New photo show at The National Bottle Museum

Photography 101 will be on display through May 28
in The Artists' Space Gallery at The National Bottle Museum

Just a quick announcement for fans of local photographers ... 

The indefatigable Fred Neudoerffer has organized a collection of many well-known shooters for an old-school display of straight photography in The Artists' Space Gallery at The National Bottle Museum in Ballston Spa that opens today.

I am among the 18 artists included, and am happy to be in their company in this lovely space (the above image, provided by Fred, shows three of my submissions just to the left of the framed poster).

There will be a reception for the artists from 5-7:30 pm on Friday, May 6. Come celebrate with us!

Less is More: 2017 Regional at AIHA

Richard Barlow Roadside Picnic II - chalk on blackboard paint on wall

The 2017 edition of the annual Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region (popularly known as the Regional) is on at the Albany Institute of History & Art and, as ever, it is a must-see for all local fans of contemporary art.

Victoria Palermo Reds - wood,
poured resin and colored plexiglas

This year's show was judged and installed by Jack Shear, a photographer, curator, collector of photography, and the president of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation. You may recall Shear's gift last year of over 500 photographs to the Tang Teaching Museum (reviewed here); now he has given the region a different sort of gift by providing an unusual, sharp perspective on the Regional, and by adding a couple of unique elements to the show that I found most welcome.

First, Shear mined the Institute's collection for works of art that had been purchased from past Regionals over many decades; these pieces (more than 20 of them) were then installed salon-style at the entrance to the exhibition, providing a refreshing reprise of those past purchase-prize winners. I will describe Shear's other innovation a bit later.

Niki Haynes To What End mixed media collage

So - how is the show? With just 87 works by 32 artists selected from 600 submitted by 268 artists, this Regional is unusually spare - and that's a good thing. All but a few of the artists have three pieces on view (the rest have two, except for two artists with a single, very large-scale work on view: Richard Barlow, whose 27-foot wall drawing is shown at the top of this post, and Tatana Kellner, who is represented by a 12-foot grid of 30 monoprints). This added depth allows the viewer to understand each artist's point of view much better than would be possible in a broader-based, more inclusive and, presumably, more cluttered curation.

Peter Crabtree PFOA Portrait: Loreen Hackett: Activist
archival inkjet print

Further, Shear has organized the exhibition into sections that group the artists loosely under themes (nature, figure, three-dimensional abstraction) that are like curated shows within the show. This also helps the viewer probe deeper into the meanings of the individual artists' work by putting it in context; though the Regional itself is a context, these sub-themes supercede the idea of a regional identity to touch on trends that artists around here (and everywhere) are currently exploring.

Within these themes, there is an additional subset of images set into a smaller gallery (with a warning outside for those with youngsters in tow) which are all photographs of people, some of them nude. Considering that Shear's collection at the Tang includes many such images, this makes sense. One might guess that photographers intentionally submitted work of this nature, or that more people who produce this sort of work submitted to the show. In any case, Shear did the expected by including these examples, some of which are in the slightly shocking realm, but the majority of which are nowhere near that turf (such as Peter Crabtree's wonderfully sensitive portraits, an example of which is shown at right above).

Dave Waite Guardian - archival inkjet print

As a lifelong follower of photographic art, I can say with confidence that, regardless of anyone's predilections, the photos included here are worthy; they also represent a great diversity of approaches, which helps show just how much this medium has done to liven up post-modern art. Among my favorites are three traditional landscape studies by Dave Waite (example shown at center above), Ray Felix's light-infused nude portrait of a heavily tattooed young man, Allen Bryan's masterful digital concoctions, and Laura Christensen's witty, mixed-media transformations of antique pictures.

T. Klacsmann Raptor and Automata
mixed media collage

I should note that not all of the photographs are in this one room - many are also included in a larger gallery with art of other media. Among those other media, sculpture is particularly well represented, as is drawing and other works on paper. Painting has a pointedly slight presence here compared to most Regionals - perhaps a commentary on what sort of approach Shear sees as being relevant in today's art scene. The top prize in the show went to a mixed-media collage (shown at right above), and a number of other collages also are included. Again, as a lifelong follower of collage art, I'm perfectly OK with this.

Jake Fallat 1997568-1
cast aluminum

The only two oil painters in the show are about as different as could be from each other - Jane Bloodgood-Abrams makes 19th-century-style cloud studies and Paul Sattler makes neo-expressionist extravaganzas (example shown at the bottom of this post). Again, this shows the juror's integrity, as he is not following a discernible style in his selections, but exercising thoughtful and tasteful decision-making about what to include.

As for Shear's other addition to the Regional, Back: A Re-Installation of 19th Century Sculpture, is a delightfully engaging intervention into one of the Institute's staple displays, and the first time that any Regional juror has directly participated in the show as far as I know.

The 2017 Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region runs through Sept. 3, and will feature three artist talks in the galleries at 6 p.m. on one Friday each month: July 7, Aug. 4, and Sept. 1. Admission to the Albany Institute of History & Art will be free on Sunday, July 2; admission is also free every Thursday from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Paul Sattler Letters to Cross (Reading the Letters from H. Matisse to H-E Cross)
oil on canvas

Paul Mauren at Albany Center Gallery

The local art mafia came out in force last Friday night for Paul Mauren's exhibition Where Things Go at Albany Center Gallery, and with good reason. Yes, many of the seeming hundreds of guests were this longtime College of Saint Rose professor's colleagues, counterparts, current and former students, friends and fans, but the show alone is an event worthy of major excitement.

Paul Mauren - Speak to Me 2016, assembled mixed materials

Mauren, a stalwart of the regional arts scene (and beyond) for several decades, has operated under the radar for the most part. Still, he has built up a presence through steady inclusion in important shows - going back to the 1979 Mohawk Hudson Regional, a 1981 solo at Emma Willard's Dietel Gallery, and the seminal Water Works exhibition, held in 1982 in an Albany public bath house that eventually met the wrecker's ball.

More recently, Mauren has been featured prominently in numerous Regionals, in the striking An Armory Show at Sage's Opalka Gallery, and in countless annual and biennial Saint Rose faculty shows. Almost as consistently, though, Mauren has shown at ACG.

A few of those highlights:

• Mauren was chosen for two Mohawk Hudson Regional Invitationals at ACG - the first in 1994, when Les Urbach still ran the show there, the last in 2005, with Sarah Martinez at the helm
• In 2007, Mauren was included in the first show at ACG's current space - titled Then and Now, it featured a who's who of local artists, from David Austin to Deborah Zlotsky
• And now this, his first solo exhibition in nearly 35 years, which fits the space like a glove

It is truly fitting that such an artist would provide bookends to the 10-year Columbia Street run of this beloved institution, and help send it on its way to its next space, just two blocks away, in the freshly renovated Arcade Building, where it is slated to reopen in January.

Where Things Go runs through Nov. 4 (and there will be an artist talk at the gallery on that last evening during 1st Friday). Full disclosure - it was my idea to invite Mauren to do this show, simply because I wanted to see more of his intriguing, wall-hung sculpture. And I am not disappointed. But don't take my word for it - just go and be dazzled.

Paul Mauren works on the installation of Where Things Go at Albany Center Gallery

Recommended: MHR Invitational at ACG

Four very diverse artists are in this year's Mohawk Hudson Regional Invitational at ACG 

One of the best shows each year at Albany Center Gallery is the annual invitational drawn from the Mohawk Hudson Regional. It's a cool idea we don't see often enough: Gallery representatives visit the big juried show and make notes on whose work they'd like to see more of, then ACG organizes an exhibition of those select picks.

This year's MHRI at ACG includes four very diverse artists in terms of medium, style - even age - and that's a good thing. As I am one of the gallery's board members and the chair of the exhibits committee, I was involved in the selection process - so this won't be a review. Instead, I will simply recommend the show and suggest you include it in your 1st Friday plans on May 6, when the artists' reception will be held from 5 pm to 8 pm.

The four included artists are Fern Apfel, Jess Ayotte, Roger Bisbing and Thomas Huber.  Apfel makes works on paper that build geometrically abstract designs from black-and-white words and painted colors. Ayotte is a young photographer working in traditional silver-based media. Bisbing has long standing locally as a maker of meticulously crafted dioramas. And Huber creates free-flowing visual diaries of mixed media.

Their outstanding bodies of work will hang intermingled in this installation; though each pursues a distinct path to image making, the gallery's director, Tony Iadicicco, envisions the show as an integrated whole. The 2016 Mohawk Hudson Regional Invitational opens Friday, May 6, and will run through June 12. Go and enjoy!

2014 Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region

Jeanette Fintz - Traveler's Reflection 3, acrylic on canvas

The annual Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region, hosted this year by the Albany Institute of History & Art, raises the usual set of questions while presenting the usual confounding mash-up of regional art.

Popularly known as the Regional, this show has been running for nearly 80 years, making it one of the longest-standing exhibitions of its kind in the U.S. It's always an annual high point for fans of the local art scene, and can be either a high point or a low point for participants, depending on their success in entering, personal taste, or overall degree of crankiness. This year's edition was mounted on a later schedule than the usual summer appearance and will be up through Jan. 19, affording a nice opportunity for the procrastinators among us to see it, even as 2015 arrives.

Stephen Niccolls - Nudges, oil on canvas

Typically (for the Institute) this Regional is overstuffed: It includes 142 works by 75 artists, which is about one-third larger than what I consider a healthy portion for one viewing. I'm pretty sure it's not the biggest Regional in memory (I can't say with certainty when that was or how many artists were included) but I think it drew a record number of entries - reported to be more than 800 by 278 artists - so the able juror, Stephen Westfall, can be forgiven for perhaps running out of the moral strength it requires to keep cutting when you've already eliminated a ton of good art.

Indeed, the show includes very few dogs, and it does present a great deal of truly outstanding work in a variety of forms, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, fiber arts, collage, drawing, sound and video, and mixed media. Westfall, however, is a painter (apparently of some renown), and his bias is so pronounced that we could arguably describe this Regional as a show of painting. According to the show's catalog (nicely produced and abundantly illustrated), Westfall also planned the layout of this Regional, in which we find solid thematic groupings and some worthwhile innovations (my favorite being the placement of four wonderful photographic nudes, one pair each by Mark McCarty and Dan McCormack, in the Institute's 19th century sculpture foyer, where these modern sprites get to cavort with those of a former time).

Susan Meyer - House of Windows, wood,
steel, acrylic, hardware, paint, flocking,
wheels, succulents, toy deer

My response to the now-common practice of curator as creator is one of discomfort for the artists whose work has been subjected to interpretation by a juror who is, in my opinion, imposing his own vision onto other people's work and using that work to express himself. Is that what the Regional's sponsors intend when they choose a juror? I hope not - rather, I would expect them to ask the juror to seek to understand the submitted work, to attempt to see it in a collective context, and then to choose a show that best expresses those discoveries. Put simply, there is too much work and too much Stephen Westfall in this Regional.

That said, it's a good show, and some of Westfall's installation ideas bring freshness to a format that runs the annual risk of being stale or stuffy. Here, he deploys Colleen Quinn's ALL SOULS, a collection of cartoonishly painted-over beach balls, into three of the museum's spaces, placing them high, low and in between. He also has placed a floor sculpture by Ginger Ertz that represents a babbling brook (crafted in colored pipe cleaners) among landscape pictures from the museum's 19th century collection in the entry hall to the exhibition; put a plaster piece by Linda Horn that looks like a giant prehistoric crawling bug high up on a wall in a narrow gallery; and set one painting by Stephen Niccolls entirely outside the exhibition, where it serves as an emblematic welcome to the exhibition. Emblematic of what? Of the painterly geometry that pervades the rest of the show, of course.

Jenny Kemp  - Mellow Yellow, gouache on paper

In all, there are 70 paintings included, and all but a few of the sculptures, fiber work, and most other media are decidedly painterly as well. I noticed that most of the sculptors in the show each had two pieces selected, but then they were not shown together; instead, each artist's works were systematically separated into different rooms, while the great majority of the painters' works, also largely selected by twos and threes, were not separated. There were two exceptions to this treatment of the sculptures: Joann Axford's three delicately decorated white porcelain vase forms (unique among the rest of the selected work in both medium and scale) are presented together in a glass case; and Susan Spencer Crowe's three-dimensional pieces remained together but, being wall-mounted, they come across more as painting than sculpture anyway.

Another factor that added to my discomfort with Westfall's method is that a large swath of the photographs selected were segregated in a lesser gallery, along with other work that seemed to be among the show's secondary choices. Pride of place in the exhibition's main gallery was given to three photographs by Jim Allen and two by Julie Pamkowski, and I agree with the juror that they are better than most of the ones in the other room - but then, why keep the others at all? If it weren't for a terrific little painting by Jenny Kemp; a finely seen color photograph by David Ricci (which I liked much better than another one of his that took a prize); a large mixed-media painting by the ever-wonderful Wendy Williams; and a few other choice pieces in that room, I'd say the juror should simply have eliminated the whole bunch, rather than not-so-subtly kicking them to the curb within the exhibition.

Richard Garrison - Circular Color Scheme: Walmart,
May 22-27, 2013, Pages 1-2 "Celebrate With Savings",
watercolor, gouache,and graphite on paper

As regular readers of this column know, I adore painterly abstraction, and I actually really liked a lot of the work in this show, including many pieces the juror singled out for awards. Most compelling were two potent panels in greens and blues by Jeanette Fintz (nicely deployed on opposite sides of a narrow space); Richard Garrison's methodical yet agitated gouache studies; Susan Meyer's two colorful architectural fantasies; and the aforementioned Niccolls painting, titled Oscillator, along with his smaller Nudges. Additionally, there were some terrific - and not painterly - sculptures, including Specimen by Mary Pat Wager and Tendere by Peter Dellert. The show has many other highlights and is, naturally, not to be missed.

Also, upstairs from the Regional is a fascinating historical exhibition of quilts and coverlets, titled Undercover: Revealing Design in Quilts, Coverlets, and Bed Hangings, on view through March 8, and well worth checking out.

Catching up with the Albany Institute

A view of the Small + Seductive installation

We’ve all been there – you’re aware of a show you know you want to see, and it has a long run, so you leave it till later because you know you have plenty of time to catch it before it closes … and then, inevitably, time goes by and, in the best of circumstances, you catch the show on its last day – or, more likely, miss it forever.

Pink Hat - Gayle Johnson, gouache on paper

That’s how, on Sunday, I caught the last day of a fine show of five photographers at the Albany Institute of History & Art, and then took the opportunity to peruse an ongoing exhibition called Small + Seductive, which continues through Sept. 28. Featuring about 50 works of art (a few of which are multiple-piece series) by 37 artists, Small + Seductive is the third in a recent series of shows from AIHA’s collection of contemporary art. The first of that trio included only photographs (full disclosure: two of those were mine) while the second was made up of large-scale work in more traditional fine art media.

From Here to Eternity - Wendy Ide Williams
ceramic sculpture

This latest exploration of the archive is, as the title suggests, made up of smaller works, all but a few of which are from the late 1980s on, and consists mainly of paintings, sculpture, and prints. Like the other two shows, Small + Seductive provides the viewer with an excellent overview of the Institute’s collecting proclivities and a good cross-section of many of the region’s most beloved and influential exhibiting artists. It is also very helpfully labeled with descriptive information and “According to the artist” statements from the living as well as some of the dearly departed.

Wall text explains that most of these works were acquired by the Institute via annual purchase prizes from the Mohawk-Hudson Regional, though others arrived by donation – and even commissions – from artists, collectors, and supporters of the museum’s mission. Still others were acquired during the transition out of the art field by the Schenectady Museum and Planetarium and the concurrent de-accession of its art collection.

Catskill Creek - Judy Alderfer Abbott
 oil on board

In addition to revealing the taste of Directors past and present, this selection shows the overwhelming influence in this region of the fine art program at the University at Albany. Though I didn’t take a head count, it’s clear the majority of artists represented here either taught or studied at the U (some have done both), and many of them continue to teach and show hereabouts, extending that legacy on and on.

While many of the artists have just one piece in the show (whether they have others in the collection is left unsaid), several are represented by multiple works. Among them is Gayle Johnson, a painter who died tragically young, but who left behind vibrant portraits in gouache, twelve of which hang here in a grid. Richard Garrison also shows a grid of colorful paintings on paper (16 of them), while an elegant vitrine displays six of a slipcased set of ten etchings by Thom O’Connor.

Untitled - Dennis Byng, cast lucite

Among the three-dimensional works are a busily and evocatively painted ceramic shrine by Wendy Williams (it looks more like a fountain to me), discreetly aligned with a powerful painted-concrete head by her husband, Allen Grindle. Larry Kagan, a prominent sculptor with a solo show set to end on Sept. 14 at The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, is represented by a tiny framed metal relief of a flag; and the great Dennis Byng has a brilliantly decadent-looking cast plastic cube on a pedestal across the room.

Painting dominates the show, fittingly enough for one of the Hudson River School’s best repositories, and landscape features in many of the paintings. Three excellent small views by Marjorie Portnow and a fascinatingly detailed image of a forested Catskill Creek by Judy Alderfer Abbott were gemlike discoveries for me. Other strong landscape paintings include a photographically distorted wide-angle by Tom Nelson and a Fauvist composition by Carol Caruso that depicts a favorite place, the Albany Rural Cemetery.

Albany Rural Cemetery
Carol Caruso, oil on canvas

A few other paintings run far afield from realistic rendering: A mesmerizing field of strips and dots by Peter Taylor; a lush, expressive interior by Richard Callner; a slightly nightmarish fantasy by Robert Cartmell. There are a few stabs at abstraction in addition to Taylor’s, and a couple of real challenges to the status quo in terms of materials, but most of the work here stays well within the bounds of traditional and modern art, as you would expect from one of the nation’s oldest museums.

Equally, from such a venue, you would expect the contemporary art collection to be of high quality – and it does not disappoint at all in that regard. So, catch it while you can – even if it’s on the last day (again, that would be Sept. 28). And get ready for the must-see show up next at AIHA: the 2014 Exhibition by Artists of the Mohawk-Hudson Region, set to open with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 26.

View of Shaker Creek - Richard Callner, watercolor and gouache on paper

The Black & White Show at ACG

Note: The current exhibition at Albany Center Gallery features work in black and white by eight artists and was organized by the Executive Director Tony Iadicicco and me. Below are some images from the show and an essay I wrote to accompany it. The gallery will NOT be open on Saturdays through the duration of this exhibition. It will be open M-F, 12-5.

ADD NOTE: There will be a second reception for The Black & White Show on Friday, Aug. 1, from 5-8 p.m. as part of Albany's monthly 1st Friday events. Enjoy! - David

 

Show invitation, featuring a detail from Willie Marlowe's installation of acrylic paintings

 

What do you think of first when you consider art in black and white? My thoughts range from line drawings, possibly like those elegant ones Matisse is famous for, to richly textured photographic silver prints, whether from the street, the land or the studio, to minimalist paintings on a grand scale, such as those by artists from the ‘60s.

Photographic silver print by Theresa Swidorski

When Tony Iadicicco and I began to put this show together, we had those thoughts and more – certain artists jumped to mind quickly; others were just a discovery away. We knew there should be a good range of media and styles in this show, but we wanted to let the art itself lead us to what the exhibition would ultimately comprise. In a twist of fate, Victoria Salzman, the printmaker whose dark, edgy etchings of human subjects were the catalyst for the show’s theme, no longer lives within our geographic radius, so she couldn’t be included – and, as it turns out, neither a printmaker nor a social-commentator took her place.

Instead, we have a powerful confluence of realism, abstraction, minimalism, expressionism and more, with a broad inclusion of media from fiber to flower to photograph. David McDonald, whose deeply worked, highly structured drawings grace these walls, also contributed a small selection of the scores of altered books he has created. Willie Marlowe, a painter known for the brightest of neon colors, brought us similar work in juicy black and white – but she also turned the show into a stunning example of international mail art.

A Sharpie drawing on painted door by John Hampshire

John Hampshire’s labyrinthine Sharpie drawings continue to expand on his quasi-apocalyptic visions of tornado-wracked landscapes, this time with large man-made structures included. Barbara Todd has provided bold-yet-soft minimalist quilts as well as delicate wall-mounted constructions of cut-out boards, while Evan Euripidou’s mixed-media installation also starts at the wall’s surface, only to leap full-blown into the gallery’s space as living art.

A large detail of Barbara Todd's wall installation

Like Hampshire, Scott Nelson Foster depicts starkly uninhabited built spaces, but he renders them in the subtlest of gray-scale tones with almost unbelievable watercolor technique. Theresa Swidorski’s darkroom-made silver prints take us into a deep, black forest penetrated by a transcendent sunlight, and Blacklight Lighthouse’s monochromatic videos dare to stare directly at the source of that light, while doing our blinking and shrieking for us.

In all, The Black & White Show does what Albany Center Gallery’s mission has dictated for more than 35 years – it brings out the best from a regional art scene that has very much to offer and shares it with an eager audience. Thank you, Ms. Salzman, for unknowingly giving us the inspiration. You are here in spirit.

One of the etchings by Victoria Salzman that inspired The Black & White Show

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.

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!

Graphic Design - Get the Message! at AIHA

Most of us have tried to figure out where you draw the line between fine art and commercial art. My own favorite answer to that slippery question is that it is entirely a matter of intent (not, as some would have it, a matter of quality).

This sentiment is mirrored by the opening quote of the wonderful exhibition Graphic Design - Get the Message! at the Albany Institute of History & Art (through June 12), which ponders that and more while making great use of the Institute's permanent collection and other local resources to present a broad swath of commercial design by talented artists over several centuries.

Organized into thematic sections (Foundations, Graphic Design and Commerce, Political and Social Messages, and The Creative Process), Get the Message! sprawls through four galleries and features seemingly countless original examples of printed matter in two and three dimensions, augmented by electronic, digital, and multi-media material - an appropriately dense barrage that captures so much of our overloaded everyday visual experience.

After an introductory room that touches on the range of themes with examples as intriguing and diverse as war propaganda posters and a powder-blue Tiffany box, the show delves into history with a large display of old-fashioned letterpress equipment and 19th-century broadsides that represent the birth of modern graphic style.

This room also holds a distracting installation of photographs and pulp bales illustrating the papermaking process as practiced today by key exhibition sponsor Mohawk Fine Papers. While it is a blessing to a struggling museum (is there any other kind these days?) to have such prominent corporate underwriting, I must say it's a shame to see it come at this sort of price.

The next, largest gallery puts out the really colorful stuff we readily think of as showcasing the classic elements of graphic design - illustration and typography - in the form of bright and clever posters from the past hundred or so years (examples shown at the top of this post, and above at left).

It could be argued that the 20th century, with its political causes, social unrest, and explosion of commercial advertising, was the golden age of graphic design, and this room shows why. Whether selling war bonds, popular entertainment, educational toys, or soap, the artists behind these designs knew how to get our attention and make a lasting impression.

I had the company of an old friend and longtime graphic designer on this visit, and it was a pleasure to watch how he viewed the work in this section - moving in close and often marveling at the fine-art techniques, such as charcoal drawing and oil painting, that were employed in the service of these pitches. He frequently commented with amazement at the elaborate lettering that these pre-computer artists routinely hand-painted - a nearly lost art today.

For me, it was the simplest designs that held up the best. One artist featured prominently throughout the exhibition is Woody Pirtle, an internationally-known designer active in the Hudson Valley, whose politically-charged posters use color, shape, type, and iconic images in effortless concert to illuminate, anger, or amuse (example shown above at right).

Pirtle is among several top creators - all with local connections - featured in the last section of the show (Creative Process). The others are illustrators Dahl Taylor and William Westwood; design firms Vicarious Visions and Spiral Design; and early 20th-century designers Will H. Low and Hajo Christoph. All are of the highest quality in the business and have found significant commercial success - who knew the Capital Region was such a hotbed of creative design?

The Creative Process section has the expected preparatory sketches and such, but it also shows elements of the commercial design world not typically seen outside its own confines - promotional pieces in expensively elaborate detail that design firms use to give clients an idea of what they can do. Here, Spiral Design is the mind-blower, and it's here that I think the line gets crossed back over into fine art - because, in this case, the client is the artist, and the intention is to show the artist's skill. It's some pretty amazing stuff, from all the participants, and an impressive capstone to the show's historical lead-in.

Hajo, as he was known, is also featured in a separate exhibition one floor up from Get the Message! that details his personal journey from Berlin to Castleton, where he forged a career designing witty and sophisticated packaging for many local manufacturers (example shown at the bottom of this post). There are abundant examples of Hajo's extraordinary work in both exhibitions, including delightful personal art in watercolor, oils, gouache, and other media.

By the way - here's the quote that starts the exhibition, from Paul Rand (world-famous designer of iconic logos for firms such as IBM, ABC and UPS):

Design is the method of putting form and content together.
Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition.
Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.

Food for thought, no?

Rating: Highly Recommended

Note: Throughout the run of Graphic Design - Get the Message!, there has been a series of related lectures and events. The next two are coming soon - at 6 p.m. on Friday, May 6 (in conjunction with First Friday), illustrators Dahl Taylor and William Westwood will present; and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, May 8, Ellen Lupton, the author of Thinking with Type and other design guides, will address the topic How to Do Things with Typography: Introduction to an Art.

Further on, at 2 p.m. on May 22, graphic designer, typographer and calligrapher Paul Shaw will speak and sign his latest book, Helvetica and the New York Subway System; and at 6 p.m. on June 3, Laura Shore will speak on the topic The Truth About Paper.

All the events are free.

2011 Mohawk Hudson Regional Invitational at Albany Center Gallery

The above card announces Albany Center Gallery's annual invitational drawn from participants in the latest Mohawk Hudson Regional; the show has a reception on Friday, March 4, from 6-8 p.m. as part of Albany's monthly 1st Friday festivities.

It is a beautiful show (I should know because I curated it), made up of organically derived imagery in thrilling color as well as subtle black-and-white by a trio of regional mid-career artists. Amy Cheng, Katie DeGroot, and Douglas Durning have not had their work showcased in Albany before, making this a unique opportunity, and the combination of the three is very strong. Of course, that's just my extremely biased opinion.

Come see for yourself: You are invited to join me and two of the artists at the 1st Friday reception. A second chance will arrive with a closing reception set for Friday, April 1, from 6-8 p.m. - the third artist will be present for that one, and you are also invited to join us then.

The World According to Willie

Willie Marlowe: A Survey 1977-2010 has opened at Sage College of Albany's Opalka Gallery; there will be an artist's reception there on 1st Friday, Feb. 4, from 5-9 p.m.

I've seen the exhibition, and it is exquisite. But, because I was commissioned to write an essay for the show's catalog (which also contains an essay by E. Tornai Thyssen), I won't be writing a review. Instead, below are a few key images from the show, along with the text of my essay. Naturally, I highly recommend you go see this wonderful work.

Hot Coals and Feather Moon 2009 mixed media on paper 13.5" x 21"

The World According to Willie

It’s been almost 30 years since I first met Willie Marlowe, but she never ceases to amaze me. Demurely Southern, with a deliciously acerbic undertone, Marlowe is quiet but frank, extremely reliable, and remarkably committed to her work. For the many years she taught at Sage, she was also strongly committed to the students – but there was never any doubt that painting came first, clearly manifested in a relentlessly constant studio practice, which in turn set a fine example for her devoted students to follow.

I see Marlowe as having had two sides all these years: The single-minded painter isolated in her studio, continuously bringing mountains of rich artwork to life; and the joyful, attentive friend, teacher, and collaborator who issued a steady stream of letters (and, after a certain date, e-mails) as well as mail-art pieces and curatorial projects, all bearing unparalleled enthusiasm for other artists’ activities. She is that increasingly rare person who always picks up the phone if you dial her number. Yes, she’s home in the studio painting feverishly and, of course, she has time to talk.

Painters do work in isolation – it’s a necessity – and, as with all good painters, Marlowe’s work is truly a world unto itself. With the majority of her pieces being small and jewel-like, suggestive but usually abstract, and created with non-traditional techniques, it would be easy to think that they represent a primarily inward-looking process. However, that would be a grave misapprehension. In fact, Marlowe’s work is deeply informed by the world around her, and particularly by her travels.

A brilliant colorist, Marlowe added black to her palette after stints as a visiting artist in Barbados in 1986 and the Yucatan Peninsula in 1993, where she experienced the sudden drops to nightfall typical of places near the equator. The vivifying effect of black on the other colors she employs recalls for me another favorite painter, Henri Matisse. Caribbean influence also appears in the lushly lit and exotically populated underwater gardens of many of her paintings made in that period and since. And a longtime theme of houses took on new flavor with the hurricane-threatened shacks of another series that came out of those island visits.

Adding to the Mayan-inspired ziggurats and labyrinths that have always fascinated Marlowe (and which show up in tantalizing concrete poetry pieces as well as recent digital paintings), trips to Ireland in 1997, 2001, and 2005 brought ancient stone monoliths into her daily vocabulary. They found good company there with Marlowe’s various references to cave paintings, calligraphy, architecture, and historic maps. And then there’s Venice, which she visited in 1984 and 1989 and then returned to in 2006, 2008, and 2010 for artist’s residencies.

As a source for Marlowe’s dazzlingly layered and transparent colors, Venice is almost too obvious. The sun glinting off the water, the fresh and weathered colors of the houses and palazzos, and the mesmerizing glass, born in fire, all fit Marlowe’s vision like a glove (one 2010 example, titled Glass Games, is shown above at right). Recent years have found her spending longer and longer stints in that magical island city, where incidental facts of life such as the absence of cars and the presence of cats resonate with the Willie Marlowe I have always known, and where she clearly comes alive in new ways.

The work inspired by her stays in Venice is perhaps most meaningfully captured in Marlowe’s use of portals. The city has countless covered passageways, doors, and windows that suggest these arched entries into and out of the paintings. While her work has always been given to structure, the more recent Venice paintings take on new aspects of architectural rigor, sometimes flattened into pre-Renaissance perspective, other times opened into multiple dimensions. Stage-like spaces are often suggested as well, wherein Marlowe’s biomorphic figures dance and swirl, a connecting element through most of her work, whether painted, constructed or collaged, whether brightly colored or in black and white, whether shiny, flat or textured. These gestural forms represent life, ideas, dreams, poetry, fabric and glass – everything that embodies the precious elements of Willie’s world.

Stepping into that world through any of the many entries she offers gives the viewer of a Marlowe painting or series a new experience, belying the deeply historic sources that inform it. Ultimately, it is this freshness, inexplicably available to the painter in her studio over decades of constant effort, that makes the work irresistible. Equally, the artist’s rigorous attention to detail, masterful technique, and commitment to a personal vision make it lasting – and important.

David Brickman, October 2010

Wingspan 2010 modular installation, acrylic on paper mounted on wood panels, 80" x 110"