Art: Performance Art: Grillo the Clown:
Music: Street Performers: Grillo the Clown:
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Grillo the Clown
The entity known as Grillo has been a regular fixture on the streets of Kentucky for many years now. His street-guerilla performance art has enraptured and enraged many an innocent bystander, and his arrest record nearly matches that of fellow troublemaker Henry Earl.
Grillo first appeared in the 1980s and proclaimed himself to be "the world's greatest performance artist". At the time it seemed that Grillo was a satire of pretentious, over-the-top performance artists. However, in the years since, he has traveled extensively abroad and given performances at many a prestigeous European art venue. By sheer persistence and without changing his basic shtick, Grillo has seemingly actually become that which he was mocking and parodying, and for that conundrum alone he is probably deserving of his self-styled title of world's greatest performance artist.
Grillo speaks in a hodgepodge of languages, often starting a sentence in pidgin English but ending it in spanish, with a French verb stuck in there for good measure. All of which is delivered in an ever-changing variety of voicings (ranging from high squeaky to low grumbly) and accents (most commonly invoked are a thick faux-German accent and a Jed Clampett-ish hillbilly drawl). When he sings, he often enters a whole new strata of meta-language, leaving the cultivated gibberish of Slim Gaillard and Snoop Dogg way behind in the dust.
In the early 1990s Grillo headed a street gang called Grillo's Big Grape Militia, which conducted itself in an exagerrated tough-guy biker manner like in Marlon Brando's The Wild One, yet they straight-facedly drove children's bicycles (replete with tall safety-orange flags) and were obsessed with comic books. In retrospect, Grillo describes the gang as "a performance art happening", but those who were there say it wasn't just theater, Grillo was deadly serious and earnest about it. We're not exactly sure when the gang disbanded, or why.
Fellow performance artist Jennifer Ray interviewed Grillo in the summer of 2002, and though he was far from cooperative, some interesting nuggets of information were gleaned. The interview can be seen here.
Recently Grillo had a one-man art show at Louisville's Deatrick Gallery entitled Glue and Gum, which spanned a wide range of techniques, emphasizing Grillo's multi-tentacled approach. There were homespun musical instruments, such as the Creeps Can, as well as mixed media constructions, collages, found items, digital art, paintings, writings, sculpture, and more. You can view some of the items from the exhibit here.
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