aether a visual arts dialogue
AUSTIN spring/summer 2012
ae Collaborators
EDITORS Rachel Haggerty Assistant Director • Wally Workman Gallery Amanda Gorence Owner • REP! Art + Photo Consultant Judith Taylor Director/ Owner • Gallery Shoal Creek
CONTRIBUTORS Marjorie Flanagan is an Austin art consultant with Art + Artisans Consulting. An avid art thinker and lover, she holds a MA in Art Education from UT-Austin. Laura Harrison is Assistant Director of Gallery Shoal Creek and is an artist herself with a BA in sculpture from Southwestern University. Claire Howard is a Graduate Research Assistant, American & Contemporary Art, at the Blanton Museum of Art, and a Master’s Candidate, Art History, The University of Texas at Austin. Erin Keever is a visual arts writer living in Austin, Texas. She teaches Art History at Austin Community College and is currently developing online curriculum in Art History. Samantha Segar, a visual arts advocate with Art Alliance Austin from 2002 -2011, spent much of 2011 in Karachi, Pakistan, working with ArtNow, a local online arts magazine that promotes contemporary art. Shelby Stephens directs strategy design for Austin-based Formation Strategies. Catherine Zinser is the Print Room Manager at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds an MA in Art History and is an admirer of all things paper.
Copyright © 2012 by AETHER. All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part, without the express written permission of the publisher, is prohibited. aether, spring/summer 2012, issue two • contact@aetherart.com • www.aetherart.com Image: Holly Wilson, Blind Faith, 2011, bronze, 6x5x8 in. Cover Image: René Alvarado, 2011, Amor de Tia Concha, oil, 48x36 in.
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aether
The response to the inaugural issue of aether was tremendous.
Readers agreed that aether provides an opportunity for dialogue about art in our community. Twice a year, fall and spring, aether’s online publication will: introduce artists and their current pursuits, present a perspective on community involvement in the visual arts, recommend art reads and travel ideas. Issue II covers a range of topics and brings new contributors to the aether dialogue. You will find a unique article from our own foreign correspondent—former Austinite Samantha Segar, recently living in Pakistan—who shares a view not of conflict, but of contemporary art, and an engaging piece about Herb and Dorothy Vogel’s initiative, Fifty Works for Fifty States, by Claire Howard, Graduate Research Assistant at the Blanton Museum of Art. In this spring issue we take a look at printmaking, a medium that has a strong footing in our community with nationally noted print workshops, UT’s highly regarded graduate printmaking program and the Blanton Museum’s extensive collection of prints and drawings. You will meet two printmakers: one an emerging young artist, Ellen Heck, with Austin roots, and Leonard Lehrer, whose experiences from the Tamarind Institute to the IPCNY chronicle what was happening in the field for half a century. Printmaking, too, is the subject of our Bookshelf section with a review of Anthony Alofsin’s new book, Frank Lloyd Wright Art Collector (UT Press) cataloguing Secessionist prints (European, early 1900’s) discovered in the archives of the 20th century American architect. We invite you to join the dialogue with an insightful response to what you read. Or, share your stories about Laguna Gloria, our current online forum topic. Either way, let us hear from you via the website aetherart.com. –The Editors
A life lived with art is a life transformed.
America Martin, Moving Leaves & Gray Sparrow, 2012, 39x68 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas
Contents 6
STUDIO / RenĂŠ Alvarado
12 ELLEN HECK / Printing Character 16 TAMI BONE / Mythos 20 THE COLLECTING IMPULSE / Fifty Works from Dorothy and Herbert Vogel
24 LEONARD LEHRER /
40 DESTINATION / San Angelo 42 BOOKSHELF / Anthony Alofsin's Frank Lloyd Wright Art Collector
46 ON THE GROUNDS / Full Sail Laguna Gloria
50 FORUM/ Your Laguna Gloria 52 IN THE DARKROOM / Shelley Wood 58 COMMUNITY/ Art Alliance Austin
Artist, Educator, Advocate
32 EXPLORING REALITIES / Contemporary Art in Pakistan
60 FOREWORD/ Previews and Reviews 64 DATEBOOK/ Recommended
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studio
René Alvarado by LAURA HARRISON
My recent visit with René Alvarado in his
home and studio in San Angelo, TX, gave me an opportunity to see what he is currently working on and to reflect on his path as an artist. His home and studio is an old Lutheran church that he renovated in 2005. He kept the structural integrity of the 1929 building—the lofty ceilings, heavy beams, arched windows—while transforming the interior into a comfortable space for living, painting, and exhibiting his work. Alvarado’s church is a drop of eccentricity in an otherwise very ordinary residential neighborhood. Alvarado has always made his studio his home. Early in his career, he lived at the Chicken Farm Art Center in San Angelo, in a converted chicken coop, where he was surrounded by a community of artists who were always there to give support and feedback. It became a second family and included a “mother hen” who looked
after him. Ultimately, René craved his own space where he could paint and live with more privacy. He misses the communal interaction, but being able to create a space entirely his own has allowed him to further explore his identity as an artist. Alvarado says that it is somewhat ironic that he has chosen a church as a place to live. He has a deep respect for all religions, but as a young boy in Mexico, he felt oppressed by the strict confines of the Catholic Church, which he gratefully escaped at age seven when his family moved to the United States. Now he feels he is “inside the monster that tormented me, but I’ve reclaimed it and it is a beautiful embodiment of my soul.” His space now is a personal reflection of who he is. The church is filled with visual vignettes—objects that he has collected to use in assemblage pieces and which also serve as symbolic references in his paintings. aether
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Visitors are asked to respect his space—artist studios are very personal and many aren’t open to the public. When your home and studio are the same, the boundaries become blurry. He recently began to reclaim space for creating since his living space had started to take over the art space. He has plans to set aside space to create three-dimensional works alongside the easels he uses for painting. His use of impasto and heavy textural elements in his paintings— including lace and found objects—suggests his desire to expand into more sculptural work.
La Viuda con Amor Eterno, 2011, oil, 36.75 x 25.75 in.
La Novia que Nunca Fue, 2011, oil, 36.75 x 25.75 in.
While Alvarado’s work is continually evolving, he has recently begun to revisit earlier ideas and techniques. “Seeing my earlier work is like looking in a mirror,” he says. It also reminds him how naive, innocent and sweet he was as a young artist. He was once told that all work is a self portrait and was shocked by that recognition. He felt exposed and vulnerable. Now, though he sometimes feels exasperation when he sees his own face looking at him from the canvas, he continues knowing that each painting tells a part of his identity—a piece of the puzzle. As he’s matured as an artist, he has had to learn to balance the pull on him from outside pressures with his innate emotional connection with his work. In the last few years, Alvarado has received much recognition, especially for an artist his age. He appreciates the attention, but also says that it makes him more self-conscious about his work. In 2008, Alvarado’s work was featured in the show Madonna as Muse: The Paintings of René Alvarado, curated by Jim Edwards and organized by the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts. Over the next two years, the show traveled to several other regional museums throughout Texas. In 2009, Alvarado was named the Texas State Two-Dimensional Artist by the Texas Commission on the Arts and the Texas State Legislature. In 2011, his
Studio of René Alvarado, San Angelo, Texas
work was the subject of From the Pueblo to West Texas: René Alvarado at the Ellen Noel Art Museum in Odessa, TX. At the time of our visit, Alvarado was looking ahead to the show he is preparing for in June at Gallery Shoal Creek in Austin, which will feature paintings and perhaps three-dimensional representations of Madonnas. His current series includes five sisters, who are his aunts on his father’s side, presided over by the matriarch, his grandmother. Posed in the same manner, their halos, dresses and backgrounds are unique, and each holds a symbolic reference in her
hand. The Madonnas serve as expressions of his emotions, as well as a connection to the past. For example, Tia Yolanda shows up in many of his paintings. She passed away before Rene was born, but the photograph of her at his grandmother’s house always seemed to follow him with her eyes. He likes to paint her in different scenes to validate her life. As Alvarado continues to look back on his career as well as looking to the future, one thing that remains fairly certain is his love of abstraction. Being too realistic bores him. ae
René Alvarado • June 8–July 14, 2012 • www.galleryshoalcreek.com
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Ellen Heck Tami Bone
Layer. E xperime nt. Pri nt. Two artists - one a printmaker, the other a photographerpush the boundaries of the artistic process to create constructed narratives, personal and cultural, which span time and blur the real and imagined.
Image: Ellen Heck, San Francisco Color Wheels 1-9, 2012, drypoint, acrylic, crayon, and watercolor mounted on panel, 50x50 in.
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Ellen Heck Printing Character by CATHERINE ZINSER
Rory As Frida, 2012, woodcut and drypoint on paper, 8x6 in. Opposite: Davina As Frida, 2012, woodcut and drypoint prints mounted on panel, 24x18 in.
Ellen
Heck does not make prints; she is a printmaker. What’s the difference? A printmaker bows to the age-old processes mastered hundreds of years ago yet has an expert understanding of the medium in order to manipulate it at will. Artists who merely make prints seem to be interested only in their multiplicity and lack the patience to experiment with the various techniques. The result is uninspired and flat. Heck, on the other hand, dominates the medium, layering different techniques and colors in one image resulting in a dynamic and harmonious array of lines and textures. While not necessarily an innovation,
insight gained by such experimentation promises a very fruitful career for this young artist. An Austin native, Heck studied philosophy at Brown and printmaking and painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently lives and works in California’s Bay Area. As an artist-in-residence at the Kala Art Institute, she began work on The Aging of Mark Twain on One Copper Plate and Forty Fridas, two portfolios that will hang with other work at Wally Workman Gallery in June 2012. Both touch on the theme of variation and play on the ideas of identity and time. Like those aether
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The Aging of Mark Twain on One Copper Plate 2012, drypoint on paper, 16x12 in. each
she draws inspiration from—Mary Cassatt, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and David Hockney—Heck chooses her medium very carefully. A prudent artist would not carve a figure that should be painted. Heck’s portfolios are paper-centric; they exploit printmaking. She pushes boundaries and creates images that would fall short in another medium. In The Aging of Mark Twain on One Copper Plate Heck matures the recognizable literary figure in five steps. Each progression contains the ghostlike features of the younger Twain, gently fading in and out. The effect is not unlike reality—gazing at snapshots of a beloved visage and seeing the same sparkling eyes or crooked smile peeking out under slightly sagging features. Heck uses portraiture in the way that Jasper Johns used symbols in the 1950s. In the 0 through 9 series of drawings, paintings and lithographs, Johns layered all ten digits on a single field forcing each fragmentary number to compete for the viewer’s attention. Like the familiar symbols in Johns’ work, Heck’s use of a face (a recognizable one at that) facilitates an instant connection between the art and the viewer. Did Heck choose the ideal medium for this ghostly
effect or did she choose the ideal effect for this medium? A state refers to the action of running a plate through the press, making adjustments then reprinting the same plate. This basic principle of printmaking is used to follow the progress of one’s work; artists can watch a composition evolve and they often print an entire edition of each state. The portfolio “explore[s] ways in which the repeatability of printmaking will allow for the depiction of… the passage of time,” Heck reveals. She reevaluates the traditional use of states and incorporates the convention into the overall concept of the design. For Forty Fridas, Heck pulls inspiration from another iconic figure, sparking immediate interest in her audience. Frida Kahlo painted her reality; she recorded images that flowed through her mind. Her self-portraits occupy a prominent point in the timeline of art history. In another study in portraiture Heck relies on images from the internet and submissions from friends and family for photographs of people dressed up as the iconic artist. With Kahlo as the epicenter, the impersonators pay homage to her life and career but still stay true to their identity. Heck takes the snapshots and transfers them to copper with her signature style—a light hand with muted jewel-like
shades reminiscent of 19th century artist Mary Cassatt—yet maintains an allegiance to Kahlo, the initial subject. Though there are three hands in the final product, each is distinct and retains a unique identity. Heck explains that the similarities in “dress and demeanor became a framework for which the individuality of each woman [is] still so apparent—perhaps more so when viewed all together.” Pushing the theme of identity and variation even further, Heck pastes several impressions of the same print together to create large collages, a nod to the graphic portraits of Andy Warhol and David Hockney. As a result, Heck conceptualizes another key principle of printmaking—multiplicity. With twelve to fifteen Fridas differing only in their printed quality gazing at the viewer, the individual aspect of identity is sacrificed and variations of materiality come to the forefront. Over the past hundred years or so, the graphic arts have slowly been slipping into the art world shadows. Relative to painting and sculpture they are inexpensive, and therefore, to the novice, a lesser art form. Historical prints are small in scale and require close, intimate examination. In the
contemporary world of instant gratification, there is little patience for quiet, lengthy observations. Semantics also play a large role; a hundred years ago, printer referred to a master craftsman charged with inking plates and pulling impressions for artists such as Dürer, Rembrandt, Picasso and Matisse. Today it refers to the temperamental piece of machinery in your office that copies, scans and faxes. Complicating matters more, printmaking involves techniques whose complexities are lost on an audience who are not familiar with them. Heck has no doubt seen these numerous obstacles plaguing this art form and addressed them by publishing a lovely book illustrated with photos of herself in her studio demonstrating several steps of the complicated process. The book is available in Austin at Wally Workman Gallery or through the website www.blurb.com. Her dedication to inform the masses about the idiosyncrasies of printmaking coupled with her obvious artistic aptitude positions her as a beacon for the future of graphic arts. ae Catherine Zinser is the Print Room Manager at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds an MA in Art History and is an admirer of all things paper.
Ellen Heck • June 1–30, 2012 • www.wallyworkmangallery.com
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Tami Bone
Mythos by AMANDA GORENCE
The Epiphany, 2011, 16x16 in.
Photographer Tami Bone takes us to a place where
the otherworldly and familiar unite, a combination that strikes you to the core. She is a captivating storyteller, one who sets a mood so unique and specific that it’s intoxicating. Conjuring up reality and fiction, Bone reminds us how our memories inform our lives while our imagination fills in the blanks, either comforting our present or fueling our future. We are all afforded the power to create our own stories and perspectives, and those in turn begin to shape our lives. Bone captures these ideas in her deeply personal and narrative photographs, doing so with grace, mood, and mysticism. Born and raised in deep South Texas, Bone was adopted around the age of 1 by two loving parents, a Presbyterian minister and a school teacher. They lived in Alice, Texas, for 12 years before moving to the coast. She learned of her adoption at a very young age. Not only did this elevate the already curious nature of a child, but also ignited the mystery of life and lineage Bone would come to ponder. Growing up, she questioned her world, her place, her roots; “there was a big void when it came to grasping where I came from, and a sense of being dropped out of the sky from nowhere; a feeling of not quite being ‘real’." After picking up a camera for
the first time in her early 30s, photography proved to be a cathartic medium equipped to illustrate the quest for self that pulsed through much of Bone’s life. Mythos, her aptly titled series, is a beautiful collection of photographs inspired by childhood, memory and the complexities of self and seeker. We think of mythology as a means to explain, to provide context, and to understand how things came to be. It seems appropriate Bone would have chosen such a title for her work. She creates constructed narratives, often weaving together elements from two or three photographs to fulfill her vision. What results are pieces complex and layered, both literally and figuratively. Also present are consistent themes of nature and soft focus throughout. Bone channels the open skies and countryside of her youth spent outdoors, and her intentional use of soft focus represents the sometimes obscure and murky boundaries between memory and imagination, while allowing others to apply their own stories to the work. Bone divides Mythos into three parts: Memoria, Imaginings, and Hopes and Dreams. All elements reminiscent of childhood, Bone finds them still aether
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strong and breathing, still alive. The work unfolds as a trilogy dedicated to expressing fragments and figments of Bone’s personal story. Memoria focuses on memories and girlhood recollections. Despite the boundaries that have been blurred along the way, each image in this subset has been triggered by an occurrence. The Epiphany illustrates a very important moment in Bone’s life, a memory that will forever trump all, and that released her from years of questioning. The photograph depicts a young girl peering through a set of binoculars, thick fog enveloping her on all sides. In 2001, she spoke with her birth mother on the telephone for the first time. This moment alone was monumental, but Bone also learned that her mother was a photographer, and that she shot with a Hasselblad camera. This struck Bone, for her stylistic preference is to shoot square, a detail reminiscent of the medium-format
film custom to Hasselblads. Bone describes this powerful discovery as “a revelation, a flash. My knees buckled. I had a lightning-bolt epiphany experience of seeing clearly through the fog for the first time.” It was a life-changing conversation, and would serve as a huge turning point in Bone’s career as a photographer. Her birth mother gifted the binoculars Bone needed to finally see. This new clarity and vision alleviated that longtime feeling of not being ‘real enough’. Imaginings is an extension of Bone’s vast and expansive imagination, one cultivated at a very young age. Growing up, she talks about how nothing seemed to be as it really was, “but more of an invitation to an imagined world”. Bone recalls her imaginings ranging from the beautiful to the dark and remembers always having this innate sense of awe. Imaginings embodies naïve thoughts and impossibility, and child-like fear. In Ebenezer,
Ebenezer, 2012, 16 x 16 in. (left)
Galileo, 2010, 16 x 16 in. (right)
Bone creates a scene thick with mood and mystery. An antique church sits in the distance balanced by two foreboding birds circling in the fog. The commonplace church represents stability while the birds recall the seeker in all of us, and the haze completes the mysterious and ambiguous nature of the world.
she grappled with the question of where she came from. The image also expresses a sense of discovery, awareness and unfolding of possibility. Such things dreams are made of.
Hopes and Dreams channels a young girl’s longings and wishful thinking, and is the work Bone describes as the most vulnerable and challenging for her. Galileo was one of the earlier images created in Mythos and marks an important moment for her artistically. “I gave myself full freedom with the camera to express myself,” she says. A child stands alone on the beach, complete with ocean and a descending planet in the background; familiar elements once again tweaked with Bone’s mysticism. The open arms of the solitary child represent Bone at the earliest point in her life as
Bone’s work cosmically combines reality and imagination in such an authentic way because that duality is so intertwined in her life. Though much of the mystery of her birth history has been realized, Bone still believes “that given our free will, we have the opportunity to form a myriad of beliefs and attitudes about the so-called realities of our lives, and when we’re looking back on our lives, all that we’re left with are those beliefs and attitudes surrounding our memories.” In many ways, Bone’s work expresses sentiments and concepts many of us can relate to, yet there is something about her moody and ethereal photographs that make them supremely hers. And, perhaps it is just that. Lucky for us we have Bone to tell her story. ae
Ta mi B on e • w w w . t a m i b o n e p h o t o g r a p h s . c o m
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The Collecting Impulse: Fifty Works From Dorothy and Herbert Vogel by CLAIRE HOWARD
Over the past fifty years, Dorothy and Herbert
Vogel have amassed an art collection consisting of thousands of works, many by key figures in minimal, post-minimal, and conceptual art. The scope of their collection is even more remarkable, however, because of the Vogels’ unique approach to collecting: small-scale and on a budget. Setting aside Dorothy’s librarian salary for living expenses, the Vogels devoted the entirety of Herb’s Postal Service income to purchasing art—primarily drawings and other intimately sized works—directly from artists whom the couple befriended. This deeply personal, passionate approach to collecting and their preference for challenging artworks made Dorothy and Herb singular figures in the art world long before they decided to donate the vast majority of their collection to public institutions nationwide. With the advice of the National Gallery of Art, and the support of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Vogels have given fifty works from their collection to a museum in each of the fifty United States, 2,500 works in all, as part of their “50x50” initiative. The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is honored to be the recipient of the Vogels’ gift to Texas.
When Dorothy and Herb bought a small John Chamberlain sculpture shortly after their marriage in 1962, they did not intend to become collectors. “We didn’t call it a collection until other people did. People started asking to come over and see ‘the collection,’ and that’s when we realized that it existed,” Dorothy recalled. The thousands of works that the couple has acquired together provide a rich overview of the New York art world since the 1960s, from later Abstract Expressionism, to minimal, post-minimal, and conceptual art, as well as experimental figuration. The Vogels emphasize that individual works of art and specific artists, rather than a particular moment or movement, define their collection, and the breadth of their acquisitions reflects their enthusiasm for thoughtprovoking art of all persuasions. Dorothy and Herb were important early supporters of minimal and conceptual art, providing encouragement and, in the case of Sol LeWitt, first sales to artists whose intellectually rigorous work initially received little support from the American art market. “Most of the things we have we bought because we didn’t understand them—we like them,” Herb commented. “A real work of art you never
Richard Tuttle, Dallas (9 pencil lines), 1970, watercolor and graphite, 10 13/16 x 8 5/16 in.
entirely understand, and anyway, if I had waited until I thought I understood I’d never have bought anything.” Many of the artists in the collection, including LeWitt, Lynda Benglis, and Richard Tuttle went on to successful careers, but the Vogels have always prioritized personal relationships with artists and their own engagement with the work over the investment potential of their acquisitions. The Vogels purchased what they liked, with only the requirements that the work be affordable and able to fit in their one-bedroom apartment. Their
collection contains small-scale interpretations of larger sculptures, interesting one-offs, drawings inscribed to Herb or Dorothy on their birthdays, and important studies and selections from artists’ notebooks. The depth of the Vogels’ friendships with artists including Tuttle, Robert Barry, Charles Clough, Richard Francisco, Lucio Pozzi, and Edda Renouf is reflected in the numerous works by each of these artists in the Vogel Collection. “They have a survey
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Enrich.
Stephen Antonakos, Green Incomplete Neon Circles with Two Blue Lines, 1976, graphite and colored pencil, 30 x 22 5/16 in.
of my work,” Barry has said. “…It’s true of many artists in the collection and so important. They have many smaller, more intimate pieces—the personal things artists don’t always show in a gallery. I like that quality and that sense of adventure.” The Vogels’ immersion in the art scene matches the intimacy and intensity of their collecting. Their constant search for new artists and works has led the couple to devote countless hours to attending gallery openings and visiting artists’ studios. “Collecting is not just buying art works... it is also the whole experience of being part of the art world. It means… seeing, reading, talking, and thinking about art every spare moment of the day,” the couple wrote. The Vogels have enjoyed a particularly close relationship with Richard Tuttle since 1969, and own the largest collection of his work in the world. Tuttle’s drawing-based practice, emphasizing deceptively simple and ephemeral forms, is represented in the Vogels’ gift to the Blanton by a group of fourteen individual drawings and two suites of drawings on loose-leaf paper, including several preparatory sketches for site-specific
wall drawings in the artist’s 1971 mid-career retrospective at the Dallas Museum of Art. As further indication of the Vogels’ commitment to Tuttle’s work, every 50x50 museum will receive pieces by him (as well as by Clough and Francisco, other artists the Vogels collected in depth). The collectors’ admiration for Tuttle is wholeheartedly returned: “Most of us go through the world never seeing anything,” Tuttle stated. “Then you meet somebody like Herb and Dorothy, who have eyes that see. Something goes from the eye to the soul without going through the brain.” The Blanton will present all fifty works in the Vogels’ gift to Texas, as well as a 2009 documentary film about the couple, entitled Herb & Dorothy, this summer. The intuitive approach to collecting that Tuttle praised has enriched the Vogels’ lives for half a century; now they want to give back. ae Claire Howard is a Graduate Research Assistant, American & Contemporary Art, Blanton Museum of Art; Master’s Candidate, Art History, The University of Texas at Austin.
T he C ol le c t i n g I mpu l s e • Ju ne 10 –Aug u s t 12 , 2 012 •
w w w. b l a n t o n m u s e u m . o r g
Leonard Lehrer
artist • educator • advocate by ERIN KEEVER
Leonard Lehrer likes to talk. He readily admits his
gift of gab, and those interested in the visual arts would be advised to listen. As an orator, educator, advocate and artist, Lehrer expresses a deeply felt and infectious passion for printmaking and indeed, an overall enthusiasm for life. Lehrer grew up in Philadelphia’s Strawberry Mansion neighborhood. He has fond memories of his life there, and says his first two true passions were art and baseball. While his baseball career didn’t pan out, he was hooked on art after beginning art classes at the Philadelphia Museum. In a recent visit with the artist, he reminisced about his old stomping grounds and his early exposure to arts: It was really a very special way to grow up. I was about twenty minutes by bus from the Philadelphia Art Museum. I got to know people there, and they would find me wandering around and ask, “What are you going to see today, Lennie?” I would tell them because I knew all of that stuff. In high school my art teacher gave me a list of slides he wanted me to borrow from the Philadelphia Museum’s slide library so he could lecture to the class. I loved it because he had such confidence in me. He’d say, “Okay Lennie, suppose you bring in a whole selection of slides on the Barbizon School. I’ll do the notes, you bring the pictures.” I didn’t flinch. You know, fifteen-years-old, and I get to go look through the Barbizon. But that was the norm and it was heaven. Cythera, 2009, hand-colored lithograph, 11.25 x 13.5 in.
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After receiving a MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, Lehrer taught at what was then the Philadelphia College of Arts (PCA). There he was instrumental in setting up the two-dimensional portion of its foundation program. But perhaps his most life altering decision was to accept a position as the Chair of the Art Department at The University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He says, They are asking me to come out there and I am asking myself, “Am I going to do this and leave everything I’ve ever known? Where am I gonna get a cheesesteak?” To my credit, I said yes, and it was without any question the best and most extraordinary thing I could have done. I went at it, never looked back and have been smiling ever since. Lehrer’s move coincided with a significant shift in the field of printmaking. This was when the renowned Tamarind Institute (formerly Tamarind Lithography Workshop) was relocating from Los Angeles, California to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was at Tamarind that Lehrer learned to treasure working with master printers.
I was good at printing, but I never loved it like printers love it. I moved there and became head of the art department; Clinton Adams was the head of Tamarind and was also the Dean of Fine Arts at UNM. My responsibilities in terms of Tamarind were to integrate guest artists into the department. That was how I was introduced to so many people from the West Coast, which was extraordinary. I was working at Clinton’s invitation with master printers. I just salivated and dug in and went totally bonkers. I had the greatest printers in the country printing my prints. Having traveled widely throughout Western Europe, Lehrer was introduced to the ordered realm of formal gardens in France and England and was particularly moved by the Alhambra’s gardens in Granada, Spain. In the 1970s he received a travel grant to study the formal gardens of Russia and Eastern Europe. Now, he would revisit his family’s roots, photographing gardens and cityscapes to use in his lithographs. His sweeping View of St. Petersburg (1978) was created as a result of these travels. Recently the artist has been revisiting this work, hand-coloring it, creating a fresh view of the skyline, and in a sense experiencing it all over
Homage to JLB (details), 1980/2011, hand-colored lithograph
again. Of course without Lehrer’s original strength of vision, clarity of composition and skillful execution, this new version would not be possible. In the mid 1970s Lehrer moved to Texas to set up The University of Texas at San Antonio’s art program. Three years later he went to Arizona to be Director of the School of Art and Director of Visual Arts Research Institute at Arizona State University in Tempe. In Arizona, Lehrer had the opportunity to work closely with Jules Heller, who “was the heavy duty person in printmaking. I had met him at Tamarind when he was a guest there and I had hit it off with him. I had a grand time in Arizona.” In 1991 Lehrer was offered a position in New York as Chair of NYU’s Art Department. It was in New York that Lehrer met Anne Coffin who founded the International Print Center New York (IPCNY) in 2000. Lehrer is a Founding Trustee of IPCNY. He remembers when he got that first call from Coffin, “She explained that there was room in New York to set up an International Print Center of New York, where there would be a sharing of the love of the fine art print. And now, there’s nothing like it in the world…it’s a fantastically successful thing.”
IPCNY’s mission is to foster understanding of the fine art print through exhibitions, publications and programs; in doing so, the non-profit has partnered with The University of Texas at Austin’s Printmaking Convergence. Lehrer, together with Ken Hale, Professor of Printmaking and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs–College of Fine Arts, led the Printmaking Convergence program. In addition to advancing the appreciation of printmaking, the program makes personal and professional connections among students, printmaking studios, collectors, curators, and artists. Lehrer says of the two organizations, “I set them up to do things in concert with each other.” For the past two years the Printmaking Convergence has hosted IPCNY’s annual New Prints exhibition at UT’s Visual Arts Center. They also offered programming for print enthusiasts, such as this past March’s panel discussion at the VAC. Lehrer also teaches a “Careers in Art” class for undergraduates to prepare them for what’s ahead. And after many moves, notable positions and accomplishments in academia, Lehrer feels most fortunate, acknowledging, “Academics fed my habit. It allowed me to make my images and to travel.” aether
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Garden V, 2007, pigmented inkjet print, 40 x 15 in.
Academics fed my habit. It allowed me to make my images and to travel.
Lehrer’s work is highly regarded. While he has worked in a variety of media, it is his lithographic prints that allow his formal structure and sense of order to shine. His subjects lean towards classicism; he has a well-documented interest in formal and so-called paradise gardens, focusing on flowers, statuary, sculpted putti, urns and ornamental fountains. His latest work employs digital tools to review and recombine snippets from his massive personal image bank. Garden V is a wonderful example of his vertically oriented digital prints. In it the artist stacks layers of imagery in horizontal bands like architectural friezes. The top register contains a crisp image of a blue fountain centered on the page like a crown. Underneath, saturated photographic slices of gardens are alternated with semi-abstracted material from nature. Clarity is juxtaposed with painterly layers obscuring foliage, water and fish. The kaleidoscopic facets are capped and stabilized at the bottom with another photographic detail of garden surroundings, including blue walls mirroring the vibrantly blue fountain at the top.
Many of Lehrer’s works address the theme of paradise. Whether careful compositions of idyllic travel spots or works with Arcadian themes, each suggests a cultural Eden. What I learned early when I first started to be aware of the formal garden was that this was ae a culture’s way of establishing its collective view of what paradise on earth was. There was a precious little Eden that cultures went to regularly. Maybe because I grew up next to a park in the middle of a city I had an intuitive reaction, asking why in the midst of this tremendous compression of row houses is there a sense of total peace when you go into the park? Lehrer’s latest prints are loaded with ideas from earlier work and nostalgic details from a life well lived. It’s as if he has come full circle and is now being drawn back in time to the first place he knew, the Philadelphia immigrant community of Strawberry Mansion.
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It all comes together and is my sense of self. Recollected visual imagery has been spliced and re-sequenced in View from Strawberry Mansion, a digital work done in collaboration with Neal Daugherty, Digital Art Foundations, The University of Texas at Austin. The underlying geometry is akin to antiquity’s golden ratio. Lehrer credits the book, The Painter’s Secret Geometry: A Study of Composition in Art by Charles Bouleau as particularly influential to him. Lines frame brightly colored panels like lead framing stained glass windows. Exterior sections reveal architectural details and historical sculpture from around Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s grounds as well as scenes from snapshots in Italy. Not surprisingly, interior images feature family members and those dearest to the artist including his daughter Anna who suffered from a terminal illness who he says “is at the center of it all.” In the uppermost rounded arch are two images from the Alhambra in Granada: one is the Courtyard of the Lions and its famous fountain, and above that the stalactite-like Muqarnas dome in the Hall of the Abencerrajes.
The main triptych shape is mounted above a trapezoid that extends downward into a prismatic reflecting pond of sorts, dotted with koi and layered to create semi translucent veils and swaths of bluegreen color punctuated with orange dashes. Like a textile, this print will hang unframed. It reminds one of a carefully ordered yet richly expressive autobiographical fabric. The artist says his formal arrangements don’t reorder nature in any attempt to perfect it. Rather, “I am celebrating what’s there as I understand it.” Referring to his synthesis of images, memories and dreams, he says, “It all comes together and is my sense of self.” ae
Erin Keever is a visual arts writer living in Austin, Texas. She teaches Art History at Austin Community College and is currently developing online curriculum in Art History.
View from Strawberry Mansion, 2012, pigmented inkjet print, 58 x 48 in. done in collaboration with Neal Daughtery
Leonard Lehrer • April 20–May 19, 2012 • www.galleryshoalcreek.com
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Exploring Realities Contemporary Art in Pakiston by SAMANTHA SEGAR
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Pakistan exists on many levels. There is the Pakistan you know from the headlines: “Osama bin Laden Killed," secret terrorist training camps, religious clashes, military uprisings. Then there is the Pakistan you experience in the streets: extreme poverty, daily load shedding, crime, a lack of functioning city infrastructure on every conceivable level. For good measure there are the not so distant remnants of colonialism and partition that serve as an uncomfortable backdrop to it all. In this country rays of light come in small doses and are hard won. One of them, however, is visual art. Unbeknownst to most of the West, Pakistan has a thriving contemporary art scene. This fact is all the more amazing when you discover that the arts receive no funding from the government whatsoever and among the well to do, the visual arts compete with the more trendy music and fashion scenes for attention and dollars. Yet the visual arts persist. There are a handful of nonprofit organizations, art magazines, and many respected art schools and galleries that develop, support, and promote Pakistani artists and their work. While headline news items and the daily trials of living in the
country certainly influence and drive local artists, these conditions don’t always manifest themselves in their art in quite the way you would expect. The realities may be harsh, but these artists reveal the complexity and humanity of the Pakistani people striving to come to terms with both personal and national identity in the face of seemingly horrific circumstances. The current superstar of the Pakistani art scene is Rashid Rana. Holding fine arts degrees from both the National College of the Arts in Lahore, and Massachusetts College of the Arts, he has exhibited widely in Pakistan and abroad, including shows with Asia Society New York in 2009 and the Saatchi Gallery in 2010. Shows in London, Paris, Hong Kong and Singapore in addition to successful sales at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s have solidified his position as a contemporary darling in the international art world. Rana’s work encapsulates the multi-layered reality of Pakistan while simultaneously questioning what you know, or think you know, about it. Working primarily in photography, sculpture, and digital
Above: Rashid Rana, Desperately Seeking Paradise, C Print, DIASIC, stainless steel, glass, wood, acrylic, 9x9x9 ft. Previous Page: Rashid Rana and his work Desperately Seeking Paradise, photo by Vipul Sangoi
media, Rana’s pieces bait you with expectations and preconceived ideas, and then shrewdly reveal a host of realities contradictory to all you assumed. From a distance his work Desperately Seeking Paradise appears the ideal contemporary cityscape—an endless sea of skyscrapers set before a cloudless blue sky. Upon closer inspection you realize this “city” is comprised of thousands of photographs of common street life in Lahore, Pakistan—decrepit buildings, donkey carts, trash, dusty sunsets. These realities exist simultaneously; Lahore is both a modern, commercial city, home of international corporations and respected higher learning establishments, and a city of people and places that for a myriad of socioeconomic reasons seem to exist in a world more akin to the 18th century than the 21st. At 9’ x 9’ x 9’ the sheer physicality of Desperately Seeking Paradise is significant, and the viewer must work to take in even a fraction of the images—the good, bad, seedy, and banal. At certain angles mirrors create an anamorphic effect in addition to reflecting the cube’s surroundings, cleverly
incorporating both the viewer and current setting into the city’s tale. It is this duality Rana seeks to expose, as he says, “in this age of uncertainty we have lost the privilege of having one world view. Now every image, idea and truth encompasses its opposite within itself.” Sarah Khan considers the more particular reality of her heritage. Khan received her MFA from the University of Karachi in 2007 and has exhibited throughout Pakistan. Her first international show took place at Aicon Gallery New York in January 2012. Currently living and working in Karachi, Khan is of Pathan descent, one of the five major ethnic groups in Pakistan. Pathans hail from the northwest part of the country along the PakistanAfganistan border, and are a people reputed for their pride, independence, and ferocity, having inhabited a region victim to centuries of conflicts. While Pathans do have a certain reputation, Khan comes from what she calls a “modern family” with few actual ties to the people or region, and no knowledge of the traditional language, Pashto. Teased by classmates and local Pathan shopkeepers
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Sarah Khan, Qaida (pages I-IV), watercolor, gouache and carbon transfer on vasli, 7x5 in. each
for being a “fake Pathan” she sought to come to terms with being defined by something for which she had little or no connection. Not one to step away from a challenge, Khan turned the tables on her mockers and asked them, “What makes a person Pathan? What words should I know?” Her work “Qaida” documents the results. Using the hallmarks of South Asian miniature painting, vasli (a specially treated paper) and single or fine hair brushes, along with a teaching format from a bygone era, the primer (“qaida” means “primer” in Pashto) or elementary reader, she records the words they propose. “F” is for “fox”, “E” is for “egg”, “S” is for sight and sound, “B” is for “bullet”, “K” is for “Kalashnikov”, a kind of rifle. This jumble of the familiar next to objects of violence makes for an unsettling combination, but apparently serves as the basic vocabulary for any good Pathan. The interpretation one takes from the work varies according to the viewers’ relation to the Pathans; there is the way the group views themselves— proud and strong, the way another Pakistani might view the group—simple and aggressive, the way a foreigner might view the group—scary and provincial, then finally, how any of these might
view Khan—open and willing, but not without some derision of her own. All are impressions she seems to take some pleasure in arranging. Much of her work takes this deft, light-hearted approach, an unusual and refreshing perspective for such weighty topics as identity and the subjectivity of reality. Well aware of the negative connotations inherent in so many of the labels that try to define her, Khan does a monumental job of finding the silver lining and some humor, however dark, in every concept she explores. Adeel-uz-Zafar’s explorations take a more allegorical, inwardly focused bent. Zafar received his BFA from the National College of the Arts, Lahore, in 1998. Afterwards he returned to Karachi and spent the next ten years as a successful children’s book illustrator. It wasn’t until 2008 that he shared his personal works with the public again and has since exhibited in Pakistan, Singapore and Paris. In The Lion at Rest a child’s faithful companion, a stuffed toy donkey, has been carefully wrapped in gauze from tip to tail. Normally a source of
Adeel-uz-Zafar working on The Lion at Rest (detail), engraving on plastic vinyl surface, 9x11 ft
comfort and safety, the innocent toy appears injured. Set apart from the world, no obvious threat is present yet the treasured possession sits quietly in a state of repair. This large diptych suggests an identity or psyche that, while perhaps significant and established, has experienced some kind of trauma, symbolic perhaps of our most private self, vulnerable in many ways despite our size. Also to be considered is the “lion” of the title, here barely peeking through on the left flank of our friend. Might these represent the opposing faces of our subconscious, strong and courageous one moment, gentle and recovering the next? Zafar’s distinct technique is equally captivating. Working in the negative, he scratches, grates, and
digs the image from the vinyl. An unforgiving process, errors and accidents can be manipulated into the folds, but each mark is permanent, every attempt recorded. The process only seems to enhance the subject—the scratches wound the surface, the wound creates the bandage, the bandage heals what’s held dear. It’s a bit of a conceptual tongue twister. Zafar developed this approach while working outside the town of Gilgit in remote and mountainous northern Pakistan, where traditional art supplies were scarce. This dearth of materials sent him in search of alternative mediums. Originally using exposed photographic sheets current works appear on plastic vinyl sheets coated with emulsion and
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The artist Adeel-Uz-Zafar and curator Riffat Alvi viewing The Lion at Rest (diptych), engraving on plastic vinyl surface, 9x11 ft
acrylic gel. This unconventional canvas requires him to design custom frames and backings for each work to allow for delicate adjustments, a system he is still perfecting. Zafar’s exploration of such intimate subject matter and demanding choice of medium are illustrative of how he finds substantial challenges all the more rewarding. These artists provide glimpses into the cities, minds, and hearts of Pakistan, legitimate insights and perspectives that too rarely reach audiences outside of the country. With only more trouble on the horizon, local artists are in a unique position to explore and document these little known realities. Hopefully a wider appreciation of this talented visual arts community will lead to a more holistic understanding of this challenging country. ae 38
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Samantha Segar worked with Art Alliance Austin in both Chair and Board roles from 2002–2011 promoting and developing local visual artists and the local arts community. She spent much of 2011 in Karachi, Pakistan, working with ArtNow a local on-line arts magazine that promotes contemporary art in Pakistan. She and her husband have just relocated to southeast Asia where she is preparing to tackle the Singapore art world! References:
“Adeel-uz-Zafar.” LivingDesign.info. Asif R. Naqvi. 09 Aug. 2011. Web.13 Dec. 2011. Falvo, Rosa Maria. “Perpetual Paradoxes.” Nafas Art Magazine. A project for the Institute of Foreign Cultural Relations of Germay (ifa) in cooperation with Universe in Universe., Aug. 2010. Web. 6 Dec 2011. Khan, Naiza H. The Rising Tide (Karachi, Pakistan: The Mohatta Palace Museum, 2010), 97, 137, 167, 176 182, 185. “Rahid Rana.” Christies.com. n.p. n.d. Web. 7 Dec. 2011. “Rahid Rana.” Sothebys.com. n.p. n.d. Web. 7 Dec. 2011.
Expand.
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destination
san angelo by LAURA HARRISON
Affectionately called "The Oasis of West Texas" for its rivers and lakes, San Angelo is also a cultural oasis. Both visual and performing arts thrive in the city. The San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts houses a distinguished collection of contemporary American ceramic art, paintings, and sculpture in a dramatic building that was sculpted to fit its site on the banks of the Concho River. Designed by the noted New York architectural firm Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, the building features native limestone, a soaring vaulted-arch copper roof, Texas mesquite hardwood floors and other regional and local materials. Every two years, the Museum hosts a juried national ceramic competition featuring work from leading ceramic artists as well as undiscovered new talent. The editor of Ceramics Monthly named it “the premier clay show in America.” The Nineteenth
San Angelo National Ceramic Competition, which runs from April 20 through June 24, features eighty-seven artists from across the nation. The jurors this year are Mark Del Vecchio and Garth Clark, internationally renowned proponents of the ceramic arts. In conjunction with the competition, SAMFA features a parallel invitational exhibit. For 2012, Kyle and Kelly Phelps, identical twin brothers who work collaboratively on narrative pieces, were invited to showcase their work. They explore the topics of race, class and the working man. The opening reception is on April 20, 2012 from 6 to 9 pm at the museum. In addition to the opening, a series of other events will take place in nearby locations, with a shuttle bus available to transport visitors around. It is a collaborative event organized by the Museum, the Art & Music Department at Angelo State University and the Old Chicken Farm Art Center. The weekend of April 19–21 is packed with ceramic art events held at all three locations, including two ceramic symposiums at Angelo State University and a day-long workshop at the Old Chicken Farm Art Center. The Old Chicken Farm Art Center, founded in 1971 as a place for artists to live and work, has grown into a premier West Texas attraction. This unique three-acre compound has art galleries, 15 artist’s studios, a bed and breakfast and a restaurant. Every 1st Saturday of the month the center has an open house with a featured artist, great acoustic music with the Chicken Pickers, blacksmiths, free clay for kids (of all ages), and demonstrations.
Sara Ransford, Conforming, ceramic
San Angelo Museum of Fine Art, photo by Jim Bean Photography
Downtown San Angelo is filled with historic buildings which preserve a sense of history, but are now home to galleries, shops and restaurants. The Downtown Art Walk is held every Third Thursday—galleries, merchants, the museum and library are all open late, with a free trolley linking the venues. In 2011, San Angelo was named one of the Dozen Distinctive Destinations by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In addition to the artistic offerings of the city, other unique treasures are the historic Fort Concho and the International Waterlily Collection. On the horizon is a new Performing Arts Center. The complex will include major enhancements to the city’s historic, architecturally significant City Hall and City Auditorium, adaptive re-use of an adjacent former warehouse, and will be home to the San Angelo Civic Ballet, the Angelo Civic Theatre, San Angelo Symphony and the San Angelo Cultural Affairs Council. ae
International Waterlily Collection, photo by Jennie Hoelscher
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bookshelf reviewed by JUDITH TAYLOR
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT ART COLLECTOR: Secessionist Prints from the Turn of the Century Anthony Alofsin / University of Texas Press 2012
In Frank Lloyd Wright Art Collector, Anthony Alofsin presents a fresh look at modernism with an extensively researched catalogue of thirty-two prints from the Wright collection, works Wright and his lover Mamah Cheney collected in 1909 and 1910 as they traveled in Europe. Much has been written about Wright’s collection of Japanese prints and Asian textiles; yet, Alofsin is the first to study the Secessionist prints, mostly German and Austrian, which were housed unnoticed for decades in the Wright Foundation archives at Taliesin West. Alofsin sees the collection as “a testament of Wright’s aesthetic orientation” and confirms “how he, so American to the core, saw his own work as in tune with that of the Secessionists.” In compiling the print catalogue, he seeks to demystify Wright’s travel experiences and to provide an overview of the influence the Secessionist Movement might have had on the American architect. For the reader, the
catalogue and research open a window to an often overshadowed movement in art history. At the turn of the century, modernism had taken hold in Europe. As artists, writers, and architects broke from the past, various collectives emerged; in Germany and Austria those at the center of the movement became known as Secessionists. Alofsin discusses how Wright, living in Chicago, would have known of the new thinking taking place, as there was an “important and extensive imprint of German culture in Chicago” from both publications and exhibitions at the Art Institute. Wright’s trip was sparked by professional and personal circumstances. He had a chance to see firsthand what was happening in modernism as he sought to publish a compendium of his completed work through the German publishing house of Ernst Wasmuth. Travel also provided an escape from the “confines of marriage.” His personal life
Cover image: Walter Leistikov (1865–1908), Villa in Grunewald
was in upheaval, his wife refused a divorce, and his love affair with Cheney defied social convention. Alofsin emphasizes that there is scant documentation of Wright’s time in Europe. “With the exception of a few comments in his autobiographical writings, Wright covered his tracks. No journals or passports exist to mark his comings and goings, and only a few extant letters indicate his motivation and plans. The print collection therefore provides one of the few documentary sources of his taste and thinking at that time.” However, there are unknowns about the collection: Where were the prints acquired? In groups or individually? By whom? Mamah, highly educated, was likely involved in their selection or may have purchased them herself. The collection’s unifying thread is the era in which the prints were created—the movement afoot at the time and the artists associated with the group’s exhibitions and advocacy.
The prints assembled in 1910 reinforce what is known about Wright’s taste in art. The Japanese aesthetics and techniques adopted by many of the Secessionists parallel Wright’s own passion. Several studied Japanese printmaking, including Josef Soitzner (1884–1951), whose woodblock Bauernhaus in Ober Pinggau depicts a village in the Austrian Tirol Mountains and is one of the few images combining landscape and vernacular architecture. The Japanese influence goes beyond process. A delicious pair of lithographs, both stylized landscapes, convey leanings to modernism and the use of flat blocks of color, a precursor to abstraction. Stylistically, Carl Kayser-Eichberg (1873–1964) adopts the visual traits of the Ukiyo-E printmakers—flat surfaces, cropped and silhouetted imagery, contrasting voids. The lithograph, Mecklanberger See, is undated, but Kayser-Eichberg began exhibiting with the
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Joseph Stoitzner (1884–1951), Bauernhaus in Ob. Pinggau
Secessionists in 1900 and in 1910, when the print would have been acquired, he won a gold medal in the annual Berlin Exhibition. The lithograph chosen for the cover, Walter Leistikov’s Villa in Grunewald, is the collection’s prize jewel. Leistikov (1865–1908) was instrumental in founding the Berlin Secessionists and was considered its “heart and soul.” Here, the artist depicts a nighttime view of the villa, placed midpoint, and surrounded by dark trees and a foreground lake. Wright’s print is a lithographic reproduction of an original painting and “may be among the few extant representations of the original by this renowned Berlin artist,” says Alofsin. Frank Lloyd Wright Art Collector is Alofsin’s fourth book about the life and work of the man considered to be greatest American architect of
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the twentieth century. The original research is a unique contribution to the study of modern art and the progressive period of the early 1900’s. As a provisional catalogue, this book will certainly become part of Alofsin’s larger, ongoing study of Wright’s artistic sensibilities and devotion to aesthetics. ae Anthony Alofsin, considered the world’s leading scholar on the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, is an architect, artist, art historian, writer, and the Roland Roessner Centennial Professor of Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin. This is Alofsin’s first book to be published through University of Texas Press.
Educate.
Art on The Green by Ink Tank at Laguna Gloria, photo by Erica Nix
Full Sail Laguna Gloria by MARJORIE FLANAGAN
Engaging visitors can be like navigating rough seas
for an art museum. Waves of questions arise such as what is fine art? How is art relevant to visitors’ lives? What is the balance between education and entertainment? And how can museums spur dialogue for visitors of diverse races, backgrounds and ages based on art? Visual stimulation begins the voyage. At the onset of AMOA-Arthouse’s merger, it seems smooth sailing with two recent exhibitions: Art on the Green and Buster Graybill: Progeny of Tush Hog. Both inspire visitors to examine where art and life collide and raise the question of high art versus accessible relevance. Art on the Green on view this spring at the Laguna Gloria location invites visitors to have a new kind of art experience. Dubbed as a social event for all ages, viewing each sculptural miniature golf hole
is only half the fun. You are asked to play golf too! With this show, AMOA-Arthouse demonstrates their continued strength as a place for the people. Engaging visitors through interaction, artistdesigned golf holes ranging from sophisticated to subversive address the bigger questions of what is fine art and how is it relevant to life. Any museum that invites viewers to participate in the artwork is a cause for laud. Interactive exhibits help the visitor make the connection between experiencing art in a museum setting and moving out into daily life to notice that art is all around: from the layout of the neighborhood newsletter to the shapely design of your iPhone; from the color of your morning coffee cup to the sculpture in your office’s lobby. Art comes from the viewer’s mind as much as from the product of the artist. Each of the local Texas artists who created golf holes certainly designed,
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built and birthed the sculptures, but the sculptures don’t stop there. As each museum-goer putts a Titleist golf ball down the green, and with each hole-in-one or one hundred, art permeates. Fine art or not, visitors are affected. When it is as much fun as Art on the Green, positive art experiences occur and life-long art museum visitors are created. In the museum world, the delicate balance between education and entertainment ebbs and flows. Scholarly exhibits generally appeal only to a small segment of the academic or artistic society. Blockbuster shows, though informative, are often deemed too glitzy and commercial to have critical merit, but fund much of the museum’s budget for an entire year. Climbing down from the ivory tower and offering a show like Art on the Green affords the museum a chance to give a variety of types of people the opportunity to experience the space and interact with what they see. This and other similar shows can help bridge the gap between smart and significant by bringing in new visitors to experience Laguna Gloria’s unique green space and continuing to provide thought-provoking sculptural art to spur dialogue. The natural beauty of Laguna Gloria is an idyllic setting for an outdoor sculpture exhibition. It allows visitors to feel how art is experienced differently in nature versus the built environment. These grounds are lush with native Texas plant life and nearby Lake Austin creates a serene atmosphere. There are 12 acres to explore sculpture from the permanent collection as well as each of the nine golf holes created by architects, artisans and designers. AMOA-Arthouse’s downtown location has a bonus 10th hole to continue the fun in an unlikely rooftop setting. Here and at an earlier show at AMOA-Arthouse, visitors are asked to examine the intersection of art and the environment.
This past winter AMOA-Arthouse’s Laguna Gloria location presented another sculptural exhibition, the inspiring installation Buster Graybill: Progeny of Tush Hog. The title is a play-on-words. A tush hog is the colloquial term for a feral hog. In slang terms, it has come to describe certain dominant males, especially in the South. Artist Buster Graybill’s diamond-plated aluminum sculptures inhabited various areas of the Laguna Gloria property, grouped together like packs of animals. The rough and rugged construction site materials Graybill chose were in direct contrast to the smooth reflective surfaces and geometric shapes. They are reminiscent of Donald Judd and Tony Smith’s minimalist sixties sculpture and beg the question: Is it art? Yes, but much more. Graybill built the sculptures as feeding devices for feral hogs and wildlife. Each sculpture was outfitted with an all weather camera. As the sculptures were placed about the Texas outdoors, the cameras captured interactions with native wildlife. Photographs and videos of these interactions accompanied the outdoor sculptural installation. The eerie scenes included wild hogs rough-housing the sculptures in order to access the feed; strange deer, rams and rabbits in the darkness of night quietly inspecting the metal objects while in the background cameras captured blinking cell towers and man-made devices. In this way, Graybill asks, where do these hogs and animals belong? Where do these sculptures belong? In turn, viewers might have thought, where do I belong? And what is happening to our natural world as the urban encroaches? In addition to eliciting questions about art and the environment, the exhibit was interesting to see from a design stance. Laguna Gloria was a great location for these “tush hogs” because they provided a primal contrast to the well-manicured and maintained lawns of Clara Driscoll’s historic
Buster Graybill: Progeny of Tush Hog on Laguna Gloria grounds, photo by Erica Nix
gardens. Viewers had yet another opportunity to experience art in an inviting space and ponder questions about the human condition. The artist’s stimulating fine art video, photography and sculptures showcase a wealth of visual information and a rich testimony to storytelling.
to provide outstanding programming I have every confidence AMOA-Arthouse will rise to the occasion. If the two exhibitions mentioned here are any indication, the outcome will be positive. You can count on one thing, I’ll be watching. ae
All of Austin and the state of Texas hope that AMOA-Arthouse continues to provide quality art-focused exhibitions which highlight visitor interaction, fine art and education. With fewer government dollars dispersed to the arts, and an economy that hinders outside support, I suppose the rough seas for all museums will continue. As the public looks more towards cultural institutions
Marjorie Flanagan is an Austin art consultant with Art + Artisans Consulting. She received her Master of Arts in Art Education from The University of Texas at Austin. She is an avid art thinker and lover.
Ar t o n th e Gre e n
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Ma rch 9–May 20, 2012
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w w w.a mo a .org
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forum
LAGUNA GLORIA Stories to Tell LAGUNA GLORIA, the 12-acre picturesque property on Lake Austin, is an art school, museum, and host to numerous events. Generations young and old have experienced history, art, and nature here on the grounds of what was originally the home of Texas legend Clara Driscoll, and the place has special meaning to many people. We’d like to hear what Laguna Gloria has meant to you. Did you take your first art class here? Is it where you got engaged? Were you a volunteer or a docent? Did you get stuck in the mud during a downpour at the old Fiesta Art Festival? Join the dialogue . . . share your stories on aether's forum! www.aetherart.com 50
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Engage.
Printing in the Darkroom with Shelley Wood
Shelley Wood is a photographer, artist, and educator in Austin, Texas. She has been printing in the darkroom since 1982 and teaches both darkroom and digital classes at The Dougherty Arts School and AMOA’s The Art School at Laguna Gloria. She has served as president of the DarkRoom Coop since 1994. www.shelleywood.net
“ The darkroom is
tactile, submerging, enveloping.
I feel in control of the printing process; my hands are touching the paper, the negative, and the tools that manipulate the image.
I handle the agitation and movement of the exposed photo paper from one tray of chemistry to the next and watch as the whites, blacks, and mid-tones reveal themselves. When the final print makes it all the way
through the process, beautifully printed and toned, it’s
extremely gratifying. aether
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The Set Up: Wet Side: A timer Safelights Tongs and beakers Trays for chemistry & viewing prints Chemistry: Developer, Stop, Fix, Hypo-chek A print washer Squeegee area w/needed accessories
Dry Side: Enlarger with lens and timer Negative carrier with negative Grain focuser
 Contrast filters
 Burning & dodging tools Easel RC Photographic paper Drying rack or drying system
The Print & The Paper: A silver gelatin print is commonly associated with printing in the darkroom. It refers to an image being printed on a gelatin emulsion layer containing silver halides; the emulsion is adhered to a support (i.e. paper). There are two basic types of silver gelatin papers that are manufactured commercially: Resincoated (RC) paper and Fiber-based paper. Both types vary in tone, contrast, texture, and weight. RC papers have a polyethylene coating on both sides which makes them water and chemical resistant. Because of this, RC papers have shorter processing, washing, and drying times than fiber papers and cannot be processed for archival purposes. Fiber-based papers are popular among fine art photographers because of their archival quality, tonal richness and range. They are coated with a clay substance called baryta beneath the emulsion and a clear hardened gelatin layer above the emulsion. These papers are more fragile and sensitive, but are also easier to tone and retouch than RC papers.
The Printing Process: -Select the negative you want to print from your contact sheet and/or sleeved negatives with a loupe or magnifying glass. Examine the exposure of the negatives (underexposed, overexposed, good exposure); this will determine how smoothly the printing process will go. -Clean the negative before inserting into the carrier if needed. Once in the carrier, use a can of air to dust off the negative. Insert the negative carrier into the enlarger with the enlarger light turned off. -Turn the enlarger light on. Place a piece of already used photo paper or a contact sheet onto the easel and use the backside to position your image on the paper. Adjust your easel blades for custom framing of the image. Focus the image. -The enlarger lens has aperture settings just as a film or digital camera. Close down the aperture on the enlarger lens to f/8 for starters. -Turn off the enlarger light and remove the paper used for focusing. Position a piece of unexposed RC paper on the easel. -Make a test strip to determine the overall exposure time of the print. A series of 5-second exposures is a good gauge. See image opposite page. -Move to the wet side of the darkroom to process your test strip. Immerse the print into the developer bath for the correct amount of time. For even development, use proper agitation to move the print and solution around. -Remove the print from the developer tray with the developer tongs and allow the chemistry to drip off the print . -Immerse the print into the stop bath for 30 seconds, using proper agitation. This stops the action of the developer. Allow the stop to drip off the print. -Place the print into the fix bath for the correct amount of time, using proper agitation. The fix makes the image permanent. Do not leave your print in the fix longer than it needs to be. -Place the print into the wash bath for a final rinse. All RC prints should be washed 4-5 minutes. After washing is complete, gently squeegee your print to remove excess water and allow print to dry on a drying rack. -Once your overall exposure is determined you can make a print by repeating the same steps used for your test print. -Printing techniques such as dodging (blocking light from an area) and burning (adding light to an area) of the print will be applied. Continue printing with additional manipulations until you create a print to your liking. It’s always a good idea to make more than one final print.
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Shelley Wood, Go Fly A Kite, 2000, LamWood Ranch, Selenium split-toned fiber print, 14x11 in.
Darkroom Coop: Established in the mid-1970s, the Darkroom Coop is a communal darkroom for advanced printers, independently organized and maintained by its members. Hailing from a myriad of occupations and backgrounds, the coop’s members—now, close to forty—share a common love for photography and all have advanced black and white darkroom experience. As with all coops, responsibilities are shared. In addition to president and vice-president, there are five designated positions: Chemistry Man, Maintenance Man, Web Master, Towel Tech, and Fix Replenisher. Members meet three times a year and hold an annual member exhibition each fall while an online gallery showcases members' work. Many Darkroom Coop members are published on a regular basis, while others have gone on to become recipients of Fulbright Scholarships and other grants. One past Darkroom Coop member, Jean MarcBouju, was awarded two Pulitzer Prizes, the first in 1995 for his work in Rwanda, and the second in 1999 for his coverage of the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Darkroom Coop exists under the auspices of College Houses, Inc. 2000 Pearl Street (inside the Pearl Street Coop) www.darkroomcoop.net
Shelley Wood, Shoestring's Shawl, 2005, LamWood Ranch, Selenium split-toned fiber print, 20x16 in.
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art alliance austin
community Austin is lucky to have Art Alliance Austin. The non-profit organization is actively involved in engaging the public with art. From artist-driven Pecha Kucha night to collector-driven Art Night Austin, the Alliance provides a wide array of access points to the Austin art community. This spring, three major projects inspire creativity and public interaction. In mid-April, artists flooded downtown when the Alliance launched the season with their annual 2-day festival, Art City Austin, a wonderful family event full of creative energy and inspiring personalities. Bravo to the Alliance who has transformed the city’s oldest art festival into a fresh, relevant and approachable art experience. Two other projects, both public art initiates, inspire playfulness in unexpected places. The Red Swing Project, which runs through May, places red swings throughout the city in an effort to positively impact under-utilized public spaces. Started in 2007, the project has anonymously placed over 200 red swings in 5 years. The Alliance has commissioned additional red swings to be installed throughout the community this spring. They hope, as do we, that it will inspire many individuals to take control of their public environments and create their own red swings. Underpasses just got much more interesting... A second initiative, Bubbleware: Social Furniture for Austin, Texas, also, invites playfulness into Austin’s public spaces. Modular, inflatable and movable public furniture systems will appear throughout the urban core. Through May 6, Bubbleware will provide a visual and tactile contrast to the rigid structures that make up a city. Acting on a social level as well as a visual level, it will be interesting to see how the public interacts with the modular, movable installation and with each other. The project, organized in collaboration with Rebar, a San Francisco based art and design studio, is just one more way that the Alliance emphasizes accessibility and relevancy in creating community art experiences. To join Art Alliance Austin and learn more about their programs, visit www.artallianceaustin.com
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Experience.
FOREWORD On View
NEW AND SELECTED EDITIONS | Flatbed Press through May 5, 2012 Catherine Dudley, Immersion II # 2, monoprint
Flatbed Press is both a print workshop and gallery space with exhibitions in the “front of the house” generally drawing on the editions created in the workshop under the supervision of master printer Katherine Brimberry. Brimberry is particularly proud of a recent project for James Surls. The dramatic editioned print, titled Through It All, is a large scale woodcut which now hangs in the varied, engaging, and fluid exhibition, New and Selected Editions. Surls’ long relationship with Flatbed (over 20 years) is a testament to the stature of the Austin workshop in contemporary printmaking. Standing in the long, wide hallway that serves as the main gallery, one moves from print to print, and then steps back to get a broader sense of the range and quality of printmaking on view. On the main gallery wall hangs a large six color etching by UT’s dean of printmaking, Ken Hale, titled Locomotive / Red. Bold imagery, intense color, and a sense of movement create an array of sensory responses. A bit further to the right is Randy Twaddle’s aquatint Lankydo, which blends subtle washes overlaid with strong parallel and angled lines suggesting telephone lines over rail tracks. Hanging alongside these noted printmakers is work by a young Austin talent, Catherine Dudley. The grid of four small monoprints is from Dudley’s Immersion Series, printed early this year as collaboration between the artist and Brimberry. This inclusion of emerging and established artists makes for an interesting presentation, especially when work by the young talent can hold its own with the accomplished printmakers as it does here.
WILLIAM WAHLGREN | Davis Gallery September 15 - October 20, 2012 William Wahlgren, Nuages IV, oil
Landscape painter William Wahlgren opens a Solo Show with a new series of works that put a contemporary twist on the traditions of Dutch Golden Age painting. These softened landscapes concentrate on an atmospheric quality that gives greater prominence to the skies while compositionally anchoring its horizons with minimally rendered sunsets, canyon-like formations or dense treetop groves. Growing up on the edge of Lake Michigan, just north of Chicago, William Wahlgren developed an early attachment to those typically Midwestern landscapes where vast expanses of land and water meet the sky. In 1966, Wahlgren and his family resettled in Austin where new surroundings have provided an inspiring new dimension of atmosphere and light. Ultimately however, his work is less a naturalistic depiction of a particular landscape than it is a landscape-inspired, inward exploration of limitless, contemplative space. Wahlgren has exhibited nationally since 1980, appearing in juried shows from New York to San Francisco. He has earned several awards and his work is included in many private and corporate collections. Wahlgren is a graduate of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is represented by galleries in Boston, Houston, Miami and San Francisco in addition to the Davis Gallery.
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In review
GARY WEBERNICK | Kramer Gallery, Austin Community College Bots, Gizmos, Thingamajigs, Whatchamacallits and other Phenomena by ERIN KEEVER
After roughly six months of renovation, the new Kramer Gallery at Austin Community College has reopened for an exhibition featuring the work of artist and ACC Art Department Chair, Gary Webernick. The delay caused by gallery construction combined with a sabbatical allowed the artist/professor to fine tune his latest group of works, which are worth the wait. If you’re familiar with Webernick, you know he’s a mixed media artist with a penchant for found objects, whose pieces often have political portent. While we do see the occasional missile; overall this latest exhibition is filled with sculptures that forgo a heavy hand, embracing a decidedly lighter and more whimsical feel. For the most part assemblages from salvaged architectural materials, scientific instruments and other apparatus are seamless. In works like Rocket-Dance/Homage to Man Ray and CamBot the artist even built custom pedestals that compliment and are integral to the larger works. Many of Webernick’s works like “Neo-Deco-Bot” implement sound, lights and vaguely recognizable forms from by-gone eras when machine-aesthetic and chrome said “the future.” None of the works are actually robots (à la Alan Rath), but they suggest aspects of automata. “Bots” feature shiny nuts and bolts and have actual moving parts as well as implied motion. All of the works possess various white or colored light elements, for example, flashing lights, backlighting, clip-on reading lights mounted like spotlights and small LED signs displaying text. Some works feature video or cameras. Camo-Cams is a simple but successful work in which the artist mounts ten surveillance cameras to a round wooden board and paints the entire thing including the cameras in the same camouflaged pattern. The “hidden” cameras, which are only activated by motion, slowly begin to stir as the viewer walks past, becoming animated and unnervingly training their eyes on you.
Gary Webernick, Neo-Dec-Bot, 2012, mixed media assemblage, 32x17x5 in.
Perhaps the most intriguing works are three robot figures from a Pulp Fiction series done in molded paper relief. The tactile nature of these seemingly softer white works contrasts well with the hard and slick surfaces of the plastic and metal “Bots.” They seem quieter than the noisy band of colorful kinetic constructions, yet no less arresting.
“Gary Webernick: Bots, Gizmos, Thingamajigs, Whatchamacallits and other Phenomena” runs through May 20, 2012 at the Kramer Gallery, Rio Grande Campus, 1218 West Avenue, Austin, TX; Normal operating hours M-F: Noon – 2 p.m., but visitors are advised to call (512) 223-3262 for daily gallery hours or to make an appointment.
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datebook APRIL
MAY
Through May12 SELECTED WORKS Davis Gallery
May 5 through July 22 TEXAS PRIZE/Jamal Cyrus, Will Henry & Jeff Williams AMOA-Arthouse at The Jones Center
Showcasing a wide selection of painting, print, sculpture, collage
The Texas Prize recognizes innovation, talent, and a marked contribution to a thriving Texas artistic community. A diverse group of Texas-based professionals nominates several contemporary artists. A separate international jury of artists, curators and scholars then selects three finalists for an exhibition and full-color catalogue.
and photography from gallery artists.
Through August 12 COLLECTION SELECTIONS/ The Barret Collection AMOA-Arthouse Laguna Gloria Collection Selections: The Barrett Collection showcases pieces from AMOA-Arthouse's newly-acquired Barrett Collection, one of the most significant and comprehensive compilations of work by Texas artists. On view inside the Driscoll Villa.
April 5 through 28 IT’S A THIN LINE/ Holly Wilson Wally Workman Gallery Holly Wilson’s small, detailed figures in bronze, silver and encaustic seem to arrive from another world. Her delicate work captures our vulnerabilities, our strengths and our imaginations.
April 20 through May 19 LEONARD LEHRER Gallery Shoal Creek A multifaceted presentation, this solo exhibition reflects on Lehrer's strength of vision and clarity of composition.
May 5 through 26 AMERICA MARTIN Wally Workman Gallery America Martin is a Colombian-American fine artist based in Los Angeles. Martins favorite landscape is that of the human form, her work is distinguished by a command of line and color, making playful reference to both classic and indigenous art forms.
May 11 through June 10 FUGUE STATE Hector Hernandez & William Hundley
grayDUCK Gallery
Fugue is an altered state of consciousness in which a person may move about purposely and even speak but is not fully aware. Dissociative fugue usually involves unplanned travel or wandering, and is sometimes accompanied by the establishment of a new identity. Hector Hernandez and William Hundley combine efforts in a continuation of their collaboration that began with the show "Identity Crisis" in 2011at grayDUCK Gallery.
JUNE June 1 through 30 ELLEN HECK Wally Workman Gallery
May 19 & 20 WEST/ West Austin Studio Tour Big Medium Big Medium is proud to present the first annual West Austin Studio Tour! Just like its counterpart, the celebrated East Austin Studio Tour, WEST will be a free, self-guided tour that champions the abundance of talent of 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. WEST will cover a wide geographical area, and just as non-homogenous as Austin itself, the broad range of work will reflect the eclectic abundance of artists working west of I35. Additionally, a number of spaces will be presenting various art and performance events on all ends of the artistic spectrum. www.westaustinstudiotour.com West Boundaries: • West of I-35 • North of I-71/Hwy 360 • East of Mopac • South of Hwy 183 Tour Hours: 11am-6pm Cost: Free and open to the public
Ellen Heck currently works as a printmaker and designer in California’s Bay Area, but grew up in Austin and graduated from the first class of St. Andrew’s Upper School. This is her second solo show of a complete thematic body of work since her graduation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008.
June 8 through July 14 RENE ALVARADO Gallery Shoal Creek The solo exhibition will showcase Alvarado's ongoing series of portraits of the Madonna, the symbolic figure that connects him to his heritage—cultural and familial—and represents the matriarchal society of his childhood.
June 10 through August 12 THE HUMAN TOUCH Selections from the RBC Wealth Management Art Collection
The Blanton Museum of Art The Blanton will present selections from one of the leading corporate art collections in North America, RBC Wealth Management. The company began collecting contemporary art in the early 1990s as a way to distinguish itself from other financial management firms. Committed to representing the diversity of the communities where they do business, they focused on the human figure in all its variety. Ranging from whimsical to provocative in content, and from large scale to small and across media, the exhibition will feature close to forty works by leading international contemporary artists aether
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next issue
Fall/Winter 2012
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.