The Three Legged Horse

Maura McHugh, Three legged horse #3, work in progress - video

Tonight I went to the art gallery in USD (University of San Diego) for the closing reception of Maura McHugh’s thesis.

Maura McHugh presented three large paintings, two she made earlier this year, and one she painted on the spot in three sessions of three hours or so. What struck me when I entered the gallery was the strong presence of “Abstract Expressionism forces”. In her thesis titled: “Effortlessness and the Unintended”, she discusses about her influences and there is no surprise to find Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline within the group of artists who influenced her work. She has a fascination for horses and although she starts working in a complete abstract way, at a certain point she looks for forms to emerge, and those forms are very likely to be horses. She does not yet know the exact titles of the three paintings she presents here, but she is thinking of using “Three legged horse #1”, “Three legged horse #2” and “Three legged horse #3”. The three paintings have a good energy, they are strong and generous. In the middle of the single room, she made a sculpture (looking like a horse) with the material she used to paint and to protect the floor and the walls of the Gallery when she was working on “Three Legged horse #3”. In the exhibition there is also a video showing “Three legged horse #3” in progress and this is very interesting to watch.

I saw some good friends and we had a good time together!

The Pacific Ocean

Pacific Beach this morning - from the pier

This morning I went to Pacific Beach. I wanted to see the ocean. I do that sometimes. It’s only a few minutes drive from the house. I was there around 11:00. I walked from Garnet Avenue to the Crystal Pier. There were not many people: two fishermen, a couple of lovers. A few pigeons were walking along the fence. The pier was gently rocking because of the swell. The sky was very clear. On the right of the pier some surfers were calmly waiting for good waves, sitting on their boards. I stayed there, looking around and then looking west. There is no land for thousands of miles in that direction…

Then I walked to the beach. The noise of the waves was loud, covering even the screams of the birds. The wind, coming from the South, was chilly. The tide was going down, leaving on the beach long and thin streams of white foam, and piles of dark and amber seaweeds. The wet sand was reflecting the light and the whole landscape was bright, almost white. A few people were walking on the beach. The wind, the light, the waves and the mind blowing scale of the landscape were powerful and impressive. And I was completely at peace.

The Ogre

Last night my youngest son declared he wanted to be Mulgarath (the ogre in The Spiderwick Chronicles). Mulgarath is pretty spiky and looks like an old tree. My son immediately started taping Lego elements on his pajamas. He chose a lot of pointy pieces and he was done in no time. After that he said he was ready to hear the story of Spiderwick, sat on the couch and waited for my husband to come and read the story to him and his brother. He kept his costume for dinner. Then I proposed to him to change his pajamas to go to bed and we kept the other pajamas with all the Lego pieces taped on them.

This morning he was playing with his Lego before to go to school. When I said it was time to go, he came and asked me to tape “claws” on his fingers. He found - on a big Lobster Lego he has - claw-like pieces, dark red, two inches long each. And here I was, at 8:20, trying not to think about the clock, taping the claws, one by one on his little fingers. When we were done, he was ready to go, with a huge smile on his face. At school, the claws were removed promptly after I left but he asked me to re-tape them immediately after school. Which I did.

In the morning

in the backyard

The canyon bloom is increasing, day after day. Right now there are a lot of yellow flowers. Four hummingbirds came this morning in the backyard hovering above the bright orange paradise flowers. In the quietude of the house, I worked on some new images on the computer, looking for some interesting encounters between plants, faces, landscapes, trying a lot of combinations. I am wondering about the amount of images I work on which will never be either printed or painted...

I am getting there

Ingrid Betancourt, 36"x48", 2008 (detail)

In about three months it is the opening of my solo exhibition at the San Diego Art Institute.

All the work is pretty much ready. I still have to decide between some pieces. The space will not be huge and I don’t want the walls to look full. I looked at all the pieces together, paintings and prints, and it works. But although the work is very recent, it has different moods: some pieces have more layers than others, some are more transparent than others some have text and some have not. There are people but also a big empty landscape. My family and some friends are there and so is Ingrid Betancourt, the woman kidnapped by the FARC, who is still a captive somewhere in the Colombian forest. Some people are recognizable, some are silhouettes…

I am very excited to see all those pieces together in a show!

Matt Wedel: Polar bears, cat and landscape

Entrance of the gallery

Matt Wedel: polar bears, cat and landscape
Spacecraft studio, North Park, San Diego.

Last night I went to Spacecraft in North Park. I am always very interested by what I see there. They only present a few pieces. And the space, although not huge and divided in two rooms, feels always good.

I am greeted at the entrance by a gentle silvery monster: “Lion”, a big ceramic piece with six heads, and the cheerful and strange song by Ringo Star “Octopus’s Garden” which immediately makes me feel great!

Flower tree (detail)

Then I discover the other works, all ceramics, and two gouaches on paper. First a big colorful flower tree and then a much smaller tree. They make me think about cacti and succulents but they are something else too because no cacti or succulent look like that.

Matt Wedel with "Polar bears"

In the other room I am immediately attracted by “Polar bears”, a very sweet piece, with two polar bears almost hugging each other, obviously they are not fighting. The white of their fur is very milky and soft. Their feet are on a piece of blue iceberg.

Another little tree is in this room too, and two little gouaches on paper pinned on the wall. I am very excited to see this work, I feel like a child, it makes me happy and warms my heart. I think that work is very true and very personal. It feels fresh and generous and at the same time very strong. I want to come back with my children, they have to see it. I talk to Christopher Puzio; he is very enthusiastic about Matt Wedel’s work, his eyes sparkle when he talks, Matt is lucky to have someone who believes so much in his work. I can feel a strong relationship and I love that. He introduces me to Matt Wedel. His attitude is relaxed with no ostentation, I can see his determination, he is soft spoken and attentive. I say I like the picture on the invitation but the piece is not here and he says he chose the image because he likes that piece, even if it is not in the show. He talks about the inspiration he finds in landscapes, cacti and succulents, how he transforms all that to go somewhere else.

I do not wish to compare to other artists, to find the influences, I am just there, enjoying what I am seeing, the gallery is full with good vibes and that’s all that counts.

Thank you Matt Wedel!

Seeing Language @ UCSD art gallery

In the gallery, before the talk

Art Gallery, Mandeville Center, UCSD (University of California San Diego). Exhibition “In the Beginning”. With Liz Kotz, art historian; Kim McConnel, painter, teacher at UCSD, and Stephen Hepworth, curator of the exhibition.

This talk examines how language as a visual medium has been and continues to be interpreted within the gallery space as reflected in the current exhibition at the University Art Gallery.

I could see the exhibition one more time before the talk started. There were around thirty people there, mostly students. We walked around and stopped in front of certain pieces during the talk.

In introduction, Stephen Hepworth said he wanted a very generous show, a visual show. He talked about “Another World is Possible”, the piece by Mark Titchner. “Another world is possible” is a slogan from World Social Forum. This is the slogan of the year. Titchner is very interested in slogans. He reworks them on the computer. His vision is futuristic and retro at the same time. Liz Kotz talks about the 60s and the 70s: in the conceptual work there was a text-image practice. The words came in from the world of music. John Cage started to use language by the late 50s. At the time lots of artists were using text in their works.

In the 60s, artists had no rules; they were intensely collaborating with each other: movie makers, writers, painters…

Stephen Hepworth talks about the comeback of a very visual art. Artists work with their computer a lot but end to paint on canvas. They come to that culture of media as much as they come to art history. They are moving away from technology and coming back to something more handmade.

I completely relay to that because I use the computer all the time when I am transforming my photos and then framing the images, layering them, trying colors. But there is a pleasure to transfer the image from the computer to the canvas. And even if I work in parallel images which are meant to be printed, I really like to think an image as more than a print.

Stephen Hepworth talks about Peter Davis's work: it encourages you to read, you try to find a way but ultimately you cannot follow what you are reading because your eyes are bouncing. The work is interesting because when you see it you know that it took a huge amount of time to make. On the opposite wall, the work by Bob and Roberta Smith (Bob and Roberta Smith is the pseudonym of British artist Patrick Brill), on the contrary, is done quickly. Smith who has crafted a very eccentric persona, refers to Agitprop in his practice. He finds the timber in dumpsters; he uses a very cheap paint. His work contrasts also nicely with Monique Prieto’s, in the same room.

Stephen Hepworth talking about Fiona Banner's work

About Fiona Banner’s work, Liz Kotz says she does not understand the frame – why is it so massive? Kim McConnel finds that the drawing of the figure would be actually much more economical. The piece is the description of a figure but there is no image per se. There is a background text which takes the whole space and a foreground sentence on top of it, with much bigger letters. Liz Kotz says she is not sure she is interested by the foreground as much as she is interested by the background. And Kim McConnel agrees that the piece is overstated and shows on the opposite wall a piece which he likes because it is understated. It has his roots in Baldessari’s work but has its own personality.

They talk about more works, especially in the last - and small - room where they considered three works at the same time: Dominic McGill’s pencil drawing “Pick up the gun”, Tamari Demaree’s little suspended flags “I felt your lips” and Fernando Pintado’s Conte and watercolor on paper pinned on the wall. They talk about their obsessive engagement. They see a direct reference to Ellsworth Kelly in Tamari’s work and multiple references to the 60s in the three works.

It was really dark when I went outside and I was very absorbed by the talk. I did not remember exactly where my car was parked and I got lost… I walked around. At a certain point there was a kind of a small flea market. Also some students were selling hot food they had prepared, each of them sitting behind a little folding table with a camping stove, a cooking pot and some foam bowls and plastic spoons. I finally asked for some help because I could remember the name of a building close to where I parked… Finally, after I walked through darks woods and barely lighted paths, I found my car.

UCSD is a huge campus and parking there is a nightmare but I am very happy about the evening!

Tidepools

The other day we went to the tidepools in Point Loma. The tide was going down, leaving all sorts of animals and plants for a few hours in holes full of water. It is quite magic to walk on the rocks and to look for “things” to observe. It was not hot so the water stayed cool and the animals were not too fast to hide under the rocks and the seaweeds. We saw a lot of mollusks, anemones, and hermit crabs. We walked slowly and were very attentive. We saw an octopus but it quickly disappeared.

Then we spotted a quite striking starfish. I never saw one like that before. It was larger than my hand, laying on a rock, in a few inches of water. My son was fascinated and so was I: the starfish had little blue bumps with a pink center all over its back! We gently touched it, it was soft. We saw its hundreds of white tube feet moving slowly, as if it was ready to leave but it stayed there, and we stared at its beautiful colors for a long moment.

When we go to the tidepools, we never know what we will find but we always have beautiful surprises.

The Namesake

In the studio, work in progress

Yesterday my husband Kyle and I spent the evening in the garage which I use as my studio. A few days ago he started reading for us “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri - who wrote “Interpreter of maladies” which Kyle offered me when it came out and which I adored. The nights are warmer and it is the time of the year when it is nice again to spend time in the evening in the studio. We stayed there together, him reading and me painting.

I listened to that arrowing story about exile, being away from the family and trying to adapt to another culture. Ashima and Ahoke, a couple from Calcutta who comes to the U.S. have a child and they name him Gogol after one of Ashoke’s favorite Russian authors. “Read all the Russians, and then reread them,” his grandfather had said. “They will never fail you”.

Jhumpa Lahiri has a very touching way to describe everyday life situations. The words are delicate although the story which is unfolding is heartbreaking. While listening I was working on a portrait of Kyle and I. It is still the background and because I proceed by layers, there is nobody on the canvas yet. But it is moving to listen to the story of that couple, to listen to Kyle who reads a story to us and to paint something related to our story together.

And I really like to listen to Kyle’s voice! I cannot wait to hear the next chapter…

Innocence is Questionable

Innocence is Questionable – California Center for the Arts, Escondido Museum. Exhibition of the six emerging artists recipients of the San Diego Art Prize in 2008:
Yvonne Venegas
Ernest Silva
Jean Lowe
Iana Quesnell
Raul Guerrero
May-Ling Martinez

Saturday night I went to the opening of “Innocence is Questionable” in Escondido. First of all, I want to say how much I like the place. I feel good in that space and although it is very big, the way it is divided is inviting for a nice walk. I really wanted to go to see the exhibition because I did not see all the exhibitions at L Street Fine Art in 2007, where all the artists in this exhibition had a show.

I start to walk through the biggest space, and I am very attracted by four really big paintings by Jean Lowe. The titles are: Landscape (discount store), Landscape (corridor), Landscape (bus station), landscape (casino). Very colorful and powerful! These paintings of “popular venues of suburban America” are surprisingly enjoyable. I continue to the adjacent room which is completely occupied by a “mixed media installation empire style” by the same artist: “Consumer Landscape”. We are in a room with paintings on the wall (view of parking lots, places of consumption), furniture “empire Style” on the sides, a carpet on the center. A guard is present to tell each viewer not to walk on the carpet - which looks real - and of course, it happens: some people walk on it. I saw a previous installation by Lowe at the Museum of Contemporary Art in La Jolla in the exhibition “Southern Exposure” (September 2005 – September 2006) and I had the same feeling of joy because the settings were generous, oversized, colorful and at the same time a feeling of not being at ease: don’t touch or you will be in pain, like with a Cholla cactus - they look so pretty but they are dangerous if you get too close.

Back in the largest space, I discover the work by Ernest Silva. A circular look tells me that I will need some time to understand what is going on here. The recurrent themes of the vulnerable deer, the forest, the water and (what it seems to me) the helpless actors in the landscapes are so strange that I would like to know more. The colors are kind of washed, the impression of the ensemble is quite pale for me (but everything else around is very colorful) and the tension comes more from the themes than from the construction of the spaces. One of the large paintings “Wooden Man, Wooden World” has its large frame painted directly on the wall and the contrast between the canvas and the flat large frame around it is very interesting. There is also, on the same themes, a series of small acrylic on paper. As the text which presents Ernest Silva puts it: Ultimately, Silva asks: “What creates narrative or story?”

Then I go around the wall which separates the large space in two, looking again at the huge wall covered with the four paintings by Jean Lowe, I turn and embrace the space occupied by the work of Raul Guerrero. I saw the exhibition of his work at L Street Gallery. There is a pleasure in coming to a museum and seeing large, generous pieces like this endless oil on linen painting on three panels: “The desert: A cultural Primer for Undocumented workers” (2008). A desert view, whitish, painted on top of a background made of advertisings cut from magazines. On top of the landscape: three strong references-statements from three “masterpieces”. On the left, “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” from Picasso, in the center: “L’urinoir” from Marcel Duchamp, and on the right: “Saturn Devouring One of His Children” by Goya.

On the right wall, a series of 12 ink and gouache on paper: “Petty Criminals: Mexico City”.

On the left wall, two large paintings of 2006: “Mexican and American food chorizo combination: La Posta” and “Mexican and American food hotdog: Wienerschnitzel”, representing oversized food in bright colors. I read in the presentation panel: “Raul Guerrero’s work explores the notion that a sense of history is of utmost importance. With an insatiable appetite for knowledge he continually investigates the culture clashes that have shaped the history of the Americas.”

Then I go to the room on the left of the entrance. First artist: May-Ling Martinez, who proposes different pieces, installation-like, a quite intriguing space. I then enter Iana Quesnell’s space. I have seen her work before, in the “Circa Series”, at the Museum of Contemporary art in La Jolla. That was the first time I saw her work and I could not leave the exhibition. She was there talking and I was listening to her. The main work was a huge drawing which literally covered an entire wall: the mapping between two spaces, the one she was living in at the time (in San Diego) and the one she was working in (in Tijuana). Of course it was stunning to imagine her with a pencil, realizing that gigantic image, with the patience of a monk. And that was not the only drawing. Others were displayed in the space. Here, in “Innocence is questionable”, I walk directly to “La Casa Segura”, a wall length drawing of a house viewed from above – without the roof – with all the details, especially the fabric on the different beds, the tiles, the palms of the palm tree on the patio. Everything is there except herself. On the left wall: “Sofa, floral, Tijuana”, it is a sofa, from above, real size, with all the details. I recognize the couch, it is in the Casa Segura. Then on the opposite wall: “My Tijuana”, a long urban landscape, probably a view from the top of the Casa Segura. This time it is not a view from above. Still made with a pencil with all the details of the TV antennas, the cracks in the concrete, the houses on the hill in the distance. Finally “Grab life by the horns”, a vertical drawing, with different technical views of a car – it could be a house. From above, from the top, from the sides… Still nobody.

I am definitely attracted to this artist’s work, she is consistent and I can see her impressive determination. At the same time I don’t know where she is – she is nowhere to be seen in all the spaces she is supposed to occupy and that she depicts. It is a very intimate work yet very distanced. I learn that she is a self proclaimed nomad and that she moved over 60 times. I like that! And I really enjoy the quote at the top of the presentation panel of her work: “A house constitutes a body of images that gives mankind proofs or illusions of stability” (Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space). “Quesnell’s work serves to complicate and confuse our notions of space and conceptions of ownership, posing the question: “where does our personal space begin and end?””

After staying for a while in the room, I go to the last space I had not yet seen, the long wall which faces an equally long window looking to the patio of the museum. On the wall, a series of large c-prints by Yvonne Venegas. I am instantly hooked with “Nirvana”, a little girl in a white dress at a wedding party gently dozing, her head leaning upon the table covered with gold tableware. Then “Senoras”, a group of woman at a party, and “Caballo”, a white horse from behind, lifting his head high. “Despedida” shows a woman, certainly the owner, alone with two waiters working in a house we can imagine very big. “Dr Campos” represents a man with only one eye (the other one covered by a black-eye patch) holding a tiger cub. And others - all very mysterious. The colors are rich, the contrasts strong. The woman are extremely beautiful and some sadness transpires the photos. I understand that Venegas entered the special world of a very wealthy family from Tijuana and took the photos she wanted. The result is gripping, fascinating.

I think it is an excellent idea to have all the recipients of the San Diego prize together in the show. Ann Berthold, the director of L Street Fine Art is really dedicated to making the visual arts bloom in San Diego. Next September she organizes a fair: Beyond the Border Contemporary Art Fair. It should be interesting!

I enjoyed the space and the art, had an excellent Cosmo while listening to live music, and got a nice “Innocence is Questionable” tote bag!

I am very proud to have participated in a group exhibition here in 2007: “Cultural Fusion: Exploring the Multi-Cultural Influences on the Arts of this Region”. The theme was exciting and three of my digital works from the Undocumented series were exhibited, along with the works of eight other artists of Southern California.

Life is good!