Wes Bruce is in
the middle of creating anew space outdoors at the New Children’s Museum
on the patio next to the existing Wondersound. that so many of us
have enjoyed. You might also remember Bruce for his major installation at the
California Center for the Arts in Escondido.
Megan Dickenson and Wes Bruce in conversation
Megan Dickenson and Wes Bruce covered in compost!
Wes Bruce and the New Children’s Museum discussed how this new space will create a place to pause made for adults and children to allow for both emotional and physical air flow. They spent the day before the talk compositing the
site and seeing that job as a metaphor for turning over the trauma
of the last 14 months. They want this area to contain a vessel for recovery and
re-connection. Continuing the metaphor, the use of the word “sound” as a body
of water between two bits of land creating an entrance for the wind to blow, sun to shine, and birds to sing.The new Wondersound is an expansion from
inside the museum to outside which is a catalyst for healing and a sort of creation of a new sound body
Beginning sketch for the patio
As an artist Bruce is a terrific graphic designer and the
older installation is mainly animals, but the outside will have images of
plants as well as the real thing with lots of poetry and words included. He describes
himself as a professional mess maker. But ultimately, he works to knit the
community together and empower them. This project is not a thing, but an
experience. In planting this garden, he hopes to help people learn about what
their heart needs.
The New Children’s Museum is open to member now and opening to the public again on
May 21st Ribbon cutting: 8:15 a.m. – 8:45 a.m. Public access: 9:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. The new Wes Bruce Wondersound garden space will be opening June 4th.
If you want to listen to the entire talk or any of the other other artists' talks, they are available on the New Children's Museum website.
The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness, 2012-2016
Angela
Washko: Computing in the Arts Lecture Series presented by UC San
Diego Visual Arts on May 13, 2021.
Angela Washko is a performing art star. She was never
really satisfied with her training in the visual arts as it did not seem
authentic to her own interest. Very early in 2006, she started role playing in
the World of Warcraft online game and was certainly a star there with a large
following and lots of high powered awards. By 2012 she was fed up with what
happened when fellow players discovered she was a girl. Not only did she decide
to form The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral Awareness
within the game, she made this an outside/public art project. She needed the
reputation of her avatar to be able to hold sensitive and revealing sessions
about gender discrimination within the game.
Angela Washko
Not too surprising that led her to take a deep
dive (with a nice grant) into some of the feminist issues surrounding the manosphere/alt
all of the Pick Up Artist. These are men that specialize in telling other men
how to break down women’s resistance to sex. The Pick Up Artist did not take
well to this exposure and the video. TheGameTheGameis what she created to help women understand what these men were doing, resist or
even turn the tables on these guys and pursue them
Roosh V from Banged
Alpha Game, 2019
Pick Up Artists like Roosh V with his multiple Bang books,
seminars, digital instructions have now gone from being seduction guides for
their community to life coaches but they still exist. Bangedis
her revealing interview of Roosh V and led to Alpha Game, 2019 made from a code
designed to take his most used phrases and create poetry then lyrics for the Alpha song.
Millionaire Worthy, 2013
Angela
Washko has made many other bodies of work
and it is well worth a visit to her website to see all of her work. An early
video Millionaire
Worthy is a take off of the reality TV show Millionaire Matchmakers.
She analyses the top 100 qualities that those millionaires on the show
requested. This tongue in check take off asked if you are worthy and do you want to pay $39.99 to find out how to capture your own milliionaire.
Workhorse Queen, 2021
In her most recent documentary Workhorse
Queen we learn of the after effects of rejected candidates from the RuPaul drag queen
reality show. This is a sympathetic view of what a queer role model could be.
Washko, needless to say, has had to learn how to create a
safe space for herself online because her works are provocative. But when you
hear her speak it is from a place of genuine interest. Her performances are
interventions second, but seem first to come from a genuine desire to learn
more.
At the end of this interview, she spoke of her teaching
experience which has widened her scoop and added more and more mediums to her arsenal.
She is certainly a gladiator amongst media artists.
Angela Washko is committed to telling complex and
unconventional stories about the media we consume from unusual perspectives.
She is the founder of The Council on Gender Sensitivity and Behavioral
Awareness in World of Warcraft, a long-term intervention inside the popular
online video game. A recent recipient of the Creative Capital Award, the Impact
Award at Indiecade, and the Franklin Furnace Performance Fund, Washko's
practice has been highlighted in The New Yorker, Frieze Magazine, Time
Magazine, The Guardian, ArtForum, The Los Angeles Times, Art in America, The
New York Times, Rhizome and more. Her projects have been presented
internationally at venues including Museum of the Moving Image (New York), Los
Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Milan Design Triennale, Kiasma Museum of
Contemporary Art (Helsinki), and the Shenzhen Independent Animation Biennial.
Angela Washko is an Associate Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.
In early May,Lux Art Institute presented another of their Studio Series Talks for
current Artist-in-Residence, Baseera Khan.
This is a self-confident artist from Texas now living in New York with a
political agenda based around clothes and including performance, installation,
sculpture, wall works and even a TV show to come. She is charming and engaging
and grateful for this first showing in San Diego but she also admits that she does
not do collaboration because of her controlling personality. I found that
admission rather refreshing.
It helped me, as it always does, to hear the
artist speaking about their own art. At first glance you might not notice these
works were all tied together by clothing as she never mentions this. But what
brought it home to me was how she identified everyone in the audience who asked
a question with a description of the clothes they had one. “You with in the
cool leather, you in the safari jacket, you in the black with embroidery.”
It is the politics of these works that is the
challenge that she wants to present to her audience. For example, how the Nike
company who offers customized sneakers did not allow certain words and how she
worked around this. And an acoustic blanket with a couple of openings surrounded
with gold embroidery that she hides in during some of her performances,
sneaking out the occasional arm or leg. Or the bench seats dressed in bits of fabric
scrapes with vibrating subwoofers for deciding if we are allowed to sit comfortably, some
of which ended up as wall works. The giant Corinthian columns cover with snake
skin are all about power especially the power of history and who gets to sit at
the table.
So from the woven messaging prayer rugs to
covering herself with charcoal to climb a body parts wall leaving behind charcoal
smears that are framed, she is literally laying it all out or climbing the
walls.
The 6 episodes of a TV show she started
during the pandemic after she recovered from COVID-19 is in the works for 2023.
But during her time in Cardiff by the Sea, she is inspired by flora and fauna
and beaches, all things not accessible in New York. Just maybe some of our colors will work their
way into her next new project back east.
Lux Art Institute
Artist-in-Residence: Baseera Khan
In Studio: Through May 8, 2021
On View: Through June 5, 2021
By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice
Hewitt.
The back wall of Material Pulses: Seven Viewpoints, on view at Cannon Art Gallery through May 23.
Now that many of our museums and galleries
are open, it’s a joy to see art in person again. And some of our happiest
moments lately were at two wonder-filled quilt exhibitions —one in Carlsbad,
and one at Liberty Station—and you don’t have to be a quilter to love them.
On view at Carlsbad’s
Cannon Art Gallery is Material Pulses: Seven Viewpoints, an
eye-popping display of 17 pieces by 7 fiber artists who use a range of traditional
and experimental techniques. Curated by Ohio-based Nancy Crow, a major figure
in the world of contemporary art quilting, this travelling exhibit has been on
the road for almost four years, and includes artists from four U.S. states, one
Canadian province, and a county in England. This is its only appearance in
California.
Before Thought by Elizabeth Brandt
Beyond the obvious
differences in styles and colors, the closer you look, the more each quilt reveals
its own fascinating details. The two that caught my eye as I stepped into the
gallery were the ones just behind the front desk—large, brilliantly colored
geometric shapes on dark backgrounds by Elizabeth Brandt. What first drew me in
was the colors, but up close, the intricate machine-stitched lines were amazing,
creating whole patterns of their own.
Things Fall Apart#3 by Mary Lou Alexander
I also found the
trio of quilts by Mary Lou Alexander engaging, even more so when I saw they
were all titled “Falling Apart,” inspired by one of my favorite poems, “The
Second Coming,” written by William Butler Yeats just after World War I and the Spanish
Flu pandemic. “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world.” It’s definitely worth taking time to read the
labels beside all the quilts here—they’re very informative.
Veiled Confusion, by Jayne Willoughby
Then there were the
two pieces by Jayne Willoughby, with their huge, pale, egg-shaped
figures that seemed to invite meditation. They’re two-sided quilts, and I so
wanted to see the reverse sides with their “riotous color systems” but that
wasn’t possible, since no one was allowed to touch them, even with gloves. So
even though there were small colored photos of what we were missing, we were
only able to see half of the artist’s intentions.
Another view of Momentum by Christine Mauersberger
But the
centerpiece here, and surely the most unusual quilt you’ve ever seen, is Christine
Mauersberger’s Momentum. It’s 9 feet tall, 10 feet deep, and nearly
8 feet wide, made of strips of red plastic masking film machine-stitched over
white tulle fabric. It came in seven folded pieces, with the artist allowing
each venue on the tour to hang it their own way, using whatever arrangement
they wanted. Many of the venues ended up not showing Momentum, but
fortunately Cannon has high ceilings, the right lighting system, and enough
imagination to install it here, and it’s a real treat.
In fact, the whole
exhibition is a treat. Don’t miss seeing it live, for yourself, while it’s in
town.
Cannon Art Gallery Material Pulses:
Seven Viewpoints The artists: Mary
Lou Alexander, Claire Benn, Elizabeth Brandt, Christine Mauersberger, Denise L
Roberts, Jayne Willoughby, Barb Wills On view through
May 23, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Free admission. Face coverings
required. 1775 Dove Lane,
Carlsbad, in the Carlsbad City Library complex Tel. 760-602-2021 For more
information and a virtual tour of the exhibit, see www.carlsbadca.gov/services/depts/arts/exhibits/cannon.asp
Meanwhile, down in
Point Loma’s Liberty Station,Visions Arts Museum (VAM) has a lot going
on—four textile arts exhibitions, one of them the blockbuster travelling quilt
show Deeds
Not Words: Celebrating 100 Years of Women's Suffrage. Co-curated by Sandra Sider,
curator of the Texas Quilt Museum, and Pamela Weeks, curator of the New England
Quilt Museum, the show premiered last summer, in the centennial year of the 19th
amendment. 29 award-winning artists from around the U.S. were invited to create
28 artworks for the exhibition—VAM’s Curatorial Manager, Rebekah Deep, called
them “the Who’s Who of quilt artists”—and they responded with an array of materials
and styles honoring some of the many, many women who strode the long road fighting
for the right to vote.
Katharine Dexter McCormick by Pixeladies
One of
my favorites was a piece by a pair of fiber artists who call themselves Pixeladies
celebrating Katharine Dexter McCormick, an ardent activist for voting rights
and an early supporter of Margaret Sanger, who opened the first birth control
center in the U.S. in 1916. When diaphragms were illegal in this country—are
you old enough to remember diaphragms?—McCormick smuggled over 1,000 of them from
Europe to Sanger’s clinic by sewing them into her clothing. Pixeladies
included a “hidden homage” to McCormick by sewing two diaphragms into their
quilt.
Standing Together by Pat Kumicich
Another
interesting piece—actually, they’re all interesting—is Pat Kumicich’s
Standing Together, for which she created a background of pages from a found
book of suffragist sheet music. And there’s a delightful one by Susan Shie,
dedicated to the youngest woman at the 1848 Seneca Falls Women’s Conference,
18-year-old Charlotte Woodward Pierce, who was the only one of those women
still alive when the 19th amendment was finally passed in 1920.
Charlotte, Knight of Potholders in the Kitchen Tarot by Susan Shie. Check out the other women included, like voting rights activist Stacey Abrams and some of the 102 women in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Frances Watkins Harper, by Sandra Sider
Sandra Sider, one of the exhibit’s two curators, contributed a piece dedicated to Frances Watkins Harper, who spent most of her life fighting for racial equality—in the suffragist movement as well as everywhere else. In 1866, she spoke at the 11th National Women’s Rights Convention, alongside Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, saying: “We are all bound up together in one bundle of humanity,” which inspired Sider to create this quilt.
VAM’s Curatorial Manager Rebekah Deep poses with JillKerttula’s Union Station 2.
You can learn a lot about history here, reading not only the accompanying labels, but the words stitched into each piece. Then move on into the back gallery and Urban Voyeur, where Jill Kerttula combines photography with bits of fabric and lots of stitching to give a compelling look to the street scenes she sees, inviting you, the viewer, to become part of the picture.
There are two more one-woman shows in
VAM’s lobby—Hillary WatersFayles’ “botanical embroideries” and Carolyn
Harper’s hand-embroidered batik portraits of homeless people—not to mention
a very appealing gift shop. If you haven’t been here lately, it’s definitely time
to plan a visit to VAM.
Visions Art Museum: Contemporary Quilts & Textiles Deeds Not Words, Urban Voyeur,
Threaded Canopy & Look me
in the Eye On view through
July 3, Thurs/Fri/Sat, 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Free admission. Face coverings required. 2825 Dewey Road, Suite 100, at Liberty
Station in Point Loma. Tel. 619-546-4872 For more information
and a virtual tour of the exhibitions see www.visionsartmuseum.org
Lonnie Burstein Hewittis an award-winning
author/lyricist/playwright who has written about arts and lifestyle for the La Jolla
Light and other local media for over a dozen years. You can reach her athew2@sbcglobal.net
Irma
Sofia Poetercelebrates 25 years of her artistic trajectory
with this retrospective show presented in CEART Tecate, (Federico Benitez s/n,
Downey) Baja Norte. Una y lo otro: Conexion Tecate extended until
the end of June..With a selection of more than 50 pieces this exhibition
shows the different technics, formats and themes that this Mexican-American
artist has explored. More info: 011 52 (665) 65 ispoeter@yahoo.com
I was very sad to miss the 25-year retrospective of Irma Sofia Poeter at Central
Estatal de las Arts in Tecate this last month. She very kindly sent me a video
walk through of some of the exhibition which you can see below.
Poeter was a San Diego
Art Prize recipient in 2016 where she showed a part of the migration series
of cloth works that are like highly embellished mandalas. At this retrospective
she is showed one of these pieces that is her own story of migration from south
to north and back south which has jeans as a central medium. She now lives in
Tecate and considers herself a border artist.
The wide range of materials used in this show is very
exciting. In her early paintings, the subject is always women and how they are
viewed in society. The use of fabric does seem to be a hallmark of her art as
seen with the sleeves of man’s shirts hanging down from the ceiling, actually
close enough to touch you as you walk beneath them.
Her chakra dresses are made from materials from all over
the world. Each of the 7 outfits represent one the chakras. I can relate the
dresses to architecture as they are obviously constructed with layers to be
decorative and still utilitarian. Poeter was trained as an architect and she is
building her own home and studio as we could see from the maquettes on view.
The variety of
mediums is not confusing as Irma Sofia Poeter herself is the subject
which makes the show coherent.
By Lonnie Burstein Hewitt. Photos by Maurice Hewitt.
Art professors Wendell Kling and Alessandra Moctezuma carefully reveal the student prints at the press preview of Heavy Duty.
Steamroller printmaking? I’d never heard of it until I received an email about an upcoming event at Mesa College. Fine arts professor/gallery director Alessandra Moctezuma had come up with another bright idea for Covid-time art: an outdoor community event called Heavy Duty.
Last November, she organized a drive-through exhibition that invited local art-lovers, safely ensconced in their cars, to view a series of current-events-related banners created by local artists. Now, on May 7, displayed on the same campus parking-lot fence, there will be another drive-through exhibit, this time of large-scale woodblock prints made with the aid of a rented steamroller.
Moctezuma, an artist and printmaker herself, said she didn’t exactly come up with the idea herself; she’d learned about steamroller printmaking online. “They’ve been doing it for years on campuses in Florida and elsewhere,” she said. “But I think we’re the first to do it in San Diego.”
Three months ago, she invited 16 professional printmakers to participate, giving them time to create 3’ x 5’ designs. Professor Wendell Kling offered interested students the possibility of making smaller 12-inch square versions; master printer Chris Lahti gave instructions in online zoom workshops, and 24 students completed their pieces during spring break.
My husband and I had a chance to watch the printmaking process at a press preview April 21. First, plywood boards were laid on the ground, while the artists carefully inked their carved wood plates. Once they’re ready to roll, each plate is placed in a holding form and covered with fabric and a protective layer of padding. Effectively, the steamroller acts as a giant-size mobile printing press as it’s slowly driven over the artworks—at least twice, to ensure a good transfer. The inking—like everything else—was painstaking. And the reveals were exciting! All the final results were impressive, as you’ll be able to see for yourself at the May 7th event.
The inking: Artist/gallery coordinator Jenny Armer—she’s also the steamroller driver.
Artist/sculpture-lab technician Trevor Amery with his just-inked wood plate.
The placing of the fabric
Jenny on a roll
The full student prints reveal, with Alessandra Moctezuma & Wendell Kling
The final reveal: Master printer Chris Lahti and Jenny Armer display her finished print.
Heavy Duty: A Drive-Through Steamroller Printmaking Exhibition
May 7, 3-5 p. m. Free admission. San Diego Mesa College, Parking Lot 1 7250 Mesa College Drive, San Diego, CA 92111 For more information, contact Alessandra Moctezuma amoctezu@sdccd.edu/
Participating artists: Trevor Amery Jenny Armer Jennifer Anne Bennett Ty Creighton & his daughter, Samantha Creighton Brian Gibson Wendell Kling Chris Lahti Mary Manusos Jim Melli Morgan Miller III Yvette Roman Sibyl Rubottom Katie Ruiz Jose Hugo Sanchez Katy Yeaw
Lonnie Burstein Hewitt is an award-winning author/lyricist/playwright who has written about arts and lifestyle for the La Jolla Light and other local media for over a dozen years. You can reach her at hew2@sbcglobal.net/
