That's All Folks!

I could probably wring out a couple more posts if the mood struck me, but strike me the mood has not. I think it's about time we wrap 'er up. Protip to any lost soul who somehow finds this blog in the future: disregard whatever you want about whatever I have to say about art. You decide what you like.

And now I lay this blog to rest.
The last three months, I did my best
to snark on art and say my piece,
the most made of the very least.
Farewell, goodnight, away I go
in peace and rubbish SEO.

-melacritic

Creator: Vas Littlecrow

Hey, let's talk about something other than galleries! Sounds like a plan to me. 

Ordinarily, I hate watermarks, but for some reason, this looks kind of cool.

Today, I'm gonna talk about somebody I've chatted with online intermittently over the past couple years, whom I personally admire. Vas Littlecrow is an artist and fascinating person who has a lot of experience to share on many topics. She has posted insightful articles about art culture, the biz, and her personal stories. My contact with her is embarrassingly infrequent, but I asked if she would mind me writing about her work here and she gave me her blessing. Last I checked, this was a contemporary art blog, so let's ditch the books and meet a real contemporary artist!

The work I want to specifically focus first on is her abstract art, which she creates using digital medium. These are essentially art exercises, as she herself explains: 

"When I am having creative blocks, I love going on nature walks or looking and old travel photos. From these excursions, I create digital abstract paintings based upon what I see. I will often distort shapes and colors, just to see what happens. It's a lot of fun and the results can be strange, dynamic or just plain beautiful." 

See, this is the sort of thing that I wish people talked about more in art academia. There doesn't always need to be a profound message behind every last brushstroke. Sometimes--a lot of the time, really--art can be there just to be uplifting and visually pleasing. In addition to abstract art, she also has some comics and caricatures, which range from fanart to portraits and pinups.

Rosie the Riveter ain't got nothin' on these guns.

That being said, her art can also have some real punch to it. When she does have a message, it really cuts through the bull puckey and gets straight to the heart of the matter. But boy, you don't want to tangle with her more confrontational art if you're of the weak and spineless persuasion, like me.

Pictured: A weak and spineless person.

Along with her individual works, she also writes a couple webcomics, Rasputin Catamite and Rasputin Barxotka. Both are very much NSFW, but if you can handle the mature content, they're well-worth reading. I'd like to point out, when I say mature, I don't mean the moronic "mature" that (dis)graces entirely too much of our comedy cinema, with its flaccid (this is the part where said movies go "hur hur") arsenal of scatological humor and grade-school intellect. I mean, these comics deal with serious social issues from a adult perspective and it does not shy away from the uncomfortable or taboo. Vas' work is similar to the Underground Comix movement in that sense, dealing with topics mainstream writers won't touch, and exploring those topics in a way that's deeply personal and intimate.

And sometimes just straight-up terrifying.

I would, of course, be remiss if I didn't also bring up her blog posts and articles on both Rasputin Catamite and Velvet Rasputin. Being experienced as she is with webcomics, she often writes about the struggles of being an indie creator and outlining important things newbies need to know. These topics include fan art, dealing with criticism, her own inspirations and influences, how she views aesthetics in comics, general advice and how-to material, and a host of other subject matter. And on occasion, she can also be really freakin' funny.

There's a whole lot more I could say about her work, but she says it better herself. If you aren't afraid of a little raw honesty and ferocity, read her comics and blog posts when you get the chance. And if you're weak and spineless--again, like me--she has a treasure trove of beautiful abstract works on DeviantArt. So whatever flavor you like, give it a try. She'll challenge you if you let her, but you can always just sit back and enjoy her expressions of pure aesthetic if you're not up for the challenge.

Wuss.

Totally Not Biased At All Final Rating: S'mores

The Crocker Art Museum

For my last (mandatory) visit for this blog, I took a little trip to the Crocker Art Museum. To save a little money, I went during the third Sunday of the month, when it's free. Well, sort of. They still ask for a donation at your discretion, so I threw a couple bucks into the box because I'm not a complete tool. At any rate, I've been here before and there's a little matter I'd like to point out from the get-go.

Oh, that's always a good sign.

See this? I hate this. The other places I went to couldn't care less how many videos or pictures I took, so what's up with the photography prohibition? And if you think I'm exaggerating, case in point, I got caught taking this photo and a docent got on my case, following me halfway out the hall to make sure I didn't do it again. Real welcoming atmosphere you've got there.

That being said, I totally took photos and one of my famous high-quality videos when nobody was looking anyway because I'm an art paparazzi-ninja who lives on the edge.

Flora by Joan Brown

Figure With Striped Leg by Nathan Oliveira

Portrait of a Young Woman by Ethel Pearce Nerger

Haven by Allen Houser (Haozous)

The museum had a Toulouse Lautrec exhibit when I visited--which was excellent, but sadly consisted only of lithographs instead of the originals--which is part of the reason I was able to get these pictures. This area of the museum was a ghost town since it was Free Day and a famous artist was being featured elsewhere. I decided to focus on some figurative art, a style I'm generally drawn to anyway, since most of the art I've practiced is figurative in some form or another. The art in these rooms use bold strokes and thick layers of paint. Really thick layers. Some of them look like somebody went a little nuts trying to stucco a wall, while others have the texture and depth of a sandbox full of playground woodchips. Honestly, though, I like the tangible effect that comes from such thick paint, and the bright colors capture the eyes immediately. For those wondering, you can find these paintings on the third floor and if you like this type of art, I definitely recommend getting a good look at them up-close. As for the sculpture, I included it for the sake a variety, but there was something about the closeness of the faces and compact composition that attracted me to it. It's a very peacful, cozy piece.

I thought I was done taking pictures, but then I found this absurd thing.

I'm probably gonna get arrested when they see I did this. Maybe I'll share a cell with that lady in San Francisco.

It made me laugh when I saw it and applaud the artist when I walked behind it. I'm honestly impressed by the convincing nature of this painting. I'm not including it for any other reason than I simply appreciate it.

At any rate, after that, I visited my favorite part of the museum, the older half of the building. That's where they keep a lot of the traditional paintings and sculptures, the museum artifacts, and a whole room devoted to nothing but fine china. And of course, there's also the wonderful historical architecture, which I couldn't take a picture of on account of too many eyes. As much as I like contemporary art, it's a bit of a gamble. Sometimes you love it, sometimes you hate it. I've never seen traditional art I didn't at least find pleasant, however, and I wasn't about to pass up taking time for those too.

It was nice to see all my favorites again, but I still find myself pretty annoyed with their "no-cameras" nonsense. It's especially grating after visiting so many other galleries aside from this one, many of which not only allow cameras, but seem to encourage them. The Crocker has some great art, but it's not the most hospitable place I've been to. They could stand to loosen up a bit.

Final rating: White Chocolate.

Just because I'd visit again doesn't mean you're not stuffy.

Of course, while I've done all the visits I have to do, I'm not quite done here. I still have one or two things I want to talk about in this blog before I close shop and let it gather cyber-dust, but this time, I'll be talking about the kind of art I personally like.

Why? Because I can.

Michael Schwager: Don't Hide the Madness, Bay Area Art in the 1950s and '60s

 Let me get this out of the way, right now. I don't enjoy lectures. I already have to go to lectures nearly every day of the week, so attending a lecture outside of class on my own time is not my idea of fun. Plus, it takes me 30-40 minutes both ways to get to college, so when I have to go to a mandatory lecture series on a Saturday all the way on campus, you can bet real money I'll be simmering in my seat.

Why do I say all this, you ask? Well, besides the fact that I like to complain, I have to admit that while I hated being there, I did not hate the speaker. I didn't even hate what he had to say. In fact...I kind of liked it, which is why I bring up my hostility-by-default in the first place. If a speaker can win over somebody who's already in a bad mood, that says a lot more about their ability than a speaker who can impress an already interested crowd.

So let's meet the speaker, shall we?

"The name's Schwager. Mike Schwager."

Michael Schwager was the keynote speaker for the 11th Annual Art History Symposium for Sacramento State, titled, "Here as Everywhere: Art of the Sixties and Seventies in Northern California". While the series was largely focused on, as the title indicates, '60s and '70s art, mostly around the Bay Area, Schwager focused on elements of '50s art that contribute to the '60s and onward. One interesting trend he revealed is a prevalent message in '50s art that carried over to later ideals.

What, oh what, could that message be?

Hmm...

It is a mystery.

 So what could have possibly contributed to this message of seeking peace in the '50s, I wonder?

Oh right. War. Yeah, that'll do it.

And why don't most people seem to know about tha--oh right. Because this is what people imagine when they think about the '50s. Huh.

It's nice to know even back then, people spent hours in front of a screen. The more things change...

 And that's the problem with how a lot of people see history. We like to divide things into neat little decades, but reality doesn't work that way. The difference between 1959 and 1960 wasn't some huge leap, it was a gradual change building on what came before. We get a popular image of the '50s being idyllic, when the reality is there was just as much tension as there was in later decades, if not more. This lecture took a rusty chainsaw to our inaccurate notions of history and showed the progression of ideas we link to later decades. But as we can see, sometimes things aren't as new as we would like to believe. Even I've fallen prey to that. I had no idea the peace sign was made in 1958--and I bet you didn't either. Seeing this lecture made me appreciate the subtle progress that comes with time and how everything we see in contemporary art is merely the culmination of ideas. Our art today is a product of history. That's actually a really profound thing to realize, isn't it? And that's why I like this lecture. It's realistic. It's challenging.

It's inspiring.

 As an interesting side note, he also showed some Bay Area Figurative art, which I'll place here.

Bay Area Figurative is known for expressive figures...

...focusing on building form through shapes and lighting...

...and the subject is typically the human form.

 I also took the time to ask him a direct question, and this time, since I didn't forget to charge my camera like a complete moron, I got the answer on tape memory card.

Just...ignore the first several seconds, okay? I'm not a video editor, for crying out loud.

I may not have liked being there, but I liked hearing what this speaker had to say. I give him a lot of credit for being able to hold my interest despite my annoyance at the entire production. I'm rating this lecture A King-Sized Bar on Halloween. I may not have expected Good, but I think what I got was pretty Awesome.

San Francisco or Bust? Yeah, I'll go with bust, please.

In the spirit of fairness, I decided to split up my review of the gallery and my experiences during this visit into different posts. This is mostly because if I did not, there's a very good chance I might make said gallery sound really bad, when it was mostly okay. I surely wouldn't want to use my enormous irrelevance clout as an anonymous blogger to ruin the good name of the Yerba Buena, but even so, the details of the trip had some, shall we say, effects on the visit, which I will now detail here.

If you're frightened and/or squeamish about one angry blogger's indignant ranting, feel free to bail now and watch this soothing video of the ocean on the San Francisco beach instead.

Since I have a truly horrible sense of direction and finding parking in the big city is a form of torture I wouldn't wish on my second-worst enemy (my worst enemy, however, can feel free to contend with it), I decided not to take this trip alone. I went with my whole family. Accounting for traffic, the trip is about two hours both ways and takes us through a toll road, which is always a fun time. Still, this is nothing new when it comes to visiting the Bay Area, so it's no big deal.

And then it got worse. Going to San Francisco is one thing and parking there another matter entirely, but it's doable with some patience. Parking a full-sized van equipped to hold a wheelchair in San Francisco, however, pretty much requires a blood pact with a dark wizard. Or, you know, forty dollars per hour.

I wish I was exaggerating about that last part. See, we're not exactly denizens of the area, so we don't know where the parking near the Yerba Buena is and parking on the street wasn't an option for obvious reasons. Normally, you'd drive around until you find something, but good luck doing that in a huge tugboat of a van with impatient motorists trying to inch up under your chassis at every turn. We ended up at what we thought was a parking garage, but was actually a hotel. They charged us $40 to park there and would have charged double that for two hours.

The parking spot we paid $40 for. Wunderbar.

So if you were wondering why I didn't stay at the Yerba Buena long, there you go. My family didn't even go inside the gallery with me, except for my brother, because we were tapped out from the parking and toll roads. Oh, and the guides were nice enough to tell us about cheaper parking on Fifth and Mission, which would have been useful to know if it weren't for the fact that the hotel was going to charge us the entire hours' worth no matter what.

Just when we thought this trip couldn't have been more of a disappointment, we got to experience a lovely brush with the local law enforcement while hurrying back to Chateau le Larcin. A cop driving a motorcycle cut us off--on the sidewalk. He seriously drove onto the sidewalk to arrest somebody on the street. And said person he was arresting was getting dragged to the ground as we gingerly slunk away. I don't know about you, but my day just isn't complete without watching somebody get arrested while I'm wheeling my brother around with my family in a city I barely know.

Because I'm not a psychopath, I didn't take a picture, so this is the next best thing.

So in the end, we spent less than an hour in San Francisco and lost at least a hundred bucks on the fees and gas (they don't exactly make wheelchair vans fuel-efficient). It was by far the worst trip I've taken down there, not at all helped by the fact that we went to an area we didn't know and pretty much got fleeced for all we're worth. Granted, we've gone to museums as a family before--the de Young Museum even has a decent parking area that's fairly easy to find. I think it's safe to say, though, that we won't be revisiting the Yerba Buena again anytime soon. The trip as a whole gets a solid Baking Chocolate rating.

Let's just say it left a bad taste in our mouths.

But I can be fair. It's not the gallery's fault this trip from my darkest nightmares turned out this way. One thing is for certain though--no matter what they say about San Francisco being cultured and having a rich artistic heritage, it's still the big city. First rule about the big city: don't expect them to do you any favors.

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

San Francisco.

Just the name evokes a lot of ideas and stereotypes related to the city, doesn't it? It's just one of those things that comes with being a major city. I could waste everyone's time listing the things San Francisco is known for, but since this is an art blog, I think we can skip the pretense and get on with it, don't you? Long story short, I visited the city to see the Yerba Buena. The visit was...uh, we'll save that for another post. Let's just focus on the gallery itself.

The show going on while I visited was The Way Things Go, a collection of art showing cultural exchange through trade goods and agriculture. Although the artistic mediums varied wildly--ranging from videos to a giant bread mermaid, the theme was consistent through most of the pieces.

You thought I was kidding about that bread mermaid? Nope.

Much of the art had a food theme--seeds, fruits and vegetables, and other natural foods--but there were other goods, such as pottery, textiles, and writing samples. The emphasis of the show was to trace the movement of goods and culture through the colonial era through a post-colonial lens. Migration, culture, and anthropological insight on how life has developed and mingled on a global scale was reflected through these multimedia pieces. Here are a few displays I found to be especially interesting.

San Francisco de Goya: A Better Bitter by The National Bitter Melon Council

Nam Prik Zauguna by Pratchaya Phinthong

Porcelain Pirates by The Propeller Group

Nacireman Field: A Topography of Inventions by Michael Arcega

Golden Teardrop by Arin Rungjang

On a more personal note, that adorable little guy you see next to the piece from the National Bitter Melon Council (there's a thing I would have never guessed would actually be a thing) is my youngest brother. He's in a wheelchair and taking him places can be a challenge, but the gallery was very kind to him and us. They let me take him in for free, so while I was taking him for a ride, I decided to shoot some video of us going through the Wake in Guangzhou: The History of the Earth installation by Maria Thereza. Since his eyesight isn't so good, this was probably his favorite part of the show, due to the sounds from the videos playing at the center of the installation.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance to look around for very long, partly because I was supervising my brother and partly because...well, let's just say I was on a time crunch. More on that next time. As for the Yerba Buena, although I liked the show okay, I've been to this city before and I can tell you, it just doesn't compare to the MoMA or de Young Museum. If you're going to go all the way to San Francisco, you'd better make sure you see the best the city has, and the Yerba Buena isn't it.

Still, I'll give them extra points for being so accommodating for my brother. Believe me, decent accommodation for the disabled can be hard to come by in the big city. I'm rating this gallery Novelty M&Ms.

As for the city itself...well, I'm saving that for another post. Stay tuned.

Lumpen by Julia Couzens and Ellen Van Fleet

Hoo boy, did I have to think this one over for a good, long time.

That's right, it's time for my long-awaited verdict on the Robert Else Gallery installation, Lumpen, and after chewing on it like so much granola for a week now, I've finally managed to collect my thoughts on this little show.

See, the artists, Ellen Van Fleet and Julia Couzens, visited Sac State to tell us all about their experiences as artists, how they came upon some of their ideas, and what the overall concepts common in their works happen to be. But don't let me hog the mic, let me pass it along to Van Fleet for you.

Sometimes it's just better to let the artist say it herself. That doesn't make me lazy, I swear!

This is a diagram of how to construct the sculpture in the above video.

 Where Van Fleet's art is very spontaneous and emphasizes the unexpected and temporary beauty in things like shadow and movement, Couzen's work is more focused on linear shapes and grids, albeit warped in interesting ways. Though she also works with a variety of materials, particularly textiles, she said much of her art starts out as a drawing or is at least planned like a drawing.

Linear forms, you say?

Grids, huh?

Yeah, I think I see what she's getting at.

Between the two, I found I preferred Couzen's art, since I'm a bit more familiar with drawing than sculpture, but one thing is certain--seeing the artists and listening to what they had to say definitely helped me appreciate and understand what they were trying to express in Lumpen. See, the idea was never to convey some hidden message. It's simply a celebration of textures, shapes, and unusual compositions meant to tease the eye and entertain the mind. It is, quite simply, art for art's sake, drawing the viewer in by nothing short of the sheer magnetism of visual art.

After the presentation, the artists had a Q&A session, allowing us to ask them something that had been floating around in our heads while listening. I decided to ask why they used materials that didn't seem to be too sturdy and how they planned to preserve them, if at all. Van Fleet's answer was that she had no plans to preserve it and people could do whatever they wanted with the remains. Couzens simply insisted her works were sturdier than I thought.

After that, we had the opportunity to return to the gallery and take a second look at the art. I decided to do exactly that and see if I could find the traits they cited in their work for myself. Of course, this meant taking lots and lots of pictures in order to point these things out to you, the readers.

Honestly, it's still baffling to the layperson, isn't it?

 The really fun part, of course, is that my stupid camera's battery died on me in the middle of this. I managed to take about three pictures and this was the only one that was only a little terrible. Usually, I take several shots of the same thing and narrow it down, but no such luxury here. The lesson here, kids, is always keep a spare charged battery on you.

Don't be melacritic. Be smarter than melacritic.

So after all that cogitation and agitation, I bet you're all at the edge of your seats, wondering what I'm going to rate this installation. Actually, no I don't, but I still need to rate it either way. Frankly, it's a conundrum, because the plain truth is I just don't like this art.

There, I said it.

I like the idea of the art. I like the artists. I just don't like the art. To me, it looks like a confusing mess and even after hearing what they have to say, I don't think what they had in the show was their best work. I really, truly, in the bottom of my graphite-filled heart enjoyed the art in the slideshow so much better than anything I saw in the installation. That being said, I'm giving Lumpen the rating of S'mores.

No, this is not me flaming the artists. Chill out.

"What gives, melacritic?" I hear you say. "Why rate this so high if you don't like the art?"

The answer is actually very simple; art is subjective and what I dislike and find confusing and dull might be enchanting and fascinating to others. Just because it wasn't my cup of tea doesn't make the art bad. Lumpen made me think and reconsider and work toward a conclusion outside of my immediate reactions, and for that, I have respect for the artists and their creations.

A Digital Tour of Five Sacramento State Galleries: Part Two

Last gallery...will it be worth the visit?

Told you I'd be back.

So here we are, the Raymond Witt Gallery. I do like the nod to Andy Warhol in the exterior design, but just peeking in at first glance, I can tell it's not a very big gallery. Oh well, I guess there probably won't be anything interesting here to see or anybody to--

O hai dere.

Well, I stand corrected. Folks, meet Julia Kropinova, a student artist who was featured in the gallery during my visit. See, unlike the other galleries, none of these works have a label next to them, because it's all her work. The Raymond Witt cycles through different students through the school year and I just happened to walk in while this artist was in. Might I say, too, that her art has a very distinctive, unique quality to it, as well! In fact, you've already seen one of her pieces before--I had taken a snapshot of it earlier in the Union Gallery. Naturally, I was intrigued and started asking her some questions about her medium choices, process, and overall vision, all of which she was more than happy to share. She even pointed out her favorite work, which I took a video of just so the details could be appreciated just that little bit more.

She didn't know I was filming this. I just happened to get lucky and record just as she spoke up.

Julia considers her works to be a form of recycled art, using all sorts of materials to create framed sculptures with a great deal of texture, symbolism, and depth--literally! Her works all emphasize using three-dimensional space, rather than flat pieces. Here are some pictures of a few pieces she personally discussed with me as we looked around the gallery together.

She uses whatever material catches her eye and figures out how it can make the overall composition more interesting.

That being said, she's also a very good painter! This one is meant to have a sci-fi, cosmic feel to it.

This piece was especially interesting. According to Kropinova, this one represents urban life, the crowded feel of living in the city, and the heavy feeling of pollution. The keys represent noise and a dense population. I thought it represented a women waiting for somebody she loved at a train station, as evidenced by the red tones and heart shape, with the keys being the keys to her heart. We had a good laugh over the widely divergent interpretations, but Kropinova herself expressed being very open to people viewing her art in different ways, even though she has a clear vision in mind when she sets out to create art.

 

This one is a map of California. Look closely and you can see intersections in the strings!

She mentioned that she especially likes working with string. Big shocker, that.

So yeah, this was way cooler than I ever expected. While the gallery was small and only featured a single artist, having said artist in the room discussing their work with you makes a huge difference. Very rarely does one get the chance to hear directly from the source in such an open, casual setting. As much as I like the Library Gallery, having the ability to ask questions and have a real discussion with the person responsible for the art you're seeing is really something else. I highly recommend it.

Julia Kropinova, you are awesome and I rate you The REALLY Good Piece in the Valentine's Box. Best of luck to you and here's hoping more people take a look at your creations.