Search Results for: art reception

Apparently Space Stinks

 

ceramic incinerator side with sgraffito of incinerator, smoke and latin phrases

 

After one gets over the news that it smells bad, it looks like the odor of Outer Space is hard to pin down. It’s reportedly a bit like burnt metal, welding fumes and seared steak. Acrid but slightly sweet; sulphurous and undeniable. The astronauts’ suits and gear, upon returning from space walks, stunk like they’d been camping at a celestial tire fire. It was such an unlikely surprise.

But at one time so was the discovery that smoke from earthly tire fires, oil refineries, automobiles and backyard incinerators probably was to blame for the continually bad air.

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The View From HOME

 

Small ceramic tile of sky, clouds, palm and pine trees
“Central Coast Summer” by Maren Sinclair Hurn, Ceramic

 

Let’s take a walk together, just down the block and back. We can marvel at the sky moving behind the trees. Feel the songs sung by skywires.

In this third-of-three looks at individual works of art in the Pajaro Valley Arts HOME Exhibit, (links to all the others below) we have the pleasure of spending time with Maren Sinclair Hurn’s small porcelain wallpiece titled “Central Coast Summer.” It’s as brief and brilliant as a haiku. Evocative. A sassy statement about HOME without mentioning the house.

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Dad Points Things Out

Detail of Ceramic Incinerator with scgraffito carving of two silhouettes

 

It’s a moment from one’s childhood that becomes a primal imprint. We were suddenly out in the warm LA backyard twilight. Dad had us all looking straight upward, scanning, scanning. He grabbed my shoulder and pointed when he saw it and I think I saw it too. It was not a bird. Not a plane. Not a shooting star. I’d seen all of those. This was different: a glinting dot moving in a speedy soundless arc directly overhead!

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The HOME of the Phoenix

a tryptych assemblage composed of what was left after the artists house burned down
Lost Home Memory Box, Joan Tanzer

 

What makes a piece of art compelling for me is primarily Wonder. As in it fills me with Wonder (amazement at beauty, uniqueness, ineffability) and makes me Wonder (curiosity about technique, backstory, message.) With a quest for wonderfulness in mind, I set out to find the artworks at the current Pajaro Valley Arts Gallery HOME Exhibit which carried me away into their worlds whether I fully understood them or not. Pieces that called up more questions than answered them. Pieces that pushed the idea of HOME into new shapes.

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The Ur-HOME

Ceramic Bowl with Hopi Creation Myth Figures
“Sipa Pu: Hopi Creation Myth” by Dawn Motyka, Ceramic

 

If you ask over 80 artists to create art around the theme of “HOME,” especially if you incite them to go long by suggesting “HOME can be a source of identity, a state of being, a repose of security, a place to belong, a war zone, an inalienable right,” you’re bound to see an intimately idiosyncratic array of responses. And that is most certainly true at the current home-themed exhibit at the Pajaro Valley Arts Gallery.

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Sit Yourself Down

 

 

Bright Orange Painted Chair with Overstuffed Cushion
“Mi Hogar es Mi Refugio” (My Home is My Refuge)  by Anastasia Torres-Gil

 

The “HOME” Exhibit opened today and I scooted myself down to Watsonville to see it before the hoards assemble on Sunday for the reception. If I have learned one thing about Art Receptions it’s that they are not really about seeing the art.  So I go earlier and usually alone in order to metaphorically sit myself down and let the works talk to me.

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