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Saturday, January 22, 2005

America North by South

 
The proof that North and South America are not so far apart is in "The Americas," a group show at the Esther M. Klein Gallery that includes 12 contemporary women artists born somewhere in the Americas and living in the U.S.--for the most part practicing art in New York.

We've got artists from Canada to Chile and points inbetween, but it's tough to tell who's from where just by the art.

Video is a strong presence, as it is everywhere in the U.S.; we've got your encaustic and paint abstractions and your cartoony paint on canvas, your assemblage and fine drawing, your stitchery and computer prints, your plaster sculpture with flocking and the influence of English-language movies crossing the borders. A lot of the work had social and political subtexts.

In Isabel Ron-Pedrique's "Nadador" (Venezuela), a little naked man and woman with a cute blue dot strategically placed on each, swim through a world of sleek appliances and statistics about global spending and other wealth-related info. The swimmers, heading toward the top and the bottom of the screen as if they were doing laps, swim the breast stroke (thought you'd like to know; I was interested since I swim a lot) and look utterly vulnerable and human in the not so human world presented here. I tried playing with the mouse but didn't get enough of a charge out of the change in the action to get excited about it (right, "Nadador").

Four videos were included: The high point for me was "Girls and Horses" by Eugenia Vargas (Chile) (left).

Vargas' piece was a compendium of vintage movie footage from things like "National Velvet," "How the West Was Won," etc. etc. The sexual undertone and the money undertone came through loud and clear, as did the mythmaking--Anglophilia, the wild West, etc. I watched it twice (a good sign).

"Perfect" (right) by Claudia Joskowicz (Bolivia) was a conversation between two young women, one married, one not, about marriage and their assumptions about marriage. The title, which drips with irony, refers to the spouse of the married woman. The dialog comes down on neither side, but it raises questions about the value of marriage and the honesty of girltalk. There's a bad titular translation as well as a more coherent dubbed translation of the movie, and at first I thought the point might be for the awkward titles to show up the lies in the conversation, but ultimately I decided that the titles were just bad, from a previous attempt to make the movie accessible to English speakers. But I don't have the facts, so I do not really know for sure.

Karin Schneider (Brazil) presented "Pregnancy Outside the Womb" (left), a nursing baby up so close that for some of the video it looks like sexy body parts, which I found creepy. I also wasn't crazy about the concept although I felt some sympathy for the mom, because there's truth there. And Jillian McDonald (Canada) offered "Beavers for Cherries," a two-channel video on mini screens that mixed sex and politics and nature, raising all kinds of issues but not so coherently (at least for me). (We recently wrote about McDonald's "Me and Billy Bob" here.

Politics comes through loud and clear in the stuffed and stitched, reimagined maps merging pieces of the Americas from Tamara Kostianovsky (Argentina), made from the artist's clothes (right).





Almost every piece had a piece with which to compare it. For instance Kostianovsky's pillowy maps were next to Marisa Telleria-Diaz's "a felix..." (left), two sweet but hard-as-rocks pillows almost on the floor, made of hydrocal, the hem looking like it was dipped in acrylic paint in a wonderful shade of pale blue, the two pillows resting on flocked pedestals. This pristine piece, about finding happiness (or is Felix a name?) in sharing a bed and in this context perhaps the Americas being in bed together, stood in stark contrast to Kostianovsky's funky political maps.

The cartoony faces in the two Emily Keyishian (U.S.) cartoons, "Hope & Pinky" (right), take back cartooning into a female realm and also seem like an attempt to be a feminist antidote to Keane. The surfaces scratched with writing give these paintings visual interest.

Although Venezuelan Patricia Cazorla names her piece "Vanessa" from her "Munecas (Dolls) Series," Vanessa is anything but a doll and stands in stark contrast to Keyishian's pieces ("Vanessa" image at top of post).

And next to Mcdonald's "Beavers for Cherries," the arrangement from Kelly Heaton (U.S.) of two beautiful drawings of beavers and top hat perched on a stool, holding a beaver trap is a scary indictment of marriage, I suppose. One of the drawings has the beaver compressed onto the crown of a drawn top hat, the other the beaver "in habit." The title is something borrowed, "The Bride Stripped Bare of her Bachelor, Even, and Formal Transformations." I'm unclear if this piece is also about trapping animals, not just trapping wives.




Also showing were "Olas y Arenas" (right) digital prints of film stills on canvas by Aixa Requena (Puerto Rico) of bodies emerging from (or sinking back into?) sand and water, with tractor feeds suggesting film and motion and serials, and from Grimanesa Amoros (Peru), "La Piel," encaustic evocations of skin and landscape (like that of Mars, perhaps).

I have to figure that a show with so much political work in it would ordinarily be more heavy handed; this show had its leaden, didactic moments, but all in all it was interesting. The show, nicely curated by Yucef Merhi, first opened in 2004 at the Galeria Galou in Brooklyn. This is its final destination.

permanent link  libby 10:25 PM
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Home movie

 
It's a perfect day to noodle around the Internet and see what art stuff is up there (image from Douglas Witmer's "Fruitville" series).

With that thought in mind, I pass on this note, which I got today, from Vincent Romaniello, he of the online videos of Philadelphia-area artists in action (see post):

The new video for artist, Douglas Witmer has been posted. Douglas is truly a multi-talented artist working in sculpture, painting, works on paper, photo prints and also composed and played all the music on the video. In Part 1, he talks about his 3D wood sculpture in his West Philadelphia work space. He calls the series "Fruitville" which is a reference to a road in Lancaster, Pa., that seems to lead to no such town.

Link is at the bottom of the right column on this page.

Witmer is an artblog contributor as well as fellow blogger (his blog here), and Romaniello has added still another video or two to his website since my last post on him.
permanent link  libby 1:20 PM
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Friday, January 21, 2005

Talk #2: Curating the world

 
David Graham's talk to nearly 50 students at Penn, yesterday, was a "how I found my way in life" charmer, with a list of multiple influences and an artistic agenda that was kinder
than I had imagined (right, "Leonard").

Graham, who has a sense of humor about himself and the long road he hoed before he figured out what he was doing, seems to genuinely love the people who he photographs, including the impersonators. I had always assumed that there was a snicker in these photos, but after listening to him talk I had to change my mind.

In Bush's America there were no images of the common man, he said. The ordinary people he photographs refuse to sacrifice their individuality and innovative sense.

"I celebrate them for their defiance," he said.

Graham, who teaches at the University of the Arts, has had a couple of shows at the Institute of Contemporary Art, and lots of
freelance gigs for national magazines. His most recent book collection of his photographs is "Declaring Independence." He also took the photographs for "Philadelphia Murals, and the Stories They Tell" (image, "Fishing Hall of Fame," a photo influenced by vintage postcards).


Graham traced his visual education through family snapshots, an art history class--he threw up a slide of Holbein's Sir Thomas More for its startling descriptive qualities-- and vintage picture postcards.

His influences included Ray Metzger, Darius Kinsey, August Sandor, Walker Evans, Weegee, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon--it seemed like there wasn't a photographer out there who hadn't given Graham some insight, some approach to how to take a picture.

Graham was modest about his ineptness with lighting, while showing a bunch of pictures with great lighting (image left, "Maumee, OH," which did not require any help from studio lighting).

He emphasized how surprises in scale and exaggerations (techniques he got from the vintage picture postcards) and triangulation in composition were constants in his work, which is a compendium of roadside America and how people express themselves.

Of photography as a career, he said, "You're curating the world at large."

permanent link  libby 3:22 PM
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Talk #1: Keeping technology in its place

 
Digital cameras may have seduced most of us, but Sarah McEneaney, in her talk at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts last week, mentioned a way that she uses the computer that keeps her vision and hands-on approach intact (this is McEneaney, before her talk).

She goes outdoors and makes a lot of little sketches, then starts the painting, taking a picture of the painting in progress. She prints out the picture, goes outside, and makes corrections on the paper, ultimately transfering the changes to the painting.

While half the art world is madly borrowing and collaging images with this technological gift, McEneaney has devised a way to use it as a tool and stay on course.
permanent link  libby 1:42 PM
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Thursday, January 20, 2005

Newish galleries in town

 
Two galleries opened in May, but they have just penetrated my consciousness. So I visited them both in the last two days. One has installation and spare work, making it Philadelphia's second new installation space, the other being Carbon 14 on North 3rd Street. The other has more typical Philadelphia gallery fare--paintings, assemblages (left, "redrain" and other work by William Cromar at aFSe gallery).

aFSe gallery (art studio for experiments) is showing "redrain," an installation and other work by William Cromar (he's the one who had "halfwayhouse," the interlocking black and white house frames upstair at Nexus (see post).

I kept reading the name of Cromar's show at aFSe as re-drain, but it's red-rain, and it's pouring down in the gallery from the ceiling, one red thread by one red thread, maybe several hundred of them, each tipped with a drip of red-pigmented bees wax. The threads are each stuck to the ceiling with a brown adhesive circle, a Band-aid I learned for gallery owner Yikwon P. Kim. The threads are evenly spaced, the thread lengths progressively longer so the underside forms a wedge. It's meditative, elegant, architectural--and impossible to photograph well. Kim told me that Cromar dreamed of the installation--literally. And then he made it for Kim's space.

Kim enthusiastically dropped to the floor and lay looking up at the red rain pouring down. Not to be outdone, I too flopped on the floor for the experience. Standing or lying down, the piece looks great.

That "redrain" can stand up in this space is wonderful, given that the space is carved out of a framing gallery-- Framing by Walter. Walter sold the business to Kim, himself a sculptor, a couple of years ago. In May, Kim, anxious to get back to the art world and beyond framing, began using the front part of the space as a gallery (right, some of Cromar's gypsum and paper pieces--the three on the right-- seen through "redrain;" the stuff farther back is an intrusion from the framing business).

Kim and Cromar are both Penn MFAs, and Cromar is a visiting professor at Philadelphia University. His architecture background shows through in both "redrain" and the other pieces, gypsum-coated, manipulated paper on the walls.

Kim, who was born in Korea, has a body of Minimalist sculpture and performance work, as well as a fair amount of experience installing work and curating. He was part of the team that installed the Korean art at the ICA when Patrick Murphy was there, and he also helped with translation.

Stop by there when you get a chance, and if you're an artist and think your work might fit Kim's interests, send him slides.

The other gallery I stopped in is Afif Gallery, run by Moore (BFA) and PAFA (MFA) grad Liz Afif, at 1904 South St. The work included cigar-box assemblages by Jack Knight, "The Great Imported Cigar Box Series," in the front room, and a group show of 12" x 12" art, "A Square Foot" in the back.

Some of the cigar-box assemblages seemed low energy, but the paintings--there must have been more than 30 pieces by more than 20 artists!--offered several nice surprises. Curated by Carrie Cook and Jon Schoff, it was easy to look at in spite of the show's variety (left, an untitled piece by Jack Knight).

Of special note were Alina Josan's painted lp-record jackets; Woon Won Ko's architectural "Internal Landscapes;" Raquel Revilla-Sanchez's geese-against the sky painting, "Flying;" Heather Charley's comic "Bull Frogs Will eat Birds if They can get Their Slimy Hands on 'em;" and David John Simicik's "Orange Dog." The show is up until Feb. 3 (image right, one of Josan's "Record" pieces).


permanent link  libby 7:52 PM
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Fly away hair and fly away

 
I'm off to Wisconsin today. Will check out doings at the Milwaukee Art Museum and report back. Libby's in charge so stay in line, now, and I'll see you next week. (the Milwaukee six-day forecast looks better than the Philly forecast which calls for a whopper storm this weekend!)
permanent link  roberta 7:32 AM
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Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Last chance

 
"A Passionate Eye," The Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Collection of outsider art at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, which Roberta touted here, is coming down in a couple of days. If you haven't seen it, rush on over. It's a little gem, or, as Roberta said, perfect.

Among my favorites, Howard Finster's "Uncle Sam" (shown), in which the artist and two others are in a car stuck in traffic because Uncle Sam is blocking the road, burdened with the welfare of the nation on his back. Finster also painted a vision of heaven, "Wonders Without Numbers #1000 & 146," with fanciful onion domes and steeples scattered about a green landscape and reaching to the clouds. For this painting, he painted a backdrop and then added two more layers by painting on the back and front of the glass, thereby giving added depth. Both these paintings have hand-decorated, patterned frames that add to the pleasure.





Elijah Pierce's "Angel" and "Martin Luther King (Love)," two simple carved relief panels, painted with enamel, reminded me of Alex Queral's carved relief phonebook portraits. King, especially, was a knockout, his suit and tie slouching with the body in the chair (right, Pierce's "Angel," 1948).


permanent link  libby 5:55 PM
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Le Va hyped?

 
Post from Sid Sachs

[The art historian in Sid Sachs rose up from his armchair and had this to say about Barry Le Va at the ICA:]

Haven't seen the show yet and looking at your write up [here and here] am even more intrigued. Would love to investigate the catalog. Unless there is a second work, "Cleaved Wall" seemed like a cop out. I remember a "Cleaved Wall" in a Whitney Biennial that was high up and dangerous like the sword of Damocles. This seemed like a safety net for insurance [Libby--I found a "Cleaved Wall" on the Web that looked just like the one at the ICA; Le Va has historically done his pieces in more than one way, but still sticking to a basic plan].

Also the riff on his importance to scatter works seems a little hyped. A lot of artists worked in this genre: Nauman, Fox, Bollinger, Pistolleto, Kaprow, even Andre had some small scatter pieces. Look at Eva Hesse's "Tori" - how it spills out. Le Va wasn't the only one. Sooner or later Apfelbaum and Kilimnik would have made their
work even without Le Va (image right, Hesse's "Tori").
permanent link  libby 5:50 PM
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Wednesday eyefuls

 
I was going to write a post about photography. That was a few days ago and life intervened and here it is my PW deadline day and well, in the interest of time (and sharing, which has always been artblog's strong suit), I'm going to give you the photographs without the essay. Actually I'm going to give you two groups of photos from two group exhibits. One group is from a photography exhibit at Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, Drexel University, a stealth show that snuck itself up quietly and comes down in two days. The other group is from a Coalition Ingenue exhibit of art by self-taught artists at Allen's Lane Art Center. That is up for a few more weeks. I hope you'll get to see both of them because the photo show's very good and the self-taught show's delightful.

"Structure: Architecture and the Photographic View" a five-person exhibit at Drexel's Leonard Pearlstein Gallery


Thomas Kellner "London Westminster Cathedral" -- dancing buildings served up via collages of contact sheets = Gursky with some humor


David Slovic, "Purple Shadow" -- collaged color photographs turn light and shadow into odd biomorphic patterns


Richard Torchia, lens from site-specific camera obscura -- made me realize that camera obscuras (cameras obscura?) can be used for spying as well as for art!


Wyatt Gallery, from the Trinidad series -- beautiful still life studies by artist with a great name


Steven Benson, from the Three Gorges series -- monster machinery eats up China in shots that occasionally, as here, evoke the Bechers

The Great Earth Planet Sun Expo: Urban Outsider Art from the Coalition Ingenu Self-taught Artists' Collective


Francena Hill "Imani" doll, amazing stitchery and empowering subject matter


Francena Hill, "Five for Free" embroiderery and collaged lace on canvas -- beautiful


Mary Crawford, "Georgia" -- lucious paint, humble imagery


Charles Hayes, "Life's Heart" -- heartfelt words and symbols about life and love


Tom Bowdrin, "Fire Angel" -- marker on paper, not a line or mark out of place -- perfect

permanent link  roberta 8:35 AM
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Tuesday, January 18, 2005

To do list

 
Vis a vis Sid's comments on local coverage of Susan Sontag's death, I thought I'd refer you to a wonderful piece on her that ran in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Philadelphia Inquirer book reviewer Carlin Romano. (I grabbed this off the InLiquid newsletter!)

Also, photographer David Graham is speaking at Penn Thursday, 5 p.m., Meyerson Hall, B-3 (image left, Graham's "Las Vegas").
permanent link  libby 9:50 PM
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Local art criticism and other digressions

 
Post from Sid Sachs

[Sid is responding to a series of posts. The last one was here.]
The current situation is the best artistic climate in Philadelphia that I can remember. It has never been perfect. There isn't the density of critics with
objectivity (and passion) that other cities might have. Criticism pays less than poetry. You have to be serious to be serious (image, an Agnes Martin painting).

I understand the need for artists to express themselves and to write. I was first published 25 years ago. It's not been there done that but it is a matter of still trying.

However there is a lack here of real writing with a larger worldview and depth. Did anyone notice the difference between the obituaries of Agnes Martin and Susan Sontag in the Philadelphia Inquirer versus The New York Times? I learned of Martin's death first through artblog.

But none of the obits mentioned how important the ICA show was to Martin working again--and the importance of Suzanne Delahanty and Dan Dietrich in that process. Carrie Rickey's Sontag obituary [in the Inquirer] was fantastic and large and front page but nowhere near the coverage in the Times. There was also a moving essay by Gary Indiana in the Village Voice.

Now I don't think of Sontag as a New Yorker but a national writer. Her ideas affected us all. Why was there not the same coverage and celebration of her life in our press including the Philadelphia freebies? We all have to take responsibility for the situation that we have and have created. If that sounds patronizing it is not meant to be.

I don't think there is only one type of curator anywhere. Those who know me might have heard me define myself as a "lapsed artist". I truly think that way. I don't think that geography is destiny but it does affect us all. A worldview is just that.

If there are not enough for your needs you must invent them. I didn't mean nor did I say work in silence. Raise hell. "Not to feel the terrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and bowing you to the earth, you should be drunk without respite."

--Sid Sachs is gallery director of Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery at the University of the Arts.
permanent link  libby 9:30 PM
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Monday, January 17, 2005

Density squared

 
There are several reasons to catch the last week of "Specific Density" at the Borowsky Gallery, the ones at the top of my personal list being Marta Sanchez's retablo-inspired portraits, which, as promised by the show's title, are dense--with paint, imagery, words and a sense of personal connection (left, "Retablo for Ray," 36" x 36". The words say "Retablo for Ray and his search for his spiritual calling.")

The show is one of a pair of shows at the Gershman Y gallery spaces selected from InLiquid's member artists. The exhibits are long-time art critic Miriam Seidel's first outing as curator there. She said she was drawn to the subject of density in art because it's something that puzzles her. "My eye doesn't work that way," she said.

She also challenged herself with the task of going through all of InLiquid's fat online portfolio of members. She selected some out-of-towners as well as local artists, a fact trumpeted on the wall labels (I don't know whose idea this was, but it struck me as odd.) New Yorker Annette Cord's layers texture and pattern, and Brooklynite Paul Loughney suggests psychological layers in his monotype on mylar prints; local artist Randall Cleaver piles on found objects, until they become new things.

Cords' richly colored paintings bring to mind fabrics, weaving, plaids, and also city grids and networks on circuit boards. The work has a color-field quality because of its dense color, but the grids, whether upright or on an angle, talk to minimalism and obsession with drawing lines. Agnes Martin on peyote came to mind. Well, I guess that makes it an inept comparison, because spirituality is not a factor in what are flatly concrete objects rooted in reality--in the same sense that a color-field painting is just what it is, a field of color (right, "Mass Tool," pigment, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 24").

Loughney's prints get their strength from their representational subject matter that takes off from the reality of the every day and pushes its way into the "Sixth Sense." Also, like all prints, they have a physical sense of layers, but even more, a physical sense of layers of time, experiences from childhood mixed with a grownup point of view (left, "Kids in a Trance," 23" x 14").

Cleaver's assemblages of found objects have the Philadelphia craftsmanship/perfection element going. The mechanics and the metaphors merge and playe off eachother. I especially liked "Time in Hell," a demure box on turned legs with a compressed array of loopy flames inside. "Infinite Time," however, seemed to be reaching with its orrery-like clock/planets that winked and turned above swinging pendulums. Though beautifully done and carefully thought through, the meticulous workmanship held the pieces in check, preventing the ideas from taking off in unexpected directions. I like things a little bit looser.

Others in the show were two other Philadelphia artists--Carol Sivin, with overwrought ceramic assemblages, and Marc Salz, with squirmy painting assemblages--and Richmond, Va., artist and fellow blogger Martin Bromirski, with scrap-paper collaged onto canvas landscapes.

Up and coming Feb. 3 at Borowsky is an Archie Rand show on Biblical and Jewish themes--sorta like comic books filled with guys in fedoras and Hebrew Biblical quotes in thought bubbles.

permanent link  libby 9:30 PM
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Tooting our own horn: we give away thousands of pieces of art

 

In an attempt to turn the general public into art collectors, Fallon and Rosof, as presidents of their Zero .1% for Art Commission, will give away thousands of pieces of free art on four consecutive Fridays, Feb. 25, March 4, 11 and 18, at Market and 17th streets, Philadelphia, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. (If it's raining or snowing, see our website for postponement information.)



The art, "Dorothy Speaks," is a series of 12 art cards with reproductions of Fallon and Rosof's original paintings plus thoughts about life. (image is the front and back of a sample card.)

Each giveaway will consist of three cards from the series in a glassene envelope. To collect the full set of 12 cards, passersby will have to return to the same spot each week. The artists will distribute 750 sets each day.



(image left is a sample of one of the information sheets that will accompany each giveaway.)

The project is the 5th street giveaway of the Zero .1% for Art Commission, founded by the artists in 1998 as a critique of the city's Percent for Art Program. The mission of the Commission is to bring art to the general public.

The artists are also known for their ground-breaking email book "OK Artists," distributed serially in 12 pages in 2003.

permanent link  libby and roberta 11:12 AM
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Order, chaos and you and me

 
My main reason for going to the members' walkthrough of the Barry Le Va retrospective at ICA was to hear the artist's name pronounced. I'd been swinging back and forth between Le Va (ha) and Le Va (hey) all week and my curiosity was an engine propelling me to the museum.

As it turns out I got there too late to hear the surname pronounced, but Libby, who heard it, reported it is Le Va (hey). (image is Le Va, far right, and Curator Ingrid Schaffner, speaking, at the members' walk-through.)

Now that that's cleared up, I have not a lot more to say except that the work seems about chaos and order and has at its core a kind of questing to find comfort in an uncomfortable world. (See Libby's comprehensive post for more.)



The earlier works with the broken glass, meat cleavers in walls and guns fired at walls are evocations of violence and a world of shattered stability. (left is felt and glass piece)

In a sound piece from the era -- installed in the ICA's ramp but played so loudly that you hear it like rolling thunder in the gallery space downstairs -- the artist is heard running full bore and slamming himself into a wall. He does this repeatedly getting more and more bruised in the exercise.

That body slamming piece, like other body art of the time (Chris Burden having himself shot in the arm) were responses to the dark times of Vietnam and the search for meaning at what seemed like the dawn of cultural cynicism. Like "pinch me" moments when the dream is either too good or too bad, they were tests, probably had to be done, and are now, happily, behind us. (image right is the speaker for the body slam sound piece installed in the ramp.)



Anyway, Le Va's other violence works are body art without using bodies. When he shoots a wall or attacks it with meat cleavers, that wall is a body, no matter what architectural framework you want to give it. It's Le Va's ability to convey body-ness without producing a corpse or corpus that is unique. It's high level disassociation achieved with smart choice of materials and with groupings that -- in my mind's eye -- evoke community, crowds, animals, grouping and ungrouping and regrouping. What I thought most notable about LeVa's gun shot piece (where five shots were fired at the ICA wall by a sharp shooter) was that neither Curator Schaffner nor the artist could be there for its "installation." The level of Sol Lewit phoning it in for what is after all a scary piece (how can you control a bullet? accidents...and ricochets happen all the time) left me wondering. It might have been just a scheduling problem but don't you think you'd want to be there for the installation of one of the most memorable pieces in your show? As Libby told you, Le Va wielded the meat cleaver himself. And Schaffner was the one who sledge-hammered the glass in the mezzanine.



LeVa's work at bottom is likeable for being about something big -- seeking order in a chaotic world. It's also loveable for its nice juxtapositions of materials (glass and felt; wood and concrete). And, for all its formalist leanings (titles refer to geometry and science and space) the pieces all to my mind convey a level of body-ness and human-ness that I found most reverberant. (image looks down on a floor piece from ICA's upstairs.)



The artist is great at creating spatial relationships, and there's a sense of architectural or furniture arranging or chess playing. And the early works have a testosterone-fueled young man's edginess with their violence and implied chaos and the later works have a calmer, studied disorderliness. I found it all a little poignant and forlorn.

Those blocks of wood and hydrostone that are the later works, they nestle in with each other so nicely. Those cut logs upstairs placed just so next to their concrete neighbors, they're little neighborhoods; that felt under all that broken glass, it's trousers, hats, coats and blankets violated by the shards. Everywhere in the work there is separation, hurt and aloneness. (large floor piece in the downstairs)


I liked the more recent work best, the big black blocks on the first floor with their casket-like ambiance. In their non-ordered orderliness they seemed to get at some truth about life.



When the artist and Curator Schaffner convened the listeners around the various works to talk about them, the scattered bodies coming together around the scattered or not quite scattered art objects were all kindred spirits.

permanent link  roberta 7:27 AM
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