Michael Bierut: 30 Years/90 Notebooks at Esther Massry Gallery

By Sara Tack

It’s not often that a graphic design show appears in a gallery or a museum and even less often that one shows up in the Capital Region. That’s why it is pretty exciting to see a show of the magnitude of Michael Bierut: 30 Years/90 Notebooks get curated specifically for The College of Saint Rose’s Esther Massry Gallery in Albany.

Bierut, a partner in the renowned design consultancy Pentagram, has had a brilliant career, designing for a host of national and international clients. He is the author of 79 Short Essays on Design and founder of the popular online journal Design Observer. He’s a senior critic at Yale School of Art and frequent guest speaker at design conferences and organizations across the country. His work has won every design award there is to win, including the prestigious American Institute of Graphic Arts medal.

What distinguishes Bierut’s work from much of the design we see on a daily basis is that his pieces use clever, conceptual twists that create messages we have to think twice about. His ability to do this so poignantly is grounded in his knowledge of the subject at hand, his understanding of how to use modernist form to imply meaning, and a natural gift: intuitive wit.

Most of the pieces in the show are posters and most are in black and white. Sometimes the work has (what appears to be) such a simple concept you wonder why you hadn’t thought of it yourself. Yet the beauty comes from just how profound he makes “the simple.”

In one of the few multi-colored works - Obama Fifty State Strategy, 2008, a campaign poster for Barack Obama - every U.S. state’s name is re-presented and strung literally together without word spacing. Separated only by color, we read the play on words starting with Alobama and proceeding alphabetically through Wyobaming.

In the 7th Annual Book Fair to Help the Homeless, Bierut turns a black-and-white image of an open book upside down to create the roof of a house. At the bottom of the poster is a small, out-of-scale, solitary wooden chair. In a poster advertising the play The Well of Water, at the Parallax Theatre (one of many posters for the theatre in the show) we see a stark charcoal line drawing of a woman’s hair and upper torso. The rest of her face is created from stylized photographs. The eyes are hot and cold faucet knobs, her mouth the spout of the faucet where the water emerges. What is he saying about The Well of Water using a faucet metaphor to represent a woman's face? One would have to see the advertised play to find out.

There are quite a few stunning pieces in the show designed for the Architectural League of New York. Usually their purpose is to announce a lecture, or an event series. My favorite is Scale. This 36-by-48-inch horizontal has a solid black circle just under 36 inches in diameter anchored to the left edge of the poster. On the far lower right end of the circle is one word reversed out to white. The typography - all caps, san serif bold letters, not more than 1/4” in height - reads “SCALE.” The sheer literal contrast of scale focuses us on one of the most defining principles in art and architecture. This is extremely powerful.

Light Years, also for the Archi- tectural League, overlaps the letters of these two words laid directly over the other in varying translucencies. Without any literal illustration or photography, the layering of the letters on a solid black background visually suggests distance over time as we read the words “light years.”

Another set of posters for the Yale School of Architecture runs the gamut of Bierut’s thinking. Architecture and Psychoanalysis Symposium is both clever and funny. A modernist, 1960s-style psychiatrist’s couch is turned 90 degrees running vertically up the side of the poster. At a moment’s glance our minds transfer the image of the couch into an architectural structure/building.

Then we realize what we are looking at and can’t help but laugh at being let in on the visual and verbal play. Furthermore, we realize that, although the poster was installed vertically, it could also be presented horizontally (as shown above). It is more difficult to read the detailed text in this orientation, but that text now takes on the role of the architectural reference, suggesting a city skyline.

So what does the title 30 Years/90 Notebooks have to do with the show? There are two cabinets displaying many of Bierut’s black-and-white composition notebooks that he started using in 1982. He has accumulated 92 books in his 30-year career and can’t go anywhere without his most current notebook. They are used for everything from client meeting notes to thoughts on design, miscellaneous ideas, doodles, conceptual sketches, and working out his design process on any given commission. Many of the displayed pages allow viewers to make connections and see the thinking behind the work on the walls of the gallery.

Two-page spread from a Michael Bierut notebook

A commemorative poster was designed for the exhibit by Bierut himself and is available for sale at the gallery, signed or unsigned. Michael Bierut: 30 Years/90 Notebooks is on view through January 22, 2012.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Guest reviewer Sara Tack is principal artist at Smith and Jones and adjunct professor of visual communication & design in the Electronic Media Arts and Communication department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Mark McCarty: Skin at Opalka Gallery

It is appropriate that the exhibition Mark McCarty: Skin at Sage College of Albany's Opalka Gallery begins with a self-portrait, because this show is as much about McCarty as it is about the many people depicted in it. Long awaited (McCarty's last solo show - aside from a wonderful mini-exhibition of iPhone pictures that just ended at McGreevy ProLab - was in 2004), comprehensive (the show presents 35 pieces, 36 if you count the one that is, inexplicably, included twice) and focused (all the works are black-and-white portraits) Skin happened because Opalka Director Jim Richard Wilson recognized that it needed to happen.

McCarty has been making both personal and commercial photographs for over 30 years, and both have brought him considerable recognition. But the effort to mount a major art exhibition is easy to leave aside when you are dealing with clients, raising a family, meeting deadlines. So McCarty continued to make the personal work - that's essential - but has tended to only show it in dribs and drabs, usually at one or another regional group exhibition.

Now, we have the opportunity to look at a broad and deep slice of those pictures - still limited to a particular long-term project or two, but a good choice was made to present a very personal segment of the total output, rather than a more diverse survey. It tells a deeply compelling story of lives written on the skin of those living in it, and of McCarty's place amid those lives as participant, observer, and compassionate collaborator.

Like a lot of commercial shooters, McCarty is well versed in a great array of technical skills and styles. This show includes a couple of grainy 35mm shots; 11 images from a square-format rollfilm camera; and 23 prints from 8-by-10-inch sheet film (these in two sizes). All the prints have been produced by digitally scanning the negatives and printing in ink on heavy paper - but you would hardly know it, as they have the look of gelatin-silver prints in texture and tonality.

More than half the pictures are of McCarty's immediate family - wife and children - including his first wife, Vicky, who died of cancer when their daughter, Kate, was still a baby. One of the most affecting images in the show (and no less so for being about 4 by 5 feet) shows Vicky and Kate from behind, their oval heads in rhythm, the regrown hair on Vicky's not nearly as thick as the first-grown hair on Kate's.

In this, as in nearly every image in the show, the subjects are unclothed; those who are not part of the nuclear family include a number of elderly Alzheimer's patients, and others of all ages. Almost never is the picture a "nude," though some get near that when the subject's face is obscured or cropped out. Not surprisingly, those tend to be the less compelling images.

The textures that give the show life are mainly those of the face, with all its lines and freckles, the hands (ditto) and, in certain strong instances, the hair and nails. One very expressive portrait of the photographers' nude second wife crops out her head, but allows her hands to receive the treatment of a sensitive portrait. Another image, of a woman identified as Emilee, shows mainly her torso from the side, folds of fat, stretch marks, scars and all. And another, of the only non-white person in the show (named Miss Ada), is full-face with eyes squeezed shut - but behind one set of lids, there's a hollow socket.

Though the pictures in Skin go back to 1985, it is worth noting that these last three were all made in 2011, clearly demonstrating that McCarty remains at the peak of his creative and expressive abilities. Still, the exhibition works very much as a whole, as a timeline of one life's intimacies and contiguous looks outward in the form of portraits. McCarty's world is here, as is his world view. It is a vital viewing experience.

Rating: Must See

Note: A very handsome catalog, with an opening statement by the artist and essays by Phyllis Galembo and Lyle Rexer, has been printed to accompany the exhibition Skin. Larger and more sumptuously designed than past Opalka catalogs, it is priced at $20, a nice deal. Be sure to check it out when you go.

LOL at Albany Airport Gallery

At left, Granny Panties for My Ex-Girlfriend by Benjamin Entner;
at right Self Portrait by Spring Hofeldt

In a way, the Albany International Airport Gallery is like an ongoing Whitney Biennial of the Capital Region. Curator Sharon Bates mounts just two shows a year, usually around a pithy theme, and she often populates these shows with work by artists she's spotted at other venues around the area, in a sort of sifting and consolidation process.

The downside of this approach is that regular viewers of local galleries and museums will encounter things in these shows that they've already seen before, sometimes quite recently. But those are not the viewers the Airport Gallery targets; rather, Bates creates for an audience of travelers, many of whom are not from around here and will never venture beyond the terminal as they seek ways to kill time between flights.

And, in more than 10 years of honing that aim, Bates has adopted a formula that really works - even achieving national recognition for excellence in cultural programming at airports. So, it's no surprise that the new show at the Airport Gallery, titled LOL, is fresh, funny and - yes - surprising, despite including some familiar work.

OMG by Brian Kane

While being humorous would seem to be a prerequisite for inclusion in this exhibition, there are many kinds of humor, and not everything here evokes giggles or guffaws. But some of the artists do purposely go for the laugh, particularly Tim Davis, whose sly, slapstick video sequence titled Upstate New York Olympics features such hilarious pursuits as Lawn Jockey Leap Frog and Snowman Jiu Jitsu, in which the artist is seen nonchalantly launching himself over little statues on display in yards of every economic demographic, and violently assaulting unsuspecting Frosties, ninja fashion. I like slapstick and, yes, watching Davis did make me laugh out loud, as it did the Three Stooges-loving friend who accompanied me.

Other work had a more sardonic appeal, such as Roger Bisbing's meticulously detailed, miniature construction titled Shaker Air, in which stoic wooden furnishings are arranged in the configuration of a 737 jet. Created specifically for LOL, this work's humor depends on your understanding of Shaker life, and the fact that the airport is on Shaker land.

Also thoughtful and evocative is Michael Oatman's installation titled Cesare Lombroso's House of Pizza, in which a slightly tongue-in-cheek narrative explores the unlamented stereotyping of the mustachioed Italian pizza man. Sixteen silkscreened variations of the character are arranged in a grid to illustrate the cultural phenomenon, but it's hard to get to exercised about a happy pizza guy when, well, happy pizza guys are such a good thing.

This is how you repay me? by Gregor Wynnyczuk

Oatman also collaborated on Forest Freshner with Brian Kane, in which the artists made an oversized version of the classic pine-tree car freshener, shaped and scented like a new car, and photographed it being hung in the great outdoors. Kane's solo contribution to the show is equally witty and Pop-inspired: a big, red word balloon that says "OMG!," just like every tween alive.

Also notable for dry wit and impeccable technique are the drawings of Andrew DeGraff, an illustrator who likes to tilt at iconic figures, and who makes you smile but also makes you think. His We are All Descended from Homeless People is, rightly, the poster image for the show; and his The Lord's Typewriter and The Selection of Darwin are wonderful comments on scientific and religious objects of worship, which also happen to be beautifully crafted works of art.

Equally beautiful are the three small paintings in the show by Spring Hofeldt,  which are more playful than funny, but which are so well painted they make you want to see many more. Her self-portrait distorted by a glass vessel in front of her face shows that not all postmodern feminist artists take themselves too seriously.

Two of the other three women in the show cover domestic topics (Minna Resnick on the family vacation; Joy Taylor on garden tools and personal accessories) in fun or self-mocking ways, but don't completely avoid the heaviness that seems to curse so many women artists since the awakenings of the '60s, and which doesn't plague the men quite so much, leaving them free to go completely off the wall.

Technically far more crude than Hofeldt or DeGraff, but just as clever, are the found-art musings of Gregor Wynnyczuk, who elevates kitschy paintings to the level of existentialist philosophy by placing black vinyl text on top of them, then adding evocative titles, such as What's gotten into you lately? and I'm not like the others. But his indirect take on personal issues is dwarfed by Benjamin Entner's 7-foot-long Granny Panties for My Ex-Girlfriend, which just dives right into the outrageous way relationships make us feel.

The other artists in LOL are Torrance Fish, Linda B. Horn, Steven Rolf Kroeger, and Owen Sherwood. The exhibition, which is accessible to the non-flying public from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, will remain on view through Mar. 25, 2012.

Rating: Highly Recommended
 

Forest Freshner by Brian Kane and Michael Oatman

Myth in Metaphor: The Etchings of Steven Hazard at Clement Art Gallery

I don’t know Steven Hazard personally, but his show atClement Art Gallery in Troy says a lot about what sort of person he must be.Like many artists, he is obsessed – but unlike most people, artists included,he appears to be singularly devoted to his obsession, giving his entireexistence over to creating a very particular world in carefully rendered andheavily layered imagery.

At his home studio in Albany, Hazard makes etchings, which heframes himself and takes on the road to sell at craft fairs and such; thesetravels have allowed Hazard to make a living, but have largely prevented himfrom pursuing traditional gallery shows. Myth in Metaphor is the first local showI can recall that features more than just a few of his works.

So this is a welcome opportunity to take in the scope of Hazard’soutput – especially because, despite the small scale of the gallery, it’s acomprehensive collection that spans from the 1970s to the present. Then again,for me the show is perhaps too complete – Hazard’s images are so dense that itis a challenge to take in very many of them at once, and the result is that theexperience is somewhat overwhelming.

The show includes a great deal of text, most of it written byHazard to explain the complexities of his ideas and images, some of it taken fromother sources. One such quote says his prints “often represent the sensoryoverload ... of the modern world,” which mirrors my own reaction; I would addthat they also draw from the ancient and medieval worlds to further populatethis Bosch-like, crammed universe that Hazard so relentlessly depicts.

Apart from the many etchings on view (both framed on thewalls and stacked unframed in bins), the show features several pencil drawings,which provide a bit of respite from the dark, layered prints. One of the drawings,titled Four Elements and dated 1999, provides the template for a same-sizeprint also on view. At about 20x34 inches, it is large for Hazard and, being ingraphite rather than ink, it is both lighter in tone and more richly detailed.One could spend hours just exploring this single piece in all its intricacy.

Another drawing, Article of Faith, is dated 2011 and featuressofter marks in a couple of colors on textured, grey paper. While its contentis similar to the other work on view, it has a lighter touch, and its use of arabbit as the main subject makes it more approachable than many of the moreforbidding subjects presented here.

Those consist of the human figure, animals, mythologicalcharacters, machinery, architecture and landscape – sometimes all in onepicture – and all of it elaborately staged to tell a story in actions andsymbols.  The many black or brown single-plateetchings shown here are augmented by quite a few colorful multiple-plate etchings,as well as some lovely hand-colored etchings.

Hazard displays great skill with drawing, spatialperspective, and visual invention, and his well of creative ideas seems bottomless– but I find the technical quality of his prints to be wildly inconsistent:some are crisp and clear, others very muddy, and many are too heavily inked,which causes a lot of blocking up in the finer details. In work such as this,where it’s not just about the lights and darks, or the shapes and lines, butwhere every bit of information carries intent and meaning, that matters.

Note: Myth in Metaphor: The Etchings of Steven Hazard closes onWeds., Oct. 26, so you must hurry if you’re planning to see it; also, thegallery will publish a catalog of Hazard’s work by December, adding to thelineup of quality publications it has brought out for its artists over the pastfew years.

Rating: Recommended

MoHu

Some day we will all be bragging that we were here for the first MoHu festival. Let's get out there and make it real!

Ten Years: Remembering 9/11 by Marie Triller

In the inevitable push-pull between form and content thatlies behind all photographic imagery, the work of Marie Triller falls squarelyin the middle of the argument. But it’s a pretty big middle and, as seen in thejust-published collection titled Ten Years: Remembering 9/11 ($29.95, JohnIsaacs Books), her work covers much of that range.

Triller, who earned an MFA at SUNY New Paltz and works as ahigh school art teacher, has had a quiet but persistent presence on the CapitalRegion art scene for decades, and for much of that time she has exhibited expertlymade, digitally captured color photographs that represent human culture, often fromtravels to distant places such as Belize, Ireland, and the American Southwest.One might argue that these pictures were clearly documentary in purpose – and thatwould be true – but it is equally true that they were intended as personalartistic expression. The pictures presented in Triller’s new book are noexception to this duality.

Beginning with a full-bleed cover shot of a motorcycle gastank embellished with an exquisite painting of a New York City skylinedominated by hovering ghosts of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, thebook teases the eye as much as it plucks at the heart strings. Immediately, theparameters are shown: This photographer use color, shape, composition, andpoint of view in ways that your everyday documentary photographers do not.

Perusing the sequences of images inside, which are organizedinto nine chapters of equal length, one gathers a cumulative sense of thedeeper meaning behind the work. The result of 10 years’ worth of anniversary visits to thesite of the WTC attacks, these 97 pictures were culled fromthousands, then thoughtfully sequenced to offer Triller’s interpretation of thechapters’ themes: Memory, Security, Expression, Reflection, Community, Courage,Place, Justice, and Spirit.

Triller explains in a short opening essay to the book thatshe avoided the press photographers’ territory in “the pit” at Ground Zero,choosing instead to focus on “the periphery, the crowds who gather eachSeptember 11 morning, and who tell a truer story of that bright, dark day.” Ithink Triller would say that, through these pictures and this book, she isattempting to share that story – their story – with the rest of us.

But a photographer – an observer – cannot set himselfcompletely aside from the story he photographs. And, so, Triller’s book is therecord of her experience of that story, filtered through her eyes and her lens.What I see when I look at these pictures is a wonderfully sensitive, open setof eyes, guided by an equally open heart, which is thrilling and impressive; Ialso see a highly trained and critically honed eye, which is delightful – and impressive.

Which moves me more? In this work, each depends on theother. The picture of a dark-skinned woman clutching a bouquet of multicoloredroses is pure visual candy – made bitter by the knowledge that she has broughtthem not to celebrate a love, but to remember the loss of one. On the pageopposite, low-angled sunlight hides a man’s face in shadow under ared-white-and-blue hardhat; the picture is as balanced as a still life, as theman bows his head reverently, the hat emblazoned with signatures of othersurviving rescue workers.

There are American flags visible throughout this collection,hanging gigantically on buildings, stitched onto clothing, and everywhere inbetween. This is inevitable given the book’s source material, but it is also,perhaps, a sly nod to two seminal photography books of the past century: WalkerEvans’ American Photographs and Robert Frank’s The Americans, both of whichused the presence of the stars and stripes as a visual cue woven into thefabric of the books’ layout schemes.

Triller uses the same technique, placing a photo with aprominent flag at the start of the book and often beginning each section of thebook with one, too. But her tale is not a patriotic or political tract – it isall about the people who come each year to remember the tragedy of 9/11 at itsepicenter and who are presented here with their raw emotions on full display.Included among them are many in uniform, in family groups, in work clothes, businessdress or biker attire. Many also have their own creative or political messageto share, duly recorded by Triller’s camera.

The photos are presented without titles or captions – we aremeant to take them in visually and draw our own conclusions about what they maymean. This is one of the book’s great strengths. It’s difficult to approach asubject so charged without succumbing to the temptation to preach, but it maybe even more difficult to craft a narrative with images alone, as Triller hasdone very successfully here.

Text is provided in the form of a foreword by Sen. KirstenGillibrand, Triller’s introduction, and a thoughtful afterword by EleanorHeartney – all are brief, leaving the pictures to do the real communicating. Theydo it eloquently, and beautifully.

Note: There will be an exhibit of 11 of Marie Triller’s 9/11photographs at The College of Saint Rose’s Massry Center for the Arts atriumgallery, 1002 Madison Ave., Albany. The show opens on Sunday, Oct. 16, and willrun through Sunday, Dec. 11. Triller is an alumna of the college.

Public Art speaks volumes

Clown Soldier - Rensselaer Riverfront Art Park

If you haven't had public art on your mind lately, there are two current reasons that maybe you should. One of them is the 9/11 sculpture commissioned by Saratoga Arts to be made out of World Trade Center steel by two prominent local sculptors, John Van Alstine and Noah Savett, which should have been unveiled last weekend but wasn't (background here). The other is the Living Walls project that also launched last weekend and will be the focus of a broad spectrum of events this weekend in Albany.

Amid all the hubbub surrounding the 9/11 anniversary, there was the unfortunate story of how this significant piece of art has been turned into a political football by various folks in Saratoga Springs, who decided they didn't like either the initially approved siting of the 25-foot-tall abstract memorial, or a second proposed location (for a good overview of the debacle, read Tom Keyser's coverage from the Times Union).

It always galls me when people who otherwise do not involve themselves with art suddenly feel entitled to act against it when they see something they don't like being given prominence in public. A couple of significant examples from the recent past include the removal of a long-standing sculpture, which critics compared to a collapsed staircase, from its spot near a government building in downtown Albany; and the very controversial and expensive removal of a monumental Richard Serra sculpture from a public square in Manhattan.

Tempered by Memory
Noah Savett and John Van Alstine
photo: Lawrence White

In the Saratoga case, the smell is the same - if this were a bronze image of a thoroughbred horse or a ballerina or a heroic firefighter, I am sure there would have been no outcry. But it's not. It's an abstract sculpture made of 9/11 tower steel, and some people are uncomfortable with what it represents to them, so they consider it their right to spontaneously become public art critics.

And so, instead of having been dedicated on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the monument sits in the steelyard where it was made, awaiting its fate. The good news is that the sculpture has been accepted, and a committee appointed by the mayor is set to meet so they can review and recommend sites; the Saratoga City Council will then consider these recommendations and make a final decision on where it will be placed.

Important to note: The funding for this work of art has come entirely from private donations. To everyone who gave money to support this endeavor, I would like to offer thanks for your courage and your generosity. This is not a friendly time for artists and arts organizations, and they need your support like never before.

Meanwhile, all over Albany and near the river in Rensselaer there are crews of local, national, and international street artists producing monumental works of their own on the walls of buildings and the supports of highway ramps. (Street art is the more palatable name now given to graffiti muralists, but these days it means a lot more than spray paint and gangster tags, incorporating stencils, broadsides, stickers, and other materials - even ceramic tile - into the often gigantic works these artists create.)

The Living Walls project writes on its website: Through a series of lectures, performances, and the involvement of some of the world’s great mural artists, we are looking to provide an education into public art. The Living Walls project is intent on creating an open dialogue between the people and city.

Sounds great to me. For more information, go to the website, facebook page, twitter, tumblr, etc., and you will find more events than you can shake a spray can at going on throughout the weekend. And then, for as long as they endure, there will be those walls.

GAIA and Nanook - Livingston Avenue

 

Harold Lohner: Gathering at Opalka Gallery

Harold Lohner - Attraction 3 2010 monoprint 30x22 inches



My policy on faculty shows prohibits me from reviewing the exhibition Harold Lohner: Gathering at Sage College of Albany's Opalka Gallery, but it doesn't say anything about endorsements - which is a good thing, because this event should not be overlooked. It is a large, exuberant show stuffed with Lohner's characteristic monoprints in a vast array of colors, combinations, and sizes. There is also a handsome catalog accompanying the show with an essay by another Sage faculty member, Melody Davis.



A reception for Gathering took place last week on the 5th Anniversaryof Albany's 1st Friday; another reception is set for 5 - 9 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 14, just before the show closes. I missed last week's gathering, but hope to be at the next one.



Lohner's work matters, and this show is important.



In two words: See it.

Harold Lohner - Stranger 6 2010 monoprint 30x22 inches

 

Regarding Place and Wolfgang Staehle at University Art Museum

Marilyn Bridges - Castillo from Perpendicular, Yucatan, Mexico 1982

The University Art Museum is blessed with a pretty impressive photography collection, and has been showcasing a sizable chunk of it through the summer under the title Regarding Place: Photographs from the Permanent Collection. Paired with three digital projections of web- or video-derived color images by the New York City-based, German-born Wolfgang Staehle - who will give a talk at the museum at 7 p.m. on Wednesday (Sept. 7) - this offers a nice opportunity to take in a nearly century-long swath of fine photography.

Regarding Place includes over 100 black-and-white pictures by 17 artists, some of them iconic, some cult favorites, some little-known. The great majority of the prints in the show were donated to the museum’s collection over the last few decades by the Brown family, whose two children attended UAlbany in the 1980s and 1990s, and the show was organized by UAM curator Corinna Schaming, giving a sort of bi-level structure to the selection process. The result is somewhat uneven, but of a very high quality overall, and the installation takes on a subtly intriguing life of its own, as framed prints are variously grouped in rows, stacks, and grids, sometimes loosely spaced, sometimes tightly packed.

Andreas Feininger
Elevated Trestle, Division Street 1941

The premise of the show is, frankly, half baked. Many of these pictures struck me as being fairly indifferent to setting, or distinctly not about place at all – and the trouble it took to try to come up with a unifying theme for the show seems forced. This is evident in the rather tortured language of the press materials – for example, Schaming writes that these photographs “consider the resonance of a given site” and “foreground the direct and emotive appeal of black and white photography, while also informing current photography’s renewed interest in faithfully reproducing the visual world.” I’m sorry, but this is not my idea of meaningful description.

I’d be more comfortable with a less presumptuous approach – such as “here’s some really nice stuff from the collection, and isn’t it great to have a chance to look at it together on the walls instead of leaving it safe in a file drawer in the dark?” I mean, who needs all that theory? The bottom line: Photos like to be looked at, and it's very good to see these photos out of storage.

Highlights abound, including seven small prints by the ageless Manuel Alvarez Bravo that span the 1930s to the 1970s in a carefree leap; five big, bold prints by Andreas Feininger (two of which are also seen in the current New York, New York! show at The Hyde Collection); an appropriately random-seeming set of 10 images by Andy Warhol (these were donated by the Warhol Foundation in 2008); and five Joel Meyerowitz prints from the 1960s - before he discovered large-format color.

Three photographers are represented by a whole portfolio of 12 or more images: Marilyn Bridges, who makes precisely composed aerial pictures of famous sites; Douglas Huebler, a conceptual artist of the unassuming type; and Sally Gall, whose landscapes are lovely, if perhaps a bit sentimental.


Joel Meyerowitz - JFK Airport (Caddy and Christmas star) 1968


Not at all sentimental are the projections by Staehle, though they are also calm and sweet in their way. His pieces, which consist of 24-hour web views of two scenes (one rural, one urban) captured at short intervals and an hourlong continuous loop showing Niagara Falls (with pleasantly roaring soundtrack), struck me as being simply and singularly about the passage of time. Staehle’s cool gaze, aided by Internet technology, allows the viewer to contemplate at leisure a very quietly unfolding drama. Not particularly innovative or unique, in my opinion, but worthy of attention.

Note: If you want to see the Regarding Place and Wolfgang Staehle shows, you must act quickly - they end on Sept. 10.

Rating: Recommended

Wolfgang Staehle - still image from Eastpoint 2004

Thom O'Connor: Then & Now at ACG

As a member of the board of trustees of Albany Center Gallery, I can't pretend independence of thought on the shows there, and so won't be reviewing them anymore - but I also can't resist telling you that the current ACG exhibition of small prints by Thom O'Connor is an absolute gem.

O'Connor is an internationally acknowledged master printmaker, now retired after a long tenure teaching at UAlbany, and his work is impeccable - as is the selection and installation of this exhibition, which spans a bit more than 10 years' worth of output. Based on the turnout at the artist's reception on Friday (Aug. 12), it is being very well received by the public and will continue to draw well.

For a nicely presented interview with O'Connor and an explanation of the processes he uses, see this piece by Tim Kane from Thursday's Times Union ... and absolutely, positively see the show.

75th Mohawk-Hudson Regional at AIHA

Escape - Susan Stuart, oil on canvas

The 75th Annual Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region, commonly called the Regional, is at the Albany Institute of History & Art this year, and it is huge. Selected by prominent painter Holly Hughes, who considered 1,020 submissions by 235 artists (a record for the Institute, though still far fewer than the nearly 1,500 works submitted by 340 artists to the Hyde Collection last year), the final cut includes 160 pieces by 85 artists.

That’s about five times as many as the 35 works by 17 artists that were in the same show at the University Art Museum in 2003 (presumably a record low). Think of it – one Regional five times the size of another. It sort of boggles the mind. Just reading a list of the whole roster is hard work, and I’ll prove it by putting that list right here:

Mr Swifty - Linda B. Horn
Fake fur, foam structure, plaster shoes

Samuray Akarvardar, Jim Allen, Fern T. Apfel, Jaimee Atkinson, Sebastian Barre, Tina Baxter, Meredith Best, Pennie Brantley, Allen Bryan, James Burnett, Paul Chapman, Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri, William Coeur de Ville, Terry James Conrad, Peter Crabtree, Katie DeGroot, Chris DeMarco, Ginger Ertz, Ray Felix, Abraham Ferraro, Jessica Fitzgibbon, Richard Garrison, Charles Geiger, Barry Gerson, Gail Giles, George Gruel, Bart Gulley, Stephen Bron Gurtowski, Michael J. Gwozdz, John Hampshire, Patrick Harbron, Theresa Hayes, Sarah Haze, Andrea Hersh, Susan Hoffer, Stephen Honicki, Linda B. Horn, Renee Iacone, Mary Kathryn Jablonski, William Jaeger, Paul John, Richard Kathmann, Pooh Kaye, Scott Keidong, Sandie Keyser, Amanda Klish, John Knecht, Ivan Koota, Phyllis Kulmatiski, Gary Larsen, Naomi Lewis, Harold Lohner, Iain Machell, Mona Mark, Paul Mauren, Gwenn Mayers, Mark McCarty, Bryan McGrath, Michael McKay, Jenny McShan, Renata Memole, Michael Mooney, Robert Morgan, Art Murphy, Nedra Newby, Philip J. Palmieri, Liz Parsons, James Paulsen, Kenneth Ragsdale, Marc Rosenthal, John Ruff, Mark Schmidt, Deborah Schneider, Lynn Schwarzer, Jon Segan, Mary-Alice Smith, Charles Steckler, Susan Stuart, Barbara Todd, Ken Vallario, Nancy Van Deren, David G. Waite, Nicholas Warner, Edye Weissler, and Wendy Ide Williams.

With so many people chosen, I feel compelled to offer a few words of commiseration to those who were excluded: Remember, a juried show is by definition subjective. Don’t give up! There’s always next year … . Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the included were feeling a little put out to be part of such a broad presentation. After all, how special is it really to be one of the 85 "elite" from the region this year?

Empire Views with the Green
Nedra Newby, Watercolor

As it turns out, not so very special at all. The show is, indeed, too damn big. Beginning in the first small room that typically introduces AIHA exhibitions, it gets off to a very promising start with a large, vertical, black-and-white video projection of a doubled rushing waterfall that greets the visitor as if to say "this Regional is bold, get ready for a wild ride." Other works in that room, from traditional oil painting to Sharpie on whiteboard, express weather in many forms, setting an intriguing tone for the show to come - it will have themes in whole rooms or parts of them, an almost necessary strategy for presenting so much diverse work, and a wise one - though it fails to deliver on the promise.

The second room takes us in a completely different direction, immediately understood as being all about color. As a shameless color junkie, I have no argument with that, and found many pleasing pieces gathered there. But, in the next (and largest) room of the museum's second-floor spaces, this crispness of organization begins to break down a bit, and some questionable decisions become apparent. (The layout, by the way, was planned by Hughes.)

WC #6 - Paul Mauren
Aluminum, wood, ceramic tile

What at first seems to be charming quirkiness of placement - a very subtle and small box assemblage by Jon Segan is placed well above eye level; three large color photographs by Mark McCarty are forced into a tall totem - turns into extreme imposition in the form of seven works by five artists being jammed into an awkward and tight group on the gallery's end wall. This type of problem recurs in the next large room, where two color photographs by Chris DeMarco are interspersed with two watercolors by James Burnett, a distracting way to show them.

I've heard this increasingly common phenomenon called "curator as artist," and I've seen it work better in truly curated shows - but, when it comes to presenting so many unwitting individuals in a juried regional, I think the artists deserve the respect of less interpretive placement. Had the two DeMarcos simply been placed side by side with the two Burnetts, we still would have gotten the point that they are closely related, without seeing them diminished.

Meanwhile, as I trolled the show for favorites and new discoveries, I found it harder and harder to respond with any energy to the art - even the works I knew immediately to be among the best seemed to have lost their oomph to the crowding and - more to the point - to the juxtaposition with other works that, frankly, should have been edited out. Inclusiveness is a beautiful philosophy, and I think it works extremely well on a youth soccer team. But, when it comes to presenting carefully made and meticulously installed artwork, less is very often more.

If the juror had gone one more round in her process, and retained only the strongest 80 or 100 pieces, all of them would look stronger still. Instead, they are made to keep company with lesser art - not just one or two odd choices, but dozens of them - and this, again, leaves them diminished. Which is a shame, because there is a bunch of terrific art in this show.

Umatilla - Ken Ragsdale, Inkjet print

Among the highlights for me were new works by familiar names: Richard Garrison's four wittily bloodless Circular Color Schemes; another set of four works by Fern Apfel that blend color-field abstraction with simple realism; Paul Mauren's wall-hung aluminum and wood sculptures; two fine color portraits by photographer Peter Crabtree; and two "non-narrative silent videos" by Bil Jaeger.

Equally compelling were works by people new to me, including: Ken Vallario's highly polished neo-Surrealist paintings; two paper collage abstractions (and a painted one) by Bart Gulley; Terry James Conrad's intriguing small geometric constructions in paper and other materials; and two luminously dark color photographs by George Gruel.

These and many other works in the show will shine through the clutter and hold your attention as you make your way through this challenging but very worthwhile presentation. Note that admission to the Institute is free on Fridays and two-for-one on Saturdays through August. There will be Artists Gallery Talks at 6 p.m. on the next two 1st Fridays: Aug. 5, and Sept. 6.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Now that’s more like it! (Sculpture in the Streets)

Rectangles Horizontal Jointed, Big, Thin, Small 1990

A year ago I posted a review of Sculpture in the Streets, a program of the Downtown Albany BID, that was titled For Shame! because I was appalled at the BID’s decision to feature the work of Seward Johnson, an artist with popular appeal but very little else to offer.

It’s a pleasure to report that this year’s installation is a complete turnaround. Five strong pieces by the late, great George Rickey comprise the walking tour, which is in place through next March, augmented by previously existing installations of four other Rickey sculptures in Albany, Colonie, and Troy. The result is an extraordinary opportunity to experience the elements of time and space in the direct way that only the best art can offer, and sculpture in particular above all other media.

Column of Four Squares Excentric Gyratory III, Var II 1990

Rickey worked in nearby Chatham, and his local friends and followers are many – two of them, Matthew Bender and Charles Liddle are among the financial sponsors of this event. They and the other private and corporate sponsors, as well as the project’s planners at the BID, deserve applause for providing this gift to the public. They already know what I hope any newcomer to Rickey’s art who takes the time to follow the walk will soon discover: that his work is worthy of the greatest admiration, and that we are incredibly lucky to have so much of it to enjoy here right now.

Rickey's innovations included the application of sophisticated engineering to the construction of kinetic steel sculpture, by which he created large, heavy objects that easily dance and sway in the slightest wind, always striking unexpected and remarkable feats of balance while changing composition and orientation almost constantly.

Three Squares Gyratory I 1971

His persistent use of stainless steel, finished with the whorls of a handheld grinder on every surface, is another stroke of genius, because it gives his pieces both consistency and an innate subtlety that belies their heft and hardness. This is especially important for two reasons: that the sculptures are rigorously geometric and that they are placed outdoors (except for the ones at the airport and the Albany Institute of History & Art, which are indoors but still exposed to a great deal of natural light).

This swirly finish allows the sculptures to float visually by catching and reflecting light with a level of intensity that blends with the background. And, in the case of the backgrounds seen around the works in this particular installation, there is great variety, making for wonderful appearing-and-disappearing effects.

Here’s some advice for getting the optimal experience when you go to visit these nearly living entities:

1. Allow enough time: While it may be appealing to ride by in a car or pass quickly on foot during lunch or between errands, that won’t work. Even when there’s a good breeze, the sculptures may not do much at first – but, almost as if by magic, when you stop and watch, they will begin to perform.
2. Speaking of that breeze: If the day is still, forget it. The slightest wind will activate these remarkably engineered constructions, but no wind will mean no action.
3. Be sure to move around the sculptures: You’ve done it when confronted with a more traditional statue (say, in marble or bronze), and you must do it with these 360-degree objects as well if you want the full experience.
4. Pay attention to the setting: These pieces have been thoughtfully sited, providing a lot of neat relationships between their shapes and surfaces and those around them. While Rickey himself tended to place his work in natural settings, the city siting suits them particularly well. Kudos once again to the show’s planners for choosing a great location for each piece.
5. Bring a friend: It’s always more fun to share something lively, and this work is lively by design.

A downloadable tour map is available on the BID's site.

Rating: Must See

33rd Photo Regional at Albany Center Gallery

Sebastien Barre - Poolside

Wandering into the freshly hung 33rd Photo Regional at Albany Center Gallery is a little like stepping into the past. Very few of the 35 pictures in this year's show reveal anything of having been made in the post-digital age. In fact, outside those few pieces, this could almost be the 3rd Photo Regional rather than the 33rd.



Deb Baldwin - Bryan

If that sounds like a criticism, it's not. In fact, I take this circumstance as a positive sign that our fascination with the potential of digital photographic techniques may be waning, in favor of the tried-and-true traditional techniques that allow photographers to do what their medium has always done best: directly record and transmit visual experience.

Selected by a savvy pair of curators (Ian Berry, of the Tang Teaching Museum, and Melissa Stafford, recently of Carrie Haddad Photographs), this show maintains a level of quality typical of its 32 predecessors, which is to say that it has some soaring moments of revelation, along with some "I wonder why they chose that" moments, and the thematic inconsistency inherent in the juried-show format.

That inconsistency is exacerbated by the fact that all but six of the 29 photographers included are represented by just one picture each - and, even of the six people with two pictures each, just three present a related pair, while the other three present two clearly unrelated pictures. A broad range of styles is expected in a regional, but it is difficult to get much of an impression of the individual artists' intentions when nearly all the pictures shown are singletons.


Jeff Altman - Crime Scene

Fortunately, ACG's new creative director, Tony Iadicicco, has structured this rich stew with groupings and sly juxtapositions that make the most out of the hidden themes among its elements. So, for example, one corner plays a game with lines and patterns that link images of architecture, landscape, and the figure. Another spot connects back views and gestures in photos of vastly differing scale; and another sets two very different but equally penetrating portraits in relation to each other.

Anthony Salamone - Katie the Welder

Part of the fun of every juried show is seeing who gets the prizes. At this writing, the show has had an opening reception, but the awards reception is yet to come - which gives me the opportunity to try to predict who the judges have favored. Of course, they've already culled nearly 500 submission by 101 artists to the present group, which makes my job pretty easy.

Here are my picks: Mark McCarty's greatly enlarged cellphone snap, Sebastien Barre's wry industrial post-mortem, and Deb Baldwin's Surrealist throwback in black and white will all win prizes. Also worthy of note are two shots by Anthony Salamone, one of which echoes important color work by Philip Lorca DiCorcia; Deb Hall's thought-provoking digital manipulations of large-format views; and an improbable but almost believable conjunction of sea and sky by Linda Morell.

There will be an Artists' Reception at the gallery from 6 to 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 11th, with awards to be announced at 7. Get there early to make your picks - then we can all check to see how we did.

Rating: Recommended



Mark McCarty - MK # 0570



Keeping Time at Albany Airport Gallery

The curatorial process can be a wondrous thing to behold. Done right, it reveals new and significant relationships among works of art without drawing too much attention to itself - a neat trick in today's look-at-me world. A perfect example of the importance of the eye behind the arrangement is seen in Keeping Time, now on view at the Albany International Airport Gallery (and, unlike the airport's other artistic offerings, accessible at all hours to the non-flying public).

Organized by Art & Culture Program Director Sharon Bates and her longtime assistant Kathy Greenwood, Keeping Time combines the work of seven familiar regional artists under a unifying theme that comes as a bit of a surprise - that is, it's a revelation that so many of the best artists currently working around here have certain fundamental issues in common.

Issues such as nostalgia, the transformative power of memory, identity, and the sense of place all permeate this work. At the same time, the individual artists in the show stand clearly and solidly on their own - there is no style here to bring them together like a group of similar-looking painters or sculptors.

Still, as the show makes obvious, they belong together. Only two of the seven were new to me in this showing, and many of the works included have been shown in recent local exhibitions - still, this is a completely fresh experience because of the new context and combination.

The genesis of the show was an idea for an installation by Ken Ragsdale (who has done others in the airport's other spaces) which deftly exploits a small, roomlike remnant from the previous show in this space, transforming it so effectively that it didn't even occur to me that I had seen it there before.

Here, Ragsdale expands on his well-established trope of folded-paper machinery constructions, this time placing a half-size foamcore farm tractor inside a one-room schoolhouse, complete with little desk, chalk-marked slate walls, and framed Ragsdale works hanging on the walls. A glassed door and four double-hung windows provide ample opportunity to view the tableau, which is temptingly inaccessible. The exterior (shown at the top of this post) has a scalar projection of the tractor inside drawn on its wall, creating an Egyptian sarcophagus-like effect.

Most similar to Ragsdale among the other artists in the show is Matt LaFleur, who also has created a site-specific installation for Keeping Time, his first ever (shown above, at left). The connection of this faux-woodsy scene to the rest of LaFleur's work is readily apparent from the sketches and finished works also shown, many of which use the most pedestrian of art-making materials - construction paper, glue, and colored pencil.

His naivete seems real, yet so does the strength and sincerity of the work, which plays with the intersection of images from LaFleur's rural youth and his rural adulthood, sometimes making fun of it and honoring it in equal parts (his perfectly coined term for this style is "hick modernism").

That term could also be applied (lovingly!) to the eco-centric treatment Michael Millspaugh gives to his own take on a past/present/future point of view that features hunting and camping themes (to see a review of a Millspaugh solo show that ran in this space a year ago, click here). Here, Millspaugh offers a range of self-made implements, embroidered patches, and dry-as-a-bone line drawings, as well as an abundant array of little fireplace scenes (shown above at right) - two of them set inside tiny matchboxes.

Another Keeping Time artist who combines disparate images is Stevan Jennis, who cuts up old paint-by-number paintings into equal squares and then reconfigures them into complex mosaics (identified here as collages). Jennis also presents mid-sized sculptures of toys with rough, almost stony patinas - turning a Jack-in-the-Box figure or a dollhouse into an obtuse, almost malevolent object.

Old toys are an obsession of Randy Regier, whose false but very convincing '50s-style character DimeStar appears here in a variety of forms, from comic books to kids' wristwatches. Regier's jaundiced view of the corporate approach to little boys' imaginations is rich with associations for anyone old enough to remember that "simpler" time (example shown at left).

A lighter approach to old-fashioned products for kids is taken by the only woman in the show, Leslie Lew, whose sculpted oil reliefs and cast paper prints are colorful and - seemingly - uninflected by irony. They were for me the least interesting pieces in the exhibition, blandly playful and brightly celebratory (an example is shown at the bottom of this post).

Finally, Joel Griffith is a brilliant painter, three of whose five pieces in Keeping Time were recently seen in an Arts Center of the Capital Region show (reviewed here), and one of which caught my attention at last year's Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk Hudson Region at the Hyde Collection (reviewed here).

The one painting by Griffith that is new to me in this exhibition (shown above, at right) is actually the earliest of the group, but it reinforces the notion that the strength of Griffith's work is not dependent on the cold and the dark that dominates the other four pieces - this warm and sunny image is just as intriguing, if less obviously foreboding.

Keeping Time is open seven days a week through Sept. 5 for travelers and visitors alike. Short-term parking doesn't charge for the first half-hour, so if you're quick, you can get in and out for free.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Note: Another Bates-curated exhibition is set to open with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. on Friday, June 3, at the Esther Massry Gallery at The College of Saint Rose. Titled the Karene Faul Alumni Exhibition, it features eight Saint Rose-trained artists - Kathy Greenwood, who graduated there in 1992, among them.