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!

Four Years of Art Nights!

Art Night Schenectady celebrates four years of events today with an ambitious slate of activities, including a fashion show, an international exhibition, and a new collaboration with the city of Beirut, Lebanon. All I can say is WOW!

The poster reproduced above just shows what's at Proctors ... there are many more venues, shows, events, etc. to celebrate tonight. Congratulations to ANS founder and current organizer Mitch Messmore - and here's wishing for 40 more years of arts action in Schenectady.

Swan Song

Desiree Alvarez, The Contents of the Falconer’s Bag, 2011

The last exhibition at Union College's Mandeville Gallery to be mounted under longtime curator Rachel Seligman's watchful eye has just ended, as has Seligman's 13-year tenure there. She moves on to become an associate curator at the Tang Teaching Museum, and this last show, co-curated by Middlebury College photography instructor Sally Apfelbaum, has been dispersed.

But the show, Of Weeds and Wildness: Nature in Black & White, leaves traces worth contemplating (as well as a lovely printed catalog). Initially inspired by a small Louise Bourgeois etching titled Hairy Spider, the show brought together a completely unpredictable group of artists working over a range of many decades in diverse media and subject matter.

Quite unlike most curated exhibitions these days, and quite unlike the ideas the title put into my head, Of Weeds and Wildness was extremely subtle and anything but a facile look at nature. Viewing the show on its second-to-last day, I was perplexed by the inclusion of work that seemed not to fit the theme of the title, much of which didn't particularly seem to belong together. Perhaps the show was just a good excuse to present some favorite work in under-appreciated media (particularly printmaking) and sensitive shades of grey?

While this wouldn't have been a bad end in itself, the catalog essay explains that the show's intention was not to represent nature, but to "explore the mystery and beauty, romance and brutality of the human experience of the natural world." That makes the inclusion, for example, of Harold Edgerton's chilling high-speed photographs of a 1952 atomic bomb test, or of the mysterious abstract etchings of Kate Temple seem much more sensible.

These and other works in the show reach areas of artistic expression far broader than the title would imply. Other virtually abstract prints by James Siena and Lee Bontecou join Temple, while photographs in the social documentary mode by Robert Adams, Danny Lyon, and Margaret Moulton flesh out the human aspect of the discourse.

Drawings make their appearance as well, by two representatives of the Union art faculty (Charles Steckler, current, and Arnold Bittleman, long-deceased) who share a mesmerizing mark-making fascination expressed in very divergent scales. Bittleman conjures large, brooding cloudscapes, while Steckler's elaborate doodlings fill tiny pages with imagined naturalistic forms and textures (one is shown at left).

An animated film loop by Hedya Klein, also hand-drawn, has an affinity with Steckler's style and with a beautifully made etching/aquatint by Michelle Segre. Other fine examples of the old printmaking media on view included Kiki Smith's Fawn and Bird Skeleton (shown above at right), two sugarlifts by William Kentridge and a Robert Gober lithograph.

In a departure from traditional forms, Desiree Alvarez created a site-specific installation by hanging swaths of diaphanous fabric embellished with images drawn in ink and printed with wood blocks. Intriguingly titled The Contents of the Falconer's Bag, this piece brought an almost jarring freedom to the otherwise staid presentation of the show.

Overall, it was a show for quiet contemplation, and a fine note for Seligman to go out on. Fortunately, she won't be traveling far, and we can look forward to seeing her future efforts in Saratoga Springs.

Harold Edgerton, Atomic Bomb, 1952, gelatin silver print

Critical Stitch at Mandeville Gallery

The Pop and the political intermingle like two skeins of colored yarn in Critical Stitch, which opened in October and runs through Dec. 19 at Union College’s Mandeville Gallery. Curated by Lorraine Morales Cox, a Union professor of contemporary art and theory, the exhibition features fiber-based work by 12 artists from all over: Maine, Michigan, Newfoundland, Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island all have representatives, while California and New York City have a few each in the show.

Considering that it was organized by someone whose “primary areas of research include feminist and postcolonial theory, critical race studies, and transcultural identity,” Critical Stitch actually offers a pretty enjoyable experience, with a sense of humor running through much of the content-charged art. The fact that it includes four men among the knitters and embroiderers adds to the intrigue of exploring its many facets and undercurrents.

Morales Cox has presented quality work in every case, even if some of the ideas are a bit overwrought or unoriginal. The skill employed by the artists ranges from appropriately adequate to outright impressive. For example, Lauren DiCioccio’s meticulously embroidered renderings of consumer detritus, such as the ubiquitous plastic bag with a happy face on it, and layered newspaper clips (one is shown above at right) show the potential of colored thread as a medium that transcends traditional crafts.

Two other artists, Margarita Cabrera and Alicia Ross, also make significant use of thread itself as a medium, but in different ways. Cabrera sews Oldenburgish facsimiles of small appliances out of leatherette (one is shown at left), leaving lots of loose threads to represent the hand work of the manufacturing process she is channeling from her Mexican roots. Ross, using computerized cross-stitchery, represents female objects of desire transformed from their commercial sources in pornography into oddly appealing yet repellent images (one is shown at the top of this post).

Among the men are two whose thicker threads in hooked rugs and needlepoint pillows present ironically softened visions of cultural touchpoints – Richard Bassett’s throw pillows fetishize the Kennedy assassination, while Rob Conger enters the realm of kitsch with his acrylic wall hangings taken from Disney and other corporate source material.

I found Johanna Unzueta’s installation of soft felt to be the wittiest piece in the show (and, not surprisingly, the least political). Color-coded to match the Mandeville’s décor, her faked utility pipes could evoke issues of stealth and terrorism and subversion, but are also just a fun thing to come upon. Also darkly humorous is Dave Cole’s woven and stitched bulletproof Kevlar Onesie, a chilling suggestion if there ever was one (shown above at right).

Some of the work in the show pushes a little further into traditional gender roles, such as Mark Newport’s goofy, oversized, knitted superhero outfits and Laurel Roth’s obscenity-laden PMS Quilt, featuring crocheted-together panty liners. More touching and elegant is Roth’s animal-based work, such as her Carolina Parakeet (actually a carved pigeon wearing the colors of the extinct bird, it is represented below at right).

Other work does little to inspire or break new ground. Barb Hunt has re-created a variety of land mines in yarn – something done far more effectively years ago by Conrad Atkinson using glass and porcelain; Vadis Turner bores by stitching the names of such role models as Britney Spears and Paris Hilton onto an antique quilt; and Tamara Kostianovsky’s mute presentation of fabric and fiberfill sides of beef (shown at the bottom of this post) seems to go nowhere, despite elaborate textual efforts to infer otherwise in the catalog accompanying the show.

Overall, Critical Stitch is a nicely produced, thoughtfully curated show of worthwhile but somewhat disappointingly clever conceptual art. I think it shows just how much academic theory has affected the contemporary artistic landscape. Even when dealing with extremely emotionally charged subject matter, these artists seem to have traded the raw feelings, passion, and intensity of a bygone age for muted, funded, and packaged products that aim mainly to please the elite who own galleries, confer MFAs, and write for art magazines. It would be self-flattery to believe in the power of such work to cause any real change, despite its political and cultural messages.

Rating: Recommended

20 Printmakers at Union College Arts Atrium

It's a neat trick for a curator: Ask some artists to participate in a show, and then have each one invite another artist to join them. You get freshness, diversity, surprises - and don't have to take much heat if it doesn't really work as a whole.

Union College printmaking professor Sandy Wimer has applied this technique to craft a really nice printmaking invitational featuring 10 regional artists and the 10 artists from beyond the region they invited. Here and There: Two Degrees of Separation presents the participants in pairs, with a short statement from each inviter explaining their choice of invitee. There is also a useful introductory essay by curator/printmaker Debora Wood of Northwestern University, which neatly sums up the major techniques and overriding philosophies of the printmaking media for those not well-versed in them (which, honestly, means most of us).

The Burns Arts Atrium at Union College is a clean, well-lit exhibition space, slightly off the beaten track but not hard to find on the campus (behind or around the corner from the Yulman Theater), and its long, horizontal space works well as a frame for this sprawling display of 40 pieces of art.

The local artists are mostly familiar names, and their counterparts are mostly new ones for local viewers; the range of media thay employ is wide, including lithography, woodcut, several forms of etching, monoprints and, of course, digital, augmented in some cases by watercolor or collage. There is no uniformity of style or subject matter, not even between most of the pairs, though the work falls largely within the parameter of being smallish in scale.

It is important to point out that all these prints were made by the artists, who identify as printmakers (whereas many artists who make prints work primarily in other media and use printmaking as a tool for creating multiples, often in ateliers that specialize in helping them to do that). As a survey of what printmakers these days are doing, it's an excellent representation, and the quality of the work is consistently high.

One can approach the show as a sort of smorgasbord, and just enjoy the lovely techniques, strong imagery, and challenging ideas - or you can think about the relationships between the artists who are paired up (not to mention those among the original 10, many of whom have close ties within the local community). I found both processes worth exploring.

Some highlights:

• 
Milt Connors invited Judith Hugentobler, because both look at mass-media images and seek to transform them. These works are perhaps the least traditional in the show - Connors uses black-and-white photography (created or found?) while Hugentobler makes color digital collages based on old Hollywood head shots.
• Sandy Wimer invited Bill Hosterman, whose exquisitely crafted etchings provide a microcosmic counterpoint to Wimer's own macrocosmic lithographic views. Both employ great subtlety in their applications of traditional media.
Allen Grindle invited Jason Stewart, whose flippant irreverence nicely balances Grindle's esoteric grimness.
• Thom O'Connor invited Cècile Boucher, a French Canadian whose digital montages display Gallic humor blended with Canadian defensiveness. O'Connor's spectrally transformed, photo-based self portraits make you realize that Boucher's work is also a kind of self-portrait, but more cultural than personal.
• Sunghee Park invited Manuel Guerra, contrasting the ways in which each has brought elements of their ancestral culture into making contemporary American images.
• Harold Lohner invited Jenny Robinson, a San Francisco printmaker, whose work relates to Lohner's indirectly, by way of their shared level of excellence.

I was piqued to find that in every pair but one the inviter chose a person of the opposite sex. I don't know if this is common in the art world as a whole, or more so among printmakers, but I hope it's a sign that we've reached a point of equality between men and women in a realm where that was quite markedly not the case for centuries.

Key to images (from top to bottom):

Sunghee Park Pear Tree 2 lithograph, chine collè, colored pencil

Marion Preston Untitled watercolor, woodcut

Cècile Boucher Don't Look Back digital

Jenny Robinson Gasworks spitbite, drypoint

Bill Hosterman Reach etching

Allen Grindle Receptor etching, watercolor

Fall exhibition preview

The season is upon us and we will never, ever catch up with it. But it’s worth trying, no? Here, in chronological order based on their opening dates, are some of the exhibitions that are happening in the region this fall that are on my radar. I will try (and fail) to see all of them, but I promise to review most of them as the weeks and months roll by. Meanwhile, you may want to mark these on your calendars.

Through the Eyes of Others: African Americans and Identity in American Art, which opened today (Sept. 8) and runs through Jan. 6 at the New York State Museum, explores the complicated issues surrounding race in American culture as seen in paintings and sculptures from the 19th and 20th centuries. Many of the art works and artifacts (including Black Child, the oil on canvas by Phillip Thomas Cole Tilyard shown above) were amassed by 19th-century collector Stephen C. Clark and the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Additional selections were culled from various public and private collections, including the New York State Museum. I expect it to be one of the top shows of the year.

Also already open, but with a reception on Saturday (Sept. 12) from 5 to 8 is Alchemie, a new show by the painter Laura Colomb. Recently named “Best Emerging Regional Curator” by Metroland for her work at the Saratoga Arts Center Gallery, Colomb’s newest body of work contains large diptychs with elements of Adirondack landscape and nature (image at right). This also marks the last solo show at UpstArt, which will close after a final group show in October, and the departure of Colomb from the area.

Opening Sunday (Sept. 13) is The Play of Light, a solo show at the First Unitarian Society by Oakroom Artist Gary Shankman. A fine painter in the Impressionist style, Shankman will show new work that includes studies of toys verging on the creepy. Reception is the following Sunday (Sept. 20) from 12:30 to 3.

The University (at Albany) Art Museum kicks of its season with Uncharted, a show with thematic ties to the exploration of the Hudson River that includes the work of 10 artists. Co-curated by director Janet Riker and staff curator Corinna Schaming Ripps, it opens with a reception from 5 to 7 on Tuesday, Sept. 15, and promises to be fascinating in a Po-Mo way.

Hudson Valley Community College's Teaching Gallery will host Is It Just Me?, which surveys the last 10 years of New York artist Jennifer Dalton's sculptures and installations that were based on exhaustive “excavations” of herself and her art world surroundings. The show opens with a reception on Thursday, Sept. 17, from 4 to 6, preceded by an artist talk at 3 in the Bulmer auditorium.

Off the beaten track, but truly intriguing, will be a reception and show from 4-7 on Saturday, Sept. 26 at the newly minted Malden Bridge Community Center. Titled Levity and Not So Much, the show features four women artists who will present drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations. Some of you might already know the work of their ringleader, Monica Miller. I do, and it is always terrific - as are her parties. Don't miss it. (The map at right will help you find the site - you can click on it for a bigger, printable version.)

Back to academia, on Sept. 27 a large collection of renowned photography by Texan Keith Carter will be on view at The College of Saint Rose's Massry Gallery. It's a beautiful, new space and Carter's sensual, unassuming work is sure to be a hit with area viewers.

Looking further ahead, another solo photography show will begin on Nov. 1 at Sage College of Albany's Opalka Gallery. Dona Ann McAdams' exhibition is titled Some Women - it features selected works by this street photographer-documentarian from 1974-2009. Expect classic black-and-white treatment of avant garde subject matter.

Still further ahead, Canajoharie's Arkell Museum plans to open Walter Wicks: Games, Gizmos and Toys in the Attic on Nov.15. The traveling exhibition showcases enlarged photographs and models by the children's book illustrator famous for the I Spy and Can You See What I See? series.

Other shows of interest include gallery exhibitions in Hudson through Oct. 11 at Carrie Haddad Gallery (Great Pretenders: An Exhibit of Art Fakery - image above right), Carrie Haddad Photographs (Melinda McDaniel, Joseph Putrock and Arnold Kastenbaum), BCB Art (Arlene Becker, Cynthia Coulter and Carla Shapiro), and the always superb John Davis Gallery (Fran Shalom paintings, plus Douglas Culhane, Erin Walrath, Grace Bakst Wapner, Jeremy Hoffeld and Barry Bartlett).

Arsenault and Dirolf at Oakroom Artists Gallery

With so many high-profile galleries and museums now gracing our region, it can be easy to overlook the smaller, more community-based art entities that have served artists and audiences when things maybe weren't so good. Among the most venerable of such institutions is the Schenectady-based Oakroom Artists http://www.oakroomartists.com/, which has existed for 52 years as a membership organization mounting professional exhibitions, and is currently sited at the First Unitarian Society's landmark "Whisperdome" building on Wendell Avenue.

Oakroom membership is limited to 24 carefully chosen painters, printmakers, sculptors, and fiber artists, each of whom get a showcase exhibition every two years in the group's ample, well-lit space. Because the gallery is quite large, these shows happen in pairs; the current duo of David Arsenault and George Dirolf are showing together for the fourth time, so it really can be considered a two-person show rather than two solos.

Arsenault, whose work has been compared to that of Edward Hopper (with good reason), has mounted a selection of 15 oils on canvas that reflect the range of his style, which is lushly lit, colorful, and usually features architecture involved with landscape; people appear, but almost just as accents rather than as the subject of the picture.

A couple of new additions in monochromatic gray are much smaller than his usual scale (one is a Pop-inspired still life) and add an element of the Surreal (think Magritte), which may be a promising new direction for this highly skilled painter. Arsenault markets his work under the title the art of solitude, but a recent remarriage has brought his imagery a tiny bit further into a social place, as reflected in the piece that for me is the show's standout, Second Story (shown at left).

Dirolf's exhibition consists of about half oil paintings on board and half wood engravings, totaling 30 pieces. All but one of the works are quite intimate in scale, but they still pack a punch. The oils, all of them landscapes painted en plein air, mostly represent dense woodland or streamside trees, playing fast with layers of space and foliage and pushing the eye around the surface and back and forth with darks and lights.

Dirolf is a high school art teacher, and he certainly has his skills honed, but I wish he would take some of these ideas to a more developed state - they are beautiful, but sketchy.

That brings us to the wood engravings, which are truly masterful - illustrations, yes, but full of life and feeling (one appears at right). These were created while on sabbatical and inspired by Shaker subjects that Dirolf has been researching; they don't illustrate any particular text, instead forming a sort of quiet story of their own.

Doubtless you've heard about the Rockwell Kent show currently at the New York State Museum (if you haven't seen it, go). You can get a double shot by seeing the 20th-century master engraver there, then stopping by to see a worthy 21st-century successor at the Oakroom. Dirolf is that good.