Recovering the Artist: It was a dark and stormy night....

...which was no surprise. After all there is a tradition of rain on Expressive Arts Week openings. I believe at least five of the eight were accompanied by inclement weather. But when the winter storm sky ripped open at 4:40pm, dropping a brilliant shaft of rainbow almost on our heads, I felt a sense of relief... Perhaps some few hearty-souls might come.

The crowd arrived with umbrellas, boots and anticpation.

The week leading up to the event was immensely pressured, with lots of small details Some of which I cheerfully handed off to the estimable Jane Fyer, the grand-dame of the Creative Arts Consortium, a woman of infinite resourcefulness, who I have come to greatly admire in the work of pulling this show together. A bit about Jane:

Her long experience leading the CAC lends her a calm patience rare in the art world. She is serious and thoughtful about the work, yet quick to laugh. She has the wisdom of a veteran politician, and the savvy of New York Lawyer, and the energy of a woman decades younger .  Jane never seems surprised... (of the broken glass on a painting she owns, dropped an hour before the show, she simply said "Oh it's fine. it happens all the time.") Jane has a heart of gold and, a great eye for art.

Fyer helped lead the jury to amazingly diverse offerings, like Dodecahedron
by Steve Rodgers (foreground) and Woman of the Day by David Webb  

By 6pm, we found ourselves lightbulbs replaced, tags corrected, paintings repaired with a full house. The crowd enjoyed a middle eastern themed feast provided by Gallery patron Stephanie Swift, while waiting for a special opening night event , a poetry reading organized by by Michael Turner of the CAC. Michael teaches art and poetry at many mental-health venues in San Diego County. A veteran himself, he works with vets, seniors, and disabled persons, teaching them how to competently and confidently express themselves. He brought with him veteran performers Christopher R, and Dan Woodward, and a guest; first time reader and student of Turner, Rafael Perez.

Poets Michael Turner, Rafael Perez and Dan Woodward mesmerize the crowd.

The Expressive Arts Institute has seen its share of powerful performances, but none exceeding the nights' offering.  Michael Turner read from the deep places of the souls journey, touching on his Native American heritage, his esctatic journey as an ultra distance runner, and his deeply held conection and reverence for all things. Christopher R. (not pictured)  used wordplay, humor and rhythm to spill out a critique against the absurdity of the current state of all things , himself included. Young poet Perez gave a credible reading, with some memorable language "Graffiti is street talk between devils and angels..."

The full house was attentive, moved and entertained...

By the time Dan Woodward stepped on the stage, with his gray mohawk, eyes intense, the crowd was ready for anything. And Dan delivered. Starting with Gulf War Blues "...I knew her before she became a syndrome..." he recalled the loss of a chopper he helped to launch, in a war that seemed absurd. But before long, the crowd moved into laughter, as Dan read Shoot me for Food. Another piece in praise of larger women brough the house down with its vivd depiction of women "escaping a Jenny Craig convention" to ravage a buffet, in an Animal House-esque food fight.

Michael Turner returned to the stage to read one final piece, taking us again in the the space and light of his landscapes, the man who "...run(s) to figure things out..." leading us into a turning calmness, into the center of belonging with the strength of his lungs and heart. Before the applause finished, I was wondering about the possibility of a chap-book for the show, so later visitors ( it runs through January 7th 2012) could read the poetry which seems to match the visual art so well.

Of course you should have been there...

The evening, a great success,  was to hold one more shocking surprise for Jane and Me...but that is news for another post

At the end of a long day...

Well. The interview with Philly Joe went okay... Still I came away not entirely satisfied.  I felt the fundamental thing I'd like to get across was maybe lost in the cross-talk. Maybe teachers always feel a conflict between a presentation and a conversation... in any case here's the thought.

Art is Art. What you think art is, or what I think it is is not so important. The point is, we can both agree it exists. That said, when we encounter art in the gallery space, museum or on the street, in a very real way  it doesn't matter who made it. The encounter need not be mediated by personal knowledge of the artist, or by what anyone else thinks. We meet the being, the stranger, the presence in the frame or on the stage. And we respond. Not to the history. Not to the back story. (at least not immediately)

We respond to materality. To presence and that aesthetic response connects us strongly to the imaginal realm, the place where dreams are cast and cracked from molds white hot. The place where difficulties become for the moment transparent. Heaviness floats. Time pauses. At it's best, the encounter is visceral, it takes our breath, changes the very internal rhythms by which we walk and talk. It breaks us open, it reveals the hidden, even as it bandages the wound. Yes. Art does that.

Persons who live with mental illness live with two sets of constraints. Those placed upon them by society, and symptomology, and those they place upon themselves. The answer to fear is control, and many people find, by diminishing their lives, taking fewer risks, allowing less unknowns, symptoms fade.  But this is not a strategy for recovery or vigor.

Art, when it's real, is not small. It will not be made small. It won't be polite, restrained, contained. It's a trouble maker, a random stranger, an unpredictable outcome, a look into the void, into the chaos of unfolding possibility. And so, it is the perfect antedote, for a life of constraint, self-imposed, or not...

David Webb- Dinnertime at the Oaks -Acrylic on Canvas

The art in Recovering the Artist isn't interesting because of who made it. It's interesting because it is art. It exists purely for the sensuous encounter, it rattles our cages, tickles our funny bones, raises our pulse rate, breaks open those deep places, just as it did for the artist in the making.

I feel better. How about you?

Recovering the Artist opens Friday November 4th at The Martha Pace Swift Gallery. For information/ or directions, visit the website.

Rewnewed Dorafshan show to dazzle once more Friday Night Liberty


A renewed show awaits viewers Friday October 7th, at Liberty Station's gallery crawl. Shahla has provided some exciting new works to grace our walls for the opening, and the artist will be present for the opening. Several new paintings have been added since the original installation...can you find them all?  

Window- Acrylic on Canvas 2011
c Shahla Dorafshan all rights reserved

My latest love is this new work, "Window." Finished just this week (9/22/11), it bears all the hallmarks of Dorafshan's  best work. Direct, almost confrontational composition for one... The dark depths of the right side of the canvas seem to push the figure toward the viewer, while the strong light  of the left side returns spaciousness to the pose. And as to the figure herself, she exudes a calm energy;
she is not sitting, or posing, but waiting, as if about to rise at the next moment .  Her expression is enigmatic, the slightest of smiles upon her lips, like the one that leads to tears. Her gaze is unfocused- perhaps bearing witness to some half-concealed thought... A bittersweet memory? A secret sorrow?  Come ask her yourself...

This month's show is expected to be well attended, with its sponsorship by the San Diego Union Tribune, which will be printing a "passport" of sorts, to be stamped at each gallery. Completed passports will qualify gallery-goers for a prize drawing at night's end. 

Larry Caveney's "Party Whites" series to open January 7th at the Swift

Artist Larry Caveney is returning his talents to the Martha Pace Swift Gallery with a show that is all about process , transformation and deconstruction. These muscular canvases are really more hanging sculpture than painting, built-up out of sculpted fabric, and the surfaces reworked in depth. An interesting detail about these canvases is that they have shown in the space before. In mid 2008, before the Gallery Space was dedicated or lit, the canvases were already displayed in the hallways of the building, but anyone seeing that show would be hard pressed to recognize the pieces. That is because Caveney has continued to work the surfaces, in a practice of moving forward through the arc of a longer set of processes, applied across a body of work.

The works original pallette of yellows, blues and reds and  became completely obscured through the addition of white paint. Then into these newly pristine topographical landscapes, Caveney began a new series of operations on the canvases adding in process color through collage. 

As the process continues to progress, His latest process involves sanding away image ,
weathering in the traces, in the way that mimics the forces of weathering and erosion
which shapes the world around us. 



Are the Party Whites finished?  Remembering the series original title, "Can't Say" it now seems oddly precient. Already within the show, there are some pieces moving towards new transformations, with the weathering and stripping away technique. However, thanks to careful documentation, we do know where they came from.

Watch the Party White's history and transformation here.

See you at the opening-
Wes