Posts filed under ‘parks’
What do poultry skin, electron microscopes, cedar logs and silk chamise have in common?
From Mallory Cremin, Parks Exhibition Center Manager
What do poultry skin, electron microscopes, cedar logs and silk chamise have in common? The current show at Parks Exhibition Center includes a wide range of media, photography, sculpture, video, graphic arts, but the conceptual line is surprisingly tightly woven. The show is a fifteen year survey of work by Mary Beth Heffernan, a southern California artist, professor at Occidental College. She had shown at Idyllwild Arts 18 years ago, and then it was photos printed on rabbit skins. The theme of skin continues.
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As you enter the gallery, to your left is a collection of objects on the wall, directly transported from the artists studio. This wall of inspiration includes prosthetic teeth, deflated leather punching bag, dolls eyes as well as one of the artists sketch books. Ms. Heffernan has many sketches of the drapery on Christ from Renaissance paintings in major museums. These sketches were then carefully reconstructed in poultry skin and meat, photographed in large format Black and White, and enlarged to 20” x 24” Silver Gelatin prints. The flowing skin-fabric appears blown against the flesh of the man, but the form ends with the ‘fabric’.
The turbulence of motion ends at the wall beyond with a Splat! Red lines radiate and drip from a tangled center. Only on close examination does the viewer see that the lines are distorted text. At a certain angle, you can read ‘smile’. The anamorphic projection is inspired by Holbein’s secret skull in his painting from 1553. The yellow smiley face is a more contemporary loaded icon, made darker by nature of the red color and violence.
The smile radiates, or projects the viewer onward to a series of color photographs of the tattooed arms and torsos of soldiers from Twentynine Palms Military Base. The freshly tattooed images memorialize the names of comrades who died in combat. The images are raw and poignant, one is actually weeping blood.
The show gets closer to home here, with a leather chair and its farsed companion. The second chair has been reconstituted to elongate the legs and add body above. A cut cedar log has sliced sides onto which the legs are attached. The living room is coming back to life as a more cultured nature. Next to the animated log is a suit/dress, more an apparition than actual clothing. The suit has much of the fabric cut away, keeping substance only where the seams are, and a wispy dress of ethereal silk hangs wear the body would be. The combination refernces an idea that you still reside within me, loved ones both present and passed away. The combination also plays with the idea of many other dicotomies, opposites existing inside each other.
Cutting away layers is the subject of the video installation, where an electron microscope continuously scans closer and closer, magnifying the edge of the artists kitchen knife. Is this tool of science revealing the truth about the sharp surface? Or does the close examination just reveal absence.
And then there are the knives.
Parks Exhibition Center hours are Monday to Friday, 10 am to 5 pm, or by appointment.The Mary Beth Heffernan exhibit continues until March 4th, 2011.
Zine. from Erich Bollmann, Artist-in-Residence
What happens to all the news stories that slip through the cracks? How can a reader gain new knowledge from the mass of information that confronts us daily? The artists in Drawing I sought
to answer these questions, culling through newspapers, magazines, and online news sites to gather a collection of current news stories that may have been overlooked. Taking on the role of creative journalist, each artist then created a drawing or illustration for each news article. This group of stories and drawings covers everything from Liu Xiaobo, the recent Nobel Peace Prize recipient; to the commemoration of a WWII Polish soldier bear, to even a mouse being found in a jar of curry sauce.
The drawings and stories have been collected in Drawing I’s first collaborative zine effort, “Unseen News: A Current Events Zine” which is limited to an edition of 50. This zine offers a special insight into the varying interests and artistic talents of 13 creative people seeking to uncover what may have been overlooked. “Unseen News” will officially launch at the Parent’s Weekend exhibition in Parks Gallery, get your copy before they’re gone!
–Erich Bollmann
Parks Exhibition Center of Idyllwild Arts; Faculty Show
Today’s blog is from Parks Exhibition Center Manager Mallory Cremin…
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Currently on display until October 8th at the Parks Gallery is the 2010
Visual Art Faculty Show. The wide variety of materials and subject matter
makes this show one not to miss. On display is new artwork by the current
Visual Art Faculty including Rob Rutherford, Eric Metzler, David Reid-Marr, Paul Waddell, Melissa Wilson, Mallory Cremin, Terry Rothrock, Gerald Clarke, Steve Hudson, Youree Jin, and Erich Bollmann.
Entering the gallery, this first work on the left are three delicate wall
sculptures by Eric Metzler. They are poetic combinations of vulnerable
organic elements like eggshells and flower petals, with industrial waste, a
shredded tire part, or wire numbers. Eric’s aesthetic for line and balance
in 3-D work ties in with the visual quality also evident in his photographic
work.
The next piece is “Shoe Emporium” by Rob Rutherford, which looks like a shoe
graveyard, with the miscellaneous toes and heels pointing out like
tombstones. The base is a shelf with stripes of candy colors, into which the shoes disappear. The surreal effect is a comical cross of shoe store and chainsaw massacre. Rob’s humorous work continues in the other two pieces on display. “Arch” looks like a column of books, which are falling, starting with larger books at its base, continuing with the ten-foot tall stack curving toward the wall to meet a basketball. Are the books pressing the basketball against the wall? Was the effort a slam-dunk? The third piece by Rob Rutherford is “Northern Hemisphere”, where the southern half of a globe is full of dirt, out of which is growing live grass. The grow light suspended above suggests global warming, but the artist talks about how all our lawn seeds are imported from the southern hemisphere.
In the center of the gallery is a large figure of a boar, muscular, moving, with large tusks protruding by its snout like horns, covered with black
thistle seeds. The beast by David Reid-Marr, has six glowing bulbs for teats under the dormant dark mass of seed. The effect is a fantastic contrast of light and dark, large and small.
Another compelling piece by David Reid-Marr is “Jacob Wrestling the Angel”. The convoluted forms are jailed in the inviting strands of a monofilament shower.
A new series of hand-thrown ceramics by Terry Rothrock show his exquisite craftsmanship, and his interest in formal references, first to the shapes of human heads in “Profiles of Tibet”, secondly in sea creatures, with “the squid and the octopus”.
In the center of the gallery a ridge of sand rises from the floor and supports a series of photos on tiles by Melissa Wilson. The images show her daughter, in the early cycles of life.
The show includes a monumental new painting of a storm cloud over mountains by Steve Hudson. The title “All Our Fallen Have Fallen in Rain” is inspired by many loved ones who have passed on recently, specifically Michael Kabotie and the Hopi traditional belief that spirits of our dead come back as rain to nourish the earth.
There are two large expressive paintings by Paul Waddell, “Things Fall Apart, Twice or More”. The works pair mundane objects like a laundry basket or bedside table, with organic abstract elements, which seem to threaten the health of the subject. Three small drawings by Erich Bollman reveal an economy of line but not expression.
A new teacher, and alumna, Youree Jin has two works which show her interest in the careful balance of things.
Two new photographs by Mallory Cremin show a large melting mass of water the shape of Greenland, enticing the viewer with beautiful light refractions and juxtapositions of textures. Finally, the show concludes with two potent modern digital photo ‘Glyphs’ on canvas by Gerald Clark, continuing his
playful theme of juxtaposing historically Native American forms with modern culture.
September 29, 2010 at 1:57 pm Idyllwild Arts Leave a comment
