Rochester Art Review

LET'S HAVE A ROUND OF APPLAUSE FOR THE RISK TAKERS

2012-01-24T13:04:00.000-08:00

We have tickets this weekend to the Opera Carolina production of “Madam Butterfly.” Ordinarily, I would pass the ads right by. After all, who hasn’t seen “Butterfly” a million times? This staging is special - it’s the one designed by Japanese artist Jun Kaneko.

Kaneko was invited by Opera Omaha to design sets and costumes for its 2007 production of “Butterfly.” The show got rave reviews and tons of publicity in great part because of its artistic originality. The art museum exhibited Kaneko’s sculpture in conjunction with the opera, himself on hand for a lecture and special fund raising event.

The package was a winner – a total sensory immersion. Since then, the Omaha set has moved to stages in other cities and now it’s come to Charlotte. I can’t wait!

I don’t know much about opera in spite of years of piano lessons. Looney Tunes cartoon figures introduced great opera melodies to kids like me. But I totally believe that a city’s value is largely measured by its cultural health. And I don’t believe that vital cultural activity is achieved without risk taking and extreme commitment – even when it’s hard to justify.

“Go big or go home.” The sound bite sounds good but mighty hard to attach these days to non-essentials. Everybody knows that needs are great and somehow, my fellow Americans have turned into tightwads and toads just when it seems to me that the world is bursting with opportunity.

So the next time a start up opera company forms in Rochester, I hope the first thing they consider is asking our beloved painter Robert Marx to design sets and costumes…or Garth Fagan to set the entire trite opera to contemporary movement…or you get the idea. Go out on a limb.

No guts, no glory.

Romare Beardon at the Mint/Kathryn Clark Quilts

2012-01-14T08:27:00.000-08:00

We visited the Mint Museum (downtown Charlotte) last Saturday. It was the last weekend to view the Romare Bearden retrospective and the joint was hopping! Kids, families, live jazz music – there was nothing HUSH about the place. Those of us who came to see the artwork were civility itself in spite of elbows gently prying bodies out of the way for better viewing.

Bearden was a native of Charlotte – an African American artist (1911-1988) – who migrated to Harlem and spent his life illustrating the sights, colors, and spirit of the black experience. And this was a BIG SHOW. Nearly 100 collages, paintings and works on paper were assembled from collections across the country and sprawled throughout the entire 4^th floor of the museum.

I love collage – I love quilts and mixed up materials - marriages of glass, metal, wood and the exuberance of pattern and texture. I’m also a sucker for pictorial narrative. Bearden was a master of all that so it came as an emotional stomach punch to see these works in person. They simply took my breath away and I stood in front of the collage on loan from Buffalo’s Albright-Knox Museum and wiped away tears.

Imagine! It was free – but priceless.

(The show will travel nationally. Don't miss it!)

Few of us live in an information free environment and if you do, you are not reading this blog. For the rest of us, the news is bad and for some of us (me, for instance) who follow real estate, it’s just crazy-bad! More than one theoretical pundit states that unless the foreclosure mess is cleared up, our country will continue to struggle against the quicksand of this horrible economy and if you think you are immune, think again! That rock under which you crawl is not saving you; every one of us is being touched by this depressing historical time.

Kathryn Clark is an urban designer/architect turned fiber artist who lives and works in San Francisco. I found photographs of her quilt series- “Foreclosures” - on a design web site that I follow. Her work is artistically beautiful – a wonderful balance of color, shape and texture – imaginatively clever and thematically relevant.

Not bad for a “mere quilt maker,” eh?

(Please find her at http://kathrynclark.blogspot.com/ You’ll be glad you made the effort.)

Another New Year Already?

2012-01-03T06:52:00.001-08:00

2012 has slunk in under the doorframe and already looks tired.

“Well,” say I “sit down. Put your feet up. Rest awhile and think about how you want to spend the next 11 months, 27 days.”

I do not do long range planning well. I’m more the spontaneous type – slightly obsessive/compulsive but in a good way. That probably helps to explain why we’ve bought and sold seven houses in the past forty or so years and why even as I write this, the restlessness has descended and I’m looking around at real estate listings.

My beloved sweetly suggests I maybe should look for another outlet for my “creative spirit.” I’m positive he speaks from pure concern for me and not his dwindling retirement accounts. (?)

As I go through the search – inward and outward – I share with you these saved images from my laptop. The ostriches are my latest favorite wallpaper and the wall of windows is the potential “bonus room” in our Rochester townhouse - at least, in my dreams. One of my bff’s and I just finished the painting for my brother – a rip off of Cy Twombly – and the doll sculpture is a rip off of that talented Bliss lady.

May we all have a thoughtfully creative 2012.

Happy Holidays Everybody!

2011-12-16T06:54:00.001-08:00

We piled into our 10 year old Volvo last night, picked up our friends the Gregory’s, and went off on our annual search for the Best Holiday Home Display. We’re tough critics. We’ve only awarded three perfect 10s in Rochester – one with a nearly life-sized Santa landing on the side yard in a helicopter and another with all the usual snowpeople, angels, and santas but also lighted palm trees, dancing dolphins and a garbage truck sized elephant. Obviously, tons of lights – all colors and some blinking – are basic requirements and music is always a nice touch.

This was our first nighttime excursion through the neighborhoods of our winter home here in North Carolina and I must tell you, it’s hard to get too excited about Christmas with temperatures still hovering around 60 and too many (ho-hum) displays of white lights on shrubs.

Then we found the open garage door at John Montalbano’s house.

From the driveway, you first notice the mid-range ear split buzz of model trains almost but not quite drowning out the Christmas music. Get closer….and closer….and THERE THEY ARE! Dozens of model trains race around tracks weaving through an idealist version of a village Christmas. Houses and storefronts glow. Nearly every tree is decked out with glittering lights while tiny people ice skate on ponds, sled down hills or wander the sidewalks. 0ne small boy perpetually makes snow angels. In the outdoor drive-in movie theater “White Christmas” - the real thing! - is playing to a few parked sedans.

John began this extravaganza seven years ago to cheer up his neighbor Grace. Grace is a double breast cancer survivor (The village includes “Grace Bridge. Really! Could her name be any more perfect for this entire concept?) A large bottle sits beside the garage door to accept donations to a Charlotte cancer research center.

John says he collects display parts mostly from garage sales and flea markets all year – everything carefully stored in plastic boxes until the first of November when he begins construction. His goal is to finish the installation by Thanksgiving when he hosts an unveiling party for his immediate neighbors. From then through December, the garage doors are open every evening for gawkers – any age – and John stands by to answer questions.

We clapped for John, for the trains, for the generosity of the holidays but we only gave John a score of 9.5. After all, there wasn’t an elephant in sight.

(For more info about Trains for a Cure, go to his web site: john@trainsforacure.org.)

PS More Photographs of Urban

2011-12-01T06:45:00.001-08:00

Urban Ugly

2011-12-01T06:41:00.000-08:00

I know these things about urban decay:

It doesn’t happen quickly but inches up on a city block by block.

What I call “visual ugliness,” someone else argues “part of business.”

Pride of Place depends on obsessive attention to detail.

Almost always, the people who are most attuned to visual cues – ARTISTS – are too busy or too self-absorbed to take on the Crisis of Ugly.

Finally, yes, there are grave problems of homelessness and hopelessness in ours and every other city, but Beauty and Stewardship of our Environment lifts across economic and social lines.

These are a few photos taken ONLY along East Avenue, our Grand Entrance to Downtown Rochester, terminating at the Liberty Pole, our city’s “living room,” with one or two along University’s Neighborhood of the Arts directly behind the George Eastman House, one of our cultural jewels.

As you see, I'm not a big fan of painted fiberglass objects: horses, animals, benches, et.al. At first, they are fun - for about one summer. They have a bad habit, however, of becoming permanent - decayed or not - and what was "fun" quickly morphs into bad streetside clutter. The worse part: people feel they've spent $$$ on public art. They have not. It's kitch. Please support artists! Buy the real stuff!

EXTREME MATERIALS II and MORE MAG

2011-10-29T07:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I toured “Extreme Materials II” at Memorial Art Gallery. Putting words to intuition is my challenge and frankly, my intuition after this viewing was “ho hum, you really can’t go home again.” I remember writing a rave review of the first “Extreme,” a show that revealed a light-hearted soul. For the most part, the current show just tries too hard – and mostly fails.

There are the usual pieces trying to shock - a dress made out of condoms, a cake made out of tampons, a “drawing” made with blood. Sorry. Been there/seen that. The single piece that did move me was a pearl bonnet made from millions of corsage pins. Angela Ellsworth, its creator, grew up a Mormon, and WOW! Does this piece ever speak loud and clear about the restraints of women, particularly in that society.

Mostly, after reading the art review in City Newspaper, I really wanted to see Jennifer Angus’ installation “Creature Comforts.” This installation fills the entire Lockhart Gallery space with wall drawings (note: drawing medium: dead bugs.) The City reviewer wondered how people could voice such outrage over Otterness’ misstep (see previous blog entry) but casually accept this dead bug creation. Are puppies more important than bugs? Is there a hierarchy that dictates which killing is acceptable and why?

WELL!! This does illicit some soul searching! How do we feel about killing … anything?

I admit that without so much as a qualm, I swat flies, mosquitoes, and set traps for mice in my attic. These guys are fine in their own space but not in mine. I’ve recently given up eating meat products, not because of some enlightened political awareness of the cruelty being inflicted in this industry but because I’ve become convinced that my own health will improve with a “green diet.”

As for Jennifer Angus’ bugs, her effort leaves me dismally unmoved. I cannot call it art. Maybe it illustrates a certain craftsmanship like stenciling or beadwork or…something. Pinning bugs to a background is hardly new; Victorians did it all the time. Visit any natural museum to come away awed by the beauty and variety of insects.

So I’m back to the original question: because Angus’ installation is NOT art but simply arrangement and Otterness did his dirty deed in the name of ART (CAPITAL LETTERS), it seems to me that yes, there is a difference. Is this dishonest? Am I just moving the rules around? These thoughts flew around my brain at 3 o’clock this morning.

And then, PRESTO FIXO, ten minutes ago, an email came to me with these Otterness images of some of his current work and I know what it is about him that disturbs me most: I just don’t believe he regrets shooting that dog!

Call it whatever you want, meanness and torture in the name of art is still meanness and torture.

Is This a Fight Worth Taking On?

2011-10-01T06:56:00.001-07:00

Tom Otterness adopted a puppy from an animal shelter, tied it to a fence and shot it. He called it performance art and filmed the entire episode for gallery viewing.

Shocking? Today, he would face prosecution – certainly public condemnation. I can’t imagine any art gallery or museum condoning such extravagant lack of moral integrity. But back in 1977 when this event took place, few people ever heard of PETA. Football star Michael Vick had not been jailed for promoting dog fighting. The ASPCA maintained a near invisible profile and newspapers rarely ran stories of starving farmyard animals.

Now, thirty years later, Otterness is one of the country’s top “go-to” guys for public art. He’s established a successful career making big, comfy bronze sculptures of cute animals and marshmellowy people. Most recently, Rochester’s Memorial Art Gallery awarded him nearly a million dollars to produce two sculptures for their re-configured University Avenue entrance.

The fun begins! The Democrat & Chronicle ran a piece exposing Otterness’ controversial history on September 29, 2011, but before that, PETA members began making some noise and several MAG members cancelled their museum membership in protest.

Rochester is late coming to this party. Otterness lost several BIG commissions in 2008 when this became news and San Francisco cancelled their contracts with him. Otterness apparently said “I’m sorry…I was young” or something equally inconsequential and continued making pieces for schools, parks, and subway stations in New York City. With this history, the selection committee at MAG selected this artist for one of our cities largest, richest art commissions. Not only is this artwork among the highest price Rochester has arguably ever spent on art (and that’s a sad story right there), it announces our collective value-taste by it’s position at the entrance to our art suppository.

How could they? Didn’t they see this coming?

First, the popularity of this artist speaks volumes about where we’ve gone collectively with public art. Selection committees do NOT WANT SERIOUS ART. They want “likable art,” that doesn’t rattle patrons nor whisper of any controversy. Please! No ideas! Gentle fun is called for and if it appeals to children especially, the artist has hit a home run! One might think that the campus of an art museum could be safe from the slings and arrows of art conservatives, that this is the singular place for challenging, thought provoking work. Obviously, in Rochester, NY, this would be a wrong assessment. Our beloved institution proves yet again that it will always take the middle road, erring on the lower side when necessary.

As for Otterness, setting aside the lack of artistry in his work – he is a very good equipment designer and his timing seems inspired! – he must be one of the more intellectually challenged artist I’ve heard of recently. A serious question: does youth ever erase the act of cruelty? I know lots of mothers who begin instilling the opposite message in their children at earliest ages. But having “done the deed” and been called out on it, wouldn’t you think Otterness might come up with a way to public ally atone for his misstep? A significant public gift to a zoo, establishing a foundation to aid the fight for animal rights, endowing a prize for beginner sculptors – any of these might be a start. A simple verbal “I’m sorry” will not do the trick.

Cutting Edge Art at Culver Road Armory

2011-09-21T07:19:00.000-07:00

There’s a new art player in town.

Actually, not so new: art dealer Deborah Ronnen has quietly sold mega-$ of fine art from her home studio for years. She’s the “go-to” lady for gold-coast name prints, photographs and paintings. She has also served on boards for Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, Garth Fagan Dance and the New York State Council on the Arts. She’s sponsored shows at Memorial Art Gallery and Rochester Contemporary Art Center and made sizeable donations to Eastman Museum of Photography.

In other words, she’s got art cred the likes of few others in our little Upstate town.

Ronnen used some of that muscle to open the inaugural cultural series at the Culver Road Armory. The exhibition is cutting edge work by sculptor/artist Mark Fox and runs from September 10 through October 2, 2011.

I am told that the opening was HUGE – lots of people (everybody from a “who’s who” list of Rochester movers and shakers) and lots of sales of artwork priced from $5 to $15 thou. I was out of town and missed the gala. In fact, I haven’t seen the installation yet. And the big question: is this a one-shot deal or is Ronnen going to continue running an actual art gallery in the newly rehabbed space?

Since my return to Rochester last week, the topic of Ronnen and this art venture has surfaced in more than one conversation. One comment by a Rochester photographer – “but she doesn’t do anything for Rochester artists” – jogged my philosophical brain into motion. This is a position often repeated in Rochester aimed at nearly all our institutions from Memorial Art Gallery to Arts for Greater Rochester and ALWAYS when there are a few bucks to spend on public art, the cry goes up “don’t give the job to out-of-town people!”

In the past, I’ve wondered exactly what it all means. Do Rochester artists weigh the merit of everything so personally? Are we so insecure that we can’t stand the wider competition? Do we really want to stay so insular?

Does the art community deserve the Smug Town label along side the very same institutions/organizations we poke fun of?

Deborah Ronnen’s success in Rochester could not exist without the history we share here. She stands on the shoulders of Jackie Shulman who started Oxford Gallery nearly forty years ago, Shop One begun during the 1960s, Gallery 696… and on and on. It’s an art history that educates viewers who first ridicule, then question, then (sometimes) come to appreciate cutting edge art. I think Ronnen is aware of her heritage but I’m not always so sure that practicing artists (and sometimes, our art institutions) realize the importance of pushing boundaries. Sometimes we need an “in your face” look at what goes on in the rest of the world outside the safety of our home town.

The 63rd Semi-Annual Finger Lakes Exhibit at Memorial Art Gallery

2011-07-29T07:46:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed the avalanche of memoirs on bookshelves? A memoir examines an event or a specific period of time in the writer’s life; an autobiography is his or her story of the whole enchilada. A safe assumption is that a memoir writer thinks his/her childhood was especially unique, h/h brush with death/illness/addiction unusually traumatic and h/h hometown full of the funniest, quirkiest characters. None of this is to be kept secret. The silent, stoic type has been replaced by the victim-who-has-lived through-pure-hell-and-needs-to-share-the-story-and-cry-with-the-world.

(This probably says something about the times we find ourselves living through but I’m not here to pick through that particular pile of existential trash.)

Have you looked through the movie page lately and counted how many blockbusters are stories of apocalypse, Armageddon averted at the last minute by….TA! DA! …MR. AMERICA or some other cartoon/fantasy character? I wonder when cartoonists became so revered?

These are two very specific and easily observable trends. So does art predict or follow popular culture? Is art merely another arm of the cultural body or are it’s eyes on a different landscape? Keep this in mind when you walk through the current Finger Lakes exhibition on view (through Sept. 25) at Memorial Art Gallery. I like unraveling networks to see connections. In this show, you can keep a scorecard and make a game - "Spot the Trend" - of it with your kids.

When a piece stands apart from the script, does that suggest the artist is receiving different signals? Maybe. PAY ATTENTION.

This exhibit is full of really bad stuff…photographs that look like pages from a cheap calendar, drawings that look like an Art 101 project, watercolor that looks like wallpaper. It's always true with this kind of juried show and that's half the fun of walking through it. But there are some thoughtful pieces too. Here are a few random pictures I've copied. I do like Frank Petronio's photographs and this one particularly (Rand Street? Looks more like Germany or gritty Liverpool.) and Marissa Turin's "home..." drawing is memoir raised to a most inventive level. As for the rest of the show, you decide.

For more, visit the MAG web site: http://mag.rochester.edu/exhibitions/63rd-rochester-finger-lakes-exhibition/

Fiber at Memorial Art Gallery

2011-05-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

Every three years the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh pulls together an international show meant to wow us all with the creativity of artists working with textiles. The 2010 exhibit included 81 people from 14 countries and after debuting in Pittsburgh, the show is now on a 3-stop national tour. One of those venues is our very own Memorial Art Gallery where the work may be viewed until July 3.

I visited the gallery this week and I will admit to only the few of you who read this blog: I have more questions than insight. So I’m going to put my questions out there and I invite anybody to challenge, share, illuminate, educate….whatever your take on this, I’m happy to pass along.

First, it feels like a HUGE SHOW. But none of the pieces is especially monumental in scale and in fact, many are tiny. So why does the show seem to inhale space?

Of the 81 included artists, I noted only two or three male names; all others are female. What does this say about the medium? Does tradition refuse to die? Is there something in the female DNA that pushes us to historic ritual (dying, spinning, weaving, needlework) or is this learned?

The overarching response to the work is WHAT TEDIUM! HOW MUCH PATIENCE IS REQUIRED TO DO THIS AND IS THE MAKER BLIND YET? But is this response appropriate/necessary/even a consideration to good/great art? Where is the line between technical virtuosity and artistic expression? And if you’re aware of the debate when you look at a piece, has the piece automatically failed as a work of art?

Jack Lenore Larson was trained in textile art (at Cranbrook I think?) and went on to develop and run one of the most successful commercial high-end designer textile firms in the world. (He also has a great garden that I’d love to visit someday.) Is he an artist or a brilliant businessman? Which box would he check?

International art star Cristo “wraps” buildings, bridges – Central Park and an island! - with fabric. Does this make him a “fiber artist?” Why not? Magdalena Abakanowicz (Polish I think?) exploded onto the international art world with her fiber “corpses”. I saw one of her shows last year at Davidson College in North Carolina and it was haunting. One of her works is at Storm King Art Park (in a glass Sleeping Beauty dome.) How does she fit into the world of textile art? Or has she jumped out of any material classification?

By naming the exhibit “Fiberarts,” have we already limited the artistic value?

Smalltown, U.S.A.

2011-05-13T18:42:00.001-07:00

Never underestimate small towns. With the slightest nudge, they reveal fascinating history, quirky characters and nearly always the good heartedness we all hope to claim as our heritage. Mt. Morris, New York, is one of those small towns.

Mt. Morris hunkers down in the Finger Lakes Region of Upstate New York, near Letchworth State Park (site of the “Grand Canyon of the East"), in Livingston County.

The Mt. Morris Dam (nearly 1000 ft. across and 250 feet high) was built here in the 1950s preventing the Genesee River from flooding downstream and leading to the town’s motto: “The Best Town by a dam site!” (That right there is good enough reason to love this small town.) Mt. Morris also brags that Francis Bellamy, author of the Pledge of Allegiance, was a homegrown boy and that the largest epileptic colony in the country was once here. Now it’s a prison - a sad poetry in this coincidence.

Drive through the town center and up Murray Hill and you come into a campus of towering trees and quietly imposing two and three story red brick buildings each with a multi-paned glass sunroom on its top floor. Originally the estate of James Murray who owned local glass works and mills in the 1800s, the estate was given to New York and turned into a tuberculosis sanitarium in 1930.

Tuberculosis was proclaimed “vanquished” by the spectrum of antibiotics available by the 1970s. Tuberculosis centers everywhere were shut down and within a few years, the campus on Murray Hill was turned over to Livingston County. Now it houses county social services of all kinds and headquarters for the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts.

The arts council is in what once was physician housing which may explain the three kitchens in the relatively small building. Along with office space and gift shop, the Council runs the New Deal Gallery named for the 230 easel paintings discovered throughout the sanitarium facility. These paintings are works by Upstate New York artists, all purchased under the auspices of the WPA New Deal during the Great Depression of the 1930s and installed throughout the hospital at the request of the insightful director who convinced the WPA Board that original art would make patients feel better.

The artistic merit of these works is uneven; most pieces would never be included in any museum collection although I love Petra Mearns' painting. It reminds me of works by Frieda Kahlo who was painting similar images at the same time a half-continent removed from Upstate. (Petra Mearns invented the Scotch Cooler, proof that creative expression is seldom channeled in only one direction.)

But there is more to learn from this collection. Even mediocre art often adds huge dimension to our mythology, artistic expression is worthwhile even when the maker sees no or little reward and sometimes someone comes along with the power/money/authority who understands the human requirement for visual healing. The rest of us can only be thankful.

(These paintings all need restoration work. Even a small donation can help. Send to “Adopt Art”, c/o the Genesee Valley Council on the Arts, Bldg. 4, Murray Hill Drive, Mt. Morris, NY 14510. And a big thanks to Kathryn Hollinger, Arts Director, who lights up the walls with her enthusiasm.)

Public Spaces: Size Matters!

2011-03-31T15:34:00.000-07:00

(My blog title says “Rochester Art Review” but I’ve spent months now talking about gardens, art and events in North Carolina. Should I rename the site? Reopen a second one that deals strictly with “the south?” Does it matter?)

I took a side trip to Asheville last week. It’s a beautiful small city in the Smokey Mountains steeped in surprising architectural richness, a deep history of both traditional and contemporary art and crafts, and a liberal acceptance of racial and sexual diversity. The University of North Carolina has a large campus in Asheville: there’s a major teaching hospital that’s always expanding. The Biltmore is there – the closest “castle” we have on the U.S. eastern seaboard (open to the public, still in the private hands of a Vanderbilt whose family built this estate) with grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmstead - one of his grandest achievements along with Central Park, NYC.

A newer attraction in Asheville is the North Carolina Arboretum.

The arboretum was planned during the 1980’s, built in the late 1990’s, and added to every year since – the newest room/garden, the Bonsai Exhibition Garden, was installed in 2005.

I love visiting gardens and I especially adore stonework. North Carolina is full of stone; it gets used often and well and in this arboretum, the stonework is magnificent. I don’t know of many projects built since the 1930s WPA projects that have featured such beautiful stonework – evidence of so much hand labor – or such top quality materials showcased in a public project.

But (here it comes!), it costs over $5 million to keep the gates open (according to its 2008 annual report) and 58% of that $ comes from the state of NC. If my calculations are correct, for every person who stops to visit (entrance fee is $8), NC taxpayers shell out approx. $15. This at a time when the State is nearly broke and libraries and schools are closing.

What bothered me even more was the nagging feeling that this garden was simply not appropriate for its setting. Really now, how can a prissy little patch of annuals compete with the grandeur of those mountains? Yes, there are hiking trails but the area is sitting astride one of our nation’s ultimate hiking trails. Presumably, part of the goal of this venture is to teach students natural history of the region (Bonsai? A part of the regional history?) And ecology but everywhere I looked, I saw the result of continuing intensive labor – pruning, pollarding, pleaching.

I’ve often been at the front of the line pleading for beauty, art, and good design in public spaces. With that advocacy must come responsibility: appropriateness to setting and history both past and future. Where is Olmstead when you most need that vision?

AN ART-WARMING STORY

2011-02-27T09:19:00.001-08:00

I never heard of Felrath Hines until this morning. He was born in 1913 in Indianapolis and while working as a dining car waiter, took his first painting lessons in his 20s. He entered the Chicago Institute of Art when he was 31.

Hines ultimately became a conservator at the Museum of Modern Art, then chief conservator at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and retired as chief conservator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. He died at 79 in 1993.

For all those years, he continued to paint, seldom exploiting exhibition opportunities that he surely had. When he was invited by the Whitney Museum to exhibit in a show called “Contemporary Black Artists in America” (the exhibit helped catapult his friend Romare Bearden and other black artists to the spotlight), he declined saying “I don't want to be pigeon-holed as a black artist.” Instead, he quietly stacked finished work in the attic of the home he shared with his wife and family.

Last summer the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, N.C., mounted a retrospective of his “color balance” paintings to good reviews and his widow continues to donate his work to the Ackland Art Museum at the U. of N.C. in Chapel Hill. All this makes a good story. But it’s not the end (at least, for today.)

Lawrence Toppman covers art and culture for the Charlotte “Observer.” He and his schoolteacher wife saw that Durham exhibit and fell head over elbow for Hines’ paintings and began tracing connections to a gallery source in New York City. After various failed tries of contacting the gallery through modern electronics, they climbed aboard a plane for New York City for a weekend search. The SoHo gallery had closed.

This is a news reporter after all; he wasn’t ready to give up. Next he contacted a Nasher Museum employee who put the Toppmans in touch with Hines’ widow. The couple took a week of vacation time, flew to Massachusetts (in February…in the snow…in one of the worst winters that area has had in years!) for a visit and left carrying their very own watercolor original.

To make the purchase even more interesting, they hand-carried the painting aboard the plane but the it didn’t fit under the seat or above in the luggage rack. The idea of checking it and watching it hurled into the hold of the plane was rejected out of hand and so they ended up purchasing a third seat and belted their new baby safely in for the ride back to Charlotte.

Toppmans are a two-income family but together, no one could call a school teacher and local news writer “wealthy.” They must have swallowed hard before taking the plunge (Hines' oil paintings generally sell in the $5 - $10,000 range - watercolors on paper, substantially less. ) Yet, they went to these extremes to own a small bit of paper with some painted triangles that was produced by someone they had never heard of until last summer purely because they connected spiritually with that work.

Just when I’m falling into the abyss of art cynicism, here comes a hook that brings me off the cliff. I’ve never met the Topphams but I love them instinctively and I love their story.

Happy March!

A PEARL WORTH KEEPING

2011-01-27T09:08:00.001-08:00

Bishopville, South Carolina, is a tiny town about two hours by car from my home near Charlotte, North Carolina. Pearl Fryar lives there. His house is brick, single story - a typical southern 50’s suburban style - sitting on 3 acres of mostly flat yard, a yard that Pearl - all by himself - has turned into an explosion of topiary and sculpture.

When Pearl was 40, he decided to enter a local garden contest. He had no formal training – not in horticulture, art, marketing, or gardening design. He was “handy.” He had a full-time job that paid a living wage with full benefits (it was the 1970s) and a wife who obviously loved and trusted her husband.

She needed all that because the next thing she knew, she was looking out her window at her husband, standing on top of a 14 foot ladder with a chain saw in his hands about to carve up a spruce tree. That was the beginning.

Pearl said “Success is determined by hard work. Nothing good ever comes out of negative thinking.”

In his book OUTLIERS, Malcolm Gladwell refers to a magical 10,000 hours, the necessary experimentation investment to achieve success in nearly any given field. It was the time The Beatles spent honing their music ears in German bars before returning to England with the sound that would send them to the world music stage. It was the hours that teen age Bill Gates spent isolated with a university computer absorbing and pushing the limits of a foreign technology.

Pearl would know all about that. He’s been at this hobby for over thirty years. A few years ago, he was “discovered” by gardeners of America, HGTV, and Martha Stewart. PBS filmed a documentary of his life and art (the movie was subsequently shown in independent theaters) and his topiary was included in an important university review of North American folk art.

Now tour buses regularly drive down Main Street, Bishopville, en route to his house expecting to walk through the garden and perhaps find Pearl, now crowding 80 years old, standing on a ladder clipping a wayward green branch. His wife will tell you that's where he spends most of his days.

This Friday night, Pearl will speak at the Cornelius Art Center (N.C.) where a photographic exhibit of his lawn/yard/garden/outdoor gallery is on view throughout February. Unfortunately, I can’t be there to hear him but that’s all right. His life choices speak loudly enough for me.

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One huge problem with outdoor spaces such as Pearl’s: what happens when the creative genius is gone? Who protects the work from unsympathetic chain saw wielders?

Recently, The National Garden Conservancy took responsibility and has added the Pearl Fryar outdoor gallery to its list of national treasures. The NGC does what it can with limited resources. Consider helping them with a $$$ donation.

NEW BEGINNINGS

2011-01-02T12:16:00.000-08:00

The holidays are over. Ready or not, we are launched into 2011. I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions but I do believe in new beginnings and always, new ideas.

Spending time with people outside my own age-geographic-political persuasion spurs me to investigate alien territory. My grandchildren play this role. I always assumed that “cinnamons” were little red, hard, hot candies but now I know that my grandsons are cinnamons - red heads.

I wore a new necklace last week and my daughter, Holley, (the font of all things trendy) said, “Mom, you’ve got a steampunk necklace.” (The necklace: an old domino, various nuts and springs, an antique typewriter letter all threaded on black rubber.)

Obvious question: what is steampunk? That led to neo-Victorian. Wow! Here comes a bunch of those intertwining threads that somehow I’d observed but not connected.

Victorians embraced nature (but “embraced” may be too kind. “Control” is better.) They incorporated examples of the natural world in all design and art. Dark wood, lots of metal (industrial?) – often transposing hard with soft, i.e. lace, velvet, industrial played against the softness and beauty of nature.

So what have we been seeing these past couple of years? The photographs I’ve found are a beginning. So was the headline in the style section of the newspaper “It’s the Year of Velvet.” Now that we have a category, look around and you’ll start seeing neo-Victorian cropping up everywhere.

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This is a time to stop and consider the blessings of this past year. Here is my partial list. Please make your own.

1) Observing first hand the wild North Carolina wisteria in bloom

2) The color taupe

3) Watching the international space station cross the black sky with my grands

4) Lucy and Abbey who finally stopped chewing up oriental rugs

5) Finding buyers for slightly used oriental rugs

6) M&Ms

7) “Winter’s Bone” – my pick for best movie of the year

8) Creative people (you know who you are)

Happy New Year, dear friends.

PICTURE SHOWS

2010-12-23T13:05:00.000-08:00

I just saw the newly released version of “True Grit” and when I got home, playing on Turner Classic Movie channel, was the original 1969 version of the same movie. I remember seeing the John Wayne Oscar winning performance 40 years ago and wondered how closely the new release followed the old.

The obvious difference? The Coen brothers production is darker. People are dirty with oily hair and rumpled clothes. No pretty vistas - most scenes are set in semi- or total darkness. Men are regularly shot, hanged or otherwise physically violated and with true-to-life special effects, it’s all effectively gruesome. (In the original, John was never completely convincing as an old, has-been drunkard. The second banana Texas Ranger played by Glen Campbell (yes, the singer!) never got his hair mussed and the young girl was clever but also sweet as pie and cute as a button. Is that Robert Duval as the bad guy who gets shot, wallows around in the dust but gets up with totally clean shirt and pants?)

With all this grit in the NV, the rhythms of speech underscore the nearly foreign nature of its time and place. Language is nearly “old English” – no contractions – a jarring formality to the violence. I don’t know what to make of all this but I’m pretty sure it signals something significant about our times and tastes – in entertainment as in art.

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Chip and I came back to Rochester ten days ago to celebrate the holidays with family and friends and check on progress of the new kitchen finished just hours before we arrived. The kitchen is fabulous! But we have done less celebrating than imagined unless you count painting said kitchen and cleaning construction dust from every possible nook in the townhouse.

But nice surprises happen in spite of our mislaid plans; that’s one of the gifts of city living. We stopped for breakfast one morning last week and met Francie and Robert Marx – total serendipity! They are interesting, charming people and it is always a pleasure to spend time with them.

I’ve been thinking about women and politics lately. With more information comes deepening depression. Then Francie sent me this picture. Robert paints “portraits” but rarely of real subjects. He made an exception for Dorothy. How could Dorothy not be thrilled with the resulting painting? Robert has crowned her Queen Dorothy and I can’t help believing that in his world, he would give most every woman at least a small tiara.

Merry Christmas.

Tower of Babel ...and other musings

2010-11-19T08:35:00.000-08:00

Lydia Musco had a solo exhibit of her work last year at Davidson College. Lydia lives in Massachusetts. Transporting her 8ft. tall sculptures to the North Carolina gallery must have taken some doing. These things are constructed of thin stacks of paper pulp, concrete and wood.

The simplest are single four-sided columns. Others are two or more columns, shuffled together. They twirl and teeter and it’s the tension and texture that you notice right off. Next you might notice that the twirls are part of a dance – or maybe a fight to stay upright.

I just finished reading “Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann. The novel includes the story of tightrope walker Philippe Petit who stunned New York City when he walked between the two World Trade Center towers then under construction (1974). It was an act that was beautiful and frighteningly repellent – amazing and crazy – a “fuck you” finger pointed to God and a prayer of thanks for the gift of movement.

Lydia is a young artist. She has lots of practice time left. I hope she has the courage and tenacity to keep pushing at the intersection between beauty and disaster.

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National columnist Neal Peirce came to lecture in Rochester in the early 1990’s. The Coalition for Downtown brought him. We were all hot to push metropolitan government, erasing lines between the City and suburbia and Peirce wrote a compelling argument in his book CITYSTATES.

The argument never got far and now, nearly 20 years later, with every government budget sinking in red ink, we in Upstate New York are still not persuaded to give up our patch of identity.

Today’s Charlotte Observer ran a current Pierce column titled “How to avert a new Crisis in Suburbia.” He quotes analyst Jonathan Miller and the 2011 edition of “Emerging Trends in Real Estate” extensively. Miller claims that tract mansions are the Hummers of real estate, as obsolete as the cars. He says that foreclosures are greatest in these fringe suburbs and that the group most able to purchase such dinosaurs is marching off to downsize and the buyers on the way in (ages 30 –45) are not interested in that lifestyle choice. Besides, there are too few of them.

He claims that the changing tides will usher in a “Fix-up, Re-model, Expand, and Condominium Era” and that realtors and government planners must catch up.

Well!!!

Far Out!

2010-10-18T16:44:00.001-07:00

On Sunday, I decided to cruise new art exhibits in town. Memorial Art Gallery just opened “Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art Since the 1960s.” Rochester Contemporary Art Center is in mid-run of “Geometries: Recent works by Christopher McNulty and Andy Gilmore.” Both shows are masterfully installed and (coincidentally) speak to each other.

I walked into the main gallery at MAG and was immediately drowned in vibrating color, pattern and light and thought "I really need to bring my grandkids to see this." Then I thought "they see this stuff all the time - t.v. shows, games, teen clubs, Strong Museum". And that's my biggest problem with this show - the art hasn't aged well. Psychedelic imagery sold t-shirts, Grateful Dead record albums and "Hair" playbills. It was "sock it to me" backdrop. It may be nostalgic fun but I'm not sure it deserves much reverence.

Now for the BIG STATEMENT: Any time anybody frames "art", hangs it on a big museum wall and trains a spotlight on it...then has guards walking around to insure a hushed semi-religious environment!...poor Mr. and Mrs. Everybody assumes this stuff must be important. The older I get the more determined I am to say "hogwash!" Does that mean our art museum must be more careful about exhibit choices? Yes! Can they still have a review of art from the 60's? Yes again.
But perhaps a sprinkle of silly dust might bring the whole thing into perspective. At least, that what the artists of those times wanted viewers to believe.

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RoCo has become a really class act. Show installations are first rate - a hard-fought professionalism is evident everywhere in this uptown space. I applaud the work they do even if I don't always like the artwork they present. The current show ("Geometries") LOOKS good

but the optical color patterns by Andy Gilmore are hyped up images that fit easily into the MAG show. After the first OH! comes the hum.

Christopher McNulty's drawings are of the obsessive school and really, are we all getting a tiny bit weary of the whole multiple deal? He uses little pencil marks to create big circles...the number of dots significant (to him) of his life expectancy. The large wall piece pictured above was created from patterns left on 6 x 6 pieces of paper, taped over his car tail pipe.

Ego-centric artwork - galleries and museums are full of it! Art students want their work to tell their story/their experience. Teenaged super-stars publish their memoirs with revisions written in their mid-twenties. We've taught this generation that their every thought is profound. It is individualism run amok.

I agree that all art is autobiographical but historically, artists channel larger issues - universal puzzles, life and death questions - through their particular eye. I'm looking for that transcendence.

Or am I just getting old and crotchety? (Chip answers "yes.")

Homage to an Artist

2010-09-26T07:07:00.001-07:00

Jackie Owens died in August. She suffered from a long-standing heart condition and COPD but I suspect that she died because she was 83 years old and ran clean out of passion. In another culture, she might have wandered into the woods or crawled into a cave or onto an ice flow and commanded her spirit to leave her earthly body. Instead, she checked into a hospital room, gave her children fair notice by a few days that she was about to go and then succumbed to the “great stillness.”

For any of you who did not know her, Jackie had short hair, a round face and was about as big as a peanut. She liked intense conversation about big subjects. After getting your point of view, she would pull her nearly 5 foot frame up close, take a deep breath, spew out the most amazingly incendiary, politically leftist manifesto then erupt into giggles.

Her liberalism was not surface decoration. She continually championed better live/work conditions for women, demonstrated against war early and often, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Women’s Museum and constantly found original ways to aid and abet those in need.

For her 50^th birthday, she initiated an anti-war billboard, gathering together enough investors to pay for the printing and installation of the original artwork by Bob Conge. “Disarm or Die” haunted Rt. 490 for at least a month during the summer of 1977. (1978?)

I think that was when I first met Jackie. We crossed paths as exhibiting artists – we were both on the outdoor art circuit in those days – and for some reason Jackie invited me to the barn/home/studio she shared with then-husband Roy to listen to her proposition. The place was full of talented, creative people – a stew of juicy personalities the likes of which I had never spent casual time with before. I liked these people. I admired their intellect and sense of justice and I wanted to stay a part of the group.

So much for my "real" job hunting! I never left (metaphorically) the party and I still hold admiration and reverence for artists. They have shaped my adult life. I have Jackie to thank for the introduction.

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Jackie’s daughters held a small reception and invited a few friends to take home a piece of Jackie’s artwork to remember her by. I picked this little drawing. It is not one of her best but it is one of her last.

Our Aunt Patsy who died 4 years ago painted the oil landscape. Patsy was a perennial student and took art lessons until she died at age 87. There’s something so optimistic about that!

I cherish these two pictures and wonder: has business extinguished the emotional value of art?

Four Months Later

2010-09-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

Four months – a third of a year – gone! I am increasingly aware of time – the finite-ness of it. Several of my friends died this summer, two former neighbors, a member of my book club and others whom I knew casually. I don’t mean to sound depressed or anything but this sucks! I want to scream at something or someone “WAIT! IT’S NOT TIME.”

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We moved to this townhouse in July. Our big house was sold to a lovely woman who wanted a “grown up house.” We lost a lot of money on the property but given the economic realities of real estate, we felt lucky to get out with a little of our investment and so we took the advice of our NC realtor and friend Linda – “Accept the offer and get on with your lives.”

Our master plan revolves around paring down and simplifying. To do that, we needed to divest ourselves of the big property and all the equipment, time and effort to maintain it. (Check. Craig’s List turned out to be invaluable.) We plan to divide the year between the new cottage in North Carolina and this townhouse. Here are a few pictures.

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Now that this living arrangement stuff is resolved, I’ll get back to writing about art. But I confess I haven’t had the interest or the heart for art lately. First, I haven’t seen anything in months that inspired much thoughtful exploration. And this moving business takes all the “creativity” I can muster and when I’m not plotting color, line and space, I’m thinking about…..forgiveness. What does it mean? Who reaps the benefit? Is it just a word that we’ve tossed around so long that we really don’t know what it means? Please help!

More Pictures (Continued from below)

2010-04-30T10:18:00.000-07:00

I couldn't get all these posted.

Here goes another try.

The North Carolina Cottage

2010-04-30T06:35:00.000-07:00

We're packing to head north. The house there is still not sold and it sits where we left it - half furnished, probably full of dead flies and smelling stale from five months of disuse. We will refresh the place, rearrange to fill spaces and hope that by some miracle, a buyer will materialize within the next few weeks and we can get on with the next step in our strategic downsize plan.

Meanwhile, many of you have asked to see where we live down here and so here are a few photographs. Questions? I'll be glad to answer. (New art: the large painting in the dining area is by southern painter Charles Ladson.)

Art by Any Other Name

2010-03-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

I think I fell in love last week with W. Gary Smith. He’s a garden designer and in one short hour-long presentation – his keynote address at the 26^th Annual Davidson Horticultural Symposium – he expressed everything I hold as truth about gardening and by extraction, life itself.

I’ve been to a ton of garden lectures and frankly (and I cross myself as I say this) I could not care less about the MOST IMPROVED PLANT OF THE YEAR or the VERY LAST WORD IN DAY LILIES or TEN PLANTS YOU SIMPLY MUST HAVE IN YOUR GARDEN. Who cares? They live, they die, and they get replaced. I don’t need to know their Latin names or the latest cultivar. I like hostas – I just don’t need to COLLECT hostas (or roses, or day lilies). Does this make me a bad gardener or worse, an unworthy gardener? Should I drop my memberships in Perennial Society, National Garden Conservation League, or the Monroe County Garden Society to make room for someone who is more attuned to the soil?

There’s one major problem with that (in my mind at least): THEY NEED ME because I AM A DISCIPLE OF W. GARY SMITH. He preaches the gospel of design. He explains why certain shapes and patterns – repeated mysteriously and omni-presently in nature – please the human eye and lift the soul. He illustrated nine basic patterns in his presentation with exquisitely chosen words and pictures. The message was simple enough for the beginner gardener to grasp but old-timers were nodding with sudden insight as Smith spoke.

And if all that isn’t enough to make my heart flutter (or is that the by-pass surgery talking?), I learned a new word: NUMINOUS. An adjective that means filled with a sense of supernatural presence, spiritually elevated, sublime.

These are the reasons scientists everywhere need people like me – and Smith – and artists – and writers, musicians and day dreamers. Life is much more interesting when you squint your eyes, look for the patterns and discover the numinous spaces.

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Here is an installation that defies category: is it art or gardening? By any measure, it is creative and NUMINOUS. It’s the labor (and yard) of Robin and David Wilgus. David is an illustrator/artist by day but at night, he must be a major scavenger. The fence across the front of his house is fairly new; I saw it first last year when it was nearly pristine. In the intervening months, it’s sprouted curly iron debris (Wilgus sees this as “growing vines.”)

That construction at the back of the Wilgus house is an outdoor room. It glitters, shimmers, and is a real-brought-to-life version of “can you spy….?” Or “find 32 white doorknobs” or whatever your experience is with that game. He calls it the patio. I call it a cathedral.

ART PLACES

2010-02-10T16:06:00.000-08:00

Before I left Rochester in January, I visited a few friends. Beverly, my former business partner and BFF, was deep into living room renewal. Out with her purple suede Italian modern sofa and chair! Away with an oh-so-appropriate oriental area rug! Track lighting? Dated and harsh. Now she’s cocooned in a pastel green jellybean sofa that sits on a shaggy meadow of a rug, the kind that could hide small pets. And in place of track lighting, a huge cloud of white frosted twigs forms the chandelier over her dining table.

Tom Burke and Barbara Fox changed EVERYTHING beginning with their home address. This urban (urbane?) couple sold their city house, a 1900’s late Victorian with fireplaces, moldings, a front porch and lots of woodwork. They skipped right past the suburbs and set up the nest in a chic, open lofty townhouse three or four villages away from the city core where they’ve lived for as long as I’ve known them.

Nancy Kelly and Peter Pappas went the same route – but kept right on going. Their local quirky little cottage surrounded by woods, a ravine and wild life galore has a new owner. Nancy and Peter are excited residents of a swanky 6^th floor condo in the heart of a major west coast city. They will leave their car parked in the underground garage and walk to everything – right after they finish oiling the teak cabinetry and stop staring out the glass walls at an elegant cityscape.

Change. Most people say they want it. Few actually pursue it. Whether it’s a color on a wall or a change of zip code, most of us keep to the shoulder of the road where it’s predictable. Nothing at all wrong with that decision as long as it’s honestly come by. It’s the saying of one thing and the doing – or not doing – of the other that I object to. To any of us who have jumped into the whirlpool of change, good luck and I hope we all find what we seek. To those who stay planted, roots can be admirable. Those of us out swimming need to know that you’ll welcome us back to familiarity.

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Belinda Bryce is another friend who has changed her shirt – and address – a few times this past year or two. She’s been busy making her little city cottage homey. The first time I visited her there, I teased her about a powder room wall papered and decorated with the clichés of early Americana. Last summer, she stripped the wallpaper and after visiting the Massachusetts Museum of Modern Art and the huge Sol le Witt installation, she decided to Sol her powder room walls. Here’s a photograph of the result. And yes, that pattern you see is about six layers of “scribbles” with various pencils – over every inch of all four walls. I’m not sure if this was a labor of love from start to last or one of endurance. Maybe both?

Soon after moving to our new winter home here in Charlotte, NC, we went to the downtown Hodges Taylor Gallery fete: the closing of the group show that featured among the five artists, works by Judith Olson Gregory.

Many of you know Judy; she was a Rochester resident and very active artist for twenty or more years before she and her husband Fred left for a warmer winter. Judy turned to hand-made paper casting sculpture years ago and in the past three or four, she’s used the kimono image as basis for expression. She showed three newer pieces in the H-T Gallery show; this is one. Paper was cast using a large hosta leaf as the form.

FROM THE DEPTHS OF WINTER

2010-01-06T06:07:00.000-08:00

Do you believe in universal images? Are there animals, symbols, signs that crop up in art and dreams the world over regardless of culture, religious disposition or politics? Do they transcend time? And do those same images represent the same things to each participant?

How does this make you feel? Do you scoff at such mumbo-jumbo? Or are you comforted knowing you are not alone in the human condition, that ultimately you are bound inextricably to the family of humankind? Does it change your politics? Or how you look at art?

This is the time of year for such contemplation and – oh ho! – I am admitting another link in the march of human development! The fear of extinction parallels the Winter Solstice – the shared ancient panic at the death of light.

Belinda Bryce just sent me images of her new paintings. She marries unexpected colors in ways that always knock me out and combines pigment with melted beeswax – encaustic painting. The result is depth and surface value that’s wonderfully tactile and she makes the most of the medium.

As for subject, she’s in the hip pocket right now of the rabbit fetish. I immediately jump to the symbolic meaning of rabbits = hearth, home, procreation, femininity, and fertility.

Here’s the question: are rabbits merely the artists’ theme of the week (think back to dogs, often with bloody fangs, birds, especially black crows)?

Or are rabbits one of those intuitive symbols too strong to resist?

(Belinda’s solo exhibition opens in February at the Little Theater Café.)

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No silly platitudes from me about spring being right around the corner! It’s really cold. The scene from my window is black, white and gray – maybe as monotone as nature ever becomes. I am wallowing in ice-ness. So is my brother in Tulsa, Oklahoma, my friend in Florida and people in China that I don’t know yet. But be hopeful; we all looked out our windows on December 23 and voila!, the sun didn’t die after all.

Happy New Year!

ART STEW

2009-12-13T05:50:00.001-08:00

The Annual Members’ Art Show is installed at Rochester Contemporary Art Center. This is a democratic exhibition: if you are a dues paying member of RoCo, you may deliver one piece of your art to include on the walls for this show – no judging, no art jury, no work ever denied (except for possible size restrictions.) As you might expect, the show is a free-for-all, art hung cheek by jowl as far as the eye can see from floor to nearly ceiling.

The result: it’s hard to see any art for all the art.

I have some trouble with art democracy. For most of my adult life, my job has been to judge the work of artists – either to sell or critique for publication. I’ve spoken out against the wasted opportunity for excellence in places such as the Gallery at High Falls where no exhibitor is ever turned.

But I’ve also written recently about art elitism – particularly the Memorial Art Gallery Biennial where, from hundreds of artists’ entries, under fifty make it to the wall with an exhibition meant to showcase regional art talent.

I’m not alone in the philosophical mush of uncertainty. RoCo claims that this is a totally unjudged show but is sponsoring a public “vote for your favorite” contest – by any definition, a “Best In Show.” Several individual prizes are awarded as well. Sounds a little hypocritical to me.

So is there such a thing as a successful, truly democratic art show? YES THERE IS! And it’s RoCo again. The 6x6 fund raising exhibit equalizes size, price (every art piece is sold for $20.) and total anonymity between buyer and artist. It’s such fun that good artists are happy to submit work even knowing that it may hang alongside that of an 8 year old from an elementary school art class. It's not even a close contest between the quality of the two RoCo shows: the 6X6 wins hands down.

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I lie awake these nights mentally sorting through rooms of furniture, rugs and art work. Some will stay in Rochester to live wherever it is we end up and the rest will land at our new house in North Carolina. I feel like I’m sending half my children off to a foster home – or worse, breaking up twins or dragging babies away from mom.

As excited as I am about setting up a new place “from scratch”, I also realize that many of my art treasures are rooted in Rochester/Upstate New York soil and they give me….what exactly? Credentials? Snob appeal? OH, NO! I AM ABOUT TO BECOME ANONYMOUS.

Well, that’s part of “reinvention” isn’t it? You roll the dice and you accept the challenges.

HOUSES: ANOTHER ART FORM

2009-11-24T17:01:00.000-08:00

It’s time to move.

We bought this house five years ago. Our former house – a unique 1960 California contemporary where we’d lived for seven years (before that, a city townhouse and once, a 100-year old farm house) – was sold in a week. We moved into an apartment while we planned the “ultimate home for the mature couple.” It never got built and after living with rented furniture and even worse, rented artwork, we were ready to jump out our sixth floor window. Instead, we jumped here.

Once more we’ve poured ourselves into a house. It’s taken us five years of hard work – and more money, naturally – and now it is as close to perfection as I can make it and so, time to move on.

My best friend accuses me of self-sabotage. She claims that I can’t deal with success, that I manufacture reasons for turning perfection (whenever I get too close to whatever-that-is) into chaos and I wonder if she could be right.

I read somewhere once about achieving women who bore additional stress as they tried to keep up the face of success while, internally, feeling like an actor in someone else's play.

Do women feel like frauds most of the time? Is this the true curse of Eve?

Maybe Eve felt unworthy of all that perfection. Maybe she got tired of smiling and hosting all those garden tours while all the time thinking "this could be better. I can see the mistakes even if no one else can. I mean...poison ivy? How can I hide THAT one?"

But I prefer to believe that she looked around one day, dusted off her hands and said “There. It’s the best I can do with this place. Time for me to find a new challenge.”

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The lead photograph is our current Colorado contemporary house that is “for sale.” It’s pretty grand. Our plan is to buy a small something in Upstate New York for spring/summer.

We’ve already made a commitment to purchase a little cottage in North Carolina for the cold months. My ideal is this rustic cabin. I love the textures and the piecework look of the place. If anyone knows of such a place near here, send me the information.

Meanwhile, prepare for more house images - real and imagined - in my upcoming blogs. Here's one that I like: Christina Brinkman's charming sculptures. They look like toys. She does her own woodworking. The slab-formed houses are porcelain and she collects antique wheels from on-line auctions.

YES, BUT IS IT ART?

2009-11-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

My daughter was in town this weekend. She ran away from her grown-up life – one husband, two children, goldfish, cat and turtle – and for 48 hours, pretended she was single again. Some of her old friends came over; they dressed all in black, put on their twenty-year old Doc Marten’s and went to a rock concert.

She reports that the 1980’s have not completely died in Rochester, there are still plenty of mullets around, and in this, her home town, the 1990’s is still a bit cutting edge.

I think she’s being a tad harsh. Or is that the role of generations - one just recently past idealism of youth and coming into the judgmental middle years and the other, rage, passion, crusading replaced with acceptance, introspection, joy in wabi sabi, the imperfection of the universe?

Like bats, my daughter and her friends begin their social circling after dark and so, during Saturday afternoon, I took her with me to the art gallery craft sale; it was nice (yawn) (sigh) (ho-hum) and spontaneously, we wandered into the main gallery to see “Pain of the Flesh" which is NOT y-s-ho-h but startling and vulgar and almost-but-not quite shocking. I liked it - it is NOT a holiday show.

My daughter was wearing her pre-concert-barhopping black garb including this hand painted jacket that she bought when she was in full-blown rebel mode in 1992 and living in Seattle. The museum guards began following her, talking to each other, nearly pointing, and when they saw that I was onto them, one of them said “her coat fits right into this show!”

We left the museum and drove to Main Street and the Scio Street garage to see the newly finished tile mosaic installation commissioned by the City, the work of artist Jill Gussow.

It’s colorful. Represents a ton of hours of work. It’s good… and decorative…and impossible not to like. But what if it was installed behind a kitchen stove or in a shower stall? Does the fact that it’s big, make it good? Does intricacy make it ingenious? Is this the best kind of public art – non-controversial?

I guess I can only ask the questions. I think my daughter’s jacket is repugnant and tasteless and I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing it. But it captures a certain spirit of its time and place. The murals are cheerful, colorful, fun. Do they tell us more about ourselves? Our place? Our time?Is this good public art or is it more lipstick on a pig?

Art in the Woods

2009-10-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

Witch hazel is in bloom. I just saw it as I walked my dogs along the wood’s edge and my heart leapt as it does every fall. Witch hazel blossoms are easy to miss. They are small tufts – more like bits of yellow thread than flower petals – attached up and down the dark limbs of this under-story bush.

You need to be up close to appreciate the subtle witch hazel blooms. They appear just as the color bullies of the woods are at their strongest – maple, black cherry, sumac, beech and ash - each elbowing for attention. Those are too easy. You can appreciate their color with a drive-by, even from a tour bus window with people yakking in your ear and someone on a speaker explaining temperatures and geographic history (an occasional joke thrown in.) In a week or two, after a heavy rain or wind, their fifteen minutes of fame will be over for another year and the trees will be left empty handed. Witch hazel blooms will remain until about Thanksgiving. It’s not uncommon to see them holding up through a light snowfall or locked in a glaze of ice along their parent stems.

I remember finding our hillside of witch hazel. It was our first year on this property. We had moved into the house in early winter; I had open-heart surgery ten months later. I was taking my first post-operative walk outdoors, alone, wondering how my life would change and mostly, what was I spared to do? Even more disturbing, what if I never found my life’s grand purpose? That’s when I saw the witch hazel and I wanted to tell everybody about it – no joking.

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Debra Audet’s memorial service was held Saturday in a grand gothic cathedral on East Avenue. Her friends and family spoke eloquently about her life, her gifts and the meaningfulness of her life in theirs. It was a fitting tribute.

You can tell a lot about a woman from her haircut and humor. Debra was class all the way – style that never goes out of fashion, tastes that transcend fad. Her laugh lifted the very air around her and she intuitively and magnetically attracted an army of people like herself: talented, bright, quick to savor life.

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Here’s a photograph of a garden “folly” in a tiny city backyard in Davidson, North Carolina. I have christened it “the cathedral” and somehow – in my mind’s maize – the witch hazel, Debra’s life and the garden cathedral all tell a similar story.

COMFORT ZONE: Right or Wrong?

2009-10-09T16:35:00.000-07:00

Bill Stewart and Kathy Calderwood opened the fall season with an exhibition of their work in the spankin’ new art gallery at Nazareth College. Kudos to Nazareth College for having the good grace to include such a class space in the re-do of their art center and to the Sands’ family (Wine anyone?) for underwriting this brilliant facility. I am, however, unclear about how the gallery will operate. Is it to be used strictly for Nazareth College faculty and students? What a shame that would be! And who is serving as its director? Experience tells us that unless a qualified dictator is hired, the gallery space will fall into an art cow pie. So let us be positive and assume that the future quality of the exhibitions will be top rate with art that inspires, challenges and informs us all – faculty, students or voyeurs.

But is that what we truly want? Or do we really crave “comfort art”? Otherwise, how else can you explain Thomas Kincaid (the “painter of light”) with his cheesy cabins sitting in moonlit snow/English spring garden/fall foliage/beside a stream, animals peeking through windows, the top money-producing artist in America today? (Yes! It’s true!) Or the quilt show at Memorial Art Gallery being the largest attendance draw they had all year?

I was asked today to give my opinion about an up-coming tour of art galleries in our region with the caveat that “some members really don’t like that far out stuff.” So is the steering committee right to avoid subjecting viewers to the art fringe? But how and when does the fringe become mainstream? Has our definition of "fringe" changed in the last 5 years? 10 years? How did that happen?

Is it true that the greater our exposure to art of all ilk, the more refined and informed our art tastes? Then are museum guards the MOST sophisticated art audience in the world? Must I keep staring at the “white on white” painting until I understand it or can I simply walk away and admit that it’s all bunk?

Mihaly Cskszentmihalyi, the “happiness professor” at the University of Chicago reports that the longer we experience happiness (read his books on “Flow” for full description of that loaded term), the higher we evolve as individuals. Looking at art makes me happy and I've seen a bunch. Playing golf makes my friend Fred happy. He thinks my art taste is weird. Who's to say which of us is a more highly evolved individual? Can we respect the differences among us without being judgmental? Or does staying in a comfort zone too long give you brain sores?

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A word or two about the Nazareth show: Bill Stewart is a friend of mine, someone I’ve known well for nearly twenty years. A few years ago, I feared – and wrote publicly – that he had entered a “comfort zone” of his own. This body of work dispels those fears. They scream “Catholic saints” – size, presentation, even the spare use of red and gestures of hands look like Stations of the Cross. It’s difficult to infuse artwork with humor, subtlety and intellectual content. Stewart manages all those things with this group of all-American saints.

The very best painting in this show is Kathy Calderwood’s little girl in “Green Shoes,” a painting of her 3 year old granddaughter. There isn’t a grandparent alive who could resist this picture and there isn’t an art critic anywhere who wouldn’t be happy pointing to this painting as an example of the essence of excellent contemporary portraiture.

PORTRAITS; NOW WHAT?

2009-09-29T13:19:00.000-07:00

I have people all over my house. Mad Sally hangs above the fireplace and the Fisherman's Wife stands on the floor below. Three odd looking men watch me brush my teeth, a rigidly correct Presbyterian sits in judgment of living room activity and Mario Cuomo in clown face is downstairs along side a native american indian lady swallowing the sun. These are all works by Upstate New York artists and while other paintings have come and gone through our various homes, I still find these pieces interesting, mysterious and funny.

Yesterday the UPS man delivered a big box with a portrait of my sister Gaynell. It is none of those things. Gaynell died when she was thirty three years old. Her husband commissioned this painting and now, after forty years, he's sent it to me.

So I've looked up some information and history of portraiture. I already knew that once, historically, painters were only allowed to paint the likeness of royalty or heavenly beings. In some cultures, self-likenesses are still considered bad luck and even the Bible warns of "graven images." Still, humans attempt to re-create themselves with a visual record of their life, to somehow leave an immortal record behind that reveals the truth about themselves, that says "remember me always."

The portrait of my sister is badly painted. Paint is flaking and it looks nothing like her. It doesn't make me remember her kindly, with love. It only makes me feel sad.

So now what? What do I do with this thing? Why does it always feel wrong to destroy a work of art even if it's bad? I can't begin to tell you how many times people call me with the question: "we're downsizing....moving....my parent died and left me...." with the climax "what do I do with this ....painting/print/sculpture?" Face facts. Most of the art we accumulate has very little value to anybody else. Few of us are lucky enough to have picked up that Picasso for a few dollars in a garage sale that everybody else overlooked.

So I repeat the list of possible solutions that usually start and end with "donation." But the real question is : where is the graveyard for unwanted artwork?

Robert Marx , One season ends, another begins

2009-09-12T08:06:00.000-07:00

An unexpected August draught sent my gardens into a strange plant purgatory. Color faded, leaves sagged or browned off and ferns simply turned toes up in early surrender. All I could do was pray "Oh Lord, either send rain, send cold or get me out of here!" Obviously, I could have dragged out watering cans and hoses - a bad political choice what with the environment and all.

These are the same gardens that soaked up so much of our resources over the past five years and after such a robust growing season, we hoped for better - one of those swaggering, black eyed Susan summers that melt into frosty nights and smokey clouds of red and orange maples and sumacs. I feel cheated and wonder "Is this what old age is like?"

I had a conversation with my doctor who asked if something was bothering me and I said "No one thing. I'm cosmically depressed." She said "Here, take these. You need a little teflon." So I did (I have really good health insurance.) Now I can almost endure this chapter but I wonder if a season of swagger will ever return.

There must be a "...but" in this scenario and sure enough! There they are! Ornamental grasses that I planted just a year or two ago and they are magnificent - cocky sure of themselves, not to be ignored and I say "o.k. then! Let's get on with this dance."

¶ ¶ ¶ ¶

Robert Marx has the enviable ability that convinces you - when you meet him - that you are the very person he's been waiting for days to see and HERE YOU ARE! The man who once was lanky has settled comfortably into his skeleton in old age and appears to observe world events and the silliness of humanity with thoughtful concern tinged with satire.

I bought this Marx etching in 1979 at Gallery 696. I'm trying very hard these to days to rise above and away from ownership of objects but last night, Chip and I committed

all our gift-giving dollars for the next several years toward the purchase of this oil painting. Was that back-sliding or an act of optimism? I need to think about this.

Art Gifts

2009-08-31T06:28:00.000-07:00

I'm going to a wedding next week end and I've put together this little collage as a gift for the couple- two professional people bracketing 40 yrs. old. In other words, they really do not need sheets and a toaster.

But now I'm mucking around in the question of "the gift of art" - a subject that has wavered in and off my life screen for years now. Here are random thoughts:

Once, a very dear friend and talented artist offered to give me pieces of her work to pass along to my children who were just setting up households. I said "no thanks" thinking about the uncontrolled dogs, the scant housekeeping skills and general chaos that my daughters lived amongst. Art sculpture didn't stand a chance! But my friend looked like I had punched her in the face and I felt awful - still do! - and wonder how I might have handled that more diplomatically.

I know an artist who continuously complains how everybody takes advantage of her and her "generous nature." "Every time any organization wants to raise money, they hold an auction and want free art to sell. What do I get out of this? This is my life's work. They don't ask doctors for free services, do they?"

Well, yes, in fact they do. Visit the St. Joseph's Neighborhood Clinic entirely staffed by volunteer doctors, nurses and dentists. And not all retired either! Somehow they make time to spend a few hours a week with the poor and uninsured. For years, an accountant in town kept a few artists as clients without ever charging them for his time and a Park Avenue chef fed a local painter for years when he was "between commissions."

For mind-blowing altruism, I know two artists eligible for social security incomes who still do not collect because, they answer, "I don't need the money and if I take it, maybe the government will run out of money faster and people who truly depend on that to live will be forced to do without." They restore my faith with their generous spirit - even if it's misplaced.

So I'm back where I started with the question of the gift of art. I guess I come down to this: why not? who cares? Go wait tables or teach a class if you need to earn a living but spread the art EVERYWHERE BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE. (And I hope the couple likes my collage but if they don't, I'll get over it.)

Graffiti, Art or Vandalism?

2009-08-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

I admit it: I am in a conundrum about graffiti. The show at Rochester Contemporary Art Center includes real-life graffiti painted directly on the walls by one of Rochester's noted tag teams. The art reviewer in City Newspaper writes blisteringly about those who don't understand how inspired this work is (that would be me) and how narrow the perspective of all who don't embrace the legitimacy of this work (me again).

Please don't misunderstand. I've seen some enchanting paintings on the most unlikely surfaces and in fact, I'm fully aware that when some of these pieces are translated onto canvas, their creators have become A-one, big-time, money-making art superstars. And you can ask an obvious question: if the Berlin Wall had NOT been covered by layers of scrawling spray paint - if instead it had remained pristinely clean gray concrete - would chunks now be ensconced in galleries, museums and Bausch & Lombs lobby?

However, I spent years studying urban sociology and repeatedly, scientists found that the harbinger of urban neighborhood decay came with small visual clues - among them, "tags." (I can find sources and quotes upon request.) And caring neighbors were NOT excited to see spray painted art springing up on decaying walls. (You may rightly ask which comes first: decaying or spray painted walls? I would answer they are interlocked - a bit like poverty and poor schools.)

So what separates spray paint art from mere property defacement? Perhaps it's size. Someone said that one pink flamingo on a lawn is tacky but 100 is an art installation. Is it the same with graffiti? If an entire building - or wall - or train - is covered, does that transcend anti-social behavior and become "art"? Or does intent of the creator make the difference? In other words, are you a kid running around spraying "fuck you" on every bridge in town or are you attempting to comment on social class, injustice or the state of contemporary art itself? Is the painter a folk artist or a delinquent?

These are questions that get answered too suavely by art insiders and that may be a big reason why so many "regular people" have no use for us/them.

Outdoor Art Shows

2009-08-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

I walked through the outdoor art sale at Sonnenberg Gardens in Canandaiqua this morning. This must be year #5 for that show? It's gotten a little bigger but I'm not so sure the quality has kept up. Several decent crafters were there. About seventy percent of the show was photography (now that everybody has a color computer, images can be made quick, cheap and with as many copies as anybody could want. One result: photographers have become big-time greeting card makers.) But very few painters rose to take the bait. I guess it's hard to compete with the photographer/greeting card czars.

When I first started as a crafter doing outdoor art shows, most of us loaded our wares inside the family station wagon, tied some wonky make-shift shelving on top, pushed the kids into the back seat with lunch and off we went. I didn't see any little kids tied to "Mom, the artist" this morning. Come to think of it, most of the exhibitors were "mature." Nor did I see a single station wagon! The exhibitor's parking spaces were filled with vans or variations and every "set up" seemed ordered from the same catalog - pristine white complete with water proof roofs and roll-down side shields.

It would be easy to romanticize those early days and certainly I met some interesting people - some that remain friends nearly thirty years later. But it was hard work. Never mind making the stuff to show and sell. Packing it up was a nightmare, setting it all up in some farmer's field, nightmare, second act. Then there was weather. Cold or hot could be dealt with but rain and wind was something else again. The sound of crashing glass or pottery sent us all to the church altar: "Please God, don't let that happen to me!"

Then came the hours of sitting (or standing) and meeting the public, smiling, chatting - tap dancing to make the sale. Shoppers seemed to fit in one of three clumps. Members in one club wanted to be your very best friend. They talked about seeing you "when..." , loved, loved, loved all the new work, and needed you the artist to recognize their status in the public forum among all who were around to witness.

Then there always were a parade of people just walking through - rarely looking right or left nor slowing down to actually see any of the art work. Couldn't you and I think of a million other ways to spend Saturday afternoon? Maybe they just liked the smell of the hot dogs.

The group I personally disliked most were those that always knew how to do what you did - only better. And they never missed the opportunity to stop and explain to anybody around them why your work just wasn't any good. You,the artist, might just as well be invisible and you knew these people made every shop keeper crazy. They were the kind that probably bought the shoes, wore them three times and returned them for full refund.

I suspect nothing has changed drastically. Those artists this morning still tried to smile, be cheerful, start small talk even though I barely slowed down to see their artwork. And even with a fancy booth, I suspect they are all home tonight, tired as dirt and talking about the day's shoppers.

Finger Lakes Exhibition, Memorial Art Gallery, 2009

2009-08-18T18:00:00.000-07:00

If ever an art show was bone crushingly boring, it is this year's Finger Lakes Exhibition at Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, NY, my home town, and I fear I am partly to blame. I have nothing whatsoever to do with the current art scene - here, there or anywhere! But I DID and during the 1980s when I ran an art gallery and the 1990s when I wrote art criticism, I fought the battle for ART - capital letters. It looks to me a little like those aesthetes - me among them - won the war but lost the spirit along the way.

I remember one of the first Finger Lakes exhibits I ever saw in the early 1970s. The gallery bulged with the most remarkable collection of - EVERYTHING! Amazingly quilted and hand dyed jackets hung next to water color flowers that nearly knocked you off your feet, so real and detailed that they emitted flower smell. Furniture like I'd never seen before (nor had anybody else! Wendell Castle was still mostly unknown.) elbowed it's way into space between metal sculpture and lord almighty! the ceramics!
About a million prizes were awarded, a special one for ceramics, I think another for wood working, another for photography. Go down the media list then throw in some all-purpose, non-gender awards and you get the idea. It was a visual free-for-all and what fun it was. I was overwhelmed and in love and that experience helped shape how I would spend my adult life.

Then "we" started defining "art vs. craft" and "real art vs. hobbies" and so it went until we honed and polished our way to the level of sophistication I see now, a tiny collection of mediocre stuff that would never inspire anybody to do anything! I've written before that any judged show is merely a mirror of the taste of the judging team, yadda, yadda,yadda. And certainly, it would do none of us any good to see the gallery packed with junk - painted ducks et.al. But really folks, when you have somewhere over 500 artists entering the exhibit and only about 3 dozen accepted, exactly what are we out to prove?

An entire Year (Almost) later

2009-06-17T13:36:00.000-07:00

I haven't felt like writing about the Rochester art scene this year. Instead, I've been licking my wounds, feeling old and forgotten and ....all those feelings that get exactly no sympathy and no attention and therefore, I guess it's time to abandon that direction and look for some new strategy to (1) use my brain (2) use my experience and (3) use my time - but leave my $$$ out of it!

First, dear readers, as for one of my last blogs, I was dis-invited to participate at MAG on the Women's Council panel discussing art in the 21st century. Unfortunately, nobody remembered to tell me about the change of plans until the week before when I telephoned the program chairwoman to ask what time to show up and ... well, you can guess the embarrassing conversation from there. The panel, instead, was Ron Netsky (from Nazareth), Rebecca Rafferty (grad. of Nazareth and current art critic for City Newspaper. I wonder how that happened?) and Bleu Cease, director of RoCo. What goes on here? I feel a bit like a leper but I do remember getting Bleu Cease thoroughly angry about a slap-in-the-face review I wrote for City (before I was invited to leave there too!) And I did continue to tweek the nose of MAG (out of love! I keep wanting more, better, the best and keep getting mediocre, convenient, easy listening art.). Perhaps I went about it the wrong way and should not have done my criticism in a public forum. Oh well...water over the bridge (along with my news career!)

So where are we now? It seems to me that RoCo made some good decisions this year (the 6 X 6 show became not only a hugely successful fund raiser but equally good community builder. So why is this - the 2nd year - the last for this event ? Ask Bleu.)

MAG has a glass show up that needs some seriously thoughtful analysis but I'm not doing that now. Time is getting short and I need to take my puppies to puppy school. Instead, I'll send out this question: What's going on with this flap about ArtWalk? I need to be brought up to speed from people who know. Will you help? Can I? Shirley

Sol LeWitt at MassMoCA

2008-08-21T11:50:00.001-07:00

MassMoCA, the huge converted mill in North Adams, Mass., is preparing a retrospective exhibit of wall paintings by Sol LeWitt. An entire 27,000 square foot building will be dedicated to the show that opens November 16, 2008, and will be on view for the next 25 years. The exhibit is being installed with the blessing and co-sponsorship of the LeWitt Foundation and Yale University.

For any reader who doesn’t know, Sol LeWitt’s abstract wall drawings and paintings are applied directly to a pre-primed, specially prepared wall. And they are BIG! Dia Beacon, the factory-turned-gallery in Beacon, New York, designed to showcase works of art so big that other museums can’t accommodate them, has a wing full of LeWitt’s.

Also useful information: Sol LeWitt died last year at the age of 79.

So how is it that previously un-painted paintings are being installed at MassMoCA?

LeWitt “designed and graphed” these drawings/paintings on paper. When an art piece was purchased – or in the case of a museum or gallery show, put on exhibit – trained assistants with the help of apprentices transferred the graphed information (including explicit instructions for preparations) to the wall surfaces. Buyers were given a certificate to verify that the work was an “original” along with a copy of the certified graph to forward to any future buyer (in case they wanted to either sell the work or simply move it to another location.) LeWitt died leaving closets full of never installed works, among them the supersized pieces going up at MassMoCA.

One Rochester art collector owns a LeWitt wall pencil drawing. It is applied to a bedroom wall. Local artists supervised by a LeWitt foreman did the work. The final step – spraying a fixative so that the graphite drawing would be sealed against dirt and dust – was skipped at the request of the owner who preferred the very matt finish, pre-spray.

All went well and the finished piece is exquisite. Then the electrician and his helper came to install special lighting to enhance the piece. The helper inadvertently brushed up against the wall drawing and smudged the graphite in one spot. Rather than remove and redraw the entire piece, the owner decided to let well enough alone and add the smudge to the lore of the installed work.

The Japanese have a term – wabisabi – that means there is beauty in the imperfect. They would understand the owner’s decision.

MAG Biennial

2008-07-14T05:29:00.000-07:00

I visited Memorial Art Gallery today to take in the 3rd Rochester Invitational Biennial and here is my assessment: it’s a 50/50 success.

I love Juan Perdiguero’s “dog paintings.” These things are huge – approx. 4 ft. by 6 ft. or bigger – painted in shades of black and brown against mostly stark white backgrounds. The dogs are super-realistic, nearly photographically real. But Mr. Perdiguero places his dogs in poses that turn them into abstract silhouettes. You can’t help seeing the volumes of field as part of the whole, a lot like Rothko’s black and white abstract paintings.

Sue Huggins Leopard’s printed books are truly works of poetry as well as art. Leopard has worked quietly in Rochester for years and the level of her printmaking skills and integrity of her art has matured steadily. It is entirely appropriate that her work is finally getting serious recognition by serious art curators. I would snatch up an edition of her illustrated Emily Dickenson poems in a New York minute if I had adequate room to display them. They are charming.

I am a push over for “trash art” – those objects created from the throwaway junk that we all contribute to landfills – and Ronald Gonzalez uses these materials in clever and refreshingly original sculpture. Each sculpture sports a “junk” head perched on skinny wire legs. They form an army standing on a narrow shelf that circles a room in the exhibit, one more unlikely and funnier than the last. As someone who recently came from the latest Pixar cartoon featuring a charismatic little robot named Wall-E, I would believe that his band of characters were all movie extras.

Melissa Sarat’s paintings are complex and exuberantly colorful and that is probably the most understated sentence I have ever written about anyone’s art. Each canvas is so covered in imagery, so intensely packed with color that I just can’t concentrate on them for more than a few seconds. My brain goes into over-load. I guess her paintings are good but this time, dear friends, you’ll need to have someone else to analyze them. I found myself closing my eyes to rest.

The bad news: since the beginning of photography, picture takers have been fascinated by reflected images - mountains reflected in a lake or airplanes mirrored against glass covered buildings (and isn’t that a scarily prescient image?). And of course people reflected in everything from car windows, mirrors of every dimension and yes, even television sets. The narrative is just too easy. Susan Lakin’s photographs of people reflected on television screens are – let’s face it – old news.

Todd McGrain’s bird prints and sculpture have been done too but it took me a while to figure out why I was vaguely bothered by this artwork when by every measure I thought I should really like it. After all, I like nature art and stark images and who besides my friend Boo doesn’t like birds? Then it came to me: I own a small soapstone carving that is nearly exactly like Mr. McGrain’s birds except mine was carved by an Inuit carver nearly 50 years ago. And come to think of it, the birds prints look a lot like Eskimo art too – nearly always drawn in pairs – and I can’t help wondering if this is premeditated by the artist or an unconscious borrowing.
Now for the big question about these invitationals: it’s great seeing work by unknowns but what about the old timers in our community? Are they excluded from consideration because they have familiar names? Or because the museum selection committee sees their work as “less fresh?” Why don’t we ask those questions?

Gardens, another art form

2008-06-19T15:16:00.000-07:00

I’ve known Linda (not her real name) for nearly thirty years. In all that time, she’s gained approximately four ounces while I have added another entire person where my waist once was. Nothing on her body sags and her dimples are still cute. She has maybe a half dozen gray hairs that form a chic swoosh at her temple while I am speeding past the “salt and pepper” stage straight into a blue tint job.

Did I mention that Linda is a talented artist with exquisite tastes and an adoring husband only too happy to bankroll her every whim? When I leave her house and come home to mine, I’m not sure whether to reach for a paint roller, a vacuum cleaner or a match. I begin by pushing a chair from one side of the room to another. My husband asks what’s gotten into me today and when will dinner be ready.

I am a college-educated woman. I ran a successful business and helped guide two children to adulthood. My husband of 45 years still loves me and I have the most adorable dog in the world (everybody says so). But there are some triggers – and people - that set off a seismic quake of inadequacy. It’s totally irrational but there it is.

Now that I’m retired, I’ve decided to become a respectable gardener. I buy a lot of books. Recently, I decided to join the National Garden Conservatory as well as my regional Civic Garden Club and tour everybody else’s gardens to (1) steal ideas and (2) steal more ideas. This was a major decision. I knew I was risking another “Linda” situation and my ego simply cannot handle more abuse.

In the past month, I’ve toured fifteen gardens reflecting an astoundingly diverse scope. One was no bigger than a small patio holding about a zillion planted pots while another covered fifty acres. Most were comfortably somewhere in between these extremes spreading over backyards that once sported only mown grass. One or two provided textural carpeting among mature trees, my favorite since that mimics my own growing universe. A few included vegetables among the flowers and shrubs and one was planted with hundreds of blooming tulips that visitors were invited to pick and take home as bouquets. And while I have ideas to steal, here are a few other pointers and impressions from my visits.

First, somebody has really sold the “backyard pond” idea in a big way and the design errors can fill a book. While I’m sure that the sound of trickling water is mesmerizing, rarely does a human construction match the real deal and certainly not in a bathtub sized pool surrounded by a necklace of matched rocks the size of my head.

Hostas win the prize as the hardest working plant oxen among gardeners everywhere regardless of growing conditions.

As a group, gardeners are the most generous souls alive. They will share every secret they’ve spent years cultivating and condensing - everything from plant and tool resources to growing information that only they and their grandmother previously knew. And after all the wealth of knowledge is passed along, they bend over with a trowel and dig out a small sample of the plant for you to try at home. I’ve just returned home from a tour of the Hudson Valley gardens with a bagful of geranium roots and a tub of euphorbia. I also learned that the beautiful cordovan colored plant that mysteriously came to my garden is perilla and that it’s edible. I have enough to feed citizens of a small country.

I’ve yet to meet a gardener who has a finished garden. The eighty-something year old man now confined to a wheelchair that we spent time with at his sprawling estate on Saturday was explaining his next major planting project. His helper was at his side but there was no question about who was the brain behind this nature extravaganza.

I’m home again and you know what? My garden looks pretty good!

I’m calling Linda to come on over for tea.

City of the Arts?

2008-05-25T14:13:00.000-07:00

According to City Newspaper, Joel Seligman, U of R President, Eastman School Dean Douglas Lowry and RPO director Christopher Seaman in a lovefest after receiving a substantial pot of money from Kodak to expand Eastman Theater, proclaimed Rochester “the city of the arts.”

YIPPEE!!!

I hate to sound so cynical but exactly which arts are we talking about here? Obviously, the Jazz Festival has found an audience and continues to gain support and three cheers for the founders of the Rochester Film Festival. My heart leaps whenever I see evidence of film students using our city and resources as background for their creativity. When students invest learning here, a part of them nearly always stays with us.

In no way am I belittling these achievements. In fact, with the world class music school smack in our downtown, we should have music coming off the rooftops and out of the very pores of the sidewalks and everyone in the city should weave this talent into daily events. I’m glad to see a classical music reporter contributing to the Democrat & Chronicle and a chunk of space for contemporary music set aside weekly in City.

As for film, Rochester has long been a “movie city” and maybe somebody else can explain why. My own theory is that we (universal “we”) use movies as escapist entertainment and maybe we here need more mindless diversion than the rest of the country. Winters are long. Mercury Opera has been a big disappointment. Friends no longer care about “gracious entertaining.” Museums (unless you’re under age ten) seem to be stuck in the past. What else is there to do on most Friday nights?

But - here it comes! - how about the visual arts? Where are we in this brave new world? We are a tattered lot, that’s what, so scared now of making any sound that we mostly hide in the suburban shadows. Oh, we tried fighting – more than once! We railed when funds were cut for airport art and we fought to keep Visual Studies alive and Eastman Museum from moving its collection out-of-town. Those were the glory days. Even then, getting the “art community” to form a collective voice was hard. Now it seems nearly impossible to elicit more than a nod of concern, a tut-tut-tut of sadness. I blame most of this on the absence of strong leadership.

Enter my personal ax to grind. The Monroe County Arts Council (what do they call themselves now?) has always been a bit (how shall we say?) anemic. I suppose because it’s always relied on the kindness of politicians for operating money, it’s never really taken on a big voice. (Judy Kaplan, director during the late 1980s, tried from time to time. She didn’t have the experience or the political moxie to pull anything off.) Her successor was worse. And the present director seems much more interested in seducing business money backing for the Council than driving an epee to the heart of art action.

For full disclosure, it is because of the current Arts Council that I no longer write art criticism for the Democrat & Chronicle. I slapped the wrist of the council for kowtowing to a commercial supporter. The director complained to the newspaper editor and I lost. (Talk about no political savvy!)

So, in a “city of the arts” we have very little support for the visual side of the equation, hardly any coverage from our major paper or other media and no strong visionary who asks that we soar to anything above eye level.

The glory days are over for us. The “city of the arts” has come about thirty years too late for us visual people.

Clocks, the Ticking Controversy

2008-05-16T06:21:00.000-07:00

Wendell Castle railed (D&C, Apr. 23, 2008) about Midtown Plaza’s “Clock of Nations” occupying center stage at the Monroe County Airport during the next few years before it presumably finds a permanent home at the Gallisano Children’s Hospital at Strong. In his tirade, Castle calls the hometown artifact “kitschy junk,” unfortunate choices of words but understandable from Mr. Castle’s point of view. His own clock, after all, the very one that won a stiff art competition to occupy that space and for which the airlines and taxpayers paid $150,000, has been crated up and put into storage. Nobody seems exactly sure how long his piece will remain in its closet or why one large clock (his) is at risk during airport reconstruction but another (Midtown’s) can fit in so amicably.

Let me weigh in on the Clock of Nations. There are a few objects that define an era and the CofN is as 1960’s as Mary Quant black eyeliner, white go-go boots, and shag carpeting. It has it all – the same rounded edges that echoes the “house of the future,” the skinny stem of a Saariean table, the pure white of an egg chair. Regardless of whatever other sentimental images Rochestarians carry around in their heads, the CofN encapsulates a time and place in history.

Having established that the CofN has some value, the questions facing the community are what is to become of this iconic piece and who gets to decide? They are the very same questions that should be foremost in discussion surrounding Wendell’s clock for the very same reasons. First, these are pieces of sculpture that we tax payers actually bought and therefore, own. We don’t know their present worth. We don’t know their condition. If there is an orderly way for these decisions to be made (i.e. a Public Art Director or Public Art Commission), we don’t know about it. How is that committee formed and who serves?

The glaring fact is that the airport manager cannot make an arbitrary decision about placing art and displacing art that was purchased and placed by a duly appointed public committee formed for that purpose any more than the City can decide to give the Clock of Nations to a private hospital (even though ultimately, that may be the best place for it.)

Artwork needs moving sometimes. But our decision making process is seriously flawed and should not be left, helter skelter, to anybody who happens to come to work that day.

Shirley Dawson
6 Saddle Ridge Trail, Fairport, NY 14450
425--1639

Look Into the Future

2008-04-30T14:47:00.000-07:00

Next November, Memorial Art Gallery is sponsoring a discussion on art in Rochester in the 21st Century. I’ve been invited to participate as a panelist and I need your help. I’m not particularly good at predicting the future so if readers out there have a line on this topic, will you please share that information with me? All I can really do is look at the 20th Century and try to weave together cause and effect that may prove helpful.

Undoubtedly, the single biggest influence here during the last century was Rochester Institute of Technology. When the School of American Crafts came to this campus in the 1950s, it brought an army of talented faculty and students who stayed in our community, exhibited and sold their art. The school’s fine arts, print and photography departments paired with the manufacturing technology already at work in Rochester created a marriage of art forms that gave a level of sophistication to visual arts here that few cities could match. Nearby, state colleges were booming and all added art departments. SUNY Brockport, for example, had an outstanding faculty and regularly graduated talented artists but such satellites always revolved around the RIT juggernaut.

Direct results? Shop One opened in the 1960s, one of the first fine craft shops in the U.S. Memorial Art Gallery’s annual juried exhibit had artists of the caliber of Frans Wildenhain, Wendell Castle and Albert Paley vying for entry space. Dean Johnson, head of the SAC program, taped a weekly television show on PBS in which he visited artists’ studios. He used his influence to convince area wide manufacturing and community leaders to commission and purchase art.

In the late 1970s, urban renewal was in full force in the City. The list of “bad decisions” associated with urban renewal is impressive but art influence was visible too. When the new Xerox Headquarters went up, it included a world-class art exhibition space. The Halprin-designed Manhattan Square was a coup. Architect Halprin had already designed Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. The downtown waterfront was envisioned as a pedestrian walkway with serious art spotted along its bank.

The Gannett Newspaper Headquarters was designed to include major commissions from Rochester artists and that corporation purchased and installed a serious photography collection aided by the Eastman Museum curator. The City actually conducted a competition for artists’ designed street Christmas decorations!

By the early 1980s, there were at least a dozen commercial art galleries within the City. I opened Dawson Gallery in the Southwedge in 1982 next door to Zaner Gallery and a block away from Hoppers, Wildroot and Shaheen Raquesh Sculpture Gallery. On Park Avenue, the Wilson Gallery had recently closed but Oxford and 696 were still going strong. ArtWork at Sibley’s gave salesperson Roz Goldman her entry to the community and upstairs; the Ward Gallery generously provided exhibit space for all the regional art clubs as well as the annual Scholastic Art Show. Along Main Street, Barry Merritt opened The Gallery of Contemporary Metalsmithing. George Frederick was around the corner.

Except for Oxford Gallery, every one of these is gone. A few new galleries have opened; just as many have closed. Why? What’s made the difference?

I think the biggest catalyst was RIT’s withdrawal from the City both literally and figuratively. The new campus built on the outskirts of Henrietta removed students and faculty from any commitment or interaction with city life. It took some years to filter down but the change is nearly complete and now with a commercial “campus town” being erected, the disconnect is even more obvious.

Broader economic trends must be factored into the equation and Rochester’s economic health has steadily eroded over the past thirty years or more. Hardly any retail exists downtown and few corporations are expanding and building new art filled headquarters. Even when they are financially healthy, these companies emphasize social investment rather than cultural investment. No wonder! The demands of an expanding poor population with all the inherent problems are swamping our city, county and state.

Art, especially public art, became a political liability during the conservative upsurge of the last decade of the 20th century. This community has not recovered and may never on any appreciative scale.

Finally, young professionals are not staying in Upstate New York and their migration to hotter markets extends to the arts as well as other fields.

So my analysis: Rochester may limp along but will probably not be anything but artistically lukewarm for the foreseeable future. I hope somebody will argue against my premise. I’d like nothing more than to be persuaded that my insight is wrong.

What Goes Around Comes Around and Around and Around In Rochester

2008-04-18T13:49:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to turn back the clock? Take one more stab at something that was hard and somehow got messed up? If you live in Rochester, the answer is easy. Yes! You might want to return to the mid-1980s when downtown was nearing the end of a major Main Street facelift and the deputy mayor’s favorite project, the rehabilitation of Brown’s Race, was getting underway.

Many of us sat through countless hours of “consensus building” and information sessions. We reviewed drawings and listened to both imported and homegrown planners explain how this historic district would attract tourists and city and suburban families. “Build it and they will come!” And there wasn’t much doubt that “they” were everybody!

We quieted those little niggling naysayers who kept whispering “wait, this sounds like a bushel of money to spend on a Disneyland dream. What about the railroad ugliness that forms a wall between Brown’s Race and the rest of civilization- as- we- know- it? What’s to bring people down more than once? How will they spend time and money? Is this a big dollar hole that we, the taxpayers, will forever be pouring resources down?”

At the finish of phase one of the project, we all gathered for a whoop and holler party at the exquisitely retrofitted Water Company. The architectural team of Durfee/Bridges with offices right across the alley did a first class job of capturing the essence of the historic building while infusing the interior with a swat of industrial chic. Outside, charming cobblestone streets and pedestrian friendly streetscape enhanced the living history of the place and of course, views of the gorge and falls were nature’s main attractions. Who could resist?

As it turned out, nearly everybody!

From the get-go, the goofy “history museum” portion of the restored main building was a travesty, a penny-anti attempt at what exactly? Then began the rush to turn the place into an “entertainment district,” parceling out fat checks to one barista start-up after another followed close at the heels with fees to entertainment management companies.

Today, nearly twenty years after the new and improved Brown’s Race opened, the City of Rochester has invested how many millions? $40? $60? $80? I haven’t added it up but I suspect that the investment makes the failed fast ferry investment seem like peanuts and the thing about Mill Street is: it isn’t over! The place is deserted. The pathetic city-supported gift shop and art gallery aside, very few private investors have come forward.

Was it predestined to fail? Actually, I confess that I was part of a group who urged a different course of action from the start. Way back in 1990 and before, we were pushing for assorted housing. Any time you get people to live in a neighborhood, they invest – financially and emotionally. Immediately the streets seem safer with the coming and going of daily life and pain in the butt though it is, they complain! About noise…about trash…about poor lighting. The result? A place where other people want to spend time without worrying too much about crime and grand theft auto.

On an even more personal level, I made an appointment with Deputy Mayor Chris Lindley and marched in naively one day with nothing but a good suit and a smile and offered to run a museum/art gallery based loosely on the 30-year-old Gallery of Contemporary Crafts in Pittsburg. That non-for-profit space opened in the middle of a warehouse district, has expanded several times and manages to stay a leading attraction to art patrons worldwide.

I actually had some experience and a fairly sound basis for my offer: I had run a similar private gallery on East Avenue for ten years, had a bushel of respect and national press but it was time for me to move on and this seemed like a reasonable, challenging option.

If Mr. Lindley had one of those trap doors in his office, he would have pushed the button and sent me sailing out to the sidewalk. The response I got was as though I had just farted in his face. Actually, his exact words to me were “I’m sure there are buildings for sale in Brown’s Race and any number of agents will be happy to show them to you.” In other words, the City was happy to subsidize a bar and grill but I was whistling quite the wrong tune.

Since that day fifteen years or more ago, nothing much has changed. Another Rochester rogue business owner offered to join the current mayor’s team and run Brown’s Race. Mayor Duffy I hear politely listened but never responded at all to the overture. The message seems to be: city administration does not trust for a minute independent
“little guys” but is happy to sign away tax dollars to out-of-town experts.

Or perhaps, it’s just artsy people that can’t be trusted with public money. At any rate, I hear somebody’s finally talking about condos down there and that’s a start.

If a tree falls in the forest...and other art questions

2008-04-09T13:11:00.000-07:00

April 9, 2007

My talented friend Judy and I somehow got caught up in a philosophical discussion via long distance and within a matter of a day or two, I sensed that we were falling over an email cliff. It all started innocently enough. She's working on a new sculpture; I found myself wide awake at 3 A.M. and came up with brilliant conclusions about its meaning (Obviously! All 3 A.M. conclusions are brilliant!). I promptly sent my thoughts off to her.

Bad idea. First, I should know better than to analyze any art work after dark without reviewing my conclusions by the light of the sun. And secondly, no artist wants to know too much from an outsider about a work in progress. It's just bad karma.

So Judy wrote "There are three elements at work in every piece: the piece itself, the artist's input and the reaction of the viewer (without which the work simply becomes therapy for its creator).i.e. 'If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it make a sound?'

That's about the time I dropped the subject but the question arises to tickle my brain tissue. Does art in fact need "feedback" to raise it from self-indulgent therapy?

The whole tree in the forest thing has always seemed to me to be the height of egoism. The suggestion is that nothing really matters if I (you, we) haven't personally been involved somehow in the process. (I'm sure there are scientists out there who will tell me the reasons why sound waves sent out require...blah, blah, blah. Nobody really wants that information this time, so please sit down.) So now, what about those primitive cave paintings? Were they less "art" because they rested undiscovered for generations? What about the ones we have yet to find? Are they less important? (Ooops..."important"...There's a judgement-laden word we need to keep out of the discussion. Now I've tread into the breach of a value system as applied to art. And that is not my intent here.)

I'm currently reading "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" by Annie Dillard and stopped in my tracks at a passage. The book's narrator tells of watching a mocking bird dive bomb off a four story building and at the last minute, before slamming into the ground, spreads it's wings and lands instead gracefully on all two feet. She's stunned at the sight, realizes she's the only observer to this amazing performance and brings up the old "tree falling" business.

Then she thinks "the answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there."

Thoughts on Public Art

2008-04-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

Poor Richard Margolis! In an effort to explain why Rochester’s art community hasn’t cheered for Renaissance Square, he’s dredged up old airport art news when there is so much new art muck to smear around. And the most recent airport mess – “the mysterious disappearance of site specific art pieces” – is only history repeating itself. In 1991, Monroe County purchased one sculpture and was gifted another for Highland Park. Both have disappeared from view and at least one of those pieces, I’m pretty sure, went directly to a landfill.

Rochester is about to land smack into its next art dilemma: what’s to become of sculpture hanging in Mortimer Street Parking Garage after the tear down to make way for Renaissance? What’s to become of the artwork that the City will suddenly own that’s now hiding in the caverns of Midtown Plaza? (And I refer to more than the Clock of Nations that apparently has a cue of people lining up to suggest its new home.)

I was tickled when Lois Geiss announced that the City would (has already?) adopt a new art policy, setting aside a percentage for art on all construction projects and if I may paraphrase her, “with pieces like those sculptures of Susan B. Anthony, done by Rochester’s own artists.” This statement contains the seeds of nearly everything wrong with our public art policy to date.

Rochester has had – off and on again – a percent for art but first we need a complete inventory of what’s already owned, it’s condition, history and value, where it rests today and a policy in place for removal when necessary. (Come on Arts Council! Earn your keep. And, by the way, where is the visitors’ brochure mapping these pieces?)

Next we need to take the parochial blinders off, adopt a professional way of calling for entries and judging art works that encourages worldwide competition. Yes, we have talented artists here but not nearly as many of some of us think we do and not many with technical skills sometimes required for sophisticated installations. And I feel compelled to add, we have enough junk on the streets, thank you very much.

And we need a way of “banking the money.” When some of that percent isn’t spent (many reasons: too few entries to make good art selections, site really isn’t conducive, funds just aren’t enough to buy something really worthwhile), we need a mechanism in place to add it to funds for another site or another project. And by the way, this is a way to begin a “Trust for Art.” When I die (gasp!), I don’t want flowers. Perhaps my friends will send their $10 to such a fund instead.

Which brings me to another little piece of mud: Rochester does not want anything even remotely controversial – ever! We (the pro art group) beat the horse into the ground and the anti-art group decides the best way around the whole mess is never to take a step off the path in the first place. Shame on all of us! One result? I know a couple who offered to purchase and gift public art to the City/County to be installed along a hiking trail near where they live. The C/C representatives couldn’t get out of the room fast enough and to this day have not responded to the overture.
I’ve spent my adult life in service to our art community. I’ve written about these issues repeatedly. To date, it hasn’t seemed to matter. But a few of us – Richard included - can’t help continuing to try.

Start the discussion. What do you think?