GALLERY O

THE POTHOLE GARDENS OF STEVEN WHEEN

2012-01-29T14:09:00.000-08:00

Being a big fan of guerilla art, miniatures and gardens, I came across Steven Wheen's works recently. He describes himself as a 'pothole gardener'. He finds potholes and cracks in the streets and sidewalks of London, then plants miniature gardens in them. In his words...

"I came up with the project as part of my university course, and it has grown from there (no pun intended!). Part art project, part labour of love, part experiment, part mission to highlight how shit our roads are – the pictures and gardens are supposed to put smiles on peoples faces and alert them to potholes! I don’t leave any of the props out after we shoot them, I have only ever created low gardens on very quiet streets, mostly dead end lanes and on footpaths in my areas."

He admits that the gardens are an offshoot of the guerilla garden movement which is sweeping the urban and city environments. People get empowered by planting gardens in blighted communities and untended properties. Sometimes these are done with 'seed bombs' balloons filled with seeds and soil and tossed over fences into lots. Others take untended areas, bring in dirt and mulch and plant gardens in the dead of night.

Steven's gardens, though, are of the miniature kind. They are quickly planted into cracks and holes in pavement and themed with doll house scale additions like small lawn chairs, miniature garden tools, even a tennis court in one. While preventing angle twisting trips or car axle breaking bumps they also cause people to pause, look and admire them as well.

The idea is simple but the effect on the everyday mundane traveler and pedestrian on the paved over city environment is dramatic. It is a place where nature will eventually win... underfoot in the cracks and holes of our streets and sidewalks.

For more information about Pothole Gardens visit Steven Wheen's web/blog at ThePotholeGardener.com
And a video bit about about Guerilla Gardening - Richard Reynolds

OTHERWORDLY – Optical Illusions and Small Realities

2011-09-04T21:46:00.000-07:00

Raked Leaves being constructed by Patrick Jacobs

The current exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design in New York City features a group of forty artists who work in miniature forms. While that might easily convey a model mentality or shoebox show, the ideas and execution of these altered realities borders on the remarkable. The general theme for the show, curated by David Revere MacFadden, brought together a wide range of artists who bring a new vision to the micro world of the hand made.

The works do tend to lean toward the diorama format but opens up into the realm of built environments for the camera lens, inset worlds into walls, and globed wonders. Many artists make the scenes specifically to photograph, creating tableaus on tables in their studios and basements, setting the scene, the lights and photographing. The photos tend to then be shown in very large format photographic enlargements which make the miniature scale seem even more remarkable.

The Otherworldly collection of miniaturist works at the Museum of Art and Design is split up in the exhibit into sub-groups and themes through the floors of the museum. These include “Unnatural Nature”, Apocalyptic Archaeology”, “Dreams and Memories”, “Voyeur/Provocateur”. I will include a few of the artists featured in the show. Their names link to web sites, interviews or other information about the artists. Click on the images for a larger view.

“UNNATURAL NATURE” features work by artists that recreate natural environments or propose alternative visions of landscape and nature.

Patrick Jacobs creates interior wall mounted peep holes that are views into super realistic miniature scenes. The cover view lenses give a sense of extreme distance as if the interior scenes extend to a horizon of the imagination.

Raked Leaves

Mathew Albanese makes severe weather scenes and landscapes using common materials to push the realm of the real. His photographs of the tableaus are meticulously staged to give the sense of a believable landscape under the lights in the studio. .
video of Mathew Albanese's works
video of an interview

studio set up

Kim Keever delves into the realms of classical landscape with his constructions suspended in water to give an atmospheric effect. They are like Rousseau’s dreams of a perfect realm of nature but bounce between the fingers of the fabricated landscape.

Kim Keever photo studio

Amy Bennett’s works are constructed models of nature narratives that are then turned into paintings. Her works take on a new meaning within the realm of the painted surface but somehow retain the identity of a miniature scene as viewed from the distant and larger perspective. Her narrative flips like a storybook from a photo box filled with scenes from hospital waiting rooms, to familiar urban back yards and into the woods of some campground beside the lake of memory.

Hypochondriac

Didier Massard also works with super realism. His “The Monkey” took six months to make using Styrofoam, layered card and fur made from darning wool. The works are then pushed further through the lens of the camera to create the right effect.

studio set for "Diorama for the Monkey"

side detail of 'Monkey'

“APOCALYPTIC ARCHAEOLOGY” features works that reveal the darker side of the post-industrial landscape and the time-infused eroding urban environment.

Lori Nix works in the realm of the world devoid of humans. She pushes the time scale forward to show the results of a world left to the natural forces of decay and disuse. They are like post apocalyptic dreams where nature takes over. Lori was featured earlier this year on the Gallery O site.
video interview with Lori Nix

Beauty Shop

Violin Repair Shop

Botanic Garden

Peter Feigenbaum seems drawn to an era of the 1930’s creating street detailed street scenes of big city slums that have been ravaged by depression but still reminiscing in the nostalgia of the time. His streets are full of life and decay.

Video interview with Peter Feigenbaum

Michael Paul Smith works with the nostalgia era of classic cars, photographing them in carefully researched and built models of the time. Maybe a little slick but oh, what cars!

Charles Simmonds is an artist whose work I stumbled on at the Whitney Museum of Art staircase back in the early seventies. His miniatures of crumbling ancient native American dwellings were fit into cracks and niches in dark alleyways or in other unexpected places. They are carefully constructed from miniature adobe bricks to resemble the abandoned cities of Mesa Verde or Chaco in the southwest.

Alan Wolfson makes scenes of urban city streets with the gritty flavor of life on the edge. His works include subway platforms, mid-city diners, the slums and red light districts. The detailing draws one into the scene to catch the smells and sounds of the scenes in the imagination.

Follies Burlesk

Subway Station (coin added for scale)

“DREAMS AND MEMORIES” includes works that capture and convey states of psychological angst, often in the form of dark and mysterious open-ended narratives.

James Casebere has a long presence in the constructed photography movement and is a seminal pioneer in working within this realm. His environmental and architectural works evoke dreams of mysterious interiors, sometimes flooded with water that perhaps refer to global issues. The work in the show is from an urban series referring to urban blight. The works were inspired by a trip through Duchess County,NY. and is a commentary on the rekless housing market boom, an unsustainable lifestyle, and the loss of the “American Dream” of home ownership.
video interview with James Casebere

Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz

This artist’s team create miniature scenes within ‘snow globe’ formats. They show narrative stories of snow blown crimes, hallucinatory dreams, weathered relationships, and small human plays on a frigid stage of chill.

Traveler 174 a Night

The Well

Between Too Much and Me

Thomas Doyle says, "Creation of the works is a meditative process, and one that I often lose myself in". This is a common thread among all of the artists in the show…the creation of a world so filled with the stuff of life that it has the power to draw the viewer, and the maker, into the scene. Doyle’s works make light of the theme of ‘home’ as a fragile and sometimes terrifying place. Nature swallows, homes sink, floods are suspended and the tidal surge of our throw aways threatens the dream.

Thomas Doyle Interview

Refuge detail

Refuge

Charles Matton was a French artist who recently passed away in 2008. He created works that delved the realm of a by-gone era from artist lofts to Victorian collections they slide into Freudian dreamscapes and collective consciousness.

Bats de Lieux

Charles Matton working on "The Loft"

“VOYEUR/PROVOCATEUR” connecting with subversively witty scenes, satirical commentaries on art, culture, and politics.

Joe Fig has worked on a life series making miniature replicas of creation spaces. They are the studios of famous artists, complete with the spattered paint tables, the viewing walls and the artist’s themselves placed in action or contemplative poses. The studios tell a lot about how their works were made and the studio environment working the way into the work itself.

Jackson Pollock in his studio

Jackson Pollock studio model

Frank Kunert is a German artist and another who creates the work for the photographic lens. In the constructions he slides into a subtle and sometimes hidden commentary on a bleak industrial landscape where the architecture is pushed into a word play, a satirical jab or a commentary on urbanity and the grey empty street. His works were featured in an earlier Gallery O post last year.

Children!

Menu a Deux

Paolo Ventura is an Italian artist that produces scenes that haunt us like a Fellini Circus act. Some capture the scenes of war-time Europe in a foggy tableau like a scene from a film.

Liliana Porter uses the Lilliputian realm to put tiny figures at work on giant unattainable tasks. The monumental makes the human even smaller in comparison. Liliana Porter collects her figures and materials from yard sales, antique stores and swap meets.

Ax Man

Ji Lee also works with scale and the lesser used space overhead. He creates ultra small living room scenes in an upside down and miniaturized location at the corners of ceilings. They are invisible except for those who just happen to look up and outside their horizon line gaze.

David Lawrey and Jaki Middleton created a skyscraper view box for the show with two windows at eye level revealing an infinite array of office desks and chairs in military precision rows. By using a slanted glass pane projection technique one ghostly chair swivels back and forth behind a desk.

Consolidated Life

Consolidated Life - interior view

There are surprises in the assembly of miniaturists. Specifically refreshing are the works of June Bum Park and Matt Collishaw :

June Bum Park’s playing with cars video using the tricks of perspective to create a miniature play parking lot that he manipulates from a fifth story window. The video is speeded up to a frantic scene of hands working the job of parking cars, taking care of pedestrians and generally moving the remote scene with playful intent. Other videos included here:

“Parking” video

“Crossing” video - (video link removed by artist)

“Building” video

Matt Collishaw has made a 3 dimensional zoetrope that is a carousel of movement involving a garden of birds, bird nests full of eggs, snails, fish, butterflies and little boys with sticks and clubs wreaking destruction in the flickering strobe of the animated figures.

See a Tate Museum interview of Matt Collishaw

..and the zoetrope video of “Garden of Unearthly Delights”

The show “Otherworldly: Optical Illusions and Small realities” will end September 18^th 2011. If you are in the New York City environs be sure to see the exhibition. It is a transport into the realm of the micro world brought to you through the imaginations of thirty seven artists.

MARWENCOL

2011-08-10T15:57:00.000-07:00

Mark Hogancamp got beat up in the year 2000. It was outside a bar. He had a thing about wearing women's shoes. The teenagers kicked his head until he went into a coma. When he came out of it he couldn’t remember anything of his previous life, not his alcoholism, his marriage, nor his talents in drawing… it all disappeared. He spent nine days in a coma, forty in the hospital and then was kicked out because he ran out of money. The road to recovery began when he started piecing his life back from reading his journals he had kept from the period before the beating. In it he read that he was drunk pretty much all of the time. Hogancamp learned when he drank he had been a kind of self-destructive, self-hating asshole. The new Mark Hogancamp, however, was all about love and sober-living.... and dolls.

He started creating his own world and populating it with fantasy characters that would act out stories in his own self healing therapy project. This project was called “Marwencol”, a small Belgium village built in his back yard that was overrun by GI Joe dolls, Barbie dolls and SS Nazis. Hogancamp created the stories, the scenes and then photographed them. He naturally put himself into the story as the main character and alter ego in 'Hogie'. Each character represented a town friend who was assigned a role in the continuing unfolding drama at Marwencol. The name of the town came from a combination of Mark's name and two women, Wendy and Colleen, who he had crushes with and who helped him through his difficult early healing process. Through the comic strip narrative the story of good versus bad played itself out in countless complex interactions of characters based on his friends and the forces of good overcoming the evil ones.

In Marwencol, Hogancamp's alter ego owns the most popular bar in town, as well as a one-of-a-kind "cat fight" club. He's married to a beautiful woman named Anna and is lusted after by a sexy green-haired witch with a time machine. The SS is constantly trying to find Marwencol and take the town. Meanwhile, Hogancamp, the ladies, soldiers who have wandered away from the battle front find themselves in a place largely untouched by the war. When the Nazi jeeps enter the town they all band together to defeat the SS savagery. The continuous story weaves it's way through Hogancamps mind providing it's own free therapy. It also gives him the time he has needed to put his world together again.

Along the small Kingston, New York hometown streets where Mark lives a very reclusive life he regularly walks down the road, sometimes dressed in a World War II soldier uniform, and pulls a small army jeep model on a string into town. That’s where photographer David Naugle, saw him and asked about the jeep. Mark said he was ‘aging’ it so that it looked more realistic for his photo shoot. David said he would like to see some of Hogancamps photos. An envelope arrived in his mailbox with prints of the photos from his fantasy World War II Marwencol town..The photos were stunning despite Hogancamps crude technical skills with a less than perfect camera. After an article in Esopus magazine appeared about his work, a prominent New York art gallery became interested in the collection of the photos of Mark’s “Marwencol” village. His private world and the self guided therapy was thrown into a whole other realm outside of his back yard and into the Art World.

Word spread and Mark was introduced to independent filmaker, Jeff Malberg, who directed and edited a documentary film "Marwencol" about Mark’s story. The film “Marwencol” delves a lot further into the complexity of this story than I’d care to reveal. It is a glimpse into one man’s deep heart, though. Sometimes it feels voyeuristic as this very public media probes the depths of the psyche and how the mind learns to deal with rebuilding what is permanently lost. When a man starts playing with dolls so many assumptions can be made by a society. When the spirit of a man dives into a deep and dark pool to try to heal himself one can only admire the courage and the bravery he takes to piece himself back together again. The documentary is a woven story of this complex tale

Hogancamp's photos and his Marwencol village are his own world. The ongoing story reveals a place populated by intrigue, strong women, evil intentions, bloodlust, bravery, reconciliation, deviance, strength, sex and death. It all lives true in his eyes and has brought him back from a place few have dared to venture.

Go to the Marwencol website for more information. Also view the Marwencol trailer.

The DVD documentary can be purchased on the web site. Proceeds go toward helping Mark purchase more figures and set pieces from his favorite town hobby store. The photos are not available for purchase yet as the sales would endanger his disability payments.

Marwencol press links..
.

New York Times - "In a Tiny Universe, Room to Heal" - by Penelope Green

Wall Street Journal - "Illustrator's War Games Prove Restorative" - by Steve Dollar

Psychology Today - "Not Child's Play" - by Ethan Gilsdorf

Huffington Post - "When Therapy Becomes Art" - by Jonathan Kim

Los Angeles Times - "The Extraordinary Goings-On in a Town Called Marwencol" - by Mark Olsen

Wired Magazine - "Miniature Town Brings Its Creator a New Life" - by Pete Brook

Denver Post - "This Doc(umentary) Has Healing Powers" - by Lisa Kennedy

Austin Chronicle - "Life and Death in Miniature" - by Ashley Moreno

Times Herald-Record - "Personal Tragedy Leads Ulster Man to Unique Art Form" - by Jeremiah Horrigan

Montreal Mirror - "A World in His Backyard" - by Mark Slutsky

A MINIATURE CONSERVATORY, “LAND ESCAPE” & PEARL’S GARDEN

2011-06-27T17:32:00.000-07:00

The current exhibition at Gallery O features some of our miniature land gardens as well as an extraordinary topiary artists’ work. The landscape theme is partly inspired by a garden tour we were a part of here in Boulder called the “Eccentric Artist’s Gardens Tour” featuring fifteen artist’s gardens and an art exhibition of works inspired by the gardens on the tour. The actual tour was on June 12^th and we had perhaps six or eight hundred people come through our little back yard paradise, studio and gallery show. Great fun and a lot of appreciative smiles during the perfect mid June Sunday.

The yard featured a new landscaping arrangement that we dove into as soon as the weather permitted back in March installing new planting areas, new fencing and sculptural trellises, a new piazza seating area. Wind vane fishes blew in the winds as well as a 35’ high wind sculpture array in the front yard that was originally planned for a year run in front of the Boulder Public Library but got cut short (literally!) by a high wind burst on Memorial Day. Oh, well… it looks better in our front yard anyway.

For more photos of the garden go to the Flikr Slide show

MINIATURE CONSERVATORY

There is a new addition in the greenhouse in front of Gallery O. We made a miniature conservatory that is inspired by the classic Victorian greenhouses and solariums of the nineteenth century. The garden features miniature plants, trees and shrubs with a stone walkway, solar garden lights and overhead lighting for nighttime viewing. It was something that we've both wanted to make for quite a while and the tour spurred us on to complete it.

LAND ESCAPE

In Gallery O is a new exhibition titled “Land Escape”. The miniature constructions are like small islands plucked from the earth featuring an array of terra-themes. They float on the walls across the small gallery at eye level.

"Tracks" - George Peters

“Tracks” - A winter scene with one bare snow limbed tree, a boulder, a fresh snowfall and a line of tracks through the snow. Overhead a black bird in flight follows the tracks.

"Shed" - George Peters

“Shed” – An old rusty sheet metal shed surrounded piles of metal pipes, sheet metal. A plume of smoke rises from the smoke stack. Nearby is a pile of burned trash with a singular wooden stump of a tree and one hopeful bit of green branch emerging from the stark ground.

"Eden Rising" - George Peters

“Eden Rising” – A carefully attended to topiary garden visited by a large snake. Overhead a globe of one bush rises into the air.

"Desert Fire" - George Peters

“Desert Fire” – This desert house has caught fire. It’s history has spontaneously combusted. The stone walkway to the house crumbles into the abyss. A coyote watches the flames and smoke from a distance.

"Turtle Island" - Melanie Walker

“Turtle Island” – A volcanic island of black soil on a parched landscape. A large turtle wanders looking for a meal.

"Beetle Forest" - Melanie Walker

“Beetle Forest” – The forest of pines is dying. The branches turn a copper color. Among the trees a large beetle wanders.

"Garden" - Melanie Walker

“Garden” – Wind swept trees and grasses neighbor with a small well tended garden.

Pearl's Topiary Garden

The Topiary Garden of Pearl Fryar is a small exhibit in the Greenhouse of Gallery O and features a group of photos taken by us during our recent trip to Jacksonville, Florida in March. We had seen the documentary film about this amazing man last year and made the trip up to Bishopville, South Carolina to see the gardens and try to meet Pearl himself. The film is titled “A Man Named Pearl” and if you haven’t seen this film, you must put it on your list. It is a documentary not only about extraordinary topiary but, more importantly, about this courageous and amazing man.

Pearl Fryar became a gardener fairly late in life. He knew very little about gardening or art for that matter. A son of a sharecropper family living in Bishopsville, South Carolina he took up a job at the local Coca Cola bottling company and managed to save his earnings there to buy a modest ranch style home with three acres of corn field. The neighborhood that he chose his property from was all white and they made it known to Pearl that his black family would not be welcomed to the neighborhood. This set Pearl in motion to prove his place on their street. He made a vow to himself to vie for the Bishopsville Garden of the Month award.

Scouring the local nursery’s compost pile he rescued plants, nursed them back to health and planted them around his home. He started shaping and carving the plants he rescued into topiary forms gaining a reputation in the small town as both an eccentric gardener and a generous and wise man. He eventually caught the attention of the local garden club and soon a sign appeared in his front yard stating that he had won the garden award.

People in his neighborhood changed their minds about Pearl. In fact, they invited him over to their yards to do topiary trimming on their property greenery. Soon the entire street has become an extension of his mastery with topiary. The city council and chamber of commerce recognized this local treasure of a man and soon the main street of Bishopville as well as many local businesses featured the extraordinary horticultural sculptures of Pearl.

He started giving talks and tours of his garden. Pearl’s garden has become a living testament to one man’s firm belief in the results of positive thinking, hard work, and perseverance, and his dedication to spreading a message of “love, peace, and goodwill.” Articles have appeared in countless periodicals about Pearl’s garden. He has been featured in the New York Times, appeared in numerous talk shows gaining enough notoriety to attract national attention for his garden through the film documentary entitled “A Man Named Pearl”. The film played in film festivals throughout the world to accolades and brought many awards. His garden is now under the wing of the National Garden Conservancy as a world treasure.

From his humble beginnings he has turned his strong beliefs into a garden of inspiration and hope.

Here are a few images from Pearl's amazing garden...

To view more of Pearl Fryar's Topiary garden go to the Gallery O Flikr slide show.
Visit the Pearl Fryar Topiary website.for more information.

FRANK KUNERT - SMALL WORLDS

2011-01-17T21:24:00.000-08:00

Sunny Side

German photographer and miniaturist, Frank Kunert creates small worlds that slide into a realm of the surreal. In his table top creations he challenges our eyes, makes us look a little closer to the story being told and then makes us look again. His photos of the miniatures bring the dioramas to a level of realism that astounds. There are views that create poetic qualities, silent jabs, some quick humor and dark zones. Most of these places have very little nature. They are views of industrial grey under an overcast sky. No people show up in his creations. We can see them as simply a funny story or feel their grit and leaf blown familiar alleyways. The architecture defines the people that live there and pushes the imagination closer to a lucid state of altered reality.

Kunert’s models are made with extreme reality in mind. He works on the miniatures for months before the lights come on and the camera shutter clicks. Everything about the constructions is meant for that moment of creating the illusion and telling the story. Often the story is a word play or a subtle jab at how the punch line is delivered.

A highway beneath a park playground slide becomes a devious parental thought for dropping the kids off to play for a short time. A contemporary art center with an impossibly inaccessible entry sets the tone for ‘high art’. Diving boards that hover above the audience stands, a public pool toilet or a house at the end of a pier invites the divers to one last free dive. The clay tennis court on a half pipe for a quick rush to the net. His “Public Toilet” invites an audience to watch the stage with the not so private function displayed a little too publicly. An apartment building that stands perfectly proud except that the balconies have no access and the doors to them make for a treacherous drop.

His miniature works are like a question mark on our perceptions and are scenes that open the world around us revealing a world of quiet fantasy underneath. They mimic a disturbing dream state and pull us to the edge of a diving board.

With Balcony

Children!

Event Restaurant

Adventure Pool Complex

The Dream of Fortune

Almost Heavenly

Life Goes On

At a High Level

Crowd Pleaser

Small Paradise

Hope is Green

Onward & Upward

Petting Zoo

Public Toilets

In Depth of Ecstasy

Tennis Half-Pipe

An interview with Frank Kunert

G P- I'd like to know how your current works came to you? Just glancing at your gallery sections there is quite a difference from your earlier cartoon-like illustrative works. These almost look like another artist entirely. I do understand that some of these works were for a purpose of working in the graphic and illustration realms of commercial works but where did the building works spring from?

F K - When I started building my miniature scenes I made my figures (human beings, animals) with plasticine. After a while the buildings became more and more realistic, and I had the feeling it could be interesting to build my small worlds without any figures to make it look less cartoon-like. And it worked: the scenes became more open for fantasies.

G P -Could you talk a little bit about your processes in your works. How do you pull your ideas together? Do you spend a lot of time constructing a scene in your head or by first sketching them out?

F K - At the beginning there are influences of everyday life, ideas by watching TV, reading the newspaper, take a walk through the nature or town and let the imagination and ideas in my head move around. Then, after a while I start sketching a little bit in my sketch book. But not every sketched idea is taken for the three-dimensional work. Some ideas are mixed together one day and the result is a new idea. If I have the feeling that an idea is ready for the model making, this will take a few weeks, sometimes a few months to the final result. When the miniature is finished I set the light in my studio and take the photographs with my large format camera. Then the 4"x5"-inch slide is scanned for the production of color prints, postcards, etc.

G P - Are there any events or stories from your deep past or childhood that inspired your present use of the absurd and the surreal in your works?

F K - When I was a child I was always happy when I could "work" alone with my hands in a quiet place. And it is still the same today. I can do things that I am not able to do in the "big" world outside. Perhaps It's easier for me to handle the absurdity of life with humor. And if I am alone it's easier for me to bring some order to my thoughts.

G P - Could you talk a little about your fascination with architectural environments, the realm of city and urban places in your works and the reason there are very few people in your constructions?

F K - Architectural environments show how people live, what their hopes and fears are. And I am fascinated in suburbs with their more or less old buildings mixed together in so many different ways. And in my pictures the life is shown without showing people, only what they have done. For me that makes more space for the imagination.

G P - I find studio scale often is a driving force in the scale of works that artists make. The work space defines the work like a ruler. Your miniatures are small scale. How does the camera change this and what attracts you to the miniature made large by the close up view?

F K - It is always fascinating for me to play with the scales. If I build a miniature model, it looks like a miniature model. But suddenly - after setting the light, putting the camera into the right position - it's like diving into another reality.

G P - Your constructions often show a raw and rough edge to things. The buildings are weather beaten, the streets and steps are worn. How has living in such man made environments effected your view of nature and humor? Are these familiar places in your environment or history?

F K - As a child I lived in a new house, and everything was perfect. But I know that I was always interested in raw and rough edge of things. They always seemed to be more honest to me. We always try to get the nature under control, fight against the transience, and I think it's easier to bear the absurdity of life with humor.

G P - Could you expand a bit about the importance of your hand built environments versus the more realistic or digital effects that one sees most of in this computer age?

F K - For me the advantage of building the environments is that I can do everything step by step and the whole scene is of a piece. Sometimes it's a hard fight for my impatience, but I think it's better for developing my ideas - it's less abstract than digital work. The hand made things have more charm than digital productions. I try to work out my skills with a perfection of imperfection.

G P - I like your attention to the story and narrative of a scene. Have you ever been tempted to expand your stories to the actual streets as guerrilla art and discovery installations? I'm thinking perhaps of Charles Simonds works placed in small corners of the urban environment or maybe actual children's slides and diving boards placed for visual effect.

F K - I am always fascinated in works of some other artists working in that way. But until yet I need a quiet place where I feel secure. For me it's necessary to build my scenes with the possibility to have everything under control. Perhaps one day I will go outside...

G P - I know you don't like to talk about any future ideas but could you expand a bit about process and journey? Often times we are led by unseen forces and end up making random choices about how the ideas can proceed. I also remember from a very early age how the act of drawing and learning to draw was like a journey creating it's own path. The best that could be done is just to follow the natural outcomes and be tempted along by learning more about the world by making and drawing. What important events brought you to make these small worlds?

F K - In my apprenticeship with a photographer I was fascinated of the possibility making illusions with staged photography in the studio. There had been quite banal things like water taps or door handles we had to photograph. But I learned that how you do something and not what you do is the important thing. After my apprenticeship I was busy with advertising and industrial photography, but I knew that wasn't the thing I really liked. I always needed the "quiet place at the corner". And among my commission works I built my first scenes for myself and realized that there were also customers interested in those pictures. Then I had the first commercial works in that way - and that was the beginning of the small worlds for me. In the last years I like to do my own things without any order. That's the best way, watching step by step how the work goes on.

G P – Is there anything else that you’d like to share?

F K - An additional thought: In 2004 I began producing my own postcard edition. I like the imagination that the pictures can go their own way around the world. It's a quite cheap way for people to buy a photograph. Additionally they can write down their own messages. I think that's great.

Frank Kunert in studio working on Onward & Upward

To see more visit Frank Kunert’s web site

THE NUTSHELL STUDIES - DEATH IN THE DOLL HOUSE

2011-01-10T23:52:00.000-08:00

Dolls have always seemed a little creepy. Their silent gazes look out from their painted or glass emotionless eyes and often take on the voice of their little girl caregivers in secret conversations and private friendships. Looking back at deep history you can find dolls in every culture from ancient Egypt to today’s action figures. They have been used as girls toys to prepare their caretakers for a future of real-life motherhood. Chinese doctors used small ivory dolls for their women patients to point to the areas that corresponded to their hurt in order to retain a modest physical distance from an actual full body examination. In Japan women often carry dolls around with them when their own children have passed on in early deaths in a sign to others of their grief and loss.

Then there are dolls and dollhouses that are used to recreate crime scenes where murders, accidents and apparent suicides have happened. The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death were the result of Frances Glessner Lee, a wealthy heiress grandmother from a privileged family as well as a master criminal investigator. In an age of botched and sloppy crime investigations there was a need for better instructive methods for police and forensic investigations of the growing crime waves of the 1920's and 30's. She founded the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard in 1936. Later she was made honorary captain in the New Hampshire State Police through her work with investigative forensics. Her childhood fascination with murder mysteries like Sherlock Holmes fed this fascination with criminal investigation. Her work in the recreations of crime scenes pioneered criminal forensic studies and were used as teaching tools for the training of police investigators. She created eighteen dioramas in the early 1940’s donating them to the Harvard Legal Medicine department in 1946.

Frances Glessner Lee at work

The term ‘Nutshell Studies’ came from a well-known police saying: “Convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find truth in a nutshell”. The dioramas that were created by a meticulous hand are just as valid today and are still used in forensic training. Their detail is astounding and meant to inspire careful examination of the facts of each case. Carefully placed objects and furniture, found as they were by the first responders to the crime scene, displaying and detailing each important clue to what had happened in the room seem to freeze the death in a momentary time capsule. There are pencils that actually write, window shades that move, accurate bloodstains and spattered walls, shell casings, tipped furniture, all pointing to a clue to the crime.

In photographer and writer Corinne May Botz’s definitive book “The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death”, she chronicles Francis Glessner Lee’s life and works in equal detail. She describes her as a “brilliant, witty, shy, intimidating, and, by some accounts, impossible woman. She gave what she thought you should have, rather than what you might actually want. She had a wonderful sense of humor about everything and everyone, excluding herself. The police adored and regarded her as their ‘patron saint’, her family was more reticent about applauding her, and her hired help was “scared to death of her”. According to one family member, she could put you under the carpet in three words.”

Lee made each of the dolls and many of the details herself with hands that seemed much too large for what she was making. The photos of her working show a concentration and skill that belays that fact. The dolls were given great attention to the detail of the corpse. They were each dressed accurately down to the underwear. She was never satisfied with her work and wanted a closer realism to each scene. Some of the furniture and dollhouse details were ordered from other craftsmen and no expense was held from creating a realistic depiction of each scene. Some of the photos of Lee working reminded me of the love and care that can be seen in the documentary film of artist/sculptor Alexander Calder puts into his toy works, particularly his charming circus performance. However, there is nothing celebratory about Lee's dolls and their dark rooms..

But this macabre slant definitely has a dark shadow about it. Her miniature rooms often involved sex crimes, beds spattered with blood in scenes of domestic isolation and showing the layers of lives that ended inside what appears to be normal, private spaces tinged with a captured soul in a place of danger. The life of the typical woman during this time was one of domesticity, property and social complicity to the norms of the feminine life. Lee spent a good deal of her life fighting this stereotype but immersing herself in these scenes of death. Living in an age of women put in their home places, Lee had not gone to college nor obtained any degree after her name but, instead, gained notoriety from the profession of forensic medical studies and criminologists in the Harvard Department of Legal Medicine. Her works are studied to this day across the nation in the field.

Frances Glessner Lee died in 1962, aged 83, long before Dick Wolf turned forensics into entertainment. After her death these wonderful models were almost destroyed by neglect: Harvard lost interest in forensics after her death and shuttered the department. A former professor there, Dr. Russell Fisher, became Maryland's chief medical examiner and brought the Nutshells with him. In 1966 he moved them to the Medical Examiner's Office at the Baltimore city morgue where they are now housed. Participants in police science seminars have been poring over the models ever since.

By 1992, Lee's creations were disintegrating, and the Maryland Medical-Legal Foundation donated $50,000 for their restoration. Despite the dated decor and narratives, criminologists still swear by the Nutshells. "People take them as seriously as any other crime scene," said Dr. David R. Fowler, the current chief medical examiner for Maryland. "I've never seen anybody make jokes because of the degree of intricacy and detail. The quality is stunning. I have never seen any computer-generated programs that even come close."

The popular television series CSI recently created a series using similar dollhouse murder scenarios inspired by Lee’s Nutshell series. “The Miniature Killer” told the story of murder by model. A key signature of the miniature killer’s crimes were the meticulous scale models that were built by the killer to reflect each crime scene. The models were either left at the murder site or delivered to someone involved in solving the case.

Filmmaker Susan Marks is due to release a new documentary early this month detailing the works of Lee in a documentary entitled “Of Dolls and Murder”. The film is narrated by Baltimore native and filmmaker, John Waters. along with film co-producer John Dehn who was on the fence about the project until he encountered the dollhouses in person."You become immersed in them in a way that, if it was not done so well, you wouldn't," he says. "You can actually go down in there like you're six inches tall. Because of the detail, the effect is much more."

The scenes are certainly haunting in creating a moment of calm after a storm of violence had swept through them. The close up photography of Corriane May Botz reveals a suspended time within the miniature dioramas of collapsed terror.

LORI NIX - SMALL WORLDS OF BIG NATURE

2010-12-14T12:49:00.000-08:00

Lori Nix - Library - 2007

Visit your local electronics store to see the bank of the newest technology of giant screens and flashing 3D latest release films jumping off of the screen created by digital animation teams spending untold hours manipulating skin and hair into realistic perfection. In the early days of special effects artists, sculptors and painters created all of these effects by hand painting super realistic backdrops, carving miniature sets to match the filming site and creating a world of imaginative means. As the digital replaces the hand-made (using our ‘digits’) a new appreciation for works made by simple means and artful minds becomes important again.

There is great depth in the worlds created beneath the hand. I’m intrigued by a group of artists who work in the miniature realm creating tableaus of great detail and story. They build their micro worlds like tiny film sets complete with incredible attention to detail, stage lighting, backdrop and then prepare them to be recorded by the lens of a camera. The compression of these miniature dioramas have an effect of concentrating the miniature moments that are played out on the table tops or box frames into dream-like effect. At the same time the small scale scenes achieve a remarkable enlargement effect in the mind and eye as if you could step into them and feel the air.

Lori Nix has spent fifteen years making miniatures built to be photographed. Her works include a series of miniatures on themes suggesting visions of a future after humans have disappeared. She has constructed a group of tableaus of weather disasters and accident scenes reminiscent of her childhood home in the plains of Kansas and the back rooms of an “unnatural” history museum featuring the detritus of the museum workshops. The scenes make a delicious mix of cinematic story and miniature wonder.

Birds in Flight, 2001

LORI NIX

“…I am often asked questions about the inspiration for my work as well as my working process. As a ‘non-traditional’ photographer (I construct my subject matter rather than go find it) people find it hard to grasp what exactly it is that I do. And the fact that it is all done in front of the camera, with no digital manipulation, adds its own set of challenges. Building materials, lighting, issues of scale and space all become significant when you are recreating the world on a table top

Flood, 1998

I am greatly influenced by landscape painting, particularly the Hudson River School of Painting which included the artists Thomas Cole, Asher Brown Durand, Frederich Edwin Church, Martin Johnson Heade, and the Romantic painter Casper David Friedrich. Each of these painters possessed characteristics of romanticism and the Sublime and it's ability to create a state of mind and express intense emotions either through beauty or horror. Eighteenth century philosophers such as Burke and Kant wrote of phenomena that could excite sublime feelings when considering natural settings, dangerous situations, the unknown, and anything else that can threaten us or our belief that we live in a friendly and predictable universe that is under our control. The Sublime as a school of thought came to full force in the eighteenth century and was illustrated by these painters' grandiose landscapes. When one views these beautiful depictions of landscape, one immediately sees God in all his glory and is filled with awe and/or terror by His majesty. In contemporary art, the Sublime manifests itself in many different ways and in many different forms, but it is trying to achieve the same effect, the evocation of profound emotion. The painters Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko employed styles of Abstract Expressionism to move the viewer. The photographer Andreas Gursky takes pictures of enormous spaces that continue on beyond the perceivable horizon, confronting the viewers with feelings of unease and smallness. In my own work, I create photographs that depict our failing future and the demise of humanity, though I temper it with subtle humor.

I am interested in depicting danger and disaster, but I temper this with a touch of humor. My childhood was spent in a rural part of the United States that is known more for it's natural disasters than anything else. I was born in a small town in western Kansas, and each passing season brought it's own drama, from winter snow storms, spring floods and tornados to summer insect infestations and drought. Whereas most adults viewed these seasonal disruptions with angst, for a child it was considered euphoric. Downed trees, mud, even grass fires brought excitement to daily, mundane life. As a photographer, I have recreated some of these experiences in the series "Accidentally Kansas".

In my newest body of work "The City" I have imagined a city of our future, where something either natural or as the result of mankind, has emptied the city of it's human inhabitants. Art museums, Broadway theaters, laundromats and bars no longer function. The walls are deteriorating, the ceilings are falling in, the structures barely stand, yet Mother Nature is slowly taking them over. These spaces are filled with flora, fauna and insects, reclaiming what was theirs before man's encroachment. I am afraid of what the future holds if we do not change our ways regarding the climate, but at the same time I am fascinated by what a changing world can bring.

Beauty Shop, 2010

I began my photography career in college, working for the college newspaper. I started out as the darkroom printer and eventually became the photo editor. As the editor, it became quickly obvious that I was not much of a photojournalist. I didn't have the gift of being at the right place to capture breaking news. I'm also horrible at portraiture as I am unable to capture the essence of the sitter. In college I studied ceramics and photography. With ceramics, you're always building the object from scratch. This translated well in my photo studies, where my desire was to construct the image rather than find an existing one. Since my earliest days I have always worked with fabrication, either through darkroom manipulations or even room sized installations. My strength lies in my ability to build and construct my world rather than seek out an existing world. Inspiration comes from reading the daily newspaper The New York Times, science fiction paperbacks and magazine articles. I get most of my ideas during my morning subway commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan to go to my day job. Something about the morning light, the rocking of the subway, seeing the cityscape pass by opens my mind up to inspiration. I then research my ideas on the internet, buy reference books, then start sketching out the diorama. Sometimes I let months pass before beginning work, other times I start immediately. It all depends on how fully defined the image is in my head. Sometimes I see the final image immediately, other times I do a lot of research before committing to building the model.

Ice storm, 1999

In my earliest work "Accidentally Kansas" I relied heavily upon manufactured models for railroad hobbyists. I used a shallow depth of field to give it a dreamy quality, like the fuzziness of memories. It also helped to hide my lack of good painting skills. Building landscapes was still new to me then.

The scenes I build today are mostly made by hand. There is usually one element I do not feel like creating, such as the piano in "Majestic". I found the piano and then scaled the rest of the scene around it. The size of the piano determined the size of the diorama. My scenes can be as small as 50x60 centimeters and as large as 182 centimeters in diameter. It takes approximately seven months to build and photograph a scene. I build it for one angle of view and never move my camera from that spot. I will change the lighting, the placement of the objects and re-shoot until I'm fully satisfied with the results. I shoot with an 8x10 large format camera and film. I print my own photographs quite large.

I have been building dioramas and photographing the results since the early 1990s. As I've working through various bodies of work, from Accidentally Kansas, Lost and now The City, my fabrication skills have improved and my subject matter has become more complex. With The City series I have moved indoors, creating architectural interiors. This has proven most difficult yet most rewarding. Currently it takes about seven months to build a scene and two to three weeks to shoot the final image. I build these in my Brooklyn living room. I have miniature power tools throughout the apartment, a chop saw under the kitchen table, a miniature table saw on top. The computer room doubles as a model mock-up room. There are two of us who work on them, myself and my partner Kathleen. We split the work according to our strengths. I come up with the concept, the color palette and the lighting scenarios. I build the structures out of extruded foam and glue and paint and anything else handy. Kathleen is trained as a glass artist, specializing in cast glass work. She can paint faux finishes and gild architectural details with gold leaf. After I'm done building the structure and painting it, she comes in and adds dirt and distresses the walls to make it look old and decrepit.

I am fascinated, maybe even a little obsessed, with the idea of the apocalypse. In addition to my childhood experiences with natural disasters, I also grew up watching 1970s films known as "disaster flicks". I remember watching Towering Inferno, Earthquake, Planet of Apes and sitting in awe in the dark. Here was the same type of dangers I had experienced day to day being magnified and played out on the big screen in a typical Hollywood way. Each of these experiences has greatly influenced my photographic work. The series Accidentally Kansas explored my personal experience with the natural disasters of my childhood. The City postulates what it would be like to live in a city that is post man-kind, where man has left his mark by the architecture, but mother nature is taking back these spaces. Flora, fauna and insects mix with the detris of high and low culture.”

T-Rex, 2010

Angler Fish, 2009

Church, 2009

Junkyard, 2003

Majestic, 2006

Map Room, 2010

To see more of the works of Lori Nix visit her web site.

DALTON GHETTI - THE POINT OF A PENCIL

2010-08-12T23:48:00.000-07:00

The realm of the minaiture is often the result of extreme patience, obsession with small things as well as the astounding results of time based hand works. Dalton Ghetti creates sculptures made entirely from the graphite lead at the tip of a pencil. The works are carved without any magnifying lens using only a standard sewing needle, a razor blade, a sharp sculpting knife and a very steady hand.

"The pencil tip is great; it's like a pure, very homogenous material," Ghetti said. "It cuts in the same direction, not like wood, which has a grain. But when I tell people how long it takes, that's when they don't believe it. That's what amazes people more... the patience. Because everything nowadays has to be fast, fast, fast.

Dalton Ghetti grew up in Brazil where he shapened his pencils for school with a razor or a pocketknife. Later his sculptures were large scale and made from stone. Gradually, however, they became smaller works in soap, candles and broom handles before being reduced to the point of a pencil. He now lives in Bridgeport Connecticut where he makes a modest living as a carpenter and spending his free time carving pencils. He never sells his works but sometimes gives them to his friends as gifts.

"When I'm inspired, I can sit down and things just flow". he said. "You can't force yourself to do those things. I do it just for fun, it's pretty much like a hobby, a kind of meditation work that I do."

"I do it from my heart, I do it when I feel like... and I pretty much do it for myself", he said. "It's my own interest in the small things in life that drove me to call people's attention to them.

One work is a series of pencils each with a letter from the alphabet at the tip of each pencil. Each letter took a month to carve. Sometimes they break but are placed in his "graveyard collection" ... a group of works glued to pins and stuck into a piece of styrofoam.

"It would drive me mad when I would be just a bit too heavy handed and the pencil's tip would break. I would get very nervous sometimes, particularly when the piece was almonst finished, and then I would make a mistake.

"I decided to change the way I thought about the work - when I started a new piece my attitude would be 'well, this will break eventually but let's see how far I get.'... It helped me break less pencils, although I still do break them, it's not as often.

"Normally I'll start a different piece, but there was a hammer I was sculpting and I broke it about five or six times and I couldn't rest until it was done.

"Also, I never buy the pencils, my friends are always giving me them to sculpt on. Sometimes I use ones I find in the street."

About his "graveyard collection" he said, "People might think it's weird I keep them but they're still interesting. I worked on them for months so they might be dead now but at one point I gave them life."

Mr. Ghetti has made over 100 carvings, and is currently working on an epic piece inspired by the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

He said, "When September 11 happened I was in tears all day and couldn't do much for a while. I decided to make a teardrop pencil carving for each of the people who died in the attack.. about 3,000. I have carved one every day, it takes me about an hour.

"When I'm done they will form one big tear drop. It will take me about 10 years but it will be worth it."

Also read the NY Times article about his works...

MINI-A-CHAIR SHOW

2010-08-03T14:19:00.000-07:00

This little exhibition is dedicated to small chairs. These are the seats that inspire the active imagination to place the little person into them. As children our fantasies are placed on them like imaginary friends or dolls that need a place to sit. An empty chair often has an unknown or unseen occupant creating a story or holding a place in time.

The history of miniature chairs may have been originally as furniture in children’s play houses. As the craft developed they were used to be placed into portable display boxes as examples of a chair crafter’s wares and skills. A chair could then travel easily with the salesman. The model craft continues in the studios of designers with myriad examples of sleek and modern designs in miniature forms.

RED & BLUE CHAIR - Gerrit Rietveld - 1918

For this show, however, we’ve invited a group of friends and artists to create works on the subject of chairs and extend the function into the imaginary, the humorous and the profound realms of chairs. Many people responded from around our immediate neighborhood to remote parts of the country and the world. Our little gallery is now bursting with little chairs arranged on the display shelves and on the walls. The works are almost like aspects of personality, varied and exuberant, some funny with inspiration seemingly coming from a title and then spreading to the four legs, seat and back rest of the tiny chair. Others crafted simply from the closest thing to the hands of the maker… like the bowl of corn chips or the little piece of wire. It’s always amazing how sometimes the mind directs the hands and other moments when the hands take over the mind in a furious revolt of just making. Most creative endeavors are like an internal contest for dominance over who gets to have the most fun....mind or body.

The opening for the show packed the gallery. There are 109 works in the show by twenty four artists. It’s actually pretty easy to fill the small space with small art and curious people. We have recently expanded the gallery into the greenhouse as well since the plants were moved to the better climate outside for the summer. Despite the late afternoon rain drizzling on the gallery roof and garden of umbrellas, the show drew an appreciative audience.

MINI-A-CHAIR EXHIBITION ARTISTS

ANKE SAUER - BRUCE GEORGE - CAROL BACHMANN - DOUG PRINCE - EVERT BROWN - GEORGE PETERS - JIM WALKER - JOANNE GRILLO - JOHN ADAMS - KATHLEEN MARTINDALE - KISA SAUER - LOUISE PADDEN - MELANIE WALKER - NIKO HALE - OLIVER HART - PATRICK NAGATANI - SANDY HALE - SEI YASUDA HALE - SHERRY HART - SUSAN COOPER - TED RINGER - TIM HAVENS - TOM LYON - TOM STEENLAND - ADREAN ARMSTRONG & ANONYMOUS

Here are a few images from the Mini-A-Chair show...

Inspiration - Sherry Hart - glass, 1/2"cedar chip chair

Chair of Nails - George Peters - wood, nails

Yoga Man Chair and Bench - Tom Lyon - wood

Triscuit Chairs - Tom Lyon
processed wheat crackers & cereal, wire

Hairloom Chair - Louise Padden - human hair

High Chair - George Peters
vine wood

Floating Fan - Doug Prince - film transparencies, plastic view box

Study - Melanie Walker
view inside the peep box

Some Assembly Required - Melanie Walker - plastic, paper

Raven Chair Nevermore - Tom Lyon - paper, tape, wire

Lawn Chair - Melanie Walker + George Peters
moss, wire, sorghum, stone

Type of Chair - Louise Padden + Evert Brown - digital print

Home Seat Home - Melanie Walker

Thorn Chair - George Peters - rose stems & thorns
photo by Melanie Walker

Blue Chairs - Susan Cooper - wood, oil paint

Ying-Bang - Tom Steenland - wood, bullet

Lemonie Chair - Melanie Walker + George Peters - plastic lemon slices

Self Portrait - paper fold chair - Tim Havens

Wing Side Seat - Tom Lyon
wood, aluminum, wire

Mini Favela Chair - George Peters - wood
after Fernando and Humberto Campana Favela chair - Brazil

Place Setting Chairs - Anonymous - pewter

For more images from the exhibit go to the Gallery O Flikr slide show and even more pictures of miniature chair examples.

THE HORSE SHOW

2010-07-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

In our historic neighborhood we have an alley. In the late 1800’s alleys served many purposes. Kids played 'stick ball" in them, neighbors called to neighbors across them, incinerators burned trash and leaves there. They were also primarily made for the delivery of goods by horse drawn wagons. Our back alley building served as a shed for the coal hauler to deliver his black chunks by horse wagon for the coal furnaces around town. Today that shed is a miniature art gallery called “Gallery O”.

Recently we had our sixth “sort’a annual” alley party there for friends and the neighborhood. We do this as a way of getting to know our neighbors, catching up with the friends and creating a community of people that wave to each other. It just seemed like a good idea a while back. In the old days people would sit on their front porches every day at dusk and ‘shoot the breeze’ with whoever walked by. It was particularly popular on Sunday evenings. It is what people used to do back before the media took over our lives and made us all shut ins watching the evening news instead of the light glancing off the Flatiron rocks over the city here.

For the party we block off our alley and put out furniture, tables, chairs, rugs, lamps, a big tent we that doubles as a ‘Play Sail” kite, ping pong tables, banners and whatever else we can find to make this most communal space comfortable and fun for a summer evening. People bring food, drinks, a friend, a story, a song, a game or…. “a horse” ...this year’s theme. We open our studio and show kids films in the “Alley Cat Theater”, and, this year, had a show at our Gallery O called “The Horse Show” and invited children, artists and non artists to bring something with a horse in it. Many of neighbors and friends brought works on or about horses. Our next door neighbor even brought three real horses to the delight of everyone, especially the children. There were two miniature ponies for petting and one riding pony whose owner walked the wide eyed riders around the block on.

pony rides were given to the kids

The alley set up just before guests arrived and the rain hit

One of the hits of the night was the firing off of about eight pressurized water bottle rockets made by some of the family members who came and other friends who took up the challenge. They streamed into the sky spraying a trail of water mist, some ricocheting off the overhead cables to the delight of the ducking audience. Luckily they didn’t spook the horses into a stampede through the food table.

The Horse Show gathered an eclectic mix of works as anticipated with some really wonderful things. Below are some of the images from the gallery walls. People brought photography, drawings, prints, sculptures, there was even a horse headed human who paraded through the crowd.

Half a Horse - Sandy Hale

Capriole - Pam Capozolla

Light Horse - Melanie Walker + George Peters

Light Horse 3 - Melanie Walker + George Peters

Scorpio Rising - Sherry Hart

Italian Stallions - Melanie Walker

Eye Chart - Melanie Walker

Chance - Sherry Hart

Lukas Bachmann - age 8

Horse Hinge - collection of Joanne Grillo

Rocking Horse Toy - collection of Peters+Walker

Galloping News - George Peters

Richard Block - collection of Joanne Grillo

Horse & Moon - Carol Bachmann

Blue Horse - Melanie Walker

Trojan Horse - Oliver Hart - age 8

Sanjay wearing the Horse Head

For the photo frame images go to the slide show as well as a parade of our lead toy horse collection

EXTREME MINIATURISTS

2010-02-09T21:05:00.000-08:00

In every occupation there are the extremists. There are extreme sports that put one as close to death as possible. There are religious extremists who push the letters of the holy law to stretch the principles of common sense. I’ve run into extreme kite makers who battle for the largest kite in the world award and get carried away by their creations. There are extreme makeovers, extreme pumpkins and extremely rude people.

In the miniature world, there are, of course, extreme miniaturists. These are people who make very, very small objects by hand usually using microscopes and very steady hands. When I was working in Hawaii at a tourist marketplace as a sidewalk portrait artist, at the stand next to me was a man who painted miniature artworks on women’s fingernails. One day he showed me his other passion …making incredibly small sculptures out of a grain of rice. I was amazed. He showed me tiny little figures that could fit into the eye of a needle and even a miniature replica of the Taj Mahal smaller than a pinky fingernail clipping.

I recently stumbled upon the works of two extreme miniaturists. They both work microscopically, that is, aided by the strong vision of microscopes. The works are incredibly small. Most fit easily into an eye of a needle and can be accidentally blown away by a careless sneeze or inhaled. The sculptures are carved using hand made tools of even smaller proportions. They are painted, in some cases with a brush made from a hair off of a fly’s back. In order to carve them, particles are scraped a micron at a time with a deft precision that baffles imagination. The carving is done between heartbeats so the fingers don’t topple the sculptures off of their perch and loosing them forever.

Willard Wigan is a micro-miniaturist. His works began when he was a child who had learning disabilities and undiagnosed dyslexia. To avoid the difficulties and harassments in the English school system he would escape to a small shed in the backyard of his home and watch a line of ants working. Feeling like he was also as insignificant as these humble creatures, he started making things for the ants, like tiny little houses and then little shoes and hats for them. His mother discovered his secret hideaway one day and he was punished but it didn’t stop his fascination with these miniature worlds he could create.

Hagop Sandaldjian excelled in mathematics and music in Egypt and mastering in the miniature fingering required to play a viola poprosa, a 20 inch violin. Later on in life he used his skills of obsessive controlled movement in carving incredibly small sculptures. Sandalldjian employed self-made tools made from sharpened needles tipped with diamond or ruby dust, constructing his sculptures out of miniscule materials such as dust, lint and hair.

Are they art, craft or extreme novelty? In an age of the micro-miniature when even the most mundane of everyday objects, the ubiquitous cell phone rings in most pockets and purses, we have accustomed ourselves to small wonders filled with nano-scale circuitry and incomprehensible electronics. We have lost the wonder of the hand made. Its hard to compete against the research that’s going on to create molecular mechanical gears and circuits so small they are invisible to all but an electron microscope's gaze. But for the efforts of the extreme miniaturists they have inspired wonder at all things handmade to the beat of a heart.

BIRD HOUSE

2010-02-09T12:31:00.000-08:00

When we started the Gallery O in the fall of 2008 and the track lights came on the lights in our heads came on as well. We realized that such a small space could contain, perhaps, some really big ideas. Shows were planned for the year with an unrealistic schedule of one show a month with openings, refreshments and crowds of people attending. It would certainly keep us busy on top of our already packed schedule.

With that said, the ‘Bird House’ show is the first gallery show since last summer. It is an installation of birds inside the gallery from our collections. Bird mobiles circle in the space and fly on pedestals, wooden crows line the shelves, mechanical birds chirp and tweet when someone enters the room setting off light sensors, and miniature wood houses are arranged along the shelves between the birds.

It may be a reference to the Alfred Hitchcock film, ‘The Birds’ that still haunts or merely a light hearted romp in avian pleasures. As the bird mobiles turn sunlight is caught and throws bird shaped reflections and shadows across the walls. Occasionally a shaft of light hits the sensors on the birds and they start a small private conversation about it.

Another newsworthy development and addition to the Gallery O happened last fall with an extension to the gallery space. How soon we outgrow the meager 8’ by 10’ gallery! The patio gathering space proved too difficult during the cold winter months here to have wine and refreshments for the openings. We have now enclosed the area and made it into a solarium and greenhouse more than doubling the Gallery O space. Now the walls are lined with plants and will soon be fitted with exhibition panels to extend the available wall space for future shows.

Stand by for the next phases of Galley O's future growth. Hmmm... The exclusive Cafe O with very limited seating and maybe even a conference space and convention hall.

TINTYPE PHOTO - Through the Lens in 1860

2009-04-12T16:07:00.000-07:00

There is something that happens when you gaze at a photo of a person’s face. The presence and personality make a mark of recognition, even with strangers and people unfamiliar with our own lives. This connection spans generations. Going back in time we can see how the faces are etched with the concerns of the day, how the innocence shines in the face of a child, the look of hope mixed with fear on a twenty year old bride and the wisdom of the aged reflected through wrinkled eyes. A photo brings us to our common humanity.

The tintype photo process was the cheap and accessible form of photography in the mid 19th century America. Tintype photography, also known as melainotype and ferrotype was first described by Adolphe-Alexandre Martin in France in 1853 and patented in the United States in 1856 by Hamilton Smith, a professor at Kenyon College in Ohio. Previous techniques pioneered in France for commercial use were copper plate Daguerreotypes in 1839 and glass plate Ambrotypes in 1854. These techniques evolved to using tin plates, a cheaper and more durable technology at the time. The tintype was actually on iron that had been coated with black enamel. The plate was coated with wet collodian and a light sensitive silver nitrate for exposure inside the camera.

The process was simple, fairly inexpensive compared to other previous photo processes and made accessible to eager photographic subjects willing to give a few silver coins in exchange for a portrait. Tintype photographs were, mostly, an American phenomenon. In the years of the Civil War tintype photographers set up at carnivals, on river boats, Northern and Southern war encampments and most places where they could find eager customers. People posed in the photographer’s tent studios, with painted backdrops mimicking the formal painter’s aesthetic for portraiture. The subjects would bring their own props and dress according to their “Sunday best”. The exposures were long by today’s standards and forced the sitters into uncomfortable positions. The photo subjects have expressions of seriousness or even a dower look. Most people had never before posed for a photograph by a professional photographer using a mystical system of glass lenses and an alchemical array of ingredients. It was a serious matter. It was like being confronted by a three legged mythological Cyclops. Very few tintype photos from the twenty year period that this process reigned show spontaneous snapshots from actual non-posed life.

Floating river boat photography studio in the 1860's

Some cameras used multiple lenses to expose two or more images at once on the tin plates. These were then cut roughly with tin snips and placed into either a paper frame or, for an extra price, into elegant small hinged leather and gilded copper frames. Since these photos were generally small in size, they could fit into a locket or could be sent easily by mail inside an envelope. For the first time, having a portrait made was no longer the privilege of the wealthy class only. Anyone could have their photo taken.

These images were drawn from Melanie Walker’s collection of tintype photography and gathered since the mid nineteen seventies. They were found in antique shops from coast to coast and across the country. Some were found recently on EBay. What may stand out is that these photos are of ‘rescued’ ancestors. They are photos abandoned by their families for whatever reasons and left for the larger world to gaze upon. Whether the eye to eye connection is made while thumbing through a family album in a second hand shop or on the wall of a museum photographic exhibit, the recognition is still evident. Here is a picture of a life that was lived gazing out at a world not so different. Today’s photo technology is only slightly faster and more easily disseminated by emailing digital photos of the new baby or sharing a friend’s face on a social networking site. Where will our photos be in 150 years time? Will our portraits look out at a very different world that would then reflect on our simple and primitive means of showing our faces?

The following tintype photos are samples from the show. There are approximately one hundred and twenty images in the exhibition. Most are very small at between 3" to 1" square.

For more images from the show and other researched tintype photos go to the slide show

The show opens April 17th and continues through May.

THE MINIATURES OF UDVARDY BOGI

2009-03-17T22:42:00.000-07:00

Udvardy Bogi is a Hungarian artist, living in Budapest who makes miniature rooms and other hand sized artworks. In the rooms are objects of everyday use, a chair, a pillow, a book, a stool. But within these miniatures are stories with the unmistakable marks of a careful hand using flights of fantasy and imaginative worlds both private and revealing. She uses the miniature format to concentrate these places into hand held wonders. The following images are from her collection.

THE THREE ROOMS

Transylvania Room

Chinese Food

African Room

Memento Morti

Paris - Snow Globe

Eyeglass Lens Rooms

Travel Time Menus

Vodafone project - Street Home

Lovas - Dream Picture

An internet-interview with Udvardy Bogi…

GEO – Your works are wonderful. The miniature room series is especially intriguing. Tell me about what started you making the maquette series of rooms.

BOGI - It began from the Secondary School of Fine and Applied Art. When I was 18, I never wanted to go to any house-parties or drinking with the others. Maybe it was the depression, I do not know exactly. I was always alone in my room puttering with something. One year later, I started making the small interiors and they began to be my real world. At the time I was reading the books of Agatha Christie and from many other writers. I love the classical English style. “The Little Library”,”The Old Wall” and the detective-novels. The 1920 to the 1930 periods inspire me.

Later, when I traveled to Rome (Clock menus), to Paris (French bathroom) and to Prague, all of these countries inspired me with something…the lifestyle, the fashion, the history, the people’s behavior and their culture. Later I started to make some miniatures and maquettes. (Memento mori, Clocks, Sunday play, Poppyhouse Maison). These rooms were are not just simple models but are situations, attitudes and dreams. They may seem a little bit strange or morbid but I like the beautiful "pink rose" effect with a little black humor.

GEO - Are these actual rooms or are they imaginary rooms? The rooms have a haunting quality to them as if they are both very familiar and, at the same time, like peeking into someone else's life. How do you view the topics of privacy, interior life, the reduction of a person's things to objects that surround a sitting chair?

BOGI - All of my rooms are always imaginary, not actual. I think its a more interesting challenge to make something from a fantasy and not to copy from the real or actual. For example, I have made three rooms in the last year. The theme I chose was of foreign internationals living in Budapest. One of African, another was a Transylvanian and the third a Chinese living in Budapest. I wanted to introduce three typical rooms of three nations. I wanted to change some objects from my fantasy so I put some imaginary objects into the small room to demonstrate my personal idea of a life style from these three countries. They are imaginary interiors of what people have brought with themselves from their cultural homeland and to remind them of their own country.

GEO - Where have you shown your works?

BOGI - The Vodafone-street project was in Budapest and many other places in Hungary in 2008. The Three Room Project was in Budapest and Wien, Hungary, as well. These rooms were shown in a small spot in an MTV segment. I’m hoping that to make my own little exhibition of my small rooms.

GEO - How does photography fit in with your works? Some of the miniatures look like they were specifically arranged and lit for the camera. Do you think about the works being for the photo or the photograph being a vital part of the process?

BOGI – At the present time, the photos about my works are simple documentation. I don’t have any purpose or aim with the photography because it is enough to work and build the mini worlds. But I think the art of the maquette can go a long way with potentiality. I feel like I am only near the starting line with what may be possible in the creation of these interiors. Later, I see the possibilities of photography and start thinking about the interrelation between the photo and the maquette. The interface between the large and small is a new problem in the art and deserves some further explorations.

GEO – Talk a little about your 'Clock Menus' and the 'Snow Globes'. What is going on in these works?

BOGI - I spent two years with many trips and journeys abroad. During the travels I had an impression of airports with the convergence of many people, the differences between the nations and the business life that flows through the terminals. This work shows four slices of the nations and how I see the USA, London, Milan and Tokyo. The little snow globes were an experiment to make the a series without a Santa Claus in them.

GEO - The 'Vodafone' street landscape in an exhibition case on the street…. Describe what this piece is about.

BOGI - The international telecommunication company, Vodafone has a foundation. This company has a program that supports disabled people like the blind, deaf and handicapped. My work demonstrated the street lifestyle of the homeless people. In the mini landscape I show a park with plants and trees, where the homeless people live. But the park was like a room. In the room was a park bench, like a sofa in a home. There were small pigeons as pets like parrots or canaries in a cage and the street light like a desk lamp. It shows they live in their own room, only it is outside the home but still has the same furniture.

GEO - And how about the subject of humor in your works. Some of the works have an infectious joy to them while others could be a little scary For example what’s the story behind 'Memento Mori” and about the small skeleton underground smelling the rose.

BOGI - Memento mori (remember the mortal) means to spend your life in good things without any sins. This was the basic idea. I like the black humor, I like Tim Burton’s morbid world, and the Memento Mori is a gift to my friend, Istvan Bodoczky, a kite artist, who recently had an operation at a clinic. The message is everybody should live a good life, without any bad thoughts or evil deeds.

GEO - How many hours do you spend on a typical maquette?

BOGI - I spend sometimes four to twenty hours on one piece. It totally depends on the size and the detail.

GEO - What sort of subjects inspire you to make your miniature artworks?

BOGI - Everything inspires me, from the everyday situations or impressions of the world to one little fleck of glass or plastic that I find. From one little piece junk metal, for instance, I can build a little world around that piece or, on the other hand, I dream up a complete situation and I look for the small objects for it. I use things I find like refuse and trash. I never buy, for example, a complete set of finished goods or a ready made little chair or dish or other things your would find in shops. I construct everything from things most people throw away.

GEO - Talk about what your next project will be? I know you're already thinking about it.

BOGI - I want to work with glass. I use the eye-glass lenses for miniature rooms. I want to see how can I demonstrate the narrow field of view that eye glasses are about. I like to think about the concentrated vision of The Butterfly Collector or the eye put to the photographer’s lens. Other stories in the lenses include; the English chocolate dessert with a little glass of poison, the telephone chat about love with a white pigeon, the old sailor with his pack of cigarettes, the fast breakfast of a businessman and so on. I want to do some maquettes that imitate nature, the weather, the air, the seasons...

Diplomma

More works can be seen on his blog site at

http://bogiudvardy.blogspot.com/

or see these photos and more on the slide show

SMALL SKY

2009-02-09T14:05:00.000-08:00

We attend kite festivals all over the world. The kites flown are sometimes of enormous proportions and not only carry away the imagination but sometimes the flyer on the end of the line as well. In many countries there are traditions of miniature kites. Sometimes they are made for fun or for gifts, sometimes to show the intricate mastership of the kite maker’s craft. Some are made with such light spars and papers that they literally float on a single strand of silken thread.

They can be made smaller than the wings of a fly. Some can fit into a pocket. At one kite festival in France we witnessed a small bat kite….made from the skin of a real bat. While visiting the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, and looking through the exhibits of kites, airplanes and other flying curiosities I came across a glass case with some early ultra-light model gliders with micro thick film wings. These small planes could fly on a breath. Looking closer at one, it had been fitted with four small flies glued to the wings for propulsion.

In art school I remember a graphic design class project of designing a postage stamp. The image had to be strong and bold to show well. Later, when I started to make kites I found the same graphic rule with kite design. When the kite soared to a couple hundred feet it became postage stamp size. The trick was to make it still show up well. Some miniature kites are the size of stamps or smaller. I've seen some that are hardly show up with a magnifying glass framed with bamboo spars, bridle lines and miniature spools.

Small Sky, the February show in Gallery O now features a collection of miniature kites, collected over the years. Some are from Japan, China, France, England and Germany. Many artist kite makers produce miniature kites to work out ideas for larger creations or just for the challenge of it. Making them is a test of patience and skill.

Go to the slide show for more pictures from the show SMALL SKY

SMALL SKY will continue through February 2009

LINKS:

http://miniatures.kitingusa.com/

Nobuhiko Yoshizumi

New York Times article

BIG WORLD - small world

2009-02-04T22:58:00.000-08:00

Ever since I can remember I have loved all things miniature. Now I see the connections to the deep thinking and patterning of a growing mind. We grow up getting accustomed to the big world by playing with smaller toy versions of things we see around us. Our toys can later become our obsessions in our adult life.

I can remember creating whole worlds around toothpick villages, clothes pin dolls, toy trucks moving dirt along miniature construction site roads, making mud pies and sand castles. Miniature model ships were fitted with broom straw railings and sailed into the dreams at night when the sleep began. It was a world just as real as any, this world created out of nothing but a dash of imagination and a sprinkle of pretend.

Toys are played with by children in every culture fashioned from stick to plastic. Kids mould their worlds of imagination through them. The puppets, the dolls, the trucks and games all contribute to making sense of the world through miniature means. The dreams we have when we are young are like a prayer or a wish for how we would like our lives to be when we “grow up”. This concept of play creating the mind is vitally connected to the way we teach ourselves to think and create patterns of behavior and discovery. The small childhood worlds become our own real lives lived in full scale.

In younger years I visited natural history museums along with my family. I remember the miniature dioramas of native villages, with hogans, cliff dwellings or pueblo villages done to such a degree of detail that tiny pots had been painted with authentic patterns and clay sculpted women grinding miniature ears of corn could be seen under the small glass cases. The dioramas all brought these lives of ancient people to vivid, but miniature life.

The world of the miniature has been around for a very long time. The definition of miniature carries a wide range as well. Early man drew remarkably elegant pictograph drawings of the hunted prey to either bring success in the hunt or to celebrate their kill on the walls of caves. The body adornments that graced the wandering tribes were small out of nomadic necessity, made beautiful for the enhancement of the wearer. There was a time when, during arranged marriages of royal lineage that the image of the betrothed one was made in a miniature portrait that could safely travel to the chosen neighboring kingdom royal family. These portraits were often the only image that the future young husband or wife would see until their wedding day. The portraits were painted with great care and often creative liberties were taken to make the prospective future family member appear worthy and attractive. Architects create miniature models of buildings to convince clients that their grand designs are worth the investment. Shipbuilders would model out their plans in pine, string and miniature plank. Ship voyage maps and the cartographic miniaturization of the sea routes have served for the opening up of the world’s trade market and colonization from the European expansionist empires. The Polynesian navigators mapped islands using their knowledge of wind patterns and ocean swells and used maps of woven sticks and cowry shells to plot island positions and conveyance. Mapping is the miniaturization of the land and sea to set voyages of discovery and plan family vacations.

Dolls can be trainer babies for the real thing later in life with the practice of care and dress and groom. In Japan, when a woman looses a child its considered socially acceptable for the grieving mother to carry a doll around as a symbol of her loss. She cares for it like a real child to ease the pain. Dolls are used for shamanic focus in rituals and voodoo spell binding. There is an ivory doll, well known in the orient that is used in countries that maintain sanctity in the privacy of a woman’s body. This doll is used by doctor and patient to point to “where it hurts”.

The play of shadows on a screen or wall have entertained for centuries and is directly related to our present day shadow and light show…the television and cinema screens. Photography itself is a magnifying lens focusing our world onto a miniature light sensitized plate or film or digital sensor. What remains is a flattened miniature print of the effects light and shadow on a form or a landscape.

Plato’s allegory of the cave of shadows tells volumes about how we are entranced by the dance of images pretending to be the light of reality. In several cultures the shadow show performances have used puppetry to teach anything from French and English humor to the tales of the monkey king and the Ramayana in the all night Javanese shadow puppet performances.

We now study small specks of light on photographic plates and ultraviolet red shifts to determine orbits of the largest stars in the universe so that we can discover the invisible planets that may orbit those suns. We have sent exquisite radio controlled vehicles (controlled, more than likely, by scientists who played with radio controlled toy cars as children) to roam the surfaces of nearby planetary neighbors looking for microscopic evidence of bacterial life or fossils. We map the shape of the known visible universe to look for the smallest evidence of life. Big and small, macro and micro. It is the way we make sense of our place here in our tiny little home on our little blue planet in the sea of unknowns.

OBAMA - The Inaugural O Show

2009-01-23T13:15:00.000-08:00

The first opening exhibition is a collection of over a hundred news service photos from Barack Obama’s early life, marriage and family, his career as a law professor, community activist, through his rise as a senator in Illinois and his campaign for president, and the Washington DC Mall inauguration. The captured moments are sometimes poignant, humorous, grand and small. The exhibit gives a real look into the life behind the platform and what led up to this man's rise to the highest office in the world stage.

The opening brought many friends and neighbors for the inaugural exhibit featuring our new president. A large screen live telecast of the evening's inaugural parade and ball festivities was shown in the next door studio theater. In mid January one would think the outdoor gallery opening would scare our "Colderado" people away but it was a balmy 65 degree night with lots of warmth being thrown toward our new president.

Opening January 20th, 2008 - Continuing through January 30th

See a slide show of more photos from the Gallery O exhibit, "Obama - A Life In Pictures"

UPCOMING SHOW - SMALL SKY - Opening February 3rd (George's Birthday!) to February 24