Iowa Artists

The Art of 2011

2011-12-22T09:44:00.000-08:00

A Year of Unexpected Strangeness

“The unexpected strangeness of the moment.” Artist Dario Robleto used those words to explain the qualities he sought in his art, exhibited in the Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) “Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens.” His phrase works just as well though as an explanation of the year 2011 in Des Moines’ art scene. It was a year in which unexpected media such as dirt, projected light and neon often stood in for paints, when green eggs and lasers became sculpture, when worldly artists like Bill Luchsinger unexpectedly turned their visions upon local subjects, and when Stephanie Brunia’s girls in white underwear, Tom Jackson’s children with guns and Jeremiah Elebl’s decapitated humans became subjects of exceptional exhibitions.

The year ended with an unexpectedly strange controversy. Half a century after Andy Warhol placed low culture’s signage (Campbell‘s) on the walls of high culture’s grandest palaces, local paragons of elite culture raised a public fuss about Subway’s signage on Subway’s own venues, at least when they were visible from the perspectives of high culture. Still excellence stood out amidst the strangeness:

Artist of the Year - Sarah Grant’s exhibition at Olson-Larsen demonstrated a new clarity, as if the artist simply intuited when less had become more. Her new work was also more narrative and less abstract than in past years. A ten year retrospective of Paintpushers, almost all artists who were recruited here and employed by Grant, further demonstrated her extraordinary influence on the city’s entire art scene.

People of the Year - TJ and Jackie Moberg nearly doubled the number of artists in their Moberg Gallery stable, salvaged the defunct Art Store’s inventory, saved all the jobs of that company’s employees, opened Moberg Framing, Moberg Editions (an online gallery selling inexpensive art) and Moberg Consultations (a full service firm that directs clients from design to installation of artworks). TJ also worked on a major installation at Prairie Meadows.

Painter of the Year - Matthew Kluber’s series of abstract “paintings” in his DMAC exhibition fused color, line, digital formations, and projected light to create dramatic visual spaces that embraced new technologies.

Exhibition of the Year (museum) - German Anselm Reyle’s exhibition at DMAC introduced Iowans to the contemporary German scene, where in the artist’s words “Cologne is the past. Berlin is the future.” Chrome, bronze, piano lacquer, plinth, aluminum, glass, neon, electric cables, rust, plastic, LED lights, and wood veneer hung out with more traditional Modernist media.

Exhibition of the Year (gallery) - Travis Rice’s “Contamination” became the largest one person show ever at Moberg, taking up the entire gallery plus an outdoor wall. It was inspired by a sci fi film was about alcoholism, green eggs and coffee, in which the green eggs plotted to take over the world.

Exhibition of the Year (non-traditional venue) - “Jeremiah Elbel” at Mars Coffeehouse exhibited a monstrously talented young artist’s black and white, tar and charcoal portraits of decapitated humans - some Mexican drug war victims, some victims of Islamic terrorists, others of Shari'a, or French law.

Design of the Year - InVision’s two story, glass and steel addition to the Iowa State Veterinary Teaching Hospital glowed like a sanctuary on a storm-plagued prairie. It finally presented a coming home platform for Christian Peterson’s iconic statue “The Good Doctor.”

New Artist of the Year - Madai Taylor painted with earth, red dirt of the South and black loam of Iowa, mixed with gesso. That paint was applied in layers on which he scratched while they were drying, much like the plows of agriculture scratch at the same dirt in its natural environment. He process becomes a unique form of shorthand - a primitive scripture.

Rising Star - Stephanie Brunia, a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, became DMAC curator Gilbert Vicario’s latest discovery. That museum showed a series of her prints that mimicked classics like Leonardo‘s “The Last Supper,” Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” and John Everette Millais’ “Ophelia” with decidedly modern, edgy takes of young girls in white underwear.

Sarah Grant

2011-12-13T09:45:00.000-08:00

Des Moines’ Art Mama

Sarah Grant is the mother of Des Moines‘ ar scene. More than any person, agency or organization, she gave birth to it, bestowed an identity on it and nurtured its growth. When Grant started Sticks in 1985, as a one person studio, committed artists in Des Moines had to choose whether they wanted to be artists, or to live here. Her company let them do both, by giving full time jobs to some 100 artists at a time. They formed the creative core that snowballed into a legitimate art scene. Sticks makes furniture and art that is now sold in fine galleries and art museums all over the country. Its design work has become as recognizable as an icon, making it easy for tourists from Des Moines to spot it in Los Angeles or New York and feel some local pride.

Grant’s personal art career is also best known in large scale. She constructed, with Michigan architect Stephen Fry, a 30,000 pound kitchen table atop downtown Grand Rapids’ Blue Bridge.

Her giant murals “What I Love About Iowa State,” “We Shall Know Iowa State University by Its Myriad Parts,” and “My World Is So Full of Many Things,” grace Iowa State’s campus. She won an Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.

Grant has also chronicled her emotional life in abstract paintings. Her annual shows at Olson-Larsen Galleries have been distinguished by moody colors that have made her fans either happy or sad for her. Whether dark or sunny, Grant’s paintings have always been characterized by heavy layering. Even in gay years, they revealed a compulsiveness that almost seemed penitent. One fan called it “the yin to the carefree yang of Sticks.”

Her current exhibition of new work is remarkably restrained. I’m tempted to say it’s better edited. However, painters don’t have an editor’s luxury of going back and subtracting the superfluous. So it’s more as if Grant has attained a new clarity and now simply intuits when less is more. This year’s work is also more narrative and less abstract. She even pushes narratives with playful Sticks-like titles such as “With Bloodhounds, Band-aids Don’t Work,” “Is It Good News?,” “Four Guys in Sports Coats & Ties.”

Most of the new pieces focus through frames within frames, as if the artist is looking reflectively through windows of perspective. “Just an Old Printmaker,” a painting added to the show at the last minute, is autobiographical. (Grant holds an MFA in intaglio printmaking from the University of Iowa.) It is also the most restrained work in the show. All Grant’s work begins as black on white. This painting adds little additional color and yet makes a most dramatic impact.
This exhibition plays through Nov. 26 along with shows of new works by printmaker Paula Schuette Kraemer and painter Thomas Jewell-Vitale. Kraemer exhibits visual prayers, for nurseries and kennels, that have long distinguished her career. Jewell-Vitale reveals a dramatically different palette within his familiar medium of oil and wax. He deserts his trademark cool colors for a sunny excursion to new emotional territory.

Touts

Paintpushers, a group of past and present Sticks artists, are holding their tenth anniversary retrospective at Heritage Gallery through December 1… Jeremiah Elbel, a Des Moines artist who won England’s Saatchi Prize, is exhibiting in Iowa State University’s Memorial Union Pioneer Room through Dec. 5. An artist reception will be held Nov. 30, 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.… Robyn O’Neil, who rocked the Des Moines Art Center two years ago with her black & white visions of Armageddon, is currently exhibiting a single drawing, “Hell,” which took two years to complete and includes 65,000 characters, at New York City’s Susan Inglett Gallery… Des Moines painter Alex Brown has begun work on next year’s return exhibition at Feature Inc., a renowned New York City gallery. He will show drawings as well as paintings this time and a new, retro style.

In the Details, or Not

2011-11-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive." Albert Einstein

Houston scientist-artist-disc jockey Dario Robleto hangs out near “the boundaries of life - those strange places where the longest of odds are defied.” There he seeks the world’s oldest living humans, curators for The Guinness Book of World Records, survivors of lightening strikes, and scholars of antiquated medical practices, defiant gardens (built by soldiers in combat zones) and trench art (found object art built during combat). Robleto spends much of each year with scientists who study glaciers, collecting the flotsam of their melting masses - things like cave bear claws and wooly mammoth tusks. He also kicks around with North Sea fishermen, wounded soldiers and admirers of anything bizarre.

“I want to find the unexpected strangeness of a moment,” he explained.
A casual walk through the Des Moines Art Center’s exhibition “Dario Robleto: Survival Does Not Like in the Heavens” might reveal nothing more spectacular than “another Day of the Dead memorial” as one opening night visitor described it. Like Einstein though, Robleto finds his inspiration in slight details. Just consider the media with which he works. In “No One Has Monopoly Over Sorrow,” he built of basket out of the skeletons of human soldiers’ ring fingers, covered with lead from melted bullets. The rest of that piece consisted of shrapnel, waxed dipped bridal bouquets, flowers of human hair that was braided by a a Civil War widow, and fragments of a mourning dress.

In “Defiant Gardens” Robleto used paper he made from letters exchanged between soldiers and their wives or sweethearts, the skeletons of carrier pigeons, carrier pigeon message capsules, dried flowers collected on famous battlefields, mourning dress fabric, bullets and shrapnel, seeds, seashells, silk, gold leaf and glass. Even the small letters folded into carrier pigeons’ message capsules were from actual battlefield correspondences. This work could be mistaken for a funeral wreath, but only before the slight details are perceived. “Some Longings Survive Death” uses 50,000 year old wooly mammoth tusks, hair flowers that intertwined hair of various 19th century lovers with that of mammoths, plus ivory, bone, ribbon and typeset. That work was enshrined in a case made of bocote, an endangered wood.

“The Common Denominator of Existence Is Loss” is the most dramatic piece in the show. A spotlight shines through a showcase, also made of bocote, which holds the paws of cave bear skeletons which have been extinct for 50,000. They are intertwined with human hand skeletons around a braid of audiotape which holds the first human recording in history. Shadows move under the showcase.
Other pieces in the exhibition are considerably more whimsical, mostly sweet parodies of music album covers and historical signs. Everything though is far more than the sum of its extraordinary parts. This exhibition plays through Jan. 15.

At Moberg Gallery, Mary Kline-Misol unveiled her two year series “Awakenings: The Journey from Pain to Empowerment.” Painting portraits of Des Moines’ homeless became therapeutic for Kline-Misol whose husband, artist and surgeon Sinesio Misol, killed himself in 2010. The portraits in this exhibition leave faces poignantly unfinished, missing the fine details in Kline-Misol’s other portrait series (including a pair of Mahatma Gandhi and George Washington Carver that were unveiled last week at World Food Prize headquarters), or even in marvelous head studies of the same subjects included in the Moberg show. Sometimes the devil is in the detail, sometimes in their detachment.

Touts

After a year off, Metro Arts Expo will feature fine art by juried artists from across the United States, Nov. 4 and 5 at Capitol Square… Paintpusher’ s Ten Year Exhibition features 31 current and alumni artists of the influential Des Moines art collective. Through Dec. 1, with a reception Nov. 12… Olson-Larsen Galleries hosts new works by Sarah Grant, Thomas Jewell-Vitale and Paula Shuette-Kraemer, through Nov. 26.

A Sobering September

2011-10-13T14:22:00.000-07:00

September is a virtual second Lent for Des Moines’ art scene, a sobering season that follows a Mardi Gras summer filled with big festivals and light entertainments. At the Des Moines Art Center “Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens” takes the Lenten theme to existential lengths. That major show of Texas conceptual artist Dario Robleto opens September 23 to explore longevity and extinction.

Metro Arts Alliance and Des Moines Social Club take the post Mardi Gras theme more literally with “Sweeping Up the Mess” opening this Friday at White Carpet Gallery at Hillyard (4267 109th St., Urbandale). That juried exhibition of painting, sculpture, poetry, and other art forms requires the use of custodial supplies and highlights Iowa’s refugee community. Rex Haussmann, Deb Seeger, Jennifer Rivera, Jason Barr, Katherine O'hara, and Yarn Dawgz will exhibit.

At Moberg Gallery, Thomas Jackson’s “Child’s Play” continues a forty days run providing an ironic look at the ambiguity of American character. For a decade now, Jackson has been composing stacked images that consider a subject from seemingly incongruous points of view. His choice of subjects has been influenced by Robert Frank’s mid - 1950’s series “The Americans.” That work, which reduced 28,000 images into a seminal look at the national character in mid century. Jackson has been trying to do the same thing for the new millennium. While most of his imagery began as a photographic safari, he now translates much of it into paintings and ink brush drawings. His most dramatic painting, “Photo Op,” stands on its own and translates a famous film image of George W. Bush hearing the news of the 9-11 disaster into giant pixels.

The dominant ambiguity of Jackson’s new show stacks images of child’s play with deadly serious stuff like hand guns, violence, sex and advertising. “American Cypher 40” places a doll house under the image of an actual row house that barely looks real. In another, a messed up hotel bed is stacked over another doll house. Clenched teeth of an anxious lady stand above symbolic ruby slippers. Several works use hand guns and rifles juxtaposed with the toys of little boys. Toy trucks collide in one ominous childhood scene while another toy truck graces a dashboard in an eerie dessert. Wedding cake figures of a bride and groom lurk over dancing senior citizens in another. One collage of photographic images compiles roadside attractions that fight for tourists’ attention. This show plays through October 1.

Other area artists have been busy with large public commissions. Frank Hansen’s three story mural on the side of a Des Moines Street building has been turning heads for much of the summer. People love it and people hate it with equal fervor. Des Moines artists Thomas Rosborough and William Barnes won commissions by the Army National Guard and the United States Army Reserve to paint a giant mural in the new Armed Forces Reserve Center in Middletown, Iowa, as part of Iowa’s Art in State Buildings program. Also in that program, Sarah Grant is currently in residence at Iowa State University creating an installation within the atrium of Horticulture Hall, as part of the Horticulture Teaching and Research Greenhouse Complex.

Locally works by William Barnes, Scott Charles Ross and John Preston will be shown at Olson-Larsen Gallery through October 8. New, more whimsical works by Jamie Navarro are on display at Pegasus Gallery, along with large paintings by the late Don Dunagan. Hilde DeBruyne-Verhofste and John Schwatzkopf are showing through at the Polk County Heritage Gallery. An opening reception will be held this Sunday.

Two Iowa artists are showing in America’s first and second cities. Anthony Pontius opened last week in “Shirts & Destroy,” a major group show at Tara Mcphearson’s “The Cotton Candy Machine” Gallery in New York City. Brent Houzenga’s show “Remixed Media” continues at Pawn Works in Chicago.

August Is the New October for Color

2011-10-13T14:13:00.001-07:00

Three new exhibitions in Des Moines examine color from different points of view. Less (color) is more in Steven Vail Fine Arts current exhibition “Selective Color in Printmaking.” Curator Breianna Cochrane talked about the show’s forefather.
“Barnett Newman, a color field painter, came under fire when the National Gallery of Canada bought one of his works for $1.8 million in 1989. A nearly monochromatic piece of blue and red, it was mocked for its simplicity and extravagant cost, to the point where it was slashed with a knife by an angry viewer. Without innovations like that, the path to selective color might never have been explored.”

The Vail show, which h. In this show their works explore how minimal uses of color - black, as drawn attention from the New York City art media, includes works of such pathfinders from five different countries, some with big names: Rita Ackermann, Kamrooz Aram, Carlos Amorales, Donald Baechler, José Bedia, Ross Bleckner, Robert Cottingham, Eric Fischl, Wayne Gonzales, Antony Gormley, Beverly Semmes, Josh Smith, Pat Steir, and Donald Sultan. They demonstrate how restrained use of just black, white, gray and the primary colors can have major dramatic impact in reductive art. Using a variety of print media, their works communicate more through texture, pattern and balance, avoiding the use of color as their primary expressive tool.

“The simplicity inherent in primary colors is often reflected in the pieces themselves,” Cochrane explained.

Matt Corones designed this shirt to match his window installations.

Less (volume) is also more as the Des Moines Art Center’s “Iowa Artists 2011” continues with just two works by Matt Corones- large-scale “stained glass” windows in the museum’s lobby and Pei wing. These were each built with three patterns, based on photographs of flowers, and digitally-created patterns influenced by Middle Eastern decoration and by "Matisse Camouflage," - brightly-colored riffs on the Modernist master’s cut-paper collages. Each pattern was printed on large sheets of transparency film, which were then layered on top of one other and adhered to the glass. The effect is anything but minimal color wise - it dazzles entire rooms. These windows will be on exhibit through October 2.

In a separate exhibit under the “Iowa Artists 2011“ umbrella, Matthew Kluber presents a series of abstract “paintings” that also reference Barnett Newman. They profess an additional debt to the color studies of Joseph Albers, in which one color changes by its association or proximity with another. Kluber fuses color, line, digital formations, and projected light to create dramatic visual spaces with more of an embrace of new technologies than the works at Vail. His exhibition continues through October 2. Corones and Kluber will both speak at the museum on September 1.

Road trips to two Iowa art museums offer far more traditional experiences. Mason City’s MacNider Art Museum is exhibiting forty original photogravure prints by Edward S. Curtis, through October 29. That selection provides an overview of Curtis’s legendary “The North American Indian Collection.” Famous images like “Geronimo” and “Cañon de Chelly – Navaho” mix it up with lesser known but equally intriguing images like “Bear Bull – Blackfoot” and “Wichita Grass-House.” Cedar Rapids Museum of Art is preparing for a September 3 opening of its exclusive showing of “An American Masterpiece: Charles Wilson Peale's George Washington.” Commissioned by John Hancock , this was Peale’s first portrait of Washington to portray him as commander in chief of the Continental Army. America’s daddy will hang around until New Year’s Eve.

Notes

Ames artist Peter Goché’s “Water Hutch,” has been on exhibit this summer in Omaha’s Bemis Center for Contemporary Art… Moberg Framing plans a September opening of the their new shop on Ingersoll… Frank Hansen will auction several of his paintings at The Mansion September 24 in a “Paint It Black” event. Any painting that does not receive a minimum bid will be painted black and recycled. The Snacks will play.

Fall Arts 2011

2011-10-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

For Des Moines‘ fine art scene, autumn is the sobering, back-to-work season that follows carefree summers filled with big festivals and light entertainments. This year‘s fall calendar supports such sobriety with a preponderance of deadly serious exhibitions. “Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens,” a major show of Texas conceptual artist Dario Robleto at the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) explores longevity and extinction. Another DMAC exhibition “Black White Gray Blue” revisits the horrors of American slavery. A third DMAC show studies the psychology of portraiture with a title nod to dementia a la Vincent Van Gogh.

“Mingled Visions: Selections from Edward S. Curtis's ‘The North American Indian‘” revisits the extinction of the Plains Indian way of life at the MacNidar while The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (CMA) goes to THE founding father for gravity, showing “An American Masterpiece: Charles Willson Peale's George Washington.” CMA also studies photography‘s effect on grave social conditions in “Shout Freedom! Photo League Selections from the Columbus Museum of Art.”

The gallery scene is also filled with deep stuff. Mary Kline-Misol’s long awaited series of portraits of homeless Iowans comes to Moberg, as do Thomas Jackson’s ironic reflections on serious matters. William Barnes will show his latest meditations on ephemerality and wistfulness at Olson-Larsen while Steven Vail Fine Arts will continue to show “Selective Color,” a nationally acclaimed exhibition that demonstrates how subtle uses of color can make dramatic statements.

For levity, fall also brings annual celebrations with Art Stop, Quilt Walk and the fall studio tours of arty Winneshiek County highlighting that genre.

Calendar (*APT* indicates a special Art Pimp tout)

Recurring Events and Family Attractions
Thursday Night Art Walks in downtown Newton

First Friday Art Walks, Fairfield Town Square
Open houses at Studio 100 (304 Fifth St., 778-8768,
http://www.jamesellwanger.com)
James Elwanger plans on monthly open houses, mostly on the last Thursday of each month, but subject to change. Check website for latest details.

Special Events
September 8
Pecha Kucha VI
The international anti-Power Point movement takes on the arts and creativity this year, in the Des Moines Art Center courtyard.

September 23-24
Art Stop - ( www.myspace.com/artstop, www.artstopinfo.com )
A two day visual and performing arts event, with shuttle busses to Valley Junction, East Village, Ingersoll, Gateway West and Roosevelt, but not Drake.

October 7-9
Northeast Iowa Artists Studio Tour (Winneshiek County Convention and Visitors Bureau, 800-463-4692, www.iowaarttour.com ) APT
Iowa’s original art studio tour takes places around Decorah‘s autumn majesty.

September 28 - October 1
“Quilt Walk”
Nine Historic Valley Junction merchants feature quilt-related exhibitions and demonstrations, and hosting opening receptions with artists. Special open house events on September 29.

Galleries
Ongoing

Art Dive (1417 Walnut St., www.artdive.com )
Des Moines’ original alternative gallery plans alternative exhibitions. Be surprised.

2AU (200 Fifth, West Des Moines)
Pearls reign this fall in Au‘s effort to provide Art Deco comforts in a troubled year.

Finder's Creepers (515 18th St. www.finderscreepers.com)
Alternative to alternative.

Kavanaugh Gallery (131 5th Street West Des Moines, 279-8682, http://www.kavanaughgallery.com)
Specializing in purchased estate collections, there’s no telling what you might find here.

Susan Noland Studio Gallery (902 42nd St.)
The psychological properties of gems are front and center in this master goldsmith‘s repertoire.

Teeple Hansen Gallery (108 W. Broadway, Suite 206. Fairfield)

University Museum (3219 Hudson Road, Cedar Falls, www.uni.edu/museum)

Special ExhibitionsOlson-Larsen Galleries (203 Fifth, West Des Moines, www.olsonlarsen.com )

Through September 3
“Three Takes on Photography”
Peter Feldstein, David Ottenstein, Dan Powell.

September 9 - October 8
“New Works by John Preston, Scott Charles Ross, William Barnes” ATP

October 14 - November 26
“New Works: Sarah Grant, Thomas Jewell-Vitale, Paula Schuette-Kraemer”

December 2 - January 7, 2011
“Debra Smith, Tilly Woodward” APT

Moberg Art Gallery (2921 Ingersoll Ave., www.moberggallery.com )

August 26 - October 1
“Thomas Jackson” APT

October 7 - November 26
“Mary Kline-Misol” APT
Historical realist Kline-Misol reveals her long awaited series of homeless portraits. Coincidentally, her portraits of George Washington Carver and Mohandas K. Gandhi will also be unveiled at the World Food Prize headquarters.

December 2 - February 2011
“New Works by Bill Luchsinger & Karen Strohbeen” APT
Creating their first prints in 1970, Karen and Bill were among the nation’s digital print making pioneers, even before David Hockney made it cool. The exhibit will showcase new work on paper, canvas, and ceramic tile.

Heritage Art Gallery (111 Court Ave., www.heritagegallery.org)

August 29 - October 9
To Be Announced

October 17 - December 1
“Ten Year Exhibition”
Featuring 31 current and alumni artists of Paintpushers, a Des Moines artists collective. Reception - Saturday, November 12 from 3 to 8 pm.

December 5 - 2011
“Des Moines Exhibited”

Steven Vail Fine Arts (300 E. Locust St., 309-2763, www.stevenvailfinearts.com )

Through December
“Selective Color” APT
Works by Rita Ackermann, Kamrooz Aram, Carlos Amorales, Donald Baechler, José Bedia, Ross Bleckner, Robert Cottingham, Eric Fischl, Wayne Gonzales, Antony Gormley, Beverly Semmes, Josh Smith, Pat Steir, and Donald Sultan demonstrate how minimal color in reductive art can have a dramatic impact.

Museums
Des Moines Art Center (4700 Grand Ave., www.desmoinesartcenter.org )

Through September 4
“Surface Value”
James Gobel, Alison Elizabeth Taylor, and Mickalene Thomas present visions of American life and lifestyle, exploring pop culture influences, issues of racial and sexual identity, and the varying subcultures that make up our diverse population.

Through October 30
“Single Channel Two Melodrama” APT
Split screen high definition video features Christopher K. Ho’s Lesbian Mountains in Love.

Through September 18
“The Fashion Show”
An examination of how clothing communicates who we are and who we wish to be through the ages.

Through October 2

“Iowa Artists 2011: Matt Corones” APT
Corones created two large-scale “stained glass” windows in the museum’s lobby and Pei wing, each with three patterns, based on photographs of flowers, digitally-created patterns influenced by Middle Eastern decoration and "Matisse Camouflage," a brightly-colored riff on the master’s cut-paper collages

“Iowa Artists 2011: Matthew Kluber” APT
Kluber projects an ever-changing computer generated image onto a field of multi-colored stripes, resulting in a work that constantly changes form over time. You have to see this to believe it.

September 23, 2011 — January 15
“Survival Does Not Lie In The Heavens “ APT
Dario Robleto’s recent exploration of longevity and extinction through his incorporation of 19th-century folk traditions used to create visually arresting objects. This is a major national art event.

September 23 — January 29
“Black White Gray Blue”
Revisiting the horrors of slavery in the US.

October 7 - January 25
“Vincent van Gogh and the Psychology of Portraiture” APT
Portraits from the Des Moines Art Center's Permanent Collection, including the recent Vincent van Gogh acquisition.

Ankeny Art Center (1520 SW Ordnance Rd., www.ankenyartcenter.com )

September
“Jacklin Stoken and group”

October
“Works by Ben Schuh”
“Works by Marry Rork-Watson”

November
“Works by Heather and Nicole from Studio3”

Octagon Center for the Arts (427 Douglas Avenue, Ames www.octagonarts.org)

Through October 15
“Linda Lewis & Annick Ibsen” APT
Sculptures of irony and human nature.

Through October 23
“Iowa Watercolor Society Exhibit”

Brunnier Museum of Art (University Museums, 290 Scheman Bldg., Ames, 515.294.3342, www.museums.iastate.edu )

Through December 30
“French Art Nouveau”
Decorative arts, particularly glass and tapestry, are featured in this exhibition.

“The Age of Brilliance”
Twenty nine cut glass pieces from the Brilliant Era of American glass, circa 1876.

“Relationships: Interstitial Connections”
Studio faculty make connections to other disciplines.

“ Fragile Thread of Glass”
Thirty centuries of glass as aesthetic objects for utilitarian uses.

“Priscilla Sage: Contemporary Sculptures”
Textile sculptures.

“Iowa City and Keota Glass”
Works from two 19th century Iowa glass companies that were directed by J. Harvey Leighton.

“NC Wyeth: America in the Making”
Saturday Evening Post illustrator’s works chronicle 20th century.

“Ulfert Wilke: Words to Be Seen”
German immigrant to Iowa, Wilke’s art was heavily influenced by Asian calligraphry.

Christian Petersen Art Museum, Morrill Hall, Iowa State Campus

Through December 16
“Subject to Change: Art & Design in the 20th Century”
Rotating show from the permanent collection.

“Commissioning a Collection: 75 Years of Public Art”

Anderson Sculpture Garden, around Morrill Hall, ISU campus

Through August 2012
“Realities: the Lyric Sculpture of William King” APT
Pop Artist’s work commissioned for ISU.

The Vesterheim (523 W. Water St., Decorah, www.vesterheim.org)

September 1, 2011 - September 3, 2012
“Sigvald Asbjørnsen, Sculptor”
Works by the renowned artist, including portrait busts of famous Norwegians and Americans.

Through April, 2012
“Polar Exploration” APT
Featuring Roald Amundsen, Richard Byrd, and Bernt Balchen.

Through April 7, 2012
“Norwegian-American Lutheran Colleges”
Institutions of higher education shaped by religious and ethnic identity.

Faulconer Gallery (Grinnell College, www.grinnell.edu/faulconergallery)

Through September 4
“Liz Steketee - Family Albums” APT
"Reconstructed memories" offer creative insight into the act and the art of taking family photos.

September 7 - November 30
“Chinese Propaganda Posters”
Exhibition of posters will open on September 7 with a gallery talk by Yang Pei Ming of the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center. We don’t make this up.

September 23 - December 11
“Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin in Iowa”
Renderings and models of Griffin works, focusing on those in Iowa, will put the College's Griffin-designed house, Ricker House, in regional context on the centenary of its construction

September 23, 2011 - December 11
“From the Book Forest: Commercial Publishing in Late Imperial China”
Commercial printing during the Ming and Qing dynasties (15th-19th centuries), this exhibition will feature visiting artists from China who will demonstrate traditional woodblock printing techniques.

Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (410 Third Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids), www.crma.org

Through September 4
“Shout Freedom! Photo League Selections from the Columbus Museum of Art”
Non-profit organization of photographers committed to the transformative power of photography to effect social change. Its members included Berenice Abbott, Lewis Hine, Lisette Model, Aaron Siskind, W. Eugene Smith, Paul Strand, and Weegee.

Through October 9
“A Show of Hands: Ceramics from the Collection”
Studio ceramics from the 1970’2 and 80’s.

September 3 - December 31
“An American Masterpiece: Charles Wilson Peale's George Washington”
Commissioned in 1776 by John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, this was Peale’s second full-scale life portrait of Washington, and the first to portray him as commander in chief of the Continental Army.

September 24 - January 15, 2012
“Seeing and Remembering: Portraits and Their Stories”
Exhibition looks at the different types and situations within portraiture.

Blanden Art Museum ( 920 Third Avenue South
Fort Dodge, 515-573-2316, http://www.blanden.org )

Through October 29
“Don Heggen: Master of Luminous Watercolors”

Through January 21
“Joyce Blunck: Assemblages & Paintings”
Venerable found object artist retrospective.

MacNider Art Museum (303 2nd Street Southeast, Mason City,
641- 421-3666, www.macniderart.org

Through September 10
“A Series in Progress by Larry Gregson”
Winner of Area Show: 42 exhibition gets a solo show.

Through October 29
“Mingled Visions: Selections from Edward S. Curtis's ‘The North American Indian‘” APT
Photogravures include famous images like “Geronimo” and “Cañon de Chelly – Navaho” and less well-known images like “Bear Bull – Blackfoot” and “Wichita Grass-House.”

November 10 - January
“Iowa Crafts 40”

2011-09-14T09:54:00.001-07:00

July used to be the dead month for Des Moines fine arts. Not any more. This year the kind of big brilliant shows that galleries used to hold back until autumn are opening this month at four different venues.

Travis Rice’s exhibition “Contamination” is the largest one person show ever at Moberg Gallery, taking up the entire gallery plus an outdoor wall. It’s inspired by a 1980 Italian cult film of the same name. That sci fi classic was about alcoholism, green eggs and coffee with the green eggs plotting to take over the world. I don’t make this stuff up. You can leave all expectations at the door of the exhibition.
“I’ve always had issues with germs and bacteria. I became interested in the way they move and multiply. I observed some bacteria that expanded into aerial routes, detracting and retracting to new hosts. That’s the way they are. That’s what I tried to capture in my prints, then in the paintings. Those are my ideas about what a 3D diagram of a sneeze might look like,” Rice explained.

Rice’s meditations on bacterial growth also include neon sculptures, 3D paintings, video monitors,

and several metal sheds filled with fluorescent lights and props one might use in decontamination zones. Some of those are covered with metastasizing green eggs. All are covered with textured fluorescent film and separated from each other with shredded colored paper, a Rice trademark. This show is serious summer fun. Through August 20.

James Ellwanger’s new exhibition “41 degrees N / 93 degrees W” presents a series a ten portraits of Des Moines. Each composition is printed on four layers of Plexiglas stacked on top of each other. The background prints are satellite photos of Des Moines while the top three layers consist of various images within the satellite photo. Each set of prints is made in an edition of five and many have already been sold.

Ellwanger will also be showing a series of sculptures he’s been making out of motorcycle parts. Each portrays an animal, complete with a taxidermy tick bird. “I like to think about what it might be like some day when our pets are all robots. Plus it’s a lot of fun to work with motorcycle parts,” he said. The show begins July 28 and runs two months in the former Fitch Gallery, at 304 15th St..

Steven Vail Fine Arts’ new exhibition also opens July 28 and studies “Selective Color” in printmaking. Artists come from five different countries and use minimal color for dramatic effect in reductive art. Works range from figural to virtual abstraction and include Eric Fischl, Donald Sultan, Carlos Amorales, Robert Cottingham and seven others.
Vail quoted Alberto Giacometti while explaining the inspiration for the show. “My colleagues admonish me, ‘paint with more color,’ Isn’t grey a color too? If I see everything in grey and if within that grey I see all colors that impress me and that I would like to convey, why should I use another color?”

Works range from a screen print with flockings from Sultan’s seminal Poppies series to black on black etchings of butterflies from Amorales. The exhibition has already attracted interest from the New York City art media. One national writer expressed hope it would travel to the Big Apple.

Olson-Larsen Galleries opens “Three Takes on Photography” demonstrating different approaches by Peter Feldstein, David Ottenstein, and Dan Powell. Feldstein uses cliché verre, a technique first practiced in the 19th century, applying ink and paint to glass, film, or translucent paper by etching, rubbing and daubing. He then scans his "positive" and manipulates it digitally. Ottenstein presents new prints from travels through Iowa and the West. Powell’s hand-manipulated photographs feature out of focus objects blended with unusual scenes, enhanced by bleaching, toning and the application of pencil and oil paint. This show runs through September 3.

More Summer Fun

2011-08-23T12:35:00.000-07:00

Steven Vail Fine Arts’ new exhibition also opens July 28 and studies “Selective Color” in printmaking. Artists come from five different countries and use minimal color for dramatic effect in reductive art. Works range from figural to virtual abstraction and include Eric Fischl, Donald Sultan, Carlos Amorales, Robert Cottingham and seven others.

Vail quoted Alberto Giacometti while explaining the inspiration for the show. “My colleagues admonish me, ‘paint with more color,’ Isn’t grey a color too? If I see everything in grey and if within that grey I see all colors that impress me and that I would like to convey, why should I use another color?”

Works range from a screen print with flockings from Sultan’s seminal Poppies series to black on black etchings of butterflies from Amorales. The exhibition has already attracted interest from the New York City art media. One national writer expressed hope it would travel to the Big Apple.

A new Matthew Clarke sculpture showed up last week at Moberg Gallery. We heard Jim Hubbell gave him a home.
Olson-Larsen Galleries opened “Three Takes on Photography” demonstrating different approaches by Peter Feldstein, David Ottenstein, and Dan Powell. Feldstein uses cliché verre, a technique first practiced in the 19th century, applying ink and paint to glass, film, or translucent paper by etching, rubbing and daubing. He then scans his "positive" and manipulates it digitally. Ottenstein presents new prints from travels through Iowa and the West. Powell’s hand-manipulated photographs feature out of focus objects blended with unusual scenes, enhanced by bleaching, toning and the application of pencil and oil paint. This show runs through September 3

More Summer Fun

2011-08-23T12:27:00.000-07:00

James Ellwanger’s new exhibition “41 degrees N / 93 degrees W” presents a series a ten portraits of Des Moines. Each composition is printed on four layers of Plexiglas stacked on top of each other. The background prints are satellite photos of Des Moines while the top three layers consist of various images within the satellite photo. Each set of prints is made in an edition of five and many have already been sold.
Ellwanger will also be showing a series of sculptures he’s been making out of motorcycle parts. Each portrays an animal, complete with a taxidermy tick bird. “I like to think about what it might be like some day when our pets are all robots. Plus it’s a lot of fun to work with motorcycle parts,” he said. The show begins July 28 and runs two months in the former Fitch Gallery, at 304 15th St..

Girls in White Underwear

2011-07-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

Highbrow or Lowbrow?

At a recent Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) lecture launching a Stephanie Brunia exhibition, an audience member asked the artist what prizes her art had won. DMAC curator Gilbert Vicario answered on behalf of the rather puzzled young artist.

“An exhibition in a major art museum is a significantly bigger prize than any blue ribbon at any state fair or street fest,” he said, as diplomatically as possible.

The incident illustrated how highbrow and lowbrow culture clash these days in Des Moines. Vicario has played a significant role in that, bringing Leslie Hall, the super diva of trailer jive and satirical rap, into the hallowed confines of the DMAC last year. Brunia, still a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, is his latest discovery. He first saw her dramatically lit C prints of young girls mimicking Biblical scenes in white under ware at painter Larassa Kabel’s home. Kabel bought them at the 2009 Des Moines Art Festival, the only street fest or fair in which Brunia ever participated. The prints at DMAC comprise a series Brunia made on her grandfather’s farm near Ames. They include takes on classics like Leonardo‘s “The Last Supper,” Michelangelo’s “Pieta,” and John Everette Millais’ “Ophelia.”

She built the compositions one model at a time and stitched her compositions together on her computer. Her “Last Supper” includes “all the earthly delights and most of the seven deadly sins.” Brunia described her role as being “as much a performer as a photographer.” For instance, she obtained dramatic lighting effects by hand holding $10 flashlights for 30 second exposures while keeping all props smothered in bug spray. While her use of light recalls both Leonardo and the Dutch masters, these works are more suggestive of the more controversial ads by Ralph Lauren and Benneton.

Brunia has become a source of pride for the Art Festival, elevating the aegis of their emerging artists section. Her DMAC show runs through August 7.

Photography also delights the eye at the Faulconer Gallery where Liz Steketee’s “Family Album” begins June 24. The Bay Area artist uses photos “to rewrite history from my vantage point.” One panoramic shot of an ice cream parlor in Michigan looks like it belongs in the Smithsonian. Steketee says she reconstructs narratives in old photos, then prints them and ages these new photos to “reconstruct memories, address old confrontations and face old demons.” If that isn’t therapeutic enough, yoga classes will be taught in the gallery each Thursday June 30 - August 18. Steketee will speak there September 1.

At Moberg Gallery, John Phillip Davis confronts his “Nightmares and Allegories” in large scale. The artist says this series of mostly 36 square foot canvasses is meant to discuss a single subject from a dualistic point of view.

“If you found someone in the rain crying, and you could not tell if the they were really laughing or crying, you would need to think in other contexts… Nightmares talk about slightly more specific focal points that energize us, or make us afraid or excited. Allegories talk more to subtlety, a self narrative that is personality bent,” he explained. That show runs through July 9.

Olson - Larsen Galleries comforts us with dreamy summer landscapes. This year’s show adds two new artists to the popular trio of Gary Bowling, David Gordinier and Betsy Margolius. Rod Massey uses the geometric distortions of old fashioned Regionalism to personify houses and landscapes. British artist Roger Towndrow draws exclusively with pencil, revealing “serial and sequential” landscapes in flux. That exhibition continues through July 16.

TJ and Jackie Moberg bought the Art Store and will move its framing operations to Ingersoll this summer. The Eighth Street store will close. The Mobergs also opened Moberg Editions, an online gallery selling inexpensive art, and Moberg Consultations, a full service firm that directs clients from design to installation of artworks.
　

Much Ado About Shakespeare

2011-07-23T10:30:00.000-07:00

Iowa’s Many Mannered Love of the Bard
(Originally published 2010)

Last month Othello’s anxiety reverberated through Greenwood Park in Des Moines.

“I have lost the immortal part of myself.”

Yet, four hundred years after William Shakespeare wrote those words, it remains to be seen whether they were well founded. The Bard of Avon is bigger than ever in America. Elizabethan theaters and Shakespeare festivals have become primary tourist attractions in cities from Ashland, Oregon and Cedar City, Utah to Odessa, Texas and Hempstead, New York. For several years, outdoor Shakespeare festivals have been drawing large crowds, including many Iowans, to Kansas City, Omaha and beyond. In Rosalind’s words from As You Like It, “Farewell Monsieur Traveler.”

At least six different companies will produce Shakespeare events in Iowa this summer. In Des Moines, two of them will duel, like Mercutio and County Paris, over the same weekend for the second year in a row. That coincidence could turn mid July into a midsummer week’s dream for Bard lovers. Performance dates might be the most common denominator for Des Moines’ two biggest Shakespeare events. Certainly, their venues do alteration find.

Shakespeare on the Lawn

Venerable Salisbury House was built in the Roaring Twenties. Cosmetics magnate Carl Weeks and his wife Edith modeled it after the 16th century King’s House in Salisbury, England, a mansion which Shakespeare himself would have known. The Salisbury House Foundation’s stated purpose for the 42 room house and its collections is “to preserve, interpret, and share (its) international significance for the educational and cultural benefit and enjoyment of the public.” So their annual productions of “Shakespeare on the Lawn” tend toward faithful interpretations of the plays. That conservative approach suits Repertoire Theater of Iowa (RTI) director Richard Manning well.

“As Shakespeare wrote, ‘the play’s the thing.’ His plays have stood up for over 400 years. I heard (British actor) Jonathan Miller speak at symposium called ‘Reinventing the Classics.’ Miller was known for that from his work with Beyond the Fringe but he adamantly insisted that the classics should not be reinvented at all. Their main value is the window they provide for looking in on another time and place, to the way people lived in another era. That’s why we love Salisbury House, it comes as close as anything to setting Shakespeare in his own time,” Maynard explained.

RTI tries to bring Elizabethan manners to contemporary Iowans. Before last summer’s productions of Twelfth Night, Wes Drahuzel played a vendor transposed from the beginning of seventeenth century. He peddled fortunes, charms and souvenirs including “water from the well of St. Withburga” and polished glass “guaranteed to reveal the location of a lady’s true love.” He didn’t sell much because he couldn’t take American money.

“Be careful, the queen has spies everywhere,” he warned picnickers.
For RTI, all the mansion’s balconies, gardens, terraces and porches are a stage. Even its underground tunnels connect to backstage dressing rooms.

“We don’t see any need to put Shakespeare in a contemporary setting. We don’t even lighten his sentiment. That’s why we played the mean things that are done to Malvolio (in Twelfth Night) as maliciously as they were written. That’s the lens through which Shakespeare observed his world, with an overkill of malice in his humor. It seems to surprise people today but it shouldn’t. After all, Shakespeare wrote the prototypical slasher film - Titus Andronicus,” Manning explained.

“We chose The Merry Wives of Windsor this year because it’s the only play Shakespeare set in his own time. It’s a magnificent window into his world. And this year, when Master Ford hires Falstaff to seduce his wife, it won’t be done in the manner of buffoonery. It will be a nasty, jealous thing,” Manning predicted.

Shakesperience™ Fest

The Simon Estes Riverfront Amphitheater was built as part of Des Moines’ downtown revitalization in the 1990‘s. A civic park, it hosts multiple concert series each summer and its price scale discriminates to favor free events and weddings. As a “people’s park,” it suits Shakesperience™ Fest - the current name for a theatrical company founded by Lorenzo Sandoval and Robin Heinemann, who were also the original producers of the Salisbury House’s Shakespearean event.

"We don't do 'yer run of the mill’ Shakespeare'," the couple said, emphasizing that their company creates Shakespearean drama for a new, broader audience. This year‘s production of A Midsummer Night‘s Dream Extravaganza will move Shakespeare from the Golden Age of Athens to the mythological Illyria (site of Twelfth Night) in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Tina Haase’s original music will mix with show and movie tunes from the 1930‘s. Sandoval said to expect John Zickefoose’s Puck to be “more like Noel Coward” than the usual impish bad boy of forest. Argentine choreographer Karina Barone will translate the entire dialogue of the fairy royalty into silent dance. Heinemann predicted that these fairies will suit the elaborate fancies of the fairy people cult too. Sandoval will write new dialogue, in iambic pentameter, to help the audience keep up with the spirit or the fairies. He explained his approach.

“Modern dramaturgy tries to make Shakespeare as accessible as possible. We want to discover new ways of doing theater. That adds to the canon at the same time it expands the audience. I think that’s how we discover new insights into Shakespeare as well as humanity,” he said.
Venues aren’t the only difference between the companies. Salisbury House sells tickets. Shakesperience™ Fest is free. It’s also more ambitious, and better endowed, than its rival company with a budget ten times that of RTI’s entire annual budget. Heinemann pointed out that it’s only about a fourth that of Omaha’s Shakespeare fest.

“We want to compete with Omaha - to keep Iowan’s in Iowa spending tourist dollars and even attracting a few Nebraskans,” she said.

Heinemann mentioned eight different funding sources before adding “and many, many more. More than I can count.” She said that her multiple grantees also make peripheral activities possible. This year’s event will include Family Night, VIP parties, a mini art fair, wine tastings, after parties, cocktail soirees for young professionals, and library programs all over metro Des Moines. There will also be readings by a children’s book author Cynthia Mercati and scholarly pre-show talks on Shakespeare in the African American tradition and community by WOI radio’s Hollis Monroe.

The Picnic’s the Thing, Too

The two troupes do have some things in common. Both use elaborate period costumes, by Drake University’s Josefa Poppen (RTI) and by Mell Ziegenfuss (Shakesperience™ Fest). Both encourage audiences to come early and picnic in beautiful venues.

Last year’s Salisbury production brought together family reunions and multiple generations, including babes not yet out of swaddling clouts. Sarah Ekstrand and Kirk Martin said they both began attending Shakespeare plays at around age eight but they wanted Lola Plum Martin to have an earlier start. She was six months old when their family watched last year from a discrete distance on the lawn of the magnificent garden.

At Simon Estes, prizes are given for the most elaborate tailgating displays. In fact, SF even persuaded the city of Des Moines to grant a festival exemption to allow people to bring their own bottles of wine. Their free shows attracted a wide eyed, multicultural audience. Edwina Brandon, Ellen Yee, Tim Hickman, Margaret Rubican and Frank Vaia came to deconstruct Coriolanus’ “love of a cup of hot wine.” Their soup swapping club held a monthly meeting at the Shakespeare event last summer where they enjoying borscht, cherry soup, cucumber soup and crème de Crecy - with room temperature wines.
“Wine’s a good familiar thing when well used,” they quoted from Othello.
Central Iowa’s different theatrical companies are showing audiences that the plays of the man who created Othello are at least that too, if not yet immortal.

2011

Shakesperience™ Festival
July 23 - August 2
“The Regina Monologues”

Shakespeare on the Lawn
July 21-24, 2010
Repertory Theater of Iowa‘s “As You Like It”.

Travis Rice Has Serious Fun

2011-07-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

“I’ve always had issues with germs and bacteria. I became interested in the way they move and multiply. I observed some bacteria that expanded into aerial routes, detracting and retracting to new hosts. That’s the way they are. That’s what I tried to capture in my prints, then in the paintings. Those are my ideas about what a 3D diagram of a sneeze might look like,” Rice explained.

Rice’s meditations on bacterial growth also include neon sculptures, 3D paintings, video monitors, and several metal sheds filled with fluorescent lights and props one might use in decontamination zones. Some of those are covered with metastasizing green eggs. All are covered with textured fluorescent film and separated from each other with shredded colored paper, a Rice trademark. This show is serious summer fun. Through August 20.

Gleeful Cynicism at Surface Value

2011-06-30T07:49:00.000-07:00

During the last five years Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) exhibitions have been drawing the largest crowds ever to the institution. By no coincidence, these shows have also consistently celebrated aspects of art that stimulate our zygomaticus major, the muscle most responsible for making us smile, while also opening our eyes to somber realties. The three young artists represented in the museum’s new exhibition, Surface Value, do those things on several levels while mimicking classical art with both respect and irony.

Alison Elizabeth Taylor is a child of Las Vegas - the peripheral Las Vegas rather than mirage of neon, fountains and faux cities that attracts tourists to the Nevada desert. She simulates painting in marquetry and intarsia, which involve the cutting and piecing of wood and wood veneer to form designs. Taylor’s wooden narratives meditate cynically upon the culture of the most treeless landscape in America. Two works in the DMAC show are set in Bombay Beach, an infamous “oceanfront property” in the Colorado Desert that is half sunk in salt or dried mud.

Another work, “Roadside” studies two “hunters” shooting deer in the suburbs with automatic rifles from their woodie station wagon. “The Breeder” is a portrait of a character from the pages of the dark humorist T. Coraghessan Boyle. A sinewy man stands before used furniture he has converted into kennels for chinchilla, the breeding of which became an impractical effort at self employment during Las Vegas recent employment crisis.

In Boyle’s story, the breeder flees his rental when his inventory dies after the air conditioner stops working. A small air conditioning vent appears in Taylor’s work, looking quite inefficient as her human subject gulps Corona wearing a wife beater. Two other works in the DMAC show inhabit more darker haunts. In “Tap Left On” and “Multiple Shots with Knife Slashes” Taylor portrays houses vandalized by their owners, after Vegas‘ worst-in-the-nation mortgage crisis.

James Gobel is a child of the other Las Vegas. He credits his high school and college years amongst the kitsch icons and neon mirages for forming his aesthetic which found its true milieu in San Francisco’s bear culture. Bears are hyper masculine gay men, fond of dandified beards and long eye lashes, flannel shirts, boots, leather and alcohol. In “The Problem with Leisure; What to Do for Pleasure,” three stylish bears play musical chairs with earnest intentions. Gobel, a constituent of Nancy Pelosi, compares his sub culture to that of Weimar Republic Berlin, fostering a “golden age of open and radical dialogue before the rule of the Third Reich.” It’s hard to tell how serious he is. He “paints” his subjects in felt, “a cuddly material for a cuddly subject,” and exhibits nothing more radical than clashing argyle with camouflage.

Mickalene Thomas’ preferred medium is rhinestones. She clashes those with textiles and patterns in an unbearably gaudy manner that comments on the “power and convolution of fashion and aesthetics.” Her subjects, thrust into classical poses reminiscent of Matisse and Manet, are highly stylized African-American women, many family members. In “Sweet and Out Front” she mimics Andy Warhol’s Marilyn (Monroe) prints, by featuring the women from the film “Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song,” the original blaxplotation movie that celebrated militant black men but did little for black women.

Open House

James Ellwanger, sculptor of Shattered Silence on the state capitol grounds, is busy designing interactive sculptures for Des Moines and its sister cities. With technology from Fair-Play scoreboards, visitors to town centers here and in Kobe, Japan or St. Etienne, France will be able to converse with each other by passing by his sculptures. You have to see the drawings to understand the project though, so Ellwanger will begin opening his studio one Friday each month for that purpose, and also for mini-exhibitions of his other works, which include multi-dimensional paintings and, for the first time in his career, traditional abstract paintings. The first open house exhibition is scheduled for May 20, at 304 15th St., Studio 100, (the former Fitch Gallery).

A Marvelous Month for Alternative Spaces

2011-06-03T09:24:00.000-07:00

Alpha art collector Kirk Blunck explained his presence at a coffeehouse art show recently.

“Everybody starts out as a local artist. I bought an entire box of photographs once, mostly as a favor to a friend, for $100 a piece. The photographer was Anna Gaskell,” he said, alluding to an artist whose prints start now at around 75 times the price he paid and go up to $35,000.

This month Blunck purchased three works on paper at a Mars Coffeehouse exhibition of Jeremiah Elbel which runs through April. Elbel is a monstrously talented young artist who had a painting in a Saatchi Gallery show in London last year that drew the largest crowds of the year in the UK. He works in black and white, metaphorically and literally, painting with tar and drawing with charcoal. His subjects in the new show are portraits of decapitated humans - some Mexican drug war victims, some victims of Islamic terrorists, others of Shari'a, or French law. They are rendered in charcoal, with curved vertical lines dominating and reminding one of Egon Schiele, an admitted influence. Danny Pearl is one subject that didn’t make Elbel’s cut.

“I tried but I couldn’t. I watched the video (Al-Qaeda’s “The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl,” in which Khalid Sheik Mohammad saws off the head of the Wall Street Journal reporter) but it was too disturbing,” Elbel explained.

For now, Elbel remains a local artist. The father of two young children, he works a full time day job plus several nights a week bartending at Sbrocco. He still makes time to build a repertoire that continues to impress international collectors.

Other extraordinary artists are also showing in alternative spaces this month. Lindy Smith moved back to Iowa last summer after 35 years on the road. During the 1990’s, she documented the people and horses of the American west (“Straight West: Portraits and Scenes from American Ranch Life”) in photographs she took between the Mexico and Wyoming. In the last decade her work documented the flora of the American prairie.

For that, Smith revived Kallitype, a 19th century alternative photo process that involves iron salts and silver nitrates on paper exposed to ultraviolet light. Sometimes called “sun printing,” this process allows Smith to produce life sized images of native plants in a range of tones partially created by sunlight interacting with decomposing plants.

“I rarely know what the end result will be and that in itself holds my interest,” she explained.

Smith has done quite well in galleries of Santa Fe and New York City. She has also completed commissions for Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge in Iowa and similar places in Illinois and California. This Friday, she opens an exhibition at The Mansion with Madai Taylor, an original Iowa artist who paints with dirt, mixing different soils with gesso and scratching layers as they dry. Both artists work large. Each will show around twenty big works requiring a massive amount of wall space. With over 3000 square feet in several rooms, The Mansion has more than many galleries do.

In more traditional galleries this month, Chris Vance’s annual exhibition continues in, and outside, at Moberg Gallery. This year’s Senior Thesis Exhibition at Drake’s Anderson and Weeks galleries is the strongest in many years: Lucca Wang and Rachel Crown translate big personalities into paintings and Hannah Bloom demonstrates stunning mastery of several different media.

At Heritage Gallery “Lovers, Mothers & Their Dreams” features two sculptors, Annick Ibsen and Linda Lewis, who channel whimsy into profound, ironic statements about the human condition. That show opens April 25 with a reception on April 28. At Olson-Larsen Galleries, public art specialist Mike Baur shows small scale works along with clay vases and clay paintings by John Beckelman, and abstract landscapes and still lifes by Stephen Dinsmore.

Painting Grace

2011-04-29T11:48:00.001-07:00

Michael Brangoccio and Madai Taylor find motivation in grace - not the kind that evolved from Greek mythology to represent elegance and beauty, but the theological-philosophical grace of The Enlightenment that allowed kindness to soften moral and legal codes. Though their symbolism and media are utterly different, these two Iowa painters are kindred in this common enthusiasm.

Over two decades, Brangoccio has created a post-quantum universe of alternate realities and small miracles where fish, bears and elephants fly while birds are grounded. He has however separated himself from surrealists and tromp d-oeil artists who play with similar symbolism by consistently affirming that grace is transcendent even in secular terms. No matter how precarious the situations his subjects confront, hope always trumps despair. In his new exhibition at Olson-Larsen Galleries, Brangoccio’s stressed acrylics suggest forms of grace that are more obvious than anything in his previous shows. “High Rise” employs Biblical atmospherics where seas roil under both stormy and sunny skies. “Two Thoughts” similarly confronts flying elephants with both blue and dark skies. “Shining” suggests something extraterrestrial while “Passing Thought” welcomes blimps somewhere over the rainbow. “Drift” presents an engaging puzzle in which saucers and dishes fly off into a consuming enlightenment. Call it Brangoccio’s light period but do not read anything more into the heavenly luminescence. These paintings are still about conundrums and possibilities.

Fort Dodge painter Madai Taylor also believes that his art is a measure of grace. For this pastor though, grace is more religiously charged right down to his choice of media. Taylor paints with the earth. He gathers red dirt in the South and black loam in Iowa fields, sifts it to fine grains and mixes it with gesso. He applies that paint in layers which he scratches while they are drying, much like the plows of agriculture scratch at the same dirt in its natural environment. He considers his process is a unique form of shorthand - a primitive scripture. For both media and inspiration, Taylor goes to a childhood comfort zone.

“As a child, without shoes on my feet I would jump off the front porch of the dilapidated old house where I lived to play in mud puddles… I can still feel the thick soft earth gushing through my toes,” he recalled.

Taylor says he uses dirt to create a vocabulary that symbolizes his ideals and values. “Dirt intrigues me as a medium because it has unique characteristics, rare tones, gradations and textures that lend themselves to an immense, versatile range of possibilities. It allows me to express infinite space and spiritual universes that exist beyond the visible world in a medium that is timeless, and of the soul,” he explains.

Taylor says his manipulations of paint are intentionally vertical. “The natural material from which I made these images reminds us surely and absolutely that we are part of nature. Their verticality symbolizes the link between God and man. Horizontal compositions represent what comes to humanity out of the earth realm, or that which can be ascertained by the mind. Square composition represents neutrality that believes nothing. I believe my work is about the vertical relationship I have with God.”

Art Touts

Tim Frerichs exhibits a three year study of industrial agriculture transposed with native grasses at Olson-Larsen through April 9. Collages, digital prints, ink and graphite gesso are assembled to study the relative merits of differing uses of land in the prairie... James Ellwanger is working on a spectacular sculpture for downtown that will also provide video connections to people in town centers of Des Moines’ sister cities. Also, Ellwanger’s new eight dimensional Plexiglas exhibition at the Iowa Historical Building considers six landmark civil rights decisions in Iowa history.

International Times

2011-03-22T08:58:00.000-07:00

Future is Now in Two Brilliant Shows

Two local exhibitions show off the talents of innovative young international artists staking out territory in Post Modern history. Anselm Reyle and Jesse Small both work dialectically, creating a new kind of art by pushing old icons and clichés into seemingly disparate contexts.

Forty year old German Anselm Reyle, whose exhibition plays the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) through April 17, is a new kind of German artist who is proud to be part of the rising art scene of Berlin.

“Cologne is the past. Berlin is the future now,” he explains.

Reyle mentions Americans such as Jeff Koons, Barnett Newman and Gene Davis as influences while distancing himself from superstar German artists like Anselm Kieffer. Although one “Untitled” Reyle piece resembles a Kieffer masterpiece in the DMAC permanent collection, Reyle disavows any connection and points out differences - mainly those of mood. He is a rather gleeful German artist and no one ever accused Kieffer or his generation of much projecting much glee. Reyle admits to other contrary attitudes.

“In my painting education, painting for effect was completely discouraged but I always liked such tricks. As a child my mother prohibited me from using paint by numbers formats. Now I use them for effect. As a child I was only allowed to play with hand made wooden toys. Now I play with all kinds of flashy toys and neon games,” he said.

Reyle frequents flea markets in search of materials and thinks the next big new thing might be an old thing with a new paint job. DMAC Director Jeff Fleming calls him “a taxidermist breathing new life into exhausted or dormant visual motifs.” Reyle’s art in DMAC’s exhibition includes chrome, bronze, piano lacquer, plinth, aluminum, glass, neon, electric cables, rust, plastic, LED lights, and wood veneer - as well as more traditional Modernist media.

“I am particularly interested in typical things - clichés from another era of Modernism like African sculpture and cave paintings. I see clichés not as negative things but as connections,” he said.

Reyle says his mother has come around, somewhat.

“She accepts my work and is glad it is successful. But she only accepts it as irony,” he laughed.

Small’s exhibition reveals a distinct new phase of an evolving artist. The 36 year old now splits his time now between studios in Los Angeles and southern China. His earlier work resembled Reyle’s in the way it tried to squeeze playful new interpretations out of old humorless icons. Small built a reputation for embellishing weaponry with high gloss glazes that made objects of brutality into ornaments of frivolity.

Even today he says he can take his porcelain bombs through customs because the ornamentation disguises their identity.

Small no longer goes to flea markets though. He makes everything from scratch now, even plastic robots that might embellish his chandeliers. And everything he makes is now fully functional.

“Getting away from American culture, I realized that objects that are readily recognized in America, such as Jeeps and army helmets, have obscure meaning elsewhere. In China, people thought my army helmets were bicycle helmets and just thought it weird that anyone would make a bicycle helmet out of porcelain. So while working in China I got interested in more internationally recognized symbols and found that video games were pan cultural and pan generational,” he explained.

“Now I think I am going more for the throat of ornamentation. I am now actually making the items themselves - actual folding screens and chandeliers. They might be stylistically quite different but they are still functioning in their traditional fashion,” Small said.

That sets up a dialogue between the art and the gallery viewer.

“Is it a chandelier or a sculpture about a chandelier? And if it’s a chandelier, what is it doing in an art gallery?”

Go ask for yourself. Small exhibition continues at Moberg Gallery till March 18.

Beyond The Banjo Lesson

2011-03-22T08:48:00.000-07:00

Con - Texting Henry Ossawa Tanner

As centuries go, 21 is an unlucky number for context. It’s ostracized as “off message” from the party line “talking points” that consume contemporary politics. It’s dying on cutting room floors wherever media sound bytes are edited. Twitter’s 140 character limit might as well announce “No context need apply.” If the medium is the message, then context seems doomed to the obscurity of art house cinema, obscure cable networks, and the side galleries of museums.

While the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) received due kudos last decade for audience expanding contemporary shows, its side galleries provided a welcome refuge for context freaks. One extraordinary exhibition after another covered subjects from a range of perspectives while hardly ever drawing a sound byte hiccup from mainstream media. Henry Ossawa Tanner, the subject of the latest such DMAC show, would have understood.

Tanner was himself a stranger in strange and hostile lands. Born in 1859 of an escaped slave mother, he came of age during the golden age of African American culture between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of the Jim Crow era which can be marked from the day in the late 1880’s when Des Moines Register Sports Hall of Famer Cap Anson threatened to boycott baseball unless his opponents got “the nigger off the field” and out of mainstream American culture. Tanner owned a gallery and taught art in the Deep South during the golden days but by 1893 he found that even Philadelphia had become too racist to tolerate. Happily for art history, he moved to Paris where he fit into a milieu that revolutionized painting.

The DMAC exhibition includes works of a painter caught between the two worlds - realism and expressionism. Some paintings contain both detailed brushstrokes of the former and the broad swaths of the latter. “Le Touquet,” depicts Pont-Aven, an art colony where Paul Gauguin and Émile Bernard worked and taught younger artists. Others show Biblical events through multi cultural eyes. A visitor to both North Africa and Holy Land, Tanner depicted Jesus in “The Disciples See Christ Walking on the Water” with the reverence of an Islamic iconographer. Brushstroke blurs suggest a divine light while his disciples are painted realistically. In “Christ Learning to Read,” Tanner provides context for his iconic later painting “The Banjo Lesson.”

Paintings by Louis Ritman and Winslow Homer plus a bronze sculpture by Rodin are included for deeper context. Ritman was a contemporary of Tanner at Paris’ Académie Julian. Tanner particularly admired and was influenced by Homer’s presentation of black seafarers. Tanner helped Des Moines collector J.S. Carpenter purchase the Rodin sculpture. Tanner married a white opera singer from San Francisco and lived in Paris till his death in 1937. Because of Carpenter’s admiration, all but one the exhibition paintings became permanent parts of DMAC collection and Iowa’s penance for Cap Anson’s infamy. Some context just will not go away.

Touts

Self described “manic artist” John Baldwin shows at The Lift through February with homage to Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” and other great moments in the history of mania… Mathew J. Clark, Art Pimp’s 2009 Iowa Artist of the Year, signed with Moberg Gallery to exhibit his controversial (banned from Des Moines International Airport ) “Our Little Jimmy Can Do Anything If He Puts His Mind To It,” during their March show of Chris Vance… "Young Adult Identity and Consumption in Urban China" opens Jan. 25 in Cowles Library at Drake. The exhibit contrasts the consumption habits of Chinese born in the 1980’s and missed the Cultural Revolution with those of older Chinese consumers. In conjunction, R. Bin Wong, Director of the Asia Institute and UCLA History Professor (regarded as the top Chinese historian in America) will discuss reasons why China and Europe took different consumer paths, on February 25 in Olmsted Center.

An Irruption of Divas

2011-03-03T09:46:00.000-08:00

Song Bird Watchers Flock to Indianola

My grandfather was never interested in clearing his woods to plant more fields. Because the migratory birds that returned to his farm each year feasted on bugs, he refused to spray insecticides in his orchard. But after most of his O’Brien County neighbors converted their woodlands to corn and bean acreage, the insect-eating birds stopped coming. Grandpa sold his farm and moved, saying that he would “follow the black-billed cuckoo, who is obviously smarter than the modern farmer.” He headed south to Central Iowa and the cuckoo migrated north, so Grandpa never found his black-billed friend again. He did, however, live to discover another kind of song bird that had also been diverted by human meddling.

Just as the cuckoo’s migratory habits were irrupted by two crop agriculture and the popularization of chemical pesticides, the opera diva began flocking to Marion County in 1973 after two visionary men enticed them to stray from their usual course. When Maestro Robert Larsen and the late Douglas Duncan founded Des Moines Metro Opera (DMMO), they entered un-chartered territory. At the time, serious opera companies were only found in great cities and famous resorts. Indianola, Iowa was hardly either. Yet, from day one, Duncan and Larsen designed their company on the cutting edge of the art form.

“Their first season was simply audacious and it established the reputation instantly. Think about it, a normal fledgling company will perform three audience-pandering classics. But they did Albert Herring by (Benjamin) Britten, The Medium by (Gian Carlo) Menotti and Prima Donna by Arthur Benjamin. They’ve had the respect of the opera world ever since. St. Louis Opera, for instance, was completely inspired by DMMO,” observed Florida State University professor Kyle Marrero, who served last year as director of DMMO’s apprentice artist program

“Conventional wisdom would be to start with the pops, not a challenging repertoire like they did. Another thing about the beginnings, it was 15 years before they ever repeated an opera. It’s astonishing for a regional company to have such breadth,” added Tom Smith, who last year became only the third executive director in the company‘s history.

DMMO almost didn’t happen. Larsen was teaching an opera workshop at Simpson College because Sven and Mildred Lekberg had endowed a special assistant professor position to attract the young piano wiz. Then in the early 1970’s, the pinnacle company in America, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, offered him a position. Larsen says it was incredibly attractive, but not tempting.

“If I took the Met post, I could see how my entire life would unfold. Far more interesting were the two prospects that staying here presented - teaching young talent and providing a stage for them, plus bringing opera to a part of the country that had never had it,” he recalled.

It takes more than cutting edge programming to lure brilliant song birds year after year. Larsen and Duncan carved a niche in the opera world by scheduling a summer season in Pote Theater’s 488 seat room. Great singers came, usually for less money than they could command elsewhere, because it was the family time of year. Pote’s friendly confines symbolized what is best about life in Iowa -- whatever might be lacking in frequency of cultural attractions is compensated with intimacy. Their plan irrupted the migratory pattern of the diva.

“The summer season allowed me to spend more time in residence in Iowa than I spent anywhere else in a given year, including home,” explained Southern Californian Evelyn de la Rosa, who sang more leads than any DMMO diva since the 1980‘s.

“It’s like no where else in the opera world for its sense of family,” said Janara Kellerman, a Cedar Rapids native who returned from New York to sing the lead in Carmen last year.

“This is my oasis in the dessert. For two months a year, I hear robins, I have friends who are like family. It’s such a respite from the hard part of an opera life. Too often we just do our jobs without an opportunity to make connections with the community or with our colleagues. This is the best sense of the phrase ‘the opera family,’ explained Gwyndolyn Jones, a five time DMMO leading lady from Louisiana.

All the divas we spoke with cited DMMO’s apprentice program as a big part of the family atmosphere and the opera’s international reputation. In its 33rd year, the program saw 850 young singers audition from around the world last season, for just 42 positions.

“I began here as an apprentice. It’s an extraordinary program, the best anywhere. The apprentices are not just selected to fill out the choruses, they are a main focus of the festival. We all go to their concerts and support them. That’s part of the thrill, to hear the young voices coming up,” explained Kellerman.

The apprentice program is the result of across the board success. DMMO got out of the red ink by its second season and made a profit every year since, a winning streak unmatched in the opera universe. Between a fifth and the fourth of the audience comes from outside Iowa, from more than 35 different states and 5 countries each year. That probably makes it the most cosmopolitan attraction in the state. More than 85 per cent of the ticket holders renew each year too. Even within Iowa, ticket buyers came from 66 different counties last year. Any way you look at it, DMMO is a serious tourist attraction.

“This is a small family business only in spirit. The company has a $2 million seasonal budget and a $12 million endowment. Our stage is the same width as that of the Met (Metropolitan Opera in New York). The small house is exciting to sing in, but it’s not forgiving. It’s not for beginners. We applaud ourselves as a house that has launched so many careers,” said Larsen.

The small house is always packed. DMMO’s summer festival program has varied between 95 per cent and 105 per cent “sold out” (some tickets are returned and resold) each summer for the last several years. That allows the company to produce an unusually high percentage of earned income for such a small house. And that helps fund the educational mission - DMMO spends nearly a fourth of its budget on the Apprentice Artist Program, OPERA Iowa and Operation Opera.

The intimacy of the theater is a remarkable asset. The worst seat at Pote is closer to the singers than the best seat at the biggest opera houses in America. Such “opera in your face” is not something the critics are used to and they have responded quite well to it.

“We get more New Yorkers every year, in our audience as well as our apprentice program. They are overwhelmed by our production values. Everyone who wants to make it in opera goes to New York, but outside of The Met and (New York) City Opera, the opera companies there are pretty bare boned. If not for having so many great singers around, their productions are pretty dubious. When these singers see what’s going on here with costumes, sets, camaraderie, interchange with other artists, et cetera, they are blown away,” observed Larsen, with a smile.

Divas blend into Indianola, frequenting places like Cafe Beaujolais, Crouse Café and the Sports Page Lounge.

“We almost all furnish our homes here completely by shopping at Goodwill. Then we donate everything back at the end of the season. First one here gets first pick of the furniture,” laughed Jones.

Sometimes, divas don’t blend in enough. In many other opera houses, a “Green Room” backstage permits fans to wait to mingle with singers after they have changed clothes. In Indianola, the cast comes to the lobby after performances, still in costume, to visit with fans. That can be confusing. Jones and Kellerman frequently play classic characters of loose or tragic moral circumstances. Both divas tell stories about being called “slut” or “tart” or being confidentially told that the men they are “fooling around with” on stage are married. Jones joked that this doesn’t ever happen to Jane Redding, a buddy-diva from Florida.

“I play all the sweet roles,” Redding sighed as her husband Kyle Marerro joined the kidding.

“We call Jane ‘Miss Indianola.’ She even gets invited to sing at the local churches,” he said.

Over the years, DMMO has attracted an impressive list of singers to Indianola. Yet, one singing discovery that Larsen rates with “the best ever,” was already living in Indianola, and was never to be heard elsewhere.

“This company owes its existence to Carol Stuart. She is one of the greatest singers I have ever heard - to this day. But she was not going to leave Iowa to pursue a career. So, we provided her only stage. She was our first Magda (La Rondine), our first Cio-Cio-San (Madam Butterfly), our first Violetta (La Traviata) and so many others (Stuart premiered a record ten lead roles altogether at DMMO),” Larsen recalled.

Stuart was also my grandfather’s favorite song bird, so much so that my mother and her sister both teased him about having a crush on her. Hearing Maestro Larsen recall her history reminded me of one of Grandpa’s favorite quotations, from Charles Lindbergh.

“If I had to choose, I’d rather have birds than airplanes.”

Fortunately, DMMO doesn’t have to choose.

Best & Worst of 2010

2011-01-21T11:30:00.000-08:00

Zeitgeist of the Year - “Tight Pants/Body Rolls”

Local artists overflowed the spandex confinements of discipline and genre by manipulating new media. CeWEBrity diva Leslie Hall merged high and low culture while her latest video approached a million hits on You Tube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1c2KzJbcGA) and her gem sweater visions of American yearning were reified at in a Des Moines Art Center exhibition. Similarly Brent Houzenga’s painting, printing, music and film burst their levees and into flowed into a flood plain of hybrid culture.

Artist of the Year - Jeremiah Elbel

After winning a world wide competition, painter Jeremiah Elbel’s painting “Crowd Study 19“ is being displayed at the new Saatchi Gallery in London. It’s part of an annual show that drew over 400,000 visitors last year, a record for contemporary art in the UK. Chinese cultural magazine Vision did a major feature on Elbel’s work. Such successes landed Elbel representation with international dealer Quantum Fine Arts of Los Angeles. A Greek collector bought two of his paintings and Elbel signed for a September exhibition at Iowa State University. Elbel says his biggest problem now is inventory - demand exceeds his repertoire. “I absolutely have to get busy. I can’t let this moment pass.”

Gallery owner Steve Vail, who first touted Elbel in 2007, explained his style: “Jeremiah’s artistic ancestry hop scotches from Luc Tuymans to Gerhard Richter, all the while having a very distinctive voice of its own…In years to come I look forward to watching Jeremiah becoming increasingly recognized in the international art arena.”

We do too.

Person of the Year - Marlene Olson

Olson retired this year after more than 30 years running Olson-Larsen Galleries where she did as much to legitimize Iowa art as anyone. Consider her reflection on her 30th anniversary.

“When we opened, everyone wanted wildlife art. Not just Maynard Reece either, there were lots of others. No one calls about that anymore,” she said, smiling.

Exhibition of the Year (museum) - “Robyn O’Neil: Origins of the Universe” at the Des Moines Art Center

DMAC again debuted a major young talent by presenting an obsessive-compulsive recluse’s version of Armageddon, drawn over seven years with the nothing more than the smallest lead pencil and the largest commercial paper.

Exhibition of the Year (gallery) - “Fred Truck” at Steven Vail Fine Arts
Anaglyphic and stereographic photography, complete with 3-D glasses, provided gallery visitors a new way of looking at things.

Exhibition of the Year (non-traditional venue) - AVIVA corporate headquarters

This corporate collection simulates a museum of contemporary Iowa art.

Story of the Year - “Shattering Silence Project” by James Ellwanger with Beeline & Blue

Ellwanger followed up a massive undertaking (28 feet by 32 feet sculpture) at the Iowa Supreme Court) with a layered Plexiglas composition for the Iowa Historical Building.

Design of the Year - Stacey’s Prom, Bridal & Lingerie
by Invision

This stunning dress shop in an Urbandale strip mall blew away architectural critics and high school girls.

Best New Website - http://www.widiapradja.com/
Master of many disciplines, Ignatius Widiapradja designed an art site for art lovers showcasing his paintings, prints, designs, etc.

New Artist of the Year - Nick Naughton

Big themes and big canvasses characterized the work of this painter of black & white realism who debuted at Moberg Gallery.

Song of the Year - “Mortgage Day” by Darren and Molly Mathews

This folk rock duo brings a slightly sweeter, Iowa take on the same dark lands that obsess singer-songwriters like Cowboy Junkies and Townes Van Zandt. Catch them before they move to the big time.

Thanks for the Memories

Don Dunagan, East Village Arts Coalition
　
　
　
　

Art Inflation Terrorizes Recession

2011-01-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

To whatever degree the art world parallels the real world, early signals from this year’s holiday season are wildly hopeful. Sotheby’s and Christie’s, the largest art dealers on the planet, sold half a billion dollars worth of art in this month’s auctions, setting three astonishing world records in the process as buyers consistently bid works up 30 per cent over top end estimates.

It takes awhile for such appreciation to trickle down to Main Street galleries.

This year’s holiday exhibition at Olson-Larsen Galleries featured a “Small Works Show” by eight artists, an overture to buyers whose spending is not influenced by the news from New York auctions. Richard Black, John Beckelman, Carlos Ferguson, Amy Worthen, Yuko Ishi, Peter Feldstein and Joel Elgin comprise the roster for that show, while larger works by Priscilla Steele and Wendy Rolfe simultaneously debut.

A peak into Alex Brown’s studio at the annual Art 316 Open House suggested that even big time artists are downsizing this year. Among Central Iowa painters, Brown is in a league of his own, showing at Feature, a New York gallery of cutting edge renown, and in Europe. He says he lives in Beaverdale so he can have a downtown studio twice the size of his house, trading exposure and networking opportunities of New York for Des Moines’ lack of distractions. A eye-catching stylist, Brown composes on a grid template by creating similar miniature images of an evolving larger image with geometrically precise brushstrokes. That’s not something one does while distracted.

Brown is known for big paintings. He’s composing a series of such for his upcoming exhibition in Belgium but he’s is also creating a series of “light” drawings that reveal portraits of renowned terrorists. It might be an escape for the artist but it’s certainly a more affordable option for collectors interested in owning an Alex Brown.

How about an affordable Sol Lewitt? Seriously. The godfather of conceptual art is known for huge works, like entire walls at the Des Moines Art Center and the Pappajohn Center, the latter so brilliantly lighted at night for westbound traffic. Before Lewitt, conceptual art was mostly about language and philosophy. Plato and Liebniz were its dominant figures and both were long dead. As art critic Richard Lacayo noted, Lewitt created “eye candy that starts like an algebra lesson but ends like a Renaissance fresco.”

“Cubes, Whirls & Twirls, Loops & Curves & Wavy Brushstrokes: The Prints of Sol Lewitt” opens November 18 at Steven Vail Gallery. That title riffs off “Arcs, Circles & Grids,“ Lewitt’s 1972 book that helped take the artist into mainstream culture. The show at Vail offers prints from the estate of Sofia Lewitt, for as little as $2000, up to $22,000 for a set of five works. It runs through February 28.

Art economics in Iowa received a jump start this autumn at AVIVA’s new West Des Moines headquarters. Those who have penetrated the building’s formible security system rave about the regional art, perhaps the largest such installation anywhere. Bill Luchsinger and Karen Strohbeen, primary artists in the AVIVA installations, worked 10 to 14 hours a day for 72 straight days to meet their deadline, creating 55 of the largest prints they’ve ever done.

“And then, the building just swallowed them up,” Luchsinger said with admiration.

The Madison County couple’s annual exhibition at Moberg Gallery features a series of digital meditations culled from their Big Thompson project. That small river is the midpoint of daily walks they took for a year with cameras shooting. Their work simulates Thoreau’s Walden Pond meditations.

“It allowed us to fall in love with our place in new unexpected ways,” explained Luchsinger.

This year’s Luchsinger-Strohbeen exhibition runs through January and includes botanical paintings by Laura Luchsinger.

Design Fresh, Design Local

2010-11-22T12:48:00.000-08:00

Remember when local developers thought the only way to impress people was to beg “big name” architects from out of state to design Des Moines buildings? Maybe the disappointments such outsiders delivered with the downtown library and the Wells Fargo Arena have ended those days forever. If not, the annual Institute of Architects (AIA) Iowa convention might have.
This year, four Des Moines firms swept AIA’s top awards (Excellence in Design Awards of Merit). Invision won for Stacey’s Prom, Bridal & Lingerie in Urbandale, which jurors declared “ a model and inspiration for what can be achieved in forgotten strip mall landscape.”

Stacy's Prom photo courtesy of Invision

BNIM Architects won the same award for Retreat, on a 70 acre restored prairie in rural Iowa. Jurors lauded its “strong relationships between site and building.” HLKB Architecture took the same award for its Iowa State University (ISU) Multicultural Center, commended for its “masterful interior in spatial arrangement and detail.” Jurors added it “shows that even a modest commission can achieve spectacular results.” And Substance won for 322 Reinvented in Iowa City, which was called “a strong project which explores a new house model for the suburban house.”

Invision added two Awards of Honor: for the Whiteline Lofts on SW Fifth St.; and for their own offices on Watson Powell Way. One juror called the lofts “a model project for urban redevelopment on the industrial fringe.” Another described Invision’s offices as “understated yet elegant.” OPN Architects, also won an Award of Honor for their own offices on Court Avenue, described as “a beautiful dialog between new and old.” RDG Planning & Design won two awards for sustainable designs. Their Cradle to Cradle for ISU’s Morrill Hall rehabilitation was praised for “amazing longevity” that should give another 100 years of life to a 100 year old building. They also won a sustainability award for Hope for the Future in the ISU College of Design expansion. Jurors called the stack effect on that building a “beautiful articulation of sustainable architecture.”

Local artists also continued stifling old notions that regionalism quit mattering with Grant Wood. Two Des Moines artists reveal nuances of transition, as well as familiar themes, in their current exhibitions.

Fred Truck’s anaglyphic and stereographic photography at Steven Vail Fine Arts (through Nov. 6) is providing visitors with a new way of looking at art. His anaglyphic conceptions stitch six photos together to present 360 degree panoramas of Des Moines’ Locust Tap, The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s rotunda, and art collector Jim Hubbell’s home. Truck described stereographic (3D) images, which require special glasses to view, as a “very active” niche in modern photography. “There are five or ten new things every day on Flickr,” he said. That’s where Truck‘s work has been viewed by 50,000 people this year.

Frank Hansen’s “World Class Poseur” at Moberg Gallery (through Nov. 13) shows new directions, some literally. Master painted Richard Kelley complimented Hansen’s “Dubuffet qualities” particularly in “The Boxing Monacle.” Several paintings are actually painted over older Hansen paintings. In some, the artist explores meditative abstractions without his usual cast of characters from Iowa‘s wild side. For the most part though, Hansen’s signature bug eaters, Medusas, “pimpwitches,” freaks, and whores still walk the Planet Frank.

Works of two new artists will join that of Kim Hutchinson for Olson-Larsen Galleries’ Art Walk exhibition beginning Friday. Brian Roberts is a repeat “Best in Show” winner at the Iowa Sculpture Festival who usually references agricultural architecture in his work. Lee Emma Running uses simple tools (projection, tracing, stenciling and cutting) to characterize her observations of ephemeral things like animal hair, leaf veins and root clusters. Hutchison is among a growing number of former Grandview University artists making a scene. She is a painter who sews, sourcing materials from garage sales cast-offs, to explore quest themes filled with mysterious pathways and doors.

Escaping the Nazis and Hollywood too

2010-11-22T12:39:00.000-08:00

Some are born artists, some achieve great art and others have art thrust upon them. Like a romantic character from historical fiction, Jeanne Mammen walked all types of the artistic life. In fact, her career was so tangled in the 20th century’s greatest dramas that it’s hard to believe her biography escaped Hollywood‘s clutches.

Born in Berlin in 1890, Mammen moved to Paris at age five with her wealthy family, absorbing French culture, particularly Flaubert. She studied at legendary art schools - Académie Julian in Paris, Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and Scuola Libera Academica in Rome. Toulouse Latrec and the visionary Franco-Belgian symbolists were mentors. After a promising debut exhibition in 1913, World War I devastated her family. Jeanne caught the last train out of Paris before German nationals were sent to internment camps, waiting till the last minute for a character player by Ingrid Bergman.

The Great War moved her from privilege to destitution. After swearing she would never go hungry again, Mammen eked out a living on the mean streets of Berlin, forging close ties to the streetwalkers and thieves that also fascinated Bertold Brecht. By 1919 she had saved enough money to rent a studio on the Kurfürstendamm, the Broadway of Europe in the cabaret era. She designed posters for the German film industry in its glory days and her watercolors appeared on the covers of every notable fashion and society magazine in Germany. Her more serious work was validated with a successful exhibition in 1930. Then she illustrated Pierre Louys's "Les Chansons de Bilitis," depicting variations on the theme of lesbian love. Along came Hitler.
The Nazis didn’t know what they didn’t like, but they knew they didn’t like Mammen’s art. So they branded it “Jewish.” Refusing to work for magazines or films that that been sanctioned by the Nazis, she made her living for twelve years as a street cart vendor. Mammen resourcefully kept making art, building sculptures out of wire left behind by the Soviet army and with Care package materials sent from California. Stylistically, she turned to Cubism to suggest the dislocation of the better angels of human nature. After the war, she joined the legendary existentialist cabaret, "Die Badewanne" (The Bathtub) as a designer, but painted and lived reclusively till 1976.

Unlike her more famous male contemporaries (Max Beckmann, Otto Dix and George Grosz), Mammen viewed the social injustices of her era without dramatic malice, exaggerated satire or condescension. A new exhibition of thirteen of her watercolors focusing on independent women plays at the Des Moines Art Center through December 10. It also contributes to the museum’s growing reputation for significant twentieth century German art.

Drake’s Anderson Gallery opened its season with “A Fork in the Road: The Time and Place for Local Foods” by Hilary D. Williams. Like several previous exhibitions at Drake, the show preaches politically correctness without acknowledging opposing points of view. The message this time is that scale of America’s industrial food system begets dire consequences. Estimated statistics and slick designs remind viewers that most of them consume food that makes an obscene carbon footprint by traveling long distances to Iowa. One display even prompts visitors to change their consumption habits for the common good, providing pledge cards to be filled out in duplicate, so that those of us who aren’t yet enlightened can remember what we were prompted to pledge.

Williams talks the talk better than she walks the walk. An exhibition brochure was printed on just one side of slick, heavy (80 #) paper. It was 21 inches tall and 18 pages long. At the exhibition reception, refreshments were served in disposable, non-compostible plastic.
ArtFest West, a fall complement to ArtFest Midwest, moves to The Village of Ponderosa October 9 and10. In addition to providing a venue for 100 artists (40% from Iowa, 96% from Midwest), the show promises affordable art and free music.

Prepping for the Apocalypse

2010-09-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

August 2010

Richard Kelley opened his biennial exhibition at Moberg Gallery (through Sept. 18) by revisiting his visionary world of deep blues and brilliant reds. He still observes an ominous world of housing developments, bumper to bumper freeways, and zoo animals on the loose often led by naked shepherdesses. This year, the Planet Kelley looks pre-Apocalyptic. Giant preying mantises and super rabbits stalk doomed cityscapes. Psychedelic sea hawks fish for eels. Insects seem to be preparing to mate with human women. Hares observe jungle cats as if their roles were reversed in the hunting cycle.

In his oil paintings, Kelley’s colors are more vivid than ever, something I didn’t think possible. He also added some affordable pastel paintings to his repertoire this year. Some lighter touches underlie the boldness. A traffic scene includes blondes in convertibles rather than the usual hectic road rage. The giant attacking insects in “Invasion of Gansevoort Street” pay homage to color schemes in early American works of Dutch painter Willem de Kooning.

The Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) celebrated the 25th anniversary of its Richard Meire wing with new installations. A new floor plan on the lowest level presents a de facto exhibition of modern German art. That floor’s masterpiece is a giant untitled piece by Anselm Kieffer.

(Des Moines artist Don Dunagan, who died last month, described that work as “German optimism - ballet slippers in a bomb site.”) It’s now surrounded by works of eight other 20th century German artists plus those of another eight English and American artists of Germanic descent. The contrast between those two groups says something about national psyches following WWII.

Among the Germans, Thomas Struth’s high definition photo of museum visitors focuses on cultural rape - an ancient temple which was plundered from Greece and reassembled in Berlin.

Thomas Demand’s camera recreates the scene of a famous terrorist bomb which failed to go off. Wolfgang Tillmans zeroes in on a man extracting splinters from his foot. Hilda and Bernd Becher focus on ominous blast furnaces with horrible historical suggestiveness. Andreas Gursky observes a crowded beach scene at Rimini where bathers appear to metastasize. For levity, Gerhard Richter presents an “abstract landscape” that evokes the great German Romantics. One of Joseph Beuys’ famous blackboards and a piece by Martin Kippenberger also make statements without ominous undertones. Works by artists of Germanic descent are much mellower. Jeff Koons, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Diebenkorn, George Segal and Alex Katz are at their whimsical best here. Even Julian Schnabel and Britain’s Lucien Freud seem light hearted in the company of the German Germans.

“Kill Them Before They Multiply” (through Sept. 26) continues DMAC Print Gallery’s string of intriguing, themed shows. This historical review of artistic anxieties plays in visions of multiplication and subdivision - a theme that allows artists to unleash their imaginations. Media range from prints, photos, drawings and watercolor paintings to conventional sculptures and hair sprayed rubber bands. Subjects range from Biblical (Jehan Duvet’s “The Beast with Seven Heads and Ten Horns”) to the historical (Dennis Kardon” “Death of Marat” and Pablo Picasso’s “The Lie of Franco”) to modern things like suburban sprawl (Ross Racine’s “Subdivision: Heavenly Heights”) and cell phone obsessions (Iowan Timothy Wehrle’s “Inner Kingdom, Thieving Speedway’). Everything in the exhibition seems to make a common, modern observation - be it a dictator’s polyps or a land developer’s business plan, growth is cancerous. Curator Amy Worthen tried to sum up the exhibition’s theme in its catalogue.

“ Although individuals and societies are supposed to benefit from material and technological advances, we ultimately experience overload. The world reaps the consequences of immoderation, over extension, greed, disparity and injustice.”

Tout

“Crockett” and

“Tubb’s,” TJ Moberg’s latest mixed media paintings at Moberg Gallery, celebrate 1980’s American style.

Des Moines Metamorphoses

2010-08-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

I bellied up to the bar of local hotel restaurant. This guy sitting next to me sized me up and said, “You look too old for the music thing. So, you here for the bike show or the car show?” I explained that I was simply a local guy having dinner. My inquisitor looked disbelieving but quickly bonded with a band of biker brothers who had descended on Des Moines over Fourth of July weekend, pretty much selling out every hotel room in town and packing bars and restaurants. This is not your parents’ Des Moines. It isn’t even your teenaged brother’s Des Moines.

“I remember, because it wasn’t very long ago at all, when everyone left Des Moines on the Fourth of July. When there wasn’t much of anything to do here,” recalled architect Kirk Blunck.

Blunck takes pride in the changes. His renovations of historic East Village buildings have done more than anything else to attract visitors to formerly repulsive parts of downtown. Watching people file into Lucca, Kitchen Collage, Miyabi 9 and a dozen other bustling businesses in his buildings, Blunck declared a milestone.

“Having Steve Vail here is just a huge thing. It’s a major, major deal to have an international gallery,” he explained.

Steven Vail Fine Arts (SVFA) opened in February on the second floor of the Teachout Building. An exhibition of Jan Frank paintings followed by a show of prints by the artists in the Pappajohn Sculpture Garden placed SVFA many levels above other downtown exhibit spaces, at least by measurements such as the insurance value of inventories and artists’ renown with Google.

Vail’s next exhibit is by Not Vital (a real name), who is as avant garde as an artist can be. The 62 year old Swiss aristocrat lives much of each year in a mud and barbed wire hut in Niger next to a pile of waste from local butchers. There he cultivates his sense of smell, works with silversmiths on sculptures that sometimes look like instruments of torture, and casts cow dung. Vail has actually sold some of the latter for him. For his show at opening July 29 in Des Moines, Vital will exhibit more conventional art - a portfolio of lithographs.

Originally representing only Iowa artists, Moberg Gallery has readjusted its scope. It’s currently hosting an impressive exhibit of 16 “Visiting Artists.” Missourian Nick Naughton’s large wood cut prints document the toil of migrant workers in dramatic fine detail. Colorado painter John Hull peaks into the world of carnies and trailer park police calls. Sculptor Thomas Stancliffe’s freaky environmental reflections presage the Gulf oil disaster.

Things are also changing on a personal level for local artists. Many received big career breaks this summer. The National Academy Museum selected Phillip Chen's print "Lucky 8" for its Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art. Painters Ignatius Widiapradja and Larassa Kabel were both signed by 101 Exhibit, an esteemed contemporary gallery in Miami, Florida. Their works are part of a show which runs through midsummer there. Kabel’s works also will travel to a 101 Exhibit in East Hampton, New York in August.

Painter Jeremiah Elbel won the second round of the Saatchi Showdown. His paintings are now displayed with those of 11 other showdown winners at the new Saatchi Gallery in London. Last year, over 400,000 visitors saw the Showdown finalists’ works, a record for a contemporary art exhibition in England.

Painter Alex Brown signed for a one person January show at Twig Gallery in Brussels, Belgium and also for a Frances Young Tang Museum show this September in Saratoga Springs, NY. Brown’s legendary New York City gallery Feature Inc also rebounded after a chaotic year of untimely expansion and retraction.

Sculptor Mitchell Squire won a residency at Maine’s Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, perhaps the most notable program of its kind. Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, William King and Janet Fish are among its alumni. Squire is one of 65 participants selected this year from 2045 nominees worldwide. He also won a residency at Ox-Bow in Michigan. Joan Mitchell, Keith Achepohl, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Paschke and Miyoko Ito are Ox Bow alums.
　

Fall Arts Guide

2010-08-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

Karen Strohbeen's "Doll Heads & Lace"

Dire Fetes: Fall Exhibitions Play Grave Tunes

For Des Moines‘ art scene, fall is the sobering, back-to-work season that follows carefree summers packed with big festivals and light entertainments. This year‘s autumnal calendar reinforces such sobriety with a barrage of deadly serious exhibitions.

Currently playing at Moberg Gallery, master painter Richard Kelley presents a pre-Apocalyptic vision of housing developments, traffic nightmares, mesmerizing women, and escaped zoo animals.

The Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) has a current show, “Kill Them Before They Multiply,” that is themed around visions of grave anxieties bonded by the common observation that growth, be it suburban sprawl or cell phone proliferation, is cancerous. Steven Vail Fine Arts’ continues its exhibition of deconstructed Scandinavian symphonies by Not Vital, a Swiss artist who cultivates his worldview in a mud hut in Niger.

More gravity is on the way too. DMAC’s next major exhibition brings Jeanne Mammen’s street smart visions of pre World War II nightclubs and prostitutes to Greenwood Park. By Halloween, her work will be joined there by an anthology show, “Bad Dreams,” that promises to be seriously disturbing. In late September, Olson-Larsen Galleries will premiere Sharon Booma‘s highly emotional paintings that attempt “to control the chaotic forces that control our lives.” The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art will feature “Goya’s Disasters of War,” with all the horror of war and none of its heroics nor romance.

As fall winds its way toward winter, lighter spirits begin to influence the muse of curators. Wendy Rolfe and Priscilla Steele will bring their earth goddess visions to Olson-Larsen. Frank Hansen’s latest pictorials on human frailty will follow Kelley at Moberg. Quilt Walk will keep Valley Junction in stitches and various artists’ studio spaces will host open houses during the holidays. Bill Luchsinger & Karen Strohbeen shall deck the holiday season with their latest meditations on beauty and prairie life. But Chuck Close has the last word and that's as stark as winter.

Calendar
(*APT* indicates a special Art Pimp tout)

Recurring Events and Family Attractions

Thursday Night Art Walks in downtown Newton
First Friday Art Walks, Fairfield Town Square

Special Events

Festivals

September 24-25
Art Stop - ( www.myspace.com/artstop, http://www.artstopinfo.com/ )
A two day visual and performing arts event, with shuttle busses to Valley Junction, East Village, Ingersoll, Gateway West and Roosevelt, but not Drake.

October 1-3
Northeast Iowa Artists Studio Tour (Winneshiek County Convention and Visitors Bureau, 800-463-4692, http://www.iowaarttour.com/ ) APT
Iowa’s original art studio tour takes places around Decorah‘s autumn majesty.

October 6-9
“Quilt Walk”
Nine Historic Valley Junction merchants feature quilt-related exhibitions and demonstrations, and hosting opening receptions with artists.

Galleries

Ongoing

Art Dive (1417 Walnut St., http://www.artdive.com/ )
Des Moines’ original alternative gallery plans alternative exhibitions. Be surprised.

2AU (200 Fifth, West Des Moines)
Pearls reign this fall in Au‘s effort to provide Art Deco comforts in a troubled year.

Finder's Creepers (515 18th St. http://www.finderscreepers.com/)
Alternative to alternative.

Kavanaugh Gallery (131 5th Street West Des Moines, 279-8682, http://www.kavanaughgallery.com/)
Specializing in purchased estate collections, there’s no telling what you might find here.

Octagon Center for the Arts (427 Douglas Avenue, Ames http://www.octagonarts.org/)
Usually a fabulous fiber art show each fall.

Susan Noland Studio Gallery (902 42nd St.)
The psychological properties of gems are front and center in this master goldsmith‘s repertoire.

Special Exhibitions

Olson-Larsen Galleries (203 Fifth, West Des Moines, http://www.olsonlarsen.com/ )

Through September 4
“Yuko Ishi, Ken Smith and Mary Merkel Hess”
Ishi’s multimedia studies of birds are a bird watchers’ dream.

September 24 - November 27
“New Works by Sharon Booma” ATP
A rare one person exhibit for Olson-Larsen.

October 22 - November 27
“Kim Hutchison, Brian Roberts, Lee Emma Running”

December 3 - January 15, 2011
“Wendy Rolfe, Priscilla Steele”
“Small Works Show”
Includes pieces by Carlos Ferguson, John Beckelman, Richard Black, Pat Edwards, Yuko Ishi, Amy Worthen
APT

Moberg Art Gallery (2921 Ingersoll Ave., http://www.moberggallery.com/ )

Through September 18
“Richard Kelley” APT
Des Moines‘ master painter creates his own magical world.

October 1 - November 13

“Frank Hansen” APT
Hansen’s exhibition are Des Moines most raucously attended as a range of folks respond to the artist’s blue collar wit. Last year’s exhibit featured over 60 new works and a movie premier.

November 19 - January 2011
“New Works by Bill Luchsinger & Karen Strohbeen” APT
Creating their first prints in 1970, Karen and Bill were among the nation’s digital print making pioneers, even before David Hockney made it cool. The exhibit will showcase new work on paper, canvas, and ceramic tile.

Heritage Art Gallery (111 Court Ave., http://www.heritagegallery.org/)

Through September 10
“Charitable Print Trust”
Robert Schulte leads a group of artists who create prints to sell and also to donate to non profits and charities to use in their fundraising auctions. James Conn, Matt Welbourn and Jim Engler are also included.

September 13 - October 21
“Contemporary Fibers”

October 25 - December 2.
“Works by Mary Muller, Leslie Leavenworth, and Joyce Lee.”

December 6 - January 2011
“Greater Des Moines Exhibited 17”

Instinct Gallery at Des Moines Social Club (1408 Locust St., http://www.instinctgallery.com/)

September
“Juried Photography Show”

October
“Creepy Crawlies”
DMSC’s second annual Halloween themed show.

November
“Hybrid: Holly Jensen and Michelle Holley Installation”
Steven Vail Fine Arts (Teachout Building, East Village, 309-2763, http://www.stevenvailfinearts.com/

Through October
“Not Vital - Dirigerer” APT
Swiss artist paints impressions of great musical compositions by Sibelius, Grieg and Nielsen.

September
“Fred Truck“
Anaglyph and 3D photographs

November

“Sol Lewitt”
Selected Prints from the Estate of Sol LeWitt

January - March
“Chuck Close – Works in Edition”
Museums
Des Moines Art Center (4700 Grand Ave., http://www.desmoinesartcenter.org/ )

Through August 29
“The Bike Riders - Danny Lyon”
American photographer documents his years with the Chicago Outlaws biker club.

Through September 26
“Kill Them Before They Multiply” APT
Fifteen artists’ visions of viral growth, obsessive repetition, and overcrowding - from the colorful, beehive world of fast food courts, through traffic jams, people on cell phones and suburbia gone amok.

Through September 19
“Iowa Artists Exhibited”
Fifteen artists ranging from performance diva Leslie Hall to realist oil painter Larassa Kabel. Des Moines’ Dan Weiss, Nate Morton and Benjamin Gardner represent the metro.

September 10 - December 12
“Jeanne Mammen” APT
Working as a magazine illustrator in the years just before World War II, Mammen captured a world of nightclubs, street singers, fashionable cafes, and prostitutes in her stylized and often critical images.

October 1 – January 23, 2011
“Another Dimension: Sculpture Park Artists’ Prints, Drawings, and Objects”
Works on paper by artists represented in the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park.

October 8 – January 9, 2011
“Bad Dreams” APT
Drawn primarily from the Art Center’s permanent collections, Bad Dreams presents the imagery of nightmares, from literal depictions of our worst fears to surrealistic visions that inexplicably conjure up anxiety and unease.

Ankeny Art Center (1520 SW Ordnance Rd., http://www.ankenyartcenter.com/ )

Through September
“Robert Mullinex”
Teeple Hansen Gallery (108 W. Broadway, Suite 206. Fairfield)

August 6 - September 18
“Four Dimensions”
Fairfield artists Judy Bales, Manuel Coradin and Shannon Kennedy and Deborah Vanko of Des Moines show multi media works.

Brunnier Museum of Art (University Museums, 290 Scheman Bldg., Ames, 515.294.3342, http://www.museums.isu.edu/ )

Through August 2010
“Exquisite Balance: Sculptures by Bill Barrett”
Sculptures recall fluid effortlessness of calligraphy and betray a positivism to which many viewers feel drawn.

August 24 - December 17
“Relationships: Drawn, Analog to Digital”
“The Observant Eye: Beth Van Hoesen”
“Mark Adams: Translation of Light”
“N.C. Wyeth’s America in the Making”

The Vesterheim (523 W. Water St., Decorah, http://www.vesterheim.org/)

Through March 2011
“Pieces of Self: Identity and Norwegian-American Quilts”Expressions of family, religious, and ethnic identity in quilts from Vesterheim’s collection.

“2010: The International Year of the Nurse”Featuring WWII, Red Cross, and deaconess nurses.

Faulconer Gallery (Grinnell College, www.grinnell.edu/faulconergallery)

Through September 5
“Harry Shearer: the Silent Echo Chamber”
A who's who of American politics and punditry in the moments before they go "live" on television.

Through September 5
“Michael Van den Besselaar: Unconscious Optics”
Paintings, resembling old Zenith and RCA televisions, freeze fleeting images once beamed into collective consciousness.

September 17 - December 12
“Culturing Community: Projects about Place”
Projects will include an examination of attitudes towards work and a look at current and pending environmental issues facing the Grinnell community.

Through December 12
“Young Pioneers: Lithographs from the Johnson-Horrigan Collection ”
Examines the role of children in works produced by the Soviet Artists Union in the early and mid 1970s.

Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (410 Third Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids), http://www.crma.org/

September 4 - December 12
“Goya‘s Disasters of War”
All the gruesome horror of war without heroics or romance.

October 9 - December 31
“China: Insights. New Documentary Photography from the People's Republic”
Emerging and vanishing China, through the eyes of seven mainland photographers.

November 27 - October 9, 2011“Earth Transformed: Ceramics from the Collection”Celebrates the growing section of decorative arts in the CRMA's collection.

January 22 - May 1, 2011
“Wizards of Pop!”More than 60 images from 13 picture and pop-up books reveal a variety of media and techniques in batik, marbleized paper mosaic, and delicate cut-paper, and pop-up books rendered in pencil, marker, watercolor, acrylic, and linoleum block print

University Museum (3219 Hudson Road, Cedar Falls, www.uni.edu/museum)

September 13 – December 23
“Object as Subject”
It does itself, plus other tricks of self absorption.

January 2011
“Our World in Focus”Clearing things up.
Blanden Art Museum ( 920 Third Avenue SouthFort Dodge, 515-573-2316, http://www.blanden.org/ )

Through Sept. 22
“Iowa in Pastel - Mary Muller”
MacNider Art Museum (303 2nd Street Southeast, Mason City,641- 421-3666, http://www.macniderart.org/

October 29 – January 8, 2011 “Marc Sijan: Being Alive”
Hyper-realistic sculptures of Wisconsin artist.

July 2010

2010-08-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

Des Moines Metamorphoses

I belly up to the bar of local hotel restaurant. This guy sitting next to me sizes me up and says, “You look too old for the music thing. So, you here for the bike show or the car show?” I explained that I was simply a local guy having dinner. My inquisitor looked disbelieving but quickly bonded with a band of biker brothers who had descended on Des Moines over Fourth of July weekend, pretty much selling out every hotel room in town and packing bars and restaurants. This is not your parents’ Des Moines. It isn’t even your teenaged brother’s Des Moines.

“I remember, because it wasn’t very long ago at all, when everyone left Des Moines on the Fourth of July. When there wasn’t much of anything to do here,” recalled architect Kirk Blunck.

Blunck takes pride in the changes. His renovations of historic East Village buildings have done more than anything else to attract visitors to formerly repulsive parts of downtown. Watching people file into Lucca, Kitchen Collage, Miyabi 9 and a dozen other bustling businesses in his buildings, Blunck declared a milestone.

“Having Steve Vail here is just a huge thing. It’s a major, major deal to have an international gallery,” he explained.

Steven Vail Fine Arts (SVFA) opened in February on the second floor of the Teachout Building. An exhibition of Jan Frank paintings followed by a show of prints by the artists in the Pappajohn Sculpture Garden placed SVFA many levels above other downtown exhibit spaces, at least by measurements such as the insurance value of inventories and artists’ renown with Google.

Vail’s next exhibit is by Not Vital (a real name), who is as avant garde as an artist can be. The 62 year old Swiss aristocrat lives much of each year in a mud and barbed wire hut in Niger next to a pile of waste from local butchers. There he cultivates his sense of smell, works with silversmiths on sculptures that sometimes look like instruments of torture, and casts cow dung. Vail has actually sold some of the latter for him. For his show at opening July 29 in Des Moines, Vital will exhibit more conventional art - a portfolio of lithographs.

Originally representing only Iowa artists, Moberg Gallery has readjusted its scope. It’s currently hosting an impressive exhibit of 16 “Visiting Artists.” Missourian Nick Naughton’s large wood cut prints document the toil of migrant workers in dramatic fine detail. Colorado painter John Hull peaks into the world of carnies and trailer park police calls. Sculptor Thomas Stancliffe’s freaky environmental reflections presage the Gulf oil disaster.

Things are also changing on a personal level for local artists. Many received big career breaks this summer. The National Academy Museum selected Phillip Chen's print "Lucky 8" for its Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art. Painters Ignatius Widiapradja and Larassa Kabel were both signed by 101 Exhibit, an esteemed contemporary gallery in Miami, Florida. Their works are part of a show which runs through midsummer there. Kabel’s works also will travel to a 101 Exhibit in East Hampton, New York in August.

Painter Jeremiah Elbel won the second round of the Saatchi Showdown. His paintings are now displayed with those of 11 other showdown winners at the new Saatchi Gallery in London. Last year, over 400,000 visitors saw the Showdown finalists’ works, a record for a contemporary art exhibition in England.

Painter Alex Brown signed for a one person January show at Twig Gallery in Brussels, Belgium and also for a Frances Young Tang Museum show this September in Saratoga Springs, NY. Brown’s legendary New York City gallery Feature Inc also rebounded after a chaotic year of untimely expansion and retraction.

Sculptor Mitchell Squire won a residency at Maine’s Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, perhaps the most notable program of its kind. Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, William King and Janet Fish are among its alumni. Squire is one of 65 participants selected this year from 2045 nominees worldwide. He also won a residency at Ox-Bow in Michigan. Joan Mitchell, Keith Achepohl, Claes Oldenburg, Ed Paschke and Miyoko Ito are Ox Bow alums.
　

How to Sculpt a New Civic Image

2010-07-22T13:04:00.000-07:00

As the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Garden (PSG) completes its debut season most of its skeptics have gone underground.

Bustling every weekend with camera-laden visitors, the the garden park has become extraordinarily popular with locals and tourists alike. A bright happenstance during an economic recession, the New York Times even proclaimed the PSG a “cure from urban blight.” As its novelty ages and the value of free entertainment depreciates in a hopefully revived economy, now’s a good time to ponder what might be the city’s next move. I posed the following question to some keen observers of Des Moines culture:

“What can be done to capitalize of the Pappajohn’s largess to help Des Moines become known as “a sculpture town” rather than just a town with a downtown sculpture park?

Des Moines Art Center Director Jeff Fleming likes what’s already been done.

“I think that we’re already moving in this direction. The Principal River Walk project has two major sculpture works in progress. The Parks Department has completed one project by creating a sculpture map to downtown and they have another in the works that identifies, with consistent standards of identification, sculptures of note all over the entire metro area. I think the most important thing is to progress with a focus on maintaining an enhancement of quality,” he said.

Journalist Chuck Offenburger also thinks the Parks Department map will lead to more good things.

“First, I’d say a detailed study should be done to identify and locate the most interesting existing sculptures around metro Des Moines. Of course there’s “Crusoe Umbrella.” But we forget some of the intriguing ones – like the tricycle rider in Merle Hay Mall, the tree carvings at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, some of the statues in the Iowa Hall of Pride, the string quartet at Drake, the stylized baseball outside Principal Park, the new Paragon Prairie Tower in the extreme northwest corner of the metro, those at the Art Center, the various military-related statues, some of the best church ones, those on the State Capitol grounds, some great ones in businesses (Mac Hornecker’s in the Iowa Farm Bureau headquarters lobby), and some good ones that might be accessible to the public at private residences.

“That could 1) make it possible to put together a new self-guided “Sculpture Tour” of the city, with occasional escorted tours. 2) It could also identify areas of the city that are really short of sculptures and may stir ideas of what new pieces could go there and 3) If we’re really paying attention to sculpture in Des Moines, that might lead to some new funding sources to commission new pieces – and one of the first ones we should get done is a big one by Sticks, since their headquarters is in Des Moines,” he said.

Sculptor James Ellwanger, who created several of the pieces Offenburger mentioned, agrees that new commissions could stimulate a positive image for the city. He’d like to see it result from a sculpture prize though. Noting that Chicago’s image as America’s greatest architectural city was boosted by the Pritzker Prize, he mused about a competition at the Iowa State Fair.

“They have a million visitors and lots of open space. They already have arts competitions and they’re moving those into a new venue. It would be a great place for sculptors to bring works,” he said.

Author John Domini likes the prize idea and adds that legislation requiring sculpture in new developments has worked imaging miracles in Portland, Oregon and New York City.

“The Portland legislation is called "1% for Art," and it's meant that even the city-center shopping malls Lloyd Center & Pioneer Place have eye-catching, mind-bending sculpture installations at all four entrances. Even parking garages have them, lightening the tomb effect. As for New York, Manhattan has recently grown full of sculpture in public, on block after block, park after park,” he noted.

Grandeur & Glamour: Lost & Found

2010-07-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

Anyone with a cell phone is a cameraman today. So what does it take for a photographer to catch the eye of museum curators? This year’s Iowa Artists Exhibition at the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) provides two very different answers.

Ranked the #12 most watched musician on You Tube, Leslie Hall is a bona fide “ceWEBrity.” CNN profiled her. Wired.com reported 900,000 downloads during the launch period for her song “How We Got Out Version Two.” She was featured on a VH1 special of the 40 greatest internet stars. Hall recently completed her fourth national tour to rave reviews, has a Los Angeles booking agent and is in talks with HBO about her own show. Why is she still living in Iowa?

“I am not appreciated here and I have a deep Midwestern need to earn hometown love. I also love cheap rent. In New York or Los Angeles I’d be a starving artist with a day job I hated. I can’t do that and I don’t have to do that in Ames. I have a big apartment and a car too. Besides, Iowa thrift stores and garage sales remain relatively un plundered,” Hall explained.

Garage sales and thrift stores are the mother lode of her art career. While a student in Boston, she photographed herself in each of 400 gem sweaters she had collected. She posted those shots on a web site and that became a internet sensation. Today she uses the web to sell her musical albums, original artwork, T-shirts, and a line of custom spandex outfits under the label "Midwest Diva." The best of her famous gem sweaters are now enshrined in a museum that also serves as a gay wedding venue.

“An artist today has to make a living any which way,” she said.

Hall began posing in second hand clothing for publicity at Ames High School. She entered the homecoming parade in a neck brace, a sparkling pink Goodwill gown and a tiara her mother had worn when crowned Miss Auburn 1970. The Ames Tribune ran Hall’s photo on the front page and that sparked her successful campaign to become Prom Queen. Hall had that stunt in mind when she began performing “large sized hip hop” to turn heads in Boston.

“It worked as a publicity generator. I dressed up in glitter and big hair and spandex and the media picked up on the act. People came to the shows and things just took off. That probably would never have happened in Iowa,” she explained.

Hall admits there are drawbacks to being a rap star in Iowa.
“The Iowa Dream is killing my music career. Back up singers keep pursuing that dream - having babies and moving away. They also experiment with weight loss fads and become sassy,” she complained.

Hall’s gem sweater photos, including one dedicated to her “main dead man” (Elvis), are part of the DMAC exhibition.

Richard Colburn of Cedar Falls has spent years chronicling the effects of economic transitions in the Midwest.

“I came from Pennsylvania where the decline of the American steel industry effected so many lives. So, I started these projects interested in how that also effected the Iron Range,” he said.
In the DMAC exhibition, a Colburn series on closed schools reveals Midwestern ingenuity (schools converted into tornado shelters, private homes, fire departments, a City Hall, and haunted houses) as well as lost grandeur (empty swimming pools in once wealthy towns.)

“I wanted to photograph from the point of view of a student in the school, not like a realtor,” Colburn explained of his preference for close-ups and details.

Colburn and Hall’s works debut June 11 along with those of sculptors Josh Black, Daniel Weiss and Jim Shrosbree, painters Micah Bloom, Megan Dirks, Laura Farrin, Larassa Kabel, Teresa Paschke and Kristin Quinn, installation artists Nathan Morton and Benjamin Gardner, and ceramicist Ingrid Lillgren.

Des Moines’ Festive Season

2010-05-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

Picasso mused that artists are children who never grow up, a metaphor encouraged by the school like calendar on which the traditional arts keep time. As if air conditioning had never been invented, the art world still closes shop and heads for the hills and beaches at the first utterance of the phrase “It‘s not the heat, it‘s the humidity.” For centuries, summer art festivals have been held almost exclusively in resorts from Salzburg to Spoleto, and Newport to Carmel. Yet summer has become prime time for the fine arts in Des Moines where reputations have been built against the winds of tradition.

With little more than the sheer force of their personalities, Maestro Robert Larsen and the late Mo Dana created two summer festivals of national repute in Central Iowa‘s unlikely fields of dreams. Like corn, Larsen’s Des Moines Metro Opera thrives in heat and humidity, drawing the tassel of star singers, on summer break from the cultural capitols of the world, to the silk womb of Indianola. The Des Moines Arts Festival grows every year and now fills the city’s hotels and restaurants with eager shoppers from near and far. These two festivals have persuaded itinerant artists to pitch their tents in the farm belt summer and convinced locals to support those artists with endearing enthusiasm.

This year for the first time, both festivals play on after their guiding muses have handed off their batons. DMMO’s first season without Larsen will feature “Figaro,” “MacBeth” and “Susanna” - from the formula of one comic, one tragic, and one modern opera that Larsen developed to win respect for his corn belt company.

Together these two festivals transformed the image of summer in Des Moines while inspiring other notable festivals. ArtFest Midwest and Iowa Sculptural Festival now have followings of their own. Festivals also inspired brick and mortar institutions to bump up their summer programs. Des Moines’ gallery scene has grown exponentially since Art Fest began. Only Kavanaugh and Olson-Larsen galleries are still around from those days. The latter provides its annual Summer Landscape show showcasing popular John Preston, Bobbie McKibbon, Dennis Dykema.

Summer also dances in festive light at Central Iowa’s main museums. Minimalist sculpture will glow at the Brunnier Art Museum and Iowa artists of all media, from hip hop to photojournalism, will dazzle the Des Moines Art Center in the 2010 edition of its Iowa Artists exhibition. The city’s burgeoning metal and gem art galleries (Susan Noland, Elements and 2Au) have also been busy working with odd stones with magical properties - freaks of nature set in metals too durable to succumb.

Calendar (*APT* indicates a special Art Pimp tout)

Recurring Events and Family Attractions

Thursday Night Art Walks in downtown Newton

First Friday Art Walks, Fairfield Town Square

Third Wednesdays of the month, Art Walks on Iowa State University campus.

Special Events

Festivals

Des Moines Metro Opera 38th Summer Festival (Simpson College, Indianola, http://www.desmoinesmetroopera.org/)

June 4
Cabernet Night Live
An evening of standards and show tunes mixed with musical favorites from Broadway and American opera presented by DMMO’s talented Apprentice Artists. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks round out this evening of great entertainment at the Temple for Performing Arts. $50.

June 16
Threads & Trills Costume Show and Luncheon 12 p.m. Holiday Inn & Suites, Jordan Creek
A sneak peek at the costumes from the upcoming season’s operas while enjoying arias and duets sung by principal artists from each show. Lunch is included with the purchase of a $40 ticket.

June 17 (twice) & 19
Peanut Butter & Puccini Family Opera Adventure, 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. Blank Center
Kids and adults take backstage tour of the opera. Learn about wig and makeup application, lighting, etc. $10 includes lunch. *APT*

June 19 - Ju1y 12
The 2008 Season *APT*
“Marriage of Figaro” by Mozart (June 25, July 2, 10 & 13 with 7:30 curtainsJune 27 & July 18, at 2 pm )
An opera adored equally by critics and audiences, this buffa was written at the height of Mozart’s career. DMMO’s performance, the debut for conductor David Neely will bring back two audience favorites, Larsen’s student Craig Irvin and Sarah Jane McMahon.

“MacBeth” by Giuseppe Verdi (June 26, July 6, 9, 14 & 17 at7:30 and July 4 at 2 p.m)
No one ever called MacBeth light and Neely recruited big voices including DMMO favorite baritone Todd Thomas, Acclaimed bass baritone John Marcus Bindel and off beat specialist Brenda Harris.

“Susanna” by Carlisle Floyd (performances June 25, July 2, 10 & 13 at 7:30 and June 27 & July 18 at 2 p.m.)
The Bible’s apocryphal tale of Susanna and the Elders is reset in Appalachia. Home girl Beverly O'Regan Thiele (debuted at DMMO as Abigail in The Crucible) returns to sing the title role and Joseph Mechavich conducts in his DMMO debut.

July 15
“Stars of Tomorrow” Concert, (Sheslow Auditorium, Drake University). *APT*
DMMO's Apprentice Artists perform arias and ensembles at Sheslow Auditorium. $20 and $10

May 31, June 6, 9, 12, 17, 19, 26, 30 July 3, 7, 10, 15, 17
“Apprentice Artist Program Performances,” times vary, at Lekberg Hall, Des Moines Social Club, and Sheslow Auditorium
The troupe performs scenes and entire acts from both popular operas and rarely seen works. Most performances are free!
　
Iowa Sculpture Festival, Maytag Park, Newton, http://iowasculpturefestival.org/ $2

June 12-13
The 8th annual event brings big bronze and steel art to Maytag Park for a hands-on experience of meeting artists, picnicking, swimming and watching comedians, magicians, balloon animal makers, etc. $1 and $2.

Des Moines Arts Festival, Gateway West, http://www.desmoinesartsfestival.org/ Free

June 26 - 27
A festival grand enough to inspire copycats, critics and loyalists, plus national rankings. We’re Number 5! And, yes, someone does actually rank art festivals, according to sales. The three day, free event brings 185 national artists of all media, and 24 emerging local artists, to the river banks of downtown Des Moines. Plus, there’s enough food and music to turn shopping into a mega-event and source of civic pride.

ArtFest Midwest, Varied Industries Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, http://www.artfestmidwest.com/ Free
June 27 - 28
Piggybacking on the big shoulders of DMAF, the eighth annual “Other Art Show,” boasts lots of demonstrations (glassblowing, pastel portraits, lampwork jewelry, pottery etc.) plus free parking and regional chauvinism. Over 210 artists will be showing, with approximately 40% from Iowa and 90% from the Midwest. The fest is now calling itself the “largest fine art show in Iowa.”

Art Stop
Sept. 10-11
The fourth annual shuttle bus tour of Central Iowa’s art galleries, studios and museums.

Galleries

Ongoing

Art Dive, 1417 Walnut St., http://www.artdive.com/
Des Moines alternative gallery plans alternative exhibitions. Be surprised.

2AU, 200 Fifth, West Des Moines
Beach boys of Ipanema and mermaids of Tahiti mix it up with Tanzanian gems this summer.

Des Moines Social Club, 1408 Locust, Ave. http://www.desmoinesocialclub.org/
Circus, wrestling, tai chi, akido, theater, belly dancing and other acts of sociability make the club’s Instinct Gallery the most alternative to alternative in town.

Finder's Creepers, 515 18th St. http://www.finderscreepers.com/
Alternative to alternative.

Kavanaugh Gallery
131 5th Street West Des Moines, 279-8682, http://www.kavanaughgallery.com/
Specializing in purchase estate collections, there’s no telling what you might find here.

Steven Vail Gallery, 500 E Locust St.
Focuses on late 19th century, and 20th century European and American art. Open by appointment only.

Susan Noland Studio Gallery, 902 42nd St.
The psychological properties of gems are front and center in this master goldsmith‘s repertoire.

Limited Engagements

Olson-Larsen Galleries, 203 Fifth, West Des Moines, http://www.olsonlarsen.com/

Through July 10
“Landscape Show”
New works by the gallery’s big picture stars Barbara Fedeler, John Preston, Dennis Dykema, Bill Barnes and Bobbie McKibbon *APT*

July 10 - September 4
“New Works”
New works by Ken Smith, Yuko Ishii and Mary Merkel-Hess

Moberg Art Gallery, 2921 Ingersoll Ave., http://www.moberggallery.com/

Through July 31
“Larassa Kabel"
Realist painter *APT*

“Small Works Exhibit” by various gallery artists

August 6 - Sept 18 (reception August 7)
“Richard Kelley”

New developments in housing, color and human obsessions from the unique world of Des Moines‘ master painter. *APT*

Octagon Center for the Arts , 427 Douglas Avenue, Ames http://www.octagonarts.org/

June 3
ARTini Bash
Silent auction fundraiser with free martini bar and music by Soul Searchers.

Heritage Art Gallery, 111 Court Ave., http://www.heritagegallery.org/

Through June 2
“A World of Water, Wax and Wonder: The Art of Janet Heinicke”June 7 - July 20. Iowa Exhibited XXVThe annual exhibition of work by artists across the state, professional and amateur, juried by Jack Wilkes

August 8 - September 10“Robert Schulte and The Charitable Print Trust”A new venture by a team of DM Printmakers who unveil their plan and their recent work.

September 13 - October 23“Contemporary Fabrics: inspired by the art of quilting”
Local artists show innovative works in fabric and decoration. This show will be up for ARTSTOP

Museums

Des Moines Art Center, 4700 Grand Ave., http://www.desmoinesartcenter.org/

Through August 20
Summer classes. Day camps and family workshops. Call 271-0306.

June 11 – September 19, reception and preview party

June 10
“Iowa Artists 2010” APT
Fifteen artists this year range from performance diva Leslie Hall to realist oil pinter Larassa Kabel. Des Moines’ Dan Weiss, Nate Morton and Benjamin Gardner represent the metro.

June 11
“Leslie Hall’s School for the Precocious”
A diva tutorial for large sized appetites and ambitions.

June 17 & July 15
“Artist Gallery Talks” (6:30 p.m.)

June 18 - September 16
“Kill Them Before They Multiply”
Print artists from Picasso to Tara Donovan interpret multiplicity and excess.

Through August 29
“The Bike Riders - Danny Lyon”
American photographer documents his years with the Chicago Outlaws biker club.

August 5
“The Wild One”
Brando‘s bad ass biker became a cult favorite.

August 8
“Easy Rider”
Dennis Hopper’s anthem to the 1960’s open road.

Ankeny Art Center,1520 SW Ordnance Rd. http://www.ankenyartcenter.com/

June “Mary Kline-Misol”
Iowa’s inimitable painter of wonderlands within and without.

“Annick Ibsen ”

July

“Gary Tonhouse & Denny Peterson”

August
“Kyle Tyhe”

Brunnier Museum of Art, University Museums, 290 Scheman Bldg., Ames, http://www.museums.iastate.edu/

Through August 2010
“Exquisite Balance: Sculptures by Bill Barrett”
Sculptures recall fluid effortlessness of calligraphic strokes, and betray a positivism to which many viewers feel drawn.

Through August 6
“Polyphonic Abstraction: Paintings and Maquettes by Bill Barrett” in Morrill HallThis exhibition “juxtaposes his expressive canvases with his sculptural maquettes.”

The Vesterheim, 523 W. Water St., Decorah, http://www.vesterheim.org/

Through March 2011
“Pieces of Self: Identity and Norwegian-American Quilts”
The exhibition will highlight the ways Norwegian Americans have expressed gender, family, community, religious, and ethnic identities through quilt making.

July 17 - 24
“National Exhibition of Folk-Art in the Norwegian Tradition”Exhibition of knife making, rosemaling, weaving, and woodworking by the very best contemporary American artists working in the Norwegian tradition will be on view again next year during Nordic Fest, the last full weekend in July.

Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, www.grinnell.edu/faulconergallery

June 18 - September 5

“Harry Shearer: The Silent Echo Chamber”
See President Barack Obama, Senator John McCain, cable news anchormen and other "talking heads" in the moments before they go "live" on television.

“Michael Van den Besselaar's Unconscious Optics”
Paintings, resembling 13 inch televisions freeze fleeting images once beamed into our collective consciousness of America.

“Mark Wagner: Art/Appreciation”
Wagner collapses all pretense between art and money, archly appraising the status and intersection of both without devaluing either.

“Bryan Drury - The Feast” APT
Artist’s solo show focuses on a single painting, The Feast.

Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, 410 Third Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids, http://www.crma.org/

Through September 19
“From Monet to Picasso ”
Significant but little-known works by Monet, Renoir, Degas, Pissaro, Chagall, Cassatt, Dufy, Matisse, Léger, Mondrian, Miró, Dali, Braque, and Picasso - the Riley Collection has become one of the most significant private collections in the state of Iowa.

June 19 - November 14
“Grant Wood Windows”
Wood‘s drawings for his stained glass windows displayed for the first time.

MacNider Art Museum, 303 Second Street SE, Mason City,
http://www.macniderart.org/

Through July 24
Martin Weinstein’s “The Teresa Paintings”
Works focus on the artist’s wife, in the landscape of the shared family home on the Hudson River.

University of Iowa Museum of Art, 1375 Highway One West, Iowa City, http://uima.uiowa.edu/

Through June 22
“Two Turntables and a Microphone:Hip-Hop Contexts” at the Memorial Union
Features Harry Allen's "Part of the Permanent Record: Photos from the Previous Century"

Figge Art Museum, 225 West Second St., Davenport, http://www.art-dma.org/

Through August 15
“10 Years: The Brand Boeshaar Scholarship Program”
Highlights the successes of several scholarship recipients who are fulfilling their career dreams of working in art-related fields.

June 6 - August 29
“Scale: Ceramic Forms and Photographic Landscapes”
Gerry Eskin’s primary interest remains ceramics but he returns here to an early interest, photography.
　

Des Moines’ Avant Garde: Rising from the Dead

2010-05-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

The avant garde ain’t what it used to be. Appropriated from the military after the Napoleonic Wars, the term has been deployed ever since by marginalized artists, writers, composers and intellectuals who oppose mainstream values. That got tricky after the Industrial Revolution when new technologies began shortening the gap between culture’s margins and mainstream. The Surrealists were self proclaimed revolutionaries in the 1920’s but by the next decade surrealism was part of the commercial establishment in advertising and mass produced art. In the Information Age, the gap’s virtually non existent - social media bypasses the old arbiters of cultural validation. If your You Tube video gets ten million hits in the right demographic group, the opinions of producers, editors, publishers, critics, museum directors, grant committees, and gallery or club owners don’t much matter.

Now days counter cultures stream through young blood more hopefully than ever. In fact, today’s avant garde is seizing ground that is counter to counter culture, yet alone to mainstream culture. “Hi-Fructose” art magazine subtitles itself “under the counter culture.” When it began five years ago, its stated intention was to represent the culture “beyond the comfort zone of the ‘alternative’ norm to deliver a diverse cross section of the most influential, genre bending and defining subversive art of our time.” Yet “Hi-Fructose” celebrated its fifth anniversary with an exhibition at a prestigious Los Angeles gallery.

For today’s graphic artists, that magazine represents the aspirations of the new avant garde better than any mainstream publication. In Des Moines, Instinct Gallery began its second year of monthly exhibitions that have consistently made that point. Their latest show, “Flies in the Land of Milk and Honey” features artists from all over North America, including Jaqueline Roate and Michelle Holly from Des Moines and Chris Bent from Toronto. Like “Hi-Fructose,” they’re more apt to take style tips from surrealism, anime, comic books and science fiction than from mainstream art history. They may not be “subversive” or “genre-bending” but they are arresting to the eye and a lot of fun. Some of these artists use “virtual Easter eggs,” an avant garde term invented by Diego Rivera, Alfred Hitchcock and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” but trademarked and owned now by Atari. Virtual Easter eggs are hidden personal signatures (actual Easter eggs in “Rocky Horror“) in an artist’s work.

Dancing and strutting in custom made, high performance, pink spandex jump suits that could raise Elvis from his grave, Leslie Hall has staked the most commanding position of any member of the Iowa avant garde. While others crowd under the counter culture, Hall attacks the “high end of hip hop,” plus multimedia art, gay wedding culture, and tight stretch pants style. Hall’s diva shows have been selling out in the avant garde capitals of America from Cambridge to Seattle where an “homage to her diva-ness” has been proclaimed. The Des Moines Art Center will host her “School for the Precocious” on June 11, as part of their annual Iowa Artists Exhibition. It’s limited to 16 students over age 21.

It will sell out faster than a poorly designed jump suit makes “proud lady stuff jiggle.”

In the old spirit of avant gardism, EVAC’s May Day (April 30) exhibition at Northland Studios focuses on symbolism from both Bolshevism and Mother Nature:

“To increase awareness of the connection between nature and humans. If we continue to misuse our natural resources and employees for greed, all of us are doomed,” explained EVAC artist Deborah Vanko. She will exhibit along with Janet Marie Safris, Chris Peterson, Brad Ball (whose work would fit well in “Hi-Fructose“), Bethany Springer, E.J. Wickes and new EVAC member John Sayles, a reborn former Establishment artist whose poster art could convince the proletariat that Lenin is rising from his tomb.

Making a Scene

2010-04-29T15:02:00.000-07:00

Des Moines “Paintpushers” Defy the Odds

Des Moines‘ art scene just completed a very good decade. Sticks, a professional artistic design company, expanded in the city, creating scores of jobs for artists. The nine member rock band Slipknot maintained residences in Des Moines even after winning a Grammy and hitting the top of the Billboard charts. Public art featured prominently in new developments like Davis-Brown Tower, Mercy Wellness Center and Ponderosa Village. Record setting attendance at Des Moines Art Center continued show after show and that museum produced critically acclaimed traveling exhibitions when many museums had given that up. Hollywood film makers frequented the city. Pappajohn Sculpture Garden, one of the nation’s grandest sculpture parks, opened between downtown’s two busiest streets.

In the shadow of those ballyhooed events, Des Moines’ creative culture received perhaps its biggest boost when a group of painters gave the lie to a time honored negative cliché - that a young artist had to choose between living off his art and living in Iowa. While the World War II and Baby Boomer generations produced original artists here, their art hardly ever provided a full time profession. Richard Kelley pushed a broom at the Des Moines Register. Mary Kline Misol taught at North High School, Karl Mattern at Drake. Cornelis Ruhtenberg and Jules Kirschenbaum were rising art stars in New York but when they moved to Des Moines they taught too. Others left town. Larry Zox and Richard Bauer moved to New York City, Doug Shelton and Ellen Waggoner to the Southwest. Bill Luchsinger and Karen Strohbeen made their living solely from their art here but they were rare exceptions to the ruling cliché.

That changed last decade and the emergence of the city’s new artist community can be traced to March of 2002 when a dozen young painters, many Sticks employees, produced a trunk show that has become a local legend. Determined that Des Moines painters needed other painters for collaboration, critique and support, Chris Vance started a group that Frank Hansen named Paintpushers.

John Phillip Davis joined a year later. Paintpushers met monthly to discuss one another’s art, rented space for an annual exhibition and sold their art wherever they could - street fests, trunk shows, consignment galleries. Almost simultaneously, the destinies of those three painters were being forged by a young sculptor who felt that his art was stuck in the rut of his own success.“For seven years I had worked back to back to back on commissions, mostly out-of-state. Each one took six months to a year. But I was recreating the visions of my clients and I was tired of it. I hoped that owning a gallery was a means to more artistic independence,” TJ Moberg explained why he decided to open Moberg Gallery in 2003 with his wife Jackie Moberg.Thanks to mutual support, all four artists realized their dreams of making it in Des Moines before they turned 40. What’s more, after signing exclusive contracts with the Mobergs, the three painters did it with non commercial, personal styles that Central Iowans now recognize as brands. Bigger markets opened too. Moberg Gallery added an annex in Beverley Hills, California and the internet has given their artists a wider audience.

“People in Chicago and Los Angeles look at the Moberg website and are totally impressed at the all the good art and inevitably disbelieving that the gallery is in Iowa,” said Vance.

All four artists still collaborate, each contributing something different. The others credit Davis for teaching them to take more pride in their production values.

“I remember the first time I looked at the sides and the back of one of John’s paintings. They were more professionally produced than the canvasses of many other artists. I was so impressed by that attention to detail that I started upgrading my materials and taking care with little things,” Hansen explained.

Vance is the nurturer, the only one of this group who still goes to every Paintpushers meeting, “Just in case I can help someone younger.” When he bought another artist’s work at a Des Moines Social Club exhibition last year, the word spread so quickly that within an hour, people were coming in and asking, “Which one did Chris Vance buy?”

Hansen motivates the others with context and enthusiasm.

“When we started Paintpushers, we were all novices. Frank brought so much energy to the group that I felt I had finally met someone with real passion for their painting. Frank told stories about his work, little personal histories behind each painting that brought out that passion,” Vance said.

TJ is considered the voice of reason. He says that Vance and Hansen are more receptive to his advice than Davis.

“I tell John that a painting is perfect and a week later I will go back to his studio and see that he has painted it over completely,” he said, soliciting a response from Davis.

“If someone likes one of my paintings too much then it becomes theirs, not mine. I don’t have anything in my studio that I think is underdone,” he explained.

All four agree that their common denominator is an Iowa work ethic. Each artist said that they were familiar with 100 hour work weeks. “It’s a cliché but as different as we all are, we have it in common. We are all work horses,” said Vance.

“And as soon as I got to know them, I knew that I wanted to be part of this gallery. TJ and Jackie work harder than any gallery owners I’ve met anywhere. And TJ really has a different way of looking at art - mostly because he‘s an artist himself,” Davis explained.

Vance, Hansen and TJ say that Davis has a genius for conceptual discipline that they lack.

“John knows exactly what he’s going to do two years in advance. I am working year by year,” Vance said.

“And I am minute to minute,” said Hansen with the others nodding.
Davis thinks each artist has a distinctive brand now but that they will always feed off each other.

“Chris is the one who’s seen as a local icon. People identify his work with the city. He’s the name artist. TJ is the gallery owner and the public artist. I’m the enigma and Frank is the crazy artist. We’re packaged quite differently but we are all afflicted with the same fetish - to make that which we love making and to figure a way to live off our labor,” he explained.

The Art

John Phillip Davis, 41, paints very large, heavily layered abstractions dealing with conflict and tension - “Push and pull, chaos with a design,” in his words. The most philosophical of the group, he consciously paints to provoke ambiguous responses, both visceral and subliminal. Subjects can veer toward the holy and the demonic. Lately, Davis has been working in tactile, three dimensional paintings and sculptures. He shows biennially at Moberg Gallery.

Chris Vance, 33, is the best known and most collected artist in Des Moines. A hundred paintings often sell at his annual exhibitions at Moberg. He paints on all kinds of media in both narrative and abstract styles. Often his paintings are meant to be re-arranged as segments of an ephemeral anthology. Known for bright attractive colors, he calls his subjects a “diary of small things,” like the tribulations of raising children and pets. Vance has won “best in show,” or “best in class” at every major festival he’s entered. He had his first museum show last year at the South Dakota Art Museum.

Frank Hansen, 40, calls his art “Emotionalism” and combines words and subjects in ironic narratives and autobiographical reflections. He deals with modern Midwestern themes, like the transformation from rural to urban life. He paints with all kinds of media, from branding irons on Buffalo hides to canvasses moved by steering wheels. His work is collected by television stars and has appeared in Slipknot videos. Hansen was the subject of Mark Kneeskern’s 2009 documentary “Thank God I Sucked at Sports.” He designs ski ware for Neve and now has a line of T shirts with Smash of Des Moines.

TJ Moberg, 34, is best known for large, realistic sculptures such as horses racing out of a wall at Prairie Meadows Racetrack & Casino and a “Race Car” at the Iowa Speedway. He says he will never do anything like them again. His later sculptures are multi faceted abstractions with identifiable themes. They include a symbolic landscape installation at Mercy Wellness Center in Clive and “The Homework Machine,” a walk-through sculpture for the Marshalltown Library.

March 2010

2010-04-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

Robyn O’Neil: Origins of the Universe

Wunderkind artist Robyn O’Neil (at the Des Moines Art Center through May 23) stalks both high and low culture for stimulation.

“I read the classics. Except for Cormac McCarthy, that’s about all I read. Walt Whitman, Nabokov, I just finished the complete Proust thing,” she said, before admitting a rather different influence.

“I love bad TV. I have it on all the time while I work,” she revealed, adding that her alter ego is a character from “Roseanne.”

“Darlene Connor is my hero. We’re virtually the same age, grew up together,” O’Neil explained.

The Texan resembles Roseanne‘s younger daughter in many ways. Both grew up in “average Middle American households” and were usually the smartest person in whatever room they occupied. Both depended upon dark humor to muddle through their teenage years with “jerk” boy friends, and both went off to art school in Chicago only to discover they missed their fathers terribly.

"Most people see me and assume the artist is late. They can’t believe these expressions come out of this demeanor. I work at it. I am product of polite Midwestern moral responsibility that demands one be cheerful amongst others. It‘s a good thing I spend most of my time alone, other than with my dog. I couldn’t handle a real social life with a job. I break down and cry when I am alone, for reasons I couldn’t explain to others.

"I need that. I have to pace. When this opening is over, I will not explore Des Moines, I will shut myself in my hotel room and read. That’s how I do it. Patrica Highsmith wrote that imagination functions better when you don’t have to speak to people. I believe that," she said.

Had she been real, Darlene Connor might have created the darkly humorous universe that O’Neil etched

“obsessively” over seven years with the nothing more than the smallest lead pencil and the largest commercial paper. That universe is populated by funny little men in track suits and sneakers, modeled after the death shrouds of the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult. Her men behave badly and not so badly, balancing acts of cruelty and brotherhood.

"These are my melancholy worlds, I don’t use models, it’s all my imagination. I admire the Italian Renaissance painters sense of perspective, how buildings have an unnatural awkward relationship to landscapes. My men float awkwardly like that. Unlike trees, I don’t really let them fit in, they float on the landscape, sometimes without even casting a shadow," she explained.

O’Neil gives cynical titles to her works:

“Everything that stands will be at odds with its neighbor and everything that falls will perish without grace.”

“As Ye the sinister creep and feign, those once held become those now slain.”

“As darkness falls on this heartless land, my brother holds tight my feeble hand.”

“As my heart quiets and my body dies, take me gently through your troubled sky.”

“Oh how the heartless haunt us all”

Such titles were grave enough that Artforum magazine attributed them to the “Book of Revelations.”

“That was flattering. Someone thought something I wrote sounded Biblical,” she said, before revealing that Goya’s “Disasters of War” were an inspiration for her vision.

“Who doesn’t love that?” she asked.

In O’Neil’s drawings, men are always secondary to Mother Nature. Trees, owls, bison, dogs and horses cast shadows in some works in which her soulless men do not. The latter indeed die without grace, while her trees perish in magnificent splendor and her talon-bearing oceans and skies reveal superhuman countenances.

"I am a severe weather watcher, I am obsessed with that too. I mean I am one of those geeky people who calls in weather news to the TV station. It comes from growing up in Omaha and North Texas."

Her series concludes dramatically with the end of mankind.

“That was my intention from the beginning. That’s why I never drew a woman, to remove their hope of procreation,” she explained.

Her final survivor is last seen desperately clinging to a tightrope above a sea of wrath. O’Neil thought his fate was obvious.

"I always knew I would kill all the men off. I just didn’t know when till it was time. I could have ridden off into the sunset with the men too. Could have made a nice living continuing to draw them, that’s what people want. People love these goofy guys but I could care less. They’re too goofy for me now.

"I don’t see the world that way anymore. I have a little more respect from human life now. I see the world in quieter tones, more somber and less anxious than before. I have grown more comfortable with melancholy," she explained.

The more confortable O'Neill takes others unexpected. For all practical purposes, this writer found her to be a rather cheerful young lady. She laughed when I told her that.

“People have trouble with how devastating my work is. One sweet old lady in Dallas told me that she believed he was going to climb right on up to Heaven. I guess I got what I deserved, but hat’s not how I see it,” she said.

She's not so comfortable that she wants her photo taken. After I snapped her she asked that I never publish it anywhere. Preferring to deal with the cheerful persona, I promised.

Two drawings in the Art Center show portend O’Neil’s future. One is a take on Caspar David Friedrich’s depiction of a poem by Goethe, the super ego of Romanticism and the original reconciler of high and low cultures.

"Even a purely romantic scene like that, I was drawn to the idea of a black & white rainbow - not exactly hopeful. I can’t help imposing a down note even in romance. Bird of prey die mating in free fall. That’s romantic, " she confessed.

The other places her doomed tribe within the medieval legend of Magonia - a mysterious place beyond the clouds that has inspired true believers inpredetermination, utopia, and UFO sightings. O’Neil says she’s putting her pencil down to work on an opera about that footnote to France’s Dark Ages. She brought her composer to Des Moines - Chicago singer-songwriter Daniel Knox who shares style with Tom Waits, a view point with Randy Newman and a first name with Darlene Connor’s dad. O’Neil said she’d never even listened to an opera until she was urged to write one about Magonia, by Werner Herzog. But, that’s another story in Robyn O’Neil’s brilliant career.

Touts

From Our Hands won the Niche Award for the nation’s best retail art stores… Chris Vance’s new exhibition opened at Moberg Gallery after the artist’s smash debut in Denver, where 22 of his paintings sold on the opening weekend at 44T Art Space…

2010-03-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

Best & Worst of the Wild Times - A Decade in Review

Anna Mendietta self portrait, courtesy DM Art Center

People talk about starving artists but significant art scenes usually keep company with sustained periods of prosperity. The recently completed decade began with an all time high stock market. Ten years later those same markets had climbed back to within ten per cent of where they began. Iowa’s art scene experienced similar highs and lows.

The Story of the Decade - Des Moines’ artistic magnetism

Prior to the last decade, almost all young artists in Iowa had to choose between making a living as an artist and staying in Iowa. Most left. Artists who stayed usually needed day jobs to make ends meet. That changed during the last ten years. Sticks, the artistic furniture company created by Des Moines artist Sarah Grant, became a magnet for artists, reversing the “creativity drain” that obsessed focus groups from coast to coast. Alex Brown maintained his residence and studio in Des Moines even after making it in old New York.

A group of young artists with eastside backgrounds, signed with fledgling Moberg Gallery and soon discovered they could make a living as artists without leaving town, even for representation. Before the end of the decade, artists were moving to Des Moines and not just to work at Sticks. One of them, Zach Mannheimer, established the Des Moines Social Club, a serious theatrical company that also provided a place for all kinds of artists to hang their berets.

Other Top Stories: The Temple of the Performing Arts is saved from civic rubble lust; The Faulconer Gallery opens with generous endowment; The Pappajohn Sculpture Garden shows off a magnificent gift to the city.

Person of the Decade - TJ Moberg

Jackie Moberg says that one day in 2003 she came from work and her husband, sculptor TJ Moberg, told her to quit her job because he had purchased an art gallery. The Mobergs spent the next six years getting people to take local artists seriously. They began with all Iowans and mostly young artists. By decade’s end, they had expanded to Beverly Hills and their stable included known artists from coast to coast. Meanwhile, TJ’s career as a sculptor took a serious turn. His work moved from realistic representations of client’s visions, to unpredictable personal abstractions, as he became the most interesting public artist in the state.

Painter of the Decade - Michael Brangoccio

This painter of magical realism delineated a placeor grace and faith within a post-quantum universe of alternate realities. His investigations into the laws of physics arrested the eye and engaged the mind with a religious sense of awe.

Designers of the Decade - Kirk Blunck & Greg Wattier

I hate ties as much as anyone but these two guys shared the workload that turned East Village and Court Avenue into the most arty hoods in town. They did it with distinctively different visions too. Blunck’s minimalism suited the revival of East Village’s marvelous historic brick buildings. His café Lucca was designed to remind people that the food was the attraction.

Wattier restored other historic buildings with more flair. His Alba café is the most theatrical in town. Apples and oranges.

Gallery Exhibitions of the Decade - “Jules Kirschenbaum: A Matchless Clarity” at Anderson and Olson-Larsen, 2000

This Des Moines master anticipated the style of the YBA’s by decades. His posthumous retrospectives increased his international profile and led to museum exhibitions.

Museum Exhibition of the Decade - “Andy Goldsworthy” at the Des Moines Art Center, 2002

The great Scottish sculptor created three remarkable cairns for this show. They are now civic icons. Runner-up - Anna Mendieta at DMAC.

Architecture’s Best and Worst

Two sports arenas demonstrated a decade of great contrasts. Rob Whitehead’s (HLKB) McLeod Center retained traditional Iowa values, with a democratic aesthetics that included a single seating area, intimacy and great sight lines. Wells Fargo Arena (by ironically named Populous) shucked all that for the trappings of apartheid - valet stations, segregated seating areas, elitist entrances and tiers, etc.

Top Ten Breakthrough Artists

John Phillip Davis, Chris Vance, TJ Moberg, Frank Hansen,

Mathew J Clark, Jean Marie Salem, Larassa Kabel, Jessie Fisher, Ryan Clark and Lee Ann Conlan all came out of nowhere to mark the Iowa artscape.

Made Man of the Decade - Alex Brown

Des Moines' Alex Brown left the city behind professionally. He's represented by one of the world's top galleries - Feature, Inc. in New York City. But the painter still keeps a studio in Des Moines and even opens it up during open houses there.

February 2010

2010-03-20T13:55:00.000-07:00

Fire & Rain — the new media?

Photo by Bill Witt

Medium is the message. Marshall MacLuhan’s old mantra is frequently chanted these days as wireless streaming threatens just about every medium that preceded it. While newspaper and newsstand magazine sales dropped more than 9 percent this year, Meredith and Gannett continued a controlled burn of old media jobs. And with brilliant timeliness, “News & Nightmares” reminds us that there’s really nothing new under the sun. The Des Moines Art Center’s new show of wood engravings uses stunning works, by two cutting edge artists from the 19th century, to bracket the history of one short lived medium that enabled all kinds of new forms of art — including recycled art. The medium is examined from the heyday of Winslow Homer’s career as a Civil War magazine illustrator through the moral rot of Max Ernst’s lost generation between the world wars. The show’s Ernst works include an illustrated book called “A Week of Kindness, or the Seven Deadly Elements.”

This surrealist masterpiece is a novel without a plot. “Yet it’s still so compelling it has become a cult thing,” explained curator Amy Worthen, who found a rare copy of the book and persuaded the Art Center to buy it. This long lost medium still moves viewers with an exhibition that investigates the nature and substance of cruelty — from the political and physical cruelties in Homer’s Civil War to the imagined mental cruelties that fascinated the Dadaists and Surrealists of Ernst’s day. Through June 13.

Drake’s Anderson Gallery is hosting a multimedia exhibit in which medium is not only the message, it’s also the subject, the sub text and the subliminal connection to super human ecosystems. “To know the land” is also very fine art.

photo by Bill Witt

Scott Robert Hudson’s piece de resistance is a film about a fire sculpture he built near LaPorte City last autumn — eight-foot tall towers of willow, cedar and river dead fall with bison skulls enclosed. Photographing from several angles, the former U.S. Forest Service firefighter played with the hottest of all media. “Fire creates its own weather; it turns atmospheres inside out. It never behaves the same way twice,” Hudson explained.

Also in this show: Hudson’s “Western Juniper Lava Beds” shows an intricate attention to detail rarely seen in watercolors anywhere; Painted sculptures of 20 bison skulls, plus a shadow dancing,

hanging sculpture of a painted horse’s head all pay homage to the war paints of the Iowa Indian chief White Cloud, as depicted by George Catlin;

A sculpture of shot gun shells, Acoma pottery shards and beaver skulls reflect on the nature of war; Wood carvings and bobcat brush drawings reveal an artist tuned in to both the media and methods of ancient artisans working the same territory. Through Feb. 28.

At the Des Moines Botanical Center, photojournalist John Gaps III uses his medium to examine the nature of water. Abstractions from his lens play with H2O droplets in various stages of evaporation where each gaseous bubble reflects full prism globes. Different shots catch flood water on asphalt, water on windshields, floating lilies, melting ice on sheet metal, boat fuel frozen under early river ice, crepuscular light reflected off flood water, and a hail damaged pickup truck simulating Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.” Through March 31.

Des Moines writer John Domini has long been paying dues in myriad forms of the literary medium. Now he’s collecting some residuals. Last year Domini won a Major Artist Grant from Iowa Arts Council and the runner-up prize for Italy’s Domenico Rea Award, for his novel “Earthquake I.D.” Last month his new novel “Tomb on the Periphery” was selected one of the top nine international books by the London Book Festival in England. “Tomb” was then contracted for translation, a Domini short story was included in the prestigious anthology “Paraspheres 2,” one of his essays in the anthology “Papa Ph.D.,” and two of his poems for “Poetic Voices without Borders,” which will be published next month.

Best & Worst of 2009

2009-12-24T18:32:00.000-08:00

Zeitgeist of the year — Dancing at Waterloo

In the midst of the most volatile economy in 75 years, larger than ever crowds consistently turned out for art openings and not just for free wine and cheese. The Des Moines Art Center oversold its wildest expectations for a tent party at the Pappajohn Sculpture Garden (PSG) at $500 per couple. One observer compared that gala to the most famous ball in history, that of the Duchess of Richmond on the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. Painter Shawn Colvin debuted his first art exhibition at another gala, in the Hotel Kirkwood Ballroom. Bachata, a Dominican dance that electrifies the sexual tension of tango, stormed our nightclub culture.

Artist of the year — Matthew J. Clark

This 35-year-old sculptor burst upon the art world like Barack Obama taking the White House. Clark’s “Simulation of the Triumphal Entry of the Christ,” performed on the eve of the Presidential inauguration, was a prelude to his stunning sense of artistic relevance and the unrealistic expectations of these times. http://www.matthewjclark.com/index.php?showimage=6

Consider that the day Clark’s Obama/Christ simulated the coming of the new Messiah, the Dow Jones Industrial Average completed its largest ever dive (1,400 points) between a president’s election and inauguration. And yet, most newspapers characterized the country, and economy, that day as “surging with optimism,” even as the Dow began to dive another 1,400 points.

Clark began to visualize his 2009 works while reading Jean Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation.” That philosophical treatise is popularly known as the inspiration for “The Matrix” films (though Baudrillard claims it was completely misapplied). “I started thinking about the hyperreal and how it relates to reality and to the existence of objects of hope,” Clark explained. His summer studio show revealed hyperrealist, silicone sculptures further reflecting on displaced faith. “Our Little Jimmy Can Do Anything If He Puts His Mind To It,” “Took $1.37 from the Offering Plate,” and “No You May Not Borrow a Cup of Sugar” all dared to reveal that prevailing, empirical wisdom was dressed in invisible clothes.

Person of the year — Jeff Fleming

The Des Moines Art Center Director edged out John & Mary Pappajohn by shepherding that couple’s largess into the PSG. Fleming’s big year also included bringing to Des Moines both the largest ever retrospective of American Regionalism (including Grant Wood’s “American Gothic”) and also the most cutting edge retrospective (“Tara Donovan”) in America. Fleming had astutely signed Donovan four years ago, anticipating her leap to fame.

Exhibition of the Year

Museum — “Tara Donovan” at the Des Moines Art Center; “Molecules That Changed the World” at the Faulconer.

Gallery — “New Works by Bill Luchsinger & Karen Strohbeen,” currently at Moberg

Non-traditional venue — Mathew J. Clark’s “Twisted Words”

Design of the year — Kyle and Sharon Krause house by Thomas Phifer, and Henning Construction

The “architect of light” brought visually spectacular, state of the engineering science, environmental vision to central Iowa, much like the Chipperfield library was supposed to do. Runner-up — Simonson & Associates Headquarters by Simonson & Associates.

New artist of the year — M. Shawn Crahan

Slipknot’s Clown debuted paintings and manipulated Polaroid art that took a Bosch-inspired view of Dante’s hell from the point of view accessed with a rock star’s backstage pass.

Story of the year — The PSG

The PSG became a downtown tourist attraction the moment it came online, greeting eastbound traffic with a contemporary, cosmopolitan first impression of Des Moines. Runners-up — Steven Vail reopens his gallery; Des Moines Social Club opens.

Worst design — Ingersoll Dahl’s

The design for the new Ingersoll Dahl’s brought displaced suburban aesthetics to the inner city, emphasizing wasted space and customer inconveniences in parking, entrances and displays.

Art in Des Moines 4th Quarter 2009

2009-10-14T15:16:00.000-07:00

November

A Season for Contemplation

Des Moines’ art scene is becoming as seasonal as Iowa’s weather. Summer is now dominated by festivals of renown, magnetically attracting itinerant artists from all over the globe. The post-harvest season has become a time of introspection and contemplation, when suddenly naked trees reveal broader perspectives. Artists withdraw into closer-knit circles of community. Three November shows represent this season with: a deep show of respect for nature’s creative cycle, a testimony to a communal Middle American folk art, and a reflection on our place in the universe.

Bill Luchsinger and Karen Strohbeen personify Iowa creativity. Like no other Iowans of their generation, the couple lived for their art, sacrificing creature comforts like furniture and furnaces for years. They were digital pioneers years before David Hockney discovered that medium and made it hip. Strohbeen’s single line drawings became as distinctive as the works of any turn-of-the-century Iowa artist. No artists anywhere work more closely with nature’s creative process. The couple has for decades lived in rural Madison County where they can create art that begins with seeds and stewardship. They documented that stage of their art for several years on the PBS television series “The Perennial Gardener with Karen Strohbeen.” That show became so popular that Strohbeen can barely walk around a farmer’s market or garden center without being recognized by fans. Much of the art in their new show at Moberg Gallery fuses garden produce, at various stages of maturity and decomposition, with Karen’s drawings and Bill’s photographs, compressed like a time lapse memory of beauty’s life cycle.

Leeks, dahlias and wild coneflowers star in a heartbreaking evocation of the ephemeral quality of life.

Luchsinger added “cancer survivor” to his résumé last year, and the couple is debuting a collection of cemetery angels they have been working on for decades. Street scenes, beach scenes and 8 foot tall slices of prairie life also feature in this year’s show. In some instances, 360-degree vertical shots are compressed into singular flat prints. “New Works by Bill Luchsinger & Karen Strohbeen” opens Friday, Nov. 20 and runs through the rest of 2009.

For the second straight year, Des Moines hosted a major national quilt event in late October, and Olson-Larsen Galleries assembled a complementary state-of-the-art exhibit. A full circle of quilting variety is provided by four Midwest artists. Linda Andeberg contributes still life fiber collages. Priscilla Sage’s shows hand stitched quilts of silver mylar fabrics, rods and Japanese paper. Astrid Bennett’s presents hand painted fabrics, and Debra Smith presents minimalist fabric collages, many stitched from raw and antique Japanese kimono silks. “Quilt Walk” runs through Nov. 28.

At Drake’s Anderson Gallery, Angela Battle’s painting students collaborated with Physics and Astronomy professor Charles Nelson to create art inspired by active galactic nuclei, where powerful energy sources fall into black holes of over a million solar masses. Nelson explained: “This project emphasizes how scientists use their visual senses to aid in interpreting data. Astronomy is inherently visual.” Their exhibit opens Friday, Nov. 20 and runs through Dec. 18.

Art Dish Steven Vail Gallery recently added exciting new work by Richard Tuttle, Lee Krasner, A.R. Penck, Anthony Gormley and Joe Andoe… Bill Barnes won an Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation grant, one of twelve chosen from more than 500 applicants… Tom Moberg (Mercy Medical Center East) sculptures were featured for a second time in the most recent issue of “Health Care” magazine… Sculptor Jesse Small opened a studio in Hong Kong… Painter Mary Kline-Misol revealed the first phase of her new portrait series giving a face to homelessness in Des Moines.

October

Haute & Low Culture - More Than Coincidence

As the equinox passed, haute and low culture in Des Moines celebrated shining moments on three successive nights. Pappajohn Sculpture Garden (PSG) opened with dignitaries present but the Governor and Mayor conspicuously absent. Shawn Crahan and Frank Hansen opened two nights of joint shows and celebrations with indignities present and bodyguards active.

PSG’s gala tent party oversold its most hopeful estimates, at $500 per couple. Maybe not so coincidentally, the Art Center, who administers the PSG, had just released their 2008 Annual Report. It curiously listed the decreased evaluation of its portfolio as "lost revenue and support." To the tune of nearly $7 million in "investment loss" and "$2.6 million in bottom line "lost revenue and support." Most people I talked to thought it a brilliant move - that it might solicit an opening of checkbooks without having to even make a phone call. It seemed to work on the immediate response to the gala anyway. It was also the last hurrah for the Art Center's extraordinary Development Director Edwina Brandon. She was seduced away by a Long Beach museum where she can be near her Mom, whose health is failing. She will be missed, indeed. Polity ruled the gala night: No one mentioned the more than coincidental closing of Des Moines Art Center’s Downtown Gallery.

Slipknot clown Crahan celebrated his new career as a visual artist (and his 40th birthday) with more raucous crowds at the Azalea Ballroom and Moberg Gallery. Art ruled his more than coincidental joint exhibitions with Hansen. Both artists have synthesized unique personal styles of expressionism.

Crahan’s large canvasses make Bosch-like statements of hellfire and bliss, seemingly fashioned by a seasoned veteran.

Hansen’s new paintings show maturity too, with more heavily layered canvasses and sharper details accompanying his familiar narratives of wry humor and lament.

“Mostly, I have the time to do that now that I’m painting all the time. Plus, I feel like I have to keep producing. I’m have seven paintings at Beneveda, (in Beverly Hills) plus works at Corner House (in Cedar Rapids), Art Biz (in Kansas City) and Icon (in Fairfield). Shawn Crahan wants me to join him in shows this year in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Plus I am doing a clothing line, of ski sweaters, for Neve in Denver and they want to show some of my paintings there for the launch," he explained.

Frank's latest works also use more kinds of media, including old fashioned dial telephones, umbrellas, glitter, antique couch fabric, horse shoes, screen prints, paper weight scorpions, steering wheels, Christmas tree lights, chrom luggage racks and ashtrays. Some commented on the careers of other artists - Crahan and Lee Ann Conlan.

Others, seven others, were self portraits, from different moments in his life that ranged from epiphanies to mid life crises. Hansen relates to the singer song writer Roger Miller, who makes similar comments on life of a farm boy gone to the city.

He considers “Designated Drunken Driver his masterpiece to date. That ten foot long painting is on a scroll mounted as a windshield in an old model car. Viewers can drive the painting with the steerring wheel and the perspective moves from farm to city and around the world, with all modes of transportation moving by - bikes, cars, swimmers, tractors. Boats, airplanes, wheelchairs, roller skates. Many of his paintings are “flipable” - you can turn them upside down and find a whole new story.

Elsewhere it’s a season of very big ideas, the biggest being stated by Faulconer Gallery’s “Molecules That Matter.” That show persuasively demonstrates that just as metals defined human eras into Silver, Bronze and Iron Ages, the non metallic eras began with the 20th century’s Carbon Age.

Celebrating the gallery’s tenth anniversary, “Molecules” gathers scientific and artistic works about ten carbon-based discoveries that rocked our world during each of ten decades in the last century. Life without them is as unimaginable today as life without metal weapons would have been to the Trojans. Yet, one hundred years ago there was no aspirin, gasoline, penicillin, plastic, nylon, DNA, birth control pill, DDT, Prozac or Buckyball. This show also does more to synthesize art and science than anything since Arthur Koestler’s “Act of Creation.”

Artists Tony Cragg, Bryan Crockett and Melissa Gwyn remind us that scientific breakthroughs are served on plates of irony: DDT may have wiped out malaria but it unbalanced ecosystems and created freaks; Gasoline and computing chips shrank the world but at uncertain costs to environments and brotherhoods. “Molecules” runs through December 13.

Des Moines Art Center’s “Return to Function” demonstrates artists working on very specific ideas. Being artists, even their ideas seem embellished. Undaunted, they create: lamps out of kiwi packaging; box cutters out US quarters; post apocalyptic shelters on wheels; homeless shelters out of car covers and Fed Ex packaging; mousetraps from Gucci cases; dresses out of the magnetic tape from discarded cassettes; garden shovels out of pogo sticks;

and coffins from IKEA furniture. The exhibition plays January 10.

Lee Ann Conlan’s big idea is to survive physical abuse. Conlan has long been the reality show of Iowa fine arts. (One Slipknot member bought Conlan’s post hysterectomy uterus art as a birthday gift for Crahan.) At a group show last month, she built a model house and sculpted figures participating in spousal abuse. That house was wallpapered in her drawings of her ex’s mug shots - from a series of such incidents.

She burned that art at the end of that show, on camera, flames ironically engulfing a frightened image in the mug shot art. “Flutter,” her show at Fitch Gallery, opens October 23 and includes the charred remains of that previous creation.

New sculptures and paintings are about her recovery. Every autobiographical piece includes a reference to monarch butterflies or chrysalis. Conlan’s adult head is set on her pre-adolescent body in one series. Her adult body emerges from a black butterfly in another.

“Monarchs aren’t as innocent as people think. They are the most poisonous of all insects to non human animals. I want to communicate that ambiguity. That’s why some of my butterflies look like moths and emerge from dreams in the paintings. The Czech word for nightmare is nocimura, literally that’s night moth,” explained an artist who shares Czech heritage with Franz Kafka, more than coincidentally.
　

Fall Arts Guide

2009-09-02T19:42:00.000-07:00

Art Stop and non stop

In just its third year, artstop has developed into the major cultural event of the central Iowa fall while honoring the memory of an art pioneer.

"It all started at the memorial for Jan Shotwell," Marlene Olson explained of the long time gallery owner who died in 2007.

"We were talking about how much we all owed her, how much she had done for the arts, and (Elements Gallery owner) Sheena Thomas suggested that we might honor her legacy by commissioning a bus that connects the arts districts of town on a continuous run. She was thinking it could run year around, but we started with something more practical, once a year," Olson said.

On Sept. 11 and 12, shuttle buses will run continuously through some of metro Des Moines' artsy neighborhoods. The culturally rich Drake area is conspicuously omitted while Ankeny and Grandview areas are off the route for more understandable geographic reasons. Still, Artstop has created an event that is developing into a tourist attraction like studio tours of Winneshiek and Van Buren counties and art walks in Iowa City and Fairfield have.

Several galleries are honoring Artstop this year by holding big events. Anthony Pontius' entire available catalogue shows at Moberg Gallery after the artist's successful shows this year in New York City, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Seattle. Mary Kline-Misol will sign books, Chris Vance will teach drawing and the Des Moines Chorro Ensemble will play at Moberg during the event.

Olson-Larsen Galleries will open a show of new works by three popular artists including magical realist Michael Brangoccio, who will deliver a gallery talk, Richard Black and Dan Mason. That gallery will also offer do-it-yourself animation stations and acoustic rock music. Steven Vail Fine Arts opens "Jan Frank; Kissinger & the Ladies" with folk-pop-rock. East Village Art Coalition debuts "The Seditionist Art Project" with a reconstructed classical music mosaic. From Our Hands Gallery has convinced Linda Andeberg to open a fiber show. Susan Noland Gallery has a reception planned for woodworker Dave Grieve. 2Au will present "meet the artist" events with Judy Whipple and live dance performances. Des Moines Social Club opens "Brent Houzenga's Me & My Army" and the artist will give painting demonstrations along with Michelle Holly, Chris Roberts and others.

Other fall highlights start with the Des Moines Art Center's "Return to Function" another big anthology show which explores functionality through the eyes of artists like Jules De Balincourt, Davide Balula, Ralph Borland, Claire Fontaine, Mark Hosking, Fabrice Hyber, Huong Ngo, Lucy Orta, Jorge Pardo and Andrea Zittel. Valley Junction's second annual Quilt Walk will keep October in stitches. Frank Hansen's latest pictorials on human frailty will attract the artist's enthusiastic throng to Moberg where Bill Luchsinger and Karen Strohbeen will deck the holiday season out with their latest meditations on life on the prairie. A Fred Truck retrospective brings deadly serious humor to Heritage Gallery. Kemlyn Tan Bappe's spiritual takes on water soothe eyes at Ankeny Art Center.

A short drive away, highlights begin with a Faulconer Gallery exhibition on "Molecules that Changed History" including aspirin, Prozac, nylon and DDT. The Cedar Rapids Museum of Art debuts a Norman Rockwell show while University of Northern Iowa museums offer two stellar outdoor photographers' works.

Calendar
( APT indicates a special Art Pimp tout)

Recurring Events & Family Attractions

Thursday Night Art Walks in downtown Newton
First Friday Art Walks, Fairfield Town Square

Special Events ~ Festivals

Sept. 11-12 Artstop (http://www.myspace.com/artstop, http://www.artstopinfo.com)
Oct. 29 "Quilt Walk" in Valley Junction
Galleries ~ Ongoing

Art Dive (1417 Walnut St., http://www.artdive.com) Des Moines alternative gallery plans alternative exhibitions. Be surprised.

2AU (200 Fifth, West Des Moines) Pearls reign this fall in Au's effort to provide Art Deco comforts in a troubled year.

Des Moines Social Club (1408 Locust, Ave. http://www.desmoinesocialclub.org) Circus, wrestling, tai chi, akido, theater, belly dancing and other acts of sociability make the club's Instinct Gallery the most non traditional in town.

Susan Noland Studio Gallery (902 42nd St.) The psychological properties of gems are front and center in this master goldsmith's repertoire.

Special Exhibitions

Olson-Larsen Galleries (203 Fifth, West Des Moines, http://www.olsonlarsen.com)

Sept. 11 through Oct. 10 "New Works by Michael Brangoccio, Richard Black and Dan Mason." Brangoccio's excursions into magical realism are highlights of any season. APT

Oct. 16 through Nov. 28 "Thomas Jewel-Vitale," "Pastels" by John Preston. APT

Oct. 29 "Quilt Walk" Featuring works of Linda Andeberg, Priscilla Sage and Debra Smith.

Dec. 4 through Jan. 16, 2010 "Susan Chrysler White," "Anthology Show" with Bill Barnes, Dick Brewer, Barbara Fedeler, Carlos Ferguson, Dave Gordinier, Sarah Grant, Scott Charles Ross and Ken Peterson. APT

Moberg Art Gallery (2921 Ingersoll Ave., http://www.moberggallery.com )

Through Sept. 19 "Anthony Pontius' Casual Calamity" In Pontius' hands, technique becomes symbolic. Moberg curators included Pontius' preliminary sketches with his paintings showing how the artist reworks a concept. APT

"New Artist Exhibit" Shows off bright, gypsy abstractions from Therès Murdza, Heather Brammeier and Diane Henk, sunny realism of Larassa Kabel and the dark wonderland of Mary Kline-Misol.

Sept. 18 through Nov. 16 "Frank Hansen" Hansen's exhibition are Des Moines most raucously attended each year as a wide range of folks respond to the artist's blue collar wit. Last year's exhibit featured over 60 new works and a movie premier. APT

Nov. 20 - January 2010 "New Works by Bill Luchsinger & Karen Strohbeen." Creating their first prints in 1970, Karen and Bill were among the nation's digital print making pioneers, even before David Hockney made it cool. The exhibit will showcase new work on paper, canvas, and ceramic tile. APT

Heritage Art Gallery (111 Court Ave., http://www.heritagegallery.org)

Through Sept. 18 "Fred Truck - Ten Year Sandwich." Takes on corporate images, individualism, war and terror all intertwine in this exploration of identity and its dissolution. APT

Instinct Gallery at Des Moines Social Club (1408 Locust St., http://www.instinctgallery.com)

Through August "Animal Nature" Anthropomorphic animals (Christopher Umana, Rudy Fig), parasitic insects (John Stuart Berger), teddy bears on crack (Chris Bent), mythological hybrids (Jeremiah Kettner) and Kafkaesque nightmares (Jason Scott Hoffman) hang their hats on the same rack as more traditional artists like Vanja Borcic and Jamie Fales.

September "Me & My Army" Brent Houzenga. The artist's largest solo show to date.

October "Creepy Crawlies" DMSC's first annual Halloween themed show.

November "The Lost Diary of Capt. Malcom Chang"? Installation by Van Holmgren in the main gallery. Veronica Hubbard and Zech Ward in the Side Galleries.

Steven Vail fine Arts (2880 Grand Ave., 309-2763, http://www.stevenvailfinearts.com )

Through October "Jan Frank and Robert Stanley" Jan Frank's heavily worked, subtle abstractions and Robert Stanley brassy photo-realist nudes share a certain fascination with the female body. APT

Museums

Des Moines Art Center (4700 Grand Ave., http://www.desmoinesartcenter.org)

Through Sept. 13 "Tara Donovan" Sculptor Donovan starred in a previous group show at DMAC and returns for her first solo exhibition of eye-fooling installations that transform large quantities of mass-produces items - toothpicks, adhesive tape, drinking straws, buttons, straight pins, plastic drinking cups, and Mylar - into stunning spectacles that defy expectations. APT

Through Sept. 6 "Before Anime" Prints from the Japanese imagination.

Oct. 2 through Jan. 10, 2010 "Return to Function" An artistic exploration of functional objects from vehicles to clothing, lighting and mobile architecture by Jules De Balincourt, Davide Balula, Ralph Borland, Claire Fontaine, Mark Hosking, Fabrice Hyber, Huong Ngo, Lucy Orta, Jorge Pardo, and Andrea Zittel, and others. APT

DMAC Downtown (8th and Walnut St.)

Through Sept. 13 "Tara Donovan" The first show so big and mind boggling it requires both DMAC buildings to hold it. This is also the downtown gallery's final show.

Ankeny Art Center (1520 S.W. Ordnance Rd. http://www.ankenyartcenter.com )

Through Oct. 10 "Beyond The Sea" Iowan artist's love for water creatures in a variety of media: acrylic, mixed media, watercolor and ink, pencils and silk dyes. APT
"Diversify Your Bonds" Brings together over thirty different Iowa artists from wildly different backgrounds.

Brunnier Museum of Art (University Museums, 290 Scheman Bldg., Ames, 515.294.3342, http://www.museums.iastate.edu)

Through Dec. 31 "Artists Visions: Prints, Paintings and Drawings from the Permanent Collection" 60 prints, paintings and sculptures from the University Museums' permanent collection, including works by Marvin Cone, Grant Wood, Dorthea Tomlinson and their contemporaries.

"N. C. Wyeth: America in the Making" Beloved Saturday Evening Post illustrator from the golden era of that medium.

Through Dec. 18 "HOT and COOL: Contemporary Studio Glass Sculpture from the Permanent Collection.

Through Feb 26, 2010 "All the Evils...Christian Petersen and the Art of War."

The Vesterheim (523 W. Water St., Decorah, http://www.vesterheim.org)

Through September 26 "Woven Women: Representations of the Female in Norwegian Weaving."

Through Oct. 11 "Knitting along the Viking Trail" Knitwear designed by Elsebeth Lavold with intertwining and runic motifs from the Viking Age.

Through February 21 "Sacred Symbols" Explores the pre-Christian function of symbols in textiles: good luck, fertility, protection and the spiritual world.

Through Spring 2010 "Sami" Artifacts and images from the Sami people.

Faulconer Gallery (Grinnell College, http://www.grinnell.edu/faulconergallery)

Through Sept. 6 "Below the Surface: A 21st-Century Look at the Prairie" Contemporary views of our place in the world and its natural history, infused with overtones of the cultures that now live on this former sea of grass.

Sept. 25 - Dec. 13 "Molecules That Matter" An exhibition exploring 10 significant molecules of the 20th century: aspirin, isooctane, penicillin, polyethylene, nylon, DNA, progestin, DDT, prozac, and the buckminsterfullerene/nanotube. APT

Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (410 Third Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids), http://www.crma.org

Till further notice "Malvina Hoffman: Rodin's Last Student." "Mauricio Lasansky Master Printmaker" Lasansky combines a spectrum of graphic techniques including etching, drypoint, aquatint, and engraving.

"Art in Roman Life" More than 50 works, including 21 Roman portrait busts.

Sept. 12 through Jan. 3, 2010 ?"Norman Rockwell - Fact & Fiction" In the 65 years since his visit, numerous anecdotes and stories have arisen about the artist's time in Cedar Rapids and the creation of this work.

University Museum (3219 Hudson Road, Cedar Falls), http://www.uni.edu/museum

Through Oct. 24 "The Irreplaceable Wild - Fragile Nature" National Geographic photographer Joel Sartori.

Nov. 2 through Dec. 23 "The Irreplaceable Wild - Touch the Sky" The photography of Jim Brandenburg.

Art in Des Moines 2009 3rd Quarter

2009-08-19T19:32:00.000-07:00

September 09

Just as the equinox passed, and eggs stood on end to defy common wisdom on that subject, Des Moines watched high and low culture show off without clashing as the town's old and new guards celebrated shining moments, if not generational statements. The PSG opened with dignitaries present. Shawn Crahan and Fank Hansen opened shows and celebrations with indiginitaries rife as clowns at a Slipnot concert.

The PSG Brands Des Moines

Des Moines’ Pappajohn Sculpture Garden opens next Sunday like a methamphetamine injection of civic pride. Asked if anything like it exists elsewhere, Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) Director Jeff Fleming cited Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park, the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC and the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. Those are not hyperbolic comparisons. By one measure or another - value of sculptures, acreage of park, renown of the works - the Des Moines park can stand with each of those. In fact, “The PSG” kicks Minneapolis’ butt by all measures.

“These are all blue chip artists and each of these pieces are amongst the most important works of each sculptor,” Fleming explained.
With sculptures bearing $31.5 million of appraised value, 24 hour security and the most conspicuous venue of any such park in America, the PSG also fulfills a Princeton professor’s 17 year old vision with a remarkable touch of irony. Mario Gandelsonas, controversially asked to create a vision plan for Des Moines back in 1992, has become known in theoretical architecture as the disciple of “unplanned urban dynamism.” Yet his original suggestions for Des Moines’ future have been dogmatically followed - riverfront development, airport improvements, Fleur Drive beautification and the creation of Gateway West. Gandelsonas’ firm was even made the principle architect for the installation of the sculpture garden in Gateway West Park. The actual sculptures are a rare unplanned dynamic, given to the city and DMAC by John and Mary Pappajohn.

Wild enthusiasm is as hard to hold down as a fiber glass frame. Fleming thinks the PSG will become a civic brand like the Gateway Arch or the Golden Gate Bridge. At a time when anyone with a cell phone becomes a photojournalist, this garden park has instant branding potential, multiplied by the power of tweet. Fleming says Catalan artist Jaume Plensa’s “Nomade” could become iconic. Underground artists entertain similar expectations for Martin Puryear’s “Decoy.”

Barry Flanagan’s “Thinker on a Rock” is already the most popular piece in the park. That pensive rabbit, precariously perched on a sharp edge, suggests defiance of the wind-blown laws of dynamics. That is still Gandelsonas’ point.

Breaking Laws Like Gravity

If sculptors were not compelled to obey laws that govern gravity and thermodynamics, Michael Brangoccio would likely be one. His paintings are all about grand scale and magnificent effort.

On his web site, “Default” even looks like an epic sculpture. Brangoccio’s magical realism instills a sense of wonder and grandeur rarely seen outside the special effects labs these days. His subjects, things like floating elephants, defy laws like gravity.

“Floating is nearly always about grace - that unearned quality that just happens if you are in the right state,” he explained.

His new work is being shown at Olson-Larsen Gallery, along with new works by Dan Mason and Richard Black, through October 10.
Frank Hansen openings always flirt with lawlessness. This year his show will feature a painting that needs to be driven like a car.

“I am a moment-to-moment artist. “Charlie Button's Hobo Dude Ranch” happened because (The Mansion owner) Ted Irvine gave me a whole buffalo hide. So I learned how to paint with a branding iron and here we are. My brother was junking a car and he gave me a steering wheel. I thought it would be cool to build a painting that could be driven and unveiled itself to the driver like a highway,” Hansen explained.
“Frank Hansen New Works” premieres Sept. 25 and plays through November 14 at Moberg Gallery.

Art Skin

John Sayles is closing the design firm that bears his name and will pursue a fine arts career, debuting a line of paper mache sculptures soon… Chris Vance signed for a one man show in Denver and for a two person show with John Phillip Davis at Sioux Falls’ Washington Pavilion… The Very Reverend Cathleen Bascom of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul recently delivered a sermon based on her impressions of the Tara Donovan exhibit at DMAC. Dean Bascom sees deep spirituality in Donovan’s manipulations of disposable commodities.

August 09
Taking Comfort in Pearls and Bombs

The programmers of Des Moines’ art scene are now working in Metamorphic Code. Just look what they’ve done to August. During its first 150 Augusts, the arts communities in this city shut down like a French bureaucracy. One art critic wrote that the Iowa State Fair was the only cultural thing happening here between the opera season and the fall. Just a few years ago, Iowa galleries didn’t bother opening new exhibitions between mid July and September. This year, six smashing new shows have reinterpreted August and the local art scene.

Fred Truck is a thoughtful iconoclast whose work is deadly serious humor. “Ten Year Sandwich,” at Heritage Gallery through September 18, includes some of his best takes on corporate images, individualism, war and terror. All intertwine in his exploration of identity and its dissolution. In a bomb series, Truck arranged sculptures in a medicine cabinet — because “terrorists believe that a bomb can make everything well.” The artist noted while observing the Enola Gay and Big Boy exhibition at the Smithsonian, that early atom bombs were quite imperfect showing hammer dents on their skin.“They were just handmade items — they were a lot like art,” Truck said.

Former Des Moines painter Anthony Pontius is another original stylist who meditates on war and the way it’s perceived. His “Casual Calamity” at Moberg Gallery includes “every available painting in America” by the artist after his successful exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle and Washington D.C. this year. In Pontius’ hands, technique becomes symbolic. He lays “fat paint over lean paint, intentionally painting badly” in his words — so that his paint will chip prematurely, effecting an Old Master’s look on which he scribbles, doodles and assaults with green shoots, sun rays, Mardi Gras streamers and other statements of youthful hope. Moberg curators included Pontius’ preliminary sketches with his paintings showing how the artist reworks a concept. On landscapes, which almost always look like battlefields or concentration camps,

“Bubble Gum Cowards” morph into piles of amputated limbs and the Statue of Liberty’s torch changes into Medusa’s severed head.

“I really don’t mean to be intentionally ironic. I just can’t help but go there sometimes,” Pontius explained.

Also at Moberg, a “New Artist Exhibit” shows off bright, gypsy abstractions from Therésè Murdza, Heather Brammeier and Diane Henk; sunny realism of Larassa Kabel and the dark wonderland of Mary Kline-Misol. Both Moberg shows play through September 19.

Dan McNamara exhibits his latest Jade Buddha meditations on universes within riverbanks at Olson-Larsen Galleries through Aug. 29.

An out of state museum director once told me that this most stylized of Iowa’s landscape artists possesses “astonishing vision that would dominate an exhibition, if the nature of his vision was not so peaceful.” Om to that. Abstractions from Jeanine Coupe Ryding and animal prints from Paula Schuette Kraemer complement McNamara’s serenity in this current show.

At 2Au, Ann Au explained the subject of her dazzling show “Pearls” playing through August. “They are comforting. They are warm, you can fondle them and they go with everything, with or without color. They become part of the body. I suppose that’s why they were associated with the 1930s and why they are comforting today.”

At Des Moines Social Club (DMSC), Michelle Holly has gathered the most eccentric flock of artists seen here in years for “Animal Nature” through Aug. 29. Several of these artists have professional names befitting an underground venue — Bosko, Macix, Rudy Fig, Netherland, M@r$h, Kettlefart, etc. Some go for double entendre jokes like Macix’s “Shaved Beaver” and others for the shock value of anthropomorphic animals (Christopher Umana, Rudy Fig), parasitic insects (John Stuart Berger), teddy bears on crack (Chris Bent), mythological hybrids (Jeremiah Kettner) and Kafkaesque nightmares (Jason Scott Hoffman). At DMSC they hang their hats on the same rack as more traditional artists like Vanja Borcic and Jamie Fales, who contributed a meticulous triptych of Keane-like girls modeling living hat wear.

July

Tara Donovan: Don’t ask this woman, “How many?”

The Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) “Tara Donovan” exhibition drew the second largest opening fortnight crowds in decades and has been particularly popular with younger audiences. What’s more, those crowds are lingering longer than usual, taking time to check out Donovan’s sculptures from multiple perspectives. That’s exactly what the museum hoped for three years ago when it scheduled Donovan.

Though she was little known at the time, DMAC committed their prime summer season and also, for the first (and last) time in museum history, both there Grand Avenue and Downtown galleries to the same shows. The exhibition’s multiple, untitled sculptures examine everyday objects while restoring both beauty and interpretation to the eye of the beholder. Everyone sees that Styrofoam cups, toothpicks, Mylar sheets, drinking straws, buttons and Scotch tape are the media stars. To different eyes, those same things might become coral reefs, stalagmites, mushroom clouds, sepia tone kaleidoscopes or instruments of torture. Officially, this is Donovan’s first ever “museum survey.”

“‘I think that’s a polite way to say it’s a retrospective without implying that I’m old,” she joked about a career that has taken off faster than even she imagined.

Six years ago, Donovan was in her 13th year working the bar and restaurant business to help support her art. Today, she employs a full-time crew of five people and owns a 1,500-square-foot studio in New York City. Her life changed after a sensational debut show at New York’s Ace Gallery in 2003. That led to bigger gallery representation in New York and London, a one-person show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the first ever Alexander Calder Award and a 2008 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a legendary “Genius Grant.”

Because a single sculpture might include hundreds of thousands of identical objects, Donovan dreads quantifying questions.

“How many? How long did it take? Those questions annoy me. I have receipts and I could go through them to supply the answers, but that’s silly and it misses the point. No one asks a painter how many tubes of paint he used, or how many days he spent applying paint. My attraction to materials and to their quantities comes from how they absorb and reflect light. I don’t see a straw; I see a tubular construction that sucks light. I work as much as a scientist as an artist. It’s all a process of experiment and discovery for me,” she explained.

Donovan doesn’t like the words “found object” either. “I don’t call it ‘found art’ because I don’t scavenge. I work with accumulated materials. That has led to this because mass-produced materials are readily available and inexpensive,” she said.

Cheap mass-produced materials are not the easiest media to handle. Everything Donovan creates must be built or rebuilt for each display. The Des Moines show took two weeks to assemble on site after months of pre-assembly in New York. She can never work outdoors — Scotch tape for instance is a “vampire medium” — it turns hard and becomes something else when exposed to daylight, losing the “misty, foggy artistic essence” that attracts her.

“I live in the zone between nature and the plastic realm. Materials do things beyond my control. That’s the mysterious part of the experience — how can one thing become something else? That separation drives me to explore,” she admitted.

Donovan also confessed that everyday materials assist another motivation.

“I like that I make art for guys from Home Depot, guys who don’t think they care about art but find out they appreciate this stuff. They get it. They find a carnal way, a Gestalt way of identifying. I like that breaking down of attitudes of elitism associated with art,” she said.

Summer Arts Guide

2009-08-12T12:22:00.000-07:00

Tent Cities in Tall Corn Country

Picasso defined artists as children who never grow up, a metaphor encouraged by the school-like calendar upon which the traditional arts keep time. As if oblivious to the invention of air conditioning, the art world still closes shop and heads for the hills and beaches at the first signs of hot weather. For centuries, summer arts festivals have been held almost exclusively in resorts from Salzburg to Spoleto and Newport to Carmel. In Des Moines, however, national reputations have been built against such winds of tradition.

By sheer force of their personalities, the late Mo Dana and Maestro Robert Larsen created two summer festivals of national repute in Central Iowa. Somehow Dana and Larsen persuaded itinerant artists to pitch their tents in the heat and humidity of the corn belt summer. Then they convinced the locals to support these gypsy artists with endearing enthusiasm. Together they transformed the very image of Iowa summer while inspiring other festivals.

Like a state fair for shoppers, the Des Moines Arts Festival (DMAF) now fills the city’s hotels and restaurants with visitors from near and far. Under Dana’s patronage, DMAF morphed from a sleepy day in Greenwood Park to downtown’s biggest weekend, a three day, 180 vendor, multi-stage, pyrotechnically enhanced carnival flattered of its alternative imitator - ArtFest Midwest.

Like corn itself, Des Moines Metro Opera (DMMO) thrives in heat and humidity, drawing the tassel of star singers, on summer break from the cultural capitols of the world, to the silk womb of Indianola. This year DMMO’s festival detours its traditional recipe of one tragedy, one comedy and one modern opera with a season of relentless romance in which larger than life harmonies tell three classical tales of love, jealousy and fate. Soprano Carter Scott makes her Iowa debut as the tragic Tosca while DMMO favorites Jane Redding, John Osborn and Jeffrey Springer return in other starring roles.

Those two gypsy festivals have even inspired brick and mortar arts institutions to bump up their summer programs. Des Moines Art Center is riding a hot streak of nearly four years of non-stop record breaking exhibitions. This summer, they bring back Tara Donovan whose eye-stopping sculptures dazzled in earlier group shows. Donovan’s first solo exhibition is so big it will take over both the Grand Avenue and Downtown DMAC museums, the first time that’s ever happened

Des Moines’ gallery scene has grown exponentially since Art Fest began. Only Kavanaugh and Olson-Larsen galleries are still around from those days. The latter provides its annual Summer Landscape show showcasing popular Gary Bowling, Dave Gordinier and Bobbie McKibbon. If Midwestern fields and streams don’t quench your thirst, the gallery follows it up with an exhibition of textile art from Central America.

Reflecting a recent run of good fortune, the youthful Moberg Gallery is introducing back gallery shows of “New Artists” and “Small Works” by not so new artists. Those play supporting roles to Ignatius Widiapradja’s meditations on metaphysics, memory and transcendence and to the return of prodigal son Anthony Pontius, back from New York City with his classical takes on similarly deep subjects.

The Cedar River Valley art scene enters post-flood stage this spring when Cedar Rapids Museum of Art reopens some shows postponed from last year simultaneously with new shows. Elsewhere, Grinnell’s Faulconer Museum takes a contemporary look at artistic reflections on the prairie while Decorah’s Vesterheim takes an historic approach to the same subject.

Calendar
(*APT* indicates a special Art Pimp tout)

Recurring Events and Family Attractions

Thursday Night Art Walks in downtown Newton

First Friday Art Walks, Fairfield Town Square

Special Events

Festivals

Des Moines Metro Opera Festival (Simpson College, Indianola, www.desmoinesmetroopera.org)

May 29
Cabernet Night Live
An evening of standards and show tunes mixed with musical favorites from Broadway and American opera presented by DMMO’s talented Apprentice Artists. Hors d’oeuvres and drinks round out this evening of great entertainment at the Temple for Performing Arts. $50 ( 50 % reduction)

June 10
Threads & Trills Costume Show and Luncheon 12 p.m. Holiday Inn & Suites, Jordan Creek
A sneak peek at the costumes from the upcoming season’s operas while enjoying arias and duets sung by principal artists from each show. Lunch is included with the purchase of a $40 ticket.

June 11 & 13
Peanut Butter & Puccini Family Opera Adventure
Kids and adults take backstage tour of the opera. Learn about wig and makeup application, lighting, etc. $10 includes lunch. *APT*

June 19 - Ju1y 12
The 2008 Season *APT*

“Tosca” by Giacomo Puccini (June 19, 26, July 1 & 4, plus matinees on June 21 & July 12)
In love with the young painter Cavaradossi but desired by the ruthless Chief of Police the beautiful and tempestuous Floria Tosca finds herself caught in a web of jealousy and intrigue.

“Der Freischütz” by Carl Maria von Weber (performances June 20, July 3, 7 & 11 plus a matinee on June 28)
From its famous overture to its stunning conclusion, music plays harmony in this classical fantasy that married the devil and birthed German opera.

“The Barber of Seville” by Gioacchino Rossini (performances June 27, 30, July 8 & 10 plus a matinee on July 5)
DMMO favorites coloratura Jane Redding and tenor John Osborn return to reprise the misadventures of the world’s most famous barber.

July 9
“Stars of Tomorrow” Concert, (Sheslow Auditorium, Drake University). *APT*
DMMO's Apprentice Artists perform arias and ensembles at Sheslow Auditorium. $20 and $10

May 31, June 3, 6, 11, 13, 20, 24, 27, July 2, 4, 7, 9
“Apprentice Artist Program Performances,” times vary (Lekberg Hall, Des Moines Social Club, Sheslow Auditorium)
The troupe performs scenes and entire acts from both popular operas and rarely seen works. Most performances are free!

June 13-14
Iowa Sculpture Festival (Maytag Park, Newton, www.iowasculpturefestival.org)
The 7th annual event brings big bronze and steel art to Maytag Park for a hands-on experience of meeting artists, picnicking, swimming and watching comedians, magicians, balloon animal makers, etc. $1 and $2.

Des Moines Arts Festival (Gateway West, www.desmoinesartsfestival.org) June 26 - 28
The only festival grand enough to inspire copycats, critics and loyalists, plus national rankings. We’re Number 5! And, yes, someone does actually rank art festivals, according to sales. The three day, free event brings national artists of all media to the river banks of downtown Des Moines, with all the food and music that a festival needs to turn shopping into a mega-event and source of civic pride.

ArtFest Midwest (Varied Industries Building at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, www.artfestmidwest.com )

June 27 - 28
Piggybacking on the big shoulders of DMAF, the sixth annual “Other Art Show,” boasts lots of demonstrations ( glassblowing, pastel portraits, lampwork jewelry, pottery etc.) free parking and regional chauvinism. Over 225 artists will be showing, with approximately 40% from Iowa and 90% from the Midwest. The fest is now calling itself the “largest fine art show in Iowa.”

Art Stop
Sept. 11-12
The third annual shuttle bus tour of Central Iowa’s art galleries, studios and museums.

Galleries

Ongoing

Art Dive (1417 Walnut St., www.artdive.com )
Des Moines alternative gallery plans alternative exhibitions. Be surprised.

2AU (200 Fifth, West Des Moines)
Beach boys of Ipanema and mermaids of Tahiti mix it up with Tanzanian gems this summer.

Des Moines Social Club ( 1408 Locust, Ave. www.desmoinesocialclub.org )
Circus, wrestling, tai chi, akido, theater, belly dancing and other acts of sociability make the club’s Instinct Gallery the most non traditional in town.

Susan Noland Studio Gallery (902 42nd St.)
The psychological properties of gems are front and center in this master goldsmith‘s repertoire.

Limited Engagements

Olson-Larsen Galleries (203 Fifth, West Des Moines, www.olsonlarsen.com )

Through June 20
“Landscape Show”
New works by the gallery’s big picture stars Gary Bowling, David Gordiner and Bobbie McKibbon *APT*

“From the Earth”
New works by Michael Brangoccio, Wendy Rolfe, Betsy Margolius and Priscilla Steele

June 25 - July 18, reception June 25
“Textiles of Guatemala: Tapestries & Rugs by Mary Zicafoose”

Des Moines Social Club

Through August 29

"Animal Instincts"

Michelle Holly has gathered the most eccentric flock of artists seen here in years. Several have professional names befitting an underground venue - Bosko, Macix, Rudy Fig, Netherland, M@r$h, Kettlefart, etc. Some go for double entendre jokes like Macix’s “Shaved Beaver” and others for the shock value of anthropomorphic animals (Christopher Umana, Rudy Fig), parasitic insects (John Stuart Berger), teddy bears on crack (Chris Bent), mythological hybrids (Jeremiah Kettner) and Kafkaesque nightmares

(Jason Scott Hoffman). At DMSC they hang their hats on the same rack as more traditional artists like Vanja Borcic and Jamie Fales, who contributed a meticulous triptych of Keane-like girls modeling living hat wear.

Moberg Gallery

Through June 19 - August 1 (reception June 19)
“All Is Vanity -Ignatius Widiapradja"

Articulation on multidimensional reality, faith and memory by Des Moines’ existential artist. *APT*

“Small Works Exhibit” by various gallery artists

August 7 - Sept 19 (reception August 7)
“Anthony Pontius”

New York painter returns to Iowa.

“New Artist Exhibit”

Heritage Art Gallery (111 Court Ave., www.heritagegallery.org)
June 7 - July 30
“Iowa Exhibited 24”
The best of an annual statewide arts competition.

Through September 18

Fred Truck "Ten Year Sandwich"

The thoughtful inconclast brings his best takes on corporate images, individualism, war and terror. All intertwine in his exploration of identity and its dissolution. In a bomb series, Truck arranged sculptures in a medicine cabinet - because “terrorists believe that a bomb can make everything well.”

Museums

Des Moines Art Center (4700 Grand Ave., www.desmoinesartcenter.org )
May 30
“Big Hair Ball: The Glamour of Illusion” APT
The Des Moines Biennial Celebration of kitsch in its frizzled, wigged out, bouffant glory.

June 9 - August 14
Summer classes. Day camps and family workshops. Call 271-0306.

June 19 – September 13, reception and preview party June 18
“Tara Donovan” APT
Sculptor Tara Donovan starred in a previous group show at DMAC and returns for her first solo exhibition of eye-fooling installations that transform large quantities of mass-produces items—toothpicks, adhesive tape, drinking straws, buttons, straight pins, plastic drinking cups, and Mylar—into stunning spectacles that defy expectations. Gallery talks on July 9 (Grand Avenue), 16 (downtown).

July 19
“Art Inside Out” (noon - 4 p.m.)
International celebrations of all things arty.

Through Sept. 6
“Before Anime”
Prints from the Japanese imagination.

DMAC Downtown (8th and Walnut St.)
June 19 - Sept. 13, reception and preview party June 18
“Tara Donovan”
The first show so big and mind boggling it requires both DMAC buildings to hold it.

Ankeny Art Center (1520 SW Ordnance Rd. www.ankenyartcenter.com )
June-August in Main Gallery
“Virginia Ocken”

June in Side Gallery
“Art Martinez”

August in Main Gallery
“Kemlyn Tam Bappe”
The Peranakan-American returns to Central Iowa with paintings of faith and inspiration.

Brunnier Museum of Art (University Museums, 290 Scheman Bldg., Ames, 515.294.3342, www.museums.iastate.edu )

Through August 2010
“Exquisite Balance: Sculptures by Bill Barrett”
Minimalist modernism.

Through August 9
“N. C. Wyeth: America in the Making”
Beloved Saturday Evening Post illustrator from the golden era of that medium.

The Vesterheim (523 W. Water St., Decorah, www.vesterheim.org)
Through July 5
“Augustus F. Sherman: Ellis Island Portraits, 1905-1920”
Photographs of immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island from all over the world.

Through Spring 2010
“Sami”
Artifacts and images from the Sami people.

July 12 - October 11
“Knitting along the Viking Trail”
Knitwear designed by Elsebeth Lavold with intertwining and runic motifs from the Viking Age.

July 23 - August 31
“Flashback: Norwegian Landscapes in Retrospect”
Photographs comparing historic and comtemporary Norwegian landscapes.

July 18-25
“National Exhibition of Folk Art in the Norwegian Tradition”
A competition and sale of works by contemporary artists in the Norwegian tradition.

Faulconer Gallery (Grinnell College, www.grinnell.edu/faulconergallery)
June 12 - Sept. 6
“Below the Surface: A 21st-Century Look at the Prairie”
Contemporary views of our place in the world and its natural history, infused with overtones of the cultures that now live on this former sea of grass.

June 12 - August 28
“Small Expressions”
Annual exhibition of small scale works is limited to fiber techniques such as weaving, spinning, basketry, felting, beading, and papermaking.

Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (410 Third Avenue SE, Cedar Rapids), www.crma.org
May 30 - August 16
“John Buck: Iconography”
An overview of the Iowa-born, Montana-based, John Buck’s 40-year career in printmaking and sculpture

June 20 - August 16
“Under the Big Top”
In celebration of Iowa’s importance in the development of the circus (the Ringling brothers were from McGregor, Iowa), the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art will install two galleries of circus imagery from its own collection.

Re-opening May 30 till further notice
“Malvina Hoffman: Rodin's Last Student”
In 1985 and 1986, the CRMA received a large number of plaster and bronze works by Malvina Hoffman. In 2003, Hoffman's magnificent Bacchanale Frieze was permanently installed in the Museum's Carnegie Wing. A substantial exhibition of her work, however, hasn't happened for some time.

“Mauricio Lasansky Master Printmaker”
Lasansky combines a spectrum of graphic techniques including etching, drypoint, aquatint, and engraving.

“Art in Roman Life”
More than 50 works, including 21 Roman portrait busts

University Museum (3219 Hudson Road, Cedar Falls), www.uni.edu/museum
June 8 - August 15
“Slow Food to Fast Food” APT
The way America ate and eats.

Art in Des Moines 2nd Quarter 2009

2009-08-07T12:18:00.000-07:00

June 2009

The Art of Living Dangerously

Ignatius Widiapradja’s home and studio shelter shards of shattered histories — skulls, taxidermy freaks, body organ models, religious relics, ancient books, Salvation Army dolls and mutilated mannequins. That’s not too unusual for a contemporary painter. After Damien Hirst institutionalized morbid realism (and became the richest living artist in history), young painters began hooking up with existentialism and accessorizing their lives with gothic props. Widiapradja is anything but a poseur in this territory. Like the reptiles and Bible stories that dramatize his paintings, he is himself transformational. Even his name is an adaptation.

“I was 5 years old in 1965, ‘the year of living dangerously.’ The Suharno government fell to a coup that managed to blame the Chinese. There were horrible reprisals everyday. Fortunately, a powerful village leader gave my father an Indonesian name to protect our family. That’s when I became Widiapradja,” he said.

“The Year of Living Dangerously” is an Oscar-winning Peter Weir film about 1965 in Indonesia. Made in 1982, it identified the CIA, not the Chinese, as masterminds of the 1965 coup. In America, it’s known as probably the best work ever by actors Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hunt. For a 5-year-old ethnic Chinese boy in West Java, “The Year of Living Dangerously” was an ironic understatement. It lasted much longer than a year, abruptly ended childhood and began shaping a worldview that would desperately clawed its way into artistic visions.

“Indonesian schools closed in 1965, for two years. Daily demonstrations continued even longer. Between the ages of 5 and 12, I was never allowed to leave the house without bodyguards. For a while I saw dead bodies floating in the water every day. Friends were killed for voting Communist. Friends were killed for being Chinese. Fear makes one aware of his utter vulnerability. I became acutely aware and constantly reexamined my life view,” he recalled.

Widiapradja attended a strict Roman Catholic school and was trained for 12 years in the dogmatic Old Dutch school of drawing and painting. Yet ethnic Chinese students were admitted to Indonesian universities in such limited quotas that art school was impossible. He moved to America in 1979 to attend the University of Texas in El Paso. Widiapradja didn’t think he could learn much there about drawing and painting, but the jewelry department impressed him. His grandfather had been a master goldsmith, so he took up a family tradition.

By the mid 1980s, he was on the fast track to international recognition as a jewelry artist — featured at the American Craft Museum and included in their world tour exhibitions. Drake hired him to teach jewelry, but that discipline was becoming frustrating.

“Education kept leading me to more doubts and investigations into the nature of living. I wasn’t able to see the history of civilization as progressive. Persecution still exists, brutality and torture even. Evolution moves in baby steps, at least measured emotionally. The ideas that entertained my mind were too big to be expressed within the discipline of jewelry so I started painting again. I rejected abstraction, for the same reasons. I returned to old Dutch realism because abstraction couldn’t accommodate expressions of individual struggle that I was feeling,” he said.

Widiapradja’s paintings today, mostly seven-foot squares, can accommodate big ideas. Many are riffs off themes drawn from sacred texts.

“When you’re forced to the edge of the cliff, you lose the luxury of entertaining options. The Old Testament is full of hard decisions from the edge of the cliff, brutal ones even. Abraham had to decide whether to kill a son,” he said. Then, as if to illustrate the regressive history of civilization, he jumped to the New Testament.

“The crucifixion is the most potent image of all time. Imagine, at the moment of his apotheosis, Jesus asks, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken me?’ What a moment,” he mused. Ignatius Widiapradja‘s new paintings comprise “Vanity of Vanities, All is Vanity” opening Friday, June 19 (running through Aug. 1) at Moberg Gallery.

May 2009

Des Moines’ Gang of Four

Des Moines’ artist community morphed this decade from an oxymoron to a distinctive civic asset. While the boomer generation produced its share of original artists, their art hardly provided a full time profession in Des Moines. Richard Kelley pushed a broom at the Des Moines Register. Bill Luchsinger and Karen Strohbeen made television shows. Mary Kline Misol taught at North. Others left town. Larry Zox and Richard Bauer moved to New York City, Doug Shelton and Ellen Waggoner to the Southwest. Today a growing community of artists under the age of forty is posed to make it, in Des Moines, solely as artists.

With respect to Sticks (a West Des Moines company that recruited and employed artists in the production of a fine arts brand), the emergence of the city’s artist community can be traced to March 2002 when a dozen young painters, many Sticks employees, produced a trunk show that has become a local legend. Chris Vance determined that Des Moines painters needed other painters - for collaboration, critique and support.

Frank Hansen named the group Paintpushers.

John Phillip Davis joined a year later. About the same time, destinies of those three painters were being forged by a young sculptor who felt that his art was rut-stuck by his own success.

“For seven years I had worked back to back to back on commissions, mostly out-of-state. Each one took six months to a year. But I was recreating the visions of my clients and I was tired of it. I hoped that owning a gallery was a means to more artistic independence,” TJ Moberg explained how he and Jackie Moberg decided to open Moberg Gallery in 2003.

Des Moines’ young artists were so splintered six years ago that the Mobergs didn’t even know Vance, Hanson or Davis. Vance was in a regular rotation at the short lived Art House Gallery, Davis at the shorter-lived Bauhaus and Absolute while Hanson showed occasionally at Art Dive. All three sold at trunk shows and street fairs.

“I saw Chris’ work at Art House and I coveted it. I ran into John Phillip at various events. Jackie saw Frank’s work at Art Dive and told me I would love it. Frank didn’t have a contract with Art Dive, so I told him I wanted to give him a show but that I wanted exclusive rights to represent him in Iowa. You can’t print what he told me to do,” TJ recalled.

“About a year later, we were hosting a Kansas City Gallery event and Frank showed up.

Today, this gang of four under age forty forms the core of the new artist community here. Recent and current shows demonstrate new directions for them all. Vance has moved from abstraction to figurative, narrative paintings and is using more non traditional media on which to paint.

The only one of the group who still shows at street fests, Vance has won best in show, or best in class at every major festival he’s entered. He had his first museum show last year at the South Dakota Art Museum.

Hanson (“All Franked Up” currently plays the Ankeny Art Center) still creates narratives on canvass with wry humor but his paintings are more layered and labored now. They appeared on MTV in a Slipnot video this year and Texan Mark Kneeskerns debuted a film biography of Hanson last year.

Davis (currently showing at Moberg) has moved from his trademark - heavily layered, existential meditations on large canvass - and is now creating similarly earnest tactile sculptures, his best work but not easy stuff to sell.

TJ Moberg (currently showing at Moberg) has been creating sculptures that evolved from mental therapies based on chromatic auras.

March 2009 "Artist in the Studio" Jules Kirschenbaum

Making a Difference for 30 Years

Marlene Olson

Olson-Larsen Galleries’ 30th Anniversary Exhibition highlights this spring’s Valley Junction Gallery Walk, Friday, April 17. Marlene Olson’s gallery has always represented mostly Iowa artists and it has legitimized Iowa art as much as anything has over the last three decades. Olson reflected on her exhibition, her artists and the changing art scene in Iowa.
“Thirty years ago when we opened, everyone wanted wildlife art. Not just Maynard Reece either, there were lots of others. Of course, most of those thirty year old reproductions have turned blue now or faded away. So people have learned the difference between original art and factory reproductions. No one calls about that anymore,” she said, smiling.

The gallery’s opening three decades ago closely followed the passing of an Iowa law that prescribed one half of one percent of state construction funds be set aside for art. Olson credited that law with keeping her business afloat, saying that University of Northern Iowa and Iowa State University have been significant clients ever since.

“There’s a need now for more set aside money. In most states it’s a full percent because money is needed for maintenance as well as purchases and commissions,” she added.

Olson says the biggest change has been public awareness of Iowa art. “Thirty years ago, most Iowa artists had full time jobs. Most of our artists taught, or painted houses in the summer. Even (full time artist) Doug Shelton did murals to subsidize his paintings. Today, Byron Burford has been working on one painting for well over two years. Karen Chesterman paints around the clock and only does 10 paintings a year. That kind of layering and detail didn’t exist here back when we opened. No one could afford the time for it,” Olson explained, before reeling off a dozen names of full time artists she represents.

Olson credited former Des Moines Art Center directors James Demetrion and Peggy Patrick for giving Iowa art a boost. “They were both tremendously supportive, at a time when that was crucial. They bought Iowa art for their collections and they directed clients to us. Julia (Brown Turrell) bought a lot of Iowa art too. Jeff Fleming is a real pleasure and shows sincere interest in the local scene,” she said.

Olson also noted that the Iowa State Fair Art Show helped boost visibility, as did competitors to her business.

“Now there are so many more galleries and that’s good for everyone. For years it was just us and Percival (Gallery). When they closed, there was an opportunity to open things up. I suppose when I am gone there will be another big opportunity like that.”

Some things have not changed. Traditional landscape art is still the most popular style with Olson’s clients. “Gary Bowling is our best selling artist. Bobbie McKibbon, John Preston, Bill Barnes, Jack Wilkes and Sarah Grant have been steady, dependable artists too,” she added.

Asked about her biggest obstacles in 30 years, Olson mentioned losing Robert Bauer to Forum Gallery in New York City and Ellen Waggoner to Arizona. “All our artists have always come through with their promises. No one ever failed to deliver what they said they would. So, whatever problems we’ve had, they’re minimal compared to the stories one hears elsewhere,” she summed up.

"Cornelis" by Jules Kirschenbaum

Asked about her favorite artist, Olson played the “mothers can’t have favorite children” card.

"Life, Earth" by Cornelis Rutenberg (portrait of the aritst with Jules Kirschebaum)

She admitted that no one today has the gravitas of the recently deceased Cornelis Rutenberg and Jules Kirschenbaum, both still represented by the gallery and in the current show.

Art Touts

Artdive's Annual Spring Open House will be Friday, April 17 with graffiti artist Jordan Weber featured… The Des Moines Art Center Film Competition will be screened at 1 pm Sunday, April 26, in Levitt Auditorium (4700 Grand Avenue).

Art in Ds Moines 2009 1st Quarter

2009-08-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

March 2009

Des Moines Social Club - the Play’s the Thing

The Des Moines Social Club (DMSC) opened this month with ribbon-cutting fanfare and a revival of Karel Capek’s “R.U.R.” That futuristic play premiered in 1919, the same year that Kruidenier Cadillac cut the ribbon on the Jack Hatch building that now houses DMSC. Coincidences like that are not accidental with this not-for-profit organization. From its conception, DMSC distinguished itself from other want-to-be scene makers by composing dissonant noises into contrapuntal harmony. It now represents the holy grail of civic aspirations -- a place for the elusive “creative class” to hang its beret.

For those of you outside the not-for-profit art world, “the creative class” is a precious term coined by Richard Florida, sociology’s pop star and the super hero of not-for-profit organizations everywhere. Florida’s theories have been used, and misused, now for a decade to convince cities that their futures depend upon the abilities to attract young urban professionals to their arty cores. Florida is so politically correct that his name intimidates the people and organizations who control seed money for new enterprises. It’s used to justify this argument: “If you don’t give (fill in name of arts organization) your money, your real estate values will fall, your city will die and the rest of the world will laugh at you, you philistine.”

DMSC impresario Zach Mannheimer took a different tack. He built a cohesive artistic mass before pitching his idea. The Club combines an art gallery, an education center and a free, live theater under one roof. The theater is home to The Subjective Theater Company, which has 20 local members and affiliation with a nine year old New York City company. Everything is supported by rent (a for-profit bar subleases space from DMSC) and by a patchwork of over 30 funding sources - public, private, foundational, civic, state, etc. Few longtime locals have built such eclectic support groups - Harry Bookey and Jack Hatch ( there are no accidental coincidences) come to mind. Mannheimer is a New Yorker and that makes his achievement a signal that Des Moines acknowledges the new millennium.

DMSC’s superior angels are the Kruidenier Foundation, the Bedell family and the Iowa Arts Council. Over a thousand volunteer hours were donated to remodel the building. DMSC has a one year lease, at a generous rent, with an option to renew for just one more year. I asked Mannheimer if that didn’t scare him.

“It’s a leap of faith. This whole thing is an outrageous leap of faith. Most good things that get done require a will to take some leaps,” he said.
Opening night assembled an odd band of brothers: homeless dudes rubbed shoulders with politicians from three parties. More encouraging for the true Florida believer, the turnout represented a youthful demographic - more like a rock concert than a serious theater audience.
DMSC’s education center will be offering classes in circus performing arts, money management, dance and theater. Its Instinct Gallery will produce monthly shows “for the underground and pop-surrealist art movements.” The first was a populist all-female exhibition of very traditional media - a couple sculptures and things that hang on walls. The Gallery also plans to retail limited edition designer toys and figures.

The theater is the star here with 21st century sound and light technology amplifying such cutting edge fare as Steven Gridley’s “The Twelfth Labor” and an original play based on the works of Des Moines activist Evelyn Davis. Mannheimer plans to recruit both theater and music talent from New York for other future shows.

Touts

Three early Spring exhibitions show off the state of the Iowa art scene.
Olson-Larsen Galleries’ 30th Anniversary exhibition opens Friday, March 27 and features a work by every gallery artist… The Des Moines Art Center’s Iowa Artist Exhibition, through May 22, features self taught, magical painter Timothy Wehrle, memory explorer Larassa Kabel and inquisitional printmaker Phillip Chen… Chris Vance, Des Moines’ most popular painter, exhibits his latest amusing narratives on life in Iowa at Moberg Gallery through April 25.

Feburary 2009

Return of the Parodical Son

Already drawing record numbers of visitors, scholars and national media, the Des Moines Art Center‘s (DMAC) “After Many Springs: Regionalism, Modernism & the Midwest” is that museum’s grandest original creation in ages, perhaps ever. At a time when even the nation’s biggest museums are backing away from “blockbuster” exhibitions, DMAC mounted a one-museum show that redefines a major genre of American art. Superstars of Midwest art history are represented with their finest works, including Iowan Grant Wood with his iconic “American Gothic.” Other Wood paintings in this show look ridiculously idyllic, as if the Great Depression didn’t phase Iowa. “American Gothic” though is placed in a context that makes one wonder, in curator Debra Bricker Balken words, “Is it earnest, or a parody of Midwestern middle class values?”

Regionalism’s other major figures appear less ambiguous. The exhibition includes some obviously racist commentary on the 1930’s, such as Jim Jones’ “Roustabouts.” That suggests that viewers see John Steuart Curry’s most famous paintings not as historical commentaries but as political analogies. Curry‘s “Manhunt” and “The Mississippi” clearly editorialize on lynching and pains of the Jim Crow era while his “John Brown” looks more like a savior than a madman.

Despite Wood’s celebrated homecoming, Tom Hart Benton is the star of this show. Balken gives him both the first and last words in a narrative that treats Benton as Regionalism’s movement maker, a bigger-than-life character who reinvented himself from a Clark Gable wannabe to the American Picasso - while defiantly spitting in the eyes of: the eastern art establishment; Modernism; and economic realities of the Depression. The exhibition’s title painting even becomes Benton’s concession speech in the mid 1940‘s - Regionalism, and its rose-colored bounties, are dead and buried behind 40 acres and a mule.

“After Many Springs” appears with eerie timeliness. Though planned four years ago, in the high flying days of economic exuberance, it explores American angst after the stock market crash of 1929. The hard scrabble decade of the 1930’s is also recalled (and/or dramatized) by America’s greatest photographers. Margaret Bourke White dominates that group, much as Benton did the era’s painters, by transforming herself in a creative reaction to her subject matter - the Midwest in the Great Depression. First we see White as a card-carrying Modernist who photographed heavy machinery solely for its abstract lines. Then she’s reborn as a documentarian with a bleeding heart and an eagle eye. Russell Lee and Arthur Rothstein come off more like “Hollywood realists.” We discover that both were comfortable restaging their subjects for dramatic effect. Staged or not, the dust-blown visions of these photographers contrast utterly with the idealist Midwest that Wood, Benton and Charles Sheeler painted.

The exhibition tries to build bridges between Modernist and Regionalist visions. Benton’s student Jackson Pollack (bet you didn’t know that) presents the first stage of that synthesis, glimpsed in Pollack’s work prior to his Abstract-Expressionist epiphanies. The recently rediscovered John Rogers Cox and Philip Guston (who replaced Wood at the University of Iowa) comprise stage two. According to Balken, they both incorporated “aspects of surrealism in their paintings that transport the viewer to places where both the landscape and humanity have been irreparably altered by the harsh realities of the previous decade.”

In today’s dark light, Joe Jones steals this show with his “American Farm.” That painting appropriates a medieval landscape that looks like it might have inspired Hollywood’s later visions of America after nuclear war. “After Many Springs” plays through May 17, though “American Gothic” will be here only till March 29.

Olson-Larsen Galleries new exhibition features two contemporary landscape photographers who interact with their subjects much as the Great Depression cameramen did. New Englander David Ottenstein has been chronicling the dust blown remnants of vanishing Iowa farmscapes for five years. Last frontier photographer Stuart Klipper lugs, huge heavy equipment to the most challenging places on Earth, from Antarctica to the Sahara. Both exhibitions continue through March 21.

January 2009

Return of the Great Depression

Iowa philosopher-artist Bill Luchsinger says that some artists are canaries in culture’s mine shaft - they sense things long before anyone else can and alert the rest of us. Our mid winter arts calendar makes one suspect that gallery directors also have canary nerves. The Des Moines Art Center’s (DMAC) entire winter program, planned when the stock market flew in the 1400’s, reminisces the Great Depression. The print, drawing and photo show “Different Realities” opens Friday Jan. 16 and contrasts different approaches to art between world wars while warbling a prelude to the symphonic boom of “After Many Springs.” Opening the end on the month, that DMAC blockbuster exhibit will bring ”American Gothic” home to Iowa while examining Midwestern art in the 1930‘s.

Moberg Gallery’s first ever “Works on Paper” appears similarly divined by canary feathers, providing the now timely “affordable art” from that gallery’s growing stable of emerging regional artists. It’s also Moberg’s biggest show ever, taking over the entire gallery. Drawings, prints and photos range thematically from the au current of academia to old fashioned Iowan. That contrast also mirrors the DMAC retrospectives of art in the Great Depression. Drake prof Ignatius Widiapradja contributes the most beguiling works at Moberg. His “Rose Series” comprises complex paintings in which pop images (Lindsay Lohan mugging Marilyn Monroe) are superimposed over metaphysical themes and religious imagery. Widiapradja also shows some of his “Buddha Series,” complex storytelling without the pop. Despite the simplicity of paper, this show relishes process. Des Moines’ Larassa Kabel contributes drawings of nudes easily mistaken for black & white photographs. Wisconsin sculptor Richard Taylor manages linocut prints that resemble his giant outdoor sculptures. Californian Tracy Duran weaves photo skins into collages. Kansas City’s Diane Henk’s mixed media collages emphasize written words. Kansas City’s James Woodfill plots ink drawings on velum. In more traditional approaches: Bradley prof Heather Brammeier contributes gouache drawings; Des Moines’ Jeffrey Thompson shows drawings from his pop art portraits of cartoon characters; Des Moines’ Catherine Dreiss brings classical wood cut prints; Davenport’s Leslie Bell shows his signature female characters, mostly adults this time; Oregon’s Therese Murdza exhibits watercolor and graphite works; and Wayne Norton shows his trademark photographs of rural Iowa.

Gallery stalwarts John Phillip Davis, Richard Kelley, Nancy Lindsay, Bill Luchsinger, Toby Penney, Anthony Pontius, Karen Strohbeen and Chris Vance all contribute familiar work. Vance adds a new element of buyer interaction - cut out figures that can be rearranged. Environmental sculptor John Siblik brings drawings related to his outdoor installations.

At press time, TJ Moberg said the gallery had “no idea what Noah Doely and Frank Hansen were contributing,” but that he never has a clue what those two artists would do next. This show is the Iowa debut for Brammeier and Henk. Penney and Dreiss, two extraordinary process artists, will give a free gallery talk Saturday, Jan. 24 at 11 a.m.. An opening reception will be held Friday, Jan. 23 and the show will run through March 7.

Much of Olson-Larsen Galleries’ marvelous anthology show “Shelter,“ is being extended into February. That exhibition gave gallery artists freedom to interpret its theme. Deanna Wood and Tim Frerich’s went with strictly symbolic shelters. Bill Barnes and Ted Lyddon Hatten employed utilitarian symbols - umbrellas and roofs. Thinking like agricultural commodities, Gary Bowling painted silos and barns. Intuiting a birds’ points of view, Tilly Woodward drew nests and human hands.

Joan Hentschel Gallery’s “Father & Son; The Lake Pieces” matches pere Gene Hamilton with fils Bill Hamilton, dealing with similar subjects. There’s one generational contrast: Bill sees boating as rowing and Gene as motoring. Bill’s rowers move toward their future while facing their past, particularly in mystic portraits of his father. Gene’s boaters power forward without ever looking back. Gene is now painting characters from “The Little Woody Talk Show,” a Des Moines production that recently won the Mammoth Film Festival’s “Best TV Talk Show Pilot” award. Check it out on You Tube -www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=8194BC65265699B8. The Hentschel show plays through Feb. 19.

Art in Des Moines 2008

2009-07-17T10:46:00.001-07:00

The Best & Worst of 2008

Artist of the Year - Richard Kelley

Internationally collected since the 1970’s, the “Dean of Iowa painters” delivered brighter, more optimistic narratives in a cynical year. The “magical realist” moved slightly away from abstraction without diminishing any of its ability to mysteriously move viewers.

Designer of the Year - G.E. Wattier

Greg Wattier’s architectural firm has been defining edge in Des Moines (Court Center, Mitchellville Library, Gateway Lofts) for awhile now. This year they honed that edge with the stunning conversion of an art deco car dealership into Alba restaurant, the hopeful new Fourth Street Condos, the retro new Iowa State Bar Association headquarters and even some new benches on Court Avenue that are both practical and aesthetic.

Exhibition of the Year - “World Histories” at the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC)
Acting more like an intercontinental exposition than a 20th century museum, DMAC celebrated its 60th anniversary by recruiting 11 emerging artists from around the world. Their art demonstrated the creative process of the third millennium flat world as a Hegelian dialectic. Each piece of art synthesized something original from the clash of regional traditions with a broader cultural perspective.

Architecture of the Year & Public Art of the Year - Davis Brown Tower
This building brought a new concept to Des Moines. Its cylindrical glass structure, wedged between two rectangles, looks like a working piston while it stacks seven levels of parking between two floors of retail space and four floors of offices. Developer LADCO also incorporated the year’s best public art: sculpture by jd hansen and a staggered light installation by STRETCH that could well become a civic landmark - the 21st century’s Younker’s clock.

Studio Show of the Year - Alex Brown at Art 316
Brown previewed paintings (for his upcoming exhibitions in Tokyo, New York and Geneva) that simultaneously flirted with photo realism, geometric abstraction and atomic deconstruction. His optically mesmerizing canvases built tension between illusion and discovery.

Gallery Show of the Year - Bill Luchsinger & Karen Strohbeen at Moberg Gallery

This digital couple’s thoughtful show, currently at Moberg Gallery, blurs and confounds distinctions between photography and painting. Their montages and superimpositions reveal more about the creative process than a psychology course on Jungian symbolism.

Worst Design of the Year - Ingersoll beautification project
This long-running fiasco wins for the second year in a row by miring the entire 28th to 31st Street corridor in construction zone perils for most of the year. Truly ugly light and power poles went up and down, and up again, with the passionate intensity of pubescence indecision. Handicapped parking was placed in front of an art gallery, rather than a nearby chiropractic clinic.

Breakout Artist of the Year - Rachel Merrill
Merrill demonstrated a storyteller’s talent for embellishing ordinary objects - wedding dresses in one of her several shows - with extraordinary implications.

Artistic Life Award - Lee Ann (Conlan)
This dreadlocked stylist of skulls and bones produced the edgiest event of the year in which she painted erotically tattooed, nude models while, unbeknownst to most, visitors were photographed gawking. This year she also opened her own gallery and chronicled not one, but two, “ugly divorces” in her paintings.

Artistic Death Award - Fito Garché at Art Dive

Christine Mullane’s gallery ran away with this award for landing the suicide and murder paintings of an artist who then committed both murder (of his agent and ex-girlfriend) and then suicide.

“What Bad Economy?” Award
Des Moines collectors paid over $14,000 at a November exhibition in West Glen for bonobo art, as in watercolors done by apes.

November 2008

The Weightiest November

The art world allows November the shortest shrift of all months. If noticed at all, it’s usually defined by its deficiencies, as in poet Thomas Hood’s famous “No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds - November.” This year, however, the month blows through Des Moines like a conspiracy to transform its image. Three different galleries have simultaneously opened exhibitions by likely the four most significant Central Iowa painters of the last half century - Jules Kirschenbaum, Cornelis Ruhtenberg, Mary Kline-Misol and Richard Kelley. In the fifty years I have been paying attention to Iowa painting, there has never been such a coincidence of weighty exhibitions.
More than anyone, Richard Kelley demonstrated the artistic devotion to the painting craft. Early in his career he was a university art professor. Feeling that college politics undermined the focus a painter needed, he switched to janitorial work to unburden his creative mind. Kelley’s “Enjoying Painting, Enjoying Life,” at Moberg Gallery through November 29, is the painter’s first exhibition since he quit mopping the Des Moines Register‘s floors. Internationally collected since the 1970’s, Kelley resurrects motifs from his early decades - namely Mary Ann, his red headed muse with Pied Piper talents. His new paintings also shine brighter, particularly his trademark blues and reds. Always a painter of “magical realism,” Kelley is moving slightly away from abstraction, without losing any of its ability to mysteriously move the viewer.
The late Jules Kirschenbaum was the most influential Central Iowa painter of his generation, inspiring two generations of artists as a professor at Drake and as a thoughtful stylist who was ahead of his time. The sudden superstardom of British painter Damien Hurst earlier this decade recalled the macabre subject matter on which Kirschenbaum cleaned his brushes. It also made Kirschenbaum’s work more valuable. Very few of his paintings remain on the open market. That’s why Olson-Larsen Gallery has combined a few with drawings, and also with paintings of Kirschenbaum’s wife Cornelis Ruhtenberg, through January 3.
Few Iowa artists have as impressive a resume as Ruhtenberg, a Latvian-born painter of original style. The New York Times began sending first string art critics to review her exhibitions in the 1940’s. Her work was exhibited at the Met, MOMA, the Corcoran and other heavyweight museums before the Eisenhower Era ended. She invented a figurative style that never quite fit within any modern art movements. Critics called it: a cross between Sung Dynasty landscape painting and German Expressionism; “chiaroscuro, in a full spectrum of colors,” 3.) and “music-made-visible.” From the vantage of today‘s more clamorous art scene, Ruhtenberg’s subtle inventions serve the spiritual mood of her paintings better than the techniques of contemporary “spiritual art“ do. She used glazes almost invisibly, to modify and merge colors, rather than glossing or embellishing them.
Mary Kline-Misol, a student of Kirschenbaum and a former North High School art teacher, exhibits a year of transitional paintings at Hentschel Art Gallery through December 29. Best known for paintings evoking Lewis Carroll’s imagination, Kline-Misol focused this year on a long personal encounter with a family of foxes that she befriended on her property and mythologized on her canvasses. They mix with some botanical paintings of ominous mystery. Her paintings mingle in the gallery with marvelously original folk art by her husband Sinesio Misol. That orthopedic surgeon shows sculptures made with surgical instruments and also some mythological spirits carved and painted on tree parts.
This coincidence of exhibitions has its own poetry. While the local art scene derives most of its currency from a much larger group of young artists, they stand on the shoulders of these peers, all of whom stubbornly proved that painting could become a livelihood in Des Moines. It’s beautifully appropriate that they all be honored, and examined, in the penultimate month.

October 2008

Dirty Little Secrets

“America Imagines Chinese,” at Drake’s Anderson Gallery, exposes one of our country’s dirtiest little secrets - anti-Asian racism that led to the long-running embarrassment of the Exclusions Act. This eye-opening exhibition recalls that national disgrace through trading cards - advertising’s most visible medium before the advent of magazines, billboards, radio and television. The images in the exhibition make Little Black Sambo look dignified by comparison.
The show manages some levity by injecting considerable educational trivia. We learn that few ethnicities were exempt from the hatred and derision of America’s 19th century majority. An Oscar Wilde section shows how deeply that Irish writer unnerved mainstream America with his gayness, his wit and his nationality. Wilde was even portrayed as a Negro and Chinaman, just to make sure that uppity Irishmen were put in their place. This exhibition also reveals some little known art history. The advertising boys of America invented surrealism about five decades ahead of Dali and Dadists. The show runs through Friday, October 17.

The Red & the Black

Yan Pei-Ming’s exhibition “Life Souvenir” at the Des Moines Art Center provides an ironic closing to the saga of the Chinese and American graphic arts. Ming is famous for tweaking Andy Warhol with paintings of the Pope and Chairman Mao. Ming painted two bigger-than-life series for this Des Moines show. One, in red watercolor, shows new born babies. Another, in black and white oils, depicts American soldiers killed in Iraq. He apologized for exploiting obvious symbolism.
“Red is the color of beginnings, good luck and happiness. Black is the color of mourning and death and unhappiness. Both are memorials (souvenirs), because red is associated with the amniotic fluid and black and white with tombs and gravestones,” he said.
Ming told us that he manipulates stereotypes for irony’s sake. Born in 1960 (a metallic rat year), Ming identifies with his astrological fate.
“I am a rat, but not metallic, I am a sewer rat. I survive on garbage,” he said, explaining that he left China because the Communist Party didn’t allow students who stutter to study art. He emigrated to France and worked ten years in a Chinese restaurant to pay his way through art school and to learn French.
“Twenty eight years later, life is good,” he joked. Two of his paintings averaged $2 million each this year in Sotheby auctions. Ming smiled about profiting off Communist clichés.
“When I learned to paint, I painted Chairman Mao - because the only art that Chinese artists were allowed to paint was propaganda art. Now I paint them for my own propaganda,” he said.
Irony also directed his return to China to establish a watercolor studio.
“I painted watercolors in Dijon and they never looked the same as watercolors painted in Shanghai. So I deconstructed the process and made sure that everything was exactly the same - the pigments, the bushes, the paper. The only thing that differed was the water. It was easier for me to go to the Shanghai water than to bring Shanghai water to France,” he said, while tipping ashes from a Cuban cigar.

Congratulations!

The American Institute of Architects honored three local buildings and three local architectural firms for excellence in sustainable design. HLKB won for their M.C. Ginsburg project in Clive, Substance won for their own downtown studio and ASK for their CyRide project in Ames. HLKB also won three general design awards for buildings in South Dakota, Cedar Falls and Iowa City.

September 2008

Hanging Art: A Murderous Affair

Art imitates life but death imitates art. Fito Garché’s tragic life left evidence of that old adage in Des Moines. Despite his anti-Castro themes, Garché managed to make a living as an artist in Cuba. After troubles with Communist authorities, he fled that country in 1994, then spent a year in detention at Guantamano Bay before resuming his art career in Miami and Kansas City, with exhibitions in South America and Mexico as well. Jail and persecution haunted the painter. He developed problems with substance abuse and personal relationships. Five years ago he was arrested for breaking into an ex-girlfriend’s home and threatening her with a knife.
This past June, Art Dive owner Christine Mullane met Garché and his agent-girl friend Jana Mackey in Lawrence, Kansas. Mullane arranged an exhibition of Garché’s paintings and bought several outright. Shortly after that meeting, Mackey broke up with Garché and focused on her work as a lobbyist for the National Organization for Women and the Kansas Equality Coalition, petitioning the Kansas legislature for tougher laws on domestic violence. Mackey was murdered on July 3 during a violent encounter in which, police said, “she put up quite a fight.” Garché fled Kansas that same day but was arrested two days later in New Jersey. He was found dead by hanging in his jail cell the same day.
One of Mullane’s Garché paintings shows a tortured man hanging in a jail cell. She has taken all the Cuban artist’s paintings off the market for now, despite considerable demand. She is planning to organize an exhibition to benefit domestic violence.

DMAC Downtown enters “Twilight Zone”

The Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) Downtown’s new exhibition should be introduced by Rod Serling: “You're traveling through another dimension - a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's a signpost up ahead. Your next stop - The Twilight Zone.”
Like that anthology of great tales, DMAC‘s “Private Universe” collects stories of great imagination from the last 130 years. Themes range from historic to contemporary: Max Klinger’s crazed reflection’s on what was, in the 1880’s, a new theory called evolution would later influence both surrealism and psychoanalysis; Anna Gaskell’s eerie film seems to provide psychological context for what could be television news’ latest “Amber Alert” incident. Such diverse art is held together by its cohesive theme - everything is a creation of complex imagination. Some of the show’s artists paid dearly for their visions. Yayoi Kusama has been institutionalized for decades. Joseph Cornell, whom curator Laura Burkhalter called “The Godfather of the exhibition,” was infamously reclusive.
Most of this art is lighter than the psyches who created it: Kusama’s sculptures mix large phallic symbols with dazzling women’s shoes in a feminist dream closet guaranteed to make anyone smile. Patrick Nakatani’s photograph’s detail the life’s work of an imaginary archeologist who has discovered late model sports cars beneath the ancient ruins of Maccu Piccu, Stonehenge, etc. As in Twilight Zone episodes, nothing in this show is as it seems at first glance. Wondrous surprises and ironies await patient observers.
The exhibition also restores some of long cloistered treasures of the museum’s collection. Former DMAC director Peggy Patrick observed “It’s like meeting a bunch of old friends again after years apart.” “Private Universe” runs through January 25.

Touts

Iowa State prof Ingrid Lillgren’s affordable “Assemblages” provide rock solid grounding for the dazzling gems in Ann Au’s autumn collection at 2Au… Bob Nandell’s four decade career in photojournalism dazzles the Cowles Communication Center at Grandview through December 11.

August 2008

Soap Box Rants from a Blue Collar Freak

Frank Hansen has given up his day job and now paints full time, to the benefit of both the artist and his collectors. Not too long ago, Des Moines did not provide a market enthusiastic enough to support career painters. Now it does, more than at any time since the 1920‘s. Moberg Gallery’s annual Hansen exhibition shows that this painter is using his new found studio time well. His subject matter still derives from his personal, grindhouse visions but Hansen’s technique has developed this year. Several of his new works layer paint more diligently than ever before. Others show intricate brush strokes and more serious detailing.
Thematically, the works are still sarcastic and equivocal - showing humor and beauty in the most depraved people and places. Hansen’s “Romantic Caveman” returns after several years in hiding. The painter felt his work was getting a little too proper and market-oriented so he resurrected his Cro-Magnon alter ego, in all his X-rated form. Very few people ever worried that Hansen’s work was too proper, but the new paintings clearly court a muse more prone to hanging out around dumpsters than country clubs. If these paintings were song titles, I’d buy all the albums without even listening: “Dead Guy’s Nicknames Make No Sense;” “Blue Gill Bonnet;” “Pachyderm Noodle Dish;” “Soap Box Rants from a Blue Collar Freak Seem Wise in Luxurious Homes;” “Stalking Siamese Twins;” “Karma Teasing Life Drawing.” I could go on - there are fifty new paintings in the exhibition. One, “Tracy Levine’s Big Heart,” is an homage to Des Moines Metro Arts Alliance director. Another “Date with Destiny” is a portrait of the artist’s cat during surgery. The exhibition opens Friday, Aug. 29.

Life Flux Painting

Tilly Woodward is not really a “still life” painter so much as a painter of frozen moments in flux. Her new exhibition at Olson-Larsen Galleries demonstrates a Japanese sensitivity to ephemeral beauties - “longing and loss in detail” in the artist’s words. These exquisitely detailed paintings are wrought with symbolism far more subtle than is vogue today. Woodward even dares to paint birds in the hand, an intimidating subject to most Western painters because it demands the evocation of contradictory emotions which are almost impossible to catch without movement - trust and trepidation.
“When I paint I think of the beauty of the garden, a small landscape, as well as mudras, gang signs, offerings, prayers and fairy tales,” Woodward admits.
Her paintings are appropriately paired with two large new canvasses by Michael Brangoccio. Those depict birds minus the usual busy narratives and mythic symbolism of that painter’s repertoire. The exhibition runs through Saturday, Aug. 23.

There Goes the Bride

Heavier handed symbolism reigns at Heritage Gallery where “I’ll Show You Mine” presents manipulated photography by Jason (“Don’t call me a surrealist”) Scott Hoffman and head-turning mixed media art by Rachel Merrill. Merrill demonstrates a good storyteller’s talent for embellishing ordinary objects - wedding dresses in this show - with extraordinary implications. Show runs through Friday, Sept. 12.

Touts

The second annual ArtStop (Sept. 5-6) lineup is loaded with strong attractions. Besides Frank Hansen at Moberg, Fitch Gallery will exhibit nine female artists collectively known as Jane360, Art Dive will debut “Mandalas” by Christine Mullane and a group show featuring
figurative oils by Bekah Ash, Joan Hentschel Gallery will open a “Jacqueline Kluver” fabric art exhibition, Olson-Larsen will premiere “New Works” by “Sarah Grant” and “Scott Charles Ross” and the Des Moines Art Center continues its sensational 60th anniversary exhibition “World Histories,” which has set several museum attendance records already… “Advertising Cards and the American Image“ at Drake‘s Anderson Gallery (Sept. 5 - Oct. 17) reveals how USA perceptions of the Chinese have changed in 120 years… “Resident Artists: Low Brow Elite” at the cutting edge Gateway Lofts, on Friday Sept. 12, will include works of Michelle Holly, Kyle Thye, Cat Rocketship, Alex Kuno, Brent Houzenga and Van Holmgren, with music by three groups. An after party at Vaudeville Mews will include all-night-long live painting by resident artists plus musical performances.

July 2008

Leaving a Mark on Iowa

The new Davis Brown Tower at 10th and Walnut has the potential to leave a signature on 21st century architecture in Iowa. Its concept is new here - a cylindrical glass structure, wedged between two rectangles, looks like a working piston and stacks seven levels of parking between two floors of retail space and four floors of offices. Street level design combines a sidewalk arcade and a canopy system. If that isn’t enough eccentricity to grab your eyeballs, developer Ladco also incorporated two exciting pieces of public art. “Yesterday” by jd hansen neatly bridges this new millennium architectural statement with the landmark Hotel Fort Des Moines across 10th Street. Her six foot bronze statue evokes a “modern” icon from the previous century - Henry Moore.
The Tower’s sidewalk level interior includes an installation by STRETCH that also could become a civic landmark. This solid wall of glass domes, orbs and sconces (mostly recycled from a Maytag washing machine mistake) is wired like a scoreboard with colored, programmable LED lights in staggered patterns. Tower tenants have programming privileges and we’ve heard rumors that creative minds are planning to express everything from patriotism to football fervor. STRETCH has a reputation for helping distinguish notable places (HR Block World Headquarters and Woodsweather Bridge in Kansas City). The Davis Brown wall will enhance it.
STRETCH is also being featured in “Sculpture 2,” Moberg Gallery’s exhibition through August 23. Collaborative sculpture shows have become an endangered species, for obvious reasons. When artworks are measured in tons and kilowatt hours instead of square inches, mounting a show is daunting. Moberg’s sculpture exhibition last summer was supposed to be a one time thing but the gallery’s schedule opened up after Wendell Mohr’s family pulled that artist’s paintings off the market following his death in late May. Mohr was the main reason this column lobbied the last 15 years for an Iowa Living Legends program to honor senior citizens who have significantly augmented the state’s culture. He was an American master watercolorist, a great teacher and the driving force that created an arts community in Van Buren County ghost towns. It’s fitting that his place on the calendar is being filled with an exhibition as monumental as the Industrial Era bridges, docks and railroad’s Wendell preferred to paint.
For this show: TJ Moberg constructed a wooden roller coaster inspired by his childhood memories of sneaking into Riverview Park; Jesse Small contributes four porcelain chandeliers; Toby Penney brought wall sculptures evoking rural life; Chris Vance created a new wall sculpture; James Woodfill contributed a video installation, a spinning pedestal and some wall-mounted trash can lids that also spin; John Philip Davis brought three hanging works that add a three dimensional, anthropomorphic form to his multi-textured canvasses; Frank Hansen assembled a new wall sculpture; jd hansen is displaying “Bird Man” a companion piece to her downtown statue; John Siblik shows some river weavings and drawings from his environmental sculptures; Peter Warren shows men’s suits built from salvaged ceiling tiles; new artists Akram Asheer and Tracy Duran exhibit wall sculptures and assemblages.

Reclamation

Des Moines’ Bill Hamilton set his paintbrush down long enough to assemble an exhibition of found object art, which debuts at Joan Hentschel Friday . Hamilton says “Reclamation” has a double meaning.
“Reclaiming discarded objects for one, and the other is reclaiming the walls of galleries, and hopefully homes, from the clutches of a slick shiny corporate style of art that seems to be everywhere these days.” “Reclamation” will run concurrently with “The Last Days of Eden,“ paintings of Alejandro Mazon, through September 2.

Touts

Des Moines Art Center’s “World Histories” has set multiple museum attendance records… Mark Kneeskern’s film “Thank God I Sucked at Sports,” about Des Moines painter Frank Hansen, will premiere at Fleur cinema August 28... Moberg Gallery’s show of new paintings by Leslie Bell will run through August 23… Works of Cheri Sorenson and Stewart Buck are displayed at Hy-Vee Hall in the Iowa Events Center… Waleigh LePon’s reverse glass paintings will move from Art Dive to Hoyt Sherman’s Art-A-Fair on July 27.

June 2008

Des Moines Re Invents June

In 20th century Iowa, art was pretty much considered an indulgence of the rich and artists were deemed the “unproductive class.” In this new millennium, artists transformed into the “creative class” and became a key recruiting tool for civic leaders. Now every city in America is trying to cultivate an arty persona. That’s a tough sales job for a professional town in which bankers, insurance executives, lawyers, realtors and genetic scientists form the establishment core. That’s why Des Moines re-invented June.
Just when the art world in most cities closes shop and heads for the hills and beaches, buttoned down Des Moines loosens its arty alter ego for a series of street parties celebrating the arts of winemaking, opera singing, ceramics, sculpture, painting, theatrics and more. These fiestas, especially the upcoming Des Moines Art Festival and Metro Des Moines Opera festival, became virtual advertisements for the city’s creative culture by recruiting itinerant artists and drawing impressive crowds. Some of their visitors trickle down into Des Moines’ permanent art scene where the real creative class hangs it hat. June is big for them too.
In Olson-Larsen Gallery’s Summer Landscape exhibition, Bobbie McKibbin shows off the fruits of a her first year as a full time painter. The bounty of her produce was such that Marlene Olson couldn’t even find room to hang her personal favorite piece. Like most of the ten artists featured in the gallery’s two current shows, McKibbin approaches landscape from a beauty of nature perspective. Diametrically opposite to optimism’s rosy perch, David Ottenstein contributes several black and white visions of contemporary rural Iowa. In stark portraits of endless fields of row crops and in bales of hay that tweak a Monet-based cliché, the photographer reveals the Iowa from which family farms are being eradicated. An occasional dilapidated barn, lingering like a faithful abandoned pet, is the only sign of human presence. Eugenie Torgerson co-stars in this show, with Turneresque visions of the prairie, including several incorporated into dazzling box constructions that emulate High Renaissance craftsmanship.
At Moberg Gallery, painter/sculpture Toby Penney digs deep into her rural roots. Previously an abstract painter, Penney’s most impressive new paintings depict livestock subjects in a primal language that evokes the earliest cave paintings. Her new sculptures suggest metamorphoses reminiscent of Greek myth. This is a brilliant new phase for a talented artist.
Des Moines’ edgiest show this year took place at Gateway Lofts. That’s the latest G. E. Wattier building, the architect who seems to be defining what’s edgy in Des Moines (Liar’s Club, Legends on Court, Alba, Mitchellville Library). The crowd that Lee Ann (Conlan) attracts provides context for that definition. She’s the rock star among local artists, a dreadlocked stylist of skulls and bones. Even her models are stars in the Warhol tradition. One of them, erotically tattooed and nude, modeled on a bed during the exhibition while Lee Ann worked furiously. Unbeknownst to most, visitors were being photographed while they gawked. There’s no such thing as unobserved voyeurism anymore.
Such theatrics could become farce in the hands of a poseur but Lee Ann carried it off. Her art dealt emotionally and dramatically with two events that roiled the artist: “I went through an ugly divorce and my kids have been forced to deal with that;” and “The Virgina Tech shootings really, really effected me,” she explained. In one series, Lee Ann posed her boys with thoughts of dinosaur carnage in their heads. In a second series, the same children appear with their own artwork superimposed in talk bubbles. Both drew “mommies walking out on children.” Lee Ann also painted the same model who worked the show, but with wrist bandages instead of tattoos, as the Virginia Tech killer.

Touts

Observing Flag Day and Che Guevara’s birthday, Art Dive opened
a group show featuring Cuban artist Fito Garché last Saturday. It runs through July… Ankeny Art Center is hosting an international artists trading card show, with workshops June 21, through August.

May 2008

A Sense of Place in a Flat World

To mark its 60th anniversary, the Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) determined not to celebrate its past but to boldly redefine itself. “World Histories,” the anniversary exhibition which opens this week, blows away any notions of stagnation with which the museum might have been associated in the past. Acting more like an intercontinental exposition than a 20th century museum, DMAC recruited 11 emerging artists from around the world. All provide text books examples of the creative process as a Hegelian dialectic: They begin with a regional tradition, apply it within a clashing tradition and synthesize something original.
These artists’ biographies declare the new art world order: Sonny Assu is a Native American British Columbian merging totem and pop art; Heri Dono is an Indonesian shadow play artist working with low tech sculptural installations; Dario Escobar is Guatemalan Roman Catholic whose work combines mass-produced objects, craft techniques and religious iconography; Yoko Inoue is a traditional Japanese ceramic artist working with mass made consumer products; Shi Jinsong is a Chinese metal artist branding a line of warrior baby products “to survive the manipulative, erotic and violent nature of our consumption culture;” Mustafa Maluka is a Holland-trained graphic designer painting pop culture portraits in South Africa’s mean streets; Rachel Raken is a digital and video artist of Maori descent working with old New Zealand myths; Katrin Sigurdardóttir is an “architectural intervention artist” from Iceland working in New York; Jesse Small is Kansan working in Chinese porcelain and Asian digital styles; Angela Strassheim is an Iowan who riffs off forensic photography in New York; El Anatsui is a Ghanaian painter working in Nigeria.
Curator Laura Burkhalter explained how the show reflects the state of contemporary art.
“The art world is no longer confined to one or two major cities in the United States and Western Europe. It’s opened up significantly with vibrant art centers and biennial exhibitions now thriving across almost every continent,” she said. Shows like this make Des Moines one of those new vibrant art centers.
Meanwhile, the Downtown DMAC is using the 58th edition of the museum’s Iowa Artists exhibit to redefine the most basic art form - drawing. That show includes 26 artists working in a variety of traditional media (charcoal, graphite and pen) as well as non-traditional media such as wire, vinyl and voice-activated body piercing devices. Iowa drawing now includes everything from illustrations for a children’s book to wall drawings, scarification and a skywalk installation.
Individual artists contributed to the definition of the genre. Venerable University of Iowa art professor Joe Patrick pointed out that drawing is “the revelation of the motions of the mind.” To dramatize that concept in the show, he drew the heads of some thoughtful friends. Charcoal landscapist Barbara Fedeler defined drawing as “seeing a problem” and as “thinking things through.” John Bybee, who lost his wife last year, said he turned to drawing as a way to “explore presences and context within my world.”

Toby Penney

Tennessee painter and sculpture Toby Penney will add to her growing Iowa fan base with a new show at Moberg Gallery beginning May 30. “A Sense of Place” will be a slight departure from the gorgeous abstract oils and the wax and concrete vegetable sculptures shown here in recent years. She’s working in basically the same media but her subject matter has become more figurative. Birds and animals help her build a personal mythology.
“I’m more comfortable with my own sense of place, and with myself now. I think that’s allowed me to explore some things that I had pretty much abandoned for the previous 15 years. I grew up in rural Tennessee in a farming environment. Birds and animals were part of a personal mythology, not just for me. I think that’s universal. That’s why the cave paintings of Lascaux still resonate with people today,” she explained.

Touts

In the spirit of “World Histories” Nebraska painter Larry Root applies origami and kanji techniques to the arresting medium of plastic lexan, at Joan Hentschel beginning May 30... Olson-Larsen’s annual summer landscape show debuts May 30... Metro Opera’s season previews May 31 with Cabernet Night Live at Temple of the Performing Arts, $75.

April 2008

Yoko’s Plastic Buddhas:
Art Center Celebrates 60th Birthday in Worldly Fashion

The Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) began celebrating its 60th anniversary last week by bringing Yoko Inoue to town for a series of events anticipating “World Histories,” the museum’s biggest show ever by several measures. For its big birthday, DMAC wanted an exhibition focused on the present and the future. Curator Laura Burkhalter explained.
“We looked to emerging artists from around the world who are typical of the contemporary world in that most of them were born in one country, live in another, show and sell their work in yet others and move about freely. We looked for artists who express that kind of global citizenship yet retain their unique cultural voices. Yoko exemplifies this better than anyone. Since I started talking to her, she’s been in a different country every time it seems - Holland, Bolivia, Ecuador, New York,” she said.
Inoue, who proudly hails from “Osaka - the food and cultural center of Japan,” says that even the materials the raw media in her art are global citizens. She’s currently in the middle of an ambitious six year project that takes her back and forth between equatorial South America and New York City.
“It all started a few years back when I was doing a performance on Canal Street and noticed these street vendors from Peru. They were selling sweaters that were sort of a knock-off of Ralph Lauren’s American flag sweaters. They were selling fast too. I bought one and got to thinking about it. I liked the irony that these symbols of American patriotism were being made by Peruvian immigrants,” she mused.
Those thoughts inspired her to commission a large number of similar sweaters in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. She imported them to use in another Canal Street performance. However, while visiting a potato festival near Lake Titicaca in Bolivia, Inoue became curious about red, white and blue flags being waved. She learned that they celebrated the three ancient colors of Andean potato blossoms and realized that red, white and blue had symbolic significance in the Andes that trumped their meaning in the American flag. So, she deconstructed her sweaters to export their red, white and blue yarns to a women’s co-operative back in the Andes where native weavers will turn them into textile potato flowers.
“I’m in Stage 3 now, but I eventually want to import them again and I’m not sure yet whether I’ll use them in another performance or if I’ll have them sold by street vendors,” she explained.
For “World Histories,” Inoue collected plastic water bottles and plastic knock-offs of Buddhist iconography, mostly from 99 Cent stores and street vendors. She made casts from their shapes and created her own re-images with traditional Japanese ceramic techniques of firing and glazing. She believes that together plastic Buddhas and plastic water bottle create an ambivalent metaphor.
“Plastic Buddhas are definitely kitsch but they still have some meaningful resonance for most people who buy them. They use them as décor but to express something spiritual or religious. So their form has a power to transcend its commercialization. That interests me. Water has spiritual and cultural meaning too, it’s symbolic of purity. In Buddhist temples, water is medicinal. People come to take the water and hope for a cure. When they are cured, they return to the temple and give money to build a Buddha. Now contrast that with the toxicity and environmental problems associated with plastic water bottles that are mass produced in China. With water bottles also the commercialization has detracted the spiritual meaning. I hope that by using traditional methods of firing and glazing, I can restore some of that meaning in my images,” she explained. The works of ten other worldly artists will join Inoue’s in “World Histories."

Touts

The annual Iowa Artists exhibition premieres April 25 at Downtown Des Moines Art Center. Drawings of 26 artists range from traditional (charcoal, graphite and pen on paper) to eccentric drawings with wire & vinyl, digital media, sprayed paint and skin-piercing jewelry. There’s even going to be a skywalk installation… Michael Johnson’s stunning black & white landscape photography steals the lightening from two other new shows at Olson-Larsen Gallery - sculptures of Mac Hornecker and new works by five painters, all through May 24… Bev Gegen’s gorgeous “Abstract Expressions” play through May 24 at Moberg Gallery.

March 2008

Chris Vance: the Rites of Spring

Chris Vance is the crocus of our asphalt prairie, reappearing every year to declare that winter actually ends. His annual exhibition at Moberg Gallery has never been more welcom than this year. Like Spring flowers, this show has been changing daily because collectors kept picking paintings off the wall prior to the official opening last Friday. The painter has always been a workhorse but Vance said he’s never spent more time painting than this year: The ever changing show includes more than 150 new works.
“I can’t be sure. I think there are 80 to 90 in ‘The Wall’ alone,” he guessed, referring to a three dimensional series of paintings, four layers deep, that covers an entire wall. Vance explained its evolution.
“Two years ago, I did a piece called ‘Elements’ which was painted on wood I had found in peoples’ trash. I wanted to expand on the idea of creating and recreating at the same time. Instead of painting over found objects that had histories of their own, I thought that by painting over my own painting I could create a similar sense of history. I painted over one painting ( “60 Days“) sixty days in row. I did a lot of sanding and rubbing on these new paintings. Those techniques evolved from the experience of painting on found wood objects,” he explained.
The bottom layer of “The Wall” appears to be the gallery wall. That was Vance’s intention but gallery owner TJ Moberg talked him into painting on Masonite panels and installing them. Otherwise the work would have been lost when the show ended.
“That was a great idea. I think I want to use these panels when I install my first museum show this year at the South Dakota Art Museum,” Vance explained.
Vance’s palette is brighter this year. His signature earth tones have not been forsaken but they are accented with more dabs of color, nuances that keep the work interesting for the artist.
“New colors arise from the layering process. I’m intrigued with taking colors and dirtying them,” he said.
Vance says the title of this year’s show, “Overload,” asks specific questions. “All the new technology supposedly saves us time. But time for what? It doesn’t seem to be used for connecting with people. Are we letting our lives pass by? I hope this show says ’Don’t let that happen.’”
Indeed, various works continue a personal narrative of a maturing family man. Vance has four children, ages 3 - 14 now, and parental issues pop up in the show: “Cell Phone Sheriff” is how Vance thinks his kids view him. So is “Smigel,” a word that has become slang for “adult nerd” according to Vance. “Colton’s Magic” is a portrait of a three year old’s creative arrangement of toys. “High School Boys Like Drugs” is self explanatory.
Digital works, new for Vance, return the artist to his roots - he was a printmaker before he began painting. One digital portrait, “Grass Eater,” catches Vance’s 14 year old daughter in a moment of adolescent angst. “Summer of the Farmer & Bird Infestation” riffs off that same theme.
“The starlings or garden swallows, whatever they are called, took over our yard and our life last year. My wife wanted them killed. My daughter helped me do that but then she let me know that she thought I was the Devil. She pointed out the irony that we bought indoor birds at the same time we were getting rid of outdoor birds,” he explained.
“Overload” continues through March 29.

Touts

Mary Kline-Misol’s inimitable “Puppetry” paintings are being exhibited at Joan Hentschel Gallery this month… “Trauma Reflected in Art” compiles art by students at the Iowa Juvenile Home and will be exhibited in the Capitol Law Library through March before being displayed in the Capitol rotunda in April.

February 2008

Iowa’s Most Venerable Presence

They don’t make painters like Cornelis Ruhtenberg anymore. If Iowa recognized Living Treasures like more culturally invested places do, she would be the original inductee. Few Iowa artists have ever carried as impressive a resume as Latvian-born painter of original style. Ruhtenberg has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, National Academy of Art, Corcoran Gallery, Chicago Art Institute, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, etc.. The New York Times began sending first string art critics to review her exhibitions in the 1940’s! Along with her husband, the late Jules Kirschenbaum, she influenced two generations of younger Iowa painters.
Ruhtenberg is still drawing today despite suffering two strokes, but Olson-Larsen Galleries’ new exhibition presents a life-long retrospective of painted meditations upon mostly human subjects. The artist invented a figurative style that never quite fit within any modern art movements. Critics called it: 1.) a cross between Sung Dynasty (12th century China) landscape painting and German Expressionism; 2.) chiaroscuro in a full spectrum of colors; and 3.) music-made-visible. From the vantage of today‘s more clamorous art scene, Ruhtenberg’s subtle inventions serve the spiritual mood of her paintings far better than the techniques of contemporary “spiritual art“ do. The painter used glazes almost invisibly to modify and merge colors, never to gloss or embellish them. Today a battalion of younger painters typically layer acrylics on canvasses, directly out of tubes, and cover them with glazes lustrous enough to keep a car key from scratching an automobile hood.
When Ruhtenberg began mixing acrylics on canvasses and then applying her glazes, the technique helped move viewers’ eyes subconsciously from one point of light to another. Art critic Diane Cochrane described the way that sucked one into the artist’s mood as “serenely dynamic.” Ruhtenberg’s art always had more to do with quantum mechanics than marketing or branding. While much art today screams “look at me. I matter,” ego was erased, along with many faces, in Ruhtenberg‘s paintings. That gave her subjects a chance to dance between alternative universes. Her later works (sadly the gallery does not provide dates) in this exhibition depict beloved ghosts mingling with those on the verge of passage: In “Jessica’s Last Autumn” a terrier appears at peace with a tree full of squirrels; In “Green Couple,” the artist picnics with her late husband. In “Dominoes,” two aged women in a dark parlor complete a cycle of life that begins with several brighter paintings of children playing games with the glee of those of who chase the sun in flight.
The collective mood of this exhibition harks a timeless music that harmonizes with a submissive appreciation of life‘s ephemeral quality. It’s a huge and moving show the likes of which are rarely seen in Iowa. Through March 29.

A Lesson Too Late

Compared to comparable venues, Des Moines’ 30 year old Civic Center ranked # 14 in the English-speaking world in Pollstar’s 2007 rankings for ticket sales. That topped the entire Midwest, ahead of legendary theaters such as the Orpheum in Minneapolis (#16) and the Fox in Detroit (#37). The two year old Wells Fargo Arena continued to struggle compared to comparable venues. It’s been beaten badly by Omaha’s Qwest Center and has barely managed to outdraw Sioux City’s Tyson Center and Moline’s The Mark, both of which have 5000 fewer seats. Now, with the opening of Kansas City’s Sprint Arena, Wells Fargo is no longer the region‘s new kid.
The Civic Center’s single bowl, democratic design contrasts drastically to Wells Fargo’s multi-leveled, apartheid style architecture. Attendance numbers reaffirm what many local architects said all along: segregation and elitism are hard to sell in Iowa. The Civic Center was designed by a local firm; Wells Fargo was not.

Touts

Travis Rice, an Iowa designer of vision and mischief, opens his first gallery exhibition “Topographic Delusions,“ at Joan Hentschel on Feb. 22... "Woven Traditions: Central and West African Textiles" includes glorious works by the Ashante, Yoruba, Nupe, Bamana, Kuba and Pygmy tribal people through Feb. 22, at Drake’s Anderson Gallery.

January 2008

“Odd & Awkward Trails”
DMAC shows re-open investigations

At first glance, "Objects and Economies" at Des Moines Art Center (DMAC) Downtown looks like a familiar cliché. Artists and academicians have been denouncing the empty materialism of the western world since the Industrial Revolution. With little new to say, they often become tedious in direct relationship with the earnestness of their anti-capitalism. Despite the show‘s daunting title, this retrospective of the works and stunts of University of Illinois professor Conrad Bakker side steps that drag by focusing on amusement. The exhibition presents artistic replicas of objects of value - from garage sale junk to muscle cars. Much of the art is second generational - photographs of Bakker’s experiments teasing shoppers with his replicas. It’s third generational in one instance where he photographs the sidewalk sale of a replica of a fake Rolex.
Bakker also teases himself by selling his artistic reproductions and testing his own value. In supermarkets he offers artistic replicas of household products. He lists others on eBay and Craig list. In Des Moines, he installed a faux designer furniture gallery and created limited series of Des Moines Art Center gift cards. Those sold for prices that varied according to the faux dollar amounts painted on them. The cheapest denominations sold out immediately but there were plenty of expensive ones left for sale. That’s a humbling stunt that amuses audiences as much as it amuses the artist.
“ I am interested in allowing these objects to drift into and out of social and commercial contexts. This is not a strategy to draw attention to these artworks as ‘specific objects’ as much as it is a way to create a conceptual kind of drag that leaves an odd and awkward trail,” Bakker explained. "Objects and Economies," runs through March 28.
“Play the Story,” which opens at the main DMAC next Friday, also questions establishment points of view. Raised in Nevada, Iowa, multimedia artist Matthew Buckingham questions the role that social memory plays in contemporary life. He built a reputation with accessorized film works on historic topics as diverse as Henry Hudson’s accidental discovery of the fur trapping industry and the introduction of the sparrow to North America.
His DMAC show will includes four parts. “The Spirit and the Letter” concerns 18th century social reformer Mary Wollstonecraft, best known for her books on sexual inequality. Wollstonecraft’s turbulent life has been more scrutinized than her writing and her status has been contested by generations of feminist thinkers. Buckingham’s video installation promises to present her as a ghost with an unsettled legacy.
“Everything I Need’ follows the 20th century psychologist and feminist Charlotte Wolff who escaped Nazi Germany to write some of the first books about same-sex relationships. She was embraced by the lesbian movement in Berlin, where she finally returned in 1978. Buckingham’s video tries to imagine Wolff’s thoughts on that trip back to Germany.
“False Future” concerns the 19th century inventor Louis Aimée Augustin Le Prince who invented moving pictures but mysteriously disappeared before he could patent his discovery. Buckingham shot his film at the exact location in Leeds where Le Prince first made movies in the 1880s.
The final work in the new show concerns Buckingham’s long connection to Carl Milles’ sculpture “Man and Pegasus,” a bronze of several editions around the world including one in the Art Center’s reflecting pool that enchanted Buckingham as a child.

Art News

Mac Hornecker was awarded a commission to create a sculpture for downtown Clinton. “River’s Edge” will be about turbulence at the river and changes in nature… Des Moines artists William Barnes and Thomas Rosborough will create a major mural for Snedecor Hall at Iowa State University. Part of a $9 million renovation, the mural is an Art in State Buildings project… Des Moines painter Bill Hamilton recently began a year’s teaching job in Alexandria, Egypt… Ames artist-architect Pete Goche just commenced a six month teaching and research project in Rome, Italy… Des Moines painter Richard Kelley retired from his job at the Des Moines Register and is now painting full time.

Patricia Piccinini Grabs Des Moines

2009-07-16T11:35:00.000-07:00

January 2007

Young Mother Up from Down Under

Patricia Piccinini grabs your attention with six-inch claws. And because her best-known art solicits responses from those parts of the human brain shared with reptiles, some people try to dismiss it.

The cover shot on the Des Moines Art Center’s announcement of Piccinini’s exhibition “Hug,” for example, drew complaints that it exploited shock value as a gimmick. It didn’t. Gimmicks shock for the sole purpose of shocking. Piccinini’s shocking creatures are visionary solutions to frightening real world problems.

Within the debates about the morality of cloning, genetics and stem cell manipulation, Piccinini is an extreme moderate. That makes her as odd within the worlds of art and politics as any of her creations are within nature. She articulates both sides of the debates with dramatic, but even restraint.

“We can genetically engineer a certain kind of protein in milk to feed all the children in Africa, which would be a wonderful thing. Or we might patent a new form of grain and then sell it at such a high price that it will be impossible for African farmers to remain, or ever again become, self-sufficient. That would be terrible,” she posed.

After 15 years of artful mediations about such human interventions in nature, the Australian artist now accepts a quantum range of possibilities.

“I am interested in outcomes, particularly in failures — in doing the wrong thing for the right reason,” she says. “When we intervene in nature, it is always with good intentions, but thinking we are in control is always the problem. We can’t ever control the consequences of the intervention. In Australia, we imported foxes and rabbits in order to look like England. They turned instead into the biggest pests on the continent. I try to create narratives, to tell stories that demonstrate our inability to control outcomes. Maybe this is part of evolution? Maybe this is how it goes from here?”

In “Hug,” one of those stories concerns a nearly extinct bird beloved in Australia — the HeHo, or golden helmeted honeyeater. They’re dependent upon gum trees and possums to tap their food. The controversial photo on the Art Center invitations depicted a Piccinini sculpture of a genetically engineered “Bodyguard” for the HeHo — fierce enough to frighten predators and with jaws to tap gum trees. Ferocious and repulsive at first sight, the clone becomes maternal and sympathetic on closer inspection — “more like us, than unlike us” in the artist’s words.
“My Bodyguards aren’t necessarily a real solution,” she says. “Maybe the real solution is waving goodbye to many endangered species. That’s nature, too. My work hangs on that structure.”
Another story in “Hug” concerns an issue more down to the Iowa earth. “The Young Family” is based on a chimera with dominant pig genes.

“I am interested in animal organs that can be transplanted in humans and since pig organs are the least likely to be rejected, I spent some time with pigs,” she says. “I wanted to be around a sow giving birth and it was an experience I will never forget. She delivered 13 piglets, but she sat on six of them. That’s nature.

“I’m a city girl like most people in Australia and most people in the world for that matter. So it was a bit of a revelation to see that she’s full of human qualities. The disturbing thing for us is that that reflects us in a lowly point of view. Then we have to think about how we treat pigs and other animals. They are more like us than unlike us,” she reiterated.

As if to dramatize that, Piccinini explained that “The Young Family” is partly autobiographical.

“This work is about a mother thinking about her children and their future. My mother was sick from the time I was 13 until she died many years later. I would have done anything to help her. So, I don’t find it problematic to consider organs transplanted from creatures that aren’t genetically all human. Confronting a pig mother and her own dilemma of destiny is just as emotional for me.

“I am pregnant now. My sister is depressed and her mother was depressed when pregnant with her — depression prevents the transmission of seratonin to the fetus. We never know to what extent we interfere with the outcomes of others. But when we do know, it evokes new questions about how to behave. It’s all about education. Letting people know so they can make good choices about how to behave. Education is part of nurturing and nurturing is a big, big part of my work,” she says.