At Ambach & Rice: Seattle's Gang of Four
Hiking along the Nooksack River in the Cascade Range around Mount Baker, Claude Zervas began to focus on campsites filled with burnt evidence of previous habitation.
One he carried home in his truck, rocks and all. Besides the usual shotgun shells, it contained the charred remains of an upholstered chair. Who burns a chair in a forest? Somebody too drunk to forage, too wet to plow.
Most of the camps Zervas saw were well made, dug deep and surrounded by rocks, but scattered like chickenpox scars on a lovely face, their careful construction could suggest that human damage can be contained in a pit, and that scars don't affect the whole.
Claude Zervas, Black Hole, 2009
What is constructed, found and constructed again is the theme of From Whence The Rainbow Came at Ambach & Rice, featuring four of the Northwest's top artists: Zervas, Joseph Park, Dan Webb and Jeffry Mitchell. It's the best group show in a Seattle gallery in years, proposed and shaped by the artists themselves.
One he carried home in his truck, rocks and all. Besides the usual shotgun shells, it contained the charred remains of an upholstered chair. Who burns a chair in a forest? Somebody too drunk to forage, too wet to plow.
Most of the camps Zervas saw were well made, dug deep and surrounded by rocks, but scattered like chickenpox scars on a lovely face, their careful construction could suggest that human damage can be contained in a pit, and that scars don't affect the whole.
Claude Zervas, Black Hole, 2009
What is constructed, found and constructed again is the theme of From Whence The Rainbow Came at Ambach & Rice, featuring four of the Northwest's top artists: Zervas, Joseph Park, Dan Webb and Jeffry Mitchell. It's the best group show in a Seattle gallery in years, proposed and shaped by the artists themselves.
Zervas is an urban man whose heart is in what's left of Northwest wilds.
Log and Beam, 2009. Made of paper, it wears the bark of a tree like a ball and chain, the real dragging down the illusion of the faked.
Veneer Sculpture, 2009
Leo Saul Berk should have been included in From Whence The Rainbow Came, not just because the group is really a gang of five but because Berk's elaborations are important to the theme.
Leo Saul Berk, Ribbon, a peeled tree from 2001:
Zervas' landscapes have roots in the land, but Park's come from bad painting bins at second-hand stores.
Joseph Park, eye of the tiger, oil/panel, 20 x 16 inches
Plenty of artists root through these bins, but Park's engagements are always transformative. In eye of the tiger,
he sanded down heavy brush strokes and painted them over, giving his
surfaces a mute sheen. He stuck with the original's overheated green
but added a half-halo of cracked color shards as a gaudy grace note.
Joseph Park, duck duck, 2009 oil/oil board mounted to panel, 6 x 8 inches.
Park also offers a few paintings that do not derive from amateurs, such as the futurists, 2009, oil/panel, 24 x 30 inches. A John Singer Sargent family portrait gets Park's version of futurist treatment.
I'd like to see Park's new work in an exhibit with mid-career Kenneth Callahan as well as choice samples of white writing from Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, with Susan Skilling, Michael Knutson and Joseph Goldberg.
joining Park in the contemporary moment. White writing was the
Northwest's version of Futurism. Futurism lives, but so does the
Northwest School.
And so does Picasso.
Joseph Park, picasso and bull, 2009, oil/panel, 36 x 24 inches.
Park painted Picasso drawing on glass, which Picasso liked to do to amaze the multitude, example here.
In the early 20th-century battle between Duchamp and Picasso, Duchamp represented mind, and Picasso mind in matter. For a time, Duchamp handed Picasso his hat. By the 1970s, Duchamp dominated art discourse, and Picasso's name rarely came up.
What was true in the 1970s isn't necessarily true now. Starting with artists such as Charles LeDray, whose roots are in the Northwest, makers are back in a big way.
Dan Webb, Fortress, carved cedar, 44 x 48 x 29
Two
small boys crawl into a fort that collapsed into a confessional. Like
many childhood memories, the event is irretrievable. We become who we
are based on who we were, which is lost to us. What we have is a
constructed narrative, which is why Tom Robbins likes to say it's never
too late to have a happy childhood.
Given a chance to roam through museums, kids frequently stop at the Armour.Webb made his suit of Armour in rawhide. It's a giant chew toy, but it's also a kind of skin. Nobody could say this figure wears his nerves on the outside of his body.
Dan Webb, Skin, 2009, rawhide, 72 x 34 x 22.
Back to Picasso. Do you recognize this figure?
It's Jeffry Mitchell's tribute to the Spanish master, and it tops Mitchell's partially painted sculpture titled White Weeds, 2009, made of wood, paper, plaster, string, porcelain, light bulbs, Plexiglas, gouache, pencil and epoxy enamel.
Detail:
Detail:
Log and Beam, 2009. Made of paper, it wears the bark of a tree like a ball and chain, the real dragging down the illusion of the faked.
Veneer Sculpture, 2009
Leo Saul Berk should have been included in From Whence The Rainbow Came, not just because the group is really a gang of five but because Berk's elaborations are important to the theme.
Leo Saul Berk, Ribbon, a peeled tree from 2001:
Zervas' landscapes have roots in the land, but Park's come from bad painting bins at second-hand stores.Joseph Park, eye of the tiger, oil/panel, 20 x 16 inches
Plenty of artists root through these bins, but Park's engagements are always transformative. In eye of the tiger,
he sanded down heavy brush strokes and painted them over, giving his
surfaces a mute sheen. He stuck with the original's overheated green
but added a half-halo of cracked color shards as a gaudy grace note.Joseph Park, duck duck, 2009 oil/oil board mounted to panel, 6 x 8 inches.
Park also offers a few paintings that do not derive from amateurs, such as the futurists, 2009, oil/panel, 24 x 30 inches. A John Singer Sargent family portrait gets Park's version of futurist treatment. I'd like to see Park's new work in an exhibit with mid-career Kenneth Callahan as well as choice samples of white writing from Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, with Susan Skilling, Michael Knutson and Joseph Goldberg.
joining Park in the contemporary moment. White writing was the
Northwest's version of Futurism. Futurism lives, but so does the
Northwest School.And so does Picasso.
Joseph Park, picasso and bull, 2009, oil/panel, 36 x 24 inches.
Park painted Picasso drawing on glass, which Picasso liked to do to amaze the multitude, example here.In the early 20th-century battle between Duchamp and Picasso, Duchamp represented mind, and Picasso mind in matter. For a time, Duchamp handed Picasso his hat. By the 1970s, Duchamp dominated art discourse, and Picasso's name rarely came up.
What was true in the 1970s isn't necessarily true now. Starting with artists such as Charles LeDray, whose roots are in the Northwest, makers are back in a big way.
Dan Webb, Fortress, carved cedar, 44 x 48 x 29
Two
small boys crawl into a fort that collapsed into a confessional. Like
many childhood memories, the event is irretrievable. We become who we
are based on who we were, which is lost to us. What we have is a
constructed narrative, which is why Tom Robbins likes to say it's never
too late to have a happy childhood.Given a chance to roam through museums, kids frequently stop at the Armour.Webb made his suit of Armour in rawhide. It's a giant chew toy, but it's also a kind of skin. Nobody could say this figure wears his nerves on the outside of his body.
Dan Webb, Skin, 2009, rawhide, 72 x 34 x 22.
Back to Picasso. Do you recognize this figure?It's Jeffry Mitchell's tribute to the Spanish master, and it tops Mitchell's partially painted sculpture titled White Weeds, 2009, made of wood, paper, plaster, string, porcelain, light bulbs, Plexiglas, gouache, pencil and epoxy enamel. Detail:Detail:"Write
about your ancestors," Theodore Roethke told a class of aspiring poets.
A student asked if Roethke meant ancestors or influences. "Just answer
the question," he said.
White Weeds is Mitchell's answer. Both fluid and blunt, it's Mitchell's version of Picasso drawing on glass as a means of sharing what he knows. There are tributes to Picasso of course, but also to Giacomo Balla's egg holder, to the idea of whiteness as a whale (white whale, white elephant), to the white fence Tom Sawyer tricked his friends into painting and to valentines made by small hands for loved ones.
The Y's on the sides allude to Yoko Ono's Yes piece and the Beatles I Love You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, which Mitchell has previously made as flags and plates. He also makes pickle jars in porcelain. In White Weeds, there are two real pickle jars in glass with a real light bulb, and paper/porcelain/plaster chains, hands and hearts, the chains suggesting an anchor at the bottom of the black sea, and a gourd for the balls it takes to keep making art across a lifetime.
On the ceiling is another light bulb, the Holy Ghost from the Trinity that Warhol painted as the bird from a Dove Soap bar. Mitchell encloses his light in a Babar-the-Elephant foot, a heavy thing that floats without weight.
Through Oct. 18.
White Weeds is Mitchell's answer. Both fluid and blunt, it's Mitchell's version of Picasso drawing on glass as a means of sharing what he knows. There are tributes to Picasso of course, but also to Giacomo Balla's egg holder, to the idea of whiteness as a whale (white whale, white elephant), to the white fence Tom Sawyer tricked his friends into painting and to valentines made by small hands for loved ones.
The Y's on the sides allude to Yoko Ono's Yes piece and the Beatles I Love You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, which Mitchell has previously made as flags and plates. He also makes pickle jars in porcelain. In White Weeds, there are two real pickle jars in glass with a real light bulb, and paper/porcelain/plaster chains, hands and hearts, the chains suggesting an anchor at the bottom of the black sea, and a gourd for the balls it takes to keep making art across a lifetime.
On the ceiling is another light bulb, the Holy Ghost from the Trinity that Warhol painted as the bird from a Dove Soap bar. Mitchell encloses his light in a Babar-the-Elephant foot, a heavy thing that floats without weight.
Through Oct. 18.
About
Another Bouncing Ball
Regina Hackett ... is the former art critic for the former Seattle P-I. I loved that job every day, but it's gone and I've moved on. As they say in the movies, to infinity and beyond.
more
Contact me Click here to send me an email... more
This blog continues Art To Go, which I wrote as the art critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, beginning at the end of 2007 and continuing through March 15, 2009. ABB is an exploration of art in Seattle that extends outward,
both geographically and by topic, touching on art, politics, literature, dance and whatever it is that the cat drags in. Its title comes from a poem by Delmore Schwartz, The Ballad of the Children of the Czar, specifically, "The ground on which the ball bounces/ Is another bouncing ball."
moreRegina Hackett ... is the former art critic for the former Seattle P-I. I loved that job every day, but it's gone and I've moved on. As they say in the movies, to infinity and beyond.
more
Contact me Click here to send me an email... more
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Laura Collins-Hughes on arts, culture and coverage
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Douglas McLennan's blog
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Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
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For immediate release: the arts are marketable
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No genre is the new genre
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Paul Levy measures the Angles
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Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
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Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude
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Tobi Tobias on dance et al...
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Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
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Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
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Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
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Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
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Martha Bayles on Film...
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Fresh ideas on building arts communities
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Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
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Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
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Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
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Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
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Kyle Gann on music after the fact
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Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
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Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
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Jerome Weeks on Books
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Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera
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Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
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Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
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Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
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John Perreault's art diary
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Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
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Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog
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