Good intentions don’t amount to much unless they take some tangible form, otherwise they’re doomed to wander the earth as the ghosts of ideas. To that end, this is one big giganto-post, not on a single topic, but a small slew of them. It was a busy weekend, and there’s a lot that has been seen, heard, and said; this is my breathless attempt to get it all down. With plenty of pictures, too.
Thursday, March 26
National Museum of Mexican Art, Chicago
I was asked to go along on a field trip for a Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design class (where I also teach), to the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. As you’ll note from my recent post from Mexico City, I’ve been experiencing something of a recurring theme lately in terms of Latin American art. It is a subject that I know little about, but am learning more and more, visual and otherwise.
The museum is small but richly fascinating. The exhibition Mexicanidad traces the history of Mexican art through visual representation and historic events. Another current exhibition, Miradas, is a diverse group of contemporary Latin American art from the collection of the Bank of America. Another gallery is devoted to Muralla sobre lienzo, a mural-in-progress by celebrated artist Hector Duarte.
Works are ripe with color and symbolism, and this description extends not just to pieces in the museum, but to the streets as well. Murals in the area loom large, watching over the neighborhood below. Nearby, an artist extended his work to cover the exterior of his house. Dynamic, dramatic, and impassioned images abound as part of daily living, as well in the art of history.
State of Art: Open Forum about the Visual Arts in Wisconsin
Haggerty Museum of Art
Zipping back to Milwaukee after being in Chicago for the day, the event of the evening was the State of Art forum at the Haggerty Museum. The best play-by-play review of the evening is by Brian Jacobsen for Third Coast Digest, and there have been a number of posts on the MARN list that take up the issues raised.
One of the recurring themes (besides money and arts funding) was about art education and the lack of a comprehensive art publication in Milwaukee. Mary Louise Schumacher at the Journal Sentinel certainly has her hands full covering this rather unwieldy art scene, and there are a number of blogs, established or with a rising profile, that talk about the arts. The MARN Yahoo group is the most established, and now there is a new MARN endeavor called Art in Milwaukee that seems to be sort of a clearinghouse for visual arts information. Art in the blogosphere finds a home on Schumacher’s Art City, Jonathan West’s Artsy Schmartsy, the ever-delightful CricketToes, and the sporadic stylings of Susceptible to Images.
But, as Deb Brehmer pointed out in at the forum (Deb also writes on Susceptible, as well as for Milwaukee Magazine), perhaps the most significant aspect of the sadly-missed and long-defunct Art Muscle journal was the depth and scope of criticism, regularity, and its tangible presence. It was a free, jumbo-sized publication that came out every two months with in-depth reviews, articles, excellent photography, and served as a thorough document of who-what-where in the Milwaukee art scene. The quality and tangibility of Art Muscle were important; it was the sort of thing you would toss on your coffee table and come back to over and over, or find under a stack of books for pleasant spontaneous perusing. Being available out in the public on newsstands, free of charge, also made it accessible to people who were not part of the regular “art crowd,” and was a way to enter and become interested in the goings-on of local artists and galleries.
One of the great challenges of the internet is how to recreate that sense of casual availability. The possibilities offered by the variety of media on the web are astounding, as is the speed, but how to recreate that sense of presence? And, how to make it financially viable – an unfortunately perennial question.
So in the aftermath of this forum, there are no easy answers, but at least there are interesting dialogues and thoughts generated that could come to future fruition.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Night Work opening at the Armoury Gallery
Openings at the Armoury Gallery are always interesting; they tend to have a good mix of people, the gallery itself is a unique space, but more than anything else, gallery proprietors Jessica Steeber and Cassandra Smith consistently put together intriguing shows. This time around, the exhibition is “Night Work,” pieces created by working art instructors. It may be night work, done after the obligations of the day (or so one could imagine), but these pieces are definitely not an afterthoughts or the remnants of creative energy.
Six artists are featured in the show, and it’s impossible to get a really good look at everything during an opening. But, I have to say I’m impressed by Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninch-Ganger, whose multimedia works blend elegant forms of drawing, collage, and art history tradition integrated with digital surprises. It’s a fascinating blend of old and new art technologies.
In the Armoury Gallery, there is an additional room, a small and humble space but becoming one of my favorite gallery spots. Because it’s a closed area and set off from the general hubbub outside, it has an immediate feeling of separation, as though you’ve entered into a place where, even more so than in the main gallery area, anything can happen. This time, the room holds two works by Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg, both simple but captivating. Unravel links the three-dimensional reality with the two-dimensional possibilities of drawing, and the charming and surreal Draft simply opens up all sorts of imaginative wonderment. Elegant, simple, and inventive.
Art Bar
We finished off our evening at Art Bar. Their current show, One Week Paintings, is a mix of different artists, and I can’t give you much more that that now based on casual, hazy looking. But, I will go back to investigate further. I have to say, though, that I thought the portrait over the cigarette machine was quite good. But by this point, the rest of my party was tired of me yanking out the camera like an obsessed tourist and photographing everything in sight, and after a while, you need to just relax.
So with drinks and pizza we did, but ah, a bonus – that night a fabulous duo of a group was playing. “Steph Taylor and the State of,” one on keyboards, the other on drums, and a guitar comes in somewhere . And vocals, rich powerful sounds from both female musicians. I bought their CD and love it – go see them. Their original music is tightly melodic, and their covers (The Police, Message in a Bottle, Madonna’s Like a Prayer) fall in-between ironic and earnest, and excellent musicianship all around.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
UWM MA/MFA Spring Thesis Exhibition I at Inova/Arts Center Gallery
Before the snow flew, I had a chance to drop in and see the UWM MA/MFA Spring Thesis Exhibition I at Inova/Arts Center Gallery, and I ‘m glad that I did before it closed on Sunday, March 29. There was an array of work on view, tending more toward installation and multimedia works. It was like looking at the start of a journey, you can see possibilities and ideas, though there’s a sense of tentative exploration.
To point out one, the installation by Maria Bolivar was exceptional. Bolivar, a native of Venezuela, created a work that deals with leaving her country during the 2002 Venezuelan national strike. It’s a heavy subject, but she doesn’t play it for melodrama or emotional theatrics. Even before entering her darkened gallery, you become aware of the installation, hearing gradually crescendoing noise and shouting crowds. Entering, there are two screens on tall pedestals, but in the back of the room, the source of the noise and a wall with sections cut out so you can see just a sliver of video. But this is a journey, so at the two pedestals, you put on headphones. A brilliant touch, as focus shifts to the narrative of Bolivar, describing in two different was her fleeing Venezuela, and her life in the United States. The images are mundane and ordinary and the sound of her voice is jarringly shadowed by the crowd sounds bleeding in from the other video; it’s never out of mind, either in sound or vision, even when looking and listening elsewhere.
Then, it is time to go behind the separating wall, so what lies behind of all of this. Three walls are taken up with video screens, at times all with the same image, other times the images move across the three like a wave. It’s rhythmic, enveloping, and had the mysterious quality of memory, real and surreal, vivid but dreamlike. The arrangement of the space, the process of moving through the installation, the subtle modulation of sound and control of visuals in creating a multi-layered experience were exceptional.
~ KM Murrell
Hello,
I wrote about Hector Duarte’s work for our blog at Walker’s Point Center for the Arts: http://wpca-milwaukee.blogspot.com/2009/03/get-ready-for-arrival-of-artists-from.html.
You can see Duarte’s work if you come by WPCA to see “Artists of Pilsen” show to get a first-hand visual taste of what the work is like and also see other Mexican artists working in Chicago.