AGING ART

WESTBETH 48 YEARS LATER - A LOOK AT THE 60'S

The hallway was lined so thick with canvases only one person at a time could navigate their way back into Sandra Caplan and Ray Ciarrocchi's studio. The walls were covered with more work and what would have been a bedroom was now a storage room with stacks of additional paintings some stretched and others rolled or slung over the backs of waiting frames. Their output of work was Picasso-esque with so many pieces it was impossible for them to think about cataloguing them . All this was the product of a life spent at pursuing their passion - producing art.

Last Sunday Westbeth Artists' Housing opened its doors for an afternoon with the theme looking at the 60's. Artists, many of whom had been living in Westbeth since its inception in 1970 as an affordable housing complex for people in the arts, allowed the public inside their eclectic homes and active studios.

Like many of the residents that had opened their homes for this 60's themed open house Sandra and Ray were residents in the major age demographic of Westbeth. Over 60% of the current residents are over sixty-years old and many of the participants in this open house were even older and still making art.

I asked Sandra who was representing their art, what gallery must be handling the exhibition and sales of all this art.
Sandra replied as she thumbed through one of Ray's sketchbooks that lay displayed on a small worktable "Right now we don't have anyone representing our work".
"Well who sells your work?"
"Oh Ray hasn't sold a piece in fifteen years but we're painting more than we ever have. Life wouldn't be worth it if we couldn't paint."
Their work consisting of beautiful landscapes from Italy and Upstate New York by Ray and vibrant still life table settings of summer lunches next to the Baltic Sea continued to amass for the artists own pleasure and inability to stop doing what they had to do to continue living.

William Anthony greeted everyone at his door and drew us in like a barker at a carnival. He had curated his small apartment to reflect the lifeline of his artistic journey. The walls were hung with much of his work. Bits of paper written in black marker identified each piece with a title or date. He started his career as a master figure drawing expert but the bulk of his work now distorts his figures in a way making them on first impression seem childlike and amateurish. It's the content that wags his artistic dog.

Anthony, that's how he signs his work, tottered the group of us around his apartment reveling in his titillating and totally politically incorrect discourse.
With a wry smile he pleasured us with an early anecdote: "I remember when I was in Josef Albers drawing class. If a young lady made a drawing that pleased him he'd bring her up in front of the class and joyfully paddle her behind". From there the stories only became more salisious. The satire behind his work was mystifying and engrossing at the same time. I still can't figure out if the woman sitting mute on a lounge chair in the middle of his room with her arm in a cast and a black eye was his wife or a plant.
At the end of his tour he handed out packets fat with copies of his work, reviews, old opening announcements and pages from his books that been published years ago.

Some of the artists seemed still vital and invested in their art. You could see it in their Westbeth homes; in the way they lived and flourished.

There was a bit of senility at play as you moved from apartment to apartment confusing artist colony with assisted living quarters. It manifested itself in the artifacts of their living conditions. Piles decades high of both work and materials almost too daunting to tackle rose in several apartments along with art that would most likely be carted away when these artists were no longer alive.

Ninety-one year old John Peters' room wasn't littered or disorganized. It was neat and dressed in thousands of paper collages. When I first walked in he was sitting in his leather chair, his hands shaking, his concentration sharp as he cut apart magazines with an exacto blade and arranged them on sheets of matboard.

Stacks and stacks of these compositions were arranged by subject on tables around the room as if for sale. There were piles devoted to timepieces, others to body parts and all of them neat and tidy.

I couldn't find his name in any anthology or listing of artists. He didn't possess a resume I could find. He just sat, cut, pasted and piled.

There's a sadness in seeing so much art with no where to go, artists locked into little boxes their lives stretched out on canvas and paper,

but there's also so much hope. The hope of creating and not letting go of a dream if only to please their own passion.





















THE GALLERY

Diane Arbus with Her Mamiya Camera, 1967
Tod Papageorge, photographer
Represented by Pace/MacGill Gallery

SXSW AND THE VISION COUNCIL T-EYE-ME OUT LOUNGE

BALLOONS CAN LEAVE YOU OUT OF BREATH

After having done the Time Out Lounge at South-by-SouthWest (SXSW) for the Vision Council last year we got the gig this year for a second time around. The lounge is always a design challenge transforming a pretty bland space into a hot venue exciting enough to draw a crowd. The difficulty comes from the Austin Suite at the Austin Convention Center being located on the third floor, a ways away from the main action with three story high ceilings, a bland color palette and the inability to attach anything to the walls or ceiling. Then the center and the managerial firms involved in the SXSW event are the main source for furnishings and accessories and what they have to offer is a meager selection of white leather or dirty brown upholstered sofa and chairs.

There is a small hint of an Arts&Crafts influence to the room and that's what we built on last year but this year we decided to move in another direction.

We went balls out this time.
The prospectus from the client had a list of requirements for the lounge. It needed to be a place where attendees could come to unwind between seminars and events, it needed an area for breakfast and snacks, there had to be space where several lectures could take place on digital eye strain, it needed to be able to be transformed into a party space for cocktail events and it needed to have a dynamite space where participants could try on different glasses then take selfies of themselves and Instagram them out into the universe.

We really wanted to make the space fun and we wanted people to see that as they passed by the open doors of the lounge.

We decided to go for balloons and exotic flowers. This was a stretch for the client who at first could only see a kiddie birthday party or an out of control bar mitzvah.

They hadn't seen any of the current balloon installations that are trending right now and actually we hadn't either until we started doing our research and became aware of how au currant we were being.

Last year we had contracted a local florist, Texas Blooms, to do the flowers. We went back to them again this year. We are never traditional and they got the message but we also wanted to add balloons and this wasn't something they did.

They recommended a guy who goes by the name of Nate the Great and great he was. You are always at the risk of things not turning out when you try out an unknown vendor.

We sent image after image of inspiration image and went back and forth about what we described as a balloon wall to surround the step and repeat background banner for the selfies.

Our vision of the wall was to combine various sized and multi-colored balloons with a matte finish. What Nate did was to take the wall and have the balloons not only work as side wings for the background but he made the balloons crawl up the wall to the ceiling like a flowering vine growing up a building façade.

We then extended the balloons around the bar and had them flow out of trashcans that had been left in the room.

We really had to sell this idea to the client but once they saw the results they were totally on board. Our color palette was pastel.

The balloons disguised the blandness of the room.

The flowers added that extra punch the way beautiful jewelry can complete an haute couture ensemble.

The results were very sophisticated and joyous on an adult level.

We gave it our best. They lounge was highlighted on local news programs in Austin. Over 3,000 attendees took advantage of the lounge. People learned about digital eye strain and what the eyeglass industry is doing to help. I think we succeeded. Now we have our fingers crossed that we'll be given a whack at it again next year.

















THE GALLERY

Le Premier Ballon au Parc, Montsouris Paris, 1931-34
Brassai, photographer
Represented by Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York City

ROOMS OF BLOOMS

ONCE MORE TO THE PAINE

March blew in like the proverbial lion this week. Midwest weather frequently toys with us at just about this time of the year so Tuesday's snowstorm shouldn't have come as any surprise. It was one of those wet and heavy snow falls, one that clung to the coat of our dogs making them look like they'd been in a fight with a pack of cotton balls the aftermath requiring a hot spray down in the shower to melt them out of their snow suits . It was a total contrast to the previous weekend where we were lulled into short sleeves and our tulips were thinking it just might be about time to pop through the garden dirt. The thought of flowers sent us looking for a big intake of the fragrance of spring.

We headed to the Paine Art Center  and Gardens
https://www.thepaine.org where for two weekends, March 1-4 and 8-11, the Paine would be presenting their exhibit of Rooms of Blooms. The drive from Madison to Oshkosh takes about an hour and forty-five minutes. We did it with the windows partially open taking in the earthy scents of black soil and Wisconsin farmlands.
We have a great selection of museums in Madison but I've most recently been drawn back to the Paine for its special exhibits:

Dressing Downton

and Wonderland: Photographs by Kristy Mitchell

And now it was back again for Rooms of Blooms.  Once you've passed through the entry passage and paid the entry fee

You are drawn into their main exhibition room

where local florists have paired their floral artistry with paintings from the Paine's collection.

This pairing of paintings and floral arrangements extended out into the great halls.

Some chose large arrangements while others put together smaller bouquets, little sweet periods dotting an eloquent design sentence.

The mansion's architecture provided an elegant backdrop, the original entry doors providing a compliment to an urn full of flowers looking as if it had been pulled right in from the garden.

Weddings and flowers are a natural pairing making the great room a perfect setting for showing off table designs.

The tables took a number of thematic directions with romance holding sway.

There was a delicate quality to the tables that were astonishingly true competition for florists from much larger metropolitan areas.

There wasn't a room within the Paine Art Center that wasn't given the touch of floral blooms and the scent of spring whether on a table in the library

or in a Victorian parlor

or in a dressing area on top of a pair of matching semainiers

or as a tiny vase of two stems delicately placed on an American Empire side table in a guest bedroom.

But clearly the most prized floral placement I'm assuming was given to the top area florist or then one contributing the most amount of money was in the formal dining room.

Two tall centerpieces dominated the table surrounded by dozens of small vases each with a single white rose. The blush of color of the flowers and candles all playing off of the velvet seats surrounding the aqua covered table. The tall arrangements might have caused a bit of difficultly for guests sitting across from one another attempting to have a meaningful conversation but entering into a dinner party with such a magnificent floral display would have almost assuredly taken away everyone's need for conversation leaving them speechless and in awe.

As a finishing touch high tea was served among the flowers in the Conservatory. The whole experience was a welcome respite from the cold in a winter that now needs to end.




















THE GALLERY

Melancholic Tulip, 1939
Andre Kertesz, photographer
Represented by Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York City