Still Life in Motion

Alexandra Opie is intrigued by opposites. Her art juxtaposes the richness of still life in compositions echoing the dark sumptuousness of European vanitas paintings heavy laden with fruit, flora and death symbols with the crackling immediacy of live, interactive video. In her upcoming installation, opening Oct. 9 at the Woolworth Building, Opie blurs the line between still life and real life by actually drawing viewers into her art work via live-feed cameras mounted inside the exhibition window. Spectators captured on camera are projected back onto a screen behind the glass in real-time, creating a layer of floating imagery over the composed objects. Sound complicated? We think it sounds like a sharp, lush homage to the Old Masters in the digital age.

Two compositions anchor Still Life in Motion: the Street and both revisit the medieval idea of vanitas, or the fleeting vanity of life. The first mimics a formal, traditional style and consists of items signifying abundance and high status (fruit, silver and glassware), alongside those of impermanence (a skull and flowers) – all are cheap dime-store props. The second still life is a 21st-century interpretation of vanitas and crowded with masks, blank-faced dolls, and a plastic skull nestled amidst other synthetic symbols. On top of these two striking compositions the live video of onlookers is projected, so that living faces mingle with the artificial ones, inviting a humor-tinged contemplation about mortality and the passage of time.

Still Life in Motion: the Street is a Spaceworks Tacoma event at which to see and (literally) be seen.

In February 2011, Opie’s video work will be presented at Pacific University in Forest Grove, OR. In March, the Salem, OR-based artist will have a photographic exhibition at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, at Willamette University. Still Life in Motion: the Street, 11th & Commerce, Oct. 9, 2010 – Jan. 5, 2011. www.alexandraopie.com

October Forecast: More Art!

Fall arrived last night on the rays of a bright full moon. For those of you with a geeky, poetic streak (or an appointment to go fishing today), moonset occurred at 7:27a.m. this morning, and moonrise will take place at 6:47 this evening. Yes, from here on out for several months, Northwesterners will obsess over the waning light, the waxing cold – and hopefully, an autumn that stretches golden tendrils languorously into November.

It’s a blithe spirit who will conceptualize a large-scale art installation whose interactivity is partly dependent on a light-filled Northwest forecast. Olympia-based, Harvard-educated artist Alyson Piskorowski accepts the challenge. Starting Oct. 9, Piskorowski’s ambitious installation for Spaceworks Tacoma will fill the large exhibit space at the corner of 950 Pacific Ave. Using tracing paper to connect various points of the existing architecture, she will create “a dynamic stage for the light that constantly changes throughout the day. At some points the work will be completely illuminated by the sun while at other points artificial lighting will provide an alternate reading. By using commonplace materials in a simple geometric arrangement I hope to create an unexpected experience for passersby to enjoy.” Piskorowski says the use of a translucent material is key to her ethereal effects, which will be on display through Jan. 5, 2011. We suspect sundials never caught on around here, even in eons past – just so, we wish Alyson fair skies. Alyson Piskorowski, 950 Pacific Ave., Oct. 9, 2010 – Jan.5, 2011.

BQdanza’s Splash

On Sept. 16, Tacoma-based choreographer Carla Barragán and BQdanza dance troupe debuted a new work, Thick, at Tollefson Plaza. The site-specific performance is a response to the Gulf Coast oil spill and represents the enormity of the tragedy through a kinesthetic interpretation of the ecosystem’s birds and wildlife. The performance took place in the early evening on the plaza, and the dance incorporated its cascade pools. Those who were in attendance agreed: It was a pleasure to see humans moving in harmony with nature (i.e., the drizzly fall weather) instead of assaulting the earth, as from, say, an oil rig.

Spectators took the weather in stride: “It was a wonderful performance. So cool that it was raining because it helped all of us feel like [participants] since the dancers were splashing in the ponds,” enthused onlooker Michael Sandner. Colleen Gray observed: “The low light and rain were perfect compliments to the mood set by the movement and sound. The use of the water in the fountain in the last minutes somehow surprised both of us. We had completely forgotten where we were!”

“I was very happy with the performance” and even the rainfall, says Ecuadoran-born Barragán. The brick plaza was softly lit, the night gently fell, “and that offered the audience and me a very mystical experience of the performance. We are so used to [performing in large venues] that this was a very genuine display of focused talent from my five beautiful dancers.” A soundtrack of natural bird and insect sounds, and original poetry by Luke Smiraldo, added subtle intensity to the slow-paced dance piece.

Many thanks to BQdanza for a memorable tribute to a natural habitat still under siege.

BQdanza dance troupe. Photo courtesy of Carla Barrágan

A Garden of Enigmas

 

Second Nature with tree, by Kyle Dillehay

 

A sterile white cubicle is transformed into a mysterious earthwork in Lines of the Earth, an installation by artist Kyle Dillehay. This site-specific work, opening Oct. 10 at the Woolworth Building, illuminates the way natural systems – of the human body, of nature’s flora – share an interconnectedness in the grand scheme of life. Upon a white backdrop, Dillehay employs the root systems of plants to show how seemingly disparate systems – of the body (lymphatic, circulatory, reproductive) and the earth (plant vascular, seed and root systems) – are, in fact, similar in purpose and design.

“Since having my two babies, I have become much more concerned with the quality of the food that we eat,” says Dillehay, a recognized sculptor, and an instructor of sculpture and photography at Tacoma Community College. “So, I have been growing much of my own food using heirloom varietals in hopes of avoiding any genetically modified plants and obtaining the highest quality of food possible. As these food-bearing plants mature and die, I remove them from the soil and dry them in order to preserve their root structures as much as possible.” The plants find a second life as elements in Dillehay’s art work. In Lines of the Earth, they spring from lifeless white walls and reach toward a suspended cube of fertile earth, thus mirroring the human instinct to find a quality environment to thrive in. The image is a compelling one: As societal pressures, consumerism, industrialization and environmental degradation increase worldwide, so does the need to produce food – whether from pure organic or genetically modified sources.

 

Sacred Balance, by Kyle Dillehay

 

In an earlier installation, Dispersal, Dillehay explored a fascination with seeds and their dispersal mechanisms, which he sees as a metaphor for the circulation and longevity of knowledge, as well as representing the evolution of life itself. Dillehay says the plant metaphor can be stretched to include non-living, physical entities such as high-technology and the Web, which form a near-universal network for human consciousness and community. Both cultural and biological diversity are necessary to the health of the species.

 

Installation by Kyle Dillehay

 

An accomplished sculptor who has executed large-scale public works, Dillehay is currently working with TCC students to build an iron-melting furnace for the sculpture department, as well as designing and constructing a peace monument for the campus. Lines of the Earth, Woolworth Building, 
11th & Broadway
, Oct. 9, 2010 – Jan. 5, 2011. http://www.sculpture.org/portfolio/sculptorPage.php?sculptor_id=1001643

Tacoma is for Lovers, Sept. 19

Support your local artists

Mark your calendars – Tacoma is for Lovers returns to King’s Books with the best of indie craft on Sunday, Sept. 19, 11-4p.m.This is the sixth – and best ever – installment of the D-I-Y crafts fair, according to founder and fly entrepreneur, Jennifer Adams. The event is a three-way partnership between TIFL, Indie Tacoma and King’s Books. Expect a lavish assortment of cool product by your favorite local artists, with the special personal touch that says, I wasn’t made offshore. A multitude of artists will have tables featuring arts, crafts, jewelry, letterpress prints, t-shirts and more. Participants include K.C. Potter de Haan (Black Dog Press), Ashley Mimura, Sarah Beth Smith, Audra Laymon, Connie DeBruler, Jenny Craig (Notta Pixie Press), Stella Crumpton (Stella Lee), Leah Andersson (Smart Monkey), Pat Askren, Lindsey Barnes (b. children’s wear), Caitlin Harris, Cheryl Steighner, Miki Hayes, Jana Howard, Lori Meyer (Parisienne Girl Designs), and Heather Rowland. There will be a photo booth on the premises. Your purchase helps support artists in Tacoma (what better excuse for a shopping blackout episode could there be?).

Gretchen Bennett is a Genius

Can you feel my love buzz? (Last Days), by Gretchen Bennett

This week’s edition of The Stranger, Seattle’s alternative weekly, declares artist Gretchen Bennett a genius. We already knew that, but at least they made it official. Bennett’s work has been on the radar all year: In January, at Howard House in Seattle, her installation Community World Theatre threw a shard of light on Tacoma’s legendary 1980s punk venue of the same name. At the Kurt exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, her “low-fi” pencilwork placed Cobain inside shimmering, soft-focus landscapes. In July, Bennett installed Window #4: Tacoma, commissioned by Spaceworks Tacoma, before flying off to New York for a residency with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Most recently, a series of drawings involving Beyoncé, Crazy in Love, appeared wheat-pasted on a construction barrier on Broadway, on Capitol Hill, in Seattle.

The Stranger shortlisted Bennett for its annual Genius Award, putting her a hairsbreadth away from the $5,000 prize. Stranger art critic Jen Graves wrote: “In her work, images and voices are always in circulation–being passed around inside living systems. Bennett’s two favorite systems are music and the streets of a city.” Bennett has found both of these meshworks locally; Window #4: Tacoma is an evocation of vagrant Tacoma streets anchored by a shrunken, cut-up Hudson’s Bay blanket that resembles a wilted map or a hide (the installation is on view at the Woolworth Building through Sept. 24). Graves also lauded Bennett’s video work and vocal ability. Congratulations, Gretchen!

 

wait, where am i?

Inheriting a collection of objects that is evidence of someone’s obsession can be a gift, a burden, a responsibility. Ultimately, one must ask if the the obsession itself has been inherited. So say the artists behind wait, where am i?, an installation opening at 11th & Commerce on Oct. 9, with support from Spaceworks Tacoma. Jessica Bender, Craig Snyder, Tania Kupczak and Ruth Marie Tomlinson are four artists whose fascinating inherited collections come with “the desire to re-catalog as a transformative act.” In the process of re-categorization, they explore the nature of their own obsessions.

 

Mr. and Mrs. Perry

Gig Harbor-based artist Jessica Bender saved 18 hefty, meticulously organized photo albums and ephemera from the trash after learning a deceased family acquaintance was survived by no other family member. The albums record the lives and world travels of one Mr. and Mrs. Perry, of Mercer Island. Bender speculates that their voluminous documentation grew out of a time, pre-Internet, when the world was less readily accessible, both physically and imaginatively. The photos and ephemera (including maps, pamphlets and cocktail napkins) “not only served as memorabilia but also a form of proof. Proof that they were there.” Bender, a preparator at the Tacoma Art Museum, is translating the collection into a form that will enable the lives of the Perry’s to be celebrated through the experience of others.

A father's obsession: science fiction

Tania Kupczak is a Seattle artist and filmmaker who makes work about weather and the emotional content of color. A Midwestern transplant, she spent her early teenage years raiding her father’s 200-plus volume collection of 1950′s-1970′s sci-fi paperbacks. For wait, where am i?, she is photographing the books’ covers and cataloging the images based on a self-invented system that is equal parts nostalgia and formal composition. “The overarching theme is about contact with intelligent alien life and alternative societal structures,” says Kupczak. “I am going to arrange the photo prints in a variety of configurations, some based on memories and emotional criteria and others based on formal elements, such as dominant color.” In her freelance life, Kupczak creates animations and title sequences, as well as production design for film.

Photo courtesy of Ruth Tomlinson

Ruth Tomlinson is a Northwest artist who owns an extensive series of snapshots of Mt. Rainier, all taken by her mother. “She took snapshots obsessively, but none so obsessively as those of Mt. Rainier. The earliest photos I have are from 1935. She was probably 13 years old,” says Tomlinson. “These first little 1″ x 1.5″ prints are in her scrapbook with childish titles: The Lonesome Fir, Find the Bird, The Mountain that was God. She went on to photograph the same four to five views of the mountain with a succession of cameras until her last photos just a few years ago.” She muses, “Perhaps diary keeping is close to what my mother was doing with the mountain. An obsessive act of preservation. And now that I am left with this record, I am wondering what is my role.” Tomlinson describes translating the iconic mountain shots into a new format as a process of understanding the compulsion to repeat the same act of documentation over a lifetime.

Map of Thea Foss Waterway

The son of a ship captain, Tacoma-born Craig Snyder inherited his father’s obsession with tugboat spotting. He has vivid childhood memories of his father walking “the endless rafts of logs with his spiked boots as they were towed behind the Shelley Foss.” The elder Snyder’s schedule involved long stretches of living on a boat: “Because his absence was often more noticeable than his presence, knowing which boat he was on provided a certain level of understanding and comfort.” For wait, where am i?, Snyder will create one drawing each day based on the path of a Foss tug as it travels through Puget Sound. The abstract drawings, made of flowing forms based on daily satellite data as well as personal observation, are surprisingly lyrical. The artist says the documentation “serves to re-inform my understanding of my father’s life, and perhaps more importantly, to locate myself within it.” Snyder is an installation artist and adjunct faculty member at Cornish College of the Arts.

The four artists behind wait, where am i? plan to alter and expand their pieces every two weeks during the course of the installation, their goal being for the art works to dialogue with each other as they shift during the installation period. wait, where am i?, 11th & Commerce, 
Oct. 9, 2010 – Jan. 5, 2011. http://www.wait-whereami.com

An American Album

Log Sawing Competition, Sequim, WA. By Alice Di Certo

My America, a documentary exhibit of  photographs by Alice Di Certo, opens Oct. 10 at the Woolworth Building, 11th & Broadway. In this collection of gelatin silver prints, the Italian-born photographer records quintessential scenes of American life on travels from the Deep South to the Pacific Northwest. Di Certo employs her camera in some instances with the objectivity of a magnifying glass; at other times, the exuberance of a kaleidoscope that refracts a multiplicity of different but related images of her adopted country. “In some cases the images reflect the stereotypical America I imagined before coming here,” she says, picking out a photo of a band setting up on a flatbed truck draped with an American flag. “In other instances, they represent something more universal,” such as in children playing.

Di Certo shot most of her photographs with a 35mm, Canon F1: “A very old, heavy and reliable camera.” She found her subjects in locations including Atlanta, New Orleans, Birmingham and Sequim, where she would spend days walking around “to really explore and experience the places I was visiting….I was not looking for something specific; it was a pretty spontaneous process, a sort of automatic writing á la Surrealist.” A more selective and deliberate editing process took place in the darkroom, finally resulting in the My America exhibit commissioned by Spaceworks Tacoma.

The Band, Waverly, AL. By Alice Di Certo

Di Certo also experiments with non-traditional portraiture. In another project, Skin & Flesh, the Tacoma-based photographer transcends cultural preconceptions by analyzing the relationship between human beings on the physiological level. For this series, Di Certo shot bodily forms, abstracting the fleshly landscape and highlighting “the irrelevance of physical differences in color and shape between people.” These photos communicate the linkage of individuals to each other by nature, on a level where racist attitudes cannot intervene. When confronted with a generic map of human flesh, we “are unable to distinguish what before we could see as diversities.”

Currently, Di Certo is working on Heritage, a series in which she projects images of historical architecture of her native Italy, and natural treasures of the US (the homeland of her husband), on her pregnant body, to explore the possible benefits and perils of their two children’s mixed-heritage legacy. “Though I intend to investigate additional issues pertaining to myself – still using my body – I ultimately anticipate expanding my visual research to other people, starting with other immigrants like myself.”

Photo: Alice Di Certo

My America, the Woolworth Building, 11th & Broadway, Oct. 10, 2010 – Jan. 5, 2011.

The Art of Collaboration

The Blood that Runs Through Us, at 950 Pacific Ave.

Artistic collaboration is a complicated process that can turn into a minefield of competing personalities and aesthetic intentions. It has even been described as “the ultimate unnatural act.” Yet quite the opposite was the case in the creation of The Blood that Runs Through Us, an installation by Pam Hom, Mary Coss and June Sekiguchi, at 950 Pacific Ave. These three artists worked independently (at times from different countries around the world) to create a seamlessly visceral and luminous sculptural exploration of birth, death and cultural inheritance. The work is an allegorical conversation about the nature and cycle of life, a dialogue the three initiated with another piece, Bloodlines, at Seattle’s Columbia City Gallery earlier this year. When the sculptors received a Spaceworks Tacoma commission, they decided to move and expand upon the original work, which now dominates the corner of 9th St. & Pacific Ave. It includes Family Portrait, a hanging sculpture by Sekiguchi; Motherland, a wall/pedestal installation by Coss; and You Never Listen, an audio/hanging installation, and Where Did You Go, a wall sculpture, by Hom. Using electrical conduit and dryer duct to strong effect, the artists describe the internal world of their perceptions about birth and mortality.

Internal perceptions of mortality

While they worked independently, the combined effort came off without a hitch, says Coss. “All the design decision making was done as a group. June was in Japan and Pam in Argentina while we were processing and figuring out how to use the space. We met before the travels and again after, at the [Tacoma] space, and then went to a cabin for a weekend to do a mini artist residency, so to speak. During that time the transformation really jelled,” and the artists returned to their respective studios to complete their portions of the work. Coss examines the hidden world of the unconscious, inspired partly by research into her genealogical roots. Hom’s sculptures reflect the thoughts and emotions connected with the death of a parent. Sekiguchi expresses her “fierce” instinct to protect her children with a metaphorical portrait of three eggs shrouded by ancestral bones.

A collaborative exploration of the cycle of life

Each artist brings a different cultural inheritance to the table, adding to the complexity of this work about family relationships. Hom’s father emigrated from China; Sekiguchi is second-generation Japanese-American; and Coss is five generations removed from her European roots. “The three of us are friends and have individually known each other for less than five years, but have a deep connection,” says Coss. “None of us has collaborated in this way before. We feel that we have a strong bond and work well together.” After the work is de-installed at 950 Pacific, the artist team has proposed the next chapter to be installed in Brooklyn, in early 2011. This summer, Coss and Sekiguchi travel to Stockholm, Sweden, to show work at the Candyland Gallery. The Blood that Runs Through Us, 950 Pacific Ave. through Sept. 26, 2010. http://www.junesekiguchi.com, roadsidestudio@fidalgo.net, mary@witvisuals.com

A Rapture of Words

Cache, by Holly Senn

The story behind Holly Senn‘s book-based art (she creates sculpture using discarded library books as raw material) reads like the storyline from an HBO series – you know the ones – super smart, hip and even a bit unlikely. A tall redhead with cropped hair and architectural glasses, Senn works “as a virtual reference librarian at Pacific Lutheran University where, while surrounded by books, I interact with patrons who prefer digital resources.” Unperturbed by the irony of her life in academia, Senn has found a way to take the carapace of words – i.e., the book – and sculpt its pages into fantastic forms that are literally layered with meaning. “I create sculptures and installations in which I explore the life cycle of ideas – the organic, non-linear process in which thoughts have a genesis and then are disseminated, adopted or refuted, forgotten or referenced.” Ok, it’s too rarefied for primetime, but we’d rather check out a Holly Senn opening than catch the heir to The Wire, any time.

For Spaceworks Tacoma, Senn is creating Re-Present, a site-specific installation of sculptures made with a modified version of traditional papier-mâche. “Environments are important to my process; I take inspiration from both my ongoing examination of botanical forms and the location surrounding exhibition spaces.” Re-present will open on Oct. 9 at 908 Broadway, a vintage address with resonance for Senn as it occupies the block which was once the site of Tacoma’s first library. It also faces the historic Pantages Theater. “I went back to the site several times,” she says, “carefully observing the surroundings in search of an inspiration. Finally, I went across the street and really looked closely at the Pantages and noticed the botanical architectural details. In addition, I realized that the color palate of the Pantages is similar to book pages….It seemed to fit with the themes and imagery I work with.” The large window of Senn’s exhibit space is highly reflective and, because it mirrors the Pantages, could create a lively dynamic between the art and its concrete inspiration.

Bur, by Holly Senn

Discarded library books are the primary material for the majority of Senn’s works, which can take 40 to 80 hours for individual sculptures, and upwards of 300 hours for an installation. When one considers the time and intellectual labor that went into the writing of each now-dismantled book, the organic metaphor reaches even deeper: “As I cut, rip, realign and glue, I reflect on each new generation’s collective erasure of some element of its past and its casting of new ideas into the future.” Senn says that it was after she graduated from college that she began studying art: “In an effort to find harmony between my work as a librarian and an artist, I started working with paper about eight years ago.” Many of her sculptures take the form of huge buds, blossoms and pods resembling specimens from some primeval garden, with exquisite skins of words, ready to burst with ideas. We look forward to the next installment in this garden of delights.

Holly Senn’s work will be featured in The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation Art Award Exhibit, 2008 – 2010, Sept. 2 – Oct. 2 at the Kittredge Gallery at the University of Puget Sound. Re-Present, 908 Broadway, Oct. 9, 2010 – Jan. 5, 2011. www.ryksenn.com