Keith Haring at Fenimore Art Museum

Installation view of Keith Haring: Radiant Vision at the Fenimore Art Museum

photo provided

Keith Haring was born in 1958 (one month before me) and became a defining artist of his generation before he died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of 31. Keith Haring: Radiant Vision, on view at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown through Sept. 6 Oct. 11, tells the story of how that remarkable career happened, and explores what it meant. The exhibition uses a clever graphic timeline, wall text, and ample quotes from the artist to recount Haring's history, and features a broad and deep sampling of the artist's work (including more than 100 works from a private collection, and a very impressive gigantic etching from the Fenimore's collection).

A news release about the show states that Haring "was arguably the most accomplished and prominent American artist of the 1980s," a claim I can neither fully agree with nor effectively refute. As an exact contemporary of Haring's, I can only say that he never held a lot of interest for me, partly because of the very commercial nature of his work, and partly because, though incredibly successful, he didn't have the chance to reach his full potential as an artist.

Radiant Vision offers an excellent opportunity to see for yourself what you think about a young man whose contributions included helping to bring graffiti art and hip hop into the mainstream, extending the art-for-all populism of his good friend Andy Warhol, and combining art with activism, perhaps more successfully than anyone else, before or since. The latter two achievements are, to me, the more valuable, but all of it is astonishingly impressive for a person whose career lasted just 10 years.

Keith Haring is seen at an early exhibition
of his work at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York

photo by Allen Tannenbaum 1982

Haring was essentially a graphic designer whose pictures relied on super-simplified line drawings of iconic symbols to communicate primal messages, just as corporate logo designers strive to do. And he was incredibly good at it. He used pure primary and secondary colors, vivid unmixed paints and inks, big shapes, and empty backgrounds, along with words and symbols, to make exuberant, bold statements about life as he saw it.

As seen in this exhibition, Haring invented his own visual vocabulary - a crawling baby, angular barking dogs, leaping stick figures, etc. - and rode it to vast global dissemination. He also used these skills in eminently worthy campaigns against AIDS, apartheid, and drug abuse, work that is well documented here, and which shows how effective simple graphic art and youthful sincerity can be. 

However, there are a few outliers scattered here and there throughout the exhibition that hint at a much more subtle artist who may have been trying to emerge from behind the public Keith Haring. That artist worked looser, with less clearly defined boundaries, used thinner lines and more shading, and employed a less bright palette to evoke deeper meanings and messier emotions. Some of those works reminded me of Miro' and Picasso and, as I walked around the exhibition, I found that I liked that version of Keith Haring a lot better than the one we all already knew.

One of the best aspects of Radiant Vision is the way it demonstrates Haring's humility and humanity, through quotes on the wall, in which he repeatedly explains how much he wants art to be accessible to all, and through a charming TV show interview in which he asserts an almost selfless modesty, alongside a crystal clear vision. These were the things in the show that did the most to convince me of Haring's significance. Though it goes without saying, it's a terrible shame that he died so young. Despite his own almost superhuman optimism, I simply couldn't shake the sadness.

Checkerboard, polychrome assemblage 2020
by Laurene Krasny Brown

Also currently on view at the Fenimore are a pair of shows that opened a couple of weeks ago and will remain there through Dec 31. Toying with the World: Works by Laurene Krasny Brown and 

Believe In Yourself: What We Learned From Arthur, which features the work of illustrator Marc Brown, stand alone in separate galleries but are closely linked, in that the two artists are a married couple.

Marc Brown is known to anybody with kids through the Arthur books and TV series, and the exhibition does a fine job of sharing the process involved in creating those products. Brown is an absolutely first-rate illustrator and, like any successful commercial artist, he clearly works his tail off. It was great fun to see the thumbnail sketches and story boards that lead to a finished book, but even better to see the exquisitely detailed paintings that are so easily taken for granted once they're on the printed page.

Laurene Krasny Brown is a much more interior artist, working with modest materials to pursue an almost mystical personal vision built around the concept of games. Where I was expecting stuff more childlike, instead I found a persistent exploration of geometric and architectural themes, characterized by a soft palette of early-American colors in paper and gouache. Brown's playfulness was apparent, but tempered by the same seriousness that I've observed in certain active toddlers.

Both shows are well worth spending some time with. By the way, admission to the Fenimore is free for those 19 and under for the duration of these exhibitions - so feel free to bring the kids.

A painting by Marc Brown from Wild About Books

Three must-see shows in Albany

Installation shot of Sharon Bates's show Exhibit B at Opalka Gallery

Photo: Gary Gold

While group shows typically dominate the local landscape, especially at the highest-profile venues, we are currently blessed with three outstanding solo exhibitions that all recently opened in Albany, each by a seasoned veteran of the scene, and each representing a different major medium: Sculpture, photography, and painting.

Sharon Bates, founding former director of the brilliantly established Albany International Airport Gallery, is a master of color and combination. Her sculptures (along with some prints, drawings, and paintings) on view at Sage College of Albany’s Opalka Gallery occupy the ample space with wit and whimsy, but also with mystery and musing. The collection assembled there is deep and wide enough to get us inside Bates’s thought processes – which is a funky place to be. The show, titled Exhibit B, ends October 13.

Mark McCarty, a staple of local and national advertising photography for decades, has also shown personal pictures from time to time since the late 1970s, always impressing with his pitch-perfect technique and content, whether employing the highest form of available technology (such as Cibachrome prints made from 8x10 transparencies) or the lowest (very early iPhone pictures). Dubbed Cara Mia, McCarty’s current show at Albany CenterGallery is an extended portrait of his wife, featuring about 10 years’ worth of images in large-format black and white or gritty, grungy iPhone color. It runs through October 13.

Lori Lawrence, a longtime exhibitor of prints, drawings, and paintings until a recent fallow period, has re-emerged with a strong pop-up exhibit at 3Fish Coffee in Albany, in a collaboration with Albany Center Gallery, which hosted a solo show for Lawrence back in the ’80s, and appropriately provides this opportunity to her now.

Lawrence picks up where she left off, presenting about 20 vividly-hued paintings and mixed media works (most notably, several incorporate fabulous stitchery). The works reflect Lawrence's fascination with the natural world in a style both varied and all her own. The show continues through mid-December.

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

Folk Modern at Albany International Airport Gallery

Installation of found-object assemblages by Jack Metzger, 2006-2015
all photos with this post are courtesy of Arthur Evans

The creative process can be deceptively simple, but I find exposure to it is almost always uplifting. There's a delight in seeing how a person, whatever their flaws, can draw from within themselves the strength, imagination, and skill to produce something new and wonderful to behold.

Giselle Potter, Bark 2014 gouache on paper

Folk Modern, the current exhibition at Albany International Airport Gallery (on view through May 8), explores how eight regional makers (perhaps a better word in this case than "artists") have delved into that creative impulse and, as such, is a celebration of it. Emblematic of the special qualities of this process is the work of Jack Metzger (pictured at the top of this post), a shop owner who seems to just really like to collect odd, old stuff and mess around with it. His installation in the show reveals a discerning eye, a sense of wit, and a reverence for the integrity of a good, mysterious object. It's also great fun.

John McQueen, Teeter 2012 (left) and Sitting Pretty 2011 (right)
media include metal, wood, cardboard, wax string, willow

The mounted text that introduces the show makes the point that "the wall between folk and fine art has been crumbling for some time, and inhabitants of both sides have been finding much common ground." Indeed, one would honestly have to admit that, without peeking first at a resume, there's no way to tell which of these people is on which side of that fading divide.

Not unexpectedly, a good range of media are represented here - painting, collage, sculpture, installation, and illustration - and there's enough work by each participant to get a sense of who they are individually, though the show works well, too, as a whole.

Steve Rein, installation of paintings dated 2013-2015, lettering enamel on wood

Common ground links one artist to the next. Like Metzger, Steve Rein incorporates found material into his work, starting with scavenged anonymous snapshots and reinterpreting them in enamel on found bits of wood. Formerly a sign painter by trade, Rein seems to exemplify the "outsider" artist who uses non-traditional materials that come easily to hand (but, in fact, he has an art-school pedigree). He also seems almost too productive, as though compelled by external forces - his installation in the show includes more than 40 individual pieces, overwhelming the viewer.

Anima Katz, Bottle of Negrita Rum 2014, oil on canvas board

I found the work of neo-primitive painter Anima Katz easier to concentrate on. Her intricately textured works are the result of a distinct personal drive (begun when she was 52 years old) to emulate the great artists she admires. In this exhibition, she presents heartfelt homages to many of them in the form of portraits of the artists amid carefully copied miniatures of some of their best-known works. The result is a curiously original form of imitation that transcends mere reproduction.

Nancy Natale, Look at America 2011, found and invented elements
with encaustic and tacks on birch panel

Nancy Natale is just about at the opposite end of the spectrum from Katz - from a distance, her paintings look like art-smart abstractions of stripe, color, and shape. But, when you get closer you see that they are constructed of many inch-wide rectangles of found material, nailed in place and slathered with colorful encaustic. Natale's source materials include the banal - food packaging - and the more cerebral - book spines - but it is all part of a rich blend that resembles a pieced quilt more than an intellectual studio exercise.

Matt LaFleur, Gift World 2015, site-specific installation

Susanna Starr's work also reveals a relationship with traditional textiles, in this case by transforming patterned doilies into large, wall-hung slabs of wood veneer. Her painstaking cutting re-creates the intricacies of lace in an unexpected material that is nevertheless still aesthetically appealing and safely domesticated (see image at the bottom of this post). The other artists included in the show are Matt LaFleur, John McQueen, and Giselle Potter.

Note: Albany International Airport Gallery is open to the public - not behind security - from 7 am to 11 pm daily. Parking in the short-term lot is free for the first half-hour - if needed, the staff of the airport's DepARTure shop will stamp your parking ticket to allow a longer visit free of charge.

Susanna Starr, Dresser Doily 2005, hand-cut mahogany wood veneer

Feibes and Schmitt collection going to Hyde

By now many of you know that Werner Feibes has donated about a third of the extraordinary modern and contemporary art collection he amassed with his partner Jim Schmitt to The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, as the news has been splashed all over local media (such as here by Paul Grondahl in the Times Union). The rest of the collection is promised to the Hyde as well, and Director Erin Coe rightly declares it "a transformational gift."

I'm excited for the Hyde, proud of my friend Werner, and sad for the recent loss of Jim ... but not surprised by this bequest, as I predicted it in a 2003 Metroland review, which I wrote when the Hyde mounted a superb exhibition called Form(ation) that was drawn from the Feibes and Schmitt collection. The news also brings to mind a story:

It was my good fortune sometime around 1985 to accompany Werner Feibes on a buying trip to a New York City gallery. At the time, I was a young gallery owner myself (in Albany), struggling to find customers for works by regional artists in the $300-to-$500 range. With Werner, I was exposed to quite another art world.

I don't recall the name of the gallery, but it was on the upper East Side of Manhattan and very elegant. Werner was there to see a Jean Arp relief constructed of painted wood, about 16 by 20 inches as I recall, in black and white (of course). The gallery presented it on a velvet-draped easel in a private room, where we murmured our approval and greedily eyed this vintage gem. The asking price was $15,000. Of course, Werner negotiated a discount, then coolly wrote a check for $13,500 - and, in a flash, we were on our way back up I-87 in Werner and Jim's boxy Volvo wagon (the Arp would be shipped).

I was totally speechless (think about that, you who know me personally!). I had just seen how art dealers really operated, and how sharp collectors did, too. The money that changed hands so easily was almost equal to my entire annual income (and I worked a lot of hours to earn it), but I didn't doubt that the Arp was well worth it. Neither do I doubt that it is now worth at least 15 times as much. It was a beautiful work of art and I hope to see it again some day at the Hyde.

Werner's generosity in inviting me on that trip was genuine, but this donation is beyond generous. The collection has been appraised for several million dollars; yet Werner's comment to  Grondahl was "What the hell would I do with all that money?" Good point - the true collector thinks about value in a different way than most of us. In the meantime, Werner still gets to live with the rest of the artwork, then it all goes to the Hyde upon his death. I wish him a very long life.

Adirondack Artists’ Guild's 17th Annual Juried Art Competition

BEST IN SHOW: Elaine Vollherbst - Highway 28N Long Lake

Last weekend I had the privilege of driving up to Saranac Lake to judge the Adirondack Artists’ Guild’s 17^th Annual Juried Art Competition. When I arrived, the Guild’s gallery - a pleasant, functional storefront on Main Street - was crammed with 185 entries in all media. My job was to trim these submissions to about 75 for the show, and to choose prizes to be awarded at the show’s opening reception: Best in Show (which carries with it the opportunity to have a solo exhibition at the gallery in November); 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd prizes; and five Honorable Mentions. Needless to say, it was a daunting task.

A view of the AAG gallery

Here’s a first-person account:

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the quantity (and overall quality) of the entries, I first sought to get my bearings. My hosts were three members of the Guild, a cooperative business whose 15 or so joint owners share the effort, expense, and rewards of such an enterprise, and they were graciously helpful throughout the process. They remained quietly alert as I worked my way around the room two or three times, occasionally answering questions I had as to certain relevant details. At this point, I had not yet begun to cut.

FIRST PRIZE: Shawn Halpern - Blue Cedar Vessel

The entrants were limited to three pieces each (maximum), and in many cases it was easy to tell which two or three belonged to the same artist – but not always. It also wasn’t always easy to tell the medium (and, I am embarrassed to admit, one pair of photographs had me fooled to the very end, when I was told they were not, in fact, amazingly detailed paintings). So my helpers provided clarification where needed.

The show drew a great variety of media, including most craft media (such as clay, glass, fiber and wood), jewelry, sculpture, mixed-media constructions, and two-dimensional paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs. I decided I must aim to maintain the diversity of the submissions in my final selections, as this was clearly the spirit of the show, and I delighted in keeping an open mind as to the intention of the artists.

SECOND PRIZE: Susan Hoffer - Connecting to the Protest

While I made judgments based on my own ideas about quality in art (including technical skill) and allowed my personal biases (or taste, if you will) to influence some decisions, I also tried to be receptive to the various styles and concepts that would motivate the artists. Slowly, I began to clarify which work was surely in and some that was surely out. Post-It notes helped streamline this process, and the helpers began to carry the work that I eliminated out of the room.

HM: Richard Nowicki - Lake Placid Outlet

I’m comfortable with all art media and have curated or written about all media for many years, so that was not an issue for me. However, one issue that did arise is that the Adirondacks region is very different from a city (even a small city like Albany, where I live), so I was confronted with a lot of unfamiliar rural and wilderness subject matter, including a good number of paintings, photos, and other media that depicted wildlife. To me this is a subgenre of art with its own set of rules – rules I may not be privy to – but I tried to give it the best consideration I could. After about an hour, I had picked about 40 things I knew I wanted to stay, and had cut an equal amount, leaving maybe 100 others in limbo.

HM: Lynn Taylor - Lake Lilies

Many artists entering a show like this take up certain strategies. For example, some may try to second-guess the juror and submit work that is calculated to appeal to that juror’s taste. Others will try a variety of styles or subjects to increase the chance of hitting something that the juror likes. But these attempts to outwit the juror are tactical errors, because they often fail to represent the artist’s best work or communicate the artist’s personal vision.

HM: Anastasia Osolin - Look

When I judge a show (or write criticism), I am looking for an individual style and a commitment to a personal vision that clearly communicates who the artist is and what they are passionate about. I seek to understand the artist – in his or her own terms – and then decide how successful that effort is. At this point, it became necessary to move things around, so I could see each artist’s work grouped together (the original hanging was totally random and many artists’ pieces were separated). Now the show was beginning to take on a shape, and I could more easily include and exclude more pieces.

HM: Steve Auger - Winter barn

I was trying to find the innate strengths in the work now, more than I tried to decide what I “liked best.” There was a simple but elegant clay bowl; a starkly illustrated woodland scene of an owl with its raccoon prey; a couple of quirky cartoonish drawings in glittery frames; and lots more. Many photographs were submitted - not because I am known as a photographer - but (I was told) because there are a lot of photos submitted every year. So I chose to include many good photographs of different kinds. There wasn’t a lot of non-representational work submitted, but the best of that I opted to include (paintings and fiber art, primarily). And there were many very well executed landscape paintings, including a couple of nearly abstract ones that reminded me of John Sloan; I chose those as well.

HM: Cris Winters - Arc of the Day

Deciding the prizes was a tough challenge that gave me serious doubts, but which ended up being very satisfying. The final cuts always hurt, and some excluded work perhaps deserved to be included, but I feel very comfortable that the best work submitted to this competition is the work that has received the prizes. I think that work displayed the strengths I describe above, as well as representing great skill – whether high or low – in carrying out the artist’s personal vision. Usually, this came across via two or three pieces that worked together as a body, though there were instances of a single piece that was so well realized in itself that I had no doubt about its meaning. Most of the prize-winning work is reproduced here, so you can decide for yourself if you agree or not.

Congratulations to all the artists who submitted work, and many thanks to the AAG for asking me to be their judge this year.

The opening reception for the Adirondack Artists’ Guild’s 17^th Annual Juried Art Competition is today (March 13) from 5-7 p.m., with awards to be announced at 6; the show will hang through April 12.

THIRD PRIZE: Phil Gallos - America the Beautiful #17

Abecedarius at The Arts Center of the Capital Region

An installation view of Abecedarius

When Colin C Boyd and Michael Oatman won the 2013 Emerging and Established Artist Awards from The Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, it wasn't said that they'd be collaborating on a show there, but it certainly comes as no surprise that they did. That show, a rollicking compendium of these two artists' individual and overlapping obsessions, is Abecedarius (subtitled "A Cautionary Alphabet of 26 + 1 Works).

The Convenience Effect, a 2014 collage
by Michael Oatman in a shaped frame
made by his father, Gordon Oatman

I don't know what sort of history Boyd and Oatman have with each other, but I'm going on the assumption that this is their first co-production, as it mostly re-presents significant past works, new works both major and minor by each artist, and just one jointly made item, making it in effect a two-person show. For those already familiar with the two artists, Abecedarius is a welcome return to some really fascinating and fun stuff, augmented by some really cool new stuff. And for those new to either maker, it's a pretty broad and deep immersion - not quite a retrospective, but in that direction.

Foreground, American Bison 2012 by Colin C Boyd;
background, Over (After Durer) 2014 by Boyd and Oatman

For me, the really engaging subtext of this show is discovering the elements that Boyd and Oatman share - each has for years produced fictional histories, pseudoscience, anthropological fantasy and so on. While Boyd tends toward the really old, and populates his share of the exhibition with many archaeological references, Oatman's take on anthropology is of the more cultural variety, particularly expressed in retro-futurism.

Still, both are miners of deep troves of rich material, and both exercise overactive imaginations, the result being always intriguing and entertaining. The conceit of the show is that it presents one work of art for each letter of the alphabet (plus one more), so there's the game of finding these references (easy enough by looking at the labels), and then perhaps the more challenging game of figuring out what it's all supposed to mean.

The Branch, or the Site of Our Complete Liberation 2012
multi-panel collage by Michael Oatman

The show's labels are evocative, following the classic pattern of a children's ABC book (or a mystery series), so you start with Oatman's "A is for Alien Craft" and Boyd's "B is for Balance Scale Act" and go on from there; but, given that the works were not actually created to fulfill this structure (all have other more specific titles and they range in date from 2007 to 2014), it comes off as a fun but false construct. That said, there is a lot of fresh work in the show by both artists, and I'll take any excuse offered that allows us to see it.

Favorites include "F is for Fauna + Firearms," which offers a trio of minimally layered collages by Oatman, revisiting one of his best themes with sweet subtlety; and Boyd's "Z is for Zetetic," with a museum-of-science-worthy scale model of a conceptual spacecraft designed by the Flat Earth Society, appropriately suspended above the viewer.

As I write this, the show has just one day left and will close after Dec. 23. Can we agree for purposes of this review that B is for Better Late than Never?

Daniella Dooling at the Esther Massry Gallery

3459 Macomb Street, installation by Daniella Dooling
in the Esther Massry Gallery's Vertical Gallery

Navel-gazing as an art form can be messy - and, worse yet, it is usually boring. Fortunately, neither is the case in Daniella Dooling's solo show at The College of Saint Rose's Esther Massry Gallery in Albany (which ended on Dec. 7).

The somewhat perplexingly titled Bloody Dick Road in the Big Hole Valley: Files from the Girl in Room 10 is essentially a full-gallery installation that features archival arrangements, combine-type sculptures, sound, video, and text. Dooling, an art professor at Bard College, devotes most of the space to critically nostalgic renderings of her childhood and teenage years, using carefully preserved artifacts from her life and the lives of certain key relatives (more on them in a bit), as well as other (presumably) found and created objects and materials.

Busing Break (for Amy)

While such self-centered expression can easily descend into ranting, spewing, and overall self-indulgence, Dooling's is as carefully considered as a Smithsonian scientific display, and is delightfully engaging. Dooling's approach is complex and inclusive, yet spare (as is clearly evident in the installation view shown below). Her sculptural style tends toward a very limited palette and an elegant, pared-down presentation, reminding me of the scientific and philosophical principle of Occam's razor, which favors the simplest solution to tricky problems.

Installation view

Much of the show's content is presented in showcases, cabinets or vitrines, aptly enough for archives, and effective enough as an art form, though I found it sometimes a little tough to see the details sufficiently to satisfy my curiosity. And, with this level of personal material from a teenage girl's drug-filled life, that curiosity easily bordered on morbid fascination.

Witchiepoo

Equally fascinating were the elements of the show that focused on Dooling's remarkable great-grandparents, who explored and promoted healing with homeopathy; grandmother, who published the important progressive journal Parabola; and an uncle owned a rustic Montana guest ranch. Dooling seems to have held on to everything of value from her forebears' and her own past, and here she organizes many elements of it into precise, unblinking displays of reflection and self-revelation.

But Dooling is not a sensationalist, and, to my relief, I found that this is not shock art. Rather, it is sincere almost to the point of sweetness, and was for me especially nostalgic for a number of reasons. Though my own teen years predated Dooling's by about a decade, it seems she relived similar experiences to mine, and though it seems she suffered more for it (the titular Girl in Room 10 was being held in the psych ward after a tough acid trip), it's clear to me she also had some fun (as I did) and got through it all in one piece.

My Grandmother's Parabola

I'd be curious to know how others react to this material - if they had a crappy teen-hood, would this be an unpleasant experience, or would it perhaps be cathartic? If they had a wholesome one, would they be repelled by the young Daniella's drug use and sexuality? My own teen years were drug-fueled, sexualized, and wholesome, and for me personally this show was an especially uplifting revival of memories of those dangerous-yet-innocent times.

Dooling's open sharing of diaries, mementos, and experiences is a gift to be savored, and it has left a pleasant afterglow - not at all the way I would expect to feel after viewing similar content handled by an artist of lesser skills. Bloody Dick Road in the Big Hole Valley: Files from the Girl in Room 10 is one of the year's best shows by an artist who deserves all the serious attention she gets.

Mary Pat Wager at Albany Center Gallery

A visitor contemplates one of Mary Pat Wager's reliefs at ACG.

photo by Mike Wagner

In the great tradition that Albany Center Gallery has become in its 35+ years of existence, the current retrospective by sculptor Mary Pat Wager is a big, sprawling show of important work covering a span of several decades. Wager is a familiar face on the regional art scene including at past ACG shows, but this major exhibition is still a long time coming and a welcome sight.

Featuring scores of works from 1978 through 2014, Collections: A Retrospective was independently curated by Jackie Weaver and includes wall-hung and free-standing pieces in steel, wood, copper, bone, bronze, stone, brass, glass, paper, and more, usually combining several of these materials in one piece. It's organized clutter, marvelously inventive, sophisticated-yet-direct assemblage by an inveterate collector (some would say hoarder) of stuff.

Yes, Wager loves stuff, and she lovingly turns it into art. It's almost that simple, and would be if she were less of an artist. But where craft fair or roadside sculptors are entertaining, Wager is deeply engaging. Her direct involvement in metal casting, often represented by free-form melted bits she's scavenged from the process, is just one source of the profound connections Wager forges with her materials and thereby shares with her audience.

If you love pure form, if symbolism turns you on, or if you just kinda like steampunk, see this show. I like it because I see fascinating conjunctions and droll juxtapositions throughout; I like it more because I see a very clever eye at work; and I want to go back because that's only the beginning of the fountain of
creativity on display here. But you better hurry, because it ends on Nov 21. Albany Center Gallery is open from noon to 5 pm, Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, call 518 462 4775.

Solitary Confinement, 2014 mixed media by Mary Pat Wager
all other images are sculptures by Mary Pat Wager

In Brief: Ramersdorfer and Van Alstine at LGAP

A view of Confluence of Opposites III at Lake George Arts Project
featuring Storm Warning II, left, and Sisyphean Circle, right, by John Van Alstine

The idea of a show of only sculpture shouldn't seem at all radical, but it is uncommon enough that it bears noting. And when such a show is presented by equal partners in a domestic relationship, each with significant international showing experience, at the best little public gallery in our region, it is noteworthy indeed.

Inner View - To the Bone alabaster and marble
by Caroline Ramersdorfer

Caroline Ramersdorfer and John Van Alstine are not opposites at all, despite the flowery title of their well-wrought exhibition; rather, they share similar characteristics that are more significant than nationality or gender or material or technique. Both work in three dimensions but really emphasize a frontal view of their carefully assembled compositions; both combine strict geometry with naturalistic forms; and both work in dramatic, abstract gestures.

Ramersdorfer, a native of Austria, now lives with Van Alstine in Wells, N.Y., and the sweetness of this pared-down selection reflects the comfort that it is virtually in their own backyard (by Adirondack standards, 30 miles is a stroll). A total of 11 works fill the Lake George Arts Project's modest space, but not too tightly, and are bathed there in spectacularly directed light that alternately rakes the textural surfaces of Van Alstine's raw stones and infiltrates the layers of Ramersdorfer's polished marbles.

This fine exhibition offers a chance to see a unique grouping of works (three are borrowed from private collections) without distraction in this quiet space in the heart of Lake George Village. I recommend you take a foliage drive and stop in - it will be up through Oct. 17.

Inner View - Layers V, detail - marble by Caroline Ramersdorfer

Three exhibitions at MASS MoCA

I finally got myself back to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams this week after a too-long absence, and it was well worth the trip. As my museum-going companion succinctly pointed out, MASS MoCA made its bones by taking risks, and they always seem to pay off - even when something there doesn't work, you have to admire the effort.

At the very least, you have to be impressed by the scale of things at this gargantuan former factory complex, and you can count on the vastly abundant industrial forms that make up the physical plant to be esthetically pleasing and fascinating in themselves, sometimes even more than the art. One reason I made the trip now was to catch the tail end of an important installation by the German painter/sculptor Katharina Grosse, which opened many months ago and will close on Oct. 31.

Ungrammatically and, to me, annoyingly titled one floor up more highly, the piece combines elegantly sandblasted, pure-white forms in styrofoam with garishly spray-painted mounds of rocks and dirt that also contain a few recognizable objects, such as a massive wooden bench and articles of clothing. Also in this group is a floor-mounted, curved planar polygon that is either a painting or a sculpture, depending on your definition of those media, and through a door at the end of the gargantuan space containing these works are two levels of spray-painted rooms, one of which features a framed abstract painting hung on the wall.

Grosse's installation is exuberantly colorful, muscularly formal, richly textural - I could go on, but you get the picture - and I wanted to like it so much more than I did. Somehow, though, it left me cold. Can't really explain why that is, as I normally enjoy all those elements in a wide variety of art. The closest I can come to explaining this failure to ignite is that the piece just doesn't work as a whole, that despite its quantity it doesn't properly fill the space - that this artist has bitten off more than she could chew.

Others surely will disagree, and I encourage you to go and see for yourself whether you do or not - but I am willing to take the risk of saying in print that this piece is, at best, a beautiful and expensive mess.

Meanwhile, up on a catwalk, exposed to the elements and a real challenge to reach on rickety old legs is Michael Oatman's All Utopias Fell, a neo-retro-futuristic fantasy that extends Oatman's longstanding obsessions into his best work yet - an experiential time-and-space capsule that should bring out the kid, or at least the mad scientist, in all of us (pictured above).

Oatman is essentially a collage artist who regularly works in three dimensions as well, creating participatory environments chock-full of stuff: pictures, gadgets, artifacts and so on. AUF consists of an Airstream trailer with solar panel-festooned wings and deployed parachutes that appears to have crash-landed on the museum's superstructure. Its occupant is missing, but his incomprehensible, complex inner world is on full display in the ship he rode in on.

Visitors can enter and do as they please in this delightfully bizarre interior, which is accessible only in good weather (i.e. not during the winter months) and which will remain there indefinitely. It contains all manner of material related to energy - books, a bicycle-driven generator (I rode it, and it works), and more or less functional-looking living quarters (featuring a goodly supply of toilet paper and put-up tomatoes), along with an elaborately (but crudely) furnished electrical workbench and many, many mysterious electronic contraptions.

A full description would be next to impossible - imagine the contents of an artistically and scientifically inclined packrat's garage or basement all fitted into a tiny living space and you get the idea. As with past installations by Oatman, I was left shaking my head in wonder at his ingenuity, resourcefulness, sense of humor - even his sincerity. He's a space-age kid stuck in a postmodern man's world, but thankfully he's got what it takes to drag us back in time to where he comes from - and it ends up looking like a wonderfully twisted version of where we're going.

A third major exhibition that opened at MASS MoCA in May and will remain until March is titled The Workers (or The Workers: Precarity, Invisibility, Mobility); it originated in a smaller form in Mexico, and has been expanded for its incarnation here, to include 25 international artists and filmmakers who depict workers in various ways.

Equal parts art and propaganda, The Workers has a terrific concept and ends up being a fine example of something where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Much of the art in the show is overwrought, as politically oriented art so often is, yet for me the show was still stimulating and enjoyable. As with most of the group shows I've seen here over the years, it uses the space of the galleries extremely well, allowing a comfortable flow from piece to piece and room to room.

A number of the pieces in the show appear to have been made specifically for it, in some cases by local artists, with an eye toward the detailed industrial past of the museum. This conjunction of purposes is the key to the success of the show, and I was somewhat surprised to find that I consistently preferred the pieces in the show that were related to this history.

Whereas some of the international work struck me as bombastic (for example a full-size gallows with an office water cooler set next to the trap door), some of the more local work was resonantly lyrical. My favorite pieces in the show included a wall montage of the torn-out bottoms of paper bags with the names of the factory workers who made them stamped on them (take a look at a paper bag, and you'll see one) by Mary Lum, who lives in North Adams; Los Angeles photographer Anthony Hernandez' Landscapes for the Homeless; and an installation featuring a chain-link fence and images from a 1970 strike at Sprague Electric by New York City-based Camel Collective (pictured below).

The Workers is accompanied by a detailed brochure, fittingly printed on cheap newsprint in black ink. With written material that keys on "the uncertain fate of today's workers," it strikes a rather relevant chord - and one that I respond to more than some, having been laid off from my own job nearly three years ago. As with the logo (seen above, right), the catalog eloquently expresses this exhibition's roots in socialist theory, especially as it was embodied nearly a century ago by Mexican muralists, or more recently by artists of the Soviet regime. Clearly, this point of view still has life in our global culture and still inspires many artists.

Note: There are several other exhibitions also currently on view at MASS MoCA, including Memery; Nari Ward: Sub Mirage Lignum; and Federico Diaz: Geometric Death Frequency-141. Additionally, there's an opening reception in the Kidspace gallery from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday (Oct. 1), which features several excellent artists, including Schenectady's Ginger Ertz, on a subaquatic theme. Seriously fun.

Rating: Highly Recommended

Julie Anne Mann: "Intrinsic Nature" at LGAP

During my annual pilgrimage to the Lake George Jazz Weekend last week I had the opportunity to look in on Julie Anne Mann's Intrinsic Nature exhibition at Lake George Arts Project's Courthouse Gallery. The opening reception was in session, and an appreciative crowd sipped, nibbled, looked, and listened while Mann spoke briefly about her three distinct styles as represented in the show.

Mann is based in Brooklyn but hails from Seattle, and her Northwest roots are (literally) present in the major portion of the work, which depicts trees that have grown on top of "nurse logs" in the rainforest on the Olympic Peninsula (example at right above).

The way this happens is that a big tree falls in the forest, and other trees sprout on top of it, absorbing its energy into their own growth while sending roots down around it into the ground. After a long time, the nurse log decomposes, leaving mature trees suspended a couple of feet off the ground by their own exposed roots.

Mann, entranced by the gestural aspect of these trees and their metaphorical relationship to other life forms, has carefully rendered portraits of seven of them in hand-etched silver leaf on large walnut panels. She emphasizes that the images are copied from photographs that she has taken, making clear to those unfamiliar with the rainforest that they are not inventions.

The rich darkness of the walnut combines nicely with the reflective glow of the silver to make an image (really, almost an object) that compels close attention. Mann explained that there is no direct connection between the walnut and the trees depicted (they are evergreens), which is slightly disappointing, but the finished pieces are no less beautiful for it.

A second body of work does consist of objects - manipulated memento mori that Mann painstakingly constructs of small animal bones, insect wings, seed pods, and other materials, sets into black velvet-lined cigar boxes, and has mounted in a cluster on the wall (example above). Each suggests a previously undiscovered creature, and is given a fanciful Latin name to match its appearance. Mann’s inventiveness and sense of humor make this vaguely morbid display highly entertaining, and her skill and patience in building these tiny puzzles is impressive.

Equally meticulous is Mann’s third method, in which a squadron of dried Queen Anne’s lace blossoms have been hung upside-down in the center of the gallery to form a swaying, circular disc about seven feet off the floor. Below them, blood-red resin droplets have pooled, representing the legend of the lacemaker queen’s pricked finger.

Though the three styles of art Mann uses are disparate, they hold together through their consistent concerns with issues around nature and change. It’s a show well worth seeing.

Rating: Recommended

NOTE: Starting with this review, I have instituted a new rating system. Because I rarely give space to shows I wouldn't recommend, the ratings will only be positive, ranging from Recommended to Highly Recommended to Must See. If I happen to review a show of doubtful worth, it simply won't be rated.