“Kaleidoscoptical Super Revolution!”

“Kaleidoscoptical Super Revolution!” is a show of works by one of Houston’s most meticulous artists. Patrick Turk spends hours cutting out inch-size pieces of paper to create his collages. He uses small pictures of bodies, body parts, sushi, snakes, lines, everything — to create larger pictures that resemble the view down a kaleidoscope. At his studio, he points to one work that features a bunch of green and blue human heads. “All these guys…there’s like a bunch of them — that takes a long time to cut out,” Turk says. The cutting takes up most of his time and, we guessed, a lot of his patience — we were right. “That’s the limitation,” he says. “I’m going to make something no matter how much time or effort it takes, as long as the outcome works.”

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• Patrick Turk

His obsessive attention to detail shows in pristinely cut and laid-out clips that get more interesting with every step. His weapon: one pair of blades. “I have these scissors,” he says holding them up. “If somebody stole them I would die.” He says his girlfriend had them sharpened for his birthday one year and he freaked out, but was happy to see them return with new edges. “They needed it,” he says.

This show, Turk’s first solo exhibit, will feature his large collages and smaller ones done on index-size pieces of paper. He’ll also show some of the impressive three-dimensional scenes he creates by layering resin and cutouts with more resin and cutouts. His is an organic, ever-developing process — Turk lays out the cutouts and then glues them down, but he might change his mind. This is why he says he rarely lets anyone see a piece before it’s done.

“I’m like, ‘It’s not finished.’ And they’re like, ‘What do you mean? It’s finished,’” he says. “And then sometimes people will come back and see it when it’s finished and say, ‘I liked it before.’” But Turk says this doesn’t bother him. He knows when he’s ready to stop gluing. “I be finished when I be finished,” he says. See the results at the show’s opening today from 7 to 10 p.m. ArtStorm, 4820 Caroline. The show runs noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Through July 6. For information, call 713-802-0472 or visit www.artstormhouston.com. Free.
Saturdays, Sundays, 12-5 p.m. Starts: June 7. Continues through July 6, 2008