Art I'm Looking At: The Cult of the Machine at the De Young

Charles Sheeler, American Landscape, 1930
Museum of modern Art, New York

The Cult of the Machine, now on view at the De Young Museum in San Francisco, although promoted as a look at Precisionism in general (and it is that), is a veritable Charles Sheeler retrospective. It includes some of his most important works—photographs, paintings, and drawings. It was a pleasure to see in person so many Sheelers I've long admired in reproduction, particularly the paintings he made from some of his well known photographs of Ford's River Rouge plant, and his Upper Deck (1929) and Rolling Power (1939)*.

Installation view:
Shadows cast by Shaker furniture

There is less familiar work here, too—by Sheeler, by other familiar names, and by names new to me. Besides paintings, photographs, and objects of design from the period during which the Precisionist style flourished in the United States (roughly 1915 to 1945), there is a display of Shaker-designed household items that echo in their simplicity the stylized geometries of Precisionism. The venue is also showing the brief 1921 film Sheeler made with Paul Strand, Manhatta, that looks at a day in Manhattan, inspired by Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and a looping clip from Chaplin's Modern Times (1936). The Shaker items are artfully backlit, their shadows projected onto a screen. When viewed from behind, the shadows look like one of Sheeler's cityscapes.

Strand is represented by several well-known images such as Wall Street (1915) and The Court (1924). Several of Sheeler's photographs of the Doylestown Quaker meeting house are here, as are painted and drawn versions of views he photographed there, allowing side-by-side comparisons. There are a couple of good Paul Outerbridge photos and work from photographers less familiar, such as Anton Bruehl. His Untitled, a 1929 shot of part of a Cadillac engine is striking. Some of the photographs of my grandfather, Warren R. Laity, would have been right at home here.

Anton Bruehl, Untitled, 1929
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Warren R. Laity, Mail Plane, circa 1930
(Not in show), Private collection

Gerald Murphy, Razor, 1924
Dallas Museum of Art                               

Also striking is a 1924 painting entitled Razor by Gerald Murphy that immediately brings to mind paintings from the same period by Stuart Davis that draw on advertising imagery and bright colors for their impact, works that anticipate Pop Art. There is nothing by Davis in the show and I was surprised to see only one piece by Charles Demuth—the name, along with Sheeler's, that comes to mind most readily when thinking of Precisonism. But most of the artists associated with Precisionism are here, including Joseph Stella, George Ault, Niles Spencer, Morton Shamberg, and Edmund Lewandowski. George Ault's Bright Light at Russell's Corners (1946, Smithsonian American Art Museum), a moody night scene dominated by eerily lit barns, and Lewandowski's small Furnace No. 5, are particularly attractive.

Francis Criss, Waterfront, c. 1940
Detroit Institute of Art

New to me were the painters Francis Criss, Elsie Driggs, Bumpei Usui, and Peter Blume. Criss's highly stylized Waterfront (c. 1940) reduces a waterfront industrial scene to its geometrical essence, using starkly contrasting saturated colors, a lamppost vestige of an earlier age, and a bold yellow-gold frame to heighten the effect. The frame is one of many in the show that are beautiful in their own right. Usui's 1924 New York cityscape 14th Street is a strong piece, with its cubes, cylinders, and pyramidal forms in a style reminiscent of some of the WPA frescoes of the period (and the show includes a painting by John Langley Howard, among those who contributed to the 1934 Coit Tower murals, a WPA project). There are also a couple of paintings by Georgia O'Keefe likely to seem surprisingly unlike her to most viewers. They differ markedly from the style she's best known for. One is a view of barns at Lake George. Another is a New York cityscape done from an elevated perspective—from the window of a high-rise apartment she shared there with husband Alfred Stieglitz.

Charles Sheeler, Upper Deck, 1929
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum

Precisionism was an extension of cubism in its attention to the underlying geometry of things, in its interest in architectonic form, an extension of Futurism in its obsession with the modern and with machinery, but I'm not sure how coherent it was—if it was recognized at the time as a movement at all. Perhaps underscoring that is the fact that "precisionism" was only one of several contemporary terms used to describe the style. The painters were sometimes known as "the immaculates" or they were referred to as "modern classicists." "Precisionism" is the name that has stuck. Names aside, the work on display is quintessentially of its time.

Bumpei Usui, 14th Street, 1924
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

"Precisionism" was a label given to the American expression of anxieties common between the world wars in rapidly industrializing societies globally. The paintings and photographs of the period reflect a fascination with machinery, with scale, with industrial might, but they also betray a deep, veiled fear. The clean lines, the simplified forms, and the tendency to eliminate human beings from angular cityscapes all suggest a need to slow things down, to examine reality in an artificial, controlled way, to tame things before they spin out of control. As the Cult of the Machine wall texts point out, these anxieties are familiar today, with technology rapidly outpacing our ability to adjust to it. To express the angst caused by forward leaps of technology, artists of the early twentieth century turned to depicting the physical manifestations of rapid change—to depicting bridges, dams, turbines, factories, propellers, ocean liners—large, tangible objects that overwhelm, things built not on a human scale. Artists of the early twenty-first century perhaps have a right to feel even more overwhelmed and anxious, handicapped as they are by the seemingly insubstantial nature of the technology that today drives so much change. Our technological marvels do not have an oppressive physical presence. They are not built on a grand scale. They are miniaturized and hidden behind sleek, portable steel and glass packages, hidden inside phones and tablets. They are barely visible. There is nothing to see.

The Cult of the Machine is on view at the De Young Museum (50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr, San Francisco, CA 94118) through August 12, 2018.

*It's worth noting that, in addition to the River Rouge pieces, both Upper Deck and Rolling Power were originally done as photographs (the Upper Deck photo is in the De Young show). There are many other examples of Sheeler working in a highly realistic style from photographs. I'm not aware of Sheeler being considered anticipatory to Photorealism, but surely he was, even if he usually took stylistic liberties a strict photorealist might not have.

Charles Sheeler, Rolling Power (1939)
Smith College Museum of Art

Art I'm Looking at: Claude Smith, on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi

I'm pleased to announce the next show on the Art Wall at Shige Sushi will feature work by Graton-based artist Claude Smith. These are the last few days to see the exquisite work by Bob Nugent up on the Art Wall now (through tomorrow, Sunday, September 3). Claude's show will go up over the long weekend and open on Tuesday, September 5. The opening reception will be the following Monday, September 11, from 5:30 to 7:30PM. Drop by, meet the artist, have a glass of wine, take in the art.

Art I'm Looking At: Chris Beards—Sculpture at Paul Mahder Gallery in Healdsburg (through July 15, 2017)

Chris Beards And After opening reception, Paul Mahder Gallery

The Paul Mahder Gallery in Healdsburg opened an impressive show of new sculptural work by Santa Rosa artist Chris Beards last night (May 27). The artist was in attendance, along with many of the North Bay’s best artists, gallerists, and curators. I say sculptures—and they are sculptures—but all the pieces are wall-hung rather than freestanding, and they are dramatically lit, casting complex shadows on the white walls almost as interesting as the art itself.

Chris Beards, Siege (2017), detail

The show comprises about 12 pieces made from steel—mostly formed from sinewy, twisted strips or wrinkled sheets of steel—mummified in paper. Beards works by encasing steel armatures in multiple layers (sometimes as many as 20 layers) of paper bonded to the metal with thinned glue and other media. The paper and glue layers are then heavily worked. The layers are sanded, overlaid with more paper and glue, re-sanded, painted or shellacked or gessoed, sanded again and then further overlaid and finished in a laborious process that results in remarkably refined, sensuous, satiny surfaces, suggestive not of the raw steel underneath but of other metals—well-used bronze, smooth-worn iron, patina-green copper—or even softly eroded marble. The underlying steel is present in that it defines form here, but the surface finishes Beards achieves are as important as form. The sculptures have a skillfully crafted look in an age of art that often celebrates the opposite, and they are refreshingly appealing for that. There is something decidedly seductive about the work. You’ll want to touch it—caress it, even. Happily, the artist gives permission to touch the work a little.

Chris Beards in front of Within/Without (2016)

Beards has titled the show And After. A statement on the wall explains that the work is about how memory transforms experience—in particular, about the way time distils raw experience into something softer. The work, Beards says, is about the way our “narrative of the past becomes smoother,” the way the “sharp edges and thorns are softened and dulled.” He speaks of his sculptures not as depicting specific memories but rather as addressing the idea of memory itself. The finished pieces are presented as the softened remains of their underlying rough metal selves. He likens these sculptures to “time-tumbled driftwood or bones” and the metaphor is apt.

Chris Beards, After the Last (2013-2015)

Among my favorites pieces were Within/Without (2016, steel, paper, glue, spray paint, acrylic paint), After the Last (2013–2015, steel, paper, glue, spray paint, graphite, soft pastel, shellac), and Tiered (2017, steel, tracing paper, glue, gesso). The first of these suggests an unearthed artifact—a scrap of an obsolete, abandoned farm vehicle, perhaps—rusted but its surfaces polished as if long-caressed. After the Last is evocative of more organic forms. It kept suggesting to me part of the mummified remains of a frilled lizard, perhaps squashed flat on a roadway, or a fragment of a grasshopper—but the sculpture is again transformed into something sensuous by its satiny surfaces.

Chris Beards, Tiered (2017)

Tiered, my favorite piece in the show, reminded me of centuries-old stone steps worn smooth by the foot traffic of generations of pilgrims (the interior staircase of the leaning tower at Pisa, the steps inside Haghia Sophia, in Istanbul, came to mind) or the much-touched drapery of a recumbent figure on a white marble sarcophagus lid. These are only a few impressions, but Beards’s work is beautiful to look at and richly evocative.  And After will continue at Paul Mahder Gallery (222 Healdsburg Ave, Healdsburg, CA 95448, (707) 473-9150) through July 15, 2017 (although Paul Mahder now represents Beard and will therefore continue to handle his work after the show). Highly recommended.

Art I'm Looking at: Marvelous!—An International Exhibition of Collage, Assemblage, and Construction at The Sebastopol Center for the Arts

Conversations with someone newly met nearly always get around to a question that means "what kind of work do you do?"—even if not worded precisely that way. When I tell people I'm an artist, I always feel a little guilty, because what they really want to know is "how do you make your living?" and it's my "real job" that I live on, not art. Next almost always comes "Oh, what kind of art do you do?" and I cringe inwardly. Then I cringe a little outwardly as I say I'm a "collage artist." I cringe not because of any shame. I cringe because I can see the image that pops into the questioner's mind as I speak: the collage they envision is messy and juvenile and made of torn-up pieces of glossy magazines or it's a mishmash of old magazine ads. To most people, collage is not serious art; collage is something you do in kindergarten with edible glue and scissors with no points. The truth is, a fair amount of collage is messy and juvenile and made of torn-up pieces of glossy magazines, but the Marvelous! show, now on at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, shows finer stuff. Marvelous! comprises more than 100 pieces of collage, assemblage, and construction chosen from over 600 entries (12 countries and as many US states are represented) by jurors Sherry Parker, Cecil Touchon, and John Hundt—accomplished collage artists themselves. None of the chosen works is anything but serious art.

Among the goals of the show's organizers was to suggest that collage, assemblage, and construction form a diverse and vibrant segment of the art world and to point out a recent resurgence of interest in these pursuits among artists around the world. The show is certainly diverse (and it's a challenge writing about such a big show: its scope can only be suggested; inevitably, worthwhile work gets left out). Artists from Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Japan, the Netherlands, Turkey, South Africa, South Korea, and Uruguay are represented. Although the majority of the work is collage (both traditional and digital), the show includes free-standing construction, table-top assemblage and construction, and wall-mounted assemblage and construction, as well as pieces harder to characterize: among these are altered books, an electrified mannequin (Spenser Brewer's Tesla Man), and something I personally would call a sculpture that looks rather like an exotic Southeast Asian fruit (shown here—beautiful, however you categorize it). Materials include everything from the detritus of human activity to porcupine quills. It's a large show likely to reward more than one visit.
Above: Octopus Egg, Susan Danis (Albany, CA), purple glass light bulb sockets and terracotta.

Collage (and its three-dimensional siblings assemblage and construction), usually is considered to have been born from the early Cubist experiments of Picasso and Braque (who together coined the term "collage" from the French word coller, meaning "to glue"). Although there are precedents (as far back as Western Han Dynasty China), collage as we know it today is of the 20th century. It is quintessentially modern—both in the sense of being of comparatively recent origin and in the art historical sense of association with Modernism as a movement in art.
Above: River Triptych, Lynn Skordal (Mercer Island, WA), inkjet images, found paper, ribbon, old book covers. 

At the same time, collage artists are a nostalgic bunch; while one school of collagists relies heavily on artist-made materials, another and perhaps the dominant school in terms of numbers of artists at work, seeks to evoke the past or the exotic by using found materials that point to centuries recently past or even to ancient times or by using materials that pre-date the medium itself. Antique stores and junk shops, discarded books illustrated with engravings, Asian calligraphy, and long-defunct magazines are favorite sources of raw materials for these collage artists. When done badly, collage of the nostalgic school looks forced and it relies on fetishizing the past. It is often fussy and busy-looking; it's easy to create chaos and noise with bits of the past. (Even in good work, the fetishizing tendency sometimes sneaks through in the way artists describe their work—taking care to tell us a book cover used is from 1875, for example, or that a bit of photo used is not just from an old magazine but from LIFE magazine, as if age itself or the reputation of the source necessarily transfers merit to the work of art.) When done well, however, collage artists using found materials create plausible new worlds or they project us into imagined pasts that are coherent and seemingly inhabitable or they at least keep their work focused, simple enough on the surface to allow us room to question what these bits of the past might mean in their new context. While the answers to the questions raised are not always clear, at least the questions themselves seem coherent, and the best collage work, whether nostalgic or not, always exhibits a sophisticated sense of composition.
Above: Tesla Man, Spenser Brewer (Redwood Valley, CA), vintage 19th and 20th century parts.

A good example of the nostalgic work in the Marvelous! show is Jane Murphy's Boy, in which a found photo of a young boy has been transformed into a playing card. We see the front of the card, but the lower third of the card seems to simultaneously show a design on the reverse. Below the playing card (which is framed by a pale duck's egg green, a color itself evocative of the past) is a piece of ruled notebook paper with illegible writing and a yellowed cellophane tape stain. Off to the left of the notebook page are scraps of map, other paper, cloth, and labels, that, taken together, look map-like, echoing the bits of actual map. In another echo effect, smudges in the two upper corners of the piece act like numbers in the corners of a playing card. Boy is quiet and contemplative and much more complex than it seems at first—without being busy.
Above: Boy, Jane Murphy (Petaluma, CA), found photo and paper, house paint, and pencil on vintage band card.




Lita Kenyon's Aerodynamics 3 uses an old magazine photograph to evoke a past era. The yellowed fragment of an engineering diagram, too, is evocative of the past, but the collage is at the same time utterly modern, relying as it does on a hard-edged, geometric composition comprising only three elements—a study in simplicity. There are echo effects again; three strong elements in the center of the page divide the sheet into three segments. The diagram fragment, the red shape, and the white space between them form another unit built of three elements. The red, the strip of white at its left, and the flanking triangle of black that encroaches on the photo form another triad. When I say "modern" here, I mean in the art historical sense. But modern art itself is now nostalgic. Modernism was born more than 100 years ago. Modernism is antique.
Above: Aerodynamics 3, Lita Kenyon (Edmonds, WA), mid-century fashion magazine cut-outs, clippings from discarded engineering manuals. 

The absurd forms another strong current in collage, a current that has its source ultimately in Dada and Surrealism. Jenny Honnert Abell's Book Cover No. 115, for example, drops us into a parallel universe where birds have human heads and perch on branches in deep space. An old book cover with stains (that uncannily evoke stars and a spiral galaxy) creates that space while simultaneously drawing our attention to its independent existence as a real-life object—again an object evocative of the past, an old book cover. Collage of what I'm here calling the nostalgic school is particularly good at reminding us that we are looking at artifacts. Lynn Skordal's River Triptych (pictured above) uses book covers to create a triptych that suggests a Christian altarpiece. Religious imagery is evoked not only by the arrangement of the panels but by the glowing light on the hands and their cradling of the image on the central panel in a way that suggests veneration, but where we would expect to see a holy figure, we instead see a dissected head floating over a sun-washed riverscape, with a halo not of light but of smaller heads on pins. River Triptych creates a view into an absurd but plausible world, while exposed edges of the book covers tug as back into the real world at the same time.
Above: Book Cover No. 115, Jenny Honnert Abell (Santa Rosa, CA), boar's hair, glass eye, gouache, collage on book cover.

When collage is in a more abstract vein, it still relies mostly on found paper or cloth—on real-world artifacts. Pieces in the show by Mark Eanes, Louise Forbush, Susan Friedman, and Molly Perez are good examples of this approach. Perez's Throttle, for example, combines ripped paper fragments with pieces of cloth, the paper sometimes blank, sometimes with writing on it, the cloth sometimes plain, like blank canvas, sometimes printed. Perez creates an abstract "painting" with colored paper and cloth as her paints. Cheryl Dawdy's Sunrise, Snowy Field, a small but beautiful piece, is easy to miss but well worth more than a quick look. Here the artist takes the idea of painting with paper in a slightly different direction; Sunrise, Snowy Field is highly abstract, but here collage is used to reference reality directly by picturing a real-life scene, even if the scene depicted may be imagined. Dawdy uses subtly colored paper and tissue to suggest a snow-covered field at dawn, a bank of heavy clouds in the distance.
Above: Throttle, Molly Perez (Healdsburg, CA), mixed media collage on board. Below: Sunrise, Snowy Field, Cheryl Dawdy (Ann Arbor, MI), colored and printed papers, tissue. 

Less common is abstract collage made entirely or mostly from artist-made papers rather than found materials. This type of collage stands in contrast to the nostalgic type. Its approach is more cerebral, focused on composition for its own sake, less reliant on the inevitable associations that attach to artifacts. There is no attempt to evoke another time or place. Collage of this sort creates non-referential abstract spaces that resist dialog with the real world (although human minds stubbornly insist on finding "pictures" in even the purest abstraction). Liliana Zavaleta's Displaced 7 is such a work, constructed as it is from painted papers of the artist's own making—although the title suggests the dark brown form split by the sky-like blue in the upper third is the displaced (or at least interrupted) "7" of the title. Perhaps a clearer example is my own piece in the show, Untitled Collage No. 157, made almost wholly from monotypes I create myself. The work is entirely non-referential.
Above: Untitled Collage No. 157, Colin Talcroft (Santa Rosa, CA), acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, found paper. Below: Displaced 7, Liliana Zavaleta (Milford, NY), mixed media collage on paper.

Diverse as it is, it's hard to say how representative the Marvelous! show is of collage, assemblage, and construction around the world today. The jurors had to pick from among the works submitted for entry. The sample was necessarily skewed toward the US and California simply because the show was best advertised close to home. That said, I noticed comparatively few pieces with any kind of political flavor (only three—the pieces by Serhan Turgut, Judy White, and Sally Briggs), although political commentary has been a prominent aspect of collage historically. The most overtly political piece in the show is by Turkish artist Turgut. In his Fear, we see a black and white photo of a man in a hat. On top of the hat, a workman builds a roof. A crew puts up walls in front of the man's mouth. Below the work crew, large white letters on a red ground spell FEAR. I noticed also that collage, assemblage, and construction appears to be a segment of the art world where women are conspicuously active. Of the 102 artists represented, 73 are women.
Above: Fear, Serhan Turgut (Ankara, Turkey), paper, collage.

There is not enough room to mention all the other interesting work in Marvelous! (although I especially liked the pieces by Olga Lupi, Barbara Wildenboer, Carol Dalton, Janet Jones, Koji Nagai, Peter Dowker, Deborah Salomon, Katie McCann, Antonia Rehnen, Rafael Bottino Pirez, Pål Misje, Michael Waraksa, Cynthia Collier, and Jef Arnold, among others—so many others). I've tried to give a sense of the diversity just within a small selection of the collage works presented, barely touching on the assemblage and construction in the show (with notable pieces by local artists Cat Kaufman and Rebecca Trevino), or on the altered books, or any of the pieces from the world of digital collage. Suffice it to say that the organizers have succeeded in bringing together a diverse body of high-quality work that achieves the goal of highlighting the creativity of artists working in collage, assemblage, and construction today. Highly recommended.
Above: Farewell, Antonia Rehnen (Groningen, the Netherlands), polymer print, collage. Below: Cutters, Peter Dowker (Lac Brome, Quebec, Canada), vintage papers, acrylic medium, collage.

Showing simultaneously at The Sebastopol Center for the Arts are Reflections Within—The Reliquary Series, a show of assemblage pieces by Valerie L. Winslow, in Gallery II, and Stranger Than Fiction, a show of exquisite collage work by two of the Marvelous! jurors, Sherry Parker and John Hundt, in Gallery III. Both shows deserve reviews of their own. In addition, two workshops associated with the Marvelous! show are planned. Cat Kaufman will lead an Assemblage Play Workshop on Saturday, January 28 from 10:00AM to 3:00PM. Jenny Honnert Abell will host a Wacky Portrait Collage Workshop for kids Sunday, January 22 from 1:30PM to 3:30PM.
Above: Mission Improbable, Sherry Parker, mixed media collage.

Marvelous!—An International Exhibition of Collage, Assemblage, and Construction is on view at The Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 252 S. High Street, Sebastopol, CA 95472 (707 829-4797) through February 12, 2017. Admission free. Tuesday through Friday 10:00AM–4:00PM, Saturday and Sunday 10:00AM–4:00PM. Closed Mondays.

Art I'm looking At: Traveling Exhibit of Botanical Art & Illustration at the Petaluma Arts Center

The Petaluma Arts Center is hosting a small but very high quality traveling exhibit of botanical art right now. Tomorrow, December 11, is the last day to see it. The show features works of botanical art and illustration from the collection of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. The show comprises 36 works by artists from nine countries (Australia, China, England, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea, and the US), all but one piece by women, and each one exquisite. The Institute was established in 1964 to support and encourage botanical artists.

I was impressed by the care taken to depict the most minute details of even the drabbest of plants. While there are floral showpieces among the works, notably a luminous Hydrangea by Gael Louise Sellwood (United States, detail shown above), I was strongly drawn to a number of portraits of rather weed-like plants, such as the winged sumac and Queen Anne's lace by Lara Call Gastinger (United States), rose hips by Denise Roxanne Walser-Kolar (United States), a selection of oddly formed heirloom tomatoes by Asuka Hishiki (Japan, top), and curly dock by Barbara Klaas (United States, bottom).

Well worth a visit. The Petaluma Arts Center is at 230 Lakeville Street, Petaluma, CA, 94952, in Petaluma's Historic railroad station (707) 762-5600. Open 11:00AM to 5:00PM. Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Art I'm Looking At: New Show at Shige Sushi, Cotati (December 1 through January 31, 2016)

In my role as curator of The Art Wall at Shige Sushi, I'm pleased to present a new show, opening December 1—Mixed Media work by Jenny Honnert Abell.

JENNY HONNERT ABELL—MIXED MEDIA
On the ART WALL at SHIGE SUSHI, Cotati
Dec 1, 2015 - Jan 31, 2016
Reception: Monday, Dec 7, 2015 from 5:00PM to 7:00PM. Light refreshments served. Come have a glass of wine and meet the artist (note that Shige Sushi is closed on Mondays. The restaurant will be open on Monday, DEC 7 for the reception only). The show runs from DEC 1, 2015 to JAN 31, 2016. See the Art Wall website for details of opening hours and for more information. Http://ctalcroft.wix.com/artwallatshige/

Jenny Honnert Abell is a mostly self-taught artist whose work beautifully combines fine handwork with subtly exotic imagery. Abell's work is represented by multiple galleries in the US. Overseas, her work has been shown in Canada, England, Switzerland, and Senegal. A recent commission by the State Department’s Art in Embassy program honored her with a trip to Dakar, Senegal in West Africa where she was given the opportunity to experience the people and culture there. Reflections on that experience resulted in a series of 10 pieces now exhibited in the permanent collection of the US Embassy in Dakar. Jenny’s work resides in numerous private collections including world-class collections at Hall Winery in Napa, California and Imagery Estate Winery, in Glen Ellen, California. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Abell has lived and worked in Santa Rosa, California since 1995.

Art I'm Making--and Curating: Exhausting Day Hanging Two Shows (August 3, 2015)

Exhausting day: Barbara Elliott and I finished hanging her new show on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi this morning, in Cotati. Barbara's show is entitled "On the Edge of the Animate: Photography by Barbara Elliott" (August 4 to October 4, 2015). Opening reception Monday, August 10 from 5:30 to 7:30PM. See the Art Wall website for details. http://ctalcroft.wix.com/artwallatshige/

This afternoon I put up my show at The Spinster Sisters, in Santa Rosa (August 4 to October 4, 2015). I'm showing recent collage work and my "Museum Shadows" series of abstract photographs. The opening reception will be Thursday, August 6, at The Spinster Sisters from 5:00 to 7:00PM. For more about my work, see my website: http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site

See you there--and there!

Art I'm Looking At: High Style at the Legion of Honor

Featured now at San Francisco's Legion of Honor is High Style: The Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection--a rather poorly named show, it turns out. I'm tempted to call the subtitle deceptive. It gives the impression that a large swath of the Brooklyn Museum's costume holdings awaits the visitor. In reality, the selection is modest and everything being shown is from the first eight decades of the 20th Century--hardly the sweeping display of the collection suggested.

The show is poorly lighted. While I understand the need to keep light as low as possible to prevent damage to fabrics, the first room was so dark it was difficult to read the labels. Other rooms were only slightly better. Coming in from outdoors, my eyes were poorly adjusted to the dimness. With that in mind, I went back at the end of the show for another look at the earliest pieces, but the lighting still seemed inadequate. Also, a number of pieces were displayed on raised platforms divided into quadrants by semi-transparent plastic panels that created distorted reflections of some figures overlapping with veiled views of others through the plastic partitions (above). While visually interesting, the distortions distracted from the costumes.

The show is worth seeing--if you're seriously interested in the history of 20th century haute couture, including shoes (there is an entire room full of shoes, with some especially extravagant examples by Steven Arpad, including the rust calfskin pair shown here, from 1939, printed with circular Japanese designs in green, blue, and lavender and embellished with peach and aqua metallic kidskin). The fabrics and materials used in fine clothing are always a pleasure to look at and the sculptural or even architectural approach to clothing design taken by some of the designers, particularly Charles James, is instructive to see here.

The 1953 "Clover Leaf" Ball Gown by James is perhaps the centerpiece of the show, presented complete with preparatory drawings and a media display explaining the materials used, including computer graphics showing the details of its construction. Also given special attention is his 1955 "Tree" Ball Gown in pink silk taffeta, the dress used in the main advertising materials for the show (top of page). I was attracted just as much to a group of rather somber outfits from the 1940s designed by Vera Maxwell, Bonnie Cashin, and others, however, perhaps because they seem more like clothes you might have seen a woman wearing on the street in the period. In the end, I was disappointed, having come with the expectation of seeing an overview of the famed Brooklyn Museum collection. The High Style show runs through July 19, 2015.

After seeing High Style, I walked around the permanent collection a little, noticing a few pieces I'd been unaware of--particularly a small 1889 depiction of an unfinished Eiffel Tower by Seurat, a beautiful little 1879 portrait of Sarah Bernhardt by Jules Bastien-Lepage, whose work I've noted before for the clarity of atmosphere he achieves, and a tiny 1650 painting of pea pods and various insects by Flemish painter Jan Van Kessel II.

Art I'm Looking At: Suzanne Jacquot, Abstract Painter, on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi, Cotati

In my role as a curator, I'll next be showing the work of Sonoma County painter Suzanne Jacquot on the Art Wall at Shige Sushi in Cotati. The show opens this coming Tuesday, March 31 and will run through the end of May. Artist reception Monday, April 6.

This week is the last week to see the current show: Janis Crystal Lipzin—Color Photographs from The "Starflex Series" (through March 29). For more information, visit http://ctalcroft.wix.com/artwallatshige/

Art I'm Looking At: "Birds" at Ice House Gallery (March 16, 2015)

I attended the opening of the latest show at Ice House Gallery in Petaluma, "Birds" a show of art depicting birds--work by a diverse group of artists including Dick Cole, Sylvia Gonzalez, Diana Majumdar, Robert Poplack, Michele Rosett, Stephanie Sanchez, and Joanne Tepper.

Sylvia Gonzalez's work is attractive for its decorative qualities. She sketches birds on top of subtle, layered backgrounds created using a number of techniques, notably Xerox lithography. Some of her pieces are colorful arrays of smaller works. Diana Majumdar sketches very freely, but she nicely captures the kind of quizzical attitudes that often make birds so endearing, and she gets the birds right--which satisfies the bird watcher in me. Recognizable among her works in the show were Bushtits (Psaltriparus minimus, detail shown above) and a sparrow that I couldn't positively identify but one rendered in a way that makes me confident I could have done so with a field guide in hand--perhaps Five-striped Sparrow (Aimophila quinquestriata) or Black-throated Sparrow (Amphispiza bilineata). Dick Cole's work shows some nice painterly effects. Joanne Tepper's work is realistic--with an emphasis on draughtsmanship--but often whimsical at the same time. In her paintings she likes to pose real bird species on teacups, for instance (one such painting was on the cover of the 2014 Art Trails catalog).

I spent about an hour walking around Petaluma after visiting Ice House Gallery and dropping in at Griffin Map Design & Gallery, a couple of doors down, where the Ladies Night show is still on. The most interesting bird art I saw during the evening may have been this 4-foot-high cardboard creation in a shop window along the main drag. I wonder who made this wonderful owl? If you're a bird lover and an art lover, however, my top recommendation would be to take the time to visit Erickson Fine Art Gallery in Healdsburg to see some of the wonderful bird paintings done on gold leaf by Antoinette Von Grone that Erickson shows.

Later I stopped at Riverfront Gallery where an eye-catching photographic montage by Jeremy Joan Hewes depicting a crow or raven seemed the most interesting thing on the walls. Finally, I checked out Prince Gallery, which has a new show of photography up. I especially liked the work of one Laura Alice Watt. Her dreamy pinhole images struck a chord--beautiful, blurry corners of the natural world, not at all in the tradition of "nature photography"--but striking nevertheless. She says in her artist's statement that she rejects the perfection of much nature photography, saying "I am more interested in a direct connection with the world around me...attempting to see nature from the inside, via interaction, rather than simply admiring from afar." Compelling images.

Art I'm Making: Small Works Show at Art Works Downtown, San Rafael (November 29, 2012 - January 3, 2014)

Two of my collages have been accepted for inclusion in a juried show of small art works in San Rafael over the holidays (November 29, 2013 to January 3, 2014), in the main gallery (also known as Gallery 1337) at Art Works Downtown (1337 Fourth St., San Rafael, CA 94901-- (415) 451-8119, or artworksdowntown.org).

There were about 400 submissions, I'm told. Mine were two of only 83 accepted--somewhat ironically. I say somewhat ironically because these are not representative of my work, which has long been focused (excuse the pun) more on photography and printmaking. I began making collages only in July this year. That said, I've been pleased with what I've done and most people who have seen my collages have responded well. If you're in the San Rafael area over the holidays, I hope you'll have a look--although they will disappear if they sell.... There will be a reception at the gallery from 5:00PM-8:00PM on December 13. The image in the top-right corner on the postcard pictured here is one of mine--kind of hard to see, but it gets bigger if you click on the card--or, use the Art I'm Making label here (to the right) to see more of my collage work.

Art I'm Looking At: Impressionists on the Water at the Legion of Honor (July 17, 2013)

A small but worthwhile show of mostly Impressionist works is now underway at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco. "Impressionists on the Water" looks at boats and boating in the works of the Impressionists, some of whom were enthusiastic boaters. One, the ever-interesting Gustave Caillebotte, I was surprised to learn, even designed yachts--apparently a couple dozen of them. Among the highlights of the show are a hull model carved by Caillebotte himself, a beautifully built wooden kayak-like boat, and the equally exquisite scull displayed at the entrance to the show (above). These little boats are art in themselves.

The show begins with a few examples of "traditional French maritime painting" before moving on to a body of Impressionist works interspersed with others probably not properly given that label, but the works are united by boating and waterways as a theme. Annoyingly, photography was allowed only in the entrance foyer, which makes it impossible to illustrate much here, but among the most interesting works were a pair of albumen silver prints (1856 and 1857) of boats by Gustave Le Gray from the collection of the Getty Museum; The Village of Gloton (1857) by Charles-Francois Daubigny; Storm Over Antwerp (1872) by Eugene Boudin with a wonderful glowering cloud and red pennants stretched and fluttering in the wind; an 1874 oil sketch of Monet's studio boat (apparently a number of artists had small studios built onto boats so that the could work directly on the water); View of the Right Bank of the Seine (1880), by Jean-Francois Raffaelli, showing an industrial landscape along the river; prints from the Rutgers University collection by Henri Riviere, including one from a very Japanese-influenced series of 26 views of the Eiffel Tower; a Signac view of the lighthouse (now a church) at the port of Colliure; and a rather surreal-looking Edoard Vuillard painting of a man in a rowboat, known as The Boatman or The Oarsman (1897), striking for the row of orange-yellow poplars and their reflections in the background, rather photographic cropping, and the way the line of the horizon is made to almost pierce the rower's face. Several early paintings in the show by Monet were interesting as examples of his work before he had settled into a mature style. Worth a visit. The show runs through October 13.