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Archive for May, 2008

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Riding into Telluride, Durango Herald, May 16, 2008

In Durango, Telluride on May 20, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Jon Bailey and Chad Cheeney’s documentary “Mallethead,” from which this photo is taken, will be shown in Telluride’s Mountain Film over Memorial Day weekend.

A 60-mile bicycle journey from Durango through New Mexico to Mancos for seven mountain-biking polo players became the basis for a 19-minute film called “Mallethead.” The film debuted last October at a mountain-biking festival in Durango and then played at the Durango Film Festival. An enthusiast saw the movie there and showed it to a key decisionmaker for Mountain Film in Telluride. The result is that the movie will be screened in Telluride over Memorial Day weekend.

The “Mallothead” group poses for a photo.

Not bad for local filmmaker Jon Bailey and his friend and movie-making partner Chad Cheeney. The guys have been playing bike polo for nearly a decade in Durango. They always thought it would be a good subject for a documentary, but hey, who has time to film when you can be whacking a ball with a homemade mallet from a mountain bike?

Bailey and Cheeney decided a trip would be a way to force themselves to focus on the filmmaking. They had the idea for a beginning and an ending of their documentary, but not the middle. So, they just started interviewing their close friends and polo-playing buddies.

“Sometimes it was easy, and sometimes it was a struggle,” Bailey said. “People don’t like to talk about themselves.”

A cameraman shoots footage in a Volkswagon van.

But, everyone was happy to talk about one another, and the film became an exploration of the lives and families of people who just happen to play bike polo. It’s about their personalities and what they bring to the game that builds a team.

“We tell the truth,” Bailey said. “Everything is factual.”

In other words, it’s real: Real life, real people, real passion for a backyard version of bike polo.

Their version is fast with few rules. The most important is that a rider must make a full 360-degree turn before hitting the ball again. It isn’t the U.S. Bicycle Polo Association or American Bicycle Polo Association version; it’s not the kind played in urban settings in fenced-off areas. This is Colorado-style bicycle polo. In fact, it’s difficult for these guys to play against other bicycle-polo teams because they have their own rules for riding.

Bailey and Cheeney are working on a DVD version of the film. But until it is available for purchase, the only way to catch another glimpse of this film shot in what Bailey called “random, dirtball places,” is to head up to Telluride. How bad can that be?

Leanne Goebel is a freelance writer specializing in the arts.

Copyright Leanne Goebel. May not be used without permission.

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Art in springtime, Durango Herald, May 9, 2008

In Durango, contemporary art, painting, photography, sculpture on May 11, 2008 at 5:25 pm

Explore Downtown during Durango’s Gallery Walk

Jami Tobey will be at the Rain Dance Gallery to talk about her paintings like “Wildflowers,” shown here.

Twice a year, Durango galleries get together and host a gallery walk. They invite artists to show up and mingle with guests, chill the Pellegrino and put out a plate of cheese and crackers. Visitors and locals alike wander the streets and herd themselves in and out of exhibit spaces trying not to knock over a glass or a ceramic vase.

Within six blocks, one can visit 10 art spaces and see everything from photography to bronze sculpture, landscape painting to giant abstract canvases, traditional turquoise jewelry to elegant miniature silver sculptures on black silk cord.

On East Second Avenue, visit Open Shutter to see the reverent digital images of Frisco (Colorado’s Frisco, not California’s) photographer Bob Winsett. Images of two-dozen statues of Buddha from around the world are on display, some ironic, others iconic.

Cross the street to catch opening night of a group exhibition at the Durango Arts Center. Watercolorist Dwight Lawing, an instructor at San Juan College in Farmington, is joined by layered abstract painter Tess Corrinne Jordans and nature painter Coni Grant in displaying canvases and works on paper. Henry Woolbert and Kathy Park, who create tribal-inspired spirit masks, are thrown into the mix.

Wander down to Main Avenue and head over to Karyn Gabaldon Fine Arts and see the fluid, elliptical sculpture of Santa Fe-based Somers Randolph, and catch a trunk showing of his simple and elegant jewelry. Randolph begins each piece of jewelry as a simple soapstone carving. When his wife, Hillary, found a box filled with these tiny sculptures, she figured out a way to have them turned into exquisite silver creations.

Head north on Main and catch the 10th anniversary exhibit at Ellis West Gallery featuring new work by local painters: Phyllis Stapler, Krista Harris, Cynthia DeBolt, Joan Levine Russell, Jenny Gummersall and C. Gregory Gummersall. And as a special treat to celebrate 10 years in the gallery business, Ellis West is offering 25 percent off all blown glass this weekend.

Jenny Gummersall’s painting on her own photograph “Sheep 3″ will be on display at the Ellis West Gallery during tonight’s Spring Gallery Walk.

Continuing up Main Avenue, stop in at Sorrel Sky Gallery, where Santa Fe jeweler Doug Magnus will show his high-fashion western jewelry and happily chat about his passion for turquoise.

Magnus owns three turquoise mines that he plans to donate to a conservancy or university.

And don’t miss Rain Dance Gallery. It will have California-based artist Jami Tobey present. Tobey creates fun patterned and layered acrylic, watercolor and ink landscape paintings on clayboard, canvas and paper. Tobey is the daughter of famed sculptor Gene Tobey. Rain Dance also features a museum-quality collection of Nicaraguan pottery, including masterwork by Helio Gutierrez.

Skip over to Maria’s Bookshop and check out the work of Arizona artist Shay Lopez, a self-taught painter whose vibrant oils and acrylics are influenced by Austrian Impressionism, Harlem Jazz and Chicano art.

Earthen Vessel on west Ninth Street will feature local potter Nick Blaisdell, who creates functional work punctuated by vivid red-and-blue dripped glazes. Blaisdell will be available to chat about his work and technique.

The evening’s happiness will be heightened by the reopening of Termar Trends at 780 Main Ave. after the smoke damage caused by the fire.

Finally, don’t miss sculptor Kevin McCarthy at Toh-Atin Gallery on west Ninth Street.

McCarthy creates highly detailed, western and art deco-themed sculptures of dancers and warriors using the lost wax-casting method. He will be demonstrating with several of his wax originals. Ask him about the ancient process of bronze sculpting.

Kevin McCarthy will demonstrate preparing a maquette for a bronze statue as in this 22-inch-tall dancer at the Toh-Atin Galley.

Gallery walk is a great time to get out and walk around downtown Durango. It’s the perfect opportunity to hang out with neighbors, make new friends and learn something new about art from the people who make it.

The Spring Gallery Walk will be held from 5-8 p.m. today. Here are the participants:

Durango Arts Center, 802 East Second Ave., 259-2606. Featured artists: Dwight Lawing, Tess Corrinne Jordans, Coni Grant, Henry Woolbert, Kathy Park.

• Earthen Vessel, 115 W. Ninth St., 247-1281. Featured artist: Nick Blaisdell.

• Ellis West Gallery, 822 Main Ave., 382-9855. Featured artists: Phyllis Stapler, Krista Harris, Cynthia DeBolt, Joan Levine Russell, Jenny Gummersall, C. Gregory Gummersall.

• Karyn Gabaldon Fine Arts, 680 Main Ave, 247-9018. Featured artist: Somers Randolph.

• Maria’s Bookshop, 960 Main Ave., 247-1438. Featured artist: Shay Lopez.

• Open Shutter Gallery, 755 East Second Ave., 382-8355. Featured artist: Bob Winsett.

• Rain Dance Gallery, 945 Main Ave., 375-2708. Featured artist: Jami Tobey.

• Sorrel Sky Gallery, 870 Main Ave., 247-3555. Featured artist: Doug Magnus.

• Termar Trends, 780 Main Ave., 247-3728.

• Toh-Atin Gallery, 145 W. Ninth St., 247-8277. Featured artist: Kevin McCarthy.

artsjournalist@centurytel.netLeanne Goebel is a freelance arts journalist from Pagosa Springs.

Copyright Leanne Goebel. May not be used without permission.

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DAC exhibits director resigns, Durango Herald, April 25, 2008

In Durango on May 11, 2008 at 5:00 pm

Susan Andersen resigned as the exhibits director of Durango Arts Center this month. Andersen, who came to Durango from Portland, Ore., New York and Orlando, Fla., took the job as exhibits director in January 2005. She brought her business savvy and aesthetic sensibility to the 30- hour-a-week job.

“When I came to the art center, art sales were only $4,000 a year. Last year, we sold nearly $60,000 worth of art,” Andersen said Thursday from her new home in Farmington, where she moved after her wedding April 3.

Andersen plans to focus on home makeovers and interiors and has maintained her membership in the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). She has formed a company called Marsan Studio and will continue to market her fine art and interiors. She is currently working with a Web designer to launch MarsanStudio.com.

DAC Interim Executive Director Karen Thompson said that the arts center has no plans to replace Andersen at this time. Newly hired Executive Director McCarson Jones will begin her job in May, and the exhibits committee will manage the current schedule of exhibitions at the art center.

Jones is a social worker and photographer whose college degrees include a bachelor’s in social work from Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas, and a master’s in organizational conflict resolution from California State University, Carson, Calif.

“We are looking at inviting artists and others to curate or put together shows and exhibits,” Thompson said in her office at the DAC Wednesday. She said she had mentioned the idea to a few local artists who are excited about the possibility. “They lit up,” she said. “I’ve asked them to submit proposals.”

Thompson said she hoped new director Jones would invite member and non-member artists to a brainstorming session and ask them what would get them excited again about the art center, what would get them involved. What kind of exhibits do they want to see, and what kind of exposure do they want to have.

“I realize the art center has ostracized many of the local artists,” Thompson admitted. She hopes that Jones will be able to help bring a new energy and perspective to the DAC.

Not rehiring a qualified exhibits director or curator for the arts center might seem the center’s death knell to many artists. The organization shows evidence of moving toward become a performing arts center with its purchase of the Diamond Belle Melodrama and having lost sight of its roots.

The DAC began in 1966 as the Durango Fine Arts Center, whose purpose and objective was “to promote and encourage the fine arts and cultural activities,” according to the articles of incorporation available from the Colorado Secretary of State.

Or, perhaps the lack of direction and leadership will allow something unique to flourish. We’ll have to wait and see.

artsjournalist@mac.comLeanne Goebel is a freelance writer specializing in the arts.

Copyright Leanne Goebel. May not be used without permission.

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Fireworks artist shows at Guggenheim, Durango Herald, April 15, 2008

In Art Museum, contemporary art on May 11, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Cai Guo-Qiang
Inopportune: Stage One, 2004
Nine cars and sequenced multichannel light tubes
Dimensions variable
Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Robert M. Arnold, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2006
Exhibition copy installed at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2008
© Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation New York. Photo by David Heald.

NEW YORK – Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang (surname pronounced tsai, given name pronounced gwo chang) draws and paints with gunpowder and uses fireworks to create powerful art events. “I Want to Believe” is the first comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work; it is on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Besides his museum work, Cai is directing the fireworks for the opening and closing ceremonies of Olympic Games in Beijing.

“I Want to Believe” features eight of Cai’s installations created since the early 1990s along with early works, gunpowder drawings, videos of explosions and social projects.

The show features a copy of “Inopportune: Stage One ( 2004),” composed of nine white Ford Tauruses pierced with blinking light tubes that simulate the trajectory of a carbomb explosion tumbling up through the atrium’s void. It’s a dramatic work about the dialogue of art and war, a common theme in the work of this New York- based Chinese artist who came onto the international contemporary art scene while living and working in Japan.

One of Cai’s more controversial installations is “Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard (1999)” for which the artist was awarded the Golden Lion at the 1999 Venice Biennale. For this retrospective, Cai created a new version called “New York’s Rent Collection Courtyard (2008),” inviting 12 Chinese sculptors to recreate the seminal work from 1965, which was created by artists from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute.

The installation depicts the class struggle between Chinese peasants and the feudal landlords before the socialist revolution. More than 100 life-size clay-figure sculptures reveal the misery of human oppression. The figures are in various states of completion and were intentionally
left unfired, allowing them to dry, crack and disintegrate during the exhibition.

Community involvement is also evident in “Reflection – A Gift from Iwaki (2004).” It features a replica of a sunken ship that Cai found on the northeastern coast of Japan and excavated with help from the local community. Many of the same rescuers traveled to New York to install the ship.

“Head On (2006)” features 99 realistic-looking wolves running as a pack into an invisible wall and tumbling bent and broken to the ground. “Cry Dragon/Cry Wolf: The Ark of Genghis Kahn (1996)” is a flying dragon made from sheepskin bags, branches, paddles and rope and poweredby Toyota engines.

Another installation that features a traditional Chinese story is “Borrowing Your Enemies Arrows (1998).” Thousands of arrows pierce a Chinese fishing vessel from near Cai’s hometown of Quan Zhou. The title is from a Chinese story about a general who is forced to make a thousand arrows or die. To fulfill his obligation, he sends a boat filled with grass figures into enemy territory and then collects the arrows shot into the boat to use in battle against the enemy.

Much of Cai’s work is about destruction. But in Cai’s art, destruction does not lead to elimination; it leads to creation.

artsjournalist@centurytel.net Leanne Goebel visited the Guggenheim Museum as a project of the Creative Capital/Andy WarholFoundation Arts’ Writers Grant Program.

Copyright Leanne Goebel. May not be used without permission.