Create Your Space

 It’s that time of the year, and several friends have settled down from summer fun and feel the need to put their nests in order. All speak of purging, cleaning, organizing as if their inner housekeeper is a beast to be tamed. When that mood strikes me, however, I think of … collage!

Before you imagine me cutting up stacks of magazines, I will direct you to the concept as introduced to me by Julia Cameron in “The Artist’s Way.” While the form was indeed traditional, she prescribed the practice as a kind of meditation on the content of your life, a creation of talismans for greater creativity. Meld that with the awareness of a museum buff from childhood (having seen a Rauschenberg or a Cornell or 2 or ten in my time), there I am looking around my space and saying, “There is all this stuff, that is the content. Let me arrange that to make it meaningful and visually pleasing.”

Objects were re-grouped and lit, stacked, packed into shelves, vessels housed the tiny things. A collection of baskets became gathering points for those necessary objects whose esthetics we can’t control – mail, devices, manuals, memory disks – a unified visual front. And a moveable one.

So, when people came to the apartment, even when I thought it was a mess, they saw the personality before the chaos, or even the cats (there were always a few). And yes, if you were waiting for this, several not so small pieces of quality wall art I loved to death enclosed my “installation” in an embrace that felt like endorsement. And just maybe it was a need for THEIR approval that spurred the process.

Way too much is said about making your space better by working against who you are – being neater, cleaner, giving up things. No, we can’t all keep everything forever. But your stuff should express who you are and make you happy before anything else, otherwise, what is the point? People buy expensive objects in furniture stores to add spirit to their environment. Chances are you already have what you need stashed somewhere.

So, have fun making what is old new again, revel in your creativity, embrace the wabi-sabi of items that have been around a while, feel great about your space and save your money to get that art!

 

Cat Portrait (Beau) by Eric Ginsburg,  Red Red by Mark Wiener

Dedicated to Wayne Dyer...

Photo of Wayne Dyer (c) by Phil Konstantin

Synchronicity can be beautiful,  just yesterday I wrote an essay about appreciating the beauty that is all around us.

Then, while soaking up the many tributes to the wonderful Wayne Dyer last night, I came upon the following quote from his myriad bits of loving wisdom:

"Those who think that the world is a dark place are blind to the light that might illuminate their lives."

Seeing is a gift and a responsibility... you can read the essay at:

Blind to Beauty...

Thank you Wayne, and Godspeed...

Every Picture Tells Your Story--Narrative and the paintings of Andrew David Ringler

“Write what you know.” It’s the advice given to every writer hoping to capture the moments of life with verisimilitude and exacting detail. A painter who tells the same kind of stories, Andrew Ringler anchors each work deep in his vivid, heartily subjective recollections of its subject, which he enjoys publishing and even more, sharing in person.

Mudman, Oil on Canvas,72 x 36 inches

But what about the viewer? When we approach a work of art, don’t we demand an experience based upon what we see? It’s the reason I often think that some artists are better off not “explaining,” especially when they hope someone experiencing the work will want to make it their own.

In the case of Ringler’s art, each piece arrests the viewer, speaking loud and clear, at first sight. Architecture, figure, landscape, animals, all there, but there is also an alchemy revealed through the quirks of each image and the openness of the artist’s mark.

Andrew himself is prone to referring to pieces, even in an exhibition, as being “unfinished.” His ability to deal with this uncertainty is what lets him create work that feels so alive. A foreground appears smeared against the greater, but not crystalline, focus of the rest of the scene? “ I am seeing it from a moving car.” Is the woman happy or sad? “She ‘s leaving town. She has a man waiting for her in Chicago.”

Perhaps an experience Ringler can identify with since relocating from his small home town in Ohio to Miami. But the spirit of the place and its people has never left him, and they continue to provide the basis of what has grown to be an addictively engrossing body of work – you want to see more and more.

Wise beyond his 30 years (and he’s been painting well for many of them), Ringler  knows and portrays every detail of every story he paints, yet with painterly sleight of hand his work compels us to turn the pages of our own memories – everyone who has ever experienced a small town summer, remembers a high school friend, or wondered if that house on the  hill was haunted will see, feel and hear the echoes of those experiences in his paintings. The more he reveals his memories, the more they evoke our own.

High Voltage, Oil on Canvas, 72 x36 inches

Images (c) Andrew David Ringler

"Everything in the Garden is Rosy"

Installation by Scotto Mycklebust 

Opening Reception Tuesday August 4, 6-8 pm, Jefferson Market Library
Exhibition on view during Library hours through 8/31

“Nothing but Blue Skies”

Curator’s essay for Scotto Mycklebust, “Everything in the Garden is Rosy”

Definition of everything in the garden is rosy in English:

British  -- Everything is satisfactory

-- Oxford Dictionaries

Everything in the garden is rosy.

Something that you say which means that there are no problems in a situation (often negative):  “But not everything in the garden is rosy. Sales may look good but they're actually 10% down on last year.”

 -- The Free Dictionary

Does art perfect experience? Does the experience of art refine our perception of its subject, which, in the broadest sense, is life?

We experience art and today, a considerable amount of our human interaction, through an intervening frame, be it a picture frame on the wall, a stage proscenium, or the edge of a digital screen.

Described by the artist as “an underworld Flower-Power garden,” “Everything in the Garden is Rosy” has no frame. The viewer enters into full immersion. When inside, you must decide where the art stops and your world begins. The frame is an emotional boundary, a mental device.

The Jefferson Market Garden --  it’s “double” -- co-existing just above, is also without a concrete boundary. While its footprint is defined, sights and sounds of city life intrude via the other 2 dimensions. The silhouette of an iron fence reminds us which side we are on, but it is open and subject to the elements all around. As well it must be, because a garden if a place where plants grow. Close it off and there is no rain or sunlight, or fresh air, no insects to pollinate.*

When inside, where do you wish to draw the line? Rosy – no rain, bugs, street sounds, death. It can be colorful, beautiful, a visual collaboration between artist and nature. But it is alive as a concept and an environment for human interaction, not an assemblage of organisms.

In the outdoor garden we chose where to look closely. In the installation the artist has chosen for us. He has also made us smaller than the flowers, something we could conceptualize but not experience without his inspiration and digital magic. It resembles a refinement of the source material, however, if the skies were what we see in the installation each and every day, a physical garden would wither for lack of water.

The growing garden is essential to our existence. It feeds us by bringing the energy of the sun to the substance of the Earth, and in process cycles the oxygen we need to breathe. It restores the spirit by reminding us the we are natural beings – encountering a garden, we stop, we observe, we set aside mental machinations and join the leaf, the flower, the spider…in the natural world.

Our natural and digital experiences deliver mixed messages. Walking among living plants and animals, we are awed by the beauty, power and grandeur of nature, while we are reminded that so much of it is in jeopardy due to the actions of our species. Our digital environment offers up wonders we could not see anywhere else, alongside dire warnings of the impending doom of everything. They cross connect – I just enjoyed a long, lovely shower during which I recalled reading online that clean water is critically rare in parts of our world, even the US, and choosing this luxury, without paying for it, is something not to take for granted. One can only hope the flow of information and emotion will lead to action.

Mycklebust’s work is an opportunity to consider that we live in two indispensible worlds, and ponder and make choices based on how we relate to them, and they to each other, even as human ingenuity brings them closer and closer to one another, as it has with 3-D printing, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Art feeds the human imagination, which in turn generates innovation leading to the technological connectivity and ease without which most of us can no longer imagine getting on with our lives at work or at play. We can also hold out hope that it nurtures and teaches the soul to envision a sustainable society based on a healthy planet.

* If you see a bee or monarch butterfly keep in mind that we need to act now to save these important and iconic species.

Linda DiGusta
NYC, August 2015

Press Release:

“Everything in the Garden is Rosy” by Scotto Mycklebust on view August 1-31

Opening reception at Little Underground Gallery Tuesday, August 4, 6-8 pm

The NYPL’s Little Underground Gallery is please to announce the premiere exhibition of new work by New York artist and Greenwich Village resident Scotto Mycklebust. “Everything in the Garden is Rosy,” curated by Linda DiGusta, will be on view from August 1-31, 2015, with a reception for the artist Tuesday August 4 from 6-8 pm. The Gallery is located in the Jefferson Market Library at 425 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY, 10011 and is open during all public library hours.

“Everything in the Garden is Rosy” consists of a single, full gallery installation. The artist will “transform the gallery into an underworld flower-power garden” using digital and man-made materials of variable scale and content. In counterpoint/dialogue with the planted landscape of the Jefferson Market Garden above ground, the theme of immersion in a reproduction reflects the dual nature of existence in today’s world, where we are born into a material environment yet increasingly maintain a conscious presence in a digital one.

The walk-in installation, covering the gallery’s brick foundation walls, archways, and floor, represents a bridge between our 2 lives and invites our examination of both, in relation to where we are, where we have been, and where we are going as organic beings in an increasingly electronic community. Visitors are encouraged to experience both gardens, below and above ground.

Scotto Mycklebust was born in Minneapolis, MN, in 1954. He studied art and humanities at the University of Minnesota, and obtained bachelor's degrees in Studio Arts and Visual Communications from Augsburg College. Mycklebust has long been a versatile and pioneering force in multimedia art; his practice encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, sound, video, and performance. His work scrutinizes contemporary attitudes towards imperialism, commerce, globalization, and the body, challenging dominant ideologies and conventional aesthetics. "Over time it has become very clear to me that the medium is just a vehicle," he says. "I find that limiting yourself as an artist or staying within one particular field of art just does not cut it these days. As economic systems globalize and the media landscape becomes more complex, it's important to expand your practice. Multitasking is part of our nature today.”

Originally a courthouse —voted one of the ten most beautiful buildings in America by a poll of architects in the 1880s— the Jefferson Market Library has served the Greenwich Village community for over forty years. The grounds also host another community treasure, the Jefferson Market Garden. A program of the Library, the Little Underground Gallery is in the midst of its inaugural season presenting an eclectic lineup of local artists, with a new exhibition every month.

Artist’s website: http://www.scottomycklebust.com/html/about.htm

Library Website: http://www.nypl.org/locations/jefferson-market

Jefferson Market Garden: http://www.jeffersonmarketgarden.org/

Open Letter to the New York Times

 Written in response to “A Brooklyn Storefront Hid an Artist’s Decades of Work,” (http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/04/26/nyregion/creating-art-in-the-shadows.html) on behalf of myriad New York City artists who do anything BUT hide their work, but nevertheless are largely unknown to your readers.

As the life partner of Mark Wiener, an artist we lost in September 2012, I have been struggling to find a way to keep his work alive and before the public, as well as simply pay to safely store it until it is placed.

Mark never owned a building in Brooklyn or had a home in Westport, he also never shunned or feared the art community, and certainly never threw an object at someone else’s painting. He cared about his art and other artists, used his journalistic experience to support deserving work, and kept his Chelsea studio (it was at 551 West 21^st, you covered story of it’s impending demolition and re-development in 2012. Mark also appeared in the year’s end online edition of “The Lives They Loved” as submitted by Giandomenica Becchio) open to all and had amazing experiences, ranging from surprise major sales to a little girl leaping from found object to object over the paint and ink and water on top of a mural he was staining with its first layers.

His story is that of a man filled with gratitude and joy for what he had, his work, his friends and colleagues, the visual culture of New York City, rather than given to ruminating over what had not yet arrived. His character was documented by Peter Frank http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-frank/in-memoriam_2_b_1948526.html -- quoting -- 

“One can only hope that Mark Wiener's spiritual legacy, the early-SoHo legacy of the on-the-ground artists' community, can endure and flourish in his beloved New York. We don't want Mark's sub-species, the Public Artist Character, to vanish with him.”

He did not fit the mold of the irascible, inhumane artist living under the dark cloud of his own discontent, but nevertheless he created strong and meaningful paintings, as do so many others who have no time for brooding and drama.

Mark always wanted to support other artists in that middle ground of hitting their creative stride yet finding the spotlight elusive. I am working to honor that by finding ways to bring attention and sales to these artists, who don’t yet earn the money it takes to retain PR agencies and rent galleries, even though that can be what it takes to make more money. It has become my struggle to find them a way as well. These artists are not only masterful creators who, like Mark, will never quit, they are Good People. Their work should be seen, their stories should be told, because they would be appreciated, acquired and enjoyed. 

The suggestion in another recent Times piece that an alternative for would-be collectors priced out of high-end originals should be high-end prints was also disheartening. They can own original, unique work they love for the same cost by going to middle-market galleries, dealers and consultants, or directly to the artists (open studio events are a great portal), keeping the market vital and evolving and even possibly have something of more value down the line. 

Not only are so may amazing artists underexposed, their potential audience is tainted by the focus on negative stereotyping of artists as having unpleasant personalities, and the public perception of the quality of art, distorted by the pay-to-play side of the business, where, while some of the art has merit, it is simply not the deciding factor as to what is on view even though the public is not aware of these criteria. They see a big beautiful gallery and believe that this (which they may not think is very good at all*) is the finest work being created, and the gallery is supported by its sales. Who is there to tell them that  so much art they could love is right around the corner but not receiving a glossy showcase. And what criteria do the media use? It needs to be transparent.

What do we really want to see in museums an auction houses for the next century or so? Will it get there if the artists can’t pay rent or buy supplies right now?  As members of the art community and the media, we will influence the outcome of our era. Let’s get real.

Linda DiGusta

New York, NY

* True anecdote from an earlier post: 

 A youthful cashier was making pleasant conversation as he packed my groceries, but when I told him I wrote about art he came to a dead stop, looked me right in the eyes and asked:"Why is all the art in Chelsea so bad?"

full entry at http://beauartsltdq.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-emperors-tailors-strike-again.html

Blogger's note: I am ready to back this up by presenting my iPad portfolio or bringing you to studios chosen according to your art interests, any time!