PRESS

SPECIMEN

Things are the Thing – GROUP EXHIBITION ‘SPECIMEN’ FILLS THE ARTS FUND GALLERY WITH ‘CABINETS OF CURIOS,’ FOUND OBJECT ART, AND OTHER STRANGE, HERMETIC SIDESHOW DELIGHTS

July 12, 2013 tedmills Art, News-Press, Review

GREETING visitors to the current exhibition at Arts Fund Gallery, “Specimen,” is a kindly, smiley skeleton placed strategically and without explanation. It seems a combination greeter, sentry and memento mori, all at once, befitting a deliciously bizarre and strangely comforting show about pseudo-science, dead things, decontextualized memories, found objects redirected into the direction of art, and other cultural specimens.

Curator Ted Mills, himself an artist, filmmaker, and also journalist-critic (whose writing is oft-found in the pages of the News-Press) had the notion of collecting left-of-center collectors and assemblage artists. The end result, imposing a bit more weird atmosphere than the Arts Fund Gallery has yet known, is a gathering of radiant junk, artfully constructed “cabinets of curios” and general obsessive oddity, all under one roof.

Mr. Mills explains that the idea for the exhibition was inspired right here in the thick of the “Funk Zone,” after seeing Jim O’Mahoney’s museum of oddities; the O’Mahoney piece close to the gallery entrance makes for a nice conceptual portal to what’s in store. His “It’s Another Roadside Attraction” is a quasi-scientific yet partly roadside charlatan’s collection of items, from ivory pieces to “creature skulls, snoot & egg” and vintage hand-held implements of torture, all presented with deadpanning glee

Across the room is one of the show’s grandiose showpieces, Sue Van Horsen’s “Homage to the Innocents.” In this dense thicket of a “thing” shrine, there are tangled echoes of history, memory, anthropology and an antique kitchen blender which has seen far better days. As the artist writes in her statement, channeling a spirit relevant to much of the work in the gallery, “peering at the mundane and oddball treasures you might begin hearing the voices and stories of your imagination, remembering a simpler time before you knew better.”

Another lavishly large, verging on ostentatious, “cabinet” piece is Michael E. Long’s oddly elegant display, in which individual pieces are tagged as “specimens.”

Less tidy, darker in mood and muse, and seductively creepy is Tracy Beeler’s “Human Jerky and Other Delights.” The jerky in question, half obscured behind the murky and curdled milky glass of the cabinet, is a shriveled and dried human arm, tucked in amongst various mortal and post-mortal bric a brac. This one “object,” more than anything in the gallery, steals the show in its own particular way, exerting the morbid — or naturally human — curiosity appeal of the traveling “Bodies” exhibition. Ms. Beeler’s piece tacitly raises the question: would you give your body parts to art, after the mortal coil rescinds your earthly contract? Sign me up.

Dug Uyesaka, one of the finer and more veteran members of Santa Barbara’s “found object” artist community, in some ways plays it straight with his piece “A Repository of Personal and Familial Endearments in addition to a Gathering of Natural and Manmade Curiosities for Your Contemplation and Enjoyment.” As if demonstrating the index of art materials from which his artistic process begins, he packs a honeycomb of cubbyholes with singular objects of intrigue, while also showing one of his integrated, free-associating assemblages, “Remorse,” which conveys the feeling of the title through blended, object-based invention.

Witty Dan Levin is another longtime assemblage ace in the 805 (except when itinerant), and his piece “The Contents of Calder’s Cabinet” is one of the show’s stronger pieces. In Mr. Levin’s stretch of gallery wall space, a tumbling gusher of junk objects — and “object fall,” so to speak — seems to spew down out of a small wooden box high on the wall, upon which sits a small and delicate, Alexander Calder-like self-standing mobile. Needless to say, there is nothing Calder-esque or delicate in the object-filled story here, which could contain a message about the object-filled brain of the dedicated assemblage artist.

Slightly off to the side of the hunter-gatherer nature of the assemblage artists and cabinet concocters in the show, Ethan Turpin and Jon P. Smith rely on playful history-perverting concepts. Mr. Turpin shows one of his crafty, antiquated stereoscopic works, this one involving a possibly eco-minded photograph of alligators in arctic waters, with the assuring authenticity of a British narrator rambling on. Such narration continues, in a soft chattering blur through headphones in the gallery, in Mr. Smith’s droll “Stone Works,” as if the voice is bubbling up out of rockworks on the gallery wall.

Mr. Mills, fittingly, has his say as an artist with a journalism angle once removed and blissfully transformed into surreal malarkey. His “Workers News” piece is a faded old magazine rack, with photoshopped covers for such periodicals as “Woodchipper Weekly” (no, “Fargo” references are not immediately visible) and “Cat Wonder Weekly (formerly Socialist Worker).”

Further clever tinkering, of objects and ideas, can be found in Norm Reed’s “Wheel of Flies.” This is a rare touchable-art and interactive piece in the show, in which a tilt of a lever sets the gears in sight-sound motion and a rotating gallery of flies is flecked with the occasional gentle clock gong. The artwork evokes the flow of time and the inevitability and underrated beauty of fly life, while tickling our gadget/object intrigue.

These are a few, or several, of my observations and impressions on first blush. Some impulse is telling me to pay another visit, to search for other enticements in the countless crannies of the gallery’s holdings. Maybe I have the “specimen” obsession syndrome, as well.

CUT & PASTE

Cut and Paste: Collage in Santa Barbara
at the Arts Fund Community Gallery of Santa Barbara, California, USA
16 November 2018-11 January 2019

Opening reception

Friday,16 November, 5-8PM

Collage, derived from the French word “coller”, to glue, is the joining of paper and other found objects onto paper, canvas or wood. Curated by artist and educator Dug Uyesaka, this exhibition is a broad survey of the art form and how it came alive with the influence of Santa Barbara artist William Dole (1917–1983). An internationally recognized collagist, Dole was an educator, mentor and inspiration for many artists from the 1940s to the present.

Dole married bits of paper, handmade pigments and text in lyrical, gracefully crafted images based on the mysteries of the observed and contemplated world around him. The exhibition shows a wide range of area artists who utilize collage as one of their main modes of creative expression. They run the gamut from the traditional joining of paper to paper to the digital and alternative techniques illustrating the extent and breadth of the medium.

Tony Askew’s work in collage is a journey of visual discovery when finding and re-directing the forms or narrative of found fragments. He utilizes found materials with a focus on their haptic qualities and composes them with visual fun and improvised creation. Mary Heebner’s inquisitive approach began as an MFA student under her mentor William Dole, and for over 40 years she has been making collages guided by a sense of place and layers of time. In part, inspired by travels throughout the world, her studio practice stresses a well-honed sensitivity to composition that includes the use of handmade papers, earthen pigments and text.

Angela Holland makes collages by gathering whatever papers, colours and patterns she feels drawn to at the moment. Her process is a trial and error thing; often more about seeing than doing, transforming the ordinary to the extraordinary. Kate Doordan Klavan’s collages are like cryptic maps that explore the frontier between the familiar and the enigmatic, between memory and desire, and innocence and knowledge. William Davies King works with the graphic elements in a book, super-layering an illustration with another illustration. His art begins with rejected books and out of several he makes one, a hybrid, which he calls a bibliolage.

Susan Owens transforms the tin packaging that contains our mass-produced consumer goods into new and more evocative images that may spark a memory or serve as a daily reminder. Her chosen medium reflects her “reduce, reuse, and recycle” aesthetic. Susan Tibbles’ artwork shows the psychological and sociological complexities and metaphors of discarded objects brought to life in a new light. Her work resides in the decontextualization, reconditioning, and enshrining of bits and pieces of American culture. Sue van Horsen’s digital collages are a mash up of images self-produced and gleaned from thrift shops, Ebay and the internet. Her works are often wry, darkly whimsical looks at our collective pasts, surreal present and imagined futures.

“Cut and Paste: Collage in Santa Barbara” is dedicated to the memories of William Dole and Kate Doordan Klavan, who died on 13 October 2018.

(Text adapted from the gallery’s press materials)

INFORMATION

Arts Fund Community Gallery of Santa Barbara
205-C Santa Barbara Street
Santa Barbara, California 93101 USA
(805) 965-7321

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