I have discovered fanaticism in its extreme, warts and all. And it is at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, of all places. Elvis lives at Academy
of Warts, er, ArtsIt is there that I entered a room devoted entirely to Elvis Presley. Devoted isn't quite the word. Obsessed gets closer. Restraint is not something normally associated with the study of Elvis Presley. But there is nothing -- nothing -- in the annals of excessive/compulsive behavior that can beat artist Joni Mabe's Elvis Room at the Academy of Arts.
Before I take you inside the room, let me tell you why it's there. And this, too, goes to the heart of pop culture run amok. Until June 8, the Academy of Arts is presenting an exhibition called "Elvis + Marilyn: 2X Immortal." It is a collection of paintings, sculpture, photographs, video and other artworks devoted to Elvis and Marilyn Monroe. The only understated thing about this exhibit is the line in the PR packet that says "Elvis and Marilyn are both figures who have come to be known globally." That is something like saying the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are "types of explosives that have come to be known globally."
The academy exhibit will include a puppet show with 16-foot-high Elvis and Marilyn puppets; a portfolio of Andy Warhol photo-silkscreen Marilyn prints; "offerings" by local artists to an "Altars, Niches and Shrines" showcase and a sock hop featuring -- surprise -- Marilyn and Elvis impersonators.
But the strangest part of the exhibit has to be the "installation" of Mabe's traveling, panoramic encyclopedia of Elvis. This supposedly is installation in the artistic sense: a bunch of art filling one room. But it feels more like installation in the military sense, as in a missile silo or bunker. Mabe has created Elvis -- Ground Zero.
If you've ever wondered what it would be like to climb inside the head of someone seriously deranged about one subject, this is your chance. Posters, photos, newspapers, drawings, tapestries ... there is not a single inch in this room that is not Elvis. It is fascinating, overwhelming and, at least for me, quite disturbing.
I felt like I was intruding into the deepest part of someone's personal life. A part that should be kept secret. But it isn't Elvis' psyche you see, it is Mabe's.
And the thing that convinced me that this exhibit went beyond all boundaries of normalcy was "The Elvis Wart."
Yes. There in a test tube vial, nestled lovingly in a box lined with plush red cloth, looking something like a chewed-up pencil eraser, was "The Elvis Wart." And just in case you don't believe it, there is a large fuzzy photograph showing Elvis with a wart on his right hand.
Standing next to the wart exhibit, Mabe, in a long, blue dress festooned with an enormous Elvis picture, explains to visitors that the Presley Estate does not support her work.
They should, she says, "because I have taken it to a higher brow." Yes, folks, these days displaying the wart of a dead rock singer is considered high brow. This is not criticism. This is amazement, pure and simple.
Because, in order to truly appreciate that statement, you have to realize that the exhibit also includes a vial of Elvis sweat, a lock of his hair and an Elvis toenail.
Now, to be fair, Mabe calls it the "Probably Elvis Toenail" because she's not a hundred percent sure it's his. She dug it out of a carpet at Graceland in 1983. Elvis died in 1977. Think about that. What would cause a person to scour a carpet on her hands and knees and dig out a toenail embedded in the carpet? And then convince herself that it is the toenail of Elvis and take it all over the country, displaying it in a little wooden box? That is the true eerie attraction to this room.