Westfall, Zox, Wixted, Gallagher

Installation view: Stephen Westfall at Lennon Weinberg. The work on the far wall is painted directly onto the wall

I’m mixing all kinds of geometry here. The hard edge is the uniting factor in the work of Stephen Westfall at Lennon Weinberg, Kevin Wixted at Lohin Geduld, and a wonderful small painting by a master of hard-edge abstraction, Larry Zox, at Stephen Haller. And then there’s a circular element in Wixted’s work that moves us effortlessly into the to the other-worldly stripes of Chris Gallagher at McKenzie Fine Art.

Another installation view: Stephen Westfall at Lennon Weinberg

Westfall’s work, including a marvelous composition painted onto the far back wall, contains resonant references to quilts and textiles. Most of the works are concentric diamonds or squares within a square format, so that angularity is the predominant element in each work. The compositions are “pieced” together from stripes or triangles. My favorite is a four-tiered square in which pennant-like triangles, limned in a contrasting or complementary color, create an elegantly kinetic formalism, completely beautiful to my eye—but then, dum, dum, dum, dum, a shark-like menace asserts itself. Beauty with bite. The show is up through December 20.

Stephen Westfall, no info available on the gallery website, but the work appears to be oil on canvas, about 48 x48 inches

Zox, whose work softened with looping gestures and prettier colors toward the end of his career, is represented at Stephen Haller with an earlier, small work of serape-like stripes. Into this composition he placed an acute angle along each edge so that the entire composition loses its absolute rectangularity and appears to be set slightly askew.

Larry Zox at Stephen Haller. Beach, 1964, acrylic on ragboard, 16 x 19 inches

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Wixted hasn’t given up his architectural references, but fluid elements in his geometry suggest a botanical reference—bushes or trees—and some feature intersected circles. In the "botanical" group, I particularly like Flowering Tree-Yucutan, in which a fluid mass of triangles, barely contained within its perimeter, balances precariously on the points of two triangles. Visually, the whole composition threatens to fall apart before your eyes. It doesn't of course, but the tension is exquisite.

In the latter group, circles of different diameters appear strung like beads on a flat coral ground. The placement of the intersection within the circles is different in each one, so they appear to be spinning, some pushing up against the picture plane while others recede into the distance. It’s playful and kind of cosmic.

Kevin Wixted at Lohin Geduld (now down). On the facing wall, above: Flowering Tree-Yucutan, 2008, oil on linen, 44 x 60 inches

Below: no information available on the gallery website, but the painting is about 18 x 28 inches

For the truly cosmic, you won’t do better than the prismatic paintings of Chris Gallagher, which seem less like paintings than windows or portholes into a vast and hyper-chromatic universe. Differences in vastness are suggested by stripes with a greater or lesser degree of curve. The edges of the stripes themselves have a bit of a bleed, but they hint at a much more immense geometry. And those tondos are neat slices of shape on their own. The show is down, but the gallery website offers a page of all the works, which can be clicked and shown larger.

Chris Gallagher at McKenzie Fine Art: Tondo 16-08, 2008, oil on canvas, 48 inches in diameter; Detail 12-08, 2008, oil on canvas, 64 x 48 inches

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Joanna Pousette-Dart and Ron Gorchov

Joanna Pousette-Dart and Ron Gorchov are making very different kinds of painings, but I’ve put them together here because their canvases are shaped and it's a place to start a conversation about the two artists.

Joanna Pousette-Dart at Moti Hasson, above: "canoe" shapes stack and nest but lie flat against the wall. Left: Untitled (Canones #4), 69 x 106 inches; right: Untitled (Canones #3), 79 x 92 inches; both 2007-2008, acrylic on canvas over wood panels

Ron Gorchov, below, at Nicholas Robinson: saddle shapes alter your thinking about where the painting is in relation to the wall

Pousette-Dart just squeaks into my “November” category. Her show at Moti Hasson ended on the first day of the month after having been up all of October. I wanted to write about it then but , uh, there’s this other thing I do that requires most of my time. Then I walked into the Gorchov show at Nicholas Robinson, and I knew I had found a way to talk about both artists’s paintings in one post.

In the large from gallery: Untitled (Canones #1), 2007-2008, 72 x 150 inches, and Untitled (Red Desert (#9), 2006-2007, 81 x 117 inches; both acrylic on canvas over panels

Pousette-Dart makes paintings that are chromatically gorgeous. The shapes are quirky, almost cartoony—like a Jetson’s version of “modern art”—but they're elegant, with an almost italic flow. Correspondingly, a calligraphic gesture threads its way over the surface of each painting, which is composed of two or three flat, canoe-shaped panels that nest or stack. There's a strong sense of movement within each painting--glide is the word that comes to mind--so perhaps the visual reference to a water vessel was intentional. I’d call the work lyrical geometry, although lyrical abstraction would probably be closer to the mark.

Below, Untitled (Night Road), 2008, 65 1/2 x 83 1/2 inches, acrylic on canvas over wood panels; in the far gallery, Untitled (Canones #5), 2008, 45 x 47 inches, acrylic on wood panel

The paintings by Ron Gorchov at the Nicholas Robinson Gallery through December 6 are not necessarily geometric either, but they embrace geometry as much as they embrace any number of other elements: abstract expressionism, biomorphism, sculpture, architecture.

The range of scale in Gorchov's show at Nicholas Robinson Gallery

Let’s start with the obvious. Whether large or small, Gorchov’s canvases are kind of saddle shaped and the color is by turns odd or beautiful. There are typically two biomorphic shapes in the center of each canvas; sometimes there are four somewhat more geometric elements placed to make an open square or rectangle. These shapes seem to hover just slightly above the surface. And because of the saddle shape of the canvas, which both bows out and dips in, each painting itself seems to hover at the wall. Approach a painting you’re not quite sure how close you can get without hitting your shins against the frame or bumping your nose into the canvas. I love when that happens! Not the bumping but the ambiguity of where the work is in relation to the wall, and where you are in relation to the work.

I’m packing for Miami—actually, by the time you read this, I’ll be there—so I’ll end the text here and leave you to see the shows on your own, whether on this post or on the respective gallery websites.

Sorry, I don't have specifics about the paintings, but in the two images below--which look closely at the small painting in the picture above, you can see the odd placement of the staples holding the canvas to the frame, and a side view showing the frame itself

The frame, below, qualifies as sculpture, don't you think?

The work at right is the most geometric of the paintings, but to be honest, I prefer the mystery of the biomorphic shapes

This is the painting that was barely visible in the first installation shot. It's on the wall just to the left as you exit to the street
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Mary Heilmann at the New Museum

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Second-floor installation view of Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone at the New Museum. This and all installation shots courtesy of the museum

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Mary Heilmann turns the idea of the “tortured artist” inside out. Her joyful paintings seem effortless and spontaneous. Her grids and stripes are unmeasured. She makes big, blowsy shapes with thinned paint and loose brushwork, with seemingly no attempt to do anything about the resulting drips except to let them have a life of their own. Sometimes she paints over vast tracts of the canvas; other times there’s a pentimento or perhaps an image intended to be visible beneath the surface. Lines meander geometrically over the surface, occasionally from canvas to canvas, as many works are composed of multiple units.

Above: Hokusai, 2004, oil on canvas, 75 x 120 inches

Below: Gordy's Cut, 2003, oil on canvas, 42 x 36 inches

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Above: Surfing on Acid, 2005, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches

Below: Lovejoy Jr., 2004, oil on canvas, 40 x 32 inches

The artist’s palette—huge swaths of hot pink, acidic chartreuse, cool turquoise—would be kitsch in the hands anyone one less adept. Here it’s witty and mood elevating. Heilmann maintains the chromatic intensity at a high pitch throughout the exhibition, even coordinating it with the chairs of her own design. You can sit in the chairs as you contemplate the paintings--kind of becoming one with the exhibition. I loved that! (Sit in the red chair, which you’ll see when you walk off the elevator, and you can watch a Powerpoint display of objects and scenes that have fed or influenced her imagery. Installation image is at top of post.)

A second-floor installation view: These Heilmann-designed chairs are coordinated with the paintings in this and the other galleries. The grid of the webbing echoes the exhibition's predominant motif. You can sit in them as you take in the work

And speaking of influences, I also like the way the installation places adjacent paintings with related visual themes, a glimpse perhaps of how one idea leads to another, or perhaps doubles back on itself.

Second-floor installation views, above and below

Heilmann’s work is geometric abstraction with its feet up. The formal elements are in place, but there is gestural movement in some paintings, organic forms in others. She has been painting and showing for 40 years, and during that time she has also made ceramics and furniture. The installation at The New Museum makes sense of it all.

Lobby Gallery: a wall of paintings including Lupe, 1987, oil on canvas, 54 x 54 inches; and Sea Wall, 1986, oil on canvas, 60 x 42 inches

Below: Chartreuse Table, 2008, with what I would assume is a collecion of the artist's ceramic work

This has been a fabulous and well-earned decade for Heilmann: solo shows in New York, Antwerp, London, Zurich and elsewhere; featured-artist status at Basel Miami via Hauser and Wirth; simultaneous covers on Art in America and Art Forum last year; this beautifully installed solo at the New Museum, which originated at the Orange Country Museum of Art, and a gorgeous accompanying catalog; a juicy feature in the New York Times. Could a MacArthur grant be next?

Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone is at the New Museum through January 26.

Cubes, Squared

Jackie Winsor at the Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, through November 29

From left: Circle Square, Pink and Blue Piece, and Gold Piece

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Two current shows, one in Manhattan, the other in Boston, are the result of sculptors thinking outside, inside, around and through the box: Jackie Winsor at the Paula Cooper Gallery, through November 29, and Tara Donovan at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, through January 4, 2009.

A generation separates Winsor and Donovan, yet they are united by their affinity for material, their use of the castoff (Winsor) or overlooked (Donovan) and their interest in the cube. The two exhibitions afford us an exceptional opportunity to look at the cubed sculptures of both artists.

Tara Donovan at the ICA Boston through January 4, 2009

From left: Untitled (Pins), Untitled (Toothpicks) and Untitled (glass). Work courtesy of Pace Wildenstein; image courtesy the ICA, Boston; photo: John Kennard

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Winsor’s cubes (and cubed spheres), handcrafted from industrial materials—lattice, plywood, concrete, stuff often found at construction sites or on the street—appear initially like alien objects, installed at a remove from one another in the gallery. There’s an outside and an inside, and you may peer into them. At least one of them peers back at you: Pink and Blue Piece, whose mirrored surface delivers a dose of your own curiosity. No secrets are revealed, and these works retain their mystery. They have become iconic—time-and-place markers for a particular point in art history: the Eighties, when Minimalism was holding on, Feminism had settled in, and SoHo was the center of the universe. If anything, their totemic power has increased over time. (So has the price: $300,000.)

Above: Winsor. Pink and Blue Piece, 1985; mirror, wood, paint, cheesecloth; 31 x 31 x 31 inches

Below, foreground: Winsor. Circle/Square, 1987; concrete, pigment; 34 x 34 x 34 inches

Winsor. Gold Piece, 1987; concrete, pigment, gold leaf; 32 x 32 x 32 inches

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Donovan takes the most commonplace of materials and, altering them little or not at all, amasses them into unexpected forms. A styrofoam-cup cloud that wafts overhead is surprisingly beautiful, a wall made of drinking straws is equally so. But Donovan’s cubes are the focus of this post. The ICA press materials liken them to Serra and Judd, and they’re not wrong, but they’ve overlooked the more direct lineage. Winsor is the younger artist's immediate antecedent.
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There is a divergence in that where Winsor's work is deliberately process intensive, Donovan does not make her own sculptures anymore. Still, it's process intensive for someone. The museum staff creates it from her directions. The knowledgeable ICA staffers explained the process: Thousands of toothpicks, about 650 pounds worth, are poured into a mold. Mass and material affinity hold the piece together. (Want a cube of pins? Buy the directions for $45,000 and make it yourself. I'm assuming the 1500 pounds of pins are included.)

But the process discussion is for a different post. This post is simply an opportunity to view together the work of two sculptors whose work has tangible affinities.

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Donovan. Untitled (Toothpicks), 1996, wooden toothpicks, dimensions unavailable, but about 40 x 40 x 40 inches. Image and detail from the Internet

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Material affinity may hold the form together, but you can see that entropy is already underway. Indeed, when I was looking at the work, I saw individual toothpicks loosen themselves from the mass and fall soundlessly to the concrete floor

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Detail below:

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What Jobs Have You Had?

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Recently, Julian Jackson, painter and co-owner of Metaphor Contemporary Art in Brooklyn, came to my Senior Seminar class at Mass Art in Boston to talk about being an artist and gallerist. During the course of his rich and discursive talk, he mentioned some of the jobs he's had and how they all ultimately benefited his life as an artist/gallerist. For instance, he's been a gallery installer, house painter and cabinet maker--good training for designing a gallery and serving as its general contractor, and then running a successful exhibition space--to say nothing of making the stretchers he needs for his canvases.
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That started me thinking about the jobs I've held.

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Thirty years and as many pounds ago, I worked my way through art school in Boston's Combat Zone --the high-crime, low-life bar area-- as a go-go dancer. Then, after graduation, living on a hippie commune in upstate New York, I worked as a glaze maker in a pottery factory, a janitor in the same facility, and a dump-truck driver for an independent contractor. (Talk about role diversity.)

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During those four years I lived happily in a renovated grist mill with other long-haired folks, and we gardened, canned, cut wood for heat--I owned my own chain saw--and indulged in all the things 20-somethings indulge in. I maintained my own VW bus, even rebuilt the engine. Then, longing for a New York art life, I moved to Manhattan and supported my art and myself as a magazine editor for a big publishing company before taking the leap and working full time as a studio artist.

(Image caveat: All pictures pulled from the Internet. The go-go dancers are not me; the dump truck I drove was green; the VW bus I owned was a dull, faded matte red; and my chainsaw was yellow. But you get the picture . . .)
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I'm not sure how the go-go dancing enriched my art life, except to have provided exercise and a steady income, but everything else has helped me immeasurably. As a glazemaker, I learned to think about color in a different way. The janitorial and truck driving duties built up my strength; and splitting wood built muscles I didn't realize I had--all of these activities the macho version of go-go dancing, I suppose.

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While I now do nothing more thermostatically or automotively challenging than turning up the heat or listening to "Car Talk," I can tell you that splitting wood with a sledge-and-wedge and rebuilding an engine imbued me with a sense of independence and role-breaking machisma that is now part of the fabric of the artist that I am. The subsequent editorial experience allows me to bang out these posts. Along the way there have been teaching, lecturing, writing a book, all of which have made me better able to think and talk about art, my own and others'.

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But this is not a post about me, except insofar as to serve as a platform for these questions I pose to you:

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What jobs have you had to support yourself?

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How have they enriched your life and/or career as an artist?

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(And all you anonymi out there, give us your real name for this one. I've bared all in this post; I hope you'll do the same.)

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A Little Crazy . . .

I'm a little crazy this week as I finish up the work for my solo show in Boston , rev up for a number of group shows around the country, and get my press passes lined up for Miami.

Bear with me. I have a lot of great pics of recent exhibitions to show you--Beatriz Milhazes, Ron Gorchov, Mary Heilmann, Tomma Abts, Martin Kline and more. I'll post as much as I can before I leave for the art fairs. After that . . .well, it will be all Miami all the time.

Meanwhile, following the interactive projects at Color Chunks and Thinking About Art, Pam Farrell has come up with a similarly interesting project. She's inviting artists to e-mail her two photos: "one of your studio or workspace . . . that represents your process or you as an artist, and one of your work." Go on, you know you want to.

Here's a pic I took in Pam's studio. I love the compositon, the inside/outside, the color, and the drape of yellow netting that divides the two groups of rectilinear elements. (When I have a minute, I'll post a picture of my studio on her blog.)

An in-and-out-view of Pam Farrell's New Jersey studio, taken in October
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The Downturn in Chelsea

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We know the economy has had an effect on the art world. In a series of short conversations recently, I found out just what that effect has been on individual dealers in Chelsea and elsewhere

“See the sidewalk?” said the dealer, looking down to the street from her gallery on a high floor in Chelsea. It was a Saturday afternoon, just after lunch, and the pavement was nearly deserted. “It’s been like that for the past month.” There wasn't so much panic in her voice as resignation.

Foot traffic in the galleries has been correspondingly light, so over the past couple of weeks a number of dealers have had the time to chat with me as I made my rounds of the shows. What follows are snippets of my conversations with them. I’m not identifying the dealers by name—it would be unfair to attribute quotes from a personal conversation; indeed I’ve removed as many identifying elements as possible—but I guarantee that all the conversations were real, with quotes as accurate as I can recall. (A few conversations took place outside of Chelsea but they were in keeping with the tone of the conversations, so I included them.) Not intending to write a piece about the downturn at the galleries, I took no notes, but as the conversations spun themselves into a thread and the thread wove itself into a narrative, I realized there was a story.

The changing face of Chelsea,

above and below

Going Cyber
“I’m taking my gallery virtual,” said one dealer, who plans to expand his web presence and work out of his Chelsea apartment. He’ll close his doors at the end of the year. And what of the artists he represents? They’ll be on his online roster, but there will be no actual shows. Fairs are "not out of the question, but not right now."

Similarly, another dealer will show out of his storage cubicle in the area. (There are several huge storage facilities in Chelsea.) “I’ll have a full inventory on the website, with a small selection on display in the storage unit,” he said. “My clients will think it’s an adventure.”

This approach wouldn’t be possible without cyberspace, of course, and given that so many dealers have already been selling from the Internet, it just may work. But what does it mean for artists, who need to show as much as to sell? And what does it do to a lifestyle in which gallery going and openings are part of the social and creative process?
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Staying Put, Doing Outreach
The dealers who remain committed to staying in their spaces are working the phones, calling and recalling clients. Said one dealer: “I worked out a sweet deal for a client—sweeter for the client than for the artist or me, actually—and he just called to say, ‘We really like the painting, but we’re going to hold off for now.’ It was only $9000.” It wouldn’t be so bad if it were an isolated instance but, she says, “I’ve been getting that response for the past few weeks.”

“Clients aren’t returning my calls. I think they’re embarassed,” admitted another.

Other dealers are making presentations to clients in their homes, in one instance driving more than a hundred miles in hopes of making the sale.
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Taking a Job
“I need a job!” said one dealer, half in jest.

"I’ve taken a job to support the gallery before, and I can do it again if I have to,” said another.

Yes, we understand. Is there an artist (well, an artist without a trust fund) who has not had to do that at some point to support their studio?
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Fair and Equal
The taking-a-job conversation evoked a strong sense of déjà vu. Three years ago at Armory fair time, I congratulated an out-of-town dealer for having made it into one of the hard-to-get-into satellite fairs, which at the time was being held on a ground-floor warehouse space not far from the Armory’s pier location. She sighed. “This was my backup. I really wanted the Armory but didn’t get in. But now I consider myself lucky." She ticked off the names of half a dozen dealer friends. “They didn’t even get into this fair,” she said. Just as I was thinking, Now you know what it’s like for artists, she said, “Now I know what it’s like for you artists. The rejection is terrible. It’s so demoralizing. “ Umm hmm. Then in a flash of insight she added, “Never before have artists and dealers been on such equal footing.”

Cut to the present. Never have dealers and fair organizers been on such equal footing. “I’m not participating this year,” is the phrase I've heard most often. With galleries not applying to get into the fairs, organizers have taken to calling dealers to invite them in. At least one previously rejected dealer signed on. “I figure it will guarantee me a spot when the economy picks up and it’s hard to get into again,” she said. I’m not sure whether she was being optimistic or masochistic, but she had already started packing her inventory.

“I've got to sell $80,000 worth of art just to think of breaking even,” said one dealer. She’s going, but she’s biting her nails.

Many of the dealers I spoke with have turned down the invitations. And not only are they not clamoring to get in, some are clamoring to get out after they’ve signed the contract. “Did you hear that (art fair) is suing (dealer) for breach of contract?” asked one gallerist friend.

“I pulled out," said another. "I’d rather lose a grand [in deposit money] than the $30,000 it will cost me for the booth, the shipping, the hotel and the flight.” She could do that because she hadn’t yet signed on the dotted line.

This is not to say that Miami will be a ghost town. Many of the dealers who aren’t taking a booth will go to see and be seen. As one pointed out, “This will be the first time I’ll actually get to see what everyone else sees.” And who knows? A big uptick in the Dow could sends hordes of collectors from Europe and South America with euros and pesos burning holes in their pockets. Art is a tangible asset, after all.
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Renew the Lease or Move?
Fear of commitment (or lack of money) is also an issue when it comes time to renewing gallery leases. The first wave of 10- and 15-year leases in Chelsea has already started to cycle around. Some dealers signed new leases—in some instances at double or more what they’d been paying. Others closed their doors because the rent was just too steep. The owner of 511 W. 25th is condo-izing his building--the ads have appeared in a few art magazines. Want to stay in the building? Buy your space. (I don’t know how the recent downturn has affected this transition, and to be honest, I feel uncomfortable asking the dealers in that building.) But some galleries have already departed.

A.I.R., for instance. This venerable women’s co-op is something of a bellwether when it comes to locating and relocating. It started life on Wooster Street, moved to the then fringes of SoHo—Crosby Street—when SoHo got too pricy, then back to Wooster, then over to Chelsea relatively early on (I may be missing a stop). Now it has moved to Front Street in Dumbo, where it has found a nice space on the second floor of a building where other dealers are located. It used to be that the gentrification of an area drove out the artists; now it also drives out the galleries. And now that galleries are moving into artists’ studio buildings, it’s only a matter of time before the artists have to vacate. There’s something almost biblical about the cycle.

Even the blue-chip galleries are feeling the pinch. I heard this story from a gallerist friend: A high-end dealer had renter’s remorse after signing a lease on a sprawling space in Chelsea just days before the market crashed. “When he tried to back out after the crash, the landlord threatened him with a lawsuit.” He's there now for the duration of the lease.
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Meanwhile . . .
Emerging and mid-level artists keep sending in submission packages and j-pegs in the hopes of securing representation. Dealers at all levels are keeping their eye on the bottom line as sales trail off, trying, as one dealer puts it, “to come up with new models for doing business.” Fair organizers are forging ahead with Miami.

So the shows go on.

For now.

Rose Olson: Ethereal Color

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Installation shot: Just Color No Curves, solo exhibition by Rose Olson at Kingston Gallery, Boston

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While Bram Bogart's massive paintings were straining the gallery walls of Jacobson Howard in New York (previous post), Rose Olson's ethereal layers of color were hovering over their appointed stations like benevolent spirits at the Kingston Gallery in Boston. Olson is well known in this city for her paintings, which consist of washes of (acrylic) color on birch-ply panels or boxes. There's a nice yin-and-yang at work here: the solidity of the support tethering those luminous veils.

I'm showing you installation shots only, because my little camera couldn't quite capture the subtleties of hue in the individual paintings nor the hushed conversation between the rectilinearity of the composition and the the organic pattern of the wood. But here in these shots, you can certainly see something of the kinship between and among the paintings--the rhythm in their sizes and spacing-- and the brilliance of the color, which manages assertiveness and reticence at the same time. Just Color No Curves was at the Kingston Gallery through November 1. You can see additonal work on the artist's website.

Above: In the main gallery, looking into Gallery 2
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Below: left wall of the main gallery

Bram Bogart: Hunks of Color

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Bram Bogart at Jacobson Howard Gallery in October. Here, Rode Rouge, 2008, mixed media, 66.25 x 55.25 inches

I've been viewing a new crop of exhibitions this month, but I want to close out October's offerings with a look at two shows: in this post, the material paintings of Bram Bogart in New York; in the next, the ethereal paintings of Rose Olson in Boston.
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I had not heard of Bram Bogart until I walked into Jacobson Howard, a white-walled, white-floored gallery on the Upper East Side. Wow! These are the monster trucks of painting. And I mean that in a good way.
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Color is not just on the surface, it is the surface. Indeed, the color, the surface and the painting are one. And it's as much sculpture as painting (some of the works are a good 12 inches deep) Bogart is coy about his medium, but it would seem to be pigment mixed directly into something like plaster, marble dust, and probably resin to hold the mix together. The stuff is troweled on. Looking at each work, you really get the physicality of the process, the plop, pile and smear of it. Viewing the work is a visceral experience; you almost feel every one of the hundreds of pounds that these paintings weigh. To be honest, I find the colors a bit too uh, how-you-say, unsubtle, but then finesse is not what these paintings are about.

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Here, take a look at the muscle and heft:

An approximately 8x10"detail of Rode Rouge, the work at the top of this post

Hans Hoffman on steroids? Sorry, my notes don't tell me the title, but you can see the palette and scale of the work

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Up-close viewing yields some interesting passages. The chromatic topography below is a tiny section from the right edge

Bogart also showed a number of all-white paintings, which in their monochrome strike me as even more sculptural than the chromatic works. You can see one, Het Wit, on the gallery website.

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Just in case you aren't familiar with Bram Bogart, he's a Netherlands-born octogenerian who lives and works in Belgium. As if you can't tell, he's been at it for years. .

YES, WE DID!

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for

P R E S I D E N T . O B A M A !

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OK, all together now: exhale.

Now it's back to art as usual.

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President Obama, don't overlook Jo the Artist, Joe the Gallerist, and members of the art community of all names, sexes and disciplines. We may not unclog your toilet, but we keep the creative economy flowing.

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