tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-222110332024-03-23T13:53:40.194-04:00The Thinking Eyearthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.comBlogger189125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-32658311315939761972011-04-16T17:09:00.020-04:002011-04-17T11:35:09.317-04:00Art of the Steal<style>@font-face { font-family: "Verdana"; }@font-face { font-family: "Verdana"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Verdana"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Verdana"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><iframe title="YouTube video player" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XMe3r9PLtpI" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" width="425"></iframe><br /><br />Located in Lower Merion Township, a suburb of Philadelphia, the Barnes Foundation is one America’s great (if lesser known) collections of visual art. It was founded in 1922 by Dr. Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951), a progressive albeit eccentric collector who raised himself from working-class origins through medical training and through his development and marketing of the antiseptic drug Argyrol. Housed in a distinctive building by French-American Beaux-Arts architect Paul Cret, the eclectic collection of fine and decorative artworks is best known for its Post-Impressionist and early Modernist paintings. It has formidable holdings by the likes of Jean-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Matisse once called it “the only sane place to see art in America” while the philosopher John Dewey dedicated his classic 1934 book <i>Art as Experience</i></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" > to Barnes – his student and close friend. Wary of the spectacle and commercialism that he saw as defining art museums, Barnes conceived of his building and collection primarily as a school. He stipulated in his indenture for the Collection that it be kept intact inside the original building.</span><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">It is this wish – as well as the great artistic and historical integrity of the collection and its housing – that has been violated by its current and recent trustees in their plans to move the Collection to a new home in downtown Philadelphia’s Museum District. Legally authorized in 2004, the move is currently well underway. Construction for the new building began in the fall of 2009 and should be completed this next winter. The original Barnes is to close down this July and is to reopen at the new location next year. The move has the support of many local players in politics and business, many of them seemingly more concerned with their own interests than with the integrity of the Barnes. The move have not gone uncontested: The Friends of The Barnes Foundation, a “citizens’ group,” continues to engage in legal challenges. Many in the art world have spoken out as well, among them the prominent local architect Robert Venturi – who renovated the building back in the 90’s.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">This Sunday, at 2pm, Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art will be offering <a href="http://events.cornell.edu/event/the_art_of_the_steal_40348">a public screening</a> of <a href="http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/the-art-of-the-steal">“The Art of the Steal,”</a> director Don Argott’s acclaimed 2009 documentary about the controversy. As indicated by the title, the film is an unashamedly biased polemic against the move. In <a href="http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2009/11/barnes-.html?cid=6a00d8341c630a53ef0120a656bc39970b">the words of LA Times art critic Christopher Knight</a> (one of its many interviewees) it “is a riveting — and tragic — documentary film chronicling the gratuitous ruin of a school outside Philadelphia that houses an incomparable art collection. It's a classic story of destroying the village in order to save it.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Following the showing, there will be a panel discussion featuring Cornell English professor Jeremy Braddock, grad student and preservationist Nathaniel Guest and Barnes curator Martha Lucy. It promises to complicate the perspective offered by what some have claimed is an overly one-sided film. Lucy will also be giving a lecture the following Monday with the tantalizing title <a href="http://www.arts.cornell.edu/histart/vcc_spring_2011.html">“Why We Love to Hate Renoir.”</a><span style=""> </span>It will be held at 5pm at the Ruth Woolsey Findley History of Art Gallery at Goldwin Smith Hall and will be followed by a reception. Both events are free and open to the public.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" face="verdana"><br /></p>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-81601301320421985222011-01-12T18:17:00.003-05:002011-01-12T19:18:47.514-05:00Decadia<span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.tompkinsweekly.com/currentissue/Page8.html">A review</a> of the Ink Shop's<a href="http://www.ink-shop.org/exhibits/decadia-exchange-portfolio"> "Decadia"</a> in this week's <span style="font-style: italic;">Tompkins Weekly</span>. (I'd post it here in full but I had a lousy time with Blogger's text formatting last time around and am not eager to repeat the experience.) Or download <a href="http://www.tompkinshosting.com/tompkinsweekly/TompkinsWeekly110110.pdf">the whole paper here (PDF)</a>. Go see the show before it closes after Saturday.</span><br /></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-57870299237501404862010-12-21T20:34:00.017-05:002010-12-21T21:31:17.290-05:00Trees and Other Ramifications<span style="font-size:85%;"><a style="font-family: verdana;" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPTYNIHjbJ0HXnWOiHFCl9UzXpNNebKtn0E4FZIxelMWKuu6aWXSyiHf18LG8_ZM1ocA1ZXboY5IOwY4Km0YswqBRLOrEHsAe3ZB_xxouS4pgEnklSlyGoe5KVCRYE23gPDHvkiA/s1600/Starn_Structure_of_Thought_15.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 338px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPTYNIHjbJ0HXnWOiHFCl9UzXpNNebKtn0E4FZIxelMWKuu6aWXSyiHf18LG8_ZM1ocA1ZXboY5IOwY4Km0YswqBRLOrEHsAe3ZB_xxouS4pgEnklSlyGoe5KVCRYE23gPDHvkiA/s400/Starn_Structure_of_Thought_15.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5553314197086875826" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Mike Starn and Doug Starn<br /><i>Structure of Thought 15</i>, 2001-05<br />Inkjet print and mixed media<br />Collection of the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas<br /><br /><a href="http://www.tompkinshosting.com/tompkinsweekly/TompkinsWeekly101220.pdf"><br /></a></span><div style="text-align: left; font-family: verdana;"><style>@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }@font-face { font-family: "Verdana"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 100%; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.tompkinshosting.com/tompkinsweekly/TompkinsWeekly101220.pdf">In this week’s <i>Tompkins Weekly </i>(PDF)</a>:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Branching, both as natural phenomenon and as cultural metaphor, is the subject of a current Johnson Museum show. <a href="http://www.spencerart.ku.edu/publications/trees.shtml">“Trees and Other Ramifications: Branches in Nature and Culture”</a> comes from The Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas – where it was organized by curator Stephen Goddard – and has been supplemented with works from Cornell. Goddard specializes in works on paper and “Trees,” mostly in black and white, has the same bias. </span></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Several images stand out for their raw beauty. Both Doug and Mike Starn’s large-scale inkjet photograph <i>Structure of Thought 15</i> (2001-05) and Jacques Hnizdovsky’s modestly sized woodcut <i>Copper Beech</i> (1985) present flatly silhouetted monochromatic tree-forms. The elaborate material support of <i>Structure</i> is typical of the Starns’: a grid of waxed and varnished papers glued together and stretched over a frame. The warmly colored and translucent sheets make the tree(s) ghostly, free-floating. An intended analogy between branching and thinking is robustly embodied (other photographs in the series show neurons). In a related but distinct way, the detailed and impeccable line drawing in <i>Beech</i><span style=""> conveys a sense of outward movement in tension with the static overall profile.<br /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style=""><br /></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Arboreal metaphors for lineage have a long history. Among many examples here is a diagrammatic <i>Tree of Life</i> (1860, lithograph and letterpress) by none other than Charles Darwin. This elegant piece of information design, the only illustration from his groundbreaking <i>Origin of Species</i>, diversifies upward in splitting dashed lines. Similarly, Ad Reinhardt’s polemical cartoon <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjd-L13m21TWONrANt0bjy3yJFWiC7ARErujuuMrIAnNHz3XW4nwPdkEJ-MXAjW342tEJCsyMCbukMB58JQ9ZF0mRJFghsO5GTuBeRsKC-t10JwIp_I3lHlXZr4UpBGzLXsTpSdrw/s1600/reinhardttree.jpg"><i>How to Look at Modern Art in America</i></a> (1946, offset lithography) parodies Alfred Barr’s schematic attempt to chart the roots and branches of visual modernism with a more literally drawn tree. (A print by Darwin’s evolutionist colleague Ernst Haeckel is similarly literalist – the stiff line drawing not among his more captivating images.)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Treescape as pastoral endures, despite being closely tied in Western art with the 18<sup>th</sup> and 19<sup>th</sup> centuries. Although as subject as any genre to cliché (think of images on posters and calendars), the best work in this vein is difficult to deny. Numerous pieces here attest to this. The dense accumulation of fine hatchings that make up Franz Von Stuck’s (1890) etching <i>Forellenweiher (Trout Pond)</i> make up a shadowy space pierced by light coming from between trunks. The receding perspective of these trees – reflected in the water – penetrates an otherwise flat image. A pair of recent drypoints by Donald Resnick – <i>Shoreline</i> (1997) and <i>Woods/Morning</i> (1998) is similarly atmospheric.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">But some of the most exciting work here takes the viewer into less familiar territories. One of these “other ramifications” is a gelatin silver photograph by engineer-photographer Harold Edgerton, a close-up of the <i>White of the Eye</i> (taken 1979) showing a network of retinal arteries and veins. Camera blurring, particularly in the foreground, helps create a delightfully ambiguous space. (It also suggests a self-reflexive commentary on the nature of vision.) <i>White</i> has been provocatively paired with Tanaka Ryohei’s skillful and intricate etching<i> Trees #3</i> (1974), an idiosyncratic orchard scene with exaggerated perspective. The dense overlapping of the knotted trunks and branches echoes Edgerton’s ocular vessels. (Augustus Knapp’s 19<sup>th</sup> century wood engraving of a medicinal rhizome is also worth comparing.)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Another pairing of “others” is similarly fascinating, if more opposed in its approaches. Both images show plants as botanical specimens. Karl Blossfeldt’s (early twentieth century) gelatin silver <i>Erygnium Bourgatii </i>shows a starkly silhouetted leaf. The spiky form has the look and feel of Gothic architecture filtered through the artist’s characteristic detachment. William Sharp’s (1854) color lithograph illustration <a href="http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/IX004158.html"><i>Lily Leaf</i></a>, by contrast, is drawn with great detail. Featuring an overall dull reddish tone, it shows the underside of the leaf with an admirable eye for the plant’s intricate structure of ridges and branches.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Elliott Erwitt’s gelatin silver<i> Bearded Man</i> <i>with Tree, Venice, CA</i> (taken 1979) makes a comical analogy between its two foreground “figures.” A scruffy fellow and an also-bearded palm seem oblivious to one another. In the background: a gable with a row of windows, antennas, wires.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="">It would have been interesting to see more three-dimensional work such as Cornell professor Jack Elliott and students’ sculptural <a href="http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lc1see04V91qen3g8o1_500.jpg"><i>VanRose</i></a></span><a href="http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lc1see04V91qen3g8o1_500.jpg"> benches</a>. Named after pioneering Cornell Home Economics professors Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose and crafted from the stump of a sugar maple recently cleared in an expansion of that college (now Human Ecology), the symmetrically arranged pair both preserves and enriches the natural beauty of the roots and trunk.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style=""> </span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Despite this eclecticism the overall sense conveyed by “Trees” is one of traditionalism. It would have been good to see more offbeat and aggressively contemporary work with the visual presence of the Starns’ or Edgerton. Still, this is an engaging show able to provoke hours of viewing and thought.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><i>“Trees and Other Ramifications” remains on display at Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art through January 2<sup>nd</sup>. </i></span></p> </div></div>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-49417095380348326112010-12-01T15:11:00.007-05:002010-12-01T16:03:28.725-05:00Flattery<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">For those who may not have seen it, I have </span><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://theithacapost.com/2010/11/27/a-romance-of-many-dimensions/">a fairly lengthy review</a><span style="font-family:verdana;"> of a solo show by local artist <a href="http://www.barbarapagestudio.com/">Barbara Page</a> published recently in the <span style="font-style: italic;">Ithaca Post</span>. "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 </span>–</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> this in addition to my usual close reading. Among them: Katherine Harmon's recent anthology<span style="font-style: italic;"> <a href="http://www.papress.com/html/book.details.page.tpl?isbn=9781568987620">The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography</a>, </span>popular science author Steven Johnsons "long zoom" as profiled in <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/magazine/08games.html">this <span style="font-style: italic;">NYT</span> article</a> and in many of his books, The Charles and Ray Eames film <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0"><span style="font-style: italic;">Powers of Ten</span></a>, Norton Juster's picture book <span style="font-style: italic;">The Dot and the Line</span> (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmSbdvzbOzY">a film/video version</a>), 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 a<span style="font-family: verdana;">bout </span></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">– or so I'd like to think</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">. </span>(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.)<br /><br />In other art review related news, look for an upcoming <span style="font-style: italic;">Tompkins Weekly</span> review of the show <a href="http://www.museum.cornell.edu/HFJ/currex/exhibits2.html">"Trees and Other Ramifications,"</a> at the Johnson Museum. I'll post it here. The show itself is worth seeing as well.<br /></span></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-65507017621827860322010-07-30T16:19:00.012-04:002010-07-30T17:00:30.155-04:00Post-critical<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">I've been remiss in not mentioning here the art reviews that I've been writing for the <a href="http://theithacapost.com/">Ithaca Post</a>. The Post is a new online publication focusing on the local (Ithaca-area) scene. It publishes more or less daily articles on a variety of subjects;</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> headings include Art, Culture, Film, Food, Literature, Music, and Stage.<br /><br />The Post is the brainchild of the indefatigable Luke Fenchel, who might be responsible for a quarter (or more) of our local arts coverage. This is in addition to his many other contributions to local culture, popular music in particular.<br /><br />I have also had the pleasure of working with the literary-minded Danielle Winterton as my editor. She has been very responsive and critical with my writing </span></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> something that has been a pleasure to have. Danielle is also co-edits the online literary journal <a href="http://www.essaysandfictions.com/">Essays and Fictions</a>, which is based both here and in New York City.<br /><br />An archive of my work is posted on the right sidebar. Pieces I would like to emphasize here </span></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> though unfortunately no longer timely </span></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"> are <a href="http://theithacapost.com/2010/06/29/there%E2%80%99s-no-place-like-home/">a review</a> of a two-person photography show featuring Steve Poleskie and J. Robert Lennon and <a href="http://theithacapost.com/2010/05/27/time-ink/"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">one</span></a> of the Ink Shop's recent 10 year anniversary show. More to come.<br /></span></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-73309108531097589652010-04-15T12:30:00.006-04:002010-04-17T12:01:34.277-04:00Siena studio<span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=11498">I am writing reviews for the Times again</a>:<blockquote>Intricate, sometimes brilliantly colored geometrical abstractions, carefully rendered on small metal panels or sheets of paper, are the main attractions in a current show at the Cornell's Johnson Museum.<br /><br />These lovably convoluted flatlands are the work of James Siena, a Cornell graduate (BFA, 1979), and the winner of this year's <a href="http://cca.cornell.edu/?module=pages&pid=35">Eissner Artist of the Year Award</a>. The prize is given annually to "an alumna/us who has achieved national or international success in the arts" <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span> something Siena has achieved over the course of three decades in New York City. "James Siena: From the Studio" will be on display at the Johnson through Sunday, April 18.<br /><br />Siena's images belong to a genre of artworks (not just visual) incorporating preconceived formal constraints as a primary source of structure and shape. Sol LeWitt, to whom Siena is frequently compared, is a primary point of reference. LeWitt devised formulas for wall drawings to be executed by assistants <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span> e.g., iterations of straight-ruled horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines.<br /><br />LeWitt is of great historical importance and undoubtedly an influence on the younger artist. Siena's work, however, develops these ideas in a different and arguably richer direction <span><span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span></span></span></span></span> more aesthetically robust, more sensual and bodily. Plus his math is just more interesting. Though strictly non-figurative (with exceptions, see below), Siena's art might be closer to that of M.C. Escher, whose geometrical schemas are deployed in the service of more accessible image-making.<br /><br />Siena is also frequently aligned with folk and decorative traditions. However, his art has a self-enclosed quality that seems to place it more directly in the modern art lineage.<br /><br />The most elaborately formal work here is composed with sign-painter's enamel on aluminum panels, a signature medium. <a href="http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images/826/143176.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">Enter the Faces</span></a> and <a href="http://cca.cornell.edu/media/image/SIENA_BASE%20THREE_72dpi.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">Base Three</span></a> feature elaborate patterns of nested geometric forms. The former contains spiraling rectangular shapes while the latter's rounded forms feel dully static. The acridly colored <a href="http://paigewest.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/07/09/38026_siena.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">Non-Slice</span></a> is a strong example of Siena's more organic, freeform side. It can indeed be seen as a cross-section <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span> perhaps of some biological or geological structure.<br /><br /><a href="http://artforum.com/uploads/guide.001/id04838/exhibition_large.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">V-Module</span> </a> is a dizzying maze-vortex in two colors: green and off-white. Hook-like striations converge towards the center of the panel, but the visual core is strangely indeterminate. <span style="font-style: italic;">Module</span> is notably irregular in its manual execution <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span> you can see varying opacities of paint, as well as areas of unpainted metal.<br /><br />Siena is a rather hit-or-miss colorist. Much of his best work is color restricted, often two-toned. For example, the branching, sponge-like growth of <span style="font-style: italic;">Ballou</span> <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span> black ink on white paper <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span> is not too far removed from the simplicity of Matisse's cutout collages.<br /><br />Recently, Siena has incorporated his intricate patterning into images of comics-influenced human grotesques. The profiled head of a <span style="font-style: italic;">Cursing Old Man</span> (graphite on paper) is crisply outlined, while his interior forms <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span> suggesting muscles and brain <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span> are rendered in scratchily tonal lines. (The allover abstract graphite drawing <span style="font-style: italic;">Untitled (Fuzzy Line)</span> has similar mark-making <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span></span></span> look closely and it's easy to see a face.) <span style="font-style: italic;">In Flatland</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Flat Battered Girls</span>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">Four Figures Connected</span> feature disturbingly flattened and distended figures.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Flat Mole</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Flat Mouse</span> (both from his student days) are both done on outstretched animal hides covered with metal leaf. The former features tiny drawn hands. Also outliers in Siena's corpus are three small sculptures. Lattices of toothpick fragments have been constructed around grape stems. These minor efforts fit the show's intimate and exploratory theme.<br /><br />Beyond Siena's own work, a collection of art and artifacts "from the studio" also forms an integral part of the show's concept. The bona-fide artworks are from friends and influences (many bear dedications). Although mostly so-so as art, they do help define a sensibility.<br /><br />Alan Saret, a mentor of Siena's, has created one of the most impressive images here: <span style="font-style: italic;">Shroni Gorge Air</span>. One of his <a href="http://www.drawingcenter.org/exh_past.cfm?exh=456">"gang drawings,"</a> it was done with several colored pencils in hand, manipulated with characteristic grace and variety. It contains a sense of sweeping movement akin to the weather. In a similar vein, but less subtle and expressive, is a tiny ink drawing by the abstract surrealist Charles Seliger.<br /><br />The non-art fares better. Two antique typewriters, aside from being beautiful, are closely linked to Siena's sensibility in at least two ways: in their implicitly anthropomorphic form and in the transparency of their mechanisms. Like them, Siena's work displays its inner workings <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="">—</span></span> actually more so because their resolute flatness leaves nothing occluded.<br /><br />Three small photographs, anonymous aerial surveillance images from World War 1, show networks of trenches. Many of these form crenellation-like patterns, particularly Siena-esque.<br /><br />This is flawed yet fascinating show, a glimpse into the work and sensibility of an intriguing and influential artist.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Siena will be giving a talk on his work at the museum 4:30 p.m. Friday, April 16. An award ceremony for the Eissner will be held in conjunction with the talk. Visit museum.cornell.edu for more information.</blockquote>The show was also <a href="http://cornellsun.com/section/arts/content/2010/02/10/james-siena-studio">reviewed</a> for the Cornell Daily Sun.<br /></span></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-38102853738411980282009-11-18T14:33:00.011-05:002009-11-18T15:03:28.499-05:00Mink<div style="text-align: center;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lB5KJmcgU-UyMXhM85R6LgCZd8-ap3QzktHgbm0Zn56tJVYFxa3x7hI9r6Aefl5dM9o94PzNtiNSp7b4EBrU5rpWGhl7BXKAG2BDowkJe5A_PDEayNCP9T8Dz7Mc7H6Ffhw35Q/s1600/Mink_First_String.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 398px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9lB5KJmcgU-UyMXhM85R6LgCZd8-ap3QzktHgbm0Zn56tJVYFxa3x7hI9r6Aefl5dM9o94PzNtiNSp7b4EBrU5rpWGhl7BXKAG2BDowkJe5A_PDEayNCP9T8Dz7Mc7H6Ffhw35Q/s400/Mink_First_String.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405533792567248402" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">First String</span>, 2009,</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> acrylic on canvas, 50 x 50 inches<br /></span></div><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><br /><a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=10420">From today's <span style="font-style: italic;">Ithaca Times</span>:</a><blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><a href="http://www.barbaramink.com/Gallery.asp?GalleryID=50313&AKey=MPEGN7A3">Barbara Mink</a> is one of Ithaca's most exciting and unpredictable painters. Her latest solo show "Event Horizons" is up this month at The State of The Art Gallery and features canvases from mostly this year. These rich, sometimes quirky abstractions combine pouring and dripping in the tradition of Jackson Pollock with brushy atmospherics that owe something to Romantic landscape painting.<br /><br />Understanding the history of Mink's development as an artist can heighten a viewer's sensitivity to the different aspects of her style. For her development has been accretive; you can often find traces of her older approaches within her constantly evolving style. Mink started painting about a decade ago. Her work has evolved from still-life and botanical illustration to a looser, more atmospheric form of landscape with affinities to such masters as J.M.W Turner and James Whistler.<br /><br />Then, as she likes to say, the horizon-line disappeared. (This is akin to moving your head up or down.) Her work over the past half-decade or so has become more and more abstract, gradually, never completely, shedding its allusions to landscape.<br /><br />As indicated by her paintings' titles, Mink's recent work incorporates yet another influence: popular science. As the founder and artistic director of Ithaca's yearly art and science festival Light in Winter (the next one is upcoming January 21-24) this might seem natural. Knowing her work, however, the move is a bit surprising.<br /><br />Her work is quintessentially lush and immediate, seemingly the polar opposite of science's remote concepts. At a recent informal talk (given as part of the LiW-sponsored monthly Science Cabaret series) she expressed some ambivalence about her attempts to bridge these "two cultures". It's best to regard her "concepts" as starting points for personal and unscientific association-making.<br /><br />An unexpected presence unifies most of these paintings. One or several spheres, often red, have been brushed into these amorphous paint-scapes. They invite narrative associations, either microcosmic or macrocosmic </span><span style="">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> atoms or planets, for example. Too, they could be balls, giving these works a game-like quality. Most importantly, they provide stable reference points for the viewer trying to find a way into these paintings.<br /><br />They're the descendants of the detailed botanical specimens that populated some of her earlier landscapes. For all their geometrical primitiveness, they act as stand-ins for the human body, always moving but stable.<br /><br />A series of three large paintings take their names from those given to the three laws of thermodynamics by the scientist and cultural critic C.P. Snow: <a href="http://soag.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/you-cant-win.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">You Can't Win</span></a> (a triptych), <a href="http://soag.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/you-cant-break-even1.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">You Can't Break Even</span></a> and <a href="http://soag.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/you-cant-quit-the-game.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">You Can't Quit The Game</span></a>. (Snow's poetic paraphrases are more apposite here that the actual science.) Nearly monochromatic, each features a murky curtain of black, gray, and muted color suspended over a flatly painted white background.<br /><br />A big problem with these pieces arises from the fact that in areas the white has been brushed over the splattered areas creating a duller, less dynamic contour line and an awkwardly mannered sense of space.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Butterfly Catastrophe</span>, another triptych featuring "empty" white background avoids this mistake. Here the spilled paint curtain </span><span style="">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> mostly coils and puddles of black with areas of intense but white-softened pinks and oranges </span><span style="">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> sits more properly up front, its edges un-brushed-over. <span style="font-style: italic;">Catastrophe </span>was painted in the last month or so. It suggests new directions.<br /><br /><a href="http://soag.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/first-string1.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">First String</span></a> and <a href="http://soag.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/cosmic-stringsminkii.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">Second String</span></a> are the strongest pieces. (Their titles allude to a theory addressing the composition of matter.) First suggests something like a traditional landscape: there is a thin strip of darker, solidly painted matter seemingly growing or accreting from the bottom edge: pink, red, gray. A black coil carries the eye into the air </span><span style="">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> all clouds of white, beige, pale pinks and oranges. The red balls, of which there are many, seem oddly neither here nor there.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Second</span>, although similarly colored, is something else. Suspended over a flat black background, a Rorsharch-like cascade of paint bridges the upper left and lower right corners. Springs of white paint </span><span style="">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> smooth at times, staccato at others </span><span style="">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> traverse the other two corners.<br /><br /><a href="http://soag.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/you-cant-get-there-from-here.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">You Can't Get There From Here</span></a> might be part satellite-view landscape and part billiards game. Intricate rivers and clouds of paint </span><span style="">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> creamy pinks and purples, white and cool gray </span><span style="">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> have been laced once again with smooth black coils. A spread of red balls cast black shadows, making them feel particularly three-dimensional and making their backdrop feel flatter than it would otherwise. The effect is a mannered, impure and loopily engaging.<br /><br />The title of <a href="http://soag.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/brown-and-gold-soag.jpg"><span style="font-style: italic;">Random Walk</span></a> alludes to attempts to mathematically formalize certain random processes. (According to the artist it resembles, if by accident, a graph of such dynamics.) The painting is distinctive for its richly encrusted texture and its gold on black. It's the most compelling of several smaller paintings here. The twin-sized <span style="font-style: italic;">Hubbles</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Bubbles</span> are more suggestive of the confectionary than the astronomical. Square and using smooth black backgrounds, they feature particularly cartoonish cascades of pink, white and gray alongside a crowd of blue balls </span><span style="">—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> an overuse of this somewhat precious icon.<br /><br />The work within "Event Horizons" is uneven. (I always say this yes, but it's particularly true here.) But the best work in the gallery, though not flawless, is so compelling that it almost seems not to matter. Spend some time exploring these evocative environments and don't be afraid to follow your eyes where they lead you.</span></blockquote></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-38792253887597216572009-11-08T17:33:00.006-05:002009-11-12T16:46:01.836-05:00Mink teaser<span style="font-size:85%;"><object style="font-family: verdana;" height="344" width="425">From the opening for <a href="http://soag.org/event-horizons/">"Event Horizons"</a> at the State of the Art Gallery on the evening of Friday 11/06/09. Artist in black with necklace. Other important local artworld people out and about. Footage by <a href="http://www.jankatherphotography.com/">Jan Kather</a>, an artist in digital photgraphy and video installation. My review coming on Wednesday. UPDATE (11/12/09): Wednesday of <span style="font-style: italic;">next</span> week, which is when it looks like the paper is printing it </object></span><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 100%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><object style="font-family: verdana;" height="344" width="425"> apologies.<br /><br /><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3ThvW9FOcrM&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/3ThvW9FOcrM&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-25942508485483673712009-10-29T09:35:00.018-04:002009-10-30T21:27:27.551-04:00Curvilinear<span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >Just found out about <a href="http://www.aap.cornell.edu/aap/art/events/events_details.cfm?customel_datapageid_2742=258052">this promising looking show</a>, up this week </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >—</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" > and this week only </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:100%;" >—</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" > at Cornell's Hartell Gallery:<blockquote><a href="http://www.markgibian.com/">Mark Gibian’s</a> (B.F.A. ’80) sculpture is multimedia: abstract and evocative of natural forms. He constructs both large public commissions and private works, fabricating the work himself in order to control the entire creative process. Since leaving Ithaca and Cornell he has been living and working in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.</blockquote>The show features both monoprints and small (non site-specific) sculptures. It comes down after tomorrow.<br /><br />Sarah Carpenter has <a href="http://cornellsun.com/section/arts/content/2009/10/27/the%E2%80%88hinge-between-dimensions-mark-gibian-%E2%80%9980-hartell-gallery">an intelligent review</a> in this past Tuesday's <span style="font-style: italic;">Cornell Daily Sun</span> (the student-run daily paper). The article goes into some depth about the relationship between his work in two and three dimensions:<br /><blockquote>Gibian’s work is about the juxtaposition and symbiotic structural relationship between the delicate and the sound, the spindly and the solid. Its forms imply skeletons, archaeology, rollercoasters and architectural interiors. The monoprints describe three-dimensional space, as promised, as well as motion and speed. Furthermore, they establish an ongoing conversation with Gibian’s sculptures, some of which are included in the show.<br /></blockquote>I'll have to get up the hill today or tomorrow. It'll be good opportunity as well to see <a href="http://www.museum.cornell.edu/HFJ/currex/exhibits2.html">the latest crop</a> of offerings at the Johnson. I would not be surprised, though, if Gibian's work is more compelling that any of the contemporary offerings that they have up there. (And it's a contemporary fixated season, except for "Carved on Copper: Renaissance Engravers and Collectors in the Low Countries."</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >) Alas. And d</span><span style=";font-family:times new roman;font-size:100%;" >o go see this if you can. </span><span style=";font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><strong><br /></strong></span><span style=";font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:100%;" ><strong></strong></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-79707045136275881902009-10-26T19:29:00.003-04:002009-10-26T19:36:15.556-04:00Upstairs<span style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><a href="http://upstairsgallery.wordpress.com/for-immediate-release/">Sad news for local art</a>:<blockquote><h2 style="font-weight: normal;">For Immediate Release</h2> <p>The Upstairs Gallery, a longtime Ithaca art gallery, is closing, another victim of the slow economy.</p> <p>Board members of the nonprofit Upstairs Gallery in the <a href="http://www.dewittmall.com/">DeWitt Mall</a> said they will close on Sat. December 26, 2009. The gallery opened 46 years ago, the first commercial art gallery in the Ithaca area. After a year and a half, the original owners were unable to continue in business, so the gallery was kept open by a group of volunteers dedicated to the ideals of supporting local artists, showing high-quality art, and reaching as many people as possible.</p> <p>“The board was ready to close their doors in Oct. 2008, when they invited me to join and see if new energy could keep the organization alive,” said Laurel Guy, president of the board. “We recruited new board members James Spitznagel, Rob Costello, Werner Sun, Laura Kirsner, Lori Moseman and Margaret Strother. We created a strong slate of shows for 2009, became a mainstay of Gallery Night and gained a wonderful year of remission for the gallery.”</p> <p>Unfortunately, the current recession made it fiscally impossible for the gallery to continue. The Upstairs Gallery is supported by donations and sales of art. “Art is a very discretionary sort of purchase, and we are in the worst recession arguably in the postwar era,” said Guy.</p> The board wishes to give sincere thanks to the artists, donors, volunteers and community; and encourages all to attend the current and final shows.</blockquote></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-42674592550420563442009-10-19T19:21:00.005-04:002009-10-19T20:06:27.097-04:00Event horizons<span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span class="eventHead"><a href="http://clayburgcreate.com/scicab-site/?cat=5"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Of possible interest</span></a>:<blockquote><span class="eventHead">Event Horizons: Science in Art</span> <h3>TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20th, 7:00pm</h3> <p><a href="http://www.barbaramink.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Barbara Mink</strong></a> and <strong>Frank Moon</strong> will show examples of their work, talk about the way science comes into their art and art into science, and invite the audience to share their thoughts on exploring both sides of the brain.</p> <p><strong>Presenters:</strong></p> <p><strong>Barbara Mink</strong> teaches Management Communication at Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management and is the Artistic Director of the Light in Winter Festival; <strong>Frank Moon</strong> is a sculptor, science writer and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Cornell.</p> <p><strong>Host:</strong> Science Cabaret & Light in Winter</p> <p><strong>Cost: FREE</strong></p> <p><strong>Where:</strong> WildFire Lounge – 106 S Cayuga St.</p></blockquote>Mink will be showing work from her science-inspired <a href="http://www.barbaramink.com/Gallery.asp?GalleryID=50313&AKey=MPEGN7A3">"Event Horizons"</a> series next month at the State of the Art. </span></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span class="eventHead">I got a glimpse of these the weekend before last at Ithaca's yearly <a href="http://www.arttrail.com/artists/MINK.html">Art Trail</a> open studios. More to come about these, but I will say that the new work is eclectic, often weird, and </span></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span class="eventHead">occasionally perhaps over-mannered. Her landscape allusions are still mostly there, but they've been twisted into something less familiar, less predictable.<br /><br />Her informal lecture tomorrow promises to be a candid discussion on some of the ideas behind her new work </span></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span class="eventHead"> particularly on the promises and perils of trying to derive artistic ideas from the natural sciences.<br /></span></span><p style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></p>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-15095246364375716732009-10-15T09:15:00.004-04:002009-10-15T09:38:33.824-04:00Books to print to books<span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >More Mains, along with other Ink Shop associated artists:<blockquote>The Tompkins County Public Library will host an opening reception for its newest exhibit, "Books to Print — Prints to Books," Thursday, October 15 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM in the Borg Warner Community Room and the Avenue of the Friends.</blockquote>Full details <a href="http://www.tcpl.org/news/2009/10/library-announces-new-exhibit-opening.html">here</a>.<br /><br />I saw the show over this past weekend and it looked pretty decent. The selection and display, not surprisingly, looked a bit haphazard compared to shows the Shop holds in its own space. The caliber of the work, for the most part, is an improvement over the library's usual fare </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" > definitely an improvement over <a href="http://www.tcpl.org/exhibits/seniorSummer/index.html">"A Senior Summer."</a><br /><br />The opening looks as well worth attending as the show, as </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">several of the artists will be on hand to manipulate their work. </span></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-25849785174099468132009-10-15T08:33:00.017-04:002009-10-15T10:18:02.628-04:00Mishaps<div style="text-align: center; font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzItVOtPqEZpUfUF3eHG_0UmQDLrEFQeiSN1ekGvfmER5IA__VoL2RgURHZzEVa52B_DDq4ZXJnoH_Q16KoYM3RbAxXaS7UIEexvalpeK2W25eF86rNO3SNoBEzoZA6ai3g7AoQ/s1600-h/Mains_Hedgerow_on_Fire.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 203px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzItVOtPqEZpUfUF3eHG_0UmQDLrEFQeiSN1ekGvfmER5IA__VoL2RgURHZzEVa52B_DDq4ZXJnoH_Q16KoYM3RbAxXaS7UIEexvalpeK2W25eF86rNO3SNoBEzoZA6ai3g7AoQ/s400/Mains_Hedgerow_on_Fire.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392807750535743938" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Hedgerow on Fire</span>,</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> 2008, monotype<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center; font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvNopu4nzv31Gfb7RHtF5hKlf9SA4ClNBJkJ7vnamwHuEiZYbwrBNybI1ONX4wtnE-sSQLIKBAGvtNSge2fxc7UULT5McUoqLa7PevOcJDPWJtD849ZYdpdwt6yPWtWAGq4A2gDg/s1600-h/Mains_Cessna_Cloud_&_Mountain_Range_Detail.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 282px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvNopu4nzv31Gfb7RHtF5hKlf9SA4ClNBJkJ7vnamwHuEiZYbwrBNybI1ONX4wtnE-sSQLIKBAGvtNSge2fxc7UULT5McUoqLa7PevOcJDPWJtD849ZYdpdwt6yPWtWAGq4A2gDg/s400/Mains_Cessna_Cloud_&_Mountain_Range_Detail.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392807635542013474" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Cessna, Cloud, and Mountain Range (detail)</span>, 2005, monotype triptych<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center; font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_nLwF-TFdxyw1TKWxQ8l6-RlCyhkrsctwYZyjgCLAFFYLA944coiGDO4L0uTk25Ar44SLp84mJhl2L3f2-pXK_0c0xd96OQufrrqt6v8hzijBRS9q9sQcd9HvnZsg4a77GuMpYA/s1600-h/Mains_Filter.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 302px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_nLwF-TFdxyw1TKWxQ8l6-RlCyhkrsctwYZyjgCLAFFYLA944coiGDO4L0uTk25Ar44SLp84mJhl2L3f2-pXK_0c0xd96OQufrrqt6v8hzijBRS9q9sQcd9HvnZsg4a77GuMpYA/s400/Mains_Filter.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392807553954497986" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Filter</span>, 2008, monotype<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center; font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhtZmAATp03LoFTDTU6ZJbTLMr9HOnIQRRHm0OiTOgtbxq7IF32q9whFGBQqavKSd7_zSB2ffMbRZPSTSXAvJIAjBx4sN-NSup_hElvcpZMHJSaDfQhy54JvYtXSKrscV0vhDFYg/s1600-h/Mains_Storm_Surge_And_Oil_Rig.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 309px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhtZmAATp03LoFTDTU6ZJbTLMr9HOnIQRRHm0OiTOgtbxq7IF32q9whFGBQqavKSd7_zSB2ffMbRZPSTSXAvJIAjBx4sN-NSup_hElvcpZMHJSaDfQhy54JvYtXSKrscV0vhDFYg/s400/Mains_Storm_Surge_And_Oil_Rig.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392807414338883202" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Storm Surge and Oil Rig</span>, 2008, monotype<br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center; font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjSZ6TP-0Ym1GSegLAQt5qtrCm9nAFD2S9cnoOqsZxyUv0bN8dNv8tC36SSE8KLZIP5zzov3A7Id5orWUylvw1pifIY4earySjxC6TTJFapdtpmgsTd1qRV75P4pXlEbPdf-vwZg/s1600-h/Mains_Trailer_On_Fire.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 255px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjSZ6TP-0Ym1GSegLAQt5qtrCm9nAFD2S9cnoOqsZxyUv0bN8dNv8tC36SSE8KLZIP5zzov3A7Id5orWUylvw1pifIY4earySjxC6TTJFapdtpmgsTd1qRV75P4pXlEbPdf-vwZg/s400/Mains_Trailer_On_Fire.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392807275546127346" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-style: italic;">U-Assemble Burning Trailer</span><span>, 2007, inkjet print and mixed media<br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left; font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br />In <a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=10108">last week's </a><a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=10108"><span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span></a></span><span style="font-size:85%;">:<br /></span></div><span style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ></span><blockquote style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" ><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">A small airplane seems posed to make an emergency landing in the mountains. A hedgerow sports cartoon-like bouquets of fire as do a trailer and a submarine. Houses and oil rigs tumble into the water. Ships leak oil and a bridge twists itself.<br /><br />Such morbid occurrences characterize "Mishaps: Monotypes and U-Assemble Disasters," the current show at Cayuga Heights' <a href="http://www.cornersgallery.com/">Corners Gallery</a> highlighting the work of printmaker <a href="http://www.ink-shop.org/about-us/printmaker-associates/craig-mains">Craig Mains</a>. He gives us a compelling teleology for his story-world; in an accompanying statement he imagines "large man-made objects and proscribed spaces...as attractors of natural malaise." So it goes, and with a logic that is both otherworldly and convincing.<br /><br />Mains' style and technique are as distinctive as his subject matter. Working primarily in monotype (one-of-a-kind prints) he manipulates hand-painted acetate cutouts in a collage-like manner on a hard plate. After printing these, Mains will often change their arrangement and run the plate through the press again, resulting in color-faded "ghost" images. This combination of toy-like hard-edged shapes, repetition with variation, and painterly rendering is rich and well suited to his narrative imagination.<br /><br />Although "Mishaps" presents a range of experiments and novelties, it is the relatively traditional work that stands out.<br /><br />His large-scale triptych <span style="font-style: italic;">Cessna, Cloud, and Mountain Range</span> is the most impressive of these by far. It consists of three framed square-ish sheets and can be read as a narrative sequence, from left to right, in the manner of a comic strip.<br /><br />The first frame is ghost-ly, the silhouette of the plane merging into that of a cloud, both faint blue-green. It suggests the just-occurred; the second offers up the here-and-now with a solid dark brown aircraft aimed rightward (echoing its shadowy predecessor) towards an imposing peak, darker blue-green. Looking ahead, the final frame shows nothing but landscape: blue-green, green, a patch of black and white </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> all swirled together in a manner suggesting both Chinese ink landscape and Abstract Expressionism. Where is that plane headed?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Filter</span> is another fine example of Mains in his most familiar mode. Colored in a range of ochres, pinks, reddish and orangish browns and watery yellows, it gives a characteristically surreal take on the depredations of flooding.<br /><br />In front, perched on dark cliff, stands a lone house with indications of a chimney, windows and doors, and a front staircase. Behind it is a large expanse of river, coming in from the left edge of the sheet and winding its way into the far background, towards the upper right corner. Spanning it diagonally is an arch bridge, its feet progressively twisted toward the viewer as it moves closer to her. To its left, many partially drowned dwellings, houses scattered like tumbled dice. Comically, the bridge appears to block the houses from flowing further downstream </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> hence the title.<br /><br />Recently, the artist has been experimenting a group of ideas that are idiosyncratic, at least in a fine-art context. Although animation and paper sculpture are not unexpected directions, his simultaneous use of do-it-yourself hobbyist formats certainly is.<br /><br />Mains' prints imply a world in violent motion. It's unsurprising, therefore, to see his recent turn to animation. He has built a zoetrope, a nineteenth-century animation device. A strip printed with a sequence of images </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> here an inkjet copy of hand-printed work </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> is attached to the inside of a wheel. Through holes we can see a moment in time. Turn the crank and we can see motion. This is a good idea with rich potential. Here the image he has chosen, <span style="font-style: italic;">Storm Surge and Oil Rig</span> </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> the title tells the story </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> seems a bit random in its moment-to-moment transitions (compare it with <span style="font-style: italic;">Cessna</span>).<br /><br />Images from his <span style="font-style: italic;">Oil Rig</span> series are also presented behind frames. They vary both in color and in precise arrangement. Again the action seems arbitrary, more explicitly so since we can see everything at once.<br /><br />More interesting is a <span style="font-style: italic;">U-Assemble Burning Trailer</span>, a diorama made up of folded paper </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> again inkjet replicas </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> framed behind wood and glass. The trailer is placed at a diagonal. It is monochrome save for its green striped awnings. It sports an ear-like pair of red-orange flames; another flame occupies the foreground like shrubbery. In the background is a red-orange-brown volcano. Mountain, smoke, and fire merge into a single blurry mass.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Burning Sub</span>, a small screenprint, distills Mains' oddball logic into uncommonly compact form. A solid black submarine, in profile, is submerged in cool gray water; crowning it is a bright, spongy yellow-green flame.<br /><br />Mains shows his prints around town only sporadically, so a visit to this slightly offbeat venue </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> The Corners is a suburban frame-shop </span></span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> is highly worthwhile. This is the work of an ambitious and idiosyncratic sensibility. That said, not everything here works well, particularly amongst the outliers and experiments.<br /></span></span><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" width="520"></table></blockquote>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-30209230368095799912009-09-26T11:09:00.006-04:002009-10-15T09:43:35.599-04:00Romeyn de Hooghe<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=9963&TM=40067.74"><span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span><span>:</span></a><blockquote>Shows of European printmaking are characteristically strong at Cornell's Johnson Museum. Recent years have featured superb exhibitions on such print-masters as Albrecht Dürer, Rembrandt van Rijn and <a href="http://thethinkingi.blogspot.com/2008/02/daumier.html">Honoré Daumier</a>.<br /><br />A compatriot and later-day contemporary of Rembrandt's is the subject of a compact but dense show currently at the museum. "Romeyn de Hooghe: Virtuoso Etcher" features an eclectic array of black and white intaglio prints by this little-known Dutch Baroque artist.<br /><br />De Hooghe (1645-1708) isn't on the exalted artistic level of the above artists. His line-work is never less than immensely skillful and meticulous; still, the impression is often predominantly one of workaday laboriousness. His oft-repeated trick of juxtaposing dark, shadowy foregrounds against light middle-to-backgrounds is dramatic but sometimes over-mannered.<br /><br />Like that of many printmakers, De Hooghe's oeuvre spans popular culture as well as more rarefied aesthetic territory. He made both stand-alone prints and illustrations for books (some of which he wrote himself) spanning everything from maps and mnemonic charts to political and military reportage.<br /><br />De Hooghe's lifetime was marked by a series of wars, most prominently struggles between the Dutch and a coalition of foreign powers — particularly the English and the French — that took place between 1672 and 1678. Commemorations of some of these are concentrated in the show's first gallery. He was a Dutch patriot; consequently, an often vicious anti-French and anti-Catholic politics is marked.<br /><br />Six framed plates taken from the artist's own text <span style="font-style: italic;">The Theatre of Changes in the Netherlands</span> (1674) — a bound copy of the book is on display, too — show a visually intricate and heavily idealized narrative. Six progressive stages show a Dutch utopia threatened by barbarian Frenchmen only to be eventually recovered. Characteristically, they combine real current events with mythological and allegorical figures.<br /><br />A rudimentarily hand-colored sea chart (attributed to the artist) incorporates a scene of the Dutch naval hero De Ruyter as Neptune being lead on a seaborne chariot by horses and merfolk.<br /><br />Other prints emphasize more straightforward military scenery. In the best of these, the rhythmic dynamics of the struggling troops creates a palpable energy. <span style="font-style: italic;">A Dike Bursting Toward Coevorden</span> shows the aftermath of a fortuitous (for the Dutch) event: leaking dikes washing away enemy troops, as well as flooding the farms surrounding the city.<br /><br />The subjects and formats of the second room are more far-flung. Politics, propaganda and caricature serve as something of an anchor.<br /><br />Scenes of events in the life of William of Orange are numerous. He was an important figure in both Dutch and English history (<span style="font-style: italic;">stadtholder</span> in the Netherlands, later king of England).<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Queen Mary's lying-in-state</span>, a 1695 print commemorating the ceremony following the death of William's wife and English co-ruler, is dazzlingly baroque in its command of interior space. The overall symmetry of the architecture is masterfully countered by the directedness of the crowd towards the seated king at left. Mary herself lies in an elaborate bed in the middle, both a centerpiece and overlooked.<br /><br />The same gallery gives us a sampling of the diverse subjects to which De Hooghe lent his talent. Particularly interesting are three illustrations included in Nicolaes Petter's 1674 treatise on the use of wrestling as self-defense. These illustrations feature two recurring combatants. The dynamism and unusual sparseness of the subject-matter affords the printmaker opportunity for some of his best work with the human body.<br /><br />The intersection of landscape art and cartography is one of the show's most compelling themes. You can see it in the removed perspective and topographical focus of many of his battle scenes. An exciting 1672 image of <span style="font-style: italic;">The Siege of Groeningen</span> combines a panoramic landscape (city in background, mayhem in front), a bird's-eye view and schematic regional map.<br /><br />More naturalistic and more profound, however, is the second gallery's astonishing aerial view of <span style="font-style: italic;">The citadel and town of Mont Melian in Savoy</span>. We see, from a foreground hill (moving forward) a sparsely wooded valley, a bridge-path traversing a river towards a partially fortified settlement, in its center is a steep hillside supporting an angular fortress. The rendering overall is perhaps the liveliest in show and the sense of deep space is vertiginous.<br /><br />The foreground is weirder. Arrayed center to right is a crowd of figures (in typically shadowed style, here not too heavy-handed), among them several cartographers gathered around a picture-within-a-picture — an upturned document showing a schematic rendering of the distant fortress. The image breaks with the illusionism of the whole, as if collaged on.<br /><br />"Virtuoso Etcher" is a rare opportunity to see work by this distinguished but lesser-known printmaker. Although his characteristically Baroque visual and narrative density can be off-putting to the modern eye, the work does reward the careful scrutiny it demands</blockquote></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-78822536855632344742009-04-04T14:35:00.008-04:002009-04-04T14:49:21.313-04:00metamorphic<div style="text-align: center;font-family:verdana;"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirD3PAm14CMNlF4s6xl1owxMZloGI0BwHDYHnpRHYZS1DqzwAcsoBfgGToVGyfRT9n16GLQrpXrPIVKfw_EJFM7E1m4LTYAKjWzxJoPX4f1QAF91WTIUp8jfUk15uVdA1-StFA9Q/s1600-h/THECITY-28-web-01b.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirD3PAm14CMNlF4s6xl1owxMZloGI0BwHDYHnpRHYZS1DqzwAcsoBfgGToVGyfRT9n16GLQrpXrPIVKfw_EJFM7E1m4LTYAKjWzxJoPX4f1QAF91WTIUp8jfUk15uVdA1-StFA9Q/s400/THECITY-28-web-01b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5320908989143352050" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-size:85%;">James Spitznagel, <span style="font-style: italic;">The City #28,</span> inkjet print, 17" x 22"<br /></span></div><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><br /><a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=8721&TM=52491.58">Sorry, lateness</a>:<blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><a href="http://levelgreen.com/art/">James Spitznagel</a> brings something distinctive and strange to the Upstairs Gallery </span>—<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> and to Ithaca's often over-familiar art scene </span>—<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> with his latest show of manipulated worldviews: <a href="http://upstairsgallery.wordpress.com/2009/03/10/current-artist-james-spitznagel/">"Metamorphoses: An Exhibition of Digital Fine Art Photography"</a>. Spitznagel is also an electronic musician and his sensibility here is similarly experimental. He compares the improvisational and unexpected nature of his image-making to Abstract Expressionism, an analogy based more on process than on overt style.<br /><br />In addition to more straightforward means of digital manipulation, the pictures involve re-photographing imagery off of screens, typically at an off-angle. Perspective is oddly twisted as a result. We see the subtle overall grids of the screens, but rarely quite perpendicular with the edges of the paper.<br /><br />Spitznagel is not forthcoming about the real-world sources for his otherworldly abstractions. Nevertheless, most of his prints allude to </span>—<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> while ultimately eluding </span>—<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> our sense of the familiar. Many of his photos (a sampling hangs in the gallery's back room) suggest still-life.<br /><br />His front room pictures are more diffuse, lacking a center or an un-ambiguous perspective. Indeed, they suggest an abstract urban cartography </span>—<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> the modern city and modern art filtered through a science fiction aesthetic. Each of these printed sheets here is 17" x 22" and stands upright.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The City #</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">1</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">2</span>, and <span style="font-style: italic;">4</span> are busy, patchwork-like grids of Cubist forms in overall gray tones. Square and rectangular shapes appear flat, like the roofs of a crowded futuristic metropolis seem from the sky. Occasional diagonals suggest a contradiction, breaking the flatness.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The City #28</span> vividly resembles the man-made canyons of some big city streets. The tall building flanking to the left and right evoke Manhattan </span>—<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> although they appear as a dense abstract tapestry of white, black, and gray rectangular patches. Below center are faint light-ish letters, reminiscent of Cubism and collage.<br /><br />Perhaps the most compelling pieces here are a series incorporating more amorphous, less obviously rectilinear textures. (The ever-present grid is still here in the form of the overall screen texture.) These pieces are evocative of circuit boards and Gothic architecture alike. Their shimmer of light is sometimes reminiscent of Monet's paintings of Rouen Cathedral.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The City #19</span>, with its sparsely printed dark green-brown seemingly making the white of the paper glow, is a standout in this vein.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The City #10</span> is distinctive for its suggestion of interior space, along with a (more or less) human scale. Toward the lower right there is what looks like a half-open door, half blocking a patch of bright white glare. The piece is vaguely, oddly reminiscent of Velázquez's seventeenth century masterpiece <span style="font-style: italic;">Las Meninas</span>, a meditation of self-reference, looking, and picturing. While there is little of that here </span>—<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> certainly there are no figures </span>—<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> there is a strongly narrative, cinematic ambience: one thinks of the futuristic film noir of Blade Runner.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The City #15</span> is the most radical plunge into abstraction, a thoroughly perspective-less composition with only the most tenuous reference to its erstwhile subject. (Piet Mondrian's classic abstract painting <span style="font-style: italic;">Broadway Boogie Woogie</span>, influenced by the NYC street grid and by jazz, is a conceptual and stylistic ancestor.) We see a lumpy island of square blocks, printed in black and gray against an expanse of white. The black blocks are solid in tone within; otherwise we see a fine mesh-grid texture.<br /><br />Finally, there is a standout <span style="font-style: italic;">City in Red</span> series, a triptych. Each of the three panels, hung in a row, is roughly continuous with the others </span>—<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> but with discontinuities as well. <span style="font-style: italic;">1</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">2</span> suggest a city skyline seen from a considerable distance. There is an allover smear of red. Above the jagged horizon is a cloud of magenta and white; below are architecture-like arrays of black. There are spots of yellow too. These color layers continue into <span style="font-style: italic;">3</span> but the perspective seems to shift to aerial </span>—<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> and we are no longer perpendicular to the city grid. We are thus twisted out of what otherwise might be a postcard view.<br /><br />Not everything here works well. In particular, some prints are overly reminiscent of surveillance imagery - an interesting narrative association perhaps, but less than lovely to look at. Still, the best of these images maintains the Upstairs Gallery's usual high standards while tweaking familiar expectations of gallery art.</span> </blockquote><br /></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-3966559581676042832009-03-18T12:16:00.004-04:002009-11-12T09:27:33.055-05:00photo forum clipping<div class="entry" style="font-family:verdana;"> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">[The]<a href="http://soag.org/special-events/"> State of the Art Gallery</a> will host a forum on photography in conjunction with its 20th Annual Juried Photography Show on Wednesday, March 18 at 7pm. Three photographers from the Ithaca area who have shown their work both regionally and nationally will speak at this special event. This event will be held at the gallery located at 120 W. State Street and is free and open to the public.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">The guest speakers are:</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">Wilka Roig, the Prize Judge for this year’s show and Visiting Assistant Professor of Photography at Cornell. Wilka holds an MFA from Cornell University.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">Andy Gillis, owner of Cascadilla Photography, specializing in high quality commercial and industrial photography. Andy is a graduate of Cornell and teaches as an adjunct at Tompkins Cortland Community College.</span></p> <p><span style="font-size:85%;">Keith Millman, an Associate Professor of photography and digital imaging at TC3. Keith received his MFA in Photography from California College of Arts and Crafts.</span></p> </div>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-13997602552994295482009-03-18T12:00:00.006-04:002009-03-18T12:14:27.407-04:00clustering<a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=8665"><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >In</span></a><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=8665"> today's <span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span></a>:<blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The State of the Art Gallery's <a href="http://soag.org/state-of-the-art-juried-photo-exhibition-2009-wilka-roig-prize-juror/">"20th Annual Juried Photography Show"</a> (which runs through March 29) is part of a familiar local tradition. This year's photographers are mostly from in and around Ithaca. Also included are artists from Rochester, Syracuse, Elmira, Binghamton, Utica and New York City.<br /><br />This year, guest juror Wilka Roig, an assistant photography professor at Cornell, took an unusual tack in assigning the prizes. Drawing on twelve "cluster criteria" used by philosopher Denis Dutton to define art in his recent book <a href="http://www.theartinstinct.com/"><span style="font-style: italic;">The Art Instinct</span></a>, Roig used a variety of categories, reflecting the diverse satisfactions art can offer. (None of the criteria is necessary; more than one can suggest the presence of art.)<br /><br />Phil Koons' combination of formalism, pop vernacular subjects, sly humor and (often) strong color has been a highlight of past years' Annuals. Here he is showing two compelling giclée prints: <span style="font-style: italic;">4 Blocks to the Mississippi</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">27 Miles to the Rio Grande</span>. <span style="font-style: italic;">Mississippi</span> is typically exuberant. We see, through a row of telephone poles, the corner of vividly painted building. <span style="font-style: italic;">Rio</span> is more austere, presenting us with an impenetrable warm white facade; the windows are filled in.<br /><br />Donald Specker's aptly titled color print <span style="font-style: italic;">Ithaca Iconic</span> takes its subject from near the SOAG </span><span style=""><span style=""><span style="">—</span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> from the corner of the Chanticleer, with its painted neon roosters pressed up against each other, themselves against the dark. Smaller, a glowing electric hand </span><span style=""><span style=""><span style="">—</span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> "Don't Walk" </span><span style=""><span style=""><span style="">—</span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> balances them to the left.<br /><br />George Cannon's giclée <span style="font-style: italic;">Dream Stairs (from the Spiral Series)</span> is the recipient of Roig's "Direct Pleasure Award." The piece's central form is elegant, if stiffly </span><span style=""><span style=""><span style="">—</span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> a curvaceous dark silhouette abstracted from a spiral staircase. The background is a warm greenish grayish tone with light emanating from the center.<br /><br />Jennifer Gioffre's <span style="font-style: italic;">Untitled (from the series Diaphaneity)</span> beats <span style="font-style: italic;">Stairs</span> in its sensuous depth. The palladium/gold print (black on warm white) shows is sharp focus what appears to be a curl of water frozen in time. It blurs, melts around the edges. The borders are dark, thick and painterly.<br /><br />In a materially conservative show, Lena Masur's black and white <span style="font-style: italic;">Gunblocks</span> stands out for its effectively unusual technique: gelatin silver emulsion printed on a wide strip of unframed glass. The texture is smoky and diffuse. Printed forms merge with their shadows. Four variously sized blocks are lined up horizontally in middle distance. Direct light comes through the left edge. Around them is seashore: frothy waves with patches of darker water and a distant horizon.<br /><br />Alissa Newton's color <span style="font-style: italic;">6919</span> is the winner of the "Special Focus Award," exemplifying how artworks "tend to be bracketed off from ordinary life." Appropriately, its subject </span><span style=""><span style=""><span style="">—</span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> a translucent plastic pillbox with its multiple compartments filled </span><span style=""><span style=""><span style="">—</span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> itself fills the entire space of the sheet. We are in another world. An allover moderate blur further emphasizes this strangeness.<br /><br />Sharon Barotz's color print <span style="font-style: italic;">Reclaimed by Nature</span> and Ben Altman's platinum/palladium (black and white) <span style="font-style: italic;">False Dichotomy</span> contrast natural and cultivated outdoor spaces. (They might have fit into the Johnson Museum's "Picturing Eden," up through March 22.) <span style="font-style: italic;">Reclaimed</span> is flat, as if the forms </span><span style=""><span style=""><span style="">—</span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> the rough base of a tree and several elaborate, weathered gravestones </span><span style=""><span style=""><span style="">—</span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> had been pressed up against the plane of the image.<br /><br />Elaborate divisions of space mark <span style="font-style: italic;">Dichotomy</span>. As befits the winner of the "Intellectual Challenge Award," these divisions are metaphorically ripe. Dividing left from right is a leftward leaning tree planted in the foreground. Below it, against the center of the bottom edge, is a blurry lump </span><span><span style=""><span style=""><span style=""><span style="">—</span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> apparently a balding man, hunched over, wearing a backpack. Behind the tree, in middle distance, is a dense wall of shrubbery. Behind that, seen from an off-angle, is a row of three elaborately carved spirals of greenery. In their midst is a stone statue, a female. Statue, tree and man form a cryptic dance.<br /><br />A pair of black and white inkjet prints by John Retallack come from a series portraying the RIT professor's colleagues. <span style="font-style: italic;">Portrait of Skip Battaglia</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Portrait of Lisa Hermsen</span> effectively combine formality and warmth. Together with Randi Millman-Brown's <span style="font-style: italic;">Milkweed</span>, these are the deserving recipients of two awards for "Skill and Virtuosity."<br /><br />Other prize winners: Susan Larkin's <span style="font-style: italic;">Wild Grape Vine</span> ("Expressive Individuality"), Viola Kosseda's newsstand still-life <span style="font-style: italic;">No Title</span> ("Art Traditions and Institutions") Gretel Pelto's street portrait <span style="font-style: italic;">Old and Active in Wageningan</span> ("Style") and Brandy Boden's <span style="font-style: italic;">Echo</span> ("Imaginative Experience"). Challenging artists, Roig refused to offer prizes in several Dutton-ian categories: "Criticism," "Novelty and Creativity" and "Emotional Saturation." No prize was given for "Representation," as this "is only a small element in a successful representational work."<br /><br />As in past years, the "20th Annual" is dominated by skillful work. Rich art is here as well.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">A </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://soag.org/special-events/">special forum</a><span style="font-style: italic;"> featuring Roig and two other local photographers will be held at the gallery on March 18 at 7pm.</span><br /></span></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-92230766588599676142009-03-13T13:33:00.014-04:002009-03-13T14:58:01.860-04:00drix<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdGAoaI6H30q2p-8XBZiXlQplDa0JLZwCwdUxv1lak_5N5LOK2hjgwoGiFl5d7ogiwfkZyUR0oludojqGqr25e6sdJ7GDH43KelR6hGsp4CJL2PITiyIG5Ldz5oRQw0gIQiQ0XKA/s1600-h/Drix_Four_Brothers_done.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 273px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdGAoaI6H30q2p-8XBZiXlQplDa0JLZwCwdUxv1lak_5N5LOK2hjgwoGiFl5d7ogiwfkZyUR0oludojqGqr25e6sdJ7GDH43KelR6hGsp4CJL2PITiyIG5Ldz5oRQw0gIQiQ0XKA/s400/Drix_Four_Brothers_done.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312741967481988898" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Four Brothers</span></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">, 2009, charcoal, etching, graphite, gum transfer and monoprint on paper<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxY7r6XGQDWcbuNfyIWn-3IZg9ZfKQR9OPyKr1Uum7aEAACRVO8vxiT_N4BjNcWtQR5tiYaCU3eVDq8Cm8rhK7qvC2-rY_rNh0yy4b83kcqhA5l66XlYqT7FAW7MH37-hHSFgXXg/s1600-h/Drix_Wolf_Pelt_done.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 263px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxY7r6XGQDWcbuNfyIWn-3IZg9ZfKQR9OPyKr1Uum7aEAACRVO8vxiT_N4BjNcWtQR5tiYaCU3eVDq8Cm8rhK7qvC2-rY_rNh0yy4b83kcqhA5l66XlYqT7FAW7MH37-hHSFgXXg/s400/Drix_Wolf_Pelt_done.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312730908347226738" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Wolf Pelt</span>, 2009, pastel on vellum<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWl6NWxn-0RR1g-8L4zHiUtLT3kccyoOoRujGXW9Dwn7Bwddx91HlWGjatbNX33d87o1aXO33UbuWXkjCsquXjzrxY_RWFOWbv7OuV3zSnP7hAZlxd6JkW6e1Utodo7Cf9bsNIvA/s1600-h/Drix_Four_Directions.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 293px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWl6NWxn-0RR1g-8L4zHiUtLT3kccyoOoRujGXW9Dwn7Bwddx91HlWGjatbNX33d87o1aXO33UbuWXkjCsquXjzrxY_RWFOWbv7OuV3zSnP7hAZlxd6JkW6e1Utodo7Cf9bsNIvA/s400/Drix_Four_Directions.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312728502974478290" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >Four Directions</span><span style="font-size:85%;">, 2009, gum transfer and monoprint on paper<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlQ-e8uCBT5z9QJi9pFz-xrx8w1MbyiTbmvGhNPzmjZhm-XcHmcvyzM3zsPBUnmy1lwCnjT2rvUXfUDbAZzg-VyoZoywte3xYJmrPCMBngz-pbS2gTCMzWmGT5oWKkUs7h10_8hw/s1600-h/Drix_Dissection.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 123px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlQ-e8uCBT5z9QJi9pFz-xrx8w1MbyiTbmvGhNPzmjZhm-XcHmcvyzM3zsPBUnmy1lwCnjT2rvUXfUDbAZzg-VyoZoywte3xYJmrPCMBngz-pbS2gTCMzWmGT5oWKkUs7h10_8hw/s400/Drix_Dissection.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312730188126247442" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >Dissection</span><span style="font-size:85%;">, 2009, gum transfer and monoprint on paper<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3X5sbkVtcZH0ga6r4laxKbuHYMRDy352UFUad0QZxpE4Fh8uH9WB8AkjBqu4GIuXcOfb9L_Hniy7GC9zVcZvroJvmo0dxDdS8821p7V4-beFy05cPttUFDSyxW_7ZCWz2ZPExIA/s1600-h/Drix_Valois_Pastel_done.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 262px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3X5sbkVtcZH0ga6r4laxKbuHYMRDy352UFUad0QZxpE4Fh8uH9WB8AkjBqu4GIuXcOfb9L_Hniy7GC9zVcZvroJvmo0dxDdS8821p7V4-beFy05cPttUFDSyxW_7ZCWz2ZPExIA/s400/Drix_Valois_Pastel_done.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5312730530509540866" border="0" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: center;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" ><br />Valois</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">/Con-Daw-Haw and the Great Law of Peace</span>, 2009, graphite on vellum<br /><br /></span></div><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=8619&TM=48867.77">Ithaca Times</a></span></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >:<blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"The Haudenosaunee Project: Prints, Drawings and Pastels by Pamela Rozelle Drix" represents an ongoing foray by the artist into the culture, religion, geography and history of the Native American peoples of Upstate New York </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> probably better known as the Iroquois. The show reveals Drix to be an image-maker of uncommon nuance and ambition.<br /><br />"Haudenosaunee" continues a series of engaging shows put on by the Ink Shop in the Community School of Music and Arts' first floor lobby </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> a cooperative program inspired by the Shop moving into the second floor of the CSMA-owned building about a year ago. According to Drix, this is the first solo show at the CSMA in recent memory.<br /><br />The bulk of "Haudenosaunee" is made up of a series of variations on a single motif: the pelt of a female Adirondack grey wolf. Drix has the real pelt on a wall in her studio and the pelt has a story. The creature was the gift of Joe Soto, "a Native American of Tia'no heritage and Cree training" who provided spiritual guidance during the recent death of her father, an amateur archaeologist and an enthusiast of Native culture. The gift has clearly captured her imagination during recent months; all but one of the pieces here (a landscape) dates to 2009.<br /><br />Drix draws upon Iroquois traditions of animism and spirituality </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> she speaks of her identification with the she-wolf, her strength and power as well as her nurturing capability. Nevertheless, she also stresses the exploratory nature of her quest, her need (particularly as a non-Native-American) to find the meaning of this gift on her own terms.<br /><br />Also reoccurring in many of these pieces is the image of a crow feather that accompanied her father during the final week of his life. The feather is meant to suggest "the beautiful frailty of life."<br /><br />With two exceptions, each of the pieces here is print-based. Gum transfer (a means of printing Xeroxed images) and monoprint are both in wide use, as are hand-drawn additions in graphite, charcoal and/or pastel. Many of the pieces incorporate multiple sheets of paper under a single frame.<br /><br />Typically the printed silhouette of the animal </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> sometimes whole; sometimes divided, fragmented or multiplied </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> is placed against an empty expanse of white paper. Black and brown are the most characteristic colors. The former is laid on in thick, brushy oft-fur-like marks while the latter, reddish or yellowish, is applied in dusty clouds.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Four Directions</span> makes an interesting dissociation between the solid materiality of the black and the ghostliness of the brown. Over an upward oriented smudgy black pelt, four disconnected red-brown paws have been overlaid. They radiate out from the center like the four cardinal directions on a compass. Drix cites the piece as "a reminder to...extend our protective vigilance in all four directions." Indeed. And the way she suggests an inner psychic life for what elsewhere threatens to become a lifeless trophy is distinctive.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Four Brothers</span> incorporates a grid of four tall sheets under one frame. The sheets are not neatly lined up and attached; the piece has a not-unwelcome roughness. Warhol-like (though not Pop), we see four iterations of an upward-turned wolf's head. The variety of media </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> etching, monoprint, gum transfer, charcoal and graphite </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> is noteworthy, as is the unusual range of color and textures.<br /><br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">Dissection with Arrowheads I</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Dissection with Arrowheads II</span> Drix departs from her centralized, almost heraldic treatment of the wolf pelt. Limbs dangle mysteriously from the top edge, or from the left and right edges. Both images incorporate a row of small, delicately rendered arrowheads across the bottom. These call to mind the animal's associations with killing </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> both as hunter and hunted.<br /><br />Drix combines fragmentation with the central creature-image in <span style="font-style: italic;">Dissection</span>. This is a large piece comprised of four printed pages that are hung side-by-side directly on the wall, unframed. Surrounded by white, the printed areas are of different sizes and proportions, mismatched. We see the entire span of the animal </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> more or less life size </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> but broken up. It is unfortunate that this impressive would-be-centerpiece is hung above the staircase leading to the CSMA's basement. Although it holds the space well, one does want to get up close.<br /><br />The sole pure drawing of the animal, a pastel on vellum <span style="font-style: italic;">Wolf Pelt</span>, stands out for its physical intensity. At first glance, it appears to pop out of from its thin, translucent sheet. It follows the central silhouette format; the critter's head points straight up and her tail straight down. One gets a strong sense of the physical markmaking </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> strokes of black have been vigorously smudged and, in places, partially erased. There are occasional highlights of white pastel too.<br /><br />The CSMA show also includes a pair of pieces combining landscape, imagery and text. In contrast to the focus on object and character offered by the wolf pictures, these works convey a disjunction between seemingly pastoral rural landscape and the varieties of man-made violence. These works are dense and multilayered, both visually and conceptually </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> also in contrast to the slow-moving theme and variation of that typifies the show. They are also closer to most of the work that Drix has shown in recent group exhibits.<br /><br />Both <span style="font-style: italic;">Valois/Con-Daw-Haw and the Great Law of Peace</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Sacred Conversations: What's Happening?</span> include extracts from the Great Law, the founding document of the Iroquois' Five Nations (The Mohawk, the Oneida, the Onondaga, the Cayuga, and the Seneca). Affinity with and thanksgiving for nature and the Creator are prominent themes.<br /><br />The former image, drawn in graphite, resembles a book page turned on its side (actually it looks better this way). Across the top, we see numerous paragraphs. Below is a wide strip of aerial view landscape, sketchily rendered, showing Valois, NY </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> Drix's hometown </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> alongside the nearby site of Con-Daw-Haw, a native settlement razed to the ground by General Sullivan during the Revolutionary War. (Or so we're told by the introductory text, the distinction is visually absent.) The land is divided by several vertical bands, some of which also mark off breaks in what might seem at first to be a continuous landscape. Below is an expanse of white with a crow feather to the right.<br /><br />The latter is even more eclectic in style and content </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> to the point of feeling more like scrapbook contents than an image. <span style="font-style: italic;">Sacred Conversations</span> is divided into two square sections. On the left, in an overall smudgy purple tone, is a transfer photo showing a construction site, full of trucks, with a tall crane near the center. We see a label, "HALLIBURTON"; looking again at the intro, we see that this refers to companies "drill[ing]...for natural gas in the Marcellus shale." Attached to the square is a piece of vellum bearing more lines from the Law of Peace and a feather, both providing contradictory voices.<br /><br />Further amplifying the piece's conversational contradictoriness </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> perhaps nearly to the point of absurdity </span><span style=""><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span><span style="">—</span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> the square on the right shows a serene valley landscape, rather lyrically rendered in expressive black monoprinted strokes. Melding with the cursive-like lines are rows of handwriting, this time indecipherable. There is another attached vellum scrap. This one shows, in sketchy graphite, a rustic house fronted by a blackened sign. The same image appears elsewhere in the show, in a 2007 gum printed photo. There we learn the sign's function: an official historical marker commemorating Con-Daw-Haw.<br /><br />Drix mentions the notion of the wolf as a protector of the environment as a link between her pelt series and these explorations of place. One would to like to see this narrative connection made a bit stronger. (Although the large-scale Dissection does begin to suggest a sort of landscape in itself.)<br /><br />According to the artist, "The Haudenosaunee Project" is her first solo show since co-founding the Ink Shop about a decade ago. Thankfully, we won't have to wait another decade to see her work en masse. Announced during Drix's opening last Friday, Roger and Adrienne Bea Smith of Groton's Main Street Gallery have granted her another solo showcase in the near future.<br /><br />More immediately, she has work included in the Main Street's "Spring Group Exhibition" and in the show "Artists Made Books" at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, NY. (The latter show is recommended and also includes local print and bookmaking luminaries Kumi Korf, Maddy Rosenberg, Buzz Spector, and Christa Wolf.) Both open later this month.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"The Haudenosaunee Project" remains on display in the CSMA's lobby gallery though March 27.</span><br /></span></blockquote><br /></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-55814669457924557992009-03-13T12:06:00.005-04:002009-03-13T12:22:31.690-04:00dr. christy mag uidhir<span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><a href="http://www.ithacaevents.com/">Event: Talk Print Philosophy of Art</a><br /><br />03-13-2009<br /><br />Description: The goal of philosophy of art is to provide systematic and informative methods of thinking about art. This includes the definition of art (what makes something an artwork), the nature of art objects (physical objects like chairs or abstract objects like numbers), and the relationship between the artwork, the artist, and the audience. I will briefly discuss how philosophers have addressed the above, but mostly focus on specific philosophical issues surrounding printmaking, specifically the relationship between: (1) prints, plates, and the printing process (2) prints in an edition (3) artist and printmaker (4) authenticity and forgery in printmaking<br /><br />Organization: The Ink Shop Printmaking Center/Olive Branch Press<br /><br />Time: 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm<br /><br />Location: Ink Shop and Olive Branch Press, 102-106 W. State Street , Ithaca, NY 14850<br /><br />Location Details: The gallery is on the 2nd floor<br /><br />Cost: free<br /><br />Information: (607) 277-3884<br /><br />Web Site: http://www.ink-shop.org</span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-19864200388025963382009-03-04T13:01:00.008-05:002009-03-04T15:10:25.701-05:00matters/haudenosaunee<span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >Wylie Schwartz has an informative <a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=8563&TM=42957.8">interview</a> with Pam Drix of the Ink Shop in this week's <span style="font-style: italic;">Ithaca Times</span>. Briefly and succinctly, it covers some of the history of the IS, the technicalities of their current operation, and their plans for the future.<br /><br />Drix has a solo show, "The Haudenosaunee Project," opening this Friday</span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" > in the CSMA's space (on the first floor below the Shop's own). From the <a href="http://www.gallerynightithaca.com/id1.html">Gallery Night listing</a>:<blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The "Haudenosaunee Project: Pastels and Prints by Pamela Drix" opens at the Tompkins County Foundation Gallery at the Community School of Music and Arts. The Haudenosaunee Project encompasses a series of prints, drawings, and pastels that were created after the death of my father, who passionately loved Native American culture and who was an amateur archeologist throughout his life. After his death, a Cree elder, who sat with my father the last three days of his life, gave me an Adirondack grey wolf pelt. This amazing gift became the catalyst for me to begin the project in earnest. Through the metaphor of the wolf, I am exploring the importance of being stewards of the land, protecting our natural resources, and understanding the particular history of the Finger Lakes in relation to the plight of the Iroquois Nation. In no small way, though, these images are really a tribute to my father as well. With great concern, I am also dismayed by the development of natural gas drilling of the Marcellus shale in our backyards. We have important work to do </span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">— </span></span></span></span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">to become informed citizens and protectors of our community's resources. The Haudenosaunee people, and all future generations, demand no less.</span></blockquote><blockquote></blockquote></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >I saw her working on one of her wolf pelt pictures recently (while writing up the Shop's last show one Monday). It was more or less life-size and looked pretty awesome. More to come next week.<br /></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-42569130433663800752009-03-03T13:39:00.004-05:002009-03-03T14:03:51.282-05:00added color<span style="font-family:times new roman;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">Of related interest: Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute's <a href="http://www.mwpai.org/museum/pastexhibitions/61exhibitionofcentralnewyorkartists/">website</a> has a <a href="http://www.mwpai.org/templates/Podcast/61stpodcast/19_pod.xml">podcast</a> available in which M. Johnson talks about her painting process and influences.</span></span><br /></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-24029461422012511402009-03-03T08:11:00.007-05:002009-03-03T13:34:09.045-05:00melissa johnson<div style="text-align: center; font-family: verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHNWN6wjS58R3c3KLg1M3qRRz5eYY_F0Kp-15_PDKKCkB0o2dh7cdka9ytmd4nETMA7FoDV9Uv3DkvMamppZ6euONU8l5Wa8rw0XaxO2t7e1vM4GqEote537g5Nmt2_c8zjf9AHA/s1600-h/Johnson_New_Lines.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 396px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHNWN6wjS58R3c3KLg1M3qRRz5eYY_F0Kp-15_PDKKCkB0o2dh7cdka9ytmd4nETMA7FoDV9Uv3DkvMamppZ6euONU8l5Wa8rw0XaxO2t7e1vM4GqEote537g5Nmt2_c8zjf9AHA/s400/Johnson_New_Lines.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5309030911910388338" border="0" /></a></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Melissa Johnson, <span style="font-style: italic;">New Lines</span>, 2009, acrylic on canvas, 12" x 12"<br /></span></div><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://www.tompkinshosting.com/tompkinsweekly/TompkinsWeekly090302.pdf"><span style="font-style: italic;">Tompkins Weekly</span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;"><a style="font-family: verdana;" href="http://www.tompkinshosting.com/tompkinsweekly/TompkinsWeekly090302.pdf"> (PDF)</a><span style="font-family: verdana;">:</span><blockquote>Small square canvases, of identical surface area, are covered in pools and clouds of richly colored, though thinly applied and often translucent paint. Floating or standing amongst these color fields are more crisply defined, relatively opaque shapes. Although abstract, these blobs, lumps, and tubes suggest the figure — or perhaps its limbs and organs.<br /><br />The assemblages evoke oddball human dramas. Some shapes are also reminiscent of vegetables: peppers and eggplants in particular. Rock gardens and microbial landscapes also come to mind.<br /><br />Such are the myriad forms that populate “New Lines: Paintings by Melissa Johnson,” which is currently up at Cornell’s Willard Straight Hall Gallery. Johnson’s show comprises some 20 acrylic works: 19 of them small (12" x 12") and one large (48" x 48"). The paintings are unframed and often quite thick; they pop out of the wall like boxes.<br /><br />Though distinctive, Johnson’s paintings call to mind diverse precedents from the history of modern art. Her sensuously colored, densely translucent, and overlapping tone-tongues resemble the abstractions of Morris Louis, although on a much more intimate scale (and using brushes rather than pouring). In contrast to Louis, and the other protagonists of Post-Painterly Abstraction, with their high seriousness, her quirky, quasi-figurative drama and humor is reminiscent of artists such as Joan Miro and Louise Bourgeois. (The humor is slapstick, and therefore hard to convey in words.)<br /><br />There is an ambiguity in the way Johnson plays shapes off of the edges of her squares: they either appear to rest on the edges like objects on a platform, or they seem to continue beyond our view.<br /><br />Several canvases feature rows of tongue or finger-like forms protruding from the edges, often from the bottom. Among these is <span style="font-style: italic;">New Lines</span>, one of the most strongly figurative works in the show. The background is unusually rough, with abrupt brushstrokes forming a rather landscape-like background of blue, purple, and green. Mid-ground, near the center of the square, floats a low hanging white cloud. Lined up along the bottom edge is row of six foreground finger people, resembling dancers, or individuals in a parade. Some, looking like inverted exclamation marks, even sport head-like spots. The foreground colors are warm: bold reds, murky dark purples, burnt orange.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Ten 26</span> is distinctive for its clarity and relative sparseness. The background is a busily brushy green <span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:verdana;">—</span></span> yellow over a blue under-layer. Emerging from the left of the bottom edge and seemingly leaning rightward is a pair of adjacent fat blob-tongues: lavender and orange-red. (Their brushwork fills neatly echo their contours, helping keep them separate.) Down from the top edge: a skinny, Indian yellow tongue and a pair of dark red-brown projections that suggest a pair of dangling, stocking-covered legs.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Slide On</span>, in contrast, is a densely layered vortex of color-forms, spanning a wide range of sizes and opacities (generally, the smaller, the more opaque). These are more rock-like than organic and the colors suggest desert and rust. Slightly off-center is a tear in this space. Its colors are unexpected: warm blue and magenta.<br /><br />The variety that Johnson has achieved within a fairly consistent format is impressive. <span style="font-style: italic;">Wild</span> (like several) features rough, scrawl-like marks, <span style="font-style: italic;">My Deep</span> a background of curved diagonal stripes. <span style="font-style: italic;">Pour Me Down</span> is unusually opaque. The gracefully curving <span style="font-style: italic;">CM</span> is filled with eggplants (purple and brown, hazy and sharp) while <span style="font-style: italic;">Those Spaces Between</span> seems to feature some kind of elongated orange gourd.<br /><br />Scaling up can be a difficulty for any artist. The task is a particular challenge with gestural, painterly work, wherein every mark may be called upon to make a self-conscious statement. Moving bigger requires renegotiating the manner in which bodily movements and perceptions are choreographed into the agglomeration of form.<br /><br />It is therefore unsurprising that <span style="font-style: italic;">Best Days</span>, the sole large piece here, is dominated by two stiff, flatly colored-in forms: one resembling a red pepper and the other (vaguely) an upside-down axe or hammer head. One misses the lively interplay of gesture and drawn shape found in most of the smaller works.<br /><br />All too often in local art, work that has pretensions toward playfulness or whimsy gives the impression of desperate effort being made to mask a more fundamental creative lifelessness. Ithaca loves the idea of the artist as free spirit; sadly, the real thing seems to be fairly rare. Melissa Johnson’s paintings are the real thing and as such deserve a broad audience.<br /></blockquote></span></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-8607879678077219222009-02-25T14:04:00.010-05:002009-11-22T18:46:53.572-05:00water preserves<span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=8513&TM=54306.24">Video art!</a>:<blockquote><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><a href="http://soag.org/jan-kather/">"Water Preserves,"</a> the title of Jan Kather's current solo show, has a double meaning. On one hand, water sustains us </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> our bodies and our environment. On the other, water itself may require preservation. Although motivated by real world environmental destruction, the show treats both themes mostly in an indirect, metaphorical, and poetic manner.<br /><br />The SOAG's back room, which has been darkened, contains four video installations. A large wall-projected video, <span style="font-style: italic;">Water Preserves</span>, is the show's centerpiece. Incorporating footage from different locations (upstate New York and elsewhere), we are treated to a slow-moving, meditative essay on water's surfaces. The camera is mostly unobtrusive: it stays still or pans gently. Images dissolve into images. Looking down, we see waves, froth, stones, sand, shimmering light, bits of bright green foliage. Spots or streaks of mysterious pink or orange tint intrude occasionally. We hear the water, too.<br /><br />According to Kather, the work may be entered and departed at any point in time. Still, for those willing to engage in a patient, protracted experience </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> and to abandon any expectation of linear narrative </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> it is worth taking in whole.<br /><br />Three Mason jars (suggesting the theme of preservation) have been placed atop projectors and filled partially with water. The text and imagery is obscured, we see an enchanting abstraction of light and color.<br /><br />A medium-sized video screen shows what is nearly a loop of still images. Time passes slowly before we dissolve to the next. We're outdoors, in winter's half-light. Only the steady falling of snow suggests time. We see an orange-tinted streetlight above. We move closer and then closer again. Then we see a criss-cross of snow-covered branches and then, finally, a brief shot of ground.<br /><br />The least successful video features the most elaborate installation. A metal-mesh shelf has been fitted with six small screens </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> one in each cubby-hole. In front of each are one or two water-filled jars. The top three show image grids in shades of blue. The left and right of these show shots of clouds taken from an airplane. The middle screen shows water over grass. The bottom screens recycle the snow sequence at three different speeds </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> accompanied by ambient sounds including swinging doors and radio voices. Overall, the imagery is difficult to parse, the juxtaposition sketchily conceived, and the idea of water in multiple forms (solid, liquid, gas) tentatively presented.<br /><br />In the front room, another screen presents a <a href="http://momente.wordpress.com/2009/01/24/water/">series</a> of water-related works done by artists from around the world and assembled by Kather. (These can also be seen online: <a href="http://web.mac.com/jkather/iWeb/Site%2011/Water%20Preserves.html">http://web.mac.com/jkather/iWeb/Site 11/Water Preserves.html</a>.) Highlights are many. In Simone Stoll's <span style="font-style: italic;">Rain</span>, we see from behind a bare-footed woman struggling for balance as she crosses a plank. Falling and flowing water surround her. Alicia Felberbaum's <span style="font-style: italic;">Not The Silent Sea</span> is cacophonous: bright bands of unnatural color, visual distortion, swimming sea mammals and their cries, discordant music </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> all very appropriate, given her theme of noise pollution.<br /><br />Also in front are several digital photo-collages. Based on grids (often staggered and irregular) they typically include identical or near-identical images reiterated. Again, images shot at disparate locales are mixed together. Many incorporate text, typically obscured: literary, Biblical or journalistic. One gets the sense of sketches, of ideas being worked out: only a few seem resolved as completed works.<br /><br />Among these, <span style="font-style: italic;">Water Preserves: Homeland Security</span> is particularly striking. The background image, in starkly beautiful black and white, shows a gentle cascade of water and ice. A row of translucent Mason jars cross the bottom edge. In the upper right corner of one of them, a tiny round warning sign in black, white and red: no drinking. The piece reflects post-9/11 concerns of bioterrorism and contamination </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> although these themes are (so to speak) submerged.<br /><br />A series makes use of an image of a dead fish. A lenticular print (an image printed on a array of lenses which changes appearance as the viewer moves) juxtaposes the fish with a placid, postcard-like view of a lake. The medium is a bit contrived; a paper printed montage of the two images expresses the pastoral/morbid contrast with greater grace. Accompanying it is text taken from a 1964 obituary for ecologist Rachel Carson, one of the show's muses. <span style="font-style: italic;">Silent Spring: Fish and Pond</span> (named after Carson's best-known book) shows a dead bird as well. The repetition and layering of the two images is subtle and varied. These images can be seen as elegies for environmental destruction.<br /><br />A pair of silver prints date back to the eighties. <span style="font-style: italic;">Acadia</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">The Surf </span></span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> both of them lovely and somewhat violent shore-scapes </span><span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> show the continuity of Kather's aesthetics.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Water Preserves" remains up at the State of the Art through March 1. From March 6 through April 3 it can be seen (likely in altered form) at Alfred State College in Alfred, NY.</span><br /></span></blockquote></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-2161314293853768662009-02-23T12:28:00.015-05:002009-02-23T14:45:41.888-05:00in the dark<div style="text-align: right; font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJmHPWOPKmqU7W5XM5TGu0H6XA30rtcrKjd_-MMiThg3_hYhp2Ctk2qMvNWaMQFDVsLugW4v6pcWXVSiCi8uoesjKp_ZZWpZu2RMVX_jb6DEPR8cQOU-z6ExLMtIHArELW42e_AA/s1600-h/leaving+stanley+point+25+x+50.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 159px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJmHPWOPKmqU7W5XM5TGu0H6XA30rtcrKjd_-MMiThg3_hYhp2Ctk2qMvNWaMQFDVsLugW4v6pcWXVSiCi8uoesjKp_ZZWpZu2RMVX_jb6DEPR8cQOU-z6ExLMtIHArELW42e_AA/s400/leaving+stanley+point+25+x+50.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5306046944440990802" border="0" /></a><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Treacy Ziegler, <span style="font-style: italic;">Leaving Stanley Point</span>, 2008, monoprint, 35" x 60"<br /><br /></span></div></div><span style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><a href="http://www.tcpl.org/exhibits/seeinginthedark/index.html">“Seeing In The Dark”</a> </span><span style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" > on display through March 26<sup>th</sup> at the Tompkins County Public Library </span><span style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span><span style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" > aims to be a show about the night. Local artist Laurel Guy curated the exhibit; her plein air pastels are included. Also here are moody, cryptic monoprints by Treacy Ziegler; classicizing oils by Tim Merrick; desolate photographs by David Mount; and the painted cartoons of Alice Muhlback. <o:p></o:p></span> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">A good thematic show can deepen our understanding of the artists, highlighting differences as well as affinities. This is not such a show. The work is diverse to the point of being unrelated, a series of disconnected tracks.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.laurelguypastels.com/">Laurel Guy</a> draws local scenes outdoors (here at night, of course). Her approach suggests a kind of folk impressionism.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Guy’s most affecting piece offers a view from <i style="">Sunset Park</i>. There is a palpable though elusive sense of height and distance; we are looking down at a mass of sky, land, and water. These are subtly rendered in horizontal streaks of blue, purple, and light grey. Bright lights </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> in the form of thickly pigmented spots of white, red, and yellow-orange </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> dot the bottom half of the page.<br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Treacy Ziegler’s four monoprints are by far the most advanced pieces here. One really gets the sense of being <i style="">in</i> the dark, of struggling to make out distinctions between forms. There is a rich diversity of texture: chalky lines and tone, thin brushing, and spongy oily droplets. The white of the paper is a rare sight. In addition to ample pure blacks, translucent blacks have been printed over blocks of color </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> often a pale yellow-tan.<br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Three of her prints feature pathways receding off into mysterious distance: <i style="">Leaving Stanley Point</i> shows a purple river </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> a small rowboat dangling off its edge </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> while <i style="">Evening Cow</i> and <i style="">Boundary</i> picture roads. <i style="">Cow</i> has the sole protagonist (which looks more like a black and white spotted dog), while <i style="">Boundary</i> suggests human presence with bulbous yellow-green trees and a pink-magenta house.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.turtlegallery.com/artists/prints/tziegler/tziegler10.html"><i style="">Before a Green Sky</i></a>, a still life, stands out among Ziegler’s pieces here for its extreme spatial ambiguity. Light and dark, near and far, indoors and outdoors </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> all of these are twisted into disorienting puzzle. A flower rests in a cyan vase atop a red cloth covered table. We are facing the table straight on. And looking out a window at a blackened landscape </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> but the window frame is nowhere to be seen and we lose track of where we are.<br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.timmerrick.com/Oil%20Paintng%20Portfolio.html">Tim Merrick</a> is showing a pair of large oil on canvas scenes, both of them emphatically flat and frontal. There is considerable roughness in the texture of the brushwork, much scumbling and messy translucent layering. The roughness, rather than being graceful, seems somewhat tentative and awkward.<br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><i style="">Tiempieto at Night</i> shows the front of a classical temple with a triangular pediment on top, circular windows, and a row of three arched doorways at the bottom. (The image is taken from a fresco by Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, whom Merrick sites as an influence.) The building is whitish earthy red and framed in strips of dirty ochre. A pair of large white birds in profile: one seemingly perched on the central archway, wings up and looking down-right; the other standing stiffly below the same door, facing left. Black and tan outlines give the shapes both structure and stiffness. The background is scumbled dark with blues and greens.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">His <i style="">Cachi</i> <i style="">Tree</i> is red-brown with bare branches (and no outlines). Brushy balls of yellow-orange </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> passion fruit </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> hover around these limbs; others have fallen in a circle around the tree’s base. More white birds, this time squat and plump, perch above and below.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">Also by Merrick are three watercolors, including a sketch for each of he canvases.</span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.davidmount.org/portfolio.htm">David Mount’s</a> digital color photographs (inkjet prints) of unpopulated parks and roadsides emphasize bright, artificial lighting </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> often from uncertain sources. These “Night Trees” glow with sterile, alien light. The traditional romance of the night has been dispelled. The effect is most compelling in images such as <a href="http://www.davidmount.org/images/vertical/night_trees25.jpg"><i style="">Night Trees 25</i></a> in which the alien-ness has pushed to an extreme. (One expects the immanent arrival of a flying saucer.)<br /></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:85%;">As for <a href="http://www.spiritandkitsch.com/aliceart.htm">Alice Muhlback’s </a>would be playful acrylic on wood paintings, my ability to appreciate them in the spirit in which they were intended is sadly lacking. Muhlback is more of a cartoonist than a painter. Her strokes of color </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> here a lot of blue, purple, and white, with spots of red (especially lips) </span><span style="font-size:85%;">—</span><span style="font-size:85%;"> serve as functional backdrops to her black or white outlined figures. These figures are people or birds. Or fragments: heads, teardrop-shaped eyes, schematic wings.<br /></span></p><span style="font-family: verdana;font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >One would like to see more carefully put together thematic shows in Ithaca. Here the fact that all of these images show nighttime scenes seems mostly accidental. <o:p></o:p></span><p style="font-family: verdana;"></p>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22211033.post-11197160405368194972009-02-18T10:45:00.007-05:002009-02-27T20:23:15.732-05:00icons of the desert<span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><a href="http://www.ithacatimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=119&ArticleID=8447&TM=38694.82"><span style="font-style: italic;">Times</span></a>:<blockquote>The roots of contemporary Aboriginal art are commonly traced to the activities of white schoolteacher Geoffrey Bardon (1940-2003). The place of this breakthrough was the remote native settlement of Papunya, about 150 miles west of the town of Alice Springs, near the center of Australia. (Several native groups were made to resettle there during the previous decades.) In 1971, Bardon, a schoolteacher, encouraged the children and then several of the adult men of the impoverished community to create acrylic paintings using traditional and sacred imagery. Previously, this imagery has been seen only in ephemeral art forms such as sand and body painting.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.iconsofthedesert.com/">"Icons of the Desert: Early Aboriginal Paintings from Papunya"</a> <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> which is on view at the Johnson Museum through April 5 <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> emphasizes work from the early years of this tradition, in particular from Bardon's 1971-1973 tenure. The art comes from the collection of John Wilkerson (a 1970 Cornell PhD) and his wife Barbara, who became fascinated with the movement in 1994. Put together by the Johnson and curated by University of Sydney scholar Roger Benjamin (a specialist in modern art), the show will move on to UCLA's Fowler Museum and then to NYU's Grey Art Gallery.<br /><br />Contemporary Western viewers will note the works' formal similarity to Abstract Expressionism and other modern art movements. This is an inevitable part of their appeal. However, it is important to understand something of the artwork's narrative intent and not to view the work as purely abstract or decorative.<br /><br />For their creators, they are thought not only to depict, but also to contain actual traces of, ancestral creation narratives known at the Dreamings (<span style="font-style: italic;">Tjukurpa</span>). The cycle of stories involves the exploits of ancestral beings living in a mythic, extra-worldly time. Their actions are thought to have shaped the world as it is today <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> its social and moral order as well as its geography.<br /><br />The paintings can be conceived as landscapes. Rather than the empirical, observational focus of traditional Western landscape, however, these acrylics are more akin to maps, or to the tenuous resemblances of pictographic writing.<br /><br />Even a rudimentary understanding of the works' iconography helps deepen their appreciation. Arrangements of concentric circles <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> "roundrels" in the language of the show's accompanying text <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> represent campfires, watering holes, or other "sacred sites." These are typically connected together via networks of lines indicating pathways and journeys. Bulbous U-shapes indicate people (the shape is derived loosely from that of a seated person). Wavy lines indicate water and other shapes represent animal tracks.<br /><br />Dots are the most prevalent and well-known motif in Papunya painting. ("Dot painting" is a popular name for the style.) Most characteristically, they are tightly packed and cover much (or nearly all) of the surfaces, sometimes filling in other forms and other times obscuring them. Their prevalence springs from their general lack of concrete religious significance. Much of the traditional sacred imagery created by male artists is to be kept from the eyes of women, children and outsiders. (This prohibition is occasionally <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> and carefully <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> violated in this show, with potentially controversial results.)<br /><br />The paintings are complemented by floor installation, which <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> somewhat teasingly <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> alludes to the traditional ritual origins of the culture. Arranged within a sandbox-like enclosure is a roughly square network of roundrels and traveling lines. These are done in a red, fibrous plant material while the background is done in a similarly textured white. Installed last week by a team of visiting artists, this temporary work will come down with the end of the show.<br /><br />Reflecting the art's traditional grounding, the colors tend overwhelmingly towards the earthy: black and white, as well as subdued tones of brown, yellow, red and ochre. A number of the paintings make use of a flagrantly artificial bright orange; the effect is invariably garish and off-putting. For example: Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi's otherwise interesting <span style="font-style: italic;">Mystery Sand Mosaic</span> (November 1974).<br /><br />During the first few years of the acrylic art movement, Masonite boards served as the primary support surface. The boards in "Icons" are often irregularly shaped and tend to be roughly cut.<br /><br />Formally and technically, the accomplishment of these paintings is markedly uneven. As one might expect of artists experimenting with a new medium, the technique used is typically fairly basic <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> and occasionally downright crude. (I will focus, below, on some of the ample exceptions.) The basic method involves covering the entire surface of the support with a flat underlayer <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> often black or brown <span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 85%;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-family: verdana; font-size: 85%;">—</span></span></span> and then covering most of the surface with an intricate pattern of lines and dots.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Water Dreaming at Kalpinypa </span>(August 1972), by Johnny Warangkula Tjupurrula is widely acknowledged as a masterpiece of modern Aboriginal art. Indeed, this "image of country being transformed...by Water Man" is a work of considerable visual sophistication and narrative resonance. Painted at a time of great rains and flooding, it reflects these concerns. Intricately detailed and strongly asymmetrical, it resembles a map in its lack of obvious structure. Against a milk-chocolate brown backdrop, there is a dense layering of forms rendered in brown-reddish cream, yellow, gray, beige, and black: multi-directional dots and striations, river-like curves, tiny roundrels, <span style="font-style: italic;">tjurangas</span> (bandage-shaped ceremonial boards) <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> among others. Black dots indicate raisins (<span style="font-style: italic;">kampurarrpa</span>), an important local foodstuff.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Classic Pintupi Water Dreaming</span> (also August 1972) is another variation on the same theme. Done on an upright board (roughly a parallelogram), Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi's painting features a central roundrel in cool lemon-ochre lines, representing a waterhole. From it emerge spoke-like lines surrounded by further concentric circles, more widely spaced and becoming more rectangular towards the outer edges. These are said to represent "creeks" and "soakages" respectively. White dots on black fill in the background. Framing the scene to the top and bottom are a pair of lump-shaped hills <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> black over-dotted with brown as well as white.<br /><br />Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri's almost square <span style="font-style: italic;">Yam Spirit Dreaming</span> (March 1972) is both unusual and unusually compelling in its style and conception. A central X-shape emerging from the center dominates the composition. Painted in a slightly translucent white, various silhouetted forms branch off of the X: animal and human ("Yam Spirit") figures. Disconnected, scattered, pairs of U-shapes ("Yam Ceremonial Men") face each other. A leaf-like border, still in white, surrounds all the figures. The dotting, incessant, is red within and black without; the background is a pale yellow. The yam, notably, is central to the traditional (primarily vegetable) diet of the area.<br /><br />A number of more recent works on stretched canvas or linen are included in the exhibition. Although stretching chronologically to our own decade, the late seventies and the following decade are the major focus here. In many cases, they show considerable advancement of style and technique.<br /><br />Several canvases partake of a style incorporating densely overlapping roundrels and whitish, delicate colors. Shorty Lungkarta Tjungurrayi's <span style="font-style: italic;">Tingarri Ceremony at Ilingawurngawurrnga</span> (June 1974) is the earliest canvas in the show. Displaying somewhat hesitant brushwork, it fills its space with dizzying circles and waves of pale colors: white, pink, cream and ochre <span style=";font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;" >—</span> all over a black surface. There are few dots. It shows "the men's ceremonial camp where sacred designs were painted on the novices' backs."<br /><br />In a similar vein, but more fluent, is the un-annotated <span style="font-style: italic;">Pulpayella</span> (December 1976) by Willy Tjungurrayi. The colors are similar. Imposed over a background of densely packed, overlapping roundrels is a central network of larger ones, spaced apart but connected with traveling lines. The foreground assemblage is vaguely figural, with a column of three roundrels running down the middle and two line-and-circle "arms" hanging down from the sides.<br /><br />Tommy Lowry Tjapaltjarri's tightly painted <span style="font-style: italic;">Two Men's Dreaming at Kuluntjarranya </span>(1984) is a distinctive and compelling large canvas. Its wide expanse contains two rows of over-scaled roundrel-lakes. The connecting lines have largely disappeared and the roundrels appear to radiate off the page. Dots (typically in neat rows) and lines over a brown ground: white, whitish clay red, ochre, black, cream. The Dreaming tells of the creation of salt lakes "200 miles south and west of Papunya": following the consumption of a "strong native tobacco," two healers (<span style="font-style: italic;">ngangkaris</span>) died and their "bodies began to urinate copiously." Lowry's Ngulyukuntinya, from the following year, displays a similarly refined style. (Sadly, the artist died two years later.)<br /><br />Despite the unevenness of the work, and the difficulties inherent in understanding their stories, there is much of great interest here. Although the full narrative significance of these paintings may be unavailable, the rich patterning of the most accomplished paintings and the iconographic density of their Dreamings will give viewers much to reach for.</blockquote></span></span>arthurhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13407093986689029361noreply@blogger.com2