Fun with art at the Co-Creative Center and Groundwork

“How bizarre, how bizarre, how bizarre. Destination unknown, as we pull in for some gas.

Freshly painted poster reveals a smile from the past.”

— OMC

It seems apropos that two of New Bedford’s alternate art spaces should simultaneously each be exhibiting artists that are just a step outside the conventional mainstream.

The paintings and illustrations of Joe Banda at Groundwork and the photographs of Carl Simmons at the Co-Creative Center are miles apart stylistically. But certainly there is a kinship in their penchant for the wonderfully off-kilter.

Banda embraces so-called lowbrow culture with a heady and unapologetic delight. Toss a bit of Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” Bill Griffith’s “Zippy the Pinhead” and the early Marvel comics of Jack Kirby into a Waring blender. Top it with some of Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s southern California Kustom Kulture and a skateboard punk aesthetic, and you’ll get the gist of Banda.

His “Floral Sasquatches” happily gathers eight “Bigfoots” (or would that be “Bigfeet?”) as if for a family reunion. But his woodland creatures defy the usual cryptozoological description...their shaggy hair has been replaced with flower petals in blue, orange and maroon.

Banda’s “Boxers” reimagines the 1960s toy Rock ’Em Sock ‘Em Robots as an alternate universe version of mask-wearing Mexican luchadores with the elasticity of Jack Cole’s “Plastic Man.” A fighter in a dog head knocks off the cat mask of the opponent. Their trunks are emblazoned “Ruff” and “Meow.”

“Smudge Pony” is perhaps the most “painterly” of Banda’s work in the exhibition. It has softer edges and a more delicate feel. The head of an albino pony with deep pink eyes, looking more lupine than equine, stares out from the picture plane. Atop are small rectangles of yellow, teal and coral containing a severed arm, a zig zag line, fork-tongued serpents and other curious esoterica.

At the Co-Creative Center, Carl Simmons displays a series of small photographs, all about the size of old school Polaroids. His subject is local history — and he is well-versed in it — but not bound to it.

Simmons uses ridiculously bad costumes and props to illustrate moments in regional history and some that didn’t but he wishes had.

It all works far better than it should as Simmons is not afraid to appear foolish. But he is no fool. And that makes it work.

Some of the photos are of folks known in the local art community including the late and sorely missed poet Jose Molina, local artist Meaggsy as female whaler Georgianna Leonard who went by the name George Weldon, and fellow photographer Brandon Cabral as the earlier photographer James E. Reed (1864-1939).

But most of the images are self-portraits as breads peddlers, unidentified ornithologists, abolitionists, transcendentalist baseball players, one-half of a musical duo (paired with a crow puppet) and the oft-used “mythologized New Bedford whaleman.”

The photographs are untitled but among some of the best are Simmons “failed” portrait of old local radioman Cuzzin’ Dave, another of a blind peddler in a horned red cloak, and another of William Ellery Channing — the closest friend of Henry David Thoreau — in a hideous mask.

And then there is the portrait of Herman Melville in the cupola of his sister’s NewBedford home, although there is no evidence that he was ever really there. He wears strange eyeglasses with hypnotic swirls on them. This epitomizes Simmon’s historical New Bedford...a twilight zone run by the Three Stooges. And it’s perfect.

“The Inner Workings of Joe Banda” is on display at Groundwork, 1213 Purchase Street, New Bedford until July 6.

“New New Bedford Photographic Phone Portraiture: Recent Work by Carl Simmons” is on display at the Co-Creative Center, 137 Union Street, New Bedford until June 22.

Don Wilkinson is a painter and art critic who lives in New Bedford. Contact him at Don.Wilkinson@gmail.com. His reviews run each week in Coastin’.