What are those large metal Sculptures doing

The lobby of the El Paso Museum of Art is slowly filling up with large metal installations by James Drake for his opening show Sunday (Aug 23) at 2 pm of a work called File Cabinet. At the moment there are two pieces. One including an arch with bronzed farm implements implanted in it on one side and on the other an arch with rocket launchers, ak-47’s and other military weapons embedded in its side. There is a large metal nude woman standing in the middle of this with two swans in attendance.  Close by is a large walk-in metal closet which also contains a variety of embedded objects like a heart.  The rest should be coming by the end of the week and the show will open Sunday afternoon.  I have been told Mr Drake will be in attendance and he can perhaps enlighten us all on what it is he had in mind. If you cannot make the opening you apparently have two years to see it.

I want to put in a bit of an update and clarification. File Cabinet is actually the name of the one main walk-in installation, while the other piece is called Juarez-El Paso. There are also supposed to be some wall hanging pieces coming. All of these pieces are from the 80’s, so while the Juarez -El Paso work with its images of military artillary might seem to be a response to the current situation in Juarez, and might be even more relevant than when it was made, it was in fact inspired by a different time altogether.

Mr Drake will be in attendance and will be signing a large retrospective book of his work at the reception from 2-4 on Sunday.-david sokolec