CRACKBABIES PLIGHT INSPIRE EXHIBIT

ART REVIEW

By Bill Van Siclen

JOURNAL Arts Writer PROVIDENCE

LIFEBEAT

12-4-98

Seven years ago, Morgan Monceaux saw something that branded itself on his memory.

Arriving in New York City with on job, no money and no place to stay, the 51-year-old artist found himself living in an abondoned building frequented by prostitutes and drug users. One night, he watched a group of crack addicts getting high. One was a pregnant woman.

As Monceaux looked on, the woman went into labor, giving birth to a stillborn child. After making sure the baby was dead, several members of the group dumped its body into a plastic grabage bag.

then they all went back to getting high.

That grim memory has now inspired a performance piece and installation at AS220. Called The Cost of Not Preventing Crackbabies, the work tears down the usual barriers between art and life, forcing viewers to confront the problem of crack addicition on an immediate, personal level.

" A lot of people have no real understanding of the problem," saus Monceaux, who has since turned his own life around, becoming a celebrated artist and illustrator. "They see it flicker across their TV screens from time to time. But they don't really connect with it."

To help make that connection-"to open a new door," as Monceaux puts it-the AS220 installtion mixes painting, printmaking, sculpture and video together with elements of religious ritual and personal confession.

On one side of AS220's upstairs gallery, for example, is a makeshift coffin lined with black velvet and decorated with tiny skeletons and racist caricatures of black children. Inside the coffin is a mirror. Look in the coffin and you see yourself looking back.

MULTI-ETHNIC ARRAY OF DOLLS

Scattered around the coffin are several small tables. On the tables are dolls that Monceaux has painted in shades of black, white,brown and yellow. The same multi-ethnic array of dolls appears in a series of poster size prints that ring the gallery walls. All the dolls are headless.

It's potent stuff, to be sure. But like a lot of contemporary conceptual and installation art, it feels static and emotionally remote. In the same way that news reports about social problems can be well-meaning but ultimately numbing, it speaks to the head rather than the heart.

But the installation contains another elements one that turns an earnest peice of social commentary into something truly moving.

It's a videotape of a mock-funeral service Monceaux held on the show's opening night. Backed by the soaring music of MOZART's Requiem and interspersed with reading from the Bible are testimonals from audience members about the effects of drugs abuse on friends and family.

Non of the testimonials, including an emotional speech by singer Rose Weaver, was staged or rehearsed.

"I had no idea what would happen," Monceaux says after reviewing the half-hour tape in silence."The only thing that was planned was that there would be time set aside for people to come up and talk about their own experiences. Apart from that, it was all spontaneous."

Weaver, for example, tells of losing two brothers to drugs. A thirdbrother, she says, is headed down the same dead-end road.

Other speakers tell of losing friemds, brothers and fathers to drugs. One man describes his ownatruggle to kick thehabit; then when his words begin to falter, he breaks into an a cappella version of a gosple song.

"It took me two or three days justto come down from opening night."Monceaux says. "I was totally blown away. The fact that people were willing to get up and share some of the darkest moments of their lives was amazing."

ASKED TO REPEAT PERFORMANCE

Since then, Monceaux has been asked to repeat the "performance." perhaps at a school or social service agency. But Monceaux, a shy man who waited nearly 10 years to share the details of his own encounter with the devastating effect of drugs use, has so far said No.

"It's not like a play or something," he says. "It was real."

In fact, Monceaux had to be coaxed into sharing his experiences in the first place.

Born in Alexandria, La., Monceaux moved in New York in 1989 hoping to find work with an old Navy buddy. When that fell through, he found himself living on the street, scrounging for food by day and dodging hookers and crackheads by night.

Eventullay, Monceaux fled to Long Island, where he found refuge in an abandoned railroad shack. To help pass the time, he began making drawings of famous people, beginning with every American persident from George Washington to Bill Clinton.

When Monceaux's presidential portraits were shown in 1992 at the Morgan Rank Gallery in East Hampton, L.I. they were an instant hit. That led to admiring profiles in The New Yorker. The New York Times and other publications.

Virtually overnight, Monceaux had gone from urban castaway to art star.

Since then, Monceaux has compeleted several other portrait series. including jazz musicians, beauty pageant winners and royal families. He's also published a book, Jazz My Music, My People (Alfred A. Knopf),

with an introduction by jazz trumpeter Whynton Marsalis. He moved to Providence in 1995.

Still it wasn't until a few months ago that Monceaux began putting together the material for The Cost of Not Preventing Crackbabies. The catalyst was a dinner conversation with Claude Elliot, an assistant curator at the RISD Museum.

" He said " You have to share this stuff," Monceaux recalls. " this is too important for you to keep to yourself."