Anderson Gallery

The Anderson Gallery has a show up right now called "Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art: Featuring the Bernard and Patricia Wagner Collection" which is comprised of African and Nigerian art.




The exhibit was mostly comprised of carvings and masks made by the natives of the specific countries involved. These, to me, were interesting at first, but didn't keep my attention. I did like how they would show the carvings/statues/mask and then have a picture printed of how it was actually worn/used in that country. I like seeing it on the person better than in a case. Some of the carvings were really intricate and detailed, though, which impresses me since there's no way I could do such a thing.



By far, my favorite part of the gallery was the room with wall to wall beaded prayer pouches on panels. The room was overwhelming. The colors and varieties in shapes and sizes were awesome to see on such a big scale. When Morgan and I were looking at them up close, we didn't understand at first. We complained about the use of glitter and the bad stitching and tried to find something to read about the display and once we did, I really fell in love with it. I didn't realize at first that these pouches were from people of all ages and each contained a specific wish or prayer on a piece of paper. I loved that the project was so hands-on and collaborative and involved so many people of different ages. It made me want to study each beaded prayer pouch individually.

The photos on this post were taken by me.

Harrison Street Coffee Shop

"Best of 2008 Photo Show"
February 18. 2009

Amber, Morgan, and I made a visit to the Harrison Street Coffee Shop's Show today. It was nice to get out o the rainy, disgusting weather and look at a display of nothing but photography for once.

It was nice to see a show made of just photography, but the setup made it pretty difficult to take it in. I know it's in a cafe, but regardless, it's difficult to look in depth at the photos when people are sitting at the tables. I did really enjoy the writing under each photo though, I liked being provided with the websites of the artists and being able to see an example of lots of artist work in one place. I also liked reading their descriptions.

This was my favorite photo from the exhibit. It is called "Paper Boats" taken by Cameron Charles Lewis. The colors are fantastic; they're relatively similar, but stand out on their own really well. The description of this photo dealt with parting with your childhood. It's a very touching photo that I find very calming.

There were a couple of others in the show I really enjoyed, but the ones that stick out in my mind are the ones that bothered me. I don't want feel it's right to negatively critique the artists since I've only seen one piece of their work, so I won't mention their names, I'll only mention their pieces. I was really bothered by one called "Anon." It was a nice sized print and the concept about not knowing the figure's identity because his face wasn't shown was interesting to me, but I still didn't like the print. It was way too dark and there was no point of focus, and it just really got on my nerves. I was also bothered by "Death be a lady." It was a typical fashion shot with standard fashion lighting where the woman was holding a gun (but it was so dark it was hard to notice the gun.) When it originally ran as an ad for a makeup company the ad read something like "Call # for a good time and we'll shoot you." It was just corny and standard and irritated me. Overall, it was nice to see some good photos, but difficult to take in because of the setting.

The first two photos in this entry were taken by myself, but the third was taken from Lewis' website: http://flickr.com/photos/cameroncharles/

First Friday Artwalk

February 6th, 2009

Well, this First Friday started out at 1708.

The pieces at 1708 at the time are from Nichole Maury and Christopher Quirk. The pieces were quite different, but seemed to fit together nicely in the space.

Christopher Quirk's pieces were gory looking pieces. They were mostly gray, tilted canvases with built up oil and acrylic paint that was mostly in bodily colored tones (peach, red, purple). They were relatively large pieces which was a nice contrast to the long walls in the gallery and the smaller pieces by Nichole Maury.

( That's Amber... )

Nichole Maury's work was all similar to the piece on the right. Most of them were made up of screenprints and carbon transfer's with some sort of array of little geometric shapes (sometimes circles and sometimes rectangles.) My favorite piece of hers was "An Array of Plausible Perspectives #10" where there were three pieces similar to this one >
but they seemed to form a continuous wave of boxes over three separate works.

Next stop for the group was Quirk. I never understood what people would say in class about not going to Quirk on First Friday... but now I do. It was packed and in that tight space it made it very difficult to see the art. The first piece that really caught my eye were three little sculptures by Jessica Martinkosky. They were three ceramic, green, skeleton looking heads in a glass case and they really intrigued me. They had a personality about them and made me want to hold them. Unfortunately I couldn't snap a picture without the whole world seeing me...







Another piece that caught my attention (obviously, considering it took up a whole wall) were the dark green, ceramic sculptures on the wall by Hyun Kyung Yoon. This piece was hard to miss, but what really interested me about them were the long shadows they made on the walls... this picture doesn't do it justice.








The last piece I want to talk about from Quirk was made by Elizabeth Kendall. As you can tell, her sculpture protrudes from the wall and takes up a considerable amount of space. I love the way each part is layered and reminded me instantly of a piece a fellow AFO student did last year (Alyson Aversa.) I love the shadows that are made on the wall from this piece. Also, the simplicity of the black and ivory colors kept it simple and drew my into the work.




^ Next Stop ^


The work here was all pretty similar. They were very watercoloreqsue pieces, but I think they were prints, not watercolors. I really loved the colors and the composition in the piece to the right. I love the texture in the ripple and the texture in the tree bark from other pieces. What interested me the most about this work was the mixed reaction from my group of friends. The "art school" kids seemed to be pretty turned off by this work. I'm not sure why, but they just didn't care for it. On the other hand, the two students that were with us that don't attend art school loved this work- it was their favorite work from the night. They loved the colors and the simplicity and I think they loved that they didn't have to think about it too hard, it is what it is. People's reactions and explanations of their reactions interest me more than the art sometimes...






From what I could gather, Art6 was comprised of the works of Todd Hale. The first thing I noticed when I went upstairs is that I saw the first photographs I had seen all night. In the corner of this narrow hallway was a photo I really loved. It was called Miami and was pretty much split down the center- clouds on the left and building on the right. Sounds boring, but the tonality of whites, blacks, and greys in the clouds were really beautiful and the angle and perspective were really nice to look at. This piece to the left reminded my of coral or some sort of underwater scene. I love the size and length of the panel and the way the bright pink acrylic catches the light.




The rest of Todd Hale's work got a little disturbing. There were a lot of skeletal models and skeleton charcoal sketches on the wall in addition to paint drips and all sorts of paintings that resembled organs and tissues of the body. They were very interesting in a strange way. We also stopped by Art6 East, but I don't have much of a reaction to it so I'll just skip to the next gallery.



We now arrive at Ghost Print Gallery. I have other pictures from this gallery, but it was so packed in there they aren't even worth posting. Most of the paintings and other canvas pieces in Ghost Print really didn't interest me. The pieces were odd, graphic pieces with sketches and paint together and just did nothing for me. I was interested in the painting of the newspaper boxes that was taking place throughout and even outside the gallery. The designs on the newspaper boxes were bright and unique and I would love to go get a paper off the street from a box looking like that.




Now we're at ADA Gallery.



I loved this piece to the left by Eric Sall. It was gigantic and basically a mess of organized chaos. The colors were vibrant and amazing and I loved the texture of the built up paint.




A really interesting aspect of ADA was the "Blackhole Theatre" in the back of the gallery. It literally was like a black hole in the back where some video art was being shown. The main screen showed an interesting and humourous little narrative. A man created little horses, scenes, and figures out of cloth and wire and made them move like someone would when playing with action figures. He had the horses tied to a string and would pull them along and then he created a little trapeese bar apparatis for the figures to do a gymnastics routine. It was clever and funny and had a unique perspective because he didn't hide anything from the viewer. We saw how the figures were pushed or pulled and we saw him sitting there being the puppet master and making his own sound effects in addition to the background music he used.


In addition to all the art we saw at First Friday, we definitely took in a big dose of Richmond culture. Between the street corner bands, vendors, giant cat people, evangelicals, and lobbyists for various Richmond causes... the spirit of First Friday was alive and well.


As typical photo majors, we finished up the Artwalk with a group picture (minus myself.)


The photos from this blog entry are personal photos that I took that night.

Alix Pearlstein

Alix's work was comprised of video art from the years 2000-2007. She liked to use simple backgrounds like open white or black spaces to focus on the action. In her words she likes to explore the concept of films stripped of context and locations. Her first pieces had handheld cameras that would surround the actors and were obviously shaking and unsteady. Most of her films had voice-overs of loud voices or sounds (ex: grunting, moaning, footsteps, etc) instead of normal dialogue.

The first film short we watched was called "Two Women"and focused on the illusion of a magazine cut-out of a naked woman being fondled by a shirtless, skinny man. There were commands being said by Alix's voice-over and stock sounds and the man followed the instructions of the voices. The camera, as I mentioned beore, was obviously handheld and gave you an uncomfortable and uneasy feeling.


Another theme portrayed in Alix's films is the destruction of the hierarchy and the destruction of family. The hierarchy was disassembled in "Forsaken" where the son is this authority figure who gets waited upon and whose portrait is hung up on display.




Eventually the mother is the one you brings him off his high horse and then he is brutally attacked and left on the ground with the mother's cackling laughter ringing in the ears of the audience.


In general, I found Alix's work a little over my head. I loved her concepts and when I heard her explain her intent, it all made sense to me. But I personally prefer a more conventional take to these concepts and her work just wasn't for me. Her intent was good and I think may have appealed to certain audiences perfectly, but it didn't appeal to me personally.

Photos for this post were taken from Alix Pearlstein's website. http://www.alixpearlstein.com/