Flattery

For those who may not have seen it, I have a fairly lengthy review of a solo show by local artist Barbara Page published recently in the Ithaca Post. "The Dot and the Line," comprised mainly of collage-paintings, was up last month at Center Ithaca's CAP ArtSpace and is now down, unfortunately. The piece is worth reading nevertheless (or do I flatter myself?), as I extensively relate the work to broader artistic and intellectual movements and to other works of culture – this in addition to my usual close reading. Among them: Katherine Harmon's recent anthology The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, popular science author Steven Johnsons "long zoom" as profiled in this NYT article and in many of his books, The Charles and Ray Eames film Powers of Ten, Norton Juster's picture book The Dot and the Line (a film/video version), and Georges Perec's essay "Species of Spaces." And to top it off, some of the modernist/abstractionist art that I was raised on. And if that sounds excessive, let me just say that Page's work is the sort of thing that interests me particularly and that I have a deep intuitive sense of what it is about – or so I'd like to think. (Long term readers of this blog, on the off chance that there are any, might have some clue as to the sensibility I am vaguely pointing at.)

In other art review related news, look for an upcoming Tompkins Weekly review of the show "Trees and Other Ramifications," at the Johnson Museum. I'll post it here. The show itself is worth seeing as well.