Place on Page

Weather-Eye Launched

2011-04-11T09:14:00.003-04:00

I am very excited to announce the launch of Weather-Eye!

Weather-Eye is a book of poems, drawings and paintings by two brothers from Long Island. James (the artist) and Peter (the poet) grew up on the south shore, spending their summers working at the family business and exploring the waters and beaches of the Great South Bay.

After many travels, education and varied pursuits, we have both returned to our native shores with renewed interest in this place and the personal resonance it holds for us.

This book is the result of our collaborative efforts to document, through our respective arts, the practice of a deepening awareness of the physical and metaphysical environments we grew up in.

This book will release in early summer and you can be apart of the project by pledging a donation to our Kickstarter page: Weather-Eye

Below is an excerpt from the book of Peter Vanderberg's poem Splice:

Splice

Father & three sons in a sailboat,
minds’ eyes in four directions
until drawn in to a rope turned line
by his word & the bay beneath us.

Difference between a knot & tangle
is the knot will hold & easily untie. Tangles
can't be trusted or undone. He began
to work the line. You should know

the bowline. I watched, waiting
my turn, his son turned father turned son.
One gesture looped & threaded
the free-end, like a card trick.

We all test the knot, eager to learn something
useful, something that proves itself, that lasts.

Three MUST See Shows

2010-10-02T13:03:00.002-04:00

Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield
June 24–October 17, 2010
@ The Whitney Museum of American Art

Charles Burchfield was nothing to me a year ago, but after seeing this exhibition I am an apostle. Imagine Hopper on acid. Creepy and fantastic landscapes all or mostly all in watercolor. This guy was doing large scale water color in the 1940-50;s. Imagine that? Abstract Expressionism is all over the place, Pollock is changing the way we consider painting and Burchfield is focusing entirely on a medium considered fragile, secondary and for Sunday Painters. Burchfield proves otehrwise with work so strong, powerful and psychologically moving that it really stands toe to toe with the best of the New York School of that era.

This show closes on the 17th so there is plenty of time to get to the Whitney and see it. Highlights are the room of wallpaper and the gallery of doodles.

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/CharlesBurchfield

Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917

July 18–October 11, 2010
MEMBER PREVIEWS ON NOW
@ MOMA sixth floor

Not much I can say about Matisse that wouldn't just be balls out praise. He is easily my favorite painter of all time because he was always a painter's painter. it was always really just about the painting in a pure sense. This shows is almost overwhelming in its breadth, but it really tries to take apart his working method which I found very revealing. Get there in the next week before it goes down. Big shows of masters like this don't come around all that often.

http://moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/969

Coming Soon:

Abstract Expressionist New York

October 3, 2010–April 25, 2011

There will be plenty of time to queue up and see this show between now and April, and queue up you will. ABEX:NY promises to be a block buster exhibition and I already have my tickets for Monday. The review in the NYTIMES was not over the moon, but I am not really expecting huge jumps on ABEX theory from the curators at MoMA. What I am looking forward to is seeing all this work installed in those beautiful galleries all at one time. It really needs to be see that way so you can take in the scale and the art historical movement for what it was as Roberta Smith wrote, "art movements are really messy, edgeless things that should only become more so with age..." People think they know ABEX and that it is all figured out. i am looking forward to this exhibition because i always find new inspiration and new ways of looking at these paintings. This work is so fresh still and has so much room to become even messier and expansive as more people are exposed to it.

http://moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1098

The Great South Bay PROJECT

2010-07-26T17:43:00.003-04:00

Working with Ghost Bird on a project to get at source material mined from The Great South Bay of Long Island. To start we took a sail and made a list:

Amityville Cut
anchor
Atlantic Ocean
barnacle
bay snail
beach glass
buoy
Canadian geese
Captree Island
Cedar Beach
channel
clam
cormorant
Cow Island
crab
cumulus
dragon fly
driftwood
ducks
dunes
Elder Island
engine
Fire Island
Fox Creek
Garbage Cove
Gilgo Beach
green fly
hawk
Hemlock's Cove
hermit crab
heron
high / low tide
horizon line
horse shoe crab
hot sand
inlet
Japanese Pine
jellyfish
laughing gull
lighthouse
Lion's Mane
mast
mosquito
mussels
nimbus
No Wake!
North / South Wind
oar
Ocean Parkway
Old Sol
oyster
piping plover
poison ivy
razor clam
Red Boat
reeds
rip-tide
Robert Moses Bridge
sailboat
Sailor's Haven
sand bar
sandpipers
sea weed
shoal
Snake Channel
stratus
string ray egg
tern
tide mark
under-tow
Watch Hill
waves
weather -eye

Beach Grass
Blue Claw
Bay Side/Ocean Side
Clam Digger
Cherrystone
Chowder Clam
Keel
Mermaid's Purse
Red Right Return
Red Boat
Squaw Island
The Four Corners
Tanner Park
Tick
ToBay
West Gilgo

Check out the original posted at Ghost Bird

Local Color: Four Fordham Alumnae

2010-05-10T13:09:00.003-04:00

I am curating a show of Alumni work at Fordham University:

Local Color: Four Fordham Alumnae.
June 10th, to August 9th, 2010

The Center Gallery
Fordham University
Lincoln Center Campus
113 Columbus Ave

The featured artists are Teresa Baker, FCLC ’08, Martha Clippinger, FCRH ’05, Amie Cunat, FCLC ’08, and Lauren Portada, FCLC ‘00

Bill Jensen: New Work

2010-04-12T10:15:00.005-04:00

Bill Jensen: New Work
Feb 18th-March 27th, 2010
@ Cheim & Read
547 West 25th Street
NY, NY

Bill Jensen was the first contemporary abstract painter that really made me re-think painting. His approach, color and process opened up new ways of thinking for me and really helped me understand the psychological content of abstraction.

A great part of the show that I revisited many times was a small front room of drawings. Done mostly on antique paper with ink, water and brush these drawings open up a world of beautiful value, mark making and direct experience. His "Drunken Brush" series from a few years ago is also worth looking at. An excellent catalog and introduction essay by David Hinton adds not to the "understanding" of Jensen's work but to the appreciation of his source material and working method.

Images of a Floating World
LUOHAN (RED PIE), 2008
Time After Time
PASSARE DA BERNARDO XXXVIII, 2009

It is an absolute shame that I posted this so late and now the show is down. I would love to tell everyone to go see this show, but unfortunately it is down. Go to the website to see some decent images of the installation.

*All images from Cheim & Read Website

Continuing Color Abstraction

2010-04-12T10:11:00.003-04:00

Hello Everyone,

I will have work in a group show opening on Thursday night at The Painting Center in Chelsea. I am very excited about it and I am proud to hang in such good company. The details and invitation are posted as well.

The Painting Center
547 West 27th Street
5th Floor
New York, NY 10001

Opening Reception

Thursday April 15th, 2010

6-8PM

Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom

2009-10-20T19:03:00.005-04:00

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
April 28, 2009–November 29, 2009 (weather permitting)

I teach an art course for undergraduates at Fordham University in the Bronx, NY. The class is primarily a studio class, but I try to infuse as much art history into the lessons as I can. My students are extremely bright, and catch on to concepts very quickly. However, when it comes to basic art history they always seem one step behind. I guess I can't blame them, I don't recall knowing all that much about Willem de Kooning and Clifford Still when I was their age and I have always been an artist. So whenever I get the chance I drag my class to the local museums in New York and we get an eye full. I always believed that you could never really "get" these concepts until you saw the real thing. You can paint your whole life, but if you never stand in front or a Rembrandt, you will never see how much color you can put into dark spaces. If you never sit and stare at a Monet, you will never appreciate how much you can do with color and light.

Last week we went on a field trip to see the Modern and Contemporary wings of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I won't bore anyone with the play by play of how my students reacted to the work there. All I will say is that I think the majority of them really enjoyed themselves and got a lot out of it. Something that was unexpected and truly wonderful was the exhibit on the roof of the Met: Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom. The work surprised us all and we ended up spending most of our time enjoying the beautiful fall weather, the spectacular view of Central Park and the exciting and sublime work of Roxy Paine.

The exhibition consists of a large, multi-part sculpture made out of stainless steel piping and bars. The piece is 130 feet long and 45 feet wide and evokes the root system of plants, tree limbs or other organic life. This juxtaposed with the highly polished stainless steel materials and the view of the park creates an interesting dialogue with the urban environment, natural forms and the history of landscape painting, sculpture and installation. The work comes alive as you walk through, each angle and passageway between the "branches" unveiling new ways of seeing the work. Before I knew it I was deep inside it, tangled in it and looking at the world outside it in a new way. Some straggling limbs shoot out off the roof beyond the wall and seem to stretch longingly towards the park below. Like the tin toy of a tree wishing it could run and play with its real live brothers and sisters below. Other parts of the sculpture sit heavy and anchored to the roof floor, ominous, powerful and unwilling to let go of their perch.

The work is up until late November and I think it would be worth it to see the sculpture in different times of year. See it against the back drop of the full green park and then as the trees change color and finally drop their leaves. Paine's piece remains unchanging against this ever-changing environment; an organic shape cast in steel. Catch it now before the winter chill comes and the roof closes.

The roof of the Met also has a great bar. Enjoy a cocktail while enjoying the art and the view.

All photos by Jessica Guerrette

Central Park Sketch

2009-03-21T16:02:00.002-04:00

This will be brief , but as I was taking my lunch break today in Central Park, I cam upon a few people talking about painting and drawing. They were all sitting around this one guy who was painting a small oil sketch of the fountain. I was watching him paint and noticed that all the people were wearing little "Hello, My Name is..." stickers. I hate to be that guy who bothers people in public when they are working, but I had to ask what kind of a class or group this was.

Turns out they are part of a thing called meetup.com and the group is called The Central Park Sketching and Art Meet Up ( http://www.meetup.com/sketching/?a=wm1_gn).

Very cool idea, and even cooler website if you have never seen it before. All these different groups of strangers meeting up doing all sorts of stuff. These are the grass roots movements that will plant seeds to a new art world that is really an art world, not just an art market.

Pierre Bonnard: The Late Ineriors

2009-03-03T23:15:00.019-05:00

Before Diner, oil on canvas, 1924

Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors
@ The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave NY, NY
January 27, 2009 – April 19, 2009
Robert Lehman Wing (1st Floor)

As wind and cold whipped around buildings and ice sheets caused me to slip and crash down my stairs, I found warmth, sun and solace at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an unprecedented showing of Pierre Bonnard’s late paintings of interiors and still lives.

I had actually slipped and slid down the front stoop of my apartment that Friday morning when I left to go and see the show. I was meeting an artist friend of mine to see the Bonnard when I was greeted with a thin layer of frozen rain and slush on my stairs. I found myself with my ass on the sidewalk. Why do I mention this? Because it’s been that type of a winter here in New York; cold with a chance of freezing and bitter…

The artist I was meeting up with, Gary Tenenbaum had turned me on to Bonnard while we were both doing a residency in Paris in 2007. I had always considered Bonnard a lesser impressionist or just another fluffy French painter; not quite Matisse, not quite Monet. One similarly cold and cloudy day in Paris, Gary took me to the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. In their holdings are some of the most stunning Bonnard paintings, especially one of his self portraits and his paintings of his wife Marthe de Meligny in the bathe. The color and absolute abandon in those paintings blew me away. I had never seen anything like it and was enraged that I had wasted this much time without acknowledging them. So, when I saw that the Metropolitan was putting on this show of his late interiors and still lives, I called my Bonnard junkie in crime and we headed off in the cold.

To say these paintings “warmed me” on that cold, blistery day may sound cliché, but I welcomed the cliché! The paintings at the Met not only warmed me, they made me hot. They made my blood boil, and my heart quicken with excitement and absolute passion for painting and color. Is that a ridiculous statement? Maybe. Did I have the uncontrollable sensation to rush home and paint? Yes. For Gary and me the degree to which a show is “good,” is whether or not you run out wanting to make art. I haven’t felt that in a long, long time.

Where to begin with Bonnard’s Late Interiors? There is so much information to pull from and so many different aspects to touch on. However, for this the first posting I am making in almost a year, I am going to keep it honest and simple. For me, Bonnard is a painter’s painter. If I had to sum it all up in a few words: touch, composition, color. Within these simple elements Bonnard has an ability to turn the most mundane objects, still lives and tabletops into beautiful pictures of the most importance.

Flowers on the Mantelpiece at Le Cannet, oil on canvas, 1927

Maybe that is the important thing to take form these late paintings. For Bonnard, the still life objects have the same significance as the human elements in the work. A teapot or plate is created and sculpted with the same care and absolute abandon as the figures and landscapes, spaces and objects in the room. Bonnard doesn’t simply paint a picture like a window shade pulling from top to bottom. He paints in a holistic way, he moves from every corner to every corner and in and out like a fly buzzing and landing on different spots. From the exhibition I learned that Bonnard rarely made paintings from life, rather he worked from sketches made at the scene and then painted the actual canvas in his studio. All that color and space he essentially “made up.” And yet, Bonnard’s pictures don’t seem entirely unreal. This shift from live sketch to studio painting enhances that impeccable touch. The paintings maintain freshness and immediacy dancing the line between sketch and finished work, real and abstract space.

Work Table, oil on canvas, 1926/1937

Bonnard also never lets you forget you are looking at a painting. He leaves under drawing revealed, and often white space is actual raw canvas that Bonnard left unpainted. When he does use it, Bonnard applies white in an unbelievable way. I am a painter myself and I know how hard white can be to control. The difference between “light” and chalky pastels is extremely difficult to work between. Bonnard creates luminosity with his whites and his yellows and reds. By combining contrasting colors within the lights Bonnard creates energy in the color; yellows in the violets, blues in the reds and orange/reds. These combinations of color create these electrified canvases.

One of the most striking works in the exhibition is Bonnard’s own self-portrait. Made towards the end of his life, Bonnard paints himself in the bathroom mirror. His expression melds into the color and his form becomes as innocuous as his many teapots and table linens, that is to say it is painted with care and fresh perfect touch. In the end the artist is no more or less important than the objects he loved to paint. He is stripped bear, ghostly, a part of his own work.

Self-Portrait, oil on canvas, ca. 1938 - 40

SCOPE, NYC

2008-04-11T11:07:00.013-04:00

Ok, OK so it took me a few days (possibly weeks) to write the actual reviews of the three fairs I saw last month. I've been busy to say the least but that is no excuse. In fact it just makes it more difficult for me to actually dig through my notes and recount the scribble in the margin of a book, "Great color...(misspelled name) really doing (word I can't read)." So I decided to just dive in and write a quick response so I can get on with other things and make some upcoming promises I may not keep.

Scope NYC was held at The Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center. One of the main reasons I went there was because I work at Lincoln Center and I spent the better part of my morning answering questions about where the fair was, how much it cost and what the hours were. After the third or fourth person I decided to take a walk over and see it for myself. The lay out was manageable, roughly three large white tents made up the fair and within it, walls and hallways were erected to segment the different galleries. It was very much the white cube (or white tent) but the feeling was immediately fresh and inviting. I was expecting a snootier affair but found a very open and inviting space. It was also cool because I almost walked into Chuck Close on the way in. He is a very nice man.

A few things about Scope interested me. One is that the majority of NY galleries were smaller, very interesting spaces from Brooklyn. Secondly there were mostly international galleries exhibiting and the entire fair really did a wonderful job of NOT being a Chelsea pissing contest.

Jack The Pelican Presents was the first space I saw after saying, "Oh sorry..." to Mr. Close. I was drawn in at first by Scott Wolfson's wall sculpture "Mirror Mountain" from 2007. Wolfson creates "pictures" which are also relief sculpture. The spaces and points of entry allow for endless investigative work on the part of the viewer.

Curator's Office, Washington D.C had Peter Fox's drippy, glob paintings that looked like wax, or was it oil? It didn't really matter to me as I investigated the coagulated surface and field of color it created when you pulled back.

Now I am just breezing through this: Cladia Herrera's works on paper of watercolor and ink were simply beautiful and Gallery Baer from Dresden had some wonderful paintings by Stefan Lenke. Lenke's Abstract, geometric fields of saturated color with large breaks of black and grey neutrals evoke Neuman, with an 80's aesthetic. Think The Sublime meets Tron.

Dean Project from L.I.C, NY was apparently..."FUN!" according to my notes. Here another Hunter Student, Kristine Moran had smallish landscape paintings. I have always admired her handling of the medium (oil paint). Her marks are fresh and alive, her images obscure and unpredictable. All in all she makes good paintings. Carlos Carcano (apologies if that is spelled wrong) had a sort of negated abstractions. His unsaturated fields of color are blocked over spray painted, quicker almost "tags" of color and mark. Abstract painting over graffiti.

Rare, NY showed some wonderful abstract landscapes by an artist who I did not catch the name of. He infused a bit of Diebenkorn with De Konning and a palette that was lush with color. Painterly and smart, these landscapes made my afternoon.

That was quick, my notes were scribbles but in a word Scope was fresh and very entertaining. The younger, international feel came through and really set the bar for the other two shows I saw that weekend.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Armory

2008-04-01T13:27:00.003-04:00

NYC Art Fairs: LAArt, Scope NYC, and The Red Dot Fair
March 29-31, 2008

This past weekend I set out on a mission. I was going to tackle the Armory Show at Pier 94. I will reveal an embarrassing confession. I am a painter, living and working in New York, finishing my MFA…and I have never been to the Armory. I go to Chelsea, I see shows, and I always make it to the Whitney Biannual and even got to Venice this past summer for the Biennale. So what was the problem? Clearly it was not a lack of motivation or interest.

To be perfectly honest I have always seen the art fairs in NY and all over as nothing more then seasonal malls. Fancy tents or hotels filled with all those “art goers” who schmooze, and sip their white wine, unconcerned with the actual art, indifferent to the actual artists. It was a bitter chip on my shoulder mostly formed by opening nights in Chelsea where I left nauseated by crowds, market driven work and one too many drinks. I had naively assumed there was no way an art fair; a literal place of commerce could be any different, it had to be worse.

This past weekend determined to see the Armory Show (arguably the biggest and most prestigious fair) I found myself instead wondering happily through three smaller fairs: LAArt, Scope and The Red Dot. The reason for my diversion from the Armory was simple. The person I was going to see the show with had gone already, it was getting late in the day and with a simple, “Eh, it’s not all that, meet me at LAArt,” my decision was made.

The amount of work I saw at these three fairs, the interesting people I spoke with, the gallery directors, press and fellow artists I met are to vast to fill in this write up. It confirms a long held idea of mine that avoiding the big bang for the smaller intimate affair is always a good idea. I will keep it as brief as I can and try to break it up between the three fairs in the following posts. Lets just say most of my preconceived notions were replaced by a real excitement to make work and get involved in the functioning “art world.” However, like anything else, some of the sham of a travesty of the boozy art world still seeped through.

The Landscape of the Sublime

2008-02-29T15:18:00.007-05:00

Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions

The Metropolitan Museum or Art

There has always been a long standing division among painters. Two camps formed and where you stood in that camp said a great deal about your personality and sensibilities to painting and art in general. One was either a Poussinist, or a Rubensist. The first, Nicolas Poussin was the classicist portraying the gods and myths of a time and a place unapproachable but the common man. He painted a dream of Eden and filled it with a fantastic notion that was really quite impossible. Peter Paul Rubens on the other hand loved the flesh of humankind. He was a realist as I would say and painted with a fluid, almost erotic brushstroke exposing the wrinkles and cleavage of every figure. I have always been a Rubensist.

When I first approached Poussin in undergrad I saw him as just too stuffy. His narratives of history and mythology of old moldy Rome bored me. He put the figure in a landscape as one hangs an ornament on a tree; just a touch of the human surrounded by vast, lush greens. Don’t get me wrong, I love the landscape, but searching around for wee robed women on rocks was not how I thought of nature. Then, I saw Rubens. His canvases were orgies of flesh and gesture. In his The Raising of the Cross, (1610) whirling figures gyrate and dance depicting so much more then a “story.” These paintings spoke of life, and death and sex and love and lust…all the things that make us the confused, wonderful human race. S o why go into this whole comparison? What has Rubens’s fleshy paintings have to do with Poussin at the Met?

The present exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Poussin’s landscapes and drawings from nature is so completely sublime that I think I have been converted. I walked through those galleries as if bathed in holy light and denounced my former allegiance to the decadence of Rubens. Perhaps it is because I am older then I was when I first looked at his work. Perhaps Poussin like most great painting takes a certain amount of time to unfold. It demands a certain degree of patience. For Rubens its right out there, teasing and taunting your visual experience. Poussin, well he makes you work for it. The figures in his landscapes don’t reveal (or expose) themselves too easily and you have to search them out. In the searching you realize you are getting lost in this landscape that may very well be idealized and impossible, but perhaps that is precisely why I loved them so much. Poussin’s landscapes could very well be a social critique and I find it not coincidental that the Metropolitan put this show together now.

We live in a very troubled moment ravaged by war and poverty, international turmoil and political unrest. Walking into this show I was suddenly aware that all those feelings, all those anxieties were slowly melting away. What Poussin presents in these paintings is a choice. The choice is that of something other then the present fleshy, self indulgent status quo. He is presenting a situation that allows you to visually shut up, look explore and wander amongst his landscape. He wants us to loose ourselves not in decadence but in something that is truly unorthodox, truly sublime.

The sublime as would be traditionally understood is a dialectic of pleasure and pain, an

unsurpassable fear and exhilaration that occurs when we are so close to the edge of terror, but just out of reach of harm. As humans we thrive on these moments because they offer a certain degree of clarity. The Sublime reminds us how small we really are, and it puts us in a moment where we are snapped out of our everyday understanding of self and surrounding. Poussin reminds us too, he puts the figure in the landscape as a small insignificant note. We exist in his landscapes as children running from a storm or confronting the unwavering power of nature. But there is also play and mirth and moments of quite that allow us to slow down, investigate and remove ourselves from our everyday.

This is not to say that Poussin is only depicting the glory and quite of nature. In some of his canvases he approaches subjects as taboo and shocking as Rubens does. In Venus (or a nymph) spied on by Satyrs, a scene of pure sexual decadence is shown to us. The character of Venus is depicted as a reclining, voluptuous nude. She lies back with one hand delicately placed between her legs, a look of ecstasy or post coital bliss on her face. She is presently masturbating or has possibly just finished as a Satyr pulls away a cloth that is covering her. The other Satyr looks on from behind a tree; his expression is both surprise and delight as his left arm reaches down to possibly pleasure himself. Poussin is taking major risks with a painting like this disguising immoral human tendency through myth and landscape painting.

Poussin and Nature is a gem of a show and I suggest taking an entire day to slowly work through each room. Spend the most of your time on the galleries of drawings which were done on trips into the country side, most of all in brown ink and brush on paper. These little discoveries gave me the most joy. His subtly of mark and ability to capture his soundings forced me to take that extra time to really look at these drawings. Poussin’s message is entirely that; an arena to slow down. This show forces us to take a moment out of the everyday and enter a world where we are small, and the grandeur of nature is encompassing, frightening and sublime.