Picked RAW: Katherine Sweetman and Americans for the Arts

from ARTSblog and Liesel Fenner

On November 7, 2010, artist Katherine Sweetman made an inflammatory and controversial blog post on the San Diego Union Tribune‘s new Sketchbook blog. The post lasted only 13 hours on the newspaper’s website, but by that time it had already gone viral.

The blog post, its repercussions, and its interpretations have been written about by the Los Angeles Times’ Culture Monster blog; ARTINFO.com’s Modern Art Notes section; VoiceofSanDiego.org (and response by Union-Tribune Editor Jeff Light); San Diego City Beat; San Diego Reader, the Bay Area Observer blog; the Fishbowl LA blog; San Diego Visual Arts Network blog; the OB RAG blog; EditorsWeblog.org; fnewsmagazine.com; and others.

Ms. Sweetman will discuss her San Diego Union Tribune blog post at the Media Infrastructure session of the Americans for the Arts Public Art Preconference.

Read more


*Editor's note:
I am still perplexed by the amount of attention Sweetman's actions garnered (at least, not since Émile Zola), which leads me to believe there exists a surprise element to it, a first in contemporary journalistic history so to speak, and perhaps a little bit of "sticking it to the man" - after all, everyone likes an underdog.  So do we.  And while Sweetman will always have a home here on SDVAN, I wonder about the implications of such a tactic and how it might inform or detract from a larger audience's understanding of why we (globally) write about the arts. 

It might simply come down to figuring out who that audience is, especially in San Diego, and once found try to determine what their readership needs and desires are.  There is the risk however, we could discover that this audience is not as diverse or as large as we think and is instead comprised of our own professional colleagues and peers.  What then, is it still our "civic duty to try and inform my fellow citizens — no matter their politics — about what art can do at its best" as one fervent commentator suggested? 

I don't have the answer, yet.  I do believe culturally, San Diego is a bit of an artistic anonamly, a microcosm within a larger microcosm known as the art world.  And while there are plenty of excellent artists, galleries, a few museums and a growing vitality in the ranks of its participants, I do think we should be attentive to the fact - whether you agree with Sweetman or not - that the arts community has yet to establish a firm foundation to support or even cater to diverging opinions, methods, or criticism. 

A dose of relevant and professional arts writing on par with what is occuring in other major cities across the US and establishing a critical platform for its distribution, could open more doors to a vibrant arts community here instead of being continuously distracted by bells-and-whistles. 

Kevin Freitas
             

Picked RIPE: Mark di Suvero - "Declaration" 1999-2001

Venice Beach, California
photo taken Saturday April 9, 2011

Picked RIPE: Arts for Nexgen LACMA - Get one!

I took my kids up to LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) yesterday to see the David Smith sculpture exhibit.  It's always great to visit LA and her museums but more on that later.  The really nice thing LACMA does, beyond putting on exceptional shows, is offer any child free museum membership until they're 18 years old.  How cool is that?!  Kids can come as often as they like and bring one guest.  And guess who got in for free, dad of course?  After spending $70 dollars to fill up the fuel tank it was a welcome gift. 

So, what are you waiting for?  Grab your kid(s) and go see some art.  You'll be glad you did.

Daily Art Nag for April 10, 2011: RIP John McCracken

Daily Art Nag for April 8, 2011

twitpic @robbiesharp
Tate Modern

Picked RAW: Love Henry at Sala de Espera



Love Henry

Sat.April 9th

8 p.m.

@Sala de Espera

1515 Ninth Ave

San Diego CA 92101

www.lachicaquenorecibeanillosdediamante.blogspot.com

Check out their music

http://soundcloud.com/love-henry

Love Henry is

Felicia Fis: Vocals, guitar

Aileen Rodosevich: Violin, vocals

Emily Neidhart: bass

John Branch: drums

Picked RAW Peeled: Josue Castro at Noel-Baza

by Andrew Printer


Josue Castro - "Dominatrix"

Equal = Secret Identities is an engaging but inconsistent exhibition of photographic portraits by Josue Castro showing at the Noel-Baza Gallery on India Street until April 23rd.  The exhibition, comprised of two connected bodies of work made months apart consists of numerous black & white images of different people, each face partially or wholly concealed by a mask of one kind or another.  

According to the gallery’s website the photographs aim to "capture the inner truth or the face people hide from public view," an interesting investigation but one that implies there is just one truth and two faces (public & private) per person, neither of which is the case.

The set of images made first (the unframed ones) are more successful.  They are the result of an early project in which Castro photographed friends in his studio wearing masks that either he or his model provided.   The point of the mask (and the project) was to allow the sitter to hint at the notion of having a secret identity.  Castro’s motivation was and is less about documenting a sexual sub-culture or documenting disguised individuals engaged in a taboo but universal truth, how an American audience is likely to approach the images.  Rather, the artist’s intention, referencing Mexico’s enthusiastic embrace of masked super-heroes (lucha libre etc), is to photograph ordinary people simply demonstrating the possibility of a secret them, connoted by a personally specific or even an arbitrary disguise; and in turn to create a level playing-field by neutralizing external identities. 

Each photograph is simply titled with the person’s occupation (lawyer, chef) so only the mask provides clues to the sitter’s secret identity, although this mask/secret identity seems vaguer and therefore more satisfying to ponder in the initial set of photographs.  Castro claims that each shoot was collaborative between subject and artist, but it doesn’t appear that this went too much farther than choosing a mask and posing the model this way and that.  Light and composition, for example, don’t seem to have had much bearing upon Castro’s larger concept, particularly in the second set.  While the images are all uniformly and immaculately printed and beautifully lit, I felt that those characteristics unique to photography could have been employed more to contribute to each person’s idiosyncratic secret identity; either that or every image might have been lit, framed and shot in exactly the same deadpan manner allowing viewers to survey all the portraits truly equally, catalog style.

Daily Art Nag for April 6, 2011: One free, one not

photo: Agence France-Presse

from the BBC


China artist Ai Weiwei stopped from boarding flight

Prominent Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has been stopped by the authorities from leaving the Chinese capital, Beijing, reports say.

There has been no contact with him since, and no comment from the police. One of his assistants told the BBC he had been held by border guards as he tried to get on a flight to Hong Kong.  She says police have searched his Beijing home, which is also his studio.

More than 20 dissidents and activists have been held in the past weeks.  China's authorities appear on edge over calls for a so-called Jasmine Revolution, partly inspired by pro-democracy movements in the Middle East.

Read more here, here, and here


Other Jabs:

Rabih Mroue, the Lebanese artist starting a creative rebellion
by Laura Allsop and CNN

Theatre director, visual artist, actor, writer: there are many feathers to Rabih Mroue's cap.  The Lebanese artist, whose performances, video works and installations deal with Lebanon's troubled history, is currently enjoying increasing visibility on the world's stage.

With two exhibitions currently in Europe (one in London and one in Sweden), Mroue is gaining more and more admirers, though cinephiles may already know him from his role in 2008 film "Je Veux Voir," in which his character traverses Beirut's destroyed neighborhoods with French actress Catherine Deneuve, following the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

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Picked RIPE: Orange County Great Park is calling all artists

from Mike Boehm and Culture Monster

The management of the Orange County Great Park is summoning artists in all genres to apply for grants that will pay four winners $7,500 stipends to occupy studios that used to house fighter squadrons.

The six-month residencies begin in July. The application deadline is Friday for “adult artists from around the world,  who work in any discipline,” including, but not limited to, visual arts, performing arts, interdisciplinary arts and literature.

The grant-makers aren’t looking for specific project proposals but for evidence of overall artistic quality and an ability to interact with the public, since the point is for the artists to “routinely” engage with park visitors.

Read more

Picked RAW: Josue Castro "Equal=Secret Identities" at Noel-Baza

from the press release

At 54, Josue Castro has had a long road to photography.  To please his parents, he earned a degree in graphic design from the Universidad Iberoamericano in Mexico City, where he grew up.  He later studied painting and started showing his work 15 years ago. Thanks to San Diego City College and his friend San Diego photographer David Fokos, Castro began working as a photographer. “With one, you paint with acrylics, oils or other kinds of material. With photos, you paint with light. Because that’s the etymology of photography—‘painting with light,’” Castro says.

Josue Castro’s recent work explores the idea of personal or “secret” identities.  His photographs capture the inner truth or the face people hide from public view. Prompted by the passage of Prop 8 banning Gay marriage, Castro became interested in our tendency to compartmentalize our experiences, interests and beliefs. Using the subject’s occupation as the title, Castro seeks to explore the divisiveness people experience once their opinions are known—whether it’s support of gay marriage, religion or politics or involvement in a sub-culture. “People really change once they know your secret. Otherwise, they don’t care.  The idea is to make people feel that once you know the secret of anybody, you start treating the people different,” he adds. “That’s the main concept of this project.”

Adapted from San Diego Citybeat May 4, 2010 by Lorena Nava Ruggero



Noel-Baza Fine Art

2165 India Street - San Diego, CA 92101

619.876.4160

noel-baza@cox.net

Picked RAW: (joyita/small jewel) at the Athenaeum, La Jolla



In partnership with the San Diego Visual Arts Network

2010 San Diego Art Prize: Einar and Jamex de la Torre with emerging artist Julio Orozco
On view April 2 - May 7, 2011

from the press release

The Athenaeum is pleased to present an exhibition by 2010 San Diego Art Prize recipients Einar and Jamex de la Torre with emerging artist Julio Orozco. Presented by the San Diego Visual Arts Network, the San Diego Art Prize is awarded to several established and emerging San Diego artists whose achievements in the field of visual arts merit recognition. Each season, winning artists receive exhibition opportunities, a cash prize, and are asked to select an emerging artist to share the spotlight.

Mexican-born artists Einar and Jamex de la Torre are brothers and artistic collaborators, who moved to the United States from Guadalajara, Jalisco in the early 1970s. Their artistic collaboration began in earnest in the late 1980's with small mix-media works. In the late 1990s, they began to do large-scale sculptural installations, eventually branching out into commissioned site-specific and public art projects. The brothers live and work on both sides of the San Diego-Baja California border, enjoying a bi-national life style that very much informs their art.

Julio Orozco began as a documentary photographer in 1992. Working for a daily newspaper on the police beat gave him a unique opportunity to portray crime scenes and develop a visual ability to communicate facts, which he later applied to his creative work. Issues are raised of nostalgia, historiography and cultural identity. The experimental works are rendered by the appropriation of historical documents, objects, sounds and images to establish new connections between memory and fiction, past and future as a reflection on cinema.

San Diego Visual Arts Network strives to improve the clarity, accuracy and sophistication of disclosure about San Diego's artistic and cultural life.

Athenaeum Music & Arts Library
1008 Wall Street
La Jolla, CA 92037
858 454 5872
www.ljathenaeum.org

Picked RAW Peeled: UCSD Open Studios

UCSD Open Studios show is only one day Sat. April 2 but it is a must to mark on your calendar every year. It is held at UCSD, Visual Arts Facility (Russell Lane) 9500 Gilman Road, La Jolla 92093.

The Master of Fine Arts and PhD in Art Practice students at UC San Diego open their studios to the public and you can see a wide variety of what’s on offer from our future art scene.  I choose my favorites to watch, but check out the website just for the event.
For more info: Sheena Ghanbari 858.822.7755


Brian Zimmerman gives us ironic and intriguing works that make us pause.

Joe Yorty got it just right with these two cushions, which appear to be copulating like oversexed dogs. (There is a hidden jiggler of some type so this really has to be seen)


 Sheryl Oring could fit right in with our Arts Meets Fashion promotion showing row after row of baby garments from second hand charity shops.

Noah Doely should be seen by Noel-Baza who would love this completely created scenes from the past all displayed as glass photo images.

Some old friends were also on view. Alida Cervantes on of our SD Art Prize emerging artists showed off new work and the painting based on this painting is a wow.

Lesha Maria Rodriguez continues to work with photo now of cemeteries and her room was candle lit and filled with the scent of sadness.  David White’s conversations with his neighbors moved into the museum but keeps very true to his vision.  Elle Mehrmand is in her third year and she seduced us at the first open studio with her bed and video combo. She has now gone low-brow high tech with a head phone that varies the sounds with her moods.

I was intrigued by some of the others who used technology to their advantage: Joshua Tonies, Stephanie Lie and Elizabeth Chaney and hope they will become involved in the DNA of Creativity project in 2012/13.

Picked RAW: Robert Matheny at Sushi Contemporary Performance and Visual Arts

(Arguably) New Work by Bob Matheny

On Exhibit in the Gallery April 1 – June 15, 2011

from the press release
For more than five decades Bob Matheny has been known as an influential artist and teacher working in San Diego. In that time he has created a wide-ranging body of work that is propositional in nature; viewers encounter comical, if somewhat puzzling artworks designed to advance ideas for their consideration. Sushi Performance and Visual Art has the opportunity to exhibit a series of photographs recently created by Matheny which feature as its subject matter the artist’s own sculpture, this time recast in seemingly conventional still life portraits.

Bob Matheny’s work defies easy categorization. He works across conventional media – painting, sculpture, photography, video and performance. He often creates work for highly unconventional settings – the air, the state of Utah, a single viewer. And he typically avoids signing his work, often attributing it to various personae or simply signing it “anonymous.”

In Arguably New Work Matheny challenges the permanence of meaning in an artwork by using his own sculpture and painting, which he has been creating since 1963, as raw material for still life photographs. In so doing, Matheny not only proposes that an artwork’s meaning changes over time, but he offers the public a glimpse of a highly productive octogenarian who prefers to make art without producing more objects.


Bio
Bob Matheny (b. 1929, Santa Ana, CA) earned his bachelors and masters degrees from Long Beach State College (now Cal State Long Beach). In 1961 he joined the faculty at Southwestern College as the first full-time instructor in the Art Department. At Southwestern he founded the art gallery, protested against the war in Vietnam, and battled administration about issues of censorship and academic freedom. All the while, Bob Matheny maintained an active art practice. His work spans all media, and included many forms which challenge a conventional art viewing context.

This exhibit is curated by Brian Goeltzenleuchter

Join us Saturday, April 30 from 2 – 5 pm as we celebrate this stunning work with a reception for the artist.

Sushi Contemporary Performance and Visual Arts
390 Eleventh Ave. San Diego, CA 92101
Phone: 619.235.8466
info@sushiart.org

Picked RAW Peeled: Censorship panel NTC

Introduction to the panel discussion held at the Expressive Arts Institute (NTC) on March 30, 2011.  Panelists attending: Ann Berchtold, Co-Founder/Director - ART SAN DIEGO Contemporary Art Fair; Scott B. Davis, Director of Exhibitions and Design Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego; Wes Chester, Expressive Arts Therapist, Co-Director –Expressive Arts Institute, Curator – Martha Pace Swift Gallery; Kinsee Morlan, Arts & Web Editor – SD CityBeat; Anna Stump, Artist – San Diego; Alan Ziter, Executive Director – NTC Foundation; Introduction: Kevin Freitas; Moderator: Katherine Sweetman

I believe the arts have come under assault in America and abroad.  We as artists or those who support the arts are partially responsible for letting this fight wash upon our shores.  We have grown too accustomed to the liberty and freedom we have chosen as our way of life, the freedom to create, the freedom to express ourselves without much insight or commentary from the outside world – except when we believe it has infringed on our rights to do so.  Our quiet revolutions are fought on the canvas or with the clay between our fingers, but they remain just that, quiet.  The outrage that occurs, when a community like ours feels it has been slighted, misunderstood, or misrepresented – much like many other communities who struggle to define themselves socially and politically – are often quick to judge the oppressor, sometimes without fully understanding the issues at hand.  Take censorship for example, the topic of our discussion tonight.

I believe we would do well to stop universally applying the word censorship to every instance, akin to ordering a Coke when you know they only sell Pepsi, and by that I mean, we are all censors to some degree (or have been accomplices to).  We have on occasion censored ourselves, loved ones, and even our children for the sake of our own personal beliefs, agendas or creative expression.  I believe there are many degrees of censorship and while fundamentally wrong, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t consider it at times with measured appropriateness and extreme caution. 

The point being, how do you determine what is or is not censorship when we sometimes practice it unbeknownst to ourselves and others?  Does it only apply to the arts, of course not?  Perhaps, a wiser choice would be to use a little common sense instead of repressive actions or repressive regimes for we are not in Egypt, Syria, Libya, or China but simply in San Diego.  Our worries our indeed minor, we can handle it.  A “strong” reaction to a work of art can come in all shapes and sizes and is governed by the particularities of where it is being shown, who’s viewing it and how it’s being appreciated - or not.  Censorship in all its various forms and colors will undoubtedly continue to restrict even sometimes punishing its intended target.  Shit happens, but it’s better to know why it happens - the root cause - for the benefit of both artists and the public.  So let’s talk about it.  It is always better to know then simply throw our hands up in the air in revolt.  Ignorance is not bliss.

More commentary here