Detroit Art Review – Page 68 – Critical art reviews of Detroit galleries and museums weekly

Jaume Plensa’s Human Landscapes @ Toledo Museum of Art

On July 18, 2016

Installation, Jaume Plensa’s Sculpture, Toledo Museum of Art

Spanish-born sculptor Jaume Plensa is perhaps best known in the United States for his permanent Crown Fountain installation in Millennium Park in Chicago. This sculpture, which projects recorded footage of the faces of dozens of Chicago citizens into 50-foot towers that flank the fountain, distills Plensa’s abiding interest – the maximizing of human forms to the scale of landscapes. Human Landscape , a quasi-retrospective of Plensa’s recent work has just opened at the Toledo Museum of Art, and features a selection of his arresting sculptures, six exterior works sited on the grounds surrounding the museum, and an array of his lesser-known works on paper. The cumulative effect is an exercise in gazing, quite literally, into the face of humanity.

James Plensa, Paula, 2013, Bronze

Plensa’s use of scale is nearly enough on its own to inspire awe, casting and carving sculptural neck-up portraits that stand at or above human size. Driving by the museum’s front entrance, one’s gaze is drawn by Paula (2013), a portrait of a young girl from the neck up, rendered in blackened bronze and standing out like an Easter Island head amidst the lush surrounding greenery. Around the museum’s eastern wing another piece, The Heart of Trees (2007) is sited, with 1:1 scale bronze-cast figures sitting in silent meditation at the base of seven live Kentucky Coffee trees, planted into a grove against the hillside and perfectly complimented by the angled verdigris exterior of the Center for Visual Arts. Those driving along Monroe Street by night might find their attention drawn by pieces on the grounds surrounding the Glass Pavilion, two torso pieces – Thoughts (2013) and Silent Music (II) (2013) – and two seated figures, Soul of Words, which are illuminated at night, to emphasize the open weave of their intricate metal work.

Jaume Plensa, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, 2010, Polyester resin, stainless steel, and LED light, dimensions variable

A figure seated with knees drawn up is a recurring motif for Plensa – at human scale, with The Heart of Trees; at maxi-scale, with Soul of Words; cast in hollow polyester resin, illuminated and mounted on the wall, in an interior trio of works, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil (2010). This posture, and the tendency for his massive portrait faces to have their eyes closed, suggests that his figures have an interior landscape, as well as the physical one created or augmented by their presence. There is a kind of vulnerability to Paula, even as she towers far above human height, in her closed eyes and solemn expression.

Jaume Plensa, The Heart of Trees, 2007, Bronze (7 elements), Kentucky Coffee trees, 99 x 66 x 99 (each)

Though Plensa clearly delights in siting his works in open public spaces, the gallery works create all kinds of tableaus, as well. From either of two entry points to the exhibition, the viewer is greeted by a marble portrait head of what appears to be the same woman, Rui Rui (Plensa seems prone to reiterate subjects). Like Paula, Plensa’s head portraits feature an oddly squashed perspective that causes their appearance to shift as one walks around them. What appears to be in correct proportion from one angle becomes slightly or markedly off-kilter from another. The right-hand Rui Rui stands before two massive wire-frame heads in a peaceful sort of face-off in the corner. Images on paper line the walls – it is almost jarring to see subjects with fully articulated features and open eyes after all the smooth lines of Plensa’s abstractions. A curtain of iron letters, Silent Rain (2003), divides this smaller gallery from the main gallery with an ephemeral cascade of language – another of Plensa’s recurring themes.

Jaume Plensa, – Awilda & Irma, 2014, Stainless Steel, 400 x 400 x 300 cm (each

This focus on multi-lingual creations – some of which contain characters from eight different languages – suggests a keen desire on the part of the artist to find ways of bridging gaps in communication, or at least highlighting language barriers as a critical boundary between human societies. Through works like Silent Music, Thoughts, and The Heart of Trees, Plensa seems to suggest that music might provide a form of more universal connection; other works, like the Evil trio, highlight isolating factors such as anxiety, insomnia, and amnesia.

Jaume Plensa, Talking Continents (III), 2014, Stainless steel, dimensions variable

As any portrait photographer can tell you, people love to look at other people. There is a kind of perpetual enchantment with ourselves as subjects, and Plensa’s works play easily into this appeal, while subtly introducing themes of diversity, awareness, and connection – all buoyed by whimsical and unexpected touches. Floating in the main gallery, Talking Continents (III) (2014) features an archipelago of cloud-like forms, a couple of which are ridden by his ubiquitous seated figures. The effect is playful and magic-carpet-like; the seeming effortless lift of the metal forms belies their material structure, and their open motif of linguistic characters throws lacy shadows beneath them. All of Plensa’s environments, expertly installed around Toledo Museum of Art, provide opportunities to pause and wonder at the human condition – arguably one of life’s greatest mysteries, and the one given to all of us, as humans, to contemplate.

Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape, Toledo Museum of Art
June 17-Nov. 6, 2016

Road Trip @ Detroit Institute of Arts

By Ron Scott

On July 10, 2016

In Photography

Road Trip! Detroit Institute of Arts presents “The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip.”

The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) opened a photography exhibition on June 17, 2016; The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip, sponsored by Aperture Foundation, New York, with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

“Road trips are a tradition in America and can clearly reveal what is unique about this country’s culture,” said Salvador Salort-Pons, DIA director. “Photographers traveling through the United States have defined, critiqued and celebrated America.”

Truer words were never spoken. In my sophomore year of college while studying art and playing trumpet, I read On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I knew that after reading the novel, I had to take a road trip. That next summer I took my VW Beetle across the country to California and ended up in San Francisco’s North Beach listening to Grace Slick and The Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore. Just by chance, I bought a copy of The Americans, the now famous book by Robert Frank, at the City Lights Book Store. Back then, the City of San Francisco offered free darkroom facilities to its city folk. I had brought my used 35 mm Nikkormat, with a 50mm lens and a carton of Tri-X film, so all I needed to do was buy a box of Agfa paper and start printing images from the trip. What a deal! Much of my experience that summer resonated as I browsed The Open Road.

Robert Frank, Drive-In Movie, Detroit, 1955 (Printed 1978) Gelatin Silver Print, Courtesy of the DIA

Robert Frank emigrated from Switzerland to New York City in 1947, and eventually got work as a photo assistant at the fashion magazine, Harper’s Bazaar. After receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955, he embarked on a two-year trip across America and captured 28,000 images with his Leica 35mm rangefinder. Detroit was one of his longer stops, and here, Drive-In Movie, Detroit 1955, is one of sixty black & white images taken during his stay. This photograph, owned by the DIA, cements in time the moment, the light, the automobiles and the movie screen images that are so distinctly American. For this review, I pulled out my copy of The Americans, where Kerouac begins his introduction, “That crazy feeling in America when the sun is hot on the streets and the music comes out of the jukebox or from a near-by funeral, that’s what Robert Frank has captured in his tremendous photographs…”

Gary Winogrand, Dealey Plaza, Dallas 1964

Gary Winogrand (1928-1984) was born in the Bronx, New York, and studied painting at City College of New York. Soon after, he studied photography with Alex Brodovich at the New School for Social Research and was commissioned by Harper’s Bazaar where he linked up with the American Society of Magazine Photographers. This photo, shot in Dallas, Texas, was part of a road trip that took him to fourteen states, where he shot 520 rolls of film. My favorite image is his untitled photo taken at a New York Thanksgiving Parade that captures a male figure high in the air in the middle of a flip off of a trampoline that was on top of a rolling float. Winogrand taught at Parsons School of Design and the School of Visual Arts, both in New York City. His work is a rendering of a classic street photographer, out of the tradition of Robert Doisneau, Ruth Orkin, and others.

Shinya Fujiwara,Untitled, from the series American Rouleete, 1988 Courtesy of the Artist

This photographer, Shinya Fujiwara, a native of Japan, traveled across the United States for seven months in a motor home, seeking images that were peculiar to his sensibility. A leading Japanese photographer born in the 1940s, he has spent most of his adult life exploring different continents. He brought his life in another country and cultural to his experience on the road. Fujiwara has gone on to influence travelogues and books, both non-fiction, and fiction.

Lee Friedlander, Dealey Plaza, Gelatin Silver Print, 1964, Dallas, TX,

Lee Friedlander, born in 1934, began photographing the American social landscape in 1948. This photograph, New Orleans 1969, reminds me of his 2008 exhibition, America by Car, at the Fraenkel Gallery. It does so, because he used the rear view mirror on his car on many occasions, as a framing device, providing the viewer with a front and rear view of his subject. Friedlander was the recipient of the prestigious Hasselblad Award as well as the subject of a major traveling retrospective and catalog organized by the Museum of Modern Art. In 2010, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, exhibited the entirety of his body of work, America by Car.

Joel Sternfeld, McLean, Virginia, December 1978

The America photographer, Joel Sternfeld, was born in 1944, received his BA from Dartmouth College and taught photography at Sarah Lawrence College. Known for his large format color photography, Sternfeld was influenced by color theory by Josef Albers. Here in Mclean, Virginia, December 1978, one of his most famous images, he depicts a fireman shopping for a pumpkin as a house burns in the background. The pumpkins’ vibrant oranges match the autumnal colors of the countryside, and ironically, the fire’s flames. The image is peculiar because the fireman appears to be casually browsing as the flames roar.

Stephen Shore“U.S. 97, South of Klamath Falls, Oregon, July 21, 1973,” Courtesy of the artist and 303 Gallery, New York

The billboard along a highway with its copy blocked out might just be the surface in transition, waiting for its next advertisement. For Steven Shore, it’s a landscape set against a landscape where he finds art along the road. Stephen Shore’s photographs are attentive to ordinary scenes of daily experience, yet through color and composition Shore transforms the mundane into subjects of thoughtful meditative. He was the first living photographer to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York since Alfred Stieglitz, forty years earlier.

image-436Claire, 8th Ward, Justine Kurland, 2012

Justine Kurland – Claire, 8th Ward, 2012

One of the younger photographers in this Open Road exhibition, Justine Kurland, was born in Warsaw, New York in 1969 and studied photography at Yale University, graduating with her MFA in 1998. She was the only photographer who attended the opening at the Detroit Institute of Arts, where she appeared on a panel after the opening. There she described her years on the road, photographing images in all part of the United States, often with her husband and young child. Her photography is comprised of large-scale C-prints, mostly of rural landscapes made up of utopias or pre-industrial worlds. Many of her images capture cars, or parts of them, with anonymous auto-mechanics. She described in her talk the trials and tribulations of raising a family while traveling with the sole purpose of capturing this kind of post-apocalyptic imagery. She gained popularity with her work in the group show, Another Girl, Another Planet, at the Lawrence Rubin-Greenberg Van Doren, in Manhattan 1999, which was reviewed in the New York Times by Ken Johnson.

On The Road: Photography and the American Road Trip is a great survey of American photographers who traveled the country in search of moments in time, capturing oddities in the American culture with an eye on composition, color and light. It is good to know and remember that a revolution has taken place in photography, largely due to the technology that has given every smart-phone user a camera. The impact that the digital revolution has had on producing images is immeasurable. Many professional photographers have lost their employment to mammoth stock photo collections, like Getty Images, and with the development of the Internet, the delivery of imagery has made certain aspects of the profession, obsolete. People will say, “Today, everyone is a photographer.” An art director sends the intern out to get a shot with their cell phone.

But the truth is that once this settles down, photography by professionals will rise again, and although everyone will still be able to take a snapshot, true artistic composition will be an important commodity. Large format cameras and a variety of lenses with specific focal lengths will become unique and powerful. Let’s not forget that photography is an art, and this exhibition, On the Road, serves as an example of how artists use their cameras to capture and create amazing images.

Museum Hours and Admission

9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Tuesday–Thursday,

9 a.m. – 10 p.m. Friday,

10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.

General admission (excludes ticketed exhibitions) is free for Wayne, Oakland and Macomb county residents and DIA members.

For all others, $12.50 for adults, $8 for seniors ages 62+, $6 for ages 6–17.

For membership information, call 313‐833‐7971.

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia @ Cranbrook Art Museum

By Sarah Rose Sharp

On July 6, 2016

In Ceramic, Drawing, Fiber, Installation, Paintings, Photography, Prints, Sculpture

Two exhibitions offer a preponderance of material objects to make sense of the past

Psychedelic posters and printed matter, installation view

These days, the San Francisco Bay Area is neatly divided into two camps: you either are a tech bro, or you hate them. Back in my day as an errant Bay Area youth, there was a different kind of division: you either were a hippie, or you hated them. I, my friends, was certainly no hippie. Of course, in my time they weren’t even real hippies—although there were still a healthy number of Summer-of-Love burnouts quietly resisting the rising tide of capitalism. They were proto-hippies, the spawn of Baby Boomers, appropriating the fashion or rediscovering the music as it made its 20-year orbit in retrograde. Whether the die-hard originals or the new school posers, hippies were not, by any metrics, modern.

Isaac Abrams, Hello Dali (1965)

In fact, the seeming paradox between hippie and modern sensibilities provides the immediate tension of Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia—a sprawling exhibition initially organized by Andrew Blauvelt during his tenure at the Walker Art Center, which has subsequently followed him to be presented at the Cranbrook Art Museum, where he took up the mantle of Director last year. Hippies are commonly associated with back-to-the-land movements, eco-sustainability, and the timeless human yearning for peace and simplicity. Modernism is more concerned with technology, rapid progress and development, clean, modular design, and spare, white spaces.

Ken Isaacs, The Knowledge Box (1962-2009)

But, as Hippie Modernism proves, these odd bedfellows forged a powerful connection indeed (who wouldn’t hippies jump into bed with, really?), fused in a social pressure-cooker of late-60s radicalism and wartime unrest. This extremely dense exhibition is not so much an art show as it is a walk through time with an art-historical lens—one which captures facets of hippie culture that have been elided by a typical focus on the flashier and more simplistic culture of drugs, fashion, rock-and-roll, and sex.

Works by Haus-Rucker-Co, (installation view)

These facets are loosely divided into three galleries: Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out. Each of these examines a dominant theme of the time period, roughly the mid-1960s through the early 1970s—that of consciousness-raising on an individual level, social awareness on a geo-political level, and active rejection of certain cultural pressure of normativity and technological progress (to name a few). The objects and information on display demonstrate a deep interest in modern design not as an aesthetic exercise but a practical one, as applied to communal and off-the-grid living, mobile housing, and sustainable infrastructure; technology, not at as means of warfare but as a means for more direct powers of computing and personal representation; and tool use as a mechanism for exploring the inner workings of the mind. The exhibition, which occupies the entire main floor of Cranbrook is veritably papered in schematics of ergonomic living solutions, imagined vehicles, and visions of bio-domes (not to mention an actual geodesic dome that features an interactive and highly trance-inducing installation, The Ultimate Painting, by Clark Richert, Richard Kallweit, Gene Bernofsky, JoAnn Bernofsky, and Charles DiJulio.

Superstudio, Prints from the Superstudio Series (1969-1973)

Many of the works bear collective credits, the products of communal discussion and creative efforts; many have the earmarks of what today would be considered “social practice art,” but at the time was considered radical politics—leaving the viewer to marvel at the subsequent commoditization of art in the 1970s and 1980s to defang its inherent power as a social catalyst! There are, as one might imagine, a room splashed with dozens of examples of psychedelic poster art—but the collection is not limited to the vivid band promo materials that probably still line the halls of the Fillmore (if they haven’t turned it into a vape bar or something). Rather, there is a kind of radical parallel to the Madison Avenue advertising culture that was taking hold of the market—a conscious and deliberate exploration of type, color, and imagery as a mechanism to promulgate messaging. There are, undeniably, quite a number of chill spaces distributed around the exhibition, and a good thing, too—with so much going on, the opportunities to stop, drop, and contemplate are welcome interruptions. These include a handful of audio/video screening rooms, a Relaxation Cube from Nomadic Furniture 1 (1973) with floor cushions and a soothing slide show, and a full-gallery installation of a work by Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida, CC5 Hendrixwar/Cosmococa Programa-in-Progress, complete with hammocks.

John Glick: A Legacy in Clay, installation view

John Glick: A Legacy in Clay @ Cranbrook Art Museum

It bears mentioning that Hippie Modernism is not the only spectacular exhibition currently on display at Cranbrook Art Museum, though it certainly warrants a visit all on its own. A career survey of ceramic artist John Glick—John Glick: A Legacy in Clay—is a dazzling walk through the life work of a virtuosic artist who managed to find fresh takes on vessels and forms as old as human society. From the wall of teapots, to the hanging friezes, to the physical timeline of Glick’s singular and beautiful ceramic forms, laid out in an engaging and accessible 360-degree display that mimics the sort of tables where they might otherwise be found, the Glick retrospective offers eye candy at every turn.

Food for thought, vessels for food, and much to take in at Cranbrook Art Museum!

Michigan Fine Arts Competition @ BBAC

By Ron Scott

On July 1, 2016

In Ceramic, Drawing, Fiber, Installation, Paintings, Photography, Prints, Sculpture, Textile

Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center Hosts the 35th MFCA

BBAC / MFAC Installation Image – Courtesy of DAR

The Michigan Fine Arts Competition (MFAC) exhibition opened June 24, 2016, and is one of the best they have had in their long existence, beginning in 1982. Not many know that the competition was previously held by the Detroit Institute of Arts, but with their demise of leadership in contemporary art, they were pleased to find a home at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center (BBAC). The key to this year’s success is Terence Hammonds; the juror selected to make this year picks. Originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for his BFA, and Tufts University for his MA. One of the factors that make this exhibition so exceptional is that it draws on a mid-west region, where more than 500 artists compete from Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.

Gerald Moore, Late September Field, Oil on Canvas

Gerald Moore is an expressive landscape painter who holds an MA in painting from Central Michigan University. He says “I work opposite the Oriental painting philosophy that ‘less is more.’ ‘More’ is the engine of my work; ‘more’ is more.” His large landscape painting seems to draw on the landscape as a subject, but flirts with abstract field painting and gives us a little of both. Color field painting, championed by Clement Greenburg in the 1950’s characterized this expression as solid color creating an unbroken surface and flat picture plane. One might view the Wheat Fields of Van Gogh to see early examples.

Mary Brodbeck, Blanket, Woodblock Print

Maybe it’s because we don’t see a lot of artists working with wood-cut printmaking, that this landscape with rings and melting snow is so attractive. She says in her statement “ Affected by my travel and study in Japan, notably by visiting traditional Japanese gardens, my landscape prints are carefully designed in abstract and stylized ways that are intended for viewers to have a contemplative experience. “ These Zen-like impressions made by the woodblock can transport the viewer to a place that blends design, craft and a spiritual aesthetic. Ms. Brodbeck holds a BFA from Michigan State University, and an MFA from Western Michigan University.

Mario Inchaustegui, Into the Unknown, Digital Print

Mario Inchaustegui’s digital print “Into the Unknown” draws purely on composition for its power and interest. The geometry along with perspective leads us to four figures on the edge of some type of a concrete pier. This middle school teacher at West Bloomfield Schools has been part of photo exhibitions in Metro Detroit, most recently at the Scarab Club.

Susan O’Connor, Can I Get Some Water, Clay

Susan O’Connor, who teaches hand-built ceramics at the BBAC, grabs the audience with a pop art object, that also carries a current social message. So, she got me with this Fire Hydrant from Flint, Michigan where the water has been contaminated by a decision leading to elements of lead in the water supply.

This exhibition has many generous prizes totaling $5800 and goes a long way to showcase artists in the Midwest. I will mention here that I usually stay away from covering these large competitive exhibitions, largely because they jury the work from jpegs, which makes the process more of a challenge. In this particular case, I give Mr. Hammonds a lot of credit for getting most of his decisions right. I have heard it many times, that it is the only practical way to conduct such a large undertaking, however when only viewing an image of an artwork, mistakes are made.

The 35th Annual Michigan Fine Arts Competition – June 24 – August 26

Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center

15 Steps: Perspectives in Drawing @ Red Bull House of ART

By Sarah Rose Sharp

On June 27, 2016

In Drawing, Prints

Capturing the process and dispersive outcomes of one of humanity’s oldest expressive forms

Class Portrait by Tyanna Buie – Installation view, All images courtesy of Sarah Rose Sharp

Red Bull House of Art has made its name in Detroit by showing some of the most cutting-edge young artists in town. Now, as the residency/gallery space transitions to get an international influx of artist in the mix, a palette-cleansing show, 15 Steps: Perspectives in Drawing, curated by local artist and organizing powerhouse Tylonn J. Sawyer brings the focus back to the basics of drawing.

Tyson J. Sawyer, Cabal: Class of 2016

“When I lived in New York, I attended drawing shows all the time, yet I can’t think of any in the surrounding area, other than the DIA Drawing and Prints gallery,” said Sawyer, regarding his motivations for the show’s theme. “Drawing is very instinctual practice. As children, we are compelled to pick up crayons and scribble. Early on in mankind people felt the need to record their daily lives on caves as in parietal art. I think there is an honesty in drawing and in the process of drawing. To do it well takes repetition, practice and caring. For many of the artists (in this show), drawing is not their primary art form, but it remains somewhere in their creative process.”

Leto Rankine, Figure in Pink and Gold

Despite its thematic foundations in drawing, the show has some unexpected outcomes as the result of these various creative processes, including an augmented piece of found object art by one of Sawyer’s fellow MOCAD employees, Leto Rankine, and a breathtaking large-scale print work by Detroit newcomer and CCS Professor of Fine Arts and Printmaking, Tyanna Buie. Buie’s piece, Class Portrait, works from imagery lifted from one of her own childhood class pictures, universalized by the obscuring of the facial features of the children pictured, yet still somehow achingly personal.

“What prompted me to make this particular piece was my response to what is happening within the public school system in our country, but specifically in Detroit,” said Buie. “My memory of my time in a public elementary school in Chicago, IL, was not made clear until I received documentation of my achievements and class photographs from that school. I thought the schools that I went to was not special and didn’t teach me anything of importance. However, once I looked at the class photo, I began to analyze it…I realized how much the principal took pride in the school and how the teachers worked hard to make sure we also had a since of pride in ourselves. The school I once went to from 1990-1993 is still standing, but is now a charter school. I wanted to make a piece that would give a subtle nod to public schools for making a difference in our communities through the children despite the many challenges faced.”

By what Sawyer characterizes as the “happiest accident ever,” Buie’s work is directly in conversation with a large-scale piece by Sawyer himself, which applies a similar technique and aesthetic to a large-scale class portrait of another kind. “In Cabal: Class of 2016, I am presenting the institution of law enforcement standing tall and proud as one collective or brotherhood, ready to do their sworn duty to enforce the law of the land,” said Sawyer in an artist statement about the piece. “Yet we live in a time where literally hundreds of videos and news reports highlight police officers behaving less than professionally, and the majority facing no consequences. I imagine the institution of law enforcement struggling to maintain integrity in the public eye, and this struggle visually manifesting itself in the form of officers physically falling apart or melting away. I purposely removed all the faces because when I think of police officers, I don’t think of them as individuals, but rather parts of a whole.”

Christopher Batten – Chronicles of Kobi (A Japanese Chin) – installation/detail view

Other contributions to the show are more lighthearted and more strictly limited to drawing as a final process, rather than a foundational one. A collection of 16 drawings by Christopher Batten take, as their subject, a Japanese Chin named Kobi. In an era where the internet threatens to collapse beneath the ponderous bulk of adorable pet pictures, there is something endearing about the process of capturing a (presumably) beloved pet in this more analogue form. Batten’s work is face-to-face with a colorful wall of visual and performance artist http://baileyscieszka.com/—a kind of insane clown posse unto herself—who also has a few pastels on display in a show of local talent at What Pipeline, Ever get the feeling we’re not alone in this world?

Jennifer Wroblewski , Clones v.1,

Truly, there is no lack of innovative approaches and gratifying results, an outcome that Sawyer consciously cultivated with the group of 15 artists on display. “I don’t know if I would characterize this collection of artists, especially in any monolithic terms,” he said. “That’s kind of the opposite of what I was going for. Diverse is the first thing that comes to mind. Some of the artists are documenting life as they see it, some are trying to negotiate traumatic experiences, and others humorously reflect on some of the worst aspects of our current society. I asked each artist to contribute more than one piece, so that viewers can see that the work presented in the House of Art show is not a lark, but rather a small glimpse into the creative practice of each individual.”

Collection of works by DeMags, Circles of Routine – Installation/detail view

The appreciation that Sawyer, and House of Art curators Matt Eaton and Robert-David Jones have for the arts, artists, and viewers is evident in the open process that permeates both the HOA residencies and the construction of 15 Steps. It’s a brilliant showcase of a wildly diverse range of talent and approaches, one that’s definitely worth taking a few steps out of your way to go experience!

15 Steps: Perspectives in Drawing will be on display Saturdays from 10-3 (or by appointment) at the Red Bull House of Art through July 9. For an appointment, you can make contact at [email protected].