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Posted by libby

[Ed. note: artblog contributor Colette Copeland's critical writing class at Penn went to First Friday, too. Here's what a couple of them had to say.]

Across the sculpture-craft divide

The "Mastery in Clay Auction Celebration" on exhibit at the Clay Studio through Oct. 22, showcases a diversity of styles within the medium. Mary Roehm employs traditional ceramic techniques in her piece “Pale Blue Celadon Bowl”. The beauty is found within the simplicity of its shape and angelic color. Like Roehm’s piece, Karl Radasch’s “Bowl and Terracotta Glaze” displays traditional mastery of pottery thrown on a wheel. However, the elaborate glaze in complementary colors such as pinks and greens, on top of whites and browns, makes this piece anything but conventional (left, a piece by Cynthia Consentino).

Simply crafted common pieces of pottery, such as cups, saucers, and plates, assembled in an uncommon way gives Benjamin Schulman’s “Stack # 26” a modern edge. Numerous opaque black pieces of slightly differing sizes and shapes are stacked up in one long tower, creating a unique sculpture that brings together traditional and contemporary art.

If Schulman’s piece is the mid-point between traditional pottery and contemporary sculpture, Cynthia Consentino’s “Family Portrait: Mother and Daughter” falls very distinctly into the contemporary sculpture category. Both the title and the initial viewing of the work would lead one to believe that this is a conservative family piece. However, upon closer inspection one observes multiple arms and hands sprouting from the mother’s back, and an ear pressed on to the daughter’s stomach. Is this supposed to be commenting on the clichés of demanding children not listening to their parents nor realizing that their parents “only have two hands”? Instead of simply admiring the craftsmanship, I found myself wondering about possible familial or cultural implications and meanings within the work.

--by Jessica Gerber


Red socks for AIDS research

Naked fashion models in shapeless, calf-length red socks? All in the name of AIDS research funding from photographer Rayzor Bachand’s exhibit at the Qbix Gallery that opened Friday, Oct 7. The obvious humor and sexual appeal of the exhibit is in direct opposition with the reason for creating this show, which will go on tour nationally after one month in Philadelphia. Bachand’s prints, inspired by Philadelphia native fashion model, Gia Carangi, who died from AIDS complications in the 1980s, are on sale at the gallery to raise funds for AIDS research.

The show definitely succeeded in getting attention this First Friday, not only because of the erotic nude photography, but also because it was raising money for an important cause. In fact, the combination of those two strategies reminds me of that calendar project from England where elderly women from a small town put out a nude calendar of themselves to raise money for leukemia.

The one room gallery even looks like a sales floor, marketing and selling the prints for AIDS research. The show draws in the audience with nudity and then forces them to examine the completely out-of-place red socks in the photographs.

Each image is titled individually to correlate to the role of the socks in the image. “Musical Socks” features a women playing the piano with her feet in a very intimate and casual pose. The socks signify the individuality of each woman and bring to mind that each AIDS patient is an individual.

The show will run until Nov. 4.

--by Anastasia Kouriatovaroehm, maryradasch, karlschulman, benjaminconsentino, cynthiabachand, rayzor

permanent link   libby 9:00 AM
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Posted by roberta

everest and me
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Fulfilling my dream of conquest at last. Here I am in a Polaroid picture by Nick Paparone in the Paparone and Jamie Dillon installation "Everest" at Space 1026. I'll be back any day now. In fact watch for me and my frostbitten nose at the Ellen Harvey opening "Mirror" at PAFA tonight.

paparone, nick and jamie dillon

permanent link   roberta 7:01 AM
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Posted by libby

It's good I didn't read the student posts about the Comicology show at Slought Foundation before I took a look, or I might have forgotten to enjoy what was there. But enjoy it I did (so did Roberta; here's her post) (image from Ron Rege Jr.'s "Where I Slept").





First of all, Charles Burns' fabulous intense black and white drawings were sooo sexy--the antithesis of Archie comics. No saddle shoes, roadsters and Jughead here. Only the drawing style that calls back to Veronika's hair lives on through Burns' testosterone-driven "Black Hole," which turns teenage angst and acne into a virus and turns wounds into vaginas, and whole multi-frame pages into vaginas. I didn't care that the story was a little sketchy, and I assumed that the pages were not necessarily consecutive (image from Burn's "Black Hole").

The Dame Darcy comics were, I thought, incredible, even though I was reading them in the dark because Slought turned me down when I asked if I could have some lights turned on. These were incredible feminist social commentary, dark and sarcastic, with a punk/Goth scratchy drawing style. Twisted fairy tales and stories of "girlfriend" betrayal hit on the twisted cultural expectations for women--passivity waiting for a phone call or a prince, weight and beauty issues, etc. Darcy is drawing in a male comix culture, and she's the ultimate bad-girl, out-badding the boys and adding content no guy would ever handle (image from Dame Darcy's "Meat Cake" comics).

Mark Bell creates an Escher-like world that's a robotic or monster figure that moves and is the earth at the same time that it is a creature. It's got the macrocosm-microcosm thing made visible, a sense of universe and my clubhouse in my little town. The wordplay and spaceplay are nothing short of fabulous.

The existentialism /nihilism in Anders Nilsen with his space-filled collages and white-out takes comics in a direction that's utterly unexpected. I am reminded of drawings by Justin Witte and by Robyn O'Neil, with their sense of the vast universe and dark happenings among the humans (image from Nilsen).


And Kim Deitch's drawings take the Krazy Kat look and put it to dark purposes in multi-frame compositions. And Ron Rege Jr.'s strange thin-line drawings (see image top of post) have a sad-sack central character whose peregrinations take him all over the place so the drawings add up to an archive of our way of life (image, from Kim Deitch's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams").

While comics were not created for gallery walls, they are art that opens still another window on the culture and its paradigms. Putting the work in a gallery, as curators Judith Stein and her nephew Gabriel Greenberg have done, seems like a good thing to me. If you're not looking at graphic novels you owe yourself the pleasure of checking out this work.rege jr., ronburns, charlesdarcy, damebell, marknilsen, andersdeitch, kim

permanent link   libby 11:34 AM
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Posted by roberta

This week's Weekly includes my review of the exhibits by Douglas Takeshi Wolfe and Robbert Flick at Gallery 339. There's no sketches today. But there's an editors' choice listings box with a quick review of the "Very Early Pictures" exhibit at Arcadia University Art Gallery. Here's the link to the review and here's the link to the listings box. And below are is the copy with some pictures. For more on Wolfe and Flick see my previous post.

Lens Crafters
One photographer zooms in on the small; the other shrinks the monumental.

Between the photographs of Douglas Takeshi Wolfe and Robbert Flick at Gallery 339 is a brotherliness you might find between likeminded souls. Which isn't to say that the artists-one local (Wolfe), the other from Los Angeles (Flick)-are doing similar work.

While they both depict urban or rural landscapes that suggest the big eternal picture and the passage of time, Wolfe is looking through the small end of the telescope making the infinitesimal monumental. Flick, especially with his later works, is a "big ender" whose sliced and diced panoramas aggregate many small moments and turn them into a monumental river of life.



Wolfe's exhibit "31" in the upstairs gallery covers work from the last 10 years. Shot in Philadelphia, Seattle, Italy and Japan, the black-and-white images-available in a catalog self-produced by the artist-range from a street scene with one lone graffiti arabesque to shots of birds on electrical wires, paint peeling on a wall, and some images of brooding dark office buildings. Without including a body or face in the lot, the works imply the human experience of being alone in a timeless universe.

What separates Wolfe from modern masters like Harry Callahan or Ray Metzger who also depict small moments as monumental is Wolfe's sense of wonder, which swings from exuberant to questioning. While some of Wolfe's shots brood-like Itabashikuyakiushomae, Tokyo, a line of white shirts on hangers in a dark laundry space-others evoke something like glee.

(image above is Wolfe's Itabashikuyakiushomae, Tokyo)



Birds on wires either alone or perched together in long lines are coffee-klatching friends gathered in networking strings like IM chat buddies. Birds in flight-depicted in four images in the exhibit-convey not only wonder but a big-hug embrace of nature and the cosmos.

Wolfe's Ephemera is a bird-in-flight photo that is reproduced as a freebie poster in an "infinite" stack sitting on the gallery's floor. It's a joyous image-and a generous impulse to give it away. Ephemera asks you to reflect on the fragility of life in the larger scheme of things but reminds you to have a little fun while you're at it. (image is Wolfe's infinite stack "Ephemera.")



Robbert Flick's images have less joy but are imbued with the artist's poetic view of the world. The Los Angeles-based photographer, recently featured in a retrospective at the L.A. County Museum of Art, has works from three series here: black-and-white shots of a parking ramp from the '70s that are beautiful depictions of light and shadow and structure as hard-edged geometry; gridded sequences of black-and-white landscape imagery that read as stories about site; and Los Angeles Documents, more sequences, taken with a video camera from a moving car, then printed as horizontal streams and collaged into fabric-like swatches of imagery.

(image above is from Flick's parking ramp series and below is one of his LA Documents pieces)



The L.A. Documents, in color, have a horizontal matrix-like flow. More than the earlier works, these L.A. street scenes imply the chaos and serendipity of the universe. Like life itself, they need to be studied up close and viewed from afar to be understood.



"Douglas Takeshi Wolfe: 31" and "Robbert Flick: Sequential Views"
Through Oct. 23. Gallery 339, 339 S. 21st St. 215.731.1530.




"Very Early Pictures"

Through Oct. 30. Arcadia University Art Gallery, 450 S. Easton Rd., Glenside. 215.572.2133.



"Very Early Pictures" at Arcadia is every mother's nightmare--a group exhibit of children's art that probably doesn't include her child. But if the mother-jealousy factor
doesn't bother you, I guarantee you'll find things to love in this exhibit, which is, after all, art by 60 gifted children who continue to make art now as adults--some of them as international superstars. Hindsight is not a valid lens through which to read this exhibit, looking back for signs of genius, but it's the natural tendency. For what it's worth, graphic novelist Charles Burns seems to have been born a cartoonist; and stained glass artist of pain and sorrow Judith Schaechter shows acute empathy for human suffering in a drawing at age 3.

(image is Schaechter's self-portrait in dental headgear when she was 14 or so. It was one of my favorites in the show.)



And while "VEP" isn't an exhibit to demonstrate some point about child development or art education, there's one outstanding example of bad school art: Ed Ruscha's magazine cut-out Santa circled by a generic construction paper wreath. The piece's awfulness is redeemed by the fact that in another context it would be deemed conceptual and postmodern, and you might even call it a typical Ed Ruscha. Ultimately "VEP" is a celebration of every mother's child making art--and of every mother who's saving it, and that's sweet.

(last image is Ruscha's school boy Santa)
ruscha, ed
schaechter, judith
flick, robbert
wolfe, douglas takeshi

permanent link   roberta 8:29 AM
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Posted by roberta

Post by Colette Copeland

I was still thinking about David Lynch’s lecture on consciousness and creativity when I visited the Rodney Graham exhibit at the ICA. (See my Lynch post)

Lynch attributes his unique (a.k.a. macabre) vision and ideas to his 2x/day TM practice. Conceptual Vancouver artist Rodney Graham also seeks to expand his consciousness, but through means at odds with Lynch’s approach. In lieu of a disciplined, organic practice, Graham uses synthetic chemicals to alter his brain chemistry. In his retrospective, Graham explores optics and perception, readily admitting to being ‘under the influence’ while creating some of his film and video pieces.

(for another take on Graham, see Libby's post)


When I took a class of students to the exhibition last week, a few expressed outrage over his blatant drug use, which they alleged as condoning (even celebrating) illegal behavior. I wondered why Graham chose to ‘confess’ his drug use in the wall text of the museum. Is that knowledge intrinsic to the understanding of Graham’s work? Even after viewing the work several times, it was not obvious that Graham was under mind-altering substances. Since perception is a recurring theme in Graham’s work, the drugs seem to function as an experimental strategy in altering or transforming insight and creativity. (image is Graham's "Vexation Island," a video loop in whichthe artist gets repeatedly konked on the head by a coconut when he wakes up from being previously knocked unconscious and --forgetting himself -- shakes the coconut palm tree again triggering another nut to fall on him.)


For the 1994 video, “Halcion”, Graham ingests a large does of the tranquilizer Halcion (known for inducing deep dream states). Friends removed his sleeping body from a hotel room in Vancouver and placed him in a taxi, which then drove him to his apartment in the city center. The video features a comatose Graham, dressed in comical, striped pajamas, peacefully slumbering in the backseat of the cab. (image. And see the video here.)

The journey is both real and metaphoric; Graham travels through his consciousness into the deep recesses of his memory, not privy to the viewer. The camera’s vantage point places the viewer inside the taxi with Graham—we become the voyeur watching Graham sleep. On display next to the video is a glass case containing the striped pajamas. Do the pajamas authenticate the experience or point to the artificiality of the film world? I wonder if this is a real or simulated ‘trip’. (Pun intended)



Graham created, “Coruscating Cinnamon Granules” (1996) while on acid. Are we to believe that the magic occurring in this lovely black and white16mm film would be absent without a hallucinatory-inspired experience? In a darkened room, sudden bursts of light appear on the screen, resembling shooting stars or fireflies on a humid, summer night. The abstraction reminds me of early Lazlo Moholy-Nagy’s photographic experiments with light and movement. As the film progresses, we suddenly see the outline of interlocking circles revealing a coil. The shape references Robert Smithson’s famous land artwork, “Spiral Jetty”. In the gallery notes, Graham refers to Marcel Duchamp’s “Rotorelief” and to Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Is he concerned that the viewer will dismiss the work as merely the product of an LSD trip, feeling compelled to legitimize the film with important art historical references? (image is Graham's "City Self Country Self")



Quoting Graham, who says, “My point is, the trip is the thing” perfectly summarizes the experience of the 16mm film “The Phonokinetoscope” (2002). Loud stoner music reminiscent of Pink Floyd blares as the viewer enters the dimly lit room. In one corner sits a record player, with instructions on how to lift and lower the needle. At the other end of the room, an old film projector hums as the film plays, depicting Graham on a bicycle trip. (image is film still from Graham's trippy bike trip)


According to Graham’s ‘cliff’ notes, the film references Albert Hoffman’s 1943 inaugural bike trip on acid. In homage to Hoffman, the inventor of LSD, someone produced Hoffman acid tabs, which picture the man on his bike. Apparently this brand was unavailable, so Graham had to make do with ‘Mad Hatter’ acid. The artist also cites the Syd Barrett documentary film, which depicts the first acid trip on a bike byhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif the 19yr old Barrett. Graham also composed and performed the soundtrack to “The Phonokinetoscope”. (image is Graham speaking and gesticulating at the opening. Pardon my wiggly arrow.)

I’m not sure if Graham’s intent was to create a hallucinatory environment for the viewer through the music and film. Since he is the film’s subject and not the cinematographer, the viewer does not have access to the altered state of consciousness. Graham carefully storyboarded the film and his sketches are on display in the room. So what is the point of the acid trip, beyond citing his ‘tripping’ predecessors?

As for expanding consciousness and creativity, I personally prefer the safer and legal organic methods.
--Colette Copeland is a video installation artist and a regular contributor to artblog.
graham, rodney

permanent link   roberta 8:41 PM
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Posted by roberta

We just shortened our front page to eight days instead of 14, in hopes that it helps out you dial-up folks who occasionally have told us the page takes forever to load.

We put up another page of "So True," our autobiographical e-project, proving once again that we really are interchangeable, just like everyone seems to think. See the newest page in the project here.

your friends,
libby and roberta

permanent link   roberta 10:39 AM
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Posted by roberta

Post by gorillagrrl

[We usually don't run anonymous posts, but this one seemed to have something important to say, and besides, it's about a new gallery in town.]


I'm writing something a bit inflammatory and feminist, and I want a virtual gorilla mask in which to do it. I walked into Lineage gallery today, and I liked lots of what they were showing- looks like they are filling the lowbrow art hole once filled by Tin Man Alley gallery- but I left the gallery depressed. Why? Because I'm getting used to a very depressing trend in lowbrow art: there are no women artists allowed in lowbrow art galleries. Or very few, anyways. (image, Naoto Hattori's "Monument")

I liked the people there, and they were obviously ready to take my money if I was buying, but I had to wonder if they would have considered showing my art. They might have, but the odds were stacked against me, and not just in the usual way. It's a huge group show with 22 artists, and there are 2 women in it. If that. (If Naoto and Adrian are women: they are the only non-gender specific names.)

Jonathan Levine Gallery, the other big lowbrow gallery on this coast, has 25 men and 6 women listed in their stable, which is way more than they had when they were here. And one of those women reflects the other depressing trend I've seen in these galleries. Often, when they do show women, they are women who are painting nekkid women with huge breasts. Notice Miss Van. Their track record gets better with previous shows: 7 out of 17 previous artists were women, and of those, only 2 are painting naked ladies. (image, Miss Van's untitled print 2)

Now, if a woman wants to paint women with big breasts, that's fine by me, but given that these galleries show a hugely low percentage of women artists, does it not strike one as slightly convenient that they love showing women who deal with sex? It's a perfect deal for them. They get to continue to be sexist without being called on it by showing porn painted by women. I bet they even think it's feminist of them to show the work. And I also bet that they think that they just don't show women because there aren't that many women artists making good lowbrow art.

And my other guess is that because they are so self conciously lowbrow, they'd attack anyone pointing out that they were not showing women by accusing them of being really PC. (image, Adrian Lee's "Rain of Ruin")

But the thing is...There are, and have always been, tons of women artists. Art schools are 80% women. And most gallery scenes are pretty much showing 50% women [eds.: really?]. Which is a bias against the numbers of women who were trained to be artists, but reflects a fair overview of society.

But lowbrow galleries have been given some kind of pass- nobody talks about this issue because of the threat of seeming damnably PC. Because they are so socially transgressive, we let them get away with being jerks (Lisa Yuskavage's "Kathy").

I suggest, girls, that you keep your money in your pockets, and that you talk about this with your friends: there's no reason this has to happen. There are lots of women artists making every kind of art, and even lowbrow art could be for everybody if these male gallery owners would just get on it. Lets hope Lineage improves.

--guerillagrrl, we think, is a Philadelphia artisthattori, naotolee, adrianvan, missyuskavage, lisa

permanent link   roberta 10:27 AM
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Posted by roberta

look at me 2
Originally uploaded by sokref1.

Let me add this little post-ito to Libby's First Friday roundup. While in Gallery Siano Vince Romaniello introduced us to Nexus member and inliquid artist Jody Sweitzer who told us she had a piece in Bird Park that was fun and that Becky Kerlin loved. Well, I was in town to see the show at Kerlin's Gallery Joe (next to Bird Park, Kerlin is in charge of the outdoor park/project space) and took this snapshot of the audio/visual piece by Sweitzer and Chris Vecchio (also a Nexus member and inliquid artist.) "Now that we have your attention" is a motion-sensitive piece: The playpen crew talk at you when you pass by. It's a cacophanous chorus of "Look at me, look at me. Don't go. Good bye. Have a nice day. Oh, you're going." And the like. There may be more snarky stuff but that's all I could make out. I thought it was great, with all kinds of references to street side altars to slain children and to the idea of children (and adults -- and cities, too for that matter, eg NOLA) abandoned for one reason and another. (picture is from my flickr site. click it to see it bigger)

Kerlin told me she did love the piece. And she witnessed children laughing and enjoying it as well. My experience observing passersby was that, like with all public art, some people like it and some don't. A couple of moms came by and were surprised and couldn't wait for their trailing kids to catch up and look. When the two little boys (maybe age 7) arrived they seemed underwhelmed. And then a group of adults came by, slowed to a stop, and when one of them said "I don't get it," they quickly moved on.

Sweitzer and Vecchio have both made motion-sensitive works that I've seen at Nexus. They've also both done public interactive works. It's great to see the collaboration and I think it's a successful piece. Part of its success is in the decay factor. I'm trying to imagine what the little street urchins will look like a month from now and I think the piece will be quite different and will evoke a kind of disgust -- disgust at the dirty toys; disgust with the idea of chirpy little voices coming out of objects that look beaten down and unloved.

sweitzer, jody and chris vecchio

permanent link   roberta 7:35 AM
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Posted by libby

Maybe it was youthful exuberance (not ours, of course, but the artists'), but yesterday's First Friday highlights included an installations at Space 1026 and Black Floor that tickled me (image, right, Teresita Fernandez's "Fire" being admired at the Fabric Workshop and Museum).

We had started out at the Fabric Workshop and Museum, where we listened to MacArthur genius Teresita Fernandez give evasive questions about her work and drone on about the wonderful experience of collaboration with the Fab. Some of it wasn't her fault. As always, the Fabsters ask leading questions about just how amazing the collaborative experience was.

The big installation piece, a labor-intensive ring of fire made of dyed silk threads with mucho help from Fab workers, was too literal and industrial-looking for my taste. Although it did offer some shimmering and moire effects plus a little jiggle factor in the strings, ultimately it was awfully minimalist in the worst sense--screws, pieced metal rings, anti-lyrical (right, Fernandez speaking).

The small collage drawings on the wall, however, were something else entirely. They were beautiful, intense, evocative of fire in ways that the big, pumped up ring didn't begin to realize. Made after the big sculpture, they are worth going to the Fabric Workshop for (left below, one of the fire collages--the reflections of light are not part of the art--sorry).

While there, we met up with Brent Burket, artblog's New York correspondent and a Fab member, who came here especially for the Fernandez piece. He seemed more kindly disposed that I was.

We also bumped into curator Andrea Kirsch who reminded us that Fernandez had had a piece at the ICA under the Patrick Murphy regime. It was rooms created with scrims. I remember I saw it, but I don't remember what I thought of it.

The white and the black, part 1

Ultimately, the four of us set out together for a quick pitstop at Vox Populi--here's an image from the Kate Abercrombie exhibit, "Ghost Town of the Sky," Abercrombie's work is moving a new direction, with a kind of patchwork approach to landscapes where Indian miniatures and chintz unite. Some were not as successful as others, but as usual, her work is worth a look. This was my favorite, the amazing sky-and-black-clouds pattern showing influences from Japanese wood blocks. The clouds were rather bat-like (image right, from Abercrobie's exhibit).

[insert 10/12/05--I don't know how I could have forgotten to write that at Vox we bumped into Anabelle Rodriguez from Taller Puertorriqueno. She was exuberant and heading upstairs to the Fabric Workshop to see the Teresita Fernandez work.]


Also showing there were Eva Wylie's exhibit "Near Berserk" and Nami Yamamoto's "White Noise."

Wylie's use of borrowed landscape-related images,was subtly disorienting and surprising. The tents and mountains, including cross-hairs that look like printer registration marks or vice versa, are taken out of context, flattened, juxtaposed and turned around to create a panoramic wall installation, silkscreened directly onto the plaster (image left, a detail of one of Wylie's two panoramas made with the same images shuffled differently).

There's also some thinking about the computer, where scale becomes a shaky verity. I presume the images are taken from the computer, both because of how they look and because Wylie's previous installation used computer images. The result is at once strange and familiar--great to look at.



Yamamoto's white dots stuck on the white wall and colored ones drawn on paper are inspired by patterns in nature, but they seem stuck at that initial thought, so I take this as a step on a path in a new direction. We'll have to wait and see where it goes. (Here's a picture of someone looking at what almost appears to be a bare wall, but it's covered with white dots).

The black and the white, part 2

We traipsed on, our clothes glued to us by the amazing humidity, to Space 1026, to see Nick Paparone and Jamie Dillon's "Everest," a small mountain-top of polyurethane foam resting on a white rug with undulating edges in front of a two-wall backdrop --a wallpaper-like strip of white and black mountain tops against blue sky (left, a shot of the installation of "Everest").

We all remarked on the danger posed to the all-white rug by the soupy weather. No they hadn't Scotch-Guarded it. And yes, they were sorry they hadn't.

For $5, they took pictures of people in front of the mountain. I won't say the result is uncanny. It's funny, instead, as is the mountain, with a boy-makes-model or boy-builds-a-train-landscape kind of gruffness. Therein lies its charm. Any attempts at realism are subverted to an almost child-like idea of what a mountain is like (image right, that's Dillon and Paparone, left to right).

Needless to say, there's a gap between reality and the idea, and I for one think the idea is a lot more fun. The real mountain is brutal and cold. When Paparone said they were interested in Everest as an idea, I immediately thought of the work of Philadelphia artist Matt Pruden, who's also interested in Everest as an idea--about nationalism and glory.

By the way, we wrote about Paparone and Dillon when they showed a little slide that ended in a pitch-black room with no apparent way to exit at the late, lamented Project Room.

The black and the white, part 3

After Roberta posed for her picture and received it in a handsome Everest memento photo folder with slots to hold the picture corners, three of us--Brent, Robert and I (Andrea left us)--headed to Black Floor. “Close Your Eyes, This Will Take Some Time,” turned out to be a sort of anti-Everest. Everything in this installation was black.

Sabrina Lessard's light-absorbing black bed looked totally real to me. I couldn't understand why the two young ladies in the gallery were squatting near it, and not sitting on it. But the bed wasn't a bed at all, but an idea of a black bed made of a mix of resin, gypsum and fibrglass, with a polymer top coat. Very high tech materials, for what didn't look high tech at all. Unlike Everest, the material had no give whatsoever. Very funny (Lessard's "Close Your Eyes, This Will Take Some Time").

Lessard, who has done casting for Norman Paris and Virgil Marti, and has gotten lots of casting experience working with Kait Midgett, said her bed was the opposite of white, the traditional bed-sheet color.

Amplified from speakers were answers to questions about beds that she asked people--about dreams, experiences in beds, and suggestions for bed names. The answers to the bed names question ranged from a launch pad to a worm hole to a white protection place, a place of safety.

"My concept was just the opposite," she said, referring to the place of safety suggestion. Then she noted that we spend 30 percent of our lives in bed--probably even more than that. And beds are sometimes places of danger, where people die or lie sick.

Philadelphia art-scene props

She also reeled off a list of familiar names from the Philadelphia art world who helped her, so if you helped her, believe me, she credited you and said she felt totally supported. "I think that's specific to Philadelphia," she said. "It gave me the security and the guts" to get the piece done.

Speaking of networking, she was selling imprinted tee shirts and pillowcases silkscreened by Paparone and Dillon, the "Everest" crew.

New York Jenny Holzer digression


Then Burket left us for New York and the Jenny Holzer piece based on poems projected on the outside walls of the New York Public Library (here is one of Burket's images of that). By the way, Holzer is due to speak at the University of Pennsylvania Nov. 16. Here's a link to more information about Holzer's talk.

Here's Burket's email on Holzer:

And O MY GOD, the Holzer. The 2nd time that art made me cry yesterday. I'm really glad I made the effort to get back in time too because today the rain is really heavy. The other great thing with the Holzer was watching some of the locals walk by who weren't expecting to see all these huge beautiful words on their library. That and the crowds of people that specifically came to see it. Somebody even brought a group of high school kids.

You can see more info and more images here on the Creative Time Blog.

Networker extraordinaire

We headed off to Gallery Siano for some networking of our own. There we found Vince Romaniello whose online videos of artists working in their studios is turning into quite the archive. The exhibit is of his artwork plus pieces from his network--i.e. his video subjects and fellow bloggers. The videos themselves, which are a public service, are also projected in the exhibit(left, Romaniello on the right, schmoozing).

We found another out-of-towner, art blogger Chris Ashley, who was visiting from the Bay area (not kidding!) and had a piece in the show (image right, Chris Ashley).

We also found artists Tim McFarlane (left) and Tremain Smith, also in the show and subjects of Romaniello's videos. The evening ended abruptly when we dashed out late for our dinner date with Murray (image left, McFarlane and Smith to the right of him are in the center of the photo).fernandez, teresitaabercrombie, katewylie, evayamamoto, namidillon, james and paparone, nickpaparone, nick and james dillonlessard, sabrinaholzer, jennyromaniello, vincent

permanent link   libby 6:59 PM
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Posted by roberta

[Ed. note: My New Orleans friends Chuck and Iris, whose evacuation saga I've told you about before, have been living in the Bronx for almost two weeks now where Iris was offered lab space and housing by Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Yesterday C&I put this report on their website about themselves -- and about conditions back in their poor clobbered city. I'm posting the whole thing here.]

From Iris Lindberg, Chuck Patch and Lianna Patch

Dear Folks,

We are now closing in on the end of week 6, our second in New York, although it seems as if we have been here much longer than that. The stay has been punctuated by two trips back to New Orleans; one by Chuck and another by Iris, with a visit from Alex in between. Another trip to NOLA is coming up next week. Thank God for JetBlue's cheap fares!

There is unquestionably a fatigue setting in with us, almost made worse by our approaching return to our home, where difficulties abound. Here in our little apartment in the Bronx, where our lives are pretty much on hold, we decorate with drapes from the dollar store and struggle to adapt to the civilized, but unfamiliar "normality" of New York. Then there is the sudden jarring change to New Orleans, where nothing is normal at all. From the first step out of the airplane into an airport that is all but shutdown, to a ride into the city where most businesses are closed and hand-written signs offering work alternate with piles of wet and molding debris stacked 5 feet high, everything feels wrong. People were slowly beginning to return to the neighborhood earlier this week.



There was still no electricity, gas, phone or potable water at our home, but here and there people were moving in to camp. Getting everything fixed begins with tearing out everything that has molded, which must be done before an electrician will enter your home to replace all the wiring that got wet and certify that the power can be reconnected. And this must be done before gas lines to water heaters can be replaced and air conditioners repaired. And all of this is essential before the minor things like replacing broken panes of glass and clearing the mountains of tree branches and dead plants, killed by the brackish flood waters, or the new washers, dryers and refrigerators can be purchased. It will all take huge amounts of energy to accomplish and we have it very easy compared to many people we know who have lost all of their possessions. Cell phones still hardly work. You have to drive out of the city to get gasoline. Almost none of the traffic lights or street lights work. (image above is from Chuck's flickr site. it shows bugs in the kitchen which was spared flooding but not six-legged invaders.)



The Historic New Orleans Collection held its first staff meeting this week, but Chuck missed it, even though he was in town. Instead, he was rigging a small two machine network so that the Collection's finance officer could get to her accounting data and pay bills. The rest of the time he was in town, he was dealing with contractors, plumbers and electrician and hauling rotting rugs, furniture and books to the curbside from our dark and stinking basement. He will do what work he can for the Collection, but until we have a place to live in New Orleans of our own, we are reluctant to return permanently. (image is of the water line mark -- half way up the Matisse poster -- in the basement)

In fact, for Iris, the situation is almost reversed. Her building in New Orleans will apparently not be open until the end of December, in which case she will continue working in New York so that she can maintain some sort of momentum. She is hoping her technician joins her to start to rebuild their protein collection and that some Katrina aid will actually emerge to help with the dual housing bills of both of them.

Another growing source of consternation is the realization that we will have to live apart for a while until LSUHSC is back in town. We are determined, though, to celebrate Thanksgiving in our own- repaired- home. Will Molly the cat return to NO too? She hates the Bronx, but Iris loves her company. In the meantime, we are looking forward to a possible visit from the elusive Lianna next week. Stay tuned.

As usual, you can see more images (just snapshots) at Chuck's Flickr site.
patch, chuck

permanent link   roberta 8:15 AM
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