This article, Seizing the Day, by Azadeh Ensha of NYTimes, just stays with me. I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do what the artist Pep Carrio has done, a drawing a day in a sketchbook for as long as I can. Maybe forever. Carrio’s done it since 2007–over 1800 drawings.
Gonna. Do. It.
Starting today.
Stay tuned.
Why did it blow my mind? After all, it was a cold, rainy First Thursday, the sort of chilly gray that doesn’t get people heading downtown in droves. But the turn-out was pretty healthy anyway, and here’s what made the show a success in my mind: people engaged with the work.
They stood close, stepped back, looked and looked for a long time. They moved slowly and came back to works for second and third looks. One woman said, your lines are heartbreaking, several said the main piece, a large drawing eight feet long, was stunning.
So why, beyond the obvious, was the response so profound for me? Because sometimes you have a feeling inside, an experience of the world, non-verbal, kinetic maybe, but true and personal, and to share that feeling, that experience…well, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. It’s an edgy spot to put yourself in. This body of work was, for me, like a poem offered to nature…and it seemed like a lot of people who saw the pieces “got it,” or got something that was personally affecting for them, it went somewhere in them. And that meant everything to me.
Thank you all who came out to see the show.
Release, works on paper by Cass Nevada
Shift Collaborative Studio
306 s. Washington #105
Fri/sat 12-5 or by appt.
Artwalk in Pioneer Square tonight–that means Free Parking, visual cortex engagement, hoards of people milling about–what more could you ask for? Come on down and oh by the way, drop by Shift–you’ll be glad you did.
Release, a new installation by Cass Nevada @ Shift thru April
Energy! It’s about energy!
All my work lately seems to be focused on energy–a very nice theme for spring. A couple of the drawings for Release, opening at Shift April 4, are nearly 8ft long, although only one will likely make the cut. These ink drawings push past the edges of definition and boundaries, exploring irruptive energy in nature–think murmurations, swarms, waves and storms. I found the hydrographic maps (from WWII), at Second Use in Seattle–a treasure house full of salvaged gems. The maps are full of history, but like all maps, more suggestive of plans, command and control, than the true nature of things.
Sumi and acrylic inks, wax, water color, natural pigments on salvaged hydrographic maps from the 1940s.
Release by Cass Nevada
Artist Reception @ Shift Studio: April 4, 5-8pm (First Thursday Art Walk)
306 S. Washington, #105 in Pioneer Square
See you there!
Release @ Shift, opens 4/4, First Thursday (runs thru April)
I’ve been working with maps again, this time hydrology maps from the 1940s, most of them of Southeast Asia–Japan, Burma, the Philippines–places that might come in handy for planning a by-sea invasion, for example.
But maps are interesting–so disconnected from real life, and yet so involved in the business of life as we humans know it. These maps seemed like a perfect starting point to consider limitations and boundless energy. The more I looked at these maps, the more I became interested in borders and boundaries…and then of course, got to thinking about birds. Specifically, I got to thinking about murmurations. There are a lot of studies about murmurations going on these days, largely because they are amazing natural phenoms–how do ten thousand birds fly in complex patterns without mass accidents? And starlings aren’t the only birds that do this. But what we see when watching a murmuration is very different from what the birds see–they are responding to the six or seven nearest birds and those networks expand out like waves across the cloud of birds. The information exchange is truly awe inspiring, and while perhaps we don’t see it, we know instinctively that sort of networked wave.
Thoughts about those networks and waves evolved into thoughts about energy itself. How energy is so completely in the moment, so beyond boundaries and rules, so wild. Here’s the statement for the show:
Release
Like marks on paper, first one, then another and another, energy flows through everything, building on itself, urging life forward–emergent, unpredictable boundless. 10,000 birds rise up as a cloud, incomprehensibly shifting, dispersing, combining again. 10,000 fish swarm as one massive dervish, spinning through water at impossible speeds. 10,000 people fill the streets, speak with one voice, become a wave. We are awakened to the energy of the moment.
Sumi and acrylic inks, wax, natural pigments on hydrographic maps from the 1940s.
Shift Collaborative Studio
Artist Reception, 5-8pm, First Thursday, April 4
TK Bldg, 306 S Washington, #105
Open through April, Fridays and Saturdays 12-5pm
First Thursday @ Shift, artist profile: Jeff Curtis
Really looking forward to this opening, please drop by!
I’m all about the Tashiro Kaplan building this coming First Thursday…and I’m thinking a lot of other people will be too.
First, there’s the annual 30 Day Art Challenge, which seemed like it had about a zillion artists involved when we dropped our work off. Here’s what’s in it for you: really. I saw some really good stuff, and it all goes for $50. All 8×10 canvasses–it could be overwhelming but what a way to go. (one of mine above, I took the opportunity to do something completely different for 30 days. They’re all titled “Aerial View” with the day #.
Room 104 Gallery, TK Bldg–reception Dec 6.
Then there’s Room 104–this is a new gallery in the TK hood and the show is good. Well, ok. I’m in it too, but the other work is worth making your way upstairs for–it’s right next to the Shift space, which is having its own first-ever sort of event. Many of the artists will be in attendance, please do come by.
Jeff Curtis Shift Collaborative Studio
And then last but not least, Ted Hiebert and I and the rest of the Shift crew are very pleased to present our first curated show, Shift in Perspective. Three artists were selected from a healthy field of entries; the work of Jeff Curtis, Jessica Kreutter, and Tyna Ontko seemed to cluster around ideas of the unexpected, the ordinary turned on its head, familiar in unfamiliar ways.
We are truly excited to present Shift in Perspective. Stay tuned to the blog for more information…and for now, mark your calendar. There will be a lot going on First Thursday where Washington and Third intersect. See you there!
Both Elles/SAM and the Pompidou collection offer a lot–a LOT–to take in and mull over. The Elles/SAM show was delicious, it was a real pleasure to see so much Helen Frankenthaler, for example. And big big Joan Mitchell (the earlier the better IMHO), and lots of Yayoi Kusama, and many others.
And then the Pompidou. It was a fascinating move from early works where artists took back the objectified female body and myth–one of my fave pieces was the Blue Room, a fully clothed typical reclining-nude-posture depicted by Suzanne Valadon who goes one step further and puts a cigarette in the mouth of the ample, self-aware woman. The arc of this objectification reconsidered moves into the 60s and 70s, an era that resonated personally for me. It was a painful period of internalizing and spitting back out all the fractals of objectification; it was an era of grappling with big big big questions–everything from war to politics-is-personal to “freedom” and fury and destruction of old assumptions.
In many of the works, this urge to destroy objectification plays with objectification itself, taking the power out of it…but in some cases, the works seemed gratuitious, powerless, opting simply for shock value, rather than images that would really knock the scaffolding out from under the powerful. The artists aimed to hurt and maim themselves–to damage the goods, as it were. Barbed Hula by S. Landau has stayed with me.
It reminded me of eco-terrorists from a decade ago or so who “spiked” trees in old growth forests–scarring them, making them too dangerous to cut, lest the power tools of the forest industry hit one of the spikes. The trees grow around the spike, but the spike is there, the trees are scarred, and since the tree is damaged, its “value” is lessened–it may live a long and undisturbed life as a result.
One of the target end users of The Pollinator Pathway
Jen Graves does a very nice profile of The Stranger’s Genius Award Winner Sarah Bergmann, my new hero. Sarah has a love of nature and urban wildness that makes me swoon, and I’m looking forward to checking out her living, breathing, urban wildlife installation...The Pollinator Pathway.
“What Sarah’s doing” is The Pollinator Pathway. She started it in 2008 and, when it’s finished in a few years, it will be a stripe down Seattle’s back. It may be the largest art installation ever created here. It’s a series of gardens—there will be 60 in all—spanning a mile of Columbia Street, planted in the parking strips. Most of the plants are native, and they will draw insects along a new thruway that links one existing green space to another. (The two dots being connected are the well-tended Seattle University campus and Nora’s Woods, a pocket forest at 29th Street; visit the gardens anytime.) Bergmann’s art is especially social. Before any planting begins, she needs the consent, buy-in, and participation of every building owner along the way.
Oh, brava, Sarah Bergmann–you are a most awesome thoughtful human. Graves quotes Robin Held saying of Sarah’s work: “The Pollinator Pathway changes the way we understand our city.”
We can’t not change our urban-ness, nor do I even think we should want to. But we can evolve the way we think about and understand our urban-ness, and the Pollinator Pathway helps us do just that. Thank you Ms. Bergmann!
PS: you can help, just go here.
|
Slog on Art Art Fag City
