Deconstructing Criticism
w/TJ Norris @ Newspace Center for Photography
Five Tuesdays :: 1/8 - 2/5 :: 6:30-9:30pm :: $195

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(from Newspace Winter 2008 catalogue)
What’s that you say? Not quite sure where you’re going as an artist? Need a little direction, guidance, advice, and inspiration? In this five-part class, multimedia artist and curator TJ Norris will guide you through the process of engaged critique. It’s simple to say, “I love that” or, “I hate that,” and much more difficult to really express why. This class is a great chance to go beyond semantics and lip-service and to give your thoughts some teeth. As art can often be subjective, direction will be both creative and analytical with a focus on discussing each student’s own creative work in progress. Through peer review, supportive feedback, individually focused assignments, and a fun gallery field trip, you’ll develop the tools necessary to better understand and articulate your work – and the work of others. This is a wonderful chance to gain invaluable insight into what you’re doing as an artist and to study with a true leading light in the regional arts scene. This class should attract artists and critical thinkers. Limited to 8

* The button in my mouth was handed to me by Hilary Pfeifer and reads “words are my secret weapon” - evidentally it’s one of many phrases used to advertise this year’s Wordstock running through 11/11.

The mysteriously foggy drive through the dark added to the perplexing end point to last eve’s journey into night. The destination, the Art Gallery at Linfield College for Usufruct, curated by foArm Magazine co-editors Matt Marble and Seth Nehil. It’s an eclectic mix of works by artists near and far, with a peculiar intersection of media including fake fur, thread, a covered film projector, cardboard packaging and live plants. There’s a certain statement about living things, both animal and vegetable. And disectable narratives that go along with their individual lifelines. Birds, bling, petals and the subtle gesture. The curators have been ultra sensitive to infuse the show with kinetics and sound at every corner, and while doing so have managed to incorporate fourteen artists into a medium-sized space while still allowing for breathing room. The show balances the fragilities of ecosystems constantly dividing nature and humanity.

Works by Rebecca Davis (needles and thread), Dan Senn (a multipart audio floor installation) and one of Melody Owen’s two video works called MGM Lion seemed the most physically alluring, balanced by the narratives in works by Harvest Henderson (also showing in LA this month, as well as Ogle in Portland) and Dirk Lange’s Estonian collages titled Imagine How Much Fun We Could Have Had. Other pieces took the object out of context of place like curator/artist Rhoda London’s Untitled floor piece with photo transfers on glass illuminated from a centering lighting element dangling from the ceiling, like some sort of audubon reliquary. Upon entry in a glass wall case, performance writer and maker of things, Bethany Wright’s Hallowed, made from basic ingredients like soap, wax and hair conditioner, gives you the immediacy of a visceral gross-out. In many ways her style of working really always conjured something quite physical in its inferences. References of the insides of the body, often something viscous, of the touch, something fluid. This piece deals in the oral extraction, or that which we reject.

In the show there are works that hang from the ceiling, emerge from the floor and walls and corners, or some combination thereof. The curators have truly used the space to invoke movement and spatial relationships. That aside, the work as a whole comes with weighty conceptual conundrums that field domestic neighborly concerns (Henderson’s Specimens i-iv: Starla’s Garden - Document of Abandoned Narrative) to the containment of the fragments of coccooned nature in Linda Hutchins‘ Jade Plant, a bit of a reclamation (or resurrection) of natural things kept whole by the process of ‘contemporary mummification’. Delicate by nature and pointed by truth. The show has its points of alluding its viewer in works by both Sreshta Premnath (Point Decapit___on) and Joshua Hart (_iso_) which each use objects like a cloth covered and running 16MM projector (Premnath) or a fake fur coat attached to distorted graphite drawings (Hart). Interesting to note their use of text titles, and how language has a strong bearing on the curatorial selections, given their literary roots in the formal and segmented nature of how text/context are interpreted through works such as this.

It was both Senn’s and Davis’ work that were without pun, most sound. Senn’s Cradle: Cross dealt in a sort of improv secretive gamelan, powered by digitally produced sinewaves that had a nervous gesture played on metallic plates. While Davis’ Untitled (green thread) had a simple floating ambience that delicately floats weightlessly and linearly from a perfectly installed fine line of sewing needles. The color green shifts from end to end with subtle variations like the colors coming into the light of the sun. Owen’s work had a spot of humor, often a good balancer in a show with such elegance and simplicity. Her work MGM/Lion (2004) a digital video plays on the endless roaring of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s age-old motif. Here, though, she has silenced the mighty voice of this empirical king of the cinematic forest and instead replaced it with cartoon jewels or bling being visually expurgated from the fearsome cat’s mighty jaws. It’s cute at first, but comes to a boil in time. Therefore adding to the weight of this otherwise luminous little show. But remember: I am big, it’s the pictures that got small…..

The tall and short of it all.

While walking to the bus stop I noticed a hummingbird a few doors down yesterday. Seeking nectar at this point in the season seemed unusual, when nearly all the leaves have fallen and things have dried up. Such a special and fleeting occurence. Perhaps there was a message of hope as I watched his tiny blackened emerald body with its pearlized sheen. It’s hard to take your eyes off of these beauties, yet, it’s really difficult to spot them. They appear almost oddly ethereal and mechanical at the same time.

Less fleeting have been some of the wonderful get togethers of late. Last week I had a pleasant spot of iced tea with painter Leiv Fagereng who shows at Froelick Gallery. We met through a mutual friend and had a great time talking about east vs. west coast, the pictorial vs. conceptual, sense of place and a whole lot about the biz of art. His take was new to me, refreshing. He moved to Portland from Seattle a few years ago and shares a studio with his sculptor/brother Daniel (who I actually showed with a few years back). He was the first person to actually convince me that even I could afford to eat at Blue Hour. See you at happy hour soon!

It’s always a good occasion to see Avantika Bawa who was in Portland for the second time this year, this time presenting her Sit, Stack at PSU’s Autzen Gallery (now coordinated by Tilt Gallery & Project Space’s Jenene Nagy). Sometimes I think our brains were split at birth (only about ten years apart). First I got to hear her talk which was done at the gallery where the installation was just starting to take shape. She talked about some of her projects in Canada, Atlanta and recently in her native India, all using the permitting environment as a jumping off point for her site-specific sculptural/drawing hybrids in space. This new show is quite sparse using the chair as a recurring motif and the elements of gravity to encompass the room in repetitive shapes and angles. Her opening was good fun, with red wine, conversation and gathering a crowd of local aesthetes for a group photograph. From there a selection of people, including a cast of artists from Tilt dashed to Dots for the sate of a greasy spoon feed.

Which brings me up to date to just yesterday seeing Ryan Jeffery. It was great to catch up with him, and savor his follow-up to his gorgeous video work Fallen, which is called Rise to be screened publicly on exhibition at PDX Contemporary very soon. After a recent tour in Japan, he’s got interesting navigational changes on his radar too and I wish him much good. While we were sitting there enjoying coffee in walked Troy Briggs and good conversation just expanded. It was great that we all knew each other, reducing the degrees of separation quotient in Portland’s art community. I learned that Troy is now living and working in the same area where my studio is, so hopefully we will see each other more often than when he was out in St. Johns. He recently had a show at the Black Front Gallery in Olympia. We talked about studio space, jobs, artist lifestyles and food stamps. You’ve only begun to see and hear about these two young artists.

The majority of the week was spent working on about ten new works on paper, including a quad of part drawing/collages I think I’m calling ‘clusters’. More on these as the work develops.

Later today the plan is to head off to McMinnville’s Linfield College to see Usufruct, a fresh group show curated by media artist Seth Nehil and Matthew Marble (co-editors of FO A RM Magazine) which includes Harvest Henderson and others. From the statement: “In appropriating resources (physical or intellectual), how are they transformed? What are the ways we navigate this tension, leading toward a vital suspension?”….Away I go!

SAVE THE DATE….

Portland must seem like an exotic oasis to them there NY’ers!

Is it me or does all stand still or skip a beat for a bit on the day we observe Daylight Savings Time? People are late, some are oddly early, things just seem a lil’ bent. It feels like an outdated practice, but it’s also comical to witness how long it takes for people to redial their clocks (alarms, buses, microwaves, even computers sometimes). And how the tinge of light deprivation makes slight zombies of us all. This year was a bit strange as it was the first time in my lifetime (and perhaps yours) that this ritual was held up until November. There is a ton of speculation (not sure how your officially weigh that) as to the decision behind this switch (by about a week) - but I’m slightly at odds with the theory that it has something to do with the continually eroding ecosphere. And perhaps it’s a wartime strategy of sorts. Conspiracy theory or just ‘how the ball bounces’ I don’t feel as though I’ll really need to consult the Farmer’s Almanac to find truth about every last second. I must note that today was a Red Letter Day, however. And I may not need to remind you that Mercury has just been Retrograde!

The Portland art scene is meaty and all-purpose these days. But the structure holding it in place is more akin to a transparent glass house. There’s something at all four corners of Stumptown that sates a multitude of vast aesthetic sensibilities. It serves too as a bit of a overwhelming wake-up call for the restless soul inside all those who try to get to as many destinations as possible. The curiosity alone is always enough to draw on exhaustion for any working studio artist, but it’s also a call to certain arms. Well, those are the arms attached to these fingers, connected to the sleepless body behind the mind that infuses this blog with such gentle musings. Balance is the magic key.

IS IT A GLASS HOUSE IN WHICH WE DWELL?
But before I go into the celebration of what’s going on I think it is essential to mention the extreme urgency with which our city needs to heed this call for support. The Portland Art Center still seems new, and isn’t that a wonderful thing. It might be mostly because they are regularly presenting new work, work that is about scale, chance, risk, new ideas and intermedia. Yes, they also have trad work and some standards, names known and unknown, installations and the unexpected. They have presented a heck of a lot in a short two years, giving a whole roster of emerging artists from near and far some needed exposure - while introducing the city to some vibrant ideas and modalities. They don’t have the budget currently to produce drop-dead, blow the roof-off-the-mutha type monolith exhibitions with fabulous catalogues. They have done the best they can within a shoestring budget. But they are big on passion, ideas, and volunteer support from a community of creatives. That’s where the buck has evidentally stopped. Programming is pretty much in place for ‘08 as are some major administrative grants, but they can use all the support they can get to help with overhead, future programming dollars, and other charitable contributions. They need a kitty of cash for tomorrow, not just a month-to-month struggle to cover the basic overhead. They have a longterm plan, but need the leverage of dollars to carry it out. So, this is the time, right now, to support these folks by talking up friends with deeper pockets than the average artist to consider making some form of donation. Yes, they will host the 300 panels created to help raise money by as many artists, but they need some really forward-thinking patrons to align with them and back their efforts.

LIGHTS, CAMERA - TAKE ACTION:
Their closure would be a massive hole in the cultural infrastructure in this city in my opinion not to mention a certain dimming of the years of building a cultural tourism profile. We lost the visual art space of PICA and the Disjecta space - I say if the city can’t make this thing survive it may be time to either look at alternative ideas of either merging non-profits together to help share resources, patrons, etc. Or maybe it would be best to get out of Dodge? I mean, it speaks a lot about what potential the city has a cultural center. Plain + simple. There’s got to be some hot-shot development people out there willing to donate a few hours to work with these guys?! Yes? If they were forced to close I think a serious shift would take place for a lot of underserved, unrepresented and younger artists. And with more artists moving to Portland, and lesser sizable venues able to accomodate their wares and ideas, it would become more difficult now that the infrastructure has been laid. My suggestion is to consider the potential outcome being a strong possibility of their doors closing by year end - and where do we, as a community go from there? I personally urge you to step up in whatever way you can - its really time to band together - DO NOT WAIT until later - step right up, no lines, no waiting!
(PSA Transmission Complete)

That said, the Fall weather is crisp and wonderful, though I am looking forward to getting through this weekend before really battoning down the hatches on much of this particular form of meandering. But before I go there, to that place of metabolic egress, I must say a few things about what’s around and about in this fine, creative city. It’s important to point out those shows that really struck a fine chord, that stood out in the blitz of brisk walking and passing socialization. I’m looking forward to spending more and more time in the studio (and at the gym) this Fall/Winter and promise to come out and play again before the dawn’s early light - but I need to breakaway for a bit for focus. Part of that will take me away for a potential residency in March which I promise to report on from the hinterlands later. And I am going to try to keep this mercifully brief (for me) for all intensive purposes. These are the shows that stood off the wall and deserve a deeper look-see:

Yoshihiro Kitai @ Pulliam Deffenbaugh - The best show in town, bar none. Yoshi has really pulled it off this time. He has reigned in his use of leafing to a pristine finish by creating wafting, morphing organic shapes that appear and fade across each piece. In some of his past work, as in many works that use these certain materials, I have had a hard time breaking from the potential for gawdiness of in the use of metallics. Not so at all here though, his touch to the surface is precise, the undulating and repetitive geometric shapes are light, open, garden-like and ornate without being too fanciful. The white ground really helps balance the cooling way he has used shading to capture a relief quality. Gorgeous. (It’s interesting to compare and contrast this show with work on view at PDX by Kristen Miller and at PNCA by senior Calvin Ross Carl this month - also very good shows.)

Harvest Henderson @ Ogle - Harvest has a real knack for surprising her bated audience with unexpected work in new media. This show includes an array of anatomical drawings stitched to shopping bags and other paper material. I’m partial to the integration of materials and technique, but am also fascinated by her choices of liver, skeletal and other internal organs as subject matter. The parts and pieces of the body on oft discarded carriers of merchandise, sundries. Something about the fleeting sense of portability and transplant come to mind simultaneously. It’s a strange mix that I will continue to sort out, but Henderson has truly designed a show of intimate details, mapping the conceptual body.

Bill Will @ Nine Gallery: This is a collaborative piece with another artist whom I cannot recall their name (sorry), and I could not locate a website to assist. Though the piece had an instant impact. And it is fantastic to see a political piece. Visually stunning too, a kinetic sculpture made from recycled bags. You insert a quarter to inflate the piece. Stark and sharply satirical. The install awakens this small space. Similar to Henderson’s work and verse vica both because of the use of common bags (here plastic instead of paper) - and as this acts as a beating, breathing thing - just add coinage! It’s got that quirky respirator meets life support system meets inanimate object thing going on, with a political twist.

Beth Campbell @ PNCA/Feldman Gallery - When I first walked in it seemed like I was walking into a dulling furniture display at Target, very flat lit, very banal situation. And it only took but a few minutes for the whole picture to start to come into place. It suddenly reminded me of one of my all-time favorite pieces of all-time Lucas Samaras‘ “Mirrored Room” (1966). At 71 I haven’t seen much from this reclusive artist in years, but he’s been influencing many for decades (and you can also see it in the chair pieces of Avantika Bawa this month at the Autzen Gallery/PSU which opens today). Let’s just say Campbell sort of undoes Samaras with a very simple trick that is highly effective. I care not to say anymore except to encourage you to take your own view. She has an additional large scale steel mobile in the rear of the gallery which drapes to the floor like an old willow tree.

Oliver Boberg @ Quality Pictures - Talk about banal. The works by German auteur Boberg are at once disconcerting, mainly because your first impression may be that he photographs truly boring details of buildings and natural snippets that you generally pass by daily. The finished product, however, these large scale photographs mounted on aluminum are large-scale and pristine. It begs the question, why choose these deadening scenes? What are we or what is the photographer looking at? In his lecture at Wieden + Kennedy yesterday he elaborated on these concerns poetically and with a certain aloof attitude which kind of fit well with his concerns. He explained two very important things about the making of the work. First that he hires a photographer to capture what he ‘directs’ and secondly that the scenes depicted are actually small-scale constructed models. He showed sketches and a few studio shots that in and of themselves were keenly orchestrated. He mentioned his work being partly documentary, which seems like an impossible cliche unless you can consider every photograph a flat document. There’s so much to discuss about the potential readings of this work, but without further adieu, see the show for yourself, draw your own conclusions. It’s certainly museum quality, and the rationale for making it is very post-Dada to me. Personal and public space re-interpreted through the effects of passing memory.

Andy Graydon @ Portland Art Center - This New Yorker has done something with the Light & Sound Gallery that no one has done in the past. Actually commandeered a sense of looming presence. On par with a lot of a/v work that’s been coming out of Germany for the past several years, the piece minimally uses light and a soundtrack to a stunning effect. Graydon, a native of Maui, has build Room Works as a piece to spend some time with. It’s mesmerisingly slow moving, but enlivens the room with a sense of pulsing light and a bass drone that is quite sparse and ambient. It becomes a container of the viewers body, as if you are observing something quite alien emerging. The best use of this small space yet.

Also in and around town are all sorts of things to see like the first solo show by Randell Sims at NAAU. Lucinda Parker, Josh Arseneau, Kelly Rauer and many others came out to celebrate this occasion. The works are this sort of cross-section study between Bauhaus and expressionism, but tightly sticking to some clear techniques. The acrylic colors overflow with nice sense of translucence and he also models the flatness of the surface well in these six footers. The presentation of nine of these works acts sort of like pillars in the space. Interesting show by a new young gun on the scene who has plenty time to grow. I had the chance to see some of his work earlier in his studio, and he has changed some of his style over the year, though has remained a consistently hard worker. The more stark and geometric and blocky the work is the better it is. These are all untitled, but the red and black piece in the back was the most stunning, in the way it reminisces with the work of David Smith and other sculptors of the 60s through the 70s. The neutral white floating backing frames act as containers for these unstretched acrylics. I think, though he obviously is growing his vision that it’s daring to present them this way, it shows the entire surface, edge and all.

Also the grand opening of a new gallery called Worksound by San Fran transplant Modou Dieng. The space kicks off another addition to the slow growing Central Eastside Arts District and is located at 820 SE Alder. They have music and a current exhibition of Portland and New York photogs called PDX/Posure. Some bizarre images, all very affordably priced too. There’s a video room and at last night’s opening they had a pop/folk/jazz sorta set. At press time there is no website or normal working hours that I am aware of, but watch for them to help build a certain scene. Elsewhere there is a show I mentioned earlier over at Nemo Design called 25 Objects/25 Photographers. With photographers like Chris Bennett (the humorous stand-out piece), Holly Andres, Mark Hooper and Amaren Colosi among others its worth going out of the normal circle to see. Curated by Greg Hennes who provided the objects which consist of belt buckles, aviator glasses, a beard, an artificial leg….the works are all printed by Pushdot (new location for them) and they are affordable ($75-200). The hallway-like space is long and cool. The opening boasted a jam-packed room overflowing with young designer types and a few familiar faces.

So as we fall back, take the time to watch the last of the leaves flutter from the limbs. Its time to find a balance of the studio plan and the domestic side of life for a while.

PS: Sorry for the slight delay, my ‘brief’ post turned into a longer ramble than planned…The winner of the iPod is (I reversed the tide)……Brenda Mallory whose response was just downright perverse and smart. Christopher Brown made me laugh pretty hard. Ms. Mallory will have to claim her prize at the counter (aka my studio).

A ‘glamour shot’ from my recent haunting of Mississippi Pizza.

A new video by collaborator Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) who is as busy as ever. Also….his inclusion in Loughborough University’s Radar/Soundwalks is truly interesting (and you can download a free track). There are some other incredible artists involved in this project….take a look/listen.