The process of turning a jumble of fonts into an animal (see illustration) was the starting point for the artist’s exploration of typography as a way to “make the world a better place” by writing a book about love.  This before-and-after illustration will give graphic designers as well as laypersons insights into how the author’s interest in language and alphabets became transformed into a book.

In Animals Spell Love, Cundy uses a novel approach to promoting discovery and appreciation of foreign languages by shaping animals out of letterforms which spell the word “love” or the phrase “I love you.”  Cundy features sixteen different languages from Czech to Amharic to Korean.

His exploration of the features of Amharic, for example, which has 231 letterforms (see image) was especially challenging, yet every one of them is shown on the spotted leopard, whose nose is heart-shaped.  Looking for hearts, which can be found in each animal vignette, encourages the reader’s playfulness, adding value to the puzzles and “word pictures” to elevate this picture book’s universal appeal.

Photo credit: Gabriella Radujko. "Trunk to Trunklet" Illustrator: Mandana Sadat; Author: Jorge Luján; Medium: ink, collage, digital; Publisher: Enchanted Lion Books

The illustrations found in children’s picture books are the subject of the annual exhibition of The Original Art, no doubt so named because it describes not only the exhibition of original artwork but also the first art a child sees. Cross referencing illustrations from 132 picture books with copies of the corresponding books in metal racks in the center of the first floor gallery at the Society of Illustrators, through December 2016, makes for a unique, interactive experience.

The show is a testament to how adults and children long to be in the presence of special things. Visitors will invariably wonder why our regard for this art form, groundbreaking when it first appeared in the early 20^th Century, perennially persists beyond childhood, with great affection and sentimentality.

Picture books appear to be quite powerful, physically connecting us to the real world as much as imaginary ones through visual literacy.  They synthesize emotions, organize information and give young and young adult readers the courage they need to handle their ever-changing lives.  At the same time, they remind us of art’s role in our early lives as children.

In The Story of Mankind, artist/illustrator Hendrik Willem van Loon writes that the first five years of a child’s life are mainly devoted to art, with music, in the form of cooing, as his/her first contribution.  Later, mud-pies become sculpture, with painting following with the use of chalk, paint and paper in exploration of the basic elements of shape which include the dot and circle family and the line family.

The role of art and the corresponding behavior of art making in human life, as described by scholar Ellen Dissanayake in Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why reaches even further back in human history when we “began deliberately to set out to make things special or extraordinary.” Dissanayake suggests that “making special” actually contributed to our survival as a species.

She also describes how art and ritual have much in common.  Both, she claims, are compelling, capturing and holding our attention; both affect us emotionally, bringing feelings into awareness.  They are deliberately nonordinary, stylized and “bracketed off” from real life.

Also, the activities of embellishing, patterning, juxtaposing, shaping and transforming while making art, which are described as part of her provocative argument, are very much on display in the stunning range of media and techniques used by the show’s artists.  These include acrylic and oil on paper, scratchboard and watercolor, watercolor and digital, gouache, pen-and-ink, collage, mixed-media, cut paper, etc., in a coherently curated show with a full color catalog.

Suggestions that we begin our lives as artists and grow up to “make special” to enhance our lives may be two important clues as to why a show about children’s book illustration will reward anyone who continues to appreciate the magic of  children’s picture books.

West Village, NYC, courtesy of Zachary Mason, www.ocrazyshaman.com.

Upon Reflection, Zachary Mason’s first New York City solo show, is the aptly named
photographic travelogue currently showing at the Decoy Workspace through January
20, 2016. Most striking is a nude self-portrait set in Central Park at night, framed by a
jogging path beside the Onassis Reservoir, an arching tree in the foreground creating its
sense of depth. An incandescent city looms in the background, reflected in the lake.
Mason redirects the viewer’s attention from cityscape to his eerie physical beauty,
capturing the wildness in him. Tall, trim, but muscled, the 26-year old artist has the
carriage of satyr.

As we see him leaning on the fence surrounding the water reflecting the city, he is a
young man at odds with the city. He is embracing it, yet is simultaneously totally out of
place. The victory over the commercialized metropolis, nonetheless, is his.
Enormously triumphant, the image if of a young man embracing Central Park while
completely ignoring decorum in a city populated by millions. His distinctive youthful
hopefulness, born of another, less tame locale, is unabashed.

Mason pays tribute to 1950’s photographer Vivian Maier throughout the show. Maier
created a series of self- portraits in black and white, most of which incorporated her
reflection, be it in a mirror at a yard sale or the glass window of a train car, to great critic
acclaim. Borrowing many of the same techniques, Mason brings them into a modern
world, in color.

There is a sense that we are witnessing a young artist whose gifted eye is becoming
aligned with an enlighted mind. All of the images in this show use reflection, some of
which, like those of Lincoln Center, a building in Soho, and one of the Mumbai Airport
demonstrate great appreciation for the line and architectural design. There are
numerous stunning landscapes including a star-filled night sky behind mountains
reflected in a lake in Moab, Utah and a skyline of Manhattan at dusk reflected in the
Onassis Reservoir. Viewers not be personally connected to these landscapes might
experience little emotional connection to them.

Mr. Mason’s work engages viewers most is when he takes his lead from Maier,
capturing the world with his reflection in it. There we see a young photographer at a
point of change, in an ever-changing world, striving to find a place for his being. We see
this in the wonderful image taken from behind a bus driver in Sir Lanka, the viewer
sharing his view point as he looks at himself in a rear view mirror and through the
dashboard window to a world that seems so far away but promises adventure to; a very
sophisticated image of a man sitting by himself in a coffee shop in midtown Manhattan,
taken through the store’s glass reflecting women strolling down the street; and paying
homage to Maier again, where the artist holds a camera as he takes a shot through
glass in the West Village. We see the colorful city reflected there, women and men
going about their busy lives, ivy growing up a red brick wall, and the photographer
finding his focus as he begins to see how he connects with others in the world.

Zachary Mason’s Upon Reflection opened at Decoy Workspace, a part-gallery, part-workshop hosting weekly events for the border-community intersection of the Upper East Side and East Harlem. It’s located on 1261 Park Ave; New York, NY 10029. The show run January 7, 2016-January 20, 2016.

Edited by Gabriella Radujko

“The Red Studio,” Joan Snitzer’s wall installation at A.I.R. Gallery inserts the artist’s studio into the gallery space, calling for an investigation of the nature of both private space and exhibition space. The title “The Red Studio” comes from Henri Matisse’s influential painting created over a century ago. Snitzer’s installation moves Matisse’s concept into another dimension, transforming flattened space into a dynamic gridded room. The installation itself is made up of painted canvases and familiar, quotidian objects found in an artist’s studio. The viewer becomes a subject within an artist’s studio, immersed in a recognizable yet novel world.

There is no single viewing point. The relationship between the objects and the canvases creates the dialogue. Each object is meticulously placed, building a rhythmic optical experience, which is specific to the gallery setting. Even though the objects are commonplace, the effect is that the viewer becomes a witness to the very act of seeing. Snitzer successfully references Matisse’s painting while bringing it to life in a contemporary way. Snitzer’s self-reflexive clarity coupled with her whimsical aesthetic eye make for a profoundly unique and well-curated installation.

Kira Nam Greene’s first solo exhibition at Accola Griefen gallery consists of mixed media paintings, drawings, and collages that combine the seemingly disparate elements of food and patterning to create hyper-real domestic spaces. Working with a wide range of materials, including watercolor, gouache, colored pencil, linocut, modeling clay, stencil, rhinestones, and ink, Greene’s artworks are as much influenced by 17th century Dutch Vanitas painting as by the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s. Greene’s mastery of rendering techniques and utilization of slippery shifts in perspective come together to create scenes that are at once familiar and unsettling, beautiful and grotesque.

In the paintings Happiness is Just a Bowl of Cherries, Royal Jello, and Kimchi Joy, the food items named in the titles of each piece are rendered in exquisite, exacting detail, each referencing the corporeality of the body. The foreground patterning recedes and advances around the food-objects, and in the case of Cherries, is reflected in the bowl the cherries are sitting in, adding an exquisite weight to the rendering of the ceramic. In Royal Jello, the gelatin mold has become an organ, pulsating as the foreground patterning refracts through its gelatinous blob. The kimchi in Kimchi is depicted so fleshily, that it is almost repulsive – it looks like it might be made of skin.

Greene’s largest piece in the exhibition, Peanut Butter, Saba & Ketchup, mixes a huge range of patterning – an Ikea tablecloth, Chinese silk brocade, Japanese Noh prints, and Persian and Italian tiles, to name a few – with a hodgepodge of food from different cultures. While the ketchup, cans of tuna, and Skippy peanut butter are clearly from the present day, Green also includes a pair of hanging pheasants, a bowl of fish heads, and peeled lemons – overt references to vanitas paintings, in particular “Still Life with Lemons” by Pieter Claesz. The combination of Western and Eastern sources in terms of both foodstuffs and patterning, combined with a refusal of straight perspective, makes for a sophisticated meditation on the nature of consumption. The references to vanitas paintings combined with the corporeal quality of the renderings clearly point to questions about our own mortality.

Kira Nam Greene
“Blue Plate Special”
Accola Griefen Gallery
547 West 27th st.  #634
April 11 – May 18, 2013

In a city made quiet due to power outages south of the thirties, it was an interesting choice to have sought out films exploring noise.  “A Cinema of Industrial Noise”, a series of four films shown at MOMA on Halloween included the twelve minute, 1929 film, NYC Street Scenes and Noises, which slowed time down so appreciably, it seemed twice as long.

Capturing a time nearly two decades after Alfred Stieglitz’s moody, genre photographs of the city before ubiquitous skyscrapers, satellites and metered parking, the short film included long gone street scenes where trolleys mingled with horse-drawn carts and the masculine activities of the strangely named Noise Abatement Commission.

Cruising the streets of New York’s Times Square and Radio Row, now part of the World Trade Center site, by van, men in hat and coat took concerns about auditory health, which we continue to abuse, to the streets, filming men, like themselves in hat and coat, while coaxing them to listen and learn about the deleterious effects of the noise pollution surrounding them.

Using the warbling test tone as a tool of measurement, the commission alerted their audiences that street noise was depriving them of 42% of their hearing.  Fast forward 80 or so years from now; films will no doubt document the abuse of our ears, albeit a self-induced variety.  It will hardly matter that we did it fashionably.

Symphonie Mécanique, a thirteen minute, 1955 film by Jean Mitry, described as  “an abstract ballet of industrial images and sounds”, accompanied by Pierre Boulez’s1950’s “musique-concrète arrangements “ was a kaleidoscope of black and white triptychs with a predictable, unimaginative sound-track to 21st century ears, but one representative of the composer’s “motive behind all his work”, according to writer Calvin Tomkins–”the search for anonymity”.

Crisp footage of mass production as it approached the final stages–newspapers, thread, bottles, cigarettes, madeleines—seconds before being folded, wrapped, corked, wrapped or molded celebrated the efficiencies of  the modern industrial world with none of the social commentary found in Chaplin’s Modern Times released twenty years earlier.

Leave it to Dr. Seuss to find humanism in the machinery of modernity.  Gerald McBoing Boing, an Academy-Award winning film directed by Robert Cannon, based on a Seuss story of the same name, tracks the rise to celebrity of a little boy who speaks no words–rather, he speaks in sound affects.  In seven short minutes, retro graphics and illustrations capture the 1950’s stylistically.  As to the materialism of the era, ”Now Gerald is rich, he has friends, he’s well fed,  ’cause he doesn’t speak words, he goes boing boing instead!”

As collage, the film series charms until Punking Out, the 1978 film directed by Maggi Carson, Juliusz Kossakowski and Fredric A. Shore, disturbingly defends the exposure to potential NIHL (noise-induced hearing loss) at CBGB (Country, BlueGrass, and Blues) with Hilly Kristal’s defense, “Violence starts when people can communicate”.

photo credit:  Christian Jankowski “Review/Waterproof Test” East River NY 2012 from Discourse News, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York, New York

photography © courtesy Sam Davol

Pop-ups–boutique, market or museum have entered the psyche of hip New Yorkers, but if you are really lucky, you will have experienced the pop-up library known as the Uni Project.

Part-library, part-performance space, the Uni Project, a portable library kiosk with curated cubes, popped up on a stretch of waterfront at the Gantry State Park in Long Island City, Queens on the first day of fall. The blustery weather wrestled with the portable bookshelves and seats, but passersby, especially the short, cute variety with parents hovering close by, intuitively browsed, read and celebrated books, played games and explored portable worm bins for indoor composting.

photography © courtesy Sam Davol

The objective of Leslie and Sam Davol’s non-profit initiative is to unite a community through reading and learning. By partnering with the Queen’s Library and the Friends of the Hunters Point Library on the locale which will be the dedication site for the new library branch on October 5, 2012,  they gave the emerging neighborhood in Hunters Point, directly across from the United Nations on the East River, a taste of the future library branch.

Writer David St.-Lascaux shares, “When I was a child, bookmobiles brought the wonder of books – which are, after all, doors to learning about everything, the telling of our stories, and the magic of imagination – to my neighborhood. Now the Uni Project promises to bring the wonder of books to children in the nurturing company of their parents and caregivers. The Uni Project is truly a kinder-garten where books are the earth in which young minds flower.”

photo © courtesy Allen Joseph Epstein

With the help of local community leaders, their self-aware family members, and volunteer librarians, the founders of the Uni Project clearly understand that libraries are communities and about communities.  Unifying communities with books is a worthwhile cause.

photo © courtesy Allen Joseph Epstein

In the past, Sally Mann, named America’s best photographer (Time Magazine, 2001), has chosen young girls (At Twelve), her three children (Immediate Family), The South and Civil War Battlefields (Deep South and Last Measure), decaying human bodies (What Remains), and her husband (Proud Flesh) as her subjects. But in Upon Reflection, she has at long last turned her camera toward herself.  The results are eerie, beautiful, horrifying and brave.

The full implications of her work lie not only in her subject matter but also the technical aspects of the craft. The images are ambrotypes, wet-plate positives on black glass. The process was used in the early 1850s but was overtaken by other processes during and after the Civil War. By bringing a technique that was confined to the pre-industrial era of American history into the 21st century, while simultaneously incorporating her modern sensibility, Mann has created a strong, feminist work and study on the modern psyche.

The subject and master of these beautiful images is a woman whose face, eyes, and body – even in Mrs. Mann’s static poses – belie emotions not seen historically in ambrotypes. She also portrays a complex range of emotions. For instance, in a single work of art composed of six plates, each with a different self-portrait, one face appears ghostly, another grandmotherly-old and familiar, another young and innocent. The images are interesting in that they evoke the pre-Civil War era except the subject’s soul is without doubt outside the realm of what could have been. Instead, we see a woman at great freedom to express her thoughts – sometimes in deep satisfaction and rest, other times overcome with psychological pain; sometimes, she is looking back at you – as if you are her own reflection.

One could argue that these images clearly display that accessibility to human emotions as seen through the human face has changed in the modern era, though not in the manner that the famed historical novelist Jack Finney elucidated in his Time and Again. The world in which the ambrotype emerged– where everyone had a place and there was a place for everything – seems to wither away while being transformed. As a result, the viewer sees a modern existence that can be one of great emotional depth, as it builds on old and beautiful forms.

Installation view of Hugh Scott-Douglas "A cashed cheque, a canceled stamp"

Jessica Silverman is the owner and director of Jessica Silverman Gallery, located at 804 Sutter Street (between Jones and Leavenworth) in San Francisco. Currently installed is Dashiell Manley’s exhibition of double-sided objects and animated videos whose unique aesthetics and conceptual complexity echoes the entirety of Silverman’s roster.

AH: Do you consider yourself as a gallerist, curator or a dealer?

JS: When I first opened the gallery, I saw myself as a dealer and as a curator. But as the gallery has grown, my role has evolved and I have had to readjust my position. At the moment when people ask me for a title I say, owner and director.

That being said, I curated our recent group show Erogenous Zones.  During installation of this and other shows I am committed to resolving curatorial aspects of the exhibition. I see my role as continuously shifting from working with the artist but also taking care of the collectors, the museums and the institutions.  They are in the end equally as responsible for our growth as are the artists.

AH: How long have you had a gallery? I know that this is the second location.

JS: This is the second location. When I moved to San Francisco, I was in the Curatorial Practice program at CCA.  I opened the gallery at a basement location in the Dogpatch during the second year of my MA. I was there for one year. I had initially thought that I would do something like an artist-run space but we formalized the gallery and moved in 2008 to our current location.

Installation view of Dashiell Manley's solo show

Installation view of Lucas Michael "After Hours"

AH:  How do fairs fit into your program? This is something that’s new to me and I think to an extent it’s fairly fresh in the art world. What part do you think they play in the art world in general? I get the feeling that the best galleries are increasingly fair focused.

JS: Being a dealer in San Francisco I wanted to make sure that we positioned ourselves in an international dialogue and in order to do that you have to do fairs. I really love them and think about the booths as exhibitions. Fairs are very commercially driven and sales driven but they are also incredible opportunities for a large group of curators, dealers and collectors to see work all at once. Last year we did 8 art fairs.

AH: Wow.

JS: I think this year we’ll do close to 6 or 7. We’ve already taken on a new one in Chicago in September. Last year we did Dallas and Cologne, which were new fairs as well as NADA New York.

AH: I think that’s the fear for someone like me. I’m just learning about fairs, which is sort of naïve but true, and how the work can provide a context for itself and be read not as these autonomous things that are bought and traded but as art.

JS: It’s an important thing to try to wrap your head around and we have to just keep trying different fairs and see what works with our program. They’re not all slam-dunks.

AH: You’re in San Francisco, which is not known for necessarily adventurous exhibition making especially within a commercial format. Why are you here? What is your relationship to the Bay Area?

JS:  Before I went to CCA, I had been working for an art advisor in LA and I really thought that I would move back to LA and open a gallery there but decided to give SF a chance.

I’ve really taken to San Francisco and I feel like it’s really taken to me. I like working here. I love my collectors here and I love that I’m close to LA.  Staring the gallery in San Francisco allowed me the chance to grow without being under constant scrutiny.  If you look at New York, it’s hard for a younger dealer to hold onto a hot artist. In San Francisco, for the most part, there’s a slower build and I feel like that allows me to develop careers in a much more thorough manner before they skyrocket. Being in a small city, you also have more access to the curators here. We have very close relationships with the CCA Wattis, Berkeley At Museum and SFMOMA .

Installation view of group show "Forms and Inflections"

Installation view of Dashiell Manley's solo show

AH: Do you have any advice to a young curator or would-be dealer?

JS: Try to keep in mind the historical references that contemporary artists are aligning themselves with right now. I believe strongly in building relationships between different histories.  As I move forward I like to look back at more historic moments.

AH: Is that something that you actively do – put artists in contact with some sort of reference?

JS: Yes, I send links all the time of things that they need to be aware of.  I also try to find group show opportunities that contextualize the work, alongside other artists that were making work that has a similar resonance from the ‘40s or ‘50s, 60’s, 70s etc. Those are the dialogues I’m interested in and I try to make sure that the artists are really aware of the whole spectrum of information.

Glen Fogel at PICA

My first art stop was the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. I felt disappointed as I entered, learning the show was a New York artist. My skepticism quickly vanished. Glen Fogel’s installation of spinning projected wedding rings was perfect here. I knew the work from seeing it at PARTICIPANT in New York. His Lower East Side installation was strong, but this was the ideal setting. Amongst a turned-off fan floor sculpture and an outdoor vinyl work, there were paintings of letters on another floor. Perhaps it was all the Stumptown coffee or because of all the things I wanted to see in just a few days, but I couldn’t be bothered to read them. I was intimidated by their length and now know I missed out on some good art. A press release and poster I grabbed revealed my shortcomings. The 8-1/2” x 11” piece of paper was a copy of a FedEx Claims letter Mr. Fogel may or may not have sent. It concerned the loss of a wedding ring he had borrowed from his mother. Its power lies in how easy you can imagine being the author and wondering if it was really lost, and if so, what did FedEx do. I thought shit, this is some good stuff – what did I miss out on. An informative interview from PICA curator Kristan Kennedy was on the back of the poster. My respect and perspective on this artist grew. He goes BIG in concept and aesthetic. His bold Cadillac installation opened Callicoon Fine Arts space on the LES, which I saw almost a year ago. We should all be excited to see what comes next from Glen Fogel.

Olivia Erlanger at PDX

PDX Contemporary and Elizabeth Leach Gallery lived up to their reputation as being more commercial. Prices were on the wall labels. It also stood out how friendly everyone was. These ladies wouldn’t make the cut on Bravo’s new reality show, Gallery Girls, with all their niceties. Glancing up from taping a box, an art handler even said bye when I left PDX. As for the art from these next-door neighbor galleries, the PDX Window Project was worthy. This idiosyncratic installation was by Olivia Erlanger. Her unique process and material choices were refreshing. She states, “This Window Project is an interpretation of lists that I received in response to a Craigslist Missed Connections post in which I asked the question “What do you like?” These lists are the impetus for the creation of the objects presented here. They represent the desires, fascinations, and fantasies of the anonymous. I have never met the respondents to my Craigslist post, so I created identities for them based off of their responses. With those imaginary identities in mind, I made these objects with the hope of extending a connection between the respondents and another audience.”

gallery 12128

The next thing I knew, I was on a boat. 12128 is a gallery on a 135-foot decommissioned crabbing ship overseen by Kyle Thompson. The hull was built in 1942 for use as a body boat in WWII. When the Bering Sea crab industry took off in the late 80s, the boat was converted for crabbing and became top “dog” in the Dutch Harbor crabbing fleet. It was decommissioned as a fishing vessel in 2005 due to a shift in the crabbing fishery infrastructure, and since then has found work on an oil spill in Alaska and spent a few years moored on Lake Union in Seattle. In 2009 the Labrador, as this boat is known, moved to Portland to become a not-for-profit alternative exhibition space and working studio for a small group of artists. Kyle’s art is also as rich as his boat’s history. The art on the boat was solid too. Maggie Casey’s solo show could stay afloat anywhere in New York. I hate reviews that describe work, so I wont. Did I mention I was on a boat? Where you at Duke Riley? (Yes, I know, you have been doing some amazing work in China.)

gallery opening at 12128

inside the gallery at 12128

12128 at night

Ralph Pugay is the best painter in Portland. His work seems familiar, but his paintings are filled with new ideas in a voice that’s all his. He paints people in odd situations, revealing things we’ve felt, but had no idea how to express it or that we could. I realize I didn’t see enough painters to make bold statements about Ralph, but I’m going to confidently do it anyway. I did spend a few hours in his studio and saw some older work in his home. Look him up.

Ralph Pugay's studio

Ralph Pugay, Mount Murder, Acrylic on board, 16” x 20” - 2010

From Ralph’s I biked to Fourteen30 Contemporary. I was reminded how some work doesn’t translate as jpegs. I wasn’t excited when I looked up the current show online, but once again, my shortcomings were obvious. Bobbi Woods current show is excellent. What goes through my mind a lot is: Have I seen this before? And would I buy this? No and yes. There was a video, an old movie poster rotated, folded, and framed, and 5 other found movie posters covered in enamel chrome paint. Gestures such as hand-prints in the silver paint were left by the artist. Simple mark making was giving a burst of importance in these works. I was surprised how profound these pieces seemed. It was as if seeing 2 worlds colliding poetically on one plane while maintaining a tension that keeps you looking.

Installation view: Bobbi Woods | Warm For Your Form | Fourteen30 Contemporary

Bobbi Woods, Warm For Your Form (detail), 2012 Enamel on poster, 40 x 27 inches

My final day I saw a collective named MSHR at Appendix Project Space. Again, I was blown away with the caliber of work. Appendix is run by 4 artists in a converted garage. I can’t think of any recent New York shows I liked more than this otherworldly interactive installation. A lower east side gallery needs MSHR, and should consider themselves lucky. Talking to Travis, one of the Appendix directors, I found out he has another curatorial platform called American Medium that does shows in Manhattan. Stay tuned for all these Oregonians becoming ubiquitous.

MSHR at Appendix Project Space

MSHR at Appendix Project Space

Lastly, I met the Rock. From Mr. Sugarmann to everyone else I met, I got a sense I was to meet the godfather. Patrick Rock is a jovial man who makes he own whiskey and for 5 years has been putting on challenging shows at Rocks Box. They were installing when I was there, but I did see a large piece of baloney. A brisket on the grill was not art and being tended to by a San Francisco artist in town for the show. Rock lived up to my preconceived ideas. I left with a Rocks Box T-shirt and my Yankee friend who was now calling Portland home got one which read: Fuck New Portland.

Brian Wasson, Bologna, 2012, (around 2 feet in diameter)

Back in New York, I had coffee with Jesse Sugarmann. He was passing through town for a Creative Capital conference. I found out he had lived in Oregon, but never in Portland. I also found out about his upcoming video project for Creative Capital titled We Build Excitement. Jesse is greatly expanding upon his use of automobiles as his artistic voice. His recent work looks at car accidents as points of social exchange and thinking of car accidents as points of creation. Over the next year, he will be opening ersatz Pontiac dealerships in Pontiac, Michigan and Mojave, California. These dealership sets will be his main shooting locations. Sugarmann will also be working with car accident survivors, automotive assembly line workers, and choreographers to turn movements related to the creation and destruction of automobiles into dance.
With galleries existing in new structures, artists primarily concerned with their individual visions, I’m inclined to believe even the air emitting from Jesse Sugarmann’s cars in the Northwest is fresh. It takes more than a weekend to see everything good going on in Portland, as I did miss seeing a few things suggested to me such as YU Contemporary and Recess. As for those of us in the Northeast, we’re in luck. Look for Fourteen30 at NADA Hudson at the end of the month.