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Dennis was a Past-President of the San Diego Museum of Art Artists Guild and a former trustee of the San Diego Museum of Art (2000-2002). As Guild President he developed the first democratically juried art exhibition for the organization at the Boehm Gallery in Palomar College and by changing outdated policies, helped grow the Guild membership from 140 to over 600 artists during a two year period. During his tenure with SDMA he started a policy of sharing with other institutions. The Guild joined the Oceanside Museum of Art as a circle member and he worked with the California Center for the Arts, Escondido Museum on a strategic planning committee to help reopen the museum after it was closed by the city. He is also the author of “The Living History of the Guild” and was the creator of and contributor to a cutting-edge online magazine called the Artists Ezine.
. .. A long-term resident of Carlsbad, California, he was the co-founder and co-managing trustee of the Outdoor Art Foundation. He served on the board of the Synergy Art Foundation and worked with the committee of the San Diego Visual Arts Network. He also served on the board of COFAC (Consejo Fronterizo de Arte y Cultura – Border Council of Arts & Culture) and worked with the committee of the Oceanside Museum of Art Artists Alliance. He was the founder and web-person for the San Diego Visual Artists Guild, and aided in the creation of a cooperative artist gallery in downtown San Diego (1098 9th Ave.) called the SDVAG Fine Art Gallery.
. .. Dennis was the founder and the executive director of a charitable organization called, the Museum Artists Foundation (MAF). As director of MAF, in accordance with its policy of sharing with other organizations, he presented an elegant fundraiser called “Façade” in conjunction with the Small Opera of San Diego on May 21, 2005. He helped create and designed a multi-phased curated Wildlife Art Exhibition & Sale, which was open to all regional artists, in the San Diego Natural History Museum, Balboa Park, dates August 12, 2005 – January 1, 2006. He assisted in the creation of two Carlsbad Masquerades, held on February 25, 2006 and February 24, 2007, to benefit the Outdoor Art Foundation’s Outdoor Art Initiative. He also partnered with Doctors Offering Charitable Services (DOCS) to create“The Unveiling” an Art and Opera fundraiser held on May 19, 2007. He created and keeps current a comprehensive database of over 2,900 regional visual artists including 2,000 email addresses. This database has been shared with several organizations looking for artists to donate work or enter exhibitions. It is growing, kept current, and is made available on request for museums and qualified art organizations.
. .. In January 2007 Dennis launched a new business venture called Virtual Fine Art. He was the owner and President of the company, which features a 3D Interactive Virtual Art Museum. Dennis was a member of the executive steering committee for a local think tank, Imagine Carlsbad. In May, 2007 Dennis was invited to join the San Diego Group Leaders, a multi-organizational networking group of professionals and leaders of various charitable organizations. He was then put on the Campbell Networks with his own events list, which provides information on events for artists, fans of art and those who wish to support the arts, primarily those with an interest in the visual arts.
. .. Since then, Dennis assisted Martin E. Petersen, curator emeritus of the San Diego Museum of Art, to publish his manuscript called “Alice Klauber”online. He was also the curator of a new art gallery, part of the New Village Arts Theater, in Carlsbad. He created the website for San Diego’s Movers & Shakers in the art world.
. .. Dennis was the artist/curator for an exhibition in the Parker Gallery of the Oceanside Museum of Artcalled Commesso: Made in America “Gemstone Fine Art.” The show ran from March 2 – May 1, 2009. This is the first art museum exhibition of commesso di pietre dure e tenere created by American artists. He talked about the exhibition to a standing room only audience on April 25, 2009. In 2009 he joined the Pink Party team and became their art curator and webmaster. In 2010 and 2011 he was the art curator for theCrime Victims Fundannual benefit.
From the website: The Kearny Mesa Lunar New Year Festival 2012 @ SEARS is a 3-day cultural and charitable community event whose mission is to promote the Asian cultural heritage during an important traditional holiday.
The Lunar New Year is celebrated in many Asian communities, particularly those whose countries and territories have significant Chinese populations, such as Mainland China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Tibet, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and also in Chinatowns elsewhere. Chinese New Year is considered a major holiday for the Chinese and has had influence on the new year celebrations of its geographic neighbors, as well as cultures with whom the Chinese have had extensive interaction. These include Koreans (Seollal), and Bhutanese (Losar), Mongolians (Tsagaan Sar), Vietnamese (Tết), and the Japanese before 1873 (Oshogatsu).
Sears Parking Lot– great place to throw a party. And although I’m uncertain if I gained any insight into Asian cultural heritage, I did enjoy myself.
Asian food: Check. (cheap, good)
Very yummy fruit that’s (seemingly) hard to get in San Diego (in my world) + sugar cane juice and 2$ Coconuts!
And I talkin’ really good Coconut — not like the ones I always end up buying at the store.
Rides: Check. (cheap, scary, dizzy, glad to be alive, but fun). A lighter traveling at 75mph flew off The Kamikaze and missed us by a few inches. This one’s safe. Tested and survived.
There was a solar flare episode around Halloween in October of 2003 and it coincided with a major brushfire that burned hundreds of homes in San Diego. For days the cloudless skies were filled with brown-orange smoke which acted like a filter against the sun and you could see clearly the two large sunspots in the lower-right of the disc. At the time I figured, “Oh, well that must be the way the sun normally looks.” But then weeks later the news was reporting that one of the reasons why the brushfire got so out of control was because one of the effects of the solar flares is that they interfere with radio communication, making it difficult the night of the fire’s startup and thereafter to coordinate air-drops of retardant.
With the brand new year upon us, 2012 is sure to bring some surprises. So far, the most intriguing one has been the new CD from of Montreal’s, Paralytic Stalks, a righteous return to the heady days of the mid 2000s. Just when you thought the party was burning at both ends and had just about burned out, from left field emerges this brave new CD.
Originating from Athens, GA, of Montreal is the brainchild of singer/songwriter/guitarist Kevin Barnes. Of Montreal was part of the second wave of bands to emerge from the sprawling Elephant 6 collective. Barnes chose the band’s moniker to memorialize a failed relationship with a woman from, of all places, Montreal. Barnes originally signed with Bar/None Records whilst residing in that place called Florida and after having had enough of FLA, he made his way northwards, both to Cleveland and Minneapolis in order to seek out compatible, like-minded freaks that would suit his needs perfectly and complement the idea he had for of Montreal, finally returning home to collaborate with bassist Bryan Helium (also a member of Athens’ Elf Power) and drummer Derek Almstead.
Their first CD, Cherry Peel, appeared in mid-1997, which was followed up that same year by an EP entitled The Bird Who Continues to Eat the Rabbit’s Flower. From the start, Barnes & company merged their bright, flamboyant indie dance sound with heavy doses of psychedelia and humor; of Montreal’s earliest records also exhibited a lo-fi sound that bordered on “twee pop”, although the band steadily shed those influences throughout the early 2000s. After Helium left the group in 1998 to focus on Elf Power full-time, Almstead assumed bass duties, while keyboardist Dottie Alexander and drummer Jamie Huggins both joined the lineup. Next, though, of Montreal’s follow-up full length, 1998′s The Bedside Drama: A Petite Tragedy, was recorded primarily as a Barnes solo project, wherein Barnes did most of the studio duties as a one-man outfit, playing all the instruments, singing, writing and producing and/or co-producing. But that was not to be just a one-time thing, as Barnes’s long shadow would penetrate most of the best of their CDs, with help, of course, from the others. But without Kevin’s vision and songwriting efforts, of Montreal would definitely not be what they are today.
On 1999′s The Gay Parade, multi-instrumentalist A.C. Forrester signed on as a collaborator; then the retrospective album, Horse & Elephant Eatery followed in the spring of 2000. The group continued with the release of Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse in April 2001 and Aldhils Arboretum in September of 2002, both of which were issued by the Georgia-based label Kindercore Records. With the subsequent folding of Kindercore, the departures of multi-instrumentalist Andy Gonzales and Almstead, and Barnes’ marriage, 2003 proved to be an up and down year for the group. Barnes’ wife, Nina, joined of Montreal’s lineup as the group signed to Polyvinyl Records and in 2004, delivered one of the first of the records that really started getting them noticed around the indie scene, Satanic Panic in the Attic.
The following year found Barnes exploring a bouncier, synth-driven avenue with the release of Sunlandic Twins, but things began to get complicated in his personal life at the same time. He and his wife moved to Norway for the birth of their baby. Deprived of familiar touchstones, Kevin fell into a deep depression and, upon returning to the States, continued to travel progressively downhill. He and his wife separated for a time, and she returned to her family in Norway with their new daughter. Through the emotional turmoil, Barnes concocted what was to be his darkest, most personal and ambitious album up to that point: 2007’s Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? The same year saw the release of one of several compilation EPs: If He is Protecting Our Nation Then Who Will Protect Big Oil, Our Children? which, sadly, was thoroughly stomped on by critics. The next year, however, Barnes et al came out with something that surpassed Hissing Fauna… and all that had they had created up to that point (and in my opinion, still ranks as unsurpassed in creative, sexual chaos: Skeletal Lamping, a mind-blowing, 15-song magnum opus of brilliance that only furthered their ambitious sound by emphasizing Barnes’ outrageous alter ego, “Georgie Fruit,” whose influence pushed the album toward a funk and sexually charged disco-rock territory, with a slice of prog-rock hidden in the background. An Eluardian Instance (Jon Brion Remix EP) followed in early 2009, featuring five remixed tracks from the previous album. Of Montreal’s tenth studio release, False Priest, arrived the following year and besides (or because of) featured cameos from fellow genre-hoppers Janelle Monáe and Solange Knowles the album was not awful, but something about it was just a little off to me, of course, following up a mind-blowing, genre (and gender-bending) masterpiece would’ve been hard to do. At first I was into False Priest, danced around to the new tunes and enjoyed the variety of the novelty, but after a whole bunch of listens, found False Priest leaving me feeling a little bit empty and not as excited, as if Kevin Barnes and his cohorts had used up too much of their creative skills on the previous brilliance and instead of taking a little break had to go right back to work.
A smattering of songs originally slated for release on False Priest but which were, for one reason or other, were left off it saw the light of day in April of 2011 on thecontrollersphere EP, which was a nice, short EP that whet one’s appetite for the return of the raw, unyielding alter ego, “Georgie Fruit”, who seemed to be hospitalized or otherwise indisposed during the False Priest sessions. Songs such as “Black Lion Massacre”, “Holiday Call” and “Slave Translator” showed that the band was definitely on the mend and getting their groove back.
The following year Barnes revisited the lyrical rawness and supercharged emotion evident on Hissing Fauna… with Paralytic Stalks, the new CD just out, which explores themes of self-loathing, revenge, and romantic turmoil to create Barnes’s most honest, personal and naked offering yet. Although I, myself, still feel that Skeletal Lamping is somewhat of a peak for of Montreal, I must admit that Paralytic Stalks has the effect of returning to the greatness of 2007 and before. This is proof that of Montreal is not burned out and that their bag of tricks is not used up. Look for them (or at least hope they will) to show up in your neck of the country, as an of Montreal show is sure to be a colorful, Tubes-like gig for the 21st century.
In this reoccurring blog column, I’d like to highlight things that are not typically considered “Art”. One might think, perhaps this means Dance, Fashion, Theater… but, no. More like Tattoo Arts, Martial Arts, Extreme Performance Arts. That’s more along the lines of what I had in mind. I can’t remember the last time I went to the theater, but I spent last night at a tattoo parlor, and I definitely remember the last amateur MMA fight that I attended. So, here it is. OTHER THAN “ARTS” volume 2.
Getting bored of the same old San Diego Friday night happenings? Maybe some good old-fashion CAGE FIGHTS are want you need to break up the monotony.
For over a year now I have been attending and filming the Native Fighting Championship, Mixed Martial Arts, Cage Fights at the Golden Acorn Casino in Campo, California (little less than an hour east of San Diego). For $60 you can sit ringside and watch amateur and professional fighters battle it out. I’ve seen concussions, knock outs, arms being broken…
FIGHTERS, if you’re feeling froggy, you can even sign up to be a fighter… with advanced notice and training of course. Contact John Mesa, jmesa@goldenacorncasino.com
For almost 20 years artist and scholar Lynn Dewart has been creating magical, sculptural, figurative creatures. OK I’ll call them dolls. But these “dolls” aren’t for kiddies.
"Asbestos"
Well, perhaps some of them could be.
"Bone Baby"
For 17 years Lynn has been facilitating workshops to help others make “dolls”, and this Saturday, January 21st, is the first “reunion and retrospective” of the dolls both from the workshops and from Lynn’s personally created collection.
But this isn’t a doll party. It’s part of a Lynn’s Masters thesis work. I wanted to ask Lynn a little about this exhibition, about her work, and about the subject of dolls.
Katherine Sweetman Tell me a little about the exhibition on January 21
Lynn Dewart I have been facilitating a particular workshop using the figurative form as medium for deep play in the arts and tool for transformation based on my own experience with the form and process. A reunion of participants and their “dolls” has been discussed for some years. This exhibit represents work across that span of time and is held in conjunction with and celebration of the completion of my Master’s thesis on this work with the doll.
K.S. The invite for the exhibition requests “dolls, stories and photos” from the public. What are you going to do with these?
L.D. Any dolls made by participants in my workshops, any stories they wish to share about the work and perhaps photos of dolls not available in person will be on display for the public to view.
K.S. What is your background with dolls? Why are dolls in particular something that you create?
L. D. That is the opening heuristic story of my thesis. Briefly, in 1993 an important personal art experience helped to restructure my narrative. I had created a small doll representing myself, age of 14, after a specific trauma. The effects of the process were life-changing. I became fascinated by mythical and folkloric practices and cultures where dolls are recognized as tools not playthings. I have experienced firsthand the prejudice and limited perspective the western world has of the object “doll” and did not use that work in conjunction with my work for a long time.
The doll was my primary art form for many years, and I still return to it though in many varied configurations. I have made hundreds, from 4” to 5’ tall. They have sold in galleries, shows or online and are collected around the world.
K.S. You are pursuing a Masters Degree in Expressive Arts Therapy, are the dolls part to this graduate degree?
L. D. Yes, it is the subject of my thesis: The Art of The Doll – Doll as Tool For Transformation and Container For Narrative, a study of the process according to principles, practices and philosophies of Expressive Arts Therapy as taught at the Expressive Arts Institute of San Diego and the European Graduate School.
K.S. I want to ask about Bone Girl Boxes. On your website, they are described as objects “Originally inspired by young maidens departed too soon.” Can you tell me more about these objects?
A dear and longtime friend lost her daughter, just 14 years of age, to an angry driver running a stop sign at 90mph on the corner of the block where they lived. I thought then of making a doll out of bones I’d been collecting, but it wasn’t until 15 months later, when my niece, age 19, was killed by a drunk driver on I-15, that I did. The first art made after that was a small doll out of bones. Then I made a doll as shrine to my niece’s death in that car accident and then Bone Girl Music Boxed about each of the girls. I only made dolls out of bones, wood and found objects for a long while with a rare venture back into fabric until just last year.
"Red Shoes"
K.S. The work of yours, that I’ve seen in person, that I am most attracted to are the Bone Dolls. Can you tell us a little about these dolls, what they are made of, what the process of making them is like? Also, where do you get the bones?
L.D. At first, the Bone Dolls came about as my response to death of those close to me. Their deaths caused me to reflected on just what are the marks we leave on this planet when we die. I saw that bones are basically all that remains physically so thought about what else do people leave behind.
The recent series “The Pall Bearers” deals with losses, perhaps tiny deaths, we suffer daily – lack of funds for arts education, jobs, and some other personal stories. I also make Bone Dolls of mythical and archetypal figures and even people I know and love. The first of a real person was in memory of Ottavio Cannestrelli, son of a local, prominent 8 generation circus family, who died tragically. I knew him from Fern Street Circus and made costumes for him. Others are of those still living: dear friends or colorful personalities that catch my eye.
I use bones of fish, fowl, beaver, deer, moose or elk. I have used lynx, wolf, beaver and other animal bones, too. I make my own molds and cast their heads or use old doll heads. I use wire and beads of glass, metal, wood or bone as joints and, as a costume designer, enjoy making their little costumes immensely. They are usually made in groups, like a family of sorts, not one at a time. It’s a bit of an assembly line as I make the parts then the bodies start to form themselves. Then the notion of who they are appears.
Initially, I collected odd bones here and there and some have been given to me. Some I still find myself or buy from a trader way up north.
3) Have a drink before and after you get a tattoo at the bar next door to the tattoo shop, SHOTS, and find this guy– Ben Burns.
Ben Burns
We met Ben Burns one evening while stumbling back towards our hotel in District 1′s backpacker neighborhood of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC). My friend and I (both tall, 30-ish, white women) had just spent the evening at the bars and dance clubs in the area, and we noticed that we received very little attention from any male patrons of any of these establishments. Overall, their attention was focused elsewhere– like on the two very hot Vietnamese women dirty dancing with each other or on the scantily clad Vietnamese lady with her hand down the front of their pants. The walk home revealed other bars that seemed to have only female clientele. Then out of nowhere a seemly American, white guy called out to us. He was sitting alone in front of an establishment that he introduced to us as “my bar”, so we sat down to have a drink with him (even though we didn’t believe him).
It turns out it was his bar, SHOTS Bar Saigon, and upon further interrogation, I learned he was an ex-pat punk rocker/artist/writer living in HCMC, but even though that was his city of choice (at the moment) he returned to the states frequently to tour with his San Jose punk band, Preachers That Lie.
Katherine Sweetman: How does a 30 something, white guy with a punk band get himself mixed up in co-owning a bar in HCMC?
Ben Burns: Actually, 40-something, but thanks. I guess it all started ten years ago when I first met my best friend (Mike) in Japan. We were both teaching English and enjoying life. A few years ago Mike gave up teaching, moved to Vietnam and started writing e-books on dating. The idea was to make a decent income via the internet while living in a relatively poor country in order to have a good quality of life. Anyway, he invited me over to join him in the whole writing thing. I saved up my money and came over. Soon after arriving however, his fiancé lost her job. She had been managing several bars on Bui Vien – the main backpacker strip in Saigon. So, Mike and I decided to pool our money, buy a bar and let his fiancé run it. That, as they say, is that.
K.S. Tell me about prostitution in HMC in general and then about prostitution at Shots.
B.B. Prostitution in Saigon is quite varied. There are hair salons where rather than getting your hair cut, you’ll get a blowjob, karaoke bars where naked girls will give you hand-jobs, girls who ride on the back of motor bikes and try to pick up tourists, club girls who will go home with you for money, and finally, bar girls…otherwise known as “chicken girls” who are for hire.
Our manager had been running several “chicken” bars on the same street before losing her job, so that’s what our bar started as. However, we don’t have anything to do with the prostitution side of things. Normal chicken bars will take a cut of the girls’ income through prostitution. The girls would be expected to pay the bar a percentage or set fee each time they took a customer home.
At Shots, however, we don’t negotiate prices nor do we take money from either party involved in sex for pay. Here’s what we do: our employees must pass a health check (including an STD check), then they serve drinks and serve as waitresses at Shots. If a customer buys them a drink, we will pay them a large percentage of that drink’s cost. That’s it. Oh, and we feed them. They come and go as they please and if they go home with someone, that’s their business. You would be surprised though, many customers just like to have cute girls serving them drinks (think Hooters) and are willing to buy our staff drinks all night. As I said, this is how Shots started, but we are moving away from that type of business. Now Shots is a seafood restaurant in the afternoon, a bar/party spot in the evening, and then a hostess bar/chicken bar late night. The business keeps evolving and will likely faze out the more nefarious parts over the next year… although I hope not.
K.S. What are you doing with yourself on a daily basis in Vietnam? (how do you spend your days?)
B.B. Aside from working on my book, I am quite interested in self-defense, or to be more honest, dealing with drunk people who want to start trouble. Seems to me that if you’re going to have a hooker bar in Saigon, you need to be able to take care of yourself. On a nice, productive day I would wake around noon, go to the gym, box with my trainer, take a nap, write, go out to dinner, play pool, then head in to Shots for drinks and socializing.
K.S. What is your book about? What’s it called? (Tell me it’s not on e-dating)
B. B. The book is about open relationships. Over 20 years of doing that, figured I’d write about it and the issues involved in living a sexually free life.
K.S. So, how long have you been with the punk band based out of California, Preachers that Lie?
B.B. P.T.L. Started in 1986. I met the drummer while setting up a tour for my first punk band Manic Depression. My band broke up in 1992 and I joined up with P.T.L. in 1995 to write and record some songs and play some shows in Northern California. Now we just get together once a year to play a few shows, lose money and stay eternally youthful. So far, so good.
K.S. When are you going on tour again?
B.B. Actually my band is going to play some shows in Northern California Next month. Check us [Preachers that Lie] out on Facebook and come to our shows.
(end interview)
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No, I didn’t forget the fourth recommendation:
4) When you are drunk and tattooed go eat here: LAM CAFE or across street at Hello Saigon (same food). 175 Bui Vien, Q1, Ho Chi Minh City
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Want to know more about living in Asia? Check out blog by Ben and his friend Mike: AsiaWTF
Sometimes I describe L. Ron Butterfly as “tongue-in-cheek new age,” but more specifically, my aim is to produce multi-dimensional music that can serve either as background noise or as a focus of intense concentration, even meditation, at the listener’s discretion. LRB is strongly influenced by the German electronic groups of the 1970s as well as other early, experimental electronic sounds.
Also get yo ass on facebook and “like” the crap out of L. Ron Butts. Also check out his Soundcloud.
Now for the Interview
Heathen Parade: Geetins, L. Ron. How did you come to choose this name?
L. Ron Butterfly: There’s this episode of The Simpsons where Bart replaces the organist’s sheet music with “In a Gadda da Vida” and the preacher reads the name as “I. Ron Butterfly.” So I took that and gave it a sci-fi twist because I’ve always been fascinated by mass psychology, brainwashing, cult leaders and stuff like that, particularly the way music relates to those subjects.
HP: Like subliminal messages? Backward masking, that kind of thing?
LRB: Heh, sometimes I describe this project as “tongue-in-cheek new age,” so I’m playing more with people’s moods and mindstates than I am transmitting or implanting suggestions or satanic messages. Not that such things don’t interest me, but my aim is to produce multi-dimensional music that can serve either as background noise or as a focus of intense concentration at the listener’s discretion.
HP: Music for meditation?
LB: Well, I don’t foresee my stuff being played in yoga studios, but my creative process is certainly a kind of meditation, though I’m not sure if it’s meditation in the Western sense (of deep thought and intense concentration on a subject) or the Eastern sense (of clearing the mind of thought altogether). Maybe a different sort altogether, since both of those approaches seem to involve an inward retreat from the sensory world. Since I’m focusing on sound, it’s a very sensory practice by definition. If I travel inward, it’s to the space between my ears.
HP: “Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream,” so to speak?
LRB: I like the relax part, but as a composer, I can hardly just float downstream, can I? Somebody has to steer the ship. The closest I get to “floating downstream” is in a piece like “Organic Astrology,” (http://soundcloud.com/l-ron-butterfly/organic-astrology) which is hardly melodic. It’s more of a recording of an algorithm: I set up a network of devices, give them a push this way and a twist that way, and record what happens. I do a lot of experiments this way: hours and hours, applying my successes and occasionally capturing an accident that sounds appealing enough to be worth framing as a piece of music.
HP: What kind of tools do you use?
LRB: I’ve owned a bunch of different synthesizers, grooveboxes and such, but these days I use software synths almost exclusively. It’s amazing to have the equivalent of a modular synth and a huge studio all on my laptop. Propellerheads Reason is the software that allows me to experiment the way I like to. With combinators and routing paths, the only limit seems to be my imagination.
HP: Do you like dance music?
LRB: I like to dance, but I find the overwhelming majority of EDM to be pretty unimaginative when it comes to rhythm. I dance when music moves me, not when some DJ counts to four and says “go!” So I’m more likely to dance to live funk or even rock. Trance and techno tend to make me paranoid – I can’t ignore the fact that that 4-on-the floor disco kickdrum is a march rhythm.
LRB: Well, that piece has a deceptively simple rhythm. It’s actually pretty sophisticated, and develops a lot over the three minutes, so there’s something to listen to even if you’re not dancing. The whole point of manipulating rhythm, to me, is to alter the listener’s perception of time. We experience time as a linear, one-directional dimension because of the limits of our individual senses and consciousnesses. Rhythm helps us experience time in cycles and this gets us closer to experiencing its circularity; sometimes you can catch a glimpse of something intersecting with our timeline tangentially, an insight into the interconnected cosmic whole. Dancing can be part of this process – sometimes it’s the only way people concentrate on listening.
HP: Do you have any musical influences?
LRB: Sure, I’m a lifelong record collector and music freak. I love “outside” jazz, psychedelic rock, soul and funk, among other styles. As far as electronic music goes, my favorites are still largely German artists from the 1970s like Can, Popol Vuh, Klaus Schulze… and the list goes on. I like music from the early days of electronic instruments, the more experimental the better. So Edgar Varese, Louis and Bebe Barron’s Forbidden Planet soundtrack, Raymond Scott, Bruce Haack, and many of their contemporaries are relevant points of reference, too.
Each year thousands of patrons (65,000+ this year) make the pilgrimage to Art Basel Miami Beach and/or the countless other happenings, satellite fairs and parties that intentionally overlap this weekend of art-flavored events.
This was the 10th year for the Miami fair that’s billed as “the most prestigious art show in the Americas“, and the rumors are that attendance is up, sales are up and rich folks think that art is a better place to stash their cash than Wall Street.
The Art Fair knows its role as both vital necessity and dirty whore. It is necessary to keep art glamorous and trendy in the eyes of the outsider (and stock holder) in order to keep the arts economically viable, but the concept of the Art Fair is inherently problematic and, dare I say, dirty — dressing up the art and hoping for a high bidder to take it home. The fair(s) takes something that is supposed to be pure, like art (or sex), and puts a price tag on it. The fear is that artists become corrupted by the knowledge of what sells and then become “sell outs”– a good phrase for dealers but a bad phrase for artists. But it is when this duality is made apparent, when the art-commodities at the fair point to the fact that commodification of art is dirty, THIS, in my opinion, is the most interesting situation at the Art Fair.
Jonathan Horowitz, Art Delivers People, Art Basel Miami Beach
Jonathan Horowitz, Art Delivers People, Art Basel Miami Beach
While I paused to take these photos (above), very few people stopped to watch Jonathan Horowitz‘s Art Delivers People, 2010. The piece is a play on Richard Serra and Carlota Fay Schoolman’s early 70′s video, Television Delivers People, that effectively critiques television– informing the audience they are the product TV is selling; they are the product that the advertisers are purchasing. Horowitz replaces the critique of television with that of the ART WORLD, and now the fair goers walk by a critique of the art market at that same art market’s most sacred event. At first I thought this was a brave move on the part of Sadie Coles, London (the gallery that paid for the wall space where Art Delivers People was hung), but perhaps collectors enjoy this dichotomy. A prime example of this was seen elsewhere this weekend in Miami, at the Rubell Family Collection‘s exhibition held in conjunction with Art Basel Miami Beach aptly titled American Exuberance. Bert Rodriguez’s The True Artist Makes Useless Shit for Rich People to Buy, 2008, seems to let us know that collectors, at least the Rubells, are in on the joke.
Bert Rodriguez, The True Artist Makes Useless Shit for Rich People to Buy, Rubell Family Collection
The Flash Artmagazine booth, back in the Art Basel Miami Beach proper, had one particular item that was selling like hotcakes. The 20$, “Fuck Art Fairs” T-shirts (done in the Art Basel font) were flying off the table. There was actually a line to buy them, and yes, I was in this line. I bought one, and wore it all day Saturday at: Scope, Red Dot, Art Miami, SEVEN.
Booth selling "Fuck Art Fair" T-shirts at Art Basel Miami Beach
On the topic of ironic T’s, I thought I would throw in an image of fair goer (below) sporting a T-shirt with a famous quote from Nazi playwright Hanns Johst (although may be bad translation). Phrase is often attributed to the ultra-evil Nazi henchmen, Joseph Goebbels, but upon closer inspection, it seems the shirt is a commemorative souvenir from another ultra-sheik curated art exhibition, The Venice Biennale.
"When I Hear the Word Art I Reach for My Gun" T-shirt seen at Scope Art Fair
Venice Biennial 2009 Souvenir?
Self reflexivity abounds at the art fair(s) as evidenced by Simon Thompson’s Fuck Off Art Cunts series. I should mention that these images (below) are not from Art Basel Miami Beach but from Scope Miami. An easy tell could be that the booth selling “Fuck Off Art Cunts” prints is a local Miami gallery, the Robert Fontaine Gallery. Art Basel Miami Beach includes very few local galleries. The vetting process is beyond my comprehension, but of the 260 galleries allowed into Art Basel Miami Beach, only three are located in Miami.
Simon Thompson, Fuck Off Art Cunts (in the back there), Scope Miami
Simon Thompson, Fuck Off Art Cunts, Scope Miami
Artist Paulo Nazareth was a big hit at Art Basel Miami Beach this year. His piece may be one of the most cited and photographed works in the fair, but I have yet to see anyone giving any sort of critical overview of the situation. Perhaps the situation is to obvious to analyze. The installation, paid for by the São Paulo-based gallery Mendes Wood, included a rusty VW bus filled up with one-ton of ripe bananas– spilling out onto the convention center floor. The artist seemed to always be on hand, and he became part of the installation.
artist Paulo Nazareth (left)- notice sign (left wall), photo credit: Barbara Revelle
He had a few hand-drawn signs with him. Thursday’s sign said (in Spanish), “Soy un hombre extraño en sus ojos? Saca un foto conmigo por Q1″. Translation: “Am I an exotic man in your eyes? Take a photo with me for 1 Quetzel” (1 Guatemalan Quetzel equivalent to about 12 cents US). The sign was inspired by one of the artists’ photographs of an indigenous-looking Guatemalan man with the same sign obviously posing somewhere tourists frequented. Now, the artist is the hombre extraño in the eyes of the art collector and fair goers.
(detail) "Soy un hombre extraño en sus ojos? Saca un foto conmigo por Q1"
I watched people interact with the installation and the artist, and I saw many of them stop to pose and have their photo taken, but I didn’t see anyone really fork over the Quetzel. Perfumed, face-lifted, white ladies with their older husbands paused and spoke with the Brazillian artist. Lots of people smiled and laughed, “what an interesting installation,” they remarked as they took photos. The artist’s objectification and the critique on class, wealth, and power became a critique on the fair goer and the fair itself. Nazareth’s work was the closest to performance that I witnesses inside the Art Basel Miami Beach fair although some performances were moved outdoors to be part of the Art Public (Public Art mainly in a beach-front park separate from the fair). The only performance that I happened across was by new york artist Jen DeNike from the same São Paulo-based gallery as Paulo Nazareth (Mendes Wood).
Jen DeNike, Lemanjá, Art BAsel Miami Beach- Art Public
Jen DeNike, Lemanjá, Art Basel Miami Beach- Art Public
I read that the piece was about the worship the Brazilian sea goddess “Lemanjá”, but the highlight of this performance, for me, was the backdrop because typically when I see performance art with pretty girls in pretty dresses my brain shuts off, and an 80° South Beach day in December was breathtakingly beautiful. I wondered why I didn’t skip the art and go grab my bathing suit and a Piñacolada. (Actually I did have that Piñacolada.)
I believe that for most people, self-included, Art Basel Miami Beach, is eclipsed by the other events and happenings around Miami during this weekend. The Wynwood area events, for example, are an amazing and sprawling collection of galleries, warehouses, public and private collectors’ spaces, pop up galleries in vacant properties, parties in parking lots, live street painting, and general parties with live music, fashion shows and art backdrops.
vacant lot, pop up gallery, featuring Art Cream Truck
“I got tired of waiting for you to come to my galleries so I decided to bring my art to you…” from Art Cream Truck website.
Wynwood Arts District
Bride as art, Wynwood Arts District gallery
Although these murals (below) were not made for this particular iteration of Miami Basel, Wynwood Walls featured many of the famous street artists, the ones that now sell work for millions of dollars.
Shepard Fairy mural at Wynwood Walls ... (done in 2009)
Ron English Mural (2010)
On the topic of pop culture, and street artists… Absent from Wynwood Walls, but showing very strong in both Wynwood and in Miami Beach was Mr. Brainwash. He had two large events during Basel weekend. I only got into one of them.
Mr. Brainwash takes over a building in Miami Beach, photo credit: Barbara Revelle
Mr. Brainwash poses for Reviewer Magzine
In closing, the Art Fair is necessary and dirty. Some might argue the same traits apply to the prostitution industry. Either way, it was a fabulous experience. And I think I would do it again.
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