Blue Sky shows some of the last prints produced by seminal artist Robert Rauschenberg. For these works, he sampled his own photographs made in China in 1982 and 1985 to produce the 12 prints in the Lotus Series in an edition of 50. Each image repeats a lotus flower image, juxtaposing the waterborne bloom with images of a China which may not still exist.
Robert Rauschenberg is one of the fathers of sampling, video art installation and modern art crossing country borders.
Rauschenberg studied at the experimental Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, founded by professors opposed to the tenure system and strict subject divisions. It is a model for schools such as Washington's Evergreen. Rauschenberg studied with John Cage (first to use random process to compose music), Buckminster Fuller (environmental inventor, built first geodesic dome there), Merce Cunningham (modern dancer, first to disconnect the music from the movement), Anni and Josef Albers (founders of the Bauhaus, proponents of modern design for all, not just the wealthy [Ikea?], Walter Gropius (architect and designer of the first ranch style home), and many other now famous artists, writers and poets.
Moving to New York City, Rauschenberg worked in painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture. Rauschenberg's sampling of news photographs and combining them presaged Warhol. First he developed a method of lifting printed images from magazines and transferring them to canvas using solvents. Later he used photographic printing to prepare silk screens of news images.
Rauschenberg collaborated with Bell Telephone Research Lab engineers to produce legendary performances at the Armory including "Open Score". In Open Score, two artists played tennis. Wireless microphones in each tennis racket relayed the sound of each stroke to loudspeakers. Each time the ball was hit, one light in the space was turned off until the space was in complete darkness. Then the audience surged onto the court, shown by infrared video cameras only available to the military and Bell Labs at the time. The infrared video was projected (1966!) in real time onto a huge screen. Soon after Rauschenberg founded Experiments in Art and Technology - E.A.T. - with Billy Kluver of Bell Labs to produce more art and technology collaborations. Many chapters of E.A.T. were formed around the US.
Later Rauschenberg founded the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange with the UN. The project promoted peace through art exchange and connections with ordinary people in the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Tibet, Berlin, Mexico, Venezuela, Japan and Chile. Rauschenberg also untertook projects in India and Malaysia.
Rauschenberg is known for many other firsts in the art world.
In his later years, Rauschenberg has been arranging donations of his work to museums and for charity. We wish the artist, who passed May 12, with paintings active in his Florida studio, the best, sampling and innovating the beyond.
Blue Sky also shows Soldier Portraits by Ellen Susan. Susan references some of the first photographic work, work by Civil War photographers. Using early colloidian chemistry on metal and glass, Susan has captured positive process monochrome portraits of Iraq-era soldiers. Ususally the copywriting award of the month goes to fanciful writing, rather than gravitas. However this month we make an exception for Susan's description of the work:
"This work is a result of my relocation to Savannah, Georgia, which is near two major army installations. I started seeing soldiers in uniform at the grocery store, the gas station, everywhere. I’d never really given soldiers much thought, because I rarely encountered them. I began to read in the local newspaper that many members of the local division were being deployed to Iraq for the third time. Looking into the impossibly fresh, young face of the uniformed kid in front of me at Home Depot and connecting that face to what happens in Iraq was a big shift for me in the way I thought about soldiers.”
“I felt that the the 150 year old colloidion process could be a meaningful way to photograph contemporary soldiers, to provide a counterpoint to the anonymous representations of soldiers seen in newspapers and on television. The necessarily long exposures of this slow process often result in an intensity of gaze that asks the viewer to look longer, and the grainless, highly detailed surface brings out minute details of each individual.”
“In the end, I wanted to produce physically enduring, visually, emotionally arresting images of people who are being sent repeatedly into a war zone with no apparent end in sight.”
At Blue Sky Gallery www.blueskygallery.org in the Desoto Building, 122 NW 8th. Opening 6PM-9
Susan speaks on her work Saturday, July 5th, at 3PM Free
Municipal Maneuvers is the result of collaboration between artists in PSU's Social Practice program, the Port City Development Center and the Northwest Downs Syndrome Association. Social practices art spans more than socially conscious change work. But that change work is some of the most interesting emotionally charged activity in art. The Port City Development Center (no website yet - just phone 503-236-9515) trains disabled adults for jobs and does contract work for businesses and organizations. They have been doing it in obscurity for 30 years. A quiet labor of love. Much of the work in the show is about or made by individuals in the programs, including portraits of people and their families. It is exciting to see Portland activities paralleling San Francisco's Hospitality House and Oakland's Creative Growth, movingly documented in ANP Quarterly #6. At City Hall 1221 SW 4th. Second Floor, South Offices. Until July 29, business hours. Opening first Thursday 5PM-7
The Seven exhibition at Upper Playground - Fifty24PDX - continues with: Corey Arnold, Ryan Bubnis, E*Rock, Caleb Freese, Justin Gorman, Jason Greene, Sara Padgett and Ryan Jacob Smith. It's all there - photography, painting, illustration, design and video. www.fifty24sf.com 23 NW 5th
Seattle artist Jaq Chartier makes bright abstract paintings recalling the gel electrophoresis patterns analyzing DNA genetic markers. Bright. I like. Genetics is a weighty meta topic, a rich vein of metaphor. Melody Owen created sublime installations in Portland, including one with dozens of identical hummingbird feeders, a series of migrating night illuminated igloos, illustrations and video work. She then bundled off to Alfred University where she has completed her MFA and has participated in international residencies. Her work spans more media with surety, but she will always be the "think different" artist, rare and valued. At Elizabeth Leach www.elizabethleach.com 417 NW 9th
Tamara English is a painter of rich landscapes. She offers artist workshops on the transformational potential of artmaking. So that vibe is implicit in her work too. At Mark Woolley Gallery
817 S.W. 2nd
Portland artist Sonia Kasparian makes mediative body themed mixed media constructions. Excepting some sublime life size figure sculptures in window screen, displayed some time ago in basements and abandoned spaces on Alberta, her work incorporates used material and objects into shrine-like constructions. Her new work recycles ornamental silver into compositions edging the pleasant side of baroque. Yes! At Butters Gallery www.buttersgallery.com 520 NW Davis, 2nd Floor
Artist Brian Borello does everything. Well. He is a master fabricator, particularly of metal, teaches, creates art interventions, is a significant maker of public art with an idea - but still accessible to the public and, if you need anything made of neon, he can do it. Oh, and he teaches Karate. Moving from New Orleans, he set up shop on Alberta when it was abandoned, made a public garden and hosted performances in the lot beside his studio. Borello works in 2d too, making Zen biomorphs of used motor oil on paper. These are them. In Ars Longa, Vita Brevis, the lighter elements of the oil slowly migrate, softening the image edges, leaving the pigment, oil breakdown products and metal particles in place. At Pulliam Deffenbaugh www.pulliamdeffenbaugh.com 929 NW Flanders early close 8ish
Shannon Buck is known for her printmaking as loaded hips press and whirlygigs. Hayley Barker works in performance, video and installation. For this show, both present drawings and paintings. At Powell's Basil Hayward Gallery, 3rd floor. www.powells.com. 10th and W Burnside. 6:30PM-9
Compound presents ReadySetGo, five emerging artists, Hannah Stouffer, Tatiana Krasovski, Anneli Olander, Axelhoney and Juri Ueda; all in that Compound illustration-style. At Compound - Just Be Toys www.justbedesign.com
107 NW 5th
Backspace does what it does best, drawing young artist expression. This month is perfect: Art and Politics www.backspace.bz 115 NW 5th Late
Justin "Scrappers" Morrison is an arts agitator in Portland, playfully caricaturing our wild outdoor folk culture - think Twin Peaks meets the Simpsons. He has a book of his work, Camp, and it is being released this evening at the homegrown Independent Publishing Resource Center. Scrapper's paintings are on show too.
917 SW Oak Room 218. 6PM-9
Nubby Twiglet - Shawna Haider - is a collage artist remixing pop culture - fashion and advertising. The art of collage as comment predates dada, and despite being somewhat displaced by Photoshop maneuvers, it is a simultaneously rich and accessible medium for art making and art reading. At Vino Paradiso 417 N.W. 10th Until 11, though the lighting is dim after about 9. Also there is an opening July 2 6PM-9
And, as always, the Everett Station Lofts (NW Broadway, Everett, 6th, Flanders) and the Desoto building (NW Broadway, Davis, Park) galleries are recommended for your sampling.
The Eastside artspaces are in a tizzy as their norm first Friday falls on a holiday, July 4. One to catch tonight maybe is at Lille Boutique with photos by Portland photographer and Kundalinist Aisha Harley. At Lille Boutique www.lilleboutique.com 1007 East Burnside 6PM-9
Still have power? Italians Do It Better is a recording label, as a meme, we must agree it true in certain realms such as design, hey, food too! (Making reliable motor vehicles is not a forte, but making sexy ones is) Tonight is a big dance party with Italians Do It Better recording artists the Chromatics playing with nouveau disco producers Runaway and DJ's Linger and Quiet, Genevieve Dellinger and Matt Kwiatkowski. At Holocene. $7
