MWPAI Voices

Sittin’ Pretty in the Garden

Tue, 08 May 2012 15:26:01 -0400

The Museum of Art owns a garden settee that was made in Utica, about 1870, by the Phoenix Iron Works. These are some things I learned about it, from reading Masterpieces of American Furniture from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute (1999).

The settee reveals some interesting things about the United States and its burgeoning industrialization. It is made of cast iron because metals were becoming increasingly recognized for their aesthetic value in furniture. And, thanks to mass production, this kind of form became available to a growing middle class of consumers.

Metal is also, of course, ideal for outdoor use as garden furniture. The design on the back of the seat is called fern-and-blackberry, based the motifs used. The fern was a popular Victorian houseplant and the manufacturer cleverly reproduced the word F E R N in the seat so that is legible in the cast shadow. The pattern of fronds demonstrates that, even though it is based on nature, the design is that of nature tamed. And, the idea of sitting on a settee in nature is a further demonstration of taming nature through “civilizing” artifacts.

You can see this charming settee in the “Saturated Sight” exhibition in Gallery One North, Museum of Art, on view through July 8.

Home of Elvis and the Ancient Greeks

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 10:25:32 -0400

I knew that Memphis has a fascinating history and is a great music town, but I didn’t know it is also a great museum town. I highly recommend a visit there, especially in spring when the gardens are in all their glory.

Memphis, Tennessee

Dixon Gallery and Gardens

My friend and co-worker, Michael Somple, and I recently went to the Dixon Gallery and Gardens, in Memphis, to preview an exhibition that the MWP Museum of Art is considering for the future. Curator Julie Pierotti was our gracious host and made us feel very welcome. Although, fyi, the picture below is not a portrait of Julie.

Dixon Gallery and Gardens

The larger art museum, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, is located in the heart of Overton Park. The Brooks collections feature an array of sculpture, painting, and decorative arts, from ancient to contemporary, including an impressive display of African art.

We had the good fortune of timing, in that Utica-based artist Chris Irick is having a one-person show at the Metal Museum in Memphis and we were delighted to stop in there, too. The Metal Museum is on the grounds of a former Civil War hospital and it overlooks the mighty Mississippi River.

Tributaries: Chris Irick, at the Metal Museum, Memphis

Of course, a visit to Memphis wouldn’t be complete without a stop at Graceland.

The Dining Room at Graceland

As museums go, it is excellent in its visitor services (good signs, friendly and helpful staff) and audio tour, which includes helpful narration about Elvis’s home life and career; comments from Elvis, Priscilla and Lisa Marie; as well as generous samplings of the King’s music.

A fan's portrait of Elvis, at Graceland

There is a lot to see at Graceland. In addition to the home itself, there are several out buildings that house awards and costumes and cars; I was especially impressed with the seemingly endless gallery of gold and platinum records.

National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, Chris Afir, photographer

I have to return to Memphis because in our two short days, there was plenty that we missed, including the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was assassinated, and the Stax Museum, where all that marvelous music from Otis Redding, Carla Thomas and the like was created.

Did I mention the food? The gastronomic gods were shining on us because our hotel was serendipitously right across the street from Corky’s Barbeque, which is consistently voted the best bbq restaurant in town. Memphis is known for its dry rub bbq, by the way. In addition to ribs, at Corky’s we also ate hush puppies, yum, which I can’t ever find here.

Corky's Bar-B-Q, East Memphis

Then there was Gus’s Fried Chicken. We also drank lots of sweet tea and began to compare different versions of fried green tomatoes, though we only got to two. And, yes, we did share a fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich at Graceland; it tastes better than I expected, honestly.

Great Art from PrattMWP Freshmen

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 09:58:36 -0400

Friday afternoon the School of Art Gallery opened the annual Freshmen exhibition and it’s a great show.

PrattMWP Freshmen Exhibition

Hanging sculpture by Solji Kim

The faculty recommended two artists for the top awards for this year’s work, Solji Kim and Colleen Doody. Good work, gals!

Figure drawing by Colleen Doody

Here are some more pictures and stories:

Danielle Landers, from Canastota, told me that she has learned a lot her first year at PrattMWP: “At the beginning of the year, I wouldn’t have been able to draw fabric like this.”

Alyssa Viloria, from Leonia, NJ, entered as a sculpture student and found her drawing and painting courses a real challenge but feels good about how she has applied herself.

Alyssa Viloria and her sculpture

Christian Martinez , from Montgomery, NY, likes his LCD class but discovered he doesn’t like making sculpture!

Cartooning by Christian Martinez

Congratulations, artists!

Sculpture by Karina Mendez

Cindy Sherman

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 09:46:52 -0400

Cindy Sherman, untitled

There is a lot of interesting art work to see in New York City right now (who am I kidding?! There is ALWAYS a lot of interesting art work to see in New York City!).

The Cindy Sherman retrospective at the Museum of Moder Art is filled with the artist’s provocative photographs from the past thirty-plus years. Seeing the work in person, in a large collection of several series, reinforces the power of her vision, which has lost none of its sting in its familiarity.

Sherman is a 21st-century flaneuse. Her eye captures the pulse, and more specifically, the desperation of youth culture in our country. Throughout the show I kept wondering, how can she consistently grasp, then make visual, the personification, the image of what we as a culture think women should look like?

Cindy Sherman, untitled

I visited the exhibition with my friend Margaret, a smart gal who is an educator at the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an astute judge of art and I respect her opinions. Margaret made two pointed observations: “How can women exist, how can we be, the awareness of self-imaging is always with us.” And, “I felt like it exposed all of us.”

Sherman’s photographs implicate the viewer as participating in the illusions and deceptions, and there is often a strong sense of voyeurism, too, that is a little creepy. Okay, a lot of her photographs have what MWP Director of Museum Education April Oswald calls a big creep factor.

Cindy Sherman, untitled

Did I mention Sherman’s clowns? Talk about creepy.

The Cindy Sherman retrospective will remain on view at MoMA through . Have you seen it yet? Leave your comments about her work; I’d like to know what you think about it.

Cindy Sherman, untitled

The Sherman show remains on view at MoMA through June 11.

I Heart Stuart Davis

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 15:22:13 -0400

Stuart Davis (1894-1964) is one of my favorite artists and I am fortunate because the Museum of Art owns several works by him. Currently on view is the splendid Tournos, 1954.

Stuart Davis, Tournos, 1954, oil on canvas, 35 7/8 x 28 in.
MWPAI Museum of Art, purchase, 54.25

The painting is based on a drawing Davis made dockside in Gloucester, Massachusetts, on September 12, 1932. The sketch is the artist’s stylized interpretation of a shed with the word FISH on it, nets, stairs, and other waterfront stuff; it was, in fact, the catalyst for several paintings.

Ever the jazz fan, Davis used the musical medium as an inspiration for his painting. He credited jazz with giving him the understanding of seeing spaces between objects, just as breaks in sound are as important as the notes played. In 1932 he wrote, “One must see the ‘shapes’ of the space not the shapes of the objects in it.” In Gloucester, Davis especially liked how the schooners (sailing ships with several masts) “define the often empty sky expanse. They function as a color-space coordinate between earth and sky.”

Stuart Davis, Memo,
1956, oil on canvas, 36 x 28 ¼ in.
Smithsonian American Art Museum

Whether he was living in New York City, Paris, or coastal Massachusetts, Davis captured the spirit of a place by distilling its subjects into a series of synchronized forms and colors. He sought to transform personal, ephemeral sensations into a composition that had what he called “objective permanence.” So, for Davis, the sketch of a scene was the launching point for compositions that knitted together formal elements in an interesting way

Notice the word “ANY” at the lower left corner of Memo? Towards the end of his life Davis added it to paintings occasionally to demonstrate that “any” subject was as good a starting point; it was what the artist did with the material, to create an interesting composition, that transformed it into art.

Rachel Williams Proctor, World Adventurer and Photographer

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:02:47 -0400

This very cool photograph, taken by Rachel Williams Proctor around the turn of the 20^th century, is of her husband, Fred, standing in the shadow of the Sphinx in Egypt.

Frederick Proctor in the shadow of the Sphinx, photograph by Rachel Proctor

As most of you probably know by now, Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute is named for three generations of one Central New York family that left its fortune to endow this remarkable center of visual and performing arts. Rachel Williams Proctor was the older of two sisters of the last generation and she was pretty remarkable herself.

Rachel and Fred Proctor at an Egyptian temple

Rachel was quite the globe-trotter and she was also a serious amateur photographer. The Museum of Art owns thousands of images she took in the late 1890s through the teens. These images are great historical documents. They include candid shots, incredible travel shots from all over the world, and very creative work, such as self portraits taken in mirrors. The candid pictures are wonderful and capture Rachel’s adventuresome, playful spirit—she even had her picture taken sitting on Fred’s lap.

Tourists and guides at Egyptian temple, photograph by Rachel Proctor

Rachel was interested not only in documenting the world around her—from hotel rooms to pyramids—but also in the creative process. She cropped images and printed the same image as silver prints, cyanotypes, and so on, and then “stacked” them in her numerous albums. MWPAI Museum of Art owns thousands of photographs, collected in more than 70 albums.

Tourists and guides at Egyptian temple, photograph by Rachel Proctor

Rachel’s Egyptian photographs are especially noteworthy this year because the Museum presents the exhibition, Shadow of the Sphinx, opening June 17. Stay tuned for exciting details!

Sue Coe in LitGraphic

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 14:30:25 -0400

The Museum of Art’s current exhibition, LitGraphic, includes imagery from Sue Coe’s gripping, disturbing illustrated story, The Pit, 1999. Thea Spittle, excellent Museum of Art intern from Hamilton College, wrote this essay about the drawings.

Sue Coe, The Pit, 1999

After attending the Royal College of Art in London, the internationally recognized artist and illustrator, Sue Coe (born in 1951) moved to the United States, where she found her passion for socio-political issues during the Vietnam War. She translates these concerns—which range from homelessness, to AIDS, to rape, and animal rights (Coe grew up near a slaughterhouse and hog harm)—into graphic images that confront the viewer with troubling strength and beauty.

William Hogarth, The Second Stage of Cruelty, 1751

The Pit: The Tragical Tale of the Rise and Fall of a Vivisector (1999) is a powerful example of these concerns. Coe sought inspiration from British artist William Hogarth’s allegorical series The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751), which equates animal abuse with human degradation. Through thirty mixed media drawings, Coe tells the story of Pat Watson, the protagonist, and his demise.

Pat begins by abusing helpless animals, then moves on to humans (a homeless woman and a mentally handicapped girl), parallel to Hogarth’s story. Pat’s dog, Pit, represents his better instincts by encouraging Pat to make the right choice, and not become bait to an economic scheme. By using a dog in this role, Coe humanizes Pit, acknowledging the human tendency to identify with dogs, due to their highly domesticated quality.

LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel remains on view in the Museum of Art through Sunday, April 29. The exhibition was organized and toured by the Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Massachusetts and is sponsored by the Bank of Utica.

Comic Book Confessional

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:58:30 -0500

I read comic books and I’m not afraid to say it.

Like millions of others my age, I was addicted to the “Batman” TV show in the mid-‘60s, but since comic books were for kids, I soon abandoned them. It wasn’t until I was in college in 1980 that I took another interest in costumed heroes (I was an art student so it was ok). The Batman had gotten dark and brooding, Green Arrow was pursuing believable adventures, Jonah Hex was a ill-tempered antihero, and the X-Men were, well, they were the X-Men.

Go to any comic book shop and marvel at the racks of books, posters and other super-paraphernalia. Probably the last thing you will see in a comic book shop is someone under age 16. Comics have come a long way since the Man of Steel fought for truth, justice and the American way. The sophisticated story lines, “mature” dialog and intricate plots are geared purely for adults.

And why not? Reading, for a large percentage of the population, is to escape reality, so why not escapeit with tales of derring-do? “The Scarlet Pimpernel,” created by Baroness Emmuska Orczy in 1905 is considered great literature and features a title character who is a mild-mannered fop with a dual identity as a heroic champion of justice during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. Take the same concept and put it in the Spanish colonial era of California and you’ve got Zorro, created by Johnston McCulley in 1919. Add illustrations and 20 years to that concept and you’ve got The Batman.

Not that illustrated tales of heroics started in 1939, mind you. Let’s jump back to the year 1070 and take a look at the Bayeux Tapestry. The Tapestry is a 230-foot illustrated account of the Norman conquest of England. In case you’re wondering, yes it is historically accurate, back in the 11th century horses actually were multi-colored, grand warships held about six soldiers, and people were much taller than horses and always stood perfectly side by side, even while fleeing broadswords and battle axes.

Throw a red cape and a unitard on William the Conquerer and you’ve got one whopper of a comic book. (By the way, did you know that Halley’s Comet is depicted in the Tapestry?)

Oh, what the heck, let’s go back even further and examine cave drawings. No doubt that 30,000 years ago, prehistoric geeks, after spending the day getting loincloth wedgies and being turned down for dates by cute pom-pom sporting “gruntleaders” gathered around caves marveling at the heroics of shaggy champions pummeling mastodons in the name of truth, justice and the Cro-Magnon way.

Which brings us to the exhibition, LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel, opening this weekend in the Museum of Art. Here, illustrated stories get their well-deserved recognition and the art takes its place among other visual masterpieces. Stop by and savor the genius of Sue Coe, Marc Hempel, Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, Frank Miller and a host of other important graphic novel artists.

Join us on Sunday, March 4 for the public opening of LitGraphic, which begins with the presentation “Manga in the Context of the Graphic Novel,” by Oneika Russell, followed by refreshments in the Root Sculpture Court.

LitGraphic was organized and is toured by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and generously sponsored in Utica by Bank of Utica.

LitGraphic Uncrated

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:19:33 -0500

We are very busy in the Museum installing LitGraphic: World of the Graphic Novel, which opens this weekend. Visit the Institute’s website for all the details about the show, which includes drawings by Sue Coe, Marc Hempel, Will Eisner, Robert Crumb, Frank Miller and a host of other important graphic novel artists.

Here are some action shots of the Museum’s excellent installation department doing what they do so well, creating a beautiful exhibition from an array of scattered pedestals, vitrines, signs, and works of art. Thanks to Lorelei Eurto, Museum of Art Assistant Registrar, for taking these pictures.

Hamilton College intern, Thea Spittle, cleans vitrines. Artists’ visual journals, foreground, await pedestal assignments.

Dariusz Sady, Museum Technician and man of wit, installing Jessica Abel’s drawings.

Here is Tara Avella, Museum Preparator, installing labels for Brian Fies’ Mom’s Cancer.

Okay, so I changed my mind about three times about the placement of the temporary walls, but Dariusz Sady and Michael Somple, Registrar/Exhibition Manager, were very accomodating. By the way, this is my new favorite paint color, Salsa.

Join us on Sunday, March 4 for the public opening of LitGraphic, which begins with the presentation “Manga in the Context of the Graphic Novel,” by Oneika Russell, followed by refreshments in the Root Sculpture Court.

LitGraphic was organized and is toured by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and generously sponsored in Utica by Bank of Utica.

Graphic Novels, Some Background

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:31:16 -0500

LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel

On view at Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute March 4-April 29, 2012.

This exhibition is almost upon us! For the next two weeks the Museum of Art staff will be installing this interesting show. I’ve been learning a lot about the history of graphic novels in preparation and here are some things I’ve been reading about.

A graphic novel tells a tale with sequential imagery, and may have words or may not. Visual narratives in this format fascinate as the story unfolds in inventive pictures that give the impression of motion through time and space.

Will Eisner, whose work is included in LitGraphic, is the father of the graphic novel. As an adolescent, he was a pioneering comic book artist in the 1930s and worked in the business for decades. By the 1970s Eisner coined the phrase “graphic novel” when he produced a very personal book of sequential pictures and text, Contract with God.

Will Eisner, Contract with God, 1978

Eisner had trouble finding a publisher because his manuscript didn’t fit into a traditional category within the field of books for adult readers.

The graphic novel moved into the consciousness of mainstream literary and art circles with the publication of Art Spiegelman’s Maus.

Art Spiegelman, Maus, 1986

Maus is a two-part book that relates the author’s understanding of his father’s experiences in a World War II concentration camp and his subsequent life with family in New York City.

Spiegelman’s sensitive treatment of this difficult, historical and personal subject matter opened up readers’ understanding of and appreciation for the power of this medium to address the most serious issues of contemporary life.

In the late 1980s the prolific Neil Gaiman emerged as a major writer for graphic novels. He has gained near-cult status for his work, notably Sandman, which numerous artists have illustrated since its inception in 1989. Barron Storey and Marc Hempel, both represented in LitGraphic, have illustrated Gaiman titles.

Marc Hempel, The Sandman

More on graphic novels in my next installment. In the meantime, visit our website for information about the exhibition and its related programs.

LitGraphic was organized and is toured by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and generously sponsored in Utica by Bank of Utica.

North Dakota, Kaleidoscopes

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 16:24:41 -0500

Mary Lucier, Mandala
#4 (Lignite),
2009, video projection

This month the museum debuts a recent acquisition, Mandala #4 (Lignite), 2009, a video projection by American artist Mary Lucier (born 1944).

Lucier has created works of art using video since 1973. In addition to projected imagery, her work ranges from single-channel to large-scaled sculpture installations that incorporate video with other materials. Landscape and issues of the environment are Lucier’s primary subjects, to which she invites spiritual queries – finding divinity within the natural world – similar to Hudson River School painters like Thomas Cole.

In the early 2000s, the North Dakota Museum of Art commissioned Lucier to create a new piece, which became The Plains of Sweet Regret, 2004, an installation of four large-scale projections and a pair of monitors that functions as an elegy to loss of regional populations.

Mary Lucier, Mandala
#4 (Lignite),
2009, video projection

While in North Dakota, Lucier gathered a lot of visual material on video from which she later produced four beautiful, abstract, kaleidoscopic video projections, Mandala #1 (Corinth), Mandala #2 (South Forks), Mandala #3 (Lewis and Clark), and Mandala #4 (Lignite). Ms. Lucier commented: “I love the idea of taking a landscape image that was dour and transforming it into something a little more beautiful and meditative. Hence, the four North Dakota Mandalas named mostly for the places where the original footage was shot.” Lignite is North Dakota town, just seven miles south of the Canadian border, named for the type of coal mined there.

Lucier’s interpretations of these landscapes are a reverse look into time of what life has been lived there during the past few hundred years.

FabFeb

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:11:32 -0500

It’s Fabulous February at the Institute.

Escape the dreary weather to enjoy some good arts fun.

James Iritani, The Winner Toots, 1990, 40 x 20, x 14 inches

In the Museum of Art we have made some changes to the Enhancing a Legacy exhibition. There is an entirely new set of works on paper and some new sculptures to see in the 2 East Gallery. Imagine: drawings by Joseph Albers, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Thomas Nozkowski, Tony Oursler, and Jerome Witkin, just to name a few.

Tony Oursler, Empathetic Pet, 2004, acrylic and ink on paper

On February 16 you can “Feel the Heat” of the MWParty – music by Showtime, cash bar and spicy bites from A Moveable Feast, and a preview of the exhibition, LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel, which opens March 4. Get all the details here.

Sachal Vasandani

And on Saturday, February 18, enjoy the fresh vocal jazz of Saschal Vasandani at the next Concert in the Court. Hear a truly swinging preview and purchase tickets here.

And throughout February there are LunchArt videos, guided tours, yoga classes and great films, too. I’m looking forward to seeing Meryl Streep as the Iron Lady at the end of the month. Find out all you need to know about the fabulousness happening at the Institute on our website.

Meryl Streep is The Iron Lady

Art MART

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:00:29 -0500

MART

I started the new year on the move. Last week I went to a small northern Italian town, Rovereto, for just a few days. There is a great art museum there, MART (that’s the Museo di arte moderno e contemporaneo di Trento e Rovereto), and it has everything I like in an art museum. Designed by Mario Botta, it’s airy and light-filled in its public areas. The spaces of the exhibition galleries flow comfortably and have high ceilings so that I always felt oriented, never felt lost. Then of course, to add to the satisfaction of the visit, I found that MART has an excellent restaurant (not a big surprise, I suppose, in Italy) and a very groovy gift store from whence some fabulous shopping could be had. And when I happened upon “BabyMart,” their children’s room, my happiness was complete.

MART, Rovereto, Italy, Mario Botta, architect

The art work on display was beautiful and interesting.

Carlo Valsecchi, from the San Luis series

I lingered over two shows in particular, Carlo Valsecchi: San Luis, which featured large color photographs that looked at times abstract, but were landscapes from South America.

The other show was Diango Hernández: Living Rooms, A Survey. Hernández takes every day stuff (frankly you might think it was throw-away stuff at that) and re-purposes it and re-groups it with other everyday stuff for a startling transformation.

Diango Hernandez, Giardino Tropicale

Hernandez’s installations can be unexpectedly tender, even poetic; recurring themes are the sun, home, and the revolution. My favorite work was titled Dances with Missiles, 2009. It is composed of a projected black-and-white video of Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn dancing effortlessly on a simple stage; over this footage, transparencies of Cold War maps and weaponry were laid. The video was paired with period jazz that corresponded surprisingly well with the classical ballet and to the dancers’ gestures, rhythm, and movement. As a whole, it seemed a successful marriage of period arts and politics.

Marvel-ous: Graphic Novels in the Museum

Sat, 07 Jan 2012 15:50:56 -0500

It’s 2012, happy new year from the Institute.

We have some pretty interesting and fun events to look forward to in 2012. At the next MWParty, for instance, we will “Feel the Heat” (that’s the theme for a chilly winter night, clever, right?) on February 16 starting at 9 pm.

In early March the Museum of Art opens LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel, a show organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It features 200 original paintings, drawings, storyboards, notebooks, comic books, and photographs by artists as diverse as pioneers Lynd Ward and Will Eisner as well as contemporaries such as Sue Coe and Mark Hempel, whose illustrations for Neil Gaiman’s groundbreaking Sandman are included.

The Museum of Art Education Department has organized several exhibition-related programs to complement LitGraphic. There will be a lecture series and artist Matt Madden, whose work is in the show, will discuss his books and present a workshop about creating comics. Please refer to the Bulletin and the Institute’s website for full details.

LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel will be on view from March 4 through April 29, 2012. Come and see this interesting stuff for yourselves.

LitGraphic panel designed by Marty Blake, Jamesville, New York. Illustrations, clockwise from top left: Lynd Ward (1905-85), God’s Man, 1929, one of 139 woodblock prints, Collection of the Ward Family; Marc Hempel, Falling, 1990, illustration for Breathtaker, ink and collage on paper, Collection of Insight Studios; and Will Eisner (1917-2005), Baxter’s Perfect Crime 1, illustration for The Spirit, January 4, 1947, ink and gouache on paper, Collection of The Will Eisner Estate.

This Joint is Jumpin!

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 15:08:41 -0500

Ansel Adams, Half Dome, Merced River, Winter, Yosemite National Park, c. 1938

During this inter-holiday week, there are many, many, many visitors in the Museum of Art, primarily to see the Ansel Adams exhibition before it closes on January 8. Be part of the fun! On Thursday, December 29, artist-photographer Gina Murtagh will host a drop-in family workshop in the Art Odyssey Gallery from 10 a.m. to noon. If you stop in on Friday, December 29, you can take a 1 p.m. guided tour and stay for the 2 p.m. screening of Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In.

Alec Soth, Melissa, 2005
Chromogenic print

The Skin I Live In

Let me also encourage you to visit the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse very soon. I recently had the pleasure of seeing two interesting shows that are widely different takes on ideas about landscape: From Here to There: Alec Soth’s America and Margie Hughto: A Fired Landscape.

Soth is a young photographer who has captured the lives and places of contemporary Americans from Minnesota to Texas, and lots of other environs, too. The Everson’s show occupies three large galleries of compelling pictures, complemented by some videos and stories that fascinated my friend, Yvonne Buchanan, and me.

Margie Hughto: A Fired Landscape. Photo by Dave Revette

Also at the Everson, Margie Hughto created an impressive installation in ceramics that that surprised me out of my expectations of what “ceramics” are. Instead of a gallery of individual objects, I found what can be honestly called a mural. In clay. It’s a fascinating hybrid of genres – craft, sculpture, relief, painting – all in one treatment. The work combines the earthiness of clay with sublimely colored glazes and rich textural impressions that invited Yvonne and me to look in closely and then step back to be embraced by the whole.

Rush to see these two good exhibitions at another good Central New York art venue, the Everson, before they close on January 12.

Here at Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute, we wish you a good 2012 that is filled with rewarding arts experiences.

A Colony in Utica

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 14:52:33 -0500

Visit the Museum of Art this holiday season to see an enchanting video installation by Jane Edden. She created Colony while she was working at Sculpture Space, an international artists residency program here in Utica. The title derives from another, earlier, Utica, the first colony established by the Phoenicians from Sidon (now Lebanon), ca. 1100 B.C.E., in what is now Tunis, North Africa. By happy coincidence, Utica, N.Y., has a rich and long-standing Lebanese community.

Sculpture Space, 12 Gates Street, Utica, NY

Edden described Sculpture Space as “a creative colony of far-flung artists; my installation used a film I took by the train tracks in Utica of a group of birds flying on and off communication wires, so I thought it fitting.”

Sculpture Space resident, Adam Davis, directs visitors in a project at a 2009 Works-In-Progress Reception.

Birds in flight, telephone lines and trains all evoke movement and communication, making Colony a meditation on assembly, interaction and exploration. It is captivating to watch, as it moves from cloudy to bright skies.

Colony

To make Colony, Edden filmed birds on telephone wires, then manipulated the raw footage digitally into a harmonious choreography of flying and alighting. She projects the imagery onto walls from which real ropes are fixed at the same point the wires connect to the telephone pole; the three-dimensional lines, extending into real space, became a facsimile of those in the film.

Colony

Along the wires Edden places small white cards that act like film screens, to catch the birds. In her mind, these elements place the viewer back into the original moment of the birds’ flight. She said:

To film something is to record three dimensions and time but it is so often shown on a two-dimensional screen. I wanted to explore the essence of film as light and time, treating the projected film as light being sent through space and stopped at various distances, allowing the relative positions of the birds to be re-experienced.

Colony is projected in both positive and negative film. The positive film portion looks more two-dimensional, but in the negative the shadows of the wires and card screens in the room disappear, leaving the cards to act as the only landing places for the projected birds.

Colony

The Museum of Art thanks donors Richard Blumenthal and Linda Morgan for their generous gift of Colony.

Someone’s in the Kitchen with Carrie

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 11:08:02 -0500

During the holiday season visit the Institute and enjoy a stroll through the Museum of Art’s Enhancing a Legacy exhibition, where you and your out-of-town visitors will enjoy seeing some works of art that have been added to the Museum’s collection only recently.

One such work is the compelling Carrie Mae Weems photograph pictured here. It is from Weems’ portfolio of images known as the Kitchen Table Series, from 1990. With minimal means, she created a rich narrative arc, from the first images to the last, of loving relationships, heartbreak, friendships, the challenges of child-rearing, and self actualization.

Here are some other images from the series (sadly, NOT in the Museum’s collection).

As you can see, the basic setting for the Kitchen Table images remains constant: a table with chairs and an overhead light. There is a changing cast of characters, although one figure, played by Weems herself, is always present. The décor changes from picture to picture as well; there may be posters or a birdcage or nothing at all added to the basic set. On the table there may be drinks, ashtrays, cards, cosmetics, books, a mirror. These accoutrements contribute to the story being played out.

Throughout the Kitchen Table series players reveal aspects of interpersonal relationships. Women congregate in support and friendship. Little girls emulate or argue with their mother. Interactions between the woman and men are loving, tense, or poignant.

In the image that the Museum of Art recently acquired, the woman and a man size each other up and seem to be weighing the risk of betting on or against the other.

About the narratives in her early work Weems states: “I endeavored to intertwine themes as I have found them in life – racial, sexual, and cultural identity and history – and I have presented them with overtones of humor and sadness, loss and redemption.”

Transfigured

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:03:25 -0500

The Museum of Art announces the acquisition of Bill Viola’s Transfiguration, a high-definition video from 2007. It’s an arresting art work; museum visitors seem compelled to watch as a shadowy figure emerges into our space through water, then recedes after spending a short time with us.

Bill Viola (American, born 1951)
Transfiguration, 2007
B + W high-definition video with sound on plasma display mounted on wall
Seven-minute loop
Edition 5 of 7, 2 Artist’s Proofs
Performer: Blake Viola

Bill Viola uses contemporary technology as an art medium but his subject matter is age-old: he examines humankind at important transitional stages—birth or death, or at the threshold of spiritual transcendence—in other words, standing between spiritual and material realms.

To be transfigured, a person undergoes a profound transformation within himself, even though his outward appearance may remain unchanged. In Viola’s Transfiguration, a ghostly presence emerges from a distance and walks through a veil of water in a kind of birth or baptism. The figure, who is the artist’s son, Blake Viola, looks at us, turns away, looks once more, then returns to the obscurity from which he came. What are we to make of this?

Viola was raised Protestant Christian, studied Zen Buddhism and also incorporates Sufi mysticism into his work. He seeks a balance between what he calls “the three great reservoirs of humanity—the Unborn, the Living, and the Dead.” The figure in Transfiguration could represent many different things to us, depending on our personal histories: a lost loved one; an angel or spirit; a memory of one’s youth; an ancestor; or a child from the future.

Road Trip

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 10:25:31 -0500

Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg, Massachusetts

On Friday, I drove with some of my buddies here at the Institute—IT Superhero Bill Doherty, Director of Education April Oswald, and Registrar/Installation Manager Michael Somple—to Fitchburg, Massachusetts, to visit the Fitchburg Art Museum. Director Peter Timms and the staff there were very gracious hosts, I must say. It was an altogether excellent adventure.

Why did we go there, you might ask?

We thought we were going to preview the exhibition, LitGraphic: The Story of the Graphic Novel, which is arriving at the MWPAI Museum of Art in March.

LitGraphic, some examples of contemporary graphic novels

And we did actually see the show and are very excited about bringing it to Utica. Here are some pictures:

LitGraphic at the Fitchburg Art Museum

More LitGraphic:

LitGraphic at the Fitchburg Art Museum

But we also really had waaaay too much fun in the Fitchburg Art Museum’s Ancient Egypt exhibition.

Stay tuned for more LitGraphic news!

Stay tuned for more LitGraphic news!

Walnut in the Round

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 10:06:04 -0400

Raoul Hague, Little Beaverkill Walnut, 1959

Raoul Hague (1904-93) lived and worked in Woodstock. He carved large tree trunks found in rural New York state and named his completed sculptures after these locations, such as Little Beaverkill Walnut (FYI: Little Beaver Kill, in Sullivan County, is one of several bodies of water that are renowned as the first fly-fishing venues in the United States). This marvelous sculpture is a recent gift from the Raoul Hague Foundation in honor of the Institute’s 75th Anniversary; it is on view now in the Enhancing a Legacy exhibition, in gallery 2 South.

Hague’s method of working was direct carving. That is, he didn’t make preliminary sketches or maquettes in advance. He was inspired by the tree trunks and followed their lines, explaining:

“One can orchestrate in the wood – I don’t have a clear idea when I start. I am not a conceptual artist.

“So you begin. You stare at it, and finally you have to do something. You are not making a story out of it. You make a cut. From then on it follows. Like the jazz musician, music comes out of you. You make one cut, then you become intimate. That thing becomes humanized, a being. It becomes part of my life for the next three or four months.”

In many cases, Hague’s sculptures do have a resemblance to human form, although they might just as often be non-representational. And it is important to circle around his sculpture to see the many different facets he carves into one side, then the next. They are truly carved in the round.

The Museum of Art has remarkable holdings in mid-20th-century paintings, but many fewer sculptures from the period, so we are very pleased to add the Hague to the collection and send sincere thanks to the Hague Foundation for its generosity.

Photo caption: Raoul Hague (American, 1904-93), Little Beaverkill Walnut, 1959, 55 1/4 x 34 1/4 x 24 1/4 in. 75th Anniversary Acquisition. Gift of the Raoul Hague Foundation, 2010.31.