Patrick Nagatani: Confessions of a Tapist & Attention to Detail

Patrick Nagatani • Confessions of a Tapist

Attention to Detail • 12 artists exhibition catalog

Published by 516 ARTS 516 Central Avenue SW Albuquerque, New Mexico 87102 tel. 505-242-1445 www.516arts.org © 516 ARTS, 2007 FRONT: Patrick Nagatani, Yakushi Nyorai – The Healer, 2004, photograph, masking tape, archival enhancing medium, 66 x 50 inches.

BACK: Nick Abdalla, altered sketchbook page 4/28/04, pen on paper, 14 x 11 inches.

Contents

4

Introduction

6

Patrick Nagatani: Confessions of a Tapist

14

The Zen of Materials and Process Essay by Stella de Sรก Rego

18

Attention to Detail 12 artists

44

Credits

Introduction

[4]

I

t is an honor for 516 ARTS to present Patrick Nagatani’s solo exhibition

Confessions of a Tapist and the accompanying group exhibition Attention to Detail. As he retires as a professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of New Mexico, we are pleased to showcase the first comprehensive exhibition of Nagatani’s ongoing, twenty-five-year series of mixed media works employing common masking tape as a subtle painterly veil over his photographs. Nagatani’s contemplative approach and subject matter coupled with his playful and innovative use of nontraditional materials are uniquely his own.

The artists in Attention to Detail were selected through a group curatorial process by Patrick Nagatani, Andrew John Cecil, Richard Levy and myself.

The exhibition celebrates obsessive artistic practices as a positive means to reaching a deep level of concentration and communication. Thank you to all of the artists for their participation in these exhibitions.

Suzanne Sbarge Executive Director

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Patrick Nagatani Confessions of a Tapist

Epiphany 2003, photograph, masking tape, archival enhancing medium, 41 x 26 inches

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Artist’s Statement T

he process is like driving from Albuquerque to Los Angeles non-stop.

It’s like being in shape and running ten miles. It’s like playing blackjack for thirteen hours and not missing a deal. It’s like chanting. It’s like doing all the movements of Tai Chi the meditative way. It’s about finding a zone of no thought. Time passes and only my aching fingers and shoulders indicate how long I have been continuously painting with the tape. I relish the focus on details and to be lost in the quiet and minute parts of the whole.

Decisions are mostly made as a reaction to the materials, the image and the emotive feel. Time is a factor. It must take long sessions to get to the zone.

After each session there is another zonal journey. Clarity often comes after a long session. More things are revealed to me after each session. Magic is a goal. My entire day is shaped by solitude and what I believe is constructed beauty. I want magic in my life and work. Beauty is important. Constructed in the simplest of ways, I believe that these are among the most beautiful pieces that I have created. I relish the fact that the tape is an inexpensive and somewhat castaway art material. The Zen of the material and process moves me to a spiritual happiness.

I have often desired the overlay of sensory experience in my work. These pieces require looking from afar and getting in very close; both vantage points offer differing visual experience. The pieces are wonderful to touch.

I’ve been in the zone off and on for over twenty-three years with this work.

Time has no fixed position, it has been positive energy. It has left me no room or desire for negative creative existence. Most things seem to now have a place in the cosmic meaning of things. Especially in coping with

Introspection (detail) 2001, photograph, masking tape, archival enhancing medium, 38 x 26 inches

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getting older and dealing with cancer. Especially here in Albuquerque. Even Bugs Bunny understood that.

The taping process is obsessive. It is done with precision and ardor. Masking tape is a simple material. I use every variety of masking tape that is commonly available. The color of the tape creates my range of hues for my “painting” palette. There are varying degrees of translucency and the amount of layers dictates a value shift. The tearing and cutting parodies a variety of “brush strokes.” The original surface images are large Chromogenic photographs from a variety of sources that are often collaged and manipulated. These are cold-mounted with Coda (two-sided archival adhesive) to museum ragboard. The archival museum board is contact-cemented to oak wood laminate and stretcher bars are wood glued for stability. Finally, the entire finished taped surface is multi-coated with Golden Acrylic Matte Medium of different strengths. A final brush coating of Golden Polymer Varnish with UVLS (Ultraviolet filters and stabilizers) is applied. Although masking tape is not considered an “archival” medium, the matte medium both seals the piece from oxidation and soaks through the masking tape for added adhesion. My “tapist” career started in 1983 and the pieces made at that time have lasted throughout the years. I believe that the pieces have a life of their own and will change very slowly in time, much as mummies from ancient Egypt have lasted through the centuries but nevertheless have changed. The work might be seen as an evolving entity.

Patrick Nagatani 2007

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Enlightenment/Truth 2000, photograph, masking tape, archival enhancing medium 39 x 28 inches

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Manjusri’s Compassion 2000, photograph, masking tape, archival enhancing medium 40 x 30 inches

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Biography P

atrick Nagatani is retiring as Professor Emeritus in the Department of Art & Art History at the University of New Mexico after a twenty-year teaching career, and he will now be a full-time artist. He plans to live and work in Albuquerque. A major survey of his work from 1996 to 2006 is planned to travel and open at the University Art Museum at UNM in 2009. A book will accompany the exhibition opening. In 1991 he earned the Outstanding Faculty Award from the College of Fine Arts, and from 1998 to 2000 he was honored with a Regent’s Professorship. In 2004 he was recognized for his scholarly achievements and exemplary contributions to the College of Fine Arts by the University of New Mexico Libraries. He received his MFA degree in 1979 from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a past recipient of two major National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowships. Some of his awards include: the Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, the Kraszna-Krausz Award for his book Nuclear Enchantment, the Leopold Godowsky Jr. Color Photography Award, and the California Distinguished Artist Award from the National Art Education Association. He has served as a panelist for the Illinois Art Council, Arizona Commission on Arts, Southern Arts Federation, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, California Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is an honored recipient of the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts from Governor Bill Richardson in New Mexico. Nagatani has given numerous public lectures, seminars and workshops, and his work has been exhibited widely both nationally and internationally.

Sandia 2003, photograph, masking tape, archival enhancing medium, 41 x 26 inches

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The Zen of Materials and Process T

he present exhibitions, Patrick Nagatani: Confessions of a Tapist and

Attention to Detail, bring together the work of thirteen artists who employ alternative materials and/or processes in the creation of their art. While their media and themes vary, all make use of processes that are extremely detail-oriented and labor-intensive, requiring a profound focus and total engagement that is, ultimately, the artists’ reward. For some, like Patrick Nagatani, working leads to a meditative, out-of-time state. For others, the art-making process allays anxieties or simply displaces the distracting flux of outside stimuli, and inner thoughts and emotions. In consequence, the artists maintain the desired level of control over both self and circumstances for the duration of the creative process, finding a space to be in the moment, held and drawn deeper as the work evolves.

The solo exhibition of Patrick Nagatani’s “tapist” series (a word coined by the artist) reflects the evolution of a process that he has worked with intermittently over twenty-five years. It is defined by the use of a simple material and a complex practice. In these works, the artist selectively veils and reveals, using tape to mask, quite literally, the underlying photographically derived image. Layering allows varied degrees of transparency; cutting away the tape lays bare the image below. His earliest use of tape goes back to the Colorful Cathedral series from the early 1980s. At this point, tape played a supporting role in the process and was used with his large Cibachrome prints. A little later, he applied tape in a greater proportion to Polaroid prints of nudes, obscuring portions of their bodies and the background in a manner suggestive of bandaging. Two major bodies of work made in the 1980s and early 1990s, his large-format Polaroid collaborations with Andrée Tracy and Nuclear Enchantment, did not make use of taped images.

These painstakingly staged, highly saturated color photographs address [14]

by Stella de Sá Rego

cultural and political themes with satire, irony, and (often black) humor.

Following his documentation in the early 1990s of World War II JapaneseAmerican internment camps, Nagatani returned to taped images with a series of Eastern religious figures. The underlying images are not his own photographs, but enlargements from a variety of printed sources. Except for small areas, notably hands, they are completely covered over in tape. Here the taping can read as a diaphanous division between the earthly realm and that of the spirit. The hand gestures convey messages to devotees,

While their media and themes vary, all make use of processes that are extremely detail-oriented and labor-intensive, requiring a profound focus and total engagement that is, ultimately, the artists’ reward. such as “have no fear.” In 2003, Nagatani made another taped series using enlargements of vintage postcards. Icons of Southwest tourism—cacti and yuccas, burros and prospectors—these were completely or largely taped.

Added to the already altered appearance of the often retouched and unrealistically toned postcards of the period, the tape adds another layer of removal from any lingering sense of photographic realism and implies a lost time shrouded in memory, inhabited by ghostly effigies. A year later, Patrick Nagatani taped another Eastern religious icon, Yakushi Nyorai - The Healer, whose attribute is the medicine jar that he holds in his hand. Recent work includes an incredibly detailed landscape, White Pines - Memory, an enlarged print taped with as many as ten intricately cut and applied layers to create a sense of depth. The amount of labor-intensive detail in this composition is difficult to grasp—it must be seen both at close range and at a distance to appreciate.

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Many of the artists whose work is represented in the accompanying group exhibition Attention to Detail are colleagues or former students of Patrick Nagatani. Others express in their work complementary concerns and approaches. The themes they explore include healing on many levels (of the body, mind, spirit, and environment), politics and society, dream and myth, and the revelation of unseen worlds, both fantastic and quasi-scientific.

Nagatani and Carol Chase Bjerke have an ongoing correspondence, a bond forged by personal and artistic commonalities. Cancer survivors and artists, they share a unique support system. Bjerke’s art addresses the daily realities of living with an altered body and rising above difficulties with grace, spirit intact. Charles Benefiel, who has been diagnosed with obsessivecompulsive disorder, makes art as a means to heal the mind, while Heather Willems strips the emotional charge from the written phrases she repeats obsessively. In his minutely detailed rock studies, Todd Anderson mentally climbs mountains and finds sanctuary from the distracting trivialities of life.

Conversely, Teo González seeks detachment through repetition, mastering a mercurial technique, working with predictability and chance.

Environmental healing is a conscious act for artists using found, often castoff, materials. Nick Abdalla uses cardboard and twine as sculptural elements.

Aurora Robson recycles litter, transforming it in an act of environmental redemption. Her junk mail collages contain an ironic, humorous element and implied social criticism that is more overt in the work of Thomas Barrow, Chad Person, and Krista Charles.

Barrow and Person examine contemporary culture and politics. Barrow’s mixed media sculptures combine photographic media images with bits of the mass-produced consumer “stuff” that surrounds and engulfs us, suggesting a myriad of readings for the viewer’s consideration. Chad Person

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takes the offensive, destroying currency to make his collages and depriving the government of tax dollars that could be spent on weapons of war. Krista Charles proclaims a victory of imagination and ingenuity over the deadening effects of commercial, mass-produced craft products, transmuting creativitysnuffing junk into original art.

Leaving the objective world aside, Carlos Quinto Kemm turns inward to construct intricate, multidimensional fantasy worlds inhabited by mythical and iconic figures. He finds the sources for his intricately detailed compositions from within the history of art, literature, and his own fertile imagination. Leigh Anne Langwell’s delicate photograms evoke, through light and shadow, hidden worlds outside the range of our unaided vision.

Her experience in medical photography has led her to create imaginative and poetic visions suggestive of elemental life forms and physical phenomena at a multiplicity of scales from micro to macro, cellular to astronomic. To do so, she fabricates original sculptures and employs multiple, innovative light sources for use with the most elemental of photographic processes.

The near obsessive level of engagement and the use of simple materials, transformed through alternative art-making processes, are the matrix that binds and relates the works of the thirteen artists in these exhibitions—what Patrick Nagatani has called “the Zen of materials and process.”

Stella de Sá Rego is an art historian, curator, and translator. She served as archivist of Pictorial Collections at the University of New Mexico General Library from 1986 to 2004. She has published numerous articles and translations on photography and Latin American art, including Mexican Suite: A History of Photography in Mexico.

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Attention to Detail 12 artists

Nick ABDALLA Todd ANDERSON Thomas BARROW Charles BENEFIEL Carol Chase BJERKE Krista CHARLES Teo GONZALES Carlos Quinto KEMM Leigh Anne LANGWELL Chad PERSON Aurora ROBSON Heather WILLEMS

Nick Abdalla Albuquerque, New Mexico

“More often than not, I really don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just doing. When I begin to work, I have no idea where I’m going. I just start (that’s the hard part) and the rest is a journey. Actually, it’s more like wandering—or meandering. I once noted that my favorite bumper sticker was ‘I’m not lost, I’m just exploring.’ It’s still my favorite. I wish I’d said that. There’s another saying I like, ‘Wherever you go, there you are.’ I wish I’d said that, too!”

A

fter many years as a painter, Nick Abdalla currently works in sculpture,

making large freestanding or wall-mounted mixed-media constructions fabricated from cardboard, twine, and other found materials. The raw, natural quality of these materials and the organic forms he employs evoke the power and vitality of African sculpture and Native American art. This body of work comes out of a lifelong fascination with the land and culture of the Southwest. An amateur archeologist, Abdalla hikes the back country of New Mexico in search of interesting landforms and rock art. Other forms of Precolumbian and Native American art and artifacts—basketry, fetishes, and Katchinas—have also had a significant impact on his work. Nick Abdalla is Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico Department of Art.

Moscabeja (detail) 2003, wood, cardboard, twine, acrylic, epoxy, 62 x 41 x 23 inches [20]

Todd Anderson Edwardsville, Illinois

“William Blake suggested that in the particulars wisdom and happiness consists . . . I do find a certain magic and devilry in an artistic exploration of nuance and minute data. These artworks serve as a means to honor my passion for climbing. The towers are created through repetitiously drawing miniature rocks, cracks and snowdrifts with the aid of magnifying glasses. When a climber ascends a mountain, the climber discovers a unique, step-by-step understanding of the particular landscape. These artworks mirror the physical activity of climbing through a millimeter-by-millimeter drafting technique that considers each and every detail. This slow building of imagery, in many ways, informs its own making. Conceptually, these works may also serve as a personal place of refuge from the mundane and muddled circumstances of day-to-day life.”

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odd Anderson’s intricate, painstaking depictions of rocks transcend scale,

literally making mountains out of pebbles. With intense concentration and attention to detail, the artist creates a world of fictional peaks and craggy summits using a process that mimics the climber’s inch-by-inch struggle to know the mountain. In doing so, he creates a world under his control in which he becomes completely engaged. Born in Rochester, Minnesota, Anderson earned an MFA in printmaking at the University of New Mexico.

He has worked at a number of renowned print studios both in this country and abroad, including the Tamarind Institute of Lithography. Todd Anderson is a member of the faculty at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Pancho and Lefty: Northwest Faces 2007, intaglio and lithography, 24 x 20 inches [22]

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Thomas Barrow Albuquerque, New Mexico

“When making things with the flotsam and jetsam of our culture there is always meaning beyond the obvious. I like to believe the photographic notes I add deepen that meaning and it becomes as varied and elusive as the audience itself.”

T

homas Barrow’s work examines contemporary American culture, using

recycled photographic images together with other cultural artifacts. The resulting works are nuanced, layered, complex, and open to a variety of interpretations. In a long and distinguished career in photography, Barrow has played every role: artist, administrator, professor, writer and editor. He was assistant director of the George Eastman House before coming to the University of New Mexico where he served as associate director of the Art Museum and, until his retirement in 2002, as a professor in the Department of Art and Art History. He has received two NEA Fellowships for Photography. His work is represented in the collections of museums and galleries across the United States, and in Japan and Canada.

Hare Reliquary 1997, Sx-70 photographs, mixed media, 22.5 x 19 x 9 inches [25]

Charles Benefiel Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

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harles Benefiel was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder

following a breakdown in 1997. By making art that engages him on every level, he has found a way to control his sometimes erratic thought patterns. The intense focus and deliberate approach he takes to his art making contributes to his healing. Benefiel created the Random Numeric Repeater series between 2000 and 2001 while living in New York City and New Mexico. Reacting to society’s system of reducing people to numbers as identifiers, Benefiel created his own language in which dots, circles, and dashes are symbolic of numbers and sounds. For example, a dot equals the number one and the sound “ba”; a circle equals four and “na.” As he draws, the artist simultaneously recites the sounds and counts the numerical values. This all-consuming process is essential to the artist’s sense of order, and thus calming. Unlike much artwork by obsessive-compulsive artists, Benefiel’s is minimalist and refined, visual mantras that recall Agnes Martin’s grid paintings, works which she also described as meditative and healing.

Random Numeric Repeater #17 2006, pen and ink on paper, 89 x 56.5 inches Courtesy of Richard Levy Gallery [26]

Carol Chase Bjerke Madison, Wisconsin

“Invisible Means of Support is a story of recognition and acknowledgement, and of a profound but intangible communication between two artists with common knowledge and shared experience. Its timeless presentation juxtaposes ages-old medical practice with contemporary technology and materials.”

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arol Chase Bjerke’s art is a document of her life experiences and serves

as a means of self-expression, community, and healing. To tell her stories, she incorporates the use of medical and plumbing supplies, in addition to office, household and craft materials. Bjerke has an MFA degree from Central Michigan University. Her photographic works, artists’ books, and installations have been exhibited internationally and are found in numerous collections including that of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

Invisible Means of Support 2007, mylar scrolls, thread, mixed media, each scroll 72 x 9 inches [28]

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“Using the design of the American flag took care of a great deal for me because I didn’t have to design it. So I went on to similar things like targets—things the mind already knows. That gave me room to work on other levels.”

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—Jasper Johns

Krista Charles Albuquerque, New Mexico

“I originally assigned a paint-by-number project to my art appreciation classes for some of the same freedoms that Johns found in his use of symbols. By starting with a ready-made paint-by-number, my non-art students had a basic roadmap to follow and, with some outrageous thinking, changed the colors, textures, and details to turn generic designs into original and truly fantastic creations. The infinite variations suit my own artistic and obsessive inclinations and while my work may be regarded as kitsch by some, I never approach humor in my work as merely clever. The absurdity in making a minimalist artwork from a lowbrow craft beginning intrigues me. Life is too short not to dispense with all shame when making art.�

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n her Pooben (paint-by-number) series, Krista Charles uses inexpensive,

commercial craft materials as a starting point for her imaginative and humorous adaptations. She enlivens the dull subject matter by replacing the lifeless figures of the purchased kit with those of vintage toys found in thrift shops and garage sales. The process she employs in her Blizzard series requires hundreds of hours and untold coats of white paint to nearly all but obliterate the printed image beneath. This repetitious work frees the mind like a mantra and results in a surprising, simple beauty. Krista Charles holds degrees in architecture, German, and art from the University of Washington, Seattle, and is an MFA candidate in the University of New Mexico sculpture program.

Red Barn (from the Pooben series) 2006, acrylic on board, 20 x 24 inches [31]

Teo González New York, New York

“One of the principal objectives in doing this work is to avoid, as far as possible, the burden of creativity. To do so, I choose to work with geometric arrangements, the rigidity of the straight line and preestablished measurements. I also choose to work with predictability, and chance, of chemical reactions under different conditions. This allows me to be emotionally detached from the work. And this, in turn, enables me to gain perspective, to explore the depth of what, otherwise, could be a quite shallow process.”

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eo González’s work is elegant and minimalist. Working with painstaking

attention, he releases thousands of drops of pigment in aqueous solution, forming cell-like structures on his carefully prepared canvases. He prefers to call his repetitious and labor-intensive process “highly committed” rather than obsessive. The effect on a large scale is hypnotic. Teo González was born in Zaragoza, Spain and currently works in New York. He has received many awards and exhibited internationally. His works can be found in the collections of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Museo Pablo Serrano in Zaragoza, Spain. His work is currently represented by Richard Levy Gallery in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

untitled 331 (10,000 black on white direct 100 gauge) 2004, gesso, acrylic polymer emulsion, graphite, acrylic enamel on canvas 36 x 36 inches, Courtesy of Richard Levy Gallery [32]

Carlos Quinto Kemm Las Vegas, New Mexico

“Since the early 1980s my works’ concentration has been on threedimensional painted collages. Each piece is the culmination of experiment, spontaneous play, and active dreaming. The dimensional space created by adhering images at various heights and depths from the visual plane adds a quality of intimacy. My work is often linked to the tradition of magic realism in Hispanic art and literature.

I draw extensively on images from art history, religious symbolism, and archetypal imagery. My art has always been an emotional and spiritual journey healing my life’s great questions.”

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volving out of a long exploration of assemblage, Carlos Quinto Kemm’s

current work has a dreamlike quality. Its dense, surface richness and decorative lushness convey the viewer to fantastic, timeless realms, rich in references to history and myth. Watteau’s clown as the artist’s persona, Titian’s Venus of Urbino become an Anasazi Venus, certain medievalizing

figures, and others recalling fantastic creations of Hieronymus Bosch. His finely crafted works are constructed of layers of associative detail that attract and hold the viewer. Carlos Quinto Kemm has exhibited his work in the United States, Canada, and Mexico since 1976. His work is in many private and public collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe and the Albuquerque Museum.

Anasazi Venus (detail) 2006, mixed media, 9.25 x 12.25 inches photo by Pat Berrett [34]

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Leigh Anne Langwell Albuquerque, New Mexico

“I have always envisioned the core of the body as somehow illuminated— a self-contained lightning storm. Swirling clouds of charged ions pass through membranes and fleshy nets. The internal light of electrical fire flashes in milliseconds like the discreet pulses of stars conducted through oceans of saline and covering vast atomic distances. The concept of scale and the creation of intersections between microcosm and macrocosm reside at the heart of this work. My research for these images began with my employment as a medical photographer and is rooted in the history and visual conventions of medical and scientific imaging. I began to explore the photogram process exclusively because of its similarity both visually and in process to X-ray images and because it is one of the oldest procedures in photography . . . a simple way to speak of complex ideas.”

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eigh Anne Langwell builds three-dimensional sculptures for translucent

and transparent materials which she places on light sensitive paper and photographs using a variety of light sources: incandescent bulbs, fiber optic lights, and electroluminescent wire. The developed images record the shadows, in varying translucencies, cast by the objects. The resulting images seem to be records of life in spaces outside of the range of unaided vision and everyday knowledge: outer reaches of space, the inner secrets of the body, or depths of ocean trenches. Leigh Anne Langwell has an MFA from the University of New Mexico and is the recipient of a number of awards, most recently the 2007 Santa Fe Prize for Photography. She has been a lecturer at the University of New Mexico and continues to work and study in the field of medical photography.

Aggregation (detail) 2007, installation of photograms, each 5.75 x 4.25 inches [36]

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Chad Person Albuquerque, New Mexico

“My interests lie in the confrontation of power relationships that exist within capitalist society. It excites me to consider that as a producer of goods within a capitalist system, I can attempt to question the validity of that system, yet continue to reap the benefits of it. As a rule, I begin with a concept and execute each piece (or body of work) in whatever medium I deem suits the work conceptually. . . I have been destroying currency for my work for the past two years. As a professional artist, I deduct my material expenditures as a write-off. If I slice up a hundred dollars to make an image, or a thousand, or just five, I am taking it out of the IRS coffers. Imagining the weaponry that I’m not buying with those dollars is a reminder for me that a little creativity can be quite empowering.”

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had Person’s work addresses contemporary political and social issues

with assertiveness and humor. His TaxCut series is a subversive critique of the military industrial complex. The images are methodically assembled with strips of shredded currency. Other bodies of work depict lusted-after contemporary electronic goods depicted in the context of traditional still life (Mammon series) and insular gated housing communities (Fortress America). Person earned an MFA from the University of New Mexico in 2005. His works have been shown nationally and internationally and reside in private and public collections, including those of the University Art Museum in Albuquerque.

SAML 2007, U.S. currency on canvas, 12 x 18 inches [38]

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Aurora Robson

New York, New York

“I am interested in the idea of enantiodromia as it applies to psychology, nature and art. The forms in my current body of work are from nightmares I had when I was a child: I kept finding myself in tangled and knotted chaotic landscapes populated by increasingly large colonies of misshapen blobs. My goal is to subjugate the negative aspects of these nightmare memories by transforming them into positive and playful creations. Additionally, it gives me great pleasure to transform ‘garbage into art.’ I am always on the lookout for new ways to create work that doesn’t add much to the matter that we must all contend with on this planet.”

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urora Robson makes beautiful art works from her junk mail. Balance

Transfer is a paper collage made from unsolicited advertising. She also collects plastic litter from her chaotic Brooklyn neighborhood which she transforms into elegant and witty sculptures. As the cast-off materials of consumer culture, these materials express a social consciousness as well as an ethic and an aesthetic. Rescuing and recycling these materials into objects of delight and beauty is an act of redemption and renewal, a celebration of possibility. Her exuberant forms have been compared to the blown glass of Dale Chihuly. A graduate of the visual arts program at Columbia University, Aurora Robson’s work has been recognized by numerous awards and publications. She has exhibited in major cities of the United States and Europe.

Balance Transfer (detail) 2007, junk mail, ink, gouache on paper collage, 22 x 30 inches Collection of Dr. and Mrs. Alberto and Jennifer Castaneda Courtesy of Richard Levy Gallery [41]

Heather Willems New York, New York “I utilize the writing process not to ward against forgetting or misremembering but to question and unfold my unconscious thought. Whether I repeat a single phrase or employ free writing to blacken a 900-square-foot scroll, text becomes the visual image.

With repeated exposure to a phrase, event, or emotion, we become desensitized. For example, the more ‘I love you’ is written the less meaning it conveys. The focused writing process deflates the pregnant phrase ‘I love you’ to marks of graphite on paper, a trace of what was or a hope for what is yet to be. As a private performative act my pieces simultaneously cleanse and condition. The Midnight Disease series are artifacts of my intimacy and time spent transitioning from one love to the next. Like a meditative mantra, I write ‘I-L-O-V-E-Y-O-U’ to the point of emotional neutrality. At that point the conditioning begins: love new love.”

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s a way to quiet her mind while riding the subway, Heather Willems

began carrying her notebooks everywhere, devoting every available minute to obsessively writing and rewriting the same phrase until the meaning became subordinate to the texture created by graphite marks on paper. From the patterns created by thousands of words (some written almost microscopically), images may be suggested: irrigated fields, desert mountains. Rarely, she departs from her text, introducing other related words or phrases: “alone,” “more than you love me,” “but you called me her name,” etc. A recipient of various grants and awards, Willems has shown her work extensively across the country. She has a BFA degree in photography from the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities and an MFA from Ohio State University-Columbus.

The Midnight Disease: Cover 2007, graphite on paper, 34 x 26 inches [42]

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516 ARTS Staff

Suzanne Sbarge, Executive Director Andrew John Cecil, Program Director Rhiannon Mercer, Program Coordinator Bryan Kaiser, Education Coordinator Board of Directors

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Kim Arthun Miguel Gandert Arif Khan Norty Kalishman Diane Karp Wendy Lewis Danny Lopez Susan McAllister Christopher Mead Elsa Menendez Melody Mock Exhibition Catalog

Artists’ Biographies: Stella de Sá Rego Design: Tom Richardson & Suzanne Sbarge Editing: Jill Root Printing: Don Mickey Designs [44]