Art I'm Looking At: The Art-o-Mat

This post was prompted by a post I happened to see today on Hyperallergic, following an old link to an article about the Art-o-mat®.

What is an Art-o-mat® you ask? If the name suggests some connection with the culture of automation (and naming) of the 1950s and 1960s, you're right on track. A group called Artists in Cellophane, the brain child of artist Clark Whittington, operates a fleet of old cigarette vending machines from the period that now dispense art rather than cigarettes--machines Whittington has dubbed Art-o-mats®.

I first encountered an Art-o-mat® in the entrance lobby of the Crocker Museum of Art, in Sacramento, in the summer of 2012 on my first visit to that museum. A $5 bill and a pull on a lever dispensed a cigarette pack-sized art object of my choice (eventually--the machines are old, finicky, and not tolerant of much deviation from the size and weight of a cigarette pack; my choice got stuck and a staff member had to open the machine with a key to retrieve it). If you're old enough to remember cigarette machines, the idea makes instant sense. I had to buy something, just to support the whimsy. Sitting on my bookshelf now is a small (very small) painting of a Laysan Duck by artist Alice Dean. I had misplaced the little painting right after buying it, until yesterday, when looking through a small travel bag I had used that day two years ago, I finally found the purchase again. The finding of my little duck portrait and seeing the article about the Art-o-mat® coming a day apart was the serendipity that prompted this post.

This being the start of a new year--another bit of serendipity--and the start of new years being the traditional time for starting new projects, I went to the Art-o-mat® website (well worth a visit) after reading the Hyperallergic post, suddenly curious about the location of other Art-o-mat® machines that might be near me. I see that there are seven in the Bay Area, four in San Francisco, the one at the Crocker Museum in Sacramento, one at the San Carlos Public Library, and one on the Stanford campus, in Palo Alto. In San Francisco, there's an Art-o-mat® at the Exploratorium (Pier 15), one each at two locations of The American Conservatory Theater (415 Geary St. and 1119 Market St.), and one at the RayKo Photo Center (428 3rd St.). According to the Art-o-mat® site, there are more than 100 working Art-o-mat® machines around the United States. You can find them all on a map on the site. Pictured at top is the Art-o-mat® at The Exploratorium (photo from the Art-o-mat® website). Perhaps I will attempt to make a collection of artworks from all the Bay Area Art-o-mat® machines in 2015. If you're an artist and willing to meet the stringent dimensional requirements that allow the machines to work, Artists in Cellophane is looking for contributors.

Places I'm Visiting: Sacramento

Made a short trip to Sacramento recently, mainly to visit the Crocker Art Museum again, but took the opportunity also to visit the old Governor's Mansion in the city. The large Victorian house was built in 1877 not for the governor but for Albert and Clemenza Gallatin. Gallatin was a partner in a large hardware firm in Sacramento who had become very wealthy supplying the railways and purveying to men who had become rich in the gold and silver businesses, among others.

The $5 tour is worth the time (about an hour). Tickets are sold in what used to be the stables and carriage house, an impressive building in itself (pictured here with palms). Many details date back to the original construction, including some of the original plantings (the palm trees and a couple of very large camellias), but the house has undergone modifications that reflect decades of use by the first families of California, many made in the 1950s and 1960s. The result is an interesting blend of late 19th century architecture with bathrooms and a large kitchen brought up to date in a style that's familiar from my childhood. The kitchen looks a lot my grandmother's kitchen did. Thirteen governors used the building as a residence over a period of 64 years from 1903, when the state purchased the structure. It's still used occasionally for special events.

Special exhibits currently at the Crocker Museum of Art include a show of quilts "Workt by Hand: Hidden Labor and Historical Quilts," from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum (through September 1) and a show of African American art from the collection of the Smithsonian Institution's Smithsonian American Art Museum "African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, Civil Rights Era, and Beyond" (through September 21).

Some of the quilts were magnificent. The curators have hung most examples on the walls, but several are shown on period beds and a number are placed on horizontal supports positioned so that a wall behind the quilt can be painted with the outline of a headboard, allowing the viewer to easily imagine how the quilt would have looked in use. The oldest date from the early 1800s, the most recent are post-WWII work, but the majority are from the mid-1800s. A large number of styles and techniques are represented. Particularly impressive were a large patriotic quilt using reverse appliqué, a fabulously flower-embroidered crazy quilt, a beautiful Rob Peter to Pay Paul quilt in red and white, a large Whig rose quilt (detail shown), and a number of "album quilts"--quilts made cooperatively, with a number of people creating panels later sewn together to form a finished piece. Accompanying materials include popular magazines showing how quilting has been interpreted differently in different periods. Particularly interesting were brief discussions on wall panels of the work from a feminist point of view, raising issues of authorship and highlighting the tendency of curators to see abstract quilts as a precursor of modern abstract painting, usually relegating the quilts (made mostly by women) to a subordinate position and exalting the paintings (made mostly by men), positioning them as the culmination of a trend.

The African American art show is notable for a very large collection of excellent photographic work and a range of paintings from the mid-20th century by less familiar artists (less familiar to me, anyway). Among the photographers, I was impressed by the work of New York-born Roy DeCarava (1919-2009), a name I'd never heard before (but should have, considering the excellence of his work). His prints, mostly of street scenes in New York, are dark and atmospheric on the whole but characterized by starkly contrasting details--islands of light in a sea of black. I especially liked "Two Women, Mannequin's Hand (1950). The show includes work by some familiar names--notably Gordon Parks (1912-2006) and James Van Der Zee (1886-1983) but mostly by people new to me--Marilyn Nance, Robert McNeil, Earlie Hudnall Jr., Tony Gleaton, and Roland L. Freeman, among them. Among the paintings, A couple of pieces by Benny Andrews are striking. There are two large collages by Romare Bearden, and I especially enjoyed a couple of paintings by William H. Johnson (1887-1967) in an almost primitive style. Well worth the time, especially for the photographs. Finished the day with a very good dinner at The Waterboy.

The Cocktail Glass Collection: The Distillery, Sacramento (July 26, 2013)

I visited Sacramento yesterday. Besides taking a walk around Old Sacramento (which is not devoid of interest, but mostly shops with tourist trash in them) and visiting Sutter's Fort, taking a peek at the Capital Building rotunda, and visiting the Crocker Museum of Art again, I photographed this martini glass bar sign, which belongs to a place called The Distillery (near 21st and L Streets). For some reason, I love these old-school martini glass advertising signs on bars.

To see others in this series of photographs, click on the "cocktail glass collection" label. 

[Update: This was only the second example in my collection of cocktail glass bar signs, which has ended up focusing on neon signs. I've decided to leave it here because it lights up, even if it's done with incandescent bulbs rather than neon tubes.]

Art I'm Looking At: Mel Ramos Retrospective at the Crocker Museum of Art (July 24,2012)

Mel Ramos is a name I must have heard before. I looked him up in the textbook I used in college in a history of American art class (Hunter and Jacobus, American Art of the 20th Century, Abrams, 1973) and there he was, with penciled-in margin notes nearby. I can't say that I remembered him, though, so I approached the current Ramos retrospective at Sacramento's Crocker Museum of Art with no baggage--either positive or negative ("Mel Ramos: 50 Years of Superheroes, Nudes, and Other Pop Delights," through October 21, 2012).

The work is certainly eye-catching. The canvases are big. They are bright. The compositions are stark--usually a single large figure against a plain background. The superheroes lack the commercial artifacts that accompany most of the nude figures (a typical nude combines a Playboy Playmate-style woman in, on, or next to something like a box of candies, a package of Cracker Jacks, a cigarette pack, or a martini glass), but even the nudes are rather simple compositions, and their backgrounds tend to be garish--flat planes in colors like mauve and apricot.

According to the gallery labels, Ramos became serious about painting while under the spell of the Abstract Impressionists, especially Willem de Kooning. Ramos, we are told, disgusted with his own slavish copying of de Kooning's style, eventually decided to paint what interested him, and that appears to have been comic book characters. The show begins with some of these early superhero paintings. It's a shame that at least a few of the painter's Abstract Impressionist works are not included. I left the exhibition curious to see what Ramos was doing in that earliest phase of his career.

"Wonder Woman No. 1" (1962, oil on canvas, Rochelle Leininger Collection. © Mel Ramos/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY) is among the early superhero paintings. It has a naive simplicity, as do the other comic book heroes in the show. The comic-influenced works look precisely like what you'd expect from a man who enjoyed comic books and had recently decided in a moment of artistic frustration to simply paint what he wanted to without worrying about what others were doing. Having said that, I sense a certain disingenuousness here. Already at this period the Abstract Impressionists were moving away from a purely painterly style and beginning to add bits and pieces of the real world to their canvases; artists were already showing a fascination with the visual clichés--including comic book images--that became central to Pop Art. I suspect Ramos still had his eye squarely on trends among his contemporaries.

Whatever his precise thinking, "Phantom Lady" of 1963 (Oil on canvas, Leta and Mel Ramos Family Collection, © Mel Ramos/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY) appears to have been a turning point--as the wall text in the galleries points out. With "Phantom Lady," Ramos combines the comic book hero with the airbrushed pin-up girl, a step toward the nude work that appears to have occupied him most consistently since this period.

With the nudes, Ramos would seem to have embraced the artistic mainstream again. The nudes show all the typical characteristics of full-blown Pop Art. They are not portraits of real women. They are portraits of photographs of women photographed in a style that already makes them a commodity. The addition of commercial artifacts as props adds a surreal note, but essentially they are a send-up of the American obsession with commercialism and with an artificial, smoothed over, enhanced notion of feminine beauty.

"Five Flavor Frieda: The Lost Painting of 1965 No. 47" of 2005 is a good example of the later nudes (2005, oil on canvas, Collection of Don Sanders, courtesy of McClain Gallery, © Mel Ramos/licensed by VAGA, NewYork, NY). The nudes are rather funny. A couple of the titles made me laugh out loud. I particularly liked "Monterey Jackie," a pin-up girl sitting on a large block of cheese, presumably Monterey jack. There is a light-hearted irreverence in the parody of the party stripper in several images in which the nude is emerging from a package of candy or from inside a banana, but I wonder if Ramos's jokes are funny enough to sustain decades of retelling, decades of variations on a theme. I enjoyed seeing the Ramos show, but most of the work seemed only superficially attractive without much to sustain long interest. The paintings (and one or two sculptures) reminded me of the sort of gaudy woman that is superficially attractive--a head turner--but with no personality, the sort of woman that doesn't sustain interest, the sort of woman that Ramos perches on his packages of candy and drops into his martini glasses like pickled olives.

More about paintings at the Crocker Museum of Art.

Images used by permission, courtesy of the Crocker Museum of Art.  

On the Road: Crocker Museum of Art, Sacramento (July 20, 2012)

A couple days ago I got back from a short trip to the north--as far north as the Mt. Lassen area. On my way home to Santa Rosa I made an unplanned stop at the Crocker Art Museum, in Sacramento. I've rarely been in Sacramento before--I usually drive around it on the way to skiing at Lake Tahoe--so I've hardly done anything in the city. This, my first visit, was a short one, but I rather enjoyed myself. The museum was the highlight.

The Crocker collection is quite varied, including everything from antiquities to modern painting and photography, but perhaps strongest in arts of Oceania, in contemporary ceramics, and in California painters. There were quite a few good California landscapes on display, although I especially liked a landscape in Scotland entitled "On the River Minnock, Kirkcudbrightshire," by James Faed (1857-1920), a Scotsman (pictured above--the painting, that is, not the Scotsman). He's nicely captured the peaty brown water and the mist, although these may be hard to see in my photo here.

There were several good landscapes in the Impressionist style by Guy Rose (1867-1925), a painter I've never been aware of before. Apparently Rose was born in Southern California, the son of a California senator, but he spent more than 20 years in France (1890 to 1912), living near Monet's home at Giverney, having earlier studied at the California School of Design, in San Francisco, and at the Académie Julian in Paris. He is best known for the impressionist landscapes he did along the California coast after his return to the United States, including the one of the Monterey coast pictured above.

A number of interesting portraits caught my eye. I liked an 1889 portrait of Mary Blanche Hubbard by  Mary Curtis Robinson (1848-1931) who, like Rose, studied at the California School of Design, in San Francisco, and also at the Art Students League, in New York. The limited palette and the choice of a white dress against a white background immediately suggest Whistler. I liked the way the cloth of the dress is handled and the line of the arm and hand.

Another portrait I liked, "White Dress (White Nightie)" by Otis Oldfield (1890-1969) was similar in that it depicts a woman in a white dress (actually a white nightgown), but in a more modern style. I suppose this is actually quite derivative. The pose with the slightly tilted head and the closed eyes, the palette (with its use of rusty tones), and the small african carving in the corner all suggest the influence of Modigliani; and there is something Picasso-esque in the modeling, but I liked it nevertheless. According to the tag, Oldfield was criticized for painting the model (his wife) in a nightgown, so he changed the name of the painting to "White Dress" to defuse controversy at exhibitions. How times change.

Among the more modern works in the collection there were some good paintings by Richard Diebenkorn and many by unfamiliar artists--too many to catalogue here. I enjoyed seeing a good example of one of the map-like San Francisco cityscapes Wayne Thiebaud (1920-    ) made in the 1980s. I like the odd perspective that gives the impression of looking straight down on the subject while seeing it from another angle at the same time, the odd angles of the streets and buildings and of the long shadows. This one is called "Street and Shadow."

The main special exhibition was a retrospective of work by pop artist Mel Ramos, a Sacramento native. Details here.

[Update: Also see this post about the Art-o-mat® in the lobby of the Crocker Museum.]

On the Road: Lassen Volcano National Park to Sacramento (July 19-20, 2012)

A very successful day, yesterday. I returned in the morning to Lassen Volcano National Park, to the area around the entrance in the northwest corner of the park, and took a couple of short hikes from there--one through lily ponds, another around Lake Manzanita, a flat oval of blue surrounded, as its name suggests, by manzanitas, but also by towering evergreens. I had hoped to see White-headed Woodpecker, a bird I've never had the pleasure of meeting, and one described in the national park handouts as "common," but I had no luck with the woodpeckers. Mostly I saw Mountain Chickadees, Steller's Jays, and Canada Geese on the lake. I did, however, get to watch a Western Wood Pewee flycatching over one of the lily ponds, a pair of Red-breasted Sapsuckers feeding a fledgeling, and a Coot with two babies with their bizarre red and yellow whiskers--something I've never seen before. So, the day started with a pleasant walk, despite the absence of White-headed Woodpeckers.

What made the day so successful, was my spur-of-the moment decision to head toward Sacramento. As I entered the city, I happened to see a sign pointing the way to the Crocker Art Museum. I was in no hurry. I like art museums. I decided to follow the signs.

Good fortune. I found a parking space immediately in front of the galleries. Thursday, the museum stays open late, until 9:00PM. With good summer weather and long days, the museum invites musicians for outdoor concerts on these late evenings. The museum café looked good. So, I took a leisurely stroll through the exhibits, had a light dinner of pulled pork tacos and amber ale in the café and then finished my ale out in the museum's courtyard, lazing on the grass, listening to the music, watching people dance. Excellent Latin-flavored jazz by the Gonzalo Berger Quartet. Serendipity.

The Crocker Art Museum has a good collection, strong in arts of Africa and Oceania, in contemporary glass and ceramics, and in 19th and 20th century California artists. A recent addition (completed in October 2010) has created a very large display area. Special exhibits included ceramics by Karen Karnes, photographs from the museum's collection, contemporary glass from the museum collections, and paintings by Mel Ramos. Details here.

Places I'm Visiting: Sacramento, California--California State Yo-Yo Championships

Last Saturday, March 3, my son participated in the 2012 California State Yo-Yo Championships--his first time entering such a contest. There were 87 contestants in the 1a class he chose. He ranked 40th, which doesn't sound all that great, but he can now claim to be the 40th best Yo-Yoer in the state of California--which sounds pretty good. Actually, it is pretty good, considering that the top placers included current and former state and national champions as well as people that have placed in or won world competitions. This year's top award in the 1a class went to Yuuki Spencer. He was followed by Gentry Stein and Augie Fash. Some of the best are amazing to watch in action. I enjoyed watching the action off-stage as well--people comparing skills and sharing tricks, trading, buying, selling, and everywhere the whirr of yo-yos.

Birds I'm Watching: Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge

© Colin Talcroft, 2010

Sonoma County's Madrone Audubon Society took a trip to the Sacramento National Wildlife  Refuge yesterday, staying overnight to bird nearby areas today. Because of work obligations, I drove up for the day and came back last night, but still got to see tens of thousands of birds (not an exaggeration) that have come down from the north to use the Sacramento area wetlands to overwinter. There were easily 5,000 pintails alone--very pretty ducks (photo above)--and probably 20,000 snow geese or more. Highlights included a couple of bald eagles--one that caught and ate a large duck--and a beautiful peregrine falcon (the best view I've ever had of this bird, photo below). The majority of the birds were Pintails, Snow geese, Ross's geese, Greater white-fronted geese, Northern shovelers, and Coots, probably.

© Colin Talcroft, 2010

In total, I saw about 45 species. Last year on this trip, I saw seven new species. It's an indication of just how many birds I've seen in the past year that I got nothing new this time around. Still, it was a pleasure to see so many birds--in absolute numbers. Birds sighted were: Western meadowlark, Turkey vulture, Red-winged blackbird, Black phoebe, Red-tailed hawk (about seven in the course of the day), kestrel, American pipit, Mallard, Northern Pintail, Snow goose, Ross's goose, Greater white-fronted goose, Yellow-rumped warbler, Coot, Northern shoveler, Marsh wren, Northern harrier, Cinnamon teal, Blue-winged teal, Horned grebe, Dunlin, Peregrine falcon, Moorhen, Snowy egret, Raven, Great blue heron, Greater scaup, Black-necked stilt, Gadwall, white-crowned sparrow, American wigeon, Eurasian wigeon, Great egret, Bald eagle, California gull, Herring gull, Starling, Ring-necked duck, Ruby-crowned kinglet, Bufflehead, Golden-crowned sparrow, and Ruddy duck (all on the driving tour at the main refuge). At Llano Seco, saw many of the same birds but also Sandhill cranes, a Long-billed curlew, Greater or Lesser yellowlegs (too far to tell which), and Canada geese (surprisingly few of these overall), and, along the road elsewhere, a few groups of Tundra swans.

Birds I'm Watching: Sacramento Area

Just to report a chilly but rewarding trip to the Sacramento area with some local birders yesterday. Saw an amazing 72 species during the day and saw six species for the first time in my life--not to mention two others that I had seen before but never well enough that I felt I should consider them real sightings. The route was up I-80 to Highway 160 through Isleton, Walnut Grove, and Thornton, and then to the Cosumnes River Preserve. On the way back, we passed a spot known recently for mountain plovers and a burrowing owl. We found the burrowing owl, but not the plovers.

First-time sightings for me were: Ross's goose, Lincoln's sparrow, loggerhead shrike, borrowing owl, lark sparrow, and horned lark. I added the sandhill crane and ferruginous hawk, to my list as well, because I got to see these birds well for the first time.

Other birds observed were: Downy woodpecker, Nuttal's woodpecker, belted kingfisher, Say's phoebe, black phoebe, mallard, black-necked stilt, yellow-rumped warbler, ruddy duck, ring-necked duck, violet-green swallow, bufflehead, marsh wren, snow goose, yellow-billed magpie, turkey vulture, ruby-crowned kinglet, golden-crowned kinglet, kestrel, red-tailed hawk, canvasback, Brewer's blackbird, red-winged blackbird, house finch, California towhee, northern shoveler, killdeer, coots, tree swallow, least sandpiper, Wilson's snipe, dunlin, northern harrier, European starling, robins, Anna's hummingbird, bushtits, cinnamon teal, green-winged teal, golden-crowned sparrow, white-crowned sparrow, American pipit, spotted towhee, tundra swan (thousands), Canada goose, cackling goose (the leucoparia and Aleutian races), northern pintail, wood duck, greater white-fronted goose, American wigeon, gadwall, common goldeneye, great blue heron, long-billed dowitcher, and greater yellowlegs. Other group members saw about six species I missed, including a golden eagle.

The whether was dark and dreary--heavy overcast. As a result, I didn't get any good pictures. Posted here is the shot I was able to get of one of the lark sparrows. This photo does not do justice to so pretty a bird.