Winter Wonder Wander

John Ahearn's "Ernestine" at the 
  Herbert F Johnson Museum of Art
  Cornell University, Ithaca, New York

Let's go see what is on view in Ithaca, New York on a winter's day.  Up the hill, The Johnson Museum beckons at Cornell University.  At the entrance to this I. M. Pei designed edifice, I found this wall mounted "portrait" in painted plaster by John Ahearn who was studying at Cornell when I was an MFA candidate there in the early 1970's.  John made the painted plaster cast his medium, though when I first met him he was a traditional painting student.  It is the artist's job to take common materials like plaster and transform them into something that captures your attention.  I think John's artwork is not too different than figurative sculpture from the past few hundred years, though his subjects are often folks who volunteer to have themselves cast wherever John makes his studio whether is is in the Bronx - or Brazil.

Another figurative artist catches my attention and this time it is Storm Tharp, a more recent Cornell grad from 1992.  His medium is mostly ink on paper, but also color and pattern play a role, as does a fierce characterization for each person portrayed.  In his portion of the exhibit space a vitrine holds sketchbooks and artist's keepsakes and memoranda - all of which help to personalize the show.

Storm Tharp at The Johnson Museum

Walk upstairs to the next floor and there is an exquisite drawing show of masterworks by European artists like Bronzino, Bernini ( the architect and painter ), Watteau, and Ingres.  This is one show you won't want to miss: "Drawn to Excellence": Renaissance and Romantic Drawings from a Private Collection.  Since I teach drawing, I had more than enough reasons to stop in to see these remarkable works on paper by some of Europe's finest artists.  I have great respect for this art that captivates the mind and eye and satisifes on so many levels.  Just take a look at the trois-crayon method in the Watteau drawing of a man playing a guitar - the particular marks made to indicate the thumb and fingers are so concise and add to the entire framework of this little drawing.

In some ways this art resembles the bare trees outside the museum - a world of lines and marks made in the wind.  Back inside, a study of a leafy tree by Annibale Carracci has the vitality and sound of spring.  You can find favorite artists, and many obscure ones in this show.  One of my favorites was a pencil portrait by Ingres, that couldn't have been more than eight inches square.  A portrait of precision, Ingres' drawing reveals the personality of his wife Madeline, while the artist has added his own image off to the side at a later date.

The great benefit of The Johnson Museum is that you can see so much of the world's culture by only taking a few steps down the hall.  If you venture into another gallery you can take in an exhibition of Southeast Asian weavings, and see wonderful batiks and long loom lengths of intricately detailed fabrics made to be worn.

When I ran out of quarters to feed the meter outside the museum, I went downtown in Ithaca to the Ink Shop on State Street to see the new exhibit "No Land Escapes".  There, I found the curator of the show, Barbara McPhail and more than thirty works at the gallery that make up a show illustrating the effects of fracking.  This exhibition provides visual testimony to the ravages of the land by the push to drill for natural gas, using the controversial method of extraction known to pit neighbor against neighbor.  In prints by these six accomplished artists:  Craig Mains, Pamela Drix, Elizabeth Durand, Teri Power, Kathleen Sherin, and Barbara McPhail we see a variety of styles in art that range from miniature prints to panoramas often filled with the notorious drilling rigs and the attendant devastation that surrounds these launch pads.  Sometimes the image is as simple as the rainbow sheen left on the surface of water that reflects on the quality of what might happen to our natural resources - in ways that alter what we can't reverse.

Barbara McPhail,

  artist and curator of "No Land Escapes"

  at  The Ink Shop, Ithaca, New York

Art Reflected / A View Back to the Future

"Art Reflected"  
      February 10-March 16, 2013
The Memorial Art Gallery on
University Avenue hosts a centennial celebration

In Rochester, The Memorial Art Gallery is in its' centennial year and one of the ways they celebrate their role in this community is to inspire people to be more creative.  As an exhibition, "Art Reflected"
provides a catalyst for artists and the general public to open their eyes to the Memorial Art Gallery's collection of art and artifacts, and choose a work of art as a starting point for a dialog.  Regional artists were invited by the museum to pick out an artwork from a list of 100 masterpieces in the MAG collections, and to develop a new work of art using their choice as an inspiration. The goal was not to have the artists copy but to use the earlier art as a touchstone for an entirely new creation.  Then, these 41 artists got to work ( over a period of several months ) and brought to life new art to be installed for this month in the museum ( alongside the earlier original work ).  Also, this is a fundraiser for the Memorial Art Gallery, and ultimately the new works will be sold.

As one of the artists invited to participate, it is a little daunting to suddenly have my art hanging next to an artist whose paintings I have admired for most of my life!  In a way, it is also a dream come true.  Having chosen a painting by Stuart Davis ( I lectured on this painting "Landscape with Garage Lights" at the MAG almost ten years ago ) I set about planning new prints that would make use of some of the same elements in a setting like the Gloucester, MA harbor that Davis had visited.  At opening night I was happily surprised to see that Nick Ruth, a professor from Hobart William and Smith College, was also fond of the same Stuart Davis painting, and Nick made a colorful work which sat alongside the master ( see photo below ).

 Stuart Davis " Landscape with 
     Garage Lights, oil on canvas 1931-32

This would be a great time for you to visit MAG to go on a treasure hunt to find the works in the galleries that inspired all of these local artists.  Here is a list of the participating artists:
http://mag.rochester.edu/mag/index.php?page_id=36402

I took a tour after listening to the ceramist Stephen Merritt speak in the auditorium the day after the preview party.  Stephen introduced the audience to a small oil "sketch" by the Hudson River landscape painter Thomas Cole, titled "Genesee Scenery" which portrays a rustic bridge crossing a gorge above the falls in what is now Letchworth Park.  The Thomas Cole is a tiny oil on board, and Stephen Merritt's clay and wood sculpture is a bit bigger but still in proportion.  It is interesting to see the transformation from painting to sculpture, and how Stephen Merritt makes his choices of color, texture and space. Stephen took time to explain that his father and mother had donated the original Thomas Cole to the Memorial Art Gallery, and it was his father's love for this painting that remained in Stephen's memory.

This is a gallery visit that the whole family would enjoy - finding the works in "Art Reflected" and making some comparisons - it is really like an engaging lesson in art history, and at the same time it offers more personal choices and attitudes towards materials and issues in the visual arts.  Witness Shawn Dunwoody upstairs with his assemblage below a 14th century altarpiece - where his use of found objects, signs and curiosities highlight his African-American heritage, and this throws into relief the ideas involved in "Art Reflected".

I went along looking at everything with new eyes.  I found many artists whose work I was familiar with showing some new aspects of what they normally present.

Right next to the Stuart Davis painting was a boldly imagined work by Nick Ruth, and I was interested to see that he found the elipse as an organizing principle ( his work is titled "Can You Hear Me Now" ).  I have an elipse in my print too, but we didn't know that each of us had selected the Stuart Davis artwork out of all the art in the museum!

Some of the original artworks are transformed by a change of medium, so that a famous painting by Winslow Homer of his studio in Maine surrounded by fog became a bracelet by Loraine Cooley, and a sculpture by Gould called "The West Wind" translated into a video of curtains by Anne Havens.  This was the kind of magic I saw; artists pulling the rabbit out of the hat and delighting the gallery goer. You will want to see every spot on the map and enjoy the trip!

Vernissage

A day before the show opens to the public, I gathered along with artists and invited guests for a reception at the JGK Gallery, 10 Vick Park A in Rochester.  I looked over the 2013 Art Roc Showcase and I was especially pleased to see one of my students ( Gareth Fitzgerald Barry ) as a featured sculptor among eleven other artists chosen for this exhibition.  The JGK Gallery is in what appears to be a renovated carriage house close to the museums in the Neighborhood of the Arts.  Relatively new to the area, the JGK Gallery brings together regional talent in this new show, and I was attracted to the nearly abstract landscape images in Alejandro Gutierrez's paintings made with enamels and resin.  Other artists deal with abstraction such as Carey Corea and Jeanne Beck who is also known for her art quilts.  A nice article accompanied the show (published in Rochester Magazine written by Michelle Cardulla) and hopefully that will bring in curious gallery goers.

"Makers and Mentors" at
Rochester Contemporary Art Center, 137 East Ave., Rochester
From the left:  Bleu Cease,Director, and artists: Peter Monacelli, Kurt Feuerherm, and Kristine Bouyoucos.

This week is witness also to a new edition of the "Makers and Mentors" series at Rochester Contemporary Art Center.  This year's artists include Kurt Feuerherm, Peter Monacelli, Kristine Bouyoucos, and Patricia Dreher and all of these artists contribute two dimensional works that have color and verve.  It is good to see Kurt again in this area, he's moved back to Rochester from the seaside community of Wellfleet, MA.  I can see a bit of the scrubby landscape elements from the Cape in Kurt's paintings - which are very vigorous - brushy yet still descriptive - and all of a modest size.
Kurt is a well known teacher having been at Empire State College, and the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC.  Kurt was mentor to many budding artists.  I think he was pleased to be so honored with an exhibition at RoCo especially in light of the fact that there is now a campaign to buy the building where the show is being held.

One could say that Kurt's paintings are very environmental - all about kinds of space with a great sensitivity towards nature without being realist in his approach.  Peter Monacelli's series titled "Midtown Transfiguration" is also a guide to space but in this case it appears to be about architecture and the abstract patterns and geometry of many a building site.  Peter told me that it is important to known that he had a construction company and that the Little Theatre had been one of his jobs.  Peter's wall of artwork at RoCo is thrilling - and once again it is all about color and space.

Kristine Bouyoucos makes prints which feature music notation and aspects of nature; fine old trees - almost somber in their tonality - yet these works of art are also about space, rhythm, and color.  Of all the work on exhibition in "Makers and Mentors" Kristine's art demands a closer look, in effect to really see it is to get up close enough to read the notes.  These prints also have a friendly quality, the botanical elements along with the musical theme is uplifting.

The small paintings of Patricia Dreher portray gritty scenes from the Port of Oakland, California. If you fly into the airport during day you can see acres and acres of containers waiting to be put on board boats bound for voyages elsewhere.  Maybe it is a coincidence, but Patricia's paintings have some of the same colors and abstracted space as Kurt's.  One hopes that the "Makers and Mentors" project will continue to shine a light on the relationships among the many working artists in our midst.

Big Tent Shows

Robert Heischman
at the Bevier Gallery at R.I.T.

December is the month of the art fairs in Miami, and the idea of a warmer climate and all that visual stimulation motivates me to go out and see what's up in our area.  I didn't have to go far, because there is a faculty exhibition at the Bevier Gallery where I teach at R.I.T. and this show has some attractive aspects.  One of my favorite pieces in the show welcomes close inspection: a carved and sanded wood plate by Rich Tannen that employs a kind of Sol Lewitt design of cubes divided into parallel lines on a subtle wavy panel of glorious simplicity.  Robert Heischman paints the streetscape of India, complete with sacred cows, while on the other side of the partition there lurks a glass block with what looks like a cast of an ancient trilobite.

installation view at MAG
of "Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation 3"

If you want to open a new avenue of art exploration you must see "Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation 3" now on view at The Memorial Art Gallery.  There are so many new things to see, and such a vital call for your attention, we are honored to have this traveling exhibition here in our midst. You can also learn a lot by noting how this exhibition is arranged: three categories, art is aligned with a point of view - 1.  Evolution and Exploration  2.  Natural Selection  3. Historical Provocation/ Decoding History.

Native american contemporary art has not been given this kind of forum often, but things are changing and a market is developing for these artists.   Some of the featured artists carry over craft traditions from the trade goods of the 19th century - updated and upgraded - an example of which I found in the works of Dawn Walden ( Anishinaube (First People)) and Jeremy Frey (Paint Basket).

I haven't been in many museum shows that include decorated heavy weight punching bags ( Jeffrey Gibson's "Everlast" ) or a chain of animals made out of packaging tape by David Hannan.  There are delectable objects in this exhibition that capture my eye like Dan Townsend's amulet "Speaker of the House/Warrior made out of mother-of-pearl oyster shell that both recalls Mayan Art and Keith Haring at the same time.

Alan Michelson at  MAG
part of the Changing Hands exhibition

The political angle of being effective as a Native American artist is explored in some powerful ways, just go see this show and find Alan Michelson's "Phoenix" made out of handmade paper, or Shan Goshorn's "Educational Genocide: The Legacy of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School" made out of a sliced up historical photo of Indian children in front of the notorious school.

I was glad to find the products of G. Peter Jemison in this show -his signature decorated shopping bags were found in a long vitrine.  Last year I had Peter come to R.I.T. to speak to students about some of the same artists that are in this show.  Buy the catalog to read the essays and you come away from this gallery experience with new respect - and you will want to see more!

Peter Jemison at MAG in
Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation 3

Destinations

Tarrant Clements 
at Phillips Fine Art
thru December 22nd

Tarrant Clements has a host of new intimately scaled sculptural artworks on display at Phillips Fine Art, 248 East Avenue.  Though the gallery itself is small in comparison to other art gallery spaces in Rochester, Tarrant's  dimensional artworks hold their own because of their often colorful aggregations of wood, wire, and even some kitchen utensils!  The exhibition titled "Celestial Songs" has part of its intent to be humorous - with one foot in folk art and one foot in formalism, while another aspect of her work can remind me of early armillary spheres    ( scientific models of planetary orbits ) and other forms of assemblage.  Tarrant Clements has a genius for invention, and all the while she demonstrates a firm ambition and a nod of respect for European Modernism.

Kurt Moyer at Axom Gallery

When I first met Kurt Moyer in his studio at the Hungerford Buillding I was surprised to see reproductions of paintings by my teachers from Cooper Union, notably Robert DeNiro, Sr. and Paul Resika.  These two artists from New York City were renegades and they formed a larger group that included painters Lennart Anderson, Leland Bell, and Paul Georges - all involved with figurative art at a time when the artworld was head-over-heels in love with abstraction( in one form or other ).  So why was Kurt Moyer ( who is a lot younger than I am ) associating himself with this earlier generation of painters?

When I was a college art student my guiding lights were artists like Poussin, Titian, Corot and Paul Cezanne - who said that he once wanted to paint "Poussin from nature".  Kurt may be younger, but he seems to be attracted to the same magnets of the human form in natural settings as one can see from his solo exhibition titled "New Arcadia" at Axom Gallery.

That Kurt goes outdoors to paint from time to time is nothing new; artists have been painting en plein air for decades, and although the traditional landscape painter hasn't been in the mainstream of American contemporary art doesn't seem to stop artists from gathering their materials to see what can be accomplished.  Having models pose in natural park-like settings was a theme that was handled recently by Keith Howard in a show I reviewed a few months back at Axom Gallery, so are we seeing a trend?

Where Keith Howard's art followed along the Adam and Eve Story, Kurt's narrative is a bit more generalized.  This demonstrates again, what can be taken from classical art and how it can be re-modeled and seen freshly.  Looking at Kurt's paintings reminds me of watching students swim in Nine Mile Creek along the reservoir in Ithaca.  There is no doubt that this art has a retrospective look, owes a debt to Cezanne, and looks toward a new choreography.

 The Center at High Falls Gallery

The Center at High Falls Gallery is a beautiful open space, with a schedule of shows drawn from the many artists of our diverse community.  The exhibition season is arranged around theme shows and the spirit behind this ongoing enterprise is Sally Wood Winslow.  At the moment there is a friendly show of paintings hanging in the main gallery, with many portraits by artists like Richmond Futch.  This gallery space connects with people, and it is a real asset to the Rochester area and its vibrant art scene.

Printedness

Print by: Karen Kunc at
Davis Gallery in Houghton House
"Force of Invention"
now thru December 14, 2012
Hobart William & Smith College, Geneva,NY

There are aesthetic qualities that give hand printed images on paper a certain look and the artist Karen Kunc calls this "Printedness".  The agency of the printmaker is only applauded after a protracted focus on making a plate that is then inked and printed successfully.  Delayed gratification is always a factor in learning how to make a print because one never knows what you are going to get until the last few moments on the press.  Printmaking is absorbed in process; you have to be patient - not lose your enthusiasm to bring the print to its fullest expression.  Some artists work on their own plates and make their own prints, while other artists may create the plate or plates and have master printers make the print or a numbered edition.

Let's not get lost in the technical minutia of how to make a print - but concentrate for a moment on what story is being told with the image.  If you want to speculate on the value of metaphor in visual art, I can think of no better place to start with than the exhibition at Hobart William & Smith College, curated by Nick Ruth - now at Houghton House's Davis Gallery through December 14th.   Aptly titled " Force of Invention ", this show features "the Sublime Worlds of Lenore Thomas, Sarah Smelser and Karen Kunc".  These three active printmakers share a concept - to establish a narrative in an oblique fashion - they rarely address their subject matter in a realist or photographic sense - their stories play out between the realms of abstraction and personal symbolism.  Karen Kunc and Sarah Smelser both have a more kinetic dialog going on in their graphic image than does Lenore Thomas.  Lenore's prints tend towards flat planes of color, they are more obviously landscapes or diagrams of geology topped by a pattern created by applying smoke to the surface of the printed paper.

Karen Kunc and Garden of Disasters ( detail )

There in Geneva, New York, we were in the land of the artist Arthur Dove who lived there ( in the early 20th century) and pioneered a kind of exuberant abstraction whose legacy is shared by the printmakers in "Force of Invention".  Sarah Smelser works in the mid-west as does Karen Kunc, and in their art they seem to grapple with relationships of physical forces, interactions of color and layers of space in general. Smelser tends to be a bit more diagrammatic; Kunc tends to be more theatrical and both of these artists deserve more attention - their art certainly attracted my eyes.

Closer to home, I attended the opening of "Contemporary African American Printmakers" presented by Deborah Ronnen Fine Art in the Arts Center Gallery of Nazareth College.  The present show coincides with the Rochester premiere of "Lighthouse/Lightning Rod", a production by Garth Fagan Dance and the composer and instrumentalist Wynton Marsalis.  During the opening of the print show I had the opportunity to congratulate Garth Fagan on his successful collaboration, and I look forward to a terrific evening of modern dance and music.

Taking a look at the prints in this installation - we get a more diverse grouping than was found in "Force of Invention".  A visitor looking over these contemporary prints can find realism in the style of Rembrandt and Goya in the artists Kerry James Marshall and Kara Walker respectively, and one can also find reductive abstraction in the prints of Jennie C. Jones and Martin Puryear.  One of the more surprising aspects of this showing of African American prints were the "translations" from the Gee's Bend quilters.  I remember being taken by the quilts when I saw them in a show organized for the Whitney Museum in New York City, but I did not know that prints ( color aquatints with Chine colle ) had been made to document the look of these groundbreaking works of art.

Alison Saar
in " Contemporary African American Printmakers "
Art Center Gallery, Nazareth College through December 21, 2012

When I was painting in my loft in Brooklyn during the 1980's, my neighbor across the airshaft was Alison Saar, and I could watch her work away on large scale models, rugged forms which were part of her narrative about the social predicament and semiotics of being a working African American artist ( from a family dedicated to the visual arts ).  How to grapple with a painful history of a people, maintain your dignity as a person, control the integrity of your art and contribute to society as only an artist can - through a transforming vision - that is what I get from Alison Saar.  We will all see her artwork onstage with Garth Fagan Dance as she contributes the sets for this production of "Lighthouse/Lightning Rod".

The nine artists, plus the women of Gee's Bend who contribute the quilt works constitute a wide range of artisitic expression.  Of the younger artsits, Mickalene Thomas is a rising star, and her screenprints have a jazzy surface texture especially in "Why Can't We All Just Sit Down and Talk It Over" from 2006.  Luckily, for this viewer, there is much to see and think about, that is my take away from all of this "Printedness".

Gallery Going As A Social Medium

"Painting Tuscany"
painting by Betsy Taylor on view
at The Mill Art Center & Gallery
Honeoye Falls, NY on view to December 1, 2012


The fall season I had experienced on the way over to the gallery was quickly followed by sunny summer weather indoors at the exhibition:  "Painting Tuscany".   Maybe it sounds like a scenario from a movie, but a quintet of ladies go to Italy, painting en plein air and come away refreshed and full of treasures - both memories and paintings made on the spot.  Accompanying this show of mostly portable size paintings is an enjoyable slide show of the rustic villas and countryside that is so eye catching.  We live a vicarious thrill in the Italian hills famous for their wines, for the gorgeous light, and the romance of it all.  Rebecca DeMarco, Denise Heischman, Jane O'Donnell, Sara O'Donnell, and Betsy Taylor remind us of how seductive painting the landscape in Northern Italy can be.

Over to the Axom Gallery on another night for an artist talk by Susan Ferrari-Rowley.  Susan carried on an animated discussion about her minimalist constructions and answered audience questions.  She made mention of the visceral nature of her creative act of sculpture and her practice of incorporating light and shadow as part of her concept - in evidence whether you visit the gallery during daylight or evening hours.

Susan Ferrari-Rowley
speaks at Axom Gallery
her show continues to November 17, 2012

First Fridays gets underway this November with hordes of people strolling through artist's studios and galleries creating a social buzz that certainly beats Facebook!  Go and see for yourself.... everywhere I looked there was something of interest from the Pop-up books presented by Bill Finewood at the JGK Gallery at 10 Vick Park A -  to the color abstractions of William ( Bill ) Sellers now on view at the Arts & Cultural Council for Greater Rochester.

Among the open studios at the Anderson Arts Building, I found Kathy Clem in her new multimedia space - showing her latest images developed on her iPad - these were colorful puffy kitty-cats that somehow morph into owls and fly away into a land of digital fireworks.  In the same building, The Shoe Factory Art Co-op has "Tone It Down A Notch" a show of minimal art for a modest budget.

My favorite things on this gallery ramble were photographs by Nathan Lyons on view at the Spectrum Gallery at Lumierre, and the photos by Patti Ambrogi and Owen Butler at Gallery r.  Walk over to 100 College Avenue and the doors open to a world of wonderful photos - a cross section of Nathan Lyons and his life's work behind the camera.  I was intrigued by the dialog of photos presented in pairs which maintain an elegant poetry of visual acuity.

Nathan Lyons
courtesy of Spectrum Gallery at Lumierre


I was pleased to see R.I.T. president Bill Destler and his wife at the opening of the show at Gallery r.  Well attended gallery shows develop a buzz, and then become the thing that you must see.  Hopefully all this social whirl has an economic benefit to the city, to the galleries, and to the artists who participate.

The retrospective exhibition of photos by Patty Ambrogi at Gallery r have a spectacular particularity.  I immediately want to go there - to the places she finds through her lens.  The goblins from the deserts of Utah, to a block of stone that resembles an ocean liner - these photos are a document of color and substance, a love letter to geology and geography.  Owen Butler's black and white photography is a tribute to a man who always seems to have a camera at hand - ready for that decisive moment ( to borrow a phrase from Henri Cartier-Bresson).  The eloquence of a glimpse into the life of a lady selling dresses on a hot day reveals a deep seated humanity that is not unlike reading the pages in a great novel....bravo!