MLP's art critiques from NUVO

Art whiners be warned!

Within this blog archive you will find...

220 art criticisms spanning February 2001 through September 2005 representing...
100 venues (from coffee shops to museums)
160 artists
63 group shows
15 exhibitions
...and 1 show where I couldn't quite figure out who was responsible.

There are still approx. 100 that have yet to be posted. God only knows when I will find the time to scan and post everything. I do find it absolutely fascinating how many "hits" this blog gets daily (bunches), and who is tracking whom in or from the Indianapolis art scene.

This blog is an archive of predominantly short, evaluative, art critiques I've written for NUVO, the Indianapolis, Indiana, local weekly alternative newspaper. Most are not available online through NUVO's website, www.NUVO.net.

Please excuse the misspellings here and there as I've had to scan and transcribe the hard copy texts. They are searchable show titles, featured artists, critique publish date, and star ratings all found in the titles. Exhibition imagery accompanies most critiques. Feel free to forward me show imagery via email or as a comment.

Also, there are several obituaries posted (one for my great pal and mentor Doris Vlasek Hails, and another for Jack Hartigan - an artist I have a great admiration for), one toy review (the adorable Ugly Dolls), and three newsy visual arts stories. I've also posted new regarding the arrival and demise of local galleries.

A five star rating system applied to most all of my reviews is used to gauge the quality of exhibitions reviewed.
Here's what the stars indicate:

1 star: life’s too short
2 stars: not bad, needs some work
3 stars: good job
4 stars: excellent!
5 stars: life-altering experience

Do note that all of these critiques were read and edited for content by the editorial staff (specifically the threesome of David Hoppe, Lisa Gauthier and Jim Poyser), who usually viewed the exhibits and had a familiarity with what I was critiquing. Conversations beyond what is written about shows also took place, so opinions were generally very cohesive.

I stand by every art critique I've written 100%.

Also, I think Indianapolis has a great art scene. There is solidity and talent.

You don't always find the best shows at the hottest galleries in our city, rather you can find them in the least expected venues usually by the least expected people.

Please email images from shows if you have them.

Enjoy.

Pivot Gallery, formally Print Resources Gallery or the Stutz Gallery, closes.

Got another email today about another gallery closing. Looks like the average life span for a local gallery is about 3 years. I don't know the time frame and I'm not going to figure it out anytime soon, but it looks like the Stutz Gallery/Print Resources Gallery became Pivot last year. How many years prior to that did Print Resources oversee it? 2004 to 2007? I don't know. Anyway, another one bites the dust.

Can you call a set of weirdly incongruent walls splicing through the center of a large, warehouse-esque, hollow space, a gallery? The athletic stadium harsh lights alone were enough to fast forward the disintegration process on any of the works displayed in my opinion. Very "fun house." While I dislike seeing yet another visual art venue fold (we need as many as we can get despite their shortcomings), with this one I am completely not surprised regardless of reason. Kudos and applause toward their efforts.

Here's the release:



February 18, 2008

For Immediate Release
PIVOT Gallery presents its Farewell Show (March 7–20, 2008)

*** Reception :: Friday, March 7 from 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. ***

For additional information, please contact:
Jenn Rarick, Pivot Marketing & Gallery, 317-536-0047, jenn@pivotmarket.com

Pivot Gallery presents its Farewell Show, a one-piece invitational featuring Indianapolis artists. This group was specially selected from among those who have exhibited in the gallery since it opened in 2003. A reception will be held on Friday, March 7 from 5:30–9:30 p.m. The event is free, open to the public, and street parking is available. Visitors should enter on the first floor of the Stutz Building at the corner of 10th Street & Senate Avenue. This exhibit continues through March 20. Additional information is available at www.pivotgallery.com.

Participating Artists
Emma Overman, Caroline Mecklin, Chris Sickels, Ben Long, Dan Thompson, Paul Siebenthal, Susan Hodgin, Stephanie Robertson, Brian Myers, Susan Brewer, Constance Scopelitis, Laura LaForge, James Kelly, Larry Endicott, Sofiya Inger, Kipp Normand, Alex Peace, and Jason Zickler.

Appetizers: Hoaglin Fine Catering
Live Entertainment: Crackhead Patty

Title Sponsors:

Pivot Marketing (www.pivotmarket.com)
Pivot is a full-service marketing firm based in Indianapolis, Indiana. They provide a central—or pivot point—for each brand. At Pivot, inventive ideas are rooted in strategy. This focus, fueled by creativity, produces financial results.

Print Resources (www.printindy.com)
Print Resources is a design, print and promotional products provider with locations in Indianapolis and Jacksonville, Florida. By leveraging extensive industry knowledge with outstanding vendor resources, they consistently provide creative solutions and exceptional service.

--

About the Gallery Closing
Sister companies Print Resources and Pivot Marketing will relocate on April 1, 2008 from the Stutz Business Center to a freestanding facility at 1500 East Riverside Drive. The purchase will triple the pair’s office space from 6,000 to 18,000 square feet. According to Tim Browning and Kurt Ellinger, owners of Print Resources, “We have outgrown our current space, and West 16th Street is an attractive area for relocation. This section of Indianapolis is ripe for redevelopment, especially in light of news regarding potential redevelopment plans for the Bush Stadium corridor.”

Print Resources has experienced rapid growth in its seven-year history. In 2005, the firm made the Indianapolis Business Journal’s list of the 25 Fastest Growing privately held Indiana companies. Earlier this year, Print Resources was also named to Inc. magazine’s list of the 5,000 fastest growing private companies in the nation. In March 2006, Print Resources’ former marketing director Jenn Rarick formed Pivot, a full-service marketing firm. Pivot Marketing has experienced 70% revenue growth in its second fiscal year.

In 2007, Pivot Marketing assumed operation of the Stutz Art Gallery (formerly run by Print Resources), and rebranded it as Pivot Gallery. Relocation will mean the end of a four-year run for the gallery. According to Jenn Rarick, the change is bittersweet. “We’re excited about our growth and can’t wait to see what develops along West 16th Street. We will miss the Stutz Building, the artists, our friends here and those who have supported and visited the gallery over the years. The gallery will close, but our commitment to the arts will continue.” Print Resources and Pivot Marketing plan to continue their sponsorship of events such as ORANJE, Primary Colours’ Art vs. Art, and the annual Subsurface Graffiti Exposition.

FLUX in flux

(Oh, to be cliche is a sin, but alas.)

Looks like FLUX is going to take a breather for a spell. Not a bad idea. The space is so confined and the windows could bore holes through paintings with the heat they generate. The needs of their building are many. Good luck.

From an email from FLUX received today:

It's a new year, and with it brings change. FLUX will be operating a bit differently this year, with DeAnne and Nicci taking time to focus on their own endeavors. What this means for the Gallery is that there are no scheduled shows for 2008, but we're not saying that all is silent. Something could pop up along the way, and if so we'll let you know right away. With that said, we would like to thank you for all of the support given to the artists and FLUX. The last three years were wonderful, we've enjoyed working with every artist, and visiting with so many of you. Our current plan is to reopen in 2009 as a full time gallery. By taking this time we will focus on the needs of the building, our own work in our personal, professional and creative lives, and to give ourselves a chance to breath.

FLUX in FLUX,
Co-directors
Nicci Herren & DeAnne Roth


This email was sent by FLUX, 1046 Woodlawn Ave., Indianapolis, IN 46203, using Express Email Marketing.

About me

This was a brief bio. written about me for a project I was involved with last year.

"Pappas’ fine arts experience is broad and encompasses curatorial, education, conservation and research roles at gallery, public, university, and museum venues for nearly 20 years. The Columbia School of Journalism identified Pappas as one of 169 visual art critics nationally (one of two in Indiana, the only from Indianapolis) for her work with NUVO, the local alternative weekly. She received her BA in Art History from Indiana University, is a painter represented at Editions Limited Gallery, and a writer."

A First Person on Art Critiques - Does Indianapolis Really Want Arts Criticism?

By Mary Lee Pappas
NUVO art critic
spring 2005

Should an art critic write about artists whose work they collect? Should an art critic fraternize with artists they write about? Should they accept gifts from artists they’ve written about, be an exhibition consultant, sit on boards of visual arts organizations, or exhibit their own artworks?

According to “The Visual Art Critic: A Survey of Art Critics at General-Interest News Publications in America” by Columbia University’s Journalism Program in 2002, there was no consensus among the 169 art critics surveyed (myself the only Indianapolis representative) regarding blanket ethical conduct within the American art world. This perhaps resulting from the public’s equally as uneven expectations of what art criticism ought and ought not to be.

An opinionated bunch to begin with, participating art critics had to have written at least twelve ”evaluative” pieces the previous year to qualify for the survey. Those are reviews that make judgments regarding quality, purport, and context based on the work, the artist, the venue, the curatorial competence, and sometimes funding. It’s gauging art instead of strictly spouting anthems of advocacy, subjective explanations, and taking strict emotions into account.

Critics, predominantly employed as part-timers or freelance at both daily and alternative weekly papers, were actually found to be “intimately connected” to their local arts communities. Is this conflict of interest, or fundamental for the role? 24% of us had worked in museums, 18% in commercial galleries, while nearly half of us were artists – 70% of whom exhibit or have exhibited their works. 14% were employed in art-related industries. Four out of five newspaper critics and three out of four alternative weekly critics collect art.

Though 90% of the critics were curiously Caucasian when multiculturalism in visual art is ever present, well preparedness for their work varied greatly. The majority of practicing art critics had on average 13 years of journalism/art writing experience. 20% of art critics had no formal training in art or art history, while only 26% of us actually had a B.A., M.A. or Ph.D. in art history. But, apparently it doesn’t really matter who’s writing about art anymore.

Some artists should, “Park their paints,” and let go of ego, pride and fickleness local painter, art historian, and gallery owner Doris Vlasek Hails said to me once. But there has been an increasing trend for artists and arts organizations across the country to steer clear of uncompromising critics and seek-out positive press thereby creating their own undeserving derivative art stars. Some buy it.

As our local visual arts community flourishes so too do the proliferating and, more often than not, only moderately talented artists who Indianapolis audiences so anxiously and sometimes bafflingly accept. Can anyone who can afford rent at a trendy studio be an artist? Are gallery owners and proprietors actually qualified to choose quality art to present to the public just because they can fund their venues? Who is drawing the line between hobby and excellence? Should critics simply relinquish themselves to this laissez-fare intellect regarding the fine art process and art history thereby giving artists and venues the praise they ultimately fancy? Where does criticism fit in and who really wants it anymore?

Indianapolis appears to be succeeding at placing novelty (or propaganda at times) above discrimination. The survey makes an example of our city by stating, “Citizens of significant urban agglomerations, including Indianapolis and Las Vegas…do not have the benefit of hearing from an art critic who might qualify for inclusion in this survey,” from a daily paper.

This perhaps in part because formal criticism doesn’t serve the city’s desires to make Indianapolis a cultural destination overnight. However, celebrating the mundane won’t make it happen either.

Though art critics across the board thought they were writing for a “lukewarm audience that is not too well steeped in the arts,” nearly two-thirds unfortunately write strictly positive reviews, with “rendering a personal judgement” about the artwork being “the least important factor in reviewing art.” It’s a sorry commentary that’s ultimately destructive of the arts evolution (like Indianapolis’ visual art growth spurt), and the art itself. So are gallery openings where the art plays second fiddle to the party.

Are arts writers accepting expenses on press junkets? Are papers merely supposed to conform, jump on the promotional bandwagon, and be another form of advertising?

Perhaps this is an indication that some “critics” should park their pens or thicken their skin. Perhaps local media should give more space and credence to the visual arts cultures of their communities, and artists should challenge themselves to create more than attractive formula paintings accompanied by contrived statements of purpose.

Local eagerness to be exceptional in the visual arts has created levels of administrative and artistic inferiority that can be remedied by demanding quality and education from those that serve the arts community, critics alike. Inferring that arts audiences and potential arts audiences are un or under educated (as is the rhetoric from artists and arts orgs.) only serves to insult and estrange audiences…as does substandard art.

Everybody's an Art Critic by Michael Mills - February 6, 2003 New Times

Everybody's an Art Critic by Michael Mills Feb. 6, 2003 New Times
Everybody's an Art Critic
If they're college-educated, city-dwelling, 40-something white people, that is

By Michael Mills
Article Published Feb 6, 2003

Details

Last year, the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University contacted more than 200 art critics across the country, inviting them to participate in The Visual Art Critic: A Survey of Art Critics at General-Interest News Publications in America. About 75 percent of those responded. I was one of them.

It was a lengthy, exhaustive survey, available online or in hard copy, that quizzed critics on our backgrounds, our aesthetics, our opinions of specific artists and even theorists and other art critics. I was glad to participate in the study and looked forward to seeing the results.

I finally received my copy of the report recently, a slender paperback that resembles a modest exhibition catalog and features a reproduction of Honoré Daumier's The Critics (Visitors in a Painter's Studio) (c. 1862). The drawing shows a handful of middle-aged-to-elderly white men peering intently at an unidentifiable work of art. Given Daumier's dim view of critics, it's not surprising that the ones shown here are made to look vaguely buffoonish.

In some respects, not much has changed in the nearly century and a half since Daumier's critics gathered, at least not in America. Artists, curators, and gallery owners still approach us warily, as if we might bite. And according to the survey report, which is full of pie charts, graphs, boxes, and sidebars, while art criticism may no longer be predominantly male territory -- about half of the survey respondents were women -- it's still an overwhelmingly white domain. Ninety percent of the critics who took the survey are Caucasian, with just two Asian-Americans, one African-American, and one Hispanic responding. The report characterizes "the statistically average art critic" as "a highly educated, Caucasian city-dweller in his or her late 40s (the median age is 48)." Am I squirming yet?

We also tend to be well to the left of center, politically speaking. Just over half of the critics surveyed characterized themselves as "Liberal," with another 20 percent calling themselves "Progressive" and another 16 percent weighing in as "Moderate." In other words, don't get us started on government arts funding, censorship, and freedom of speech in the Dubya era.

Critics at newspapers classified by the survey as alternative weeklies, the category New Times Broward-Palm Beach falls into, are even further to the left. Fully 85 percent of us are liberals or progressives. So why don't I get more hate mail?

Maybe, one outspoken critic of the survey suggests, it's because America's art critics aren't critical enough. Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight, in a recent column on the report, complains, "By and large, journalistic art critics don't write art criticism." (Knight was invited to participate in the survey but was unable to because of Internet problems, although three of his colleagues responded.)

Knight marvels that a mere "27% of survey participants said they place a great deal of emphasis on forming and expressing... judgments. Twenty-seven percent!" Instead, he worries, we're too concerned with the other aspects of criticism ranked in the survey: accurately describing the art in question, providing historical background on the art and/or artist, creating a piece of writing with literary value, and theorizing about art. He begrudgingly acknowledges that these are "important but nonetheless routine concerns."

It seems especially irksome to Knight that an overwhelming majority of art critics agree with the statement "My job is to educate the public." Sixty-five percent strongly agree with that idea, and another 26 percent somewhat agree. Such an attitude, Knight frets, represents arrogance and elitism, condescension and superciliousness.

I don't recall my specific response, but I'm sure I sided, for once, with the majority. What surprises me is the vehemence of Knight's insistence that art criticism and art education are incompatible. Perhaps he forgets that the survey participants, as the study's subtitle indicates, write for general-interest news publications, not academic journals or art magazines. An inherent function of the "general-interest news publications" the survey focuses on is to share knowledge.

And I'm not just picking on Knight, by the way. Other critics have written about the survey, among them the New York Observer's cranky Hilton Kramer. He begins by calling the report "the silliest, most expensive, and least necessary 'research' folly ever devoted to the art scene in this country" and later refers to it as "a perfectly useless enterprise."

THE VISUAL ART CRITIC A Survey of Visual Arts Critics at General-Interest Publications in America

THE VISUAL ARTS IN THE UNITED STATES have recently experienced a period of dynamic growth and professionalization, prompting the timely question: Do the news media provide sufficient exposure for art, artists and art institutions?

In early 2002, the National Arts Journalism Program set out to answer this question, inviting art critics at general-interest news publications around the country to complete an online questionnaire about their backgrounds, educational credentials, work habits, tastes and opinions on issues concerning art in America today. The survey's 169 critics—drawn from 96 daily newspapers, 34 alternative weeklies and 3 national newsmagazines—write for a combined audience of approximately 60 million readers. The findings suggest that although art critics have carved out important roles at many publications, criticism is struggling to keep up with the swift evolution of the art world.

The Visual Art Critic draws a portrait of a profession that is deeply committed to advancing the national discussion about art, yet hampered by job insecurity, vagueness of ethical standards and uncertainty of mission. Accompanied by insightful comments from artists, art-world professionals and the surveyed critics themselves, the findings of this report call attention to the need within newsrooms for continued investment and support for the enterprise of art criticism, especially in smaller communities, where some of the most noteworthy artistic developments are taking root.

Quotes about Critique

"I learned a long time ago that you can't control what people think. Do I have a mission of what I want to accomplish with this? I've already accomplished it. There it is. There's the song. There's the painting. That's the accomplishment, not what people think about it. If you do things because of what people think, man, you're crippled." - John Mellencamp (catalog for his exhibition at Herron School of Art and Design, Indianapolis, IN, Nov. 18, 2005 - Jan. 7, 2006)

“The highest aim of the aesthetic being is to find the Divine through beauty,” – Sri Aurobindo (Gems from Sri Aurobindo V1. by M.P. Pendit)

"I have always been grateful for press. Even if a review is negative, reading it helps me better understand what exactly it is I think I'm doing in dance...critical attention has helped me put my work into a larger perspective." - Twyla Tharp, NUVO (Indianapolis, IN)

Hi Fructose Magazine

I saw it at Northside News at 54th and College today (my hangout) and fell in love with it.

I'm ordinarily not a fan of many art magazines, but this one I do. The image is "Kitten Study" by digital pop surrealist, Ray Caesar.

OK, I like Cabinet also. Sometimes. And, I love the NYT's critics hands-down.

Anywho, check it out at www.hifructose.com.

If you live in Indianapolis, stop by the NN...and have a Cuban sandwich.

Be happy and nice,

Mary Lee