VANISHING POINT

February 18 — April 15, 2016

TO AUTUMN.

1.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For summer has o’er

-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats

1795 - 1821

GODS AND MONSTERS FROLICKING UNDER THE TREES in their bountiful Edens; the utopian landscape has been a subject of art since the ancient Greeks. In Western art, the landscape has occupied the greater or lesser part of the background of a depiction, yet the focus was always on the figure (ourselves). By the end of the 15th century, through the work of Giorgione and Titian, landscape was increasingly integrated into painting. Still, it remained the setting for human or supernatural activity. It was the Dutch who did away with the human presence in landscape art and made it the sole subject of a painting. As styles of landscapes evolved they were elevated from the lower position in the hierarchy of genres (just above that of animal and still life painting) to that of high art by the inclusion of historical, classical or religious subjects. Painting that was the product of the artist’s imagination commanded the greatest attention from the public and the academies. For example, Claude Lorrain (1600-1682) would ennoble his landscapes with the fanciful addition of historical or mythological figures to serve the expectations of high art.

The 19th century saw the concept of the pure landscape take hold fully. In Europe, the Romantic school found inspiration in wildness and with atmospheric effects. The Hudson River School following the European Romantics, tried to depict the hugeness and grandeur of the new America as the country began expanding its political power. Then the Impressionists pulled it back in and began looking at how fleeting light affected the moment. From Impressionism onward, art and the landscape became evermore conceptual.

ABOVE: In 1859,The Heart of the Andes by Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900) captivated audiences when it was exhibited for the first time in New York City. Over 12,000 people paid twenty-five cents each to view the five feet high, almost ten feet wide painting that established Church as the preeminent landscape painter in the US.

With Vanishing Point, Art House Gallery is looking at the ways contemporary artists are portraying the landscape now. The natural environment has lost none of its draw to artists, but unlike in past eras, there is no dominant school to dictate the approach an artist should take.

Gillian Wainwright brings us back to the 19th century with her referencing of Impressionism in “Orange Streak”. The dominance of the brush stroke and the reliance on color and light retain the immediacy of the fleeting moment. Michael Ensminger also gives us an impression of the landscape, but with a more conceptual view. His “Early Morning Drift” is both a comment on environmentalism through the reuse of a paper bag as the support of the work, while the texture and form of the embroidery references drifting snow as it falls and accumulates.

Casey Inch with “Ravine” and M. Benjamin Herndon with “Untitled” are both commenting on overpopulation and urban sprawl as they contribute to the disappearance of wilderness. Inch, by whitening out the landscape painting, declares that the 19th century Romantic ideal of the grand wilderness of the expanding country has reached a crisis of depletion and encroachment. As we strive to reuse and recycle, still we continue to expand and overpopulate. Herndon sees his print as a meditation on harmonizing these dichotomies of human existence in nature.

Michael Dal Cerro’s, “The Provisional City” and Sarah Nicole Phillips’, “Office Solution” both make comments on the urbanization of the landscape. Dal Cerro sees the man-made environment as an Escherian maze of towers and tunnels that threatens to consume the globe until the only way left is up, while Phillips envisions the time when our sterile, cubicle dominated workspaces revert back to the wilderness we are only just holding back.

Sara Sutro and Elin Noble both take a more Zen, abstract approach to nature. Sutro’s “Landscape Composite” celebrates the changing color of the land/sky horizon at dawn or dusk. Noble’s work in silk, “Danube 3”, is a meditation on the fluidity and movement of water.

Both Anthony Santella and Robert Lach have narrowed their focus away from the expansive view of nature and concentrated on the microcosm. Lach takes his forms from an insect’s architectural design, and also incorporates materials from the landscape with “Nest Colony II”. Santella has enshrined in his Wardian case a bit of the earth itself creating his own tiny, mobile landscape that seems set to scurry off to find new ground.

Amber Heaton sets her sights on our place in the universe with her works “All the Sunlight” and “All the Moonlight”, where she tracks the changes in the placement of the sun and moon from her spot in Brooklyn. These drawings map our place as the earth travels through space with its constant companions, the life-giving sun and the tide-making moon.

We only have one earth, and we may be alone with our life in the universe. Vanishing Point is part of that constant awareness that we must cherish the uniqueness of that life and the natural beauty that surrounds us on our planet. There is no other.

Arthur Bruso & Raymond E. Mingst

curators

THE ARTISTS: 

Nicole Antebi, Lasse Antonsen, Nancy Cohen, Ian Costello, Michael Dal Cerro, Michael Ensminger, Amber Heaton, M. Benjamin Herndon, Casey Inch, Tom Koken, Ellen Kozak, Sahar Kubba, 

Robert Lach, Dominic Montuori, Elin Noble, Gilda Pervin, Sarah Nicole Phillips, Anthony Santella, Robin Sherin, Sarah Sutro, Gillian Wainwright, Debra Weisberg

Vanishing Point was presented through Art House Productions.

Museum

Museum: 12.75”w x 8.5”h x 6.5”d - plaster, paper, cotton velvet, tile, 

grout, glass, steel wire, archival mat board, acrylic paint, wood

My great-grand-mother’s Italy was of the 19th century, a newly unified country, still dominated by the padrone and village farming communities. The many stories she told were of impossible love with the padron’s son, love settled for with the man who saw her in church, and the meddling mother-inlaw who blamed her for taking her daughter’s dowry. She never spoke of large cities like Rome. And although she proudly claimed herself as coming from Naples, she was meaning the commune of Naples, not the city. The city of Naples was merely the port where she boarded the ship that brought her to America. As a child, the Italy I experienced through the stories of my great-grandmother seemed quaint, old-fashioned, and set in a land of rural exoticism.

In art school I learned of another Italy, an Italy that was the center of art history. Most of the treasures of the Western World seemed located there, something my Nonni never mentioned. By the time I was college age, my great-grandmother had died, so I was unable to ask her about the great art of her home country. Since she never really travelled far from her village, she probably wouldn’t have known about any of it anyway, so this Italy of art, architecture and ancient history, was a new place to me. While the romance of my family history had me dreaming of an Italy long ago and far away, the Italy of art had kindled a longing to travel and to see the treasures I was learning about.

It took a long time for me to get to Rome as other life events had intervened. My mother and sister went before me and returned with eyes full of marvelous things, insisting I had to go. My cousin, a Roman Catholic priest travelled there frequently and planned a trip with me that somehow never happened. It wasn’t until after college, graduate school and a move to New York City that I began to explore the wider world. Rome was the first place I went.

I wasn’t prepared for Rome to be like going home - the people looked like my family and they acted like my family. There was something in the architecture that I resonated to as well. Was it the form, the materials or the age? The aura of Rome felt comforting and familiar, like Friday pastina when the weather begins to turn cold. I didn’t have enough senses to take it all in. There was mystery and magic in every shadow. And, just like my mother’s wide-eyed description, art was everywhere.

For an artist, Rome is an immersive saturation of the visual. Every piazza, every street has something to delight the eye. Art and history take on a nearly casual role, it melds into everyday life. In the US, art is precious and expensive. It is closed in silent white box galleries, or idolized in high stepped museums. In Rome, art is part of life. While there are many museums, art also lives in churches, and adorns the piazzas. In the Vatican Museums, I passed through room after room of classical sculpture. One room was devoted to ancient statuary of animals;every inch of the room was filled with them, each on top of the other. So on through the other galleries, everywhere these precious objects were placed behind, above, on top of other objects, or left in dusty corners. It was this casual treatment of what I had come to revere as precious that informed my piece “Museum.” It is how I saw the manifestation of the European interaction with art. Art is something that lives with you. It is to be appreciated and studied, but it is not something to grovel under. In Italy, history and art are long. These hundreds of years of of human activity, inures the soul of those born with it.

I wanted to stay and live in Rome. From my family and upbringing, I innately understood the culture. But, it was the art, architecture and history that I wanted to keep near me. To be able to pass, as a casual, familiar friend, the Pantheon or a Bernini fountain, would be sublime.

Arthur Bruso

Museum was part of the exhibition, “Sanctus” at Curious Matter, Sept 27 - Nov 15, 2015

Sanctus

OPENING RECEPTION, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2015, 3 TO 6PM

SEPTEMBER 27 – NOVEMBER 20, 2015

Christian Brown
Two Hands of God, 2013
Oak and copper, approximately 24 X 8 inches

SINCE PREHISTORY, humans have been impressed by skill, prowess, and by those individuals believed to have magical abilities. There was the hope that these attributes might be transferred or preserved in some way after death. It came to be believed that the essence of a person was still present in their physical remains post mortem and that essence could also be transferred to the objects associated with the person. Relics are the physical remains or the objects associated with a person who was deemed special in some way. These elevated items were treasured for the power with which they were imbued and for their ability to transfer that power to the living.

Many cultures venerate relics. Some, like the ancient Greeks, used them for incentives or inspiration. The armor of a fallen hero would be displayed to encourage heroism in living soldiers. Buddhist relics exist to show proof that enlightenment is possible. Other cultures ascribe great power to relics which is manifest though the alleged way the objects affect those who come into contact with them. The Mayans believed that to wear the skin of a jaguar gave one the attributes of the animal. The prehistoric people of Jericho, believed that to recreate the features of dead ancestors on their dry skulls was to manifest the dead back as a protectorate of the family. In many European cultures with strong Catholic beliefs, the parts of deceased individuals who were believed to be especially beloved by God were honored as tools through which the will of God could be channeled to achieve the miraculous. It is important to understand this distinction by the Catholic Church. The relics have no special power in themselves, lest there be a belief in Paganism. Instead, the relics are a way to focus the omnipotence of God and allow His power to manifest in the supplicants’ life.

M. Benjamin Herndon
Scholar’s Rock, No. 1, 2014
Found carburetor; paper and wood tabletop, metal base; six photolithographs on Japanese paper inset in table. Table: 40 X 16 X 19 inches; carburetor: 6 X 8 X 6 inches

With Sanctus, Curious Matter is delving into the freighted waters of the relic and reliquary. The container for holy relics can be as simple as a rock slab pedestal, such as that which displays the bear skull at Chauvet Cave. This simple gesture sets the object apart from the world and notifies the viewer that this is something extraordinary. The container for the relic may also be elaborate and precious, designed to illustrate the glory of heaven to the faithful, as those found in countless churches. The relic can be anything that is perceived to have some special power. The object can be anything, but it needs to be venerated and it needs to have either folk proof of its magical power, or historical value to promote heroism, or patriotism in the viewer.

Lauren Jo
Memento Mori: A Bone To Pick
(White and Gold Incisor, Canine, and Molar sets), 2015
Found crayons, wood, foam, 3 X 4 X .5 inches

Christian Brown’s Two Hands of God, is an example of an object of worship. His ax-like sculpture recalls the ceremonial tools of the shaman to fight evil spirits and protect the tribe from the pestilence of the surrounding mortal world. Like the sécespita[1] of ancient Rome or the athame[2] of the modern Wiccan, it has the appearance of a ritual object whose use may be for blood letting or as a metaphor for the channeling of the energy of the thrust or cut.

M. Benjamin Herndon’sScholar’s Rock, No.1 takes an object, in this case a carburetor, and elevates it from its utilitarian purpose into an aesthetic meditation. As the Chinese scholar’s rocks that it is named after, once the object is placed in its vaunted position, it is up to the viewer through meditation on the form, to bring meaning and value to the piece. Like its oriental counterpart, Herndon has created works on paper as a paean to the object, which increase its preciousness and worth as an art object. Gilbert Hsiao’s Composition with Three Records, is another object of meditation. Here, the artist has utilized the form of the mandala as the meditative focus. The mandala is the gateway into the spiritual realm for the seeker. Hsiao has created his entrance to this realm as a circle within a circle; a tunnel to infinity. It has the additional secret potential of being a kinetic work. It can be placed on a turntable and spun to achieve a hypnotic state in the viewer.

Linda Tharp
Sacré Coeur, 2015
Acrylic on wood, 9 X 5 inches

In the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there is a gilded reliquary that contains a tooth purported to be from Mary Magdalene. Whether or not this tooth is in fact from the Magdalene’s mouth can only be guessed or left for the faithful to assert. It is however a true Catholic relic of the first order in an elaborate display from the 14th century. Lauren Jo is channeling the anonymous goldsmith of the Magdalene reliquary with her Memento Mori: A Bone to Pick. Like Egaeus displaying his odontophobia in Poe’s “Berenice”, we are fascinated and yet repelled by Jo’s depiction of the teeth, which she has presented as more fitting as a curiosity, than the Metropolitan’s hallowed tooth. In this same macabre direction of human relics, are Cristin Millett and Linda Tharp. As does Lauren Jo, Millett’s Sever: Agatha’s Offering incorporates a body part, in this case, the breast. St. Agatha was an early Christian martyr of Rome, who at 15 years of age dedicated her virginity to Christ. When she refused the advances of a Roman prefect, he sent her first to a brothel, where she maintained her purity. The madam of the brothel, perceiving her uselessness for her purpose, returned her to the prefect. The prefect, incensed with Agatha’s fortitude, then imprisoned her and began a series of tortures, the most frequently referenced being the severing of her breasts with pincers. Millett depicts this act of Agatha’s travails by placing the breast and a pomegranate on a gilded tray, perhaps with Agatha’s own hands. Both items are potent symbols of the arduous journey of the spiritual.

Linda Tharp’s Sacré Coeur, brings to mind the Shroud of Turin or Veronica’s Veil as a cloth stained with holy blood. It also brings to mind Laura Keen’s dress stained with the blood of Lincoln or the pink suit of Jacqueline Kennedy, marred with the blood of John Kennedy. The red stain is powerful as an invocation of violence and death. Blood is the life force, the vital liquid that keeps us alive. The color red brings that image into focus and reminds us of its preciousness.

Sanctus brings together artists who, regardless of their creeds, venerate the object. We can look upon these works and understand their preciousness and their need to be separated from the everyday world and placed apart. In each it brings us closer to that indefinable humanness of art making.

CURIOUS MATTER

[1] a ceremonial knife from Ancient Rome used for live sacrifice [2] a ceremonial knife in Wiccan practice used primarily by women

Sanctus catalog

THE ARTISTS

Tal Barel
Christian Brown
Arthur Bruso
Michael Dassle
Larry Dell
M. Benjamin Herndon
Aimee Hertog
Gilbert Hsiao
Lauren Jo
Guillaume Légaré
Ross Bennett Lewis
Marianne McCarthy
Cristin Millett
Raymond E. Mingst
Steven Paneccasio
Ari Richter
Anthony Santella
Robert Schatz
Linda Tharp
Tenesh Webber

Eridanus Supervoid

This was my piece that was included in the Terra Incognita exhibition at Curious Matter.

Eridanus Supervoid:
8 3/4 “w x 6” h x 3 1/4” d
paper, rubber, glass, steel wire, archival mat board , acrylic paint, wood

Eridanus Supervoid

During the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy rearranged the skies. He plotted and named many new constellations from stars that were ignored or unseen by the ancients. One such constellation that Ptolemy observed and named was Eridanus.

Eridanus is a meandering line of stars beginning at Orion and winding past Cetus in the southern hemisphere. It is best seen in the winter. Its name transliterates from the Greek as “early burnt,” or “early river.” It is most associated with the myth of Phaeton (the Shining One), the son of Helios. The boy had pleaded with his father to allow him to drive the chariot of the sun. With trepidation Helios relented and the father’s fears proved true. Phaeton was unable to control the solar horses. The team veered wildly from their arced course; sometimes so close to the Earth that it became scorched, sometimes so far away that the land froze. To save mankind from destruction, Zeus hurled a bolt of lightening at the hapless boy and shot Phaeton from the sky. The body of the youth landed in the Eridanus River. There have been many attempts to determine which river is meant by the Eridanus, with the Po in northern Italy as a main contender. However, Eridanus is a river of myth and its location resides in the stories of our past. 

In 2007, modern astronomers began mapping the cosmic microwave background radiation, which is residual energy remaining from the Big Bang. In the direction of the Eridanus constellation was found a huge area, of 50 million to one billion light years across that was significantly cooler than the surrounding area. Immediately, theories abounded about what could be causing this anomaly. One particular theory that had the scientific community excited was that it represented a place where our universe was in contact (or had been in contact) with another parallel universe. Further investigation and research has led astronomers to believe that instead of being an exotic place of two universes touching, the cold spot in question was a massive supervoid in space. That is, a place in the distribution of intergalactic material where there is no matter – not even dark matter. 

On Earth we cannot point to the river that caught the doomed Phaeton. Yet, an immense hole in the fabric of space lies where it is told that Phaeton was knocked out of the sky by the might of Zeus. The Phaeton myth can be interpreted as an ancient explanation for a meteor that exploded before impact with the ground, but an actual hole in space brings new meaning to the story. There are many voids in the universe, each attributable to the uneven distribution of the stars in the universe as determined by the laws of physics. But, once in a while natural forces will interact with supernatural forces to form a new reality. Perhaps this void is a remnant not of a place not yet filled with star matter, but a place where the hands of the gods show their power.

Mystic

Mystic

  5 -1/4”w x 8”h x 3 -3/16” - 

plastic, porcelain, murcury glass, archival board, steel wire, copper wire, wood, acrylic paint, glass

My sister Tracey and I were cruising down a dark, rural road. Tracey was driving. I had been in bad way after some major life disasters and she thought going to a psychic would be a fun diversion for a Halloween night. All I could see was blackness outside the car window. Occasionally, a pool of light illuminated a front doorway, renting the dark comfort I had wrapped myself in.

Angela was going to read our cards. She was the mother of a woman my sister worked with. Tracey had set it up and I was going along, because when you begin to believe that there is no future, you become desperate to prove that belief isn’t true. We pulled into the driveway of a low-roofed house. It was an unremarkable ranch. Behind it, a zeppelin-shaped trailer glowed in a silvery porch light. The metallic light and the odd trailer gave the unassuming house and eerie aspect. I had a feeling that I was leaving the familiar world behind. Inside, Angela sat at a long kitchen table. She looked remarkably like Zelda Rubinstein in the movie Poltergeist. Her hair was dyed a bright red. Her hands were covered in jewels. Why do psychics and fortune tellers adorn themselves so copiously? Is it to distract the seeker from their legerdemain, or is it a holdover from a nomadic people who put their wealth into portable assets? Angela’s ornamentation seemed to me less an attempt at gypsy costume and more a hopeful suggestion of wealth. Still, the diamond lights from her fingers danced around her as she moved her hands in rhythm to her talking, adding a sparkling aura that surrounded her; the star in the room.

As we took our places around the kitchen table, I noticed darkened doorways to other rooms offering vague possibilities. Angela reigned under the circle of light radiating from the lamp overhead. Before her was a deck of cards printed with “Gypsy Witch” in Halloween black and orange. Angela explained her process: she would lay out the cards and interpret their meaning. Occasionally a word, phrase, or name would cross her mind and she would shout it out. “They mean nothing to me, but they might mean something to you,” she instructed.

The reading began. In an ever expanding fan shape, she placed out the cards. They were ostensibly a normal deck with the standard trumps. What made them curious was the addition of illustrations of objects limned in an antique engraving style, complete with mock hand coloring. The images told their story: a house, a hearth, a dog - symbols of domesticity; an anchor, a key - symbols of luck. Mountains covered in clouds, “you will have problems,” she intoned absently. Her voice was a sing-song chant of information about the present and the future. Punctuating the placing of the cards, Angela blurted out names: “Agnes, Laura, Skip; do these mean anything to you?” “I don’t know where they come from; I just tell you what I hear.” Then suddenly, “Who’s Busty!?” shot through the thickening atmosphere. The incongruity of the question broke the heaviness of the moment and my sister and I tried to suppress our chuckling. “I just tell you what comes, I don’t know what they mean” she reminded us again, her face began jiggling with laughter. This gave us permission and we all gave in to the levity. We didn’t know anyone named Busty.

My attention had been on the curious cards and the baroque hands of Angela. Gradually, I became aware of the other kitchen chairs quietly becoming occupied. One by one, women, frail and cadaverous, unsteady in their shuffling, materialized out of the shadowed doorways. They drifted to the table, grasping the backs of the chairs with skeletal hands and joined the reading. It seemed that Angela rented rooms to the elderly in the final stage of their lives. These were her tenants, and the reading was as good an evening’s entertainment as any.

I don’t remember if that Halloween reading held any truths for me, or if the future it predicted actually happened. What I remember is the theatrical character of Angela, her good natured humor about her “gift,” and the near ghosts manifesting throughout the room. 

There are many methods that have been devised in our attempts to divine the future. Angela used cards (cartomacy), while Mystic depicts catoptromancy - the use of a mirror. Mirror scrying is akin to crystal gazing, or the use of any reflective surface to obtain images that are usually interpreted as portents of the future. It is up to the seer to make sense of the images that manifest. The seer is the mystic who is supposed to possess the sensitivity to access beyond the present and gain impressions or knowledge of other timelines. The mirror may only be a point of concentration to open an intuitive connection. It may not be magical in itself.

I would see Angela twice more, not because she had been particularly accurate, or because she offered amazing insight. Instead I felt a comfort, as if someone were attending to my particular problems. Angela was the conduit of hope for my lost sense of purpose. Somehow through the cards, her words, and the theater of those evenings, she made my journey to the future possible. Eventually, my interest in the cards led me to learn how to read them myself. They would become a path away from the blackness I had wrapped myself in. 

Mystic was part of the exhibition, “A Time in Arcadia” at Curious Matter, May 19 - June 23, 2013

The Fool's Journey

I participated in this exhibition at Curious Matter.

APRIL 1, 2012 – MAY 20, 2012
AT CURIOUS MATTER

APRIL 14 – JULY 1, 2012
AT PROTEUS GOWANUS

The Fool’s Journey is a collaboration between Curious Matter in Jersey City, NJ and Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn, NY. The exhibition will be presented in two parts concurrently at Curious Matter and Proteus Gowanus. The exhibition is a complement to the yearlong, multi-disciplinary inquiry hosted by Proteus Gowanus on the theme of Migration and will be exhibited in parallel to its Future Migration show, exploring where we may end up as we embark into the future.

. 

“Every voyage is a journey…. who knows/if the old men/who shine shoes on the Staten Island Ferry/carry their world in a box slung across their shoulders/if they share their lunch/with birds/flying back and forth/upon an endless journey/if they ever find their way/back home.”

Audre Lorde, excerpt from “A Trip on the Staten Island Ferry”

The Fool’s Journey

And so we begin…

THE MOST COURAGEOUS PART of any undertaking is always the beginning. Making the difficult decision to begin pushes aside the doubts and fears of what may lie ahead and calms the expectation of failure. This energy of beginning is the Fool who sets out into an unknown to discover whatever he may find. In the tarot, the Fool is represented by the numeral 0: nothing, emptiness, void. The fool is a blank slate without knowledge, an acolyte who is seeking. He starts out penniless and ragged, carrying all of his meager possessions with him; a young man, just leaving home to make his way in the world. He is a naïf full of dreams, willing to let the Universe show him the way.

Read more at Curious Matter

I was proud to be included with the following artists:

Curious Matter

Lasse Antonsen
Arthur Bruso
Elaine Su-Hui Chew
Travis Childers
Clair Chinnery
Brian Edgerton
Peter H. Everett
Mustafa Faruki
Laura F. Gibellini
Tom Hollenback
Cat Jensen
Matthew Jensen
Charles Printz Kopelson
Ross Bennett Lewis
Marianne McCarthy
Raymond E. Mingst
Alex Nathanson
Gilda Pervin
Ari Richter
Dave Rittinger
Roger Sayre
Garric Simonsen
Claire Watson
Ellen Wiener
Sasha Zhitneva

PROTEUS GOWANUS

Fanny Allié
Lasse Antonsen
Louise Barry
Angela S. Beallor
Joseph Cavalieri
Gail Goldsmith
Ian Addison Hall
Joe Lugara
Marianne McCarthy
Anatoli Savov Monov
R. Wayne Parsons
Sarah G. Sharp
Melissa A. Stern
Claire Watson
Katarina Wong

Dividing Light Measuring Darkness

I am participating in this group exhibition at Curious Matter:

And of a sudden he is off again on his wanderings, passing from light to shadow, from shadow to light, unheedingly. –Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

"Photons first appeared ten seconds after the Big Bang, signaling the first light. In the Judeo-Christian tradition God separated light from darkness on the first day of Creation. In Greek Mythology Nyx (night) with her consort Erebos (darkness) gave birth to Hemera (day). In all of these systems, from ancient myth to modern science, light comes out of darkness. Light and darkness are separate entities, but dependent upon one another. With “Dividing Light Measuring Darkness,” Curious Matter explores our diverse human responses to the benign physical properties of light and darkness."


To read the rest of the essay, go to Curious Matter. The exhibition runs from October 1 to November 6, 2011 with the following artists:

Arthur Bruso
Joseph Cavalieri
Ken Collins
Jaclyn Conley
Brian Edgerton
Peter Emerick
Jennifer Ewald
Daniel John Gadd
Tom Hollenback
Erin Rachel Hudak
Patti Jordan
Hannah Kirkpatrick
Tom Koken
Heidi Lau
Ross Bennett Lewis
Abraham McNally
Raymond E. Mingst
Alexandra Momin
David Moreira
Kym O’Donnell
Joey Parlett
Robert Schatz
Hyun-Joon Yoon

Of Water

Of Water: book: 8¾ ” h. x 6½” w., 36 pages; jar: 3½” d. 4¼ ” h.: 

watercolor on paper, linen, archival board, cotton thread, wheat paste, glass, shells, turquoise

You had to climb wide marble steps and go through the huge and ornate bronze doors of The New York State Education Building in Albany, New York to get to the New York State Museum. Here was truly a temple of learning in the Greek style, with its block long, monumental colonnade. Its very architecture emanated grandeur. Walking through the entrance made you feel important things were to come. A brass, cage elevator took you to the floor where the museum was located. The elevator operator was quiet and knew that the public was allowed only into the fifth floor museum. My young self imagined there were other fantastic mysteries housed on the other floors. When the elevator stopped and the squeaky door was pulled open, it took a second or two for your eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. You heard the sound of trickling water first, then you looked upon a full fledged recreation of a prehistoric forest. Giant club mosses the size of trees perched upon rocky ledges appeared to stretch into a humid distance. Strewn among this vision of Paradise were the fossilized stumps and logs of actual prehistoric trees. The adventure had begun; you were now in another world. 

It was in museums that I learned about collections. They were in oak framed cases with glass windows isolating their contents away from the chaotic world. Everything was labeled and had some sort of explanatory text, which gave name and context to the objects on display. Even the most mundane rocks were elevated to a place of importance. Museums gave everything an aura of worth. Not necessarily a monetary worth, but perhaps a worth of being studied, or a worth of being admired for some unique quality that set the observed apart from its peers. 

Of Water examines the notion of what makes a collection and what makes it have worth. My small gathering of mostly shells is of a common sort. They were collected by me over time from beaches or shops or the cast offs of pets. I had no specific end in my mind, there was just some quality about each object that captured my imagination: a mussel shell had a barnacle attached, the knobby texture of another was a pleasure to handle, or a snail that once spent its hours quietly slithering along the glass of my aquarium left behind an empty shell without an explanation of its inhabitant’s whereabouts. The accompanying book documents and finds the Latin name of each animal (except the stone, for which I give the chemical formula), giving each an identity and placing them among phyla of all the creatures on earth. From their small glass jar, they are ennobled and immortalized with a portrait; rendering them special among all of the other fish of the sea. 

The contents of this installation are all related by the theme of water. Even Turquoise was once considered a solid form of water and has water molecules as a component of its formula. As such, they come under the dominion of Triton, who heralds the opening of the book on the title page. Triton’s name means “of the third” which refers to his father Poseidon. The third lot of water fell to Poseidon when, with his brothers Zeus and Hades, they divided the ruling of the world among themselves. Zeus claimed the heavens, and Hades fate sent him to rule the underworld. The third lot gave Poseidon complete kingship over all of the waters of the earth. Thus, Poseidon’s son, Triton, he born of water, blows his shell trumpet to proclaim the strength and majesty of the sea. 

Museums offer an imposing entrance to other worlds. Whether a window to a prehistoric forest, a doorway into our human past or a peephole into the workings of the universe, they guide us to seeing and understanding what surrounds us. Perhaps this why we collect, to ponder the great mysteries in all things; of Gods and how their great forces act upon the world and of creatures, now in a jar whose curious, hidden lives lived in secret add up to Life.

Of Water was part of the exhibition Naming the Animals at 

Curious Matter and Proteus Gowanus, April 3 - July 17, 2011