August 31, 2006
Congrats to Don Relyea
Don Relyea, artist, composer, and maker of The Reductionizer (which I've been using during August to make HTML images) and other things, and his family welcome kid #3, a son, Aiden Aldon
Relyea, born August 29. Congrats to everyone.
Joanne Mattera: Heat of the Moment
Joanne Mattera: Uttar 294, 2006, encaustic on panel, 36 x 36"
JOANNE MATTERA
"Heat of the Moment: New Paintings in Encaustic"
Arden Gallery, Boston, September 5~30, 2006
Reception: Friday, September 8, 5-7 pm
Gallery Talk: Saturday, September 9, 1pm
August 30, 2006
Eva Lake
I have been wanting to feature Eva Lake here for sometime. Now is the time.
EVA LAKE: CRIMSON, 2006 oil on canvas 12 x 12 inches
Eva Lake is a Portland artist whose show at Augen Gallery is just about to close. She's hardworking, and her paintings are intense, beautiful, and very visual.
Although the forms in her current work might be called geometric or grid-based, and some might even toss out the "Op" word, her work is firmly rooted in the natural world, in color and atmosphere and times of day, and has to do with the way we see our world as both the thing it is and then abstract from that to sensation, periphery, memory and the iterative circle of translation or conversion from the visual to emotion to intellectual, and back and forth again. (There is a kinship between Eva's work and Mel Prest's, who I wrote about in June.)
Eva's work is about how we see and experience nature, and provides and frames the experience of how we are able to take in only so much at a time, how we scan and take things in it bits and pieces, and how the actual act of seeing nature isn't necessarily about seeing a whole.
Seeing nature as a whole isn't possible, because nature, what is before our two eyes and in our periphery, is too overwhelming. Our two eyes aligned horizontally provide a relatively narrow field of vision. But if while we look at nature we also feel ourselves in nature, as part of nature, there is the possiblity of a feeling of wholeness. A painting is a finite area of certain dimensions with edges, and so the painting has to have a kind of composition and resolution and containment. It has to be a whole, integrated and complete. I think Eva achieves this.
Eva's work helps us see and feel part of nature, but in a way that does not tie us to place, allows a kind of focus, and makes this kind of seeing and feeling rooted in the material and the handmade. This kind of consciousness of nature, made with materials and with a human touch, is a unique aspect of nature, is evidence of our place in nature, is a way of talking to and sharing with each other.
Additionally, Eva makes excellent photomontages, keeps an excellent running diary that's well worth following, interviews folks for Artstar Radio (many archived and downloadable, and excellent), and runs Chambers, a Portland Gallery, to which I've never been, but I'm assuming since Eva is running it, it's also excellent. And I don't throw the word "excellent" around all that much. But whoo! If I even thought to aspire to all of those activities, well, I'd just need a nap right now.
Joseph Hughes
SF painter Joseph Hughes has a new website and a show opening Sept. 7 in SF at Takada Gallery.
Ernie Kwiat
Ernie Kwiat has an August run of digital drawings- they're great. See 08 Green Fuzz or 05 Hay Fever. Check out the sketch made in Painter. Ernie tells me that it is his intention to draw a monster a day until Halloween, which I happen to know is his favorite holiday. That's gonna be like close to a hundred drawings.
11 Summer of Love, digital, Ernie Kwiat
August 29, 2006
Candlestick (19660829)
Candlestick (19660829), HTML, 348 x 494 pixels
August 28, 2006
August 27, 2006
Meds (Gravenstein)
Meds (Gravenstein), 20060827, HTML, 300 x 470 pixels
August 26, 2006
August 25, 2006
August 24, 2006
Delacroix: The Sea and Cliffs near Dieppe
Eugene Delacroix: The Sea and Cliffs near Dieppe, 1851, (La mer et les falaises près de Dieppe, avec reprise de la mer se brisant contre la paroi à droite), Watercolor and pencil on paper, 10¼” × 15½”, Dated lower right; stamped lower left: Lugt 838a; $75,000.
James Harris Gallery and Jill Newhouse, New York Present Junctions: Selected Drawings from Contemporary Artists and Modern Masters
See a very nice Vuillard drawing. And a Manet watercolor.
August 23, 2006
The thing about Matthew Barney at SFMoMA is that...
The mysterious thing about Matthew Barney is the fact that he has the backing to basically do whatever he wants.
The depressing thing about Matthew Barney is how bland his work is.
The smartest career thing about Matthew Barney is that his work appears ambitious because it's big and colorless and uses unusual materials.
The surprising, and not so surprising, thing about Matthew Barney is how derivative his work is.
"DRAWING RESTRAINT is an ongoing performance-based project exploring the notion that form emerges through struggle against resistance[1]." That sounds good. But it doesn't look so good. I'd like to propose a moratorium on artists who explore notions.
The real show at Barney's SFMoMA exhibition (through September 17, 2006- be sure and miss it) is the viewer walking through these massive spaces. 
Video monitors are mounted hanging from the ceiling, everything is white, everyone is walking around looking up. One room is all hanging monitors and vitrines, white and quiet- it feels like fashion, like shopping, like walking through some hip clothing store with music videos playing on monitors. Everybody is trying so hard to figure out what the hell is going on here. They're all being good obedient art lookers.
Everything is so big. It obviously took a lot of work to do all this. The museum put some resources into this event. The museum has tried to celebrate this exhibition. It must be very important. That's the message.
I tried. It didn't work.
Barney's grandiose metaphors and mythology are trite. It's J. R. R. Tolkien and Carlos Castaneda rolled into... no, it's not even that good.
There are many many many Beuys references:
- Sketchy, shaky, faint pencil drawings of body fragments? Check!
- Vitrines? Check!
- Vaseline, the equivalent of Beuys' use of fat? Check!
- A 35mm film can on the floor? Check!
- The artist in costume, adorned, or transformed? Check!
- Industrial material in its natural, "formless" form? Check!
- The artist as a seer or healer? Check!
- Highly metaphorized and oh so grand mythology? Check!
Even the drawing on the wall above the stairs that he did on-site during a performance dressed as General Douglas MacArthur borrows the central cross form from Beuys.
The photo stills aren't anything special. They're just dull and thoughtless fragments. They're all frame and nothing interesting.
The drawings aren't anything special. They're just dull and thoughtless fragments. They're all frame and nothing interesting.
The sculptures are really big. It's kind of cool to see big blocks of cast petroleum jelly falling apart. I don't know why the exhibition doesn't stink up the museum.
The sculptures aren't much, however, without the videos to give them a little context. And the videos are tedious. The lighting and framing and the cuts are ugly. It looks like crappy digital video. Speaking of artists who think they're in the same league as Beuys, I'm sure Barney could get some sound film making advice from Julian Schnabel- it might be a huge improvement.
Aspects of the installation which place the viewer in the place of passive spectator are simply offensive- that one small room with all the video monitors and vitrines is awful because of the position in which it places the viewer. I was struck by what I perceive as Barney's indifference or disregard for the place of the viewer in the work.
One of the most fascinating things to me was seeing the fourth floor south gallery with all the walls removed- I'd never seen that space opened up like that. Three or four years ago the Eva Hesse show was in those very same galleries - that was a great show; I'd put Hesse up against Barney any day.
William Wiley is a really interesting, genuinely imaginative artist who creates characters and situations, invents little worlds, uses language in fun ways, is visually interesting, and deals in important topics. He could be seen as a predecessor to Barney, even more so than someone like Bruce Nauman, Jack Smith, Scott Burton, Ree Morton, Joan Jonas, John Waters, Yoko Ono, Vito Acconci... But Wiley's just a little ol' local boy Northern California senior citizen painter.
The saddest thing about Matthew Barney is that, despite my being open to the work and this exhibit, it's just plain boring. I'm not easily bored. I have a lot of goodwill towards artists, towards people trying to make stuff that has meaning. But this stuff isn't that interesting to look at, much less think too hard about. This is the kind of show that makes me think, now why do I have that museum membership?
Photos by mac-tasitc at Flickr used without permission.
More exhibition photos at Flickr or Fecal Face.
August 22, 2006
August 21, 2006
Travelling Northward (After Tu Fu)
Travelling Northward (After Tu Fu), 2006, oil on canvas, two panels, 20 x 16 inches each (20 x 33.75 inches installed)
Tres Sendas
Tres Sendas, 2006, oil on canvas, four panels, 12 x 9 inches each (12 x 40.5 inches installed)
Strummer
Strummer, 2006, oil on canvas, four panels, 12 x 9 inches each (12 x 40.5 inches installed)
August 20, 2006
Andy and the Lion
Andy and the Lion, by James Daugherty, The Viking Press, New York, first published 1938, fifteenth printing March 1967
Yet another book read to me by Captain Kangaroo: "In this retelling of Androcles and the Lion, Andy meets a lion on the way to school and wins his friendship for life by removing a thorn from his paw. Andy is always barefoot ... when he visits the library to get a book on lions, on the way to school, meeting the lion and later at the circus. This book was first published in 1938. It has about two dozen illustrations."
This is the last book I've scanned and will show here. They can all be viewed on a single page.
August 19, 2006
Run Weatherman Run
Run Weatherman Run, 20060819, HTML, 484 x 414 pixels
The Little Fire Engine
The Little Fire Engine, by Lois Lenski, Henry Z. Walck, Inc., New York, 1946
Lois Lenski also wrote Cowboy Small, featured 20060806.
"In this adventure, Fireman Small rushes to battle a fire in town. When the alarm bell rings, Fireman Small suits up and roars down the road in his shiny red fire engine. When he helps extinguish the fire and rescues a young girl, Fireman Small becomes a hero in Tinytown."
August 18, 2006
The Travels of Babar
The Travels of Babar, by Jean De Brunhoff, translated from the French by Merle S. Haas, Random House - New York, 1934
Everybody knows Babar. I like the blue heads and the daintily held yellow handkerchiefs in the trunks. Blue, yellow, and black. I like the texture of the basket. Of course, the anchor, and the wound rope, should be hanging down, not at an angle. Who is Babar, King of the Elephants, travelling with? Why, it's Queen Celeste!
The Babar stories are full of expressive language, sophisticated beyond the early reader level.
In the twinkling of an eye, Babar has unbound Celeste. They both hurl themselves on the cannibals. Some are wounded, others take flight; all are terrified.
Unbound, hurled, cannibals. The syllabic rhythm of the last sentence. It's fun to read aloud with flourish.
Although, humans attacking animals- is that cannibalism? If the animals are anthropomorphized, I suppose so.
And sophisticated emotions:
They have landed. The aeroplane has gone back. Babar and Celeste are speechless with surprise. Where are Cornelius, Arthur, and the other elephants? A few broken trees! Is that all that is left of the great forest? There are no more flowers, no more birds. Babar and Celeste are very sad and weep as they see their ruined country. The Old Lady understands their grief.
August 17, 2006
The True Book of Tools for Building
The True Book of Tools for Building, by Jerome Leavitt, Ed. D., pictures by Bill Armstrong, Childrens Press, Chicago, 1955
August 16, 2006
Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994)
Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994), 20060816, HTML, 150 x 450 pixels
Jack and the Three Sillies
Jack and the Three Sillies, by Richard Chase, pictures
by Joshua Tolford, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1950
From Resources for Readers and Teachers of Appalachian Literature
for Children and Young Adults- "Jack and the Three Sillies" - or - "Jack's Wife":
There are many variations on this old tale about noodleheads or sillies or foolish people. There is usually a series of three individuals or couples or groups doing something incredibly stupid such as trying to get the moon out of a pond where they see its reflection, or showing ignorance of everyday practicalities such as how to put on pants. Often the main character sets out to find others who are as foolish as his or her spouse or fiancé(e). It is interesting that in some of the Appalachian tales, the main character is Jack's wife and the sillies are all men.
August 15, 2006
Umbrella
Umbrella, by Taro Yashima, New York: The Viking Press,
First published 1958, third printing February 1961
Wikipedia: "Taro Yashima (1908–1994) was the pseudonym of Jun Atsushi Iwamatsu. After studying for three years at the Imperial Art Academy in Tokyo, he became a successful illustrator and cartoonist before going to jail because of his opposition to the militaristic government. In 1939 he and his wife went to America to study art, leaving their son Mako behind in Japan. After Pearl Harbor Mr. Iwamatsu joined the U. S. Army, and went to work as an artist for the OSS. It was then he first used the pseudonym Taro Yashima, out of fear that if the Japanese Government found out there would be repercussions for Mako and other family members. After the war, he and his wife were granted permanent residence status by act of Congress, he was able to return to Japan and collect Mako, and his daughter Momo was born.
"In the early 1950's he began writing and illustrating children's books under the pseudonym he'd used in the OSS. Crow Boy (1956), Umbrella (1958) and Seashore Story (1967) are Caldecott Honor books."
August 14, 2006
George Lawson in Folly
George Lawson is interviewed in Folly; download the August 2006 issue as PDF.
"I'm concerned with what constitutes painting, how best to use the medium to discover an image. I think about what makes a picture open or closed, and how best to bring together the different constituent elements of all things visual, just as one might strive to integrate (as I mentioned Jung before) pre-dispositions to think, emote, intuit and touch things. But I'm not too concerned with categorizations. Most categories, abstract and figurative for example, don't offer me much in the way of a differentiating principle. They don't help me to orient myself and my world to painting; they don't open up or deepen my experience of painting."
George Lawson: Japanese Firemen 2, oil on linen, 2005, 64 x 54 in
A Hole is to Dig
A Hole is to Dig: A First Book of First Definitions, by Ruth Krauss, pictures by Maurice Sendak, Harper & Brothers, 1952
Classic!
August 13, 2006
Fish in the Air
Fish in the Air, story and pictures by Kurt Wiese, The Viking Press, New York, 1948
1949 Caldecott Honor Book Award
A boy named Fish gets a fish kite. A big wind comes and pulls Fish and the fish kite into the air. They are finally caught in a fisherman's net. Other than that, this is a pretty uneventful story, much less award-winning, and I can't believe the award was for the illustrations. I don't know; beats me.
August 12, 2006
Mono Hot Springs (2004)
Mono Hot Springs (2004), 2006, HTML & JPEG, 460 x 600 pixels
A Pony for Linda
A Pony for Linda, by C.W. Andersen, The MacMillan Company, New York, 1958
Inside are highly rendered pencil drawings pretty obviously made from photos- there's just a quality of light to them that looks like a black and white photo.
Girl riders, horses, and Linda's gracious gift of the trophy and blue ribbon to the other girl who had to travel farther for the competition after the judges couldn't decide on a winner- I guess this is what you'd call Chick Lit.
But the cover- heavy. Terrific pale green cloth background that feels very spacious and distant, and then the title and images sit right on the surface like they're rubber stamped.
The more I look the more I think, Chick Lit- look at the dainty pointed hooves.
August 11, 2006
What's Inside of Me
What's Inside of Me, Herbert S. Zim, illustrated by Herschel Wartik, William Morrow & Company, New York, 1952
This book is kind of creepy, but I can't decide if it's a good kind of creepy or a disturbing kind of creepy.
August 10, 2006
James K. Polk
James K. Polk, 20060810, HTML & JPEG, 200 x 200 pixels
This is more fooling around with Don Relyea's Reductionizer, which is my August project here. I've incorporated JPEGs into the HTML work (Sept 2005 & June 2006), but those drawings involve more of a drawing process for me.
I use Dreamweaver, and I make images beginning with a table, filling in cells, control-selecting groups of cells to draw a line or separate areas to insert a hexidecimal code or modifying the existing code to slightly shift colors. I can add and delete rows and cells, copy and paste one area to another, or invert or reverse an image by copying and pasting rows and cells in reverse or into another table. I can change cell and row height and width, and I can put tables inside tables. It's very much of feeling of drawing, though it may not sound like one by my description. To say that it is somewhat like collage may be closer.
But using the Reducitionizer is very different. An image is converted to a table and then I work with this existing image, rather than building up an image. It's modification. The Sept. 2005 and June 2006 series the JPEG is specified in the table attribute "background", so I am drawing on top of the image. Using the Reductionzier the image is in the table, so I am working into the table image. And once a table is rendered as an image with any detail it's a pretty hefty file, so making changes is a little slow and unwieldy. I'm just trying to figure out an approach here, and how to bring in what I was already doing, which I don't want to leave behind, into this new way of working.
This is just to explain that the images so far are pretty different from what I was doing, not close to what I have in mind, and I'm uncertain how to get there so far.
Cowboy Small
Cowboy Small, by Lois Lenski, Henry Z. Walk, Inc., New York, 1949
"Cowboy Small takes good care of his horse, Cactus. In return, Cactus helps Cowboy Small get work done on the range. Together they round up cattle for branding and live the good life. At night, Cowboy Small eats at the chuck wagon, sings with his friends, and sleeps under the stars."
Lois Lenski (1893-1974) is a well known author and illustrator. In 1946 she was awarded the Newbery Medal for Strawberry Girl. A school is named after her in Littleton, Colorado- why? I wonder about the connection between Littleton and her Mr. Small Series.
A sweet little book. Many reviews at Amazon.
Nice touches: like the font a lot, with its subtle narrowing and broadening; the yellow "socks" on the horses legs; the plaid lines of his shirt are the cover fabric; the two dashed lines on either side of the tail; cool chaps; the deep space of the right side (his left) of his hat rearing back around his head; the horse is prancing, like a carousel horse; that little touch of yellow along the edge of the saddle's horn popping right up out of Cowboy Small's crotch.
For a simple drawing it's very complete and articulate- the rope, the saddle, the one spur, the kerchief.
The two clouds over the single sheep crammed into the left side right in front of the horse is a little peculiar; I feel this need to put the sun or a big cloud on the left side between "Cow..." and the tail.
The horse's head looks a little like a burro.
August 09, 2006
Connemara Tartan
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Connemara Tartan, 20060809, HTML & JPEG, 400 x 400 pixels
Don Relyea's Reductionizer
The HTML images I've been posting during the month of August are made with Don Relyea's Reductionizer. Learn more, download, play: The Reductionizer. Don writes:
The reductionizer is a software art project. It was spawned from an email conversation with artist Chris Ashley. Basically I wrote him and said, "Hey I have this script, would this be of use to you?" He was definitely interested and dialog ensued discussing ideas, possible features and suggestions. In it's current state it is more like a photoshop filter than an art tool. The current thinking is to move it into the realm of a simple art tool for creating art on the web. Adding features that give the artist manipulative capability is desirable.What is it?
It converts bitmap images to html table layouts and provides for easy scaling of cells using sliders and text entry fields. It has a very reductionist lean to it, in that it is easy to reduce a photograph down to a more abstract lower resolution image. It exports to both graphic and html formats. It will have editing functions like a pencil, eraser, paint bucket, hand and gradient tools to allow for more creative freedom. It will have z sort able layers, palettes and an eyedropper.It also has a component that randomly grabs photos from flickr from random wordlists sorted by interesting. The image absorbed, below was scraped automatically by the reductionizer. I doodled on it with the pencil tool after reducing it.
Eileen Fell & Tim Schwartz
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| Eileen Fell: yellow leaves, 2005 | Tim Schwartz: Tops 2, 2006, oil on linen, 19"x13" |
Eileen Fell and Tim Schwartz just launched a new website.
I met Eileen and Tim last October in Philadelphia at the Urban Canvas opening. I wrote about one of Tim's paintings in January, 2006: Tim Schwartz: Untitled (Four Ways). Look at some more past work.
I chose the two images shown here. I decided on two verticals simply because I thought it would make a nicer post. I resized them to the same height so they'd make a more nicely formatted post. I don't know the actual dimensions of the photograph. I wasn't aware until these two images were side by side that, very loosely, they share a kind of compositional wedge shape in the upper right area. The work of these two artists is separated at the website, more like two separate sites. My intention here was not to homogenize the images, so don't let your looking end here, go to their website.
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel
Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, story and pictures by Virginia Lee Burton, The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1939.
Classic. Captain Kangaroo read this story to me. I was shocked when I saw this book in the library's discard pile.
Since it was first published in 1939, Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel has delighted generations of children. Mike and his trusty steam shovel, Mary Anne, dig deep canals for boats to travel through, cut mountain passes for trains and hollow out cellars for city skyscrapers. But with progress come new machines and soon the inseparable duo are out of work so Mike Mulligan and Mary Anne travel to the small town of Popperville and accept one final challenge — to dig the town cellar in just one day. What happens is a testament to their friendship and to old-fashioned hard work and ingenuity.
August 08, 2006
Slieve Gullion, Armagh
Slieve Gullion, Armagh, 20060808, HTML, 312 x 304 pixels
How to Play Baseball
How to Play Baseball by Martin Iger and Robert Fitzsimmons, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, 1962.
When the last time you saw a boy with a crewcut wearing a cardigan, cuffed pants, and leather shoes with heels swinging a bat?
Yellow sweater, yellow socks- such a stylish dresser!
This kind of printing makes home plate levitate at just below knee level.
I really like the simplicity of the hands.
I like the how black outline is used and not used- it's all around the pants, but none around the bat or arm, none on the forehead or top of nose.
That bat is quite a club.
Nice exposed achilles and lifted heel on the right trailing foot.
The more I look at the right leg sticking out from behind the left knee the weirder it looks. Try it: forget that the right leg joins a hidden thigh- just see it as joined to the left leg. It's like his right leg grows out of his left knee.
I find the ear pretty convincing.
There are a couple of things at work here that aren't too far from my Berkeley paintings: flat areas, use of background as a color, dark outline used extensively but not completely.
The red area defined below the bat, around home plate, up against his stomach, and down to his knee is an interesting shape once your eyes call it out.
That white arm pokes out of the puffy folded sleeve like a bone sticking out of meat.
All photos inside, including part of a photo deeper inside the book on which the cover is based:
