Art Adventure Itinerary (2004)
January- Des Moines, Kansas City, Saint Louis
February- Chicago, Columbus, Indianapolis
March- Cincinnati, Louisville
April- Claremont, La Jolla, Los Angeles
May- NYC
June- Mexico City
July- Chicago, Grinnell, Iowa

Upcoming Trips-

August- North Carolina

September- New York City

January:

On New Year’s Day, we drove to Des Moines, Iowa. The next morning, senior curator Jeff Fleming gave us a rather extensive tour of the Des Moines Art Center’s vast collection, housed in three eras of interlocking buildings designed by Eliel Saarinen, I.M. Pei and Richard Meier. Many works in the DMAC collection were originally acquired by adventuresome, local collectors like Louise Noun, who collected art made by women, such as Nadevhda Udaltsova’s remarkable Suprematist Composition (1916). Not only does the DMAC collect Iowa native Anna Gaskell’s photographs, but it is the rare museum that owns a Christopher Wilmarth sculpture or a Franz Gertsch woodblock print. And it is the only museum that permanently displays one of Joseph Beuys’ blackboards from his traveling lecture series, Energy Plan for the Western Man (1974)! They also have one of the most interesting William Wiley wall installation on record.

We then proceeded south to Kansas City, whose museums remain open Friday nights. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art presented an incredibly thorough Marsden Hartley survey, claimed to be his first in decades, yet Pepperdine University’s Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art had presented a 1998 survey of 70 works owned by the other Weisman Museum. Except for an Anish Kapoor table-top sculpture comprised of five colored vessels, NAMA’s contemporary collection pales in comparison to their dramatically installed, mid-century paintings. Their Chinese collection is stellar. A display case filled with fascinating cricket paraphernalia, including cages, bowls and ticklers, is totally worth the trip! Since Grand Arts was closed for installation, we had plenty of time at the Kemper Museum of Art, which featured an employee-selected, randomly installed exhibition of mostly figurative paintings from their permanent collection and a playful exhibition of sexy sculpture.

We drove another 100 miles that night, so that we could have a full day in Saint Louis, which began with a visit to Eero Saarinen’s incredible Gateway Arch (1965). The Robert-Irwinesque buckets transporting visitors to the top combined with the way adults must lean over to peer out the windows make this the world’s best example of public art. We then visited the Tadao Ando-designed Pulitzer Foundation, which lists their site-specific Ellsworth Kelly painting as sculpture! In addition to a modest Doris Salcedo and Kiki Smith exhibition, there was a Richard Serra survey, whose highlights included an early sprawl of wood and steel and one of his more recent Torqued Ellipses, sited on the Foundation’s plaza, which offered a twisting sky view. The adjacent Contemporary Art Museum Saint Louis presented an exhibition of African ex-pat artists, whose works mix aspects of their heritage with qualities of their lives abroad. While ex-pats are typically privileged, these works explored rather down-to-earth topics such as foreign influences, treasure hunting, exploration, gender issues and family albums. We then darted over to the Saint Louis Art Museum to see a classic survey of recent German art that included a rare Sigmar Polke decaying potato sculpture. SLAM’s important Currents series featured German postmodernist Neo Rauch’s first U.S. solo exhibition, five paintings whose juxtaposed imagery suggest dream-like stories.

www.nelson-atkins.org Nelson Atkins Museum of Art

www.kemperart.org Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

www.grandarts.com Grand Arts

www.contemporarystl.org Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
www.slam.org Saint Louis Art Museum web-site

February:

I traveled by Greyhound bus to Chicago to review the Art Institute of Chicago's Margherita Manzelli delightful exhibition of 16 drawings of imaginary women and one painting of a building's rear end. While listening to Cindy Loehr's Bluebird Burden at moniquemeloche, I learned about a concurrent panel discussion for Lee Bonticou’s amazing survey, so I caught a cab to the Museum of Contemporary Art just in time to hear Donna DeSalvo, Doug Harvey, Liz Larner and Elizabeth Smith discuss Bontecou’s work. Fortunately, Bontecou’s vast exhibition included plenty of her incredibly detailed drawings in addition to her remarkable wall works, mobiles and objects, such as her vacuum-formed flowers.

Returning from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where I had just delivered three lectures, I stopped by Columbus’ Belmont Building (the Wexner Center for the Arts’ visual art outpost during its renovation) to review Splat Boom Pow!. This extensive exhibition featured works by contemporary artists who deliver their societal critiques using cartoon imagery, thus easing the transmission. A second exhibition featured coffee and tea sets designed by famous architects that I had seen at Max Protetch's Chelsea gallery. Ten days later, I organized a road trip to the Indianapolis Museum of Art to see its impressive collection of Neo-Impressionist and Symbolist paintings. Since IMA is also being renovated, it had closed its modernist and contemporary sections. We then opted to check out the brand new Indiana State Museum, where we saw comedian Cheech Marin's collection of contemporary Latino Art (a traveling show) and participated in a remarkably progressive, live-action poll concerning the various issues facing Indiana’s future, such as the effects of cloning dead pets and the farming of corporate-licensed, genetically modified crops.

www.moniquemeloche.com moniquemeloche

www.mcachicago.org Museum of Contemporay Art

www.wexarts.org The Ohio State University Wexner Center for the Arts

www.ima-art.org Indianapolis Museum of Art

March:

Mid-March, the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati opened a high-spirited exhibition, Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture, which featured influential historical works; skateboard ephemera and videos; scores of artist-designed skateboards, collectibles and 'zines; and video, painting and photography installations by about 35 younger artists and graphic designers. Toy Machine’s skateboarding demonstration in the CAC lobby was filled to capacity with spectators of all ages. Several street artists did their thing on buildings around town, while several alternative spaces like the Mockbee and Publico hosted related exhibitions. The next week, appropriately enough, an exhibition I curated for Warsaw Projects, opened. appropriately enough featured a C.D., digital photographs, an ink drawing, a D.V.D., light boxes, artists’ instructions, a vinyl-tape installation, videos, a sound installation, a cassette-recorded reading and several paintings, all of which were works by local emerging artists, who had transformed pre-existent material into new works.

At the end of March, we traveled to the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky for the opening of Presence, a unique exhibition curated by Julien Robson that invites viewers to focus on one object at a time. Each work is displayed in an architect-designed, enclosed space, sited within the museum’s tapestry gallery. Presence opened with Maria (2000), one of Swiss artist Franz Gertsch’s large-scale, meticulously-rendered woodblock prints, which is a portrait of his wife lying supine in a forest. Presence next featured Ik-Joon Kang’s viewer-activated installation and is currently presenting Bill Henson’s photographic tryptich.

www.contemporaryartscenter.org Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati

April:

Trips to Los Angeles are always action-packed, since balancing visits with friends and art becomes complicated. When a Cincinnati friend wanted to join me mid-week, I knew this trip would be even trickier, since she wanted to see everything during her two-day visit, including museums like the Getty that I only occasionally visit. Arriving just in time to catch the last day of Shirley Tse’s Pomona College exhibition in Claremont, I figured I could swing by en route to La Jolla, where the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego was presenting Baja to Vancouver: the West Coast and Contemporary Art . The highlight of Shirley's exhibition of human-scale, plastic power towers and wires was her installation sketch, made from strips of white correction tape adhered to a peach-colored, plastic sheet. Blue Sky, another Pomona College exhibition, featured recent works by seven artists deemed dreamers, romantics or visionaries, a list that included Russ Crotty, Sharon Ellis, Tom Knechtel, Nancy Jackson and Vally Mestroni.

Baja to Vancouver included several of Russ’s globes, as wells as art and furniture by scores of other artists, including Delia Brown’s real-time video of a low-key afternoon party, Catherine Sullivan’s video of people dancing amidst detritus on a tennis court, Evan Holloway’s incense-burning sculpture and Chris Johanson’s crudely-constructed shack. Initially resembling Rob Pruitt’s 101 Ideas for Art You Can Do Yourself (2000), B2V’s freshest work is sort of a correspondence gallery sponsored by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July. Harrell and Miranda generously use exhibition opportunities to present people’s solutions to assignments listed on their web-site, www.learningtoloveyoumore.com. A few days later, we attended Terry Meyer’s walk through of his exhibition of Robert Overby paintings from the 1980s at Cal-State L. A.'s Luckman Gallery. Afterwards, we headed to the gorgeous Chinatown bar, Mountain, which Jorge Pardo designed and supposedly-owns. A few hours later, we wound up at Spaceland to experience Los Super Elegantes, a rather hillarious, groovie duo, who performed a few weeks later as part of the 2004 Whitney Biennial.

After an early breakfast at Kokomo's, we spent nearly five hours at the Getty Museum absorbing Photographers of Genius at the Getty, a massive multi-century exhibition of works by 38 artists, as well as the Getty's sprawling historical collection. The Business of Art: Evidence from the Art Market , the Getty's temporary exhibition of art-market related letters and ledgers, exposed some fascinating details of otherwise secretive ventures. We then dropped by to UCLA Hammer Museum, where several of Pae White's gorgeous installations of laboriously cut and strung, colored paper discs were on view in the museum's foyer. George Raggett's super-wonderful pulsing, sprawl suspended within a wooden gazebo provided a much-needed respite. The main exhibition, The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960-1982, offered an engaging exhibition of 150 works by 57 artists and collaborators. Since all of the heavy hitters were involved, there were few surprises save Hans Haacke’s photos of events in action. Nonetheless, it offered a great overview. When we left, we discovered that our car was missing, so we hitched a ride to the tow company and paid through the nose to retrieve it. The moral is, pay for the garage, rather than risk a tow.

Once we retrieved our car, we set out for the Museum of Contemporary Art's A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968, curated by Ann Goldstein, which featured works by 40 artists. On first glance, this exhibition read like a real life version of Anna Chave's Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power, yet this U.S.-centric exhibition was disrupted by several unusal inclusions such as Hans Haacke's Blue Sail (a flying blue tarpulin), Ice Stick and Condensation Cube. Doug Huebler’s wonderful formica-clad "constructions," which can be oriented in any direction, required intense scrutiny to experience their total diversity. Rather than re-construct high-flying beams that engage the architecture, Robert Grosvenor was represented by photographs of his monumental 1960s installations. Michael Asher's unprimed canvas stretched over bars, shaped to form beveled edges, challenges Thierry de Duve’s claim that no artist would ever just exhibit a canvas! Patricia Johanson's Minor Keith invites viewers to walk the full length of this super-wide painting to experience its full effects. The inclusion of two lesser known artists, Robert Huot and Paul Mogensen, rounded out this much-needed exploration of a decade when artists employed humble materials to isolate experiences that still engender perceptual experiments and cognitive events. We then ventured over to Venice's Beyond Baroque to catch the tail end of a reading by Mexican poets, but we were too tired and hungry to stick it out, so we headed back to Canters for dinner. Since this trip was organized to take full advantage of free days, we bedded early to prepare for Friday's buzz.

On Friday morning, we immediately headed for L.A. Louver to see Terry Allen's sensorial exhibition Dugout. During our brief Venice Boardwalk tour, we watched guys work out at Muscle Beach and ate corn slathered in mayo, parmesan and paprika, which proved providential, since we would eat this two months later in Mexico City! On the way to Bergamot Station, we dropped by the Broad Foundation, which is open Fridays by appointment only. In addition to their comprehensive Cindy Sherman collection, we totally enjoyed their dazzling Philip Taafe paintings, Gregory Crewdson photographs and an unfamiliar Shirin Nishat video. At Bergamot, we saw Track 15's giant Joseph Beuys exhibition, Santa Monica Museum of Art's Terry Allen exhibition Dugout II, Rosamund Felsen's trompe l'oeil sculptor, Patty Faure's survey of white works and Patrick Painter’s documents of Andre Thomkins’ incredibly marbled works on paper. We then went to the Center for Land Use Interpretation, whose unusual show concerned Owens Valley, where 95% of the private land is owned by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Next door at The Museum of Jurassic Technology's, we studied its This American Life-like exhibitions and took tea and treats in its charming tea room, which one can rent for private events. On our way to Jan Baum's gallery, we toured the Schindler House during its free window (Fridays 4-6pm). We then headed to Los Angeles County Museum of Art to see its impressive Diane Arbus exhibition, which framed her fascination with the dispossessed around her rather comfortable upbringing and her in-depth library. On track to arrive at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions before 9pm, we caught a Beat Streuli video and Stephanie Taylor's sound-installation. On our way home, we stopped by El Pollo Loco for chicken tacos and BBQ bean burritos.

Around noon the next day, I took the subway downtown to see the pleasantly, informative Isamu Noguchi and Modern Japanese Ceramics at the Japanese Amerian National Museum. An experientialist, I was quite keen to experience the Geffen Contemporary’s temporary exhibitons. While exploring the rooms within Gregor Schneider’s two-story Dead House u r at my own pace, I discovered halls and doorways along the way, whose direction was undetectable. Most of the fascinating installations included in Sitings: Installation Art 1969-2002 were new to MOCA. Its recent acquisitions of Ed Ruscha's Chocolate Room (1970) along with works by ‘90s artists Julie Becker, John Bock, Olafur Eliasson, Gabriel Orozco and Rirkrit Tiravanija suggest a new aesthetic direction, away from Postmodernism toward Experientialism. Although I was "photographed out" after LACMA, the Getty and UCLA/Armand Hammer, I managed to spin through MOCA’s Street Credibility, curated by Mike Kelley, which introduced me to Jeffrey Silverthorne's work.

www.pomona.edu/museum Montgomery Gallery, Pomona College, Claremont, CA

www.mcasd.org Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

www.getty.edu J. Paul Getty Museum

www.hammer.ucla.edu UCLA Hammer Museum

www.moca.org Museum of Contemporary Art

www.smmoa.org Santa Monica Museum of Art

www.track16.com Track 16

www.patriciafauregallery.com Patricia Faure Gallery's

www.eloupe.com Rosamund Felsen Gallery

www.clui.org Center for Land Use Interpretation

www.mjt.org Museum of Jurassic Technology

www.makcenter.org MAK Center for Art and Architecture LA/Schindler House

www.artleak.org Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions

www.janm.org Japanese American National Museum

May:

Given my day job as a lifeguard, I could only get away for three days, but I managed to see a lot on my short New York City trip. Our first stop was the Guggenheim Museum, since it was the last day to see Boccioni's Materia. I was pleasantly surprised to discover Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated), perhaps their response to MOCA's minimalism show. Drawn mostly from several decades of works owned by the museum, its premise differed greatly, yet it proved the movement's impact on the Guggenheim’s acquisition tastes. We then scooted to the Whitney Museum of American Art's 2004 Biennial and found the freshest biennial since 1985. Its high-spirited energy made it the artworld version of Outkast. Having been so impressed by Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July's work in Baja to Vancouver, I arrived eager to find their contribution here, which I never found. I later learned that one of their web-site assignments is to combine different sound clips to make a choir, which was broadcast in the elevator. I had heard sound in the elevator, but I never made out what it was, so I guess I did find it! Vigilance matters: I had also overlooked Harrell's newsletter detailing the various remote exhibitons his student volunteers had organized around town.

Given my experiential focus, I was pleased to see so many sprawls- Tom Burr, Katie Grinnan, Eric Wesley and installations- David Altmejd, assume vivid astro focus, Dike Blair, Santiago Cucullu, Yayoi Kusama, Virgil Marti, Anthony McCall, Dave Muller, Raymond Pettibon, Andrea Zittel. There was plenty of great painting, though biennial curators rarely select an artist’s best- Laylah Ali, Cecily Brown, Amy Cutler, Kim Fisher, Cameron Martin, Julie Mehretu, Laura Owens, Elizabeth Peyton, James Siena, Amy Sillman, Fred Tomaselli and Tam Van Tran. Emily Jacir's project of ferrying things between Palestine and Israel is fascinating as good will and art. Jack Goldstein’s gorgeous film was as mesmerizing as Arthur Danto had described in his Nation review. Isaac Julien's BaadAsssss video was so amazing that I watched it over the shoulder of someone seated in its booth. There were plenty of interesting videos by Jeremy Blake, Andrea Bowers, Slater Bradley, Sue de Beer, James Fotopoulos, Deborah Stratman and Catherine Sullivan. The main disappointments were Richard Prince's retread carhoods and Dario Robleto's contribution. One of my favorite artists, Robleto usually creates incredibly snappy, totally original conceptual work, so his exhibiting faux-old objects that resemble stage props seemed strange.

We then went off to the Central Park Zoo, where I hung out with penquins and literally spent 20 minutes watching a polar bear swim back and forth in his tank. Watching swimmers is de rigeur for this lifeguard! Evidently, I arrived at too late a date to see some of the Biennial's Central Park works, in particular the installation supposedly situated near Central Park's user-assembled rollerblade arena. Its absence made me realize that this D.I.Y. temporary arena, which I've known for 20 years, is an historical example of participatory art! The next morning, I went to Beacon to experience Drainage, Alysse Stepanian and Philip Mantione's installation at Collaborative Projects, and Roy Staab's photographs at ecoartspace. After lunch with Alysse and Amy Lipton at Dia:Beacon, I headed to Queens to review Dieter Roth’s retrospective for artUS. Fashioning Fiction was fun, but Dieter's show, spanning MOMAQNS and P.S.1, was the best ever survey, and its guards were incredibly gracious. Several guards struck up conversations with me about the show and one even offered me a pass to return anytime, should I require more time! I arrived just in time to see Roth's survey at P.S.1, but I unfortunately missed Lee Lozano's retro and everything else there. A dear friend treated me for dinner at the stellar Babou, where servers as gracious as MOMAQNS guards deliver arty pastas and deserts!
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The next day, I tried to get prescription glasses for $39! No such luck, but I did stop by Issey Miyake's fantastic TRIBECA outpost, where an adorable salesboy gave me a personal tour of every line. I then headed up to Chelsea to check out the galleries. After spending almost an hour hunting down Gavin Brown's Enterprise, which is now Soho adjacent, we had little time left to explore Chelsea, so we felt fortunate to catch up with Ashley Bickerton, Roe Etheridge, Harrell Fletcher, Rachel Harrison, Carsten Holler, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Vik Muniz and Alan Sonfist.

www.guggenheim.org Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

www.learntoloveyoumore.com Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July's

www.whitney.org Whitney Museum of American Art

www.moma.org Museum of Modern Art

www.ps1.org P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center

ecoartspace.org ecoartspace

alyssestepanian.com Alysse Stepanian's

philipmantione.com Philip Mantione's

June:

Have you ever decided on a Tuesday to travel abroad Saturday? I hadn't, but that's how suddenly we selected Mexico City! And I'm glad we did! What an amazing place for anthropology, architecture and contemporary art! Within a few hours of landing, we refueled on street tacos and headed over to the city's best known Gallery OMR to see its exhibition and get a map of the city's art activities. Finding the gallery closed, we headed south via subway to visit the Dolores Olmedo Patino's estate, whose charming home is filled with pre-Columbian antiquities, Diego Rivera paintings and fascinating ceramic pieces. We continued on the light rail to its last stop, a short distance to Xochimilco's Aztec canals, where we boated on colorful "chinampas," bought beers and spicy-mayo corn from floating vendors, while enjoying other partiers being serenaded by Mariachis. At dusk, we grabbed a cab for the zocalo, eager to locate La Faence, a toreador/matador bar that was hip ten years ago, but now seems ghost-like.

We spent Sunday exploring Chapultepec Park museums, breaking only to watch the Mexican soccer finals on a TV in a nearby garden restaurant. On our way to find people watching the game, we accidentally passed Ricardo Legoretto's groundbreaking Hotel Camino Real(1968), a minimalist compound whose innovative spaces read as minimalist installations. The Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection offers a splendid tour of 20th Century Mexican art. Its small Remedios Varo temporary exhibition made me wonder whether his magical technique didn't inspire The Triplets of Belleville's animation style. The Tamayo Contemporary Art Museum featured a fantastic Fluxus in Germany exhibition, two old Vito Acconci videos and a Luc Tuymans painting exhibition. The National Museum of Anthropology (1964), designed by Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, must be the world's largest museum dedicated to one nation’s cultural artifacts. Monday, we visited Teotihuacan (ancient pyramids) and the Shrine of Guadalupe, whose Vazquez-designed basilica is stellar. Returning around 6pm, we feared missing our last opportunity to visit Gallery OMR. We called ahead and they agreed to wait for us, so we saw Thomas Glasford and Carla Arocha’s fabulous solo exhibitions. We then set out to locate the gallerist’s list of Condessa hot spots, such as Centennario, where a wild birthday party with Mariachis was in full swing. Along the way, we slipped into myriad magnificently designed bars.

Our Tuesday walking tour included experiencing Antoni Muntadas’ inspiring Projects 1974-2004 at Laboratorio Arte Alameda, the Diego Rivera Mural Museum, the Latinamerican Tower’s fantastic city view and a busy Sanborne's restaurant housed inside a totally tiled building. Our delicious French lunch at the Franz Mayer Museum's lovely garden cafe was more sophisticated than the museum’s Italian Fashion,1950-1990 show. After walking through the Danish print exhibition at the Print Museum next door, we headed over to the recently renovated Palacio de Bellas Artes. Its museum reopened with an interesting exhibition showing each artist’s design and installation process related to the impressive murals lining the building's interior, while its architecture museum surveyed 20th century Mexican architecture, beginning with this 110-year old building. Too late to enter the zocalo-adjacent Templo Mayor, we attempted the Diego Rivera murals at the National Palace, but it was too late for that, so we walked over to Ex Teresa Arte Actual, but its art exhibition had been replaced by a piano recital that entertained hundreds! Then the rain came and all the people awaiting a public concert and the merchants occupying the busy zocalo fled in every direction. We took cover in the Cathedral for about 45 minutes and then took the subway back to our neighborhood. It was still raining so we hopped into the first busy bar.

The Chapultepec Park vendors were so enjoyable that we dropped by for our last meal. Though less busy than Sunday, plenty of vendors were setting up stands. Plus it was en route to Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros, our last venue, which turned out to be the trip’s highlight. We went there expecting only to see another Muntados video, but we also found a house covered wall to wall with dynamic, abstract Siqueiros murals, which he had completed only a few months before his death. Siqueiros placed paintings inspired by his criticism of the Vietnam War atop the murals, which appears to be an art historical first.

www.arte-mexico.com Mexico City art information

www.history.mx/museos/mam/home.htm Museum of Modern Art archives

July:

Invited to write a catalog essay for Austin Thomas’ solo exhibition at Iowa's Grinnell College, I drove out to see her exhibition via Chicago over July 4th weekend. Of course, I had never driven so far in my 1988 Honda, so I was a bit unsure, but what the heck. The traffic to Chicago was unusually light, so I arrived in time for its July 4th fireworks celebration. The next day, we visited the Art Institute of Chicago to study Seurat and the Making of La Grande Jatte, a much-needed public analysis of the Neo-Impressionists’ eschewing representation for cognition, the experiential turn that paved the way for Constructivist, Futurist and Minimalist perceptual experiments. Rather than use this opportunity to popularize Seurat’s circle of cohorts, they framed him around the Impressionists who had influenced him, making it just another excuse for an Impressionist blockbuster. A regrettable decision, they not only misconstrued Seurat’s singularity, but they missed the perfect opportunity to borrow works from the Indianapolis Museum of Art's vast Neo-Impressionist collection, which is under wrap during the museum’s renovation. Five ethereal, black and white drawings hanging to the left of La Grande Jatte are so ghostly that one wonders how a 19th century brain could have processed such Richter-like matter. Roni Horn’s Saying Water was also intermittently dispersed throughout several of the museum’s galleries.

As a major Margiela collector and old friend of Viktor & Rolf, I was excited to experience the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Skin Tight: The Sensibility of the Flesh. Hardly your typical costume exhibition, the clashing sounds emanating from Skin Tight’s five contiguous, projected videos lent the museum the chaotic thrill of a fashion carnival. By juxtaposing conceptual strategists (Hussein Chalayan, Maison Martin Margiela, Raf Simons, Viktor & Rolf, Bernhard Willhelm) against sculptural practitioners (BOUDICCA, Under Cover, Walter Van Beirendonck, A.F. Vandevorst), Skin Tight offers a dynamic appraisal of today’s fashion shticks, even though its flesh focus seems passe. The adjacent Dan Peterman survey was comparatively serene! While Peterman’s breathing new life into post-consumer, pre-consumer and forgotten waste is noble, his works’ discursive nature overshadows their experiential potential. Consequently, too few entered Carbon Bank (2004) the whole time I was in!
the gallery. Peterman’s using a bent bottle cap as a pasta mold is sheer genius! His bicycle station sited on the MCA’s plaza was closed.

On my drive to Grinnell College, I passed dozens of firework displays. Rain had delayed the City of Grinnell's 150-year anniversary extravaganza, so when I arrived around 11pm, the skies were exploding. After spending the night in a gorgeous craftsman home, I spent about 3 hours studying the ICA's traveling survey of Mark Lombardi's econo-political diagrams, Danica Phelps’ resourceful drawings that wonderfully document and sponsor her daily activities and Austin Thomas's newest works, Picnic Table sited in the Faulconer Gallery’s courtyard and Free-form Perch, placed like a "palate cleanser" between the two other artists’ solo exhibitions. Hilariously, as I arrived in Cincinnati Monday evening, I was greeted by more firework displays. Go figure!

/www.mcachicago.org> Museum of Contemporary Art

www.grinnell.edu/faulconergallery Faulconer Gallery, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa

www.blackand whitegallery.com Black and White Gallery