'The Long Drive South'
Volitant Gallery, through Sept. 25

By Nikki Moore
Austin Chronicle
Friday, September 1, 2006

Art or anthropology? Volitant Gallery's exhibition "The Long Drive South" may be a revealing discussion on both. Let's imagine that the idea for the show came about as follows: A group of New York artists are asked to contribute work to an emerging gallery in Austin, Texas. They submit their own works, varying in themes from the air-filled, iconic, and mythical pieces of Lance de los Reyes to the rich chaos of Brian Belott's The Equalizer and See Above -- See Below. And then these same artists drive south. Filming their road trip, they hit beach and prison alike. Soaking up sun and roadkill, the artists make their way to Austin, picking up pieces of their trip that will be made into a work in itself when they arrive at Volitant. The resulting finds include a parking ticket; a few nudie-girl, NoDoz-style pills; two looming and poignant lists of inmates from an abandoned prison; a beer bottle; some paper paraphernalia; a couple of books that might have been read along the way... in short, a box and wall full of backwoods rural hee-haws, a few trip markers, and a more balanced filming of this participant-observer experience.

Yet what if the show had been called "The Long Drive North"? The stereotypes would be different, and if the same selective processes held for the drive north as they did for the drive south, these artists might have picked up abandoned snow shovels, human rights pamphlets, and Democratically leaning political posters along their merry way. Yet we are beyond the time when the objective nature of anthropology is a given. "This is how I see you" is no more viable artistically than it is culturally. So is the point of "The Long Drive South" to help us see ourselves, as Southern or Northern dwellers? Or is the point to help us see ourselves as selective seers, as minds trained to look for difference and confirmations of that difference? The anthropological spin on the "The Long Drive South" comes, not in the drive, not in its findings, but in its re-revelation of the human capacity to group, to categorize, and to try to make sense of things in the simplest way possible and of art's complicity in this simplifying process.

Looking back at Lance de los Reyes' work: masons, snakes, fathers, skeletons, babies, and cartoonlike texts stand in for meaning and revel in the process of reducing ideas and events to painted objects, like hieroglyphics, like text. In Ginna Triplett's paintings, reductions and simplifications of feminity (à la Disney and cartoon playboys) are suspended for close viewing in clouds of pink fluff. The photography by Joshua Blank plays out the anthropological suit of "The Long Drive South" in miniature, as does the rich collage work of Brian Belott.

Among the many things that this show's icon-laden style suggests is that the 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant wasn't so off when he hypothesized that although the world might be otherwise and ultimately unknowable, our minds work by categorizing... for better or worse. And if this show is a reflection of the New York art climate, as Volitant suggests, it seems that while anthropology is still losing its foundations in New York, Kant is making a comeback.

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Art that binds
Quilts from isolated Alabama town bring time-honored craft to modern prominence and alter perceptions along the way

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
Austin American-Statesman
Thursday, September 7, 2006

First they were derided as folksy kitsch, then embraced by millions as fine works of art.

In the past four years, the bold, geometric quilts created by African American women from tiny, rural Gee's Bend, Ala., made a journey -- real and philosophical -- further than many people, especially their makers, ever imagined.

Indeed, days before "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" opened at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in September 2002, a headline in the Wall Street Journal sniffed, "Museums Cozy Up to Quilts: It's High Season for Blankets, But Patrons Ask, 'Is It Art?' " The article dismissed the hand-sewn quilts as "beaux-arts blankies," charged the museum with lowering its artistic standards and quoted one arts professional as decreeing "No more quilts!"

The exhibit -- which featured dozens of the unusually abstract quilts, some dating to the 1930s -- received scant attention from local media, which mostly lumped the story into their house and garden coverage.

But some who saw the exhibit appreciated the quilts as much more than mere decorative household items or even the exotic products of an "outsider" community. After all, these were as different from the flowery pastel-colored quilts of Americana as the modernist art of Henri Matisse.

One of the admirers was Austin Museum of Art director Dana Friis-Hansen. "It was simply some of the most exciting and impressive art I had seen in years," said Friis-Hansen. "It made me think anew about all my notion of where great art could and should be in the 21st century."

The Houston exhibit piqued his interest to such an extent that he decided to bring some of this exciting art to Austin. The result is "Mary Lee Bendolph, Gee's Bend Quilts, and Beyond," an exhibit at the Austin Museum of Art-Downtown, organized in conjunction with Tinwood Alliance, an Atlanta-based nonprofit promoter for vernacular artists. (The alliance was co-founded by collector William Arnett and Jane Fonda, both early promoters of Gee's Bend quilters.)

The Austin show features the work of 70-year-old master quilt maker Mary Lee Bendolph and those she influenced, along with art by fellow Alabama artists Thornton Dial and Lonnie Holley, whose expressive sculptures make use of found objects. The pieces include Dial's homage to Bendolph, "Mrs. Bendolph," an undulating grid of clothing scraps mounted on a wood panel and layered with paint. The exhibit and catalog will travel nationally.

Friis-Hansen wasn't alone in his enthusiasm for the distinctive geometric abstractions crafted mostly from scrap fabric. When the Houston show traveled to New York's Whitney Museum of American Art (at the time, its only scheduled tour stop), critics for Newsweek and The New York Times raved about the quilts, declaring them "some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced." Eleven more museums quickly added the exhibit to their calendars; the show is currently on view at Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.

Bendolph and other quilt-makers suddenly found themselves new stars in the art world firmament and were sought after for radio and television interviews. Some of the quilters dined with first lady Laura Bush. Postcards, posters, coasters, magnets, calendars and other gift-shop merchandise emblazoned with Gee's Bend quilts filled museum stores. Retailers launched reproduction quilts and rugs. And just last month the U.S. Postal Service issued commemorative postage stamps featuring Gee's Bend quilts.

All that hoopla is a long way from the tiny town of Gee's Bend, surrounded on three sides by an oxbow of the meandering Alabama River. Only one long strip of roadway (not paved until 1967) connects the isolated community to the rest of the world.

Founded in antebellum times, Gee's Bend was originally a cotton plantation belonging to Joseph Gee and his relative Mark Pettway, who bought the Gee estate in 1850. After the Civil War, the freed slaves became tenant farmers for the Pettway family. Because of the difficult topography, they remained cut off from the surrounding world, but still subject to the Deep South's racism, Jim Crow laws and the punishing poverty of tenant farming.

After now-famous images by Farm Security Administration photographer Arthur Rothstein appeared during the Great Depression, the community earned a strange renown as an "Alabama Africa." Subsequently, the federal government purchased land and homes for the "Benders," as residents are called. Martin Luther King Jr. visited Gee's Bend in 1965 and Benders joined in local civil rights protests.

At the same time, the area's agricultural economy was in its death throes. Younger people left for jobs in the cities.

Yet, from its earliest days and throughout the decades the town's women continued to quilt, piecing together scraps from worn-out work clothes and using leftover cotton retrieved from the fields or the cotton gin floor for batting. First and foremost, quilts were a winter necessity in the drafty, uninsulated plank-and-mud houses: Piled on beds or draped on walls to keep out drafts, dozens might be used in each home.

After long days in the field, the women of Gee's Bend had little time for fussy designs. But over generations, they developed a bold and sophisticated style marked by jazzy geometries and syncopated colors. Critics have noted the stylistic similarities not only with modern art but with vivid, traditional African textiles. (In fact, the San Francisco exhibit of Gee's Bend quilts is paired with patterned textiles from West Africa.)

Beginning in the 1980s a few art collectors found their way to Gee's Bend. By the mid-1990s, Arnett and his Tinwood Alliance had discovered the tiny town, and the rest is art-world history.

"I think of these quilts as cutting-edge art," says Friis-Hansen, explaining that he means "cutting-edge" in the most literal sense as something that breaks boundaries. "These quilts and their creators are literally in our time and right under our noses widening the definition of art."

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'Black and White and Read All Over': They got the shots

By Robert Faires
Austin Chronicle
Friday, September 8, 2006

Words eat up the lion's share of the ink in this publication and have for the full 25 years that it's been around. But some of the most significant contributions to the paper, the contributions that have genuinely chronicled Austin over the past quarter of a century, have come from our photographers. They got the shots that told the story: of a young upstart guitarist named Stevie Ray, of a living legend named John Henry, of citizens raising hell at City Hall and gutter punks barely getting by on the streets, of a few bands that made history and many more that faded away, of where we went and what we ate and who we were. As the Chronicle marks this milestone in its history, it seemed fitting to pay tribute to the frequently unsung shutterbugs who have added so much to our pages. So the paper, in partnership with the Austin Museum of Art, is opening the exhibit "Black and White and Read All Over: Austin Chronicle Photographers Celebrate 25 Years." Staff photographer John Anderson spent three months combing through every issue of the past two-and-a-half decades, tracked down every photographer he could, and assembled this show of images that they considered their best. "After 25 years, Austin finally gets to see the Chronicle's photography presented as real art," he says. "Without the cramped layout or the muddy filter of newspaper reproduction, these photos breathe with new life as big and beautiful images." Worth seeing? Well, I could expend a lot more ink trying to persuade you of that, but as you can see from the image above or those in our anniversary insert, these are images worth 10,000 words each.

"Black and White and Read All Over: Austin Chronicle Photographers Celebrate 25 Years" is on display Sept. 8-24 in the Community Room at AMOA-Downtown, 823 Congress. Admission is free, and as a special thank-you to our readers, the Chronicle and AMOA are hosting three free community receptions at AMOA-Downtown:
Friday, Sept. 8, 5-7:30pm: free Mexican food & margaritas
Saturday, Sept. 9, 5-7:30pm: free food from 219 West & Shiner beer
Sunday, Sept. 10, 5-7:30pm: free food from Central Market & Fisheye Wine
All food and beverages will be provided on a first come, first served basis.

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The Russell Collection: A second home Downtown

By Robert Faires
Austin Chronicle
Friday, September 8, 2006

For four years, the Russell Collection has been comfortably perched in the northwest corner of the city, showcasing classic oils, pastels, lithographs, etchings, and aquatints from the likes of Rembrandt, Mary Cassatt, Marc Chagall, Toulouse-Lautrec, Manet, Picasso, Renoir, Matisse, Pissarro, and the artists of the French Barbizon school, among others, in the Arboretum. But with so much recent activity on the gallery scene in the heart of town, gallery owner Lisa Russell has decided to come on down to where the action is. As of this weekend, the West End space recently vacated by F8 Fine Art Gallery will be a new home for the Russell Collection. Don't mistake it for a move, however. Russell's original gallery is staying put and will continue to serve serious collectors of classic works where it always has. The new space is a second spot where Russell can try something different, mix it up a little, exhibiting contemporary artwork to complement the masters of yore. In the West Sixth location, you'll be able to find works by Ray Donley, Maxine Price, Oscar Riquelme, Jennifer Balkan, Tim Howe, Jill Pankey, Michael Klung, Laurence Parent, Michael Kessler, Steven Tugwell, Rodolfo Buonocore, and Brigitte Grassin Chombart de Lauwe -- as it happens, many of them artists who were exhibited by Amy and Richard Griffin at F8. So gallery-goers will be getting the best of both worlds: a new venue that brings something different to the West End and one that preserves some of what made F8 a valuable addition to the scene. See for yourself this Saturday, Sept. 9, when the Russell Collection holds a grand-opening reception from 6-9pm in its new location, 1137 W. Sixth. For more information, call 342-0747, or visit www.russell-collection.com.

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"Oliver Boberg / 1997-2005"
Lora Reynolds Gallery, through Oct. 7

By Nikki Moore
Austin Chronicle
Friday, September 8, 2006

In some sense, a reviewer's job is to help make the unknown more knowable: to give you enough information that you can see if a work is in line with the mood you are in or fits your tastes, to help reduce the possibility of wasted hours and money on your part. There are things that a reviewer ought to say, might be even bound to say -- for example, in reviewing the work of a close friend or relation, the reviewer is obliged to be transparent about her relationship to the artist. Sometimes revealing things about a work can be helpful: If you were hoping to take your 5-year-old to a movie geared toward an older audience, you might appreciate the blatant revelations of sex and violence in a cautionary review. On the other hand, there are things best left unsaid, things that each viewer ought to discover for him- or herself. If you were going to see a thriller, would you want to know all the twists and the ending beforehand? So, before I go any further in this review, I guess I need to know one thing: Are you going to see the current Oliver Boberg retrospective at Lora Reynolds Gallery? If you are or think you might, I don't want to give away the secret. But if you aren't going, I guess I could tell you. Of course, I am dying to tell you. But in spite of that, I'm going to leave it at this: My opinion, take it for what it is, is that the implications of this work by Boberg are outstanding and that this set of photographs is a must-see. Why do I think so? Find me after you've been to Lora Reynolds, and I'll let you know.

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"Gladys Poorte and Naomi Schlinke"
D. Berman Gallery, through Sept. 30

By Nikki Moore
Austin Chronicle
Friday, September 8, 2006

What surprises me every time I hear artists and curators speak or write about process art is that the emphasis is always on the interaction of materials in an environment or under specific conditions, and what goes unmentioned is the "creatorly" power of the artist herself. D. Berman's joint exhibition of work by Naomi Schlinke and Gladys Poorte is an illumination of this tension in the extreme. On one side of the gallery, Schlinke's work is a striking and stirring shrine to event- and materials-oriented imagery where the hand of the artist is desperately trying to erase itself. Made with only India ink and clay-board, Schlinke's creations have an organic and biological appeal. They are, as the artist describes them, "materials under stress" in an uncertain milieu. Working on macro and micro scales, these images of what happens when ink falls prey to pressure, time, and manipulation are beautiful -- but if and only if you also consider, say, bacteria under a microscope beautiful. The parallel herein is more intimate than the artist reveals or possibly even realizes. Though Naomi Schlinke describes her work as simply process and "not reliant on cultural signifiers," it is indeed, outside of the Blanton's recent "New, Now, Next" and "Paul Chan" exhibits, one of the most sign-posting works of cultural revelation I have seen in the last two years in Austin art. It is an indication of just how diligently contemporary culture is trying to erase its own ego from the world in which we live: It is an indication of just how badly we hope to describe our own existence as simple systems and elegant materials under unknown stress.

On the other side of the gallery, Argentinian Gladys Poorte's work is another very different experiment in "creatorly-ness." A more blatant yet clever play on social utopias -- of humanity creating its own heavens and hells in playful junk, in plastic, wood, glass, metal, and liquid-filled objects -- which, as the subject matter for the artist's still lifes, become brilliantly painted cities against equally brilliant images of sky and sunset. The artist's hand and eye are everywhere present, from the unique brush technique on the painted surface to the designation of form, space, and perceptual depth in the works themselves. This becomes most evident in the shift from the larger works, which show what seem to be city and culture scapes, to Poorte's newer and smaller views on what she calls the potential inhabitants of the larger scenes. As the paintings shrink in size, the glow in the works diminishes, as well, but whether this is a reflection on the artist's view of the individual versus society or simply an attempt to test the "cuteness" of the figures involved is left for the viewer to resolve. Yet as this comment wanders into the hazy region of interpreting an artist's intent, what is crystal clear in Poorte's work is her own human presence. And though it has been a while since contemporary art has been so honest about its own making, the juxtaposition of Poorte and Schlinke is a provocative reintroduction of these reoccurring themes.

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One artist's (quirky) answer to world's wicked problems

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
Austin American-Statesman
Thursday, September 14, 2006

Wicked problems fascinate Daniel Bozhkov.

Not just complex, wicked problems -- as identified and termed by theorists in the 1970s -- have incomplete, contradictory and changing requirements. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem. And solutions to wicked problems are not true or false, right or wrong. Instead, solutions just make things better -- or maybe just good enough. And usually, those solutions require divergent groups of people to radically change their minds or alter their behaviors.

Think of the global warming, poverty, terrorism -- they're wicked problems.

Think of Barton Springs, the Edwards Aquifer and the Barton Springs salamander, the tiny vertebrate with the smallest habitat in the world. Bozhkov did.

At least the Bulgarian-born New York-based artist was thinking about water -- its powerful necessity to life, its preciousness, its symbolic importance-- during a residency last year at the Center for Environmental Education, Science and Technology at the University of North Texas in Denton. There, Bozhkov rubbed shoulders and minds with water toxicologists, hydrogeologists and philosophers.

That led to Austin, to Richard Heinrich's Tank Town rainwater harvesting ranch in Dripping Springs, the Works Progress Administration-era Sunken Gardens near Barton Springs and half a dozen Austin choirs.

The result? "Cantata for Twelve Choirs and Several Salamanders," a sprawling conceptual project that resulted in a multimedia film installation now on view at Arthouse at the Jones Center.

In late August, Bozhkov, along with Austin media artist Cauleen Smith, filmed six choirs -- Capital City Men's Chorus, Conspirare Children's Choice, St. Edward's University Choir, Tapestry Singers, Birth of the Salamander Choir and soloist Malford Milligan (a choir of one) -- each singing distinct arrangements of the African American spiritual "Wade in the Water" as they ringed the spiral walkways of the Sunken Gardens.

As much an odd homage to water and the Barton Springs salamander, "Cantata" is also a fascinating social portrait, a musical experiment and absurd group outing to the park.

For years, Bozhkov has taken his classical arts training (he studied traditional fresco painting methods in Bulgaria) and merged it with a very conceptual aesthetic approach to create expansive, sometimes confusing projects that led, he says, "to a sliver of liberating space."

Simultaneously soft-spoken and hyper-engaged, Bozhkov seems the ultimate multitasker, even in conversation flexing an odd ability to listen, ask questions and explain his ideas -- all at the same time.

"If you can bring the metaphoric to the scientific and vice versa, than that's the place where a real conversation can take place," he says, jotting down contact information for local new music experimenters a reporter has just given him. "Sometimes a sort of reverse engineering leads to a sliver of liberating space."

Although "Cantata" -- the culmination of more than a year of Bozhkov's time and at least half a dozen trips to the Lone Star State -- makes its debut at Arthouse, exhibit curators Regine Basha and Diana Block also have gathered materials from seven other Bozhkov projects.

Among them is "How to Fly Over a Very Large Larry," which involved Bozhkov creating a detailed crop portrait of talk-show icon Larry King in a Maine hayfield. After taking flying lessons to view and document the project, Bozhkov released news of his project to the media just as the Hollywood movie "Signs," starring Mel Gibson as a farmer who finds crop circles, hit the nation's screens. Bozhkov's project got coverage from every major U.S. television network, including a spot on "Larry King Live"; the thoughtful, personal botanical study of the Maine hayfield Bozhkov made with the property owner and a local naturalist did not.

"They're polar opposites of the American paradigm," says Bozhkov, referring to the quiet, rural Mainers and the large-than-life media personality.

And in case that clash of extremes doesn't jolt your sense of perspective, Bozhkov gives you a leg up. An extenuated 15-foot bright green couch, built into perspective, serves as a viewing platform for a bank of five video monitors in the gallery that show the media components of "Learn." Sit in the middle and you look normal -- sit toward either end and you appear too big or too small.

Of course, knocking you off your perspective is a good thing in Bozhkov's book. Maybe a little wicked humor will reveal the best solutions to the mind-boggling wicked problems.

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2 Takes on Vietnamese Folk Art

By V. Marc Fort
Austin American-Statesman
Thursday, September 14, 2006

"The World of Lacquer" at Fielding Lecht Gallery is an exquisite rarity not only for Austin, but also for the United States. Measured, but brimming with colors that seemingly spill off the shiny wooden frames, the exhibit reflects the personalities of Vietnamese artists Nhat Tran and Tran Hoang Son, yielding evidence of their studied artistic powers and the beauty of ancient, luminescent Vietnamese folk art styles.

Tran and Son contributed nearly 30 lacquered works for the exhibit's international debut. Fielding Lecht Gallery chose wisely by pairing the two very different artists together: Tran and Son both pursue visuals that sublimely operate as a metaphor for life. They gently push the viewer toward discovery of personal and inner spiritual paths.

"Many of my ideas come from traditional pagodas in Vietnam . . . some from Buddhist images," says Son, a devout Buddhist and professor of drawing and lacquer arts at Hanoi Fine Arts University. He traveled to Austin specifically for the exhibit's opening Sept. 8.

Son's spirituality permeates his artwork through layers of luminous lacquer and organic materials -- bright red clay from his native Hanoi, rich greens from powdered earth, gold-leaf powder from Japan and the bright white of crushed egg shells.

Although Tran was born in Vietnam and earned a degree from the University of Fine Arts in Ho Chi Minh City, her art incorporates 20th-century Western influences -- including the abstract expressionism of Pablo Picasso and the vivid and furious brushstrokes of Jackson Pollock. Tran combines these influences with the ancient technique of lacquer painting, yielding something entirely original.

("The World of Lacquer" continues 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays through Oct. 20. Fielding Lecht Gallery. 708 Congress Ave. 476-0044, www.fieldinglechtgallery.com.)

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"Mary Lee Bendolph, Gee's Bend Quilts, and Beyond"
Austin Museum of Art, through Nov. 5

By Nikki Moore
Austin Chronicle
Friday, September 15, 2006

In 2002, a group of women and quilts from what was once a small sharecropping community in Alabama went national, proving that there is literally no time like the postmodern present for quilting. As Austin Museum of Art Executive Director Dana Friis-Hansen writes in notes for "Mary Lee Bendolph, Gee's Bend Quilts, and Beyond," "Postmodernism in the visual arts represents an attempt to move beyond the hegemony of the white, male, Eurocentric ideas and forms that were the basis of modernism and that served as the standard by which all other ideas and forms were measured." In this new climate, groups and works that were previously cloistered off as "folk" are now making their way onto some of the art world's most exclusive wall space.

The results are as varied as the quilts which have come to symbolize this opening, leaving room for both doubt and celebration. For certainly, on one very important hand, it is high time for some of the world's most expressive and significant art forms and artists to make their way into a limelight once reserved solely for the painting and sculpture of the status quo. The Gee's Bend quilts and their quilters tell rich stories of tradition, of innovation, of social realities, and of family ties. Without a doubt, these are stories worth telling, beauty and intricacy worth revealing. But on the other hand, there is a part of this opening up of the art field to those who have long been considered outsiders that still carries the paternalism of Levi Strauss and the early ethnologists who cried, "Look! Look at this beautiful culture I have found! Look how like or unlike me it is."

Merely glancing at the Gee's Bend quilts reveals a parallel to modernist aesthetics, in their bold color fields and simple abstracted forms. While this is decidedly not a blight on the work itself, it is interesting to wonder if, had these quilts been otherwise, their impact would have been so profound and pervasive. When Mary Lee Bendolph first began the work of quilting, passed on to her by her mother as it was passed on to all young girls of Gee's Bend, she lived in a home without temperature control or much money for extemporaneous spending and was part of a culture that looked at quilts as warmth, albeit beautiful warmth, on walls, beds, and laps alike.

The consequences of "being noticed" and the inherent changes that take place within a "watched culture" have not been lost on Gee's Bend, with primarily positive consequences: A group formerly unconsidered by the outside world has now found recognition and praise for its work, diligence, and artistic integrity. The art of quilting, which was fading in Gee's Bend before "The Quilts of Gee's Bend" exhibition in 2002, has been revived, and the quilters are finding artistic fellowship in mutually enriching art-tethered relationships.

But of course, as with all ethnology projects, postmodernism's obsession with openness has its dark corners and its points which change things, art, and people, irrevocably, for better or worse. It is most often these effects that ethnologists hope no one will ever "Look! Look! Look!" into. Yet I am not suggesting a return to some "real" or "authentic" Gee's Bend quilting culture that occurred prior to exposure. The women of Gee's Bend deserve the praise they are rightly receiving, their lives have been enriched, these are things we all dream of -- I am only trying to piece my own quilt, my own thought fields, points of interest, and conflicts into a story about postmodernism. Of course, it is this very opening up that is allowing me, a woman, to write this review in the first place. It makes one pause. It makes one pause.

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Let Me Show You Something You May Have Missed
Sean Perry's photographs offer to show you familiar settings in a whole new light

By Robert Faires
Austin Chronicle
Friday, September 22, 2006

Does the world need another photograph of Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium? You might not think so. After all, we've seen it so many times in print, on television, and on all manner of collectible memorabilia, not to mention in life whenever we pass within a country mile of the 40 Acres, that its colossal concrete features are seared into our cerebellums. It's a structure we know right, left, and center.

Then comes this image: The exterior of the stadium in the dead of night, during a summer storm. The spill from the blazing stadium lights -- inexplicably on, as if for a game -- illuminates the structure's back and the drizzle falling toward it, setting the night sky aglow. This is obviously the stadium we know, and yet ... it seems recast in stillness, a stillness that accentuates the classical character of its architecture, suggesting a fortress or temple of ancient days as much as a contemporary arena for collegiate sports. And though we associate this place with cheering throngs, an unexpected sense of solitude seems to attend it here. Here's a photograph of this much-photographed structure that whispers of its unseen character, that entices us to look at what we believe we know and see it as if for the first time.

That's the way it is with a photograph by Sean Perry. This 38-year-old image-maker, who divides his time between New York City and Austin, can train his lens on the most familiar settings and come up with a picture strikingly free of old associations and vibrant with discovery. It's particularly evident in his current series, "Transitory," which is being showcased through Oct. 19 at Stephen L. Clark Gallery and in a new limited-edition book from Cloverleaf Press. The photographs focus on abstract architecture and the built environment about Austin, with many of them made from familiar local landmarks: DKR-Texas Memorial Stadium, the Zilker Christmas tree, the Erwin Center, Seaholm Power Plant. Perry doesn't deny these structures whatever iconic power they possess, but he comes at them from an angle that accentuates their geometric qualities: the lines and block and curves within these forms and that play off of the nature surrounding them. And somewhere in there he seems to find a spirit within these inanimate forms that pops to life as he snaps the shutter.

Given the simplicity of the images, one may be tempted to assume that they were simple to create. But no, each image was patiently and painstakingly crafted by Perry with considerable care and time taken to compose the shot, find the ideal light, shoot it, and develop it, with periods along the way for just living with the image to see what can be seen in it. Sean Perry sat down with the Chronicle to describe that process in detail, as it related to two specific images in the "Transitory" series.

Sean Perry: So a couple of years ago, I would be driving around town, and I would see these cell towers or the moon towers or these electrical structures that I just thought were so beautiful, really cool. And the light in Texas I really like a lot. Early morning or late evening is good anywhere, but in Texas, with the big skies and stuff, it would illuminate these structures in a certain way, and they would kind of bloom. For a short period, you would get a sense of these things being alive, and then they'd sort of go back to sleep again. And that's what I wanted to make pictures of. I struggled for a long time because I couldn't really get them. I mean, I was seeing it, and I was feeling it, but I wasn't able to make pictures about it. The first one I made was Pulse, the one of the Zilker Christmas tree. There was something about that image that, when I got the film back and saw it, [I knew] there it is. And that image taught me how to make the rest of them. It was about the way the light fell on it and how to shape the light in the camera and then in the darkroom to get that translation with the rest of them.

Austin Chronicle: Did you go to Zilker knowing what about the moon tower you wanted to shoot?

SP: It was about: What is familiar about this that you may have forgotten? A lot of people have made images about the Zilker tree -- if you're from Austin, it's a big part of that whole season -- but what's something that's familiar about it that kind of blooms as a secret and goes away? For me, there's just so much energy under that thing. It becomes a city event, and all the wires and structures of these moon towers, they vibrate and pulse, which is where the name comes from. That's what I felt under it. And I wasn't sure about the angle and which way to abstract it and whatnot, so I just went there and spent time there, walking about.

AC: What time of year?

SP: Right after Christmas, that window between Christmas and New Year's. It was a cloudy day, and I was by myself. It was one of those weird times in the afternoon when no one was there, and the place was very, very still. But there was still all that energy underneath it. Even though I'm alone there, it vibrates; it resonates.

AC: What kind of camera did you use?

SP: It's a Hasselblad. They call it medium format, and it shoots a square, so the negative ends up being 21/4 inches by 21/4 inches. It's a manual camera, so there are no batteries or anything like that. I use the same camera, the same lens, the same film, the same developer -- all of that stuff is very standardized. I don't change my tools. By reducing all of my variables that way, it becomes about the image. So when I have problems, it's about my problem in getting the image onto the film, not technical issues like, did I have right lens? Ansel Adams used to say that if you have more than one lens, then you're sure to have the wrong one [on your camera]. I thought about that for the longest time, and it's true. If it gets to the point where I can't make the image with what I have, then maybe I need to look for something else. But I haven't gotten there yet. If I haven't been able to get it, it's just because I'm not open to it or I'm not finding it.

AC: How many shots did you take of the tree?

SP: Maybe 24. But before I made that image, there were other places that I had been photographing before Christmas, and I'd gone through dozens of rolls and just not had anything. I mean, they were OK -- I was shooting some of the cranes for construction and some electrical towers as you're heading out toward the "Y" -- but they were kind of flat. They just didn't have any magic in them. I was just kind of documenting the towers. Pulse was the first one that, when I got up underneath and was able to get that thing in the frame that way, all of a sudden there it was.

AC: You had a sense of that ...?

SP: Underneath it? (Guardedly) Yeaahhh ... I mean, you never know.

AC: You had a hunch?

SP: Yeah. You get a hunch. There's this thing that happens when you're making images that's like a bell curve, where you recognize that something is there, something's happening, and you work through it and work through it, and it starts to increase, and it increases, then it crests, and then it starts to go back the other way, where you're losing it and it's going back to sleep or you're repeating yourself. Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't. One of the things I like about film is: I don't know right away. Because there's that lag time in the manual process of loading the film, unloading the film, developing the film, doing the contact sheets, looking at them later. If I was shooting that stuff digitally, I would see it right away and then make judgments. I don't work that way. A lot of times, what I'll do is I'll make images and run the film, and I won't look at it right away. It'll be a couple of weeks before I look at it. Or I'll make five or six small prints from the contact sheets and tack them up around my desk or around my bed, and I'll live with them for a little while before I go in the darkroom. I don't go in the darkroom right after I've made images. It'll be months before I print them sometimes. Because there are things there I haven't learned yet, things I haven't seen about it yet. I give myself room to be surprised.

AC: How long before you went in the darkroom with Pulse?

SP: Probably six months. It was a long time. I saw it on the contact sheet, and then I kept making other images. From a technical standpoint, it was about time of day and backlighting these things in a certain way, placing the sun in a position to get the shadows to wrap forward. That was the secret of that image. It started by silhouetting these things, and the trick became -- and this is more the technical side -- holding information and holding detail in the shadows. It's easy to silhouette something when you put the light behind it, but the tricky part is, can you do that and still hold something in it so you want to look into the shadows? A lot of how I print and what the experience of seeing my prints is about is getting lost in the detail in the shadows. There are secrets in there, and that's what I work for.

AC: So what happened in the darkroom?

SP: It becomes about preserving that feeling. Can the print represent how I felt? So if the thing has all this energy and resonates, I need to make a print that translates that to someone who wasn't there or didn't share that experience. That was the challenge. I want to make light a three-dimensional object. A lot of what my photographs are about is giving light viscosity. When you look at the prints, I want it so you almost can't tell if light is being reflected off of them or coming out of them. That's hard. I spend a lot of time in the darkroom on that, but when I get it, there's a certain amount of magic to it.

AC: How long did it take to get a print that had that energy to it?

SP: I usually give myself a day with a negative. If I go in at 8 or 9 in the morning and get something by lunch, then it's a good day. And if it's midnight before I get something, that's fine, too. I stay until I finish. [With Pulse], I made a series of prints of it and ended up tearing those up and going back a second time. So that particular image took two days. The first ones were good, but they just didn't burst. They didn't quite have the resonance that the thing had.

AC: You say you want the print to communicate the feeling you had to someone who wasn't there that day. Who do you show the prints to in order to test that out?

SP: John Christensen, who is a sculptor here in Austin. He's a mentor and one of my dearest friends, and he loves me enough to tell me the truth. And that's such a rare thing. Lots of people will encourage you, or they'll say, "that's great" or "that's good" or "that's nice," and as an artist, that stuff's useless. I am much more suspect of compliments than criticism. I much more prefer criticism. I can handle criticism. Compliments scare the hell out of me.

I know [John] cares about me as a person, so what he says to me as an artist, there is no filter of he doesn't want to hurt my feelings. It's brutal, and I adore that about him.

AC: Did he have anything to say about Pulse?

SP: He nodded, like I was on to something.

AC: Has he seen other images from the series?

SP: Oh yeah, and he's very quick to point out when I have or haven't hit the mark. I have nowhere to hide when I show him stuff. He'll say, "You're wandering here," or "I don't think you've quite gotten to it here."

When I was doing my first show, years ago, he was talking about [the pictures] and said, "One of the things about your photographs is that they say to me, 'Let me show you something you may have missed.'" And I hadn't realized it, but that is sort of the theme of these things. I'm right on that line of clichés. I've gone to places and shot things that are clichés, but is there a secret there? Is there something fresh I can get out of them? You've seen that. You've been around that. But did you notice it this way? I don't have any truths. You know, they always say artists show people truths. I don't have any answers or truths. [My work is] about reminding you of something you already knew. It's about something that's familiar.

AC: That may be a great way to segue into talking about the stadium, which, if there's a structure that people in this town know, that's it, and yet the feeling from your image of it is very distinct from the postcard image of Memorial Stadium.

SP: I spend a lot of time in Austin, and I walk a lot, or I'll just grab my camera and go for drives and try to get lost, you know. And I've walked around the stadium or been around that area a lot. There are a lot of interesting structures on campus, like the big air-conditioning units that are lit up at night and have steam coming off them, so I'll drive through there as opposed to going up Guadalupe. I was heading north and cut through the campus. It was about, I don't know, 2 or 2:30 in the morning. It was late July or early August, so the season hadn't started or anything like that, but all the [stadium] lights were on. And a storm was blowing through, where the clouds were moving by really fast. Very surreal. It was one of those things where I'd been working late; I'd been in the darkroom; I was tired. All I really wanted to do was eat some cereal and go to bed. But I had to go back. So I went home, I got the camera, I got some plastic, and I came back and made images in the rain for an hour or so. I shot maybe three or four rolls. The first roll or the second is where that image comes from. It's one of the few images that I shot with a tripod. Everything else is hand-held, just me walking around. And the exposure -- I didn't have any way to meter it, so I was guessing: 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30, ... yeah maybe. That's why the clouds are trailing.

The titling of it, Revelation, and the idea of lights coming on or the duality of "am I inside or outside?" -- I'm not thinking about them when I'm there. I'm thinking about: "Is the camera dry? This looks cool." I'm just hanging out by myself. Then later I can look at them and see what was going on, where I was emotionally or psychologically. Your work will teach you things about yourself, if you're open to it. There are things in there that you can't always keep track of or like in your subconscious that you don't know, and that's my favorite part of what I do: It teaches me things that I can't get to in other ways. And I don't think it's unique to photography. It happens with anything, because it's an expression of something that's inside of you.

It's kind of like making a good song. When you hear a great song, it's visceral. You don't know the words to it; you don't know where the arrangement's going; you just know that there's something in it that's grabbing hold of you. Then, as you spend more time with it, you start to learn that's what the lyrics are, and that's what the story is, and there are these different layers. That's what happens with my images. There are all kinds of themes that are running in them -- man and the built environment and issues of communication and struggles within relationships and all this stuff that goes on inside of me -- but those aren't the things I hit people over the head with. They're there if you're interested, but as a visual language, I make them more visceral. I want them to be beautiful first and foremost, and if that grabs you, then as you look, those things are underneath.

"Transitory" is on display through Oct. 19 at Stephen L. Clark Gallery, 1101 W. Sixth. For more information, call 477-0828.

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"Kenneth J. Hale: New Works on Paper"
Slugfest Gallery, through Oct. 8

By Amanda Douberley
Austin Chronicle
Friday, September 22, 2006

In the latest stage of a career that spans more than 30 years, Austin-based printmaker and longtime UT faculty member Ken Hale has traded in his flatbed press for a flatbed scanner. Rather than take advantage of the scanner's potential for image manipulation, however, Hale exploits this tool's absolute truth to the image. His new collages and ink-jet prints, on view at Slugfest Gallery this month, occupy the intersection of photography, printmaking, and digital media while at the same time remaining faithful to a modified version of traditional analog print processes.

All three series in the exhibition share a similar starting point. Hale cut photographic reproductions of artworks out of glossy coffeetable books and art history texts. He pasted these pictures down on sheets of paper, then applied a gouache wash that obscures the base images to varying degrees, depending on the resistance level of the coated paper and the amount of blotting done by Hale. Finally, he collaged bits of home and garden magazines on top of the gouache to create a tree in the center of each composition. At every step, Hale scanned the images he was assembling and altering. The importance of this part of the process for Hale seems rooted in printmaking, where images are separated out into layers that can be recombined and reworked to create new compositions. Such is the case, too, in Hale's newest work.

Contrary to expectations, the suite of 20 prints, hung in a grid array on one wall of the gallery, are studies for Hale's collages rather than the other way around. Collectively titled The Same Only Different, each print reproduces a page from Hale's sketchbook, which he scanned, printed out, then painted with acrylic. The scanner's unstinting fidelity picks up every detail, including warps in the paper, which take a while to notice because they look so real – I assumed the prints were buckling on a particularly humid day, until I realized that the grey shadows I saw were actually two-dimensional. This flattening-out makes for a drastic contrast with Hale's series of collages, Now & Then, which can be described in one word: luscious. True to the best collage work, he takes the utterly mundane and transforms it into something extraordinary. The buildup of layers on the surface of each support is exceptionally tactile; one gets a true sense of Hale's pleasure in the tedious task of ripping and pasting down scraps of paper.

In Now & Then, the collaged photographic reproductions of historic artworks are so obscured by gouache as to be almost unrecognizable. They form a ground for Hale's trees that's all color and pattern rather than a set of allusions with any fixed meaning. The gouache is less dense -- and more vibrantly colored -- in each Landscape Revision, a series that incorporates some of the scans made during the production of Now & Then. By allowing a greater part of the base image to show through, Hale gives the old master paintings he poaches more of a voice. Still, although the Landscape Revisions begin to establish a firmer relationship between the different elements in Hale's compositions, the connection in terms of content remains tenuous. These ties may be strengthened as this new body of work progresses; after all, the artist's last major series took him about 10 years to exhaust. With the current show at Slugfest, it seems Hale is just getting warmed up.

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A closer look at Austin's architecture

By Erin Keever
Austin American-Statesman
Thursday, September 28, 2006

"Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence," Minor White once said.

Surely Sean Perry possesses the stillness that White extols. His photographs on view at Stephen L. Clark Gallery demonstrate that focusing on simple forms from one's local landscape may reveal newness, grace and elegant beauty.

Here most of Perry's images abstract by isolating details of Austin architectural sites. Take "Revelation," which lends the exterior of Royal-Memorial Stadium's upper deck a dramatic feel remote from what goes on inside. Or "Night Into Day," which turns a section of the Frank Erwin Center's façade into a yin and yang struggle between bleached white stone and moody dark sky. Perry's works are black and white, and he uses light to full advantage -- both in shooting and in printing. He also maximizes line -- both straight and curved. Results resemble modernist photographic predecessors, Paul Strand as well as precisionist Charles Sheeler.

Perry's education includes three years at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Perhaps the lyrical quality of line and arrangement in his imagery can be attributed to his musical background. He strikes a tangible note to what may seem fleeting, as the "Transitory" title of this exhibition suggests.

Along with large chromogenic prints and silver gelatin prints on view, a limited edition book, "Transitory: Abstractions," published by Austin's Cloverleaf Press is available. Whether mounted on pages or hung on walls, Perry's images allow silent structures to emote, to resonate or in cases to sing. As they say, still waters run deep.

("Sean Perry: Transitory" continues 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Tuesdays-Saturdays and by appointment, through Oct. 19. Stephen L. Clark Gallery. 1101 W. 6th St. Free. 477-0828.)

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"Rembrandt's Etchings"
Blanton Museum of Art, through Dec. 10

By Nikki Moore
Austin Chronicle
Friday, September 29, 2006

Rembrandt: Before you know his work, you know his name. And in deference to his talent, even genius, a bit of reverence is, it seems, in order. While you may think of him as a master painter (and he was certainly that), during Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn's lifetime, he was best known for the extraordinary sensitivity and untouchable advancement of his etchings. In celebration of the 400 years since Rembrandt's birth, the Blanton Museum, under Jonathan Bober's curatorial direction, has put together an exhibition that explores not only Rembrandt's skill but also the work of his peers and followers from the 17th century and into the 19th-century Dutch revival. What lingers after viewing these works, however, is not the magnanimity of Rembrandt's name but the intimacy of his work, the care with which the artist developed each individual line, and thereby each emotional expression covering a nearly full range of human possibilities. This master began and ended with the standard tools of his time: an etching needle and copper plates. Giving voice to variations of light, line, and subject, Rembrandt experimented outside the traditional hatching and crosshatching techniques of his contemporaries. He played with the acid etching process and used drypoint to saturate his prints with more ink than traditional etching could allow. The result is unparalleled in its advancement of the medium, in its abilities to capture expressions, emotions, light, and variable line. Rembrandt's virtuosity and deep personal involvement with the art and craft of printmaking enabled him to draw out uniqueness in the face of potential repetition: While printmaking by nature allows for multiples to be made from the same copper plates, Rembrandt's use of variable papers, his attention to ink saturation on the plates, and his practice of wiping the ink on the plates in changing directions multiplied the possibilities for one-of-a-kind results. Training this expansive understanding of emotive articulations was frequently done on the artist, by the artist, through carefully etched studies of his own features in variable moods, manifestations, and dress – as works like Self-Portrait Wearing a Soft Cap (c. 1634) illustrate. To this shifting and turning, widening then narrowing, dotting then dragging a single line across a printing plate, Rembrandt dedicated nearly two-thirds of his career. One single line after another. One etched scene after another. One inked copper plate after another. All this time, dedication, and careful drafting resulted in nearly 300 final prints, which changed the course of printing to this day. In honor of and testimony to Rembrandt's patience and passion after a line, his attention to so many different states of the human condition in all of its hopes, faiths, and sorrows, and in deference to the legacy these attentions have reaped, Jonathan Bober and the Blanton have created a rare and intimate opportunity for you to see, study, and absorb the results and impact of Rembrandt's dedication for yourself. Today, this work speaks boldly in its virtuosity and softly in its challenge to a society so deeply embedded in the "Age of Mechanical Reproduction" that we often forget that careful examination, study, and execution have as much, if not more, promise as rote and robotic productivity.

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Exhibit shines light on under-recognized Renaissance artist
Not as well-known as some of his peers, Luca Cambiaso now gets a show of his own

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
Austin American-Statesman
Saturday, September 30, 2006

What makes a Renaissance artist a household name in the 21st century?

Many things, not the least of which is old-fashioned promotion -- the kind of buzz generated by today's art scholars and curators.

Good thing for Luca Cambiaso, then, that Blanton Museum of Art curator Jonathan Bober is part of an international team that has organized "Luca Cambiaso, 1527-1585," on view through Jan. 14. It's the first exhibit of significant size and art historical heft in the United States for the prolific Italian painter from the rough-and-tumble port city of Genoa (which also claims Christopher Columbus as a native son). After its Austin debut the exhibit heads to Genoa's Palazzo Ducale next spring for its only other showing.

But to back up a bit: Cambiaso's standing in the art world got a boost when in 1998 the Blanton acquired the $35 million Suida-Manning Collection. Assembled by pioneering art historian William Suida along with his daughter Bertina and son-in-law Robert Manning (a native Texan), the collection has some seven major paintings and more than two dozen drawings by Cambiaso. While their peers trained their sights on artists from Rome, Florence and Venice, the Suidas and Manning took an interest in the less-familiar Genoese artists. Thus the family ended up assembling arguably the largest single collection of Cambiaso masterpieces outside the northern Mediterranean seaport.

And thus, eventually, so did the Blanton.

Extensive as they are, the Blanton's Cambiaso holdings still don't represent the whole of the artist's productive output. So Bober and his curator peers from several Genoese art institutions went looking for the crème-de-la-crème of Cambiaso. The result is a singular exhibit featuring some 60 paintings and 80 drawings that span the long trajectory of Cambiaso's career. Many of the artworks have never before traveled to the U.S.; they hail from a roster of top European institutions such as the Louvre, the British Museum and the Uffizi Gallery and more than a dozen different collections in Genoa.

All this, though, begs the question: Who was this artist, and why isn't he better known?

Few records exist that shed light beyond the basics of Cambiaso's life. Born in 1527, Cambiaso was trained by and collaborated with his painter father, Giovanni. As a young man, he traveled to Rome where he was likely influenced by Michelangelo, among other artists. Cambiaso returned to Genoa and spent all but the last few years of life (when King Philip II of Spain commissioned frescoes for a monastery in Madrid) in the bustling port city as it emerged as a European financial capital. His ascending career echoed the explosion of wealth; he counted all the rich merchant families of Genoa as patrons.

So if he was in such demand, why doesn't Cambiaso have the same fame as Caravaggio, da Vinci, Botticelli or other Italian Renaissance artists? For starters, many of Cambiaso's paintings remain in Genoa in the hands of churches as well as museum and private collections. With the city's history of remaining a bit isolated and distinct from the rest of Italy, Genoese artists like Cambiaso stayed close to home as well. In other words, the city was never the cultural capital and destination as were Rome, Florence and Venice: not in Cambiaso's lifetime, not now and not in the early 1900s when William Suida was beginning his scholarly career.

Add to this relative isolation the fact that many of Cambiaso's best works are frescoes -- vast paintings created directly on palace and cathedral walls -- and therefore impossible to remove without destroying them.

Then consider this: Cambiaso is a victim of his own success. A savvy businessman, he organized an efficient workshop of artists and apprentices skilled at reproducing his drawings. It was a terribly modern -- and profitable -- venture to establish in booming Genoa, but it means there remain today an estimated 20,000 drawings and prints attributed to Cambiaso and his workshop, exponentially more than any other artist of his time. And that fact makes scholars shudder when it comes to authenticating and identifying exactly which drawings came from the hand of the master and which are the products of apprentices' pens -- and which are outright knockoffs. (The more than 70 drawings on view in the current exhibit are all properly identified as Cambiaso's or from his workshop).

But perhaps what has confounded Cambiaso's popularity most is his exacting style. His virtuosity is so controlled that his elegant paintings lack that accessible, visceral appeal common to prettier Italian Renaissance masterworks -- the key to popular appeal today. Cambiaso produced secular and religious scenes arranged in rigorous compositions, such as "Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptist," the 1550 painting that the Blanton purchased in 2004. And he got more rigorous as he got older. Partly in response to the conservative tastes dictated by the Counter-Reformation of the late 16th century (which eschewed sensualism, extravagance and individuality), Cambiaso created increasingly more systematically composed scenes. In fact, his work became so abstract that his later, casual drawings and studies are downright cubist, with figures sporting cube-shaped heads and rectangular limbs.

Of course, Cambiaso remained a thoroughly Renaissance master. One who is now, thanks to the Blanton exhibit, poised to join some of his better-known peers in the pantheon of popularity.

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