Alli Good was conditioned to be modest and lady-like. 
She paints drunk girls, lascivious nude women and a family who makes absinthe in the basement.

By Connie Bostic

            There are no hard figures on the number of visual artists trying to make a career and make a living in Asheville.  AdvantageWest, the economic development group, reports 2,465 "Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers" in the 23 western counties in 2008.  In Buncombe County alone, there are 1,023 in that category.  Given the hype about Asheville being a mecca for the arts and crafts, it's likely a large proportion are visual artists.

Many of those under 40 are probably here because they graduated from the arts programs at Warren Wilson College, UNC Asheville or Western Carolina University and stayed for the congenial surroundings, part-time jobs and friends.  Others moved here having heard Asheville is an artist-friendly place.

One of the best things for me about getting older is the pleasure of watching these young artists mature and come into their own.  From my conversations and observations, I've learned they have different ideas about what "making it" as an artist means.  Some think success is having gallery representation and museum shows.  Others just hope for an occasional exhibition in a coffee shop or hair salon.  For some, it's selling lots of work, having a Web site and constantly displaying their work in as many places as possible.  A few strive for recognition in the larger art world.  They visit galleries in other cities and look for a place where their work might fit.

For some, however, art is primarily their means of communication, a way to express and share ideas and concepts.  Making art is more important to them than making it as an artist.

Alli Good is one of those.  At 33, she does not fit the romanticized profile of the bohemian artist.  She did not go to art school.  Unlike many of her contemporaries, she has responsibilities as a wife and mother.  Her husband Doug is the technology manager for an architectural moldings manufacturer. They have a 9-year-old son, Oskar.  She works part-time in a West Asheville coffee shop and volunteers three or four hours every week at Oskar’s school.  They live in a comfortable home in Arden with a lawn and a jungle gym in the back yard.

Good is friendly with other area artists her age but doesn’t particularly enjoy being a part of Asheville's "art scene."  She seldom attends exhibition openings.  When Bill Thompson, owner of Asheville's Satellite Gallery, showed some of her paintings at the Gen Art Vanguard Art Fair during Art Basel Miami Beach, Good went along and took her family.  She saw all the art she could but divided her time so Oskar and Doug could enjoy the beach.

Good is one of a number of young Asheville artists loosely affiliated with the Satellite Gallery and what Thompson and others call "New Contemporary" art. 

What strikes me about Good's work is how intensely personal it feels.  She paints corpulent, sometimes lascivious nude women who can be grotesque or funny or both and is clearly exploring feminist body image issues.  (In reality, Good is trim, attractive and keeps her clothes on.)  In "Daughters of a Beautiful Mother," she delves into the dark insecurity of young girls and the mother-daughter dynamic.  

Importantly, Good cares what her paintings look like.  She has something to say that is her own.  Although self taught, she has technique.  Good’s line is clean and expressive and her figures are executed with flat planes in a restrained palette.  Nothing has a dashed-off look.  Everything is carefully planned and just as carefully rendered.
 
 The imprint of graphic novels is apparent in a series of narrative paintings Good is currently working on.  A good story-teller, she has constructed a dark fairy tale about a family in which the daughter has Gigantism, the medical condition that causes excessive growth.  She has given the family an ordinary name, (they are the Bowmans), classic suburban clothing and a typical middle class existence.  They indulge in typical old fashioned middle-class activities.  They go on picnics and spend time together.  But they also make absinthe in their basement.

 The  story has a creepy undertone.  Good has given the family a secret so dark it affects their entire small town.   She hasn't revealed the secret yet but says it will come to light as the series progresses.

 Good did not pull ideas about her character’s disease out of the air.  She did extensive research on how the bone structure of the head is affected by Gigantism and how the hands and feet change.  She's repeating and enlarging themes of her earlier work: feelings of otherness, alienation and isolation. 

I talked to Good one afternoon on her patio while she waited for Oskar to come home from school.  She said she was attracted to graphic novels because of their freedom of expression as much as the narrative painting style.  "The material is so raw," she said; "there are no inhibitions.  The content can be sexual and intense."  Her favorite artists in the genre are Daniel Clowes (a story from his "Eightball" series was the basis for the 2006 film "Art School Confidential"), Chris Ware, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, and Phobie Gloeckner. 

A military brat whose family moved regularly, Good learned early what it felt like to be the "new girl."  She had skill with a pencil and used it to make friends.  When she drew, the other kids would come around to look and talk.  She absorbed art from her family.  Her mother is a painter, her father is a photographer and her sister is a print maker.  Her brother is a magazine writer.

Her discomforting imagery may arise from her own childhood experience of not fitting in or from a scenario she creates from her imagination.  In either case, she challenges taboos.  Not that Good takes herself too seriously.  She rents space in Woolworth Walk, the downtown gallery catering mostly to tourists.  Here she sells kitschy pillows, fabric dolls she calls "Mandolls" and liquor bottles she calls Drunk Girls, all adorned with faces rendered in her signature comic-grotesque style.  Good sews the pillows and dolls herself, as well as painting them.  "I like having the space there,” she said; “It allows me to bring in some money for my family, and, if I make a painting that might be considered in questionable taste it is never a problem to hang it there.  They are very accepting.”

Although Good has exhibited in galleries and other places in Asheville, Raleigh, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, she is not working toward any exhibitions this year.  She began the Bowman family series this spring and expects to take at least another year to finish it.  "It’s scary,” she said, "to back away from showing.  I hesitated.  I keep thinking, 'What if I lose my place?’ But it is more important to be able to experiment and try new things.  It is important to me to let the work evolve.”  She worries.  "I see all these other artists doing all these incredible things to promote their careers," she said, "and I feel like a slacker."

To keep new imagery circulating in her brain she makes a drawing or a watercolor almost every day and posts them on her blog. Why does she do this?  The work, she knows, can only communicate her ideas if it is seen by others. "It gives me a goal," she said.  "I never know what image will come, but if one comes back again and again, I think it must mean something.”

What is Good’s idea of "making it” in the art world?  She answers without hesitation.  "To be able to make work as honest and fearless as that of Kara Walker," she said, "and have it accepted, even if it is hard to look at and think about. I know that men have a much easier time promoting their work than I do.  I was conditioned, like most girls, to be modest and lady-like. What it takes to 'make it' and what it means is a struggle for me right now.”

As I gather my notepad and prepare to leave, Good, modest mother and artist, checks the time and goes out to meet Oskar at the school bus.