R.I.P. Robert Rauschenberg

Robert Rauschenberg died last night. One of the great 20th-century artists. A huge loss for art.

Gothamist ended their news story about his death with this great quote:

Rauschenberg continued working well into his twilight years on the island of Captiva, off Florida’s Gulf coast. He once said, “I think you’re born an artist or not. I couldn’t have learned it. And I hope I never do because knowing more only encourages your limitations.”
 

Locally, he exhibited a huge piece at MassMoCA, in 1999, 2 Furlong Piece (shown above), an enormous quarter-mile long work-in-progress that lined the walls of MassMoCA’s largest gallery.

Is that a …..bikini?

Anonymous art has found its way to Easthampton!   While we were wandering the streets checking out Art Walk Easthampton last night, we came across this.  It reminded us of the now famous tree sweater in Seattle,  but tailored for warmer weather.  We were really excited to discover this little display, among a lot of other really cool art on Art Walk. 

 It’s in front of Mt. Tom’s Homemade Ice Cream on Cottage Street.

UPDATE:  5/13/08 — we are pleased to report that the tree bikini is still there….unmolested or vandalized.  We thought for sure it would be stuffed with something, or stolen for that matter.

Local Performance Art

There was a bit of spontaneous performance art in downtown Northampton yesterday recorded by fab local blogger, In the Valley. Happenings like this are one of the reasons we love this area so much.

Anyone have any idea who the performers are?

Lynn Latimer at The Grubbs Gallery

It was a perfect day for Lynn Latimer’s opening reception on April 13th, at the Grubbs Gallery on the campus of The Williston Northampton School, and we weren’t going to miss it.   The sky was cloudless and the sun was intense, creating an ideal atmosphere for looking at Lynn’s work. 

If you don’t know Lynn Latimer, an Easthampton artist working from her studio in Cottage Street Studios, we highly recommend you see her exhibit of fused glass panels, running at the Grubbs Gallery until April 30th.  She creates amazing works of art using glass and cites Paul Klee and Pierre Bonnard as some of her influences.  We marvelled at the brilliant and often transient nature of looking at these pieces, and how they are influenced by every aspect of the environment in which they are displayed.  Whether it was a person walking behind a panel and creating a mottled reflection within the glass, or a change in the sunlight streaming through the high windows of the gallery, we were engaged by the constantly changing quality of each piece. 

We’d like to note that one of the most exciting aspects of this show is that the artist displays working drawings on the walls around the gallery.  They are so beautiful in their own right, we didn’t feel that the exhibit would have been the same without them.  On first inspection a viewer might think that this work is easy, because of the fluidity of the colors melting together, it looks easy.  The delicate and intricate drawings helped to illustrate just how difficult and not easy Latimer’s process is. 

To find out more about Lynn Latimer’s process and work visit her website or better yet, visit her personally during Cottage Street Studios Spring Open Studios event on the weekend of June 7 & 8, 2008. 

Photographers’ Lecture Series at Williston

The Williston Northampton School in Easthampton has a series of lectures with prominent photographers in April. They are free and open to the public:

April 3: John Willis
April 10: Lori Grinker
April 15: Sean Kernan

Williston frequently has free lectures by prominent artists and writers. Last year we attended the talk by Augusten Burroughs, which was part of their 2007 Writers’ Workshop Series.

Williston is also home to the excellent Grubbs Gallery, which recently hosted a lecture by artist Cat Chow, which was webcast live. The webcast is still available for download (best to right-click on this link & save to your desktop, it’s a very large file - the lecture is about an hour long).

The First Annual Easthampton “Paint Out”

We just learned about this upcoming event in this morning’s Arts Newsletter Experiment:

We are pleased to announce the first annual Easthampton “Paint Out” to be held May 8 – 10, 2008. The event is sponsored by Easthampton Savings Bank, Nashawannuck Gallery and Art Walk Easthampton

The two-day event that culminates in a gallery show and judging at Nashawannuck Gallery during the popular Art Walk. Oils, acrylic, watercolor and mixed media/painting works are accepted. Participating artists must paint within the city limits of Easthampton from May 8-10, at an outdoor location and not from a photograph.

And there will be a grand prize, and reception:

The exhibition will include a grand prize selection by the show juror as well as a “people’s choice” award where Art Walk attendees vote for a favorite work. Winners will be announced at 7:30 PM during the opening reception. The grand prize winner and the People Choice award winners have their painting purchased by Easthampton Savings Bank for $300 each.

We are really excited about this city-wide art event in Easthampton. More information is available at www.ArtWalkEasthampton.org (and sign up for their excellent weekly arts newsletter while you’re there).

Help Save The Mount!

We heard this morning on NPR about the plight of The Mount in Lenox. This beautiful, historic and important property is due to be foreclosed on April 24th. They are trying to raise money so that does not happen, and are taking contribution pledges.

From the website:

The Mount has secured a pledge of matching funds, which will be made available to supplement funds raised under Save The Mount, if The Mount is able to reach a successful restructuring with its principal creditors. Your contribution today will bring us closer to survival and success.

All donations will be processed only if The Mount meets its fundraising goal. In the event that the campaign is unsuccessful, The Mount will destroy all checks and credit card forms and post a notice thereof on this website.

Time is short, but a dramatic show of support will keep Edith Wharton’s house and gardens open. We urge you to make a generous donation without delay. Thank you.

The Mount was the home of writer and socialite Edith Wharton (1862-1937). She designed and built the house in 1902 as a summer home and writer’s retreat.

It is historically important and a beautiful place with majestic views of the Berkshires. It is also, according the the website, “…one of the mere 5% of National Historic Landmarks dedicated to women.”  Wharton is such an important figure in American literature (e.g. she was the first woman to win the Pulitzer prize), and The Mount is part of her legacy, for us to learn from and enjoy, and an architectural gem in western Massachusetts.

After Wharton’s death, the house had a succession of owners, and eventually fell into a terrible state of disrepair. In the 1980’s a group formed as The Edith Wharton Restoration purchased the property and has been preserving and restoring it since. It is open to the public May to December.

Please donate whatever amount you can to help save The Mount at their Emergency Campaign page. More information can also be found on the blog, “Help Save The Mount!“

New Links: Local Art Instruction

We were thinking about the old Guild Studio School, which we miss - we were so hopeful that it would evolve into a degree-granting art school (wouldn’t that have been fabulous?). It was so sad that it closed in 2005, but there are still some great places in the area for art classes in everything from painting to pottery to printmaking.  So we’ve added a new link category, “Local Art Instruction.” We’re aware of a few excellent places in the Valley: Snow Farm in Williamsburg, The Garage Annex School in Easthampton, and Zea Mays in Florence; we’re sure there must be more.

If you know of any other places in the Valley offering art classes, please let us know and we’ll add them to our list.

 The final webpage of the Guild Studio School is still online at the Wayback Machine. The page includes a letter from the director, Andrew Francis, thanking supporters and it closes with this wonderful paragraph about art and community:

The most powerful organizations are those with the support and participation of their community. The Guild Studio School does not feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, or protect a vulnerable population. However, art infuses a soul into a community and is a necessary resource for broadening and enriching the lives of children, families and individuals. Art is an unsung hero that has struggled for millennia for support. Art is personal and public, emotional and political, informative and decorative, as well as wild and crazy at times. Supporting the arts and artists in your community is the most powerful way to make it more than a good and safe place to live; supporting art and artists is the only way to ensure that your community will be a rich, thriving and diverse place to live.

Beautifully put.

In the Realms of the Unreal

We recently saw an interesting documentary, In the Realms of the Unreal, about the artist Henry Darger. We first saw Darger’s work on the cover of local musician Mark Schwaber’s CD The Killing Card - the cover has a dark, post-apocalyptic scene with little girls running from a background of flames, smoke and explosions.  The artwork is striking and strange. We assumed it was the work of a local artist. The liner notes credited Henry Darger, At Sunbeam Creek. We were intrigued, so naturally we went online to find more information about the artist.

Darger lived 1892-1972 in Chicago. A quiet recluse, his enormous body of work was discovered by his landlord, Nathan Lerner, shortly before his death. After his death all of his work and belongings entered into Lerner’s possession.

Darger’s artwork is a mix of line drawing, tracing, watercolor, and collage. All of his art seems based on his 15000-page novel, Realms of the Unreal - a good vs. evil war story in which the heroes are the “Vivian Girls”, young often nude little girls who represent all that’s good, pure and holy. The novel seems to be semi-autobiographical, filled with anecdotes from Darger’s own childhood woven into the fantastical story.

Darger’s work is considered “Outsider Art“. Outsider Art (also called Art Brut or Visionary Art) is art created by untrained artists, outside the mainstream, and often by people who don’t, or didn’t, consider themselves artists. Much outsider art has an obsessive quality - pieces that are enormous, or intricately detailed, sometimes one piece is a lifetime’s work.

The documentary about Darger (In the Realms of the Unreal) was tough to follow, but fascinating nonetheless. The filmmaker may have been trying to mimic Darger’s writing, by drifting the narrative in and out of reality, blurring the boundaries of fantasy and reality, so the viewer is left wondering what is fact and what is part of Darger’s fantasy.

Art note: New York City has an Annual “Outsider Art Fair” in January, as part of The American Folk Art Museum’s Outsider Art Week. Darger’s work is always among the most popular there.

In 2000, Kiyoko Lerner (Nathan Lerner’s widow) donated Darger’s manuscripts to the American Folk Art Museum, which established The Henry Darger Study Center, “to foster open inquiry and multidisciplinary research into the life and work of the Chicago artist,” and recently announced a Henry Darger Fellowship Program.

Local Historical Museums and the Pioneer Valley History Network

In response to our previous post (see below) about the numerous local historical museums, a reader posted a comment about the Pioneer Valley History Network. He wrote:

The Pioneer Valley History Network is a new organization that helps link these historical museums and sites. They have a listserv … and soon will have a website. It can be a great source of information for anyone seeking to explore historical resources in the area.

They have a Yahoo Group, and we’ll post info about their new website when it launches.

We’ve also added a new list of links to our sidebar, “Local Historical Museums.” These little museums are fascinating places. Many are admission-free, but please consider a donation when visiting to help support them.

One of our favorites is the Skinner Museum in South Hadley, which was a pet hobby of its founder, Joseph Allen Skinner (who bequeathed it to Mount Holyoke College). Not only is it full chock-a-block with local artifacts and curiosities from all over the world, the building itself has an interesting history: it was moved from one of the towns that is now submerged beneath the Quabbin Reservoir.

Local trivia: Joseph Skinner was part of the Skinner family who made their enormous wealth via the Skinner Mills in Holyoke in the early part of the 20th-century. Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke was the family home of Belle Skinner, Joseph’s sister.