Just as promised! I have lots of lovely photos of a couple of stand-out art shows I saw while in Santa Fe this summer.
First up, the
Tako Kuchi: Kite Crazy in Japan exhibit at the
Museum of International Folk Art on Museum Hill. This show runs thru March 2014 and if you are a fan of Japanese art forms, this show is wonderful! The only mistake I made was arriving a little less than an hour before they closed! So I didn't get the see the other exhibits in the museum. This museum is really wonderful and I always make time to check out what's new there every time I'm in Santa Fe. This show was exceptional- the curation was well done, the hands-on stuff for kids (And adults!), there was video and even a small collection of
moku hanga (Japanese woodcuts) featuring kites.
My favorite artist was Takeuchi Magojiro. His kites had an abstract quality about them that was lacking in the other kites. They were painted with a playful brush and had a wonderful lively sensibility to them.
I found some more info about Japanese kites and Magojiro as well as some fantastic contemporary kites online
here, on the Drachen Foundation's Kite Journal.
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| Info about Takeuchi Magojiro, my favorite kite artist |
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| Some of Magojiro-san's kites |
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| Huge kite, probably about 8 feet tall |
*****
The next day, I went to see a very special show at the
Center for Contemporary Arts. I hadn't been to this gallery before and was more than pleasantly surprised....the show there, called "Making Places', was stunning.
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| The front of CCA |
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| A close-up of the amazing sculpture! |
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| About the show |
It was a show of husband and wife artists Michael Moore and Linda Fleming. The show seemed to be part travelogue, part installation, and part retrospective. The gallery space was large and open and their pieces took over the whole space. There was video, audio, drawings, sketch books, paintings, sculpture, maquettes, slide shows, watercolors, and household items. The show struck me as a life journey, with influences of different homes, locations and art studios, road trips, walks in the woods, relationships with place, pet dogs, nature, and ordinary objects collected over the years. It was melancholy and joyous, epic in scale and sometimes small and intimate. There were studies, models, sketches, and family photos of artists as ordinary people with children, dogs, and lives.
There were no titles on the pieces that I remember.
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A wall of ephemera with artifacts in the cases in front.
These look like items from travels: maps,
photos, art show flyers and postcards, sketches. |
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A humongous pencil drawing; gorgeous but incongruous
with the paintings, and maquettes nearby |
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| The "rug" looked like one of the sculptures, only flattened |
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I love the 3-d effect that this painting has. It looks like you need
special glasses to see the mesa as intended |
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| Pages from a sketch book lined two walls under the large paintings |
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| Detail of the sketchbook pages with numerous sketches of cars, dogs, etc. |
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| Table with books |
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| Nikola Tesla! |
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| I love this painting |
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| The scale! |
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A wall of landscape watercolors; all apparently of the
same view of mountains. Done over
a period time. You can see the seasonal changes in the paintings. |
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| Detail of the landscapes |
It was a stunning show overall, with a depth and breadth that was unusual. For some of the of the art works, I wasn't sure which artist had done which piece, but for me, it didn't really matter. It was a wonderful collection and a wonderful show. Go see if you can, it's up for a few more weeks. More photos soon!
Ciao,
Reb
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