Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History

A natural sandstone concretion from France that is about 5 feet wide

all photos by Robert Blake

Is Mother Nature an artist? That question came to mind as I perused the mind-blowing collection of minerals at Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven on a recent road trip.
My old friend Rob, a rock hound and certified gemologist, guided me on this trip, and assured that this collection is truly dazzling even to an expert (he grew up near Harvard, which has a similarly impressive collection, but he said the Peabody's outshines Harvard's in terms of the size of the specimens and the way they're displayed).

To rank amateur me, the outstanding impression was of sculptural brilliance. Sure, the collectors who pay a king's ransom to own such specimens are as affected by aesthetic concerns as anyone, but they're still gathering objects that came from nature, not an artist's studio. Though there's no individual creator making these objects - just chemistry plus time - the results are no less visually exciting than a carefully executed sculpture. After all, who wouldn't be pleased to display the beer-can sized specimen of beryl with albite from Pakistan shown at right, above, on a nice pedestal in their living room?

A stunning specimen of pure gold found in California

By the way, the Peabody is best known for its dinosaur exhibits, which were not on view for our visit (and won't be for years, pending massive renovations), but the mineral exhibits alone were well worth the trip to New Haven (a city I'd never visited, despite having once lived in Connecticut for several years). Additionally, the museum has an equally impressive bird collection, and quite a few excellent dioramas featuring a broad array of environments and their respective animal specimens.

The heart of the mineral collection is in a special gallery dedicated to a donor and Yale alumnus named David Friend. Here, examples of extraordinary value from the collection are grouped with equally outstanding specimens on loan from the friends of Friend. We were told that this selection rotates every couple of years, as many more items than can be displayed are available. Just a few are shown in the photos in this post, but the full display is extensive, featuring all types and sizes, as well as a good sampling of gems for fans of wearable art. All of it is beautifully mounted and dramatically lit with high-tech spotlight arrays.

So, check out these examples, and think about going. Alert: Those renovations will take over the entire museum as of this June - and it won't reopen until 2023. Now's the time.

Our blogger examines a giant fossil of prehistoric plants and fish

The Cosmic Perspective

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Karen Ciancetta share a photo-op

Do you think a two-hour lecture on physics would be a dreary exercise in relativity (as in how a short time can stretch to infinity)? If so, then you have never seen Neil deGrasse Tyson in action.

A full house at Proctors sat enthralled on Monday night as two hours flew by at warp speed, with TV's Cosmos star Tyson guiding us on a rollicking trip through centuries of scientific, cultural, and social ideas, illustrated with slides that communicated clearly and entertained fully.

Though he claims to prefer time in the lab, Tyson is a natural and enthusiastic showman who knows how to work a big crowd as if they were guests in his living room. Rarely have I experienced such a sense of intimacy among so many people. This is the Tyson charm - he may be a genius astrophysicist who regularly schmoozes with presidents and billionaires, but somehow from the stage he makes you feel like he's also happy to hang out with simple ol' limited you.

Meanwhile, he's teaching you lessons that could be some of the most important ones you will ever learn.

The theme of The Cosmic Perspective is to share with the general public the extra-proportional mindset that astrophysicists live with every day - as they are accustomed to seeing everything from a big-picture point of view: from biology and space travel to arithmetic, economics and war.

Tyson presents each topic in a humorous, yet well documented style, referring to his PowerPoint slides as needed, but riffing like the best professor you ever had crossed with a seasoned stand-up comic. Along the way, you are asked to question whether space exploration is a good investment (clearly, he thinks so), how the periodic table can be read as a history of different nations' passion for science, and why Americans tend to be so afraid of math that our elevators never display negative numbers for the floors below ground level.

Along the way, you may learn something about evolution (for example, we humans are more closely related to mushrooms than mushrooms are to green plants) about astronomy (the tiniest slice of a clear picture of the universe from Hubble will include countless billions of entire distant  galaxies) or about chemistry (the "noble" elements are called that because they don't bond - i.e. associate - with other elements).

And, ultimately, you will see both how utterly inconsequential our own actions are and how easy it can be to feel empowered to try to have a positive impact on our little world.

Tyson, like all scientists, owes a debt to those who came before him, and he honored many of those lights during his talk - but none so much as his direct predecessor, Carl Sagan, who he quoted at length in his conclusion, citing Sagan's elegiac book Pale Blue Dot, which really puts things on Earth into proper perspective. The book was inspired by a picture taken in 1990 by the Voyager spacecraft as it passed beyond Saturn. Tyson shared a reprise photograph of Earth, taken in 2013 by Cassini - which, in timely fashion, has begun sending back new close-up pictures of Saturn and its rings just this week, on its way toward total immolation in that planet's atmosphere.

The evening ended with a lively Q&A, leading Tyson to offer advice to one questioner (and the rest of us) on how to "talk to idiots": He advised empathy, patience, and the willingness to offer information. Tyson also emphasized the value of supporting STEM education as our path to a future as a world-leading nation - a status that he amply and viscerally demonstrated the US is rapidly losing. He also pointed out that our educational system must find ways to stimulate students' imaginations, rather than teaching them how to pass tests.

My one criticism of these conclusions is that, to stimulate the imagination, STEM must become STEAM - that's for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math. I wish Tyson had publicly acknowledged the importance of the arts in developing good, young minds into critically thinking adults.

Finally, as you can see above, some people with special tickets, including my wife, Karen, were able to meet their idol backstage. While waiting, I had the good fortune of running into my friend Steve Tyson, a painter and professor of art at Schenectady County Community College. He would also be going backstage - to visit with his kid brother, the scientist. I like to think Steve might have taken the opportunity then to say a little something to Neil about the importance of that A in steam.

Cassini took this picture from behind Saturn, showing the "pale blue dot" of Earth 

Radical Kingdoms at Mandeville Gallery

Extensive open hours may not be the best reason to like a gallery, but it's a factor in my positive assessment of Union College's Mandeville Gallery in the Nott Memorial, where a show intriguingly titled Radical Kingdoms is on view through June 18. It's great that you can go see it any day from 10 am to 6 pm.

Juan Fontanive - Passerine 2016
mechanized flip-book

But a more substantive reason to like the Mandeville is its eminently able leader, Julie Lohnes, who deftly organized the show around a theme of botanical and biological illustration by contemporary and historical artists, drawing connections from the past and linking traditional scientific illustration to more expressive modern iterations of the style.

A visit to the Nott is always a step into the past, as it is a unique structure that exemplifies the state-of-the-art design and engineering of 100 years ago, and that makes this show a particularly comfortable fit for the unique space that the gallery occupies on a circular, second-story balcony. Lohnes has chosen works by five contemporary artists, augmented by examples of work by ten historical illustrators drawn from Union College's archives that range from an anonymous 19th-century printmaker to the uber-famous John James Audubon.

Portia Munson - Dahlia Target 2015, photograph

Several gorgeous 2001 re-prints of Audubon's work are the stars of the historical group - but they can't outshine the best of this selection of current work by George Boorujy, Juan Fontanive, Portia Munson, Amy Ross, and Anne Siems.

Boorujy presents painstakingly detailed, large-scale images of plants and animals that appear both highly realistic and fantastical. Artist statements are peppered through the installation, and his are among the more engaging, as he describes his interest in nearby wildlife that may surprise the average New York City urban dweller, calling himself a "large social primate" living in "an enormous colony."

Amy Ross - Lovebirds #3 2016, collage

Fontanive is represented by a single, very small work, which is an electrified metal contraption that continuously flips through an accordion book of appropriated bird illustrations (see image above at right). The sound and the movement of this work of art unobtrusively capture and hold the viewer's attention. It's an excellent example of the post-modern approach to creating a new kind of art experience from a familiar kind of image.

Amy Ross is also a filcher of old illustrations who uses her thievery to produce a fresh result. In this case, the old images are reconfigured into delicate hybrids by means of collage, or reimagined into masterful watercolor originals. Her six pieces on view are perhaps the most seductive work in the show.

Anne Siems - Hare and Snail 2016
acrylic on canvas

Complex combinations are also at the heart of Portia Munson's deliciously colorful scanner photographs (one is shown above at left), in which she builds arrangements of flowers and dead birds into beautiful inkjet-printed mandalas. Munson hails from Catskill, and her work has been seen in recent years at the Albany International Airport, MASS MoCA, and other local venues - and it's always a pleasure to see more of it.

Anne Siems is a German-born artist now based in Seattle, whose work retains a Grimm-ness reminiscent of her homeland. In her three paintings on view here, she combines pure painterly concerns with storytelling imagery that is just a little bit unsettling. Her small piece titled Little Nest is subtle and particularly appealing, as it places an egg-filled bluebird's nest on a white ground, with brown rivulets of paint, rather than branches, holding it aloft.

Overall, this show is a breath of fresh air. You'll be glad if you make a point of checking it out.

George Boorujy - Florida IV (wrack line) 2014, ink on paper

Jim Shaw: Entertaining Doubts at MASS MoCA

Jim Shaw - The Rinse Cycle 2012 acrylic on muslin

Have you ever tried to describe a crazy dream you had, or tried to follow someone describing such a dream? Then you will have some idea what it's like to experience the large exhibition Entertaining Doubts by California artist Jim Shaw at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams. Shaw draws a great deal from his dreams, and attempts to manifest them physically through sculpture, painting, and installation.

Alas, it is not an entirely successful effort, just as none of us has ever really adequately articulated our own dream or understood another's, but a lot of compelling and enjoyable art is created along the way, so it's also not a failure. Shaw has great skills in drawing and painting, and a good understanding of the theatrics that go into effective installations, and MASS MoCA gives him plenty of space to spread out in.

Jim Shaw - Frank Frazetta Figure 2013 - installation view

A signature of the show is Shaw's re-use of discarded painted theatrical backdrops. The worn texture of these huge curtains of muslin, and their time-softened colors, are very appealing, and Shaw makes the most of this appeal by limiting his interventions to partial overpainting or, in some cases, simple reinterpretation by the placement of flat figures in front. Shaw also takes smaller cuts of the backdrops and paints on them like stretched canvases. These are some of the best works in the show, perhaps because it is easier to digest them, or because smaller works can concentrate the idea better. (Mind you, in this context, small is relative: say, six feet rather than forty.)

Jim Shaw - Blake/Boring 2010
ink on paper 

Another key feature of Shaw's work is his impressive mastery of comic-book style inking, which he applies to various obsessions. Clearly, he is a child of the '50s and '60s, and is completely, unabashedly in love with Superman, whose image is captured, transformed, fractured and fragmented in many ways here.

Sources as disparate as William Blake and Walt Disney are blended into the Superman myth as processed by Shaw, connecting the visionary's Songs of Innocence and Experience to the Seven Dwarves and then linking it to Kryptonite.

Jim Shaw - Fire Female 2012
faux hair wigs with airbrush

Again, I think these elements come across best when simplified, as when Shaw groups giant cutout drawings of Superman's body parts into a wall-mounted installation, or in another installation where the black-ink area of the superhero's costume shorts turns out to be a portal into a plastic dreamworld of glowing colored crystals (shown below).

Shaw also shines in book-page-scale drawings of vortices, swirls of hair, and others of his many obsessions (architecture, the human body, American Indians, snakes, and Wagner's Ring series among them).

Shaw's sculptural forays include architectural dioramas, amusing surrealistic furniture designs (such as a nose-shaped wall sconce), and bizarre wigs, which also appear in a series of paintings made over inkjet prints, rather than discarded muslin. These paintings extend Shaw's technique of altering given imagery and introduce a self-conscious reference to art history in the form of a white rectangle cut out of the colorful image, then replaced outside it as a gray-toned expressionist swirl.

Meaning what? As with the dreams, I couldn't quite get inside Shaw's head to understand the point. But I'm grateful that it's such an active place, and that an artist of Shaw's ability makes the effort to take us there. Entertaining Doubts continues through February 2016.

Jim Shaw - The Issue of My Loins 2015 (installation detail)

In addition to Jim Shaw, MASS MoCA is currently featuring several other exhibitions. Two that are particularly worthy of note:

Eclipse is a remarkable, immersive video installation by Susannah Sayler and Edward Morris in collaboration with the ecological writer Elizabeth Kolbert that commemorates the passenger pigeon on the 100th anniversary of its extinction (image at left).

Not only a powerfully moving experience of what the incredibly numerous birds were once able to do (i.e. blot out the sky), Eclipse is a brilliant example of digital technology put to an innovative purpose as art. It also offers a beautifully produced oversized publication free to visitors. Eclipse is a must-see; it continues through Sept. 1.

Bibliotecaphilia is a group show curated by Allie Foradas with support from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute that brings together six very diverse artists around the theme of books.

It includes a complex interactive installation by Jonathan Gitelson that invites visitors to spend time with a great variety of books annotated by their former owners; Dan Peterman's wonderful sculpture titled The Polymer Catalog - one ton archive, which looks like massive stacks of books but is just slices of colorful recycled plastic boards; Meg Hitchcock's painstaking and beautifully transcendent collages made of individual letters cut from holy books; and a large-scale carved wooden screen by Susan Hefuna.

Also included in Bibliotecaphilia are Jean Prebe's site-specific sculpture titled The Secret Lives of Books (pictured below), and an adults-only series of nine videos by Clayton Cubitt titled Hysterical Literature, in each of which a woman sits at a table and reads aloud from a book of her choosing until she has an orgasm (you don't see what's going on below the table, but it apparently involves a skillfully wielded vibrator).

Bibliotecaphilia continues through the end of 2015.

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?

M.C. Escher: Seeing the Unseen at Berkshire Museum

It had been several years since I'd gone to the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, and I am so glad I got back there this week for the current exhibition M.C. Escher: Seeing the Unseen. Founded in 1903 with a dual mission to present material on natural science and fine art, the museum completed a major renovation three years ago, adding climate control, a modern entryway, and fresh galleries, and updating its approach to the same worthy mission.

The result is special - and the Escher show perfectly fits the museum's family-centric and dual goals by offering an experience that can be taken in by all ages and on many different levels.

For those of us who grew up in the '60s and '70s, Maurits Cornelis Escher's work was ubiquitous and highly influential. No doubt, visitors of baby-boomer vintage to Seeing the Unseen are finding it more than a little nostalgic and will recognize many of the images presented (as I did). Equally likely, their kids or grandkids will delight in this accessible yet intensely fascinating imagery as a new discovery. Either way, it was a smart choice by the folks at the Berkshire to organize this exhibition, and I expect it will draw crowds everywhere if it gets the road tour they are seeking for it.

While some would be inclined to dismiss Escher's art as mere illustration, or to take it less seriously because it was (and still is) so popular, this collection of 120 works representing about 45 years of the Dutch native's output should put such thoughts to rest. On the basis of technique alone (in painstakingly rendered woodcuts, lithographs, mezzotints and drawings), it's clear Escher was as good as it gets.

Though he was, apparently by nature, a bit dry compared to many of his more histrionic contemporaries, nearly every item presented transcends the realm of pedestrian graphics to stand up as Escher's personal expression of awestruck wonderment at the way things appear and the way things maybe really are. In fact, he was ahead of his time, not behind it, in his integration of mathematical and scientific knowledge into the creation of a personal vision.

The show (which relies on loans from the Boston Public Library and a couple of commercial art sources) begins in a smallish gallery where both the earliest and some of the latest works can be seen and compared. Here, numerous examples of drawings and prints from Escher's formative 10 years spent in Italy show not only how he honed his vision and technique, but how those agrarian Italian vistas and geometric towns remained a key influence on that vision for the rest of his life (such as the 1930 lithograph Castrovalva shown at the bottom of this post).

The early drawings and prints also demonstrate how deeply Escher studied nature, setting the stage for him to later become enthralled with math and physics. And they provide a fresh perspective on an artist perhaps too well known for certain eye-tricking visual puzzles that became icons for the psychedelic generation (such as Up and Down, shown below at left).

That Escher's sometimes fantastical vision was deeply rooted in nature is key to understanding his work, and the range of images in this first gallery of the show makes that clear by linking the early and later works (such as a 1933 lithograph titled Phosphorescent Sea, and the 1955 litho Three Worlds, which is shown at right).

The first gallery also establishes the show's own graphic style and informative intentions with hanging and wall-mounted panels of text and photographs that illustrate the man and his influences. Here I found two Escher quotes that function almost as bookends to his aspirations. The first, "Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible," is apt but a bit arrogant, while the second, from very late in his life, shows humility: "I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, and not in a formless chaos, as it sometimes seems."

Throughout the rest of the exhibition, the thoughtful inclusion of rare artifacts and related materials provides context for the marvelous images, most of which are masterfully hand-printed and so detailed that the many magnifying glasses placed in racks here and there are sure to be put to good use.

Among the extras are several short videos that animate and further transform some of Escher's most illusory designs; '60s-era clothing with Escher patterns; vintage black-light posters, properly illuminated and accompanied by beanbag chairs for comfortable contemplation; videos of people with elaborate Escher tattoos; and reproductions of Escher imagery on book covers, in puzzles and plastic toys, and in one recent case as a New Yorker cover featuring an oil-dripping pelican.

But, for me, nothing beyond the still mind-blowing original art was needed to create a deep impression and be uplifted by the outpouring of work from one artist's lifetime. The show ends on May 22 - try not to miss it.

Rating: Highly Recommended