naked barbies, HAMBAMs, and patron silver

i promised nudity and tequila didn’t i?!

well, i make sure to follow through.  actually, make that naked-barbie-with-cockroach-between-legs-atop-animal-skull.  NOW you have an official introduction to the highway 62 art tours….

the weekend was undoubtedly as much of a whirlwind as i expected!  it was INCREDIBLE, overwhelming, inspiring, emotional at times, hallucinogenic at times (naked cockroach barbie was just the beginning), and by 10pm on sunday night, as steve aptly said, “the only damn thing left to do is have another drink!”

steve & ruth had family here all weekend starting wednesday, camping out on the property and helping with preparations.  we spent all day thursday and friday setting up the studio space, moving pieces, and sharing delicious meals every night.  as i walked the dusty path up from my cabin saturday morning at 8:30am, coffee cup in hand, visitors were already starting to arrive for the day.  it didn’t stop all weekend.  highlights, supplemented heavily by photos, included the following:

-        starry-sky, coyote-sung dinners up on the riemans’ porch and courtyard every night, including the biggest artichokes i’ve ever seen, let alone eaten off hand-made dishes.

-        watching an incredible array of people tour the property, become fascinated with pieces, ask questions, pour their emotions on the table.  getting to truly connect and talk in-depth with more fascinating and talented people (and some sure-to-be new friends) than i have in a long time.

-        tony & bobette milici.  i showed up at their house & studio via recommendation by ruth, who told me that tony does raku pottery (a japanese style of pottery that ruth knows i’m obsessed with).  all the other ceramic artists that ruth loves are traditional, simple, 70’s-style earthen potters.  i just about peed my pants when i showed up to a massive quonset hut compound, entirely off-the-grid, where tony was chugging a beer on the front stoop, in front of a 10ft-wide sign hanging from the 2^nd story, that read Bobette in bright red cursive light bulbs.  

tony didn’t leave my side for the next 45 minutes, taking me up to the concrete slab where he had just finished a raku piece.  he’d, moments ago, pulled it out of an old bathtub filled with sawdust (in raku, you remove the piece from the kiln WHILE glowing hot, and put it in a reducing environment, where combustible materials are forced to pull oxygen out of the glazes and clay, leaving behind wild and unpredictable metallic colors.)  he insisted that i MUST come over absolutely any time i want, to get into pottery mischief with him.  then he took me inside…. where i was greeted by a bear’s head mounted on the wall, next to an enormous 8ft-long x 5ft-high black and white polka dot high heel, next to naked cockroach barbie herself.  and that was only the beginning of the barbies.  and did i mention their house and studio spaces are entirely off the grid?  needless to say, i will DEFINITELY be stopping by tony’s to do some pottery asap.

-        tina bluefield’s painting studio.  the woman can paint.  exquisitely.  she is a true talent out here.  her recent work involves more abstract washes of color and is absolutely stunning.  my friend lily had introduced me to her work a while back, and i had fallen in love with a small painting/collage she’d made.  i must have mentioned it a few times, but knew i’d probably never see it in person.  last year at christmas, i opened up the last box in front of me, a gift from my parents, to find that very collage.  i burst into tears.  i was so shocked and blown away to be staring right at it in front of me, but even moreso i was so touched by the gesture from my parents.  it was one of the few belongings i brought out here with me, and it was cling’s favorite perch beside the window.  little did i know, that tina hadn’t been sure i’d ever gotten the piece, let alone liked it.  so when i walked into her studio, met her for the first time, and told her the story, it was enough to give me goosebumps.  as an artist, there’s probably nothing more powerful than connecting with someone who was so deeply moved, for whatever reason, by your work.  it was a beautiful thing to be a part of.

-        john lauretig and nora lousignot.  THE john, and THE nora.  i could spend an entire blog introducing these two, who have quickly become some of my closest friends here.  but for now, suffice it to say that john is a law enforcement ranger in joshua tree, been working for the park service for years all over the country, makes and sells handmade crocheted hats (HAMBAMs… HAnd Made By A Man), and has an alter ego (it really describes his personality best) in which he is a rock and roll legend, Johnny Victor.  nora is one of the most naturally creative and talented people i’ve met, a brilliant mathematical mind-turned artist, who met john in hawaii, and now has churned out everything from beautiful pottery and clay sculpture, to deeply poignant paintings, to elaborate cactus gardens and now handmade purses sewn from myriads of salvaged fabrics and materials.  she and john are very likely the most thoughtful, welcoming, and generous people you’ll ever come across.  i was lucky enough to meet the two of them through my best friend lil (the one who introduced me to this whole place), and now i can’t ever get enough of them.  they hosted a joint show, at their wondrous house, with nora’s creations alongside, of course, hundreds of Johnny Victor’s HAMBAMs. 

        

-        a special early evening reception at two adjacent galleries in j-tree: the red arrow & JTAG (the latter a collaborative gallery where steve displays some of his work, and which is owned by a wonderful friend and artist himself, fred).  tim easton, a local singer-songwriter, strummed a guitar from the back of a pickup, while many were schmoozing and nibbling inside the red arrow, where deborah martin’s hauntingly amazing realist paintings of abandoned wonder valley homesteads were on exhibit. 

-        saturday night circus and after-party under the stars and in a massive converted big top barn.  i showed up with my friend matt, somehow recognized the first 4 people i ran into (pretty much the 4 people i know in town), and then immediately stumbled upon a massive photoshoot, where scandalously-clad humans in various wild outfits were posing with a giant pair of silver sequined angel wings (7ft wingspan) in front of an abandoned freight car.  spotlights, disco lights, everywhere.  stepping into the barn the scene only got stranger (slash better).  the first person i ran into was a man in a giant spandex transformer-like unisuit with a full HD television screen playing psychedlic animation across his abdomen, and a silver 2ft-long battery pack on his back that shot 3 fluorescent green laser beams up onto the ceiling as he danced.  nope, this was not a costume party. never, sober (until of course, i found out there were $2 beers), have i felt like i was on so many drugs.  it was amazing.

  

-        the weekend-capping event:  sunday night dinner & festivities in steve’s woodshop.  it started years ago as steve & ruth gathered their fellow artists together to have a drink and put their feet up after the tours were over.  but now, it has morphed into a full-on 40-person potluck and party, complete with a full bar, and open-air guitar singing.  steve’s margaritas are, without a doubt, the epicenter of the night.  ruth cooked a feast, including pork with spicy tomato sauce and spiked with chocolate.  everyone gathered around the woodshop tables and spilled out in the courtyard to recount stories from the weekend, and share their love for each other and this incredible desert community.

       

all in all, steve & ruth sold (i’m guessing, but am not sure) roughly $20-22,000 worth of art.  ruth was cooking pork for 5 days.  the two of them were on their feet all weekend, and still were the life of the party sunday night.  over the course of two days, we had hundreds of visitors come through the property and studio from places as far away as germany and austria.  some people’s minds were blown.  some couldn’t speak.  some cried.  many snuck onto my porch to sit down and take it all in.  it’s impossible to overstate how overwhelming an experience it is just to be here amidst the art and the landscape.  its a feeling that, every moment, i try not to take for granted.  

at one point on sunday afternoon, i was in the studio talking to a charming woman named phillis, who i’ve now met a few times and know well.  i was gushing over just how happy i was, how impossible it all is to articulate, when steve walked over.  she made a comment about how absolutely lucky i am to be working with him, and how lucky he must feel to have me.  for a moment we were like an awkward high school couple, unsure who should, and how to, respond.  finally steve turns and looks at me, smiles, and then says to phillis, “yeah….we’re in love..”

it was hands-down my favorite moment of the weekend. 
 

enceladus’ geysers: art meets science… and i meet another steve

*** DISCLAIMER:  this post is LONG and BORING.  read at your own risk.  i promise tequila and nudity in the next one.***

last thursday was our playday.

steve, ruth, and i piled into their subaru forester with a couple trader joe’s freezer bags and ice blocks, and cruised on out of our high desert cradle down into the civilized world.  at the second stoplight as we’re parked alongside a bald tattoed man in a 4WD truck, steve says, “wanna see me drag race this car??  watch this.”  ruth rolls her eyes.  “remember the bad old days ruth??” steve continues.  “ohhhhhh i remember them all too well deary…” concedes ruth, as she puts a protective coat of clear nail polish over her bright purple sparkly toenails (no joke).  she then tells me how obsessed he was with racing anything that was possible.  he’d race VW buses, he’d race to the toilet, they bought a hobie cat to take some relaxing sails off the coast, but instead steve spent every second racing anything else in the harbor that moved (or didn’t move, he’d just pretend).  it was obvious that the day’s plans had made steve excited and nostalgic before we even left home.

we were taking a special visit to artcenter college of design, in pasadena, the graduate program where steve got his degree in industrial design.  steve and ruth are some of their most treasured alumni, and not only because they believe so passionately in what the school is doing (and they have donated money as well), but i learned on this trip that steve was an incredibly talented automobile designer, having worked in his dad’s autoshop for years and designed or built innovative cars and engines for fun.  i even just learned he raced three times, twice in cars he built himself, in the BAJA 1000, an endurance race from ensenada to la paz.  artcenter is reknowned for its transportation design program (consistently working on projects for major clients like BMW), and is also arguably at the very top of the industrial design world.  but what’s most inspiring about the school is their focus on quality craftsmanship and real-world problems rather than strictly theory.  in fact, they were the first art school to be given NGO status by the UN, because they were so active in promoting positive social change and improving people’s lives.

anyway, steve has talked about artcenter ever since i’ve met him, and i was so excited to finally see the place.  the purpose of the trip was to attend a private viewing and reception of a new exhibit in their gallery that was set to open the next day.  the exhibit was the third in a special series done by their curator, steve nowlin, which was, coincidentally, focused on blending art and science.

up my alley, alley?

i think so.

(apologies... i couldn't take photos at either exhibit, so these are photos of photos)

it was called WORLDS, and blended work by both artists and scientists to shed light on various perspectives and understandings of earth in relation to the heavens, the universe, everything else.  actually, the president of artcenter, lorne buchman, had come out to steve’s for lunch the previous week and i’d gotten to meet him.  he was utterly confused, but also (i’m telling myself at least) intrigued, by my supplanting to the desert to apprentice with steve, after finishing a medical phd.  (actually, steve told me later that lorne was also jealous, and wanted the apprenticeship position.)  lorne thought it all too much of a coincidence that their curator at artcenter, steve nowlin, had been fixated on the intersection of art & science for 15 years now.  not to mention, pasadena, with its world-renowned art and science institutions often collaborating, has prided itself as the “city of art + science” for a long time, and had an annual festival going on at the moment.

the opening of steve nowlin’s exhibit WORLDS was timed so that it would also be a part of this larger festival in pasadena.  so lorne invited us to a special pre-opening of the gallery last thursday evening with a wine reception and some famous artcenter alums.  he also set us up a meeting with steve nowlin earlier that evening, so i could be introduced, and so all of us could get a private tour of the gallery before the reception.  

i mean, seriously… it just never ceases to overwhelm me how lucky i am to know steve and get to pal around with him.

steve and ruth excitedly used the invite as an excuse to make it a playday in pasadena.  there was also an exhibit going on at the huntington museum there, on a famous woodworker named sam maloof, who steve both knew and greatly admired, so he was eager to see it.  we drove in, went out for sushi at their favorite little spot there, then spent the afternoon at the huntington before heading over to artcenter for the rest of the evening.

   

the sam maloof exhibit alone was enough to make my day.  seriously!   sam was a groundbreaking furniture maker, known for bringing exquisite craftsmanship and sculptural elements into woodworking in the 50's through 70s.  his pieces were collected by US presidents, celebrities, and art connoisseurs across the globe, and he was given the “Genius Grant” in 1985 by the John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation.  however, the exhibit, titled “the house that sam built”, was focused on his house, his art collection, as a metaphor for the incredible art community in southern california that he helped create.  the exhibit included many pieces of his own furniture, but more importantly a variety of work (sculpture, watercolor, ceramics, textiles, and enamel) from 35 artists in his close circle of friends, who were all living in the pomona valley post-WWII.  it was a stunning illustration of how the rich networks of influences and exchanges between artists in their group of friends helped formed the LA art scene.

what i dug the most, was that the show subtly highlighted how overlapped craft and fine art can be.  it’s rare these days to see the two side-by-side in a museum setting, yet in this exhibit it worked so fluently, drawing attention to the aesthetic conversation between the different objects.  and in many cases, the ceramic piece, quietly sitting on a hand-sculpted endtable, far out-shadowed the famous painting hanging on the wall behind it.  part of what inspired me to work with metal jewelry in the first place, was a love of jewelry not just as a material or functional object, but as an evocative sculptural form.  i still wonder how far i can go with that before the concept feels exhausted.  and ultimately, even after a short time with steve, i know i’ll be exploring other forms of art to get at something deeper.  but it was an inspiring message to see just how powerful the piece can be when you blur those functional/sculptural boundaries.  and sam maloof insisted on deliberately maintaining direct relationships with his clients.   somewhere in the exhibit i wrote down an explanation he was was quoted giving:

“i want to be able to work a piece of wood into an object that contributes something beautiful and useful to everyday life.  and i want to do this for an individual i can come to know as a friend.  i want that person to know that it was made just for him.  and that there is satisfaction and enjoyment in the object for both of us.”

 

from the huntington, we made our way through their beautiful botanic gardens, and across the city up into the artcenter campus.  steve toured me around the machine shops and studios and labs designed to manufacture things in ways i never thought were possible.  a young student was in one room, controlling a robot in another room, who was printing, in 3D, an entire motorcycle.  it was like being on another planet, or ours 30 years in the future.  fitting for the main exhibit we were about to see.

we then met steve nowlin, chatted for a bit, and got to enter the gallery where WORLDS was on display, just as the final technicians were straightening glitches in film reels and power cords.  the exhibit was incredible.  there were beautiful, large-format, black and white photographs of rocks from earth, set on a black background so they looked like photos of meteors.  in front of them, in silhouetted display cases, were pieces of meteors, looking like rocks from the earth. there were galileo’s hand-drawn images of the moon next to NASA-generated photographs of the surface of enceladus (one of saturn’s moons).  it was all designed to contrast our imagined narratives of the world beyond earth, with the mind-blowing realities revealed by modern science. 

“if from our current perspective, for example, it seems incredible to accept with any plausibility the story of uranus, ancient greek god of the sky who arose from a cosmic primordial soup to sire enceladus, the part-human part-dragon source of volcanic fires in mount aetna, how incredible is it to know with a far greater certainty that enceladus is also the sixth-largest of 62 sibling moons of saturn, a planet in a solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago in a galaxy 100,000 light years across in a universe of hundreds of billions of such galaxies.  enceladus is a frozen ball concealing an ocean of liquid water that erupts through its ice crust into space through massive geysers, literally running rings around its custodial planet.  and, enceladus may just be gestating organic life beneath its tantalizing watery shell.”  (writes steve in the exhibit’s brochure.)

aside from addressing a provocative topic using work by both artists and scientists (which could have been enough in itself), the real brilliance of the exhibit was the way it was displayed, and concepts and perspectives were juxtaposed, in order to leave a truly lasting impression.  it was the first time i really wanted to go home and read about planets for the next 3 weeks, and i still haven’t stopped thinking about it.  at the end of the tour, i finally got the nerve to start asking steve nowlin questions, and talk about the exhibit and art/science in general.  i don’t recall many times in my life feeling passionate about science itself.  about literally molecules or hypotheses or DNA.  but there are plenty of people who do.  so probably not a good idea for me to be a scientist, eh?  well, the ways the subject impacts humanity have continually pulled me back to the field, and the gut belief that there are aspects of science and medicine which are absolutely fascinating.  but i rarely pick up a scientific journal and feel the type of emotion and passion i feel working with art.  some who know i have an interest in both things will suggest, “oh, why don’t you make jewelry that looks like cancer cells?”  or “put together a photography exhibit of your microscope images”.  neither one does it for me.  in fact, they are way less appealing than art or science alone. 

in talking with steve nowlin, he seemed to fully agree.  “nowhere in the mind-numbing thicket of pages, texts, diagrams and quizzes was it ever expressed to me that science has a soul.”  but he has been continually drawn, not to what science knows, but to what science, as a human concept, means in our culture.  and how the two disciplines of science and art profoundly need each other.  “art and science as left-brain and right-brain is an ancient dualism—the conversation between intuition and reason, and emotion and intellect.  there are examples of it throughout history.  and i don’t think it’s been any more vital than it is now.” 

so can we make anything of this? 

how do you effectively bring these worlds together? 

well, on one end of the spectrum, you have science museums.  these seem to have it wrong a large majority of the time.   they are stuffed way too full with facts and information, in a way that’s not stimulating to the human brain, and you end up leaving without remembering a great deal, or feeling much more inspired.  and yet we talk so frequently about needing to encourage our children to pursue science and math, and how they’ve lost an interest in these subjects.  on the other end of the spectrum, we often see things in science that remind us of art.  some students will track the fluorescent movements of drosophila over time, merge the images, and it will coincidentally look like a jackson pollock painting.  that’s great in it’s own right, but as for bridging the two disciplines, that doesn’t do it either.  there’s nothing deeper there. 

steve, as the completely autonomous director and curator of the williamson gallery at artcenter, has successfully managed to make a career out of solving this problem.  what he strives for in his exhibits (which have involved collaborations between ArtCenter, NASA, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Engineering departments at Caltech) is something that falls in the middle of the two extremes above, that’s really powerful to the viewer.  he defines it simply as contemporary art that stirs meaning.  maybe it doesn’t present as many facts, but you forget those anyway.   the bigger point, it seems, is to use the power of art, as a medium that can deeply connect to another human, to fuel the mysteries and the discoveries, to shed light on new perspectives, and to bring to surface the emotional and the profound.   and in doing so, it leaves a lasting impression of how compelling and vital the dialogues between artistic and scientific processes are.

“we commonly describe the ways of science and the ways of art by using terms filled with tension and conflict, as if the two domains reside at polar ends of a spectrum.  one wonders, though, which is more profoundly aesthetic: nature sculpted with divine purpose; or nature sculpted by random encounters with forces of energy that we, by virtue of our privileged chemistry, experience as beautiful.  if the latter, the aesthetic lies not in the shape of things, but in us—we, the lucky finders of beauty where it wasn’t meant to be.”

 

i’m still trying to understand where my perspective fits into the picture, but it’s been intriguing to have all these thoughts mulling on the backburner.  after that full day of stretching my brain, i was damn excited for the drive back up into our sandy perch, and to get home to the hi-dez.    

 

all week we have been busy bees, finishing some smaller, more affordable pieces (i’ve been making birds and more birds, and working on an enormous piece called the birdhouse that isn’t yet finished, but which i'm SO excited about!), and eagerly setting up the studio for the art tours this weekend.  we finally put up the two composite pieces i worked on as initial welding studies (scroll down), and the influx of visitors and family has already begun.  given the economic state most are in, who knows if we’ll sell much, but regardless, i’m so excited i may pee my pants!!  seeing this art community come together in all its love and quirkiness makes my chest tingle.  wish you all could be here.

in the meantime, for anyone in the LA area, it’s sure to be an amazing two weekends up here, and it goes without saying that for anyone else interested in owning a piece of steve’s work, at any time, all you have to do is ask…