New Horizons in SD Art

I found myself making two speeches this month and in both the most important point was that old chestnut, why do we do this. Now I am no spring chicken and that means that I can cycle back to childhood and do things just for the fun of it. But I do have standards. My husband Darwin helped me to focus on the qualities that really attract us in any art work that we admire. We are looking for the excitement of break-though thinking and creation of the differences in perceived reality. We want a glimpse of new horizons, a view of what could be possible.

Many artworks will tell stories. Those stories will define in someway who we are, maybe in the past, maybe the present and hopefully in the future. I continue to be impressed with the quality of art we are now seeing in San Diego. The standard is getting higher and higher agrees Karen McGuire the curator of the William D. Cannon Art Gallery in Carlsbad. On view right now is the 2012 Invitational Exhibition, and McGuire admits it was hard to make a choice of just five from the juried show held last year.

Robert Ecker's paintinga were a favorite of Darwin especially the landscapes right at the entry. I also found these the best of his works as they seem to have focus and purpose which some of the other composition lacked. The technical ability of all the artists was very, very high but that is not the reason that we see such an improvement in the works in the last 15 years. SD artists were always capable of craftsmanship.

Becky Guttin (assemblage) created a field of strange and compelling shapes mainly on stems of metal and using gourds lined with metal filings. She is revisited these shapes that we first saw a while ago. The real revelation is when she groups them together and used her hand to vibrate the stems. All of a sudden we were transported from a desert landscape to an underwater bed of waving seaweed. I just wish that the works could move on their own so everyone could experience what we saw on the night of the opening.

Roy Jenuine (sculpture) Robert Nelson (drawing) both have stories to tell and allow our imaginations to fill in the blanks although we are directed by the visuals. Jenuine’s small figures holding on to picnic tables in gale force winds generated by drawn desk fans are charming. When grouped with figures in a variety of yoga-like positions all divided into display boxes, or a surfer and his surf board on a pulley with an elaborate water wheel, or a series of dogs of all sizes, we feel we are let into the world of an acute observer of life. Nelson continues his series of finely drawn characters seemingly from his dream world and we enjoyed another chance to see his work which is represented by Noel Baza. Nelson was one of our emerging artists from New Contemporaries III exhibition.

Sasha Koozel Reibstein (ceramics) has her own pharmacological lab in a kiln and has produced capsules for every possible malady. We see them not only suspended but embedded in what looks like body inners. For some reason these look rather pleasant and even humorous but there is a darker novel brewing here.

These artist are only just five of the wonderful talent that is developing in our community. Watch for the show in June of New Contemporaries now in its fifth year and all nominated by art professionals like Karen McGuire.

P.S. You still have time to see the wonderful overstuffed, radically shaped and exquisitely finished works of Lila Jang at Lux Art Institute. Ms. Jang’s misfortune of not being able to travel to SD from Korea is a benefit for us in that Kim MacConnel and Paul Henry have worked in the Lux studio during her show and their work is on display as well until March 3.

Is La Jolla coming back as a center for the visual arts in San Diego?

La Jolla is known as an upscale shopping community with lots of sales art galleries, but not that much art street cred. I had high hopes when I planned my recent trip there to see three new galleries. I was most impressed with the beautiful white Scott White space showing Ross Bleckner. On Jan 14^th there will be a community "art walk" in La Jolla and Scott White Contemporary Art will unveil the gallery's second show in this new location having moved from Little Italy. Stranger Than Paradise is a retrospective of photographs by Stefanie Schneider that have been hand-picked by White himself. Although her work has been showcased in collections and museums around the world, this is Schneider's 1st solo show in San Diego. You can also still see the William Glen Crooks exhibition

Thumbprint Gallery does not have street level windows and neither it nor Alexander Salazar Fine Art were open for business on the day I visited. Neither appeared to show work different from their other gallery spaces in North Park and downtown. But both will be open in the evening on Jan 14. ASFA (6-9 pm) will show paintings by Erik Skoldberg from San Diego and sculptures by Kevin Barrett from New York. Thumbprint (5-10 pm) invented Works of Wisdom, works by an eclectic mix of artists using famous quotes as their stimulus.

I used this opportunity to drop into Quint Contemporary to see the stunning minimal back painted glass works by Thór Vigfússon. These works do not read in photographs but have such a quiet power. Also close by is RB Stevenson and I discovered the work of John Rogers, which blew me away. This local professor at San Diego State is another hidden SD treasure. The show at the end of December was sparse because many of the works were sold, but that made the space ever more open and elegant.

The Kathleen Marshall: Still in Paris gouache paintings at the Athenaeum Art and Music Library were almost photographic the technique was so perfect but it was the way that they drew you into the scene and made you believe, for the moment at least, that you could be living in one of these rooms and about to step into the sun dappled garden that is their true charm..

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I visited The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego to see the Phenomenal: California Light Space and Surface. I knew the works of most of these artists and was surprised to be most taken with the completely black room by Eric Orr called Zero Mass. I entered the room with trepidation and left after a few minutes. But something prompted me to ask a guard if I had missed anything. He kindly took me back into the room and gave me the confidence to stay long enough for my eyes to become accustomed to the very low light. The room was not a deprivation experience but an experiment in light and space after all.

Do I think that La Jolla is coming back as a center for the visual arts in San Diego? No, three new gallery spaces will not make that much difference. What I do think we are seeing is the re-bounding of the international art market being reflected in these galleries’ quest for a bit of that succulent pie. I hope that Thumbprint and Salazar have not put more on their plates than they can digest as I sincerely wish that they will succeed.

Audience Engagement

I was glad to see the James Irvine Foundation publication Getting in on the Act as they made a very good case for the value of the policies at SDVAN. They reported that building support for the arts in the future depends on encouraging more participation from our audiences.

The study identifies three main types of involvement; curatorial where the public makes decision about the content or direction of the project; public co-producing with the collaboration of professional artists; and finally when the public is asked to create their own works of art.

We have found that SD audiences want to meet the artists and love to sit down for a meal with them and even share in the process of making the work. We know that art gives people a way to identify their community, take pride in it and thus protect and improve it.

SDVAN continues in its efforts to gain more and more participation from our community. During the Art Meets Fashion 2011 public launch in April of this year, we invited the public to strut their stuff on our catwalk with fashions made by them or their friends. This popular part of the program helped to build the number who attended this event to 1000 and it was one of the most well attended events of the NTC Liberty Station complex.

Hats Off to Life is a project where we will be going into retirement communities and basing hat constructions on the life of some of the residents. We hope to hold a hat making workshop for them as well. We will strive to introduce participatory components into the DNA of Creativity project in the next two years.

However, having spent 6 weeks looking at art in London with very little personal participation, I can testify that this was an immensely satisfying experience. Not all art needs to be displayed with a participation element although a little education is never amiss for those who might want it. The new show at the SDMA, Mexican Modern Painting from The Andrés Blaisten Collection (through Feb 19, 2012), is wonderful to see just for the varied styles and high quality of the work on display. There are two educational rooms within the show space. One has a time line with four ways to listen and interact with the information presented. The other has specially commissioned drawing benches with a chance to create right there.

For SDVAN, not having our own brick and mortar venue has become one of our strongest strategies. We do not consider this a disadvantage or even something to strive for in our future plans. As we work alternatively online, in loaned spaces and even work to get into people homes, we see this as a cost effective and innovative way to go forward.

Today’s artists are collaborating, remixing and repurposing not just with their materials but with their cultural views. At SDVAN we encourage that and try hard to do it internally within the organization. We are a 100% volunteer organization with no salaries or building cost to cover. All our donations go into the funding of projects for the community. This is an alternative way of running a non-profit and one which has grown out of the needs of those we serve.

I was astounded when I first came to SD to see the hundreds of art association that exist here. Although they have not perhaps been very proactive in creating an art market, they have certainly been responsible for supporting the many cultural resources of our neighborhoods. The SD region has this incredibly rich pool of amateur and part time artists and their impact is underestimated, I believe. It is heartening to learn that a total of 33% of all adults create and attend art events. Add to that 17% who attend and 12% who make art but don’t attend and you get a whooping 62% of American engaged in creative processes.

Here are a few examples of visual arts project mentioned in the study that I thought you might enjoy:

• The Art Gallery of Ontario’s In Your Face was an open-submission art exhibit featuring 17,000 portraits collected from the public
• The Davis Art Center’s Junk2Genius program celebrates the community’s commitment to reduce, reuse and recycle. This annual competition features 15 teams of community members competing in a timed sculpt-off using recycled materials
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LONDON 2011 - PART TWO

The link to this PDF includes news of

• Frieze Art Fair
  
• Exhibitions at Tate Modern (Gerhand Richter top)
  
• Degas at the Royal Academy
  
• Frank Stella at the Haunch of Venizen
• Raqib Shaw at White Cube (above bottom)
  
• Grayson Perry at the British Museum
  
• more news of the design shows at the Victoria and Albert Museum
  
• Pipilotti Rist at the Hayward Gallery (above middle)
  
• Turner Prize show at the Baltic in Gateshead
  
  
• and much more totaling 12 illustrated pages of coverage of October 2011 in London and Newcastle
  
  
  I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed attending these exhibitions.
  
  http://www.sdvisualarts.net/sdvan_new/pdf/A+ArtBlogLondon2011Part2.pdf
  
  
  

LONDON 2011 - PART ONE

My London Trip is Sept 15 to Oct 31, 2011 and I am sharing my art adventures this year on the A* Art Blog. This covers Sept 15 to Sept 26.

This is the beginning of my exploration of the London Design Festival 2011 and there are 200 participants and over 280 events in 25 different design areas. I have plans to go to about a dozen of them as it is quite overwhelming but fascinating. Evidently this is the largest design festival in the world. Hold on to your hats as what follows is just the first day.

I started with a lecture by Murray Moss at V&A about digital 3-D printing and examples are scattered through out the Victoria and Albert Museum so it was like a scavenger hunt to see them all, but brilliant and he is one cool old dude. He curated this collection from existing and commissions works and each is set for a reason in its space. It reminds me of what Ruben Ortiz-Torres says he is doing for the Long Beach Museum for Pacific Standard Time. By juxtaposing art works, you provoke new meaning on both. Displaying works of art in a relationships which are not time lined or regional but has to do with the influences is more historical but Moss envisions museums that could be science oriented one day and economic the next. . Moss was very interested in the way that nature can be mathamatised and how that could teach us things about structure in design. New architecture is not so much a referral to older styles (the variation on the box) but wide open to new materials construction in brand new ways. Some of the objects on view could not have been any other way but by 3-D printing.

Art work has been digitized before in a reductive process, where robots cut away in a reductive process, those bits not wants. Laser water jets controlled by computers are a good example of this. But 3-D printing is an additive process. Somewhere in between is digital modification to change an existing shape. This technique is pushed forward originally by the need for substitute body parts in the health industry. So far, we only read about the uses for peace purposes, but Moss thinks a broader dialogue is needed to cover the potential uses for war as well.

What you see below is a set of objects that were all made using 3-D printing. The light fixture opens and shuts like a flower in the sun the little stool telescopes up into a pole. The head of Lady Belhaven is reproduced in resin with a hat added to it by Stephen Jones in fiber filaments. The dress (this time on a dress form) was located in the only empty niche of the V&A hall opposite of one of the warrior saint. And the shoes were ringing the Bed of Ware which was supposed to sleep 16!

While looking for all these goodies, I discovered lots of other parts of the Design Festival. The entrance was decked out with a giant curve of interlocking wood bits called Timber Wave by Amanda Levete (left) that looks better in this photo than it did in real life. Bouroullec Brothers: Textile Field (right)- click the link to see a film of this being installed which is more interesting then the finished product,

basically a huge colored couch. When I saw it, exhausted museum visitors were reclining all over it. . The massive 240-square-meter structure was pieced together panel by panel over a fourteen-hour nocturnal stint captured by photographer Ben Dunbar-Brunton in the Raphael Gallery

A Pylon for the Future was a set of maquettes of short listed winners of a design contest by the Electric Grid. I think they missed the point here as these are really sculptures and no matter how elegant there is no way they will disappear into the landscape, so why not go all out and use a scheme of 6 which changes as you view them through the landscape.

Engineering Eyelashes: Paper Art by Jessica Palmer was a cute little

workshop for drop in visitors with an array of fiber papers for making jewelry and more sturdy glazed paper for making intricate cut out. I met Jessica who was wearing this collar necklace (left) at the time. I relaxed a bit from all that walking (three tube changes to get to the V&A from my flat in Clapham Common) and made a fun flower broach (right).

I was very surprised to be impressed with the Jameel, the bi-annual £25,000 international Art Prize for contemporary artists and designers inspired by Islamic traditions of art, craft and design. The Jameel Prize 2011 short listed artists and designers span a geographical region stretching from North America, to France, Algeria, Egypt, Pakistan, Iraq and Iran. I did not notice the prize winner Rachid Koraïchi perhaps because it was more subtle.

The youngest artist in the shortlist, Noor Ali Chagani (left) lives in Pakistan and his sculptural works made from miniature terracotta bricks are like a piece of cloth. Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (middle) has combining Iranian traditions of mirror mosaic and reverse glass painting techniques with a modern aesthetic. Farmanfarmaian spent nearly a decade living in New York during the 1940’s and 1950’s as an art student and later as a fashion illustrator where she worked alongside Andy Warhol. Hadieh Shafie‘s (right) new works are made up of 22,500 strips of paper, each scroll is marked with printed and hand written Farsi (Persian) text then tightly rolled into concentri circles The concentric forms of both text and material take their inspiration from the dance of the whirling

dervish.Hadieh Shafie was born in Iran and lives and works in the USA.

Lifeline (2010) Birds of Paradise'(2008) 22500 (2011)

It is a very pleasant experience, walking around in an elegant tent erected in the middle of Berkeley Square at the LAPADA Art and Antique Fair presented by The Association of Art & Antique Dealers. Gold jewelry, silver presentation pieces, curiosities, furniture, paintings and drawings of the very finest quality, beautifully presented with a glass of champagne when one is parched, and a bit of smoked salmon if one felt faint. I gravitated to the Colander Table (so named for the holes) by Daniel Rohr, an edition of 8 for about $72,000 each which crated a stunning optical illusion. It dipped in the middle but a thick glass cover made it viable for use. This was the winner of the LAPADA "Object of the Year 2011 and presented by Peter Petrou Works of Art.

The Tent and Origin Fairs plus Super Brands which is one of five other displays near Brick Lane which is now the most happening place in the capitol. The streets were thronged and apparently this is not unusual for any weekend. The district was old and poor Jewish immigrants but is now a mix of Indian and yuppie. Spitalfields meat market has gone the way of Convent Garden flower market and is now all restaurants and shops. We got fabulous cheese from Androuet and chocolate brownies from St. Johns. Both were first consumed as a picnic lunch with wonderful cold meats, chocolates, corn nuts, baby artichokes, delicious bread and of course, wine, at Lesley’s nephew Ben’s temporary home while his business The Cold Press was displaying at the Tent Fair. (below)

The Old Truman Brewery London E1 was home to the English design fair in about 9 different rooms (NO actual tent!). These fun stools were made from cricket bats and more shapes liked cupcakes, fabulous puddled chrome chair, wonderful chandeliers that looked like them were made from a children’s erector set, and this clever knotted light.

Pierra Ospina Daruma Design Phillip Aduatz

Pink Clip Tick Chandelier by Freshwest Jung Myung Taek

These little fine porcelain pots all lined up like soldiers or a Morandi landscape (left) and this collection of little animals with a tiny pin cushion and two pins (right) was part of the onslaught of far eastern wares on view. .

Ikuko Iwamoto Naori Preistly

I couldn’t help but document all the deer themed wall décor I saw at Design and Made

Another theme was birds that seemed to be everywhere.

Latorre Cruz

Then on to Origins which was in the middle of Old Spitalfields Market London E1 and consisted of 6 long rows of small booths of fine crafts including a mass of jewelry, home décor objects, textiles and lighting. I was watchful for hats because of our upcoming Hats off to Life project and this antler hat seemed most impressive as it referred to all the deer I saw earlier at Tent.

Barbara Keal Katty Janneh Mirjam Muver

Another trend was paper cut outs and you can see further birds here in paper as well.

Claire Brewster Sarah Morpeth Abigail Brown Maxine Greer

This light sculpture below seems to tie every theme together and I am showing it with a wall of doll arms used to display necklaces. As always, many booths put a lot of thought into the display design and that is great fun to see.

Tsai and Yoshikawa Momocreatura

But I think my favorite piece of the shows was these drawings in space, one at the Tent fair on the left and one at Origins on the right. I especially like the one on the right as it only used the essentials lines to tell its story.

Jan Plechac Maya Selway

Drink, Mate, Art

I am sure everyone has noticed how well attended the events aimed at the younger demographic group are when art is added to the entertainment. TNT at MCASD, Cocktails and Culture at SDMA, A-List at the Athenaeum and Art After Dark at the Oceanside Museum of Art, as well as the numerous vodka companies that hold launches at art gallery, are all opportunities for young adults to mix and mingle.


The really big question is how do we get that same audience to start buying art after they have attended an art show to eat, drink and mate? Suggesting education might be too big of a leap for those addled by alcohol. But the idea is to get them to start looking more closely at the art to develop some sort of choices that might lead to a desire to acquire. Here are two strategies to consider:

• Roll playing: Hand out oodles of fake money and ask the guests to make choices about what art they would buy. A case of vodka goes to anyone who brings out the real thing and makes a purchase.

• Match Making: ask couples to choose art for each other. This would entailed some work in figuring out the what and why. A bottle of vodka goes to the artist whose work is most chosen.

We need every trick in the book to build a healthier art world and that means where events are not only well attended but artists are supported hopefully in a monetary way.

Read another view on this subject by Kevin Freitas

Too Brave to Fail

One of the suggestions for a DNA of Creativity project that was generated in our June meeting was Super Heroes, the DNA of our future selves. Comic Con, host to all things with super powers, came to town in mid July close to the same time I was invited to a SD Foundation visioning exercise for the future of SD. Join them all together and that train of thought dumped me into the subject of power and how it is used in a successful community and what we expect from our leaders.

In my own limited case, power is not a goal in itself. But I seem to have accrued some power as a by-product of various projects that I had a passion to complete. For example, my phone calls or emails are answered, I am asked to make job recommendations, our events draw a crowd and we can fund some projects because of the money we have raised. I have the power to get things done especially for others and I try my best to be a force for the good in the community.

Leaders are known to hold power and leaders have affected our past, affect our present and have a huge responsibility to affect our future. To see that future calls for imagination and a fearless attitude towards charge. No matter how much we might like things to stand still, the world turns and courage is called for to make sure we are traveling in the right directions. My husband Darwin coined a phrase, “too brave to fail.” It refers to risk takers who aren’t afraid to have new ideas and make them public. These leaders are responsible enough to know that failure is not acceptable. Everyone who has an imagination and is willing to use it is a leader in my book. I just wish these leaders were the ones who held the power.