Hungry Hyaena

Oh, Starlings!

2012-01-24T19:43:00.007-05:00

A few months ago, a friend shared the above video with me. You might have seen or read about it before; it went "viral" late last year. The two friends who appear in the clip are treated to an intimate encounter with a large murmuration, or flock of European starlings. Murmurations of such substantial size are natural phenomena that, no matter how familiar, retain their capacity to inspire wonder, even awe. As one, the birds sweep and dance in an astonishing and fluid choreography; the rush of their wingbeats and many bodies pushing through the air produces a sound that accounts for the name. Because the audible component of a murmuration is impressive in its own right, I wish a version of the video were available without the hokey music, but the giddy joy that the canoeing friends experience is palpable, especially near the short film's end, when one of the women looks at the camera with marveling, wide eyes, and they both begin to laugh.

Richard Barnes
"Murmur 01 November 15, 2005"
Watching the video, I recalled photographer Richard Barnes' "Murmur" series, which documents vast murmurations over EUR, a suburb of Rome, Italy. Barnes is better known for "Animal Logic," a terrific collection of photographs that document the artifice of natural history museums, and "Unabomber," his contemplative pictures of Ted Kaczynski's cabin, but "Murmur" is his most poetic project.

Richard Barnes
"Murmur 21 November 26, 2006"
Revisiting "Murmur" this week, I was particularly engaged by "Flight Patterns," a short essay by Jonathan Rosen about Barnes' pictures, starlings, and, more generally, birdwatching.

"[...] We project onto the natural world a large measure of ourselves. In ancient Rome, augurs studied the flight patterns of birds to divine the will of the gods; part of the fascination with starlings is the way they seem to be inscribing some sort of language in the air, if only we could read it. [...] Bird-watching thrives on the recognition that the urban and the wild must be understood together. We are, after all, urban and wild ourselves, and still figuring out how to make the multiple aspects of our nature mesh without disaster."

Right on, Mr. Rosen. I'm a birdwatcher who admires starlings' adaptability and beauty, and I'm particularly intrigued by their ability to polarize people. But, when a murmuration swirls around or above you, there are no words; it's "full on, double rainbow all the way across the sky," so to speak.

Christopher Reiger
"further murmuration"
2008
Watercolor, gouache, pen and sumi ink on Arches paper
12 3/8 x 13 1/4 inches

Image credits: "Murmuration" video, Sophie Windsor Clive, 2010; Richard Barnes photographs and Christopher Reiger painting, courtesy the artists

Urban Wild #4

2012-01-18T10:14:00.000-05:00

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

Big Sky Country

2012-01-13T21:36:00.009-05:00

Christopher Saunders
"Whitenoise no. 1"
2008
Oil on linen
24 x 18 inches
In a 2009 post about painter Christopher Saunders' "Whitenoise" series, I recounted philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer's hierarchy of aesthetic experience and connected it to Saunders' work.

"In his volume The World As Will and Representation (1818), Schopenhauer elucidated a scale of aesthetic experience. At one end of this spectrum, he described the 'Feeling of Beauty' as 'Light...reflected off a flower. (Pleasure from a mere perception of an object that cannot hurt [the] observer.)' At the other end of the spectrum, the philosopher positioned the 'Full Feeling of Sublime' and the 'Fullest Feeling of Sublime.' These categories are described, respectively, as 'Overpowering turbulent Nature. (Pleasure from beholding very violent, destructive objects.),' and 'Immensity of Universe's extent or duration. (Pleasure from knowledge of observer's nothingness and oneness with Nature.)'

[...] Most modern humans (especially modern humans in the First World) are insulated from inclement weather. We fret over a rained-out ball game or beach party, but we rarely tremble before dark cloud heads; our appreciation of the elements is principally one of admiration, an aesthetic experience that resides near the middle of Schopenhauer's scale. But Saunders' landscapes provide viewers with a vantage point that repairs the reverent awe that we once felt before the expansive firmament. He does not include the rugged, mountainous imagery familiar to most artistic depictions of the Sublime. Instead he portrays clouds pushing over a featureless land, the violent potential of atmospheric flux readily observable at a distance. The clouds, vast, magnificent, menacing, dominate Saunders' compositions; they are the rough mountains of our inner wilderness."

Camille Seaman
"Each Year We Pray"
2008
Archival Pigment Print, Edition of 5
32 x 48 inches
I thought of Saunders' paintings when I visited Corden/Potts Gallery last week and was introduced to the photography of Camille Seaman. Cloudheads also dominate Seaman's pictures. To produce her "Big Cloud" series (2008), the photographer crisscrossed Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas chasing supercells, powerful thunderheads associated with hail, downpours, and strong winds. Her description of the storms -- "In that force is also creation." -- suggests an appreciation of the sublime.

Christopher Saunders
"Whitenoise no. 14"
2011
Oil on linen
24 x 18 inches
The press release for "The Fair and Open Face of Heaven," a concurrent 2-person show in New York City that features new paintings by Saunders, notes that, "though there is the sense of the sublime [in Saunders imagery], there is certainly the portent of doom." The "though" is unnecessary; sublime experience, as our brooding friend Schopenhauer made clear, is nothing if not fearsome. Existential dread is often the foundation of spiritual euphoria. As I observed in the earlier write-up on Saunders, the "surrender of self also opens our field of vision to the infinite variety and scope of being; through negation, liberation."

The modern man/nature dichotomy of the Romantics is best dismissed as naive ideology, but it's not entirely without value. Arcadia, the pastoral Utopia celebrated in so many paintings, poems, and scores, is a fiction, but the Romantics weren't exactly wrong in insisting that bucolic and frontier settings act as a curative to what they viewed as urban and industrial decadence. Although experiences of the sublime like those Schopenhauer categorizes occur in living rooms, houses of worship, and on bustling city streets, they're more easily afforded outdoors, under the sky's great canopy. In a gallery space, we're unlikely to be awe-struck or shaken to the extent that we might be were we, like Seaman, kneeling beneath a roiling supercell. But one of the principal joys of art is its ability to provide us with inklings of the sublime and the ineffable, no matter the setting.

Camille Seaman
"Tracks Through the Field"
2008
Archival Pigment Print, Edition of 9
20 x 30 inches
Christopher Saunders' paintings are on view at Allegra LaViola Gallery (179 East Broadway, NYC) through February 4. Camille Seaman's photographs are on view at Corden/Potts Gallery (49 Geary Street, Ste. 410, San Francisco) through February.

Image credit: courtesy Christopher Saunders and Corden/Potts Gallery

Her Colorful Obliteration

2012-01-10T11:55:00.005-05:00

Yayoi Kusama
"Obliteration Room"
2011-12
Yayoi Kusama calls herself an "obsessive artist." Indeed, she's obsessed with polka dots; her paintings, sculptures, and constructed environments are almost always speckled with them. But Kusama's singular commitment to circles and pattern isn't her only "outsider artist" qualification. Since the mid-1970s, the artist has voluntarily committed herself to a Tokyo mental hospital, where she continues to create new work.

Yayoi Kusama
"Obliteration Room"
2011-12
I recalled this last fact when I first saw photographs of Kusama's "Obliteration Room," an installation included in her "Look Now, See Forever" solo exhibition at Australia's Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art. "Obliteration Room" began as a completely whitewashed interior space. The room's couches, bookshelves, kitchen table, cupboards, house plants, and piano were all colorless. When the museum exhibition opened, colorful stickers were distributed to installation visitors, and children were especially encouraged to cover whatever they pleased. Over time, the whitewashed installation has exploded in vibrant color, its once discernible space transformed into a perception-warping experience. The room, as the installation's title predicted, has been obliterated.

Yayoi Kusama
"Obliteration Room"
2011-12
"Obliteration Room" might arouse the ire of Jerry Saltz and other critics weary of Relational Aesthetics. Despite countless curatorial essays complicating its definition, Relational Aesthetics is just a term applied to artwork that incorporates viewer interaction. Most of the artists celebrated for their Relational Aesthetic achievements -- Rirkrit Tiravanija, Carsten Höller, and Pierre Huyghe are the best known representatives -- produce work that, as Saltz wrote in his December New York magazine column, fails to provide "much in terms of form, social commentary, or the willful transformation of materials. It’s arty junk food."

Kusama's "Obliteration Room" distinguishes itself because the "relational" aspect of the project -- the distributed stickers and visitor interactivity -- eventually results in a transformative, "aesthetic" experience. Rarely do works considered part of the Relational Aesthetics camp move beyond the vitality of the act itself; generally speaking, there is little aesthetic, in the traditional sense of the word, about Relational Aesthetics. Refreshingly, Kusama's simple installation places equal emphasis on both the interactive role of the viewer and the visual result.

Yayoi Kusama
"Obliteration Room"
2011-12

Yayoi Kusama
"Obliteration Room"
2011-12
Thanks to Colossal for drawing Kusama's installation to my attention.

Image credit: top three images, courtesy Queensland Art Gallery and Mark Sherwood; bottom two images, Stuart Addelsee

Ernest Jolly's Unfinished Labors

2012-01-08T22:43:00.008-05:00

Ernest Jolly
"Limbo"
2012
Disco ball, flocking, wire, leather thread, and foam
Dimensions variable
One has to marvel at the inscrutability of the sculptures and installation Ernest Jolly includes in "The Labor Party," his current solo exhibition at Patricia Sweetow Gallery. "Carry Me Home," a wheelbarrow fashioned of frosted Plexiglas and metal, and "Limbo," an installation featuring a half-flocked disco ball spinning above leather punching bags, are compelling and surreal creations. Yet I connected neither to the plight "of the black agricultural worker in the Southern United States before the First World War," their conceptual substance according to the gallery's press release, which almost reads as if it describes a piece of choreography or theater.

"The punching bags represent the hero of the field laborer, a Black Prize Fighter, whose strength was respected in a world where the laborer was powerless. If only for a brief moment, and with great cathartic justice, The Prize Fighter could break the color barrier, by competing with, and potentially beating the white fighter. [...] The globe, while being a ubiquitous object at dance halls, also gives voice to the specific dance 'Limbo' - dancers move under a pole that is gradually lowered from chest level, and when cleared is considered the triumph of life over death. In Jolly's 'Limbo' the transformation of hope, life, and place are revolving in his disco sun, casting an eclipse in a profound struggle for life."

None of those rich details come across in the work, but if Jolly's wheelbarrow were used as a theatrical prop or his installation as a setting, the objects would acquire their conceptual significance in the context of a performed narrative. As is, displayed in the vitrine-like white cube, they're merely esoteric curiosities, wholly dependent on the words of the artist, curator, or critic to provide a particular meaning. Jolly is a musician as well as an artist; I'd like to see him create a more fully realized production: a video with an original score, or even a collaboration with a choreographer on a live performance.

Ernest Jolly
"Carry Me Home"
2011
Acrylic, wood, metal and rayon
Dimensions variable
Ernest Jolly's work is on view at Patricia Sweetow Gallery (77 Geary Street, San Francisco) through February 11.

Image credit: courtesy Patricia Sweetow Gallery website

Zeke Cube

2012-01-05T23:38:00.007-05:00

Zeke Berman
"Still Life With Necker Cube"
1979
16 x 20 inches
I've long celebrated -- even, in my idolatrous way, revered -- the Necker Cube, the familiar optical illusion created by Swiss crystallographer, Louis Necker. I regard the impossible cube as a symbol of life's push-pull ambivalence and contradiction.

Zeke Berman
"Measuring Cup"
1979
16 x 20 inches
As I wrote here, in 2006,

"I'm preoccupied by...ambivalence. Most people think of the word, ambivalent, as a pejorative. Without question, it can be used in a disparaging way, especially when interpreted only to mean indecision, but what of the word's other meaning, 'the coexistence of opposing attitudes or feelings'? This latter usage accurately describes the balance sought by yogis, the Chinese yin-yang symbol, and the quantitative and qualitative possibilities figured in E=MC2. Contradiction, in this sense, is an altogether natural, even positive phenomenon."

Zeke Berman
"Domestic Still Life - Art and Entropy"
1979
16 x 20 inches
As a Necker Cube fetishist, then, I was especially excited to discover photographer Zeke Berman's "Still Life With Necker Cube" on a recent visit to SFMOMA. This evening, I paid a visit to Berman's website, and discovered several other pictures from the same time period that either feature my right-angled mandala or play with the ideas it provokes. Clever stuff....and handsome, too!

Zeke Berman
"Cubes"
1979
16 x 20 inches
Image credits: all photographs from the artist's website

Keep the Flame Alive In 2012

2012-01-02T16:10:00.006-05:00

2011 will be best remembered as a year of popular dissatisfaction and uprisings. Lacking a crystal ball, such instability -- especially the prospective political transitions from despotism to democracy in Egypt and Libya -- can cause acute anxiety.

As we enter 2012, it's useful to keep in mind that democracy is a pendulum that forever swings from equilibrium to imbalance and back. The uncertainty and tensions associated with the political and ideological landscape of today's Middle East are also endemic to established democracies. Lewis Lapham described the workings of a democratic government in "Democracy 101," an essay published in the April 2011 issue of Harper's Magazine.

"Democracy is a dangerous business; it allies itself with change, which engenders movement, which induces friction, which implies unhappiness, which assumes conflict not only as the normal but also as the necessary condition of its existence. The idea collapses unless countervailing stresses oppose one another with competing weight - unless enough people stand willing to sustain the argument between the governing and the governed, between city and town, capital and labor, men and women, matter and mind. [...It] is the freedoms of thought that rescue a democracy from its stupidities and crimes, the courage of its dissenting citizens that protects it against the despotism of wealth and power backed up with platitudes and billy clubs and subprime loans."

This description should ignite fire in the belly of all United States citizens, wherever they place themselves on the political spectrum.

In late January 2009, I wrote an essay titled "Eudamonia." The piece explored the possible causes of a "bout of optimism [that] seemed remarkable in both duration and degree." That optimism is tempered today, but it still burns, despite the growth of "triumphant pessimism" among our populace. I remain optimistic because I believe in long term improvement, in two steps forward for one step back.

Let us all be devoted, active citizens in 2012, realistic, but not cynical, hopeful, but not naive, critical, but not destructive.

Image credit: uncredited photograph ripped from Care2 Make A Difference website

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T20:44:00.004-05:00

Ampitheatre; Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve; Guerneville, CA; December 2011
Happy new year, HH readers! I hope that you all had joyous, healthy, and memorable holiday seasons and that 2012 will bring good things.

The photo-collage above is best viewed at a larger scale; click through to my Flickr account to enlarge it.

Image credit: Christopher Reiger, 2011

Rest in peace, Mr. Hitchens

2011-12-16T13:16:00.006-05:00

"I personally want to ‘do’ death in the active and not the passive and to be there to look it in the eye and be doing something when it comes for me."

- Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens, like G.K. Chesterton, was one of the best polemicists of his day. Given his penchant for stridency, I frequently reacted against the moralistic lengths to which he took his arguments, but I was always impressed by his erudition and craft. He was a joy to read.

Also like Chesterton, Hitchens had unconfronted dragons; his robust ego and his tendency to bully intellectual inferiors (as he too often did when wearing his New Atheist hat) were significant shortcomings, but they didn't stop me from relishing his work.

Hitchens died yesterday of pneumonia, at the age of 62, after a prolonged fight with esophageal cancer. Writers and readers should lower their flags to half mast.

For a nice collection of Hitchens' essays, visit Tablet's roundup, "Just Enough Hitch, For A Day."

Addendum: I opened this brief eulogy by likening Hitchens to Chesterton. Two days ago, when I wrote the above, I didn't realize that one of Hitchens' final deadlines was a review of the new biography of Chesterton by Ian Ker. I learned this fact in the course of reading Ian McEwan's moving tribute to Hitchens in the New York Times. For those who, like me, mourn the loss of a keen, energetic spirit and intellect, I can't recommend the McEwan piece enough.

Image credit: ripped from Philebrity.com

Chesterton's Dragons

2011-12-14T14:45:00.009-05:00

Brad Carroway
"Smaug the Magnificent"

“Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

- G.K. Chesteron

I admire the English writer G.K. Chesterton's intellect and curiosity. Today, he's best known for his proverbs, but I appreciate his generalism no less. As his Wikipedia entry details, "[Chesterton's] prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, plays, journalism, public lectures, and debates, literary and art criticism, biography, Christian apologetics, and fiction, including fantasy and detective fiction." (And I thought I had a catholic disposition!)

Chesterton was independent-minded enough to turn his incisive critique to any subject, including those he held dear, and thoughtful enough to engage in courteous debate with his antagonists (a trait today's intellectual leaders typically lack or deny).

Still, he wasn't perfect; some of his writing is flavored with antisemitism and, by many accounts, his strengthening religious convictions dulled his later criticism. Chesterton was right about the value of fairy tales, but too many brave knights ride off in search of dragons to slay, unmindful of the beasts within.

Image credit: ripped from Fine Art America

I Can See The Whole Emperor!

2011-12-13T00:47:00.007-05:00

In a 2006 post titled "Lichtenstein the Ingrate," I bemoaned Roy Lichtenstein's elitism. I explained that I was bothered less by the famous artist's "questionable sampling" of newspaper and comic book artists' work than I was by his disregard for the skill of those he copied. In a 1963 interview, Lichtenstein distinguished between his source material and his paintings.

"What I do is form, whereas the comic strip is not formed in the sense I'm using the word; the comics have shapes but there has been no effort to make them intensely unified...The difference is often not great, but it is crucial."

Throughout my late teens and twenties, Lichtenstein's comic-inspired artworks inflamed my sense of righteous indignation. I don't get especially worked up about Lichtenstein's appropriation anymore, but I still believe the man was a charlatan. Had he acknowledged his indebtedness to the artists he imitated, his comic panel paintings could be interpreted as a cynical project highlighting the role of class and money in the appraisal of culture (i.e., it's not fine art if it's in a newspaper, but if it's in a gallery and the "right" person will pay a lot of money for it, it is). That still wouldn't make it particularly thoughtful artwork, but Lichtenstein could have been remembered as a winking champion of the comic artists that nourished him.

Left: William Overgard original
Right: Lichtenstein's rendition
In 2006, I believed that Lichtenstein was "turning into a cultural blip." I took comfort in that presumption, but it's no longer so clear to me that Lichtenstein will be forgotten. A recent ArtInfo article by Judd Tully compares last month's Christie's auction sales price of Lichtenstein's "I Can See The Whole Room!...And There's Nobody In It!" to the EBay auction sales price, last August, of the William Overgard artwork that was the source of Lichtenstein's painting. The former sold for $43,202,500; the latter, for $431. According to the art market, then, the Lichtenstein version is worth more than 100,000 times what the Overgard original is worth! Sure, Lichtenstein's is a bigger picture, but the enormity of the price difference is testament to the intangibles in play in the art market. I love looking at, writing about, and making art, but contemplation of the art market is a depressing affair.

Image credit: "The Emperor's New Clothes" illustration, ripped from My Fresh Plans site (illustrator uncredited); Overgard and Lichtenstein reproductions "appropriated" from The Daily Cartoonist

Coaching For Critics?

2011-12-09T14:13:00.003-05:00

I recently read "My Disappointment Critic," a short essay by Jonathan Lethem in The Los Angeles Review of Books (November 7, 2011). I particularly appreciated the four quotations Letham prefaced his piece with. The first of these was drawn from "The Perils of Pauline," a consideration of celebrated film critic Pauline Kael's career by Renata Adler. In 1980, when Adler published the essay in The New York Review of Books, her dismissal of much of Kael's criticism divided readers. But whatever one makes of Adler's Kael-specific critique, the excerpt Lethem picked out is unassailable.

“The job of the regular daily, weekly, or even monthly critic resembles the work of the serious intermittent critic, who writes only when he is asked to or genuinely moved to, in limited ways and for only a limited period of time … What usually happens is that (the staff critic) writes for some time at his highest level: reporting and characterizing accurately … and producing insights, and allusions, which, if they are not downright brilliant, are apposite … What happens after a longer time is that he settles down. The simple truth — this is okay, this is not okay, this is vile, this resembles that, this is good indeed, this is unspeakable — is not a day’s work for a thinking adult. Some critics go shrill. Others go stale. A lot go simultaneously shrill and stale. A few critics, writing quietly and well, bring something extra into their work … Some staff critics quit and choose to work flat out again, on other interests and in intermittent pieces. By far the most common tendency, however, is to stay put and simply to inflate, to pretend that each day’s text is after all a crisis…”

How does a critic avoid going "shrill and stale"? Art bloggers, who often feel the need to write about the same "crisis" several times over the course of one day, are especially at risk.

A week before I read Adler's diagnosis of critical slump, I'd finished Atul Gawande's most recent New Yorker essay, "Personal Best." (Does anyone else wonder just how Gawande does it? He's a highly regarded surgeon, a professor, a staff writer for the New Yorker, a federal health-policy advisor, and just about 101 other things!) Gawande begins his essay by admitting that, as a surgeon, he'd reached cruising altitude.

"I’ve been a surgeon for eight years. For the past couple of them, my performance in the operating room has reached a plateau. I’d like to think it’s a good thing—I’ve arrived at my professional peak. But mainly it seems as if I’ve just stopped getting better. [...] Over time, you learn how to head off problems, and, when you can’t, you arrive at solutions with less fumbling and more assurance. After eight years, I’ve performed more than two thousand operations. [...] As I went along, I compared my results against national data, and I began beating the averages. My rates of complications moved steadily lower and lower. And then, a couple of years ago, they didn’t. It started to seem that the only direction things could go from here was the wrong one."

Gawande surmises that surgeons, like athletes and singers, could benefit from good coaching. To test the idea, he recruits a coach of his own.

"Since I have taken on a coach, my complication rate has gone down. It’s too soon to know for sure whether that’s not random, but it seems real. I know that I’m learning again. I can’t say that every surgeon needs a coach to do his or her best work, but I’ve discovered that I do. [...] In the past year, I’ve thought nothing of asking my hospital to spend some hundred thousand dollars to upgrade the surgical equipment I use, in the vague hope of giving me finer precision and reducing complications. Avoiding just one major complication saves, on average, fourteen thousand dollars in medical costs—not to mention harm to a human being. So it seems worth it. But the three or four hours I’ve spent with [my coach] each month have almost certainly added more to my capabilities than any of this."

So, I wonder, why not have coaches for critics, too? Certainly, a good editor is a kind of coach, and today every other comment-leaving reader seems to know what the critic could have done better and or how she got it wrong, but I'm thinking of another dynamic, a relationship that is more coaching specific. What if critics coached one another? For example, I could plow Critic X's work for flow, strength of argument, original thinking, and all the other elements we desire of critical writing, then provide X with a thoughtful response. X could do the same for Critic Y. These relationships would surely help the coached writers, but they'd also benefit the coaches. Acting as a bullshit detector and whip-cracker, the coach is likely to carry an invigorated critical capacity into his or her own writing.

Still, as Gawande points out, "the greatest difficulty...may simply be a profession’s willingness to accept the idea. The prospect of coaching forces awkward questions about how we regard failure." True, but our culture is also a invested in results, and good ones will change skeptical minds.

Image credit: Sylvester Stallone and Burgess Meredith as boxer and coach in "Rocky," United Artists, 1976

Review In Brief: Cordy Ryman at Eli Ridgway Gallery

2011-12-07T16:32:00.002-05:00

Cordy Ryman
"Shadow Boxed"
2011
Acrylic, enamel, and graphite on wood
38 x 33 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches
Using staples, tape, crudely cut blocks of wood, and other modest materials, Cordy Ryman creates painting-sculptures that explore the interaction of color, light, and line. The DIY appearance of Ryman's artwork belies the sophistication of his enterprise. He's taken a page from the Light and Space playbook (note Ryman's attentiveness to light refraction), but his primary preoccupation is graphic and compositional.

Kin to the painter Thomas Nozkowski, who last year told the New York Times that “a painting is finished when I finally understand why I wanted to do it in the first place,” Ryman engages his materials as if they were collaborators, allowing compositions and designs to reveal themselves over time. In his words, "the process dictates its own direction and evolution." We can't know if this approach is arduous or easy (it's likely both), but Ryman's works almost always appear playful.

Cordy Ryman
"Tangerine 75"
2011
Acrylic and enamel on wood, screws
11 3/4 x 10 1/2 x 5 3/4 inches
The best of Ryman's creations radiate an electric -- almost manic -- energy. A number of these successes are on view in the artist's current solo show at Eli Ridgway Gallery. "Luca," "Shadow Boxed," "Bumble," and "Rose Meridian" are standout works. No less interesting, however, are the middling pieces included in the exhibition. Consider "Tangerine 75." The artwork isn't, on the whole, a star, but the sum of its parts is intriguing; I returned to it several times during my gallery visit, always finding something new to admire or react against.

Ryman's willingness to fail -- and to share his failures with us -- is refreshing and important. Seen alongside their stronger relatives, apparent missteps like "Can Bottom Redline" and "Sun Staple" inform viewers' understanding and appreciation of Ryman's greater project.

Cordy Ryman's work is on view at Eli Ridgway Gallery (172 Minna Street, San Francisco) through December 22.

Cordy Ryman
"Luca"
2011
Acrylic, enamel, and graphite on wood
40 3/4 x 35 1/2 x 5 inches
Image credits: Cordy Ryman images, courtesy Eli Ridgway Gallery

Meditations #3

2011-12-06T17:44:00.001-05:00

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

Square Cylinder: "Painting Between the Lines"

2011-11-30T17:29:00.003-05:00

Fred Tomaselli
“Watt”
2011
Photographic collage, acrylic and resin on wood
48 x 48 inches
My review of "Painting Between the Lines," a thoughtful (if flawed) group show on view at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, is published on Square Cylinder.

Read it here.

Image credit: courtesy, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, 2011

Review In Brief: Lionel Bawden's "World of Surface"

2011-11-29T18:13:00.004-05:00

Lionel Bawden
"Flipside (II)"
2011
Colored Staedtler pencils, epoxy, and incralac on black Perspex shelves
12.25 x 5.25 x 3.5 inches
All of the sculptures exhibited in "The World of Surface," Australian artist Lionel Bawden's recent solo show at Frey Norris Gallery, are constructed using colored pencils. Bawden painstakingly epoxies the pencils together and carves them into a variety of colorful forms. Some of the resulting artworks pour off their wall-mounted shelves like melting candles. Others are small totems with geometric, mandala-like patterns that evoke Georgia O'Keefe's sensual flower paintings as well as the indigenous art forms of Bawden's native country.

"Flipside (II)" and "Gatekeeper (II)," the strongest works in the exhibition, belong to this latter type, and their kinship to Australian Aboriginal art forms like basket weaving and bark painting is manifest not only in their patterns and Bawden's consummate craftsmanship, but also in the sculptures' earnest desire to function as sacred objects, vehicles of meditation and trance.

Lionel Bawden
"jewel linking (dense field)"
2011
Colored pencil & ink on paper
30 x 22 inches
Even viewers who dislike Bawden's work must acknowledge his skill, but the pencil sculptures' material novelty (their "neato" factor) risks their dismissal as schtick. Wisely, Bawden included 5 works on paper in "World of Surface." Although his drawings aren't as peculiar and interesting as his sculptures, Bawden's decision to enlist different materials in his exploration of repetitive processes is a good one. Each of these drawings features a honeycomb array of carefully rendered, multicolored hexagons. They're almost garish, and the imagery isn't particularly compelling, but Bawden is most concerned with creating a record of his patient handiwork, and the "World of Surface" pictures can be seen as a design-conscious riff on jail wall hash marks.

Lionel Bawden's "The World of Surface" was on view October 1 - November 26, 2011, at Frey Norris Gallery (161 Jessie Street, San Francisco).

Lionel Bawden
"Gatekeeper (II)"
2011
Colored Staedtler pencils, epoxy, and incralac on black Perspex shelves
11.5 x 9.25 x 4.25 inches
Image credits: Lionel Bawden images, courtesy Frey Norris Gallery

Elisheva Biernoff's "Inheritance"

2011-11-27T17:18:00.018-05:00

Elisheva Biernoff
"Inheritance"
2010
80 slides of endangered wilderness areas projected onto mist from a humidifier housed in a plywood and fabric enclosure
Environmental historian William Cronon argues that "only people whose relation to the land was already so alienated could hold up wilderness as a model for human life in nature, for the romantic ideology of wilderness leaves precisely nowhere for human beings actually to make their living from the land." I recalled Cronon's incisive critique of wilderness ideology as I pondered artist Elisheva Biernoff's "Inheritance," a compelling installation included in Eli Ridgway Gallery's recent group show, "Better A Live Ass Than A Dead Lion."

"Inheritance" was installed in a dark side gallery on Ridgway's lower level. A wall-mounted, carousel slide projector cast images of "endangered wilderness areas [...] onto mist from a humidifier housed in a plywood and fabric enclosure." The humidifier's fog billowed out of a television-sized opening cut into the plywood, and the projected photographs reflected by the haze were sometimes -- for an instant, when the mist was just so -- recognizable as landscapes, but rarely as specific environments or locations. Without the artist's accompanying list of "disappearing places," viewers couldn't know they were looking at Alaska's Tongass National Forest, Florida's Everglades, Brazil's Pantanal, China's Gobi Desert , or another of nearly 80 imperiled landscapes.

Elisheva Biernoff
"Inheritance"
2010
80 slides of endangered wilderness areas projected onto mist from a humidifier housed in a plywood and fabric enclosure
Biernoff's installation, which was also included in ProArts Gallery's 2010 "2 X 2 Solos" exhibition program (and, by virtue of its strength, will likely be a part of future exhibitions), is luminous and its effect almost ethereal, but unlike the meditative Light and Space works of James Turrell or Doug Wheeler, Biernoff's installation doesn't provide opportunity for reverie. The transitions between the images are abrupt, and marked by the noisy, mechanical advance of the slide carousel. Ka-jenk, Ka-jenk. Just as we begin to discern the vision roiling in the mist -- 'Is that a jungle? Perhaps a swamp?' -- we're jarred from our musing. Ka-jenk, Ka-jenk. Again, we endeavor to interpret the play of light and color in the vapor, and again: Ka-jenk, Ka-jenk! A contemplative inclination is foiled by the machine's relentless progress, and there's sly humor in Biernoff's frustration of our stubborn need to identify and classify; viewers can see the specters in the mist, but can't make much (if any) sense of them. Even so, we'll continue to plumb the rolling fog for clues.

Our ancestors assigned supernatural qualities to fluid media. They scried smoke to portend future events and viewed it as a vehicle of conveyance, capable of carrying the essence of a sacrifice to the god or spirits of a people. In "The Wizard of Oz," the face of the eponymous wizard appears to the protagonists in a cloud of reddish smoke, causing them to tremble in awe. Seeking a similar experience of wonder, many of the people who visit wilderness areas do so to behold nature's majesty. Their language is often reverent; they speak of the sublime and the transcendent. But what is a wilderness area, exactly? According to the United States Wilderness Act of 1964, wilderness is land that "generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable [...that is] designated for preservation and protection in [its] natural condition." Unfortunately, the "imprint of man" is not always readily observable (consider the nuanced affects of climate change or the irradiated, if picturesque Red Forest that surrounds the decommissioned Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant). More problematically, as Cronon makes clear, the Wilderness Act definition sets man apart from "the forces of nature." This latter move is a Romantic, naive impulse. All habitats are interconnected; even protected landscapes are affected by activities outside their boundaries. Moreover, because many refuges, parks, and wilderness areas are disconnected from other undeveloped lands, the flora and fauna living in these protected areas risk genetic isolation and face an increased risk of local extinction (e.g., the Florida panther and many other critically endangered species). Outside of the Wilderness Act and our collective imagination, then, there is no "original" or "virgin" landscape.

The dreamlike quality of Biernoff's installation is therefore appropriate. The notion of "wilderness" is as indefinite as the mirages the artist creates for us with light and vapor. Some fictions, though, are useful. If the dream of Eden compels us to be better stewards, it's all for the good. Yet Biernoff reminds us that we're more likely to avoid the pitfalls of ideology if we recognize wilderness is an illusion, that the specter before us is manufactured using a humidifier and an outmoded piece of technology. The artist presents us with the wizard's face, but also reminds us of the man behind the curtain.

Elisheva Biernoff's "Inheritance" was on view October 8 - November 5, 2011, at Eli Ridgway Gallery (172 Minna Street, San Francisco).

Elisheva Biernoff
"Inheritance"
2010
80 slides of endangered wilderness areas projected onto mist from a humidifier housed in a plywood and fabric enclosure
Image credits: "Inheritance" installation photographs, courtesy Eli Ridgway Gallery

Note: Due to carelessness, this write-up was originally published as a "Review In Brief." It's longer than the pieces in that series, however, and is no longer associated with it.

Review In Brief: Jan Tiura's "Hulls"

2011-11-19T23:56:00.003-05:00

Jan Tiura
"sea song"
2011
Archival pigment print
36 x 30 inches
Bay Area native Jan Tiura half-jokes that a high school sailing trip from San Francisco to the Galapagos Islands and back, a voyage of some 6,600 miles, "ruined her for indoor work." Fortunately, Tiura eventually found maritime employment on San Francisco Bay's tugboat fleets, and, not long thereafter, became the first woman to captain a Bay tugboat, a position she held for over 30 years, until her retirement in 2010. During the decades she spent at tugboats' helms, Tiura regularly photographed the container ships and oil tankers that she helped guide into and out of port. The weathered hulls of the vessels were a favorite subject; 14 of Tiura's "Hulls" pictures are currently on view at Dickerman Prints.

Tiura has a keen eye, and she frames for us the remarkable beauty that she observed on the job. In "pirate II," the discoloration of the ship's paint by the action of salt water and sunlight over time creates captivating alchemical abstractions. In "Oslo II" and "sea song," the scratches, gouges, and furrows into the ships' steel skin call to mind the best of Cy Twombly's gestural mark-making. The "Hulls" photographs are enriched by the knowledge that the beauty Tiura documents is the effect of a working boat's full, hard life.

Jan Tiura
"pirate II"
2011
Archival pigment print
30 x 30 inches
The prints were produced in collaboration with Seth Dickerman, and the exhibition's press release celebrates the results as "a testament to modern photographic technology's ability to create high-quality, large-format works of art from incredibly small and low-resolution digital files." The prints on display average about 30 x 30 inches, and they look terrific from 3 feet away; on very close inspection, however, the details are pixelated and slightly blurred. Unfortunately, no matter how talented the printer, a small digital file can only be pushed so far. In future editions, I hope Tiura and Dickerman will scale down the print size; the pictures would still sing at 20 x 20 inches.

Jan Tiura's "Hulls" is on view through December 11, 2011, at Dickerman Prints (3180 17th St, San Francisco).

Jan Tiura
"5W/4W II"
2011
Archival pigment print
36 x 30 inches
Image credits: Jan Tiura photographs, courtesy Dickerman Prints

"Drawing Conclusions"

2011-11-14T12:24:00.006-05:00

Christopher Reiger
"slow motion, falling through the ylem"
2009
Pen and sumi ink, gouache, and watercolor on Arches paper
13 x 13 inches
I have a number of works included in "Drawing Conclusions," a group exhibition at Heart that features a selection of Root Division resident artists (and me, a Root Division alum). Root Division is a Mission District-based arts and arts education non-profit.

From the press release:

"Root Division and Heart are pleased to present an exhibition of work by Root Division artists who use a wide range of media and techniques to elevate the form of drawing from simple sketch to complex works of art.

Continuing its tradition of exploring the connections between wine and other forms of creative expression, Heart will pair wines to each artwork at the opening reception, with $1 from each pairing sold donated to Root Division."

I look forward to finding out what my art tastes like!

"Drawing Conclusions" is curated by Marisa McCarthy.

Heart
1270 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

Opening: Wednesday, November 16th, 7-10 pm
Exhibition Dates: November 16, 2011 - January 16, 2012

Stretcher: Surabhi Saraf

2011-11-10T11:34:00.004-05:00

Surabhi Saraf
"Fold {Live}"
2011
Photograph of site-specific performance in San Francisco
My write-up of new media artist Surabhi Saraf's "Fold {Live}," a series of site-specific performances in San Francisco, is published on Stretcher: Visual Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area and Beyond.

Read it here.

This month, Saraf's "Fold {Live}" is being performed in Australia.

Image credit: courtesy, Surabhi Saraf, 2011

Jerry Saltz's "Clusterfuck Synchronicity"

2011-11-07T18:35:00.017-05:00

Some folks love to grumble about Jerry Saltz. Whether it's his writing craft, his demeanor, or his decision to participate as a judge on Bravo's "Work Of Art" reality series, Saltz's haters always find something to bemoan. Whatever.

I don't know Jerry well, but I enjoy reading his reviews and I appreciated the two classes he taught at the School of Visual Arts. Saltz's proclivity for, in his words, "speak[ing] about art more directly and more often to anyone willing to listen [...] even if they didn't go to art-school or don't know the secret handshakes and lingo of the art world" distinguishes him from many of his professional counterparts. Admittedly, I'm biased by this populist attitude. As I wrote here a few months ago, "artists need to make art that connects to common human experience, and both artists and art writers need to communicate more effectively with the general audience." Saltz generally succeeds on that count, and he should be cheered for that achievement. But this very success often inspires his detractors because, in the eyes of some, fine art isn't meant to appreciated by the masses.

In the course of a recent interview with ArtInfo, Saltz expressed his disappointment with "the many who continually pooh-pooh art-galleries."

"For these complainers the art world is not good enough. Contemporary art is not up to their standards. They're always disappointed. I always want to say to these people, 'Go away. We can't help you.'"

The same goes for most of the Saltz haters, in my view. Go away. Help yourself. ("Most of," because a small minority of Saltz naysayers articulately and thoughtfully express their grievances and invest their energy in creating the type of criticism or point of view that they champion.)

The ArtInfo interview is short and worth a quick read. If you're a writer, some of Saltz's responses will be particularly resonant.

What's the most indispensable item in your office?
My doctor said, "You have almost no vitamin D in your system." I said, "Probably because over the last 12 years or so I barely go out of my house other than to see shows and buy deli coffee each evening to refrigerate for the following day." So, until my number comes in, the most important thing in my office is the picture window I sit next to all day, every day, and look at the world going by.   

Where are you finding ideas for your work these days?
I believe in a sort of clusterfuck synchronicity. I believe anything and everything I'm reading, seeing, thinking, or talking about has something to do with whatever I'm working on at that exact moment. I pay very careful attention to all of these things and use as much of it as possible. It is no longer possible for me to look at something and not think, "This has something to do with my work."

I especially like "clusterfuck synchronicity." Thank you, Jerry. If you write it, they will come...for better and for worse.

Photo credit: NBC Universal, Inc., 2010

Announcing BAASICS

2011-11-04T18:37:00.005-04:00

I'm very excited to announce that artist-curator Selene Foster and I have received a Southern Exposure Alternative Exposure Grant award for our Bay Area Art & Science Interdisciplinary Collaborative Sessions (BAASICS) proposal! BAASICS is a series of San Francisco-based evening programs that bring together local visual artists, choreographers, composers, scientists, and interdisciplinary thinkers to present engaging, multi-media lectures and performances that consider a given theme. The programs are free and open to the public.

In conjunction with A Live Animal, a group exhibition that Selene and I co-curated at Root Division in July 2011, we assembled 4 visual artists, 3 scientists, and 1 choreographer in San Francisco's ODC Theater to further explore the exhibition's theme in a program of TED Talk-like lectures and performances. The evening was a terrific success, drawing a capacity crowd and generating excited conversation during the reception that followed. Many of the attendees enthusiastically requested more such events.

With BAASICS, Selene and I hope to foment creative exchange and even long-term, mutually beneficial relationships between artists and scientists. Despite much talk of commonality between the disciplines, there is little substantive dialogue. Laudably, there are an increasing number of efforts to cultivate interdisciplinary, art-science projects; unfortunately, the lion's share of these result in vaguely "sciency" artworks or analyses of aesthetics rooted in cognitive neuroscience or sociobiology.

BAASICS isn't goal or project oriented; after all, there are many important differences between art and science, but one undeniable likeness is that the best discoveries are often stumbled upon, not planned for. We hope that BAASICS will provide a forum for artists and scientists to come together to share the ideas and practices that animate their lives and work. A principal aspiration of BAASICS is that we will learn from and be inspired by one another.

Even more important than facilitating relationships and the sharing of ideas, however, is the possibility of engaging a general audience. In the United States, the contemporary fine arts and sciences are generally set apart from popular discourse. Because BAASICS programs are free and open to the public, we hope to make the fine and performing arts and sciences less esoteric, inspiring guests to think about how art and science relate to one another and to society at large.

FYI: The theme of the second BAASIC event -- albeit the first associated with the name -- will be technology and notions of "the future." The roster of presenters hasn't been determined (it will take place in May or early June 2012), but speakers and performers might ponder, for example, robotics, artificial intelligence, medical advances and human nature, how our globalizing culture will shape technology, or dystopian versus utopian prospects. If HH readers know of Bay Area visual artists, composers, choreographers, scientists, or general smarty-pants who are engaging technology in some way and might be interested in participating, please put them in touch with me. Selene and I want to review as large a pool of applicants as possible.

AIRIE Residency: Update #5

2011-10-29T17:02:00.012-04:00

This update is associated with my 2-week-long Artists In Residence In the Everglades (AIRIE) writing and art residency.

AIRIE Housing; Everglades National Park; October 2011
Notes from Days 12, 13, & 14:
- I had the privilege of joining Florida International University Honors College professors Peter Machonis and Devon Graham as they led their "Everglades: From beginning to end?" seminar class on a slough slog. Before we waded into the river of grass, I presented a short lecture on my artwork, the importance of biodiversity, and the Endangered Species Print Project (ESPP).

I wrapped up the talk by highlighting the Endangered Species Condom project, an ESPP collaboration with the Center for Biological Diversity that aims to raise public awareness of the environmental impact of a burgeoning human population on natural resources, habitats, and thousands of critically endangered species around the world...and, of course, I distributed the Endangered Species Condoms to all in attendance.

The real fun started about an hour later, when we stepped into the water. As regular readers of HH know, I've seen plenty of flora and fauna from the roads and trails in my two weeks in Everglades National Park, but sloshing through sawgrass marshes and into two bald cypress stands provided another, more sensual prespective. We met countless spiders (all species unidentified, unfortunately), diminutive American green tree frogs, and Halloween pennant dragonflies (as well as other, unidentified dragonfly species) on our way to the cypress dome.

Once inside the dome's shaded, cooler, and humid environment, most of the students found seats on a hurricane-felled tree and the rest of us took up positions nearby. We ate lunch while the class described some of what they'd seen during our slog to the cypress stand. Afterwards, Peter led a discussion of Their Eyes Were Watching God, the novel by Zora Neale Hurston, which the class recently read. As students offered their insights, a curious, juvenile American alligator swam close to our group, provoking some "ooo"s and "aww"s (admittedly, tyke gators are cute).

I kept my eyes peeled for the flow of a Burmese python through the water. The python population in the Everglades is one of the most celebrated invasive species concerns in the United States. The week before I arrived, rangers caught a python crossing Anhinga Trail, a popular park destination. The rangers killed and dissected the large reptile to learn what it had been preying on. The pythons aren't picky eaters and they grow to nearly 20 feet in length; the recent capture had only birds and water rats in its belly, but these invaders have been known to feed on fish, raccoons, river otters, bobcats, deer, and even the occasional alligator. One ranger remarked to me that he rarely sees small mammals in the park anymore. A decade ago, he told me, visitors were guaranteed to see marsh rabbits, Eastern cottontail rabbits, Eastern grey squirrels, and nine-banded armadillos along the park's roads, but I haven't seen even one of these animals during my two weeks here.

"Do you think the pythons are responsible?," I asked the ranger. He shrugged and said, "Well, it could be a coincidence. Rabbits have population boom-and-bust cycles." "What about the armadillos?," I asked. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged. "I'm not really sure about their populations. We can't prove anything yet." Some researchers now estimate that the established, breeding population of Burmese pythons in the Everglades is in the thousands.

Highlights of the slog (besides talking with some of the students and the professors) included seeing 2 American bitterns, a bird that I'm particularly fond of, and watching (and feeling) the mandibles of a grasshopper (unidentified as of yet) work on the the upper layer of my index finger's skin, scraping away little flecks of it, which the insect appeared to eat. It didn't hurt; it felt like a cross between being tickled and rubbed with a small piece of sandpaper. Had it been a larger grasshopper, I may not have been so obliging, but I enjoyed watching the insect at work.

Finally, I tip my hat to the aims of Peter and Devon. Their class curriculum is designed to introduce students to Everglades' natural history and "the political nature of local and regional environmental issues," but also to "read critically, to understand the interconnectedness of art, literature, and other disciplines." Amen! Its exactly the sort of generalist class I'd like to take....and the type of class I hope to one day teach. I hope that most of the students realize how fortunate they are to be a part of it.

- During the early days of my stay in the park, I didn't hear any cicadas. Now that the rain has become infrequent, however, I hear their clicking whine all day long. It reminds me of the Eastern Shore of Virginia, my home ground.

Tricolored Heron and Anhinga; Anhinga Trail; Everglades National Park; October 2011
- While I watched, a male anhinga caught a bluegill in the flooded borrow pit by Anhinga Trail. The fish was at least 3 inches in length, and the anhinga decided that he'd better not attempt to eat the fish while still in the water. Unlike most fish-eating birds, anhingas have to throw the fish they catch up into the air, open their beak wide, and swallow the fish as it descends. It's quite a trick to see, especially when the fish, as in the case of this bluegill, is of a fair size. The anhinga waddled (like penguins, anhingas are evolved for diving and swimming, and they're graceless on land) up the grass slope at the borrow pit's edge, his catch held tight in his bill. He moved onto the paved trail and, surrounded by a small group of excited German tourists (and me), pulled off the fish tossing feat with aplomb.

Common Snapping Turtle; Main Road; Everglades National Park; October 2011
- I stopped for 2 more common snapping turtles crossing park roads. One of these was an especially fine model. I also rescued a Florida box turtle from harassment by two American crows. Whether the crows would have eventually gotten past the turtle's shell defense, I don't know, but corvids are clever birds and, though I'm very fond of them, I opted to spoil their fun and potential meal by moving the turtle off the road and into the undergrowth at the forest's edge. The crows clucked and rattled at me in disapproval.

Florida Box Turtle with American Crows; Everglades National Park; October 2011
- I had an on-the-move photo shoot with another road-crosser, an Eastern diamondback rattlesnake. As it continued to move across the road and through the grass on the far side, it kept its head and one s-curve of its body angled toward me, prepared to strike were I to molest it. The encounter was a treat; I've long wanted to meet an Eastern diamondback outside of an enclosure and now I have! Like the cottonmouth I met earlier in my visit, this is a snake that I have no inclination to handle and examine more closely, so I don't know it's gender.

Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake; Everglades National Park; October 2011
- Sadly, not far from where I came upon the rattler, I found a dead, partially crushed and ant-consumed rough green snake, a beautiful species that, when alive, is a radiant emerald; even dead, they are pretty snakes. Not counting insects or the dead dog wasting away on the roadside outside of park land (there are many dogs with apparently negligent owners living near the park), this is the 3rd dead-on-road (DOR) critter I've found. A red-shouldered hawk and a great blue heron also lost their lives to cars during my time here. There are almost certainly others that I didn't happen to discover.

DOR Rough Green Snake; Everglades National Park; October 2011
Photo credits: all photos, Hungry Hyaena (Christopher Reiger), 2011

Related post: "ESPP and an Everglades Slough Slog," at The Endangered Species Print Project Blog

AIRIE Residency: Update #4

2011-10-27T12:21:00.007-04:00

Pinelands; Everglades National Park; October 2011
This update is associated with my 2-week-long Artists In Residence In the Everglades (AIRIE) writing and art residency.

American Alligator; Long Pine Key Lake; Everglades National Park; October 2011
Notes from Days 9, 10, & 11:
- I danced a slow-motion tango with the American alligator pictured above. The animal was only about 6 feet long (which I presume is too small to view a full-grown human as a potential meal), but this gator's eyes may have been bigger than its stomach, so to speak.

When I initially approached the lake, the alligator was about 15 yards from the shore. I squatted at the water's edge to take some photos of periphyton, spongy masses of algae and microorganisms that play a critical role in the Everglades food web. Although I focused on the periphyton, I occasionally glanced at the alligator; in so doing, I realized that it was slowly, almost imperceptibly nearing my position. When it was about 10 yards away, it submerged. From where I crouched, I could see the dark shape of its body moving more rapidly toward me. I hopped up and retreated to a safe distance. The reptile moved within 8 feet of the shoreline and surfaced, its third eyelids retracting. It stared at me; I stared back. "Are you serious?," I asked, as though it understood. "Are you eyeing me, buddy?"

After a few minutes, the alligator submerged and moved away, to a spot near its original position. I approached the water, checking carefully to make sure I wasn't overlooking any other gators in the area, and again squatted. Moments after I did so, my cold-blooded friend sunk beneath the water's surface and moved toward me, as before.

This dance was repeated several times: the gator approaching, me retreating, the animal moving away, me approaching and crouching, repeat. I have to conclude that, when hunkered down, I appeared to be of a size that a hungry, 6-foot gator could take. The animal was moving into a position from which it could strike. While I doubt that it could kill me easily, I've no doubt that it could do me serious harm.

I decided to leave the area. As the old adage has it, no photo of periphyton is worth loosing a hand.

Periphyton; Everglades National Park; October 2011
- Birds of special interest these three days: a peregrine falcon hunting at a field's edge, just outside the park; a common ground dove; and a barred owl that calls most evenings from a tree outside of my dormitory.

Rain Cloud Opening; Anhinga Trail; Everglades National Park; October 2011
Photo credits: all photos, Hungry Hyaena (Christopher Reiger), 2011

AIRIE Residency: Update #3

2011-10-24T15:42:00.005-04:00

Mahagony Hammock; Everglades National Park; October 2011
This update is associated with my 2-week-long Artists In Residence In the Everglades (AIRIE) writing and art residency.

Notes from Days 6, 7, & 8:
- Before this residency, I knew that the Everglades is a birder's paradise. I didn't really know this until I found myself excitedly fumbling with my binoculars as I threw the car into reverse, craned my neck out the window, and attempted to drive-by identify a fast-moving raptor...only to realize that there were also two curious-looking warblers in the pineland understory to my immediate right (and what IS that bizarre call I'm hearing)?!

To stay sane, you learn to focus on one bird (or flock) at a time. That means, of course, that you have to let many birds go unidentified, but the primary pleasure is watching, not cataloging.

Wood Storks; Pa-Hay-Ohee Overlook; Everglades National Park; October 2011
Still, every bird watching enthusiast suffers from some degree of census pathology. I've inherited my father's disdain for "ticket punchers," birders who prioritize a day- or lifelist over observation and the experience itself. By no means, however, am I immune to the compulsion. I scold myself when I catch myself frantically estimating numbers in a faraway flock -- "Is it 52 or 53? Damn it! I can't &@^$% tell for sure!" -- or fretting over the unidentified animal that may have been a notable rarity. (On a related note, I haven't seen "The Big Year" yet, but I'm looking forward to it.)

Since my last update, some of the avian highlights include 3 snail kites, wood storks aplenty, a solitary sandpiper, 2 groups of American avocets, and a great white heron (a bird that is cause of much ornithological debate: is it a species, subspecies, or simple color morph?).

Cottonmouth; Main Road; Everglades National Park; October 2011
- And my herpetophilia -- I use this term in a decidedly non-sexual sense! -- has been sated, too. At the western edge of the park's pinelands, I came upon a handsome cottonmouth basking on the warmth of the main road.

The Agkistrodon genus is among my favorites and, in my excitement, I took disappointing photos of the snake's shockingly white mouth lining, its namesake, which the species displays as a defensive threat. Not all of the photos were unusable, however; above, you can see the cottonmouth moments after it flashed me a warning. I enjoy handling snakes, but I harbor no impulse to pick up cottonmouths; their hemotoxic venom attacks tissue and can lead to necrosis at the bite site.

Eastern Racer; Ecopond; Everglades National Park; October 2011
An Eastern racer, on the other hand, I'll want to catch, sex (i.e., determine its gender), and inspect for parasites. I found a racer hunting anoles in the vegetation surrounding the Flamingo Eco Pond, but moments after I crouched and pushed my way into the bushes, I was forced to abort my mission by a mosquito assault the likes of which I haven't before contended with.

- The below photo, taken at the Flamingo Ranger Station, explains why I was so impressed by the mosquitoes. Hysterical, indeed! The ranger stationed there told me to avoid a number of the trails I'd intended to explore. She suggested I instead cruise the campground roads in my rental car.

Mosquito Meter; Flamingo Ranger Station; Everglades National Park; October 2011
- Perhaps all that driving was partly responsible for the tire blow-out on Day 8? I was driving west on Tamiami Trail, heading to Naples to visit a high school classmate and go on a hike in the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, when the tire gave out. A female red-bellied woodpecker tapped out some consolation as I changed the tire.

A pleasant highway patrol officer pulled over to check on me. I'm grateful that he did. The spare I'd put on was one of the mini tires that you don't want to limp along on for more than a few hours, and the policeman told me where the closest two tire shops open on a Sunday were located. I appreciated his advice to go to the farther of the two (in the suburbs of Miami) because it would be considerably cheaper, but his word choice -- "Don't go to the shop on the Indian reservation. They'll rape you." -- was, at best, poor.

Green Heron; Anhinga Trail; Everglades National Park; October 2011
Photo credits: all photos, Hungry Hyaena (Christopher Reiger), 2011

Art Practical: Michelle Fleck

2011-10-24T11:38:00.003-04:00

Michelle Fleck
"Picket Fence"
2011
Acrylic on panel
18 x 24 inches
My write-up of artist Michelle Fleck's "Somewhere," her solo exhibition at Park Life Gallery, is included in the most recent issue of Art Practical. The review appears in AP's Shotgun Reviews department. Read it here.

"Landscape in art," writes the English academic Malcolm Andrews, "tells us, or asks us to think about, where we belong." Fleck's paintings are part of this vital tradition, and are on view at Park Life through October 30th.

Image credit: courtesy Park Life Gallery and Michelle Fleck

AIRIE Residency: Update #2

2011-10-21T15:07:00.005-04:00

American Alligator Under Water; Anhinga Trail; Everglades National Park; October 2011
This update is associated with my 2-week-long Artists In Residence In the Everglades (AIRIE) writing and art residency.

Notes From Days 4 & 5:
- The sun came out on Day 5! Southern Florida is beautiful now...bright, but not too hot because of a merciful breeze from the Gulf of Mexico.

- The birding continues to be tremendous. In addition to the "firsts" I mentioned in my previous update, I've now added an immature Northern parula, a group of blue-grey gnatcatchers, whose aerial acrobatics delighted me for a long while, and countless palm warblers. While Northern mockingbirds are by no means new to me, I did have an opportunity to watch a young mockingbird hunt an anole, kill and eat it, then meticulously clean his bill on a branch. Watching birds hunt, it's hard to understand why it took biologists so long to elucidate the relationship between dinosaurs, reptiles, and our feathered friends.

Great Egret; Anhinga Trail; Everglades National Park; October 2011
- Speaking of reptiles, my 5th day in the Everglades was made notable by 3 turtles. A juvenile common snapping turtle, an adult of the same species, and a Florida softshell turtle were all crossing the park's main road at different locations. I moved the juvenile snapper off the road, but elected to leave the adult to its own pace, hoping that its large size would compel drivers to slow down. Having watched a snapper peel the flesh off my father's index finger, I was reluctant to face the challenge of moving the testy reptile without assistance. The softshell turtle, however, didn't need my help. It lumbered with determination, and I simply escorted it across the road.

Florida Softshell Turtle; Main Road; Everglades National Park; October 2011
- Thinking about roads, though, I was disappointed that two passing vehicles failed to slow, blowing by me -- and the softshell turtle -- at 50 miles per hour (the speed limit on the main road is 55 mph). One wonders why folks come to a national park if they only intend to race across it. Some death toll is inevitable. I generally drive well under the speed limit (35-40 mph) and strive to be alert for flying critters; still, I've killed countless insects (most especially butterflies that seem to suddenly materialize in front of the car's grill) and very nearly knocked off two palm warblers that jumped from the shoulder.

- Tomorrow, I head to Florida Bay to look for American crocodiles.

Common Snapping Turtle; Main Road; Everglades National Park; October 2011
Photo credits: all photos, Hungry Hyaena (Christopher Reiger), 2011

AIRIE Residency: Update #1

2011-10-18T14:57:00.016-04:00

Tricolored Heron; Anhinga Trail; Everglades National Park; October 2011
As expected, my WiFi access is limited to Florida City's Starbucks. Rather than spend too much of my two weeks in Florida driving between my dormitory in Everglades National Park and this too-cold coffee chain so that I can regularly check email and provide HH updates, I'll post sparingly. Following the residency, I'll write a substantial essay about my experiences here. I've having a terrific time, despite my catching a cold on the airplane and contending with near constant rain these first four days.

Tropical House Gecko; AIRIE Dorm Room View; Everglades National Park; October 2011
Notes From Days 1, 2, & 3:
- A sign at the park's entrance gate informs visitors that the mosquito level is "high." A friendly park employee told me there are many more mosquitoes than normal for mid-October and explained that the number is a result of above average rainfall. In two days, I've been bitten over a dozen times. I dislike the itching, of course, but I don't particularly mind being a critical part of the Everglades food chain (see the sign below).

Willingness to be fed upon aside, I'm also happy that I have a tropical house gecko as my roommate. Mosquitos may be small snacks for a gecko, but I like to think the lizard will prey on them as eagerly as it will larger insects (like cockroaches). Everglades biologists might appreciate having an insect eater in their homes, too, but they probably wouldn't smile on this particular species; the house gecko is one of three invasive gecko species in the Everglades.

Food Web Sign; Anhinga Trail; Everglades National Park; October 2011
- There's been no sun since I arrived. The silver lining is that the park trails and roads are relatively uncrowded. On Anhinga Trail's "boardwalk," I sat for 15-20 minutes without another park visitor passing. In a nearby corkwood tree, I observed a female American redstart, an immature female black-and-white warbler, and a male black-throated blue warbler. All three of these bird species were "firsts" for me.

Stalking Great Egret; Anhinga Trail; Everglades National Park; October 2011
- I also watched two red-winged blackbirds hunt for insects by hopping from lily pad to lily pad on the surface of a flooded ditch, behavior I'd not seen before.

Water Lily; Taylor Slough; Everglades National Park; October 2011
Photo credits: all photos, Hungry Hyaena (Christopher Reiger), 2011

AIRIE Residency: Prologue

2011-10-14T20:05:00.007-04:00

Tomorrow night, I'll fly from San Francisco to Miami, Florida. Early on Sunday morning, I'll drive a rental car southwest into the Everglades National Park, the site of my 2-week-long Artists In Residence In the Everglades (AIRIE) writing and art residency. In my application to the National Park Service program, I touched on one of the many reasons I want to explore a park and region that I haven't visited in many years.

"Each fall and winter, when I travel to my childhood home on Virginia’s tip of the Delmarva Peninsula, I assist my father on the farm, and also hunt, fish, and walk the fields, woods, and salt marsh. The mid-Atlantic wetlands are my home ground. Although I've traveled to a range of ecosystems in many countries, I'm intimately tied to the ecology of my youth. The sawgrass marshes and swamps of the Everglades are a subtropical version of Virginia’s wetlands, and I am eager to become better acquainted with the ecosystem."

I was generalizing. The marshes, mangrove and cypress swamps, and hardwood hammocks of the Everglades are a far cry from the mid-Atlantic salt marshes I grew up alongside, but there are some similarities I intend to consider (and write about) while in Florida.

One unfortunate likeness: mosquitoes. October is the last month of the warm, wet season in the Everglades; water levels will be high and biting insects, plentiful. Fortunately, birds and reptiles also thrive thrive in the Everglades, and I hope to be too distracted by creatures I enjoy watching to notice the drone of the "skeeters."

Most of my 2-week term will be devoted to hiking, writing, reading, and photography, but I plan to work on some painting and drawing studies, too. I'll present one lecture on art and ecology to a class from Florida International University, after which I'll join them for a "slough slog," an off-trail hike through the Pa-Hay-Okee, the Seminole name for the Everglades (which translates as "grassy waters"). I've inquired about "shadowing" wildlife researchers in the field and/or assisting park rangers with their work. I was informed this should be possible, so my fingers are crossed.

While at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Residency in Nebraska City, Nebraska, I provided regular updates about my experiences. I'd planned to do the same during my time in "America's Subtropical Wonderland," but no Internet connection is available in the park and the closest coffee joint with WiFi access is a 20 minute drive outside of the park, in what I expect is Florida City's suburban sameness. As a result, I'm not yet sure how often updates will appear. More to come....at some point.

ROA's Ark

2011-10-13T11:52:00.005-04:00

ROA
2010
East Village, New York City
I admire skillful street art, but I rarely feel compelled to photograph it. In early 2010, however, when I came upon the starling mural pictured above, I immediately reached for my camera. At the time, I didn't know anything about the artist; months later, I recognized the muralist's hand in an image I came across online. ROA, a Belgian artist whose animals adorn structures on four continents, is a rising star among street art aficionados.

ROA
2010
London, England
Admittedly, my love of natural history and enthusiasm for animal imagery predispose me to ROA fandom, but the artist's bold, black-and-white technique is distinct and compelling, and most of his mural projects exhibit a clever site-specificity. This attention to location is most often compositional -- for example, the neck of a Limpkin-like bird passes between two windows on a building in Brooklyn, New York, with the bird's body below and the head above -- but ROA's strongest pieces are also conceptually playful: in Ancona, Italy, he painted a disheveled cormorant, a type of water bird, on the side of a large boat; elsewhere, a mole emerges from a pile of bricks; and a desiccated fish is painted on the side of a trailer near California's Salton Sea, a large salt lake in which most fish species are unable to survive. An enthusiastic amateur naturalist, I appreciate the context-appropriate nature of these works.

ROA
2010
Zaragoza, Spain
Unfortunately, ROA doesn't always paint his creatures in or near their natural habitat. I love his giant anteater, pictured trotting along the side of a single-story building in the Mexican state of Guanajuato, but I wonder if the artist realizes that the species is extirpated north of Honduras. Still, because giant anteater fossils have been found in northern Mexico, let's give the artist the benefit of the doubt and interpret this piece as an observation about ecological change. A stylized blue whale rising from a sea of grass outside an abandoned factory in Moscow, Russia, however, is too far from an ocean to be rationalized. Its incongruity is amusing and the image is beautifully crafted, but the piece lacks the impact of ROA's more considerate efforts. No worries. ROA's terrific Virginia opossum in downtown Los Angeles, its prehensile tail wrapped around a stretch of the building's brickwork, more than makes up for the misplaced whale!

While my fondness for natural history makes me an unusually nit-picky viewer, it also means that I'm especially excited by the urban and exurban placement of ROA's rats, squirrels, starlings, herons, raccoons, cormorants, and skunks. These animals are hardy and adaptable, and have proven able to thrive in ecosystems dominated by human habitation. Many people dismiss these creatures as pests, but their presence in our lives is of significant value. As we become an evermore urban species, they are our most immediate connection to the undomesticated, non-human world. In this respect, ROA's murals are portraits of our closest neighbors.

ROA
From the "NUART Landmark Series"
2010
Stavanger, Norway
Some of ROA's more elaborate murals depict great piles of dead animals. These call to mind the tables laden with rotting fruit, hunted game, and skulls that appear in many 15th century Northern European vanitas ("emptiness"), memento mori ("remember your mortality"), and ars moriendi ("art of dying") still life paintings. As their names suggest, all of these allegorical works were created as nods to death's inevitability. It seems these themes preoccupy ROA, too. One of his best memento mori works is located in Stavanger, Norway. Lifeless squirrels, rats, rabbits, and herons are heaped at the foot of an old warehouse, with the limp necks of the herons apparently tied to cords on the wall's face (should we call this reverse trompe l'oeil?) In Mexico City, ROA adds a raccoon, armadillo, and skunk.

ROA
2011
Mexico City, Mexico
These murals will seem grotesque and bleak to some viewers, but they aim to inspire by reminding us that life is transitory. The sentiment was expressed well by Steve Jobs during his 2005 Stanford University commencement address, a speech that, in the wake of Jobs' untimely death from cancer, has been making Internet rounds. Jobs said,

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose."

In many respects, ROA's works are the less refined kin of Walton Ford's paintings. Both artists address mortality and the relationship of humanity to other animal species with humor and finesse, but ROA's pictures are less layered with art historical and natural history references; as a result, they're more accessible and immediately gratifying.

Based on the images he shares on his Flickr photostream, the talented 30-something has at least five murals in San Francisco. Let's hope that he returns to the Bay Area and contributes more of his handiwork to our landscape.

The Bike Tree

2011-10-06T00:34:00.004-04:00

After being featured in the September/October 2011 issue of Sierra, the Sierra Club's magazine, the above photograph of a pine tree that has grown around a child's bicycle has been making Internet rounds.

Berkeley Breathed, a one-time hero of mine, apparently created a children's book about this very "bike tree." I'll have to pick up a copy of Red Ranger Came Calling.

Image credit: Photo by Ethan Welty/Tandem

Review In Brief: Mary Ellen Bartley's "Books"

2011-10-03T18:50:00.011-04:00

Mary Ellen Bartley
"Untitled 49," from "Paperbacks"
2010
Archival pigment print
12 x 18 inches
San Francisco's resident bibliophiles will have a hard time resisting photographer Mary Ellen Bartley's subject matter. The two most successful pictures in "Books," Bartley's solo outing at Corden/Potts Gallery, are part of the artist's "Paperbacks" series. "Untitled 44" and "Untitled 49" are particularly elegant tributes to the book as formal object; in both, paperback books are photographed against a light grey background, their fore edges or tails facing the camera. The book tails in "Untitled 49" resemble impasto strokes of oil paint, and the simple composition and subdued palette call to mind the still lifes of Giorgio Morandi.

Mary Ellen Bartley
"All The More Real," from "Standing Open"
2011
Archival pigment print
18 x 27 inches
In the company of "Paperbacks," Bartley's "Standing Open" and "Blue Books" series are relatively weak. "Blue Books" is too contrived; the artist arranges blue-covered hardbacks in Rothko-like compositions that are attractive, but bland. For "Standing Open," Bartley photographs the fore edges of partially open books in close-up, so that the pages create stripes and, in the artist's words, "shadowy voids [...] that read like burns or stains." The fine concept is diminished by Bartley's decision to shoot artist monographs; the imagery printed on the pages of these collections too often dominates our attention, distracting from the series' formal impetus.

Mary Ellen Bartley's "Books" is on view through October 29, 2011, at Cordon/Potts Gallery (49 Geary St., Ste. 410, San Francisco, CA).

Image credits: Mary Ellen Bartley photographs, courtesy Cordon/Potts Gallery

Thoughtful Editing

2011-09-30T18:41:00.002-04:00

"A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying."

- G.K. Chesteron

Finding Unicorns

2011-09-27T14:00:00.016-04:00

someguy
"9 Unicorns"
2011
Individual vintage bible pages
Large, juried shows are usually confused affairs. "Proof," the latest rendition of Southern Exposure's annual "entry-fee free juried exhibition of Northern California artists," is no exception. Of the 47 artworks (by as many artists), 5 pieces stand out: Kelly Falzone Inouye's "Tagging Sequence 1"; Robert Larkin's "Original Art"; Summer Mei Ling Lee's "Les preuves fatiguent la verite"; Kate Nartker's "West Main 1984"; and Someguy's "9 Unicorns."

"9 Unicorns," in particular, provided much to mull over. Someguy displays 9 pages from vintage Bibles; on each of these, all text except for the page heading and the word "unicorn" is blacked out. On his website, the artist states, "it's not commonly known, but the Bible mentions unicorns 9 times." I suspect that Someguy intends his handsomely presented editing job as a winking critique of religious literalism. By highlighting the occurrence of the word, the artist reminds viewers that mythological creatures populate the tome that literalists insist is non-fiction and most U.S. president-elects place their hands upon when they're sworn into office. Little girls notwithstanding, most of us are informed and sensible enough to dismiss unicorns as harmless hokum. Why, then, doesn't an overwhelming majority also view the Abrahamic narrative as an epic myth (i.e., fiction)?

Religious apologists point out that the Hebrew Bible makes no mention of unicorns. Instead, readers will find an ox, auroch, rhinoceros, or bison, depending on the edition. These more mundane creatures are indicated by the ancient Hebrew term re'em. The word was first translated as "unicorn" by the Greeks who, between 250 BCE and 100 CE, crafted the immensely important Septuagint, bringing the Hebrew scriptures to the Western world. Still, lest we too hastily ascribe an elevated rationality to the Jews of antiquity, scholars believe that re'em was not meant to describe an ordinary animal. The oral traditions of the Israelites and early Jews spoke of a powerful, monstrous auroch, a creature of gargantuan proportion, large enough to be mistaken for a mountain. Because they were unfamiliar with this monster bull, it's only sensible that the Greek translators and editors of the Septuagint substituted another fanciful creature, one better known to their audience; enter the unicorn.

Point being, the Bible, no matter the translation, is chock-a-block with fantasy. Most epic stories (and especially those with the staying power to warrant inclusion in a sacred narrative) are tall tales. Fictional or exaggerated narrative often pushes reality out of popular memory. The rhinoceros becomes a unicorn and the large crocodile becomes a dragon in the same way that the angler's fish grows through successive tellings; generations after the big mackerel was caught, it's Leviathan. But knowing how unicorns came to appear in some translations of the Bible doesn't justify easy dismissal of the sacred canon. Even for secular culture, the ancient stories are the closest approximation of universal myths, and they have much to offer readers with a critical bent -- much more, in fact, than they afford literalists.

someguy
Detail of "9 Unicorns"
2011
Individual vintage bible pages
But "9 Unicorns" isn't just about the relationship between religious texts and fairy tales; it's also a critique of our postmodern malady. Today, technology and globalization expose us to a heretofore unprecedented quantity of information. As a result, it's progressively more difficult to wrest fact from fiction. As the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan quipped, "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts." Disappointingly, most of us reject Moynihan's gospel, instead opting to go at our texts with a Sharpie, making of them whatever we wish. This willful shirking of intellectual responsibility is amply on display in the fractious debate about the meaning of the United States Constitution and the legacy of our "founding fathers." Benjamin Franklin, one of those very prophets, smartly observed, "so convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do."

Someguy's "9 Unicorns" evidences our species' taste for selective reading, subjective "truths," and rationalizations. Ever more interconnected, such an unhealthy disposition can become dangerous. Someguy's piece is a visual fable of sorts, cautioning us to master our appetites.

someguy
Detail of "9 Unicorns"
2011
Individual vintage bible pages

Image credits: all someguy images, courtesy the artist

Acknowledging Exceptionality

2011-09-24T20:56:00.008-04:00

"As glass office and condominium towers have proliferated in the last decade, so, too, have calls to make them less deadly to birds. The San Francisco Planning Commission adopted bird-safety standards for new buildings in July, and this month that city’s Board of Supervisors will vote on making it law. Legislation is pending in Washington that would require many federal buildings to incorporate bird-friendly designs. The United States Green Building Council, a nonprofit industry group that encourages the creation of environmentally conscious buildings, will introduce a bird-safety credit this fall as part of its environmental certification process, called LEED."
- "A City of Glass Towers, and a Hazard for Migratory Birds," New York Times, September 14, 2011

I enjoyed reading "A City of Glass Towers, and a Hazard for Migratory Birds," a recent New York Times article about bird-building collision mortality. Lisa Foderaro's piece is a hopeful account of how a confluence of activism, technology, and regulation can improve the lot of animals, especially in cases where a particular species has been adversely affected by human development.

The comments that follow the article, however, are predominated by doom-and-gloom attitudes. A representative survey follows:

All that matters are people and every little whim. We're a doomed species.
-Karma Every Moment, NY, NY

The people who tell us that evolution and climate change are just unproved theories have no idea how life formed this planet since its inception and no understanding whatsoever of the role of extinction in maintaining the climate within habitable bounds when any one plant or animal breaks the equilibrium. They convinced me long ago that there is no future for my own children.
-Steve Bolger, NY, NY

Yet another example of the consequences of man's selfish and destructive behavior. So sad.
-agetibi, Carrboro, NC

No wonder over 50% of Americans polled by The Nature Conservancy caricatured environmentalists as preachy reactionaries. In the words of the Conservancy's Chief Scientist, Peter Kareiva, most people see members of the environmental movement as "misanthropic, anti-technology, anti-growth, dogmatic, purist, zealous, exclusive pastoralists." Unsurprisingly, this negative stereotype has led to a dwindling of the movement's ranks.

I consider myself an environmentalist, but I distinguish between preservation and conservation (placing myself in the latter camp) and, more critically, I believe that environmentalism needs to embrace a "can do" attitude. If the majority of my fellow Times readers identify as environmentalists, their comments suggest that they're a well-intentioned pox. Wholesale condemnation of our species is as wrongheaded and malignant as exclusive glorification. In order to decry humanity as a "selfish and destructive" brute, one must stubbornly overlook all the evidence to the contrary. I wrote about such oversight in an essay included in the catalog for "A Live Animal," a group show that Selene Foster and I co-curated at Root Division.

"Although 'deep ecologists' and animal rights activists bemoan conservation approaches that prioritize human interests, the fact remains that human beings are exceptional animals. Skeptics and naysayers need only consider our species' biological and imaginative success to find evidence of our unprecedented faculty. But of all our remarkable features and feats, among the most notable examples of humanity's anomalous nature is our interest in and empathy for other species. Although there is growing scientific agreement that some other species possess self-awareness and even a capacity for empathy -- whales, dolphins, elephants, and our ape relatives are especially interesting in this regard -- humans are the only animal striving to learn about and better the lot of other creatures and environments. It's true that we often prioritize short-term, anthropocentric interests and it's also clear that reckless human activity has contributed to dramatic climate change and the ongoing Holocene extinction (our geological epoch's staggering loss of biodiversity), but conservation efforts and legislation, as well as our burgeoning interest in sustainability, speak to another, more hopeful human impulse; we possess an innate ability to see ourselves in other animals and, in turn, to recognize our capability as their stewards and representatives."

In short, we're not all bad. If you believe that we are, then you're guilty of sapping our species' potential. Christopher Cokinos is excellent on this point. I've quoted his terrific "Consolations of Extinction" essay before; I'll do it again.

"Too much grief for the world means less energy to help it along. [When] you find yourself free of the poisons that too much angst can cultivate, then something marvelous happens. You can sense how very old the planet is, how very old life and death are, and you can keep going on, you can keep doing the work you do in this universe, feeling despair when you feel despair, feeling - amazing - joy when you feel joy."

Kija Lucas' Stars & Pillows

2011-09-22T11:30:00.006-04:00

NASA and the European Space Agency
"Hubble Ultra-Deep Field"
2004

Glow-in-the-dark star stickers dotted the ceiling of my childhood bedroom. Every night, before sleep, I marveled at the phosphorescent firmament. Over time, however, the stickers' charge diminished and the ceiling's constellations grew dim. Likewise, the burgeoning egocentrism of adolescence dulled my capacity for wonder; for years, I gave little consideration to the night sky. By the time I'd matured enough to be awed anew, adult life had carried me from rural locales to the electric glow of New York City, where all but the brightest celestial bodies were swallowed by our species' illumination.

Today, whenever I find myself in sparsely populated areas at night, I'm startled and humbled by the brilliance of the stars and my relative insignificance. The famous Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) image evokes a similar awe. The HUDF was produced by compositing visual data from the Hubble Space Telescope, and the colorful result provided astronomers with a 13.2 billion-year-old picture of our universe. The orange, yellow, blue, and purple marks that spot the HUDF are primordial galaxies that formed shortly after the Big Bang. The photograph is attractive, but it appeals more to our imagination; it's capable of elating a viewer as much as the heavens can an enthusiastic amateur astronomer or glow-in-the-dark star stickers can a child. The incomprehensible grandeur of the cosmos is intoxicating.

Kija Lucas
"Origin Story No. 4"
2011
Silver gelatin prints, tape
30 x 40 inches
The HUDF came to mind as I admired Kija Lucas' "Origin Story No. 4," a photogram collage included in Root Division's "Introductions 2011" exhibition, the non-profit's annual survey of a dozen Bay Area emerging artists. Although the abstract imagery of "Origin Story" appears cosmic, the galaxies and gases of Lucas' picture are more earthly. The artist gathered dust from her studio floor, placed it on light-sensitive photo paper, and then exposed the paper. Afterward, she cut the resulting photograms into 2x2 inch squares and rearranged them; the seams of the collage create an unsteady grid, adding to the impression of an extraterrestrial survey. But the white-specks and smears might also be construed as microscopic lifeforms near the deep-sea floor, the products of a particle accelerator's "God-particle" collision, or documentation of activity in another sphere invisible to the human eye. The photogram's easy transition between the unfathomably vast (i.e., the universe) and the subatomic speaks to the mystical notion that scale is Ouroboros-like, that infinite travel "inward" (i.e., moving ever smaller) eventually leads to the infinitely large.

Kija Lucas
"Pillow No. 4"
2011
Archival pigment print
23 x 30 inches
Does Lucas intend "Origin Story No. 4" as a rumination on such matters? I don't know. But the artist also includes another body of work in "Introductions 2011" that invites a complimentary interpretation: a series of photographs of old pillows, presented specimen-like on black backgrounds. The pillows' patterned fabric, stained with mold and sweat, is testimony to their years of service. In the context of "Origin Story," it's hard not to think of these well-used pillows cradling the craniums of people transitioning between waking life and dream, a liminal state conducive to contemplative insight into the incomprehensible. Yet the beautiful photographs are also anthropological documents; Lucas treats mundane pillows as artifacts worthy of sustained consideration. What do they tell us about ourselves? What do the patterns mean: the fleur-de-lis, the crop of diamonds? Specific answers will be provided by viewers, but Lucas' overarching project attests to the human inclination to collect and interpret, to grope for understanding.

Kija Lucas
"Pillow No. 6"
2011
Archival pigment print
23 x 30 inches
Image credits: HUDF, courtesy of NASA; Kija Lucas images, courtesy the artist

The Beautiful / Palace Prayers

2011-09-15T14:28:00.010-04:00

OLD MOONS

Old moons now are dried and crusty
Brittle and as uninteresting as history is
To my fingers and lips.

And yet also, it cannot be denied
That each man
King of his home-throne
Misses something of eternity
When he chomps down on lamb chops
(Which are his reward
For winning the bread)

Each of us misplace the universe
And lose the word
When we get our desires
On plates before us.

There is a grain of rice on the table.
Around it, oil has bled
And spreads

In this way does our egodeath
Halo around us
  And puncture the beauty
    Of clouds
- Yusuf Misdaq

Two years ago this month, I highlighted the poet, musician, artist, and author Yusuf Misdaq's Palace Prayers project. August 21st - September 19th, 2009, was Ramadhan, and Misdaq, a practicing Muslim who, as I noted at the time, "shares my universalistic mystical inclination," created a new work of art for every day of the month-long fast and period of Muslim introspection.

Some months later, Misdaq invited me to contribute a forward to a book of his poetry, prose, and lyrics. That book, The Beautiful / Palace Prayers, was published this year. Visit Misdaq's website for more information.

+++++

"Dissolution Is The Whole Show"

When Yusuf invited me to contribute a foreword to The Beautiful / Palace Prayers, I was at first surprised. Although I enjoy reading poetry, my education in literature is wanting, and my tastes run to work that most "serious" critics and scholars deem pedestrian. Who am I to comment on this young artist's latest collection? With characteristic enthusiasm, however, Yusuf's invitation quelled my self-doubt, insisting that The Beautiful is made up of poems "for normal people who do not normally read poetry." Well, in that case, it is a privilege and a joy for this normal person to introduce a collection of poems, verse, and prose written "for normal people"!

        They are a good species.
        Clean and caring;
        Made mostly of water and forgiveness
              - from "The Beautiful"

Normal people are very much in need of poetry, and perhaps especially so today, when the art is generally neglected. Words are powerful entities, every one an invocation, yet we too often use them carelessly. Poetry, like prayer, can serve as a corrective, reminding us that words conjure meaning and that they have a felt, physical component. As critic and philosopher George Steiner writes, "the meanings of poetry and the music of those meanings...are also of the human body." Appropriately, Yusuf refers to the italicized and apparently random words that he includes in some of his poems as "body echoes." "Carbunkle. Crellis. / Pulse-if. peaces." or "Que Que" are not intelligible formulations but, when read aloud, they aren’t exactly jibberish either. They supply somatic meaning, as do the poems’ rhythms. Yusuf's strongest poetry or verse has a perceptible pulse; in some cases, I notice my head slowly bobbing as I read. This is not insignificant. Beat and rhythm are primal properties, manifestations of the infinite, unfathomable being within which we reside and of which we are composed.

        Echoes
        of the original
        Voice
        From the original
        Breath
              - from "Ramadhan 26"

Ludwig Wittgenstein insisted that earnest philosophers should "descend into primeval chaos and feel at home there" if they expect to produce worthy work. I extend the same requisite to artists. Yusuf draws pictures, makes films, and writes poems, novels, and songs, but he is, above all, a mystic. And mysticism, in its quest to directly experience elemental truths, necessitates Wittgenstein's appreciation of the primeval and the chaotic; ancient disorder is at the root of everything. In most cases, the mystical perspective is merely an uncommon one; mystics survey and respond to the same earthly, material realm that the rest of us do. But they disregard accepted classifications and train themselves to mindfully observe and reinterpret their surroundings. They locate the extraordinary in the mundane. As Henry David Thoreau, a 19th century mystic, lamented, "All this [splendor] is perfectly distinct to an observant eye and yet could easily pass unnoticed by most." Mystics reawaken their capacity for reflective wonder and, in doing so, experience a kind of rebirth into a vaster dimension of human experience.

        On perfect Spring mornings
        God puts a clear blue sky in our pockets
        Pats us a few times and says
        'On your way!'
              - from "The Merciful Cheerful"

So reborn into sublime beauty, mystics strive toward the transcendent. Both Wittgenstein and Thoreau can be described as transcendentalists; Yusuf qualifies, too. Like the two philosophers, he finds in his observations of the world cause for a fundamental optimism. Unlike them, his writing is generally informal and devoid of pretension. His poems give readers the impression of a devout Sufi Muslim happy at play in our waking, sensual dream. In the collection's title poem, Yusuf writes "Awake in this dream / Where abstract clouds calmly keep us. / Where birds secretly make love in public and / Give voice to the current of joy which / Slices through us in a day." Again, in "Back Amongst Men (Drowned)," he references this dreamed life: "Or as I have also interpreted it / .God is a laughing dream." No doubt, the poems’ author, laughing, singing, eyes wide and sparkling, would appear mad to many of his fellows. This is to their discredit. They have forgotten (or failed to learn) how to look. Mystics, like many philosophers and artists, are too easily dismissed as lunatic or eccentric. Yusuf's ability to see through the veil of our cultural forgetfulness informs his aesthetic imagination and invigorates his art.

        Silk veils, dark and weightless
        Are being removed from her countenance
        Time after Time

        Each day I ready myself to know her better
        Each day, closer
              - from "Wahad"

But not all that Yusuf observes is felicitous. The most biting poem included in The Beautiful, "Ramadhan 23: Only To Be With You And No-one Else," is a reaction against the politicization of Islam and a celebration of his intimate relationship with Allah. After rejecting the "bloody bridge builders / Shmoozers or politicians" and others who "come to the Mosque smiling in your suit," Yusuf writes, "I wish to be alone / And serious / And deeper in love / With the only one who ever matters." The striking seriousness of his personal communion with G-d is important; discipline is one of the central currents running through the poems included in The Beautiful. In “Waiting (A Song for Guitar),” Yusuf writes, “I do believe in magic but first you gotta work at it.” Hope and love, he reminds readers, are nurtured through dedicated ritual and practice.

        Understand, thee
        That tenderness comes not of softness
        But of a firmness
        And of a discipline

        Understand that of discipline
        -Say, the discipline of prayer-
        Comes an enjoyment of that same thing.
        Discipline to run breeds a love for running
        Discipline to practice ones instrument brings forth a love
        for playing it
        Discipline to speak good breeds a love of horses
        And love of all refined things
        Whatever you may find them to be.
              - from "Ramadhan 12: The Vows Revolve"

A visual artist, I appreciate the centrality of discipline in a life committed to aesthetics. Like Yusuf, though, I am also mystically inclined. Paintings, sculptures, and other hand-crafted objects are among my adored icons but, if I work at it, I can find occasion for worship in every place, in every form, in every moment. The European starling that paraded on the sidewalk in front of me this morning warranted exaltation. In his iridescent dream coat and brilliant yellow bill, I see cause for startling, smiling celebration. For some other pedestrians, the bird, a representative of a despised species, may be ignorable or irrelevant. For others, my viewing the starling as a manifestation of the Divine amounts to idolatry. So, too, might the dirty, discolored Queens sidewalk be deemed a cement calf by unimaginative or close-minded "believers." Yet, striding on such a sidewalk today, my thoughts range through eons of geologic time to consider the ancient rock and mud, precursors to and components of the concrete that I now tread upon, from which our kind eventually emerged on crude limbs as a gasping, fish-reptile thing.

        The salt-pepper sugar mills on this table look like planets.
        I want to know the word for planet in as many different
        languages as possible.
              - from "Celestial"

Doubtless some of those who consider themselves religious don't share my enthusiasm for our scaled, long-snouted ancestors. But I'm not concerned with narrow definitions of religion. I believe that humility, wonder, gratitude, and communion are the four pillars of genuine religious practice, and the mental stretching engendered by the work of scientists, philosophers, and artists is an integral part of any intellectually rigorous, honest religious life. And, love, too, is a bit like religion. The same four pillars are fundamental to it. As Douglas Thorpe writes, "[love] demands of us a new way of being in our old world." Religious mysticism is a love affair with The All. It's not always easy, but religious attunement can turn each day, each hour, or each instant, into "a new way of being." Reading Yusuf's poetry, I'm reminded that every step is a psalm, every directed gaze is a prayer.

        Dot-Dot-Purple and Palaces
        Says the starling in approximate translation.
        Star-Star-Chandeliers and
        Bread on the wind-ind-ind.
              - from "The Beautiful"

I'm also reminded that we both enjoy watching starlings.

- Christopher Reiger, May 1, 2010

Urban Wild #3

2011-09-14T00:15:00.002-04:00

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

"Secret Garden"

2011-09-04T16:15:00.003-04:00

Christopher Reiger
"living, moving, in the space between"
2009
Gouache, watercolor, and marker on Arches paper
15 x 14 7/8 inches
Four paintings and drawings of mine from 2010 and 2009 are included in "Secret Garden," a group exhibition opening later this week at Denise Bibro Gallery, in New York City.

From the exhibition's press release:

"Nature plays the perpetual muse for the six contemporary artists in this exhibition. Featuring work by Roberley Bell, Peter Bynum, Sara Crisp, Erica-Lynn Huberty, Ysabel Le May, and Christopher Reiger, each artist offers their own innovative, distinctive response to the sublime wonder of the landscape, flora, and fauna, inviting the viewer into their own secret garden. [...] Contemplating man's mutable conception of nature and our place in it, Christopher Reiger's works on paper incorporate scientific and mathematical symbols, hieroglyphs, animals, and plant life. Mysterious equations are drawn, creatures peer out from unlikely vegetation, and the garden becomes curiouser and curiouser."

I won't be in NYC for the exhibition, unfortunately, but if you're in that neck of the woods, please visit the show.

Denise Bibro Fine Art
529 West 20th Street, #4W
New York, NY 10011

Exhibition dates: September 8 - October 8, 2011
Opening reception: September 15, 2011; 6-8pm

Meditations #2

2011-08-29T18:25:00.003-04:00

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

Gregory Ito's "Point of Vision"

2011-08-26T18:28:00.008-04:00

Gregory Ito
"Untitled (Time Diagram Set B)"
2011
Acrylic and gouache on wood panel, acrylic on handmade wood object, and table
Like it or not, context informs our experience and interpretation of artworks. We generally think of context as a work's physical situation (e.g., how and where it is installed) or its social and art historical framework, but most important is the context provided by an individual viewer. What is the viewer's profession? What book is she reading? Who was she talking to an hour ago, and what about? Of course, artists can't control for these subjective factors, and many craft artist statements that provide viewers with what the artists believe is appropriate context for the artwork. Too often, though, these statements tell viewers what the "take away" should be, thereby forfeiting the most vital and collaborative element of the artistic enterprise, the creation of meaning by the viewer.

How refreshing, then, to find Gregory Ito's healthy twist on the artist statement in his terrific "Point of Vision" exhibition at Gallery Hijinks. While the artist and gallery provide a press release (usually an artist statement reworked and edited by the gallery staff), Ito also includes "Sources," a tidy stack of books on the floor, spines out so that the titles are easily read. Is "Sources" intended as a found object sculpture? Kinda sorta (after all, it's titled, is situated among Ito's other work, and is included on the exhibition price list, albeit "NFS"), but its principal valuable is as an alternative to the formal statement. It provides viewers with context without bullying them into a particular conclusion.

Gregory Ito
"Sources"
2011
Book collection
"Sources" is something of a companion piece to "Self Portrait (Object Collage)." Installed in one of the gallery windows, "Self Portrait" includes a beach chair, flip flops, a towel, a pile of diary-like journals, an ashtray, empty beer bottles, a candle, and 28 snapshots mounted on a board that faces the chair. One imagines the artist in his chair, sipping beer and smoking as he contemplates his collection of isolated observations. The photographs are mostly of clouds and sun-soaked skies, but there are also landscapes, some abstract imagery, a rainbow, and an illuminated light fixture. These pictures complement Ito's reading list. A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe, by Michael Schneider, Concerning the Spiritual In Art, by Wassily Kandinsky, The Cosmic Perspective, Third Edition, by Bennett, Donahue, Schneider, and Voit, The Handy Weather Answer Book, and other titles included in Ito's book pile suggest that the artist is preoccupied with sublime, existential mysteries and celebrating our species' impulse to solve them.

Gregory Ito
"Self Portrait (Object Collage)"
2011
Window installation with 28 photographs and wood display
Ito's sculptures, paintings, and installations reflect this focus. Especially in the gallery's "white cube" setting, they read as speculative objects and diagrams as much as they do aesthetic entities. The artist is well aware of this; he titles the two most compelling installations on view, "Untitled (Time Diagram Set A)" and "Untitled (Time Diagram Set B)." He pairs a painting with a sculpture in each. The paintings are straightforward illustrations of the sculptures, but, displayed in the gallery setting with the three-dimensional objects they depict, the images read as icons, potent stand-ins for the "real" or "true" object. Curiously, by virtue of having been depicted, the sculptures also gain in significance. The meaning of these pictures and objects remains somewhat esoteric. I infer, based on the works' titles and Ito's "Sources," that these are representations of space-time's nature or shape, but that's a rather general interpretation. Still, the sculptures resonate as totems and the paintings as their icons. This reciprocal dynamic is compelling, and serves as an oblique reminder that all artwork exists in relationship to the world and ideas outside of the gallery and studio, a fact too often overlooked since the advent of modernism.

Gregory Ito
"Untitled (Time Diagram Set A)"
2011
Acrylic on wood panel, acrylic on handmade wood object, and shelf
In other works, Ito more directly highlights what I've elsewhere described as "the wonder current." In "Human Euphoria," a disembodied ceramic head of a girl in a big-brimmed, yellow hat rests on top of a block of adobe clay, apparently gazing at an ocean sunset. The piece is a winking, contemporary tribute to Caspar David Friedrich's Romantic masterpiece, "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog," but Ito's head is better-suited to contemplation than the vigorous morning constitutionals of Friedrich's dapper hero. Is this a comment on the continued dominance of conceptual concerns over aesthetic and material considerations in contemporary art? Perhaps; perhaps not. Ito's better pieces excel precisely because they can be interpreted as "art for art's sake" or, taking a hint from his "Sources," as art about the stupefying magnificence of being.

Gregory Ito
"The Embrace Installation"
2011
Acrylic and gouache on wood panel, found book with handmade page holders, and petrified object on shelf
Image credits: all images, courtesy Gallery Hijinks and Gregory Ito, 2011

Making More "Live Animals"

2011-08-19T21:04:00.009-04:00

Two weeks ago, I presented a lecture at the Art College Center of Design, in Pasadena, California, titled "Aesthetics, Ethics, and Experience." It was my first attempt to respond to the question of how contemporary artists might connect the "fine arts" to society at large, and I drew from an array of sources, classical (Heraclitus; Aristotle) and contemporary (Dave Hickey; David Milch; Erik Reece), to constellate what I'd like to think Aristotle would have described as a virtuous way of being in the world (as an artist). After the lecture, one of the students remarked that it was the "most liberal arts style" approach she'd come across in art school. I appreciated her compliment, but it reminded me of the urgent need for more generalism in arts education.

As I often insist, there is a lot of beautiful and compelling artwork produced and exhibited today, but it generally lives apart from popular culture. We -- that is, those of us active in the fine arts -- are complicit in this ghettoization because we're content to carry on a conversation among ourselves. Moreover, because we've come to preference our tribe's voices over others, there is a surplus of insider commentary and critique passed off as art. Almost all of this work and wordiness is irrelevant to the world outside the ghetto walls and, because young artists are educated in this context, with little or no pedagogical emphasis on disciplines other than art theory, the art and commentary become, over time, increasingly provincial. The wellspring of this contemporary predicament is as old as modernism.

On the heels of co-curating "A Live Animal" with Selene Foster, I've been rereading John Dewey's brilliant Art & Experience essays (1934). Dewey writes, and I quote him at length because he articulates the crux of the problem so eloquently:

" [Art is today] isolated from the human conditions under which it was brought into being and from the human consequences it engenders in actual life experience. [...] Art is remitted to a separate realm, where it is cut off from that association with the materials and aims of every other form of human effort, undergoing, and achievement. A primary task is thus imposed upon one who undertakes to write upon the philosophy of the arts. This task is to restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience which are works of art and everyday events, doings, and sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience.

[...] So extensive and subtly pervasive are the ideas that set Art upon a remote pedestal, that many a person would be repelled rather than pleased if told that he enjoyed his casual recreations, in part at least, because of their esthetic quality. The arts which today have most vitality for the average person are things he does not take to be arts: for instance, the movie, jazzed music, the comic strip, and, too frequently, newspaper accounts of love-nests, murders, and exploits of bandits. For, when what he knows as art is relegated to the museum and gallery, the unconquerable impulse towards experiences enjoyable in themselves finds such outlet as the daily environment provides.

[...] For the popular notion comes from a separation of art from the objects and scenes of ordinary experience that many theorists and critics pride themselves upon holding and even elaborating. The times when select and distinguished objects are closely connected with the products of usual vocations are the times when appreciation of the former is most rife and most keen. [...] Theory can start with and from acknowledged works of art only when the esthetic is already compartmentalized, or only when works of art are set in a niche apart instead of being celebrations, recognized as such, of the things of ordinary experience. Even a crude experience, if authentically an experience, if more fit to give a clue to the intrinsic nature of esthetic experience than is an object already set apart from any other mode of experience. [...The] trouble with existing theories is that they start from a ready-made compartmentalization, or from a conception of art that 'spiritualizes' it out of connection with the objects of concrete experience. The alternative, however, to such spiritualization is not a degrading and Philistinish materialization of works of fine art, but a conception that discloses the way in which these works idealize qualities found in common experience. Were works of art placed in a directly human context in popular esteem, they would have a much wider appeal than they can have when pigeon-hole theories of art win general acceptance.

[...] The sources of art in human experience will be learned by him who sees how the tense grace of the ball-player infects the onlooking crowd; who notes the delight of the housewife in tending her plants, and the intent of her goodman in tending the patch of green in front of the house; the zest of the spectator in poking the wood burning on the hearth and in watching the darting flames and crumbling coals."

Amen, Mr. Dewey...though I'd add that the "primary task" to "restore continuity between" works of art and the everyday is not only the obligation of the art writer; it is also incumbent upon the conscientious artist. Artists need to make art that connects to common human experience, and both artists and art writers need to communicate more effectively with the general audience.

I thought of Dewey's argument when watching a video of Scottish cyclist Danny MacAskill that was recently shared by a friend on Facebook. The video offers a more visceral (and therefore meaningful) aesthetic experience than most of the contemporary art I've viewed in the last weeks. An acrobat with his bike, Macaskill is Dewey's "live animal," "fully present, all there" because of he has honed his craft and is, as we often hear athletes put it, "in the zone."

Can contemporary fine art inspire people to exclaim, as one person did in the comments under my friend's Facebook posting of the Macaskill video, "That's crazy & beautiful!"? Can artists again enthuse the general audience?

I believe that we can, and I hope that I can one day have an opportunity to design (or help to design) an undergraduate or graduate art curriculum that prioritizes generalism and social responsibility.

Photo credit: photo of Danny MacAskill ripped from CyclePath Magazine

Party Animals #2

2011-08-01T02:00:00.004-04:00

Read about the "Scavenged Image (Remixed)" series here.

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

"Wicked Little Critter"

2011-07-05T01:21:00.007-04:00

Christopher Reiger
"the banks of solitude"
2006
Watercolor, gouache, sumi ink, and marker on Arches paper
27 x 22 inches
My 2006 painting, "the banks of solitude," is included in the group exhibition, "Wicked Little Critter," at Kristi Engle Gallery in Los Angeles.

Coincidentally, "Wicked Little Critter" opens July 9th, the same date as "A Live Animal," the San Francisco exhibition that I co-curated with artist Selene Foster. Moreover, it also deals with similar subject matter.

From the exhibition's press release:

"Wicked Little Critter, curated by Anne Hars, brings together the work of 12 artists who address the human/animal relationship. Non-human critters in art, be they wild, house-pets, zoo residents, farm animals, or fable characters reflect ethical attitudes of privilege over our dominion. These works reveal among other things, how clearly we comprehend the minds of critters, and how much we project ourselves onto them. This show is dedicated to those wicked ones that continue to play a part in what it means to be human."

I won't be in LA for the reception, but I'll visit the show in early August, when I'll fly south to lecture at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Kristi Engle Gallery
5002 York Ave.
Highland Park, CA 90042

Exhibition dates: July 9 - August 12, 2011
Reception: Saturday, July 9, 7-10pm

Announcing "A Live Animal" Exhibition, Catalog, and Program

2011-06-27T15:18:00.009-04:00

It's a thrill to announce that "A Live Animal," a large group exhibition that artist Selene Foster and I are co-curating, will be on view at San Francisco's Root Division in July 2011.

In addition to the opening reception for the exhibition (July 9), we will host an Evening of Presentation and Performance (July 19) in the new ODC Theater space, located just next door to Root Division. The EoPP features presentations relevant to the theme of "A Live Animal" by some of the participating artists, as well as scientists, dancers, and others.

I'm biased, of course, but "A.L.A." is a very strong show, and the sort of cross-disciplinary fare that I believe the art world needs more of. If you're in the Bay Area, please visit!
+++++

Detail of "Sharks," by Maria Lux
"A Live Animal" explores the relationship(s) between contemporary man and other animals, with a particular focus on the different lenses, be they mystical, scientific, or philosophical, through which we view other species.

ARTISTS:
Brandon Ballengee, Jeremiah Barber*, Joianne Bittle, Bethany Carlson, Karl Cronin, Donald Farnsworth, Todd Forsgren, Dana Harel, Nicole Jean Hill, Michael Kerbow, Anne Klint, Maria Lux, Jon Rappleye, Shelley Reed, Steven Rubin, Susan Silas, Deborah Simon, Sarah A. Smith, Kate Stirr*, Youngsuk Suh, Ryan Thompson, James Wendell, Gail Wight, and work from the Endangered Species Print Project
*Root Division Resident Artist

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 9, 7 to 10 pm
Exhibition Dates: July 7 - 30, 2011
Gallery Hours: Wednesdays - Saturdays, 2-6 pm (or by appointment)

AN EVENING OF PRESENTATION AND PERFORMANCE:
July 19, 2011, 7:30-9:30PM
ODC Theater, 3153 17th Street, SF, CA

EoPP PRESENTERS:
Chris Black: "Extinction Burst (last dance, last chance): A reanimation of lost movement"
Karl Cronin: "Kinetic Empathy"
Jeremiah Jenkins: "The Hunt"
Brian Null, Ph.D., "Examination of Animals, Examination of Self"
Georgeann O'Brien, Ph.D.: "Direct observation of sensory neuron regeneration in live zebrafish"
Christopher Reiger: "Introducing the Endangered Spcies Print Project"
Philip Ross: "Eating Bugs for Fun and For Profit"
Jon Sack, Ph.D.: "Bioelectric Venom"
Gail Wight: "Animal Animosity"

For more information about the "A Live Animal" EoPP, click here.

We're also producing a full-color exhibition catalog that includes original essays by Selene, me, and artist/writer Michael McDevitt.

Us & Them #2

2011-06-26T16:37:00.003-04:00

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

Urban Wild #2

2011-05-31T16:34:00.003-04:00

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

Wilde's Critic

2011-05-03T17:04:00.004-04:00

“To the critic the work of art is simply a suggestion for a new work of his own, that need not necessarily bear any obvious resemblance to the thing it criticizes. The one characteristic of a beautiful form is that one can put into it whatever one wishes, and see in it whatever one chooses to see; and the Beauty, that gives to creation its universal and aesthetic element, makes the critic a creator in his turn, and whispers of a thousand different things which were not present in the mind of him who carved the statue or painted the panel or graved the gem.”

- Oscar Wilde, 1890

Were that every viewer approached art as Wilde's archetypal critic does!

Navigating the Flood

2011-04-20T15:33:00.004-04:00

"By [Claude] Shannon's definition, the world now produces more information in 48 hours than it did throughout all human history to 2003. [...But] if the universe is information, it has always been producing a deluge of data, and humans have always found patterns of meaning in the waters visible to us."

-uncredited writer in The Week

Party Animals #1

2011-04-17T16:33:00.003-04:00

Read about the "Scavenged Image (Remixed)" series here.

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

Urban Wild #1

2011-04-10T15:54:00.003-04:00

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

Meditations #1

2011-03-31T19:53:00.002-04:00

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

"Chewing On Tinfoil"

2011-03-27T17:58:00.004-04:00

As a follow-up to my recent essay, "Communicating Art's Relevance (Or Not)," and the ongoing discussion that it's engendered, I thought it appropriate to post artist, writer, and all-around keen mind Michael McDevitt's response to the language that dominates art world discourse.

"Reading it," Michael says, "feels like chewing on tinfoil."

It's an unfortunately apt analogy, especially with respect to gallery press releases and most of the writing included in Art Forum. That certainly doesn't help with the communication challenge!

I'd like to have more voices contribute to the conversation below.

Us & Them #1

2011-03-27T16:55:00.003-04:00

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

Communicating Art's Relevance (Or Not)

2011-03-24T13:38:00.008-04:00

Science journalists have penned a profusion of articles about the scientific community's failure to communicate effectively with the general public. The articles bemoan how un- or misinformed Americans are about the science of vaccination, global climate change, mass extinction, and myriad other subjects. But the journalists don't blame the great unschooled for their ignorance; instead, they point the finger at scientists and, almost as often, at themselves. As a result, there are a growing number of journals, graduate programs, and institutions devoted to tackling the science literacy problem.

The aptly named Center for Communicating Science, at Stony Brook University, is one of these. It's mission is straightforward: "to enhance understanding of science by helping train the next generation of scientists and health professionals to communicate more effectively with the public." It's an uphill battle, but we must all hope that their efforts (and those of similar institutions or programs) succeed. Presuming (hopefully) that the majority of the world's states remain liberal democracies, the future health of the planet and our species may be contingent on a greater popular appreciation of science.

Although it is a matter of less urgency and consequence, the contemporary American art world should consider a comparable movement. We also need programs dedicated to training "the next generation of [curators and art] professionals to communicate more effectively with the public." I'm not being facetious. There are brilliant, sensitive art writers and curators working today, but they are a small minority who, despite their talents, generally fail to reach a popular audience. Just as so much good science is shrugged off (or even angrily rejected) by the public, so, too, with art. Most Americans see science as extraneous esoterica crafted by white-coated wonks. Similarly, contemporary art is seen as the province of effete Onanists devoid of "family values."

But the respective responses of the two realms to these ugly public perceptions is critically different. The scientific community has confronted the issue head-on, spilling ink, hosting panel discussions, and building programs. Whether or not this conscientious approach will change things for the better remains to be seen, but scientists and science academics can't be criticized for inaction. Should an art writer or organization assert, however, that negative popular sentiment indicates the art world is faltering, they won't receive donations for a new graduate program or institution dedicated to improving the art world's communication skills. In fact, many (if not most) professionals in the art world rankle at the suggestion that fine art should even consider appealing to the masses. They believe that popularity debases art because, in order to achieve it, the artist must cater to the interests and intellect of the lowest common denominator. This stance is obviously elitist but, more importantly, it's also defeatist. Shouldn't those of us who care about art's role in society strive to make it accessible to the general public? After all, unlike those skeptical of science, "Joe the Plumber" isn't the only one who dismisses contemporary art! The large majority of my college-educated friends -- scientific researchers, English professors, political journalists, doctors, lawyers, actors, musicians -- make no space for contemporary art in their lives. Contrary to the avant garde aspirations and claims of so many artists, curators, collectors, and critics, most of America views the contemporary art world as a cultural backwater; it has become functionally irrelevant (excepting its role as a luxury commodity market).

But the art world is not irrelevant; there is vital, inspiring contemporary artwork being produced, work that the public can be in dialogue with (and even without initiation into our art cult)! But the onus is on us, as representatives of the art world, to make a case for why fine art matters today. If curators and artists (or dealers writing press releases) can't express why an artwork or body of work is vital, then they need to ask themselves hard questions. Is this work really and truly meaningful? Is it made with intent to improve, in whatever way, the world (i.e., not intended merely as an exercise in critique)? Clinging to the myth of the avant garde is unacceptable unless the "vanguard" work is, in the view of the curator, artist, or dealer, essential. Art professionals shouldn't be making or promoting work that they can't make an impassioned case for and, in order to do so, they have to be able to speak about art intelligently and plainly.

I'm interested in hearing reader's thoughts on this subject. Barring the introduction of requisite communication courses in American art programs, what are some ways to begin to chip away at the wall between the art world and the rest of it? Can we be as relevant and respected as pop music or Hollywood, creative industries that produce both edifying brilliance and schlock, but that are not maligned by the general public? Can the American art world play as much of a role in the lives of citizens as does the European art world, an orbit in which the educated classes regularly visit galleries and recognize the names of prominent fine artists? What do you think?

Update: Jessica Palmer, ever erudite, remarks on this post at Bioephemera. I encourage readers to jump over to BioE for her take; Jessica is an artist, writer, and science communicator...though she wears other hats, too.

Photo credit: copyright 2009, Diane Wallace, ASU Art Museum

Carnimals #1: Buick Skylark

2011-03-17T16:56:00.002-04:00

Read about the "Scavenged Image (Remixed)" series here.

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

Hero Shot #1

2011-03-06T17:45:00.003-05:00

Read about the "Scavenged Image (Remixed)" series here.

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

Root Division's Youth Education Fundraiser

2011-03-02T15:10:00.019-05:00

I rarely make fundraising appeals on HH, but Root Division, the San Francisco-based arts education and residency program that I am a part of, needs some (cash money) love.

Please take a moment to watch the short video about RD's Youth Education program and to read the excerpted appeal below. If you have a little capital to contribute in these tight-belt times, Root Division would appreciate it, I would appreciate it, and, most importantly, alotta kids who don't know you would appreciate it...and that's one of the highest forms of giving.

The Root Division Youth Education After-School Project aims to provide 250 kids who wouldn't otherwise receive an arts education with 10-weeks of arts workshops each, at four different after-school programs in San Francisco. We serve diverse groups of students, most of which are low-income and attend schools within the San Francisco Unified School District. Partner schools include Cesar Chavez Elementary, Horace Mann Middle School, Seven Tepees Youth Program, and Mission Education Center, a K-5 school for students who have recently immigrated to the U.S. from Spanish-speaking countries.

So Many True Colors

2011-02-28T17:03:00.014-05:00

Installation at Haines Gallery
"Studies for La Destitution de la Jeune Fille"
2010
Gouache on paper and wood
Dimensions Variable
French artist Katya Bonnenfant has adopted the moniker The Old Boys' Club. TOBC's current exhibition at Haines Gallery - a scaled-down version of the recent wallpaper and sculptural installation at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts - is titled "La Destitution de al Jeune Fille (The Deposition of the Young Girl)." According to the gallery's press release, the title references a "post-Situationist theory [...] initially put forth by the anonymous collective, Tiqqun." Apparently, Tiqqun "advances the notion of the young girl as embodiment of the capitalist machine and the meaninglessness of modern life." Further research reveals that the preponderance of content published in Tiqqun's now defunct journal is jejune and impotent pseudo-philosophy, the sort of tripe that too many artists mistake for genuine thoughtfulness. Happily, despite her meager inspiration, TOBC puts on a good show.

"Study for La Destitution de la Jeune Fille #41"
2010
Gouache on paper
12 x 9 inches
The back gallery at Haines is pleasantly crowded with TOBC's colorful and riotous gouache drawings and sculptures. Bonnenfant's cast of cartoon characters is diverse; celebrities like Darth Vader and Waldo appear, but most of the artist's spear-wielding insurgents are humble and unfamiliar. What treasure or ideology are they fighting over, exactly? Narrative particulars are few and no critical players or turning points are obviously apparent; it's a ceaseless and meaningless melee (like Tiqqun's conception of modern life!).

The opaque, vivid colors of TOBC's gouaches call to mind the advertising industry's heraldry and, in combination with the masks and costumes of Bonnenfant's characters, emphasize the combatants' ethnic or cultural differences. The effect is gestalt; Bonnenfant's oddball cast of warrior mascots is a manifestation of the physical and economic violence of globalization. That's also what Tiqqun aimed to communicate but, where they failed, TOBC succeeds artfully and without pretension.

Installation at Haines Gallery
"Studies for La Destitution de la Jeune Fille"
2010
Gouache on paper and wood
Dimensions Variable
Image credits: all images from the artist's website and Haines Gallery website

Art Practical: Richard Baker

2011-02-24T11:16:00.006-05:00

Richard Baker
"The Air-Conditioned Nightmare"
2010
Gouache on paper
12 x 10.5 inches
My write-up of artist Richard Baker's gouache portraits of books is included in the most recent issue of Art Practical, an online magazine focused on the Bay Area's visual arts. The short piece appears in AP's Shotgun Reviews department. Read it here.

An element of Baker's work that I don't mention in the AP review is its special relevance to San Francisco; the artist's selection of titles and authors highlights the city's rich literary history. Happily, the town remains chock-a-block with neighborhood bookstores and reader-friendly cafes. Yet Kindles, iPads, and conversations about "the death of print media" abound. Indeed, even we bibliophiles find ourselves doing more (if not most) of our reading on electronic devices. Soon, our cherished libraries and bookstores may be considered the equivalent of charnel houses. If so, I'll still retreat to those tombs to touch, smell, and otherwise be with books. I'm guessing Baker will, too.

Baker's book portraits are on view at Gregory Lind Gallery through February 26th.

Image credit: courtesy Gregory Lind Gallery

"The Air That Touched Things"

2011-02-20T00:52:00.005-05:00

Claude Monet
"La Pie (The Magpie)"
1868-69
Oil on canvas
35 x 51 inches

"Monet once revealed that he wanted to paint not things in themselves but the air that touched things - the enveloping air. The enveloping air offers continuity and infinite expansion. If Monet can paint the air, he can follow it like following a thought. Except that the air operates wordlessly and, when painted, is visibly present only in colors, touches, layers, palimpsests, shades, caresses, scratches."

- John Berger, "The Enveloping Air," Harper's Magazine, January 2011

I'm not sure which I like more, Monet's wonderfully quixotic desire to paint "the air that touched things" or Berger's evocative prose. In any case, Monet nailed the light in his magpie painting.

Image credit: ripped from SeineValley.com

Babies on Bearskin #1

2011-02-17T17:18:00.003-05:00

Read about the "Scavenged Image (Remixed)" series here.

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

The Authority of the Museum

2011-02-11T17:30:00.006-05:00

Marcel Duchamp
"Fountain"
1917
(Photo by Alfred Stieglitz)

"The traffic of the readymade is one-way; a urinal that becomes art [...] can't escape to be a urinal again. The authority of the museums forbids it."

-Peter Schjeldahl, "Between the Lines," The New Yorker, November 29, 2010

Schjeldahl's observation is insightful. I'll take it one step further.

By submitting itself to "the authority of the museum," the urinal becomes something lesser than any of those in a public toilet. Presented as art, it is form without function; as Schjeldahl contends, it ceases to be a urinal.

But even though the urinal-cum-artwork can't escape this new identity, it might inspire museum visitors to reconsider the aesthetic merit of mundane, functional objects. If the visitor carries that perspective out of the museum doors, the readymade's meme has "escaped" the institution. In other words, the urinal trapped in the museum aggrandizes free and functional urinals the world over precisely because it has been stripped of its utility!

Why does the art world understand aesthetics and utility to be mutually exclusive?

Image credit: courtesy, Wikimedia Commons

Everywhere Looks the Same #2

2011-02-09T18:01:00.004-05:00

Read about the "Scavenged Image (Remixed)" series here.

Image credit: copyright Christopher Reiger, 2011

"Scavenged Image (Remixed)"

2011-02-09T17:39:00.008-05:00

"The price which man had to pay for his culture and civilization was the severing of this bond which had to be torn to give him his specific freedom of will. But our infinite longing for paradise lost is nothing else than a half-conscious yearning for our ruptured ties.”

-Konrad Lorenz, King Solomon’s Ring

I enjoy using Adobe Photoshop's basic tools to tweak JPEGs that I've collected online. Occasionally, my tinkering provides inspiration for a drawing. More often, the crude experiments are saved to my hard-drive on the off chance that I might later find some happy use for them.

A couple of weeks ago, while pondering a quick collage of a young man wearing a howling-wolf-with-moon t-shirt, I realized that my Photoshop amusements more plainly evidence the humor implicit in the ideas and questions that preoccupy me. Very few people comment on this aspect of my drawings and paintings; if they do, they assume the humor is unintended.

I believe this is partly a function of the artist's character informing the viewer's read of his or her art; people who don't know me well usually describe me as earnest, pensive, and not a kidder. Compounding matters, the pictures' principal mediums, watercolor and gouache, are considered the province of the Sunday painter. For many viewers, then, the drawings and paintings are either too heady or too precious.

By contrast, the Photoshop works are unpretentious "one-noters" that demand little from the viewer, yet still speak to some of the same existential questions that my works on paper do. What is our relationship to the rest of the animal kingdom and to nature, at large? How does our cataloging impulse inform those relationships? How do we reconcile imaginative myth with science, or our base animal with our spiritual aspirations?

But the Photoshop works also ask questions that my drawings and paintings do not. In what ways have we turned other species into commodities? What are the contemporary totem animals for an increasingly urban humanity? More profoundly, is the contemporary human condition one of contradiction? Although self-consciousness, advanced socialization, and technology make us exceptional and allow for the creation of culture and civilization, is it not those very developments that our inner animal rages against? Might many of our contemporary behaviors be analogues of the displacement exhibited by animals living in zoo enclosures?

Because these are related, but different questions and because the Photoshop works are more playful and wry, I've decided to present them on Hungry Hyaena. The first picture in my "Scavenged Image (Remixed)" series will follow this post. I will add more regularly.

Note: A thank you to Joy Garnett; her ongoing "Found Art/Unmonumental" series, posted on her long-running and consistently excellent blog, NEWSGrist, is, in some respects, cousin to this project.

Enter the Rabbit

2011-02-04T01:07:00.007-05:00

A red rabbit for the Chinese New Year
Although New York City has a larger Chinese American population than does San Francisco, the Chinese New Year is a much bigger deal in Fog City than it is in the Big Apple. The Chinese American population in New York accounts for approximately 4.5% of the total population; in San Francisco, it constitutes close to 20%.

Like New York, San Francisco has ethnic enclaves that exaggerate these demographics. I live in a part of the city known as the Inner Sunset, located at the eastern edge of the expansive Sunset District. About half of the Sunset's population is Asian American, mostly of Chinese extraction. In an interview published in the current issue of San Francisco Arts Quarterly (SFAQ), celebrated Bay Area artist Barry McGee remarks that he dislikes the Sunset District because "it's foggy, and there's a big Asian population." The interviewer asks, "You don't like Asians?," and McGee replies, "[...]well it's not that I don't like Asians, but I don't like that many Asians, you know?" I presume that the half-Chinese McGee is joking, but his tongue-in-cheek comment speaks to our species' inborn, tribal orientation.

Curiously, while I'm acutely aware of how "out of place" I am in some ethnic neighborhoods, I've never felt incongruous or unwelcome in predominantly Chinese American communities. There are, of course, significant cultural differences - I'd almost certainly feel homesick and alien were I to live in Beijing or Shanghai for a time - but, unlike McGee, I think the substantial Asian American population is a feather in the Sunset's cap, and I was pleased to see a number of red lanterns and celebratory banners hanging from Sunset awnings yesterday morning.

Maybe, though, there is a more novel reason why I appreciate the Chinese New Year? As a would-be ger (or convert to Judaism), I also observe a new year that's not dictated by the Gregorian calendar. I made my New Year resolutions in early September, during the days preceding Rosh Hashanah, a period that saw no spike in gym memberships.

What is to be made of this hybrid identity of mine, especially in light of our increasingly universalistic aspirations? I'm a straight, white male, and my family tree has a preponderance of English and Scottish Protestants; in other words, like it or not, I was born "the man." Yet I am also, by means of the mystical and psychological process of conversion, a Jew (technically speaking, I'm almost one, mikveh pending). Although most of us associate ethnic identity with skin color or bloodline, ethnicity is by definition a stew of heritage, language, culture, and religion; it is compound. Thus, though I'm only 1/8 Jewish by blood (i.e., genetically or physiologically), I'm able to identify as wholly so (i.e., psychologically).

Because of this rewiring of my identity, I'm ever more appreciative and proud of the diverse makeup of the United States. Many Americans nurture a composite identity (e.g., Italian American, Japanese American, or, less specifically, African American). Although it's crucial that we must prioritize the shared aspect of these respective identities, we should also celebrate the differences. In other words, just as our membership in the family of humankind does not preclude our identifying as part of nations, clubs, or families, American peoplehood does not prohibit membership in particularistic communities, subsets of the greater national identity. Contrary to the well-intentioned, "all you need is love" promises of misguided ideologues, our nation's principal virtue may be it's appreciation for both the universal and the particular.

So, to my many Chinese American neighbors, and to the rest of our experimental nation, cheers to yet another Happy New Year!

Image credit: ripped from Sweety Petey Eco-friendly Baby Toys

Artworld Digest Limited Edition Released!

2011-01-24T15:12:00.009-05:00

Christopher Reiger
"everywhere looks the same #1"
2008
Watercolor, gouache, pen and sumi ink on Arches paper
12 3/4 x 10 inches
I'm pleased to announce that the first limited edition print that Artworld Digest Magazine is offering for sale (via its newly launched online store) is based on my 2008 drawing, "Everywhere Looks the Same #1."

When I passed through New York City in December, I met with David Cohen, founder and publisher of Artworld Digest, to confirm that the print looked up to snuff; it exceeded my expectations! AD has produced a very handsome, archival digital print.

Each print in the edition of 100 is sold with a signed and numbered certificate of authenticity and, importantly, 65% of the sales proceeds will benefit The Center for Contemporary Environmental Art (CCEA), the organization behind the Seed Project.

The kicker? The prints only cost $25.00! Buy one here.

Image credit: copyright, Christopher Reiger

Surprise! Cats kill!

2011-01-20T16:08:00.004-05:00

My cat, Mr. Misi, displays his inner killer
"Conspiracies Don't Kill Birds. People, However, Do.," the title of a recent piece in the New York Times declares. The article reports that US Fish & Wildlife research shows that "some of the biggest death traps" for songbirds in the United States are the jaws and claws of domestic and feral cats. The author dubs the USFWS finding "surprising," but it shouldn't be. Folks surprised by this report are either innocently ignorant of wildlife (and of the wild within the lives we've tenuously domesticated) or they willfully deny the ambivalent violence that animates so much life, cat, bird, and human included.

Read the NY Times piece, then revisit "i taut i taw a putty tat," an HH post from April 13, 2005, in which I discuss some of the realities of cat predation and make it clear that, though I'm a cat lover par excellence, our nation's songbirds, small mammals, and reptiles need us to stop playing favorites.

Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2004

Artifacts

2011-01-14T15:56:00.004-05:00

Butt Johnson
"Various Video Game Controllers, Maps, and a Robotic Accessory"
2007
Ballpoint pen on paper
15 X 19 inches
It's been five years since I owned a video game console. It's been even longer since I abandoned myself to a game, a happy pastime (read: addiction) of my teens and early twenties. Just as I made a teenaged vow that I would always be knowledgeable about new music -- Damn it, I wouldn't be the adult who plays the same John Denver tape on the car stereo, day after day! -- I also promised myself that I'd always own a technologically sophisticated gaming system. Although I accepted the cruel fact that my body would age and degrade, I believed that I'd remain young at heart if I remained a serious gamer. In retrospect, this latter, already broken vow seems laughably naive. If I were still gaming (even casually), I'd be hard-pressed to juggle my art-making with my writing, my volunteer commitments with earning a living, my solitary "thinking time" with my relationship; where would gaming fit!?

In any case, artist Butt Johnson's drawing "Various Video Game Controllers, Maps, and a Robotic Accessory" strikes a nostalgic chord. Over the years, I've owned or used all of the controllers depicted (with the exception of the unfamiliar robot). Today, a little more than twenty-five years after the release of the tremendously popular Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console, we consider the system's controller (top row, third from the right) an artifact of a bygone gaming era. And the Atari joystick? A fossil! It's curious to feel wistful about technology so recently outmoded.

On a tangentially related note, I recommend Nick Paumgarten's New Yorker profile of Shigero Miyamoto, one of the creative minds behind Nintendo's success and the creator of revolutionary games like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Star Fox. He's also one of the idea men behind the industry-dominating Wii console. Like Paumgarten, I find it revealing that Miyamoto cites his active imagination and the outdoors as the foundation of his creative success.

"When Shigeru Miyamoto was a child, he didn’t really have any toys, so he made his own, out of wood and string. He put on performances with homemade puppets and made cartoon flip-books. He pretended that there were magical realms hidden behind the sliding shoji screens in his family’s little house. There was no television. His parents were of modest means but hardly poor. This was in the late nineteen-fifties and early nineteen-sixties, in the rural village of Sonobe, about thirty miles northwest of Kyoto, in a river valley surrounded by wooded mountains. As he got older, he wandered farther afield, on foot or by bike. He explored a bamboo forest behind the town’s ancient Shinto shrine and bushwhacked through the cedars and pines on a small mountain near the junior high school. One day, when he was seven or eight, he came across a hole in the ground. He peered inside and saw nothing but darkness. He came back the next day with a lantern and shimmied through the hole and found himself in a small cavern. He could see that passageways led to other chambers. Over the summer, he kept returning to the cave to marvel at the dance of the shadows on the walls.

Miyamoto has told variations on the cave story a few times over the years, in order to emphasize the extent to which he was surrounded by nature, as a child, and also to claim his youthful explorations as a source of his aptitude and enthusiasm for inventing and designing video games. The cave has become a misty but indispensable part of his legend, to Miyamoto what the cherry tree was to George Washington, or what LSD is to Steve Jobs. It is also a prototype, an analogue, and an apology -- an illuminating and propitious way to consider his games, or, for that matter, anyone else’s. It flatters a vacant-eyed kid with a joystick (to say nothing of the grownups who have bought it for him or sold it to him) to think of himself, spiritually, as an intrepid spelunker. The cave, certainly, is an occasion for easy irony: the man who has perhaps done more than any other person to entice generations of children to spend their playtime indoors, in front of a video screen, happened to develop his peculiar talent while playing outdoors, at whatever amusements or mischief he could muster. Of course, no one in the first wave of video-game designers could have learned the craft by playing video games, since video games didn’t exist until people like Miyamoto invented them. Still, there may be no starker example of the conversion of primitive improvisations into structured, commodified, and stationary technological simulation than that of Miyamoto, the rural explorer turned ludic mastermind."

My solitary, television-deprived childhood was akin to Miyamoto's, an enchanted, wondrous world of books and nature. That changed during my sixth grade year, when my parents purchased a television. A few years later, they presented me with a Nintendo console. For years after that purchase, I spent more time with a console controller in my hand than I did exploring or contemplating the world around me.

It's misguided to dismiss video games as artless or to condemn them as escapism, but I wonder whether my connection to natural history and my investment in ecology would be so concrete had my early, formative years included television and gaming. What if I'd been born eight years later, after the introduction of the NES and home computers?

I have a positive view of humanity; an overview of our species' short history reveals a social animal that takes two steps forward for every step back. Technology is an essential part of this gradual and steady improvement. Psychologically, however, we're growing ever more distant from our fellow species; our contemporary songlines resonate more in the virtual world than in natural history. Technology is no less a part of that unfortunate development.

Image credit: ripped from Butt Johnson's website

Jeffrey Simmons' Sacred Circles

2011-01-07T17:52:00.003-05:00

Jeffrey Simmons
"Apparent Horizon VI"
2010
Watercolor on paper
12.5 x 9 inches
If you're in the Bay Area this January, I encourage you to visit "Apparent Horizons," Jeffrey Simmons' solo show of watercolor paintings at Baer Ridgway. Most of the works on view feature "semi-transparent concentric circles [...] with subtle color variations between each light-hued ring." That description, taken from the gallery's press release, is perfectly accurate, but it fails to convey the other-worldly experience of Simmons' pictures. Radiant and diaphanous, the circles vibrate and murmur on the paper's surface. Calling to mind minimalist Buddhist mandalas or Hindu yantras, the paintings could well serve as objects of sacred utility, focal points for meditation and, for those who dabble in mysticism, gateways into the sublime.

Jeffrey Simmons
"Apparent Horizon I"
2010
Watercolor on paper
15.75 x 11.25 inches
The Bear Ridgway press release describes Simmons' work as "painstakingly engineered." Indeed, like those of the mandala-making monk, the artist's processes require meticulous control. To produce the paintings, Simmons uses a rotating easel, situating his brush hand so that it remains stationary while the paper moves, turntable-like, beneath it. I get a kick out of knowing this; artists like to peer over one another's shoulders because we're as curious about the 'how' as we are enthused by the 'what.' When appreciating artwork, however, technique should be a secondary concern; if the machinations of the man behind the curtain are more important than the smoke and light show he endeavors to produce, he won't wear the wizard mantle for long. Happily, Simmons' shimmering, ethereal pictures prove him an adept; I look forward to seeing more of his work.

Jeffrey Simmons
"Apparent Horizon III"
2010
Watercolor on paper
15.75 x 11.25 inches
Imaged credits: all images, courtesy Baer Ridgway Exhibitions

Karl Cronin's Experiencing Forms

2011-01-04T00:41:00.007-05:00

Karl Cronin
"Populus tremuloides (Aspen)"
2009
In late November, I visited "Ecoarchive: Meditations on Time and Nature," a group show on view at Intersection for the Arts 5M, in San Francisco. All of the work included in the exhibition (on view through January 22, 2011) is intelligent and commendable, but I most appreciated Matthew Moore's video, "Lifecycles," Sam Easterson's video, "The Museum of Animal Perspectives," and Karl Cronin's video sampler of his "Somatic Natural History Archive."

I spent most of my time with Cronin's project. For his "Somatic Natural History Archive," Cronin aims to "document with his own body representational expressions of 10,000 U.S. plants and animals," an undertaking that the artist estimates will take 50 years to complete. To date, Cronin has made "expeditions" to Nashville (TN), Santa Fe (NM), Yosemite (CA), Raleigh (NC), Plainfield (MA), and the Grand Canyon, and he's earned the well-deserved support of the Santa Fe Art Institute, Movement Research, and the Puffin Foundation. The documents of his "representational expressions" are archived in the SNHA Catalogue, each labeled with the observed species' Latin name and common name (e.g., "Populus tremuloides (Aspen)").

Karl Cronin
"Awaiting identification"
2009
With so very many plants and animals to imitate (only 66 of the 10,000 have so far been cataloged online), it's not surprising that Cronin's earnest attempts are uneven; generally, I find his embodiment of plants more intriguing and successful than his animals, but even the less-realized "expressions" made me smile, giddily impressed by the artist's wonderfully quixotic efforts.

Importantly, however, Cronin's endeavor is not mere whimsy. The project may seem simple enough, but I'm certain that it provides the artist with a fundamentally new understanding of (and relationship with) the creatures he studies. Cronin first observes the plant or animal subject, then he perceives it physically, with his body. Watching the artist sway and lean with the breeze in a stand of a grass (an as yet unidentified species, perhaps related to switchgrass), it occurred to me that Cronin is something of a latter-day shaman. "Shaman" is a term abused by new-age prophets and their ranks of well-intentioned, but ill-informed followers, but the philosopher and cultural ecologist David Abram is one of a handful of writers who have given shamanism the thoughtful consideration that it deserves. As I watched Cronin channel a heron, Abram's definition of magic came to mind.

"We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human. [..] Magic is participating in a world of multiple intelligences with the intuition that every form one perceives - from the swallow swooping overhead to the fly on a blade of grass, and indeed the blade of grass itself - is an experiencing form, an entity with its own predilections and sensations that are very different from our own."

In essence, magic is empathy with other "experiencing forms"; it's communion with other facets of the animate world. Happily, by documenting his work with video, Cronin allows the viewer to participate in the magic. I'm grateful for that.

Karl Cronin
"Caelifera sp. (Grasshopper)"
2009
Note: As a proud natural history geek, I was disappointed that Cronin titled the last of the three videos above "Caelifera sp. (Grasshopper)." In fact, the insect that Cronin imitates in this video is actually a katydid, a species more closely related to crickets than to grasshoppers. Still, while I presume Cronin will make the correction when he adds this video to the SNHA Catalogue, I don't envy him the task of trying to secure a definitive ID on many of the species he works with. Without the help of a entomology expert, he'll be hard pressed to determine the species of katydid in the video above.)

Image/artwork credit: all videos, courtesy Karl Cronin

Relative Birthday Abundance

2010-12-29T22:18:00.006-05:00

Tundra (or Whistler) swans; Heron Hope; Locustville, VA; December 2010
As an enthusiastic amateur naturalist living in New York City, I grew fond of the hearty, adaptive species that populated the boroughs' streets, parks, and waterfronts: pigeons and gulls, rats and red-tailed hawks, starlings and squirrels. When I felt out of step with my urban friends and neighbors, as I occasionally did, I found that watching the animals helped. Chittering around the base of a corner garbage can, the sparrows and starlings chastised me for moping. The herring gull's shrill shout over the East River exhorted me to shake off my self-conscious alienation. All of these species were part of my urban wildlife support network. Watching them reminded me to get on with the business of grateful L-I-V-I-N', no matter where I might be. Now that I live in San Francisco, a town with greater biodiversity than NYC, I'm happy to have Steller's jays, Brewer's blackbirds, and ravens keeping me company, too.

Today, however, my girlfriend and I are visiting my parents on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Dumped on by the latest "snowpocalypse," we've been locked in for most of our visit. Not that I mind. Yesterday morning, I trudged through the snow drifts around my home ground, eyes squinted in the dazzling winter light. In the space of an hour, I saw thousands of snow geese rise noisily from a partially exposed barley field; turkey vultures sweep across the sky, scenting for an unfortunate victim of the biting weather; a woodcock flush from a hedge; coyote tracks that skirted a small cemetery; mouse tracks that emerged from under a snow-covered plow and lightly skipped across the snowfall's surface to a patch of open grass; a yellow-rumped warbler and a Carolina wren vying for position atop a perch; two tundra (or whistling) swans flying low overhead; Canada geese and green-winged teal gathered in the open water of the estuary; a cottontail peer from a tangle of grasses. It occurred to me, as I contemplated such abundance and diversity, that my urban wildlife support network, whatever its personal value, is but a shadow of what I witnessed this December morning.

Sunset; Heron Hope; Locustville, VA; December 2010
Last year, at this time, I wrote, "32 years on this Earth, and still I feel like I am opening my eyes for the first time." Now 33, that statement is no less true. Given my stubborn optimism, I presume that it will be true at 43, 53, or 83 (should I survive so long). Still, I wish that I could open my eyes to greater species diversity in the cities that I call home. We humans are an increasingly urban species, and we must take care not to forget about the world's collapsing biodiversity. It isn't just the country folks that benefit from it; we all do, whether we appreciate that fact or not.

All the same, I'm looking forward to hearing the belated birthday croaks from the ravens above the Inner Sunset.

Happy 2011, friends. May it be a rich, sweet, and happy year!

Snow Geese; Heron Hope; Locustville, VA; December 2010
Photo credit: Hungry Hyaena, 2010

Red Wolf ESPP Prints Released!

2010-12-03T17:59:00.005-05:00

Christopher Reiger
"Constellation (Canis rufus)"
2010
Pen and sumi ink, gouache, and watercolor on Arches paper
15 x 12 inches
My 2010 drawing "Constellation (Canis rufus)" has been made into a limited edition print for the Endangered Species Print Project (ESPP). The drawing features the red wolf (Canis rufus), a critically endangered wolf species.

I wrote the following description of the red wolf and its plight for the ESPP website:

"The Red Wolf (Canis rufus) is a medium-sized North American canid, generally larger than a coyote but smaller than the gray wolf. As the common name suggests, red wolves often have reddish fur on and around their ears, neck, and legs. Like other wolves, the Red Wolf is a social species that lives in packs, groups typically comprised of a mated pair and their offspring (of multiple generations). Red Wolves are crepuscular predators, most active at dusk and at dawn. They prey on white-tailed deer, raccoons, opossums, rabbits, and rodents, but are also known to scavenge.

The Red Wolf once occupied a range that extended over the forests, swamps, and coastal plains of the southern and eastern areas of the United States, as far west as Texas and as far north as New York. As with most non-domesticated canines, however, the Red Wolf was vilified as a dangerous competitor of man (and, erroneously, a "man-eater"). These entrenched, negative attitudes gave rise to aggressive predator control campaigns; wolves were poisoned, shot, and trapped. This persecution was compounded by habitat loss and disease, taking a terrible toll on red wolf populations. By 1980, the species was extinct in the wild.

Today, though, there is good news. Thanks to several focused preservation and reintroduction programs, and especially to the efforts of the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium (PDZA) and the United States Fish & Wildlife Service (USFWS), in conjunction with programs like that at Mill Mountain Zoo, the Red Wolf is staging a small, isolated recovery. There are now approximately 100 wolves living wild in eastern North Carolina and up to 250 individuals in zoo-based captive breeding programs."

As per the ESPP model, this is a limited edition of 100 prints, the number determined by the featured animal's current wild population. The print measures 8 x 10 inches, and costs a mere $50.00. ALL proceeds from sale of the prints will be donated to the Port Defiance Zoo & Aquarium Red Wolf Recovery Program.

As I explain in the ESPP artist notes, my fascination with taxonomy increased my interest in researching this particular species:

"Ecology, wildlife biology, and natural history are subjects that I'm passionate about, and I'm especially intrigued by taxonomy, the classification of different species. The ever-evolving field's binomial nomenclature is chock-a-block with curious etymological backstories and, more importantly, taxonomists are endlessly debating species classification. Names change, species become subspecies (and vice versa), and protected animals become unprotected animals on what seems to be a month-to-month basis! The red wolf is no exception. It's an honor to produce an artwork that may, in some small way, help save a keystone predator from extinction and genetic isolation; I must admit, however, that I also planned to use the print as an excuse to learn more about the particulars of the red wolf taxonomic debate.

Some wildlife biologists insist that the red wolf's scientific name is Canis lupus rufus and that the animal is a subspecies of gray wolf (Canis lupus). Another camp, one that the US Fish & Wildlife Service concurs with, believes the wolf to be a species distinct from the gray wolf. It is their classification, Canis rufus, that I use in the species description above. Frankly, both groups make valid arguments; the different verdicts depend on whether the red wolf is classified according to the biological classification rule (i.e., if Wolf A can make viable pups with Wolf B, the two wolves belong to the same species) or the phenotypic/phylogenetic approach to classification, based on distinct physiological or genetic characteristics. Because the phenotypic/phylogenetic approach leads to a great many more species, it remains a source of contention within wildlife biologist communities and complicates conservation politics, for better and for worse.

Of primary importance, though, are the animals. Whether red wolves are ultimately deemed their own species or a subspecies of gray wolf, they're on the brink of extinction. There is ample cause for hope, however, and you can make that hope a little more concrete by purchasing a print!"

Visit the ESPP site to learn more and, during this holiday season, please consider helping the species by buying a print as a gift.

Gallery Report, November 6th, 2010

2010-11-14T17:08:00.006-05:00

On a beautiful fall Saturday, I visited a number of San Francisco's downtown galleries with Brian Friedman, a good friend and artist who was visiting the Bay Area from New York City. Although I'm very happily installed on the west coast, I haven't lived here long enough to establish close friendships, and I was impressed by how much I appreciated spending time with a friend with whom I'm so comfortable. Maybe I'm getting prematurely sentimental? Sentimental or not, I'm still a harsh judge of artwork, and most of what Brian and I viewed was unremarkable. Fortunately, there were a few exceptions.

+++++
"Narwhellian"
Seth Koen at Gregory Lind Gallery

Seth Koen
"Djiril"
2010
Wood
43.25 x 72 x 8.25 inches
Sculptor Seth Koen produces work that appeals in equal measure to my formal sensibility and my imagination. Viewers who prioritize craft will delight in Koen's refined and sensuous surfaces and formalists will applaud the forms' casual elegance. As playful as they are soulful, some wear knitted contraceptives or melt impossibly while others limn space's transcendental properties almost as effectively as a James Turrell light work.

My principal pleasure, though, is considering what the esoteric objects might represent or be. The artist avoids didacticism -- he shows instead of telling -- and the sculptures are more open-ended and interesting as a result. Are they abstracted totem animals, as the exhibition's title, "Narwhellian," might suggest? Are they instead the tools or ritual objects of some unknown, aboriginal population? Or are they sophisticated, conceptual responses to our contemporary political predicaments, another reading of the show's title? The answers, of course, are supplied by each viewer.

Seth Koen
"Medusa" and "Arachne"
2010
Wood / Wood and thread
63.5 x 5 x 7.75 inches
69 x 6 x 6 inches

+++++
"Incidental Objects"
Andy Goldsworthy at Haines Gallery

Andy Goldsworthy
"Hand hit site dust, Presidio Spire, October 2008"
2008
6 unique C-prints
16 x 16 inches, each
Could it be that Andy Goldsworthy is at last taken seriously? These days, I don't receive as much grief as I used to when I admit that I admire much of Goldsworthy's effort. Perhaps the self-conscious, punishing cool of conceptualism is finally beginning to wane, making room for artists who aspire to the sublime and wear their Romantic and mystical impulses like badges of honor? Whether or not Goldsworthy's work is taken seriously by his contemporaries, however, it is no less important. That's not to suggest that all (or even most) of the artist's output is particularly notable; nevertheless, when Goldsworthy connects, he produces profound and potent work.

A few gems are included in "Incidental Objects," his current show at Haines Gallery. The strongest work in the show is a series of photographs titled, "Hand hit site dust, Presidio Spire, October 2008." The photos document an unremarkable gesture captured in six frames; the artist smacks dry, dusty ground at the site where his "Presidio Spire" sculpture would later be constructed. By presenting the action in a Muybridge-style sequence, Goldsworthy invites the viewer to ruminate on the significance of the crude, abrupt mark-making; in so doing, he invests the unremarkable with significance or, as the exhibition's title terms it, the "incidental" is rendered radically full of meaning.

Few artists are so interested in getting dirty. Playing in the mud, Goldsworthy asks vital questions about our contemporary relationship to terrain, ritual, time, and natural processes. It's interesting, then, that video and photography, mediums we associate with an anthropological remove and even sterility, are the artist's most effective means of documentation and presentation.

+++++
"Recent Paintings"
Stephen Beal at George Lawson Gallery

Stephen Beal
"untitled"
2010
Acrylic, gouache, and graphite on wood panel
31.75 x 31.75 inches
In the Bay Area art community, Stephen Beal might be better known for his regional academic and managerial activity than for his artwork. Like many other working artists, Beal is a college professor, but he's also the active President of the California College of the Arts (CCA), a Board member of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Board President of the Creative Growth Art Center. Impressive and laudable though his contribution to Bay Area arts is, I'm pleased to report that his show of recent paintings at George Lawson Gallery proves he's an artist who "sunlights" as an arts administrator rather than an arts administrator who moonlights as an artist.

All of Beal's paintings hum and vibrate, and his brightly colored works crackle with energy; generally, however, his strongest pieces are understated, more Om than bug zapper. Admiring "untitled" (pictured above), Beal's repetitive, paced process calls to mind the meditative work of Agnes Martin. The finished, undulating picture, however, relates more to Mark Rothko's transcendental canvases. (Tweeting contemporary benefactors: "21st Century Chapel, Anyone?" But, until Daddy or Momma Warbucks steps forward to give Beal a permanent space to transform with his pictures, his work will transform one collector's wall at a time...and that's no incidental thing.)

Stephen Beal
"untitled (sb03)"
2010
Acrylic and graphite on wood panel
8 x 9 inches

Image credits: all images, courtesy the respective gallery websites

Winner Take All?

2010-10-10T16:46:00.004-04:00

My father recently sent me a clipping from the Hampton Roads Daily Press that highlighted some curious research presented at my alma mater, the College of William & Mary.

Biologists have determined that "the maximum length of a duck's penis depends not on genetics but rather [on] the males he keeps company with." Dr. Maydianne Andrade, of the University of Toronto Scarborough, explained that ducks "are essentially engineering their own phallus in response to social challenges." This is fascinating evolutionary biology, to be sure, but I find it remarkable that ducks have penises at all, given that most birds do not. (Apparently, a cloaca just won't cut it in duck world!) Dr. Patricia Brennan, of Yale University, believes that the heightened intensity of male-male competition among waterfowl has resulted in the development and size fluctuation of their sex organs.

The evolving duck penis battle came to mind when I read Ashley Mears' article about Coco Rocha, the popular fashion model. Early in his piece, Mears summed up the competitive dynamics of creative industries revealingly.

"Rocha is what economists would call a winner in a 'winner-take-all market,' prevalent in culture industries like art and music, where a handful of people reap very lucrative and visible rewards while the bulk of contestants scrape together meager livings before they fade into more stable and far less glamorous careers."

As with the bulk of would-be daddy (or uncle) ducks, most artists, designers, musicians, writers, and other creatives will not be prolific and celebrated. There are many intangibles in play, of course, but, like the drake duck whose penis twists to extraordinary lengths to impregnate a hen, "winning" in a creative industry often depends on who you're keeping company with.

Once vetted, however, the successful creative becomes, like Coco Rocha, a known label; his or her career is likely to be a fruitful one. That label is what the blog "Is It Art or Fart?" trades on. As the blog's co-founders explain,

"The blog began as a conversation between two friends living on opposite coasts who shared an undying passion for contemporary art. Both friends have the habit of seeing as much contemporary art as they possibly can, and this habit has uncontrollably spilled over into the recognition of 'fart'--coincidental moments in everyday life that, when isolated and [attached to the name of an] artist, bear uncanny resemblance to art seen in museums and galleries around the globe. Back and forth the two friends would point to the 'fart' that seemed to be just about everywhere. Now the humor of their findings is for all to enjoy. Remember, the world is your readymade!"

Part of the humor of their project is that the "fart" is often as good as or better than the "art" it might be confused with. Unfortunately, for the "fart," as for many drake ducks and coulda-been-a-contender creatives, it's a winner-take-all world.

Image credit: Scrooge McDuck, copyright Walt Disney Company

"Uprooted"

2010-10-01T12:20:00.005-04:00

I have work included in "Uprooted," a group exhibition at Heart that features a selection of Root Division resident artists. Root Division is a Mission District-based arts and arts education non-profit.

Exhibition details follow.

"Root Division and Heart are pleased to present a select group of Root Division resident artists whose work shares a common reflection on their current setting - San Francisco. Whether in motif, subject, light or sensibility, each of these artists addresses the influence of their surroundings.

All but two of the artists have come from outside California and embraced the Bay Area as their home, as well as the backdrop of their artistic creations. How is the landscape that we call home shaping these emerging and newly arrived Bay Area artists?

'Uprooted' is curated by Marisa McCarthy."

Heart
1270 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

Opening: Wednesday, October 6th, 6-10 pm
Exhibition Dates: September 23 - November 15, 2010

Update: Jane Hammond's "Fallen"

2010-09-26T13:53:00.004-04:00

Jane Hammond
"Fallen"
2010
Dimensions variable
In January 2006, I wrote a short post about Jane Hammond's mixed-media, evolving sculpture "Fallen," a melancholy and beautiful tribute to the lives lost during the (now sort-of-but-not-really-over) Iraq War.

When it was exhibited in 2005, the work consisted of 1,500 paper leaves, each meticulously crafted by the artist and inscribed with the name of an American soldier who met his or her end during the invasion or occupation of Iraq. At the time of my post, I wondered if Hammond had continued to add leaves to the work.

A couple of weeks ago, four-and-a-half years after I wrote about "Fallen," the artist sent me an email telling me more about the life of the sculpture. I share the bulk of her update below, along with some images of the piece as it was in 2005 (below) and as it looks more recently (above, and detail below).

"I make the leaves by hand and each is based on a real leaf which I gather and digitally scan, then there is cutting, hand-painting, a little fiberglassing and more hand-painting, then they are signed by me with sumi ink and a brush pen and molded into a three-dimensional form.

[...A]ll the leaves in the piece you saw at Lelong were from upstate Connecticut, gathered in the Fall of 2004—I have now gathered leaves in Hawaii. Washington State, California, Colorado, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Michigan, Mississippi, Alabama, Virginia, Maryland, Massachussetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Rhode Island. And adding to the original group from 2004, I have gathered in the Autumns of 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009. And I am sure I will gather some in 2010 this Fall.

[...]This Fall, ["Fallen"] will [...] be shown at the Taubman Museum in Roanoke, Virginia from September 23rd until January 10th, 2011. It will open with 4,390 leaves."

Jane Hammond
"Fallen" detail
2010
Dimensions variable
Sadly, she does have more leaves yet to add.

Jane Hammond
"Fallen"
2005
Dimensions variable

Image credits: courtesy Jane Hammond

The RSA's "21st Century Enlightenment"

2010-09-22T10:41:00.008-04:00

Sure, the video is 11 minutes long, well over the too-long-to-watch mark for readers casually trolling the blogosphere, but it's worth bookmarking and saving for later. (In fact, I encourage you to watch it on YouTube or the RSA website, as the resolution is better than that of the above embed.)

The ideas articulated are vital and might provide some solace for those of you who, like so many of my friends, suffer from political apocalypse syndrome! Moreover, the animation is terrific and the narrator, like the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (RSA), is British, satisfying the Anglophile in all of us.

Enjoy.

(Thanks to Michael McDevitt for turning me on to this RSA video.)

"From the Same Place"

2010-09-12T14:43:00.004-04:00

Robyn Winston
"Untitled 30 (Vampire Series)"
2010
Acrylic, charcoal and gesso on paper
28 x 22 inches

"You have to learn to love all your artworks and accept them because ultimately they were all made from the same hands and come from the same place."

- Robyn Winston

Robyn wrote the above in a recent letter to me. I think the quotation worthy of inclusion in a future collection of Letters To A Young Artist. The sentiment is simple and too often forgotten...like so many noble truths.

Image credit: courtesy Robyn Winston, 2010

ESPP at Chicago's Renegade Craft Fair

2010-09-05T13:46:00.004-04:00

The Endangered Species Print Project will be exhibiting at the Renegade Craft Fair, taking place this September 11th and 12th, in Chicago.

Co-founders Jenny Kendler and Molly Schafer will be selling prints to raise funds for all of the fourteen species so far featured in ESPP prints, as well as some upcoming print subjects, including my red wolf (Canis rufus).

I'm pleased to report that, to date, the ESPP has raised $4,000 for critically endangered species, and hopes to raise another $6,000 at Renegade! If you're in or around the Windy City, please pay them a visit.

An August Update

2010-08-30T14:07:00.004-04:00

Me, on Tank Hill; San Francisco, CA; August 2010
If you're a regular visitor to HH, you've noticed that no new content has been contributed in the last month. Even in the months before this current drought, my activity here had become sporadic and the essays or reviews generally shorter. It's easy to attribute this dearth of content to my preparations for the move from NYC to San Francisco and, now that I'm living on the west coast, to my attempts to locate myself in a new town and community.

Whatever the cause or causes, HH will continue to serve as a venue for my art-related announcements, as well as an archive of my past writing. Now and again, I also reread and tag older posts so that they are added to the "Post Archive By Subject" sidebar.

In the future, I may again supply regular content - in fact, I expect that I will - but, for now, I'm happy working in the studio, reading, exercising, earning my keep at a day job, discovering many exciting things about my new home, appreciating the ravens that frequent my neighborhood, and, above all, living again with Elizabeth.

A view of my Mission District studio; San Francisco, CA; August 2010

Photo credits: Hungry Hyaena, 2010

"100 Starlings"

2010-07-29T13:18:00.008-04:00

Christopher Reiger
"the bird that stands against time's desolation"
2009
Gouache, acrylic, watercolor and marker on Arches paper
12 3/4 x 11 3/8 inches
"the bird that stands against time's desolation," a 2009 drawing of mine, is included in The Stockyard Institute's Nomadic Studio Bird Sanctuary, at the DePaul University Museum. The show opens this weekend.

My work is part of the "100 Starlings" installation by artist Nikki Jarecki. From Jarecki's press release:

"I am [...] bringing a collective of artists together under one roof to teach and learn from each other about the potential of a singular invasive species, the European Starling. I observe nature in the urban environment the same way I did in my rural environment. The observations lead to research which made me wonder how others perceive this common creature. I named the project, 100 European Starlings as that is the number that Eugene Schieffelin collectively released in North America in the 19th century."

Personally, I admire the starling, and I'm skeptical of those who villify the species. I wrote here in 2008,

"I have a soft spot for the trophic generalists, those species able to eke out a living - even thrive - across a range of unexploited ecological niches. Prince among the trophic generalists is the European starling (Sturnus vulgaris). Clothed in a white-speckled, iridescent suit of blues, blacks, purples and brown, the starling is dashing, if despised. Like so many American immigrants, the bird made a fresh start in New York just before the turn of the 20th century. According to recent estimates, the approximately 200 million starlings that call North America home all descend, Old Testament-like, from one group of birds (numbering between 60 and 100) released into Central Park in 1890. Shakespeare enthusiast Eugene Schieffelin believed his goal of introducing all bird species mentioned in the works of Shakespeare was a worthy one. Legion biologists disagree.

I'm not sure that their concern is wholly legitimate. The xenophobic couching of the terms - "invasive," "alien," "exotic" - is worrisome, and I also favor the realist's long view. Given the opportunity, all species spread when and where they can, and ecosystems, like climates, are forever in flux."

It will be interesting to learn what the other artists present. Read more about Jarecki's project here.

"100 Starlings"
(in conjunction with The Stockyard Institute's Nomadic Studio)
DePaul University Art Museum
2350 N. Kenmore Ave.
Chicago, IL 60614
August 1 - August 31

ESPP Anniversary

2010-07-21T19:41:00.007-04:00

Molly Schafer
"Moldavian Meadow Viper"
2010
Archival giclee print (Edition of 2000)
8 x 10 inches
The Endangered Species Print Project recently celebrated their one year anniversary! To mark it, they released three new prints.

I'm especially fond of the two newly available limited editions created by the project's co-founders, Molly Schafer and Jenny Kendler...and I'm most drawn to the Moldavian Meadow Viper (Vipera ursinii ssp. moldavica). This, for three reasons: Molly rendered the animal beautifully; I adore serpents, and Molly evidently does, too; I have an irrational attachment to Hungary, since my paternal great-grandparents hail from the country, and sales of the print benefit the Hungarian Meadow Viper Conservation Center, a conservation organization based there.

Visit the ESPP site to see the other prints.

Image credit: Courtesy the Endangered Species Print Project

Benefit Auction for Audubon Action Center

2010-07-20T19:40:00.004-04:00

Christopher Reiger
"Totem:Wolf"
2007
Pen and ink, sumi ink and watercolor on Arches paper
16 1/2 x 14 3/4 inches
"Totem:Wolf," one of my 2007 drawings, is included in Heide Hatry's Silent Auction to Benefit Audubon Action Center's Gulf Oil Response. The auction is being held in conjunction with Hatry's benefit exhibition "Imagine It Thick In Your Own Hair," at Pierre Menard Gallery. The Audubon Action Center is doing valuable work assisting in the Gulf region.

The auction takes place this Thursday evening, July 22nd. If you're in the Boston or Cambridge area, check it out!

Pierre Menard Gallery
10 Arrow St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
Auction and reception: July 22, 6 - 9 PM

Denise Bibro "Summer Selections"

2010-07-19T23:48:00.002-04:00

I have work included in Denise Bibro Gallery's "Summer Selections," a group exhibition opening this week.

Denise Bibro Fine Art
529 West 20th Street, 4W
NY, NY 10011

"Summer Selections"
July 22 - August 13, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, July 22, 6 - 8 PM

A California Hello and a New York Hyena

2010-07-05T21:06:00.003-04:00

Robyn Winston's spotted hyena cake in progress
This past Thursday, Elizabeth and I safely completed our cross country drive, and with negligible damage to any of the art, furniture, books, tchotchkes, or other objects we loaded into the back of Cheryl, our Penske rental truck. Now that I'm a San Francisco resident, however, I must settle in, find a part-time job, and land happily on my art-making feet in a new and exciting environment. In other words, please understand if HH posts are irregular.

In the coming weeks, I hope to sort through the many drive-by snapshots Elizabeth took from the shotgun seat, including tremendous storms brewing over Kansas, vast wind farms in Colorado, and the stunning salt flats of Utah. In the meantime, I'm posting several photographs of the amazing spotted hyena cake that my friend and talented artist Robyn Winston made for my NYC send-off. I'm delighted to think that I may be one of a very few people who has been presented with a hyena shaped cake! Thank you, Robyn!

Robyn's finished cake

My happy mug with the hyena maw
Photo credits: Robyn Winston, 2010

Moving Notice

2010-06-20T22:41:00.002-04:00

HH will be quiet for a couple of weeks. In a few days, Elizabeth and I begin the drive west; as of July, I'll be a Californian resident.

I haven't known so heightened a degree of nervous anticipation since I sat on my hands in the passenger seat of my dad's Ford F-150 and, wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, emerged from the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan.

That New York City birth occurred more than ten years ago, but I recalled it earlier this week, as I bounced a four-and-a-half month old baby on my lap. Whenever the two of us made eye contact, the baby would smile toothless at me and drool on the chest of his Snagglesaurus onesie. Each time, though, his eyes would soon drift away from mine, his smile would open into an imperfect "O," and he'd stare, head lolling, at some other object of wonder.

I've got thirty-two years on the little guy, but I don't believe that my appreciation of the world is altogether dissimilar. Certainly, I slip into self-conscious, myopic modes (say, when I'm packing for a major move!), but much of each day is spent squinty-eyed happy or struck dumb by wonder. I don't drool as much as I used to, but the stupidly sublime fact of being wows and humbles me no less than it did way back when.

Despite the long hours and the relative monotony of Interstate driving, I look forward to crossing this spectacular land. Along with books on tape and downloaded lectures, Elizabeth and I will have a road trip playlist to listen to. I added Liz Phair's "Go West" to the tracks last night.

"Safe on the interstate
New York is 3,000 miles away [...]
I've closed my eyes and my bank account
And gone west, young man

Take off the parking brake
Go coasting into a different state
And I'm not looking forward to missing you."

And I'm not looking forward to missing you New York, but life rolls on and I keep on smiling.

Image credit: State flag of California, ripped from Wikipedia