Blog Post
Kerrytown Concert House’s “Winter Meditation” offers austere ambiance from Kirsten Lund, Ann and Fred Ringia
by christopherporter
It may initially seem surprising that winter can inspire artists. One would think the nippy climate would discourage creativity.
Blog Post
Dennis Jones’ “Candyland” is a graffiti-inspired exploration of post-painterly art
by christopherporter
Dennis Jones’ Candyland at the University of Michigan North Campus Research Complex Rotunda is for those who like to have a little contact high to go along with their art.
Blog Post
Local Legends: "One-Shot Stanger: The Photos of Eck Stanger" at AADL
by christopherporter
Local legend says Egbert ("Eck") Stanger, a 1930s copy editor for The Ann Arbor News, was hired as the paper's first staff photographer because he was the only staffer who knew how to read the German instruction manual for the newspaper's only camera.
Blog Post
Both Sides Now: “See Through: Windows and Mirrors in Twentieth-Century Photography” at UMMA
by christopherporter
See Through: Windows and Mirrors in Twentieth-Century Photography at the University of Michigan Museum of Art focuses on one of the most thought-provoking conundrums of art photography.
Blog Post
Patterns in the Process: “Sara Adlerstein: Ecologies, my true colors” at WSG Gallery
by christopherporter
Vivid, biomorphic expressions take imaginative turns in Sara Adlerstein’s Ecologies, my true colors at downtown Ann Arbor’s WSG Gallery.
Blog Post
Minimalesque: “Deborah Campbell and Lois Kane: Burgeoning” at Kerrytown Concert House
by christopherporter
There’s minimalist art and there’s art on the edge of being minimal. This distinction may seem paradoxical, but it is one way of describing the Burgeoning exhibit at Kerrytown Concert House by local artists Deborah Campbell and Lois Kane.
Blog Post
Causing Moments: WSG Gallery's “Lynda Cole: Recent Places and Themes”
by christopherporter
Local artist Lynda Cole is back at the WSG Gallery with another adventure in abstraction that’s as much about her sense of self as it is an exploration of art itself.
Blog Post
Lyrical Lines: “Matisse Drawings: Curated by Ellsworth Kelly" at UMMA
by christopherporter
Matisse Drawings: Curated by Ellsworth Kelly at the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s spacious second-story A. Alfred Taubman Gallery is proof that less is more when it comes to art.
Blog Post
Look Deep: John Lilley's “Wandering Around … in black and white” at Kerrytown Concert House
by christopherporter
We last saw John Lilley’s photography at the Kerrytown Concert House in June 2012. His John Lilley Photographs exhibition found the Dexter photographer using digital color notable for its exhilarating chromaticity as well as its remarkable penchant for detail.
“Simply put,” said Lilley at that time, “I make photographs because I see photographs.”
But as he later tellingly added in that statement, “I’m rarely attracted to the 'big picture.' Rather, my vision is almost unconsciously drawn to distinct designs, textures, and forms that occur as small subsets of the broader landscape. I’m fascinated by the myriad possibilities for abstract composition that exist in our world.”
All of which is to say that Lilley’s current Wandering Around … in black and white shows us that his monochromatic photography is easily the equal of his color work. Indeed, if anything, Lilley’s photographic self-discipline is as much (if not more) vivid than his color art.
The work in this exhibit dates back to the 1970s, from using old-school analog photographic technology right up through contemporary digital work recently executed. None of the photos are dated, which creates a chronological ambiguity that forces the viewer to focus on the art rather than try to trace Lilley’s artful development. This strategy effectively makes each work an equal among equals.
As he says in his most recent gallery statement:
The American Road Trip is, for me, the activity of simply wandering from place to place. I’m not sure if the road trip is an excuse for photography, or if photography is my excuse for the road trip. Whichever it is, the traveling about is an opportunity to see what’s out there, to discover new places and the things that inhabit those places and spaces. When I’m on the road with my cameras I’m totally focused on the undivided landscape. I try to see into that landscape as deeply as I can.
Right said: What’s best about this self-description is that this “seeing” is precisely what Lilley does best. And how he sees -- as much as what he sees -- is what makes his exhibition a superior display of art.
This may be because black and white images tend to appear ageless. There’s often a subtle chiaroscuro tincture that ironically reveals more nuance than the color we would normally see around us. This monochromic shading makes it difficult to date the work because of the composition’s play of light and shadow.
As such, black and white photography is often more dramatic than color photography because of this psychological remove. There’s a nebulous gravity running through the photographs in Wandering Around in Black and White that contrast heartily to the vibrant color patterns of Lilley’s color photos.
Likewise, it’s interesting that one of the more stunning works in the 25 photographs on display is magnificently large-scale if there ever was a “large-scale.” Because for someone who says he’s not looking for the “big picture,” Lilley’s Devils Lake, North Dakota sure looks big enough.
Photographing an aged building next to a silo, Lilley’s Devils Lake is simultaneously a big picture and nuanced study. Shrewdly referencing a touch of early 20th century American Precisionism, the aged architectural structures in the photograph have a gritty integrity that can’t be missed. Lilley expertly captures these structures rectilinear façade with its complex horizontal and diagonal gradation to illustrate each striated scuff that marks its history.
On the other hand, Lilley statement implicitly references “road trips” and other such places --
and what could be more other than landscape photography? His Sand Dunes, Early Morning: Great Sand Dunes NP, Colorado certainly fits this bill. A striking crosswise depiction of nature in its harsh environment, his depiction of this national park is surprisingly serene for such a terrain.
The vista is grandly impressive -- and there can be no denying this fact -- yet Lilley’s judgment softens the environment’s austerity through the adroit manipulation of light and shadow. Really no more than a series of receding sand dunes whose alternation of light and dark creates an internal harmony of visual alliteration, Sand Dunes, Early Morning's interspersed rhythmic contemplation carries the viewer’s eye well beyond the desert horizon.
Yet perhaps the hardest trick for any art photographer using black and white is to craft silhouettes of such a sharp disparity that the precise tonal juxtaposition supplies the entire information one needs to take the measure of the composition. Lilley’s Wires: Concordia, Kansas is easily the masterwork in the exhibit for this reason.
Wires features a black and white contrast that’s startlingly pure in its monochrome articulation. As inspired as it is spare, two supporting triangles (of whatever origin) suspend a tangle of irregularly coiled curvilinear wire through an eye hook bolt in what amounts to a compositional limbo. Lilley dispenses with any semblance of depth in favor of a paradoxical black and white curvilinear and rectilinear abstraction whose precise difference lets the work’s geometric elements hover on the photograph’s foreground. It’s a satisfying inner tension that allows his viewer’s eye to wander as restlessly as does his camera.
John Carlos Cantú has written on our community's visual arts in a number of different periodicals.
John Lilley's “Wandering Around … in black and white” runs through Dec. 3 at Kerrytown Concert House, 415 N. 4th Ave, Ann Arbor. The exhibit is available 9:30 am-5 pm, Monday-Friday, during public concerts, and by appointment. For information, call 734-769-2999 or visit kerrytownconcerthouse.com.
Blog Post
Photographer Nina Hauser dreams of India in her new WSG Gallery show
by christopherporter
The last time we saw Nina Hauser’s iPhone photography at the WSG Gallery was in May 2013. I was keenly struck at that time how her display illustrated the fundamental principle that the human element cannot be taken out of art irrespective of the technology used to make the work. The 22 photographs in that exhibit were marked by a remarkable technique and skill -- with both artful elements reflecting the “eye” implicit in the photographic image.
Hauser’s current exhibit at that same gallery, The Real World Is Not the Only World -- India Dreams, finds this local photographer immersed in her fascination with the culture of the Asian subcontinent -- and certainly sufficiently enough as to revolutionize her aesthetic.
Hauser once crafted her art through an extraordinarily meticulous photographic application and her control brooked no opposition. Indeed, Hauser has always been a photographer’s photographer and her restraint was near absolute, whether studied from the structure of her composition to the manipulation of her camera.
But that was yesterday -- and yesterday’s gone. What The Real World Is Not the Only World -- India Dreams instead champions is a new creativity that requires a new approach to her art.
“All that you see here are composites of images I’ve taken in India over the past three years,” says Hauser of this recent clutch of photographs. “What compelled me to pursue this body of work was an encounter with a Brahmin woman. She had watched me while I was photographing a woman sweeping away leaves from the grass with a little bundle of twigs, and was scornful of my interest in a Dalit or an 'untouchable' woman.
“Her reaction was the spark for this work. I began photographing women performing menial jobs such as working on road crews and sweeping up garbage. These women were the most striking and beautiful to me not because they were dressed in colorful, beautiful saris but because of their dignity and conscientiousness. They were such a startling contrast to the work they were doing.”
Yet this explanation doesn’t really fully cover the art. It merely touches upon the theme of these photographic essays. For what really captures Hauser’s work comes near the end of that statement -- and this information informs the whole of her effort.
“In my photographs,” Hauser says, “I began to move people and animals from where I found them into my own version of Indian Mughal paintings, using either copies of paintings or my own photographs. Mughal paintings are a particular style of South Asian painting, usually done in miniature, during the time of the Mughal Empire of the 16th to 18th centuries CE.
“My subjects,” she concludes, “are far from those in the vivid scenes of Hindu epics, mystical legends and courtly life usually depicted in this type of art. But my subjects are just as deserving of lush surroundings, and my people and animals just as noble and valuable.”
And we’re now reaching the core of Hauser’s most recent artistic development. While her prior photography had an elemental geometric purity that lent an integrity to the whole of the composition solely through its depiction, these latest works require a fanciful manipulated resolution for them to reach their fruition and Hauser’s reconstruction is meant to provide this meaning.
Mughal-style painting features stylized portraiture typically set in harmony with realistic birds, plants, and animals. Hauser’s supplement is, by contrast, two-fold within this prior tradition. First, and most crucially, she remains true to her photographic style. Second, the photos feature newfound fantastic qualities that have been arranged to heighten their iconographic meaning.
She’s therefore still working with her handy iPhone (more precisely, iPhone7+), but is now also reliant on an iPad to modify her compositional elements until indeed “the real world is not the only world.” It is, rather, a world of Hauser’s “Indian dreams.”
Take for example her 10x7 inch composite photograph on archival paper, Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark --R. Tagore. Quoting Bengali poet-philosopher Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Hauser frames a supplicating Brahmin in the center of the artwork set against a gesturally abstracted background that shades from a mottled earth tone to dark blue horizon while a group of stylized swans fly above in the sky. Symbolizing avian beauty and grace, the swans richly reflect the spirituality that faith requires. Hauser thus illustrates the belief that what comes effortlessly to the natural kingdom is the largest part of discipline on our part as humans.
Even more whimsical is Hauser’s 7x10-inch composite Expressing the Inexpressible where a Buddhist novice is shown dramatically flying through the air through a lush landscape while a fellow in blue headdress sits stoically below to his right and a garlanded Brahman bull stands on his left. What she depicts may seem inexpressible, but the sheer exuberance of the youth is more than expressible enough.
Yet maybe the supreme expression of Hauser’s latest development is the delightful countenance of her 6.5x10-inch composite entitled Joyful Maybes. For in this work, a young girl in a bright green sari is set in the center of the composition flanked by women, animals, and a verdant backdrop that would comfortably fit a traditional Mughal painting. Hauser’s surrendered herself to her enthusiasm and it tells in this most captivating of her recent artworks where contemporary art meets Indian reverie.
John Carlos Cantú has written on our community's visual arts in a number of different periodicals.
"Nina Hauser: The Real World Is Not the Only World -- India Dreams" will run through November 25 at WSG Gallery, 306 S. Main St. Exhibit hours are Tuesday-Wednesday, 12-6 pm; Thursday, 12-9 pm; Friday and Saturday, 12-10 pm; and Sunday, 12-5 pm. For information, visit wsg-art.com or call 734-761-2287.