Art I'm Making: More New Collage Work

During the 2015 Sonoma County Art Trails open studio event (always the middle two weekends in October) I created several demonstration sheets of paper using browns and oranges and pinks. These made it into the work I did during the event. This collage is very simple, but I like its quiet dignity.

Untitled Collage No. 114 (Santa Rosa). October 11, 2015. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. Image size 16.3 x 17cm. Matted to 16 x 20 inches. Signed on reverse. Signed on the mat.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

Music I'm Listening To: Christian Tetzlaff with Susanna Mälkki Conducting the San Francisco Symphony

I attended the Friday, October 16 San Francsico Symphony performance at Davies Symphony Hall. On the program titled "Russian Masterpieces" were Mussorgsky (orch. Shostakovich)
Dawn on the Moscow River from Khovanshchina, Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No. 1, and Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5.  Guest conductor Susanna Mälkki led the orchestra. Christian Tezlaff was the soloist in the Shostakovich concerto. Mälkki was in control throughout, delivering a good, precise reading of the Prokofiev. I especially enjoyed the second movement. Tetzlaff was wonderful, going at the concerto with great energy. An excellent way to begin the 2015-2016 concert season.

Books I'm Reading: Stiff

Stiff, was a New York Times bestseller when it was new, but I found it at a used bookstore long after the fact. I remember hearing its author Mary Roach interviewed on the radio (probably Fresh Air or All Things Considered) and thinking the book sounded interesting, although I'd forgotten that when I bought it recently.

The subject is a somewhat creepy one, but Roach's approach is matter-of-fact and almost reverent--if at times laugh-out-loud funny. Educational and entertaining. I read it in one sitting. Recommended. I see Roach has published at least two other books--Bonk, which takes human sexuality as its subject, and Gulp, which looks at eating—probably both as entertaining as Stiff was.

Art I'm Making: New Collage

Still catching up with the collages I made during the recent Sonoma County Art Trails open studio event (always the middle two weekends in October), here is Untitled Collage No. 113 (Santa Rosa), which (unintentionally) has a rather Turner-esque feel to it, I think.

Untitled Collage No. 113 (Santa Rosa), October 11, 2015, Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. Image 20.2 x 27.7cm, matted to 16 x 20 inches. Signed and dated on reverse, signed on the mat.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

Books I'm Reading: The Hare with the Amber Eyes

Edmund de Waal's The Hare with the Amber Eyes appears to have been a best-seller when it was new. I received it long ago as a gift but read it only recently. It's an extraordinary tale expertly told. I can see why it was popular. De Waal is the current custodian of a remarkable collection of more than 260 netsuke that has been in his family since his relative, one Charles Joachim Ephrussi, acquired it whole in Paris during the late 19th century, a time of intense interest in Japanese art there among the wealthy and knowledgeable. Charles and the Ephrussi family as a collection of people are as interesting as the netsuke and De Waal is expert at introducing them to the reader as he investigates his ancestors and traces the history of the collection he now owns.

The collection moves from Paris to Vienna, following the family fortunes--where it narrowly escapes confiscation by the Nazis--and then to Tokyo by the 1960s, in a kind of homecoming, owned by a great uncle of the author, who now houses the collection in England. The earliest section, about Paris, is especially interesting for the picture it paints of the artists and writers Charles Ephrussi associated with.

A first-rate story beautifully told. My only complaint is that the edition I read (Picador, 2010) frustratingly has no illustrations of the collection, or even of the several special netsuke the author repeatedly mentions--the hare with the amber eyes among them. I've heard, however, that there are fancier editions available that are better illustrated. Still, highly recommended.

Art I'm Making: New Collages

I finished only one collage in the weeks leading up to the Sonoma County Art Trails event in the middle of October, but I produced quite a number during the event. Here are Untitled Collage No. 111 (Santa Rosa) and Untitled Collage No. 112 (Santa Rosa). Both are collages made from acrylic monoprints. Number 111 (left) uses monoprint elements evocative of watercolor. Number 112 (below) uses some new papers I've made with a lot of browns and rusty oranges--as usual, incorporating scraps from papers made for earlier pieces.

Untitled Collage No. 111 (Santa Rosa), September 17, 2015, acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage, 12 x 11.4cm, signed and dated on reverse, signed on the mat. Matted to 11x14 inches.

Untitled Collage No. 112 (Santa Rosa), October 10, 2015, acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage, 10.5 x 12.1cm, signed and dated on reverse, signed on the mat. Matted to 11x14 inches.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

Books I'm Reading: Two Books on Japanese Art

I've just finished reading two new publications from University of Hawaii Press, both about Japanese art. Hokusai's Great Wave: Biography of a Global Icon, by Christine M. E. Guth, examines the history of response to Hokusai's print Kanagawa Oki no Namihira [Beneath the Wave off Kanagawa], better known today as The Great Wave, from its 1831 publication as part of Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji to the present day, and then looks at how the image has been adopted and repurposed since then. The book's approach is mainly descriptive, aiming to show the breadth of the image’s influence. Guth doesn’t dwell too deeply on the question of why The Great Wave has become the most widely recognized non-Western work of art in the world and perhaps the most recognized work of art of any kind after Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

The themes are diverse, and appropriately so, as the central truth that emerges from Guth’s writing is that The Great Wave has been extraordinarily adaptable, particularly in a commercial and artistic context, where it’s been used to add cachet to package design and advertising, to decorate everything from éclairs to wristwatches, and as a backdrop or pictorial element in both high art and parody. It’s been called upon to represent the power of natural forces generally and, the struggle between man and nature more specifically. It has been taken to symbolize a temporal dichotomy—with Mount Fuji in the background standing for timelessness, the wave for the ephemeral. It has been used as a stand-in for Japan and, by extension Asia, although Guth points out that the print’s use of European illusionism and the then-modern Prussian blue likely would have given it a foreign and exotic appeal to Japanese viewers at the time of its initial appearance.

While simply adding a dash of Japanese flavor is sometimes the goal of these commercial and other applications, just as often the aims of those adopting Hokusai’s wave image seem vague and hard to pin down. The Great Wave remains a symbol of Japan but at the same time a powerful and ambiguous icon easily divorced from its geographic origins, referenced as often as a signifier of abstract ideas as of anything specifically Japanese. Ultimately it is perhaps this elasticity of meaning that has allowed—and continues to allow—its many transformations.

Julie Nelson Davis’s Partners in Print: Artistic Collaboration and the Ukiyo-e Market is a more focused volume. Although it takes the form of close—almost archaeological—studies of four disparate publications and looks at their differing collaborative configurations, her carefully researched book uses each of the four studies to make the same point—that creation and consumption of artworks in the Ukiyo-e tradition were highly collaborative processes.

Davis examines a specially commissioned print featuring a work by painter Sekien, a teacher to both Utamaro and Sekichujo, to look at relationships between a teacher and his students. She examines a full-color printed guidebook to the Yoshiwara entertainment district in Edo, complete with reviews of the prostitutes and their establishments, focusing on relationships between painters, a publisher, the brothel operators, and tsu (those in the know—in this context, veteran frequenters of the pleasure quarters, the idealized assumed reader). She reveals the nuances of an erotic printed scroll, examining ties between the scroll’s designer and its publisher. Finally, she looks at a popular illustrated satire in book form, illuminating the interdependence of the book’s writer and its illustrator, at the same time shedding light on how publishers and government censors interacted in late eighteenth century Japan. She sees each of her examples as a “material record of dialog,” and she is expert at teasing out meaning from the smallest details of these works. Partners in Print is valuable not only for the convincing clarity of its central argument but also for the author’s masterful explication of each of the works she examines so closely. Partners in Print is likely to be of special interest to students of Japanese art history but of interest to any reader with more than a passing interest in Japan, art, and the sociology of art. 

Birds I'm Watching: Magnolia Warbler at Bodega Bay (10/21/2015)

A stray Magnolia Warbler has been hanging out at Diekmann's Bay Store, in Bodega Bay. Magnolia Warbler (Setophaga magnolia) is normally an Eastern species not found here. Once in a while a young bird will get lost west of the Rockies during its first migration south. I went to have a look and was lucky enough to get a good photograph of the bird. Warblers are such frantic foragers that I always feel lucky to capture one in focus (above).

A few days later I went again, but was unable to find the bird. I did, however, see a Nashville Warbler (Setophaga ruficapilla), also unusual here (although much less so). The birds can look similar in some plumages. Both have a complete white eyeing, a grayish head, and are otherwise greenish above and pale yellow below, but I knew this to be a Nashville because  of a number of differences--notably the lack of patterning in the wings, lack of a yellow rump, and the lack of the black and grey scalloping at the base of the tail present in the Magnolia Warbler (above). From underneath, it was all yellow except for a white patch at the base of the legs, which is typical of a Nashville (below).

For more about birds and birding in Sonoma County, see my Website: Sonoma County Bird Watching Spots. 

Wines I'm Making: 2015 Wines Pressed

I pressed our 2015 Cabernet and Sangiovese wines the other day. We ended up with only two gallons of Sangiovese, three gallons of Cabernet Sauvignon/Cabernet Franc--the smallest harvest we've ever had. This appears to have been typical even at commercial wineries around the county--very low yield this year. The wines are now resting, ready for inoculation to initiate malolactic fermentation. I'm also in the middle of a hard cider fermentation and trying to make wine from the neglected Zinfandel grapes (mostly raisins) my neighbor gave me.

Art I'm Making: Sonoma County Art Trails 2015

Sonoma County Art Trails Open Studios 2015

Two weekends in October, every year, more than 160 artists open their studios (October 10–11 and October 17–18, 2015, 10:00AM to 5:00PM). This year, I'm studio no. 63, at 973 Stone Castle Lane, Santa Rosa, CA 95405.

In case you don't already know, I' m a self-taught artist active in a range of media, including drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, and photography. I began making photographs at the age of eight and began drawing at an even younger age. In the realm of abstract art, I've recently focused on photography and on creating collages from monoprinted paper elements. This year at the Art Trails open studio event I'll be showing new collage work and new work from my "Museum Shadow Series" of photographs as well as older woodblock prints, etchings, and other photography, including nudes. My work is in private collections in the US and Japan and has been shown in galleries in cities around the world including San Francisco and Tokyo. I am the creator of Serendipitous Art, a blog that celebrates the unintended art all around us. Additionally, I curate shows on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi, in Cotati, CA. I spent much of my adult life in Tokyo, but I've lived and worked in Santa Rosa since the year 2000. If you visited my studio last year, please come again and see how busy I've been since you were here. If you've never visited, please come and have a look at how I work and at the art I make.

See more at my website (http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/)
More than 50 new pieces since last year

Miscellaneous: The 2nd Amendment is the Problem

The idea that guns should be controlled seems so obvious and logical to me that I find it difficult even to weigh the issue (it seems already clear, not requiring much thought), but the recent massacre in Oregon and the reaction to it among gun rights advocates set me to thinking about logical arguments supporting gun control. The automobile analogy makes most sense to me. The idea surely isn’t novel, but why isn’t it persuasive to gun rights advocates?

Why do we register automobiles? Why do we require drivers to have a license to operate a motor vehicle? Why do we require drivers to have insurance against accidents and to carry proof of that insurance? Why do we require vehicles to display proof of registration and registration renewal prominently in the form of a license plate? Why do we require vehicle owners to keep their vehicles in good repair?

Have you ever asked yourself these questions? At first it all looks complicated. One question seems to lead to another and another. But one answer seems to apply to most of these questions: Cars can kill people, and, therefore, they should be regulated. All these arguments would seem to apply to guns. If we can regulate cars tightly, we should be able to regulate guns tightly.

Why isn’t that persuasive to gun rights advocates? Is my conclusion outrageous, outside the bounds of common sense?

We register autos because cars can kill people and we want to know who is responsible when a car is involved in causing property damage, an injury, or a fatality. We require a driver’s license so that people know the basics of operating a car safely—in the hope of avoiding property damage, injuries and fatalities—and to identify the operator. We require insurance because cars can kill people and we believe it just that victims of auto-related harm should be provided for and that victims of automobile fatalities and their families should be compensated. We require vehicles to be in good repair, because a poorly maintained vehicle can cause an accident and auto accidents kill people. We accept the risk, because cars are useful—for pleasure, for sport, for moving things and people from place to place—but we regulate cars tightly nevertheless. We require registration and insurance and we require these to be renewed annually. We require operator’s licenses that must be renewed periodically. We don’t give licenses to very young people or to people judged physically or mentally unable to handle an automobile. Because cars can kill people.

So why not guns—which are far more dangerous and, on the whole, much less useful?

Why not? Because, the gun lobby has persuaded too many people to believe that individual gun ownership is protected by the constitution. I believe that’s a mistaken interpretation, as many others do (and many deny, based on historically recent supreme court decisions that have destroyed the original intent of the Amendment). What’s clear is that the Amendment is confusingly worded. I think we need to amend the 2nd Amendment to say clearly what we believe it ought to say. The question is: What, as a nation, do we want it to say? If, as I believe, the Amendment’s intent was to limit federal interference in the maintenance of well-organized militias for local self defense (and only that), then the Amendment should say that. Guns in the hands of individuals in all other contexts then become like automobiles—just another potentially dangerous tool. If we can tightly regulate automobiles because automobiles can kill people, then surely we can do the same with guns. Let every gun operator be required to take training to obtain an operator’s license that must be renewed periodically. Let every gun in the nation be registered annually. Let every gun prominently display a unique identification plate. Let every gun owner carry insurance for each gun against its use in a criminal or accidental act that destroys property, maims, or takes a life. Let every gun owner be required to keep proof of adequate insurance with the gun at all times. Let all guns be required to undergo periodic safety inspections.

I would go further, arguing that some kinds of guns should be banned entirely, on the grounds that their potential danger far outweighs their potential utility. Just as most people don’t need potassium cyanide at home, most people don’t need an automatic assault weapon at home. If the 2nd Amendment is clarified, guns become easily controllable—like any other potentially dangerous tool. The NRA and its allies have been smart to focus on the supposed special constitutional protection of individual gun rights. The Amendment is the problem. We need to take back the 2nd Amendment by making it say unambiguously what it was originally meant to say—or, at the very least, to decide what, as a nation, we want it to say today.

And we hear about only the big ones--mass shootings, that is. Here's a link to a site that tracks mass shootings in the US (apparently defined as four or more people shot in a single incident). Mass Shooting Tracker.

[Update: A recent piece in The NewYorker argues, as I do, that the amendment does not guarantee individual gun rights (in fact, the author argues that the Amendment was designed to allow regulation of guns outside of an organized militia). He therefore believes the Amendment does not need to be amended. I continue to believe that clarifying it would be helpful.]

Art I'm Looking At: Mark Eanes on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi

I'm looking forward to showing the work of Mark Eanes next on The Art Wall at Shige Sushi, in Cotati. The show will run from October 6 through November 29, 2015. The opening reception will be Monday, October 12. Click on the image here for a larger view. For more information about current and upcoming shows on The Art Wall, visit The Art Wall website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/artwallatshige/

Miscellaneous: Lunar Eclipse (September 27, 2015)

We were treated to a total eclipse of the moon today. Did you see the blood-orange red moon tonight? By the time I was able to photograph it, the color had gone....

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 110 (Santa Rosa)

I've been taking a break from the intense collage-making activity of the past two years, but here is the last one I made over the summer, Untitled Collage No. 110 (Santa Rosa). This one uses more found paper than usual. The white area on the left with a signature on it is an antique book page. The black area at the top is a piece of a platinum/palladium test print made by my photographer friend Barbara Elliott. The other pieces are papers I've made myself. Image size: 17.5 x 24.6cm, matted to 16 x 20 inches. Completed July 27, 2015. I'll start making more collages soon, as Art Trails 2015 is just around the corner.

 Click for a larger view. Visit my studio  (Studio No. 63) during the 2015 Sonoma County Art Trails open studios event, Saturday and Sunday, October 10th and 121h and Saturday and Sunday, October 17th and 18th, 2015.

Wines I'm Making: 2015 Grape Harvest

I picked our grapes this year on September 19, which is about three weeks earlier than usual (although only five days earlier than last year, which was likewise early). Because of the heat and dry conditions, many grapes were already beginning to turn to raisins. Fruit set was also very poor this year--the worst it's ever been. The harvest was tiny. I took in only 18.7kg or 41.4lbs of Cabernet and 12.8kg or 28.2lbs of Sangiovese. We normally harvest anywhere from two to three times that much. The crushed cabernet must measured 26.0 Brix at a pH of 3.62 (pH squared times Brix = 340.7). The crushed Sangiovese must measured 22.0 Brix at a pH of 3.57 (pH squared times Brix = 280.4). I usually aim for a Brix reading of about 25 for the Cabernet and about 23 for the Sangiovese. I lightly sulfited both containers and set them aside in a cool place for a pre-soak.

I inoculated the juice on the morning of the third day, September 22, using the Rockpile yeast for both. Ordinarily, I press the Sangiovese after about 18 hours to make a rosé, but we had so little fruit and because of work conflicts, I had to leave it longer than that, so, by default,  I'm fermenting the Sangiovese as a red wine this year for the first time in many years. I'm trying to decide whether to blend the two varieties. I may have no choice. I ended up with only about three gallons of each, which, when pressed, will reduce to about two gallons each. That would require using four one-gallon containers, which is a pain (no one seems to make two-gallon glass containers suitable for handling wine), so it will be easier to combine them.

So, fermentation is under way. I'm also doing a hard cider fermentation at the moment. More soon.

[Update: In the end, I decided to leave the two red wines unblended for the time being. As of today (October 6), the wines are resting, awaiting inoculation for malolactic fermentation.]

Art I'm Making: Untitled Collage No. 109 (Santa Rosa)

I've been taking a break from my comparatively intense activity as a collage maker in the past two years and I've been lazy about posting the newest ones. Here's a fairly new piece, Untitled Collage No. 109 (Santa Rosa), from early July. It's currently up in my show going on at The Spinster Sisters until October 4, 2015. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, collage. Image size: 14.6 x 18.7cm. Matted to 16 x 20 inches. Signed on reverse and on the mat. I didn't think about it at the time, but this a rather elemental piece using black, white, and the three primary colors.

  Click for a larger view. Visit my studio  (Studio No. 63) during the 2015 Sonoma County Art Trails open studios event, Saturday and Sunday, October 10th and 121h and Saturday and Sunday, October 17th and 18th, 2015.

Rain: First Substantial Rain of the Season (September 16, 2015)

We had odd mists of rain on a couple of days in July and in August this year--which is extremely unusual--but it was too little to make much of a difference--only 0.10 inches. Yesterday and last night (September 16) we had the first real rain of  the 2015-2016 rain season--0.4 inches in the rain gauge this morning. Let's hope that the start of a heavy rainy season. I hope the rain last night helped the firefighters up north, but I've seen no news. So far, the total for this year stands at 0.5 inches.

Trying to Find a Creative Solution to a Problem: Epson, Shame on You

My GoFundMe campaign

I'm a photographer, printmaker, and collage artist. Three years ago, after saving about a year, I bought an Epson Stylus Pro 3880 printer--finally upgrading to a professional level printer to expand my activities as an artist. I've used the printer very lightly, but it's been critical to my photographic work. After printing only 50 sheets, a piece of the head transport mechanism cracked, causing serious, but temporarily manageable problems. The repair shop that diagnosed the problem believes the failure to have been a result of a manufacturing defect. Epson would do nothing to help me, despite that. Not long after, the print heads clogged so badly that the machine has become entirely unusable--and these machines are designed so that they are more expensive to repair than they are to replace (Repair estimate: $1,650). During the diagnosis, the cracked head support broke off completely. I tried to suggest nicely to Epson that this is like a $25,000 auto becoming undriveable after 3,000 miles and costing $28,000 to repair. I even wrote directly to the CEO of Epson America, but simpy got another rejection from people hired to protect the bottom line. I have nowhere to turn. The machine is out of warranty. That's all Epson cares about. Period. Tough luck. They refuse to stand behind what is clearly a lemon. Others have had nothing but praise for this machine and used the 3880 for many years--as I expected to do. Clearly my experience has been anomolous, not my fault. I bought a lemon. If you look at the photo here, you can see that the factory protective films are still in place--that's how little it's been used.

Why should you donate? You shouldn't have to. Epson is responsible here, but they've left me in the lurch and I don't have the money for a new printer. Having a printer is important to supporting my work. If you love art and hate companies that leave customers out in the cold--and product design that forces replacement rather than repair (creating yet more plastic in landfills)--then please do what you can to get me up and running again.

Happy to provide documentation of any details to parties that may be skeptical. The amount I'm trying to raise ($1,582) will cover a new printer ($1,405--retail price plus tax) and the three ink cartridges I had to buy to diagnose the dead printer ($177--yes, the ink costs $59 a cartridge, and there are nine cartridges; a full set costs close to a third of the price of the printer). 

To see examples of my work, go to  http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site. To make a donation, see My GoFundMe campaign 

Thank you!

[Update: Epson finally agreed to send me a refurbished printer if I would buy a one-year warranty upgrade for the original product. That seemed a reasonable compromise, so I accepted the offer. I now have a printer again--although the first replacement they sent was faulty and had to be replaced itself. That said, they  made this offer only because someone mistakenly sent me a form letter long after our correspondence had stopped about how my complaint had been resolved (which it hadn't). The offer was made in response to my reply to the form letter, which pointed out that the letter was an added insult. In other words, they offered me a replacement printer out of embarrassment, not in recognition of the initial problem. While I'm glad I have a printer again, it seems to me Epson would have done better simply to have acknowledged the original failure and to have done something about it promptly.] 

Tidbits--RIP: Oliver Sachs

I was sorry to hear about the death of Oliver Sachs today. He appears to have died a couple of days ago. I'm surprised there hasn't been more about him in the news. I enjoyed many of his books, particularly Uncle Tungsten and remember a couple of pieces about him and by him in The New York Review of Books over the years. Always an interesting writer.

Art I'm Looking At: More Diebenkorn

A show of Diebeenkorn's work just closed yesterday in Sonoma, but it looks like Stanford will soon display a group of recently acquired Diebenkorn sketchbooks, starting in September. Richard Diebenkorn: The Sketchbooks Revealed will be showing September 9 to February 8, 2016 at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University (328 Lomita Drive at Museum Way, Stanford, California).

Art I'm Making: Newer Collage

I've been taking a break from making art for the past couple of weeks. I've had a lot of work to do: I've had trouble with two different cars; I've had trouble with my Epson printer and Epson has been decidedly unhelpful and unsympathetic about it; I've put up a new show (the work of Santa Rosa photographer Barbara Elliott, at Shige Sushi, in Cotati); and I recently put up a show of my own work at The Spinster Sisters, in Santa Rosa. So, I've been busy.

Here's one of my more recent pieces, however, from back in June. Untitled Collage No. 108 (Santa Rosa). June 16, 2015. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, found paper (antique silver leaf), collage. 6.8 x 8.8cm. My show of recent work--abstract photography and monoprint collage (as well as a couple of older prints)--at The Spinster Sisters will be up through October 4, 2015.

  Click for a larger view. Visit my studio  (Studio No. 63) during the 2015 Sonoma County Art Trails open studios event, Saturday and Sunday, October 10th and 121h and Saturday and Sunday, October 17th and 18th, 2015.

The Cocktail Glass Collection: The Hydro Grill, Calistoga

Driving through Calistoga at dusk recently I saw the neon signs lit up at The Hydro Grill. This is a new addition to my collection of neon cocktail glass signs. For more, use the "Cocktail Glass Collection" tab to the right.

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 Making: Recent Collage

This is Untitled Collage No. 107 (Santa Rosa), something I finished during the Art at the Source Open Studios event in June. It uses some plum-colored paper I made recently and scraps from several months back. In this one, I like the tension between two possible readings—one entirely abstract (the reading I intended and the one I prefer), the other vaguely representational, taking this as a view of a ship at the horizon, floating on a plummy sea. In the representational reading there's something that evokes travel poster design of a bygone era.

Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint on paper, collage. Image size 15.1 x 17.3cm. June 14, 2015. Click on the image for a larger view. For more, use the "Art I'm Making" tab on the right or visit my collage website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site.

Art I'm Looking At: Degas and Friends in Petaluma

It was with some skepticism that I recently visited the Petaluma Arts Center to see Edgar Degas: The Private Impressionist, Works on Paper by the Artist and his Circle, on view there through July 26, 2015. An important Degas show? In Petaluma? Before my visit, I couldn't help feeling there'd probably be one or two good pieces to look at and then much of inferior quality padding out the gallery spaces.

I was wrong. Quite the opposite is true. There's almost too much to look at comfortably here, and the art on display is of a high caliber, with only a handful of exceptions (the pieces by Ingres and Toulouse-Lautrec, for example, are disappointing).

The works in Degas: The Private Impressionist are all from the collection of Robert Flynn Johnson, Curator Emeritus of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The exhibit was curated by Mr. Johnson and Louise Siddons Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Curator of Collections at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater.  Each piece is accompanied by an unusually long explanatory label. Reading these is time consuming, but you'll want to read them. I recommend allowing two-three hours to give the show its due.

The Petaluma Degas show is worth seeing for a number of reasons. First, it's notable for its breadth. It includes more than 100 pieces, about 40 by Degas himself. The latter include very early drawings, some of which are copies made in the Louvre and other museums, often with one sketch overlapping another. Several sheets have drawings on both sides of the paper (mounted here so that front and back are visible)--images Degas made for practice rather than as finished works. Thus, the early part of the show gives us an unusual glimpse of Degas learning to draw.

Second, the show includes work by Degas in less common media. There are several early monotypes (one-off prints made by drawing with ink or paint on a hard surface--usually glass--and then transferring the image to a sheet of paper). Reproduced here is Heads of a Man and Woman (circa 1877-1878), notable for its combination of spontaneous execution and acute observation. There are etchings and drypoints, many of which are interesting for being late impressions from cancelled plates.  There are prints made in collaboration with publishers that reproduce some of Degas' pastels and paintings as lithographs. There are photographs by Degas.  In a combination of photography and printmaking, Degas in a couple of examples has worked on used Daguerreotype plates to make aquatints. Again, the breadth of the selections is impressive. It attests to Mr. Flynn's expansive taste and explains the show's subtitle referring to the "private Degas": Degas himself publicly showed work other than paintings and pastels only very rarely.

If you're interested in the history of photography, the show is worth seeing just for the eight photographs included (two of these show composers Debussy and Chausson). While Degas' interest in photography is well known and it's easy to see how photography influenced his cropping of compositions in other media, I don't remember ever having seen photographs made by Degas himself--although he was an avid photographer, at least for a short period of apparent obsession with the medium. It seems there ought to be more of his photographs around. Apparently, there aren't. So, this is a rare treat. One of the wall labels on the photographs is rather funny, describing Degas breaking up a dinner party by bringing out his camera and coercively posing reluctant guests in fastidiously composed scenes that then required long exposures.

Third, the show puts Degas clearly into the context of his artistic milieu by including so many works by and of artists that Degas knew and himself collected. Not all of these people will be well known to a general audience, but they include Tissot, Fantin-Latour, Moreau, Gérome, Desboutin, Aryton, and Jeanniot, among others. Better known names include Cassat, Ingres, Cézanne, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Also included are some modern takes on Degas and his work, including a very funny drawing of Degas from 1964 that David Levine made for The New York Review of Books that poses Degas in a tutu standing in the ballet dancer's fourth position, alluding to the artist's sculptures of young dancers.

Some of the highlights of the show among the Degas works include: the lovely portrait of Mademoiselle Dembrowska used on the cover of the catalog and in the show's advertising (circa 1858-1859); a beautiful pencil drawing of a plough horse from 1860-1861; several prints executed in 1934 by Maurice Potin using photogravure, aquatint, and etching to reproduce monotypes of brothel scenes Degas made between 1878 and 1880 but never exhibited; and the above-mentioned monotypes and photographs. Among the work by other artists, there is an intriguing Portrait of a Working Girl (circa 1880) by Annie Aryton (shown below)--which, as the label points out, depicts a woman who looks remarkably like the girl who modeled for a couple of the dancer sculptures Degas made; A bold drypoint self-portrait by Marcellin Desboutin (circa 1875); a portrait of Degas as an older man by Pierre-Georges Jeanniot;  a very fine red chalk drawing entitled Portrait of an Officer (1853) by Jean-Léon Gérome--an uncharacteristic subject for an artist best known for his paintings of mythological subjects; the circa 1854 Portrait of a Man (pictured above) by Gustave Moreau, a graphite drawing that looks more like an Ingres than the small Ingres head on display; a pair of small self-portraits by Jeanniot; and, among my favorites in the show, a circa 1870 graphite drawing by Adolph von Menzel of his sister asleep in a railway carriage (bottom). Fans of the sitcom Seinfeld may find it amusing that one piece in the show is on a piece of paper watermarked "Vandelay."


If I had to nitpick, I was disappointed that no photography is allowed in the galleries, which is frustrating, as it makes it very difficult to later talk about individual works without relying on sometimes-faulty memory, and the catalog is available only as an expensive hardcover edition I didn't feel I could afford. It appears to reproduce all the wall labels verbatim, so it will make an excellent resource, but I had to pass. I noticed that while the drawings and prints are generally well reproduced, the Degas photographs have been given an odd orange tinge not present in the originals on display, which is a shame. Otherwise, I can recommend Edgar Degas: The Private Impressionist wholeheartedly--but make sure you allow plenty of time to take in the full sweep of this remarkable collection. General admission is $10 (free for Petaluma Arts Center members). Thursday through Monday (closed Tuesday and Wednesday) 11AM to 5PM. Open on Saturdays until 8PM. (All photographs from the online catalog.)

Art I'm Making: Collage with Antique Silver Leaf

Not long ago I had the pleasure of visiting the studio of local artist Jenny Honnert Abell, a painter who often incorporates collage elements into her work. I'm pleased to say that I'll be showing her work at Shige Sushi in November and December this year. Her studio is full of collected artifacts that find their way into her work--buttons, book covers, wishbones with wishes written on them, old illustrations, scraps of paper. On one table was a small pile of antique silver foil sheets backed with tissue that appear have been part of a (probably Japanese) screen. I admired the sheets and Jenny kindly gave me one. Here is a collage that incorporates some of that silver leaf. It was not my intention to mimic a screen, but the finished piece seems to have the proportions of a screen. Perhaps that was inevitable? This is Untitled Collage No. 106 (Santa Rosa). Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, found paper (antique silver leaf), collage. 21.1 x 11.3cm.

Click on the image for a larger view. For more, visit my collage website at http://ctalcroft.wix.com/collage-site/.

Art I'm Looking At: Turner at the De Young

San Francisco's De Young Museum is now presenting a major show of the late work of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). Organized by Tate Britain in association with the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, this is the largest exhibition of Turner's work ever mounted on the US West Coast. The De Young show runs through September 20, 2015. The exhibition is a large one, including more than sixty oil paintings and watercolors, but the museum has devoted a great deal of space to their display. The galleries therefore feel spacious, with the works widely spaced on the walls, making it easy to see them without feeling hemmed in by other viewers.

While this show is likely to attract attention for some of the famous large oil paintings on loan from institutions around the world (such as Peace—Burial at Sea (1842), pictured at the top of this page), it's an excellent opportunity to see a large number of Turner's very fine watercolors together. I've always had mixed feelings about Turner. Some of his work seems sublime. Some moves me not at all--for reasons I can't quite articulate. I don't much care for the allegories, for example, especially those that include figures. I think Turner was at his best when using his eyes to depict what he saw rather than attempting to tell stories. I most enjoy the work that veers off strongly in the direction of abstraction, which is perhaps why I find the often more loosely drawn and quickly executed watercolors especially interesting. The interior scene reproduced immediately above (of one of Turner's hotel rooms in Venice, circa 1840) is a good example. Only the ceiling decoration and the distant view of the Campanile anchor this little painting in reality. Without these, it's mostly a composition dominated by vaguely defined blocks of color.

An 1841 watercolor depicting the Ehrenbreitstein fortress on the East bank of the Rhine, overlooking Koblenz, is similar. Only the fortress on top of the rock is drawn with much precision. The rest of the composition is highly impressionistic, rendered in textured washes. It's easy to see why Turner is often considered to have pointed the way toward Impressionism. There is much in the show that brings Monet to mind. This piece even made me think of Rothko, with its horizontal bands of soft color. Looking at the pieces in the show (the largest group of Turners I've seen at one time), I noticed diffuse bands of color serve as the compositional armature of many of his works--although mostly vertical bands—typically deep colors on the sides of a composition and a swath of bright, pale color in the middle, suggestive of color field painting, a development that lay about 100 years in the future.

I was also struck by a pair of watercolors entitled The Red Rigi and The Blue Rigi from 1841-1842, depicting a mountain close to Lake Lucerne, in Switzerland (the latter shown here). The idea of painting the same subject in a series in different lights and from different angles immediately brings Japanese printmaking to mind. Although it wasn't too long after this time that Hokusai's most famous series of images of Mt. Fuji (originally published in 1831) was becoming known in Europe, 1841-42 was probably too early for Turner to have been influenced. Monet certainly was aware of Hokusai.

Inclusion of unfinished works at the end of the exhibition is a nice touch. Turner was criticized in his own day for, among other things, his dissolution of form—for his distinctive indistinctness that many took to be incompleteness. Being able to see truly unfinished pieces makes it abundantly clear how calculated Turner's apparent incompleteness was.

Rain: Odd Drizzle

Unusually for this time of year we've had a couple of bursts of rain in the morning or overnight. Welcome, but never enough even to register in the rain gauge more than a trace. The new rain year (the 2015-2016 rain year) began on July 1, 2015. So far, we've had just these traces....

[Update: And a little rain again today, July 9--very unusual for this time of year to have any rain at all. We ended up with 0.10 inches of rain--the first appreciable rain of the new rain year.]

Art I'm Making: New Collages (June-July 2015)

Two newer collages--these completed in the past couple of weeks. Untitled Collage No. 104 (Santa Rosa) is a tiny collage--the smallest I've yet made, measuring only 4 x 4cm, or less than two inches on a side. This one incorporates a scrap from an engineering drawing from an old book that I found at a Goodwill store. It suggests a cityscape to me now, although I had nothing concrete in mind when I made it. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, found paper, collage. Completed June 7, 2015.

Having made some bright red papers recently, I made Untitled Collage No. 105 (Santa Rosa). I like this one for the way it simultaneously suggests both motion and stasis. Acrylic on paper, acrylic monoprint, graphite, collage. Completed June 7, 2015.

Art I'm Looking At: Diebenkorn Around the Bay Area (July 5, 2015)

We're privileged right now to have two shows of rarely seen work by Richard Diebenkorn on view simultaneously in the Bay Area, a show of prints at the De Young in San Francisco and a show of small-scale drawings, collages, and watercolors at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, in the town of Sonoma, a venue that has only recently come to my attention--and that accidentally: I happened to come across a reference to the Sonoma show in one of three books published by Kelly's Cove Press in conjunction with the exhibition, which is subtitled "The Intimate Diebenkorn."

In keeping with that subtitle, the Sonoma show presents a selection of smaller works, the largest being no more than about 24 x 36 inches (most considerably smaller) in various media. None of the images was included in the large show of Diebenkorn's work in the summer and autumn of 2013 at the De Young Museum (Richard Diebenkorn: The Berkeley Years). Some Bay Area viewers may have seen the bulk of the Sonoma show at the College of Marin (September-November 2013) or San José State University (March-May 2014), but the selection of works now at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art has been augmented by about 12 pieces not included on earlier stops. The show next travels to the University of Montana (September-December 2015).

The De Young show of Diebenkorn prints highlights the museum's "latest significant acquisition of [Diebenkorn's] prints, made possible by the Phyllis C. Wattis Fund for Major Accessions and the generosity of Phyllis Diebenkorn," the artist's late widow--to use the words of the introductory gallery panel. I believe the De Young Museum now has the largest collection of Diebenkorn's prints in the world aside from the collection of the Diebenkorn Foundation, from which the traveling show now in Sonoma has been assembled.

The Sonoma show provides an intimate overview of the various styles in which Diebenkorn worked. There is a good selection of representational work including still life subjects, nudes, and landscapes as well as abstract work, both in the fluid, organic style of the Berkeley and earlier periods and the more rarified, highly linear style best known from the large paintings of the later, Ocean Park period.

The works are arranged thematically rather than chronologically, which allows a comparison of similar types of work from different periods, although it somewhat obscures Diebenkorn's journey from abstraction into figurative work and still life and then back to abstraction--part of what makes looking at the whole of his artistic career fascinating. Despite the diversity of subject matter, Diebenkorn was always concerned with formal compositional problems. An interior view of a posed model or a landscape was for Diebenkorn always as much about dividing up space on a flat plane as any abstraction was. The works as shown demonstrate both the breadth of his subjects and the compositional concerns that unite his work. The 1962 figure drawing in ballpoint pen shown here (above) is an excellent example--a highly economically rendered pair of nude figures but, at the same time, a composition consisting in large part of blank rectangular or squarish areas of paper separated by thin lines. The legs of the male figure at the left side of the page are particularly ambiguous. The 1958 untitled oil landscape on paper shown below likewise blurs the line between the abstract and the descriptive.

The Sonoma venue is divided into four areas: the main exhibition space, a permanent art library off to one side, a space at the front of the building where visitors are offered a place to play with paper and drawing tools if inspiration has hit them, and a darkened area behind a wall at the rear, where two videos about Diebenkorn run in a loop. One of these was made at the time of a major retrospective of the artist's work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, in 1977. The other shows Diebenkorn at work at Crown Point Press, in Oakland, collaborating with master printers Marcia Bartholme and Hidekatsu Takada, in 1986, photographed by Kathan Brown, the founding director of Crown Point Press. The former is short (22 minutes) and interesting mainly because it shows Diebenkorn politely, somewhat shyly interacting with an adoring public at the opening reception for the Los Angeles exhibit. The latter video (35 minutes) is of greater interest and well worth the time it takes to watch. It offers a rare look at the artist in the studio, showing him proofing prints, working on copper plates, consulting with the printers about changes, and finally coming to decisions about finished versions of a number of pieces (one of which he ultimately decides to abandon after much frustration).

Diebenkorn's work process was interactive, restless, and experimental--involving interaction between the artist and his materials. Each new piece was a kind of conversation with the medium: an idea proposed, considered, approved of or rejected--the artist always listening and responding to the voice of the evolving work--the cycle beginning again, repeating until an equilibrium was achieved. It's a process especially well suited to collage, so it's not surprising that collage enters into many of the smaller works on display in Sonoma. Some of the drawings are on joined pieces of paper. One small abstract work from 1992, the year before his death (shown here), consists of pieces of what appears to be a drawing cut up and arranged on a second blank sheet (coincidentally, highly reminiscent of some of the work of Basque artist Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002)). The Crown Point Press video shows Diebenkorn cutting up proofs and pasting them together to rework a composition--essentially designing a print by collage.

The De Young Exhibit focuses on Diebenkorn as a printmaker. He seems to have been interested in printmaking of various types throughout his long career, and many of the last works he made--when ill health had made it impossible to tackle the large canvases he favored as a younger man--were prints. Most were etchings and drypoints, but the De Young show includes a fair number of lithographs and you get a sense looking at the early examples that he was testing the limits of what appears to have been a new medium for him at the time. Some of these early lithographs are essentially line  drawings in crayon, others look like puddled ink drawings. Later color lithographs from the 1980s are more mature, looking very much like Diebenkorn the painter. Again, the subject matter in the De Young exhibit is diverse, including figure studies, landscapes, still life subjects, and abstraction. Nearly all the pieces exude something essentially Diebenkorn despite that diversity.

The show at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art (one half block from Sonoma’s historic Town Plaza: 551 Broadway, Sonoma CA 95476, (707) 939-7862) runs through August 23, 2015. The show at the De Young Museum in San Francisco (Golden Gate Park, 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Dr., San Francisco, CA 94118, (415) 750-3600) closes October 4, 2015.