SPY - HOME

“Swimming Cities, From Spy’s Perspective,” Juxtapoz Art & Culture Magazine, December 21, 2009.

Dr. HAL Robins (Church of the SubGenius) says: Spy Emerson is an accomplished practitioner of the graphic and plastic arts. For years her metier has been what can be best described by her slogan, "Making Something from Nothing." Though in a sense this could be said of all art, Spy's specialty is synthesis. As she achieves effects essentially more profound than simple satire and social criticism, the "nothing" she employs as raw material is our unnoticed trash, the cast-off leavings of a civilization undergoing enforced technological mutation. The resulting work serves the lyric and decorative functions of art as it adds to the didactic voice of the art of our times. It insists, as Dr. Nicole Archer has written, "...that we recognize the ethics implied in our relationships with such detritus... [and] see the beauty inherent in these items...." A contributor to JUXTAPOZ magazine and a boldly inventive Performance Artist, Spy's numerous and playful works include stage shows of dance and drama, collage and assemblage of found materials, photography, painting, film and video.

Gutterbunny in Chinatown is a Performance Art of The Absurd, most like a Vaudevillian Furry-Fetishist stage show. An existentialist story starring a rabbit that escapes from a butcher shop in Chinatown hides behind a dumpster and considers the meaning of freedom following a talk with some enlightened rats.

Anthropomorphic animals wade through human complexities with dark humor and philosophical fumblings in this original story starring a cast of her friends. Props and costumes are art pieces themselves, constructed entirely from salvaged materials. “Gutterbunny in Chinatown” is the next iteration of the Happy Forever series of performance pieces spanning the past 11 years.