Lordy Rodriguez
Maybe these maps and legends have been misunderstood

By Wayne Alan Brenner
Austin Chronicle
May 8, 2009

In his comprehensive exhibition "States of America," now on display at the Austin Museum of Art, Lordy Rodriguez has it all mapped out. What it is, is this country of ours, albeit a version that the artist has rendered fantastically, subjectively, using the sort of cartography he's evolved from road maps: the bright color-coding, the labels of graduated weight reflecting size or influence, lines of demarcation sanctifying political boundaries, other lines charting the myriad routes of transportation. These maps are enormous, strictured and structured swaths of text-bedecked hues, representing 55 states – because Rodriguez also includes the states of Disney, Hollywood, Internet, Monopoly, and Territory – and they're the culmination of a decade's worth of work.

"It started off with me driving back and forth between Houston and New York when I was in undergraduate school," says the disarmingly young (33) artist whose family moved to the U.S. from the Philippines when he was 3 years old. "Back then, the work I was doing was closer to Damien Hirst or Francis Bacon type of work – totally different and mostly sculptures, like Hirst's shark-in-the-tank kind of work. But I was in school, and I didn't have any money, so I thought, 'Maybe I'll start drawing,' because sculptures are too expensive, and I've always been good at drawing.

"And I was driving back and forth across the country, which I did every semester, but the only way I could really relate to the landscape was by looking at the map. And I was feeling so homesick for Houston, through almost all four years of school, that I'd just look back, when I was in New York, just look at the map of Houston – where I'd lived, where I went to high school. And it all just kind of connected to me. Later on, thinking about it, it made so much sense. Because mapping is probably the oldest visual language there is. Not the traditional methods but, like, just a line with a circle on it, meaning, 'the path to the lake.' After realizing that and combining it with the sense of nostalgia I had with the landscape, I found that maps have such a great potential for any kind of discourse. You could talk about anything and relate it to a map somehow."

In "States of America," the artist talks about a lot of things, moving the discourse smoothly, one map to the next, from the effects of multinational corporations on local areas to the influence of a Hollywood-amplified imagination on the borders between what is and what might be. You might be a bit jarred to find, in Rodriguez's map of Texas, the Davy Crockett National Forest next to the Catskill Mountains and the Gulf of Maine defining the northwestern border of our great republic, but after a while and a few more of these cartographic chimeras, it all begins to make a sort of Lordy-visual sense.

"Visual" is a key word here, as, for all the show's discursive power, the words on these maps could be expressed in some language you don't understand, and you'd still be awed: by the impact of the colors, the technical precision with which this fabulist's cartography is inscribed, the idea of the hours and hours gone into each depiction of territories revealed as only Rodriguez the traveler can. These are maps of a country that bears repeated exploring.

"Lordy Rodriguez: States of America" runs through May 17 at the Austin Museum of Art – Downtown, 823 Congress. For more information, call 495-9224 or visit www.amoa.org.

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Blanton Museum names Ned Rifkin, former Smithsonian Under Secretary of Art, as its new director

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
Austin American-Statesman
May 7, 2009

Ned Rifkin, former Under Secretary for Art at the Smithsonian Institution, has been named the new director the University of Texas' Blanton Museum of Art, university officials announced Thursday.

Rifkin, 59, replaces Jesse Otto Hite who retired in 2008 after 30 years with the museum. With Rifkin's appointment, the Blanton Museum will move from the College of Fine Arts and report to the UT Provost's office.

The university's Ransom Center, a rare book and manuscript library and museum, also reports to the provost's office.

Rifkin will also will hold the position of full professor of art and art history and hold the position as special advisor to UT president William Powers.

At the Smithsonian, Rifkin served as the top administrator overseeing eight art museums, a position he held from 2004 to 2008. During his tenure at the Smithsonian, Rifkin oversaw the renovation of an historic building for the American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery. He had previously been director and chief curator at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum after serving as director of Houston's Menil Collection from 2000 to 2002 and the High Museum in Atlanta from 1991 to 1999.

Rifkin received a bachelor's degree from Syracuse University and a master's and doctoral degrees in art history form the University of Michigan.

A champion of contemporary art and public art, Rifkin organized a major exhibit of the work of minimalist painter Agnes Martin while he was director of the Menil. When he was director of the Hirshhorn, Rifkin commissioned conceptual artist Olafur Eliasson to reconceive the entrance to the historic museum building by shifting the front entrance to a different side of the building.

"I'm interested in all contemporary creativity," Rifkin told an interviewer last year. "Art is a part of culture. Culture is what we make collectively. Artists are a kind of beacon."

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Fundraiser makes art affordable

By Tobin Levy
Special to The American-Statesman
Thursday, May 14, 2009

Artist Tony Oursler once said, "Making art is how people sort through chaos, through life." Living with art has a similarly calming effect. And for many of us, life right now (with its looming pandemics and fiscal instability) is exceptionally chaotic and in desperate need of sorting through. So, never before has there been a more perfect and opportune time to add to — or start — an art collection.

Enter Arthouse. On Friday Arthouse at the Jones Center will host its 10th annual 5x7: Art Splurge and Exhibition. The fundraiser will feature an estimated 1,500 donated works, each for sale for $100, by recognized local and national artists. Tickets to the event are $125, and proceeds will support Arthouse's exhibitions and educational programs, which are always free to the public.

"5x7 got started because we were looking to do a fundraiser that wasn't traditional," says Arthouse director Sue Graze, who was inspired to do it after seeing a similar fundraising exhibition at a gallery in Santa Fe. After securing permission from the gallery owners to adopt a similar concept, she developed her own version of the event.

She came up with these criteria. First, all participating artists, local and national, must have a connection to Texas. They must submit work that is roughly 5 inches by 7 inches. The scale, although not strictly enforced, is to "make sure artists aren't burdened by (the project) or donate work that would affect their livelihood," says Graze. To emphasize its appreciation of the artists' inherent time and financial commitment, Arthouse provides each artist, months before the show, with four pieces of archival Matboard (many of the artists contribute more than one work) cut to size as well as a self-addressed envelope with postage.

For a number of the artists, including Chris Dial, a former Arthouse board member and a nine-time contributor to 5x7, the size constraint provides a creative challenge. "Every January I start thinking about the 5x7 show. It's like a little window into what I want to do next in my work," says Dial. "It's as though someone is giving me an assignment to go in a new direction."

And artists "definitely push the limits," says Jennifer Gardner, Arthouse development associate. Part of that has to do with respective mediums. "We have people who make CDs, DVDs, sculpture, and metal work, along with paintings and drawings," she explains.

All of the art is displayed anonymously — the artists sign the back of the work rather than the front. It adds excitement to the event because a buyer doesn't learn the artist's identity until the piece is sold. Another reason, though, is so that people respond to work they love, rather than to work they think they should love.

"The well-known and lesser-known artists like it because we're presenting them as a community," says Graze.

Eric Zimmerman, a five-time contributor to the show, agrees. "I like the idea of having this huge number of artists from diverse backgrounds all submitting a work of the same scale and it being anonymously displayed," he says. "It's the most democratic the art world ever gets."

For painter Scottie Parsons, 83, an annual contributor, withholding her signature brings back memories. "My first painting teacher, years ago, wouldn't let us sign our work in school," says Parsons, who lives in Wichita Falls and is a former Texas Fine Arts Association board member. "He said, 'People will get to know your work and recognize your work, so you don't need your name on it.' "

Recognizing the work of artists is half the fun. Don Mullins, who's attended every 5x7 show to date and has collected "more than 30, but less than 50" 5x7 pieces, enjoys the "competitive aspect of going in and identifying anonymous work by trying to match your knowledge of an artist and what they might or might not be doing at that time."

There are people who sneak a peak at the artist's signature on the back of the work. Austin artist Bob "Daddy-O" Wade, a regular contributor to, and patron of, 5x7, has witnessed a few throughout the years and is vocally anti-cheater. He even has a preventative measure in mind.

"It would be great if the work plugged into something so that it shocked the cheaters if they tried to turn the project around," he says, only half-joking. "You'd just have to make sure your piece was next to an outlet so you could plug it in."

Just because you want a specific work doesn't mean you'll get it. But most patrons will tell you, from experience, that there's enough art to go around, and you might fall in love with and purchase more than one.

For the exhibition, each piece is assigned a removable round tag with a number. Starting at 7:30 p.m., guests — a mix of seasoned and novice collectors — mingle over cocktails and appetizers, an annual gift from Ranch 616. Unlike most gallery and museum openings, they actually look at the art.

As 9 p.m. approaches, people hover around the object of their desire, waiting for the countdown to "the pull." At 9 sharp the pull is announced, meaning guests may grab tags and claim, then pay for, the art they'd like to purchase. (No one may take home the work until after the exhibition is over.)

In a utopian world, 300 people (the expected number of attendees this year) will stand next to 300 different tags. At Arthouse, that hasn't always been the case. Wade compares the spectacle to the annual bridal gown super sale at Filene's Basement. (He's seen it on TV.) "The official opening is totally outrageous," he says. "All the people in there are rushing around and trying to grab the piece before someone else does."

In a story that conjures up images from the 1997 documentary "Hands on a Hard Body," about an endurance competition for a pickup in Longview, Dial remembers an incident in the early years: Two women held on to the same tag long after the pull. "Neither one would let go, and finally one twisted it out of the other's hands, and the loser went to Sue in tears." The crisis was ultimately resolved, and both patrons went home happy.

"The last few years it's been much more civilized," assures Dial. She attributes the new civility to a better understanding, by the patrons, of the process and of the bartering system.

One year, Austinite Bradley Bechtol experienced the benefits of deal making. She had her eye on a tongue-in-cheek, written piece about how wonderful it is to be right-handed. (She's left-handed). It was one of three in a series that someone else already had her eye — and hand — on.

"A woman really wanted this set of three, but she also really wanted something that was across the room," says Bechtol. "So she made me a deal: If I could stand there and take all three tags for her so she could get the tag across the room, then I could have the tag for the piece I wanted."

Amicable negotiation isn't the only thing to blossom through the years; so has the number of artists and patrons interested in participating. In 2000, 182 artists donated more than 600 works. This year, more than 770 artists will donate an estimated 1,500 pieces.

For Graze, it's a remarkable development. "During the first five years, there were periods when we said 'Oh this year will probably be the last year,' because no one will be interested, but then it just got bigger and bigger. Now we've gotten to the point where it's our signature event, and we're certain of its value."

For artists like Austin painter Sydney Yager, who's also contributed every year, it's an opportunity to champion Arthouse. Remembering a time when Austin was devoid of such institutions, she says, "I think people are really motivated by the purpose of the organization, and it holds such a wonderful position in this town that I'd never fail to support them. I can't really afford to give them a lot of money, but I can donate my work. It's the artists' way to be a benefactor."

And then there is the value to the collectors, which didn't escape Graze this past September when she was in Dallas with the traveling portion of last year's exhibition. "Things were happening in the economy by then. People were anxious because they felt this pent up desire to own art and live with it, and they felt like they couldn't spend that kind of money," she says. "But for a hundred dollars they were so excited. They said, 'The economy is so difficult but this is one thing I can do'."

There are special additions to this year's fundraiser, in honor of its 10th anniversary. In the past few years, they've added a raffle component to the program. (Those who enter and win get to pick — and then pay for — the work of their choice prior to the pull.) However, this year, if you buy 10 raffle tickets, each of which is $10, you get one free. If you buy 10 5x7 pieces, you get the eleventh free. Members of Arthouse get a 10 percent discount on all 5x7 purchases. And there also will be an auction of at least 10 8-inch-by-10-inch works.

As in previous years, upper-level donors, people who annually contribute $5,000 or more to Arthouse, get to preview the show and pick (and pay for) one work of their choice.

The 5x7 show will be up through May 31, at which point the gallery is open to the public and the works that have yet to be sold are available for purchase. The pieces that haven't sold by the closing date will travel throughout the state.

And after each piece is sold, whether in or outside of Austin, Arthouse makes a point to put the artist and patron in touch.

5x7: Art Splurge and Exhibition

What: 10th annual fundraiser for Arthouse at the Jones Center

Where: Arthouse, 700 Congress Ave.

Tickets: $125 and can be purchased at arthousetexas.org

More information: fivebyseven.org

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'Lauren Levy: Beneath the Palm of My Hand'
D Berman Gallery Through May 30

By Wayne Alan Brenner
Austin Chronicle
May 15, 2009

Lauren Levy, mistress of all buttons and one of the locally based but world-class pantheon of visual artists, moves her compelling creations from three into two dimensions within this exhibition of her newest works. In addition to the more familiar objects built from hundreds of precisely arranged buttons, now there are buttons stitched into a variety of flat fabrics.

Observe: black squares of cloth to provide a simple background for button-based images of, for example, scissors and their permutations; long riverlike ribbons of material with buttons describing the currents and eddies while suggesting also the pebbles below the flowing depths of the works' inspiration; all of these fabrics worked with myriad stitches just short of quilting, some bordered with contrasting triangles, the careful adornments adding subtle texture to these pieces along the walls and the floor and over chairs in D Berman Gallery's small and elegant space.

"The linear quality of time is one that is false but it does lie behind the motif of the flow of water as a metaphor for the passing of time," says the artist in her statement for this show. And, perhaps to illustrate the contention, there are the sculptures more representative of Levy's earlier period; but even in these – Bit of Fluff and What Flew Out of the Dark – time and Levy have wrought mutations, shifting the familiar doll-sized dress-forms into shapes more evocative of tiny costumes for some Lovecraftian elder gods. She builds intense fascination with these fasteners wrought from ivory, bone, or humble plastic – a fascination undiminished when applied to the Flatland vistas of two dimensions.

Time flows on, according to our perception of the process, and if Levy's work isn't in your past, this gorgeous exhibition may brighten your future even more than it does that of a longtime aficionado. There's no time like the present, they say, and this buttony work is a present for all time.

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'Wood & Steel: Works by Caprice Pierucci and Randall Reid'
Davis Gallery Through June 27

By Rachel Koper
Austin Chronicle
May 22, 2009

Randall Reid is breaking rules, literally. Wooden and metal rulers, T squares, and thermometers, along with other found objects, all get chopped into his elegant wall-hanging compositions.

There is something naughty and fun about repurposing a functioning gauge. A tool with a scientific purpose is flipped, cut, and layered. It is rendered impotent, transformed into the realm of "faux science," into a mere metaphor for an obsolete data system. Reid plays with this concept in certain pieces. Time and Temperature is part of a thermometer holder with very faded paint. Timeline, Crossing the Border, and Gauging a Moment also feature recombined rulers. Reid writes: "The memories are evoked by the textures I create, and they reside within the materials as well. By combining raw and well-worn materials, I seek to give visual form to our relationships with the past."

Reid uses a steel frame to encompass his materials. He has a distinct sensitivity to texture. He doesn't create "distressed" surfaces; he cuts them out. Some compositions are built-up frames within frames, which he calls "windows." The focal point of the piece is a tiny area with a large industrial support and reinforcing shapes, colors, and textures repeated around it. I am reminded of artists such as Robert Rauschenberg and Alexander Rodchenko, as well as locals such as Steve Brudniak, Barbara Irwin, and Lance Letscher. Battleship Sky drew me in with its red, white, and blue painted metal base shape, because I heart Evel Knievel. Then the title prodded me to notice the dark scratches in the red wood panel above the vibrant stripes. The wear pattern looks like the towers and antennae of a ship. Red Sky at night is a sailor's delight, and this is just a great little piece.

Caprice Pierucci, the other featured artist in "Wood & Steel," isn't breaking rulers, but she is bending the rules of woodworking. In her hands, wood looks soft, fuzzy, and flowing. She creates wavy, curving forms that defy function and right angles. They make awesome shadows and feature a very rhythmic and consistent use of negative space. I found myself looking through these interesting gaps and holes. These are mysterious gravity-defying sculptures. I can tell she is gluing boards together, aligning various grains of the wood; she is band-sawing and jigsawing, belt and orbital sanding. It looks like pine, a soft wood, and it looks like she goes at boards with freedom and gusto, letting the grain of each board help determine the final shape. This is the perfect abstract art to hang near natural light and watch the shadows change; hour by hour, they would dance around the piece, changing silhouettes.

Both artists have an intuitive sense of finish texture and overall rhythm. Reid has rusty parts just sitting there rusting and looking great. Pierucci's airy wood is sometimes clear-coated or stained but also shown unfinished with sawdust drifting through it. Both artists allow the medium to be itself, a bit raw and undisguised. This purity is comforting, and there is no doubt as to the thoughtfulness that went into this exhibition of humble materials elevated to fine art.

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Blanton Museum of Art
Rifkin takes the reins

By Robert Faires
Austin Chronicle
May 22, 2009

"No one who loves art wants to be an administrator. I am at the point in my life where I am going to be careful about the next job. What is important is the fit."

That's Dr. Ned Rifkin talking to The Washington Post's Jacqueline Trescott following the announcement of his resignation as undersecretary for art at the Smithsonian Institution in March 2008. One must presume then that the job of directing the Blanton Museum of Art has the fit of a Savile Row suit. On May 1, just a year after taking a self-described sabbatical from the administrative life, Rifkin is back in management mode, taking the reins from interim Director Ann Wilson, who got the assignment following Jessie Otto Hite's retirement after 15 years as director.

Perhaps the prospect of overseeing one museum instead of the six Rifkin supervised at the Smithsonian made the position more appealing to him. Or maybe the chance to get back in the classroom was part of the draw. (Come fall, he'll also be a professor of art and art history in the University of Texas College of Fine Arts.) Possibly he liked the idea of serving as special adviser to President William Powers Jr. on the visual arts for the 40 Acres and the UT collections. Or maybe he was simply eager to get back to the Lone Star State. (His first job was teaching art at UT-Arlington in the late Seventies, and he did a stint as director of the Menil Collection and Foundation in Houston, too.) Whatever did the trick, he's here, and here's hoping it's the fit he was looking for. We welcome him.

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She's ba-aack! UT's Frida Kahlo returns home

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
Austin American-Statesman
May 21, 2009

If paintings had passports, the one belonging to Frida Kahlo's "Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird" would be filled with stamps from around the globe.

Arguably the most popular art work in the collections of the University of Texas' Ransom Center, Kahlo's "Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace" has been on almost continuous loan to other institutions since 1990, visiting more than 25 museums in the United States and in countries such as Australia, Canada, France and Spain.

That's a road trip of 19 years thanks to art world Frida-Mania.

However now, the colorful vaguely surrealist portrait is back home in Austin and on display at the Ransom Center until Jan. 3, 2010.

Kahlo's painting came to UT in 1966 with the Nickolas Muray collection of more than 100 works of modern Mexican art

During her turbulent marriage to famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, Kahlo traveled to New York City in 1938 for her first solo exhibition outside Mexico. In New York, she embarked on a passionate love affair with her friend, the Hungarian-born photographer Nickolas Muray who she had met years before in Mexico City.

Though Kahlo and Muray ended their affair in 1939, they remained friends and Muray purchased "Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace" in 1940 from Kahlo to help her during a difficult financial period.

Muray, in turn, made some of the best-known photographic portraits of Kahlo. Muray's collection at the Ransom Center also includes Kahlo's painitng "Still Life with Parrott and Fruit" and a drawing "Diego y Yo." Of Kahlo's more than 140 paintings, 55 are self-portraits that belie her trademark combination of naive folk art, classical Mexican painting and surrealistic expression.

After its Ransom Center showing, "Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace" heads back out on the road in 2010 for exhibits in Berlin and Vienna.

Ransom Center Galleries
21st and Guadalupe streets
Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays (Thursday until 7 p.m.), noon to 5 p.m. Sundays
Tickets: Free
Information: 512-471-8944, www.hrc.utexas.edu

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Your A-List: Best Museum

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
Austin American-Statesman
May 27, 2009

Readers have chosen Austin Museum of Art as their favorite in this week's A-List poll with AMOA receiving 37 percent of the votes.

This weekend, AMOA opens 'The Lining of Forgetting: Internal & External Memory in Art,' an exhibit of international contemporary art that all expresses the ways we remember or forget or even re-write our memories.

Here's something to remember: Austin's art museums have a very symbiotic history.

Nearly a century ago, friends of famed German-born sculptor Elisabet Ney established the Texas Fine Arts Association in 1911 to honor Ney. The group bought Ney's idiosyncratic home and studio in the Hyde Park neighborhood to pave the way for some kind of official state art gallery.

At its first meeting, that group of early 20th-century arts supporters pledged to found an art school in connection with the University of Texas, thus planting the seeds that grew into UT's art program and the Blanton Museum of Art), now the largest university art museum in the country.

In the early 1940s, the TFAA deeded the Ney house to the city of Austin, which now operates it as the Elisabet Ney Museum, a national, state and local historic landmark. And yet the materials in the Ney Museum, belong to UT's Ransom Center.

Wait, there's more: After the Ney house was deeded to the city, TFAA received stewardship of the Clara Driscoll estate on Lake Austin known as Laguna Gloria. TFAA ran its programs there until 1961, when a separate entity known as Laguna Gloria Art Museum, was established.

TFAA and Laguna Gloria Art Museum co-existed at the Driscoll mansion for years with TFAA organizing an annual exhibit and Laguna Gloria percolating and growing as a civic art museum.

Jump ahead a few decades and by the early 1990s, TFAA moved downtown to a permanent facility at 700 Congress Ave and re-named its Arthouse. It's now a burgeoning contemporary arts center.

At the same time the TFAA was morphing into Arthouse, Laguna Gloria re-named itself the Austin Museum of Art and opened its current downtown location at 823 Congress Ave.

Others receiving A-List votes

• Mexic-Arte Museum, 19 percent
• Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, 17 percent
• Blanton Museum of Art, 16 percent
• Austin Children's Museum, 2 percent
• Ransom Center, 2 percent
• LBJ Library and Museum, 2 percent
• Texas Memorial Museum, 1 percent
• O. Henry Museum, 1 percent
• Elizabet Ney Museum, < 1 percent
• George Washington Carver Museum, < 1 percent
• Austin Museum of Digital Art, < 1 percent
• French Legation Museum, < 1 percent

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