Lynda Benglis at Cheim & Read, Jan-Feb 2014

These new works are vigorous, funky and really fun to walk around, peer into, and experience from

many viewpoints.  They seem to mainly be formed by extruded hollow tubes that are manipulated

by twisting, stacking, combining, leaning into each other.  Openings and negative space shapes enliven

what might feel overly ponderous.  The glazes are slapped on in big, gloppy strokes or allowed to

drip where they will.  Colors are muted putty mauves, pinks as well as bright yellows, reds and

bitumen-like browns and gunmetals.

Salem Art Works / Jordan Becker

One of the highlights of the late summer/early fall was getting to travel upstate to see Jordan's show of recent pots and visit his woofire kiln at Salem Art Works in upstate New York

John Chamberlain

The last weeks of 2011 saw the passing of the sculptor John Chamberlain, whose welded sculptures made from scrap parts of automobiles never fail to seduce with their world-weary abraded surfaces and paint colors that speak of long useful lives spent going and going more, until going no more. I think when I first saw Chamberlain's work as an art student, I may have romanticized the idea of the possible back-story of a high-speed car smash-up; " Leader Of The Pack " kind of stuff. These images from a recent show had me jazzed more by the fluidity of shapes in space, almost brushstroke-like in many instances. And this time I was the one traveling: forward, backward, around the perimeter, looking into the nooks and crannies, then doing the step-out and reverse to get the big picture again. Just the way I like to experience sculpture.

Just One Of Those Things

Sittin' on the street. A cardboard box, minding its own bizness. Bustin' out all over.

some Street Art

Quickly after the passing of Steve Jobs this fall, I happened upon this two-sided tribute on Bond Street between Bowery & Lafayette in my neighborhood. With cut strips of photos attached to opposing sides of an iron fence, one sees separate images from early and late in the life of Jobs.

be chill

MAKING MY DAY, part 1

avenue A, Sunday

might as well be spring

Only a short time ago, I was finding frozen tree branch ice sculptures on this street. Today, for some reason, a trio of dirt-colored flip-flops. ?

fish cup, part 2

The last post showed a cup I said reminded me of a fish. I decided to make a companion cup, and I show them together here. The head of the fish is the new cup's handle.

little fish

this recent small cup has a shape that reminds me of a fish in motion.

ice readymade

Messy weather, even unpleasantly so. Ice-encased branches. but still pretty cool when the warmer softening moment lets you lift off a perfectly formed cast of delicate twig. amazing that even the texture of the bark is perfectly preserved. for a minute.

These two unusual double-handled pieces were said to be found together. A nice set.

handle

This cup is identified as a tankard, although it is too curvy and diminutive to approach what I consider a tankard, but the thin strap handle is kind of mod-feeling.

Footsie

a bronze foot and a marble hand that have become separated from their owners.

The Daily Grind

I love finding clay figurines, from any time and culture, that depict people at work. Here we see grinding and baking in what appears to be a clay oven.

Wild Kingdom

Pyxis

When I saw these at the Met, I thought of the similar type things I've seen lately made by Julie Knight or Deb Reed. I have always loved these cutaway-style feet.

There's No Stoppin' the Cretans from Hoppin'

A very early cup from Minoan Crete is unglazed except for the iron-rich slip decoration over a calcium-rich lowfire clay body.

Barbotine

Some evidence of the longstanding preoccupation we here at the Dojo have had with pinecones. It was nice to stumble upon this second century A.D. roman terracotta jar, said to have been found in Gaul, and described as having "barbotine decoration". A little digging leads me to state that barbotine is the same technique I would call slip trailing, namely, piping a semi-liquid slurry onto a leatherhard pot to produce a raised texture ( not the way my vase shape was decorated ).

Alongside the decorative, the breathtaking, and the puzzling ancient artifacts it is also fun to see this comparison of unglazed, strictly functional jars which present minor variations on the same container. The ability to easily seal up the top for efficient transport, the double handles to enable two people to off-load and carry, and the tapering base that may have helped them nest together better when laid on their sides were the considerations that dictated these shapes. Clays from different locales show a range of color and texture.
Excavations which describe finding literal hill-sized castoffs of similar jars give a perspective onto their discardability, however surprising that may seem to us now.

This lineup of utilitarian large vessels made me think of of a project arraying oversize narrow-necked bottles made by GHP resident artist Will Coggin last year.