Let there be LIGHT!

The 9.24.07 Blank Canvas art column by Jodie Cavalier:

LIGHTS, SPACE, ACTION!

No, this is not a movie scene. However, light and space are fundamentals when making and or viewing an art piece.

In Ephemeral: Explorations In Light, the artists must consider how their work will be affected and translated to the viewer by the light as well as the shadows it may cast and the space it will occupy.

Light-And-Space art was first introduced in Southern California during the late 1960s through the 1970s by artists such as Robert Irwin, Dan Flavin, Maria Norman, Eric Orr and James Turrell.

This movement of art, much like Conceptual Art, focuses more on sensory perceptions and less on a specific idea or message. This is not to say that the artist dismisses the importance of ideas and messages.

Turrell, whose work is currently on display at Pomona College Museum of Art, explores light as a primary medium. Fields of colored light saturate the space and create an installation work, which the viewer is forced to become part of.

Using light as a medium allows the artist to make the viewer more actively involved in the work. The viewer is open to explore the entire space and themselves as the light is reflected onto them.

Although the Light-And-Space movement is documented as having taken place during the 60s-70s, this does not restrict other artists to re-explore the process of such pioneer artists. As such, the new Claremont Museum of Art has created an exhibition titled Ephemeral.

Curator Pilar Tompkins has assembled artists from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Mexico City to feature multi-media installations and sculptures.

The Claremont Museum of Art uses its space to display five works of art from five artists, which challenge the conception of what signifies art and addresses light as a phenomenon.

Don't be fooled. The narrow entrance into the exhibition is actually the work of Inaki Bonillas.

The piece literally transitions you into the show by lighting up this narrow hallway with neon tubing. Bonillas starts with cool toned tubing and then midway through shifts to warm toned tubing to create both a subtle and sharp contrast in the space.

More tricks are up their sleeves when viewing Elaine Buckholtz's piece Spinning Night Café.

This video installation illuminates onto the wall of the gallery, presenting bands of rich color resembling stained glass. The twist is that Buckholtz is reconstituting Van Gough's The Night Café by translating the brushstrokes and color into her piece. It really makes you question if the color and the application are the same. Therfore, how are the two any different?

They are different of course.

However, the point is to question art making and to explore and consider the point being made. Other artists in the show include: Thomas Glassford, Won Ju Lim and C.E.B. Reas.

An Artist Talk: Process / Drawing with C.E.B. Reas will be held Saturday, Oct. 13 at 3 p.m. The Artist Talk will be free for members and $5 for non-members.

The exhibition Ephemeral: Explorations in Light will be at the Claremont Museum of Art Sept. 16 - Nov. 18, 2007.

For a sneak peak or more information, visit them online at www.claremontmuseum.org or call 621-3200.

Asian Art History

I wanted to make sure everybody noticed the story in the September 24 issue of The Breeze about the visit to the Venkateswara Temple in Malibu taken by the Asian Art History (Art 11) class taught at Chaffey by Melia Belli. This must have been a wonderful experience for the students. I wish I was there!

LIVING work of art

Students of art history are accustomed to field trips to art museums to view the art that has been preserved through the ages.

They are used to old art.

Melia Belli's Asian Art History class, however, found themselves visiting a very contemporary work of art, a modern Hindu Temple, tucked into the gentle rolling canyons of Calabasas.

After a lecture covering the pantheon of Hindu gods (the numerous incarnations of Brahma, Vishnu and Krishna), students took themselves for a long drive to Las Virgenes Canyon Road to the Venkateswara Temple in Malibu.

On Sunday, Sept. 16, several Chaffey students drove into the Temple parking lot just as members of the temple were arriving. The women were wearing bright silk saris and everyone removed their shoes before entering the temple, some even washing their feet at an outside fountain provided for just such ritual cleansing.

Inside, the main temple housed a likeness of the deity Sri Venkateswara (a form of Vishnu) and also smaller temples housing sculptures of other deities. Music was playing and offerings of food had been left to call to the deities.

Begun in l981, the temple hides among the shrubbery until one turns from busy Las Virgenes Road onto Las Virgenes Canyon Road. There, suddenly appearing above the thick oak trees, are towers covered with beautifully carved sculptures depicting the many deities in Hindu belief. It is the most authentic Hindu Temple in the western hemisphere.

The last of the construction is almost complete including the exquisite plaster sculpture that covers the walls, gates and buildings of the complex.

Natalia Update

Hey Everyone!

The 2007 Fall session has began, and I honestly didn't get to experience summer. Things got pretty crazy in the end. For example, for 2 weeks leading up to the end of the term past I worked at school until 7pm, went home to shower, got back to school at 10pm, worked again until 4 or 5 am, slept in my car until 8 or 9am and then started the cycle all over again. The last week of school I was thrashed, and the first week of break was all about catching up on much needed sleep. I wanted to move to a new place that was cheaper, and I did. So the rest of my break was moving from one place to the other and then school started.

Note: Some of you may raise a judging eyebrow at my study habits, but this school does not give A's to students that get all their work done on time. A's are given to near perfect work that leaves for little improvement. Along with the financial pressure of tuition and scholarship, I have to do what it takes to do the best job possible within my capabilities. Its also not scary being at school, at least 30 other students stay overnight as well.


I have 5 classes, and also a 3rd term portfolio review. This is where I put a body of work of what I've created at Artcenter so far, and get advice and critiqued by faculty.

The classes I'm taking are
1. Materials of art and design ( like a shop class)
2. Sketching for Illustration- deals with drawing but also how to compose an image that communicates an idea successfully
3. Digital Illustration
4. Visual Communications- an academic class that breaks down the components of an image, what those components do, and how its successful in a lecture style class.

5. Type 1- an intense class in which I will learn what type is, how to use it, and how to draw it nearly perfect...sounds simple but it is quite complicated.

I also got a camera, so I'll try to incorporate more images, though the camera will be extremely helpful in in my work at Artcenter.

Hope you are doing well and here's to another 3 months,
Natalia

Photographic Artist Chris Jordan

I just finished watching Bill Moyers Journal on PBS. The main topic tonight was a look at the life and legacy of Rachel Carson, who is often credited for launcing the modern environmental movement with her book Silent Spring. It was well worth watching the life of this incredibly courageous woman.

But, it is the short segment at the end of the program on photographic artist Chris Jordon that I want to bring attention to at this moment (watch video). In a prior life he was a corporate lawyer with an interest in photographing objects he believed had an aesthetic beauty. He began focusing on photographing color compositions that are unintentionally created by human activity. He noticed that even a large pile of garbage could contain some interesting and he thought "beautiful" attributes. After displaying some of his works friends began commenting on the social critique of American consumerism and waste that was present in them. This had not been his intent, but it soon became the central purpose of his work.

"There's this contrast between the beauty in the images and the underlying grotesqueness of the subjects. And it's something that I put in there intentionally. I know that if I were to take ugly photographs no one would be interested in looking at them," states Jordan about his Intolerable Beauty series.

Cell phone chargers, Atlanta 2004
Jordan's latest project, Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, seeks to make tangible statistics about our country's consumption that involve such large numbers that they are difficult to fully fathom on the page. "Our minds are just not wired to be ableto really comprehend and make meaning of, and feel, numbers that are that huge," Jordan explains. "I think there's this worldwide cultural craving for a more sensible approach to our consumption."

Follow this link to see additional works and detail enlargements of the following images that are assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

Plastic Bottles, 2007.
Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.

Plastic Bags, 2007.
Depicts 60,000 plastic bags, the number used in the US every five seconds.

Handguns, 2007.
Depicts 29,569 handguns, equal to the number of gun-related deaths in the US in 2004.
This new series is currently exhibited at the Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles through October 20.

Machu Picchu artifacts to be returned

Los Angeles Times:

LIMA, Peru — Authorities here are hailing a deal reached with Yale University to return some of the thousands of artifacts carted away by Hiram Bingham III, the swashbuckling historian and explorer who stumbled upon the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu almost a century ago.

But doubts have surfaced about the scope of the accord and about Yale's right to retain certain parts of the collection for "ongoing research," as a university statement said.

"It's good that the pieces are to be sent back, but it's absurd that this doesn't cover all of them," said Luis Lumbreras, former director of Peru's National Institute of Culture. "If Yale wants to continue studying the pieces, they can come to Peru."

When the decision became public here, media reports indicated that Peru would get most or all of its artifacts back. But Yale since has reiterated that a substantial part of the collection will remain on the university's New Haven, Conn., campus.

Read complete article.

For my two cents, I think it is good that questionably gotten artworks and pieces of cultural heritage are returned to their country of origin. It is a complicated issue that needs to be dealt with on an individual basis and in good faith from both parties involved. It often results in a sharing of objects, especially in cases of research institutions and museums where it can be shown that further benefit (research, conservation, etc.) can be gained that will benefit our understanding or preservation of an object. Laws were passed in the 1950s in an attempt to stop the illegal removal of artifacts from their country of origin, but the black market is still filled with smuggled objects that will go to the highest (and in my opinion, unethical) bidder.

John

Things to do before you die.

Stewie from Family Guy visits the Chicago Museum of Art, where he finds Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. (0:52)

"The Great Picture"

Photographers pose in front of the image cast by a pinhole camera in Irvine, Calif.
The world's largest photograph is enjoying its premier showing in the Wind Tunnel at Art Center's South Campus. This landmark photograph, a gelatin silver image that is three stories high by 11 stories wide, was produced in the summer of 2006 using a shuttered Southern California F-18 jet hangar transformed into an enormous camera obscura -- the largest camera ever made.

In conjunction with The Great Picture, an Artists' Lecture plus commemorative book signing will take place on Thursday, September 20, 2007 from 7:00-9:00 pm. The lecture is described as "a chance-driven conversation://the beginning of photography/the end of photography."

Accompanying the showing of The Great Picture is an exhibition of student work from Art Center's Photography and Imaging Department. Aptly titled "Look Here!" by Sam Davis, new faculty member and curator of this exhibit, the student's work points directly at the intricate mosaic that photography exists in today, including all the techniques from its rich past to its digitized present. Students employ these techniques to emphasize the personal and contemporary ideas about themselves, their social matrix and the global condition.

The exhibition will be on display September 6-29, 2007 from 12:00 noon to 9:00 pm Tuesday-Friday and from 12:00 noon to 6:00 pm on Saturdays. Art Center South Campus, 950 S. Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, (626) 396-2319.

The Great Picture is the result of a collaborative effort between artists Jerry Burchfield, Mark Chamberlain, Jacques Garnier, Rob Johnson, Douglas McCulloh, and Clayton Spada, also known as The Legacy Group.

Blank Canvas

There is a new art column titled BLANK CANVAS in the Chaffey College newspaper, The Breeze. It is written by the recipient of the Chaffey College Art Writing Scholarship and current Chaffey Art Organization President Jodie Cavalier. Below is the first article from today's issue on the Wignall exhibition Subvertisements.

Well done, Jodie! And, I hope to see everyone at the Wignall on Wednesday, September 12 for two events: the Chaffey Art Organization meeting at 12:30 and the Subvertisements opening reception and Diversity celebration from 4:00-6:00 PM.

Subvertisements at Wignall discovers art in commercialism
By Jodie Cavalier

As you enter the Wignall Museum, a sense of familiarity occupies your mind while you are bombarded by a space rich with controversy.

The gallery is temporarily home to the traveling exhibition Subvertisements. Curated by the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, the exhibition sets out to fashion awareness of both past and current issues in our culture.

The art works contrast the meaning of original works of art versus appropriated works of art. The art works' appropriation of popular logos, advertisements and famous works of art are used as a tool in conveying their message.

"The logo usage becomes more accessible to the viewer. It may also act as a segway to master artists," Rebecca Trawick, Wignall's Assistant Curator, says. "Humor is another important tool used so the images are more palatable," Trawick adds.

Humor cuts the edginess off of the many other heart wrenching, very serious works in the show. It contributes to the balance in an exhibition loaded with diversity.

Powerful works such as the iRaq images become more powerful when juxtaposing the seriousness of war and the luxury of living in a consumer driven society full of iPods.

Referencing iPod advertisements becomes vital to the piece because it creates a new way of providing compelling information to the public in relation to daily lives.

Other art works, such as Cancer Sticks and AIDS Crisis, address issues on a more local or personal level. Both images mimic cigarette ads and question the product's relationship to its buyer.

The exhibition is jam-packed with an array of other issues such as presidential scandals, human rights, drugs and prescriptions, animal cruelty, propaganda, globalization and more.

The intent of the images will force you to reflect your actions as a citizen, but more importantly as a human. Works are gathered from around the world and cover decades of time yet they share the same goal to create a conscious awareness to any and all.

Be prepared to doubt, discover, gasp and giggle.

For more information about the Center for the Study of Political Graphics go online to www.politicalgraphics.org.

Subvertisements will be available Aug. 27- Sept. 29 at the Chaffey College Wignall Museum. Don't miss the opening reception and Diversity Celebration.

Light refreshments and music by DJ Patrick Miller will be provided, Wednesday, Sept. 12, 4-6 p.m. on the Wignall Museum Patio.

Experiential Studio Art Lab Offered

Chaffey College Art labs 92LA (1/2 unit) and 92LB (1 unit) are set up to assist the student with independent art projects proposed by the student. Term projects and scope will be determined by instructor and student in relation to each student’s area of study within studio art.

Term projects and scope may include but are not limited to: painting, drawing, design, mixed-media, sculpture, etc.

LAB HOURS:
Monday/Wednesday
3:30-6:30 pm
Room Art-15

For more information and to enroll contact:
Art Instructor: Misty Burruel
m2burruel@charter.net
909-652-6111

***Students need not be currently enrolled in an art class***