Throwback Thursday- Go See Art Outside this Summer

from seattletimes.com

Now that it is getting so nice outside, I have been pining to go check out the Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park. Sculpture parks are one of those amazing things, because so often they are free, and it is a great way to check out art (often contemporary art) in a more laid back and fun setting. I know from teaching at the Cantor, if you want to get kids excited about art, helping them move through sculptures outside, where the rules seemingly change, empowers them to connect in ways you won't see outside. Plus, you can experience the environment, the sun, the ocean breeze while you look at art. It's pretty awesome.

A lot of museums now have sculpture parks because beginning in the 60's, a lot of sculpture was made to be semi-monumental, and to be viewed outside. Museums like SFMoMA stage huge shows in public settings (such as Mark di Suvero at Chrissy Field, which just closed last month), and they can make you see a place in a totally new way. Permanent outdoor collections also just feel like an adventure. The best ones combine the beauty of the environment with art objects, so you find them in surprising places.  If you have some travel planned this summer, or you are just looking for something different in your neighborhood, think about what art is living outside. It might make a great place for a summer afternoon. Here are some great ones:

The Fran and Ray Stark Sculpture Garden at the Getty- I don't care how you feel about art, there is no better place to spend a Saturday in Los Angeles than the Getty Museum, which has gorgeous views of the city and a breeze from being up on the hill. They have an interesting collection of art (the shows I have seen there, honestly, were a little lame), but some of the great pieces are actually outside, and I had one of the best days ever with my brother just hanging out there.

Storm King Art Center- In Mountainville, New York (in the gorgeous Hudson River Valley), this park is consistently on the lists of best sculpture parks in the world, with one of the best collections in the United States. I haven't been to this one, but clearly, I need to go. He has a huge collection of David Smith's anchoring the whole thing, with works from everyone from Alexander Calder to Maya Lin (of Memorial fame).

the deCordova Sculpture Park- This is the other staple on every list of great sculpture parks. It is worth going just to see the Lichtensteins, but the grounds and building on it are also some of the most gorgeous you can see. If you are near Lincoln, MA, you should check it out!

Some museums have great sculptures parks right outside their door as well- I am thinking specifically of the Hirschorn in DC,  The Rodin Sculpture Garden at Stanford, outside the Chicago Institute of Art, Mass MOCA, and the DIA Foundation. There are plenty of wonderful outdoor sculptures near museums- you don't even have to go in!

If you want even more outside art, try checking out what monuments and land art might be around you. These works are often more site specific, meaning that they were built specifically for the world around them, so you can really enjoy and think about the relationship between the object and its setting. Plus, some of the most famous ones, like Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson, are absolute adventures (see: ridiculous) to get to. Here are some Land Art pieces for you avant garde adventurers and monuments for those of you who like more kitchy or historical cultural fun (no judgement- I love both!)

 Double Negative- This is outside Overton, Nevada, and it is an adventure to get to, from all accounts, specifically so you can see a giant hole in the ground. But a freaking brilliant hole, right?

Navajo National Monument/ Montezuma Castle Monument- This is way towards the top of my Bucket List (right next to Monument Valley, God's monument to John Wayne). These historical monuments preserve the most intact cliff dwellings of peoples who lived in Pueblos. They are so strange and beautiful, and they are a good reminder that the Western Canon actually destroyed other cultures in its search of progress.

The Portland Headlight- Everyone go see some lighthouses. They are pretty and cool, and are usually really really windy. I love them on both coasts, but this is probably one of the greatest.

Cadillac Ranch- The Ant Farm made this piece simultaneously lampooning and praising American car culture. This piece is pretty popular for artists and tourists alike, and it lives just outside Amarillo Texas.

Cloud Gate (The Bean)- Chicago tourists often get their picture taken in front of this giant mirror, and I wonder how it would be to spend a whole day in this plaza- that probably makes for a great people-watching for the day. I also wonder if Anish Kapoor was building off of Nancy Holt's gates, which are famous land art works that you can go see as well, and there are "gate" sculptures in Seattle Center! Maybe I will do a whole blog on sculptures with "gate" in the title.

There are about a million suggestions I could give of things to go see. These are either ones I love or would love to go to. Just don't go to Mount Rushmore. Seriously, that place is my enemy, and it will turn against you.

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Today's Inspiration- Ira Korman

This week has been a great one for genoming (not that I got as much done as I wanted to, but I did see a lot of exceptionally cool stuff). One of my favorites was Ira Korman's Memento Mori series, in which the artist does extremely realistic and soft charcoal drawings of photobooth pictures found in antique stores and that kind of thing. Why is there nothing more magical than old photobooth pictures? I think it may actually be the privacy of a curtain and tight space brings out an intimacy you just don't see in other photographs. Anyway, here are a few of the photographs that are on display until December 20th at Koplin del Rio in LA, but you can see more at the gallery's website here.

from artweek.la

from www.complex.com

from artsy.net

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Today's Inspiration- Jody Alexander's Ruby B

Today I had a special project to finish for Artsy, and I couldn't be happier, because I discovered yet another truly amazing artist. Jody Alexander works as a librarian in Santa Cruz by day and as a book artist and collector by night. She spins her own narratives around found books and texts, but the ways she transforms them are unlike anything I have ever seen. New favorite for sure. Here are a few images from her "The Odd Volumes of Ruby B" series, which you can read more about here (no seriously, click the link. You will see beautiful things).

from www.seagergray.com

from www.jalexbooks.com

from www.herringbonebindery.com

The total femininity and precision of what she is doing moves what could be just an original idea into something that feels precious and rare. The embroidery on the pages is unlike any I have seen before. When a collector makes her own objects, I think she captures that magic that drives those archival instincts in the first place. I think this work is magic.

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3 Things for Yesterday- Notorious RBG, Xbox Music, and Word to Mother

from https://www.etsy.com/listing/196009779/notorious-rbg

1. Notorious RBG t-shirts- I have almost bought this on etsy like 10 times now for the Boy (he loves Ruth Bader Ginsburg- that's a keeper. I keep thinking about making him a surprise bag for the hospital when I am in labor, both because it sounds pretty boring for him and just in case I am super mean to him, and this may be in it. Need to make a decision.
2. XBox Music- I am finally saying goodbye to Zune, which has gotten worse and worse for quite a while, and I am switching over to XBox music, so I can have music on my new phone when we get it in November (ah to have a phone with battery life?).

from godsavedadaism.blogspot.com

3. Word to Mother- This is my favorite artist I genomed yesterday. Former Street Artist/ Graphic Artist. Check out his work here.

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Today's Inspiration- Thomas Campbell

As people at home are getting crafty, I will look at things in my own home with much less seeing kids I went to high school with (though you never know? If any FHS grads are around Greenlake, they should totally stop by). One thing I can do is look at some objects that incorporate craft into their aesthetic, like Thomas Campbell's faux quilting flowers.

from www.gingkopress.com

These flowers are made of thread and varying types of paper (if you look close, you can find currency in there!). Beyond being quite femme and pretty, they highlight craft by letting those strings hang, reminding you of the labor involved. So Thomas Campbell is my inspiration today.

Hope all of you Franklin people are enjoying the first day of Applefest!

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Today's Inspiration- Cayce Zavaglia

Zavaglia may top the list of my absolute favorite discoveries since I started genoming for Artsy (I am up to genoming about 100 artworks a day, so I am seeing an awful lot)! Cayce Zavaglia makes portraits, mostly of individuals, with embroidery thread. It may not sound like the most rigorous or complex methodology (it sounds very folksy DIY), but take a look at the finished product. They are not only gorgeous (do they kind of remind you of the texture on van Gogh self-portraits- not that modern but so beautiful) but incredibly impressive in their technical mastery and understanding of the different textures on the human body. They just look so real, like a Chuck Close portrait done in string.

Not all are of children, but I liked this example from the Colossal, because you can see the back of her canvas and the detail of her work. I am totally obsessed, so I hope you like her work as well. Go look at more.

from http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/10/new-photorealistic-portraits-hand-embroidered-by-cayce-zavaglia/

from http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/10/new-photorealistic-portraits-hand-embroidered-by-cayce-zavaglia/

from http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/10/new-photorealistic-portraits-hand-embroidered-by-cayce-zavaglia/

You can also see a video about her process here.

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The Center for Sex and Culture's "Doing Your Dirty Work" Show

 

In August, the Center for Sex and Culture Gallery in San Francisco opened their first juried show "Doing your Dirty Work: a Sampler of Contemporary Art about Sex." My good friend, who happens to also be a spectacular artist, Dorian Katz and her partner Marlene Hoebler have done a lot of work both in the archive and curating the exhibition space in CSC's relatively new building. They used this exhibition to highlight  the shared mission of the CSC Gallery as a whole - to create a space for work that addresses sexuality and sexual identity but is "every bit as varied, complex, compelling, beautiful, ugly, and sophisticated as art ever is."

The space in the gallery is pretty limited; the CSC is highly multi-functional (they have shows, classes, readings, and all other sorts of amazingness), so all of the work has to safely fit on one wall. The curators  used this constraint to their advantage by tightly arranging the photographs, paintings, and film stills. The intimate grouping of these thirty works invites comparisons to old salon spaces and allows for formal and conceptual combinations. It reminded me of walls in my Grandma's house, just packed with a lifetime's worth of memories and art and photographs, except that the material was all sex stuff. This kind of humor wouldn't be lost on the curators; the cover piece of the show was a small needlepoint in a heart shape frame. It said, ever so sweetly, "Teabagging for Jesus."

The show not only succeeds in demonstrating the variety and seriousness possible in work about sex, it also adeptly highlights a correlation between the formal aspects of the work and their subject matter and a collective respect toward their subjects. It's this respect (and often genuine kindness) that I found most striking in both of my visits to the exhibition- where mainstream work often treats the power dynamic between artist and subject as a foregone conclusion, but many of these photographs, paintings, and sketches treat their subjects with much more mindful care.

 

Brittany Neimuth Visceral

George Dinhaupt- c-print, 30 x 40

The curators juxtaposed George Dinhaupt’s tender photograph of a robust kneeling man cleaning off his partner with Brittany Neimuth’s more forceful molding of her own flesh in “Visceral.” Dinhaupt defines his work as reexamining masculinity within a broader cultural dynamic, but he does so in this case with a mix of sexualized and desexualized signifiers (the mans straps and his simple grey socks) in an intimate space.In Neimuth’s closely-cropped photograph, she uses her hands to push her body into ambiguous abstractions, which confronts the viewer with their own fear of excess and the body. These two beautiful gestures trouble traditional definitions of certain sexual bodies and desires by recognizing the aesthetic potential in their subjects.  

 

Sydney Hardin- L'Origin du Inflatable Love Doll- latex enamel on  canvas

 Sydney Hardin’s “L’Origin du Inflatable Love Doll” also manipulates traditional notions of desire, specifically women’s roles as vessels for cultural fantasies. The plastic, acrylic surface of the paint and sharp, abstracted edges further stress Hardin’s use of the synthetic stepping in for the organic, showing the artificiality of the fantasy female. This painting is so striking because it is simultaneously sexy in its positioning and very artificial. It acknowledges the viewers' desires, and then reveals the artificiality of this desire.

 

Emmett Ramstad's collection of Pubic Hair archives treats a sexualized, yet debated topic with pseudo-scientific logic and seriousness. Karen Thomas's Madonna and Child (as Blue Poodle)stands at the very end of the exhibition wall. This fabulous and somewhat campy sketch has tremendous presence and humor. These bookends to the exhibition show the tremendous range available in this work. Ramstad's work especially is delivered with a slight wink, but it has deep art historical roots, back to the work of Hannah Wilke or even back to Dada products.

If you had never gone to a show of this nature, you might be surprised by the variety of issues this work addresses: body image, sex toys, humor, technology (or at least vibrators), race, gender roles, the archive, power, art history, religion, women’s cultural positioning, pleasure, and violence are just a few running tropes through the exhibition. This show is already closed, because the CSC gallery opens their new show usually the second Friday of each month, but this means that, if you are in the San Francisco area, there is always something smart and fresh going up in this gallery. This month, "Tough Love: A Half-Century of Masculine Homoerotic Imagery from the San Francisco Bay Area," is opening at the gallery. Go check it out!

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