Tomorrow we're in New York for the Whitney preview. Look for our first take on the Whitney on Wednesday. See ya then.
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Tomorrow we're in New York for the Whitney preview. Look for our first take on the Whitney on Wednesday. See ya then.
clockwise, from top left, Leda--Sugar Gilder, Maureen--Echidna, Simone--Ermine and Tom--River Otter, by Julie Bradley Norton
A small home gallery in West Philadelphia has been operating for a couple of years, right next door to where Roberta used to live back in the day, and just three blocks from where I live. How could I have not known about it?
Currently up in Gallery 13 w. (named for the 13 Trolley plus a W to differentiate it from another Gallery 13) is a series of paintings of animals with souls, by Julie Bradley Norton, whose background is in illustration and whose artists statement is sincere about the Buddhist belief in the souls of even inanimate things. Also the exhibit includes one of the Fringe Festival rolling toilets by Steve and Billy Blaise Dufala.
The show is in a house owned by contractor/carpenter Jon Stivers, (who is 47 and still single, he announced). Stivers liked the idea of showing art. "My big brother is an artist...and always had art around," he said. Brother Mark is in Sacramento, but he studied painting at Tyler, and is a cartoonist whose work appears in Funny Times.
Jon talked his drinking buddy Januario Esteves and his then housemate, Teresa Curran, into putting on shows. Esteves, like Bradley, started out as an illustrator, but he gave it up for fine art after more than 20 years. In most cases, Esteves curates the shows. Here's more stuff about Esteves that I can't resist sharing. He was born in Portugal in 1947 and grew up in Angola. In 1962 he came to the U.S. and graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1969. 
Curran posing in Gallery 13 w., with a detail of Norton's "Maurice--Giraffe"
Curran, a painter and PAFA/Penn alum, now lives around the corner. She worked for a while at Charles More's gallery and for six months at the Wood Turning Center. The experience shows in the professional way the exhibit is hung. She also curated this show.
While I may not have been aware of the gallery, apparently lots of other people have been, because they show up for openings (really the only time to get in unless you make an appointment). Stivers said the gallery sold stuff in the last four shows. The sales were in the hundreds of dollars range, but not bad for artists without a track record.
The openings include fabulous food and sometimes music. "People come for the food," said Stivers, which last time included scallops, escargot, and salmon. The idea is to create a feast for the various senses, he said. "I like socializing, and I'm starting to get used to entertaining. I used to agonize."
Curran, who is now a full-time house painter and is teaching herself decorative techniques, said the neighborhood was full of talented people.
The gallery has also shown some more established artists like Robert Asman and John Overmayer. 
Charlie--Llama by Julie Bradley Norton
Norton's 18 paintings mostly are iconic animals against white or black backgrounds. She hasn't done a lot of this kind of painting before, and some of that inexperience shows in the surfaces. But the animals are human--kind of like Edward Hicks' Peaceable Kingdom critters, especially his alter-ego, the lion. Norton's beautifully simplified, slightly comic animals, besides delivering graphic punch, have names as well as eyes that do seem to serve as windows to their souls.
Billy Blaise Dufala and Steven Dufala's rolling toilet
Billy and Steve Dufala's rolling toilet is displayed with surprising dignity on a little rug that serves as a pedestal substitute in this show. The tricycle chassis is elegantly elongated and lyrical. So's the paint. Steve did the detailing and Billy Blaise the construction work. The porcelain throne is a readymade, a salute to Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain." In case you were out of town during the Fringe Festival, this piece was created as part of a fleet of 14 or so pieces of rolling stock, created to parade on the street, removed from the fine-art world of the gallery. It holds up well in this alternate venue.
The show is up through April 7, 4504 Regent Street, Philadelphia. 267-312-1426. A portion of Norton's sales will be donated to an organization providing support for endangered animals.
Upcoming shows at Gallery 13 w. are, April 22 to June 10, a group show with Norton, Maija Miettinen, Maija Jesperson, David Guinn and Pavel Efremoff; July 22 to Sept. 9, "The Figure Revisited," with James Lint, John Overmeyer, Robert Asman and Adam Presti; and Oct. 21 to Dec. 9, Salvatore Cerceo.
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Originally uploaded by sokref1.
Click picture to see it bigger. Installation shot of Anthony Campuzano's exhibit at Fleisher-Ollman Gallery. Words in the vitrine piece say "Is this any way to haunt a house? You bet it is!"
We're surrounded by words. Some come in from sources like radio, television, the internet, signs and labels. These words either reverberate or they don't. They're either useful or simply background to the day. But the ones that reverberate, the words and phrases that get picked up and used -- the jokes, the stories, the funny signage, the bon mots, the slang -- that's the ever-weaving fabric of who you are.
Language grows as you grow and it stretches to fit all sizes and shapes. And language is something you share. Anthony Campuzano's been sharing his word art for some time. Now until March 4 the artist has his first solo exhibit at Fleisher-Ollman Gallery. Campuzano's a word magician and his art is twice obsessed: It's fueled by love of language and fueled by love of a good story. In piece after piece, Campuzano's words tell stories. Looking at his art is like sitting around a campfire and listening to a raconteur spin a yarn. Sometimes the yarn's a shaggy dog story and sometimes the yarn pops like a firecracker and lingers in the air.
Most word art -- indeed most words -- have multiple meanings and allow a rich subtext for the reader/viewer. Campuzano's words are sometimes the headlines that make you hungry to read the story. And sometimes, as in his 12-panel opus, "The last words of Lee Harvey Oswald, compiled by Mae Brussell" they are the story itself. In all cases the words are symbols and broadcast with the urgency of a frisky puppy. They WILL be heard.
One thing more. The physicality of this work elevates it beyond a lot of word art. Whether it's the choice of colors or the intensely worked background behind the words, these are objects whose hand-made charms keep coming. This is far from automatic writing. It's planned and conceived and executed with care. Campuzano's on a quest and I can't wait to see where the journey takes him next time.
We've written a lot about the young artist's work. Here's Libby's recent post on this show. And see the artist's index for more. For photos of the show see my flickr set. And by the way, when I stopped in last week I found the large show all but sold out.
Post by Dan Schimmel
One of John Murphy's false landscapes from the series Seeing is Believing, 2004, digital print, dimensions variable
The ArtBlog quoted a quote (see post):
“Instead of inventing landscapes as a reflection of interior states of mind—a much more common practice nowadays in the art world—Diane Burko is an uncommon artist-explorer of the majesty of the land and its psychological and spiritual effects on us.”
The Problem of Prevost's Squirrel, one of Samantha Simpson's landscapes of the mind, partly obscured by a ladder and slashes of sunlight
I am very amused by the ill-logic of that quote that actually completes itself as a circuitous whole. It’s like that myth of the snake eating it’s own tail.
Isn’t any art form an invention of an ‘interior’ state if it is created by choices human as opposed to chance or computer machine? Even a camera is aimed. And painting from photographs is no cure for the hopelessly personal attempts at becoming more than ourselves.
Cloud Plume, by April Gornick, also an imaginary landscape
I think it is misguided to imply that what one artist paints is a better realism than another because one is invented while another is....not invented???!!!
Do Diane Burko’s ‘majestic’ landscapes trump Paul Klee’s little cosmos’ in the realm of ‘psychological and spiritual effect’ because her painted reflections are superficially more external than his?
Internal, external. Blah blah blah.
--Artist Dan Schimmel is director and curator of exhibitions at the Esther Klein Gallery
ahem. Dan had some extra thoughts about this post, so I put them in the comments section. If you don't see Dan's comment below, just click on the red word "Comments" at the bottom of the post.
Chinatown Map, by Jihyun Park
Pink sticks of incense assembled into a 3-D map of Chinatown is on display at the Asian Arts Initiative until about mid-March. It's on loan from the artist, Jihyun Park, one of the participants in Chinatown In/Flux, a now-concluded community arts project organized by AAI and featuring installations by seven Asian American artists in and around Philadelphia's Chinatown.
The piece is cross shaped, the horizontal bar being the Vine Street Expressway, which has cuts through Chinatown and long blocked the spread of Chinatown northward.
Among the charms of the piece are the swoop of the Reading Viaduct cutting through the urban grid, and the two tones of what looks like a zillion sticks of pink incense.
Park created this map as an afterthought for Chinatown In/Flux in addition to his main piece Chicken Broccoli, a series of ceramic broccoli bonsais with chicken perched atop, displayed in the window of a Chinatown business. Chicken Broccoli salutes and mocks all at once the cheap ceramics mass produced in China for export around the world. At the same time he mocks the commodification of Chinese culture and also mocks our American confusion of the various Asian cultures.
Park's Chicken Broccoli tshirt
Speaking of merchandising, the catalog for Chinatown In/Flux is now available, and Park himself has created a nice Chicken Brocolli t-shirt, not being a bit above commodifying his own work. Both are for sale, of course, $20 for the t and $15 for the catalog ($12 for AAI members).
Park also has a New York City incense map--gold incense, of course--scheduled for exhibit at Art in General in New York in April.
Rickshaw NYC, by Nitin Mukul
And speaking of New York City, a painting by New York artist Nitin Mukul of a rickshaw in New York City (yes, there really are bicycle-drawn ones, these days) amid piles of tires and advertising signs with a third-world, homemade look, was a highlight of his small exhibit at AAI of paintings and video, now on display. I also liked the shelter drill (we who dropped the bomb on Asia teaching our children what position to die in should Asia return the favor), and a triptych, Want Some Candy, of three men wearing Indian masks. The faces are photographic prints, but the cerulean sky is painted on, pulling the masks out of context and turning them into something menacing and leering. This is the transformation of the gods of Indian culture into the feared other of our national xenophobia.
a detail from Mukul's Want Some Candy triptych
Most of Mukul's work is based on photocollages, and like so many photocollages, sometimes they work, sometimes not. But when he's good, he's terrific. His resume includes a list of interesting New York area shows, including "Fatal Love" in 2005 at the Queens Museum of Art. He was also a Sol LeWitt execution team member in 2004.
Got two more emails worth noting:
Bridgette Mayer of the Bridgette Mayer Gallery will be featured on CNN's "On the Rise" Wednesday, March 8, 10-12 p.m. (EST). A featured story will also be airing on CNN's website on Thursday, March 9.
"On the Rise" is a series about successful business owners.
Diane Burko's Palami Pali with David Okita, #2, inkjet print
A Philly triple
A triple Philadelphia connection is working over at Tufts University, where the Philadelphia Art Alliance's former Curator Amy Schlegel is showing work by Philadelphia painter and photographer Diane Burko, Feb. 9 to April 2, Koppelman Gallery. The third Philadelphia connection is the show will travel to the Michener Museum in Doylestown, June 10-October 15, 2006. Here's my favorite part of the description that accompanied the email:
Instead of inventing landscapes as a reflection of interior states of mind—a much more common practice nowadays in the art world—Diane Burko is an uncommon artist-explorer of the majesty of the land and its psychological and spiritual effects on us.
Got this note from Brian Wallace at the Galleries at Moore
1) we have scheduled three free public events connected to the show:
March 2, 2pm
Director of Exhibitions Brian Wallace and Carlos Basualdo, Curator of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art
March 8, 11:30am
Wallace and Annabelle Rodriguez, Visual Arts Curator, Taller Puertorriqueño, Philadelphia
March 15, 6pm
Wallace and Paul Hubbard, chair, 3D Fine Arts at Moore College of Art & Design
2) we have added a great deal of Portuguese-English and French-English interpretations, overview curatorial texts (on walls and in a brochure), and
3) 6 or 8 more full-color duplicates of artists' books (joining the 6 we had for the opening)
4) This particular show is open 7 days a week ("what to do on Monday") [this is libby's personal favorite]
5) it is only open until March 19, and
6) admission is, as always, free.
Eddie and Ben, by Andrea Stern
Andrea Stern's exhibit of photographs at the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art (in Rodeph Shalom on Broad Street), turns out to be a sort of antithesis to the Nan Goldin photos at the Morris Gallery at PAFA (see post).
Stern, in "Inheritance," is showing 19 images, all family photos, and all way too large to be considered snapshots, although most have a snapshot quality, a quick, capture-the-moment sort of affect.
But there's no snapshot zaniness here, no posing for the camera as an outside eye, no putting the best face on things that people in snapshots tend to do, with big smiles, posed comaraderie and forced ebullience.
The Ten Plagues, with suggestions of a birthday celebration, presents and too much of a good thing
The photographs are of Stern's family, and they are taken in New York City, Palm Beach, Los Angeles, and on a Disney Cruise. They show people who are bound to eachother and their shared pasts. The photos have the weight of ancestry and traditions and rituals and possessions. They also have the weight of a life lived in plenty.
Their force is centripetal, and claustrophobic at times. It offers closeness and belonging and love--and airlessness.
Goldin's world is the very opposite, the force centrifugal, the boundaries not only crossed but smashed through to some escape from all the rules. Goldin's world is bohemian, a circle of peers who have found eachother and the endless party as they drifted away from the past that suffocated them. Ironically, it's the intense connection to others, to love and to family that Goldin is seeking.
Cynthia
Stern's "Cynthia," in her red-patterned dress, standing in front of a sideboard topped with ritual silver candle sticks and havdalah set, a red-patterned wallpaper behind, seems less the subject than the patterns and the possessions. With her expensive hair streaks and conservative cut, it is the Jewish version of a Main Line matron, woven into the fabric of her life in such a way that it's no longer her life but the life she was given.
The large scale that Stern chooses for her images puts these photos in the same class as the possessions that Stern is photographing along with the family. There's a sense here of a European past, a desire to use the possessions--ritual and secular--for ballast and roots. 
Marlon, the name alone a sign of assimilation, the leather tfillin straps a sign of Jewish prayer tradition and the ties that bind
The family serves as a bunker, a safe haven away from the American mainstream at the same time the family is wholly of the American mainstream. The exhibit in that richly appointed Jewish house of worship, Rodeph Shalom, raises issues about assimilation and holding on to the past, a past that helped Jews and Jewishness survive in alien lands.
I'm not sure that Stern meant to show her family as both protection and prison. Her artists statement says nothing of the sort.
I'm not sure if I hadn't seen the Goldin exhibit, that Stern's photos would have been as meaningful to me. But I had, and they were.
In a way, I am too close to the culture of these pictures, so I had to overcome my personal issues to spend the time with them that they merited.
Some of the photographs are wonderful, telegraphing a complete world, a complete culture, in just a few artifacts and a figure. I once again want to put in a good word for curator Matt Singer, who continues to make this offbeat space worth a visit for provocative contemporary art.
Interview with Jacksonville FL artist Mark Creegan, continued. Read Part 1.
Tell me about the paintings which seem to spring from a different well than the sculptural installations...they're more coded and less overtly playful although i do get some notion of play from them. But play like Richard Tuttle plays -- arty not like a kid.
Sink, foam, acrylic, oil and flashe, acetate on canvas, 12" X 16", 2004
The paintings were part of my initial work in grad school and were the result of taking stock of what I was making and how I was making it. Before school, I was making these abstract paintings (ala Tom Nozkowski but not as good) using thick layers of acrylic paint and medium. Considering other forms of paint and mediums, my first piece in grad school was an installation of butterscotch candy (the pigment) wrapped up in plastic wrap ( the medium) to form a long rope which then could be used to make a field on the wall and extend out into the space. 
Road, foam core, acrylic, flocking, acetate, 22" X 20" X 2", 2004
This segued into the relief paintings which echoed some of my earlier painting but using cut layers of foamcore, layers of transparent plastic forms and acetate, and found objects. Vinyl paint was used on the first batch but I gradually began to let the intrinsic colors of the materials dominate.
This led me to using objects that had paint applied to them thru other processes and circumstances other than me applying paint. These would be the used paint rollers, watercolor pans, paint can drips etc. that show up in the later arrangements. The rollers were collected as I worked at the local art museum as a preparator during school. I loved the idea of using these discarded elements that related to the artworld from a custodial perspective. Same with the can drips and children’s art supplies.
What's the art scene like in Jacksonville?
Kris' Spiral, Foam Sheets, gumballs, paperclips, monofilament, Dimensions Vary, 2005
Strange. We have a huge art gallery at the beach built by a Johnson & Johnson heir that looks like a big money gallery in New York. It has shown Al Held and Yayoi Kusama. [Ed. note: that would be J. Johnson Gallery]
What is funny is that it is surrounded my beach bums in flip flops and tacky souvenir shops. I love that clash of cultures! There is no thriving arts district because people are so spread out because it is such a large city land-wise. Most of the galleries are really commercial and tame and cater to the décor aesthetic of the beach or golf enthusiasts. 
Strapping On, Used paint rollers, bungee cord on wall, Dimensions vary, 2004
There have been some short lived attempts to get things going. Right now there is one gallery run by artists who went to graduate school. It is called Seesaw and it has put on some really interesting conceptual shows. Other than that we really need alternative spaces. We do have a pretty good modern art museum which has done their best. The museum building is nice and some of their shows have impressed me. [Ed. note: That's the Jacksonville MoMA.]
Many peeps here are starving for culture in this sports and business environment- meetings are held, plans are made- but nothing really exciting happens. I think if there was an art school with an MFA program in this city things would happen because the grads (some anyway) would stay and stir things up. For the most part, those with that degree go to or participate in better art communities. Cool artists! Please move here! Rent’s cheap and we got a beach!!!
Anything you'd like to tell us? Are you a native Floridian? Surfer dude? been adjudged an art prodigy since you were in kindergarten? Make any comix?
Boog Woog, Used Paint rollers, used watercolor pans, cassette tape cases, Dimensions vary, 2004
I am a web surfer dude! I was born and raised in central and north Florida. I was basically an only kid raised by a single mom so I found ways to entertain myself creatively. I always drew pictures and made up comics to entertain my friends in school. My high school newspaper would publish my caricatures of teachers. But I did not take art seriously until college when I took my first art class one summer.
My feeling is that art is getting smaller instead of bigger (I don't mean size-wise). Artists are hunkering down and turning inward more and making small statements instead of big ones. It's almost like the fight's gone out of art. No more transforming the earth, the visions are smaller and reflect less about the world and more about inner states of being. It's not a bad thing but it points to a negativism about the world, especially in art by young artists. Are you optimistic about where art is going? (that's a huge question and requires more than a yes or no, so feel free to break off a part to chew over). 
"Fieldstream" an array of used craypas
I never fret over the direction of art. It is going in all directions so why get on some soap box? I understand some do concern themselves over whatever they perceive as going backward or too far or whatever. I appreciate their passion but it seems silly to me. Art is silly, it is sincere, shallow, smart, stupid, a cry for attention, a means to get laid, an attempt to point to injustices, an ironic statement, a reverence for technique all at the same time.
But I do hear you. I think a lot of artists just want to escape from the world right now. Especially the young ones who are disgusted at what a world/country we are inheriting. We need more creative leaders in this country to face all the challenges of today, which are at super critical status (the environment, foreign relations, economy, health care). I was deflated after the last election and feel like going into a hole (with my radio tuned to NPR) for four years. Care to join me?
What art magazines do you think are relevant these days? Do you subscribe to any?
I no longer subscribe mostly because the internet keeps me abreast of the latest art news and happenings. But I check them (AiA, Artforum, etc) out at bookstores and such. Sometimes I even peek at the technique magazines for kicks.
Is there any found material you dream of finding in quantity so that you can make an installation with it?
Well, can a creative imagination be considered a material? I already have so many accumulated materials and the only thing that keeps them from being used is my limited imagination. So I want more of that. Adjunct teaching at the local colleges has proven to me what a rare thing a fruitful imagination is. And when you witness it, your belief in art (and maybe humanity) is refreshed.
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Originally uploaded by sokref1.
It can't always be Spring or Summer. And the wintry bleakness of the current members' show at Vox Populi seems an almost natural cyclical turn from the exuberant growth-ful (if not entirely hopeful) Parts to the Whole of last month. (See posts here and here for a reminder of that show.)
M. Ho's Another New Year displays death on the gallery floor in a graveyard-like grid of New York TImes front pages with everything "blued" out but the above-the-fold color pictures. We all see dead people now thanks to the open-eyed front page coverage of carnage in the Middle East and eco-disasters from Thailand to Louisiana. 
One of Ho's blued-out NY Times front pages, shows two soldiers hugging a coffin.
Ho told me she'd collected the papers over several years and her use of the single, solidifying blue came from thinking about the sky and the quiet calm it can bring. I called it a baby blue -- innocent. And she told me a story about Felix Gonzales Torres who made an infinite stack that was a baby blue color. The piece was called Lover Boy and Gonzales Torres referred to the blue as the color of innocence. Ho said she's a big admirer of the late artist's works.
One of Robert Chaney's drawings of California
Robert Chaney's California-themed room of Polaroids, drawings and a painting is much ado about the sky also. But it's a sky seen through the infrastructure of wires, stop signs and Western urban effluvia. Chaney's works just keep getting better. The graphite drawings, all black silhouetted shapes against a stark white void are eerie and anthemic. This is a familiar but forbidding world.
Linda Yun's piece with joint compound sanded down to within an inch of its life
Linda Yun, using make-up and joint compound made several works of Rothko-like or Turrell-like mysitcal spiritualism. White on white works with body glitter adding starry sparkle the works are windows on a world of white-out. Yun's pock-marked piece using joint compound grabbed me. In the context of the other works' pristine beauty this seemingly flawed work -- especially lovely for all the footprints in the snow below it -- was imperfection personified. Imperfect skin, dirty window, snow fall of dark unloveliness. I love it for its vulnerability.
The show's up through Sunday so swing by if you can. And also, check back soon for information on a forthcoming fundraiser for Vox to help it with its imminent move out of the Gilbert Building. (They like all tenants have to move because the building's being torn down to make way for the Convention Center expansion. And the move may be sooner rather than later (as in May might be their last show in Gilbert, Ho said.) Anyway, apparently Victory brewing is preparing some kind of fundraiser for the group. More on that when I get the details.
Mark Creegan, an artist in Jacksonville, FL, is one of my flickr friends. His flickr moniker is onesock which I like alot for its embrace of what many people consider a useless discard.
Creegan’s art which I’ve seen online at his flickr pages and at his website makes use of discarded materials like children's watercolor paints, rubber bands, magazines and what looks like mayonaise or salad dressing containers from Wendy’s.
In arrangements that are whimsical and surprising Creegan transforms the ordinary into something that verges on the monumental.
Intrigued by the art I saw I emailed the artist some questions to see what lay behind his playful but serious art. Here’s part one of our interview. Part 2 is here.
Interview with Mark Creegan
You use ordinary materials to make comments about art, art history and the larger world of commerce and culture. who are some of your art heroes? and who -- if any -- are the art villains...or do you think in those terms?
"Twist" which looks like it might be a twisted sock could also be a riff on Brancusi's endless columns. The piece appears to be a stack of mayonaise or salad dressing cups.
“Art Heroes & Villains” brings to mind some comment I once read drawing similarities between artists and the X-Men (both are extraordinary and social outcasts).
I suppose I make some sort of distinction in my mind about who rocks and who doesn’t, but I really try to be open to acknowledging the virtues of many different forms of art.
I am a promiscuous art nerd because so much impresses me. But, if I have to choose, my personal heroes would be those that have shaped my conception of what is do-able in art and allowed me to expand my artistic sensibilities. When I saw Tony Feher’s work for the first time in NY I was profoundly changed in terms of being aware of the intrinsic qualities of material and of the precise gesture. For these and other reasons I would have to also cite artists like Rachel Harrison, Ry Rocklen, David Hammons, Tom Friedman, Ellen Harvey, Dieter Roth, Jim Shaw, Jessica Stockholder and so many others (certainly Polly Apfelbaum and Rich Tuttle whom you mention later). But anyone making interesting and engaging work is a hero in my eyes.
"Fieldwall," detail, made with used watercolor paints.
I think my commentary is about my relationship to art, or my feelings about it having grown up a lower class white kid wanting a “better” life. Art is my escape, my step up from what I was supposed to become. But I enter it through a base, physical and emotional reaction to material and form.
Also, I have worked at many different types of art businesses –everything from hip art galleries to cheesy frame shops- and the funny thing about it is that each of these constitute a separate artworld that assumes that it is the only “real” one. Each exists in its own bubble and I have been able to float around in all of them. I find this such a funny and pitiful situation and microcosmic of the larger cultural, political, and religious disconnects we witness today. Obviously, I have my own inclination as to which art world I consider more important.
The Kent watercolor floor arrangement is, like many of your works, child-like in its simplicity: Take some materials and arrange them. On the other hand, like minimalists -- and like Duchamp with his readymades, you are messing with materials, and that's transgressive. Is childhood your reference -- the artist as child? Or do you go straight to the transgression: I will subvert the intent of this material.
"Kent Watercolors" here seen on the floor ala Polly Apfelbaum.
More often than not it is the material subverting my intention, and hopefully I pick up on it and run with it.
Children subvert the intent of material all the time. Childhood seems packed with transgression that usually involves the simple, small thing transforming into the complex, gigantic thing. Sometimes I think I am just continuing my childhood practice of building forts out of boxes and pillows (when I can tap into it, of course).
The watercolor pieces come from seeing my wife, who is an elementary art teacher, clean out her supplies to get ready for class the next day. She was washing the used sets at the kitchen sink and I thought they looked beautiful. 
"Watershed" det., Used watercolor pans, tape on wall, Dimensions vary, 2005
I only use the ones that have actually been used by the kids in her classes. And what a contrary thing to then take these objects which come from one context (elementary art ed) into another (high art). I like to think that on some number of refrigerators are little watercolor pictures made out of the objects I am using in a piece for some intellectuals at a gallery. Most of those pictures are probably way better than my stuff.
Of course many art things come to mind here with the Kent watercolor ovals, like minimalism (the fieldwall grid brings to mind Agnes Martin...the floor arrangement, Polly Apfelbaum for example.) When you came through art school was there a prevailing wind blowing towards or against an "ism?" Down with minimalism, up with reductivism?
The professors and students at Florida State all had their inclinations toward or away from reductivism. But, for the most part, these issues were not debated. I think it was like most grad school programs these days where everything is fodder. As a student, I was drawn to the Bay Area Conceptualists and Arte Povera but I wasn’t thinking in hierarchical “movement” terms. My direction in school came from responding to the materials and a distillation of ideas more than wanting to fit in some cultural niche. My grad school experience was very good. I was encouraged to find my own voice.
In a way, your pieces call up lands like Lilliput where tiny people live in one world and we giants live in another. Your art magazines as Serra's Torqued Elipses for example seem ideal environments for tiny folk to walk in. Want to comment on Serra's Elipses as objects of commerce and marketing (like magazines) that people of our size walk amongst and feel small?
"All My Art Magazines as Rolled Stumps”
These are interesting associations you mention. “Some of My Art Magazines as Serra’s Torqued Ellipses” is an extension of an earlier work called “ All My Art Magazines as Rolled Stumps” , which came from my relationship to these magazines, how they supplemented my education before grad school and fueled my desire to be an artist (they made me feel small and big at the same time). For the first piece, I rolled up all the mags into tubes held together by rubber bands, the number of bands corresponded to the number of articles or images that I remembered influencing me. They were installed standing up referring to some model cityscape. Visually, I found the edges of the pages and interior holes to be beautiful. 
"Some of My Art Magazines as Serra’s Torqued Ellipses”
Months later, I took some of the rubber bands off and noticed the magazines still held the memory of that coil form, the thought of Serra’s Ellipses came immediately. I have only seen images of his work in art magazines so the idea of using the mags themselves as stand-in miniatures (echoing the disparate impression of the real vs the reproduced image) was intriguing to me. I wanted to reverse the experience. I was making a funny.
You were an Art & Drumming Instructor, Gateway Community Services Jacksonville, Florida. Drumming? Got some music experience in your background?
Yup, and theatre also. I went to a local college for undergrad and before becoming an art major, I was in the theatre program where I met most of my closest and dearest friends. On Thursday nights we would gather with other artsy folks, poets, clowns, and hippies along the riverwalk for a vaudevillian type show. I got into performing, drumming, playing guitar and writing songs with my best friend, poet and artist Nestor Gil, during this time. I continue to collaborate with him, both musically and artistically. He has a project called “Elephant See” in which I contribute some banjo and vocal sounds. I also continue to drum with my mentor and undergraduate professor, David Lauderdale, in his drum group.
Those classes were my first foray into teaching. I would bring drums and art supplies to adult halfway houses and teen rehab centers, That was a trip, it reminded me that I could have easily ended up in those shoes. ...To be continued
Brian Tolle (facing us on the left) addressing the opening night crowd at the ICA, with the Ben Franklin portrait in the background, the snake in the foreground
Ben Franklin is getting better looking by the day. I don't know if it's because I'm getting on in years, losing my eyesight (not), losing my mind (maybe) or because I just saw this relatively youthful reimagining of him--part of the advertising campaign for his 300th birthday. What a hunk!
Or maybe it's the wit of Brian Tolle's salute to Franklin installed at the Institute of Contemporary Art that has somehow shifted my view. By twisting Franklin's political cartoon caption Join, or Die so the words are reversed to Die, or Join, he has turned Franklin into a post-modern hipster with a blue-states point of view. Like I said, that Franklin's getting better-looking by the day.
Tolle's installation is a beauty, a sort of public art work, even though it's in a private space. I say a public art work because it seems to me to have the civic pride and civic identity of public art. It's not personal. It's about what we as Philadelphians and Americans like to think about ourselves as reflected in our hero, Ben.
Some of the things we like to think about ourselves are:
We agree to disagree, and in that we are united into one nation; we disagree with those who believe that we all must agree, and in that, we blue staters part ways from our current political leadership.
We like to play with words and ideas, just like that clever Franklin who wrote Poor Richard's Almanack and who quipped, when the Constitution was signed, that the sun on the back of George Washington's chair (you can see this chair at Independence Hall if you take the tour) was rising, not setting. At this point in time, when I am feeling as if the nation is on the wane, it's moral imperative lost in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, the rising sun of Tolle's installation, painted on the wall, is heartening, and it's certainly more like how I would prefer to see my country than the way it looks in the papers these days.
We are practical, solving problems by using science and the printing press. We love science. We have a whole museum dedicated to it, named after none other than Benny. And we are forever looking to improve our lives, just like our hero, who invented the postal service and who printed our first paper currency.
All of this is in Tolle's Franklin installation.
But what's really great is that Tolle's installation is easy to understand, direct, populist.
the red-and-blue-states snake, its segments separated, with the nation's rising sun on the wall behind
The Die, or Join snake hangs from the ceiling in 50 segments--red and blue. It's easy to get that reference. Then the pieces of the snake clap together when an electrical current magnetizes them. It's easy to get that reference too. And even the inspiration for the snake and the name of show--a cartoon by Franklin--is well-enough known that almost everyone who grew up in this country can recognize the reference.
detail of Franklin's words embedded in Brian Tolle's portrait of Benjamin Franklin, taken from the $100 bill and printed out on computer paper
Same goes for the giant portrait of Franklin taken from the $100 bill. The engraved face is so familiar that even blown up, it is recognizable as that particular engraving of that particular face. That it's money is a reference to Franklin's role in printing money. And that it's a computer generated print-out is the topper--today's printing press, with previously unthinkable bells and whistles. If you get nose to nose with the portrait, Franklin's words appear, becoming the engraving lines only from a distance.
This is Franklin writ large, on a heroic scale, but from materials so practical and ordinary as a computer print-out. It's the perfect embodiment of this guy and what he stood for.
It's not that the ideas in this installation, which was commissioned by the ICA as its contribution to Philadelphia's citywide celebration of Franklin's 300th birthday, are revolutionary. It's that the ideas in this installation are accessible, just like the man the installation celebrates.
Tolle, by the way, has a background in public art, and is best known for his "Irish Hunger Memorial" in lower Manhattan. So it's no surprise that what he has made here is a classic piece of public art. Once the exhibit is over, let's spring the installation from the ICA and get it into a more public place in Philadelphia. The piece belongs here and it belongs to the people. It's all about us.
After nearly three years of comments failure, we finally got our comments working (actually, an elf did it for us)!!!!! We're so excited we can bust. So go ahead and comment. We'd love to hear from you.
Other artblog business matters: index
We are changing the scope of our artists index to include the occasional name of exhibits. This will be helpful to us when we look, for example, for "Swarm" or "Artificial Worlds," during one of those senior moments when we can't think of the name of a single artist who was in the show but can recall the exhibit name.
Also, we have solved (actually, an elf also did this for us) the awful glitchiness of the index, and it now seems to be working smoothly. If you were reviewed in artblog and we included an image of your work, but your name is not in the index, email us the permanent link to the post and we'll try to correct the error. (To get the permanent link to a specific post, click on the red "permanent link" at the bottom of the post and then copy into your message the url in the address bar at the top of the browser page).
Other artblog business matters: ads
We do believe all our advertising links are working well now. Click them and check them out. In a couple of weeks, after we migrate our site to a new server, we are expecting any lingering crankiness to get fixed. Thanks to all of you for your patience and support.
Eakins
Originally uploaded by sokref1.
This week's Weekly includes my review of the new Sidney Kirkpatrick biography "The Revenge of Thomas Eakins," a book I want to highly recommend as a great read. Not only does it have lots of details about the city but it's a rich, nuanced portrait of a difficult, complicated man who was a tortured genius. Here's the link to the art page and below is the copy with more pictures.
Sculls and Bones
Thomas Eakins was ambitious, hardworking, charismatic, opinionated, stubborn and a mischief-maker. It's that combination of characteristics that fueled the artist's genius-and turned him into a local pariah who packed a pistol when he ventured out at night for fear his enemies were out to get him.
The Gross Clinic, 1875, perhaps his best-known painting, controversial for its blood and realism which shocked and dismayed most of his contemporaries.
As chronicled in Sidney D. Kirkpatrick's new biography The Revenge of Thomas Eakins, the painter of psychologically incisive portraits and all those rowing pictures was a character out of step with his Victorian era, and his troubles were partly self-inflicted.
(Read a Q&A with Kirkpatrick on the publisher's website.)
Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand, 1879. Rogers was a director of PAFA and champion of Eakins at a time when others disdained him.
Much of the story told about Eakins in Kirkpatrick's book isn't new. In fact the book fleshes out source material discovered by curator Kathleen Foster in 1983 and now in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts archives (the Charles Bregler cache of Eakins' personal correspondence and papers). The author also draws on the scholarship of the eye-opening 2001 Thomas Eakins exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which brought to light the artist's use of photography to work out compositions. (The PMA has redone its website to include generous text and pictures about their exhibits. Here's the Eakins exhibit online -- not the entire 60 works from the show, but it's pretty comprehensive.)
Mending The Net, 1881, a painting based on several photographs the artist took which he then collaged together to create an image
But the book's value is that it's a general-interest biography, not a scholarly tome. Kirkpatrick brings Eakins to life as a breathing, sweating, prickly and fascinating man, one a wide audience will appreciate. This is the artist as hero who's both visionary and vulnerable. And his life, if not exemplary, is a cautionary tale about getting along in the greater world.
Rich in details about the history of the time and told in compact, almost cinematic episodes with many illustrations, the book is a page-turner even though you know the outcome. Philadelphia is a wonderful backdrop for the story-a big metropolis and center for medicine, education and industry, and a city with great physical beauty where both rivers are accessible for recreation and Fairmount Park is a crown jewel.
What helped fuel controversy about the artist was his espousal of nude modelling. He was always trying to get people to unrobe and pose for him. He made many photographic studies of the nude, like this one.
There are pages about the rigorous curriculum at Central High School, where Eakins graduated fifth in his class in 1861, and pages about Jefferson Medical College, where the artist completed a year of studies before deciding to turn his full attention to art.
Gossip stuck like glue to the larger-than-life Eakins, who by all accounts was a handsome leader. At a time of great cultural prudishness he was unabashedly pro-nudity. Twice he pulled the loincloths off male models in a coed art class to reveal the body's beauty (once at the Academy and later at Drexel). Eakins inflamed the imaginations of many. When impressionable young female students made accusations of sexual misconduct against him, everyone was inclined to believe the accusers-though judging from documents unearthed in the Bregler cache, it now seems they fabricated their stories.
Motion Study: George Reynolds, nude, pole-vaulting to left, 1885. Eakins worked on a project with Eadward Muybridge to make thousands of photographic studies of the figure in motion. Eakins in fact invented a device that allowed multiple photos to be taken by the same camera (instead of many cameras positioned in a row--Muybridge's technique.)
Eakins' life had moments of sheer hell, injustice and tragedy. Kirkpatrick says his revenge is that he became as big as the city and is an indispensable civic icon. We name a traffic circle for him and we claim his glory as our own.
The Revenge of Thomas Eakins
By Sidney D. Kirkpatrick
Yale University Press
unchainbbdprehills72
Originally uploaded by sokref1.
artblog contributor and pal, Colette Copeland, sent us the mass blast email from the Guerilla Girls. They're agitating against the white, male-dominated Hollywood film industry. We love the Guerilla Girls here at artblog. So we pass this on to you. Here, from the GG email:
We took Kong, gave him a sex change and a designer gown, and set her up in Hollywood, just a few blocks from where the Oscars will be awarded March 5, 2006.
Why? To reveal the sordid but True Hollywood Story about the lack of women and people of color behind the scenes in the film industry:
Only 7% of 2005's 200 top-grossing films were directed by women.
Only 3 women have ever been nominated for an Oscar for Direction (Lina Wertmuller (1976), Jane Campion (1982,) and Sofia Coppola (2003). None has won.
More embarrassing Hollywood statistics:
Of 2004"s top-grossing films:*
5% had female directors
12% had female writers
3% had female cinematographers 16% had female editors
Only 8 people of color have ever been nominated for an Oscar for Direction.**
Hollywood guilds are 80 to 90 % white.
Only 3% of the Oscars for acting have been won by people of color.
In the 21st century, low, low, low numbers like this HAVE to be the result of discrimination, unconscious, conscious or both. Hollywood likes to think of itself as cool, edgy and ahead of its time, but it actually lags way behind the rest of society in employing women and people of color in top positions.
There may be women heading studios these days, but what are they doing for women and people of color? Why do they keep the white male film director stereotype alive? Here's an easy way to change things: open up that boys' club and hire more women and people of color. It worked in medicine, business and law. It worked in the art world. Now it's Hollywood's turn. Rattle that cage, break those chains! LET WOMEN DIRECT!
Pictures of the new billboard can be downloaded from the Guerilla Girls website. High-resolution images and interviews are available from kathekollwitz@guerrillagirls.com.
[What follows are a series of posts by students in Colette Copeland's art-writing class at the University of Pennsylvania about the Slought Foundation exhibit "Almost Art"]
Post by Seth Manoff:
Carlos Ginzburg's installation of artificial flowers taken from graves
The [exhibition] title’s irony is that regardless of the materials used, a lot of the pieces have much deeper meanings than many other contemporary counterparts that are “aesthetically pleasing.” For example, Carlos Ginzburg, in one of his pieces, has an area filled with artificial flowers taken from the cemetery. While viewers might not enjoy looking at fake flowers from the grave, it doesn’t matter. Ginzburg cares more about the ideas it evokes in the viewer, especially in this case regarding the artificiality and superficiality of American consumerism. To Ginzburg, it has become so prevalent in this country that even when people die, Americans participate in the consumerist culture of cheap, crappy artificial goods instead of higher quality more expensive goods.
Another one of Ginzburg’s works is a commentary on the famous Baudelaire quote “What is Art? Prostitution.” Ginzburg has a naked woman sitting on a chair holding a sign with the Baudelaire quote. At first sight, viewers might think that Ginzurg is making a comment about how artists prostitute themselves to the buyers (making them what they want). But, if so, why would a naked woman be holding the sign? It goes deeper than this. It could be referring to women’s role in art and society. But the most interesting thing about this work is that this is the second time Ginzburg has done this piece (he did it once in the '70s). This leads me to ask many questions, such as: why again?, why now?, and how have things changed since the first time he did the piece? Thus, regardless of the appearance, “Almost Art” is much more than art to me.
Post by Agnes Stachnik: 
One of Tom Fruin's drug-bag quilts
It is in the spirit of Duchamp that the Slought Gallery curated its most recent exhibition entitled Almost Art. Most of the work featured in Almost Art uses unusual or unconventional materials, ranging from t-shirts and televisions to traffic cones and memorial flowers.
Like Duchamp’s productions, these works hold other meanings and hidden connotations. Artist Tom Fruin, for example, creates collages using objects he has found near housing developments. In one of his collages Fruin has diligently sewn together the plastic bags formerly used to hold drugs. The pictures on the bags, which range from leaves of marijuana to small skull heads, form an eclectic pattern against the plain white wall on which they hang. Viewers are either drawn to Fruin’s work because of its unusual nature or repulsed by its use of unpleasant materials.
Fruin did not intend for his work to be viewed solely on an aesthetic level. His collage is also a social commentary on drugs in today’s society. Drug use has become much more prevalent over the last few years, as evidenced by the numerous drug bags Fruin was able to collect. By displaying these plastic bags, Fruin reminds viewers of this problem and encourages them to take action.
Drug bags are certainly not a typical material used in artworks, and so many might not perceive Fruin’s collage as a praiseworthy piece. In this sense, Fruin’s work is almost art. By utilizing unusual materials as well as taking on various meanings, the works featured at the Slought Gallery are just on the edge of traditional definition of art.
Post by Priyal Bhartia:
Shahram Entekhabi’s video of a girl endlessly consuming a McChicken Sandwich
Drug packets, a branch of a tree, patchwork quilting, and a young girl eating a happy meal are not the first things that come to your mind when you think of contemporary art. Curator Osvaldo Romberg is not interested in the aesthetic appeal of these pieces, but more how they mirror the prevailing social conditions in our culture. The artwork is attempts to address issues like utopia, sociology and anthropology.
Artist Shahram Entekhabi’s video installation captures a young, chador-clad girl devouring a happy meal. The meal goes beyond the confines of the golden arches and addresses the issues of consumerism and artificiality. The artwork is a link between the Western consumer culture and the Eastern spiritual culture.
Duchamp’s fountain, a urinal hung on a wall, was unacceptable in 1917 but it pioneered the way for other contemporary artists. Much art today does not depend on aesthetics alone, but the creative and intellectual thought behind it. Some may consider it art and some Almost Art.
Post by Akriti Saxena:
installation at Slought of Hamdi Attia's deconstructed television set
The juxtaposition of construction and deconstruction is an important theme of the exhibit, and is mirrored in individual pieces as well. Tom Fruin’s drug packets demonstrate this idea. Each drug packet is capable of destroying an individual (an act of deconstruction). However, drugs have become a social phenomenon. The repetitive pattern on the packets illustrates unity and how this trend ties communities together (a construction of relationships).
Hamdi Attia’s deconstruction of a television set also comments on this juxtaposition. A television, a strong form of communication, unites different parts of the world. When deconstructed, the radiation and electric fields from individual components can prove to be fatal. Clearly, the artists have little interest in showing off their artistic technical skills since aesthetics can often be distracting. The assembly of simple, everyday objects into a social commentary prods the viewer to consider the assembly of the artists’ ideas and create meaning out of the work.
Post by Kate Chovanetz:
Karen Shaw's unraveled sports jersey draped around a column like a dress
Artist Karen Shaw, transforms male jerseys into dresses, making a satirical statement on masculinity. These ideas transcend the visual value of the works, and instead stimulate thinking. I, for one, left with the perpetual question “What is art?” on my mind, but because the works have meaning and purpose, the appreciation for this “Almost Art” might be enough to stretch people’s definitions to include the pieces at this exhibit.
Post by Katy Rose Glickman: 
Hand-done cross stitching and piecing meets commercially printed fabric in this piece by Gian Carlo Pagliasso, raising issues about hand-made and ideosyncratic versus commercial, uninspired goods
This exhibition is very relevant because the meaning and purpose of contemporary art is constantly changing. Some of the pieces shown are seemingly simple and superficial, which is what forces the viewer to ask meaningful questions and truly interpret the work on their own. Some of the work is so simple and poorly constructed that it can be confusing to the viewer in its context (that of being in an “art exhibition”). Some of the work is actually pretty pathetic. Some of it is even boring. But that’s the theme at large, is it still art? Not much about this exhibition is “easy to understand,” which is what makes it all the more interesting.
DSCN0650.jpg
Originally uploaded by sokref1.
"Why do they have elephant trunks instead of noses?" was Stella's question when we saw John Shipman's "If You Believe" at Woodmere Art Museum. Good question.
Shipman, a CFEVA artist and featured in Woodmere's emerging artist series, makes highly stylized drawings based on Indian miniature paintings and on his feeling about the importance of love (love of one and love of the many). So, throughout his exhibition, which includes 24 small paintings and drawings on paper and board and one 80 ft.-long charcoal drawing on multiple panels, the bald-headed characters sport elephant trunks or bird beaks where other human features usually appear. 
Ganesha, of course, is the elephant-headed Hindu Diety worshipped for his powers in the realm of success. He's the "destroyer of evils and obstacles and god of education, knowledge, wisdom and wealth. The elephant head denotes wisdom and its trunk represents Om, the sound symbol of cosmic reality." Here's more about Ganesha.
Shipman's cross-cultural embrace of the Hindu symbolism works well with his delicate illustrational technique in which a character poses in a void of white space. 
And while the works do resemble those early Hindu miniature works in their touch, symbolism and delicacy of pose, there's a less intimate voice at work in Shipman's paintings and drawings. Shipman's pieces, especially the large mural, speak with a public voice that is on the verge of didactic. This is most apparent in the mural's exhortation to belief and love. But it's evident also in the small works, which seem cousins of children's book illustrations.
There is nothing wrong with didacticism, especially one as benevolent as this. But I'd like a little more story. And I have to think that the sweet optimistic message would work better if it were couched not in static iconographic imagery but in works that told about the foibles and follies of these characters. The Hindu and Islamic gods have fire in their bellies and have amazing adventures and bloody big obstacles to deal with. A little more of that here and you'd transform nice work into amazing work.
In my panoply of gods and goddesses I worship at the altar of Rumpole of the Bailey. Now there's a god for me. Not only does the pot-bellied and sweet-faced Rumpole resemble Ganesha (don't you think?) but he's an almost invincible force for goodness, justice, truth, love, and humanity. He has s