"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!

Miami 2014 - Bringing Up Baby

Coming to Miami for Art Basel Week? 

"Fridge Art Fair, the baby who has refused to obey orders to stand outside the door while the adults confabulate inside. " - http://uk.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/1065071/one-art-fair-was-never-going-to-be-enough-for-miami#sthash.dp6HrH3t.dpuf

Fridge is back in Little Havana, newly branded the upstart fair to watch by ArtInfo, and once again the artists of Q (which is having its first birthday!) will be there with some surprises for you, this time including  2 world premieres!

(c) Giandomenica Becchio

Will this be the newest art in Miami? Italian photographer Giandomenica Becchio visited NYC in November and just captured an intimate group of candid images of life in some of Brooklyn's Hassidic and Orthodox Jewish communities - 3 photo essays will be on view at the Fair.

Poundo

Q is also proud to present "Poundo the Six-Legged Dog" an ongoing collaboration featuring text by Gene Beery and illustrations by Eric Ginsburg. At Fridge Eric's original paintings are on view for the first , and you can get a taste of the book, which will be published in 2015.

Mark Wiener (1951-2012) Madonna Series

What else have we got? Photos and works on paper for sale by Sol Lewitt, Kenny Scharf, Arturo Toulinov, Mark Wiener (his 1981 photos of Madonna!), CJ Nye, Carol Schaefer, Matthew Cervenka, Joanna Stokes and small sculpture by Bonnie Rothchild.

Bonnie Rothchild

Iliyan Ivanov - Race Horse (detail)

Last but not least, have fun bumping into NYC artist Iliyan Ivanov's 3-part Horse and Unicorn Murals as you tour the Fair and meet all Fridge's great exhibitors!

Full Fair info at http://www.fridgeartfair.com

Words For the Day (and then some…)

As a lover of serendipity, finding food for thought on the tag of my morning chai is as tasty a treat as the sweet tea itself.

And this one got me thinking about the artists I know and love. The one thing they all have in common is the genuine feeling and spirit that infuses their work, grabs our attention and keeps us looking. Lacking that, I don’t think they would create, they are givers, sharing their vision of this world and perhaps a possible better one.

The one thing they cannot create is our response, they need us to supply that time and energy. And we all have to see with our hearts as well as our eyes, because that will lead us to the truth, difficult as it may be.

Are there really any wrong ways to see? Perhaps not technically, but in the art world we can be tempted to see things that are not there rather than simply look at what is.

Some see with ego, they will not praise excellence or beauty unless there is something in it for them.

We can all be tempted to see with vanity when everybody else says something is wonderful and we want to be included. Or we pretend to understand the incomprehensible not to seem foolish.

It is also possible to see only through the filters of our values – money, religion, past experience, cultural immersion – all color the way we look at a work of art. This is not always a negative, but it can be enlightening to also drop those pre-conceptions and notice the difference.

Often when encountering exceptional work there is a shift in my senses, sometimes can almost hear it humming or speaking to me, feel warmly or coolly, even have it pull me in or push back. Great art engages you.

And that is what it is made for.

tag by Yogi Tea, background detail of panel by Mark Wiener

When words are worth a thousand pictures...

Thinking back to when I was about 5 years old, sitting with a friend on the front steps on a day much like today. We were cracking what we called Polly seeds – sunflower seeds -- carefully removing each from the tiny shell and savoring the flavor, before starting over again…

What brought me to this picking up a packet of sprouted, shelled and seasoned sunflower seeds, good to share this week, along with my ubiquitous “bars,” when on the run with my visiting vegan friend. And thinking, “How convenient!”

Convenience is an essential asset on a tight itinerary, but it is also becoming a transparent element in our daily lives. I obtained the image for this post on Wikipedia with a few strokes and clicks (something I no longer take for granted after actually having to use the research library in 2011!), I can send it to you or talk to you about it on the bus or in a store, or just skip going out or even using the phone by ordering lunch from the very keyboard I am typing on now.

Again, handy if you need it, but it seems to engender a lack of patience to the point that people can’t even wait to safely cross a street before reading something on a device. There are trends toward the benefits of delayed gratification gaining momentum – tech breaks, slow food, meditation, DIY, urban farming – perhaps this is even what folks are reading about in traffic. With good reason, it feels good to just be in the moment with what is before you, the nuts taste just a bit sweeter when you work a little for them, and the sweetness makes the cracking just a bit more fun.

Sometimes we must go with the flow. We have to work with computers to work with others in a timely fashion, you can’t be the only one without a mobile phone on a collaborative level. Online information and sharing widens our intellectual and emotional world and allows us to understand it via myriad points of view - including a great deal of enlightening writing about art. But in this case, the words ring truer than the pictures. Visually, it is a mirage.

Nowhere is time spent more rewarded than in the appreciation of art. The simple act of looking at art is a human pursuit unchanged at least since the days of cave painting. You look, you see, you look closer, you see more, you step back, put it in context. Try doing that with the zoom feature of your browser, you will realize that as important a tool as digital technology is, you are just looking at pixels, not paint or sculpture in all it’s transparency, solidity, layers, patina, subtle motion in changing light… Even the nuances of a digital photograph, well printed, escape the screen.

Fine art is a nut you have to crack yourself – when you see something intriguing online, go to that museum, studio, gallery, public venue, theatre – and just take in the miracle of creativity and the fact that you are participating in a timeless ritual. You can even have your phone set to vibrate. But don’t be surprised if you forget it is there.

"Sunflower Seeds Kaldari" by Kaldari - Own work. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sunflower_Seeds_Kaldari.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Sunflower_Seeds_Kaldari.jpg

An artist, a curator and a dealer walk into a bar...

Passing by an outdoor performance yesterday and witnessing a comedian totally bombing to the point where the large audience was about to boo him off the stage, I suddenly remembered that I hadn’t published anything about my recent visit to the Whitney.

Aside from well-curated selections from the Museum’s permanent collection now on view, the most impressive art experience of the evening was walking into an unintentional performance – a guided tour of the Koons exhibition in progress before a large, rapt audience  – and feeling as if I had been transported into a remake of “Brave New World.”

My first thoughts about the work on view, gathered in a Facebook comment, were:

“…srsly…my thought for the day on the Koons show is that the visually grotesque* has its place in my aesthetic. The socially and psychologically grotesque not so much. I just don't know when to take it as satire and when to be repelled and very afraid...srsly...”

But I had to ask myself, “Why?” I am simply not one of those people who only considers “serious” art to be art… 

At the opening of Paul McCarthy’s  “WS” at Park Avenue, I jumped for joy like a kid at Disneyland – he had built an enchanted bridge between art and fun for the subversive pleasure of art-jaded grownups. Kara Walker’s visual depth and dexterity allow her to gracefully hopscotch around the lines of “taste”, eliciting a smile or a laugh even as we confront prodigious grief and brutality. Her 2007 show at the Whitney was masterful. My multi-talented dear friend, the late Chris Twomey**, played with sexuality and banal materials, particularly in her “XX” & “Tsunami” bodies of work – I can still see her grin and wink as she watched somewhat shocked viewers take it all in with a gasp and a giggle.

The Joke Rule:

 If it makes you laugh, even in spite of yourself, you can’t complain about it.

And what is more the function of visual art than to evoke a strong, immediate response without requiring analysis?

So, when I cannot, even while trying to understand, get myself to respond with anything other than a kind of numb confusion to Koons’ work, I am released from the rule. I still stand ready to come out and play, but only if it is fun… LD

Chris Twomey, Triumph of the XX (installation) 2008, aluminum foil, prints, DVD projection (c) estate of the artist.
video from the series 

* fine examples of the visually grotesque, well used, can be found in the works of Philip Guston, Francis Bacon, Ahmed Alsoudani and others…

**A retrospective of Twomey’s work is planned at Creon Gallery this coming season. http://www.creongallery.com/

Potential

“Mark would have loved this.”

(That is what I said to myself when I passed this object lying near the curb.)

Flash back a couple of years and I would have picked it up and brought it to the studio, or maybe saved it for an anniversary present for him – June 24 would have begun our 13^th year together…

But it is 2014 and I was on my way to meet a friend, so I captured the image and went on my way. This small by-product of recent street work on the block would have been transformed to something entirely different in the studio – a tool (to create one of his final series, Street Markings, Mark set aside brushes in favor of found objects) to resist and apply paint, likely the inspiration for one or more new works.

Untitled, Wed, Aug 11, 6:00:00 pm, 20" x 21.5", mixed media on paper, 2011

In that moment I felt grief not only for Mark, and the fact that I could not give him this object he would have so enjoyed, but all the paintings he did not create, the objects he did not use. The world is a better place because humans are creative, we take the most humble of resources and use them to share feelings, ideas and inspiration.

Did the worker who left that there know he could have been making art? We all leave traces of ourselves, our work, our belongings behind at times, with no real way of knowing if someone else has observed, recorded, acquired them and what they have done as a result. This forlorn piece of pipe with threads, lying in the gutter, had at least once the potential to become something far more.

In that moment, the object also stood for the fragility of our way of life, and the capriciousness of fate. So much human potential goes untapped for so many reasons, it underlines the importance of all that we do, or can do, to support one another, hopefully so we can all realize something more to add to the universe. Mark and I were very lucky to be surrounded by so many who "got it" ( and they still do). We are on this planet and in this world together. Reach out, be inspired, give your spark in return, it could be our only chance... imagine life if no one had noticed that rounded objects could be rolled, if Shakespeare had never loved, or Turner not looked deeply into a sunset.

By the way the piece of metal was still there on my way home, and I later retrieved it.  It may join others in the studio even though it will not be used as a brush. After all, it became a story.