main spring

Buzz Spector, Creeley's Creeleys, Internal Dye Diffusion Print (Polaroid), 36.75" x 24"

Kumi Korf, Birds in Conversation, Gold, Intaglio Print on Japanese Paper, 36" x 20"

Victoria Romanoff, The Oysters of Le Havre, Paper Mosaic

Jeremiah Donovan, Walnut Bowl Inside/Out, Earthenware Clay layered with Terrasigilatta and Raku Glazes (Multi-Fired), 12" x 14"

A version of my review appearing in the Times, 3/19/08 (which I can't find online):

The Main Street Gallery's annual spring show covers an eclectic range of styles and mediums with an emphasis on local artists. The show has been markedly strong in recent years (particularly relative to similar efforts by other area galleries) and this year's feels particularly so.

Cornell professor Buzz Spector's Creeley's Creeleys exemplifies his recent large format Polaroid work as well as his use of books as brick-like sculptural units. The bricks here come from the collection of the late poet Robert Creeley and collectively form an oblique, associative portrait. The volumes vary richly in color, design, and typography; some include author photos. They are arranged in a roughly circular cluster of small stacks (some clearly showing different editions of the same book). The stacks zig-zag — facing in different directions — and grow taller towards the back. They sit on rough, unpainted floorboards which emphasize the picture's deep perspective. (As does the contrasting flatness of scattered volumes placed upright, more or less parallel to the picture-plane, as if in a bookstore display) The image itself is sensuous with subtle contrasting tones and artful blurring along the top and bottom edges.

Birds in Conversation, Gold, by Ithacan Kumi Korf, is another standout. The tall intaglio print belongs to a recent series in which she attempts to provide an abstract analogue for the experience of flight. Like others, this one features a flock of flatly painted, hard-edged shapes arranged against a brushy, gestural background. In Gold there are three. Moving from top to bottom, left to right and then back left: a warm grayish-blue one most resembling a bird in profile (wings closed), a burnt orange amoeba, and a red one suggesting a kite or an arrow. These are tied together by curving green line suggesting a flight line or a thread. These stick sharply out of a ground of indian yellow, printed over silver onto a thin tan-colored Japanese paper sheet.

Korf's long-standing print collaborator is Ink Shop master-printer Christa Wolf. Wolf herself is well-represented here by the monotype landscape Alegretto. The piece loosely depicts a view of the landscape surrounding her upstate NY farmhouse. The piece is arranged in vertical tiers of wave-like, gestural marks barely hinting at perspective. The bottom half is dominated by a pair of dark purple-brown tree trunks, gnarly and with bare branches leaping out sideways. The brushing reveals the white of the paper. The colors -- mostly greens with small patches of reddish brown --are faintly iridescent.

Victoria Romanoff (another well-known Ithacan), offers an engaging collage-painting, The Oysters of Le Havre. The bits that make up this "paper mosaic" fit each other snugly without overlapping. Although the scene is fragmented and filled with abstract mark-making, it is recognizable as a landscape with a shoreline. A relatively empty horizontal bar towards the top is warm gray (apparently sprayed) and indicates sky. Marks elsewhere are predominantly whitish — pink and blue — and applied via thick and thin paint and with chalk or crayon. The whole vista is surrounded by a pink painted border, relatively dark, but tied to the rest through similar marks.

The inclusion of functional pottery is a distinguishing characteristic of the Main Street's group shows; included here are the decoratively glazed vessels of Anna Velkoff Freeman — two tall cups and a wide, shallow bowl. The white on dark blue designs are stylized depictions of dangerous microbes. The inclusion of the foodborne e coli (on the bowl and one of the cups) is a cheap joke but their sinuous tendrils do form interesting patterns.

Much more interesting sculpturally are three asymmetric goblet-like bowls by the Groton native Jeremiah Donovan. They are inspired by the forms — interior and exterior — of walnuts, and their jagged inner ridges and staggered, uneven rims limit their functionality. Colors are copper brown and greenish. The outside edges (along with parts of the inside) are rough, covered in scored lines and accreted dirt clumps.

The least satisfying mode of art on display here is a figural, narrative surrealist sculpture based on an assemblage aesthetic. By far the strongest work in this vain is Gail Hoffman's Messenger, a bird-headed figurine welded together from cast bronze fragments. Included are casts from real objects, e.g. a leaf wing and a doily covering its chest. In comparison, Claire Harootunian's Angel Mine and Lead On look rather slight. Both feature tiny, minimally altered dolls sitting atop benches: clay and painted wood, respectively.

"Spring Group Exhibition" will be of greatest interest to those already familiar with the works of the artists shown. The particular style of combining well-known area artists with select (and perennial) "outsiders" is idiosyncratic to the Main Street. Visitors from past years should feel an engaging tension between the expected and the new, as different aspects of artists' work are (often slowly!) revealed.

ink spot

From the Times, with further edits:

Late in the evening of this past January 8th, an accidental fire started in the three-storey Handwork Building at 102 W. State Street. The second floor was home to Ithaca’s community printshop. And while the Ink Shop did not face the catastrophic flame damage of their upstairs neighbor, the Ithaca Academy of Dance, it was blanketed in soot and water. On show, but thankfully only minimally damaged, was their most expensive endeavour to date, a show of work from Lafayette College’s Experimental Printmaking Institute. However, the structural damage done to the building means that they will have to wait, probably until at least next year, before they can consider moving back in.

In the meantime, the Shop's newly rented — and possibly permanent — location is in the second floor of the Community School of Music and Arts building at 330 E. State St. The association of the two non-profits has potential, especially as both organizations show visual art and teach it to the public. This is their third home since the Ink Shop's founding in 1999.

The new gallery can be entered either from a side entrance or through a back door exiting the CSMA's first floor space. After twisting up a rough, concrete staircase, you find yourself in a long hallway, facing towards the front of the building. A door on the left leads to an architect's office. The door on the right leads to the new shop: two cramped rooms lined up straight, front and back, with a marble-lined washroom in the very back, off to the right. Each main room has three tall windows dominating their right-hand walls. The view looks out the CSMA parking lot, with The Commons in the background. Despite the pristine white walls and elegant cornices, the space has a grittier feel than the old one.

The front room contains, on the right, an impromptu office with tables and desks arranged in a square, chairs lining the inside. Flat-file cases are scattered about. An open closet space has been added up against the back left corner of the room; its low homasote walls don't reach the ceiling. The awkward combination of uses — work, office, and exhibition — is a marked change. The presses are in the back, along with scattered tables and chairs and a drying rack for prints. The back and left walls make a relatively spacious exhibition area.

A dedicated crew of member-volunteers has done most of the hard work of moving equipment and planning the logistics of the new space. Although the space now looks fairly settled-in, things are still being worked out. As of press time, they still lack telephone service. Programs are being worked out. Starting next month, the Shop will be resuming their schedule of printing classes that are open to the public.

Their latest show, "Fired Up," features mostly recent prints by Shop members. Many survived the fire. It was put together in the months following the disaster and its ad hoc-feel is unsurprising. (It opened on the last Gallery Night on March 7.) And the installation is understandably awkward as well. Things are cramped and the work is sometimes hard to see. It will be interesting to see how they meet this challenge in the future. The show does feature some impressive art, as usual. Some of it is familiar from past exhibitions.

There are two strong etchings by Tim Merrick. Both of them are rounded squares, and feature dark, purplish-brown lines against a light, mottled backdrop. The lines are fine and energetic, jazzy, forming sometimes dense accumulations of hatchings. And both scenes place the viewer beside — and in front of — a rapidly flowing creek, perched on some rocks. In The River, the water flows towards the foreground on the left. Behind it is dark and densely wooded hillside. In The Red Mill, the water flows away in a roughly straight path. The lines of the rocks in front exaggerate the sense of perspective. On the right shore sits a dilapidated split-level house; in the background, the water is blocked by an elongated building.

Also compelling is an untitled monotype by Neil Berger, a painterly, black-on-white rural scene. The central road (which in the foreground spans the bottom edge) arcs it way up a gentle slope, towards the upper left corner of the page. Piercing it is another road, going from the lower left corner towards the right edge (mid-ground), narrowing. Both roads are covered in fluid streaks, indicating mud rather than pavement. On an arcing hill-horizon in the background, from left to right: a grove of trees, a tiny house beneath a phone pole canopy, a pair of frame-structures, more trees.

"Fired Up" makes a useful accompaniment to the Main Street Gallery's current spring show. Both Kumi Korf and Christa Wolf are showing closely related work there. Pamela Rozelle Drix is showing in both galleries as well.

A recent series of intaglio prints by Korf draws a connection between aerial view landscape (or maps) and a classicist approach to modern art. They're reminiscent, in particular, of Joan Miró's paintings. The two tall pieces here are compelling but not quite as successful as the Main Street's Birds in Conversation.

Like that piece, Migratory Flight and Flight of the Red Window feature three hard-edged, flatly toned shapes — here: red, green, and yellow — hovering over a looser, but also flat background. In these two, the backgrounds are spanned top to bottom by finger lake-like columns of watery color: blue and purple respectively. The flying forms do not cross over into the lightly colored areas making up the left and right margins. As a result, the compositions feel unduly cramped. Unlike the bird-kite shapes of Birds and Migratory, Red Window features a more varied, and more straightforwardly abstract menagerie: a square (in yellow), a bent rod (green), and the empty frame-shape suggested by the title. Silver threads tie the foreground figures together in both prints.

Drix's monotype Where The Grass Meets the Water is another impressively abstract distillation of nature. The piece is made up of two square window-like panels, adjacent and side-by-side. On the left is a wave-like pattern of light and dark blue stripes. On the right, over the warm white of the paper, is an angular pattern of thick, dark-green lines. In the middle of these panels are two smaller squares, nested and touching so as to echo the larger ones. The same image of reeds is repeated in each of these: on the right in blue on blue again (but even darker) and on the left in white and black.

Moving to the back room: Christa Wolf's Allegro comes from a series of monotypes picturing her farmhouse garden, dominated by tangled vines. The pieces are each named after one of the five movements in Beethoven's sixth symphony (the "pastoral symphony"). The one downtown is black and white, with the white paper forming the vines and other foreground shapes. The lines are tangled, greasy, and often thick.

Craig Mains is represented with a pair of hard-edged digital images showing, appropriately enough, a flooded print shop. They're basically interior design schematics. Although they share in his characteristic (and endearing) subject matter of disaster and ruin, they lack the visual wit conveyed by his usual flat, stencil-derived forms.

Jenny Pope's color woodcut Underworld Owls is another standout. It shows, in cross-section, an underground network of burrow-holes, each housing an owl, some asleep. The earth is dotted with rocks and if you look closely, you can see snails and segmented worms. Above ground, toward the top edge, is a lumpy landscape, with snow falling and accumulated. Toward the left corner, in the distance, is a rail bridge with a small steam locomotive, both in profile. The colors are subdued: raw umber, ochre, medium gray, light celery green, baby blue, black - and the white of the paper. The rendering is flat overall, but the owls manage to contort themselves in a comically animated fashion.

Irina Kassabova's Scanning is an etching with smudgy layers of color: red, black, purple, blue. A loosely defined purple figure is seen in profile. Below, in white scratchy outlines, are what look to be bones. The print's painterliness and lack of coherence contrasts greatly with the work she showed in a two-person show at the Shop last fall (with her father Motko Bumov). There her black and white etchings of prehistoric animal skeletons were impressive in their detail and linear clarity.

In the basement of the CSMA is a reprise of "The Birth Portfolio," which was shown in the Clinton House's Mural Lounge earlier this year. It was originally planned for the old Ink Shop and features work from the International Birth Exchange Project. It's uneven but well worth a look. The space was generously lent for free by the School.

annual photography

Times:

This year's "Annual Juried Photography Show" is the State of the Art Gallery's 19th. Like last year's, it provides a fine opportunity to survey the range of regional work (with some from beyond, too).

Joleen Mahoney Roe's architectural montage Sorroe is impressive but perhaps too slick. The thin, panoramic piece incorporates several separate views, which are variously repeated and staggered. On both sides is the same interior wall covered in graffiti script. In the middle are outdoor scenes; beams are all-over as are color painted totem-pillars and garishly colored Mother Marys. Otherwise, the middle is largely sepia-toned. Much of Sorroe's surface is soaked in a layer of digital effects - sometimes thin but thick and colorful around borders.

Carrie Chalmers' Red Rug. Niagara Falls, Canada is, in contrast, quietly poetic. Seen in three-quarters view from a concrete driveway is the back of a nondescript white house. The sky is cloudy and there is a thin layer of snow. Behind a tree is a porch; over one of the railings is the rug, the only patch of strong color. Two diagonal phone lines above the house act like picture corners (e.g. the little plastic ones) as do more subtle snow lines below. Jessica Evett-Miller also rings poetry out of similar color-contrasts. In Strata I and II, a knit red blanket draped softens barren, rocky landscapes.

Both Phil Koons' Cayuga Lake: Red Wall 27 and Myron Walker's Entrada (both digital) evoke early 20th-century modern painting. Cayuga appears to be a homage to the Synthetic Cubism of Picasso and Georges Braque, which is characterized by shallow perspective, angular fragmentation, and the juxtaposition of textures and signs enabled by collage. Picasso's 1912 Still Life with Chair Caning introduced collage into mainstream Western art. The cane (fake, printed on oilcloth), is alluded to in the Koons by three rectangular sections of wooden lattice. Also reminiscent of Still Life - and its brothers - is Cayuga's use of fragmented text. A "no parking any time" sign is in the foreground, tilting off the left edge. Only a "G," an "E," and a suggestive arrow are readable. (Compare with the similarly positioned French fragment " J O U" of the Picasso.)

Other similarities between the two works exist, but they are not quite versions. Cayuga is a rectangle rather than an oval and is dominated by red, green and blue along with the grays and browns of the older piece. In the background is a red building, perhaps a barn, and above a strip of bright sky. Cluttering the space in between is junk, mostly: pipes, a telephone pole, the lattices, a cinder-block, another arrowed sign.

Entrada is divided into two rectangular sections resembling the pages of an open book. The left shows a flat, solid wall, painted pink and covered in blobby white writing: the title ("entrance" in Spanish) and a schedule. Piercing this script is a yellow arrow gesturing right. The right is more dimensional; it shows the bottom of a pink stairway curving up leftwards. Above is a dirty mustard yellow wall painted with another arrow, dark red. The two pointers seem to echo each other but the right one is shorter and isn't flat, curving with the stairs. Paul Klee (a contemporary of Picasso) often used arrows in a similar way: both as strong graphic elements and as narrative cues, enticing the viewer to enter the work. Like Cayuga, the piece combines abstraction with a playful evocation of vernacular - albeit a more exotic one.

The over-scaled full-body portraits of Jessica Brown and Michael McCarthy show contrasting aesthetics. Brown's Polaroid self-portrait All the Lingerie I Own comes as a column of three framed pieces. These are subtitled separately (A, B, C) but are not experienced separately. As the title suggests, there is a wealth of fetishistic detail. McCarthy's void-like cyanotype Silhouette is white on dark warm blue, with ghostly blurring around the edges. Limbs are variously blurred and attenuated. The piece is a photogram, made without a camera by impressing objects directly on light sensitive paper. The paper is roughly textured and the piece has a painterly quality.

There are numerous botanical close-ups in National. Too often, these lean towards either the predictably competent (Linda's Lilly by Joshua Harden) or the unconvincingly experimental (the repetitive, mandala-like geometry of Daniel McPheeters' Succulents). Corrine Stern's Ornamental Cabbage, which is paired with, and echoes, her close-up Elephant's Eye is an exception. Both ink-jet prints are framed in glass, without any other backing. Cabbage is a reddish-purple ball surrounded by ghostly whitish leaves while the Eye is encircled by heavy folds of skin in cool grey and pale pink. Both have rich textures; the former's scattering of leaf-holes and dewdrops is particularly compelling.

daumier

Times:

The great French artist Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) was an accomplished painter and sculptor. He was best known during his lifetime however, for his satirical black and white lithographs. Sold individually or in subscription periodicals, they took on the foibles of his age. A selection of these, "A Wit Still Sharp: Daumier Turns 200," is on view at the Johnson Museum. The show is small, especially relative to his prolific output. Nevertheless, it is packed with ideas — both visual and verbal.

The latter are primarily the contribution of Charles Philipon, publisher of La Caricature and La Charivari, liberal journals Daumier contributed to regularly. Philipon's captions supply an extra measure of wit — along with most of the works' titles. Many prints bare traces of their journalistic origins: horizontal fold-lines and text printed on the backs.

Much of the artist's early work satirized the government of constitutional monarch Louis-Phillipe, who reigned from 1830 to 1848. His rule was ostensibly a moderate, reformist one. He promised freedom of the press but this was not carried out consistently. Daumier and his publisher found themselves facing fines and even prison time for their efforts.

The highlight of the show is the 1834 classic La Ventre Législatif (The Legislative Belly), a vicious indictment of the new regime. It assembles government officials Daumier earlier caricatured individually. (Three of these portraits from the previous year are also on view.) In contrast to the detail of the earlier prints, the often grotesque visages of Belly are constructed out of suggestive blocks of tone. The statesmen sit in four rows which surround the semi-circular bit of floor which makes up the foreground. Alternately, they plot together, read papers, doze-off, or stare vacantly into space. In front, right, stands a dark-coated, mop-haired man recognizable from one of the earlier portraits as a Dr. Prunelle. An analogy is made between the corpulence of the leaders, the shape of the chamber, and the greed of the government. (Money-grubbing is also the subject of a sardonic April Fools' print wherein L-P and associate Adolphe Thiers throw coins from a balcony to a stupefied-looking crowd.)

Baissez le rideau, la farce est jouée (Lower the curtain, the farce is over) is from the same year. It shows the same belly-chamber through a sort of window in the center of a beautifully weird, angular composition. We see the rows from the side, above, at greater distance. Obscuring it from above is a curtain; to the right it is fronted by a plump, monstrous clown — Louis-Phillipe. He points a baton leftward, where it disrupts the scales of justice held by an allegorical female statue. Baissez recalls the artist's early background in theatre. His father, a glazier, had aspirations as a dramatist and poet.

Legislation passed in 1835 (following attempted regicide) banned political caricature. Daumier turned his satire towards the everyday social life of Paris. Although less joyfully mean-spirited, the resulting pieces show a keen awareness of modern city-life and an increasingly loose and expressive line.

In Cré nom!...(1841), a tattered man slumps against an outdoor wall, complaining that his rain-soaked boots have it better than he does, for at least they are able to drink. The print is hung alongside the only non-lithograph in the show, an intaglio Absinthe Drinker by Manet whose heavily worked shadows and other dark tones are only hinted at in the Daumier.

Daumier mocked the official French art-world, which in his day was dominated by the conservative exhibitions of the Salon. Three pieces here illustrate these shows. Lofty, idealized artworks are juxtaposed against the vulgarity of their viewing audience. Walls loaded with portraits — women, probably from classical mythology — form the backdrops of two. These are rendered lightly in the sketchiest of lines. The audience below can only understand them in coarse, sexualized terms.

In Triste contenance de la Sculpture...(1857), a nude female statue bears an agitated pose while around her a circle of gentlemen face away obliviously. In contrast to her, they appear formless, lumpy. The caption makes the target clear: a tendency to favor painting over sculpture.

A tout coup l'on perd! (Every throw's a loser!), from 1868, exemplifies Daumier's late return to politics. It alludes to the clouds of war then gathering over Europe in humorously allegorical terms. A crowned woman personifying Europe holds a bag of money in each hand. Squatting down, she aims in the direction of carnival game bearing the coarsely rendered likeness of the Greek god of war, his mouth a black hole. Framing him is the upright section of the contraption; it resembles a gravestone. The loose line-work is impressive, but the lack of tonal variation keeps it from being one of the more visually impressive pieces.

nick maione at stella's

Times:

Stella's Cafe in Collegetown is currently showing a series of abstract drawings by Cornell student Nick Maione, up through February. Their clusters of marks, although expressive, are typically spare, with most of the action going on in the middle and the white of the paper playing a major role. Colors and mediums are restricted as well: black ink along with red, black, and bluish-grey marks in pastel, conte crayon, and oil paint. The sheets are all approximately the dimensions of a magazine or notebook page and usually panoramic rather than upright. All of this helps to give both the works and the show unity, although not at the expense of variation and surprise.

The art here recalls that of several well-known twentieth century modernist painters. You can see traces of Arshile Gorky's fine, fluid black lines — here rendered in pen. Although less graceful, Maione's cover space in a similar way, sometimes loosely outlining chalky, cloudy forms and at other times going their own way. The use and frequent repetition of abstractly calligraphic and scrawl-like marks calls to mind Cy Twombly. Philip Guston's late work - with its limited palate, coarse, cartoon-like images, and darkly humorous narrative - is another likely influence. Contained in Maione's more or less abstract spaces is an unexpectedly personal figurative vocabulary: maps, landscape, weather, fluids, bottles, body-parts.

The pieces lack individual titles, which makes it difficult to refer to them specifically. It is tempting for this reason and because of their (above-mentioned) consistency to treat them as parts of a single work, perhaps even sequential like a book. Nevertheless, several pieces stand out.

One piece does so with a horizon-line, a sign of landscape and deep perspective in a show otherwise dominated by a shallow, screen-like space. (Along one stretch, it is an actual line, while elsewhere it is merely implied.) It gives the surrounding lines and shapes strongly figurative associations that they might not have otherwise. Patches of horizontal gray strokes resemble choppy water. A rocklike island-bump in black and gray pokes up towards the left while a hollow red circle balancing it on the right could be a sea-monster. It trails tendril-lines downward diagonally to the right; these end in smaller circles. Surrounding the beast is a halo of black ink and gray chalk marks.

A pair of Maione's pieces bares ironic resemblance to certain ones by the Abstract Expressionist painter Adolph Gottlieb, in particular for their compositions dominated by central circles floating in mostly empty space. In many of Gottlieb's canvases, these are counterbalanced by gestural paint-tangles evocative of stormy weather. In Maione's case, weather comes in the form of cartoon raindrops (for some reason these are mostly upside-down, as if gravity were reversed). In one piece, there are two loosely-rendered balls — red dripping downwards on the left, gray on the right — supported by a tripod-like bit of scaffolding drawn in black crayon. The other piece has a red ball in the same position but it is thinly colored and smudgy rather than boldly drawn. A cluster of drops balances it to the right.

Needless to say, a coffeehouse is not the most auspicious place for concerted art-viewing. Still, Maione's work is definitely worth checking out for anyone interested in gestural abstract drawing that is playful as well as rigorous. There seems to be little else like it in Ithaca and it may be telling that it is the work of a student rather than a member of the gallery establishment. (Incidentally, the drawings were made during time spent away in Barcelona.)

states of the art

Times:

"States of Identity: Real or Imagined" is the State of the Art Gallery's contribution to the upcoming Light in Winter Festival. As usual, it features gallery members weighing in on a loosely-defined theme. This year's theme is "identity." Although this may have served as a jumping-off point for the artists, it doesn't work as much of a guidepost for the viewer.

"States" does have a mood distinct from most SOAG group shows. While carefully observed realism often acts as an anchor, the work here is more experimental. There are a few traditionally figurative paintings scattered about; however, they are not among the strongest works here. In keeping with the hybrid and high-tech character of LiW, mixed-media, collage, and digital imaging rule. The human figure — portrayed literally or by analogy — is common, as is the natural and built environment presented in unfamiliar and awe-inspiring ways.

Not surprisingly, LiW founder-director Barbara Mink is well-represented. Her three large mixed-media acrylic canvases are standout works, full of her rich geologically-inspired painterly textures. These pieces are new terrain for Mink, as they incorporate collage and portraiture into her signature style. The monochrome faces are printed via photo-transfer. There is some awkwardness in the way they are juxtaposed with the paint. The familiar, intimate forms don't always sit well with the awesome expanses of color.

Black Angels is the most resolved painting in this regard and the best overall. The center is dominated by a black-printed face shown in three-quarter view — a portrait of the artist as a young woman. Another artist-head, frontal and less visible, hides in the lower right corner. The piece works so well because the blackness framing the angels is echoed throughout as contour-lines and shadowy patches. Portraiture dissolves into abstract landscape. The background is composed of patches of rich and varied color, particularly turquoise. Angels is named after a string quartet by avant-garde composer George Crumb and incorporates appropriate sheet music.

Grotto is of the same size and proportion and also features a pair of Mink's, this time blending in more. The dark, earthy colors are covered with patches of dark turquoise and thick golden powder. The square shaped Old Country places the face of a white bearded ancestor in a sunken, shrine-like enclosure.

Ethel Vrana is also working with an abstraction inspired by the natural world. The acrylic Event-Particles indeed evokes a microcosm. A loose, branching grid of yellow lines covers a green ground and is itself covered by a cloud of copper. The overall texture is dense and lively with layering, scratches, and air bubbles. A cluster of shiny black droplets hovers near the center. It resembles a living system.

Photographer Jan Kather shows a series of lenticular photographs (the surface is a grid of tiny lenses). Depending on where you stand, you can see either one of two images — one astronomical and one earthly — or some combination of both. The images are iridescent and mesmerizing. Ausable Eddy Galaxy is particularly compelling. A marble-like maelstrom in black and white is juxtaposed with a pink cloudburst in the darkness of outer space. Central Park Galaxy combines similar astronomy with a blurry nighttime skyline, the park a strip in the foreground.

Carol Ast, long respected for her carefully rendered pastel landscapes, has been trying out new directions recently. Here, she has collages featuring diverse and unexpected combinations of media. Inunnguaq: In the Likeness of a Human: Inuit is on paper. It shows a dark stone monolith rendered in what looks like thick paint, set against a desolate pink pastel expanse. Remarkably enough, the pile is actually made of clay. Ast used regular clay as a top layer with paper clay in the middle acting as a kind of glue (containing as it does both materials). I assume this is a viable technique but the result appears somewhat unwieldy. Still, it is a striking image. Autobiography combines torn paper scraps — including fragments of her landscape pastels and bits in silver — with dried plant material and energetic pastel strokes.

This Ole House, a digital photograph by David Watkins Jr., shows a decrepit wooden house. The building is at a moderate distance, near the top of the page. Sloping upwards towards it is a swampy landscape filled with barren trees and branches. The dull, wintery colors are punctuated by the green of grass and the red of a brick chimney. The piece hangs in the middle of a row of five prints; each of the others shows an exterior detail of the ruin. Many show corners. It is up to the viewer to construct a whole from the evocative fragments. The borders of the images are uneven which gives them a weathered feel similar to their subject.

A correction: the central image in Black Angels is not Barbara Mink but her daughter (the corner image is Barbara). In Grotto, the top image is the artist.

retrospective

From the Times, looking back on 2007:

Following tradition, I've put together a year-end list of notable shows, artists, and venues from 2007. The list is not comprehensive and is in no particular order. My focus is mostly on shows that I've reviewed for these pages and, consequently, mostly on shows in the Ithaca area. In addition, this was my first full year as a regularly published newspaper critic.

1) Syau-Cheng Lai: Lai, a local artist, had a pair of excellent Ithaca shows. "Visualizing for Bunita Marcus" accompanied her performance of Morton Feldman's solo piano "For Bunita Marcus". Held in Cornell's Tjaden Gallery, the exhibit featured four long sheets of paper pinned directly to the walls. Using a wide range of wet and dry media, Lai created a sequence, beginning sparsely before developing dense strata of varied marks in rich colors (including gold and electric pink), finally petering back out into paper white. The piece is notable for its repetition and layering of different motifs. Letter-like forms and scribbles are prevalent, as are horizontal strokes and bands of color. On display for just five days in early February (2/5-9) and located in a obscure space, "Visualizing" was easy to miss. [See also my pictures: 1, 2, 3, 4.]

"Transformations," her two-woman show at the Upstairs Gallery (5/1-6/2) was just slightly less exhilarating. The show was a valuable complement to "Visualizing," as well as being powerful in its own right. Consisting as it did of work reaching back to the early part of the decade, it was more eclectic. The images are even denser, most with little or none of the white space that carries through "Visualizing." Although predominantly abstract, some of the pieces have more or less explicit references to landscape, often to the nautical.

2) Kumi Korf at The Main Street Gallery: Korf (also local) is best known as a printmaker and book artist. In 2007, she had substantial shows of her print-work in San Francisco and in her native Japan. "Paintings by Kumi Korf" (9/7-10/21) gave the local community a rare chance to see another side of her practice. Characteristically, the show combined abstraction with a sensibility rooted in nature.

The show was dominated by a pair of enormous acrylic paintings done on unprimed canvas. Each is of roughly human height and two to three times that in length. Together, they filled the gallery's oddly-angled front gallery. Korf treats the paint in a way analogous to watercolor, staining the fabric rather than covering it. While An Amphora and a Fish features graceful, rounded calligraphic shapes, A Clear Day has coarse, drippy blocks of (less diluted) color.

They were complemented by a generous selection of small pieces on paper hanging in the small back room. Included were a series of pieces in pastel and another in thick, greasy oil-stick.

3) The Ink Shop: The downtown printmaking cooperative's shows have been both diverse and almost uniformly strong. In addition, they have put on an impressive array of public talks and classes. With that said, no one show sticks out as the winner.

The current show (through 1/14) features work by nationally known artists such as Sam Gilliam and David Driskell. All prints are the work of Lafayette College's Experimental Printmaking Institute; EPI director Curlee Raven Holton (who has art in the show) gave an enthusiastic and well-received talk about his work there. Jenny Pope's "Kiwi Egg Soup" showed-off her playful, high-contrast color woodcuts of animals, both familiar and exotic. Stretching back into 2006, IC professor Susan Weisend's "Garden: Delights and Detritus" mixed mediums, styles, and formats in an almost reckless manner. Her best work enlivens or disrupts her pastoral flora and fauna through formal experimentation.

4) Out of Town Shows: Lane Twitchell and Alan Singer: I travelled for two Times reviews - to Auburn's Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center for Twitchell's "Revelation" (9/1-10/27) and to Syracuse's Redhouse Arts Center for Singer's "Cosmology" (9/20-11/08). Twitchell's jewel-like cut paper on panel collage-paintings were more impressive. His ornate compositions are packed with imagery relating to the Brooklyn artist's Utah Mormon upbringing as well as to American urbanism and to art history. They are typically large and are notable for their often off-kilter symmetry.

Singer is from Rochester. "Cosmology" was made up primarily of digital prints with hand-painting. This mixture of technique and texture gives the work a latter-day Surrealist feel as does Singer's taste for abstract, three-dimensional geometric forms and spaces placed alongside suggestions of human or otherwise organic form. Although some of the pieces feel over the top, his best work has a vibrant and meticulously crafted theatricality.

5) "Stop. Look. Listen: An Exhibition of Video Works" at the Johnson Museum: This ostentatious and highly uneven show (10/13-12/23) filled nearly all of the museum's temporary exhibition space and incorporated a night-time projection (of Janine Antoni's Touch) on the building's facade. It represents a culmination of several years of focused video collecting. Nancy Geyer reviewed it ably for this paper.

Works were divided into "feedback" and "immersion" modes, the former treating the camera as simply as a "electronic mirror" and the latter taking a more high-production, cinema-like approach. Works in the latter category were generally stronger. Among these were such standouts as Mircea Cantor's Deeparture - in which the camera gracefully tracks a wolf and a deer around a silent, white-walled space - and Amy Jenkins' macabre but subtle Ebb - in which the image of a bathing woman is projected on to a miniature ceramic tub. Gradually she purifies the at first bloody water.

6) "Looking Homeward: A Century of American Art" at the Johnson Museum: (7/7-9/23) This historical survey ran from turn-of-the-century Impressionism to the present. It was a more consistent effort than Stop., although its historical focus wavered for the postwar years. The show was particularly strong in its representation of the early 20th-century Ashcan school, a group known for their gritty portrayals of contemporary urban life. Group leader Robert Henri's Patience (1915) - a brushy portrait of a dark haired young boy reminiscent of Manet - was a standout. The show was also strong in early to mid-century modernist figuration, with pieces like Milton Avery's 1941 The Brown Hat (a young girl painted in flattened forms, mostly black, white, brown and tan) and a characteristic small female portrait by Willem de Kooning (1947). Other highlights included Reginald Marsh's satirical watercolor of wealthy folks atop the Grand Tier at the Met (1939) and a shadowy, enigmatic gelatin-silver photo by Imogen Cunningham, Eiko's Hands (1971).


While Ithaca has more than its share of good artists, many are unable (or unwilling) to show locally on a regular basis, or at least not in venues where their work will be fully recognized. While it is legitimate to show work in a café or restaurant, it can be difficult for aficionados, collectors, and critics to trace such efforts. A great deal of work is shown at Cornell, much of it by students or faculty. Aside from exhibits at the high-profile Johnson Museum, these are often invisible to the community at-large. The State of the Art Gallery is members-only, excepting its annual juried and invitational shows. Finally, several of the more established artists living in the area choose to show their work elsewhere.

I have tried to highlight some of these lesser-known artists and art spaces. For example, I reviewed Jay Hart's satellite graphics at Cornell's Mann Library (up through Jan. 10). While Lai is relatively well-known, the Tjaden and its programming is not.

As strong as it is, Ithaca's art world suffers in comparison to the talent and eclecticism of the music scene. I believe that some of the reasons for this are systematic - not that that's any reason for complacency. Music is more socially fluid in our culture; the prevalence of recording as a medium of creativity and exchange contrasts with art's focus on unique objects and limited multiples. While this is a good thing in many ways, it also constrains the dissemination of artworks and artistic ideas, and musicians travel extensively while artists tend to stay put. The result of all this is that it is impossible to see all the art you need to in a small town. Although cultural isolation can have its advantages, I believe that on balance, it is not a good thing for Ithaca.

think small

Yongjeong Kim, My Map III, Mixed Media, 14.5" x 14.5"

Times:

Ending an impressive year at the Main Street Gallery is the latest of its annual small-paintings exhibitions. Programming has ranged from strong solo shows by distinguished local artists Victoria Romanoff and Kumi Korf to less-even group efforts focused by theme or medium. Come 2008, the gallery will be on hiatus for about two and half months. "2007 Small Works Painting" is a fitting conclusion, eclectic but well-balanced. Pieces were chosen from submissions by painter Joy Adams (an emeritus professor at Ithaca College) and gallery director Roger Smith.

My Map II and My Map III find common ground between abstract art and cartography. Both are by local artist Yongjeong Kim. Her two acrylics are relatively large - fourteen and a half inches square - and incorporate bits of fabric and other collaged materials. Apparently influenced by modernist artists like Paul Klee, Kurt Schwitters, and Chuck Close, they show loop-filled aerial views of rivers, roadways, and buildings. The painted areas are often murky, lacking in color contrast. The fabric additions help both pieces in this regard, particularly III.

According to the artist, II loosely depicts the outside and inside of her local Warrenwood apartment building, including her L-shaped sofa and imagined views of neighboring apartments. III zooms out a bit to show nearby Triphammer Mall and its surrounds. The correspondence is loose.

Aerial perspective is a compelling artistic device. Abstraction in art can be an effort at transcending the visible world, whereas realism tends to focus on the concrete and the everyday. Birds-eye landscapes can have the best of both worlds. They present familiar places in a de-familiarizing way. At least a handful of local artists are working in this rich vein. Barbara Page's scale-jumping paintings and her natural-historical mixed-media relief Rock of Ages, Sands of Time (at the Museum of the Earth) come to mind. Kumi Korf has a print show up this month at Chandler Fine Art in San Francisco. Included are large intaglio pieces in which cutout-like abstract bird-shapes trail curves over brushy backgrounds. Craig Mains has done a number of witty prints showing burning crop circles. (Unlike the other artists above, his perspectives are from oblique angles and sometimes show the horizon.)

Two pieces offer more straight-up forms of abstraction. John McLaughlin's jaunty oil Fair Fun features a cascade of fluid brushstrokes, both translucent and opaque. Pale, whitish blue dominates the background; these are overlaid in white, mustard yellow, ochre, and purplish grays. Thinner, rope-like curls of paint sit on top. Metamorphosis by Laura Glenn is perhaps a bit too sweet. The piece is done in watercolor and ink on paper, with little torn-paper bits collaged. Pinks, blues, and purples dominate. Calligraphic forms in black resemble Chinese characters, and the composition has something of the all-over evenness of the written page.

Four artists are showing work in encaustic (melted wax mixed with color pigments). The medium is seductive as well as novel; a temptation seems to be to use it to build up luscious surfaces while neglecting the underlying image. Paul Kline's Stairways buries an angular photo-collage of shadowed stairs in translucent white, a seemingly incongruous atmospheric effect. Martha Ferris' NOT is more texturally interesting; unlike the other wax pieces, the surface is scratchy and weathered-looking rather than smooth. A standing silhouetted woman bends down; layered over her is an uneven translucent grid and three blocky letters: N O T. The yellow-red-blue color scheme is effective, if obvious. Neither these nor Paul Kline's Toxic Plaza nor Martha Ferris' Sherry's Closeup (a fragmented femme fatale in blue, green, pink-red and peach) quite lives up to their textures.

A pair of tiny portraits by Vanessa Irzyk provides one of the show's few compelling investigations of the human figure. Induced is done with watercolor and polyurethane on board, while Swaddled adds oil paint to the mix. Each features a mischievous, child-like face, surrounded by white. The heads are built in an almost sculptural way, composed of layers of translucent brushstrokes which are loose but short and finicky. Unexpected colors include pale pinks and oranges as well as a dark, purplish red (the latter mostly in Induced). Induced is a diptych; the right side is mostly empty.

Landscapes and cityscapes are more common themes. Margaret Olney-McBride presents a pair of bookmark-sized panoramic oils on paper. The wintery fields and trees of Landscape Slice and the sea-like cloudscape of Sky Fragment 2 (its low low horizon capping silhouetted hills) are rendered in brushstrokes which pack a suprising amount of energy into such a small space. Jerry Schutte's Kansas is comparable, although its impasto is thicker and more stolid. The urban scenes show a greater stylistic range: from the flat and (overly) dry illustrational quality of Sue Wall's Brownstones and City Roof Tops to the whitish colors of Erica Pollock's impressionistic Overpass.

experimental

From today's Times:

The Ink Shop is unique among Ithaca galleries. Comprised primarily of skilled printmakers working with a variety of styles and media, it is mainly a working studio. Complementing this activity is a busy schedule of classes, visiting artist speakers, and of course, print exhibitions (all public).

Also remarkable is their dedication to networking with out of town print organizations and to introducing Ithacans to art from around the county and beyond. No other non-university affiliated gallery in the Ithaca area has been doing so in such an organized manner. While other galleries call for open submissions, the Ink Shop has taken a more systematic approach, seeking out artists that fit a particular vision or goal. The result is better and more coherent exhibitions. Their latest catch is "Selections From the Collection: Lafayette College's Experimental Printmaking Institute".

EPI founder and director Curlee Raven Holton lectured at the gallery last Thursday to a mostly insider crowd. A confident and articulate speaker, he spoke for about 50 minutes before taking questions. The lecture felt like a pep-talk, with exhortations to self-confidence mixed with anecdotes and recollected practical experience. While acknowledging some of the problems faced by foundling studios, his philosophy is one of calm determination.

The Institute was born in 1996 as a semi-autonomous collective affiliated with Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, where Holton teaches. Although he describes the school as being not particularly artsy (and lacking a BFA program, for example), he says that the EPI has become a respected and integral part of the curriculum. It has also been successful in drawing well-known printmakers and other artists to the modest community. Students work for and learn from them.

According to Holton, an early inspiration was the pioneering NYC Printmaking Workshop and its founder Bob Blackburn (1920-2003), a friend and artistic collaborator. He cites Bob's commitment to printmaking and its communal ethos. But he mentioned his differences as well, in particular his dissatisfaction with the studio's poverty and with Bob's inclination to treat it as "his spouse" rather than something he was willing to let go of. "I made a commitment that I would try to create an environment similar to this, but it wouldn't be impoverished," Holton said. "I wouldn't be at risk, and it wouldn't be my spouse... I couldn't covet it." The EPI, he said, is intended to be a place where artists can experiment without financial worries. He plans to retire as director.

Holton presented work from the Institute's Master Artist Printmaker Portfolio, the core of the Ink Shop show. As he explained, the project paired a well-known artist (typically a painter) with an expert printmaker. His goal was to elevate the reputation of both partners by association. He is also interested in raising the profile of printmaking, which has been sometimes marginalized.

The show is eclectic. With one exception—a painterly abstract monotype by Al Loving showing a hollowed cube frame—all of the work is from the current decade. The work was created principally at Lafayette, with the assistance of students.

Sam is a gorgeous mixed media abstraction. The print is the work of Sam Gilliam, a well-known Washington D.C. artist. Although part of an edition, it is a one-of-a-kind production. Like much of his work dating back to the sixties, it combines three-dimensional and painterly elements. The relief construction is supported by an upright oval of orange felt covered with calligraphic swirls of blood red. Although the piece is not overtly figurative, the shape evokes mirrors and portraiture. Angular and curving bits of cloth and rice paper have been applied on top, with the visible stitched lined (arcs) forming an important compositional element. Colors and textures include white translucent and wavy striations of green, red, and yellow green. Holes have been cut to let the orange through.

According to Holton, each print in the edition was created using cloth scraps cut from one of Gilliam's large paintings. A woodblock for printing was created using a scanned drawing along with CAD software and a laser cutter owned by Lafayette's engineering department. The master printmaker was Wayne Crothers (who is represented by the loopy, maze-like woodcut, Humanitarian Camouflage). The rice paper sections were printed in Japan by an Australian artist and the stitching done by the students. Not suprisingly, Holton describes it as "one of our most popular prints."

An untitled triptych of silkscreen prints is by frequent collaborators Ian Short and Robert Beckman. Three identically sized paper pages are framed together behind glass. On first glance, the piece is a disorienting visual buzz of bold colors and hard-to-decipher textures. Further inspection reveals layers of discrete color: black over green, red, cyan, cool green-gold. Letters and other typographic symbols can be seen along with the intricate maze-like texture of circuit boards. Similar details are repeated from page to page but with jarring shifts of color and arrangement that engage the eye. Read a sequence, the effect is dynamic like an animation.

Another screenprint, Mark's Tale, by William T. Williams, achieves its dynamic effect via more economical means. A flat black is printed over greenish off-white tinted paper. Its the off-white that forms the foreground image: a trapezoidal jumble of calligraphic swirls evoking plant-life and musical symbols.

Richard Anuskiewicz's silkscreened Twin Portals, is another sequential triptych. Like his mentor, the pioneering German modernist painter Josef Albers, Anuskiewicz is interested in optical effects created by juxtaposing hard-edge blocks of color. The individual panels in Portals, with their upright rectangular blocks enclosed in frames, echo Albers' famous Homage to a Square series. The pieces are intended as a 9/11 memorial, alluding the absent towers as they might appear in morning, mid-day, and night. In this regard the sequence also echoes Monet's well-known Rouen Cathedral paintings, which also tried to capture the effect of changing natural light on a constant architectural form. The colors and their contrasts in Portals are however much sharper and less naturalistic.

A number of pieces sport themes associated with the artists' African American heritage. Curlee Raven Holton's own Blind Spots I (etching and silkscreen with embossing) incorporates photos depicting rather fetishistic details from both black and Asian woman. These appear against a dull yellow-green background in baby blue portrait-ovals. The blind spots—apparently allusions to racial ignorance or confusion—appear as large black circles dotting the picture. Painter David C. Driskell's sensitive, earth-toned etching Brown Derby features a crowd of overlapping, angular faces pressed up against the plane of the picture (the one in front wears the titular hat). Like that of Romare Bearden, much of Driskell's work updates early 20th-century cubism—and Picasso's appropriation of the African mask—with specifically modern African American resonances. Wynton's Tune, a folk-art-like silkscreen by Faith Ringgold, shows the jazz trumpeter in a red suit, backed by band members in cool, contrasting blues.

Two untitled relief prints are by German artist Bodo Korsig. The rough black lines form strange images: on the left hand piece, what looks like a handful of chicken drumsticks hanging on horizontal wire, on the right a pair of sponge-like blobs tethered to the right and left edges respectively. The rich texture enlivens these reductive, cartoon-like pictures but not quite enough to make them come together.

Antidote, a stylish abstract digital print by Berrisford Boothe, has a grainy, video-like texture. A column running down the middle recalls a film-strip with the horizontal frame-borders removed so as to suggest the seamlessness of projected film. Its contents are bluish, aqueous and drippy. Outside is warmer with tan, reddish ochre and whitish green. The middle strip is flanked by four symmetrical, semi-circular curves running up and down. The right and left edges are blackened with flame-like streaks.

Grace Hartigan is veteran Abstract Expressionist painter, currently in her eighties. Her lithographic diptych is entitled Cleopatra and Marie Antoinette and features thick brushy black lines against colored fields—blue and yellow respectively. They form organic, loosely figural clumps. The work has a remarkable material presence.

As exciting as it is to see some of these artists in an Ithaca gallery, the actual work is unexpectedly uneven. The result is that Selections stands as merely another compelling but imperfect Ink Shop show. Viewed positively, this attests to the strength of the collective's own homegrown talent.

evidence

Lewis Hine, Sunday Morning, March 7, 1909, Morris Herowitz, Ten Years Old, 1909, gelatin silver print

Alfred Steiglitz, The Steerage, 1915, photogravure

Arthur Rothstein, Girl at Gee's Bend Alabama, 1937, gelatin silver print

Times:

Alongside its big video-art extravaganza, the Johnson is showing a modest gallery-full of still camera images. Evidence: 150 Years of Documentary Photography is quiet and mostly conservative. Only a single work is in full color; two are in sepia and the rest are black and white. Their scale is intimate, book-sized. Most of the work is by established 20th-century photographers, American and European.

The Steerage (1907), by Alfred Steiglitz, is among the best-known pictures in the show. Although Steiglitz is not usually thought of as a documentarian, his photo does provide a strong (even overstated) formal analogy for class stratification. It shows the side of a boat packed with American immigrants; the wealthy are on the deck above and the poor below. The angular, cubist division of the scene suggests instability.

Sunday Morning, March 7, 1909, Morris Herowitz, Ten Years Old is by Lewis Hine. Among other subjects, Hine famously covered the sordid condition of early 20th-century child laborers. Newsboy Morris looks more dignified than most. Standing on a step, slightly to the right, he wears dark trousers and a buttoned blazer over a striped shirt. Under his left arm, he carries a stack of papers. Along with his stoic-looking face, these contain the lightest tones. Behind him is a corner entrance to a stone building. Reflected in the glass of the double doors are dark, silhouetted trees and buildings. Hazy off-white frames the left and bottom edges. The condition of the paper detracts from the strength of the image—the sheet is wrinkled and the bottom edge torn.

Several images illustrate the lives of the Great Depression poor. Although some of these are quite striking, their abundance suggests the clichedness of the subject (not the fault of the artists).

Arthur Rothenstein’s Girl at Gee’s Bend, Alabama (1937) is a standout. Standing in front of a rough log-cabin window is a young girl with her arms on the ledge. She faces left toward the back of the window covered in newspaper. Although the paper serves the practical purpose of insulation, its purpose in the photograph is symbolic. The cheerful advertising contrasts ironically with the evident poverty of the child. (Bruce Davidson’s 1965 Women In Cabin, Alabama makes use of the same device). The paper is also interesting as texture, torn and layered like artistic collage.

Girl bears comparison with Marion Post Walcott’s Unemployed Miner’s Wife (1939), who leans over the railing of a balcony on a rickety wooden building. Her head too is framed by a window (covered this time). Unlike the girl, with her earnest, pained expression, the woman smiles as she looks down at the camera.

A macabre scene by Margaret Bourke-White (shot in 1945, printed in 1965) is titled Hitler’s 1000 years stopped short for the Leipzig city treasurer. He gave his family poison when he saw American tanks under the window of his office. The viewpoint is from slightly above and at an oblique angle. Along with the sharp contrast of a dark interior and a bright exterior, this gives the piece a cinematic feel. Three people are dead. By the bottom left corner sits a man slumped over a paper-strewn desk, his body oriented rightward. In the middle, a dark-dressed woman is arched over a leather chair, her feet under the desk. A couch (also leather) up against the right wall holds a Red Cross nurse in a dark coat and white cap. Above her is a romantic landscape painting. Three tall windows flanked by skinny drapes line the back wall. The furnishings—an oriental rug and a chandelier among them—are lavish but the overall effect is austere.

Landscape in photography often tends towards the romantic and the pastoral. The gritty realism associated with the documentary appears less commonly, at least in self-consciously artistic work. Perhaps this helps explain why the handful of landscapes—with one exception—seem like curatorial afterthoughts.

Richard Misrach’s Dead Animals # 1 (1987) is an anomaly. It is the only piece in color and one of the few by a living artist. It is also the largest picture, although modest by the artist’s standards. The subject matter is exceptional as well. Dramatizing a destructive human presence, it shows a pile of animal corpses on a slope in the Nevada desert. Joined by metal barrels and other man-made detritus, the cows and horses form a large arrow pointing left (the base covers most of the right edge). Above and behind them, near the upper-left corner, is a pile of raw, bloody entrails. The ground is mostly sand, although patches of grass punctuate the far background near the top edge. It is a powerful scene but it feels stranded, both as a picture and as social commentary.

eye in the sky

Early publication in the Times this week, due to the holiday:

Jay Hart comes to the world of art from that of science. The Trumansburg artist comes out of a career of several decades in map-making and in the study of geomorphology (the processes by which land-forms acquire their shapes). He has long been fascinated by the beauty of the land, and that of the pictures we use to represent it.

Recently, he has turned his skills and knowledge toward the making of more purely aesthetic images. The world seen from space is his subject. He is currently showing samples of his "terrain art" at Cornell University's Mann Library. These are large-format digital prints, many human-size or larger. They have been mounted to foam boards and are directly exposed rather than being protected by the expected glass. Each print is part of a limited edition.

Along with the differently colored Plains of Tidikelt, both Transitions and Greater Somalia were made using only color-coded elevation data. Although perhaps scientifically interesting, these two are less aesthetically rich than the others. White and violet mark the highest spots, green and tan the middle range, and reddish orange the lowlands. Hart has chosen to make bodies of water an uninflected black. This helps these images quite a bit by offsetting the sharp, punchy 3D effect of all those tiny ridges and valleys (especially in the former piece). Still the overall affect of these gradations feels cold and mechanical, ill-suited to the grandeur and intricacy of the subject matter.

Transitions depicts the Finger Lakes area. Appropriately enough, Ithaca is in the center, although visible only as an orange tail on the south end of Cayuga Lake. The southeast part of Lake Ontario silhouettes the top left corner. Pennsylvania is to the south, highlighted by what look something like loose strokes of transparent paint—the Appalachian Mountains.

Most of the pictures in the show combine the elevations with one or more satellite images, added as a translucent layer. This gives them a greater range of color and texture which is much more aesthetically compelling. The color seems more naturalistic. We can also see human traces more directly. These images feel more concrete.

An analogy can be made with painting, and with abstract painting in particular. Traditionally, the earth has been a primary source for the pigments that give paints their colors. Synthetic pigments imitate their properties. The interaction of minerals with more fluid substances generates most of the forms seen in Hart's pictures. Although intentionally manipulated by the painter's hand, painting can involve similar natural processes. A number of abstractionists have made such processes central to their work. For example, Larry Poons' poured paintings and the "abstract landscapes" of local painter Barbara Mink come to mind. Similarities of shape and texture with Hart's work are in some cases quite remarkable.

The panoramic Al Kidan, with its painterly layering of copper, turquoise and cloud-like white, is a stunning image. Its also one of the most impressive pieces of trompe-l'œil that I've seen in a while. From a few feet away, it looks as if a striated pattern of copper pigment blobs has been applied, or has accreted, on to the smooth photographic surface. But no, the blobs are actually sand dunes in the Saudi Arabian desert. They cover most of the surface, save for a bit around the right edge.Their rich variety of density and direction reflects the changing of the winds. The effect is reminiscent of some of Gerard Richter's abstract paintings. If you look closely, you can see a network of roads and other signs of human habitation beneath. The piece is roughly human-size; if it were laid on the floor, you could sleep on it. Like several other pieces in the show, the piece is unconventionally oriented. To the left is north.

In Cape Farvel, left is south. The piece shows the southern tip of Greenland, with the bottom of the eastern shoreline running across near the bottom edge. The water is blue and turquoise. The land is mostly white, except of course around the shore, where it is pale gray and brown. Punctuating the coast are many lengthy fjords, with a wild cluster toward the middle. The scene looks something like a row of burnt out trees—an interesting shift of scale and perspective.

The installation of the show could have been better thought out. Several relatively small pictures are hung well above eye-level, overlooking an area where the gallery area transitions to stacks of books. This makes it impossible to get a suitably close look at the intricate details.

From the same issue: Wylie Schwartz's profile of local artist-writer Stephen Poleskie touches on aerial art of a rather different sort. Also check out these two paintings from his early-sixties realist period.

wakon yousai

For the Times, not a review:

Wakon Yousai is somewhat unusual for the Upstairs Gallery, where painting is the usual focus. The exhibit highlights the rough, elegant ceramic vessels of local artist Momoko Takeshita Keane. Complementing these are two miniature tabletop “gardens” by her husband Marc, a landscape architect and a writer. The work mixes cultural influences: Japanese and Western, traditional and modern, craft and fine art. The show’s title is a pun on a 19th century Japanese expression expressing the goal of reconciling traditional values with the new Western technologies. In the Keanes’ version, the phrase—pronounced the same way but with two out of the four kanji characters changed—takes on a related but different meaning: Japanese “roots” combined with western “color”. The literal colors though are traditional: earthy and restrained.

I recently spoke with both artists at the gallery. Momoko’s English was limited, so much of the time, Marc spoke on her behalf. Our conversation was informal and meandering; the following is an attempt to distill the most relevant parts.

Both artists have deep roots in the culture and aesthetics of Japan. Momoko was born in Kyoto and studied her craft there and in the well-known Japanese pottery town of Shigaraki. Most of her teachers and peers were men. Eventually she set up a studio business in Kyoto. Marc spent a period of eighteen years studying and working in Japan, where he met and married Momoko. In 2002, he took a one-year teaching position at Cornell. The couple moved to Ithaca, along with their son. They were planning to go back but they liked it enough to stay. About two years ago, they completed a studio where Momoko now works. Importantly, this is her first solo show since then.

Momoko has found the change valuable. She stresses the greater openness and “exchange of information” (Marc’s term) among the local art community. In Kyoto, the system was rigid and hierarchical, with masters and apprentices. Here things are more fluid. There is less pressure here to stay within a medium, something borne out here by a group of small crocheted copper wire bracelets. There is also less pressure to make functional pieces, as a grouping of doll-sized clay jackets hints. But both artists also stress the ongoing importance of Japanese skill and knowledge for their work.

Her technique is largely traditional, typically involving coil-building and firing over several days in a wood-fired kiln. She is a traditionalist when it comes to materials too. There is little glazing in her work here, although the ashes from the firing give the pieces different patterns in browns and grays. She also prefers the rough, minimally processed quality of traditional Japanese clay. We spoke about the difficulties of finding similar materials from the northeastern United States.

This show has been an opportunity for Momoko. The onion shaped Scarf Vase 1 is tan and reddish brown in color. A pair of small, drop-like ash markings huddle together on one side, highlighted in cool, shiny white. Its size is typical of the work in the show, roughly the size of a basketball. Like many of her pieces here, it has a sculpted scarf wrapped around its neck, an anthropomorphic feature Momoko describes as a feminine touch.

The piece was recently purchased for the Johnson Museum, where it will join an excellent collection of Asian objects. Both the museum director Franklin Robinson and the Asian Art curator Ellen Avril were at the opening on the 30th of October. Avril saw the piece and thought the museum should purchase it. A couple, Bob and Kazuko Smith—acquaintances of the Keanes and established donors—stepped in and bought the piece directly for the museum, sidestepping the usual complicated acquisitions process.

Marc’s work here has a supporting role. He refers to his tabletop gardens as bontei, “tray gardens." The two pieces feel cramped and awkward in the gallery space. The Ploughman’s Dream II is the more impressive of the two. Encased in a a circular steel stray is a microcosmic landscape divided by a wavy clay wall. One side is inlayed with long, precisely cut slate blocks arranged in rows. The other side is oak bark. According to Marc, the piece is meant to represent a dialectic of wild versus cultivated furrowing. His other tray piece echoes traditional Japanese rock gardens and is framed in wood. He too spoke of his working method, which involves improvising with found materials.

Also by Marc is a series of clay kanji, attached to irrregular, plate-like forms. These he made in Momoko’s studio.The intent was to make the characters fluid and expressive, more like ink or paint than clay. He plans to make more, enough to spell out sentences. These he tells me are a purely modern invention, without historical precedent.

Below: Scarf Vase