Boston Sculptors on criticism, art and craft

On Apr 16, 2011, at 11:36 AM, Peter Haines wrote:

Dear BSGers,

I am a fan of [Boston Globe Art Critic] Sebastion Smee. Smee can be tough, and I do not always agree with his opinions, but he has a stance- something to engage with.

Smee's October 8 Globe review of Dale Chihuly's MFA show was a nuanced masterpiece. Chihuly's tacky work has become as ubiquitous as a Louis Vuitton handbag. He is a favorite in Columbus, Ohio where I grew up. The "cognoscenti" can recognize each others pieces on shelves like they might a Hermes scarf around the neck. A seven-inch diameter glass bowl -$6000; am I jealous? (perhaps, yes).

Smee's writing can put into words my own inchoate thoughts and feelings. Like a good poem- [from the Chihuly review] "They're like daily deliveries of unwanted flowers after a regretted one-night transgression." WOW!

Or this, "Nor am I bothered by the absence of ideas in his work; I am all in favor of senseless beauty, and would prefer it any day to most of the brittle, air-filled meringue that goes by the description of conceptual art." YES, with a fist-pump!

I do like the Green Tower at the MFA (Smee agrees). I think that it with two other sculptures do much to relieve the sterility of the new food court. More is needed. Perhaps one of us us has proposed "a spectacle" for that space.

Having read the Chihuly piece in bed, I could not fall asleep for hours after turning out the light. In my mind, I played a taste parlor game:

TASTEFUL / TASTELESS / TASTE IRRELEVANT
Maillot / La Chaise / Rodin
Braque / Dali / Giacometti
Manet / Renoir / Van Gogh
Brancusi / Jean Arp / Picasso
Noguchi / Pomodoro / Calder
Rothko / Georgia O’Keffee / Orozco, Rivera
Joseph Cornell / Klimt, Parish, Erte / H.C. Westerman
Caro / Oldenberg / DiSuvero
I.M.Pei, Foster / Gehry / Calatrava (?)
Minimalism / Pop Art / Abstract Expressionism
Tang Dynasty / Ming Dynasty / (?)
Haines / Jeff Koons / Anish Kapoor

This, of course, reflects my taste- that tends to favor columns one and three. However, some tasteful minimalists (Agnes Martin) bore me, and I like the tasteless Philip Guston (an acquired taste). I puzzle about the appropriate column for others: Bonnard (T or TL), Hans Hoffman (TL or TI), Turner (T, TL, or TI). A great player would have nicely parallel threesomes.

It occurs to me that this game could be a good framework for fun and discussion if we meet as usual at the end of the year. I would be willing to host this year.

Tastefully Yours,
Peter DeCamp Haines

On Apr 16, 2011, at 12:46 PM, DANIEL WILLS wrote:

Thinking about Peter's letter I am reminded of a couple of quotes from Chihuly: I put a lot of stuff together until it looks right and: there is never too much. I also think the green piece is exciting to look at and seems to exist without a need for intellectual content. I also agree with Peter's take on Smee.

- Dan Wills

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 3:23 PM, Eric Sealine wrote:

From 1975 to about 1983 I worked in vitreous enamel, fired onto plate glass. (Home page of my website at present.) I was a member of the Glass Art Society and got to know a lot of glass artists and the issues they deal with. I would make two comments about Chihuly and the world of glass art.

First, it is very difficult to make something out of glass that isn't beautiful, just because the medium is like that, and that makes critical judgment very hard. Stephanie Walker's last show comes to mind.

The second has to do with the high cost of incremental technical change. Once you're set up to, say, cast large objects out of glass like Howard Ben Tre or produce thousands of latticino spears like Chihuly, the cost of making a different kind of object is very high. You have to build a whole different kind of factory. This means that glass artists tend to keep making the same kind of object over and over, especially if they are selling well. Chihuly is directly in the tradition of Murano for reasons that have to do with the intractable nature of the material itself.

That lack of maneuverability is one of the reasons I quit working in glass. - Eric Sealine


On Apr 16, 2011, at 4:18 PM, Peter Haines wrote:

Eric,

Interesting. The reason that I never took to the lathe or to the potters wheel,
fun for a while, was the intractable roundness.

Peter DeCamp Haines

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 10:23 PM, Eric Sealine wrote:

And the intractable 'craftness', which to me entails a definition-by-material. I regard 'oil paint on canvas' as the king of art media precisely because it is so maneuverable. If you want to make an entirely different painting tomorrow than you made yesterday, that's your business. If you want to move into watercolor, the start-up cost can be as much as a couple of hundred dollars; big deal. If you have a glass factory...not so simple, not so cheap, not so maneuverable.

There was always a background chatter at G.A.S. conferences about the division between art and craft, and how it was important to define 'glass art' as 'art' and not 'craft'. My opinion was that, if you're having that discussion, you have other problems.

I can define the junction between art and craft while standing on one foot (thank you rabbi Hillel): Every art has a craft, and every craft has an art. If what you just made doesn't have both, you have nothing, whether that thing is a new patch of sidewalk or the Mona Lisa.

All of which makes being a member of Boston Sculptors so interesting. We're not just a collective of sculptors, we're also a collection of (developing) definitions of what we mean by 'art'.

On Sun, Apr 17, 2011 at 12:50 AM, Peter Haines wrote:

Yes, Eric.

While I have nothing against ideas, it seems to me that no idea is so great as to justify a crappy object- thus comes craft.

Conversely, take the trajectory of Chinese Art. My favorite objects are from the Shang dynasty (1600 BC). What is amazing is that motifs established then persist for nearly 3500 years. High points are considered to have been reached in the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) and the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD).

The problem is that the Chinese did not know when to stop, more was always better.
If a white object is beautiful, then white and blue is better, then white and blue and red, then green, then silver, gold etc.

By the time you reach the much-heralded Forbidden City stuff of the Ming and Quin Dynasties, ever more amazing craft has triumphed, at the expense of art- my taste.
Peter DeCamp Haines

Tues. April 19, 2011:

Sebastian Smee, art critic for The Boston Globe, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism today “for his vivid and exuberant writing about art, often bringing great works to life with love and appreciation.” The prize, which is the preeminent award for newspaper journalism, comes with $10,000 cash. Globe art critic Mark Feeney won the Pulitizer Prize for criticism in 2008. This seems to make the Globe the only newspaper in America have two full time staff Pulitzer Prize winning visual art critics.

=

What Yeats Said

From Mac Dewart: Yeats said, "We never know when life will catch fire and become art."

Here's a thought: We labor as sculptors not knowing really whether it's Art with a capital A or not.... but we pour our life force into the process none-the-less, we exhaust ourselves mounting shows, we scrounge and borrow and go broke at the last minute, hoping for that moment of fire when the work comes alive and we can't take our eyes off it. In my own work, I never know for sure, but.... in Your Work all of you.....I find inspiration. Three examples: walking into Charles Jones' show, I had to shout out loud, so dazzlingly strong and authoritative the drawing and sculpture was. Looking carefully at Rosalyn Driscoll's piece The Nothingness of Fire, it seemed a tour de force, like nothing I'd ever seen, yet also like everything...flesh, mountain, river...the light at the heart of the world. And at the Scoop show one night, there was a cluster of onlookers around David Lang's piece in the window absolutely mystified, shouting their amazement "at the pigs that could fly." Thank you all for your moments of fire.

Eric Sealine responds: I remember seeing a show at the Art Institute in Chicago in about 1975. I had driven six hours from Ames, Iowa, and saw a substantial collection of genuinely contemporary art for essentially the first time. There was a Christopher Wilmarth sculpture on the wall, about 3' square, of slumped glass, maybe 3/8" thick, with the center square frosted and the rest clear. It was hung from the wall with a single wire that passed down one side on front, around the back, and back up the other side of the front. The shadow was an integral part of the object. It was the most beautiful and elegant and simple thing I had ever seen, and at that moment it occurred to me that this was something you could make your life about. I walked into the museum as one of those young vaguely artsy types, and I walked out as an artist. You never know.

What's YOUR experience? Let us know -

Laura Evans and Jessica Straus in Trigger and Reconfigure

Trigger and Reconfigure
Jan. 22 - Feb. 21, 2011
Jewitt Gallery at Wellesley College

This exhibition explores how an artwork begins with an encounter between an object or image and the artist. The found form, not necessarily interesting or beautiful to others, is so compelling to the artist that it must be engaged with, seized even. Intuitively the artist understands the possibilities this form offers for reinvention. And thus the art-making process begins. There will be dialogue surely, sometimes a grappling, a coaxing or a nudging of this form until new light or a new life emerges.

Featured Artist: Eric Sealine

What intrigues me most about artists is not necessarily what they are working on but where they came from and where they have been. Just by learning about someone’s past you gain a greater appreciation for what they create now and who they are. Their background influences every piece of art they make, paint, or build, whether they know it or not.

When I spoke with Eric Sealine, this same fact proved to be true as well. Sealine’s current and future work is based on his past experiences. Sealine has a show scheduled for 2012 at the Boston Sculptors Gallery. The theme for his show, unless things change, will be based on the creek that he played in when he was a kid in Delaware.

Through perspective, Sealine wants to show the natural history of the creek he so often visited as a child. He is very interested in the idea of perception and how it works. People are easily fooled, why is that? People also love to be fooled. However, he does not want the show to be a story of loss but instead that of a gift he experienced as a child. He is also trying to incorporate how our memories get smoothed and changed by taking them out and toying with them as we get older. The concept is one that anyone can relate to.

Sealine’s past has influenced his work in numerous ways. For example, he has built boats by hand and still has the first boat he ever built, which he sails to this day. He was also an architectural model maker. His carpentry skills translate directly to his current works in progress, as well as his studio, which he built.

A lot of Sealine’s work has a three dimensional illusion to it. The picture above is a good example of a three dimensional illusion. It has no official title yet but is just being called, A Work in Progress. Sealine’s work is fun and carefree and when I see this picture, well, I enjoy being fooled. Submitted by Jen Costa, Boston Sculptors Gallery intern.

Featured Artist: Rosalyn Driscoll

Which material should you choose to work with for your next sculpture? Wood, Metal, plaster? How about rawhide? I bet you haven’t worked with this particular material yet! Rawhide is Rosalyn Driscoll’s medium of choice in her most recent show at the Boston Sculptors Gallery, Natural Light.

Driscoll first came across rawhide while she was in New Mexico for an artists’ residency. She was in a drum store and saw a painting on rawhide. After some conversing with people at the store and figuring out that it could be shipped to her, it was an obvious choice for Driscoll that she wanted to work with this material. Driscoll’s father used to own ranch land so her current pieces connect her to her past. Driscoll also is drawn to the rawhides ability to hold form, translucence, and irregularities.

So what draws Driscoll to create art with this material is the fact that the rawhide allows her to make forms that are organic. Driscoll was looking for a way to enliven and mobilize rectilinear forms that she was working with, so what better material to use than a form of skin. Her work is also about containment as well as being rectilinear and how skin is the ultimate container. Driscoll also added some neon lights in her rawhide pieces to amplify the feel of energy in certain pieces. She also used the lights because she was attracted to the transparency of rawhide.

In her piece shown here, Revelation, Driscoll was trying to show that things encounter our quiet, orderly world unexpectedly, for example when someone dies suddenly, or a job changes. The rawhide resembles a hand is passing through this square box that is lined with copper leaf.

As for Driscoll’s future direction, she says she will continue to explore working with rawhide to take it to its next phase. In the spring she will be working in London with some other artists who will be putting together a show on touch and other sensory forms of art. Lastly, she is also collaborating with a neuroscientist. Submitted by Jen Costa, Boston Sculptors Gallery intern

Featured Artist: Andy Zimmermann

When I think of sculpture, I think of a stationary object that was produced by human hands that I can sit and look at while it is on display. However, the other day, I was introduced to a piece of art done by Andy Zimmerman which was a mixture of sound, video, and sculpture all in one.

Zimmerman finished graduate school at Mass School of Art in 2003. After school he then started using video and sound in his artistic process. Prior to graduate school, Zimmerman’s art work was mostly sculpture with some painting early on in his life. Now Zimmerman is interested in how to integrate video and sound into his new works.

Zimmerman has designed computer programs that sound like instrumental music but are actually computer generated sound. These programs when finished look like a spider web of some type of complex math problem. They appear very intimidating and daunting; however, Zimmerman enjoys making them for his works. He then turns that unique sound back into sculpture. Zimmerman has also used video projection in his installations. In some ways, he feels like he is incorporating painting with the video projection because it is able to manipulate objects. For one installation, Zimmerman used old car parts as his projection surface. The parts were all painted white and then very specific masks were generated on the computer to project exactly what Zimmerman wanted to show.

Zimmerman also likes to use frosted Plexiglas in his work. He enjoys the visual effect that the Plexiglas gives off. For example, in Either Nor, Zimmerman constructed the frame and glass in an abstract geometric way. He then included the image that would serve as a human body in the piece. The theme of the piece was about being haunted and how things of this nature are not very clear but instead give off a foggy presence.

I was able to get a sneak peek at Zimmerman’s most recent work in progress which will be at the BSG in the spring, but I am sworn to secrecy and can’t give you any hints, so you will have to wait and see! Andy Zimmermann’s work will be on view at Boston Sculptors Gallery April 20 - May 22, 2011. Submitted by Jen Costa, Boston Sculptors Gallery intern.

Featured Artist: Joseph Wheelwright

I happened to luck out today. I was able to interview Joe Wheelwright, and during our interview, Wheelwright told me of his Tree Figures show at the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA, and mentioned that sadly, it would be coming down in two days. I thought to myself, “well maybe I’ll see it before he takes it down.” However, I had a very busy weekend and didn't think I would make it. But due to pure luck, I did get the chance to see Tree Figures. I ended up bringing my husband with me to see Wheelwright’s show the day before it was coming down.

I have never been to the Fruitlands Museum grounds, so it was quite a sight. The museum is set on higher ground so you are able to look out and see a scenic vista. It was beautiful, especially with the fall foliage, even though it’s fairly late in the season. I must say that I have never seen quite a show like this one.

We were given a map when we bought our tickets and had to walk through fields and forest to see the Tree Figures. As we began our walk, it was clear that Wheelwright’s Tree Figures, eight trees and one stone carving, were very thoughtfully placed throughout walking trails. Each tree seemed to fit naturally into it’s surrounding area. It was almost as if they were meant to be there all along. As we walked through the exhibit, we came upon tree after tree. We even became a little lost at one point turning this “show” into a small adventure. Walking along the path, we came into a clearing and that is when we saw it, The Oracle, one of Wheelwright’s main trees. It was standing tall and omniscient at the end of the clearing. This tree gave off a feeling of power as we stood there gazing at it. It was beautiful but at the same time, intimidating because it seemed like it was naturally grown there. We both joked and said that if we didn’t know that this was an art show that we would both have probably run in the opposite direction of The Oracle!

I only wished that I knew of this show earlier. However, the trees are now on the move. Wheelwright will be showing some old and some new works in New York next year. So if you want to experience an artistic adventure go see the trees, I promise you will not be disappointed! Joe will also be exhibiting his works at the Boston Sculptors Gallery at 486 Harrison Avenue from January 5 - February 6, 2011. Meet the artist at one of the First Friday receptions Jan. 7 and Feb. 4 from 5 - 8 pm, or at the artist reception Sat. Jan. 8 from 3 - 6 pm. Submitted by Jen Costa, Boston Sculptors Gallery intern.