ruth laskey: 7 weavings

i ran into a ruth laskey yesterday when we were both scoping out the free sandwiches at the easter egg hunt at work (please, i couldn't make this stuff up if i tried). she's one of those folks that i'm acquainted with on various levels, i've been admiring her art work since she was my senior in grad school, i managed to convince her to do our first show at the spare room project (she was very gracious, there was little convincing), and we've been library co-workers for several years, although despite sharing the same position for a while, we almost never actually see one another.


(detail of Twill Series (Avocado) via ruthlaskey.com)

anyways, i think she's great. i think her work is great. she a weaver via being a painter that began weaving to, for all intents and purposes, make her own canvases. she considers the structure that holds the paint in the same care and regard as the paint itself, and then the paint evolved into embroidery and then the image, the pattern evolved into self contained weavings. her current work is a series entitled "twill" in which she hand dyes the threads used to create the geometric patterns in the weavings. the results are quite subtle and unassuming, there is a slow and delicate tenuousness between the weightlessness of the weaving as a whole and the weight of the image, the color, the angles, woven through.
ruth has a solo show opening up this friday at ratio 3, and if you're around san francisco, you should most definitely be there. i know i will. the show is up until April 26, so you've got no excuse to miss it. and if you're not in sf, check out her website: www.ruthlaskey.com.


(detail of Twill Series (Cloud Grey) via ruthlaskey.com)

casual labor

alex clausen (image via kala.org)

a week or two ago i stopped by the 'casual labor' show at the kala art institute in berkeley after getting a lovely woodgrain show card in the mail from my friend alex (who we've been courting for our little art space). i'd never been to kala, although i'd been meaning to check it out because there is always interesting stuff coming out of their artist in residence program. the space was amazing, full of beautiful well-used and well-loved printing equiptment, and rampant with creative energy. you walk through the studio space to get to the gallery (which is what you'll be doing in our new set-up, on a much much tinier scale), which i liked very much, and thought really suited the work in the show.


zachary royer scholz (image via kala.org)

the show seemed to me to be much about doing and less about being and therefore, my cup of tea entirely. it featured Alex Clausen, Zachary Royer Scholz, and Kirk Stoller, all somewhat rough and tumble investigations about the curiousness of space and objects. i was inspired by the motion in the work, there was nothing static in the show, it made for a sort of tension in the air between the pieces.
'casual labor' is up til march 29, and if you're in the bay area, you should stop by. more info is on the kala website.


kirk stoller (image via kala.org)

felix gonzalez torres

since last week was someone i get to see everyday, this week i'll take it far away to someone i'll never have the good fortune of meeting in this life, felix gonzalez-torres. in my own humble process there is a small handful of makers that over the years have really dug up under my ribs and stuck there. there's something visceral about their work, that it reaches me on a cellular level, like i was born with it in my bones. it makes my own work better because i aspire to be able to quietly and universally communicate my story in a way that speaks to other people's experience. i feel this way about felix gonzalez-torres work. it's so subtle and sincere in the way it connects both the viewer and the maker and the viewers with each other. you can't just look at it, you have to experience it, you have to become a part of it. the following two pieces are my personal favorites.



These two identical, adjacent, battery-operated clocks were initially set to the same time, but, with time, they will inevitably fall out of sync. Gonzalez-Torres created this work shortly after his partner, Ross Laycock, was diagnosed with AIDS. By assigning these redundant objects the title "Untitled" (Perfect Lovers), the artist transformed these public, neutral devices used for the measurement of time into personal and poetic meditations on human relationships, mortality, and time's inevitable flow. Of the light-blue background, Gonzalez-Torres said, "For me if a beautiful memory could have a color that color would be light blue." (from The Museum of Modern Art)



"Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A.)" consists of a pile of 175 lbs (ideal weight) of fruit flashers candy, which viewers are invited to take and do with as they please. It was made for Gonzalez-Torres lover, Ross, after he passed away. The candies are replenished as they are removed, creating an endless pile, an eternal portrait, giving his lover and their love the ability to live forever.

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erin mcelroy

if you're incredibly lucky, like i clearly am, then the smallest circle in the concentric ripples of inspiration that surround you, is your home. maybe if you've done something good in a past life it's right down the hall or maybe you even share a garage studio and a bathroom darkroom and run a humble gallery project together. oh yes folks, i start my search for stimulus and amazement in the breast pocket of my t-shirt, close to my heart, and there's erin. and she's not just my first feature because she's near and dear, she's brilliant and she works hard for the money.

erin mcelroy is a photographer and a painter and a photographer/painter although she's up to her elbows in a handful of other things as well. Her work is a something of a merger between personal relationships and cosmic occurences, the geometry of the manmade and the soft folds of the organic, the history of wood and found object canvas and the new breath of image and paint, and a dense, structural black with a soft dreamlike color palette. The following is her own statement which I stole off of her website: www.erinmcelroy.net. She also has an opening tomorrow night at City Art Gallery on Valencia in the Mission if you're in SF.







“Decision, the moment of saying yes, is prompted by something deeper; recognition.” – Jeanette Winterson, Weight

What triggers the release of my camera’s shutter is barely based upon the isolated moment that my subject exists in; it based upon something much older, something that has already occurred,something already vaguely recognized through my own eyes. They say that we only dream about things that we have already allowed into our brains, and in this way my photographs are snapshots of flickering collective memoir. As I go about my daily life, chance-sightings whispering bells of familiarity occur. Sometimes it’s the desperate look in a stranger’s eyes; sometimes it’s the angle between a blade of grass and a friend’s shoe, but either way, it’s familiar. Whether I print the photograph directly or I go on to work through it as a photo-transfer painting, my own processing of the subject’s familiarity surfaces first and foremost. -Erin McElroy