Albuquerque/Santa Fe Museum Tour

For me, seeing art is a key element of any trip. I hadn’t been to New Mexico before, so this recent trip gave me the opportunity to view a sample of the art offerings in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

Albuquerque had a small but quite interesting art museum, across the street from the museum of natural history, and next to that tourist trap known as “old town.” Imagine SF’s Fisherman’s Wharf with native American pottery and Route 66 mugs. Albuquerque also has the National Atomic Museum, which I was fascinated by, unfortunately my timing was bad and I didn’t get there.

The exhibit that really spoke to me at the Albuquerque Art Museum was the Albuquerque Now – Winter show (1/24-4/18) which featured contemporary artists with an Albuquerque connection. Mary Tsiongas’s piece Vanish consisted of a monitor (32”?) in an ornate gold frame (at the left), showing an idealized river valley (by Bierstadt) with a small herd of deer and mountains in the background. The artist walks into the scene, stretches and waves her arms above her head. In response, the background quickly fades out, and then gradually reappears as the artist looks on. She looks back at the viewer, as if saying “if we would stop interfering, nature would recover.” I thought it was subtle and lovely.

Also on display was a famous news photo of then President G.W. Bush meeting with President-elect Obama in oval office at the White House by Eric Draper. Seeing a large, clear print of this photo for the first time, I was mesmerized by the symmetry of it. Another piece I really enjoyed was a large surreal oil painting by Scott Greene called Ship Shape (2010, Oil on canvas over panel). In what I assume was meant as commentary on the state of world, a galleon bearing symbols of Western consumerism sails wildly off the edge of a waterfall.

I had one afternoon in Santa Fe, hardly time to do it justice. Santa Fe has made a big investment in the arts, and walking though the snow from the train station to the central plaza, galleries and studios were everywhere. Near the central plaza was the beautiful St. Francis Cathedral, where we watched as 29 couples of all ages marched down the aisle toward marriage (apparently the thing to do on Valentine’s weekend…). Across the street from the St. Francis was the Institute of American Indian Arts. The main galleries of the IAIA were closed for roof repairs, but their museum store filled with art, jewelry and pottery by local artists was worth a look.

About three blocks from the plaza in a small adobe style building was the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum (her former home, outside Santa Fe at Abiqui, has been converted into a museum and research center). The museum’s permanent collection had on display many intriguing works by O’Keeffe that I had never seen in person before. For example, they had many of her works in pastel (such as Pederal, 1945, Water Lily, 1921 and The Black Place, 1945). I was struck by the way the pastel forced her to adapt from her normally smooth, blended style to layers of color with a more illustrative quality. Also interesting were The Cottonwoods (1956), a pair of undulating forest scenes reminiscent of Cezanne’s. In the largest room, I was captivated by three contrasting works placed next to each other at the end of the gallery; A Street, 1926, flanked by The Beyond, 1972 and Apple Family 2, 1923. A Street was the only “urban” painting on display, a view down the middle of street with non-descript grey and brown buildings rising in steep verticals on both sides of the canvas. The contrast between the muted pallete and vertical of A Street with the calm horizon painted in rich blues and greys (The Beyond, one of her last unassisted works), and the lively reds in a still life of apples (Apple Family 2) was quite striking.

Also on view at the O’Keeffe were works by the contemporary painter Susan Rothenberg. Known for her abstract horse paintings (such as Cabin Fever,1976, shown on the left), it was interesting to see a wider range of her work. In one series of paintings, she depicts over head views of situations in nature she came upon while riding her horse. Dogs Killing Rabbit, a monumental oil painting from 1991, makes use of wild brush strokes and surface texture to capture the violence of the moment. She is also able to harness and internalize this energy for more meditative pieces, such as her Folded Buddha (1987-88).

After a day full of galleries and window shopping, we were very happy to discover the Margaritas at the Del Charro Saloon (corner of W. Alameda & Don Gaspar). We got on a nice buzz at this warm and friendly place, and it greatly enhanced the train ride back to Albuquerque.

SWTX PCA/ACA 2010 - Albuquerque

I’ve just returned from the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association’s 31^st annual meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This conference, like the other PCA/ACA conferences I’ve attended, had an amazing range of topics you’d never think would get the full academic treatment. There must have been 20 different sessions on the Twilight phenomenon, for example. The entire Whedon-verse (Buffy, Angel, Firefly, Serenity, Dollhouse) was analyzed every which way, along with every other pop culture or American culture/history topic you can imagine, such as advertising, material culture, film criticism & theory, indigenous studies, The Grateful Dead, Harry Potter, food & culture, all types of sci-fi and fantasy, gender issues, etc…

I was speaking at a session of the American Culture section on the evolution of the Arm & Hammer emblem, part of my ongoing labor graphics project. The other presenters in my group were all really good. The speakers included Andrew Harrington (The House That Cultural Capitol Built: The Saga of the New York Yankee Stadium), Ellen Dornan from the New Mexico Humanities Council (Atlas of Historic New Mexico Maps: Cultural Identity Through Cartography, an on-line interactive project) and Michael Nagle (U of Conn), who was stranded in Connecticut by the stormy weather, but presented long-distance by phone and e-mail (That Magnificent Land of Sunshine, Health, and Wealth: How Early Twentieth Century US Companies Sold Cuba’s Isle of Pines). Thanks the the chair Kelli Shapiro (Brown U) for coordinating (and inviting me!).

This conference had a really active comics and animation section. I heard a good group of papers in the Batman section, particularly Symbol and Color in The Dark Knight Returns: Visual Depictions of Relationality Between Batman and Robin by Andrew Bahlmann (U of N, Las Vegas) and Forever Batman: Neil Gaiman, Identity, and the Compensations of Eternal Recurrence by Brandon Kempner (New Mexico Highlands University). I also enjoyed Serial Pleasure: The Original Flash Gordon by Patrick Enright (Northeastern State U) and No Future Shock Here: The Jetsons, Happy Tech and the Patriarchy by Brian Cowlishaw (also NSU). Other highlights (to me, anyway) were Cinematic Cross-Cultural Collaboration: Alec Morgan and Australian Aboriginal Communities by Davinia Thornley (U of Otago, New Zealand) and Atlantis on our Minds: Through the Stargate and Under the Sea to Find a Lost World by Beth Petitjean (Villanova). There were also mumblers who read their papers like it was their first book report, and others that were so pretentious and full of themselves that I just wanted to slap them.

I’m guessing that about a quarter of the people who planned to come to the conference that live on the east coast couldn’t make it, due either to the blizzards that hit the east coast or the freak storms that hit the southeast (from Dallas to Atlanta and Florida). It was still a good turnout though, and the people who were there were all enthused about the material and actively participated in discussion.

The Hyatt at Albuquerque Civic Center, where the conference was based, was very nice and grateful to have the business. They bent over backward to help. The hotel was just a couple blocks from the restaurant row called Central Avenue, which is actually Route 66. Generally, I found everyone I met in Albuquerque to be warm and chatty. I also made it to some of the museums in ALBQ and in Santa Fe, but I will post about that separately.

Photo on left by Kim Munson, 2010. Cell snap of mountains looking out the window of my room at the Hyatt over the Albuquerque Court House.

The Bodies Are Back: Comics and Gender Explored at Intersection for the Arts

The Bodies Are Back by Margaret Harrison at Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco.

Wed, Feb 10 - Sat, Mar 27 | 12pm - 5pm | FREE

"Margaret Harrison, renowned British artist and pioneer of feminist art, revisits the themes of her very early work exploring notions of the human body as an object of sexuality, consumption, and gaze. The Bodies Are Back consists of works on paper that Harrison produced in the late 1960's/early 1970's displayed alongside new works created for this show. In 1971, Harrison's work was instantly met with controversy and antagonism (the London police shut down her first solo exhibition the day after it opened feeling that its contents were too controversial). This controversy caused Harrison to abandon the issues and themes of this series. Now an established artist with work in the permanent collections of major international institutions, she is critically re-engaging with this body of work, continuing the dialogue that she began four decades ago." (more examples of this work here).

Sometime ago Intersection's curator/program director Kevin Chen gave me a peek at his image checklist for this show. It was fascinating to see so many (usually) macho superheroes re-imagined in this way. Anyone studying gender issues in pop culture should check it out (artist bio on Intersection site). New reviews: SF Chronicle/Gate, Bay Area Reporter.

My Zoo Experience: Thoughts About On-line Networks

Many people I know are giving a lot of thought to the ways that on-line social networking sites (Facebook, YouTube, etc) have changed the way people communicate with each other and how they represent themselves when they do it. The massive amount of imagery available on-line isn’t new topic in art, of course. Immediately coming to mind are Deborah Oropallo’s Guise series (this is her Helle’s Belle © 2007) and Elliot Anderson’s Average Landscapes, both of which reused images found on the web (exhibited at the DeYoung in 2007) and Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen’s astounding digital text piece Listening Post (video of London installation, was part of YBCA’s Dark Matter exhibit, also in 2007).

Exploring these issues of self representation on-online to one’s virtual “friends,” is Christine Webster’s recent piece Transitions (just closed at The Lab). The work consists of a bank of flat screen monitors showing pairs of headshots of people being interviewed in China, the UK and here in San Francisco surrounded by wall projections of images gleaned from the interviewee’s Facebook pages. Artist Clare Szydlowski, who knew the background of the project, told me the stories of how these specific people came to be interviewed, and why they responded to each other the way they did. After hearing their stories, it was fascinating to watch the thread of projected images of families, friends, holidays, parties and other events and wonder why the interviewee choose that particular image and what they were trying to project about themselves.

I have recently been immersed in an on-line exploration of my own. While I use Facebook, Slideshare, LinkedIn and other networks somewhat regularly, I had never been really interested in on-line games. Right around Thanksgiving, an old friend sent me an invitation to try a Facebook game called Zoo World. When I put that innocent looking, big-eyed penguin in “my zoo,” I had no idea that I would be jumping into an obsessive interactive experience. The object of the game is buy (with mostly virtual money) a collection of about 150 animals of different species, various decorations, food and shopping kiosks (hot dogs, carousel, etc…) and that will enable you to pass though 42 levels of various tasks. While there were many different aspects to the game, of interest in this discussion were the ways that the game maximized Facebook’s networking capabilities. Each animal needed a friend assigned as a “zookeeper,” and to raise the value of your zoo and increase the amount of money the zoo was bringing in (to buy animals, etc), a large network of people was needed. Very few people have enough of their own real-world friends to do this, and it’s common practice to add other players found in chat forums dedicated to the zoo game. Eventually, aside from a small core group of real-world friends involved in the game, I was interacting with 120 random people from all over the world. I was fascinated with the way relationships were formed with strangers, and how the community decided on netiquette.

I was blown away by how little people read, or take time to understand anything remotely complicated. The game’s main help page has a running open chat room where players ask for help and offer themselves as zookeepers. Right next to this on the same page is a FAQ that answers many common questions about the game in very straightforward language. Apparently, nobody reads it, as every other question was repeating one answered on the FAQ. The worst one, the one that stunned me, was the number of people who couldn’t figure out what the word “unique” meant (as in buy 10 unique animals). Duh. Literally 1 in 15 would ask this question.

The way the community approved or disapproved of various types of interactions and how the disapproval was enforced (flaming, blocking, exclusion, reporting) was very interesting. The process of trust building and credentialing within the community though groups and chats was very important, as a sort of group hierarchy formed of people who were smart, serious players who would network together to help each other and distribute any perks, cheats or new information. Maybe this will be another paper someday.

Husband Marc will be writing on some of these issues sometime soon, and he will be teaching a class at the law school this summer about legal issues in new technology, including cloud computing, participation in virtual worlds (2^nd Life) and in massive multiplayer games like World of Warcraft. I’d also like to recommend a great interview with Jeben Berg, Creative Director of YouTube in the Feb 2010 edition of Juxtapoz by Alexander Tarrant (unfortunately not available on-line without a digital subscription, here's his blog on Juxtapoz).

Spring Conferences

The art-icons-comics blog has been taking a little rest over the holidays... more to come soon. In the meantime, I'd like to announce a couple presentations at conferences scheduled for the spring: In mid-February, I'll be presenting on my research into the origins of the arm & hammer emblem at the Pop Culture/American Culture Association's Southwestern conference in Albuqueque, NM. At the end of March, I'll be presenting on the Comic Art Show (Whitney, 1983) at the PCA/ACA national conference in St. Louis.
Hope everyone had a happy holiday season!

See Kim's Art at the Annual Postcard Show

It's time for the annual Postcard show at The Lab (2948 16th Street in the old Labor Temple building in the Mission). Every year The Lab rings their gallery with bins filled with small artworks by dozens of local artists ranging from $1 - $50, to give people access to inexpensive original art for holiday gifts (or whatever).

This year I've gotten into veggie drawings and watercolors, and will have those plus some other graphics, like the floral collage on the left. I get so busy with other things, that I really appreciate this chance to get some small pieces of my own out there. The show opens the evening of 12/4 and goes through the weekend.

Documentary - 24 Pages

24 Pages is a 15 minute documentary that follows what happens during 24 Hour Comic Day, an international challenge where an artist of any background must complete a 24 page comic, written, drawn and inked, within 24 hours. Filmed October 3 & 4, 2009 in San Francisco at the Comic Outpost and Mission Comics and Art by Gary Buechler (co-owner of Comic Outpost).