^{Jim Riswold's Basquiat Gets Famous and Dies (2008), archival pigment print, big}

At G. Gibson Gallery. (Gallery site here.)

It's time for me to bring the hammer down. I've posted Portland artist Jim Riswold's images before, and I even appreciate one of them for its unintentional pathos and politics (Frida's Owies, an anatomical map of her injuries, including her abortions and miscarriages).

But other than Frida's Owies, which I saw about a year ago at Tacoma Art Museum, and including a more recent show of Riswold's work at Vermillion (which I hear has lovely food and drink), I have to disavow basically Riswold's entire catalog. It's grating, shallow, and self-satisfied. I'm sorry to be so rude, but I honestly never thought I'd actually have to come out and say it, because I didn't think it would rise to the level of ubiquity. But why on earth is this stuff getting so much play? Because art flirting with advertising is risky and post-ironic and fun? No, it's old, dull, and cynical. Bleh. It sort of hurts.

I was doubly reminded of this when I noticed on TJ Norris's blog (pointed out to me by Howard House's Sara Callahan today) the list of artists that Tacoma Art Museum is considering for its next biennial, and Riswold is on it. Please, people of the art, please.

(Jim, I'm sorry. You seem like a fine fellow on email, and I fear the email I know you're about to send.)

We've fallen in love with this image—does anyone know created it? We'd like to use it in an upcoming issue.

From the designers at Dumb Eyes, there's now an official First Thursday Art Walk web site.

It shows you the weather. It gives you make-your-own maps. It is searchable by art medium. It has space for you to leave comments about the art. There are links to everywhere (social networking sites, galleries, press reports on the art), and glow-in-the-dark maps will be distributed. There's bus, train, ferry, bike, and parking info. The only hitch is that venues have to update their own information, so there are still a bunch of blanks.

It's the sort of thing you can't believe didn't already exist, and it looks good. Give the guys at Dumb Eyes your feedback about how it works this Thursday during Art Walk, at a booth at Art in the Park in Occidental Park.

^{Isaac Layman's Stereo (2008), 58 by 102 inches}

Standing in front of the above image, Layman talks about the anti-exotic photograph:

(*This is a new feature I'm trying where I break up the art podcast In/Visible into little pieces for those of you who don't have the time to deal with a 30-minute block. For those of you who love the 30-minute block, the interviews will still be available in that form on the In/Visible home page.)

They all want to suckle at the credibility-teat of art. This is the new marketing-advertising, folks, made for people who distrust the old marketing-advertising.

There's even a clever, clever name! From the press release:

We wanted to make sure you knew about Pabst Blue Ribbon’s third annual “PB-Arts Contest” and the upcoming submission dates.

The contest invites PBR drinkers to create unique works of art inspired by the historic brew. Works will be accepted in four categories -- photography, painting, sculpture and poetry (new this year) -- from September 1 through December 31, 2008. PBR will select one grand prize winner and one runner-up in each category on January 15, 2009. As in past years, the winning artwork will be honored and displayed in cities across the United States in various ways -- wallscapes, alternative weeklies, building projections, newspaper racks, bus benches, store displays and other visual outlets. You may have seen this year’s artwork up around your city.

Grand prize winners will receive $1,893 in cash, symbolic to the year 1893 when PBR won their famous blue ribbon, and a one-year supply of the inspiring brew. The runners-up in each category will receive exactly 1/3 of the Grand Prize: $631 in cash and a four-month supply of Pabst. For further submission and contest details your readers can visit www.pabstblueribbon.com.

The masterwork of last year's contest:

First, I hated PBR for its newfound hipsterism. Now I hate it for its devious, devious scheme to get me not to hate it.

In a stunning move of unintentional PR irony, Silvio Berlusconi's people re-veiled a nipple in the Tiepolo painting The Truth Unveiled by Time, therefore brazenly calling their own man a big fat liar and setting off an Italian Justin-Janet fiasco.

For those craving the truth in the form of a Tiepolo nipple, look no further than the zoom-in function on SAM's Tiepolo.

Dan, I called the Seattle Art Museum for you. It seems to be a case of underperforming dogs. They didn't make enough money down there (I bet the people who protested the penis-sculpture fountain have something to say about why nobody wants to eat hot dogs in front of exposed penises), so the dogs had to take it on the road.

The cart is called Dante's Inferno Dogs. You can find it "around town." It might return to the park when crowds are expected (ie, for Hempfest).

This information is courtesy SAM spokeswoman Cara Egan.

Earlier today I posted about PDL's installation this past weekend at the Olympic Sculpture Park. With a sign of proposed land use, the artists announced a coming Starbucks sculpture. There's no such sculpture coming—they did it to see how people would respond.

In the comments on that post, somebody named NG reminded me of this:

Actually, OSP already has a sponsored sculpture—the Neukom Vivarium. That entire building is the sculpture itself, not just the nurse log. The artist was involved in the sponsorship-naming process, and is purportedly fine with it.

Posted by NG | August 5, 2008 11:38 AM

Here's what I know about how that went down: The press was given a list of the artworks prior to the opening, and on that list, the piece was called Seattle Vivarium. Then, shortly before the park opened, the sculpture took the name of the Neukom family of donors. The artist made the decision.

It's not uncommon for artists to title works after the people who commission them or after collectors with whom they have some kind of ongoing or special relationship (see "Wright's Triangle" by Richard Serra at WWU). I have a call into the museum to see whether Dion has any special relationship with the Neukoms. I have a vague memory of asking him about this amidst all the hubbub at the opening, and I don't remember any special relationship coming up.

Even if there isn't one, there's nothing wrong with Dion titling the piece this way—he can do whatever he wants. Maybe I'm reaching here, but I suppose it's also possible that he adopted the title to make a subtle point. Because his work is always exploring the systems that underlie objects, he could have decided to use the name to remind viewers of the system of philanthropy that undergirds a project like the OSP. Or not.

Either way, I've tried to think of other contemporary artworks that take donors' names as their titles but are not inspired by the donors, and I've come up short. I even enlisted a couple curators. Anybody think of any?

UPDATE from museum spokeswoman Cara Egan, of the museum's point of view: "Because the Vivarium is a park infrastructure project (its own building, structure, permit, etc.) it was determined to be a recognition/naming opportunity and approved by Mark Dion."

^{Alec Soth's Rainbow Inn (2005)}

The truth is, this is really only currently "hanging" on Alec Soth's web site, but I really wanted to share it with you because I just found out that Soth, one of my favorite contemporary photographers, is receiving the Photographic Center Northwest's PhotoVision Award this year. That means he'll give a public talk Sunday, September 28, at 2 pm at Seattle Art Museum.

One of the reasons I love this image is fairly personal: It's from Soth's NIAGARA series, and my parents, like so many, honeymooned at Niagara Falls in the late '60s. Like the tight triangular composition of this image, my parents had a very structured life in mind ahead of them: marriage, home, children. And, of course, as the incongruent elements of the photograph depict (the rainbow sign, the gray sky; the intimacy a motel promises, the distance of the camera from the building), things didn't work out. Like not even close. For the last 26 years, my parents haven't spoken.

If you think that's cheesy, let's just say this is also simply a terrific photograph, taken by someone who still believes in the power of an image to (relatively) unselfconsciously depict the world.

UPDATE: I meant to add a link to Soth's great, now-defunct blog, but according to a note on its home page, it has been attacked by hackers and is down for now.

This past weekend saw another performance by the group PDL (I Slogged about their last performance here.) Again, I missed it, but I have heard from some folks who were there.

Did you have the opportunity to see the installation by PDL this Sunday at the Olympic Sculpture Park? It was fantastic. If you did not, I would be happy to tell you more about it. If you did, I'd love to hear your thoughts, and wondered whether you planned to blog about it? It was deliciously over the top and well-executed. Provoked a heated debate in our little walking party about whether the "forthcoming installation" was real or not.

That was the first email I got. This was the second.

I was at the Sculpture Park this weekend and I noticed a newly fenced off area with a large sign next to Calder's Eagle. The sign was advertising the imenent arrival of the new "art" sponsored by Starbucks entitled Wake (up). It depicted a few huge Starbucks coffee cups which were kinda wavey and some bullshit copy talking about how the new "art" was inspired by Serra's Wake. While obviously an attempt at pop art, this crass intrusion of of corporate advertising into a respectable art venue is shocking and contemptable.

Well, here's what happened. This time, the artists got permission from the museum (unlike in their This Is Not a Swingset installation, which was removed after a short time by security guards).

And no, there will be no Starbucks-sponsored sculpture at the park. Here's what Greg Lundgren, one of the artists, has to say after the fact.

Thank you for joining us at the Olympic Sculpture Park yesterday for a beautiful, sun-filled afternoon of art appreciation. We set up our installation without a snag and had a wonderful breakfast at the Shanty. When we returned, our Wake(up)tm installation was in full effect with tourists and art enthusiasts alike all wondering and contemplating this new partnership between SAM and Starbucks Coffee. We sat with stretched ears and listened to the full range of responses, from "Isn't anything sacred anymore?" to "This will be really nice for the tourists." Some wondered how much Starbucks had to pay for such prime real estate while one fine lady exclaimed, "Finally sculpture is meaningful!" It was a little strange to hear an approval of WAKE (up)tm, and visitors explaining the idea to their family. ...

PDL would like to thank Michael Darling and the SAM staff for allowing PDL to punk them. It says a lot about a large arts organization that is willing to be misrepresented, misunderstood and the subject of potentially misdirected criticism and disapproval- all in the name of artistic exploration, social experimentation and fun. It is rare and refreshing. We hope that an espresso stand is never embedded into a sculpture at OSP without great conceptual intent. Hey- maybe that is where all this leads... I think we are onto something... Maybe corporate sponsorship and utility IS the future of contemporary art. It would be a wonderful world indeed if sculpture really did have a purpose. We can dream.

Here's what the installation looked like.

And here's the sculpture the poster promised was coming, "based" on Richard Serra's Wake.

Myself, I love these guys. They are truly public artists in that their medium is the public. They do it for nothing but experimentation—they have no gallery representation, they don't get paid, they don't even use their names. And the idea of a Starbucks-inspired sculpture isn't so far off. Remember the Target-inspired opening of the sculpture park? How fine is the line between sponsoring a sculpture park and sponsoring a sculpture?

This, and so many more, are at worth1000.com's Star Wars Classic Art Photoshop contest.

(Via DarthMojo.)

^{Martin Klimas's Untitled, C-print, 59 by 79 inches}

At Howard House. (Gallery site here.)

I would like to dedicate this installment of Currently Hanging to Amy Kate Horn, whose last day at the paper is today.

My bike was stolen earlier this week (yes, it was locked). That really, really sucked. But Amy Kate's departure is worse. Amy Kate's departure makes me feel like doing what the above image depicts.

When Amy Kate announced she was leaving a while back, I said, "I hate it." I'm wearing black today.

I probably don't have to tell you, Slog, but Amy Kate is an emotional center for this paper. (And, as you might not know, for me.) She's calm, reasonable, and organized. When something goes wrong, she fixes it. She actually fixes it! I don't know if you've met her, but there is something deeply reassuring about this woman.

I will truly, madly, deeply miss her.

^{Michael Bray's Untitled (2008), aluminum, wood, spraypaint, 3 1/2 by 4 feet}

At Crawl Space. (Gallery site here.)

At Crawl Space on Capitol Hill, this sculpture actually stands upright, with the axes headed into the wall—the way they should be. They're a tribute to Jack Nicholson's attack on the bathroom door in "The Shining." At first, I wasn't terribly taken with them, but the longer I looked at them, the more they turned into a sort of time machine. The sizes of the axes are in proportion to the velocity they might have in a given position. So if you can imagine this with our upside-down handicap (sorry, I couldn't find any right-side-up images), you can see that the super-long ax (second from right above) inhabits the spot right before the ax would strike a surface—in the spot where it would have the most (frightening) speed and power. The elongation feels very much like the elongated moment of tension just before something terrible happens in a movie like "The Shining." This is Bray's talent: making horror physical, making it non-psychological, giving it a kind of evacuated body that is missing a self.

I suppose that doesn't sound like fun, but it is. I completely recommend Bray's installation, which is all based on "The Shining." There's a video piece you really have to see, inspired by the scene in which the wife drags Nicholson's character while he's unconscious into the meat freezer—and check out the "monitors" the videos are showing on. The art is only up through this Sunday, August 3, so get over there.

UPDATE (full circle): Because Michael Bray is on top of things, he put a link to an image of the right-side-up version in the comments, and here it is, big and beautiful:

^{Isaac Layman's Asleep 4.5 Minutes (2008), photograph, 40 by 53 1/2 inches}

At Lawrimore Project. (Gallery site here.)

All of the "action" in this photograph—a regular old single photograph (not a digital montage) taken with a special camera over a time lapse of 4 and a half minutes—happens on the scalloped edges of the pockets. See them? It's not a fashion thing. In real life, those edges are straight, not scalloped. They only look like this because of the breathing of the artist, Isaac Layman (another rocking Seattle photographer), during the long exposure time. The regular, rhythmic up and down movement of his torso left its mark on the shape of the pockets. What's strange is how clear they appear to be, how unblurry and static. At the same time, they bring to mind cartoon movement, like the way characters' lips undulate when they burp on The Simpsons. I can't get these shapely little nonexistent things out of my mind.

All of you probably remember (and are still trying to forget?) my limitless love for light-and-space artist Robert Irwin, which earlier this year led to a seemingly limitless number of Slog posts. (Here, here, here, here, here, here.)

Today, Modern Art Notes has promised three (count 'em!) posts about Irwin, and the first two are up already. One details Irwin's plans for an installation at the Donald Judd compound in Marfa, Texas, including a simple, beautiful pencil sketch of the way blinds will hold out/let in light. The other is a description of a commission Irwin is working on for the entrance of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

In about five ways, I'm jealous of the IMA. It's got Max Anderson as director. (My May podcast with him here.) Its sculpture park will truly be an experimental zone, where the emphasis is on temporary exhibitions based on the place itself (not on Dennis Oppenheim's fading reputation). It has the best web site in the business.

And now IMA is getting a great big Irwin. Sigh. Imagine if SAM had commissioned Irwin for its entry space, rather than buying up the shallow, easy Cai Guo-Qiang that looks so compromised in that broken-up space. Ugh.

^{My first Irwin love: an installation of windows (openings) cut out of windows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla}

Those are the central questions of the artists who call themselves PDL.

I'm remiss with this post, and I apologize. I meant to give you the report from the latest by the "This Is Not A Swingset" people when I got it two weeks ago. (I know! Sorry!) I couldn't attend, but here's the artists' postscript from what happened the morning of July 12 at Kerry Park, along with an image of the installation, titled SQUAT—which will be followed up with another installation in the same series this Sunday, August 3, at the Olympic Sculpture Park.

At Kerry Park, the premise was to install a piece of sculpture that looked like the announcement of a public transit station that would carry people by tram from the top of Queen Anne to EMP. Signs would say that the City of Seattle, with sponsorship from Vulcan, was breaking ground on the station in August; nothing of the kind is happening. The purpose was to start conversation about territorialism in public spaces. "We felt like, it's that everyone wants public transportation, but they don't want it in their backyard, and everyone wants access to downtown, but they don't want downtown to have access to them," artist Greg Lundgren (the "L" of PDL) said in a phone conversation today. Some people enjoyed the play on misinformation (Iraq war, anyone?), other people took it so seriously that they contacted government officials to stop the (fictional) construction. The artists set up a fictional hotline; it received 20 furious voicemails.

Our installation was cut back an hour in a small effort to alleviate some political pressure from the Seattle Parks Department. Apparently there were more than a few people who took this at face value and well, phoned their way to the top of the political ladder. Those Queen Anne residents that were not signing a petition to halt the pending construction of SQUAT, truly enjoyed the installation. PDL considers the project a great success and sincerely hopes that any misunderstandings transformed into a greater understanding of contemporary sculpture. SQUAT is now dismantled and defunct.

Further defense of this sculpture may prove necessary, but for now, we'll leave it with a fine quote from Marshall Berman:

"To be modern is to find oneself in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world—and at the same time that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know and everything we are."

PDL would like to thank the Seattle Parks Department for understanding this, and allowing challenging work to exist in the public domain. SQUAT is part of an ongoing exploration of site-specific installation work, encouraging people to talk and discuss the foundations of sculpture and its role in contemporary culture. ... We do encourage you to visit it the early hours of an installation, as PDL cannot guarantee the intended duration of a project.

Sincerely,
PDL (at the moment Pihl/Dunkerley/Lundgren)

"I'm pretty sure that people aren't going to look at a construction site on Queen Anne the same way for a while," Lundgren said.

As for the event this coming Sunday, Lundgren said he believes the artists will be in Olympic Sculpture Park all day, and that they won't be kicked out—Seattle Art Museum has approved their plan. "I'm really surprised they approved it, because they're going to get a lot of heat for it," he said.

He didn't want to describe it; he wanted to save the surprise for Sunday. This will be the second of four planned public installations in the series. I have mixed feelings about telling you that it will be there, since the whole purpose of these installations is to stumble across them—so if you do go, don't tell whoever you're with. Let them have their innocence, because their innocence is PDL's true medium.

And now for an artist who recreates famous historical beheadings using mantises.

This, of course, is Judith and Holofernes.

More from The Rogue Entomologist can be found here.

Seattle's own rogue entomologist, artist Jim Rittimann, is here and here.

^{Mark Soo's That's That's Alright Alright Mama Mama (2008); two C-prints, 3D glasses, angled wall; each print 71 by 93 inches}

At Western Bridge. (Gallery site here.)

There are so many doubles going on here that I hardly know where to begin. But I'll start with the double that's affecting you right now, but is not really a part of the original work—the fact that you're looking at a JPEG copy of the original installation. The original installation is meant to be looked at with 3D glasses. If you have a pair handy, try them on these JPEGs, but I don't think it will work, and I'm assuming that most of you don't have 3D glasses at the ready. The reason I say this is not "really" part of the original work is that it sort of is: you can get a similar effect if you simply walk into the room where these are installed (in Western Bridge, by themselves in the cozy upstairs gallery) and don't put on the 3D glasses that Western Bridge provides. It gives you a headache after a bit.

What you're looking at are two stereographic photographs, meaning that each photograph is taken from two slightly different positions, mimicking the separation of the human eyes before the brain resolves a view into a three-dimensional whole. So each image is a double. In addition, as you can see here, the two large photographs are mounted on the two halves of a slightly convex wall. The two shots that go into each image are taken from a short distance apart; the two resulting final images are taken from positions about nine feet apart. That's the technical breakdown of what you're seeing.

I barely understood any of that when I was first standing in front of these. What I saw was an empty recording studio clearly taken out of time—that old technology!—and rendered as though it were right there, in the room with me. I kept trying to find ways to peer past the booth and into the soundproof chamber, to look "through" the framed glass pictured inside the framed glass that contains the photographs themselves (both sets of frames are white and look similar, in another doubling). Who was the musician? What was the sound like? It felt like if I could just lean the right way, I'd get a glimpse at what was "back" there.

The title is a clue, although I wouldn't have gotten it. That's That's Alright Alright Mama Mama is clearly a reference to all the doubling, but split down into "That's Alright Mama," it's the name of Elvis Presley's first single. That puts me in mind of another, classic, double: Warhol's Double Elvis, surely known to the Vancouver artist who made this piece, Mark Soo.

The "original" in this case doesn't exist. There are no photographs of Sun Studios in Memphis during that time in 1954 when Elvis Presley made his appearance there. Nobody thought to shoot what they didn't know would become history, but later, people remembered it in writing. Soo used those written accounts to recreate the studio, actually building it himself, and then taking the photographs of it. It's an interpretation of an interpretation, forever removed from its source, and yet its three-dimensionality aches toward realness just as the image makes you ache toward seeing and experiencing what's behind that window. The ache is what I like.

^{Catherine Cook's Thunderhead (2007), oil on board, 44 by 44 inches}

^{Peter Olsen's Bowl (2006), wood-fired stoneware, 4 by 16 inches}

^{John Taylor's Seven Sin Series – Gluttony (2007), stoneware, slip, stain, glaze, 29 inches tall}

At Tacoma Art Museum. (Museum site here.)

These three pieces are in this year's Neddy Fellowship Awards exhibition at Tacoma Art Museum. The Neddy Awards have been going on for 13 years, and each year, one recipient wins for painting, and one recipient wins for another (rotating) discipline. The award is $15,000, and this year's winners are Randy Hayes for painting (one of his strong earlier works is seen here) and Akio Takamori for ceramics. Those are good choices.

I don't mean to be churlish, but the three artists listed above are not good nominations. The Neddy Awards, according to their own materials, honor "artistic excellence, innovation, unique vision, and a passionate commitment to his or her art and community." Perhaps the above artists are exceptionally committed to some community that I don't know about, but otherwise, they fall dead flat. Their works are not excellent, and they're not even close to innovative or unique. Their inclusion—and the fact that they make up nearly half of this year's Neddy choices—is a permanent stain on the awards.

Until now, the awards were administered largely by Sherry Shari Behnke. This year, she stepped down, leaving other family members in charge.

Word to the family: Not just anybody can do this. Either talk Shari into coming back, or do your homework next time. Otherwise, the Neddy Awards are headed for disrepute and, worst of all, meaninglessness.

^{Janet Cardiff's The Forty Part Motet (A Re-working of Spem in Alium Nunquam Habui 1573, by Thomas Tallis) (2001); 40 loudspeakers mounted on
stands, placed in an oval, amplifiers, and playback computer; 14-minute loop with 11 minutes of music and 3 minutes of intermission.}

At Tacoma Art Museum. (Museum web site here.)

This photograph, courtesy of Tacoma Art Museum, is incredibly inadequate—not because of anything having to do with the photographer, but because this is a sound installation. There is a single voice coming out of every single one of those black, figure-like speakers, set in a circle as though they are singing to each other as individuals rather than unified against a unified audience. There are 40 speakers, and the musical composition has 40 parts; one voice singing one part comes from every speaker. If you sit in the center of the room, the sound washes over you, individual voices tapping you on the shoulder from every angle. If you stand next to a single speaker, you fall into the world of that one voice. You try to picture the singer. Half of the singers are children. You can pay attention to yours and lose all the rest, or you can pay attention to them all together and lose yourself.

It is not an overstatement to say that the experience of this piece in this particular 35-foot-tall room at the heart of Tacoma Art Museum is unbelievable. It made me stay with it for 40 minutes. When I first went in, people were sitting on the benches in the center of the room with their eyes closed.

I sat down next to one of them, a white-haired woman. When the 11 minutes of music ended, she turned to me. "I can't possibly go back to the world now," she said. I asked her name and she said it was Anita Goldstein, and that she was visiting from El Cerrito, California. I introduced her to Tacoma Art Museum curator Rock Hushka, who I was walking the exhibition with, and told her that Hushka was responsible for bringing the show. "Can I give you a hug?" she asked him. He laughed it off, but she was serious, and leaned right in. She gave the curator a hug. He deserved it.

Sorry, a little late with this today. This is for sale in one of Provincetown's antique stores/galleries.

"Blueboy," John Le Grand, oil, $595.00.

Jen?

^{Carlos Vega's How Quiet (2005), acrylic and collage on canvas, 17 by 16 inches}

At James Harris Gallery. (Gallery site here.)

I almost hesitated to post this piece at full size, feeling like a tiny version of it would align more with its internal volume (reflected truly in the title, How Quiet). But I wanted you to be able to see what I saw when I came across it in the gallery the other day: the lined paper with numbers on the top corners, the unfussiness of the thinned paint, the way the artist turns a page ready for a list into a scene of incredible modesty, with the window-washer reaching just as far as she can without making the ladder tip. To me, it's absolutely beautiful. And it makes absolutely no demands.

It looks like the rock wall is coming down—but that's not the end of the story.

Yesterday I reported the protest of an artist named Ronald Aeberhard, who said he represented 15 to 20 Georgetown artists against a project by fellow Seattle artists SuttonBeresCuller to turn an abandoned former gas station into a little city park. (More information about SBC's "Mini Mart City Park" is here.)

SBC's project is on a site that holds what Aeberhard calls a "landmark" for the neighborhood. He's referring to a rock wall by Louie Moss that he says was built decades ago—images here.

Artists John Sutton, Ben Beres, and Zac Culler are traveling this month, but they sent a response back this morning through their Seattle dealer, Scott Lawrimore.

The property is privately owned; SBC has a two-year lease on it, Lawrimore said. In about nine months, the artists hope to open the "Mini Mart City Park." For five months, they've been working with the Georgetown Community Council on the project, Lawrimore said. In order to turn the site to any use, the artists have to bring the former gas station building up to seismic code, which means taking down the rock wall, Lawrimore said. (An awning rests precariously on the wall, he said; Georgetown Community Council chair Holly Krejci said this yesterday as well.)

After the wall is down, the artists plan to incorporate elements from it in their design. They do not, however, plan to reinstall it as it was, he said.

Lawrimore said the artists are frustrated by Aeberhard's complaint now since their ideas have been far from secret for the last few months.

"If this was such a landmark, then why was it covered in brambles and derelict for 10 years?" Lawrimore said. "These artists are bringing this site back to the community, and trying to do it respectfully."

SBC's project is funded by Creative Capital. The artists also are seeking support from corporations and the EPA to help fund the environmental cleanup, Lawrimore said.

Aeberhard spoke out at a Georgetown Community Council meeting last night. His sentiments were echoed by a few others but there was no tide of dissent, said Stranger reporter Jonah Spangenthal-Lee, who attended. Community council chair Holly Krejci described the event in an email afterward:

The community council monthly meeting served its purpose tonight. It allowed people to share info and concerns, to vent, and to learn more about an issue—this time, the rock wall.

As one member of the community noted, the bottom line is that the property is privately owned and we really don't have much say as to what happens. Another noted that change is hard and sometimes sad. This is a sad change on the one hand, but a great one on the other.

I personally think that the project is just the kind of innovative art and cutting edge green space that I'd like for Georgetown to be known for.

As for me, I have mixed feelings about this. Artists working in publicly accessible spaces, even on private property, have some spiritual obligation to that "public"—and that's a good thing. Otherwise, they may as well be working in private: The public aspect of their work is what makes it meaningful. This is particularly true for SBC, artists (and Stranger Genius Award winners) best known for a portable living room, a portable park, and a portable island.

In other words, wrangling with competing interests may be a pain in the ass for SBC, but it's a very real part of their work. This particular rock wall is a symbol of the public's sometimes fickle emotional investments, and I am glad SBC has to contend with it. However they decide to use elements of the wall, I expect them to take seriously the fact that it has some value—more and different value than a piece of disused land, or an old crappy building—to a number of people, however vocal they are or aren't. It may not be art, but it is an artifact of a certain sort. An artifact in the hands of caring artists is far better off than in the hands of uncaring developers and maybe even strict preservationists who'd seek to remove it and place it in a more obscure location. If the artists do their job right, Moss's rock wall may not live in the same form, but it will gain, not lose, meaning. At least that's my hope.

Bravo has picked up Sarah Jessica Parker's reality show, America Artist. I can't even say that title without getting stuck in the middle by a clicking noise in the back of my throat. Yeck. But yes, I will watch. "Performance art" means I have to.

Dan, this time I believe a commenter captured my feelings about that painting best.

You know, if we opened up drilling in protected oil paintings, we could fulfill our oil paint needs for the next century.

Posted by Bush Red House | July 21, 2008 4:15 PM

This morning, an artist and Georgetown resident named Ronald Aeberhard claimed to represent 15 to 20 artists and local residents in protesting what he said was an art project by a Seattle trio, SuttonBeresCuller, who plan to tear down a "folk art" rock wall.

In response to my post interviewing Aeberhard—I haven't heard yet from SBC—the Georgetown Community Council Chair helpfully chimed in with this on the comments thread:

For all, A few facts to set straight on the project.

1) The entire building was slated to be torn down and the property was going to be sold to a developer for condos.

2) For zoning and code purposes, the rock wall must be removed so that the columns of the awning can be retro-fitted and brought up to code. Rock wall simply cannot stay.

3) The artists have spoken with several members of the neighborhood, including the owners of Louie's former home on Flora. The artists have promised to re-use the rock wall in their project. While it will not be reconstructed as it is now, the wall's use will honor Louie.

4) The Georgetown Community Council did not vote to tear the wall down.

5) This is a really amazing opportunity for the property to be re-purposed not only as green space but also a gathering space for the community.

Sincerely,
Holly Krejci
Georgetown Community Council - Chair
chair@georgetownneighborhood.com

So according to Krejci, the rock wall will not be destroyed, but rather reused in this new project.

Krejci mitigated her own comment a little with this later post:

Re: #16 I'd like to make corrections on #1 and #5. Neither are fact.

#1 - The land is zoned for condos. But, I do not have confirmation from the property owner as to the fate of the land/building. I was speculating.

#5 is clearly a statement of personal opinion.

I apologize if I have mislead anyone.

Meanwhile, Slog commenters are more or less united: "SBC, tear down that wall!" They are also united in their hatred for this.

This week we're in Provincetown, Massachusetts. There's not much medium-sized-sculpture-garden sculpture here, but there are tons of galleries selling acres of oil paintings. Are any of them any good? I have no idea. But Jen should.

This piece is currently in the window of the Alden Gallery on Commercial Street.

Jen?

Painter and etching artist Ronald Aeberhard is the person who sent the email I posted about earlier, from "Georgetown_artists." I spoke to him on the phone and he says he's one of about 15 to 20 artists in Georgetown who want to protest SuttonBeresCuller's Mini Mart City Park, which Aeberhard says is underway at 6525 Ellis Avenue South in Georgetown. I'm still waiting to hear back from SBC.

The idea behind the SBC project, which is funded by a prestigious Creative Capital grant, is to take an abandoned former gas station and turn it back into a little green zone. Aeberhard says SBC's intention at 6525 Ellis Avenue South is to do that by ripping down what Aeberhard describes as "a great old folk art piece" on the property—the rock sculpture pictured below, which Aeberhard says was made by someone nicknamed Louie Moss sometime around 1950. (Aeberhard has lived in the neighborhood 20 years; he got the more ancient history from nearby residents who he says have mixed feelings about the project.)

"There's several of us that have gotten together to try to do something," Aeberhard said. He said the artists' project has been approved by the Georgetown Community Council, but he and others disagree with the council's decision.

"If the idea is to make art out of a former gas station, well, guess what? Louie Moss already did that," he said. "People who live around here are just like, What? Why are they doing that? There's mixed feelings. The place has been virtually abandoned for a while, so it's good they're doing something to it. But they're basically destroying this guy's rock art."

Here's a view of the rock piece:

Here's a view of the house that Louie Moss designed and lived in a few blocks away at 6920 Flora Avenue, Aeberhard said:

Aeberhard hasn't spoken to SBC about the rocks yet to confirm that SBC is in fact tearing them down. He bases his belief in this on the artists' schematic drawings on their web site.

More, definitely, to come.

I got this email a few minutes ago from someone called "Georgetown_artists":

Georgetown neighborhood artists and neighbors are very concerned about a new SuttonBeresColler work site. According to their website, they are planning on destroying a famous piece sculpture by Louie Moss which has stood in the neighborhood for over 50 years. Why is SuttonBeresCullor not incorporating this piece in to the project?

This piece is one of several that remain in Seattle. Enclosed are some photos of the SMini-Mart City PaRK and also the house at 6920 Flora Avenue here in Georgetown.

I don't know who Louie Moss is, no photos were attached to this email, and no name was provided, so I've written back to request all this information. I also checked out SBC's web site and found no mention of a sculpture to be destroyed for the Mini Mart City Park they're working on.

Now I'm calling SBC.

^{Patricia Hagen's Breach (2008), watercolor on paper, 22 by 30 inches}

Hagen makes paintings based on bacteria, viruses, and "various" organisms, meaning that these are portraits of living things, despite the fact that they are unrecognizable. What I can't help but consider when I look at her work is that these dripping and oddly shaped things could be inside my body right now for all I know.

The most unnerving part of this one for me is that soft brownish bulb that points downward and to the left, and is slightly squished at the place where it connects with the other, brightly colored bulbs. It's definitely not like the others: the light hits it differently, and it falls outside the pink-and-blue color scheme of the blooms. It reminds me of those wild forms by Louise Bourgeois, which are both male and female, human and alien. The body is so impossibly opaque!

I realize this is weird, but part of the reason I'm posting this is that I found out last week that my father is going to have to have intestinal surgery soon. My father lives far away from here, and I won't be there. I sort of wish someone could make a portrait of what's inside him for me. Yeah, I'm the kind of person who likes watching surgeries, but I've also never really understood my father. I'd like to hang a portrait of his intestines on my mantel next to my photograph of him from before I was born, wearing his mutton chops, sitting at a typewriter.

At PUNCH Gallery. (Gallery web site here.)

Safe-for-Work Porn.

Thank you thank you thank you, World of Wonder.

P.S. I am a particular fan of this one.

^{Kim Rugg's She Did What She Had to Do* (*The Seattle Times, Main Story, Hillary Clinton canvassing for the primaries) (2008), newsprint, 23.6 by 12.6 inches}

At OKOK Gallery. (Gallery site here.)

Dan! I can't wait until you get back, not only so that we don't have to do this to distant sculptures anymore (I'm considering doing it to the local ones, in fact), but also so that I can show you my Renoir holograph postcard. It is a sculpture in itself! When you put your finger on it, because it tricks your eye into thinking it has depth, you think that you are right here in the Stranger newsroom while your finger is on an 1870s Parisian boulevard, waiting for its top hat. It really is something.

But back to what you tell me is a sculpture in Saugatuck, Michigan, called Family of Man IV by Cynthia McKean from 2005. (To see more of these, not only by me and Dan but including an interlude by Erica C. Barnett involving truck-flap ladies, click here.)

I have to be honest. What I'm seeing here (and, to be honest, I can't be quite sure what I'm seeing here, depth-wise) looks like a fire-engine Miro version of a nuclear family. It even seems to have 1.5 kids, or at least some sort of fractional person there in the lower right.

But my mind is telling me to like this thing, and it's strictly because of the title, which reminds me of a great photography exhibition that Edward Steichen organized at the Museum of Modern Art in 1955. When my grandparents died, I inherited their hardback catalog from this exhibition, with its slightly torn cover, and I still cherish it. The cover of the catalog, paradoxically, is decorated with a sort of abstract design. That's paradoxical because the images couldn't be more grounded in things actual and real, and in the belief that photographs give you something actual and real. The show didn't really make distinctions between photojournalism, sports photography, and fine-art photography. And from the catalog, it looks as though there were hundreds of images in that show. I've tried many times to imagine what it must have looked like.

I wish I could have been there, or that I'd asked my grandparents whether they were. Before they died, I never even knew they had it. So you see, when I look at this sculpture, I just feel like I'm holding that catalog.

Safe trip home, Dan!

In this week's paper, Charles Mudede writes about a film that succeeds by eschewing cinema's "fruity old aunt" (those words by Tilda Swinton), theater, Alexander Sokurov's Alexandra.

In the department of crossover artists, I'd also like to point to Implied Violence, a performance company that this weekend begins its triptych, Our Summary in Sequence. (Details and more on IV by Brendan Kiley here.)

I got a sneak-preview image of the setting they've constructed for this weekend's performances, inside a South Lake Union warehouse, and it looks like an art installation in itself.

It is entirely our luck that the artist Jim Hodges was born in Spokane (in 1957). It means that his work keeps finding its way back here to Washington. Last summer, he was the anchor of the Tacoma Art Museum group show Sparkle Then Fade. That exhibition included his intense, simple Coming Through (seen above), which I wrote about at the time.

Jim Hodges's 1999 Coming Through is the beating heart of the show. It's a grid of naked lightbulbs of all types, struggling not to burn out as the exhibition wears on. They generate a cloud of heat along with the various colors of light—golden, cold marble, orange coil. Coming Through might refer to something otherworldly, or maybe it's simply the longing sensation of hoping not to be disappointed.

So it was with great joy that I got a press release today announcing a Hodges-Storm Tharp show this summer in Spokane, of all places. Seems that last fall, a new nonprofit contemporary art gallery opened in Spokane called Saranac Art Projects. It's run by Megan Murphy, an accomplished abstractionist whose work has grabbed me every time I've seen it (I think the last time was at Maryhill Museum!).

Here's the skinny:

Abandon: The Work of Jim Hodges and Storm Tharp

Saranac Art Projects is pleased to announce the opening of Abandon: The Work of Jim Hodges and Storm Tharp on Wednesday, July 16th. The exhibition will run from July 16th through September 6th, 2008. The exhibition highlights the relationship between two artists who have abandoned traditional means of making art to find their own process in the loss of tradition.

Tharp isn't a connection I would have made with Hodges, but the more I think of it, the more interesting I think it might be. Also, as an adjunct to this main exhibition is a series of works by
Heidi Arbogast, an art educator at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane who studied with Felix Gonzalez-Torres. (FG-T and Hodges were close friends.) It all sounds worthwhile to me. I leave you with a Tharp (The Dalles, ink on paper from 2006).

Saranac Art Projects is at 25 West Main Street in Spokane, and it's open 11 am to 5:30 pm Wednesdays through Saturdays.

"Family of Man IV," Cynthia McKean, 2005.

Jen?

I sort of love these things that rise and shake and fall down and die, and then do it all over again, all over the streets of New York.

My first, and greatest, black-trash-bag love, however, remains Susan Robb's Toobs, which have gone on tour. This is them in New Jersey not a month ago.

(Thank you, BJC!)

Newsweek has an on-scener about the recently opened, weird, official art show of the Beijing Olympics.

^{Sarah Sudhoff's Senior Portrait (2006), digital C-print}

At Photographic Center Northwest. (Gallery site here.)

Dan, you realize this Sunning Bear is now a Mooning Bear, right?

And is it possible that, with that, I am released from the fun that has been Mid-Sized Sculpture Park Sculpture With Dan Savage this week? I cry a yogafied bear tear, and leave you with this apparently majestically bad piece of public art.