Grandma take me home

A photo exhibit consisting of fairy tales, grandmothers and elevator girls holds more than your interest. This exhibition practically grabs you by the collar and demands reciprocal appreciation. That would be due to the extreme beauty and visionary insight afforded by the images on display.
Miwa Yanagi: Deutsche Bank Collection contains major pieces from this Japanese photographer who can easily be divided into the distinct Fairy Tale, Grandmother and Elevator Girl series. This collection is currently on display at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston until May 4. Most of the photos are wall sized. In other words you could drive a Datsun into one.
Of the three arrays of Yanagi’s photos the elevator girls perhaps don’t exist in out culture. Maybe they do if you replaced elevator girl with cheerleader or Hooter’s server. In Japan elevator girls wear white gloves and dresses color coordinated with their respective corporate parent. A companion video Kagome Kagome utilizes the narrow spaces of corridors of commerce to comment on these well-groomed lasses. Yanagi has frozen images of these young ladies in a fetishistic blur of blues and reds. By contrast the grandmother series uses young models that were told to write what they would be in 50 years. Taking their responses Yanagi then staged tableaux and digitally altered the faces to reflect the wages of age. One of the centerpieces of the show depicts one grandmother in the sidecar of a motorcycle traveling along the Golden Gate Bridge highway, her dyed red hair waving in the wind and her diamond tooth catching a ray of the sun.
In sharp contrast to the blazing color and life affirming nature of the other two chapters of Yanagi’s photos, the fairy tale series presents carefully staged poses in rich black and white that practically beg the viewer to conjure unpleasant images. All of the stories resonate familiarity with their titles – Rapunzel, Snow White, The Little Match Girl – yet their staging, involving mostly young girls and masks, makes you shudder to consider the consequences. The gallery is dark and in the middle stands a tent suspended from the air so that if you stand in it people outside can see your feet. About six or seven people can fit inside, and when you breech the flaps of canvas you realize you are watching a video. The video shows the point-of-view looking outside from inside a tent and onto a horizon of sand dunes.
Welcome to the world of Miwa Yanagi, a place where fantastical landscapes merge with subconscious desire.
-- Michael Bergeron

Where Clouds Disperse

When artist Suh Se-ok, in his 70s, introduced his exhibit to a group assembled at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston he spoke softly. Suh Se-ok also paints with a large brush. In fact the bamboo brush he wields in a video seen as part of the Where Clouds Disperse exhibit is nearly four feet long, and the bristles laced at the top are bound lamb hair.
Large mulberry or rice paper panels painted by Suh Se-ok in a calligraphy style surround the viewer both as serious art and as a kind of representation of abstract figures. The video shows him in his studio itself a work of art, a country house with many windows for sun and surrounded by trees and brush for solace of the soul.
The exhibit “continues the museum’s initiative to bring emphasis to Asian art,” remarks MFAH director Peter Marzio. In fact last December the MFAH opened a Korean gallery in the museum’s Law Building that houses artifacts from Neolithic ceramics to Buddhist art from the Three Kingdoms period. Marzio points out that Korean art is more expensive than comparable Asian pieces from the same era in Japan or China because there is less of it. Whenever Korea was invaded throughout history the conquerors would sublimate the Korean culture.
There is a “thunder when the artist puts his brush to the canvas” concurs museum curator of prints and drawings Barry Walker about the various images of Suh Se-ok. Many of the works bear the same name; no less than 23 are titled People. Then there’s Two People and the signature piece Where Clouds Disperse where the brush strokes seem to move in from the edges to the clear void of the middle. An X may be a stroke of ink but more likely it is a person as indicated by hints of irregularity in the form of the crossed stroked. Maybe it is even us looking back at our own image.

Houston Street Art

Flickr - Houston Street Art Collection

For the past couple of years I've been documenting the Graffiti and Street art around me here in Houston, TX. I originally started this because everything seemed to disappear or get buffed so fast. I'm not sure why the City of Houston is so adamant about fighting such a petty crime. Especially when I can personally point out dozens of more severe infractions occurring in this city.

Anyway, before I get into a rant I should just stop now and get back to the point. These have been a private collection of sorts but I'm finally getting back around to editing them all and sharing them with the world. I hope you enjoy what you see and that it inspires you to create!
I'll do my best to keep up with the pace of these dogs.

Be sure and check out these gems and also be on the lookout for my collections of street art in other cities which I'll be uploading in the near future.