visual art
Note: This post is written by EW intern Kaitlin Flanigan.
Today the University of Oregon is showing a new exhibit at the LaVern Krause Gallery, located in Lawrence Hall. The show, titled "Casualties of Funk", showcases the artwork of friends Taylor Schwartz, Ryan Mowery, Joshua Burson, Sydney Lane and Ben Olsen.
"[The artwork] is just stuff I've been working on recently," said Schwartz, an art major at the UO. "My friends and I always joked about putting our best stuff up and having a good time."
Comic book layouts by Taylor Schwartz
"It's been a theme for us [to have fun with the artwork], because we could joke about how serious our art is, but it's really not," said Ben Olsen, a digital arts major who is showing a film at the gallery. "We're doing this for fun."
Film by Ben Olsen
The art ranges from film to digital prints to comic book layouts to the more traditional oil on canvas paintings.
"I hope my art makes people want to have fun," said Schwartz. "It's more shallow entertainment than anything deep and meaningful."
The exhibit officially opens tonight, Monday February 22, at 5 pm; however, it will only stay up until Friday after noon because the gallery features new student artwork each week.
A student meanders around, looking at the new exhibit
This review will appear in the 2/11 Eugene Weekly, in print and online.
Young & Under 21
Multi-artist shows at DIVA and White Lotus
By Suzi Steffen
What does age or size have to do with art?
The Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts deals with the first, in a show that pulls artists from the Midwest, Canada, California and Portland. Lane Arts Council’s First Friday Art Walk brought more than 1000 people to DIVA on Feb. 5. (See tweets from Debbie Williamson-Smith, Becca Pollard and intern Rachel Coussens about that show, often hashtagged #ArtRovers, for more tales of that night on the Art Walk.)
The day after that crush, DIVA feels quiet, in recovery mode from the party. As rain pours outside the floor-to-ceiling windows in the front gallery, the work of “Young Visionaries” provide whimsy, intensity, beauty and thoughts about the paths of artists in a world with so many media options.
In the largest gallery, to the right of the door, Kristin Beaver’s portraits stun me with their forthright declaration of competence. How often do viewers get to see women artists making monumental-realistic oil portraits? That’s as rare as the subjects, reportedly the artist’s friends, who appear fully clothed but in poses I’d call provocative — not sexually, but in terms of provoking curiosity and a bit of discomfort. Lou With Knife most obviously confronts us with some mystery: With a bandaged right hand, the model puts on lipstick as her left hand holds a knife. Her red eyes make me believe this portrait comes from a photograph, but the portrait remakes the photo so that the viewers stand in for the mirror, reflecting and reflecting on the young woman’s complexity.
(Read more after the jump!)
THE BLOG IS BACK!!!
Excuse me. It went down for almost four days,* It was being moved to a new server, and I couldn't access it for a couple of days; when it came back up (on the new server) this morning, I was scribbling this week's cover story like a crazed raccoon, so I couldn't blog.
Two things (I am *so* going to post my interview with Chris McVay tomorrow morning):
1. There's a PICASSO up at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. And although the PR folk assured me it wasn't just any old Picasso, allow me to tell you that no web photo, even one on a big screen, is anything like the big, beautiful thing itself.
Bust D'Homme, Pablo Picasso, courtesy Sotheby's. (c) 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
See, this is not even right. Look away from the screen, pull up your calendar and make plans to go to the J-Schnitz and see this work. I happened by J-Schnitz director Jill Hartz' office yesterday just after it went up, and she took me up to see it. The painting is HUMONGOUS and completely dominates its little (very secure) room. The colors, the brushstrokes, the confidence (and arrogance!) of the man who painted this ... I was bowled over. Hartz said, "Isn't it wonderful to be part of a museum that can have this painting!" She seemed truly appreciative to the anonymous lender and impressed by the work, which she hadn't seen yet either. So, you know, GET OVER THERE. You can see the "Amazonia" exhibit while you're there.
Read about an exciting theater-fest in Portland after the jump!
This review will appear in the 12/17 print issue of the Eugene Weekly and online at our regular website.
We still fear Africa, by Andries Fourie
Question, Memory
Andries Fourie deals with South African identity at the DIVA
Personal history converges with national history in one of the strongest shows ever presented at the Downtown Initiative for the Visual Arts.
Artist Andries Fourie grew up in South Africa, the scion of many generations of Afrikaaners. He traces his family to 1680, when his ancestor Louis Fourie arrived in the area, and his heritage — the food, the dances, the music — hold meaning for him, but he’s well aware of the other legacies of Afrikaaner history. He lived it, growing up in the ’70s and ’80s, leaving when he was 21 for the U.S.
His show embraces the complexity of history, his and the country he once called home. The show’s title, “From the Heart of Darkness to the Rainbow Nation: South African Reinvents Itself,†scratches the surface of the conversation Fourie says he needs to have with U.S. viewers. “An American audience generally needs a lot of context when looking at my work,†he says, but he adds, “There are a lot of parallels between American and South African history.â€
Read more after the jump!
Coming at 5:45 ... if I can trike down to the Hult Center in time!
Yep, I got to the Hult Center around 5:38, locked up the trike, searched out the event (it was in The Studio) and got moved to a table (thanks, Theresa!).
Corrections to the event:
• The man from Barney and Worth, Inc. was not Clark North (quick glimpse of nametag=oops) but Clark Worth, whom you will not be surprised to find out is the president of Barney and Worth.
• In the very last bit, I mentioned Renée "Gruber" with a question mark. No "r" — it's Grube. (And she's, duh, the director of the Library Recreation and Cultural Services division in the City of Eugene.)
• I still don't know Eloise's last name. But! Theresa Sizemore (who's in the City's Cultural Services area) sent me the slide show to which I referred, and I'm planning to attach it here. It's a PDF and will download to your computer. Lots of pretty pictures!
Bird boat image courtesy Queens Museum
Where Twitter has led me today, in the art world, anyway:
1. Most Charming Idea for Inter-Museum Competition
UPDATE! New photos from @queensmuseum! Also, the Wall Street Journal wrote about the match!
I don't quite know how to describe this, but @queensmuseum is hosting a ... um, a naval battle. Yes, a naval battle, with various museums (@brooklynmuseum, @bronxmusuem and @elmuseo Del Barrio [they don't really Tweet yet; their website]) duking it out ... and when I say duking, I mean Duke Riley-ing it out. Riley is the Queens Museum's artist in residence, and he created this ... event ... called Those Who Are About to Die Salute You.
Preparation! Courtesy Queens Museum
Some stuff from the description on the website:
A battle on water wielded with baguette swords and watermelon cannon balls by New York’s art dignitaries will take place on Thursday, August 13, 2009 at 6 pm in a flooded World’s Fair-era reflecting pool in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, just outside of the Queens Museum of Art. Various types of vessels have been designed and constructed by artist provocateur Duke Riley and his collaborators: the galleons, some made of reeds harvested in the park, will be used to stage a citywide battle of the art museums in which representatives from the Queens Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum of the Arts, and El Museo del Barrio will battle before a toga-clad crowd of frenzied onlookers. The event is free and open to public. Dress code: Toga. Live music by Hell-Bent Hooker. Beverages will be served.
Museums from everywhere, including of course @metmuseum, Tweeted about it all day long. There are blog posts ("The folks from conservation are looking into building a corvus similar to those used during the First Punic War."), total trash-talking on Twitter (link is here, but you can also just do your own following with the hashtag #dukeriley), and @artverse is planning live coverage for those of us on the West Coast who can't quite make it to Queens tomorrow evening (3 pm for us). I am so looking forward to this.
Courtesy TBA
For several years now, I've been trying to figure out how to have a job, a garden, cats, a relationship and STILL go to Portland for as much as possible of the Time-Based Art festival at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (that's PICA, and for some reason I adore the acronym, as if a cute little typeface term mated with a kitten ... oh, never mind. Too much soda near the end of the day).
A couple of years ago, we didn't make any performances but did hit a couple of art exhibits whose gentle impact lingers. One, and I can't find our photo/video of it, was a humungous rotating mobile in a factory somewhere on NW Johnson (maybe one reason I liked it so much was that the space reminded me of the lovely Dia: Beacon, which I hope to see again SOON).
Last year (the cat died in August & the relationship wanted to see as much of TBA as I did), we tried to get to performances, but let's just say that the handling of media passes was less intelligent than it should have been. We did go on this extremely cool if bizarre walk with artist Khris Soden called The Portland Tour of Tilberg. (Here's his description of it.) That is to say, in Portland, Soden acted as our tour guide to Tilberg, Netherlands; and in Tilberg, he gave a guided tour of Portland. Fun, funky and while occasionally disconcerting also entirely charming. We also saw some seriously crap art (y'all, come on; I LOVE conceptual art, but it needs to be, I don't know, GOOD) and the most incredible thing, a music/dance/fountain performance — Third Angle New Music Ensemble / The City Dance of Lawrence and Anna Halprin. That was unexpectedly tremendous, and I think most of Portland eventually came out to see most of it. Also, it was free and didn't require an early sign-up something blah blah blah. Also, again, it was TRE. MEN. DOUS. Come to think of it, other than the crap visual art, what I saw of last year's TBA was pretty great.
Today, I got an email from the new media guy at TBA (Sept. 3-13), and I *think* there might have been some ... feedback ... last year about how it went down. One paragraph begins, "Our box office has changed our press ticketing for this year ... " which, I *hope*, means that I can blog more about TBA for the Eugene audience. (As usual, our intrepid Brett Campbell will be previewing TBA for the print version of the paper, and I'll do a little more on the blog, I hope, when I'm inspired.)
Aaaaaanyway, point is, the big thing this year is Pink Martini's Oregon 150 celebration thingy. Which is described here and was moved to the Oregon Zoo for some reason (size?). Here is what the TBA website says, and it's a tad bit fulsome, but whatever (also, here is NPR's Scott Simon talking with Pink Martini's Thomas Lauderdale about the whole thing from our Actual Sesquicentennial Date back in February):
In 1959, to celebrate the 100th birthday of Oregon, the Blitz-Weinhard Brewing Company commissioned the Grammy Award-winning radio personality Stan Freberg to write a 21-minute-long musical comedy about the beaver state. The result was a hilarious tale of two explorers in 1859 named Harry and David, their encounter with a witch, and the subsequent birth of a state which must go back into the bottle after 100 years … that is, if the citizens of 1959 can’t break the spell. Sound confusing?
Well hold on to your myrtlewood, because a team of Oregonians, including Metro President David Bragdon, Chariots of Fire conductor Harry Rabinowitz, Thomas Lauderdale of Pink Martini, PICA Flash Choir’s Sarah Dougher & Pat Janowski, and the writers of Livewire! have teamed up to write a new Act IV, complete with brand new songs and rollicking plot!
With sets by Scrappers and an all-star Oregonian cast backed by the 234th Army Band - Oregon National Guard and Pink Martini, Oregon! Oregon! 2009 will debut at the Oregon State Fair, followed by performances in Bend and Jacksonville. The final performance—in Portland—will be co-presented by PICA at The Oregon Zoo for one night only!
You probably know Pink Martini, ubiquitous as they are, but just in case, a slightly blurry video:
Below is a video of the 234th Army Band's "Hymn to the Fallen." So ... that mashup will be interesting. I guess I'll be looking for tix to this (as will you, if you know what's good for you and you claim to love Oregon!).
Note from Suzi: Along with planned regular blog visual arts updates from me, arts interns Natalie Miller and Sheena Lahren will regularly contribute posts from the gallery and museum scene in Eugene, Springfield and sometimes farther-flung places like Florence (or, hey, even Portland). This is the first in a series! Natalie Miller is a senior journalism-magazine major from the UO, and her website is available here. Natalie is a staff writer for Ethos Magazine this summer and has written about food for the Weekly. Look for more from Natalie and Sheena in the months to come.
Image: Okazaki: Castle and Sugo Bridge: woodblock print by Sekino Jun'ichiro, from the series "The 53 Stations of the Tokaido." 1969. Courtesy White Lotus Gallery
An Evolving Tradition
Japanese printmaking
By Natalie Miller
Following their recent return from Japan, Dick Easley and Hue-Ping Lin, the owners of White Lotus Gallery, have opened their doors to showcase a new exhibit.
On display through August 29, the show features contemporary Asian art, with an emphasis on Japanese printmakers Yoshida Hiroshi, Sekino Jun’ichiro and Noda Tetsuya. Jennifer Huang, White Lotus’ curator, says that each of the artist’s work represents a different generation and a number of Japan’s major printmaking movements. Thus, by showcasing these artists side-by-side, White Lotus gives people a chance to learn about the individual movements and the techniques. According to Huang, the exhibit also allows viewers to visualize the changes that Japan underwent throughout the 20th century.
“To a large extent, the thrust of this show is to work in conjunction with the Jordan Schnitzer Museum’s showing of the 53 Stations of the Tokaido by Sekino Jun’ichiro,†Easley says. “[And] to compliment Sekino’s work, the gallery has a number of prints by Yoshida Hiroshi. In the case of Noda Tetsuya, this show has to do with recent acquisitions.†Easley explains that Yoshida’s schooling in the techniques of shin-hanga, or new prints, make his work a good counterpoint to the work of Sekino, who focused on the printmaking school of sosaku-hanga, where prints are self-carved and self-printed.
