SuttonBeresCuller: Big thinkers turn their attention to smaller-scale artworks

"Nauseatingly."

"Clichéd."

A few years ago, a critic used those words in a review of a performance piece by the artist trio SuttonBeresCuller (SBC). Clearly, they stung. In a new collection of work on display at Lawrimore Project in Seattle, the artists answer back by sandblasting every word of that review onto stones, and perching those two particular words on the top of a loose pile.

"A Dissent" (named for the originally referenced performance) is nearly the first thing you stumble on in this show filled with symbols of good intentions, frustrations and futility.

For example: "Flight Path" is an impressively constructed installation of a military gun, which shoots dozens of model aircraft at the wall. "Distribution of Wealth" slices a stack of one-dollar bills into portions representing the costs of producing the exhibition, dealer Scott Lawrimore's take and the amount the three artists will be paid.

What will John Sutton do with his $100?

"Pay off some debt," he says.

The show seems to say that artists such as Sutton, Ben Beres and Zac Culler — who have been working together for a decade since meeting at Cornish College of the Arts — have the odds stacked against them. And yet, it also presents a major symbol of the artists' ingenuity and perseverance: "Model for the Mini-Mart City Park."

In 2005, SuttonBeresCuller decided to transform an abandoned gas station in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle into an amalgam of park and community center. This living work of art, and the bureaucratic hassles SBC has been tied up in regarding its implementation, has been well-documented from the weeklies to the architecture publication Arcade.

For now, its most complete representation is the model that sits in Lawrimore. The Georgetown site, still a toxic mess, was best put to use this year as the venue for some punk bands on a warm August night.

The formidable obstacles of creating their largest work to date were matched with the destruction this spring of "There Goes the Neighborhood," a mobile living room that SBC had parked in various neighborhoods and at events since 2005. There it went outside of Lawrimore Project one night — up in flames.

So perhaps the artworks made in the studio, on display now, show the trio's relief in the small(er)-scale creative process, as well as frustration with the larger ones.

"That practice [of making art] was lost over the past year, and it was a welcome change to get back to actually making things instead of writing proposals and working on budgets," says Culler.

For "Everyone is an Artist, The Summit," printmaker Beres replicated a heavily graffitied mirror from the bathroom at the Summit Tavern (now the Summit Public House) by pulling acid through a silk-screen. It references midcentury German artist Joseph Beuys, whose "social sculpture" promoted the idea that society is to be regarded as a work of art.

The projects that have made SBC love-'em-or-hate-'em darlings in the local art world are exactly that kind of social sculpture. Their portable environments like "Neighborhood" throughout the years have allowed the public to physically complete the work.

SBC has garnered plenty of media attention over the years (in these pages and elsewhere) for outlandish endeavors such as 2005's "The Island." That project was treated with bewilderment by rubberneckers on the 520 bridge, who couldn't believe that three men in ripped business suits were floating on a palm-tree-adorned raft in Lake Washington.

They don't like to be called pranksters, but viewers and other artists continually become partners in play. Vital 5 Productions' Jason Puccinelli, Jed Dunkereley and Greg Lundgren smashed their initials together as "a direct reference and challenge" to SBC — and impersonated them to hilarious effect during the Tacoma Art Museum's Northwest Biennial in 2007. While SBC installed their work for that show, PDL addressed the press.

"My No. 1 impression is just how well they get along, how much they genuinely care about each other, and how balanced they work as a team," says Lundgren.

Beres says that being part of such a close-knit team can be an "emotional roller coaster," but one that makes the work better.

"As for their growth, it's exciting, frustrating, fun and painful to watch," Lundgren says, calling their career "a performance piece in endurance."

As the members of SBC prepare for a winter residency at the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, and whatever the future holds for the Mini-Mart, they continue to think and work big.

"It's a testament to the idea that three perspectives, three different skill sets and three different personalities can create work that is stronger than the work of one person," Lundgren says.