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Street art has an image problem. This is of course nothing new. The spirit of renegade vandalism is inherent to the medium, just ask any graffiti artist. Often an integral part of the street artist's palette- right alongside the can of spray paint and a stencil or two - is a concern for tweaking the status quo. Or to put it more bluntly, it helps to have a loose, freethinking state of mind to ponder: "How much can I get away with here?" It is a case of the freedom of artistic license bumping up against the boundaries of civic obedience and property rights laws. The more covert and riskier the work, (skirting the borders of the law especially) then the more street cred is bestowed on the entire undertaking if it's pulled off successfully. This is very important stuff for an art form that occurs outside of the system of art gallery and museum contexts.
Back on May 30th of 2009, Joseph Carnevale, a 22 year old
history major at NC State University, garnered more such urban acceptability
than he probably imagined that day. Earlier
that morning he had an idea for a street sculpture created from ubiquitous
orange and white traffic barrels (numerous around the NCSU campus right now due
to major street construction along Hillsborough Street bordering campus) and as
he put it to the News & Observer newspaper, "it kind of grew in my head, until it was
something I had to do." And do he definitely did. After pilfering a few barrels from a local
construction site, he sawed, snipped, and reassembled them into a startling,
larger than life visage of a 10' tall figure standing alongside the
construction zone and making a gesture with an outstretched 'arm' seen as
either (a) pointing traffic to the adjoining lane to avoid the construction zone or (b) extending a
thumb as if hitchhiking. The "Monster's" moment of streetscape glory was brief however as by
the next morning,
The story has extended beyond that initial Technician piece
and has been reported in the local
I see all of this as a healthy
dialogue for the city. It is well known
that
Related stories
http://www.newraleigh.com/articles/archive/barrel-monster-spotted-on-hillsborough-street/
http://www.technicianonline.com/features/barrel-monster-creates-a-stir-on-campus-1.1759449

Playboy, the magazine, used to say something, because it used to say something about the female body, something that was erotic, not just sexual.
What’s the difference? Erotic, in my mind, is fleeting, ineffable, hard to pin down, tantalizingly elusive, and pleasurable for it. Sexual is fine, but it’s concrete.
The difference between them, you might say, is the difference between faith and knowledge. Playboy these days, as Molly Young rightly describes it in this insightful essay for N1BR, the online book review of the annual n+1 magazine: “Playboy ceases to be about the erotic everyday encounter. Flesh and blood women turn to images; the “girl next door” becomes distinctly mediated.”
The bunnies were always mediated, of course, but something about the earlier photographs made you forget the medium and feel as though you were staring straight into the eyes of a luscious partner. Enthusiastic photoshopping has aided the transformation. Gone are the freckles and downy arm hairs of the predecessors. Breasts are surgically standardized; gym routines and spray tans produce identically toned and tinted bodies. Girls of all ethnicities blend together into one latte-colored woman, and the result looks computer-generated. When you try to imagine how the models might feel and smell, things like rubber come to mind.
I happened to read Young’s piece before interviewing Ed Coyle, a photographer of black-and-white nudes here in Charleston who loves women the way Hugh Hefner loves women. The difference is that Coyle’s nudes do not blend together into “one latte-colored woman.” Coyle’s nudes are of course mediated through his lens and his eye, but they are not blurred into a composite ideal of sensual femininity.
Instead, he seeks out what makes an individual women distinct (most of them in their 30s and 40s, many of them having borne children) and therefore what makes her beautiful. Beauty is in the freckles and curves and appearance of comfort. It was charming to discuss the craft of man so clearly enamored of women, especially older women, he says, who “get it,” but also so clearly in love with the discovery of their beauty.
One of the biggest cultural happenings is the opening of a new George Segal exhibition at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA). The show, organized by MMoCA, heads to Dallas, Kansas City, Mo., and West Palm Beach, Fla., after its run here ends in December. The show represents quite a coup for MMoCA in that a cast of "Depression Bread Line," which Segal did for the FDR Memorial in Washington, will head back to Madison and join the museum's permanent collection after the show is over. For preview coverage, see Isthmus, 77 Square or the Wisconsin State Journal. My review will appear in Isthmus later this week. I've been told the show will also be covered by the Wall Street Journal and Art in America, but I'm not sure when those articles will appear.
Madison's only professional theater company, Madison Repertory Theatre, opens its season this week with Becky Mode's "Fully Committed." The Chicago actress Amy J. Carle, who has performed with Madison Rep before, stars. I'm looking forward to seeing her again, since she was one of the best things about Madison Rep's production of "The Diary of Anne Frank" this past January. "Fully Committed" looks like fluffy fun, but we'll see.
This 40th anniversary year is an important one for Madison Rep. Former artistic director Richard Corley's contract was not renewed near the end of last season. While it sounds as though he and the board made a mutual decision to part ways, I can't help but wonder--and this is my own personal musing here--if he was blamed for not getting enough butts in seats. Which begs the question, who really is getting enough audience members in these tough economic times? And how will Madison Rep's direction change under its interim artistic director? The season's choices seem pretty safe (including well-known fare like "Bus Stop," "True West" and "My Fair Lady"), but of course the proof will be in the pudding.
Under Corley's tenure, I saw a few shows that I'd file in my "all-time most memorable" category, such as "I Am My Own Wife" starring David Adkins and "Permanent Collection" with a more local cast, including UW-Madison professor Patrick Sims.
About 45 minutes west of Madison in Spring Green, classical repertory theater American Players Theatre is winding down its season. I had a chance to catch a Sunday evening show of George Bernard Shaw's "Widowers' Houses," which didn't knock my socks off but was still enjoyable (as far as Shaw goes, I preferred APT's production of "Misalliance" two summers ago). APT is an outdoor theater in the woods and, when the weather cooperates, it's fabulous. Other times, it's, um, challenging--as it was Sunday. Light rain started almost as soon as the show did and got heavier throughout the play. Luckily, I had a tacky-but-useful plastic poncho so the rain didn't faze me too much, but it did halt the show temporarily at one point. That, coupled with two intermissions, broke up the flow of the play, but there was a sort of camaraderie between the audience members who stuck it out and the actors. In its own weird way, it was a fitting and fun end-of-summer experience--rain, swooping bats and all.
The famed glass artist gave a talk and presentation recently at Google’s speakers series in California. Chihuly is widely recognized for his distinct work. His Gardens of Glass series has been exhibited in municipal botanical gardens throughout the country. The Columbia Museum of Art will open a new exhibit of Chihuly’s works called Seaforms, showcasing about 35 works and preliminary sketches of shells within shells, and other forms inspired by the ocean, which he worked on over a 14-year period. That show begins Sept. 5.
On Tuesday, I mused a bit about how scientists have a lot to say about the arts, but artists don’t seem to have much to say about science. I still believe that’s true, but that’s certainly not a categorical statement, as I concede from the beginning. That said, there is a growing field of artists examining the possibilities of what’s being called “biotech art” or “bioart.” I’m not convinced we know what that actually means yet, but it has to do with this notion of cross-pollination that I talked about. From what I can tell from a quick tour around the internet, this movement is small but based on what I’ve seen, it’s really stunning — and disturbing. A good place to start is a report by Slate that ran this time last year. It’s a slideshow of some of these “bioartists.” The above image is by Adam Brandej. His website, called Genpets.com, is scathing and captivating parody of biotechnology.
Matt Lively - Recent Works at
Raleigh NC March 28 -

Turgid Type, oil on paper, 30"x40" (all images courtesy of Adam Cave Fine Art)
Matt Lively creates paintings that
live up to his surname. His works are
never dull but instead are about the fanciful flights of everyday objects that
foray off in unexpected directions. The
The paintings share much with the fundamentals of still life painting in that the main subject matter consists of carefully composed objects, attentively painted, within a supporting background. Yet in Lively's paintings these objects are always strongly metaphorical and seem to be stand-ins for the missing occupants of these spaces. This in turn gives rise to all sorts of associations that your mind begins to draw. Has the occupant of the room just left for a second and we're catching the precise moment when they are absent? Or are they ever really coming back? Why are their belongings blowing all around in the drafty breeze like that? Who really owns that many chairs and how can their house have so many little rooms?
Indeed for all the tendency of your
mind to have a traditional Westerner's point of view (i.e. focusing on the
objects rather than the space around them) it is a more intangible element that
recurs throughout that gives these works their chutzpah: namely the continual breeze
that appears to be blowing across the scene. It is a constant presence whether
blowing the papers out of an antique typewriter in the painting titled "Turgid
Type"or loosing the dots right off the pattern of a hanging dress in "Fall in
Place" leaving them tumbling down onto the floor. It is a tough task this; the
painting of the wind, yet this abstruse breeze seems to me to be the true
inhabitant of these spaces. It flutters
and flows about, making its way around and between the objects in the rooms as handily
as we viewers survey the painted subjects themselves.
Fall in Place, oil on canvas, 30"x30"
A few live elements do occur to bring a sense of the living into the fray: a bird just flown out of a birdcage, a comical swarm of bees in flight mounted on curious little miniature unicycles. But one particular inanimate item that caught my attention is the recurring old fashioned plug-in electrical cord that is generally present with each painted appliance. This cord curls out and away from the fans, clothes irons, and movie projectors towards a wall socket as if to seek out some broader harmony for the objects within their surroundings. It is a tangible element of connection -a literal power source- that suffuses Lively's work with a sense of tactile linkage. In our accelerated present, a time of wireless and unplugged everything, sometimes it takes an honest time-worn item like this to connect us back to fundamental notions of inhabitance and spaces we might call our own.
a postscript...
The painter, I learned from his recent interview on WUNC radio's "The State of Things," also has an intriguing alter ego- Matthew Lively- who is more the brooding type, preferring to work with darker, more menacing themes. Matthew is more prone to show his work in bars and pubs - his own art underworld if you will- whereas Matt's work is more content in hanging (no pun intended) with the traditional gallery crowd. The work done under each guise rarely crosses over into the realm of the other and Lively (who I have to imagine must have to constantly refer to himself as the Artist formerly known as the other M) is perfectly ok with that. Indeed it is a modus operandi that serves him well as it has many other creative types through history from Duchamp / Rose Selavy to the multi-heteronymical Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa. The overall benefit is that Lively is able to cleverly pursue multiple, simultaneous streams of thought in his work in a fruitful way. He in fact becomes his own multi-tasking editor as this working method allows him to let varying ideas and concepts be utilized (or not) in a pluralistic variety of working styles. In doing so he is able to tinge his works with various subtle shades of meaning that have the benefit of broad resonance with viewers...whatever sort of art venue they tend to frequent. The artist noted in this same interview that practically none of Matthew's fans are likely to cross over to see the paintings done by Matt and vice versa due to the differences in venue and the type of crowd each attracts. But do yourself a favor if you get a chance; break this trend and check out what's going on in both places. It's well worth the trip to see what's coming out of the flip side of this artist's palette.

I was speaking with someone this week about a local artist I
hadn't thought about in awhile and I got to pondering why this was the case. (Since I'd been thinking about local folk or
outsider artists lately this seemed a natural choice for me to write about this time out also.) The
sculptor's name is Vollis Simpson and he's become especially well known
nationally in the past decade or so for his giant whirligigs. These are
windmill-like contraptions that he builds in his garage in tiny
There is always an element of kinetic anticipation with these sculptures since for all their lightheartedness and carnival-like whimsy they are actually very precisely balanced and engineered; constructed to spin even in very slight winds. It is easy to be transported back to childhood memories of kites and handheld windmills when you look at Vollis's work because they in fact conjure up all these associations. Hand built, home made toys cobbled together for an afternoon's enjoyment come to mind but most particularly they exemplify flights of fancy straight from the imagination of a child. To get an idea of what one of these looks like, picture a triangulated metal truss painted up in red, white, and blue and decked out with small cup shaped propellers, reflectors, metal cut out figure shapes, fan blades, and festive spirals that project up and about. This truss is typically perched upon a metal post directly proportional in height to the whirligig's overall size (i.e. the larger the truss then the taller the post.) There is often a large propeller shape at the front end and a vertical wind vane-like tail at the rear to help the whole construction spin on its axis and orient itself to the best winds. There is always with these whirligigs a guarantee of a multitude of shapes and colors glittering and spinning in harmony at the whim of the breeze all through the day.
One of Vollis's more spectacular whirligigs which is at
least the size of a Volkswagen rises magnificently up on a tall column base
sited along the sculpture walk that circles the North Carolina Museum of Art. The
What my companion and I actually talked about was Vollis's extensive collection of original whirligigs scattered abouts his property in Lacama and how they've weathered over time. The artist has been at it now for a good couple of decades and some of his first sculptures have been out in the elements since then. They've gotten a little creaky as a result and we were contemplating this fact as my companion had been fortunate enough to see some of the early whirligigs when they were brand new and freshly installed outside Vollis's garage workshop. Their movement, he told me, was flawless and silent; like a fine tuned machine motoring along with the breeze. Part of their awe was seeing the whimsy and crudity of some of the cut-out sheet metal figures and windmill blades contrast with superb engineering allowing their high degree of wind-blown performance. Would the artist be amenable to restoring his constructions to such a state of super-smooth efficiency if asked? Or would he instead prefer their weathered appearance acquired over time in situ? It struck me as an odd pair of juxtapositions: one set of folk art sculptures whose only real problem is that they have simply been outside now at the artist's home for quite awhile now and have consequently suffered pm;u at the hand of Mother Nature, and another trio of small whirligig cousins whose only crime is that they sit on some now highly valued land deemed much more appropriate for something other than a teeny-tiny urban park that no one can enter or use.
Todd Smith shocked everyone last week when he resigned as executive director of the Gibbes Museum of Art (in Charleston, S.C.).
The sudden and unexpected decision became effective Tuesday. Until June 30, Smith will serve as director of special projects while an interim replacement is found and a new director search is launched. An official press release said what we already knew: Smith was resigning. It didn't elaborate much further except to list his accomplishments.
Since March 2006, Smith led an effort to rebrand the museum's identity, he shepherded its re-accreditation with the American Association of Museums (a long, complicated process), and he brought back fiscal discipline.
Smith was hired to usher the Gibbes into the thick of the 21st century. That meant overseeing a new brand, an assertive outreach program, a renewed network of development, imaginative and culturally relevant exhibitions, and a collection refreshed by new work.
That also meant building a new facility to replace or augment the current Gibbes Museum. Building, Smith told me in an interview last January, was a major reason he took the job. The board was eager to expand and grow. He was ready to build. It was a good match all around. Now he's leaving. Why?
The official line did little to stop speculation (including my own) that Smith was pushed out. My hunch was that he'd locked horns with the wrong board member over how, when, and how much it would take to build a new museum. I wasn't alone. Others were skeptical, too.
The Post and Courier surmised in a March 25 report that Smith was fired, either because he presented too much contemporary art or because he didn't present enough (the article seems to contradict itself in guessing that the reasons were both). Other rumors spread that Smith wasn't doing the job he was hired to do.
These are barely plausible theories. By all accounts, Smith and the board agreed, for the most part, on the role of contemporary art. As for job performance, most measures indicate at least modest gains -- membership grew by 7.5 percent and large donations by 6 percent during his brief tenure. What bothered me was that Smith was the second executive director in six years to step down. It was starting to look like an institutionally unhealthy pattern.
But after several conversations with board members, museum staffers, and former employees (most of whom were granted anonymity because they did not want to be identified commenting on his imminent departure), it appears there is little more behind Smith's resignation than a change of heart.
Due to the construction of the Overture Center for the Arts, Madison's downtown performing and visual arts complex, the Wisconsin Triennial--a showcase of contemporary visual art organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art--was knocked off its every-three-years schedule. The first Triennial since 2002 is now on view.
My review of the show ran in a recent issue of Isthmus, Madison's alternative weekly. Brief interviews with two of the included artists and one of the curators ran alongside the review. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's visual art critic also covered the show.
Simply put, the Wisconsin Triennial is one of my favorite things on the local visual art calendar. I'd love it if it were an annual tradition, but the scope of the show makes that nearly impossible. (This year, the curatorial team whittled about 500 applicants down to about 50 exhibiting artists.) I'd also like to see it get wider coverage - I just did a quick Google News search on "Wisconsin Triennial" and only four results turn up. While the show might not be able to get national coverage (even if it deserves it), we are living in a regional arts economy, so to speak - Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago form a sort of triangle and it's not unusual for residents of one place to attend theater, visual art, etc. in another. While farther away for me, Minneapolis is not out of the question, either.
I can't help but think that with all the coverage in recent weeks about arts journalism cutbacks in places like Minneapolis and Atlanta that it will be even harder for worthy events and artists to attract attention beyond their immediate environs. There will be fewer people out there with their radar attuned to noteworthy, high-quality events. But unless the reading public responds to these cuts in arts journalism positions with an outcry (and I doubt they will), such cuts are unsurprising.
Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is the relevance of arts programming to its community at large. One local organization (in
The current exhibition in the Academy's James Watrous Gallery is "
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