International Arts and Crafts

A small, self-standing clock that sits atop a pedestal is among the first objects one encounters in the International Arts and Crafts exhibition at the de Young Museum. The clock is modest compared to many of the objects that surround it. It’s scale and hand-painted wooden surfaces seem quaint next to the lush materials and exquisite handicraft seen elsewhere in the exhibit. The clock, designed by Englishman Charles Francis Annesley Voysey and made by Frederick Coote (case) and Camerer, Cuss and Co. (clock movement) between 1895 and 1896, might not have been memorable to me were it not for an adage that appears below the clock face, “TIME & TIDE WAIT FOR NO MAN.” This truism would be apt in the context of any historical exhibit, but concretized in a domestic use-object another truth emerges: many of the things made by people will long outlive their makers. This seems more inevitable than ironic. Still, in our age of disposability there is something improbable, even providential, about anything that lasts longer than the average human lifespan. Time and tide may indeed wait for no man, but collected and categorized the hundreds of mostly functional objects on display in the exhibit do wait for us—each new generation’s curiosity about the past.

Clock, 1895-1896
Designed by Charles Francis Annesley Voysey. Mahogany case made by Frederick Coote. Movement made by Camerer, Cuss and Co. © Victoria & Albert Museum/V&A Images.

The exhibition organized by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London hovers between a display of unique objects and didactic history—insisting on period dates and geographic distinctions, [the exhibit is broken into Britain (1880-1914), Continental Europe (1890-1914), United States (1890-1916) and Japan (1926-1945)] and biographical information about the major proponents of the movement (apparently William Morris, the Arts and Crafts patriarch, unable to find suitable furnishings for his home, founded his own company to fill the void, thus Morris & Co. http://www.william-morris.co.uk/ was born). At the same time there is very little given in the way of broader historical and cultural context. I suppose this is typical of art history, and it may not be the worst strategy. I did leave the exhibit anxious about my knowledge/memory of the history of art and world events, seeking to clarify a number of vagueries. Who were the Pre-Raphaelites again? When was Art Nouveau happening (France is conspicuously absent from the exhibit)? How was it different from Arts and Crafts? What characterized Victorian style? And how was that different from Edwardian? Why did it take so long for an Arts and Crafts movement to emerge in Japan? And what about World War I? I hardly know a thing about World War I!

Of course it is a mixture of history and art that drew me to the exhibition in the first place. So the questions of chronology and context can recede, did recede, into the shadows cast by particular objects that caught my attention. It’s not that history has nothing to do with my appreciation for the set of delicate, thin-walled glasses designed by Philip Webb and made by James Powell & Sons in 1860, just that history becomes an ambient element along with my imagination around what appears to me a thing that is in perfect proportion to the world. Admittedly the intended utility of the Arts and Crafts objects—the human scale required for “the integration of art into everyday life” appeals to me, but it’s not every rug, chair, or light fixture that I find compelling. There is something more. Like David Ireland’s Dumballs or Gordon Matta-Clark’s Cuttings, a genuine engagement with the material world that produces something ineffable, something transcendent.

I know “transcendent” is generally reserved for the likes of Rothko paintings, but I found several instances of transcendence in the International Arts and Crafts exhibit. Most profound to me were objects that strongly foreshadowed “form follows function” modernism: the glasses by Webb, an arm chair designed by Josef Hoffman and made by J & J Kohn in 1908, fire irons designed and made by Ernest Gimson in 1910, and perhaps most disarming, the typeface designed by Edward Johnston for the London Underground http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tube/ in 1916 (it’s still in use today!). With this last item, what is on display are the original, hand-inked, upper and lower-case sans serif alphabets, complete with drafting marks, corrections, three versions of the lowercase “g” and a note warning that the ink is not waterproof—traces of the designer’s hand. It's surprising that such contemporary looking objects were not only made, but imagined close to a hundred years ago.

Of course relative to the history of human activity the Arts and Crafts movement could be considered contemporary. Its closeness to us—the familiar forms and textures, and to a great extent its ideologies, make the Arts and Crafts movement seem at once quaint and relevant. One of the first modern movements, Arts and Crafts embraced personal expression, egalitarianism, and secular imagery. It also opposed the dehumanizing effects of industrialization, idealizing rural life and emphasizing handcraft. The more socialist ideals of the movement didn’t survive as Arts and Crafts became tailored to wealthier clients. The apex of which can be seen in the all-encompassing architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and Greene and Greene. The highly skilled craftsperson working away in his shop, blissfully or not, simply cannot compete with factory production and mass marketing. It’s apples and oranges really. Ikea! And we find ourselves in a post-industrial world—hovering rather precariously above a deeply industrial infrastructure—where craft, in the Arts and Crafts sense, has become a hopelessly elitist notion.

Room re-creation, based on original drawings from Gustav Stickley's Craftsman Workshops. Designed and built by Jo Hormuth, Chicago Architectural Arts. Courtesy V&A, London.

Still, I’m able to take occasional pleasure in well made, beautiful objects, even if they are strictly “do not touch” (I set off one of the sensors simply by staring at it too long). Also part of the International Arts and Crafts exhibition is a room based on images from Gustav Stickley’s magazine The Craftsman, a sign carved by students of Frederick Meyer for the California School of Arts and Crafts (first named School of the California Guild of Arts and Crafts, later called California College of Arts and Crafts, and recently renamed California College of the Arts), a pair of “weed holders” designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, an unusual ceramic funerary urn in the shape of a Japanese building (I’m unable to remember the maker’s name), and a Japanese Mingei (Folk Art) interior from 1928 designed by Yanagi, Hamada, and Kawai, and until recently, thought to have been lost. Lastly, there is the de Young Museum itself, not in the exhibit proper, but in many ways an homage to the legacy of Arts and Crafts design. So I was surprised, then disappointed, then amused to see such shoddy workmanship in the construction of the walls for the exhibit (yes, the badly taped sheetrock joints are noticeable under those tasteful muted tones).

International Arts and Crafts: William Morris to Frank Lloyd Wright will be on view at the de Young Museum through June 18th. For more info go to http://206.14.230.206/index.asp

The Art of Tea

I attended the opening of “The Art of Tea” (or Why is Soda Pop More Popular than Tea?) show at the Cricket Engine Gallery http://www.cricketengine.org last Friday and I did not see a single Mr.T related work. What a gyp! Although artist Lexa Walsh did create a piece titled “Cozy” constructed from hair extensions that did very much resemble something that would be very much at home on the head of George Clinton or Cousin It.

Now I’m not much of a tea drinker. Sometimes I get a craving for sweet & sour chicken so I go to the restaurant where such things are served and they pour me tea and I drink it because it’s there. But to answer the question asked in the title of the show I prefer soda and the reason why is simply because it’s choc full of sugar and delicious chemicals that are bad for the human body and as we learned in jr.high all things delicious are hazardous (Not unlike Barbara Sue Hillary who sat next to me in third period English).

The show featured a live performance of a Japanese tea ceremony and a free to all tea tasting hosted by a glam rock inspired Mad Hatter played by Vinney Flores. One of the greatest assets of the Cricket Engine gallery is its unassuming nature. It is a very welcoming place where the artists can feel free to be more experimental in the work they present here than they might in a more mainstream setting. Jessica Moreno an artist in the show and a friend of mine created an incredibly charming Alice in Wonderland inspired piece titled “The Dormouse” which can be seen on her web site http://www.allfeltup.com/ no hipster’s nursery should be without one. She is relatively new to the bay area art scene and as you may know it can be a very daunting task to break into this or any other field. But thanks to venues like Cricket Engine budding artists have a place to cut their teeth.

The show is up through May 28th, 2006

Cricket Engine Gallery
499 Embarcadero Avenue #3 (at 5th Avenue) in Oakland
Gallery Hours 1pm to 5pm Saturday & Sunday
Or by Appointment 510-835-1920

Michelle Waters' "Animal Insurrection"

"Animal Insurrection," Michelle Waters’ series of paintings at the Presidio’s Thoreau Center http://www.thoreau.org/gallery.html , reminds us that art can, even in the apres-moi-la-Deluge decadence of the late Bush Regime, aspire to arouse the social conscience and foster a sense of ecological urgency. Waters, a sometime wildlife rehabilitator, clearly identifies with the animal victims of human expansionism and dominion/dominionism. Her paintings are adamantly pissed off about human arrogance and stupidity —especially about our tendency to foul our nest while careering about in hulking vehicles— and yet mordantly funny, too, indulging her love of the absurd sharpened by her moral imagination into "environmental surrealism," or, Hieronymus Bosch meets Edward Abbey.

Bosch, the 15th century allegorist whom contemporary audiences tend to see simply as the visionary champ of all time, would certainly understand and appreciate Waters’ moral intent, so alien to today’s largely innocuous formalist Art Lite. Waters, like Bosch, reverts to the tradition of medieval folk art: animals hunt their hunters in an eternal Feast-of-Fools reversal of the natural order — animals, of course, just as in cartoons from Disney to "Maus," standing for the denizens of the human pecking order, and exacting/enjoying retribution. In medieval eschatology (The Vision of Tundale, Dante, Bosch), the punishment fits the crime, and grim poetic justice prevails: the lustful are tormented by snakes, toads and other vermin, for example (don’t you just hate that?). In Waters’ The Right to Arm Bears a Papa Bear shows off his bareskin rug and glass-eyed trophy mounts (like saints’ heads on chargers) to an admiring Mama and Baby. In What’s for Dinner, animals prepare to feast on roast man-beast. In Global Warming, polar bears sugar the engine of a Hummer. In Habitat Restoration, animals demolish an overpass.

But Waters’ animals are without malice, impartial agents of justice, rather, neither demonic nor angelic. No humans are harmed in the making of Waters’ pictures (given those few exceptions already cited), just their absurd symbols of power: Hummers, transmission lines, overpasses, billboards, Bobbing Bird oil pumps. The bears, mountain lions, seals, vultures, walruses, woodpeckers, and caribou doing the dismantling are workmanlike both in their use of human tools (jackhammers, axes, explosives) and in their workaday attitudes and postures. They’re restoring the balance of nature; it’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. Perhaps the absence of humans is accountable on other grounds: resources have vanished and they’ve just moved on, like our local Ohlone Indians; that’s the benign interpretation, anyway. In The Un-Development Agency the billboards being dismantled by the animals seem less threatening than the exhortations on the signs: "Monster Homes…Where All the Neighbors Are Like You!" We suspect that the suburbanites were vanquished less by maddened animals than by monster mortgages and monster commutes. In Land of the Free, gas-masked animals stare us down before a landscape of oil rigs, fires, and sharklike rockets; in this dystopic version of Edward Hicks’ Peaceable Kingdoms, reflecting today’s interconnected "flat world (to quote Tom Friedman)," all homelands are insecure if any one is.

If American consumers are still capable of wising up, it will be because of the "cultural resistance to ecocide" of Waters and others telling us that Mother Earth is tired of cleaning up after us. When the Durangos run aground, the Tahoes aredrowned, and the Expeditions and Foresters utterly lost (full disclosure: I drive a teeny tiny girlie man SUV), we may repent our sin of gluttony (gula, in Bosch’s Seven Deadly Sins). If we’re smart we may be able to strike a better balance, a win-win-deal, with Gaia in all her manifestations.

Felipe Dulzaides & Packard Jennings

The concurrent solo exhibitions at Catharine Clark Gallery presenting Packard Jennings and Felipe Dulzaides made use of the unexamined life under scrutiny tying in several cases of suspect: suggestive advertising, target marketing, rediscovered perspective of the everyday, and the challenge of office culture on the human instinct.

Jennings and Dulzaides both utilize an invisible hand approach to guide the viewer toward seemingly clear stated conclusions on topics of universal concern while never insisting on any viable outcome. Minus any clear case in point methods and refusing any hard line tactics of a personal nature grants Jennings and Dulzaides a chance at producing interpretations from the jovial to the deeper inflective.

Jennings series of illustrations titled "Business Reply Pamphlets" uses ‘You’ (general) by example illuminating a track of reliance on the suggestibility of the viewer. Whereas one could view the "Business Reply Pamphlets" illustrations as light wry humor, the work could also be seen as scratching just below the surface of social innuendos employing a fleeting cynical overtone in an attempt to evade too brash of a judgment. Hosting a brand of counter cause usability, Jennings proposed reverse office culture seeks the vein of the transient and impermanence that underlies contemporary social structures. Is the extreme alternative too simple a line to cross without an explicit destination- such that the risk becomes Jennings cultural criticisms lost in an aesthetic façade catering more to allaying any point too critical or (possibly) alienating while leaving any deeper commentary untouched?

Jennings strength lies within the green interpretation of his statements: the mixture of jest and cynicism coupled with illustration and grass root efforts captures a side of the artist that comes across as honest and thoughtful. Also to Jennings benefit is his taste for experimentation in social cause, new realizations on exhausted cultural criticisms that have depreciated or gone underground due to current political climates coupled with his quiet removal from the front lines of the cause. Jennings is not championing on the side of chaos or anarchy but is paying homage to its historical merit by chipping away at framework that holds such values in place.

Jennings and Dulzaides both utilize a personal value in their work on very different levels. Jennings personal appearance in the Bus Stop Advertising project documentation, (though not of his personal choosing) connects the artist with the message in a personal manner, which elevates the message to a direct statement pushing a borderline activist sentiment. Stronger than that of Jennings personal image included next to one of the retooled bus bench advertisements reading “You don’t need it”, is Jennings name carved into the seat of the constructed bus bench located in the gallery. These actions take Jennings from the universal and insert him directly and intimately into his work, almost like a stamp of personal approval. As a social comment on the suspicious quality of corporate culture Jennings work is better served outside of a traditional gallery space and in the public arena where direct interaction can be made and received. This was envisioned with the bus tour organized by gallery, making Jennings work on display a full documentary of the realized projects co-directed with artist Steve Lambert.

The bus bench project organized by Steve Lambert, the Anti Advertising Agency and Jennings targeted Oakland bench back advertising space and a cross sectional survey of the neighborhoods they exist in. The statement available in the gallery for visitors explains what they are viewing as documentation of the bench project and presents visual artifacts of public view space revised by artist vision over typical advertisement. Jennings bench back illustrations installed on Oakland bus benches hits deep within the tradition of Oakland’s covertly installed and removed public art projects such as Justin Artifice’s wall murals and bus bench facades and Erik Groff’s disputed territories. The available literature in the gallery made Jennings message most direct within this instance, using referenced statements and flawlessly mastered illustrations depicting the characters of the rampant stereotyping in far less hostile like actions and environments. What may not be as understandable is the clear intention of images, at times found thick in interpretation, to the general public outside the gallery and beyond the one-block radius of the targeted bench.

Dulzaides photographic series, "Series: One-minute Installation in Havana", featured the phenomenon of perspective trading: what we view daily redefined by the help of Dulzaides impromptu drawings on scraps of white paper. Lampposts, clothes lines, flags, and city statues all received a simple translation. Dulzaides is the invisible guide in each print, as the focal point is such that the viewer is right next to Dulzaides while he reconstructs on site via momentary reconsideration.

Dulzaides C-Print series of his recent site specific billboard project in San Francisco titled "Double Take" are beautiful billboard size replicas of city landscape articles. The emblematic billboard reproductions offer little to interject beyond the reproductions of the immediately recognizable. "Double Take" is fulfilled by occupying billboard space otherwise leased by advertisers, such as one of the projects sponsors, Clear Channel. With its rank and merit in urban art, Dulzaides personal intuition seems absent with the "Double Take" series (unlike "Series: One-minute Installation in Havana"), instead present is a place holder in the ever current San Francisco tradition of flighty urban discourse: messages that read more as ‘non-messages’ that are vaguely linked to personal perception more than that of any one true defining point or cause. The sterile and empty feel of "Double Take" is depressing when viewed against Dulzaides more personally involved work on display.

Jennings and Dulzaides work within the public realm are incredibly plotted and designed pieces that can be described as public art. This is the inherent beauty and similarity within their work. The heavy reliance on translation, intent and speculative investment on the part of the viewer at times produces a questionable fit for the benefit of the general populous or the average public viewer. Some of the social comments risk ending up entrenched in detail and laden causes that resist simplicity and end up woven in personal philosophies such that a surface glance may be all that is left for the average bystander.

Moby/Monstro and me.

Chad Stayrooks show at Ping Pong gallery mixes fantasy with mild psychosis via the scientific method…

I think the best part of the show was not the images on the wall, nor the giant whale – Chad’s impromptu performance WITH the whale on the other hand, and his documentation via polaroid of the visitors was the most dynamic aspect.
The performance was as follows:
Chad crawls into the mouth of the whale, then proceeds to eject roses through the blowhole…minutes later he emerges through the blowhole changed into his bunny costume (a persona he dons for many of his works) and a t-shirt bearing his artistic equation.
Weird is a word I hear spoken about Chad’s work….weird it is, with a logic system in place.
I have to say I have a tendency to like work that is cryptic, and weird, and misconstrued.
Maybe this is due to my fondness of mystery – the unknown realm. When an artwork instantly hits me over the head, I may initially be impressed, but it leaves no questions behind. Though I haven’t made full sense of Chad’s fantasy whale/horse/pidgeon imagery, I still see that he has his own artistic logic. Essentially, he lives in a world of wonderment, creatures and mythology, humans and logic – depending on your taste, this could be extremely pleasant or extremely excrutiating.

The Stayrook Equation: governing overall artistic value

(VA + m) / i = PV
thus
(((PV2) Im) Ic) / X = OV

where:

VA = valid argument

m = medium

i = artist’s intention

PV = proposed artistic value

Im = intensity of the communication/concept as derived from the medium

Ic = intensity of the meaning as derived from the communication/concept

X = audience expectation

OV = overall artistic value

The valid argument plus the medium used, divided by the intention of the artist equals the proposed artistic value of the work. Thus, the proposed artistic value squared and multiplied by the intensity of the communication/concept as derived from the medium, multiplied by the intensity of the meaning as derived from the communication/concept, all divided by the audience expectation equals the overall artistic value of the work.

Red76

Collectives are a new hot topic for museums across the country, institutions attempting to reaffirm their anti-establishment street-cred by showing work that challenges the organization’s own purpose as cultural mediator. Yerba Buena Center for the Arts is hosting a year-long investigation into the phenomenon of artist collaboratives and the current Whitney Biennial is also featuring an number of artist groups such as Reena Spaulings, The Bernadette Corporation, The Wrong Gallery and Otabenga Jones & Associates — all monikers for a larger body of artists working together with a particular mission, one that usually questions the role of the museum or the art-star frenzied market. The Portland-based artist collective Red76, featured in the current exhibition Peer Pleasure 2 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, is one group that throws art conventions into disarray while effectively engaging a wide audience in unexpected locations from laundromats to karaoke bars.

Who is Red76? The only constant member is Sam Gould, who started the group in 2000 with Kris Soden to organize monthly art and music parties. These events have given rise to prolific collaborations with a network of artists, more resembling the structure of a rock band than the one-artist, one-product norm. The group’s artistic production has been altered and influenced by the occasional participation of Paige Saez, Laura Baldwin and Jen Rhodes. However, it seems futile to their purpose to call out any more names. Authorship does not concern the group. Red76 is inclusive of all those who participate in their series of “How-To…” projects that call on the public to get involved. Anyone who conducts any one of these projects, such as a “Laundry Lecture Series” or hangs an informational flyer about Duchamp as part of “Free Art History” could seemingly claim membership to the group. Or, you could just forget about assigning any roles at all — a challenge to how we, as both audience members and participants ingest, interpret and discuss art.

For the Peer Pleasure 2 exhibition, Red76 has created an installation of videos, photographs and ephemera that document their past projects in the same quick and dirty style as the interventions themselves. Spirit Quest, another artist collective, repurposed disused wooden crates through a process of sanding and finishing to create the platform and background of raw wood panels for the installation. Rather than opting for the standard museum wall text, the collective has chosen to draw their explanatory information with blue marker and black chalk, using arrows to point to corresponding photos, sketches and posters roughly stapled onto the walls. This raw presentation reminds the viewer that what you see is not a precious art work to behold; the art project has taken place outside of institutional sanctions — in the streets or in public places — produced with only a shoe string budget and a huge band of conspirators.

One photograph depicts a row of carrots sprouting up from the cracks of grey pavement beneath a freeway underpass. This is one possible enactment of the project “New Graffiti” that calls for any alteration to public space that may create a disruption to mundane consciousness. Red76 asks you to reimagine public space as your own and dare to think that you may be the creator of your culture.

A stop-animation video documenting Spirit Quest’s workshop process plays alongside videos that relive a few more of these open-source projects such as a “Laundry Lecture Series” where people are indiscriminately invited to give talks at a laundromat of their choosing. “It’s easy,” Red76 says “invite someone to talk about something, bring your laundry, throw in a few quarters and some detergent and begin.” Voila! A pesky chore is made into an informative experience with a snap of the fingers.

“News Blackout” is an even simpler task demonstrated in a video by an artist taking a sharpie to a newspaper, blacking out strategic words, and an instantaneous message is put into the public consciousness about the censored content of our media.

On another monitor, protagonist Sam Gould is shown enacting “Protest Song Karaoke” by prefacing an apolitical karaoke song, “Sweet Caroline,” with a fabricated political message — Gould announces that Neil Diamond was lamenting over an old girlfriend who was forced to break up with him because of her anti-semitic parents.

Against a wall, stacks of brown paper shopping bags serve as invitations to “The Museum on the Heart on Your Sleeve,” a picnic on the lawn of the Yerba Buena Gardens that will converge on June 6th. You are asked to create your own “museum,” or any collection of meaningful objects housed in say coat pockets, backpacks, under hats, or simply conveyed through thoughts or conversations. Just imagine the nonsense and loveliness that will ensue as people bounce around picnic blankets to view each other’s miniature museums.

Red76 is shown alongside Visible Collective’s internet-based project “Disappeared in America,” which gives a voice to the untold victims of the “war on terror” and Temporary Services who mine the territory of prison life through an artistic collaboration with an anonymous inmate “Angelo.” These projects share the serious political tone of the exhibition in the downstairs gallery, Black Panther Rank and File, which mixes photo and video documentation of the radical movement with contemporary art reflecting on the Black Panther legacy. With this charged subject matter still knocking around in your head, you might find yourself in a conflicted headspace when confronted with Red76’s seemingly light-hearted interventions. But to dismiss the collective on the basis of their humorous approach would be to miss the subversive point of their project.

While the Black Panther exhibition explores the political movement of a previous generation, “Peer Pleasure 2” asks: What is our struggle today? How is the younger generation challenging the current status quo? While Red76 may not be addressing a specific political concern, they are proposing an alternative of generating culture outside of institutional sanctions. Like the 1970’s phenomenon of “guerilla gallerizing,” in which artists organized exhibitions in unexpected locations, Red76 challenges the very categorizations and hierarchies of culture constructed by institutions who deem what is worthy of being presented to the public and what isn’t. Collectives provide an experimental forum for young ambitious artists to work outside of institutional approval and they do so with little or no money—just the pooling of energy and resources by their members. The message that Red76 sends is get out there, get your hands dirty, just do something!

The Whitney Biennial, a self-proclaimed “cultural barometer” and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, devoted in part to representing its local community, should be commended for acknowledging these ever-proliferating groups that are difficult to pin down or categorize due to changing membership and, often, an inconsumable final product. But can this type dynamic of work ever really sit comfortably in a static art institution? While Red76 is successful in their thoughtful installation that constantly points to the outside world, you still have to wonder if it even makes sense for these kinds of projects to be represented inside the very structure that it wishes to challenge.

For information on upcoming Red76 events in the Bay Area call the toll-free hotline
1-888-212-5652 or visit www.red76.com/howto.html.