utopian benches

Utopian Benches, 2011, by Francis Cape, illustration from the Murray Guy website.

"A bench is a social sculpture, and this is why it interests Francis Cape." -- Frances Richard, in a review of Cape's show at Murray Guy, New York, in Artforum, October 2013, p. 293

over the river and through the woods

I'm on a Christmas-New Year's trip to Queensbury, Portland, and Boston. My older sister Roberta lives in Queensbury, in the exurbs of Albany. We had a nice evening and breakfast. I had it in my mind that I could do a bunch of art hopping on the way to Portland: the Tang Museum at Skidmore College for the "Jewel Thief" group show which looks interesting, on to Troy for an exhibition at EMPAC (Experimental Media Performing Arts Center) at RPI (and maybe to pick up the new book The architecture of EMPAC which includes a picture of three of us art librarians in the blackbox theater), and then some Dürer at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown. Well, the Tang wasn't open yet, EMPAC was closed this week even though their website hadn't indicated it, but the Dürer print show at the Clark was wonderful. Since I hadn't had my contemporary fix, I stopped in at MASS MoCA and was delighted to find a Petah Coyne show entitled "Everything that rises must converge" (thoughts of Deb Kruse who also uses Flannery O'Connor for inspiration) and another visit to the Sol LeWitt installation, as well as Michael Oatman's work "All utopias fell" which includes a football field-sized photovoltaic cell installation on the roof.



At about this time, the weather reports on the radio were talking about a coastal winter storm. I didn't see snow right away but it was pretty thick and windy as I approached Boston and the drive up to Portland was pretty dramatic. I didn't have any trouble (keep knocking on wood) and enjoyed my evening with Christie and Janet. The morning included considerable worry about Janet's return to NYC via bus and train but she seems to be getting there.

Oh, the picture at the top. When I'm doing the drive from Queensbury to Boston, I like to take the blue highway, Route 2, across Massachusetts. Just after you climb the mountain out of North Adams, you get to the town of Florida, Massachusetts. It is especially fun to see the "Entering Florida" sign in the winter, and I've done that more than seeing the sign in the balmy weather.

Carrie Moyer at CANADA and more

There's much to like in Carrie Moyer's current show of new paintings at CANADA gallery at 55 Chrystie on the Lower East Side (just North of Canal Street). Before I read the press release, I scribbled down a few of my favorite things:
- pigment: thick and thin, sometimes a glaze or inhabited with glitter, sometimes almost like a stain painting by Helen Frankenthaler or Morris Louis, other times so thickly applied that it has cracked
- color
- sometimes just raw canvas among the colors
- red string lines, mostly free form among the more precise edges of color areas, is this the influence of her partner Sheila Pepe?
- shapes that evoke: breasts but "First instance" reads to me like a thrusting male member
- a bit of Miró, a Target, puppets and calligraphy

And then I read the press release which talked about "Arcana" (the show's title) referring to the Tarot deck. I don't know much about Tarot so I'll have to take their word for it. There's also a list of what we might see and what it means. No mention of male parts so it must be me. The picture above is appropriated from the CANADA website; not "First instance" (and not identified by title on the website) but fairly representative.

My next stop was going to be Leslie/Lohman to see the Marco Silombria show so I started meandering North and West. I stopped at Jane Kim/Thrust Projects and found the Momoyo Torimitsu show. The gallery is full of small resin sculptures imitating melted chocolate Easter bunnies, supposedly critiquing consumerism. I don't really get it, or it doesn't move me.

Next. I vaguely remembered that Storefront's current show was on an interesting topic so I aimed there, forgetting that it was too far North for Leslie/Lohman.

The show now at Storefront for Art and Architecture is "49 cities" put together by WORK Architecture Company (WORKac): plans and statistics about 49 plans for better cities, whether that be denser or sparser, higher or over water, green or aerial. Included were the Royal Salt Works at Arc-et-Senans, a Roman town, a colonial Latin American town, some of the megastructures of the 1960s and 1970s, Levittown, garden cities, Broadacre City, Radiant City. The catalog is wonderful and reproduces most of the stuff in the exhibition. I find it an amusing coincidence that Storefront's show of photos from early last year was called "49 state capitols." The gallery guy said the 49s were just coincidental.

As I left the gallery, someone called my name and there was Jim Bergesen leading a group of young women galleryhoppers from Connecticut. We talked a bit about the joys and sorrows of galleryhopping amid the shoppers and lunch takers. And then I realized I was too far North for Leslie/Lohman so went to the grocery store and home. There's a lecture by Nina Katchadourian at Hunter College tonight: more evidence of the value of Facebook where I saw a notice for the artist talk.

right by me

After the morning's silliness, I had a lovely Sunday afternoon. I went out to the Queens Museum of Art for the Cinemarosa films which were quite fine: "See me" by Steven Liang, "Right by me" by Thanyatorn Siwanukrow. Both were coming out stories: the first a first-person narrative from a Chinese American in California, the second in Thai about three young men. During the discussion after, someone described the stories in the latter as considerably easier than (his) real life. It was affecting and effective, nonetheless. I was amused too by the harmony of the titles with the shared word "me"; not the me-ness of it but the rhyme and the double entendre of the "right by me."

I got to the museum early enough to see the "Reason's clue" show in the galleries. If you enjoy works that mix cultures and times, "Reason's clue" is a show for you. Zhang Hongtu has done some objects that wonderfully mix traditional Chinese styles with contemporary pop culture: Coke bottles in blue-and-white porcelain; zodiac figures in Mao suits, done in Tang-style three-color glaze; McDonald's containers in Shang bronze costumes; a series of Van Gogh-ish paintings looking rather like traditional Chinese scroll painting. With my current gig of ARTstor cataloging being Chinese art, this is especially amusing. There are also wonderful Hung Hao maps looking like a combination of western Renaissance style and Chinese content. And Taiwanese Tu Wei-Cheng has created the Bu Num civilization whose excavated steles look suspiciously like Blackberries.

I just love visiting Flushing Meadows and the Queens Museum. Is it the liveliness of the park? Or maybe the chance to walk through the panorama of the city from the 1964-1965 World's Fair? Or the camaraderie of the folks at Cinemarosa? Or maybe the ride in the 7 train, looking at Queens as we zip along?

From the park to the yard. After Sunday in the park, I took off for Alfred early on Monday morning. Raked the leaves this afternoon and helped my brother bag them to take up to his mulch pile. The yard and garden at the family homestead are in need of some attention and I am rather thinking I could manage a bit of that ... next year.

we might have to do this again!?!

In an article in The New York Times on August 26th, John Tierney describes Vernor Vinge's new book entitled Rainbows End and other writings. He describes a man who succumbs to Alzheimer's but comes out of it not knowing about Facebook, Second Life, Wikipedia and whatnot. He has to go back to high school to learn how to cope. In the world of 2025, he retreats to Geisel Library at UCSD where the "paper books are about to be shredded to make room for a highbrow version of a virtual-reality theme park." We've got intelligence amplification, not simply artificial intelligence. cf http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/26/science/26tier.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=rainbows%20end&st=cse&oref=slogin (or search "rainbows end" at nytimes.com Yes, Rainbows End is given without an apostrophe; not the end of the rainbow, but rainbows are over. Or an allusion to Howards End?

"Harvie Krumpet"

Thanks to Emerson Morgan for posting a charming film on his Facebook page -- "Harvie Krumpet" by Adam Elliott, narrated by Geoffrey Rush. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvie_Krumpet

memorial moments

Randy Pausch, professor and author of The last lecture: He did, however, mention that he experienced a near-deathbed conversion: he switched and bought a Macintosh computer. (N.Y. Times, 26 July 2008)

Katherine Kinkade, founder of utopian commune: ... more pioneer than hippie ... "She was not fond of group hugs, had no interest in alternative medicine, nature-centered activities or tofu lasagna." (N.Y. Times, 27 July 2008)