The definition of art is something that I've read a lot of dense philosophical ramblings on about, but tonight lets boil it down to something rather simple:  art is about connection to yourself and to a universe of conscious beings who are also muddling through their own definition of art.

It took me a long time to write this review, because I was muddling through my own credentials. Short of private musings I'm not a poet or a scholar of poetry. Watching the Living Poets do their work made me feel deep connection to my species, to my planet, to this city, to bunch of New Age bullshit claptrap that I usually roll my eyes at, because I'm allergic to earnestness.

Good poetry is an inoculation to this kind of allergy. It pushed through the tough barrier of irony I normally mount subconsciously, and into dragged me into authentic contact with other beings. And so in the spirit of that, even though I feel in adequate to evaluate a medium I'm only starting to immerse myself in, I present to you musings on Harvest Moon, a poetry showcase at Shea's with regional and visiting poets.

Dr. Brené Brown, in Daring Greatly, discusses research on vulnerability.  At its heart is a catch 22: the major barrier to experiencing human connection is whether or not you feel that you are worthy of human connection.

The poets gave everyone in that room the feeling of connection with each other, despite FOMO and various other Internet meme's regarding how we constantly are looking for something more, there was no feeling of scarcity. The genius of the poets was our genius. We were thrilled to see them flying, we hated to see them pause and stumble, we exulted when they lifted themselves up again.

Below I leave for you a sampling of the lines that hit me hardest, that I was quick enough to scribble down.  Art is always a fight between savoring the moment and recording for later thought,  Together this group wove their way through the pain and violence we are navigating as a people, the love and food and pain and loss and solidarity that might serve as a waysign was their gift to the crowd.

It's a sign I hold dear, as a lesson to stay open. 

This is for the rotten kid the forgotten kid

...Why do they tell us not to be artists unless you wanna live in your parents basements

I wrote this for myself
I hope you can't tell

-Ben

I have been been at war
14 hours of my life in the hands in another.

-Autumn

Knowledge is food
Free eats

-Soundcloud thestates716

I don't wanna end up a new hashtag
That's not what black lives matter about

...Be weapons of mass construction...

I will teach my son that practice makes permanent not perfect.

-Shaq

Greet strangers with shock... waves.
(This opening piece really brought home how disconnected our daily lives are from one another.)

Isn't she lovely?
(Always excellent to see new collaborations: in this case with serene and strong models.)
-Lazyrus

Throw the feed in our face like who can eat the fastest

I keep my sons on my shoulders I hope they can see past it

We need to let more light shine through our freaking blackness

The shallower the minds the deeper the caskets

-Finks

11 plus 58
Well let's say that's a dinner that we just ate...
M e is equal to slut
Slut is always greater than victim

-Bianca, powerfully playing with our perceptions.

The united condemnations...

Jerusalem isn't the Stanley cup
Unlike hockey you don't cheer for one side of the other

-Sam, with amazing range from the humorous to the confessional to the political.

My one complaint here for the event:  The MC was edging into mockery of some works,  more out of confusion than mean spirited-ness, but it was jarring to hear jokes after some of the more heavy works. 

Curating something like this must be like hanging a show: the neighboring works have to be harmonious or interesting in concert.

Brandon writes to "commit the perfect crime, called poetry:"
A war...
You have not silenced a people until you've silenced their poets

If there were one word to describe me it would be
Not good at following directions.

(Something we can all aspire to.)

Can we get much higher
The power of love to create revolution

(Amani brought a super involved audience even deeper into the event:  having us proclaim our place in the universe as stardust.  If this sounds like the New age claptrap I mentioned earlier, your irony is showing:  You are scientifically stardust whether you admit it or not.)

I'm walking stardust dressed to the nines
How dare I.

-Amani

If you need to dare greatly, spend more time in the company of poets.

Kinetic Body is a mixed media installation up at Wrafterbuilt:
119 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, NY
The first Friday event is 11/6/15, from 6-9 pm.

An artist used to daily studio time is adrift without that space of making.  Jaime Schmidt was without a physical studio for months, and poured herself into daily sketches and photography sessions in order to "make something happen."  Faithfully in response to this daily practice: Kinetic Body has happened.

Immediately the woven enclosure recalls the web-like installation by Chiharu Shiota: Trace of Memory, at the Barrel Factory in Pittsburgh.  While Shiota's work looks to the echoes of past residencies in a space, Schmidt's is a living system.

Lines etch across the air in enfleshed color, building connections and an overall sense of identity forming itself.  The lines both stretched and drawn recall topography, fingerprint whorls, and cells in expansive division. 

Bodies incubate in amniotic sacs, flesh metamorphosing or healing wounds (again with the growth of cells and tiny reflected details., each drawing like a gylph.) 

What was this critical wound?  The artist references past traumas of childhood being addressed by a meditative process: healing began with visual mindfulness, where repeated sketching helps Schmidt reach a subconscious state.

In this state, ideas connect with each other.  Travel photos splay out in linked threads, linking like neurons in the brain.  The physical photos ( as opposed to Instagram shots with hashtags) convey that  the identity being constructed here is explicitly present and handmade, not digital.

Schmidt describes the evolution of her work: previously it was more emotive and visceral, a coping mechanism for surviving her father's long-term illnesses. This new body of work is emerging from that past catharsis and beginning the foundational stages of a new cosmology.

This world-building is grounded in Phenomenology: the study of consciousness.  She (and I) wholly recommend John Dewey's Art as Experience, as an exploration of how art takes experiences and distills them into Experiences: more concentrated and purposeful than the whirl of life passing by.

My main point of concern with Kinetic Body is that it requires solitude to be experienced to the fullest.  This limiting factor of installation work continues to come up:  how to we frame and invite in the public to installation and performative works?  How do you have an "Experience" while milling around at an art opening?

Schmidt's cosmology has the fingerprint at its heart.  Her research revealed a guiding biological curiosity:  your fingerprints remain the same from cradle to grave.  For her this connects many forms of identity in a fascinating symbol of the physical, mental, and spiritual.  This became an obsessive and meditative drawing practice which led to the current body of work seen here.

Traveling for the first time, Schmidt recalls flying over California and looking down:  "The lines of the land were the lines on my hand."   These geological fingerprints became a visual home for the process unfolding in Kinetic Body.

Unspooled thread sits altar-like before more glyph-paintings of fingerprints and the adjoining room, and nearby a fleshy sac sits patiently inside a cocoon of printed lines.  Schmidt says that the work will take on another form: she has eschewed the traditional aversion of cutting or re-purposing work in favor of consistently tearing up and remixing her paintings and installations.

 Anselm Kiefer said during his visit to Buffalo last year at the Albright Knox:  "Archival is an idea in service to the museums.  I don't worry about it at all."  Schmidt echoes this focus on the changing work:  "As an artist, spaces come to you. Creativity is the one solid thing in my life that I have." 

Essentially, other than this constant making, everything else will change.   In opening up your identity to the unknown, through wear and tear and the dangerous tools of the maker, your fingerprints change.  This power is enticing and dangerous, and it is an irresistible combination which keeps the artist moving.

Excerpted from the Curator's Statement:

"Representations of the male form have played a major role in the history of Western art... Despite the significance that trajectory has had in both academia and the art world, male figuration is currently an infrequently exhibited genre of art. This exhibition is intended to address that incongruity by providing a brief survey of works...  The artists included in the exhibition are Bruce Adams, Nick Butler, Max Collins, Kevin Kline, Craig LaRotonda, Cristiano F. Lopes, Michael Mararian, Thom Neill, Paul Rybarczyk, Donald J. Siuta, C.J. Szatkowski, Chuck Tingley, Adam Weekley and Mark
Zahm."     


CURATOR TALK: Saturday, September 26, 2 p.m. 
Studio Hart Gallery on Allen St, Buffalo, NY,   September 4 - 26, 2015
Studio Hart is open Tuesday - Friday, 11:30 - 3:30, and Saturday, noon to 4:00.

in 2014, Colin Dabkowski of the Buffalo News noted that two shows were up simultaneously in Buffalo which featured the male nude.  This sparked the interest of  artist, collector and curator Gerald Mead.  Dabkowski's description of "unclad" male figures became an alternative to "nude" which Mead adapted to his exploration of this uncommon art form.

"Unclad" fits 14 artists into the diminutive Studio Hart with skill:  the effect is one of many small meditations which require patient looking.  The perspectives on the male body, all by inhabitants of a male body, work in conversation with each other to provoke many avenues of thought:  What about the unclad male seems more empowered than the female nude?  (Is it the female nude's role in  Orientalism? The general dominance of male will to control art and imagery?  Our cultural bias toward shows of physical strength?)

In my conversation with the curator we discussed  the problem of the press image:  Can a full frontal work of art run in the Gusto?  Can it happily live in the bay window of an Allen St. Gallery?  (Technically yes.  Ideally, it's complicated.)  There is a notable accessibility to indirect nudity, which we are constantly exposed to in athletic and advertising imagery, while explicit nudes have an opaque purpose.  They could be pornographic, but if they are not, what do they signify?  (The capitalist's lament: How can I exist if I am not buying or selling anything?")

Meanwhile, I asked if another show was forthcoming, with female artists portraying the male nude.  Another list of potential artists is already underway.  For now, lady-artists will have to content themselves for winning massively in the nude race of the sexes:

In Edward Lucie-Smith's Adam: The Male Figure in Art, we read that "No image in our culture evokes a more powerful taboo than the male nude."   In Unclad there are many interpretations of this taboo, from self-portraits, icons, and academic work to commissions for articles and impressionistic paintings.  There is a range of queer and straight artists, and the degree of desire intended shifts and eludes strict interpretation with so many works side by side.  This tangle of aesthetics and sensuality reveals our mess of societal norms:  The work ranges from the 1970's to the present, and reflects various cycles of repression and permissiveness.

What does it say about us that the MOST mundane thing in our lives; the flesh we live in, is treated like a secret that would shock and offend?  The penis is a kind of political barometer:  the more we must hide it, the more afraid our society is of the vulnerable truth about ourselves.  It is a political act to expose this vulnerability, to let go of the pretenses of toxic masculinity and be open.   Stripped bare, the idea that we are lords over all creation seems particularly absurd.

It is this openness that we are in love with.  Not in the schadenfreude sense of tabloid celebrity-shaming beach photos, but in embracing the ultimate artistic taboo of the male nude, or of male vulnerability, there is an ultimate pleasure of freedom from pretense. 

One problem with this concept in practice is the generally idealized nude forms in "Unclad."  Divorcing the eye from objectification is a challenge for every portrait artist, and not a requirement.  But in seeking liberation from concealment, censorship, repression, I personally feel that representation of many bodies is another great political act by the curator and/or artist.

I leave with many avenues to explore:  Does the sexual preference and gender identification of an artist translate into their making?  Gender is central in our cultural conversation right now.  Sex, while separate, is increasingly understood as spectrum-based rather than binary. 

What can Trans-Men, Fluid-gendered, and Asexual artists teach us about the male nude?  How does nudity function for artists and activists looking to build representation for #BlackLivesMatter?  Can this taboo/vulnerability be used to break down harmful cliches of masculinity?

"Unclad" is a stone in the cultural stream, stubbornly forging an alternate route.  There is so much work to be done by curators and artists in opening up a dialogue on masculinity.  Art and representation can empower a shift toward vulnerability, honesty, and the naked truth.

Jesse Pace
Needles and Columns, 2015
mixed media installation: annealed wire, vintage sewing pattern paper

    Tea-stained stalactites and stalagmites welcome you into Jesse Pace's Needles and Columns.  These geo-glacial structures invite exploration of their delicacy and decay, monumental teeth bursting from the raw-wooden jaw of Sugar City's floor.
    Pace has applied old McCalls dress patterns paper-mache style to annealed wire in cave-formations faceted with organic/geometric patterns.  The aged paper seamlessly integrates with the floor, with one notable exception where a metal heating-grate interrupts the organic flow of wood to paper.
    Walking through the work, a video projector illuminates the structures with flickering blue light, and the observer is inscribed on the piece in silhouette as they roam.  Most observe from outside, making those who venture in part of the spectacle.  The difficulty of engaging with work without feeling self-conscious is heightened by the shadow casting effect:  to be enveloped you have to be willing to enter a spotlight of sorts.

A central triad of formations join above eye level, growing together overhead to cradle the head/face in gentle teeth:  they hold gently, giving a sense of their sharpness impending but not piercing.  Standing with these structures in your peripheral vision gives a fission of danger alongside the security of being enclosed.

The work challenges our mental division between the natural and constructed worlds.  By crafting organic forms out of industrial materials, Pace has blurred the line humanity too-often draws between us and "everything else."  It's too lonely inside this line:  the blurring is intriguing. 

Pace grew up in Niagara Falls, often doing works in Graffiti in an effort to hew out space for himself in a physical environment with no room for agency or creativity.  He is soon off to pursue his BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  His Buffalo summer was spent in anticipation, working through Needles and Columns as an extension of that early space-claiming activity.  Working through large installations is a way to invite ownership of the environment by the spiritually-oppressed. 

If you are wondering what the hell I mean by "spiritually-oppressed," take this quick quiz:

Have you experienced any of the following in the past 30 days:

• Exposure to body-shaming tabloids when you just want to buy bread.
• An inability to un-learn the lyrics to Happy.
  
• That person on Facebook who "just thought you should know."
• Constant enslavement to the requirements of linear time.
• Listicles.
  

Congratulations!  You are spiritually oppressed.  Needles and Columns invites you to drop all the bs for a moment and consider claiming some space for yourself,

Needles and Columns is on view at Sugar City until August 23rd, 2015. 

Gallery hours:
Fridays 5:30-7:30 and by appointment at buffalosugarcity@gmail.com