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

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..

Gleeful Cynicism at Surface Value

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).

How to Sculpt a New Civic Image

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.