5.9.08: By the People, For the People at the Weisman

Thousands of artists received funds through the Works Progress Administration and other New Deal programs during the 1930s and early 1940s. Some of the artists became household names—Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, and Cameron Booth, to name a few. Many others did not, but their work became part of the fabric of American culture in the form of post-office murals and handicrafts. By the People, For the People: New Deal Art at the Weisman offers up the full spectrum of work from this era.

The show draws from the museum’s impressive collection of New Deal art. It’s organized by a mish-mash of aesthetic and topical themes: work and industry, abstraction, photography, the University and Minnesota, women. The themes only serve to underscore the premise of the show: that New Deal art encompassed far more than social realism. The Weisman folks even managed to come up with a few examples of Surrealism, which gives you an idea of  how eclectic and interesting this show really is.

The New Deal programs placed emphasis on regional folkways and traditions as subject matter. By the People contains many examples, but Lucia Wiley’s series based on the legend of Paul Bunyan—and, more broadly, the world of logging—caught my eye. She based a series of post-office murals on the oil illustrations, which resemble woodcuts in style. In one, Bunyan nearly fills the canvas. On one knee, head bowed, he cradles a young ox. The other images in the series swirl with energy, but the simple exchange between ox and man is oddly touching.

The show has a little of something for everyone. The colorful abstract paintings of Alexander Corrazo in one room, documentary photographs of Marion Post Woolcott in the next, and a handful of local landscapes of the Twin Cities circa 1940 in the next. The exhibit also highlights the work of women hired as New Deal artists, and will serve as the foundation for a series of lectures and seminars on this fascinating period in American art.

Through July 27, Weisman Art Museum.

Pictured: Dorothy Lau, Workers-Five O'Clock, ca. 1935-1940, oil on canvas

4.28.08: Judy Chicago at Flanders Contemporary Art

I was a little surprised to encounter a capacity crowd at last Wednesday’s lecture at MCAD by artist Judy Chicago. A diverse crowd at that—young and old, male and female, hip and conventional. Chicago is, after all, synonymous with Feminist Art, and supposedly we’ve moved on to a post-feminist era. Chicago pointed this out herself by way of introducing the topic, noting that many people, especially young women, consider feminism and feminist art passé. And she’s here to tell those people how wrong they are.

Chicago started by pointing out that the National Gallery collection in Washington D.C. is still overwhelmingly made up of the work of white males, a sobering fact for young women leaving what she describes as the “protective womb” of art school. She also noted that a million people have viewed her seminal work, The Dinner Party, over the years.

Chicago’s Dinner Party, which she completed in 1979, is the subject of a new show at Flanders Art Gallery. The actual piece—a triangle-shaped banquet table with thirty-nine settings—remains on permanent display at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The table’s sides each represent a chunk of time from prehistory to the present. We start with “Primordial Goddess” and end with “Georgia O’Keefe.”

The show at Flanders consists of a large color photograph of the permanent exhibit and drawings of the design of each plate, along with illuminating text and a color photograph of the place setting. The Dinner Party draws you in with a feast of symbol and detail. For example, the Susan B. Anthony place setting features a crazy quilt border, a nod to a popular folk style of the time, and a red, fringed triangle representing both the symbol of the women’s movement and the red shawl Anthony often wore. The plates themselves echo the artistic style of the period—the plate devoted to Theodora, the empress of the Byzantine Empire, incorporates mosaic.

During her talk at MCAD, Chicago offered an abbreviated history of her career and of the evolution of Feminist Art that touched on some of the in-fighting among feminist scholars, which ironically relegates her own work to the margins for a period in the 1990s when, she says, women’s studies scholars got very, very confused. Chicago makes the case that Feminist Art encompasses far more than the work of a handful of women artists in the last few decades. She points to recurring compositional tendencies and visual motifs such as mirrors to underscore her claim that there is a specifically female point of view in art.

“I was told I couldn’t be a woman and an artist, too,” says Chicago. She first internalized this message, she says, but eventually rejected it wholesale and devoted her career to carving out a place for women in art history. With Feminist Art, Chicago and her contemporaries set out to create a counter iconography, to bring women to the table, so to speak. What better way to do than a dinner party? 

Judy Chicago at Flanders Contemporary Art continues through June 14.

4.6.08: It’s a Beautiful World at Rogue Buddha Gallery

While I missed the Friday night opening for the Scion Installation Art Tour exhibit It’s a Beautiful World at the Rogue Buddha Gallery, an abundance of empty Colt 45 cans still in evidence the next afternoon suggested a lively gathering. Gallery owner Nicholas Harper says the party drew upwards of 300 people.

Now in its fourth year, this is the first time the Scion Tour has come to Minneapolis. Minneapolis is the second-to-last stop on a nine-city circuit that wraps up in Los Angeles with a charity auction of the art in the show. And if Scion rings a bell, that’s because you’ve probably seen one driving down the street at some point. The Scion line of cars is an offshoot of Toyota designed to appeal to the city-smart younger set, which describes the vibe of the show pretty well, too.

The premise is simple: all of the art takes its cue from the show’s title. The aesthetic ranges from cartoonish to surreal to abstract to figurative, from both emerging and established artists, many of them recognizable to those acquainted with contemporary artists. The media is just as diverse—painting, photography, sculpture, and collage.

A few pieces that caught my eye: LeRat’s The Universal Soldier, a black-and-white stenciled painting of a soldier cradling a child. The foreground is filled with foliage, which, combined with the soldier’s bowed head, gives the scene a strange forlorn tenderness. Kenton Parker’s photo of New Orleans ruins with a riff on the “As Seen on TV” logo—a red sign with block letters spelling out “Not as Seen on TV”—comments rather more whimsically on another American tragedy.

Harper singles out Caia Koopman’s Migrant Respite as a piece that resonates for him based on its technical merits and figurative style. The painting offers up a whispy-haired waif set against a fairy tale backdrop, flowers in the foreground, rolling green hills, a tiny cottage dwarfed by a wind mill, a tree with a burning heart. He also points to Mike Giant’s vivid color photo of an almost deserted El Salvador street with ominous, low-hanging clouds and brightly colored buildings in yellow and green; a picture of desolate, dilapidated beauty.

It’s a Beautiful World continues at the Rogue Buddha Gallery through April19.

3.12.08: August Sander's People of the 20th Century at the Weinstein Gallery

It took me a while to make my way to the Weinstein Gallery for the first time. I finally stopped in a few months ago to see the Alec Soth exhibition, Bogota Days.  Once there I quickly realized why it’s a magnet for great shows. The space is spare and simple, the light natural. Nothing interferes with the art. It’s unusually accessible for such high-caliber fare. The current show, a sampling of photos from August Sander’s influential People of the 20th Century project, is no exception.

The show consists of twenty-three large reproductions of black-and-white photographs taken by Sanders during Germany’s Weimar Republic period following World War I. A painter stands at his easel pasteboard in hand. A bricklayer effortlessly balances a load of bricks. A pair of middle-class children pose in their knickers and ribbons. A high school student strikes a foppish pose, a cigarette dangling for his right hand. Sanders turns an anthropological eye on German society across social strata, his stated goal being “to see things as they are.” But his images are anything but clinical.

The arc of a country road receding into the distance behind a farmer in his Sunday suit, or the perfect symmetry, not to mention the unwitting humor, of three rumpled “revolutionaries” perched on a stoop. Sander excels at simple compositions that hint at a world alive with every sort of person. Even though his intentions may be anthropological and his mindset the product of early twentieth century thought with regard to photography as an art form, his images manage to capture the uniqueness of the subject, and this paradox keeps Sander relevant. It’s also why the Nazis banned his work in the 1930s—because it didn’t support the vision of Germany as an Aryan redoubt.

Fans of the portraits of Diane Arbus and Richard Avedon or the documentary sweep of Robert Frank’s Americans, will recognize Sander’s influence. The direct gaze of the subject, strong compositions striking in their simplicity, the ambitious effort to document a time and place with an objective eye—all are hallmarks of Sanders work, and all good reasons to see this show.

Through April 12 at the Weinstein Gallery.

3.2.08: Arts of Japan at Minneapolis Institute of Arts

It’s almost spring. A recent trip to the west coast provided a vivid presentiment of the changes to come: cherry trees in full bloom. The pink blossoms reminded me not only of the season but of connections to the Pacific Rim. On a visit to the remarkable Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, we happened upon a kabuki performance the evening we visited, putting Japan squarely front and center in mind. I was already anticipating a trip to see the new MIA show, Arts of Japan: The John C. Weber Collection, and the Asian inspirations of my San Francisco foray sealed the deal.

The show, which features more than 100 pieces from the collection of Dr. John C. Weber, runs the gamut of Japanese art—from hanging scrolls to folding screens to sculpture and textiles. The large, paneled screens and dozens of robes stand out right away. Cherry trees show up, too, in small details and as the main subject of two mid-seventeenth-century screens. “Blossoming Cherry Trees in Yoshino,” with its verdant rendering of a wild cherry tree grove, is a particularly lovely example, capturing the distinctive curve of the cherry tree trunk and evoking a refined world view complete with golden, scalloped-edged clouds drifting across an eternal spring.

At the other extreme—and equally engaging in their way—are the screens depicting famous battles described in Japanese epics as well as shrines and other celebrated spots in Japan. Where the cherry tree grove feels timeless, these renderings of moments in history offer something specific. They tell a compelling story with an astounding level of detail, drawing the viewer in with both their style and substance.

The many examples of robes—the long flowing sleeves of the furisode, the katabira summer robe, and the uchikake wedding robe, to name a few—provide a very different but no less compelling canvas for both symbol and story. A light blue robe depicting night fishing with cormorants suggests a way of life. An apple-green robe decorated with a landscape plays on motifs from classical literature. A bright red robe with wisteria vines and golden waves evokes a highly refined view of the Japanese landscape.

The show also offers an abundance of silk hanging scrolls, including Utagawa Toyaharu’s “brine maidens.” The painting’s flirtatious subjects are hard to resist. The artist founded the Utagawa school, which influenced ukiyo-e painting and printmaking, a movement popularized in the Edo period by the
likes of Hokusai and Hiroshige, and the connection comes through noticeably in the shape of the waves with their curves and curls.

There’s much more to see. But for me, the cherry trees alone make this show worth the price of admission.

Arts of Japan: The John C. Weber Collection runs through May 25 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

And check out our slideshow of exhibit pieces!

2.14.08: Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes at the Walker

Suburban life has always been a bundle of paradoxes. Just as soon as owning a modest rambler on a quarter-acre lot with enough backyard to roll out a Slip ‘n Slide became a cornerstone of the American Dream, it also began to represent everything that is misguided and disturbing about American life. Beneath that thin veneer of normalcy, so the myth goes, lies a festering sewer of angst, a wasteland of conformity and materialism that reduces life to a job, six hours of TV a day and a trip to Home Depot on the weekends. The sprawl, the isolation, the excessive lawn care—it’s all so creepy, so Stepford.

But if the burbs are so awful, why does more than half the American population live in them? And unless the majority of Americans are hopeless dullards (a possibility that cannot, alas, be entirely ruled out), how can the suburbs themselves be as dull as people seem to think?

They’re not, of course—one simply needs to know how to look at them. John Cheever fashioned an entire literary career out of suburban hypocrisy (or, as we city dwellers like to call it—gossip). In recent years, the industrial-entertainment complex has given us plenty of subversive suburban intrigue (Pleasantville, American Beauty, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, The Riches), and now—hard as it may be to fathom—the Walker Art Center has stepped into the breach with Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes, a show dedicated to, if nothing else, the cultural legitimacy of suburbia.

Worlds Away has taken up residence in the gallery recently abandoned by Frida Kahlo, and it is both more and less than one might expect. Architect Teddy Cruz’s mural of the political and practical dynamics of developing intelligent housing options along the California/Tijuana border is a mind numbing cluster of circles and arrows and photos that should probably be studied for an hour or two if you hope to make any sense of it. Likewise, some of the displays that dive deep into dilemmas of civic engineering and various re-uses of abandoned mall space look more like the kind of thing you’d see at a MnDOT planning meeting.

The show is arranged in three parts—architecture, car culture, and retail—but the most interesting (and entertaining) parts are less about the suburbs than they are about artists who have found something interesting to do with the layers of contradiction and pretense that conceal the “truth” about suburbia. Many of the photos have an entirely intentional “things are not what they seem” quality. One of the best is a photo by Larry Sultan that at first glance looks like some nice people lounging on a couch in a living room. A closer look reveals a movie camera and lights on the back patio with a guy holding a light meter over a pair of sprawled legs. Suddenly it’s clear that they’re shooting a porn film and the people on the couch are actors waiting for their cue—which is, evidently, a popular and lucrative use of suburban Los Angeles real estate.

Another interesting series features aerial photographs by Edward Ruscha of various empty parking lots. They are not pretty photos, but what’s fascinating are the patterns of oil stains left by the thousands of cars that have parked in those spaces; the wear and tear of a million individual shopping trips. It’s difficult to say what these pictures tell us beyond the fact that people at malls like to park as close to the door as possible, but the photos are undeniably mesmerizing in a Google–satellite-view sort of way.

The show is not without a sense of humor, though. By far my favorite piece is a photograph by Lee Stoetzel that looks from a distance like an ordinary suburban McMansion. But look closer and you can see that the house is actually made from pieces of McDonald’s food and packaging, with crumbled hamburger for a driveway (“ground” beef—get it?) and drink-cup lids for windows. A special nod must also go out to artist Stefanie Nagorka, who has created a sculpture entirely out of patio paving stones, something she apparently does for fun on the back lot at Menard’s when no one is looking.

There’s more, but the exhibit was only about 80 percent assembled for the press walk through. All in all, Worlds Away offers an extremely cerebral take on the idea of suburbia, and to the credit of curators Andrew Blauvelt and Tracy Myers, almost none of it is what you might expect. You won’t find anything here about the alarming proliferation of holiday lights in Eden Prairie or the existential implications of life in a cul-de-sac, but there are plenty of thought-provoking tidbits to browse and contemplate.

Rest assured that the mystery of the burbs will still be intact when you walk out. Which is as it should be, for there are some things in American life that cannot and should not be explained away—Chemlawn, Hummers, and lawn ornaments among them.

1.23.08: Minnesota Biennial 3D II at the Minnesota Museum of American Art

Shows that feature Minnesota–based artists reassure me. It’s good to know that so many creative minds walk among us, especially in the thrall of winter, when any ounce of life seems to have drained away. The Minnesota Museum of American Art’s juried show of three-dimensional work by Minnesota artists satisfies the deep need for color, texture, and even energy (given that several of the pieces actually move).

Anastasia Ward’s ”Mole,” “Wolf,” and “Knob,” (this last a cross between a sloth and a pterodactyl), are both whimsical and unnerving. Something like stuffed animal Frankensteins, her work evokes sympathy and maybe even nostalgia while also striking a dissonant chord. Cuddly, off-putting, or both—you decide.

“Networked Bamboo,” by David Bowen, might be just as at home at a science fair as in an art gallery. The piece is described as “kinetic, interactive, robotic and sculptural,” and features a half-dozen hydroponic pods radiating out from a central hub, connected by wires. Each pod houses a single bamboo shoot, its leaves sprouting from its plastic enclosure. Here’s where the kinetic part comes in: The plants react to photo resistors, picking up sources of light around the gallery and wobbling around as the source of light shifts. It could be a metaphor for our modern fusing of technology and biology, but whatever the intention, it’s just plain fun to look at!

It’s impossible to ignore Jack Pavlick’s “6 Bands,” an incredible moving metal contraption. Powered by an old-fashioned system of mechanical cranks, the six bands of metal after which the piece is named sway rhythmically, creating criss-crossing waves when viewed from the front. Mesmerizing.

Contrast that with Seho Park’s “Work 1,” a tiny paper sculpture held together by a few staples (a mutant form of origami, perhaps?) and you get an idea of the variety in scale and materials. David Hamlow works on a variety of scales, but like Park’s paper sculpture, it’s one of his small creations that attracted my eye. Hamlow crafted a structure out of playing cards featuring parts of receipts from past purchases; an ode to personal consumption. He calls each piece “a self-portrait” and an “act of penance for having consumed unhealthy things.” A house of cards fits that paradigm well while bringing to mind the less self-conscious pursuits of children everywhere—to play, to explore what’s possible given the limitations, to create.

Minnesota Biennial 3D II runs through Februart 3, mmaa.org

1.5.08: Tino Sehgal at the Walker Art Center

I tried to see the new Tino Sehgal exhibit at the Walker on Saturday but only partially succeeded. Sehgal—a bad-boy favorite of European art wonks—is a London-born, Berlin-based conceptual artist who is said to be pushing the boundaries of art by creating work that has no physical footprint. You can’t buy a Tino Sehgal poster in the Walker book shop because his work consists entirely of people—trained actors and volunteers—who say and do odd things presumably in the name of art but also in the name of something more subversive as a kind of anti-art that turns creative expression into something so ridiculous, it’s almost impossible to take seriously. For instance, in a piece called This is Contemporary, shown at the Venice Biennale in 2005, a museum guard danced around in a gallery singing, “This is so contemporary, contemporary, contemporary.” (Sadly, this piece is not being presented at the Walker.)

Sehgal’s work can be funny because it seems to have a satirical edge to it, but people take it very seriously, which in a way is even funnier. Grad students and art critics rub their thesauruses raw trying to find a vocabulary for describing what Sehgal’s work is “about”—“immediacy,” “spontaneity,” “the something-ness of nothing”—, and art museums all over the world are clamoring to exhibit his work. The Walker exhibit is Sehgal’s first major exhibition in the United States, and it is actually a retrospective of five of his earlier works though I only saw two of them during my visit. (I might have seen a third, but I’m still not quite sure.)

The pieces are scattered throughout the Walker, and some are meant to be surprises, so you’re not supposed to know when and where they are going to happen. If you ask, you will discover that the staff has been instructed not to spill the beans. One of the staffers I asked could only muster the courage to point me in the general direction of Gallery 2 and apologized for not being more helpful.

Because Sehgal’s work “exists” only in interaction with other people, I decided the best time to go see it would be on Free First Saturday when the bargain-minded masses flock to the Walker in droves. The place was jammed on Saturday, and the line to get into the Frida Kahlo exhibit, which ends on January 20, was so long it looked more like a line at Disneyland.

Perhaps fittingly, Sehgal’s only gallery-bound piece is housed as far away as possible from Frida—on the seventh floor in the Medtronic Gallery. There were no lines here. In fact, most of the people I saw were afraid to take more than a step or two into the gallery. After a hasty glance, many people concluded that the Medtronic gallery was actually empty—and it was, except for a guy in the corner wearing orange high-top sneakers who was rolling around on the ground like he had just been kicked in the nuts. The piece, called Instead of allowing some thing to rise up to your face dancing bruce and dan and other things (2000) is one of Sehgal’s earliest works, and the whole point of it seems to be the degree of discomfort all that empty space can generate. Sehgal himself tells people that what he really does is “stage situations,” to which people must react. I stuck around for about twenty minutes, and most of the people I saw reacted with their feet—as in, “let’s get out of here.”

The only other easily located Sehgal piece is in the Burnet gallery, where a guide sings a little aria and then announces, “This is propaganda, courtesy the artist, Tino Sehgal, 2002.” When I pulled out a pen to jot down some notes, this same woman scolded me for two violations: 1. Leaning against a wood pylon/artwork, and 2. Using a pen in the gallery; she handed me a pencil. (Evidently, the only people allowed to break the rules at the Walker are the artists.) When she went back to singing, pretty much everyone ignored her, and the woman seemed to be taking it a little personally, as if she were doing something wrong.

Anyway, as I said, my third Tino Sehgal “experience” involved me being pointed to Gallery 2, me walking around in Gallery 2 for ten minutes, me wondering what I was supposed to be looking for, me looking at the guard who looked a little odd, me wondering if he was “it,” me getting impatient, and then me leaving to go look at something a little more traditional, such as a big ball of plaster with fishing rods sticking out of it.

Curiously, as I meandered through the Brave New Worlds exhibit (home of the aforementioned ball of fishing tackle), every time I saw someone who looked a little out of place, which is often on free Saturdays, I wondered if they might be a Sehgalian plant whose purpose was to make me question the very nature of art itself. At the Walker, one doesn’t usually need extra prompting to ask such questions—but ask them I did.

Tino Sehgal continues at the Walker through March 23

12.18.07: Period Rooms at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

There are many reasons to love the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The period rooms, scattered about the second and third floors, occupy the number-one spot on my list. Maybe it’s a deep historical voyeuristic streak, but the strange lumpy canopy bed in the dour early American Connecticut Room and the dark panels and molded ceiling of the late-Renaissance English Tudor Room evoke visceral responses. During the holidays, the museum adds period holiday decorations to the mix for a glimpse of Christmases (and Hanukkahs and Thanksgivings) past.

Walking through the rooms all made up for the holidays, I was struck by the continuity between past and present—the impulse to celebrate, to indulge, and to elevate. But sometimes it’s the differences that engage the imagination most. I’m thinking of the Thanksgiving spread in the Connecticut Room in particular. The room, which dates to the 1700s, features a table serving a typical holiday meal with mostly familiar offerings. Oh, except for the pigeon pie. It’s as if a pigeon took a nosedive into the dish, its feet still protruding from the top of the crust. Those pilgrims and their dark humor!

Things get decidedly brighter and livelier in the Bell Family Decorative Arts gallery just down the hall. The gallery, bordered on both sides by period rooms, brims with nativity scenes and Christmas trees, including the Kimmel Christmas Tree—a small holly tree decorated with sugar cookies with a nativity scene below. The tree recreates one of the earliest visual records of a Christmas tree in America. There’s a Swedish tree with candles, blue and yellow flags, straw ornaments, and Julbock, or Christmas goat. Nativity sets from Mexico, Germany, France, and Italy add dimension.

The Macfarlane Memorial room—the one with the dizzying Chinese landscape wallpaper—delivers a Victorian theme with holiday trappings from the late 1800s. Think porcelain dolls and elaborately illustrated Christmas cards. The Charleston Dining Room, just across the Bell gallery, offers a display of all manner of period sweets, even one resembling a hedgehog!

Down the hall in the Tudor room, a meal of a very different sort is laid out. A huge ceramic boar’s head, a brimming pile of crabs, and—the pièce de résistance—a fully feathered peacock, await the “lucky” celebrants. Period instruments reflect the popular holiday entertainment of the time.

Closer to home, literally, the Duluth Living Room, dating to the turn of the twentieth century, blends Asian, Art Nouveau, and Arts and Crafts influences with a distinct Northwoods aesthetic. The room features a Christmas tree with both candles and electric lights, reflecting the transition from Victorian to modern at the beginning of the last century, bringing everything full circle. It’s an idealized version of our own world . . . the idyllic Minnesota Christmas.

Holiday decorations and period room tours continue through January 13 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

12.9.07: Home for the Holidays at Soo Visual Arts Center

Soo VAC’s holiday show, Home for the Holidays, offers the visual equivalent of eating tapas—a little of this, a little of that. No thematic or stylistic thread connects the pieces in the show, which represents a cross-section of media and method, but most the artists have Minnesota roots and many are recognizable from past Soo VAC shows.

Bethany Kalk is one such name. Her work has appeared inside and, notably, on the walls outside the gallery. Kalk’s pieces actually appear in two different places—one spot devoted to her low-horizoned landscapes, another to her more abstract pieces populated by organic shapes against shadowy backgrounds. She uses a technique called encaustic, also know as hot wax painting, that infuses her work with depth and texture.

Another up-and-comer, Gregory Euclide, offers up a very different sort of landscape. His incredibly detailed wilderness tableaux in acrylic, oil, and pencil on Yupo, a plastic-coated paper, suggest the detailed renderings in the corner of old territorial maps.

The show also offers up new work from Jennifer Davis, whose mixed media creations straddle the line between fanciful and evocative. Davis’s expansive horizons cut through dreamy emptiness consistently delivering a feeling of openness and possibility.

And I couldn’t describe the show without mentioning Joe Sinness, “Clouder No. 2,” which resembles nothing more than a bouquet of cats. Sinness uses colored pencil and gouache in lovely shades of gray and orange and brown with accents of blue and hazel and yellow. It’s strange, but good strange.

Other notables include Andrea Carlson, Amy Rice, and Clint Rost. It’s an excellent survey of up-and-coming talent. Extra incentive: all the work is on sale. So if you like something you see, you can pick it up right then and there. Prices run from a couple hundred bucks to just shy of $2,000.

Home for the Holidays continues at Soo Visual Arts Center through December 31.

11.21.07: Alec Soth: Dog Days, Bogota at Weinstein Gallery

Alec Soth’s images of people and places along the Mississippi River, in Sleeping by the Mississippi, rightly earned him acclaim. His follow-up, Niagra, follows a similar storyline, offering up an America as populated by present and past at once. Soth has a real knack for capturing that duality, and it comes through in Dog Days, Bogota as well. The exhibit is currently on display at Weinstein Gallery in Minneapolis.

In his introduction to the Dog Days—the only textual clues he gives, since the photos themselves are untitled—Soth explains his approach to photographing the birthplace of his adopted daughter Carmen Laura. “In photographing the city of her birth,” he says, “I hope I described some of the beauty in this hard place.” That beauty takes shape in a dozen different ways. A little girl standing on a rocky ledge above the city holding a doll. A young man in a bright tie against a backdrop of urban decay. A wall in a working-class home lined with photos of children.

Bogota is, of course, strongly associated with the drug trade in many Americans’ minds. It’s less a place than a set of assumptions. That’s one of the things that makes Dog Days so powerful. Soth shows us a landscape that manages to look half finished and falling down at the same time, a place where beauty coexists with gritty reality.

Dog Days, Bogota continues through January 12 at Weinstein Gallery.

11.3.07: PhotoBravo at Minnesota Center for Photography

From the look of things, the Minnesota Center for Photography is attracting not only photography enthusiasts, but those with dollars to indulge their affinity. Those attending Saturday night’s PhotoBravo 2007 event—an annual auction featuring works from both established and up-and-coming talent—were enjoying the open bar and engaging conversation. The talk reached the level of a low roar.

It’s good to see such obvious signs of success. If any organization deserves to succeed it’s MCP, which manages to feel like a true community player with deep roots among photographers while simultaneously drawing a well-heeled audience for their work.

PhotoBravo is equal parts social event, art sale, and exhibition. It’s unique in that the work on display tends to be a “best of.” You’ll see pieces from past shows. You’ll also see big-name photographers who have gone on to bigger things but still maintain a connection to the community—for example, Alec Soth, Wing Young Huie, and Doug Beardsley all donated pieces to the auction. You’ll see the rising stars such as Brian Ulrich, one of Photo District News’s thirty emerging photographers for 2007, and a slew of interesting emerging photographers such as Xavier Tavera, Mickey Smith, and others. You’ll see even see works by the likes of William Wegman and Jerome Liebling.

Many pieces were valued in the high hundreds to low thousands. While it would be a definite stretch to call such numbers attainable given the median income in this country, the photographs up for auction were certainly accessible by art-world standards. And at the very least an auction allows one to indulge in an entertaining game of “what if?” to ask: “Which pieces would I bid on?”

Given the options last night, I’d be hard pressed to pick one piece. But with a few thousand dollars in my pocket, I’d certainly have made bids for Lori Ginker’s portrait of the war wounds of an Israeli veteran—not exactly a piece to hang over the sofa, but extremely provocative and powerful nonetheless. I’m also quite partial to Orin Rutchick’s Agra #266 and Keri Picket’s The Secret, to name but a few. If you missed the auction, you can see the works that were up for grabs.

Images:
Top Left: Two Women, Miami Beach, FL, Jerome Liebling
Center Right: The Secret, Keri Picket
Bottom Left: Agra #266 (Taj Mahal, Woman in Black), Orin Rutchick

10.31.07: Graphic Reality: Mexican Printmaking Today at Highpoint Center for Printmaking

If you’re looking for a connection to Mexico on Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), be sure to include Highpoint Center for Printmaking on your itinerary. Walk in the door and you’ll be met by a selection of prints brimming with Mexican folk imagery woven into works on very contemporary themes. The show, Graphic Reality: Mexican Printmaking Today, features the work of about a dozen printmakers, most of them mid-career pros. Organized and curated by Artemio Rodriguez, Graphic Reality comes to the Twin Cities following runs at the International Print Center in New York and at Columbia College in Chicago.

Some of the most eye-catching works come from Rodriguez himself. His prints fill an entire wall of the gallery (though it’s a fairly small space). His imagery and style—black-and-white compositions without a speck of gray—evoke the so-called “father of Mexican printmaking,” Jose Guadalupe Posada. But like any family resemblance, the variations are what make the story interesting.

Rodriguez plays with Mexican folk images in clever ways. Will you see skeletons and religious icons? Yes, except that Rodriguez adds pop culture and political elements to the mix. Two examples are Super Muerto, a deathly superhero clad in cape and underpants, and Gluttony, a man with food-stuffed cheeks and fast-food logos tattooed on his arms.

Other artists in the show incorporate similar imagery, but in vastly different styles. If Rodriguez descends from Posada, then Oscar Camilo de las Flores may well trace his roots back to Hieronymus Bosch. Absorbing his dense, detailed prints requires some sustained attention. Like Bosch, Camilo de las Flores’ prints suggest a landscape at once timeless and historic, where human actions—both banal and grand—take on a mythical quality.

In the introduction to the show, Rodriguez says that the printmaking community in Mexico is “fresh and alive and diverse,” taking its creative inspiration from many sources. Rodriguez and Camilo de las Flores are two variations on this theme. Other artists in the show follow very different threads to very different, but equally compelling conclusions.

Graphic Reality runs through November 28 at Highpoint Center for Printmaking.

Images:
Top left, 21st Century Calligraphy, Oscar Camilo de las Flores
Center right, Gluttony, Artemio Rodriguez

 

10.25.07: Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation at the Weisman Art Museum

Changing Hands fills four rooms—about half of the Weisman’s gallery space. The show, the second in a series organized by the Museum of Arts & Design in New York, features about 150 words by 130 artists. It’s a dense and highly diverse snapshot of contemporary Native American art.

All of the artists are from west of the Mississippi, including Alaska and Hawaii. Most of the work is recent (produced within the last seven years). The show is organized around four broad themes that touch on ideas, materials, and practices in contemporary Native art. But that’s where easy characterization of the exhibit ends. The show verges on overwhelming with its sheer variety of styles and statements. The upside is that while not every piece will resonate with every person, you’re unlikely to walk away without at least a handful of images in mind.

One of the pieces still swirling round in my own is Sonya Kelliher-Combs’ Guarded Secrets. Composed of walrus stomach and porcupine quills, the piece looks a little like a menacing pile of discarded paper lanterns artfully heaped in a pile, or maybe the outer layer of a cactus that’s shed its skin. Kelliher-Combs’ piece falls into the category of “Material Evidence,” which spotlights the relationship of artist and materials, and specifically those linked to the visual heritage of Native North Americans.

Another standout for me: Teri Greeves’ Khoiye-Goo Mah, a pair of beaded Converse sneakers that suggests a mix of whimsy, nostalgia, reinvention, and adaptation. The piece, part of the “Beyond Function” section of the exhibit, turns attention to cultural meaning and status in recent Native American art. The shoe is an apt metaphor for a journey, and Greeves’ Converses offer us a chance the opportunity to “walk” in another’s shoes.

Two other memorable pieces were Marcus Codman’s Kachina: Bingo Sheet ‘Please God Let Me Win’ and Judy Marchand’s Metis Soup. The latter echoes Warhol’s famous print of Campbell’s soup cans, except Marchand’s are ceramics painted half red, half white with names in English and Cree. Instead of Chicken Noodle, the cans bear labels such as “Elk” and “Turtle” and “Antelope” as well as “Indian Agent” and “Hangover.” Codman’s three-dimensional collage evokes a Hopi kachina doll plastered with dollar bills, bingo sheets, and topped with a small plume of feathers.

It feels highly unfair to mention only four of the pieces in this show, but there it is.

Changing Hands continues through January 13 at the Weisman Art Museum.

10.6.07: Georgia O’Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction at the MIA

Waiting in lines ranks high on my list of un-fun activities. But if you're going to wait, you could do worse than standing feet away from ancient Roman marble sculptures and mosaics. The line at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to see the new Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at last night’s member preview stretched half the length of the second-floor corridor. Interest in the artists appears to be alive and well.

I’ll admit I’m not one of O'Keeffe’s most ardent admirers. My opinion of the artist, though, derives as much from the popularization of her work as from the work itself. Circling Around Abstraction, which is organized by a theme—the circular motif in O'Keeffe’s work—implicitly counters assumptions about the artist’s intentions and explicitly underscores the premise that she was first and foremost interested in abstraction. The show asks viewers to look at O'Keeffe’s work as an abstraction first and a thing (flower, bone, etc.) second.

The circle motif makes sense as a portal to a view of O'Keeffe’s work that is as much abstract as it is realistic. “Nothing is less real than realism,” O'Keeffe said, and when you take a good long look at, say, White Rose Abstraction (1927), one of the flower compositions for which O'Keeffe has gained so much acclaim in recent years, it makes perfect sense. Suddenly, it's less a flower and more a spiral of white and grays and bluish green that embodies the essence of a flower.

Certain shapes cut across decades. Blue II, from the 1920s, is a whorl of varying shades of azure in a shape resembling the rounded crest of a wave. In an untitled work from the 1970s (the first image above), that same whorl pops up in shades of red and orange (still with a streak of blue). It’s interesting to make those connections. While not every piece in the show is as compelling as the next, the net effect is to recast O'Keeffe a bit; to give her an enigmatic edge that mass marketing had dulled considerably.

Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction opens today and runs through January 6 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

9.14.07: $99 Sale at the Soap Factory

Name recognition is worth its weight in gold in the art world. So it’s novel to think of relative unknowns side by side with art world fixtures, all identified solely by numbers. That’s the premise underlying the Soap Factory’s $99 Sale. All art may not be equal, but for two days, all artists are. The uniformly small size of the works plays on that egalitarian theme. Contributions by the likes of Alex Soth and Jan Estep rubbed shoulders with those of up-and-comers and under-the-radar art stars.

Billed as “an aesthetic mêlée, a bemused statement about the value of art, a snapshot of the Twin Cities’ art scene, and a fabulous fundraiser” the show featured works by 200 different artists across genres—photography, painting, collage, even embroidery. Trying to match artist with artwork proved an entertaining party game for some. But regardless of provenance, the show offered something for everyone, from nude studies to a collage covered in a thick layer of amber-colored laminate in which was embedded (among other things) a dead white mouse.

Perhaps it was this latter item that inspired a young boy to ask his mother, “Why would someone pay $99 for art?” Her reply: “Art has value . . . it’s mysterious.” In some cases, why someone would pay $99 is mysterious. But as for the art on view last night, $99 was in some cases surely a steal. If the $99 Sale is a sort of art lottery, last night’s winning numbers in my own personal and highly subjective system, where 88, 57, 36, and 12.

The pieces reflect the aesthetic diversity on display from 88, a whimsical painting of a yawning red cat in a yellow dress, to 55, an evocative photo of part of the Golden Gate bridge taken, it would seem, through frosted glass; gradations of gray and white punctuated by bits of rich, rusty red. And from 36, a cluster of tiny pencil drawings—revolving around an owl with “FBI” on its breast—connected through snippets of text and words that manage to suggest a rather troubling storyline; “Sunday school” and “You are a ghost” and “Syrup,” to 12, embroidered fabric with a decorative border, but in lieu of, say, a Bible verse, the text reads, “Why does it always smell like ass in here?” Thankfully, that sentiment did not apply to gallery environs.

The $99 Sale runs through Saturday at the Soap Factory.

9.7.07: Rotten Sun at MCAD

Part of the fun of going to opening receptions at art shows is listening to people talk about the art. In the case of last night’s show at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the eavesdropping payoff was compounded by hearing art students discuss the work of faculty.

Comments overheard at last night’s opening for Rotten Sun: On the Grotesqueries in Art and Design: “It just really jars me. I don’t like it . . . I don’t see any reason to it. I can’t even look at it.” And later in the evening: “The finger shoes are so disturbing!” referring to Design Chair Tom Gannett’s Deadly Pumps, graphic collages reminiscent of 1950s-era advertisements, except the pumps are made of beetles and razor blades instead of patent leather.

One could have a thoroughly entertaining evening following around a particularly vocal and opinionated group of young people on a “guided tour.”

Rotten Sun features recent work from two dozen Minneapolis College of Art and Design faculty members. The show’s name refers to an essay by French writer and philosopher Georges Bataille in which he describes the “life-giving sun as actually a monstrous ball of fire”; the smooth and shiny surface turned inside out to expose dark inner workings.

The grotesque in art can be obvious. But more often it’s subtle, producing a sense of unease rather than outright revulsion. Mary McDunn’s diptych of a polar bear floating in a tank of water falls into the latter category. Titled Around . . . and around . . .  and around, the black-and-white photos hint at animal despair and the futility of life in the manmade world.

Several artists follow a similar thread offering highly detailed images of animals that draw you in with their beauty, but stir up dissonant feelings with their subject matter. Pam Valfer subverts the pictorial process with Highway 35 and County Road V. Her landscape in oil depicts a forested landscape with the smallest scrap of highway visible and a deer laying lifeless in the foreground, the certainty of its state punctuated by an unnaturally bowed leg. Katherine Turczon’s American Crow and House Sparrow, close-up highly detailed black-and-white images of dead birds, offers incredible depth and beauty along with a helping of morbidity. Then there’s Linda Wing’s Hannah’s First Trout, a taxidermy fish lacquered in sparkly pink nail polish and mounted on a pearl-studded plaque. The description next to Wing’s piece sums up well the mixed impulses at play: “There is a special and perverse place in [Wing’s] heart for wildlife.”

Dead animals may strike a more obvious chord of the grotesque than, say, Allen Brewer’s colored pencil and ink drawings. His portraits of 1950s teenagers—girls in fitted sweaters, boys in ties and thick glasses—are taken out of context, isolated from their surroundings. For Brewer, the grotesque in his work has to do with the idea that representation of the past, of a person’s life, always feels like a “chunky, cheap rendition” that does not live up to our own memories.

Rotten Sun runs through October 7 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

8.4.07: New Photography: McKnight Fellows 2006/2007 at MCP

Openings are the best kind of parties—free food and wine (even if it is served in plastic cups), interesting people, and good atmosphere. Of course, more often than not, people are looking at each other rather than at the art. Last night's opening reception for New Photography: McKnight Fellows 2006/2007 at the Minnesota Center for Photography was packed and people were talking about the photos. Given the many distractions available, that's a good sign.

The show features new work by Orin Rutchick, Kristine Heykants, Mickey Smith, and Angela Strassheim. Rutchick turns his camera on tourists, often with whimsical results. His Push Button Memories project captures scenes familiar to anyone who has visited a landmark—people posing for cameras. It's the stuff of family photo albums, but with a twist. The images—taken at Graceland, Alcatraz, Kennedy Space Center, and Hoover Dam—catch people unaware in moments of calculated observation or, as the description of the show puts it, in the "willful, if chimerical, creation of memories."

From landmarks to laundromats, Heykants offers a different sort of unguarded moment. Her images echo the stylized scenes of certain Cindy Sherman photos. Heykants shows us women caught in a moment of thought, or maybe hesitation, against a variety of backdrops: a laundromat, a kitchen, a cowboy saloon. They look like they can sense trouble coming.

Strassheim does something similar with images of oddly private public moments (and vice versa). Young women huddled together dissecting a cat, an unhappy young couple visible through glass doors, a group of nude young people eating roasted marshmallows around a bonfire, a rather demure red-haired nude perched atop a library counter, in each case the outward drama implies a more complex inner state.

And speaking of libraries, Smith's images of huge oversized book spines with the stark heavily-bound look of reference tomes evokes a whole other kind of drama. Her cleverly framed images offer up a simple pallette of green, black, and yellow spines embossed in black and gold with single words: "Life," "Progress," "Endeavor" (the last bracketed by an "Or" and "End"). Simple and striking.

New Photography runs through October 7.

ArtCar Pre-Parade Party

"I'm not a dentist," is the first point on an artist's manifesto stuck to the window of the "Chewbaru," a '95 Subaru refashioned into a moving homage to teeth or, more specifically, to dentures and partials of all shapes and sizes. Points nine and ten of the statement rule the Chewbaru out as the work of a twisted funeral director or kleptomaniac retirement-home worker with a thing for teeth. The inspiration? "I found a seventy-five-pound box of recycled dentures on eBay." The rest is ArtCar history.

The Chewbaru was one of a dozen-plus art cars lined up outside Midtown Global Market last night for a pre-parade party that was mainly an opportunity to examine the cars (and their people) up close. There was the camera van covered in cameras of every shape and size, several "animal" ArtCars (polar bear, dog, etc.), a fairy-themed VW bug, a car covered in toys and a mosaic of plastic beads and stars—the list goes on.

Further down the line was a Dust Bowl–inspired jalopy worthy of a Steinbeck character—every surface covered in salt-of-the-earth wisdom and the pots, pans, lamps and other necessities—not to mention some more whimsical elements, such as a rubber chicken dangling from the side.

Walking down the row of ArtCars, it's impossible not to consider exactly what kind of car you might create. The consensus at my house? Bumper-to-bumper Pokemon cards.

For more about this annual event, go to artcarparade.com. 

6.15.07: Picasso and American Art After Hours Party at the Walker Art Center

A throng more than 3,000 strong gathered at the Walker Art Center Friday night to celebrate the opening of what is sure to be the must-see art event of the summer: Picasso and American Art. It was a warm, muggy night, perfect for a party, save for the occasional light drizzle that dampened the outdoor Target lounge, but not the spirits of the partygoers themselves.

Artinistas young and old shuffled shoulder-to-shoulder just to get into the exhibit, where they slid politely past each other in large but orderly packs, some standing on their tippy toes or peering through a sea of elbows just to get a glimpse of the master’s work. Getting close enough to read the nameplates was a bit more difficult. People at the back could be heard murmuring “Is that a Picasso?,” and a few moments later the message would be relayed from the front, “No—a Gorky.”

In the gallery itself, such herds, despite their size, tend to be relatively quiet, but one is never sure whether it’s out of respect for the occasion or fear of being overheard saying something stupid. This is especially true at the Walker, where the exhibits are known for defying easy interpretation, and patrons have become accustomed to being mystified and humbled on a regular basis.

Which is one of the reasons this show is so different. After showings on the east and west coast, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, this is the tour’s only Midwest stop. It is arguably the most accessible show ever to appear at the Walker (is there a conscious being alive who is not aware of Picasso’s influence in the art world?), and according to outgoing director Kathy Halbreich, deciding to host the show was partly a strategic decision “to attract people who might not normally visit the Walker” in hopes that they might view the permanent collection as well. Such naked populism was entirely uncharacteristic of the Halbreich-era at the Walker for the past fifteen years, and it’s far too early to tell if it is a harbinger of things to come after her departure in November. It is far enough out of character, though, that Halbreich felt the need to mention it to a roomful of reporters on Thursday morning, if only to acknowledge that the management and board are aware of the odd fit.

The decision to do the show apparently hinged on the idea that it was too important an exhibition not to do. Picasso is easily the most famous and iconic artist of the twentieth century, and here is a show that demonstrates, in some of the most startling and obvious ways imaginable, the force of the giant’s influence on successive generations of America’s greatest artists, including such household names as Max Weber, Stuart Davis, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. Put together over a ten-year period, largely through the efforts of Whitney curator Michael Fitzgerald, Picasso and American Art is a show almost everyone can “get,” because it puts several well-known and instantly recognizable paintings by Picasso side by side with the work of dozens of artists who either borrowed stylistically from Picasso, shamelessly ripped him off, or tried to combat his influence by mocking or trivializing him. Fitzgerald himself doesn’t want people thinking about this show as being about Picasso’s influence—he prefers the word “response,” because what the show is really about is the many ways in which American artists of the early to mid-twentieth century had to grapple with Picasso’s astonishing productivity (more than 45,000 works, which averages out to about two pieces a day, every day, for sixty-plus years) and the unstoppable juggernaut of his all-encompassing reputation.

There is little subtlety in these responses. Some are so similar that it’s impossible not to wonder why no one has pressed a copyright infringement suit—though in one case, Claes Oldenburg’s sculpture "Soft Version of Maquette for a Monument Donated to Chicago by Pablo Picasso, 1968," which sits next to a model of the actual Maquette (baboon) sculpture Picasso gave to the city of Chicago, a lawsuit was involved. Others, like the many Jackson Pollock’s in the exhibit, feel like angry retorts: “You call that abstract? Watch this—drizzle, drizzle—now that’s abstraction for ya!" As one moves through the exhibit, however, the responses to Picasso’s god-like legacy become less reverential, less emotionally heated, and turn decidedly ironic. One can only do four things with a god—worship it, wrestle with it, destroy it, or mock it—and the artists in the latter half of the exhibit, particularly Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns, seem to have had a fine time poking fun at the legend of Picasso. In a quote on the wall, Lichtenstein points out the extent to which Picasso’s work has become a commodity, and he drives the point home by assimilating Picasso’s style into what are essentially large, if exquisitely executed cartoons. Jasper Johns is even more irreverent, taking one of Picasso’s famous noses and turning it around and upside down in various hilarious ways. The tone is wry and satirical, but it is, nevertheless, a reaction—one of many—to Picasso’s unignorable status as the king of twentieth-century art. And this, after all, is the whole point of the show. There is a great deal of tension in these pieces. One can almost hear the conversation/argument between the master and his disciples, and it is one of the most fascinating cultural dialogues in history.

It would be all too easy to stroll through this exhibit, note the most obvious connections, and say, “I get it: Picasso was a legend.” But those who grazed the show on Friday night would be well-served to return for a closer viewing when the gallery isn’t so packed. It’s easy to take Picasso for granted, because he has become almost as much of a brand as Target, whose projected logo swirled over the walls of the Walker throughout the evening, serving as a reminder that practically everything these days has some sort of corporate sponsorship behind it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just the sort of thing that tends to divert people’s attention from more important matters. In this case, the more important matter would be the profound ripple effect Picasso’s existence has had on the evolution of art in the past hundred years. This show, impressive as it is, illustrates but a pebble in a puddle of the tsunami that was Picasso. By all means go and catch the wave, but don’t assume when you walk out that you have “gotten it.” This is a Walker exhibit, after all, which means that you should end up thinking about it for a long time to come.

Picasso and American Art runs through September 9 at the Walker Art Center.

6.6.07: Shojo Manga! Girl Power! East and West at MCAD

When I lived in San Francisco, I would sometimes visit a certain bookstore in “Japantown,” a neighborhood of Japanese shops and restaurants in the middle of the city. Manga of all kinds practically spilled off the tables at the front of the store—a testament to its popularity. Even though I could not discern the meaning of the text or make out the storyline, something about those colorful little tomes pulled me in. Shojo Manga! Girl Power! East and West at MCAD has that effect, too. It just draws you in.

The show—an internationally touring exhibition curated by Masami Toku—features 170 works by twenty-three mangaka (manga artists) spanning about six decades and organized by eras, starting roughly with the end of World War II and ending with shojo manga produced in the last few years. It’s the first show to take such a comprehensive look at Japanese comics for girls. The show features both Japanese masters of the genre and mangaka on our side of the Pacific Rim, hence the “west” in the show’s title.

The influence of American popular culture jumps out at you with the very first image by Osamu Tezuka, dubbed the “father of modern manga.” It’s as if Walt Disney had decided to expand his empire, heading due east. Tezuka’s Princess Saphire has all the elements: a princess with huge sparkling eyes, knights, fairies, anthropomorphic animals. Contrast that with Riyoko Ikeda’s Rose of Versailles, a love story set in revolutionary France and created in the 1970s, the Golden Age of shojo manga. Then have a look at the lush, painterly images produced by CLAMP—a collaborative group of four women mangaka—or the ink drawings of Akimi Yoshida from the last few decades. You come away with a fun lesson in the evolution of Japanese aesthetics and cultural attitudes.

Shojo Manga! runs through June 29 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Admission is free.

Photo: Hideko Mizuno, Silver Petals (Gin no Hanabira), 1957-59. Courtesy of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design

4.14.07: "Our Wildest Dreams" at SooVAC

Someone died at the fundraiser I went to at SooVAC last night. In fact, it was a virtual bloodbath. Graphic scenes of death were everywhere, and the evening culminated in a body splayed on the floor amidst the fashionably dressed crowd. There was even a crime-scene investigation by a real-life police officer.

OK, the graphic scenes were of dolls, the “body” was that of an actor, and the cop was off duty, but still . . . . A typical night at the gallery? Not so much. Good fun? Most definitely.

The event, titled "Our Wildest Dreams: A True Crime Evening of Music, Art & Mystery," was a fundraiser for a forthcoming documentary by Susan Marks, the force behind the book Finding Betty Crocker and an accompanying documentary about the cultural icon. Our Wildest Dreams trades wholesome, corporate domesticity for a sordid, unruly view of life behind closed doors.

Though the film has yet to be made, the premise is intriguing, if quirky. The tale plays on our seemingly tireless fascination with forensics based on what Marks describes as “the nation’s insatiable appetite for programming like CSI.” Marks seems to have a knack for finding the unusual angle to a familiar phenomenon. In this case she tapped straight into out collective fascination with both death and domesticity. She uncovered a most peculiar forensics tool—dollhouses used to recreate crime scenes—designed by one Frances Glessner Lee. The houses are still used to train investigators at the Maryland facility where they are housed.

Each dollhouse recreates a crime scene complete with tiny corpse dolls who represent actual murder victims. SooVAC's walls were lined with black-and-white images of suspicious doll death in all its variations:

Doll hanging from a noose? Check.

Dolls shot as they lay “sleeping” in bed? Check.

Doll laying face down at the bottom of the stairs? Check.

You get the idea. The photos' heavy shadows and unrelenting focus on blood and guts evoke the crime scene photographs of Weegee—except, of course, with dolls.

By the end of the investigation (though by no means the end of the evening, which also featured live music and an ample supply of chips, pretzels, peanuts and peppermint patties), a love triangle had been revealed, the body in question had disappeared, and two “people of interest” had been taken into figurative custody. Not a bad night’s work on the homicide beat.