The transition in New York from Summer to Fall is dramatic. The city empties in August, no one is sending work emails, galleries are closed, the concrete bakes all summer - then, come September, everything enters hyper-speed, everyone is desperate for culture, emails are flowing, and of course - endless art events await.
Before I go full-pull into the rush of Fall, here are a few Summer reflections on viewing art. The Campus in Hudson, 3 hours north of the city, was a highlight of Upstate Art Weekend. Experiencing work by acclaimed artists outside of the traditional white cube is like a cold plunge you didn’t know you needed. Focused connections in the 2-3 artists pairings in former classrooms with installation elements a-plenty were so fresh. Finding arty basketballs as a natural intermission worked well in the old school yard abutting fields of tall grass.
Over in Seattle I caught the Stephanie Sejuco and Samantha Wall exhibitions at the Frye Art Museum. A museum I adored when I lived there in my late teens and early twenties. Sejuco mounted a massive four room survey of several bodies of work. She examines museum archives: representing and rearranging her findings in the form of photographs, slideshows, a diorama installation, and video. Culling the archives of American History seeking the colonial residue in images and the pretenses of their construction, Sejuco is equally poetic and calculating in her ability to dissect and dismantle. From her hand obscuring the identities of “subjects” to obscuring details of KKK propaganda by photographing documents laying facedown, her transformations leave space to ponder how we deal with these remnants from the past and what are doing with our materials of today.
I spent the Summer in and out of the city, setting my phone down more and ripping through books at night, working on new paintings in the studio, and prepping materials for a new body of work; dying, weaving, and sewing. We capped it off with a big road trip around Maine, visited our land to stomp around a bit, pick the last shriveled up blueberries, dream about what we will build one day, and luxuriate in the quiet.
