More from Mass MoCA!

 Hello!  Splat!  Here I am, above, in front of one of the many Sol LeWitt wall drawings and paintings on display long-term in the museum.  Let me share a bit of what else is currently on exhibition.

Above, a sculpture outside of Mass MoCA, is an actual bolder split in  half.  There's also, right outside the entrance, an overhead group of upside down trees, but that's another story all together.  They are real trees, suspended in the air, growing upside down.  Currently they are bare, but I was hypothesizing that in autumn, when their leaves change, they should "fall" upward into the sky!  Both of these are, I believe, very long-term (or permanent) installations at the museum.

We spent some time in the part of the museum called Kidspace, and I thought it was amazing!  It's set up with creative spaces for kids to use, but it is also adult-friendly.  I'm glad we didn't skip it!  Federico Uribe re-purposed interesting materials for his sculptures that currently populate Kidspace, to give the viewer a lot of provocative food for thought - bullets were used to create various animals such as a lion, and the bunny sitting on the donkey above.  Leather sneakers, made from animal hides, were used to create new animals, army helmets became turtle shells, and so on.  Above is a donkey made out of leather valises!!  Don't you love his zipper eye (below)?

And here's a closeup of a gator made from sneakers...

I love this sheep (or is it a lamb?) made from tons of white scissors.  In the pic on the right, the pig is made from measuring tape, and I believe the man is a conglomeration of various pencils. 

Aren't these wasps made from sneakers just fabulous?

There was a multi-room exhibit called "Explode Every Day - An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder", with work from various artists, each more boggling than the next.  These next three photos are blown glass pieces, by Chris Taylor.  I am NOT KIDDING.  These are blown glass.  The guard allowed us to touch them for proof!  Amazing!!

The guard actually told us where to find this blown glass piece below.  He said "Look for what looks like a pile of garbage on the floor in a back corner."  I had no idea glass to could look like this!  Even from inches away, there's no way you'd know it is glass.

I loved this painting, below, by Sharon Ellis, one of several on display in the gallery. 

The most provocative part of the exhibit was a room that looked like the lab of a mad scientist.  The work is called "Field Station" and is by Charles Lindsay.  There were things spinning and blinking and making noises and two giant tube thingies that were randomly, it seemed, broadcasting whale songs.  Below is a view into one of the tubes, one of the randomly spinning blinking whirring thingies, and.... something else.  I don't know what. 

Some of my favorite pieces in the exhibit were works by brothers Ryan and Trevor Oakes, particularly intricate drawings on curved surfaces. 

Below is one of the brothers working on the piece pictured above, of the Chicago "bean" sculpture, officially named the Cloud Gate. 

 This matchstick structure below is also by Ryan and Trevor Oakes. 

Also in the exhibition, this room below, filled with bottles and vases, with fossilized rocks and shells on top, I think.  I didn't understand the point, but I loved these bottles (they reminded me of great blue herons), and I also loved the light quality in the room.  They were wired up in some way to... oh, I don't know.  I couldn't figure it all out.  I admit it.  Some of them had humidifiers.  I'm stumped.

 There was a timeline of the universe, starting with the Big Bang, and ending in the future, with the demise of our planet.  Here's a couple of blips from the timeline, from the short period of time humans are on earth.

 

Below, a couple more pics from Kidspace.  This lion is made from bullets and shell casings, and the hair on the  heads in the  CD pond are keyboards. 

The pics below were shot in the Sol LeWitt exhibit.  I've seen this work before, but it is always fun to walk through it.  And, as I said before, the museum has incredible light quality .  

 I took this picture just before I dropped and broke my little camera, while trying to put it back in its case.  It was a handy-dandy little Sony camera, and I'm getting a used replacement from eBay.  I hope it works...

If you've never had an opportunity to go to Mass MoCA, the museum is a really cool space, with buildings linked by tunnels and such, resulting in interesting spaces like the one below.  One of the tunnels has interesting sounds coming from the walls, making it an immersive experience.  

I tried to close the post with a little video weirdness from one of those tube things that I told you about before, but it wasn't working.  I'll try to put it back soon, so come check back.  In the meantime, call me befuddled.......  

MASS MoCA - the Sol Lewitt retrospective

 With my husband and son, yesterday we spent the day visiting a favorite art museum, MASS MoCA (the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art).  I have so much to share as a result of that exhibit that I will have to divide it into probably at least two posts!  Lots of photos in this post!!!!

A row of hanging upside down trees greet you before you enter the museum!  Why am I always there at a time of the year when they have no leaves? Reminder to self:  Go to MASS MoCA in the summertime!

First, briefly about MASS MoCA - it is, as its name says, a contemporary art museum, one of the largest centers for contemporary visual art and performing arts in the country, located in North Adams, MA, in the lovely Berkshire Mountains. Each time I'm at this museum, there's stuff I love, and stuff I... wellll... stuff I don't love.  But I'll talk about that in another post.  This post is about an exhibit that I most decidedly loved, though it did provoke some serious conversation with my family about what it means to be an artist.  I'll share that concept later in this post.

Me.  Overwhelmed by the huge wall drawings in the Sol Lewitt Retrospective.  I have greatly cropped the wall drawing behind me for this photo.

So - this post will focus mostly on a giant retrospective of Sol Lewitt's giant wall drawings. (Yes, I just used the word giant twice in that sentence.  I'll have to try not to  use it any more in this post.)  This installation will be at the museum for 25 years, so take your time; it will likely still be there when you go for a visit!  Let me share a number of the  pieces with you here, and then I'd like to talk about them a bit, as I said above.  I have photographed people in proximity to the artwork so you can see the monumental size of this artwork. The young man in the white hoodie who appears in several photos, including the one directly above, is my son.  Please forgive me, but these pics are not posted chronologically.  Sorry!

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

When my son was little, he loved driving around little matchbox cars.  A wall like this in his room would have been great; all those black lines would make great roads for little cars!

 

 

 A note about the piece directly above.  I am enthralled.  I would like it to be a wall of my living room.  My husband positively cringed when I told him that.  But can't you just see a sleek couch, in a bright primary color, directly in front of that wall?  It would make me feel so very sophisticated!

 

 Please take note that the walls of this amazing museum are as terrific as some of the artwork!

 

 My son thought the lines in this piece looked like lips and butts.  I also saw sewing needles.  Below is a closeup of the lines in this work.

 There's a mathematical thought process for the arrangement of lines in this piece.  Below, a closeup.

 

 

Two walls of straws

 

 Above are extreme closeups of the work below.  It is all made of layers of overlapping pencil and colored pencil lines.  Lots and lots and lots and lots of lines.  They are probably 1/4" apart and cover a huge wall.  Crazy.

 

The piece below is a small section of a piece, consisting of...well... lines.   The 'artists' who drew the piece on the wall were given Sol Lewitt's directions about how many lines to draw, and information about where lines should go from/to, but a lot of the decisions were made by the actual draftsmen.

Above is a closeup of a section of the painting below.  Three 'artists' painted this wall, one with each color, taking turns painting their line based on the line they were next to.  Does that make sense?

 The painting below is a carefully organized progression of colors.  As in many of the other colorful pieces, the paint is an acrylic ink applied with rags in layers to achieve the desired tones.  The color progression started with gray, then the primaries, then the primaries  mixed with the gray, then the primaries mixed to make secondaries, then the secondaries mixed with the gray, then all of the primaries mixed together, and then all the primaries mixed with the gray. The last two sections are missing from my photo.

So, are you still with me?  I promised to share some of the provocative discussion I had with husband and son as we viewed this exhibit, and watched a short video about the production of the pieces in the show.  I told you we had some discussion about the meaning of the word 'artist' which I have put quote marks around in paragraphs above, as well.  So here goes...

The exhibit is a retrospective of Sol Lewitt's work.  But the actual drawings on the walls were created by others, according to his specifications.  But his specifications were not always totally specific. For example, the specs for one piece might say to draw a certain # of straight lines and a certain # of curved lines that intersect in a specific # of places, but then it is up to the person who puts it on the wall to determine exactly where those lines go.  The people who drew and painted these lines and colors all over the walls were referred to in the video as artists.  There was a huge wall-size chart of who was doing what, and when.  It was complex choreography.  But is someone an artist who simply places colors on a wall according to specs?  Or are they just draftsmen/ladies?  Or is someone an artist who simply gives someone specs to follow but doesn't actually paint or draw the colors and lines?  Who is the artist here?  The person with the creative inspiration, or the people who brings that inspiration to life?  What do you think?

We couldn't come to an agreement, but we did nevertheless enjoy the lively fun colorful work.  Meanwhile, I'll be talking more about the nature of art when I post again, in a couple of days, about the other work that we saw in the museum.  

Please weigh in with your opinions! I'll close here with a couple of visual reflection photos from the museum.  By the way, all these photos were shot with a Canon Powershot point and shoot camera.