aether issue nine- fall/winter 2015 by Aether Magazine

aether a visual arts dialogue

AUSTIN fall/winter 2015

ae Collaborators EDITORS Rachel Stephens Partner • Wally Workman Gallery Judith Taylor Director/ Owner • Gallery Shoal Creek

Copyright © 2015 by AETHER. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part, without the express written permission of the publisher, is prohibited. aether, fall/winter 2015 • contact@aetherart.com • www.aetherart.com COVER: Gracelee Lawrence, Forbidden Fruits (Eve's Stack), 2015, polychromed fiberglass, steel, epoxy, 80 x 40 x 40 in. THIS PAGE: Caprice Pierucci, White Vessel I, 2015, pine, 84 x 16 x 9 in.

CONTRIBUTORS Veronica Ceci is an artist and Master Printer living in Austin, Texas. Laura Harrison is the Assistant Director of Gallery Shoal Creek. She has a degree in art and sociology from Southwestern University and loves all things design. RJ Harrington directs the Museum of Pocket Art and is a founding member of the Center for Experimental Practice. Tara Barton is a manager of scientific journals, aspiring author, dancer, and student of permaculture. Jude Richard is an art-loving medical writer in Austin. Claiborne Smith is the editor-in-chief of Kirkus Reviews and a board member of the National Book Critics Circle. J.C. Trebon is an essayist and visual communication strategist who is interested in where culture and creativity intersect. Catherine Zinser is the Education Coordinator for Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin.

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aether Contemporary, three-dimensional art is at the heart of this fall’s visual art offerings.

Museums, galleries and alternative spaces have organized exhibitions that embrace the unexpected, the unsettling, the interpretive and meditative. There are big-name artists and young talent spreading their wings. In this issue, aether writers share their responses to three shows and assess the impact of challenging, collaborative initiatives. The UMLAUF Prize recognizes two MFA students whose innovative work references the city’s treasured collection at the UMLAUF Gardens. The collaboration between the Texas Sculpture Group and Gallery Shoal Creek is realized in Speaking Silence, a juried exhibition that will be on view during the East Austin Studio Tour. The most challenging undertaking is far and away the Contemporary’s Strange Pilgrims, curated by Heather Pesanti, Senior Curator, and spread over three locations. It is certain to broaden your comfort realm. Alongside the in-depth look at objects and constructs, we continue our ongoing commitment to covering Austin’s strong printmaking and fine art photography scene with features on two artists: Jeffrey Dell and Kevin Greenblat. Both work in a series; their current creative direction confirms their devotion to and achievement in silk screening and black and white film photography, respectively. Certain topics are hot button issues in our highly divided national environment. Topics of racism, immigration and mental illness intersect in art in a historical perspective by aether editors and this issue’s Bookshelf interview by Clay Smith. Both are must-reads and are certain to generate dialogue. In fact, our goal in publishing aether is to stimulate dialogue. We encourage you to read, share and be a part of the conversation.

- The Editors

image (opposite): Charles Atlas, Plato’s Alley (from Tornado Warning), 2015. Single-channel video projection and site-specific architectural installation, silent. Dimensions variable. Running time: 6:38 min. Installation view, Strange Pilgrims, organized by The Contemporary Austin, on view at the Visual Arts Center at The University of Texas at Austin, 2015. Artwork © Charles Atlas. Courtesy the artist; Luhring Augustine, New York; and Vilma Gold, London. Image © The Contemporary Austin. Courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons.

Contents 34 STRANGE PILGRIMS/

JEFFREY DELL/

Beyond Imagination

GRACELEE LAWRENCE & RYAN HAWK/

42 MARTIN RAMIREZ/

Old Guard and Vanguard

20 CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE/

Speaking Silence

KEVIN GREENBLAT/

Child of the Mississippi

Modern Journeys in Reality and Fantasy

Framing His Life and Art

ON THE SOUTH MALL/

The Deconstruction of an Artist's Vision

CRIT GROUP/

A New Portrait for the Contemporary Artist

DATEBOOK

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BEYOND IMAGINATION Jeffrey Dell by VERONICA CECI

Does artist Jeffrey Dell believe in the existence of

movement, such as renowned color theorist Josef aliens? “Yes, absolutely!” He doesn’t focus, though, Albers, preferred the term perceptual art. on what exactly they might look like: “I just assume it's beyond what I can imagine.” Dell’s most recent Fifty years later, Jeffrey Dell expands on what was exhibition, Sightings, goes far beyond what one then a new kind of subjective experience. His work might imagine could emerge from the deceptively both depicts an object and creates effects that are simple idea of color on paper. real to the eye without necessarily existing in the work itself. Dell chose the name Sightings, because The 1965 Museum of Modern Art exhibition, “[I]t references both the spotting of a UFO and The Responsive Eye, included paintings and an attempt to fix on a particular thing visually.” constructions from artists whose work approached The merging of these two notions is apparent in the picture plane from a new angle. As William C. A Date with Ambivalence, where the delicately Seitz, curator of the show, stated, “These works exist toned surface is marred by things indecipherable. less as objects to be examined than as generators Whether one thinks the specks are dust or flying of perceptual responses in the eye and mind of the saucers says more about the viewer than the artist. viewer.” Although many artists had been playing with these themes for years, the display made what Dell did not deliberately set out to build on the they were doing a legitimate movement. Artwork foundation of the perceptual artists but recognizes which confused the eye came to be known as Op, the connection. “I realized the Op Artists were a big short for optical, Art. Some artists within the reference for this work, and I started looking at them

Flat Bow Rising, Dark Blue, screen print, 34 x 23 in.

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KXTA Field, screen print, 36 x 26 in.

Watertown Station, screen print, 34 x 23 in.

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more closely . . . I began to understand how much of what we see is determined by our own faculties of perception…and how our brains process the data that we get. The Op Artists gently turn some attention back to the viewer, since what we see is created as much in our own heads as in front of us.” Flat Bow Violet appears dimensional despite the viewer knowing, and the artist emphasizing in the title, that it is flat. The more time spent with it, the harder it becomes to decide exactly how in space that bow is arranged. We begin to understand how much sway our physical faculties have in relation to the brain’s process. The notion of perceptual illusion spread beyond the world of fine art, infusing everyday life. Fabric patterns inspired by Op Art marched down the runways. Color interaction was a key component of the psychedelic rock posters popular in the seventies. The commercial outgrowth of what started as pure visual experimentation is acknowledged in Dell’s work. He is not concerned if his concepts are eclipsed by the striking visuals. “The immediate impact is meant as a sort of feint; that's part of the nature of seduction. And I never want to be the artist that dictates how the work should be understood.”

The artist hints at the commodification of the visual experience by including desire, a key component of every consumer interaction, amongst his central themes. It is with the idea of expanded space that Dell’s unique take on perception is most apparent. The artist tells a story about one source. “Not long ago, I was driving through west Texas, among the thousands of windmills. It was night, and I was far from any cities, so it was very dark. The windmills have small red lights at their top . . . and they blink in synchronicity. The night will seem utterly black and opaque, then suddenly all these things will blink, and I'm aware of not only how many there are, but also of how far apart they are, stretching to the horizon. Those lights articulate the space in a unique way. I think there's something very basic in us that responds to that, and I think it's possible to access that in something very small and insignificant, like a folded or blowing piece of paper.”

In rendering images of papers that seem to pop off the page with their sharp creases and vivid palette, Dell pushes against the physical edges of the work. The fact that the depth and placement of these volumes is then further confused by color doubles down on the legerdemain. Playing with optics has remained a constant in art, although the strength of its presence fluctuates. Dell has many contemporaries. Cory Arcangel’s Photoshop Gradients modernizes the notions through the use of software and screens as means of production. Although chromatically rich, this work of Arcangel’s exists without a hint of dimensionality. Sculptors such as Keith Lemley use literal light in the form of neon and reflective surfaces to trick the eye in three-dimensional space, corralling the physical territory around us to beguile. Jeffrey Dell, however, is distinct in his use of the completely flat surface of paper to create the illusion of three dimensions through the optical effects created by a carefully chosen color interaction. The mass of a sculpture is evoked through the planar. The result is visually stunning.

two camps, mystical and technical, into which the original Op Artists were so often divided. Dell expands on this idea saying, “As a print person, there is a certain amount of motivation I get from technical challenges . . . but I'm very interested in making something that feels both magical and completely grounded, even a bit mundane . . . [M]agic is really always in the perception, not the thing we're looking at.” One of the most readily accessed forms of magic in our world is that of beauty. Inherently subjective and at times even controversial, beauty has the power to stop us in our tracks and trump our better judgment. Dell uses that charm as an entry point into more complex themes: “Beauty tells us a lot about ourselves, about what we long for, what we desire, what we think will complete us, what we want to possess. It seduces us into believing things we might shouldn't.”

Beauty in these works is color. One might be surprised to learn that for years the artist worked only in grayscale. The shift was relatively sudden, occurring over a holiday break. “I was feeling very constrained by the nature of how I was engaging intaglio and mezzotint,” Dell recalls. “I couldn't There is a bit of magic involved, a synthesis of the push myself out of working a certain way with it. So

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Dreamland, screen print, 34 x 23 in.

I just left it and started working in a very different direction, and color was central . . . it asserted itself immediately after the switch and has remained that way.” From pieces as delicate as Stacked Sides to ones as bold as Paradise Ranch, hue is the main language. The shift to color may have been rapid, but mastery of it took “years and years” of work. The artist cites a residency at the Charles Adams Studio Project in Lubbock, TX, as being particularly helpful, giving him time to perfect his method.

Maxfield Parrish.” The artist adjusts his traditionally sourced palettes for maximum impact by creating situational color studies. “I will make maquettes and look at them in different lighting situations, mixing warm and cool, natural and artificial. But I also look at how they photograph, which is a particular way of ‘seeing.’ We are so surrounded by photography, and by the particular ways that our cell phones capture color and light, that we're not even aware of how these affect our vision.” The photographic image has become a new kind of truth, one that the artist Jeffrey Dell’s chosen medium is serigraphy, utilized sometimes accesses in order to extend his illusion. by Responsive Eye artist Gerhard von Graevenitz without achieving Dell’s level of technical In a time when the image captured is the event sophistication. The artist explains the method: “[The actualized, Dell utilizes that presumption to his prints are] made by pushing ink through fabric with advantage: “I think it's possible to appropriate a form or stencil on or in it. I mix the colors on certain color casts from digital photography . . . and the screen to create the gradient effects.” The paper trick the viewer a bit: [if it] looks like a photo [it] stays flat while printing, and the ink is applied in must be optically correct.” That which has occurred thin, flat layers. This gives the artist an advantage is only made real through photographs, but the over the perceptual painters of the 1960s, many photographs themselves are a type of unreality. of whom spent years perfecting the technique of Dell’s work, like the existence of aliens, teeters creating perfectly flat, brushstroke-free paintings in between these places of evidence and unbelief. ae order to not distract from the other optical devices. The production in no way involves the digital, but the exploration leading up to creation takes it into account. For each piece, Dell’s initial thoughts on the palette come from historical sources, “I've been looking at a lot of Tiepolo and, strangely enough,

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Old Guard Vanguard Gracelee Lawrence & Ryan Hawk respond to Charles Umlauf by CATHERINE ZINSER

The UMLAUF Sculpture Garden and Museum was established in 1991 to

house the collection of work given to the city of Austin by twentieth century sculptor, Charles Umlauf (1911–1994). When the current curator, Katie Edwards, interviewed for her position just over two years ago she stressed the importance of competitive, juried exhibitions for smaller institutions. “It’s how art moves forward,” she said. The museum enthusiastically agreed and as soon as Edwards was on staff she revived the UMLAUF Prize, a juried award open to MFA students at The University of Texas at Austin where Umlauf taught for 40 years. Damian Priour—a UT alumnus and UMLAUF board member—and his wife Paula founded the Prize in 2004 to foster a dialogue between established and emerging art while supporting the careers of young artists—passions the Priours shared with Umlauf. Winners receive a monetary award and a stipend to create new work for display in the galleries or on the grounds of the museum. The Prize was awarded four times before it was suspended in 2008. Edwards (left) Charles Umlauf, Ballerina I, 1977, bronze, 54 x 17 x 15 in. (right) Gracelee Lawrence, Forbidden Fruits (Eve's Stack), 2015, polychromed fiberglass, steel, epoxy, 80 x 40 x 40 in.

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Charles Umlauf: (left) The Kiss, 1970, bronze, 50 x 58 x 19 in. (right) Lovers V, 1976, bronze, 40 x 24 x 42 in. Gracelee Lawrence: (left) The Kiss (Bananapear), 2015, polychromed fiberglass, steel, epoxy, 102 x 66 x 36 in. (right) The Lovers V (Pair of Purple Pears), 2015, polychromed fiberglass, steel, epoxy, 90 x 32 x 32 in.

resuscitated the Prize with an exhibition of work by Adam Crosson in 2014. For the first time this year, UMLAUF recognizes two recipients, Ryan Hawk and Gracelee Lawrence, in the exhibition murmurs. Another first—both artists respond directly to Umlauf ’s work, creating site-specific pieces that reflect twentieth-century ideas and present them to a twenty-first-century audience. Though their work is paradoxical in many ways, Hawk and Lawrence both address gender roles, gender identity and sexuality to question past and present societal norms. Juror and arts advocate Suzanne Deal Booth recognized that either artist would have been a strong choice but that together their work plays off one another, generating a conversation that flows in and throughout the gardens and gallery. Both artists were immediately struck by Umlauf ’s figurative work. Influenced early in his career by

Auguste Rodin, Umlauf's male figures are muscular, heroic and seemingly larger than life. The female figures, however, are willowy and pliable and seem to lack any logical bone structure. This isn’t a critique on Umlauf ’s skill as an artist. The suppleness of the women in his sculptures speaks to their place in society—a male-dominated society—in midcentury America. As a whole, the Prize exhibition suggests that gender exists on a spectrum. Viewers are asked to suspend preconceived notions of gender and reconsider what it means to be masculine or feminine. Hawk and Lawrence approach this from very different angles. Gracelee Lawrence sought to create something sitespecific that would respond to its surroundings. Using 3D scanners and a computerized milling machine in the new Digital Fabrication Lab at UT, Lawrence fabricated three fountains: each addresses a sculpture by Umlauf and is oriented

near its inspiration in the ponds of the garden. CNC (computerized numerical control) technology allows Lawrence to dramatically alter the scale of her work. Lawrence often works with food—pulps and juices––as materials in their natural state, but here she uses fruit imagery for the first time, scaling to human-sized proportions. Feminism has always been central to Lawrence’s work and she uses fruit because of its long-established associations with fertility and fecundity. For this same reason, she prefers to use soft, pastel colors—gendered feminine––to debunk the opinion that serious art requires a reserved color palette. Lawrence was drawn to Umlauf ’s The Kiss. “The way these bodies are shown, the physiological aspects, is very troubling. She is malleable and he is a pillar,” Lawrence explains. For her work entitled The Kiss (Bananapear) Lawrence substitutes the human figures with fruit, mimicking the lines and forms in

parody of Umlauf ’s work. Her Forbidden Fruit (Eve’s Stack) stands near Umlauf ’s Ballerina. Lawrence parodies the figure’s stiff, bulbous breasts with a pile of plump pomegranates, pears and apples. The pairing is a play on seduction and temptation. In these sculptures, the fruit acts as a foil, exposing the heteronormative nature of Umlauf ’s work and the twentieth-century mindset: men are powerful and dominant and women are delicate and submissive. Lawrence shines light on society’s need to fit all things—particularly people—into neat categories and by doing so, begs her audience to ask why? Ryan Hawk is first a performance artist, and the human body is central to the videos and installations in this exhibition. Throughout the gallery, if Hawk doesn’t present a male body physically, he suggests one with hand-smeared Crisco or glistening goop (GAK polymer) flowing in and out of a tight space. Hawk’s work requires more unpacking

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Ryan Hawk, Untitled (After Spirit of Flight), 2015, two-channel HD video, 9 min., color, sound

than Lawrence’s. Subtle subculture references give deeper meaning to the context of his work. For instance, Crisco had an almost exclusively female consumer base in the early twentieth century, before it became the preferred lubricant for gay men in the 1970s. The product may not have experienced a complete gender reassignment, but it’s worth noting its disparate uses. Crisco is used in Untitled (A Ring Is Not A Hole With Something Around It), where Hawk references the etymology of the words "ring" and "anus" and their shared root. This piece is positioned near Untitled (Plumbing), two screens that show the GAK flowing in and out of a hole, suggesting the multidirectionality of orifices.

Like Lawrence, Hawk was struck by Umlauf ’s proclivity towards representations of powerful, physically superior male figures. Hawk’s subject, a male nude, mirrors the pose of Umlauf ’s heroic bronze, Spirit of Flight, but Hawk’s figure is dominated rather than dominant; GAK slowly flows down his body and he finds arousal in this submissive role. As Hawk explains, “Showing this type of masculinity—that it can be passive and it’s okay to be passive—alleviates masculinity of things that can be detrimental, especially to queer people. Simultaneously it alleviates female bodies of femininity, from passivity and assumptions that a female body can’t be an active force. I hope that addressing a male figure does both of those things.” The main work in the gallery is Untitled (After Lawrence continues: “I think it’s ironic that Ryan’s Spirit of Flight), another video on two screens. work reads as masculine and mine as feminine—I

Ryan Hawk, Untitled (A Ring Is Not A Hole With Something Around It), 2015, Crisco on gallery windows, 40 x 12 ft.

think that goes back to [society’s] tendencies. I think we both have an understanding of the fluidity between the two and that everything is existing on a giant spectrum instead of binaries and dualities.” For the museum, the exhibition is revolutionary. Lawrence and Hawk are pushing 25-year-old boundaries that are begging for slack. The museum is charged with the presentation of and education about the work of Charles Umlauf and his contemporaries, and the institution continuously does this in an elegant way. This exhibition shows there is room for other voices; it allows viewers to experience contemporary art in conversation with work that is already considered universally pleasing. It’s important to periodically hold up that lens. Kudos to the UMLAUF for taking a running

leap in the direction of serious contemporary art that can question the past and do so without being flippant or dismissive. Next year, the museum will celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary with two Prize exhibitions: a retrospective of all Prize winners and another singular exhibition chosen from current students by juror Don Bacigalupi, founding director of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and UT alumnus. Viewers of this year’s murmurs will agree next year’s applicants will have their work cut out for them. ae The exhibition murmurs will be on view at UMLAUF Sculpture Garden and Museum until November 8, 2015. More information can be found at www.umlaufsculpture.org

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CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE Speaking Silence by JUDITH TAYLOR

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The contemplative nature of contemporary sculpture is to a large degree driven by the language of silence. Artists meld form and material seamlessly to create objects that engage and spark our curiosity.

Christine Finkelstein, in her article "Studying Contemporary Sculpture" (Sculpture magazine) reinforces this idea of contemplation when she says, “Looking at sculpture, especially freestanding works, takes place over a matter of time, which adds a unique quality to the viewing experience."

the art object itself. Artists of creative genius broke boundaries and made way for numerous innovative developments. Beginning in the 1950s, artists embraced industrial materials and techniques as part of a bold sculptural language, choosing to reject traditional methods of casting or modeling. Consequently, an unprecedented partnership was This experience involves relationships. I am formed between artist and industry.” particularly fascinated with the compositional connect between the object and its surround, and This “bold sculptural language” is the focal point how the sculptor uses voids and negative spaces to for the juried exhibition Speaking Silence, hosted connect the two. Undulating lines and changing by Gallery Shoal Creek. Organized in collaboration angles suggest movement, while evocative patterns with the Texas Sculpture Group, 18 individual cast shadows and illusions take hold of our works give voice to the range of materials and imagination. Such is the magic of contemporary techniques that define contemporary sculpture. sculpture. On the following pages, aether profiles three of the artists whose work will be on view in the Finkelstein goes on to discuss sculpture in terms of exhibition— Jason Mehl, Elizabeth Akamatsu the rapid changes that occurred in the last half of the and Paul Seeman—and talks with them about the twentieth century. “Subject matter was suppressed, themes that run through their work. the figure abandoned, and emphasis was placed on

image (previous page): Jason Mehl, A Language Older Than Words, 2014, bronze, 20 x 9 x 6 in. image (above): detail of A Language Older Than Words

JASON MEHL Jason Mehl spent the better part of a decade exploring the world while creating art. With a degree in Environmental Science, he traveled the vanishing wildernesses of North America seeking natural areas—areas with silence and solitude— places where dynamic forces create intriguing patterns over time. After living in South Korea for five years, Mehl closed his Seoul studio and returned to Dallas in 2013 with a full shipping container of work. Today, he lives and works in a former foundry building in Dallas now used by a group of artists as workshop and foundry for their own work. It has been said that “rocks are the bones of the world,” and from this idea emerged the art form of Gonshi (Korean) or Suiseki (Japanese). These are small, naturally formed stones admired for their beauty and for their power to suggest a scene from nature. Mehl’s work embraces a similar reverence for natural forms as he “creates ambiguous, composite work based on the intuitive geometry of nature.” His sculpting is a cyclic process of addition and subtraction based on keen observation and rooted in a clear understanding of how natural forces

produce and alter forms. He relishes the idea that each piece "reveals itself through often unexpected discoveries.” Thematically, A Language Older than Words—a linear form that floats on an upward angle—is representative of Mehl’s core focus: erosion in nature and the impact that manufactured spaces have on a fragile environment. Rendered in bronze, the crusty surface angles upward, hinting at what might have been, and crescendos with a dramatic end point. The languages of erosion, decay and growth guide the artist as he establishes balance, shadow lines and ratios of positive and negative areas—almost as if the sculpture was a found object. Photographed in a desert environment, the form and the surround become one, emphasizing the full intent of Jason Mehl’s expressive work. Plans are on the drawing board to translate A Language Older than Words into a large-scale, outdoor piece that is certain to make a most powerful statement.

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ELIZABETH AKAMATSU “I am an object maker. I have an aesthetic that reflects my Japanese heritage.” Born in Japan, Elizabeth Akamatsu grew up in Southern California surrounded by orange groves and eucalyptus trees, where she developed a great love for nature that has had a significant impact on her work.

This process of creating can occur in a moment or take months to come to fruition.” The complexity of identity, like nature, is one of several themes that play out in Akamatsu’s work. “Like all females growing up and living in a maledominated society, who I am is formed by our conceived notions of what it means to be a woman. My work serves as a forum for questions that I feel compelled to examine and address.”

She talked of her process, saying, “Sometimes I start with an idea. I’ll objectify it out of a raw material such as steel, bronze or wood. At other times, I’ll start with a found object, such as an exceptionally beautiful branch, which I then incorporate into a sculpture to create a piece that is uniquely mine. The needle is one of the oldest and simplest of

The Needle's Eye, wood, encaustic, steel, 32 x 41 x 5 in.

tools. In lore and literature, it has often been used metaphorically to symbolize womanhood and women’s desire to nurture and hold together the family unit. The needle—the idea of sewing— suggests secure bonds, a certain permanence. In contrast, “pins” denote girlhood and the transitional nature of growing up.

intertwining needles—suggestive of male and female sexuality—emerge as a fertility symbol, bringing universality to the simplicity of the form. The sculpture is also suggestive of the “all seeing eye” or "window to the soul.” Suddenly, a simple, ageless form carved from wood and covered in a layer of encaustic becomes a complex, expressive object confirming that Akamatsu’s work is both Akamatsu’s intriguing sculpture titled The Needle’s current and contemporary. Eye presents a range of associative meanings, all the while leaving a sense of vagueness that insists we complete the narrative in our own voice. The aether

Gateway to Texas, Cedar, pine, industrial pipe, 36 x 35 x 16 in.

PAUL SEEMAN Fire dances in Paul Seeman’s art world. Trained in structural welding, he discovered the meditative properties of molten metal while making straight, strong welds. All along, he studied the way the molten metal moved, which led to his discovery of what he calls “doodling with metal.” From there the evolution to becoming an artist began. The doodling led to line, form, shape and motion. Completely by accident, he had fallen into a love affair of metal and art. Paul has been "dancing with metal" ever since. Living in South Texas, Seeman is concerned with the impact of the energy industry on community. Gateway to Texas is a thought-provoking piece made of circular, laminated strips of wood suspended on an assemblage of pipes. The work conveys the artist’s deep belief that, while industry leaves its mark on the land, it affects communities and people the most. The work combines stripped wood—cedar and pine—with sections of discarded industrial pipe, one a drill pipe. The wood element of the sculpture represents the small communities that profit from cyclical oil booms, yet are

abandoned, left to dry up, when the bust comes. The shadows cast from the piece loom both literally and figuratively emphasizing the lasting, often negative, effects of the industry. A range of media came into Seeman's artistic world while he was working towards his Fine Arts degree at Texas State University–San Marcos, where Roger Colombik was his mentor. Formal training was Paul's road to becoming a well-rounded artist, something that he believes is important to being an artist. Seeman is currently in his last year in the MFA Sculpture program at Texas A&M–Corpus Christi, studying under Jack Gorn and Greg Reuter. All three professors are members of the Texas Sculpture Group and speak to the positive influence and mentoring opportunities that seasoned, accomplished members can have on young aspiring sculptors. ae

For half a century, the International Sculpture Center (ISC), based in New Jersey, has been advancing the creation and understanding of sculpture internationally. Providing resources, bringing together artists and patrons, convening conferences and publishing Sculpture, an international, monthly magazine dedicated to all forms of contemporary sculpture, are just a few of the organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s initiatives. Texas Sculpture Group (TSG) is an affiliated chapter of ISC, and one of just three branch organizations. Chicago Sculpture International and the Pacific Rim Sculptors Group join TSG in promoting contemporary sculpture as an art form regionally. With 118 current members, TSG works to advance camaraderie among those who make, collect, research and simply enjoy sculpture in Texas. TEXAS SCULPTURE GROUP Speaking Silence / A Juried Exhibition featuring eighteen TSG members Elizabeth Akamatsu, Melissa Borrell, Lauren Browning, Valerie Chaussonnet, Susan Fitzsimmons, Jerry Freid, Michael Furrh, Amy Gerhauser, Kathi Herrin, Jason Mehl, Caprice Pierucci, Cat Quintanilla, Paul Seeman, Sabine Senft, Judith Simonds, Mike Stephen, Hank Waddell, Jo Zider on view November 1â&#x20AC;&#x201D;December 3, 2015 and during East Austin Studio Tour at Gallery Shoal Creek / Flatbed Building

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CHILD

OF THE MISSISSIPPI Photographer Kevin Greenblat by J.C. TREBON

Ms. Pearl, pigment print on fiber-based paper, edition of 12, 22 x 22 in.

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I’m looking for people who are surprising — heartbreaking —or beautiful in a terrifying way. Beauty that might scare you to death until you acknowledge it as part of yourself. - Richard Avedon

Richard

Avedon’s statement rings true for photographer Kevin Greenblat. Greenblat’s keen ability to capture a powerful duality in his subjects is the hallmark of his work. The impact of 22 photographs from the series Child of the Mississippi (an old nickname for Louisiana), presented at Photo Méthode Gallery can be credited to his immersion into the culturally rich and ethnically enthralling region, Southern Louisiana. “There is an unwavering spirit in this state of diverse backgrounds and cultures that has captivated me ever since my first visit.” While in college, Kevin Greenblat took a road trip with friends through Louisiana and on to Florida before returning to New York. Stopping for gas in Metairie, Louisiana, he had an intense feeling of strangeness. The sights, the music and the highpitched energy level made for an unusual, unnerving experience. He left remembering the contagious spirit of people expressing themselves.

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In 2003, he began photographing the unbridled spirit that permeated the region—the rituals, cultural identities and theatrical flair of the people: Creoles, Cajuns and Houma Indians. Having lived in Texas now for over 20 years, he speaks of the vast difference in our neighboring state. Louisiana is a different place—culturally, geographically and historically. Austin-based Greenblat continues to explore the soul of southern Louisiana in what is an ongoing project. Images juxtapose the mundane with the surprising, uncovering an intense contrast—beauty among bleakness, oddity within the ordinary. Such is evident in the haunting femininity Greenblat brilliantly captures in the photograph of Ms. Pearl. Age and pride break forth from the bleak backdrop—the familiar allure of a woman’s boudoir and the mirror’s reflective image. Ms. Pearl, a fixture in the Bywater, one of New Orleans’ poorer neighborhoods, is typical of the spirit Greenblat

(left) Baptism, pigment print on fiber-based paper, edition of 12, 22 x 22 in. (right) Snakes and Baby, pigment print on fiber-based paper, edition of 12, 22 x 22 in.

sees and senses. During Katrina she turned disaster photographing with a Hasselblad and film makes into strength, drawing people together as she me slow down—wait for something interesting, provided refuge for many. unique and special.” Baptism was also shot in Bywater at the Trumpet of Truth Ministry. A decidedly transformative event set against a backdrop of community life shot in black and white presents a dramatic, most compelling image. As a photographer, Greenblat is drawn to such backdrops that have not changed over time. He is not interested in creating narrative but compelling visual imagery. Nor does he desire to make political statements or reflect on tragedies such as Katrina. He wants his work to stand alone detached from experience. Baptism achieves just that. Explaining why he works only in medium-format black and white film, he notes that “I am by nature fast moving; a visual can change in an instant adding to my tendency to be in a hurry. Abandoning digital,

Waiting paid off when Greenblat shot Snakes and Baby where he cleverly captured the everyday—the familiar charm of a contented baby being pushed along on the sidewalk. Yet, the ordinary is presented in contrast to the shock one feels seeing the unusual pets—three snakes contently coiled around the adult. A third element completes the strangeness, the fact that the adult’s face is not revealed. In this way, Greenblat avoids the narrative. Child of the Mississippi demonstrates Greenblat’s social and emotional connection to his subjects as well as his powerful photographic direction. He draws viewers into the imagery by effortlessly capturing and conveying the untold dynamic and being of his subjects. Despite the sometimes foreign elements, viewers will find relatable familiarity with

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Chief Dardar of the Houma Nation, pigment print on fiber-based paper, edition of 12, 22 x 22 in.

the individuals as well. Two in particular capture being accepted into his or her world. Such was the the bold, rich heritage and strong devotion to case with the Houma chief who invited him into his traditions within distinct cultural groups. home. Speak of Mardi Gras, and visions of the celebration in the French Quarter of New Orleans come to mind. Greenblat, though, prefers to experience the authentic Cajun Mardi Gras near Iota which harkens back to an early rural ritual. The celebration focuses on the men—dressed in strange costumes, faces covered, riding on horseback—while women cook and open their homes as the procession moves from place to place. In Iota Mardi Gras Rider, a sense of tension permeates the image. The horse is reared up, the horseman definitely in control; both express a fierce intensity that verges on frightening. The photograph Chief Dardar of the Houma Nation conveys a far more tranquil moment and invokes a far different emotional reaction. The historic Native American Houma tribe inhabits areas on the east side of the Red River of the South. Greenblat always spends time getting to know a person in hopes of

In the photograph, ritual, tradition and history are captured in this powerfully posed yet graceful image. When this photograph is viewed alongside other photographs from Child of the Mississippi, it becomes evident that Greenblat masterfully conveys the fierce energy radiating from a region’s people whose spirit has over time been beaten, battered, but never broken. ae Child of the Mississippi opens at Photo Méthode November 12 and runs through December 22. For more information, please visit www.photomethode.com

Iota Mardi Gras Rider, pigment print on fiber-based paper, edition of 12, 22 x 22 in.

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Strange Pilgrims

Modern Journeys in Reality and Fantasy by CHRISTINA MARTELL

We’ve

all had that moment, whether daydreaming at our desks or staring longingly out a window, where we make a decision to take a trip and we begin to visualize what that journey might look like.

15 artists: Charles Atlas, Trisha Baga, Millie Chen, Phil Collins, Andy Coolquitt, Ayşe Erkmen, Roger Hiorns, Nancy Holt, Lakes Were Rivers, Angelbert Metoyer, Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono, Paul Sharits and Sof ía Táboas.

It starts with a dream, an ethereal idea rife with This exhibition will ask a lot of you—but take the emotions of adventure; it’s a quick and free escape leap of a journey unknown and you will probably from the banal. We find ourselves attempting discover things about yourself you never knew. to materialize a new experience by placing our physical self with our mind’s eye into a rose-filtered “The exhibition Strange Pilgrims begins postcard. What we are really doing is living in a state with the metaphorical notion of the of “magical realism.” Travel, at its core, is one of the traveler: an open-ended journey through most effective transports to this ethereal world. strange and unfamiliar spaces, embarking on a pilgrimage not only in time and place This fall we can experience magical realism on but also through imagination, the senses many plateaus with an ambitious exhibition that and perception.” spans three locations: The Contemporary Austin –exhibition description, The Contemporary downtown, the Visual Arts Center on The University Austin of Texas campus and at The Contemporary's Laguna Gloria site. Curated by Heather Pesanti, Strange Pilgrims encompasses three distinct sites for Senior Curator at The Contemporary Austin, engaging with artworks based on thematic sections: Strange Pilgrims includes work in varied media by Environment & Place, Performance & Process, and

Angelbert Metoyer, Untitled (Indigo Series A–Z), 1997–present. Found sculptures, indigo pigment, silver nitrate, table, chair, gold dust, and rug. Dimensions variable. Installation view, Strange Pilgrims, The Contemporary Austin –Jones Center, 2015. Artwork © Angelbert Metoyer. Courtesy the artist. Image © The Contemporary Austin. Courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons.

Technology & Information. Deftly represented in these categories are artists who are both well established in the modern art canon, as well as younger artists working locally and collaboratively. Purposefully broad, this exhibition requires the viewer not only to experience many mediums of art, ranging from static to kinetic, video and sculptural installations with photography and film. It also requires a bit of travel to the different sites, which in its totality will solidify the metaphysical themes as well as accompany the physical traveler seeking new visuals and ideas. As I set out on my personal journey to visit all the sites I quickly learned time and space were the most needed. Don’t expect to absorb all the spaces and works in one afternoon. To fully enjoy and contemplate this exhibition you have to set aside time and a mindset of reflection for each environment. Thankfully the exhibition is on view through 2016. Beginning with Environment & Place at The

Contemporary (one can begin at any location) and encountering Andy Coolquitt’s installation in the front gallery first seems like a lesson in indulgence, and, truthfully, is a bit off-putting. But, upon closer inspection one can see the artist’s deliberate choices of seemingly random objects arranged in some strange, unsettling story. This is what happens with a show of this nature. You are presented with works that might make you feel uncomfortable, but try spending a little time with them, and they may open up ideas and memories long forgotten. Angelbert Metoyer's, Untitled (Indigo Series A-Z), 1997–present, is more approachable but also layered in metaphor, with gold dust, mystical creatures and items of everyday use rendered inoperable. His works are like opening a large dusty history book with small print and faded images. They invite you to squint and get closer, walk around, smell them. He pulls from history and heritage to compile a story of greed, exoticism, worship and alchemy. The shrine to his ancestors encapsulates “Afrofuturism” as a conduit for ritual and injustice within the social

Lakes Were Rivers, Swan Cycle: Chapter One, 2015. Installation of framed photographs on drywall and support. 120 x 192 inches. Installation view, Strange Pilgrims, The Contemporary Austin – Driscoll Villa at the Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria, 2015. Artwork © Lakes Were Rivers. Courtesy the artists. Image © The Contemporary Austin. Courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons.

historic African diaspora. You’ll be inspired to friends as you recommend this experience. learn more about indigo blue and its significance in American history. Admiringly, Millie Chen’s video, Tour, 2014, was the most centering. The camera walks us backwards Not to be missed is the participatory installation by in first-person view through grass down a hill, Bruce Nauman, Green Light Corridor, 1970. This away from a structure, while soporific siren songs will be a “geek out” moment for those art history engulf you. This is such a divergent space from students who only were able to read about this work the other works. It allows reflection, albeit with in books. This seminal and monumentally historic stark realization; for example, what happened in work is surprisingly humanistic. You have to walk Murambi, Rwanda in 1994—the mass genocide of inside it to fully understand its power. You will 65,000 Tutsis—is only addressed with a place and also, most likely, experience it with other visitors, date. Andrew Wyeth’s famous painting, Christina’s adding to the moment. It feels like being trapped World, came to mind, as the film has a sense of great in a subway: uncomfortable, yet exhilarating. This loss and beauty in a stark natural setting. It was is the definition of a new perspective in space and a needed visual breath and allowed the viewer to light. Your skin color changes, your eyes dilate, reflect on bigger-than-life issues, while also giving and after the journey in the narrow corridor, you weary travelers a quiet place to sit on their first see a new intense light and color. Your eyes work day of this bizarre walkabout. The overall feeling, differently—just don’t give away the ending to your however, was this: This will not be an easy journey,

but an important one. What better way to define a interact with one another. It is a successful way of pilgrimage? discussing the act of “display” and references a life led long ago in opulence, industry and performance The second leg of the exhibition is Performance & through the status of her daily life. Driscoll herself Process at Laguna Gloria. The setting is the historical was a trailblazer and renaissance woman who villa and beautifully kept grounds that so many of broke many molds in her time. These works set out us who live in Austin have visited frequently. You to question and remake her unique history. will be surprised by how you encounter this “old friend” anew with these works. Beautifully paired with the framed photographs is a video installation, Swan Cycle: Chapter Two, Entering the late vacation home (built in 1916) 2015 (indicating there are many more chapters of Clara Driscoll (1881–1945) you nearly trip on to come). The formal dining room of the home a photomontage installation lying on the floor, has been turned into a modern art theater—stark titled Swan Cycle: Chapter One, 2015, compiled by but inviting—and the images projected are slow Lakes Were Rivers (lakeswererivers.com), a unique motion, ethereal pans of thick natural fauna on photo collective of 11 Texas-based artists. As if an the Laguna Gloria grounds. The audible layers of auction house or historian were cataloguing Ms. resonating bird songs, cicadas and an occasional Driscoll’s personal photographs for archive, you crunch of undergrowth transport the viewer to can see careful consideration of how the images become the cameraperson/jungle-explorer. The aether

style of footage is romantic and epic. The images of fog, mist, night and early morning create an eerie sense of a horror film unfolding. In a clearing an ice swan is melting, but the artists don’t tell the whole story, and this allows the imagination of the “why” to take hold. It brought back fond memories of Andy Goldsworthy’s temporary sculptures and the idea that nature (and ultimately our own lives) is supposed to grow, blossom, decay and begin again as a new form.

The final leg of the journey is Technology & Information, on view at the Visual Arts Center (VAC) on The University of Texas campus. These works are predominantly video and mixed media installations by Paul Sharits, Dream Displacement, 1976; Charles Atlas, Institute for Turbulence Research (from Tornado Warning), 2008; Phil Collins, This Unfortunate Thing Between Us, 2011; and Trisha Baga, 4pm on a Sunday, 2015. Works like Paul Sharits’s multiprojection sensory color field film paved the way for many future mixed-media artists. As he deconstructs the physical film frame, he questions the identity of the moving image with blocks of red, white and green color. Almost as if Sharits were animating an Ellsworth Kelly or Rothko painting, this work puts the viewer in a visual trance, and the sounds of the projectors, audio crackles and breaking glass add to the unbalancing effect. This work is also a historical statement now that “film” is predominantly shot in a digital format and 35mm or 16mm film is rarely used for commercial purposes.

Contrasting the mystical journey of the Swan Cycle video is Yoko Ono’s, Summer Dream (Let your dream come true on a distant wall), 2012/2015. Simple, stark and playful, the artwork asks the visitor to type an anonymous note describing their dream on an iPad, which is transmitted to an LED sign beyond the French door frame view. Sometimes literal, I dreamed my cat licked my skin off, or philosophical, we are all still dreaming. Most of the phrases are reflective, hopeful statements: I will remember happy days and not sad ones. I want my life to mean something. Ono’s work has been an anchor in contemporary experimentation and social participation since the 1960s. For better or Paired with this is the all-encompassing Charles worse, we associate her with peace and hope. That Atlas video installation that creates a sense of panic may affect our decision to type in our dreams of and inescapable devastation. better days ahead. The bold and hopefully truthful statements help balance the saccharine: I dream of “Tornado Warning consists of spider webs, ice cream and bare breasts. hallucinatory video projects inspired by

Charles Atlas, Institute for Turbulence Research (from Tornado Warning), 2008. Four-channel synchronized video projection, transparent screen, VMU, sound.Dimensions variable. Running time: 6:00. Installation view, Strange Pilgrims, organized by The Contemporary Austin, on view at the Visual Arts Center at The University of Texas at Austin, 2015. Artwork © Charles Atlas. Courtesy the artist; Luhring Augustine, New York; and Vilma Gold, London Image © The Contemporary Austin. Courtesy The Contemporary Austin.Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons.

the artist’s childhood experiences of storm alerts in St. Louis, Missouri. There is a nostalgically technophile element.” –Colin Perry, published in frieze magazine, November 26, 2008 Although extremely different in context, medium and approach, all these artists are engaged in a similar “magical realism,” whether it be in more of a dreamscape or an attempt at writing one’s own history, the cliché stands firm: The journey is more important than the destination.

exhibition. These stories took him over 18 years to finish, starting in the 1970s. “True memories seemed like phantoms, while false memories were so convincing that they replaced reality. This meant I could not detect the dividing line between disillusionment and nostalgia. It was the definitive solution. At last, I had found what I needed most to complete the book, what only the passing of the years could give: a perspective in time.” –Gabriel García Márquez, Strange Pilgrims

Gabriel García Márquez wrote a collection of The curator and writers of this exhibition have 12 short stories of the same name, Strange Pilgrims, emphatically encompassed these works with this that serves as the metaphysical foundation of the weighted quote. These artists were chosen because

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“Travel is fatal to p our people need it views of men a

they question—Perspectives in Time—from every nuance and angle imagined. While reading García Márquez’s stories you can journey deeper into the wonderland rabbit-hole of your own existence while thinking about how each artist wrestles with his or her own perspective of time. Ultimately, you begin to question everything.

way that most curatorial shows do not welcome in such an engaging way.

This curatorial juggernaut comes at a time when we are questioning what the new technical world is. Will we really have computer chips behind our ears? Thankfully we are not quite there yet. But the lines of individuality, experience and time are being Like these artists, García Márquez is attempting to blurred at a dizzying pace with the help of personal reach a level of truth by experiencing the spectrum devices and the new “wearable” technologies. of life: lust, longing, fantasy, loss, insecurity, comfort, seeking resolution and with some hope Magical realism is a state of both fantasy and reality. and luck—happiness. However, the mysticism The comparison of detailed descriptions of everyday is parlayed with the realism, an unraveling of the mundane events is countered by the attempt to psyche. His individual short stories carry a common understand mystical events. The foundation of this darker thread, many of which are victims of their idea is that our subconscious functions between own destructive choices. the supernatural and natural easily and constantly. We assume we are the only animals on the planet While most of his stories touch on exile, dislocation who exist in both states simultaneously, although and the strangeness of life as a foreigner, García ecological inquiry may prove that incorrect Márquez wrote of the journey as the process of someday. experience and the memory and nostalgia as the emotional currency that carries beyond time and Strange Pilgrims is an investigation into these space. This exhibition, although dense, is one that connected yet distinct realms of existence. It you can come back to, contemplate and revisit in a accepts the natural world and our curiosity to

prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness, and many of t sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” –Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

harness and experiment with the elements given to rough terrain; other times it is blindingly bright and us, which, in turn, are the basic building blocks of restful. How will these experiences, in the moment our ever-changing technologies. or long after memories, change me? How will they affect my future choices? How will I interact with Why is it that just the idea of exotic travel gives rise to others afterwards? How will I raise my children or skin bumps and deep breaths? Perhaps instinctually live in relationships, es post facto? we are creatures of constant evolution, which is a testament and credit to our own survival. When we Art, in its varied forms, is a veil through which we travel we can’t help but expand our understanding can view the world full of beauty and vice, joy and of humanity and our role in it; seeking, being darkness. Art is especially needed in instances of hungry for a new perspective and being changed injustice, chaos and catastrophe so we can approach (sometimes forever) in a world that is not your own the difficult with a tempered calm and reflection. can be exhilarating and frightening. The idea of the exploration and fantasy is only the beginning. Sometimes we have to blindly trust in When we stretch beyond our tiny life-bubbles strangers to know ourselves. Strange Pilgrims gives and immerse ourselves in unknown cultures and us the space and contemplation to inspire this and environments, we receive the gift of empathy and more. ae perspective. You have to smell, taste and touch these new things to truly have them change you, if Strange Pilgrims is on exhibit at The Contemporary change is what you seek. Austin—Downtown, The Contemporary AustinLaguna Gloria and The Visual Arts Center at That is the heart of the pilgrim. True travel is to UT Austin through January 24, 2016. be changed for the better, to be forgiven, or to More information can be found at www. forget while traversing a journey uncharted and thecontemporaryaustin.org unknown. Sometimes the journey is dark and full of aether

BOOKSHELF

Martín Ramírez: Framing His Life and Art Victor M. Espinosa, Published by University of Texas Press Release date, November 2015 interview by CLAIBORNE SMITH

Imagine

the story of a migrant from Mexico who ends up in a psychiatric hospital in California, where MARTÍN RAMÍREZ he devotes his time to creating Framing His Life and Art VÍCTOR M. ESPINOSA idiosyncratic art that makes him a sought-after and respected artist (but not until after his death). Doesn’t that sound like the plot of a well-meaning, touching arthouse flick? In the movie version, there’d be one doctor or nurse who valiantly has faith in the patient’s unique artistic faculties, when no one else sees the artist’s talent. The real story of Martín Ramírez’s life is just as inspirational—until his death in 1963, Ramírez did, in fact, doggedly pursue his art at the DeWitt State Hospital, when very few people believed in him—but also more mysterious. One of Ramírez’s paintings, Alamentosa, is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art; in 2011, a 90 x 36-inch drawing inspired by

an image of the Immaculate Conception sold for $500,000. After much work, and by employing a lot of patience, Victor M. Espinosa, the author of the new book Martín Ramírez: Framing His Life and Art, was able to find Ramírez’s files from the hospital, where Ramírez lived for several decades. Those files answer certain questions but invite others: namely, was Ramírez truly schizophrenic? (He claimed he wasn’t.) And what is the relationship, if any, between madness and artistic genius? Espinosa, who teaches in both the United States and Mexico, makes a compelling argument in the book that viewing Ramírez’s art as the product of an insane mind isn’t at all fruitful, or even accurate. Instead, Espinosa says, Ramírez’s intricate paintings, which often depict journeys, are best understood as the result of the cultural displacement any migrant undergoes. I talked to Espinosa recently about Ramírez’s life and his art. I’m wondering if you said to yourself, "What is the most difficult thing I can investigate? I’ll write a book about that." First of all, the details of migrants’ lives are hard to document, especially in a historical context. Secondly, Ramírez was

Untitled, c. early 1950s, mixed media on paper, 44 x 30 1/2 in. Private collection © Estate of Martín Ramírez

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a psychiatric patient for much of his life, where issues of confidentiality intervene with a writer’s desire to tell his story. Since the first day, I knew that looking for Martín Ramírez was going to be a challenge. I was still in Mexico when I heard about Ramírez for the first time. It was in 1989, the year the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City organized the largest Ramírez exhibition to that date. I was then working on a project on US migrants from Jalisco, Mexico, which is one of the most important areas that sends migrants to the United States. For me, in Ramírez’s art there was a lot of evidence that indicated that he was probably from that area. An example is the constant presence of the Virgin Mary, as the Immaculate Conception, in his art. This saint is really important in the area called Los Altos de Jalisco. But it was not until I finished my dissertation, published as El Dilema del Retorno, and moved to Untitled, c. 1951, Graphite, tempera, and crayon on paper, 90 x 32 in. Private collection. © Estate of Martín Ramírez

the United States that I decided to start looking for Ramírez. Leaving my mother, my siblings and my friends in Mexico and adapting to a new place was not easy. I realized now that over the years, my research on Ramírez kept me alive. Besides the lack of information about him, at first I also found some difficulties in obtaining access to the people from the art world who had his artwork. Since it was difficult to find resources to finance the research, I remember asking a director from a museum that had Ramírezes in the permanent collection to write a letter. I was not asking for a letter of recommendation. Since only a few people knew about Ramírez, I was only asking him to state in the letter the importance of doing in-depth research and finding out more about Ramírez’s life. He refused to write the letter and said that it would be too controversial to know more about Ramírez’s life. He did not say why, but it was obvious that people inside the art world—I mean people personally connected with some of the collectors

who owned his art or the dealers who sold his art— were afraid of the possibility that research like mine could eventually help to find relatives that could claim ownership of Ramírez’s art. In those years, people also believed that Ramírez’s files did not exist. In fact, it is amazing that the Ramírez files were preserved only because his file number ended in zero. After the psychiatric hospital was closed, all the files that did not end in 0 were destroyed. The intention was to keep only a representative sample of the patients. It took me years to locate the files. Having access to that information also took years. It was not possible to publish that information until the formation of the Estate of Martín Ramírez. In the end, finding Ramírez took 10 years of my life and a lot of resources, since the project was almost self-funded. Since the process was slow and had many barriers, I had to be really patient and find a way to work on other projects in the meantime.

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Untitled, c. 1950s, gouache, colored pencil and graphite on pieced paper, 39 1/2 x 25 in. Estate of Martín Ramírez © Estate of Martín Ramírez

Sometimes it was like facing a wall without more working at the hospital was really valuing his work. doors to go through. I would have to back up a little It was not until the last year of his life, when Dr. bit and think about the next move. Dunievitz met him. He saw Ramírez very frequently, provided materials, and also saved a large number Does your research reveal whether there was of his works. He was also the first to communicate anyone inside the hospital who was a champion in Spanish with him. He spoke Spanish and used to for him and his art? visit Mexico for vacations. It seems that Dunievitz was the first member of the medical staff who had His two main supporters, Professor Tarmo Pasto some training and interest in art: he liked to play the and Red Cross volunteer Gail Northe, did not violin; he liked to paint, enjoyed photography and work at the hospital. They both provided materials, was part of the local art world in Auburn, where the encouraged him to keep working and preserved hospital was located. In short, it seems that he was a large number of his works, and they did see the first person inside the hospital who valued the Ramírez frequently. At some point, they stopped aesthetic characteristics of Ramírez’s work. visiting him. Pasto, the professor who supplied him with paper and materials and preserved the larger You make the argument that Ramírez’s work number of his works, lost track of him during isn’t best understood as the product of an insane Ramírez’s last years. Pasto, for example, did not mind or a passive manifestation of his mental know when Ramírez died. It seems that for most illness. How best to understand his work, then? of Ramírez’s life inside the institution, nobody

Some people have tried to make a direct connection between his mental illness and his art. They are basically arguing that his art is affected by his mental state. My feeling is that making that connection is very problematic. First, it is not really possible to prove that there is a connection between the formal characteristics of a painting and a schizophrenic condition. It is also too late to prove that Ramírez was an incurable schizophrenic. Besides many cultural barriers, he was institutionalized when the notion of schizophrenia wasn’t very well-developed. He was legally declared a schizophrenic; he also died with that diagnosis. But we don’t really know what kind of psychiatric problems he had or didn’t have. What I prefer to do is to explore his art as an expression affected by his immigrant experience.

his memories. The way he represents space and distance on paper, for example, is the result of a visual need to represent two very different points in space (Jalisco and California) on a two-dimensional surface. Even very sophisticated art historians and curators are trapped in the mindset of believing that his way of using line structures is simply a product of an affected mind. I think that’s not the way to go. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but I’m saying that in order to go with that argument, they first have to find a way to prove that he was a schizophrenic. If they find a way to prove that, we can move the conversation and discuss how his art is the product of a mentally ill mind. ae

His art was affected by his experiences of physical and cultural displacement: family separation in times of war, nostalgia for his homeland and

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ON THE SOUTH MALL

The Deconstruction of an Artist's Vision by RACHEL STEPHENS and JUDITH TAYLOR

In April, red and yellow spray paint expressed

deep-seated feelings on the base of the Jefferson Davis statue on The University of Texas at Austin’s main mall. The slogans “Davis must fall” and “Emancipate UT,” set the stage for the controversy that heightened over the summer. Student protests were held and a formal call from the student body asked that the statue of Davis, the President of the Confederacy, be removed. Memorializing Davis and other Confederate soldiers is greatly considered to not be in keeping with contemporary society, as it represents a war fought over slavery and, for many, reinforces racism in the twenty-first century. In his article, “The Great South Mall Controversy,” Jim Nicar, the unofficial historian of UT Austin, points out: "Some claim this has been a point of contention for the past quarter century, but an extended look at the history of statues and fountain on the South Mall shows that the controversy is as old as the gateway itself."

Pompeo Coppini was the artist who created the sculpture of Davis and other historical figures. Had the artist’s vision been realized, the statue of Jefferson Davis on campus might well have been viewed quite differently. But, as is too often the case in institutional settings, an artist’s intent is edited, altered or modified until the original concept loses meaning. Costs, donors, campus architects, politicians and administrators all played a role in diluting Coppini's original vision. Coppini was commissioned by George Littlefield, one of two major benefactors to the university in the early 1900s. Littlefield’s original plan was twofold: to create an impressive, welcoming gateway to the campus and to erect a monument to veterans of the Civil War. Littlefield envisioned an arch, but Coppini resisted and finally persuaded him to take a different course. In letters to Littlefield, the artist articulated his feelings concerning the commission. “We must give

Coppini’s 1920 redesign for the Littlefield Memorial Gateway. Courtesy of JimNicar.com

up the Arch idea, as it would be a sin to sacrifice any sum of money for something that could not be a credit to you or to me. We want to give something that will express a high ideal and an elevated sense of knowledge and true patriotism, rather than a pile of stones.” With foresight, Coppini went on to say, “As time goes by, they will look to the Civil War as a blot on the pages of American history, and the Littlefield Memorial will be resented as keeping up the hatred between the Northern and Southern states.”

The memorial was to be centered on a 100-footlong rectangular pool of water with an elevated section at its head to represent the bow of a ship. On this elevated pool, a statue of Columbia would stand as a symbol of the American spirit. Representing the armed forces, a member of the Army and the Navy stood behind her to each side. Three sea horses were to be depicted as pulling the ship. For Coppini, this element suggested “a strong, united America sailing across the ocean to protect democracy abroad.”

Nicar points out that the final plans called for a war memorial “to show the reunification of America in World War I after it had been divided in the Civil War.” Jefferson and other individuals were incorporated into the overall design but did not dominate. The contract for the project was signed in 1916. George Littlefield would get his prominent gateway to the university, and Coppini’ s broadened vision for the monument was accepted. Or so it seemed at the time.

Behind the fountain to either side, Coppini’s design called for two obelisks, each 37 feet tall, that would represent the North and the South. Statues of Woodrow Wilson and Jefferson Davis would stand in front of each, respectively. On either side of the fountain leaders with strong ties to Texas — Robert E. Lee, Albert Johnston, John Reagan and Jim Hogg—would be placed. However, the artist’s metaphorical design which aether

he and Littlefield had agreed upon did not come to be. A decade of setbacks was to follow. With the benefactor’s death in late 1920 and a rise in construction costs, the original amount set aside was not enough to complete the memorial. Even after substituting granite for some of the limestone pieces, the University’s Board of Trustees voted to cut a significant portion of the memorial, the two obelisks representing the North and the South. According to Nicar, Coppini protested saying “that removing them would destroy intended symbolism.” Instead of complementing the message of the memorial as a whole, the statues of Davis and Wilson would now be free-standing and, in time, be seen to honor the men individually. This was not the greatest or last challenge the memorial was to face. In 1930, the architect Paul Cret, who was charged with the University’s master plan, fundamentally redesigned the memorial layout. In his words, “the portrait statuary was separated from the allegorical figures, as the juxtaposition of these two types was objectionable on account of the difference in scale. The portrait statues selected by the donor gain in prominence when provided with an individual setting instead of being used as accessories to a fountain design.” Without being tied to the metaphor of the fountain, all symbolic meaning Coppini had intended was destroyed.

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And so you have it. The Jefferson Davis statue was a part separated from a whole. The “accessory” statue was never intended to monumentalize Davis individually, to promote his values over others, or memorialize the issues for which the Civil War was fought. Nor does the act of removing the statue from its place on the Main Mall destroy an artist’s vision. It seems that was done a long time ago. Late this summer, UT Austin’s new president, Gregory L. Fenves, made the decision to remove the Jefferson Davis statue. To maintain symmetry, the Woodrow Wilson statue was moved as well. The fate of the Wilson statue is up in the air, but the Davis statue will find its new home in the Briscoe Center for American History. The hope is that it will now find context that has been lacking for almost a century, and that Coppini will be remembered for his vision. ae To read more of the history of the Littlefield gateway please visit Jim Nicar’s The University History Corner at http://jimnicar. com/2015/08/10/the-great-south-mallcontroversy/

CONTEXT.

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Crit Group A New Portrait for the Contemporary Artist by RJ HARRINGTON

For the past three hours I’ve been sitting in my studio staring at this painting. I am unable to decide if

I’m done with it. I think it needs something more, a bold streak of cadmium yellow along the side? Too harsh. Perhaps I should add a light wash of ochre? I don’t know. What am I trying to say with this work? It’s eluding me, compounding my struggle. I’ve worked on this piece for what feels like forever. My body fights with my brain, reminding me of my hunger. Has it been a few days since I’ve last eaten? I can’t remember. I attribute my poor nutrition to an anemic bank account, but I also blame my focus. My art consumes me. It is all I do. It is all I know how to do.

This romantic, yet outdated portrait of an artist is one that many people believe still holds true. The singularly driven starving artist struggling to feed himself, holed up in a cold, dark studio waiting to be discovered. In reality, today’s average artist juggles many tasks. Pragmatically stated, an artist runs a business that creates its own inventory. For many artists, a large amount of time is spent not on creating their next great masterpiece; instead they allocate time for other duties that could easily be applied to various occupations. From writing artist statements and grant proposals to networking at exhibition openings, scheduling

studio visits, keeping up to date via social media, documenting work and self-promotion, the many hats an artist wears can be overwhelming. The question then becomes where does the artist learn and develop all the other skills required to be a successful artist? While art schools do an amazing job of teaching their students the ins and outs of making art, appreciating art and talking about art, tragically most schools completely fail to foster or even touch upon all the other skills that an artist needs to be successful. There is no Networking 101 for artists or a class on how to price your work. Graduates from art school must learn how to

installation at GrayDuck gallery/ work by Bobby Scheidermann, engineering print, 36 x 24 in. each

navigate the art world via the sink-or-swim method, leaving most to sink. Fortunately, for the Austin artist there is an opportunity available to address this deficiency. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s called Crit Group, a six-month-long course developed in the fall of 2014 and hosted by The Contemporary Austin. The course sets out to address the knowledge and experience gap by providing artists with information, advice, guidance and criticism. Participating artists gain professional development, with monthly sessions dedicated to the "paperwork" of art, including writing an effective artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s bio and statement; photographing

work; applying for grants, residencies, and public art projects; what to expect from curators and galleries; understanding copyright law; and more. An application must be submitted for consideration of acceptance into Crit Group. The application includes images of artwork, an artist statement or bio and curriculum vitae for review by the curators and art historians that direct Crit Group: Andrea Mellard, senior curator of public programs and community engagement at The Contemporary; Andy Campbell, art historian, independent curator and current Museum of Fine Arts Houston CORE fellow; and curator Sarah

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installation at GrayDuck gallery/ work by Katie Rose Pipkin and Glenn Twiggs

“Crit Group was an excellent exercise in stepping outside of myself to see how others interpret my artist statement, images, etc. It’s beneficial, in a non-competitive setting to sit down with an artist in a different discipline, sometimes with a different level of education or exhibition experience on their CV than you and find that you are both asking the same questions or confused by the same funding essay.” -Rebecca Rothfus Harrell, Crit Group alumna Celeste Bancroft, who previously worked at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Orange County Museum of Art and is currently the assistant director of Austin’s own TestSite.

Art making can be expressive, cathartic or even a great way to pass the time, but getting artwork off the easel and sharing it with others is not as simple as learning how to paint. An artist must take on the role of entrepreneur, handling paperwork, networking, advertising and many other jobs. The advantage for Austin is that The Contemporary has provided an opportunity with Crit Group for artists in our community to learn those skills and hopefully create a new portrait of the present-day artist. ae

For artists in the program, there lies an opportunity to apply the concepts and information gained through the process with real-world experience. The course concludes with an exhibition hosted by Jill Schroeder’s grayDUCK gallery in conjunction with The Contemporary. Jill offers knowledge about pricing work, submitting proper label information for artwork, selecting images for promotion and For more information about The Contemporary even legal contracts including terms of sales and Austin's program for artists, Crit Group, please visit rights and responsibilities for both artist and gallery. www.thecontemporaryaustin.org The Contemporary provides staff for installation and a professional photographer to document it all.

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CONSTRUCT.

datebook OCTOBER through November 7 LUZ Y MOVIMIENTO: Ender Martos CAMIBAart

through November 15 FLYING WILD: Brad & Sundie Ruppert Yard Dog Gallery

When we are born into this world, our first visual experience is simple stimulation by light and movement (Luz y Movimiento). As our eyes develop and become accustomed to the world around us, we begin to see more clearly, discovering the source of the light and the movement. And so it is also with the artwork of Ender Martos. In addition to discerning these elements of light and movement in his creations, we are able to delight in the invigorating colors and geometric forms that are present throughout. Ender Martos invites the viewer into a new dimension of interpretation, playing with light and perception to create senses of movement and orderly chaos.

Brad and Sundie Ruppert, the husband and wife team of Vintage Sculpture, have spread their wings and are soaring to new heights with the addition of upcycled hat felt into their found object assemblages. Teaming up with Master Hatter Trent Johnson of Greeley Hat Works has provided them with a never-ending supply of the soft and supple sculptural scraps. Creating icons of nature and wildlife was a natural fit with the muted pallet of the tactile textiles.

through November 12 ABHIDNYA GHUGE: Paper Plate Perspicacity Women and Their Work

October 23 through December 14 HOMECOMING Flatbed Press

Abhidnya Ghuge transformed 7473 disposable paper plates into this large-scale sculpture, a visual representation of her own internal transformation after coming to the United States. Ghuge uses woodblocks to print imagery derived from the henna patterns she knew growing up in India. The patterns and forms incorporated into her designs are part of the same paradigm seen microscopically within the human body, a fact she studied in medical school. Creating structures, Ghuge invites viewers to immerse themselves and experience these physical and spiritual landscapes.

For twenty-five years Flatbed has been fortunate to have the assistance of many creative individuals to help in our publication of etchings, lithographs, relief prints, screen prints and monotypes, with artists from all over the world. It is a pleasure to show selected works by these individuals, many of whom now live far from Austin. The work includes printmaking, installation, sculpture, ceramics and painting.

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

through November 22 COMMUNITY ALTARS: Ofrendas Inspired from the States of Mexico Mexic-Arte Museum

December 21 through May 29, 2016 SHAKESPEARE IN PRINT & PERFORMANCE The Harry Ransom Center

To honor their deceased relatives and friends, artists will create ornate altars consisting of traditional adornments such as cempasuchitl (marigolds), foodstuffs and memorabilia commemorating individuals who were dear to them. This year the Mexic-Arte Museum will present altars in the style of each state in Mexico.

November 7 through 28 MALCOLM BUCKNALL: Pinning Down the Elusive is Tricky Business Wally Workman Gallery A chameleon-like eclecticism ties Bucknall's work to various distinct periods of arthistorical (and non-art-historical) influences, but the common thread in his "re-visionist" imagery is an animal-human mix. As in myth and fairytale, this gives a child-like directness that promotes a more direct link to fears, love, emotions, humor and the unconscious.

Explore the legacy of William Shakespeare at the Harry Ransom Center. This exhibition provides insight into the origins of his works, the history of their publication and performance, and the manner in which the texts have been studied on the page, and the plays interpreted on the stage. The Elizabethan world of Shakespeare and his contemporaries is presented through early printed books documenting his contemporary reputation, his textual sources, and his plays. Costume and set designs, promptbooks, and other ephemera showcase the variety of ways artists have translated his plays into performance.

through January 17 MODERNO: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, 1940-1978 Blanton Museum of Art The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin presents Moderno: Design for Living in Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, 1940â&#x20AC;&#x201C;1978. Organized by the Americas Society in New York, the exhibition is the first to examine how design transformed the domestic landscape of Latin America, during a period marked by major stylistic developments and social and political change. The presentation features over 130 works, including furniture, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, and graphic design by Lina Bo Bardi, Clara Porset, Miguel Arroyo and others.

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next issue

spring/summer 2016

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.