aether a visual arts dialogue
AUSTIN fall/winter 2013
ae Collaborators EDITORS Rachel Stephens Assistant Director • Wally Workman Gallery Judith Taylor Director/ Owner • Gallery Shoal Creek
CONTRIBUTORS Claiborne Smith is the Features Editor at Kirkus Reviews and the former literary director of the Texas Book Festival. Caitlin G. McCollom is an artist and independent curator currently working in Austin, TX. She is also the director and curator for Red Space Gallery. Joel Nolan is an architectural designer and furniture maker living in Austin, Texas. He is founder of joelnolandesign and co-founder of Space Camp, an architecturally rooted duo working to produce art installations in public spaces. Macy Ryan is a filmmaker and writer. She graduated Cum Laude from Rice University with a degree in English. You can find more of her culture writing at www.butterflywiththeday.com.
Copyright © 2013 by AETHER. All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part, without the express written permission of the publisher, is prohibited. aether, fall/winter 2013, issue five • contact@aetherart.com • www.aetherart.com (above & cover image) THIRST on Lady Bird Lake presented by Women & Their Work, Beili Liu, Emily Little, Norma Yancey, and Cassie Bergstrom. Photo by Ben Aqua, courtesy of Women & Their Work, 2013.
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aether As fall brings cooler weather, two major visual arts projects take a close look at the environment. The College of Fine Arts' Landmarks Public Arts program at The University of Texas unveiled James Turrell's Skyspace, a light installation bridging art, architecture, and the atmosphere that was designed for the new Student Union Building. On Lady Bird Lake, Women & Their Work successfully opened THIRST, a conceptual project which draws attention to our severe drought and its long-term effects. In this issue of aether we explore the significance of these monumental works, the reflective nature of each, and the stature they bring to the city's visual art's offerings. The current exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center adds another dimension to the season's highlights. Radical Transformation: Magnum Photos into the Digital Age showcases over 300 photographs from the prestigious Magnum collection, the newest addition to the center's archives. In a recent interview, Clay Smith talked with the show's curators about the historical nature of the collection and how it depicts photography’s ever-changing face. Here at aether, our writers continue to take an in-depth look at the breadth of art available in our community, the people who create, and those who collect. In this issue, collector Mike LeBurkien shares the story of his ever changing personal collection. Datebook recommends upcoming exhibitions, and a special feature on PrintAustin 2014 announces the citywide event coming this winter. -The Editors
Contents 6
JAMES TURRELL / The Color Inside
37 JAIME CASTILLO /
MVP of Austin's Art Community
12
JANE RADSTROM / Routine & Scandalous
40 BOOKSHELF / Capital Improvements
16
RADICAL TRANSFORMATION /
44 PRINT AUSTIN / 2014
Frozen in Time
24 30
COMMUNITY / Quench Your THIRST COLLECTOR / Mike LeBurkien
50 FOREWORD / Nick Brown 52 DATEBOOK / Recommended Happenings
(image) Jason Urban, Caldera Series #2, Digital and Prismacolor on Paper, 30 x 22 in., 2011.
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THE COLOR INSIDE James Turrell's Skyspace by JOEL NOLAN
On October 19th The University of Texas unveiled its very own James Turrell Skyspace installation perched atop the roof of the new Student Activity Center. Due to the completion of his recent projects and a three-city exhibition Turrell has recently received an exceptional level of national media attention, including a New York Times Magazine cover story and piece on CBS This Morning, both highlighting his project on the campus of Rice University in Houston. James Turrell: A Retrospective explores nearly fifty years of his work and is currently on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until the spring of 2014. The retrospective was also shown at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City earlier this year. The exhibition includes early geometric light projections, prints and drawings, installations exploring sensory deprivation fields of colored light, and recent two-dimensional work with holograms. One section is devoted to Turrell’s masterwork in process, Roden Crater, a site-specific intervention
into the landscape just outside Flagstaff, Arizona. With all the interest focused on other work the construction of his University of Texas project has maintained a relatively low profile which is fitting for its smaller scale and more intimate setting. Born in Los Angeles in 1943, James Turrell is the son of Archibald and Margaret Turrell, both devout Quakers who did not believe in art alluding to its correlation with vanity. When Turrell was a young boy he recalls his grandmother instructing him how to act at a Quaker meeting: “Go inside and greet the light”. Even at the early age he understood his grandmother meant the inner light, but this statement had a profound effect leading him to meticulously cut tiny holes in the dark shades of his bedroom in order to re-create the stars of the sky during the daylight hours. His father, who was an aeronautical engineer that ran the technical school at the Pasadena Junior College, died when he was only ten years old. Perhaps inspired by his father’s work Turrell worked to obtain his pilot’s license by
James Turrell, Interior of The Color Inside, 2013; Photo by Florian Holzherr
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James Turrell, American, born 1943. Details of The Color Inside, 2013. Black basalt, plaster, and LED lights, 224 × 348 × 276 inches. Commission, The University of Texas at Austin, 2013. Photo by Paul Bardagjy. Courtesy of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin.
the age of 16 which would later play a large part in his ‘Ganzfelds’ (German for ‘complete field’) exhibition. Turrell was an independent young boy with strong interests in the sciences and math. He was an eagle scout, an honor student in high school, president of his class and named Pasadena “boy of the year” in 1960. During his college years Turrell’s interest in light continued to grow and evolve until he finally reached an epiphany while sitting in a dark lecture room watching a slide presentation. He had become less interested in the sterile and dull images on the screen and more inspired by the beam of light emanating from the projector with its unhurried particles of dust hanging in the smoky, flickering colors. In the following weeks Turrell diligently worked on his next installation that involved the use of a blank slide in a high-intensity projector mounted near the ceiling and directed at the opposite bottom corner of the room creating a three-dimensional floating rectangle. Following the success of his first light installation Turrell decided to lease the Mendota Hotel which
was located in what was then a slum of Los Angeles. He painted the windows of the front two rooms of the hotel and meticulously scratched lines in the paint working to allow only small, narrow slits of light to enter the room. Turrell found that he could create patterns and illusions, much as he had with the high-intensity projector. Because the light came from the outside world and there was no machinery in the room, he had created a gallery in which the art was made entirely of light. As his thesis evolved he worked to keep the appearance of the rooms completely bare while filling them with brightly colored or white electric light. Through experimentation Turrell recognized that he could modify the walls to create hidden chambers for the bulbs. Titling these pieces “Shallow Space Constructions” he attempted more than a dozen permutations of this new idea. In some he tucked bulbs along a single edge of the room while in others the entire frame of a wall glowed in brilliant color. The result was a series of dream-like spaces housing walls of colored light that appeared solid until the viewer was close enough to reach out and try to touch them.
By the early 1970s, Turrell was exploring another phenomenon with natural light. Instead of scratching paint on the windows he decided to cut large holes in the walls and ceiling to create a view of the open sky above the old hotel. With the right size aperture, the right point of view and some careful finish work he found that it was possible to eliminate any sense of depth, thus bringing the sky flat against the opening and producing the appearance of it having been painted directly on the ceiling. After some experimentation he began to point the bright electric lights at the opening, marveling at the discord between the light seeping in and that being thrust out. These explorations revealed that when he changed the color of the electric light he could change the perceived color of the sky. He began to call the series “Skyspaces.” With the opening of skyspace on the Campus of the University of Texas Turrell has created an installation that combines these two explorations in his past work, light and color. Every day, once at sunrise and then again at sunset, the skyspace will host a programmed sequence of LED lights that are broadcast across its stark white ceiling. During
these performances the play of slowly progressing artificial and natural light is asking the viewer to focus on the in-between zone, the space where the natural and artificial light have come together to create a new light, a new color. Both the natural and artificial light continue to slowly change and engage with each other, creating an incredibly ephemeral but meditative space. In a Turrell skyspace time becomes exceptionally significant, directly responding to the sometimes drastic but often subtle variations in quality of light throughout the course of the day or year. Its location, size and form suggest that Turrell had a very unique experience in mind, a stark contrast to the recently-constructed ‘Twilight Epiphany’ located on the campus of Rice University. While 'Twilight Epiphany' is cited on a prominent university axis and seats 120 people under an expansive 72 square foot white ceiling, ‘The Color Inside’ on the University of Texas campus is located on the roof, four stories above ground and seats under 30 people, seeking to provide a far more intimate experience for each guest.
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An important component of this project will be Turrell’s creation of the journey to the skyspace as an integral part of the experience. The guest will be asked to traverse up through the Student Center in search of the apparatus. This expedition will become a short purification of the mind, giving everyone time to clear out the noise and distractions of their daily life. Typically we can quickly adjust our mindset upon entering spaces such as churches, temples or libraries as these have been designated places of silence and reflection but in this instance we are given time to set our mind to the correct frequency and to fully breathe in the experience offered in Turrell’s skyspace. Upon entering the roof of the Student Center the user will be greeted with a small white oval building flanked with metal panel clad walls directing you to the entrance of the space. In another stark contrast to 'Twilight Epiphany' Turrell has constructed the aperture in the ceiling as an ellipse, probably functioning to achieve a distorted contour of the sky (not unlike the effect he’s been able to achieve through his work on the Roden Crater and at Stroom Den Haag); a concept he has titled Celestial Vaulting. There is both a power and
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subtlety to this experience, something that Turrell is intensely fascinated with during conception of his installations. In his work he seeks to orchestrate an experience rather than an effect, citing how cheap an effect can be but how revolutionary an experience. Over time this installation will host a number of guests, some students of UT as well as others that have travelled to Austin to join in the inimitable experience offered by Turrell’s installations. Even when viewed alongside a group of strangers these spaces allow for a uniquely complex experience for the individual as well as a shared group experience, a complicated concept Turrell has been exploring throughout his career. In his own words Turrell is seeking to create a space with “psychological or perceptual cues that can take us beyond the space that we’re actually in, extend it so that we’re in a space bigger than its physical dimensions.” ae A Skyspace by James Turrell: On the Rooftop Garden of The University of Texas at Austin Student Activity Center, Free to the public, reservations recommended at sunset. www.turrell.utexas.edu.
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James Turrell, The Color Inside, 2013, located on Student Activity Center rooftop garden, The University of Texas at Austin; Photo by Florian Holzherr
Routine and
Scandalous
Jane Radstrom by RACHEL STEPHENS
Jane Radstrom’s work quietly dances the line between pinup and portrait. At less than 30 years of age, Jane has a strong sense of self that allows her to tackle this fine line that art history has made so brittle. Working with the female figure, especially nude or even partially nude, is a subject that has been fighting objectification and beauty stereotyping for centuries. This subject matter does come with a lot of baggage. I certainly do not want to paint a lot of sexy pin-ups, and my work has a lot in common with those images. So, I am constantly assessing the line between art and objectification. I believe that it is possible to paint nude women without objectifying them. I look for the individuality of each model in their personality, body language and shape. The poses that I like best reflect the person’s natural mannerisms rather than posturing
for the viewer. I think that this emphasis on the individual separates authentic portrayals of women from objectified portrayals. Before taking pastel to paper, Jane extensively photographs her subjects and then carefully reviews the hundreds of images to find the few that seem to best convey the models personality and mood through body language. She has found the most effective way to get her models to forget the camera and be themselves is to have them perform routine actions over and over. “By the twentieth time of putting socks on and off, they have stopped thinking about the action and have begun to do it naturally, just as if they were at home.” It is these quiet, ordinary moments that Jane portrays so well. Though Jane’s technique is quite different, she relates to Degas’ pastel revival of the 19th century and his depictions of women completing everyday image (opposite): Unstable Ground, pastel, 59 x 29 in., 2013
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tasks like drying themselves with towels, brushing their hair and bathing. In Degas’ time, this depiction of women performing private, routine tasks was incredibly scandalous. Jane’s work too has a hint of scandal, even today. The voyeuristic quality of witnessing another’s private moment, even if that moment is routine, has not lost its taboo. But that is what makes the work so captivating, seeing another human-being completely at ease in one’s own moment is an unusual experience. Our public actions are self-conscious; we all wear a mask of sorts when we are aware of the gaze of others. We project what we think others want to see or what we want them to see. In private, the masks fall away. It is this private, unfiltered identity that Jane strives to portray; “When you meet someone there are undercurrents you can’t seem to grasp. My work attempts to uncover them. With each piece, I ask myself, how much of one person can I get into one face?” By layering multiple poses in one painting, Jane creates a double exposure effect that your eye interprets as movement. She chooses to emphasize some areas over others, creating a moment that appears real and fleeting. It is this careful selection of how much detail to render that allows the mind to instinctively fill in the blanks of these simple actions, which subconsciously connects the viewer to their own experience and allows them to identify with the subject. This connection is what changes the association of the piece from pinup to portrait, from objectivity to subjectivity. “A friend once told me that I was creating self-portraits of other women,” says Jane, “and that comment stopped me in my tracks, he was totally right. I had never thought about it in that way before.” Jane’s solo show “Multitudes” will be at Wally Workman Gallery in November. The title is drawn from an excerpt from Walt Whitman’s poem Song of Myself: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” This not only refers to the double figure in the painting but also the reflection of self that the viewer associates with the piece, just as Jane sees herself in these portraits of other women. Her work is at once a mirror and a window, at once routine and scandalous. ae image (opposite): Austin 10am, pastel, 38 x 25 in., 2013
Ja n e R a d s t rom • w w w . w a l l y w o r k m a n g a l l e r y . c o m
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"USA. Robert Kennedy Funeral Train." 1968 Š Paul Fusco/Magnum Photos
Frozen in Time The new Ransom Center photography exhibition is epic but also refreshingly intimate by CLAIBORNE SMITH
For
someone unfamiliar with the history of photography, the idea that a group of ambitious photographers needed to band together in 1947 to protect their rights as artists might, on the face of it, seem a little absurd. Anyone nowadays who is half-awake wouldn’t bat an eye seeing a photograph mounted in a major museum, but the acceptance of photography for more than its documentary value as a tool of journalism—for its acceptance as a medium as artistic as canvas and paint—has been a relatively short-lived phenomenon. It certainly wasn’t the case in 1947 that photographers were thought of as artists. The change in how photography is perceived is partly due to those photographers who linked arms in 1947. Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, David “Chim” Seymour, and George Rodger are some of the better-known photographers who founded the artists’ cooperative agency known as Magnum Photos with the idea that each member of Magnum would be able to retain the rights to his or her photos, determine how the photos would be used in magazines (at the time, coffeetable books of photos weren’t published), and what the captions would say. The art of the photo essay or photo story in magazines is largely due to Magnum’s influence. Photographers were thought of as technicians at the
time; the establishment of Magnum was a radical move that insisted on more power being given to artists rather than the media makers who published those artists’ photos. Radical Transformation: Magnum Photos into the Digital Age is on display at the Harry Ransom Center until January 5; in 2009, the Ransom Center acquired a deposit, or kind of temporary archive, of some 200,000 images from the New York office of Magnum (there are four Magnum offices around the world). There are 315 images that made it into the exhibition. For the members of a society that is assaulted by images every waking moment, the exhibition is a return to first principles: the curators, and the Magnum photographers whose work appears in the exhibition, demand that you look slowly, thoughtfully, and actively at these images of war; languid Hollywood glamor; insane, institutionalized children; and people who seem curiously nonchalant about the fact that a noted photographer is capturing the essence of their personality for us to ponder and judge. Even for two respected scholars of photography like Roy Flukinger and Jessica McDonald, the curators at the Ransom Center who created the exhibition, culling 200,000 images into the
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“When Magnum was founded, it was very, very rare to have a photograph in an art museum.” – Jessica McDonald, curator of Radical Transformation: Magnum Photos Into the Digital Age
315 on display was a daunting task. The images they selected for the exhibition tell the story of Magnum’s intuitive, flexible adaption to the rapid technological innovations that have fundamentally altered photography since the agency’s founding (and since cameras were invented). I think the more compelling story the exhibition tells is about the tension in photography between its reliable ability to document news events and the more aesthetic capabilities of the medium (although even that formulation seems inapt when you look, for example, at Paul Fusco's images of the mourners by the train tracks as Robert F. Kennedy’s funeral train passed them by—the photos are newsworthy but also deeply human and sad and objects of art in their own right). However you approach the exhibition, it is not only worth visiting, but you might consider a second visit to fully absorb everything it has to offer. I sat down with McDonald and Flukinger just before the exhibition opened and asked them about the story they tell about Magnum and the history of photography in the exhibition. How did the Magnum archive end up at the Ransom Center?
Jessica McDonald: There are four Magnum offices around the world and the archive on deposit at the Ransom Center came from the New York office. It’s what they were using on a daily basis until 2009, so it’s very much a working collection of materials. If digital photography didn’t exist right now and somebody called up and said, ‘It’s the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and we know you have photographers who were there in 1963, please send us photographs from that event and we may publish them as an anniversary issue,’ they would go in their file cabinets of prints and they would send them in the mail and that magazine would reproduce it from the photograph. Well, now this is all done digitally, of course. And so what was there was this moment in time, this frozen moment; they didn’t add to it, they didn’t take anything out. As the technology changed and they decided there was another way to go with these prints and the archive could be a record of their office at the time and it could all be kept together, that’s what we’re showing in the exhibition and that’s what really inspired the organization and theme of the show, because it’s really about technological shifts. And we’re arguing that this whole digital thing is not the only one that changed how Magnum worked, that [technological change] has been going on since Magnum was founded. So when television came, they had to
"France. Normandy. Landing of the American troops on Omaha Beach." 1944 © Robert Capa © International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos
change how they worked significantly. Television ate into the picture magazines quite a bit. As the way that people consume images has changed and is changing since the 40’s, Magnum has had to adapt and shift how they operate. Most people assume everything was the same until digital came, and then everything changed, but we’re showing how there have been these cycles through the history of photography.
Flukinger: It would be important to emphasize that sense of story. Many photographers from early on wanted to go out and not only shoot a particular assignment but cover it completely, as a point of view, and reveal many things about the event as it occurred. That evolved from the magazine story to controlling it with their own books and getting into film and video, so there are other ways to combine the imagery with the words to make that work.
Roy Flukinger: Not only do photographers evolve McDonald: Magnum’s never been about getting and technology evolves, but the whole agency has the one picture; they’re all about the picture story. evolved with the times. That’s a legacy that continues and that’s why I think multimedia is such a good development, because McDonald: When Magnum was founded, it it allows them to combine moving images, still was very, very rare to have a photograph in an images, language and all kinds of different things, art museum, even though one of the founders of which is a natural evolution. Magnum did have an exhibition in 1947 at MoMA. It was incredibly unusual; there were only two or Flukinger: I hope for people to come in here and three museums in the entire country showing see the course of that progress but also to see that photographs. As that changed in the 60’s and 70’s, here’s this great, famous image and yet it was part how did they adapt to that? What opportunities did of a larger story. The Capa image of D-Day… they take? There’s this whole interaction between the history of the agency and the field, so we’re McDonald: People know the image of the soldier’s taking a really broad view of all that. We’re looking head popping out of the water… at photography itself and how it’s been changing through this window [of Magnum’s history]. Flukinger: And we’ve added three images from Life magazine from that sequence. aether
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The exhibition Radical Transformation: Magnum Photos into the Digital Age. Photo by Pete Smith. Image courtesy of Harry Ransom Center.
McDonald: It’s several days’ worth of photos; [Capa is] going back on the medic boat days before the attack, he’s photographing the generals as they’re strategizing and then he goes on the boat. He’s with them in the days before and then he actually gets in the water and goes to the beach and then he’s there several days after, setting up camp, there are bodies, they’re hauling away German prisoners: it’s the whole thing. People will know the one iconic image but Magnum never thought of that as the one picture. So people will recognize that [in the exhibition] but then they’ll see that it’s part of a story.
a perfect world. We decided we wanted to represent every current member and every member who continued to be a member until their death. Flukinger: And then from there, it evolved into what stories were there in-depth and then others that maybe only had one or two images that didn’t tell that story, so that helped us narrow it down, too. What were the strongest years for Magnum?
McDonald: That’s a difficult question because it’s changed; you could talk about the heyday of the certain kinds of things they’ve done, but I don’t If there are 200,000 photos in the archive that know that there’s a heyday. arrived from Magnum to the Ransom Center, and there are 315 photos in the exhibition, what was Flukinger: It’s all evolved, in some ways subtly and in some ways dramatically. They have always come the selection process like for this show? forward and always come up with solutions to McDonald: I think that in a perfect world, we technological change and now they’ve entered the would’ve had 20 years to look at them. I can’t say Web. That’s as much a heyday as the early magazine that we did look at every single print—that would years. The flexibility of these people is amazing. have been impossible—so we accepted that it’s not
Why do you think that flexibility with technological innovation was built into the organization from the beginning? A lot of cultural institutions aren’t as adaptable as Magnum has been. Flukinger: Part of it has to do with the fact that they were always open-ended about bringing in new members. They refreshed themselves as they went and some of the older members had to face the fact that there were younger people working with different techniques and different media. They may have had arguments amongst themselves but at their annual meeting, they always voted in new members. They wanted to bring in that new challenge. They didn’t say ‘No, this is a closed club;’ they wanted the agency to have people who contributed in an active way and that takes a certain commitment to the future. McDonald: I think the whole spirit of the agency is unique in that the founders didn’t want to be controlled by the people who assigned them to
do things. They would get an assignment from a magazine, they would have to shoot what they were supposed to shoot, and then turned over their negatives and they didn’t know how their photographs were going to be reproduced or captioned. They didn’t know how many times those photos were going to be republished and they didn’t get a financial benefit from that and they formed this organization to retain that control. And that was a completely radical idea and that’s why we use that word in the title of the exhibition. That had never happened before. They were thought of as technicians, so this idea that they would decide how their photographs were published, how they would be captioned, allowed them the freedom to say what they wanted to say with these projects. They wanted those captions to say what they wanted to say about the situation; they didn’t want them to be used to support another political side. One of the very interesting ironies about Magnum is that it’s made of these individuals who want to be fiercely independent but that’s what has joined them. They are still these aether
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“Not everyone in the family gets along all the time and there’s a lot of strong personalities, but they still want to be in the family at the end of the day.” – Jessica McDonald, curator of Radical Transformation: Magnum Photos Into the Digital Age
very, very independent, forward-thinking people with ideas, even though they are operating in this mutually beneficial situation. They’re in it because it allows them to not be beholden to assignments or be a staff photographer somewhere. This is one of the only agencies that allows them to be a member but still drive their own bus, so to speak. A lot of people will talk about it like a family and I’m not the first one to say that. Not everyone in the family gets along all the time and there’s a lot of strong personalities, but they still want to be in the family at the end of the day. They’re very loyal to each other but that doesn’t mean they all agree.
Flukinger: This is perhaps defensive, but this is what David Douglas Duncan once did to me: Somebody would ask him what his favorite photograph was and he would always quote Picasso. When Duncan was doing a bunch of copy work for Picasso, one day he asked him, ‘What’s your favorite painting?’ And Picasso took his hand and stuck it up in front of Duncan’s face and said, ‘You may as well ask me what my favorite finger is.’ Perhaps that’s a cop-out but my problem is that my favorites change week to week, if not day to day. ae
Radical Transformation: Magnum Photos into Flukinger: It’s not entirely a logical, rational the Digital Age is on view at the Harry Ransom organization. In so many ways, it depends on Center, University of Texas - Austin, through emotion, and they bring a lot of that to their January 5, 2014. photography. Are there favorite images you all have from the exhibition?
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VISION.
Quench Your THIRST by MACY RYAN
If you’ve run on Lady Bird Lake lately, you may
to the 1st Street Bridge, and back. Praying for life? Hoping against death? Asking for help?
think you’ve seen a ghost out on the water. And you have. Replete with personification, a dead white ghost tree floats above the lake between the Pfluger THIRST, the collaborative, site-specific temporary Bridge and the Lamar Bridge, while 14,000 Tibetan installation on Lady Bird Lake, is not just a question, prayer flags wave in the wind across Pfluger Bridge, or even a statement, but a prayer and a plea. And aether
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not just to the Universe, to God, or to Mother THIRST began with an invitation from the Nature, but to all of us. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation to Women & Their Work Gallery to apply for a grant for an As city dwellers, we may not be presented with such art project in the spirit of Robert Rauschenberg, an up close and personal view of the great Texas which would emphasize collaboration, innovation drought of 2011; this is exactly why Lady Bird Lake and fearlessness. “I asked a number of artists was chosen for the installation site. Not only is it the and organizations to consider collaborating with heart of Austin; it also maintains a constant water Women & Their Work to develop a project we level and has a beautiful greenbelt surrounding it, could submit to the foundation. Emily Little and making it precisely the place where the urgency of Norma Yancey (Clayton & Little Architects) and I the water crisis is forgotten. With THIRST, our discussed what was the most pressing issue facing observation is undeniable. It is as if those who love Austin, and we decided it was the water crisis. I then nature and the Austin environs the most are being asked Beili Liu (visual artist) and Cassie Bergstrom handed the problem, much like an orphan being (landscape architecture) to collaborate with us, and left on a caring family’s doorstep. THIS. NOW. THIRST became an idea that, after more vetting YOU. HELP. And they would have those who listen from the Foundation, became a reality,” says Chris haunted by this tree ghost and praying with the Cowden, Executive Director of Women & Their prayer flags for a solution – or better, praying that Work. we have the insight to contribute to the solution ourselves. From start to finish, THIRST took 18 months to complete. One of the most challenging components
Perhaps
THIRST
is
even
beyond a prayer and plea; it is a public outcry.
included the city approval and permitting process, a journey that was shepherded by Little. She also oversaw the erection of the tree in the middle of the lake, while Liu helped shape the visual elements of the installation – the white ghostliness of the tree, and the prayer flags. The iconic tree appears to hover over the lake, floating like a ghost; the roots reach, but cannot touch, the water. The tree represents the 300 million trees lost in the 2011 drought - a haunting reminder of our plaguing water crisis. “The tree is at the core of the THIRST project and provides stark contrast between our loss and our precious resources,” says Liu. “The prayer flags component of THIRST borrows from the physical form, and cultural and spiritual reference of Tibetan prayer flags, which are often found strung along mountain ridges and peaks high in the Himalayas. They are used to bless the surrounding countryside, people and their lives. The color white also signifies water in Tibetan prayer flag tradition.”
Cowden, Little and Liu maintain that THIRST would not have been possible without the crossdisciplinary collaboration of the team. It took the expertise from multiple fields to overcome the roadblocks and fulfill the artistic vision of this public art piece, allowing THIRST to realize its destiny as a truly dynamic, game-changing experience to behold. “Because we were a team, we had a number of minds at the table, and there were so many more resources available to us as we tackled difficult problems. The different areas of expertise allowed us to create this very complex installation. As a group, we could imagine creating something really big; I don’t think any of us could have done it alone,” says Cowden. At its very core, THIRST raises awareness of the 2011 drought, shocking most with its 300-milliontrees-lost statistic. Perhaps THIRST is even beyond a prayer and plea; it is a public outcry. It identifies the water crisis as the number one environmental
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issue facing Texas – an issue that is not going away, that is not getting fixed, that is left to linger in the wind, much like the ghost tree and the prayer flags. The water crisis is a problem that will only begin to improve with public consciousness, public attention, public action and public demand. “We have to conserve water to sustain our way of life in Austin. We all know that water is central to life. But up until recently, most of us had taken water, and its constant availability, for granted. THIRST … reminds us that we must re-assess our relationship to water and change our habits,” Cowden explains. In this way, THIRST identifies itself as activist art. It is not art merely commenting on a certain perspective of existence and asking for understanding; it is art with a call to action. When other outlets are exhausted, art is the medium and vehicle for a movement. “Art can touch us in ways that words do not. We strive for change at all levels using all messaging possible,” says Little.
about the millions of trees that have died and are continuing to die. We can no longer have the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. We cannot be dumb, be blind and be ignorant. THIRST is here. It calls to us and yearns for our help. It is TIME. “We are already hearing of the profound, gut-level impact the tree and prayer flags are having on viewers, from all walks of life,” says Little. “I have seen individuals moved to tears immediately upon seeing the tree … I can hope we respond on an individual basis to the need to conserve water, and on a larger scale to educate ourselves on the pending legislation and necessary large-scale steps required to understand what is coming and how to deal with a dramatic reduction in our water supply.” THIRST represents the hope that no more ghost trees haunt us, that no more messages come from the dead, that those already lost can be assured we will learn and act – and they can rest in peace. ae
The team behind THIRST contends that it stands as a beacon for the community; just as it brought THIRST on Lady Bird Lake is on view through the collaborative team together, so it will hopefully December 20, 2013. More information at www. bring the community together and elicit dialogue thirstart.org
w w w. w o m e n a n d t h e i r w o r k . o rg
"THIRST on Lady Bird Lake" presented by Women & Their Work, Beili Liu, Emily Little, Norma Yancey, and Cassie Bergstrom. Photos by Ben Aqua, courtesy of Women & Their Work, 2013 (photo on pg 26 by Macy Ryan). Dimensions: Tree is 38 feet tall 20' x 20', flag loop is 2.5 miles Materials: cedar elm, paint, metal, buoys, LEDs, rope, & 14,000 silkscreened cotton flags Location(s): Pfluger Bridge and the Ann and Roy Butler Hike and Bike Trail in Austin, TX Commissioner(s): Women & Their Work commissioned THIRST on Lady Bird Lake. This project is supported in part by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation's Artistic Innovation and Collaboration Program, which supports fearless and innovative collaborations in the spirit of Robert Rauschenberg, The Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. Art Works, by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts, as well as, Elizabeth and Jamie Baskin, Deborah Green and Clayton Aynesworth, Lori and Tito Beveridge, Lindsey and Mark Hanna, and Elizabeth Young.
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NOBODY COMES IN AND
STAY S Q U IET by RACHEL STEPHENS
The home of Mike LeBurkien is eclectic, mesmerizing and filled to the brim with art and antiques. From magazine cutouts to a neon Lady of Guadalupe, from contemporary oil paintings to a 19th century porcelain toilet-there is a lot to take in when one walks through the front door. So, as Mike says, nobody who comes in stays quiet. His collection calls out for questions and engages visitors immediately. Why is there a marble mantelpiece in the dining room that frames a painting instead of a fireplace? Over lunch, Mike and I discussed this as well as his philosophy on collecting. Like most of his visitors, I had a lot of questions. His responses formed a very interesting story, one that I found educational and enlightening; luckily, I recorded our conversation. Here is a compilation of Mike’s thoughts on creating his very personal collection. Enjoy.
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Mike LeBurkein
This is my second collection; there is nothing
to find the people I like in the city and go to them. It here that is more than two years old. In a previous is their métier to keep their walls interesting. life, I was married for many decades. The collection I had then was quite different. That collection was One of my criteria in collecting is to find a lot of more antique in its tenor. The one I have now is beauty for as little money as possible. Sometimes more contemporary. Starting this new collection it’s a photograph, sometimes it’s an ancient from scratch was liberating. There is something icon, sometimes it is something that was drawn very interesting about just getting rid of everything yesterday. Like the soup kitchen photograph I got at the Austin Historical Center for 25 cents. Look and starting over. at the beauty in their faces, the concern they have I like the process of collecting because I like to meet for the people they are serving the soup to, the the art dealers. In many cities, they are amongst the policeman and the very proper ladies who are living most interesting people. When I first began, I asked out a decent mission in life feeding poor people- I around and looked at artaustin.org to find out don’t know how you capture that intentionally. All where to go. I visited most of the galleries but there of that captured in one photograph, I think it’s good were two that stood out, what I thought was quality enough to be in any museum. of work and of people running the galleries. One was Davis Gallery and one was Wally Workman’s Everybody thinks my collection is wonderful, gallery. I really don’t like running around a lot, I like magnificent. But a lot of it doesn’t cost much at all.
But it speaks to people. It’s an affirmation of life. I don’t buy anything to accrue in value, because when I die I’m going to give it all away anyways. I don’t invest in art as a money thing. I collect beauty; I collect a celebration of the human experience. That is why I’ve always liked figurative work, I feel part of humanity. I have photos by Alan Pogue and paintings by Kermit Oliver, Janel Jefferson, America Martin, Tracey Harris and many more. I feel connected to humanity through antiques too, even more so in my previous collection. I really enjoyed for a long time relating to people who lived in the past, created in the past. It’s only 500 years since Shakespeare, you could almost have 5 or so people from different generations touch hands. That’s why I collect mantles, and because they’re beautifully carved and the material is so incredible, French marble. It’s an art that’s lost really. Who carves
mantles anymore? I believe mantles are objects of art themselves; they don’t need to have a fire in them or anything. I use them to frame paintings or display other antiques. It’s a way of relating to the 19th century; this is Napoleon and all that stuff, right here. I also sometimes cut pictures out of art books or magazines. People come in and don’t know what’s original or not, even cultured or educated people. It doesn’t have the joy of owning the original but if that’s not possible and you love the art, it’s really nice. I like to support the cultural institutions in Austin and I love my city. Every once in awhile, you see something that is really outstanding or an artist that you want to have in your collection. I can take down some of the magazine pictures. People will
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come in and say you have no room for anything else, and I’ll say yes I do, right over there. There are a few areas that still need improvement. All of my art mostly has stories connected to something next to it, or sort of next to it. Here is the seashell carved into the mantle, which relates to the ocean that is related to the seagulls in the Michael Frary painting the mantle frames. And then there on the wall I have David Everett’s three-dimensional seagull. And that relates to the outdoors and that relates to the Bob Rohm’s oil painting of aspens. And on top of the mantle, those are Japanese bronzes with nature scenes: birds, vines, flowers, and snakes. And this pink glass vase from the 1940s is like a shell. It is fun to put together these themes. It’s like living in an art museum, which is really the ideal place to live.
I feel every artist feels close to, I don’t know what other word to use, God. I do think there is a process of creation and that is what the artist connects to because the artist is always creating something new and beautiful. The artist is a wonderful visual creator. They show the beauty of being alive, the pathos of being alive. Because we’re all, as the bible says, we are all flowers that grow in the desert and wilt, swiftly. That’s what the artist captures, the beauty of the flower, of the human condition and of the sadness of the wilting, too. I don’t think there is anything in my collection that I don’t notice; there is nothing that I have that I forget. Everything… it’s like people telling you their stories, all the time, all the time, all the time. That’s what I like. ae
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PASSION.
JAIME SALVADOR CASTILLO MVP of Austin’s Art Community By CAITLIN G. MCCOLLOM
Everyone
knows this man who attends everything, usually accompanied by one of his adorable daughters— whom he fondly refers to as his “assistants”. He is easily approachable and smiley. To know Jaime Salvador Castillo is to know a heartbeat of the Austin visual arts community. Jaime Salvador Castillo is a modest and likeable man but a tireless and hard working member of Austin’s arts community. Castillo has lived in Austin since 1994 and here he has made his thumbprint on the hearts and minds of so many artists, gallerists, nonprofit workers and community members with every level of interest in the visuals arts of Austin, Texas.
and Castillo, in which Castillo brings in an artist in the national spotlight to infuse the local scene with new talent from outside our immediate view. Other projects include his writing, curatorial ventures, and he’s always scheming up something new.
Castillo began his work as a writer. His blog ‘Bout What I Sees, began in 2006, was a hallmark of art writing that caught a large culty following. The remains of that project is an essential tool for navigating the world of Austin art: “The Bout Route”. Jaime tweets and posts his suggested “route” through town every busy evening with openings at local art spaces. It’s imperative in my household Castillo’s projects are numerous and ambitious. He to check “The Bout Route” before embarking on a runs an annual competition, Eyes Got It!—a quirky Saturday night. American Idol style contest, in which the prize is a solo show at a local commercial space. Additionally, His most recent curatorial project over at he co-created the Hybrid Arts Summit. The Hybrid grayDUCK—That Silky Smooth Feeling is another Arts Summit is a lecture series collaboratively example of his great eye for a special production. produced by Art Alliance Austin, Fusebox Festival (above) artwork by Christina Coleman / photo by Michael Anthony Garcia
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That Silky Smooth Feeling is an exhibition about hair. Inside the walls of grayDuck is a monstrous and very creepy arch of black braided hair along with many other works including paintings made with hair gel (which have a particularly interesting odor for a painting…) and momento mori like hair weavings and objects. This exhibition highlighted Jaime’s interest in bringing together quite literal art objects that explored a complex conceptual relationship with themselves, each other, and the viewers.
particularly challenging as I juggled a fulltime day job and a studio practice. When the challenge for more sophisticated arts writing came out of the panel discussions of AMOA's “20 to Watch” exhibition, I became interested in contributing my observations in the form of a blog. 'Bout What I Sees was started in January of 2006. That started me on the path to where I am now.
Will you discuss your newest project That Silky Smooth Feeling? What were your curatorial I caught up with Jaime at grayDUCK to talk about intentions and how did the show develop as it his most recent exhibition and hear more about his came together? history within the arts here in Austin. That Silky Smooth Feeling began as one of my blog posts of fictional shows I would like to curate. When What’s your history with Austin? How did you get Jill Schroeder (director of grayDUCK) invited me here and what do you think drew you into your to curate a show, I proposed this show about hair. current place in the art community? The original group of artists were more illustrators that created imagery of hair that was sensual and I moved to Austin as a teen with my family and maybe a bit superficial. Some were unavailable for attended Travis High School all four years before the show while others I never actually connected attending the University of Texas at Austin. I with, but that lead me to Loren Schwerd, Christina graduated UT in 2005 with a BFA in Studio Art. Coleman and Claire Finin. And this group of artists Since I already had a family, I was very aware that make work that is much more complex. Yes, hair I would not be able to take a typical path into an is still the visual hook but the sub-layers yield so art career. Things like artist residencies would be much more content: hair as identity, hair as signifier
Clare Finin, Place Setting #1, Linen placemat, human hair, 25 x 18 in, 2012
Loren Schwerd, 1812 Tuepelo St, Human hair, fiberglass screen, wire, 23 x 24 x 8 in, 2007
of change, hair as historical marker, Reconciliation be invited to participate in "Group Hug" at Pump through hair… And unconsciously, revealed to Project: Flex Space in early spring. me by guests at the opening reception, there is an attraction/repulsion to hair as a body part that can be creepy. How have you seen the Austin arts community change in the last few years? What growth do you What’s your goal as a curator in general? predict? I think generally, I aim to advocate a healthy exchange of artists. I try bringing in outside artists into Austin and conversely, I try taking Austin, Texas artists elsewhere.
I feel that Austin is constantly in a state of expansion or contraction. I’ve seen things expand recently with the development of the East side of town, then watching the pushback from gentrification sent the art scene back into a contraction. I think we are Tell us about what’s in store for us this year at expanding again. Eyes Got It!: This year's Eyes Got It! really depends on who applies. I am confirming judges now. The "Artist" and "Celebrity" judge are rotating seats, so the panel will have a new lineup. The venue is in the process of being finalized, but it will be at a new location. The actual structure will remain the same; artists from Austin and San Antonio are eligible to apply with 5 images. The panel of arts professionals will review the work and participants will have the chance to win a solo show at grayDUCK Gallery next year. The Top Ten will again have prizes and
Do you have any new projects on the horizon? What’s next for you? (Laughing) Secret projects. Secret partnerships. They’re all secret, I don’t like to announce projects until I really know they’re finalized. ae Eyes Got It! open call deadline is 11:59pm October 31st. The Eyes Got It! event for EAST will be Friday, November 15th 7-9pm (doors at 6:30pm) at Museum of Human Achievement. Follow the Bout Route @salvocheque
eyesgotit.wordpress.com
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bookshelf reviewed by JUDITH TAYLOR
Capital Improvements Austin, Texas * Original Square Mile * One American Center * 1982-1984 2013 Deluxe Limited Edition Book, Mark Goodman
In 1982, Mark Goodman began a two-year photographic project documenting the changes happening in downtown Austin. At the heart of this project was the building of One American Center. Now, thirty years later, the project is detailed in an exquisite handmade artist book with thirty-six original photographs, Goodman’s extensive research presented in three essays, and a collection of historical postcards. In one of the essays titled Move to the Beat of the Street, Goodman describes his interest in documenting the transformation beginning in the central city, the period when the rise of One American Center “trumpeted that change was in the air.” “The razing of the F.W. Woolworth five-and-dime 40 aether
in March 1982 prompted me to take photographs of Austin’s Central Business District, the city’s original square mile. This forty-year-old, two-story building was located at the northwest corner of Congress Avenue and Sixth Street, an intersection off-handedly referred to as ‘Main and Main,’ the midway point on Congress between the Colorado River and the State Capitol, the avenue’s foot and head. On this site in 1839, Richard Bullock erected a log and plank cabin that became the city’s first hotel and social center. One American Center was rising on this historic ground, a three-tiered, thirty-two-story skyscraper that would become the tallest building in the city: 505,000 square feet of office space, retail space, and a nine hundred and fifty-car parking garage. A reporter for the Austin American-Statesman, writing about the ribboncutting ceremony at One American Center in October 1984, called this white limestone edifice the ‘Wedding Cake-Shaped Building.’ ” Goodman approached his self-appointed project with the analytical eye and limited focus of an
GROWTH.
Northwest corner, Congress Avenue and West Sixth Street, looking north, toward the foundation site for One American Center, Austin, Texas, 1982
anthropologist studying the city’s historical one as found in my surviving negatives, searching for a square mile—a manageable area easily covered on sequence of poetic images to fuse to together.” In foot from a pedestrian point of view. doing so, he ponders: What did Austin look like? “There are no special viewpoints that require privileged access, like high-rises or private property, [instead, I chose] viewpoints available to anyone who walked around,” he noted in an interview. “I circled One American Center—a maypole, in my mind—with a photographic strategy not unlike that of a certain New York City cabbie who [remarked], ‘I move to the beat of the street.’ I played visual riffs off the city’s walls and scrawls, sunlight and shadow, destruction and reconstruction, trees and weeds, change and chance.”
Goodman is unique in his presentation. While he exhibits groups of his photographs in traditional manner and individual images are available, he chooses to showcase this body of work in book form rich in background information and commentary. It is the sum of the project that is important to him, more so than an individual photograph. The 112page artist book includes thirty-six black and white fine art photographs, pigment prints crafted from Goodman’s original negatives by Peter Williams at AgavePrint. The hand-sewn binding and cloth cover, housed within a custom-made clamshell Three decades after Goodman photographed the presentation box of vintage fabric was made by Jace beginning of the current transformation of the Graf at Cloverleaf Studio. The completion of Capital central city, he set out to make “sense of time past Improvements as an artist book, limited to an edition
Intersection at Congress Avenue and Sixth Street, looking northwest toward the future site of One American Center, Austin, Texas, 1982
of five, was a labor of love for Goodman during the last three years and affirms his simultaneous commitment to photography and cultural history. The collaboration of photographer, printer, and bookbinder (all working in Austin) has created both a unique handmade book of photographs and an in-depth study of urban change. For those of us who knew pre-1980 Austin, the book sparks nostalgic memories of how we remember downtown—the 1950‘s style Christmas decorations that stretched across the Congress each holiday season, the Grove Drug’s iron clad facade on E. 6th, and the stately avenue leading to the Capitol. Each is a part of the city’s cultural history and I find myself wanting to revisit the text and imagery to absorb it all. Yet, the nature of the artist book of original prints, unlike a mass produced offset printed coffee table book, allows for savoring real photographs
held in your hands, even if wearing white gloves; but let’s hope that Capital Improvements is also picked up by a publishing house for a trade book edition, as it deserves a broader audience and viewing. ae Mark Goodman was born in Boston in 1946, received a B.A. degree in Anthropology from Boston University (1970), and studied photography with Minor White (1970). He received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship (1973) and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1977). He moved to Austin in 1980. His photographs are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, among others. Goodman was Professor of Studio Art in Photography at the University of Texas - Austin / College of Fine Arts from 1973 to 2013 and served as the Graduate Student Advisor. Recently retired, he is pursuing other book projects including one on the 2011 Bastrop Fires.
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PRINT AUSTIN 2014 January 15 - February 15
Austin has a vibrant print community anchored by the Blanton Museum of Art’s vast print collection boasting over 13,000 individual works. Two major workshops—Flatbed Press and Slugfest Printmaking Workshop—are an integral part of Austin's printmaking story and edition work for artists from across the country. The Serie Project, now in its 20th year, has fostered over 250 artists from different professional levels and ethnic backgrounds, who together have produced a rare and special collection of serigraphs. Printmaking is a key component of the area academic offerings, also. UT’s College of Fine Arts has a nationally recognized graduate and undergraduate printmaking program; other area colleges—Texas State University and Austin Community College—also have strong programs and an outstanding faculty. This winter these organizations and institutions, along with local galleries and art spaces, will come together to present PrintAustin 2014. The city-wide collaboration focusing on fine art prints will draw
on the area’s wealth of resources and printmakers. Women Printmakers of Austin, a professional association founded in 1995, has taken the lead in organizing the month long series of exhibitions and events. WPA actively works to expand the audience for fine art printmaking, so taking the lead is “a natural fit,” say co-chairs Cathy Savage and Elvia Perrin, who see PrintAustin emerging as an annual visual arts happening that will attract statewide attention. PrintAustin, which will run from January 15 to February 15, 2014, will open with a juried exhibition sponsored by WPA and close with a print fair hosted by Flatbed Press. Between the two events, which will bring printmakers from across the state, the calendar will be filled with exhibitions, demonstrations, lectures, family events, and hip happenings centered on fine art printmaking. A brochure with event listings and maps will be available at all participating venues in early January. Meanwhile, follow developments online at printaustin.wordpress.com.
Monika Meler, Ojczyzna/Orgod, diffused relief print, 32.25 x 63 in., 2010
Juried Exhibition / The Contemporary Print The First Annual WPA Juried Exhibition will launch PrintAustin, opening reception will be held on January 18, 6-9pm at Big Medium Gallery at Canopy, the newly opened arts center in East Austin. The juried exhibition is open to printmakers from across the state of Texas and is certain to bring noted printmakers to Austin. Jurors for the exhibition are Francesca Consagra / Blanton Museum of Art, Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings and European Paintings; Katherine Brimberry / Flatbed Press and Galleries, Owner and Master Printer; Jeffrey Dell / Texas State University-San Marcos, Associate Professor of Studio Art in Printmaking. Online submissions will be accepted through November 9, 2013. Guidelines and deadlines are detailed on the WPA website, printaustin.wordpress.com. The weekend events will include a Bin Fest where artists can show their portfolios and collectors can purchase original prints; demonstrations will showcase a variety of print processes.
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, "Mannerkopf I" (Man's Head I), 1918, woodcut, from Da Neue Stadt. Photo courtesy of Flatbed Press.
Mary Cassatt, In the Opera Box (No. 3), circa 1880, soft-ground etching, aquatint, and etching, fourth state of four, 30.6 x 26.8 cm (12 1/16 x 10 9/16 in.) (2004.98) image courtesy of Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Gift of Susan Garwood in memory of Sue Ann Reagan, 2004. Photo by Rick Hall.
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EXHIBITIONS / Galleries Flatbed Galleries / Broken Brushes: Prints by Hitler's Degenerate Artists, an exhibit about German artists whose work was deemed publicly degenerate by the Nazi Government in the 1930’s, includes paper works by Edvard Munch, Kathe Kollwitz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckman and others created before the purge. Organized by Gus Kopriva, Redbud Gallery, Houston. Gallery Shoal Creek / International Printmakers, an invitational exhibition curated by Karen Kunc, will feature eight accomplished printmakers from Europe, Asia, and the US who have each developed their own unique approach and visual language. Photo Methode / Silver and Ink, Christa Blackwood's evocative landscapes are featured in the photo gravure series, Naked Lady: A Dot Red Series. Wally Workman Gallery / Jason Urban, Printmaker / Working with traditional printmaking methods as well digital printing, Urban will showcase collages, prints and installations that address parts coming together to make a whole. *Also participating will be Slugfest, Yard Dog, Davis Gallery, Kirchman Gallery
EVENTS / Art Spaces, Museums, Universities Harry Ransom Center / The World at War, 1914-1918, an exhibition featuring color lithograph war posters, prints by Eric Gill, and Apollinaire's Calligrammes. Blanton Museum of Art / Print & Drawing Library viewing Print Department, Texas State University / Screen Printing Mash Up with the Amazing Hancock Brothers Coronado Studios at Pump Project Satellite / Texas Printmakers from the collection of the Serie Project Archives Women & Their Work / Unbound, artists books & artist talk Sandra Fernandez
Jason Urban, Sunset Sticks, Digital Print on Paper mounted to Poplar, 1"x2"x6' each, 2009.
FLATBED CONTEMPORARY PRINT FAIR February 14-15, 2014 Organized by Flatbed Press and Galleries, the Contemporary Print Fair will showcase fine art prints from twenty-five vendors—printmakers, print publishers and university print programs from across Texas. The two day event will kick-off with a preview event on Friday evening; Saturday the fair will be open to the public and will include hourly demonstrations on printmaking in Flatbed’s 4000 sq. foot workshop. Contact: Katherine Brimberry, Flatbed owner and master printer. Katherine@flatbedpress.com / applications are due December 14, 2013
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FOREWORD Still Life, Nocturne New paintings by Nick Brown at Tiny Park October 25 - November 30, 2013
These are dense, lush paintings. They have as much as an inch and a half of paint coming off the surface, while in other areas naked, exposed canvas is used to represent sand. The darkness of the paintings is initially misleading; a closer look reveals a world of color and depth. Compact and focused, these small-scale works are as much objects as images. They stand in contrast to most of his recent work: large-scale paintings (up to 8ft by 12ft) informed and inspired by the solo camping trips he began taking upon his return to his home-state of California after years of urban living in New York and Chicago. In this new series he turns his attention from the mountains to the coast, and from the day to the night. Brown's work has been shown at The Drawing Center, NY; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; The Chicago Cultural Center; and at numerous galleries, nationally and internationally. He received an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 50 aether
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Nick Brown, Night Bloom, oil on canvas, 24 x 18 in., 2013
Nick Brown explores the southern California coast at night with a camera and headlamp. He waits for low tide, photographing creatures and plant-life left in shallow pools when waves recede. The resulting spot-lit photographs become source material for his thickly impastoed oil paintings. For Brown, the pools and life forms are a meditation on impermanence, natural cycles, and physicality.
OBSERVATION.
datebook NOVEMBER November 2 through 30 JANE RADSTROM Wally Workman Gallery
November 16-17 and 23-24 EAST AUSTIN STUDIO TOUR Open Studios in East Austin
Jane Radstrom's work quietly dances the line between pinup and portrait. Jane is able to capture movement in her pieces by layering pastel to create multiple frames of the same action. She leaves much of the white of the paper exposed, forcing your eyes to fill in the blanks. The effect is seductive and thought provoking.
EAST is a free, self-guided tour that champions the abundance of talent within Austin's large and wildly diverse creative community. The public is invited to discover new artistic talent, see working studios, learn about artists' tools, techniques, and inspirations, and support the arts community by building their collections and supporting local businesses.
November 8 through December 7 ECHOES OF FORM Visual Arts Center - UT
through November 21 LEIGH MERRILL: STILL Women & Their Work
Layering objects, meanings, and processes, the artists Andrea de Leon, Mira Coquina Dickey, and Shalena White remind viewers of their own intricate connection to each other and their surroundings. By multiplying seemingly disparate materials with a ritualistic approach, the presented works convey an intense and rhythmic sense of harmony.
through November 17 THE SINGING BONE grayDUCK Gallery This exhibition showcases three artists that use old world flavors and dark folk tales to tell a story. Each artist starts with familiar but intangible themes – identity, history, storytelling, childhood memories – and through introspection and archetype bring these concepts to visual, narrative form. Acrylic paintings by Stephanie Chambers and mixed media paper collage by Katy Horan and Kathleen Lolley.
Still is quiet yet unsettled. Leigh Merrill digitally constructs prints and videos of imaginary but familiar feeling places. Utilizing warehouse imagery that goes on and on, the changes in the images are subtle - a cloud shifts slowly across a parking lot. They suggest a visual hyperbole – an embellished scene circulating around a small fascinating detail. The seamless quality of these photo-based works slowly unravels, giving viewers a sense of curiosity as these hard to place street scenes shift in unfamiliar ways.
November 23 through January 4 HOLIDAY GROUP SHOW Davis Gallery Davis is proud to showcase all of our great artists during the holiday season. New works and gems of days past will be on view for all to enjoy.
DECEMBER
JANUARY
December 7-24 WILL KLEMM Wally Workman Gallery
through January 5 ERIN CURTIS Laguna Gloria / Gatehouse Erin Curtis marries her interests in traditional craft and textiles, gendered labor, and modernist architecture and furniture to create a colorful, painterly installation. Developed through a hybrid practice of painting and sculpture, her work treads the line between fine art and decoration.
through January 12 THE NEAREST AIR: A SURVEY OF WORKS BY WALTERCIO CALDAS
The Blanton Museum of Art
Austin, Texas-based artist Will Klemm has shown his work nationally since 1993 and is a veteran of over forty one-man exhibitions. His latest show at Wally Workman Gallery will feature luminous still life and landscape work in oil completed over the last year. Klemm’s work appears in museum, corporate and private collections including The Austin Museum of Art, United Artists, Fidelity Mutual, Motorola, Samsung, Dana-Farber Institute and many others.
December 5 through January 23 YULIYA LANINA Women & Their Work Yuliya Lanina is a Russian- born American multimedia artist who splits her time between New York City and Austin. Her paintings on canvas and paper, animations and animatronic sculptures portray alternate realities that fuse fantasy, femininity, and humor.
This show will explore the artist’s full body of work, from the 1960s through the present, and will investigate Caldas’s centrality within Brazilian art, his role on the international stage, and his unique position on art and its ethos.
January 15 through February 15 INTERNATIONAL PRINTMAKERS Gallery Shoal Creek Curated by Karen Kunc, this printmaking show will feature works by Karen Kunc, Anna Ve r ta n e n , Mi c h a e l S c h n e i d e r, Ko i c h i Ya m a m o to, Brian Curlind, Ina Kaur, and Monika Meler.
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next issue
Spring/Summer 2014
ae aether (Greek αἰθήρ aithēr[1])
n. 1 the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere 2 a medium that in the wave theory of light permeates all space and transmits transverse waves 3 personification of the sky or upper air breathed by the Olympians.