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Artomatic - The Rest of the Story

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

June 12, 2009

Art Enables' Charles Meissner

How shall I sum up Artomatic 2009? I have already used every synonym for overwhelming and huge, so we’ll take that as said. I stopped counting skulls at 22 (there is a special place in art hell for people that draw skulls. You are tied in a chair while Michael Bolton albums play forever.)

Chuck Baxter's masterpiece

But, oddly, there are far fewer guns and other ordinance than in previous years, hardly any reference to war and there are probably almost as many Obamas as skulls. Lots and lots of Obamas, presented in a decidedly non-ironic way and lots of references to the kids and the family inspiring your work and even photos of a delivery. I mean, that’s sweet, but enough already. Even with 1000 artists, two showing their kiddie lunchbox art seems a lot. Ms. S was getting violent.
On the whole, the thing did feel generally more upbeat and – dare I say it – optimistic.

Susan Finsen

Susan Chapin - nails and wax (I think)

Some art that I liked and/or that caused me to stop and think: Chuck Baxter’s lounge chairs made from plastic bags – Chuck, my man, you have outdone yourself!; Susan Chapin’s sculptures made of nails and her wonderful sales scheme – pick a piece, pick a price, mail me the money – so touchingly 1960’s; the Art Enables display of the work of its cadre of disabled artists, especially Charles Meissner’s precise rendering of a scene from his past, complete with narrative.

Edward Johnston

Edward Johnston’s sculptures are gorgeous and intriguing, but buddy, you need to tell me something about how these were made and what they’re made of. It makes me crazy.

Megan Maher

Marina Reiter

And some more: John Guernsey’s dense, churning drawings of an invented cosmos; the same for Ben Tolman, who always gets me looking closely; Susan Finsen’s colors; Megan Maher’s energetic bursts of squiggles, alive and wriggling; Marina Reiter’s new pods – they look brooding to me; Patrick Finley’s provocative drawing of a woman’s pelvis and what looks like a manufactured vagina; the graffiti walls. a project which began small at the Children’s Museum and has grown and grown.

Ben Tolman

Finally, I love the garden of recycled bottles, cans and other discards, made by Virginia school kids under the direction of Torpedo Factory artists – notice that my picture of it shows the ballpark all lit up and pulsating right outside. That’s the best part of this site.

Trash park and ballpark

John Guernsey

So, thaaaaaaat’s all, folks. Tomorrow bright and early I’m off to beautiful Truro, MA, from where I will report on art and life on the ragged end of Cape Cod.

A Woo-Woo Kind of Day

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

June 11. 2009

"Deep Connections" - monoprint, about 30" x 40" framed

"Willing Watchers", oilbar, 30" x 30"

Wow. I have had a real woo-woo experience. For a week, I have been worrying about how I’m going to have to move everything in my studio around like a big old three-dimensional puzzle in order to stash the pieces that are stacked around so that my friend Richard Dana can have some nice clean space to work this summer since I have bequeathed it to him while I’m in Truro. (leaving Saturday!). And then yesterday morning bright and early I got a call from Julia Morelli, formerly Gallery Director at Nevin Kelly and now an arts coordinator for Prince Georges’ County, asking me if they can show my work this summer at the Headquarters of the Maryland National Parks and Planning Commission and the Prince Georges’ County Parks and Recreation Dept. And I said yes and she and Phil Davis, Gallery Director of the Brentwood Arts Center, came to the studio that afternoon and picked out more than 20 pieces, packed them up and drove away with them. Storage problem solved! So if you’re in Upper Marlboro or Greenbelt, check it on out.

This is like one of those stories where you wish so so very very hard for something and the universe just gives it to you. I think I’ll write a book about that; maybe I’ll call it “The Woo-woo Factor”. I bet nobody’s every written anything like that before.

These are a couple of the pieces they took - an oilbar from the "Circular Reasoning" series and one of the big monoprints from the "Neurotransmitter" series.

Artomatic Part Deux

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

June 8, 2009

Only at Artomatic

I am daunted this year by the sheer muchness of Artomatic; I am engulfed, overrun, routed and swamped by it. Nine floors? 1000 artists? This is not an exhibition, it’s a municipality, it’s own ecosystem, a good sized corporation. But I am determined not to let my reader down, so made it through another few floors Sunday.

There’s a big dollop of bad photography as usual, but some very good stuff caught my eye: Mark Parascandola’s clever and very well-executed “DC Tags”, pictures of iconic Washington sites (like the Lincoln monument) with superimposed graffiti. I also really liked the photos from R. Teri Memolo’s “Corner Stores and Carry Outs” series, particularly the two little stores still standing but marooned in their deteriorating emptied-out neighborhoods. I haven’t seen her work before but will look for it now.

Jenny Walton

Erwin Timmers' What We Leave Behind

Other stuff definitely worth a look: Jenny Walton’s dense drawings, both inviting and a little scary, Erwin Timmers' new recycled glass pieces called “What We Leave Behind”, made of layers of objects discarded over time; Pat Goslee’s sexy, swirly paintings, Sheila Crider’s cut and woven canvas and her “Blackstraction” manifesto;

Pat Goslee

Sheila Crider

Ben Nicholson’s large overwrought, bravely-colored prints; Larissa Presniakov’s drawings that have a certain life and movement that make them feel original; Allegra Marquardt’s complex childlike narratives in glass.

Ben Nicholson - detail

Larissa Presniakov

Also, among the many wonderful glass artists from Sunderland, UK, Criss Chaney presents glass that has been made to look like it is partly iron. It’s a wonderful baffling effect.Closer to home, Baltimore glass artist Megan Van Wagoner presents what are essentially glass potatoes. Sounds kind of dumb but a fabulous look and an aesthetically appealing little joke. And Steven Jones "half chicken/ half man sculptures are effectively creepy, like little aborted cloning experiments.

Criss Chaney

Megan Van Wagoner

While good painters are pretty rare on the ground here, I was attracted to the layered embellished prints/paintings by Mei Mei Chang. They are not all fully realized, but they are quite interesting and made me want to see more. And Dana Ellyn has an irresistible wall designed to offend the religious, including the Pope wth a big old Pinnochio nose looking downright lascivious. I told her she'd better double her security detail.

Steven Jones

Mei Mei Chang

Finally, there is Veronica Szalus’s lovely fragile and delicate installation, made from chicken wire bricks dipped in what looks like thick white paint, built into a transparent curving wall. It looks like it’s the innards of a building that’s in the process of decaying back into nature, an effect which is heightened by the dry leaves and other bits of detritus scattered around and caught in the wall. Great stuff.

Dana Ellyn

Still another four floors to go. I will return Thursday, God willing and the fence don't come down.

Veronica Szalus

Hubcap guy - an Artomatic stalwart

John Adams at GRACE

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

June 3, 2009

The Divine Ms S. and I schlepped out to deepest VA to see John Adams’ show at the Greater Reston Art Center. Warning: digressive rant approaching.I understand and applaud the concept behind the “new urbanism” developments: build dense mixed-use urban-type environments in the suburbs, particularly near transit, to encourage people to get out of their cars and to avoid the evils of sprawl. I get it and it’s a thoroughly worthy, even necessary goal. The problem is that the actual bricks-and-mortar manifestation of the concept so often creeps me out. Like Reston Town Center and its Truman Show cousins in Rockville, Germantown and numerous other suburbs, they look like every building was designed in the same architectural office and popped up out of the ground on one day about five years ago - and that littering is a capital offense.

Each one of these towns has a Panera, a Whole Foods and an Arts Center, and in some cases, a very fine one. That’s a good thing, make no mistake. Because synthetic environment or not, real people live here, including real artists and people who want to see real art. Which brings me back, thank God, to John Adams.

John’s work is serene and, although these pieces are mostly small, the visual space they create is as expansive as the universe. If you went outside at night and stared at the sky for a very long time, you might get this effect. The pools of black, white and grays are draped over grids; in the most effective pieces, the grid is just barely visible as if you may have imagined it. Nice stuff.

Jantzen, Lelah and Logsdon at Mclean Project for the Arts

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

June 3, 2009

I’m sorry that it took me so long to motivate my ass over to the Mclean Project for the Arts because now you only have a couple of days left to see the current show: Franz Jantzen, Aliza Lelah and Roslyn Logsdon. And you definitely should go.

Jantzen, Coal Creek Library

the outside of the library

Jantzen produces large scale “digital assemblages”, visual/psychic maps that begin with a meticulous process of photographing every inch of the multiple surfaces of a subject such as “Coal Creek Library”, the one-room library in Vinland, Kansas, home of his wife’s family. He then digitally alters and reassembles the hundreds of images into a single print that is the product of thousands of aesthetic and technical decisions and yet is somehow complete and coherent despite the astonishing variety and perspective of the imagery.

detail of an eviction

Apparently unafraid of revealing his unique process, Jantzen has documented the step-by-step making of “Coal Creek Library”, which greatly enhanced my appreciation of the endeavor. Really, this shouldn’t be missed. My photo is a pretty pathetic facsimile.

ALiza Lelah's piece

another Lelah - I love this creepy speedo dude.

And a well-deserved nod to the curatorial judgment involved in this three-person show, which has joined three artists whose work shares a “take it apart, move it around, put it back together”, recycled kind of aesthetic. Aliza Lelah works with recycled fabrics and stitches them into evocative, expressive and often sardonic portraits and figures. I am amazed at how she gets such specifi human emotions on the pieced fabric faces.

Roslyn Logsdon makes elegant hooked rugs in subdued colors. They are lovely if perhaps a bit quiet to compete with the other work in the gallery this month.

Artomatic - Encounter of the First Kind

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

June 3, 2009

Jim Tretick Who Must Be Obeyed

Lisa Gold, new WPA Director.

The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities (thanx to Beth Baldwin) organized an evening at Artomatic Monday when the joint is otherwise closed, so I got to make my first pass through. This one is Extra Giant Size Yoooge – 1000 (!) artists in nine open floors of a brand new commercial building smack next to the brand new ballpark on Southeast DC, surrounded by a dozen other brand new empty condo and office buildings waiting for the economy to turn around. (If you’re very quiet, you can hear the financing curdling.)

George and Gloria Nauden, new Exec. Director of the DCCAH

Stephanie Bonifant 's colors

There are fabulous Capitol-to-Potomac views of DC from the roofdeck, which may get the building a few tenants.

I LOVE the Homewrecker installation

Michael Janis's amazing new work

As my reader knows, I was one of the founders of Artomatic over 10 years ago and I still lust nostalgically for the grimy, scary old buildings of ye olden days when we had to take a collection to buy toilet paper and light bulbs and getting back to the car after a night shift was an adventure.

Tim Tate at Kristi Mathias's work

Most of us fogies have since turned the insanity over to a new generation and the current organizers seem somehow to have accommodated themselves to marble lobbies and slate bathrooms, not to mention professional cleaners. (And a big shout out to Veronica Szalus and the rest of the current board, including the eternals George Koch, Jim Tretick and Chuck Baxter, who really have done a fabulous job whipping this craziness into some kind of shape).

Peeps caught in the infamous purple inaugural tunnel

The surroundings are slick but the art is still Artomatic. Temporary partitions have been fashioned to give each artist a space, and it all flows together in a big goofy stew.

Peep on Wire

Peeps of Wrath

The peeps show on the 7th floor displays the work of the finalists in this annual contest organized by the Washington Post, featuring the obsessive dioramas of people who have way too much time on their hands and imaginations that range from the sweet (e.g Peeps at Passover) to the frighteningly lunatic (Peeps Killing Room). It is NOT to be missed.

Peeps (Pee Wee's) Playhouse

I’d say from my first walk through about 2 ½ floors that the dreck-to-interesting ratio is about the same as always, although the sheer overwhelmingness and undifferentiated nature of the space makes it challenging to find the gems. And I’ll confess that I was a bit impaired Monday night. I’ll be back.

Only at Artomatic

Only at Artomatic II

So these are pictures of a few of the things that stopped me:Michael Janis's deeply layered new work based on mythology; Kristi Mathias's prints on aluminum panel made by scanning and reassembling the paint-by-numbers pictures she collects (Kristi wants me to make it clear that no actual paint-by-numbers pictures were harmed in the making of these images; an amazing "Homewrecker" installation featuring a woman-scorned screed of remarkable intensity and breadth and a few dozen mutilated dolls (I'll find out more about this, including the artist, when I go back - it was too crowded); Stepahnie Bonifant's wonderful colors.
Later: I found out that the Homewrecker was made by Deb Jansen. You go, girllll.

That was some gala!

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

May 30, 2009

Back garden with performer

The District of Columbia Arts Center (“DCAC”) is an artist-born and run visual/performing arts institution that plays a unique part in the cultural life of this city. DCAC threw itself a 20th anniversary gala last night and it was a hell of a party.

Anita Walsh, Ms. Pipecleaner Head

the bunny guy

First, the setting: Halcyon House is a stately Georgetown mansion that dates to 1789. It is owned by sculptor John Dreyfuss and the upper floors, each room with its fireplace and antique feel, are what you would expect of a home of this vintage and splendor. The lower floor, however, has been fashioned into a cavernous three-story high studio big enough to fabricate the Queen Mary and it is to die for. The back garden has two tiers and one of the most spectacular views in town.

dancer

Arkin and Holtsman, faces in the crowd

Pretty much tout le monde was there, including myself, and I even dressed for the occasion, although admittedly not to the standards of many of the highly-groomed throng in attendance. Anita Walsh won the “S/He Sure Cleans Up Good” prize, with Mark Planisek a close second.

There was music, performance, dancers, a juggler, a guy with a big bunny head, open bars with champagne (!), very nice finger food brought around by liveried servers. Homestly, I still can’t believe they let me in. Oh yeah, I bought a ticket.

The Class of 1969: You Wouldn't Believe It

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

May 26,2009

Chapin House, my home for four years

some of my Chapin cohorts

I just got back from Northampton, Massachusetts, where I celebrated the reunion of the Smith Class of 1969 along with 125 of my classmates. We were the class that overturned 100 years of tradition; when we arrived, there were blue-haired genteel housemothers and no going away for the weekend without mommy’s permission.

From the Smith museum from left, Frankenthaler, Mitchell, DeKooning, Kline

a fabulous Lee Bontecue at the museum

We had to wear skirts to dinner (I protested by wearing the same skirt over my jeans for four years) and there was coffee in demitasse cups on Thursday evening. My first week, I was admonished for “lowering the tone of the house” by going barefoot downstairs. I was the lead singer and drummer in an all-woman band called “Maggie’s Farm”. By the time we left, there were no housemothers and pretty much no rules left worth breaking.

the class parade

more class parade

I organized a show of artwork of my class members, which was quite interesting, and also took a few photos of some of the work in the genuinely outstanding collection of the Smith College Art Museum, which is more than worth a stop if you are in or near western Mass. The museum also has a special show of the work of Leslie Dill, class of ’72. Her impressive, evocative installations and sculpture generally start with poetry and incorporate both the meaning and the text itself. (Then you can go on to North Adams and see MassMOCA, another truly rewarding experience.)
The reunion classes parade down the campus wearing their class colors and other ridiculous paraphernalia. I knew you wouldn’t believe if you didn’t see it yourself.

NYC Shows - the Sublime and the Silly

Latest News and Thoughts from Ellyn Weiss

May 26, 2009

Leon Ferrari and Mira Schendel

Ferrari

I recently saw two shows in NYC, one disappointing over-hyped extravaganza and one that was, for me, an almost life-altering surprise. Let me start with the good – “Tangled Alphabets”,the Leon Ferrari/Mira Schendel retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Ferrari, born in 1920 in Argentina and still living, was politically engaged and ferociously prolific. Schendel, born just a year earlier in Europe, emigrated with her family to Brazil and lived and worked in South America throughout her life.

Schendel

Ferrari

The show does not really make clear the extent to which the artists were in touch during their creative lives and I intend to do some research to find out, but the relationship between their bodies of work is immediately apparent when you approach the first room of this sprawling retrospective.

Schendel

Both use language as their primary visual building block, sometimes words in understandable script, sometimes calligraphic-like marks that have no independent meaning. They use the physical embodiment of language, sometimes as an act of love, sometimes as an instrument of fear and repression.

Schendel

Ferrari

They both work in both sculptural and drawing media and while they produced this art during the birth and high water mark of conceptualism, it is something distinct and apart; it is never bloodless and didactic, but always freighted with emotional power. This show is up until June 15 and you should levitate off your tush and see it. The bus to NYC is only $25.

Younger than J

more younger

Now for the bad news: “The Generational; Younger than Jesus” at the New Museum, featuring 50 artists from around the world aged 33 or less. I deliberately saw this show with two artist friends younger than me and one younger than Jesus and we all had the same reaction – ech. It’s just-out-of-art-school art, full of DIY photography and installations and we all thought that the ratio of interesting to dreck was about what you get on a floor of Artomatic.

young Steven Rhodes

Katerina Seda - good and young

The one piece we all liked was Katerina Seda’s “It Doesn’t Matter”, a collection of drawings of implements for sale long ago at the hardware shop, done by her grandmother at the artist’s urging to try to recapture some hold on life. Not much else in the show seemed to show genuine feeling of any kind. This sentence from Thomas Micchelli’s review in the Brooklyn Rail reflects my views as well: “The most telling part of the exhibit is that many of the works cannot be fully appreciated without the verbal dimension of the wall label.”

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