NYLON - August 2008 - (Page 131) A BEAUTIFUL MIND If you are not already a fan, the documentary Beautiful Losers will make artist Margaret Kilgallen your new role model. By Kate Williams Margaret Kilgallen was a librarian, a graffiti writer, a surfer, an activist and an artist. There also is a good chance that she is one of your favorite artist’s favorite artists. “I loved her artwork,” says Ed Templeton. “And her person was so amazing! Just the way she held herself and how she replied to questions, rode her bike and spoke with people. Any time you come in contact with someone like that, they leave you with a real impression and a model to emulate.” Born in Washington, D.C., Kilgallen studied printmaking in Colorado before landing in San Francisco. It was there, and also through shows in New York at Aaron Rose’s Alleged Gallery, that Kilgallen and her husband, artist Barry McGee, became part of a group—which also included Templeton, Thomas Campbell and Steve Powers, among other influential artists—who are now profiled in Rose’s documentary, Beautiful Losers. “That whole scene was really active, and that’s how I met Margaret,” Rose recalls of San Francisco’s art community. “I had seen her artwork before, so I knew what was coming. Sort of like, wow.” Kilgallen died of cancer in 2001, shortly after giving birth to her and McGee’s first child, and the reverence that Kilgallen’s contemporaries hold for her is both sincere and earnest. “I do stuff all the time that reminds me of Margaret,” says Powers. “It is never conscious theft, it’s just me hitting territory she opened up 10 years ago. The whole pile of artists that make up the Beautiful Losers group are really outclassed by her: She was different in that she never made a bad move; she just grew like a tree in amazing and natural directions.” “We would always try to find something new or old that would inspire us in our work, and we’d try to make it our own,” McGee says. “It could be from the street, a freight train, whatever, it didn’t matter. It was always fun that way.” Working at the public library restoring old books helped fuel Kilgallen’s interest in hand-drawn typography and in the history and tradition of American craft. Her work, which ranged from quick hobo tags on passing freight trains (she wrote under the name Matokie Slaughter) to community murals and multi-layered installations, was filled with flat-painted words and long-limbed women and shady characters. “She was able to create a dictionary of incredibly recognizable imagery,” Rose says. “Immediately, at first glance, you say ‘Margaret Kilgallen.’” She also took a lot of her inspiration from the painted signs in the Mission District, and always worked by hand herself. “Margaret understood what the hand was capable of producing, large or small scale,” McGee says. “It was a detail that was very important to her.” Kilgallen frequently worked on community projects and believed that art shouldn’t be a selfish pursuit. “She was a true embodiment of the do-it-yourself ethos,” Campbell says. “She explored her surroundings and the community in a beautiful, realistic way. She was just doing what she loved and needed to do and that was it. It might not sound all that rare, but it really is.” It’s this spirit that is Kilgallen’s legacy, and what makes her stand out, even in the group of internationally successful artists profiled in the film. “When I get down and don’t feel like doing art and I feel like giving it up, then the thing that keeps me going is the fact that maybe, maybe, somebody will learn from what I’m doing,” Kilgallen once said in an interview with PBS’s Art21. “I know artists supposedly do their work for themselves, and it is very personally motivated. And yet when you put your work out there and somebody comes up to you and thanks you for doing it, and especially when young people come up and thank me— that is why I do work.” margaret kilgallen photo by cheryl dunn. mural image (above) courtesy of aaron rose. “slaughter” train-writing image courtesy of barry mcgee.
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