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  Joseph Phillips, Corkscrew Park |
Dreamscapes function on many lavels Dreamscapes function on many lavels By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin The ideals of utopias. The allure of theme parks. The privatization of nature and public space. Joseph Phillips suggests all these in his alluring drawings now on view at D. Berman Gallery. Using delicate precise lines and wonderfully exploiting the luminous quality of gouache pigment, the Austin artist renders imaginary playgrounds and fantasy outdoor spaces. "Corkscrew Park" shows a tidy path winding through a park of manicured trees and lawn, the landscape layered atop a spiraling multi-story concrete form. "Four Slide Tower with Palms" is a massive tubular water park slide placed on a sandy beach filled with palm trees. One wonders what the admission charge is to these bizarre natural amusements. Or moreover, if we're even allowed in. And that's the point. With the nicest of gestures, Phillips suggests that these idealized natural environments are exclusive: Each of these places does, after all, have sharply defined boundaries, with most sitting on neat squares of artificial land. More profoundly, those boundaries are the constructs we ourselves impose on nature. Look closely and you'll see that these fake bits of nature need to be propped up; garden rakes hold them in place. Too often young artists make the mistake of crafting their criticisms into one-liners that don't leave you with much after you get the one, inside joke. Phillips doesn't fall into the trap. His beautifully rendered drawings are more sublime and even sympathetic in their criticism and thus richly rewarding. Complementing Phillips' masterly drawings are the equally beguiling imaginative landscapes created in clay by Jared Theis. Riffing on bulbous natural forms (wasps' nests, coral clusters, ant hills), Theis creates miniature, and mysterious, archaeological ruins. Are these the remnants of some otherworldly tiny civilization? Who knows. But it's awfully rewarding to look and imagine. ("Joseph Phillips and Jared Theis" continues 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays through May 26 at D. Berman Gallery, 1701 Guadalupe St. Free. 477-8877. www.dbermangallery.com.) |
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 Oscar Gillespie, Float and Scamper |
Over 21: Pages and Marginalia By Wayne Alan Brenner Oscar Gillespie's latest works, currently deepening the interior facets of that hidden gem called Slugfest Gallery, wouldn't be more compelling if they were printed in the artist's own blood. You get the idea that they would be printed that way, though, if it were necessary to achieve whatever effect or meaning Gillespie wanted to convey. Among the more simple prints, if such stunning and intricate line work can ever be called simple, are larger pieces that incorporate original graphite drawings collaged onto the engraved paper ground, with monotype glazes layered beneath, with evidence of much thoughtful labor having created the final, textured image. These graphic intricacies and the more plentiful monochrome simplicities often depict animals, perhaps "spirit animals," in fetish form but anatomically precise, as translated from the artist's dreams and waking visions. Blacks darker than a shaman's dilated pupils, ochres like the shades of a dying sun, searing reds: These construct fractured tableaux of rabbits and ravens and their human familiars and are reminiscent of ... "It's strange," says Tom Druecker, Slugfest co-owner. "There's something very Mayan about his work." But what could be strange about a Hispanic artist harking back to the mythos of his ancestors for - "No, that's the thing," says Druecker. "He's this white guy from the Midwest, teaching at Bradley University up in Illinois. And yet, there's usually this Mayan... or maybe it's Aztec? There's a definite Mesoamerican feeling to his work." There also is a feeling of much depth, of a man driven to depict the more urgent aspects of his interior landscape with whatever processes best render the image. That those processes include printed engraving and monotype glazes and unerring pencil drawings, often in the same piece, is the good fortune of those who visit Slugfest to see Gillespie's "Over 21: Pages and Marginalia" exhibition. |
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 Jennifer Balkan, Unmasked |
Jennifer Balkan: Her New Work By Amanda Douberley Jennifer Balkan used her prodigious skill as a figure painter to create a fantastic realm replete with hidden symbolism and personal meaning in a new body of work on view at Wally Workman Gallery. The Austin-based artist holds a Ph.D. in sociology and began painting in 2001 following a trip to Europe, where she was inspired by experiencing firsthand artworks previously available to her only in books. Since then, Balkan has had a slew of shows in Austin and elsewhere, in addition to teaching art classes in town. Balkan takes up certain surrealist painters' penchant for self-portraiture and dense symbolism in her recent paintings, which are executed in oil on panel. In The World and The West, she depicts herself from the waist up wearing a shirt made from actual strips of map collaged onto the painting. Bees mysteriously buzz around her head -- in The West, she holds one between thumb and index finger as she stares out at the viewer. Are these insects a personal totem? Are we meant to account for bees' homeopathic qualities and understand them as symbols of healing? Balkan doesn't provide any clues, and much of the work in the show is equally open-ended. Take another series, where masked figures wearing garden-party dresses strike alluring poses seemingly cribbed from fashion magazines. Each woman is framed by a decorative pattern of diamond shapes or fleur-de-lis in gold, light blue, and white, with a hand or foot straying outside of the frame and confusing our sense of space. Balkan's coquettish ladies look at us from behind masks that resemble animals, further blurring the lines between fantasy and reality. A zebra, a bunny, a bird, a dog -- it's a cast of characters straight out of a children's book. And like a fairy tale, we're left to wonder if there's any deeper significance. The clearest message emerges from a group of smaller works that feature American junk food set against pieces of map. A half-eaten Twinkie obscures France, Hostess Cup Cakes blanket the Northeast, while Balkan dubs a burger, fries, and a Coke the new "language of love" in two other paintings. Here the geopolitical statement is obvious, albeit tempered by the dreamlike world conjured throughout the show. Balkan's loose brushwork dapples figures with highlights of blue, green, orange, and pink. The current rage for flatter media like acrylic and the ubiquity of works on paper in Austin galleries make these oil paintings stand out. The least successful works in the show, however, also have the most traditional subject matter. Balkan's nudes, which also include collaged maps, are well executed but less compelling than her other self-portraits. There's a quirky element in The World and The West that falls out of paintings like Extinction, where a swathe of map wraps part of an otherwise nude female body. Balkan is at her best when she leaves a little more to the imagination. |
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 Mel Ziegler Photo courtesy Austin Museum of Art |
Mel Ziegler: The Exit Interview By Salvador Castillo When he came to Austin a decade ago, Mel Ziegler thought he'd be here about a year. But the internationally renowned artist – here's hoping you caught the fine retrospective "Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler: America Starts Here" at the Austin Museum of Art this spring – got a little more involved in the life of the city than he expected, teaching sculpture at UT and spending several years on the city of Austin Arts Commission, including a three-year term as chairman. Now, he's moving on (to Vanderbilt University, where he'll chair the studio are program), and the Chronicle asked him about his time here. Austin Chronicle: Besides teaching sculpture at UT, how have you influenced Austin art in the past 10 years? Mel Ziegler: As soon as I got on the Arts Commission, I decided to become the liaison to the Art in Public Places, so I sat on the AIPP panel for two years and the Arts Commission for six. I knew there was this history of them fighting, and my goal was to try to bring them together. And by doing that, we were able to put together the 2 percent policy. [Two percent of new city construction projects fund public art.] I consider that one of my major accomplishments. It wasn't just done by me; there were a lot of other people involved. I will say I was instrumental. AC: What about the cultural plan; weren't you part of that? MZ: They're working on that right now. That's something I have not been involved in. It's important in relation to Downtown, what's going on culturally, what's going on in terms of the construction and building. The fact that we might lose a restaurant like Las Manitas that's been here forever, those things that have character in this place that we've all attached to what Austin is, they have to address those things. It's not just about the arts; it's also about what this city is and what kinds of things like restaurants, which to me [help] give it its cultural identity, are really important. And to lose a place like that is really sad. AC: Maybe it's a little too late for completing the plan? MZ: I don't think it's too late. Perhaps for some places, yes. But there's still a possibility to try to latch on to some things that need to be held. You're going to lose things in the process of growing; that's just part of the nature of place. You don't want to be overly nostalgic either, because that would destroy the possibility of growth and expansion. AC: Do you find the AMLI art projects to have been significant events? MZ: Actually, that happening was significant. There were a lot of things that were going on at the same time. There were younger artists interested in generating their own space to show work. It used to be that a lot of students would graduate and leave. Now you graduate, you can stay, and you can actually generate something and make something happen. I think it's great; that's what should happen. That gives a place its identity. I always try to encourage that type of thinking. Don't wait around for someone to come to you. Just go out and make it happen yourself. That was what I did as a young artist. AC: You do that now, don't you? MZ: [Yes.] Even though I'm leaving, I'm being very complimentary. If you had asked me 10 years ago, I would've said, "I told my wife, 'I live in Podunk!'" [chuckling] I hated Austin. And I've come full swing. I enjoy being here; I like the community; I think it's much more exciting than it was before. Rather than just complaining and going elsewhere, I decided I'd try to also help the cause in one way or another, by being involved. It's kind of important. All of us can do a little bit on some level. And we can't do all of it ourselves, which is something I've learned. If I was gonna stay, the next big project I would do would be to get the Dougherty Arts Center rebuilt. It's amazing what they do there already with that dilapidated building, and it could be such a great identity to the city of Austin. I think, even though it would be argued to the nth degree, that it should be right on the lake and it should be done by a world-class architect. That's the piece that needs to be redone and remade in keeping in character with everything else that's going on around the lake. I think it could be a world-class city arts center. It should be a symbol to Austin. |
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 Denise Prince Martin, Daily Powder Fresh Disposable Deodorizing Mist |
Inner Worlds We Inhabit By Clayton Maxwell Ball gowns, blow-up dolls, and cotton candy – welcome to the sumptuous visuals of Denise Prince Martin, one of Austin's most arresting photographers. Her latest series, "Things I Never Told You," is a seductive tour through the unspoken world of women: a diva in a doughnut shop, a burlesque queen on a picnic table, a housewife in a bubble, and more. With vivid detail and absurd arrangements of setting, prop, and persona, the photos make you want to know what these women are up to. Prince Martin, named by Chronicle Arts writer Rachel Koper as one of the Top 7 Individual Artists of 2004, exhibits nationally and internationally. This summer, she will be in residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. We talk before the opening night of her show, currently at Women & Their Work. Austin Chronicle: The name of this series is immediately intriguing; one can't help but be curious about the unspoken. Can you tell me more about it? Are you suggesting that these women are keeping secrets? Denise Prince Martin: This series is less about secrets and more about the things we don't find the time to say or are a little afraid to talk about. For example, there is one beautiful, romantic photograph of a woman in an orchard. She's got this heart, this little furry heart that I actually made when I was a child, and she's holding it and kind of looking at it. The title is Why Haven't I Shown Him How to Touch Me? And that one very specifically is not about a secret she's keeping willingly, but rather it's one of those things that is a huge part of yourself – yet it's small and simple. This unspoken thing is not elemental to your being and doesn't mean that you have an absolute lack of intimacy; it's just one part of yourself that you haven't got to yet. AC: So those things I haven't told you may be parts of ourselves that we are not even aware of? DPM: Yes. And it's about the inner worlds we inhabit – but it can be superficial, too. I'm interested in the ways we locate ourselves within society. For example, when I go to Neiman Marcus, I always feel a lot better if I happen to look decent that day, because while I'm there, I'm making these sorts of plays with myself about what someone might think about me or what I think about them, asking myself if I am better dressed, et cetera. It's that weird cultural positioning that goes on. It can be as shallow as that, or it can be very intimate. AC: You said that this work is more loyal to the id than the superego. How so? DPM: There is this fantasy part of us, not unlike how we feel after a couple of margaritas, where the structure of life and morality is much less important. It's about the part of us that is free from judgment, that more honest and grounded side of us. AC: And yet, while the photos are about the unexplained and fantasy, their composition is very structured and deliberate: In each of them there is a woman, a prop that she holds, and an unusual setting. DPM: Yes, my photos are very structured. That, to me, represents the perfection that we want, the order. I want to see my world this way. So there is this balance within the work: that side that is very ordered and the side that is not. People have a lot of questions when they see the photos; they ask, "What does this mean?" It's not that viewers don't understand, exactly, because then they tell me what they think it means. And even if their view is not what I intended – because I do have deliberate intentions with my symbols – another person's reading is always a beautiful, subtle thing about life, often about being a woman. The photos can help you go to that place. AC: Your settings are so fantastic and unusual: the parking lot of a motel, an oil refinery, a fallow field. What do you look for in backgrounds? How do you know when you've found one that works? DPM: I was a filmmaker, so I take my film experience into the photos, as if they were little scenes. I look for places that are strange, think about what needs to go with it and build from there. That motel you mentioned has a particular style that really worked for me. For that one we drove all the way to the coast. It speaks of something else – of summer, of that quintessential place. The title of that one now is Vibrating Bed. To me, it's about the wildness of childhood. When I was young and a motel had a vibrating bed, I thought, "How funny and exciting that you put a coin in there and the bed vibrates!" And yet a part of me knew that it was about something else and that it wasn't really for children. There was something there beyond my experience. So it had that little bit of danger. That photo is alluding to freedom, to that place where you don't judge. And even if you were a grownup who was going to have sex on a vibrating bed, you'd have to have a pretty good sense of humor. "Denise Prince Martin: Things I Never Told You" is on display through June 23 at Women & Their Work, 1710 Lavaca. For more information, call 477-1064 or visit www.womenandtheirwork.org. |
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 Andy St. Martin |
"Andy St. Martin: Selected Works From 1999 to 2007" By Rachel Koper As the visual-arts scene in Austin continues to expand, viewers are rewarded with more solo shows. One of the newest is "Selected Works From 1999 to 2007," showing several series of paintings by Andy St. Martin, whose work can be labeled abstract expressionist or minimalist. What gives St. Martin a more expressionist interpretation is his light, spontaneous line work and his use of symbols. In some of the paintings, a thick, chunky line will skip across, twirl, and then exit the composition. These lines are bold and rapid and act as if they were a character in a quiet vignette. What St. Martin describes as "a private symbolized divulgence" in his imagery are the vaguely recognizable elements that drift through his work. Roots seems to have a wacky green mountain behind the roots. Superior Prize has a baby-blue Monopoly-house shape in it. Dog Dreaming is literally a dog. But some pieces, such as Mexican Imagination, a diptych of blue panels, are strictly abstract. Abstract expressionism can sometimes seem juvenile, incomplete, or be overwrought by ego, but St. Martin's light touch, natural subject matters, and palette allow him to avoid these common pitfalls. St. Martin's solo show is on display in 4 walls fine art, a spacious new Downtown gallery that is pleasant to visit and that has produced a charming book for the exhibit. The high ceilings and textures of the space work well with St. Martin's palette and scale. Most of his abstracts are in the 4-foot-by-4-foot range, although some of the 28 works here are larger and not square. The compositions are simple, light, and open feeling. The lightness is due to a combination of technical discipline and whimsy. His techniques of mixing media and a strictly limited palette allow the surface texture of the works to be the signature element of the paintings. The manner in which St. Martin layers the paint, the brushes he uses to apply it, and the sheen and thickness of the various materials are all precisely controlled. With all this attention to ordering and building up thick and thin surface qualities, there is a sense of finish. The artist is paying attention and is intellectually engaged in the process. The paintings shown here were all created over a span of eight years with a very consistent style. Paintings made in 1999 hang next to works made this year in harmony. St. Martin's works can be divided into groups more easily by color palette than by year made. The newest series is mostly black and white. There is a pastel group that incorporates pinks, light blues, and whites. I like the earth-toned ones, of which Plantwall is quite appealing with its periwinkle touches. These nature-themed paintings are heavy on the sienna and saturated greens and yellows. There is also perhaps a retro category, with pieces like Home, which includes the classic two-color combination of toothpaste gel mint with rusty chocolate brown. A fairly new piece titled Field has quite a bit of acid yellow and green divided into three panels. It includes aerosol, latex, and oil paint; it's one of my favorite pieces in the show. Each of the three panels uses more or less the same colors but applied in different ways. The structure is supercontrived, and yet the finished effect is fresh. The colors of St. Martin's animated personality shine through all the careful color fields he creates.
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 Andy St. Martin |
Andy St. Martin: Break on through to the other side By David Bradford Andy St. Martin is proof that vision, talent, and perseverance can bring success on one's own terms. For nearly two decades, St. Martin has made large, mixed-media paintings while working a variety of typical and not-so-typical day jobs. Recent response to his work suggests that he is finding an audience; he has enjoyed a brisk run of sales, and the show "Andy St. Martin: Selected Works From 1999 to 2007" is currently on display at 4wallsfineart, a recent addition to the Austin arts community by Michael Terrazas of Club de Ville and Starlite fame. A member since 1999 of the Splinter Group, one of the Eastside's creative collectives, St. Martin shares space with five woodworkers and a blacksmith. "When I first moved to Austin, I had a studio in my house. I was going bonkers, so I started looking for a studio. I was friends with Hawkeye Glenn the blacksmith, who introduced me to [Splinter Group founder] Mark Macek. We've stayed pretty much the same crew since then." And what about the noise and dust from all those power tools? "I paint around the others at night and on the weekends. People are pretty respectful. There have been different issues, as there always will be, but we've all been together for so long, and we all like each other. I feel like I'm in with a group of people who are dedicated, professional, and hardworking. Just being in proximity to them is inspiring. And it's weird – sawdust has never really been a problem." St. Martin's quiet progress over time brought him to the attention of 4wallsfineart. "The gallery approached me. [Assistant director] Julie Stevens knew my work." Although the show covers nearly a decade, St. Martin is careful not to use the word "retrospective" to describe his still-emerging work. "We are calling it 'selected works.' I feel that although it is a retrospective, that word is kind of loaded. It is a bit pretentious for me." Modesty aside, studying the paintings side by side in order to make his selections has given St. Martin confidence about the maturity of his themes. "No matter how different the two things that one person made might be, there are underlying congruities also. And that's exciting, because that means it's possible to change and still be yourself." Whatever St. Martin's long-term prospects, 2007 will be remembered as a turning point. "When you're working in obscurity, there's a nice tension there because there's something to push against. When you break through that, there's nothing on the other side. It's a little bit startling, a little bit disturbing. At the same time, I've put a lot of energy out in the last 10 years to produce these paintings. The prospect of doing the show is exhilarating and flattering. It's a good acknowledgement of effort and will." "Andy St. Martin: Selected Works From 1999 to 2007" is on display through June 30 at 4wallsfineart, 115 E. Fifth #1 (between Congress and Brazos). For more information, call 472-2007. |
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 Jedediah Caesar, Helium Brick |
Jedediah Caesar at Blanton By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin There's an immediate visceral intrigue to Jedediah Caesar's solo exhibit in the Workspace gallery at the Blanton Museum of Art. Materiality and process rule here. The young Los Angeles-based artist mines the leftovers of 21st-century urban culture to come up with a fitting palette of materials. Detritus culled from the streets (plastic combs and toothbrushes, food wrappers, soda cans) and from his own studio (paintbrushes, paint cans, wood scraps) are combined and layered within blocks of industrial resin. Or Caesar coats objects heavily with paint encrusting them together. Every one of the blocklike sculptures or assemblages sings with gritty color and texture. The enormous "Helium Brick aka Summer Snow" -- made especially for this exhibit which was curated by the Blanton's Kelly Baum -- grabs center stage. Streaks of colorful resin coat the hulking compact car-sized block of Styrofoam while cracks reveal color-saturated interior crevasses. Caeser's work suggests an imagined archaeology -- one that reflects the ecosystem of today's industrial -- toxic? -- urban cultural with terrific beauty. His layered sculptures are like bizarre geological samples filled with strange fossils that invite all kinds of imagined histories. Installed as they are on wooden shipping palettes, they look even more like recently found and just unpacked archeological treasures. But while covering the Workspace gallery floor with unfinished plywood adds a clever conceit for displaying Caesar's exhibit, it doesn't quite offer the radical re-interpretation of the museum exhibit experience Blanton organizers suggest it does. Still, Caesar's beguiling objects make for one of the better Workspace exhibits we've seen since the Blanton launched the space to feature emerging artists. |
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 Damian Priour, photo by Jeanne Claire van Ryzin |
A Coffee With ... Damian Priour By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin Damian Priour likes chairs. No — he loves chairs. He's fascinated by them. He's been collecting them for years. By his estimate, he and his wife, Paula, have a couple hundred at their West Travis County house. "Chairs are ubiquitous," says the 57-year-old celebrated and widely exhibited artist. "You can be coronated in a chair, punished in a chair, fall off of a chair, cuddled in chair. . . . " Still, Priour doesn't pay too much notice to the chair he sits in at Little City Espresso Bar & Café. That's probably because he has other chairs on his mind right now. Specifically, the 100 miniature chairs of glass and fossil-imbedded limestone he's made in the past eight months. Priour has built his artistic reputation with typically monumental — if not just darned large — sculptures of limestone and glass, the bleached-out 100 million-year-old stone and cool blue-green glass a fitting artistic signature for the Corpus Christi native and fifth-generation Texan. The 100 miniature chairs are, well, uncharacteristically miniature in scale for Priour. But they need to be smaller than your average Priour piece because beginning next week the artist, and his assistant, David Hester, will begin carefully packing each of the chairs into an 8-inch-by-8-inch box to send them to artists around Texas and Texas-connected artists elsewhere. The recipients don't know to expect the package. Only Priour and Hester know who's on the list. "And I'm not telling," says Priour. "Imagine the surprise when someone opens the box." And when those artists do open their boxes, they'll find not only the minichair but an invitation from Priour, who this year was recognized by the state Legislature as the Texas State 2008 3-Dimensional Artist, to please create a chair of their own and return it to him by Dec. 1. The only limitation is that the returned chair must fit into the same box that the Priour chair came in. And it needn't be another chair per se; not all of the 100 artists are sculptors. What comes back in the small box could be a painting or print of a chair. "This isn't about limiting creativity, but encouraging it," Priour explains. "And I really don't have an explanation for why I'm doing it. I just couldn't not do it." Of course, it's about creating an artistic dialogue, too. Whatever is returned to Priour will be included in an exhibit at Austin Museum of Art in 2008. And a few of the chairs will be used to raise money to benefit arts and environmental causes, what Priour puns are two "chairished chairities." In the meantime, starting today and running through this weekend, the chairs are on view at the museum. "This is the only time all of my chairs will be together before they get dispersed," says Priour. "It's a little like sending your kids off to college; only they don't come back." It's also a little like the artists' tradition of exchanging work — a particularly codified practice among fine art printmakers. But not many artists exchange limestone-and-glass miniature chairs. Hence, Priour has funded this project himself, spending what he will say only is "tens of thousands of dollars" of his own money to create, package and mail the chairs (he's including return postage in each package). Eventually, he'll launch a national version of the Texas Chair Project and then an international one as well, both with more opportunities for the art to be sold and put toward charities. "I'm naturally a pretty optimistic person," he says. "I'm hoping this starts a good dialogue about important causes: art and the environment." |
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