The Past comes close to Home

Preparing my own work for a couple of shows has kept me busy lately - good work, good shows, but it's kept me from writing here. To catch up, I'll start with the past. Ruins of late great civilizations are everywhere. Romantic artists and poets loved ruined abbeys, dismantled temples of Ancient Rome, columns and half walls sticking up through the sand or vines for evocative soul-stirring associations with shunted human ambition and poignant death. Shakespeare's 73rd sonnet calls to mind the same tug of romance and futility with an architectural metaphor.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang 

But all these ruins are elsewhere, right? Europe, Rome, Sicily, Africa, Central and South America: the closest we here in the US come is the Southwest, with the spectacular cliff houses of the Anasazi? Today, though, thanks to Yahoo and several intrepid photographers with an eye for unusual beauty, the US enters the Pantheon of great ruins. Here, via the link below, is a look at ruins all too close to home. These poignant photos tell of an America that we can now only know from books and our grandparents' stories, of thriving industrial cities in the heartland, churning out vast quantities of widgets or whatever, building strong prosperous communities on an infrastructure of faith and thriving capitalism. It is a bit of a shock to see so clearly the evidence of a time and way of life that will never come again, but it is also a prompt to look ahead and not backwards for technologies and human achievement. Regretting the past is a dead end, if a searingly picturesque one. Click on this link to see the video - you don't want to miss this. Thanks to these photographers for seeing and sharing. They also have a Flickr page of still photos.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_weekend/20101210/ts_yblog_weekend/lost-treasures-of-the-city

High level Handwork

The PMA Craft Show comes and goes much too fast. This spectacular show, the first and one of the best of the major high-level Craft shows, took place in Philadelphia for four days over the past weekend. I was there for two, but two days was barely enough time to see it, let alone pay close attention to all the artists and their work. So I’ll share some of my favorites.

This was a great year for jewelry. Nature is a constant inspiration for artists, but this year’s crop seemed particularly focused on natural forms, shapes, and materials.  The very first booth I stopped at was that of Roberta and David Williamson, longtime veterans of the PMA show, who make the most wonderful combinations of metals  and crystal in which they often trap images like specimens. If you look closely at the photo you can see that David and Roberta, who met in art school and have worked together successfully ever since, are wearing examples of their creations. I was really intrigued by some of the smaller work in their cases, with antique prints and little bug drawings hanging from chains and worked into pins and rings. Christy Klug, from Austin, TX, gets one of my biggest gold stars. I really love her work, in no small part because she manages to use her jewelry as a drawing medium. In the photo you can see an egg with her calligraphic lines; next to it is an exquisite enamel pendant with a parallel form and surface – a presentation as thoughtful and striking as the work itself. One of the most unusual materials was the antler horn used by Eric Silva for brooches and pendants. He describes cutting and shaping the solid antler to give it flared edges and hollows, then polishing to bring out a beautiful patina. His pieces speak of the eternity in nature yet have fresh, contemporary style.

Of the ceramic artists in the show, I especially admired the work two of the newer exhibitors, Judit Varga from Maryland, and Nathan Falter from Missouri. Judit is one of those rare potters who appreciates the pinch pot, a relatively unsophisticated form for beginners (when I taught ceramics that was chapter one,) but in her hands a marvel of complex possibility.  Her small pod shapes grow into honeycombs of dark mystery, an effect furthered by a dark heavy clay with natural gravitas. Nathan Falter’s work, by contrast, quotes man-made forms – oil cans and funnels - tweaked by the earthy solidity of his darks and lights with a witty sprinkle of stenciled numbers and letters.

A good number of wood artists were represented, from furniture makers to turners. Janel Jacobson, from Minnesota, was kind enough to bring her tools, to let us see what she uses to make her magic – true magic – tiny, impossibly beautiful forms that recall the wit and careful artistry of Japanese netsuke.  I could hardly tear myself away from Philip Weber’s work. Philip, from Effort, PA, makes exquisite boxes of wood – boxes that are the jewels rather than what might go inside.  His oval box made of holly and ebony is a chess game of dark and light with inlays of tiny sticks of wood and metal, made so much patience and minute craftsmanship that the mind can hardly grasp what it took to bring it to reality.

             There were also plenty of fiber and textile artists, many of them showing wearable art - dresses, hats, scarves. David Fraser was one of the few hard at work in the midst of the show, working on his waxed linen weaving. His creations take many forms, including vases and tubular shapes, all of which have a vibrant, tactile energy. One of my brightest gold stars for the show goes to Renee Harris, a storyteller with color and thread. Rich, elaborate, elegant, whimsical, each of her wall pieces is a festival displaying a narrative that goes straight to the heart. I talked to Renee for quite a while – enjoying her conversation as much as her work – as she explained the process of masterful felting and embroidery, and spoke of her concerns for fish, birds, and the other marvels of nature that we humans treat so carelessly. It’s all there, in every stitch and surface, and the case is so beautifully made.

            These artists all have websites – you can easily find them with a search. Some of them will be at the Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington in April. Go if you can, and if you do, tell them you know about them from ArtSmartTalk!

Between and Beyond the Covers

You may be one of those who think that ‘The Book’ is in decline and will soon disappear from common currency, like the typewriter eraser or the dial phone. With E-readers available to deliver information, what’s the point of books? The same question, of course, was asked in the mid 1800’s, but then it was art that was in atrophy and about to disappear. Who needs painting or sculpture when you have photography? But art didn’t go anywhere, did it? Well, yes, it did, but it didn’t go AWAY. In fact it became more ART. With photography handling the mundane tasks like portraiture and recording historical events, art was free to expand beyond traditional boundaries. You know how that story goes.

Now it’s the book’s turn. Last weekend I went to the NY Art Book Fair at P.S.1, the contemporary arm of the Museum of Modern Art, and I can assure you that the book is far from over. This is not brand-new news for artist book aficionados – the first NY Art Book Fair, which is sponsored by Printed Matter, was held in 2006. And some artists have been making books for a long time, but the field is now exploding. P. S. 1 is a big space, but it was filled top-to-bottom with books, paper publications, and zines, with the artists and publishers who make them, and with a galloping crowd of fans hungry to see what’s new and exciting. So here are a few favorites: The Women’s Studio Workshop (Rosendale, N.Y.) - Sandy and Chris (in the photo) presided over a display of bright, crisply made editions, all impressive in the craftsmanship of the objects and the depth of ideas. The Thing (San Francisco) cleverly offers a periodical in the form of an object designed by an artist – one, by Jonathan Lethem, is a pair of glasses with the text written on the inside of the frame – another was a shoe with a lace bound into a blank book. Art books are thriving in Europe - a featured group from The Netherlands was there in force, along with other international presenters. The Bongoût Gallery (Berlin) and Lubok Verlag (Leipzig) had rich, exciting work on display Bongoût stood out for layered, complex, colorful imagery in large format, while Lubok showed work with masterful printmaking techniques, like the book of Faces in the photo. The beautiful range of thoughtful, well-made books from RedFoxPress, an Irish-Korean collaboration, exemplified the spirit of this art form. I liked the work of Napa Books (Finland) so much that I purchased an exquisite little flip book by one of the principals, Jenni Rope, and was interested to find out that they hold a yearly flip-book competition, with past winners from Japanese and far-flung places. Canadian book artists were also well represented, with a full room of artists and publishers, spilling over with great ideas and beautiful books of all kinds. This is a very vibrant, exciting world where artists are finding great ways to turn a familiar old technology into a leading contemporary art form.