The Intimate Page

The Intimate Page, an exhibition of artists’ sketchbook pages, opens Friday, November 13 from 6 to 9 p.m.

The most intimate kind of art, the sketchbook page is where ideas are noted and thoughts remembered with both text and image. About 60 artists will be represented in this show, from the well-known to the emerging.  This exhibition is co-curated by Natanya Blanck, art historian at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.

Some of the artists included are: Sofi Askenazi, James Barany, Liz Bachhuber (Germany), Christine Beetow, Fred Bell, Joe Boblick, Debra Brehmer, Barry Carlsen (Madison painter), John Caruso (MIAD faculty), Paul Caster, Jose Chavez, John Colt, Kari Couture, Santiago Cucullu, Kim Cridler (UW-Madison faculty),Raoul Deal, Orlando de La Garza, Mary Diabiasio, Colin T. Dickson, Polly Ewens-Caster, Leslie Fedorchuk, Frankie Flood (UWM), Christiane Grauert, Karin Haas (printmaker), Ryan Hahn (Buehl designer), Pat Hidson, Mark Hoelzer (MSOE), Michael Howard, Ariana Huggett, Erica Lynn Hupe, Yegeniya Kagnovich (UWM, metals), Ruth Kjer, Richard Knight, Amber Krueer, Sally Kuzma, Dara Larson, Sally Mallamo, katie martin, Colin Matthes, Kurt Meinke, Chris Miller, Katie Musolff, Nick Nagowski, Chris Niver, Thomas Noffsinger, Josie Osborne (UWM), Will Pergl, Nick Reback (industrialdesigner, Madison), Adolph and Suzanne Rosenblatt, Rafael Francisco Salas, Jill Sebastian (sculptor), Stacy Steinberg, Claire Stigliani (UW-Madison), T. Oliver Sweet, Tori Tasch, Aries Thjin, Amanda Toelke (UW-Madison), Lynn Tomazewski (MIAD), Jade Watring, Jordan Waraksa, Stacey Williams ng, Carley Rae Weber, Jason Yi. 

Flock of Birds

(Gallery B)

Opening Reception: 6 to 9 p.m. Friday, November 13

Milwaukee artist Michael Kasun presents 36 new small scale bird paintings, ranging in price from $50 to $175. In the same space, former Milwaukee artist Amy O’Neill presents 30 small scale chicken paintings, each representing a different breed.

Now on view

Rafael Francisco Salas

Through October 30, 2009 (Gallery A) Gallery Night: Friday, October 16

Review:  Rafael Salas by Mary Louise Schumacher

Review: Rafael Salas by Kat Murrell, in Third Coast Digest

Mike Ringo White

Through October 30 (Gallery B)

 See “Current Exhibitions”

Review: Judith Moriarty on Mike Ringo White

Film: Mike Ringo White by Sara Caron, 2009

RAFAEL FRANCISCO SALAS

Rafael Salas, 36, a graduate of the New York Academy of Art, grew up near Wautoma, Wisconsin. He says that his childhood in the country, surrounded by Christmas tree farms (one of the few industries in the area), afforded him lots of time to be alone, to read and to look. After living and working in Minneapolis, London, New Mexico and Brooklyn, NY, Salas now chairs the art department of Ripon College, in Ripon, Wisconsin. Perhaps the sense of solitude in a rural area still pervades his paintings. For three months of the summer of 2009, Salas worked on one large triptych (each panel 60 x 36 inches) for this exhibition at Portrait Society. 

The painting features the writer Flannery O’Connor (Wise Blood and Everything That Rises Must Converge, 1952) on one end of a couch and the front man of the ’80s Punk band The Pogue’s, Shane Macgowan, on the other. Salas states that “the triptych creates a theatrical, quite fictional stage to convey the nature and anxiety of the artistic process including topics such as authorship, audience and legacy.”  The heart of the painting is about artistic process. O’Connor spent her later life on a farm called Andalusia in Georgia, with peacocks and other exotic fowl. She was dying of Lupus. Salas seems to relate to the inward, private existence of this artist. Shane Macgowan on the other hand is purely self destructive. Drugs and alcohol (the creative capital of too many rock stars) have taken their toll. Ironically, they also fueled the brilliant compassion, sensitivity and showmanship that made him great. Alas, what powers us often also destroys us. At the opposite ends of the couch, Shane and Flannery represent two tendencies: to suffer privately or to suffer publicly. But their goals are the same as they must give order to their challenging internal conditions, or turn that chaos into a form to be shared (what we call “art”). The horizontal expanse of coffee table that connects them is littered with beer cans and bottles. The middle panel of the painting functions as a transitional space depicting a copy of a 19th Century folk art painting of a cat eating a peacock hanging on a paneled wall with steer horns hanging above it. This middle panel contains only “things,” but it forms the connection between the two human subjects and represents how ‘things’ become a form of communication too. This panel may also be a symbolic stand-in for a third figure. 

In all of Salas’ recent work, there tends to be visual interruptions, like cosmic static moving across the picture plane. This might represent the general condition of unstoppable acts of deterioration, hesitation, obliteration as well as the overall struggle to make images. Salas spent months painting this ambitious triptych and then when he felt the panels were done, he returned to them and painted a cloud of controlled abstract daubs and finger prints over the top, essentially defiling the painting.  

Salas seems to insist that his paintings hold their origin of paint colors and smears and unformed masses (thoughts) while carrying on the job of representation and narrative at the same time. The beginning, the middle and the end become mixed up points of contact. The formed and unformed and the raw paint that is pulled from the palette he uses, bring us out of the illusion and comfort of the painting. As viewers we are held in the artist’s emotional terrain of tension and uncertainty that comes with the creative process.

Along with the Untitled Triptych, the Portrait Society exhibition features both oil and pencil studies that Salas did in preparation for the larger work, as well as an assortment of his earlier work.  

Rafael Francisco Salas: New paintings

Opening Friday, September 4, 2009 at Portrait Society is a show of paintings by Rafael Francisco Salas. The opening reception is from 5 to 9 p.m. Salas is a professor of art at Ripon College. His portrait-related work blends fact and fiction, representation and abstraction.

Interior, Exterior: Home as Portrait

Interior/Exterior: Home as Portrait

June 26 to August 14, 2009

Portrait Society Gallery

Hours: Fridays and Saturdays, 1 to 4 p.m.

207 E. Buffalo Street, Suite 526, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53202, 414.870.9930

www.portraitsocietygallery.wordpress.com

• Opening Reception: Friday, June 26, 6 to 9 p.m.

• Gallery Night Reception: July 24

• Closing reception and catalog release: To be announced.

 What is a home but a metaphor of the self and the body. We dress and style it. We create intimate private spaces within. We build and tear down and build again. The home offers a lifetime of aesthetic choices and pleasures: Does the chair look better here or there? Look at how the morning light caresses the piano. This vase would look very nice near this plant. These domestic artistic decisions appeal to the part of our soul that craves beauty and visual rhythm.

 This exhibition at Portrait Society Gallery (207 E. Buffalo Street, Third Ward, Marshall Building, Suite 526) features three painters who deal with the home as a reflection of the self.

 Kay Knight is a professor of painting at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her work employs vintage wallpaper patterns which she uses as a base to construct shelters and dwellings. Nostalgic and post-modern at the same time, Kay Knight’s work seems to try to pry apart the nails and glue and decorative surfaces that we use to contain and sometimes to conceal the truth of our lives.

Ariana Huggett is a Milwaukee artist who earned her MFA from UWM in 1994 and her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1987. For this exhibition, she has created a series of small scale watercolor and oil paintings of home interiors. All of the paintings are done on-site and involve repeated visits.  Intimate, lush, and personal in that each painting captures a certain mood and time of day, Huggett’s paintings speak directly about how the things we live with represent who we are as individuals. She says: “The paintings become portraits of how humans accumulate and live, and they become a snapshot of the times by showing what people have and use in this moment.”

 Chicago artist Keiler Sensenbrenner’s animal paintings were featured in a show last year at Portrait Society. This time, she is back with delicately realist still life paintings and room interiors. Sensenbrenner earned her undergraduate degree at UW-Madison in 2000 and her MFA at Northwestern University in 2002. She currently teaches at De Paul University. Sensenbrenner is the consummate painter, offering lushly rendered objects and animals. Her work is clearly about the pleasure of seeing and translating the material world into painterly approximations.

 Gallery B will be fully reconfigured for this exhibition. The seating area will be styled with 1950s furnishings, from the collection of Skip Forrest. The art installation will feature about 600 plastic plate collages by Carolyn Gaska, of Madison, who died in 2005. Mrs. Gaska spent the last 20 years of her life engaged in various craft activities, including the production of  collaged plates and metal juice cap refrigerator magnets.

 For additional information please contact Debra Brehmer at 414.870.9930.

Madison’s tall controversy

It’s not a portrait, so this discussion does not really belong on the Portrait Society web site, but I just couldn’t resist: We are so cut off from our sister city, Madison, that I did not know that a major sculpture by a nationally known artist landed in front of Camp Randall Stadium as part of the “percent for art” program. The Madison alumni, Donald Lipski,  was chosen to execute this $200,000 commission and after the proper design/review/discussion process “Nail’s Tales” was installed in November of 2005. On a recent visit to Madison, the city’s public art coordinator Karin Wolf gave Natanya Blanck and I a quick tour of public sculpture. Before we headed over to view the Lipski piece she said, “We are now going to see Madison’s most controversial work of art.” Hmmmmm. How exciting. I couldn’t imagine what it might entail: A giant piece of plop art? A series of amorphous blobs somewhere? Something too classical or narrative? What kind of art would incite the seemingly liberal and intellectual community of Madison. Interestingly, this sculpture by Lipski is hated by both sides of the often divided constituency. The art people hate it and the public hates it. This is unusual. Most often these two factions (the knowing professionals and the out-of-touch public) are at odds over what they want in their public spaces. 

When we pulled up to the towering 50 foot megalith I gushed with such relief: This sculpture is clearly magnificent in all its weirdness and the city of Madison should be delighted to own it. Lipski’s piece is a jaw-dropping quotation of an Egyptian obelisk, composed of a tapering tower of cast footballs. It’s kitschy, and sexy, and funny and scaled to a height where it pierces the blue sky, causing viewers to gaze upward in reverence to the football phallus. It is a thing of such great beauty and wit. Some people thought Lipski was making fun of the city’s devotion to football, and he was, but in a gentle way. Lipski himself said that when he was at Madison he spent more time protesting the Viet Nam war than rooting for the home team. He actually said he thinks there are far more important things than football. Can you imagine going public with such a statement?

Here is a quote from Lipski’s web site about this piece, which, by the way, was named for his college roommate whose nickname was “Nails.” 

“Seeing football players as modern gladiators, it occurs to me to look to ancient forms, and of course the obelisk came to mind. I created the piece to look as though it were a solid block of stone, eroding away, leaving a pile of footballs, as if they were a geological or archeological fact slowly being unearthed. I picuted it standing on a solid base, like a trophy. In fact, the obelisks in the squares and piazzas of Europe are indeed trophies, stolen from Egypt since the time of the Romans. I wanted both a kind of historical grandeur appropirate to the rich and wonderful history of the university, yet ambiguous, light-hearted. Although I understnd that for some people the stadium is the cultural heart of Madison, for me athletics are definitely a side-show. I wanted pomp and irony.

“There was a time when, in the shadow of rude and threatening behavior of some fans at games, there was concern, both by the Chancellor’s office and the Athletic Dept. that my piece was too phallic. I made a prsentation to Barry Alvarez and others, telling them the history of the obelisk and explaining the thoughts behind my creation….” 

While Milwaukee’s Bronze Fonz certainly has a stake in “weirdness” Lipski takes the overblown and kitschy in a different, more noble, direction and I think he succeeds with great aplomb in making a monument to football that also causes perhaps just a moment of reflection about the things we revere and the role they play in society. 

Another public sculpture that we saw on our tour was Jill Sebastian’s Philosopher’s Grove on State Street by the Capitol building. This is a series of granite, geometric forms that look a little like polished ruins. The good thing about this work is that it is functional. People sit on the granite forms and eat their lunches. This little stone garden provides a frame for the human encounters, turning the mundane activities of sunning or lunching into performance tableaux.

Upcoming reception

The closing reception and catalog release for Tender is the Line will be Wednesday, June 10 from 6 to 9 p.m. Please come for one last look at the exhibition, some appetizers and a glass of wine.

Society tea report for Friday, May 29

What a busy day at the gallery today. I did not have time to bake scones but I did pick up a loaf of banana bread from Outpost, as well as some organic pears and havarti cheese. Today’s tea was a mysterious blend that I purchased a week ago in China Town in Chicago. The vendor did not speak English but she hovered aggressively over large glass vats of various blends. Every time I would near one, she would zoom over and say “You take this.” I finally, almost randomly went for what I think is some kind of jasmine blend, very aromatic, with little blossoms of something mixed in. If you haven’t visited Chicago’s China Town it is a real treat. My kids love the avocado milk shakes. 

(The image above is Milwaukee’s Bronze Fonz and not to digress but after the Society closed, I met my friend Jonas for dinner and in the course of conversation I realized that I had never seen the controversial Bronze Fonz. We immediately set out to the river near Wells Street. Wow. I was stunned by this incredibly crazy figurine. You must see this. I think it is supposed to be life-sized but the scale is off and the Fonz looks diminutive, even miniature. The coloration of the bronze is hysterically comic-book styled. This is truly one of the weirdest sculptures I’ve ever seen. Had it been on a much larger scale, it would have had the dynamic perversity of a Jeff Koons. But at its present size, standing thumbs up by the river with a nice skyline behind, the Fonz looks so darn lonely. He’s all dressed up but no one else showed up for the party. What I liked the most about this was his smile: a big golden, toothy rapper’s grin.)

Enough of that and onto the Tea Report. The first person to come to the gallery was Claire Ruzicka, a photographer who I met briefly a year ago or so while I was giving a lecture at Cardinal Stritch. She moved to Milwaukee several years and is finding her way into this new locale. We spoke of her new found passion for horses (which I fully share). She’s been riding at a stable in Plymouth, Wisconsin that teaches dressage. Claire also had a file of horse-themed work that she shared.

Next, my old neighbor and good friend, Ruth Treisman, came in with her mother who is visiting from Florida and some other friends, The Feffermans (Mike and Bobbie). Ruth’s daughter just had her batmitzvah last weekend and the painter Reginald Baylor and Portrait Society created a four-foot portrait of the 13-year-old, to be colored in by the guests at the reception. It turned out pretty cool.  Ruth decided that the perfect “coming of age” gift for her daughter would be a Claire Stigliani drawing. We spent a lot of time picking out the right one, but in the end, she opted for an image that looks like a self-portrait of Claire playing the guitar. The Feffermans are very involved in Congregation Emanu-El on Brown Deer Road so I showed them some of the Jewish self-taught artist Rudy Rotter’s religious carvings from the 1960s with the hope that there might be a place for them in the temple’s new addition. The young (and cute) local architect Phil Katz has designed the addition, which is green and clean and is going to knock our socks off when it is completed.

My old buddy and collaborator in Susceptible to Images, Kat Murrell stopped in. She was looking light and summery after her mini road trip to West Bend to see the former MIAD student Emily Belknap’s One from Wisconsin show. The museum also has an exhibit of paintings and photographs by Bernhard Schneider. Kat said she really liked Schneider’s landscapes, which is inspiration enough for me to try to find time to get up there. 

The artist Sally Kuzma and her friend, the poet Barbara Wuest, came in next. They recently collaborated on an artist’s book of Kuzma’s elegantly scanned and manipulated nature photographs and Wuest’s poems. The book is called “Corn in Four Parts.” The book seems like it has a hand-stitched binding where the threads float into the middle inside seam like the silk of corn. I’m going to speculate that the book is available at Woodland Pattern. It would be the ultimate, meaningful gift for anyone interested in growing things.

Julie Tarney and her aunt Leslie came in. Julie is in love with Claire Stigliani’s Antoinette series. It is true that Stigliani’s work holds its impact in a way that every time you see it, it has a radiant, dynamic presence that feels surprising and I am not just saying that as a gallery dealer. Every time I arrive at the gallery and unlock the door to Gallery B (the red salon), I am newly struck with this body of work. I think it was visitor Barbara Wuest who said that Stigliani’s drawing style is “animated,” which is the perfect description of this young artist’s spirited, playful line quality.

Byron Alpers, a playwright and wood turner and marketing specialist, stopped in for his first visit to Portrait Society. He spent a lot of time looking at the work and reading the small descriptions of each of the seven artists’ drawings. But just after he arrived, a large group of 6 to 8 year olds came in from the Mitchell Street Boys and Girls Club. I knew they were coming, but I had more or less forgot. An explosion of energy ripped through the Society. I really loved how one little boy kept coming up to me to tell me which pieces were “tight.” Another boy asked if I had any Van Gogh’s because the group is currently collaborating on a mural of Starry Night. I told him he’d have to go to Chicago to see Vincent’s work and he seemed highly interested in that. To be eight years old and see your first Van Gogh, in the flesh: I would love to hear his reaction to that experience.

I believe this is a true and accurate summary of Friday, May 29 at the Portrait Society.

Society tea report, Saturday, May 23

It was a sunny day in Milwaukee and five people came for tea. I made Lavender English Earl. I also baked rhubarb scones for the first time. I will try again next week. They weren’t bad, but a tad underdone. The UWM painting professor Kay Knight came in and gobbled up a few scones while waiting for the tea to steep. Kay’s work will be featured in the next Portrait Society exhibition, “Interior/Exterior: Home as Portrait.” It was actually rhubard from her husband, Richard Knight’s garden that went into the scones. Kay’s work was featured in New American Painting quarterly this year and she also was in a group show in New York recently. The writer and artist and art patron Judith Moriarty came by and sipped some tea. She apparently does not like rhubarb. She said that during WWII, with the sugar shortage, there was no way to make it palatable so they fed it to the hogs. We need about 50 more Judith Moriarty’s in this town to create a vital art scene. She has supported all the galleries for many years in her collecting and has also contributed intellectually through her writing AND has also continued to make art. Next, the painter Dave Niec dropped in. It was a treat to see Dave’s up-north hands clutching an English tea cup. We love Dave Niec’s work at the Portrait Society. He is represented by Dean Jensen Gallery and you can see his paintings there. He paints outdoors at night — moon scenes, dark woods, starry skies in resplendent shades of blues. He winters in a wood-heated cabin North of Green Bay and said that recently a local trapper up there showed him the places where wolves had made their dens. Dave Niec has river blue eyes and long blond hair and that certain sense of calm that only people who spend a lot of time alone in nature can propagate. Next, Julie Tarney and her friend Katie Heil came in. Katie was at the gallery to pick up a Rudy Rotter she had purchased a while ago, but had time to sit around for tea. Julie and Katie are also great supporters of the art community and I always feel honored by their visits. I also admired their hair cuts. Julie will be moving to NYC soon and I am already feeling sad about that. I should mention that two MIAD students also were in today: Gallery intern Anastacia Stevens, a drawing major,  and Emily Marshall, who is a stitching artist. Emily has actually been going to life drawing sessions and stitching the models. Bravo Emily.

Friday tea, May 15

Four people came and we had cookies as well as scones from Beans and Barley. Next week, if I’m not totally tied up on jury duty, I’m baking the scones myself. First, my colleague and friend Natanya Blanck, an art history professor from MIAD, dropped in. Shortly after that another colleague from MIAD, Leslie Fedorchuk stopped by. That was a mighty pleasant surprise, because she had never been to Portrait Society and was very impressed, especially with Paul Caster’s suite of drawings. Then Tim Murphy dropped by for a cup o’ tea. Tim is a local artist and computer person. He was wearing a very beautiful vintage-looking plaid shirt. We talked about the gallery business. Last, but not least, Mary Louise Schumacher sauntered in for a cup. This was close to closing time so we didn’t really get much of a chance to talk about the new Art Institute addition. She did promise to come back soon. If you are reading this and you haven’t come for tea, PLEASE stop in next weekend.

Saturday tea

Two people came for tea yesterday. I served lime ginger from Anaba tea room with Nikki’s cookies. My friend Ruth Treisman lent me her mother’s in law’s mother’s silver tea service so now Salon B is much more fully equipped for pouring tea. First, Dave Luhrssen came in. He is the entertainment editor at the Shepherd and the film critic. Many people probably don’t know that he has a master’s degree in history. He’s been writing about music and film in Milwaukee for at least 20 years. The next person who dropped in for tea was Andy Muchin. Andy is also a writer. He specializes in Jewish culture and arts. He is about to embark on a major life changing move to Jackson, Mississippi where a new job awaits him. He had just come from the antique center on First and Mineral where he was buying a few things for his new apartment, including a vintage chrome kitchen table and a black velvet painting of the Wailing Wall (of all things). 

YOU are invited for tea next Friday (1 to 4 p.m. at the gallery).