BOOKS / EXHIBITION CATALOGUES / VIDEO
Ramona Solberg: Jeweler, Teacher, Traveler
Indian Basketmakers:
Of the Southwest
Of California and the Great Basin
The Art of Basketry
Mokume Gane: A Comprehensive Study
Nature in Design
Breon O'Casey
Contemporary Ceramics
Jim Leedy: Artist Across Boundaries
At Home with Art: How Art Lovers Live with and Care for Their Treasures
Glass Art from UrbanGlass
The Fine Art of Wood: The Bohlen Collection
With Wakened Hands: Furniture by James Krenov and Students
The Art of William Edmondson
Ramona Solberg: Jeweler, Teacher, Traveler
Video, 2000, 28 minutes. Written and directed by Ann Coppel. Produced by Northwest Designer Craftsmen, Living Treasures Project, P.O. Box 31611, Seattle, WA 98103. $25 ($5 shipping).
Reviewed by Robert Silberman
Near the beginning of this video, the Seattle critic Robin Updike describes Ramona Solberg as "a cross between a Julia Child and a Margaret Mead of Jewelryland." The comment seems, as the British would say, spot on. Solberg displays the hearty exuberance of the doyenne of French cuisine and the adventurousness of the renowned anthropologist. She is also an excellent artist, and therefore makes a delightful and worthy subject for the second in a series of profiles of Living Treasures written and directed by Ann Coppel for Northwest Designer Craftsmen. Like the first video, on the ceramist and filmmaker Robert Sperry, this release provides an admirable portrait of an admirable artist. Solberg, who though retired since 1983 from the University of Washington, still gives workshops, describes her teaching as "what I really am . . . the most important thing." The testimonials by colleagues and students are impressive and clearly heartfelt. Yet telling is not as effective as showing, and so the video cannot really conjure up her distinctiveness as a teacher. The presentation of Solberg as a traveler suffers from a similar problem, although images from around the world, including classic tourist snapshots of the artist in front of the Taj Mahal and atop a camel, do suggest that it would be fun to go a-traveling with her as tour guide and companion. When it comes to Solberg the jeweler, however, there are plenty of handsome images of the work that reveal her ingenuity and skill. The video traces her career of six decades, revealing how she decided to become an artist and eventually turned from what she calls the "free-form amoebic" modernism popular in the 1930s and 40s to her mature style, which combines found objects into necklaces and pins. Those interviewed are intelligent as well as affectionate, as when her friend and fellow jeweler Kiff Slemmons relates Solberg's work to the assemblage art of Kurt Schwitters. Solberg uses ordinary materials, not precious metals or jewels, saying she is "willing to put almost anything in a piece of jewelry." Among her grandly miscellaneous materials are bits of Americana: antique rulers, buttons, tiny toys. More often she relies on the exotic items she finds on her travels, or, now, that find her, as when a trader is shown making a house call with a van full of the African amber, bead and shell necklaces she mines so brilliantly. The informing sensibility remains modernist, even without the amoebic forms; hints of Calder can be glimpsed in the treatment of the metal in her fibula-style pins. Solberg takes materials from one cultural context and puts them into another. But hasn't that always been the fate of trinkets and trade goods? As Updike notes, Solberg's jewelry reflects a faith in internationalism and cultural diversity. And, I might add, in art as a means of discovering the extraordinary in the ordinary. In this video such issues are addressed, but with a light touch epitomized by Ramona Solberg's final remark: "I'm sure that if any anthropologists find a piece of mine 1,000 years from now, they're never going to figure out how these cultures got together."
Robert Silberman teaches art history and film studies at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Indian Basketmakers:
Of the Southwest
Of California and the Great Basin
by Larry Dalrymple, 2000, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, 505-827-6455; two-volumes, slip-cased, 216 pages, forewords by Susan Brown McGreevy and Catherine S. Fowler, glossary, list of plants, bibliography, illustrated. $60 paperback.
In this two-volume set subtitled The Living Art and Fine Tradition, Larry Dalrymple, a history teacher and collector of Indian baskets since the late 1970s, tells of an ancient Native American craft that is on the brink of demise in some places, but enjoying a resurgence in others. His informed discussion of the styles, techniques and functions of the baskets merges seamlessly with the life stories of the makers-middle-aged or elderly practitioners, mostly women, who have sustained the tradition, and a new generation finding their way to it. The Southwest volume includes baskets made by Yavapaik, Havasupai, Hualapai, Apache, Ute, Navajo, Hopi and Pueblo weavers, while the California and Great Basin volume presents examples by the Hupa, Western Mono, Western Shoshone, Northern Paiute, Washoe and Chemehuevi. The abundant illustrations include documentary photography by Dalrymple, studio photos of his collection by Blair Clark and archival photos.
The Art of Basketry
by Kari Lønning, 2000, Sterling Publishing Co., New York, NY, 800-367-9692; 132 pages, foreword by Michael W. Monroe, illustrated. $24.95.
Kari Lønning, a self-taught basket maker, demonstrates the variety, technical ingenuity and artistic maturity of the contemporary basketry field and invites the reader to try a hand at the craft. Half the book is a guide through basic and progressively more complex basketry techniques illustrated with L¯nning's rattan reed baskets. The rest features a gallery of works by 23 noted basketry artists, who comment on their methods and aesthetic philosophy.
Mokume Gane: A Comprehensive Study
by Steve Midgett, 2000, Earthshine Press, Franklin, NC, 800-374-6423; www.mokume.com 160 pages, contributions by Robert Coogan, James Binnion, Hiroko Sato-Pijanowski and Eugene Pijanowski, et al., illustrated. $34.95.
Steve Midgett, an authority on mokume gane (wood grain metal), provides
a brief history of this traditional Japanese craft and abundant technical
information. In addition to the process photos, the book is illustrated
with objects-holloware, knives and jewelry-in the mokume process by leading
metalsmiths.
Nature in Design
by Alan Powers, 1999, Conran Octopus Limited, London, UK, 44-19-33-44-38-63; 160 pages, illustrated. $45.
"Nature can probably be found in some form in almost any piece of design," writes Alan Powers, a London artist and writer, in this stimulating examination of nature's profound influence on designers in all disciplines, including architecture, civil engineering, interior and landscape design, decorative art, fashion and graphic design. The striking photographs reveal formal correspondences between, say, a spider's web and the Brooklyn Bridge, or a spiral shell and Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum. But the text goes beyond formal juxtapositions to discuss our complex relationship with nature and our desire, in the face of growing ecological threats, to live in greater harmony with it.
Breon O'Casey
by Brian Fallon and Breon O'Casey, 1999, Scolar Press, England, and Ashgate Publishing Company, Brookfield, VT, 802-276-3162; 152 pages, illustrated. $44.95.
Over four decades, this prolific artist (son of the playwright Sean O'Casey), who lives in Cornwall, England, and has been closely associated with the St. Ives "school" of painters and sculptors, has embraced many media: gold and silver jewelry (for which he is best known), holloware, painting, sculpture and weaving. The monograph presents all facets of Breon O'Casey's work, highlighting its simplicity and formal elegance.
Contemporary Ceramics
by Susan Peterson, 2000, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, NY 212-764-7300; 176 pages, illustrated. $35.
The ceramist and educator Susan Peterson presents the recent (though undated) work of more than 260 ceramists from around the world-including 13 from China-in thematic chapters: color versus monochrome, architecture and installation, objects and non-objects, man and beast, symbolism and narrative, survival of traditions, walls, tiles and mosaics. The author's succinct introduction, surveying thousands of years of ceramic history, but zeroing in on the 20th century-with an insider's view of the 1950s California clay revolution-provides a technical and historical context for the variety of work shown.
Jim Leedy: Artist Across Boundaries
by Matthew Kangas, 2000, Kansas City Art Institute, MO, in association with University of Washington Press, Seattle, 206-543-4050; 160 pages, illustrated. $29.95 paperback.
In a career spanning 50 years, the artist Jim Leedy has been a protean figure, difficult to pigeonhole. Paintings; ceramic platters, vessels and sculpture; mixed-media works, airborne nylon "sky art"; outdoor stoneware murals; installations and performance art-Leedy's multifarious accomplishments "have both anticipated and responded to many contemporary art trends," asserts the critic Matthew Kangas in this monograph. He traces Leedy's artistic development, touching on his significant encounters during his student days in New York City in the 1950s with the painters Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, his application of abstract expressionist principles to ceramics, his interaction with Peter Voulkos and Rudy Autio in Montana, his role as an influential teacher at Kansas City Art Institute since 1966, and his projects abroad.
At Home with Art: How Art Lovers Live with and Care for Their Treasures
by Estelle Ellis, Caroline Seebohm and Christopher Simon Sykes, 1999, Clarkson N. Potter, Crown Publishing Group, New York, NY, 212-572-2537; 248 pages, illustrated. $50.
House envy is likely after browsing through this book on the collecting habits and homes of a variety of art lovers-mainly writers, artists and arts professionals. In presenting these 50-odd homes-which range from urban lofts and apartments to farmhouses and traditional houses-the authors emphasize how art lovers integrate their finds into their everyday lives. The special sections on framing, hanging and lighting art also offer practical advice on conservation. A resource directory includes framers, dealers, auction houses and restorers in major American cities and in London.
Glass Art from UrbanGlass
edited by Richard Wilfred Yelle, 2000, Schiffer Publishing Ltd., Atglen, PA, 610-593-1777; 320 pages, contributions by Kenneth R. Trapp, Bruce W. Pepich, Karen S. Chambers, William Warmus et al., illustrated. $79.95.
This pictorial roll call of the modern studio glass movement has been compiled by Richard Yelle, a founder of UrbanGlass: New York Center for Contemporary Glass, in Brooklyn, a nonprofit organization now in its 23rd year, which provides studio facilities for glassworking. The work of 175 artists is represented in some 500 photographs, complemented by brief essays from writers and curators in the field.
The Fine Art of Wood: The Bohlen Collection
by Bonita Fike with Mike Mendelson, 2000, Detroit Institute of Arts, MI, and Abbeville Press, New York, NY, 800-278-2665; 136 pages, illustrated. $35.
This book documents a collection of turned wood objects on exhibit at the institute (through December 31). The 130 works by 98 artists from North America, Europe and Australia-all made in the 1990s-were collected in the last three years by Robert Bohlen, who has donated them to DIA. The essay by Bonita Fike, the institute's associate curator of modern and contemporary art, provides an overview of developments in turned wood since the 1940s, touching on the contributions of James Prestini, Rude Osolnik and other pioneers. But her main intent is to place the collection in a fine arts context, linking particular works to such movements as Pop, Minimalism and Photo-Realism.
With Wakened Hands: Furniture by James Krenov and Students
By James Krenov, 2000, Cambium Press, Bethel CT, 800-238-7724/ Linden Publishing/Fresno, CA, 800-345-4447; 125 pages, foreword by Ellis Walentine, principal photographer, Seth Janofsky, illustrated. $39.95 hardcover, $29.95 paperback.
The master craftsman James Krenov, author of three books expounding his woodworking philosophy, has taught furniture making since 1981, in a program that he established at the College of the Redwoods, Fort Bragg, California. In this book, a showcase for the work of two generations of his students, Krenov writes eloquently of the inexhaustible appeal of wood, the "timeless quest" for excellence in workmanship and the emotional and intuitive aspects of the creative process.
The Art of William Edmondson
1999, Cheekwood Museum of Art, Nashville, TN, and University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 601-982-6205; 256 pages, essays by Robert Farris Thompson, Bobby L. Lovett, Lowery Stokes Sims et al., illustrated. $60 hardcover, $30 paperback.
This scholarly study focuses on William Edmondson (1874-1951), a stone carver from Nashville and the son of former slaves, who was the first African American artist to have a solo show at New York's Museum of Modern Art (1937). Starting with gravestones, he went on to create limestone sculptures of animal, human and angelic figures notable for their simple, emphatic forms. They are powerfully conveyed in photographs by Edward Weston, Louise Dahl-Wolfe and Consuelo Kanaga. An exhibition originating at the Cheekwood Museum is at Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, New York (through January 7, 2001).
ARCHIVE
Oct/Nov 2007
Aug/Sept 2007
June/July 2007
April/May 2007
February/March 2007
December/January 2007
October/November 2006
August/September 2006
June/July 2006
April/May 2006
February/March 2006
December 2005/January 2006
October/November 2005
August/September 2005
June/July 2005
April/May 2005
February/March 2005
December/January 2005
October/November 2004
August/September 2004
April/May/June/July 2004
February/March 2004
December 2003/January 2004
October/November 2003
August/September 2003
June/July 2003
April/May 2003
February/March 2003
December 2002/January 2003
October/November 2002
August/September 2002
June/July 2002
April/May 2002
February/March 2002
December 2001/January 2002
October/November 2001
August/September 2001
June/July 2001
April/May 2001
February/March 2001
December 2000/January 2001
October/November 2000