A Visit to the Wounded General and more!

Two weeks ago, Robert and I finally made it out to see Heather's studio and her gallery, The Wounded General, out in Point Reyes Station.

It's a small space, but is doing rather well. While we were there, there was even a surprise encounter with Anne Beck, who happened to wander in!

Heather's work is influenced by 19th Century Art, narrative, wordplay, and playfulness, in paint, prints, and textiles (in addition to being a poet!) The image directly below is part of a series that she is doing in response to the Bayeux Tapestry. She described it as a woman's story of survival compared to a male story of conquest.

The Wounded General also features work from local Marin County artists, and a few familiar East Bay folks - like the Don and Era Farnsworth piece centered on the wall below:

Other works:

After a lunch at Marin Sun Farms, Robert and I popped into Gallery Route One, a space I've driven by many a time but until now had never wandered in. In their Project Space, there was an exhibition called, Disappearing Act, Our Role in Species Extinction, with works by Marie-Luise Klotz and Xander Weaver-Scull. I was very excited to see Weaver-Scull's 30 foot long accordion book, printed with stencils:

Not only a pretty cool piece, a helluva way to display it.

Every time I visit Point Reyes, I feel like I could live there happily, if I only had a paying job that could keep me in plenty of cheese from Cowgirl Creamery. Right now, it's way, way too long of a commute for me.

A vist to Lost Coast Culture Machine!

The focus of my trip to the North Coast was for Lost Coast Culture Machine's first invitational portfolio, of which I'm a part. LCCM is stationed in Fort Bragg, a lumber mill town that in recent years hosted a Georgia Pacific/Koch Brothers mill, the remains of which dominate the most of the downtown coast. (Image above is from a 2008 article on the Mendo Coast Current, which discusses how to properly remediate the soil on the GP site).

With the town's legacy as a mill for paper products, Anne Beck and Dietmar Krumney founded an alternative exhibition space and a sustainable hand paper mill, Lost Coast Culture Machine.

Click on any image for a larger picture.

In the spirit of DIY, they've built all or most of their equipment. For instance, this couching table:

They did admit to hiring a woodworker to build their molds, though Anne sewed the screens on. Below is one of their molds with a an multiple envelope deckle.

Their paper press:

Their beater, which came from Chillicothe, OH!

Something I thought was completely ingenious was their drying system for pellon and felts. It's a hanging rack system that can be raised and lowered so that it doesn't take up workroom. I wish I had the space for something like this in my basement studio, but alas.

These papers are offered for sale through their store. This table shows just a selection of what they offer:

As part of their sustainability program, they are harvesting local fibers. They recently worked with the Mendocino Land Trust to harvest pampas grass.

Some local fibers they get at the thrift store. Here's where they store them, sorted by color:

Other papers they've made:

No studio is complete without a poet hanging around. LCCM has Virgil to guide them.

I'll be posting updates as they get the portfolio online. Sales will support LCCM, in particular, the artist-in-residence program they are developing.

A visit to Stanford and the Cantor

A few weeks ago, I had a chance to visit Stanford University and see the Cantor Museum. This precedes my trip up north, and I thought I'd take a break from my irregularly scheduled programming to post about it. Stanford, if you have to ask, is a gorgeous campus. The picture above is their church, which is designed in a mixture of Romanesque and Byzantine styles, and executed in way that feels authentic rather than imitative.

The Cantor has a small but impressive collection. For instance, it was my first time ever seeing a Duane Hanson sculpture in real life.

It was positively creepy - I keep seeing the figure out of the corner of my eye and thinking there was a real person there, even after I'd read the label and with knowing who the heck Hanson was to begin with!

Get a load of the details:

Another artist I had heard of, but never experienced their work outside of photographs was Richard Serra.

I'd never been too impressed with him from photographs (C'mon, big steel things! I'm over Big/Overwhelming=Good Artist). But I'll grant that actually walking through a Serra changed my mind. Due to the tilted nature of the walls, you have to be cognizant of space, otherwise you'll hit your head.

Which I'm sure was his intention - to make the viewer uncomfortable.

However, I also found myself intrigued with the labyrinthine nature while inside it.

In front of the Cantor was their newest - installation? Acquisition? Not sure. A work by Andy Goldsworthy.

I usually love Goldsworthy, but this piece felt lacking. On one level, its winding nature speaks to the Serra a few hundred feet (and behind a high wall) away.

I wasn't sure how I felt about it being sunken. I walked down into the piece and around it, and it didn't seem to add to the piece at all.

In fact, I like the piece better in these pictures than I did when I was actually there - I'm not sure what that means. It felt to me that this piece, in this arid, sandy environment needed to engage the landscape more - like there should have been water rushing through it, and the reason for the wall's curves was to guide the water. On the Cantor's website, it states, "Set in a trough in the earth, the sculpture gives the appearance of an archaeological excavation. Over time, the land around the work will return to its natural state and animals will settle into the site. The stone has traveled full circle: quarried initially for Stanford University buildings, it now returns to the earth in another form."

I like that idea, so...maybe I'll like the piece more later.

I know I've chosen to write here about three white guys, and the museum, like many, is pretty white-guy heavy. In deference to this, I'll say I really enjoyed the exhibition of contemporary Chinese Art - particularly the Xu Bing - but out of respect for works on paper I didn't take any pictures. The collection of Native American art - both historic and contemporary, is pretty impressive and I was glad I got to see that as well. There were also statements posted by Stanford students reflecting on the work for visitors to read, which contained some pretty insightful and eye-opening revelations. It seemed to also emphasize that university museums like the Cantor really do belong to the students, as much as their libraries and classrooms should.

The Cantor has free admission, you don't have to be part of the Stanford community to go see it, and I recommend it!