Reflections on February

William Betts, Pines, Sun Valley, 2011

at Holly Johnson Gallery

(reflection of David Schulze and me far right two figures)

Wow, I didn't have one post throughout the month of February, but my blog still had an average of 37 pageviews per day.  There were 74 pageviews yesterday, February 29, alone.  So thank you for your continued readership.

It's not that I didn't have anything to write about, quite the contrary.  I attended over 20 art events from the last few days of January through the end of February. However, I also had more job interviews and follow up electronic forms to fill out during the month of February than I had through the whole year of 2011.  Also, February 16 marked the 20th anniversary of my first partner's, Dennis, passing.  I had been planning a single blog post as a tribute to his memory, but that along with my preparations for job interviews and follow ups caused me a bit of writer's block.  So I present here some reflections of February so that I can free my mind and spirit to move onward and refocus on posting meaningful art related topics.

Amazing isn't enough to describe some of the art events I attended or participated in during the month, while it is also a gross overstatement for a few.  One of the more truly amazing exhibits that we did view one last time before it closed on February 12th was the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit at the DMA. This exhibit is now traveling to San Francisco where it will open at the de Young Fine Arts Museum on March 24.  I urge all of my west coast readers to see this fabulous exhibit.

the table set in Rusty's studio

Cris Worley cooking in our kitchen

On January 28, Rusty and I opened his studio/our home for an event hosted by CADD, the Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas. Billed as a "Mystery Dinner", CADD hosted the event to raise funds for their scholarship and educational programs.  There were six different venues around the city in artists' studios, collectors' homes and gallery owners' homes.  Participants purchased tickets and then found out the day before where they were to show up for cocktails and dinner.  After dinner, all of the guests and hosts were to drive to the McKinney Avenue Contemporary for dessert and dancing and to share stories from each of their respective dinner adventures. It was great fun and I look forward to the next Mystery Dinner so that I may attend as a guest. (Though I admit it was a fantastic incentive to clean the studio/home!) Here is a link to the article Lucia Simek wrote on Glasstire about the event and her experience in our studio.

left to right, Ben Terry, White Denim, graphite, acrylic and latex, on wood panel, 2011

Val Curry, bloom, mixed media, 2012

detail of bloom and Ro2 Art UPTOWN in the background

I enjoyed my intern job at Ro2 Art during February while I also continued to search for a full time job that will pay a salary and provide health benefits. I've gained retail experience, as well as making a few sales, which I hope will help me find a job in retail banking after over 30 years of treasury services and securities services banking operations.  But more than just the retail experience, I've written press releases, assisted in exhibition installations and deinstalls, and throughout February I've assisted the gallery owners as they curated and installed a ceramics exhibition out of a private collection.  I have pieces by five of the eleven functional ceramic artists whose works were curated into the exhibition, and one of those is pictured front and center in my table setting photo above. This has all been very valuable hands-on experience that provides me further knowledge of the inner workings of the business of art, and I am very grateful to Jordan Roth and Susan Roth Romans for affording me this opportunity.

Ro2 Art

Mother-and-son partners Susan Roth Romans and Jordan Roth operate Ro2 Art, a full-service gallery and consultancy with spaces in the Uptown and Downtown areas of Dallas, working with a diverse group of contemporary artists, most with ties to the North Texas Region.  At present, Ro2 focuses on the exhibition and sale of work in all visual media, through a fine art gallery space in the West Village of Uptown Dallas, in addition to a progressive, intimate gallery in the historic Kirby Building in Downtown Dallas, and now introducing a new space just steps away named Ro2 Art Downtown COLLECTION at 1408 Elm St. at Akard. Ro2 Art is a member of the Dallas Art Dealers Association, The Uptown Association, and was named “Best Art Gallery” by The Dallas Observer.

David Schulze, Valentine's Day Card, 2012, acrylic on paper

I hope to write about a few of the 20 something art openings and artist talks I attended in the next few days and weeks. For now, I will wrap up with my homage to Dennis and his way of introducing me to art.

Dennis Acrea, lidded vessel, clay coil pot with celadon glaze, 1977

(lidded vessels in background by Amy Halko, Sally Campbell, James Watral)

Dennis and I became best friends when my family moved to Sachse, TX when I was in the sixth grade.  We were best friends through high school, and then we moved in together on July 20, 1978, a month before my family relocated to the Houston area.  We lived together for fourteen years starting off as "roommates" and after buying three homes together we realized we were actually life partners.  We enjoyed going to the symphony, ballet, theater, and musical theater.  But Dennis loved the visual arts as well, though try as he might, he was never able to entice me to join him.  I just didn't "get it" when it came to visual art.

 Dennis Acrea, Seagull, oil on canvas, 1975 - 1977(?)

This is the only decent photo I have that includes the painting Dennis did while in high school.  It now lives at his nephew's house somewhere in east Texas.  If I ever acquire a better photo I will edit it into this post. We stripped decades of paint off of that spool bed and stained the wood, and we covered the wall behind the painting with fabric because we were quite handy and artsy-craftsy back in those days.  Dennis was a commercial printer by trade.  He ran a Ryobi 4 color offset printer working for a commercial envelope and stationary company.  In his spare time, he was able to use the equipment in the shop to create his own prints.  Sadly, I do not have any of his prints because I did not see the intrinsic value in them at the time.  

Dennis also had a love for photography and spent many hours taking photos around the city.  He took the photo above of himself at Old City Park, now known as Dallas Heritage Village, which is just a couple of blocks away from where I live now.  Rusty and I walked over there last week so that Rusty could take pictures for an auction project he is working on for the benefit of the park.

Dennis napping on the loveseat with our cat, Chita, in 1986

R.C. Gorman print with rendering date of 1977

Dennis worked the night shift four days a week for many years.  When he did switch to the day shift, he worked half-days on Fridays.  This gave him the freedom to go to art gallery openings on Friday afternoons and evenings. While he did have a good job that would have afforded him the ability to buy real art, Dennis was quite frugal and chose to purchase prints instead.  I remember that he bought the Gorman print at Adams-Middleton Gallery which is now long gone from Dallas, even the building it was in was torn down and is now a parking lot.  I also remember that the framing for each of the Gorman and the Nagel prints shown above was much more expensive than the prints combined.  My lessons learned these twenty-five years later are: A) buy real art, B) buy art and prints that you really love, not necessarily for investment reason, and C) stay away from trendy 'what's hot now' art.  Both of these framed prints now live behind a sofa in my brother Ray's apartment as he prefers blank white walls lit by the glow of his computer screen.

a lovely view of the Neiman Marcus store at NorthPark Center through the trees from Dennis' grave site  

Someday I think I'll have "& faithful partner" added to the headstone.  My anticipated grave is to my left (the viewers right) in the picture above.  I'm not sure yet if I will use it, or decide to sell it, and choose a cremation instead with a garden burial at my church.  I had told Dennis that I never planned to visit his grave, it just seemed too morbid when I was 31, but I have done so at least once a year since that time, and I pass by all the time on my way to NorthPark Center.  Dennis told me a few days before he lost consciousness that I would find someone great and be happy again. And I have. Thanks Rusty Scruby!  I know that Dennis is looking down and loving Rusty's art and my almost total immersion in an artful way of life.

Now I just need a good job to come along so that I can afford to buy art again!!

Pray

Hadar Sobol: "Go" at McKinney Avenue Contemporary

This exhibition ended on December 10, and I had seen it a month earlier.  But oddly enough, it is stuck in my mind. Odd, because this is not the type of work that usually appeals to this 50-something gay guy - and some video, no less, that I usually never even notice.

Hadar Sobol was born in Israel and earned her Bachelor degree at The Israeli University for Fashion and Textile Design.  She was quite pregnant during the creation of some of these works, and still very much so on the day I stopped by The MAC to see the galleries.  The director of the gallery asked me to wait a bit before viewing the show while Sobol made some minor adjustments.

So I went through the Robert Polidori exhibit and viewed large photos of the restoration of the royal palace of Versailles.  Next I gazed upon very large charcoal drawings on paper by James Drake and this one sculpture:

James Drake, Snakeskin Engine, motorcycle engine, python snakeskin, 1994

I have no idea how this one sculpture that was sixteen years older than Drake's newest drawing related to the drawings, but it did resonate, at least to me, with Sobol's work that I moved toward next.  As I stated earlier, it is unusual that I am still considering this work.  But since it is the first day of winter, and the third night of Hanukkah, and two days before I will be celebrating another pregnant Israeli woman's gift to the world, I am documenting Sobol's works and my thoughts about it.

The first thing I noticed was a rather permanent looking, though temporary wall, that created a long narrow entry way.  Two light tables with short loop videos were playing beneath a thin veil of embroidered cloth.  More embroidery hung along the walls, and several of these were hung on top of small lines of LED lights that caused the cloth to radiate a warm glow.  The wall helped me to feel a new sense of being in the small New Works Space in which I had seen a show earlier in the year that felt more like a day spa lobby.  Sobol's exhibition was decidedly different, more intimate, more of a story. 

Another difference of this exhibition was that while there was a page long artist's statement available, there was no list of titles of works, or dimensions, media, or dates created.  There were no wall plaques, either, except for this:

And "the work to the right" mentioned refers to this massive wall sized hand stitched labyrinth:

We have a labyrinth at church.  I understand a labyrinth to be a sacred space, a tool to pray and meditate, and as a metaphor for a life's journey or a journey into one's deepest self.  For some reason labyrinths feel feminine to me.  Perhaps it is the curves, or the non-linear approach to a journey, or maybe it is my association with the first four letters of the word.  But in this case we are told that this work was created by a gathering of 20 women.  We see stitched figures moving around the labyrinth in an overall "X" pattern.  Upon closer inspection we find interesting text stitched into the fabric.

A beautiful massive work created by a community of women in relation with each other for at least as long as it took to make this.  So there is part of the key to why I keep thinking about this work - community and relationships.  But then there is this that I can't stop thinking about:

My gay self keeps screaming that I should be repulsed by this.  Strangely I'm not.  Is it the iridescent threads that glitter?  I do love shiny sparkly things.  Sobol has displayed this work beautifully.  The cloth rests in a valley created by the way the table is constructed.  We see this as a vessel for receiving that which will eventually cause the same vessel to bring forth new life.  What is the sparkle?  Post coital secretions - his, hers?  Perspiration as the labor begins to expel the living contents? Layers of meaning and context via simple shiny threads.  Indeed!

And then this:

Mine's not a great video - shouldn't be, it's just my documentation.  Sobol has the original and it should be seen. But mine provides a visual reference.  We see a very pregnant women seemingly quite capable of providing amble nourishment for her imminent offspring.  We view the video under an embroidered linen.  The video is a very short loop and the action is simple.  She seems to be gathering thread and then stitching it into place on a line in the linen in front of the video.  The action is repetitive just as sewing and embroidery are.  Just as the actions of our daily lives are that eventually accumulate into the journey of our lives.

Sobol said this in her artist's statement: "My other source of inspiration involves both the visual and spiritual idea of the Torah Wimples (a cloth used to bind the Torah during a bar/bat mitzvah and a cloth used to swaddle a baby boy during his circumcision). I was fascinated by the symbolic way it provides an opportunity for a mother to connect her baby with the family, the community, and the Jewish nation.  My intent was to embrace part of this tradition and create for my daughters a personal and unique version of the wimple as a way to pass on a woman's legacy; insight and wisdom gathered by life experience through generations."

I've only attended one bat mitzvah in my life.  My third grade Catechism class loaded up on a Saturday morning for a "multicultural experience", probably while they thought we were too young to jump ship.  But I still remember the experience.  Temple Emmanuel is a gorgeous synagogue in Central Dallas.  I still think about that time as I drive by.  Temple Emmanuel is next to the cemetery where my first partner, Dennis, is buried.  I have a wonderful view from his grave through the trees of Neiman Marcus at NorthPark Mall.

I thank you, Hadar Sobol, for sharing your journey through your art.  You've given this gay goy much to think about. Shalom

Hadar Sobol is represented by Valley House Gallery in Dallas.  Her next exhibition opens January 27, 2012 at Ein Harod Museum of Art, Israel

Rusty Scruby's Works at McMurtrey Gallery's "Holiday Exhibition 2011"

The Ninth King and Realm of Eight

both are playing card constructions, 2011

McMurtrey Gallery generously forwarded these pics of Rusty's works installed in the gallery for this past Saturday night's opening reception. These are the two works that we delivered to the gallery last week that I mentioned in my previous post about Art Palace.  Here are two more installation shots:

pictured to the left: Lance Letscher Atom Smasher and The Ninth Kitchen

both are collage on masonite, 2011

pictured to the right: Sydney Yeager Traces, oil on canvas, 2011

Rusty has given me permission to use these photos that he took of The Ninth King and Realm of Eight in his studio prior to delivery:

the backside/inside of Realm of Eight.  This work was created using Eights of Clubs and Spades.  A ring of black Gatorfoam board has been attached to give the piece added rigidity and to provide a means to hang the work on L pins.

the backside and inside of The Ninth King. A ring of Gatorfoam board has been attached to the bottom for hanging purposes as noted above, as well as a ring inside the "crown" to give stability to the work as it hangs horizontally from the wall.

a side view of The Ninth King as it hangs in Rusty's studio with one of his earlier framed print on Mi Teintes paper works in the background.  The Ninth King was created using red playing cards Nine of Diamonds and Hearts and one band of blue playing cards using King of Hearts.

While creating the "neck" of the open-ended vessel that is The Ninth King, Rusty created a tangential series of works that he has named Playing Card Flowers.  Rusty submitted one of these to The McKinney Avenue Contemporary for their 16th annual Blue Yule Holiday Party.

three Playing Card Flowers

Rusty found other uses for these works as well as enjoying as small sculptures:

Bill Davenport and the Golden Treasures of the Pharaohs

Curated by Charles Dee Mitchell.  Presented at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary, September 17 - October 22.

Last weekend was busy in Texas arts.  Bill Davenport kept bar at the Glasstire booth at the Texas Contemporary art fair.  An actual 'art' bar that Bill created himself and stocked with his unique hand-painted bottles.  As Houston occupied itself with the second art fair in two months time, Dallas witnessed the final weekend to view Davenport's work at the MAC.  The MAC's press release tells us that Davenport filled the large gallery with works that reference the "mysticism of ordinary man's treasures."  Davenport is a contributing editor for Glasstire and a freelance art critic for the Houston Chronicle, and he has had numerous regional art exhibits during the past decade.  Glasstire has posted a variety of articles as of late regarding the state of the Dallas commercial art scene.  It was interesting to see the demonstration Davenport presented to Dallas viewers in this exhibition at the MAC that was curated by a Dallas art critic and curator.

installation shot of Big Owl and Nopale

both are paper mache over steel, 2011

Big Owl, 108" x 60" x 60"

Nopale, 50" x 82" x 132"

Strawberry, painted ferroconcrete, 25" x 29" x 29", 2011

Moldy Cheese and Stein

Moldy Cheese, polyurethane foam and acrylic paint, 4" x 4" x 4", 2011

Stein, ceramic, 6" x 4" x 5.5", 2009

Wood Pretzel, plaster gauze and acrylic paint, 14" x 21" x 12", 2011

Big Owl

Swiss Cheese, polyurethane foam and acrylic paint, 3.5" x 6" x 4.5", 2011

Interview with Simeen Farhat

Insceced, cast resin, 2011
photo used with permission from Simeen Farhat

I went to visit Simeen Farhat in her large apartment/studio.  She lives in one of those now-rare-in-Dallas early 20th century four-plex apartments that have high ceilings and reach far back into the lot providing for a number of large rooms.  Like most artists, her works in process were present from the front door to the back.  She was preparing for multiple upcoming exhibits both in Texas and abroad.

.

Simeen in one of the rooms of her studio

Simeen started off by showing me around each room in which she performs her various processes separately.  In the room pictured above, she cuts the word or phrase shapes out of MDF and then creates latex molds.  She has molds for each word or small phrase for many of the different cluster sculpture and installations that she creates.  She pours resin in the molds in another room and allows them to set up in various rooms.  She also showed me a small pressure chamber that she uses to set the crystal and translucent resins which helps them retain clarity rather than becoming too cloudy.

detail of one element "most"

Simeen has been sculpting using painted wood forming words and phrases in Urdu.  She creates her own stylized fonts, though many of us in the States have not been able to pick out the words we see represented in her stylized Arabic script.  For her exhibitions at Anya Tish Gallery and Kirk Hopper Fine Art, Simeen has started to use English translations.  The picture above shows one of the word elements that she later combined into a cluster sculpture.  The word "most" is shown above in her own stylized font - see the "m" moving from the far left to the far right; the "o" and "s" overlap the middle bottom of the "m", and the "t" sticks up above the "m" as it rises out of the "o".  For these two exhibitions, Simeen has chosen Edward Fitzgerald's English translations of Omar Khayyam's poetry. 

Morphed, cast resin, 2011
photo used with permission from Simeen Farhat 

The translucent resin has allowed Simeen to add extra layers of conceptual meaning to her works.  The dark rich brown color of the elements in Morphed shown above call to mind both the henna dyes that women of the Sub-Continent adorn their skin as well as the glass bottles of Shiner Beer.  We see both sides of Simeen's past and present cultures coming together.  She also showed me icy blue resin pieces and smokey gray works as seen in "most" above.  Anya Tish's press release tells us this about the exhibition and Simeen's work:

"Anya Tish Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Word, Object, Motion, an exhibition of contemporary Islamic art, featuring the work of Dallas-based Pakistani artist Simeen Farhat, and Houston-based Iraqi artist Mohammed Al Shammarey. Both artists take inspiration from classical Persian and Urdu poetry, dealing with subjects of human struggle and emotions, freedom of thought and expression. Farhat’s sculptures, created from wood and/or cast resin, explode from the wall, forming three-dimensional manifestations of Urdu and Farsi poems. The sculptures’ compositions, sinuous Pashto calligraphy, present the viewer with many layers of meaning. The shadows cast by the intricately layered forms, bring to mind whispers, as if the words that cast them have just been spoken. Farhat’s work, both original and visually striking in execution, provides a fascinating commentary on present-day perceptions of Islamic culture."

 3 sculptures in her 2008 MAC exhibition

front Shroud of Silence

back left Body Language

back right We Won't Kill You (installation)
photo used with permission from Simeen Farhat

HC: How are your new works different from the exhibition you had at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary in September 2008?
SF: The MAC show was more political. This one is less so, and I want to see how people react. I call these speech bubbles, in a way, because they are like the bubble 'pops'. They are not my words, of course - I'm not a poet yet, maybe I don't want to do poetry - I'm a visual person.
HC: right, visual poetry
SF: this is visual. What I do is poetic dynamism into visual energy.
HC: ah, that is beautiful
SF: that's how I describe my work. It's not that you go read it right there, don't go try to read it. I mean, I will provide the reference and you can go read it. These are like music. When you hear a song, you know, there is poetry there, but what you're really attracted to, especially if it is very melodic and all, is the music, the sound of the lyrics.
HC: right
SF: and even some people reciting sounds so beautiful. You know if you just read something (she shrugs) but with some people even the reciting is so beautiful and it is really appealing. And from where I come, poetry and even philosophy also, and all the poets I use are philosophers, they're talking about life and all these things, and they are timeless. So I am also looking for some contemporary <music and poetry> that is timeless with a lot of philosophy. What I'm trying to get at also is questioning all these things happening in the world. That's how I started it out. In a way, questioning my own culture that I come from. And why is there all this chaos in the world. We are all just human beings, accept the differences and similarities, and be more open to other cultures. And why Sufi, I mean, Sufism had been part of the Islamic culture, and it was very passionate and loving and talking about humanity as opposed to what we see in YaNabi Islam.

Expulsion, fabric, painted-wood, wire, 2009, variable dimensions
photo used with permission from Simeen Farhat

HC: Your 2008 show at the MAC, as you said, was a bit more politically driven, but now you're moving into aspects of life and finding commonalities and relationships between the different peoples and how we're not that different.
SF: yeah, and now the work is becoming less political, it's still political in a way, but the political aspect has become less drastic, it has become more subtle. I mean, it's still there, and I'm making the smoke, I reference it to a lot of things happening, you know, like wild fires or mushroom clouds or something. Now it is more about humanity, like us being who we are, you know these kind of questions. And of course it's visual art. I'm not a politician or a diplomat, you know, I mean I can be a diplomat in the sense of artistic diplomacy. So enjoy it visually.

Smoldering, cast resin, 2011
photo used with permission from Simeen Farhat

HC: So you're going to have a piece up in a project space at Kirk Hopper Fine Art starting September 3 with opening reception on September 10th. And you're in a two person show at Anya Tish Gallery in Houston starting September 9th, the reception is that night also. And then you've got a solo show coming up at La Fontaine Centre of Contemporary Art in Bahrain...
SF: yeah, that show was supposed to be in March, but it got postponed because two weeks before the show was supposed to open, then all this revolution things started up there so it got postponed. Now it opens October 28th. Then I'm also in Abu Dhabi Art Fair and then Contemporary Istanbul art fair.
HC: Is someone taking your work to these art fairs, a gallery, or are you presenting in some type of artist project?
SF: XVA Dubai gallery is taking my work. My gallery in London, Xerxes Art, took my work last year, but they aren't participating this year. I had a solo show at Xerxes last year, too.

one of the works that exhibited in her solo show at Twelve Gates Art Gallery, Philadelphia PA, March 4 - April 30, 2011
photo used with permission from Simeen Farhat

HC: What is your greatest challenge with exhibiting your work outside of the US?
SF: One of the challenges for my art and these shows - shipping.  To make sure everything....especially with my work, oh my god, so that is one reason why also I switched from wood to these resin because they are more durable. They are more archival, and more professional, you know.  They're more forgiving, but also they are more playful to work.  I've been doing a lot of experimenting. I put them in the microwave, I do a lot of these things or maybe use a heat gun, and maybe getting all these twist shapes so they actually are giving me more flexibility.
SF: Since the show at the MAC two years ago, I haven't shown much locally.  I had a two person show at Anya Tish last year with Paul Booker.
HC: Oh, I bet your works looked good together.
SF:  yeah. Anya was perhaps the first gallery in Texas, like main stream galleries, who, you know, believed in my work.  And now Lillian at Kirk Hopper Fine Art is taking the chance and showing my work.

After my studio visit we went and ate at a Vietnamese Buffet a few blocks away.  She continued to tell me the history of Pakistan.  We compared similarities we find in the Muslim faith practice to those of Catholics and other Evangelical Christians - such as fasting for a month once a year, male only clerics, priests, and ministers, oppression of gays and other lesser societal roles for women in general.  I told Simeen that I find her to be a very brave woman and artist and I highly respect her art's message. Simeen has taken a leave from teaching at the University of Texas Arlington to afford her time to make art and to accommodate her extensive travel schedule from this fall into early spring 2012. Simeen is also scheduled to have a solo exhibition this fall at Art Chowk Gallery in her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan.