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02/25/2005: "Sanibel Island - Atlanta"

My totally nonart job incidentally rekindled my ongoing hunt for Robert Smithson sites. A few weeks ago, I discovered that Mirror with Crushed Shells, a 1969 nonsite included in his traveling survey, requires shells from Sanibel Island, where I currently reside. I briefly switched environments when I traveled to Atlanta to participate on Stephanie Smith’s “Sustainable Spaces: Contemporary Art to Environmental Activism” CAA panel.

Sanibel Island-
With roughly two-thirds of the land preserved by non-profit, city, county, state or national authorities, it’s an enticing climate for the kinds of artists’ projects described in Ecovention: Current Art to Transform Ecologies (2002), available in total on the Green Museum’s website. Given Sanibel’s pellmell assembly of shells, it was inevitable that crushed shells would enter Smithson’s oeuvre. In addition to myriad birdwatching and shelling opportunities, a unique wildlife clinic (C.R.O.W.) treats racoons, opossum, gopher turtles, hawks, sea turtles, waterfowl and alligators that have accidentally intersected man’s path. I heartily recommend the 4:30 p.m. pontoon cruise to view rookeries (islands with hundreds of birds sitting nests) amidst Tarpon Bay, the lively hiking trails throughout the Sanibel Nature Center, as well as a bike or tram ride along Wildlife Drive, which meanders through J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge provides guides and scopes. I can’t report on the Shell Museum adjacent the nature center, but I’ll definitey check it out before I leave.

If you’re looking for art, discover Big Arts. Plan to read the newspaper daily to prepare for Current Events, Wednesdays 10-noon ($3), the event I will miss most. Big Arts also offers dozens of art, language, literary classes, and even “Women’s Issues”. Every Monday, a current artfilm is followed by wine, cookies and film chat ($5). Other nights, world class speakers, dancers, theater troupes, musical groups and all sorts of performers wow a packed house (408 seats). And the gallery regularly changes its shows. If you’re still searching for activities, check out the library. The Sanibel Library lent me six books concerning women and Islam that I need for my Women’s Issues presentation!


The Green Museum- www.greenmuseum.org
Clinic for Rehabilitation of Wildlife- www.crowclinic.org
Tarpon Bay Explorers- www.tarponbayexplorers.com
Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation- www.sccf.org
D.N. “Ding” Darling Wildlife Refuge- www.dingdarlingsociety.org
Big Arts- www.bigarts.org
Sanibel Library- www.sanlib.org

Atlanta
I went to Atlanta to participate on the “Sustainable Spaces: Contemporary Art and Environmental Activism” panel, organized and moderated by Stephanie Smith for the College Art Association’s 93rd Annual Conference. My first time to attend CAA, I had no idea what to expect other than that my affordable Comfort Inn would likely be quite a hike from the conference. Each subway cum bus trip to my hotel took 45 minutes, but I totally lucked out. The hotel not only provided quite a spread at breakfast, but it sat across the street from the Summit Tavern, which featured scores of beers on tap from all over the world. There’s nothing like a pint to wash down hours of art lectures.

On Wednesday, I registered for the conference and attended the welcoming party at the High Museum of Art, whose newest building was designed by famed museum architect Renzo Piano. A bit overwhelmed the next day, I first met with a few book publishers, attended Mel Chin and Victoria Vesna’s “Eco-tistical Workshop,” and then ate lunch at the adjacent Avenue with painter Teri Hackett, her mother-in-law and her husband Ray Manikowski. Before Teri and I headed off to a 5:00 p.m. party hosted by Mark Harris, University of Cincinnati Art Department chair, she managed to accrue $200 worth of free art supplies and had arranged for a swap of Flasche paint in exchange for a work of art! After Mark’s party, I drank some green tea and chilled while rewriting sections of my presentation. By 8 p.m., attendance seemed worrisome, especially since most people were just returning from the many art openings. Plenty of people eventually trickled in. Artists Jane Palmer and Marianne Fairbanks, known collectively as JAM, described myriad Chicago artists’ projects, including their own user-generated bicycle energy and user-supported solo energy book bags that power cellphones, etc. Art historian Ross Elfline analyzed Atelier van Lieshout’s AVL-Ville in terms of sustainability. This autarkic community has since blown up for reasons lost on all of us.

Friday, I attended four panel discussions, beginning with “Contemporary Art and the Plight of its Public” and ending with “Temporary Action: Contemporary Public Art Practices,” co-organized by artist Adam Frelin, who had been my Kyoto host a few months back. In between, I headed to the “Visual Culture” caucus just to hear noted art historian W. J. T. Mitchell, who was a “no show,” in contrast to psychoanalytic critic Donald Kuspit who was “all show.” As part of the “Robert Smithson’s Dialectics of Death and Creativity Panel,” Kuspit flayed Smithson’s work “alive.” After asserting that the signs of Smithson’s “death drive” were embedded in his surrealist, ab-ex and minimalist tendencies, I asked him to cite examples of art that were life-giving. Kuspit remarked how art had not concerned life since Henri Matisse’s “Joie de Vivre.” Well, maybe not so literally as Matisse’s title. I responded, “Excuse me, your theory about death concerns decades or genres more than this particular artist.” Not only did I nail his theory’s flaw, but since he referenced Asphalt Run Down as exemplary of Smithson’s death drive, I showed him my recent photographs of Asphalt Run Down, whose presence of greenery where asphalt once flowed defies Kuspit’s interpretation of that image. Despite his gaffs, Tim Martin and Wouter Davidts presented extraordinary papers that opened up new avenues into Smithson’s oeuvre. Ecoartspace’s Tricia Watts and I joined up with these Smithson gurus and Smithson panelist/moderator Suzanne Boettger at Nikoli, a Russian restaurant atop the Hilton Hotel, where I got to drink a delicious peach-infused vodka. I happily bumped into my 2001 apartment-mate Tulu Bayar on the way out the door.

Saturday, I had high expectations to visit myriad galleries in between various panels. I began with the “Radical Art” caucus, which I will make an effort to attend from now on, since it is indeed radical! Entitled “Art/War/Empire,” art historians Josephine Gear, Donna Hunter and Amy Lyford, and artist Peter Dykhuis revealed rare images of war, strategy and revolution, and managed to avoid getting embroiled in our menacing foreign policy. During the Martha Rosler-led Q&A, I headed out to the Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center to see “Who’s Business is it Anyway?,” an exhibition that featured several artists who walk the line between business and art. The exhibition was quite uneven, but the best examples came from artists who managed to transform their work experience into art. One artist used London’s “Speakers Corner” as a platform to teach people how to be more effective speakers, which was particularly great, since one watched people gathering and dispersing. Another artist advised artists on how to focus their art career. Several older Andrea Fraser works demonstrated her finesse at leading tours and lecturing to larger groups. I have to admit. I’m a total sucker for Alex Bag’s nearly decade-old video where she acts non-plussed as Bjork discusses the myths and realities of televisions. A classic, I’m always pleased to encounter it. Where’s Alex Bag gone?

I returned to the conference just in time for the riotous “Play, Pleasure, and Perversion: Insubordinate Refusals of Discipline in the Practice of Art and Theory,” organized by art historian Simeon Hunter. With most of the panelists awaiting their turn decked out in costumes, this send-up promised a delightful end to CAA (as we know it). With four artists and one cultural theoretician, the decks were stacked in favor of practice. I can’t imagine a CAA panel that generated more laughter. Senam Okudzeto argued that Lacan erred when he privileged the phallus at the expense of the truly democratic anus, which informs her nyashology (roughly translated in English as tushology). As with so many artforms, the third wave has been completely neglected. It seems that fourth wave art historians (those born after 1970) consider themselves the first generation to undo the second wave’s strategies of obfuscation. Art issues. arose in 1989 to tackle the over-zealous use of critical jargon Arts magazine was engaged in a similar tact.

CAA closed with receptions hosted by Spelman College Museum of Fine Arts and Clark Atlanta University Art Galleries, which sit adjacent one another and are easily accessible via MARTA. On view at Spelman were dozens of photographs taken in the late 1940s and early 1950s by the Columbian Hector Acebes who evidently traveled great distances through Africa on camelback. Not only are his black and white images stunning, but they definitely preserve peoples, customs and styles that are fast disappearing as western ways breach traditional modes. Attempting to complement this exhibition, “ANIMA of the African Diaspora: The Feminine Presence,” at the nearby Clark Atlanta galleries displayed paintings, prints and sculptures from their permanent collection in which female imagery figured prominently. The most curious image concerned two entwined prone women, one apparently white and the other black, so provocative in content that its adjacent didactic label conveniently failed to mention it.

The High Art Museum- www.high.org
Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center- www.thecontemporary.org