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12/20/2020 0 Comments #4: 12/20/2020Finding Our Way Through the Landscapes of Joan Nelson by Benjamin Terrell  Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2019-20, spray enamel, acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. All eyes on Portland protests has turned the city into an art gallery of commentary, and if the blocks and blocks of boarded windows are her newest creation, the city is a particularly prolific artist. Adams and Ollman gallery fear not, the serene smolder of the imaginary landscapes of Joan Nelson (on display there until Dec. 19) has become the city's sacred stained glass. Never has something so harmonious and holy begged to be plugged in like Nelson's electric plexiglass paintings. Having previously painted on wood, it's as if the artist shed surface for shimmer, perhaps next seen on foil as maps and manuscripts to faraway lands. Who among the locked-down and housebound hasn't evolved into an escapist or a would-be sailor of anywhere but home?  Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel, acrylic ink, marker and burnt sugar on acrylic sheet 20h x 20w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. Our current digital home life is a life without landscape and is therefore a life without a place for our authentic selves to roam. In traditional landscape painting, self (most always male) is often at center. Joan Nelson's work is intriguing and opposite - she paints landscapes taking place before and after "us" and uses reverence to restore agency to her subjects. In doing so, the artist puts the "m" back into what IMAX reduced to "-other earth." If her work is feminist, it is because she sets landscape free from ownership and paints past a masculine need to conquer. Picture Casper David Friedrich forgetting figure or cross, only to focus solely on the steam off a rock formation or how an unanticipated pink light from an unnamable source suspends the urge to capture in exchange for jaw dropping awe.  "...an unanticipated pink light from an unnamable source suspends the urge to capture in exchange for jaw dropping awe." Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2018, spray enamel and acrylic ink on acrylic sheet 12h x 12w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman.  Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2019-20, spray enamel and acrylic ink on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. Sometimes a work by Nelson borrows directly from art history, including details from famous paintings excluded from their original context. The artist even reuses her own imagery. The mystery is how she sews important and incidental parts into a seamless whole so well, like a poem or an ode made from only one word. In her work, volcanoes foam and glow, meteors swish and swoon, rainbows aren't reluctant and pure awareness lights up the resplendent unknown. For her show, the plexiglass paintings are placed on ledges, and if you are lucky enough to get to see their opulent other side, then there are further codes to be cracked. Painted, scraped, and drawn in with unusual materials like glitter, wax and sealant, expressive colors and shapes reveal a backside becoming a switchboard to the divine.  "In her work, volcanoes foam and glow, meteors swish and swoon, rainbows aren't reluctant and pure awareness lights up the resplendent unknown." Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel, acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. What I admire most about Nelson's work is the same thing that I find intriguing about classical Indian satellite radio. Rapturous meditations intimately heard from afar remain nameless (by language barrier over the airwaves) and therefore, ask for all your attention, like a divine secret spoken only once. Also, like radio sounds from a distant continent, details and passages emerge like finding a feather but not the bird. What is known and not known is made more mysterious and resplendent by the detail. Both audio and the artist's visual are symphonic palaces of the in-between. Both are the "thin places" of creativity, where the curtain that conceals us from everything eternal is at its most transparent.  Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel and acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 20h x 20w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. We are nostalgic for what cannot be named or can never be known, and for Nelson that quest is center stage. Her artistic visions are like biblical prequels or like discovering the planet's Lonely Planet guide or, imagine if you can, a Jules Verne book as a coy pond. To reimagine a landscape without us is to look away from what we think is the real world. To make great art from that expression is to gaze higher, discard everything not needed in prayer, empty ourselves out and find patterns in our transformation. If we choose to look at the world through Nelson's creative spiritual lens, past training and limitations, a coherent world is restored in which nature remains an ally and mystery is always greater than knowledge.  Joan Nelson, Untitled, 2020, spray enamel and acrylic ink and marker on acrylic sheet 24h x 24w in Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. New Works: Joan Nelson was on display at Adams and Ollman (December, 2020). Coda: Nelson told me about a trip she took from New York to Oregon to visit her parents on the coast. After flying into Portland, she began driving in the opposite direction of her destination because the GPS of the car had dropped and reset. It wasn't until reaching the gorge that separates Washington and Oregon that she realized the error and rerouted. But by then, Nelson explained, the mistake had led to discoveries of magnificent and unexpected new landscapes. Embracing the misstep and continuing on an unknown path, the artist was lead on a different journey around the state, that was both "perfect and beautiful." The road trip story is also a perfect analogy for how the artist approaches a new painting.
The Columbia River Gorge that divides Oregon and Washington.
Photos by David Schell
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11/19/2020 0 Comments #3: 11/19/2020The Semi-Finalist is celebrating artist and writer Benjamin Terrell's first column under the heading "Notes of Persistent Awe." To kick things off he wrote about the poetic, understated work of Lois Dodd that was up at Adams and Ollman last month. Terrell will be the primary writer for "Notes of Persistent Awe" and will contribute to it on a monthly basis. You can also find his writing in the Eugene Register Guard (Eugene, Oregon). Lois Dodd By Benjamin Terrell  "There is artistic evidence of egoless allowance in the intimate paintings of Dodd." Lois Dodd, Tree + Flowers, 2009, oil on masonite, 12" x 19 1/2" Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. While viewing an exhibition of paintings by Lois Dodd at Adams and Ollman gallery in Portland, I was reminded of the 2016 Japanese film, Sweet Bean. In the film, director Naomi Kawase sums up existence as this, "We are born into this world to see and to listen to it. Since that is the case, we don't have to become someone. We have, each of us, meaning to our life." There is artistic evidence of egoless allowance in the intimate paintings of Dodd. The artist, now in her nineties, has quietly painted through many major artistic movements, content to observe and intuit the seasons surrounding her home in Maine. In her work, expansiveness is acceptance of life rather than the contraction of trying to control it. That idea absorbed into an unusual year full of uncontrollable events is as welcome as flowers seen blooming in a fire ravaged landscape.  Lois Dodd, Japanese Red Maple in October, 1986, oil on masonite, 20" x 13" Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. In a work by Dodd: The rich orange red of an October maple pictured through the four pains of a window appear geometric, shapes evenly exchange foreground for back like a living chapel's stained-glass, reluctant to solidify. (Japanese Red Maple in October, 1986)  Lois Dodd, Queen Anne's Lace, 2012, oil on panel, 11" x 11" Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. A wildflower often considered a weed, a plethora of Queen Anne's lace forms a symphonic spiral when seen from above. For that moment we have the vantage point of a butterfly or the sky. (Queen Anne's Lace, 2012)  Lois Dodd, Pink Geranium + Window Lock + Ochre Tree, 2011, oil on masonite, 15 3//4" x 10" Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. A small indoor bloom is partially seen, separated by a window through which we view a large tree, its branches abstracted and reaching out of the picture as if to say a cut flower in a vase speaks to our own perishability as an entire tree expands to a limitless sky. (Pink Geranium + Window Lock + Ochre Tree, 2011)  Sharif Farrag, Watermelon Warthog Jug (foreground), 2020, glazed porcelain, 13"h x 10"w x 11"d Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. Another show featuring Dodd at Parts and Labor in Beacon, New York pairs her work with the imaginary and fantastical landscapes of Shara Hughes. Both galleries pair Dodd with younger artists, in Portland with the animated and whimsical vessels of Sharif Farrag. The contemplative nature of Dodd's work becomes more evident in these pairings. Dodd's work is grounded and grounding. By abstracting line and shape we are kept from focusing on specifics; she reminds us that nature exists before our ability to name it. To paint landscapes en plein air as Dodd does is to look beyond limitation of self, is to bottle awe at its source and is the closest we can come to conversing with creation. Such direct perception is a privilege possible with heart, not head, and is a way to look past the contradictions of a world seemingly on hold. Mary Oliver describes the act and the landscape of gratitude in her poem, Mindful: "...to lose myself inside this soft world- to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation."  Lois Dodd, Lily Buds, 2007, oil on masonite, 19 1/8" x 11" Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman.  Sharif Farrag, Skarhead VCR Jug, 2020, 8 1/2"h x 6"w x 6"d Photo courtesy of Adams and Ollman. Lois Dodd's and Sharif Farrag's work at Adams and Ollman was on display from September 12- October 31, 2020 and can be seen at adamsandollman.com
10/9/2020 0 Comments #2: 10/09/2020Artist and writer Benjamin Terrell recently wrote a column that touches on fire, regeneration, and the works of John Dilg, Helen Mirra, and Harold Ancart. You can also find this and other columns by Terrell in the Eugene Register Guard. you can't be afraid to leave it all behind |
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Installation shots from The National Exemplar.
The Paintings of John Dilg and the textiles of Helen Mirra at the National Exemplar in Iowa City are an excellent example of two things made more mystical when seen together. Dilg's small canvases shimmer in a mist of threadlike brushstrokes and describe spare dream states with water, wolves, lone figures, and open skies. The subject of his work isn't the objects that occupy the paintings but the moment in time itself, always a symposium of stillness in soft grey greens and powder blue hues. Helen Mirra's similarly sized pieces in silk and linen aren't pictorial but appear painterly, like trees and reeds seen through smoke or rain. They are poetry to Dilg's prose.
Helen Mirra, Late May, early June, Trisha Brown Stanley Brouwn, 2017,
linen, silk, 21 3/8" x 8 5/8"
Photo courtesy of The National Exemplar
linen, silk, 21 3/8" x 8 5/8"
Photo courtesy of The National Exemplar
In Dilg's world a rock formation or the bark of a birch tree has an undisclosed order, is symmetrical and both grand and intimate. His leaving or letting go of detail is a reverent pairing down like the cautious steps of a hunter who respects what he sets out to capture. Similarly, traces of the human hand in Mirra's tapestries are like tracks in fresh snow and like footprints, point to tactile paths of process and place also indicated by titles like "Pale tying bale edging" and "Late May early June, Trisha Brown Stanley Brown 2017".
"...traces of the human hand in Mirra's tapestries are like tracks in fresh snow..."
Helen Mirra, Pale tying bale edging, 2016, linen, 11 1/4" x 12 1/8"
Photo courtesy of The National Exemplar
Helen Mirra, Pale tying bale edging, 2016, linen, 11 1/4" x 12 1/8"
Photo courtesy of The National Exemplar
Installation shots from The National Exemplar.
An advocate for the energy of the in-between, the art of Harold Ancart, at David Zwirner gallery in New York, is abundantly incendiary in style and subject. An Ancart painting is often an image of something hot or cold, like a giant iceberg or an oversized head of a match ready to be struck. Orange orbs, pale pink moons and rainbow hued leaves all are found flickering over black and white backgrounds. Color versus its vast black opposite, the picture plane as meeting place for old and new, a rest stop between tradition and its trajectory.
"Ancart often pick-pockets potentiality from the dormant and undisturbed."
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020.
© Harold Ancart / SABAM, Brussels
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020.
© Harold Ancart / SABAM, Brussels
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
For the current show the artist paints trees seen close up, often between branch or bloom or as neither trunk nor top but as origins of transformation. There is a similarity between his old and new paintings. A tree trunk is a matchstick to the flame of its fruit or imagined as a green mushroom cloud over a funnel of forest organically ignited. Ancart often pick-pockets potentiality from the dormant and undisturbed. The inclusion of a miniature flat square concrete pool sculpture ( like an empty canvas on its back, its "water" blue and blank) would seem to suggest stillness. For Ancart, it implies the unlimited capacity of art itself.
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020.
© Harold Ancart / SABAM, Brussels
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
© Harold Ancart / SABAM, Brussels
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020.
© Harold Ancart / SABAM, Brussels
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
© Harold Ancart / SABAM, Brussels
Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner
Not much more than a year ago, at 4:13pm (as the cell phone photo tells me) my wife and I sat outside the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Perhaps the act or action that started a fire that consumed much of the church was just then happening. We heard the sirens only hours later when napping back in our hotel a mile away. It occurred to me when walking back toward the billowing smoke, that the cloud (colored yellow and smelling of dense wood) was hundreds of years of history and art ignited and imbued by equal years of prayer. While the prayers for survival aren't always granted, the embers of imagination fanned by artistic intent always create something reassuring and new.
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Ben's wife Claudia at 4:13 and Notre Dame a few hours later.
Photos courtesy of Benjamin Terrell.
Photos courtesy of Benjamin Terrell.
In the wake of the recent Holiday Farm fire near Eugene, Oregon.
Photo courtesy of Benjamin Terrell.
Photo courtesy of Benjamin Terrell.
The art of John Dilg and Helen Mirra can be seen at the National Exemplar's website, thenationalexemplar.squarespace.com. The work of Harold Ancart is on display at David Zwirner gallery in New York city until October 17th.
Press release from the National Exemplar:
AUGUST 1 - SEPTEMBER 20, 2020
John Dilg has a sense of awe for the natural world, and Helen Mirra has no sense of separation with it. Their artworks resonate through literal and figurative means, choice of media, color and associative titling. Helen Mirra weaves abstract tapestries with linen and silk, material indications of physical activity, registering where she is and how it feels. John Dilg paints invented landscapes featuring what he calls essential forms, drawing on memory and tonality to emphasize stillness and the continuum of time.
Helen Mirra, b. 1970, Rochester, New York, lives in Muir Beach, California.
John Dilg, b. 1945, Evanston, Illinois, lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
AUGUST 1 - SEPTEMBER 20, 2020
John Dilg has a sense of awe for the natural world, and Helen Mirra has no sense of separation with it. Their artworks resonate through literal and figurative means, choice of media, color and associative titling. Helen Mirra weaves abstract tapestries with linen and silk, material indications of physical activity, registering where she is and how it feels. John Dilg paints invented landscapes featuring what he calls essential forms, drawing on memory and tonality to emphasize stillness and the continuum of time.
Helen Mirra, b. 1970, Rochester, New York, lives in Muir Beach, California.
John Dilg, b. 1945, Evanston, Illinois, lives in Iowa City, Iowa.
Benjamin Terrell's artwork can be found on his Instagram page @moseswaits and in The Semi-Finalist's post "Here and There, Mostly There." Terrell has also written about about Matthew Wong, Kwang Young Chun, and others for a column in the Register-Guard (Eugene, Oregon) called Cafe 541. Terrell lives up the McKenzie River, not far from Eugene, Oregon.
9/6/2020 0 Comments
#1: 9/6/2020
Artist and writer Benjamin Terrell recently wrote about the enigmatic work of Kevin Mcnamee-Tweed. He describes his piece as "...a COVID column written without a gallery visit, inspired by a new book and Instagram."
how to file the tiles of kevin mcnamee-tweed
by benjamin terrell
Walk, 2018, glazed ceramic, 6 x 6 inches (15.2 x 15.2 cm)
photo courtesy of Steven Turner Gallery
photo courtesy of Steven Turner Gallery
In art school I worked in the library and it was my job to put things away. I spent whole days cataloging art books big/small, old/new, all different styles and genres from antiquity to avant-garde. There was a room we all wanted to eventually work in where you could see and, in white gloves, could touch and turn the pages (for library patrons) of the actual sketchbooks of world-famous artists like Van Gogh or Cezanne.
We see so much imagery now on iPhones and computer screens without giving thought to how we catalog it or if and where in the brain we "digest" the information into fact or fiction. For me, the art of Kevin Mcnamee-Tweed is the perfect crossroads to stop and think about "thinking", to wash and hang dry memories big or small, or to take random fact, weigh and fillet it like the fish that could feed or be thrown back from the boat.
Turning the pages of KMT
1. I grew up thinking it was possible to talk to a friend if you each held an empty can attached by string. I remember thinking computers needed to be giant, even room size, like I saw them in the Hall Of Justice on the cartoon, "Super Friends." I also remember being told people died purposely sitting in their own bathtubs with plugged in radios. These days I stop short of believing everything I hear, comfortable in the middle ground between “maybe so" and "perhaps."
2. As a child (in the seventies), I often went with my father to the newspaper office where he worked. Every desk had a large ashtray and a giant typewriter. The latter looked to me like a sleek sewing machine for ideas. Years later, when my father called me to tell me he was dying, he borrowed a phrase from early Bugs Bunny to broach the subject. "It's curtains for me Rocky," he said.
2. As a child (in the seventies), I often went with my father to the newspaper office where he worked. Every desk had a large ashtray and a giant typewriter. The latter looked to me like a sleek sewing machine for ideas. Years later, when my father called me to tell me he was dying, he borrowed a phrase from early Bugs Bunny to broach the subject. "It's curtains for me Rocky," he said.
Wave Cloud, 2019 Glazed ceramic 6 x 4 3/4 inches (15.2 x 12.1 cm)
photo courtesy of Steven Turner Gallery
photo courtesy of Steven Turner Gallery
3. My pockets use to be full of post-it notes, often origins of creative ideas. But sometimes they were stressful reminders, like "pay bill" or information lost of context, details dictated from other people or inspirations unfollowed. Now I write ideas on the "notes" app of an iPhone. Funny thing, I have a drawer of forgotten things like little tools, light bulbs, keys, but also a collection of outdated phones full of notes, photos, and things of irretrievable purpose.
4. I lost the instructions to most early pc related gadgets but still have a box of miscellaneous parts and pieces. Technology moved so fast and the things I wanted to do had been slow, like put my albums on disc or record my own podcast of old country music I've collected. There was a gap or gasp between analog and digital, like a cleansing of everything earthly, (plus the boxes were huge and the content small).
5. I grew up in the era of record shops and stereo stores and remember when a new section appeared for "personal and portable." Music prior to then had required time, had weight and a tactile nature but then, suddenly it seemed possible to carry yourself around with yourself.
Just think, before then it was possible to walk around all alone.
4. I lost the instructions to most early pc related gadgets but still have a box of miscellaneous parts and pieces. Technology moved so fast and the things I wanted to do had been slow, like put my albums on disc or record my own podcast of old country music I've collected. There was a gap or gasp between analog and digital, like a cleansing of everything earthly, (plus the boxes were huge and the content small).
5. I grew up in the era of record shops and stereo stores and remember when a new section appeared for "personal and portable." Music prior to then had required time, had weight and a tactile nature but then, suddenly it seemed possible to carry yourself around with yourself.
Just think, before then it was possible to walk around all alone.
Walk, 2018 Glazed ceramic 10 1/4 x 9 1/4 inches (26 x 23.5 cm)
photo courtesy of Steven Turner Gallery
photo courtesy of Steven Turner Gallery
6. The first ceramic painting of Kevin Mcnamee-Tweed I saw was, "Walk", where a cartoon hand strolls ocean side, its two mid fingers as feet, outer two as arms behind the "back" of the hand and the pinkie pointing out. Pointing out as if to say, onward to the land where this is normal or out as if acknowledging another walking hand or perhaps a sign of pseudo culture covering up some other intent.
7. KMT's subjects on odd shaped slabs of clay (drawn into and painted with glazes) are weighty bygone bubbles of thoughts deep and light. The ideas are often occurrences, like people finding or losing themselves in states of repose, are also independent from the shapes they live on, feeling like significant but forgotten torn out newspaper articles or tops of cereal boxes.
8. KMT makes many references to candlelight. Candlelight, the precursor of the lightbulb, as the universal symbol of sudden epiphany or idea. Often new ideas are a patchwork of old problems on a sharp stick of truth. With wit as a wick, taking in a work by Mcnamee-Tweed can be a slow glow until the artists intent arrives like a sneeze during a punchline.
9. Like puzzle pieces to a mosaic of lost limericks, sometimes insightful clues come in the artist's groupings. 'Shrooms, keys, and butterflies painted together are all things capable of unlocking and becoming. Lamps, stars, and potion bottles collected, but scattered around a tabletop offer illumination and/or the opportunity "to level up", like in a video game.
7. KMT's subjects on odd shaped slabs of clay (drawn into and painted with glazes) are weighty bygone bubbles of thoughts deep and light. The ideas are often occurrences, like people finding or losing themselves in states of repose, are also independent from the shapes they live on, feeling like significant but forgotten torn out newspaper articles or tops of cereal boxes.
8. KMT makes many references to candlelight. Candlelight, the precursor of the lightbulb, as the universal symbol of sudden epiphany or idea. Often new ideas are a patchwork of old problems on a sharp stick of truth. With wit as a wick, taking in a work by Mcnamee-Tweed can be a slow glow until the artists intent arrives like a sneeze during a punchline.
9. Like puzzle pieces to a mosaic of lost limericks, sometimes insightful clues come in the artist's groupings. 'Shrooms, keys, and butterflies painted together are all things capable of unlocking and becoming. Lamps, stars, and potion bottles collected, but scattered around a tabletop offer illumination and/or the opportunity "to level up", like in a video game.
Selfing Unself, 2019 Glazed ceramic 8 3/4 x 6 3/4 inches (22.2 x 17.1 cm)
photo courtesy of Steven Turner Gallery
photo courtesy of Steven Turner Gallery
10. If there were a historical jump rope, with "dial up" on one end and scrolling, feeds and tweets on the other.. and one began to jump, eventually the sky would rain KMT tiles like loose change out a ripped pocket, down a trouser leg, and those totems would tell us everything subtle and missing in an age of thicker phone screens and thinner magazines.
11. Civilizations fall and artists are employed to write the history, to remind future us that the joke was always on us and there are a million ways to retell it, write it in stone, folded up and passed in class or drawn and painted in clay like those of KMT. To look away is to forget: a bubble blown is blown to pop, and everything else is water out the boutonniere.
11. Civilizations fall and artists are employed to write the history, to remind future us that the joke was always on us and there are a million ways to retell it, write it in stone, folded up and passed in class or drawn and painted in clay like those of KMT. To look away is to forget: a bubble blown is blown to pop, and everything else is water out the boutonniere.
Painter, 2019 Glazed ceramic 4 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches (11.4 x 16.5 cm)
photo courtesy of Steven Turner Gallery
photo courtesy of Steven Turner Gallery
12. Makers and tool portrayed by KMT: Artist with backward brush paints own beret, artist paints past hole in soul to confront canvas, man chops down tree with a frowny trunk, key, second key, scissors, broken scissors, twisted pencil, hammer hammers too close to the end of the board and nail and it reminds me I was once told....
Blame the hammer but bless the nail, art at last driven, sets the artist's dark passage sail.
Blame the hammer but bless the nail, art at last driven, sets the artist's dark passage sail.
The artwork of Kevin Mcnamee-Tweed is on display at the Steven Turner Gallery July 25-August 29th and can be seen on the artist's Instagram page @cottontweed. Steven Turner Gallery has recently released three books on Mcnamee-Tweed that can be purchased through their bookstore, www.steveturnerbookshop.com
Benjamin Terrell's artwork can be found on his Instagram page @moseswaits and in The Semi-Finalist's post "Here and There, Mostly There." Terrell has also written about Matthew Wong, Kwang Young Chun and others for Cafe 541, a column in the Register-Guard (Eugene, Oregon).
Benjamin Terrell's artwork can be found on his Instagram page @moseswaits and in The Semi-Finalist's post "Here and There, Mostly There." Terrell has also written about Matthew Wong, Kwang Young Chun and others for Cafe 541, a column in the Register-Guard (Eugene, Oregon).