Big Tree, Little Branches

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At Carroll and Sons Gallery, Boston: Sandra Allen, Ballast, 2009, graphite on paper (15 separate sheets), total of 133.5 x 222.5 inches. That's about 12 x 19 feet

In Boston recently, I stopped into Carroll and Sons Gallery in the South End to see Sandra Allen's marvelous arboreal drawings. The one I loved most was the imposingly large-scale Ballast, installed on the wall facing the gallery entrance. Photographic from a distance, it is a mass of pencil marks from up close--a graphic rewriting of the old saw about not seeing the forest for the, well, you know.

That shift in scale reminded me that in May I'd photographed the maquette of Roxy Paine's Maelstrom at the James Cohan Gallery, just before the actual gargantuan sculpture was installed on the roof of the Met. I'll show you the big work via multiple pictures in the next post, but here you can take in the whole thing in two views.

At James Cohan Gallery in May: Roxy Paine's maquette of Maelstrom

Above: view from the south end (as it is installed on the Met roof)

Below: view from the north

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Milhazes in the Window

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Lately it seems as if the James Cohan Gallery is showing all Milhazes all the time. I'm not complaining. The work is joyful and visually intoxicating. I tried to photograph the installation in the small window-facing gallery, but some guy with a giant head was chatting up a collector type--blah, blah, blah--and they just wouldn't budge from their spot in front of the work. So I shot above their heads to get the two pics you see here.



Then I went to the gallery website and found a nice installation shot, which I have taken the liberty of reproducing here. I guess more than anything else I've seen in the past few weeks, this work personifies the new season--well, the season that arrived but has been in hiding for the past few days. Spring!

Gamboa, 2008, iron and mixed media, 27.6 in tall x 45.7 in diameter
Image from the gallery website

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