Riding into Telluride, Durango Herald, May 16, 2008

Jon Bailey and Chad Cheeney’s documentary "Mallethead," from which this photo is taken, will be shown in Telluride’s Mountain Film over Memorial Day weekend.

A 60-mile bicycle journey from Durango through New Mexico to Mancos for seven mountain-biking polo players became the basis for a 19-minute film called "Mallethead." The film debuted last October at a mountain-biking festival in Durango and then played at the Durango Film Festival. An enthusiast saw the movie there and showed it to a key decisionmaker for Mountain Film in Telluride. The result is that the movie will be screened in Telluride over Memorial Day weekend.

The "Mallothead" group poses for a photo.

Not bad for local filmmaker Jon Bailey and his friend and movie-making partner Chad Cheeney. The guys have been playing bike polo for nearly a decade in Durango. They always thought it would be a good subject for a documentary, but hey, who has time to film when you can be whacking a ball with a homemade mallet from a mountain bike?

Bailey and Cheeney decided a trip would be a way to force themselves to focus on the filmmaking. They had the idea for a beginning and an ending of their documentary, but not the middle. So, they just started interviewing their close friends and polo-playing buddies.

"Sometimes it was easy, and sometimes it was a struggle," Bailey said. "People don't like to talk about themselves."

A cameraman shoots footage in a Volkswagon van.

But, everyone was happy to talk about one another, and the film became an exploration of the lives and families of people who just happen to play bike polo. It's about their personalities and what they bring to the game that builds a team.

"We tell the truth," Bailey said. "Everything is factual."

In other words, it's real: Real life, real people, real passion for a backyard version of bike polo.

Their version is fast with few rules. The most important is that a rider must make a full 360-degree turn before hitting the ball again. It isn't the U.S. Bicycle Polo Association or American Bicycle Polo Association version; it's not the kind played in urban settings in fenced-off areas. This is Colorado-style bicycle polo. In fact, it's difficult for these guys to play against other bicycle-polo teams because they have their own rules for riding.

Bailey and Cheeney are working on a DVD version of the film. But until it is available for purchase, the only way to catch another glimpse of this film shot in what Bailey called "random, dirtball places," is to head up to Telluride. How bad can that be?

Leanne Goebel is a freelance writer specializing in the arts.

Art in springtime, Durango Herald, May 9, 2008

Explore Downtown during Durango's Gallery Walk

Jami Tobey will be at the Rain Dance Gallery to talk about her paintings like "Wildflowers," shown here.

Twice a year, Durango galleries get together and host a gallery walk. They invite artists to show up and mingle with guests, chill the Pellegrino and put out a plate of cheese and crackers. Visitors and locals alike wander the streets and herd themselves in and out of exhibit spaces trying not to knock over a glass or a ceramic vase.

Within six blocks, one can visit 10 art spaces and see everything from photography to bronze sculpture, landscape painting to giant abstract canvases, traditional turquoise jewelry to elegant miniature silver sculptures on black silk cord.

On East Second Avenue, visit Open Shutter to see the reverent digital images of Frisco (Colorado's Frisco, not California's) photographer Bob Winsett. Images of two-dozen statues of Buddha from around the world are on display, some ironic, others iconic.

Cross the street to catch opening night of a group exhibition at the Durango Arts Center. Watercolorist Dwight Lawing, an instructor at San Juan College in Farmington, is joined by layered abstract painter Tess Corrinne Jordans and nature painter Coni Grant in displaying canvases and works on paper. Henry Woolbert and Kathy Park, who create tribal-inspired spirit masks, are thrown into the mix.

Wander down to Main Avenue and head over to Karyn Gabaldon Fine Arts and see the fluid, elliptical sculpture of Santa Fe-based Somers Randolph, and catch a trunk showing of his simple and elegant jewelry. Randolph begins each piece of jewelry as a simple soapstone carving. When his wife, Hillary, found a box filled with these tiny sculptures, she figured out a way to have them turned into exquisite silver creations.

Head north on Main and catch the 10th anniversary exhibit at Ellis West Gallery featuring new work by local painters: Phyllis Stapler, Krista Harris, Cynthia DeBolt, Joan Levine Russell, Jenny Gummersall and C. Gregory Gummersall. And as a special treat to celebrate 10 years in the gallery business, Ellis West is offering 25 percent off all blown glass this weekend.

Jenny Gummersall’s painting on her own photograph "Sheep 3" will be on display at the Ellis West Gallery during tonight’s Spring Gallery Walk.

Continuing up Main Avenue, stop in at Sorrel Sky Gallery, where Santa Fe jeweler Doug Magnus will show his high-fashion western jewelry and happily chat about his passion for turquoise.

Magnus owns three turquoise mines that he plans to donate to a conservancy or university.

And don't miss Rain Dance Gallery. It will have California-based artist Jami Tobey present. Tobey creates fun patterned and layered acrylic, watercolor and ink landscape paintings on clayboard, canvas and paper. Tobey is the daughter of famed sculptor Gene Tobey. Rain Dance also features a museum-quality collection of Nicaraguan pottery, including masterwork by Helio Gutierrez.

Skip over to Maria's Bookshop and check out the work of Arizona artist Shay Lopez, a self-taught painter whose vibrant oils and acrylics are influenced by Austrian Impressionism, Harlem Jazz and Chicano art.

Earthen Vessel on west Ninth Street will feature local potter Nick Blaisdell, who creates functional work punctuated by vivid red-and-blue dripped glazes. Blaisdell will be available to chat about his work and technique.

The evening's happiness will be heightened by the reopening of Termar Trends at 780 Main Ave. after the smoke damage caused by the fire.

Finally, don't miss sculptor Kevin McCarthy at Toh-Atin Gallery on west Ninth Street.

McCarthy creates highly detailed, western and art deco-themed sculptures of dancers and warriors using the lost wax-casting method. He will be demonstrating with several of his wax originals. Ask him about the ancient process of bronze sculpting.

Kevin McCarthy will demonstrate preparing a maquette for a bronze statue as in this 22-inch-tall dancer at the Toh-Atin Galley.

Gallery walk is a great time to get out and walk around downtown Durango. It's the perfect opportunity to hang out with neighbors, make new friends and learn something new about art from the people who make it.

The Spring Gallery Walk will be held from 5-8 p.m. today. Here are the participants:

Durango Arts Center, 802 East Second Ave., 259-2606. Featured artists: Dwight Lawing, Tess Corrinne Jordans, Coni Grant, Henry Woolbert, Kathy Park.

• Earthen Vessel, 115 W. Ninth St., 247-1281. Featured artist: Nick Blaisdell.

• Ellis West Gallery, 822 Main Ave., 382-9855. Featured artists: Phyllis Stapler, Krista Harris, Cynthia DeBolt, Joan Levine Russell, Jenny Gummersall, C. Gregory Gummersall.

• Karyn Gabaldon Fine Arts, 680 Main Ave, 247-9018. Featured artist: Somers Randolph.

• Maria’s Bookshop, 960 Main Ave., 247-1438. Featured artist: Shay Lopez.

• Open Shutter Gallery, 755 East Second Ave., 382-8355. Featured artist: Bob Winsett.

• Rain Dance Gallery, 945 Main Ave., 375-2708. Featured artist: Jami Tobey.

• Sorrel Sky Gallery, 870 Main Ave., 247-3555. Featured artist: Doug Magnus.

• Termar Trends, 780 Main Ave., 247-3728.

• Toh-Atin Gallery, 145 W. Ninth St., 247-8277. Featured artist: Kevin McCarthy.

artsjournalist@centurytel.netLeanne Goebel is a freelance arts journalist from Pagosa Springs.

DAC exhibits director resigns, Durango Herald, April 25, 2008

Susan Andersen resigned as the exhibits director of Durango Arts Center this month. Andersen, who came to Durango from Portland, Ore., New York and Orlando, Fla., took the job as exhibits director in January 2005. She brought her business savvy and aesthetic sensibility to the 30- hour-a-week job.

"When I came to the art center, art sales were only $4,000 a year. Last year, we sold nearly $60,000 worth of art," Andersen said Thursday from her new home in Farmington, where she moved after her wedding April 3.

Andersen plans to focus on home makeovers and interiors and has maintained her membership in the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). She has formed a company called Marsan Studio and will continue to market her fine art and interiors. She is currently working with a Web designer to launch MarsanStudio.com.

DAC Interim Executive Director Karen Thompson said that the arts center has no plans to replace Andersen at this time. Newly hired Executive Director McCarson Jones will begin her job in May, and the exhibits committee will manage the current schedule of exhibitions at the art center.

Jones is a social worker and photographer whose college degrees include a bachelor's in social work from Texas Woman's University, Denton, Texas, and a master's in organizational conflict resolution from California State University, Carson, Calif.

"We are looking at inviting artists and others to curate or put together shows and exhibits," Thompson said in her office at the DAC Wednesday. She said she had mentioned the idea to a few local artists who are excited about the possibility. "They lit up," she said. "I've asked them to submit proposals."

Thompson said she hoped new director Jones would invite member and non-member artists to a brainstorming session and ask them what would get them excited again about the art center, what would get them involved. What kind of exhibits do they want to see, and what kind of exposure do they want to have.

"I realize the art center has ostracized many of the local artists," Thompson admitted. She hopes that Jones will be able to help bring a new energy and perspective to the DAC.

Not rehiring a qualified exhibits director or curator for the arts center might seem the center's death knell to many artists. The organization shows evidence of moving toward become a performing arts center with its purchase of the Diamond Belle Melodrama and having lost sight of its roots.

The DAC began in 1966 as the Durango Fine Arts Center, whose purpose and objective was "to promote and encourage the fine arts and cultural activities," according to the articles of incorporation available from the Colorado Secretary of State.

Or, perhaps the lack of direction and leadership will allow something unique to flourish. We'll have to wait and see.

artsjournalist@mac.comLeanne Goebel is a freelance writer specializing in the arts.

Fireworks artist shows at Guggenheim, Durango Herald, April 15, 2008

Cai Guo-Qiang
Inopportune: Stage One, 2004
Nine cars and sequenced multichannel light tubes
Dimensions variable
Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Robert M. Arnold, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2006
Exhibition copy installed at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2008
© Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation New York. Photo by David Heald.

NEW YORK – Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang (surname pronounced tsai, given name pronounced gwo chang) draws and paints with gunpowder and uses fireworks to create powerful art events. “I Want to Believe” is the first comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work; it is on display at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Besides his museum work, Cai is directing the fireworks for the opening and closing ceremonies of Olympic Games in Beijing.

“I Want to Believe” features eight of Cai’s installations created since the early 1990s along with early works, gunpowder drawings, videos of explosions and social projects.

The show features a copy of “Inopportune: Stage One ( 2004),” composed of nine white Ford Tauruses pierced with blinking light tubes that simulate the trajectory of a carbomb explosion tumbling up through the atrium’s void. It’s a dramatic work about the dialogue of art and war, a common theme in the work of this New York- based Chinese artist who came onto the international contemporary art scene while living and working in Japan.

One of Cai’s more controversial installations is “Venice’s Rent Collection Courtyard (1999)” for which the artist was awarded the Golden Lion at the 1999 Venice Biennale. For this retrospective, Cai created a new version called “New York’s Rent Collection Courtyard (2008),” inviting 12 Chinese sculptors to recreate the seminal work from 1965, which was created by artists from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute.

The installation depicts the class struggle between Chinese peasants and the feudal landlords before the socialist revolution. More than 100 life-size clay-figure sculptures reveal the misery of human oppression. The figures are in various states of completion and were intentionally
left unfired, allowing them to dry, crack and disintegrate during the exhibition.

Community involvement is also evident in “Reflection – A Gift from Iwaki (2004).” It features a replica of a sunken ship that Cai found on the northeastern coast of Japan and excavated with help from the local community. Many of the same rescuers traveled to New York to install the ship.

“Head On (2006)” features 99 realistic-looking wolves running as a pack into an invisible wall and tumbling bent and broken to the ground. “Cry Dragon/Cry Wolf: The Ark of Genghis Kahn (1996)” is a flying dragon made from sheepskin bags, branches, paddles and rope and poweredby Toyota engines.

Another installation that features a traditional Chinese story is “Borrowing Your Enemies Arrows (1998).” Thousands of arrows pierce a Chinese fishing vessel from near Cai’s hometown of Quan Zhou. The title is from a Chinese story about a general who is forced to make a thousand arrows or die. To fulfill his obligation, he sends a boat filled with grass figures into enemy territory and then collects the arrows shot into the boat to use in battle against the enemy.

Much of Cai’s work is about destruction. But in Cai’s art, destruction does not lead to elimination; it leads to creation.

artsjournalist@centurytel.net Leanne Goebel visited the Guggenheim Museum as a project of the Creative Capital/Andy WarholFoundation Arts’ Writers Grant Program.

Temporal Tenuosness: Whitney Biennial 2008

Mika Rottenberg, Production still from Cheese, 2007.
Digital video, color, sound; approximately 12 min.
Collection of the artist.

Below is the original article I wrote and submitted for publication:


“A biennial is an exercise in imposing temporary order and control onto a situation that is, essentially, out of control,” writes Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in the foreword to the catalog for the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

The Whitney Museum opened in 1931. The first Biennial was introduced in 1932 and remains a cornerstone of the museum’s mission to support living artists. Purchasing art from the biennial is the foundation of their permanent collection.

However improbable, the biennial attempts to provide a snapshot of “where American art stands today.” At least that’s what the ads say.

Eighty-one artists were selected to participate in the biennial by two young curators given a mere 13 months to pull together one of the most high profile exhibitions in America. Henriette Huldisch, 36, assistant curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and Shamim M. Momin, 34, associate curator at the Whitney and branch director and curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria were entrusted the much hyped task. Weinberg then assigned Donna De Salvo, the Whitney’s chief curator and associate director for programs to oversee Huldisch and Momin. The team also worked with advisors Thelma Golden, director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem; Bill Horrigan, director of media arts at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University; and Linda Norden, independent curator and writer.

Weinberg writes in his foreword that the artist selection process is exhaustive, explaining that the curators “distilled artists into a collage of artistic expressions that resonated to reveal networks”—a sort of invisible reticulation. These threads tenuously hold together this biennial that fills more than three floors of the museum. The result is a show that is highly cerebral featuring a lot of art with complicated back-stories.

Huldisch and Momin write in their introduction: “Many of the projects presented in the 2008 exhibition explore fluid communication structures and systems of exchange that index larger social, political and economic contexts, often aiming to invert the more object-oriented, ends-driven operations of the art market.”

Well, yes, I suppose intellectually that is the idea. But in the end, being in the Whitney Biennial means that many of these artists will now be the stars of the art fair world (if they are not already) where one can truly find out where art stands today. And, after all, the Whitney is going to buy some of this art, too. So as much as we may want to glorify process and experience, in the end the intellectual idea does become a product sitting in a museum.

Some of the products are made with very modest materials. Take for instance Charles Long’s sculptures made from detritus found along the banks of the Los Angeles River. Feathers, cans, bottles, cigarette butts, you name it it’s bound together in his desiccated effigy’s that echo the frail figurative sculptures of Alberto Giacometti. Great Blue Heron bird droppings found along the riverbank inspire the sculptures. Long made albumen prints of the droppings and then translated the images into three dimensional sculptures describing them as somewhere “between beauty and anger.” Long sees his tall ghost figures as harbingers of death that paradoxically assert the resilience of life. There is something treacherous and yet life affirming about the work.

Charles Long, Untitled, 2006.
Papier-mâché, plaster, steel, synthetic polymer, river sediment, and debris, 144 x 72 x 7 in. (365.8 x 182.9 x 17.8 cm). Collection of the artist; courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York.

Another paradox inducing work is Mika Rottenberg’s video installation “Cheese.” It is an artwork one enters like a womb. Inside the maze like shanty made from wooden debris, several video screens show crowded pens of goats and a group of women with extremely long hair in floating white dresses. These Rapunzel’s milk their locks and the goats they live with to make cheese. There is something erotic about the piece, yet objectifying, something mysterious and magical, yet earthy.

In contract, Daniel Joseph Martinez creates work that is unapologetically uncomfortable and explores complicity. “Divine Violence” is a room-sized installation filled with 125 rectangular, sleek, gold panels with crisp black lettering spelling out words like Al Qaeda, Central Intelligence Agency, Army of God, Iduwini Youths. Martinez aims to name all of the groups in the world currently attempting to enforce politics through violence. The title comes from Walter Benjamin’s coinage for a form of violence that function as pure means with knowable ends.

Daniel Joseph Martinez, Divine Violence, 2007 (installation view, The Project, New York).
Automotive paint on wood panel, dimensions variable.

A biennial is not pure means with a knowable end and this is but a smidgen of the work on display, most of it installation and video with a smattering of sculptural objects and a few token paintings and photographs. This is a biennial about what is bubbling beneath the veneer. While on the surface it may seem uncharismatic, beneath the surface there is something to think about.


If you go:

Through June 1, 2008
Whitney Biennial
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison @ 75th Street
212-570-3633
www.whitney.org


artsjournalist@centurytel.net Leanne Goebel attended the Whitney Biennial as a project of the Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts’ Writers Grant Program.


List of Artists in the Biennial and links to their online Biennial catalog page:
Rita Ackermann
Natalia Almada
Edgar Arceneaux
Fia Backström
John Baldessari
Robert Bechtle
Walead Beshty
Carol Bove
Joe Bradley
Matthew Brannon
Bozidar Brazda
Olaf Breuning
Jedediah Caesar
William Cordova
Dexter Sinister (Stuart Bailey)
Harry (Harriet) Dodge and Stanya Kahn
Shannon Ebner
Gardar Eide Einarsson
Roe Ethridge
Kevin Jerome Everson
Omer Fast
Robert Fenz
Coco Fusco
Gang Gang Dance (Lizzi Bougatsos, Brian DeGraw, Tim DeWit, Josh Diamond, Nathan Maddox)
Amy Granat and Drew Heitzler
Rashawn Griffin
Adler Guerrier
MK Guth
Fritz Haeg
Rachel Harrison
Ellen Harvey
Mary Heilmann
Leslie Hewitt
Patrick Hill
William E. Jones
Karen Kilimnik
Alice Könitz
Louise Lawler Spike Lee
Sherrie Levine
Charles Long
Lucky Dragons (Luke Fischbeck)
Daniel Joseph Martinez
Corey McCorkle
Rodney McMillian
Julia Meltzer and David Thorne
Jennifer Montgomery
Olivier Mosset
Matt Mullican
Neighborhood Public Radio (NPR)
Ruben Ochoa
DJ Olive
Mitzi Pederson
Kembra Pfahler/The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black
Seth Price
Stephen Prina
Adam Putnam
Michael Queenland
Jason Rhoades
Ry Rocklen
Bert Rodriguez
Marina Rosenfeld
Amanda Ross-Ho
Mika Rottenberg
Heather Rowe
Eduardo Sarabia
Melanie Schiff
Amie Siegel
Lisa Sigal
Gretchen Skogerson
Michael Smith
Agathe Snow
Frances Stark
Mika Tajima/New Humans
Javier Téllez
Cheyney Thompson
Mungo Thomson
Leslie Thornton
Phoebe Washburn
James Welling
Mario Ybarra Jr.

Cerebral art for modern minds, Durango Herald, April 8, 2008

Daniel Joseph Martinez, "Divine Violence," 2007,
automotive paint on wood panel, dimensions variable.

The article as it appeared in The Durango Herald:


NEW YORK - "A biennial is an exercise in imposing temporary order and control onto a situation that is, essentially, out of control."

That's what Adam Weinberg, director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, wrote about the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

However improbable, the biennial attempts to provide a snapshot of "where American art stands today." At least that's what the ads say.

Eighty-one artists were selected to participate by two young Whitney curators who were given 13 months to pull together one of the most high profile exhibitions in America.

Henriette Huldisch and Shamim M. Momin were entrusted with the task. Weinberg then assigned Donna De Salvo, the Whitney's chief curator, to oversee them. The team also worked with Thelma Golden, chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem; Bill Horrigan, director of media arts at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University; and Linda Norden, independent curator and writer.

The result is a show that is highly cerebral, featuring a lot of art with complicated back stories.

Huldisch and Momin write in their introduction: "Many of the projects explore fluid communication structures and systems of exchange that index larger social, political and economic contexts, often aiming to invert the more object-oriented, ends-driven operations of the art market."

I suppose intellectually that is the idea, however awkward their prose. But being in the Whitney Biennial means that many of these artists will be the stars of the art fair world, if they aren't already. And the Whitney is going to buy some of this art, too. So in the end the intellectual idea becomes a product sitting in a museum.

Some of the products are made with very modest materials.

Take Charles Long's sculptures made from detritus found along the banks of the Los Angeles River. Feathers, cans, bottles, cigarette butts, you name it, it's bound together in his desiccated effigies that echo the frail figurative sculptures of Alberto Giacometti.

Great blue heron droppings found along the riverbank inspired the sculptures. Long made albumen prints of the droppings and translated the images into sculptures he describes as somewhere "between beauty and anger." Long sees his ghost figures as harbingers of death that paradoxically assert the resilience of life.

Another paradox-inducing work is Mika Rottenberg's video installation "Cheese."

It's art that one enters like a womb. Inside a mazelike shanty made from wooden debris, video screens show crowded pens of goats and women with extremely long hair in floating white dresses. These Rapunzels milk their locks and the goats they live with to make cheese. There is something erotic about the piece, yet objectifying, something magical, yet earthy.

In contrast, Daniel Joseph Martinez creates work that is unapologetically uncomfortable and explores complicity.

"Divine Violence" is a room-sized installation filled with 125 rectangular, sleek, gold panels with crisp black lettering spelling out words like "Al Qaeda," "Central Intelligence Agency," "Army of God," "Iduwini Youths." Martinez aims to name all of the groups in the world currently attempting to enforce politics through violence.

Most of the work on display at the Whitney is installation and video with a smattering of sculptural objects and a few token paintings and photographs. This is a biennial about what is bubbling beneath the veneer. While on the surface it may seem uncharismatic, beneath the surface there is something to think about.

artsjournalist@centurytel.netLeanne Goebel attended the Whitney Biennial as a project of the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts' Writers Grant Program.

Feminists Under Forty show honors novel and neon, Durango Herald, March 21, 2008

BELEN, N.M. - Feminists know the name Judy Chicago.

She is an artist, author, feminist and educator whose work spans 40 years. She pioneered feminist art and education through programs at California State University, Fresno, and the California Institute of Arts.

In 1974, Chicago turned her attention to the history of women and created her iconic work, "The Dinner Party." This multimedia work was executed between 1974-1979 by hundreds of volunteers and has been seen by more than a million viewers in six countries. In 2007, "The Dinner Party" was permanently installed at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Today, Chicago lives and works from her studio and nonprofit feminist art organization, Through the Flower, in Belen. On March 1, Chicago opened an exhibition that she juried, at Through the Flower, which is near Albuquerue.

It provides a glimpse into work currently being created by young New Mexico feminist artists: Maureen Burdock, Kate Carr, Andrea Cermanski, Helen Colton, Shara Hannah Finnerman, Erin Lynn Forrest, Mikhayla Harrel, Kimberly Hargrove, Nicole Kowalski, Emily Kimball, Ashlie Maxwell, Merce Mitchell, Kelsy Waggaman and Sheila Wilson.

The purpose of the show for Chicago is to encourage a younger generation to explore feminist themes through art.

"By looking at the work of young feminist artists, we can see what issues are still unresolved. We see artists working in a variety of media, but they are still concerned with the body; with what it means to be a woman today; with sexual orientation; and with abuse," Chicago writes on the Through the Flower Web site.

"Although we wish that some of these issues were in the past; that we truly lived in a 'post-feminist world,' unfortunately, they are still with us. Until this changes, there must be spaces for Feminist art - and there aren't enough of them."

Maureen Burdock and Sheila Wilson were both awarded $500 prizes and solo exhibitions at Through the Flower.

I met Burdock last fall at a Narrative Art Center writing retreat in Carson, N.M., where she shared some of the ink drawings and paintings for her feminist graphic novel series called "The F Word Art: Five Feminist Fables for the 21st Century."

Each book tells the story of a super heroine who fights oppression.

Images from Marta and the Missing and Mona and the Little Smile are showing at Through the Flower.

Marta and the Missing is the first book in the series, available from Narrative Art Center Press. Told in English and Spanish, it tells of a woman in Juarez, Mexico, who puts an end to the femicide there (the disappearance of hundreds of women) and saves her own cousin.

The second book, Mona and the Little Smile, told in English and German, is about a girl in the U.S. who heroically and humorously deals with childhood sexual abuse and transforms herself through drawing. Mona sends her magical drawings to other children who are then empowered to get back at their abusers and turn them into mushrooms.

Sheila Wilson creates neon signs that tell a story: "STILL HERE" in bold pink letters, "(sigh)" in flowing blue script punctuated by the parentheses and the elegant green scroll "forget your past." Each word or phrase is the hiccup between language and storyteller, between fantasy and history, between fact and myth.

This exhibit strives to be more than a hiccup. It attempts to reinvigorate feminist artists and to remind viewers that the goal of feminism is to achieve equality for everyone on the planet. Everyone.

View the art in person or on the Web site. Listen to the political rhetoric between the first woman and the first black man to be on the brink of the presidency and realize that Through the Flower provides an important space for continuing discourse on equality for everyone.

artsjournalist@centurytel.netLeanne Goebel is a freelance arts journalist from Pagosa Springs.

Critical Condition, has big money replaced the pundit as the true authority in the art world?

I just finished reading Adrian Searle's insightful rant on the role of the art critic and criticism in the art world today. Searle's article appeared in The Guardian on March 18, 2008.

Here are just a few paragraphs I want to share:

"Writing about art only matters because art deserves to be met with more than silence (although ignoring art - not speaking about it, not writing about it - is itself a form of criticism, and probably the most damning and effective one). An artist's intentions are one thing, but works themselves accrue meanings and readings through the ways they are interpreted and discussed and compared with one another, long after the artist has finished with them. This, in part, is where all our criticisms come in. We contribute to the work, remaking it whenever we go back to it - which doesn't prevent some artworks not being worth a first, never mind a second look, and some opinions not being worth listening to at all."

"In the end, we are all critics. Listen to the babble of conversation as you leave the cinema or the theatre, or to the chat in the gallery. People argue about what they have experienced and about what the critics have said. This is good. But some voices might be worth attending to more than others, just as some artists, some playwrights, moviemakers, composers, choreographers are better than others. The fact that we can't all agree on what is valuable (and why) keeps things interesting. It also keeps criticism alive."

"Some things are not easy to grasp. We have to work at them. This, in part, is what criticism tries to do. It is also where a lively engagement with the art we encounter begins. And it is where we all begin to be critics."

This timely article comes after a lovely luncheon with my friend Sheri yesterday and our discussion about criticism and the role it plays.

Here is what I wrote in my Arts Writers Grant proposal:

"Writing about contemporary visual art is my passion. Writing about art completes the artistic process by providing an intelligent viewer reaction. I strive to write informed observation and make judgments that are more than just opinion."

"Being an art critic in a small town requires sensitivity. Situating aesthetic objects within their broader social and political context does not win one friends. But then, that’s not the goal. Honest, thoughtful reviewing withstands the test of time. My job as an art reviewer is to educate readers and help them understand work with which they may not be familiar. My writing is not academic, but it is educated, insightful and bridges between the historic and the current."

This is the role. This is what I strive for. Not to be some authoritative voice, but to be one intelligent voice in the discussion and to keep the discussion going, because if we aren't talking about the art, about the shows, about what is happening culturally in our communities then it is all irrelevant and pointless.

Juilliard pianist to perform with local voices, Durango Herald, March 14, 2008

The Durango Choral Society, the Durango Children's Chorale and the Durango Women's Choir will perform a multi-faceted selection of music at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Community Concert Hall. They will be accompanied by Juilliard pianist Evan Shinners.

Linda Mack, choir director, said by telephone Wednesday that the music includes recognizable pieces like Mozart's "Requiem" and "Laudate Do-minum" and a big work, Beet-hoven's "Hallelujah," which has not been performed in Durango before.

The program will also include music by contemporary composers Randall Stroope, David Wilcox and Norman Dello Joio.

By some accounts, Dello Joio's "A Jubilant Song" includes the most technically difficult piano part ever written. Shinners, 21, who was a silver medalist in the Four Corners Piano competition when he was 16, will perform that complex composition.

Shinners is a native of Denver who began playing piano at age 9 and made his orchestral debut with the Utah Symphony at age 12. In 2003, he was the only American to win a prize at the Eastman International Young Artists Competition. Shinners can be seen in the PBS documentary "Speaking with Music." He is in his last year at the Juilliard School of Music, where he studies with Jerome Lowenthal.

Longtime Choral Society pianist Christi Livingston will join Shinners for a four-hand arrangement of Randall Stro-ope's "Magnificent," featuring the voices of the Durango Women's Choir.

Mack has directed the 75-voice Choral Society and 13-voice Women's Choir since 1999.

"I've seen tremendous growth in musicianship, strength and loyalty in these groups," Mack said. "They have an array of talent, and there is an amazing passion for music in this community. These performances mean everything to them."

Mack is particularly proud of the Women's Choir for the amount of work they've put in to learn the contemporary compositions.

"These are very big pieces of music that would normally be programmed with a larger choir, but the musicianship of these women has grown so much that they can handle and are willing to stretch themselves to perform these wonderful pieces," she said

Not to be outdone by the adults, the 56-voice Durango Children's Chorale will perform selections from their upcoming tour to Denver, where they will sing for the Organization of Kodály Educators National Conference. Zoltán Kodály was a Hungarian composer who loved children and folk music, and developed a program for teaching music to children through games, dances and folk singing. Kodály's method helps children learn to read music at an early age and is widely accepted as one of the best forms of music education.

Director Rochelle Mann is a nationally recognized Kodály method expert and teaches the method to Fort Lewis College music students who plan to become music educators.

The diverse programming scheduled for Sunday's performances should solidify why Durango Choral Society received the Honorable Mention ASCAP Alice Parker Award for Adventurous Programming in 2007. The next time these voices will perform is this summer, with Music in the Mountains, when they will sing Verdi's "Requiem."

If you go

Choral Classics, 3 p.m. Sunday, Community Concert Hall, $15/$12/$5. Tickets at the CCH Box Office, 707� Main Ave. or 247-7657. Tickets also at the door.

artsjournalist@centurytel.netLeanne Goebel is a freelance writer specializing in the arts.

Eccentricity or ingenuity? 'Jesus' Castle' let's viewer decide, Durango Herald, Feb. 29, 2008

Antonito resident Cano is building a castle to honor Jesus

In 1980, Cano (like Chicano, the artist explains, a name given to him by his niece) decided to make a little building for Jesus, possibly like a castle in Antonito. More than 20 years later, he is still working on his citadel. Filmmaker Eric Hopper provides a nine minute glimpse into the work of Cano, an outsider artist who built his monument from scraps and objects found at the local dump. Hopper raises the question: Is this man a crazy eccentric or an ingenious craftsman?

Cano’s castle for Jesus reminds viewers of Antoni Gaudi’s expressionistic Church of the Holy Family in Barcelona. Two cone-shaped towers rise into the sky, shaped with stone and aluminum cans, plastered with mud; these towers mark the skyline in sleepy Antonito,
Colo. Hopper’s film opens with shots of the barren town, its murals, its old neon signs, a simple church, a semi-truck passing through and then behold: Jesus’ Castle.

Cano appears on camera, disheveled, unshaven, his dark curly hair, unruly. He is wearing a yellow plastic visor, dirty blue sweat jacket, faded red sweatpants with vivid green shorts over them. Cano explains the reason for his project: “Jesus is my neighbor, and I am his servant,” he says. “I felt that working for Jesus would be a good thing. Just to give yourself a way, once you go by that concept there’s so much to discover, so much out there to open up to. That’s what it’s all about.”

His friend Ron Martinez won’t tell the filmmaker what the townspeople think of Cano, except to admit that they think what he’s doing is crazy.

“At least he does something for himself, and for his world and for his country,” Martinez defends.

Cano began by building the fence around the property in the shape of a crown. Next he made a throne for Jesus carved from wood, inlaid with marbles. The building started with a cellar and
grew to its towering height over time. Martinez says he left town, and when he returned several years later, Cano had built a castle.

Cano doesn’t call his castle art. He merely says that he sticks to what he creates. “One thing is seen and another is hearing. You see it and you hear it,” Cano says. “In the Bible, the Lord says to do his will. I might be doing his will.” What he is doing is expressing himself and his opinions. Signs around the castle lament: “Broken treaties,” “Distribute of wealth” and “vitamin m.” Two arrows came down from the sky and landed in front of the castle. One says: “Tobacco and alcohol is killing,” the other says: “Mary Jane is healing.”

“For red people and the brown people, we always use marijuana. They should never illegalized it,” Cano says.

Martinez sums up his friend’s mission: “Two towers are gone in New York, and two towers are coming up in Antonito.”

Hopper leaves the viewer with this thought; it’s the last sound from the film as we watch the castle and see the clouds rolling in the sky above.

artsjournalist@centurytel.net Leanne Goebel is a freelance arts journalist from Pagosa Springs.

Local writer, artist win grants for contributions to the art world, Durango Herald, March 11, 2008

By Patricia Miller Arts & Entertainment Editor

A Pagosa Springs arts critic and a Durango artist and gallery owner have been awarded grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Colorado Council on the Arts.

Arts critic Leanne Goebel, who writes regularly for The Durango Herald, has been awarded $20,000 by the Arts Writers Grant Program of Creative Capital, a branch of the Andy Warhol Foundation.

Goebel was awarded the money, according to the foundation, to fund trips to Denver, New York, Santa Fe, Venice and "art fairs and biennials around the globe."

Goebel said the foundation gave her even more money than she asked for.

In her application, she wrote, "Being an art critic in a small town requires sensitivity. Situating aesthetic objects within their broader social and political context does not win one friends. But then, that's not the goal. My job as an art reviewer is to educate readers and help them understand work with which they may not be familiar."

Goebel has also won a second grant, a $500 Small Steps Grant from the Colorado Council on the Arts to develop the Pagosa Springs Writer's Residency Program.

She will start this year working with vacation rental property owners near her home in Pagosa Springs to donate two to four weeks lodging during the nonpeak seasons of spring and fall.

Writers will be selected by jury. They will stay rent-free to work on a project and will be required to give back to the community with a workshop, reading or working with youth or seniors.

Lisa Lenard Cook the author of the novels Dissonance and Coyote Morning will be the first writer to participate from May 9-23.

Durango artist and gallery owner Karyn Gabaldon also has received a Small Steps Grant for $500 to develop a series of free lectures on how to make a living in the arts.

Gabaldon delivered her lectures at her gallery Karyn Gabaldon Fine Arts last autumn.

"The premise is that by educating artists and enabling them to make a living in the arts, they will stay in the community and contribute to the arts and culture," Gabaldon said.

She may want to invite the enterprising Goebel as a guest lecturer.

Disturbed and Disturbing, Durango Herald, Feb. 22, 2008

Artist explores fraying center in DAC Library Gallery Show



Kevin Bell’s oil, "Mountains," on display this month at the Durango Arts Center Library, shows the painter’s use of blank space to emphasize what he decides to depict. It is part of his "Land Objects" series. Bell's "Domestic Disturbances" series of paintings emphasizes the calm of suburban life by contrast with a disturbance as in "Patio Chair," looking at cracks appearing, in this case literally, in the suburbs. In "Transformer Fire," Bell once again explores discord in a heavily manicured environment.


Kevin Bell explores the tension between man-made and natural environments, the intersection between natural forms and human activity in two series of paintings currently on display at the DAC Library Gallery. "Disturbed Lands," an exhibition of painting by the Assistant Professor of Art at Fort Lewis College, features work from the series "Land Objects" and "Domestic Disturbances" and is an exhibit not to be missed. Bell's paintings are some of the finest work shown in Durango and deserve more than the cramped spaces of the library. These paintings should be hung in the main gallery with lots of breathing space, because Bell is a world-class artist.

Bell's paintings have been shown in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Hamburg, Germany, Seoul Korea and Vancouver, British Columbia, where Gallery Jones represents him. His work has been accepted in the slide registry at the Painting Center in New York, and he was featured in New American Paintings in 2003. For those who don't know, these are honors most Durango painters are not likely to achieve.

Bell achieves tension between the human and the natural in his paintings without human forms. Instead, he leaves large swatches of the canvas blank, painted white in "Land Objects." A painting called "Mountain" features a realistically painted outcropping of land, carefully carved rock, clumps of green bushes and a wire that stretches across a highway with bright red-orange spheres used to help helicopters and planes navigate. In Bell's painting, the asphalt and sky are missing. The subject of the painting is just this object of land jutting into the canvas, an incomplete vista, a fragmentary piece of information. It's an intentionally incomplete picture.

Bell writes in his artist's statement for this series: "Our view of nature cannot be wide angle or unbroken as it is crowded with discordant elements that often contradict and muddy our perceptions and expectations."

Bell's paintings attempt to capture the way we experience our surroundings, selectively, filtered, not as a whole, but a collection of specimens.

And, these memories tend to feature a man-made element like the red-orange balls or the way the earth is cut into and shaped. In "Parking," all we see are the empty plotted spaces filled in with bushes and landscaping bark, a giant light pole. There are no cars. No yellow stripes, just elements that are oddly human, oddly natural.

Three paintings in this exhibit are from the newer "Domestic Disturbances" series. This work has an Edward Hopper feel to it, bleak and simple. The paintings are flat with compositions that are off-kilter, their horizon lines seldom straight. The colors are muted and dull, and provide a pastoral quality.

These are neat, controlled suburban landscapes, but in each painting: "Patio Chair," "Transformer Fire" and "Fallen Tree," something is wryly amiss. These disruptions in the otherwise tame world provide the viewer with a jarring reminder of how unpredictable life really is. Not only can we not control nature, but in "Transformer Fire," we realize we cannot control anything.

Bell writes of this series: "The unpredictability is ultimately ineffectual and we are disappointed, but also anxious that it is not (effective)."

Bell understands nature. He earned a masters in environmental studies several years before earning his masters of fine art in painting. Edward Hopper believed that nature and the contemporary world were incoherent. Bell believes that nature and human activity are oddly interdependent. Where Hopper focused on the incongruent in his work, Bell attempts to paint a more conciliatory tension between humans and nature.

If you go

"Disturbed Land," oil paintings by Kevin Bell, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Feb. 29, Durango Arts Center Library, 802 East Second Ave., 259-2606.

artsjournalist@centurytel.net Leanne Goebel is a freelance arts journalist from Pagosa Springs.

Confronting violence, Durango Herald, Feb. 15, 2008

Students of the Pagosa Springs High School Drama Club rehearse "Bang, Bang, You’re Dead" by William Mastrosimone on Wednesday . The play about gun violence in schools will be performed Saturday. The student in the center is Tyler Carpenter, who plays the lead character. Becca Stephens is standing in the back.

• Heath High School, West Paducah, Ky.

• Westside Middle School, Jonesboro, Ark.

• Lincoln County High School, Fayetteville, Tenn.

• Thurston High School, Springfield, Ore.

• Columbine High School, Littleton.

• Heritage High School, Conyers, Ga.

• Santana High School, Santee, Calif.

• Henry Foss High School, Tacoma, Wash.

These are just a few of the schools across America in which teens have shot and killed their peers at school.

Since 1996, there have been 40 recorded incidents of shootings in and around schools, according to crime data recorded by the Web site infoplease.com.

"Bang, Bang, You're Dead" is a play written by William Mastrosimone in an effort to end violence among teenagers. The play centers on Josh, a teenage boy who shoots his parents and five schoolmates, and is then haunted by physical manifestations of his memories of them.

Josh is based on Kip Kinkel, the 15-year-old who killed his parents and two classmates, and wounded 25 other students at Thurston High School in Oregon.

Mastrosimone's play was performed for the first time April 9, 1999, just 11 days before the Columbine High School shootings. The Pagosa Springs High School Drama Club will perform it again Saturday.

Director Dale Morris said this week that she and the students selected the play believing that the benefits of putting this work out there far outweigh the risks. But she admits it's a difficult production.

Tyler Carpenter, a junior at Pagosa High School, plays Josh. The lanky teen sports a multi-shaded, multi-length punk hair cut and speaks with wisdom beyond his years.

"My character is something I've been trying to distance myself from," Carpenter said at rehearsal Wednesday night. "He's stuck up and ignorant about a lot of what people go through in real life. He doesn't think about how what he does is going to affect others. He has a very twisted view of the universe."

Carpenter said he uses music to help him get into the mode for playing his character. He hears the anger in lyrics. It's the same music he listens to, but the difference comes from his mood. For Carpenter, music is an escape and a release. When getting ready to play Josh, he said: "I can amplify those feelings of hatred and misunderstanding."

The play has touched each of the 14 students in the production.

"I get to breaking points," Hilary Matzdorf said. "The people that do this are normal. It can happen to anyone."

"I don't know," Emmi Greer said. "I don't have any first-hand or second-hand experience with violence. But this production has made me assess myself and how I would face a situation like this. It's intense. It's noxious. It doesn't go away. Things in real life will remind you of things in the play. It's like it really happened."

"You see and take away everything they (the characters) could have been and everything they lost in losing their lives," Ashley Iverson said.

And while they have mixed feelings about the subject matter, all of the students are clear in what they hope the audience will take away from the production, particularly their peers who will attend a performance next week during school.

"We want to get it to be perceived as something real," Jeff Readon said. "Not just as something you can laugh off."

Student Becca Stephens said: "It's not like we are going to end violence. But our hope is that people are reminded of what happened. We can have a lasting impact."

And Rhain Harris said: "I want people to think about this play for more than just the car ride home."

I bet they will.

If you go

"Bang, Bang, You’re Dead," 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Pagosa High School Auditorium, free but donations appreciated.

artsjournalist@centurytel.netLeanne Goebel is a freelance writer specializing in the arts.