Lynden Sculpture Garden is a Feast in more ways than one

Linda Wervey Vitamvas installed this piece (above), entitled Indigenous Transience, at the Lynden Sculpture Garden three years ago in the summer of 2010. It was the first of a series of invitational collaborations called Inside/Outside sponsored by the Lynden. Although the installations were intended to be temporary and most were indeed ephemeral, this one has lasted all these years. Until now, that is. Vitamvas was present yesterday to decommission the work in advance of its disassembly.

However, you can see more of her experimental ceramic work at the Lynden. Vitamvas has been invited to engage in an on-going dialogue with the landscape and the gardens as an artist in residence of sorts. Her latest offering is called Feast. (Below) Read all about it on the Lynden website.

A different kind of feast awaits those who venture into the dining room of the Bradley family's former house, which now serves as the gallery. Emilie Clark's Sweet Corruptions is laid out on the formal table, as if the family were preparing to dine. No one will wish to partake of this particular feast, however. It is comprised of food waste elaborately collected and preserved, literally, over the course of a year. You can read a far better account of that, as well as Clark's other art works at Art City.

While I was there I also revisited one of the other remaining pieces from the Inside/Outside installations. Amy Cropper and Stuart Morris collaborated on Inverse, for which they painted rocks and the trunks of trees in bright, unnatural colors. In a fittingly ironic twist this particular tree has resprouted vigorously despite the remnants of the paint on it. A fine turn of the screw, if you ask me!

Full disclosure: I had the privilege to be among the artists who participated in Inside/Outside, in Oct. 2011.

The High Line: Good and Bad

It was a glorious fall day, warm with buttery sunlight, as I made my way slowly along the narrow, tree-lined pathway. I was moving slowly for multiple reasons. First, I was enjoying the sunshine as well as my first experience of the High Line. Second, I frequently paused to inspect intriguing details of the park, which include wildflowers and public art, as well as marvelous panoramic views of mid-town Manhattan. Third, I was in a crush of like-minded revelers, an enormous, snaking parade of humanity out to visit one of New York’s newest, most innovative parks.

And fourth, of course, I was stopping periodically to take pictures. Like just about everyone around me. Spirits were high and the mood festive. A polyglot cacophony of human voices surrounded me, ebbing and swirling as people passed in both directions.

Amidst the many languages and inflected exclamations as I was, I might have passed by without noticing the one installation of public art that had no physical presence. But when I stopped to frame a photograph atop the steel grated “flyover” section of the park I heard a calm, measured voice speaking slowly and deliberately. It was oddly out of sync with the clamor. When I started to pay closer attention I heard the names of animals.

“Cheetah, …goose, …elephant, …hen, …lion, …mongoose,” intoned an invisible voice. The narrator paused and pronounced, “Bad animals: …spider, …bat, …shark, …head lice, …cockroaches….” The speaker must have been hidden under the walkway. Upon nearing it an expression of curiosity would appear on people’s faces and they would slow to figure it out, as I did.

I waited for it to cycle to the beginning: “Good animals: …penguin, …turtle, …swan, …house cat….”

A distinctive circular sign on the railing informed us that it was one of the many public art projects along the High Line, a sound installation by Uri Aran called Untitled (Good and Bad). I wondered how Aran decided which animals were to be considered good or bad. In my own opinion, a couple of the “bad” ones—bats and sharks—have gotten bad reputations for various reasons, but prove beneficial upon objective observation. And at least a couple of the “good” animals—geese and raccoons, for example—often are considered pests.

Then there’s the ambiguity of “goodness” itself. Listed among the “good” animals, the qualities of a rhinoceros look very different to a safari hunter, a naturalist, and a poacher intent on cashing in on the horn.

On another level, every kind of animal has its appropriate niche in the interconnected web of life—even head lice, I guess! The artist, according to the description on the High Line website, is trying to “spark dialogue about the arbitrary nature of classification in language.” It certainly spurred an internal dialogue for me, one that continued beyond classifications and even linguistics. 

The context of the piece, situated as it is at the center of the High Line, led to a larger question in my mind: Can nature be considered “good” and “bad?” Or, more fundamentally, what is nature? The High Line is one of the most unnatural places ever to have been conceived as parkland. Yet one of the amazing things about it, I think, is that it was inspired by nature; by what was perceived by some as wilderness taking over an abandoned elevated railroad.

Are there “good” and “bad” parks? The masses voting with their feet have clearly proclaimed the High Line “good.” I concur. By contrast, some parks, considered unsafe, are shunned by the general public. However, those parks are more likely to be refuges for wildlife. This also seems like a good thing to me. Good animals? Bad animals?

During the past week I spent four days walking and photographing the High Line. Time well spent, I believe. The park is a remarkable accomplishment. But, although it was inspired by the kind of urban wilderness to which I am usually attracted, it can no longer be called one. The website says that the landscape design is “reminiscent of the quiet contemplative nature of the self-seeded landscape and wild plantings that once grew on the unused High Line.” Emphasis mine.

What role should an urban park have in bringing the experience of nature to the citizens of any city? Followers of my Urban Wilderness blog know that I am fully committed to urban parks that enable connections with nature. There has to be room for a variety of experiences and a spectrum of natural features, from formal gardens to outright unmanaged “wildernesses.” New York happens to be large enough to accommodate both. The High Line is a hybrid, exquisitely designed and carefully controlled.

Public art is a significant feature of the High Line’s program, but I submit that the High Line itself is a work of art that will always transcend the installations on and around it. The High Line elevates questions about the intermingled roles of art and nature to a unique level. Pun intended.

This is the first of what I expect will be at least a few meditations on my experiences this week on the High Line. And a lot more pictures. I hope you’ll stay tuned. 

Gary John Gresl: An Assembler

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Mnemonic Device..., detail

A small cabinet contains some unlabeled and unidentifiable pickled vegetables and jellied fruits—and dime store Indianhead salt and pepper shakers. But the contents are obscured by the cabinet itself, which is thoroughly encrusted with multi-hued buttons, old Christmas light bulbs, miniature statuary, vintage cameos. It is festooned with hemp, rawhide, feathers, and strings of beadwork. A familiar looking sock puppet monkey hangs ignominiously off to the side. An old enameled tin spoon stands at attention atop it all. It is a commanding gesture, but one left open to interpretation.

Titled "Mnemonic Device, I Remember Grandma," this is one of the more restrained and contained assemblages by Gary John Gresl in his current show at Mount Mary College’s Marian Gallery. Some of the more flamboyant installations feature human and animal skulls, stuffed deer with racks of antlers, rifles, feathered arrows, fishing paraphernalia, full-scale farm implements and other machinery. Gresl calls himself “an assembler,” which is an understatement.

Gresl told me that his work is inspired by the environments and people of his youth: “cabins, fishing holes, farms with their dried corn stalks and haylofts, attics and country auctions, and the good unpolished people that were my aunts and uncles, cousins and friends, all Wisconsinites.” But, although the work at a superficial glance appears to be rough and haphazard, his ideas are anything but unpolished. Art that suggests hunting lodge décor or a fisherman’s wharf are often pigeonholed or, worse, dismissed by the art establishment. (I was happy to see some of this work at UWM’s INOVA gallery recently, an indication perhaps that Milwaukee’s art establishment has a healthy willingness to transcend traditional dichotomies.) This work deserves serious consideration and careful scrutiny is rewarded with layered meanings and potent symbolism. 

Storage

Gresl counts Robert Rauschenberg and the abstract expressionists among his many influences and considers Franz Kline, “with his huge bold black and white strokes” a favorite. The connection could easily be overlooked, but the relationship is there in the extravagant gestures of thick rope, steel barrel staves, worn wagon wheels, and—yes—antlers and bones.

detail

This piece in particular, intriguingly titled “What We Found After I Opened It,” easily recalls Jackson Pollock or even Frank Stella’s more recent high relief sculptures without losing a sense of its own identity.

Art has the power to provoke, to delight, to disturb, and to surprise. It is a rare work of art that can do all of these things. Art can be sensory, intellectual, emotional. The successful combination of all three of these modalities is likewise a rare achievement. This show, subtitled “New and Old Works, Large and Small,” is both a retrospective and a tour de force. It is a truism among serious art patrons that an authentic experience of original work is lost when it is seen in reproduction. That is especially true of sculpture—and, I will confidently assert, most definitely true of this exhibit.

It will come as no surprise that for several decades Gresl made his living as an antique dealer. In fact, I first met him in his shop in Milwaukee’s Third Ward, a typically dusty and cluttered establishment full of potential treasures. “I chose that occupation for the most part because the objects fascinated me. Handling antiques and collectibles have provided me with opportunities for learning: . . . their design . . . their history . . . their sometimes peculiar and enlightening place in cultures. They bring [to my sculptures] that sort of multi-layered history with the associations and possibility to create metaphors.”

Gresl’s love of materiality is self-evident in his artwork. The conceptual rigor that lies beneath the encrusted cabinetry takes more effort to appreciate. But it is well worth it. As indicated parenthetically in the exhibition title—“possible solo finale” —this may be the last opportunity to see his work in this breadth and depth. While reassuring me that he is in good health Gresl conceded that the physical effort and financial investment that are required to produce, transport, and install such elaborate pieces are taking their toll.

Perhaps this is one reason why the labor-intensive installations are supplemented with images of what Gresl calls “Outstallations.” These are interventions in the landscape that become available in the gallery setting through meticulously composed photographs. While I personally find the installations richer in texture, denser with metaphoric possibility, and packing a more powerful emotional punch, I look forward to seeing how this new phase of Gresl’s long career develops.

The exhibit opened last weekend but the “opening reception” is Sunday, September 16, 2–4 pm. The show runs through October 27.

The Marian Gallery is in Caroline Hall on the Mount MaryCollege campus at 2900 N. Menomonee River Parkway, Milwaukee.

“Here, mothers are…” a public art experience in Milwaukee

On the corner of 24^th and Locust is a sight that is all too common in Milwaukee and elsewhere – a foreclosed home with boarded up windows. But if you drive by there now you will be surprised to discover something much less common: art.

Mural-sized photographs are mounted over some of the boarded windows and doors. In one of the murals a brightly illuminated chandelier blazes invitingly as if from inside the house.

If you don’t stop your car and look more closely you won’t notice that there’s even more to the image. In the top corner are the sobering words, “She didn’t trust me,” and then at the bottom of the picture the enigmatic disclosure is counterbalanced: “but I wanted that trust from her.”

The suite of murals and texts that adorn the vacant house are part of a multifaceted project by artist Sonja Thomsen and storyteller Adam Carr. The project is called “Here, mothers are…,” The dangling sentence is intended to stimulate reflection and elicit thoughtful reminiscence and discussion about personal and universal notions of motherhood.

Working with the Dominican Center for Women and the Amani neighborhood where it is located, Thomsen and Carr began conducting interviews with women and their families three month ago. They documented their encounters with photography and audio recordings.

Across the street from the Dominican Center for Women, 2470 W. Locust, and next to the foreclosed home is a tiny pocket park that has been turned into a “pop-up gallery.” This is where you can find a public art display of images, text, and interactive audio based on the interviews.

With help from the City of Milwaukee and the Neighborhood Improvement Development Corporation, the nondescript lot has been turned into a clearly defined public space. Additional improvements are planned.

The display officially was unveiled Saturday morning, April 7, with a neighborhood reception followed by public opening. An enthusiastic crowd basked in the warm sun as well as the warmth of emotion created by the community gathering around the art works.

In addition to viewing the murals and reading the texts, visitors to the site can activate excerpts from the recorded interviews by pushing a doorbell button on one of the display panels. Introspective and intimate moments are translated into shared and public experiences. Voices fade into one another in a montage, each a consideration of women and motherhood.

“When I look at parents now I don’t even know how I had the energy to do it…” intones one of the voices.

Participants at the opening were encouraged to take a yard sign designed by the artists and to help spread the message into the wider community. Each yard sign bears the title phrase, “Here, mothers are…,” with its explicit invitation to complete the sentence. Someone in the crowd had used a marker to say, “Here, mothers are heard.” The signs were inscribed various languages, indicating the cross-cultural appeal of the concept.

The current installation will remain through October.

Thomsen and Carr intend to continue adding to the project throughout its duration. They have also built a website for archiving and disseminating the materials they collect. A visit to their website will provide a flavor of their creativity, but a visit to the Amani neighborhood and the installation site will provide a truer insight into the community spirit of this project.

INVERSE opens at the Lynden Sculpture Garden

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

Inside/Outside is taken literally at the Lynden Sculpture Garden

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.

Carroll University exhibits two distinct mixed media installations

I wander amongst large vellum panels elaborately suspended from the ceiling with a crisscrossing system of strings. The panels swing gently with the breeze of my passing. Their feathery lightness is counterbalanced along the walls with a wide variety of ceramic constructions and what appear to be small sandbags hanging from the strings. The effect is by turns delightful and vaguely disquieting.

The austere Rowe Art Gallery in the Humphrey Art Center has been utterly transformed by Sandra Westley into something akin to a funhouse maze. The installation is entitled The Object Series, A Narrative in Many Parts. The concept of the narrative, a potent artistic device throughout history, is at once literal – the panels are emblazoned with script and scribbles galore – and implied. However, the questions it poses are left unanswered, the story without an ending. 

 Like the texts, drawings on the panels are enigmatic. They combine overtly the symbolic imagery of ladders with more elusive and personal iconography. When I emerge from the maze I am confronted with an assortment of odds and ends that include toy-like vehicles, ladders, notebooks, scrolls – and severed feet.

Showing concurrently in the lofty Marceil Pultorak Atrium Gallery is the latest work by Gary John Gresl, the result of a three month artist in residency at the Kohler Company in Sheboygan. Though hardly sedate, to anyone familiar with Gresl’s oeuvre these pieces will seem relatively restrained. 

A female torso, modeled on a manikin that he describes as deriving from contemporary pop culture, has been slip cast in the Kohler ceramic factory, using the same processes and material out of which they make bathroom fixtures. Eschewing the traditional glazes as “unexciting,” Gresl painted the torsos with automotive enamels and lacquers, giving them a slick, metallic quality.

However, the very slickness of the surface makes Gresl’s manipulations of their forms all the more striking. The torsos are punctured with machined openings, like tourist figurines that are meant to hold toothbrushes, kitchen utensils, or bouquets. And in fact, some of these items are inserted into the openings as comments, as I interpret them, upon feminine stereotypes, roles, and identity.

Either one of these exhibits is worth the trip out to Waukesha; together they are quite a bargain. They run through March 19. For more information, go to Carroll University.

Lynden Sculpture Gardens: Winter Carnival and Inside/Outside

The weather was perfect yesterday for the Winter Carnival held at the Lynden Sculpture Gardens. The grounds, always lovely, were especially magical in the lightly falling snow. Artists and art aficionados of all ages came to be creative or simply to enjoy the creativity all around.

There was snow painting, using watering cans filled with food coloring.

Jade used a sprayer to zig zag up a hill.

Local environmental artist Roy Staab led a team who created a sculpture on the frozen pond.

Roy in front of the finished piece.

UWM students Sam, Katie, and Tina, made use of a pair of trees to create a Goldsworthy style artistic intervention.

The latest installation in the Inside/Outside series of invitational collaborations got underway during the Carnival. Here Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg, dressed in period costume, dig a "foundation" trench and fill it with charcoal.

The process is being meticulously documented in both video and still photography. Later in the day the completed charcoal foundation was to be lit and burned. I was sorry to have to leave before that happened. I think it's a wonderful concept. For more about this installation and Inside/Outside, go to the Lynden Gardens website.

The permanent collection is always on display, of course, and today's snowfall made for interesting new views of the familiar works. This is a detail of one by John Henry.

Linda Vitamas's installation for Inside/Outside is still holding up and is also made interesting with an encrusting of snow.

"Under Construction" was the collaboration that Phil Krejcarek and I did for Inside/Outside. Three of the sites where we erected construction fences and sculptural ladders remain for now. The weather is taking its toll on the fences, as expected. For more pictures of our collaboration, go to my flickr page.

Charles Allis: A visual tour of 100 Years

detail from The Master Bedroom by Martha Glowacki

When I first moved to Milwaukee in 1976 I happened to live just a few blocks from the Charles Allis Art Library, as it was called then. I developed a fondness for the quirky tastes of its former owner when I met there regularly with a group of poets. I admired the gems by Inness and Ryder and always knelt before a small glass case to admire the netsukes from Japan.

from permanent collection

Some things have changed in the 30+ years since then. The Library became a museum and, along with nearby Villa Terrace, was acquired by the Milwaukee War Memorial as a satellite. A gallery to exhibit changing contemporary shows was shoehorned into two upstairs rooms. A great room was added that could accommodate larger contemporary works as well as larger parties of patrons.

from permanent collection

 But most of the mansion has remained exactly as I first saw it, the main hall, the sitting room, dining room, library and master bedroom, all kept meticulously inviolate with Mr. Allis’s personal collection intact. Until now.

from permanent collection

 In honor of its 100 year anniversary, for the first time artists were asked to create installations that intrude – and reflect – on the staid integrity of the permanent collections. I found it a refreshing and welcome departure and I enjoyed the diversity of responses.

The Library with Gary Gresl installation

 Gary Gresl's transformation of the library was characteristically outrageous and constituted the most extreme intervention. A collaboration by Alexander Boyes and Martha Glowacki in the master bedroom was much subtler, moodily evoking the spirits of the deceased former inhabitants. 

The Dining Room with Ashley Morgan installation
(you have to listen to this one!)

 Here then is a visual tour, just a few things I noticed (and was able to capture in the mostly dimly illuminated rooms.) I wasn't able to capture Reginald Baylor's multiple video installations in the Sitting Room. Of course, you should go see them all yourself. These are mere snapshots.

the changing exhibits gallery with fireplace

The Marble Hall with Carol Emmons installation 

the house is showing its age

The Master Bedroom with Glowacki installation 

The Master Bedroom bath with Boyes installation
(you have to see this one move!)

You have plenty of time to plan a leisurely visit - or multiple visits: according to the Charles Allis Art Museum website this lasts through November 13.