Images from Proximity: MFA Thesis Show

These are a few selections of work by AU's graduating MFA class. "Proximity" will be on display at the Katzen until May 18th.


Geoffrey Aldridge

(video)



(detail from drawing)



Brian Barr








Andrew S. Blair








Tim Campbell









Bradley Chriss








Lily Desaussure




(detail)





Katherine Knight











Amy Misurelli Sorensen










Max Perry




(video)




Cory Oberndorfer





(photos by Alex Ebstein)




Lauren Rice









Sharon Servilio





(image from art book)


Come check it out!

Proximity: MFA Thesis Opening, this Friday!!!

Proximity

An exhibition of this year's graduating MFA candidates

Opening Reception Friday, April 18th, 6-9 pm

Featuring the work of:

Geoffrey Aldridge
Brian Barr
Andrew S. Blair
Tim Campbell
Bradley Chriss
Lily Desaussure
Katherine Knight
Amy Misurelli Sorensen
Max Perry
Cory Oberndorfer
Lauren Rice
Sharon Servilio

Work will be exhibited from April 19- May 18 at the Katzen.
Click here for museum information.

Bread and Puppet

By Katherine Knight



A couple of weekends ago, I had the opportunity to see a performance by the legendary political art and theater troupe, Bread and Puppet. I love Bread and Puppet, and have loved them for years. In fact, Love may be a bit of an understatement. I have revered them, internet-stalked their work, and ripped off their construction techniques. Despite this, I have seen them in person only once before; and that was more of a parade than a proper show. This past Saturday, therefore, was my first opportunity to see them in full swing, and I was not disappointed.

The show was held in the sanctuary of St Stephens Episcopal Church in Mt Pleasant, NW DC. I was struck by character of the crowd before even entering the building. There was a generous helping of crunchy hippies and pseudo-hippies (of course), but also a large contingent of normal people. Not DC politicos, hill-staffers, hipsters, hustlers, or fashionistas; but actual, bona-fied normal people, of all ages and races, with their sensible shoes, wooly sweaters, and kids. They didn’t seem to be trying to convince anyone that they were important, or cooler than they were; they just seemed to have showed up for a good time. It was a huge relief and such a pleasant (and sadly scarce) environment to experience. It was a great way to start the evening.

The performance itself was entitled Divine Reality Comedy Circus, and took place in front of a large and delightfully crude painted landscape which was lit cabaret-style from below by cheep hardware store clip-on ‘foot lights’. The performance began with a brief and rollicking musical interlude; which was a poignant moment in itself. The event was sponsored by ‘Hear Mt Pleasant’, a group fighting a neighborhood ordinance against live music, which was passed without consent of the residents, and was specifically designed to target Mt Pleasant’s large Latino community. What followed was ninety minutes of pithy, campy, ironic, politically charged, hilarious and wonderful puppet genius.

On its most basic level, the show was an organizational masterpiece. The cast consisted of 9 or 10 individuals who were constantly on the move, and who all participated as musicians, dancers, narrators, masked characters, and puppeteers at different points in the show. During one memorable sketch, for example, the words ‘When A Government Resorts To Violence It Is The People’s Right To ABOLISH It’ (or something along those lines; I may be paraphrasing) each appeared emblazoned on an individual, life-sized burlap donkey, who strode one-by-one across the stage to a saucy march played by the multi-piece band. When each puppeteer finished their rotation as a donkey, they would dash backstage, loose the donkey, pick up an instrument, and join the band -literally seconds later and without missing a beat- before their fellow donkeys had even finished spelling out the sentence. The entire sketch must have taken less than two minutes.

In fact, the majority of the show was so seamless that further evidence of careful forethought and planning was well concealed. What prevailed was a glorious sense of slap-dash spontaneity, where everything there is to love about puppetry shone through. Only the transparent and unapologetic use of commonplace materials could allow for that moment of pure magic when a group of cardboard be-decked burlap sacks transforms into an utterly believable choir of warbling turkeys; or when a fifty-foot scarf waved above the heads of the crowd on a long pole is so unexpected, ethereal, and beautiful that the experience reminds us of our humanity. It was poetic, and almost medieval in its simplicity; a low-tech and humbling moment of awe.

This is not to say that the performance was completely without problems, but they were few, and were, for me anyway, mostly to do with the content. Bread and Puppet is overwhelmingly liberal, and although I am pretty liberal myself, and was aware of the issues fore-fronted by the sketches, there were times when the message was either so vague or so convoluted that it was lost on even me. Why was that buzzard conducting those computer monitors? And what exactly do the Tigers of Complacency signify? Oh, who cares; wow aren’t they cool? Did you see them roll over? Oooooo, now they’re eating that guy! And here come his little felt guts flying around from back stage! Neato!

Fortunately, the sketches that were spot-on far outweighed the ones that were confusing. The oversized potato-faced Rotten Idea Players succinctly summed up our political system as follows:
On Health-care
Republican: Problem? What problem? (hides issue behind his back)
Democrat: This is a very important issue! (laughs manically and hides issue behind back)
Third party: begins to say something coherent but is silenced by a mighty WHACK from both Republican and Democrat.

On Education:
Republican: Problem? What problem? (hides issue behind his back)
Democrat: This is a very important issue! (laughs manically and hides issue behind back)
Third party: begins to say something coherent but is again silenced by a WHACK from the others.

… and again with environmental reform, repairs to the national infrastructure, torture, etc, etc, etc.

Since this was billed as a kid-friendly show, and since kids were encouraged to sit on the floor right in front of the stage (actually, I sat there too…), I found myself wondering precisely what the kids would take away from this experience. On Local Issues, the message was pretty clear: Corporate farming = BAD. Local produce will keep you from falling over (demonstrated by a guy on stilts!) AND local farmers care more about their livestock… they even teach their turkeys to sing! Tap water is 1000 times cheaper than bottled water and uses less resources (Don’t be a sap, drink from the tap!). When arguing with your neighbors, don’t run out of words or you might accidentally shoot them instead. All good advice- if a little quirky. Advice on the broader issues was harder to pin down: Abolish the violent government! You can tame the Tigers of Complacency, but they will ultimately eat you! If you ignore bombs, they will multiply (apparently of their own accord) and take over! Again, all good points, but what should we do instead? If we let our Tigers of Complacency go, won’t they eat us all the sooner? We can’t just get rid of them because they’re so cute! And how exactly does one abolish a government, and what do we have instead? Granted, I am thinking way too hard about this. The overriding message is good: think for yourself, be fair, and act locally; but in some cases I kept remembering the potato-faced Democrat quipping ‘this is a very important issue!’ without ever doing anything about it.

Hold on. These are only puppets after all, and maybe (for puppets, not democrats) it’s enough to simply raise awareness. Maybe it’s enough to plant these little seeds and let the audience nurture them for themselves; and after all they did provide some very solid advice on issues where we can actually affect change. Maybe those kids will go home and bug their parents about buying bottled water, and maybe some of them will tell their friends about it, and those friends will bug their parents, too. Maybe some of those kids will remember the message of non-violence if and when they are ever courted by gangs. It seems outrageous, but then I remembered that my life long obsession with conservation and the environment all began when my fourth grade teacher read me a book. Seeing this performance reminded me of a time when I believed that activism could actually accomplish something; before five years living in our Nation’s Capitol turned me into a cynical, pessimistic, complacent tiger myself. Maybe art, and puppets, and children’s books can change the world after all. Why the hell not.

In the Flesh

American University's own Katherine Knight will be showing at the Torpedo Factory's Target Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia.

In the Flesh
September 13 – October 13
Reception: September 13, 2nd Thursday Art Night 6-8pm
Gallery Talk: Tim Doud, 7pm, September 13
In the Flesh is an all media juried exhibition that focuses on the current trends in contemporary figurative art. This exhibition is open to all artists nationally and internationally. The show was juried by Tim Doud, professional figurative painter and Professor of Art with American University.

Torpedo Factory

Katherine Knight

The Torpedo Factory. I’ve been hearing about it from the moment I set foot in DC. At first it was ‘New artist in town? You must visit the Torpedo Factory! You’ll love it.’ Once I was renting studio space from an artist’s co-op in Takoma Park, visitors would say ‘these studios are nice, but have you been to the Torpedo Factory? Wow, now there’s a facility. The artists there are really something.’ Then, when I was teaching classes at a community center in southern Maryland my adult students would say ‘I used to take classes at the Torpedo Factory; the teachers there are really top notch. If it wasn’t for all the traffic on that bridge…’ I won’t pretend that this didn’t get really old, really fast. The final straw, though, came about a year ago when I heard a lengthy NPR segment expounding upon the many virtues of the Torpedo Factory- their talented artists, the good they did in the community, their lengthy history in Washington (it’s in ALEXANDRIA). That did it. What did these guys have that the rest of is didn’t? Hadn’t my studio been thriving in DC proper for over 20 years? (Yes, it had!) Wasn’t my community center doing good by offering cheap art classes to underprivileged kids who didn’t get art in school? (Yes, it was!) What made these guys so special? Fancy real-estate? I had had it. The Torpedo Factory was dead to me. They were my nemesis. I vowed never to set foot in the place.

Until today. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe, it’s because my first year of grad school is rapidly drawing to a close and I’m already freaking out about life after school. It is likely that I will remain in DC for a while, and if the Torpedo Factory really is the bee’s knees in DC, maybe it’s worth looking into. I could at least check it out. What harm could that do?

It pains me to admit that at first glance, everything I’d heard about the Torpedo Factory seemed to be true. It is beautiful. The first floor studios are huge, and each backs up to a two story window. A few of these windows look out over the Alexandria marina and the Potomac. It houses five separate galleries, the Art League school, 82 working studios, and over a hundred individual artists. The space is modern, open, and inviting. Plus it was surprisingly busy for 3:00 on a Tuesday afternoon.



I started to notice things, though, as I wandered around. Most of the studios are occupied by two artists if not more. This would be fine except that the majority of each studio is dominated by a large exhibition or display space, with a tiny or even miniscule functional workspace crammed in the back. In most cases, it would be impossible to fit more than one person into the workspace at a time. How do they get anything done? Do they organize shifts? Furthermore, all of these work spaces are pristine (even the ceramics!). Out of all the studios I visited, I saw not one mess to rival the mess in my studio on its cleanest day. It was at this moment that I noticed the most shocking thing of all: I was looking at all of this through glass. One entire wall of each studio -not the windows I mentioned earlier, but a wall facing the open interior of the building- is made of glass. You can go in your studio and shut the door, but there is always the possibility that someone will be looking over your shoulder. Many of the artists I saw were working on tiny collages or watercolors at the sort of desk appropriate to a CEO’s office. Others were working on easel paintings while chatting to friends or visitors over their shoulders. Remember that this building is open to the public and busy; even on a Tuesday afternoon. It’s like an artist petting zoo. The only people who seemed legitimately at home were the jewelers.

I cannot imagine being creative in such an oppressively clean, non-private environment. How is anyone able to actually connect with what they’re doing? I realize that disorganized privacy might be a particular neurosis of mine, so to this end I decided to question one of the artists about the Torpedo Factory lifestyle. Who knows; maybe the benefits outweigh the inconveniences. Finding someone to question proved to be difficult; not because the artists were rude or standoffish, but because I felt so bad about interrupting them. Finally, on the third floor, I encountered someone who seemed amenable to questioning. Laura Weaver Huff is a printmaker who has been a member of the Torpedo Factory since the 1970’s. She was able to answer all my questions.

The Torpedo Factory is a completely artist-run organization (there are no hired administrators). Each artist has to be juried in by a committee of artists/ teachers/ curators who are not affiliated with the Torpedo Factory. The selection process takes place once a year. There are many more admitted members than there are individual spaces. Admitted members who are not studio lease-holders are Associate members. They are allowed to sublet space, or a portion of a space, from full members, or to join a group and utilize a group studio (such as the Printmakers Inc). Artists who neither sublet nor join a group are put onto a waiting list, where they stay until a full member picks them for a sublet/group, or their number comes up. These individuals have to keep reapplying every year until they gain access to studio space.




This is where the conundrum begins. Each artist pays dues each month and rent, which is dependant on the square footage of the studio (or whatever you work out with your lease-holder, if you are subletting). The city of Alexandria subsidizes the rent because otherwise affording anything on the waterfront would be impossible. I did not ask specifically what the rent was like, but owing to the number of people squeezed into the studios I imagine that it is not inconsequential, even with the subsidy. In return for subsidizing some of its best property, the city requires that the Torpedo Factory do its part to ‘educate’ the public about the arts. This means that the studios are open to the public, and that the artists themselves are required to be there to keep their studios open during business hours between three and four days a week (the number of required hours per week increases with the number of artists subletting the studio- some artists expected to volunteer up to 30 hrs/week!). Thus the conundrum: who can afford it? The amount of volunteer hours would make it difficult-if not impossible- to have any kind of regular job, but who can afford the rent without a job? Laura Weaver Huff explained that there are basically two types of artists at the Torpedo Factory: Those who actually sell enough work to pay the rent, and those who are retired, are being supported by their spouses, or are otherwise wealthy enough to absorb the cost.

Which leads me to my biggest problem with the Torpedo Factory: it is a self-limiting system. To be a successful Torpedo Factory artist there is pressure to be commercially appealing; moreover to be commercially appealing to the type of consumer that is attracted to Old Town Alexandria (you can draw your own conclusions about this). Those artists who are exempt from the financial pressures must belong to a certain tax and often age bracket, and are also likely to produce a certain kind of art. Furthermore, the place itself, with its glass walls, tiny workspaces, and aestheticization of process, would drive away any artist unwilling of making their work in a living room-like setting. What that ultimately means is that at the Torpedo Factory you will find nice art. It is well crafted, pretty, and would look good on any wall, on any coffee table, or in any niche next to the telephone. It is comfortable. With one exception (Rosemary Feit-Covey’s dark prints) it is not challenging or thought provoking in any way.

I get the feeling, though, that the Torpedo Factory is fine with all of this. I don’t think they are bothered one bit by the fact that their self-limiting system keeps more ambitious, less conventional, or frankly younger artists out. In fact, they might even prefer it that way. There are benefits to working at the Torpedo Factory. A lot is done to promote and publicize the work of their artists. They have the opportunity to teach classes or workshops at the Art League School to supplement their income. And of course there is the prestige and attention that comes with being associated with such a highly visible organization. I find it frustrating that these resources and opportunities are being provided to a section of the art world that may not really need the help; namely the well-off, appropriate, and/or commercially viable. I do not deny that this section of the art world is as valid as any other, but wouldn’t these particular people be as successful in any other setting? The Torpedo Factory, in my mind, would be far more exciting if it provided space and opportunities for emerging artists, experimental artists, and people who were actually engaging in their work. Sadly this will never be; primarily because the Torpedo Factory has no interest in doing that, but also because the entire infrastructure, from the way the group is organized to the building’s design, would be unable to support such a change. The Torpedo Factory has sought out and filled a very specific niche, and there it will have to stay.

Guerilla Art in DC

Katherine Knight

I first encountered Guerilla Art in DC about three years ago. It was winter, and we’d had a storm similar to the one we just had: cold weather, snow, melting snow re-freezing into solid ice. I was living on Capitol Hill at the time and I used to walk past the Capitol and all the other Government offices on my way to and from the museums on the mall. I was on my way home from such an excursion when I noticed that the snow and ice covering the reflecting pool in front of the Capitol Building was all messed up. As I got closer I realized that someone had obviously had a great time sliding across the reflecting pool’s ice. I continued on, and paused half way up the hill for one last view. From there I could see that what I’d thought were just random scuffles was actually a message. Someone had taken the trouble to tread, plain as day, and in enormous letters facing the Capitol, the words ‘FUCK BUSH’. It was impossible to miss; anyone looking out of their office window had to see it (and remember- at the time most of these people were Republicans). Plus, the repeated melting and re-freezing of the snow meant that it was there for days and days. It was brilliant.

My second encounter was about a year later. It was just before Christmas and for some reason I was up and on the Metro smack in the middle of morning rush-hour. The cars were packed with just the people you’d expect: mostly business men and women in their drab suits and overcoats clutching briefcases. People crushed together to get on and off at each stop, but of course no one spoke. After one stop, as soon as the doors closed, and Asian man (I believe he was Chinese, but I could be wrong) started singing Christmas Carols in broken English and a thick accent. The effect was unexpected and instantaneous. One business man looked up from his Palm Pilot and said, in a voice already laden with hostility ‘Shut Up!’ and when the Chinese man didn’t stop he said, in a louder voice ‘Don’t you shove your religious views down my throat!’ A second business man addressed the first: ‘Hey! It’s a free country, pal. He’s got a right to say whatever he wants!’ After this a chorus of heated arguments broke out among the passengers; one nearly coming to blows (no joke). The Chinese man ignored it all and continued to sing, although he did move a little closer to the door. This whole scene erupted before we’d even reached the next stop, and when we did, the Chinese man was one of the first people to get off. As soon as he set foot on the platform the lady next to me, who’d been quiet up till now, gave an odd yelp and lurched forward in her seat. I looked at her and she said ‘I thought he’d stepped out through the wall’.

The third piece I experienced was probably my favorite. Early this fall I was riding the escalator up to the street from Metro Center. It was a pretty long escalator, and about half way up I became aware of a weird jangley rhythm coming from near the top. I didn’t think much of it and probably assumed that it was coming from a street musician. When I got to the top, though, I realized that there was no musician around. The sound was coming from a handful of Smarties (those sour candies shaped like little fruits) that had been scattered at the top of escalator. They would ride the stairs up, bounce off the grate at the top, and fall back a few stairs to begin the whole process again. The result was a wonderful continuous, plinking rhythm; made both regular and irregular by the evenness of the stairs.

My most recent Guerilla Art encounter was about a week ago. Again on the Metro, I noticed that someone had taken the time to remove or black out all the personal information from their junk-mail, and then tape one piece on the back of each seat. I tried to think of all the different points this person might be making. As an environmental nerd my first take was on the total waste of such pointless and mass mailings. My second thought was about the protection of our private information such as addresses and interests. The mail was from such a wide range of groups that I found it impossible to believe that a single person could actually have signed up for it all. Finally, judging from the way many of the other passengers were inspecting the mail- some even taking pieces with them- I thought the artist might be making some commentary on our willing acceptance of information or propaganda; even to search for a point when none was readily available (after all, what else was I doing?)

It’s possible, and perhaps probable, that none of these ‘pieces’ were orchestrated by people who consider themselves artists, and that many of them (the Smarties, and the reactions provoked by the Chinese man) were complete accidents, but that matters little to me. What I love about each of them is their simplicity, their directness, and especially the way they function as reminders of how little it takes to remove us from the every-day. I loved the way the Smarties turned the escalator into a musical instrument. In the case of the Chinese man, who knew that such anger was bubbling so close to the surface of Washington’s business people? Or that it could take something so small to make the woman sitting next to me believe, if only for a moment, in the impossible? Do any of these experiences qualify as Art? Who knows? Perhaps they do only because I’m approaching them from that direction. But in each experience I have learned or appreciated something new about my world, and I am eagerly awaiting the next one.

A South Carolina Boy at Heart, Another Look at Jasper Johns

Katherine Knight

I decided to challenge myself by reviewing ‘Jasper Johns: An Allegory of Painting 1955- 1965’ at the National Gallery. I know embarrassingly little about Jasper Johns; especially when you consider that he spent his middle school, high school, early college, and army years in my home town of Columbia, South Carolina. But Johns’ was never a loyal native-son in the way that Dizzy Gillespie, Steven Colbert, or the guys from Hootie and the Blowfish are, so I’d inherited the bias that Johns had ‘sold out’ or had ‘gotten too big for his britches’. Plus, I had never been convinced that Johns’ work was Art. What is all the fuss about? This seemed like the perfect opportunity to investigate.

The exhibition claims that Johns’ work was vital in determining the future of post-war (and post New York School abstract expressionist) painting. This claim is supported by tracing the way four motifs- the target, the mechanical device, stenciled words, and casts or imprints of the body- challenged accepted notions of Art, art making, and the Artist. The exhibition itself is sponsored by Target, and I still can not decide if this detail is a disgusting example of rampant corporate sponsorship, or a telling manifestation of the breadth of Johns’ influence on our culture.

Anyway, the target was, of course, the first motif to be presented. After several small pencil drawings of targets, where the image is nearly lost to the density of the scratchy marks, I was first struck by the large ‘White Target’, painted in 1957. The image is constructed by collaged torn paper covered over with gloopy white encaustic. Looking at the messy surface, I was more aware of a sense of work than I was the presence of the artist’s hand. This is a significant and intentional shift, especially when contrasted with the surface of a Pollock painting, where the drips are controlled and carefully choreographed.

A second large ‘Target’ from 1961 furthers this line of thought. This target, also in encaustic, is blue, yellow, and red, and although the circles remain true, the paint is applied in a frantic slap-dash manner, as evident by the thread-like colored drips flecked haphazardly across the bottom of the painting. Again, the sense of work prevails. The message is clear; Johns is removing the romance and mysticism from his role as a painter, and questioning the possibility of artist as manual laborer. To Pollock he seems to say; sometimes a drip is just a drip.

Johns further questions the role of the Artist in his Device paintings, which depict perfectly crafted arcs along with the simple devices used to make them. Later, many also include imprints of his own arm in a similar capacity, which demands that we view the arm, and perhaps the artist as a whole, as a simple art-making device.

At this point in the exhibition, as I was considering becoming a true Johns believer, I came across four pieces of a different nature that would solidify Johns’ position in my esteem. The first was a stenciled drawing (reading Red Yellow Blue Yellow from top to bottom) entitled ‘Folly Beach’. Folly Beach! The site of many a happy holiday and the beach I visited when playing hooky from high school, and later, from work. This drawing, I soon discovered, was a study for a larger painting entitled ‘By the Sea’ which contains the aforementioned stenciled phrase and flashes of corresponding color amidst a muddle of steely blue-grey and murky green, which is undeniably the Atlantic Ocean.

Following this were the drawings ‘Hatteras’ -which is a device drawing depicting an arm cutting a light arc through a cloud of dark smudges in a clear reference to the beam projected by the historic Cape Hatteras light house- and ‘Edisto’- whose smudged footprint and adjacent clam shell could only mean a beach walk on Edisto Island, where Johns lived and worked for several years.

These discoveries delighted me; a South Carolina boy at heart! All was forgiven, but they also made me consider the work differently. What other subtle commentary could be hiding behind the bigger picture? Could the charcoal colored ‘Voice’ from 1965-67, whose solitary message is defiantly resilient despite the threat of literally being wiped out, perhaps be saying something about the civil rights movement? What about the original ‘White Flag’ (which was not present in the exhibition) from 1955? A white American flag; what other connotations could that possibly have? The mind boggles.

In all, I thought the exhibition was a success. The literature early on encourages viewers to ‘de-familiarize’ themselves with Johns’ work, and I think this is good advice. His reinterpretation of the Dada ready-mades and the ensuing dialog about what Art can be and who can make it has become so familiar to us that his early, ground breaking pieces seem almost quaint. When considered in context (post Rothko, Pollock, and Newman, and pre Pop Art), the work takes on a deliberateness and power that had previously been lost on me. I went into the exhibition with ignorance and skepticism, and came out enlightened. Isn’t that what Art is supposed to do?

Portrait Gallery 2006 Competition Review

Katherine Knight

I was disappointed in the Outwin Boochever 2006 Portrait competition at the National Portrait Gallery. I saw a lot of skillful painting, to be sure, but to what end? I went in hoping to gain some insight into the state contemporary portraiture, but found that most of the pieces relied too heavily on either art history or photography for my taste.

Offenders in the first category include Ginny Stanford, and Richard Weaver. Stanford’s gilded vertical triptych of Nicholas looks like some bizarre cross between an icon and a sterile CEO portrait, and unfortunately conveys no trace of the strong AIDS survivor described in her Artist Statement. I was particularly keen to see Weaver’s painting of Maggie Sullivan since he is the mentor of a dear friend. Unfortunately, the stylistic nostalgia is so overpowering that the sitter’s contemporary clothing seems out of place; and not in a good way.

There is also a sub-category of historical coattail riders; a gimmick so obvious that it overshadows all legitimate skill. Among these are William Lawrence’s Big Self-Portrait, whose Warholian scale, color, and funny hair are permissible only because the artist is clearly no more than 15 years old and doesn’t know any better, and Mark Dennis’ Portrait in the Composition of a Jackson Pollock Painting, Echo no. 10, 1951. Need I say more? There are also those who painted actual living historical figures; such as Paul Oxborough’s uninteresting Chuck Close, and Kathleen Gilje’s Robert Rosenblum as the Marquis de Pastoret; which is witty for the correlation it draws, but rendered in an unconvincing cut-and-paste manner.

There are two portraits of historical figures worth mentioning for their aptitude. The first is Carle Shi’s large, double portrait of Anthony Haden-Guest, which is beautifully executed, striped down, contemporary and thoughtful in an unselfconscious way, and Brenda Zlamany’s Portrait #83 in which a discerning Alex Katz stares critically out at the viewer for a change.

Among those who rely too heavily on photography are Bryan Drury’s Electro Bloodlines and Sarah Sohn’s Between Dialogues. It is clear to me, from the flat colors and all-too-familiar light source that both artists went to great pains to copy a photograph, and my question is ‘why bother?’

Two artists who address photography and film in a more complex way are Alan Caomin Xie and Burton Philip Silverman. Xie’s Still Image 24-Andrea resembles a de-laced TV still, and directly challenges the traditional relationship between portrait artist and sitter. Silverman turns assumptions about use of photographic sources upside down in Survivor by including the camera in his very painterly self-portrait. This begs us to question whether the camera is being used as a tool or a prop, and then to question the larger significance of ‘tool’ and ‘prop’. Earlier I asked ‘why bother’, and Silverman’s painting seems to counter ‘why bother questioning my camera when I can get this kind of result?’

There are a few truly original pieces in the competition. Among these are Zak Smith’s Girls in the Naked Girl Business: Aprella, which flirts dangerously with graphic design but ultimately escapes the stigma by the shear density and specificity of the image, and Steve DeFrank’s light-bright piece Mom and Dad- whose combination of material nostalgia and parental nudity is cheeky, hysterical, and a little disturbing. My favorite piece is Winter to Spring by Sara Pedigo. The piece is comprised of 47 match-box sized images painted chronologically on a single slat of wood; a format clearly referencing a film strip. However, instead of indulging in a straightforward narrative or some kind of motion sequence, Pedigo explores broader cinematic themes such as the development of character, place, and time. The result is genuine, light-hearted, and exquisite in its simplicity.

My hope for next year’s competition would be that more artists would attack the difficult issues facing portrait painting in the 21st century, and that less would rely on crutches and gimmicks.

http://www.portraitcompetition.si.edu/exhibition/PeoplesChoiceAward/AllFinalists.aspx

Richard Cleaver: Family Fictions Review

Katherine Knight

On the third floor of the AU museum there is in exhibit of embellished ceramic sculptures by Richard Cleaver entitled “Family Fictions”. The work deals with the repression of certain truths and desires in a rich style evocative of religious reliquaries and icons. The sculptures are complex and extraordinarily detailed, and invite you to study them carefully for clues to their meaning. Some clues are obvious. Most pieces have drawers, hidden compartments, or hinged heads that reveal truths about their subjects. For example Dreamer, which depicts a series of underwear-clad adolescents holding smaller versions of themselves standing atop a larger head whose retractable tongue reveals two men in a tender embrace, is clearly addressing anxieties about being openly gay. Other clues are more difficult to pin down. What’s with the heterosexual couple represented on the back? Or the tongue of fire burning atop the upper figure’s head? I decided to attend the Artist’s talk in hopes that Mr. Cleaver would explain some of these obscure references to me. Little did I suspect the web of concealment I was about to fall into.

It is always gratifying to learn that you were right about something. Many of Cleaver’s more personal pieces indeed deal with the experience of growing up gay in a ‘repressed’ and slightly ‘depressed’ middle-class Catholic family. He admits that the work, with its obsessive attention to detail, has always functioned as a sort of therapy. He also admits that he is unaware of the significance of many of his references, as he relies heavily on dreams and day-dreams for material. This leaves the viewer free to speculate on the significance of many stream-of-conscious details.

What interested me most; however, was not the way he dealt with the struggles he faced growing up, but the way he dealt with his family as a whole. In one such piece, Family Fiction- Arcadia 1, Cleaver shows us his parents in a coffin-like box, surrounded by all the things that consumed their adult lives: their children, their house, their smoking habits, their marriage, etc. Both the small house and the sculpture as a whole are being enveloped by gilded flames inspired, Cleaver admitted, by a mortgage-burning party hosted by his parents years ago. “I can say this because my mother isn’t here,’ he was quick to add.

In a second piece entitled Mother’s Life, Cleaver again depicts his mother in an uncomfortably cramped space, surrounded, or perhaps guarded by her twin sons, and supported by a frieze of clothespins; a symbol of her domestic drudgery. (Cleaver himself appears in the piece as a small gilded icon.) A similar piece, Spring Mother, which claims to deal with the plantation past of the land now partially occupied by his studio, shows a black woman who is literally enslaved by the children she cares for; twin girls this time.

Similar examples abound: Mother’s Tale deals with the discovery, at a friend’s funeral, that this friend was not the British ballerina she had always claimed to be. Cleaver made a point to add that the woman in question looked nothing like the woman depicted in the sculpture. Mars, God of War deals with the current war in Iraq, yet the soldiers wear uniforms from WWI. When asked about this decision Cleaver replied that he just liked the WWI uniforms better.

I got the feeling from Cleaver’s talk that he is completely unaware of the irony. It’s as though he’s unwilling or unable to depict anything that will hurt, embarrass, or step on any toes, and therefore nearly every piece is at least twice removed from his actual message.(The exceptions seem to be Swim Team and Hair Shirt, which deal with his personal experiences in high school, and are fairly straightforward.) He addresses repression with repression (the hidden compartments), and then represses it again (disguising the subject, addressing one issue through another, obfuscating the imagery, etc). Far from being pathetic, it’s actually quite touching to witness Cleaver’s struggle to work through complicated personal relationships in a manner that is entirely considerate and gentle.