Occupy Wall Street

The minute I saw it in Adbusters I knew I would want to attend. I also knew I couldn’t afford a trip to New York. To my delight, the Arab Spring has turned into Western Autumn! Two weeks in, no attention. Then the Brooklyn Bridge is shut down! Events are blossoming all over the country, then the world. Portland is an activist town. It makes me lazy, because I know someone else will always demonstrate for me. (don’t hate, I donate, volunteer etc.) I have a close friend who is an activist in Central American issues, I try to be supportive. These days you have to find your passion.

I have always been envious of my boomer friends. They did it all; en masse, those times of intense beauty and horror combined with such innocence. They knew they were RIGHT. All before crippling student debt, a service industry future, food corruption, and reality television, made our eyes dull. How many times have I been angry, frustrated?  Ever since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission I’ve been plain out pissed. I googled for activism, groups to become a part of. Nothing. No outlet. I’m upset about a lot. I’m also one of the Stewart/Colbert “too busy” population. I’m taking time out for this.

Everyone says “have fun down there.” It’s not about fun. Honestly, I’d rather be at home, or work, or class (I am fortunate enough to be employed in a job I love.) I feel a need to participate, a duty. I feel as though I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen my entire life. This matters. I was in class when the march took place. The press is saying 5,000. The participants 10,000. I believe the participants. Take time out. Go.

This is a continual demonstration, it is being distilled into statements, it is a “hashtag revolution”, it is possibly our last chance to make real statements and change for the present and the future. Voting is no longer enough. Massive popular demonstration and civil disobedience is the only way. Our system is a lurching and corrupt beast. As proud as I was of Obama’s election the truth of corruption at the stem of our government has been exposed. Nothing gets done. No changes happen. Worship of the free-market fails when bankruptcy is mentioned. If I can fail, so can they. Why not government purchases of mortgages, student debt, and consumer debt? Fuck the banks! I was eight when the s&l scandals happened. I know life got better afterwards with regulation. I saw the banks getting “too big” again. I’ll say it again: how can I fail and they not? Where is the relief for my parents who trusted in the Las Vegas of pension funds and IRA’s?

A Rainy Day Wildfire

Celebrating Portland City Art’s One Year Anniversary with an Art Spark. An amazing group show including myself, Dele Mercier, Sabina Haque and many, many more.  April 15th at the Olympic Mills Commerce Center, located at 107 SE Washington Street. Come out and celebrate with us!

Henrique Oliveira’s

Henrique Oliveira’s sculptures, coined  ”Tapumes” for Portuguese word meaning boarding or fencing, are simply astounding. While a student in São Paulo, Brazil, Oliveira began reclaiming the remains of  fences, which had begun to peel and break into layers, and used the pieces to create sculpture. 

“The work with fragments of plywood found in the streets was born out of the open possibilities brought about by modern painting to identify aesthetic qualities on the world’s weary surfaces. This idea gave me room to apply wood on three-dimensional structures as an analogous to paint on canvas…Working with wood made me realize that painting can be thought beyond a genre of art – that is, it is a language capable of re-inventing itself, but is also a concept that can be applied to other forms of organizing the real.”  

 

Oliveira started as a painter and began to notice that laminates and degrading wood surfaces resembled brushstrokes and decided to create “tridimensionals” using these materials. The results  are enormous and angular.

 

This process has given way to another as Oliveira began to examine different properties of the materials:

“As I started to exploit the flexible properties of  this material, I felt it necessary to use something more plastic. Them I started to build them using PVC tubes first, and next another kind of  board that we call “flexible plywood”… It provides a first surface and the used plywood is used like a skin, covering it. The PVC tubes I buy at the store, and the flex plywood at the wood store. The used plywood is collected from the streets; I take them to my studio and pile off the layers, separating them by color, size, etc. In some works I control the color pouring diluted paint on the wood, getting them moist in order to make it easier to be manipulated.”

This new technique becomes more obvious, especially as he begins to create rooms and bulbous hallways.

 

The sustainable nature of this work should make Oliveira a shoe- in for a show in Portland. Let’s hope someone (nudge, nudge PAM) gets on board so we can witness this immense and overwhelming up close.  If the photos blow you away, what must it be like to stand next to them?

Apex: Joseph Park at Portland Art Museum

I came into the Apex space with a preconceived notion, having heard that Joe Park worked from photographs in a photorealistic manner.  I wondered,  is there still a place for this kind of realistic approach in this day and age? Anymore it’s a skill, not a vision, right?  I was pleasantly surprised.  What I had heard was wrong. I was delighted to find elements of fauvism, cubism, and deco paintings in the works presented.  The surfaces of the panels were super smooth and slick: a very contemporary presentation that gives the work a slick, almost commercial feel; as if in an attempt to erase any sign of the brush. Even the ground is ambiguous. One knows it is painted panel and would at first glance believe Park to be using the natural grain, but this has been supplanted by the artist’s own grain. he allows us to see the panel, but changes the look and feel of the material.

This is most evident in ‘Machinist’ (2008) where the vice and various other tools painted to appear as if manufactured from wood.  The simulated grain is so complex that it jumps off the panel and demands that the viewer search for dovetails that hold the structure of the vice together.  The bolts attaching the vice to the table are of particular interest: they appear to be “carved” perfectly from the body of the tool due to the finely executed “grain.”  The colors used in the rest of this piece are contrasting, but of very low intensity– adding to the prominence of the “wooden” objects.

 

 

 

The woodgrain device is used more subtly in ‘P.Leonilla’ (2009.) Here, only selected parts of the panel have a burled appearance which is masked by light layers of color to give a visual texture and depth to skin, shadows, and folds of fabrics that is in stark contrast to the flat and shiny surface of the painting itself. This painting especially has an Art Deco feel to it, directly referencing Tamara de Lempika’s angular style of portraiture.

 

 

 

Two still lifes from 2007 are included in the exhibition.

I love the banality of the subject matter in ‘Still Life #2’.  Again, the burling effect is used with less finesse but still with impressive results. It is the negative spaces of this work that delight the eye– the light playing on the side of the table, inside the jar, and trickling through the blinds onto the wall.  This is a painting about light; Impressionism circa 21^st century.

Although I appreciate the depth of detail in ‘Still Life #3’ it falls a little flat for me in comparison to the other works.  It seems to absorb light rather than reflect it.  While the spacial shifts are compelling, the glass on the tabletop seems to lack reflection despite the painstaking details the artist has inserted to denote a reflective surface.  I cannot put my finger on it, but something is missing. I think it presents better photographed than when viewed in person… weird.

 

‘Waiting for Claude’ (2008) is a study of contrasts.  A balancing act of light and dark, bright and low light, of realism and abstraction.  The liquid in the bottle and refracted light through the glass are stunning and diamond- like in complexity, while the composition is tight and simple. The glossy finish and dark, negative spaces give the illision of airbrush- perfect commercial art.

 

 

In contrast,  ‘Absinthe’ (2009) is a very painterly delight, despite the slick finish.  I am given to thoughts of Van Gogh, Picasso, and the Harlem Renaissance all at once. The colors are pastel, but intense. There is a sense of movement and perspective shifts that capture the essence of an absinthe heavy evening– the heady, mildly hallucinatory shift and shimmer of forms that have an aura of light emitting from them despite sitting in what should be darkness.

 

 

 

October 11 Yayoi Kusama

Why had I never heard of Yayoi Kusama? Sure, there is a ton of work out there today…who can keep track of it all? The thing is, this mother of ‘soft sculpture’, this woman who inspired the likes of Claes Oldenberg and Andy Warhol had turned 80 this year and outlived them all!

Looking at her more colorful installations one can see clearly how she influenced these artists. Why, though, is she not included in the canon?

Kusama was born in Matsumoto Province of Japan to an aloof and philandering father and a tradition- soaked abusive mother. Once her father left the family for a geisha and her mother’s behavior became more and more explosive, Kusama began having visions of dots that she called “infinity nets” covering everything. At age 10 she began drawing and painting these visions at the encouragement of her psychiatrist.

Rebelling against her conservative mother, Kusama attended the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts

In 1957, Kusama left Japan for New York, following a lengthy correspondence with the American artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Her first show was at the Zoe Dusanne Gallery, Seattle, WA. By the 1960′s Kusama was showing all over New york and throughout the world.

In America, Kusama’s installations caught the eye of critics and collectors. Her influence on both installation and Pop is obvious, looking back. Why is she not mentioned more in the context of this time? Is it just that female artists, unless married to successful male counterparts, were largely shoved aside at this time? After all, Henry Geldzahler’s vision of New York painting and sculpture 1940-1970 at the Met included no women.

Is it due to the deterioration of Kusama’s mental health? This forced her to return to Japan in 1973 and she consequently checked herself into the psychiatric hospital she still calls home.  Did this marginalize her and lose her a place with the greats?

Although Kusama has continued to produce and flourish, winning many awards and recognition, she does not have the status and instant inclusion on the list of the modern masters. I believe this is due to a pervasive cruelty and indifference in the art world at large that marginalizes female creativity and achievement every bit as much as Kusama’s parents did.

October 4, 2009: Carolyn Mason

Frosting as sculpture. Yes, frosting. Hard to conceive of, but divine when it is executed properly. This is just one of the mundane substances that Carolyn Mason transforms into magical, whimsical installations that offer subtle commentary of our materialistic surrounds. Her work normally starts out as performance- installations that are captured photographically and may later “evolve into individual sculptures.”

Other everyday items used by Mason include paint rollers, mops, and dish soap.

I am particularly drawn to her soap bottles and vases.

These are the profane made sacred: porcelain glazed in celadon for a luminous crackle effect. The lines are so very pleasing without the branding and we may step back and appreciate the form itself.

Equally intriguing if less radiant are the paint rollers. These range from ordinary store-bought tools inserted into an environment to large scale eccentricities to duplications of form that seem to be in the midst of a rapid division and reproductive cycles. Everyday objects with a will of their own a creepy thought in a mass consumer society.

Mason lives and creates in Los Angeles. She holds a MFA from Mills College, Oakland, CA.

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