Vaeth Art Blog

Review: Yvonne Lancet and Gijs van Lith at Victory Gallery, Portland

2011-09-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

Victory Gallery has selected for their debut exhibition, Double Dutch, two young artists whose pictorial concerns intersect in their responses to the urban landscape. Yvonne Lancet's photographs of paper maquettes are both intimate constructions and uncanny imagined cities. Gijs van Lith's paintings explore a territory encompassing referential and nonobjective abstraction, individually tipping in one direction or the other.

In Lancet's Template of a Sleeping City, a field of white dots crowds against a black plane. The composition reads initially as an abstract overallness. Yet, a slight blurring to the edges of the dots makes them glow and they concentrate in strings and recede in scale from foreground to background, tracing the pattern of- streets? Something in the regularity of the dot patterns makes the viewer hesitate to identify this as the nighttime photograph of a city. As in all Lancet's images there are 'tells' that it's a simulacrum (in this case, made by shining a light behind a hole-punched sheet of black paper). Lancet explains:

The tell is important, but it needs to be a natural aspect of the image too. I don't go around my way to deliberately create them as a layer in the image; they are actual seams, cuts and gluespots, that I choose not to hide. These tells are aspects that contribute to the experience of the cityscapes as a quickly built scenery, often destined to exist only briefly.... I intend the images to seem real, but at the same time feel artificial - that something's not quite right about their realness. More than the seams and cuts and gluespots the actual 'tells' are the absence of things. The absence of movement, of wear, of growth and decay - of actual existence, in short.

An irresolvable fluctuation confronts the viewer in Lancet's Playground 2008-2009. Simultaneously we see a literal arrangement of geometric shapes- and an aerial photograph of a strange city. The paper maquette could easily have been made into a painting. It starts out flatly enough: a gridded array of squares and rectangles, mostly gray on a gray plane, but with bits of muted color. Lying flush to the background, the gridded shapes act like those in a Mondrian. Only, they're not pasted down, and Lancet subjects them to manipulations which can only be spatial. The rectangular shapes are also rooftops, grouped in city blocks with narrow interstices indicating streets. The blocks are mainly aligned with the cardinal points, but a section of diagonals lends a city-planning authenticity. Inexplicably, along the periphery of the image, the 'rooftops' have been swept out of the grid and into loose piles. Piled up, the paper chips look like just what they are, thin confetti, not buildings. This 'tell' negates the possibility of the image as painting. While it should contradict the city-illusion, the piles only confirm the image as three-dimensional. The viewer is left with the queasy impression of city-swept-into-confetti.

Van Lith's Homage to the Flat Surface also resembles city streets. In fact it's sourced in a satellite picture and the the palette isn't too different from what you'll see in a google map of any city center: the gray values of a concrete landscape, small amounts of near subliminal color- indigo, naples yellow, an asphaltum brown. Van Lith explains, “In that case I used satellite pics because of their almost "mondrianic"visual qualities. I like them [for] the depth in these lines,shapes and color.” This is a starting point. The piece grows in its own direction, becoming sculptural with thick daubs of impasto paint and collaged paper strips. The rugged texture corresponds to nothing topographical: 'rooftops' recede under runnels of paint, collaged 'streets' lift from the canvas, and accretions of painterly material layer over both. The painting teeters on the fence between literal object and pictorial window, but van Lith does not make distinctions along these lines:

I personally don't think in terms of figurative or abstract. For me there's no difference. In the beginning I worked a lot with pictures from the internet and my own photos and others'. I knew I like to paint and wanted to show that. I thought the more paint and painterly actions I show, the more I show my love for material and its medium. I was interested in the image itself- what draws me to it. I was looking to find that essence, those extracts.... Not a direct translating.

In Structural Rules No. 10, the steeply receding perspective lines are liberated from describing any plausible architecture. They sit physically on top of the canvas in narrow collaged strips, and the planes they trace melt with dripping red paint. The effect is of an inferno-like psychological landscape. This image retains the tension of spacial cues built into an abstract image; and I find it more satisfying than, for example, the unambiguously non-objective Untitled 60. But van Lith is still in the process of discovering the parameters of his work, and isn't afraid to share the risks with his audience:

...the way the series Structural Rules is created; because there are too many choices to make in a painting. I made my rules, I built the image from the leftovers and consequences of painterly actions and reactions. So they dictate the process and therefore the result, the painting.

So the last three years I did not only develop my skill, but I also developed as a artist and I'm coming closer and closer to my core, and closer to a form that can carry it. And still open and free. It needs to be all, one, and nothing at the same time. I believe Willem de Kooning sad something like that. (he's right).

Catch my interview with Yvonne Lancet and Gijs van Lith in the September Artwrit.

Double Dutch

Victory Gallery

733 NW Everett St, Portland, OR

August 4 – September 30 2011

In Artwrit: Locus at White Box

2011-08-17T09:24:00.000-07:00

The new Artwrit is out, with my review of artist-architect team Locus at White Box, Portland. Here's an excerpt:

Locus is the collaborative team Robert Mantho and Michael Wenrich, whose joint projects examine architecture as “an act of art in a specific place.” In Changing Place, Mantho and Wenrich have finely intersticed the two rooms of White Box gallery in Portland with strands of thin vinyl-coated cord, anchored in a false floor which undulates in shallow hills and valleys. Rising from the floor in vertical or diagonal batches, the cords wrap around a grid of pipes on the ceiling, then attach to the gallery walls. Most are black, but a few red cords accent the batches and subtly deviate from them in trajectory. Because they’re pulled straight and taut, the cords seem to point, resembling the forensic lines used to trace bullet paths. The hard-edged geometry of the cord system relates it to minimalist structures; however, its functional interaction with the features of the gallery puts a focus less on its own materiality and more on the space it intersects. In this way the work aligns with a history of architectural sculpture in which the theatricality of minimal forms is fulfilled at the expense of their “objectness.”

Read the rest here.

First Show in a New Town

2011-08-11T09:04:00.000-07:00

The night of the 4th was First Thursday- the main 'art crawl,' when all the downtown galleries and art spaces are opened up to the multitudes. Everett Station Lofts (my new home) held its annual Rooftop Exhibition, a one-night only event, and my first opportunity to show in Portland. The turnout was bigger than what I've been used to, and a little more glamorous, with lots of hipsters and fashionistas. A group of Japanese tourists had their picture taken in front of my piece. I suppose it made a good stage set.

I started building a new wire drawing installation about three weeks in advance of the show. A relatively tight deadline, but that wasn't a bad thing. I've had such a long break from the studio due to the move, and I was feeling a lot of hesitation about getting started again. This project sort of jolted me back into the rhythm of working. I arrived at a composition that continues the idea of 'temporary shelter' that I've been working with, but that has more movement than previous ones, with a lot of cascading and broken forms and more aggressive wall drawing. This felt intuitively right, as I've been in a state of flux- not quite settled into my own new shelter.

The outdoor site of the project presented some interesting new problems. Foremost was the absence of white walls to serve as a support for the wire drawing. Where previously I've worked with the existing architecture of an exhibit space, here I had to supply my own.

I designed a simple open-fronted box that fit under the awning in front of our apartment, folding out into the courtyard. I have to credit Ron here- he was my fabricator. Given more time, I would have liked to integrate the structure better with the existing architecture. It was harmonious with the site, but not seamlessly a part of it.

Cave Falls. 2011. 7' x 8' x 5'

I do like the way the box was positioned to line up with the grid of concrete tiles on the floor of the courtyard. This was a fortuitous accident of the site that became important to the way the piece took shape. I decided to leave a lot of the concrete visible in the interior of the structure, adding painted vinyl tiles only as discrete shapes that extended the built structure into the space of the floor.

Cave Falls. Detail.

I'm also happy with the way I built the lighting into the piece. This was another response to the problem of exhibiting outdoors. Cast shadows have become an important element in these installations, and previously I've been pretty satisfied with what I could achieve with gallery lighting (when I've had it); but I think that designing the lighting part-and-parcel with the piece was an improvement. I found some small white halogen lamps that could be discreetly worked into the design. I placed the lights exactly where I wanted them- to create cast shadows exactly where I wanted them. I think that, with this piece, I've progressed in terms of making light and shadow a more deliberate part of the drawing process.

Now from Portland!

2011-07-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

You'll notice I have a new tagline. Month-long hiatus notwithstanding, I will be blogging again regularly, but from a new city. I've been in Portland since the beginning of June, living right in the middle of the action art-wise. Ron and I have moved into a live/work space in Everett Station Lofts, which is an Artspace community in Old Town, really close the major commercial galleries, the Portland Art Museum, multiple other exhibit spaces... and a lot of really great food. I don't want to get into food blogging, but I do want to mention that Korean taco carts are a miraculous revelation.

Now that I'm getting settled in, I expect to be posting short reviews of local and regional exhibits, as well as writing about my own practice as I've done in the past. I'm also continuing to write for Artwrit. The July issue just came out today, with my review of John Beech at Elizabeth Leach Gallery. Here's an excerpt:

John Beech’s show at Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, Oregon is a tightly focused presentation of intimately scaled works, showcasing the shared themes in recent but otherwise unrelated sculptures and works on paper.
At first glance, Beech’s Blagen series constitutes a historical in-joke. A raw mass of congealed enamel paint is folded into the crystalline confines of a plexiglass box: art’s most formless impulses (expressionism at its most indulgent) crammed into a rational minimalist prism. Of course it’s funny, this forced alliance of opposed camps. Although they’re notably more refined, they resemble the kind of mid-60’s “soft” modular objects dubbed eccentric abstraction by Lippard. Poised between minimalism and postminimalism, these broke from the cool rigidity and machined quality of the prevailing nonobjective sculpture and, to one degree or another, leaned towards sensuality and Duchampian games of “absurd” juxtaposition. If Beech’s Blagens are more finely crafted than their predecessors, it’s because the art world in 2011 doesn’t turn on questions of preciousness and commodity. Clumsy or exquisite, it’s more a personal choice, and Beech has played the field; elsewhere he has filled cubes with used paint rags or chunks of dirty foam.

Read the rest here.

In Artwrit: my review of Hermann Nitsch at MCA Denver

2011-05-16T09:06:00.000-07:00

The paintings in Bloodlines are what remains, “relics” or “relicts” of Nitsch’s aktionen. In these Schüttbilder (poured paintings), always the act of painting is foregrounded.
The actions performed in Nitsch’s Orgien Mysterien Theater are abreaction events, used as a psychological tool for liberating repressed drives in himself and the many participants in his plays. The action is sensually indulgent and gory with imitated violence: paint, blood and offal are poured and splattered over participants and the canvas. Central acts include a mock crucifixion and the tearing-apart of a slaughtered animal representing Dionysus: both are death-and-rebirth motifs, but Nitsch maintains that, underlying both is a primitive human urge to abreaction, to release censored sadomasochistic drives....

Read the rest of my review Hermann Nitsch at MCA Denver in the May 2011 issue of Artwrit.

My New Project: Big Paintings, Fair Trade Outsourcing, Sustainable Materials

2011-04-11T08:53:00.000-07:00

Last month I posted about my return to a series of large paintings- in which I combine small hand-stitched textile pieces (like quilting squares) with impasto oil paint. As in much of my work, these paintings come out of a procedure of building, dismantling, and re-building. It's a very tactile process countering constructive with destructive impulses. New layers of textile are stitched to underlying layers. Layers of paint and cloth are cut through, then mended; sanded down, then built up again. A history of conflicting decisions is built in to create a storied work: an artifact shored up against dissolution.

Advent, Proliferation. Oil, cloth on canvas. 40" x 65." 2008.

It's a labor-intensive process, reliant on many hours of preparing the textile pieces before work can begin on the canvas surface. This aspect of the work has been problematic for me. Although I like the fact of having touched and marked every tiny piece of the painting's surface, this condition slows the work down significantly. In the past, it seemed unfeasible to attempt a large body of work along these lines, but, as I mentioned in my previous post, I started to think about outsourcing the preparation of the textile pieces.

The employing of fabricators or assistants is common practice in large-scale projects: any work in which the making of the art challenges the physical capability of an individual artist. This has always made good sense to me vis-a-vis other artists' work, but I wasn't sure at first whether I was comfortable relying upon other makers in my own work. Before choosing to seek a fabricator, I had to think about how my familiar process would be disrupted.

Detail from Advent, Proliferation.

For me the question hinged on whether, by changing the way the work is made, the meaning of the work changes; and if the meaning changes, is it enriched or impoverished? Is it crucial that I be the sole producer of this work- that the textiles be cut and stitched by only my hands?

I don't think it is. I think that the connotation of human touch is important: that the object (the painting) comes about through intimate processes, and that hand-stitching is one of these. I don't feel that the object is an expression of self, rather an expression of feeling for things made by human hands and the temporality of those things. I don't feel that my mark must be interwoven throughout the piece, but that a thoughtful human mark must be. I think it's even possible that, by coming into being through multiple hands, the object will more fully embody it's meaning (to borrow a phrase from Danto): expressing through its form and its making my connection with other people and the things they make.

So, I decided that the work could be enriched by collaborating with others, and I was ready to go forward. Knowing that I needed the textile pieces produced in quantity (roughly 1000 for each painting), I knew I was looking for a manufacturer (employing textile workers), rather than a studio assistant. I knew that a greater social responsibility was implicated in this decision. Labor practices must be progressive and the manufacturing process must be environmentally friendly. What is for me an ambitious project, is relatively small-scale in terms of commercial textile manufacturing. I needed a company using progressive practices, that would also be willing to take on a small, eccentric project.

I found Selyn Exports through an query to the WFTO (World Fair Trade Organization). I like Selyn's story and I like their brilliantly colored woven textiles. Selyn employs weavers in a region of Sri Lanka where hand-woven textiles are a traditional craft. 98% of these weavers are women; and they make significantly more than the average wage for their region (75- 90 USD, plus health insurance, compared to 50- 60 USD). According to company founder Sandra Beverly Wanduragala:

"We try to do our level best for the people who depend on us - like paying the maximum possible - giving them insurance and having awareness workshops , health care workshops. We work in this most difficult hand loom industry on which the elderly grass root women are dependent - the younger prefer to go to the Middle East as domestic workers or garment factories in the free trade zones - taking them away from their homes. But [with] us... they could work from their homes - this is why we are trying to do the maximum to sell even the waste just in order to raise funds for all [this] extra work which some times is impossible on the price of the products - we do not get any external funding for these activities."

Fabric off-cuttings at Selyn.

Sandra tells me that, where formerly Selyn employed 435 workers, the global recession has resulted in a reduction of their labor pool to 260. Sandra and her staff have taken on an initial order of 1000 cloth pieces for me: little squares and pouches constructed from fabric off-cuttings, the waste ends of fabric with conventional manufacturers throw away. Workers at Selyn will prepare these textiles just as I do: roughly cutting to yield an organic varied look, and thoughtfully hand stitching each piece, so that the traces of human touch will be interwoven throughout the completed work.

The 'Right' Kind of Art?

2011-03-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

I picked up Andrew Kagan's 1995 essay collection Absolute Art at the Atlanta Book Exchange the last time we were visiting Ron's folks- it's a great place to find used art books. I wasn't familiar with the author, but was attracted to the premise of the book: an argument for the endurance of non-objective painting in the wake of postmodernism. As enticing as this sounded to me (a fan and practitioner of non-objective art), I wasn't won over by the author's case for what he calls absolute art. I found the book more interesting as an example of ideologically-biased art criticism.

Kagan differentiates non-objective or absolute art from abstract art, arguing that artists such as Pollock or Morris Louis created novel forms, not abstracted from observed nature. Consider these artists, Kagan suggests, in contrast with late Gorky: abstraction is (or should be) by definition, abstracted from something, as Gorky abstracted his biomorphic forms from observed ones. No artist creates art in a vacuum, so can any artwork be truly independent of nature? Kagan is satisfied to make the distinction based on what the artist intends: an image sourced in or evoking observed material, as opposed to an image constructed of color, line, shape- the formal vocabulary standing for nothing but itself. This could be a useful way to define a subset of abstraction, but what Kagan is attempting is more than a clarification of muddy terminology.

Absolute art originates, according to the author, in a universal human urge towards "freedom and individualism": absolute artworks assert this drive. I won't try to explain how I got through the introduction to this book without recognizing the libertarian code, but in later essays, Kagan is explicit about equating absolute art with libertarian ideals. The reader is to accept a priori that an impulse toward individual self-expression is universal and supremely moral. Kagan identifies absolute artists with the national character of a free society and "mediocre" artists with Marxist thought. Whether the artwork he champions does in fact express freedom and individualism, is something Kagan doesn't try to prove. As the author admits, it's a feeling that he has: the boundlessness of absolute art, liberated from mimesis and symbol, 'feels' like an assertion of the human will to freedom. This makes inspiring rhetoric for artists seeking lofty validation of non-objective art, but it makes for shaky analysis.

When is absolute art successful? When is it unsuccessful, and why? How does one make absolute art today, and make it differently from Malevich, Pollock or Louis. What keeps it relevant? Kagan doesn't delve far into these questions. The 'great' absolute artists include the above mentioned, but he doesn't explain how they differ from failed absolute artists. His basis for picking them above their peers strikes me as metaphysical: they're heroic individuals. We should presumably just feel this in our bones. According to Kagan, absolute art will be the most significant art of the future, but the only impetus he posits for its endurance is the persistence of the human will to freedom. For him, this drive is the ultimate expression of humanity, so presumably it will never go out of fashion in art. One big idea, even the best idea, asserted over and over in perpetuity: will we never tire of it? Kagan promises that the art will have ample room to change as new media become available, as if changes in visual media are enough to keep the underlying premise fresh.

Maybe Kagan would quibble with my presumption that art should stay fresh. He's hardly a neophile. Innovations in art practices from the 1960's through the 1980's leave him cold. At first I was baffled by his blanket dismissal of a quarter-century of art-making. Op, pop, minimalism, post-minimalism, performance, conceptual art, earthworks... everything after 1960. He brushes aside these and other art practices of his day as "fashions" among which there emerges no "greatness," only "mediocrity." How can that be? Kagan offers no analysis, no examination of how artworks stemming from these practices might fall down aesthetically or rhetorically. What he does give as evidence of artistic impoverishment, is the simple fact of these movements' plurality. The only way to understand this is as an economic position, not an aesthetic one. Kagan complains that no single art movement rises "to dominance;" no "hero" or "leader" emerges. "Of course," he tells us, "this pluralism is itself a consequence of the lack of greatness"(Kagan, 118). Of course? For the author this equation is self-evident, so he leaves it unproved. Kagan isn't interested in pursuing the cause of artistic pluralism, or in investigating the particular art movements that coexist in this state. It's the mere fact of pluralism that offends him: that a lot of little guys are sharing the field. It reeks of collectivism; and for Kagan the proceeds of collectivism must be inferior. The practices he disparages include only a few which incorporate collectivist ideas, relying on collaboration or a deliberate downplaying of authorship. Kagan acknowledges that most "mediocre" artistic practices are not explicitly leftist. It's the academic climate of Marxist nostalgia that allegedly permits these failed practices to thrive critically: a sort of affirmative action for bad art. It's unthinkable to Kagan that his colleagues have a genuine appetite for contemporary practices; they can only be apologists after-the-fact, employing a milk-toast doctrine of egalitarianism to validate an undistinguished field.

What's bad art, and what's good? Kagan yearns for the art of 1950's America- the heroic productions of abstract expressionism and color field. When he predicts a future for absolute art, it's a continuation of that historic moment (unjustly usurped by Pop and everything that followed) to be recast in high-tech new media. Perhaps he is pining for the 1950's in general. He identifies Pollock's career with American preeminence: In those years immediately following the war, the beacon of America's moral authority and esteem shone more brightly than ever before or since. This nation had earned the right to celebrate and to declare ts own cultural and moral values to the world- the values of Jefferson and Emerson, the ideals of free enterprise and individualism (131). When Kagan talks about what he admires artists like Pollock and Louis, he dwells more on the perceived heroic stature of those individuals, than on the qualities of their artwork. They are "leaders" of "genuine charisma," who have "risen to dominance" achieving "critical consensus" or "historic primacy"(118). How does Kagan explain the fact that some of the little guys are actually big boys? Artists such as Andy Warhol are mere "celebrities" lacking the gravitas of a great artist. Calling the opposition a celebrity instead of a leader- that's a political barb, not an aesthetic one. Kagan is not so much concerned with artists as-artists; he's treating artists as political figures and it's a clumsy fit. Warhol, after all, would seem to epitomize the free-market artist, but Kagan doesn't like Warhol: his art is the low-value byproduct of a free society. If it weren't propped up critically by Marxist academics, it would presumably find its level. With this little bit of mental pretzelling, Kagan is able to assign any art he doesn't like to the side of the Marxists. This still leaves undefined the objectionable particulars in post-1960 practices.

I can only speculate that Kagan's real objection is that these are not the paintings of his youth, not the art he fell in love with, the art that made him want to be an art historian. In his case, the art practices of his youth were bound up with a powerful teleological idea: that each major visual form was honing in on a 'pure' involvement with its "unique and proper area of competence" (Greenberg, 1960). What Greenberg characterized as an operation of fortifying self-criticism, Kagan takes as the basis for a metaphysics.

He echoes Greenberg's 1979 lecture denouncing of the "philistines of advancedness," those critics and academics who prefer a new art lacking rigorous aesthetic standards (Greenberg, 1980). Only for Kagan, the stakes are higher. What for Greenberg was a falling off of good taste, is for Kagan a betrayal of the ultimate expression of a free society. To witness artists abandoning the pursuit of formalist self-critique, almost as soon as this was designated the singular goal of painting, must have been startling to many dedicated followers of Greenberg after 1960. I think that few could have been as profoundly disappointed as Kagan.

Sources:
Greenberg, Clement. " Modernist Painting." Art and Literature No. 4, spring 1965. Web. 29 March. 2011.
Greenberg, Clement. "Modern and Postmodern." Arts 54 No. 6, February 1980. Web. 29 March. 2011.
Kagan, Andrew. Absolute Art. Grenart Books, 1995.

limitation

2011-03-12T15:31:00.000-08:00

Our house has been on the market two weeks now; and what was at first an obsessive, frantic cycle of housekeeping in advance of a flurry of showings, has ebbed to a more manageable rhythm. So, I'm finally able to turn my mind to something creative again. I'm a little frustrated with the restrictions on my work space: I can't pull out the sloppy paints and inks, I have to be careful not to scratch the pristine wood floor in the studio (formally covered under plastic sheeting and industrial carpet). And I can't set up anything that can't be packed away again at pretty short notice. So, the project I'm working on now has largely come about through the process of elimination. It's very focusing: I'm so prone to pulling in several directions at once with my art; there's a real relief in letting go of multiple artistic impulses, of feeling no doubt about the choice, because it's the only choice that's feasible.
So, the work at hand: a couple of years ago I made a small series of mixed media paintings, in which I started layering in stained and painted fabric with oils on canvas. At first I was pressing the cloth into the paint, which was pretty straight forward; but the little series culminated in one huge canvas which was made with hundreds of stitched squares, boxes and bags of fabric. These were then stitched onto the canvas and layered with impasto paint. The whole thing took 8 months, much of that time devoted to making the little fabric units before I even began to work on the canvas. I loved the finished piece, and still feel that it was one of my strongest works; but by the end of it, I felt too drained to attempt another one like it. It seemed too labor intensive to make a cohesive body of work feasible: I would never be able to make and stockpile enough fabric units to come up with a decent number of paintings. So I set that work aside.

Mark Howard. Here to There.

I've missed it from time to time. While I moved on to other equally gratifying work, I never felt quite done with the implications of that painting, which I'd titled Advent, Proliferation, like it was the start of something. I started thinking about it again recently when I borrowed two big, gorgeous encaustic paintings from my friend Mark Howard- to help stage the house for showings. They more than fit the bill; I didn't anticipate being so moved by the grandeur and sensuality of them- they make me want to work big and in color again. Finally I couldn't resist. I started making the little fabric units that will form the first layer of a big new painting. I can pull out the box of fabric between showings; it packs away again quickly. The work at this stage is all sewing- no paint, no mess that can't be remedied with a lint roller.

Advent, Proliferation

Yes, this is a really inefficient working process. It doesn't bother me at the moment- because I was looking at the possibility of no working process while this house was on the market. But I have been thinking about how I might increase my productivity, with the aim of making a new body of work instead of just one more labored-over painting. It's early days, but last week I got in touch with a Fair Trade textile company in Sri Lanka. Outsourcing my little fabric units? I'll keep you posted.

Thoughts on Buying Local (Art)

2011-01-24T13:19:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to mention this particular art acquisition Ron and I made in 2010. Mainly because I want to tell you about the artist, my good friend Anne Bossert; but also because I want to use the occasion to make a point about hedonistically indulging in (as opposed to 'supporting') local art. This seems to be the moment because Anne just emailed pics she'd had taken professionally... of our gorgeous sofa-back table. This is the nicest piece of furniture Ron and I own, and the biggest art purchase we've made to-date.

So, first the table itself. Anne designed the piece to be placed parallel to the back of our black leather sofa, basing its dimensions on its proposed placement. She invited us into the design process at every stage, showing us sketches, and then refined sketches, finally allowing us to combine features from two different designs. She talked about wood species and direction of grain, and we chose a combination of bamboo with Baltic birch plywood, using the position of end grain as a design element. Anne's background is in sculpture and fiber art, and she often integrates hand-woven textile into her furniture pieces, inlaid as a runner, under glass, along the length of the table top.

I knew that I wanted textile to play a part in our table, because that's the element that most strongly drew me to her work initially. I can't overemphasize the laboriousness of this work. The textile runner was woven exclusively for this particular piece, but before she started the weaving, Anne dyed the thread with the same dyes she used to stain the wood, so the two elements are very strongly integrated. Saturated, poetic color is a signature of Anne's work. Her colors sometimes evoke sweet and spicy flavors or encounters with exotic species of bird or flower. These colors grab attention in the gallery, but Anne tells us that when collectors commission work from her, they often hedge toward a more conservative palette. Ron and I wanted this piece to be both characteristic of the way Anne works, and a piece we would arrange a room around- not something that would blend in. If not cherry red or canary yellow, it would be something equally lyrical and outspoken. We must have been thinking about our upcoming move to the pacific northwest (although the topic didn't come up), because the colors we chose could have been sampled from coastal Oregon: raw growing green (like fresh bamboo), stormy gray, and a vivid marine turquoise. We have little spots of these colors elsewhere in our current house, but I really see the piece as belonging to our future home.

I'm glad that Anne's a friend and a local: in a way, by buying a piece from her, we're affirming our town as an art community, and affirming our belief in the excellence of this local artist's practice. However, "buying local" isn't a simple position when it comes to art. On more than one occasion, I've been told by a collector, "I only buy local art." This statement rubs me the wrong way. Why buy "only local"? Local art isn't like local chèvre- only one of these products benefits from proximity to optimal grazing. It can't be that Fort Collins is the optimal environment for creative produce. It's a small city, with just a small handful of artists who excel in one form or another. Its typical of a regional scene in this respect. Being few in number and sprinkled over only some of the vast diversity of artistic practices, local artists can't possibly satisfy every taste that might arise in a would-be collector. The "only local" collectors are telling me, in effect, that either their tastes are met easily (by what happens to be in their proximity), or they're not collecting as a matter of taste at all. If not taste, then what?

Are you one of these "only local" collectors? Perhaps you feel that you're supporting artists in your community, "giving back", the same way you give to the local museum or the local food bank. Is the local artist a charity case? We don't regard ourselves that way. In fact, if we're selling locally, we're inevitably lowering our prices in order to match local market expectations- so who's being charitable to whom? Believe me, those of us who are serious about art-as-a-profession, aren't aiming our work at the local market.

Perhaps you envision yourself as instrumental in building the local artist's reputation. This simply won't happen if your collection is "only local." No artist wants to be part of a local collection- we want to be part of an excellent collection. A collector can potentially confer value upon a work of art by including it among more established art works- and then only if it can be justified as part of a cohesive collecting vision. If you have aspirations (and the means) to be a serious collector, you may ultimately have some influence with galleries and exhibition spaces in your region; but that means building your own reputation. Collect art that you love- wherever you find it. Think about building your collection around a set of interests that you'll become expert in: will it be organized around media, style, concept? Build a pointed and intelligent collection. Then, when you ask the local artist to sell you a piece, she'll feel honored, not patronized.

When we buy local chèvre (or eggplants or peaches), we're often saying that, all else being equal, we want the fresher choice, the one incurring shortest distance from farm to shelf, the one that puts money back into our local economy. With art, all else is not equal. A painting you find in Santa Fe is not the same as a painting you find in Fort Collins: if it's a good painting, it has no equivalent- it's resolutely one of a kind. The right kind of "buying local", when it comes to art, is more like buying a very limited, very special product your town is known for- the award-winning stout, or the variety of honey that tastes like no other honey. Buy a local artist's work because you've never seen anything like it anywhere else.

Beware!

2011-01-13T14:52:00.000-08:00

If you get an email like the one that follows, delete it on sight... unless you have some time on your hands and want to send them uploaded porn or photos of industrial accidents. Agora is probably the most notorious of the vanity galleries- galleries that charge an exorbitant fee to naive and hopeful artists for the privilege of hanging art on their walls. They typically do little or nothing to promote these artists, because (obviously) they're making their money off the artists themselves, and thus have no incentive to sell the art. What they're really offering - what they're selling- is the fantasy of a New York show. Don't be fooled- legitimate gallerists certainly won't be; and they will regard you with pity and contempt if they see the name Agora on your resume. (By the way, I know that my new friend Alexandra didn't look at my website- because I have sitemeter, and have had no recent hits out of NY.)

Dear Sarah R J Vaeth,
My name is Alexandra Cespedes and I am a gallery assistant at Agora Gallery, NYC.
I recently visited http://www.sarahvaeth.net

and I feel that your work may be well suited for Agora Gallery representation and for inclusion in one of our many internationally publicized exhibitions.
Agora Gallery has been in business since 1984 and is located in the center of the New York City art community in the Chelsea art district. As a well established gallery, we provide promotional services to talented artists such as yourself, for these services we charge an annual promotional fee.
For more information about gallery representation and the services that we provide please visit http://www.agora-gallery.com/artistinfo/gallery_representation.aspx

- if you would like to submit your portfolio for gallery review, you can do so using your email address and password. Your password is: CTBE624C. If you have any further questions, I would be happy to answer them. You can reach me at 212-226-4151 ext 207 or alexandra@agora-gallery.com.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Kind regards,

Alexandra Cespedes
Gallery Assistant / Agora Gallery
http://www.Agora-Gallery.com

Alexandra@Agora-Gallery.com
Phone: 212.226.4151
Fax: 212.966.4380

Happy New Year!

2011-01-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

Do you have any art-related resolutions for 2011? Care to share them here? Leaving aside the perennial vows to exercise more, eat better... blah blah blah, here are my own goals for the coming year:

1. Submit/ propose only to non-fee exhibitions. Never say never, but I'm taking at least a year off from submitting to any exhibit or competition with a fee attached. Looking over my exhibition activity for 2010, I don't regret the $40 I spent to submit to a really respectable juried show, but.... I don't think my resume would have been significantly weaker without it. The other four exhibits I participated in, I pursued by emailing inquiries, sending proposals, having conversations with members of the art community and generally making myself known. This is a strategy that works: there are many, many venues for an artist to show, without ponying up a submission fee- and they can be found at every level of an artistic career. Coffee shops are a great place for the fledgling exhibitor to try out her wings; and I've had more than a few coffee shop shows. Now that I'm more confident and further along in my practice, I look for higher value exhibits. I routinely contact community arts centers, university and college galleries, and small museums. I look at their websites first for submission guidelines; if none are posted, I email the curator or director, and ask whether they accept proposals.

2. Work on deficits in my art history/ theory knowledge. Postmodernism, I hardly knew thee; now that you may or may not be coming to an end, I want to get to know you better. Which means... Semiotics, I want to get to know you better. (By the way, I can recommend a great introductory read, Chandler's Semiotics: The Basics). I'm realizing, too, that I've been out of school long enough, that there are areas of art history that I used to know well, that are getting a little hazy. Use it or lose it. Amazon will be hearing from me.

3. Focus on small works on paper. If you're reading this, there's a good chance you already know that I'm in the midst of a major transition. Ron and I are putting the house on the market next month. We are planning a move to Oregon in the spring, although I'm also looking at some residency opportunities on both coasts and in-between. Either way, I'm anticipating some months of upheaval, with significantly compromised studio access (not least because I'll be staging my studio as a 'master bedroom'). To get though this time with my sanity intact, I'm thinking about ways I can keep moving forward with my art, in smaller temporary quarters. I remember that my former professor, Jim Dormer, was a great proponent of working small, especially when one is between projects or indecisive about a new direction. It's a way to push through some ideas relatively quickly. I may not produce a great deal of 'finished' work in the coming months, but I should be able to progress conceptually- and not find that I've lost track of my ideas, once I'm settled in a new studio.

Snow Cave

2010-12-05T18:02:00.000-08:00

Here it is: my completed piece for Object, No Object: Sculpture of Ideas.

Snow Cave. 8' high x 12' wide x 5' max deep. Steel wire, laminate tiles, latex paint, wall perforations, cast shadows.

It's already gone, by the way- reduced to modular parts in a 19" x 42" storage box, plus a few odds and ends.

Object/ No Object

2010-11-29T09:02:00.000-08:00

Opening (and closing) night for Object, No Object: Sculpture of Ideas is fast approaching. I hope you'll join me Friday night for this fleeting exhibition. If you can't make it, check out the above link to find out how you can enjoy the exhibit online.

My own contribution to this show is a site-specific installation I've titled Snow Cave. In keeping with the ideas of the show it is both literally and metaphorically an ephemeral piece: a delicate "shelter" built out of wire, dotted lines and shadows. As with my previous installations this past year, it will exist only for the duration of the show, a particularly short lifespan in this case. In common with previous works too, the piece takes its shape in response to the conditions and constraints of the exhibition space. This space, a classroom in the basement of FCMOA, has some eccentricities (i.e., the corner I'm using butts up against a kitchen counter)- but I like eccentricities. Encountering awkward arrangements forces problem solving, and this spurs novel approaches in my art making. There's some give-and-take: I'll take the cabinetry hardware off to make the structure more neutral, but I find myself delighting in the way the cast shadows from my piece wrap around the face of the kitchen cabinets.

Although it's always a factor, I think this piece in particular foregrounds the dependence of my work upon found spaces. Of my several installation spaces, it's the least like a conventional exhibit space. I think it raises hitherto neglected questions about where my piece ends and the where the architecture of the exhibition space starts. In this instance, I like the boxy shape of the cabinets and the rectangular niche where a window used to be- and I've utilized (or appropriated?) both. If I had to recreate the piece, I would want to recreate those elements.

Where does the work of art end and the rest of the world begin? The curators of Object/ No Object raise the question implicitly by crafting and creatively orchestrating an exhibition that has it's own virtual existence, and which can grow by accruing participation. In a very real sense the exhibition is the work of art, and its borders are yet undefined. Around the time I initially became involved in this project, I was just finishing reading Arthur Danto's The Transfiguration of the Commonplace. There's an anecdote the author tells about a bronze cat statue, which I think is terrific (and applicable):

There is at Columbia University's Arden House Conference Center a statue of a cat in bronze. It stands on a floor at the head of a stairway that leads into a common room at a lower level. Presumably it is of some value, or believed to be... inasmuch as the managers have chained it to the railing- to forestall theft, I suppose, as if it were a television set in a squalid motel. Such might be the obvious interpretation. But I am open to the suggestion that it is not a chained sculpture of a cat but a sculpture of a chained cat, one end of which is wittily attached to a piece of reality.... Of course what we take to be a bit of reality can in fact be part of the work, which is now a sculpture of a cat-chained-to-an-iron-railing, though the moment we allow it to be a part of the work, where does or can the work end? It becomes a kind of metaphysical sandpit, swallowing the universe down into itself.

Reflecting

2010-10-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

I'm a little too close to shows that I'm in to want to review them, but I think it would be remiss not to write a few words at least about my own experience with Drawing in the Expanded Field. This exhibit feels like an important one for me, only partly because it's an honor to be included. More important is the way I've felt challenged by the rigorous dialog about drawing that this exhibit represents. The individuals who put this show together, Curator Mary-Ann Kokoska and Jurors Howard Riley and Deanna Petherbridge, are people who pursue drawing very seriously as a studio practice, and also write about drawing very seriously. It's a bit overawing for my work to be made a subject for their attention.

It's also invigorating. I'm coming away from this show wanting to be more grounded in theory, wanting to read more (yes, I'll be spending some time with The Primacy of Drawing), wanting to write better. It's not that I feel unworthy- I'm proud of the piece that I made for the show. It's more that I feel my best work is still in front of me, still in the future, will always be. That's a good feeling. Listening to Petherbridge's lecture, and reading both jurors' statements was a reminder of what a thrilling adventure-of-the-mind this is, this lifelong pursuit of art. This is what it's all about- the journey, the mystery, the willing difficulty. I forget that sometimes- trying to land the good gallery, trying to boost my credibility, terrified of the gap on my resume. What garbage.

I did get some feedback from Petherbridge. That was humbling, again in a good way. It reminded me of Bookworm. If you don't listen to it you should- it's great brain food. Guests on Bookworm will say that Michael Silverblatt has insights into their work that they didn't have, or that they'd like to have him around all the time to tell them what their work is about. That's the mark of a great critic. Anyway, it's been gradually dawning on me that the cast shadows in my installations are important, maybe crucial. I felt that intuitively: with this piece I started to play around with manipulating the shadows. But I wasn't at the point of naming the relationships between a physical-wire-line, a drawn-on-the-wall-line and a cast-shadow-line. Petherbridge told me that the shadows needed to be a little stronger. I agree: I was relying on the lighting system as-I-found-it. Which is a passive approach, if the shadows are really as important as I feel they are. She also said that this relationship in the work was about reflection. I'll be mulling over that for awhile.... I'll let you know what I come up with.

I said I wouldn't review the show, but I do have a favorite (I can't resist): Billy Fribele's Traversing Suburban. It's a video, shot from the vantage point of a shopping cart, being pushed though a supermarket (I think it's a Super Target). As the shopping cart makes its way through the store, its path is depicted as a red line on the screen, eventually forming a closed shape. The red line is a drawing. But, says Petherbride, the path itself is a drawing, a literal "taking a line for a walk." She likened it to a child pushing a toy truck, which is a first act of drawing.

Pay to Play? Why I won't be in Studio Visit Magazine.

2010-10-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

Last month I was notified in an email that my work had been accepted for publication in Studio Visit Magazine. This was the second time I'd submitted; and for the second time, I got in. Only this time, as the Oct. 4 deadline approached to send in my payment- a $225 participation fee- I hesitated and debated. The deadline arrived, and I let it pass. This wasn't a flip decision by any means. I gave a lot of thought and a little bit of research to the relative advantages of appearing in the magazine. Not statistically valid research by a long shot, but enough to help me make a decision.

There are some advantages: Studio Visit is a sleek and professional publication. It borrows credibility-by-association from its sister publication New American Paintings. It has a large and impressive mailing list of galleries and museums- a partial list appears on its website, and there are some very recognizable names on it. I have no reason to doubt that art world VIPs are receiving this magazine. Whether they're looking at it is another question.

I can attest that my first appearance in Studio Visit (v.2, 2008) did attract a gallery (of sorts). A company that sells and rents art for office spaces found me through the magazine. They were reputable, and for a couple years (while I was doing lobby-friendly paintings), I did some good business with them. But they were not a brick-and-mortar gallery, and they weren't anywhere near the class of gallery I was hoping for.
I've had a fair number of hits on my website that originated from Studio Visit's site. However, I have not been approached by any 'real' gallery as the result.

A painter friend of mine has appeared in Studio Visit twice, including the first volume. She was contacted by one gallery after the first publication. This gallery, which she did sign on with, is one that charges a substantial fee for representation (i.e., a 'vanity' gallery). When I asked her this month about her assessment of the magazine's impact on her career, she told me very frankly that her gallery wasn't doing anything for her, and that she hadn't been approached by any other galleries. After talking to my friend, I was leaning heavily away from participating; but I felt I needed a little more to go on before I made a decision.

I searched the internet for any discussion of the magazine. I didn't find much. A few mentions appeared in artists' websites, where they announced their acceptance for publication. I found a couple references on blogs and message boards, where readers were on the fence about submitting. There weren't any persuasive or particularly dissuasive answers. The magazine has only been around since 2008, and nobody seems to know if it's having an impact. All in all, there's not much buzz about Studio Visit on the internet.

I emailed queries to two very reputable galleries that I'm familiar with, soliciting their directors' opinions of the publication.

To Marsha Wood Gallery, Atlanta:

Me:   I noticed that Marcia Wood appears on Studio Visit's mailing list.... I'm wondering about your take on the magazine: do you feel that it adds to the credibility of the featured artists; and have you used it to seek new artists for your gallery?

Marcia Wood (Director): I think, at this point any publication in print has value since that is a dying breed. Some of more critical and better regarded than others of course.
You would need to weigh what your best options are.

I'd call that a politic non-answer.

To Robischon Gallery, Denver:

Me:   I noticed that Robischon is on the mailing list for Studio Visit, and I'm curious about your take on the magazine. Do you regard it as reputable, and do you feel that it adds to (or perhaps detracts from) the credibility of a featured artist?

Jim Robischon (Director): I did find a Studio Visit from 2008 sitting in a pile of things to look at (someday). Seems like a nice enough publication to me. I thumbed through it and saw several artists I thought we could use in our roster. Whether I was to act on that is another question.   Credibility is pretty relative in that I found one of our artists in there and they did not list us as a gallery.... I did see several artists who I know have gone on to some modicum of success. That said I would have never known that from the image that was shown.

Robischon's response was more forthcoming, and in a sense, favorable. If your work is published in this year's Studio Visit, maybe Jim Robischon will come across it in a couple of years and think favorably of it, for what that's worth.

But who cares what two actual gallery directors think?
I think what finally made up my mind was asking myself, if I were a gallery director, how would I view the magazine? So here's my own take, as imaginary gallery director....

First, I see that nearly one out of three submissions is accepted for publication: The response to our call for artists was overwhelming, with almost 1,000 submissions. Our juror, Beth Venn, selected you and 300 other artists to participate in what will become volumes 13 and 14.

30% is way too high a percentage to regard this as a juried exhibition-in-print. Sure, they're using a juror, but that juror is only weeding out the stuff that doesn't look gallery-ready. She's not going for excellence. That means I can't use this magazine as a barometer for excellence.

Second, I see that there were only 1000 submissions to start with. So, say I'm not concerned with a fine screening- as a gallery director I can screen for excellence myself. Then, at least I want a useful sample- either a very broad sample to give me a comprehensive idea of what's out there artwise, or a targeted sample, so that I'm seeing a lot of examples of the kind of art I show in my gallery. But, with Studio Visit, I'm looking at the results from an average of only 20 submissions per state; and it's plausible that no submissions are coming in from low-population states. Furthermore, the sample I do get is a hodgepodge of media, genres and styles. Say I specialize in minimalism: I might have to wade through 299 images of landscape painting, neo-expressionism, figure sculpture, lyrical abstraction... before I get to the single minimalist work that might be of interest to me. As a gallery director scouting new talent, I can do a lot better looking at the big online registries. With those I can target my search.

This magazine is not getting that many submissions. Of the ones its getting, its accepting as many as its juror can stomach in order to fill two volumes, because this is a money making venture, not an honor. The bottom line for me as an artist (not an imaginary gallery director) is that this magazine does nothing to add to my credibility, and does not provide targeted exposure. I'm not being singled out for an exclusive honor, nor am I being differentiated according to my artistic practice.

A Few Thoughts on the Chagoya Controversy

2010-10-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

Instead of posting comments on a lot of other peoples' articles, I thought I'd just throw out a few points here.

First, I did see the exhibit. The Chagoya images are pretty small, intricate and ambiguous. They make up just a small part of a large group show. What I've been reading in the press makes them sound really in-your-face. Honestly though, you have to make an effort to look at them in full... and you'd have to make an effort to find the provocative bits and get offended. My first thought on hearing about the protests was, "Wow, some people have too much time on their hands....".

That said, if you do go to the trouble, you will find graphic material (or you would have, before the work was destroyed). Most museums deal with controversial material by posting a highly visible sign to warn patrons that they may be confronted with offensive material. I'm not certain, but I don't think the Loveland Museum did this- probably because it didn't occur to the staff that such small-scale images would inflame such outrage. This was perhaps an oversight on their part.

I've seen a lot of comments to the effect of "I'm a taxpayer, and I don't think my taxpayer dollars should pay for art that offends me." I would counter this by saying, I too am a taxpayer, and I don't like paying for art that bores me- which is most of the art on display in Northern Colorado. Most of the art exhibited at our regional museums and exhibition centers is selected to appeal to a general audience. It's decorative, safe and traditional. Once in a while our museums throw a bone to the art school set... something a little more edgy or complex. If you don't like it, don't look at it- wait for the Governor's Show, and oh so many other exhibits of wildlife sculptures and landscape paintings. As long as we have public museums, these institutions have to make some effort to serve a huge range of tastes and attitudes towards art. There is an alternative of course- any libertarians want to chime in?

A couple words about the First Amendment. It really irritates me when people misread the First Amendment. Chagoya is quoted as saying It will be a loss for everybody, not just for me, but for everybody that believes in the First Amendment.... Suppression of art and ideas is something that happens in totalitarian regimes, not this country. Ok...no. The First Amendment guarantees that your speech will not be censored by the government. It does not protect you from private acts of censorship- or vandalism for that matter. Chagoya's speech was not suppressed. Although the matter was debated by Loveland's city council, his right to free expression was upheld, and the work remained at the Museum until a private individual committed an illegal act of vandalism. The last time I got really annoyed about a misinterpretation of the First Amendment, it was Dr. Laura whining that her speech was being suppressed because her show got canceled (because private sponsors didn't want to pay for it). Anyway, it's bad enough when I hear that crap from the right. It's worse when it's coming from the progressive side, because then I feel implicated in the stupidity. Chagoya's real beef is with the Loveland Museum for not providing adequate security for a work which was already embroiled in controversy.

Finally, if there' anyone out there who's really offended by post-minimalist abstraction, I've got a new piece at the Hatton and I could use the insurance money.

Gallery Talk, UNC (Greeley, CO)

2010-09-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

The following is a brief introduction to my work, prepared as a presentation to Prof. Connie Stewart's class on Sept. 2, 2010, in conjunction with my site-specific piece Web/Veil at UNC's Oak Room Gallery.

I work mainly abstractly, but my practice is ultimately grounded in observational drawing. The forms and relationships in my work come from seeing. It's crucial for me always to be looking; and I tend to alternate between projects in which I'm building something, and projects in which I'm drawing something from observation.

Tablel IV. Graphite on paper. 2007.

The two feed into each other, so that lately I've been making observational drawings and paintings of table-top constructions- which have a lot in common with my large-scale constructions. These table-top compositions are small, allowing me to experiment and work out innovations relatively quickly.

Shelter Fantasy. Oil on linen. 2009.

An abstract construction such as Web/Veil is far from non-objective. I'm always working with a set of references that I find compelling. So, in working on this particular piece, I was thinking of spider webs and textiles, and the way that both can be very fragile.

My project for the Oak Room comes out of a relatively new involvement with site-specific, spatial drawing. I developed much of my visual language through printmaking (this was my area of concentration in graduate school). The reliance upon line is something I've carried from printmaking practices into my current work. Etching, engraving, drypoint: these approaches made me more sensitive to how line itself could be expressive.

Web. Intaglio. 2004.

Ascension I. Drypoint. 2004.

My interest in line work lead me to make a series of thread-on-paper drawings in my last year of graduate school. I was making these concurrently with drypoints and engravings which were thread-like or hair-like.

Darting Line. Thread, graphite on paper. 2004.

The thread work segued very naturally into working with wire, which I liked for the particular line quality it yielded- very cool and precise- and for the possibility of using line spatially.

Mutable Box. Steel wire. 2008.

This year I started working at a larger scale, using the medium to respond situationally to a given exhibit space instead of producing stand-alone pieces. As soon as I started working this way, I wondered why I hadn't been doing this for years, because it felt like such a good fit. The possibility of spacial (habitable) drawing is something I encountered as a student, and it stuck with me for years before I saw an opening for it in my work.

Shift. 2010.

There have also been some unexpected pleasures in working site-specifically. I like that it's a little unpredictable. I like that each space presents eccentricities and constraints. These spur problem solving, and this spurs innovation. I like that the work is ephemeral: Web/Veil will never be exhibited again, at least in its present form. Unless I sell the piece, I will divide it into parts to make a new drawing for a new space.

Who I'm looking at right now...
In a very real sense I will always be a student of art. I'm always looking at other artists' work, past and contemporary. Here are a few artists who are important to the way I'm thinking right now:

Gego (drawing in wire, net motif).
Giorgio Morandi (placement, pictorial geometry).
Janine Antoni (intersection of minimalist form with feminist reference, medium as message).
El Anatsui (casual materials, metal as textile. recycling).
Jim Hodges (casual materials, web motif).
Guerra De La Paz (casual materials, towards color).
Mike and Doug Starn (a habitable drawing).

A Bitter Brew II: Update

2010-07-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

Last week I discussed Taylor Gallegos's announcement of a "Locals Walk" in downtown Fort Collins. Gallegos has since issued a revised statement of mission which softens the tone. In the interest of representing Gallegos's group fairly, here it is:

There is a movement brewing in the art community of Fort Collins, Colorado. It is called the “Locals’ Walk” and is set to launch on August 6^th, 2010. The Locals’ Walk is a self guided walking art tour of local businesses displaying local artwork. The Locals’ Walk mission is to bring the homegrown art and culture to the stage as a serious participant in the art community here in Fort Collins.

On the first Friday of every month during business hours, The Bean Cycle, Big Al’s Burgers and Hot Dogs, Canyon Spirit Gallery, CoCo Art Studio, Equinox Brewing, Everyday Joe’s, The Gallery Underground, Harper Point Photography, Lloyd’s Art and Framing, The Luscious Nectar, The Lyric Cinema Café, Mugs Coffee Lounge, Old Town Yoga, On Display Studio, The Red Table Café, Surfside, The Vault and more will have a fresh display of local artwork and a flyer in the window showing their involvement.

The Local’s Walk is not meant to clash with the existing First Friday Gallery Walk in Downtown Fort Collins, but more to compliment it. The existing Gallery Walk is a collection of fine art galleries with associated requirements and fees that many local businesses with revolving displays of art cannot or do not wish to meet. With these conditions in place and the recent move by the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art (FCMOCA) to eliminate “Contemporary” from their name, changing to the Fort Collins Museum of Art, we in Fort Collins are left with the perfect circumstance for an emergence of an underground art scene.

The Locals’ Walk is an event designed to add a spotlight on this contemporary art created by folks who live, work, and study here that has previously gone unseen by the general public, to provide affordable art options for the art collectors of Fort Collins, and to broaden the artistic horizons of our downtown art scene. Make plans and bring friends, but be sure to attend the Local’s Walk in Old Town Fort Collins, August 6^th, 2010, and every first Friday of the month thereafter.

Called on the Carpet

2010-07-16T11:36:00.000-07:00

This month I reviewed Joy Wulke's The Great Alone for Scene Magazine. Laura Brent, Director of Valhall Arts, emailed her response to the exhibit- and to my review. I'm sharing it with you because Laura makes some valid points about flaws in the exhibit. But I'm also interested in the way that our different takes on an exhibit raise the issue of the role of art criticism today. As you'll see, Laura is... well... more critical.

Laura Brent's Response

I hate to see an exhibition presented as documentary, when in fact it is not so! The fact that Ms. Wulke places objects into the environment immediately removes it from the realm of documentation. By her interaction, the nonemotional, purely straight recording of an object/event is lost, and the work becomes creative, not documentary. I hate to see this dissemination of mis-information being spread to the audience. This generates a dumbing down of the viewer, and perpetuates the 'hickness' of the art world in non-metropolitan areas like ours, and continues the rural bias in the industry. It is up to the institutions, and critics to keep us on the right path.

Also, I did not see or feel the 'passage of time' that was intended. Perhaps the artist is young, and 2 decades seems like a long time to her. I did not see much change in the cabin, I expected to see it decay into ruin, and to me it was only the same cabin, over and over. It appeared to me that there were only a few years in the 80's and 90's, perhaps 3 or 4 trips that were covered in the exhibit. I would encourage her to continue the series, following the cabin to its ultimate decomposition, and edit out the creative shots, if she wants to continue with a documentary series.

Yes, her images are beautiful, her use of light and print techniques are great. I especially enjoyed the installation of the cloth from the skylight, and saw a connection to the images with the cloth, but she needs to be clear in what she is presenting. (I assume the exhibit was her presentation, but perhaps it is the curator's fault?) Nothing irritates me more then mis-information, this is a disservice to the art community.

Vaeth's final comments about "hanging curtains" are great, but to laugh the error off, does not get us anywhere. I want to see the local art community grow and be respected world wide.

My Counter-Response

When I'm reviewing work for Scene, I'm cognizant of what I'm choosing to forgive in an artist's work, or the presentation of it. Mainly, this is because I'm trying to represent the regional art community in its entirety. I may be writing about a sophisticated career artist, or about a student having his first show, or an organization that supports artistic participation at an amateur level. I treat these topics very differently.

However, in the case of Wulke's work, I may have invited a good shellacking by downplaying flaws in the work of a prominent career artist. I was definitely aware of these flaws, and of choosing my stance towards them. What I decided at the time, was that Wulke's photographs were good, and that conceptual inconsistencies in the work as a whole stemmed from a disconnect between the artist's photographs and the artist's statements about the photographs. I decided to be forgiving of the ways in which the textual framing failed to fit the images. This gets me into pretty sticky territory. Basically, what I'm admitting too, is not treating the text and the images as a whole work of art. But- this is something I do all the time, as I frequently encounter young artists who don't know how to write an artist statement, and for whom the artist statement truly is ancillary to the work of art. Wulke, on the other hand, is no rookie, and she presents her work as documentary: she's telling us that the written statement is integral to the work of art.

Ultimately, I was won over by the photographs. My feeling (and I am speculating) is that Wulke's project got away from her original intentions. The school house didn't decay fast enough. Wulke became interested in some aspects of the school house more than others, resulting in a prolificacy of similar images, undermining the notion of sequentiality. She became interested in bringing objects into the schoolhouse- and these still life images could really constitute a separate project. My line about "hanging curtains" wasn't just a quip. I was thinking about the prospect of a thirty-year involvement with this building, and how the artist would be affected by that. I imagine that that the schoolhouse came to feel like a home, and the meaning of the project changed for her. It would have been so much more interesting, if Wulke had written about that.

All of this is much more complexity than I can get into for a 400wd Scene review. In that tight format, for a general audience, I'm usually just trying to bring reader's attention to art I think is good- and entice them to go see it. Laura might rightly argue that I'm not writing criticism in this context. Occasionally I go negative in a long column- in that format I can be negative in context. But Laura's right- most of the time I'm accentuating the positive. To a degree I'm implicitly being critical by choosing which artists to write about, and which to ignore. But I get a little frustrated too. In my writing for Scene, I'm occupying a near-vacant niche- writing about art for a local newspaper. I think if there were more voices, covering more art, I could distinguish myself more as a critic- sometimes taking the negative position among multiple viewpoints.

A Bitter Brew

2010-07-15T11:44:00.000-07:00

There's been some buzz over Taylor Gallegos's manifesto-ish announcement of a coalition of alternative art venues (coffee shops, bars, unaffiliated galleries). The announcement is worth a look. You'll find it at the bottom of this post. It also raises some points that are worth discussing- read on...

Revolution
Gallegos is the self-described curator for Luscious Nectar. He calls his collective action a "revolution". I call it a sensible re-packaging of the status quo. The said venues will host First Friday openings- which most of them were doing already. Only, now they will broadcast their openings with e-invites and fliers, positioning themselves as the hip alternative to the official First Friday Walk, a self-selecting group of dues-paying commercial galleries and art organizations. The collective branding that results from organizing alternative venues will be beneficial to the young, novice, and amateur artists who exhibit in these venues. Traffic to openings will increase if gallery goers have the expectation of consistently finding openings at these venues on First Fridays. I have to remind myself that when I was younger, an announcement like Gallegos would have excited me. However, I'm writing from the perspective of a career artist navigating the limitations of FoCo's art community. I assume a readership that shares my perspective. For us, Gallegos's announcement is, of course, not revolutionary. We're not looking for another opportunity to show in a coffee shop. We want to exhibit on white walls, not decorate purple ones.

Appropriation, Confusion
Contemporary Fluid contributor (and Valhall Arts Director) Laura Brent points to Gallegos's appropriation of the First Friday Gallery Walk's map, which may confuse art walkers. Valid point. Now that I've had a look at it. Gallegos uses the same street map, listing members of a "Locals Walk" and pinpointing their locations. He makes no mention of the walk's status as an alternative to the established First Friday Walk. So, plausibly, an art patron could pick up a flier and erroneously believe it was a comprehensive (not a partial) list of art offerings. On the other hand, this is Gallegos's objection to the established First Friday Walk- that these establishments present themselves as only game in town. So, fair is fair. As to the appropriation of an image (the map) by a group of artists- I can't manage to get worked up over that. Sorry, Laura, I'm deep into Danto this week- Brillo boxes and all that.

Exploitation
A second objection raised by Laura is one I'd like to counter at length. Not least because it's one I've heard many times before, and I think I've been waiting for an opportunity to take it on. Laura objects that these venues exploit artists- who "decorate" the walls of these establishments "for free." So common is this complaint, that I've heard it from two other artists in unrelated contexts within the last week. The argument from this camp is that artists are providing a service free to the coffee shop (or bar or dispensary) that this business would otherwise have to pay for, by buying or renting art to decorate their establishment. Arguably, by lending one's art to a business, an artist is undermining her own and others' potential to make money by leasing or selling work to that business.

Let me explain why this argument doesn't hold water. First, coffee shops aren't the kind of establishment that buys art for the walls (think doctor, think lawyer). Second, the artists who show in coffee shops aren't the kind of artists who sell at that level. No monetary opportunity has been lost, because there was no monetary opportunity to begin with.

Coffee shops benefit artists in a different way. They are suitable venues for young or novice artists who can't attract galleries (yet). These fledgling artists benefit by having a show- putting down the first line in an exhibition history. By having shows, they demonstrate to prospective galleries that they are productive and motivated about showing. The venues may benefit too, from the artsy vibe, in which case it's a win-win. Or they may be taking a risk, giving wall space to local artists, whose work may be unconventional or unaesthetic or frankly bad- whereas they could use the wall space to promote their own products, or exhibit a set of tasteful posters.

Do I exhibit in coffee shops? Not anymore. An earlier version of my CV listed several coffee shop shows, useful at the time. Now that I'm a little further along in my career, I've dropped those shows from my CV, in what is now a selective exhibition history. And that's as it should be. I don't need coffee shops now because I'm not aiming for my first gallery, I'm aiming for a better gallery.

Should you exhibit in coffee shops? Depends on where you are in your career. The main advantage is that line on your CV- do you need it? There's also the experience you gain in putting together a show- seeing the body of work up on a wall, assessing how successfully it came together. Do you need the practice? Otherwise.... Sales are negligible. The exposure is dubious: you may become more recognizable locally, but you won't make a good impression on the collecting class (to the degree that we have one in FoCo). They don't look for acquisitions in coffee shops.

Laura points out some other factors to consider:

How is the space representing you? Will an employee at the coffee shop be able to answer any ?'s, or give insight to interested parties like a gallery director could? What sort of environment do you want to be in?

What happens if a piece is damaged or stolen?

Who handles the transaction/sales? If you are paying a commission the store should handle this, IMO. Will they contact you upon any sales?

Hierarchy
I have my own objections to Gallegos's announcement- not to his collective action, which I think is good for young artists. My complaint is with the assumptions about artistic hierarchy that underlie his action. Gallegos complains about the $70 dues collected by the Gallery Walkers, seeing it as an exclusionary device. But, the Gallery Walkers are in the business of art. They have chosen to differentiate themselves as art professionals, and they collect dues to buy ads and print glossy brochures. It's their prerogative to advertise themselves strategically, in the best interest of sustaining their businesses. Each art professional reinforces his own professional identity by association with the others. They reinforce each other's legitimacy, and this benefits both themselves and the artists they represent.

Gallegos complains that this exclusivity is "highbrow" and "stuffy." He doesn't consider that established artists want to be connected with an exclusionary system (of galleries, dealers and exhibit spaces), differentiated from the un-curated miasma of hipster galleries, coffee shops and other DIY ventures. Exclusivity: that's how value is created in an artist's work. The "highbrow" establishment confers value upon the art it embraces. The anointed artist can ask a higher price for her work. To a very limited degree, on a very small scale, this system functions in FoCo. Gallegos isn't doing artists any favors by offering them liberation from the establishment.

To the degree that we even have an establishment in FoCo. Gallegos frames his "revolution" as a rise of the hipsters against the galleries. It's an imaginary conflict. The so-called establishment is just a loosely affiliated assortment of art professionals each trying to carve out a modest niche in a community where there's little demand for art. They're not the enemy. Taylor Gallegos blames the professional art community for downgrading the status of artwork in non-galleries, presumably by refusing association with them. No. The work is downgraded because it's in non-galleries. Being listed in the same gallery guide wouldn't change that; it would just make the professional galleries look less serious by association.

"Who is to say, Gallegos asks, 'what is "better" art?' Who is to say which art will make a bigger impact over time?" Um... I'm to say. The question of which art is good (establishment or hipster) is a false question. Some of the established art is good; much of it is godawful. Some of the hipster art is good; much of it is godawful. The offerings of our commercial galleries are largely mediocre species of provincialism. The genres are traditional and so don't give me much to chew on critically; but my real indictment of them is that most of the art is poor of its kind. Bottom line: local commercial galleries are hardly a worthy adversary. Gallegos's hipsters should get out of town once in a while and find out what they're really up against. Then they should work like hell to get better and move up.

I don't spend a lot of time contemplating the art in coffee shops, bars, or our sole hipster co-op. Once in a while I'll see an artist in these venues who's exceptional: who makes purposeful visual choices, employs intelligent concepts, exhibits an awareness of her own moment in relationship to art history. I say once in a while. When artists reach that level in their work, they generally move on from coffee shops.

It's weird that Gallegos conflates commercial galleries with nonprofit art organizations. The two are very different categories, and I find more to like in the latter, which make some room for progressive practices (not as much as I'd like). I can't talk about them as a single entity, because they each operate differently, but I have no problem with the fact that some are exclusive. I'm for meritocracy. I believe in judging art. I believe in submitting my own art to judgment. It may hurt, but I want to know where I stand- so I can get smarter and make my work better.

The Real Enemy?
My feeling is that Gallegos has created a phantom adversary, which distracts from the real problem with FoCo's art scene. Which is? Basically, it's just a very small scene. When artists are ready to move up from coffee shops, they need somewhere to go; and locally, they have few choices. If they work in traditional and conservative genres, there are a small number of commercial galleries. If they're working in contemporary practices, no dice. The museum formerly known as FCMOCA (now naming itself for an extinct flightless bird) used to create space for emerging contemporary artists. Apparently that opportunity has dried up. The remaining contemporary artspaces are stretched to accommodate more established artists, and there's little to bridge the awkward transition period we call "emerging."

I don't anticipate this situation changing soon. FoCo doesn't have the critical mass to support an endogenous art market. Nor does it have the cultural background out of which to build a tourist-based market (like Santa Fe).

I'm the last person to be calling for remedy. I'm working on my exit strategy. In my defense though, I have made the best of things here for ten years. I could not- and did not- rely solely upon local art venues. In engineering my own emergence (a continuing process), I've shown in Denver galleries, juried shows out of state, and online exhibits. I would advise Gallegos's hipsters to be realistic about the benefit to be had from alternative venues, and to upgrade their art the same way I'm doing: get schooled, get better, and branch out.

The Manifesto
Artistic Colleagues!

This First Friday went off! Huge volume of people, lots of compliments, tons of people looking up at those well decorated purple walls of ours. Thank you to all who have art in the show.. Things are only getting better and better.

BIG NEWS!!! There is a movement being spearheaded here in Old Town Fort Collins. I want to tell you all about it..

Currently there is an art walk in existence called the "First Friday Gallery Walk." The first Friday of every month the galleries downtown open their doors from 6 - 9 pm and shmooze the public. Very nice. BUT, they won't allow any business to be on the walk if it can't show that AT LEAST 50% of sales come directly from artwork.. No bar or restaurant will ever be able to claim this. Also, there is a committee that decides who gets on the walk. Then, on top of that there is a $70 monthly fee to be involved.

Very exclusive. Sort of "High Brow," sort of "Stuffy."

Here's the revolution... Starting the First Friday of August, we are launching the "Locals Walk." "Art for Locals, By Locals." An artwalk involving local businesses, showing local art, at local prices, with no governing committee and no monthly fee. Simple as that. There are businesses in Old Town Fort Collins that continue to display quality local artwork, done by quality local artists, that get no recognition. It's a denunciation of the work that these artists are doing, and it keeps the gallery art (often regional, often more traditional) on a pedestal. Who is to say what is "better" art? Who is to say which art will make a bigger impact over time? Our simple goal is to try to turn the established art hierarchy here in Fort Collins on its head.

We have a great list of participating businesses.. The Gallery Underground, On Display, CoCo Art Studio, The Luscious Nectar, The Vault, The Surfside, Hodi's Halfnote, Mugs Coffee Lounge, Everyday Joe's, The Bean Cycle, Lloyd's Art and Framing, Harper Point Photography, The Red Table, Cafe Ardour, The Lyric Cinema Cafe, etc....

If you have art that you want to hang in town, please look into these venues first.

Press releases to the local media have been sent, flyers are being printed, emails are being circulated, underground chatter has started. The movement is beginning... just Please feel free to send this on to anyone that you would like. And be ready for August 6th, 2010...

Taylor

Why exhibit (selectively)?

2010-07-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

As artists, when we're working passionately and sincerely, we're putting in so much more effort than we'll ever be rewarded for- monetarily. That's all the more true if we've chosen to live in a community where the demand (the market) for art objects is low. If you're like me, you have to remind yourself that you traded in the geographical advantages of a major art center for something else (maybe something important) that brought you to this place. And, if you're like me, that doesn't mean you don't feel resentful sometimes.

Recently my friend M. (almost) seized at the chance to show at a local coffee shop: because he hadn't been exhibiting and was worried about that; and because there aren't many local art venues to choose from. He ended up backing out: disgusted at the prospect of showing in a context unequal to his work, and doubtful that he would sell anything anyway. I can't blame him- he can and should do better. I am however a little dismayed at the defeatist conclusion he himself has drawn from the episode. Rebuffing my suggestion to submit to regional arts centers, he declares, "it seems like a waste of my time to visually entertain folks for nothing."

I understand the point he's making: exhibiting doesn't translate into sales around here- even showing at the most respected venues. In the past, I felt this way too: that I was adding a line on my resume, but that it wasn't leading to anything.

At some point though, I accepted the fact that there's no market here: basic supply-and-demand problem (too many artists, too few collectors). At the same time, I began to clarify to myself the reasons I still had for exhibiting locally- if very selectively. I'm not adding to my bank account, but I am building my reputation. By getting shows at better venues (small museums, university galleries, and arts centers) I'm making myself more attractive to galleries and exhibition spaces in more vigorous (and more competitive) art markets.

I personally have a second reason for exhibiting: my process itself has become more dependent upon exhibition. As I continue my development of a site-specific practice, I've got to have sites to respond to. These need not necessarily be exhibition spaces. I could build things privately, without an audience. I expect I'll be doing some of that. I suspect though, it will be tempting to just build things in my own head, and leave them there, if I don't have plans to show. I know myself well enough to see that audience is a motivator for me in realizing my ideas physically. I know too, that I've got to physically make things, in order to work through ideas and improve on them. I want to improve- that's the most important thing, whether or not my work ever becomes salable. First and foremost, it's this cerebral journey I'm on; I never want it to stop being new and challenging. If showing spurs me to keep moving, then that's reason enough to show.

Announcements!

2010-06-28T11:20:00.000-07:00

So, I'm working on performance art piece: in which I meticulously clean and re-paint every square inch of my house. Kindof a Janine Antoni kindof thing (although, no, I'm not using my tongue). Anyway, not much to see here, but I do have a couple items to pass along:

Aaron Ristau at Art lab

Aaron Ristau’s most recent artwork will be debuted to the public at his upcoming solo exhibition, “Aaron’s Art Lab 2010.” Art Lab Fort Collins will host Ristau and his work at its gallery in Old Town Fort Collins at 239 Linden St. An opening night reception will be held on July 2 from 6 to 9 p.m., where local band Speed Whiskers will perform live.

His new collection features technology recycled and re-crafted into sculpture. More than 25 light and kinetic sculptures will be featured including a custom computer mouse, mechanical sculptures, a remote controlled spacecraft light sculpture, retro punk-style accessories, mobiles, floor lamps, wall sculptures, chandeliers and night lights.

“Aaron’s Art Lab 2010" runs July 2 through July 10. Gallery hours are Fridays from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Saturdays from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, please call Aaron Ristau at (970) 669-1816 or visit www.artlabfortcollins.org.

Through Our Eyes: A Maasai Photographic Journey
Date:
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Time:
1:00pm - 2:00pm
Location:
Lyric Cinema and Cafe, 300 E. Mountain Ave., Fort Collins, CO 80524
Description
A Documentary Short Film of the project featured at Valhall Arts gallery this summer, "Through Our Eyes: An Exhbition of Maasai Photographers", see more info at www.valhallarts.com.

Art-Cation II: New York

2010-06-23T07:35:00.000-07:00

I got back last Wednesday night from my five-day stay in that ultimate of art-cation destinations. Still getting re-oriented to home. What an intense trip! I went with my friend Susannah, who's an early riser and very goal-oriented; so it's to her credit that we wrung every bit of tourist potential out of each day. It was nearly the perfect time to visit. Although it was too late for a few major spring exhibits, there were several important shows up in June too; and the weather was perfect. Every other time I've been to New York, it's been tied in with a family visit- and it's either been the sweltering month of August (when many galleries are closed) or frigid February.

It's not easy to pick out the highlights- we saw so much good stuff...but I've been home almost a week now; and I think I know which moments will stay with me. I'll stick with those.

1. Big Bambú At The Met. We got to the Met our first evening. It was a Saturday and the Museum was open until 9:00pm (and that's how late we stayed). Big Bambú: You Can't, You Don't and You Won't Stop is on the roof- where we also found a beautiful view and mediocre cocktails (but sufficient to soothe the stress of what was otherwise a travel day). This huge and still-growing sculpture/construction is the creation of twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn, assisted by a team of rock climbers. You can buy tickets to walk up and through it on narrow pathways- but no sandals. "But they're tevas!" No dice. We enjoyed it from below, where the interlaced bamboo creates shady cover. Coming off of the Shift show I find myself paying special attention to work that's, variously, site-specific, improvised, linear, modular. Bambú has all of these elements plus grand monumentality- it was powerfully attractive to me. The way I think about my own work right now inclined me to view Bambú as "drawing in space." So, how inspiring to encounter a drawing that one can walk on and through and take shelter under.

2. Lee Bonticou at MoMA. The Lee Bonticou exhibit was the one non-negotiable must-see on my itinerary. I've been intrigued with her work for awhile, but only knew it through reproductions. I wasn't disappointed- they're better in person. I responded to her constructions similarly to the way I did Big Bambú. I was struck first by how improvised they seemed, and nevertheless, spot-on. She was bringing such varied materials together. The stunning untitled mobile (organic/mechanical/alien/aquatic) lists welded steel, porcelain, wire mesh, canvas, grommets, wire. Her wall-mounted constructions (the ones with the deep black maws) list, for example, welded steel, canvas, black fabric, rawhide, copper wire, soot. For the most part these are casual materials. It's as if she saw a need in the developing work, and reached around for the first thing that fit that need. I love that they're a little rough, that they feel raw and necessary, and not second-guessed and fussed over. As someone who gets a little hung-up over which materials "belong" together, I'm inspired by how "impure" Bonticou's constructions are (I hope I'll be more emboldened too).

3. Bruce Nauman at MoMA. I wasn't looking at this one for tips; I just loved it- unexpectedly, because written descriptions of Bruce Nauman's Days didn't do it justice. The work can be summarized (inadequately) as: Fourteen stations, consisting of gray ceiling-hung panels, are fitted with looping recordings. Stools are placed equidistant to pairs of stations. The recordings consist of seven individuals reciting the days of the week, in various orders. The individuals are variously, men and women, and one child. Sounds kind of banal. In some sense, it is- what meaning could be present in a rote recitation of the days of the week? As I found though, by spending time with the piece, it begins to act on the viewer/listener experientially. I slipped into an unspoken ritual followed by most of the visitors to this piece: finding an unoccupied stool, listening to my first pair of recordings (my attention shifting from a single recitation, to two at once), then walking in a circuit around the room, until another stool opened up. While walking, I was at times in close proximity to a single voice; at other times all the voices blended. In unison, the voices seem impersonal, at times pleasantly neutral (like a waterfall or waves crashing), at other times oppressive, mechanical and droning. Then, curiously, my attention would be grabbed by the personal inflection of a single voice; my mind optimistically inferring a fragment of conversation. For me a cycle of lapsing and renewed human connection was established. This was interesting- the degree to which I felt I wanted to connect with each unseen speaker seized out of the crowd, the way I felt rebuffed by the relentless repetition.

4. Kiki Smith at Pace. Wow! On very rare occasions a work of art will hit me this emotionally- it got a little misty in the gallery. Kiki Smith's Lodestar is an exhibit of Pilgrim, a sequence of drawings on large glass panels. These are arrayed upright in the gallery; and viewers can walk among them or sit on benches at various spots. The drawings appear at first to illustrate the story of a big, multigenerational family and the climactic moments in their lives- births, deaths, coming-of-age. This isn't quite right though. Most of the figures are women at different ages, shown singly (sitting or standing awkwardly) or paired variously with a child, a man, or a woman of a different age. A couple of the women appear more frequently- an older woman with short-cropped hair is easy to pick out in many of the tableux. Looking at the panels more carefully in relationship to each other, it becomes apparent that this story is unfolding around one woman- depicted at different ages, and in relationship to different people she has loved. Many of the images entail loss: a woman is shown caring for someone who is ill or dying; or one figure floats away from another, as if ascending to the sky. In some images it seems that it's the younger version of the woman who is departing. It's hard to explain how Smith's drawings feel so tender... They're plain and stark; a kind of brush and ink wash adapted for glass- they have a deceptively casual look. Nothing embellished, nothing superfluous. Her drawings both expose the depicted persons in their vulnerablility, and treat them very gently, very empathetically.

Art-Cation I: Portland, OR

2010-06-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

I had an idea that I was going to blog about last week's trip to Portland in real time, reporting each day on my discoveries there. Not realistic. I stayed too busy- which I think in itself speaks well of the city. Thanks to our friends Chipper and Kirk, and Jay and Desi, for making our visit such an effortless pleasure.
Here are a few highlights:

1. The Museum of Contemporary Craft. Showing were Land Art: David Shaner and Gestures of Resistance. I'm not convinced by the museum's positioning of Shaner's art in the context of Land Art. Nevertheless, his lumpy slabs and vessels are really exquisite in their stubbornly homely way, and indeed evocative of the Western landscape. Gestures of Resistance has an intriguing premise: "work by contemporary artists who focus on craft actions and create works that use craft to agitate for change." I like the idea of crafting as performance. The artist working/performing in the space last week was Ehren Tool, a potter and Gulf War vet. He was just getting started constructing a paradoxically fragile bunker out of clay cups thrown on site.

2. Powell's City of Books. So many books... and a good coffee shop w/ free wi-fi open late. I picked up Gould, "Eight Little Piggies," Danto, "Unnatural Wonders," and Buskirk "The Contingent Object of Contemporary Art". Summer reading!

3. Jason Williams' studio at Radius. Jay is an old friend and Fort Collins transplant. He has a modest space at Radius Studio, which offers work space, classes and workshops and facilities for painting, printmaking and ceramics. I'm a big fan of Jay's abstract oils on plexi; so I was eager to see his recent paintings. Marked progress in already strong work- the forms are more intentional while remaining unforced. I particularly like his introduction of "squeezed" forms- little puddles of paint compressed from all sides. The new work is funny but also tense and aggressive. Awesome paintings- here are three of them:

Jason Williams, Quixote.

Jason Williams, Goma.

Jason Williams, Choir.

4. The Columbia River Gorge. Kirk and Chipper took us on a hike about 3.5 miles up the Eagle Creek trail. Spectacular. Coming from the plains, I can't quite believe all that lushness is real- huge, moss covered trees, thick undergrowth, raw force of falling water.

5. Fabulous Food. Every place we tried was good or great, especially: Bamboo Sushi (the albacore carpaccio was lovely). Siam Society (vanilla-infused pulled-pork and hazelnut springrolls- sound unlikely, but they're divine). Broder (all-Scandinavian-all-the-time; we went for breakfast: tasty unusual savory/sweet combinations, like the lefsa with goat cheese and strawberries).

I think I should be frank about why Ron and I were in Portland: we're shopping for a new city to call home. I was reluctant to mention this because it goes to the heart of my ambivalence towards my current residence. That's a messy subject. Suffice it to say, I'm looking for someplace with ample art career opportunities- more commercial galleries and exhibit spaces. Ron needs a good tech scene and insists on- demands- proximity to mountains. Not many places fit all three criteria. Portland was one of the few; and after this visit, it seems to have emerged as the forerunner.

The gallery scene looked comparable to Denver's in scale. I was hoping to find it a little bigger. (But, there's been economic shrinkage everywhere.) I was reassured by two things. One, there was more variety in contemporary work on exhibit than I've been seeing in Denver in recent years. I like my chances for finding a place for my work, whereas I've been doubtful about fitting in in Denver. Two, Jay pointed out that local artists have good access to the Seattle market, and can reach out to San Francisco and Los Angeles.

As for our other criteria.... We already know there's a strong tech sector. We enjoyed a splendid hike not forty minutes from town, so Ron is satisfied with the mountains. Add bonus points for cute, hip neighborhoods, amazing food everywhere we went, a really easy bus system (we used it almost the whole time), and the right climate for growing an excellent vegetable garden. We're kinda sold.

Shift Wrap-up

2010-06-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

I just got back last night from a week-long visit to Portland, OR. Now I'm home for six days before darting off to New York for another four days. This is really anomalous- I don't normally live a hectic and glamorous jet-setting lifestyle- and the rest of the summer should settle into a relatively quiet routine of art/write/home-improve. In the meantime the writing is catch-as-catch-can. I want to say some things about the culmination of Shift while it's still fresh in my mind; and then on to other topics, I promise.

Shift feels like an important move forward for me. While Amy has been working in an installation-based practice for some time, for me this was a new departure. I'd been making these 3-d wire constructions for close to three years. They were small-scale, stand-alone pieces: very satisfying as a meditation- visual problem solving (like building with tinker toys)- but seemingly fated to be ancillary to the mainstay of my practice (painting and works on paper). While I immensely enjoyed making them, they seemed limited as means of expression, not having the referential vocabulary I'd worked out in 2-d media.

What happened (I think crucially) over the course of this show is that I chose to regard completed constructions as masses of "mark-making" within a much larger 3-dimensional drawing, bounded by the physical space of my gallery niche. I permitted myself to be very destructive: formerly complete (titled) works were completely transformed, broken up or merged. In doing so, I responded to the space of the installation (an alcove, 18'wide x 11'deep x 8' high).

The parameters of walls, floor, ceiling and corners acted upon the form of the piece. The piece started to be about a room, and the masses of wire marking were features of that room. In this way, new possibilities for metaphor were introduced. That was very exciting to me- and continues to be. Hang a globular piece from the ceiling of a room, and it seems to be a chandelier. Attach a passage of net at a corner, and it seems a spider web. Or spread it on the floor, and it becomes a carpet. I'm intrigued with this domestic reference that's entered in. It makes sense to me. I was already attracted to the textile aspect of the net and chain elements, and the way those echoed the thread drawings I was making in 2003-4: both connect to traditionally feminine craft practices, and connect me personally to impressions of my mother and grandmother creating textiles. The staging of a domestic interior further evokes a feminine sphere. The identity of textile-with-spiderweb is a classical metaphor I'm very attracted to as well: the sinister feminine. It seems like I'm reclaiming some ideas I'd been missing in the wire work, and actually making room for new ones too. This was my first foray into installation- and it fit like a glove. I wonder why I haven't been doing this for years.

So, how'd it look in the end? Here is my last batch of photos, of both Amy's and my own space.

Friday 5-28: Amy's space.

Right near the end of the show, Amy drilled into the walls and plugged in circular patches of sod- which I found thrilling. She also placed narrow strips of sod on the floor- "growing" in the cracks between tiles and boards. Effectively, Amy's space became a mash-up of indoor/outdoor references, narratively whipped together in the context of an overarching "cyclone" structure.

Friday 5-28: Amy's space.

Watching Amy at work was incredibly inspiring- a revelation of the act of drawing as very physical, monumental- and ingeniously opportunistic.

Friday 5-28: Amy's space.

Everything she found on site was potential drawing material. Repeatedly, on seeing her re-purpose and rearrange architectural elements, I found myself thinking, "wow- that can be drawing... and that can be drawing too!"

Friday 5-28: Sarah's space.

For the most part I stuck with my planned scheme: installing nine isolated roughly-globular forms, breaking them apart, linking them together. I'm pleased that the outcome was, as I'd hoped, an integrated single piece. However, there remained much more heterogeneity, from one area of the piece to another, than I would have liked.

Friday 5-28: Sarah's space.

In one important respect I broke from my original plan: I'd anticipated dissolving the nine initial pieces into a more-or-less homogeneous net-like structure; and only then rebuilding new areas of denser, distinct form.

Friday 5-28: Sarah's space.

Instead- and to a large degree this was a response to time constraints- I found myself dismantling and rebuilding alternately, moving from one region of the installation to another. Visually this was effective: early decisions (about how to transform a passage) decided later ones, so there was a formal consistency throughout. In conceptual terms though, I wasn't entirely happy with this compromise: I would have preferred to see the whole thing fall apart together. Too, I would have liked to see less evidence of the original nine pieces: the loci where those were installed remained the densest areas of the piece.

Friday 5-28: Sarah's space.

Shift: The Mid-Exibition Report

2010-05-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

Amy Reckley and I are right at the midpoint of our installation exhibit Shift. By Wednesday of last week the installations were beginning to take shape. Amy had popped out ceiling tiles, placed the first of two "cyclone" forms- huge circular gestures fashioned from birch strips- in her space and begun to rearrange the salvaged carpet into organic, sometimes anthropomorphic shapes. I installed nine closed, roughly spherical wire clusters in my own space, carefully choosing the spacing between them.

Saturday 5-15: Amy's space.

By the time the "in-progress" reception was held on Friday, Amy had completed the cyclone structure and addressed the floor of the space, using salvaged panels and tiles to create an uneven surface (as if buckled by destructive natural forces). She had also begun tracing and cutting into a stenciled vintage wallpaper pattern, (effectively identifying the space as a domestic interior). Indulging in an historical in-joke, she piled a length of carpet into the shape of a sitting blanketed figure: Beuys in the corner.

Saturday 5-15: Sarah's space.

By Friday my own space was beginning to feel more "full," as I opened up four of the spheroid clusters, adding the first tentative connections between them and expanding the tendrils of one chandelier-like form into a creeping "spider web". One unanticipated result the closed-to-open action upon the forms: they go from reassuringly harmonious to decidedly sinister. Opening the clusters, releases loose "threads" of wire that seem very much like appendages. Once I've noticed it, I can't help but exploit it, posing "limbs" and trailing "tentacles" around corners. The installation as whole is taking on a really strange atmosphere: both ethereal and ominous.

Wednesday 5-19: Amy's space.

Yesterday (Wednesday the 19th) was the half-way point. Amy continued to incise the wallpaper pattern, exposing the color of the pine boards under glue and primer. This wall drawing creates an additional layer to the whole 3-dimensional drawing of the piece, lending it depth and visual richness.

Wednesday 5-19: Sarah's space.

I worked on a new web-like passage, where I had earlier opened a sphere into a cradle-like form. At this point I've settled on a few semantic guides to structure the outcome of this piece: webs, nets, cradles, chandeliers. By working on variations of just a few basic forms, I'm keeping the piece "reigned in" conceptually.

Shift: the what, the why and the when

2010-05-15T20:14:00.000-07:00

Shift is a two-woman installation show at the Fort Collins Lincoln Center, featuring Amy Reckley and yours truly. The premise of the show is that the installations change over the course of the three-week exhibit. The way we're working is very much site-specific. Amy and I are both responding to the context of immanent demolition and renovation of the space - although we each bring our own personal and idiosyncratic concepts to the work as well. Here's the main thing I want you to know: the show runs through May 28, and it's a little bit different every day. Stop by:

Mondays – Fridays, 8am – 6pm
Saturdays, noon – 6pm
Evenings of performances

This is to be the last art show before the galleries reopen in Spring 2011. The space we're working in has been rendered effectively disposable, opening up a one-time opportunity to radically alter the gallery... which we both jumped at, stripping the beige-carpeted walls and purple-carpeted floor.


Amy stripping carpet.

Because the exhibit will evolve, I'm documenting our progress, photographing the work every couple of days. The first two days of the exhibit were committed mainly to preparing the space. Amy is constructing her piece partly out of the materials found on-site: the carpet, the acoustical ceiling tiles, the wall in its raw state. I needed something closer to a blank canvas- a more or less neutral backdrop for my frail wire constructions. So, after stripping the carpet, I painted the ceiling and floor a soft cream color. (I'm very indebted to gallery crew members Aki and Nancy for their assistance at this stage.) I put just one coat on the wall because I liked the rough texture and the many many nail holes, reflecting a history of use. Those were a welcome surprise- they remind me of constellations, and I'm happily integrating them into the piece.


Wednesday 5-12: Amy's Space.


Wednesday 5-12: Sarah's space.

Wednesday 5-12: Detail from Sarah's space

Still with me? Below are our artist statements- and stay tuned... I'll be posting images and thoughts as the exhibit progresses.

Amy Reckley
I think of my practice to be drawing. The questions that I attempt to explore in my work are grounded in contemporary art discourse that combines two and three-dimensional practices into an elastic definition of drawing.

Borrowing fragments from the natural and the constructed world, my drawings are never completely non-representational. In response to specific locations and architectural structures, I propose for the viewer a fluctuation between perspective and physical presence. I reflect upon a particular set of structural conditions set forth by existing spaces (corners, rafters, stairs, ceilings, walls), and engage possibilities within those spaces with specific materials, gestures and divisions.

For me, drawing is the most immediate visual method of inventing, expanding and articulating simultaneous realities. I am interested in the potential of an instance where space, location, and time teeter between reality and imagination.

My personal studio practice does not fit comfortably within the confines of traditional definitions in drawing. I incorporate aspects of installation, sculpture, video, performance and digital manipulations as ways of exploring all stages in the life of a particular work. By using a variety of methods in conjunction with traditional and non-traditional media my processes serve to communicate drawing as a practice that is both noun and verb, object and action, formal and conceptual.

New genres within the contemporary art world question how we define art – what form it takes, where it takes place, how long it lasts - and the process of making.

Sarah Vaeth
For several years an idea of construction/ dissolution has been the major principle of my work. My drawing process is driven by activities like placement, building, dismantling, rebuilding. Often I'm working from a basic unit of line or mark, thinking of the lines or marks functioning like bricks out of which the image is “built.”

This synonymous relationship between drawing and building arrives at literal equivalence in my wire drawings. (I do think of these 3-d constructions as drawings, only the line is physically embodied in a length of wire.) I may spend as much time taking a construction apart, as I spend making it. These works begin as symmetrical and firmly supported quasi-architectural forms- then I introduce flaws in the integrity of the structure, moments of slippage. I feel finished when I've hit this balance between precise placement and capricious disarray.

This play between structure and the dissolution of structure is very compelling for me, suggesting analogies to human constructions subjected to time and entropy.

The fortuitous timing of this installation, preceding a partial demolition/renovation of the Lincoln Center, has inspired me to think about how this piece can speak to the imminent change affecting the space. My response is to foreground the process by working publicly on a piece that evolves or "shifts" over the course of the exhibition. I've broadly planned the direction of this shift analogously with the idea of demolition-to-renovation: proceeding from closed/ isolated forms, to an open/ intermingled structure, to the emergence of new loci of distinct form within that structure.

Master of Fine Arts Exhibition at CSU

2010-05-09T19:32:00.000-07:00

I can’t let an MFA show come and go without a word or two. And this one’s been up for a month so it’s about time, right? Arguably these exhibits present the best new talent of our region, poised to be launched into the greater Art World. I won’t argue with that: the work on exhibit now at the University Art Museum is confident and thoughtful- but only a few works really made my heart sing. Here are my three favorite artists from CSU’s Spring 2010 Master of Fine Arts Exhibition. What were yours? Comment with your own best-of-MFA picks.

Sara Goldenberg White, Refractions

Sara Goldenberg White

White’s Fiber installation Refractions (2009-10) contextualizes her textile pieces as an “underwater environment,” with the long cloths and organic scrunched forms hung in a tranquil blue alcove replete with booming oceanic soundtrack. Although i’s a pleasant and meditative way to encounter the work I’m not totally sold on it as an under-the-sea vignette. My feeling is that White overemphasizes the marine reference: pounding the message home with the install, where she could trust the viewer to appreciate this reference intrinsic to the forms. Which are very fine taken on their own. Her palette comes from the red tones absorbed by the ocean, so that the piece “highlights the colors of absorption, inverting our usual view of the ocean.” I was best able to appreciate this in the vertical cloths: the subtle shift from wine-red into plum, into gold was shown to full effect here; so was all the richness and nuance of the weave. In the scrunched forms- wrinkled cylinders like tube worm shells- color and medium seem less important than the biomorphic metaphor. Because they seem like creatures to me, I wonder about if they could be arranged to interact more. Dispersed separately throughout the alcove, they seem a little passive. What if they were piled and clustered together the way tube worms or corals are?

Bart Mills, Focused Meditation

Bart Mills

Of Mills’ three mixed media pieces, the only one not working for me is the single figurative piece. The other two canvases rely on physical surface rather than depiction; and they’re stronger for it. Mills seemingly acknowledges that this is where his strength lies- in the making of physical objects which are psychologically connotative. In his artist statement he explains, “My interest is in making contemplative work. The work requires the viewer to participate with patience, allowing time to reflect and let thoughts wander instead of directly decoding something that fits neatly into verbal language.” Mills’ square canvas Untitled (2009) is visually simple at first: it might be a section of bisque-colored plaster wall. But the longer you look at it, the more variation you see; and you begin to infer a long history and sense of place from the stains and uneven fading, the cracks and rough patches.

Focused Meditation (2009) similarly appears as an aged relic. Raised letters cover the the surface of the long horizontal canvas in uninterrupted rows: meaningful phrases can be made out, but no spaces and no punctuation, so the text is evasive. The whole surface is corroded and peeling, as if the letters are stamped in what is now badly rusted metal. In some places they give way altogether to a crusty deposit, so one can imagine the eventual obliteration of the text.

Farrell Tompkins, Self-Portrait Grid

Farrell Tompkins

Farrell chooses a stance as “the quiet observer of the world around me.” Indeed, her self portraits are powerfully quiet: whispery apparitions that force the viewer to hold very still and look closely. She presents herself in classic three-quarter profile, rendered variously in fragile line etching, or subtly colored block prints. In Self-Portrait Map she draws selectively, using a minimal contour line to choose what information she’ll share, and what to hold back. Her block printing palette is also designed to veil as much as reveal: in Self-Portrait Grid she all but disappears in nine almost white-on-white panels. Tomkins recognizes a metaphorical function in the process of reductive block printing. What comes across is the individual reduced to a quiet presence. The artist is frank about the distillation that results from translating her initial drawings into a prints, a process in which layers of color and shape are isolated, thus abstracted from the whole image. “…I intend to raise questions as to whether the viewer can ever know my personal psychological truth…. The manipulation of abstract shapes causes a sense of separation between the viewer and the artist, and ultimately underscores my role as creator of my own image.”

The Master of Fine Arts Exhibition is on exhibit at the University Art Museum through June 12.

Introducing.... Vaeth Art Blog

2010-05-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

My recent work: Floating City at Art Lab

Hi! My name's Sarah Vaeth and I am a Northern Colorado-based visual artist and critic. I currently write for Scene Magazine and Scene Savvant. If you've been following my art reviews at Scene Savvant, you'll find those here too. You'll also find reviews that range beyond the local scene (art I like wherever I find it), and posts dealing with my own studio practice and art-related interests. Here it's all me all the time. By the way, I'll be making a concerted effort at both blogs to share regional art announcements. So email me about an upcoming art exhibit or event in Northern Colorado or Denver: I can't promise I'll review it, but I'll definitely announce it.