She comes in colors – Rainbow Deli offers shocks and awes with new pop-up galleries

It’s not so much the death of childhood as it is a slaughter. Winston Willingham’s latest artwork is a colorful morass of stuffed animals—hundreds of them—de-carcassed, slathered in stray paint marks and splayed out on 4-foot-by-5-foot canvases.

“There are some heads, some eyes here and there, but I try to mask that they were once animals,” Willingham says. “It’s all feeling, all instinct. I’ve been trying to write artist statements for a while, and it is very difficult.”

Though it began as a title for a series of his own gleefully chaotic mixed media pieces, Willingham wants to turn Rainbow Deli into a full-fledged guerilla gallery movement in Baton Rouge.

A year ago, the 24-year-old moved back from New York City, where he had worked as a musician and photographer. Once home, he reconnected with longtime friend Rebecca Herbert, a furniture designer and photographer who had just returned to Baton Rouge herself after studying at the renowned Rhode Island School of Design.

Last summer, the pair conceived of a local art show featuring the progressive work of the friends they made in the Northeast. Though only acquaintances of Ephemeral Gallery owners Kathryn Hunter and David Cano, Willingham and Herbert walked into the Mid City space and pitched an ambitious idea for a progressive eight-artist pop-up show.

“Their energy was great, but what really made the pitch was that Winston and Rebecca were two artists from Baton Rouge that left, were educated outside the state, but chose to come back to Baton Rouge,” Hunter says.

The result, that September, was Cool Jumbo Holy Mess, a bombastic launch for Rainbow Deli that attracted a couple hundred curious patrons. Some of the grown folks were delightfully shocked by the work on display, and Willingham loves that. He just loves that they got out of the house.

“It’s about getting people out of their normal way of thinking about art and showing them something new that’s happening in the world,” he says. “We’ve been fortunate to see some interesting work across the country and want to use Rainbow Deli as a vessel to share cool stuff.”

For Rainbow Deli’s planned event this spring, though, the venue could change.

The artists are contemplating other alternative spaces, like vacated warehouses, to create new opportunities for pop-up galleries. Herbert understands that the work she and her partner champion may appear edgy to many in Baton Rouge; therefore, the way in which they present it needs to be less formal and more approachable than a traditional gallery.

“The art we’re interested in is really different, so the spaces we use need to be different, too,” Herbert says. “Hopefully, people will view the work with a fresh pair of eyes.”

Visit wix.com/winstonwillingham/rainbowdeli for more information and updates on Rainbow Deli.