Crown Point Press, a true jewel in San Francisco’s art crown, currently shares a mini-retrospective of Robert Bechtle’s work. It’s truly wonderful to see some older editions juxtaposed with the newer ones. We can see some elimination in Becthle’s work and sublime improvements in the print-making process. “20th Street VW” is simplicity rendered by a master.
If you have never visited Crown Point Press please, give yourself this gift. It’s a fantasy trip into the printmakers world. Your SteinbergFarmer reporters were awed to be in the building whilst Nathan Oliveira was busy working –WOW, moment of abundance. Our souls stood still in respect.
Nathan Oliveira, Twin Runners
We contented ourselves by viewing the work of Pat Steir, Laura Owens, Ian Baxter, Julie Mehretu, Anish Kapoor, Robert Colescott (currently showing at Meridian Gallery on Powell St), and others. CPP has hosted more than 100 artists since their 1962 inception. www.crownpoint.com
Mary Heilmann, Joaquin's Close Out
Of course we filled our totes with treasures from the well-stocked bookstore; oh, a few printmaking supplies found their way into our bags as well. Farmer confesses, “ I’ve never left Crown Point without a purchase. This is the ultimate artist’s candy store.”
Here’s your scoop: Amy Sillman opens Tuesday, Nov 6. Be there; this unusual Tuesday opening will provide the perfect opportunity to slow down and enjoy this magical space. You won’t have to run around to other openings and you can take in Sillman’s expansion of her visual vocabulary, blending her figurative work into abstraction, at your own pace. Give yourself time to explore this treasure trove of fantastic art and art making.
Oh, did I mention magical? Well, “Magical Secrets about Thinking Creatively: The Art of Etching and the Truth of Life” by Crown Point Press’s founder, Kathan Brown, provides insight into the creative process from artists who have worked with Crown Point. They’ve even embroidered the catchy tenets onto work aprons.
To round out our visit we discovered a special dry-point kit. You purchase the kit, it contains everything you need to produce a print, create your own work and then send it back for a professional print. Here’s the link: http://crownpointpress.stores.yahoo.net/drypointkit.html
LONDON Calling: Beaux Arts, Seventeen Gallery, Gallery 435
On a recent trip to London I (Gail) visited over three thousand galleries and museums, from upmarket Cork Street, to artsy Hoxton, to the republic of Slough...well maybe it only seemed like that many because there was so much great work. Unfortunately I had to miss the art fairs which were scheduled a week too late for our schedule but I did see more than I ever thought I could. Here are just a few highlights:
Beaux Arts, Redefining Bodies
There is something provocatively primal yet clean about these sculptures, like new age creatures birthing, transparent bodies constructed of plastic sheets covered with digitally precise photographic scans of the human heart and womb. Marilene Oliver uses digital imaging technologies to examine the relationship between seeing and knowing a human being and the desire to discover something fundamentally true about ourselves through knowing the human body. Oh sure, some might say these works are more crib mobiles than serious exploration with their clear colors and movable parts but Oliver says that “the only way to find the information we want is to go inside it” and that the more time “I spend working with and through computers the more I feel the way I interact with others and even myself is changing.”
Marilene Oliver, Heart and Womb
There’s something that feels true and intriguingly different about her vision that holds your interest. Using tools she calls “pivotoptic,” that “allow us to enter the information world at ground level and spin inside it, the more we pivot, the faster we spin, the more information we acquire,” her work strives to both put us inside the body and to comment on the impossibility of attaining a fuller sense of identity by knowing our digitalized selves. Providing new packaging for information that is both encapsulated and in motion at once, Oliver’s work redefines our relationship to what the human body is and exposes our continual drive to know more about ourselves. It takes a special set of skills to make this much information all at once visually exciting. Her creatures have personalities and supply aesthetic intrigue. I’d be glad to visit them again and again. www.beauxartslondon.co.uk
Seventeen Gallery, Susan Collis, Redefining Looking
We were in Hoxton, half way out the door of the Seventeen Gallery when Paul Pieroni, the director pointed out the drips on the floor, one of those categories I don’t usually pay attention to. Someone carried an open can of paint across the room leaving a trail of drops. Whoa. The drips are actually a 32 foot pattern of precisely cut mother of pearl stones set into the floorboards of the gallery. Most people: too preoccupied to imagine the obvious as interesting. Susan Collis: an installation artist who notices the things in front of our eyes we tend to overlook. When it comes into focus, the work is exquisite, a wake up call. Feeling new empathy with that deer caught in the headlights, my perception shifts abruptly. Look. Search for more.
Is this a gallery or a treasure hunt? In a corner, a plastic bucket catches drips from a hole in the ceiling. Not really. Called Without You the World Goes On , there is a concealed pump that lets the same trickle perpetually recirculate. Think about it. What appears to be an old broom leaning against a different wall is not flecked with bits of paint but delicately set with inlaid pearls, jasper, turquoise, garnets and black diamonds. Challenging what we think we’re supposed to do in an art gallery (As Picasso said, “Give me the venue and I will fill it up”, all viewers have to do is view what’s on display).
Susan Collis
Collis insists we search for her work to find these things that exist between what we take for granted and what she has created. Apart from the so beyond boring game of it and the invitation to meditate on what’s present, she challenges our way of defining how we see the surfaces of everyday life. What she calls for is a fundamental change in our assumptions about art and when you find her pieces they are stunning. Spare. Revealing. Compelling. Good. There is no way to be indifferent to her vision. Depending on what you bring, her work matters or does not. www.SeventeenGallery.com
Gallery 435, Pintura Fresca, Redefining Abstract
Pintura Fresca is an international group of abstract painters who met through the internet and are now working together on various art projects. The principal objective of the association is to be a platform and a forum for contemporary artists and in particular, abstract painting. The essential drive of Pintura Fresca is to encourage dialog and demonstrate that articulate abstract expression still thrives and remains vibrant into the new millennium. They propose that in contrast to being dead abstract art has matured and grown in nuance and refinement of thought over the last century. Artists involved, Mark Bennion, USA, Petronilla Hohenwarter, Germany, Eva Ryn Johannissen, Sweden, Mirian Kres, Slovenia, Thierry Le Baill, France, Paul Lorenz, USA, Connie Noyes, USA, Antonio Puri, USA, and Kathleen Waterloo, USA.
Gallery 435 is a nonprofit gallery housed in a huge warehouse in Slough, about 20 minutes outside of London. Gallery 435 is Slough's only public art gallery. It combines the energy and innovation associated with London art spaces to present some of the best and most challenging contemporary work from local, national and international artists. It was established as a voluntary organization in 2006. The Pintura Fresca show was curated to compliment the work on display and could be seen as a piece of art in its own right. Paintings were ingeniously suspended from the rafters to the ground, making full use of the enormous gallery size, creating a display that was accessible, engaging and inspiring. Gallery 435 has developed a loyal community who are interested in contemporary art and is well worth the short train ride from Paddington.
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