p.s.

I think I've set a new personal record for blog entries in the past 24 hours, but I can't retire tonight without linking you to TJ Norris' blog because he tells more about our day. Hit me, baby! If you can't bear to read anything more about CHAMP, at least go to see the crazy photoshop hairdo I'm sporting!

we are the CHAMPions

Well, as I mentioned earlier, today was the day to walk my talk and speak for the arts. There's a new program afoot in Oregon and it's called "CHAMP" which stands for Culture, History, Art, Movies, Preservation. The proposed budget will fund these nonprofit organizations: Oregon Arts Commission, the Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Public Broadcasting, the Oregon Film and Video Office, and Oregon Main Street. These are the major arts funders in the state, and this well-rounded budget expenditure would funnel money into the arts and our local communities, but in the long run bring money back into the state via tourism and from major Hollywood studios who come here to make their big budget productions for much less than they can in California. Although now that I think about it, I was trying to get across the Broadway Bridge the other day but had to reroute because they had it closed off - get this - to film a scene with fake rain. The day they were scheduled to film this scene happened to be a dry day. Cracks me up. But I guess that's not as chuckle-worthy as the time soon after Sept. 11, 2001 when they were filming some big explosion scene down near PSU and didn't tell the local authorities, who rushed in with their SWAT teams and bomb squads. Oh, the folly of Hollywood. Anyhow, they leave behind a lot of moolah when they come to town, and we likey the money.

TJ Norris was my partner in crime today and we hit the road mid-morning on a beautiful sunny day. We got there a little early for the rally at noon where some politicians spoke, including First Lady Mary Oberst, Senator Betsy Johnson, our adorable Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams, and the cute-as-a-button Pink Martini Founder Thomas Lauderdale. Most of it was just the blah blah clap clap blah blah clap clap kind of talk you'd expect at any political rally, but Thomas Lauderdale was the most interesting, peppering his advocacy with tidbits of information like "Oregon Public Broadcasting originally just aired weather reports for the farmers." Who knew? He made some very astute points with specific examples of the importance of the arts in Portland, and it was also very familiar to me when he mentioned that he feels like an ambassador of Oregon when he travels for "work." I know what you mean, Tommy boy. And then his people handed out free Pink Martini cds afterwards, which was pretty kind. For anyone out there who doesn't know Pink Martini, they're one of Portland's best musical groups. Don't believe me? Here - see for yourself:


But I digress.....we're here to talk about political causes, aren't we dear reader? I will give you a brief overview of CHAMP since I was in too much of a hurry to even do that last night because all I could think about was crawling into beddy bye. The arts are, as they are everywhere, grossly underfunded in Oregon. Governor Kulongoski is proposing to spend over ten million dollars of the state's budget on the arts. As Lauderdale pointed out, this is half of one percent of the entire budget, so really, it's a pittance in the big scheme of things. TJ and I talked about how sad it is that most people don't understand the value of art in our life.

That said, I was really sorry not to see more artists from Portland show their faces today. This affects us all and although there were at least 100 bodies present, I would have loved to see ten times that. But don't despair, here's what you can do. This bill will be voted on soon by the state house and senate, and you need to contact your representatives and let them know how important this issue is.

click here to go to CHAMP's informational page on how to contact your State Legislators

TJ and I tried to do our own in-person advocating, but of course our representatives were out having all the fun at meetings with other arts groups. We did drop a few cards at their desks to let them know we popped in. Then we made our own fun by wandering around the State Capitol--a building I've never been inside of. I have only gazed at the little gold man on top as I try to navigate around town and remember when the schoolchildren raised money to have him regilded so many years ago. There are wonderful murals inside the entrance of historical scenes of Oregon, such as the first white women to cross the United States. There were also lots of photos and paintings and prints around by Oregon artists, the framed score to "Oregon My Oregon," our state song, which TJ performed for me, and a cute little display case of rocks and minerals of Oregon. We got to see our state gemstone (Oregon Sunstone) and our state rock (geode). Somebody must have been mighty proud when they got that case together.

So, it was a nice way to spend a day off, since I have been working pretty hard lately. It's starting to cloud up now and the weather report says we're in for a few days of rain. Well, I'm kind of glad because I managed to get out in the garden almost every day last week and made a big dent in the travesty out there. That will keep most of it at bay for the summer and little by little I'll be able to whip that area into shape. When I get to the more creative stages, I'll be sure to let you know how it's going.

getting ready for the summer in Fiskars

Ron Nordström sent me this nice photo he took of the exhibition space in Fiskars being cleaned in preparation for the POV show. Too pretty not to share. Reminds me of a Rothko or a Mondrian or a Malevich or.....

short and sweeeeeeeeet

Hey Beautiful People!

Well, I'm wrapping up the weekend and am so tired, but one last thing I had wanted to do was to write about the opening I went to yesterday at Froelick Gallery. I'm just too bushed to think right now, so I'm just going to post some images.

But I also want to mention that there's a big rally in Salem tomorrow and I'm going with fellow blogger TJ Norris. They're trying to get artists to support CHAMP, Governor Kulongoski’s $10.9 Million Reinvestment Package for Culture, Heritage, Arts, Movies and Preservation. Amazing Gov. K has the energy for all that after eating all those cans of beans he purchased with food stamps all last week! Anyhow I'll be back to write more later this week. For more information about the rally, click here and read all about it on the website for the Oregon Arts Commission.

Here are some of Portland veteran painter Katherine Ace's lovely new pieces to ponder. Note the scissors in the second one - I wonder if they are Fiskars products??? The paintings at the beginning of this blog entry belong to the other artist showing at Froelick in May, Victor Maldonado. We arrived right when he was beginning his lecture linking Warhol, Rothko and Mexican Folk art. Interesting speaker, he is. But for now, it's time to crawl into bed with a good movie. Later!

I love you I love you now go away

Hey - just wanted to let you know about two OTHER websites on my mind this week. Both can be attributed to TJ Norris - one is his blog where he did a nice entry recently where he asked some local artists to discuss who inspired them artistically. I'm one of them, although now that I see the mix, I wish I'd elaborated a little. I was just following his instructions to stick to two or three sentences. You know how difficult that must have been for me, dear readers, but now you'll see that I'm not the only one with that problem. Anyhow, click here to read TJ's blog entry titled "Under the Influence."

The second website is that of Carsten Nicolai, who, TJ informed me in the comment on yesterday's blog entry, is the real name of Alva Noto. I found his website last night and was reading all about the audio/visual projects he's been working on in the past decade. Click here to see his website and go to the "works" link.

the bitch is back

I know it may sounda little harsh, but this is the exact phrase that has come to mind oh, so many times in the past few days. I have had an amazing past three days in the studio working on my final part of the project that Christian and I will be sending off to Finland in just a few days. Before I get too far into this entry, I'll tell you that it has been a long time since I've been able to work on a project like this in my studio. I'm not counting Fiskars because that was off-site and completely new work, and I'm not counting the Bresler commission because that was a commissioned project that didn't give me complete artistic freedom as is the nature of such projects, and I don't even count the ITE residency because that was an social experiment in and of itself. It really feels like the last thing I got to do like this was when I was working on the 'sWarm installation over a year ago. I can't complain because my life is so creative and I really needed all of those experiences of the last year to bring me into the here and now, but man......this feels like coming home in such a big bad way that I'm just waiting for that alien to pop out of my stomach and say hello.

To briefly recap, I was asked to be in one of the summer exhibitions in Fiskars when I was there for my artist's residency last February. There are several exhibitions that run during the summer there, and this one is called "Points of View." When I heard the title, I thought it seemed perfect for a collaboration. And since I had Christian on my mind, well, he seemed like the perfect partner in crime.

My initial idea was to start with one of the pieces I made in Fiskars. I let Christian pick out which one responded to him the most. It wasn't a big surprise which one he chose, because this particular piece was one I made in direct response to the music he gave me (particularly Alva Noto) Prototypes that I was listening to a lot while I was there. This piece was also in response to the extra hours of darkness in the Finnish winters that I was experiencing. So he took it home and pinned it up near his workspace.

The first thing he did that surprised me was to hang it sideways. As you may recall, I thought of all of those pieces as being very linear and reading like a piece of music or a piano roll. I guess piano rolls read vertically, huh? Well, anyhow, I had a definite up and down for this piece and when I went over to his place next, it was hanging all catty-wompus and I knew that this was in perfect sync with the concepts of the show.

Christian, I've mentioned before, works for Second Story--one of the most creative and interesting businesses I've ever heard of in Portland. Click here to see their website and more about what they do because I don't have time for that now. Anyhow, I love it when he tells me about what he's working on because when they are designing projects for clients, I'm most interested in the way that they don't just plug in that client's information into a format they've done time and time again. They figure out a way to convey that company's information in a way that their customers might relate to and use that for the basic structure of the way that information is disseminated. If I've lost you now, you'd better take a little break and look at their website. Or not - your choice.

Anyhow, the reason I bring this up is that Christian saw how I was working quite literally from the music I was hearing and emulating and then wanted to push it another step. He proposed to make a sound piece that responded to my initial visual "score," and then make a second piece that responded to his first piece that was, in his mind, non-linear. He sent me MP3 versions of these pieces over the past few weeks so I could listen to them. I made this initial drawing based on hearing the second piece.

So then, to complete the project, I would make a non-linear piece that responded to his response. At first, I thought I'd do a single 3-d pedestal piece, but as I heard his part develop, I thought it needed to be a mini installation. I am so glad I made this choice, because it really came together in the end in a harmonious way.

Since Christian's music is all made on the computer, he used voice samples and altered sounds and then processed and filtered the hell out of them. In the next few days I'll hopefully have finished versions that I'll have available for you to hear, dear reader. For now, you'll just have to try to imagine it. (And I thought talking about art was hard!)

So the last little dialogue we had before I really had to commit with my end of the deal was that he was going for a sound that was like "the inside of a pipe." I was really glad to hear this because I was hearing murky water and my sculptures were taking on the forms of a microscopic world that lived in that stagnant, swaying pool.

This was particularly imperative when I was at the color stage. My first attempts at color were very dark, also thinking about the original Fiskars piece. As I neared the last few elements of this 30 piece group, I stopped and took a break. I didn't want this piece to be gloomy. I started thinking about beauty and how there needed to be something lovely spawning from the murk. I guess this is something present in my work already, but I wanted more of the "beauty-in-ugliness" element. So I pushed the palette a little and found ways to bring a nice fleshy pink and red and some purples into the mix so it wouldn't just look like a bruise.

Here is the entire assemblage. My final touch was the hanging elements, which have lead weights at the ends. My initial thought was that they would be like little percussion instruments, bringing their own music in if someone walked by bruskly and made them swing and hit each other in the sway. But the rubbery paint I use, on top of the dense malleable lead makes it such a faint rhythm. It doesn't really matter because the idea is still there. Now that I think about it, that delicate sound is like the careful listening it takes to appreciate Alva Noto, so maybe it's just right.

I will say, it's been a really great collaborative experience working with Christian. This is the second sound designer I've worked with and I really love how he embraced the project and pushed it to new levels. We have talked about collaborating on this installation I have scheduled for this fall in Virginia, and I hope we can get on it in the early summer so we have more time to interact with it and each other. I loved being witness to his working process and the way it challenged and pushed how I worked when I was alone in my studio.

This is the kind of experience I've always wanted to have with a creative sound artist where we really work together and I'd love to have a project that really starts with both of us and organically evolves into something neither of us expected. I guess we did have that here - when I brought Christian into the studio a few nights ago to see the forms, he was surprised at what I'd done. And that was when they were barely starting to get some color. Now with the surface treatments and arrangement on the wall, it's much more like it will be in the show. He'll come by tonight and see it in its completed state.

In fact, this project also inspired me to work on some of the pieces for my next big big installation, the one I'm still trying to find the perfect venue for. I loved coming back to the organic forms and have new techniques I developed for this project that I can't wait to use again. Since these projects will be longer in their execution, I'll blog more along the way about my trials and tribulations. I had to borrow Christian and my dear friend Leah's cameras to get these images since mine is still in the shop. I feel so incapacitated without my camera - it's such a big process tool for me to be able to record stages along the way. It helps me think about the next step in a way that drawing or memory doesn't quite touch.

So, we'll finish it up today - get the statement and the templates and installation instructions all together and then send it off to Fiskars. The last image is one I took of the installation space when I saw it last spring. I see on the invitation Ron sent that it will be about 40 artists altogether. I think Ron told me that we're the only people outside of Finland in the show, but maybe that's changed in the past few months. It's a wonderful space - I believe it used to be a copper smithy. There are movable gallery walls, and an additional room as well to show more work. I really wish I could see it, but Ron Nordström has agreed to send an image when it's installed. Will post that for sure.If anyone else from Fiskars is reading this, I encourage you to send images so I can post them here. Thanks!

let's be blogfriends

I don't know what's in the air (besides a whole lot of tree pollen) but I have had this flurry of really great new people in my life this year. Maybe it's always like this, like the way that I constantly think that "I'm busier than I've ever been before." Anyhow......in one way or another, my blog has played some sort of role in these new acquaintences. For example, remember how I wrote about a whole mess of shows I saw in March a few entries back, and among the long list of names and places, I mentioned TJ Norris and his blog? A few days later, I get a "Google Alert" that TJ has mentioned me by name in his blog because he saw that I had written my tiny review. A few days later, we start a little email correspondence, he invites me to the invisible.other show he curated, I do another tiny review, we write some more, we have coffee and I get invited (well, actually I think I may have invited myself now that I think about it...) to see his studio. I love it when the world works this way. So I guess the lesson here, dear reader, is...hmmm - what's the lesson? Start a blog and win friends and influence people? I'll get back to you on that.

So....here I am to tell you about my studio visit. The first thing I knew about the building was that the other artists who work there include some of my tried and true Portland favorites like Sean Healy, and MK Guth. Anyhow, that's pretty good company if you've got to run next door for a cup of sugar or mineral spirits or conceptual tweaking or whatever. I immediately had "studio envy" because TJ's space is over twice as big as my space in every direction. Ungghhhhhhh. I don't know if I will ever be able to work outside of my home to be honest, but a girl can dream, can't she?

I first checked out his big wall of images. I love seeing what other artists are inspired by, especially when other folks have the same images I have had around me at one time or another. Right now my image wall in the studio is mainly bonsai and ikebana plants, as I think about my next major installation. TJ's had a lot of my faves like Andy Warhol, and the card from Storm Tharp's last show at PDX, which I look at every morning when I make my tea.

TJ has done a bunch of really interesting collaborations with musicians and sound artists. You can read about one of his projects here. I didn't really experience them today, so I'll let you explore that on your own.

Here's one of TJ's photo/sculpture pieces--it's part of an ongoing exploration of orbs he's been working on for a few years. I love the sensory curiosity of these pieces. Also reminds me of something I haven't thought about in a long time, which is Eva Hesse's testicular hanging net pieces. So many other connotations too but since this is a PG-13 blog, I'll let you figure those out on your own. I really loved these pieces--especially the way he paired the photo of the object(s) and the concealed object(s) itself. I don't know if this was the intended display or not, but I also loved that they were on the floor. Made me want to sit in front of it like an altar, meditating on the prayer beads.

This is a drawing that was part of a series he was still working on - really lovely pieces that were my favorites overall, I'd say. I think this is because I really loved the cutouts and collage, being a scissor afficionado and recent spelunker with my work in this way. (see February blog entries if you've forgotten already, dear readers...) It always excites me to see how other people use unexpected combinations of materials. The rich blackness of the vinyl on the thick white Arches paper he used was so much more satisfying than ink or pastel - but maybe not as rich and black as Lee Bontecou's torched interiors of her early wall pieces. But for this purpose, it was really effective. TJ sent me this image to use on the blog, but this is still work in progress, as well as being work you really really need to see in person to appreciate their subtle nuances.

TJ talked a lot about diptychs and how pieces would sometimes start as stand alone works and then somehow seem to always end up pairing off. Hmmm....maybe that's a metaphor for relationships? In this case, he paired two photographs. This one is called "blackpower" and they're both power sources-- the top image is of a subway wall in New York and the one below is in an alley here in Portland, but the title also refers to the racial issues in Boston's history, particularly bussing and segregation. This piece is about 5 feet tall, so has a lot more impact than this thumbnail I have for you.

Another diptych - this one called "Netwerk" - these photos are silkscreened onto plexiglas discs and then mounted into a steel podium-like wall mount. I liked this piece because it almost asks the viewer to physically participate somehow, for example, I wanted to give a spontaneous lecture on ferris wheels and ecology. No, silly bunny, that's not a ferris wheel. It's a radio tower? What is it, TJ? Please tell me. I know you said something about the contrast between technology and nature, but it has slipped my mind.

(TJ's response: the 'ferris wheel' has been referred to as reminding several people of
a moholy nagy image! wow. it was taken in spokane - and i'd rather
keep it a mystery. but you arent far off.)

These last two are from a series of at least four large (about 3 feet) square black and white diptych prints. TJ is interested in graffiti, and I liked the way he uses this common motif in his work and makes it seem fresh. Perhaps this is the power of pairing - that shape at the top is actually a giant blowup of a tiny faded decal from a store window. I loved the way that top element had flatness and yet sometimes looked like you were looking up into a modern skylight, and how either of those worked with the line and form of the bottom piece. TJ pointed out how the the blackness makes a line that curves around the whole field between the two separate images. Nice.

Okay - I'll leave you now, but not withour showing you the bunny piece. It's called "Rabbit Test on the Moon." You can see more of TJ's works on his website by clicking here. More soon - as I write this, dear reader, I'm sitting on Christian's couch listening to him put the finishing touches on the two compositions he's doing for our Finland collaboration. I will make my piece this weekend to complete this project so I'll fill you in on the details of that.

two shorties

Yesterday the Oregonian published their review of the invisible.other show I blogged about last week and I learned something new about the sound recording by Steve Roden. Apparently, it's the soundtrack to Robert Bresson's film "Proces de Jeanne d'Arc" and then Roden replaced the dialogue with the sound of footsteps, ambient music, and the record crackling, as I heard. That's the problem with going to a show on opening night - it was pretty crowded when Christian and I were playing with the record player, so hard to hear clearly and I never saw any sort of statement. Makes me want to return and see (or rather, hear) it again because it's such a nice idea and seems to sonically fit the concepts of the show with the same strength that Melia Donovan's Frosty Freeze piece did visually/conceptually.

Lastly, I'll share this tidbit for my woodturning fans/readers that I found last week when searching for images to use of Takashi Iwasaki's sweet embroidery pieces . So there's this company called Turn Your Head that takes a digital image of your profile and then turns it in wood to either produce a vase-like form or cuts it down to a framable piece of art. Personally, I think it would be cool to have the vase on the shelf and then pull it out at parties and surprise your friends who have already indulged in a few martinis. I know this is a little gimmicky, but it hits a sentimental place in my heart too--I have always loved puzzles and one of my favorties was the optical illusions, such as the "face or vase." Since we're on the sentimental bandwagon, I'll also throw in another favorite, where you can see either an old or young lady in the same drawing. Have fun!

it's a small world after all.....

Happy Bunny Day, beautiful people!

Remember the other day how I blogged about the show I saw at the Art Institute? Well, it led to a really nice email connection with fellow artist and blogger TJ Norris, who invited me to the opening of a show he curated at the New American Art Union.

I checked out the show on the web first, but was very pleasantly surprised to see the work in person. I'm telling you this now because the images I'm going to show you here seriously don't do justice to the quality of the work in this show, which was outstanding and frequently difficult to capture in a photograph.

Case in point: even though I was holding the list of all the works in my hand, dutifully going through each one as I circled the room, making my attempt to read and learn the names, etc. I missed this one by Melia Donovan until TJ pointed it out to me. I'm only showing a detail here, but it's a subtle drawing made with tiny holes in the wall. And it's below the typical viewer's eye level, so you are rewarded for being either super observant, super curious, or just damn lucky. I guess I fell into the third category there.

The title of the show is called "invisible.other" which refers to the acknowledged presence of subtlety, whether it be an emotion shared by two people or other ways that something that is really nothing can have form. Phew - did that make any sense? I'll let TJ do the talking himself in his curatorial statement:
---
invisible.other risks asking a set of questions. As an inferred sub
theme, rather than the adoption of a more literal construct, the
formality of its conceptual prowess is fairly delicate. What is a
blank stare? Does it simply exist in space as a flat tonal value - or
is it a gesture of ambiguity strictly meant to titillate? The viewer
is welcomed to observe the impression of a faded glance, navigate
between the peripheral nature of shadows and reflections, challenged
to find a parallel universe. The layers are potentially endless.
Often these semblances are purported in the subtle gesture of mark
making and/or in the faint overture of erasure.

The work included here incorporates an array of such observations.
They question varying and obtuse layers, which vacillate in a state
between implicit reasoning and the exploration of a world of
invisible, temporal associations.
---

Another piece that I really liked was this really curious photograph by Daniel Barron. Doc Edgerton's strobe photography meets Matthew Barney's love of the grotesque. It's a pretty large photograph, but I'm sure that the actual subject matter is probably fairly small. I love the abstraction of the overall composition, and the subtle details keep my eye moving around and around, lapping it all up.

I also loved the audio piece by Steve Roden, which was a record that you could play and hear the popping sounds of wear that old records make while they're playing or the way the needle hits the label in the center when the music is over.

There were other individual pieces in this show that I liked, but what struck me the most about this show was the mix of work TJ chose. It was a wonderful balance of media - painting and photography and drawing and video and audio and altered found objects and then the Donovan piece, which was essentially made by creating tiny empty spaces. Something out of nothing. That's probably the piece that fits the concepts of the show the best, now that I think about it.

New American Art Union is a really great exhibition space too. Definitely a shining star of the east side gallery scene. I did wander over to see what was in the Burnside complex, and unfortunately didn't make it to Newspace, but I'm taking a workshop there this month so there will be time to check that out.

Okay. It's the most glorious Easter day I've seen and I'm gonna git me some of that while the gittin's good. Hope you're all doing fabulously well in your respective parts of the planet.

a photo is a photo is an installation is a photo is tiny embroidery is a photo

Went to see some art on a lovely summery spring day (in the upper 70's!) here in the Rose City. I had a huge list of things to see and didn't even get to it all because on a night like tonight, every gallery opening presents itself with at least one person I haven't seen in a long Oregon winter. Nights like this remind me of so many reasons why I love Portland.

I was overjoyed to see that the PDX window project had yet another actual installation! For so long it seemed like that space was used for extending the sales portion of the interior gallery, but now, unless I lost count, we have a third month with a true site-specific work. Looooooove it. This show is a piece by Dave Meeker titled "Breathe." It's pretty simple, but I love that about it - a wall of plastic bags that are all gently filling with air and deflating. I have been on several selection committees lately and it's so nice to see a simple, strong piece that subtly speaks about environmentalism without having to hit you over the head with a recycled plastic composite baseball bat. It also is nice because it reminds me of my favorite Ron Nordström piece called "Zoo," but without his quirky sense humor, of course. Fits into Jane Beebe's intimate aesthetic. I couldn't find an image to accompany this mini-review, but you can see its clunkier older cousin at this link.

Nine Gallery had a fantastic installation by my former metals professor at OCAC, Christine Clark - this was my favorite thing I saw all night. A room full of wire and mixed media pieces that were a lovely jungle of drawing-like shapes that you could move through. She really used the room well - it was full and yet didn't feel too crowded. I loved that it felt like new work, and yet you could see references to her past work in concrete and hair trapped in the tinkered wire forms. I think what makes this project stand out from her past work is scale - even though this installation filled the 12 by 8 foot room, each section has a delicacy that her larger pedestal works always lacked for me. I hope she gets some press coverage for this because it is truly inspired. The title of this installation is "drawn wire" which refers both to the technique of altering the size (or gauge) of wire by "drawing it" through a series of smaller holes in a steel plate, and also to the line-like quality that black wire has. Tom Hill is still the master of drawing with wire in my book, but I really really loved this show.

Made my way to Quality Pictures, which is quickly becoming one of my favorite galleries in town. There was a ton of photography shows in town today--perhaps I'm missing that there's a conference in town or something - but that medium isn't always something that I gravitate towards first in the art museum. But by the graces of God, I think QP might turn me into a hands in the air, prostate and genuflecting bona fide photography fan by the end of their first year in Portland.

The larger front gallery was a photo installation by Jason Fulford. What was so great about this show in particular was personal for me. As I mentioned before, I've been reading proposals lately for the Portland Building installation space because I'm on the selection committee for the next go-around. This exhibition space is where I did the first Vertical Garden piece three years ago--it's a small area in the Portland Building, our city hall, and overseen by the Regional Arts and Culture Council. It was once one of the only places an artist could do an installation work, but that's quickly changing. Anyhow, it's interesting to be able to see the smattering of proposals that are submitted for an installation space, especially one like this with an open call for entries and a $750 stipend. I question whether many of the artists just want a gallery wall to hang their 2d work, rather than transforming the area into a new environment altogether.

This is hard to do in a new and innovative way with strictly 2-d work, and I wouldn't say that Fulford's work did that at Quality Pictures, but I really loved how this room felt and it was nice to see it after thinking about the concept this past week. It reaffirmed for me that there's a way that 2-d work can be arranged so that it is interesting from afar as well as looking at each individual work and I was glad that the gallery wasn't too crowded so I could have both experiences.

Up close and personally, Fulford's work was great on an intimate level - one classic photo was of a Dorito chip covered in ants. Others were taken all around the world in places like Sweden, Germany, and all over the United States. Some were close-up shots, others faraway vistas, and this change in scale stood out to me as a viewer more than in most shows, probably because of the size and arrangements of the photos in the room. Most of the pieces really stood on their own as well as in the mass, although it definitely was great to see them as a big mass. The one that caught my eye to use as an example was this detail of a motel ceiling covered in floral wallpaper. It's titled "Alibi"

Continuing the motel theme, in the smaller gallery there was a sweet little show by J. Bennett Fitts of old motel swimming pools that were drained, most likely for the winter, but perhaps for financial reasons as well. One was filled in with grass. This show reminded me of Matt McCormick's show at Leach last month--a tribute to the architecturally lost remnants of America.

Ogle's exhibition space had another "installation" of photos, although these combined silkscreen on the glass in the frame so there was a really interesting interplay in the flatness of the color and the other forms behind. II wish there had been a statement to read about the way that Caleb Freese and Justin Gorman collaborated on this project and the ideas behind their collaboration because it made for a visually exciting show. I want to know more. These pictures were also scattered along the wall the way that they were in Fulford's show at QP.

The last thing that caught my eye last night was the nice little embroidered pieces by Takashi Iwasaki at Motel Gallery. They were the standout in a group show titled White Light that was filled with brightly colored pieces. The careful craftsmanship as well as the simple language of forms was refreshing for me after a night of visual and social stimulation.