Recently I had the occasion to pay a visit to Paul Sutinen at Marylhurst University. After we talked he showed me where “Sculpture in the Form of a Building” and “Among the Pin Oaks” were installed behind the Mayer Art Building. We talked about the greyed patina the wood of “Sculpture” had taken on and how some of the boards were warping away from the structure. It’s perhaps even more beautiful now than it was when the wood was golden and new.
Via research I’m doing on another topic, I’d recently seen a photo of an early installation Sutinen had done in the unfinished basement of the Anne Hughes Gallery in 1976 consisting of rough wooden stakes driven into the dirt floor. It’s ominous and melancholy in equal measure as well as being formally beautiful in spite of its arte povera-ishness. Sutinen has a long relationship with wood, not as a source of content, but as a material means to an end…it’s reasonably inexpensive vs. say, stone. But its true as well that tree and house—respectively source and terminus (for much wood)—have been addressed/employed repeatedly in his siteworks and installations.
I asked Paul about the simple house form that has recurred in his work, because it doesn’t seem that the house form for Paul is expected to say anything about houseness. (See also, his “Sculpture in the Form of a Small Building in the Distance” at Nine Gallery in 2008 reviewed on PORT). “Sculpture has to take a form,” he said. And where does one go after the minimalist box? Paul said it occurred to him that his work uses found forms, that the saltbox house is just one of these found forms.
“Sculpture in the Form of a Building” was built at the time of the mid-career retrospective Terri Hopkins did of Sutinen’s work at Marylhurst’s Art Gym, Incidents and Ideas in 2000 (for which there is a great catalog). I was surprised and dismayed to hear that he is considering taking it down next year. “That would be ten years,” he says.
So may I urge you, on one of these bright days, to take a field trip down to Marylhurst and make your picnic on the lawn behind the Mayer Art Building. You’ll also see, if you look hard enough under the trees close to the building, his sitework, “Among the Pin Oaks,” two intersecting concrete block paths laid from trunk base to trunk base of four oak trees. Both worth the trip.
POSTED: June 9th, 2009 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: installation, marylhurst university, paul sutinen, portland art, portland artist, visual art | No Comments »
image via Andrea Zittel‘s A-Z an institute of investigative living
It is perhaps enough that PMMNLS brings international, national, and regional artists to PSU to talk about their work every Monday night of the school year. But even better, the talks are open to all and completely free. Three cheers for the educational institutions doing public programming for the community! With PNCA hosting its IDEA STUDIO lecture series (as well as local initiatives like PDXplore), University of Oregon‘s architecture and design programming in its freshy new White Stag building, AND the programming Stephanie Snyder has been doing at Reed College’s Cooley Gallery, we are a lucky culture-loving public indeed.
A pretty brilliant partnership among arts and educational institutions (Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Reed College, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Lewis & Clark College, and PSU’s Department of International Studies) The Portland State University MFA Monday Night Lecture Series (PMMNLS) brings top-notch visual arts lectures to the heart of downtown (just off the streetcar line!).
Portland State University Shattuck Hall Annex (1914 SW Park Ave) at the corner of SW Broadway and Hall on the PSU campus almost every Monday night from October 13 – May 18 at 7:30 PM.
And here, from the press release via PICA, the schedule:
OCTOBER13 : Andrea Zittel
Internationally acclaimed Andrea Zittel develops hand-crafted furniture, homes and vehicles for contemporary consumers, in response to human rhythms and the creative need of people to match their surroundings to the changing appearance of life. Recently Zittel’s institute, known as A-Z Enterprise, has been acting as host to The High Desert Test Sites, a series of experimental art sites located along a stretch of desert communities in Southern California, which will provide alternative space for experimental works by both emerging and established artists in connection with the California Biennial in November, 2008.
20 : Buster Simpson
Buster Simpson is widely known as an environmental artist, making outdoor sculpture and public art that involve its environment as well as its viewers. Simpson has worked on major infrastructure projects, site master planning, signature sculptures, museum installations, and community projects. Some of these include a light rail bridge collaborative over the Salt River in Phoenix and art master plans for urban centers and watersheds that integrate community, ecology, and art.
27 : Matt McCormick
Matt McCormick is a 34-year-old artist and filmmaker, residing in Portland, OR, whose work blurs the lines between documentary and experimental filmmaking. McCormick has made several award winning short films in recent years, including contributions to the Sundance, San Fancisco, Ann Arbor, and New York Underground film festivals. Some films of note include Towlines, American Nutria, and The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal. McCormick is the founder of the video label Peripheral Produce and the Portland Documentary and eXperimental Film Festival. He also records music under the name “Very Stereo.”
The rest of the year’s lineup is as follows:
NOVEMBER
03 : Darren O’Donnell
10 : Courtney Fink
17 : Stephanie Smith
24 : Matthew Higgs
DECEMBER
01 : Hamza Walker
JANUARY 2009
05 : Lucky Dragons
12 : Daniel Bozhkov
26 : Michael Brophy
FEBRUARY 2009
02 : Edgar Arceneaux
09 : Julie Ault
16 : Mark Beasley
23 : Althea Thauberger
MARCH 2009
02 : Modou Dieng
09 : J.Morgan Puett
30 : MK Guth
APRIL 2009
06 : Michael Rakowitz
13 : Larry Sultan
20 : Neighborhood Public Radio
27 : Doug Blandy
MAY 2009
04 : Mark Dion
11 : Frances Stark
18 : Mierle Laderman Ukeles
POSTED: October 7th, 2008 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: art, portland art, visual art | No Comments »
What we know: Jeff Jahn (critic/curator/PORTer) has put together a group show, Volume , that Jahn says is a, “a survey of how Portland’s art scene addresses, redirects, abuses and redefines space… as the city itself undergoes a transformation.” Intriguing. The artists include Sean Healy, Nathan Shapiro, Joe Thurston, Salvatore Reda, Laura Fritz, Stephen Funk, Ellen George, Arcy Douglass, Jesse Hayward, Josh Smith, Adam Sorenson, Karl Burkheimer, Stephen Slappe, Damien Gilley, Stephanie Robison, Philippe Blanc. So what to make of the idea of volume/space/city? Why ask Jahn when we can speculate ourselves…more fun.
Regardless of Jahn’s city reference, because of the artists curated into the show, the space referred to ultimately seems to be that inside the gallery or installation space (exception might be Douglass’ current (beautiful) work that is Carl Andre meets Andy Goldsworthy) in contrast to the volumes (!) of art lately being made in or responding to the built environment: the Artists-in-Residence at the South Waterfront, the incoming Halprin City Dance project, and Justin Gorman’s work for TBA come to mind. From Sorensen’s landscape paintings encasing exterior space in a rectangular plane to Stephanie Robison’s excellent installations we see the idea of space is loose…loose enough that the party includes plenty of Jahn favorites, some of whose engagement with space is typically focused on placing a studio object in it. Regardless, it’s bound to be a good show.
Volume opens August 30 at Worksound (820 SE Alder). There will be a lecture on September 25, Mark Rothko’s 105th birthday. More details when we get them.
POSTED: August 14th, 2008 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: art, portland art, visual art | No Comments »
Just back from a solo show in San Francisco at Giant Robot, Yellena James opens a show tonight (First Friday) at Life + Limb (1716 E Burnside) with a reception from 6-9 PM. If you can’t make it in to see her lush, organic pen and ink works tonight, the show will be up through August or…see online.
POSTED: August 1st, 2008 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: art, portland art, visual art | No Comments »
“I have always delighted in [the] relationship between words and images [and] thought of the book as a form of collage space.” — Jess
We take it for granted that you will go see the Jess: To and From the Printed Page at the Cooley Gallery (3203 SE Woodstock) at Reed College, a traveling exhibition we’re particularly excited about that includes painting, sculpture, collage, book arts and ephemera.
His life as interesting as his art, Jess in a former life was a chemist on the Manhattan Project. But he’s known as the visual artist whose work is tied in myriad ways to the fertile literary soil in which it grew in San Francisco in the 50s and 60s, through collaboration (his partner was poet, Robert Duncan), process, subject.
For pre-viewing homework, why not check out “Didactic Nickelodeon,” one of Andrew Maxwell’s literary product trials, which he calls “poetic fabric samples.” “Didactic Nickelodeon”s fracturations go head-to-head with images from the Jess’ “Jess’s Didactic Nickelodeon, Series Two, ‘The Guardian Angels’ Guidebook,’” (bouncing off Jess-isms like “The great knotted headpiece of the whole.”) which is in the show at Reed. You’ll have to click through Maxwell’s “Rookies” to get to it, but it can only do you good.
See also: for a completely different take on collage, check out Whiting Tennis’ giant collage as part of the Contemporary Northwest Art Awards Exhibition (requires a scroll) at the Portland Art Museum. We were getting nose-close to it checking out the source material which reminds one of old Letraset architectural textures (remember?) or maybe wallpapers that are way cooler than any wallpaper you’ve ever seen. But it turns out (we saw Tennis doing a demo for kids) that Tennis does relief prints of textures like woodgrain, carved surfaces, and composes from the results. !
POSTED: June 24th, 2008 | AUTHOR: lisa | FILED UNDER: art | TAGS: art, portland art, visual art | No Comments »
