Arts Without Borders

Chandelier Mistaken for God

2012-02-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

This installation by James Croak is entitled "Chandelier Mistaken for God."

An article posted in NY Press says, "The boy is startled, empowered, and utterly absorbed by the light from the interlacing flock of bulbs and crystals, as if he is experiencing the same exhilarating, inexplicable excitement of someone encountering an angel’s halo, a golden religious icon, or the glory of Aurora Borealis."

OK. That's a possible interpretation. On the other hand, I've experienced being mesmerized by any number of lighting situations, natural and artificial, without confusing my experience with divine intervention. I may even have gone further on occasion and crossed over into the numinous and sublime. So, I can relate, I guess.

This piece could be a thoughtful social commentary, a meditation on transcendence, a revelation of naïveté -- or perhaps "It is a spontaneous, subliminal and physical experience of absolute truth that cannot be controlled or explained," as the article goes on to say.

The title of a work of art is important, of course. I often give my own work titles that direct the viewer's attention in unexpected ways, as Croak seems to be doing. One of the most famous instances of this is Magritte's "The Treachery of Images." The French phrase in the painting, of course, reads "This is not a pipe." The title, along with the phrase, transforms the painting from representational into conceptual - and in fact, in this case, the concept is the very idea of representation.

But one must be cautious about this. The danger is that the clever title turns what could be a subtle, ambiguous and thoughtful piece into a one-liner or visual pun.

I haven't decided whether I think Croak's piece steps beyond it's title or not. What do you think?

The NYPress article says Croak's work is installed at the Stux Gallery in New York. I found additional examples of his work, many of which I like better than this one, at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery.

The image of "Chandelier Mistaken for God" is from the Stux Gallery website.

Arnold Newman at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee

2012-02-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

Jonas Salk, creator of the first polio vaccine, stands upright and stares with a steady gaze at the viewer. His figure takes up a small proportion of the right half of a composition that is dominated by the massive and enveloping concrete forms of the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California. A series of square architectural voids recede into deep space on the left. The formal qualities of the picture, with its stark geometries, harsh lighting, and evocative use of space, would make for an intriguing image no matter who the subject was.

It is an example of what makes Arnold Newman an exceptional portraitist. The photograph of Salk is part of an exhibit called "One World, One People" on view at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee.

Credited with originating what has come to be known as environmental portraiture, Newman specialized in the placement of his subjects within settings that were both meaningful and carefully controlled.

"I didn't just want to make a photograph with some things in the background," Newman once said. "The surroundings had to add to the composition and the understanding of the person. No matter who the subject was, it had to be an interesting photograph. Just to simply do a portrait of a famous person doesn't mean a thing."

The Newman technique is clearly evident in the portrait of another famous personality, Leonard Bernstein. In the exhibition the image is printed with dark, moody tonalities and the precisely centered conductor seems to brood in the shadows of a slightly disarranged middle ground soon to be occupied by the orchestra. A seemingly enormous score in the foreground and the repetitious lines of white chairs for the chorus frame his pensive form. The stillness of the pose and the composition’s symmetry belie the passion that will soon explode onstage as it fills with the music of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (as revealed in the exhibition wall text.) Only the slashing diagonal of the baton that cuts across the outspread score suggests the imminent transformation.

Curators sometimes debate the virtues and failings of text panels – do they provide needed background or distract from the pure experience of the image? Well conceived labeling does the former without succumbing to the latter. The texts that accompany these images add supplementary narratives that I found helpful in humanizing what occasionally feels like overly engineered formal structures. They were well worth the time spent reading them and provided new insights for me into Newman’s working methods.

While the environmental approach lends depth to portraiture, Newman’s attention to abstract formalism can seem a bit forced – and sometimes repetitive. Authors, philosophers and politicians often appear in similarly book-lined rooms, as with the portrait of Golda Meir.

On the other hand, I was especially taken with the few portraits that broke away from Newman’s traditional methods. Woody Allen, for example, is portrayed in a tightly cropped but casual pose, splayed across his bed where he does his writing. He seems to have been arrested at a moment of creative insight, glancing up at the interruption by the photographer. We learn from the text panel that Allen had allowed only 45 minutes between takes on a movie. But Newman managed to strike up a conversation about “taking advantage of unexpected situations and other creative problems” and the session went overtime.

Highly atypical was the fragmented visage of a sculptor named
Yaacov Agam, the image constructed from crudely shaped slivers of collaged photographic paper.

By far the most moving piece in the show, for me as well as others I spoke with, was probably the least posed. In the house made famous by her unparalleled and heartbreaking story, the father of Anne Frank leans against a bare wooden pillar. In the unbalanced and deeply shadowed interior, the silhouette and simple posture of Otto Frank reveals what I can only imagine is a tiny fraction of the weight that he was experiencing by being there.

Here is a prime example of a picture that is worth a thousand words. We read that both subject and photographer wept and that Frank’s wife finally urged Newman to stop photographing because he “was killing my husband.” Newman himself is quoted as saying, “It was the most emotional experience I ever had in my life.”

In a lecture about portraiture in association with the exhibit, Lisa Hostetler, curator of photography at the Milwaukee Art Museum, described Newman’s importance as one of the “triumvirate” of great mid 20th-century portraitists (the others being Irving Penn and Richard Avedon.)

At 39 prints this is not a major retrospective. But whether you are unfamiliar with his name or a long-time fan of Arnold Newman, as I am, this delightful show has something to offer.

For a medium in which monumentality has come to such prominence lately, it is also refreshing to see that modestly scaled black and white silver-gelatin images still can retain expressive power.

"One World, One people: Jewish Photographic Portraits by Arnold Newman" will be on display at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, 1360 N. Prospect Ave., through March 30.

This review first appeared in Art City.

Image credits, from top: portrait of Leonard Bernstein, 1968; portrait of Golda Meir, Jerusalem, Israel, 1970; portrait of Woody Allen, 1996; portrait of Otto Frank, 1960; all images courtesy the Jewish Museum Milwaukee and the Arnold Newman estate.

What’s remarkable about Milwaukee?

2012-02-01T14:35:00.000-08:00

Monday evening the preservation group Historic Milwaukee Inc. held an annual event called “Remarkable Milwaukee.” The main purpose was to honor a Milwaukee organization, business, or corporation that “exemplifies Milwaukee’s spirit, has a strong history in our community, and has made important contributions to our city’s heritage.” This year the honoree was the Pabst Theater Foundation, along with its director and founder. Congratulations! Well deserved.

The Pabst Theater set the scene for the evening with an onstage “experiment in civic dialogue” in the form of a “conversation” called “Envisioning the Seen.” A panel of community leaders shared their ideas about what is good about the city and what could make it better. I noticed, however, that what the panelists envisioned for Milwaukee seemed almost entirely focused on its downtown. Was this emphasis by design or simply inherent to the mission of Historic Milwaukee? I don’t know but as the conversation progressed I found myself envisioning with a larger perspective.

One of the themes of the conversation was connectivity and I think it could have been emphasized more. The panel seemed largely unified in its vision of Milwaukee, but a second, and I suggest related, theme that emerged from the small degree of discord was inclusivity. I’ll come back to these themes.

The conversation began dynamically with statements that championed downtown Milwaukee – in contrast to the suburbs, which were painted with a broad negative brush. How unfortunate to hear again the divisiveness that has characterized our larger community for so long and that easily could have turned off someone like me, who came in from a suburb to participate. But I was glad I stuck it out. A shift in tone was exemplified by restaurateur Joe Bartolotta who encouraged everyone to “put a positive spin” on our community.

Jill Morin, an author, consultant, and activist, went further, insisting, “We are our own worst enemy.” We know this a great community. People who come here tend to stay. But we’re not yet good at attracting people in the first place, she said.

Former Mayor John Norquist expressed a particularly telling insight: “The parts are greater than the whole.” Though referring to Wisconsin Avenue, he could have been describing the whole fragmented region.

It was Reginald Baylor, the sole African-American on the panel, who urged inclusivity. That concept, I’d like to add, extends in many directions and is central to any vibrant community. I would argue that inclusivity means reaching out to the much-disparaged suburbs as well as to traditionally disenfranchised groups within Milwaukee. All of the parts need to be considered – and invited to the table – before the whole of the Milwaukee region becomes greater than the sum of our parts.

After all, quipped Norquist, “if it weren’t for Milwaukee, Wisconsin would be Iowa.”

Where inclusivity is crucial connectivity follows closely behind. Historian John Gurda’s attempt to steer the conversation in this direction resulted only in a brief, heady consensus (amongst panelists and audience alike) that effective mass transit is sorely needed. Amen – and good luck!

One vital form of connectivity that should not be overlooked is Milwaukee’s magnificent park system. To be truly inclusive, in addition to wrapping an arm around the suburbs instead of keeping them at bay, we need to acknowledge the incredible wealth of nature that we have in our midst. There was a lot of talk about the Grand Avenue Mall, infrastructure like roads and bridges, the resurgence of downtown, and arts organizations – all concerns that I applaud. But there wasn’t a single mention of the lakefront, Milwaukee’s premier public space.

Of course these observations do not diminish the Remarkable Milwaukee ideas discussed by the panel and the good work being done by Historic Milwaukee, which I support. Closest to my own perspective was Sarah Daleiden, who suggested that we need “new ways of walking in the city” and cited the Beerline Trail – which connects the burgeoning residential developments along Commerce Street with the remarkable Milwaukee River Greenway – as one opportunity to “get off the grid.”

Milwaukee River Greenway

As a booster of our metropolitan area’s virtues, I won’t take a back seat to anyone. I love what’s happening downtown, and I love the arts. But along with all that, I envision a day when we can’t have a discussion about Milwaukee’s future without mentioning its parks, open spaces, and natural areas. This is truly one of the most remarkable urban areas in the country. If we believed in ourselves we could become as well known for our natural environment as for “the Calatrava” or any other part. I believe we could compete for attention with cities like Portland, OR.

The panelists were asked, what one thing would you recommend be done to improve the city? Real estate attorney Bruce Block replied, create “more and greater public spaces.” Yes! We have one of the largest and best (and most remarkable) in my neighborhood of Wauwatosa: the Milwaukee County Grounds.

Inclusivity means bringing together all of the parts. Let’s celebrate the Pabst, the Art Museum, the marsupial bridge, and all of our excellent and catalytic structures. But wait! There’s more. Among the best things about a vibrant city are places where there are no buildings.

Architect Grace La asserted, “Healthy cities are measured by beauty.” I couldn’t agree more.

Milwaukee County Grounds

Poetry Marathon at Woodland Pattern

2012-01-28T09:33:00.000-08:00

Woodland Pattern's annual poetry marathon is today - in fact it's going on right now! It lasts until 1:00 am. I'm heading over there and will be reading a poem of mine during the 5 - 6 o'clock hour. I hope you'll join me there or some other time today and support this wonderful event and this special and unique place in Milwaukee.

Details, directions, and the like at Woodland Pattern. If you want a sneak preview of my poem, which is called "We Came to Build Two Houses," it is on my website (but it won't be the same if you don't hear it spoken!)

Is there a "War on Photography?"

2012-01-24T16:30:00.000-08:00

From JPG Magazine:

There has always been tension between the press and government regarding news coverage of matters of public interest. Unfortunately since 9/11 the "War on Terrorism" has somehow morphed into the "War on Photography." Visual journalists and citizens taking photographs or recording video in public places have been experiencing extraordinary interference nationwide from security personnel and law enforcement officials at all levels of government.

Read the full first article in a series of articles by Mickey H. Osterreicher on photography and the law. Mickey is General Counsel to the National Press Photographers Association.

The best of 2011

2011-12-30T06:57:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the second annual highlights from the past year at Arts Without Borders. Once again I submit a few of my favorite art experiences of 2011, in chronological order. And may the New Year be filled with art and creativity!

January – Combat Theater rocks Milwaukee.

Writing and performing a play over a 24-hour period with ideas pulled out of a hat – literally.

February – Charles Allis: a visual tour of 100 years.

In honor of its 100^th anniversary, the Charles Allis Art Museum broke with tradition and invited a slate of artists to do installations in the historic building.

March – Science, Poetry, and the Photographic Image.

Which was the theme of the Society of Photographic Educators annual conference in Atlanta, GA. A review.

April – CoPA and contemporary photography.

Milwaukee’s Coalition of Photographic Arts annual membership show stimulates reflections on the nature of contemporary photography and the challenges of keeping the organization fresh.

May – ArtChicago: The “Artropolis” has shrunk.

My review of this year’s annual gallery fair in Chicago.

June – Cardinal Stritch shows “The Face of War.”

My review of this powerful exhibit of war photography.

August – Thousands gather at the river to hear Water.

My reflections on Present Music’s magnificent performance – and collaborative event – at the Marcus Center and the Milwaukee River.

August – “Field of Vision: Artists Explore Place” at the Racine Art Museum.

This post was a slightly amended reprise of my debut as a blogger for Art City. It is a review of what was an excellent and surprising exhibit.

September – Remembering ten years of Milwaukee art.

My response to a query from Art City on developments in the art scene from 2001 – 2011.

October – Louder than a Bomb rocks Milwaukee Film Fest.

The best film of the festival rockets to the top of my own personal charts. Read my review and then add this one to your Netflix queue.

November – Art and environmental remediation.

Patricia Johanson creates large-scale artworks that help heal the earth.

December – Storm King Art Center.

A visit to my favorite sculpture park, in upstate New York, with a link to my meditation on Dia Beacon as a bonus post.

It was a good year for the arts in Milwaukee. It also was a good year for me personally, I’m happy to say. Two highlights:

Seeing the real Peru: beyond Machu Picchu and the Sacred Valley, my solo exhibit at Mount Mary College in January.

Gallery 2622, another, very different, solo exhibit at this eponymous gallery in Wauwatosa in August.

Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays from Arts Without Borders

2011-12-20T11:51:00.000-08:00

I didn’t go out seeking abstraction. Far from it – I went out in search of reality, the natural world. I went to feel the solid ground beneath my feet. On the first snowy day so far this season, late though it was, I took a walk in the forest. But what is this reality?

It is a bit of wilderness – or the idea of wilderness – ensconced amongst a well-groomed landscape in the middle of the Milwaukee metropolitan area. How abstract is that?

I photographed a few things that caught my eye. Photography, that most utilitarian and democratic of art forms, has always teetered on the brink of abstraction, despite it’s reputation for verisimilitude.

The snowfall had been too light to blanket the earth. Instead, like a painter’s deft brush, it established highlights, created emphasis where there had been uniformity. The snow, the reality of that natural phenomenon, helped me to push photographs over the edge into abstraction. First, remove most of the color. The overcast sky and the leafless trees, along with the snow, conspired to establish a monochromatic canvas, a nearly black and white world.

The more I looked the more the forest resonated with art. Picasso said, “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.” I started with the snow-dusted trees and my mind filled with familiar images of abstract art.

The straight line of a giant log became a Barnett Newman.

A lyrical swirl of branches reminded me of Franz Kline.

The regularity of textured bark and snowy interstices on another fallen tree created an optical consonance that evoked the work of Bridget Riley.

Though lovely to behold, these small epiphanies were hardly surprising. I’ve been an artist too long for that (and as a photographer I often do go out seeking abstraction.) But they were welcome reminders of the power of art and its inseparability from the human spirit.

Cody, Barnett Newman

I went out in search of nature, paradoxically a nearly abstract ideal in twenty-first century society, in order to reanimate a spirit dulled by the stresses of living in the “real world.“ Is it really surprising that I discovered abstraction?

Chief, Franz Kline

The abstract works of art that came to mind were all created in the fifties and sixties, at a time of great social upheaval and when the threat of nuclear annihilation seemed frighteningly real. I’ve never believed that the artists of that time were immune to those fears, although, unlike some of their predecessors of the previous generation, their art has no obvious connection to real world events. A retreat into abstraction can serve as palliative, if not quite an antidote, to life’s travails.

Arrest, Bridget Riley

Today, too, the real world can seem truly frightening, from the state of the economy to the deterioration of the environment, spiked with political polarization. And so I offer what I hope will be a little holiday cheer: a jolt of abstraction. Art can heal. So can a walk in the forest.

Don’t wait for the season to bring you peace. I invite you to go out and seek it.

For another, very different, take on the same hike in the County Grounds go to Urban Wilderness.

Museum of Wisconsin Art breaks ground

2011-12-19T09:53:00.000-08:00

The Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend broke ground on its long-awaited new building last week. A couple years ago Milwaukee area sculptor and indefatigable supporter of Wisconsin artists, Gary John Gresl, convinced me to become a member with a plea to support Wisconsin art and artists.

I thought I'd share Gary's new message following the ground breaking. I hope it'll inspire you to join with me and become a member, too. Individual memberships are a deal at only $30 per year.

Gary:
Ground has been broken for the new building to house the Museum of Wisconsin Art. Last week in a field in West Bend, the ceremonial dig began. I was there on that cold damp day, in a crowd of people
who were enthused and dedicated. The real physical work will start in spring, but the reality of a new museum building dedicated to both contemporary and historical Wisconsin artists has come to fruition.

This place will be the focus of activity for many WI artists, their works, their legacies, their futures. Like several other US regionally focused art museums, important attention will be given to the wealth of talents and skills within our defined borders. Children for generations will have the opportunity to learn, to explore and to gain confidence that their own art interests have meaning and importance.

I have been inspired to send this email notice off to you as a result of getting in the mail a check for $25, to be given to the MWA, by a former resident of Wisconsin. This artist had been active in Wisconsin for decades but has been living out of state for over ten years. Her ties to Wisconsin and its art culture remain, and she recognizes the importance of the Museum of Wisconsin Art and what it can do for our reputations and for art education. Her $25 donation, along with hundreds of others, can importantly assist the Museum.

Have you yet turned your attention to this endeavor? Have you supported it by means of cash donations? Can you give $10 or $100 or $1000 toward enriching our local art culture for generations? Have you gone to visit the current old museum building to see the exhibits that have been going on for
50 years? For the next year, while the new building in being built, the current building will continue to house and explore art made in Wisconsin.

The new building will be finished, but the Museum still needs to raise more money in order to continue and complete the reality, to fulfill the dream which is in hand, to build and maintain its mission for decades to come. Perhaps you can be convinced to simply give money to a project that will have long reaching and important effect on our regional art culture?

The Museum of Wisconsin Art is located at 300 South 6th Avenue, West Bend, WI, 53095.

Storm King Art Center

2011-12-06T17:35:00.000-08:00

When I visit my sister in Orange County, NY, as I did for Thanksgiving, it always gives me an excuse to make a pilgrimage to nearby Storm King Art Center. Not that I need an excuse; it's one of my favorite places on earth to see modern sculpture. Nestled in the lower Catskills on 500 acres of rolling hills, meadows, and woodlands an hour north of NYC, the sculptures are largely abstract. What I love most about it is the way they interact with the landscape.

I have old favorites that I always enjoy seeing, but it's fun also to see what has been added since my last visit. Andy Goldsworthy has a second piece now, another stone wall, this one undulating around a string of boulders. I got there around midafternoon, after my visit to Dia Beacon (see my previous post), and by the time I reached 5 men, 17 days, 15 boulders, 1 wall, it was too late and too dark to get a good photo of it. (It took 5 men, including Goldsworthy, 17 days to build the wall around the 15 boulders.) You can see a shot of it on their website here, if you want.

My new favorite piece is this one, appropriately called Mirror Fence, by Alyson Shotz. As you can see, I got to this one just as the sun was setting over the mountain across the valley. There are two additonal views of Mirror Fence, along with many others on my flickr page.

Dia. Meditation.

2011-11-30T14:44:00.000-08:00

Last week I first encountered the Dia Art Foundation’s museum in Beacon, NY. It is housed in a 30,000 sq. ft. former factory. The place and the art invite introspection.

Space.

Light.

Dual naves of brightly lit white space. Polished wood floors stretch into the distance. Tiny solitary black-clad figure at the far end. Silence.

To the left, variously colored irregular shapes punctuate the white bays the length of the vast wall. Bare wood floor. (Imi Knoebel)

On the right, polished steel plates form a single line down the middle of the polished wood floor. Bare white walls. (Walter de Maria)

Space.

Beyond that, more space. Light streams in from skylights overhead.

A small, brightly lit alcove. Mammoth rough-hewn vertical granite boulder stands, improbably, tightly bound in a niche. somewhere in the vast silence of afghanistan in the mountain at bamiyan stand three empty niches. Colossal granite teardrop of the Buddha. (Michael Heizer)

Space. Air.

A series of thin strings of black yarn stretched from floor to ceiling emphasize the air around them. Concrete pillars. Galleries opening out to more galleries.

Sunlight.

Thin red strings establish a rectangular plane in the space, canted against the rectangular wall floor ceiling planes of the architecture. I step across the thin red line on the floor. Through air. (Fred Sandback)

White walls give way to concrete, then brick. Polished wood floors become polished concrete floors. Finally, two exterior windows. Glimpse of an expansive, empty green lawn.

L-shaped steel remnant of original factory embedded in brick wall. minimal; life mimics art. the place wants to be photographed. Photography not permitted. an issue of control? privacy? marketing? at every turn the place demands to be photographed. i can’t imagine the harm a photo would cause the art or the museum. i resist the urge to sneak a shot. Numerous black-clad guards wander throughout the galleries. issues of trust? They smile when spoken to. Reply to questions with beatific patience.

Finally, shadows. A dark corner contains rubble. Vertical stacks of photographs mounted on steel. In shadow. Horizontal stacks of enormous felt pads weighed down by rusted steel plates. Not a loading dock. Not a storage room. Dark dustless rubble. (Joseph Beuys)

Cleanly bored holes of four geometric shapes in the polished concrete floor. Dark, empty interiors. Invisible depths. A glass wall prevents close inspection. a friendly, black-clad guard, when asked, says that tours inside the glass are available upon request. my request elicits a walkie-talkie call. no reply. maybe later she says. she says that the artist himself installed the glass. it is being viewed as he intended. an issue of control? Mystery. can mystery be created? is mystery endowed from within or without? in the mind of the beholder? The four holes, gated empty lightless bottomless pools, remain mute. (Michael Heizer)

Mezzanine. Four Brobdingnagian curls of rusted steel. Four ambulatory chapels off to the side of the Cathedral. Four short labyrinths to choke a claustrophobic. Four giant steel clamshells. Inside each, a pearl of peacefulness. they want to be outside, in the back, on the grass, under the open sky, open to the heavens. not to the gray coffered concrete factory ceiling. And yet, after a breathless entry, a place to inhale deeply. (Richard Serra)

In the spotless attic, rough windowless brick walls, polished almost liquid concrete floor. Crouched in the far corner, enormous black bronze spider, Gothic in dark silent splendor. Menacing. or not. there are no secrets here, only misunderstandings. Far down the dark hall the black-clad guard leans against the wall, reading. Silent. (Louise Bourgeois)

Suddenly a wall of glass. Exterior windows. Bright north light. Room full of colorful vigorously twisted steel forms, like carefully spaced collisions. almost baroque compared to the prevailing minimalism. (John Chamberlain)

Outside, narrow walled garden. Leafless trees, brown grasses, green hedges in rigid rows. Sounds of birds. Cuckoo. Crows. Unrecognizable sounds. Almost voices. Muttering. Almost intelligible words. what are they saying? they don’t want to be understood. Catalogue text: Sound Piece. (Louise Lawler)

The warmth of the sun.

Air.

I did not succumb to the temptation to sneak photos inside the museum, harmless as that prospect seemed. The two images that accompany this meditation are my tribute to the spirit of the collection. They are from the garden, where photography is permitted. I remain frustrated by museum policy.

After Dia Beacon I went to nearby Storm King Art Center, where I could take plenty of pictures. Photo essay on my flickr page.

Art and environmental remediation

2011-11-18T09:10:00.000-08:00

In 1969 Patricia Johanson, inspired by close observations of the natural world, made simple pencil drawings of animals and plants in sketchbooks and on loose-leaf pages. Copious notes written in casual long hand surrounded the drawings. Johanson had a vision for designing artworks that were not merely representations of nature – what is more common than that? Nor was her idea to reflect on or abstract those sources.

Johanson, in tune with the Zeitgeist that led to the first Earth Day in 1970, wanted nothing less than to heal the earth using art.

She has been doing just that for decades now, often on a monumental scale.

This past Wednesday, the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison, WI hosted Johanson for a talk entitled Science, Art, & Infrastructure. The event was sponsored by the Design Coalition Institute in partnership with UW-Marathon, UW-Madison, and UW-Extension.

Beginning with the humble ideas sketched so long ago, Johanson, who subsequently received a degree in architecture, went on to describe several of her major completed projects.

The Dallas Museum of Art is situated picturesquely on Fair Park Lagoon. Water quality in the lagoon, however, had been so badly degraded over the years that it was biologically dead. Johanson’s solution was a sculptural design based on plant forms that simultaneously buttressed eroding banks and created a series of microhabitats. Unlike most public sculpture projects, the obvious concrete structures are only the most visible tip of the iceberg. Native aquatic plants and animals introduced into the newly rehabilitated environment are as important, if not more so.

Not coincidentally, the sculpture doubles as a playground and outdoor classroom for people young and old who visit the newly invigorated site.


archival photo courtesy Anthracite Heritage Museum

Scranton, Pennsylvania provided Johanson with one of the most daunting challenges: a landscape utterly ravaged by coal mining. She outlined the historical background, which includes human suffering along with environmental devastation. The many levels of now abandoned underground mines have become a defacto reservoir into which all surface waters, former streams, etc. have disappeared.

Her designs are sensitive to this history as well as current conditions, the needs of the local community, and the intention to help ameliorate environmental problems.

This aerial view of the water treatment facility under construction in Petaluma, California gives a sense of the enormous scale of some of her artistic accomplishments.

Aside from sheer wonder, delight, and appreciation for Johanson’s work, there were four main points that struck me:

This is work that requires enormous amounts of research and cooperation for it to be successful. No amount of self-reflection in the studio can produce such far-reaching and practical results.

Johanson reiterated several times the need for community involvement. She was not there, in whatever the location, to impose an aesthetic concept on the land. She listened to the public and the local stakeholders and her designs respect their needs as well as her own creative imagination.

The third point is sadder, I think. Her presentation as well as her work reminded me of Betsy Damon, who had given a talk at UWM a while ago. Afterwards, I asked Johanson about Damon. Unsurprisingly, they are friends. She went on to say that there were only a few like-minded artists doing these kinds of projects that combine imaginative artistic design with actual restoration and bio-remediation – and they are, like her, all getting along in years.

Young artists are not uninterested in the environment, she said, but they tend to want to draw attention to places or frame issues rather than dealing directly with healing the earth.

There were many young people, university students no doubt, in the audience. My hope is that some of them heard her message and found her example inspiring enough to turn that around.

Finally, as I did when I heard Damon speak, I couldn’t help wishing there is a way that one of these artists could be brought to Milwaukee to do their creative and restorative work. The Menomonee Valley would be the perfect location.

Project descriptions and more images can be found on Johanson's website.

Crime Unseen at Museum of Contemporary Photography

2011-11-09T08:16:00.000-08:00

The Milwaukee Art Museum opened its remarkable exhibit of Taryn Simon’s photography in September. With three impressive bodies of work of an important contemporary photographer, the show brings to Milwaukee work that is both significant and insightful. If you haven’t gone to see it yet, do so.

From The Innocents, Taryn Simon

The Innocents by itself is worth the visit. Simon’s portraits of people who have been convicted wrongly of crimes are powerful and challenging without being melodramatic or disturbing – although the stories that accompany each image should disturb and outrage anyone with a conscience. It remains on view through January 1, 2012.

If you are traveling to Chicago, a concurrent exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Photography bookends the Simon show nicely. A group show called Crime Unseen has related themes. (In fact homage to Simon is paid by including one of her Innocents images.) Apparently, for contemporary photographers, crime not only pays – as dividends in art world caché – but also is in fashion.

Richard Barnes photographs of the Unabomber's cabin.

From the exhibition text:

“All of the artists in Crime Unseen grapple with a retelling of disturbing crimes. Using photography and other methods, the artists reactivate historical material and open it up to further contemplation. By drawing on techniques of photojournalism, forensic photography, and documentary landscape, the artists actively engage with myth and reality as they question the roles of memory, the media, and evidence in solving and remembering crime.”

Detail from Killing Season: Chicago by Krista Wortendyke shows one of several series of images of crime scenes arranged to resemble the skyline of the city.

“All of the work in this exhibition has tragedy at its root; every artist deals with materials and stories that stem from extremely serious crimes and real murders of real people. Yet they approach the idea of violent crime obliquely. There are no graphic images of real dead bodies here. The artists did not witness the crimes, and their photographs were all made after the crimes occurred—in most cases, long after. …Partly as a rallying cry against forgetting, they confront us with our perverse attraction to horror by skirting it slightly, bringing stories back to life, and demonstrating that the evil side of human nature unsettles our fundamental notions of security, humanity, and control. …By transforming history into something new and current, the artists discourage us from being passive and distant, and in so doing perhaps leave room for an implicit, liberating acceptance that human nature is sometimes unpredictable and flawed.”

The work is intriguing, if not as powerful and compelling as Simon’s. But I take issue with the last statement above. If there are flaws in human nature, so too in the “passive and distant” stance taken by these and many contemporary artists. The photography is technically excellent and conceptually engaging, but unemotional.

Perhaps it is a reaction to tabloid journalism with its devotion to graphic depiction and lurid detail, but contemporary artists can go too far with their “oblique” approach and banal aesthetic. If they wish to “confront us with our perverse attraction to horror” I think they just might want to skirt it less slightly. Taryn Simon’s work balances on that edge beautifully.

The circular images in Tooth for an Eye by Deborah Luster are intended to mimic the shape of a gunshot hole or the view through a gun sight.

However, it’s a strong show and worth checking out for yourself sometime before it closes January 15. The MOCP website has a thorough description of the show.

Gallery view

2011-11-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

The Alex Webb show at the Steven Daiter Gallery in Chicago was very good, despite appearances in this shot I managed to get while there on a tour with the MAM Photo Council.

MAM turns 10

2011-10-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

If you don't get the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, or missed today's Cue section, I invite you to visit Art City. Prompted by the 10th anniversary of the opening of "the Calatrava," Mary Louise Schumacher has provided a wonderful overview of the last decade at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

from Quilts at Gee's Bend, MAM

And if you missed my own reflections on the last decade in Milwaukee Art (which didn't emphasize MAM), check out "Remembering ten years of Milwaukee Art."

Nature Belle, Roy Staab, Hank Aaron State Trail

"Rescued by Design" and Hip Hop heraldry

2011-10-26T07:29:00.000-07:00

Although the writing in the New York Times is invariably excellent, coverage of visual arts, sadly, is usually relegated to the last pages of the Arts & Leisure section. Not so last Sunday when two very different but very intriguing articles made the front page of the section.

In 'Rescued by Design' architecture critic Michael Kimmelman describes how architecture, urban planning, and simple but elegant utilitarian solutions to urban problems can alleviate a plethora of social problems. Focusing on places as far apart as Medellin, Colombia, Nairobi, Kenya, and Bangkok, Thailand, among others, the examples used make it clear that good design can provide hope for those living in "some of the world's worst conditions."

Sharing the cover is a much more introspective story entitled 'Blending Hip-Hop and Heraldry' by Melena Ryzik. It describes the life and work of Rashaad Newsome who fuses images from contemporary Hip-Hop culture with the ancient forms of heraldry to create richly detailed symbolic portraits.

Support Arts Education; make something happen

2011-10-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

If you missed it in yesterday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, here is my letter to the editor about supporting the arts and the businesses that are trying to promote the “creative industries” in Milwaukee. (This version is slightly longer than the 200-word limit imposed by the MJS. Original version here.)

Business should support education

In the Oct. 16 Crossroads was an article about Innovation in Milwaukee (MiKE), which “is branded a design, technology and innovation cluster.” (Op ed: "Grab the MiKe; make something happen") MiKE is a laudable effort by local businesses to spur start-ups and growth in businesses that involve design and technology, often referred to as the “creative industries.” As a long-time artist and educator, I can only applaud any effort that “puts art at the center of economic development.”

The op ed was more informational than editorial. The information about MiKE is welcome. Let’s put the word out often and loud about the value of the arts to business and economic development.

However, I saw a missed opportunity to make a broader point. The authors, Messrs. Jeffries and Teske (Exec. V.P. at Kohl’s Corp. and CEO of Brigg’s & Stratton, Corp. respectively), assert, “One of our region's greatest resources is its talented workforce….” They observe that this workforce “is continuously bolstered by the students graduating from our world-class colleges and universities.”

Well and good, but from where are these college students coming? From a pool of elementary and secondary students who already are experiencing an array of impediments to a quality education because of recent policy changes in Madison and consequent budget cuts to schools nearly everywhere in Wisconsin. Ironically, the first disciplines to get the ax are always the arts.

If business wants to grow its creative workforce, it will have to lend moral and monetary support to the foundations of public education and, in particular, arts education.

Madonna & Child Interpreted

2011-10-19T08:25:00.000-07:00


Madonna & Child, Pacia Sallomi

The idea is not unusual: choose a classic theme - in this case Madonna and Child - and invite artists to render an interpretation of it. That is the premise of a new show opening on Friday, gallery night, at the H2O Gallery at 221 N. Water St. in Milwaukee’s Third Ward. But if the idea is conventional, the results are anything but.

The interpretations range from traditional to iconoclastic; the styles from realistic to abstract. The mediums range from painting to sculpture to photography – to creative writing. The artists in the show include some for whom this is their first gallery exposure and others who have exhibited widely. Here at Arts Without Borders I love the whole concept!

Magic is the Child, William Zuback

If you go to see this show on Friday – and I recommend it – expect the unexpected. In the words of curator William Zuback, “The beauty of this exhibition is that it represents a wide visual and emotional spectrum of artistic representation and translation of this iconic subject.”

Although many of the works in the show either pay homage to or reinterpret the Christian theme, others reflect on the subject in a way that reveals its archetypal and universal aspects. Reverent treatments reside comfortably alongside works that explore the edges of orthodoxy and faith, or question our assumptions.

Oya and Virgen, Holley Bakich

The exhibition of visual art is accompanied by a catalogue that includes three dramatic literary interpretations of the theme written in response to the invitation. Below are excerpts from each. I hope they will motivate you to want to read them in their entirety.

“Hush, little baby. Don’t cry. Papa’s an iconoclast. But it’ll be alright. He carries a sledge hammer. It’s the tool of his trade. He sees an icon? He leaves behind shards. But don’t cry, little baby. It’ll be alright. Shards tell stories….” – from A Taboo Lullaby by David Press

“When I found out that Mary might not have conceived Jesus in the traditional way, I have to say I was rather disappointed. It put her further away from me than I had initially anticipated. Not getting pregnant out of love? Passion? No seduction? Bizarre forced entry, without a fight. I mean, really, what kind of a way is that to get pregnant? A stranger whispers into your ear? Blowing a Lilly into it? Really? A bit like rape, if you ask me, or maybe like ‘Rosemary’s Baby.’” – from Searching for Mary by Michelle PG Richardson

“I was named after my mother, she and I sharing the same first and middle names of Mary Elizabeth, though everyone called her Beth. It was explained to me by my grandmother that Beth was her favorite name but, when it came to formally naming my mother, Elizabeth most certainly could not be placed in front of Mary. This was very curious to me and I asked her why she didn’t just name my mother Elizabeth Mary. “The Virgin always takes precedence,” she responded in a matter-of-fact tone. When I pressed her for more information, she gave me The Look. Translation: This discussion is over.” – from Life as Mary by Mary Dally-Muenzmaier

The discussion may have been over, but you know that’s not the end of the story!

Madonna & Child, Ellen Pizer

Proceeds from the sale of the exhibition catalogue go to benefit the Grand Avenue Club, which provides a variety of programs and opportunities for adults with mental illness. A thoughtful, diverse exhibition of art combined with a direct social benefit – it just gets better and better!

Full disclosure: a photograph from my Nicaragua Portfolios is included in this exhibit. It is only tangentially religious, but decidedly reverent.

Gallery H2O is at 221 N. Water St. (which is also Soup’s On!)

The show runs Oct. 21 – Jan. 13, 2012.

It will be open gallery night and day.

Friday 6 – 10 pm and Saturday 11 am – 2 pm.

New Photo Expression 2011

2011-10-09T19:48:00.000-07:00

New Photo Expressionism 2011 will be opening on Thursday, Oct. 13 at the Blutstein Brondino Gallery. Blutstein Brondino Fine Arts is a full-service gallery in the Marshall Building in Milwaukee’s Third Ward. The gallery invited Milwaukee photographer Lawrence D'Attilio to be a guest curator for their first venture into contemporary photography.

I am one of eight Milwaukee photographers featured in the show. The others are Valerie J. Christell, Robert Israel, Dara Larson, William Mueller, James Seder, William Zuback, and D'Attilio himself.

Christell should be familiar to regular gallery night visitors to the Marshall Building. Her profound and disturbing images on social, political and philosophical themes have been on display in her own Merge Gallery until she closed it in August.

D'Attilio's work involves complex surrealistic photomontages. Israel takes somewhat traditional views of land and water and pushes them into places of mysticism.

Larson has a long established career in traditional print media. This time out she integrates that expertise with photography, a new direction for her. Mueller’s whimsical "insects" and macabre set pieces are astonishing in their conceptual and technical virtuosity.

Seder’s dark flower compositions are far removed from the usual clichés that the genre calls to mind. Zuback brings us enigmatic and very personal fabrications.

Blowing in the Wind

The five pieces of mine in the show represent three bodies of work: The Icon Series, The Reverie Series, and Accidental Art. You can see examples on my website by clicking the links. This one (above) from the Icon Series is the most recent.

Thursday’s opening reception is from 5:30 to 8:30 pm.

Blutstein Brondino Fine Art is at 207 East Buffalo Street, Suite 212.

I am obviously biased, but even if I were not in it I would want to see this exhibit. I hope you’ll join me there on Thursday evening.

In his curator’s statement, D’Attilio says of this show, “The safe sterility felt in some contemporary photography is here supplanted by work that appeals as much to the heart as to the brain.”

Louder than a Bomb rocks Milwaukee Film Fest

2011-10-06T18:15:00.000-07:00

“Poet, breathe now…because it’s the last thing you’ll ever do for yourself….” – Adam Gottlieb.

When was the last time a poem brought tears to your eyes? When was the last time you saw a documentary and felt like applauding – frequently – and so did everyone in the audience? When was the last time a bunch of teenagers made you feel good about life?

Louder than a Bomb is a documentary about a high school poetry competition – a slam – that manages to do all three. The Louder than a Bomb slam brings together young poets of every kind of background imaginable from all over the Chicago area for an Olympics style competition.

Yes, scoring poetry is stupid. So they say again and again. “The points are not the point; the point is the poetry,” becomes a mantra for the participants. But their enthusiasm and drive to succeed is contagious.

The young poets are exciting and inspiring. Their poems and their stage presence are breathtaking. And not all surface effect and flash, the depth of the work is stunning. The film takes you on an emotional roller coaster ride as it follows four contestants through practices, performances, and the final slam.

It was Sunday evening, the last night of the Milwaukee Film Festival. We went to the Ridge, a Marcus cinema in New Berlin. There were two film choices. Both sounded appealing. Not knowing anything more than the brief blurb in the program, we picked Louder than a Bomb because we like poetry.

Not knowing that Louder than a Bomb had won awards at film festivals all over the country. Not knowing that a few days later Louder than a Bomb also would be voted best in the Milwaukee Festival. Not knowing that I would laugh and cry and applaud in equal measures throughout the performance. I say performance, although the movie depicted many performances, because it felt more like a performance, like it was happening in real time, than like a documentary movie.

A quick glance at the Louder than a Bomb website shows how unanimous the critics have been in their acclaim of this tour de force. Don’t take my word for it. Nor even the critics. Visit the site and listen to Nate and Adam and Nova and the Steinmenauts recite and perform their incredible works of art. Then find the nearest screening of the film and go see it all.

One of the best features of the Film Festival is the opportunity it provides to learn more about the movies you see. After Louder than a Bomb, the movie, ended we were introduced to Kevin Coval, the poet who started Louder than a Bomb, the teen poetry slam. During the question and answer period someone asked if there was a poetry slam in Milwaukee. Happily, there is!

The next slam is on Oct. 14 at Centennial Hall in the Milwaukee Central Library; at 6 pm. Check it out at Stillwater Collective.

“Poet, breathe now…because there’s a fire inside you that needs oxygen to burn and if you don’t run out of breath you’re gonna run out of time….” – Adam Gottlieb

Thank you, Milwaukee Film.

Love

2011-10-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

photo by Sylke Vonk

Last Saturday my daughter, Chelsea, married Marcelo. It was a lovely, intimate wedding at Unitarian Universalist Church West. The minister, Suzelle Lynch, picked out the following poem by Pablo Neruda to include as a reading. It's beautiful and I thought I'd share it. The original Spanish version follows the English translation.

Love Sonnet by Pablo Neruda
Maybe nothingness is to be without your presence,
Without you moving, slicing the noon
Like a blue flower, without you walking
Later through the fog and the cobbles,

Without the light you carry in your hand,
Golden, which maybe others will not see,
Which maybe no one knew was growing
Like the red beginnings of a rose.

In short, without your presence: without your coming
Suddenly, incitingly, to know my life,
Gust of a rosebush, wheat of wind:

Since then I am because you are,
Since then you are, I am, we are,
And through love I will be, you will be, we'll be.

Love Sonnet by Pablo Neruda (Spanish Version)
Tal vez no ser es ser sin que tú seas,
Sin que vayas cortando el mediodía
Como una flor azul, sin que camines
Más tarde por la niebla y los ladrillos,

Sin esa luz que llevas en la mano
Que tal vez otros no verán dorada,
Que tal vez nadie supo que crecía
Como el origen rojo de la rosa,

Sin que seas, en fin, sin que vinieras
Brusca, incitante, a conocer mi vida,
Ráfaga de rosal, trigo del viento,

Y desde entonces soy porque tú eres,
Y desde entonces eres, soy y somos,
Y por amor seré, serás, seremos

Groundbreaking design breaks ground in Menomonee Valley

2011-10-03T09:54:00.000-07:00

UEC director Ken Leinbach

“Milwaukee is an amazing city!” exclaimed Ken Leinbach, the dynamic and indefatigable director of the Urban Ecology Center

(UEC). “When it comes to supporting the work of the center,” he continued, “miracles just seem to come down from the sky!” Then he looked up…leading the crowd also to turn their heads…just in time to see tiny parachutes flutter down bearing seed packets. Children scrambled to scoop them up.

The occasion was the groundbreaking ceremony last week for the new UEC, its third satellite, which will occupy a soon-to-be renovated 1933 tavern on 37^th St. and Pierce in the Menomonee Valley.

Mayor Barrett plants seeds with a buddy

At the completion of the ceremony the seeds were planted along the recently completed Valley Passage, adjacent to the center’s site, which leads to the Menomonee River,
Hank Aaron State Trail, and as-yet-uncompleted 24-acre park. Such notables as Mayor Tom Barrett, Milwaukee County Parks director Sue Black, and many others bearing trowels, each buddied up with one of the children.

The emotional intensity of the ceremony was electric. Speakers included board members, CEO’s of Valley businesses, major donors, DNR personnel, and representatives of the Silver City neighborhood where the site is located. Everyone was thrilled to be part of an historic moment. Most moving, I thought, was Michele Bria, CEO of nearby Journey House, who had brought the elementary students. She spoke with unmistakable excitement about the prospect of bringing them all to the new center and being able to visit the new park in their own neighborhood instead of having to ride the bus to Riverside Park.

Raising trowels in salute for the groundbreaking

The new branch of the UEC, which is slated to open in fall 2012, would be reason enough to celebrate. However, this is just part of a unique collaborative effort that will do much more than transform the Menomonee Valley, once largely a post-industrial wasteland, into a vital, ecologically significant, culturally rich, and economically powerful part of Milwaukee. It may well spark a revitalization of the entire region.

For the project, called “Menomonee Valley – From the Ground Up,” the UEC has teamed up with
Menomonee Valley Partners, a non-profit whose mission is to redevelop the Valley. The project has four components:

Improving pedestrian/bike access to and from the Valley.
Doubling the Hank Aaron State Trail with a six-mile western extension.
Establishing the third branch of the Urban Ecology Center.
Transforming a 24-acre brownfield into a visionary public park and ecologically significant natural area.

At Tuesday’s groundbreaking plans for both the UEC branch and the park were unveiled to the public.

Rendering by Uihlein-Wilson Architects

The old tavern has been reimagined and enlarged in designs by Uihlein-Wilson Architects with an eye toward sustainability. The rooftop sports an array of solar panels. An exterior stair provides access to a deck from which both the panels and the Valley can be viewed. At 6,000 sq. ft. it is smaller than the UEC flagship in Riverside Park, but will provide similar environmental programming, including community gathering space as well as science-based classrooms. The elegant new building steps down from its perch on Pierce St., visually and symbolically directing attention towards the Valley Passage and the park beyond. A lower level classroom opens directly onto the Passage.

Within five years the new branch expects 10,000 annual visitors and to provide students in 22 south side schools with environmental stewardship projects, urban recreational adventures, and science education, among other things.

Site of the new park

I took the time to walk through the Valley Passage for a peek at the new park.

Bikers already use the recently erected bridge across the Menomonee River and head west on the Hank Aaron State Trail. Looking east past the temporary gate, however, all I can see are large, featureless piles of dirt.

The concept is compelling: to make of this vacant former railroad yard a “touchable ‘wilderness’” with “a mosaic of biodiverse landscapes, including forest, prairie, and ephemeral wetland,” and to evoke topographic formations specific to glaciated Wisconsin. What a refreshing way to conceive of “landscape architecture” – to design a long-abused urban space in such a way that it becomes a healthy, functioning ecosystem, so that it appears un-designed – natural.

Rendering by Wenk & Associates

The quality and ecological integrity of the design has already generated national acclaim. The
American Society of Landscape Architects has granted local designers Landscapes of Place, LLC
an honor award for their plan, called “Making a Wild Place in Milwaukee’s Urban Menomonee Valley.”

Before long, guided by Urban Ecology Center staff and volunteers, school children from all over the south side will be roaming the hills, exploring the woods, and discovering the river. Milwaukee is an amazing place!

Some additional photos of the event:

Ken Leinbach juggling trowels!

Menomonee Valley Partners director Laura Bray with renderings

Students from Journey House

Hank Aaron State Trail manager Melissa Cook

Parks director Sue Black planting with a buddy

Menomonee Valley design wins award

2011-09-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

"Making a Wild Place in Milwaukee’s Urban Menomonee Valley" won an honor award from the American Society of Landscape Architects. The award recognizes the importance of this design to the restoration of the Valley, a place that "has been mistreated for a hundred and sixty years."

The winning design firm is Landscapes of Place, LLC. The team of Nancy Aten and Dan Collins are the principles of the firm. Congratulations!

A project description can be seen on the ASLA website.

Project site is on the right side of the river in this view from 2008

Remembering ten years of Milwaukee Art.

2011-09-05T07:18:00.000-07:00

“The Calatrava” is ten years old this year. To mark this anniversary of the Milwaukee Art Museum’s famous new wing the Journal Sentinel’s art critic, Mary Louise Schumacher, is asking her readers to comment on a series of questions about the last ten years. Here are some of my random thoughts. (The complete set of questions is below and on her blog at Art City. If you are as inspired by them as I was, please go to her blog and give her your responses.)

Is Milwaukee’s art scene as exciting…? Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder. Excitement, I’d suggest, is an equally subjective response to a set of circumstances. For me Milwaukee’s art scene has become more and more exciting in the past ten years. If I am projecting…, well, I hope my excitement is infectious.

First, let’s get the bad news out of the way. The political trends of the last ten months threaten to overwhelm ten years of building optimism. Among the most ominous developments have been the decimation of arts programming in schools along with what seems to be a deliberate dismantling of public education in general.

Regarding architecture, Calatrava and the museum threw down a gauntlet ten years ago. That building is still pretty damn exciting, if you ask me. I rarely drive by without thinking it’s a miracle that it was built and that I am seeing it right here in Milwaukee.

What is missing? No similarly bold architecture has been built in ten years. A Calatrava design proposed for a pedestrian bridge over the former North Avenue dam site was scrapped for a less expensive alternative. A clumsy attempt to mimic the Art Museum’s tour de force at the adjacent Discovery World was wisely reconfigured.

Park East corridor

The excitement generated by the demolition of the Park East freeway, which made national headlines, has long dissipated, its still largely vacant corridor a constant reminder of untapped potential.

Sixth St. Bridge

Two architectural developments that come closer than most are both in the Menomonee Valley, which itself qualifies as having had a pretty exciting ten years. They are the twin Sixth Street bridges, ushering visitors into the revitalized Valley, and the remodeled Intermodal Station.

Which artists represent Milwaukee’s avant-garde today? Why the emphasis on “avant-garde”? I’m all for “forward-looking,” if that’s how it’s interpreted, but skeptical of the merely unconventional. Novelty devoid of content or relevance is vacuous. What is most exciting is the vigor of the art scene and how deep is the bench, both in visual and performing arts.

Lenz: Wishes in the Wind

I hesitate to begin a list of individuals because so many good artists are working in the region today that I would inevitably overlook many of them. So, I’ll pick just one: David Lenz. Avant-garde? You choose your definition; he fits mine.

What experiences have changed your perspective about the power of art? First, I have never doubted the power of art. Second, my experiences here and elsewhere have continually reinvigorated my faith. Here are a few things that I managed to dredge from my memory of the last ten years:

Staab: Nature Belle

Eyes Wide Open: TheHuman Cost of the Iraq War, at the then Midwest Express Center (2004). Roy Staab’s Nature Belle, a delightfully kinetic environmental installation in the Menomonee Valley (2005). Chris Jordan’s billboard sized photographs called Runningthe Numbers at the Union Art Gallery (UAG) in 2007. The UAG also had an exhibit that included an installation of a freeway ramp; can’t recall the title, definitely recall the bold use of that unique gallery space. Alverno College hosted a powerful exhibition of art by cancer survivors. Riverpulse, art and science combined to make the health of the Milwaukee River visible – an installation underneath the Holton Street Bridge (2007).

Of course, Milwaukee’s most famous public art piece of the past ten years is the one that was rejected, Oppenheim’s “Blue Shirt.” Much has been written about this early victim of then County Executive Scott Walker.

The performing arts scene is every bit as vibrant and deep as the visual arts. If I had to pick a single play from the last ten years, I think it would have to be the Milwaukee Rep’s production of Angels in America. And the whole idea of Combat Theater, which is just incredibly exciting.

I don’t get out to see dance as often as I’d like, but I’m sure glad I caught Wildspace’s use of the Chimney Park in the Menomonee Valley (before the Chimneys had to come down!)

What impact has MAM had on the art “ecosystem” here? MAM always will be the 800 lb. gorilla in Milwaukee and, although some have criticized its programming as not living up to the standard set by its new architecture, I think it has hosted a number of excellent exhibitions in recent years. (If you still haven’t seen Summerof China, get there before it closes this Sunday!) However, MAM should showcase more WI artists.

Fortunately, MAM is not the only alternative, nor the only one that has grown. The Latino Arts Gallery expanded into a larger and more beautiful space. The Wustum in Racine added the RAM. The rebranded Museum of WI Art in West Bend is poised for its own exciting expansion. The Kohler Art Center in Sheboygan provides more consistently excellent major exhibitions than any other museum in the region, in my humble estimation. And MU’s Haggerty also punches above its weight. “Current Tendencies,” which just opened there to a packed crowd is testament to the vitality and popularity of Milwaukee’s contemporary art scene.

Lynden Sculpture Garden

I knew I couldn’t keep this short! Quick hits: Bucketworks! Redline! MIAD’s senior thesis shows every May. MARN. Sharon Lynn Wilson Center. The Lynden Sculpture Garden opens to the public! Have the last ten years been exciting or what?!!

Final comment: If you are an artist, have you had formative experiences in Milwaukee lately? To do this question justice I would need at least a whole new post, but I will mention one influence for which I am grateful: it was Mary Louise herself who prompted me to start blogging. Thank you!

Here is the survey:

Is Milwaukee’s art scene as exciting today as it was 10 years ago? Why or Why not?
How would you describe the health of the art scene today? Are there missing ingredients?
If you were to assemble a list of people that represent Milwaukee’s avant-garde today (in terms of visual culture), who would you include?
What experiences at local galleries, museums or other venues have you had in recent years that have changed your perspective about the power of art? How do they compare to the experiences you’ve had in previous years (if applicable).
If you are an artist, have you had formative experiences in Milwaukee lately? In other words, what exhibits or talks have opened your thinking?
What are the greatest opportunities for change/improvement for Milwaukee’s cultural scene today?
If critical (but informal) dialogue once centered around places like Pumpkin World and UWM’s film department and people like David Robbins, what or who are the driving forces today?
What impact has MAM had on the art “ecosystem” here (i.e. galleries, artists, collectors, etc.). How should that change, if at all?

Except for David Lenz's "Wishes...," all photos in this post are mine. I found the Lenz image at http://www.artepolitik.com/WIpainting

Thousands gather at the river to hear Water!

2011-08-30T06:54:00.000-07:00

What a triumph! Yes, the music was magnificent, but there was much more to Saturday’s concert, aptly titled Water, at the Marcus Center. More even than the diverse outdoor performances and festive activities that literally surrounded the concert outside the hall. The real triumph was the Milwaukee River and the crowds who gathered there to experience the multimedia extravaganza orchestrated by Present Music.

When I moved to Milwaukee in 1976, the then Performing Arts Center (PAC) was still new. I didn’t realize at the time how bold a move it was for Milwaukee to build its premier performing arts showcase on the riverfront. Unlike today, there was no riverwalk then and even the businesses that lined it didn’t face towards the river.

Although a newcomer to the city, it didn’t take me long to discover that the sorry state of the river itself was the main reason. But it wasn’t just the polluted river. Downtown Milwaukee suffered the malaise of many rustbelt cities in the 1970’s. No one lived there and after five o’clock it emptied. The streets were deserted by six.

The riverside plaza behind the PAC that led down to the water likewise languished, underutilized.

Flash forward to today.

While no one will claim that Milwaukee has overcome all its problems, its downtown, and especially its namesake river, couldn’t be more different than it was 35 years ago. On Saturday evening thousands of people packed the riverfront plaza and lined the two flanking bridges. Boats of all sizes paraded past, idled to watch. The musicians floated up to the concert hall on the water.

This event made the Marcus Center, at its prescient location, the epicenter of a revitalization that has water as one of its defining features. The theme of the evening was no coincidence and its success was far more than symbolic. It represents a still nascent but real transformation in the hearts and minds of Milwaukeeans.

Moreover, the event brought together two constituencies that haven’t always found common purpose. It warmed my heart to see this event sponsored by both the United Performing Arts Fund and Milwaukee Riverkeeper, by the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Urban Ecology Center. For once I don’t have to choose between my two blogs to post this story, for it is appropriate to both.

The performances by Present Music and its partners, including Danceworks, several choirs, and video artists, were remarkable and moving. The music evoked the various rhythms and sounds of water in its many forms. In a piece commissioned especially for this concert, water itself was one of the “instruments.” The musician seated before a clear plastic tub with his sleeves rolled up looked incongruous, even humorous – until he began to “play” the water with reverent solemnity. The gentle, natural sounds he made harmonized beautifully, fittingly, with the voices and instruments of the ensemble.

Poet and naturalist Gary Snyder has said, “Art is not real unless some wild is let in.” Kudos to artistic director Kevin Stalheim and composer Kamran Ince for taking his metaphor to a new level.

The highlight of the evening, for me, was the concluding piece, a medley of songs “concocted” by Stalheim. Small groups of choristers stood around the periphery of Uihlein Hall, adding their voices to those on stage. Familiar tunes – How Dry I Am, The Water Is Wide, Down by the Riverside, Row, Row, Row Your Boat – joined with Handel’s Water Music (of course!) The melodies tumbled and washed over the audience like water.

A crescendo was followed by a hush. Then, out of the pregnant silence, a child’s voice sang out the single line: “Shall we gather at the river?” In a brilliant move, the thrilling climax erupted from the audience itself as the hall filled with two thousand voices proclaiming in song, “YES, WE’LL GATHER AT THE RIVER….”

And we did.

For more detailed reviews of the concert, read those by Tom Strini in Third Coast Digest and Jim Higgins at JSOnline.

The images that accompany this post are my own tribute to this important event.

"Field of Vision: Artists Explore" Place at Racine Art Museum

2011-08-28T17:59:00.000-07:00

This is essentially the same review that appeared in Art City last week. I offer it here with additional images and links to the artists' websites.

Rebecca Hutchinson, Connected Bloom

The Racine Art Museum has assembled a diverse collection of artists who explore the idea of “place” through feelings, thoughts, and impressions. In the first invitational show of its kind at the museum, nine artists were chosen whose work responds to place imaginatively rather than representationally.

This remarkable show surprised me and shook off a bias I didn’t know I had. The exhibition subtitle, “Artists Explore Place,” brought to mind stereotypical scenes associated with “artist colonies” – lighthouses and lobster traps in Gloucester, MA; native dancers and animal skulls in Taos, NM; sailboats and farms in Door County. There is nothing like that in this show.

Mary Giles, Copper Crevice

Try this: close your eyes and think of a place to which you feel deeply connected. Let your mind drift away from what that place looks like and concentrate on how it feels to be there. What kind of art would that sensation generate?

The artists in this show seem to have been chosen because their work avoids representational specificity and embodies sensation in a nuanced way. The conceptual integrity of the work in the exhibit is matched too by a meticulous level of craft across diverse mediums. The mediums range from the ephemeral – paper, natural fibers and wax – to the enduring – copper, bronze and gold. The processes are all labor-intensive.

Jolynn Krysostek, Untitled

Jolynn Krystosek carves large but delicate medallions out of fragile wax. The forms suggest cameo pendants while the content references Victorian botanical illustrations. I found the sumptuous physicality of the wax and the technical facility with the unusual medium mesmerizing in all of them. However, I preferred the few in which curls of wax roll askew and out of the frame, which deflates the tromp l’oeil effect and calls attention to the fluidity of the wax itself.

Sarah Hood, Birch Tree Ring

Sarah Hood fashions jewelry on which she recreates tiny fragments of the natural world. The meaning is ambiguous: is it a plea to respect the jewel-like preciousness of nature, a lament at how little there is left, or commentary about its commodification? While I enjoyed these pieces conceptually, I found the use of model railroad-scale artificial trees unconvincing and distracting. In earlier works, which I found on Hood's website, she incorporated real plants, leaves and seedpods. This seems more compelling.

Nicole Chesney, Betoken

The only painter among these artists is Nicole Chesney. Consistent with the rest, neither her approach to place nor her painting technique conform to tradition. Chesney layers oil paint, glass, and reflective aluminum to create luminous abstractions that stray so far from a specificity of place that they could be any place or no place. A horizontal line may be the horizon; her colors may be atmospheric; her work may be an updated version of color-field painting on a high-tech substrate. In any case the combination of deft painterly brushwork on glass over aluminum results in a mystical sense of space that would fit in just as well with an exhibition of Rothko and Olitski as it does here.

Beverly Penn, Topo I, detail

From a distance, Beverly Penn’s two large oval wall pieces have a decorative simplicity. The curvilinear effects reminded me of Louis Sullivan’s architectural ornamentation. Up close the detailed rendering of simple weeds seems almost miraculous. I wanted to reach over the velvet rope and touch it; that it was made of cast bronze was hard to believe. High relief and the museum’s lighting create shadows, which animate a sculpture that might have remained inert and ornamental.

Lauren Fensterstock, Third Nature 3

My favorite works were by Lauren Fensterstock. She manufactures shadow boxes that from a distance appear to be filled solid with some black earthy substances. Reflections on the glass fronts make the interiors visually impenetrable. But they are not minimalist forms a la Donald Judd, whose work they superficially resemble. Upon close inspection one discovers a very dark approximation of a kitchen-window terrarium or a science fair ant farm. Nothing actually grows in these faux terrariums. The deception is created from thin strips of cut and quilled black paper “planted” atop charcoal that’s been crushed to look like soil. The artist says that they represent “the earth becoming an expression of man’s view of nature rather than man’s true experience of nature.” If so, I found it especially symbolic that the dominant image as we view each box straight on is literally a reflection of ourselves. It takes an oblique viewpoint to make out the interior detail, as if nature has become such an alien experience that we can see it only with peripheral vision. Or perhaps they are apocalyptic reliquaries that contain the charred remains of a scorched earth, still held in hopeful reverence.

Olga de Amaral, Umbra 31, detail

In the end, for the artists in Field of Vision, place may be interpreted many ways, but is not somewhere that can be located via GPS. Place is a state of mind, an emotion, or a relationship. The catalogue copy states, “These works are substantial without being directly representational.” They are substantial indeed.

There is still plenty of time to see Field of Vision: Artists Explore Place. It is on view through October 2.

Photography illuminates an Urban Eden in Milwaukee

2011-08-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

Pete appeared suddenly, seeming to materialize from nowhere. Perhaps from the street itself, which is where he calls home. He approached the wall cautiously, hesitant. His own face gazed back at him, enormous, calm, composed. Softly, he said, “I can’t believe this is happening.” In the deep shade under the brim of his cap his tired eyes glistened, first with pride, then tears. He repeated, his voice barely audible, “I can’t believe…, this is me.” After a long pause he added, “I’ve been on the streets for….” His thought trailed off, leaving me to wonder how long. He sat on a board that edged one of the planting beds in the community garden. He sat for a long while in silence, watching as the crew of volunteers pasted up face after face alongside his.

When Pete finally got up to leave he reiterated his disbelief. Then he said he was going to go invite all his friends to come see it.

Urban Eden is a photographic mural project named after the community garden that it faces. It was created by Sally Kuzma and John Ruebartsch. Kuzma is an artist and ESL teacher at the International Learning Center (ILC), a program of Neighborhood House of Milwaukee. She acted as project director, seeking out participants and recording their stories. Ruebartsch, a professional photographer, made the portraits.

The subjects of the portraits all have some relationship to the garden and its neighborhood, which is in one of the city's poorest zip codes. At Urban Eden refugees who attend the ILC grow and harvest food alongside people from two multicultural neighborhood parishes, St. Paul’s Lutheran and Central United Methodist. A group of environmentally active students from Marquette University were instrumental in establishing Urban Eden. Some of them are included in the mural.

That the mural is more than an art installation is almost too obvious to mention. Kuzma shared with me the following stories:

“During the mural installation yesterday, some profound things were happening:

An artist who came to see the mural approached me about renting rooms to ILC refugees; she owns a rooming house in the neighborhood and feels called spiritually to do this.

A Marquette student who had helped initiate the garden came to paste up posters but ended up spending most of her time playing with neighborhood children in the ILC playground.

People from the neighborhood are asking how they can be part of the garden, and learning that the colorful Somali Bantu women they see at the bus stop on 25th St. are coming to school here.

It's almost as if the mural is an incidental thing that is making visible the very real good will that is being generated in this place by a lot of different people. Marking the spot where human beings are being human.”

The project is also much more than a single installation. Urban Eden is part of an international effort “to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world.” That effort, called INSIDE OUT, was inspired by the work of JR, an internationally acclaimed artist and winner of the 2011 TED prize. (If you haven’t heard of TED, which awards $100,000 annually to people with ideas that can change the world, check it out: TED prize.)

The portraits that make up the Urban Eden mural, along with the stories, will be archived online with similar projects from around the world at INSIDE OUT: A Global Art Project. The mural is located on 26th St. between Wisconsin Ave. and Michigan St., behind the US Bank building, facing south.

This is not the first collaborative project for Kuzma and Ruebartsch. Here, There and Elsewhere: Refugee Families inMilwaukee, a photo-documentary that debuted at Walker's Point Center for the Arts last summer, is currently touring to several locations around the country.

Here Kuzma and Ruebartsch stand in front of a section of the completed mural. To see more images from the installation, go to my flickr page.

Congress should take up poetry!

2011-08-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

It isn't my idea. Last Sunday, Bill Keller, editor of the NY Times, suggested just that in a wonderful editorial. Read "I Yield My Time to the Gentleman From Stratford-Upon-Avon."

Keller says, "Poetry is no substitute for courage or competence, but properly applied, it is a challenge to self-certainty, which we currently have in excess. Poetry serves as a spur to creative thinking, a rebuke to dogma and habit, an antidote to the current fashion for pledge signing."

I have known a few poets in my time, met quite a few more, and heard many read their work. I've never known a poet who wasn't both thoughtful and attentive. Unlike some other kinds of writers, poets tend to be good listeners. I'm sure there are among them some narcissists, but I'm guessing the percentage is far lower than among other kinds of artists; certainly lower than among that class of people who choose to enter politics.

There is angry poetry, but humility is a far more common quality.

Keller quotes these familiar lines from “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,” by William Carlos Williams:

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

Keller also asked David Orr, the poetry columnist for the Times Book Review, to provide a reading list for Congress. Here is that link: "Bedside Table Suggestions for Congress."

If you go to the Times website to read any of this and do a search of the topic you will find that lots of people have added their own suggestions for a Congressional reading list. Why not send a few suggestions to your representatives, hey? (Can you see Jim Sensenbrenner picking up a volume of poetry when he goes to bed tonight?)

Here's mine, by Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton:

Like You

Like you I

Love love, life, the sweet smell

of things, the sky-blue

landscape of January days.

And my blood boils up

and I laugh through eyes

that have known the buds of tears.

I believe the world is beautiful

and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don’t end in me

but in the unanimous blood

of those who struggle for life,

love

little things,

landscape and bread,

the poetry of everyone.

Who has a big idea?

2011-08-16T08:15:00.000-07:00

Is there an Einstein living today, someone who thinks so big that everyone takes notice? So big that it changes the way everyone thinks?

If there were such a person, would we be paying attention?

We've all heard the old conundrum, "If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear, does it make any sound?" What if a tree falls in the city? All around the tree there is a cacophony of noisy activities, traffic, construction, conversation, etc. Will anyone notice?

In the New York Times, Neal Gabler has written a provocative and engaging essay about the death of the big idea. He cites many examples of famous thinkers from time gone by, like Einstein, Reinhold Niebuhr, Betty Friedan, Marshall McLuhan, William F. Buckley, Jr. Marie Curie, and George Washington Carver. But he opines that the voices and ideas of any such thinkers alive and speaking out today are drowned out by the deluge of information to which everyone is constantly subjected. He further suggests that social media, with its emphasis on short bursts of mostly trivial information, is particularly culpable.

It's a good essay, worth reading: The Elusive Big Idea.

Gabler makes only one reference to big ideas in art. He doesn't mention a single artist, though. He says, "An artist friend of mine recently lamented that he felt the art world was adrift because there were no longer great critics like Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg to provide theories of art that could fructify the art and energize it." I find it sad but telling that the people who wrote theories about art get credit for having had big ideas instead of the artists themselves. But then, so much of Modernism was about the words/ideas as much as the art itself. I think it may be even more true of contemporary art.

Which artists had the big artistic ideas, on a par with the great thinkers who affected the culture? Giotto? Velazquez? Manet? Cezanne? Warhol? Was Pollock's success really so dependent upon the intercession of Rosenberg and Greenberg?

How about photography? The medium itself probably changed the way we see the world more than any single practitioner. In fact, until I retired from teaching last May, I kept a poster version of this famous image on my classroom wall because I consider it (or whichever was the first one taken from space) to be the most influential photograph ever taken. Further, the image of the earth from space, that tiny blue sphere in a universe of black, may be the most important image ever made precisely because of the big idea it represents: the earth is fragile and its resources finite. It is no accident that the image graced the original cover of the Whole Earth Catalog or that the first Earth Day was organized shortly after its first publication.

Does art still have the power to affect how we see the world? Or is everyone too busy uploading images to facebook and you-tube of their pet or their latest meal from their cell phone cameras to see anything else?

Hey, I have an idea: anyone want to see pictures of my adorable new granddaughter? Just go to my album on Facebook.

The artistic life

2011-08-05T06:43:00.000-07:00

I read The Writing Life by Annie Dillard a while ago. I dog-eared a particularly poignant passage thinking it applies equally well to other art forms as it does to writing. When I googled the passage I found that the beginning is often quoted, but that the quoters usually trail off before the end of the first paragraph. Which is a shame because the second provides a counterpoint that contrasts profoundly with the first. Without it her observations are unbalanced.

I guess the reluctance to include the second paragraph is understandable. The beginning has a sunny attitude, while the end becomes a bit nihilistic. Art, like life, isn’t always sunny. I can relate to both moods. In the first version below I’ve taken liberties with her text to generalize it. Her original version follows that in case you want to see how little I had to alter.

"Creating a work of art is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as an artist is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild abandon; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself. In the democracies, you may even express anything you please about any governments or institutions, even if it is demonstrably false.

The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever. You are free to make several thousand close judgment calls a day. Your freedom is a by-product of your days' triviality. A shoe salesman – who is doing others' tasks, who must answer to two or three bosses, who must do his job their way, and must put himself in their hands, at their place, during their hours – is nevertheless working usefully. Further, if the shoe salesman fails to appear one morning, someone will notice and miss him. Your work of art, on which you lavish such care, has no needs or wishes; it knows you not. Nor does anyone need your work; everyone needs shoes more. There are many paintings, sculptures, and prints already – worthy ones, most edifying and moving ones, intelligent and powerful ones. Why not shoot yourself, actually, rather than finish one more excellent work of art on which to gag the world?"

I believe the answer to the dramatic rhetorical question that concludes the passage is found in the first paragraph. Of course, some artists are not unlike shoe salesmen, but for those to whom Dillard refers, for whom art is exhilarating rather than commercial, not to pursue one’s calling would be the metaphysical equivalent of shooting oneself.

The original text from The Writing Life by Annie Dillard:

"Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invent your task, and pace yourself. In the democracies, you may even write and publish anything you please about any governments or institutions, even if what you write is demonstrably false.

The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever. You are free to make several thousand close judgment calls a day. Your freedom is a by-product of your days' triviality. A shoe salesman--who is doing others' tasks, who must answer to two or three bosses, who must do his job their way, and must put himself in their hands, at their place, during their hours--is nevertheless working usefully. Further, if the shoe salesman fails to appear one morning, someone will notice and miss him. Your manuscript, on which you lavish such care, has no needs or wishes; it knows you not. Nor does anyone need your manuscript; everyone needs shoes more. There are many manuscripts already -- worthy ones, most edifying and moving ones, intelligent and powerful ones. If you believed Paradise Lost to be excellent, would you buy it? Why not shoot yourself, actually, rather than finish one more excellent manuscript on which to gag the world?"

Gallery 2622 opening August 5

2011-07-29T04:12:00.000-07:00

Blooms, from the Icon Series

I will be showing selections of my work from two projects, the Icon Series of triptychs and the Reverie Series of photomontages.

The exhibit will be held at Gallery 2622, which, not coincidentally, is located at 2622 North 76th Street in Wauwatosa. The exhibit runs August 5 - 28, 2011.

The opening reception is August 5, 5 - 9 pm.

Artist Statement

I believe that we live in a world that is fundamentally different than that of previous generations. The land is stressed, the natural processes that sustain life are stressed, and as a result the human species is stressed. Our unavoidable and often unconscious task is to adapt to these unresolved circumstances. My work tries to make sense of the paradoxes inherent in this human condition.

The pieces in this exhibit are drawn from two series. Each series deals with particular formal considerations as well as subject and meaningful content. While my work often involves very specific formal structures, form is driven by content, expression and an overall conceptual framework.

Tower, from the Icon Series

The Icon Series uses the triptych, a recognizable formal structure with historical/cultural resonance, to emphasize iconic themes. The form places a central figure within a context that either magnifies its iconic stature and symbolic meaning or creates an unexpected juxtaposition. The central figure in these constructions is often elevated to iconic status despite its being an otherwise ordinary subject. It is rarely a subject that would be perceived as iconic and therefore it subverts or inverts the accepted definition of an icon. My intention is to invite the viewer to think about the subject and its relationship to its context in a newly symbolic way. Using multiple images emphasizes that our experience of the world is relational and conditional rather than singular and fixed.

Burn

The images in the Reverie Series are subjective landscapes. They are less about a particular place and more of a meditation or emotional experience. Each is a montage created from multiple photographs. Like the realities I perceive, the facts are blurred: the image is removed from actuality to some dimly seen place between memory and desire, where the landscape is subjective and the intersecting spirits of nature and humanity are suggested.

The meanings are often ambiguous, but they refer to the tensions and narratives of living in an environment that is increasingly compromised or redeemed by our own actions. I am not a dispassionate observer and although the landscape I experience may be beautiful, it is never pristine. This work has been informed by author Bill McKibben’s “The End of Nature,” in which he asserts that nothing on earth is left untouched by human influences, and other ideas of contemporary environmentalists.

But, while they may relate to urgent topical issues, the images are not didactic; they are experiential, symbolic and emotional. My central intent in this work is to express feelings I experience when confronting a particular landscape at a certain time and—paradoxically—to find the universal in the specific place and the eternal in the moment.

This is work that has not been shown in one place before. Examples from both series can be viewed on my website.


Glass Facade, the Reverie Series

Keeping Quiet

2011-07-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

I read Pablo Neruda's remarkable collection of poems, Extravagaria, in its entirety when I was in college. While the sense of Neruda's stature as a poet has never faded, the individual poems, the words themselves, certainly have succumbed to my failing memory.

I was reminded of it last Sunday in a service on Buddhism when the poem below was read. I am grateful. I just pulled my bilingual copy of Extravagaria off my bookshelf and wiped off the dust. Time to revisit the master.

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still

for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

And in the original Spanish, should you be able to enjoy it that way:

A callarse

Ahora contaremos doce
y nos quedamos todos quietos.

Por una vez sobre la tierra
no hablemos en ningun idioma,
por un segundo detengamonos,
no movamos tanto los brazos.

Seria un minuto fragante,
sin prisa, sin locomotoras,
todos estariamos juntos
en una inquietud instantanea.

Los pescadores del mar frio
no harian danio a las ballenas
y el trabajador de la sal
miraria sus manos rotas.

Los que preparan guerras verdes,
guerras de gas, guerras de fuego,
victorias sin sobrevivientes,
se pondrian un traje puro
y andarian con sus hermanos
por la sombra, sin hacer nada.

No se confunda lo que quiero
con la inaccion definitiva:
la vida es solo lo que se hace,
no quiero nada con la muerte.

Si no pudimos ser unanimes
moviendo tanto nuestras vidas,
tal vez no hacer nada una vez,
tal vez un gran silencio pueda
interrumpir esta tristeza,
este no entendernos jamas
y amenazarnos con la muerte,
tal vez la tierra nos ensenie
cuando todo parece muerto
y luego todo estaba vivo.

Ahora contare hasta doce
y tu te callas y me voy.

Things on Strings at MARN

2011-07-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

If you didn't catch the opening of "Things on Strings" at the Milwaukee Artists Resource Network gallery, stop by and check it out from now through August 13. As usual at MARN, there was a lively crowd ogling the diverse collection of sculptures, which, as the title suggests, were all hanging from the ceiling.

I didn't have my camera along (what was I thinking?!), but fortunately my friend Frank Juarez was there and has posted on his flickr site a set that he took: Things on Strings.

Frank missed my favorite piece. Three cups were placed on the floor, a tea cup, a coffee cup, and a plastic cup. Above each was suspended the frozen contents of that particular cup: tea, coffee, and some colorless liquid that might have been soda. By the time I got there the three cups were about two-thirds full again and the frozen remains had shrunk to small balls of ice. There was a steady drip from each that continued to fill the cups. Whimsical and clever. The ephemeral quality that provides conceptual depth to this piece makes me wonder what will remain for subsequent viewings or if you "had to be there" for the opening.

"Things on Strings" was conceived by Becky Tesch, who participated in the MARN mentor program this past year. She worked as a curatorial protégé with Mark Lawson, who is gallery director at MIAD.

Art is life and death

2011-07-11T15:16:00.000-07:00

"This is the heart of the matter - art, truly, is not a commercial proposition. This is not "idealism." This is the truth. Art is life and death, nothing less. When it is less than that, it isn't art. Money is only one form of value, often acting merely as representative for more profound ones. True art patrons know this - therefore, they look to patronize art that clues us in on our fundamental humanity and core values. Artists are not entertainers. We're not fantasists. Richard Tuttle said only art can show the truth of our existence. I don't disagree. Ad Reinhardt called art commerce and art as entertainment a "suicide burlesque." That phrase crossed my mind more than once last Friday, strolling the fair. A carnival of the frivolous. I don't have the time. None of us really do."

That is a quote, which I found provocative, from Titus O'Brien. I got it from a blog about ArtChicago by Paul Klein. To see the rest of his post, click here. I think it's interesting that Klein considers Fred Stonehouse a Chicago artist even though he lives in Milwaukee.

Cardinal Stritch shows The Face of War

2011-06-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

Summer in Milwaukee is brief and fickle. It is a time to forget about the long, cold slog of what passes for spring, to get outdoors, attend the festivals on the lakefront. Paradoxically, we rush to relax, to enjoy the warmth before it vanishes. When it is warm it is glorious!

Summer in Milwaukee; who wants to be reminded of war? Even before the change in the weather, the mood of the country has shifted. Never fully engaged at home, after ten years the nation has become tired of war. But the fighting continues. The news from Afghanistan, like the uncertain weather here, is ambiguous: There has been progress; but it may not last. The Taliban seem to have been weakened, but there is fear of resurgence once the U.S. draws down its troop strength as planned this summer. And life for the troops themselves, as well as the Afghan people remains fraught with tension. Although the daily effort to survive has become easier, the unpredictability of violence is ever present.

In the midst of these divergent summer realities CardinalStritch University has brought us an exhibition of photographs from the Vietnam War. Do photographs from that war have any relevance to our current lives or provide a context for understanding the on-going predicament in Afghanistan and Iraq? I think they do.

The show is called “The Face of War: Vietnam Combat Photographers.” Unlike many of the now iconic – and to most of those of us who lived through it, searing and unforgettable – images from that tragic and divisive period in our collective history, most of these were taken by largely unknown military photographers. Half of the exhibit is award winning work by the late Robert J. Ellison, who has ties to Milwaukee and who died at the age of 23 in combat in Khe Sanh. The rest were done by members of the Department of the Army Special Photographic Office. The emphasis, as indicated by the title, is on the people involved. Most of the subjects are individuals. They are soldiers and civilians, American and Vietnamese.

If it weren’t for some of the captions, the photographs would reveal nothing of politics or military strategies. There is no reason for fighting in the faces that stare out of these frames. There is no anger, no patriotic zeal. Mostly we see numbing fatigue.

“The Face of War” is an exhibition, but there is little impulse to view the photographs as aesthetic objects. This in no way implies that they are inferior as pictures, poorly composed, or visually uninteresting. The quality of printing varies. Some of the images have been enlarged to a point that exaggerates the graininess of film; others are lush and beautifully toned. Some are in color, some black and white. But that is not the point.

The wall text makes a point of honoring the extraordinary talents and efforts of the photographers, and rightly so. But I don’t feel it diminishes their achievements to say that it is the subjects that are most affecting, not the varying styles or techniques of the photographers. What unifies this show is the consistent attention that is paid to the common humanity of the people being portrayed.

A shirtless American casually carries his weapon, his tanned skin contrasting starkly against a background of billowing bright purple smoke. A soldier is caught in the simple act of shaving, framed by sandbags. A platoon crouches in a trench as the earth above explodes and showers around them. A Catholic priest leads troops in prayer on bended knees.

In one photo, a line of people – helmeted U.S. soldiers carrying rifles, Vietnamese women in white shirts – wade through chest-deep water. We cannot see where they have come from or where they are headed. We do not know why they are there.

Wars are fought by ordinary people. The victims who suffer and die are ordinary people. We who live at a distance from our current war must go to some lengths to avoid thinking of this truth, for we too are ordinary people and it is likely to disturb our comfortable lives. Maybe we find it possible to wage war because we can go on about our daily lives and we can enjoy our summer activities. I found it revealing to take a short break from my own reality to gaze with compassion into the ordinary “faces of war.”

The exhibit runs through July 31. A closing reception will coincide with Gallery Night, July 29, and will feature a talk by the curator of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum as well as live music by Guitars for Vets. For gallery hours, directions, and more information about the exhibit, go to the Cardinal Stritch website.

The images that accompany this post are courtesy Cardinal Stritch University.

INVERSE opens at the Lynden Sculpture Garden

2011-06-13T19:58:00.000-07:00

The latest installment of INSIDE/OUTSIDE, the series of invitational collaborations sponsored by the Lynden Sculpture Garden, is called INVERSE and is by Amy Cropper and Stuart Morris. The opening was yesterday – and they lucked out with a gorgeous day (finally!) They deserved it because the show is wonderful! As billed, they took the theme more literally than previous participants (which – full disclosure – included Phil Krejcarek and me last fall.) On the inside they filled the gallery with a boulder and natural branches. The boulder sits enthroned in the center of the room and the branches arch overhead. The effect is quite magical, like a fairytale ballroom. I imagined a hookah-smoking caterpillar perched atop the boulder.

To complete the INVERSE concept, natural objects (trees and rocks) on the outside were dispersed around the landscape, but painted brightly. The colors of these altered forms were chosen to resonate with some of the painted sculptures in the permanent collection. The bright red, orange, and yellow trees and rocks also contrasted with the “real” trees and rocks around them. These reminded me a little of some of the glass installations that Chihuly has done in landscape settings, but being made from nature and then repurposed as sculptures adds conceptual complexity that I found intriguing. The pictures hardly do them justice, especially the gallery installation. It really must be seen in situ to be appreciated.

INVERSE continues through August 10. To read more about it, go to the Lynden Garden website.

outside

insde

outside

Milwaukee Art Museum hosts "Summer of China"

2011-06-10T08:02:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of press already about the Milwaukee Art Museum's latest exhibit, called Summer of China. Some of the publicity is due to the controversy that I've written about previously concerning the incarceration of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. I'm sensitive to the issue and won't attempt to repeat it right now, except to direct you to Art City where you can read about a solidarity "sing-in" that's planned for 4 pm today. I hope to make it down there.

This post is not about that. I'll be brief. I went to the members' opening last night. Whatever else the museum does or doesn't do, Summer of China is a magnificent exhibit. Subtitled "The Emperor's Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City," the collection is stunningly beautiful and the installation impeccable. I've seen many permanent collections of Chinese art, in Chicago, Washington, and New York, among others, and this truly stands out. Kudos to the Art Museum for bringing it to Milwaukee. I expect to go back more than once.

That this extraordinary collection even exists seems something of a miracle and I can't help wondering how it survived untouched in the heart of Beijing throughout the so-called Cultural Revolution and other upheavals of the last century. I looked in vain for an explanation among the wall panels.

Let's protest the current politics of China. I'm into that. But let's applaud the art. May it continue to survive.

Inside/Outside is taken literally at the Lynden Sculpture Garden

2011-06-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

Ever since the Lynden Sculpture Garden opened to the public a year ago, one of the many innovative programming features has been the ongoing series of artist collaborations called Inside/Outside. The series invites pairs of artists to create collaborative installations both inside the gallery and outside among the permanent collection and around the grounds. The fifth installment in the series, by Amy Cropper and Stuart Morris, is due to open this Sunday, June 12 from 3:00 to 5:00 pm. I happened to catch the two of them yesterday as they dragged a 1,400 lb. boulder into the building for the gallery installation.

Their installation is called Inverse and they plan to take the Inside/Outside theme much more literally than any of the previous teams. They were only just getting started so I can't show any pictures of the completed work, but the idea is to bring nature indoors and to make art out of natural objects outdoors that will "bring them into conversation with the sculptures" of the permanent collection. It's an idea that appeals to me, as those who know me can well imagine. Nature. Art. Nature and art together? What great idea!

They're doing something dramatic with all those branches, too. I can't wait to see the finished installations.

Of course, I rarely need an excuse to visit the Lynden, but it will also provide one more opportunity to peruse the excellent permanent collection up close. (Here is a detail of one of my favorites, by Clement Meadmore.)

The sculptures look different every time I go there because of their elegant marriage with the beautiful landscape. But I also like to get off the groomed lawns and enjoy the garden's natural features, like these tiny flowers I discovered in the birch grove.

For more information about Inverse, the opening, and the two artists, go to the Lynden website. Maybe I'll see you there on Sunday.

UPAF’s Ride for the Arts goes over the Hoan

2011-06-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

What does it take to get an estimated 7,000 people to ride bicycles and raise money for the arts in Milwaukee?

How about a glorious day and an unprecedented opportunity to ride over the Hoan Bridge?

Maybe throw in a dash of anger over recent cuts to the arts in the on going Wisconsin State budget battles.

I made the 25-mile route down to Grant Park and back. Going over the bridge was the highlight, but the entire ride was marvelous. Not only was it a perfect day, with sunny skies and a cool breeze off the lake, but the ride went off without a hitch (as far as our group was concerned: according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel account, there were minor glitches at the beginning of the longer legs. Some people rode up to 75 miles! Nice.)

It was especially rewarding to be part of such a huge outpouring of support for the arts. The group I was with agreed that we all needed to feel good about that!

And afterwards we went back to Summerfest and enjoyed a sampling of the fruits of UPAF’s efforts, such as this young troupe of drummers with the Ko-Thi Dance Company.

Why did Mike Brenner shave his head for Ai Weiwei?

2011-06-01T19:37:00.000-07:00

And what does art have to do with democracy?

And who is Ai Weiwei anyway?

If you’re a regular follower of Arts Without Borders, chances are you know who Mike Brenner is. He keeps a fairly high profile in art circles around Milwaukee. He’s known as the owner of the now-closed Hotcakes Gallery, a founder of Milwaukee Artists Resource Network, and disputatious commentator regarding the Bronze Fonz, among other things. When he was asked today – as he stood at the lip of the Calatrava bridge with his newly shaved head – if he is an artist he humbly demurred, admitting only to being an “arts agitator.”

Mike showed up promptly at 10:00 am, when the Milwaukee Art Museum opens, literally and figuratively, and began shaving the center line of his head as the wings of the Calatrava building began to rise. He did this in solidarity with Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, who is being “detained” by the authorities in China. Charges have not been made public, but Ai Weiwei has long been an activist and outspoken critic of the Chinese government.

Chances are also good that you have heard of Ai Weiwei before, but if not, you can learn much more about him readily. He is easily the most famous living Chinese artist. There is even a page about him on Wikipedia. One of his more famous works of art was an installation of 9,000 children’s backpacks in Munich, Germany to commemorate the children killed in the collapse of a school during the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China. Controversy erupted when the collapse was attributed to faulty construction and oversight. Read more about this piece (above) in the Christian Science Monitor.

Steve Somers, another artist who came to bear witness

Before Mike shaved his head he was met by two burly men indark suits bearing the insignia of the Milwaukee Art Museum – giving newmeaning to “art muscle” (who knew?) They told him politely but firmly that hewould have to stay off the bridge. Not only did he stay off the bridge, but hecomported himself throughout with a quiet dignity that perfectly suited thesolemnity of the event.

To learn more about why Mike chose the Milwaukee Art MuseumI’ll direct you to today’spost in Art City, which covers it much more accurately and thoroughly thanI have room for. The short answer is, the museum is about to open an important exhibit of Chinese art.

As for democracy, Mike broached the subject with humility,claiming no great status or power for himself, but citing the example of Ai Weiwei,who has put his own life on the line. Speaking into the microphones ofinterviewers from Channel 12 TV and Wisconsin Public Radio as well as theMilwaukee Journal Sentinel, Mike said that his gesture was a small thing buthopes that it will stimulate a dialogue about ethics and the role of the artsand museums in the still contentious democracy movement in China.

China is far from alone in this struggle. As I drove home Iheard newsfrom the BBC about Hamza el-Khatib, a 13 year oldboy who had been tortured and killed in Syria and whose name has subsequentlybecome a rallying cry for a resurgent democratic opposition to the Assad regime.

Recent events right here in Wisconsin that need no remindershave led many to reconsider the importance of democracy. Today Mike Brennerdecided to shave his head to look like Ai Weiwei. It is a small thing, perhaps.But I was happy to bear witness and I too hope a broader dialogue will ensue.Thanks Mike!

Art educators shouldn’t have to prove their worth

2011-05-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

But if you go to the Marceil Pultorak Atrium Gallery atCarroll University in Waukesha before June 17 you can see that the MilwaukeeArea Teachers of Art (MATA) really do have what it takes.

Wisconsin has been shaken badly in recent months by seemingly endless draconian decrees emanating from the governor’s mansion and rubberstamped by the state legislature. Among the many disturbing decisions being made have been cuts to the Wisconsin Arts Board and to public education. For an excellent defense of Arts Board funding, check out Mary Louise Schumacher’s excellent essay in Art City.

Cuts to education are, if anything, worse. As an art educator myself, and as a member of MATA, I know firsthand what these cuts mean to the arts. Hundreds of teachers are leaving the profession. And the arts are always the first to go. I wish I could offer a view of some silver lining, but I can’t think of any. What I do suggest, as at least a consolation, is to go see the annual MATA membership show.

I didn’t get any pictures this time, but I can direct you to the blog of Jeanne Bjork, the current MATA president, where you can see lots of them.

This year’s exhibit is one of the best I’ve seen in my over 30 years of membership in MATA. It’s ironic, too, because it is an exhibit that almost didn’t happen. For many years this annual exhibit has been held in the lobby of the 100 East Wisconsin Building. This year, at the last minute, the corporate sponsors imposed new conditions that the MATA board found impossible to consent to. Financial considerations effectively sealed the fate, but, in a move sadly reminiscent of many culture war battles about art, they also wanted to control the content of the show.

Fortunately, Carroll University came to the rescue. I urge you to take the time to go out to Waukesha and see it. (It’s really not so far away!) The show ends June 17.

By the way, I’m sorry I didn’t have the time to write this up a week ago, as I wanted. It’s been a very hectic week, as the end of the school year always is. But this year especially: I went to graduation yesterday for the last time. My retirement from Marquette University High School has nothing to do with the politics I commented on above. And, fortunately, it doesn’t mean the loss of an art teacher. In fact, I am happy to be leaving an opening for a younger art teacher who can carry on in my place.

Glass Facade

OK, one more thing by way of full disclosure: I’m not only proud to be a long-time member of this fine organization, but honored that one of my pieces (right) was awarded Best of Show by the two jurors, Teri Wagner and Katie Musolff. But that’s not why you should see the show; it really is outstanding overall and twelve other artists also received significant awards.

Directions and gallery hours are on the Carroll Universitywebsite.

Experimental architecture at Jazz Gallery

2011-05-10T06:35:00.000-07:00

Plexus, an exhibition of experimental architecture by UWM students, opened at the Jazz Gallery on May 5 and runs through May 20. It is the work of thirteen designers who "transform salvaged materials and post-manufacturing scrap into provocative architectural installations."

This design, called Lotus, is for a ceiling system and is one of three full-scale prototypes on display. The trio of designers who created it found inspiration in the ancient Chinese and Hindu reverence for the lotus blossom.

The work that I enjoyed the most in this small but delightful exhibit were models of proposals to add a much needed north entrance to the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Petar Bochukov

Panels illustrated creative solutions for enlivening walls using a wide variety of salvaged materials can be seen in the background above.

Jacob Himmelman and Sara Larson Mercer (detail)

Hollie Engdall, Ted Petermann, Paul Rohde

The Jazz Gallery, operated by the Riverwest Artists Association, is at 926 E. Center Street. More pictures of the installation may be seen at the Microcosm Studio website.

Happy Mother's Day from Julia Ward Howe

2011-05-08T11:03:00.000-07:00

This post is only tangentially related to my Arts Without Borders theme - Julia Ward Howe is often best remembered as the writer of the Battle Hymn to the Republic - but I cross borders in many ways.

Howe is also remembered for conceiving of Mother's Day long before it became a national holiday and ploy to sell flowers, cards, and long-distance calls. In response to the carnage of the Civil War, Howe published the following proclamation in 1870.

Sadly, we still have a long way to go to achieve her vision:

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by
irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking
with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be
taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach
them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another
country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From
the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance
of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons
of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a
great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women,
to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the
means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each
bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a
general congress of women without limit of nationality may be
appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at
the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the
alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement
of international questions, the great and general interests of
peace.

MK-Eat, Art, and Urban Wilderness

2011-05-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

MK-Eat is Milwaukee’s version of a community-building and arts-supporting fundraising effort that has been done successfully in other cities. The public is invited to a dinner/presentation event and in return for a $15 donation gets a meal and the chance to vote on an arts proposal.

The event is tomorrow evening, May 7, at The Riverwest Public House, 815 E Locust St. It runs from 6-9 pm.

The main event is a series of presentations by the artists who have submitted proposals for projects that will benefit the community.

There will be eight presenters, including myself. You can get a preview of the proposals on the MK-Eat website. You can also sign up for the dinner and/or make a donation.

We who are presenting our proposals have been encouraged to self promote as well as to encourage any and all to come, if you have an inclination to do so. This is my invitation. I’d love to see all the supporters of my two blogs, Arts WithoutBorders and Urban Wilderness, join me for this event.

Yes, I’m grateful for the support I’ve gotten over the past year when I’ve been blogging on these two platforms. This MK-Eat event gives me a rare opportunity to cross over and share with both audiences why I do both.

I am a fine art photographer and although my work includes a variety of subjects the one that occupies most of my time and attention is what I’ve long called the Urban Wilderness Project. I have been using my artwork for many years, often in conjunction with environmental groups, to express my belief that urban and suburban dwellers will benefit from greater exposure to natural areas in our parklands. My proposal for MK-Eat combines my love of photography with my love of Milwaukee’s park system. You can read much more about the project on mywebsite – and see many photographs there, too.

Here is one recent example from the Urban Wilderness Project. I call it "Wraith." It is from Milwaukee's lakefront.

ArtChicago: the “Artropolis” has shrunk!

2011-05-03T06:33:00.000-07:00

The good news: small is beautiful.

I am among those who remember when ArtChicago was held on Navy Pier and had a well-deserved reputation as one of the premier showcases for fine art galleries anywhere. It took me many years to return to it after it left there. Last year when I finally saw the show again, it was disappointing. Although it sprawled throughout two floors of the mammoth Merchandise Mart, with some exceptions the work was tepid, timid, commercially slick, or conceptual vacuous.

This year the scaled-down show took up a single floor and, although nothing like its former Navy Pier incarnation, I found it much more stimulating than last year. In fact, I enjoyed it very much. As with any large art show, there were galleries to slip past with a quick glance. But I found myself lingering in them more often than not. The mood also was upbeat with gallery owners saying that they were making sales.

I would have loved to bring home a beautiful 20”x16” Wayne Thiebaud painting for my wife, who is fond of his work. The card said, “price upon request,” so I did. “Just under a million,” was the reply. Nuts. Over my budget. Then I came across a slightly off-sized print of Ansel Adams’s iconic “Moonrise over Hernandez,” measuring a curious 19½”x23¼” also labeled “price upon request.” I had to wonder how large the 20”x24” edition was and the price on the last one of it. This one was “almost a quarter million.” For a print! Later I came across a similarly sized Nevelson sculpture for $125,000, which seemed a great deal by comparison.

It was nice to see good work by a few big names like those and others, but the contemporary art was especially engaging. As I chatted with the dealers about one artist or another, I was asked numerous times if I was a collector. Ever hopeful, I’m sure. I would love to be. Of all the work I saw there my first pick would have been a photographer named Soi Park who had a series called “Buscar Trabajo” (looking for work.) Park photographed Latinos in situations that appeared dangerous, as if they were running or hiding from immigration officers.

What follows is a selection of things that caught my eye – and held it for more than a moment or two. There were many more.

The show began on the sidewalk outside the Merchandise Mart. This is a detail of "Vertical Vegetation" by Jason Verbeek, Cor-ten steel and sedum.

A giant print by Shepard Fairey hung like a banner across the entrance to the elevator lobby. (Detail)

"Unblinking," Shin Young An, oil on newspaper.

"All you need is Love," Joshua Hagler, oil on canvas.

Two photographic works by Michal Macku.

Sadly topical the day of the fair, "Offenes Gelande" (open terrain), Ulf Puder, oil on linen.

"Eternal Eye," Lucy Slivinski, found objects, steel wire, electric light (detail).

I didn't see individual titles on these translations of urban graffiti into precious Huichol-style pieces made by gluing together colored threads with natural wax. Laura Ortiz Vega.

"Meditative Mermaid," Cecelia Paredes, photograph

"Quaver," Rachel Nee, smoke and aquacryl on board

"The mess of emotion, no. 12," Rim Lee, oil on canvas (detail)

"Billboards, NY: Houston and Lafayette Streets," Wouter Deruytter, gelatin silver on dibond

As usual, the "Next" portion of the fair included edgier work and some off-beat installations like these ironing boards set up to resemble fair-goers ambling down the aisles.

Despite its diminished size, I still didn’t make it to all the galleries. But I did make a point to visit the three who came down from Milwaukee.

Debra Brehmer, Portrait Society Gallery

Tory and Christine Anderson, Tory Folliard Gallery

Claudia Mooney, The Green Gallery

And one former Milwaukeean, Russell Bowman at his eponymous Chicago gallery

Being Arts Without Borders, I loved that the Chicago Poetry Center had a booth at the fair. They had a series of broadsides that combine artworks with poems. A collaboration between Lawrence Ferlingetti and Ed Paschke was quite stunning, but my favorite was this piece. The text of the marvelous poem by Ana Castillo follows.

I Ask the Impossible

I ask the impossible: love me forever.
Love me when all desire is gone.
Love me with the single-mindedness of a monk.
When the world in its entirety,
and all that you hold sacred, advise you
against it: love me still more.
When rage fills you and has no name: love me.
When each step from your door to your job tires you—
love me; and from job to home again.

Love me when you’re bored—
when every woman you see is more beautiful than the last,
or more pathetic, love me as you always have:
not as admirer or judge, but with
the compassion you save for yourself
in your solitude.

Love me as you relish your loneliness,
the anticipation of your death,
mysteries of the flesh, as it tears and mends.
Love me as your most treasured childhood memory—
and if there is none to recall—
imagine one, place me there with you.
Love me withered as you loved me new.

Love me as if I were forever—
and I will make the impossible
a simple act,
by loving you, loving you as I do.

CoPA and contemporary photography

2011-04-28T19:23:00.000-07:00

What is “contemporary photography?” On the face of it “contemporary” includes whatever is happening today and excludes work done before some unspecified point in the past. When applied to art and photography the meaning of “contemporary” is imprecise, elusive, and by definition always changing. For some it connotes “cutting edge” – work that pushes the boundaries of established practice, be it style, subject matter, use of medium, or concept. (An ironic conundrum for museums of contemporary art is what to call aging work in their collections.)


Perry Heideman

However, contemporary art, to use its general denotative meaning, is not always “cutting edge.” Never was, never will be. And while historians and some collectors will always be on the watch for what is new and different, novelty can be overrated and its value overestimated. (Market valuation of “contemporary art” during the 1980’s was an egregious instance of this phenomenon.) Art doesn’t have to be “edgy” to be meaningful, good, or creative. What it should be, in my opinion, is personal and original rather than derivative or formulaic.

Enter CoPA – Milwaukee’s Coalition of Photographic Arts – an organization whose stated goal is to “cultivate awareness of contemporary photography” with an emphasis on fine art photography. The annual exhibit that showcases the work of its membership is currently on display at the Mayer Building, 342 N. Water St. in Milwaukee’s Third Ward.

I sat down to write a review of the show, which is a sprawling testament to the vitality and diversity of photography in Milwaukee, and which contains a range of styles, subjects, methods of presentation, and conceptual approaches that defies categorization. The edgy intermingles with the traditional. It is tempting to describe a few favorites and be done with it.

Michael Nowotny

But as I wander amongst the beautiful and stimulating images in the show, my thoughts are sidetracked by nagging questions about CoPA and it’s evolving identity. CoPA was founded in 2004 by a small group of photographers who wanted to network and to elevate the conversation about fine art photography in Wisconsin. Since then CoPA has grown tremendously and has changed. Many founding members have moved on. For some it no longer meets their personal networking needs; some feel that it is becoming more like camera clubs, which serve different functions for their members. (For an excellent description of the difference between a camera club and a group devoted to photographic arts, read CoPA president Robb Quinn’s essay on the subject.)

The current board of directors has struggled with this issue. Any successful organization with an open, self-selected membership is likely to face such an identity crisis. Success invites broader participation; an influx of new members risks a dilution of the original mission.

William Zuback

Full disclosure: I am not a disinterested observer. As both a founding and current member, I care about the direction CoPA takes and desire to see it function as intended. I believe that CoPA can be a voice for contemporary fine art photography. I also know that the challenge is real. New board members will be elected in May. Their leadership will be needed to realize CoPA’s potential as a vital force in the arts community of Wisconsin. But their deliberations would benefit from engaging in an energetic dialogue with those with diverse opinions who have expressed concern about the group’s changing identity.

Meanwhile, I consider the membership show to be required viewing for anyone who thinks they know what CoPA is about – or who simply wants to see a lot of wonderful photography. Of course, any open, non-juried show that includes over a hundred photographers is going to have a few weak spots, but overall the quality is remarkably high. When you come, I believe you will find some delightful surprises.

The exhibit is open daily from 12 – 6 pm through May 21.

For more information go to the CoPA website.

Robb Quinn

If you’re still with me and you do want a few selected favorites, read on. These are in no particular order. There are many more I’d like to have included!

Perry Heideman’s exquisitely realized and enigmatic urban fairy tales.

Joseph Baranowski’s angst-ridden triptych self-portraits.

Jennifer Loberg’s emotionally charged portraits of pain and disfigurement.

Robb Quinn’s 87-inch-long panorama of protest from Capitol Square in Madison.

Marcia Getto’s remarkably fresh take on El Rancho de Taos, NM, one of photography’s great iconic motifs.

Mark Johnson’s monumental yet surprisingly intimate, sensual, and alluring impression of Barbie.

Angela Morgan’s tiny image of an LP record rising incongruously, monolithic, amidst autumn weeds.

Judith Pannozo’s perfectly composed decisive moment of a strikingly stiletto-heeled woman balancing on the back of a bicycle.

William Mueller’s startling distortions in which ordinary objects metamorphose into brightly colored insects.

Tim Holte’s nearly volcanic explosion of ice on the shore of Lake Michigan.

Three Photography Exhibits in Chicago

2011-04-25T12:41:00.000-07:00

When everyone carries a camera and everything is ceaselessly photographed, who can claim to be a photographer? When cell phone images are instantly uploaded into the global cloud and available on demand anywhere on earth, what is the value of the photograph?

The Art Institute of Chicago has two current exhibitions that provide clues to the answers, if there are any, from two ends of a spectrum. At one end, “American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White” provides examples of three prominent historical figures. At the other is more recent work by the duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss. Their conceptual approach to the medium is telegraphed by the title of the exhibit: “Peter Fischli David Weiss: Questions, the Sausage Photographs, and a Quiet Afternoon.”

Fischli and Weiss

I freely admit being unimpressed by the Fischli/Weiss show, which is described by the curator as “exploring the ‘poetics of banality’.” I get tired of banality. It is so … well, banal (“devoid of freshness or originality”.) Conceptual artists seem to take banality as a challenge, trying to inject freshness and originality into the ordinary, the boring, and the ugly by elevating it with their ideas.

I have nothing against the conceptual in art and photography. Very little art survives without a basic underlying premise and even the most sensual or formal of art works exist within conceptual frameworks. However, I prefer concepts that I find meaningful or moving and images that are aesthetically pleasing or visually stimulating. I understand the work of Fischli/Weiss (after reading about it) but I still don’t feel a desire to spend much of my time looking at it.

Berenice Abbott

By contrast, “American Modern” is full of photographs that are both meaningful and moving. Of course. It’s the kind of show that keeps a museum in business. You assemble the work of masters from a dramatic historical moment and you can’t lose, right? Right – except that the Art Institute has to satisfy two audiences, the general public that craves celebrity and the “aesthetes” who have “seen it all” before. Consequently, a show like this wisely includes some of the famous images that everyone expects to see and some less well-known and rarely seen ones. There were even a couple pages from a scrapbook by Berenice Abbott that provide clues to her manner of working. They show seemingly random, repetitive, and unremarkable shots that get set aside in the editing process; the kind of shots that now fill up digital hard drives and float in cyberspace. Maybe photography hasn’t really changed that much after all!

Margaret Bourke-White

While I liked “American Modern” very much, the show that really moved me was just down the block in Roosevelt University’s Gage Gallery (at 18 S. Michigan Ave.) “The Working Class Eye of Milton Rogovin” is a memorial tribute to Rogovin, who died in January. As the title indicates, this optometrist turned social documentarian trained his discerning eye on working people and in particular those “who make their livings under modest and difficult circumstances.” My favorites were double portraits of individuals showing each in their working environment alongside their home environment: powerful expressions of dignity and the human spirit. Exquisitely printed black and white images combined with engaging content – I was delighted to have stumbled across this exhibit.

Milton Rogovin

For more information and exhibition dates:

Art Institute of Chicago

Gage Gallery - Roosevelt University