Jellies

Pinky-orangey flesh, illuminated, fluid.
Against the dark background, the jellies recall deep space galaxies.

The Sky

Photo: Phoenix Mayet

Lately, I find I am drawn to the sky... I follow the flight of birds, scan the tops of tall buildings, and watch jet trails bloom on the horizon. It occurs to me that the sky is both limitless and small. It wraps blue lips around our slice of the world, holding us in the dome of it's mouth. All things, volcanic ash, the smoke of burning buildings, the persistent wail of sirens are consumed by the sky, diluted in it's spaciousness. Yet, at the same time, the sky hovers over us, more like a cloaked villain than a busy parent. Sometimes, the sky is a pervert in a trench coat, revealing the absurdity of our lives.

Skeletons

Painting: Kathryn Boehm

This is a painting in progress, one I started this Summer. The orange is the ground stain, so most of it will be painted over, leaving just little hints here and there.

Photo: Kathryn Boehm

Here is a current snapshot of my bulletin board. National Geographic images of glacial fields, dried plant materials and orange twine.

Photo: Kathryn Boehm

The stems and leaf are skeletons of sorts, just a fragment of the whole. Grape stems cast such interesting shadows.

"Artists are basically problem solvers..."

Bruce Nauman - A Rose Has No Teeth

In this selection of the ARTnews article titled "A New Creativity" by Ann Landi (March 2009) the future of art-making during the economic downturn is discussed. I admit, I'm kind of a sucker for return-to-our-senses sentiments like the ones expressed here that suggest there is something new and powerful gathering force in the art world and now new voices and attitudes can finally step forward... and it is still possible to become a part of it. At the same time, I am also highly suspicious of that aspect of myself which desires to be a part of something.

"Irving Sandler, the scholar and critic who witnessed and chronicled the rise of American art in the ’50s and ’60s, believes that artists will “begin to create their own institutions, if you want to call them that. Artists will get together and think of fending for themselves, and this is happening right now. My sense is that they are considering the collective situation, just as we did in the ’50s with the Artists’ Club and the Cedar Street Tavern.”

We may see a change, too, in the way art is produced, which will of necessity be reflected in the character and materials of the art object. “You’ll probably see less video- and film-based work because of the kind of production standards that artists have demanded and the kind of financing they need,” predicts Eccles. Work that requires an atelier worthy of a Renaissance master could also fall by the wayside. “What we’ve seen in the last few years is a lot of art with high-production values, expensive and very sophisticated studio or out-of-studio production,” says Gary Garrels, senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. “There’s been a kind of celebration of lavishness and monumentality and very eye-catching work.” Harry Philbrick, director of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, adds, “Artists who could count six months or a year ago on projects being subsidized by museums, dealers, or collectors are suddenly finding that they will have to trim that budget, and that may mean choosing less-costly materials or scaling back projects.” And artists themselves are foreseeing changes in the way they work. “I’m finally getting around to working my way through all the materials that I already have in my studio, which is a lot of fun,” says Ellen Harvey. “In general, I’m trying to think of projects that are less expensive to make, and that’s fine. Expensive is not necessarily better, anyway.”

“I’m seeing incredible, great work made out of nothing, nothing,” sculptor Petah Coyne says of a recent visit to a show of M.F.A. candidates at the School of Visual Arts in New York. That’s an esthetic that’s not particularly new and might be said to go all the way back to early Cubist collages and Kurt Schwitters’s Merz, finding its latest incarnation in the low-rent assemblages of last year’s “Unmonumental” show at the New Museum. Govan doesn’t believe that artists who want and need certain materials will cut corners. “There are so many stories of Picasso, when he had not a nickel, buying the most expensive cerulean blue, the most costly pigments for his paintings,” he notes.

As for decisive shifts in sensibility or esthetics, it seems far too soon to say what the art of the coming years will look like or to predict what thought processes may underlie its making. Garrels believes that the choice of Bruce Nauman to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale this year is a portent, and some say Venice itself will offer a reflection of the times. “We’re going to see a shift toward work that’s more psychological and introspective and more out of an old-fashioned studio kind of work,” Garrels comments. “It will have to be a much more sober biennale this time around,” says Carlos Basualdo, curator of contemporary art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and cocurator of the U.S. Pavilion. Garrels, too, sees “a return to work that is a little more personal and exploratory. A good example of an artist who really came to represent that shift in the moment, from the late ’80s to the early ’90s, would be Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Again, you had thoughtful art with low production values. Felix was an artist who came to the fore right after the last collapse of the market, and I would not be surprised to see something parallel happen now.”

“People who travel light and do things that are contrary and ephemeral are going to have a good moment,” says Robert Storr, dean of the Yale University School of Art. Storr also notes that the last decade has seen surprisingly little political activity among artists, and virtually no politically inspired art, in spite of eight years of governance that has led to an unpopular war and a staggering deficit. “People talked revolution but didn’t do it,” he says. “If I could spot a change, it would be at the point where artists start to think outside the politics of the art world, or outside the academic discourses, and look around and ask, what’s going on here? This is an area where somebody with an idea and enough anger could have an effect.”

Like the rest of the economy, the cultural world has lived through cycles of boom and bust since the first serious museums and dealers opened their doors in the middle of the 19th century. It’s still too early to say what will happen in the coming year or two, but the one certainty is a curiously reassuring uncertainty. “Artists are basically problem solvers,” says Bonnie Clearwater, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. “They will respond to whatever the situation is in completely unpredictable ways.”"

For the full article: http://www.artnewsonline.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2641