Archives for February 2010

Matt Sheridan Smith had one of those 3-minute Shakespeare installations that Western Bridge now features. Besides a central exhibit, Western Bridge has taken to offering now-you-see-them, now-you’ve-missed them exhibits upstairs. They last two weeks. Considering that Western Bridge is open Thursday to Saturday, that means the audience has six days to hop to it or regret its choices at its leisure.

I saw Matt Sheridan Smith’s Flotsam and Jetsam late Saturday afternoon, the last day. It was riveting, but fortunately for those who failed to stop by, his is the kind of riveting that can be appreciated online through images. One of Sol LeWitt’s better gambits was to bury a drawing, refuse to say where but offer a certificate of ownership to whoever was smart enough to snap it up. Of all his drawings, this is one I think of most, the one I never saw.

Flotsam and Jetsam is a remake of a sculpture Smith presented at Lisa Cooley in 2009,
Self-portrait (golden sections). Reviewing that show, the astute Marie-Adele Moniot is worth quoting:

Self-portrait (golden sections), the “heart of the show” according to
the gallery’s press materials, is a series of pedestals arranged in a
sort of postmodern Stonehenge in the center of the room. Smith made each
pedestal according to the “golden ratio,” measuring the proportions of
his own body and transferring them to plywood. Though he literally puts
himself on display, the various shapes and sizes still seem to conceal
something essential about the artist, his process and the works’ import
as stand-ins for the body. (more) 

At Western Bridge were the same arrangement of pedestals:

This time out, however, they’re going down. In the corner of the room was a sack of cement.

At the end of the day on Saturday, as the exhibit drew to a close, Smith mixed the cement, opened the pedestals and poured it in. Two he dumped in the Sound, as jetsam. One might have been rescued, to serve as a bench in front of Western Bridge. (Flotsam.) Whether he’d dispose of the final pedestal or recycle it had not, late Saturday afternoon, been determined.

As with his exhibit in New York, the pedestals served as stand-ins for his body.

The shift in meaning, from last year to the present, when the recession grinds on and opportunities for artists to make any sort of living recede before us, is haunting.

F. Scott Fitzgerald:
(via)

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter – tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther … And one fine morning –
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Unlike Gatsby, artists are rapidly losing faith in that future. They see losses – what they can no longer afford, what they’ll never have, what they’ll have to do to survive and continue to be artists. Will they jetsam their work or park it to be retrieved later, like flotsam left after a wreck?

D.W. W.D. Snodgrass wrote in a similar vein about his child, following a bitter divorce:

Heart’s Needle,  Part 5

Winter again and it is snowing;

Although you are still three,

You are already growing

Strange to me.

You chatter about new playmates, sing

Strange songs; you do not know

Hey ding-a-ding-a-ding

Or where I go

Or when I sang for bedtime,
Fox
Went out on a chilly night,

Before I went for walks

And did not write;

You never mind the squalls and storms
That are renewed long since;

Outside, the thick snow swarms

Into my prints

And swirls out by warehouses, sealed,
Dark cowbarns, huddled, still,

Beyond to the blank field,
The fox’s hill

Where he backtracks and sees the paw,

Gnawed off, he cannot feel;

Conceded to the jaw

Of toothed, blue steel

And while on the subject of the melancholy passage of time, the invaluable, essential Western Bridge is six years old. When launched by Bill and Ruth True, they said they saw it as a 10-year project. Recently, they speculated that it might conclude at eight. That leaves two years. Tick, tick.

Via

In the West, even artists are rugged individuals who tend to go it alone. Although those who find strength in numbers are especially rare in Seattle, they’re gaining ground.

Here’s a history of who stands out.

1. Buster Simpson: In the late 1970s, he was key to coming up with the public art concept of the design team. Now that the concept is ubiquitous, it generates more than its share of  timid art, but Simpson’s version continues to stand out. He changes partners with nearly every job and makes the process of collaboration part of his performance.

Vertical Planters. (Image via)

2. The studio glass movement is nothing but teamwork, yet a single star almost always tops the credit line. Not in Flora Mace/ Joey Kirkpatrick‘s studio. Life and art mates, they have made it work for more than 30 years.

After the debut of Mace and Kirkpatrick, years went by. Not a peep from anything close to a successful team. Then, in 2002, a couple appeared who named themselves after a tool known for its usefulness in first drafts.

3. Lead Pencil. (Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo) Skating on the line edge of art & architecture and claiming both. Like Mace and Kirkpatrick, life partners.

Under the Surface, 2008, charcoal/paper, 72 x 60 inches

Since 2005, more good collaborators have been making their mark than at any time in the city’s art history. Aside from two artists who joined forces briefly, these new group thinkers are all male. Not a female in the bunch, or even a female on a team.

4. Sutton/Beres/Culler: (John Sutton, Ben Beres and Zac Culler) Comedy from the heart, formalism from the brain: Their performances, documentary photos and installations are moving them onto the national stage.

Dumanish 1 2009 – rowing on a local river that makes non-musical use of the term, heavy metal.

5. Eli Hansen. Because Hansen made his Seattle debut working with his already famous brother, Oscar Tuazon, many felt he was little more than Tuazon’s assistant. Two Seattle galleries (Howard House and Ambach & Rice), offered to represent him, but only if he brought his brother along.

Here is where Scott Lawrimore (Lawrimore Projects) shines. He is not distracted by resume. He could see right past Tuazon’s glow to Hansen’s gold. Lawrimore offered Hansen representation by himself and with any partners he wants to take on. So far, these partners have included childhood
friends Joey Piecuch and Herman Beans.

Notes Hansen on the LP Web site:

We are
brothers and friends first, artists second…We know each other’s
weaknesses, sadness, and confusion…We work in the same way we have
always worked together–as a community and as a family. 

Hansen and Piecuch, I’m not paranoid because I’m high, 2009

6. Fred Muram and Mike Simi: They want to be art partners, but it’s hard when they each do their best work alone. Unlike its members, this team has yet to prove itself. If they do, it will have to be by long distance, as Muram has moved to Chicago.

(Muram left, Simi on ladder. Image via)

7. Sol Hashemi and Jason Hirata: Brilliant both alone and together. The James Harris Gallery recently picked both up, but as individuals. Harris said he isn’t interested in collaborations, which leaves the pair free to work together wherever else they choose.

Hirata & Hashemi, The Dirty Shed Project.

Know others I’ve forgotten and/or missed? Please note them in the comments.
Thanks!

Can use them as a personal shield. (They work even when read upside down.)

Fred Muram, from his series, Kissing the Ceiling.

Art

Science

Liz Tran took Knitta‘s rap back to the studio – brighten the corner where you are. The Texas-based group of tagger moms were in Seattle in 2006 as part of Yoko Ott’s Softly Threatening: Artwork of the Modern Domestic. Below, Knitta attempts to take the chill off the Monorail.

Image via

Tran:

The idea of high and low art is both discredited and thriving. Even those who say they don’t observe these boundaries do.

Art from Emily Pothast and Mark
Grotjahn. The jewelry from Spinthread on Etsy. (Via Shaun Kardinal)

Can soak up the blood.

Adam Jahnke, via ARTslant