Two really sweet exhibits at Yale made me think about my family and family photos and family connections. No, these shows aren’t at the Beineke or the Art Gallery or the art school. One is at the Hillel and the other at a center for emeriti faculty.
My friend Julie grew up in a Yale family, her father a professor, her mother a Dean. Now retired, her father still teaches the odd course here and there and engages with the Koerner Center, named for Henry Koerner, the artist, who after fleeing Europe and famously illustrating the Nuremberg Trials, taught in the Yale art department.
Now, Alan Trachtenberg has an exhibit of his black-and-white portrait photographs at the Koerner. Each tells a story, not just of the sitter, but instead the relationship with the photographer, and in his absence, with us as viewers. These are not easy conversations. Who is the stern woman? (Turns out, it’s his wife!) The quizzical young man? How has the photographer interrupted the couple, and does that explain why they look at us the way they do?
The exhibit at the Slivka Center, No One Remembers Alone, is surprisingly touching, telling the story of a love affair and the family that surrounds it. It’s a Jewish story, of Abraham and Sophie, who are separated when she immigrates first, to Brooklyn.
They really fall in love through postcards–even the poor could afford the one penny stamp. A portrait photograph was cheap enough, too. Like a great love letter, these cards were saved over the decades. Found in a suitcase and translated from Yiddish, the cards are displayed chronologically at Hillel on a round wheel-like display, where the back is visible, as well as the front.
Chava in 1910
While I loved that story, there were also the stories of their siblings. Chava makes the trip to the U.S. in the place of Gitel, her sister, who fell in love with a young teacher Velvei Schapoachnik. So much for going to the U.S.
So Chava travels under Gitel’s name, and the ship’s manifest is on display. But then, in the U.S., she’s an illegal immigrant. She was terrified of being deported, until she was finally able to naturalize as a citizen about thirty years later, in 1940.
Then there’s her brother Abram. In 1899, when he was 13, he walked 3 kilometers to the farm school funded by the Jewish Colonization Association. He wasn’t admitted because he was considered too weak and malnourished for the accompanying farm labor. But this didn’t stop Abram. He went again the next day and was turned away again. He went every day for a month, until his tenacity got him a place in school.
Abram at school
Abram was the only member of his family to be educated, and his career came as a result, cultivating flowers and plants.
And so the love of learning moved through his world, as it does mine. And I’m grateful to my family, who made similar choices as this family of strangers, who really don’t seem strange at all.
Well, here’s another fun show to add to your fall exhibition schedule! Julianne Biehl, dear artist friend of my mother and me, has a print in the tasty new show at the Newport Art Museum: Palate to Plate: Prints & Recipes From Members of The Boston Printmakers.
So what’s a Dallas/Colorado artist doing in a Boston print show in Newport, RI? Well, the Boston Printmakers is an international group, and the 99 high-calibre artists in the Newport show are from all over.
What brings them together is this theme of food and printmaking, or prints of food accompanying their recipes, collected in this charming cookbook/catalogue.
In this era of 3D printing, where the printer can make a plastic car or a gun that shoots, there’s something refreshing about an exhibit of ideas on paper. But no worries, there’s lots of variety in the visual interpretations. Each print is its own surprise, its own story. Julianne’s is quite typical of her painterly style and passion for color. Here’s my not-so-great image of her page in the catalogue.
Vegetable soup is Julianne’s favorite soup. Some kind of hot, wowza!
To read her recipe, click to enlarge the image.
Julianne’s and my mother’s paintings talk color together with great verve. Here’s the painting “Joyous Song” by Julianne that I get to enjoy.
So if you’re heading to Newport for a day of beauty, make sure to catch the scrumptious exhibit. Although you do take the risk of leaving very hungry!
Alice and I adventured to Lowell, MA on Saturday. I had recently read The Daring Ladies of Lowell by Kate Alcott. Whereas the author succumbed to romance-novel tropes, I loved her description of the daily life of the mill girls. I wanted to see for myself, and Alice was game to visit the National Park Service site there.
We started at the beginning, with the building of the power canal. This picturesque trolleyman, Thomas Tucker, took us along the railroad tracks to our boat.
There we got our first glimpse at the managed waterway.
Clever businessmen, wanting to harvest timber for ship building in Newburyport, figured out how to maneuver a 32′ drop in the Merrimack River, turning it into a highway for the transport of goods. Through a series of locks.
In 1796, farmers sold part of their land and then provided the labor to dig through the massive rock layers and open up trenches for the canals. Lock chambers were constructed to manage the rise and drop of water levels that ranged from 2′ to 17′. Our own lock experience: a 5′ water level change, after a particularly heavy rain, when it would normally be about 2-3′.
Headed toward the lock chamber. See the lock keepers on top? They will manually open the lock for us.
Butt power opens the lock
You might get a kick out of the import rates on the canal. Manure cost 50 cents per boatload. Uh huh. Manure was imported into Lowell, not the other way around. Some clever experimenter found out that a chemical in manure set dyes to prevent fading. Imagine that smell!
click to enlarge
Perhaps you’d rather import white oak pipe staves. 100 cents per M.
We bumped our way through the lock system, away from the mills toward the open river.
This portrait of Mr. Francis hangs in the nearby Whistler birthplace home and museum
We learned about the Chief of Police of Water, James Francis. This clever engineer invented a flood gate system (you’ve heard “opening the flood gates”) to protect the town during wild weather. He was given a parade and a tea set when he saved the town from flooded catastrophe in 1848, with the first use of the 4 1/2 ton, wood gates.
The other side. A marvel of the wide canal and nature!
In 1816, the original canal system was expanded from the initial 10′ width, opening up the waterway to larger boats and more traffic. The timing was perfect for Mr. Lowell, who, in 1810, traveled to England, well into its own Industrial Revolution, to study its mill system. Returning in 1817, he began to invent Lowell as a mill town, but more importantly as an “industrial laboratory.”
Used to be farm land. Now mill after mill, powered by the canal generated lock system. A small lock here.
Ironically, with the farmers looking for short-term cash, they in essence brought their way of life to an end. In less than 30 years, the farms were gone. The pastoral was replaced with the industrial.
By the 1830s, Lowell was a showplace of industrial prowess. And a new labor force was created–the daughters of those nearby farmers. Now, the girls and young women could become financially useful to their families by working for wages and living by the “clock and bell,” instead of the sun.
Boott Cotton Mill
First bell, 4 a.m. Work at 4:30 a.m. The girls would take a 35 minute break for breakfast, and later, their other meals. They would rush from the mill back to their boardinghouse, shared with 25-40 other girls.
A typical mill owned some 70 boardinghouse blocks, some reserved for men, who performed the awful tasks of carding the wool–a lung-killing job. After the Civil War, mill owners were less “paternalistic” and workers could live wherever they chose in the city. But initially, it was a factory town system.
Boarding house dining room
Part of worker wages were garnished to pay the “Keeper,” who could then skimp or over-indulge as she pleased. One daughter complained about her mother who couldn’t make ends meet as a Keeper, being too generous in her portions. Some made up the difference, breaking the rules by serving non-mill residents. Tension over pay spilled beyond the disgruntled mill girls, who in 1847, made $2 per week, after room and board was deducted.
Still $2 was enough for financial autonomy. After sending money home, they still had some left for themselves and became instrumental in creating a consumer economy of readymade products geared toward women. Inexpensive jewelry, hat decorations, even a book, all became desirable treats after working their 73 hour work week. 13 hours Monday through Friday, 8 hours on Saturday. In their free time, they might ride the trolley to the end of the line for the amusement park (which encouraged the trolley use on non-work days; always thinking how to make a $).
Spinning Jenny, 2nd generation technology to speed up the spinning process
One child who was hired to “doff the bobbins” (taking the empty bobbins to the spinners and full bobbins to the weaving floor) said that, at first, the job seemed like play. But after doing the same thing over and over, all week long, well…
And the noise. Perhaps the most evocative part of the day was hearing just a few weaving machines running at Boott Cotton Mill. Incessant bang, bam, bang, bam, bang, bam. Really Loud. You’ll notice in this video, that the “mill girl” is wearing ear plugs.
Not so back in the day. No surprise, the girls only lasted 3-4 years on average. The job was a path to independence or marriage or … illness. This is one aspect the Alcott novel explores pretty well, as does Elizabeth Gaskell’s amazing North and South.
The size of the room. Imagine if all the machines were running. The cloth made here is sold in the gift shop.
With such efficient production, supply soon exceeded demand, and the manufacturers wanted to cut wages. After all, the mill girls were making more than teachers. The workforce started to shift to immigrants, desperate for the work even at lower wages. Irish, Greeks, French Canadians, Jews, and more took over from the moral “mill girl,” and Lowell began its slow descent.
The mills lost money during the Civil War, and the genteel boarding houses for the mill girls were replaced by tenements.
While the first protests were conducted by the mill girls, in 1912, a wage reduction led to a massive union strike. Continuing financial strain prevented investing in the latest technology, too. After World War I, “Spindle City” couldn’t compete with the mills in the South. Some moved, others were abandoned, many torn down. Some became artist lofts.
After the river was cleaned up. Lowell had grade D water according to the 1972 Clean Air and Water Act. The canal water would turn bright yellow or hot red, depending on the dyes dumped in it. Now, the water is a B. Technically, you can fish and swim. Hmmm.
By 1960, it was basically over. Some who volunteer in the museum mill, worked for the real deal in the 1980s. But that was a last and dying breath. For a town that prided itself on a motto like “Art is the Handmaid of Human Good,” Lowell “sacrificed its workers for dividends” and its fresh, clean environment for expediency. “Sounds familiar,” Alice mused, referring to today’s repetition of history.
James McNeil Whistler may have hailed from Lowell, but he saw fit to lie about it, claiming Baltimore or England as his birthplace. But the house is in Lowell, and the Art Association is working very hard to restore it. We were given a private, detailed tour by the director, before looking around at its small, nice art collection on our own. After all, where else could you see Whistler’s father?
Memorial Day weekend calls for the beach. No matter that the ferry crossing to Block Island was cold and the indoor seats smelled of mildew. No matter that the sun couldn’t find its way. There’s nowhere quite as sweet on a late spring day as the seashore.
On the ferry
Lighthouses and painted rocks and bluffs and sand and surf and cat tails and shades of gray and green. Junk shops and galleries and fried seafood and ice cream.
Yes, these alpacas are part of the North Light ( named after the lighthouse) Fiber production process. From animal to textile, they do all the steps here. I bought several skeins of alpaca for my new rigid heddle loom. Wish me luck!
I took an island taxi tour with Barry, who showed me his house and their Norwegian Fjord horses Orion and Jenny. These are stocky work horses, living a pretty good life on BIRI, or Block Island, RI to you land lubbers.
Barry lives on the west side of the island, the most isolated part of this isolated place. Historically, roads on the 10 square mile island were so bad, the west siders had their own school. Prejudice ran high. West siders were considered “short, ugly, and inbred.” Now, their houses circle $1 million.
The island is still covered by 300 miles of stone walls, used to separate fields of mostly corn and potatoes. But today, no longer part of a farm culture, the fields and hedgerow are mostly overgrown. The Conservancy maintains this pasture to show what the island looked like since its European settlement in 1661.
An environmental theme also organizes my friend Suzan Shutan’s new show at the elegant Five Points Gallerie in Torrington, CT.
I always love Suzan’s Pom Pom pieces, here documenting Connecticut’s well water in “Mapping Ground Water.” The Pom poms are scaled to indicate the prevalence of wells, larger means more.
Most spectacular is “Flow: Tarpaper Seepage,” one of a series Suzan has made from tar roofing and handmade paper. It roller coasters through the gallery space, perhaps slightly visible through my inadequate pictures. It belongs in a museum, so let’s help Suzan make it happen!
Congratulations to Suzan Shutan, who curated the new show at the Housatonic Museum of Art called “Pins and Needles.” When you go, make sure you travel the halls outside the gallery. You’ll catch a show on hard-edge abstraction and a few master works, like a Roy Lichtenstein, unassumingly hanging there, while students rush by unaware.
In Suzan’s show, women artists transform the ordinary into mystery, beauty, pain, and whimsy, commenting on women’s work and women’s lives overall.
Starting with such a tight concept–working with pins and needles–these ten or so artists each create something distinctive to her voice. Erwina Ziomkowska’s work is unmistakable, and ouch! painful!.
You don’t have to tell me that these shoes would hurt!
Karen Shaw works with words, tagging the image with layers of meaning. Three of her “Arcade” series are in the show, Make sure you look closely to see how Shaw plays with ideas with words, you got it, stuck on with pins.
I like Kim Bruce’s sculptural figures made out of cast beeswax, straight pins, and cloth. My maternal grandparents both worked with pins and needles for a living, and her work reminds me of a sewing dummy or a pin cushion figurine. But she is likely to be commenting on something much more serious.
Suzan has done a great job installing the show to create a lot of visual interest beyond the obvious. She has included large wall works and pieces on the floor, busting the gallery walls open.
Hands down, or pins and needles in hand, my favorite works were by Suzan. Who can resist her pom pom series “Homage to Ellsworth Kelly”? Not me!
The opening is tomorrow night, if you can make it, and the show runs through February 20.
My friend Cathie came down from Portland, ME to meet me in Kennebunkport, ME for lunch. A rainy day in New Haven was a beautiful day in Maine. Check out the sights by our restaurant. Enjoy this Maine-r break…ah…
Thank you to my friend Penny, who reminded me how much I love the public art at Madison Square, just about my favorite park in the city.
So with the temperature hovering near 50 degrees, I decided to walk over today to see what there is to see. You can’t miss the huge bird made out of gigantic nails. You can see the construction pretty clearly from this picture of the rear (you can also double click it to enlarge it). The front of the bird is in the slide show below.
People were much more attracted to this obvious piece of art, juxtaposing the manmade and the natural, nails and bird, that to that little, white, round canister, sitting by its lonesome.
You can probably see why. The door to the canister is open in this shot. I liked the minimalism of it. Penny had told me what to look for, so I wonder if I would have wandered over if she hadn’t.
I’m so glad she did!
The canister is an art installation by Sandra Gibson and Louis Recorder, two film artists. It’s a camera obscura, the precursor to today’s camera. A camera obscura works the same way the eye does. By creating a darkened chamber, with a hole to admit light, an image is projected upon the chamber wall, upside down.
Then artists like Vermeer, reportedly, could trace the outline of the projection to get proportionately accurate buildings, landscapes, rooms, etc.
This installation is small, and the day was moody. The sun kept going behind clouds, then reemerging, which made the projection ever changing. The artists said they wanted to “do a film piece without technology,” according to the docent, who let us in and monitored how long we could stay. I would say the results are mesmerizing, like a good film.
The docent pointed out hard to see changes in the scene–cars going by, pedestrians, the traffic light changing from red to green. None of those details turned out in my pictures, but the results of the famous Flatiron Building look suprisingly similar to Edward Steichen’s atmospheric 1905 photograph (below right), only upside down and bent where the wall met the floor.
The graininess is similar anyway. I took a few pictures to show the effects of the changing light, which you can catch in the slide show below. I think they’re eerily beautiful.
Of course, there’s also the mind-bending idea of a camera inside a camera. I’ll leave you to ponder that one…
It’s a beautiful thing. Sarabeth‘s has this Bloody Mary that my friend Katherine is showcasing for you. You can see why it’s called a ‘garden in a glass,’ jicama and carrots and all. We splurged, even on this weekday brunch, worth it for the beauty alone.
No, you won’t read about any hot club dancing or participative performance art pieces in Soho. But after a week of intense study, that promises not to let up until mid-May, what I did do tonight was pretty thrilling.
Many of the museums are open late on weekend nights, and the Morgan Library is no exception. The place was hopping. I mean, it was noisy…in the Morgan! The Surrealism Drawings exhibit was pretty packed, too.
All your favorite surrealists were there, inspired by Andre Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto. Sure, there are dreamscapes and automatisms (automatic writing/drawing). Yes, there are weird, sexual collages and the requisite Exquisite Corpse drawings.
You know, I used to be a surrealist, too. I was a regular collagist. And a great warm-up exercise my writers’ groups frequently used was the Exquisite Corpse. The results are a hoot! I feel inspired to do those, even as a solo experiment.
The art historian in me was fascinated by an exhibit that connected Picasso to Pollock, arguably the two most important artists of the 20th century. Picasso wasn’t much of a surrealist, and dare I say, Pollock wasn’t much of an artist when he dabbled in it. But surrealism served as a binder for many unrelated artists and movements, like the beautiful drawing above by Francis Picabia, another unlikely surrealist, of Olga from 1930.
My favorite discovery was the decalcomania, a process of applying wet media like ink or gouache to paper, folding it, and voilà, you have your very own Rorschach test. The process was reinvigorated by the Spanish artist Oscar Dominguez, and his works, plus those of Georges Hugnet and Yves Tanguy, were luscious and lyrical, very organic. Some looked like hyper realistic photos of underwater forms, like corral, or fantastical castles. Really beautiful.
And then there’s the laughter factor My winner would have to be Rene Magritte, who separated language from the object in a hilarious drawing. You know, the elegant egg he mislabeled L’acacia and a hammer as Le désert.
Here’s a sample weird dream-moment:
Federico Castellon, Her Eyes Trembled
From the Morgan, I went to the Hunter College gallery for the opening of the Sandy Wurmfeld retrospective curated by two of my favorite student-colleagues. The installation is beautiful, and the show just goes on and on. It’s huge, as are the works.
The model of this color-room was there, as a pitch to get it built again in New York. This next image will give you a sense of how Sandy works with color.
Sanford Wumfeld, Color Visions, 1966 – 2013
Glorious, isn’t it? Imagine if filling a whole wall. And the room with the color-maze of translucent, plexiglass panels was worth the trip alone. I hope you can get there.
I left feeling so energized. Seeing the stunning work my colleagues had done and being in a crowd of people was so uplifting after a week with my head glued to the computer. I felt just like the armless guy in the subway who banged away on his overturned plastic-drums with utter joy. That’s what a night on the town can do!
I love being a tourist in my own town, and today, my friend Helen put up with my crazy insistence to go to Serendipity. Here it is one of the coldest days of the year, and we have the frozen hot chocolate (not hot hot chocolate) at Serendipity.
Well, wouldn’t you?
This is a trademark of Serendipity’s, combining 18 different kinds of chocolate. Kind of like a really fancy chocolate milk shake.
We chose the peanut butter frozen hot chocolate to go along with our veggie burgers (and fried parsnips). Talk about combining the ridiculous with the sublime!
Serendipity is pretty high on the fun factor. The ceiling has objects, like giant keys and regular sized chairs, and people, in the form of dummies, dangling overhead. Very much reminded us of the Maurizio Cattelan exhibit at the Guggenheim, without the ghoulishness.
At the front door are tchochtke cases that are pretty good. My house used to look like these cases, before the NYC austerity era. So I get a special kick out of anyone who lets their inner tchochtke out.
Check out more images of this festive place in the slideshow below and when you feel like indulging, you’ll have to go for a sundae at Serendipity. That was too much for Helen and me today, but who knows…someday…
My friend and artist Carolyn is in town from DC, on a mad dash to see as much work in the Chelsea and mid-town galleries as she can in two days. So I met up with her at New York Public Library, one of the great, Grand buildings of New York.
What an inspiration to work there, which I had the good fortune (or challenging process) of doing while researching for the Ed Ruscha Catalogue Raisonné project. Who wouldn’t be inspired to academic grandeur in a place like this?
Carolyn introduced me to the early work of Philip Tager, a photographer she knows, giving me a behind-the-scenes look at this lawyer-turned-photographer and his (primarily) architectural images. If you’re nearby, you’ll enjoy seeing the show–it’s up on the 3rd floor (the same floor as the Reading Room pictured above and the WPA murals in the slide show below). The wonderful history of Lunch Hour NYC exhibit is still on the ground floor. Don’t go hungry.
Then we walked up Fifth Ave, as Carolyn was racing the clock to fit in a couple more galleries. But I made her slow down to look at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which is getting a facelift–only appropriate for a fading Fifth Ave beauty.
st-patricks-gets-a-face-lift-1
Image 1 of 3
One of the wonders of New York: look up at the cathedrals of Manhattan, meant to send our spirits (of commerce) soaring.
Tonight was Fall for Dance, and I think I may have been a kill-joy for my friend. Rather than falling in love, I was untouched.
Perhaps I’m just out of step (all puns intended) with modern dance these days. Two of the 3 works we saw were so inextricably linked with pop culture that I can hardly call them dance. One seemed more like hip-hopped gang ritual and the other like a trick pony, which sparked ooh’s, ahh’s, and applause from the audience.
I remember criticisms of Pilobolus back in the ’70s. That’s not dance, moaned the critics. And maybe it wasn’t. Now, 2 generations of dancers later, I see Pilobolus watered down by gymnastics and Cirque du Soleil, making those ’70s dances look like Balanchine.
So, hungry for Dance with a capital D, I find myself liking Rite of Spring more and more, the piece my friend liked the least. At least the work had a coherent whole, with performances that served the whole, that created an effect. For me, that effect was visually intriguing, like game pieces moving on a chessboard. My friend found it repetitive and dull. We agreed it didn’t really go anywhere. Still, these will be the images I’ll remember from tonight’s performances.
SHEN WEI DANCE ARTS Rite of Spring
Choreography by Shen Wei
And the noise. Perhaps the most evocative part of the day was hearing just a few weaving machines running at 
James McNeil Whistler
