Friday, March 25, 2005

Lalla Essaydi at Howard Yezerski Gallery

LALLA ESSAYDI: Converging Territories
March 18 - April 19, 2005
Opening Reception Saturday March 19, 3:30 – 5:30pm

Howard Yezerski Gallery is proud to announce Converging Territories an exhibition of photographs by Lalla Essaydi. In this series of large format color portraits of Arab women and children Essaydi continues to address the complex reality of Arab female identity from her own unique perspective of personal experience. Returning to an unoccupied family-owned house in Morocco, Essaydi painstakingly covers the space with cloth covered in Islamic calligraphy written in henna. She then paints the clothes and the bodies of the women with the same calligraphy before photographing them in front of the background.


Much of Essaydi’s work is about her cultural identity and the journey that she has undertaken. With a quiet dignity and pride in her culture she deals with complex cultural issues including Western stereotypes of Arab women. “In my art, I wish to present myself through multiple lenses --- as artist, as Moroccan, as Saudi, as traditionalist, as Liberal, as Muslim.”


Essaydi began her art training while living in Saudi Arabia. She attended the L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris in the early 1990’s and then received her BFA from Tufts University in 1999. In 2003 she received her MFA from Tufts University/ The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her work can be found in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, Williams College Museum of Art, The Kodak Museum, The Fries Museum; The Netherlands, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and The Columbus Museum of Art.
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Friday, March 18, 2005

Heidi's Favorites

In the first installation of "Heidi's Favorites":

REBECCA DOUGHTY

Reminiscent of children's storybooks, cartoons and beloved stuffed animals, Rebecca Doughty creates a complex and evocative world featuring a cast of psychologically charged animal characters. Both playfully humorous and strangely dark, her deceptively simple imagery touches upon our joys and fears, our fondest and most painful memories, while exploring the various adventures, journeys, challenges, and predicaments of modern life.

Doughty's work has been exhibited widely in galleries and museums throughout the east coast, including the Allston Skirt Gallery in Boston, the DeCordova Museum, the Fuller Museum, Massachusetts College of Art, Mills Gallery at Boston Center for the Arts, and The Drawing Center in NYC. She has received awards from the Blanche E. Colman Foundation, the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, and the Artists Foundation, Boston, and a “2002 Best Show Award” from the International Association of Art Critics, Boston. Her artwork is included in many permanent collections including the DeCordova Museum, Simmons College, Fidelity Investments, and the Ritz-Carlton, Boston.

  • www.williamscottgallery.com/artists/doughty
  • Birds that make Art!

  • An Odd Bird
  • The Mating Game
  • Resources


  • AMOROUS ARCHITECTURE


    A female bower bird considers her options.

    Scientists know that the amorous architects of the bird world build three basic kinds of bowers: "maypoles," "mats," and "avenues." But only now are they beginning to discover the reasons behind the existence of these different forms. Mat, or platform, bowers are among the simplest: thick pads of plant material ringed with ornaments. One mat-builder, Australia's Tooth-billed catbird, builds what is known as a "circus ring" by arranging silvery leaves around the mat, like the petals of a disheveled flower. The bird constantly removes withered leaves in favor of fresh, shiny replacements. The more ambitious maypole bowers are twig towers built around one or a few saplings in a carefully groomed courtyard. The Golden bower bird even perches on a roofed bridge suspended between towers. And four other kinds of maypole builders surround their creations with lawns of moss. Avenue bowers, such as the Satin bower bird's, featured on NATURE, have two close-set parallel walls of sticks that sometimes arch over to create a tunnel. In a rare example of a bird using a tool, Satin and Regent bower birds may use a leaf or twig to paint the inner walls of their bowers with a stain made from chewed plants, charcoal, and saliva.


    A bower bird builds his "bachelor pad."

    Gerald Borgia, a University of Maryland bower bird expert, believes the different kinds of bowers all serve essentially the same function: to make visiting female bower birds feel comfortable by protecting them from overeager males. Courtship rituals, he notes, almost always involve males and females standing with the bower between them, like a fence. In the case of the maypole-building Macgregor's bower bird, for instance, the courting pair warily circles the central tower. Only when the female chooses to stop and allow the male to approach can mating occur. "The bower probably started as a protective device," Borgia concludes. "It allows females to get close enough to get a good look without feeling threatened. The male that builds something that makes the females feel most comfortable is likely to see more females." Borgia has also detected a relationship between bower type and intensity of the male's display. The male Spotted bower bird, for instance, builds a wide straw wall and performs a relatively energetic display full of dance steps and dramatic poses. In contrast, species building smaller barriers have toned-down displays that are probably less threatening to females.

    Other researchers have noticed a link between the showiness of a bower bird's plumage and the intricacy of its bower: in general, the drabber the bird, the fancier the bower will be. Some believe this reflects an evolutionary choice: drab birds compensate for their dull appearances by building flashier nests.
    Borgia has also noticed that bower complexity sometimes varies with topography. For instance, species living on hilltops build more modest bowers than those living in valleys. The explanation, he says, may be the amount of light that penetrates the forest in the two kinds of habitat. Ridge tops are often shrouded in clouds, allowing only dim light. Hence, to best show off their decorations, bower birds living here may build more open bowers to make best use of available light. In contrast, light is less of an issue in the valleys, so bower birds can afford to have more elaborate roofed structures.

    Surprisingly, Borgia has found that bower birds that build similar-shaped bowers aren't necessarily closely related to each other. Using a DNA fingerprinting technique, he and his colleagues drew a family tree for bower birds that showed their evolutionary relationships. It suggested that species that evolved at different times have independently learned to build similar kinds of bowers, possibly because they faced similar kinds of environmental conditions.

    But close observation can reveal important differences in the seemingly-similar structures, Borgia says. Where one species may build its bower from the bottom up, for instance, the other may start a similar structure at the top and build down. Similarly, some species put the entrance to their bowers on the uphill side, while similar structures built by other species face downhill. Nobody knows whether young bower birds learn such practices from their elders, or whether they are encoded in their genes at birth. It is a much-debated question that Borgia hopes to answer in future studies by rearing native males in captivity with and without mature tutors.

  • http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/bowerbird/amorous.html

  • Note: This was a very cool PBS special! Makes us feel a little less special huh? We aren't the only species interested in purely aesethic creations.

    David Hilliard at Jackson Fine Art

    David Hilliard, one of my favorite photographers will be opening a new exhibit "David Hilliard Embellish", tonight at Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta GA. The exhibit will be on view March 18 through April 30. If you are going to be in the area I highly suggest checking it out!

  • www.jacksonfineart.com/home.html
  • Indepth Arts News:

    Indepth Arts News:
    "Lalla Essaydi: Converging Territories"
    2005-01-06 until 2005-02-26
    Laurence Miller Gallery
    New York, NY, USA United States of America


    Laurence Miller Gallery takes pleasure in presenting Converging Territories, the first New York one-person show of Moroccan-born artist Lalla Essaydi. Converging Territories is a series of large-format color portraits of women and children taken in a large, unoccupied, family-owned house in Morocco, the same house that as a young woman Essaydi was confined to for a month at a time whenever she transgressed her permissible roles.

    Revisiting that house, Essaydi creates a mysterious and timeless space with a cloth background, entirely covered with Islamic calligraphy that she herself has written in henna. She then painstakingly covers the women and children with henna before photographing them in front of the cloth. Essaydi's intent is to explore cultural patterns within both Arab and Western societies, to reach beyond stereotypes, and to convey her own experience as an Arab woman. She states: "Through these images I am able to suggest the complexity of Arab female identity - as I have known it - and the tension between hierarchy and fluidity at the heart of Arab culture."

    Representative of the show is Converging Territories #21, a four-part sequence showing the progression from childhood to womanhood and from public to private identity. Converging Territories #29 shows a single woman, completely hidden except for one foot covered in henna, about to step into the background. Converging Territories #10 shows the artist from behind, seated on the henna-covered cloth while writing in calligraphy. After a childhood spent in Morocco , Lalla Essaydi spent many years in Saudi Arabia , where she began her basic art education. She attended the L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris during the early 1990's, then received her BFA from Tufts University in 1999. In 2003, she received her MFA from Tufts University/The School of the Museum of Fine Arts , Boston .

    Essaydi's photographs are currently on exhibit at The Art Institute of Chicago in About Face, in NAZAR: Photographs from the Arab World, presented by the Noorderlicht Foundation, Holland , and at Williams College Museum in In the Company of Women. The DeCordova Museum in Lincoln , Massachusetts , will exhibit a selection from Converging Territories in their Annual Exhibition this summer. In conjunction with the current exhibition at Laurence Miller Gallery, powerHouse Books will publish an illustrated monograph under the same title, and Aperture will publish a portfolio of images in February.

    IMAGE
    Converging Territories # 9, 2004
    33 1/4 x 40 3/4"
    chromogenic print

    Tuesday, March 15, 2005

    BOSTON-ISM by BIG RED BOSTON-ISM by Big Red and the Boston Community

    THE -ISMS WON'T HELP US NOW: BOSTON'S ART COMMUNITY TAKES PART IN THE DISCUSSION
    by HEIDI MARSTON

    One of the reasons we have so many "-isms" to talk about artwork is because 9 times out of 10 we are trying to give enough information to someone or a group of people so that they can have some kind of tangible experience. When I think about going to galleries in Boston I don't usually find myself with a lack of vocabulary to describe what I see or a way to experience it. However, there are many artists and galleries that challenge the notion the art can be described enough to give someone the impression that they have experienced it themselves. Recently at the Gallery @ Green Street the local artist and ICA Prize winner Douglas Weathersby "exhibited" his Cleaning Projects: an ongoing exploration of site-specific installations that are the result of everyday rituals like cleaning and home repair.

    Now from this description alone, one may find it hard to have an idea of what it could be. I would describe it as one part performance, one part installation, one part cleaning and the result is a visual cornucopia of "stuff" that looks like sculptural, photographic, documentation-like interior remodeling. Most of Weathersby's work--not unlike the cleaning he performs--is extremely impermanent, living on only as long as the optimal conditions allow or until the dust is swept up or disturbed. Because of its ephemeral nature, many of his works are documented and mediated through a variety of photographic and digital means. His exhibition at the ICA included a combination of video and live-feed images of works that Weathersby created in the museum workrooms in addition to a dust drawing created in the gallery space. One of the things that I really like about Weatherby's work is that when you walk by the space where he is working and you aren't sure if you should interrupt him but curiosity can get the better of you. It can invite a type of discussion that would be hard to have about a series of paintings hung in a row, simply by the nature of working with an everyday activity like sweeping. At his gallery talk many of the questions were about the response people have had or what people asked him when they came in, that alone is unusual since most gallery talks are about an artists method to working with their medium or what artists inspire them. The dialogue around Weathersby's work incorporated the usual 'hows' and 'whys' but it also included 'what did other people think'.

    The Gallery @ Green Street, in its 6 years in Boston, has shown work that blurs the boundaries between mediums, forces its audience to engage with the art community in new and interesting ways and allows gallery goers to have fun at the same time. By showing work like Weathersby's Cleaning Projects and other performance, photographic, installation type work like the 1/2 Asian Portrait Studio, (where people in the community came and had their portrait taken then the portraits were hung in the wall continually throughout the duration of the show), the elitism of the art in Boston has become obsolete. More people are coming to galleries like Gallery @ Green Street and the Thayer Street galleries than ever before, why? Maybe it is because work like Weathersby's is allowing the community to take part in the dialogue around new work instead of the discussion going on without audience participation. On a very positive note it seems that the existing structure of the art community in Boston has enough elasticity to expand and incorporate the work of artists like Douglas Weathersby, thanks to Gallery @ Green Street, the ICA, others like Allston Skirt, Samson Projects, the Mills Gallery, while still encouraging more to come.

    For the other response articles:
    http://www.bigredandshiny.com/cgi-bin/frameset.pl?&issue=issue17§ion=article&article=RED_ISM_SCHISM_021127
    http://www.bigredandshiny.com/cgi-bin/frameset.pl?&issue=issue17§ion=article&article=RED_ISM_SCHISM_021127
    http://www.bigredandshiny.com/cgi-bin/frameset.pl?&issue=issue17§ion=article&article=RED_ISM_SCHISM_021127
    http://www.bigredandshiny.com/cgi-bin/frameset.pl?&issue=issue17§ion=article&article=RED_ISM_SCHISM_021127
    http://www.bigredandshiny.com/cgi-bin/frameset.pl?&issue=issue17§ion=article&article=RED_ISM_SCHISM_021127

    Monday, March 14, 2005

    Heidi M. Marston

    JOSH WINER @ CLIFFORD SMITH
    by HEIDI M. MARSTON

    Josh Winer’s show at Clifford Smith Gallery exhibits 30” x 40 “ C–prints of piles of sand and gravel. The photographs, shot with a 4x5 camera and mounted on aluminum, are reminiscent of western traditional landscape: but with a twist. When you first enter the gallery, images of what could be sand dunes in the Mohave Desert expand across the wall. Upon closer inspection of each image, the illusion of timeless traditional landscape breaks down.

    Winer constructs images such as 42° 14’ 36N, 071° 02’ 59W by drawing on the visual language used by landscape photographers exemplified by Ansel Adams. However, while traditional landscape can be viewed as sublimely beautiful and ageless, Winer’s photographs are all in a process of transition. Winer also titles his work by their GPS (Global Positioning System) location, unlike Adams who titled his work to emphasize the romantic (such as Winter Sunrise from Lone Pine). This romantic notion of landscape is one without death or decay and simultaneously without people. For example, Adams’ image Mt. Robson could be described as showing the beauty of “untouched nature” without flaws or destruction. Have you ever been to a national park without port-o-potties or a dead raccoon in the road? Traditional types of landscape exist in denial of the unavoidable progress of industry and encroaching population growth. Winer’s images point directly at the signs of capitalism and consumerism missing from previous landscape tradition. He does this by showing signs of humanity such as footprints and tire tracks. Winer’s sand piles reflect the human desire to construct our own landscape, to mold it and move it into place.
    However, Winer’s work does not lose the sense of sublime found in traditional landscape. By filling the frame from edge to edge, Winer creates a sense of being engulfed by the image as if the sand could slide off of the wall in front of you. Unlike the mountains of early landscape photographs that are often in the distance, Winer places the viewer at the foot of the piles of sand blocking the viewer from a wider point of view. Adams’ photographs would have had a river flowing where Winer has tire tracks pressing the dirt into place. Looking at Josh Winer’s images makes me think of the many years of piles we will have to look at driving by the Big Dig everyday. That ever-changing landscape will go on, and on, and on. Maybe after seeing Winner’s work we can develop an appreciation for it instead of just frustration.

    Winer’s work references many other landscape traditions like Katsushika Hokusai’s Japanese prints, 36 views of Mt. Fuji. Towering in the background of the image South Wind, Clear Weather is a mountain but there are no other visual references in which to locate the landscape. Without the titles of Winer’s pieces we would have no frame of reference in which to locate his landscapes. Both seem to be visually describing change and landscape as reflection of life and progress while showing the constant of the landscape as well. In Hokusai’s prints Mt. Fuji is the constant, in Winer’s photographs knowing that the piles will change is the only constant. In Hokusai’s image, Mt Fuji from Ejiri, there are people walking along the path and the wind is blowing and the people are fighting to hang onto their possessions. Winer’s images have a similar sense of tension of impending and inevitable change. Winer’s photographs have been given an exact geographical location but we do not know how long it will be there. His photographs have a feeling of temporality that gives them life. Winer’s landscapes exist for a short period of time and then trucks come and move them into a new location and a new form. They become a new landscape with a new life, resulting in a new image. This ability to express change gives Winer’s work a sense of reality that can also be found in the prints of Hokusai, but it is harder to find in an Ansel Adams photograph. How can Adams’ images have any life when they insist upon never changing? Ansel Adams can give us nostalgic images of places that are untouched and Winer’s photographs have the ability to show a more tangible relationship between landscape and the modern world. Temporary as these sand piles might be we have the chance to experience them through Winer’s photographs, and when you are standing in the gallery looking at Winer’s work, think about what the GPS coordinate for Clifford Smith Gallery is!



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    This article is available as a PDF.