Hasta La Ideas

A retrospective on the life and work of Dada’s Mama

Beatrice Wood’s “Career Woman” exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art celebrates more than her prolific ouevre of gorgeous ceramics, whimsical drawings and colorful paintings. As part of Pacific Standard Time, the show tells the story of Wood’s intimate friendships with Marcel Duchamp and Henri-Pierre Roche, the discovery of her love of clay, her exploration of complicated relationships between men and women and her search for spirituality.

I came to know the “mama of Dada” during my time in Ojai, California with the Virginia Avenue Project (VAP) after-school program, whose artistic director, Leigh Curran, was lifelong friends with Wood. I met the artist on weekly studio trips with the VAP students, and began visiting the artist several times throughout the year toward the end of her life. Now, when I am asked to describe Wood, the first words that come to mind are beautiful and mischievous. From her artwork to her personality, she was feminine, strong-willed, talented and colorful. Her eyes literally sparkled, and she attributed her longevity to chocolate and young men.

I particularly treasure a note Wood sent to thank me for sending a copy of “The Last Flower” by James Thurber, with a picture of the VAP children, that sums up her pacifist views. “I am glad to have the photograph of you and some of your project girls,” she wrote. “The children look intelligent and happy. The book about the bomb and the general is much in time with what is going on in the world. I recently read that the military has thousands of aeroplanes, I mean thousands of tankers, shells, bandages, thermometers to kill and to heal the wounded that they do not know what to do with all the surplus stuff. I hope all of us that feel about bombing the way we do with make some impact on this crazy world. Love to you and the children, Beatrice.”

Recently I reread her memoir I Shock Myself that chronicles her posh childhood, bohemian coming of age, affairs with Pierre Roche and Marcel Duchamp, and unique journey to find herself living in Ojai, CA.

The details of her life transcend the typical: artistic successes and passionate affairs, her strange loyalty to two complicated men in unconsummated marriages and a new career at the age of 40, when she discovered ceramics at Hollywood High School. She had enrolled in the class to learn how to make a teapot to go with luster plates, and went on to create within the genre for more than 60 years.

Beatrice lived to the age of 105. Her adventurous story reminds us all that living can be messy, complicated, beautiful and joyful. Much like her quickly drawn stick figure thumbing his nose at the world—that Duchamp later put on the cover of his Blindman’s Ball poster—Wood lived by her own rules and lived to the fullest.

Curated by Elsa Longhauser and Lisa Melandri with exhibition design by Adam Silverman of Heath Ceramics, “Beatrice Wood: Career Woman—Drawings, Painting, Vessels, and Objects” is on view at the Santa Monica Museum of Art through 25 February 2012. A 144-page illustrated catalog accompanies the exhibition documenting her contributions to the canon of 20th century art.

All images courtesy of the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Wood photographed in her studio and with tiger by Bill Dow; Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia and Beatrice Wood, photographed in 1917.

Sculpting with sound, an artist crafts multi-sensoral experiences

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Navigating the strata of sound, composer and visual artist Kamran Sadeghi maneuvers a digital diving bell that harmoniously discovers new territories forged between art and music. Culling sounds from eclectic sources such as found objects, a grand piano and the chamber of a nuclear cooling tower, Sadeghi weaves together an electronic topography that is both hypnotic and haunting. Sadeghi explains, “I would take the time to learn something and after doing so, I would use it for something other than what it was originally designed for, or I would just take it apart and or break it out of boredom.”

Born in Iran, Sadeghi and his family relocated to America around the time of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Although the indigenous tones of Persian folk and pop music were prevalent, Sadeghi spent most of his time as a visual artist growing up. At the age of nineteen, Sadeghi channeled his artistic talents into music, self-educated on curiosity and record stores. “I would spend a lot of time in [record stores], talking to people and listening to new music. They were my library for many, many years,” reflects Sadeghi.

In 2000, Sadeghi began to experiment with traditional instruments and computer synthesis, culminating in four full-length albums first released in 2005 under the alias, Son of Rose. Establishing a name to evoke a spirit, Son of Rose was created to “explore and experiment with electronic music theories and techniques.” Under Son of Rose, Sadeghi deftly fuses patterns of sine wave frequencies and polymorphic rhythms with a measure of warmth and timbre. “I’m often using sound as a physical material, much like a sculptor would with their preferred materials,” elaborates Sadeghi.

Delving further into the relationship between rhythm and space, Sadeghi launched the evocative album entitled, “Through Thickness,” recorded under his given name. Released by Dragon Eye, electronic artist Yann Novak’s label, “Through Thickness” forms part of Sadeghi’s “Kha series.” Referencing the Sanskrit word for “zero,” the numeric marker in tabular arrangements, the Kha series escalates into an exotic interplay of beats and movement. Sadeghi states, “It was a way to create a platform for me to focus specifically on rhythmic structures, both for sound and image. I like to create a series of work. They become more like a study that I develop over long periods of time.”

By exploring ambient dimensions, Sadeghi has also studied how space forms sound. In 2008, Sadeghi was commissioned to create and record a musical piece inside a nuclear cooling tower. Using the tower as an instrument,Sadeghi amplified an original composition and re-recorded it with the attached echo effect; repeating the procedure to affect a lulling, drone state. Sadeghi reflects. “It was a serial experience. That night I had my first acoustic dream’ where I could almost feel the sound of that place in my sleep.” Sadeghi also explored tonal resonance through his collaboration with the dance company, Zoe | Juniper, using twelve individual speakers to spatially project his live score.

Harkening back to his visual artist roots, Sadeghi has also interwoven color and shapes into his compositions, creating installations that have been internationally displayed at galleries including the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle and the Staalplaat in Berlin. In 2010, Sadeghi showcased his animated graphical score, “Pattern Recognition” at the 4Culture Gallery, an emergent, electronic art space. “The piece is like an animated Rubik’s Cube that is being moved by the music. I wanted to explore how the eye follows the ear, or vice versa,” describes Sadeghi. Intuitively exploring sound and images, Sadeghi describes his approach: “I’m hyper aware of acoustic space. I am always listening to the difference between what it sounds like ‘over here’ compared to ‘over there.’ I like to explore the threshold of sound and music in space.”

Continuing to develop musical narratives, Sadeghi is currently working in collaboration with Soundwalk Collective on a three-part album series entitled “Medea,” which chronicles the collective’s nautical journey along the coast of the Black Sea in the mythical spirit of Medea and is due for release in 2012.

This story is part of an editorial series sponsored and inspired by Le Meridien.
New Perspectives explores fresh ideas and distinct points of view in global art and culture.

An online gallery streamlines the interaction between users and content

Hastening to bridge the gap between traditional media’s tendency to over-curate and the Internet’s overflow of content, Melissa Jones has relaunched Dream the End, an online space for art, music, poetry and film. With a homepage curated by guest editors, the site will update regularly as new virtual “editions” are released. The content comes from a mix of emerging artists and lesser-known figures from the past, with exclusive mixtapes available for streaming. It’s a great way to escape from quotidian demands and browse creative interests without the deluge of commentary and criticism.

Dream the End is unique in that it isn’t set up in a rational, linear browsing interface but rather resembles a cloud, with content scattered around a page lacking typical navigation features. Clicking on a piece of art will take you to a gallery of that artist’s work, and selecting a few lines from a poem will show you the piece in its entirety, accompanied by a blurb about the artist. The “random view” button at the bottom of every page redirects to a new homepage with different content, so the browsing possibilities are endless. All the while, because the site’s streaming music isn’t page-specific, visitors can enjoy listening to new music while they explore other mediums.

The widely appealing art selection includes an impressive range of works, from Sean Kerman’s “Female Lying,” a muted image Jones excerpted from a ’70s-era photography reference book on the human figure, and “Hand,” a recent piece by Chinese artist Hai Tien that harkens tranquil tropical flowers; to the more contemporary styles of Belgian artist Raoul De Keyser, whose minimalist black-and-white piece “Ad B4” juxtaposes with Rupprecht Geiger’s bold “Geist Und Materie 1,” an example of artist’s late geometric-inspired work, which he painted at the age of 96.

“As an antidote to the increasingly chatter-driven online environment, I wanted the design of the site to be a uniquely distilled sensory experience,” says Jones in a press release. “Dream the End is where people can see what’s good and hear what’s good, and not just read about it.” The success of Dream the End lies in its simplicity. The layout requires users to follow their interests around the site without worrying about what is current, relevant, or otherwise popular.

Refresh!, the first edition of Dream the End is now live and ready to browse.

Watercolor illustrations combine Wes Anderson style with wildlife and folklore

Brooke Weeber‘s delicate, darkly humorous watercolor-and-ink illustrations are one
part Wes Anderson, one part Edward Gorey. Fantastical wolves and deer roam freely
through pastel-tinted clouds and trees, sharing space with bearded strongmen and booze. Though the Northwest native admits that she’s a huge fan of Anderson, she cites Greek and Native American art as her primary influence.

“I love the simple line figures painted onto vases and sewn into tapestries, and the use of geometric shapes and patterns [in Greek and Native American art],” says Weeber. “They also show an obvious appreciation for the natural world.”

Weeber studied fine art at the University of Oregon, but moved to New York shortly after graduation to exercise her artistry in a completely different field—cake decorating. After four years on the East Coast, she began to miss the wildlife that plays such a prominent role in her illustrations and moved back to Portland. “Once I was more acclimated, I started to really appreciate the amazing things that New York had to offer—the culture and diversity alone is much harder to find in Oregon,” reflects Weeber. “But alas, in the end, the chaotic lifestyle wasn’t for me.”

Besides illustrating album covers for local luminaries such as Blitzen Trapper and Loch
Lomond, Weeber shows her work locally and sells it through Etsy. Her fruits and
vegetables calendar is a beautiful and practical guide for anyone who likes to eat locally and shop at farmers’ markets but has no idea when figs are actually in season. Her “Animals of the Pacific Northwest” print might also reassure anyone who has been duped by the latest crop of teenage vampire romances; werewolves are not endemic to this corner of the United States.

Prices range from $4 for a greeting card to $50. For more of Weeber’s work, check her website or her
Etsy shop.

Peek inside the artist’s mind to learn what motivated his latest film noir inspired paintings

As a young boy growing up in Queens, Travis Louie would roam the hallways of his friends’ houses gazing longingly at their vintage family photographs, realizing the lack of pictures of previous generations of his own Chinese-American family. Years later when Louie’s drawing career transitioned into painting characters inspired by film noir and German Expressionism, he realized that in some way he was creating his own virtual family history. Only this family, clad in Victorian and Edwardian garb, had all sorts of ogres, monsters and insects crawling and climbing about.

We spoke with Louie at his studio in upstate New York while he was painting a man with a giant Cane Toad on his head—an image that will soon be on view at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles, along with several other unique pet-and-owner portraits—and the artist revealed where his love of storytelling, surprise, and humor comes from.

When was the first time you remember getting a reaction for something you drew?

I was in the second grade. They gave me some crayons for some busy work while they were testing other kids. I started drawing. It wasn’t a great drawing, but it was what I drew that kind of freaked the teacher out. I drew my memories of a Senate hearing that I had seen on public TV Channel 13. It was film footage of the McCarthy era. What had compelled me to watch it was that so many of my grandfather’s favorite actors were in there. I drew the people at a table with a bunch of microphones. The teacher asked me, “What is that?” and I said, “That’s the Senate hearings.” Then she wanted to talk to my parents. The drawing did not look like McCarthy, Humphrey Bogart, Danny Kaye, Lauren Bacall or anyone else that was there. I did not know why the hearing was happening, it did not make any sense to me, but I wanted to know what it was all about.

Were you more of a “scared of everything” or “scared of nothing” kind of kid?

I was afraid of people. I remember one time I was on the subway with my mom. While the train was moving, she let go of my hand for a second and someone else grabbed my hand. That was always really creepy to me. My mother lit into this guy like you wouldn’t believe.

With so much of your work being influenced by German Expressionism, film noir, Victorian portraits, Edwardian times, side-shows, oddities and more, how did your style develop?

Growing up, I used to go to my friends’ and neighbors’ houses. Their families had these great old photographs. I thought, “What’s going on that they had these things?” The reason why we didn’t have any in our family was that Chinese people are very superstitious and did not like having their pictures taken, especially in the 1890s. I don’t know if many cameras were that available. I have not seen that many photos of older Chinese people from that era. I think there was a little bit of envy. So now with my work it’s almost like I am making my own ancestors. They just happen to be monsters.

I love the look of those old movies and am interested in cinematography. I love old German Expressionist films. I did not come across them until later. As a kid I watched whatever was on for the Movie of the Week on Channel 9, which were mostly gangster movies and noir pictures. As I got older, I noticed that the noir directors had been looking at the German Expressionist films. If you look at Citizen Kane there are a lot of shots that look like they came out of the movie Metropolis including the shots of the gigantic door. I started watching more old movies to see were they got the lighting from.

Can you talk about the materials you use and the process you go through to get to the point where it is hard to see any brush strokes?

I use kind of a weird watercolor technique with transparent layers of things, one on top of the other, [and I think about] how far back you can go and how dark it is possible to make something. There are transparent washes of acrylic paint over and over again. A lot of it is rubbed out. Underneath that there is a lot of graphite to create a very smooth, continuous tone. I learned to do that because I used to work for a photo re-toucher.

Your new paintings feature large-winged insects and spiders on the heads of your portrait subjects. Do you see these monsters, creatures and animals in your everyday life?

Sometimes I dream them up. This particular show was influenced from a photograph that I saw on the back of a book about how to care for tarantulas. I was in a pet store and I came across this book and I thought, that’s kind of odd. I have a pet tarantula at home. I am looking at this book and it’s pretty informative. I flip it over and see there’s an author photograph on the back. It is the weirdest author photograph I have ever seen. He’s dressed in a powder blue tuxedo, like the kind they are wearing in Carrie. Next to him is his pet tarantula in its enclosure with a prize-winning ribbon attached to it. I looked at it and thought, “That is the craziest thing.” There was a pet show with tarantulas in it? How do you judge that? What’s the criteria? That’s when I decided to do a series of paintings of people with unusual pets. The one I am painting right now is of a man with his Cane Toad. The toad is about the size of a small pig.

What else are you working on?

I also have a bust coming out by Shinbone. We will have one at the gallery during the show. It comes in a wood crate. From the back it looks like Beethoven and when you flip it around it’s my Uncle 6 Eyes.

Travis Louie’s show opens on 12 November and will be on view at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles until 10 December.

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