Tucson's Art Exhibits Reviewed

Movie Review: "Cave of Forgotten Dreams": Genius Neanderthal artists!!

2011-12-31T16:55:00.000-08:00

"Cave of Forgotten Dreams" (now available on DVD) is an amazing film. It's about the 1997 discovery of the Chauvet cave in France, which houses the oldest Neanderthal cave paintings known to Man. It's a revolutionary discovery: the paintings are in pristine condition, and they have the effect of speaking to you across time. There might be a separation of 30,000 years between you and this cave art, but what's so amazing is it feels as if there's no distance at all between you. Time and history melt away, and it's just a bond between you and this artist (who you'll get to know as the movie progresses)

The paintings, for the most art, are in pristine condition; it seems like no time has passed. The presence of calcite crystals on the paintings is evidence that these works are indeed real and not fake; they've just had the good fortune of been in an environment that was safe from rain and wind (the cave had collapsed tens of thousands of years ago, forming a protective germ-free environment) Although this movie is billed as a documentary, it's also very much an art film.

One of the first things that popped into my mind when looking at this Neanderthal cave art was "Why does this work seem so fresh and immediate? And why does so much current artwork look so dated?" That was a paradox that I was constantly reminded of: the prehistoric work seemed to have a spirit and a presence that was very much in the "now", whereas as the "modern" work just mentioned seemed faddish and false. The cave drawings at Chauvet cave has a life and fluidity that just draws you in; you can sense the presence of artist as a real personality, right there with you.

One thing that I really thought was great were the types of animals in the cave murals. All of them were of species that no longer exist. Commentators talk about the "horses" and the "bulls" in the murals, but what's actually there (at least what I see) are prehistoric creatures that are now extinct. There is a creature that looks like a horse, but it's not a horse: it's neck is too short and thick, and it's mane is actually like a scrub brush that lies across his back. There's also something unusual with the shapes of these creatures heads, and the size the their ears (which are much smaller than a horses ears). These are some relative of a horse, but they're not horses. However, they are a peek into the past about what kinds of creatures actually roamed the earth. The same goes for the drawings of a "bull". If you look closely, it's actually not a bull, but rather, a giant rodent with tusks. Go on, have another look! These murals are great not just for the talent of the artist, but also for his eye witness account of now-extinct animals.

Another thing I enjoyed in this movie is that the researchers were able to identify one of the artists! There were multiple types of art in the cave artwork in Chauvet cave: the animal paintings, non-objective art (red dot patterns), some abstract symbols that looked vaguely like insects and butterflies, and printing (hand prints). I was really impressed with the skill and the sensitivity of these Neanderthal painters. But I was also impressed at how much of modern art history was "anticipated" (hah! yeah, right...) by these Neanderthals. Many of the hand prints had a bent pinky finger: this was hist signature. That bent finger print showed up in multiple places in the cave. Thus, much of this cave art can be traced to an individual artist!

Another thing that impressed me in this movie as the layers of history in the Chauvet cave. Not all of the drawings and artwork in the cave came from the same time. The oldest artwork is from 32,000 years ago, but there is also other artwork (drawn right over pre-existing artwork) that is 28,000 years old! Thus, these murals actually have a history unto themselves, with thousands of years separating the various artist contributions.

Lingering in the back of my mind was the question "why are these artists painting on the cave walls?" No one knows if these murals were part of a theatrical presentation, a religious ceremony, or simply as a backdrop for a display of art. The researchers in the film note that while there are many bones in the cave (usually of a prehistoric bear), there are no human bones in there. Perhaps the cave was used as a theater? No one knows...

This movie really gives you a long view of history, and your place in it. Curiously, seeing and connecting with this artwork gives one a feeling of being connected to all of human history, or even cosmic history. When artwork from prehistoric times has a moving effect on you; when you see yourself in the work; when you start sympathizing with the Neanderthal artist; when you look at these depictions of prehistoric animals, and you really feel as though you art there...then art has transcended space and time, and it's connected with you in what can only be described as a "spiritual" way. Records of the past are all around us. We just need to know where to find them and how to see them.

As you can see, I really enjoyed this movie! A great art flick! And a great discovery an an amazing artist: Mr. Crooked Pinky Finger.

It's said that life if short, but art is long. Here's the proof.

Martin Quintinilla's "Tucson" paintings...at the Contreras Gallery

2011-12-03T00:04:00.001-08:00

view of the Contreras Gallery, with Martin Quintinilla's new exhibit

Artist Martin Quintinilla has a new body of work now showing at the Contreras Gallery, in Tucson, AZ. The theme of this show is "Martin Quintinilla's Tucson". There are 27 paintings in this show, from huge to pequeño. Included here are Martin's portrayal of Tucson, some images of himself, and some unique creations from his imagination. As with any Quintinilla exhibit, there's always a lot to look at, and no two paintings are alike. Step right this way, the circus has rolled into town!

The first thing you confront when you walk into this exhibit is a massive painting called "Tradado de Guadalupe Hidalgo" mural. This is a diptych, that measures 6 feet high x 11 feet wide. The painting depicts an expansive view of Mexico, when still included Arizona. The quality of the painting shows Martin's skill as representational artist. A sign painted on the far right side of this mural explains what we're looking at:

closeup of scroll on the "Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo Mural" (right side of mural)

One thing I've notice with Quintinilla's work is that he's got a sense of history. His imagery includes things from the present (with all of its references to pop culture and current events), as well as links to the past. A good example of that is this mural itself: it provides a quick lesson in some of Tucson's history, and is a great way to introduce a show who's theme is "Tucson". This painting has some other nice details, such as a caballero, as well as some ancient petroglyphs:

a caballero in the lower center of the mural

...and on the left side of the mural, some petroglyphs

The centerpiece of the show is a large painting called "Pecado Original" ("Original Sin"). It looks like a refashioning of the Garden of Eden story, but with Tucson-oriented imagery. Instead of a Tree of Knowledge, we see a large Saguaro Cactus, with a Star of David and a crucifix adorning the center-most arm. A diamondback snake crawls amongst the cactus arms. The Garden itself appears to be abbreviated, reduced to the size of a small "landscape feature", after real estate developers had their way with it. Adam and Eve are nowhere to be seen. The only characters hanging around the "Cactus of Knowledge" are the Devil himself, and a cute looking sheep. The Hotel Congress sign hovers above in the background, flanked by bottles of booze, the Rialto Theater, an old-fashioned turntable, and what looks like Mexican lotteria cards. In the distance, dividing the paintng in half horizontally, are railway cars, spray painted with graffiti. An all-seeing eye hovers at the top, sprouting marijuana leaves from all angles, and the the bottom, a Mexican wrestling mask, which has grown wings made out of the Mexican flag, and sporting the phrase "Vida Loca".

"Pecado Original"...Tucson style

On the top and sides of the "Pecado Original" painting, are 50 bottle caps from Miller High life beer. Have a look (I counted them):

Quintinilla's use of beer bottle caps for decoration on the side of this painting (a lotteria character is also visible...)

Next to "Pecado Original" is a self portrait called "Shaman's Eater". The painting shows Martin as a fire-breathing shaman as he lifts a tiny little doll-sized man into his mouth. Before him, on a table that is out of perspective, are a large muscular heart on a plate, an ashtray filled with cigarette butts, a copy of Juxtapoz magazine, a large Gumby doll, a toy monster truck, a tiki god, and several human specimens in jars. Elsewhere in the room hangs a shrunken head, and visible from the window is an Aztec temple flowing with blood.

"Shaman's Eater"

The structure of the picture has the Old World (the world of the Aztecs) in the background, the New World (the world of Gumby, monster trucks, and Juxtapoz magazine) in the foreground. Martin, as Shaman, stands in the center of it all, paintbrush in hand, eating these little people in this ritual of sacrifice. I've heard the artists make sacrifices, but with this painting, Quintinilla has given that phrase a whole new meaning!

One can't help noticing the abundance of text in Quintinilla's work. He doesn't just paint with images, he also includes lots of signs and lettering in his work. A good example of that is his piece called "Downtown"

"Downtown": is that a party animal?

One of my favorite pieces in this show is called "Hipster". Like in "Pecado Original", you can also see the "Hotel Congress" sign, but here, there are so many other signs to see. This picture is loaded with signs of hip places downtown, including Hotel Congress, The Rialto, The Fox Theater, The Grill, and a variety of other places such as "Yoga", "Parking", and "Gallery". Martin's always had a psychedelic side to him. In this painting, the whole picture starts to hallucinate, breaking down and flattening out into a network of color patches, patterns, and designs. Floating at the top center is what I gather is Quintinilla's logo: an all-seeing eye in the center of a spade symbol.

"Hipster"

In the painting "Jardin", Quintilla paints a psychedelic garden scene, made almost exclusively of whimsical trippy lines and invented shapes. A few roses in foreground remind us that we are, indeed, in a garden....a garden of the mind!

"Jardin"

I like how Martin's paintings demonstrate a sense of place (i.e. Tucson), a sense of history, and an obvious love of pop culture. I like how he mixes nicely painted pictures of the Arizona landscape, with his oddball imaginary characters, with all sorts of folk art touches (e.g. bottle caps hammered to the frame). His work is visually rich and is a lot of fun to look at.

Tucson's got a load of artists, but there's only one Martin Quintinilla! I think he's really great, and that this is a really fine show. Check it out!

Christina McNearny's "Modello" series, at Tucson Int'l Airport Gallery

2011-12-01T14:50:00.001-08:00

One of Christina's 36 artworks at her show at Tucson International Airport Gallery

Artist Christina McNearny has an exhibit of 36 works of art, currently showing that the Gallery inside the Tucson International Airport. About five years ago, the gallery at the airport was the THE art destination for airport travelers. Now, every gallery in town seems to have it's own wall space at the airport. From tip to tail, the airport has become like a mall of local galleries. This has added a lot to the culture of the airport, but it's also made it a little more difficult to find the original airport gallery! That original airport gallery is where you'll find Christina's work.

The work here is a combination of monoprint, painted washes, color photocopy transfer (it appears), sprayed shapes over stencils or masks, and then globs of swirled and dribbled paint. The title of her exhibit includes the word "gravity", probably as an acknowledgement that gravity helped her create those dribble effects! If I was to describe Christina's work, I'd say that it was "surrealist printmaking" because of it simultaneous automatic and dream-like quality.

This is a show about texture and pattern, and functions as a showcase for a variety of alternative printmaking techniques. The show is divided into four bodies of work: "walking", "desert", "Hurricane Ike", and "Relative Size". As a whole, the exhibit is of one piece. Christina is very consistent in her methods. They're all composed of a series of layers, and each layer is made up of a different printmaking techniques.


close up of Christina's techniques (from her "Lizard Skin" piece):

It appears to me that her paintings all start with a monoprint as a foundation. (For those who don't know, a monoprint is where you paint with printing ink directly onto a sheet of acrylic, put a piece of paper over it, and run it through a printing press. The resulting print on the paper is called a "monoprint", since you just make one copy).

There are very few actual brush strokes in these paintings. Most of this work is the result of pours, prints, mists, stamps, and torn edges. There's an "automatic" quality to this work, where the compositions often feel found or discovered as the artist is working.

"Unexpected Arrival"

"Unexpected Arrival" is a small painting, which has three basic things happening in it. First, there's the purple tinted background, flecked with white paint. (Flecks and sprays of paint are one of the texture-creating methods that Christina uses in this work.) On top of this, she lays down a series of blue and purple circles, linked in a chain-like fashion. And on top of that, a big bluish blob of paint, with a white dribble that looks like melting whipped cream.

"After Image"

The painting "After Image" is a good illustration of Christina's layered approach: the first layer (the yellow background)is painted; on top of that is the next layer: the orange patterns (probably) created with color xerox transfers. The top layer (that is, the foreground) is made of bright green and blue paint that appears to have been dribbled on and manipulated with a stick. When you look at this piece up close the variety of texture and detail can be a bit overwhelming because there's so much to look at, but from afar, the painting organizes itself into clusters of dark and light shapes, and that's what gives it its composition.

"Cove"

My favorite painting in the exhibit is a large piece, titled "Cove". I think I like it for the abundance of that sprayed and stenciled appearance: I've always liked that look! But formally speaking, I think that this piece is organized very well: it's got a nice distribution of dark and light shapes, and I like it for all of its hard edges. When you're working with as much texture and pattern as Christina is in these paintings, it's easy for the eye to get overwhelmed. Those broad areas of hard-edged solid shapes serve to hold things together; they offer some spaces that are tamed down a bit. This picture also has a self-illuminating quality. The brightest and darkest places in this picture are right next to each other (just off-center), so that also provides a center of interest.

"Daydream"

The most interesting painting in the show, for me, is "Daydream". It's interesting because it looks like she's used paint to create a printed effect. The background layer is that yellow and orange pattern. I looked at it closely, and it appears to have been made with paint pours and dribbles, into which the artist painted little orange circles in all of the blank spaces; that created the initial pattern for the background. The blue swoosh-like shape in the center is made with a combination of the swoosh of a dry brush, and some atomized paint wash sprayed over a mask or a stencil. Other masked and sprayed areas are visible at the bottom of this painting. This one has a "landscape" composition, with the bright detail at the top of the picture serving as the sky, the blue shapes in the middle resembling some sort of creature, and the dark shapes at the bottom looking like mountains.

"Shift"

"Shift is a cute little painting on wood (about 9" x 12" in size) that has a bright happy feel. The cyan, yellow, and magenta colors, along with the torn edges remind of the perky days of New Wave pop. This would have made a great dust jacked for an EP back in the day....

"Snake in the Lake"

"Snake in the Lake" is another work that I'm drawn to. I like it for its simplicity. She's limited herself to just two techniques: monoprint and masked-off-sprayed-on areas. I'm guessing that the yellow shape is the snake in the lake.

Check it out! Christina McNearny's "Modello" exhibit, at the Tucson International Airport Gallery! (And remember to get your parking ticket validated!)

Melancholia (the movie): It gave me a headache!

2011-11-29T15:10:00.001-08:00

"Melancholia" is showing at the Loft Theater. This is not technically an art exhibit...or was it? I felt like reviewing it here, here's my impression of it.

I was not one of those who are raving about this movie. I like the concept, I like some of the visuals (and their references to art history, notably "Ophelia" by John Everett Millais ("malaise"?) (and David's "Death of Marat", among others) but this movie gave me a headache. As I write this, I still have a headache. I went into this flick hoping to be transformed. What a disappointment! I'm still the same, but now I have a headache!

I was hoping for a very moving, transformative piece about...I don't know, life, carpe diem, beauty and disaster, the "sublime".... mainly because others have raved about this movie, saying how great it was. Maybe my expectations were too high?? In a nutshell, this movie feels as if Ingmar Bergman and Andy Warhol collaborated to do a remake of the 1950's Sci-Fi flick, "When World's Collide"

The context and emotional landscape are both from the 1950's: in the movies, we had the sci-fi disaster flicks, and on the literary front, we had existentialist philosophy. This really is an existentialist movie, since it deals with the question "how would you live your life if you only had one day to live?" One hopes, as the best existentialist writers said, that you'd approach you situation with courage. This movie reminds me of some of Ingmar Bergman's films, which are also very long, brooding, and about messed up relationships. Here's a clip from Ingmar Bergman's "Persona", so you can get a feel for the mood, pace, and the long drawn out quality...

What "Melancholia" does is puts you in the mindset of someone who has no future (neither does the planet), and forces you to consider how you'd live your last day on Earth. What would you do? You could freakout, and run around in a panic (as do the actors in "As World's Collide"), or you could try to negotiate a dignified exit in a situation in which its impossible to survive. (Here's the trailer for "When World's Collide")

The movie's opening introductory sequence (I'm talking about first 2-3 minutes of the film) are breathtakingly gorgeous. Lots of super slow motion surrealist montage. The beginning of the movie is like a silent short art movie unto itself. It brought tears to my eyes. It was a beautifully lush and graphically surreal portrayal of the disaster which creates the impetus for the film. But after that first opening sequence, your endurance is severely tested.

The movie appears to be set up as a set of pairs: first, and most obviously, is the wedding couple itself: the pair which gets the movie started. Then there are two sisters, two planets (Earth and Melancholia), two halves of the movie (parts 1 & 2, each with it's own screen placard indicating just that, two passes around the Earth by Melancholia as it does it's "Dance Of Death". I'll stay within that tradition, and give this movie... 2 stars (no astronomical pun intended)

I mentioned that this film is part Sci Fi Disaster flick, and part homage to both Ingmar Bergman and Andy Warhol (his short movies that were at the Loft Theater last year). This movie has two winks at Warhol's short films: first, the quick, chopping, whiplash inducing camera work (to remind us that we're watching a film art object, not an illusion of reality). I'm thinking specifically of Warhol's film "My Hustler", which showed at the Loft last year, but which does not appear to be on YouTube. In "Melancholia", as in "My Hustler", the camera is constantly moving around, jerking wildly, as if held by an amateur. I couldn't understand why I was getting car sick watching this flick, but then it dawned on me: it's all of the jerky camera work! I took a break in the lobby shortly after part 2 started, and chatted with one of the guys working at the snack bar. He said that that jerky headache-inducing quality was intentional, so that we could feel the nausea that Kirsten Dunst's character was feeling. I believe him. There's no other good explanation for it. A supporting argument for seeing shades of Warhol in this movie is the presence of Udo Kier, who starred in several of Warhol's later (more polished) movies, such as "Dracula" and "Frankenstein". (Here's a clip of Udo in Warhol's "Dracula", although in "Melancholia", he's an old distinguished looking servant

The trailer for "Melancholia" is very deceptive, since it is fast paced. You get no sense of the long drawn out headache that's about to hit you (Here's the trailer)

Despite this, there are definitely many positive things about this picture: it's got a very intimate feeling; you get a feeling as if you're really spending time with these characters. The topic (i.e. the End of the World) is grim, but it's set against some breathtakingly beautiful scenery. The ugliness actually comes from the people, and their pathetic lives. Nature, and the Cosmos, are Beautiful. People, and their problems, don't quite measure up.

This movie presents you with a thought-experiment: you're getting married on the Earth's Last Day. Would that change your plans at all? It's something to think about. (As this movie suggests, loud grandiose Classical music helps move things along)

(c) 2011 by Howard Salmon

3rd Annual Sculpture Garden Exhibit...at Tucson Jewish Community Center (13 Nov 2011)

2011-11-13T23:39:00.000-08:00

A view of the sculpture garden at the Tucson Jewish Community Center

In conjunction with the "Open Studios" event, currently happening in Tucson this weekend, The Tucson Jewish Community Center hosted their 3rd Annual Sculpture Garden Exhibit. I caught it, with about 1/2 hr to spare, and with a light rain just starting... Here's how I saw it!

This is a really nice exhibit. The JCC created a full-color explanatory booklet to go with the show, with an introduction written by Elaine King, who is a professor of Art Theory at Carnegie Mellon University. In her essay, she explains her selection criteria: work must be creative, and well-made:

When I first entered, I was greeted by jazz music, by some cool cats. Here they art, jamming away...


Live jazz on sculpture garden patio. Coffee's inside...

Before looking at individual sculptures, I walked around the whole exhibit to get the lay of the land. I met sculptor Keven Burnett, who was still installing his sculpture called "Capricious Tongues". It looked like five weather vanes, but instead of arrows, they had tongues on a stick to point in the direction of the prevailing political winds....

Keven Burnett installing "Capricious Tongues"

cast iron wagging tongue on the end of a stick

Keven Burnett also created one of my favorite works in this show: sculpture of two men crawling up the side of the JCC, like Spiderman, each push a wire-frame boulder. The work is called "Sisyphus":

Keven Burnett's "Sisyphus"

Underneatch "Sisyphus", at ground level, is a sculpture by Lori Anderson called "The Veteran". This piece looking like there's figure (presumably a soldier or a vet), wrapped up in what looks like are dragonfly wings.

Lori Anderson's "The Veteran"

Next to Lori Anderson's piece, is a very creative sculpture by Martha Dunham. It is called "Forged Identity: Yitzak Rabin". The sculpture depicts a large fingerprint. The exhibit book has the artist stating that the human fingerprint represents life.

I wonder if that's HER fingerprint??

On the green grassy lawn, there is some art that is is definitly mimicing Nature: bent wire birds nests, created created by artists (or by some pretty strong birds) The nests are made of rusted coathanger wire and blue stone eggs.

Blue stone eggs in the center of a rusted wire cluster

One sculpture I really enjoyed was called "Agree to Disagree". It shows two abstract forms looking like two beached whales, hanging out under a swing set:

"Agree to Disagree"...giant figs having fun at the swingset

Artist Tidi Ozeri has a sculpture here called "Tree of Knowledge". Here it is...

Tidi Ozeri's "Tree of Knowlege"

At the exhibit, I bumped into two local artists, Ben Oreck, and Vallerie Galloway! Ben is one of the sculptors in this show.

Valerie Galloway and Ben Oreck: making the sculpture scene!

...And that's my ever-so-brief art scene report...

Janet Olsson's dark surrealism...at the Davis Dominguez Gallery

2011-11-10T20:51:00.000-08:00

At the Davis-Dominguez gallery, artist Jan Olssen has an impressive number of paintings that all seem to be about various stages in a particular relationship. The relationship doesn't end well. The narrative (as I see it) starts in the small foyer area of the gallery, with pastel works on cardboard. The colors are very drab: lots of tints and greyed-down tones; washed out greens and pinks, with some chalky off-white regions, with pencil accents. I was remind of illustration from the 1950s. The composition, the subject matter, the color and style...it had a nostalgic feel. This is true of all of Jan Olsson's work here at this exhibit. An overriding theme seemed to be memory.

Olsson's piece "Seated Woman with a Tape Measure and Iron" is part of a series of pastel drawings that are all about a woman getting ready for ....something. There's picture of her ironing a garment, there's picture of her sewing at a sewing machine...several tight shots of a single women getting some clothes ready. Another picture in the series shows a woman posing before a mirror, a man with a crew cut and wrapped in a trench coat, waiting for her...

"Man, Woman, and Heart" suggests some sort of romance of relationship, but only in the simplest of outlines. Again, muted pastel colors from another era dominate the picture. The drawings are quick and sketchy, and have the appearance of fashion illustration. A hot pink heart shape at the lower center of the picture helps further the idea that love is in bloom in this picture. But this relationship is about to go south, once you get into the larger gallery space...

When you enter the large room at Davis-Dominguez, you see more of Jan Olssen's work, but there are two new styles; there is a multi-media collage thing going on here. The painting "Girls" is a key piece in this exhibit is a sort of key to the show, I feel, because it contains a lot of clues about how to read the exhibit (at least to me). First, the work is structured in layers: Olssen combines photo collage, with splattered paint, with tinted drawings. The drawings show two girls dressed up as if they were bridesmaids, or as if they were going to some fancy event. One is dressed in a red dress, the other in a blue one. The blond girl looks like Alice in Wonderland. Doesn't a part of "Alice in Wonderland" involve a red pill and a blue pill? Hmmm.... could this all be a dream? The "Alice" character is reaching out towards a big butterfly: a symbol of innocence and freedom. But as you look in the background, you notice a few white geysers of paint, along with some collaged photos of dirt, gravel, and some triangular foundation things (probably used for building a house); in the lower right corner are collaged photos of broken wooden palettes (used for loading heavy things onto a truck). So what does this all mean? A nice drawing of two girls going to a wedding, amidst a backdrop of dirt, damage, and disorder?

By the time you get the painting "Night Blooming", things have turned chaotic. Once again, Jan Olssen uses collage to build her pictures, starting with photos of broken up wood as a foundation (noticeable in the upper right portion of the picture above), on which she painting images of a child with a lost look on her face (lower right), several flowers (nightblooming cereus?; on the left...), an image of a woman with her hand on her face (crying?), and a ghostly outline of a man who looks very animated, but it's not clear what he's doing (playing piano?) Also, more splattered and dribbled white paint, over the flowers and shooting up to the right of the picture. With this picture, you feel as if you've walked into a scene of chaos. Olssen's work is very symbolic, but the symbols are all very personal, so to decipher the work, it's like trying to psychoanalyze the artist... My guess is that this picture is about a broken home. The figures in this painting do not look happy. They look like they're in various stages of distress, from anger, to grief, to shock. The chaotic photos (the "reality" of the picture) shows pictures of a home that is literally broken: broken boards, chunks of dirt and cement. So why the flowers? A symbol of hope? Of life? It's not clear... This painting too has a washed out, monochromatic look; a barren look that looks like black and white TV, an old movie...the color of "memory"...

The painting "Oracle" is one of the best paintings in this show (along with "Treasure Hunt", which I'm describe momentarily). "Oracle" is a total surrealist southwestern tableaux. Olssen's limited colors (just black, white, and orange) magnify the already intense mood of this piece (with its crazed imagery). This painting "Oracle" has elements common to the collage work previously described, but in this case, it is entirely painted. Even the drizzled white paint strewn across the canvas is also carefully rendered. Whereas in some of previous pieces I've described here, Olssen splattered actual white paint onto her work, in "Oracle" she carefully painted the shape of a paint splatter. Obviously that white paint drizzle shape has symbolic meaning for her, because it's present is most of her work in this exhibit. She's got that same white paint splatter-type graffiti drizzled over many of her paintings. Maybe I should ask that dog in the background what's going on here? Other symbolic images here are the shrouded woman (a symbol of grief?), the dog (traditionally a symbol of loyalty), and those goofy ghost masks in the lower right. But that white splatter really dominates this picture. Is this the artist defacing her own picture? Is she drawing graffiti over her own work? Or is it simply a design element? I'm not really sure... Also, notice that the trashed wood palettes, the "broken home" has been replaced by an outhouse. Or is that a dog house? I'm guessing that this picture is about betrayal...it all kinda adds up...

In "Treasure Hunt", we see a bunch of sheep's heads (or are those goats?), woman standing in a puddle of white water (or is it spilled milk? Or more white goo?) In the background there is another house (or is that a barn?), with a forest on the upper left side of the picture. In the forest, in two places, stand two women (one on the upper left, holding an orange glowing thing behind her back), and the other waaay in the background in the upper right of the painting, standing nude and alone in a barren landscape. At the very least, I can say that these images are about a sense of darkness and disorder.

As I noted earlier, much of the work in Janet Olsson's exhibit is collage. Several of her pieces have a "Day of the Dead" quality about them, since they include photos of people from "Day of the Dead" parties. In the piece titled "Best Man", Olsson has followed her formula: she starts with a photo, adds collaged elements (a cake, a paper doll groom outfit), and again, more drizzled white paint. In this picture, she's made a halo of gold dots around the best man's head, all hastily done, as if an afterthought.

There's a very stark and angry quality about this work. You see it in the splattered paint. You see it in the images of (literally) broken homes, splintered wood, and chunks of concrete. You see it in the angular, disrupted compositions. You see it in the limited color palate. You see it in the symbols of death and mourning.

I like how she starts her paintings by collaging photos, and then using that as a foundation for a painting. I like how she creates a sense of moodiness and mystery, by limiting her colors to just one or two. I find her imagery disturbing, but that's fine: she does a good job of it.

This is art about loss and disappointment...and grief...and anger. The mood is dark, the compositions are active, and the imagery is surreal. This is painting for our times.

Ruben Moreno's "Socratic Codices" @ Contreras Gallery (November 2011)

2011-11-03T23:03:00.000-07:00

View of the Contreras Gallery, now showing Ruben Moreno's "Socratic Codices"

Local artist, Ruben Moreno, has a very ambitious and very impressive show at the Contreras Gallery. It is highly conceptual in nature, and after spending a fair amount of time lingering over his 21 medium sized paintings, I came to this conclusion: Ruben needs to make a feature length film. He's got an imagination like Steven Spielberg, and he's got a sense of darkness and the macabre like Alfred Hitchcock.

Standing in the middle of the gallery, you're surrounded by the work, and even though it's very surreal, dreamlike, and "arty" in some of its imagery (that is, characters hold up objects, making them into symbols...but of what?) , it has a very personal feel. It's risky making work like this which is so pedantic: at times, it feels a bit like the TV show "Lost"...with so much dream imagery, with cryptic titles, and with a philosophy about seeing the world as composed as a series of sets of four (e.g. "Four Elements", "Four Horsemen", "Four Main Emotions", and so on) This type of one-size-fits-all philosophy can be a bit much to take (there are "fours" everywhere!), but Ruben's saving grace is that he invests so much of his personal life into the work, that it feels like a confession. He's put so much care in the drawing and execution of the paintings, that you can feel that has a respect for his subject matter, and also for his audience.

"The Four Emotions: Love, Hate, Joy, Sadness": A touch of Stephen King or Alfred Hitchcock?

I should say something about his painting technique: he doesn't use much paint. In fact, many of these pictures rely on the natural color of the wood grain ieft. There's no gesso here: it's all tinted and stained wood (blue and orange tend to be the predominant colors). These paintings are very minimally colored. They're actually more like tinted wooden boxes.

You can feel many of cross-currents and relationships between the various pictures: this is a body of work that gives you big hug: it feels like a big family of images. But that's its "weakness" too: each work has its strength when in the community of all the other paintings, but is diminished when each is considered alone. The strength of the "Socratic Codices" is in the community of paintings. To see only one of these paintings is to see this work out of context. Ruben's work has a cumulative effect, and the more you see, the more you understand his epic idea. Which is why I see the next logical place for Ruben to go is Hollywood! With ideas this vast, he should probably make an epic-length film. His images all seem like movie posters anyhow. But back to the exhibit...

Moreno's "Four Stages of Sleep: Beta, Alpha, Delta, Theta": A touch of "Vertigo"?

This show is not merely a body of artwork. Rather, it's an illustrated "codex" (Ruben's term) of symbols, situations, and dream sequences that feel very much at home with artwork by other surrealists, such as Rene Magritte or Salvidor Dali. There's a philosophy, and a mystical point of view that underlies all of this work: to decipher the "code", you've just got to study the pictures. But there's mystery to it, because it's not clear to what the connections are all about.

One of the curiosities of this show (out of many) and the incredibly long titles, which read more like paragraphs quoted from some textbook. For example, one picture shows a young man "removing" a girls heart (Aztec style?), under the Eiffel Tower at night. Paris has vanished (judging from the barren landscape typical of artwork by Dali or DeChirico), and only a few symbols remain (the hawk flying through the back of the picture is a common motif in this work).

Ruben Moreno's "The Mammalian Heart Consists of Four Chambers..."

The title of the work isn't really a title at all, but rather, a paragraph from a textbook. The title of the work shown above is "The Mammalian Heart consists of four chambers: the right and left atriums, the right and left ventricles".

In the image below, Moreno offers his vision of the Garden of Eden, in his painting called: "The Four Rivers of the Garden of Eden"


Figures who resemble Samuel Jackson & Lauryn Hill star in Moreno's "Four Rivers of the Garden of Eden"

Moreno's "Four Dimensions of Mindfulness"

My favorite painting in the show is called "Four Dimensions of Mindfulness". It shows a picture of four nude figures in a forest (or is it two, standing before a mirror?) It's the one painting here that has a sense of deep space; of an environment where the viewer can step into. I like the sense of alternate reality, or is that a door to another dimension? Plus, Moreno treats us to four unique views of four young beautiful women. What's not to like??

When you walk into this show, and study some of the imagery, you feel as if you've walked into a maze. I'm reminded of a classic video game called "Myst": you wake up in a mysterious place, and its up to you to figure out what's going on. Same vibe here; the more you look at it, the more you get drawn in..... Moreno's combined surrealism, with a sense of history (both his own, as well as that of pre-Colombian cultures), along with a penchant for Western Philosophy (that is, Aristotle's categories), and an obvious love of "Heavy Metal" styled illustration. He obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this work, and planning the images, before he set down to painting them. The end result is epic: you feel like you're in the middle of something great.

Michael Contreras (of the Contreras Gallery) tells me that the 21 paintings on display here are only a beginning, for Ruben plans to make a total of 80 paintings in all! That could take years. And the more of this work we see, the more we'll understand...or will we? Yes, these painting ARE like the TV show LOST!

But I like the way Ruben thinks. He's thinking on an epic scale, and how all of his 80 paintings will form a monumental masterwork, that is at once surreal, dark, sad, fearful, cryptic, sentimental, stylish, honest, arty, and bold.

It's about time we had an artist who thought big! We should celebrate this emerging talent in our midst!

TPAC Open Studios preview...at Tucson Jewish Community Center

2011-10-31T01:06:00.000-07:00

Tucson Pima Arts Council's "Open Studios" event is scheduled to start in a little over a week, where Tucson's can traipse around town to visit local artists in their natural habitat (their studios). However, TPAC and the JCC have created a sampler of that exhibit, with each artists getting to show off one piece, all in the spacious and naturally lit gallery space of the JCC. I visited the preview show this afternoon, and made some notes about some pieces that caught my eye. The best work, I feel, is the mixed media and the fabric work. For me, that's the most interesting and creative. Those who worked in traditional mediums (that is, painting and drawing) had very conventional and "safe" work. The interesting stuff, as I just mentioned, was in the area of mixed media. Let's check it out...

The first piece that caught my eye was Genni Pell's "Nectarines with blue jar". I guess I was drawn to it's contrast, and vivid color. It looks like it's painted with a palette knife on a Masonite board. Although the colors are nice, it's a pretty conventional painting. This is just a competent, but very safe, painting of some objects from yesteryear. But great color!

Genii Pell's painting of a Chinese vase, Cezanne's cannon balls, and a fallen flower

Aside from Genni Pell's vivid color, the first thing that jumped out at me was Martin Shaver's mixed media piece, "Drilling Down". This piece looks like a bunch of broken drywall, adhered to pieces of wire screen mesh, and attached to a board. In my mind, any broken or disrupted surface looks interesting, and the bits of color in this mound of drywall crumbs make this piece more...colorful! So here I am, a sucker for bright color again! Martin, I really like that turquoise blue! Actually, if you linger on this piece for a few moments, you can see that the color is distributed in a pleasing way. There's a big shape of blue at the bottom (already noted a moment ago), with a lighter turquise band at across the top. there's a big white area in the upper left of this photo, which is balanced by mass of grey and brown shapes in the middle and mid-right side of this picure. Although this piece obviously looks like a "mess", closer examination finds that there is actually some order to be found in all of this! Now, the question is, did the artist plan this composition? Or is it completely accidental? We may never know...

Shaver's "Drilling Down": from trash to treasure!

Jessie Shin turns in an interesting black and white piece called "Lucid Dreaming". He says it's made with ink on clayboard, but its got a soot-like appearance, that reminds me of the some of the effects you can get when working with charcoal and water. It's got a dark, overcast, spooking feeling. Nice creatiion of dark, atmospheric ettects here:

Jessie Shin's "Lucid Dreaming"

This picture is abstract enough, where it could be anything. I like simplicity of it, and I like the gritty, moody quality of it. This artist definitely captured a mood, and created a sense of mystery...not always an easy thing to do!

One piece I really enjoyed is a stoneware piece called "Large Vessel", by Roy Lizama. I like it because it reminds me of "The Thing" from the Fantastic Four: same orange, chunky, volcanic lizard skin vibe. Although the title claims that this piece is a vessel, I can't help seeing the fist of Ben Grimm (the "Thing"). Nice!

"The Thing" from The Fantastic Four: major psoriasis ((c) Marvel Comics)

Roy Lizama's "Large Vessel". (Better title: "It's Clobberin' Time!!")

Karen Firber has nice fabric piece in this show. She calls it "Greenhouse Effect". It's a quilt, with mixed media additions to it (such as several tiny beads, and glued-on plastic baubles). The green border on the left of this work is actually a print. Most of the other elements, however, are hand sewn. Various beads have been sewn in to create the impression of a field of flowers, and a bunch of tiny blue beads Firber uses to create a "sky". The title of this piece is spelled out with big letters up in a tree (illustrated on this quilt).

Karen Firber's "Greenhouse Effect"

On the same wall as "Greenhouse Effect" is another quilted pieces that is equally as interesting! It's called "Storm's Coming", by Trish Hastings-Sargeant. This too is a quilted piece, and it depicts a landscape with gathering clouds. I really like how Hastings has used a variety of textures and colors to create her impression of a sky. It looks like art that you can cuddle!

Trish Hasting-Seargant's "Storm's Coming"

At the far end of the gallery is a bronze sculpture of three walruses sleeping on top of each other. The artist is Kate Iverson, and she calls the piece "Uupas (Sea Peaches)".

A pile o' bronze walruses...goo goo ga joob!

Kyle Johnston has a mixed media piece here (called "As Watchers Sleep"), that evokes shades of Jasper Johns or Joseph Cornell (I'm referring to the row of doll heads at the bottom of this piece). Artwork that incorporates found objects is often very interesting from a texture standpoint. Just as a design alone, this piece has a lot working for it. Johnston did a nice job with this. Nice!

Kyle Johnston's "As Watcher's Sleep"

Artist Kurt Brill has another one of his very large sculptures in this show. This one he calls "Lisa':

Kurt Brill's "Lisa": those feet are thrice the size of her head!

One of the truely surprising works in this preview exhibit was Patricia Bischof's "Springtime in Central Park". If this piece, she's glued a bunch of paper coils to a piece of painted plywood. This work vibrates and shakes at you, like a pair of "googly eyes" glasses. I admire her chutzpah with this one...

Bischof's jiggly paper coils glued to a board!

An artist who also uses paper to create sculpture (though in a different way) is Nick Georgiou, with his paper wall sculpture called "Raging Bull". This piece shows a bulls face made with discarded books. His work is like a new take on a Picasso-esque vibe: you're simultaneously drawn to it, and repulsed by it. The character is ugly and scary looking, but Giorgious has created it all with rolls and stacks of paper. I'm impressed with Giorgiou's creativity, resourcefulness, and humor...but how'd you like this bull creature staring at you when you're trying to go to sleep at night?? (This piece would make a great Halloween mask!)

Nick Giorgiou's "Raging Bull"

The preview exhibit at the Tucson Jewish Community Center is definitely worth a visit. Like any open studios event, there's a wide variety of syles, approaches, and artistic polish. I like how the who Open Studio's event can be sampled here, all in one room. Save on gas! No need to drive all around town! And if you plan on going around town next week, this show here at the JCC is a great first stop.

A discussion with Master Printmaker JORDI ARKO (at Dinnerware Artspace)

2011-10-28T19:49:00.000-07:00

Prof. Barbara Penn (left) standing with JordiArko (right) at Dinnerware Artspace

This afternoon, I stopped by Dinnerware Artspace in downtown Tucson to see a printmaking demonstration by Swedish Master Printer Jordi Arko, but I'd arrived before anyone showed up. So, I asked him a few questions about his artwork! Our brief discussion comprises the content of this interview.

Jordi is in town just for a few days as a guest of University of Arizona Art Professor Barbara Penn. (You can see some of Barbara's current work now on display at the Faculty Art Exhibit at the University Museum of Art) Jordi is in the States for a semester, teaching at Bethany College (a small, private Lutheran College) in Lindsborg, Kansas. Barbara invited Jordi to Tucson for a quick sharing of art and ideas. I was lucky enough to catch him alone for a few moments.

Jordi Arko flipping through the 80 pages of his version of "Los Capriccios": only 4 copies were made!

The work that he's here to talk about is actually about 35 years old. It is a suite of 80 prints, made from etchings on copperplate. The text and storyline closely follows suite of prints by Spain's Francisco Goya called "Los Capriccios". Here's Goya's print titled "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters", which comes from his "Capriccios" series:

Goya's "Sleep of Reason" print. An inspiration to Jordi Arko!

Arko's project back in the early 1970's was to recreate Goya's suite, using the same style, same text, same calligraphy style....except that Arko would be substituting his own images for Goya's. This was an exercise in free-association for Arko.

Arko's version of Goya's "No More, No Less" print

He would look at the title of each of Goya's prints in "Capriccios" series, and replace it with his own free-associated image. As he explained to me, he would read Goya's title, and then come up with his own unique image. Thus, he created his own version of the Capriccios, substituting Goya's images with his own. The result is very surreal and absurd, but you can immediately see the similarity in printing technique and quality.

Arko does Goya

It's a common exercise for musicians to show off their skills and competence by playing "standards". Standards provide a benchmark to measure the chops of a musician. Same thing with artists. Jordi Arko provides a way of measuring his technical proficiency by creating his own version of one of Goya's masterworks. Be makes it easy for us to compare the two, since he's kept so much of his version of "Los Capriccios" consistent with Goya's original. His printing technique is technically perfect; he's got Goya's even grey-tones, and scratchy drawing style down pat..although Arko's drawings tend to be more silly and cartoon-like.

Wikipedia describes Goya's "Capriccios" like this:

a medium for Goya's condemnation of the universal follies and foolishness in the Spanish society in which he lived.

But in Arko's version of the "Capriccios", he also takes on very contemporary themes that still resonate today, for instance, this illustration of police aggression:

a page in the follies of Mankind. Is this 1798? Or 1972? Or 2011? Yes...

Arko punched holes into the printing plate to create these white dots

Currently, Jordi Arko is experimenting with stop-motion animation using his iPhone. He's been working that way for the past month! It is brand new direction for him! I'm curious to see how this affects his printing. As I noted earlier, his work in this article is over 35 years old, but still it has interest for today's art students. Especially in a time when so much work is digital and inspired by fashion. Oh, the follies of Mankind!

"Who Shot Rock n' Roll?"...at the Tucson Museum of Art

2011-10-24T01:48:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, I checked out the rock photography exhibit called "Who Shot Rock n' Roll?", which is a traveling exhibit curated by the Brooklyn Museum. There are some great moments captured in pictures, but as it turns out, this show is a little more complicated than the title would initially have you believe. For while there are a lot of pix of rockers sweating it out onstage (and off stage), this is also a show about fashion, technology, and the packaging and marketing of nostalgia.

A quote by Chrissie Hynde (of The Pretenders), emblazoned on the wall in the center of museum servers as a guide:

"Presentation is half of it in rock n' roll. It's not just the music. There's music, and there's attitude, and there's image. It almost represents a way of looking at life"

This is a great quote, but the only problem is that it's not made by a photographer; it's made by a musician. A photographer needs to be quoted saying this! I kept wondering, how would a photographer describe this way of looking at life? How does this "way of life" affect how he or she snaps photos? By adding quotes from the photographers in this show, not only would the images of rock's photographers be honored, but their ideas as artists as well. (There was actually an audio tour to accompany this exhibit, which I didn't listen to. Maybe I should have!)

The best photos here, in my opinion, are about the audiences. There are a handful of pix on the bottom floor are where the stars are the audiences; the rockstar is either absent, or simply becomes a prop. Some of my faves are a bunch of girls all googly-eyed hanging outside the hotel room door of New Kids on the Block, and another photo of Bruce Springsteen hanging out in a doorway of some shop in New Jersey, with about seven very happy girls clustered around him, jammed in the doorway. The picture does not look posed, it looks very candid. Stuff like that is just great! Hardcore punk photographer, Ed Colver, has several pieces in this exhibit. The best one is a giant print of a moshpit: a torrential sea of humanity. Amazing!

Practically all of the photos are framed in very non-descript plain blonde wooden frames, with the exception of one or two, which were probably borrowed from someone's private collection.

Although there are mostly framed photographs in this show, there are many forms of media: in addition to photos, there are slides (projected on a wall in a slide carousel), video concert footage, MTV rock videos, a little bit of collage art, some famous album cover photos (e.g. The Clash, two Bob Dylan albums, The Ramones...), a wall of actual vinyl LPs arranged chronologically (hah! They were actually all out of order!), as well as several LP covers, CD's, some cassettes, and an 8-track tape.

One thing that immediately struck me is that there as very little music in this exhibit. The only tunes came from the Elvis video at the entrance, and videos by Grace Jones and The Vines, both on the bottom floor. But then again, it was just as well: music would only distract from the photos themselves. And then again still, adding music didn't seem necessary, for I realized that rock n' roll is a lot about image, fashion, and attitude; style over substance? Style is HUGE.

In the foyer, right as you walk in (after reading the aforementioned statement), you're confronted with a massive 10 foot high color portrait of David Lee Roth (from Van Halen), screaming crowd noise from an Elvis Presley exhibit adjacent to it, and a photo of the Brooklyn Paramount theater advertising the Alan Freed radio show on it's billboard sign. Those are the three images that served as the introduction to the exhibit.

Surveying the exhibit from the top floor, you notice that the walls of the museum are painted various shades of grey, evoking a smokey appearance. Throughout the museum are some freestanding walls, painted a rich red color. These walls serve as dividers (creating themed "rooms", and also add some color to this predominately black and white show.

The first images you see as you walk through the top floor are early pictures of the Rolling Stones, and (on the flipside) photos from Bob Dylan's "Freewheelin" and "Blonde on Blonde" albums. They are mounted on a big room divider which has the phrase "In the Beginning..." written on it. So...there IS an historical aspect to this show; in the beginning was the Rolling Stones! This is an odd beginning to confront, because the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Led Zepplin, the Yardbirds, and others were all including old rhythm & blues covers on their first albums, an obvious acknowledgement of their debt to an even earlier music, country and blues. I just feel that, out of respect to rock's real history, that a few pix of bluesmen would have been nice, and perhaps a picture of Dylan's mentor, Woodie Guthrie. (KISS, however, is completely absent--and like them or not, they were a big part of rock fashion!)

On that same top floor are pictures of the Mamas and Pappas, The Ramones, The Clash (there's a lot of The Clash in this show) and a great famous pic by Alfred Wertheimer of Elvis licking a girls tongue while holding her close. There are also pictures of Pink Floyd, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Velvet Underground, The Yardbirds, The Doors, Madonna...and in a corner, a photo of Ike and Tina Turner (playing at Club Paradise in 1962).

Walking down into the museum, you pass another wall divider, with the title "Behind the Scenes". Here you see pix of people partying, kissing, and posing for the camera. We see The Beatles exiting a plane, Keith Richards with his newborn, and Joe Strummer enjoying himself in Thailand.

There's a great pure rock n' roll shot of Joe Strummer in a leather jacket, kissing a blonde woman as he's got her back arched over the tailfin of an old car. Hot stuff! There's also a picture of Buddy Holly, sitting on (what looks like) a Greyhound bus, looking like a total rose-cheeked dweeb; there's The Supremes, with their big hair doos, exiting a plane. This photo of Salt n Pepa is also in the show...

There's Debbie Harry showing off her diamond wedding ring at CBGB's in 1978; There's Patti Smith outside CBGB's in 1976 (with a "Bleeker Street" street sign in the background).

There's a photo of Joe Strummer dressed as a beat writer, nattily dressed in white shirt, slacks, and suspenders, sitting at a writing desk, with an old typewriter: three feet of paper roll out of the back, ala Jack Kerouac writing "On The Road" (the cadence of my writing here is starting to remind me of "Howl"...)

Moving right along, we see photos of Wu Tang Clan (1996), M.I.A (2007), and a pair of video screens showing Bjork singing her song "Big Time Sensuality" (ho hum! Empty pixie rock!)

Mounted on another wall divider is a large picture of Paul McCartney looking at Linda McCartney (that is, us) in the rear view mirror, while driving down a London street. The photos is titled, "My Love, London"(1978). Also on this level are pix of several rock women in bed: Bjork (again, several times in this exhibit!), Amy Winehouse, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, and Patti Smith.

As I walked through this exhibit, I wondered, "Is a rock photographer someone who simply shoots pictures of rockstars? Or is there something else at work here?"

One of the most memorable set of pix in this show is on this level: Kurt Cobain (of Nirvana) crying after smashing his guitar, and an SX-70 photo of Courtney Love (of Hole), which she signed "Fuck You" (not pictured). Both are displayed side-by-side on their own red wall divider, as if to say "Courtney and Kurt forever" What's interesting about the Courtney Love picture is that it was made with the Polaroid SX-70. The SX-70 was a very unique camera, the first to create an "instant" photo, before the days of digital photography. But any discussion of photo technology is, for the most part, absent from this show. But it's so important! Especially if you're honoring photographers!

One of the curiosities in this exhibit of rock photography is the inclusion of actual recorded artifacts: vinyl records, CD's, cassette tapes, 8 track tapes, paper record sleeves and cardboard album covers (for those LPs). These are all hung on a wall, and organized by decade, starting with the 1950's, and continuting right through the current day, all divided with place markers for each decade (1950's, 1960's, etc...)

Here are some details about the records mounted on the walls... From the 1950's: The Hilltoppers, "Til Then" (Dot Records); The King Cole Trio, "Route 66" (Capitol Records); and paper record sleeves from Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel" (4 song EP), and Little Richard, "Keep A Knockin'" b/w "Can't Believe Ya Wanna Leave". From the 1960's: (it starts getting a little out of order here, as you'll see...): Klymaxx, "Meeting in the Ladies Room (Constellation Records); The Mood Blues, "Seventh Sojourn" LP (Threshold Records), and Kool and the Gang, "Ladies Night" LP (De-Lite Records)...I'll stop here, because I notice that a lot of albums from the '70's (I checked the dates) are hanging in categories for all of the decades (for about half of the albums)...maybe their used mainly for decoration?

Other albums from the '70's on the wall are from the Platters (a '50's group), the Lettermen (ditto), Diana Ross & the Supremes, and Joan Baez. By far, the largest number of albums in this part of the exhibit come from the '70's. Others from that decade are: Allman Bros, Cher, Rod Stewart, Blondie, David Bowie, KISS (their "Dynasty" album; WTF??), Queen, Peter Frampton, Lou Reed, and Marvin Gaye. Also from the '70's: four cassette tape cases (Foreigner, Rick James, The Who, and Neil Young), and one 8-track tape (David Bowie's "The Stage"---was that a Bowie album? I can't find it listed anywhere! Better research that one..it may actually be a collector's item!).

From the '80's, there are LPs from Cream, Joe Cocker, Jethro Tull, and Iron Butterfly (I'm not even checking if these bands are categorized correctly by decade anymore...), and CD cases by Prince, Feargal Sharkey, Chris Isaak, Simple Minds, LL Cool J, Tina Turner. For the 2000's, we've got vinyl LPs by The Stranglers, Berlin, Pat Benatar, Pacific Gas & Electric, Ten Years After, Seals & Croft, The Who's "Tommy", and "The Worst of the Jefferson Airplane".

This wall full of misfiled records has got to be regarded as an installation that recognizes the fact the the primary vehicle for showing off rock photography is the record album cover. The fact that they are sometimes out of order is no big deal. This is an exhibit, as was noted earlier, that is more about rock photography than it is about rock history. The out-of-order album covers only reinforces that claim!

Right as you walk into the exhibit, there is a placard which attempts to clarify the aims of the show: "The exhibit is not a history of rock n' roll, but an appreciation of the men and women who have photographed the music and given it its visual identity", and "there is no one soundtrack to rock, and there is no one photographic vision". That is correct, but it's also about memory, and curating, and collecting, and technology, and rock journalism, and trends, and style, and fashion. And then there are issues particular to photography: there's the type of film, the type of camera, how the photographer composes the shot, the photographer's approach to capturing an image (is there a method?).

For me, although I really enjoyed looking at these photos, and these videos, and these artifacts, I still don't know the answer to the question "Who Shot Rock n' Roll?" I know the images, but I really wish I knew more about the photographers and what they did to get their images. That would take the focus off of the rockers themselves, and instead, put it on the image makers and their methods, which is where it belongs (for a show that honors photographers)! Still, this exhibit is a lot of fun, and there are many great moments here captured on film (and video). Check it out!

my photogrphic contribution: "Encore!!"

"Mi Musica": Art inspired by music.. at Raices Taller Gallery

2011-09-04T04:31:00.000-07:00

Opening tonight (Saturday, September 3rd) at Raices Taller gallery was a show called "Mi Musica", which was dedicated to the theme of music as an inspiration for art. I counted 36 pieces in the show.

Overall, the show looked very colorful, although there was a curious retro vibe to it: as if the spirit of modern art from 75 years ago had descended onto the gallery: There was a certain "artiness" to about half of this work, although there was lots of color. But the gallery was silent: no band, no boom box. Where was the music??! For a show inspired by music, I was hoping for some tunes, the gallery was surprisingly quiet. Still it was worth seeing... read on for details...

One of the first things you notice as you enter the gallery are three large paintings by David Tineo: figurative pieces that evoke some sort of myth. If you know story or the symbolism, you get it. If not, you can appreciate his bold and vigorous style. His paintings seem to have stories embedded in their imagery.

artist Mel Dominguez looking at David Tineo's paintings

"El Profeta" by David Tineo

Tineo's "El Profeta" has an image of a bare-breasted, tattooed woman with some curly shapes coming out of her mouth (who's also missing the flesh from one of her forearms). Gallery Director John Salgado tells me that those curly symbols come from the Aztec Codex, and that they represent speech (or perhaps singing) in this painting. This painting is about five feet tall.

Mel Dominquez has a piece called "Payday Love" in this show. Her picture shows a hot couple making out in front of a liquor store, all done in the energetic and cartoon-graffiti-jazz style for which she's known for. She's does series of paintings that revolve around musical themes, such as hip-hop or jazz, so this kind of musically-inspired work is natural for her. I like her piece here, but you should see some of her other stuff. Amazing!


close up of Mel Dominguez' "Payday Love" (sorry for the shakey camera)

Next to Mel's piece, in the corner, is a large work by Lester Aguirre, called "The Memory of My Life". It made with found wood, plus other found materials. He added some his own drawing, and crafted a makeshift violin for this very interesting piece. The image is of a little girl (an angel?) holding a violin. This piece sold on opening night! Lester appears to be an up and coming artist at Raices Taller. Congrats! Keep up the good work!

Aguirre with his artwork, "The Memory of My Life"

Becky Harvey has an interesting little painting with the very serious title "Discontent Daughter of the Sun". It shows a women from what looks like "Little House On the Prairie" days looking off into the distance, while behind her, sit four crows on a wire. Also, there is a picture of a heart on the front of her garment, but it's white: drained of all blood. If Frida Kahlo was a California surfer girl, she might be doing pictures like this: an anglo women with perfect hair, with a California sunburst in the background, centered around her head as if it was a halo. I think I was drawn to the expression on this woman's face. I like the composition, the rendering of face...and all of the goofy stuff I mentioned in the previous two sentences. This is a small piece, painted with acrylic on cardboard.

Becky Harvey's 'Discontent Daughter of the Sun"

I should mention that I have a piece in this show too. It's a cartoon drawing of the "feeling" of loud rock music, with distortion, feedback, and effects pedals. Personally, I think that my piece is one of the best things in this show! ;) If you go to the gallery, you'll see it tacked on the wall above the bar.

Howard Salmon's "Rock n Roll" drawing...okay, okay, next time I'll mount it on something!

Artist Donna Stoner has a large painting called "Dancing Queen". She works in what she calls a "Desert Cubist" style. Here she is posing in front of her painting. It's looking good, Donna!

Donna Stoner's "Dancing Queen"

Next to Stoner's painting is a large painting by Ruben Moreno of a screaming head. Or is it a singing head. Or is it shouting? I thinks it's singing a protest song. I didn't catch the title on that one. Ruben is really great at realistic fantasy illustration, and a favorite subject of his (from the work I've seen at Raices) are Aztec-oriented images. This piece is relatively thin (as far as the application of paint goes), but it shows his skill at realism. His best stuff, in my opionion, is his surrealistic work, where he includes a variety of symbolic objects. But it's good that there's a picture of someone singing in this exhibit which has a musical theme. Actually, it's the only one in the show!

Ruben Moreno, Donna Stone, and Kenneth Steimle (in the background)

On the back wall are a series of irregularly shaped canvases painted in bright, bold colors: hard edges, primary colors, angular shapes. Hearkens back to an "-ism" of long ago. Artist Kenneth Steimle says (in the painting descriptions) that they are inspired by Mozart's "Last Requiem". For me, it looks like something that came out of the middle of the previous century: the geometric shaped, primary color schemed, abstract work of the 1940s, combined with the grandiose pompous statements of the New York abstract expressionists. I don't see the music. For an abstract work that is simply about colors and shapes, but makes claims to be inspired by music...I'd expect to see a sense of rhythm or movement, but it's not there. And isn't Mozart's Requiem a dirge? So why the cheery colors? To me, it looks like it should sound more like the circus. Maybe this is about the part of Mozart's Requiem where he visits the circus? I will give him this however: he 's got the crispest painted edges in the show.

Kenneth Steimle's "K116"

In the back part of the gallery are more works in a similar vein. Elizabeth Criger has a large red painting called "Song of Love" that appears to be paint brushed onto raw canvas. It looks like she's taken a pen and written in several places on this canvas, "Love is a false prophet". In the photo below, you can see the text in the upper left hand side of the picture.

closeup of Elizabeth Criger's "Song of Love".

Phillip Molina has a nice little cartoon on board painting called "Waehma Mecham". It's simple and bold and has a nice composition. But why is it sticking its tongue out at me??
Here it is:


Phillip Molina's "Waehma Mecham"

One of my favorite pieces in the show is an encaustic work by Mari Theresa Dietz, called "Camp Song, Lake Abenwki". It's got a lot of variety, color, and texture. It's the only encaustic piece in this show.

Mari Theresa Dietz' encaustic piece

In the corner of the gallery, right by the front door, is a cute little painting by Carolyn Sotelo called "Untitled". It is a picture of the neck of a violin. And she only wants $60 for it!

Stay tuned for another exciting blog entry, coming your way...eventually!

Arizona Biennial 2011: Amazing Cutting-Edge Work!

2011-06-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

I just got back from viewing the Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art, and I must say...this is a knock-out show. There are several pieces in this show that are truly world-class, and that's what I'll be focusing on in this review.

The themes that predominated in this show are: new ways to look at old discarded materials (i.e. as recyclables, or as vessels of some kind of spiritual force); issues of surveillance and control, appearance and reality, and issues of aging and change. There were also several pieces that dealt with formal art issues (such as color, composition, and what makes a painting a "painting") But for the most part, the best work (in my opinion was about refuse (accent on the first syllable); garbage, and how we deal with it: recycle it, lock it up, put it under surveillance, paint it a pretty color so no one notices, ignore it, make art out of it. I'll explain more and describe the exhibit. Follow me...

I started out by making a quick survey of the whole exhibit. I counted 27 photos, out of a total of 87 pieces of art (give or take 6 or 7 pieces, depending whether or not you counted an entire series as a single piece, or whether or not you counted each piece as a unique object) That means that about 25% of the Biennial was photography (although some photos stood alone as photos, others as components of a collage, and others as part of an installation piece). The next most predominant objects were paintings and sculptures (about 16 of each of those). But the artwork that really stole the show were the installation pieces. They were amazing. You want to be a great artist today? Consider your pieces, and how they fit in a certain environment. In fact, create the environment as well, because how we perceive any (art) object depends not only on the artistic qualities of the object itself, but also on its surrounding environment.

Right as you walk into the exhibit, you're confronted with Julie Arnaud's large pair of photographs, which she calls "Either/Or". What she's done is run these two large pictures (mugshots of a man and a woman) through a shredder, and then reassembled them, creating two hybrid photos of androgynous people, which are made of elements of each source photo. This was a good choice to put at the front of the exhibit, since it embodies several themes that will be revisited again and again: the use of shredded paper (shredded into strips) to make new art. The "stripe" motif was predominant in many works of art, either in the way a picture was composed (in a series of vertical or horizontal bars), or in the popularity of using shredded paper as an art material.

As you round the corner on the top floor of the museum, you're confronted with the huge installation piece, made of industrial felt, by artist Saskia Jorda, called "The Cartography of Memory". What you see is a large piece of white felt, suspended in the air by twine, which is actually the remainders material, from which the topo mape structures on the floor were cut. Using formal art terms, the "positive" shapes were cut out of the felt, and arranged and piled into "island" structures, while the "negative" shapes (i.e. the remainder piece of felt from which the "islands" were cut) is given a new function, as an additional piece of art. Hanging in the air, the refuse looks like a giant piece of rumpled Swiss cheese, or a big floating neural network (like a brain). It pours into the floor, with pools of piled concentric circles of felt, looking like a 3D topographical map. The effect looks like a giant brain pouring out memories, made of felt, at the floor.

But also, in addition to being an intriguing work of art, there's not one scrap of felt wasted! If there was an award for an efficient use of art materials, this piece would surely win something. This piece is very good because it touches on several current themes in art today: the idea of memory, the idea of maps (and mapping), and the issue of recycling.

Saskia Jorda's "Cartograms of Memory" (felt installation)

Adjacent to Saskia Jorda's piece is a wall installation by Kathleen Scott Moore. It consists of a wall covered with a very peculiar wallpaper, on which hang two framed photographs, one of a man, one of a woman. The photos are arranged at far ends of the wall, in a way to suggest that each portrait is looking at the other. The wallpaper has a motif of silk screened revolvers on it, which evokes (to me) references to Andy Warhol's wallpaper installation of cows -- although Moore has strived for an Old West nostalgic effect.

Kathleen Scott Moore: it looks old fashion, but on closer examination, it's totally modern

She has two portraits on the walls, one of a man, and one of a woman, situation to look as if they're looking at each other. The photo process, however, isn't of the cowboy days. I would have expected a daguerreotype, or a process used by Matthew Brady (President Lincoln's photographer), which is more of the Old West period. But rather, it's an unusual "3D" process, where a high-resolution blue photo is printed on a piece of sheer fabric, which is stretched over a blue and white abstract painting of portrait (with only a swath of blue for hair, and a round area of white for a face), which when viewed straight on, appears to to have some depth to it, but it's no process from the Old West era that does 3D. From my knowledge of art history, I'd say that in the Old West era, there was straight on chemical-based photography, paintings, and silhouette paper cuts. Everything else is an anachronism. (If I'm wrong here, please let me know). Even the shape of the portrait is wrong: it should be a rectangle or (as in the case of portraits), an oval...but not a circle (as pictured above).

Let's consider the imagery on the wallpaper itself: First of all, notice the stripe motif that I mentioned earlier in this review; here you see it again, with the strips of wallpaper (the black lines in this piece are actually strips of black ribbon adhered to the paper). Next, notice the intersecting pattern on the wallpaper. It looks like it was drawn by an Spirograph, which was popular when I was a kid. Using the gun as a design element, their arrangement into a "two up/ two down" format, the odd "Spirograph" graphic that's also part of the wallpaper design, and the unusual photo process previously mentioned, makes it clear (to me) that nothing in this display has anything to do with the history of the Old West (or those who lived in it), yet it does feel nostalgic and historic. So where's this feeling of nostalgia coming from? It's materials, designs, and arrangements are thoroughly modern, yet we read it as a window into an older time. What causes this illusion? The more I look at this piece, the more I like it, for it demonstrates that appearance is not always reality. Nice work, Kathleen!

Across the way, on the other side of this top gallery is a piece that caught my eye, by artist Lisa Corine von Koch, called "Thank You, Come Again, Please!". This piece include parts of real saguaro cactus ribs, into which she's build birds nests, out of shredded paper, for the Mexican Spotted Owl.

Lisa Corine von Koch: owl's nest made of shredded paper!

It looks like she's emptied out her paper shredder, and used the strands of paper to weave these large basket-like objects, made of paper and long strands of videotape. This is a unique type of environmental activism: making dwellings for desert creatures out of your own trash. It's an artistic form of pollution. But, as she states in her artist statement, she's an artist who has a reverence for the natural world, but has knowledge of the hypocrisy of using materials that contribute to the degradation of the environment. A complicated piece. I like it for its heart, and for its humor.

In the east corner of the top floor, is a piece about surveillance, called "Suspects" by artist Denis Gillingwater. Perhaps it was fortuitous that this piece was placed right next to security guard. Whether intentional or not, the museum's security guard becomes part of this installation about surveillance, because he's right there next to it. As far as the qualities of the work itself go, it's a mixed media work, made with black and white photos of people looking at the Statue of Liberty (viewed from behind) with mirrors and surveillance cameras on them. The photo is stuck in a hard-to-access corner, and the only way you can get up close to it is to stand next to a CCTV security camera, and a fish-eye mirror. In fact, the surveillance equipment is so intrusive, that it's impossible to get a good view of the picture. You're always aware of that camera and that fish-eye lens.

Denis Gillwater's "Suspects": The exhibit that watches you watching it

The camera is focused on a photo. The photo shows a picture of a man (in the foreground) raising his arm up to snap a photo of the Statue of Liberty. However, his pose mimics that of the Statue of Liberty itself. Lady Liberty holding up a torch has been replaced with a guy in a hoodie and a baseball cap holding up a camera. This piece really captures the spirit of the times.


Denis Gillwater (detail of photo): Statue of Liberty...you're under surveillance

As you make your way down the sloping walkway of the Tucson Museum of Art, one of the first things you confront is Josh Shaffer's installation, called "Study of An Aftermath", which is looks like a disaster scene; it looks like someone attacked one of the museums walls, breaking a support beam, and exposing all sorts of copper tubing (used for plumbing).

Josh Schaffer's installation called "Study of An Aftermath"

On closer inspection, we see that it's more than just a disaster: it's an idea about materials breaking free of their assigned roles, and grasping for freedom. Building materials are people too! This is a piece that has welded pieces of copper tubing (used from plumbing), broken apart and re-welded, and erupting from drywall. It looks like the aftermath of a scene where simple housing materials have come to life and have asserted themselves, bursting through the drywall as if to say, "Hey! We may just look like ordinary building materials, but we're artists too! Check this out!" Schaffer says in his artist statement that he seeks to "disrupt form and function of everyday objects, and express new meaning through abstraction". One of the things that the Dada artists (and the surrealists) liked to do (about 100 years ago) was to make objects that were completely useless, such as the fur-lined tea cup. Schaffer takes a similar approach by using building materials in ways that they were never intended.

Another work I liked is a tiny little painting by Craig Cully called "Defacing the Hairdresser's Husband". I love an artist who defaces his own work. Craig Cully is a very accomplished painter, who paints in a super-realistic style. But with this piece, Cully scribbles over this portrait (of a greying middle-aged man) with a black and purple Sharpie:

Craig Cully: defacing his own art

In his artist statement, he says that his work revisits his "success with failure". I don't know why Cully writes things like that, because he's a great painter, and scribbling over preciously rendered portraits is a very brave thing to do. I really like this piece; it's a great combination of two styles. I like this direction he's taking. Keep it up, Craig!

A few steps away from Craig Cully's painting, is a really nice oil painting by Rose Moon, called "Mixed Presence". This is a painting of a graffiti-covered wall, with (what looks like) a San Francisco cityscape in the background. It uses a striped, or stratified-layer composition (as is popular with a lot of works in this show). I really like this piece because it's not just graffiti art (which I like), but rather, it's an oil painting of a graffiti-covered wall, in its context.

Rose Moon: an urban sandwich; houses, a wall, and graffitti

Moon, in her artist statement, suggests people ignore graffiti art if they see it on a city wall, but will notice it if its in a painting in an art gallery. It's odd, how we don't really look (at graffiti) unless there's some distance or a filter between it and us (I know I'm generalizing here). Or, to stay with the general gist of this review, Moon's painting is another example of an artist who considers the context of art in addition to the work itself: she didn't just make a painting of graffiti...she painted it in its natural context. She's not an installation artist, but she thinks like one.

Another piece I really got a kick out of was Kelsey Viola Wiskirchen's "A Week In Review". In this piece, she wove a tapestry out of a copy of the Sunday New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Kelsey Viola Wiskirchen: recycling yesterday's papers to make today's art!

Curt Brill has a sculpture in this show completely made of hemp fiber. It's in human form, larger than life, and looks like a scarecrow without clothes.

Curt Brill's "Faiba Niozo": hemp art!

Without a doubt, the most ambitious artwork in the Biennial is Miles Conrad's installation about institutions (correctional, psychiatric, educational). He creates an environment where you're immersed in a sort of evil sanitarium. Situated in the corner in the back of museum (usually reserved for more "mature" themes) you're confronted with several very imposing-looking structures that look like they came straight out of jail or out of a psychiatric hospital. The walls are all painted black (reinforcing the feeling of darkness), and the only illumination comes from three light bulbs: two are hanging from the ceiling (with metal covers), and one looks more like a porch light. A sickening perfume-like smell of soap permeates the room. The objects in the room, all of a harsh, chunky, "institutional" style of design, all have a waxy greasy look. It quickly becomes apparent that everything in this room (the slump block walls, the bed, the desk, the bench, everything)...is cast out of soap.

Miles Conrad's institutional sculpture, totally cast out of soap

Everything in this work is carefully considered: the type of bed (thick, heavy, and cast iron in appearance), the type of wall, and the various accouterments (cafeteria tray, toothbrushes). Everything is cast out of soap, to reinforce the idea that ins are design to provide "cleanliness" from "vermin". But as you can see in the picture above, its not really designed to heal or to cure their patients, inmates, or students. Rather, institutions are designed to quarantine society from its "dirt" (hence the use of soap as a building material). But since it's all made of soap, and it smells like soap, there must something cleansing and wholesome coming from all of this, right? There's no privacy in any of Miles Conrad's architectural constructions; every wall has a window, as is evident from this picture of a soap bed, bisected by a soap wall, which comes complete with an observation window.

Closer examination of the bed reveals that it's got about 200 toothbrushes atop it, all cast out of soap, and arranged in an apple pie crust formation.Thoughts of an obsessive desire for cleanliness, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, come to mind. Obsessive teeth brushing, the obsession of casting hundreds of toothbrushes out of soap, and then arranging them in a very specific order...

What's all that criss-cross stuff on that bed made of soap?

That's not apple pie crust! That's hundreds of toothbrushes, cast out of SOAP

It looks like a shower...but it's another observation room made of soap

There's also something that looks like a shower...the mat on the floor looks like an institutional rubber shower mat...but there's no shower. There's also no shower door. There's no water anywhere. The person who sits on the bench, however, is bathed in light, and that thing that looks like a shower door is actually an observation window. Once again, things are not what they seem. And in Conrad's "institution", you're always being watched (hence the prevalence of observation windows everywhere)

A companion exhibit, also created by Miles Conrad, (and included in the museum's back room area) is a series of seven sculpted phalluses, each resting atop a different psychiatric book, and each taking on a different theme. Here's one that is encrusted with roaches:

Conrad's roach encrusted penis cast that sits atop a psychiatry text

This project is vast in scope, and obviously took a lot of work. Very memorable and intense exhibit. Miles Conrad is an amazing artist.

After exiting Miles Conrad's faux psychiatric prison ward, you're confronted with Cameron Luft's joyful pieces of garbage wrapped in slick, shiny, highly glossed surfaces (enamel, resin, and fabric over garbage and recycling). In a way, it acts as a metaphor to Conrad's work.

Cameron Luft's artistically-sealed garbage: high fashion goat's heads??

My final stop in this exhibit came at the main floor, in the middle of the museum. There I saw a fabulous sculpture by artist Benjamin William Phillips. At first, I didn't give it a second thought, since it looked kind of thrown together, until I read the artist statement, and realized that it was all intentional. As the artist says in his artist statement, this piece is about "the metamorphosis of aging as a man and a woman quietly and privately endure the natural ailments of growing older". You see two figures, and a wheelbarrow, falling apart, but continuing to move forward. This is another great piece of art. I can't help wondering if this piece didn't come together as an accident; as if the artist actually had two sculptures, and actually joined them together (thematically) with the wheelbarrow. Regardless, it's a great piece of work. Bravo!

...and that is my report on the Arizona Biennial 2011! An all-around very impressive show. This art is on par with any major exhibit you'd see anywhere in the world. See it while you can. Arizona Artists have got the right stuff! We all have reason to be proud of the talent in our own backyard.

SUMMER ART CRUISE! More great work from Tucson's artists

2011-06-06T00:26:00.000-07:00

Every month in Tucson, the first Saturday is devoted to a downtown artwalk, where all of the galleries stay open, from 6 - 9 pm. Today, I visited four galleries in the afternoon (Hotel Congress Lobby, Drawing Studio, Shot in the Dark Cafe, and Etherton Gallery), and seven galleries at night (Crystal Rhinestone Gallery, Davis Dominguez Gallery, Contreras Gallery, Platform Gallery, Raices Taller, Conrad Wilde Gallery, Dinnerware Gallery, and Solar Culture.

The lobby in Hotel Congress is currently showing an exhibit of nine framed collaged drawings of "world travelers" by artist Barbara Brandel. Each piece is the representation of a character, who is made out of postage stamps. The background of each piece is a portion of some map. The stamps and the maps aren't really related in any way, but sometimes they are (as in the case of the outer space stamps set against the backdrop a piece of a map of the moon. Brandel has a formula that she uses to make these images: each 'traveler" gets their face from some postage stamp that's got a portrait for an image, while the the body is composed various other stamps. Brandel's pictures are cute, and probably appreciated by the world travelers who pass through Tucson and stay overnight at the Congress Hotel.

"Chionsam for travel" by Barbara Brandel; note the little postage stamp head

A short walk around the corner on 6th Ave is The Drawing Studio. There is always work on their walls, evidence of the numerous classes taught here. Currently they are showing, in their main room, a collection of intaglio prints made by students of the drawing studio. Jennifer Clarke has the most prominent display here: 16 prints of muscle shells (or are they lungs? or hemispheres of the brain??) Each print is a different color; same image, different colors, 16 times, arranged in a 4 x 4 matrix:

image lifted from http://harriethomemaker.wordpress.com/

Other images in this show were Joe Marshall's "Shades",

"Shades" by Joe Marshall

a portrait of a woman by Jeanne Davenport,

image by Jeanne Davenport (listed as "untitled" in the show)

and "Birth" by Gerry Young, is a photo etching. The image looks like a grainy black and white photo of a dried desert plant; it has a "jaws" look.

Those pointy shapes are actually spines or thorns, yikes! ("Birth" by Gerry Young)

After visiting the Drawing Studio, I walked down the street to the Etherton Gallery to get a glimpse of their "Masters of American Photography" exhibit, but it wasn't schedule to open for four days from this writing, so my visit was a bit premature. Still, I did get to look around, and there's a huge amount of work in there. Here's a glimpse of what I saw:


The whole gallery was crammed with work like this! Should be a good show!

I then went across the street to the Shot in the Dark Cafe to hang out for a while, and to check out whatever art they had on their walls. I was in luck! They'd just hung a new exhibit by artist Amber Guevara (aka "Poshie"). She was at the cafe writing up labels. Her work is very edgy and dark. I like how she combines are own cartoon drawings with found objects (that is, the boards that serve as her painting surfaces), and then she goes back into them with spray paint. She uses marker, spray paint, and acrylic on wood, and various boards. Her work is a combination of collage, cartoons, found objects, and graffiti. Her work isn't the easiest to look at, but it captures something real about our society. I think she's very talented. Her work is very gutsy.

artist Amber Guevara in front of her piece "Bang!"

"Happiness" by Amber Guevara

"Bang!" by Amber Guevara

When 6 pm rolled, I started checking out galleries on 6th Street. The first one I walked into was the Crystal Rhinetone Gallery. This gallery features the work of Seoyeong Cho (Gupton). She makes very large water color paintings, with loads of salt added for effect. There is so much salt on these works, that it's piled up like a crust. I don't know how she gets the salt to adhere to those large sheets of watercolor paper, but the effect is quite startling; just a few colors with loads of salt added.

Seoyeong Cho (Gupton) in front of one of her massive crusty clouds

These works are huge. She told me that she works in the manner of Jackson Pollock, the famed Abstract Expressionist artist who worked in hip boots, splattering and drooling paint over large sheets of canvas. Seoyeong Cho works in a similar fashion, but instead of oil on canvas, she uses watercolor (and salt) on paper.

Seoyeong Cho (Gumpton), with friend, in front of another of her large salty paintings

Next door to the Crystal Rhinestone, is the Conrad Wilde Gallery. Tonight was the opening of local artist Barbara Rogers. For years Barbara Rogers has been making very stylized paintings that explore natural forms. Her work seems in line with the motivations of art noveau movement, in it's to create flowing, stylized, natural forms, although, as Rogers pointed out, she doesn't include images of people in her work: just natural stylized forms. One thing that impressed me about Rogers' work on display at the Conrad Wilde Gallery is how contemporary it looks: it's bright vivid color, its hard-edged shapes, its division of the painting surface into a series of small sub-paintings, and the overall highly vertical shape of her pieces...it reminds me of tattoo art and Japanese comics, two art forms popular among today's youth.

artist Barbara Rogers at her opening at Conrad Wilde

Barbara told me that she regards her paintings as "vertical gardens", and that she is very inspired by the "arabesque" design. The vertical shape is very oriental; just think of Chinese or Japanese paintings: they often work on the vertical.

Rogers builds a compositional tension into her work: the subdivision of her pieces into smaller panels into smaller squares is evidence of "the human", whereas organic forms are a ode to nature. On many levels, her work is enjoyable to look at: as I've noted earlier, it's got a very contemporary sense of design which seems aware and a part of current trends in graphic design, plus its got some deep links with art history. Nice work, Barbara!

At Davis Dominquez Gallery, there was a mob scene of people attending the gallery's summer invitational. All kinds of art, big and small, were on display. I counted roughly 75 artworks on the walls of all of the rooms and spaces that make up the gallery. Four pieces jumped out at me in particular: works by Albert Kogel, Joe Hatton, Lee Chesney, and Barbara Jo McLaughlin.

Albert Kogel had some sculptured wood pieces of his dog, a favorite subject of his (with a red bird on his dog's head) . I like his stressed wood approach at creating this work; it looks chunks of wood bashed together with a hammer and them reinforced with nails, and...did I see dog teeth marks?? I really like Albert's work for it's visceral earthy quality. It brings out the dog in me.

Albert Kogel: "Sabia and Friend"

Another piece I liked was Joe Hatton's drawing called "Thirsty Cholla", which he drew with a Sharpie and Whiteout...some of my favorite art materials!

"Thirsty Cholla" by Joe Hatton

Artist Lee Chesney had a very large colorful painting in the show, called "Heaven Can Wait". It's a very joyful colorful piece, and seems to be about good vibes and loving life. The whole painting looks as if it's in party mode:


"Heaven Can Wait" by Lee Chesney

Local sculptor Barbara Jo McLaughlin has a new, very interesting wooden piece in this show called "Rocking Structure". It's made of wood, steel, and aluminum. Those of you who've followed Barbara's work in the past know that wood is her favorite material, especially plywood. I think it's a lot of fun, and it's kinetic! Just tap it, and it starts rocking back and forth!

Barbara Jo McLaughlin's "Rocking Structure"

Mc Laughlin with "Rocking Structure". Just give it a tap, and it's off to the races!

Further down the street is the Contreras Gallery, where David Tineo was having a solo exhibit. If Tucson has a art rockstar, he is it. He sat in the gallery, like a king, surrounded by his creations. I must say, Tineo has gotten even better! His work is much more finished than I recall seeing in the past. Or maybe it's just the effect of seeing about fifteen of his paintings all in one place. His recent exhibit at the Tucson Museum of Art (about a year ago) had a similar effect of me. When you see a room full of Tineo's work all at once, the effect is really quite powerful.


David Tineo with his painting "Corn Princess"

"Guardian Warrior": This would make a great comic book cover!

"Gothic Angel": Tineo at his mythological, surrealistic best. He's not just a painter...he's a storyteller!

At the Raices Taller 222 Gallery, down the street, the theme was "Chubasco!" (or "Monsoon")...how considerate of Raices, to grace Tucson with an art exhibit about torrential downpour, right as we're in the midst of another scorching summer! This show is loaded with artwork, some of it very good. A particular fave of mine is Joe Rebholz's digitally manipulated photos of Doppler storm photos. I remember Joe always having to make his case over and over again that what he was doing was "digial painting" (versus "computer graphics"). Well, I think he's finally succeeded! These are rich and roiling (and large) digital prints that have all of color and apparant texture of a painting. I think they're really great. John Salgado also had an interesting installation piece called "Barrio Monsoon", which hwe describes as a mixed media assemblage with found objects. Basically Salgado simulated the effect of a storm, with water drizzling on a window pane and water dripping into a tin bucket. A hidden water pump kept the piece chugging along forever. There were many pieces here tonight worth mentioning. Raices has a policy of no photography of artwork during openings, so I've got none to show here, but maybe I'll get a chance to get some photos later on in the month. Check out the show while it's up. Another personal fave: "Tloloc's Waterproof Rain Curtain", but some artist whose name I can remember. ;)

At the Platform Gallery, painter Bryan Crow has some interesting paintings of brains. They seem to be based on MRI pictures of the brain. He's added tutti-frutti colors and psychedelic stylings jazz things up. I like pop graffitti-like quality of his work. He reminds me a mix between Basqiat and Gary Panter. This work I regard as "fun". Would probably make great images for CD album covers!

"Thinking" by Bryan Crow: this is your brain on art

"Wake Up" by Bryan Crow. An intimate self portrait of the artist's brain?

Another artist whose work I liked at the Platform Gallery was Nadia Hlibka. She had a sculptural object, shaped like a house, and made of a copy of the Tucson White Pages.

"My Home Town" by Nadia Hlibka

Over at the Dinnerware Gallery, more interesting stuff on display. An ambitious piece by Kaye Guerin, some funky art by Roberta Lewis, and some eye-candy by Jerome Rago.

A huge sculptured painting by Kaye Guerin

some funky art by Roberta Lewis

"Let's Go Crazy" by Jerome Rago

Last stop for me was Solar Culture. It was a mob scene in there. That narrow space, crowded shoulder to shoulder, with a long table of complimentary eats, and art crammed on every free space on the walls, from floor to ceiling. At the far end of the gallery, a band was setting up it's instruments on the stage.

An amazing doorway at Solar Culture

art hung floor-to-ceiling, with the sweaty throng below

...and still more art!

And that's the way it was (to me) for Tucson's Downtown Artwalk "Summer Cruise"! There were still a lot of things that I missed, but that should give you a sense of some of what's happening in Downtown Tucson's art scene.

Tune in again, for another installment of Tucson's Art Exhibits Reviewed!

Amazing (Mostly) Women Artists! Downtown Tucson Art Walk, 8 May 2011

2011-05-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

Last night, I walked to Tucson's downtown "art's district", where artists are renovating old train depot warehouses, in exchange for art studio and gallery space. In today's installment, I visit three galleries: Studio One, Central Arts, and Raices Taller. Each gallery had excellent work.


"Heart On Fire" by Martin Quintinilla (size: very big, wall sized)

First stop was a new place called Studio One Gallery. I just kind of walked right into it, I didn't even know that it was there. It's a new place, and they'll have their official opening next month, but are open tonight to be part of the Art Walk. Studio One Gallery is a small room just off of Toole Ave. The room itself is about 10 feet x 20 feet. The artists showing here now are: Martin Quintinilla, Paco Velez, Donovan White, Mary Miranda James, Gabriel Ruiz Villegas, Manuel Abril, Arial Diaz, Dave Sayre, and Rueben Moreno ( I may have overlooked one or two) This show has about 20 pieces on its walls.

By the far, the best piece here tonight at Studio One is a very large unmounted acrylic on canvas painting by Martin Quintinilla, called "Heart on Fire". When Quintinilla is good, he's really good. His best stuff reminds of a Mexican pop-art Hieronymous Bosch. Everywhere you look, there's something going on. It's like an explosion of cartoons, surrealistic imagery, pop culture artifacts, graffiti, patterns, and textures. The effect on the senses is "holy shit!" He's also got a small alterpiece to Jimi Hendrix, which I think is really great. Look for his work. Highly recommended.

Jimi Hendrix alterpiece, by Martin Quintinilla

Further on down the street is the new gallery called Central Arts Collective, which is a very large brick warehouse. Lots of space here, and I think that about 15 artists are showing here tonight. I showed up a bit late, so I only got to talk to two artists here about their work, before closing time. First was a woman named Kaye Guerin, who has an interesting textural painting called "Changing Woman".

Kaye Guerin, with her piece "Changing Woman"

The painting shows a young girl being escorted up the Chiracahua Mountains by her father, in what is know in Sioux Indian culture as the the "Sunrise Ceremony". According to Guerin, this happens when a young womans enters puberty. The painting show a young girl climbing the Chiricahua Mountains with her father, but unless you know the backstory, the meaning might be lost on you. Luckily, I'd bumped into Kaye when I entered the gallery, so she explained the story to me.

Guerin's interest in the "Changing Woman" ceremony is due, in part, to her being part Sioux Indian herself, and also because she actually a "Changing Woman" ceremony. Her painting documents the story. She says that she's trained in Classical European Art, and that shows in the way she's composed her picture (along a diagonal that goes from the lower right to the upper left), as well as how she's treated the figure, using light and shadow. However, she's added her own innovation: a sort of built-up texture in the figures that gives the painting a bas-relief effect: the figures protrude from the surface, because they are actually sculpted. Thus, this piece is a painting with a lot of sculptural elements. Guerin regards this as a secret formula, because she had to figure out a way to incorporate sculptured images onto a flat surface without them falling off due to their weight. (The solution, she tells me, is a sort of weaving and layering process) So Kaye Guerin's work is about two things: the "Changing Woman" ceremony (which she illustrates), and the unique assembly technique which she uses to hold this thing together.

Also on exhibit tonight is new work by artist Peg Wilmore. She likes to paint pictures of reflective surfaces. The work here tonight is images of streetlights in the rain. They are based on her own photographs. I've been watching Peg's work for years, and this is her best stuff. She's really loosened up, and become more gritty and expressionistic. This is due to the fact that she's now painting with a pallate knife, and that she's working with just a few colors, usually no more than two or three. I really like her new work, I think it's great.

"Slippery" by Peg Hansen (oil on wood panel)

Peg Hansen with her painting "Red Neon" (oil on wood)

The last gallery I visited was Raices Taller (on 6th Street). This was there big yearly "Mujeres!" show, which features the work only made by women. There was a big party atmosphere at the gallery, as there usually is at Raices. Lots of variety. all type of work. More than half of the work in this show is paintings, so I'm happy that Raices is keeping with art and tradition; if you're going to have an art exhibit, you've got to have drawing and painting! I counted 52 paintings, 8 photos, 8 mixed media pieces, 6 sculptures, and 1 installation piece. As far as themes go, the work is very varied. What was surprising to me is that for an exhibit that showcased the work of women artists, there were very few actual images of women. The most notable images of women were Mel Dominguez's night club singer, and Sofia Gomez's photos of "Abueltias": Mexican grandmothers smoking cigarettes.

"Abuelita" by Sofia Gomez

Lori Anderson turned in an excellent wall sculpture called "Grandmother". The face is made of ceramic, mounted on copper, with strands of fiber as hair.

"Grandmother" by Lori Anderson (sorry for the blurry image)

Right next to Lori Anderson's piece as a colorful painting by Pilar Hanson called "On The Move 3". Lots of bright colors (hot pink, orange, yellow, and blue) The image is of a cowboy (or cowgirl?) on a horse. The word "Taos" is in the background. There's a line that snakes throughout the picture, with dots on it; probably a map of a trip to Taos, via horse, and the destination? The "5th house"... (just guessing)

"On the Move" by Pilar Hanson

One of my favorite pieces is a sculpture by Pauline Pedregon, called "Beauty Secrets Revealed". The piece looks like big ceramic girdle, that is decorated to resemble muscle. It looks like a stripped muscle sculpture. A mysterious hand (painted on the sculpture) reaches from behind, towards a breast, which is covered with flowers.

"Beauty Secrets Revealed" by Pauline Rodregon (painted ceramic)

There's also an interesting painted wood piece by Michelle Misteike. The image looks like a rumpled scarf (or maybe it's just a design of her own invention). The top and bottom of this painting are cut into, and given a wavy-line shape (hard to see in my blurry photo)

painting by Michelle Misteike

In the front room of the gallery, right by the front door, and next to a big hanging installation piece, is an allegorical painting by Mahala Lewis called "The Consumption of Fragility". The first thing you notice are chickens and hens, then you notice a bunch of psychedelic designs around the sides of the picture. As you look closer, it appears that they are in a cave. I know that this isn't the most high-falutin interpretation or description, but hey...I'm just trying to descibe what I'm looking at. She's also got this Cezanne-like thing happening with her eggs: they look their stacked vertically against a flat wall.

"The Consumption of Fragility" by Mahala Lewis (oil on canvas)

This is a good exhibit! I wish I had more time to mention some other artists, but I got to the gallery late, and didn't have a lot of time. But I liked what I saw! Lots of work, lots of variety, and what's more, it avoids agit-prop shtick. In another era, an exhibit devoted to women's art would surely have included several depictions of vaginas, which (in my mind) has become a cliche with women's art. No vaginas in this exhibit. This show is an all-around wide variety of solid art, that just happens to be made by women. Well worth the visit!

And that sums up my brief tour of Tucson's downtown art scene for May 8, 2011. I'll be back with more in an another installment of...Tucson's Art Exhibits Reviewed!

Sylvia Garland: Paintings & Montotypes at the Tucson Jewish Community Center (April 14-May 19, 2011)

2011-04-25T02:14:00.000-07:00

"Betty's Garden" (monotype))

Local painter Sylvia Garland will be sharing the gallery with photographer Edlynne Stillman this month at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. This review will focus on the work of Sylvia Garland.

Sylvia Garland has two bodies of work in this exhibit: oil paintings and monotypes. She's got 12 oil paintings, and 10 monotypes, and they are hung in a straight row in the gallery, with the oil paintings lined up on one side of the wall, and the monotypes lined up on the other.

A monotype is a one-shot print that is similar to painting. The artist inks a plexiglass plate with sticky printing ink (which comes in a variety of colors), then draws or scratches into the surface (that is, "drawing"), and then putting a piece of paper over it an running it through a printing press, to produce a one-shot print; a print made from a painting of printer's ink. With the work she has here, Sylvia isn't content to simply create a straightforward monoprint. Rather, she adds various other materials, such as leaves, or bit of fabric, into order to introduce a realistic "natural" element, but also to add visual interest. In works such as "Betty's Garden", the Eucalyptus leaves, which she's inked with yellow ink, jump forward as the more hazy bands of color recede into the background.

As far as colors go, Sylvia likes to stick the the basic primary and secondary colors. This is true for both her monotypes as well as her oil paintings. In many of her works, you'll find an object for every primary and secondary color. She seems to like there to be an equal balance between shapes colored red, yellow, blue, green, red, and purple. Her work is strongest, I feel, when one of those colors predominates -- that is, where one color dominates the picture


"Interlude"

One such picture is "Interlude", which is a monontype with some great drawing of abstracted figures involved in what looks like a dance or ceremony. The picture reminds me of cave painting, but Garland has some additional features, such as the impression of some grass-like matter in the center bottom portion of the picture. She's also collaged some interesting elements into this piece, such as shiny copper foil (on the figure in the far left of the picture), as well as having collaged tiny scraps of sheet music throughout the right side of this piece (impossible to see in this photo) Most of the monotypes in this exhibit have that "cave" quality. For me, this type of imagery is an homage to surrealism common in the 1940's or so. That's what I'm referring to when I say that Garlands work has a retro-surreal quality to it.

"Pieris' (oil on canvas)

Sylvia's oil paintings have a similar retro-surreal quality, although the subject matter is different. As she says in her artist's statement, she's inspired by plant shapes, and uses that as a point of departure for her artwork. Indeed, it's easy to recognize plant forms in her work. What I like about Sylvia's style though, is that here's an ambiguity about where and what her subject matter really is. Although she's initially inspired by plant forms, many of her oil paintings have the look of a neural network; they remind me of scientific illustrations of brain synapses. Other times, her work looks like the interior of a cave, with its stalactites and stalagmites, growing together from floor to ceiling. Sylvia may paint from Nature, but she does a lot of embellishing an improvising, which in turn gives her renditions of Nature a sort of otherworldly spaced out quality.

"Botanica"

One of my favorite pieces n this show is an oil painting called "Botanica". Sylvia Garland's work has a sort of nostalgic quality that makes me think back to science fiction and fantasy illustration of the '50's. The subject matter is seed pods, and a ripe pomegranate bursting open with seeds. It's got a kind of other worldly eroticization of plant life.

Her monotypes more often than not include abstractions of the human figure, whereas her oil paintings (in this show) are almost exclusively about natural forms, especially seed pods. I enjoy looking at her work. She's interested in forms and shapes, and working basic colors: the primaries and secondaries. She has a real affinity for natural forms, and demonstrates this by adding bits of real plant-life to her monoprints, and also creating an invented surrealistic environment in her oil paintings. She's got a good sense for creating interesting environments, that are ambiguous in size: are those plant forms in a dark cave? Or are they microscopic, akin to nerve cells in your brain? My guess is they're probably both: ripe, abstracted forms, that represent the varieties of all life forms. Much of this work has a strange other-worldly quality to it, but once you take it all in, you can see that, as with the monoprint "Interlude", it's about the dance of Life.

Alfred Quiroz: new work at Davis Dominguez Gallery (April 20 - May 21, 2011)

2011-04-22T01:17:00.000-07:00

close up of "La Raza Cozmika"

For the next month, from April 20 - May 21 (2011), Alfred Quiroz shares an exhibit with the recently deceased Luis Jimenez. This review focuses on Quiroz' work; I'll revisit Jimenez's work in this show at another time.

In this exhibit, Quiroz has four portfolios of work: three more additions to his "American Presidents" series, some large "milagros" that were installation art at the Mexico/Arizona Border fence, Drawings about his experience as a professor at the UA Art Department, and finally, a few cartoons of Jesus and a veiled Muslim sharing a joke.

Right away, when surveying this work, you can see that Quiroz has no time for the advice to avoid talking about religion or politics, lest you offend somebody. Quiroz's work is designed to provoke and offend. In fact, some of his most powerful work has a pornographic quality to it; it just seems too hot to handle; forbidden. Just by being in the presence of one of his history paintings, just by paying attention to his art, it feels that you're somehow implicated in some sort of conspiracy.

He draws you into his paintings with a rich sense of color, huge scale, a "Looney Toons" drawing style, and the painting skills of Thomas Benton Hart (Harry Truman's favorite painter), but his subject matter is all about the sweep and tragedy of Colonial history. His paintings are very well researched. He packs a lot of historical images into his work, and to fully appreciate the references he's making with his imagery, you might need to do some background reading. His artwork presupposes that the audience is literate in history. (A reading list, or a bibliography might help!)

What you first see when you walk into the gallery are Quiroz's very large "milagros", or lucky charms, often used for healing. But these aren't small charms that you wear as jewelry. No, these were large works made of brushed aluminum that were mounted on the Mexico side of the Arizona-Mexico border fence, for several years, as a public art project. Each piece is roughly the size on an arm-span.

"La Razon de Corazon" border fence milagro

All six of these milagros cover the entire south wall of the Davis-Dominquez gallery. The titles are "La Lengue de Coyote" (which is the image of an angry-looking wolf); "Corriendo Recio" (image of a disembodied leg); "Brazo de Trabajo" (image of an arm holding a hoe); "Te Miro" (looks like a mardi gras mask), and "Mano por Centavo" (which shows an outstretched palm with a "cent" sign stamped into it). Once you understand what you're looking at (border fence milagros) , you can Quiroz's approach to art is not simple to amuse, beautify, or entertain the work, to rather, to agitate it. I'm trying to imagine what it would be like for a Mexican family to arrive at the Arizona-Mexico border fence, to be greeted by these giant milagros. Quiroz isn't an artist who stays cloistered away in the studio or within academia (more work on that later in this article); rather, he gets out in the real world, and installs work that directly confronts the public.

(Prof. Quiroz clarifies via email: "La Lengua del Coyote" is a "coyote" with a forked tongue, a "coyote" being the individual that crosses illegals across the border. The "mask"piece is an actual milagro image that I copied except I made the pupils larger as a way of saying "I saw you" in regard to the video surveillance on the border. The piece was photographed in the May 2007 Nat. Geographic Mag. The "Corriendo Recio" piece means "running fast" i.e. escaping across the border.")

As you round the corner in the gallery, facing East, you're then confronted with three of Quiroz' latest history paintings in his "American Presidents" series. The biggest and most intricate ("The Mendacious Maniacal Magician") chronicles the presidency of George Bush and the War in Irag. This piece is so hot, that I really feel uncomfortable describing it (that's the "porn" quality I was referring to earlier). But I'll just say that the painting is large: about 6 ft high x 3 ft across, and it is acrylic painted on wood, cut out in the shape of a mushroom cloud. The composition quotes El Greco (??), placing "angels" (with bat wings) in the sky (with the faces of the Neo Cons), while George Bush is painted as a sorcerer. Corporate logos of war contractors decorate the floor space of this picture, while American flags, and "yellow ribbon" icons decorate the background. There are many visual references to puns and nicknames.

(Prof. Quiroz clarifies via email: "The Bush piece is actually 49" across and it is oil on canvas and panel. The arrangement of the "cherubs" are from a Titian painting.")

This work falls into the tradition of history painting; The history painting is actually a very well-respected genre in art. Wikipedia writes this about the genre of history painting:

"The history painting was traditionally regarded as the highest form of Western painting, occupying the most prestigious place in the hierarchy of genres, and considered the equivalent to the epic in literature"

...However, Quiroz' use of cartoons, taboo subjects, and satire, place it more within the realm of underground comix (e.g. "Zap" or "Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers"); history painting rendered in the style of the underground comix of the 1960's.

Next to this piece, are two presidential portraits: one of George Washington as a black man (an obvious homage to Gilbert Stuart's classic painting of Washington), and the other of President Obama as a blonde-haired white man. Personally, I find Quiroz's humor in this pair of portraits superb.

"George Washington"

"F Ulna I Wuz White"

The largest piece in this show, and the most sweeping in historical scope, is titled "La Raza Kozmika", which is mounted on the North wall of the gallery, and measures roughly 8 ft long x 4 ft high.

"La Raza Kozmika"

The composition of this piece is the design of a dollar bill. The character in the portrait section of the bill looks like a mix between the Spanish Conquistador (on the left-of-center side of the picture), and the African slave (on the right-of-center side of the picture). The figure in the center is black-by-a-half result of the union of these two cultures, looking like one of the characters from the old "Fat Albert" cartoon of yesteryear, and wearing a "Mr. Monopoly" hat (from the board game "Monopoly"). On each flank of this painting are images of Africans being killed by Europeans. On the left flank, there is a painting of a black woman, clutching a crucifix, while hanging by a noose affixed a to a cross. Underneath her, is a ribbon of text that says "Mexico 1554", while on the right, we see a black man in overalls hanging from a tree; a ribbon underneath his feet includes the text: "Florida 1938"; an Aztec woman at the bottom of the picture holds what looks like a corazon milagro in each hand, as if to suggest some sort of mystical continuity with the with the killing of Africans by Europeans, as the Europeans conquered the New World.

(Prof. Quiroz claifies via email: "Raza Kozmika depicts an image from the Codex Telleriano Remensis of the lynching of the leader of the slave rebellion in 1534 Mexico City. There was a tremendous earthquake and a comet was also in the sky on that day. it is not a female. The Aztecs and the African slaves had joined forces to oust the Spaniards, unfortuneately they did not have muskets. The central figure is Memin Pequin, a well known Mexican African comic book character. In 2005 Mexico issued postage stamps to commemorate him. I copied his image with top hat, only I anglo-sized him. The Aztec woman offers her hearts to either the slave or the Spaniard. The piece is slightly over 5 ft. tall.")

Some of my favorite work in this show are Quiroz's smaller drawings about academic life at the University of Arizona. There are four framed pieces which are his notes from monthly faculty meetings. Quiroz's notes at these meetings are comic strip doodles....now framed and available for sale! Personally, I think that these are a bargain at $200 each (framed!)

Alfred Quiroz's faculty meeting notes: comix!

Another standout for me (in what I'll call Quiroz's "Office Politics" series) is his drawing of new Art Faculty members (portrayed as fascists) in a piece called " Projected SOA Faculty Uniforms.".

" Projected SOA Faculty Uniforms." by Alfred Quiroz (pencil & watercolor)

This piece just drips with bile. The characters are identified as "Faculty, Fred", "Assistant Prof, Art Theorist", and "Assistant Prof, 2D Studies". On the left of the picture are designs for faculty arm bands. Throughout this piece, are arrows pointing out salient details of the wardrobe of the New Order in the art department. Judging from the content of the "office politics" work here, one gets the impression that life in the Art Department is fraught with just as much politics, intrigue, and conspiracy as areQuiroz's historical tableaus.

One thing that stands out after viewing this show is that Alfred Quiroz is a passionate educator. Years ago, when I was one of his painting students, he told the class that "your work has to be about something. You've got to be working on some kind of edge". There are many edges in this exhibit.

Check out this show! You'll be impressed by his painting technique, and by the physical construction of his paintings. You'll be provoked and maybe even pissed off by his political provocation. You'll be confused and amazed at his willingness to gore sacred cows. You'll confront some modern-day history paintings, maybe for the first time in your life. But you'll also realize that you've got an old-school painter in town with balls of steel (or is that abraided aluminum?) who's still willing to stand up and fight for his art. This is gutsy stuff. Going a Quiroz exhibit is what I imagine going to going to a bullfight is like: there's an underlying level of danger that lingers around this stuff.

Looking for hardcore attitude in artwork today? Looking for art that's about something? Looking for art that is brave? That will challenge you? That will irk you? That is done with skill that grows out a painterly tradition in art history? You've come to the right place. Welcome to a master of the art of painted political broadside.

Jean Nerenberg's water media paintings at the Tucson Jewish Community Center Fine Art Gallery

2011-04-14T22:04:00.000-07:00

painting by Jean Nerenberg

Local artist Jean Neremberg has some very nice colorful water media work at the Fine Art Gallery at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. Unfortunately, the exhibit will be closed by the time you read this. The gallery at the JCC is a great place to see art, mainly because of its huge skylight, and tall glass windows, which provide for ample natural light, which is what's needed to really appreciate her colorful paintings.

I can tell, just by looking at her paintings, that she works in a very exploratory and inquisitive way. It reminds me of the way I paint, so I can relate to her creative process here. It looks like she starts by laying down colors, shapes, and marks, and just seeing what it becomes, seeing what it reminds her of. Only later does she shape her initial marks into recognizable subject matter.

The mountains in piece pictured above is made out of amorphous colors, shapes, and marks, without any regard for "reality", for this is a work of discovery and imagination. When you get your face right into this work, there is a lot of variety to really appreciate: from hard-edged shapes, to soft diffuse marks, to experiments with pattern....it's really a rich piece, and a real pleasure to look at.

In the piece above, she's restricted her palette to just a few colors (orange, blue, purple, and ochre), and that's enough for my tastes; any more colors, and the work would become too cluttered. For the most part, most of her work has very vibrant color matched against softer pastel colors, and she likes to work with color complements. Thus, you'll see blue and orange as the predominant colors in one painting, and magenta and olive green in another. Her use of color complements (that is, colors on opposite sides of the color wheel) give her paintings a vibrancy and a sense of excitement.

Here subject matter is also interesting. She has two kinds of subject matter here: amorphous landscapes, and geometric cosmic paintings. The geometric cosmic paintings are have a lot of round shapes, which are arranged as if they are planets, while angles cut through the picture, chopping up the space, but also service as a organizational structure. I find this work really interesting, and very well done.

painting by Jean Nerenberg

In her artist's statement, she writes: "ideas for paintings evolve as the paint flows on the paper or canvas. Jean wants to capture the excitement of the creative process by working with the irregular and accidental properties of the medium, rather than glossing over or correcting them".

This is some of the strongest work I've seen at the JCC's art gallery in a long time. I feel that her stronger pieces are those which have rich color and interesting shapes. I like how she's taken random shapes and splatters, and turned them into mountainscapes, and solar systems. Nice work! A pleasure to look at!

"Borderlandia" at the Tucson Museum of Art

2011-04-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

The "Borderlandia" exhibit, currently showing at the Tucson Museum of Art, is an awesome exhibit. The effect on the senses that that of an onslaught; a cultural overload. If kitsch-culture was a religion, then this show would be its temple. Like the churches of Europe, the art tells stories...multiple stories of cultural collision; of blood, pain, suffering, and the quest for gold, or at least all that glitters. And in this show, all that glitters may not be gold, and it actually more likely to be glass.

The artwork is a cross-cultural mish-mash. It is so cluttered, and riddled with glitz, color, texture, and advertising images, that the effect on the senses is overwhelming. It's quite possible to get a headache at this show, the amount of visual material here is nauseating. It looks like what I normally associate with "post modern art" (that is, art that is made of found objects, appropriated images, and with an odd ahistorical quality)...but a large part of it is made of cast or blown glass.

Images from art history, from Spanish Colonial history, Mexican pop culture, Southern California hot rod culture, and American pop-culture are all thrown together into a cultural blender, and then organized around familiar shapes (e.g. the Aztec calendar wheel) and colors.

The imagery is crude, crass, glitzy, and very well done. The materials alone are outrageous: 3D hologram images with attached cartoon eye stickers, in fur-lined frames. It's got a delicious quality to it. Does anyone here remember the ice-cream restaurant in the El Con Mall called "Farrell's"? Farrell's had an item on their menu called "The Boat", which was a large silver trough with about forty scoops of ice cream in it. Trying to look at everything in this exhibit, and to try to process it, is like attempting to eat "The Boat"; it's that visually rich.

A few of the pieces that stood out for me: "Killing the Inner Child": a glass Lucha Libre wrestler sculpture, with real inset glass eyes, holding a cheap plastic mirror; "E.R. For the Soul", which combines Leonardo's "Last Supper" (at the top of the picture) with a bowling alley at the bottom, with attached glass "punk" figurines at the bottom of the picture, give a 3D effect to the viewer (with objects which are closer to you in the picture actually protruding out from the picture plane, and those that are further back in space remaining flat)

There is another "Last Supper" reference in the show, and that is a piece called "Cambia de Canal"/"Change of Channel"), which uses a five foot high silver colored menorah as the main foundation of the piece, atop with sits an old 15" black and white TV, covered in aluminum foil, and which is ON, and set to a station that has "snow"; a circular opening for the screen has an Aztec Calendar when drawn upon in Sharpie. Atop the TV, sits a glass cast of the Last Supper, but instead of faces, there are numbers, which references those old "who's who" key charts in those old cigarette ads from the '60's. At the base of the menorah are about 20 beer, wine, and booze bottles spray painted silver. What does it mean? Well...it looks like an electronic cross-cultural mishmash sculpture, made of art and artifacts both old and new, sacred and profane...and with a touch of glass. That description could be used to briefly summarize most all of the work in this exhibit.

I circled though "Borderlandia" three times. First, I made a quick pass through, then a second time spending longer periods of time around pieces that I especially liked, and finally, hanging out by the massive cathedral-like facade on the second level, where the effect of art nausea on me was particularly intense.

One observation that I had was that a lot of this work, especially the round flat work, reminded me of platters of food from Costco. How apt!

All of this visual richness, its "yummy" quality, but also it's gross headache inducing quality, makes "Borderlandia" an amazing show. This is an exhibit that really can rival Disneyland in the way of visual thrills, but also the nausea that often accompanies too much cotton candy, and too many rides on the roller coasters. It's about time!

James Cook: Large Landscape Paintings @ Davis Dominguez Gallery

2011-03-30T08:11:00.000-07:00

In the cavernous space that is the Davis Dominguez Gallery currently is on display over a dozen large landscape oil paintings by artist James Cook. Most of them are square in shape, measuring roughly six feel of either side. The subject matter is the outdoors, the wilderness...but there's something unusual about these pictures that is not immediately obvious.

"Redhorse Cattails" by James Cook

At first glance, they look like large painted illustrations of mountains and forests, painted in a style that summons up how artists tended to portray the outdoors in magazines from the 1950's or 1960's: They're very competent paintings, but the colors and the way they're painted have a sort of old "illustration" look about them. There are only a few colors in these paintings, and neutral colors (such as browns and grays) predominate. The compositions tend to be organized around simple lines that cut the canvas into simple divisions: usually an "S" or a "V"-like shape. Those broad compositional lines end up taking the form of a river, or of a fallen tree. Otherwise, these pictures have a very boxy look to them, because the details of his paintings contain a lot of vertical and horizontal lines, which tends to tame the wild quality of his subject matter.

These are massive paintings, so there's no way that Cook painted these from life (ala the "plein aire" approach). These are paintings based on reference photos. Although the pictures appear to be very realistic in appearance, and his shapes hard-edged, closer examination reveals that there's actually a lot of loose painting going on here. I can imagine Cook painting very loosely and quickly, as suggested by many of the loose and gestural paint strokes distributed throughout the middle layers of his paintings.

"Beaver Creek, Fall"

There is very little air space in these pictures; it's all right there, in your face. And one other thing: there is very little depth of space in these pictures. Cook's paintings portray scenes of Nature as a wall; there is no path to follow back into the painting; the trees are lined up to block your view, as are the rocks. Though this pictures are huge, their space is cramped. Though Nature is filled with color, Cook's chosen to tamp it down to two or three, and some grey tones. This is "Nature illustration" on a grand scale, but his focus is on a private little overlooked piece of it. Supersized little details of a Nature walk, photographed and redelivered as huge wall pieces, painted with a palette knife and a rubber spatula. The paintings here in this exhibit are big and competent...but very safe. If fact, they feel as though they are a barrier: no expansive vistas, no glorious skyscapes. This is the great outdoors, literally, in your face.