Bryan Valenzuela

Bryan Valenzuela's Multitudes Converge at Golden 1 Center

Photo by David Wakely

     I attended a lecture by Sacramento artist and Sac State alumnus, Bryan Valenzuela.  He spoke about first starting school as a musician studying composition with violin.  He even has road exerience as a touring musician.  As a musician myself, it was interesting to hear another artist also speak about the music side of their creative life.  Valenzuela described falling in love with making art and "dramaticism of color" being his first interest, in parallel to his attention to music tonalities.  He also spoke about his formal influences being Chuck Close and Jean-Michel Basquiat.  He was drawn to Close's hyper-realistic, redering ability, and the use of text when it came to Basquiat.  He also spoke about Sac State's library's collection of artist monographs, and them being a huge asset in his learning.  I think it's good for students to hear that and recognize the importance of learning outside of the classroom envionment, too.

     Valenzuela then spoke about his process and work.  He primarily makes pen-and-ink drawings.  A lot of the drawings are constructed from using his writings and/or writings of poets, to weave and wrap the text so it constructs a portrait.  Literature is an important source to his work.  He also spoke about sewing canvas together for the "hand-made" quality and because it's cost-effective when you have a lot of scrap.  He then mentioned the long and laborious process of designing and completeing his Multitudes Converge piece, which is currently installed in the Golden 1 Center.  The inspiration came from a line in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas which says, "Yet what is an ocean but a multitude of drops."  From there, Valenzuela got approved for his piece, as one of five artists competing for the grant.  He then went to the Czech Republic and made over six-hundred glass spheres, in sizes of twelve, sixteen, and twenty. Even though he displayed a little over four-hundred pieces, he had to make extra because many would break.

     It's good to get insight on what a big project like Multitudes Converge involves.  It was exhausting just hearing about the arduous process but also great to see the result of so much hardwork and dedication.

Photo by Brett Melliar

Hippie Modernism at BAMPFA

Photo by Brett Melliar

Art Wall by Lawrence Weiner

Inflatables

Inflatables

Ayiti Mon Amour

Image still from Ayiti Mon Amour, from the Toronto International Film Festival

     On April 28th, I attended a screening of Ayiti Mon Amour by Haitian-born filmmaker Guetty Felin, at BAMPFA, with fellow graduate students Polo Lopez, Sean Hong, and Brett Melliar.  There was also a brief lecture and Q&A component.

     Ayiti Mon Amour is set five years after the devastating, 2010 earthquake in Haiti.  It's fictional and described as "documentary meets magical neorealism."  There are three tales surrouding the teenager Orphee (played by Felin's son), the old man, and the muse, all with the theme of connectivity.  Most of the fisherman in the film are actually fisherman since Felin wanted to keep a sense of realism intact.  Most of the conversations between the fisherman describing the challenges of catching fish are not scripted, either.  Felin's goal, however, was to not show a pity film and focus on the negative aspects of post-earthquake Haiti.  She wanted to express the beauty of her homeland, "a true Haiti," as she said; I believe she succeeded.  The cinematography is gorgeous and the color grading is excellent.  In emphasising Felin's desire for portraying connectivity, the film has a global aspect.  The teenager Orphee speaks Japanese, which brings to mind Japan's 2011 earthquake and Fukushima disaster.  Felin also notes that after Japan's earthquake, the world forgot about Haiti.  Haiti was no longer "vogue."  There are also multiple languages in the film including French, Creole, Japanese, and English.

Guetty Felin at BAMPFA

     Guetty Felin said she got into filmmaking because she's always been a storyteller.  Her drive is to tell stories and show visuals that people don't often hear and/or see.  Sean Hong asked her an important question about the possibility of goverment influence during her creation of the film.  She said there was absolutely none and proudly spoke about the freedom of press in Haiti.

Trailer for Ayiti Mon Amour

Art History Symposium

Professor O'Brien, Rachel Teagle, Lawrence Rinder, and a bunch of heads

     

     I attended two lectures on April 8th by Rachel Teagle and Lawrence Rinder.  Rachel Teagle's talk How Do You Make an Art Museum and Why? centered around the construction of the Manetti Shrem Museum in Davis, CA.  I learned that UC Davis has wanted to create an art museum for more than twenty years and there's been a plan since 1994 for one.  Teagle's mission in building the museum focused on answering "what does it mean to be a state of the art museum?"  She invited the public as an additive process to figure out what the museum should be like.  The Eli and Edyth Broad Art Museum, designed by architect Zaha Hadid, at Michigan State University was a reference.  In contrast to Hadid's architectural design style which could make a form work anywhere, Teagle and her team wanted to build something that was specific to Davis.  She listed "innovation, experimentation, and openness" as core values.  In consideration of UC Davis' interdisciplinary community, understanding how to build a space that could exhibit a wide variety of work was also important.  Teagle ended her talk by saying she wanted the Manetti Shrem to be a place where students could "find transformational experiences."

     Lawrence Rinder's talk The New Downtown Berkeley provided a history and mission statment for the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA).  As director for the museum, his mission statement is as follows: "inspires the imagination, ignites critical dialogue, and activates community engagement through art, film, and other forms of creative expression."  Certainly great goals to strive for when it comes to most museums.  During the talk, I learned that collector William Ernest had donated his big collection of Japanese prints to the museum in 1919.  At the time, it only featured about a dozen Western and American work.  Abstract expressionist painter Hans Hoffman then left forty-seven of his paintings for the museum.  Film is also an important aspect and the Pacific Film Archive was created as "part and parcel of the museum."  In 1940, the museum was moved to the UC Printing Plant of late deco design.  Also interesting to learn that ninety percent of the museum's visitors are not students.  I have recently had the pleasure of visiting the museum for the first time and I really enjoyed seeing the Collection Portal, which allows anyone to digitally see the museum's entire collection.

-My question would have been for Rachel Teagle in regards to the lab coat uniform for the staff at the Manetti Shrem.  She had said that she wanted to eschew a "research" feel from the experience but the lab coats seem to contradict that.

The Relevance of Mass Media

Getty Group (Dominique G., Brett M., Shixiang H., Trevor L., Allie L., and Danh C.)

Also, our new band photo

     The first day of my two-day trip to Los Angeles with fellow Sac State students was spent at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  As nice of an experience as that was, it lacked in much contemporary work.  Our second day was spent at The Getty, which had an exhibit on contemporary work titled Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media.

     The exhibit, which runs from December 20th, 2016 to April 30th, 2017, shows how various artists used the news media as source material for their photos and videos, over the last fifty years.  Most of the work is a response to how the media covered the Vietnam War (1955-75), and George W. Bush's declared "War on Terror," post the 9/11 attacks.  Part of the exhibit's statement reads:

"Artists began to question both the authority of the news media and the veracity of its images, employing strategies of mimicry and appropriation to highlight and challenge the glut of visual information.  They were concerned as well with the instability of a photograph's meaning and the different ways in which news is mediated, manipulated, and interpreted according to the surrounding context."

Sarah Charlesworth, Osservatore Romano, March 17-May10, 1978, electrophotographic prints

From the series Modern History

     The show exhibits over two-hundred pieces from seventeen different artists.  The first one I was drawn to is the conceptual work of artist Sarah Charlesworth.  Charlesworth would reproduce the front page of a newspaper, erase the print with the exception of the masthead, then trim the print to the size of the original newspaper.  This series of work is titled Modern History.  Within this series, Osservatore Romano, the name of a piece as well as the name of the Vatican City State's newspaper, is an image-only documentation of the abduction and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by a terrorist organization.  The layout reveals editorial decisions and the importance of image placement.

Sarah Charlesworth, Osservatore Romano, March 17-May10, 1978, electrophotographic prints

From the series Modern History

Martha Rosler, First Lady (Pat Nixon), 1967-72, printed 2011, inkjet print

From the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home

     My favorite work in the exhibit is Martha Rosler's House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home series.  Rosler would take magazine issues of Life and superimpose croppings of Vietnamese citizens maimed in war on idealized, domestic interiors.  I can imagine almost missing these juxtapositions, if this work was featured in a magazine.  But once noticed, they're striking, especially when one considers that the images come from the same source.  

Martha Rosler, Giacometti, 1967-72, printed 2011, inkjet print

From the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home

     The work is a sobering reminder of the "Us Versus Them" mentality of war.  We tend to forget that we are part of a system that is destructive of others when we're so steeped in our embrace of capitalist, commodity culture.  Through the House Beautiful series, the viewer is pushed into reconsidering their "here" and "there" worldview when images of the horrors of war are brought literally right into the affluent, American living room.

Me by Alfredo Jaar's Searching for Africa in LIFE

Photo by Allie Lown

     It's important to have a news media with a free press.  But it's more important to know how that media can shape a story and present it so it's perceived in a particular manner.  The artists behind the works in the Breaking News are clearly aware of that and their work encourages the viewer to develop the same critical understanding of the process.  I'm really pleased to have been able to see this exhibit.  And I'm happy that my first time at The Getty was with friends who share the same enthusiasm for experiencing art.  The weather was also unbelievably nice.

Trevor L., Allie L., Shixiang H., Dominique G., and Danh C.

(We lost Brett)

LACMA Visit

R.W. Witt Gallery Exhibition: "Convergence" by Jeremy Alba

Untitled

     Jeremy Alba exhibited his work last week (3/06-3/10) at the Witt.  Titled Convergence, the work made great use of the space.  There were wall-mounted pieces, a large scale installation (above), and work on pedestals.  Considering the variety of the work, Alba was successful in uniting everything under his obvious interest in sharp, geometric forms.

Untitled

     Though it's easy to get lost in such a large and sleek installation such as the one in the first image, I was equally drawn to the rest of the work.  The smaller pieces are interesting and it's from them that I feel they're an origin point for the rest of the work.  At the area where they rest against their support, they feel soft.  It's as if the angular structures they start to take on is their attempt at reaching out to see what else exists in the world; a sort of growth through knowledge.

Untitled

Untitled

     Pictured above are two of three pieces he also exhibited that are similar in their almost painting-format and installation.  The mostly triangular shapes that form the entire piece seem like a jigsaw puzzle before it's come apart.  Though I like the contrast in the wood grain and size of each shape resting against each other, the work didn't hold my attention for long.

Untitled

     My favorite piece in the gallery is the one posted above.  It's hard to tell whether the bottom part is meant to be a pedestal that flows into the work or if it's an essential part of the piece, but I really like it.  The manner in which the top, dark, geometric form and the bottom, white shape, sandwiches the the twisting, organic form really drew my interest.  The top and bottom parts also feel like they're in stasis while the center part appears to be in motion, endlessly coiling upon itself.

     I enjoyed Alba's show.  I think he found a successful way to exhibit his work in a very challenging space.

Photo by Polo Lopez

R.W. Witt Gallery Exhibition: "Paths and Portals" by Forest Aliya

Untitled, 2016, acrylic on paper

     I've seen Forest Aliya's work quite a bit in the Art Studio Lab rooms, on the Sac State campus.  She and I were also in an Advanced Painting class together so I'm relatively informed when it comes to her process.  Most of the work exhibited at the Witt Gallery this week (2/27-3/03) are paintings from that class.

     The R.W. Witt Gallery needs some serious renovations; this is not news to anyone.  The gallery is student-run and as someone who has had a solo exhibition in the space, helped install friend's exhibits in the space, and seen MANY shows there, I'm more than familiar with the building and its funky ceiling and poorly attached walls.  The lighting situation is also bad.  The limited collection of lights in the Witt doesn't have a consistent temperature cast.  They range from warm oranges to dull blues.  My point is that Aliya has to fight an impossible battle when it comes to installing in that gallery.  And her work is so colorful that the lighting does a terrible job of providing the vibrant hues any modicum of justice.

  

Untitled, 2016, acrylic on paper

     Getting my frustrations out of the way, I enjoyed the exhibition.  Some of the work is installed too high, but it's consistent in theme.  Aptly titled Paths and Portals, the work is filled with imagery of... paths and portals.  There are doorways and stairs that lead to other doorways and stairs.  The work feels introspective to me; a self-analysis of the psyche.  It feels like Aliya's asking herself a lot of questions and we are seeing a full map of her navigations to answers.  There is no apparent sense of gravity and space is effectively rendered so that the three-dimensionality of Aliya's world is fully realized on a two-dimensional surface.

Photo by Brett Melliar

     Aliya's work is heavily layered.  Working on thick paper and with the medium of acrylics, she builds the atmosphere in conjunction with the paths and openings for us to examine.  And knowing how she works, these pieces don't just happen on a first pass.  Some of these paintings have been painted over and over to reach the state they're in. Paths and Portals isn't just an excellent display of Aliya's understanding of color.  It's excellent proof of her work ethic, too.

Manetti Shrem Museum Visit

     It was exciting to finally make a visit to the relatively new Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, in Davis.  The small museum opened in November of 2016 and I really dig the architecture.  The website describes it as "a hub of creative practice for today's thinkers, makers and innovators, now and for generations to come."  That describes most museums to me but hey, it sounds fancy, right?

     The oddest thing about Manetti Shrem is that the docents, as well as most of the employees, wear lab coats.  I don't understand the relevancy unless it's to echo UC Davis' priority in research-oriented programs and the word "research" always conjures up the image of a scientist wearing a labcoat for me.  Either way, it's certainly not what I'd expect walking into a center of art.  When it comes to the work, it showcases a strong collection that includes the Davis heavy-hitters such as Wayne Thiebaud and Robert Arneson.

Black Valentine by Daniel Shapiro, 1966, acrylic and collage with paper on untempered masonite

     The first work I came across was Daniel Shapiro's.  I'm intrigued by his use of strong, contrasting values and bold, gestural brush-marks, while using straight lines to attempt to balance out the more organic forms.  The biography listed by his work reveals his profession as a teacher at UC Davis.  It also has the following quote by him on the role of the artist, that I liked: "As we know, the real artist may be any of many things.  But no matter what else his is, I submit that he is at least a searcher for some aspect of human truth."  A thought most makers can relate to.

Me with Roland Petersen's Picnic Scene with One Parasol, painted in 1967, oil on canvas

Photo by Polo Lopez

     My favorite piece in the small museum is Picnic Scene with One Parasol by Danish-American painter Roland Petersen, who presently teaches at UC Davis.  I've seen Petersen's work before and I like the expressive quality of his use of color.  Some of the work lends itself towards a more design feel, which I don't always like, but the image of the painting I posted above stays safely away from that.  The physicality of the thick paint is applied as if each brush stroke was the first, confident one, and nothing had to be edited.  Primarily a figurative painter, Petersen's work reminds me of Manet's paintings in their same sense of casual, society life.

     Overall, the Manetti Shrem is a nice addition of culture and history with the work featured.  It's still small and I'm sure the art will be rotated in and out frequently to highlight UC Davis' art collection, so I'll definitely be making return trips.  The best bonus of the museum?  It's free for anyone.

M5Arts Presents ArtStreet

Photo by Brett Melliar

     I attended ArtStreet by Downtown Sacramento's art initiative, M5Arts, with a few of my fellow graduate students, two weeks ago.  I got to see Art Hotel last year, a project also done by M5Arts, and this was a greater experience.  Art Hotel had so many visiors that people were only allowed a ten-minute window to see every floor.  ArtStreet was superior since my group and I got to leisurely explore in and around the warehouse that featured over one-hundred artists.

Section by Jason Silva and Ginger S. Thompson, 2017, wood, fabric, corrugated cardboard, and paint

Photo by Jason Silva

     One of my favorite pieces at ArtStreet was an installation called Section.  I was instantly overwhelmed by the size of each structure and the scale of the entire installation.  Each structure felt more like a monument.  It's as if I was looking up at another world that held its own gravity, with the black forms operating as moutains that pointed down towards me.  The black, organic shapes attached to the white, rectangular forms also created a nice balance in their contrasting shift from one shape to the other.  Easily my favorite piece from ArtStreet.

Mythos Ad Infinitum by Mehran Mesbah, 2017, charcoal and erasers on paper

Mythos Ad Infinitum by Mehran Mesbah, 2017, projected video

     I was happy to come across work by my friend and part-time CSU, Sacramento teacher Mehran Mesbah.  He had a projection of clouds continue to change forms as an animation, from the original sketch that was mounted on one of the walls.  Mesbah's artist tag explained the piece best: "Utitlizing one of humanity's oldest recordable forms of communication, Mesbah draws, photographs, and subsequently erases this work only to repeat the process again.  These actions allude to the indefinite reinterpretation of phenomena ever generation passes to the next."  I'm intrigued by him taking the traditional method of illustrating on a surface as a form of communication, and recontextualizing it as a digital animation with the use of a projector.

     ArtStreet was fun and I'm looking forward to seeing M5Arts' next project, ArtCity.  Also, how often do you get to stick your finger in art?  Not very.  So I did it.

Sacramento in Living Color by Laurelle Davita

Photo by Sean Hong

Dona Nelson Lecture

     I attended a lecture by Dona Nelson on February 9th at Manetti Shrem Museum as part of the Art Studio Visiting Artist Lecture Series.  Nelson has had twelve solo exhibitions and is represented by Thomas Erben Gallery.  She is also a professor of Painting and Drawing at Temple University, as well as Tyler School of Art, both located in Philadelphia.

Birdy (front) 2015 acrylic on canvas

Birdy (back) 2015 acrylic on canvas

     Dona Nelson talked about her love for Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock.  She also said it took her ten-to-twelve years to shake off her "formal abstract painter" label.  She believes her "mature" work starts in about 1989.  She's well known for her two-sided paintings, which started by accident in 2003.  She was working with a hose while being outside, where she gets a lot of energy from the Sun, and the image appeared on the other side.  I've never seen someone install their paintings in a manner in which one could see the front and the back, so I was intrigued by the installation shots she included in her presentation.  After looking at all of her work on her website (donanelson.com), I'm not excited by the work as it appears on the backside of the canvas, but I can also see why it would be an interesting avenue to explore.  Nelson said she enjoys the strangeness of her two-sided work.  "One side is like material and action, and the other side's the image."

New Paintings Installation, 2015, Thomas Erben Gallery

     "Material is time.  I'm very aware of it and being extravagant with it."

-Dona Nelson

     Dona Nelson brought up that image in the European tradition is much more important than materiality.  And to Dona, she wants to equalize the image and the material.  She's a great lecturer and I really enjoyed her presentation.  She ended her lecture by saying she wasn't going to make you a better person if you went to her show and that type of openness and humor is so refreshing when compared to most of the art lectures I've been to.

Valerie Constantino Lecture: "Crossing Sublime (After After Nature)"

Photo by Sean Hong

     I attended Valerie Constantino's lecture on her Crossing Sublime (After After Nature) exhibit, on February 7th.  Constantino teaches at California State University, Sacramento and American River College.  Her lecture was formatted in a manner in which she shared the history of her old work and the investigation she was pursuing in Crossing Sublime (After After Nature).

"I've struggled all my life to get the maximum meaning in the simplest form."

-Anne Truitt

     Valerie Constantino spoke about her influences, most of which she finds in reading works by writers who "spend time outside."  She also brought up the quote above by American artist Anne Truitt because it touches on what Constantino is pursuing in the work she creates.  "Reductive abstraction" are the words she used to describe it.  She also mentioned her process involves "listening" to what needs to be done rather than the desire to do.

     The "language" of textile became Constantino's source material.  She said she sees the material as related to time; a four-dimensional object.  It's challenging for me to understand what she means by that because I'm solely a two-dimensional artist.  With Crossing Sublime, Constantino used W.G. Sebald's narrative poem After Nature to draw inspiration from.  In her lecture, she mentioned that besides producing work in the persona of Anne Ryan and Valentina Tereshkova, the last character is an aspect of herself.  It's the part of herself observing the world and having a sense of things being illusory, while trying to make a connection to those things.  I think this is an aspect of ourselves that we all certainly have in common.

R.W. Witt Gallery Exhibition: "In the Quiet of Bedlam" by Kiere Paris

Untitled, 2016

     For the student exhibition aspect of our blog, I chose the work of Kiere Paris to write about.  Kiere also happens to be in our class.  Hi, Kiere!

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     I've been interested in the work of Kiere Paris since I first came across it in the Advanced Painting course we both shared last Fall of 2016.  As a whole, the work exhibited in the Witt Gallery ranged from traditional painting to mix-media.  There was one sculpture on a pedestal and a large-scale installation piece on the very back wall that both echoed the forms used in his abstract work, as well.  And until stepping foot into the gallery, his abstract work is all I'd been exposed to.  There were two representational paintings in the exhibit and in my opinion, they didn't seem to feel like they belonged with the rest of the work.  But they were interesting paintings on their own.  His abstract work is the highlight and it's evident that he has a strong understanding of color.

Untitled, 2016

     Some of my favorite works were his plaster(?) pieces on the wall that are spray-painted gold.  He had done some of these pieces in the class we took together so I'm already familiar with them.  The manner in which the texture folds and ripples reminds me of soft fabric.  And the thickness and size of the overall piece itself conjures the the image of a pillow.  I'm interested in the contradiction that occurs when I see the hard and brittle material of plaster and I'm instead reminded of something I could rest my head on.  I think there's a lot that can be explored in just that contradiction.

     Whether he continues down the path of investigating color as the vehicle in his work, or leans towards the sculptural elements he also explores, I'm confident that whatever he creates will be interesting.

Congrats, Kiere!

Photo by Polo Lopez

Else Exhibition: "Crossing Sublime (After After Nature)" by Valerie Constantino

     I have an especially intimate experience with Valerie Constantino's work.  I was hired by Professor Constantino to photograph her installation, as well as each individual piece.  The small scale of most of the work and the neutral colors lends to the show's presence as quiet; there is nothing flashy about it.  Colors aren't vivid and nothing is loud.  One absolutely needs to walk right up to each piece to really appreciate it.

    Left: After Valentina Tereshkova 1 (Performace with Star Trails) 2016, photomontage

Right: After Valentina Tereshkova 2 (I am Seagull) 2016, assemblage with photomontage on silk, embroidery, faux leather,  motion detector, composition of found audio including voice of Valentina Tereshkova from space

     When I first walked into the show, the work didn't feel like it all belonged in the same exhibit.  It rather felt like three, separate bodies of work installed in the same space.  The work draws inspiration from the narrative poem After Nature by W.G. Sebald.  The pieces are Constantino's interpretation of the lives and works of others.  In After Valentina Tereshkova 1 (Performance with Star Trails), Constantino has presented herself with a self-portrait as cosmonaut Tereshkova in the appropriate uniform, with digitized star trails behind her.  With Valentina Tereshkova 2 (I am Seagull), Constantino has a motion detector that plays the voice recording of Tereshkova in space, when someone walks by it.

After Valentina Tereshkova 3 (Blue Arc) 2016, mixed media on paper

     One of my favorite pieces is After Valentina Tereshkova 3 (Blue Arc).  What seems to be a sort of graphite rubbing on the paper with deckled edges is minimal and really engaging in its presence.  The blue curve that comes down the center is a representation of the curve of the Earth that Tereshkova saw from space.

     There's a lot that can be said about each piece in the exhibit.  The one thing that's ultimately clear is Constantino's interest in and effective use of non-traditional material in her work.

Photo by Polo Lopez