In Pittsburgh? Get on over to GalleriE CHIZ

If you're in Pittsburgh, I would like to encourage you to stop by GalleriE CHIZ, and check out their big holiday group show. I'm delighted to be one of the artists included in the exhibition. It's a wonderful mix of 2-d and 3-d work. Here are a few of my favorites from the show:



Thomas Norulak
Secret Steps
etching


There are several nice etchings by Tom Norulak. Tom pointed me towards approaching the gallery with my work. He's a great printmaker who lives here in Pittsburgh, and I've spent many fine evenings slinging ink with him in the printmaking studio at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.



Mary Culbertson-Stark
Untitled
charcoal on Rives BFK


There are several really beautiful drawings by Mary Culbertson-Stark. She really knows how to attack the page with the pencil. Great stuff.



Stephen Tuomala
Untitled
oil on board


Stephen Tuomala has both paintings and drawings in the exhibition. I like the way he pushes the negative space around in these small interiors - the action is all in the space around the objects. Exciting work.



Priscilla Hollingsworth
Small Chartreuse Bowl with Large Spikes
terra cotta with englobes and glaze fired in oxidation


It was a real surprise to find Priscilla Hollingsworth's energetic and fun sculpture here. Priscilla and I were at Indiana University for grad school at the same time. I'm delighted to share some gallery space with her!



Marc Snyder
24 Poets and 1 Astronaut
linocut


Here's one of the nine linocuts that I've got hanging there now. One of my favorites, and it happens to be the last one from that edition, so that's just another reason to get in to see the show.

GalleriE CHIZ is located in Shadyside at 5831 Ellsworth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15232. It's open from 11am to 5:30pm, Tuesday through Friday, and 11am to 5pm on Saturday.

Altered States Opening Reception Tonight

If you're in Pittsburgh tonight, you might stop by the opening reception for "Altered States" at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. I have three pieces in the show, and I'll be at the opening, sometime towards the end - it would be great to see you there.

You get five shows for one visit tonight, so it's a great time to check out the galleries.

Crows 2 and 3.

Crow II, linocut, acrylic, and collage




Crow III, linocut, etching, acrylic, and collage


Well, here are Crows II and III (see Crow I below). I'm pleased to report that these three pieces were selected by juror Robert Villamagna for "Altered States", a printmaking exhibition that will be on display this November at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

life on mars, the Treasure Room

David Shrigley, I'm Dead, taxidermy kitten with wooden sign and acrylic paint
photo from the "life on mars" website, link below

I just spent a very engaging couple of hours with the life on mars exhibit at the Carnegie Museum of Art. This 58th edition of the Carnegie International may be old news to y'all (Susan Constanse did a number of excellent posts about the various artists in the show over on her blog), but with a toddler and an infant to juggle, I just don't get out as often as I used to, and this was the first chance I've had to see the show.

Anyway, if you haven't gone yet and end up at the Museum sometime this year (the show closes 1/11/09), be sure to check out David Shrigley's work in the Treasure Room. It was a perfect use for this little space off of the sculpture balcony that usually houses cases full of precious little ceramic-ish objects. I previously knew David Shrigley primarily through his drawings, and it was great to see these objects. I don't know if the installation in the Treasure Room was his idea or the curator's, but it was a wonderful use of the site to amplify the absurdity of the objects. Great stuff.

Pittsburgh Small Presses

The May exhibition at the "Most Wanted Fine Art Gallery" is "Pittsburgh Small Presses". About a dozen of Pittsburgh's small presses will be represented, including the Fiji Island Mermaid Press. The show opens this Friday, May 2nd, with a reading from 6 - 8 pm, and the reception continuing to 10 pm with live music.

The Most Wanted Fine Art Gallery is located at 5015 Penn Avenue in Garfield.

Dale Chihuly at the Phipps Conservatory

As I was heading into "Chihuly at Phipps: Gardens & Glass", I was thinking about the relationship between crafts and the fine arts, the value of the mastery of technical skills in the making of things, and the use of collaborators and workshops to create ambitious work; in other words, all of those issues that I thought a printmaker might find interesting in an exhibition of glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly. Wonderfully, within seconds of entering the show I forgot about those things, and just found myself wandering around with my mouth hanging open. It's a breath-taking spectacle of a show.


The exhibition is one visual delight after another. It occupies the majority of the interior spaces at the Phipps Conservatory, with a few pieces placed outdoors as well. As I wandered through the various gardens filled with sculpture, what most struck me was how the glass seemed to have been designed for those specific plants - surely Chihuly had that exact cactus in mind when he made that particular form? But no, here's that form again in another setting, and it seems perfectly at home there too.


Eventually I realized that what I was responding to was how well these forms are drawn. These objects live so well next to natural forms because they are beautifully observed abstractions of nature. While not referencing a specific plant, they have a specificity of their own, that makes them seem to be the product of natural processes. The elements tend to be grouped in various families of forms, but each piece has its own history of growth that makes it a unique individual as well.


These herons, placed in the pools in the Japanese garden, were by far the most specific sculptural drawings. If I were teaching these days, I would direct my students here to study gesture. There's nothing about these forms that is specifically birdlike, but the gesture drawing is unmistakable.


One of the rather unique aspects of this show is that it's actually two shows - the daytime version and the show after the sun goes down. When darkness falls, the sculptures are artificially lit. As you might guess with glass sculpture, visual fireworks result.


Undeniably, a lot of the work was a lot of fun after dark. But I found the exhibition to be a lot less compelling when the plants became more of a frame and less of an active participant in the show. Natural light, and a more balanced relationship between the natural and the crafted, made for a more rewarding and thought provoking experience. But, that said, both versions of the show are well worth a visit.

The exhibition's stay here in Pittsburgh has been extended through February 24th. The Phipps Conservatory is located at One Schenley Park, Pittsburgh. You are required to order tickets ahead of time to guarantee admission to the show.

Many thanks to Heather Gabrielle for the use of her fine photographs!

One of a thousand reasons I love where I live.

This lion is exactly 78 steps from my front door.

Strolling Around

A few weeks ago I mentioned a math problem that was apparently a piece of graffiti. Sadly, as time has passed the yellow utility box has lost some of its strangeness, as the long division has been obscured by later additions to the box.



Though I must admit, the printmaker in me likes the new sticker.

Speaking of printmakers, some street art that is pretty spectacular that pops up in Pittsburgh once in a while is that of Swoon. I found this video of one of her murals through the very excellent blog of Pittsburgh's Digging Pitt Gallery.




Sadly, Swoon's work isn't something that I see on my daily stroll with my baby daughter. Which isn't to say that we don't see a lot of neat stuff. We frequently roll along Walnut Street, where my favorite artworks are the telephone poles, with their wonderful encrustations of staples and nails and such.



My daughter's favorite sculpture seems to be this fire hydrant, which we have to very carefully inspect every time we pass it:



Based on our strolls, you'd think that the next time we wander through a museum she'll be really excited about this:


Jeff Koons, Rabbit, 1986

and daddy might be more interested in this:


Kongo "Power Figure in the form of a two-headed dog", the Congo

though I must admit I'm pretty fond of the bunny, too.

A Little Mystery.

Almost every day when I'm out walking I see this yellow utility box.



Someone worked a math problem on the side of the box, using a broad magic marker and a very large hand. Each number is about 6 - 8 inches tall.

Now, when you're walking about, you often see codes and symbols spray-painted on the streets by various city employees, describing the locations of various electrical and phone and water and sewage lines, in preparation for tearing up the road or somesuch thing. You also often see graffiti, highly stylized signatures and "tags" spraypainted on just about anything that doesn't move, that some see as art and others see as vandalism.

So here's what's bugging me. What is this long-division problem?

At first this box just blends into the environment. The numbers have the look of something that a utility worker would have left behind for some officially sanctioned reason. But if you pass by it everyday, and eventually look at it closely, you realize that it's not a code or anything that carries any kind of significant information. It's 27 divided by 4.

Would someone working on the phone lines work such a problem on the side of a utility box? This isn't spray-painted on a piece of road that is going to be torn up - it's been sitting there for months, a permanent addition to the landscape. Wouldn't a utility worker use a piece of scrap paper? And wouldn't this person be able to work out that six fours fit in twenty-seven in his or her head? I kinda hope so!

So, I'm guessing it's not something left behind by someone actually working on the phone lines. In that case it must be a graffito.

But who would bother to work a long division problem as their "tag"? It doesn't identify the tagger in any way, the writing isn't stylized, it makes no statement beyond the answer to the math problem. . . If it's graffiti, it's the least effective example I've ever seen.

Or, maybe it's the most effective. It's the only one I've felt compelled to "blog" about, anyway.