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Posted by libby

The peer pressure got too great, so I've started putting some of my photos up (in giant sizes) on Flickr. Here's my page. (oops, the beautiful set of Vollis Simpson photos were taken by Rob Matthews, but the rest are mine).

The picture at the right, from my stay in Massachusetts, are artist Philip Zuchman's hand-made clothespins. Each summer when he and his wife, Debbie, go away to paint, he whittles a new set of clothepins from the local twigs and leaves them behind for the next lucky resident.

permanent link   libby 11:34 AM
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Posted by roberta

After our great chat in her studio (see post), painter Anna Conti and I hopped the "Muni" (trolley) and traveled from her neighborhood, "The Avenues" to downtown San Francisco to see her work at Newmark Gallery and to check out a few more venues. It was cloudy in "The Avenues" near the bay but bright and sunny just a few miles away. Did I mention in that other post that midway through our talk in Conti's studio the city's tsunami warning alarm went off? It sounded like a typical firehouse fire alarm or one of those Civil Defense warning sirens. Apparently every Tuesday at noon they sound the warning. Conti said, "I'm 85 ft. above sea level," and shrugged, not too concerned about being swept away.

DiRosa Preserve

On our way over, the artist told me about the DiRosa Preserve a Barnes in the Bay-area kind of place. Rene DiRosa is a collector of contemporary California art. Like Barnes, Conti said, DiRosa's installations of the art are according to his own system of what goes with what. and he doesn't believe in wall tags because you're supposed to look at the art, darn you, not read the wall text. Conti says that "90% of Northern California's famous and non-famous artists" sit side by side on the walls. Di Rosa goes to open studios events, Conti said. And he loans out work to local museums for shows. I asked if her work was in the DiRosa collection and she said no. That's an oversight.

I looked around the Di Rosa website a little and want to say that the whole thing reminds me of a kind naturalist's Visionary Art Museum. In addition to some beautiful grounds, the virtual gallery tour turned up this nice "Rhinocar" by David Best (pictured at top) and a bunch of other work that's in the visionary mold.

Newmark

Newmark Gallery's group show "San Francisco Cityscapes: Contemporary Visions of our City" includes work by four artists. In addition to Conti, there's Larry Morace, Paul Madonna and Toru Sugita. Conti hadn't yet seen her work installed and the show was so fresh that while we were there, Larry Morace came in to do some last minute tweaking on one of the frames of one of his works. (image above is Conti's "PG&E on Dolores")



The exhibit is full of wonderful insider views of the city. No bridge or bay views that I recall but houses and streets, infrastructure and simple cafes that are beloved by the artists. My absolute favorite is Conti's "PG&E on Dolores," the blue truck looming in the left like a beautiful invader. The work sits next to a similar street scene by Morace and Conti, who knows the artist, said "Larry and I live in the same neighborhood and we both use photos." And while their painting styles differ -- Conti is a realist and Morace is more of an expressionist, she said "Larry and I agree on almost everything." (image above is Morace's "Drive Home")



Morace "Drive Home" which shows a steep hill from the top looking down has a similar background to Conti's "PG&E." "That's Market St. They moved some palm trees," he said, explaining what street it was. Conti knew it well.

Conti said that while she works from photos she often edits. Sometimes, as in her parking garage rooftop scenes, she edits out an object, building or something. She removed an HVAC box from one scene, she said. (image is above Conti's "Hotel Pickwick from 5th and Mission" ).


And she feels free to edit color to suit her compositional needs. "I base the color on my memory and on intent," she said.

Her "Gordo's" (image above) is also sweet. The little couple sitting side by side on the table humble and waiting are just lovely and depicted so lovingly. The painting reminded me that Conti is also a still life painter and that this is in her tradition of still life setups.

Apart from Conti and Morace's works what stood out for me in the show were Paul Madonna's plein air watercolor paintings from North Beach area. Making extraordinary what might be considered ordinary, the works are beautifully-cropped street scenes with exquisite light. (above is Madonna's "Guerrero")

The little rooftop scene "Guerrero" especially caught my eye. It's on the verge of being a cartoon. And the sense of personality each building implies captures perfectly the condition of living in an urban neighborhood cheek by jowl so to speak.
(image is Madonna's "North Beach")

Japanese-born artist Toru Sugita had some prints of the city in the show. They held their own in the crowd but the work seemed less unexpected than the other works.

Gallerist Mark Wladika and his assistant Jessica Van Hulle were excellent hosts when we visited. Enthusiastic, smart and, boy, they know how to hang a good show. The gallery walls, by the way, are painted complicated shades of grey-green and grey-ochre and other nice warm dark colors. That worked well with the mostly small-scale paintints, prints and drawings.

I'll get to the rest of what we saw later today I hope. I'm sorry to be so slow on the upload here.
conti, anna
madonna, paul
morace, larry

permanent link   roberta 9:05 AM
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Posted by roberta

I got a note from Anna Conti saying she had posted a link to my post about our studio visit. Her post reminded me that I failed to mention that she's got work coming to Philadelphia to a show at Siano Gallery. It's a show "Urban Canvas" that's a solo exhibit of Vincent Romaniello's paintings joined by works of other artists invited by Romaniello to participate. The invited artists are friends and colleagues of Romaniello's, some local artists and some west coast artist/bloggers. In addition to Conti, the invitees include Chris Ashley, Natale Caccamo, Anthony DeMelas, Tim McFarlane, Kathryn Pannepacker, Deborah Raven, Giuseppe Riviera, Tremain Smith, Chris Vecchio Ph.D., Douglas Witmer. Romaniello's great videotaped studio visits with local artists (many of them in the show) will be projected as part of the exhibit.) This will be such fun. What a great show.

[Ed. note: the above paragraph was edited to clarify that the show is a solo exhibit by one artist with the other artists invited to participate. An earlier version of the post said the show was a group exhibit.]

(image shows Conti's paintings wrapped for shipping to Siano. Notice what's on the easels and compare to what my photos in the studio visit post showed. Whew! Speedy progress!)

It just clicked. In addition to Conti, there's another west coast blogger/friend in the mix, Chris Ashley! Ashley, a digital artist and writer, gave Libby and me some excellent html advice early on that was sweet and came in out of the blue (he was an early reader of artblog -- his blog was already years old at that point!). He helped make our blog so much more beautiful that we're forever indebted.

Back to Conti, her paintings for Urban Canvas which you can see wrapped for shipping in her picture (above), are scenes from Alcatraz that I saw in her house. They're from the old prison's sick bay, which is not open to the public but because Conti knows someone she got in there to take pictures. They're small paintings and beauties -- full of that nice glazing technique she uses. (image shows them. they're the two paintings at the left)

You will love these paintings. And Alcatraz is of course a fabulous ruin like our own Eastern State Penitentiary, so the paintings have Philly reverb.
conti, anna

permanent link   roberta 11:01 AM
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Posted by libby

In a week when Korean scientists announced a cloned dog, and a couple of weeks after our fearless leader announced that schools ought to teach "Intelligent Design" to counterbalance evolution, the group show "Becoming Animal" Contemporary Art in the Animal Kingdom" at MASS MoCA, an exhibit of work by 12 artists, seems even better than when I saw it a few weeks ago.

But what makes this exhibit good is that the individual pieces of art, for the most part, go off in their own dreamy directions, unfettered by any curatorial dictum of what the show might be about. So I'm just going to wade in or weigh in on the work that struck me as particularly interesting for one reason or another.

Patricia Piccinini's "The Young Family" is utterly fabulous and creepy. Piccinini may be all about ecology, but this piece takes a leap into the people as beasts or beasts as people. The flesh and hair, the family with their tight relationships so like our own, the near human-ness is a shocking reminder that we aren't so refined under the cloth and the beasts aren't so beastly as we like to pretend (image at top, "The Young Family").

The vision of "nature" in a video from Tokyo artist Motshiko Odani, "Rompers," looks a lot like the green dell in "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," intense greens with candy colors all around. The main focus is on a cute-cute, singing girl sitting on a tree branch, swinging her legs. But she's got strange, amphibian eyes and a long tongue that shoots out to capture a passing bee in its forked tip. Other features here include June Taylor bees dancing, and honey-dripping orifices (we won't go there) in the tree bark. Mutant birds and frogs with ears dart through the frames, too. The piece is mesmerizing. I sat through it twice.

Odani also had a stuffed baby deer fit with metal orthopedic devices, a sharp reminder of how differently we think of animals than of humans. The devices look like instruments of torture although they are holding up the little creature, perhaps enabling it to walk.

And when it comes to beasts and mechanics, Brian Conley's "Pseudanuran Gigantica," or fake frog, was a giant orange bladder that blew up and emptied and made frog noises. The mechanics of it all reminded me of Tim Hawkinson, but the focus was not on the artist but the frog. I don't know that I thought it was so enlightening about our relationship with frogs, but it sure was funny and served as a nice reminder of the miracle of how creatures can do what they do and be what they be (for our posts on Hawkinson, go here and here).

Sharing the space with Conley were two Joseph Beuys pieces. The photograph taken during a Beuys performance, stole my heart, "How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare," probably because someone else took the photo. Beuys is covered with honey and gold leaf, which doesn't really transform him from human. He looks utterly lost and sad as he talks to the dead rabbit cradled in his arms. As an image, it communicates beyond the hermetic limits of Beuys' loopy ideas. Beuys also had an installation up, borrowed from the Philadelphia Museum of art, "Lightning With Stag in its Glare." The lightning is a literal lightening shape cast in bronze--not so pleasing and a reminder of a certain other lightenings sculpture around here that no one likes--and all around are chunks that look like poop and body parts plus an ironing board (the stag) and a cart (well, a goat of course). The single picture overpowered all this sturm and drang.

South African artist Jane Alexander's pictures are of masked people transmogrified into a strange otherness. They stand in familiar but surreal-seeming spaces in the context of a land where race issues and exploitation linger (image from the "African Adventure Series"--this image "Bom Boys, Lonely Boys, Fancy Boys, Sexy Boys; National Road 1: Bom Boy with workers and traffic."

Back to the video realm, Sam Easterson attached tiny video cameras on to creatures big and small to get the world from their point of view in "Animal, Vegetable, Video." The ongoing series offers sound as well. In the video (video still to left) we hear the rabbit or whatever it is chomping continuously, for example. At first I thought the creatures were faux and this was an act of imagination. I like it better my way.

Winning the award for the funniest videos was Ann-Sofi Siden's "NK, QM Visits the Perfume Counter," part of her "The Queen of Mude Museum" installation. In it, the queen, naked but for boots and a thick coating of mud, goes shoping for perfume in a real department store. One of the sales clerks says, "Excuse me, do you have permission to do this?" Clerks spray perfume in her direction and she sniffs like any customer would. And when it looks like the jig is up, she heads for the door, calling back to her videographer, "Whatever happens, hold on to the tape."

Roberta and I had seen a different piece of this series at the 1999 Carnegie International, when Mud Queen slithers her way into the home of a psychologist. The piece was dense with psychological tension and symbolism--mother-daughter, animal-human, civilized id-untamed libido-- that weighed it down. But the perfume en-counter, which is earlier work, stays light as air at the same time that it makes similar points.

I was too tired at that point to give Siden's museum installation serious consideration.

Rachel Berwick's"Lonesome George" installation included a brief video of a giant turtle startling and drawing in. Berwick invites us to sympathize with the great beast terrified and responding to some off-camera threat (no doubt the camera and the human beast behind it). What makes the video pack a punch is the point of view from the ground looking up. The video stands head and shoulders above the rest of Berwick's installation of white sails and fans. But I liked the bench for viewing the video.

And in the realm of painting and collage, Michael Oatman borrows and alters familiar, kitsch images. His "Familiar Songbirds," 2 and 3, are kind of obvious but not so obvious. In the context of the show, it's nature fighting back. But without the context, it's Hitler Youth singing and dancing, more of an anti-war, anti-conformity message. Either way, the kitschiness of the source material saves them from heavy-handed didacticism. Oatman also had a really great pair of horizontal scrolls of collage and spray paint on paper that tackle the perfect world of advertising and the American dream home (image left, "Familiar Songbirds III").

Others in the show were Mark Dion, Kathy High, Natalie Jeremijenko and Nicholas Lampert, whose enormous black-and-white digital printed drawings of machine-beasts were papered on the wall.


Lampert's work talked directly to work in another exhibit, "Creature Discomfort: Hybrid Humans on Paper," of beautiful prints from the likes of Durer and Bosch and Goya, put the theme of man as beast and beast as man in some art historical context. I am including this particular print, "Nymphs and Satyr," attributed to Felix Bracquemond, c. 1873, because of its relationship to work I had seen and loved by William Villalongo at the Studio Museum in Harlem (see post).piccinini, patriciapiccinini, patriciapiccinini, patriciapiccinini, patriciapiccinini, patriciaodani, motshikoconley, brianbeuys, josephaalexander, janeeasterson, samsiden, ann-sofiberwick, racheloatman, michaellampert, nicholasbracquemond, felixvillalongo, williamhawkinson, tim

permanent link   libby 10:39 AM
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Posted by roberta

This week's Weekly has my review of the PMA's Mavericks of Color exhibit. Below is the review and here's the link to the paper. And here's Libby's post on the show.

Keeping It Real

A few years ago I saw a color photograph by German photographer Andreas Gursky at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. The piece showed the floors of a hotel as seen from the hotel's atrium, and it was enormous. I was told by the curator that the framed photo weighed 500 pounds. It seemed to be a photograph that thinks it's a painting. (I did some googling and found what I think is the picture, Gursky's "Hyatt Atlanta" seen here.)

But color photography's point of reference hasn't always been painting. As you can see in the wonderful 50-photo "Mavericks of Color Photography From the Collection" exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the roots of the medium are in shots that are small, documentary and humble -- and decidedly photo-like.

Early practitioners like William Eggleston and Joel Meyerowitz (and locally David Graham, included in "Mavericks" with one great shot from 1979) came to color through black-and-white photography. Back in the '60s and '70s black-and-white was considered the standard for fine art photography, and color was looked down upon as brassy, populist and commercial.



Color film was also difficult and expensive to process and print. Many photographers stayed away for those reasons, preferring instead the familiarity of black-and-white processing and printing.

But Meyerowitz, Eggleston and a few others (including Eliot Porter in the '50s before them) found their way to color and stayed there. Color was a good fit with the subject matter they were interested in-street scenes and people for Meyerowitz, socioeconomic milieus for Eggleston, and birds and nature for Porter. These are things that require a certain photo-verite and make real-world color the perfect choice. (image right is Meyerowitz' "Fallen Man, Paris")

The color photographs in this show seem to flow from the standard photo traditions of street photography, nature photography and portraiture. But the aesthetic in each shot is "real" as opposed to precious. And what you see isn't just a view-it has a point of view.

Perhaps the impulse to verity comes from the rise of photojournalism or perhaps from the influence of TV and film, but the color photos in this exhibit all have the "you are there" quality that feels a little like tonight's news.

Meyerowitz's works-which focus on people, signs and patterns in serendipitous arrangements-have a quizzical nature to them. They're deadpan compositions that invite the viewer to participate in figuring out their meaning. This generosity of spirit -- one that includes the viewer and leaves space for interpretation -- is characteristic of most of the work in this show.



"Fallen Horse, Spain" and "Fallen Man, Paris," two great Meyerowitz pictures from 1967, are mini essays about life, accidents and animal behavior. His "Danbury Fair, Connecticut," (left) a shot of an elderly man working at the state fair, documents a time and place. But by framing the shot to show something odd (there's a grid of round neon lights above the man's head, making him look like he's under a field of haloes), the artist provides some room for the viewer to weigh in. Is it a joke? What's the joke? You decide.
northrup, ann
William Christenberry's portraits of sheds and shacks in his beloved South are tiny, humble and snapshot-like. Like much of the work here, they embrace the conceit that all things are worthy.



Eliot Porter's photos are backyard safari shots of sparrows, rocks and lichens that also sing of wonder in the ordinary. William Eggleston brings color-and kindness-to photos that remind you of Diane Arbus and seem to ask what's wrong with this picture. (image is by Eggleston. It's a little hard to see but it's a child sprawled face down on the oil-stained floor of an empty two car garage)

Today color photos like Gursky's want to pick a fight with painting. None of the works at the PMA cares about painting. They're squarely in the photo tradition. The show's a welcome reminder of the power of a well-made color image no matter what the size.

"Mavericks of Color Photography From the Collection"
Through Nov. 27. Julien Levy Gallery, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and the Pkwy. 215.763.8100. www.philamuseum.org

sketches
eggleston, william
Mei-ling Hom emailed to say she's preparing for a solo exhibit at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. My friend Libby Rosof and I visited Hom's studio to see the work: 35 cloud forms sculpted in the artist's signature steel chicken wire mesh. More news from the studio visit next week. The Sackler show will run Sat., Aug. 27 through Sun., March 5. See Libby's post on the studio visit.
meyerowitz, joel
>> And in Manayunk, a new Ann Northrup mural is at the drawing stage on the Propper Brothers building. The theme is ovarian cancer awareness, and the artist's design shows a sublime landscape of rocks, sea and sky with figures symbolizing cancer survivors dancing in the sunset. Northrup's assisted on the Mural Arts Program project by recent PAFA grad Gabe Tiberino and 78-year-old Kitty Hankins. The mural dedication is on Sept. 22. [Ed. note: Stay tuned for a post with some mural pictures.]
gursky, andreas
hom, mei-ling

permanent link   roberta 10:42 AM
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Posted by roberta

In and out of the studio with Anna Conti

When we drove to San Francisco from Pacific Grove on Aug. 2, the day was to be my art day. I was meeting Anna Conti, artist and blogger, at her home studio. And then, icing on the cake, the two of us would check out what was in the SF galleries, including a group show, "San Francisco Cityscapes," at Newmark Gallery in which she had ten paintings.

I'm a big fan of Conti's writing -- it's warm and enthusiastic, focused on the local scene and on all the raging issue working artists who are also intellectuals are interested in. Conti's plugged in to the community, does some teaching, participates in open studio events and is a sought after speaker at public panels about the artist's practice. She's a dynamo and if you read her blog you know it.


I'm a big fan of her paintings, too, especially the cityscapes which show San Francisco from the insider's point of view -- no Golden Gate bridge or Telegraph Hill, but loving portrayals of parking ramps, rooftop scenes, and table top scenes inside a coffee shop -- no people, just a plastic bag and a soda bottle interacting like two characters in an Ionesco play. Everything's distilled down to funny angles and overlooked moments that are peripheral vision brought to the forefront. I was excited to be able to see the works in person. (here's a group of works hung salon-style in her house, right, and left below a shot of a painting in progress of a parking ramp -- bigger here.)


After Stella and Steve dropped me off and went on their way for the day, Conti and I had a free-ranging chat about art, blogging, San Francisco, art magazines and more. She's a generous person and the all-day conversation was energizing. And one of the things I found most excellent was that Conti said she makes her living from her art. She's one of the few people I know who can say that.

Brief background

Conti moved to San Francisco in 1987 from upstate New York. Going back farther, she's got a Philadelphia connection. As a teen living in Delaware she used to come to Philadelphia in the summers to take classes at Philadelphia College of Art (now UArts). Talented and interested, Conti got a scholarship to attend PCA after high school but she didn't go ultimately because she got married. If you were 18 and married in Delaware at that time you didn't go to college, she said.

"I wanted to be an artist since I was a little girl," she said. "I have a soft spot for Philly."

Conti lived and worked many places before settling in San Francisco. She worked in graphic arts in Dover, DE, then again in Boston and later in upstate New York. "Then my mom died of cancer. It was a long and painful death." And Conti had an existential moment where she wondered if art was doing anything to make a difference in the world. She decided to change courses and enrolled in nursing school and got an RN degree. She worked for 18 years as an RN.



Then, after all that nursing and because this is the way it is sometimes, Conti decided that being an RN wasn't really saving the world. And when by chance she was visiting San Francisco on vacation, it hit her. "This is where I should be" she thought. And art is what she should be doing.

"I went home and sold my house and drove across the country and I've been here now longest of any place," she said. Conti lives in a house in a section of town called "the Avenues." It's near enough to the bay so that it gets that ocean weather --lots of clouds and fog. And because it's near the ocean, we heard the tsunami alarm go off while we were talking. "Every Tuesday at noon," it goes off she said. Conti's house is 85 ft. above sea level and she's not too worried. (image shows a painting on Conti's living room mantle. It's a symbolic portrait of a woman friend of hers who died recently, someone she nursed in her final hours.)

The studio

Conti's studio is in her house and her paintings are placed salon style on walls everywhere. the house is visually rich and homey -- and you could imagine a salon meeting here to discuss art. Her studio is a nice-sized room that does double duty as an office and computer station. The painting takes place on one side of the large window and blogging takes place on the other side. It's just that intertwined. (that's Conti in front of the in process portrait of Virginia Tichenor. bigger here. )

There's a reading chair in her studio. It's all cozy and inviting looking but she's never in it. Conti calls it her husband's chair. It's where he sits when he's waiting for her to be finished enough with blogging or painting so that they can go do something. As we all know, blogging and painting are never "finished" but sometimes they are finished enough to leave them for a bit. (top image is the chair)

Conti was working on a portrait of ragtime pianist Virginia Tichenor when I was there. She's friends with the sitter, a local musician, whom she's painted before. More on Tichenor here. And in a follow-up email Conti told me this:

...and here's another trivia tidbit: her (Tichenor's) album covers are done by Chris Ware (another Ragtime fan and friend of Virginia's) -he's a well known artist and cartoonist, best-known for a series of comics called the "Acme Novelty Library", and a graphic novel, "Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth". Here's a bio on Ware that mentions Virginia.

I remarked on the reddish underpainting, which reminded me of Rebecca Westcott's method of doing the initial drawing and painting in red for her portraits. Conti who uses Golden acrylic paint -- likes napthol maroon and magenta at this stage which she calls her ink drawing stage.

She uses a style of painting that involves a lot of glazing over underlying layers and she likes the way the underpainting's colors peek through. (The glazing gives the paintings the depth of oil paintings.)

The artist works on several paintings at a time and over time she's worked up several series -- one of San Francisco cityscapes; one of narrative paintings -- ambitious figure paintings for which she hires models, poses them, takes photographs and then paints a series of works, like the Trickster series and a still life series.

She loves working on narrative paintings and is starting to think about the next series which will have time as its theme and will involve three models, a young man, a young woman and an old woman. "The narrative is a relationship story taking off from Charles Bukowski's book "Pulp."

Speaking of books, when I asked a passing question about what she liked to read (the house is full of books). Non-fiction she said. She likes Lawrence Weschler's "Vermeer in Bosnia," Bill Bryson's "Short History of Everything." And because her new narrative series involves time, she's reading up on physics. By the way, Conti told me she gave up all her art magazine subscriptions, getting her art news and reviews like many of us online now.



The still lifes are based on set-ups photos of objects from a collection of dolls, toys and other miniature objects she collects. She has one in process at the moment and I took a shot of the three stages of the work, from photo set up to gridded drawing to painting in progress.

The cabinet of curios was a happy place, full of all the little goodies. It sits in the dining roo

(image right is the cabinet with objects -- bigger here, and below is the photo setup, working drawing and initial stage of the painting -- bigger here.)


Above Conti's easel is an abstract grid painting that I asked about because it's so different from the rest of her works. "It's a reverse calendar," she said, explaining that it's a reminder of how short life is. She started it in March 2004 and based it on the insurance chart predicting life expectancy. Hers -- 80 years. How many days left was that? She divided the canvas into that number of squares and paints a new square each day. She imposed a design of a yin/yang and divided the two color ranges into red and blue if memory serves (no picture, sorry). The only rule is that each day's square must touch one of the other existing squares. It's amazingly beautiful.

I asked Conti about her parking ramp series with paintings that ask you to find beauty where there is none and force you to come to grips with architecture that's domineering.

"I paint a lot of cars. Cars reflect the eras; the myth of independence, wealth and class. I'm fascinated with them. Parking ramps are visually so interesting. They're like cathedrals for cars. When I first started painting I was in my cave mode -- thinking philosopher's cave. All the views were to the outside. Now, it's the last one -- with the exit sign."

"The view from the top of the garages in any city is great. I see a garage and I want to go in and go up to the top. I have shots from the tops of almost every garage in San Francisco. You see buildings but it's midway up. In North Beach there's one where you see Alcatraz, the Trans America building, the Golden Gate Bridge."

And guess what? She doesn't have a car!

The blog


I wanted to know how Conti started her blog, Big Crow. Being a kind of following edge techno-know nothing (or near nothing) I am always interested in how others get around in the tech arena. Conti is self-taught and she's as good as a pro! Before the world wide web, Conti was using clui (command line user interface) to connect, program and get around the internet. "There was a black screen with green letters she said and you dialed up a separate phone number for each site. It was pre-graphical." Who can imagine a visual person dealing with that? (image is Conti at Big Crow central -- bigger here.)

Anyway, turns out that Conti's website and blog and designed by her and she does the whole thing herself. Her big wish for the future -- she said she'd like to get RSS for feeds, something she doesn't have at the moment. Also, she's excited about her Olympus digital voice recorder which holds 5 hours of audio and which is far better for her artist interviews than the old fashioned tape recording/playback method. "I stick it in this (computer) port," she said, "and it uploads and goes to my itunes. It's an mp3 file."

And why all this reaching out anyway? "Having the blog gets me out there to see stuff," she said, adding "Not that I need that."

"When I started my intent was to speak to my collectors. And for people who aren't collectors, I wanted to make them comfortable with art and give them a little more. But most of the audience is artists -- from the Bay area, Northern Europe and Canada and Australia and Japan," she said.

By the way bloggers, Conti uses a dial-up modem for her blog posts. Imagine.

Next post I'll tell you about the great stuff Conti and I saw at Newmark Gallery, Catharine Clark Gallery and elsewhere ... how jealous I got of the obviously rich and New York like scene I saw.
conti, anna

permanent link   roberta 5:22 PM
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Posted by libby

Post from Rob Matthews


I was actually able to get out to Vollis Simpson's whirlygig farm near my parents' house yesterday. I took some photos of it for you and I'll put them on disc and send them to both of you when I get the time to download and burn them.







The wind wasn't blowing which I guess for your sake is good because the photos show all the parts and none of them are blurred from moving. (To see these and some other photos from Rob Matthews, including one of Rob doubt taken by Tracy, go here.)






We also went back at night so I could one photo of all the reflectors lit up by the headlights. That looks ok too.









In addition to his farm, or whatever it is, I took some photos of the two whirlygigs in downtown Wilson that a law firm put up and a large one that the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh owns.









(detail of one of the law firm whirligigs)










(detail of another of the law firm whirligigs)










Tracy and I were in the Raleigh area for our family reunion and snuck off to the museum for a couple of hours. Who knew Raleigh had a Titian and a Giotto? Really good small museum. I mean, the building is AWFUL, but the collection is great (left, another image of the farm).




--Rob Matthews shows his art work at Gallery Joe simpson, vollismatthews, rob

permanent link   libby 4:24 PM
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Posted by roberta

It takes some news a little time to travel. I heard it last week from Shelley Spector who heard it through the grapevine that Blake Bradford, formerly of the Fabric Workshop and Museum and now Hyde Park Art Center's director of education (and a solid nice guy) was named one of the 50 most eligible bachelors by the women's magazine Marie Claire! Now that's some kind of art news, er, art people news!

I couldn't find Marie Claire online except on sites where they want to sell you a subscription and I haven't seen the August issue with my own eye but my friend Google came up with this cyber verification which I'm taking for fact.

From The Chicago Sun Times' column July 14 by Stella Foster:

MARIE CLAIRE mag's August issue, now on newsstands, carries the first of a two-part article featuring 50 bachelors titled "These 50 Great Men Want to Marry You." The first 25 men are in the current issue, and the remaining 25 will be profiled in September.

A number of guys are from Chicago, including dapper Blake Bradford, new director of Education at the Hyde Park Art Center.

By the way, Bradford is the bachelor holding a dog in the mag's big mystery teaser photo on Page 72. (And you didn't hear it from me!)

Aren't you glad to know that? And here's the question: Was Bradford among the MC50 when he was in Philadelphia or did he have to move to Chicago to make the list.

OK, back to work, now. Got that out of my system.

permanent link   roberta 2:45 PM
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Posted by libby

Ever since I wrote that post about Mei-Ling Hom and mentioned the difference between bribery and cultivating a network from an Asian point of view, networks have been cropping up all around me.

Here are five instance from just yesterday and today.

The Wood Turning Center is hosting a conference, Wood 2005, Sept. 21 to 25, and a number of galleries and other places in town and the region are showing wood-related shows. Here's the list: The Clay Studio, Hurong Lou Gallery, Painted Bride Art Center (showing contributor Shelley Spector, who also runs Spector Gallery), Philip and Murial Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, Schmidt/Dean Gallery (showing Susan Hagen), Snyderman-Works Gallery, Wexler Gallery, Moderne Gallery, Nakashima Studio, Philadelphia Museum of Art, University of the Arts, Wharton Esherick Museum and Winterthur. Well that's pretty comprehensive.

A lesson for young artists: Alex Da Corte knows how to network (see previous post).

A lesson in blogville: Doug Witmer emails out a notice to his network that he's part of J.T. Kirkland's Q&A project on "Thinking About Art." Also, that Witmer participated is part of the lesson. Here's a link to Witmer's interview.
Here's a link to Witmer's own blog, and here's a link to Kirkland's "Thinking About Art." Another way to look at this process--if you build it, they may not come. So network.

A pair of lessons from Kirkland: He has run two projects that invite artists to talk about their work and art. This most recent one, that Witmer participated in, "Artists Interview Artists," gives recognition to two artists for every interview (make that at least two additional readers and their networks). Today he announced that he's making his previous such project, "One Word," into a book. He announced it on the blog, and he announced it by email. And now I'm announcing it. Here's a link to the info.

While I'm tossing up links, I got an email from Mark Barry, our man in Baltimore, who invariably nudges me with the kindest humor when I'm being pompous.

We don't consider this bribery.

permanent link   libby 2:27 PM
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Posted by libby

Cafes continue to be unlikely, but sometimes dead-on, in their choices of who's showing work on their walls. This week I'm all about La Colombe at 19th Street of of Rittenhouse Square (image, "Egret," in the "In Futurum Videns" series; i don't know if you can see it at this scale, but the subject has a black eye).

Artist Alex Da Corte has four huge portraits/icons up that are disconcerting after the first take. Behind the heads are gold halos, and atop the heads, bird hats that look positively medieval and 3-D as compared to the faces. But the scale of these, the faces and the blank backgrounds are ultra-modern--except for the face of the only male, who is missing one eye and has a Heironymous Bosch peasant look.

They're all a little sad, some quite angry, that being the intent of a series of seven based on the seven sorrows of Mary. Da Corte said he had been thinking about laminating the paintings so they could be more like holy cards. How do you do that? epoxy? But unlike the luridly colored, blank-faced holy cards, Da Corte holds back on color, using a mostly grisaille palette. Also, but doesn't hold back on expression. As Catholicism goes, these are pretty subversive (just in case you were worried that this work signals a return to the Middle Ages). I'm not so sure that they are faithless however. The faith has maneuvered its way to a belief in humanity. There's a curious optimism here.

Holy cards also bear a relationship to advertising with its idea of a fashionably expressionless but ecstatic face--the antithesis of what's going on here. The last show I saw of portraits was in New York (see post). The beautifully executed paintings by Karel Funk were straight out of Ralph Lauren advertising and I thought quite depressing--a shallow view of life. In light of that work, or Elizabeth Peyton's, I find this work humanistic and alive--oh, give me a break from ecstasy.

Da Corte, a recent UArts graduate whose work we've covered here and here, expects to show the whole series at a solo show at Black Floor Gallery in December. He's also got a solo show coming up in June at Space 1026, but look for something completely different there.da corte, alex

permanent link   libby 10:50 AM
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Posted by libby

I brake for art. That's how I came upon an unexpected exhibit at 3808 Lancaster Ave. I didn't realize the gallery that had been in that space had already closed, but I saw art in the window and stomped on my brakes (top image, "Strike First").

Alas, the place wasn't open, but I left a card, got a call back from one of the two artists showing work, and went to their opening night Friday.

H.D. Ivey, who is in his 50s, is showing work that I can't imagine would fit the agendas of most galleries in town. These political, anti-war wooden sculptures mix folk art traditions and comic book influences like the cowboy and Indian images on "XY" or the wooden explosion at the base of "Strike First" (image right, "XX" in which the atom bomb becomes a voluptuous, precious egg on a pedestal).

Ivey, who grew up in Texas near the Mexican border said he was influenced by traditional Mexican folk art. "Zero" includes a ring of skeletons made bone by bone out of wood and pieced together--a father, mother, child and infant--around a bomb. This is the piece where that Mexican tradition shows most vividly.

He's concerned with the "whole way we are waging war and killing people" since World War I, when the plane enabled aerial bombing. "In the 19th century, no one knew the idea of Groud Zero," he said. All four of the pieces concern some aspect of push-the-button-from-afar warfare such as "surgical" air strikes. Although the pieces have a straight ahead accessibility, they are not quite as simple as they seem at first. They are beautifully crafted, and embellished with symbols and images that add mystery and surprise.

The work that originally caught my eye when I drove by was by Clayton Ryder, a young man with comic books in his background. Ryder, who is 30 (and looks 23) and hails from Rockland, NY, is interested in the patterns of science--Fibonacci sequences, crystal formations, the geometric forms found in nature. His paintings' are kaleidoscopic and suggest computers and cartoon trips through a stretchy, patterned space. The colors are dead on, and I'm looking forward to seeing where he goes with this work, which is close to the practice of a number of young painters in Philadelphia but also has a personal vision working its way through.

The show, which is up through August, can be seen most evenings, 7 to 10 p.m. The artists are gallery sitting; the space is on loan from the owner of the building.ivey, h.d.ryder, clayton

permanent link   libby 10:33 PM
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Posted by libby

While I was out at Abington Art Center, I picked up the challenge to find the "Lost Meeting," which has ruffled art lovers and Quakers alike on artblog (see posts here , here, here, here, here and here. It's one of those shows that left everyone feeling lost, one way or another. Little did the artists involved--J. Morgan Puett and spurse--realize how appropriate their title was.

A good sign or two

My first piece of good news is that unlike those who went before me I had no trouble finding the old Orthodox Quaker meetinghouse, following the path and multiple little signs from the Abington Art Center sculptures to the meetinghouse. Here's a picture of a directional sign.


I didn't realize the place was gated (standard hurricane fence), and was nearly deterred by the shut gate. Another sign here would have been helpful. But I screwed up my courage, opened the hasp and invaded, so no problemo.

The building is just a sweet little thing in the midst of lawn. Whoops. The sign said it wouldn't open until 4 p.m. But I gave the door a push and nearly scared the pants off Parker Wood, one of the spurse members who participated in the project. He was in there working on the computers.

Lost in a very small space

First I wandered around a little, which is a surprise given how small the space is. But spurse and Puett, following a bunch of computer-generated vectors, put odd stuff in odd places in the room. The result is barricades and interruptions to flow, making a tiny space exploration-worthy. To put this another way, the items in the room appear to have been placed chaotically, in order to interfere with normal flow and logical use.

The spursians would no doubt object to my use of the word chaotic, since the whole project is about patterns, and the vectors follow some computer pattern.

Wood told me that young children respond to it in a way that the adults don't. I can see why. It's Peewee's Playhouse, designed according to some different drummer in a hairshirt (oy, spurse would hate the real Peewee's Playhouse--so camp and comfortable and decorated), with dark corners, cramped spaces and multiple levels.


My favorite part of the installation was the old wooden clothes-making patterns. Here's a picture of some of them. They seemed so utilitarian--and easy to make sense of. I also liked the old pattern weights with their real-world heft and giant Monopoly game-pieces look.

In contrast, the patterns being generated by the computer are for the most part strange and uninteresting all at once. The patterns are based on images of period clothing that get chewed up in algorithms and spit out as nothing like what they started as.


A couple of pieces they made based on the computer-generated patterns did catch my eye. Shaped by a router out of foam insulation from a CAD version of a pattern, I liked looking at them, although I found the source pattern quite puzzling (Wood was kind enough to show it to me and twirl it around in cyberspace).

Typing monkeys

But all in all, I would have to say that this project gives the tool (i.e. the computer) more power than it deserves. The result is prolific production of meaningless patterns. Wood said they would end up with a minimum of 219 paper patterns when they were done, maybe 300.

I wondered why so many and to what purpose. Wood assured me that some would be selected for use in further projects.

In other words, what's happening here is that the creative process, which isn't creative at all in the traditional sense, is ceded over to the computer which indiscriminately creates. Then the artist/designers take on the role of editors, weeding out what is useless and selecting what they might (or might not) be able to use.

This is a lot like email. It has given us more messages but they are of inferior quality. (All this reminds