Look At It This Way

Nathan Lyons photography "Made in Rochester "

in the Spectrum Gallery

at Lumiere Photo

We are lucky to have many really fine artists in our midst, here in Rochester - the "image capital of the world".  A visit to neighborhood galleries during the quiet end of August leaves a very favorable impression especially at The Spectrum Gallery at Lumiere Photo on 100 College Avenue.  I loved a new book from Nathan Lyons ( Return Your Mind To Its Upright Position ), and I went in to see the show "Made in Rochester".  How is it that Nathan Lyons can photograph a bare city wall and make it worth looking at?  He documents mural paintings in urban settings and we can revel in the incongruity of the scale of the images against the surrounding landscape.  The lighting and the clarity of these small prints in this show is just my cup of tea.

"Made in Rochester" celebrates the work of five notable photographers and is curated by one of the featured artists: William Edwards.  The summer mood is the distinct impression left by this show - and maybe that is felt through the cool footsteps in the sandy beach photographed by Pat Cain.  The color in these photos is a bit melancholy, the setting a bit lonely, but also peaceful and eternal.  The pairs of photo prints from Bruno Chalifour that feature trees and brush sometimes have a strong abstract expressionist quality to them; one in particular reminds me of a Jackson Pollock painting - just a scribble of branches and underbrush.  William Edwards takes me down a sunny path in Italy, and I can feel the warmth of the surroundings, and take in the lights and shadows in his poetic prints.

Pat Cain photography in the exhibition

"Made in Rochester"

I have written about shows for Carl Chiarenza recently, and the photos in this exhibit are equally dramatic and robust.  His pictures come from pictures - that is - his photos are often made from collages of other torn images that are all of this artist's creation -  making this self-reflexive art partly about textures in black and white.  There is remarkable restraint in this intimate world of art.

Across the hall at Galleryr, a show is just finishing called "Notables: R.I.T. connections with artists, friends, and the university."  In this selection we have artists like Bill Keyser who shows sculpture and paintings, and we have industrial designers who paint ( Toby Thompson ) and there is a fine selection of photos and drawings and much more to see in each of the rooms at Gallery r.  Norm Williams passed away a few years ago, so I was lucky to have the chance to know him, and work with him at R.I.T.

Here, some of his photos have a nostalgic quality and that is part of their appeal.  The feeling of nostalgia is something that is hard to shake in photography, maybe because I know it is a record of the past.  Jim Thomas has a few of his recent works, and I liked his drawing of what appears to be a set of rocks, or portraits of boulders.  

Bill Keyser one of the artists in 

"Notables" at Gallery r

Calling on Corning

Rockwell Museum of Western Art

Corning, New York

The Rockwell Museum is an imposing 19th century building that once housed Corning's City Hall. 

Open the front door, and once past the wonderful gift shop full of unique items, this visitor took the stairs to see the paintings and sculpture on view, and to visit with an exceptional collection of Southwestern pottery from the Nancy and Alan Cameros Collection.  The show titled "ON FIRE"allows one to compare the pottery which is a mixture of pure form and sometimes intricate decoration which builds on the early American Indian traditions and more recent ceramists like Maria Martinez.

Nancy and Alan Cameros Collection

There is a figurative show of carving and casting by the artist Abraham Anghik Ruben called: "The World of Man, Animals, and Spirits".  Here the artist portrays comparisons of northern people and investigates a tradition of Inuit art that has correlations with Asian brush painting but visualized in three dimensions.

Amergin's Prayer: The Poem of Eire, 2013

Abraham Anghik Ruben at The Rockwell Museum of Western Art

Upstairs, in the Rockwell Museum are some paintings from the late 1800's and the collection continues all the way up through the present.  Historical figures like Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt ( his landscape painting here of Mount Whitney is among his finest works ) N.C.Wyeth, and Carl Rungius are memorable.  Charles M. Russell's cowboy and Indian paintings are not up to this artist's best work, while around the corner there is a room full of color etchings from Karl Bodmer that are exquisite.

Alfred Jacob Miller

"Crow Indian on Horseback", 1844

at the Rockwell Museum

A short distance away, the Corning Museum of Glass attracts huge crowds during the summer, and it is a magnet for tourists groups arriving by the busload.  You can learn so much from a visit to this museum - be prepared to spend hours there because there is so much to see and so much history to unravel.

Lalique at the Corning Museum of Glass

The modern glass section of the museum is so inspiring, yet the displays of early glass are so full of detail that I found it a bit overwhelming.  My last visit to the Corning Museum, we found our way to the hot glass shop where they demonstrate how to blow and shape molten glass.  This time we concentrated on some of the separate shows, for example they had terrific examples of glass from the studios of Lalique - known for its art nouveau and art deco forms from the early 20th century.

A history of glass in Corning

If you have time, you can trace the early traditions of glass making from the Middle East, from Venice, and so much more.  The examples that are displayed,  and the helpful wall labels all take time to peruse.  You will find yourself wanting to come back for more and catch up not only on the history of glass making, but to see the glass artistry of today, - all very eye-catching!

20th Century glass table top at

The Corning Museum of Glass,  Corning, New York

Cool In August

A cool first Saturday in August

At the Ithaca Farmer's Market

But it is not a work of art by any one person, the Ithaca Farmer's Market is where this artist found family members shopping for just the freshest raspberries and just the right texture and taste in some green beens for dinner later that day.  You could go and gain some inspiration shopping for food, and meet friends there you haven't seen in a while.  I want to go back and buy some flowers for the table...

"Difficult Decisions"

Mixed media by Kaleb Hunkele and Nathan Lewis

In the middle of the day, I went over to the CAP Artspace at 171 The Commons in Ithaca to see some mixed media pieces by Kaleb Hunkele and Nathan Lewis.  In this small scale art there is a theme of one -liners that borrows heavily from the wit and brevity of magazine and advertising headlines from the 1950's and 60's.  This approach married to a certain droll humor ( one might find in a New Yorker cartoon ) is not going to tax your patience, but subtract the typography and what have you got?  Maybe this borrows too much from the Richard Prince playbook for my taste, though I appreciate the nostalgia for a world prior to the digital onslaught.

At CSMA ( 330 East State Street ) writer and curator Arthur Whitman has mounted a show of drawings simply titled: "DRAWN".  Figurative works, and landscapes abound, but I was caught by three large works on paper by Pamela Drix that greet you when you first walk in from the street.  I welcomed the chance to look over this body of work, also glad to see that drawings ( which are often overlooked ) by several artists who were new to me were given their chance to be considered.

The Ink Shop organized a show by

Alex Contino

Down the hall there is another show organized by The Ink Shop comprised of prints and paintings by Alex Contino ( which also borrows something from Richard Prince ).  This art shows some humor and deft handling of printmaking techniques in the works on display.  Brushy portraits are identified by single word titles that work like the "hooks" in a pop song... you keep coming back to them...

Out on a walk up Cascadilla Creek, just below the bridge at Stewart Avenue I met up with a group of totems made of the local stone, and they had a touch of Andy Goldsworthy about them.  Such an attractive location for an art show, and so unassuming... There was no one in attendance to run the gallery, and so I will have to wait and see how long the show will be up - I plan to return!

Out for a walk along Cascadilla Creek

Muralism

Let the painting begin....
Wall / Therapy hits Rochester this summer in a neighborhood near you!

Living in New York City years ago I experienced an explosion of graffiti that enveloped the subways and stretched out onto walls of any available derelict building.  The artists ranged from the unknowns to the soon-to-be-famous like Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.  There were hundreds of  taggers who just had to make their mark and some of this public art really deserved attention.  In recent years this kind of renegade art has met up with more sophisticated art school types who shaped a transgressive behavior of painting on someone else's property to meet their own needs and further their own careers.  I remember some of the first legitimate murals in New York City were terrific - Knox Martin had one on the West Side Highway in Chelsea for years.

In Philadelphia, which has a wealth of public art on the street - the murals spread around the city have become a tourist draw.  Teaching at R.I.T. I had the idea of painting murals as part of my class projects in illustration, and I put my ideas into practice.  I found sponsors for projects and my class painted murals on site for the group CASA ( in the municipal parking garage  at Family Court ), as well as for Literacy Volunteers, and for the local real estate advocates.  These projects happened almost twenty years ago, and now I can witness a whole new wave of large scale painting being orchestrated by Wall / Therapy.

This summer's events include large scale murals going up in my studio neighborhood on East Main Street.  I see a three story mural going up a few hundred yards away from my loft in the Hungerford Building.  I also noticed a work on the walls of an old barn on North Goodman by David Walker.
If you want to see the work in progress you can find out who is doing what on their web site:
http://wall-therapy.com/2014-mural-locations/

Art Critic

At the Memorial Art Gallery

the 6th Biennial

"I don't know much about art,

but I know what I like"

That's a statement you hear from skeptics about the art world ( and its economics ).  The whole art thing is a kind of a sham for them - and the people they think that prolong this mistake are often art critics - misguided journalists who don't have anything better to do.  So, some might point to the art critic and ask how they make sense of the vast offerings on view from artists all over the world - and that makes a point.  What is the job of the art critic today?  How can any one person stay on top of the art scene, and finally - what value is the art critic's perspective?

50 years ago people may have read Hilton Kramer ( New York Times chief art critic ) or Clement Greenberg ( in The Nation ) and from their writing the reader had a sense of what was good, and what wasn't - and these critics had some impact ( for better or worse ).  Today, there is no single path for a critic to take, and the art world is really that - a global marketplace and it is tough to get a handle on it.

Do many art critics know what it is like to produce a work of art today?  There are so many materials to take into account, and many points of view about what is relevant today.  You don't have to go far to see that the arts are fragmenting and it is a real job for the artist to get and hold someone's attention, and it is difficult for the audience to slow down and be sensitive to what is being shown.

A few years ago writers and critics like Robert C. Morgan and the late Arthur Danto were addressing the end of the art world as we know it.  Actually the practitioners ( artists at work ) must not have noticed, because there is so much more to look at, and to contemplate today.  Take for example the recent show that opened at The Memorial Art Gallery - their 6th Rochester Biennial.  Every two years a select group of artists are chosen to show us what they've got, and this year we have a printmaker, a painter, and four artists who work three-dimensionally.

Inside the 6th Biennial

I've known some of the artists in this Biennial for years and I can applaud their work, and also the layout of the show - giving each artist some space to breathe - allowing the viewer to focus their gaze on the objects in question.   Kumi Korf, an artist from Ithaca, NY opens the show ( her work is on the card above, and the banner outside the museum ).   Kumi's prints are biomorphic abstractions - gentle curves and attractive color which she develops intuitively in series - one thing leads to another.  Her art creates a field for a poem written by Bhisham Bherwani,  part of the image displayed is upside down and the prints are titled "Delirium" .  Artist books are on view as well, and Kumi Korf's deft handling reveals some of her background in architecture.  Her books employ printmaking techniques and may include thread and photos, as in the 2012 work " Sea to Land" .

Moving in through the show I found ceramic forms by Richard Hirsch to be very rough and sophisticated at the same time.  Encaustic paintings on the walls in his space reminded me of the colorfield art of Jules Olitski.  These encaustic works look like slabs of sandstone right out of a quarry.  His "Crucible" series is impressive in size and these often oversize vessels are accompanied with ladles, or blown glass as in the " Mortar and Pestle" of 2014.  This art is all about tactility, and it makes me imagine the people who might use such equipment and how it might be used.  This is more directly addressed in the works called "Primal Cup" - and here the clay looks like a lesson in topology. Isn't that what clay is all about?  Something you can roll out flat or roll into a ball, or make a terrific texture or even a teacup.

Kim Waale's work in this show is all about artifice, and her installation included a pieced together map as a flat surface on top of which she placed faux rocks and phragmites,  PLUS a large plastic waterfall -

all deliciously absurd!

Brooch by Juan Carlos Caballero-Perez

Juan Carlos Caballero-Perez hails from Mexico City, but has been at R.I.T. in the School for American Craft where he is now the Chair.  His talents are very detail oriented, and the artwork he has on display is fanciful, highly cultured, tactile, and alluring. Many of these are pieces of jewelry - though not in the traditional sense - they are meant to be worn, and not just looked at in a vitrine.  Juan Carlos is a gifted artist, teacher, and advocate for an open minded dialog about what art is and what it is going to be in the 21st century.  You get the feeling that Juan Carlos has absorbed many influences as he grew into the artist he now is, and his art makes this manifest.  The brooches he shows here have a painterly quality as if they had been imagined by Goya.

Across the way are paintings from Lynette Stephenson and they feature dozens of eyes looking back at the viewer in one of her canvases.  In another painting there are strange dislocations that probably contain a mystery or a story about a dog tugging on a rope with a watermelon, three people and some chairs.  These seem like the ingredients for a short story which we get to make up as we go along.  Her strategy here owes a great deal to David Salle, who made this kind of ironic juxtaposition so popular in the mid-1980's.

Earthenware with glazes by Jeff Kell

Looking in the last room I found several works from Jeff Kell who is also associated with R.I.T. and the School for American Craft.  His art is like a 3 dimensional illustration using clay as his medium, with an unusual humor that could work in a magazine story.  At this Biennial there is something for everyone, so if you don't relate to this work, you just might resonate with something down the hall.  These artists have earned a place in the spotlight, go and see for yourself. 

In Memoriam

Sterz Imrie

Several years ago I met Sterz Imrie for the first time - he was looking at a work space in my loft building in Rochester, and it wasn't long before he moved in with his young son, Calder.  I think Sterz moved up from Brooklyn as I had done, and it was obvious from this first encounter that he was an unusual sort, - he was recovering from an operation that left him partly disabled, and I later found out that he had been exposed to a toxic pesticide and had suffered from a brain tumor.  We shared our stories, and he looked around my studio and became my next-door-neighbor.  Bringing up his young son in this rough workspace, while trying to develop artworks, and stabilize his condition was more than a full-time occupation, and he needed help.

I once had to lift him up because he collapsed on top of his son, and there were some other incidents, but basically Sterz had courage and strength and wasn't shy.  Sterz also had some real world experience in fine art though he said that he was self-taught.  He made serious - thought provoking installations and videos which still stay with me.  Sterz also spent some time as an artist-in-residence here at the Cobblestone School.

I once interviewed him for a book I was writing and I went to see his art when he had shows in our area.  He made an installation once in the Hungerford Building that consisted of suspended chunks of ice in plastic sleeves that steadily dripped down into big circular pans that caught each drop and amplified the sound for anyone who came to view what was happening.  This was a solemn, profound, and moving experience to witness this piece of art.  There were other shows including one at The Rochester Contemporary Art Center, and many others in Miami and in Europe.

Sterz was a sculptor who made videos, and he explored the use of the computer as a tool when it suited him - but he could just as easily use a fan blowing on a sheet of plastic and make something out of that.

The important thing for me was his character - this was a person of great courage and conviction, and through his ordeal ( several operations ) he never wavered in taking care of his son who was growing up, and also he was engaged with the world as a thoughtful, and respectful person as you will ever meet.  He will be missed, passing away on July 4th; he leaves behind many indelible memories, and we are stronger for having known this man and shared this space and time.

Art in Ithaca

Painting by Louis Agassiz Fuertes

We started off in the morning on the way to Sapsucker Woods - that's in Ithaca at Cornell University with the Laboratory of Ornithology.  My in-laws had collected the artwork of Louis Agassiz Fuertes 

(1874 -1927 ) in the middle of the 20th century and I wanted to show them his paintings that hang in the Auditorium of the Lab.  In the Auditorium  ( which doubles as a gallery space ) we also saw the watercolors of Anita Schmidt-Kyanka.  These were small descriptive paintings for her new children's book titled "Sapsucker Blues" in honor of a family of nesting Great Blue Herons that roost on the Lab's property.

The Lab is a repository of art and information about birds, and school groups flock ( pardon me ) to the roomy observation deck and the trails that reveal so much of the local nature of the Finger Lakes region.  Louis Agassiz Fuertes was an artist who worked for The National Geographic and Cornell University starting in 1923, and Cornell has the largest collection of his paintings and sketches.

Wonderful Japanese Garden outside of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art

On the Cornell University campus stands a wonderful building by architect I. M. Pei, and that is the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.  I watched this being built when I was a graduate student at Cornell, and my studio window looked out on the construction as it went on.  They have recently added gallery space to the museum, as well as the Japanese Garden seen above.

Roy Lichtenstein, screen print from 1973

Although the museum was in the midst of a major installation there were a few floors open and I did see an interesting show called "Enticing the Eye / Exploring the Frame" which consists of prints and photos including some icons of 20th century art like the Lichtenstein above.

Lucas Cranach ( 1472-1553 )

On another floor I found one of my favorite classical painters, Lucas Cranach, represented by a painting of Judith ( holding a sword ) with the head of Holofernes - which was pretty strong stuff for the mid 16th century when it was painted.  Doing some research on this painting I found a number of versions of it attributed to Cranach and his workshop - each time the face of Judith was quite different - and not all the versions were as good as the one in the Johnson Museum.

Downtown Ithaca has a few gallery spaces including The Ink Shop which specializes in prints and printmaking workshops.  There I found a large print of ferns by Greg Page and colorful works by Kumi Korf and Pamela Drix among others.  Pamela Drix's print featured relief printing and was a portrayal of orchids set against blocks of color.

Pamela Drix at The Ink Shop

On the Ithaca Commons is the Artspace with a show by artists who have had a residency at The Saltonstall Foundation's art colony.  Artists can apply to spend some time in the country with studio spaces and time to think and develop new work.  My friend Jim Mott has been a resident twice, and made some studies there including the art below titled "Tall Ithaca" in his usual medium of oil on board.

Jim Mott with "Tall Ithaca"

at Artspace