Dem Bones

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Cheese or Pepperoni?

Just kidding. The former pizza joint on 15th & Farwell (east side of street) will reopen in mid-January '09, not as another pizza or tattoo parlor, but as Green Gallery East, brought to you steaming hot by gallerist/artist Riepenhoff who knows how to serve up a satisfying slice of art. The debut event will feature the work of David Robbins, described online as “international,” and a former laborer at the Andy Warhol Factory. He’s more than that, so I’m looking forward to his show.



The modest modernist structure Green is re-doing had slipped into severe disrepair, so hey, on the street that developer Boris Gokhman (New Land Enterprises) is holding hostage, an art gallery sure trumps a tanning spa and yet another soaring condo. Across Farwell is the Pasta Tree, and to the north, the fab Maharaja eatery, the Beehive Beauty Salon, and well, a few blocks north of that is Brady Street itself, and even further north, the invova/Kenilworth art mecca. Did I mention “Mr. Shoe?” He’s a neighbor of Green East too.

I’m hard pressed to think of a better location for an art adventure. Stroll out my front door, round the corner and there it is, in all of its one-story glory. Because it’s a former drive-up place, the parking should be adequate. This is after all, the eastside where tempers rise during the on-going battle of who gets what. Hoof it, bus it, bike it. We’ll be in a new year with a new president when the gallery opens. Suddenly 2009 seems downright hopeful. Galleries come and go, but Riepenhoff & his youthful crew have devoted fans.

It will be interesting to see who actually visits the space, set in a diverse area of the well-heeled and down-in-the-heels, and all points in between. Imagining that uber-condo types will experience it, is a bit of a stretch, but perhaps they’ll stretch their minds and consider something other than boring pretty pictures for their walls, put in place by interior designers who don’t have a clue what art is. One Riepenhoff idea that I hope doesn’t go away, is his “Riepenhoff experience,” a wonderful tree-house style small installation. Climbing up the ladder and peering in, is, in a word, sensational.

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A Poem As Lovely As A Tree

The economic crash has hit the world big time, and the world of art is no exception.



I found quite a bit of comfort at Dean Jensen Gallery where Joan Backes’ work is on display until November 22. Stroll to the back of the long narrow space and stand in front of her video, “Oak Tree, One Year (2008).” It’s eleven minutes of heaven, as if you were on her property in Massachusetts observing the seasonal changes of a magnificent oak The oak is the state tree of Iowa from whence I hail and there are far fewer now than when I was a kid and sat beneath their leafy confines. For $1,000 the eleven minutes could be mine to take home, just in case the dreaded wilt wipes away the last of the greats. This filmmaking is art at its finest. It marks time, puts the world in perspective, and for delicious moments, made this viewer forget all else.

If you are a “tree hugger type,” don’t go to the gallery with expectations of great and grand environmental statements. Her work is subtle; it suggests rather than insists. A trio of trees from 2008 (each referencing New England), are painted on panels, but they are slices of trunks, minutely detailed, and up close the details become wonderful miniature landscapes. Rising 8’ skyward and varying in width, they define the gallery’s entrance and introduce further depictions of trees, including one from this state, “Tree, Wisconsin (2004).” Fifteen photographs make it clear that Backes is multi-talented and determined to explore trees in all their glory. The concept is anything but ordinary.



Paper, the by-product of trees, carries her point home, or rather to the “Newspaper House,” a cube for entering. Constructed of diverse folded squares of global newspapers, it is the center piece of the exhibition and is an inside/outside experience, every child-adult’s dream of a magical place perfect for the ultimate escape. I found myself reading the snippets of folded squares (obsessively) plastering the exterior: “the stock market took a beating last week,” “stand-up comedy in America is not, for the most part….,” and (gruesomely), “the deeper sores may have…” The house wears a skin of words (too many to absorb), but inside the sanctum waits another world of tiny dioramas, not unlike those in natural history museums. ”Elm” (light, vellum, laser and hand cut paper 2008), memorializes the elms that were struck down by disease in the 50s & 60s, not only in Milwaukee, but across our nation. They’ve all disappeared in my hometown, but I remember those lofty citadels that shaded our streets, sheltered the birds, and gave substance to each and every day. When they died, time didn’t stop, but it sure did change.

The leaves will be gone or clogging our gutters when Jensen Gallery launches their answer to the economic downturn. “Big, Big Bangs/Small, Small Bucks” opens December 5 thru January 24 in the year 2009. Nothing will be priced over $750, and (at this writing), lower than $200. No, it’s not a Milwaukee style rummage sale. Artists from here (for example, Nick Frank and numerous other Wisconsin-based talents), will join with global “almost greats,” one-hundred strong, in an attempt to stanch the flow of bad karma in a shredded economy. Bad karma aside, in many ways their rallying round, speaks of an ongoing respect for Dean Jensen who for so many years has supported so many artists. And he’s done it with style and grace. This event will be no exception.

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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

‘Memba This?

Possibly the last remaining Art Muscle t-shirt in M’waukee? Born at 9th & National in the days when we had a great big beautiful art publication, this shirt is from “Fruit Of The Loom.” At one time, AM’s shirt inventory included long-sleeved versions. Art Muscle also sold pocket protectors, buttons and coffee mugs, and oh yeah, the shirt was available in black with white letters, or white with black letters. Just so you know.

Wearing one of these t’s meant you were with it, hip & hot. A fellow blogger wrote that he’d personally order four, if only they were currently available. Actually he bought the last remaining t-shirt before AM closed their doors. “I’d have driven 50 miles to get one,” he admits, though it’s unclear if he still has his.

If anyone out there still has an ART MUSCLE shirt, write Stella Cretek pleeze. In the meantime, you might want to consider a Vital Source t. To wear one is to be hip & hot.

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Here Pussy, Pussy

Gene Evans made the AV section of the Onion’s August 21-27 edition. You may recall he’s the co-proprietor of Luckystar Studio, formerly of Vliet St. Bridget Griffith Evans, the far nicer and more talented of the two, is moving with her grouchy spouse to a new location on Mitchell St., where they will concentrate on their respective careers. In the Q&A Onion interview, Evans says “They (i.e., artists he has to deal with) can be such pussies,” and goes on to grouse that “they can be prima donnas,” and then adds the words “demanding,” and other snippets indicating he hates being in an art kitchen populated with pussies. Well, this is hardly news. Evans is known for his complaints, though at times, he and Mike Brenner seem to be wrestling for media coverage. That said, Brenner takes the hot cakes when it comes to who sez what, besides which, he’s currently working on his MBA at UWM. After getting lots of media space by claiming they’ll never ever run another gallery, Gene & Bridget were open for October Gallery Night @ their Mitchell St. digs. These two have been around town, that’s for sure. Look for their work to pop up almost anywhere.

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Tuesday, November 18, 2008

You Say Potato, I Say Potatoe

A few years ago when Whole Foods sprung up on the west end of North Avenue, their PR person put out a call for local artists. What this usually means when a new business materializes, is that artists are expected to hang their work for free. It’s a kind of art-as-wallpaper concept.

Anyway, Mike Brenner (the former proprietor of Hotcakes Gallery) took the bait and arranged for a bona-fide exhibit of his gallery artists. They failed to pass muster with the powers that be, i.e. Whole Foods deemed the work a bad fit for their particular product. Susceptibletoimages.com picked up on the story and ran with it.

What a difference a few years make. Recently, while shopping for things I don’t need, a group of paintings caught my eye as I was about to take the down escalator to the parking garage. Most folks would never know they were there, tucked in a dead-end corner just beyond a display case hawking hemp hats and plastic water bottles. They looked quite a bit like paintings Mike Brenner might have had in his defunct gallery, though of far lesser quality. In any event, they weren’t paintings of organic tomatoes and green peppers. The tag near the grouping identified them as the work of someone in the store, a “Team” member, who perhaps was laboring in the frozen food department. I couldn’t make sense of the artist’s name, but I swear it translated from Spanish into something akin to “Devil Lobster.” I could be wrong.

Okay, so I’m near the parking garage downstairs and a pea-green “Call for Artists” poster catches my attention. It promises the artists that thousands of people monthly would view the artwork, that there would be an opening reception catered by Whole Foods’ in-store chef, and that the exhibit would be promoted in the monthly calendar, etc. It didn’t identify the three areas where the artists would have their work displayed, but I’d seen one of the areas and believe me it wasn’t exactly a high-traffic zone. I was the only one there, and that was sheer coincidence.

Artists who want to take this bait can pick up an application at the store’s Customer Service desk or online at http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com.

Just imagine how a show at Whole Foods would look on your resume. It’s not everyone that gets to exhibit near bunches of asparagus and heaps of organic fruit. Oh, I forget to mention that the exhibit opportunities include a chance to sell your pieces directly to the customers as they rush by.

On the fun side of life: A late October sign on the inside of a door at the downtown M & I Bank advises: For security reasons, please remove your Halloween mask before entering the bank.

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