Diorama Exhibition at the Museum of Art & Design, NY

Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities features the work of some of my favorite artists who work in miniature: Lori Nix (image below), James Casebere, Joe Fig, and Paolo Ventura


Lori Nix, Violin Repair Shop

From the website: "Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities illuminates the phenomenal renaissance of interest among artists worldwide in constructing small-scale hand built depictions of artificial environments and alternative realities, either as sculpture or as subjects for photography and video. These are worlds of "magic realism" conceived and realized through intense engagement with materials, attention to detail, and concern for meaningful content. In this exhibition, the works are presented as dioramas, models, snow globes, and site specific installations, as well as through photographs and video."

Springfield, Yellow Springs, and the Great Serpent Mound, Ohio

The semester ends and summer break begins with a brief road trip to Ohio to visit James and Tanya and finally (after four years) see the Great Serpent Mound. First, two objects featured previously on this blog: a robin's egg Tanya found which she then displayed in an eyeglass washer...



... and a balloon near the Underdog Cafe in Yellow Springs where James is showing Suginami.



Highlights of the opening: seeing James' beautiful prints again, edamame and hummus, learning a new word ("kaboomzie" when a trashcan was knocked over), and applying the Komar and Melamid approach on polling what people would like most to see in paintings to wines (animal labels = number one choice). After the opening, The Winds Cafe was next on the list = numerous small plates of excellent food: fried oysters, the cheese service, stuffed calamari, asparagus aillade, Italian Spidini with Bagna Cauda, and salmon with black pasta. "Stuffed" was the key word of the evening. On the way out, we spotted the best cow and barn painting in the Midwest:



After a Derby Day party at the house of one of Tanya's colleagues, we came back to the apartment and discussed James' new purchase: the 8x10 camera! My assignment is to make a work of art in response to the authors of the three books in the foreground: Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Joseph Beuys, and Wolfgang Laib.



This morning we ventured south to the Great Serpent Mound. It is located in a beautiful part of Ohio that reminded us of several other areas of the US: Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Vermont. Lots of brick houses, soggy ground due to all the rain, rolling hills, grazing cows, and brown water. Roughly two hours later, we arrived at the Serpent Mound Museum to see a couple dioramas that caught our eye (this one due to the creepy factor). The inside of an Adena Burial Mound:

Imagine the three people below as James, Tanya, and JR at the serpent's mouth which could be swallowing an egg (partially unearthed to show something resembling jelly beans):


It was a beautiful day and it truly felt like spring (70 degrees, no rain, birds singing, the foliage mostly out). Here is the view from the top of the observation tower.


It was far smaller than I anticipated (only 1/4 mile long and only three feet tall at the highest point). There were signs everywhere pointing in the direction of the summer and winter solstices and minimum and maximum moon rises. I became acutely aware how little I know about astronomy despite taking a class in undergraduate school.


There is one area at the snake's coil where there is a paved path over the top of the earthwork where one can cross over it. It is so tempting to climb on top of the mound or at the very least, lie in the grass alongside it. This area briefly satisfied the need to walk on it:


"Please keep off earthworks" is a sign I never saw at Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, Double Negative, etc. At the coil or end of the line:


JR looking confused (photograph by Tanya):


I finally saw one of the greatest early earthworks in North America built by the Fort Ancient culture. At approximately 1300 feet, it's slightly shorter than Spiral Jetty but nonetheless, impressive! It is thrilling to see as it inspired so many contemporary artists like Maya Lin's Wave Field and Michael Heizer's Effigy Tumuli. I am behind on the next round of postcards for the mass exchange. I'm thinking of doing something associated with this trip. In the meantime, REMEMBER:

The Diorama in Use as a Watercolor 1 Still Life Display

In light of the fact that it is snowing right now

Mariele Neudecker, Stolen Sunsets, 1996

From Sculpture Today:

“Mariele Neudecker makes elegantly crafted three-dimensional models based on German Romantic paintings, such as those of Caspar David Friedrich, which she sets on plinths and encloses in glass tanks filled with liquid so that she can simulate atmospheric weather conditions. Her mountains and fir trees are made from fiberglass and resin and are airbrushed with acrylic paint. She hopes to evoke the concept of the sublime impresses by the Romantic paintings, even though the sublime impresses by virtue of its overwhelming size and scale."

Caspar David Friedrich's The Sea of Ice

I'm a fan of Neudecker's use of materials (resin and submerging her objects in clear water). In addition the blue hue imitating the colors in Friedrich's paintings is beautiful. The fact that it resembles a diorama to some degree is also of interest. Replicating not just the look but the mood of another work of art from decades earlier with her use of water fascinates me. Plus as I sit in my warm bed looking at the snow outside the window falling, I am thinking that her work is as cold as I would like to feel today but unfortunately, that won't be true. Please don't tell me I have to shovel the driveway....

Diorama

I always struggle with knowing when it's time to let a project go. I'll hang onto ideas and half finished works for years before I pack, bury, or throw them away. Hannah Barnes and I have decided that we are not finishing the diorama (as an earthworks project) that we began as a collaboration [as seen here, here (we started that thing when our hair was short!), and here]. It has resided in Hannah's office for over a year and is now moving to her garage. We are currently working on other projects and this one has moved to the back burner. We are contemplating a new solution.

In the meantime, here are some of my favorite objects and images from artists inspired by this subject (without referencing Hiroshi Sugimoto):


Cabinet Model Kitchen, From Devices of Wonder - "This is one of half-dozen surviving dollhouses made in the Netherlands between 1670-1760. The Dutch makers placed tiny furnishings into chests with doors like those in which they stored their linen."


John Heaviside Clark, The Portable Diorama, 1826 - Also from Devices of Wonder: "A different sense of the transforming qualities of the Diorama can be gleaned from The Portable Diorama, which was published by London bookseller Samuel Leigh in 1826. This ingenious miniature theater was created by John Heaviside Clark, a leading drawing master in London whose manuals for the amateur artist emphasized that the effect achieved was more important than the method used to achieve it. At a price of 3.3 pounds, it was designed for an upper-class audience: “An elegant present for the Families of the Nobility and Gentry.” It was packaged as a complete course in watercoloring that could be practiced on the blank calico screens for presentation in the miniature theater. A set of 12 prepainted screens was supplied with the theater, however, so that the purchaser with limited or even no artistic inclinations could, by manipulating the backlighting and trying different combinations of backgrounds and foregrounds, produce the effects of sunrise, sunset, and moonlight, and the appearance and disappearance of clouds or a rainbow over India, a triumphal gate, a classical ruin, boats, and a mountain on a lake."


Sage Sohier, From Perfectible Worlds - Man in his basement with models of North End businesses, including his barbershop, Boston, MA, 2003. "John C. is a semi-retired barber, who makes miniatures of businesses and places in the North End of Boston where he grew up. Included in the picture are his barbershop, his father’s shoe repair shop, and the beach where he learned to swim. He has also made the Union Oyster House and Pizzeria Regina. Each time he finishes a miniature, he loans it to the owner of the business, and it resides, for a time, inside the larger version of itself."


Sage Sohier, Klickety-Klack Railroad, Wolfeboro Falls, NH, 2004. "Richard P. has for 25 years owned ad run the Klickety-Klack Railroad, a model railroad club and hobby shop open to the public. The railroad, a joint endeavor involving many different club members, is notable not only for its multiple intricate layouts, but also for its humor a small plane has crashed into a hillside near the airport: King Kong stands astride a tower in a city scene that also includes the Hard Luck Hotel; Godzilla stomps down Main Street; and the Loch Ness monster lurks near a sailboat. The large mountain scene in the photograph includes Mt. Rushmore (just out of sight to the upper right), complete with a head hole above for those who secretly harbor presidential ambitions. Richard has recently tired without success to find someone to take over running the railroad. Sales are down in the shop, and fewer families and school groups come through."


Sage Sohier, Diorama, Fisher Museum, Harvard Forest, Petersham, MA, 2004


Sage Sohier, Cat in dollhouse, Sandwich, NH, 2004. "Annie P. works as a textile craftsman, makes and collects miniatures of all sorts, and runs a used bookstore with her husband. She was showing me her pre-Civil War dollhouse, when her cat jumped in. “Purrl” was very delicate, upsetting no furniture and doing no violence to the baby or miniature Corgi. Noticing that Purrl was getting all the attention, the two real-life Corgis barked wildly from the yard."



Sage Sohier, Sculptor with model of Chuck Close in his summer studio, Norwalk, CT, 2005. "Joe F. is an artist who has made a remarkable series of miniature sculptures of well-known artists in their studios. Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Eric Fischl, and Fred Tomaselli are a few of the artists he has sculpted. In miniaturizing the artists’ work, Joe duplicates their processes as much as possible. When I photographed Joe, he was working on a model (completely shingled on the outside) of Chuck Close in his summer studio, and was about to attach Close’s arms."

Joe F. is Joe Fig whose Inside the Painter's Studio features miniature recreations of artists at work as in Brancusi below:




Chris Toalson, Penguins, South Georgia Islands, American Museum of Natural History, New York, 2007


Jane Hammond, The Touch-Up, 2009




Carlo Van de Roer's series Blinded by the Light




Traer Scott's Natural History "Natural History is a series of completely candid, in-camera single exposure images which merge the living and dead, in an effort to construct allegorical narratives of our troubled co-existence with nature. Ghost-like reflections of modern visitors viewing exquisitely rendered wildlife dioramas are juxtaposed against the preserved subjects themselves, their faces molded into permanent expressions of fear, aggression or fleeting passivity. After a century of over-hunting, climate change, poaching and destruction of habitat, many of these long dead diorama specimens now represent endangered or completely extinct species." See more here.




Thomas Grunfeld's Misfits, 2001. See more here.

Fake Cake Float: Giraffes & Franzie's Backyard, Webster, NY

Marni is creating a project where she has to pet atypical animals and we had every intention of visiting the Buffalo Zoo prior to Niagara Falls to pet a giraffe. She did some research to discover that if we brought crackers that would work if they were near the fence. We learned the night before that the county fair has giraffes that will wrap their tongues around your arm when you feed them carrots. That sounded far more promising than the zoo and we opted not to go. We did, however, visit a fantastic craft store where I made Marni pet a giraffe in some capacity until she waits for September's fair.



In turn she had me hold a "gerbil":



I also did a little diorama research and know what to purchase for desert ground cover:



and learned a little bit about painting by numbers:



I also had plans to meet my old friend from grad school, Franzie Weldgen and his wife Shannon and daughter Zazie in Webster, NY. When I learned that they had a giraffe kiddie pool, I knew the 3-tier had to be repaired and thanks to Franzie's glue gun, it held together for one more shoot. Then I dropped the topper (so ignore the cracked neck, missing elbow, and hand realignment) and meet Zazie Weldgen with her new pool:



In addition to giraffes, Zazie and Marni have something in common... they are both excellent cake wranglers:







Right before leaving, Zazie gave me the tour of her painting studio that she shares with her dad and produced this brilliant replacement topper for the 3-tier:



Next up: A taxidermy elephant and suicide letter in the George Eastman House and Lake Ontario...

Niagara, NY

First we begin with the Niagara Wax Museum of History - the WORST and therefore the BEST wax museum EVER. This is up there with the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum that displays the glass that Bill Clinton drank from alongside a Skeletor castle from the old He-Man cartoons.



Marni gave me the "bad use of caulk" tour:





Since Annie Edson Taylor was mentioned in a previous entry, here she is emerging dazed and confused from the falls after her rescue:



The first white man to view Niagara Falls (political correctness is not in this museum's vocabulary):



A re-enactment of Devil's Hole Massacre:



Next to a display of "The Three Most Beautiful Women in the World" (Mother Teresa was wearing cheap, mens' hirachis):



Drag Queen Di!



and Julia Roberts (Have I mentioned this wax museum was last updated 20+ years ago?):



As witnessed by signage like this:



Proofreading is necessary:



We did get our "horrorscope" before leaving:



JR re-enacting the Devil's Hole Massacre or was it the dead Maid of the Mist (photo by Marni Shindelman):



One of many contraptions featured all over the town of objects people went over the falls in:



More contraptions at the Dare Devil Mini Mart:



This one went down on my birthday!



Everything I heard about the town of Niagara is true (it's sad and depressing while the Canadian side looks so much more inviting):



But at least the US side has floating ice cream cones... (but alas the foliage died in the planters underneath):