Off Center

“I traced out that Morandi drawing … Traced that son of a bitch out on a blank piece of paper, and I said, ‘There’s the artwork.’ ” Who says curators aren’t badasses? Read, via Greg.org,a brief yet fascinating account of curatorial license by the legendary Walter Hopps—all with the noblest of goals in mind: to promote the work of Giorgio Morandi, who in the late ’50s/early ’60s was mostly unknown, at least on the West Coast. At an early stage of his long and illustrious career, Hopps founded and ran the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles (from 1957 to 1962), showing the likes of Robert Irwin, Ed Kienholz, Wallace Berman, and Ed Ruscha, in addition to Morandi.

We’ve noticed this, too: “The word ‘curate’,” lofty and once rarely spoken outside exhibition corridors or British parishes, has become a fashionable code word among the aesthetically minded, who seem to paste it onto any activity that involves culling and selecting.” From a recent New York Times piece.

You be the curator, option 1: Help commission a work of art with the stunningly simple FEAST MPLS: Attend a (not all that expensive) dinner. Peruse artists’ proposals with your fellow diners. Vote. The winning artist gets the take from the door (minus the dinner cost). Uses money to create proposed work. Shares work at the next FEAST MPLS dinner. Try it out on November 14.

Chief Curator, Darsie Alexander and Curator of the Permanent Collection, Betsy Carpenter, planning upcoming PC exhibiton, Event Horizon, opening November 21, 2009 and running through August 26, 2012, in Galleries 1 and 3.

You be the curator, option 2: Make your own exhibition at the Walker’s After Hours Preview Party on November 20. Select thumbnail images of works from the Walker collection (including photos, videos, films, performances, or sound pieces). Arrange works on a gallery floor plan. Put the works you care about the most in prominent places. (“Curate” comes, after all, from the Latin for “to care”?) Paint the walls of your miniature gallery. Find ideas connecting the works. And finally, title your exhibition. Get tickets to the After Hours Party here.

Who are the Walker’s avian neighbors?

My father and I went “city birding” to see the surprising ways wildlife dovetails with the urban environment. In May and then in October, we wandered the grounds of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, then migrated to Loring Park, and concluded our observations perched atop the Walker’s green slope. Here is a bird’s-eye-view of the territory we covered.

1: Minneapolis Sculpture Garden; 2: Walker’s greenspace; 3: Loring Park; 4: Walker Art Center, Gallery Tower; 5: Walker Art Center, Theater Tower

First, to introduce the birders:

Abbie

• Novice at bird identification
• Walker Art Center staff
• Fledgling artist

Renner

• Enjoys applying the principles of evidence-based medicine to his birding
• Admires thorough, rigorous experimental design
• Empty nester

What we saw may surprise you! Take a look at our list, then go look for yourself. I welcome your comments to this post — I’m curious to see if you see the same species or others!

FIELD NOTES:HIGHLIGHTS

Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

• In the Garden we enjoyed observing a fairly diverse bird population. In both May and October, lots of birds find their way to the Garden grounds.
• In May, the Green Heron was our most unexpected sighting. We saw it flying low overhead at 8:41 am. Later we spotted it in a pine tree along the western edge of the Garden. Maybe it nests in the wetlands located about 1/3 mile west of the Garden?
  
• As we walked along the park’s eastern and western edges in October, we saw Ruby-crowned Kinglets in the pines, often at very close distances (as close as 4′). They would flit from one pine bow to the next, and would frequently hover (almost like a hummingbird), positioning themselves just under the pine needles’ tips. Could they have been drinking water droplets?
• Another great bird to watch was the Brown Creeper. It lands at the base of a tree trunk then slowly hops and spirals up, foraging for insects. Once it gets as high as the branches, it takes flight and alights at the base of the next tree. We watched it scale 5 tree trunks, very methodically and consistently repeating its search for food.
  

Walker Art Center’s Greenspace

• In May, virtually all the observed individuals were flying over.
• Contrasting the greenspace observations with those recorded in the Garden or in Loring Park, one can hypothesize that features such as physical structure, diverse flora, and a water source make a quantifiable difference in the abundance and diversity of birds, even on a micro-local level.
  

Loring Park

• In both May and October, this location had the most diverse populations of our three sites.
• Mourning Doves: We saw them all through the Sculpture Garden, even atop George Segal’s Walking Man, but we didn’t see any in Loring Park!
  
• 70% increase: In October, we saw 70% more species than we saw in May! This was striking because the species counts at the other sites were consistent for our two survey dates.

We submitted our observations on e-bird, an free online checklist tool. E-bird  offers organized record storage and customizable reports to users. Its greater purpose is to serve researchers in the fields of conservation and ecology.

Every two facts in the hand is worth a third in the thicket.

Had my dad and I only surveyed the Garden, our experiences would have been less dimensional. The accumulation of information is not a strictly additive process, but can compound our knowledge multiplicatively. With every observable datum, relationships exist between that singular bit and all the pieces that came before. In this context we cobble together patterns, discriminate and identify categories,  speculate as to meaning and postulate as to the future. How many bits and pieces must we put together to present a satisfactorily convincing semblance of a whole?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

Recently I had the opportunity to attend a discussion between artist Fritz Haeg and some Walker staff. Reflecting on his works and practice influenced me to conduct this bird census. I appreciate the power of Haeg’s work to remind us that wilderness is always at hand, and closer at hand than we might casually believe.  Thank you to Education and Community Programs for making this encounter, this exploration, and this learning possible.

Sekou Sundiata – Voice and Passage

Today, I ponder death. I am thinking of life’s inevitable end because it is gray and I have just returned from Paris and feel the demise of my own vacation, acutely (and remember some vain and heroic graves in Pere Lachaise cemetary that now lie in ruins or are forgotten.) I am also thinking of death in relation to my lost compatriot, the poet Sekou Sundiata, whose life and work we celebrate and remember this week at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis.

Sekou created in voice – invisible exhalations of sound and meaning. In our time, voice can be preserved in analog and digital technologies. But constitutionally it is wind – ubiquitous, forceful and completely mysterious. Voice (as wind) shapes and moves us, wounding and restoring, animating and destroying. As long as we breath (easily) we give voice to ourselves and to others. Our (or at least my) beloved and hated remembrances are linked to these invisible currents of the lungs, throat and lips. We are upheld by those moments when we are nourished and sustained by the voices of care; of friendship; of understanding; of compassion: and often crushed by those breaths that carry the forces of hatred, contempt and violence. Spirit. Voice. Are we not wind too – ubiquitously banal – blown and blowing; arriving as departure?

These dark and light gifts of voice: a newborn’s cry; words of love and endearment from someone we long for; news of the passing of someone we cherish. Passing – always – wind and voice – words that wound, heal, reverberate and echo. Sounds carried in the head and heart; in the caverns of the body. Voice – inescapable – whisper or harangue. Voice as phantasm – mystery and mist – more allied to expiration than to form.

Unlike others who in print lie forever prone on a page; Sundiata rises holographically even now in his voice (listen to him on the web- linked here); ghostly returning to stand before us, nearly as gorgeous and tall as he was in life; convening and communicating in his crooner’s baritone; lulling in his clear tones – smoothing over the very depths he so expertly navigated. Making it all seem so easy (His Coolness forever preserved). Listen in. He tells how he temporarily escaped the inevitable through transplantation, accident and re-creation. In the end, by aligning himself with voice – perhaps he mastered expiration; escaped the final silence by refusing to just be written down.

We return this week to his work (an expiration of voice together in song and conversation); perhaps, to dance our own undoing; to be with him in passing.

* * *

Singing the Legacy of Sekou Sundiata: The America Project
Thursday, October 22, 2009 – Saturday, October 24, 2009
2822 Lyndale Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55408 | 612.871.4444

Intermedia Arts is proud to host Singing the Legacy of Sekou Sundiata: The America Project Twin Cities, a series of community events including Art Treats lunches, citizenship dinners, a film screening and community sing, all designed to inspire and ignite our passionate ideals around citizenry, civic work, and active engagement in civic life. Together we will use art, music, conversation and laughter to discuss what it means to be an American today, and to dream about what it could mean in the future

The Huffington Post has an AP story today about the contemporary art revolution that has taken place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since the Obamas took up residence there. There have been a few reports on this development since the election — including excited reactions from gallery owners and museum directors — but with today’s story it would appear that the checklist has been finalized (or at least the First Lady’s office released a list earlier this week).

Work by Glenn Ligon and Ed Ruscha, both of whom are important to the Walker’s collection, is on view (at left is a Ligon piece from the Walker – not the White House!), along with pieces Mark Rothko, Jasper Johns, and Richard Diebenkorn; the HP story has a pretty extensive slide show of some of the selections, but the Washington Post’s has even more (along with a review of sorts by critic Black Gopnik).

That’s the rhetorical question the author of a new book posed to the New York Times in a fascinating — and still unfolding — story concerning Mexico’s most famous artist (not counting Kahlo’s husband, Diego Rivera).

The material Barbara Levine refers to is a trove of some 1,200 recently discovered artworks, diaries, letters, and artifacts attributed to Kahlo, which she explores in the newly published Finding Frida Kahlo. Although officials at Princeton Architectural Press say the book states clearly that authentication of the works is still an issue, according to the Times, it is not a central part of the book (let alone its thesis).

The story about the discovery has its own fairly-tale-like quality, involving an art and antiques dealer, a reclusive Mexico City lawyer, and a wood carver in the mountain town of San Miguel de Allende. The carver is said to have made frames for Kahlo, who in turn is said to have entrusted to him several trunks and boxes of her possessions. Now the circle of characters has expanded to include a grand-daughter and other relatives of Diego Rivera; a host of Kahlo scholars and art experts (self-appointed and otherwise), including artists who worked with her and Rivera; officials from Kahlo’s trust; and handwriting and chemical-analysis experts. And, naturally, more lawyers!

There’s also a criminal complaint filed in Mexico and attempts to halt the sale of the book in the U.S., not to mention a whole lot at stake, financially and otherwise. (The Walker’s presentation of Kahlo’s 2007-2008 touring retrospective was among the highest-attended exhibitions here). So stay tuned. And since everyone’s an expert, check out the Times‘ “Frida Kahlos or Frauds? slide show and judge for yourself.

In anticipation of the sold out Brian Eno and Jon Hassell conversation on Sept 22, here is a gem for your pleasure.  Eno performs here with legendary Roxy Music in the early 70’s, freaking out on tambourine and, er, keyboard?  Here he is rocking his crucially dangerous “vampire peacock” look.  Check out that skullet!

Also, here’s one for your desktop:

http://consequenceofsound.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/roxy_band0.jpg

• “Through humor and human drama, to questions about the way we live” — Huffington Post has a short post about No Impact Man, with links to several other influential pieces that brought Colin Beavan to international recognition. No Impact Man is screening at the Walker next week.
• Bad at Sports has a fun and informative interview with Madeleine Grynsztejn, new director at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Grynsztejn co-curated the Chuck Close show that opened at the Walker in 2005.
• “Deep moral truths” — Cathleen Falsani has a fascinating discussion with Minnesota Public Radio on the spirituality and morality in the Coen Brothers films.
• Lebowski Fest Minneapolis happens this weekend. Get ready.

Many locals who know the Walker also know the Soap Factory, given that both are devoted to contemporary art. Last year I was disappointed to have missed the Soap Factory’s annual fundraiser, the $99 Sale. What better way to fill my walls than by contributing to an organization that I strongly believe in? Besides offering affordable art, the event is a novel and fun way to engage in questions of art and authorship, trusting your eye vs. buying a name.

People who are affiliated with the Walker, from exhibited artists and artists-in-residence to Walker staff members, have been contributing artists to the $99 Sale from its inception. I would imagine they get involved because they know how vital it is to support arts organizations in Minneapolis across the board; especially a place like this one, whose giant historic factory space allows artists to exhibit their work in an environment where they can also explore and collaborate.

Courtesy Soap Factory

This year, rather than buying into the Soap Factory by purchasing a $99 work of art, I was invited to submit work for the sale. Suddenly I flipped from collector to artist; though I suppose I can be both at once. In deciding what kind of work to make, I felt compelled to dig up old and make new, creating a few pieces that were stimulated by different situations, experiences, and places, as well as other artists, from the well known Edward Weston to one of the Soap’s very own, Alison Burke.

The Soap fosters fresh ideas and makes the arts more pervasive and tangible in our community. Embrace the opportunity to make a significant financial contribution while gaining your very own 5 x7 inch piece of visual interest at the $99 Sale, this Friday. Besides the great support for the Soap and for artists, it will be of particular benefit to your pension for visual inspiration.

Also coming up at the Soap:

The Austerity Cookbook

September 5th – October 25th

The Haunted Basement

October 16th – November 1th

http://www.soap99.com/about.html

http://www.soapfactory.org/mission.php

As the Walker book buyer for the last eight years, I routinely come across unusual titles. I thought it would be interesting to blog these notable discoveries as I see them.  Typically, I’m attracted to quirky material and seek out books that just haven’t been conceived before.  During some recent scouting around for new titles for the shop, I came across one such incomparable volume.  Warhol TV is a magazine-like publication that documents the exhibition of the same name held last winter at La Maison Rouge in Paris.  Even with the countless exhibition catalogues and books devoted to Andy Warhol—some of which home in on just his fashion drawings, portraits of Jews, or motion pictures—there hasn’t been a book, until now, on his role with television.

As the father of artistic and social promotion, Andy Warhol used every means of communication to self-promote his reality.  Photography, film, magazine, and paintings were employed to document and showcase his surroundings and the creative social scene.  Turns out that Warhol also wasn’t shy about tapping into television, which only seems natural given its mass appeal and accessibility.  It was the ultimate contemporary tool, a perfect platform for exposing his reality.  Andy Warhol utilized all avenues of the medium from as early as 1964, when he made an imitation Soap Opera, to his guest appearance on Love Boat, in 1985. He was also an early adopter with cable, creating a program back in 1979 on the newly formed New York Cable Network, and his MTV show in 1985, Andy Warhol’s Fifteen Minutes. 

Warhol TV focuses on the artist’s involvement with television and the beautiful talent who were a part of his world.  Marc Jacobs, Tama Janowitz, Kenny Scharf, Glenn O’Brian, and Brigid Berlin are just a few who recall their encounters with Warhol and TV.  The most interesting feature in the book, besides the rare images, is Warhol’s television filmography listing episodes with such guests as Debbie Harry, Courtney Love, Steven Spielberg, Moon Zappa, Cindy Sherman and Pee Wee Herman.  I can only imagine Andy’s relaxed, subtle reaction to the energetic Pee Wee.   

Purchase Warhol TV at the Walker Shop.

Woodstock nostalgia is so last week: Cool Hunting, the website whose name pretty much says it all, just posted a video report on June’s Rock the Garden music festival at the Walker. DJ Mary Lucia from The Current and the Walker’s performing arts curator Philip Bither weigh in on why 2009’s bands are so very “now” (no past tense, they do still matter, two months later!), and there’s also some chatting with the music-makers themselves — at least Solid Gold, Yeasayer, and Calexico. Decemberists fans will have to look elsewhere for a new fix of brilliance from Colin Meloy and co. (By the way, Solid Gold returns next week, for a whole different and not-your-Garden-variety show on the Walker’s greenspace.)

photo by Cameron Wittig

Young urban kitchen gardeners and other local food growers were the toast of Tour de Farm at the Walker on July 30 — the sole city stop on its sold-out summer ‘09 tour celebrating Minnesota farmers and food artisans. Masterminded by The Corner Table’s Scott Pampuch (with inspiration from Jim Denevan and Outstanding in the Field), the communal dinner had 115 foodies swooning over creations made with local and regional ingredients by seven Twin Cities chefs Michelle Gayer (Salty Tart), Asher Miller (from the Walker’s own 20.21), Alex Roberts (Restaurant Alma, Brasa), Phillip Becht & Jim Grell (Modern Cafe), Mike Phillips (Craftsman Restaurant) and Zoe Francois (Artisanal Bread in 5 Minutes a Day).

At left is a shot from the dinner by Walker staff photographer Cameron Wittig; but you can read all the details in an exhaustive, three-part account replete with gorgeous photos from Kris Hase, examples of which are below. If images of homemade potato chips with creme fraiche or Star Prairie trout with duck-egg pasta don’t get you drooling, they’ll have you running to the farmer’s market. Pics not enough? There’s also an eight-minute video. Just make sure you get out from behind that monitor at some point and enjoy what’s left of a summer for which we’re already growing nostalgic.

photos above and at right by Kris Hase