Wiley, Henderson: Time’s a-Wastin’

“Anybody here in a hurry?” asked William T. Wiley early in the musical performance he and fellow Bay Area artist Michael Henderson gave Friday evening at the Laguna Art Museum.

It’s a good question, because a perception of their show depends a great deal on how one regards time: If our consciousness extends through eternity, then there surely is room to include the pair’s shaggy, ambling performance, just as there is time to be a rock, snail or investment banker for several lifetimes.

If, however, one thinks we are limited to this finite span on Earth, even Wiley and Henderson’s mercifully brief one-hour event might seem an unreasonable expense of moments that could easily have been more richly spent.

The show was an adjunct to Wiley’s “Struck! Sure? Sound/Unsound” exhibit appearing at the museum through Oct. 11. His paintings and constructs--mostly limitedly fanciful abstracts on guitar designs--may best be belabored by more crenelated minds. But to this critic’s ears Wiley and Henderson’s music just didn’t stack up.

To their credit, there was little that could be called ponderous about the performance. Rather, it suffered from a forced playfulness, along with a central problem of having no apparent cause to exist, outside of art guys showing they can slum in “lower” arts like folk music and blues.

Without announcement, the 54-year-old Wiley--in bolo tie, blue work shirt and jeans, with his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail--began the evening playing slide guitar on one of his box-shaped art guitars. Henderson--in black T-shirt and porkpie hat--accompanied him by meandering over the neck of a conventional acoustic guitar. After a few minutes of noodling, Wiley explained he was only showing that one could get sounds from his works (though visitors were discouraged from similarly plucking the strings of his exhibited instruments). He went on to point out aspects of the guitar’s construction, which seemed pointless given that its details were lost on the dimly lit stage.

To the taped sounds of running water--continuous throughout the performance--Henderson struck up a two-chord figure, which he accompanied with a melodic grumble while Wiley moved distractedly between a variety of noisemakers. Those included bird, train, nose and werewolf whistles, jew’s-harp, gongs, percussion devices made from branches and junk and a walkie-talkie that spewed out static and a marine weather report.

“Whether we know it or not, it’s nice weather,” declared Wiley as he strode through the hall waving the walkie-talkie in the air. I hope he gets government grants for this stuff.

There also were snatches of poetry and song that flipped in and out of the formless piece. Perhaps there was some grand meaning to be made of the juxtaposition of sounds and bad puns emanating from Wiley, but it sounded more like bad acid night up at Uncle Bill’s cabin. Any who have lived through the era of hippie kitchen drug jams would have heard some all-too-familiar resonances in the onstage shambles.

Wiley never seemed to really dig into any of his noisemakers, never finding the child’s engagement and wonder even a nose whistle might contain. Instead he flitted restlessly between the instruments, as if desperate to express a playfulness that might actually now be forgotten.

Henderson, who outside of his painting doubles as a blues musician of some repute, appeared to be fairly distanced from the proceedings, though he lit up somewhat for the next number, in which his pained blues voice called out “Andy Warhol! Laurie Anderson!” and other art-world names before determining, “I might as well be myself.”

The cleverness of his mixing blues and art cliches wore a little thin when used again on a standard-form blues with the lyric, “I got an abstract woman / Yeah, she got conceptual ways / She can take my poor heart, and turn it into Cubist pain.”

Wiley offered a snippet of songs about subatomic particles, with lines like, “Protons, electrons and such / There’s a lot, but not much.” His highlight may have been a nearly tuneless version of “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore” on which he played ominous percussion while Henderson created tomb-like voices. Wiley also played some surprisingly musical harmonica on a closing folk tune by Henderson. Each at times moved through the crowd, one banging on a sheet of tin, the other waving a small electronic siren.

If this wasn’t already more fun than a body could practically stand, the whole show was abetted by two young female dancers, who appeared to perhaps be warming up for the Jerry Garcia show the following evening at Irvine Meadows. One moved slowly and serenely, seeming to express “I am the soul of India, or maybe a vacuum cleaner,” while the other frugged and gyrated wildly like a giant ant enrolled in a Step Reebok class.

It was brief. It was over. And it would take a stunningly dim imagination for any individual to not be able to come up with something at home or in the car that was at least as lively or thoughtful as what Wiley and Henderson were engaging in under the imprimatur of museum art.

William T. Wiley’s “Struck! Sure? Sound/Unsound” exhibit continues through Oct. 11 at the Laguna Art Museum, 307 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach. Hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission: $1.50 to $3. (714) 494-6531.