Being a city person, I can't often find a reason to go to Hanover County.
Sure, I'll drive through it for its bucolic scenery on the way to someplace else.
I'll even snicker at the humor of corny church signs I see, like the one today, "God answers knee-mail."
One reason I will go to Hanover County, though, is for art at the Flippo Gallery at Randolph-Macon.
I've seen shows by enough Richmonders there to know it's a worthwhile art stop for someone like me.
Like the show I saw today, "Send Me the Pillow That You Dream On," a photographic installation bu Michael Lease.
And may I just say for the record, that that show title may be the best I've ever heard of for its romantic connotation.
Michael solicited pictures from people in order to make a group portrait.
Each person was to send a school picture from ages 13-17, a current picture, a picture of the pillow they slept on and one shot through a frequently viewed domestic window.
The high school pictures were fascinating just for the moments in time they captured, from what looked like the sixties to the nineties.
The current pictures presented a game for the viewer; how easy was it to connect the teenager and the middle-ager?
In the case of Michael, his school picture couldn't have been more emo looking, all bangs and intensity while his current picture was so calm and collected.
Others were impossible to see as the same person.
The pillow pictures gave away far less, although I thought it was telling that the woman who lives in Italy had a pillow on her bed embroidered with "The New Yorker."
At least four of the pillows had cats laying on them, telling the viewer a lot about the person.
But it was the pictures out each person's home window that I found most compelling.
A view of Prague and another of Berlin were immediately recognizable as not American.
One from Los Angeles proclaimed its provenance with pastel buildings and palm trees.
A Brooklyn shot showed a snow-covered bush pressed up against the glass; it was winter exemplified.
Another Brooklyn shot looked for all intents and purposes like a Hopper painting with many windowed-buildings suggesting intertior scenes.
The two Baltimore views managed to convey both the distinct architectural look and the grittiness of Charm City.
Richmond revealed itself in several of the shots including one of a flowering pink dogwood in a city backyard.
Not surprisingly, the suburban backyards with their trampolines and decks failed to grab me at all.
A view of a balcony in Rome with flower boxes and watering cans in the foreground and a pastel apartment building in the distance looked like a picture postcard.
Once I saw people's window shots, I had to go back and look at them again for clues as to how well suited their views were to how happy they looked.
Because for a lot of us, place is very important and where you live is a big part of who you are.
As for what my window picture would show, it would be a clay window box full of greenery and little pink flowers against open white shades with the branches of a tree taller than my 1876 house framed in it.
And the sun would be shining because it faces south in Jackson Ward.
I don't think anyone would have any trouble seeing how well-suited it was to my current picture.
As for the pillow that I dream on, it's fairly innocuous looking.
It's the dreams that I have on it that aren't.
Showing posts with label flippo gallery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label flippo gallery. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Sunday, February 20, 2011
My Sins Found Me Out in Ashland
If art and writers are placed at the center of the universe, I will go on a Sunday afternoon.
That meant a short drive up Route 301 to the Flippo Gallery at Randolph Macon for the opening of "Artists and Writers II," a biennial invitational exhibit of collaborative works between, duh, artists and writers, even when they're the same person.
Which was the case with comic book artist Dash Shaw, whose monochromatically blue and green panels of a dating adventure opened the show. I was especially taken with the panels of a couple discussing their pasts.
Him: When I was in college, I was with a 33-year old.
Her: What did she teach you?
Him: There are things that are illegal in certain states that women really enjoy over the age of 30.
I was the only one who laughed out loud at those panels, admittedly, but I was in a cluster of people all of whom appeared to be under 30.
The Susan Singer/Valley Haggard collaboration involved Singer taking over 300 nude photos of Haggard and from them producing three paintings which hung in today's show, surrounded by two lists of words.
One held negatives (fat, cellulite, lard ass, thunder thighs) and the other positives (luscious, curvy, voluptuous, goddess), demonstrating the mental progress Haggard made about her body over the year they worked together.
Man-about-town Harry Kollatz collaborated with Amie Oliver for a series of paintings that included some of Harry's scribbles over the past fifteen years. The paintings of coffee cups, flowers and Harry were all done in beautiful winter shades of white, gray and black.
Oliver had traced over Harry's jottings to achieve words on canvas, my favorite being "I have lived long enough that my sins have found me out." A painting of Harry's ubiquitous hat was overlaid with, "C'est ne pas Harry," for a touch of humor.
Poet Joshua Poteat and architectural historian Roberto Ventura came together for a series of panels called, "For Lucy and Yard Sale," based on a news story about a homeless man's murder and the friends he left behind. The thematic nature of the piece was based on railroads, since the friends had hopped trains together.
Lines from one of Poteat's poems were used on wooden panels for a site-specific installation and some also had bits of the news story on them; the proceeds of the sale of the individual pieces will go to the Daily Planet.
I was so taken with a line of poetry on one of the panels that I immediately found the gallery's director and bought it.
While I'll have to wait until April when the show closes to collect it, I look forward to having a piece of poetry on my wall, especially one purchased for a worthwhile and local cause.
The opening was packed and most people stayed for the reading afterwards. Haggard began with ruminations about the self-exploration she'd done during the course of the project.
She said the end result was the ability to allow her insecurities to coexist with her body's past (six surgeries, six miscarriages and one child) in a peaceful and gentle way.
Harry put on his actor's hat (that is, voice) for a reading from old journals of random jottings and overheard conversations; thus we heard things like, "You have to be young, stoned and have good bowels to make art." He spoke of seeing graffiti saying, "Jesus is a gay Boy Scout" in three different handwritings.
Josh Poteat read his previously-written poem, the one that had resonated so strongly when they began their site-specific project. It's the second such piece he's done with Ventura and they hope to do more.
And I got to hear the poet read the line which had compelled me to buy a piece of art in Ashland when I had no intention of doing any such thing.
There is an agreeable sound here, under the thistle...
Not that craving words and art could be considered sins, at least not in my (illustrated) book.
That meant a short drive up Route 301 to the Flippo Gallery at Randolph Macon for the opening of "Artists and Writers II," a biennial invitational exhibit of collaborative works between, duh, artists and writers, even when they're the same person.
Which was the case with comic book artist Dash Shaw, whose monochromatically blue and green panels of a dating adventure opened the show. I was especially taken with the panels of a couple discussing their pasts.
Him: When I was in college, I was with a 33-year old.
Her: What did she teach you?
Him: There are things that are illegal in certain states that women really enjoy over the age of 30.
I was the only one who laughed out loud at those panels, admittedly, but I was in a cluster of people all of whom appeared to be under 30.
The Susan Singer/Valley Haggard collaboration involved Singer taking over 300 nude photos of Haggard and from them producing three paintings which hung in today's show, surrounded by two lists of words.
One held negatives (fat, cellulite, lard ass, thunder thighs) and the other positives (luscious, curvy, voluptuous, goddess), demonstrating the mental progress Haggard made about her body over the year they worked together.
Man-about-town Harry Kollatz collaborated with Amie Oliver for a series of paintings that included some of Harry's scribbles over the past fifteen years. The paintings of coffee cups, flowers and Harry were all done in beautiful winter shades of white, gray and black.
Oliver had traced over Harry's jottings to achieve words on canvas, my favorite being "I have lived long enough that my sins have found me out." A painting of Harry's ubiquitous hat was overlaid with, "C'est ne pas Harry," for a touch of humor.
Poet Joshua Poteat and architectural historian Roberto Ventura came together for a series of panels called, "For Lucy and Yard Sale," based on a news story about a homeless man's murder and the friends he left behind. The thematic nature of the piece was based on railroads, since the friends had hopped trains together.
Lines from one of Poteat's poems were used on wooden panels for a site-specific installation and some also had bits of the news story on them; the proceeds of the sale of the individual pieces will go to the Daily Planet.
I was so taken with a line of poetry on one of the panels that I immediately found the gallery's director and bought it.
While I'll have to wait until April when the show closes to collect it, I look forward to having a piece of poetry on my wall, especially one purchased for a worthwhile and local cause.
The opening was packed and most people stayed for the reading afterwards. Haggard began with ruminations about the self-exploration she'd done during the course of the project.
She said the end result was the ability to allow her insecurities to coexist with her body's past (six surgeries, six miscarriages and one child) in a peaceful and gentle way.
Harry put on his actor's hat (that is, voice) for a reading from old journals of random jottings and overheard conversations; thus we heard things like, "You have to be young, stoned and have good bowels to make art." He spoke of seeing graffiti saying, "Jesus is a gay Boy Scout" in three different handwritings.
Josh Poteat read his previously-written poem, the one that had resonated so strongly when they began their site-specific project. It's the second such piece he's done with Ventura and they hope to do more.
And I got to hear the poet read the line which had compelled me to buy a piece of art in Ashland when I had no intention of doing any such thing.
There is an agreeable sound here, under the thistle...
Not that craving words and art could be considered sins, at least not in my (illustrated) book.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Artists as Collaborators
"Everybody seemed to be interested in other arts- that was probably the thing that was the most exciting."
That sounds very much like something several artists who have moved to rva have told me about our fair city. Actually, it references Black Mountain College, a N.C. university in which the study of art was seen as central to an education; it was open from 1933 through 1957 and an unusually high number of students and faculty went on to become major influential artists of the twentieth century.
"Black Mountain College: Education and the Arts" opened today at the Flippo Gallery at RMC and it was completely worth going to Ashland for the second time in less than 48 hours. The exhibition of photography, collages, paintings, prints and posters is a fascinating cross-section of the artists that came through BMC and influenced one another during that very fertile period in the late 40s.
The Robert Rauschenberg "Jacob Javitz Center" poster looks like an rva graphic designer's dream, with random images floating in the foreground. The Alvin Lustig Design magazine cover on first glance evokes an "Oh, I've seen that a million times" reaction; then you notice the year it was done - 1946- and you realize how influential this man's work was on subsequent generations of designers. Hazel Larsen Archer's photograph of "Merce Cunningham Dancing" is a study of the line of the dancer's body in mid-air, echoed on the ground by his tiny shadow behind him, looking like that of a doll.
Also fascinating was a look at the women who accompanied some of the men to BMC while they taught, but were really artists in their own right, albeit less well-known. There was an etching by Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, wife of faculty member and Harlem Renaissance painter Jacob Lawrence. Sue Weil, Rauschenberg's wife, had come to BMC as a student and later married the artist; her "Musical Chairs" was like a Chinese puzzle with squares moved to the wrong places, causing a fractured image.
Probably most arresting were the photographs of the artists themselves; the handsome and artistic faces of composer John Cage and artists Rauschenberg, M.C. Richards and Willem de Kooning. We can only hope today's photographers are capturing current artists as meaningfully.
In the meantime, the exhibit is up through early January and it's a terrific reminder of the importance of creative people coming together and influencing each other. Just like what happens right here in River City.
That sounds very much like something several artists who have moved to rva have told me about our fair city. Actually, it references Black Mountain College, a N.C. university in which the study of art was seen as central to an education; it was open from 1933 through 1957 and an unusually high number of students and faculty went on to become major influential artists of the twentieth century.
"Black Mountain College: Education and the Arts" opened today at the Flippo Gallery at RMC and it was completely worth going to Ashland for the second time in less than 48 hours. The exhibition of photography, collages, paintings, prints and posters is a fascinating cross-section of the artists that came through BMC and influenced one another during that very fertile period in the late 40s.
The Robert Rauschenberg "Jacob Javitz Center" poster looks like an rva graphic designer's dream, with random images floating in the foreground. The Alvin Lustig Design magazine cover on first glance evokes an "Oh, I've seen that a million times" reaction; then you notice the year it was done - 1946- and you realize how influential this man's work was on subsequent generations of designers. Hazel Larsen Archer's photograph of "Merce Cunningham Dancing" is a study of the line of the dancer's body in mid-air, echoed on the ground by his tiny shadow behind him, looking like that of a doll.
Also fascinating was a look at the women who accompanied some of the men to BMC while they taught, but were really artists in their own right, albeit less well-known. There was an etching by Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, wife of faculty member and Harlem Renaissance painter Jacob Lawrence. Sue Weil, Rauschenberg's wife, had come to BMC as a student and later married the artist; her "Musical Chairs" was like a Chinese puzzle with squares moved to the wrong places, causing a fractured image.
Probably most arresting were the photographs of the artists themselves; the handsome and artistic faces of composer John Cage and artists Rauschenberg, M.C. Richards and Willem de Kooning. We can only hope today's photographers are capturing current artists as meaningfully.
In the meantime, the exhibit is up through early January and it's a terrific reminder of the importance of creative people coming together and influencing each other. Just like what happens right here in River City.
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