'Draw Out' Performance by Kristina Lenzi and Gretchen Reynolds.

Several features can characterize works of Performance Art. One is duration. Performance artists often (not always) push the boundaries of their audience’s patience, creating a corner in time that proceeds according to the work’s inner tempo. The artist’s stamina can also be pushed – to exhaustion. Another feature that can so easily accompany works of performance art is a binary dynamic created between two participants. Here I think of the works of Gilbert and George, Abramavic and Ulay, Valie Export and Peter Weibel, Chris Burden and his anonymous assistant.

Such was the case on Friday evening (March 21^st) at Artspace, where Kristina Lenzi and Gretchen Reynolds sat at opposing easles, drawing each other for over six hours during Gallery Stroll. Facing each other at 180 degree angles, one could have assumed that the easels were attached to each other. In fact, the artists studied each other’s faces through a small gap between the boards and, with charcoal, graphite, colored and highlighter chalk undertook facial studies of each other – drawing eachother.

The resulting drawings were displayed on adjacent walls behind each artist, serving as a backdrop to the central action. The results varied from the sublime to the ridiculous. Some achieved such life-like naturalism, that the subjects almost started breathing. Others were rendered with simple contour drawings, or the grand gestures of Willem deKooning. Some placed a realistic eye squarely in the middle of a nest of scribbles, barely decipherable as the structure of a face. And towards the end of the marathon, meditative concentration dissolved into childsplay and portraits descended into charicatures, revealing disfigured proportions and Picasso-like monsters.

Forays into these drawing styles demonstrated the range of each artist, both of whom have taught drawing for several years at institutions throughout the valley.

The results also invited comparison. Who was more skilled? Who posessed a steadier hand? Who was the master of naturalism, who was quicker to abandon the torch and embrace the lighter side of the discipline?

While some observers are trained “not to judge” the dynamic of one artist pitted against another invariably emerged for this critic. Did the coupling mirror a scenario of rivalry, which can so easily emerge between partners of any kind? Was this a competition? Or, was this a paean to cooperation, of working in tandem and symbiosis, in the true spirit of partnership? As much as the arrangment was a ‘closed system’, it was also entirely complementary, as the personal styles of each artist quietly unfolded, while spectators meandered through the event. Perhaps in this sense, the performance more closely approximated M.C.Escher’s iconic work from 1948 Drawing Hands.

'I Was Not Concerned.' Gay Marriage in Utah.

Michelle Mumford's comments on the rhetoric surrounding the legalization of gay marriage in Utah (Op-ed, 2/15) are well taken. Words such as ‘apartheid’ and ‘bigotry’ are indeed strong and her experience in California is deplorable. The question of their accuracy is a different matter. I would think that these labels derive from a legal and legislative landscape that has still not decriminalized sodomy and has dragged its feet to protect a group that “gives them pause” from housing and employment discrimination, or include them in hate crime legislation. I would argue that these deeds go beyond semantics and verbal abuse. They impact the safety of ordinary Americans and their families. They do very much criminalize their actions (76-5-403), and limit their ability to partake in ordinary civic life, such as health and inheritance benefits. If this is not the essence of “apart-hood” or apartheid, it is certainly the beginning.

Another historical parallel can be found in the early days of Nazism. One of the first things the Nazis did when they came to power was to wade into the bedrooms of ordinary Germans, and outlaw marriages and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews. (Utah leaders who argue that they are representing the vox populi will be interested to learn that the Nurenberg Laws of 1935 had a petition of over a million signatures supporting the measures).

It is because of such laws, that we today think of the Jews and the Nazis as separate entities in apart-hood, like antagonists in a moral play: the winners and the losers, the bullies and the victims. But in reality, they were once one. They spoke the same language and shared the same beds – and children. They were integrated members of society, yet became a separate class through the laws that were passed. As we now know, these laws had a domino effect in Germany, and led to some of the most egregious crimes in history.

But it is worth considering that the same can be said for many other conflicts, which began with marital and sexual restrictions, to the point where one might argue that they could serve as signals or predictors in the rise of Fascism. History has shown that no society – however righteous – is immune to this cancer. We have only to remember the tragedies in Armenia, Cambodia, Rwanda and Darfur.

Moreover, lest we forget that we live in a state where Americans have already been targeted and incarcerated into labor camps, at the Topaz Internment Camp near Delta. Given the tendency for these ideas to run amok, why open the door?

One of the few blessings to emerge from the Holocaust was the voice of evangelical Pastor Martin Niemöller, who famously wrote:

When Hitler attacked the Jews, I was not a Jew, and therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions, and I was not concerned. Then, Hitler attacked me and the Protestant Church – and there was nobody left to be concerned.

The Pastor’s message makes clear the capacity in ALL of us to turn a blind eye, because “I was not concerned.” Our nation is already on shakey ground. Americans are divided between the insured and the uninsured, the documented and the undocumented, and still the black and the white. Do we really need more division and strife? I ask readers of The Tribune, along with the legislators of our State: who among us is so righteous so as not heed Pastor Niemöller’s warning? Our laws and our leaders are the only stopgaps we have against the tyrany of evil – and the capacity in all of us to say “I was not concerned.” Why not learn from the mistakes of others? If we don’t, we may be haunted by that other ominous warning from George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Connie Borup : A Natural Idiom.

             New works by Connie Borup opening January 17th at Phillips Gallery once again demonstrate the power of resurrection. Not just the renewal of nature, but the regenerating endurance of Borup’s idiom. Working in oils on medium-sized canvasses, Borup’s subject continues to be nature, and how little we really know about it. Not only are we treated to numerous paeans in the finest of details, but are constantly reminded of how many visual surprises are hidden in the most unsuspecting of places.

             At the heart of Borup’s work lies a fascination with natural process and the cycles of nature: the ying and yang of life. Rich with pathetic fallacy, we are privy to a world of tumult and repose, brutality and recovery. Exemplary is ‘Water Journey’, which shows a gently sloping beach, half bathed in water. The fluid is completely transparent, giving us a direct view to the riverbed and its mottled lodgers. These consist of an assortment of smooth and rounded pebbles that are strewn across the waterbed, landing in chance positions like dice on a gameboard. The ovoid forms are contrasted by several sharp twigs, which jut into the scene at odd angles, adding agitation where once there was none.

             ‘Watery Resting Place’ presents a similar scenario as the tangled branches of an overflowing shrub pour out over a waterway and drop its leaves onto the water’s surface. As they drift along, some float away while others stay and idle, perhaps as a parable to the unpredictably of life. Not only does this foliage guard darker recesses of the underbrush, but serves as a harbinger of color, in creamy beiges and greens. In addition, leaf shapes lose their depth, becoming elliptical and lacrymal to evoke Japanese screens. Whereas some of Borup’s works use water as a window onto subterranean worlds, it here serves to reflect a gloomy, overcast sky. 

                Borup’s images are often situated at transitional locations, where water meets land and adaptation is required. In particular, the artist’s iconography feeds off expired plant life and the resulting decay: the retreat of leaf color and the draining of pigment. Here, stems and branches become splintered and prickly, yet are swiftly remedied by the healing properties of water as the source of all life. In these instances, the harsher effects of nature are mitigated by the interplay of light and water and its dual role as window and mirror. Such is the case in ‘Dancing Reeds’, where a hillside of reeds has been ravaged by a long, dry summer. All of the plants have expired, their leaves bent in cruel contortions, forming peach and cream arches. In the foreground, a still blue pool reflects the plants, translating their curved leaves into jagged, lyrical patterns. The pool’s pale blue and grey hues contrast the warm brick colors of the red rock background. A cluster of plants emerge from the middle of this puddle, showing a Nietzschean perseverence in the fine green sprigs sprouting from their base.

               A similar resoluteness is seen in ‘Glassy Echoes’, where a dried bush defies gravity by growing horizontally above a body of water. Hovering just inches above the surface, we marvel at the architectural tenacity of this achievement Most of the curved branches grow skyward, while a few are downturned, stroking the water like fingers. Bleached by the weather and drained of all pigment, most are chalky white, while a warmer orange hue clings to a few remaining sticks. These weave their way in and out of the lighter twigs, forming a lattice through which the blue-grey water can be seen. While the actual branches posess a gently curving shape, they adopt a more irregular motif in their reflection. Here I can’t help thinking that the interplay of water, wind and wood not only mirrors our own existential predicaments, but at times, the folly of human endeavour in general.    

           Perhaps the most dramatic of this series is ‘Tree Reflection’, where the view is limited exclusively to a reflection. Pictured is a tree of uncertain origin, with branches twisted into the paths of Rorschach inks, inviting prophetic interpretations. Forming an intricate lace not unlike a splatter painting, this is set against the ripples of a small periwinkle pool. Saturating our vision, Borup has chosen a firey palette of crimson reds and oranges for the tree’s reflection. This conjures up sun flares, and the violent alchemy that set the landscapes of Southern Utah in motion. As we experience the tree in reflection form only, we are left to speculate on the original object that inspired this doppelgänger. As such, the work invites parallels with other reflecting pools, and their capacity to misrepresent and deceive. Cautionary tales which expound on the illusory nature of life, such as Plato’s Cave, also come to mind. More reassuring is the use of the mirror by Perseus, which functioned as an aid to overcome demons. 

             Just as we think we have Borup pegged, ‘Pond Disguised by Leaves’ sends our thoughts into new directions. In this work, water plays a dual role of mirror and window, while incorporating new elements of the environment. Here we see a shallow pond, bordered by two masses of tiny, lanceolate leaves. These flank the water, like golden curtains on either side of a stage. The water inside is still and reflective - like a sheet of glass. In its mirror, a bright grey sky is captured. This is contrasted with the dark silhouette of a nearby tree. Where the shadow falls, a view to the pond bottom is seen, carpeted with pebbles and sludge. Still and cold, this is the birthplace of northern mythology, where Ophelia was laid to rest, and where the Lady of the Lake retreats.

           Works such as these not only remind us of the nuances and complexities that can be found in the most unassuming of nooks and crannies. More importantly, they expand the parameters of Utah landscape painting which, subject to market forces, often descends into cliché. Replete with mirages and shadows, mirrors and windows, screens and symbols, Borups works reveal secret worlds – both real and imagined – that inspire a renewed return to nature – and art.

 'Waterscapes' will be on display from January 17 to February 14, 2014 at Phillips Gallery, 

444 East, 200 South, Salt Lake City, UT 84111.

Is Modesty Culture only Skin Deep? Photographs by Katrina Barker Anderson.

               Not since Arnold Friberg painted the Queen of England has a Mormon artist made so many inroads onto the international stage. On Nov 28, an article in HuffPost Canada featured Salt Lake City photographer and artist, Katrina Barker Anderson. Barker Anderson is the brainchild behind ‘Mormon Women Bare’ – a photography project and website showcasing Mormon women in their birthday suits. The works not only feature nude Mormon women, but champion the notion of their imperfect and unidealized natural bodies. Ravaged by pregnancy, genes, time and gravity, we encounter the female form in all its shapes and sizes: twisted, torn and beautiful. The works are about as honest and forthright as one can get.

              The artist, along with her sitters, seek to ‘reclaim the body’ against the shackles of the beauty, fashion and sports industries, which impose unattainable ideals onto girls and women. This places Barker Anderson’s work squarely among other feminist artists throughout the world, (from Paula Modersohn-Becker to Jenny Saville and Jen Davis) who have addressed similar deamons, such that by now, the genre is quite saturated.

              Truly groundbreaking is how Barker Anderson’s work diverges from her contemporaries and predecessors, by specifically targeting LDS ‘modesty culture.’ According to her website and well-crafted artist’s statement, modesty culture instills a sense of shame and self-doubt onto Mormon girls and women, and permeates college campusses as much as self-narratives. By voluntarily participating in the photographer’s project, declaring their bodies to be ‘beautiful, strong and resilient,’ the sitters upend the above equation, and adhere to a litany of women who have made similar statements of empowerment. In the context of Mormonism, the risk of censure - and ex-communication – is tangible, and makes their courage all the more moving.

              In Utah, modesty culture has many ugly heads. Among them is the tendency to lump ALL nudes together, and dismiss them all as pornographic. After all, it was not so long ago that the BYU Museum of Art allowed for August Rodin’s internationally beloved sculture The Kiss to be censored with a bed sheet during a travelling show. I encountered similar attitudes at the University of Utah, when I lectured on the subject of ‘Nudes in Art’, and tried to explore what viewers could learn from other naked bodies, besides pornography.

            Modesty culture is also promulgated by our secular institutions; it would be unfortunate if we did not see Barker Anderson’s work supported by the UMFA, BYU or LDS Museum, nor reviewed in the ever-shrinking Tribune, or 15 Bytes. Institutional chasteness only promotes a vicious cycle, and keeps Utahns ignorant of a whole world of cultural production that is profoundly edifying, yet neither sexual nor pornographic, and that international audiences have benefitted from for centuries. HuffPost Canada has shown Utahns that we have a bold and talented contemporary artist in our midst: something we should all celebrate. Her work is good news for Mormon women – and all our mothers, sisters, daughters. Fist bump to them all! But unless our cultural institutions open up and step up to the educational challenge of embracing Body Art, our experience of other people, other cultures and other generations will be limited, and the reception of such trailblazing work, lukewarm. 

Katrina Barker Anderson's work can be viewed at http://www.mormonwomenbare.com/

Brad Slaugh's 'Feast.'

            At thirty three feet long, Brad Slaugh’s Feast just barely fits into his studio. It may be the most monumental mural drawing created in Utah in recent years (1998). Pieced together from 48 pastel drawings, it is difficult to achieve optimal viewing distance - even in the artist’s sizable studio. But size isn’t everything. Other aspects of this work speak to its ambition – and genuine grandeur. 

            Displayed last month at Poor Yorick’s biannual open house, Feast is not just the artist’s masterpiece. It is a paean to epicurism, and also to Utah. Assembling twelve supersized dinner guests along a makeshift table, the lateral composition and its proximity to the picture plane begs comparison with that other dinner party we all know so well. In contrast to Leonardo’s illusionistic room, Slaugh’s guests are cramped up against a wall, the knots in the veneer screaming of basement rec rooms. Along the left edge, a partial figure in the form of a hand surrepticiously holds out a ham and cheese sandwich. Reminiscent of the Sistine Chapel’s famous ‘Hand of God’ – or perhaps Monty Python’s, it tantalizingly suggests a thirteenth sitter, and flirts with Leonardo’s numerology.

             Beyond this, Feast diverges from The Last Supper in important ways. Slaugh’s dinner guests, for instance, are Everyman. They lack the decorum of the apostles and could be anybody’s uncles and aunts, half-brothers and stepmoms. Clearly, time has not been kind to them. Their flesh hangs from their bones, perhaps in a nod to Lucien Freud or Eric Fishl. Suggesting the sloth that comes from a lifetime of television viewing, they are signifiers of the downtrodden, the aged and the infirm, and every bit as proletariat as Courbet’s peasants.

            Wearing stylistically obsolete clothes, a sense of nostalgia for seventies fashion and furniture emerges. As such, Slaugh pays homage to a generation of folks just ‘making do’ on the fringes of society, trapped in that time machine called Utah. He also toys with their proportions, dwarfing some and enlarging others; creating giants only a Trollhunter could love.

            Appropriately, they are faced with the greatest of consolations: a large meal, and the gastronomic catastrophe laid out in front of them adds an element of jouissance to the composition. The table, propped up like the one in the Merode Altarpiece, displays a cornucopia of processed foods, along with an unconscionable amount of mustard. The gooey and acrid splendor of American condiments flows to but one thing: indigestion. An anathema to Mormon retraint and sensibility, we are but a small step away from Francis Bacon’s open carcasses. And then there’s the ham and cheese sandwich, hardly the stuff of Passover meals.

             Surprisingly, Slaugh informs me that the sitters would self-identify as Mormon. And yet, they challenge the more conventional model, of mission suits and bleached out smiles. This begs the question: are they heirs to the apostles, or perhaps usurpers? As Latter Day Saints, the gospel has fallen to this motley crew to disseminate. Should we be comforted? Concerned? There may be no greater question facing Utahns today.

            While situating this dilemma in modern day Utah, and infusing it with a more universal, tragicomic humanism, Feast becomes Leonardo’s legacy. Unlike the Last Supper, which has been a stable fixture in Milan for half a millenia, Feast is still in search of a home, itself a drifter in the land of Zion. 

Feast can be viewed at a fraction of its real size, at www.bradslaugh.com

Sugarhouse Saint. Marion Rockwood-Johnson and the Rockwood Artist Studios.

              Peering through the chain link fence on 21^St South at 11^th East, one is confronted with raging bulldozers shifting colossal volumes of earth, sloshing concrete and disconnected plumbing pipes. The scene is disorienting. Yet amidst all the filth and chaos of what is known as Salt Lake’s ‘Sugarhole,’ one building has remained unscathed. Rockwood Art Studios is predominantly occupied by twenty-two painters and visual artists, and stands relatively untouched: tenants in tact. The area will soon transform, as condominiums will abut the property on both sides. To the south, a light rail project promises to revitalize business in the area. Yet with all this activity, one can’t help wonder: why is Rockwood still standing ?

            Certainly there was no shortage of speculators vying for the prized property. Flanked on either side by multi-million dollar projects, developers were eager to gut the entire block, and install their own pipe dreams. Yet that was unthinkable to Marian Rockwood- Johnson. At ninety-one, she’s seen buildings come and go along 21^st South.  As scion of a prominent Sugarhouse property family, her father owned nine acres in the ‘Furniture Capital of the West.’ And, with a business degree from the U (Class of ’42) it was business as usual for Marion and her renters. Though several artists panicked when bulldozers broke ground; some even left preemptively, in fear of eviction, Marion kept her ground, reassuring her occupants she had no reason to sell. “Where would we go? Why should we leave? Adding : “These artists are wonderful. They’re happy there. They have a good thing going. Why disturb that?”

              Rockwood-Johnson’s commitment to her tenants is rivaled only by her loyalty to her family legacy. When she was eleven, she remembers how her father, Jullius Apollos (‘JA’) Rockwood, acquired the land in severance from Granite Furniture, his employer of 21 years. With a penchant for property, Marion recalls her mother bemoaning “I can’t trust Daddy when he goes out. He’s always looking for corners to buy.” JA passed away in 1944, entrusting Marion’s mother with the family estate. “Mother wanted the Rockwood name to stay in Sugarhouse” she explains, “out of loyalty to our father.” Complete in 1955 when Marion was 33, decades of property management were thus channeled into ‘Rockwood Furniture Corporation.’ The elimination of parking along 21^st South soon ended the venture, as walk-ins completely dried up. Rockwood struggled to fill its space, and for many years, it remained near-abandoned.

             Connie Borup first saw its potential in the early nineties. Having recently received her MFA from the U, she needed a place to work. “But it was otherwise pretty bare bones.” Borup recalls. “With the Blue Boutique at street level, along with a fortune telling business where gypsy proprietors were squatting, the area was a little shady.” But soon enough, the Rockwood-Johnson family decided to renovate, and in 1999 created purpose-built studios for their tenants. The spaces were rented before the work was complete and in no time, Marion became the building manager and was responsible for everything from plumbing to rent collection.

            In addition to housing established artists such as Borup, Rockwood also fosters newer practitioners. Many are still finding their way by ‘just dabbling’ or have taken up the brush following first and second careers. Such variety often characterizes artist communities, and is heralded by city planners as a catalyst for the revitalization of neglected neighborhoods. Stephen Goldsmith, an Associate Professor in the College of Architecture + Planning at the University of Utah, advocates for the inclusion of artists in urban development. “Artists and art communities play an important role in the health of a city.” he says. “They bring creative energy and vitality to an area, which is unique to that of the developer or property owner.” The brainchild behind Salt Lake’s Artspace, Goldsmith describes a scenario in which everyone benefits. Not only do artist communities fuel collaboration and innovation among themselves, but the effect multiplies. Goldsmith explains how “Artist communities often contain micro-economies. A painter might engage the services of a framer in the same building, or purchase materials from an art supply store, which may result in a gallery exhibition, which generates sales. Participation in a gallery stroll might then lead to restaurant and cinema patronage in the area.” The benefits are manifold.“When creative people come into contact, innovation occurs, which leads to economic development.” Goldsmith says.

            Meri DeCaria, Director of Phillips Gallery, concurs. As one of the oldest galleries in the Intermountain West, Phillips has had a long-standing relationship with Rockwood. “We’ve exhibited several Rockwood artists over the years” she says. But the advantages are not just economic. There is a ripple effect that feeds into the intellectual life of the city. Not only do the works go out into private and corporate collections, but exhibition openings energize the cultural community at large, by attracting practitioners in related disciplines. As well, Phillips plays an educational role, it is visited by groups such as high school students, art appreciation classes and even the UMFA’s ‘Young Benefactor’s Club.’ DeCaria also alludes to a spiritual dimension of the gallery. “People come here to be recharged. To feed their soul. For a breath of fresh air, and for new ideas.”

            As the extended life of Rockwood Art Studios percolates down into the further recesses of the city, it generates unexpected momentum and activity. With this in mind, it would not be inappropriate to heap praise and accolades upon Marion Rockwood Johnson. Yet she prefers a more retiring life behind the scenes and, with an eye on her family legacy, is content to pass the torch onto her sons. As for her tenants, she says simply  “They’re good tenants. They‘re clean and responsible. And we’re just happy to provide a good environment for them.”

Tatsuya Nakatani & Vanessa Skantze at DUNCE.

              It’s been a while since I had the urge to vomit. To turn my insides out, and start messing around with my own entrails. Yet such was the case last Monday at DUNCE, during Tatsuya Nakatani and Vanessa Skantze’s jarring performance.

            Donning a coat of rags consisting of torn scraps of fabric, Skantze teetered through the audience in a seizure-induced stride, until reaching the stage. Proceeding to twitch and convulse, she eventually collapsed, just barely clinging to her paralysis. Abandoned, slivers of percussion eventually stirred her, as Nakatani unfurled his artillery of noisemakers. Emerging slowly, twine-like dreadlocks cast cobweb shadows onto the wall.

            Meanwhile Nakatani unleashed a cacophony of noises evoking nails-on-a-chalkboard, and the opening of the heavens. Laboring on other instruments, he sawed cymbals with violin bows, dragged fingernails along drums, pounded gongs, and delicately tapped temple bells and chimes with chopsticks.

           Skantze’s personae, dredged up from the depths of a primordial soup, thrashed and seized, while teetering on the brink of a cataclysmic abyss. Her pale skin encrusted with paste, was lizard-like and brought to mind the Marat de Sade’s excruciating suffering. Here was a woman who’d lost it all, survived the apocalypse and was clinging to the faintest glimmers of existence, while writhing about in her own chthon.  And when her life-force surged, she sputtered and slashed, gasping for air, as sinews of flesh peeled from her acrid body and shards of mantle swung wildly about.

           Skantze equaled any number of femmes fatales – from the Classical medusa to the medieval witch. Above all Kiki Smith’s iconic ‘Tale” came to mind. Just thirty minutes of this harrowing spectacle left the audience utterly depleted and traumatized to their core.