Detail of painting by local artist Ken Nagakui. Image courtesy of the artist.
What is perception? Philosophers, psychologists, and ophthalmologists have studied this question for years, but none have studied as vividly or exhaustively as visual artists.
Subtle nuances of memory, culture, and aspiration within us dictate how we see the world and how we respond to it. In this way, every artist sees the world differently, but also manipulates the perceptions of the viewer to evoke worlds with distinctive voices and capture alien beauty in a multitude of ways.
Local artist, Ken Nagakui is one such unique individual. His current exhibit, “A Retrospective of Paintings and Ceramics” at the Firefish Gallery offers a distinct view derived directly from Nagakui’s personal perceptions and life experiences that bridge Japanese and American culture.
The exhibit showcases two mediums of the artist’s choice: paintings and ceramics. The paintings are all created in a neutral palette and display the use of quick, short brushstrokes in a painterly fashion. Each piece captures the image of specific trees in various browns, grays, and moss greens. The ceramics also gravitate towards the earthy both in the organic quality of the shapes and the color palette. Amidst the sea of balanced neutral browns, Nagakui’s work could appear dreary. The craftsmanship, however, is impeccable, and each work is activated by subtle nuances and delicate structures which emerge over time.
A native of Japan, Nagakui sees the world from a very distinctive point of view; one that comes to life in the subdued quality of his work. His paintings evoke a strange sense of time and space. Although not overwhelmingly warm or cool in the way that the Western impressionists may have seen it, instead the light is captured as if it is as timeless as a shifting old memory. Every branch, twig, and leaf is captured and rendered with a sense of transience, movement, and life.
Buddhist and Shinto traditions honor the inherent integrity of everything that is natural in its ever-changing state. There is also an element of sadness in the work. According to Buddhism, emptiness, impermanence, and suffering are three traits carried within every sentient being. These qualities also seem to permeate Nagakui’s work in true wabi-sabi fashion. This contrasts with much of the history of Western painting, which is more concerned with capturing and codifying nature than with exposing the frights that lurk deep within forests.
There is a quality to Nagakui’s paintings that are capable of transporting one to Japan. The brushstrokes weave a quiet memory of a hot summer’s afternoon on a wooded knoll in a rural town. But this is where the real cultural perspective comes into play, as many of the trees in this show are in fact growing locally in Charlottesville.
Nagakui’s show is slow and meditative, and is in many ways reminiscent of process-oriented art. It offers an opportunity to glimpse the work of a dedicated craftsman. Nagakui built his own kiln from the ground up, digs his own clay, and builds his pottery by hand in a style similar to that of the early Jomon people of Japan. His love and reverence of nature is evident both in his work, and the way that he makes his art. The viewer can sense the care and vast experience used to create each object and this sense is what enriches the work in the show, and what makes the work most pleasurable to view.
“A Retrospective of Paintings and Ceramics” at the Firefish Gallery will remain on display through September 1.
Blacksmith Gerald Boggs hammers out a perfect circle. Photo: Will Kerner
I am sick to death of reading about food. Over the past decade, the preciosity of the new approach to cuisine has contaminated almost everything. Don’t get me wrong. We certainly could use a rethink of the way we produce and consume what we eat. But does it have to come with so much Church Lady attitude?
The self-congratulation of working with “reclaimed” cuts of meat. The sanctimony of putting the word “heirloom” in front of the word “zucchini.” “Slow” whatever. The preening one-upmanship of celebrity foodies as they slum their way to culinary authenticity followed by throngs of gastronomic status seekers.
I am completely over it. But of course, I’m caught up in it as well. And so, as I pull into the Spudnuts parking lot at 8:45 on a miraculously clear Friday morning at the end of a sodden week, I find myself wondering how they source their potato flour. Then I think that someone should just shoot me already.
I’ll excuse myself the momentary mental lapse by confessing that I’ve been watching too much Portlandia and preparing to go on a full-fledged, day-long authenticity hunt on the Monticello Artisan Trail. At least one of my companions actually remembers the Foxfire movement in Appalachia, rubbed elbows with real live back-to-the-landers, and may have actually engaged in a little of it himself. I’m thinking about the selling of authenticity, and the typewriter in my head is stamping out the word “blowback” on the mostly blank page of my morning mind.
The first time I fired a handgun (a .357 magnum revolver), it literally hit me full in the face. The bullet exploded out of the gun, and the scalding propellant gases and particulates blew backwards to deliver a hot toxic slap right to the kisser. Semi-automatics divert some of that return energy to re-cock the gun. But with an open-backed six shooter there’s nothing standing between you and the repercussions. It’s not a pleasant sensation.
Blowback. That’s what we’re experiencing now. For a couple of hundred years we’ve been sacrificing tradition and quality at the altar of the cheap, the shiny, and the convenient. It’s left us with a serious reality deficit. Slavish foodies, suburban craft-brew tourists, hipster lifestyle faddists are all, understandably, looking for the same thing—a little shot of the veritable, the deep, the true in a world that’s lousy with malls and minivans and megachurches and disposable everything.
Capitalism, though, is fully automatic. It captures blowback, not just to re-cock the gun, but to effortlessly fire the next round. Like “green” before it, “craft” and its cousins “artisanal” and “slow” and “heirloom” have now been co-opted to provide new opportunities to ramp up sales, to get us all to spend our conscientious dollars to feed the corporation. When Dominos is printing the word artisan on a billion pizza boxes, maybe it’s time to take a closer look at whether craft and authenticity can still mean anything in our marketing-driven world.
Maybe, in short, it’s time for a bag of spudnuts and a road trip.
Gerald Boggs of Wayfarer Forge gets to work early in his Afton shop to avoid the heat of the day. About half of Boggs’ sales come from fairs and markets; the other half are custom orders for things like fireplace screens and railings. Photo: Will Kerner
‘A’ is for artisan
Wham. The hammer comes down with a dull clang and a small shower of orange sparks flares and dies off the hot metal. It’s 10am and blacksmith Gerald Boggs has been busy for the past couple of hours forging iron bottle openers. You heard me. Forging. Iron. Bottle openers.
I’m standing in his shop with John Conover, a lawyer at the Legal Aid and Justice Center, longtime Democratic Party stalwart, and former owner of Papercraft Printing, which used to reside just off the Downtown Mall. He is asking Boggs where he gets his coal. (West Virginia, it turns out, “not that dirty stuff from Wyoming.”) Will Kerner, photographer, co-founder and current board chair of Live Arts, co-founder of the LOOK3 Festival, is snapping photos as Boggs talks and works.
Boggs’ home and workshop are tucked into a pleasant little bend of the road in Afton, and the forge in the corner is boosting the mid-summer swelter with a couple thousand degrees of coke-fired heat. The five other bottle openers he’s produced already are shaped like squat railroad spikes. The piece he pulls out of the embers now is a more slender, tapered ingot that he is in the process of turning into a han d-chiseled wizard complete with a beard and a pointed hat.
“Nobody likes a straight line,” Boggs says, holding the glowing orange metal over the anvil with a pair of tongs. “The human eye doesn’t respond to it.”
With a few deft blows of the hammer, what had been a straight spike of iron takes on the shape of an arching curve in one direction capped by a delicate spiral scrolling back in the opposite direction. Wizard hat. Damn.
The words deft and delicate don’t often apply to a strapping guy wielding a 10-pound hunk of metal on the end of a stick, but Boggs earns them. He looks as if he might be made of iron himself. Twenty-five years of swinging a hammer and hauling coal and metal and setting up a portable forge at craft fairs and farmers markets will do that to you. But it will also give you skills.
“I made all the tongs you see,” he says, gesturing to a rack of about 15 of them. “I made the forge. I made about half the hammers, all the chisels and punches and stuff. I mean, what’s a blacksmith if he doesn’t make his own tools?”
Using those tools, Boggs puts the twist in the hat, chisels a few stars into it, creates a face with eyes and a moustache and a beard, opens a slot in the metal with a punch, and with something called a drift coaxes the slot into the classic church key shape. He then scrubs the hot metal with a brass wire brush, which imparts a slightly golden cast, and coats the whole thing with a paste wax which smokes and sets as the iron continues to cool.
When he’s done, he holds up his work to the light. It is beautiful. Rough-hewn, but also surprisingly detailed, considering that he whacked out its facets with a bunch of dull metal implements. About half of Boggs’ income comes from the bottle openers, hooks, drawer pulls, and door handles he makes to sell at markets and shows. The other half comes from custom orders for wrought iron tables and fireplace screens and railings.
Who buys his stuff? “They’re people who want something made by hand. And not the ambiguous, fluffy use of hand-made. Truly made by hand.”
Boggs’ craftsmanship is impressive. But I’ll admit to being skeptical. The idea of an artisan trail has a kind of tourist board, marketing confection feel to it. And it seems like you can’t turn around in Central Virginia these days without finding somebody slapping up a few signs and a website, drawing a map, and waiting for the tourists to start spending. The Brew Ridge Trail. The Monticello Wine Trail. Next week, I’m launching my own tourism trail, the Trail of Trails, which will no doubt in future years be remembered by its back seat, car seat-restricted victims as a kind of metaphoric Trail of Tears commemorating a prolonged, enforced roadside encounter with the real.
A couple of weeks before the road trip, I interviewed Sherri Smith, director of the Artisans Center of Virginia, at the organization’s offices overlooking the new Native American Village at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton. The Artisans Center runs the trail and is tasked with supporting the state’s small artisan businesses. Smith is a market development pro, an artist herself, and an enthusiast. That enthusiasm is infectious.
“The businesses that we represent are so amazingly creative,” she told me. The center’s mission is “to embrace that innovation and creativity and try to figure out how we can start to stabilize it and help the small businesses that are the people who make our communities interesting and rich and wonderful.”
The Artisans Center was formed in 1997 with the original goal of creating a series of retail gallery hubs around the state to showcase the work of local craftspersons. But the craft center model suffered in the financial crisis of 2008, and the idea arose of developing a series of trails with a more localized, grass-roots feel. According to Smith, “the idea for the trail system actually originated in northwestern North Carolina with ‘Hand Made in America’.”
Living here in Virginia, you can begin to develop a bit of a complex about our neighbor to the south. Sure we were here first, and we’ve got all these presidents and all. But it seems like North Carolina is otherwise constantly beating us to the punch. More tobacco, better barbecue, the pork industry, the whole research triangle thing, the furniture industry, basketball. Now the trails idea. Hell, I’ve driven through North Carolina, and damnit if the grass isn’t actually greener.
Be that as it may, the first Virginia artisan trails were developed in the southwest part of the state, where the landscape and local heritage are rich and the economy is poor. There is now a total of 15 trails wending through southside Virginia, operating under the collective name of ’Round the Mountain.
The Monticello Artisan Trail was the first effort to bring that model to another part of the state. It covers Albemarle and Nelson counties, and its roster encompasses not just traditional craft businesses like pottery and textile and glass blowing, but also agri-businesses like orchards and wineries, restaurants and brewpubs, and B&Bs and tourist information centers. The goal is to build a self-reinforcing community of small businesses.
“When we go in to build a trail it isn’t just about identifying people and marketing them,” Smith explained. “It’s about getting them connected to one another. To strengthen one another. The way we look at it, when we build a trail it’s development. Community development. Once we launch it, it’s tourism. It’s marketing. It’s getting people out there.”
"Stilts and Three Trees," a painting by Rob Browning. Image courtesy of Warm Springs Gallery.
For the month of July, five paintings by Rob Browning will be on display at the Warm Springs Gallery alongside other works by Andras Bality and Liz Price . Browning’s paintings are figurative, illustrative works, magnetic from a distance. They appear through the gallery’s window like surreal images from a fantastical children’s book.
His works are lonely and contemplative; they depict open rural settings, leisurely paced with blue skies, distant sculptural clouds and a few young figures punctuating the first and last canvases of the series. His figures are alone and appear to be hiding or avoiding the activities presumably happening elsewhere. “Sandwich” is a beautifully composed painting which exemplifies the entire show. A single figure sits hidden in a small oasis carved in a field of wheat. He sits alone holding a sandwich, behind him is a curve of a road which cuts through a field of grain. The road is empty, but we get the sense of distant car noise passing by unseen. Browning’s paintings all effectively illustrate this intentional isolation and singular meditative experience of reality. The paintings reminisce about childhood moments when we built wild forts to conceal our existence from the world.
Each image is thoughtfully composed and well executed, with a slight exception for “Window and Blue Curtains” which, compared with the series, has a few lighting and compositional issues.
His works are crisp and clean, although they seem to be constructed for reproduction. This is to say, while they are highly enjoyable images which appear pristine when photographed, a few technical and formal issues are unavoidable when the paintings are seen in person. His straight architectural lines are formally beautiful, but they leave behind a raised ridge where his masking material lay on the surface. This effect is slightly jarring to come across when immersed in the illustrative moments of the paintings. His edges, especially in his clouds, often threaten to become atmospheric, but never quite reach the appropriate resolution. This isn’t to say that there are not hidden moments of painterly pleasure to be discovered. For example, the sky in “Sandwich” is fantastically activated by short strokes of nearly invisible green paint which float lazily in the thermal currents. It is only to say that Browning has valued swiftness and effectiveness of his images over creating objects which are interesting from the standpoint of the craft of painting.
Browning’s show is definitely worth a look. The pieces effectively capture quiet contemplative experiences in a stylized and methodical way, and the show is perfectly timed to be enjoyed during the nostalgia filled summer season.
“The Pleasures of Summer” is a group show featuring work by Andras Bality, Rob Browning and Liz Price at the Warm Springs Gallery. The opening reception will be from 6 – 8pm on July 5 and the exhibit will remain on display though July 30, 2013.
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.
First Fridays, July 5
Angelo 220 E. Main St. “Resulting Jigsaws,” a new collection of paintings by Kathleen Craig. 5:30-7pm.
The Bridge PAI 209 Monticello Rd. “MapLab,” a participatory exhibit to map Charlottesville in creative ways. 5-8pm.
Chroma Projects 418 E. Main St. “In the Field” by Dymph de Wild in the Front Gallery. “Humanature” by Karen McCoy in the Passage Gallery. “Elemental Encounter” by Karen McCoy and Robert Carl in the Black Box. 5:30-7:30pm. Starting at 7:30pm, “Stereoscope,” a two-act performative event, will take place in Chroma’s underground space.
CitySpace 100 Fifth St. NE. VSA Charlottesville/Albemarle presents artwork from various community members. 5:30-7:00pm.
C’ville Arts Cooperative Gallery 118 E. Main St. “A Fiber Garden” by Carolyn Seaman. 6-8pm.
The Garage 250 1st St. N. An exhibit of concert posters and photocopy art by James Ford. 5:30-7:30pm.
The Honeycomb 310 E. Market St. “Apocalyptic Dentistry” by Jamie Morgan featuring painting, fashion and sculpture. 5-9pm.
McGuffey Art Center 201 Second St. NW. “Journeys In Woven Color” in the Susan B. Smith Gallery. “Annual Summer Group Show” in the Hall Galleries. 5:30-7:30pm.
Second Street Gallery “Decoration/Destruction” by Olga Antonova, Laurent Crasté, and Cheryl Pope. 5-7pm.
Telegraph 110 Fourth St NE. “Jurassic,” an imaginative journey to the age of the dinosaurs by a variety of artists. 5-10pm.
Warm Springs Gallery 103 Third St. NE. “”Pleasures of Summer” by Andras Bality, Rob Browning and Liz Price. 6-8pm.
WVTF and Radio IQ Studio Gallery 216 W. Water St. “Thor’s Harbour,” paintings from Iceland by Chrissy Baucom. 5-7pm.
WriterHouse 508 Dale Ave. “The Natural World of Nancy Jane Dodge,” featuring oil paintings by the artist. 5:30-7:30pm.
OTHER EXHIBITS
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center 233 Fourth St. NW. “(sur)passing,” photographs by Lola Flash.
Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection 400 Worrell Dr. “Black Prints from Cicada Press” featuring artwork by various contemporary Aboriginal artists.
UVA Health System, Main Hospital Lobby 205 14th St NW. “In the Country” by Richard Bednar.
Check out PCA’s Google Map of local galleries and cultural hotspots to plan your visit.
I met up with Claibourne Reppert, owner of The Honeycomb Salon and Gallery, at her renovated warehouse apartment just before 10 on a Sunday morning. She was cooking hashbrowns and slowly waking up after a late night performing as the lead singer of The Sharkettes, a fictional girl group put together for local math metal band Sharkopath’s latest music video. Her tiny orange kitten chased a green sock back and forth across the wooden floor and Gaston, her English bulldog (adopted from a Frenchman), tried to balance himself on a shiny red ball. Huge, brightly painted canvases and sculpture were stacked against the walls and balanced in corners in a makeshift gallery archive.
Reppert has been styling hair and setting trends in D.C. and Charlottesville since 2006, winning the Best of C-VILLE hairstylist award in 2011 and 2012. In June 2012, riding off her success at Moxie Hair & Body Lounge, she opened her own shop, The Honeycomb Salon and Gallery on East Market Street, parlaying her sense of style and tastemaking into the local art scene.
A year after opening, with a growing client list and the demands of booking out artists and promoting events mounting, Reppert hired her brother-in-law, Ryan Trott, most recently of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to take over management of the gallery.
Trott, a visual artist and musician himself, joined Reppert and C-VILLE with some strong coffee and Carpe donuts for a conversation about the future of The Honeycomb Gallery and Charlottesville’s subversive art scene.
C-VILLE: Why did you decide to start up a gallery in addition to the salon? You weren’t busy enough?
Claibourne Reppert: “Originally, the idea for the gallery came because the space I rented for The Honeycomb was just too much space for me. I wanted to do something interesting that kind of gave back to the community and cultivated more of the environment that I want at the salon—the people that the art shows attract are the clients I want and vice versa. There’s a nice crossover.”
One problem with that is I’ve been to one of your openings where a client has tried to get you to cut her hair in the middle of it…
Ryan Trott: “Is that really true?”
CR: “Oh, yeah. You get ’em a little drunk and they’re like, ‘I feel like this side is a little shorter than this side…’”
How would you describe the artwork you feature for someone who’s never been to the gallery?
CR: “Younger, funkier, and maybe a bit edgier… God, are these all horrible buzz words? [laughs] I mean, one show we had was all just wizards. It was all 4/20, wizards, and weed, and I was like, ‘This is awesome!’”
Does that create a contrast between the gallery and the salon crowd?
CR: “Definitely. Many of my clients are on the more conservative side, so it’s kind of fun to have those two extremes. The gallery is in line with my personality so I like being all, ‘O.K., you need to go sit down there with the art for an hour while your highlights process. Have fun looking at all these wizards.’”
RT: [laughs] “Yeah, you can read People or you can look at some cool art.”
CR: “Some clients who don’t have time or interest in going out to galleries can do both. I love having a St. Anne’s [-Belfield School] mom come in for a cut and browse the gallery and be like, ‘Oh wow, that’s a woman [having sex with] a deer.’”
So, I know you also don’t charge a commission on any of the work sold in your gallery. That’s pretty rare—what prompted that decision?
CR: “Well, I don’t pay for advertising for the salon and I feel that the little bit of money that I put into the openings is my form of advertising. Also, with a lack of commission, I’ve been amazed at how affordably artists are pricing their work. They sell really well. The only commission I take is a piece of art.”
You have a piece from every show?
CR: “Yeah, I’m stocking up my own little collection. I think it’ll be cool after The Honeycomb ceases to exist to have a record of all the shows.”
Do you guys want it to stay focused on mostly local artists?
RT: “I definitely want to branch out. I’ve reached out to people in Baltimore, it would be nice to mix it up so it’s not mostly friends at the openings. It’s cool that a lot of artists we know in D.C. and New York have Charlottesville connections too.”
What are your plans for the gallery moving forward?
RT: “We have a show in August with Daniel Cundiff from the Roanoke band Eternal Summers, which will be the first show I’m really involved with. And I’ve been going back and forth with Jamie Morgan who is lined up to be our show for July. We’ve got some lighting renovations planned, and I’m also getting a library going in the gallery. It’ll feature contemporary art books that visitors can flip through. It’s kind of a funny space (the ceilings are only 6’2″), so we’re talking to artists about creating alternative installations. I’m really excited to connect with the gallery community here.”
CR: “The haircutting pays the rent and the gallery is just for fun. We’ll keep doing it as long as it’s fun.”
“Apocalyptic Dentistry,” a sculptural jewelry installation by Jamie Morgan, is on view at The Honeycomb Salon and Gallery through the month of July. The opening reception is Friday, July 5, from 5-9pm and will feature a candy buffet and music by DJ Shay Shay the Wulf Baby.
Panels from a comic by local artist Francesca Rowan. Image courtesy of the artist.
The Telegraph is unique in Charlottesville for its wide selection of zines, indie comics, and small press books. Among these are several works by local artists, including a short comic by the young artist Francesca Rowan titled Alencia.
This zine-style stapled booklet contains a short sword-and-sorcery story about a young heroine who uses her skills in magic and fighting to vanquish undead forces. The story is simple and clear, and her character begins to develop in interesting ways by the end of the seventeen pages.
Rowan’s draftsmanship has stronger and weaker moments throughout the story. Her drawings are simple and are influenced by some of the naïveté art styles which permeate indie comics as well as contemporary illustration. The goal of this drawing approach is to reach for emotive clarity rather than representational clarity, which suits the art of storytelling. Some of Rowan’s drawings are confident with clean marks which elegantly depict motions and actions. On page twelve (spoiler alert) the first panel depicts the heroine lopping off the head of a desiccated undead lady-creature. This drawing in particular fantastically captures a slice of time. The image is reminiscent of the graphic stylized drawings of Mike Mignola. Some of Rowan’s drawings, however, are less confident, and revert to generic depictions of faces and objects. This seems to happen most often when Rowan is describing intricate facial expressions or larger environments. In general, she seems most comfortable rendering monsters and small atmospheric moments.
The storytelling, however, is very interesting and well thought out. She leads the viewer through each moment of the story effortlessly. Rowan shows us around each scene using shifting aspects to build suspense as the undead creep from their graves. The drawings and panel compositions direct the viewers to each important moment as it happens, without relying on narration or predictably consistent jumps in time. One of the most fantastic aspects of comics and visual storytelling is that when done well, the craft becomes invisible.
The writing in Alencia reads a little campy. It fits so perfectly and absolutely in the fantasy genre. The dialogue is functional and economic except for an occasional arbitrary exclamation. It seems that the story is designed in an episodic manner. Rowan introduces conflicts which are not resolved and gives small glimpses of characters, like Alencia’s talking cat companion, which we immediately want to know more about. These elements create the beginning of what I imagine could be a fairly interesting story arc. Even the subtitle, “A Noble Deed – First Story,” suggests additional chapters to follow.
Alencia is not a masterpiece, but the work is lighthearted and fun to read. There is no mention of when future stories or chapters will be released, however this sort of work only gets better the longer an artist pursues it. I look forward to reading future installments.
From the Earth to the Sky, from Petrochemical America. Image courtesy of the LOOK3 Communications Office.
Everyone has his or her own way of processing information. Some of us think visually; the neurological place where seeing is believing and photographic memories are born. Others have an astounding knack for audio perception, memorizing information primarily with their psychoacoustic faculties. There are those who rely heavily upon numerical data and others who do best when offered a literary source of information.
No matter how we perceive the world, we all have strengths and weaknesses in terms of what holds our interest. All of us enjoy thinking about some things but not others. That’s why some of us chose to practice law, while others study rat brains, or cook French cuisine for a living.
These inevitable truths can leave those of us in the visual arts with a difficult dilemma to overcome. That is to say, even if there is a very important message we wish to convey through our creations, there is no guarantee that viewers will take that information away from those visual representations alone.
Photographer Richard Misrach and landscape architect Kate Orff attempt to overcome this obstacle by combining their respective efforts in a large scale research collaboration that touches both on the power of the photographic image and the weight of infographics. The resulting exhibit is titled “Petrochemical America: Project Room,” and offers a multifaceted approach to discovering the issues surrounding the proliferation of petroleum products in American culture.
Some of the images are primarily visual. Viewers are given the opportunity to bask in the hauntingly surreal and beautiful photographs captured by Richard Misrach. These large-scale images depict the industrialized landscape of the Mississippi River Corridor also known as “Cancer Alley.” One of them shows a field of green, a sky of blue, and in between, a small ranch style home with decorative plants on the front porch. The house is dwarfed by the expansive chemical plant towering behind it. Another photograph shows a misty morning landscape. In it, several over-sized spherical factory tanks are faintly visible through the mist, while the hollow grave-like slabs in the foreground rise up like memories; an indication of where homes once stood and people once lived.
Other images primarily function to showcase information. Viewers are presented with a combination of graphs, topographical maps, posters, leaflets, interesting emails, linear doodles, and scribbled notes. Each of these pieces of information was obtained through extensive research. Taken individually, they seem meaningless, but put on display side-by-side, they form narratives pertaining to complex economic and ecological forces that have shaped this landscape.
Somewhere in between, viewers will find several large infographic artworks: aesthetically pleasing representations of information gathered and then combined through graphic design. Various subjects were chosen with obvious specificity to convey very precise meanings. One such piece mashes together aesthetic elements with at least five distinct infographic systems. Superimposed are an image of bluish-black oil floating on water, an illustrated depiction of evolutionary history and the rise of man, a graph of carbon monoxide levels in our atmosphere through history, a cutaway view of the geological changes through time (from the appearance of fossil fuel to its complete depletion) and a map of the Mississippi River. Another such piece shows cutaway views of a human’s internal organs combined with extensive information regarding the astounding number of cancers that are caused by petroleum products that proliferate in our daily lives.
With such a broad spectrum, some of the infographics have lost their clarity and meaning. Even if the viewer will walk away with an idea, or a general concept, certain types of data are hard to glean from the visual representations alone. One such piece as mentioned above, depicts the evolution of man and the depletion of fossil fuels over time. The piece hypothesizes that when fossil fuel is all used up and carbon monoxide levels in the atmosphere make the earth uninhabitable, the evolutionary chain will end. Concrete data in this graphic is essentially unattainable or unreadable. This leads us to ask whether is it more important to lay out actual facts or to give just a general idea in an exhibit like this.
There are several other pieces in the show that present factual information very concretely with less focus on aesthetics. These pieces successfully function as a call to social action through an artistic representation of statistics and scientific evidence.
This show attempts to balance the vivid emotional photographs with the stark graphical overlays. Misrach and Orff have created a body of work which functions very well as a whole, though each individual work is executed with varying degrees of success. Some are bulky or over-worked, some beautiful and terrifying, while others are haunting but obscure. Perhaps this is meant to mimic the noisy proliferation of information we experience and analyze on a daily basis.
These photographs will fill viewers with an undeniable sense of horror and helplessness. It successfully presents us with information ranging from the things we use daily that are made of petroleum, to the types of cancers that are caused by those products. On a larger scale, it reminds us how the production of these products affects our environment and how it will change our future. It even gives us a window into the lives that were destroyed by various illnesses caused by petroleum products and the very plants that produce them all over the world. The show is painful to look at and yet the compelling information and poetic imagery is hard to look away from.
Unlike some other exhibits that display various inconvenient truths, “Petrochemical America” leaves us with a small glimmer of hope. Rather than leaving viewers with nothing more than an empty feeling in the pit of their stomach as a starting point for change, the exhibit offers up a small handbook full of potential solutions. Entitled, “Glossary of Terms and Solutions for a Post Petrochemical Culture,” the leaflet covers a whole range of options available to us as a means for coping with the consequences of our collective actions. Somehow, it is relieving to be reminded that despite the fact that the giant scale of social, political and environmental factors that led us to this point are much bigger than any of us imagine, even smalls actions like carpooling are a step in the right direction.
Ultimately, “Petrochemical America” as one complete entity achieves many things that a standard body of artwork does not. It functions to successfully present research and analysis in the form of an aesthetic visual art display. It is a scary, but also hopeful. And above all, it provides information via more than just one medium, which should allow people from all walks of life to appreciate and understand it.
~Rose Guterbock and Aaron Miller
“Petrochemical America: Project Room” is on display at the McGuffey Art Center through June 30, 2013.
A shot from Slumber Party Massacre by Rich Tarbell and Brian Wimer. Image courtesy of the artists.
For the LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph, Rich Tarbell and Brian Wimer have created a series of charming and nostalgic narrative photographs. The series, “Slumber Party Massacre,” is essentially a remake of the 1982 film of the same name. Tarbell and Wimer have obviously altered the story and how we view it by shooting photographs rather than film. This approach offers a unique vision of the slasher movies and their formulaic pivotal moments. It allows viewers to take some time to relish every detail, from the subtle foreshadowing, to the stunning climax, and all the gore and screaming that transpires in between.
The photographs are highly detailed glossy metal prints which are hung in a small floating gallery under the Market Street Garage. The images themselves are very striking and the printing method gives them a refurbished vintage feel. As you enter the gallery space, the narrative unfolds from left to right. It is also interesting to note how the photographs are dated by the 1980′s period objects which populate them. In the series you will find a wired landline telephone, an Ouija board, and a small television with a twist knob for the channels.
The way the images are constructed is varied and versatile. Some photographs are composed like still frames of film. An example of this is the image shot from the killer’s perspective. In it we see one gloved hand holding a trowel and a bloody heart held in the other. This is a technique often used in horror films to give a strong sense of point of view, as well as to preserve the mystery of the killer’s identity. Alternately, some frames are composed more like traditional photographs. For example, the first image in the series contains a lot of information that is conveyed through the composition. This image takes time to examine, and would function very differently with moving parts. However, all the images function to further the narrative by the most effective means available, drawing from the crude and campy implementations of the film genre itself.
The screenplay for the original 1982 film Slumber Party Massacre, written by the American feminist author Rita Mae Brown, was intended to be a parody of the genre. The producers shot the film as a straight genre piece instead. Nonetheless, the film retained elements of comedy and philosophy which were uncommon to its era. Although the photographs are difficult to analyze as one would a film, it seems as though Tarbell and Wimer have picked up on these subtle notes and carried them over to their reworked script. The photographs depict a predominantly female cast who live up to the standard of Nancy from Nightmare on Elm Street-not merely surviving by accident or relying upon external forces for salvation. Instead, the photographs depict a female instigated and female resolved murderous rampage, with many male and female casualties along the way. Tarbell and Wimer have also made the interesting decision (spoiler alert) to make the killer one of the slumber party participants. This is not a unique strategy in slasher films, but an interesting one considering the feminist undertones.
Despite possessing such a concrete narrative, a few of the photographs still manage to stand out as beautiful works independent of the series. In particular the first and last images are strikingly well composed, and distort time like a skilled painting.
In addition, we would be amiss not to mention the forethought taken in planning the opening reception for the show as well. Culinary themes run throughout the photos and it really put a smile on our faces to see the props from the photo-shoot offered up as refreshments. After all, who doesn’t want to eat pizza and popcorn and candy while enjoying a bunch of campy-fun, horror-filled photographs brimming with pizza and popcorn and candy? (We really giggled at the electric carving knife placed with a certain nonchalance among the pizza boxes!)
As a whole, the series is very nostalgic, lighthearted, and visually enjoyable. It is well worth a visit.
“Slumber Party Massacre” by Rich Tarbell and Brian Wimer is on display as an official Community Exhibit of the internationally renowned LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph. The show will be displayed alongside the “It’s Only Rock’n’Roll, Volume 2″ exhibit by Rich Tarbell. Both exhibits can be viewed from June 12-21 at Pop-Up Galleries 106 & 110 on the first floor of the Market Street Parking Garage.
Lola Flash's portraiture (shigi, NYC, 2008) is set against the skylines of London, New York, and South Africa. Image courtesy of the artist.
The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center encapsulates the seminal role played by the quest for and the denial of public education in the history of African-Americans. Promoted by Thomas Jefferson as key to the success of democracy, education was denied to black people in Southern states between 1800 and 1835. Despite this, African-Americans managed to educate themselves surreptitiously, knowing it was the surest route out of the tyranny of their existence. Their struggle, embodied in the center’s past, provides an essential window into this nation’s history.
Though the Jefferson School opened in 1926, it can trace its genesis to a freedmen’s school that opened just four months after the end of the Civil War. The center’s permanent interactive exhibition “Pride Overcomes Prejudice,” opening in September, chronicles the school’s rich history, revealing the resilience and resolve of Charlottesville’s African-American community in the pursuit of education.
Local African-Americans were “deeply engaged in the political process that determined access to education from Reconstruction to the end of the 20th century. “In the case of Charlottesville, their efforts meant pushing back against a system where separate was anything but equal,” said Executive Director Andrea Douglas.
Many don’t realize that the school held an enormous position for Charlottesville and Albemarle’s African- American citizens above and beyond its educational one. Without other options, it became a de facto community center. From plays to concerts, every range of entertainment took place here as well as various social events. The center will continue this tradition, offering the community a place where African-American culture and history is sustained and honored.
State-of-the-art, with all the bells and whistles you would expect in a first class museum, the center allows Douglas enormous latitude in the type of art she can exhibit. Incorporated into the design is a genealogy hub where local residents can trace their family histories, making connections with the larger African-American story of the United States. Here “histories are being questioned, developed, and articulated,” said Douglas. “We have come a long way into defining and undefining what Charlottesville’s black community is supposed to be in the minds of all of those people who think they know.”
Each year, the center will present four temporary exhibitions, monthly lectures, performances and a film series in its Dolby-surround theater. In addition, art and language classes will enable students of all ages to “engage with cultural production that reflects the diversity of our American landscape.”
The focus is mid-career artists like photographer Lola Flash, whose work will be on exhibit through August 30. Based in New York, Flash spent a decade in London where she received her M.A. Her photograph, “Stay afloat, use a rubber” is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum. Interestingly, Flash happens to have deep roots in Charlottesville: Her great great great grandfather was Berkeley Bullock, a landowner and deacon of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and she traces her family back to Sally Hemings.
Flash’s work deals with issues of gender, race, and sexual orientation, deconstructing pre-conceived notions and stereotypes. She is concerned with the phenomenon of “pigmentocracy” wherein lighter skin is equated with beauty. It’s an issue that exists within the entire African diaspora, whether one is talking about Brazil, Jamaica or the U.S. Aside from the soul-crushing injury such a hierarchy of skin tone does to self image, it also has real socioeconomic ramifications—going back to slavery, for example, where the slaves with lighter skin were assigned to the house, while the darker skinned ones labored in the field.
Flash’s arresting photographs of men and women, shot in London, South Africa, and New York, command attention. Flash keeps the locations intentionally ambiguous, but the subjects all have a unity of style: They’re hip, urban and urbane. With the exception of the light skinned women, gender is blurred—the message being one of desirability. But at least on the outside they don’t seem to be too bothered by these issues. Confident and self-possessed, they appear comfortable in their own skin no matter what its shade. And perhaps the fact that the new generation is more tolerant with respect to sexual orientation and race has a lot to do with this.
Large format (5′ x 4′) C-prints are hung just above eye-level so that you are looking up at them, giving them a position of power. The film border is left intentionally visible signaling that these are not rarefied portraits. Unframed and affixed to the wall with Velcro, there’s an edgy freshness and immediacy to the work. Nothing stands between you and it.
Flash exemplifies exactly what the Center is trying to do. “By concentrating on artists of the diaspora, which you don’t get to see very often in Charlottesville, we’re trying to diversify the city’s arts offerings,” Douglas explained. “We’re not limiting our selection to just American artists. Our desire is to exhibit artists from the Caribbean or from Africa or L.A.—artists whose point of view is so vastly different from an East Coast point of view. The work is going to look different and this will challenge the notion of cultural specificity. Black people are not monolithic. We are not all thinking the same thoughts or needing to have the same set of dialogues that have been prescribed for us. Creating those spaces where these dialogues become multiple and temporal is what I see as the center’s role.”
Lola Flash will give a gallery talk on June 14 at 5:30pm in the African American Heritage Center auditorium.
Detail of Nude in Motion by Guillermo Ubilla. Image courtesy of the artist.
We take mobility and locomotion for granted. Our bodies are designed like a well-oiled machine and our nervous system works with such fluidity that we often forget the complexity involved in creating movement. It isn’t until we sustain an injury that we remember all the physiological aspects, and how hard it is when that range of motion is taken away from us.
Throughout time, and all over the world, capturing the very moment in which movement occurs has fueled many artist’s ambitions. From Degas’ dancers, to Turner’s “Rain, Steam and Speed,” to Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase,” movement has offered a certain magic.
Guillermo Ubilla’s series “Nudes in Motion,” currently on display at FIREFISH Gallery, contributes to the tradition of celebrating movement. His photographs are clean, well presented and strive to capture quick movements of the human body in a clear and visually penetrating way.
The photographs are black and white figurative images with simple compositions. Each image contains one or more nude female figure, the visual evidence of its movement, and nothing else. The backgrounds are black or white, providing an empty space through which the bodies can move. Ubilla exposed his images over a period of time and captured the artifacting and blurring as his models moved. The evidence of movement is caught in the form of fingers tracing lines across the composition, fuzzy spheres repeating themselves in space, or phantoms appearing behind shadowy figures. Each piece gives the impression of shadows, blurred vision, even echoes of inverted x-rays. The contrast within the images is heightened, the edges are soft, supple and distinctly human.
The photographs are not portraits. The identity and details of the individuals, other than an occasional tattoo, are not significant. The figures in the photographs are all females and all nude. The lack of clothing reveals bizarre and interesting details of the figure’s movements. The collapsed time twists and contorts the bodies of the models. However, it is not clear in the photographs why the figures are all female. As a study of movement, the show seems narrowly focused in this respect.
The images give the viewer little choice but to focus on the figure in motion. The black space around the figures serves a few purposes. It provides contrast, sets the figures in a particular place in the composition and also provides an empty feeling where we can easily imagine where the figures are moving next. In many of his images this purpose is clear and effective. However, Ubilla also tends to overuse blank space, achieving a crisp design and aesthetic, but conflicting with the way the image functions. The large spaces sometimes add nothing to the image or even dampen the effect of subtle movements in the figure.
According to the artist, “The idea behind the project was to capture the movement of a human body over a period of a few seconds. Often photographs are about a single, decisive moment capture in a fraction of a second. I wanted to take a moment and spread it out over a few seconds and see what kinds of shapes and patterns the human body can make under those conditions.” To accomplish this, Ubilla used a variety of lighting equipment; continuous lighting sources and flash stroboscopic lighting, as well as a long shutter speed to record the path of movement of the body. The method used to capture these images is not obvious, leaving the photographers work mysterious and a little eerie.
The finished pieces clearly depict how well Ubilla uses the tools of his craft. He also printed, matted, and framed all of the pieces for the show himself. Each portion of Ubilla’s creative process has been well controlled with quality in mind.
Guillermo Ubilla’s show “Nudes in Motion” at the Firefish Gallery opens Thursday, June 6 from 7pm – 9pm and will remain on display for the month of June, a month in which we celebrate the photograph.
It is well worth a visit to see well thought out and well presented work by a local artist. Ubilla was also recently featured in Black and White Magazine.
