Latino Arts: Gardens, Gods and Grids by Dara Larson

The full title is a mouthful: Gardens, Gods and Grids: Retracing Nature, Culture, & Infrastructure in the Americas. The multimedia exhibit by Milwaukee artist Dara Larson, which fills the huge Latino Arts Gallery at the United Community Center, is also a lot to take in.

As the title suggests, the work is from "the Americas." In this case it means throughout North, South and Central America. Larson clearly has done a lot of traveling. She did confess to me that she's been collecting materials and images over many years. However, the current work is recent.

Most of the prints in the exhibit are digital collages. Larson's images begin as photographs, but her complex layering and collaging techniques demolish normal perspective and any kind of typical photographic picture plane.

The center of the gallery is dominated by a day-of-the-dead style ofrenda, or shrine. Larson is a regular contributor to official Day of the Dead exhibits, so it comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with that work. But this ofenda is made up largely of old travel guidebooks and maps that show the varied destinations.

Gardens, Gods and Grids runs through February 26, so there is plenty of time to get in there to see this fine show.

The Latino Arts Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.

All images courtesy Dara Larson.

Who is C. Matthew Luther and why does he like Superfund sites?

Path of Least Resistance

I interviewed C. Matthew Luther for JSOnline's Art City recently. He spends time in places around Wisconsin that have been so polluted that they are designated Superfund sites by the Environmental Protection Agency. Then he makes art.

Read my interview at Art City Asks C. Matthew Luther.

Revisiting Vietnam: The photography of Larry D’Attilio

“Get to know your subject” is an appropriate mantra for aspiring and veteran photographers alike. Many of the most admired photographers have been known as much for their subjects as for style, technique, or conceptual approach to the medium. Yosemite Valley belongs to Ansel Adams; the lowly green pepper became Edward Weston’s forever monumentalized icon, and although many photographers have trained their cameras on wars, none is so enduringly identified with that vast subject as Robert Capa.

If people don’t soon begin to associate contemporary Vietnam with Lawrence D’Attilio it won’t be for his lack of trying. Over the past four years, D’Attilio has traveled to that distant land many times, often spending months on location. The depth of his exposure is clearly evident in the work that is on view at Redline Milwaukee through the end of September. This is no travelogue. In fact, in this unconventional installation, with a trio of shows related only by their common subject, formal experimentation almost eclipses the artist’s mission to bring Americans up to date on this complex land. The desire to express that very complexity is what integrates three rather distinct bodies of work.

Tucked in a back corner gallery, color prints in a traditional documentary style depict entrepreneurial women who have managed to create small businesses with the aid of a microloan program. But D’Attilio is not content to show us neat rows of carefully framed images. The other two legs of this triadic exhibit have less in common with traditional photographs than with installation art in other media. Upon entering the main gallery, one is confronted first by enormous mixed media collages that the artist titles “Time for New Women.” The physicality of these pieces combined with their larger than life depictions of young Vietnamese women elevates them from commonplace portraiture; they become totemic metaphors for an ever-changing and unpredictable contemporary global culture.

The third and most unexpected component of this installation occupies the center of the gallery space. Large transparent black and white images on film are suspended from wires. They swing freely as visitors pass in between and around them. A reductive process has created stark graphic images that almost seem hand drawn. During the opening reception this installation was accompanied by a jarringly discordant sound track of music and ambient sounds of traffic recorded in streets of Hanoi. We are transported out of our normal lives to the frenetic and mysterious culture of Vietnam that shifts even as we try to make sense of it.

It is an exhibition that could be called “photography without borders” so of course I was intrigued. Redline, with its open spaces and flexible display systems, is the perfect venue for such a complex show. Vietnam, which continues to confound most Americans 35 years after the cessation of hostilities, is a challenging subject and the scope of D’Attilio’s examination of it is ambitious. Try to see it before it closes Sept. 30.

For more information go to Redline Milwaukee.

But wait…there’s more! Ambitious as this show is, D’Attilio has two additional concurrent exhibits of photography from Vietnam in the Crossman Gallery at the University of WI – Whitewater.

You can also see more of D’Attilio’s work on his website.