Provincetown: Art with a View

View of Provincetown Harbor from the East End of Commercial Street, where most of the town's galleries are located

Call me a creature of habit, but at the Provincetown galleries I find myself responding to the same artists and galleries summer after summer. (I stay at the same place, and go to the same beach—Herring Cove—and ride the same bike trails, too.)

Out of many possible galleries, this season I again turned to these: Albert Merola, Ernden, Kobalt and Rice Polak, all within a couple of blocks of one another on Commercial Street; and the DNA Gallery one block over on Bradford.
At the Albert Merola Gallery, although a Jacqueline Humphries show was in the front gallery, it was a small piece in the back gallery—in a sightline from the front door—by Provincetown resident Helen Miranda Wilson that beckoned: small, imprecisely geometric, luminous. I've been a huge fan of her work ever since she switched from landscapes (and I liked those, too). Not to ignore Humphries; her gestural paintings, smaller than what she shows at Green Naftali in New York, are always changing. This year glitter charged her surfaces. Above: Albert Merola Gallery

Looking into the Albert Merola Gallery: A small geometric abstraction in oil by Helen Miranda Wilson.

Below: The painting up close

One thing to know about the Provincetown town gallery season: It's short, roughly May through October, so shows last about two weeks each. Openings are on Friday nights, and the entire art community turns out

At Albert Merola Gallery: Installation wall of paintings by Jacqueline Humphries. Her gesture is familiar, but her surfaces seem newly reflective

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At Ernden, this year as last, I liked the work of Carlos Estrada Vega and Linn Meyers. Gallery owner Dennis Costin has an interesting mix of the coolly reductive, such as these artists, and the neo-fauvist. My preferences are, well, you know where they lie. XXX

Left: Carlos Estrada Vega. Right: the little building that houses Ernden Gallery (the ocean is just out the back door)

Carlos Estrada Vega at Ernden Gallery. Small constructions in oil paste on canvas

Linn Meyers at Ernden Gallery. I love this piece, which is ink on Mylar or vellum, one sheet layered over another.

At Kobalt, my buddy Reese Inman showed three small paintings in acrylic whose dot-dot-dot compositions, rendered in layers built up and scraped back, suggest television static or electronic noise in brilliant jolt-the-eye colors against black. The small size pulls you in close; then the color zaps you.

Above: Looking into Kobalt Gallery. Below: Three small paintings by the Boston-based Reese Inman

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I also like the constructed grids of Barbara Cohen—not sure if she calls herself a painter or a sculptor, because the work could go both ways. I first saw her work in an otherwise empty storefont a couple of years ago when I biked past, caught a glimpse, stopped short and drove back for another look. (How's this for a bumper sticker: I Brake for Grids).

At Kobalt: Small grid constructions by Barbara Cohen. I also like the gallery's gridded tile floor, below

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At Rice Polak, three painters and a sculptor interested me: Steven Baris, a Philadelphia-area painter who works a spatial and floaty kind of geometric abstraction; Rusty Wolfe (sounds like a stripper’s name, no?) whose geometry shares a similar spatial quality but with scores of overlapping circular shapes; Peter Arvidson, whose monochrome(ish) grids in luminous oil are exquistely rendered; and the Boston sculptor Anne Lilly, whose elegant stainless steel constructivist pieces balance machine precision with a whimsical kineticism. You have to see them move. (Disclaimer: Baris and I were in a show together in Philly last year; Lilly and I show at the same gallery in Boston.)

At Rice Polak Gallery. Above: Three acrylic-on- plexiglass abstractions by Steve Baris. Below: Peter Arvidson's elegantly ordered oil-on-canvas grids

At Rice Polak Gallery. Above: Rusty Wolf's exuberant geometries of incised lacquer on board. Below: A stainless steel kinetic sculpture by Anne Lilly

At DNA, a large loft upstairs from the Provincetown Tennis Club (!), a group show that included Eric Aho and Sara Lutz was terrific. Aho, whom I know of as a painter of fairly reductive Vermont landscapes, did some pink-hued, sweepingly gestural dunescapes of Truro (Edward Hopper country), the town just west of here whose spectacular bluffs face Cape Cod Bay. Lutz makes a particular kind of abstraction that looks sweetly pretty from a distance and which turns out to be more satisfyingly stringent when you get up close. (She has a show opening at Lohin Geduld in New York next week.) I’d tell you more, but the gallery’s website is sorely lacking in installation shots and artists’ images, and when I went to look for information about this show, there was no mention of it.

At Lohin Geduld, New York: Sara Lutz, Nautilus, 2007, oil on linen, 30 x 26 inches

YYY

Fortunately, I found Cate McQuaid’s Boston Globe review of the show (courtesy of Two Coats of Paint, an excellent blog maintained by Sharon Butler, who posts reviews and essays about painting).

One evening, on a "Wax Walk" that I took with students from my Encaustic Master Class (at the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill), these works in encaustic stood out: Deanna Wood at Ernden; Kim Bernard at Bowersock Gallery; Cid Bolduc at Lyman-Eyer; and Cherie Mittenthal at Julie Heller Gallery. (These latter three painters also had work in "Thinking in Wax," the show I juried at Castle Hill.)
ZZZ

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Paintings by Deanna Wood, above, and Cid Bolduc, below

Paintings by Kim Bernard, in the window of Bowersock Gallery, above; and pulled from the gallery website, below

Cherie Mittenthal, from her Patron Saint series. This one is Patron Saint of Bad Weather, 14 x 11 inches, encaustic on paper. (If there's one thing you think about in P-town, it's the weather.)

. For those of you who don't know about Provincetown, it's at the very tip of Cape Cod, which extends from the Massachusetts mainland out into the Atlantic like a flexed arm with curled fingertips. P-town is the fingernail of the fingertips. If you've visited ports in Portugal, you get a taste of its maritime flavor, as it was settled by Portuguese fisherfolk. (Improbably, the town of Lahaina on Maui could be its twin, because New England whalers settled that town, bringing their spears and their architectural ideas with them.) Hans Hoffman called it a summer home for many years in the Fifties, and many artists live and work there part-time or yearround. (The Provincetown Art Association and Museum, newly renovated and enlarged, occupies a prominent spot in the East End.) And, if you've ever been to Sheridan Square during the Gay Pride Parade, P-town is a lot like that, too.

Recent sightings: Summer resident John Waters on his bicycle; the comic Kate Clinton in earnest conversation with a friend outside one of the town's many coffee shops; at Packard Gallery, the man who inspired Sex and the City's Mr. Big; and at least four versions of Cher.

It's a nutty and savory mix.

"Thinking in Wax"--Notes on a Juried Show

Earlier this year I curated a show for the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, and last week I juried a show for the Castle Hill Center for the Arts in Truro, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. Curating is quite different from jurying, (I talked at some length about curating in my blog post on the topic) because you’re selecting work by artists you’ve already decided you want to include. There’s usually some give and take—the artists wants to know who else is in the show; the curator may want a work that’s unavailable—but generally it’s a dialog between and among people who have agreed to be involved with the project.

Panoramic view of two walls. From left: Mimi Reilly, Heather Pilchard, Susan Hardy Brown (on pedestal), Molly Hamilton, two paintings by Shirley Mossman Nisbet, three paintings by Binnie Birstein, Cid Bolduc

Jurying a show requires much more flexibility, because you never know what the work will be like until it arrives. The artist has a reasonable expectation of being included (otherwise why enter and pay the fee?) as well as the understanding that not everyone who enters will likely be accepted. .

"Thinking in Wax" opened at the Castle Hill Center for the Arts last week and will run through August 31. I chose the title* because I wanted to see how an artist’s concept and use of the medium came together in a realized work. Delivery was by hand, which meant that most artists were from the Outer Cape (Eastham, Orleans, Wellfleet, Truro, Provincetown)—a good opportunity to see the best of a region that is full of art and artists—though one artist drove down from Boston and another from central Connecticut. About 35 artists dropped off about 100 works; 23 artists and 34 works were juried in.

So how does a juror select work for a show?
.I can speak only for myself, of course. What follows is some of my thinking for this show, which had a specific medium and a general theme, but it’s equally valid for work that is selected by slide or digital image.
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1) In a room full of actual work, I started by selecting, more or less at the same time, the work that resonated positively for me, as well as that which resonated negatively. Positive went to one side of the room; negative to the other. (With slides or digital images, sides of the room are conceptual but no less separate.)
. A work resonates positively when I feel it is resolved visually and technically. In a show such as this, there must be evidence that the medium has been used in service to the idea—not as an afterthought, not as a way to get into a show--but in which the medium and concept are so fused, so to speak, that neither could exist without the other. I don’t have to love the work personally, but I have to respond to the elements that make it what it is.

Binnie Birstein, First Prize recipient. Work from left: Floor Through, 12 x 12"; Empty Room Full, 16 x 16"; Untethered, 12 x 12"; all encaustic on panel

. A work resonates negatively when it doesn’t do those things. Moreover, I’m looking for interesting ideas, for well-developed concepts, maybe even some pushing of the conceptual envelope, so birds flying off into the sunset, for example, was not what I want to see here, no matter how good the paint handling might be.

2) While my own painting is abstract and non-narrative, I made a point of looking closely at work that is representational, and at work that has a narrative component, either visual or textual. And at sculpture. One artist, for instance, entered a small spiral-bound notebook filled with page after page of fluidly rendered paintings that referred to Greek vases, and in the same classical palette of black, ochre and red. Everything about the work was a delight: the imagery, the brushwork, the colors, and the concept of compressing those Greek stories into a differently dimensional narrative.

Narratives. Above, Susan Hardy Brown, Leaves of Wax, app. 14 x 12", encaustic on notebook paper. Below, Cherie Mittenthal, Patron Saint of Wax Melters and Bee Keepers, app. 12 x 10", encaustic on paper

3) In jurying the show by actual work, the largest pieces were the first to be selected or declined, mainly because they were the most visible and I had to start somewhere. However, there were two small photographic collages—positive and negative image scans of a nineteenth-century baby doll, one overlaid with an old photograph of the doll, and both collaged with wax—which resonated quite strongly for me. So it’s not just about the visual impact of the size, but of the idea that propels me to the first yeas or nays.

Joyce Zavorskas, Found Child and Lost Child, each app. 14" x 12", encaustic collage

. Let me say something about size: While big may catch a juror’s eye first, it must hold its own, otherwise it will be the first to be declined. . .

. While slides and digital images all project more or less the same size, they have their own "large" and "small" in terms of image quality. The best images are considered first. And, honestly, it takes a dedicated juror to make the effort to look, if at all, at images that don’t immediately yield their visual information.

. By the way, if you are submitting sculpture to a show in which most of the work is two-dimensional, your work has a greater chance of getting in. Why? Because while the paintings are all fighting for wall space, the floor is wide open.

Abstraction. From left: Jessica A. Gosman, Indigo; Francie Randolph, Coral Series 9 and 15, each app. 10 x 10 "; Kim Bernard, Spyro Gyra, app. 24 x 24", and Spiral Six, on pedestal. All encaustic on panel

4) Then I considered the vast middle ground. Often, I’ll find that I’m selecting, or deselecting, additional work by artists who were selected or deselected in the first round. This is not surprising. If an artist’s work resonates, then his or her second or third pieces are likely to resonate as well--or not.
. If it’s going to be a narrowly focused show, then I’d select more work by fewer artists.
. In this situation, however, I wanted to see a wider range of "thinking," so often I selected just one work (occasionally two, and in one instance three) from the same artist.
. But isn't the jurying done anonymously, you ask? It was, right up to the point where I had to make some decisions about whether to include two pieces by one artist or one piece by each of two artists. In this situation, the names were of people I didn't know, so it made no difference. And besides, there was other work I recognized as having been done by people I do know. So the best answer here is that a good juror--and I think of myself as one--is not influenced by whom or what she knows but by the quality of the work she sees, based on all the factors I mention in this post. (Grant juries, which have the power to award thousands of dollars, are a different issue, and I think anonymity is essential. And notice I said "juries," for big decisions require more than one person's power to grant or deny.)

Carol Hardy Brown, Leaves of Wax; Molly Hamilton, When the War is Over, app 24" x 36". Both encaustic on paper

5) At this point things got really interesting, because there were pieces that could have gone either way. I wanted to be fair to the artists, but I also wanted to be fair to the show, which is larger than any one artist or work. Once about half the selections were made, the curatorial part of my brain kicked in and I began to think about how all of this work would look together. I wanted a cohesive show, not a jumble. You do no favor for artists if you put their work into a big mess of a show.
. To be honest, this is the point in which context helps make the decision. A weak-ish work (that is, one that resonates weakly for me), may converse well with the already accepted work and become stronger in such context. In that case, it goes over to the accepted side. A strong-ish work (one that resonates but not enough to have motivated me to include it initially) that doesn’t converse well meets the opposite fate.
. I do a lot of back-and-forthing here. It’s in. It’s out. In. Out. Effecting this visual balance is probably what takes the most time, and certainly the most emotional energy, because I know someone’s excitement or disappointment (and entry fee) is riding on the pendulum swing.

Geometric and (mostly) abstract. From left: Michael Teters, Strength; Barbara Melcher, Bursting Color (top), Heather Pilchard, Untitled (bottom); Cecilia Rossey, Entrapped; Carol Odell, Looking for Adventure, app. 24 x 24"; John Shane, Skew; Ellyn Weiss, Blue Hill

6) Jurying was completed when all the work selected seemed right, both individually and together. I left the room several times before I reached this point. (I would have done the same thing with projected images)

7) Looking at the declined work in this or any show, it’s clear that a different juror could have made a different and equally good show. That different show might have come from declined work from artists whose other piece(s) got in; or from choosing an almost entirely different roster. So a juried show is as much about the taste and response of the juror as it is of the quality of work by the artists. Moreover, it’s a snapshot of a particular brief time in a juror’s thinking process, as well as of the selection of a few works by an artist, out of how many paintings or sculptures in her entire oeuvre. More than once it has happened that a painting declined from one show receives first prize in another—and vice versa.

I’m sure that a different juror would offer you an entirely different perspective on how she selects work for a show. Unlike competitions in which you have to hit a target or physically surpass a competitor’s leap in order to remain in the running, in a juried art show, the target is constantly moving, as is--metaphorically, at least—the ground under your feet.


* Thanks to the New York painter Debra Ramsay for the phrase, "Thinking in Wax"

Off to the Cape

I'm off to Cape Cod to do a weeklong teaching residency, and to jury a show ("Thinking in Wax") at the Castle Hill Center for the Arts in Truro, almost at the tip of the Cape. The weather is forecast to be cool--good for painting, not so good for beach going. I may not return with a tan, but I will certainly have a report on the galleries and shows at the tip, Provincetown, which has a handful of very good venues.

Above: the tower, icon for the Castle Hill Center for the Arts.

If I can post while I'm there, I will--depends on my access to wireless.
Meanwhile, if you haven't hit these recent posts, take a look:

. Sixth Anniversary Book project--for all you wax heads. I'll start posting pics soon
. Cyber Poetry (composed from the spam in my inbox)--I'm up to 10 sonnets and counting
. Serra and Stella--two long posts, one on both; the other on Serra's painterly surfaces
. "Luxe, Calme et Volupte," the show I curated for the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta--the show is up through the 25th, so if you can't see it in person, see it here. And read my essay if you have a moment.
Plus a the usual rants and opinions, and a lot of links.

Below, the painting studio where I'll be spending the week.

Poetry from Spam

Updated on 10.27.07

I have an e-mail box at a college where I teach. Every time I log on I find dozens of unsolicited messages squirming there. Honestly, I had no idea there was such an epidemic of minimally endowed men with bad credit in need of erectile help, more hair and second mortgages. Then a funny thing happened, my inner poet saw the messages in a different light. Now I love that junk mail! Some of it still creeps me out, though. All phrases are real, taken from the subject line. As you can see, this poetry section has been growing longer. (No, not that way.)

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The Penis Monologs . . . . (10.27.07)
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Trust our wonder medicine and your penis
No surgeries!
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Get a massive confidence boost
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Your life will be better
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Russell’s vast phallus
Megadik
Steven’s massive schlong
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Now it’s a snap.
Your new penis is waiting for you .........................................................................

..

Just Asking. . . (8.29.07)
How are you?
Are you confident in bed?
Can’t afford medications you need?
Why can’t you?
Query:
How big do you want to be?
Seriously, how big…
Don’t you want to know?
Why don’t you?
What do you need?
Are you achieving total pleasure?
Don’t you want more than this?
How much do you think you should pay?
Please reply

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Free shipping any amount. . . (8.27.07)
Best deals are here
What do you need?
Stamina
Herbal vitamins
Pleasure toys
More hair
Pictures
Britney????
Don’t pay too much
Everything 50% off
Get it delivered to your home
Without leaving your chair
Free shipping any amount
You should check it

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Friends he accumulated. . .(8.26.07)
Hot
Best
Large
Magic
Better
Larger
Longer
Massive
Acrobat
X-tra size
Bea Harde
Seymour Dick
Velazquez C. Dick
Edmund @ viagra.com

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Flexible Positions. . . (8.19.07)
Get into shape
Flexible positions
Fine Arts Faculty Positions
Expanding their circle
Get big
Experience creative . . .
Get bigger
Experience like no other
I help you
I show you how far the rabbit hole goes
Where you fit in
Information especially for you
Info zum
Do you measure up?

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The way it works… . . . (8.15.07)
Wassup
You ask me about this game
The way it works…
Just a few cents, really
Best Deal
Xtra size
Biggest ever
Much longer than average
Massive
Don’t take my word for it
Doctor approved and recommended
Over 1,500,000 bottles sold
Yes
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Message for You . . . (8.14.07)
Colleague sent you a postcard
Holiday ecard
No subject
Friend sent you a greeting card
A Friend Confides. . .
Don’t you want to know?
What Paris knows…
Query
Query
Query
Important
Don’t you want to know?
Y Don’t U?
xoxo Britney

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Pharmacy Paradise . . . (8.12.07)
Capsules, tablets, liquid
Medication to Your Door
Cheapest medication
Cheapest here
Cheapest anywhere
Don’t pay more
Pharmacy Paradise
Vi-8-alis
Ci-agra
GOLD!
Virility as never befoe
5% off the price
Good Time
Better ZZZZs

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Magic Stick. . . . (8.9.07)
How are you?
Wanna be like me?
University Degree in Economics
Really high wages
Why don’t we meet?
Enjoy with you hard stick
Magic stick
A pretty-pretty fly
Anything you want
Gold
Rolex
Vi-alis
Guaranteed investment
Anything else?

.

..

Very-very Magic Stick. . . . (8.11.07)
BBC News reports…
Very-very magic stick
$2.00 per pill
Don’t pay more
Important
Get more energy
30 pills $89.95
Don’t pay more
Important: Massive
Womens Luv You
Paradise in your bed
All night long
Message from:
Velasquez C. Dick

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..

Be Confident and Stand Tall . . . (8.03.07)
Hello
Message from Wanda:
Be the most confident man in town
No more being shy of your manhood
Significantly increase penis length
Bigger, really
Harder than ever!
Size without surgery
Then after a month or two you will
Get more energy
Be totally free of debt
Did you know that?
XXX Pictures!
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..

No Side Effects. . . (8.03.07)
Life changing Herbal pills, just a few cents
The thing that convinced me was
No side effects
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Why wait when you can . . .
Control your weight
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No side effects!
P.S. Donna sends her regards

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..

Time is Running Out . . . (8.03.07)
Polite request:
Get Rich
Suggestion:
Regrow your hair
Save big on your mortgage:
Bad credit welcome
Not earning enuf?
Get hard stay hard
Tired of growing old?
Turn back your body’s biological time clock
No gimmicks
No obligation
Time is running out
Please fill in the required information

.

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Haiku
For these I'm using the spam subject lines as well as some of the "senders'" names. For the last one, "Complete Ecstasy," I drew from the whole message (how could I not?)

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Young, Rich and Bourgeois. . .(8.27.07)
Dwayne Young, Barton Rich
Friends he accumulated
Hillary Bourgeois

Change Everything . . . (8.8.07)
No more feeling down
Womens used to laugh at me
Rolex Britney Sex

Hi There! . . . (8.8.07)
Hello. Chat with you?
You’ll feel better right away
Wanna see my pics?

Complete ecstasy . . . (8.8.07)
We shall in no way
Be obliged to clarify
Any of these claims

Some Chelsea Geometries

Click here for updated Cyber Sonnets

Just looking around. Chelsea had a couple of nice recent bits of urban geometry worth posting.

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Above: The truck is parked at the corner of 10th Avenue and 20th Street, at a public works depot. The colors aren't so great, but the pattern sure is. Below, also on 10th Avenue: shadows between 22nd and 23rd. This one reminded me of the long horizontal Ellsworth Kelly sculpture I saw last year around the corner at Matthew Marks

Above: This gem is a few years old--old enough to have been taken with a film camera. I always liked it, and when I was purging stuff from my office shelves to make room for the new scanner, I found it. Of course it's the first thing I scanned. I think I shot on 20th Street, too, but farther east--closer to Sixth Ave.

Click here for Book Project

A Few Stops in the Blogosphere

Click here for The Artist as Curator, updated with pictures and review

Here’s what I like about art blogs: they cross boundaries freely

Edward Winkleman, owner and director, and Max Carlos Martinez, associate director, behind the desk at Winkleman Gallery, New York

as they dip into art reportage, gallery gossip, personal venting, politics, rampant image appropriation (see below), and shameless self promotion. The best ones pull it off by being well written, and the very best have such unique points of view that someone should swoop down and pay them for their writing.

. Edward_Winkleman: The subtitle for this blog is "art / politics / gossip / tough love," and it lives up to its claims. Some recent posts: "Worst.War.President. Ever" is all about you.know.who. "The Reality of the Collector-Driven Art World," talks about who’s buying and what that means for artists. And "The 50/50 Split" explains from a dealer’s point of view why the sale price of an artwork is divided the way it is. When Winkleman offered advice on how to find a gallery, scores of readers responded. (Yes, I put my two cents in, as I do from time to time.) He raises many interesting questions: What’s a mid-career artist? How does the issue of artist’s age affect the market for that artist’s work? What’s the value of Art Fairs?

Winkleman is a New York gallerist (Winkleman Gallery, on 27th Street in West Chelsea) whose daily posts are well written and thought provoking. His blog has a huge following. Often the responses are as interesting as the posts. The participants, mostly artists, I think, are smart and articulate with points of view that range from radical to occasionally reactionary in tones that are incendiary, conciliatory, measured, considerate, agressively opinionated and monumentally pissed off—all of it spiced with bitterness, bloviation, genuine appreciation, non sequitors, humor, a few puns, and the occasional bad typing. Now that’s an essential daily read.

Last year about this time I wrote about several blogs I liked (still do). The following are some new ones I like. All are listed on the blog roll at right:

. Artist, Emerging: We go from an established dealer’s blog to an emerging artist’s blog. Deanna Wood, from Texas, is the artist. Her blog description: "One artist's struggles and triumphs in starting an art career. Sharing resources and ideas..." Her posts are all over the place: entering juried shows, dealing with rejection, how to hang artwork, her travels. She’s not hemmed in by New York art politics, so her comments are sometimes naïve but always refreshing. In a leap of faith recently, she quit her non-art job and is now making art full time. If you're an art student, this blog gives you a glimpse of what's ahead; if you're an emerging artist, you know you're not alone.

The Intrepid Art Collector: Author of a book the same name, the Montreal-based collector Lisa Hunter describes her blog as "Adventures in the art market -- plus occasional museum and art book reviews." Hunter is a smart thinker and good writer, and she doesn’t pull punches. For instance, a recent entry,"Team Art: A Modest Proposal," starts: "Has anyone noticed that Blog and book: The Intrepid Art Collector (Image from the blog) art coverage has started to sound a lot like the sport pages? It's all about big scores [by collectors] and record-setting [auctions]. Artists are "over the hill" at 35, just like athletes." She goes on to suggest scoring it, a la Grand Prix racing. She also posted a video of a fly larva being made from pearls and gold—disgusting and fascinating, and certainly over the top (which might describe much of the artworld we’re all blogging about these days)

. Two Coats of Paint: The intent of Sharon Butler’s new blog is "Articles, reviews, writing about painting." And that’s what you get. Butler started the blog this spring and has covered a lot of ground. I learned, for instance, that a Frida Kahlo Centennial Exhibition, which opens at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis in the fall (October 27, 2007–January 20, 2008), will come East and then head West: Philadelphia Museum of Art (February 20–May 18, 2008) and then the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (June 14–September 16, 2008). I plan to see it in Philly and, of course, blog about it.

I also love the blog’s title, the second coat being, presumably, journalistic coverage of the painting in question. (Disclaimer: she’s posted two items that relate to me: one, my take on the painterly surfaces of Richard Serra’s Sculpture; the other, Beauty Show in Atlanta, a link to the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s review of "Luxe, Calm et Volupte'," a show I curated this summer for the Marcia Wood Gallery).

. CultureGrrl: This is the name of the blog, and the nom de blog, of Lee Rosenbaum, a veteran cultural journalist (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Art in America) whose site is full of art news info from all over. Writes Rosenbaum, "Since I always have more opinions and information than the Mainstream Media can use, I've decided to throw some of those juicy tidbits into this blog." Her writing makes you understand that art is not just about the artists; it's about the academics, collectors, corporations, critics, curators, dealers and media outlets (am I leaving anyone out?) who/that have input and opinions about our collective endeavor. Required reading for art professionals.

. Color Chunks: This one's totally quirky: Tennessee artist John Tallman posts pictures of colored objects, like a pink tarp or a roll or blue masking tape tape or green soap--sort of like Jessica Stockholder deconstructed and in 2-D. It's a

It has to be hue: John Tallman's blog is, uh, what's the opposite of colorblind? (Image, Color Chunks)

new blog ("dedicated to assertive color," says the tagline) and I’m curious to see how it develops. To be honest, after all the reading I do each day, online and on paper, I like that when I log onto this blog, all I have to do is look.

Serra on the Surface: Looking at the Sculpture with a Painter’s Eye

Click here for The Artist as Curator, updated with pictures and review

In my previous post, Serra and Stella: Big Boys in Big Spaces, I talked about walking around and through the massive works. You can talk about the sculptures in formal terms: the sinuousness of their line opposed to the muscularity of the material; and of the torques, which define the exterior and interior spaces, sometimes simultaneously, with a different shape at the bottom than at the top.

A painterly surface and....color!

Exterior view of Intersection 2, in the MoMA courtyard. To me, the work is as much painting as sculpture

You can also talk about the achievement of the artist in mathematically wresting the material into shape so that the huge machines used in shipbuilding could roll and forge the metal to deliver the work physically.

Another view of Intersection 2 showing three of the four slabs that make up the work, each with a distinct surface

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I've already talked about my physical experience, which had me pleasantly disoriented, lightheaded and, to be honest, a little fearful. Gravity is anchoring these bent and twisted slabs; couldn't it also pull them down? But there is no experiencing this work if you don't get past that--so, er, que sera, sera; you take a breath, set aside what may or may not be an irrational fear, and enter the work. My emotional experience of the work was that these muscular slabs of metal were almost maternal in the way they enveloped the body.

And how can you not make the connection between iron oxide and blood? Indeed, in some places the iron has bled onto the marble of the courtyard, so that when the sculptures are removed, a physical trace of their presence will remain permanently. (I hope the museum won’t replace the pavement.) So the work is all very First Chakra and earth centered.

Above: A view from inside Intersection 2. This stretch of slab is particularly topographic, so I composed the detail shots (three shown below) to suggest maps of uncharted territory

In this post I want to talk about the surface. I’ve seen several Serra installations at Gagosian and the permanent installation of the big basin-like shapes at Dia Beacon, but indoor lighting—including the glaring overhead illumination at MoMA—does not prepare you for the experience of seeing his work out of doors in full daylight. The mottled and scratched surface texture, always interesting, reveals itself in daylight to be something more like skin: thick here, thin there, pocked, shiny, flaky, smooth. Or skins, plural: human, animal, mammalian, amphibian. Or planetary: a sandy strand, a lunar crust, a Martian landscape. There are red-orange tracks formed by liquid (rain?), and deep gouges, perhaps wrought in installation. Wherever the treated surface of the metal is rent, there is rust—pits, scars, scabs, craters.
Still inside Intersection 2, above, this stretch of metal is pitted, scabbed, scarred. Two details are below
Then there is color. The vibrant spectrum of rust is richly satisfying, from yellow-orange through coral (!) to ocher and brick red. But the surprise--the shock, really--is in the other hues: lavender, pale pink, gray-blue, even blue-green. I’ve used the parable of the blind men and the elephant before in describing the experience of Basel Miami and its satellite fairs, but it’s more apt here. Depending on where you (visually) touch these mammoths, you will perceive a different creature.

This stretch of Intersection 2 is marked by a dramatic counterpoint of granulated rust and a smooth gray-blue surface where the surface treatment had not been broken. Along the bottom curve of the slab you can see where the rust has bled into the marble pavement.What I found surprising was the particularly lovely coloration--note the light blue, below-- and the delicate scrim traced by the path of bleeding metal. Like watercolors, no? The brick hue and matte surface of Torqued Ellipse IV, the second sculpture in the garden, held a different surprise when you passed through the spiral slot. . . . . . an inner surface whose cascading waterfall of color might have come from the brush of Pat Steir. . .

. . . and calligraphic markings as light as anything you might see on rice paper.

What I haven't read anywhere is how much of this stupefylingly beautiful surface patination is the result of planning. Surely there was a decision to rupture the weatherproof coating. So are we seeing unintended consequences or simply the painterly passage of time? What will the work look like a decade from now? A century from now?