Backstory

So, the path to an art exhibition is not always as straight as one might imagine -- I thought I would share a few of the details here about how "Arroyo Seco Watershed and Surrounding Area" has fared in its evolving life as an eco-conscious installation about water, specifically about the water supply in my immediate area.

"Arroyo Seco" began life as an idea I had for an outdoor installation along the Pasadena gully of the same name. I was going to hang a shower curtain between some trees along the water that you could look through at the scenery in the area.


That never materialized, but I continued to think about the watershed and also about the conventions of traditional landscape composition that artists typically rely on.


I wanted to do something that would make people look at the natural surroundings differently and think about their relationship to water and the water supply with greater awareness.

Then winter came -- a very, very rainy winter. And the Arroyo Seco changed. It became inundated with water. I walked everywhere and shot all kinds of photos, experiencing more water in the usually dry gully than anyone might otherwise imagine possible. Long story short, I took lots of photos and used patterns of them on the shower curtain.

I have shown variations of "Arroyo Seco" in going on five exhibition spaces (Los Angeles, Riverside, Chicago and -- upcoming -- San Francisco). First I used only one shower curtain -- and learned the hard way that the colors of the photo ink were so fugitive that all of the pictures turned sepia when exposed to direct sunlight.

This was actually a lucky accident, because while I was reconstructing the shower curtain I decided to double its size -- and it looked a lot better with two curtains circling the rod instead of one. More recently, I sent it off to Chicago for a national show and somewhere during the installation process a small but crucial bit of hardware from the rod went its own separate way. As a result, as I discovered when I arrived at the gallery opening in Chicago, the curtain was installed without the vertical bar, a key visual element to the work. Oh, well. . . . Since, after subsequently combing the internet, I have lost all hope of finding another part, I will need to replace the whole rod -- perfect timing again, since the installation site in San Francisco has extremely high ceilings and the installers have been worried about how to properly hang "Arroyo Seco" in the space. So the third version of the work will involve a 108" D-shaped rod (big enough to display both curtains) that screws into the wall. No photos yet of course, but it will be interesting to experience the third version of this work.


"Arroyo Seco Watershed and Surrounding Area" will go on display as part of the exhibition Blue Planet: works exploring social, political and economic issues related to water, sponsored by Pacific Region Women's Caucus for Art and juried by Kim Abeles, at SOMARTS Cultural Center, 934 Brannan Street, San Francisco from June 19 through 26. Artist reception June 26, 5-7 pm.

June, and showered with shows --

So in the midst of piles of finals and final papers and projects that are coming my way from my students, I am also penciling in a profusion of openings to the exhibitions where my work will be showing this month. First, since I just mentioned Blue Planet and Elements, I can now fill in the details of my own participation -- my installation "Arroyo Seco Watershed and Surrounding Area" was chosen (by juror Kim Abeles) for the exhibition Blue Planet at SOMArts, San Francisco, and I will also be moderating a panel called "What is Eco-art? Past, present and future" during the Elements conference at the David Brower Center in Berkeley. This is the third city where my installation has been shown -- here in Los Angeles, in Chicago, and now in San Francisco. I feel so cosmopolitan! The nice thing is that it helps me rationalize a few travel opportunities that are breaking up the cycle of work.

"Elements" and "Blue Planet"

Recently I have found myself in the thick of organization plans for WCA's Elements: An Eco-Art Conference to be held in Berkeley in June. Although I have been interested in artistic approaches to landscape/nature/the environment since I started drawing naive mountain landscapes as a child in Western Pennsylvania, I have only recently discovered the contemporary art movement, Eco-art, that meshes environmental activism, an ecological perspective, and one's art practice. A combination of innovative and pragmatic approaches characterizes most eco-art work. Most eco-artists appear to be strongly motivated to serve the environment (for example, Lynne Hull actually lists bird and animal species as her clients) and to communicate effectively with the public (community participation has become a key feature of many projects). See my new PowerPoint to find out more about eco-art: "Eco-art: What Is It?"

Dovetailing with the conference, the Pacific Region of Women's Caucus for Art is also sponsoring an exhibition focusing on the theme of water called Blue Planet, curated by Kim Abeles at SOMArt in San Francisco. For more information on the conference and the exhibition visit the ecoartactivism blog.

From the Center: Now!

"From the Center: Now!" opened at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago last Friday -- I wasn't there, of course, so it was an interesting exercise to think about what went on and how everything must have looked. The exhibition was juried by Lucy Lippard, who revisited the question she posed in her 70s anthology, From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women's Art. It was kind of exciting to think that someone who wrote a book I had just been referring to while teaching my contemporary art class had chosen my work for a show! I don't really present myself as a feminist (too much to do walking the walk, I suppose), so it is interesting to me that my work keeps showing up in women's shows ("Material Girls" at the Riverside Art Museum a few years ago).

In any event, I will be going to Chicago on February 10 and will be at the artists' opening on February 12, in addition to attending the Women's Caucus for Art and College Art Association national conventions. I have never been to Chicago (which seems particularly odd for someone who went to school in Ann Arbor) and I am really looking forward to spending time at the Art Institute with all the Impressionist paintings and whatever they are exhibiting in the new wing. I also signed up for a Frank Lloyd Wright architectural tour planned for CAA members, and there will be lots of other interesting things to do.

Oh yes -- the overcoat is ready, the scarves and gloves assembled, and the new boots are broken in!

News of the World

Time marches on and I am currently in a show at PCC, where I teach Contemporary Art. The show is called "News of the World: A fraction of the artists who teach at PCC" -- it will be up through September 30 at the Pasadena City College Art Gallery. Here is the front of the card:



The interesting thing about this is that it features a photo of Howard Carter and his team of archaeologists opening the fourth chamber of King Tut's tomb. What this has to do with the show I'm not sure, but in two weeks I will be teaching Egypt in the other class I teach, the art history survey from ancient to modern. . . .

The show itself is a group show that includes a lot of very interesting work by other adjuncts in the Visual and Media Arts Division at PCC. I submitted a small photo/textile piece called "Arroyo rakusu". Rakusus are symbolic, handsewn bib-like wearable patchwork squares that stand in for robes and symbolize Buddhists' refuge in the precepts. I like to think about taking refuge in nature, and the greenery of the Arroyo Seco is refreshing so soon after the fires.

"Bringing the Past to Light" recap

I had a blast curating this show. The artists were great and I was very happy with my own piece, too. To start with, here are some pictures (thanks, Kevin Hass) of my installation, "Dirty Laundry" -- it is a clothesline hung with domestic linens covered with photos of some of the various women in Charles Lummis's life, "acknowledging the experience and points of view of the many women who comprised Lummis's domestic circle, supporting the household with their work and devotion."

Lummis had three wives and was a notorious womanizer. Harvard educated, Lummis is best known as a man of letters in love with the West and a founder of the Southwest Museum in Highland Park. He launched his career during the 1870s by walking from Ohio to Los Angeles in street shoes, on his own, and writing a book about the experience. He also married three times, brought a daughter from another liaison to live with him, and collected dozens of photographs of the women in his life who entertained him and kept him on track. I wanted to bring their contributions to light by including their words and images in my installation.

Little vacation from blog --

So, I confess, Facebook has sucked my attention away from keeping this poor blog current!! I am not really a dedicated "blogger" in the "blogging community" anyway -- but I still like to have a place to post things about art activities and other things. My last post was in April -- even though there is no catching up, here are a few posts that cover what's been going on. . . .

"Bringing the Past To Light" is coming --

So the show at the Lummis home is moving forward -- and we have an electronic announcement.

In addition to doing a lot of curatorial work on the show, I have started my own piece. Here is a description of my project:

"My installation will be designed to mark both conceptual and physical space in behalf of the women who helped to create and sustain the lifestyle of Charles Lummis, man of letters and sometimes notorious bohemian resident of the Arroyo during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These women included his three wives, Dorothea Rhodes, Eva Frances Douglas and Gertrude Redit; an out-of-wedlock daughter, Bertha Belle Page, who cared for him in his old age; and numerous and frequently nameless assistants, “secretaries” and maids who supported the household through their work and devotion to Lummis and his extended family. These women bore the burden in various ways of Lummis’s reputation as a lifelong womanizer, and in “bringing the past to light” it is important to acknowledge their experiences and points of view as members of Lummis’s domestic circle."

I am going to string a clothesline in an area of the grounds near the bedroom and hang a series of pillowcases on the clothesline, each with a photo image and/or a caption ironed on – each photo or caption referencing the experience or remarks of one of the women in Lummis’s orbit relating to their experience of life with Lummis.