Archive for April, 2007

Let us introduce the new fresh look of the SALT Gallery Center Square, an informational resource center where you can find instructions, background information and program descriptions of SALT Gallery activities. As you will see, we have spent a few months brainstorming and designing ways in which to make the information sections of the online SALT Gallery more alive and interactive- check out what we consider to be a smooth and intelligent solution at www.salt-gallery.com/history.html

Also to be announced is our first annual SALT Gallery Youth Forum, an ambitious community-oriented program to engage artistic young people to boost their potential artistic career, with a chance to get sponsored by an art gallery. If you know someone between the ages of 12 and 18 who has some talent, tell them about it. The SALT Gallery Youth Forum is a painting contest, juried by an independent committee consisting of members from the art and design community. The submission deadline is September 14 and the winners will be announced at the end of the year. For more information, visit www.salt-gallery.com/history_5.htm

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This morning, I had the opportunity to witness a deliciously scary example of road rage.

First, the backdrop: we are on US soil, on the tiny island of St. Croix, part of the US Virgin Islands, heading East on Northside Road in a slowly winding line of cars heading into the town of Christiansted. Traffic is smooth, but one needs to have patience, because we islanders tend to “let people in” quite a bit, even when least expected. The honking heard here usually comes from a place of polite permission to enter instead of anger. Not so today.

Second, the event: Coming down from Rattan at the Five Corners intersection, a woman in a gold Honda honks angrily at a man in a white pick-up truck who does’t respond quickly enough when the light turns green. The man wildly throws up his hands to indicate that he’s on his way. The Honda engine roars as the woman enters the intersection on the right side of the pick-up truck, attempting to pass. The pick-up slowly turns and continues through the intersection, blocking the Honda from passing. The woman is forced to screech to a halt to avoid a head-on collision with the car waiting at the light. At this, the Honda-woman gets furious, and the gunning engine and honking that ensues is more than insistent, at this point it’s maniacal as the two vehicles crest a hill and disappear from view. I am (luckily) going in the same direction, and when it’s my turn to go, I head up the hill to see how it all played out.

Third, the conclusion: As I come over the crest, I see the two cars in the distance, one following the other tightly and continuously trying to pass. They are so close to each other- they are like one vehicle-train erratically continuing on with this conflictive beginning of the day. What a way to start, I think as I drive gingerly to work. I wonder who is in the immediate company of the angry woman or the stubborn man and I wonder if there are children in the back seat who take the cues of their parents as their daily lesson for life. As I contemplate our society through this event, I am reminded that there is always a need to step back and breathe, to assess and think before we speak, to ask “is it worth it?” before we hurt someone. We are all here together as one, in peace, if we choose it.

When Luca Gasperi graduated from design school and found himself in the great city of New York, he realized he needed to make life choices. He needed to get a job to pay the bills, but he wanted to be a figure in the world, wanted to do something memorable. All this pressure, that I am sure we all recognize, appearing so abruptly after the directional and structured school years, caught Luca off-guard and placed him at the threshold of his “real” life.

During this time of anguish, homesickness, and indecision, Gasperi created an exquisite group of small-format paintings, full of his already mature talent for realistic natural landscapes, but also hinting at the playful abstraction that can be seen in some of his more recent work.

The two artists: Swedish contemporary installation artist and visionary, the artistic activist Leif Vilks and Paul Klee have two very apparent traits in common: determination and productivity. If you have seen Vilks’s massive sculpture Nimis in the Kullaberg nature reserve on Sweden’s southwest rugged coastline, you will find yourself at home with the recurring stick-drawings and etchings of Paul Klee. The Nimis sculptures wind upwards into the sky for seventy feet in an organic type of grasping, all built by hand, by one man, with nails and scrap lumber and driftwood. To see it had the effect of making me proud of being human and proud of being on earth.

Nimis by Lars Vilks             

The jagged rocks and intense forest backdrop brings the visitor into a magical realm of man and nature, mimicking the billowing wind in its non-linear force.

Paul Klee: St. Beatenberg, Ink on Paper, 1909 

If you take the time to hike the rocky slippery kilometer to get to Nimis and sister sculpture Arx, made of cement and rock, you will be happily rewarded by a sight you have never seen before. If you don’t plan to go to Sweden anytime soon, for now, go here: http://ladonia.com/nimis_arx/index.html 

Paul Klee refers to the artist’s architectural role in building a piece of art through the use of several dimensions, among which line, tone, value, and color are four. His theories were specific to say the least; he truly knew the emotional and philosophical effects of each line, cluster of lines, color, gradation, and every relationship between them: If a calm and rigid aspect has been achieved, then the construction has aimed at giving either an array along wide horizontals without any elevation, or, with high elevation, prominence to visible and extended verticals. 

Interestingly, since he was often considered snobbish and condescending, Klee once said about the artist’s not at all megalomaniacal role in society: And yet, standing at his appointed place, the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what comes to him from the depths. He neither serves nor rules, he transmits. His position is humble. And the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel. (From a speech given at the opening of the Museum of Jena in 1924.) Such humility was rare to witness from Klee or his contemporaries. To find out more about Paul Klee, go to http://www.guggenheimcollection.org/site/artist_bio_75.html