Gargoyle Mechanique

Gargoyle Mechanique was originally the name of a group of
collaborating art inventors in San Francisco in the late 1970's,
and later to be the name of an inter-media art space and theater, music, radio, sculpture, art and film collective
serially located at various basements and storefronts in New York City's East Village
through the 80's into the 1990's.

The name Gargoyle Mechanique was partly inspired by a museum of antique mechanical toys and contraptions on the pacific coast of San Francisco named Le Musee Mecanique. The name Gargoyle Mechanique was devised originally for the purpose of sending a set of gifts to another local San Franciscan arts group, Ralph Records and The Residents, and the group felt they needed an identifying moniker to do so.

Original S.F. member, artist Douglas Bert Kennedy created the first logo of the shield emblazoned with the goats head. After Steve Jones Daughs had established the Gargoyle Mechanique project and identity in New York, Kennedy redesigned the logo into the bug-like-tribal-mask image. Eventually Jones altered that design, placing it inside a gear, to create what is most widely remembered as the Gargoyle Mechanique logo image.

The initial San Francisco collective, located in an old victorian-era house at the intersection of 14th Street and Eureka, a few blocks from Castro and Market, included sculptor/poet/illustrator Douglas Bert Kennedy, electronic music composer Matthew Myrle Crowe, experimental musician Steve Jones Daughs, poet musician David Davo Landazuri. In various collaboration with others and themselves, the group made music, sculpture and writings all at once.

MORE TO COME
GARGOYLE MECHANIQUE LABORATORY 28 Avenue B, New York NY 10003

REFERENCESEast Village Journal; Baying at the Moon . . . ReverentlyBy COLIN MOYNIHANPublished: October 12, 2003http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E5D9133FF931A25753C1A9659C8B63