Brad Copping: Prairie Portage Primer

A very nice interview and video tour of Brad Copping's exhibition, "Prairie Portage Primer", on view at Moose Jaw Museum and Art Gallery through September 2, 2012. I was honoured to have been asked by curator Heather Smith to write the catalogue essay.

VSVSVS: Graffiti Removal Removal

VSVSVS is a collective of young artists based in an industrial space in the Port Lands on Toronto's eastern waterfront. Current members include Stephen McLeod, Wallis Cheung, Miles Stemp, Laura Kreviazuk, Ryan Clayton, Anthony Cooper, Jemma Egan, Laura Simon, and James Gardner.

"Graffiti Removal Removal" is a public art project which VSVSVS has recently done as part of Art of the Danforth 2012 . This festival  is a welcome newcomer in the Toronto free-art, community-engagement scene. Bracketed roughly by the Greenwood and Woodbine subway stops, "Art of the Danforth" celebrates a stretch of the Danforth that has yet to see much in the way of gentrification. The festival runs from May 20 through June 10 this year, but "Graffiti Removal Removal" should be around for some time to come, or at least until someone removes the removal removals.

Graffiti Removal is what you get when city workers, or private property owners, attempt to erase graffiti by painting over it. You see these erasures everywhere, as floating and layered blocks of colour which almost, but not quite, match the tones of the underlying surfaces on the original buildings or fences. The resulting forms can be pretty interesting, if unintentionally so.

I have not asked the members of VSVSVS, but their project seems to be the logical extension of ideas introduced in the wry mocumentary short film "The Subconscious Art of Graffiti Removal" (2001, director: Matt McCormick, narrator: Miranda July,  based on an original idea of artist Avalon Kalin).

"Graffiti Removal has become one of the more intriguing and important art movements of the early 21st century. With roots in abstract expressionism, minimalism and Russian constructivism, Graffiti Removal is both a progressive continuation of these movements and an important step in the future of modern art. What makes graffiti removal particularly intriguing, though, is that the artists creating it are unconscious of their artistic achievements."

Here is a clip:



And so, we have "Graffiti Removal Removal". Works of "removal art" are unintentionally made by city workers and property owners who have the conscious intention of erasing that which they do not sanction as art. With the addition of carefully chosen colour and occasional sculptural elements, VSVSVS consciously and deliberately "removes" the graffiti removals in such a way as to elevate the erasures. The graffiti removals now become validated and sanctioned works of ART as we more commonly define it: that is, work created purposefully and thoughtfully by professional artists. As is always a trademark of VSVSVS at their most successful, this project manages to be tongue-in-cheek and utterly serious at the same time. Unsanctioned artists make graffiti, which the city and the property owners do not consider to be art. The city and property owners make erasures, which they do not intend to be art, but which are now defined as such as a result of the intervention of professional artists. Next up?

Three of my favourite works in this series can be seen in the laneway which runs from Greenwood to Linnsmore Crescent, behind the stores on the north side of the Danforth. (Shot with my iPhone, and not the best. Go see for yourself, if you are in Toronto.)

The door, the post and the stairs have been painted in the same colour as the removal removals.

Sculptural elements are sometimes included in the removal removals: note the addition of spray-foam insulation on the right of the door. Note, too, the dash of aqua at shoulder height to the left of the door, nicely enhancing the divot which a truck has taken out of the corner of the building...

...and a pink-painted padlock installed on the pole.

The colour of the removal removal on this fence was inspired by the weathered siding on the adjacent garage.

The property owner attempted a white-wash removal of an entire wall of graffiti, but could not paint around the permanently parked van. VSVSVS helpfully added the text, reading "WHITE PAINT" (vinyl lettering, thus itself easily removable).

MuMo: a mobile museum for children

What a wonderful project this is! Conceived by Ingrid Brochard, entrepreneur, art collector and philanthropist, MuMo is a traveling contemporary art museum especially for children aged 6 through 12. The project is the first major undertaking of her non-profit foundation, L'Art à l'Enfance.

Designed by New Jersey-based architect Adam Kalkin, the museum consists of a shipping container engineered to magically unfold and pop up like a Transformer toy, topped off with a giant inflatable pink bunny sculpture, courtesy of Paul McCarthy.

Kalkin's preliminary sketch for MuMo.

MuMo at a schoolyard in Cameroon

The museum was assembled in Liverpool in the spring of  2011, and from there was shipped across the channel to France. It began its journey to schoolyards throughout France last fall, and is now traveling to elementary schools in Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire. It will return to France in the fall of this year, with a fully-booked tour schedule through the spring of 2013.

There are 15 internationally recognized artists featured in the museum, including Lawrence Weiner, Nari Ward, Paul McCarthy, Ghada Amer and Maurizio Cattelan. 

Children enter the museum in small groups of 14...no parents or teachers allowed! They are, however, accompanied by a child psychologist, who travels with the exhibition, and trains additional local adult mediators to assist.  In a recent interview with ArtInfo,  Brochard stated that at first she had wanted the children to explore the museum with no adults whatsoever. "But I was afraid that they would miss certain things or that they wouldn't take their time. The idea of guidance is important, as long as the child can speak freely and be listened to. It came down to shedding the academic habits and structure that teachers enforce. I didn't choose (psychologist) Donatella Caprioglio because she's a therapist but because she knows how to listen to children, because she respects their freedom," Brochard said. "I want to avoid at all costs having any authoritarian aspect to the visit."

After the visit, children make their own artwork, and Caprioglio and the mediators conduct a "café" to discuss the experience with the undoubtedly disappointed and frustrated parents and teachers, who are able only to experience the museum vicariously through their children's eyes and ears.  I love how this project turns the traditional pedagogical hierarchy upside down, and allows children space for creative exploration and critical thinking, on their own terms. In the artists selected for the exhibition, the curators avoid any dumbing-down or pandering to adult notions of what children are capable of appreciating, understanding or enjoying. Also on MuMo's website is some charming documentary footage of children's reactions the art they've just seen: one small boy in Cameroon is positively giddy about the experience, declaring Ghada Amer's work, his favourite in the exhibition, to be "Magnifique!...I've never seen anything like that before!".  What he has never seen before is a depiction of two people kissing, highlighting the cross-cultural exploration of similarity and difference that is at the core of this project.  I hope a full-length documentary about MuMo is in the works.

From MuMo's website, here is a short video clip about how the project started, with some interesting commentary from a few of the artists involved. Even if you don't speak French, you'll get the idea...and of course, the American architect and artists speak English.  Lawrence Weiner's comments about the importance of art the psychological development of children are spot-on.

The following excerpts from an interview with Ingrid Brochard (conducted by Françoise Claire Prodhon, via l'Art à l'Enfance) give a fuller sense of Brochard's philosophy and guiding principles:

Why do you wish to set up this project?
Ingrid Brochard : This project is part of a very personal thought process. In my eyes, art, or rather "the arts" in their widest sense: they have the power to open eyes on the world and the realm of emotions, they help us to get through life and its hardships. This is probably the observation that led me to think of a project that would help underprivileged children, or at least those who do not have access to art.

It's a charity with a humanitarian vocation. How do you plan to carry it out ?
This project is designed for the children of Europe, Africa, Asia, South America… It can be implemented with orphanages, hospitals and schools. It will take on the form of a travelling museum that will get to the children in places that are sometimes very remote. The idea is to provide them with a special moment during which they'll have to confront the creative process. But it will also create opportunities to share with the artists during workshops and performances.

What are the guiding principles of the project and how does it work?
The interventions can take on various forms. One of its aspects is the Mobile

Museum, but there are artists who design a project with a specific target that doesn't require them to go on location. For example, Florence Doléac, the designer, designed the blanket-transitional object project for us, which targets small children at an orphanage who don't really have any toys of their own. Another example: Lawrence Weiner is currently setting up the project of a book designed by artists for the children, which will be handed out to the children with the help of Libraries Without Borders.
I talked about L'Art à L'Enfance with many artists, and they all tend to appreciate that type of experience that's outside of the usual framework of contemporary creation, and in which there are no commercial stakes.

What do you mean by that?
I have first-hand experience with the world of contemporary art and its market, the strategic and economic stakes that pervade it. I'm not criticizing, but that's not what I'm looking for… Art is a tool of the mind, and by balancing our emotions, it transforms our outlook on the world, and that's what I wish for these children.

Helen Adam

Today is International Women's Day. I recently spent the afternoon at MoMA wandering through the Tim Burton exhibition. What does one have to do with the other?

Helen Adam (1909-1993) was a poet, free spirit and iconoclast. She wrote in the style of the Victorian ballad. Although much older, and working within a very different creative framework, she counted Allen Ginsberg and the very young Patti Smith among her colleagues, along with many other members of the literary avant garde in New York and San Francisco. I think she would have liked Tim Burton.

In "Apartment at Twin Peaks" she takes the crone stereotype and makes it her own, with characteristic black humour:

"New Year’s Eve, and the moon like a flame.
From as far as Fresno my girl friends came.
I knew my party simply could not miss
Though I served my husband as the principle dish."

Here's an excerpt from Ron Mann's "Poetry in Motion" (1981).

Happy Birthday, Claire.

One Claire I know was a toddler when the Rheostatics recorded this.
Always loved the song, and Claire is the best girl's name, ever.

Life is all about beginnings and endings, and this song is all the more poignant to me now, owing to it's connection to Paul Quarrington, who wrote the song for the soundtrack for the movie based on his novel, "Whale Music".

Claire turned 20 on Jan. 20. Happy Birthday!!

Paul Quarrington died on Jan 21, 2010, at age 56.

Nick Cross: Yellow Cake

We live part-time in a small town where yellowcake is king. No, not a town with a big bakery...a town with a big uranium processing facility. Which gives us an extra-special appreciation of the latest work from animation genius Nick Cross of Ottawa.

Bruno, Saskatchewan Declares June 7 Julie Doiron Day

This story is tangentially related to the "power of one"/creative contagion theme in the previous post.

I've written before about All Citizen's Gallery, and the two young artists who brought their artistic and creative energies to the tiny farming community of Bruno, Saskatchewan, pop. 590. Julie Doiron recently gave a concert at All Citizens, and was surprised when the Mayor declared June 7 to be "Julie Doiron Day". Ms. Doiron was further honoured by the unveiling of a bench and plaque.

I love this video clip of Tyler Brett and the Mayor making the presentation. A bit of research was required to uncover the Mayor's name: she is Audrey Ludwig. I'll bet she'd have a thing or two she could teach big-city politicians about community-building and the "creative class". Richard Florida might want to consider inviting her to deliver a guest lecture at the University of Toronto.



Click here for a lovely Julie Doiron music video.

Exponential Joy

Happiness is wonderfully contagious. It just takes one creative person to get things rolling. This clip about fun-gone-viral has itself gone viral. You may have already seen it elsewhere, but I am posting it as my little contribution to cultural probiotics.



Music by Santigold, Sasquatch Festival out on the Left Coast (Cascadia somewhere)

Never Too Early

One more installation in my series of posts pertinent to arts education, this time from the tenderest end of the spectrum (age-wise, anyway). In a fabulous send-up of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead", Maggie Simpson, whilst pursuing her studies at "Mediocri-Tots Daycare Center", gets punished for being creative. It all works out in the end.

Kate Bush Talks to Kids About Making Art

Another post on the general topic of art and education. Here is a clip from the early 80's British TV show "Razzmatazz" featuring a sweet and sincere Kate Bush talking to kids about the art, music and choreography involved in making a music video.

"I'm very lucky because my interests are actually my work, and in so many ways, any interest I have can become a part of my work...that's the wonderful thing about art...anything you do can then become your work... just keeping your mind open for all these things. It's really fun. Life becomes work."

I wonder what these children went on to do in their lives. They seem so attentive, and I cannot help but think that this experience must have been influential.

Speaking of which: Kate Bush's work would appear to have been an influence on Marcel Dzama and his skating ghosts as well. And a good influence, it is.




(video clip via, via)

Art School Advertisement

Don Novello's circa 1980's TV ad for the San Francisco Art Institute, from a time when not taking yourself too seriously was considered a virtue.

School's Out for the Summer

I have been on trains and planes for the past week, shuttling between Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto, attending to some important beginnings and endings in the life of my family. For a full week, I've been too preoccupied to look at art, read about art, or even open my computer. However, I had the pleasure of encountering many university students from across the country, heading home at the end of their school year. So, in honour of them, I plan to spend a bit of time this week on the subject of education in general, and art education in particular...starting with one of my favourite Pinky Show clips. It features some familiar school architecture, combined with classic Ivan Illich passages read in voice-over by a Japanese schoolgirl. Weirdly appropriate and very funny. Somehow, his commentary on the state of our educational institutions seems even more appropriate today than it did 40 odd years ago. Large class sizes, too many classes taught by sessional instructors and grad students, and graded by multiple choice rather than essay: it must be hard to keep a sense of creativity and curiosity alive for those students and professors who have a passion for knowledge, and are not afraid to learn from failure and risk. I celebrate those students who have that passion, and want them to know that in ten year's time, nobody will care or remember that they got a B- rather than an A in Art History 101.

Playing For Change

Playing for Change is a charitable organization founded by Grammy award-winning producer and engineer Mark Johnson. The foundation's mission is to "connect the world through music". The bricks-and-mortar part of the mission is to build music schools and art schools around the world. Two projects are well underway in South Africa, and the foundation has also been supporting Tibetan refugee centres in India and Nepal.

This music video produced by Playing for Change is an inspiring demonstration of the internet's creative commons philosophy at its best. "Thirty seven musicians from five continents assemble together to create one unified track. The musicians have never met in person and connect through their music. Each track is added to the song as the musicians are recorded live outside across the globe. The end result is a remarkable human connection and a powerful song."

Marcel Dzama: Department of Eagles

Marcel Dzama: Even More Calamities (storyboard for "No One Does It Like You" video). 2008. Ink, root beer base, water color, and paper, 22" x 14"





This beautiful video for "Department of Eagles" premiered at MoMA on March 24, 2009. Produced by Directors Bureau. Direction: Patrick Daughters and Marcel Dzama. Costumes and Sets: Marcel Dzama.

I have tried in vain to discover who was responsible for the choreography. Please post a comment if you know.

If you click through to the MoMA site, you'll note that Dzama is identified as a New York City-based artist...of course, we know that he's from Winnipeg.

Cybele Young: You won't find it here

Cybele Young has now posted one of her stop action videos on YouTube. She tells me more are to come in the near future.



Previous related post here.

Nobuo Kubota Accepts Governor General's Award

Please note: the following video is NOT Nobuo Kubota's GG acceptance speech (but wouldn't that have been fun!).




The above is a clip from Kubota's sound poetry performance at Proposta 2001 in Barcelona.

Kubota was born in 1932 in Vancouver, and came to Toronto as a young man to study architecture at U of T. He practiced architecture for 10 years before turning his attention to sculpture in the early 70s. Most of his sculptural works have been installations which focus implicitly or explicitly on sound and language.

Kubota played saxophone as a member of the Artists Jazz Band, but ultimately had to abandon the instrument when he developed a painful auditory sensitivity. He later joined the CCMC (Canadian Creative Music Collective, formed in 1975 by Michael Snow and featuring a revolving group of artist/musicians over the years). As a performer, Kubota uses a range of extended vocal techniques which explore the boundaries of the human voice. Influenced by Kabuki and Noh theatrical traditions, his facial expressions are deliberate, exaggerated, and made all the more humourous by the maintenence of a neutral, deadpan deportment in the interstitial silences of his performance.

Kubota describes himself as an practitioner of Intermedia: the movement of an idea from one form (e.g., sound) and continuing into another form (e.g., sculpture).
Here is a clip of work created in collaboration with fellow Intermedia artist and poet Mark Sutherland. The oval voiceprint of Kubota's vocals is a real-time spectrogram: no manipulation or animation is involved. (see the post re: June Callwood Park for a fascinating use of the voiceprint in landscape architecture).



Angry Artist #2: Julia Roberts doing Christian Bale doing Jorge Zontal

Thirty years ago, the f-word was reserved for "special" situations. Now it is sprinkled around like salt on a tortilla chip. Too bad: it has lost much of its expressive value as a result of overuse. Did you see Julia Roberts getting all Christian Bale-ish on Letterman? Poised, demure and ladylike. What a waste of a good word.

Back in 1979 when "fuck" had more meaning, Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson of General Idea made a video taking on the artist's relationship with mass media and the marketplace. In the process, they neatly skewer art critics, art prizes, and popular cliches of the artist as wild child. Then, Jorge Zontal delights with what is, and probably always will be, the finest artist rant ever to be recorded. Very, very funny, but also a serious and prescient commentary on the uneasy relationship between art and fame.

Herb and Dorothy Vogel

Megumi Sasaki's award winning documentary, "Herb and Dorothy" was a hit this weekend at the Reel Artists Film Festival in Toronto. Click on her name to see a trailer of the documentary.

A photo of the Vogels has been the inspirational screen-saver on my laptop for some time now. Theirs is a story of obsession and commitment, and proof that "you don't have to be a Rockefeller to collect art". He was a postal clerk. She was a librarian. With their modest means, the couple managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history.

The Indianapolis Museum Of Art has been one of 50 institutions to receive works from the Vogel's collection:



Sasaki's comments on the making of her documentary:

"From the beginning, my intention was to make something other than a so-called "art film." I wanted to capture how these two ordinary people accomplished the extraordinary in the field of art collecting. The film is about the power of passion and love, and a celebration of life.

The story of Herb and Dorothy Vogel is unique not only because of their avant garde vision and discernment as collectors, but also their love and dedication. It is through their loving partnership that the viewer truly experiences this remarkable story.

The Vogels' message is also about access. Art is not limited to the elite few. You don't have to be wealthy or an art school graduate to enjoy art. If you are interested in collecting art, you don't have to follow trends or others' advice, just listen to your own voice. Trust your eyes and instinct. Simply take the time to look, look and look.

In today's world, where art is treated as another commodity and a work's investment value takes precedence over its artistic value, Herb and Dorothy offers us an important question: What is it to appreciate and collect art?

My fortunate encounter with these beautiful people has changed my view of, and appreciation for, art and life."

Play is Child's Work

Related to yesterday's discussion of the serious play underlying Cybele Young's art, I've posted this video clip, because it vividly illustrates how important it is to a child's development to have freedom to explore and play on his own terms. I know the creators of the clip intended it as a bit of humour, but when I watch it, I feel as if I can literally hear this infant's neurons clicking, grinding, firing and connecting as he gets busy with his work. As it turns out, the infant in this video is the son of a young Quebec photographer, Francis Vachon.


via

We Love Museums...Do Museums Love Us Back?

Pinky, you are very funny! Please come visit us in Toronto. We love the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Art Gallery of Ontario loves us back. The new curatorial approach is fresh and engaging, and Frank Gehry's architecture makes our spirits soar.