16 August 2008

Mass MoCA: Badlands


Yesterday Lynn and I drove west to Mass MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art) to celebrate our anniversary. We had no idea what was showing there, we just wanted to get out of town, so I was surprised and thrilled to find two exhibits that dovetailed nicely with my latest woodblock work. One exhibit, there until April '09, is titled Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape, a show that purports to "reinvent the genre [landscape] to produce works that look beyond vast beauty to address current environmental issues." There were a number of pieces that dealt with microcosmic and macrocosmic views of the land. My favorite work of this type was two large pieces by Leila Daw who works a lot with mapping.


Also currently at Mass MoCA is a group show about China, Eastern Standard: Western Artists in China. Much of the work was photography or video-based. I particularly enjoyed a video by Catherine Yass called Lock (2006) that takes viewers on a barge traveling through the Three Gorges Dam’s massive lock. The view from the front of the barge is projected on one wall and the view from the back projected onto the opposite wall, so you really feel like you're on the boat. It made me want to see the film Up the Yangtze.


My preparations for the Great Wall of China print have been slow. Part of the slowness is because of the Olympics. There's so much information about China in the media right now -- my own feelings and views about China have felt very fluid in response to all the input. My sketches are firming up this weekend, though, so I may be starting on the print soon. If so, then this will be the first time I've ever worked on more than one print at a stretch, as I've also started on a print called "The Well" (see previous post). It will be interesting to see what it's like to work on two projects at once, or if one falls to the side in favor of the other.

4 comments:

Anita Thomhave Simonsen said...

thank you for a very interesting post...I really enjoyed reading about "Badlands: ...." and the different artists and their way of re-interpreting the landscape...very intersting...
Find Leila Dew very intersting too and such beautiful works she´s doing....nice museum of contemporary art in massachusetts...did use your Leila Dew link and did check out some artists at the A.I.R. Gallery and there is many intersting women artists...fell over Nancy Azara and her drawings and her woodwork that I found very inspiring....and I will certainly return to the A.I.R. Gallery site and see some of the other artists and their work.....
thanks for sharings your anniversary-exhibition-experience...

d. moll, l.ac. said...

What a great outing, serendipitous even, some beautiful works. For me China is a bit tricky; love the culture, enjoy the people I have met, don't like the some the politics....

Annie B said...

Tak, Anita. Glad you enjoyed this post. I too want to explore the A.I.R. Gallery artists more.

Diana, given that you practice Chinese medicine I can imagine that you would have a strong attachment and love for the culture that birthed your field of study. I'm a Japanophile myself, but I'm very aware that much of what I love about Japanese culture originally came to Japan via China, including my beloved moku hanga!

Anonymous said...

oh I wanna go to Mass MoCA and might just be able to do that when I go to Hoosick Falls if I am able to get there this year

happy happy
patty