From the moment I stepped into the Father/Son Art Show (June 18-July 23) at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts, the concept of the show (and the innovative pieces in it) intrigued me.  The basic premise of the exhibit is that four professional artists/dads (Irve Dell, Michael Kareken, David Lefkowitz, and John Schuerman) would display their work alongside that of their sons, ages 5-9.  The result is a great tribute to the artistic efforts of these fathers and sons, but also highlights the work of young artists in a way that I’ve never experienced before.

According to the Star Tribune article on the exhibit, the intent of the show was not to elevate the children’s work to that of ‘professional’, but rather to “celebrate the relationship between creative dads and their kids.”   While I know the aim was not to force the children’s art to seem ‘professional’, the part that fascinated me most was that oftentimes the artwork seemed just that. Had I not known the ages of the young artists, there were some pieces I likely would’ve thought was an adult artist trying to capture raw, un-tapped emotion in his/her work. I think most people appreciate the unique beauty of children’s art, but viewing it on a refrigerator leaves a much different impression than when hung on a gallery wall.   In a very healthy way, this exhibit forced me to reflect upon my own prejudices and assumptions about ‘good’ art and ’skilled’ artists and admit that the work created by the hand of a child is able to impact me just as much as the work of a world-famous masterpiece.

As talented as the artist fathers are, one thing that training and technique try in vain to match is the expression of a child. Oftentimes the uninhibited creative nature of children’s artwork is underappreciated and overlooked.  It seems so ironic that adult artists spend years of their life chasing after the level of expression that came out so naturally when they were younger.

Pablo Picasso was quoted as saying, “Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”  To that, I say, “Paint on!”  Creative ability lies within each of us.  It’s possible one’s greatest sense of artistic growth may come from looking backward rather than forward.

Father/Son Art Show, courtesy Minnetonka Center for the Arts

Father/Son Art Show, courtesy Minnetonka Center for the Arts

Father/Son Art Show, courtesy Minnetonka Center for the Arts

Hyperbolic models crocheted by Heather McCarren, Anitra Mehring, Christine Wertheim, and Margaret Wertheim

The interview was conducted by Margaret Wertheim, who along with her sister Christine Wertheim, make up The Institute For Figuring, an LA-based educational organization that conducts projects, makes publications and curates exhibitions aimed at illuminating the poetic and aesthetic dimensions of math and science. Soon after the 1997 crafty breakthrough, the IFF teamed up with Dr. Taimina to further explore and elaborate on her methods of crocheting hyperbolic space, while sustaining a feminist conversation about craft, gender, and labor. Through public workshops around the world, the IFF and many curious crocheters have continued to hook together these symbolic forms, including the ones found in The Quick and the Dead.

If you have further questions on the subject of non-Eucilidean space, the physics of snowflakes or any other wonder of figuring, the IFF will be here on Thursday, July 30 to answer them. For their engagement at the Walker, Margaret and Christine will lead a workshop on how to crochet hyperbolic forms that is open to all skill levels. Yarn and hooks will be provided, although participants are welcome and encouraged to bring their own. The lesson takes place from 5 to 6:30 pm in the Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab. After the workshop, everyone is welcome to continue working on their crocheted objects at the IFF’s lecture, at 7 pm in the Walker Cinema, where they’ll discuss their various projects, including their ongoing effort to draw attention to the plight of the world’s coral reefs through crochet.

Crocheted Coral Reef

Stephen Kaltenbach uses a delightfully familiar symbol of a culture’s time passing in his piece Time Capsule (OPEN AFTER MY DEATH) from 1970. The directive of the work found in the title addresses another monumental subject tackled by this exhibition: our own inescapable ends.

These two fundamental notions–the nature of time and the inevitability of death–are key forces in the life and career of Dr. Ronald Mallett, a theoretical physicist who will speak at the Walker in July in conjunction with the exhibition.

Dr. Ronald Mallett

When he was just ten years old, Mallett’s beloved father died of a heart attack. A year later he stumbled upon a comic book based on H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, the famous science fiction tale of time travel originally published in 1895. Inspired by the seemingly magical ability to travel backwards in history, Mallett formed a secret plan that he hoped would one day allow him to reunite with his father. Decades later, as a tenured professor in the physics department at the University of Connecticut, he has developed his childhood dream into a working theory of time travel.

Using Einstein’s theory of relativity which states that energy equals mass, Mallett’s machine uses circulating lasers to create loops or warps in time.* It’s a bit much to explain here (especially for a museum educator with a high-school physics education such as myself; this article does a better job), but luckily you can get it straight from the source.

On Thursday, July 9 Dr. Mallet will take the stage to give a lecture on his theories, including a basic introduction to scientific thinking on time-space. He’ll also read from his memoir, Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality and will be available to sign books.

Join us for an evening steeped in the mysteries of the universe via science and art. Gallery admission is free on Thursday nights from 5 to 9 pm–come early to discover the shapes of time found in The Quick and the Dead.

*It would be disingenuous to end this post without mentioning that Mallet’s time travel experiments are currently limited to sub-atomic particles, although he believes that with enough funding and research, human time travel can happen in this century. Now if someone can just figure out a sure-fire method for human cryopreservation we’ll all be back to the future!

Arty Pants activity

I took both O and J to Arty Pants today — technically, J. is a bit young and O. is a bit old, but they both had a great time. There were two activities — one was a “magic” watercolor painting (you draw with “invisible” white crayon, then paint over it to make your drawing magically appear –see O.’s painting of the “textures of the world,” above). For the other, kids used felt shapes to make versions of minimal sculptures.

Oskar was very hesitant to play with the felt at first — but Christina, the WAC staffer who worked with him in the gallery, had really good ideas for getting him started experimenting. Here’s what she did:

- First, she had O. use the felt shapes to make an arrangement that was just like the Judd sculpture (6 dark blue boxes, six dark blue pieces of felt).They got up, and counted the sections of the sculpture together.

- Now that he had that down, and had made something just like the sculpture, she started giving him random pieces, “Here! Add this in!” By this time, he was warmed up, and the variation made for a good twist.

- My favorite thing she did: they scooped up all the felt compositions, and she said, “Okay, I am going to close my eyes and count to 25 — make something!” This was great: no time to worry about what to make, or whether it was perfect — just make something, and quick! Then they looked at it together (he made a tower), and they added windows and a door, and a few things just to finish it a bit more.

The Norae Shanty is based on Korean karaoke rooms called “ Norae bangs” (song rooms). The Norae bang (pronounced “ nō–rāy–bŏng”) is essentially a scaled down version of a karaoke bar, a small room with karaoke equipment and comfortable seating that groups of people rent by the hour. These bangs provide participants with simultaneous visual, audible, and emotional experiences. Yet unlike the sometimes competitive and embarrassing nature of the karaoke bar experience, the norae bang provides up to a dozen participants a cheerful and supportive environment for a more comfortable exchange. Ice fishing and ice house culture is similar to the bang phenomenon in Asian urban centers. Bangs, like ice houses, serve as a retreat, a small and isolated space for groups to participate in a shared activity away from the stress of everyday life. The Norae Shanty was developed to provide new and intersecting populations with the opportunity for soulful exchange.

To preview a list of tunes you can sing and to learn even more about his Norae Shanty check out Mike’s website.

First Amendment Arts is proud to present “ Dessert,” the collaborative art of 6-year-old CohenMorano. Much like the title of the show, the art has no grand illusions to be anything but a sweet feast, but for the eyes rather than the taste buds. When asked about why he named the show as such, he simply replied, “ Dessert is really good.”

From the age of two (with a little help from dad, Gangsta Rap Coloring Book artist Aye Jay), Cohen’s watercolor paintings have traveled the globe to a “ Who’s who” of modern art, spanning graffitists, fine artists, printmakers, tattoo artists, as well as clothing and toy designers. Once in the artists’ possession, they have carte blanche to do whatever they wish to one of Cohen’s watercolors before shipping it back to eager little hands.

What has come back has been nothing short of stunning, from Barry McGee’s intricate pen work, Shepard Fairey’s iconic stencils, Chris Ware’s animals on parade, to Mark Ryden’s interpretive use of negative space. With the number of pieces now well over one hundred, artist Jack Davis (of Mad magazine fame) called Cohen “ another Ralph Steadman.” Other artists involved in the show include Juxtapoz regulars Bigfoot, Kaws, and Gary Taxali, Ego Trip’s Brent Rollins, rappers Rammelzee and Z-Man, gig poster giants Art Chantry and Frank Kozik, and Burlesque’s own Aaron Horkey, Todd Bratrud, and Mike Davis. While these collaborative pieces will not be for sale, this is a very rare opportunity for Twin Cities art enthusiasts to come see work from all of these artists in the same place at the same time.

When not painting or drawing, Cohen is your average 6 year old. He loves going to kindergarten, watching cartoons, eating mac and cheese, and everything Star Wars. This last October, Cohen was asked to design a skateboard for Foundation’s limited edition “ F Art” deck series, and his work has been featured in recurring blog entries on the respected art website http://fecalface.com

The show will run from June 16th through July 17th, 2007.

We will have an opening reception on June 16th, 6-10PM (note: no late night afterparty) with music from DJ Mike the 2600 King.

Both Cohen and Aye Jay Morano will be in attendance.

We will also be serving a giant array of desserts, so come hungry!

First Amendment is located at 1101 Stinson Blvd at the corner of Broadway and Stinson in NE Minneapolis.

(612) 379-4151

http://firstamendmentarts.com

Gallery hours:

Monday – Friday: 12 – 5PM

Weekends: by appointment

Some other links of interest:

http://www.mumblemagazine.com/407lilcohenmorano.htm

http://www.foskco.com/fartdeckprogram

Sankai Juki, aParis based Butoh company will performas part of the Walker’s dance season, Friday, November 3, 8 pm at Northrop Auditorium on the University of Minnesota campus. Image: Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.

Writing for the New York Times, Claudia La Rocco, asks if “Is Butoh’s Big Season Good for Butoh?” As I eagerly await the Minneapolis appearance of the Paris based company Sankai Juku at the Northrop on November 3rd,the article serves as a timely reminder of the breadth and diversity of this ineffable and visually stunning dance form.

Excerpt:

“People tend to think of Butoh in terms of aesthetic markers: white body paint, shaved heads, slow movement gained through intense muscular control, and a way of manipulating the body that is at once beautiful and grotesque, tragic and absurd. Influenced by German Expressionism, it tends to be imagistic rather than narrative. But while these elements often appear, defining Butoh in stylistic terms is dangerous. There is the beautiful, highly stylized theatricality of Sankai Juku, or the mad kineticism of Mr. Kasai, or the creaturely abstractions of Yumiko Yoshioka. Like contemporary American dance, Butoh is no one thing, but it always has, at its center, a fragile transformative spark. You can’t always describe it, but you know it when you see it, and you know when it’s missing.”

Susan Weil, Ziggurat, 1986

In other news, I recently did an interview with Susan Weil. At first, when I was asked to do the interview I had never heard of her work, but it turns out she was a friend and contemporary of Pollock and de Kooning and had a major influence on the work of Robert Rauschenberg, who she married back in the 50’s. When I discovered all this and saw her amazing contributions to abstract and figurative painting, I thought it was outrageous that her work has garnered so little attention after all these years.

The last straw was when her name didn’t appear on a Wikipedia search, so for the first time I was compelled to write my own Wikipedia article. You can also check out the interview above to hear Weil’s own thoughts on how women artists have been overlooked over the years. Best of all, she’s still doing incredible work today.

“A computer has been used to decipher the enigmatic smile of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, concluding that she was mainly happy.

The painting was analysed by a University of Amsterdam computer using “emotion recognition” software.

It concluded that the subject was 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry, New Scientist magazine was told. “

Rachel McIntire and Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein: “What good was any of this gorgeous theory without recognizing the way it interplays with life beyond academic borders? ”

From the CAN Network:

Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein, a community writer and educator from Chicago, and Rachel McIntire, a muralist and multimedia artist from California, spent a year immersing themselves in theories of Arts in Education at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. At the same time, they embarked on a collaboration with Bread Loaf writer Mary Guerrero and her mostly Latino after-school writing group at Oliver Elementary School in Lawrence, Mass to use body-mapping and poetry to explore cultural crossroads.

During the Mapping Within workshop, young artists compose an interpretive dialogue about identity through an exploration of text, performance, world maps, audio and photography.

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“The idea of a map emerged as the ultimate metaphor for the journey of understanding self as influenced by fluid geographical, spiritual, political, academic, social and emotional landscapes. We decided to use maps as a central part of the art making because it was both visually and metaphorically powerful. By sharing notions of both interior and exterior maps, we hoped to express identity as organic as opposed to fixed. We also hoped that…artists would begin to notice the ways in which they construct and narrate their own stories and that identity is often in constant conversation with place and space.”

Outline of McIntire and Lichtenstein’s “Mapping Within” process:

1. Begin with Questions like: Who am I? Where do I come from? and Where am I going?

2. Connect with bodies, breath and memory through theater exercise and warm-up.

3. Explore the “ shapes” of different emotions and transform those shapes in slow motion

4. Discuss memory, movement, migration and change, and identify significant personal memories.

5. “Locate” these memories in your body.

6. Participants make full-body cut outs of their bodies using butcher paper and maps that they later manipulate through collage and text.

7. Explore movement and change through creative writing.

8. Break into pairs and embellish the “body maps”. for example: visually locate text within body cut-outs.

9. While students work in pairs with their “ body maps,” record students reading their favorite poetic lines from the writing exercise.

10. Students take digital snapshots of one another as “ portraits of the present tense.”

11. Create an “exhibition” of the body maps, poetry, photos and recordings

For here for the full story