Tag: Fine Arts

In The Forage House, published by Red Hen Press, Tess Taylor explores the historical and individual toll of inheritance and how we are shaped by the legacies that come to represent our past and present realities.

A descendant of Thomas Jefferson, Taylor was greatly affected when, in 1997, University of Virginia biologist Eugene Foster discovered a genetic connection between the relatives of Sally Hemings and the country’s third president and UVA founder.

“It was a fierce wake-up call,” she said, in a Publishers Weekly interview earlier this year.

Taylor was dually affected by her California upbringing and by her ties, through Thomas Jefferson Randolph and the Randolph-Taylors, to slavery, and propelled as a journalist and a poet to uncover the truth of her family lore. During the years of 2005 and 2006, she was in residence at Monticello, where she worked with archaeologists and historians, combed family attics, and pored over historical documents, including letters, wills, and auction records, in research for the book. In an effort to name and give record to the past, Taylor infuses many of the documents she found into poems like “Southhampton County Will 1745” and “Martha Jefferson’s Housewife,” but also enlivens the spirit of her grandfather in “Oral History 1963,” and sings of her literary and American bequest in “Song for Cerrito” and “Reading Walden in the Air.”

While The Forage House is Taylor’s press debut, she also wrote a chapbook, entitled The Misremembered World, which was awarded the New York Chapbook Fellowship and was published by the Poetry Society of America. Her journalistic work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times, and her poetry, acclaimed by Natasha Trethewey and Eavan Boland, has been published in Shenandoah, The Harvard Review, and Poetry Magazine, among others. She currently lives in her hometown of El Cerrito, California and teaches writing at the University of California, Berkeley.

In anticipation of Taylor’s book signing at New Dominion Bookshop on September 11, C-VILLE spoke to Tess Taylor by phone.

C-VILLE Weekly: How are you specifically related to Thomas Jefferson and what role does inheritance play in this collection?

Tess Taylor: Thomas Jefferson Randolph [Thomas Jefferson’s grandson] was the grandfather of Bennett Taylor, who went off and fought in the Civil War, and Bennett Taylor is my grandfather’s grandfather (Lee Taylor, who is mentioned in the poem “Oral History 1963”). So as I thought about this book and which stories to feature and which characters were going to pop, and as I was kind of learning this genealogy, those people as markers of proximity or distance to Jefferson were really fascinating to me.

Jefferson is very interesting, but you might also think about this book—in its small way—not only about literal family but also as framing a kind of dialogue with inheritance itself, or as a proxy discussion for any flawed thing we inherit. You might notice references to Auden, Hopkins, Ginsberg as well—there are some literary figures passing through this somewhat historical gathering. Think about the literary past—also based on haunting exclusions, and full of cruelties and riches. We look back and critique it, we also can’t simply throw it away; we find ourselves and orient ourselves through recourse to it. We reinvent it, but we are also sticky with associations.

In “World’s End: On the Site of Randolph Wilton,” you write, “O descendants, I am sorry/Ancestors I would undo this if I could.” Why is it important to undo or sort out the transgressions of the past?

As a writer I became really preoccupied with the questions of what it meant not to write people down. This is a book that is enthralled with documents and a lot of the poems are achieved through looking at documents and looking for documents. So the fact, then, that the documents don’t reveal people became something that was haunting for me. It became a thing where I could say, well, whether or not you agree with the story about Sally Hemings, something we can all agree with is that this was something that happened, where we didn’t write people’s names down. You can say there’s no proof, but we’re the very family that created the condition by which there is no proof.

How does writing a collection of poems with a historical basis differ from writing poetry based on personal and narrative impressions of life?

I thought I was going to be writing essays and some kind of journalistic book about what had happened in my family. As I started working with it, the material, I found that it was overwhelming to try to create a complete and coherent account of what had happened; that some people in my family felt threatened by the project of journalism whereas poetry somehow didn’t threaten them as much. Also, I was dealing with these very haunting documents. Poetry kind of presented itself as a form that made use of absence. You could be working with shards because poems are like shards. I had the chance to work with archaeologists at Monticello. I would go out and see the things that they had dug up, and I’d see these tiny little buttons. These little buttons or these little pipe stems that they’d excavated from the ground, and see the enormity of the absence around them, and, to me, that suggested a poem more than a big long essay.

What are you trying to accomplish, personally, as a poet? 

Well, Elizabeth Bishop once said that, “If you came in contact with a work of art it would make the world look different for 24 hours.” That’s always something that I’ve looked for in the work that I read. I like the idea that poetry can unsettle the present, in a way that it can make the day that we live in feel more mysterious if we engage with it. That’s my hope for the work that I make.

This week we share our studio visit with local artist Andy Faith.

Andy Faith’s artwork would fit perfectly in the setting of the Visionary Art Museum. It was a treat to meet someone whose personal sense of style so embodies the aesthetic of her art work. When we met, she wore a purple velvet cape with spiked hair, pink glasses, and a carved resin necklace in the shape of a snake’s head. Here is what she had to say about her artwork and her artistic vision.

Tell me a little about yourself as an artist.

I have always been the type of person who believes that if you follow what your passion is, then you can make things work. Do what you love, be happy, don’t worry, just chill and it will be okay.

I am a retired elementary school teacher and I didn’t start making art until I got a divorce. Then, all of a sudden, all this stuff came pouring out of me. My house looks like my studio, filled with stuff. I have always been attracted to things like rust and beeswax, and as I get older, I find that I am using more natural materials like branches and deer antlers, etc. When I first started, I was doing all this kitschy Jesus art, similar to the kind that I love from Mexico. But over the years, my artwork has evolved to be more autobiographical. All of my figures are me, and they depict my life story through various stages of aging, being single, and being a mother.

Around the time that I separated from my husband, I remember walking down the street in South Philadelphia, and there was this store there where everything comes from Mexico. I loved to shop there, and I loved to look at the sculptural work. I said to myself, “I’d really love to get that, but I can’t afford it. ” And then I started just making stuff like that. I was very whimsical and funny and people liked it. I even had a one woman show on the Downtown Mall.

I had so much stuff for art materials at the time that I had boxes and boxes stacked up in my bedroom. I had to make a pathway to get around them. And I would get up in the middle of the night and start working on two or three pieces at a time. I just had this energy and it really floated me. Doing artwork really helped me get through a very difficult time.

I also found that I had reinvented myself. I wasn’t Andy the wife anymore; I was Andy the artist. I even changed my name after the divorce to my sister’s middle name, Faith. My motto is “I have faith that everything always works out in the end,”and I feel that I represent “A” faith. I’m not any religion, but merely having faith will get you through in the end.

What are you working on now?

I usually have several different projects going on at any given time. A piece that I am currently working on is called “The Unbearable Lightness of Being.” It’s about where we come from in nature and utilizes the imagery of the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the main nerve in your body that hits every internal organ. This symbolizes the mind-body-soul connection and a lot of the spiritual things I have been studying lately. I’m not sure I would have been working on a piece like this five years ago, but I’ve been doing a lot of soulful work with various teachers and it has come into play in my artwork. All of the heart stuff and all of the soul stuff is an important part of my collection.

Do you have any formal training?

No. But I’ve always had a soul that is attracted to unusual, provocative art pieces that really make you think. Like works by Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, or Edward Kienholz.

I remember going to the Philadelphia Art Museum when I was a kid. I went into this room, the Marcel Duchamp room. There was the broken glass piece, the urinal, and the upside-down wheel. And then he had this piece where you had to look into it, and he made you a voyeur. There was this woman inside, a sculptural thing. But that was my favorite room in the entire museum. I will never forget that, and I went back again and again to see it.

I also feel very inspired by the kids that I teach. I base a lot of my kids’ projects on artists I love like Louise Nevelson or Hannah Hoch, African art, Sailors’ Valentines, even shoe design books.

What would you call your style?

I do call it mixed media, but it is also intuitive. Because for me, it is an experimental process of deciding what works and what does not. I try to integrate different objects into a piece and make them meaningful. And different people, they see my work and they offer so many different reactions. Some people are put off by the religious imagery I use. Some people can look at my skulls and respond with fear. They say, “Oh that’s so scary!”  I find it interesting that people interpret my work in their own way dependent upon who they are and where they come from in life. None of my pieces are scary to me because they come from me and I’m not scary. So my style is very intuitive.

What is your medium?

Sometimes I think that I do this art just because I love to collect things.

I have a whole crawl space at home plus two storage buildings, and my entire backyard is filled with my stuff. I’m just attracted to skulls and barbed wire and little pieces of hardware. That’s the cat’s pajamas for me.

I also use horseshoes, antlers, baby dolls, mannequins, and rust. My daughter travels all over the world, and she brought me a piece of rust from Tajikistan. I love it, and it goes really well on a piece that I am currently working on.

I have these spoke thingies that make great breasts and these portions of a lampshade that make great shoulders. I have baby doll eyeballs that I love. If you remove the face from an old baby doll, you will find that the eyes are amazing. I use old eyelash curlers, bullets casings, eyes glass lenses, animal bones, clock parts, and iridescent beetle wings. I even utilize used tea bags and I have a whole collection of teeth and partial dentures.

I am just so in love with my materials.

What is your method of working?

It’s funny because in my ad for my kids classes, I always advertise that art making is a problem solving process. And the process is so very important. I want the kids to know that there is no “wrong” in art. I will model ideas as the instructor, but I always want them to maintain their own vision and figure out a way to make things work and take ownership of the fact that they are artists, too.

In terms of artistic process, what I will usually do is choose a form, and then gather my materials. I’ll just start looking through my stuff to get inspired. My materials are my inspiration, and once I get started, the piece will take on a life of its own and become what it wants to be. I don’t usually start with a set idea in mind, so I let the materials inform the direction the piece needs to take to be completed. I’m constantly experimenting, and I like to follow my gut. I will try different materials until I know I have found the right ones. I’ll know that it’s finished when it’s finished.

Do you use photographic sources?

Not usually. I start with one thing and then keep building until I feel that it is finished. My favorite art is African art, and I have made figures that are inspired by African masks. But I try to let my materials inform the work.

How regular is your studio practice?

I try to come to the studio often. You can find me here most days. I always have multiple projects going on, so once I am in the studio, there is always something to do.

What is your favorite Bodo’s bagel?

Cinnamon raisin with coffee or an everything bagel with tomato, cucumber, and the baked salmon and whitefish salad.

~ Rose Guterbock and Aaron Miller

The Émilie Charmy retrospective currently on display at the Fralin Museum of Art is perplexing.

Most of her paintings have a fierce inquisitive quality. Her application of paint gives expressive life to simple compositions. Single thick brush strokes resolve into a small elegant wrist or a delicate twist of hair. Although a few paintings, like “Nu tentant son sein,” appear fast and crude, her work cultivates a rough and layered visceral quality. The show culminates with a painting so thickly built, it brings to mind the Balzac story “Unknown Masterpiece.” Mounds of paint construct an obscure image, a self-portrait which viewers experience more as brush stokes than a foggy-edged figure haunting the picture plane.

While Charmy’s craft is fascinating to explore, her content is slightly odd. Her paintings initially seem to be an artifact of her times, nudes reminiscent of Manet’s Olympia and blocked color scenes recalling the primitivism of Gauguin’s landscapes. As one studies the paintings, however, it seems that Charmy shifts the focus on the female-body-object to include immediate sensuality. She also creates distinct moments which build notes of fashion and character in her figures. These notes are subtle, and her images threaten to settle into the niche of patriarchal misogynist tropes which dominate much of art history and particularly the canvases of Charmy’s contemporaries. This is not inherently bad, it is only to say that Charmy is more distinct for her rugged love and care for painting than for the fact that she was a female artist during the time in which she lived.

As such, the Fralin does Charmy a disservice when it describes her as “one of the most original female voices of modern art in Paris during the first half of the 20^th century.” Rather Émilie Charmy should simply be described as one of the most exquisitely inquisitive and visceral voices in modern expressive painting.

~Aaron Miller and Rose Guterbock

This week we’re sharing our write-up of a studio visit with local artist Nancy Bass.

On a grassy knoll just south of town sits Historic Anchorage House, a landmark on the National Historic Register of Places. Built in 1825 by John White, this beautiful building now functions as the studio space of local artist Nancy Bass. I visited with her to meet her beloved cows and to learn more about her work.

C’ville Arts Blog: Tell us a little about yourself as an artist. Why animals?

Nancy Bass: I think I’ve been painting since I was really young. My first memory is from when I was about three years old and I wanted to have a pet. At the time, my parents were struggling financially, and my father just didn’t want a pet. My mother bought me one of those huge boxes of crayons, one of those really big ones with all the different colors, and I figured out how to draw a pink poodle because I really wanted one. After that I started making poodles in every different color so that I could put them all around my room. That’s my first memory. It’s just so funny to me because it hit me one day when I was giving a talk to little children that I am doing the same thing I was doing when I was three years old. I’ve come back around.

I wasn’t always painting animals. When I was in my twenties I was doing portraits for people, and when I moved here in the early ’80s I started painting landscapes. At first the cows would be in the background, very small, in the style of a typical landscape. As time went on, the cows got bigger and bigger in the composition until they reached the size of what I paint currently. Now my pieces have become portraits of the individual animals. So I went back, in a sense, to what came naturally to me as a child, which is really loving animals and really liking the personalities of the individual animals.

At the same time, I really like abstraction. I feel like the genre of painting animals has a lot of historical basis in the tradition of the British horse painters like George Stubbs. But I wanted my work to be contemporary, to be of the time that we are living in and reflect the current movements in art.

Why abstract backgrounds?

When I was in college, I had a professor who I remember because she was a color field painter. We were required to go to her retrospective at the Des Moine Art Center in Iowa. It was three gigantic rooms of these paintings that were made up of little lines only and for some reason I just could not “get” it. I wondered “How could anyone paint only little lines for thirty years?”

Then, about six years ago, there was a large retrospective exhibit of color field paintings in D.C. Although I didn’t see it, I read about it, and it made me think about my old professor. That was when I started thinking about the conflict between realism and abstraction. I thought about how the whole idea in color field paintings was not to have anything that could be identified as realistic in any way. I wanted to combine that somehow into my realistic paintings. I had played with abstraction before and that is how I got into this, by playing with it.

It’s worked really well for me because every animal, in light and shadow, picks up different colors. I pick out different colors from the animals, or from the story of the animal or the name of the animal, to use in my backgrounds. For example, I have a painting of one of my calves. She is the whitest calf I have ever owned, so I named her Snow White. I knew I wanted to paint her, and I made it so the background colors reflect the kind of cow that she is.

I try to let the colors of the figure inform my background. In doing so, it picks up mood and personality and a story line. Even though it looks simple, it’s extremely challenging for me to make the color fields work with the animal. I have to decide the direction of the lines, the breakup of the space, and come up with a background that even without the animal in it could be interesting all by itself. That is important to me as well. But putting the animal in the picture makes the piece comes together and makes the composition whole. That’s where I’m working right now.

Sometimes the colors change and become bolder, sometimes the color field becomes smaller or enlarged, and this group of diagonal paintings that I am working on now uses color blocks. I’m trying to achieve the same thing with those blocks as in color fielding, but it allows me to play with a quilt-like background instead. It still reads as a contemporary painting while allowing me to build up texture and play. The blocks are a little bit freeing, and I can put lettering and things in there, so it’s just another change in the same direction.

Once in a while, for practice, I’ll still do your very traditional landscape, although I don’t do it very often. It’s just so different to go backward and to do a cow in the landscape. For me, it just doesn’t pop the same way. It’s just not as exciting. But I still like to do it for practice.

Ultimately, I think that using an abstract background highlights the animals more, whereas they are just part of the whole of the landscape when they are in the landscape. When they are against an abstract background, they become more iconic.

I like that people read my paintings in different ways. I’m not giving you all the information, so people will walk in and come up with a story, saying “Oh, it looks like they are standing against a barn” or “It looks like they are standing against a wall with wallpaper.” People say all kinds of different things, and I think that that’s what art is about. Art shouldn’t give you the whole story, so I like that I can play with people’s perceptions.

Do you have any formal training?

I studied art in high school and then I went to college. I went to Drake in Des Moines, Iowa, to study art. But it was in the days when you really didn’t learn anything, back in the 70′s. You just went in and made something and you didn’t learn technique or anything about materials. So I got out and didn’t feel like I knew anything. But I started painting and since then I’ve taken workshops. I’ve studied with Janet Fish twice and I’ve studied with some local people, even with Yvonne Jacquette. So I would go and take a workshop once a year and feel that in one week I had learned more than I ever did in college. I still do that once in a while if there is something that someone knows that I would like to know. I’ll just go and study that specific thing. Of course, now you can get so much information on the web, too.

What would you call your style?

Contemporary realism. I think that’s what I would call it.

What is your medium?

I love oil paint, and I use walnut oil for my medium. It is a traditional medium that is not used very much. The materials I use are completely eco-friendly and as environmentally nontoxic as possible. Obviously some of the paints contain metal, but I’m not a sloppy painter and I like to keep the environment in which I paint safe. I also love to work on wood board in the style of Renaissance painting. With canvas, you always have to build up enough paint to get up over the tooth. On wood board, it’s already smooth, and it just works for me. I love it.

What is your method of working?

I usually start with a very simple sketch. I find a lot of times that the sketch doesn’t translate into the painting, but I have to play with the idea and the cropping a little bit. I work on wooden panels, and the first thing I do is paint them all orange after I put an additional coat of gesso on. I like the bright orange because it bleeds through underneath and gives me that glow and a lot of brightness. I always use that for my mid-tone. Then I’ll do a sketch of the painting on the orange panel, and when I feel that I have it right I start my under-painting. For my under-painting, I use the opposite color. So, for example, anything that would end up in a warm, light yellow tone would have been under-painted in a purple tone. I do the whole painting that way. After that dries, I start going back in with the colors that I’m going to use and working up the layers on the animals. I usually start darker and then go to the highlights. In the end, it ends up being tons of layers.

I am usually working on three paintings on a time to allow the various layers to dry enough before I go back and continue working on a piece. My layers usually dry within a day or two. It takes a lot of layers to make the fur look like fur, and the color fields also need to be painted up enough that they develop a surface that feels right to me. That of course allows me to play with texture. I’m currently playing with screen; I take a piece of screen and push paint through it to build up layers. I’m also doing different fun things like incising into the paint, just experimenting and having fun. I always work on the figure and ground simultaneously. In the figures, I start with the big shapes and then work down to the little ones.

Do you use photographic sources?

I take photos all the time. I have storage files for images of my heifers; I have files for images of my calves; I even have them all broken down into categories online, too. I’m constantly taking photos to build up resource materials to work from. So if I have an idea for a painting, then I’ll need images of a particular cow and I’ll need to find the right light or the right direction. Probably everybody who paints animals will use photographic resources.

How do you choose your subject matter?

I’ve always loved animals since I was really young, but I never really thought I would end up painting animals. I think raising them here, I’ve just fallen in love with them. I never really had an attachment to cows, but coming here and having them, I’ve realized that they’re just wonderful animals. They are great mothers, they are beautiful to look at, and I guess I’ve just become enchanted with them.

I have my own herd, and the herd is based on my painting. Unlike most people who are picking cows to be good milkers or good beef cattle, my cows are all about painting. So I have all different breeds, and I interbreed for a variety of looks and colors leaving me with a crazy-looking herd, all different colors, shapes and sizes. I like cows with very sweet personalities that are also interesting looking.

I will also go to other farms since we have so many wonderful artisanal farms doing heirloom varieties of everything. That’s where I will go to take photographs of other subject matter like sheep or pigs.

How long does it normally take you to finish a piece?

Maybe a couple of moths for a bigger painting. Partially because of the number of layers in the painting, but I will also live with a painting for a while to decide whether or not it is finished. Even if I think a piece is done, I will usually figure out something that I don’t like about it, so it’s a process. If it’s a really small painting than it will take me a shorter time to finish and others take longer.

How regular is your studio practice?

I work in my studio pretty much every day.

Who do you consider to be your audience?

While I was at the McGuffey, I was very successful with a particular clientele that likes landscapes. So when I switched and started doing abstract work, I really lost that audience. They would come into my studio and ask “where are the landscapes?” But I was at the point where I wasn’t feeling satisfied with my work, so I knew that I had to change. Being inspired is not a production factory type of thing, so it’s never really been part of the equation for me. But I do have an audience, and what I like about it is that it’s a younger audience. Young people in their thirties or forties have really enjoyed the work and that has been fun for me. They understand it.

Also, when I am near to finishing a painting, I take it out to my house and I hang it over my mantle and decide whether or not I like it enough that I want to live with it. That’s my criteria. If it makes me happy, then it is finished. If it doesn’t, then it comes back to the studio, and I work on it some more. So I do work that I love and that I can live with and that makes me happy. That is just the nature of who I am. My audience are people who are pretty much like me. They are animal lovers and they love color. But I also really want my work to be unique. You’ve got to find your own voice as a writer or an artist and figure out who it is that you are. So you have to get away from the pleasing thing and be willing to go out there and just create.

What is your favorite Bodo’s bagel?

Once a year I allow myself to go and have egg and cheddar cheese on a whole wheat bagel. That’s my favorite.

Visit Nancy Bass online at http://nancybassartist.com.

~ Rose Guterbock and Aaron Miller

Ansel Adams’ photography is one of those things that’s easy to dismiss because we’ve seen so much of it reproduced in calendars, outsize posters, and the like. But after spending time with the actual photographs now on view at UVA’s Fralin Museum in “Ansel Adams: A Legacy” through October 13, I rediscovered the magic in Adams’ images of desert, mountain, and forest.

Printed in the 1960s and ’70s by Adams for the San Francisco Friends of Photography, the Meredith Collection of photographs is, in effect, a retrospective of Adams’ career from his early explorations of the medium in the 1920s, to familiar masterworks. The photographs came into the Merediths’ hands in 2002 after the SFFOP was dissolved. At the time, Tom Meredith, a committed conservationist from Austin, Texas, was looking to acquire four prints for his wife, Lynn. With the auction of the SFFOP holdings looming, the couple was talked into purchasing the entire collection in order to keep it intact.

Passionate about both photography and conservation, Adams is known for the beauty of his tonalities and the majesty of his subject matter. Like the great manipulator of Western scenery, 19th century landscape painter, Albert Bierstadt before him, Adams was intent on creating a vision of the West, as he wanted it to be seen, moving beyond mere reportage and elevating the scenery to the mythic.

Adams used small apertures and long exposures in natural light to create precise detail. He further worked on his photographs in the darkroom, dodging (lightening) and burning (darkening) them to achieve dramatic effects of light and dark, finally printing the work on glossy paper to intensify tonal values.

Adams advocated a concept he called “visualizing,” imagining what he wanted his final print to look like before taking the picture. “I had been able to realize a desired image—not the way the subject appeared in reality but how it felt to me and how it must appear in the finished print,” he said.

Though he is famous for his black-and-white photographs, Adams did shoot with color film. However, he wrote: “I have a problem with color, I cannot adjust to the limited controls of values and colors. With black-and-white I feel free, and confident of results.” Moreover, from a stylistic point of view, the western landscape is so dramatic as it is, color would be both too much and too ordinary. Opting for black-and-white, Adams was able to endow his work with immense gravitas and drama.

One of Adams’ most famous photograph’s, “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico,” holds the record for the highest auction price ever paid for a single print: $609,600 in 2006. Taken just after sunset, Adams reputedly used the moonlight to calculate the proper exposure. Interestingly, there was some question of ownership of the print as Adams was employed by the Department of Interior taking pictures of national parks, Indian reservations, etc. for use as murals in government buildings. However as part of his contract, he was allowed to take photographs for himself. The position of the moon allowed the image to be dated November 1, 1941, a day he had not billed the department, so the image belonged to him.

The remarkable “Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, California,” appears to have three zones. At the bottom, dwarfed by the mountains, a horse grazes in a swath of sunlight. Behind the horse, in dark shadow, foothills rise, a blank mass of black that divides the foreground from the background where the mountains, like the horse are in high relief.

An abstract study of tones, “Sand Dunes, Sunrise, Death Valley National Monument, California,” is a perfect marriage of subject and technique. One marvels at the enormous, perfectly formed dunes just as much as the velvety blacks and grays Adams achieves.

With “Golden Gate Headlands from Lincoln Park, San Francisco, California,” Adams reveals an interest not just in tonalities, but textures. Here, he captures the gamut, from puffy clouds to craggy rock, water and scrubby pine trees.

“Aspens, Northern New Mexico,” looks like a stage set with the sentinel trees and dramatic light. Examining it, the bark on the trees seems to dissolve away from reality, transforming into something that looks more like a painting than a photograph.

“Adams’ work reminds me of the title of Wallace Stevens’ poem, ‘Reality is an Activity of the Most August Imagination’,’’ said Fralin Director Bruce Boucher. “The poem itself is not that memorable, but the title captures an essential truth—art shapes our perception of reality. Adams created an image of nature that is now archetypal. Looking at his photographs reminds us all that we have a stewardship of these natural treasures, which we’re not really living up to.”

Upstairs at the Fralin, “Looking at the New West,” presents the work of six contemporary photographers following in Adams’ footsteps. In conjunction with the exhibitions, OpenGrounds is sponsoring a September 27 symposium, “Changing Views: Photography and Environmental Action.” Given his tandem passions, there is no question Ansel Adams would approve.

This summer, I’ve noticed art in unlikely places around town: local hospitals.

McGuffey Art Center member artist Lindsey Oberg had new mixed media works on display at Martha Jefferson Hospital in June. “In the Country” by Richard Bednar and “Sightings,” a collection of photographs by Frank Feigert, have been featured in UVA Medical Center’s Main Hospital lobby during the summer months. In addition to these featured shows, UVA Medical keeps a surprising amount of artwork on permanent display as well.

There was a time when hospitals were crisp, clean, immaculately sterilized, and notorious for “that hospital smell.” Now it seems that ideas in medicine are changing. Aesthetics are upheld more frequently, and there is a higher appreciation for the impact of our surroundings on our psyche and mental well-being.

There are several examples of art therapy practices in which the experience of beauty is used to aid traditional medicine. Recently, several window washers visited Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital as superheroes, bringing smiles and joy to the patients. UVA Medical Center also has a group of “clowns” that volunteer on a weekly basis. (“Compassionate Clowning” provides comfort and emotional support to patients and family by creating an environment that alleviates anxiety and stress.) A recent study even found that patients undergoing surgery while music plays remain calmer and cope better during their recovery compared to patients who are operated on in silence.

It might be easy to conclude that showing art in a medical setting may have similar effects. The previous example of window washer heroes bears resemblances to happenings from the 1980’s. Art is a very broad medium of expression, and through the very crafting process itself, it can showcase, embrace or entice a huge array of emotions.

So why is it that much of the art on display at the hospitals feels like an afterthought? Obviously, our taxpayers may not want to feel as though their money is being used to fund art as opposed to medical research. However the timid patchwork curation which currently inhabits the hospital halls is a far cry from what it could be.

Even if we consider that art in a state-funded hospital must be largely non-confrontational, much of the work on display seems like an apology. Prints are stuck behind glass and unobtrusively hung behind counters. The primary display wall at the UVA Medical Center is a small patch of gray that hugs a corner near the cafeteria entrance. Here and there we find permanent pieces: a bust of Thomas Jefferson by a pillar; an oil landscape by Tom Tartaglino extending across the wall from the Administration Office. A few pieces have been hung in honor of donors or patients, but none appear to be placed with intent, pride, or flourish.

This absence is unfortunate as so much of the work was obviously chosen with care by some unknown person at the hospital. The paintings and sculptures are beautifully crafted. Each brushstroke vibrates with individuality. The bronze castings of heads stare thoughtfully, it is as if the artwork is begging to suddenly become more significant.

Art can be thought of as just another pretty thing to look at or use to cover walls, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In the play of light and form, stories can be told, memories drawn out, and, dare I say it, wounds could be healed.

~ Rose Guterbock and Aaron Miller

An Op-Ed style manifesto and general response to the McGuffey Summer Show

Art in Charlottesville can be characterized by a sort of conservative tameness. Local artists combine quaint country craft with universally pleasing aesthetics to create an experience that is enjoyable but limited to a limbo world of perpetual charm. Limitless talent is channeled into oil, mosaic, and tapestry landscapes and ruggedly constructed objects that easily fit into the idyllic country experience in which we imagine we live. It is a highly marketable image, and artists have to eat.

There are many conceptions responsible for perpetuating this charm-limbo, including several that trickle down from lofty galleries in Manhattan. Such concepts include artistic identification, a lingering Modernist Greenbergian narrative of introspection, and the desire to attain genius status, or to make a living at any rate, through the positive feedback loop of actually selling work. In this way, contemporary gallery exhibitions feature collectability and fashionability but dampen the visceral experience of specific, emotive, and purposeful visual constructions.

The quality of paintings in Charlottesville is good, but considering the level of resident talent, paintings from Charlottesville should be impressive and momentous. Paintings which are or become significant have an aura, a fetishistic quality which is nearly impossible to reproduce: a mixture of purpose, time, mystery, and artistic excellence which can only be viewed in person. Significant paintings necessitate a pilgrimage.

With this in mind we have assembled the following brief message for painters, patrons of painters, and the art community at large:

Stuff style. Stuff originality. Stuff introspection. Find what you love and preserve it in the most impressive manner you can imagine. Make a spectacle. Make pilgrimages. Steal everything.

Make studies, make paintings, and then make better ones.

And after that, make better ones.

~Aaron Miller and Rose Guterbock

The abstract and stylized tapestries of Klaus Anselm and Joan Griffin, currently on display at the McGuffey Art Center, are indisputably beautiful objects. They have clear pleasing palettes, unexpected bright intense colors, soft surfaces, and an odd but familiar resolution. Anselm’s tapestries are mostly geometric abstractions, overlapping squares, curves, and quadrilaterals that fill each composition. Griffin’s tapestries provide a great contrast to Anselm’s. Her organic shapes create recognizable but stylized landscapes which are bright and flowing, however, as a group, the images of each artist vary widely in interest.

The constraints of the tapestry format add particular interest to the exhibition. The low resolution designs recall vintage Nintendo animation and early computer adventure games. The bright oranges and blues in Anselm’s canyon landscapes mimic the brightness of a glowing screen, and many of his designs bring to mind 1980’s imaginative visions of a graphic cyberpunk future. This pixelized retro-futuristic feel is fun and appealing, especially when considering the analog mode of their construction.

Anselm’s canyon images are beautiful and unexpectedly bright with alien towering walls and burning sunlight. Anselm’s geometric tapestries construct interesting imagined abstract spaces with extruding rectangles and walls of cobbled 2D and 3D shapes. A few of Anselm’s works, however, hover on the edge of being overly-decorative. “Concert for Space,” creates a small distortion of space with the twist of each red ribbon, but beyond this, the work provides very little spatial-geometric intrigue to hold the viewer. In this particular work, the scale of the tapestry fights with its composition. The ribbons are cut short in order to fit the square, which limits their ability to enliven the space.

Griffin’s tapestries use a great sense of light to construct delicate scenes that are painterly and almost fantastical. “Village Path” show a shadowed overgrown path leading to a stone arch through which we see a brilliant sunset. The image is intriguing and well composed with a bit of sentimentality.  By contrast, “Breeze” is very tightly cropped and autumnal to the point of being tacky, which leaves the viewer with little reason to examine the work further.

Overall, the show is full of well designed tapestries that are interesting objects by themselves. Each image is accomplished with varying degrees of success, and the pixel-like nature of the work manages to create some intriguing and unexpected associations.

~Aaron Miller and Rose Guterbock

First Fridays is a monthly art event featuring exhibit openings at many Downtown art galleries and additional exhibition venues. Several spaces offer receptions. Listings are compiled in collaboration with Piedmont Council for the Arts. To list an exhibit, please send information two weeks before opening to arts@c-ville.com.