Student art show
Thank you to John Carlos Cantu for reporting on the annual Ann Arbor Public Schools Student Art Exhibit at the public library. In addition to the third floor and the multi-purpose room, the children’s section of the library also contains many fine works.
This year I was the chair for the show, and would like to report that there were actually 350 pieces of art and about 80 pieces in the display case. This represents the work of the students at 16 of the elementary schools. In addition, at Washtenaw Intermediate School District on Wagner Road, there is the work of the remaining five elementary schools as well as the middle schools and the high schools, showing the full range of our fine students. I encourage members of our community to take the time to observe these wonderful “galleries” of student work. Thank you to all the art teachers for providing an excellent art education.
Europe’s ‘grand tour’ of contemporary art
Basel, Kassel or Venice? In the art market equivalent of a total solar eclipse, the world’s most prestigious art shows are aligning next month in Europe to create a back-to-back cultural orgy of buying, networking and attending a seemingly endless roster of private dinners and cocktail receptions.
There’s the Venice Biennale; the annual Art Basel in Switzerland; Documenta, which is held every five years in Kassel in central Germany; and the Munster Sculpture Project, a once-a-decade show that transforms the sleepy German town into a surrealist spectacle.
Anybody who’s anybody in the art world is turning out for what promises to be the art event of the decade. All the openings have been neatly coordinated to take place the second and third weeks of June, creating a Cannonball Run-style marathon at which art collectors, buyers and the artists themselves will race among cities - and parties - on planes, trains, automobiles and gondolas.
The fun starts June 10 with the 52nd Venice Biennale, the art world’s Oscars. Actually, it begins June 7, at least for the VIPs who jet in for exclusive previews and black-tie dinners. The most coveted invitations include Miuccia Prada’s soir?Še for the German photographer Thomas Demand in a palazzo and Angela Missoni’s dinner for Tracey Emin, a British artist, on a yacht. (Harry’s Bar and the terrace of the Hotel Monaco are also prime spots for art-star gazing.)
“I love running around and seeing important people like museum directors getting lost,” said Alison Gingeras, curator for Fran?§ois Pinault, the French financier and collector. “The city is very egalitarian in terms of its topography. Even if you have a private motoscafo” - water taxi, which rents for about $125 an hour - “you still have to get out and find your way through the alleys.”
The Venice Biennale, founded in 1895, is concentrated between the Arsenale, a cluster of 16th-century brick buildings leased from the Italian Navy, and the Giardini, a leafy park where many of the 76 participating countries are setting up pavilions.
Sprawled around the city are other buzzworthy shows. Palazzo Grassi, a museum opened last year by Pinault on the Grand Canal, will present a show designed to delight the industry: a peek at rarities from his private collection that includes Richard Prince’s “Entertainers” series and early works by David Hammons.
After Venice, those without a private jet will hop a flight to Zurich and then a high-speed train to Basel, a manicured pharmaceuticals city on the verdant banks of the Rhine. The 38th Art Basel, the world’s largest contemporary art fair, will exude an air of commerce and bling as dealers and consultants snake around town in BMWs wielding their checkbooks and credit cards.
The fair is a high-stakes trade show with 300 major galleries from 30 countries all crammed inside the huge Messe Basel Exhibition center. If you burn out on the wheeling and dealing, venture to one of the boutique-size museums on the city’s outskirts. The Fondation Beyeler feels as luxurious as a mist of mineral water with its gardens and impressive collection of modern art spanning Picasso to Calder. Or head to the Schaulager, another private art foundation that is housed in an awe-inducing warehouse designed by Herzog & de Meuron
After Basel, Documenta 12 will feel almost like a lazy retreat. Held every five years in Kassel - a picturesque city that was rebuilt in the 1950s after being heavily damaged by Allied bombing - Documenta is the opposite of the moneyed atmosphere of the previous two art shows. The opening gala, for example, is a free all-night party on a hillside park with live music and a picnic.
Cressman’s success
The new Cressman Center for Visual Arts at 100 E. Main St. has been a dominant visual element for the city since it opened in February as a satellite art studio for the University of Louisville’s expanding fine-arts program. The adaptation of part of the ground-level floor in a city-owned parking garage has been so successful that “people still come up to me and say, ‘So, you have offices upstairs?’ ” said James Grubola, chairman of the U of L art department.
His bemused reply is: “No. There are six floors of parking above us.”
But at ground level there is a bustling hot-glass studio, windows open to the sidewalk and students absorbed inside in the fine points of blowing, casting, slumping and manipulating molten glass. Studios nearby behind closed windows are for “cold” and other often-noisy techniques for sculpting glass and other materials. A gallery with large windows makes exhibitions visible day and night to passers-by.
“The space is such, you forget it’s in a parking garage, which I think is a testament to the design,” Grubola said.
Interior designers and architects, graphic designers and poster artists seldom get their due, with the exception of high-profile buildings or events. A successful design is, simply, successful and remarkable in how usable and interesting it is. At the Cressman, the industrial look, eccentric space configuration and touches of bravura, from the plywood and glass reception desk to the glitz of the bathrooms with star-sparkled black countertops and brilliant red floors, just seem inevitable.
The dynamic makeover of 12,000 square feet of space that was not much more than a concrete floor was done by Rowland Design, under the direction of lead designer Wendy Balas, an architect.
“It was very challenging,” Balas said. Part of the challenge was the deadline, which allowed only nine months before students showed up for classes in the space. It had to be ready.
In terms of design, she said, “two main obstacles we had to overcome were fitting the entire program into the space and coordinating the many (heating and air-conditioning) requirements with consulting engineers. The space we were given to work with had a very difficult footprint. We solved the problem of having limited space by locating all the mechanical and electrical equipment on a (new) mezzanine.” With high ceilings, this mezzanine over the bathrooms tucks a bevy of industrial-strength ventilation, heating and cooling almost out of sight.
Although Rowland is composed of interior designers, graphic designers and architects, “we refer to all of us as designers. They work side by side,” Brown said. “It’s what makes us different,” said Tom Vriesman, an architect who is vice president of business development for Rowland Design. “I think the general field is more compartmentalized (into design specialties).”
“It’s all art,” said Brown, who has degrees in interior design, graphic design and fine art, all from U of L.
U of L has hired Rowland again to update the warren of three connected galleries at the Hite Art Institute on the Belknap Campus with a new look, removal of old materials, including asbestos tile, and a reorientation of the entrance.
The project is slated for completion by fall, said gallery director John Begley, who also is head of the Cressman Gallery.
Have cell phone, will digitize outstanding art
Patrice Elmi hasn’t touched her bulky 35-mm camera since last fall. The emerging visual artist from Los Angeles has discovered that all she needs is the diminutive gizmo she clips to her jeans and flips open to chat with friends.
Take a look at her photography - colorful abstracts of urban settings - and it’s not immediately obvious that her equipment of choice is a cell phone camera.
Even LG Electronics Inc., maker of the handset Elmi uses, initially didn’t believe her photos originated from its LG8100 phone when she asked the company to sponsor a recent gallery exhibit of her camera-phone art.
“When people see my images, they don’t believe that I took them with a cell phone,” she said. “The depth and clarity of the images are so phenomenal.”
The quality was good enough to persuade John Matkowsky, owner of Drkrm, a small gallery in Los Angeles showing Elmi’s work through Saturday, to do his first-ever show of digital prints.