KATE BECK :: ART NOTES

On and of the Mesa :: Johnnie Winona Ross, Carole Sue Ross

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:00:00 +0000

“Of all the memberships we identify ourselves by the one thing that is most forgotten, and that has the greatest potential... is place. We must learn to know, love, and join our place even more than we love our own ideas.”

-Wendell Berry

Snow Canyon, Utah

As artists, and writers, I think we do carry within ourselves a sense of place that uniquely defines us and grounds us to our lives; a point of reference, perhaps, that allows for meaning and the opportunity of personal being -- within the larger grasp of the more impersonal world. Perhaps 'place' is as simple as a response to a certain area or geographic region, or a more spiritual embodiment within our hearts and minds.

It may not always be easy to recognize our need to have a sense of place, to connect to it, or even to learn to trust our instinctive desire to seek it out. As artists, and writers, our course so often leads to no discernable plateau of worth, or even sensibility, when we pit ourselves against contemporary norms of material success. Surely, our strength lies within our hearts and souls.

Johnnie Winona Ross, Carole Sue Ross Southwestern Gothic Arroyo Seco, NM

It's impossible to talk about a sense of place in regard to contemporary art without thinking of my friends, Johnnie Winona Ross and his wife, Carole Sue Ross. Moving their lives and practices after many years in northern New England to the southwest United States, has allowed them to connect to a deeper sense of home, and work. They say they will never leave.

PocoCasa, Arroyo Seco, New Mexico

They built their house, PocoCasa, and workplace, Dry Creek Studios, in the austere landscape of northern New Mexico's high plain. They make non-objective art that is derivative of the nature that surrounds them, and rich in an essence of the cultural history of the native lands and people. 'Place' is visible in the choices they have made as life partners, as stewards of the fragile southwestern environs which they have come to love and as artists -- their life and their work, has everything to do with spirituality, and heart.

Dry Creek Studio “It’s like light in a cathedral…”

Set apart from their house, Dry Creek Studio is a sweeping, cantilevered structure with clerestory windows that open to all four directions, the largest facing north and south. The building is divided into two separate studios: Johnnie’s faces east, toward Taos Mountain, and Carole Sue’s faces west, toward Pedernal Mountain -- mountains often painted by Georgia O’Keeffe. Separate doorways and porches keep the spaces individual and private.

PocoCasa

Carole Sue Ross’s studio features shelves and tables to hold her hand-built, polished and smoked vessels which when finished, are mounted on a simple white shelf. “I want them to look contemporary but have an ancient feel”. Carole designs and nurtures PocoCasa’s beautiful gardens and plantings of fruit trees, sage, chamiso, juniper, aspen and pine. Flagstone walkways connect the buildings and wind around terraces and a ramada. Acacias border a seasonal pond where birds nest.

Johnnie Winona Ross at Dry Creek Studio
Johnnie Winona Ross
Johnnie Winona Ross is very interested in the nature of painting, and in process. His vocabulary is rich in paradoxical components that imbue his quiet, pristine surfaces with a tension of both chance and structure. I am very moved by this. They are strong, yet personal; formalistic, yet profoundly spiritual.

"....I look for the feeling that being in the landscape gives me, a feeling at the small of my back when I see something beautiful and consider it sacred. That's what I go for in my work, and I try to achieve that by keeping things minimal, almost meditative." -Johnnie Winona Ross

Johnnie Winona Ross Black Creek Seeps, 2009 acrylic burnished on linen, 36x34.5 inches

Indeed… Traces of viscous pigment flow vertically from top to bottom, scraped back layer upon layer, to be held eventually by luminously white horizontal bands. Ross’s paintings are firmly grounded, yet, they float between opaqueness and translucency.

The process of painting, scraping and repainting establishes a subliminal dynamic between counteractive elements --presence/absence, structure/freedom, resistance/release, richness/ austerity -- so that the painting itself becomes an elegant and sensuously integrated expression of oppositions. The viewer is quietly entranced by the purity of form, light and the suggestion of what lies beneath; the artists’ process, his hand.

"....Repeating the mark, or the drip, scraping, burnishing, builds a physical history within the painting …… when you see worn stone steps, whether at an Anasazi site, or the Met, it is interesting to consider the scores of people that have used or are using the steps in roughly the same way; or seeing the keys on an old piano, worn with use. You realize that you are just part of the stream of history, a large or small part, but you are only moving through.”
- Johnnie Winona Ross

Dry Creek Studio 2009

Ross is a consummate painter. His depth of experience is clear, from start to finish of each piece, as all aspects of his creative process bear the same touch. From his preferences for particular substrate materials, to the final, meticulous polishing of surface with a traditional burnishing stone of native Pueblo potters, Ross approaches all with the same integrity and sensitivity.

"... There is a beauty in that a craft, a care, are conscience decisions being made that maybe help one to be aware of the possibility…. that the overall effect of the painting somehow transcends the everyday physical world... (This) is a philosophical choice...."
-Johnnie Winona Ross

Johnnie Winona Ross James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe

Ross exhibits regularly in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, and throughout Northern New Mexico. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including a Gottlieb Foundation Support Grant. His work can be seen at The Stephen Haller Gallery, New York, James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe; Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque; Barry Whistler Galley, Dallas. He also works with Tamarind Prints and Santa Fe Editions, and has a beautiful book out, Johnnie Winona Ross, published by by Radius Books in Santa Fe, foreword by Douglas Dreishpoon and essay by Carter Ratcliff.

Dry Creek Studio

“Nature informs my work. I spent so many years working in a place that I didn't respond to, thinking it didn't really matter much. I lived in Maine; I was in NYC a lot. I found I was traveling to the Southwest every chance that I got. The light, the culture, the archeology, the desert, mountains. It was austere, real, exposed, but mysterious; it was not a casual place that you just were.

"It was spiritual to experience a rock art panel that was 2000-5000 years old, that is more affecting then any piece of art that I’ve ever seen. In 1994, I spent another year on grant at Roswell, my work really solidified, it wasn't like it really changed, it just became more powerful, it began to have that feeling of 'experiencing the rock art panel', or 'experiencing the desert', it became still, real, and a unique experience. My studio has 12' glass doors that face a 13,000' mountain, to one side of that is Taos Mountain, the sacred mountain. It is an unobstructed view. That view feeds me, every time that I look up.”

Carole Sue Ross Tilting Series 2008, Stoneware, Pit-Fired

Carole Sue Ross
Inspired by the exceptional quality of light and the open horizon of the land, Carole Sue Ross creates delicate smoke-fired ceramic vessels that rely on gravity, balance and weight. She molds the shallow clay pots by hand and fires them with eucalyptus wood or sage to color the surfaces. Her finished pieces are cohesive, visual groupings of these beautiful vessels, each taking into consideration the color, size, and direction of their respective tilting.

Carole Sue Ross Vessel detail

"I create work that relies on gravity, balance and weight which also contains similarities and contrasts. …The process involves a traditional way of forming the clay in direct sunlight. After the walls are manipulated to their thinnest state, I scrape and carve the exterior to form an organic-like open vessel. The clay pieces are created as sculpture, without a traditional foot which allows gravity to determine how each rests on the shelf.”

Carole Sue Ross at Cafe Loka

I am very attracted to the fluent color transition from within the vessels that radiates throughout the space that surrounds them. Color, for this reason, as well as the sensitive form, seems central in the luminous quality and consistency of these small, responsive pieces.

Carole Sue Ross Untitled Series 2008, Stoneware, Pit-fired

"After the initial forming, many layers of terra sigillata are applied. This mixture both seals and leaves the work with a satin smoothness and iridescent finish. The system of working is reminiscent of the process used by early Pueblo people going back to the eighth century.

“After bisquing, pieces are fired numerous times in a pit. Depending on the combustibles used -- eucalyptus, sage, seeds -- the resulting smoked areas ad patterns are both spontaneous and controlled."

Carole Sue Ross Tilting Series #5, 2008, Stoneware, Pit-fired
Carole Sue Ross’s work can be seen at Cervini Haas Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ. You may run into her work at Cafe Loka in Taos, New Mexico.

.... finally reuniting their hearts and being, Johnnie Winona Ross and Carole Sue Ross achieve work that has a glowing meditative presence, that reveals the austerity and subtlety of the desert landscape reduced to its experience; of mystical aura and natural formal beauty....

Must be the Land of Enchantment….

Thanks Johnnie,
Thanks Carole Sue

Sight Lines :: Fiona Robinson, Mary Judge

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 02:31:00 +0000

Fiona Robinson There and Back, Acrylic, Oil, Charcoal on Canvas, 2006: 90x70cms

For me, the pairing of these two artists has been instinctive, yet also a bit unfocused. I discovered, though, that although their techniques and expression vary considerably, they embrace a manifestation of life commonly, through line and through the earth; a human grounding of time and memory; history in the most profound sense.

Fiona Robinson
Fiona Robinson is an artist living and working in Weymouth - Dorset, England -- a seaport village 140 miles southeast of London, and 140 miles northwest of Cornwall. Several years ago, we connected through the Drawing Research Network, an organization based in the UK, comprised of individuals and institutions who are in some way involved in the research of drawing. We began a professional dialogue across these many miles which has resulted in a deep, professional respect, but also developed into a wonderful friendship.

Fiona Robinson Circular Walk 6, from The Journey Sequence, Pencil on Paper, 2007: 70x50cms

"The Circular Walk series refers to a walk accompanying a fellow artist on a route of her choice across the moor land of West Penwith between the parishes of Morvah and Madron. We started near Bosullow, walked up and over Watch Croft, joined the footpath to Nine Maidens Stone Circle, more accurately, the Boskednan Stone Circle and back to the beginning. Walking around stone circles within a circular walk became a series of circles within circles. Between the beginning and the end there is only uncertainty, explores the idea that nothing repeated can ever be the same. Any journey, however great, however small, has two certainties, a beginning and an end; it is what happens in between that has potential."

Fiona's abstract drawing sequences are conceptual journeyings through chosen and intimately felt landscape; collective records of experience pertaining to time and space, physical meanderings and memory. Her soft tonal surfaces, on paper and canvas, are saturated with layer upon layer of spontaneous line -- traversing the plane in fits and stops of transition -- sometimes smooth, often broken, only to resume its pace again, renewed, perhaps, by possibilites of destination and of return.

Fiona Robinson Journey Sequence 2007 installation , New Greenham Arts, UK

In 2007, Fiona won the University of Bath Painting Prize, UK, and was a Prizewinner at the 4th International Drawing Biennale, Melbourne, Australia. She is also a recipient of the Proof Magazine Brabcombe Award, UK and the Indigo Arts Prize, Liverpool, UK. She has been an invited artist at the International Drawing Biennale in Kosovo 2008, and was selected for the the Vth International Drawing Biennale, Pilsen 2006, Czech Republic. Recent shows include Lineweight at TSU Art Gallery, Missouri USA; Drawing Room II, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol UK; Transition at Rougemont Castle Exeter, UK and the Oxo Tower, London, UK. She has been awarded residencies at Brisons Veor, Cape Cornwall, UK; The Cill Rialaig Project, Co.Kerry, Ireland; and is a 2010 Recipient of the Ballinglen Arts Foundation Fellowship Award, Co. Mayo, Ireland.

Fiona Robinson Opposite Ends of a Possible Path, Oil, Charcoal on Canvas, 2002: 122x154cms: University of Bath Collection

"Opposite Ends of a Possible Path became about possibilities. A record of the memory of a walk over the hills above Upwey near Weymouth, it had been done many times but the painting specifically acknowledges that each time it is different. The lines are infinite variations of the route taken, preserved in a film of paint. It is about how memory fades as time elapses. In the painting the physicality of the line pales becoming a distant echo of earlier layers. Because of the organisation of space within the painting the route appears to change as the viewers move from one position to another. The work embraces the idea of mutability and variation. In it’s combining of paint and charcoal it deliberately overlaps the techniques of painting and drawing."

Fiona's drawings have been referred to as "documentary movement within interpretive space", "investigative, emotional topography", and "collective geographical meanderings". To me, they are elegant renderings of a heartfelt life and brilliant mind. They are exquisitely sensitve and beautiful, attributes difficult to share in this venue, perhaps, but I attest to this personally as I am lucky enough to have one....

In her own words:

"My work is about journeys and memory; journeys through spaces, through time and through memory. They are rooted in place but often exist only in memory. My father was born in Cork in Ireland in 1913 and one of his earliest memories, probably before 1920, was being taken to Kerry on the back of a cart to a family wake. The journey took three days, some of it on unmade roads, through a landscape that was wild and inhospitable. In 2008 I travelled to Kerry, to take up a residency as part of the Cill Rialaig Project in the Ballinskelligs. The roads are better now but it is still a wild landscape. The restored buildings of Cill Rialaig were once home to the family of Séan Ó’Connail, an illiterate Irish-speaking storyteller who was part of the oral tradition. He never left this peninsular but in retelling the stories brought to him by other travellers he journeyed, in his imagination, further than many people do in reality.

Fiona Robinson A Love Affair with the Irish Landscape: From Ballinskelligs Beach to Bolus Head Triptych, Pencil on Paper, 200x340cms, 2009

A love affair with the Irish Landscape follows a remembered journey from the ruins of an ancient Abbey, sitting perilously close to the encroaching sea, on Ballinkelligs beach, along winding lanes, past Cill Rialaig up to the top of Bolus Head. From this vantage point you can see the Skelligs, two outcrops of rock eight miles out to sea, on one of which is the remains of a sixth century monastery. The monks who lived there then were living on the edge of the known world, looking out over the Atlantic they were staring into the abyss. Each retelling of a story, each repeated journey, each new layer of drawing is different. This work is part of a continuum connecting me to the memories of all those other journeys through these spaces."

Fiona Robinson Transition 3 (detail) Drawing 5. 180 x 120 cm pencil on paper 2009

"Curated jointly by Exeter Artspace and Rita Parente of submit2gravity London, this project is in response to the prison cells underneath Rougemont Castle in Exeter. My drawings were installed in the holding cells under the castle which measure 6′ x 3′ and are a response to the space, or lack of it, to the marking of time, the lack of natural light and the echoing sound."

"I walk in the hills, across moors and along the borders of the sea. I drive through the landscape, take train journeys through derelict backwaters and trudge the pavements of cities. I plot these journeys in my mind and in my daydreams remembering them as real things but drawing them with my mind’s eye."

Fiona Robinson Studio at Weymouth, Dorset, UK

"The works on paper, with the marks rubbed back and laid bare, have a quietness about them, imparted by the apparent fragility of the pencil line, but the line also has a tensile strength that is insistent. The images stay in the mind. The generosity of scale of the canvases allows the lines to flow within the layers of paint imbuing them with a lyricism that suggests reverie. The process involves adjusting the memory, adjusting the line, allowing the formal requirements of the piece to take over from the initial free mark making, and then redrawing the route. Finally some parts of the image achieve a greater significance whilst preserving the faintest marks so that they stay in the mind like an unrecalled memory. Each piece of work records the progress of the drawing as well as tracing the route of the original walk. They are a sequence of remembering and forgetting."

Mary Judge

I've been so fortunate to run into Mary Judge, and her seductively intimate drawings and sculpture. We met in New York in 2008 following the opening of a large exhibit I was in at OK Harris -- along with mutual friends Joanne Mattera, Julie Gross and Margaret Neill. Mary creates abstract drawings on paper, canvas, stone and poured concrete forms.

Mary Judge Trebisonda Spazio per l'Arte Contemporanea, Perugia Italy 2002

"This former school in Perugia Italy provided a completely neutral environment and I proposed a stark, open presentation of works. Here one can see two spolvero drawings made directly on the wall, and a concrete floor piece."

She uses the ancient Italian copying techinique of spolvero, or "dusting", to build line and hue with dry pigment, imparting an earthy, even primitive essence to her conceptual surfaces, and shapes.

Mary Judge Exotic Hex Series
"These were inspired by Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs. Here a single design form is rotated around the center point of a circle. Size of works: 36x36"

She has worked also with Wildwood Press, creating amazing relief and photo litho prints on handmade paper. I am continually moved by the depth and sensitivity of this beautiful work -- her mark, her materials, her process.

Mary Judge at Wildwood Press,

Mary is an Associate Professor of Art at Parson's School of Visual Arts, and she is represented by Gallery Joe in Philadelphia, Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn and Dieu Donne Papermill in New York.

She is the recipient of a Dieu Donne Papermill Workspace Grant; NEA Mid Atlantic Foundation for the Arts Grant Works on Paper; Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; New Jersey Council on the Arts Individual Artist's Grant. She has also been awarded residencies at Concrete Laboratory Samsoe, Denmark; Valparaiso Foundation for the Art, Mojacar, Spain; Fondazione Marguerita Arp ; and Tel Aviv Artist's Studios . Her work is included in collections here and abroad including The Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; The British Museum, London, England; and the Neburger Bauman Collection.

Mary Judge at Wildwood Press

In her own words:
"The drawn image is a beginning - a first attempt that can be tentative and impulsive. The fragility of paper, the medium's usual support, and the visible tracks of the artist's hand combine to create a privileged space occupied by no other medium. More immediate and less controlled than in painting or sculpture, the artist's marks are fully exposed in drawing.

Mary Judge Spazio Dinamico, San Guilano Terme & Villa Undulna, Pisa Italy 2005
"Works displayed includes spolvero drawings on panel, canvas and Carrara marble chosen by the artist on site at a local quarry. The largest piece was trucked down and placed outside the gallery. I worked over the surfaces of the various pieces using a black powdered pigment with various stencils. The second part of the show took place at the Spa, Villa Undulna, where we placed several pieces outdoors and also hung a group of small drawings."

During the 1960s and 1970s, artists began to push these definitions, and for many, including Robert Morris, Dorothea Rockborne, Nancy Spero, and most notably Sol LeWitt, drawing became the medium within which many of their conceptual investigations materialized.

Mary Judge Metaphor Contemporary Art, New York NY 2005
"The high ceilings, great light and concrete floor inspired me to propose a large-scale cast concrete sculpture, my first made in the US, which was sold to a major collection. Also included were works on paper and canvas and panel. "

"Shifts in scale and new techniques also changed the environment for presentation and in turn helped elevate the status of the medium within the institutions of the art world.

Mary Judge Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield CT, June-Sept 2007
"Smaller cast concrete sculptures were placed throughout the space, both inside on two different levels and in the exterior. The interior gallery space included relief prints and spolvero drawings and outside this gallery I created a site specific spolvero drawing for the corridor wall, creating a dialogue between interior and exterior spaces and works."

" Proportion is something natural that the body feels: it is part of our survival mechanism. Every cell in the body feels it ... its sensing rightness and harmony that in the end is what beauty really is. I think everyone has this sense of natural proportion, which for an artist can be reinforced through drawing. Through the drawing process, specifically figure drawing, you develop a rhythm, things fall together, links are created, something between the body/eye and model and mind, like everything is connected ... the problem of expressing balance, the force of gravity, potential or arrested movements, and so forth. ....

Mary Judge at Wildwood Press

"....when I was very young, I began to actively draw on my own. Like so many young girls, I was always drawing horses; I was in love with horses. This desire manifested itself in countless drawings; the object of desire was the subject. I also learned from "how to draw" books, the kind where there are organic and geometric shapes that add one to another to make up an image. I think there's a connection with those geometric shapes and proportion.
Another part of understanding measure and proportion, other than direct contact with nature, is exposure to a wide range of "things" greatly made: cathedrals, temples, piazzas. In architectural structures proportion can be seen in a pure way. This exposure enters your body and becomes a part of what comes out. The Gothic cathedral at Cologne is a good example. It seems as if a great force is thrusting it up from underground, that it has emerged directly from the earth. There is a dazzling quality to the texture and repetition of the spires that grabs your attention and won't let it go. It resembles an exotic crystal formation: one can imagine those spires piercing the earth's crust on its journey from the underworld. This duality of expression of the upper and under worlds is a manifestation of the spiritual desires of those who built it. In a way, everything is encapsulated in it all at once: wonder, fear, and hope."

New Art TV Studio Visit with Mary Judge

http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:http://www.newarttv.com/Mary%2BJudge

Thanks, Mary and Fiona.

Color as it Happens :: Steven Alexander and Willy Bo Richardson

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 01:06:00 +0000

Color as light and form. My own conclusions are manifested within a spectrum of black and white, and geometric shape -- an architecture which I find astonishingly complete. But in which viewers often suspect other color is lurking. This is not so: the repetitive striations of my drawings are strictly monochromatic. It is an illusion, and an example of how the color we see is very personal, defined by an accumulation of associations, thoughts and memory -- as well as wavelength.

Regardless of my own aesthetic choices, I am continually moved by the power of a full spectrum -- what actually happens between colors, and that transformation at the hands of a sensitive, skilled colorist. Here are two I know, both experienced, who use color deftly and in very different ways but within a shared language.

Steven Alexander installation, The World at Large, Gremillion & Co. Fine Art, Housto

STEVEN ALEXANDER
Running into Steven Alexander -- his eloquent work and words, and sensitive, generous nature -- has been very special. Steven makes abstract paintings characterized by luminous color, sensuous surfaces and simple geometric configurations. He is an Associate Professor of Art at Marywood University, and has been Artist in Residence at Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy and Visiting Artist/Professor of Art at Parsons School of Design in New York, Marywood University/France, Anjou & Paris, and Austin Community College, Austin, Texas. Steven is represented by Gremillion & Co. Fine Art, Houston, Denise Bibro Platform, New York City and Ruth Morpeth Gallery, Hopewell, NJ.

In his own words:

"Sometimes the studio can be a fairly raucous place. Sure, there is plenty of time spent sitting, staring at stuff in progress, waiting for the motivation, energy or clarity required to make the next move.

Steven Alexander The Primrose Path, , 2007, 48 x 36 inches, acrylic on canvas

But when things are in motion, it becomes a place where much happens at once, and where actions are often accompanied by a din of sound -- thick, layered and pulsating, moving in and out of focus -- symbiotic with the labor, the color and viscosity of the painting process. Recently addressed works in progress lay drying under large fans -- the more stuff to dry, the louder the dense hum of the fans. The louder the fans, the louder the music -- overtones of both combining and colliding to form disembodied drones. Often during a cycle of work, one piece of music will be played over and over for the entire duration -- the repetition seeming to deepen the focus -- the music sustaining a specific poetic relationship with the decisions being made.

Steven Alexander Vibrolux, 2009, 16" x 158", acrylic on 7 canvases

But then, at a certain point in the process of each painting, it is necessary to completely change the atmosphere. Guston once talked about the the whole laborious painting process leading up to the final fifteen minutes when everything comes together. Well, it may be more than fifteen minutes, but the final stage of each piece is indeed where it all happens -- the culmination, the payoff -- and it is the most relaxed and satisfying part of the process. That's when the music and the fans are turned off -- when a different, more acute focus kicks in. There is only the sound of the trowel sliding across the surface, the taps and clanks of tools and paint buckets on the table as they are chosen, discarded, shuffled around -- a subtle awareness of the sound and rhythm of my own breathing and the scuff of my shoeheels on the concrete floor. In this zone, several hours can pass in an instant -- and the expanse, the stillness, the silence that is the essence of painting becomes a physical presence in the room.

Steven Alexander Meteor Beach, 2008, 96 x 96 inches, acrylic on 4 canvases (Hines Collection, NYC )

My work is an exploration of relations that reside in the constant flux of pure sensory events. I am interested in the interaction between the painting and the viewer's imagination and experience; in the painting's catalytic potency - it's potential to generate unspecified mobile meaning.

Color operates in this work and in the world as a kind of pure energy, dynamic, capricious, evocative. The surfaces emphasize the sensual rather than analytical nature of the painting process, and attest to the pervasive presence of time. Within the structures of the work, archetypal relations of male/female, earth/sky, internal/external are inevitably implied; not as opposing forces, but as interdependent aspects of an animate whole. In this sense, the paintings might be regarded as open-ended cosmologies, or as chunks of raw reality, unencumbered.

Steven Alexander Shine Eye, 2009, 48" x 36", acrylic on canvas

I am trying to build, out of color and substance, a place for the viewer's consciousness - where unexpected associations and resonances may occur, where past and future merge with the present moment, and the stuff of life, love and desire has corporeal presence - states of being, embodied in paint. "

Steven Alexander 2009

Willy Bo Richardson

Willy Bo Richardson is an abstract painter living and working in Santa Fe, NM. His work can be seen at William Seigal Gallery in Santa Fe, Gallery Sakiko and Nohra Haime Gallery, NY, New York, and Fresh Paint Art Advisors, Los Angeles, CA. Several months ago, we were fortuitously connected by a gallery in Santa Fe because of notable similarities in our work. What a nice find... I have been moved by his translucent surfaces of veiled color, and sensitive use of scale. And by his articulate meanderings about his work:

Willy Bo Richardson Poseidon I, 114 x 53 inches, 2008

"Poseidon was painted under a tin roof on a hilltop with rain, lightning and thunder crashing down. I don't know if you've ever been under a tin roof with rain- but it's right there with it.

Willy Bo Richardson Poseidon, Oil on Canvas, 53 x 114 inches, 2008

"Natural surrounding is important. I have a love/like relationship with NM. I like the desert, and sometimes really crave it, but generally head for the mountains. Skiing is incredible in Taos. You can also hike up from the last chair to mountain peaks -- a snowy mountain with Tibetan prayer flags is actually up in Taos.

In the summer a good hike will be enough to look out to the distance, and that's where the desert, along side mountains is really lovely.

Willy Bo Richardson Three Stages, #1, Oil on Canvas, 29 x 31 inches, 2004

And that's where my paintings come in- spaciousness. I try to digest it and put it out for others. Paintings can be like doorways or at least windows to physical locations and more.

Willy Bo Richardson Bathers, Oil on Canvas, 2008

Of course, the paintings are not landscapes - strictly places.

Willy Bo Richardson Confluence, Oil on Canvas, 53 x 114 inches, 2001

The idea of painting is an adaptation. It’s something that our culture can relate to. It has a certain format. Within a frame, within a context. It’s a way of taking an abstract moment, a color, an experience and putting it into a culturally digestible format. 40,000 years ago, humans were painting on the walls of caves. The painting as we know it today is a recent invention, but it's purpose stems back to humans' earliest civilizations.

Willy Bo Richardson Schalako Wall, Oil on Canvas , 53 x 114 inches, 2006

When I was a child I remember being mesmerized by the blur of colors from the vantage point of a speeding car. Along with the blur and the speed was always a feeling of freedom. In this same way, whenever taking a flight, not only would I leave the earth physically, but on an emotional level gain distance on life.

My paintings give me the same experience. My painting brings perspective. In some ways it’s like creating a window. One can put this window anywhere. No need to move somewhere to get this view. But the window is not necessarily looking out on a beach scene, or a forest scene, or a mountain scene. It’s actually looking out on a “distance scene”, a scene where one has space from their personal life. "

Willy Bo Richardson, 2009

A single color is hardly ever unconnected or unrelated to other colors. Color exists as a matter of context, relating constantly to its changing environment. Light. Form.

Thanks Steve, and Willy

Kate Beck: Whitespot, Drawings

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:06:00 +0000

Kate Beck: Whitespot, Drawings & Paintings, Icon Contemporary Art, Brunswick, ME

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DON VOISINE :: Conversation

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:32:00 +0000

with Ben La Rocco and Craig Olson
by Phong Bui

A week after the opening of his exhibit of a new group of paintings, which will be on view at McKenzie Fine Art Inc, located at 511 West 25th Street, till June 6, 2009, the painter Don Voisine visited the (Brooklyn)Rail’s Headquarters to talk with Assistant Art Editor Ben La Rocco, and contributing writer Craig Olson about his life and work.

Portrait of the artist. Pencil on paper by Phong Bui.

Ben La Rocco: Lets talk about your early life in Maine.

Don Voisine: I was born in Fort Kent, Maine in 1952. Fort Kent is a northern border town on the western-most edge of New Brunswick just 10 miles from the Quebec border. The majority of townspeople are of Acadian descent and speak French, the principal industry is potato farming and lumbering. My father died when I was three and my mother never remarried. She worked two jobs to support and raise three kids. From the time we were ten we also worked part time and after school.

Portrait of the artist. Pencil on paper by Phong Bui.

Ben La Rocco: Lets talk about your early life in Maine.

La Rocco: Are there any particular influences you remember from that time?

Voisine: While a senior in high school I played drums in a garage band called Mantra, hence my lifelong interest in music.

La Rocco: Do you really think Ike Turner is the greatest electric blues guitar player of all time?

Voisine: He was a phenomenal musician. At nineteen he was an A&R man for Sam Phillips and he brought people like B.B. King and Howlin’ Wolf to the studio for the first time.

Craig Olson: Right.

Voisine: And he played piano on some of those tracks. Then he started playing guitar. He had a great band in the mid-50s: The Kings of Rhythm. They recorded some terrific tracks on Federal Records out of Cincinnati. He’s the one who played guitar on all of those incredible Otis Rush Cobra singles.

Olson: Yeah, they’re so great.

Voisine: But I’m just not into virtuosity in guitar playing for it’s own sake. That’s like a white boy thing. It’s frantic.

Olson: Unless you’re Albert King.

Voisine: I went to see Buddy Guy in Central Park and it got totally boring because he was playing to the crowd, just going on and on with these extended guitar solos. I’d love to see him in a small club on the South Side of Chicago. That would be more the kind of music I’m interested in.

Olson: Yea, I hear you. I used to go down to Muddy Waters’s old club on the South Side, the Checkerboard Lounge, and there was this guy, Vance “Guitar” Kelly. And he could play, he could play all those licks, but he didn’t show off. But when he would play that way, as in this song called “Candy Licker”—you know that song? “I got me a candy licker, lick my candy all night long.” And he would make frat boys from the audience come up on stage and act it out. It was the most humiliating thing in the world. It was so funny. [Laughter.]

La Rocco: Don, what was your education like?

Voisine: I attended what was then the Portland School of Art; it’s now the Maine College of Art. I received an honorary BFA from the Maine College in 2000. The Portland School of Art, or PSA, was one of the last regional art schools in the country. Half the faculty did watercolors of the Maine seashore. We had lots of figure drawing classes and made many field trips to do plein air watercolors of nature. After 2 1/2 years of this, in 1973, I transferred to an alternative art school in Portland called Concept Center for Visual Studies. Concept was a short-lived program that broke away from the PSA. It was started by William Manning who, back in the 60s, was one of the few abstract painters in Maine, and a few others who disagreed with the PSA’s teaching philosophy. The faculty at Concept seemed more attuned to what was going on in New York and encouraged us to experiment. They did not have structured classes. You saw the faculty when you wanted to or had something to show them. As students we learned as much from each other as we did from the teachers. I met Kathy Bradford there. We, along with Maury Colton, had many intense and passionate discussions about art. This was my unofficial graduate school. Concept was located above a cosmetology school on Congress Street. The smell of hair products filled the corridors and mingled with the smell of paints. This has left me with an indelibly visceral memory of the place. I think one of the best ways to learn about art is to look and see what other artists have done. Learn how to look hard, seriously, and in an engaged critical manner, then use the same standards when considering your own work.

La Rocco: Is there a metaphorical intent to your paintings? Do the dark areas represent an absence or a void?

Voisine: Well, I do think of it as an absence, but it’s also full. It has weight, you know, a presence. It can be read both ways, a void, or something weightier.

Olson: And that’s important for you, that it’s read that way.

Voisine: Yes. In my work I like to get different readings. The white ground can be read as a negative or a positive, and it can vary from painting to painting, but generally I try to have things operate on a number of levels.

Olson: Yeah. So maybe even spatially, then, those areas flip back and forth.

Voisine: To me, that’s the air that activates the space of the paintings. That’s where the paintings breathe.

La Rocco: Despite all the black in the paintings, they never seem moody or maudlin, which is in contrast to a lot of other painters who use dark colors.

Voisine: Well, I’ve done some of those paintings, but I’ve also worked really hard to eliminate any sense of mourning from my work. I think a lot of art in the twentieth century, modernist work, has that sense of mourning to it.

La Rocco: How do you see your work in relationship to the Modernist tradition? I think of a lot of modernist work as having to do with negation or an abject condition.

Olson: I think they were also trying to neutralize space, and I don’t think you’re necessarily trying to do that, Don.

Voisine: I’m not trying to make a break from the past. I think I work in dialogue with it. But I’m also trying to make something that is relevant now, a different way of thinking about abstraction. One of those things is space. Like, Greenberg’s formalism is about flatness. I’ve always been trying to bring a kind of visual space into my work. Not something illusionistic, but a real visual space.

Olson: Would you consider that analogous to the way you experience space in your life? Where does it come from?

Voisine: I’ve made my living painting apartments. Usually, when you do that the room is empty, so you get a sense of that room when there’s no furniture in it. It’s a very different experience from when a space is lived in. I worked in theater for a while as a technical director with Ping Chong, and we were trying to create a space within a theatrical environment. Each show had a very different kind of space to it. He used a lot of films and projections and shadow plays in his work and that required a very shallow space. What I’ve experienced goes into the work, what I see goes into it.

La Rocco: Do you think of space as having an emotional quality?

Voisine: I use the color in my paintings to convey that, and this absolutely affects the space. My use of color is very subjective, very intuitive. It’s what sets the tone. The colors affect the interior blacks. But I don’t try to put in specific associations. I’m open to how people respond to the work and what they’ll see in it. I’m not trying to make something look like a landscape or something literal or literary.

La Rocco: One wants one’s work to evoke something familiar in a viewer. Do you want your painting to evoke sensation in a viewer? Or memory? Or feeling? Or should it be some kind of new experience?

Voisine: It could be all of the above. I don’t want to close off possibilities. But I don’t want to be heavy-handed about it. I don’t like it when artists say “Well, this piece is about this. This one is about that.”

La Rocco: It’s a little like an empty stage.

Olson: One thing I learned from your work early on was that you were engaged with that history of formalist abstraction. It wasn’t a critique of it. It was a different take on it. And, to me, as a young artist, it was very inspiring because you kept that dialogue alive. You actually offered new insight into something that we had all been told was over. And I think the kind of abstraction you do lends itself to those open readings.

Voisine: Well, how I work doesn’t derive from theory. It’s all about the visual. It’s all about creating a convincing object. I’m always looking at art, and sometimes some paintings I do are a response to that. A Malevich painting might inspire me, or it could be a Titian. Or, maybe the Cézanne I saw last week in Philadelphia. It’s all a big pool to draw from.

La Rocco: Is your painting targeted at a space outside of language?

Voisine: Yeah.

La Rocco: So that in some sense attempting to discuss what it’s about is contrary to its nature?

Don Voisine, “Wheel” (2008). Oil on wood. 25 × 20 inches. Courtesy McKenzie Fine Art, New York.

Voisine: It’s not as if you can’t talk about it. I’m not a storyteller, you know, and that’s one of the reasons I was drawn to working abstractly in the first place. I can express the essence of something without a narrative to it.

La Rocco: Did you come to that realization slowly? Or was it something you knew from the start?

Voisine: I think I knew it early on. When I decided I wanted to paint, it was my second year of art school and from that point on, I just worked abstractly. The first abstract art that I saw I didn’t understand, I had no idea what it was coming from, but there was something about it that I felt I could connect with.

Olson: I think that this is an interesting question, in terms of narrative or storytelling. They are very abstract things. This split between abstraction and narrative happened somewhere. Where do you see your work fitting into that? Do you plan each painting out before hand? Or is it from a more subjective place?

Voisine: It’s been a long, ongoing thing. It’s hard for me to remember what the decisions were that steered me in this direction in the first place. The structures or the black forms in the paintings are kind of figured out when I start. They’re laid out on the board I’m painting on. I don’t have drawings that I blow up to scale. If I do any drawings to figure out a structure it’s a little thumbnail thing.

Olson: Is there intuition involved in the work?

Voisine: Oh, totally. I figure out the proportions as I’m making the paintings. I’ll take center points, or an edge, and build something off of either. I’ll pivot an edge, a straight edge off from a point and then build the angles off of that. Sometimes I’ll draw a cross, and then I’ll move the measure, adjusting the thickness of it, and then do another line, keeping the original point. That creates a very different angle than if I’d measured everything out.

Olson: Yeah, it’s a strange take on single-point perspective. Lets talk about the surfaces you get in your paintings.

La Rocco: When I look at those surfaces it seems there’s almost always a central area, with different types of matte, different actual colors and sheens within the black. Then that’s bordered by a different color in each painting—a very wide variety of colors in the borders from painting to painting. Then there’s this incredible attention to edges, which never seems fussy in your paintings. The edges are always careful but they’re never tight, like they’re in motion.

Voisine: Well, they’re at the service of something. I need to get those edges taut to create the spatial tension in the painting. I use tape and there are bleeds and soft edges but if they don’t distract from the line that I want or create a slackness in the space, it’s fine. A painting doesn’t really snap into place until I’ve straightened out those lines.

La Rocco: So you’re waiting on a certain experience of the painting based on the types of edges to know when the painting is starting to work, but there’s a certain margin of error.

Voisine: Right, because paintings have optimum viewing distances. When you go to a gallery or show and walk up to a painting, you find yourself going back and forth, taking a couple steps back or coming forward until you kind of settle at what is the right viewing distance. For me if it looks fine at that distance then if you see bleeds up close, it’s not an issue. But if I’m at that distance and it’s working against what I’m after, then I touch it up. But it’s not about perfection. Agnes Martin said that’s an impossible task. And was it the Chinese Buddhist painters who would always make sure there was a mistake in the work somewhere?

Olson: What types of paint do you use to get that specific black matte that occurs in your work and that sheen that you get on the gloss surfaces? I was wondering if you could go into some technical details of how you actually come up with those passages. They’re pretty flawless and elegant. At the McKenzie exhibition I noticed you can see reflections of one painting in another as you move around the gallery. That creates this extra dimension in the darkness of the central area of each painting.

Voisine: There’re no secrets. There’s really nothing fancy in how I make the paintings. Everything is done in a very straight forward way. No fancy gels and mixtures. No flourishes. I use oil paint pretty much straight out of the tube. I mix the colors myself and I use Liquin to get the gloss. It takes a number of thin layers to get a smooth surface. It gets shinier with each layer. For the matte areas, I just let the paint dry as it normally does. Mars black dries pretty matte. It’s all very matter of fact. But then I try to get a painting to do as much as possible within these limitations.

Olson: In some of the recent work you have the black areas replaced by red. I was wondering if you could talk about that decision.

La Rocco: What kind of red?

Olson: Red red.

La Rocco: I was picturing a dark red.

Olson: No, it’s red red.

Voisine: I always think about having other colors in the center and I’ve done a few using cadmium red on Styrofoam. But on the whole the use of black has provided the clarity to what I’m doing.

Don Voisine, “Buzz” (2009). Oil on wood. 17 × 17 inches. Courtesy McKenzie Fine Art, New York.

La Rocco: Those are your R-Value paintings. They’re all done on Styrofoam. They seemed to mark a transitional point in your work. Prior to that you were working with squares and rectangles on square surfaces like those you exhibited in the Presentational Painting exhibition at Hunter in 2006. I thought the R-Value paintings opened things up after that. And now you’re working on rectangular surfaces of varying dimensions and incorporating diagonals on a much larger scale. Weren’t the R-Value paintings titled after race car drivers?

Voisine: Yes, whatever formats I’ve used before I feel like I can use again, I can quote myself. But as far as the titles for the R-Value paintings, they were shown in a converted garage space, Abaton Garage in Jersey City. I named them after race car drivers to maintain an automotive association. Each painting also has its R-Value rating, which is based on the thickness of the Styrofoam boards I use, if its 2 inch Styrofoam it has an R-Value of 10, but if it’s 3 inch its R-Value of 15. It’s one of the few things in my paintings that is quantifiable, as a natural measure of something. Any other attributes my paintings may have are more intangible. Painting on Styrofoam boards is an ongoing and interesting side project I began in 2006 when I was invited by Mark Dagley to exhibit at Abaton Garage. It began simply as a “what would happen…?” kind of thing. As you noted Ben, the use of diagonals in the central forms was, to a large extent, developed on this surface. Shortly thereafter I began painting these more dynamic shapes on the wood panels. Each approach has generated ideas for the other. For me one of the most interesting aspects of the R-Value paintings is how people perceive them. Viewer response has been quite different from my work on wood. Although I use the same imagery on both substrates the Styrofoam paintings maintain a funkier edge, with perhaps less gravitas, and convey a quality of humor not associated with rigorous geometric forms. The contrast of such formal imagery on a basically throwaway material seems to make the paintings very approachable, even viewer-friendly.

Olson: Many of your materials are used in construction—wood panels, Styrofoam, etc. Not materials associated with formal, abstract paintings, as defined by [Clement] Greenberg or [Michael] Fried. What is your relationship to those guys? Do you read them?

Voisine: No, I don’t read them now. In the early 70s I was reading a lot of Greenberg and seeing a lot of Color Field paintings. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was showing a lot of the painters they championed, Larry Poons, Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland. I was trying to work in that vein. Once I moved to New York I saw there was a lot more that was going on, and the narrow perspective I’d come to know from Portland Maine needed to be broadened. I wanted to make work that was more my own. I started bringing in things from the outside world, and my life. I’ve never really been a purist; it’s a sullied sort of formalism. I like my formalism a little bit dirty. [Laughter.]

Olson: In some of the paintings in your current exhibition, the central black bands break the edge of the picture plane, extending beyond. In others, they’re contained within the borders and that changes how the picture is read.

Voisine: A few years ago most of the paintings had the perimeter or border color going all the way around. But I use that less and less now. I came to understand this idea of laterality through looking at Barnett Newman. If the color is at the top and bottom only, or just on the two sides, it allows for a more expansive spatial reading. It’s not as contained. In a way, that could be an expression of me as a person, where I am.

La Rocco: There’s the issue of scale also. In this most recent show there is a whole other level of intensity and ambition, and also expression. These are some of the largest paintings you’ve done.

Voisine: Yes, but I’ve done larger work before. When I was working on canvas and linen.

La Rocco: How long ago was that?

Voisine: Um…last century! [Laughter.] I’ve made some seven and eight-foot paintings. I started working on wood in 2000 and it opened up another possibility for expression in the work. In my current show “Inauguration” is a five-foot square, that’s the biggest I’ve done on wood and it’s about as big as I can handle. You know, they just get really heavy. But I think paintings can be big without size. I don’t feel like I have to make 8-foot paintings. That’s a lot of black! Also, a big difference in the work on wood is that it reads a lot faster. It seems to have more of a graphic impact. And then if you slow down and actually look at the painting you’ll find that there’s a lot of detail, too. It gets your attention and hopefully slows you down to look. The ones on canvas were slower and they seemed to absorb light more. They were more reticent.

Olson: How long you been involved with the American Abstract Artists?

Voisine: I was nominated and accepted into the organization in 1997 and elected President in 2004. I’m usually not a joiner of groups but this seemed more important. It’s a link to history. The American

Abstract Artists is an artist’s group that was founded as an exhibiting organization in 1936. From its inception the AAA played a pivotal role in the evolution of non-objective art in America. The group was born in response to the lack of professional respect accorded American Modernists in the 1930s. Among the original founding members were Ilya Bolotowsky, Balcomb and Gertrude Greene, Harry Holtzman and Alice Trumball Mason, just to name a few. Once the group was officially chartered and mounted its first exhibition new members included Josef Albers, Giorgio Cavallon, Carl Holty, Ray Kaiser, Ibram Lassaw, George L.K. Morris, and Esphyr Slobodkina. By 1940 Ad Reinhardt was writing and designing broadsides used to promote the group’s causes. During World War II many European artists came to the United States. Moholy-Nagy, Leger and Mondrian all became members during the war years. Mondrian’s work especially exerted a significant influence on the group. With the dominance of Abstract Expressionism the organization almost died out in the 50s but a revival of interest in geometric art and the new styles of the 60s such as minimalism helped revive interest. New artists joined, Brice Marden, Robert Ryman, Sol Lewitt, Dorothea Rockburne, even Robert Smithson. This helped maintain the AAA’s vital tradition. David Reed and Merrill Wagner led the group at one time in the 80s. The AAA has always included a significant number of woman artists, in contrast to the more male dominated movements that followed.

La Rocco: Now that abstraction is a more accepted part of the artistic landscape, how do you understand the AAA’s role in contemporary culture?

Voisine: Abstraction is certainly well accepted in the art world but can still be an issue for the general public. Artists still need a forum to present and discuss ideas. Most artist groups only last a few years, while the AAA is approaching its 75th anniversary. We continue to organize member exhibitions, produce member print portfolios and catalogs, distribute published materials internationally to cultural organizations, document member history in the Archives of American Art, publish a journal every few years, and host critical panels and symposiums. In 2007 Kat Griefen curated an exhibition from the membership titled “Material Matter”, which was presented at Sideshow Gallery here in Williamsburg. The show felt fresh and current. As to the American Abstract Artist’s mission today, all I can say is, it’s not over.

La Rocco: Yeah. How do you feel about dust?

Voisine: In my painting? [Laughs.] I can’t keep it off. Did you notice stuff embedded into the surface?

La Rocco: I once watched you take out a big brush and dust a dry painting. Those dark areas will show any speck on them. I thought it might have a particular interest for you. People have done a lot of work with dust in the past—Marcel Duchamp, Gabriel Orozco and Vik Muniz.

Voisine: No, I really don’t strive to make the paintings perfect, it’s not about that at all. It’s important to me that they have a trace of the hand in them, that they are not machine made.

La Rocco: Can you tell us on the record what abstraction is? [Laughter.]

Olson: There isn’t a forty-five or a seventy-eight? [Expressive.]

Voisine: After all these years, I don’t really know. Michael Zahn makes abstract paintings that are actually representations of something. The paintings he had at the show with Linda Francis, Joan Waltemath, and myself at Janet Kurnatowski Gallery, those were box-tops, but they were abstract paintings. Those aren’t realistic but they’re abstracted from something. In a way maybe Linda’s work was the most abstract but she also works from something that is observed. My painting in that show was a tall narrow vertical, called “Debutante Twist.” For a long time I was trying to figure out how to do a vertical painting and I didn’t want it to read like a figure or doorway. But I couldn’t get past it so I just said I’ll go with it and that’s how I was able to resolve the painting. I came up with that title because the shifting of the planes reminded me of a pose in figure drawing class, a contra-posto? And the blue reminded me of tulle. My geometric figure was all dressed up. But then I don’t want people to read the title and look at that painting and say, “oh, I get it.” I’m not an advocate of anything for stylistic reasons. My work isn’t geometric because I wanted to make geometric paintings. It’s where the work led me. It’s all painting whether it’s representational or abstract. A good painting is a good painting.

La Rocco: It’s a personal decision, you come to it. It’s not an ideological position.

Voisine: No, I don’t think I’m an ideologue. I realized how uncool I was in 1991 when everybody in the art world in New York was talking about going down to D.C. to see the Sigmar Polke show. At the same time the National Gallery had a Titian show. I was like “Oh, I have to see the Titian show!” I mean the Sigmar Polke show was coming to the Brooklyn Museum within a year anyway. The Titian show was just amazing. There was a late painting he did when he was in his seventies, “The Flaying of Marsyas”, which was in a room all by itself. I walked in and my jaw dropped. You get up close to that painting and you find everybody in there, Bacon, Turner, Whistler. It’s basically an emotional response. And in the Boston show now there’s a late Titian painting of, I forget the saint’s name, but everything was really softly painted except a bit of the features, his right arm is held back and the division between the light and dark, the shadow on his arm, is the vein going down his bicep, which is clearly delineated. And that’s what holds everything together in the painting, just makes it work. It’s amazing, those little details that make the painting.

La Rocco: I guess that’s where I fail to understand the distinction. Abstraction. Sometimes I think I grasp it. Where I fail to understand it is that basically it’s grounded in the painting of it and in your immediate emotional response to it. It doesn’t really matter if it’s a Rothko or a Titian, and that’s where I get bogged down.

Voisine: You don’t need to get bogged down, that’s language. You just do your work.

La Rocco: Don, what do you think of Harvey Quaytman in relation to your own work?

Voisine: People ask me all the time what I think of Quaytman and I do like his work. There certainly were similarities to what I was doing before all the diagonals. People say, “It would be great to see your work together, you know, what do you think of showing with Quaytman?” It’s not as clear-cut as people think, it’s a strange relationship. We share a common visual language but when I look at his work I can’t help but think of all the different decisions I would have made. For me that’s an interesting relationship in itself.

La Rocco: What do you think the relationship of the blues is to painting?

Olson: Do you find one at all, in your own experience?

Voisine: Well, the blues is about a good woman treating you bad. And paintings can treat you bad. Paintings mess with you all the time.

About the AuthorThis exhibition also occurs in conjunction with Chuck Close: Maquettes and Multi-Part Work (1966-2009), which will be on view from May 7 through June 6, 2009 at Pace/McGill, 32 East 57^th Street. The artist will also be the subject of an upcoming museum exhibition entitled Familiar Faces: Chuck Close in Ohio Collections at the Akron Art Museum, Ohio from September 5, 2009 through January 3, 2010.

Happenings :: NOW

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 13:23:00 +0000

A few really nice things are happening with people I know. First, my good friend and favorite art conversationalist, Andres Verzosa, director, owner and founder of Aucocisco Galleries in Portland, Maine, is celebrating the opening of his beautiful new space in the Old Port section of the city.

Above, 89 Exchange, with Arrow !

A U C O C I S C O G A L L E R I E S
89 Exchange Street Portland, ME 04101
207-775-2222
Tues-Sat, 10-6 and by appointment

A long time anchor of the Portland Arts District in it's former location on Congress Street, near the Portland Museum of Art, Aucocsico Galleries represents a range of focus through mid career and emerging artists, estate works and private collections, including my friends: Grace DeGennaro, Kathy Bradford, Dozier Bell and Jessica Gandolf. To one degree or another, gallery artists ascribe to a common inspirational bond with the state of Maine.

Aucocisco's inaugral opening at 89 Exchange is this Friday, May 1 -- please stop by and welcome Andy in his beautifully renovated new space!

In New York:

Don Voisine has new work opening Thursday April 30, 6-8pm, at McKenzie Fine Art, 511 West 25th Street, through June 6

Don Voisine , Weave, Oil on Wood, 16x26 inches, 2009

Doug Witmer , Field + Stream, opening this Saturday 5-7, at The Painting Center 52 Greene St 2nd Fl, in Soho

Doug Witmer, Green Gloves, 24x20 inches, Gesso, Acrylic on Canvas, 2009

Mark Wethli, Recent Paintings, at Red Flagg through May 16
638 West 28th between 11th &12th Aves

Mark Wethli, Signal, Acrylic on Wood Panel, 20x15 inches, 2009

Jackie Lipton at Corinne Robbins Gallery
147 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn (between Clinton and Henry Streets) through May 17

Jackie Lipton, Acrylic, Oil, wax and alkyd on Panel, 2009

Stephan Plount , Pratt Alumni Group Show, in Water Mill on Long Island

Stephan Plount, before blue, Watercolor, Gouache,Graphite on Arches 300# HP (6 sheets), 36 x 15 inches, 2008

In Santa Fe:

My friend Diane McGregor's very beautiful new paintings at Judy Youens Gallery 826 Canyon Road, Santa Fe, NM

Diane McGregor, Whisper the Luminous, 36x36 inches, Oil on Canvas, 2009

And two group venues where I currently have work:

Kentler International Drawing Space 100 Works on Paper Benefit, 353 Van Brunt Street(Red Hook) Brooklyn 718-875-2098 Thurs - Sun 12-5
BENEFIT EXHIBITION: April 17- May 10 / Thursday - Sunday, 12-5 pm
BENEFIT: Thursday, May 14, 6 - 9pm, Doors open at 5:30 (Ticket holders only)
PLUS: SPECIAL SILENT AUCTION

Kate Beck, Untitled, Graphite on Rives, 10x10 inches, 2009

Stayin' Alive a silent art auction for metaphor
at Metaphor Contemporary Art 382 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn
May 1 - May 19, 2009
Exhibition and Auction: With over 100 art works by your favorite Metaphor artists and guest artists, this is your chance to purchase an exceptional artwork at a very collectible price!
Preview and Meet the artists party: May 1, 6-9pm

Kate Beck, Untitled, Charcoal, Graphite on Architect Vellum, 20x24 inches, 2007

Go see them!

Speak Line, Shape :: Brent Hallard

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 15:46:00 +0000

060908# 'miyu', 8.27" x 11.69" card on Japanese cotton museum board mounted onto expanded PVC

For me, line is being. When I look at a beautiful drawing, my heart beats faster; I am seduced with the reckoning of space by artist and mark. I respond to line, to shape, to color; to order and to structure; the architectronics of space, both obvious and obscure. I believe drawings can be created as an intuitive response to material placed within a certain defined location, at a certain velocity, within a certain moment. In such processes, the resulting drawings are evidenced as the mechanics of time and structure evolve.

Pour faire simple - at ParisCONCRET. The exhibition marks the opening of a new establishment in Paris devoted to abstract and reductive art.

If you are familiar with my work, you know that I also believe drawing to be a form of visual intelligence; a record of thinking and re-thinking through repetitive attention to formal elements. Brent Hallard creates drawings within this dialogue. As he says, "The spin is in the story that the line and shape speak".

Brent grew up in Sydney Australia. He has lived in Germany and the UK, and currently in Tokyo, Japan. He runs a project space near the Jiyugaoka district called Bus-Dori. Brent keeps a studio blog, ConcretePhone, as well as Visual Discrepancies, where he interviews contemporary artists such as Kevin Finklea, Mel Prest, John Tallman, Doug Witmer, Linn Meyers, and
Shinsuke Aso.

Hallard Studio shot of small mock templates that are being turned in physical signs using corrugated plastic, sheet plastic (that resembles shoji), with Japanese acrylic resin for the color line

Brent's work is evidenced in vividly graphic, scaled segments of line and color positioned within varying spacial parameters. His drawings are a sort of metaphysical exploration of concrete space, implicit with tension arrived at via combined oppositional structures such as controlled line and vast expanse; noise and quietude; the grounded and the gravity-defying; the formalistic and the conceptual.

acrylic and pencil on cut and folded paper, 8.5 x 11.7 in., 2008

"...What I’m actually looking for are a set of lines that work well while keeping the interest in a visual flux. The template drawings are usually small. I use painted tape to clarify choices, but also to hunt out other viable ways of bringing the experience out. I work with very simple materials and employ simple rules that eventually get broken. In the end it’s in the monkey business that you get good rhyme, reason, and rhythm".

spare snippet

Visually spare, yet ephemeral, Brent's work embraces a reductive, perhaps Minimalist aesthetic. But with life. Line is an entrance to surface, and beyond, by sheer constructivist physicality. It moves fluidly, shifts into dimensional form, flattens and returns to quiet. Color, both as chroma and substance, clinches the deal: Japanese acrylic resin on plastic paper, colored tape, mounted board, walls, and layers of corrugated plastic. Simplicity, and beauty.

Spa-t_kiss -pink fb

".... Each of us have our special moment with art, and I have mine too. It's a moment defining a frame within a space, a moment that moves clock-wise, or, and then, anti-clockwise. It's a moment above and below the moment. It's a moment that floods and sinks. It's a moment that pours into every empty cabin-space. It's a moment that moves deeper into the moment. This moment eventually breaks into two, and is engulfed by the one, and as an ocean, drives us through".

TRANSformal at Pharmaka, LA, 2009

Yes, your line and shape do speak.

Thanks, Brent.

Beyond the Boundary :: Clytie Alexander

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:08:00 +0000

Clytie Alexander NM 67 Blue, Ink on Glassine, 36 x 24, Courtesy of Betty Cunningham Gallery March, 2009

I have been captivated by Clytie Alexander's pristinely ordered painted planes on view in her exhibit, Diaphans, at Betty Cuningham Gallery in Chelsea. The work consists of minimal, elegantly constructed surfaces which embrace a sensitive and austere perception of light, color and space. In the foyer, framed ink drawings on translucent Glassine paper, hover beneath plexi panels and layers of the reflective, shimmery paper.

Clytie Alexander Diaphan 41 White/White, acrylic aluminum, 48 x 34, 2009 courtesy of Betty Cuningham Gallery

In the main gallery, her Diaphans hang by metal bars just away from the wall support. These are process oriented renderings constructed of paper-thin sheet metal, randomly punched through with holes, and painted on each side with tonal variations of acrylic paint.

Clytie Alexander Diaphans 48 x 34 inches, acrylic aluminum, 2006 Installation view courtesy Greenfield Sacks Gallery

The installation of the panels allows light to travel through and around the uniformly sized surfaces. With gentle fluctuations of color, light source and air flow, the essence of the work is continually and subtly in flux.

Clytie Alexander Diaphan 18 Blue/ Ultramarine 34 x 35 inches, 2007 Courtesy of Betty Cuningham Gallery

The effect is powerful: a muting of edge and therefore a questioning of the architecture of defined space, controlled by the presence or absent of light. Go see it.

Clytie Alexander, Diaphans

Betty Cuningham Gallery
Chelsea
541 West 25th Street
February 5 - March 14, 2009

ISP :: An Inside Story

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:26:00 +0000

Fellow artist and blogger Pam Farrell has a very nice thing going on which she refers to as an 'interactive studio project'. She has posted on many cohorts -- including Diane McGregor, Joanne Mattera, John Tallman, Steven Alexander, Ken Weathersby -- and other interesting artists whose work I hadn't been as familiar with. Its a more intimate look into our work, and a nice way to see where our practices actually happen, and how we feel about all of that..... check it out!

Color :: Obscura

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:44:00 +0000

Liz Doles Pinhole Camera image 4x5 inches Teotihuacan, Mexico

I recently heard from artist and friend, Liz Doles, who finds herself teaching in Nepal for the winter. Liz is a painter who also takes extraordinary photographs with a pinhole camera.

Liz Doles Digital Image Nepal, 2009

We met as fellow residents at the Vermont Studio Center last fall. I asked , "Why Nepal?", and she sent the following words and images*:

"While others may come to Asia to benefit from Ayurvedic healings, to give rein to unrestricted illegal drug use, to immerse themselves in esoteric Buddhist learning and Hindu spirituality, to shop, to ascend Earth’s highest peaks or drown in guilty sexual pleasures, I came for the color combinations.

Liz Doles Pinhole Camera image 4x5 inches Teotihuacan, Mexico

Crushing color in landscapes of fabulous filth. The extraordinarily brilliant dress of the most ordinary Indian and Nepali women.

　

Liz Doles Digital Image Nepal, 2009

When I walked into the classroom in the monastery and saw its robin’s egg blue walls and crimson doors awash in winter sunlight, the young monks, their lithe, adolescent male bodies draped in maroon, their brown Newari faces with chiseled cheeks and chins, their dewy eyes and plump little pillow lips, Hollywood white dentition and cropped black tonsures, seated erect at benches that extended in parallel rows to the back of the classroom, I fell in love."

Liz Doles Digital Image Nepal, 2009

A pinhole camera is very simple: it is a light-proof box with a small hole in one side, no lens and a single, tiny aperture. Light passes through this single point and projects an inverted image on the opposite side of the box. The camera's shutter is manually operated and consists of a flap of light-proof material to cover and uncover the pinhole. Typical exposures range from 5 seconds to hours and sometimes days.

Though slow shutter speed may make for a typically lesser defined image, there is nothing at all obscure about Liz' color. The opposing tension of richness of hue and subtlety of line is very intriguing.

Thanks, Liz.

* The pinhole camera images I have included are not from Nepal as Liz has not been able to travel to Beijing to have her film developed. She sent these more traditional Nepalese digitals of her experience, which when pared with the pinhole images from Mexico, illustrate well the impact the culture, and color, is making on her.

Down to Zero

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 15:31:00 +0000

Kate Beck Digital Snow Cover January 2009
Does it remind you of Stengel at The Whitney?

I've been procrastinating for several weeks now. The election is over, world peace is a fallacy, we're not selling, they're not buying. I've been taking long, really cold walks with my dog just to numb it all. Then I picked up a book of selected writings of Ad Reinhardt, which took me back -- to my own Black Paintings, and to myself. This poem, by W. H. Auden, was sited.

Kate Beck Canyon.Black 46x46 inches Oil, Wax, Mica on Linen 2007

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell;
But, on earth, indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all the stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look to an empty sky
And feel its total darkness sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Kate Beck Untitled 12x12 inches Oil, Wax, Mica on Linen 2008

Indifference, indeed.
I guess it's the best I can do right now.

Take a Pencil :: Bienále kresby Plzeň 2008

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:03:00 +0000

I am frequently awed by the broad European embrace of drawing as a complete aesthetic. Here are a few images from the International Biennial of Drawing Pilsen 2008:

Honored Guest artist, Adriena Šimotová

Jurying process University of Western Bohemia, Plzně , Czech Republic July 2008

Drawings are initially submitted in the raw: only pure mark on paper. Works of 112 artists representing 46 countries were selected this year.

Zdeněk Tománek Barrier III, Pencil, graphite, 100×70,0 cm, 2008 Czech Republic

Works of Adriena Šimotová at Galerie města Plzně

Paul Manfred Kaestner
From the Big Bell of Love, 29.01.2008, Combined technique, hand-made paper, 65,0×50,0 cm, 2008
Germany

Jaroslav Jebavý BP 5, Pencil, 100×70,0 cm, 2008 Czech Republic

Gallery at the University of Western Bohemia

John Jones Untitled VIII 55,0 × 72,0 cm Pencil, 2008 Ireland
The Prize of the Union of Visual Artists of the Czech Republic

A traveling exhibit is comprised of specifically chosen Biennial works that will eventually tour Italy, France, Norway and other countries as it leaves the city of Pilsen, including my own drawing:

Kate Beck Untitled, Graphite on Rives Paper, 22.5 x 30 inches 2008

"....Such a comprehensive show makes it apparent how the individual artists differ from each other in their diversity, how different worldviews they hold, how differently they express themselves. Some, for instance, tend towards the realistic approach, others towards the more abstract.
This, however, is not relevant. The important thing is the quality of the work, its message and the ability to capture the viewer’s attention. I believe that from this perspective, the Biennial is significant and inspirational – it shows the world on a small scale; practically on several tens square metres of exhibition area we have an opportunity to see it in all its complexity. Perhaps no field of human activity can express this better than art. The art of drawing in this case..."
-Werner Schaub, President of International Association of Art – Europe

Yes We Can

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 05:31:00 +0000

A Political Season :: Eden in a Fallen World

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:49:00 +0000

On Joanne Mattera's lead, I too am making this a political blog before the election. Or rather, I'm going to let Dave Hickey do it for me. If you haven't read his PAGANS article in the October issue of Art in America or this month's, CULTS, make a point of it. Hickey hits big through the metaphoric twist of his observations on paganism, religion and the American dream -- vis a vie, Eden and Utopia -- that is surprising and powerful, at least for this reader.

Following are a few of Dave Hickey's postulations, courtesy of the author and A.i.A:

"...not believing in anything is never an option. We are all swimming underwater and playing hunches. Zealots, who turn every civilized adjudication, litigation or election into a snarling, slobbering delight between heaven and hell, eviscerate our pagan, adversarial system of governance and jurisprudence. They also get tax breaks that should be going to skateboarders.

...We can do without a common language, a common religion, a common culture, and a common climate. We cannot do without a common code of cordiality.
Any democracy whose prerequisites for success included an abiding contempt for democracy costs too much. It also hurts too much. The public humiliation of others degrades our daily existence. This republic was founded on the pagan doctrines that we must believe to save our lives. Tact, courtesy, civility and tolerance are neither statutory mandates nor Christian virtues.

.... When I turn on cable news, a bad-haircut tells me, "Negative campaigning works!" Why? Because if you give them the juicy crap they want, they will multiply its impact a thousandfold. Without this multiplier, negative campaigning works about as well as torture. So I listen to these trash-talking heads and think back to courtly disputations between ideological opponents like John Kennedy and Barry Goldwater, Everett Dirkson and Lyndon Johnson. I remember Ms. Veronica Chavez in sixth-grade civics telling us that we should get it together because democracy only works if we behave like serious grown-ups.
These childhood encounters persuaded me that democracy, at its most congenial, is theater and not drama. The closer democracy gets to to drama, the further it gets from democracy -- and the closer it gets to television. So I've been wondering who, in the last half century, has made a stand for civility, quiet, and tact -- for manners if you must. The water torture of vituperation hurts too much for someone not to raise a flag.

Nothing better demonstrates the extent to which we have come to hate the people who have done what America was designed to help them do than the popular and academic press ... collectively dedicated ..to proving that pain and tragedy invariably accompany success -- and to exacerbating that pain and tragedy whenever possible and by any means necessary. Check the abuse and humility of reality television... compare the mild embarrassment of actors playing regular people to the morally disgusting spectacle of regular people forced to behave like actors... or even better, hang around Chelsea and savor the delicious cruelty doled out by gallery attendants and doormen to the uninitiated. It's a distressing spectacle and I don't know what to do about it."

... I have been thinking about dreams of Eden in a fallen world -- those places where, one imagines, things are either perfectly normal or normally perfect, for us, personally. Edens and Utopias ...both arise from our propensity to notice the discomforts and inequities of everyday life, its blemishes and irregularities.
Compared to the visions of Utopia that laid waste to the last two centuries, dreams of Eden have much to recommend them. Utopias are all logos; Edens are all in the details: the fashions, the china, the art, the landscape, the climate. Eccentric and addictive, they may require doilies, Keds, Balthus, or Gilbert and Sullivan. Most critically, Edens can and do exist."

Please, vote.
Vote with humility and grace.
Vote Democratic: Vote OBAMA

Subliminal Structure :: Katharina Grosse

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:28:00 +0000

Katharina Grosse: This is Not Dogshit, 2007, acrylic on glass, metal, brick, paving stone, Franchise Foundation, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands

Beauty is important to Katharina Grosse. She spacializes rather than localizes visual vocabularies. Paint is her medium of intervention between architecture, color, and political culture. Her mammoth installations are highly controlled pictorial events using encountered structure and objects to define a space where the viewer wafts between the familiar and the foreign; the known and the unknown; reality and illusion: a masterful journey of feeling and affect. In this month's issue of Art Papers , Melissa Ragona describes her work as "...beginning to move off the canvas, onto the wall and out of the gallery...". True enough.

But, what does that mean? I have been thinking about Grosse's aesthetic since reading this interview, trying to sort out exactly why her work seems to resonate so strongly up against my own creative posturings and articulations. For one thing, her work is physically and startlingly prolific. Size is directly related to context. By placing large elements in relatively small spaces, the scale of the work is contraindicated. She outsizes herself, even, by the sheer volume of cubic feet her installations encompass -- at once opening up and negating the space within walls, within buildings, within streets and towns. It is this relationship to scale and boundary that I am most impacted by.

Katharina Grosse: Pigmenta Para Plantas y Globos, 2008, acrylic on balloons, soil, walls and floor, Artium, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

Above, images of gigantic hue-saturated balloons exist fully and weightlessly against the walls and ceiling of the gallery, and piles of dirt on the floor. I am initially uneasy with this. The proportion of mass to the architecture of space seems 'wrong'; foreboding almost. There is something horrendous and beautiful all at once.

Then I notice the drips of paint falling and hanging so beautifully over the surfaces of those looming spheres, onto the dirt, against the walls. And I feel better. I look more. This is such a powerful example of Grosse's ability to transcend feeling and emotion through her created artificial structure. The architecture of the gallery space is a rational, understandable given, contrasting with the saturation and drips of paint which represent an emotional link. Fictitious space, illisionistic space and painterly space become one as she deftly rocks the viewer, including me, between this subliminal concept of chance and structure.

Katharina Grosse: SKROW NO REPAP, 2008, acrylic on paper, floor and walls, , FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, France

At FRAC, above, white paint was sprayed on the walls, ceiling and floors first, then Grosse installed drawings made before hand in her studio to offer yet another dimension of entry into the project space. I think this image, and the one at the beginning of my post, are incredibly sensuous and interesting. I respond emotionally to the tension between the gentleness and purity of the white hue against the grey stability of the architectual surfaces. The white paint breaks down the boundaries between the walls and floors so that the structure becomes one unified whole, laden with potentially expressive swaths and drips of paint, beautifully and simultaneously opening up and negating the space. Paintings within paintings, within paintings.

Katharina Grosse: Picture Park, 2007, acrylic on,wall, ceiling, soil, balloons and canvases, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, Australia

Grosse considers her work representational in the sense that it 'looks like' psuedo-realistic landscapes, something recognizable, when in fact they represent abstract landscapes. Her projects and installations, which she defies you to describe as monumental, are an elegant analysis of scale, time and mood.

Thanks, Katharina.

Read More:
Katharina Grosse: Lush Irreverence ART Papers, September/October 2008
Text + Interview by Melissa Ragona

Essentials of Light :: Pure Color

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:44:00 +0000

It is high summer and my eyes are filled with all manner of blue and green, but it is to Orange I am drawn. From Tilman's very personal grasp for the potential of color as light and form to Joanne Mattera's iridescent geometric surfaces described as 'lush minimalism', the aesthetics of these artists challenge, stimulate, move and satisfy.

Tilman : Expander with Urban Structure 2, The House of Art Ceske Budejovice (CZ), 2008

Rose Olson: Double Orange Left, Acrylic on Paper, 41 x 26 inches , 2005

Julian Jackson: Interior with Orange, Oil on Panel, 36 x 38 inches

John Tallman : Ssamzie Shape , mixed media , 7 x 6 inches, 2004

Joanne Mattera : Silk Road 99, Encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches, 2008

Rossanna Martinez : Crash Into Me, Fluorescent orange and hot pink ribbons,
Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York, NY, 2007

Steven Alexander : Sage, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 60 inches, 2006

Jeff Kellar: Fold 16, Resin, Clay, Wood , 7 x 7 x 4.5, 2007

Julie Gross : #115, Gouache on Paper, 16 x 16 inches, 2008 , Courtesy of Kenise Barnes Fine Art

Following is an excerpt from a conversation between Chris Ashley and Tilman,
Tilman, by Chris Ashley
MINUS SPACE, June-August 2006 :

CA: The color is material, first. It could be the natural color of the material, or painted, or printed, or the color is applied in some way. It’s a property of the object. Of course, color is made possible by light, but how does the color move from being a physical thing to being simply light?

T: In early Greek philosophy, light is described as the fourth element, the ether; they called it Olkas, a carrier which holds all together. That’s what I am trying to say with simply light, making a reference to this thought. So color, yes, as a material it becomes a carrier of thought, something essential, so to say.

And finally, as August steamrolls past us, Julie Gross sums it up:

"...Orange...the warmest color in the spectrum...so to use it, despite its warmth, is less assertive, more moderate than red, and more weighty & more serious than yellow..."

:: Happy Summer Days ::

On Maine: New Paintings by Don Voisine and David Row

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:23:00 +0000

Don Voisine Pinwheel Oil on Wood

Over the weekend, I stopped into the opening of On Maine at ICON Contemporary Art in Brunswick to see my friend Don Voisine and his new work. Don makes reductive paintings, created within a vocabulary of architectural geometry, light and austere color.

Don Voisine On Point II, On Point III, On Point IV oil on wood

The paintings are constructed on plywood substrate with painted bands and shapes of color shifting, subtly and precisely, throughout the surface. He uses black in dual viscosities to create a visual tension that pulsates between highly reflective and softer tones, and hue.

Don Voisine Connection oil on wood

This dichotomized ambiance deftly seduces the eye into and out of the picture plane. I find them pensive, very personal and beautiful.

David Row Blind Spots oil on canvas

David Row's aggressive paintings are new to me. In contrast to Voisine's meditative work, his luminous, gestural surfaces practically implode from the gallery walls. Beginning with canvas or aluminum, he builds his work with technical precision in layers of color and subtle mark, culminating in final undulating curvilinear strokes which dip below or rest on the surface.

David Row Avatar Oil on Steel

I don't think I've ever wanted to call a painting voluptuous, but, these are.

David Row Gossip oil on canvas

Both artists live and work in New York City, but hail from Maine. They have exhibited widely within the United States and Europe.

With these combined approaches to color, space and composition, ICON gallery owner and curator Duane Paluska has a great show.

ICON Contemporary Art 9 Mason Street Brunswick, ME 04011 207-725-8157
Through August 9

Ideas of Housing: Christine Hiebert

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:36:00 +0000

Brooklyn-based artist Christine Hiebert 's drawings have been speaking to me for a long time. Her very sensitive and powerful marks explore spacial tension, spontaneity and structure, all elements which I am greatly interested in. Her drawings -- from works on paper to gigantic wall drawings -- are personally evocative in an almost primal sense as they explore the relationships between humanity and physical space. To reference:

Untitled 2004

movement and vision

at Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, PA 2004

awareness and eloquence

Untitled 2003

fragility and strength

Untitled 2004

intuition and intellect

at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, 2005

physicality and other-worldliness

in her Brooklyn, NY studio

" If a house is the physical place where I live, where I feel at home," she writes," then my drawings constitute metaphysical houses that allow for the kind of mental living I need to do. That mental living is full of hesitations, fits and starts in my thinking as well as the determination to process headlong into something unknown."

Untitled 2004

Hiebert's surfaces give us cause to think of who we are and how we define our own existence -- the lines within which we live and formulate 'home'-- an architecture of humanity.

Thanks, Christine

Robert Rauschenberg

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Tue, 13 May 2008 21:09:00 +0000

Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

Robert Rauschenberg at his home and studio in Captiva, Fla. in 2005. More Photos >

Robert Rauschenberg, Titan of American Art, Is Dead at 82

By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN

Published: May 14, 2008

Robert Rauschenberg, the irrepressibly prolific American artist who time and again reshaped art in the 20th century, died Monday night. He was 82.

Multimedia

Photographs

Rauschenberg: Art and Photos

Times Topics: Robert Rauschenberg

"Retroactive I," 1963. More Photos »

He died of heart failure, said Arne Glimcher, chairman of PaceWildenstein, the artist's gallery in Manhattan.

Mr. Rauschenberg’s work gave new meaning to sculpture. “Canyon,” for instance, consisted of a stuffed bald eagle attached to a canvas. “Monogram” was a stuffed Angora goat girdled by a tire atop a painted panel. “Bed” entailed a quilt, sheet and pillow, slathered with paint, as if soaked in blood, framed on the wall. They all became icons of postwar modernism.

A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.

Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.

Mr. Rauschenberg was also instrumental in pushing American art onward from Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged during the early 1950s. He became a transformative link between artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and those who came next, artists identified with Pop, Conceptualism, Happenings, Process Art and other new kinds of art in which he played a signal role.

No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg. Mr. Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Mr. Rauschenberg, without sharing exactly the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture. Apropos of Mr. Rauschenberg, Cage once said, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.”

Cage meant that people had come to see, through Mr. Rauschenberg’s efforts, not just that anything, including junk on the street, could be the stuff of art (this wasn’t itself new), but that it could be the stuff of an art aspiring to be beautiful — that there was a potential poetics even in consumer glut, which Mr. Rauschenberg celebrated. “I really feel sorry for people who think things like soap dishes or mirrors or Coke bottles are ugly,” he once said, “because they’re surrounded by things like that all day long, and it must make them miserable.”

The remark reflected the optimism and generosity of spirit that Mr. Rauschenberg became known for. His work was likened to a Saint Bernard: uninhibited and mostly good-natured. He could be the same way in person. When he became rich, he gave millions of dollars to charities for women, children, medical research, other artists and Democratic politicians.

A brash, garrulous, hard-drinking, open-faced Southerner, he had a charm and peculiar Delphic felicity with language that nevertheless masked a complex personality and an equally multilayered emotional approach to art, which evolved as his stature did. Having begun by making quirky small-scale assemblages out of junk he found on the street in downtown Manhattan, he spent increasing time in his later years, after he had become successful and famous, on vast international, ambassadorial-like projects and collaborations.

Conceived in his immense studio on the island of Captiva, Fla., these projects were of enormous size and ambition; for many years he worked on a project that grew literally to exceed the length of its title, “The 1/4 Mile or 2 Furlong Piece.” They generally did not live up to his earlier achievements. Even so, he maintained an equanimity toward the results. Protean productivity went along with risk, he believed, and risk sometimes meant failure.

The process — an improvisatory, counterintuitive way of doing things — was always what mattered most to him. “Screwing things up is a virtue,” he said when he was 74. “Being correct is never the point. I have an almost fanatically correct assistant, and by the time she re-spells my words and corrects my punctuation, I can’t read what I wrote. Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”

This attitude also inclined him, as the painter Jack Tworkov once said, “to see beyond what others have decided should be the limits of art.”

Two Marks, Necessarily, make a Line

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:44:00 +0000

Anna Hepler Wire Sphere Composite Sculptural Prototypes 2008

"Drawing as an approach is regaining the importance it once had as a way of thinking or acting that is fundamental to the human experience. It is being considered less as a particular use of materials or sub-activity of a particular discipline, and more as an approach discrete in itself." So says Andrew Hewish, Director of the London-based Centre for Recent Drawing, a public, independent space dedicated to the exhibition of drawing.

Thanks Andrew: two marks, as in mathematics, do necessarily make a line.

Fiona Robinson Journey Sequence Oil and Conte on Canvas 90 x 140 cm 2006

Here are works of six artists I know -- Anna Hepler, Rebecca Salter, Amy Stacey Curtis, Fiona Robinson and Gosia Wlodarczak -- who share this interest not only in their core connection to line, but in their sensitive and powerful humanistic modes of expression. And Richard Serra, whose 'Verb List Compilations: Actions to Relate to Oneself (1967-1968) I have borrowed to further instill the essence of this critical performative analogy that is drawing.

to roll to crease to fold to store to bend to shorten to twist to dapple to crumple to shave to tear to chip to split to cut to sever to drop to remove to simplify to differ to disarrange to open to mix to splash to knot to spill to droop to flow to curve to lift to inlay to impress to fire to flood to smear to rotate to swirl to support to hook to suspend to spread to hang to collect of tension of gravity of entropy of nature of grouping of layering of felting to grasp to tighten to bundle to heap to gather to scatter to arrange to repair to discard to pair to distribute to surfelt to compliment to enclose to surround to encircle to hole to cover to wrap to dig to tie to bind to weave to join to match to laminate to bond to hinge to mark to expand to dilute to light to modulate to distill to waves of electromagnetic of inertia of ionization of polarization of refraction of tides of reflection of equilibrium of of frictioto stretch to bounce to symmetry

to roll to crease to fold to store to bend to shorten to twist to dapple to crumple to shave to tear to chip to split to cut to sever to drop to remove to simplify to differ to disarrange to open to mix to splash to knot to spill to droop to flow to curve to lift to inlay to impress to fire to flood to smear to rotate to swirl to support to hook to suspend to spread to hang to collect of tension of gravity of entropy of nature of grouping of layering of felting to grasp to tighten to bundle to heap to gather to
Amy Stacey Curtis 617 Charcoal and Graphite on Paper

scatter to arrange to repair to discard to pair to distribute to surfelt to compliment to enclose to surround to encircle to hole to cover to wrap to dig to tie to bind to weave to join to match to laminate to bond to hinge to mark to expand to dilute to light to modulate to distill to waves of electromagnetic of inertia of ionization of polarization of refraction of tides of reflection of equilibrium of symmetry of friction to stretch to bounce to erase to spray to systematize to refer to force of mapping of location of context of time of carbonization to continue to roll to crease to fold to store to bend to shorten to twist to dapple to crumple to shave to tear to chip to split to cut to sever to drop to remove to simplify to differ to disarrange to open to mix to splash to knot to spill to droop to flow to curve to lift to inlay to impress to fire to flood to smear to rotate to swirl to support to hook to suspend to spread to hang to collect of tension of gravity of entropy of nature of grouping of layering of felting to grasp to tighten to bundle to heap to gather to scatter to arrange to repair to discard to pair to distribute to surfelt to compliment to enclose to surround to encircle to hole to

Gosia Wlodarczak Skin of the Wall Helen Maxwell Gallery, Canberra, Australia 2006

cover to wrap to dig to tie to bind to weave
to join to match to laminate to bond to hinge to mark to expand to dilute to light to modulate to distill to waves of electromagnetic of inertia of ionization of polarization of refraction of tides of reflection of equilibrium of symmetry of friction to stretch to bounce to erase to spray to systematize to refer to force of mapping of location of context of time of carbonization to continue to roll to crease to fold to store to bend to shorten to twist to dapple to crumple to shave to tear to chip to split to cut to sever to drop to remove to simplify to differ to disarrange to open to mix to splash to knot to spill to droop to flow to curve to lift to inlay to impress to fire to flood to smear to rotate to swirl to support to hook to suspend to spread to hang to collect of tension of gravity of entropy of nature of grouping of layering of felting to grasp to tighten to bundle to heap to gather to scatter to arrange to repair to discard to pair to distribute to surfelt to compliment to enclose to surround to encircle to hole to cover to wrap to dig to tie to bind to weave to join to match to laminate to bond to hinge to mark to expand to dilute to light to modulate to distill to waves of electromagnetic

Gosia Wlodarczak

of inertia of ionization of polarization of refraction of tides of reflection of equilibrium of symmetry of friction to stretch to bounce to erase to spray to systematize to refer to force of mapping of location of context of time of carbonization to ~~continue~~ to roll to crease to fold to store to bend to shorten to twist to dapple to crumple to shave to tear to chip to split to cut to sever to drop to remove to simplify to differ to disarrange to open to mix to splash to knot to spill to droop to flow to curve to lift to inlay to impress to fire to flood to smear to rotate to swirl to support to hook to suspend to spread to hang to collect of tension of gravity of entropy of nature of grouping of layering of felting to grasp to tighten to bundle to heap to gather to scatter to arrange to repair to discard to pair to distribute to surfelt to compliment to enclose to surround to encircle to hole to cover to wrap to dig to tie to bind to weave to join to match to laminate to bond to hinge to mark to expand to dilute to light to modulate to distill to waves of electromagnetic of inertia of ionization of polarization of refraction of tides of reflectio~~n of equilibrium of symmetry of friction to stretch to bounce to erase to spray to systematize to refer to force of mapping of location of context of time of carbonization to continue~~ to roll to crease to fold to store to bend to shorten to twist to dapple to crumple to shave to tear to chip to split to cut to sever to drop to remove to simplify to differ to disarrange to open to mix to splash to knot to spill to droop to flow to curve to lift to inlay to impress to fire to flood to smear to rotate to swirl to support to hook to suspend to spread to hang to collect of tension of gravity of entropy of nature of Rebecca

Salter Untitled EE20 Mixed Media on Linen 204

grouping of layering of felting to grasp to tighten to bundle to heap to gather to scatter to arrange to repair to discard to pair to distribute to surfelt to compliment to enclose to surround to encircle to hole to cover to wrap to dig to tie to bind to weave to join to match to laminate to bond to hinge to mark to expand to dilute to light to modulate to distill to waves of electromagnetic of inertia of ionization of polarization of refraction of tides of reflection of equilibrium of symmetry of friction to stretch to bounce to erase to spray to systematize to refer to force of mapping of location of context of time of carbonization to continue to roll to crease to fold to store to bend to shorten to twist to dapple to crumple to shave to tear to chip to split to cut to sever to drop to remove to simplify to differ to disarrange to open to mix to splash to knot to spill to droop to flow to curve to lift to inlay to impress to fire to flood to smear to rotate to swirl to support to hook to suspend to spread to hang to collect of tension of gravity of entropy of nature of grouping of layering of felting to grasp to tighten to bundle to heap to gather to scatter to arrange to repair to discard to pair to distribute to surfelt to compliment to enclose to surround to encircle to hole to cover to wrap to dig to tie to bind to weave to join to match to laminate to bond to hinge to mark to expand to dilute to light to modulate to distill to waves of electromagnetic of inertia of ionization of polarization of refraction of tides of reflection of equilibrium of

Fiona Robinson Circular Walk Pencil on Paper 2007

symmetry of friction to stretch to bounce to erase to spray to systematize to refer to force of mapping of location of context of time of carbonization to continueto roll to crease to fold to store to bend to shorten to twist to dapple to crumple to shave to tear to chip to split to cut to sever to drop to remove to simplify to differ to disarrange to open to mix to splash to knot to spill to droop to flow to curve to lift to inlay to impress to fire to flood to smear to rotate to swirl to support to hook to suspend to spread to hang to collect of tension of gravity of entropy of nature of grouping of layering of felting to grasp to tighten to bundle to heap to gather to scatter to arrange to repair to discard to pair to distribute to surfelt to compliment to enclose to surround to encircle to hole to cover to wrap to dig to tie to bind to weave to join to match to laminate to bond to hinge to mark to expand to dilute to light to modulate to distill to waves of electromagnetic of inertia of ionization of polarization of refraction of tides of reflection of equilibrium of symmetry of friction to stretch to bounce to erase to spray to systematize to refer to force of mapping of location of context of time of carbonization to continueto roll to crease to fold to

Rebecca Salter DD28 Mixed Media on Linen 2003

store to bend to shorten to twist to dapple to crumple to shave to tear to chip to split to
cut to sever to drop to remove to simplify to differ to disarrange to open to mix to splash to knot to spill to droop to flow to curve to lift to inlay to impress to fire to flood to smear to rotate to swirl to support to hook to suspend to spread to hang to collect of tension of gravity of entropy of nature of grouping of layering of felting to grasp to tighten to bundle to heap to gather to scatter to arrange to repair to discard to pair to distribute to surfelt to compliment to enclose to surround to encircle to hole to cover to wrap to dig to tie to bind to weave to join to match to laminate to bond to hinge to mark to expand to dilute to light to modulate to distill to waves of electromagnetic of inertia of ionization of polarization of refraction of tides of reflection of equilibrium of symmetry of friction to stretch to bounce to erase to spray to systematize to refer to force of mapping of location of context of time of carbonization to continue

Anna Hepler Fall, Scatter, Float Tape and Thread 2006

Collective of intellect, consciousness, and physicality this is important and interesting work that explores and pushes the boundaries of our mind's processes.

Richard Serra Verb List Compilations: Actions to Relate to Oneself (1967-1968)

Thanks, everyone.

Blacker than black?

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:59:00 +0000

Ad Reinhardt, Abstract Painting 1960-66, Oil on canvas, 60 x60 inches

"The blackest black ever made on Earth..." has been created by scientists bubbling a shiny metal plate in nitric acid for a few seconds, resulting in a material that absorbs 99.9% of all visible light. I emphatically say wow to this. The new super-black will apparently have a major impact in certain fields of scientific research and industry.

And for the rest of us?
Does a color exist if there is no one to see it?

Black is a color; black is not a color: depends on who you ask. How about Frank Stella, Robert Rauschenberg, Jacqueline Humphries, Ad Reinhardt, Joseph Marioni or Pat Steir, for starters.

Pat Steir The Dark 2007 Oil on Canvas 134 x 215 1/4 inches, at Cheim Read

Black does not reflect light at any point of the visible spectrum. A response to zero stimulation of the retina, the perception of black depends on contrast with surrounding color stimuli.

Black is the achromatic color value of minimum lightness or maximum darkness,
the color of objects that absorb nearly all light of all visible wavelengths,
and one extreme of the neutral gray series, the opposite being white.

Jacqueline Humphries Untitled 2005 Oil on linen, 36 x 44 inches

If it can be defined in light, then black is the absence of light and therefore not a color -- most especially not Super-Black. But what if defined as a pigment? Then it is a color, most especially Super-black.

Joseph Marioni Violet Painting 2004 Acrylic on linen 78 x 62 inches at Larry Becker Contemporary Art

It is a matter of vision and reflection, a physiological response jaded by our brain.

Kate Beck, Black_2_0208 Digital Image: Pre-Dawn Light, Winter

Super-black reflects 10 to 20 times less light than the current black standard, and is measured as being 30 times darker. So in physics, at least, a black body is a perfect absorber of light.

Still, does Super-black exist if there is no one to see it?

Please, get it in a paint can, whether I can see it or not.

John Zurier: Night Paintings

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:33:00 +0000

John Zurier Night 23 Distemper on Linen 20x30 inches

John Zurier Night 20 Distemper on Linen 20x30 inches

Poking around the Old City district of Philadelphia last Saturday, my husband, Jamie Whittemore, and I happened upon John Zurier's eloquent show, Night Paintings, at Larry Becker Contemporary Art. Wandering from the street into this intimate space, on a quiet morning with soft spring-ish light about, we were so pleased to spend a generous, comfortable hour with Heidi and Larry, amidst Zurier's beautiful surfaces. Really, it couldn't get much better than this...

The paintings, all 12 close in scale and blue hue, are created through a process Zurier refers to as distemper: a mixture of dry pigment and hide glue thinned with water and embedded into raw linen in thin, multiple layers. The resulting surfaces become subtle journeys of the artist's mark and color, in this case resonating pthalo, deep ultramarine and bright lapis-like blues with undertones of veridian and the earthy raw linen evident at the edges and throughout. They are uniformly finished with swathing wide horizontal strokes against the final surface. These are profoundly personal, and fragile, paintings -- so wonderfully displayed within the gallery.

I had a chance to speak with both Zurier and his wife, photographer Nina Hubbs Zurier, later that evening. John's focus of surface, line and gesture are similar to my own, and it was nice to share a bit of our individual experience together. He and Nina live in Berkely. Both show also with Wade Wilson in Houston and John with Peter Blum in NYC. John Zurier is someone whose work I will follow, and look forward to knowing better.

The exhibit continues through April 19.

Accidental Oxidation

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:11:00 +0000

Having lunch with my friend Grace DeGennaro recently, we bumped into a new installation by Maine sculptor and Bowdoin College lecturer John Bisbee at Coleman Burke Gallery -- Bowdoin's exhibition space at Ft. Andross in Brunswick, Maine. Bisbee's installation is a three-part project titled Switch. This segment, Patch, is comprised of interlocking oxidized nail clusters which will eventually evolve as Bisbee transforms to Ridge and finally, Mound.

John Bisbee Switch: Patch Coleman Burke Gallery, Brunswick, Maine

The monumental geometric mass of Bisbee's spikes resting against the wooden floor -- all 10,000 pounds of it -- was definably impacting. Talk about transcending the materials… it looked like a highly organized pile of fall leaves, quietly present in the deserted gallery space. How could this hefty mass settle so easily into and bond with the architectural details of the exhibit?

This is a question of art, and a question of the nature of art that we, as creatives, are continually faced with. Is our art born by chance, or predetermined by other means? How do we know?

The work of my contemporaries, such as Bisbee in this case, is a lever I utilize which forces me to look more deeply into my own process and perspective; to seek a clarity that I must ignore on a day-to-day basis in order to sustain a viable studio practice. Still, the questions do remain.

No, I do not consider my work to be accidental. But I do allow chance to be a factor in my process. I discover something about myself by moving outside of my comfort zone, such as taking abstract photographs of found objects and random occurrences to keep the concept of possibility fresh and open within me.

John Bisbee Switch:Patch detail

It is a balance between letting go and adhering to principles which I have found to be reliable. Hopefully unhappy accidents occur as infrequently as possible, but they do happen.

Kate Beck Found Object.3.12.07

Letting go is the obvious way to progress. But, is it accidental?

Just have to keep looking….

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:12:00 +0000

Honorable Mention
Maine Biennial 2008
Untitled
Oil,Carbon,Wax on Canvas 10x10 inches

Paler Shade of Gray

kb@katebeckstudio.com (Kate Beck) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 11:50:00 +0000

This being the inaugural post of my new web blog, I want to open with a shot of brand new 2008 color, Gray.1.3.08 , taken from my front yard in January. The new routine is shooting the morning sky just before daybreak from approximately the same location, at approximately the same time. So why am I compelled to step into these frigid winter mornings -- just out of bed, still in my socks, camera ready? I admit, I've attracted some interest from my husband and my dog. And, I think they are beginning to like it.
My cohort, Fiona Robinson http//:www.fionarobinson.info/
and I have been discussing the grays that we each create and bring to our work. We both adhere to fairly traditional drawing technique and perspective -- a commonality in our painting. Grays are of course a big topic: it is a foundation color of choice, from which we compose all surface and luminosity. Especially Fiona. Her grays tend to range from blues to yellows to reds, I think it's safe to say, while my own are much more neutral and hover in umber-ish territory. My approach is purposely conservative. I am concerned with creating a surface which the eye can easily sustain. That is, look at and 'see' with ease. I want my grays to temp you, persuade you to linger at the surface. When more light is captured within the surface hue and stabilized -- not released back-- I believe it is a purer and more powerful experience. An involuntary incentive for the viewer to experience the painting. This is why I often refer to my work as being performative: I seek to elicit a dynamic, physical response from the viewer. What else is there?
If you still need convincing, take a look at the paintings of Alfonso Fratteggiani Bianchi, which just came down my art feed cyber-pipe from Charlotte Jackson Fine Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico http://www.charlottejackson.com/ Fratteggiani Bianchi hand rubs pure pigment directly onto Italian limestone, creating what appears to be -- from this limited perspective -- incredibly pure-hued paintings. The light is locked into the color on the surface of the stone and very seductive to the eye. My eyes are hungry...