REVIEW: WPA artists at the T.W.Wood Gallery, Montpelier

by Marc Awodey

The south gallery room of Montpelier's T.W.Wood Gallery has a few treasures from its Works Progress Administration artists collection on display, and if you’re not familiar with the Wood’s status at Vermont’s sole WPA art repository, now’s a great time to find out more about it. In the halcyon days of the WPA artists programs, during the Depression era 1930’s, the federal government actually purchased art outright to support visual artists. The modern National Endowment for the Arts doesn’t even give grants directly to visual artists anymore (thanks to Sen. Jesse Helms and other right wingers during the 1990s), so don’t expect any similar WPA-type programs for artists any time soon - even if we get our own sequel to the great Depression as a legacy from George Bush. The Roosevelt administration’s WPA artists programs are a positive cultural legacy of incomparable worth, that just keeps on giving generation after generation.

One of the most important pieces now on view at the Wood is the gouache Harlem Scene (Butcher Shop) by Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000). Lawrence was a major artist closely identified with the Harlem Renaissance era who, like Romare Bearden and Lawrence's wife Gwendolyn Knight, swam against the tide of non-ojective abstraction to invent a distinctive brand of expressive figuration. There was always a meaningful social edge to his works and Lawrence produced several great historical cycles including his Migration Series, and prints on the life of Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint L’Ouverture (which appeared recently at the Brattleboro museum).

Russian born Raphael Soyer’s (1899-1987) Man Eating is a lithograph capturing the desperation in the eyes of an unemployed worker. The Social Realist painter and printmaker taught at The Art Student’s League for many years, and was an important influence on mid-century figuration.

A substantial late painting by Italian-American Joseph Stella (1877-1946) also currently appears at the Wood. Stella is a first-generation abstractionist who appeared in the legendary 1913 New York City Armory Show, along with Marcel Duchamp, early Cubists and Italian Futurists. Stella’s Skyscrapers clearly reflects the exuberance of early Twentieth century abstraction.

The Wood’s current WPA show barely scratches the surface of its extensive WPA art holdings. It’s an honor for the gallery to be Vermont’s official WPA repository, but it’s also a burden as the work must be adequately insured and cared for - and there’s no federal mandate to assist repositories with those costs. So check out the show, and give the gallery a few bucks while you’re there. Keep alive the embers of the WPA artists projects, and who knows - maybe history will repeat itself in an artistically important way?

OPINION: What constitutes a conflict of interest in the visual arts?

This is in response to a question submitted by Marc Awodey and posted on February 28, 2009. Further responses will be posted as they are received by the editors, and may be lightly edited.

by Janet Van Fleet

Plugged In at SPA, 2005
It may be a hassle to question whether we might have a conflict of interest in some activity that we are undertaking, but I think it keeps us honest, and is worth the irritation. We’ve recently become intensely aware of what bad things happen to the economy when people relax into feathering their own nests at the expense of others. Maybe the consequences aren’t quite as dire in the art world (mostly, perhaps, because there is less at stake in cold, hard cash!), but they are still worth thinking about.

What is a conflict of interest? It is an act that does (or might) create a benefit to you at the expense of the interest of others. Marc said, for example, that he avoided reviewing exhibits at galleries where his work was displayed. Why? Because it might be seen as an effort to get people to go to the gallery to see the show he praised and, while they were there, have an opportunity to see (and possibly buy) his work. There might be a perception that he reviewed that show (instead of another, more “worthy” show) because of that self-interest.

Far Out at SPA, 2004
For me the issue arises more in the context of curating shows. I mostly put together thematic shows on topics that I am really interested in – which means I probably have some work of my own that relates to the concept I’m building an exhibit around. But, I have a policy of NOT putting my own work in an exhibit that I curate. Why? Well, I’m already the arbiter, the decider, about what the show is about and what work is selected for the show. If my own work is fair game, then I can a) structure the concept for the show in a way that makes my work a shoe-in, b) select my own work over someone else’s, whose work might have been selected by a more objective judge, and c) foreground my work in a prominent spot and in promotion of the exhibit. Even if I don’t do any of those things, there is still the opportunity to do them, and the perception that I might have done them. As my grandmother used to say, “Avoid the appearance of evil.”

When I put together a show that I feel is really first-rate, I sometimes regret that my work isn’t in the mix, but I am content to feel that I have acted ethically by my own lights.

REVIEW: COMBAT PAPER at The Firehouse Gallery in Burlington VT

By Sharon Webster

“That’s pretty,” Drew Cameron says as he scoops a bit of combat uniform, red thread, & scrap of paper with the Constitution written on it from the bubbling vat of paper mash. His hands move the way someone’s might move through bread dough, intuitively. Boiled down to abstraction the globs are indeed pretty and rest comfortably in a person’s hand. Then he throws it up to the ceiling where it sticks – a way of sifting imperfections from the mash, I’m told.

The Combat Paper Project, currently at the Firehouse Gallery, is made up of a growing number Iraq Veteran artists who beat their uniforms to a pulp – literally – and then turn them into striking and stirring visual artworks and books. They have set up shop at the Firehouse Gallery on 135

 Church St., where they will work and invite the public to join them in the process until April 11, 09.Since it’s a working paper-making shop, the first thing you see is the machinery. The gallery/studio is authentically ooey gooey and get-down dirty. Pools of water from draining paper collect on floor. Clunky apparatuses abound. But there is a Renaissance feeling to the place as well. Intellectual tools are assembled beside the mechanical ones, and many disciplines coexist easily. Poems, musings, letters are tacked to the wall. Stacks of favorite books, souvenirs from a shared surreal past are given space in the gallery, including jarringly clear reports from the other side of the globe. Most interesting are the inner travels & the visual vestiges of those travels. They acknowledges painful realities, move through & inside of it, ever widening the vision. With this art, seeing is transforming.

A few specifics: Jon Turner’s dog tag pieces have poetic elegance and an arresting presence. Leaving a stirring amount of negative space, he uses the tags as stencils for spattered red pigment with restraint and sophistication In Eli Wright’s Open Wound series, the gaping holes in the paper are as meaningful as their deep blood color. A collection of deftly rendered black and white portraits by John LaSalce portrays a group of soldiers united by their experience after different tours. “Our Tours Were Different, Now Our Work Is Together.”

Many of the largest works get their color through pulp “paint,“ and of course, their texture. The texture being the signature trait here - grainy and gnarly as the desert sand.

Combat Paper is important because it assures that people cannot look the other way from the reality of war. It blurs the lines between art, activism, politics. It is also clear that the truths told in these art works are not just military truths, but human truths. Painfully, plenty of people who have never been to war have experienced traumas that embattle them every day. A strength of this art movement (I say movement, not show, because I know that they’re not done yet) is how single-mindedly they chase after the fissures…& identify artistically the threads that can heal.

My Introduction to Studio Art class participated in a papermaking workshop recently. The experience was rich and complex. “Is that real Iraqi money?!” queried a student on seeing a piece embedded with Saddam heads and Arabic writing. Yes. Not only were there new artistic skills to absorb, but culttural and political relevancies to consider too. Combat Paper also does poetry readings and powerful performance art. A performance to culminate their Firehouse gig is scheduled for March 28 at 1-4pm. The Iraq Vets Against the War, have published two Warrior Writers volumes of poetry: Move, Shoot and Communicat

e, and Remaking Sense. Both are available on the website combatpaper.org & elsewhere.

Jon Turner could have been one of those performances on the day of our visit. With monk-like concentration he pulled a stitch through the pages of a handmade book with unwavering precision, oblivious of the roomful of excited young people. In spite of bubbling activity, a quiet but tangible work ethic pervaded the space. On the walls, a common vein of passion united the show; the creative process courted here without censorship. The artists, too, are united by that passion & fellowship. A look at their commitment and how prolific they have been suggests it is a policy that other “regular” artists might emulate. The images seen in this zine are just a few. Go to Combat Paper’s beautiful website www.combatpaper.org for some more. But go to the Firehouse for the Feel! Cameron says he’s happy with the amount of foot traffic Combat Paper is getting in the busy, urban hub on Church Street. “It’s amazing how many people stumble in who have no idea how paper is made,“ he says. Stumble in and see for yourself!

SHORT: New Stained Glass at SPA

Chris Jeffrey, a stained glass artist who has his studio/workshop at Studio Place Arts (SPA) in Barre, is donating a 3-panel, original stained glass work to SPA. The panels, each approximately 18 inches tall x 30 inches wide, will be installed side by side at the top of the front window in the SPA classroom on March 11, 2009. Two types of glass were used in creating the work: mouth-blown glass, which provides rich, striking and vivid colors, and dichroic glass, a glass that changes colors depending on the viewer's angle and the light source.

INTERVIEW: Blood is Thicker Than Water

By Riki Moss

Showing with a parent or child is intriguing: what were the influences? The similarities? The pleasure and the Angst?

Burlington artist Linda E. Jones is an abstract painter who uses organic forms and an earthy palette, while her father Robert is an honored illustrator - remember the Exxon ads: a tiger in the tank? - and representational artist using the ocean with its ever changing and vibrant light as his source. They're about to show together at 215 College St. Coop Gallery in Burlington. The reception is Friday, March 6th from 5-8 pm.

This is from an an email interview with artist Linda E. Jones:

"Blood is thicker than water. Oil paint is also thicker than water. Dad really just watched me and left me alone as I explored my way around art as a child. I just loved playing w/ his materials in the studio- absolutely drawn to them (excuse the pun). Knew I would be an artist at an early age. Well, maybe a nurse too. In talking to him now, he says that I was off an my own and he didn't want to interfere with that process. I don't see any similarity in our work at all- other than we both use oil. Even when I was representational. I do remember looking down my nose at commercial art and saying something awful to him at my senior exhibit. Something to the effect 'See Dad, this is real art- not a sell-out like commercial art' Dad said something that I had a good eye that might prove useful in supporting myself should I ever get tired of waitressing.

And it was The Exxon Tiger was what paid for my BFA by the way. Can you believe I was such an insensitive, idealistic idiot?"

INTERVIEW: Tari Swenson on Dick Gordon's "The Story"

Tari Swenson, calligrapher, painter and co-owner of the West Branch Gallery in Stowe will be the subject of Dick Gordon's "The Story" on VPR Thursday at 1 PM.

Here's the gist of her story ....

"I did this piece in 1973 when trying to teach myself Asian brush calligraphy. I did many of them and hated them all and put them in the attic. Twenty years went by. One January day the house burned down ...all was lost.
In the in the spring - still devastated - I went over to try and start cleaning up. There in a square of green grass surrounded by snow I found this piece of mine that survived the fire. I called it "The Main Thing." The calligraphy is of a quote of Robert Henri from "The Art Spirit":

"The main thing is to feel emotion, to love, to hope, to quiver, to live."

If you miss the radio program, Tari's story will be available here: http://thestory.org/

PRESS RELEASE: Kimono - Japanese Flats by Frank Woods

An exhibition of new works on paper by Frank Wood appears at the Vermont Arts Council


"The current exhibit in the Vermont Arts Council's Spotlight Gallery is a series of new work by Montpelier artist, Frank Woods.

KIMONO is an exhibit that captures the Japanese cultural icon in a variety of media. Woods uses the kimono's outline as a vehicle through which he pursues his interest in abstraction and in surface design. In mixed media works on paper, and in paintings in oil on panel and canvas, Woods uses the familiar T-shape of the kimono as a template to provide structure as well as continuity from one piece to the next. The appearance of flatness in these works is not accidental. In fact, the very flatness of the stylized kimono shape is what holds attraction for him. At the same time, surface treatment and mark-making serve to offset the flat quality inherent in these pieces and to give them some of the flow and body of the real/original, draped, elegant silk garments from which this collection springs. In most of these pieces the viewer will find that what occurs in the space outside the kimono's outline is as important as what takes place within it. Of course, neither space exists without the other. Using this form as inspiration opens the way for the artist to explore the possibilities offered by fabric and the construction of wearable kimono."

- From the VAC...

PRESS RELEASE: London museum acquires a bowl made by Al Stirt of Enosburg Falls.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England has just acquired a wooden bowl made by woodturner Al Stirt of Enosburg Falls. The fluted Butternut bowl was made in 1987. The museum chose the bowl from the holdings of a U.S. collector.

ESSAY: Fran Bull's DARK MATTER series

By Tara Verheide

   Dark Matter - the large series of some thirty plus pieces offers ample insight into Fran Bull's astute and deviously elegant methods of metaphor, as well as her preoccupation with the dynamics of figure and ground. She herein extends it to a deeper dimension; one tacitly expressive of the dark interface between the cloak of culture and the obscurity of soul.
   The pieces are mostly square in format, and range from 12” x 12” to 30” x 30” to 50” x 55” and consist of monochromatically painted muslin fabric that has been dipped in Italian Plaster and laid over small simple forms set atop stretched canvas. While at first glance they function as spare low-relief abstractions worthy of minimalism, in their reductive quality of parts and matter of fact resistance to content and detail; they are quickly perplexed by a theatrical tension duplicitously entangled in a simultaneously gauche and glamorous play of figure and ground, ground and surface. By this strategy Bull radicalizes her stated influences of Ancient, Classical, Renaissance, and Baroque painting and sculpture from which in her own words she sees: "the human body portrayed as lying hidden beneath ...swaths of fabric...sacred garments of the divine ...whose folds tell their cryptic stories of what lies beneath, and in some cases, of what has transpired as with volcanic ash ...capable of burying whole civilizations."
   In Bull‘s hands, Greek edicts of how drapery should by movement and distortion reveal the form are revamped, and Romanesque preferences for divine costuming, Platonic Revival and low relief representation are redressed to a contemporary level of craftiness inclusive of consumer ready-mades, cultural commentary and postmodern inside-trading. Under the histrionic, exquisitely painted surfaces of satin white, shimmering rose, metallic bronze, glimmering gold, blood red, creosote black, paste peach and primer matt crenellations of fabric lay odd objects, eerily inert and disturbingly recognizable as lowly craft items whose associations with homespun kitsch subvert presuppositions of highborn art and tasteful understatement. Bull’s collusion of mundane and urbane value systems debases signification in a lubricious currency of skepticism and pleasure that operates as darkly and perniciously above the ground as it does below. Presence begets absence and the viewer seeking solace in definitive meaning finds only a retrograde sensation of ambiguity cast upon a timeless ground of inertia as cold and blind as the contents within. The result is unsettling.
    The dyadic tensions between conceptual and formal oppositions wherein material and metaphysical dissolution and resolution of figure vs. ground are affectively crucified in surface relations of ego-self, culture-soul, day-night, micro-macro, intra-extra create a tension which Carl Jung believed was prerequisite to the emergence of meaning and James Hollis claimed was the terrible embodiment of the divine. Saying one thing through two that are violently opposed is a necessary way of seeing through to reality, James Hillman noted. He conferred with Heraclitus‘ thoughts that “the real constitution of each thing is accustomed to hide itself and that to arrive at the basic structure of things we must go into their darkness.” Thus by separating one thing from another and pitting them even against themselves in a process of phenomenological “bracketing,” Bull ascertains essence through transcendental reduction while her use of an extreme metaphor is a clear sign that hard answers do not exist. And it is only Plato’s forms that remain firm beneath the covers when reality shifts as readily as the greatest concepts forever elude. Stanley Kubrick once said: “No matter how vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” Ultimately it is through Bull’s lucid eye that we see Dark Matter is not so much a riddle to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

Dark Matter, the paintings and more may be seen at Fran Bull's Site: http://www.franbull.com/home.html

WALKABOUT: Inuit art at the Sullivan Museum

The Sullivan Museum of Norwich University in Northfield is more than a museum of military or university history. Right now, it's hosting a show called Arctic Visions, 1950s Inuit prints and carved sculptures representing the Inuit cultures’ spiritual beliefs.

There's a video as well, “Songs in Stone”—the award winning documentary on the origin of Inuit art by legendary John Houston. Shot principally on Baffin Island in the wilds of the Canadian Arctic, the film features the native  sculptors and printmakers of Cape Dorset. For information: http://www.norwich.edu/museum/ 

Image: Pudlo Pulot (1916-1992) Spring Landscape Stonecut and stencil

PRESS RELEASE: Philip Wofford at Vermont Arts Exchange

Vermont Art Zine will occasionally present excerpts from press releases that we think our readers will find interesting and informative.

NORTH BENNINGTON, VT - Vermont Arts Exchange presents an art-filled evening at its Sage Street Mill on Saturday, March 7, beginning with the opening of the new exhibit Philip Wofford: Recent Paintings 2005 - 2009, in the Mill Gallery from 5:30 to 7:30 PM. Wofford then heads downstairs to VAE's basement concert venue, joining musical partner Dave Mellinger as the duo To Be in a Basement Music Series concert at 8 pm.

Wofford, an abstract expressionist painter and former Bennington College instructor, performs on reeds, brass, and percussion while Mellinger, a psychologist with a practice in Bennington, plays drums in this performance of free-form, unorthodox music.

Wofford has exhibited in New York City at Whitney Biennials, at the National Academy of Art, The George Adams Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in Los Angeles, and elsewhere. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, three National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and a Pollack-Krasner Fellowship for his work.

For more information, contact VAE at 802-422-5549 or visit www.vtartxchange.org

OPINION: What constitutes a conflict of interest in the visual arts?

We've decided to post one or two discussion questions a month. March question #1 is submitted by Marc Awodey. Responses will be posted as they are received and may be lightly edited.

One of the reasons VAZ was started is because Art New England determined that Janet couldn’t review an Axel Stohlberg show at City Center in Montpelier because of her affiliation with the Art Resource Association (ARA), which curates the space. I'm both an artist and a

reviewer, and obviously don’t review shows I’m in, but I’ve also been sure not to review venues that represent my work. I ended my affiliation with Furchgott-Sourdiffe Gallery for that reason. But what about reviewing an exhibition at one of the colleges I teach at? What about discussing a venue whose director has purchased my work? Have you been in a potential conflict of interest situation, and how did you deal with it? The bottom line is - what constitutes a conflict of interest in the visual arts?

above: Exhibit poster for Wolf Kahn - Vermont artist and distinguished critic.

                                                                                             

REVIEW: Amanda Franz at Langdon Street Cafe

   Montpelier’s premier counter culture hang out is the Langdon Street Cafe, and its visual art programming is generally strong. Paintings by Amanda Franz appear for the waning days of winter. Her seventeen watercolors, of which six are no more than 5” x 6” are bright and airy landscape based abstractions. She also presents eleven tenebrious, textural acrylic nocturnes.
   Many of Franz’s watercolors come from her The Space In Which Eyes Endlessly Open series. It’s a poetic title, and the visual poetry of Franz’s work makes her titles apropos. The Space In Which Eyes Endlessly Open #10 takes viewer’s eyes on a journey through rolling desert hills. In the foreground a band of indigo gives way to umber hills deeper in the picture plane. Franz skillfully modulates the intensity of her paint, letting it become progressively richer at it nears the horizon. It’s a high horizon, resting beneath an orange band of sky along the top edge on the paper.
  If #10 is a desert landscape The Space In Which Eyes Endlessly Open #1 seems to be from the arctic. It’s a vista of blues and white.  A distant pale mountain reflects onto an inlet, in the center right of the painting. A pale purple section separates the mountain from foreground blues, and Franz enlivens the piece by using complimentary yellows in her sky, reflected in the  body of water.
   Franz’s works on canvass are not quite as strong as her watercolors, but most still have engaging qualities, and she’s beginning to successfully refine an interesting personal aesthetic. The Mute Gravity Of Some Disquiet is a long horizontal piece with a bare tree 

silhouetted in front of a large moon at right. That You Could Give Up A Portion Of Your Eternity is less predictable - Franz found a chromatically richer palette with a bright yellow moon floating behind rough passages of textured green, blue and purple. The largest piece in the group, again with a full moon, has a wonderfully marbled silver, pale blue, and slate gray surface.
  The Langdon Street Cafe bills itself as a “worker run, collectively owned” cafe, but that’s not all that makes it unique. The cafe includes one of the few functional art vending machines in Vermont. The readapted cigarette machine had been christened the The Gladiator since it makes people glad, and it sells a variety of cigarette pack sized poems and object de arte to the delight of both art, and vending machine enthusiasts. visit the Cafe’s website for more information. http://www.langdonstreetcafe.com/ 

WALKABOUT: City Market members gallery, Burlington

It' s just a wall, but it's a big wall. The current exhibition is a group of quirky paintings by Jason Pappas. City Market is a co-op and its members only shows rotate every month.

OPINION: What makes art vandalism happen?

This is in response to a question submitted by Janet Van Fleet and posted on February 23, 2009. Further responses will be posted as they are received.

by Clair Dunn

Don't forget, we live in a country that has developed, over the last 60 years, a strong tradition of anti-intellectualism. With this comes a complete lack of respect for creativity and individualism and also the idea that if you can't understand "something", or, if "someone" is significantly different from you, those things or people are of no value.

The great dichotomy in this country is the constant boast of our national strain of independence and individuality and the equally constant disparagement of independent individuals.

Of course those who destroyed Van Fleet's work don't go through these thought processes, but, because they live in a society where elected representatives often denounce the NEA, where music and art are among the first cuts in a tight education budget, and the word "elite" has become a very satisfying put-down, they have absorbed the essentials by osmosis.

So, as a nation, we too often destroy what we either dislike or cannot understand. In so doing, we feel like we've made a positive, cleansing, contribution to the society we want.

CARTOON

by Robert W. Brunelle JR

In order to see this more clearly, click on it for a larger, clearer image.

We welcome submissions of cartoons that comment on the visual arts!

OPINION: Is there a Vermont style or styles?

This is in response to a question submitted by Sam Thurston and posted on February 12, 2009. Further responses will be posted as they are received.

By Riki Moss

To consider that there is a Vermont style implies that Vermont’s painters relate to their landscape differently than those in, say, the state of New Hampshire; that art is in someway defined by statehood, rather than a state of mind. Even raising the question makes me nervous and feels - my students used to love this - very last century.

So what's very this century? Our culture has just yesterday been jolted awake with the realization that our species is devouring its own habitat and that it may be too late. Our hunger for technology has separated us from everything in the world that is not human - the ground, sky and plant life, the animals, water and air - severing the bonds with that which provides the very nourishment we need to exist. We are no longer part of the natural world: we rule it, and we rule it badly. We have devalued our own currency. What we depend on has become expendable. Surprise, all gone.

What's an artist to do? Do we sink into despair or polemic? Or do we keep up the illusion that (like the market) the environment will self-correct and we keep on painting pretty pictures? Neither? Both? Something new?

The current show at Mass MoCa entitled Badlands, New Horizons in Landscape posits a “next chapter in the landscape tradition” as artists express their hunger for a new cellular connection with all that is not human - a desire to experience it directly, to be it, grieve with it, rather than regard it from the middle distance. Badlands refers to “an area filled with both inhospitable conditions and immense beauty,” while simultaneously suggesting a landscape that is in very bad shape indeed.

From the catalog: the show “…. opens the next chapter in the landscape tradition, addressing contemporary ideas of exploration, population of the wilderness, land usage, environmental politics and the relativity of aesthetic beauty. Badlands comes at this critical time, an era when the world is more ecologically aware yet more desperately in need of solutions than ever before.”

image: Anthony Goicolea, Tree Dwellers, 2004 from MassMoCa's website

http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=369

I don't see any Vermonters amongst those exhibiting artists. Most of them seem to be from New York or LA or Philadelphia. But here in Vermont, we’re looking down the same well and drinking deeply. More about that in another posting.

OPINION: What makes art vandalism happen?

Question submitted by Janet Van Fleet
Responses will be posted as they are received and may be lightly edited.

An issue that keeps coming back to my mind has to do with vandalism of artworks. This is most commonplace in outdoor installations, where I think perhaps some people have the sense that what's outside is fair game. If you left it lying around, it belongs to the community. I am particularly interested in reading perspectives that may help explain the motivation to vandalize. Is it a kind of collaboration? Is it a political act?

Here is a case from my own experience, and only one example of many times my work has been vandalized:

On the night of September 25, 2005 my large sculpture, Teapot Dialogue, was destroyed by vandals in front of Café Piccolo in Burlington, Vermont. The piece, which had been awarded second place for Art Hop outdoor sculpture, showed two groups of wooden teapots facing off over a line on a dining room table (see piece and then its remains at left).

My response was to post (see at right) a statement headlined CONVERSATION NOT OVER, stating, in part:

I find it significant that this happened on the weekend of massive anti-war protests in Washington, D.C. and across the country, continuing a (rather one-way) dialogue about how our country should respond to violence, destruction, and perceived and actual threats.

Also on this weekend, my daughter, Anna Berrian Eno-Van Fleet, was evacuated from Golden Meadow, Louisiana, where she had been working (through Veterans for Peace) with the United Houma Nation to repair homes that were damaged by Hurricane Katrina. While the tribe was evacuated to Raceland, Hurricane Rita wiped out all the work they had done and completely destroyed several communities. So, another story of destruction. What can you do?

I went on to suggest that donations be sent to the United Houma Nation Relief Center, and finished by saying

Something cruel and completely gratuitous happened to me in the destruction of my artwork, but I am not interested in vengeance or retaliation. I would rather continue the dialogue by doing something positive that works to repair what has been damaged. I hope you will join me.

Many donations were sent to Louisiana, but the issue of vandalism and the questions it raises are still with us. If you have thoughts about this, send them along.

Send your responses (at least 100 words please -- we don't want you to just toss off a one-liner) to janetvanfleet@fairpoint.net

WALKABOUT: The Waskowmium

by Janet Van Fleet

Mark S. Waskow is an art collector on a grand scale. He owns many thousands of artworks, most of them by Vermont artists. These works are housed at two residences and four other spaces that are exclusively devoted to storing and displaying the collection, which is known (at all its various locations) as the Waskowmium. He would like to create a non-profit public institution to permanently house this treasure trove, but while he's working on that project, he keeps on needing to find space for the collection in its present form.

He recently moved some of his collection to a new location in Burlington when development pressure drove the rent in two of his spaces too high. I spent a few hours this morning photographing the space for a catalog he is creating, and, while I was at it, took a few shots to share with readers of Vermont Art Zine.

In the hallway outside his space, Mark has hung large paintings, drawings, and mixed media work.



Inside the new space are artist books, works on paper, 3-dimensional work (primarily, but not exclusively, by Vermont artists), material related to the Vermont arts scene, and other art memorabilia. This place is chock-a-block with vitrines, cases, sculptures, publications, videos, artist-decorated chairs and flamingos. It's really overwhelming to see this much art -- and to realize that it's only a drop in the bucket of what's out there stored in artists' studios.

In addition to art, Mark collects all kinds of paper having to do with art and artists in Vermont – catalogs, invitation postcards, posters, and artist portfolios. He has between 1,000 and 1,200 artist books, almost 3,000 zines, and at least 5,000 art books. This is a tremendous resource and a wonderful archive that will preserve the history of the visual arts in Vermont.


And here's Mark himself. With all the energy this man has, it's going to take more than a small fire extinguisher to put out his fire.

OPINION: Is there a Vermont style or styles?

This is Sam Thurston's response to a discussion question of his we posted on February 12, 2009: Is there a Vermont style or styles? Further responses have been posted as they were received.

Interstate Winter by Elizabeth Nelson
acrylic/photo on canvas 10" x 10"

by Sam Thurston

There are indeed lots of Vermont landscapes but I do not see a Vermont style there. The Mary Bryan landscape style (at least until recently - I have not seen the most recent show) does not look especially "Vermont" because the landscapes shown there have much the same style whether done in or outside of Vermont or by Vermont residents or not. I also do not see a Group of Seven similarity to Vermont landscapes. To me the group of Seven is more in a symbolist style while Vermont landscapes seek realism, however selective. Marc Awodey's landscapes do not look especially like Vermont so I am not including him in the above analysis. But to try to understand the Vermont landscape style - I guess there must be a Style there - it is such part of Vermont and our experience - I could mention Liz Nelson, who paints a lot of Vermont landscapes. She seems to accept the Romantic nature of her vision of the land and tries to nail it down realistically - but then she can not keep the lid on - and her unconscious plays a major role and the work loses its starting point which is to be more tied to the real. This is especially the case with her night landscapes. Perhaps that points to a Vermont landscape style.

If I took a stab I might say Cheryl Betz and Alexandra Bottinelli show one example of a Vermont style. Their work, more abstract than realistic, has a very inner approach. It seems to grow out of the winter isolated rooms we often inhabit up here. Even when, in the case of Bottinelli, the work is social or even a little goofy, it does not have the "wink,wink, get the joke?" quality of big city art. Isolation keeps us from that type of thinking. I am proposing isolation as a style factor. This idea grows out of Clair Dunn's post.

REVIEW: More than Bilingual at the Fleming

By Riki Moss

Every time I wander through the Fleming Museum in Burlington, or have a conversation with its director Janie Cohen, I'm struck by the delicate balance of its role as a teaching museum with its intention to engage the public in a dialogue with contemporary art. To this end, the museum is participating in what it calls a resurgence of painter-poet collaborations by showcasing one between Peruvian-born visual artist William Cordova and African-American poet Major Jackson , a UVM faculty member.

"What's wonderful about collaboration is that it gives us an opportunity to have cross-genre conversations around ideas, large ideas that are important to us," Jackson said. "There's the sense of this melding that happens, even at the level of the poem or the visual art."

This from the website: The artists find inspiration and common ground in music, literature, and the urban aesthetic. Cordova's mixed-media drawings and his installations of discarded stereo speakers and record albums allude to modern urban subcultures as well as to his memories of Peru. Jackson's poetry explores race and language, and ways in which language can both perpetuate cliched attitudes and foster new ways of thinking. Individually and collaboratively, their works celebrate and critique how cultural territories are dispersed, redefined, and transformed in urban settings.

In the Wolcott Gallery More than Bilingual: William Cordova and Major Jackson
January 27 - May 10, 2009

On Wednesday, Feb. 18th 6 PM at the Fleming

A panel discusion with the artists and Joseph Falconi, Art Forum Curator at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University; and Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions.

In conjunction with the exhibit and part of the poetry series:
On Wednesday, February 25th 6:00-7:30 PM
Jim Schley and Greg Delanty,

REVIEW: Galen McDonald "National Reservation."

Galen McDonald,
Muddy Waters, Burlington. "National Reservation" paintings.

by Marc Awodey


Muddy Waters on Main street in Burlington, next to Nectars, has been a major cafe venue for years but its exhibition efforts have had mixed success. It’s recently been curated, however, by the elusive artist known as “Mr. Masterpiece” - Lindsay Vezina - who is one of the area’s best painters in his own right; and the shows have been getting markedly stronger. Labeling, and exhibition durations remain quirky so although the current show Galen McDonald’s "National Reservation" exhibition of new figurative painting is scheduled to be up till 2/23, don’t be surprised if it’s up longer. And that wouldn’t be a bad thing.
  McDonald says his works are informed by global culture. His concerns are mostly manifested through portraiture. The 8 large scale acrylics on unstretched canvas present a range of faces - soldiers, children, men and women - from around the globe. He has a confident, even brash, drawing style influenced by the best of contemporary comic book art more so than Degas, or Michelangelo. That connection to pop culture serves to remind viewers of the globalism of our times and the interconnectedness of the whole human species.
    Paint layers are applied thinly, and as in stain painting, McDonald lets hues soak into his canvasses, and the palette is reduced to essentials - phalo blue, yellow ochre, napthol crimson, and decisive dark lines of varied weights. His crowded compositions also reflect the din of human interactions in disjointed narratives that are more ambient than specific. In one presumably untitled piece, soldiers in khaki, berets, and helmets are interspersed with dogs. The canines seem like pit bulls, and if the painting has a title - albeit unposted- it may well be The Dogs of War. Other McDonald paintings are less easily decipherable, but no less satisfying to investigate.
  

   And the coffee at Muddies is good too.

OPINION: Is there a Vermont style or styles?

This is in response to a question submitted by Sam Thurston and posted on February 12, 2009. Further responses will be posted as they are received.

By Anna Dibble

I agree with some of the others who have posted – If you look through the timeline of Vermont’s art history, landscape painting predominates. How could it not? The Landscape in Vermont predominates, and overwhelms almost everything else. We have a lot of fantastic landscape painters – past and present, as well as a lot of mediocre and terrible ones. Landscape paintings will always be a major ‘Vermont style.’

I think, however, that Vermont’s art ‘style’ is changing, and in my view that’s a good, long overdue thing. There seem to be more and more artists in the state that are bucking the landscape system. It’s a lot easier to sell landscapes here – especially if they are more or less realistic – than other ‘styles.’ Our economy depends on tourism, and many of the tourists want to buy art that reminds them of the beautiful landscapes they saw when they were here. But I’ve been noticing that the taste of the tourists is evolving, and the art in the state is reflecting this change. Many visitors in the 21st century have more sophisticated taste in art, and are delighted to find imaginative work in painting, sculpture or photography that is very different from the landscape style they more or less expect when they come here. Let’s move in that direction! Even with landscapes! Vermont’s new Eclectic Style reflects Vermont artists’ special lifestyles, and a certain independence that has always existed in this state.

P.S. In response to some of the posts, it doesn’t matter if a Vermont artist was born here. Even the Woodland Indians were flatlanders. People get too hung up on this subject.

OPINION: Is there a Vermont style or styles?

This is in response to a question submitted by Sam Thurston and posted on February 12, 2009. Further responses will be posted as they are received.


By Clair Dunn, Vermont Photographer

I think strong and definable "styles" come from artists that are in close contact with one another. Focussed either on the same subject or the same technique. As Marc mentioned, the Group of Seven is a prime example. Another, though with different inspiration, was the group of impressionists in France at the turn of the 20th Century. They were in love with light on the landscape. It would be quite hard for a particular style to arise in Vermont I think, for the simple reason that we are so separated. Working in our private hovels with our own agenda. Sadly, we are not likely to run into one another on a daily basis during our coffee breaks. Nor meet in the evenings for raucus and drunken arguments and philosophical discussions!

OPINION: Is there a Vermont style or styles?

This is a response to a question submitted by Sam Thurston, and posted on February 12, 2009. Further responses will be posted as they are received.

By Marc Awodey

When I first read the question by Sam Thurston I immediately thought of the best of Vermont landscape painting, and I wondered if responses to our environment paralleled the fine art of eastern Canada (as seen in the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts), especially the historic Group of Seven. But that’s probably because I’m a northern Vermont artist, more oriented in that direction than to Boston or New York City. In my art critic capacity (and in just being visually aware of what’s around) I also see many Vermont exhibitions every week: from Burlington cafe shows, to the Vermont Supreme Court lobby, to Lois Eby’s current show at Johnson State College, to the NVAA at Bryan Gallery. So getting past the theoretical - I guess the answer is simply NO. There is no overarching Vermont style. I would add though, that the premise suggesting style exists regionally at all may be a false notion. Not all Chicago artists in 1980 were self consciously figurative. Not every young New York City artist of today is dripping with irony. True, there are plenty of aqua colored kitsch paintings in Florida, fishing boats in Gloucester, and paintings of kachinas in New Mexico - but tourist oriented art anywhere is typical of the worst of Vermont’s sap bucket paintings. Eclecticism, is probably most indicative of the sum total of critically informed art everywhere in Western civilization.

Lois Eby, Moment of Blues, 10 5/8 x 10 5/8 in., acrylic on linen, 2007