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Brent Green's 'Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then' has an Indiana bond
by Elizabeth Kramer - The Courier-Journal
Once upon a time in Clarksville, Ind., a man named Leonard Wood built a house for his wife, Mary, who had been diagnosed with cancer.
Wood had a magical idea: This house could be a healing machine to cure her. Still, Mary died.
Mr. Wood, however, held onto magical beliefs. He began to believe that if he kept building on the house, he could help bring Mary back. That dream drove him to keep building for many decades — and to add a 23-foot tower, numbered stairs and windowsills painted in a rainbow of colors.
This is not a folktale but true story about Wood, who worked as a salesman for Belknap Hardware and spent some time playing violin for the Louisville Orchestra. One day, he fell off his roof and had to sell the house. He died on Sept. 11, 2007.
But Wood's story got a second life several years ago when it inspired rural Pennsylvania native and artist Brent Green to create the film “Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then.” It tells the artist's version of Wood's story replete with the artist's hand-built sets, custom-designed animation and music, which Green also composed.
Green will be in Louisville tonight as his view of Wood's world — in all its whimsy and folk-like charm — opens with as part of an exhibit at the Land of Tomorrow gallery. The installation has been brought here with the support of artwithoutwalls, a Louisville visual art organization. Visitors will be able to walk through the multimedia installation, with its sculptures and life-size buildings, including a replica of the tower Wood built, which Green constructed for his film. And they will be able to see projections of vignettes from Green's film on the walls and hear him tell the story.
“That combination of using different art forms to tell a story is incredibly compelling. It is deeply imaginative and deeply sincere,” said Alice Gray Stites, director of artwithoutwalls, a nonprofit founded by Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson. “It lacks the kind of ironic distance that we've come to associate with as lot of contemporary art.”
To make this piece and others like it, Green starts by writing a script using stories he finds, some based on family members. He then draws sets and characters and builds the sets himself. He has actors for the filming of live-action scenes and later incorporates his drawings and stop-motion animation in his films, which lend his work an old-timely quality with frames that quiver slightly and match Green's faintly scratchy and sometimes halting voice. The results are hauntingly sweet and somewhat echo the work of director Henry Selick (“The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Coraline”).
Green started making films about five years ago, when he was writing fiction and music.
“The songs were really bad,” he said in a telephone interview. “The stories, they were OK, but I wasn't getting across the images I wanted people to see with my writing. So I thought if I would put that image in front of you, you would see it and I could control the music.”
Green said he taught himself how to do animation and make the films. At first, he thought that he was making Disney films, but later realized, “I was delusional.”
Green didn't have any insight into film festivals, but was a big fan of alternative music and sent the film to five of his favorite artists. The group Califone was one of them. Another was Vic Chesnutt. Green then worked on a record with Califone, who often back Green when he plays and narrates live screenings of his work. He also wrote a film with Chesnutt, a Georgia singer-songwriter who committed suicide in 2009.
Over the years, Green also has collaborated with Howe Gelb (Giant Sand) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (Wilco, Freakwater). But it was through another musician, Brendan Canty of Fugazi, that Green learned the story of Leonard Wood nearly five years ago.
The Clarksville house had been condemned and became the location for a music video for a series called “Burn to Shine,” started by Canty and director Christoph Green. It features musicians from communities throughout the country playing in condemned properties.
Green premiered “Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then” last April at New York City's Andrew Edlin Gallery. Since then, it has been featured in more than a half-dozen states and at prominent venues including the Dallas Art Museum and Minneapolis' Walker Art Center. He has also taken it to Argentina, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. And after his visit to Louisville, he's slated to take it FilmFest Basel later this month. In many venues, Green and his music colleagues perform live with the screening. So far, that's not on the schedule for Louisville.
Green said his writing is influenced by the fact that “I read all the time and I write all the time.” Among his favorite authors are Kurt Vonneget (“I think he's the greatest”) and Mark Twain. He also counts the South African William Kentridge, who makes his own haunting animated films.
But when judging his own writing, Green does more than just re-read it. “I write and I make sure it sounds good out loud,” he said, which is something he needs to do to make sure it will work with the film.
The recognition Green has received for his work is rare for a self-taught artist, especially for one in his early 30s who never attended art school or college.
His work has been shown at such venues as the J. Paul Getty Center and the Sundance Film Festival (four times). In January, he was featured in the magazine Art in America.
“His work has this sense that something can come of this self-destruction that is bigger and beautiful,” said Josh Siegel, Museum of Modern Art associate film curator, who worked on a series that included Green's work last year.
Ascending Divas: Artist E.V. Day delivers an opera-inspired exhibit
With sunlight streaming into the lobby at the Kentucky Center, visibility was good. But it looked as though Lawrence Mitchell had gotten lost in an array of hats strung between two round hoops.
Artist E.V. Day looked on unconcerned, however. She knew that Mitchell, her assistant, was perfectly in control as he and a small crew hung her Ascending Divas, an exhibit which now dominates the space high in the center's atrium.
Because we just mentioned hats, and because this is mid-April, you might think this exhibit is Derby related. Not quite.
Ascending Divas is inspired by opera and some of the most memorable characters who inhabit that world. It's created by Day, whose reputation exploded after a piece from her series Exploding Couture became part of the 2000 Whitney Biennial.
That piece, “Bombshell,” is a sculpture based on an iconic costume — the white halter dress that Marilyn Monroe made famous in “The Seven Year Itch” — which splits into a multitude of pieces seemingly flying in all directions, an explosive motion frozen in time.
Over the course of about five days, the crew mounted eight sculptures in the atrium, each made by Day from outfits that once were part of the New York City Opera's costume shop. Like her work for Exploding Couture, the clothing of each character is suspended with the aid of miles of fishing line. Day carefully and decisively attached the wire to the garments to put the characters in a state of frozen motion.
Many are tragic, such as Canio's clown in “Pagliacci,” who stabbed his wife upon learning she was having an affair. He hangs as if falling from the sky, his white, flowing garment lit by sun pouring through the skylight, and surrounded by bloody knives. There's also Violetta from Verdi's “La Traviata,” who found a great love just before dying from tuberculosis and Mimi, still dressed in a lush red dress but posed in rigor mortis illustrating her death from the same illness in “La Bohème.”
But there are also characters from more cheerful operas, including Hanna, the lead character in “The Merry Widow,” who is falling, having gone literally head over heels.
Louisville bound
These pieces were part of an exhibition that the New York City Opera commissioned Day to create for the grand promenade space at Lincoln Center during the company's 2009-10 season. To create 13 pieces (eight of which are in the Louisville exhibit), Day combed through a trove of the company's costumes and boned up on the world of opera and its many iconic characters.
“It was like being a kid in a candy store,” she said of the sorting through the costumes and dreaming up how she could present them.
After the temporary exhibit closed, Day packed up her pieces to store in her studio. Not long after, Day said, James Salomon — whose gallery, Salomon Contemporary, represents the artist — came by her studio. He missed the Lincoln Center installation, but upon seeing the pieces, she said, realized “these have got to go out.”
In a matter of weeks, Salomon made a connection with Alice Gray Stites, director of artwithoutwalls, the Louisville nonprofit founded by Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson. It specializes in unconventional visual art projects worldwide, using a range of media. The three had been talking with Kentucky Center President Stephen Klein about an exhibit.
“He is such an opera buff,” Stites said of Klein. “It was clear during our conversations which exhibit ideas sparked his imagination.”
Living history
Given the documentation she found on some of the garments, Klein relishes the probability that Mimi's costume was worn by legendary diva Renata Scotto, whose debut in this country was Mimi in “La Bohème” in 1960 at Chicago's Lyric Opera. He imagines that the beloved American soprano Beverly Sills wore the costume of the Merry Widow.
“All of these things have a history,” Klein said.
The history of the pieces fascinated Day as well. She found labels inside many of the garments, often sewn one on top of another, with the names of opera companies and performers. Seeing them up close and learning how the costumes were built was another of Day's fascinations — from the lining and other parts of the costumes' interiors to the solid seams and connecting parts.
“They're just built to the hilt,” she said. “It's very different from couture clothing or any kind of garment.”
Day said one of her favorites is the piece she calls “Skirt Chaser” — inspired by the lecherous lead character in Mozart's “Don Giovanni.” Its pieces consist of an ornate petticoat paired with pink bloomers and two black gloves, their fingers oh-so-greedily reaching for what promises to be just beyond the fabric. The petticoat, Day notes, was made using 17 layers of crinoline and a wire hoop for support.
Then there are the two dresses that make up Cinderella. On one side is the satin gown with flowers and faux pearls. Then there is the shabby-looking peasant dress made, Day said, of “the finest merino wool to look like burlap” and a bodice of silk velvet.
Recasting feminine
Day's work in Ascending Divas is similar to her Exploding Couture series, but she sees these works as a step towards telling more of a narrative.
“Most of my work deals with a frozen moment in time,” she said. “But here, there's a whole story that goes with each piece.”
Day took some artistic license when she created the piece based on “Carmen,” Bizet's opera in which the heroine is stabbed to death by a spurned lover whom Day described as a “milquetoast.” In the sculpture, the artist gets the last word.
“It just seems so unfair,” she said of the ending. “So, with her costume I made a bloody dagger as though she's holding it in her hand and maybe she can get revenge someday.”
The touch echoes several themes in Day's work, which Stites describes as “fraught with complexity and violence.” She also addresses the power of the feminine — and how it is constrained.
In her 2005 work, G-Force, first shown at the Whitney Museum, she positioned thongs (yes, women's underwear) along suspended wires, creating an image reflecting a fighter jet formation.
Next month, Day will be in New York City, where she lives, for the opening of a show exhibiting her “Madame Butterfly” sculpture from the Ascending Divas series, along with a wall sculpture by one of her mentors, Alice Aycock.
Reporter Elizabeth Kramer can be reached at (502) 582-4682.
E.V. Day's 'Divas Ascending'
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While most sculptors use materials like clay, wire, wood or random odds and ends, E.V. Day’s medium is women’s clothing and old costumes. “I make sculptures that transform familiar icons of women’s empowerment and entrapment into new objects that confound conventional readings of these clichés, and constellate meaning in a range of emotions: anxiety, ecstasy, liberation and release,” Day says. The Kentucky Center main lobby has probably never seen so much fishing line as will be used to hang Day’s eight-piece installation of retired opera costumes, arranged in life-like positions and suspended from the ceiling. Originally commissioned for the Lincoln Center and presented by Louisville nonprofit artwithoutwalls, “Divas Ascending”recycles the elaborate attire of memorable characters like Carmen, Violetta and Don Giovanni and recreates these characters minus one thing — a body.
—Jane Mattingly
US envoy lights up Stockholm park with 'green' public art project
Published: 15 Feb 11 12:42 CET | The Local: Sweden's News in English
For the next several weeks, art and nature lovers who walk by the Stockholm residence of the US ambassador will be treated to a unique art installation designed to spark new thoughts on sustainability, explains contributor Anita Badejo.
While the recent blast of heavy February snow left many Swedes shaking their fists at the resurgent winter weather, the new blanket of fluffy white powder brings a smile to the face of US ambassador Matthew Barzun and his wife, Brooke.
As it turns out, the fresh snow makes for a perfect canvas on which to view a newly installed public art project designed to celebrate the Swedish winter in "A Different Kind of Light".
Consisting of a specially-created video art instillation by Brooklyn-based artist Chris Doyle entitled "The Underglow", the project is meant to show that the darkness of the Swedish winter can be a thing of beauty.
The installation, which features a 3D animation of mushrooms presented in three parts, each one representing a type of light, is a gift to the people of Stockholm from the Barzuns.
It will be projected from the US ambassador's residence on Nobelgatan onto the park below every morning and every evening until March 25th.
Ambassador Barzun was inspired to move ahead with the public art project as a way to heed the call of US president Barack Obama to increase and diversify US engagement in the world.
“I think engaging the next generation is so important,” Barzun tells The Local, before turning his thoughts to the recent youth-led revolution in Egypt.
“Look at Egypt today: 60 percent of people in Egypt are under the age of 30. So, they don’t remember America’s role in World War II. They have more recent memories and we need to engage with them and help them understand what we’re about as a country.”
Doyle chose to focus his work on mushrooms after visiting Sweden for the first time last September.
The recent removal of a diseased 150-year-old tree that was beloved by the ambassador and his family led Doyle to reflect on the fungi which sprout from death and decay. During subsequent dinner conversation he learned of Swedes’ love for mushrooms, allowing him to make connect his reflections to Sweden.
"In a way, this piece is more about my experience of this place," Doyle says.
"So, whether or not it’s successful on the level that people recognize it and think, 'That’s so Swedish', for me, it represents my experience of Sweden."
The first part of Doyle's work depicts bright green bioluminescent mushrooms, which are thought to have been used by Swedes in medieval times to guide them through the long winter.
The second depicts red mushrooms that resemble glowing fire embers, and the third depicts poisonous amanita mushrooms, whose white dots become stars in the video.
“I sort of thought of the embers, the stars, and the bioluminescence as three ways of lighting up the winter,” Doyle explains.
Doyle also said he hopes that viewers who stumble upon the work will experience an unexpected “shiver of magic” in their day.
The focus of Doyle’s work on subjects that are able to create energy from the earth (as mushrooms don’t grow through photosynthesis) also serves as a step by connecting to President Obama’s goal of “trying to save the climate, create new jobs and clean energy,” the ambassador said.
The Barzuns have also made some strides themselves in implementing climate-friendly measures, recently converting the heating in the ambassador's residence from gas to geothermal.
In addition, the electricity used to project “The Underglow” from the residence is 95 percent hydro-powered and 5 percent wind-powered, the ambassador explains.
In unveiling the public art project, Barzun describes his recent realization of the “power of art to start new conversations and to start new ways of thinking.”
“That’s what President Obama has charged us and all of us as American diplomats [to do] – to engage with the world, to start new conversations to tackle the challenges we confront,” says Barzun.
He hopes that Stockholm residents would ultimately take two things away from viewing "The Underglow":
"One, I hope that they will appreciate it as a gesture of thanks to the people of Stockholm and of Sweden, who have been so welcoming to Americans for 200-plus years of our official relationship," he says.
Secondly, the ambassador wants the presentation of Doyle’s work to mark the “beginning of new conversations” about the ways in which Sweden and America “can have a more sustainable future together.”
BlogOm: Being not truthful works against me.
Written by Matthew Barzun :: Friday, May 21, 2010
NOTE: This is a one in a series in which I blog about a piece of art currently being shown at the residence. Warning: I am no art critic. I’m interested in how the pieces further our mission of engagement as I watch visitors to our residence interact with and comment about the art.
“Being Not Truthful Works Against Me” is one of 20 lessons that artist Stefan Sagmeister has learned in his life so far. And it’s the title of the piece that hangs on the wall of the residence as part of our Transparency and Transformation art show that we launched at end of last month.
Speaking of the truth, I must confess for the record that, contrary what was just printed about me in a Swedish magazine last week, I don’t play handball with the Russian ambassador every week. The quote was, “’I play handball with the Russian Ambassador every week’ said Ambassador Barzun.” Hmm. Never said that. Never even played handball. It’s true that the Russian ambassador had just left my house after a fascinating luncheon we enjoyed together when the reporters arrived. I mentioned that Ambassador Neverov had injured his wrist practicing for our 4-nations hockey tournament. Somehow, that got translated into my playing handball with him weekly. Hopefully it won’t work against me.
Stefan Sagmeister takes a year off every seven years to do a deep-think. He removes himself entirely. He tried this in 2000 when he, at the height of an economic bubble, declared it a “client free year.” He was nervous that clients would never use him again, but they admired his choice and they came back. He did it again in 2007. I highly recommend that you watch his TED talk on the “power of time off.”
The work we have consists of camera, video projector, and some very clever software running on a laptop. As you, the viewer, walk, the camera tracks you. The spider web on the wall breaks, then rebuilds once they have left.
Just last week we hosted the Yale Alley Cats, a singing group from Yale University, for a concert at our residence for students from Stockholm area music schools. As we always do, we encouraged our guests to wander around and explore the art before the show. The Alley Cats grouped together in front of the spider web. First they thought they were triggering an automatic response. With more experimentation they discovered it was reacting to each of their motions differently. A slow approach and the web will just gently undulate. If you charge up to it, it collapses quickly. In either case, it rebuilds after you leave to show the words “Being Not Truthful Works Against Me”.
This work shows something apart from what it tells. Namely, that what we do has an effect. It matters. How we do it matters. What we say matters. How we say it matters. It’s connected. It shows more, too: The fragility both of nature and our creativity, and the resilience of nature and our human resilience -- our ability to apologize for mistakes we’ve made and for not being truthful.
Stefan Sagmeister posted his collection on a website and then encouraged others to submit what they have learned. Here is how he says it: “So here I extend this same question to you:
“What have you learned in your life so far? What is it that you are fairly sure about? What is it that you believe in by now? Please do write it down beautifully. Design it digitally, photograph it, draw it, scan it and upload it. Use any media that works for you, paint, sculpture, film…”
When you go to his website , you see the wisdom he’s harvested. Some powerful stuff, so you don’t need me to elaborate on my lesson learned about being more careful referencing sports during interviews. Handball, anyone? Posted by Ambassador Barzun at 9:54 AM
Hit and Run Art
Written by Steve Wilson
In 1999, while examining the museums of Europe my wife, Laura Lee Brown, and I began to formulate a concept we later named Museum Plaza. It was to be a community within one building. The idea was to create a vibrant and exciting environment that would entice people to live downtown so fewer farms would be turned into subdivisions and our city center would be more populated. We decided that such a building would have to be innovative architecturally and would have space for living, learning, shopping, working and playing. And, of course, the glue that would hold it all together would be an art museum like no other. In eight years' time and with countless consultants from around the world, we, along with our partners, actually broke ground on our dream project that by then had become known as Museum Plaza. The following week, the economy took a turn, and, like most other major construction projects in the world, we postponed construction. The delay made us step back and reconsider everything. During that time of evaluation and soul-searching, there were several other museums around the world that were in the middle of capital campaigns that, most likely, would never be realized. Our expert consultants were advising us that “certifiable, insurable“ museum space would cost $990 a square foot to build. What? How preposterous!
Even though we ultimately decided to go ahead with the project, we realized that the heart of the project, the art museum within, would never be the same. As it turned out...all for the better.
Beginning in October of 2008 and continuing through the next several months, we met with museum consultant Chris Dercon (director of Munich’s Haus der Kunst) and Alice Gray Stites (now director of artwithoutwalls) and determined that the time was right to launch a new model. It would be a nimble, innovative, non-collecting art institution defined by its programming – not by the value of a collection or how much art could be stuffed into ever growing store rooms. Our new institution was founded to achieve three important goals: To bring the best contemporary art to more people, to help artists realize ambitious projects outside the restrictions of a traditional museum and to use money for art – not to build infrastructure. Its official name is artwithoutwalls, but I call it “Hit and Run Art.” Here today and gone tomorrow!
Over the years of collecting and working with living artists, Laura Lee and I have realized that artists are increasingly eager to create work in unconventional places—in parks or shopping centers, on streets or the internet, and anywhere else their art can engage directly with people in an uncontrolled setting. We’ve also seen that museums are struggling to attract and retain audiences. Many people feel they do not have the time or the interest required to go to a museum. Or, they think they would feel intimidated by the environment. Today, people have so many ways to spend their leisure time that museums are low on the their list of priorities. Through our work with 21c, we’ve learned that people really enjoy contemporary art. We capture their interest when they encounter it in such an unexpected way. We think the time is right for a new organization that can bring together artists, civic organizations, and cultural institutions to realize ambitious projects and to enrich life with art in new ways.
Integrating art into everyday life is what Laura Lee and I do at home and in our work places. We always wanted the future contemporary art center at Museum Plaza to do that as well. But, now that we have redefined our mission, we don’t have to wait until the building is completed. We have already started bringing the spirit and energy of Museum Plaza to the street...into every home through Louisville's daily newspaper and soon to our American Embassy in Sweden. I want to bring equally as interesting projects to the Kentucky State Fair, Slugger Stadium, TARC facilities and even to the river. The possibilities are as endless as dreams in which one can fly or breathe under water.
Our first project was done in conjunction with the ‘08 IdeaFestival when we installed six gigantic, inflated monkeys by Stefan Sagmeister, an Austrian artist, in Fort Nelson Park on Main Street. The 30-foot inflated sculptures each held a sign, which, when put together, read “Everybody Always Thinks They Are Right.” The monkeys worked! They fostered a lot of reaction and discussion among Louisvillians and visitors alike, and created an ongoing collaborative relationship with an innovative partner, the IdeaFestival. This was Sagmeister’s first public art project in the U.S. He will be speaking at IdeaFestival this fall.
Next, we turned to The Courier-Journal to help us take a contemporary print of handmade work into as many households as possible. Turkish born artist, Serkan Ozkaya, with a team of fine arts students from the University of Louisville, hand drew the text and images of the front page of the April 10, 2009, edition of the newspaper, after it was created by the newspaper’s editors. The drawing was printed as Page 1 of every copy, in effect, transforming The Courier-Journal into an accessible, affordable, and surprising work of art, delivered to anyone who got the paper that day. The edition sold out entirely. The New York Times printed an article about the project the very next day, and thousands of online media picked up the story as well. Just recently the project won an award from the Society of Newspaper Designers and we’ve just published a book—our first—about Today Could Be A Day of Historical Importance; it is an art object itself: You need a can opener to open it!
Last September, again with the IdeaFestival, artwithoutwalls presented another first: Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde’s U.S. debut, Dune 4.0. An interactive, techno-hybrid landscape made from hundreds of LED lights that flashed and chirped in response to people passing by. The work was installed in a 45-foot-long tunnel made of construction scaffolding on a stretch of the Main Street sidewalk between 6th and 7th. For every person who walked that section of downtown, Roosegaarde’s creation provided a seamless transition between everyday experiences and contemporary art—exactly the kind of encounters we want artwithoutwalls to cultivate. Our collaborators for Dune 4.0 included the University of Kentucky College of Design, whose students donned hardhats to help with the installation. After leaving Louisville, Dune 4.0 was shown at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and in Vancouver, as part of a citywide exhibition in honor of the 2010 Winter Olympics.
I need to step off my soap box, so I’ll try to bring this article to a close but we hope these projects will continue for years to come and we will need every Sophisticated Living reader to participate. It is clear to us that Louisville can be as important a player in the global art world as New York or Venice. The programming of artwithoutwalls is reaching far beyond our region. Last December, we organized a major exhibition in Miami, of Cuban artist, José Toirac. This project was very special to me, as I had met the artist and seen much of the work in his Havana studio a few years earlier. Most of his pieces had never before been seen outside of Cuba. José was invited to attend the opening but at the last minute his visa was denied.
Currently, artwithoutwalls is facilitating an art-as-diplomacy project in Stockholm. This installation, which features painting, sculpture, photography, video, and digital art, was the brainchild of Louisville native Brooke Brown Barzun, wife of the new U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, Matthew Barzun. Brooke approached Alice with the idea that American contemporary art could become a viable platform for diplomatic engagement. To realize this project, we collaborated with the United States ART in Embassies Program administered by the State Department. A majority of the art is being loaned by the Louisville based International Contemporary Art Foundation, while other pieces have been borrowed from collections and galleries in the U.S. and Sweden. We are very pleased that two Louisville artists are included in the exhibition, Valerie Sullivan Fuchs and Letitia Quesenberry. While ART in Embassies has always borrowed works from a variety of sources, this installation marks a truly new level of cooperation between a federal agency and an independent nonprofit to create cutting-edge programming. When the Barzuns return home in a few years, we hope artwithoutwalls will continue connecting Louisville with Stockholm as well as with many other cities around the world as diverse as Beijing or Cairo.
By bringing new art to new audiences, we believe that artwithoutwalls can play an important part in the enlightened development of Louisville, and in connecting with communities all over the world. After all...”Louisville is the City of Art and Parks.”
Art brought to public without walls
From the Courier Journal
Alice Gray Stites is a contemporary art curator. Her Louisville office is, significantly, bereft of any art on the walls.
That works for her.
“My interest is in creating experiences, not objects,” said Stites, 44. She is curator for artwithoutwalls, a new group that Stites calls “part artistic supercollider, part public forum, part creative playground.”
What it is, emphatically, not about, is collecting art, she said.
Artwithoutwalls is the concept of international art patrons and collectors Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson of Louisville. They have famously used their passionate collecting of works by living artists to underpin the 21c Museum Hotel, recently voted the No. 1 hotel in the United States and No. 6 in the world in Condé Nast Traveler's 2009 Readers' Choice Awards.
Stites, who has a background in conventional curatorial work putting art on walls, said she relishes her new role.
She finds ways of placing art into the public right of way, as it were, such as the Stefan Sagemeister giant, white inflated monkeys tethered in downtown Louisville in 2008 at the foot of Seventh Street. The first official project of artwithoutwalls was the transformation of the April 10, 2009, front page of The Courier-Journal into a collaboration with Turkish artist Serkan Ozkaya, who hand-drew a facsimile of the words and pictures that were produced by the newspaper staff.
“I no longer really think of myself as a curator,” Stites said in an interview at her office next to 21c at Seventh and Main streets and, later, across Main in the sales office for Museum Plaza, a multiuse riverfront building planned by Brown and Wilson with other developers. Stites helped decide what art should be on the walls of the sales office for condominiums in the office, residence, hotel and art building. The project is on hold because of the recession.
“What I love doing, now,” she said, “is finding new, really exciting projects. I really want to get out of the way, and not in the way. I want to help artists realize their projects and engage directly with an audience.” The last Louisville project she organized was the interactive “techno hybrid landscape” of plantlike wands that lit up and moved in response to visitors. “Dune 4.0,” by Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde, was installed in a tarp-covered corridor of construction scaffolding on Main Street.
Stites' latest project for artwithoutwalls is bringing Cuban artist José Toirac and four crates of his art out of Havana to be at the PULSE contemporary art fair in Miami Dec. 3 through 6. His reimagined versions of familiar press photos and other images suggest we should wonder if what we see is really the truth, or ever can be. Toirac's works about the power of politics and religion have been both applauded and censored in Cuba.
PULSE will be the premiere of his “1869-2006,” a controversial series of portraits of every Cuban leader. It was set to open at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana in 2007 but canceled at the last minute. Helping an artist like Toirac find an audience for his work is part of the artwithoutwalls mission, Stites said.
One of the organization's next projects may be a collaboration with the Park Avenue Armory in New York.
Stites is a native New Yorker whose childhood included SoHo gallery-hopping with an art dealer friend of the family. “I was 14 when I saw the first Julian Schnabel paintings that included cracked pottery. I was there for the first screening of Christo's “Running Fence” film.” And, she said, “My mother is a painter, so art was always in my life.”
Stites majored in English literature at the University of Virginia and minored in art history. She earned a master's degree in literature at Columbia University, but her first job was writing about contemporary art for “Art and Auction magazine.” She also wrote a book about Ansel Adams' photos of national parks.
“It gets in the blood. I tried at various times to escape,” Stites said. “All my attempts to evade (art) came to naught.”
After marrying Louisville lawyer Walker Stites, Alice Stites met Peter Morrin, then director of Louisville's Speed Art Museum. He asked her to do an exhibition about the 25 years of collecting by the museum's New Collectors group. She became adjunct curator of contemporary art in 1995, producing about 15 shows over the next 12 years, Stites said.
Working with realist painter Mary Ann Currier of Louisville for an exhibition was “a turning point,” Stites said. “We met two hours every Monday for two years. When I realized how exciting it was to share an artist's vision, it made me want to keep working with contemporary artists, living artists.”
“Then, in 2006, Laura Lee and Steve approached me about curating the initial exhibitions there (at 21c), and I worked with (21c curator) William (Morrow) on some. It was great fun. They hired me full time in August of 2007. Working with Laura Lee and Steve has been the most exciting, stimulating experience one can imagine.”
For a curator it is often a matter of extremes.
“I spent the last 25 hours — and it's only Thursday — sitting at my desk, writing (about Toirac), thinking and doing that more typical kind of curatorial research that's not so glamorous, but is satisfying,” Stites noted. “However, I will be at the Miami opening Dec. 3, and I was in Stockholm a few weeks ago.”
She visited Stockholm for two days, meeting Swedish artists and working with new U.S. ambassador to Swedem, Matthew Barzun, a Kentucky Internet executive, and his wife, Brooke Brown of Louisville. “They contacted artwithoutwalls to curate the residence,” Stites said. They want to use art as less of a showcase of American art and more of “a medium for cultural exchange and a new era of engagement. This fits perfectly with artwithoutwalls' goal to integrate contemporary art into daily life.”
“That's my passion,” she said. “Many people are suspicious of contemporary art. They are afraid it is something to mystify you, that you might be duped, that irony is too much at work. It is my passion to dispel that.
“Artwithoutwalls is different from museums and places where it seems like art is valued above people, or art is decorative,” Stites said. “Our whole goal is to build the audience. You never want to shrink it. In that sense, it doesn't matter if it's misunderstood as merely technology or futurism, or even as just a market value. You begin to imagine the value of the art by the value of the experience.
“I really believe that what lasts longer is the experience. The permanence of the ephemeral is what I like to say.”
Reporter Diane Heilenman can be reached at (502) 582-4682.
Public art in pairs
From the Courier Journal
Two new temporary public art works in downtown Louisville should have you roaming the streets day and night, becoming more sensitive about how your actions affect others. When (human) nature meets technology, it's love at first sound.
Daan Roosegaarde's elegantly abstract “Dune 4.0” on Main Street between Sixth and Seventh streets is a temporary, white-tarp corridor filled with hundreds of motion- and sound-responsive stems rather like bulrushes topped with LED lights that flicker and flash and emit chirps, depending on the visitor's actions. It is on view for several more weeks.
As the Dutch artist noted in his entertaining talk during the Idea Festival, the wavering LED rushes are having a sort of dialogue with their visitors. “I'm talking about social technologies. … It's become such an important part of who we are.”
Karolina Sobecka's “Sniff” in the windows at 804 E. Market St. is a computer-generated dog form in a street-front window that, based on a video tracking system, interacts with viewers as they move. It will be displayed after dark through October.
“Sniff” reacts as if slow movements are friendly but large actions are threatening. Over time, the dog can keep track of viewers' attitudes and form a sort of relationship with them. The project debuted during the NuLu Festival on East Market Street at the end of the Idea Festival.
According to the Gallery in the Green Building, which organized the installation, the Brooklyn artist commented: “I hope he (‘Sniff') will make some friends, provoke some interesting conversations and perhaps inspire some reflections on the nature of engagement and on the process of intuiting someone else's desires and intentions from their behavior.”
Campbell retrospective
Louisville artist Frank Campbell, who died in 2008, is among a short list of little-known, serious artists in this region in the late 20th century who quietly pursued a keen interest in stretching their style, which in his case documents his abiding interest in people and places. A retrospective of 40 paintings, with a few watercolors and pastels ranging from Louisville and Chicago to East Coast beaches, opens Wednesday at Jane Morgan Gallery, 4838 Brownsboro Center. It is a joint venture with Jim Jackson of Louisville, owner of Aesthetics in Jewelry and owner of some Campbell paintings, who is working on behalf of Campbell's son, Dave Campbell.
This group of paintings, priced from about $100 to $2,000, came from Campbell's son, who asked Jackson to get them fit for display. Jackson and Morgan worked together to frame, stretch, mount and varnish the works.
There will be a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. Oct. 22. The exhibit ends Dec. 19. Call (502) 592-7835. Straw-bale sculpture
Bring a long-sleeve shirt and gloves and help Brad McCombs, who teaches art and media informatics at Northern Kentucky University, create a large-scale straw-bale sculpture Thursday outside the Carnegie Center for Art & History, 201 E. Spring St., New Albany, Ind. The free 1 and 6 p.m. workshops coincide with Harvest Homecoming Festival (www.harvesthomecoming.com) in downtown New Albany and the New Albanian Brewing Co.'s Fringe Fest (www.newalbanian. com) at its Bank Street Brewhouse.
The straw sculpture will remain in place through Oct. 11. McCombs gives a free 6 p.m. lecture Oct. 15 at the Carnegie. Call (812) 944-7336 or visit www.bradmcco.net.
Art on the fly
The Pegasus Gallery of cases in the Louisville International Airport is reopening, with a display of 33 paintings by Plein Air Painters of Kentucky on view through Jan. 4. Plein Air Painters was founded in 1998 for artists of the greater Louisville area who enjoy painting outdoors.
The airport exhibit includes the work of 21 member artists. Plein air is the practice of painting the entire, finished picture out of doors as opposed to simply making preparatory studies. It was initiated in the early 19thth century by British painter John Constable and seized upon 50 years later by French Impressionists. Call (502) 452-1252. Art park set to open
The economic downturn has slowed many projects, but the opening of the exciting 100-acre art park at the Indianapolis Museum of Arts has finally been announced for June 20.
“100 Acres: The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park” is among the largest American art parks and is a pioneer (along with the Georgetown, Ky., campus art park) in featuring ongoing commissions of temporary, site-responsive artworks. The IMA park's initial commissions are by Atelier Van Lieshout, Kendall Buster, Alfredo Jaar, Jeppe Hein, Los Carpinteros, Tea Mäkipää, Type A and Andrea Zittel.
Regional exhibits and events
Tuesday, Oct. 6, and Wednesday, Oct. 7: Northern Chinese photojournalist Li Zhensheng, who was a Communist Party-approved photographer for the Heilongjiang Daily, will speak at Indiana University in Bloomington about his other work, 10 years' worth of the only known existing photographic documentation of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), largely hidden from public view.
He talks at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Room 220 of Ernie Pyle Hall about his secret photos; a reception follows. Li gives a second talk about his personal experiences with sexual repression at noon Wednesday, titled “Sex and the Revolution — China in the Sixties,” at the University Club, Indiana Memorial Union, 900 E. Seventh St.
Friday: Saturday Oct. 9: “Roaring Tigers, Leaping Carp: Decoding the Symbolic Language of Chinese Animal Painting” with works from major U.S. museums and works from The National Palace Museum, Taipei; The Palace Museum, Beijing; and the Shanghai Museum, which are being loaned to a U.S. museum for the first time. Cincinnati Art Museum, 953 Eden Park Drive. Ends Jan. 3. Call (513) 639-2995 or visit www.cincinnatiartmuseum.org.
Saturday: “DOCOMOMO Annual Tour Day in North America” offers tours in 23 cities from Puerto Rico and Mexico City to Montreal and Toronto, all highlighting modern architecture. Tour topics include religious structures, corporate modernism, locally prominent architects and post-war housing. For schedule and information about Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites and Neighborhoods of the Modern Movement, including membership, visit www.docomomo-us.org.
Reporter Diane Heilenman can be reached at (502) 582-4682.
Small Talk: Labels & More
From the Design.NL
By Jeanne Tan
United Nude will open a flagship store in Amsterdam in mid-late October. The progressive shoe label is a collaboration between Dutch designer Rem D. Koolhaas and Brit Galahad JD Clark. Designed by Koolhaas, the 350m2 square store will be prominently located centrally on Spuistraat.
Couturier Frans Molenaar has designed several exclusive womenswear collections for Dutch retail giant C&A. The first collection which will be available from 8 October in selected stores in The Netherlands, Paris, Zurich, Hamburg and Stuttgart, will comprise coats, jackets, blouses, skirts, pants and accessories such as shawls, bags and gloves. The collaboration was announced at the end of the showing of Molenaar's 88th couture collection in Amsterdam earlier this month.
The Dune project by Studio Roosegaarde debuted in the US this month in conjunction with Louisville's Ideas festival, an annual conference celebrating innovation. Presented by non-profit art organisation artwithoutwalls, Dune 4.0 will be situated on Louisville's main street as a 45 foot long corridor, illuminated by a waist-high forest of hundreds of LEDs that respond to human movement and sound. The interactive installation can be seen from 22 September until 20 October. A permanent, site-specific version of Dune will be installed in Rotterdam next year. Additionally Studio Roosegaarde's founder Daan Roosegaarde will be speaking at the Idea festival itself and later at the College of Design, University of Kentucky.
After years of successful menswear collections and a new childrenswear line, Dutch label Scotch & Soda will introduce a womenswear collection. Under the name Maison Scotch, la femme selon Marie, the first collection (Summer 2010) will be available from January onwards in the new flagship store which opened this September in Antwerp, Belgium and from stores in The Netherlands.
Forget collective soul, Daan Roosegaarde's working on "collective skin"
From the Idea Festival blog
With his interactive landscapes, Daan Roosegaarde tests spacial connections between people, architecture and technology to enhance our understanding human behavior and our environment.
While in Louisville, check out his "Dune 4.0" installation on Main St.; it's the first time its been shown in the United States.
Pointing out that geography might forge identity between people, for example, who lived on either side of the Berlin Wall, he has become fascinated at landscapes generated by technology. Developing material art from immaterial ideas is daunting, but the subject of Studio Roosegaarde.
Relatively low tech, save perhaps for the software, "Dune" plumbs "the function of nature in an urban context," between "what you do and how the environment behaves." The glowing, swaying lit rods of Dune, which follow and react your presence, engender many responses. In places like Slovenia, where people had been used to the walls literally spying, an older generation were a bit unnerved by Dune. Actors in Hollywood seeing the work in a keynote presentation were, by contrast, energized by the seeming attention, saying "more, more, show me more!"
He shows Dune also reacting to the presence of newly married couples. Perhaps like older couples, the software behind the art will begin to tune out repeated refrains and cease to respond at all. There's a lesson in that.
You should have seen it.
He's observed that people often "need something between them" to begin a conversation.
Another example of the idea is a dance floor that generates electricity from the group as a whole. The collective actions create feedback loops, which generate lights and electricity.
"Liquid Space" is a sculpture that surround and looms over you on three legs, perhaps like a good monster, and chirps and moves and reacts to your presence. And set in a forest, the piece has a particularly effective purchase: drawing very authentic emotion from people who encounter it. In that setting, he suggested that it functioned like "digital mistletoe," attracting in particular, couples, which appears - to some decided ambivalence on his part - to be one of the repeated and unintended consequences of his art.
His latest project will be composed of a material that he slyly adds will become more transparent the more intimate people become with each other. It's "Facebook squared." Nice.
ARTWITHOUTWALLS — A NEW CONTEMPORARY ARTS ORGANIZATION LAUNCHES ON APRIL 10 WITH THE PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION OF 200,000 WORKS OF ART
Debut Project with Artist Serkan Ozkaya, Today Could Be a Day of Historical Importance Transforms Front Page of The Courier-Journal Newspaper in Louisville
LOUISVILLE, KY, April 10, 2009 – artwithoutwalls — a new non-profit, non-collecting art organization that will work with artists to create installations and programs in a range of media and locations—launches today with a collaborative project by Turkish artist Serkan Ozkaya and The Courier-Journal newspaper in Louisville, Kentucky. For this debut project, Today Could Be a Day of Historical Importance, Ozkaya has hand drawn the text and images of the front page of The Courier-Journal for the April 10, 2009 edition of The Courier-Journal, after it was created by the newspaper’s editors. The drawing is printed as Page 1 of every copy of the April 10 paper, in effect transforming The Courier-Journal into an accessible, affordable, and unexpected work of art.
artwithoutwalls offers a fresh, on-the-street approach to contemporary art through innovative projects in non-traditional settings. The brainchild of arts patrons Steve Wilson and Laura Lee Brown, the initial programming presented by artwithoutwalls will take place in the Louisville area and expand to include projects around the country. Based in Louisville, artwithoutwalls will exist in a range of sites, both virtual and tangible. Collaboration is a central element of artwithoutwalls. Through cooperative work with a broad range of cultural and civic institutions like The Courier-Journal, artwithoutwalls will use an ever-changing pool of intellectual and material resources to engage people with the art of our time. artwithoutwalls is currently developing a collaborative project with the Park Avenue Armory in New York, as well as projects with the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts, the Idea Festival in Louisville, and the Creative Capital Foundation in New York.
“Part artistic supercollider, part public forum, part creative playground, artwithoutwalls is dedicated to the idea that art can have a vital role in everyone’s life,” said artwithoutwalls Director Alice Gray Stites. “Working with Serkan Ozkaya and The Courier-Journal exemplifies our mission to integrate contemporary art into the fabric of the everyday. The locations of our projects may range from exhibition spaces to web sites to public parks, construction sites, athletic fields, riverfronts, and rail yards, but wherever our projects take place, artwithoutwalls will change how people interact with art and provide surprising perspectives on the world around us.”
“We established artwithoutwalls to take art out of the confines of the conventional museum and bring it directly to the community,” said artwithoutwalls co-founder Steve Wilson. “artwithoutwalls will present dynamic projects by allowing artists to be free from traditional restrictions and inviting the public to be part of the creative process.” Co-founder Laura Lee Brown added, “artwithoutwalls’ eclectic, interdisciplinary approach reflects Louisville’s energy and diversity. We’re particularly excited to collaborate with Serkan Ozkaya and The Courier Journal for our inaugural project, as the Courier is truly a cornerstone of our city.”
Arnold Garson, president and publisher of the newspaper, said that The Courier-Journal is pleased to be part of the artwithoutwalls launch. “This project is consistent with The Courier-Journal’s long-standing commitment to the arts. We are proud to bring a work of art, and, no doubt, a topic of discussion, to the 490,000 residents of our area who read the newspaper on a typical day. We believe that the community will be richer for having had this experience,” Garson said.
Lunch With...Serkan Ozkaya :: Courier Journal
What is the conceit of your art?
If only I knew! It would be much easier for me to produce. On the other hand, I guess I can give you a list of a few concepts that I had been working on over the last 20 years.
The relationship between the copy and the original would go on the top of the list. This is something I experienced and felt under my skin from the moment I decided to be an artist and make something new in this world. The problem I faced was that it was almost impossible to come up with something new, and even more so when one starts to study a certain area like art. I kept bumping into these great artists, who had undertook "my" concepts, years before I even could think of them and with utmost skill.
Then I thought maybe trying to make something which wasn't new would open a new perspective and decided to be an art lover instead of an artist. That way I had the whole art history wide open in front of me and I could use any one of the works that were in it. That's when I started to mimic works of art that I saw in the art magazines and art history books.
"Ephemeral" would be another key concept, I reckon. I believe the experience of here-and now is what forms our existence. It is the very essence of the unique. The flow of time makes the experience unrepeatable and yet the beauty of the moment lives in the memory, even though the memory keeps changing. Looking at this very moment and knowing that it will not last forever, makes one to look at it more intensely.
"Value" is another concept I had been trying to explore in my work. I believe art works at its best if the work can be priceless and worthless at the same time.
Given these concepts maybe you can go ahead and come up with the deep structure or the conceit of it all!
How did you get the idea of drawing newspapers?
I am fascinated by the concept of a copy and had been copying different objects from the beginning of my artistic efforts. As a student or an art enthusiast, I used to copy and replicate the drawings and paintings of old masters, such as Leonardo and Michelangelo.
Art in Your Front Yard :: Courier Journal
Walking along New York City's Madison Avenue last fall, I saw people of all ages gathering in the park at 23rd Street -- an unusually large group, given that dusk was rapidly descending. As darkness fell, beams of light streamed across the grass until a shimmering scrim enveloped the park and its delighted visitors.
In fact, the people themselves were responsible for the magic: by placing their hands in the sensor-sculptures at each end of the park, their heart rates were recorded and translated as beams of light, which moved sequentially down the arrangement of spotlights. Pulse Park, as this installation by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was called, was a feat of art and technology which depended on public participation: It only worked when people came together to share a communal experience.
By reading this edition of The Courier-Journal, you are participating in a communal artwork, a collaboration between artist Serkan Ozkaya, this newspaper, and its readers. Today Could be a Day of Historical Importance celebrates the printed -- and drawn! -- word, the value of a free press, and the intersection of art and daily life. No matter the headlines, art is the news of the day, and the news of the day is art -- conceived by the artist, printed by the newspaper and accessible to all.
Artists have long sought to escape the confines of museum walls and white-box galleries in order to express themselves and engage with people. When artist Paul Chan staged performances of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" in New Orleans's Ninth Ward two years ago, the message and setting of the play highlighted the real challenges facing that community and drew record crowds. When Christo and Jeanne-Claude installed glowing saffron-colored gates throughout New York's Central Park, they encouraged everyone to look at the Park and the city around them in a different way. When contemporary artists stage, create and share their work in everyday places, they show the relevance of art to all of us.
Turkish artist transforms Courier-Journal's front page
The front page of today's Courier-Journal, you likely will have noticed by now, is a work of art -- a hand-drawn replica of the printed cover you expected to see.
Don't panic: You can turn to Page A3 for the traditional printed version of today's front page.
The artistic rendering represents a public art partnership among the newspaper, a new local organization called artwithoutwalls and Turkish conceptual artist Serkan Özkaya.
Özkaya, 36, has done similar hand-copying projects at four other newspapers around the world, including The New York Times, though The Courier-Journal's collaboration is the first involving an American paper's front page.
Why does he do this? Why did we let him?
Özkaya said his art is intended to make people "look at your experience in a new way."
Courier-Journal publisher Arnold Garson said the project intrigued him because it can generate discussion, and because it points out how art is a valuable part of everyday life.
"It is about starting the thought process, which is what art is about," Garson said. "It makes you stop and think.
"We are in the business of communication. The mission is to bring new art to new audiences in nontraditional places -- like the front page of the newspaper. We're actually delivering a work of art," said Stites, who explains her goals further on today's Forum page.
"For 75 cents," added Özkaya.
The actual work to produce today's replica front page took six people about one hour.
After Courier-Journal designers finished the page, Özkaya and his volunteer team of five University of Louisville fine art students -- Hallie Jones, Roea Wallace, Alexia Serpentini, Seth Farnack and Collin Lloyd -- went to work with pencils and tracing paper to copy every word, image and headline. Özkaya recreated most of the photos himself. The hand-drawn page was then scanned to a metal printing plate and sent through the presses in the usual way.
So in truth, the replica page is art, but not an original. It is a copy of an original that is itself a copy of another original.
"It's kind of funny to think about a printed page being the original for a hand-copy," Özkaya said.
Secondhand News
Özkaya is part of a generation of artists whose work reflects the influence of Dada pioneer Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, comic book artists, karaoke, Japanese animé and even reality TV. Copying art, he suggests, is legitimate art in its own right.
Growing up in Istanbul, he said, he received news and information from around the world secondhand. Also, Özkaya said, he was unable to see important, original art in Istanbul's museums, even though he could often see replicas. He calls this "geographic dislocation" -- the idea that "you always presume there is something more important happening elsewhere, (so) you never believe that you are ever in the right place at the right time."
But Özkaya's playful work goes beyond theory and questions of what constitutes authorship, authenticity and ownership. He transforms familiar objects and social practices. Among his best-known works is "Proletarier aller Länder" ("All the Workers of the World"), an installation of thousands of tiny red sponge men with their left arms raised. In its European exhibition, he glued the sponge men to the floor -- so museum-goers had to step on the "workers" in order to move through the gallery.