Chris Jordan at Whitworth University

I attended Chris Jordan’s presentation on Tuesday, October 12. Since I interviewed Chris before the presentation, I expected a longer version of what he talked about during the interview. His presentation contained many of the same eye-opening material that he mentioned in his interview, but he emphasized more on his projects than his biography. Chris Jordan began his talk by saying “There is nothing special about me.” This surprised me because I have seen his work and I do believe it is special. However, he insisted that he is not special, but just loves what he does, and it shows. It is obvious that Chris Jordan is very passionate about his work. His mission is to open the public’s eyes to different issues facing us as humans and our planet. First, Jordan spoke briefly about his upbringing and how he got to where he is today. Detachment was a key concept in his upbringing; whether it was detachment with the world around him or the detachment of him with himself. Then, he spoke about his project known as “Running the Numbers.” This lasted most of the presentation, for good reason. Lastly, Jordan spoke about his newest project known as the Midway Island project. He is planning on returning to Midway to take more pictures of the effects of the Pacific Gyre (an enormous gathering of plastic in the middle of the Pacific Ocean). The Pacific Gyre is killing most of the albatross that live on Midway Island, and not too many people know about this. Jordan is trying to get people involved and let them know about this present tragedy. Furthermore, Jordan is planning on bringing students and a film crew with him in the spring. This way, he can show people the beauty and cuteness of the albatross that live on this island. (More can be learned at Midwayjourney.com)

Jordan’s most well-known work comes from his “Running the Numbers” project. This project is all about the idea of mass consumption and human tendencies. For example, one of Jordan’s pieces depicts 38,000 shipping containers, the number of containers processed through American ports every twelve hours. Many of the artwork in his “Running the Numbers” project is made in Photoshop. He takes a picture of certain objects in different positions, then he stitches those images together however many times he must in order to accurately show a certain statistic. This transcale imagery gives people a visual depiction to relate to the number statistics people hear. Jordan described his work as being able to put huge statistics in perspective in a way that people can understand.

As opposed to such artists like Robert Glenn Ketchum, Chris Jordan shows people the ugly side of what we are doing to the planet, and evokes change. Ketchum’s works show us the beauty of the world and makes one want to keep it that way. Both artists evoke change in community and society. However, they both choose different ways to evoke such change.

I was able to really connect with Jordan’s message about the tigers and how their depletion is increasing at an incredibly rapid rate. This piece shows what seems to be an orange frame with a black background. It depicts 3200 toy tigers, equal to the estimated number of tigers remaining on Earth. The space in the middle would hold 40,000 of these tigers, equal to the global tiger population in 1970. Personally, I would like to see this frame begin to refill. However, how could one person make such a significant difference?

Harold Balazs at the Tinman

Harold Balazs is one of the most prominent local artists in the region. Originally from Ohio, Balazs has lived in the Spokane area since graduating from Washington State College in 1951. His works range from delicate jewelry pieces to large-scale sculpture and are currently being exhibited at the Tinman Gallery (located in the Garland district) the whole month of October. The gallery’s mission is to “expand the visual arts community in Spokane” through supporting artists and exposing their work to the community. The current variety displayed makes a stimulating exhibit for the community as well as honoring and supporting the creativity of Balazs.

Enamel, glass, wood, paint, and metal are just a few of the mediums used to create the many expressions of art Balazs has on display. The front room is lined with abstract art works in bold colors done in enamel. In the center is a glass table displaying a variety of jewelry. In the corner is a wooden sculpture painted completely black. Though each of these mediums is very different, they all incorporate rounded abstract shapes that seem to organically fit and flow. Balazs’ pieces seem to come from a place of innate ability and defiance. Both his life and his works say “Transcend the bullshit” and do whatever it is that makes you come alive.

I think honoring Balazs by displaying the range of his works must be very encouraging to him as well as mind opening for the community. His endless hunger to master new techniques is inspiring in itself. His integration into the Spokane community is undeniable. I was an admirer before I even knew who he was. One fateful night during my freshmen year at Whitworth, I went transcending. The “club” (as Balazs called it) prohibits me from explaining what this actually is, but I can tell you Harold Balazs knows of us daring transcenders and is honored by it. Balazs’ work is a part of our every day life, whether we drive by it on division or walk by it at the park or even transcend it. I strongly encourage anyone in the area to visit and understand who the man is behind so much of the art we see around town.

Friday evening was the kick off to Art Walk in dowtown Coeur d’ Alene, Id. This is a great community event that showcases and celebrates art. This years theme for Art Walk is Art from the Heart, 14 galleries hosting opening receptions that feature new and old local artists that have a heart for Art. The event also offers many hands on activities for families, as well as food and wine. You can get almost a nostalgic feeling seeing people gather together to learn become art critic's for the week whether experienced or not. There are many artists being showcased this week and their works range from your classic to the abstract. I was personally inspired by Michael Horswill who is from Coeur d’Alene and a Professor at NIC. I viewed his works at ArtSpirit, which is gallery on 2nd St., it is well lit, open, and offers a great canvas for the art. The exhibit being shown are relief sculptures made with the medium of wood, fabric, wire, steel, copper, vines, bamboo, tin, branches, and beeswax and while using acrylic, stains and a technique called encaustic (which is burning the color in using wax). These sculptures are raw and industrial as you can see from the materials, and very captivating. I love the simplistic depth of the show. These pieces have forms that tend to be very familiar to our trained eye, and it is easy just to take them as we seem them at first glance. In pausing and viewing closer you see something completely different a whole new texture, color, line and it changes the whole piece or your idea of it anyway. A paticular piece I had this experience with was "One Voice" which looks like a giant horn, this was my first glance. This sculpture is comprised of welded together stell washers and rawhide. My second glance was seeing the individual piece that completed this work of Art Michael has a way of expressing life through the art while leaving a journey yet for the viewer. His philosophy for art is almost tangible as he says he learned young “the intricate small things that made up a larger picture were somehow more important than the picture itself” and his relationship with nature is at the center of what he does. This knowledge is what he sets out to leave us with, humbled by our roles in nature we are creators and destroyers but have the predicament of living in the moment, and yet not least or greater than the next creation. Every detail is important in his work and if you leave one out you will miss the beauty of the piece.

I encourage you to get out and experience this event and for those that have young ones (or borrow one) they have many activities and programs going on throughout the week to expose the younger generation to the Art’s . Which makes me ask how important do you think it is to support, learn grow, and share with the youth events like these? And what does it say and do if we don’t?

Underpinnings

Who: Amanda Knowles

She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania in printmaking and her masters in printmaking from the University of Wisconsin. Currently, she is a lecturer in printmaking and drawing at North Seattle Community College.

What: “Underpinnings” Amanda Knowles Art Exhibit/Art lecture

When: September 14, 2010

Where: Bryan Oliver Gallery at Whitworth University –

In keeping with Whitworth's mission, the art department strives to develop in its students an awareness and appreciation of God's world. Professionally active faculty members whose works have won awards at exhibits and juried competitions throughout the nation encourage students to participate in art to enhance their life experiences, to develop skills and concepts through theory and practice, and to immerse themselves intellectually and spiritually.

Why: This event follows Whitworth University Art Department’s mission to encourage students to participate in art and enhance their life experiences.

Photo by: Ryan Young

Amanda Knowles primarily does prints, but she also mixes in a little mixed media and sculpture. Her work has a common theme of scientific figures/shapes, and she incorporates them in different ways throughout her pieces. Knowles started using these shapes due to the influence of her parents. Both of them are scientists, and she grew up looking at the vast amount of scientific figures/designs in their textbooks. Her intent with her images is to take the scientific figures/shapes out of their normal context and reassemble them in interesting ways; this allows for a sense of imagery and allows the viewer to make their own interpretations of the figures/shapes.

For instance, her Pitch series does exactly this. These three pieces shown in her show, Underpinnings, are mixed media on paper. With these she incorporated photography and print. In the background of each of these pieces there is a photo she took of the silhouette of a ferries wheel. Then on top of the silhouettes, she layers her scientific figure/shape that look like a metal donut, similar in shape to the ferries wheel. The pieces are attractive because of the way she juxtaposed the photo with the different layers of the donut shape, printed and/or drawn on. Unfortunately, when she talked about these pieces in her lecture she never really had a specific meaning behind them, only that she thought they looked cool. She prefers to let the viewer come up with their own context.

By showing at Whitworth University’s Bryan Oliver gallery, it allows the northern Spokane community to view her masterful printmaking abilities. The Bryan Oliver gallery has not shown printmakers from outside the Spokane community in the recent years, thus this is a refreshing change. Whitworth’s art department does offer courses in printmaking, and now the students can see an accomplished printmaker, other than their own professor Scott Kolbo. We have seen many of Kolbo’s pieces over the years, but unlike Kolbo, Knowles doesn’t use the human figure in her pieces. Her main subject matter is her unique designs of a specific scientific figure/shape, whereas, Kolbo’s work often tells a story of a person. Also, Kolbo mainly sticks to the gray scale, but Knowles enjoys experimenting with different color palettes in each of her pieces.

Overall I enjoyed her show, but I did wish to hear about a little more meaning behind her images when she gave her art lecture. I was disappointed when I found that she doesn’t really have any specific meanings behind her images, only that she finds scientific figures/shapes and reassembles them so the viewer could make their own interpretations. In fact, all her lecture consisted of was her expressing her fascination with the images she had created, often pausing just to gasp at her own work. Even though, her work is really pleasant to look at, especially because of the way she assembled all the scientific figures/shapes shapes, which she described as “wonkey.” But it does make me wonder if her work might be more significant if she actually researched what the figures/shapes meant and purposely composed her images around their purposes…

This Month at the Saranac

Last Saturday, I attended the art exhibit at the Saranac in downtown Spokane. I went with the intention of seeing some of Scott Kolbo- one of my art Professor's- works, but got even more out of the event than I expected.
Scott Kolbo and Jen Erickson both had new works on display, which will be available for viewing for the rest of October (so go take a look!). Scott Kolbo's drawings and prints consist of hand drawn elements mixed with photomechanical prints. The characters he uses are normally thrown into some type of humorous and grotesque environment.
Jen Erickson's drawings consist of mini graphite mark-making that reflect her fascination of scientific examinations and other visual systems. From far away, her art looks like one big shape or mass, but when you are within inches of it you can see that it is made up of hundreds of miniscule objects like zeroes.
The work of Kolbo's that I was most interested in was the Monroe Street Dog Attack. The piece is an archival ink jet print; ink, acrylic, prismacolor, and charcoal on paper were used. The print shows a scene of a grungy man being attacked in the middle of a Spokane street by two vicious dogs. Off to the right there are flames exploding and smoke bollowing from two cars that have just collided. Overall, the theme isn't a very happy one, but like Kolbo usually does, it shows a scene from society that most people would not choose to recognize and represent publicly. I personally found the piece very interesting and had a hard time not staring at it for the majority of the time I was in the Saranac.
Earlier I mentioned that this event was more than a display of works by two incredibly talented artists. This is because I got a lot of information from the discussion panel of four artists who spoke at the event. There were many questions raised about our art community today, about Spokane's participation in the arts, the changing media, the role of education, how we find critical dialogue, and other important topics. The panel agreed that they would like to see more media coverage visually, and also more critical, essential coverage. Since there is a disconnect in the generations of artists, the artists agreed that art education shouldn't stop at the learning process and technique, but that as many venues should be opened as possible. Artists also find it hard to find good critical dialogue because people are too afraid of criticism and rejection of their art. So my question to the community is: where do YOU think the areas of art could be improved today? Is it in our youth, in media coverage, critical dialogue, or some other form of participation?

On Oct. 1, 2010 there was an event entitled Terrain. This included 64 artists, 179 works of art, live performance art and even music. These artists are from the surrounding Spokane area. There were many different mediums represented at this community event. The event seemed to have a very generous showing of people. It had a huge range of ages, interests, and a vast demographic of people. It was located in the Music City Building on First Ave. downtown. The venue was full and had many rooms and spaces to show and display this large body of work composed by all of the participants.

Because of the variations in the artists, there were many themes, ideas, materials, and more. As a whole this event was a success. It was geared entirely towards the community, their involvement, and emerging artist participation. It left viewers and those that attended wanting more. There was a great showing and was very busy. Compared to other artists and gallery spaces this was unconventional in the best way. The whole show seemed to feel more authentic than that of other distant galleries.

What was excellent to see, was that there were not tight rules. It was not limited to formally trained individuals. There was room to experiment with the work itself. Some had innocence and others we very distinguished in the craft. Seeing all of these pieces together in this setting was a positive experience. There was live local music which added to the casual, and urban feel of this Spokane show.

Some questions to ponder include:

-Does an artist have to formally be trained in their field or specific medium to show work in any setting?

-Is it important to orchestrate events like this more often?

-How does the community prosper from this sort of exposure and interaction with art?

Video by: Kellen Pacheco and Casey Armstrong

New Works at The Saranac

The Saranac Art Projects is currently holding a New Works exhibition featuring two of its artist members from the Northwest; Scott Kolbo and Jen Erickson. This exhibit features a series of new works, never seen before, by the two featured artists, and will be up for viewing throughout October.

Saranac Art Projects is a non-profit artists’ cooperative that is geared towards involving the community and other artists in a contemporary art culture. Kolbo and Erickson are members of this artist co-op and have chosen to share their artwork with the community and other practicing artists. This event and organization allows for the community to come and enjoy the work of local artists in a wonderful environment put on by the members of the non-profit artists’ co-op.

Scott Kolbo, an art Professor at Whitworth University, mainly works in printmaking, but also utilizes his skills in drawing, digital projections, and installations. All of Kolbo's works are inspired by the daily humors that he observes in the world around us; the tendencies that we fail to recognize as members of society. Kolbo steps back, observes these hilarious events, and then creates a comical story weaving reality with grotesque characters and boisterous events.

In his New Works, Kolbo’s series of prints and drawings are focused around a comical series of characters that he has created, and uses these characters to create his satires. Each character has its own unique background which is critical to interpreting each of his works. The staging of the events taking place in each piece is seemingly located in Spokane’s west-central neighborhoods. In studying and understanding his own environment, Kolbo treats the setting of each of his works to be a microcosm to the rest of the world.

Then we have Jen Erickson, who’s latest works have been inspired by the idea of loss and decay. Each of Erickson’s works goes through a seemingly similar process of having a painted surface, followed by symbols of decay drawn repetitively throughout each piece. What is interesting about her work though is that she makes you take a few steps closer to the piece; getting up close and personal in a sense. The size of each symbol are purposefully drawn small so to create an overall aesthetic appearance when looked at from afar—similar to the same idea schools of small fish use as a defense tactic. When observed at a distance, each symbol blends together to create one large object, but realistically it is only one small symbol drawn closely to the next. The symbols in each piece of work are systematically placed to create a decaying feel of the overall artwork.

I found that Erickson’s work reminded me of Amanda Knowles, in a sense that these two artists seem to work more formally than contextually. When observing Erickson’s and Knowle’s artworks, I felt as though I only wanted to see the formal quality of each piece, which I personally enjoy. There may very well be a contextual meaning behind their works, but I never found myself digging to find what it was. And, I think that is why some viewers are drawn to a formal piece, and why others may be turned away. I feel that some people may want more juice behind each piece than what is actually intended by the artist, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I mean art is meant to be interpreted by the viewer, right? An artist can only give the viewer so much before he begins to spoon food his/her message to the audience, but what if the viewer begins to add context to something that has no context? Or, the viewer doesn’t understand the context because it is so complex and can’t interpret the work?

Learn more about Saranac Art Projects by clicking here.

Photos by: Kellen Pacheco

Amplified Growth, at the Second Space Gallery

The Second Space Gallery is currently showing a series of mixed media paintings by Jessica LaPrade. The show is well named “Amplified Growth.” All of her works are teaming with energy, and patterns that seem to grow off of the canvas. The images of bees and flowers, and the bright colors and repeating square and hexagonal patterns all give a sense of the repetition and renewal of life. According to LaParade this series “reinterprets the natural world, by integrating technological and urban, contrivances into textural studies of nature.”
LaPrade’s largest piece in the exhibit, “The Last Colony” was a triptych. It has hexagons of various blues, greens, yellows and browns creating a pattern continuing throughout the patting. In Large gaps left by the painting you can see a royal blue sky and in the middle panel on the right side a bright yellow hive that takes up almost a third of the middle canvas. The tree that the hive hangs from is right of the hive, but its long branches continue onto all three of the canvases. The texture of the work defines the hexagonal spaces and the hive. The drippy paint and Impressionistic style mix communicated an energy as well as an uneasiness to me as the viewer. It was though I was looking at a real hive, it is amazing to see but there was also something about it that made me uneasy. I liked her work, even if this piece made me uneasy, because it all got a reaction out of me.
LaPrade grew up in Virginia, but came to Washington to get her degree from Eastern Washington University. She graduated with her bachelors of art in 2008. I know that I certainly like seeing a locally taught artist doing well in the community. Normally when I think of local artist I think of older ladies and gentlemen painting quintessential scenes of local historical landmarks. I like seeing local artist that are creating works that reflect contemporary art ideals and have some deeply conceptual ideas. I think that the community also enjoys seeing art like this and I think that it is good to how this art because it helps teach the community about what contemporary art is doing as well as draws them into see work by someone in there community.
Do you also think that seeing local artist with a working knowledge of contemporary art is more beneficial for the community?

Splatter Art Blog

We're jumping into our Community Arts in Practice class blog. The Whitworth students are cruising around Spokane looking for art events to write about. The students have compiled a local art calendar on the right so if you are looking for something to do, check it out! Look forward to seeing photos and reading their reviews of exhibitions and events. Please feel free to comment and engage in the conversation.