Hasta La Ideas

Artist Ellen Lesperance weaves new meaning into knitwear with an exhibit honoring women activists

Fair Isle fans have long fetishized the winter staple, but Ellen Lesperance‘s upcoming exhibit at Seattle’s Ambach & Rice Gallery explores the sweater as more than a cozy way to keep warm. Named “The Strong, Star-Bright Companions,” after an elegiac poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the show features Lesperance’s gouache paintings of sweaters worn by female activists, as well as three actual sweaters knitted by the artist herself—all rendered with precise attention to detail.

Lesperance painstakingly replicates the pattern and gauge of yarn in large paintings, piecing the whole pattern together from photographs into flattened-out diagrams. Much of her source material came from archival photos of the Greenham Commons Women’s Peace Camp. For nineteen years, from 1981 to 2000, women camped out to protest the storage of nuclear missiles in Berkshire, England. While they waited, they knitted—incorporating their ideologies, in the form of fish and axes, into intricately innovative patterns. “I’ve been knitting for over 20 years. I used to work at Vogue Knitting in New York, and I’d never seen patterns like these,” Lesperance said from her home in Portland, OR.

The exhibit also features the artist’s tightly-gridded visions of sweaters worn by contemporary women, like Nawal el Saadawi, the famed Egyptian feminist activist. And Lesperance commemorates the darker side of activism in the form of triangle-shaped patterns that serve as death shrouds for activists who died in the line of duty, including Helen Thomas, who was driven over at Greenham Commons Women’s Peace Camp, and Italian activist Pippa Bacca, who was raped and killed on a symbolic peace protest while hitchhiking to Jerusalem. “They were definitely maligned for being stupid young girls,” said Lesperance. “There’s definitely an interest in elevating them.”

By memorializing and replicating these sweaters, Lesperance also lends a deeper resonance to the simple, utilitarian act of knitting a sweater. As Rosa Parks might have suggested, in the face of greater forces there’s something very powerful about the act of sitting down, taking your time and creating a useful object of beauty. “Sweaters can be worn,” said Lesperance. “You can stretch out the experience of being with the work. You could wear the sweaters for years, if you wanted to.”

“The Strong, Star-Bright Companions” is on view through 15 May 2011 at Ambach & Rice.

California dreaming in a group show featuring Los Angeles photographers

The American Dream is familiar enough territory, but what of the allure of the West? The group show “A Place in the Sun: Picturing California” highlights Los Angeles photographers, some native and others transplants, who explore the Caliifornia dream.

Images cast a collective portrait of the Golden State as a place where promises are alternately fulfilled, deferred and denied—a vision that’s not too far off from the reality of the U.S. What defines the work of these talents (among them Sam Comen, Emily Shur, Alex Tehrani, Katrina Dickson, J. Wesley Brown and Chad Ress) ;is a shared distinct sensibility. Their approach lies in the beauty and awkwardness of trying to feel at home in a vast region founded on prosperity— not to mention the photographers’ commercial gigs.

“Here in L.A., at the locus of the entertainment industry, crisp lighting and saturated colors elevate celebrities to icons,” Comen explains. “It’s in this context that I apply those same photographic motifs to everyday people in the environments that define them, holding them up, casting them as lead characters.”

Comen shares a fascination many artists feel about their personal stomping grounds. “Though I love making work afar in the field, I’m endlessly interested in my hometown of L.A., and feel like this city holds a lifetime of stories for me to tell through pictures.”

The show opens today and runs through 6 May 2011 at Hi-Lite Studio and Project Space.

Ambient musicians across the globe unite to support Japan relief efforts

As the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis begin to fade from the headlines, heartfelt efforts to help the nation recover continue. One that recently stood out brings together a group of ambient recording artists who are stepping up with their talents to support the cause.

The compilation album, called For Nihon, is the work of husband-and-wife musician team Keith Kenniff and his wife Hollie Kenniff. Like that project, this one beautifully fuses music and a digital component; in this case, British DJ Luke Twyman—whose Solar Beat music box caught our attention last year—designed this site allowing visitors to create beautifully-simple circular patterns and sound by skimming a mouse around the page.

The album itself, originally sourced from Twyman’s community of musicians, organically grew to include upwards of 40 contributors, including Rafael Anton Irisarri from the U.S., Japan’s Ryuichi Sakamoto and Robin Guthrie (U.K.).

Pick up the two-disc CD or download it (coming soon) for $20 each, with 100% of sales going to the Japan Society‘s Japan Earthquake Relief Fund.

Our latest video looks at a conceptual artist’s meditation on gray

by
Gregory Stefano

On a recent trip to Mexico City we had the chance to stop by the Zona Maco Art Fair to check out what’s happening south of the border. We explored some great galleries, saw some fantastic work, and one piece that jumped out immediately was by London-based artist Martin Creed called “Untitled” from 2010. We had a chance to discuss it with one of the gallery reps at Hauser and Wirth to get some insight on the scope of the work, as well as the importance of having a presence in the Southern Hemisphere. Check out the video and look out for more from our experience at Zona Maco and Mexico soon.

Twenty teams are challenged to make short films in 48 hours using micro-four-thirds cameras

During the recent Vail Film Festival Olympus challenged 20 teams of young filmmakers to shoot and edit a short film using only Olympus PEN E-PL2 cameras and lenses—a great way to show-off how powerful their high-end, compact cameras really are. A creative set of rules challenged the teams with using the cameras’ built-in art filters as well as forcing them to take in commercial considerations like not showing logos and including slugs for Vail and Olympus. As a guest of the camera-maker, I had the opportunity to observe this process from initial allocation of equipment all the way through to final screening and awards.

While many teams were comprised of Vail locals, some came from as far as California to participate. Experience levels were also varied—high school students, film school graduates, professional skiers and grandparents rounded out the competition. Having a tight plan proved to be a key element as four teams weren’t even able to complete in time and a fifth was not done rendering by the time the deadline hit. That piece, Exit the Snow Dragon directed by Ryan Dunn, was disqualified from the competition but still presented at the screening and turned out to be one of my favorites for its humorous take on the perceived tension between skiers and snowboarders.

Even before the contest kicked off, Bujin Productions stood out as the team to beat, with brotherly duo Austin and Maitland Lottimer (pictured above) asking specific technical questions about the cameras and comparing the answers to details in their well-organized shot list. Their production in the Vail village drew attention from passerby for its grand setup that looked like a professional film shoot. This professionalism wasn’t a veneer, their final short film stood out from the rest for its complex camera work, tight edit and creative post-production. Winning the contest with their short film “Running Colors,” all five members of the team received Olympus PEN E-PL2 kits plus a cash prize.

Team T&A’s Der Burgermeister won honorable mention for their cleverly written comedy about the fallen pop star-cum-mayor of a small Swiss village—Zwiebelberg (which translates to Onion Mountain). The story sees mayor Klaus Lautner traveling to Vail in an effort to save his town from the economic despair wrought by the closing of their famous coo-koo-clock factory.

While the contestants were busy filming, Olympus was also using their own E-PL2s to shoot a documentary about the project. Have a look at that after the jump.