Some posts are art.

Or were made into art.

Some posts hold art. Or what goes for it in a post modern world.

If you want to see some truly amazing glass art instead, look no further than here:

https://urbanglass.org/glass

This magazine keeps up to date and has smart articles on the current glass scene – including the upcoming closure of a Portland Landmark at N Kerby St: Uruboros. The owner has decided to call it quits next year because of the trouble with new safety legislation, gentrification’s effect on rent, and his own advancing age. He will be sorely missed.

Fall is the time for birds passing through on their southward migration. If you want to see some of them all you have to do is come to the Open House on October 23rd and 30th, at the Re/Max building on NE Broadway. I have 5 works  – landscapes with birds – in the group show which is a fundraiser for an organization that helps abused teens and children. Mark your calendar!

Today’s thoughts revolve around the fact that we so often pass by some art or marker without really noticing it. It’s not that they are in some transitional state – instead, we are, running from point A to point B in our daily lives, our attention captured by more spectacular things, or given over to everyday time pressures.

Here are three examples of what I mean, all taken from travel experiences, where time was not an issue, but attention magnets in the surroundings, instead.

Massa Marítima is a 13th century town in the metalliferous hills of western Tuscany. Tourism thrives there because of the traditional beauty of the old town, a glorious cathedral and a single astonishing fresco that was discovered some years back when a building was torn down: a phallus tree. (Reflection in the photograph because the fresco is kept safe behind plexiglass during renovation.) The small marker that commemorates the hard lives and deaths of the miners that brought the town its riches through iron, mercury and copper mining, goes unnoticed.

Bamberg is a southern German town, a UNESCO world heritage site, with marvels of architecture, located in beautiful Franconia. The small marker commemorating Jews and resistance fighters tortured and killed by the Nazis is located in a corner of an otherwise eye-catchingly decorated town hall. How many people walk by it, blindly, every day, not even wondering about the strange swastika-like emblem overriding the human forms? 

The Spui is a graceful little square in the center of Amsterdam. People walk and bike across, hang out in outdoor cafes or wait for the bus. The fact that there are three sculptures by one of the founding giants of Postminimalism’s conceptual art, Lawrence Weiner, goes unnoticed. In fact people are walking on top of and across the small open books that are inscribed in three different languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Weiner

I guess we can all think of public art we walk by here in PDX, not giving it a second thought….

Not all passages lead to a better place – some just send you back to where you came from… such was the fate of Wilfredo Lam, the Cuban Picasso, when he escaped Europe in a cargo vessel in 1940, together with multiple other artists and intellectuals fleeing the Nazis. The US denied him entry – whether for racist reasons or the mundane fact that he was acitizen of a neutral country – Cuba – and thus not eligible for refugee status, who knows.

Point is, that he had to return to Cuba and later chose to live out his successful life and career in Europe. And so it is a European museum, the Tate Modern, that mounts a major retrospective of his work.

The first review, below, struck me with the sentiment of the last sentence – “Perhaps it is time to remind the Americans that there is knowledge to be had beyond the fences they are trying to build. ” Note we are now all seen in that deplorable basket of ignorants, a generalization frequently encountered when I talk to my friends abroad in the context of this election season. Outcome of a freakish election season.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/the-ey-exhibition-wifredo-lam-tate-modern-london-review-cuban-artist-painter-pablo-picasso-andre-a7307626.html

Wifredo Lam: the unlikely comeback of the Cuban Picasso

Lam’s most famous painting is called The Jungle. I think it is a terrific example of mind blowing transitions within a piece of art. The melding of figures, landscapes, botanical and cultural elements and a claimed state of mind works seamlessly, drawing you ever deeper in.

http://www.moma.org/collection/works/34666

Next on my itinerary is getting from Seoul to Busan and boarding a freighter that will take me to Melbourne. http://www.freighterexpeditions.com.au/it-australia-to-china-via-south-korea  They only have two passenger cabins on board and you need to certify your physical and mental (!) health a month in advance, since there’s no doctor on board, just a first aid kit. Hm. A twenty day trip should not be so hard, camera in hand…..if necessary as a stow-away….

Just like Korea, Australia would be a first for me, but Banksy is not. And it looks like there will be a serious display of his art curated by his former agent (they have since parted ways under somewhat mysterious circumstances….)

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/12/melbourne-bansky-exhibition-a-major-coup-for-city-says-mayor

While in town, these shows would be worthwhile, given my interest in art about war,

http://www.thatsmelbourne.com.au/Whatson/Exhibitions/Art/Pages/ae69883f-ebf3-45ed-8cc1-1d0cb88b6f7b.aspx

http://www.thatsmelbourne.com.au/Whatson/Exhibitions/Art/Pages/ae1237c5-b209-4388-bc32-bb08e6d2b0bf.aspx my need to learn about aboriginal art, of which I know zero.

This show here is unfortunately over, but maybe I could get a catalogue and bring it home for my dance critic friend….. http://www.thatsmelbourne.com.au/Whatson/Exhibitions/Art/Pages/7f8c8bd8-c097-4db5-bb9f-a5683d884925.aspx

and then I would walk the streets of Melbourne hoping to find graffiti that is local and compare it to American, German, French, Turkish and Italian street art respectively.