Art in Aboriginal Australia

In honor of the closing of Inside Tracks: Alone Across the Outback, Photographs by Rick Smolan, we are doing a segment on contemporary art from Aboriginal Australia on the Art School Blog. 

Contemporary Aboriginal art has the unique quality of being at once steeped in tradition and representative of individual artistic vision. In this way, the title of Ian McLean's book "How Aborigines invented the idea of contemporary art" rings true. Contemporary Aboriginal artists in Australia are expressing their ancestral culture with contemporary art supplies, creating works of an unironic brilliance rare in today's art market. Sales that have broken the $2 million barrier at international art auctions bring economic independence to marginalized communities with nary a tale of new found fortune gone awry.

Robyn Davidson's adventure, retold in her book and the recent film Tracks took place in the legendary desert wilderness of Outback Australia, known as the Bush to the country's natives. The incredible story, captured in the photographs by Rick Smolan and his book Inside Tracks, tells of the landscape and the hardships that befall a person alone in that challenging environment. The native Australians inhabited this land long before European contact, having developed a complex animist cosmology known as Dreamtime, with evidence in rock art dating back 60,000 years. Theirs is considered the oldest continuing culture, which has evolved with contemporary Aborigines into a vibrant contemporary art. 

As we celebrate the land down under, artistic excellence and boldness of vision, please take a moment to look at a few images collected here that received the Telstra Art Award (National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Art Award) for artistic excellence in 2014. They are shown here along with the Judge's comments.

Daniel Walbidi, Wirnpa & Sons, 2014

2014 General Painting Award
Uncommon in Aboriginal painting practices, silver and gold pigments are employed in Daniel Walbidi’s Wirnpa and Sons 2014 giving life to the stark bleached saltpans and the parched desert sand dunes of his homelands. The harsh nature of these lands is tempered by a delicate organic overlay that carries the stories of ancestral beings such as the jila (living water), rainmaker of the Great Sandy Desert. Daniel’s paintings are like satellite photographs that concentrate on typographical complexities while they also eloquently translate his people’s stories as told to him by elders. Daniel is a sophisticated colourist who utilizes both typical desert tones and saltwater hues to narrate the dual nature of the cultural heritage of Bidyadange with vibrancy and confidence.

Garawan Wanambi, Marrangu, 2014

2014 Telstra Bark Painting Award

Garawan Wanambi uses the expressive qualities of his clan’s geometric patterns as a medium for the representation of restricted sacred areas in Arnhem Land.  This work contains a narrative that involves the mosquito ancestor, a symbol of aggression, who fights with spears and who is known for creating spiritual danger. In Marrangu the designs represents a place at the mouth of a river where fresh water boils up underneath the salt water. Garawan focuses on the changing waters, from turbulent to calm, with an intricate weave of pastel colours that give great depth to his work. Viewers will be mesmerized by the distinctive patterns and the lustrous surface of the painting that imitate the idea of light on water. 

2014 Work on Paper Award
Nici Cumpston uses photography to convey a spiritual and cultural connection to her country, capturing a sense of mystery as well as the physical landscapes. Scar tree, Barkindji country straddles the line between the serene and the dynamic. Nici looks at degraded landscapes, which are surviving, and prospering, they become a metaphor for Aboriginal people and culture. She has transformed this black and white image through the colour that she vigorously applies, reinserting her presence into the landscape. With dynamism and spirit, colour bursts off the page and cannot be contained by the frame of the picture, similar to Indigenous culture and presence on country. 

Nici Cumpston, Scar Tree, Barkindji Country, hand-colored inkjet print, 2014

Cafe Gallery: Winter Workshop Sampler

Denise Kadar (pottery), Stephanie Maddelena (beads)

Stephanie Maddelena

Each winter, The Art School at Old Church offers a variety of workshops taught by visiting artists and faculty.  These workshops provide one or two day instruction ranging in different art mediums. Samples of work for several of the workshops can be viewed in a new exhibition in the Café Gallery through March 20^th. The workshop sampler exhibition included work in collage, pastels, cane/reed handled ceramics, and flame worked glass beads. With a selection of student work and the instructors own art, the exhibition encourages students to see work that will be made in each workshop.

This exhibition includes work by the Art School’s talented instructors and students; Marcy Cagan (collage), Denise Kadar (ceramics), Stephanie Maddalena (flame worked beads), and Karen O’Neil (pastels).

The Art School is pleased to present these opportunities for artistic growth in new materials. Come by The Art School to view the winter workshop samplers and make sure to register for one of the exciting winter workshops.  A description of each workshop offered can be found in the schools catalog and website at www.tasoc.org.

Marcy Cagan (left & middle), Karen O'Neil (right)

INSIDE TRACKS AT THE MIKHAIL ZAKIN GALLERY

A new exhibition of photographs by the highly acclaimed photojournalist and National Geographic photographer, Rick Smolan, is on view through March 4-31^st in the Mikhail Zakin Gallery. A free film-screening will accompany the exhibition on Saturday, March 7 from 5:00 – 7:00 PM followed with a talk by Rick Smolan, author and photographer of Inside Tracks. This bold, beautiful “smart phone enabled” coffee table book, is based on one of the most beloved stories in the history of National Geographic Magazine: 27-year-old Robyn Davidson’s 1700 mile trek across the Australian outback.  Davidson’s journey from Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean, accompanied by just four camels and a dog, inspired her own bestselling book, Tracks, a cult classic that has sold over a million copies, has been translated into 18 languages and is required reading in Australian schools.

Rick Smolan, the American photographer assigned by National Geographic to document her journey, had his own adventure tracking Robyn down in the desert periodically throughout her journey. The outback of Australia, seen through Robyn's eyes and Rick's cameras, is an ancient awesome landscape swept by rain, heat and dust and inhabited by all varieties of marauding life, from poisonous snakes to wild bull camels but is also inhabited by the caring aboriginal people of the Pitjantjatjara tribe and the outback farmers who encouraged and helped Robyn during her journey.

The incredible story is now a major motion picture titled “Tracks” from the Oscar winning producers of "The Kings Speech". In the film Robyn is portrayed by Mia Wasikowska (Alice in Wonderland) and Rick by Adam Driver (HBO's Girls). A special state of the art Canon projection system will be used for the March 7th presentation of the feature film.

At the film screening event, Rick will share images and behind the scenes stories from Robyn's adventure and will also autograph copies of Inside Tracks. The magnificently printed book features more than two hundred photographs from Robyn’s journey, many never published before, as well as an inside look at the making of the TRACKS movie, with scene photographs and excerpts from the script.

“To me” says Rick Smolan “what matters most is that she [Robyn]  permitted herself to listen to the little voice in her head that propelled her to set off on such a risky journey. My deepest hope is that Inside Tracks and Robyn’s belief that ‘an ordinary person is capable of anything’ will inspire readers to embark on their own voyage of self-discovery”

Special thanks to Hank Gans, photography instructor at the Art School at Old Church who helped organize this inspiring exhibition of photography. Please call (201) 767-7160 by March 5th to RSVP to the March 7th film screening. The exhibition and film event are wheelchair accessible. Gallery hours are Monday-Friday: 9:30 AM – 5:00 PM. Call ahead for evening and weekend hours.

Floating Islands on view in the Mikhail Zakin Gallery

Ken Cro-Ken, Brief Moment in Time in foreground, Ken Cro-Ken, There in background

Floating Islands is an exhibition of works by four contemporary artists making art with an environmental edge. A variety of materials and processes come together in this group show, immersing the Mikhail Zakin Gallery in sculptures, installations, paintings and a live painting experiment with nature.

We are proud to feature the works of Riccardo Berlingeri (Middletown, NJ), Ken Cro-Ken (New York, NY), David Purcell (Baltimore, MD) and Etty Yaniv (New York, NY) in this exhibit.

Riccardo Berlingeri, Deep Down

The exhibit takes its name from the floating islands of trash that have collected in the Pacific Ocean. These islands, inadvertently formed, have held up a mirror to our culture of use. This process of realization catalyzed by a physical form led me to think of the symbolic power of art in contemplating our experience of the world.

One of the most striking aspects of the exhibit is the way art can seem exclusively expressive of the self yet evoke a vast system of interrelation. Each piece in this show is seated squarely in the artists’ respective styles, established through ongoing practice and investigation of materials. And yet, each piece has the quality of being rooted in our society and performing an act of reflection, forming a conceptual bond with nature that can be collectively shared.

The works on view recap the awe of the natural, where seemingly disparate organisms interweave to create a tapestry of living beings and ecosystems. Together the artists have formed a humbling space, starting from scratch with layers of corrugated cardboard or colored pieces of newspaper that provide entry to a new slant on the physical world.

David Purcell, Memory of a Hike Through Echo Canyon

The exhibition is equal parts an ode to Mother Nature, an apology and a pledge. This is what we have done, this is what we love about living here, and this is what we hope for: a planet that we not only avoid offending, but one that we seek to love in all the ways in our power. Through understanding every crevice, walking through the logic that creates these forms, acknowledging the beauty of juxtaposition and the details hidden in plain sight, allowing ourselves to be humbled by the simultaneous representation of a river delta and the veins of a maple leaf, or getting our hands dirty and building monuments to our great mistakes.

Most importantly, and in the context of the Art School at Old Church, the exhibition is a manifestation of the power of the artistic process to transform inanimate materials into complex comments, critiques, and calls to arms regarding human society. We can all benefit from considering our actions as paths from creative ideas to material expression. The show is on view at the Art School, a gathering place for creative development, where it is hoped that all our lives will leave a mark and that mark will be deliberate and artful.

Join us for a reception with the artists Thursday, January 29, 2015 from 5:30 - 7:30 PM.

Etty Yaniv, Parallel Topographies in foreground; Ken Cro-Ken, There, in background

40th Annual Pottery Show & Sale: Daze of Clay

Forty years ago, a Pottery Show and Sale was born in the small town of Demarest, New Jersey, just south of the New York state border and a few miles north of the George Washington Bridge. It came into existence through a long-time friendship between two respected potters, the late Mikhail Zakin, co-founder of the Art School at Old Church, and the eminent Karen Karnes. 

Sometimes called the “grandmother of American ceramics”, Karen Karnes taught at the avant-garde Black Mountain College in North Carolina into the early 1950’s, and later moved to Vermont where she has lived and worked since 1979. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Arts and Design, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among numerous others.

Back then, Karen decided to make a pottery sale to benefit the newly formed community art center, but she also wanted to create an event that served as an annual gathering place for potters to meet and exchange ideas. The grassroots culture of the school and the familial convening of potters helped to quickly establish the Annual Pottery Show & Sale as one of the best invitational shows in the country.

The Annual Pottery Show & Sale is unique because it has remained relatively unchanged in forty years. Karen has continued to curate the sale, bringing together some of the nation’s best potters of one-of-a-kind, functional and sculptural pieces. Pottery is displayed on humble wood benches and adorned with unpretentious flowering branches and sprigs of greenery. The show is held each year on the first weekend of December. This year’s preview reception is on Friday, December 5^th, 6-10PM, and the show continues on Saturday, December 6^th, 10AM-6PM, and Sunday, December 7^th, 12-5PM.

The 40^th annual Pottery Show & Sale marks the first noticeable change in the event’s long history. This year, Bruce Denhert and Chris Gustin join Karen in co-curating the show. Both are well-known figures within the American ceramics community, recognized among their peers as experts in the field.

Bruce Denhert is currently the director of the ceramics program for Peters Valley School of Craft in Layton, NJ, and has taught workshops internationally. He has published in many journals on ceramic technique and processes.

Garth Clark, a chief writer and critic on ceramic art and fine craft, calls Chris Gustin “one of the leading ceramists of his generation”. Chris is cofounder of the Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine, and retired from academia in 1999 to devote his energies to his studio work and tile production company. Before then, he was associate professor of ceramics at University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.

Their collaboration brings together 30 potters from around the nation for the 40^th annual invitational, including:

Richard Aerni, Dan Anderson, Mary Barringer, Ingrid Bathe, Bruce Denhert, Judith Duff, Heather Mae Erickson, Julia Galloway, Scott Goldberg, Tyler Gulden, Chris Gustin, Kenyon Hansen, Bryan Hopkins, Nick Joerling, Karen Karnes, James Lawton, Robbie Lobell, Matt Long, Matthew Metz, Maureen Mills, Ted Neal, Aysha Peltz, Doug Peltzman, Seth Rainville, Rob Sieminski, Mark Shapiro, Jeff Shapiro, Jack Troy, Adero Willard, and Erica Wurtz.

Each potter will ship and tote hundreds of their best pots to Demarest in early December, arriving on Thursday morning before the show to set up their displays. Then, Friday through Sunday, they will meet and greet both potters and ceramic enthusiasts, sharing in relevant discussions about pottery-making, and having the pleasure of seeing their wares in the hands of those who appreciate artisan pottery just as they do.


For more information about this year's show, check out oldchurchpotteryshow.org

The Art of Community

Generations

By guest writer Carol Avery.

I took a pottery class.  I was about 11 years old.  I walked across the street from the Demarest Middle School and went down into the basement, as I was told to do by my mother.  "Just cross the street and go down into the cellar.  I have signed you up for a pottery course at the new cultural center." 

The “new cultural center" was of course the Old Church Cultural Center now known as The Art School at Old Church.  A beautiful 1800's arts and craft style Baptist church which had been rendered obsolete by the 1950’s A frame style of the new church next door.  

My parents had been early supporters.  They went to meetings and fundraisers to help.  My first memory was an Italian film event we attended in the fall.  My father was in his suit as usual, and my mother had put on perfume.  We entered the old church building at night. The street lamps made very sharp contrasts of shapes and shadows.  Upon entering I immediately realized I was the only child there as the noise level was singularly adult.  There was wine and cheese, I ate the crackers.  We were congregating in what I disturbingly recognized as the church's main hall.  Churches were mysterious places for worship, not cocktail parties. A white move screen had been placed where the alter should have been.  

A few glasses of wine later, some metal folding chairs scraping on the floor, lights dimmed and the projector sputtered to life.  The words "ROMA" in back and white appeared on the screen.  For the next hour and thirty minutes I was transported to a place I knew I would never see.  Only director Federico Fellini could construct the fantastic combination of beauty, pathos, the sublime and the grotesque in one moving image. "Well" my father said to my mother, "she will want to go there now."  I wouldn't go to Rome for many years, but I did go to art classes until I got there.

As I descended the stairs the smell of wet and dry clay was a new smell.  I had molded clay at camp, maybe even in school, but down the stairs was different. It was more serious and more cool at the same time. There were important looking tools and unfamilar equipment and beautiful ceramics the likes of which I had never seen. Shapes and colors I had not considered. Unique, one of kind pieces that gave pinch pots a newness I had not understood before. The adults were different too. Not the usual art teachers one finds at camp or school.  The new cultural center's teachers had a secret excitement and whirling liveliness with their long colorful skirts, big smiles and free flowing hair.  I of course was a bit concerned, in my saddle shoes and corduroy jumper.  

I went every week to my class in the basement of the old church and I worked the clay.  After many hours of hard work I could throw and center a ball of clay on the potter’s wheel.  Spinning the clay into a beautiful pot- it was mysterious and transformative.

Last year my daughter attended her first class at Old Church.  I am sure her impressions are much different than mine.  She is a few years older and she has the beginnings of artistic ability.  Eloise pointed out that her mother had also signed her up for a class.  “A Teen Art Class- you will love it, Saturday mornings for a couple hours.”  

Eloise reminded me that she had been to the Old Church Cultural Center before taking a art class as well.  “It was your birthday party and Margo came.” When we moved back to Demarest, I co-hosted a Farm-to-Table party there in the spring.  It was about 4 years ago.  She would have been about the same age as my first memory.  “It was light outside.  Not in the main hall of the church but the side studio where I have my art class” she continued. 

There were other children, and her brother.  Some wine, some cheese and raw milk was served along with pastured meats and homegrown vegetables and fermented foods.  It was a wonderful meal.  Artwork was everywhere and many who came were artists, my friends.  It felt very good.  Some came with instruments and someone sang. The opposite of Felliniesque.  I could turn out to be a disappointing mother. 

I enrolled my daughter in the Teen Art Experience class on Saturday mornings.  "I was a little nervous, but I was soon busy with the class activity and my fellow students.  I learned a lot of different techniques and my teacher, John taught us about so many different artists-like Edvard Munch.  I really enjoyed painting on snow or the time we painted without using our hands."  Eloise is now in her second session at Old Church and it seems she will be the third generation in our family, to enjoy all that the school has to offer.   

Art School student featured in The Journey, the Kennedy Center’s 2014 VSA Emerging Young Artists Exhibition

(WASHINGTON, D.C.)— Art School at Old Church student Andrew Weatherly was selected by VSA, a Jean Kennedy Smith Arts and Disability program of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as a winner of the 2014 VSA Emerging Young Artists Program.

The program is designed to give visibility and a voice to the work of young artists with disabilities, ages 16 to 25, by exhibiting their work throughout the United States and around the world, cementing their work in the broader context of the history, art, and culture of the American, as well as global, experience. The 15 winners of this year’s competition receive cash prizes totaling $60,000. Of even greater value, they are brought, all expenses paid, to Washington, D.C. to explore the skills needed for a professional life in the visual arts, preparing them to competitively pursue arts-based vocations, whether as full-time visual artists or in a range of other professional capacities employing their creative talents. During this time, artists will meet with highly regarded professionals in the visual arts field and visit museums and galleries around D.C.

Andrew Weatherly
Winter Worlds, 2013
acrylic on canvas, 11" x 9"

Closter, NJ resident Andrew Weatherly, a student at the Art School at Old Church, has been selected as a winner of the 2014 VSA Emerging Young Artists Program for his artwork, Winter Worlds. As a winner, Andrew will receive an award of excellence accompanied by a cash prize of $2,000. Andrew is a student in a special mentorship program taught by Holly Ciccoricco on Friday afternoons. Holly Ciccoricco teaches the class three times per month to two special needs students from the Demarest area. Holly has taught children's art classes at the school for 14 years including a class for special needs students on Saturday mornings. Gail Rutigliano, a Demarest resident and active student at the Art School, assists Holly with the special workshop program.

The 15 winners were selected by a jury of noted art professionals, including William Newman, the Carolyn S. Alper Professor of Contemporary Arts at the Corcoran College of Art + Design, Brandon Brame Fortune, Chief Curator and Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the National Portrait Gallery, and Sarah Tanguy, curator in the ART in Embassies Program, a program of the U.S. Department of State.

“We are delighted to recognize this inspiring group of talented young artists living with disabilities,” said Betty Siegel, Director of VSA and Accessibility at the Kennedy Center. “This program highlights the contributions that young artists living with disabilities make to American society and culture and we commend Volkswagen Group of America for making it possible.”

The Journey will be on public display from September 15, 2014 to January 5, 2015 at the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution, 1100 Jefferson Drive SW, Washington, DC. The exhibition will be open daily 10:00am to 5:30pm and is accessible by Metro. The exhibition is free, no tickets are required. Following the close of the exhibition at the Smithsonian, The Journey will embark on a national tour to museums and galleries across the country. Volkswagen Group of America will host the first leg of this tour, displaying the entire exhibition at its headquarters in Herndon, VA. For information on the where The Journey is touring, please go to: http://www.kennedy-center.org/emergingyoungartists

VSA's signature programs offer multi-faceted, unparalleled opportunities for youth, with disabilities, who have aspirations in the performing and visual arts. Explore VSA programs at: www.kennedy-center.org/education/vsa/programs/