Today is the big day – the day we relaunch ArtBabble to the world. After six months of surveying, planning and designing and one wild 24 hour #babblesprint, I couldn’t be happier to share the fruits of our labor with our loyal followers. I hope you love the changes as much as we do.

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Filed under: Art, Design, Education, New Media

“Fashion is architecture: it is a matter of proportions.” – Coco Chanel

I grew up in a family of artists: my father was a painter and my mother is a sculptor. At home, it was like an open house for other artists to come over and passionately discuss art and politics. For me, the best painter was my dad and the best sculptor was my mom. So I guess the other “real” artistic professions, in which I will not compete with them, was to become an architect. I was good in mat, loved problem solving, and was fascinated by shapes and colors, so becoming an architect was a very natural path for me to choose. From here comes my deep interest towards fashion as an art form, with its volumes, colors and proportions.

This is my second participation in Project IMA. Two years ago, my daughter and I created a dress made from rubber bands as part of Project IMA: Fashion Unbound.  It was a great experience to be involved with the Indianapolis Museum of Art and I am thrilled that I have the opportunity to contribute again. For my current entry, I found inspiration in this evening dress by Norman Norell:

I wanted to grasp the spirit of Norell’s work and give it a new, contemporary interpretation. My work, which will be made entirely from different sized black rubber bands and industrial felt scraps, is continuation of the design ideas developed in my conceptual project “Recycling of the Architectural Office,” in which I explored the ever-changing character of the contemporary architectural office and how standard tools become obsolete in lieu of digital technology. Recently I’ve also been thinking about our current economic condition, and opening our senses towards the use of alternative materials, recycling and upcycling. I believe that we have to be environmentally responsible and conscious about our surroundings. My submission to Project IMA is my creative response towards finding new sources and expressions. Intrigued and inspired by the Chantilly lace that Norell used, I created my own version of the delicate net by using only black rubber bands. Thousands of rubber bands are knotted, interlocked, twisted together and assembled in order to create the unique texture of the garment. Looking for a fusion of past and present, I’ve chosen to pay respect in this way and give a modern interpretation of the artistic techniques associated with creating fabric, all done by hand. Norell used fox fur to trim the lampshade-shaped top of the evening dress. Half a century later, and living in different environment, I decided to interpret his design by using colorful industrial felt scrap circles. The felt that I used is 100% wool – a biodegradable and renewable material.

In my work, I am inspired both by the artistic and cultural heritage of couture, and am intrigued by innovative designers like Norell who changed the shape and the mood of fashion with his geometrical shapes and attention to detail.  You’ll have to come to Project IMA tonight to see the results of my work.  I hope that you will find it interesting, challenging and a valuable contribution to the show.

Filed under: Art, Public Programs, Textile & Fashion, The Collection, The Toby

Robert Brown, “Concession Stand,” posted on the My Snapshot website.

When I look at “Concession Stand” by Robert Brown I am reminded of artist John Baldessari’s commentary about one of his favorite found photographs. He was mesmerized about a particular film still image he had bought because of what it didn’t show him, and thus what it left open to interpretation. We are seduced by several different factors in photographs, but one often overlooked by the amateur and sometimes even the professional is what is left out. One of my old photography professors has a farm in Vermont. He used to joke with us that he practiced reductive farming, only choosing what plants to remove and leaving the rest. He may not be a very good farmer but photography, especially the kind where one goes around with a camera hunting for a good image, is just this sort of reductive process.

For Brown’s image we are given a title and a very open-ended scene. We see the silhouette of a woman with her hat off, raised to one side, interrupting a distant view of some indiscriminate low lying building. There is just enough detail in the shadows of the foreground to see evidence of some candy bars, which I latch onto because it makes the title of the image ring true. Sometimes not enough context can cause us to lose interest, to throw up our hands and say, “and…” But this image saves itself from that fate because it sets up just enough of a narrative that our imagination (or at least mine) is kicked into gear. There are lots of questions streaming though my mind: Is it a woman? Why does she have her hat raised just so? And where are we? Am I inside the stand looking out or outside looking in? And that view is so bleak, yet intense. It could be any non-descript location, but the vagueness of the scene is disorienting and it makes me feel like this moment was captured just before something consequential was about to happen. It’s akin to a cinematic ploy where everything seems too ordinary and hum drum, so the tension in you rises because you know something will have to happen soon. This type of internal visual game (if you will) captured my interest, and that of course is the goal for all of us lens-based artists.

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Filed under: Art, Audience Engagement

Herbert and Dorothy Vogel at home in New York City, from “Herb & Dorothy,” a 2009 Arthouse Films Release.

The beloved art collector Herbert Vogel passed away yesterday at 89 years old. Herb and his wife Dorothy amassed an unprecedented collection of contemporary art with their modest incomes in public service. The couple married in 1962, and the five decades they shared were shaped by their passionate pursuit for the acquisition and understanding of the most innovative art of their time.

Herb and Dorothy developed personal connections with artists through frequent studio visits and rigorous conversations. Through these friendships, they were often able to acquire works at significantly discounted prices or on payment plans, sometimes as little as $10 a month. It’s frequently mentioned that Herb and Dorothy collected intuitively, without much thought about how individual pieces would fit into their collection. Over the years, every surface of their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment became a place for displaying art, and when the walls and ceilings were covered, large storage crates displaced their living room furniture.

The Vogels’ bedroom with works by Leo Valledor, Gary Stephan, Richard Tuttle, Robert Mangold, Alan Saret, Ron Gorchov, Joseph Kosuth, Vito Acconci, Joseph Beuys, and Peter Hutchinson, among others, c. 1975. Photographer unknown.

As they aged, Herb and Dorothy began to think about the future of their unique collection, and the pair entered into a partnership with the National Gallery of Art. Due the astounding size of their collection, which had grown to include roughly 4000 works, the National Gallery of Art launched the program “Fifty Works for Fifty States,” which dispersed 2500 artworks to public collections across the country. One museum in each state was chosen by Herb and Dorothy to receive 50 carefully selected works that accentuated the permanent collection of the institution. The IMA was honored to accept these gifts—including works by Lynda Benglis, Robert Mangold, Edda Renouf, and Richard Tuttle—which were displayed in the 2008 exhibition titled Collected Thoughts.

Many in Indianapolis had the pleasure of getting to know Herb. Works from their collection were featured in the 1993 exhibition The Poetry of Form: Richard Tuttle Drawings from the Vogel Collection, and in 2003 the couple participated in a public conversation with former IMA director Bret Waller. I was fortunate to meet Herb and Dorothy when they attended the opening of Collected Thoughts.  As a junior in college and a new intern at the IMA, I found their quiet dedication deeply inspiring, especially at a time when I was grappling with the practicalities of an uncertain future in the arts during a recession. My conversation with the Vogels was incredibly brief (I was one in a long line of people waiting to meet them), and I didn’t mention my trepidation; but I wonder if Herb sensed it, because he urged me to stay the course and reminded me that contemporary art could always use another champion.

Filed under: Art, Contemporary

“Trash” is not the first thing that comes to mind when viewing El Anatsui’s Duvor. Its undulating, shimmering, and intricately assembled and designed form suggests anything but trash to me. I am aware of the statement El Anatsui is making by creating this textile, however, I cannot help thinking that a mystery serpent is slithering around naked somewhere, having molted his fabulously marked skin and leaving it in the hands of the IMA’s contemporary collection. This shed skin is, in fact, made up of thousands of flattened bottle caps sewn together with copper wire.  Viewed up close, there is no mistaking the flattened Castello beer bottle caps, connected by small pieces of copper wire twisted at the end. Viewed at a distance, Castello’s brand name and copper wire disappear. Duvor undergoes an amazing evolution as you take more and more steps backward.  What was once obvious transforms into a beautiful golden tapestry, causing you to question its materials and return once more to the up close and personal position. I call this optical illusion a “Monet,” for obvious reasons.

Fortunately Duvor is not the only artwork of El Anatsui’s housed in the IMA. One floor below the Contemporary Collection is the newly redesigned Eiteljorg Suite of African and Oceanic Art. Here you will find Sacred Comb.

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Filed under: Art, Contemporary, Film, Textile & Fashion, The Collection