Making Artwork More Accessible at Smith
by John Paul Stapleton
Northampton, Mass. – From the new Whitney Museum of American Art building in New York City to our semi-local Peabody Essex Museum expansion project, renovations seemed to be the hot decision for 2015. The Smith College Museum of Art joined this league with their four-year renovation project that was of officially completed this past fall.
Margi Caplan, the museum’s membership and marketing director, showed me around the museum to point out what has changed in their two-phase project. In addition to updated lighting and the removal of the main exhibition gallery’s staircase, the whole observer experience has changed.
“We thought about museum methodology and pedagogy,” Caplan said. “The museum’s collection works well, but wasn’t up to date. As a teaching museum, what we wanted to do was make the work accessible.”
Caplan described the method as “chronothematic.” Each oor is organized into time periods, but then works are grouped thematically to give the visiter background and provoke critical thinking.
For example, upon walking into the gallery on the top oor, the words “Traditions and Transformations” are the initial guide. This is the museum’s collection of art made after 1800 from Africa, America and Europe. Beyond comparing recent and familiar styles, this gallery explores the words “tradition” and “transformation” themselves.
One of their new mobile display cabinets showcases wartime prints by Percy John Delf-Smith. This traditional idea of depicting battles gets a macabre spin that effectively communicates the apocalyptic sentiments held during World War I. In terms of transformation, a Seurat study from “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” shows how his original depiction of the woman with the monkey in the forefront developed into the full piece.
Downstairs, you’ll nd the pre-1800 art gallery with work from America, Europe and the ancient world. Religious iconography from all periods is in conversation here with a “Sacred and Secular” theme. An addition from the renovation that I greatly appreciated here was the “Encounters: Art in Conversation” space at the far end of the oor. The top oor offers this as well, but a Greco-Roman mosaic oor segment titled “Personi cation of the River Pyramos” dominates this space. Although it weighs tons, it has been hoisted up above eye level to catch all the light from the windows around it.
The first floor holds the main exhibition gallery. This is the least permanent space, and during my visit it was showing “Woman’s Work: Feminist Art from the Collection.” Second- wave feminist art seems to be abundant, as shown by the cohesive exhibit curated without loans. Themes such as “The Body” and “Gender and Performativity” are exempli ed by a dynamic array of work.
“Red Flag” by Judy Chicago is a great surprise for viewers who are drawn in by the beautiful composition of the image,
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Tea For Two
LAU AND LEDBETTER AT KNIZNICK
by James Foritano
Waltham, Mass. – As a critic, I have no trouble recom- mending the exhibit currently at the Kniznick Gallery in Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center. The art, craft and vision, as well as the curatorial presentation, are all top-notch.
It’s only on the personal level, which is a big “only,” that I can’t guarantee the integrity of either the pitch, the come-on or the content which, though all perfectly innocent-looking, are only partially so — on purpose, I suspect.
Take Heidi Lau’s ceramic sculptures. They pitch themselves as objects we can walk around, take in and, most impor- tantly, assign a place vis-à-vis ourselves – as in “here” and “there.” But try as I might, I could never resist the feeling that I’d missed something a closer look would have revealed — and by leaning in, I’d lose my objectivity.
Blame this seductive push/pull on Lau’s feeling for organic construction. As in those creatures that grow along the tide-lines of our continent and haven’t yet decided to be sh or fowl, so do her columnar gures — both fragile and strong, fuzzy and slick, open and closed — seem not indecisive but still breeding momentous questions.
Our questions seem importunate, even premature in the face of such bubbling, buzzing founts of potentiality. And it wasn’t easy for me to say that, even to myself, because I’m used to asking questions and getting answers.
I lost my composure just as I passed a particularly portentous column about the breadth of a giant’s thigh and, noticing that it was hollow, leaned in and whispered “Umbrella stand?” as though I were just thinking aloud.
Of course I didn’t get any satisfaction from a composure eons older than mine but, for my trouble, I did get sassed by an eyeball, opening amid a brew of organic shapes and staring right at me. It was elegant, witty, endlessly allusive, and maybe just sour grapes from a guy who got no unambiguous answers, even though answers seemed as close as touch, deeply duplicitous.
Just to get away, I wandered over to the one piece of text in the exhibition and, sure enough, I had the conspiracy theory to
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THINKING SMALL AND LIVING LARGE
TINY HOUSES AT FULLER CRAFT
by Brian Goslow
Brockton, Mass. – For most of his life, Derek “Deek” Diedricksen has had an affinity for small structures. When he was 9 or 10, his father, at the time a high school woodworking teacher, gave him a copy of “Tiny Tiny Houses” by Lester Walker, an architect from Woodstock, New York. The 1987 book has become a guiding light not only for his life, but thousands of others around the world who have used it as inspiration for creating their own special miniature living spaces. More recently, they’ve become attractions at galleries and museums, including the Empty Spaces Project in Putnam, Conn., and this February, the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Mass.
“The art is shelter, but also art that you can walk into that’s around you, which is pretty darn cool, I think,” Diedricksen said. “People always have this affinity for being in these cozy spaces or being able to pry and check out small dwellings, so it ties all that together.”
Diedricksen has become one of the faces of the tiny house movement, frequently appearing on HGTV and The History Channel. He writes books to show others how to create their own small structures and celebrating similar creative works; his most recent book, “Microshelters: 59 Creative Cabins, Tiny Houses, Tree Houses and Other Small Structures” (Storey Publishing) came out last summer.
“There’s a bunch of different reasons why people go tiny, but control over one’s tiny affordable domain is part of it,” Diedricksen said. “You can own your own house; build it cheap, build it quick and design it for just you. You can control it to fill your needs.”
Each structure is created to fit a different need; some people construct their tiny house to include many of the necessities of everyday living, including a kitchen, stove and sleeping area, and use it as their full-time residence. Each town or city has different structural codes, causing many owners to have to live off-radar.
To help others follow him in his passion, Diedricksen regularly conducts hands-on workshops. Last May, he hosted a three-day Tiny House Building & Design Workshop at the Empty Spaces Project in Putnam, Conn. that included live demonstra- tions, discussion groups, talks by tiny house owners and the construction of a tiny house that was donated to the gallery. It also gave the town a small economic boost.
“It brought people from all over the United States, filling up the local hotels and guest houses, making our local restaurants packed and introducing the town of Putnam to a whole different group of individuals,” said Paul Toussaint, co-founder and execu- tive director of The Empty Spaces Project/Gallery on Main Street. “It fit in perfectly as an art installation inside our gallery.”
The cabin’s back wall was turned into a communal graffiti piece. “We painted it a flat color and just left out paint, an iron chisel, some sharpies and let everyone in the group go nuts and blast the wall,” Diedricksen said. It was then layered with 3-D wood cutout pieces. “When the cabin lights up, you have this bizarre art piece radiating from the back casting a lot of color.”
Toussaint intentionally didn’t have the tiny house built in his gallery’s front window so that people had to walk through the main gallery to see it. “People came from all over New England and we did get a lot of new people into the gallery,” he said.
Diedricksen hosts many of his tiny houses projects with the assistance of his brother, Dustin, under the relaxshacks.com moniker. “We did another one for an art gallery [The Ecce Gallery] in Fargo [North Dakota] that lit up, like a giant Frankenstein-like head, and doubled as a service bar. You could go in and use it like a meeting space. It was just bizarre.”
They also appear at home and garden shows, where many of their builds are “just artsy, funky light up displays.” Last March, they went to Sydney, Australia to host a workshop during which, with the help of 25 participants, they designed and collectively built a tiny house prototype (“The Rad Pad”) for a battered women’s shelter, making good use of salvaged cabin windows. “They’re trying to put together a village of these little eclectic tiny houses that women can seek shelter in to get away from an abusive relationship,” Diedricksen said.
For the past three summers, the Diedricksens have hosted a Tiny House Summer Camp on land with no electricity that Deek owns in Orleans, Vermont. “The first time we did it, we were, ‘Nobody’s going to come.’ We sold out instantly. We had people flying from California; we had someone from Switzerland attend,” Diedricksen
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IN CELEBRATION OF THE PENCIL
Leaving a Mark at D’Amour
by Marguerite Serkin
Springfield, Mass. – Graphite occurs naturally in many forms, and its appli- cation for modern inscription has a history dating back to sheep marking in 16th-century England. Formerly referred to as “Plumbago,” graphite was used as a paint base in Neolithic times by the Marita culture of the Danube to decorate ceramic pottery. Versatile, easily manipulated, and widely found in nature, graphite serves as an accessible and functionally effective tool in both art and science. It is used in nuclear technology, batteries and brake linings. And, of course, in pencils.
“Leaving Our Mark: In Celebration of the Pencil,” on view through March 27 at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Spring eld, offers a unique perspective on “pencil art.” Organized by New England artist Steve Wilda and curated by Spring eld Museums curator Julia Courtney, the exhibit illus- trates a wide range of stylistic approaches to pencil drawing, charcoal and silverpoint, and features compelling works constructed from pencils themselves by Dalton Ghetti and Jennifer Maestre.
Originally inspired by sea urchins, Maestre’s pencil sculptures are created using one-inch pencils drilled into beads, which are sharpened and stitched together to form undulating, spiny pieces of unexpected variety. There is a continuity offset by whimsy in Maestre’s pieces, which are intelligently scattered throughout the exhibition.
Ghetti’s tiny pencil sculptures defy common artistic approach in their fastidious and excruciatingly detailed construction. Ghetti, whose mother was a seamstress, spends months to years using a sewing needle to shave down a single pencil into a form so minute and refined it captures the discreet nature of all things small.
The drawings in “Leaving Our Mark” clearly illustrate the versatility of graphite in creating a full range of textures: from blurred and smoky to highly de ned and precise. In the rst gallery, Terry Miller’s “In The Midday Heat” conveys an ethereal context beyond the con nes of its architectural detail. Lisa Henry’s “Ablution” expresses the literal simplicity of the artist’s memory of her grand- father washing his aging hands in an emblematic image at once poignant and familiar. Both pieces combine precision in stroke and content with the fluid movement of light, implying a presence that is greater than the subjects themselves. “My goal when installing the show,” said curator Julia Courtney, “was to allow the works to speak to each other as if the artists were in the room discussing their styles, similarities and differences. Although disparate, each work reveals common threads whether in the quality of line, subject, form or composition.”
Elizabeth Kostojohn has drawn upon life experience to inform the compel- ling series “Hurt & Damage.” The series portrays fragile pieces of fruit that have been ruptured by pointed and blunt objects. In one, an upright pear is pierced by a black-handled screwdriver; in another, a partially deconstructed pear is held in a vice grip. The unusual applica- tion of graphite on Mylar in these works creates a tension between object and background, in keeping with their implied social commentary.
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CORNERED: Multimedia Artist Gene Gort on his current show, Venetian
By Sarah Rushford
Torrington, Conn. – Five Points Gallery in Torrington, Connecticut is a non-profit contemporary art gallery showing professional regional, national and international visual artists. The gallery presents exhibitions in three renovated exhibition spaces in a historic downtown building and the lively events and receptions draw large crowds from a community of artists, educators, collectors and an engaged public from across the region.
Multimedia artist Gene Gort’s installation, “Venetian,” on view through October 17, 2015, combines six channels of video with an array of 30 archival inkjet prints shot by the artist during a visit to Venice during the 2013 Venice Biennale.
The prints are slightly out-of-focus photographs of exterior walls of Venetian buildings; a moody palette of pastel gradients simply framed and not behind glass. Large flat-panel video screens hang at intervals amidst the closely-placed prints playing long loops of idiosyncratic, lightly-handled moments that unfold in Venice’s public spaces. One front-to-back arrangement of two screens in the center of the gallery play video of San Marco piazza, a bustling central square with a clock tower that rings on the hour, the only audio from the six video channels. A video of the gallery discussion that took place on Oct 2, 2015 at Five Points Gallery can be found here fivepointsgallery.org/2015.html.
SARAH RUSHFORD: During your process of making these prints you talked about your interest in the tactility of the paper itself in contrast with the videos. Can you say more about that?
GENE GORT: Yes, I wanted it to be about the visceral qualities of the prints; the ink on the paper, the way the light illuminates the ink, which is very much like the unique light in Venice, and I thought that putting them under glass would compromise that experience. Then I ended up pinning the prints with spherical map pins. You get a sense of their tactility, the sense of the paper as the object, as opposed to the image.
You really can’t tell what the images are, in terms of the medium. Some people at the reception were saying “Are these photographs of textiles? Are they screen prints? Are they watercolors?” They really didn’t know, which was great. I like that. If people obsess about what they are as a medium, then I’ve lost them. But if they’re mysterious enough to be just color-fields with variation then I think that’s successful.
There is the potential of them being photographic, but they’re also lithographic, and mysterious. It’s really about color and light more than anything else; anything I can devise to get the viewer to feel them as color and light as opposed to a framed print or something behind glass — and I think that has to do with present tense. They’re there at the moment – you’re there with them. They’re not a representation of some other time and space. You’re there now with these objects. And that contrasts with the video which reveals a whole different time frame.
The video deals with recollection, reminiscence, a kind of subjectivity of being in a place that’s not necessarily public (although some of those things are very public) but … to me they seem like very private little observations, which is kind of what the images of the walls are too, but in a different way. The prints are about thumbnails of the city, the light of the city, and the videos are about private observation.
SARAH RUSHFORD: Your other installations, especially ‘Unit of Measure,’ combine tactile objects with video. In ‘Unit of Measure’ there were thousands of wooden lathes, all of this wood was cascading and it was so present in the gallery as a material, and then there was the electronic signal literally immersed in it. Does Venetian connect in your mind with ‘Unit of Measure?’
GENE GORT: I hadn’t thought about that but that’s true of most of the installations I’ve done. I’m very much tied to the visceral quality or the materiality of installations. It’s very satisfying to see that come back, the materiality and the electronic representations.
SARAH RUSHFORD: I see a connection between the linearity of the prints series (they’re almost like a timeline) to ‘Waterline’ (one of the videos that’s more abstract because it’s out-of-focus.) I wondered about the connection between those two moving lines.
GENE GORT: Yes, I think of them as a gradient sometimes. There are slippages between color and place. But I think the waterline video is the closest one to the prints in terms of that abstraction. What that video is, is me leaving Venice. I’m on the vaporetto and I’m heading out to the airport, and I’m videotaping the waterline against the canal wall. Sometimes you see two horizontal lines of color and then when it breaks you see up alleyways and into the city, and you see boats that have color and people working on boats. But it really is about color-field, stuff kind of sliding by and shifting, which is very much like the prints.
SARAH RUSHFORD: Did the Biennale influence the work?
GENE GORT: The thing about it is that none of the Biennale is evident in the work. What I’m observing or collecting is before and after the Biennale, it’s after I’ve had this intense connection with the art world that I retreat, and look at where I am. That’s an interesting relationship. Part of the intensity of the Biennale and all the thought that goes into the artwork that’s there really puts you into that frame of mind of paying attention, and being hypersensitive to what’s around you, in an observational way.
SARAH RUSHFORD: When you were in Venice, your roles were as artist, educator and tourist. Do those societal roles come into this work?
GENE GORT: I think they’re all interrelated, because clearly I’m a foreigner. (But so is the Biennale a foreigner to Venice, although it’s international, some, but very little of the art work is about Venice itself.) Educator and artist are inseparable for me. Because what you do as an artist is educate your viewers to observe the world in a unique way. You’re trying to let the viewer in on perceptions that you have. I guess the tourist thing is kind of…the way I use the materials that I acquired there is more about discovery, and tourism implies imperial acquisition of another culture.
I’m not trying to appropriate a culture or to consume it. I’m observing it from the outside. With the videos I’m trying to create a kind of entry. And I’m sure that if I did Berlin or New York or San Francisco, I would be focusing on other things objectively, not as a way to objectify… I would notice things about those places that are unique to them. It’s not about exoticism.
The other thing I was thinking about is that this piece doesn’t really need to be about Venice. It is about being inspired by a place to pay attention to. To pay attention to certain things about it specifically. The piece is more about noticing, in the general sense. It’s more about calling attention to the fact that you’re immersed in a place that is unfamiliar, and that you notice the nuances of the place. This just happens to be Venice. Venice is just kind of an excuse.
SARAH RUSHFORD: It seems like this installation is documentary. These are ways of documenting a place, and though expressive, not outwardly. As a viewer you trust that reality is being revealed to you, there’s little manipulation happening, and the work is trusting the viewer to use their experience to see into the work, it’s not trying to rope them in, it’s not gimmicky. It’s relying on the viewer a lot and I think that’s a really successful thing about the piece.
GENE GORT: Yes, it’s about observing, modes of observing, to a greater and lesser degree they are close to photographic sincerity as they are documentary. I’m embellishing but I’m not sensationalizing. I’m not trying to fool anyone.
SARAH RUSHFORD: The piece seems to ring (even literally) with a message about ways of noticing. That’s clear to you as the artist because you’re saying it in words too. Is it clear to others in your audience?
GENE GORT: I think some. Some of the audience of this gallery is sophisticated enough to engage with it. Others look at it as pretty colors, and some people don’t understand why there is video. I don’t mean to short-change the people I‘ve talked to but some people see it as tourist video. “Oh you shot this all in Venice when you were there?” “Well, yes”…but then they don’t see the connection to the color palette or investigate it further. Some people were like “Are these watercolors, what are these?” but that’s as far as they get. When they find out they’re photographs, there’s no more investigation.
Power Booth is going to moderate the discussion. He was very taken by the ‘Moored’ video, he locked onto the framing, the corner of the screen, and the pigeons and the black door. He looked at it and really investigated the frame. He was really examining the image. That’s great, that’s what I want.
I showed the ‘Venice Calling’ video in a faculty show last year and people were like; it’s hilarious and it’s haunting. They were taken by the narrative of it and the irony of the ever-present cell phone call and the man framed in that ancient window. There’s something really interesting about that juxtaposition. But it’s also kind of melancholy.
One thing that I have heard consistently though is that it’s really elegant. There’s something very elegant about the setup. It really fits the gallery well. I’m thrilled by the way it looks. If it were inelegant or sloppy or uninteresting to look at I wouldn’t get those second comments. I think the fact that it looks as clean and pleasant and inviting as it does — it invites people and gives people the opportunity to investigate.
Gene Gort is a visual artist, video producer, media programmer and educator who lives in Torrington, Connecticut. His artwork and videotapes have been shown internationally including DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Mass.; Pacific Film Archive/Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, Calif.; TheVideoArtFoundation, Barcelona, Spain; Cyberarts Festival 2001 + 2010, Boston, Mass.; University of Rochester; Hallwalls, Buffalo, NY; Mills Gallery, Boston Center for the Arts; Vtape Salon and the Art Gallery of York University/Prefix Centre for Contemporary Art, Toronto; Black Maria Film and Video Festival, touring; Athens Film and Video Festival, Athens, Ohio.
He has been twice recognized by the Rockefeller Foundation with nominations in the Film/Video/New Media categories for individual fellowships. He has received grants from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts; Pollack-Krasner Foundation; LEF Foundation; New England Foundation for the Arts, “New Forms”: National Endowment for the Arts Regional Artists Projects and has received two residencies at the MacDowell Artist Colony in Peterborough, N.H. and a residency at iPark, East Haddam, Conn. in 2009. He currently holds the position of Professor of Media Arts at Hartford Art School, University of Hartford, a program he designed and directs. See more of his work at genegort.com.
SARAH RUSHFORD is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and curator who lives in Boston. Her poems and text-art have appeared or are forthcoming in the literary journals Houseguest, Tuesday: An Art Project, and Accordion. Sarah has recently completed art and writing residencies at Takt Kunstprojektraum in Berlin and Art Farm Nebraska and exhibits work internationally with current shows at Satellite Contemporary in Las Vegas, Nevada and 13 Forest Gallery in Arlington Mass. Sarah is a member of the curatorial collaborative Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn. See her work at sarahrushford.com and follow her on twitter @SarahRushford and Instagram @sarahannrushford.
Artist profile: John Evans
By Rhiannon Leigh
South Natick, Mass. – Boston-based painter John Evans incorporates art into all aspects of his life. His Natick home is adorned with work, old and new, by both himself and his wife, Carolyn. Although his studio only had two current pieces, both works-in-progress, there was an abundant quantity of drafts of many of his works, emphasizing the amount of time and effort he spends on one piece.
In 1987, a young Evans was motivated by pleasing everyone else rather than pleasing himself — as well as a fear of failure, which in turn led to his rejection from a potential show in New York. Although this was disappointing at the time, Evans also acknowledges that he felt a sense of freedom. He continued to paint, and because he was now only painting for himself rather than for others, “there was no sense of failure, just an adventure,” Evans said. He also speaks of the Buddhist mantra of “not wanting,” and because of this, Evans became much more free and playful with his work, landing him a show with the same gallery a year after the initial rejection.
His process is playful yet deliberate, creating an initial piece of work and then taking photographs and working from those in order to create an aesthetic composition and describing the final work as serendipitous, “a wonderful surprise.” He continues to mention that his work, many of which are landscapes, “are about mood, and you don’t get that until all of the other problems are solved. Whatever the paintings evoke is totally secondary — I’m not 100 percent conscious of it.” Although Evans has become much more free with his work throughout his life, he works extremely hard in order to create the final piece and evoke an emotion, even if he is unsure of what that emotion is, and it is clear how important he views his work, whether you step into his home, his studio, or the galleries in which his work is displayed.
(John Evans’ work can be seen in the “Water Scenes” group along with Todd Kenyon, Chris Armstrong & Eric Zener from September 10 through October 3 at Gallery Henoch at 555 West 25th Street, New York, New York. For more information, call (917) 305-0003. To learn more about Evans, visit johnevansartstudio.com.)