Transportation, Considered.

aLIVe last Saturday was a mellow day in the sun. I noticed that several of us artist participants are also parents. We laid about on the grass with our projects and kids.

{All-Terrain by Nicole Kistler}

MSWP (meadow starts with p) exhibited their astronaut training apparatus, which is meant to provide “basic space-craft training, such as craft maneuvering and navigation, communications protocol, button pushing, and being strapped in to something white and silver.”

Jen Graves rode the Walk and Roll by Peter Reiquam.

I wrote about my contribution here.

Robert Yoder Workshop at Howard House

I participated in one of Robert Yoder’s workshops a couple of weeks ago. There’s still one left on the 29th. It was fun! Robert and three other artists (including Jack Johnston and — I’m sorry I didn’t get the others’ last names — Sheila and Peter) and I passed collages around as we worked on them together. I love organized social settings where there is some kind of task at hand. You learn a lot about people when you’re not talking to them. We did talk, too, of course. Robert said, “Let’s gossip, and whatever we say doesn’t leave the table.” Perfect!

I also love the concept of bringing this kind of engagement into a professional setting where personal interaction is usually fairly prescribed. We played. Sitting there at the table with the others, cutting with scissors and gluing with glue sticks, it did not feel much different from my childhood communal art activities. At the end, we put our collaborative work on the wall to admire. It was interesting to notice how at the beginning of the session, we were all working in our own intensely personal styles, and towards the end we had all seemed to compromise a little bit and the pieces looked more cohesive. I think we all learned from each other.

aLIVe at Seward Park on Saturday!

I’m participating in this outdoor exhibition of/about vehicles that have a low impact upon the earth. My contribution is of the conceptual variety. Should be fun!

“All-Terrain,” Nicole Kistler, 2009 “Walk and Roll,” Peter Reiquam, 2009 “Cykel,” Brian McAllister, 2009 “Barefoot in the Park,” Alex Martin “Nopcicle Joe,” Clair Colquitt “LIV DIY table,” Rainier Avenue Summer Streets, 2009 Duwamish language and dance group T’ilibshudub, 2006	aLIVe at Seward Park Please join us for an exhibition that promises to re-energize how we think about our transportation system. On Saturday, August 22nd a Low Impact Vehicle exhibition (aLIVe) will be at Seward Park from 10am – 3:30pm. The term “low impact” has a dual meaning describing both the impact of a vehicle on a pedestrian, as well as the environmental impact. The implementation of low impact vehicles would generate a huge range of public benefits, including increased mobility for transit and freight. A bicycle is a low impact vehicle, but what else can we imagine? Artists, inventors and community members envision a new type of transportation system designed around the human body. Everything from poetry to prototypes will be on display! aLIVe – a Low Impact Vehicle exhibition Saturday 10am-3:30pm Seward Park, 5895 Lake Washington Blvd. S, Seattle, WA 98118 Attendees are encouraged to use less environmentally harmful transportation choices to arrive at the event such as transit, carpools, vanpools, bicycling and walking. Parking will be limited.
	Artists/Inventors: Vaughn Bell, Susanna Bluhm, Clair Colquitt, Nicole Kistler, Joseph Kochanowski, Brian McAllister, meadow starts with p, Peter Reiquam, Lucas Deon Spivey and Kristin Tollefson Activities: Sustainable Ballard’s Undriver Licensing Station SvR Design’s DIY LIV table and Haiku Project Cascade Bicycle’s Ambassador Program Artist-made trophies awarded by Jen Graves, Lorna Jordan, Buster Simpson and Jackie White People’s Choice Award Performances: Opening Ceremony by T’ilibshudub, 10:30am Barefoot in the Park by Alex Martin, 1:00pm Sponsors: 4Culture, Cascade Bicycle, greenmuseum.org, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, Seattle Parks & Recreation and Anne McDuffie and SvR Design, in conjunction with “Healthy Parks/Healthy You” Brought to you by Great City Organized by Cheryl dos Remédios Participate at http://seattlegreatcitynetwork.ning.com/group/alive About Great City We are environmentalists, neighborhood leaders, business people, and citizens working together to enhance our quality of life, help preserve our region’s natural beauty, and make Seattle a model of economic and environmental sustainability. Great City P.O. Box 599, Seattle, WA 98111-599 www.greatcity.org my.greatcity.org Joshua Curtis Executive Director joshua.curtis@greatcity.org

The Passion. Of Painting, that is.

{Updated to add image credits, at bottom}

When I first read the title of the Seattle Art Museum’s show Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949–78 some months ago, I experienced a flood of emotions that read like a sentence. First it was excitement over “Target Practice: Painting” which mounted into frenzied joy when I got to “Under Attack” and then a cruel blow of disappointment at the end when I read the dates “1949-78.” Then anger. SAM was admirably endeavoring to examine the ubiquitous “attack” on painting in an original, major, traveling exhibition, but was stopping the examination in the 1970′s. How could this be?!? The opportunity to contextualize the attack on painting in a survey that spans modernism through the contemporary could not be more ripe; the fruit is barely attached to the tree it is so ready to burst at the seed. “Now now now!!!” I shouted emphatically to my dog and baby. “1949-2009!” (There was tail wagging and toothy grinning; I think they concur.)

Having already had a tumultuous relationship with an exhibition I had not yet seen, I entered into it yesterday with reluctant skepticism, willing it to be more than a finite art historical survey.

Incidentally, I left SAM yesterday with a renewed appreciation for the art historical survey.

Harnessing a new and improved group of international artists, Michael Darling presents the mid-century Attack on Painting as an art movement within the art historical lineage where one movement begets another in an evolutionary push towards modernity.  He does it with gusto, and ultimately I found the curatorial work far more interesting than the art itself.

I walked from room to room, watching people engaged. They were not bumbling around in a stupor of boredom. They were reading the text placed two inches from the floor and up near the ceiling. They were watching the tedious videos of artists making conceptual art. They were talking and giggling as they nailed the contents of their pockets to Yoko Ono’s Painting to Hammer a Nail. They were visibly scandalized by the violated canvases. They were having fun.

I became aware that most people might not have known this work ever existed, were it not for this show. Which could, if one looks at the works themselves, not be such a travesty. They are not great works of art. I, for one, really don’t think they were intended to be. (Or, at least most of them.) This work is about the process, not the product; and it is a process that – as the exhibition instructs – needed to happen. Painting needed to be literally assaulted, knocked off its pedestal and thoughtfully examined, in order to take its rightful place as one art-making medium among many.

The language used to tell this story of Painting’s demise and [pending] resurrection enacts a drama of Catholic proportions. One blurb of wall text reads, “The exhibition ends in the late 1970′s, when many of the perceived demons that dogged painting had been exorcized. . . and a more recognizable type of painting began to flourish again.” And another, with the heading “Last Rites” reads: “Around [1978] more conventional approaches to painting began to recapture the imagination of the art world and one could sense yet another generational shift, the demons of painting having been exorcized and those lessons applied to new circumstances.”

Painting had to be sacrificed in order to live again. The “paintings” in this exhibition collectively serve as the Lamb, righteously slaughtered so that Painting’s sins could be forgiven.

So, what do we have after this metaphorical crucifixion? We have the assurance that we can go forward in peace, lest we never forget the suffering rendered on our behalf.

“The critical thinking of the Target Practice years lives on to this day, as no painter worth his or her salt takes anything for granted when picking up a brush, evidence of a healthy self-awareness that allows painting to thrive.”

{Image credits, from top to bottom: Yoko Ono, Painting to Hammer a Nail, SAM Installation, 2009; Yoko Ono, Painting to Hammer a Nail, SAM Installation, 2009; Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, 1958; Matthias Grunewald, The Crucifixion, 1515 (detail); artist unkown, Jesus Christ with Crown of Thorns, as seen on allposters.com (detail); Günther Uecker, Grosse Wolke, 1965 (detail); Susanna Bluhm, Target Practice (figure a, figure b), 2009.

Robert Yoder Workshop at Howard House

This Saturday August 8th at 1pm I am participating in Robert Yoder’s collaboration invitation/workshop at Howard House!  You can too, if there are spaces left. What exactly we’ll be workshopping is a mystery, but that makes it all the more exciting.

Art Lending Library

Did you know Seattle has an Art Lending Library, where you can borrow artwork for your own home for free? It was started by Seth Damm, Gina Coffman, and Flynn Bickley over here at Cooper Artist Housing. It’s been going strong for over a year and has been doing great. There are many sweet stories of people who have really enjoyed having art in their home for the first time in their lives.

If you are an artist who would like to contribute a piece of work for circulation in the Library, I’ve posted all the details here.

Here is a video of Seth explaining how A.L.L. works.