Living Color

For "The Artist As Curator: Luxe, Calme et Volupte," click here

You’d like to think you’ve reached a certain position in your field when a paint company names a color after you. Joanne Loves This Red! is an intense, semi-transparent orange red from Evans Encaustics, and the name reflects my predilection for the hue.

I’m flattered. Thrilled, actually. And I love being able to say that the color I have used in a painting is in fact named for me. But namesakes aren't always as flattering. Years ago, after art school, I moved to Upstate New York to live the country life. Needing a vehicle, I bought a 10-year-old red VW bus from my neighbors, Jenny and Milford Pitts, who raised their own vegetables and farm animals. My engine, which was just slightly more powerful than a lawnmower, needed constant work so I often visited their compound for Milford’s knowhow and the use of his tools (until I got my own). We got to be friends.

One spring they bought a bunch of holsteins. I think you can see where this is going: They named one of the cows after me. "Joanne" was not the best milker, and she liked to wander off. It was mortifying to have someone call your name, and to respond, only to realize that the call was for the cow.

I much prefer the new "me."

Hatshepsut, Transvestite Queen

For "The Artist as Curator: Luxe, Calme et Volupte," click here

The Internet headlines were worthy of the New York Post: "Remains of beard-wearing Egyptian queen ID'd" and "Ruler was known for dressing like a man and wearing a false beard."

Queen Hatshepsut and her pharaonic beard

The story was straight out of, well, Dynasty.

The mummy of Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled Egypt in the 15th Century B.C., has been identified. The mummy, found in a nondescript tomb, had been discovered a century ago and left on site. Recently an observer noted that the position of repose, with the left hand over the chest and the right hand by the side, was that of a ruler. Another observer noted the presence of a molar in the box of entrails that had been left

Cairo CSI: Hatshepsut was identified by her dental records--actually, by a loose molar that fit perfectly into an empty socket in her skull

with the body, so the bones, the tooth and the entrails were brought to the Cairo Museum for genetic testing. Helpful, that molar, because it allowed genetic resarchers to test for mitochondrial DNA since they had previously identified other of Hatshepsut's female relatives. Voila, the long-missing Queen.

“We are 100 percent certain the mummy belongs to Hatshepsut," Egypt’s antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass, told The Associated Press.


Long story short: It seems Hatshepsut took the throne from from her young stepson, Thutmose III. She wore the beard and men's clothing to distinguish herself as a pharaoh (because apparently even female pharaohs had to take on the trappings of a male to have

A figure of Hatshepsut from her temple in Luxor, on the west bank of the Nile

power). When she died in 1453 B.C. after a successful and productive 21 year rule, Thumose III, the bitter little snot, had her remains removed from the royal tomb and eradicated as many traces of her reign as he could. Clearly the temples and statues remained, but until this past week, the body did not.

So history will be rewritten to something like, "Hatshepsut's mummy was identified by DNA testing 3500 years after her death." Her legacy remains the same, however: She was known as a builder of Ancient Egypt.

For more on the discovery: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19454551/

First National Conference of Encaustic Painting

I’m not the best person to attempt a report of the First National Conference of Encaustic Painting , which took place June 8-10, at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass. As the conference founder I’m unashamedly skewed in its favor, but I’ll give it a try. As with my BaselMiami reports, I'm offering you a biased, myopic and journalistically suspect look at the events--with pictures.

Here’s a day-by-day overview:

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Thursday This part is not connected to the conference proper, but it involved conferees. I invited about 30 artists who had taken a Master Class or consult with me to come to my Salem loft (about three miles from the college) for wine and cheese. About 25 folks showed up. Although I knew everyone, initially many folks didn’t know one another. This was not true by the time we left en masse for dinner two hours later, when 25 friends walk together to the Thai restaurant downtown. Fun! It was worth having spend two days cleaning up for the party. Later a few diehards returned chez moi for a last glass of wine.

The pre-conference party at my loft. Photo courtesy of Eileen Goldenberg

FridayRegistration was scheduled for 3:00 pm, so many of the conferees who arrived on Boston's North Shore early found their way to the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, where a Joseph Cornell exhibition, organized by PEM curator Lynda Roscoe Hartigan, was featured. I went for a bike ride as I knew it would be the last exercise I’d have for the next several days.

Registration: Around 3:00 p.m. conferees started streaming into Montserrat’s Hardie Building. Everyone got a folder with maps, color-coded schedules and presenter bios. And a pair of red wax lips.

The Hardie Building, center for many of the conference activities

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Art Supplies: Vendors were set up in the Hardie building, just upstairs from the registration desk. Enkaustikos, Evans Encaustics and R&F Paints were there with luscious displays of paint; Paula Roland demonstrated her hot boxes (guess who purchased both of them?!) and Rodney Thompson had panels stacked high. (I eyed the 16x16-inch panels, thinking I’d return later to purchase four. Alas, I waited too long. By Saturday Rodney had sold out of everything.)

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Above: Piper Evans and Hylla Evans of Evans Encaustics, Sonoma, California. All photos by Carol Zepp courtesy of Montserrat College of Art except where noted

Above: Gina Adams at the R&F table with conferees Lynn Bregman Blass and George Mason

Right: Paula Roland demonstrating her hot box for monoprinting

Above: Gina with a spectrum of R&F hues

Above: Rodney Thompson with his perfect panels

Left: More luscious hues, this time from Evans Encaustics

Below: Anne Cavanaugh pondering the palette of Enkaustikos paints at The Fine Art Store's booth

"Hot Stuff": At 4:00, the doors to Montserrat’s 301 Gallery were unlocked for the opening of "Hot Stuff," juried by Zola Solamente, director of Boston’s Arden Gallery. The entry process had been open to participants of the conference. Thirty-two artists and 48 works were selected. The show, open to the public, was impressive for the range and quality of the work—limited to 30 inches to allow for a greater number of selections—and the installation was superb.

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Zola at right with Dean of Faculty and me standing alongside Debra Ramsay's reductive abstractions

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Montserrat's outgoing president, Stan Trecker, was impressed with both the esthetic level of the work and the passion of its makers, most of whom were in attendance. Laura Tonelli, Dean of Faculty, noted the work of Debra Ramsay, elegantly reductive colorfields in pale aqua and ivory that incorporate a cracked eggshell intarsia as a textural element.

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Norman La Liberte, a painter and friend of Montserrat, purchased a painting by Linda Womack.

I wasn’t buying, but I liked a lot, including:

. Elena De La Ville’s sepia-toned photographs of torsos

. Alexandre Masino’s quiet still lifes in tones of ocher and warm gray

. Linda Cordner’s brilliantly hued geometries

. Kim Bernard’s organic sculptures in clay and wax

. Miles Conrad’s and Ed Angell’s dimensional paintings, each about 12 inches square, with elements emerging from the wax surface (Ed: you need a website!)

. Diana Gonzalez Gandolfi’s small paintings with almost pictographic symbols suggesting familiar but ultimately mysterious narratives.

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Above and below: Installation views of "Hot Stuff" at Montserrat's 301 Gallery

Jen Nazzaro installing the show. That's Jeff Schaller's painting over her left shoulder. Works by Kristin Swenson-Lintault, Diana Gonzalez Gandolfi and Debra Ramsay await installation

Two quiet corners. Above: sculpture by Lorrie Fredette and Kim Bernard, and a painting by Julie Shaw Lutts. Below: Still lifes by Alexandre Masino, with anothe view of Jeff Schaller's painting

My Keynote: Hey, the founder gets to give the talk—at least this year. My topic, "Almost Mainstream After 2000 Years," focused on encaustic history—ancient history, current history, and the space in between. Before the lights dimmed for slides, I talked a bit about having visited Jasper John’s studio in 1986, back when encaustic was, as he put it, "an archaic medium." I showed images from ancient history, jumped to John’s paintings from the Fifties, jumped again to the Seventies and Eighties with paintings by Kay WalkingStick, Rachel Friedberg and Michelle Stuart, and then showed work from the past few years. The medium is what links us, but it is our individual vision that sustains the work, wax or no wax.

That's me giving the keynote, "Almost Mainstream After 2000 Years." My theme was ancient history, contemporary history and the history in between. The image above is of a krater, circa 350 B.C., at the Met which shows a painter applying encaustic to a marble statue of Herakles. Did you know that most Greek marbles were polychromed? The image below is a work from 1955 by--oh, come on, you know who.

Saturday
Things started moving faster on Saturday morning, fueled by enthusiasm and caffeine.

"Encaustic: State of the Art" This was the only event scheduled for its time slot--Saturday morning--so we had a full house. The panel addressed issues in contemporary encaustic, from content versus medium, to how work in this medium is packed and shipped.

 Panel for "Encaustic: State of the Art": Painter Timothy McDowell, curator and museum director Katherine French, paintmaker Richard Frumess, gallery owner Hope Turner, critic and independent curator Barbara O'Brien. I'm the moderator at left

Barbara O'Brien, critic and curator, broke the ice when she said that until she was asked to be on the panel, she hadn't really thought much about encaustic. She'd had some inchoate ideas about it being somehow secondary in the hierarchy of painting, so she was surprised to see the quality and variety of good work being done in the medium. In that regard, she said, "I guess it's like racism. I was being racist about encaustic."

Katherine French does know about encaustic--she's shown work in the medium at the Danforth Museum where she is director. Her dialog with O'Brien about content and concept, rather than medium, was a jolt for some artists who are focused on the waxness of their work, but for others it was a welcome discussion. "I was so relieved that we could put the topic of 'art first, wax second' on the table and discuss it," Deb Ramsay, a painter from New York City, told me later.

As a Newbury Street gallerist, Hope Turner, owner of Arden Gallery, shows encaustic painting regularly (disclaimer: I'm represented by Arden) and deals with both conceptual and physical content. This is true, too, for Timothy McDowell who shows his paintings regularly in galleries around the U.S. and Canada. Both offered advice that acknowledged the commercial aspect of gallery representation--including the importance of archival preparation of the work.

(By the way, when Tim brought up the topic of beauty I had all I could do to keep from plugging the show I curated, "Luxe, Calme et Volupte': A Meditation on Visual Pleasure," which is at the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta through August 25. As the moderator, I was a model of restraint, but here there's nothing holding me back from a little plug here: It's up through August 25. Tim is in the show.)

Richard Frumess, a painter and paintmaker, reminded us that commercially made encaustic paint has been widely available for only a couple of decades. Frumess's company, R&F Paints, has been a major factor in the expansion of encaustic. Frumess himself is looking forward to letting his company take over more of the reins so that he can get back to his own painting. Referring to the content versus medium discussion we'd been having all morning, he said to the audience, "I hope you'll understand, when I do go pack to painting, if I end up working in something other than encaustic."

There was also plenty of nuts-and-bolts advice for artists on how to present themselves and their work. Katherine French offered a cautionary tale--and provided a good laugh--as she recalled the artist who had called her to set up an appointment to view work and schedule a show (!) The artist explained that she was busy, so she wanted to schedule both a studio visit and an exhibition right away. Taken somewhat aback but responding to the chutzpah, French asked the artist what she liked about the museum. "Oh, I'm too busy to visit the museum," the artist responded. Deadpanned French: "She didn't get a show."

French did offer this sound advice, which I'm paraphrasing, and which is applicable when dealing with curators and dealers anywhere: "Come to the openings. Introduce yourself. Let me see that you know the museum. Let me get to the point where I recognize you. We're booked for the next two years, and I have a stack of 400 packages that have come in since the beginning of the year, which I've been too busy to open. But if you've broken the ice and ask me to look at your work, I'll be more inclined to do so."

After the panel, choices got more complex. When I planned the schedule, I was thinking of the CAA model--multiple choices in the same time slot. So the afternoon offered two options: A technical panel or a series of three demonstrations.

The Technical Panel:  "Wax, Paints, Substrates and Grounds"

This panel brought together experts in material matters: John Dilsizian, president of Dilco Refining (now part of Strahl & Pitsch), the man I fondly refer to as "Dr. Wax";  Hylla Evans, painter and paintmaker, founder of Evans Encaustics;  Rodney Thompson, painter and panelmaker; and Ed Angell, multimedia font of wisdom who operated the largest privately owned prop house in Hollywood before retiring to make his own art.

Panel for "Wax, Paints, Substrates and Grounds" on Saturday afternoon: Moderator Eileen Goldenberg, with panelists Ed Angell, Hylla Evans, John Dilsizian and Rodney Thompson

Forty artists took note--and took notes--as panelists discussed topics like temperature, ventilation, archival issues, and the best ways to mix materials (yes, some artists make their own paint, and who better to offer information than the foks who make it?). There was disagreement (disagreement is good!) about the safety of wax at melting temperatures and the best ways to deal with safety issues. John Dilsizian summed up the tone of the proceedings when he said, "I've found that the general rule with artists is that they don't like general rules."

Later in the afternoon a series of informal talks took place at the 301 Gallery. Alexandre Masino, Diana Gonzalez Gandolfi and Anne Cavanaugh talked about their work in the "Hot Stuff" show.

Right: Diana Gonzalez Gandolfi; below: Alexandre Masino. Masino photo by Sara Ashodian

Sunday
Here’s where it gets hot and heavy: three successive time slots, each with three simultaneous events. The CAA model of multiple offerings means there are many good choices. The good news: you’re sure to find something that interests you. The bad news: everything interests you and you have to choose. Here, you have a glimpse of each event..

 Above: Collaborati collaborating

 Below: Abby Heim who presented "Wax in the Context of the Hive," with fellow beekeeper Stephanie Williams. (Yes, those are real bees in a real hive in the classroom)

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Above: Paula Roland demonstrating "Encaustic Monotypes." Below: James Meyer, longtime assistant to Jasper Johns, discussing his own journey to encaustic, with participant Kandy Lozano looking on

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Above: Reni Gower at her talk on curating. She discussed the show she recently curated, "Divas and Iron Chefs of Encaustic Painting," and offered advice to artists who aspire to curating. Below: George Mason, who demonstrated the use of stencils on a heated palette

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Above: Mart Hart demonstrating the use of text elements in encaustic painting. Missing from this photo roundup: Kim Bernard, who gave a slide talk on encaustic sculpture, and Chris McCauley, who discussed realism in encaustic painting

Wrapup
Sandi Miot, a vice president of International Encaustic Artists, and Kim Bernard, president and founder of New England Wax, took the stage to announce a collaborative project between their respective groups. (Post script: the show, The Diptych Project, would be shown the following year at The COnference.) 

More info
. Deanna Wood’s blog, www.artistemerging.blogspot.com
. Linda Womack's blog: www.embracingencaustic.wordpress.com/tag/encaustic  

Sandi Miot, VP of IEA, and Kim Bernard, president of N.E.W., announcing a joing project, hatched at the Conference

Paula Roland showed slides of work that she didn't have time to show in her workshop, and Sara Ashodian gave us a glimpse of several workshops she attended. For those of us who didn't attend those particular events, it was great to see what went on, and for those who did, the images offered a different perspective of the goings on. 

A Mixed Review

I am delighted that my small show at OK Harris has gotten some critical attention. Last week, Maureen Mullarkey's generous review appeared in The New York Sun. This week there is a review in Abstract Art on Line, an ambitious web project by Joseph Walentini, himself a painter. It's a mixed review, but Walentini said some very nice things, which I have excerpted below.

My buddy Richard Frumess offered this observation on the two reviews: "They're coming from two different directions: the Abstract Art Online review looks at the individual paintings through the whole show, the New York Sun review looks at the whole show through the individual paintings."

If you have a moment, go on line for Walentini's entire review, which contains thoughtful comments, and if you can, spend some time there. Not only am I in good company this issue--with Gregory Amenoff, Myron Stout (a huge fave of mine) and Michael Shemchuck (whose strong show is in another gallery at OK Harris)--Walentini's project is good reading. More than that, it's a wonderful example of how artists can expand their lives outside the studio.

From Abstract Art Online, May 15, 2007:

Joanne Mattera

OK Harris Gallery, 383 West Broadway, to May 26 At OK Harris: Silk Road 54, 2006, encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches

Over the years Joan[ne] Mattera has gradually reduced the imagery in her work to finally arrive at this celebration of color, surface and also the medium she has championed: encaustic painting. Mattera combines conceptual order, as embodied in the structure of the grid, with beauty. The grid is represented both explicitly and implicitly. With the former it is in the even distribution of the 1 foot by 1 foot square paintings along the wall. WIth the latter, the grid is subtly woven into the paint handling and the medium......Continue: http://www.abartonline.com/html/ny_views_16_7.html

A Good Review

"Silk Road," my show at OK Harris Works of Art in New York City (up through May 26), got a thoughtful and good review by Maureen Mullarkey in the May 3 "Arts and Letters" section of The New York Sun.

Installation wall of Silk Road paintings at OK Harris

I've copied the text into this blog entry and formatted it to include the paintings she mentions. If you would prefer, you can read the original on line at http://www.nysun.com/article/53750?page_no=2 . (There are no images in the on line review, but there's a good one in the print version.)

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JOANNE MATTERA: Silk Road
OK Harris Works of Art

"The ancient, labor-intensive process of encaustic painting has come a long way since art historian H.W. Janson, in 1941, declared it an "almost forgotten medium." If Jasper Johns put it back on the map in the 1950s and '60s, Joanne Mattera has been a prime mover in making the technique accessible to a new generation of painters. Her 2001 handbook, "The Art of Encaustic Painting," is the reigning manual for contemporary artists drawn to the surface qualities and translucence for which the medium is known.

The medium itself is very much the subject of "Silk Road," Ms. Mattera's series of small encaustic panels on view at OK Harris. Each panel is a simple expanse of what appears, at quick glance, to be a single color. But owing to the opalescent properties of pigmented beeswax applied in layers, these radiant fields are irreducible to monochrome. Cunning visual subtleties are the raison d'être of the series.

Silk Road 87" (2007) appears superficially as red. But the panel cools, through a preternaturally delicate scumble, to a nimbus of pale blue that rises upward from the bottom edge like polar rays on the horizon. The red undergoes shifts in intensity from layer to layer (10 of them).

Silk Road 87, top, and Silk Road 90, each 2007, 12 x 12"

Silk Road 90" (2007) spreads a luminous green-yellow over clear vermilion that asserts itself between the interstices of the brush strokes that crisscross right to left and top to bottom. Each panel achieves the woven quality of a textile, the warp and woof of exquisitely controlled brushwork.

If no panel is truly monochrome, neither is any color totally opaque. Light is held in the depths of the wax; color is suspended within the body of the medium. You look into the panels, not simply at them. Unseen underlayers display themselves naked at the edges in counterpoint with the dominant color.

The refinement of Ms. Mattera's touch is all the more impressive when weighed against the handling properties of encaustic, which work against finesse. Encaustic begins to cool — and harden — the instant a brush leaves the heated palette. Speed of application is critical. Ms. Mattera's panels are no larger than 12 inches square because that is as far as a single, discriminating brush stroke can be sustained on an unwarmed panel.

Resonance from within lends depth to understated surface patterns. Viewed in ensemble, there is nothing minimal about them.

--Maureen Mullarkey
Until May 26 (383 West Broadway, between Broome and Spring streets, 212-431-3600.)

Back on the Road

I know, I know. Bad blogger. I haven't posted in a while. Still busy with other projects. But they're all reaching completion. The first of them: my solo show, Silk Road, at OK Harris in SoHo, which opens next Saturday, April 28. I'll be there from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. Come by if you're in the neighborhood. Here's a studio installation shot of some of the paintings:

Studio installation of selected work: Top row: SIlk Road 75, 80, 86, 87; bottom row: 90, 91, 92, 93; all 2007, encaustic on panel, 12x12"

Silk Road is the most reductive painting I’ve done. While my work tends toward the reductive anyway—I refer to my esthetic as "lush minimalism"—each painting in this series is a small color field achieved by layers of translucent paint applied at right angles. It’s not quite the monochrome it initially appears. Each painting has about 10 layers of paint and four or five different hues. Because of the translucent nature of my paint (encaustic) the color mixing takes place in your eye as the layers of color, sometimes as disparate as orange and purple, coalesce into one hue. While you’re up close, you’ll see that the subtlest of grids is formed by the trail of brushmarks and intentionally grainy elements within the paint. Because of the luminous nature of the paint and the surface grid suggestive of woven cloth, the series just named itself. I’ve limned each painting to charge the intensity of its color field and—I hope—to spark the eye so that it travels from painting to painting on a small visual journey of its own.

You can see more of what I'm doing on my schedule blog: www.jmschedule.blogspot.com.

Notes from the Southwest

A partial view of my solo show at Cervini Haas Gallery in Scottsdale. From left: Quadrate 2, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches; an installation of nine 12 x 12 inch Silk Road paintings, encaustic on panel; and Uttar 286, also encaustic on panel, 32 x 32 inches

Greetings from Scottsdale. My opening at Cervini Haas Gallery, "It’s Always About Hue, Isn’t It?" just took place, so I’m coming down off a nice little art high. My travel is pretty much always art related. That makes it deductible, and thus affordable. But finances aside, it’s the tasty carrot after the stick of so many days of protracted work in the studio. Did I mention I’m writing this by the pool? (OK, so I’m at the Day’s Inn, but the pool is set into a manicured courtyard aswish with tall palms and shrubby cactus.)

Big Changes in This Desert Town
I get to Scottsdale every couple of years for a show (this is my fourth solo at Cervini Haas), but this time something’s different: There’s construction everywhere. I mean 360-degree views of cranes and other machinery, and buildings—condos, mostly—in various degrees of completion, from skeletal infrastructures to everything’s-in-place-but-the-sod. (I believe the name Scottsdale comes from a Native American word meaning "The irony of green lawns in the desert.") There are some relatively tall buildings, 10 to 12 stories, under construction but the overall impression is one of sweep rather than soar. Even the tallest buildings take up a lot of ground, so horizontal remains the predominant plane, nicely punctuated by tall, skinny palms.

I was just thinking that I needed a quote here about Scottsdale’s building boom, and, no kidding, from a bunch of businessmen sitting at the bar, this phrase wafts over: "They’re calling it the ‘Manhattanization of Scottsdale.’" Blogging is journalism at its most relaxed so I’ll go with that timely comment. Personally wouldn't normally connect the words "Manhattan" and "Scottsdale" unless I'm thinking about how to get from one to the other, but you get the idea: the town is busting up and out.

Scottsdale has long been a second-home community for folks who flock to the desert for the winter. Vast tracts of land are given over to golf courses—see comment above—and new homes. I’m going on about real estate because all those homes need to be filled. The home furnishings companies have already set up shop: Crate and Barrel, Design Within Reach (which, let’s be honest, for most artists, it ain’t) to Ikea. Of course I’m thinking about all those bare walls that need art to humanize their proportions—or maybe just something to go above the sofa.

Cervini Haas Gallery, right, and Cline Fine Art share a long, low U-shaped building that opens onto an inner courtyard

A Visit to the Galleries
Apparently the dealers are thinking about those bare walls, too, because while still small, the number of serious galleries appears to have doubled over the past few years. On North Marshall Way, the 57th Street of Scottsdale, galleries in single-story buildings line the two-block street. Just to orient you, North Marshall Way briefly runs parallel to Scottsdale Road, the main thoroughfare that connects the town to Phoenix.

Once you weed out the cactus-and-cowboy venues--and there are dozens of them--you end up with a good handful of serious contemporary galleries: Bentley, Bridge, Cervini Haas, Cline Fine Art, g2, Hernandez Contemporary, Lisa Sette, Robert Roman, the European-inflected Udinotti Gallery, and around the corner on Main Street, Chiaroscuro.

At Hernandez Contemporary: Momento Rojo, bronze, 43 inches high, by Gustavo Torres; Circe, acrylic on canvas, 66 x 84 inches by Don West

Sette, a longtime gallery owner on Marshall Way, is more sanguine. "We’ve been here 21 years," she says, "and we’ve seen galleries come and go." Still, it’s a critical mass, and the Thursday night Artwalks draw crowds, particularly on the First Thursday openings.

Above: From-the-street view of the Lisa Sette Gallery and Wilde-Meyer Gallery

Chiaroscuro Gallery on Main Street: Facade and interior view of the solo show by Marcia Meyer, showing her fresco paintings

The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art is a short walk away. Skip the big show of art about celebrities (and, get the barf bag, celebrities who make art) and head into the middle gallery where Willie Birch’s charcoal drawings of pre-Katrina New Orleans capture the African-influenced culture of Chocolate City. "Celebrating Freedom: The Art of Willie Birch" runs through April 29.

Willie Birch, Blind Musician Playing the Piano, 2001,acrylic and charcoal on paper, 66x42 inches. Image courtesy of Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans

If you’re in the market to pick up some Native American objects, head over to Faust, on Main Street, for a well-edited selection of jewelry, rugs, pots and other handmade objects. This isn't design within reach, either, but the objects both historic and contemporary are a unique amalgam of art, craft, culture and place.

At Faust Gallery: Jar by Sharon Rustin Garcia, from the Acoma Pueblo

Postscript from Tucson (3.12.07)

On Saturday, I headed 100 miles south to Tucson for the opening of a group show, the "Second Annual Encaustic Invitational", at the Conrad Wilde Gallery. Wendy Haas, owner of Cervini Haas and a good friend, did the driving which gave me the opportunity to be a tourist for 90 minutes. The desert has some stretches of spectacular landscape, especially the saguaro cactus, those big prickly anthropomorphic plants that look like they're doing yoga standing poses ("It takes 100 years for a cactus to sprout an arm," Wendy tells me) and the Dust Devils, mini tornadoes that crank up funnels of dust out in the shrubby landscape. There's no power in these vortexes except the visual; depending on their form, they're like kinetic dimensional drawings or transparent sculptures.

On the way into town we stopped at Graficas Gallery, where my buddies Susan Schwalb and Rainer Gross, New Yorkers both, were in a show together. Normally I wouldn't think to pair these two artists, but the theme of the show was process and materials. Susan works in metalpoint to create luminous paintings that engage the meditative power of the horizontal, while Rainer, working in a technique of his own devising, creates texture-and-color-field abstractions with extraordinary sensuality. Owner Lynnette Hyde Mautner, presides over a small space with a great program.

Above: Neuble, by Rainer Gross; oil and pigments on linen, 21 x 18 inches, 2001.

Left: Atmospheric Disturbances III by Susan Schwalb; silverpoint and acrylic on wood, 24 x 24 x 2 inches, 2005.

Then we headed down the hill to the Conrad Wilde Gallery, owned by Miles Conrad, himself an artist, and his partner Ryan Wilde.

The scene at the Saturday night opening was jumpin'. The national show featured the work of 20 artists, among them Heather Hutchison (New York), Kim Bernard (Berwick, Maine), Catherine Nash (Tucson) and myself, and many of the artists were in attendance. Tucson, with its university students and substantial artist population, turned out in force.

Nautilus, a pedestal sculpture in terra cotta and encaustic, by Kim Bernard; Above, below, by Catherine Nash

A highlight of the evening was a performance piece by Nancy Popp with Adam Overton that consisted of Overton atop a 10-foot ladder pouring honey into the mouth of Popp, who is standing on a square of canvas on the floor below. The performance was equal parts beautiful and terrible, as the honey poured into Popp's mouth and then over her body to pool onto the canvas beneath her feet. I was afraid she'd choke to death on the sticky liquid, but I guess that's the point.

"Popp's projects investigate the fragility of the body as subject and sculptural object and the creative and radical human endeavor of serious play coupled with risk and vulnerability," says the gallery's press release. Just in case you missed it: there's the connection between the beeswax in the artwork and the honey of Popp's performance--though this work is anything but sweet.

Nancy Popp and Adam Overton at Conrad Wilde Gallery. Honeymoon 2, inspired by George Brecht’s Drip Music, addresses conundrums of confinement and commitment, along with the paradoxes of traditional receptive feminine roles that often prevail despite resistance to gender conformity. Photo courtesy of Conrad Wilde Gallery