12/22/14 Catching Up At Year’s End

Determined to see a couple of shows that were about to close, I drove to downtown Denver Saturday on a bright and quite warm afternoon.  First stop was at Helikon Gallery which was hosting two shows, Muses of Mount Helikon II and Volume: A Post Card Tribute to CPR’s Open Air. 

 Muses included quite a variety of painting, drawing, illustrative work, digital art and sculpture from across the U.S.

Rebecca Green’s Hortense and the Leaf Bug was in two parts, a photograph and a mixed media sculpture, presented side by side. The photograph showing a lab-coated female botanist, Hortense, hearkened back to early days of naturalistic investigations.  The related sculpture featured a poem revealing that, in her efforts to find a new unidentified plant, poor Hortense had mistakenly identified a bug for a leaf.

Holly Chastain’s group of four collages, (l to r, top to bottom) Hester, Small Talk, Reveal and Anthony, also had a somewhat nostalgic feel.  Swirls of color in the first and fourth images helped to unify the group.

Detail

A set of small drawings by Edward Kinsella, Wisp Mask I, II and III, were sensitively rendered in  graphite, gouache and watercolor.

Honoring Colorado’s Public Radio station’s Open Air programming, Volume: A Post Card Tribute had some 80 5”x7” pieces of art.  Proceeds from sales of these works was divided between the gallery and the radio station.  The small size did not seem to hamper creativity.

Melanie Pruitt’s Before the Moment and Realizing the Moment were strong drawings using ink on paper.

Choosing an unusual ground for his small paintings, Vinni Alfonso’s works on CD discs captured the exuberance of the music contained on them.

(l to r) Crowded Disco, Common Demographic, Coarse Delight

Detail-Crowded Disco

Not far from Helicon at Redline, a combination art gallery and artists’ studios, was the last show in a year long series of exhibits of women artists, She Crossed the Line.  Judy Chicago’s retrospective, on view until December 28, 2014, covered well-known examples from her famous installation, The Dinner Party, as well as more recent works (paintings, drawings, textiles and sculptures).  Running throughout the show was her ongoing concern about gender, roles of women and art history.

An entire wall of the gallery was covered with Dinner Party Plate-Line Drawings, 1978 (small section below) showing the comprehensive planning that went into that installation.

Four of the test plates for this piece were shown including Elizabeth Blackwell Test Plate, 1975-78.

Another large and very impressive piece occupying an entire wall was her 1983 textile work, Earth Mother, made from sprayed Versatex and DMC floss on fabric.

Submerged/Emerged 1&2, 1976/2005, made of cast paper sprayed with acrylic, with its pleated folds reminded me of Ann Hamilton’s  Ciliary piece from the previous post.

More recent work, displayed in the first gallery, was a series called Retrospective In a Box, a five year project, started in 2008 in conjunction with Landfall Press of Santa Fe, NM.  The collaborations resulted in ten prints, each referring to an important period in Chicago’s artistic life.

The Return of the Butterfly-2012

Rage Rather Than Tears-2012

Other recent works were a series of sculptural heads made from materials such as glass, china painting and bronze.

Masked Head-2013

Bronze Flowering Head-2013

Au revoir until 2015.  Wishing everyone happy holidays and a very healthy, happy, productive and exciting new year!

12/21/14 The Rest of the Story from Nov. 24

It’s taken me almost a month to get back to the rest of what we saw on Nov. 24.  But, still on at Robischon Gallery until Jan 3, 2015 are Ann Hamilton: Selected Works, Jae Ko: Force of Nature and a group show of work by Linda Fleming, Ted Larsen, Derrick Velasquez and Judy Pfaff.

Ann Hamilton’s work has been mostly very large multimedia installations including The Event of a Thread in the New York Park Avenue Armory last year (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fJ4umqXGjM), a show involving 42 swings and an enormous piece of white fabric.  At the Robischon Gallery, however were two “ciliaries” and a number of “visite" prints.  My eye was immediately drawn to one of the Ciliaries,  a work looking like soft textile but instead made of folded lithographic sheets printed with bands of lines in varying intensities in a the single red hue with a burst of fabric in the center.

Behind the main gallery, in a comfortable seating area, a video of Hamilton’s work from the TV series Art In the 21st Century was running.  It was very exciting to hear her speak and watch her process.

Amazing for her use of simple materials (rolls of paper adding machine tape) to create structures of commanding presence, were the works by Jae Ko in Force of Nature.  Whether compressed in solid form or allowed to twist and turn in waves across an entire gallery wall, her work was both graceful and imposing.

JK446

Force of Nature

Detail

In contrast, Ted Larsen’s Round Corner had a delightful crispness of both color and form, moving the eye back and forth between positive and negative spaces.

Judy Pfaff has been a regular exhibitor at Robischon.  Her work, Sing, was reminiscent of pieces shown last year.  Pfaff played the crispness of cut and dyed file folders against more organic shapes of plastic pieces and origami and artificial flowers.

Robischon Gallery never disappoints me.  Their shows are always thought-provoking and their gallery personnel are always available for a warm greeting and to knowledgeably answer any questions.

November 24, 2014- Mark Mothersbaugh- Total Immersion-Denver

Taking advantage of a relatively warm and clear day Saturday, my husband and I did another downtown Denver art day.  We started at the Museum of Contemporary Art, a venue that never disappoints, its shows always stimulating and thought-provoking.  

No exception-Myopia, a retrospective of Mark Mothersbaugh’s work.  Filling all three floors of the museum, all walls, floors and even stairwells, with Mothersbaugh’s incredibly prolific work, the rooms also vibrated with the video sights and sounds of DEVO, a band that he co-founded in the 1970's.  

Media used included rubber stamps, postcards, screen prints, photographs, videos, sculptures (one with sound), art journals, letters, rugs, and ceramics.

Untitled 1980

His general artist statement revealed that he is severely myopic and was not given eyeglasses until the second grade.  A recurrent theme in the show has to do with vision and mirror imaging.  A student at Kent State at the time of theNational Guard shooting, he and several classmates created a theory of “devolution” evidenced in his print and video work as an extreme contrast between the “American dream” and actual events going on in the country, making his work political.

His interest in mirror images included The Beautiful Mutants, small cameo photographs made by making mirror images of one half of a person’s face or photograph and, more recently, a fiberglass sculpture and an actual mirror image car.

50 Foot Tall Scale Models of Proposed Farewell Arches to Luxembourg City, 2014

Three sculptures used disparate parts such as vintage organ pipes, steel, electronics, vintage bird calls.  Mechanical  Aviary periodically erupted with shrill bird calls.

(l-r) Mechanical Aviary, The General, Finky 2014

Mechanical Aviary-Detail

One entire darkened room was devoted to the postcards, art works Mothersbaugh has been making since the 1970’s and producing one to twenty-five postcards/day ever since.  These were presented in looseleaf-type books placed on the floor on raised platforms.  The postcards are not only a kind of art journal but also have provided the inspiration for other art works.

A large ceramic installation called Spin Chain the Gears featured gnome-like figures he calls Rolo Polis arranged in a kind of dance formation.

And then there were the rugs.

When we left the museum, our heads were reeling from the stimulation of sight and sound.  Believe it or not, we continued on to several galleries but that’s a topic for another day.

November 24, 2014- A Dutch Connection

Recently I was very excited with the news of the publication of my work in a magazine and book from the Netherlands!  After sending photos and an email interview back and forth, the November issue of Textiel Plus arrived with a three page spread about architectural elements in my work.  

The book, Textile Art Around the World, a beautifully printed hard cover quality edition, gives each accepted artist one page and features just about every kind of textile art you can think of.  I enjoyed each and every interaction with Dorothé Swinkels (Textiel Plus) and Ellen Bakker (Textile Art), both of whom were wonderful to work with.  Textile Art Around the World can be ordered at http://www.textile-link.com/new-textileart-around-world.

October 19, 2014 Denver Autumn Sampler

Last weekend, after a panel discussion at The Pattern Shop about Wopo Holup’s work (see September 29, 2014 post), I took advantage of being downtown to see two other shows.  A beautiful fall Rocky Mountain day was perfect for seeing art.

At aBuzz Gallery, Pat Isaacs Red Thread showcased her recent encaustic work.  Full of energetic movement and intriguing textures, the two halves of Skip and Peel 1& 2 spoke well to each other.

Detail

Motley 6, 7, the left hand pair of a four panel piece also moved the eye back and forth with suggestions of wind moving through trees or branches.

I hadn’t been to William Havu Gallery in the Golden Triangle for quite some time but was drawn there by several items on their latest announcement, especially Homare Ikeda’s paintings.  They were really wonderful with lots of color, yummy paint strokes and some interesting repeating motifs such as dots and sharp angles that made the images relate to each other across the room.

Mrs. A

Lady C

Upstairs  were the mysterious smoke drawings of Dennis Lee Mitchell.  Somehow calling to mind the human form and also black and white photographic negatives, they were haunting and beautiful.

Poylyptych

Detail

Back downstairs was a large ceramic wall piece, Quadrants 1-40, by Nancy Lovendahl.  Using 12” textured squares, the artist united the composition by repeating the circle, rectangle and meandering line elements.

September 29, 2014-Autumn in the Denver art scene-RINO

Sorry for the long absence for which I have no excuse except being buried in the studio.  This weekend, however, was glorious in Denver and my husband and I got out to gallery-hop downtown in the River North (RINO) neighborhood.  

The Ice Cube gallery was featuring two solo shows by Regina Benson and Ray Tomasso who often show together due to their shared sensibilities and interest in natural phenomena.  Regina's show, Catching Fire, is her second showing inspired by Colorado’s devastating wildfires.  Her monumental pieces, made from rusted, discharged, re-dyed and manipulated fabric is even more successful than the first, with the pieces illuminated from within by various intensities of flickering light.  You could almost hear the flames crackling.

Detail of texture

Tomasso’s exhibit, Wind and Storm; New Works In Paper, shows his mastery of cast paper in large very textural pieces implying the weathering of the earth through the forces of nature.

Detail

A group show at Helikon Gallery, a wonderfully large and very open exhibition space, featured the work of three artists in a group show, Great Plains Three Point Perspective, which included painting, photography and ceramic work.  Reed Weimer, one of the artists who happened to be at the gallery, generously shared information about the background of his work as we walked around.  I found his painting, The History Hole, very mysterious with many possible interpretations.

Patricia Barry Levy’s work, accomplished through digital collage and printed on canvas, was quite whimsical and evocative.  Two somewhat different approaches are seen in Tethered Depot and Silo #2.

The Tethered Depot

Silo #2

In the smaller back gallery, Chandler Romeo’s beautifully rendered ceramic pieces occupied an entire wall.  They were part of an enormous installation, Urban Abstract Rural Grid, earlier this year at the Museum of Outdoor Arts.  I was glad I’d seen them in the larger context.

Reid Weimer was at Helikon with a mutual friend, Rex Brown, whose gallery/living space, The Pattern Shop, was also open Saturday for a very different exhibit, Rivers Alive, work by Wogo Hollup.  Her paintings in Japanese leaf and ebony pencil on denril paper were beautifully rendered, and shimmered in the changing light.  Inspired by satellite images of rivers, the floor to ceiling length scrolls moved very slightly in small breezes and represented abstractly bodies of water and clouds from various parts of the world.

Clouds Over Estes Park

Detail

East River To Long Island Sound

Last stop for the afternoon was at Plus Gallery.  In the downstairs space, Jenny Morgan, originally from Colorado but now a New York artist, was showing a series of paintings called The Golden Hour.  Mysterious and somewhat mystical, they seemed to use a kind of exterior portraiture to speak of interior spaces.

Psychic Heartbeat

Breakthrough Sharona

Various gallery artist had work in the upstairs space at Plus.  One painting that had me in front of it for some time was work by Xi Zhang.  What held me there was the tension between the foreboding content and the absolute lusciousness of the paint strokes. 

Permanence Within #01-E04

Detail

It was hard to believe that he also had two smaller pieces so different in mood and execution.  I went back and forth several times to convince myself that both were done by the same artist.

The Bath #4