She’s only 8 years old, but already, Isabella Sisk-González has five years of visual art collaboration under her belt.
The third-grader showed 22 pieces at Minicine Gallery in Shreveport, Louisiana, with her grandfather, Dennis González, in September.
Their show, Isabella Anais Sisk-González and Dennis González: 5 Years of Collaborative Works, opens with 18 pieces at Top Ten Records on Nov. 12.
Dennis González is the patriarch of a musical legacy that includes Yells at Eels, his band with sons Aaron and Stefan and guitarist Gregg Prickett.
“The artwork is bright and astonishing,” he says of the show.
It all started when González asked Steve Cruz at Mighty Fine Arts if he could show some of his work. He hadn’t shown anything in years, but visual art has been part of his musical life for years. When touring in Europe, the avant-garde jazz musician used to show artwork that corresponded with the music.
That’s one reason all of his work is on paper — they’re collages that he duplicates in black-and-white on a large-format photocopier and then colors in with paint and markers. So they’re easy to roll up and take on the road.
Yells at Eels performed at his show at Mighty Fine Arts in 2016. Just before, his granddaughter, who is called Issy, then 2 and a half, “got this gold marker and started scribbling all over my art work.”
It was the biggest piece in the show and had taken longer than any of the others.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my lord!” he says. “For a second I started to freak out.”
Then he realized it added a story to the piece, so it went up in the show like that, and it was the first one to sell.
After that, they started an intentional collaboration.
Once they have the photocopy, Issy takes over. Sometimes she could finish her part in 30 minutes or three hours, Gonzalez says.
“I used to call them her ‘scribbles,'” he says.”But she’s very serious and conscious about what she wants to do.”
When she’s done, he goes in and “fills the holes” with black marker.
One of the pieces was used as a CD cover for Gonzalez’s group Ataraxia, which came out on the French jazz label Ayler Records in March.
González, who has lived in Oak Cliff since 1976, has been very ill for the past two years and is on dialysis. About a year ago, he fell and broke bones in his face and neck, and he has scarcely left the house since the start of the pandemic, he says. But he says the whole family went out to the show in Shreveport last month.
He’s been unable to move around much and is learning to walk without assistance.
“But every morning, I would wake up and say ‘you’re here,'” he says. “You’re awake and breathing. You’re able to be with family and talk with friends.”
The collaborations with Issy have helped keep him busy and creative, and he says “the magic is coming back.”
Issy calls him “Booboo,” and he says she is 8 going on 18.
“She’s teaching me a lot about art and not getting stuck in certain ways,” he says. “All that is helping me recuperate.”
