“There’s not a single gallery in town that I go to and I think, ‘Wow, I love this. I feel inspired by this,’ Michael Mahaffey told me over coffee at Gallery Espresso, where he has his latest show.
“How the [heck] is it possible to have a city this size with this many artists in it and have it be such a [highly] depressing place to show in?”
"MrMahaffey" (as he's known on Etsy and Instagram) has never been one to pull punches in either his work or his critique of the local art scene, and our latest chat about some downright controversial new artwork he's been creating and the creative community as a whole was no exception.
“I don’t mean that there aren’t inspiring artists here,” he clarified. “I just mean that the art movements and the art venues are absolutely, 100% not inspiring.”
Mahaffey, who is a SCAD graduate but had initially moved away after obtaining his degree, came back to Savannah at the end of 2013 full of energy and excitement. He had a list of goals in mind, and in his nearly eight years in town all of those goals have been achieved.
“I had just gone into business for myself, and I wanted to be someplace beautiful and inspiring and a little cheaper so I could just focus on the artwork, and I did all that.” he explained. “I came [and] wanted to save money, I wanted buy a car, I wanted to build up my portfolio, and all those things happened.”
In short, he became a successful artist, working full time creating the kinds of pieces that you can see at the current Gallery Espresso exhibition. And as someone who has followed him for a long time and who considers him a friend, his work has also gotten more and more interesting over the years, and he’s become more and more willing to push the envelope.
Take, for example, one recent piece that raised a few eyebrows on social media: Featuring two figures in swimsuits facing each other, one male and one female, the image could be classified as one of Mahaffey’s “simpler” designs. The text, however, ultimately transforms it into one of his finest. Through the use of a dialogue bubble, the man asks, “Why do you dress like a whore?” to which the woman answers, “Why do you think like a rapist?”
“I was like, oh, I have this kind of douche-y looking summertime guy and I’ve got this fancy summertime girl,” he related. “I’d love to put them together and have them have that exchange.
“I think this time of year is always interesting because guys can wear whatever they want or don’t want to wear, but women cannot, and the backlash against that is always really fascinating to me.”
It’s this kind of piece that has defined his artistic output of late, and the sort of visceral reaction he’s looking for from his audience. But it’s also something Mahaffey rarely sees locally, not because there aren’t plenty of exciting and talented artists in the city, but because he believes Savannah galleries just aren’t taking enough chances on truly moving artwork.
“You should be turning every corner here and seeing something that is inspiring or weird or troubling or beautiful or all of the above,” he said. “It shouldn’t take me 11 or 12 months in between gasps of excitement over somebody’s art.”
Sadly, Mahaffey isn’t likely long for Savannah, as he’s planning on moving back to San Diego as soon as the pandemic makes such a relocation feasible. Thankfully for us, this current show won’t be his last here in town, as he’s presently creating a massive collection to act as a sort of going away exhibition, to be displayed at a time and place as yet undetermined.
But beyond his frustration over the art scene, his personal reason for leaving can’t help but make me feel like I should have made a little bit more time for the talented creator, because once he’s gone, I, for one, will feel the loss.
“Not to say it’s all bad, that I haven’t met amazing people,” he said of his time in Savannah. "But the level of kindness and of camaraderie that I experienced in southern California is nothing like what I feel here. I don’t feel that people are all that friendly here. And maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s the way I approach life or art or whatever.
“There is a weird cliquishness here that I would have laughed off if somebody would told me about when I first moved here,” Mahaffey added. “But there’s just something really weird and really sad about Savannah to me. When I first got here I remember thinking I’m gonna see new galleries open while I’m here, and I’m gonna see a revolution of art while I’m here, and I’m gonna do my best to make as much art as I can and meet new people. And I really feel like I tried. I feel like I put up my end and put myself out there. But I’ve never met such rude people and weird artists that just didn’t want to grow, or didn’t want to at least have anything to do with what I was doing. And that really bummed me out.”
As an arts writer who has an easy in to almost any artist’s studio, it’s hard for me to feel ostracized in the way that my friend MrMahaffey feels. But as I contemplated his words in the days after he spoke them to me, I couldn’t help but wonder if, for many creatives in Savannah, he isn’t 100% right.
Michael Mahaffey’s current exhibition at Gallery Espresso will run until sometime in late August or early September. He has no plans for a reception.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: MrMahaffey is still waiting for excitement with art in Savannah, but has a new show in the meantime
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