Fluid Dynamics: Anastasia Pelias’ “Washed (to the Sea and Other Waters)” at Heriard-Cimino Gallery

by Reggie Michael Rodrigue

“The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.” – Rabindranath Tagore

Is there anything more beautiful, dynamic, and awe-inspiring on our planet than water?  It is the conduit of life.  It is the the substance of vitality.  It is also the incubator of our worst nightmares. It lies within us and without us. It is the be all and end all. The alpha and the omega. It is simply the most precious substance on our planet.

Yet, we take it for granted for the most part.  That is until we either loose access to it or it strikes us down.  The fresh and salt waters that we depend on to sustain life on this planet are constantly being polluted by the chemicals and waste we release into it on a daily basis. We are turning our oceans, rivers and lakes into toxic wastelands. Recently, we have even managed to pollute the waters in our ground table in our search for natural gas. The connection we have had with water as a life affirming substance is being stretched to a breaking point that would have been unimaginable just 300 years ago. It is beyond obvious that we desperately need to start reevaluating our relationship with water, not only for our own personal health but the health of our planet as whole.

Something of this sentiment is expressed in a body of artwork currently being exhibited at Heriard-Cimino Gallery in New Orleans.  Artist Anastasia Pelias has installed a suite of paintings titled “Washed (to the Sea and Other Waters)” there. The exhibition is a visual love poem to the sea in general, along with some of her favorite bodies of water around the planet. Each painting is devoted to a specific body of water, a general area of concentration, or a mythological deity associated with water.

Rather than simply attempting to paint a detailed, representational depiction of these subjects, Pelias stays true to her penchant for abstraction, however. The paintings are large to mid-size color fields or monochromes that are rendered based on a very human scale in order to allow the viewer to feel that they are either inside the works or intimately connected to them.  From a distance, the works operate as expansive squares and rectangles of luminous color. As one gets closer, an awareness of the fluidity of the work comes to the fore. Pelias has used layers of thin oil and turpentine washes to cover her canvases. Streaks, trickles and veils of color catch the eye and provide an infinite array of painterly incident which provide access to the deeper meaning of the work.

In “For Poseidon (delft blue, violet deep),” Pelias pays tribute to the Greek god of the sea.  In this instance, it may help viewers to know that Pelias descends from a line of Greeks, and her heritage plays an important part in her life. The ancient Greeks, a generally sea-faring people, had a vital connection to the sea, and they expressed this in their veneration of Poseidon. The god was portrayed by the Greeks as a regal and mysterious force to be respected. Pelias manages to invoke this portrayal in her painting, combining two fields of deep blue and violet. Both colors refer to royalty, mystery, and unfathomable depths. Another work in the exhibition is connected to Greece as well. “July at Velanio (ultramarine, cyane, yellow)” refers to the beach at Velanio on the Greek island of Skopelos. Here, Pelias juxtaposes a field of blue against a stoically dark field of green to mimic the meeting of the sea with the verdant yet abrasive cliffs that is breath-takingly apparent at Velanio Beach.

As a resident of South Louisiana, in general, and New Orleans specifically, Pelias has had ample opportunities to commune with water. South Louisiana is surrounded and riddled with bodies of water from the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi River, and a host of bayous, swamps, lakes, marshes and canals. Within the exhibition, Pelias offers three canvases in honor of the waters of her home state. “Louisiana (chrome yellow, oriental blue)” reaches to the heart of the state’s topography.  It is a field of yellow juxtaposed with a striation of blue to its side.  Pelias has laid a thin veil of blue wash over the yellow, transforming it into a vast, moist plain of green. The painting absolutely speaks to the ubiquity of water in Louisiana, and its power to render the land into a lush zone of vegetal abundance.  “Bayou Sauvage (golden green, violet umber)” explores the feel of the Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge: the only national wildlife refuge within the limits of a city in the United States.  On the eastern boundary of the city of New Orleans, the site contains a world of brackish waters, bayou, swamp and marsh. Pelias evokes this meeting of water, mud, grass, moss and murk in the her painting to great effect. The other Louisiana moment in the exhibition seems to be more personal. “My Mississippi (carmine alizarin, brilliant scarlet)” is a monochrome painting in the throws of a sluggish liquid fire.  It has all of the smoldering and sultry, red-hot passion of a moment spent gazing into the Mississippi from its banks in New Orleans at dusk when the sun hangs low and crimson on the horizon.

Within the exhibition, one is confronted with “My Mississippi (carmine alizarin, brilliant scarlet) upon walking into the gallery from the street. After being lost in its visual hold for a minute or two on my visit, I was shocked by what came next in my path through the exhibition.   Right beside it is “Tulum (translucent turquiose),” a large field of shimmering, light-infused green-blue.  The effect of shifting attention from the intense saturation of red in the first painting to the cool blue of the second is astonishing and plays some amazing tricks on the eye.  It’s as if one is being sucked out of a womb into a bright and boundless sea.  It’s almost an instance of rebirth and definitely a moment within the exhibition one should experience in person. “Tulum (translucent turquise)” refers to the crystal-clear blue Caribbean waters off the shore of Tulum, Mexico.

Rounding out the exhibition are two canvases that refer to bodies of water in Africa.  “To the Fertile Nile (viridian, echtorange, prussian blue)” mimics an aerial view of the silt-laden Nile River running along its fertile banks, delivering the richness of its bounty to the land.  A much more imaginative and poetic take on water can be found in “Oshun’s Rivers (translucent orange, indian yellow).”  Here Pelias pays hommage to the Yoruba goddess of rivers and water. According to Yoruban mythology, Oshun tends to the life-giving waters of West Africa while knitting at the bottom of her rivers. Oshun is traditionally associated with the color yellow.  In Pelias’ painting, a field of striated orange tops a field of yellow with a thin strip of the orange falling into the bottom yellow field. It is a moment of succinct, sun-drenched bliss within the exhibition.

“Washed (to the Sea and Other Waters)” is a testament to the variety of shades and aspects that water can take on in nature and in our lives. What is surprising in the exhibition is that Pelias manages to speak of this through the use of color field and monochrome painting.  Whereas Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt used these painterly strategies to speak of the flatness of the picture plane and grand themes tethered to the ether of platonic ideals, Pelias weaves together a personal story of her interactions with and remembrances of a handful of global marine sites and mythologies that have significance to her, as well as millions of others.  With her suite of paintings, Pelias brings abstraction back down to earth and deep into the substance that sustains life on this planet.

I imagine that more than a few viewers would accuse Pelias of painting nothing with this body of work.  The familiar cries of “I could do that,” “A child could do that,” or “It’s just a bunch of empty paintings” always accompany viewings of work such as this.  Comments like this don’t take into account the history of art, much less the specific history of abstraction, or the amount of work and thought that it takes to make a successfully abstract painting.  Then, there is the issue of depth. As expressed in the opening quote above by the great Bengali poet and artist Rabindranath Tagore, silence says more about the universe that we live in than a billion words, after all the vast stretches of space out there are silent.  The same can be said of abstraction. Representional images can only get one so far in pursuit of visual truth.  At some point, they all become lies and referents to other things.  I say this not to denigrate representation, but only to point to the value of abstraction as a way to move past the images the world gives us to creating our own images that speak to the great depths of our minds and the universe at large.

So, Pelias actually occupies a position right at the nexus of representation and abstraction with the works in “Washed (to the Sea and Other Waters).” It is a position from which she weaves together a wordless love poem to and a silent story of the seas and painting, itself.  Dynamic doesn’t even begin to describe the depths of what lies on and beneath the surface of Pelias’ current body of work.

Bayou Sauvage (golden green, violet umber)

Oil on Canvas, 72 x 72 inches

July at Velanio (ultramarine, cyane, yellow)

Oil on Canvas, 72 x 72 inches

For Poseidon (delft blue, violet deep)

Oil on Canvas, 36 x 72, inches

a satellite exhibition of Prospect.2 curated by John Otte

October 22, 2011 through January 29, 2012

The Pearl 639 Desire Street, New Orleans, Louisiana

 It’s gonna be alright, baby
Three Channel Digital Video
Anastasia Pelias 2010

The Pearl is proud to present Constant Abrasive Irritation Produces The Pearl: A Disease Of The Oyster, a group exhibition, curated and installed by John Otte, and set within the confines of an extraordinary historic house/compound in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans. Here, Otte assembles a wide spectrum of local, national and international artists: AdrinAdrina, Jonathan Bouknight, Susannah Bridges-Burley, Elliott Coon, John Curry, Dawn DeDeaux, Lee Deigaard, Kim Phillips, Courtney Egan, Margaret Evangeline, Jessica Goldfinch, Brian Guidry, Dave Greber, Sally Heller, INGRIDMWANGIROBERTHUTTER, Kathleen Loe, Aristides Logothetis, Jennifer Odem, John Otte, Anastasia Pelias, Michele Schuff, Gary Stephan, Paige Valente and Delona Wardlaw. An additional evening at The Pearl in which Matthew Barney’s film “De Lama Lamina” will be shown as part of the exhibition during the early part of the Carnival (Mardi Gras) Season in January 2012 is planned. The title of the exhibition is taken from a quote by Lenny Bruce, which proclaims: “Constant Abrasive Irritation Produces The Pearl: A Disease Of The Oyster!” For this installation, Otte takes a very counter-intuitive approach by deliberately installing the videos and sculpture first, then selectively clearing away and organizing around the resulting vignettes so as not to disturb their essential character or mystery. Otte sees this as a meditation on the chaos and order of the specific site of The Pearl as well as of New Orleans itself. Videos are ceiling-mounted, wall-mounted, projected, and embedded throughout the space in a nod to the vast proliferation of tv screens and video projections currently installed in many public spaces, especially bars, restaurants and nightclubs. Sculptures are strategically placed to interact with already existing assemblages and accretions of found objects. Sound is a vital element, in many cases interpenetrating with additional sounds from one or more of the video works as well as ambient sounds from the environment. Dramatic lighting is used to isolate specific objects and assemblages. Raw and refined elements coexist in a cornucopia of elegance and decadence.

John Otte was born in Virginia Beach, VA in 1963, and is an artist, dj, curator and installation specialist. Otte has lived and worked in NYC and Atlanta, and now resides in New Orleans. He curated a satellite exhibition of Prospect.1, entitled “Entr’acte” at Bush Antiques in 2008.

The Pearl, brainchild of multi-talented artist/musician/impressario, Jay Poggi, and known as a legendary speakeasy and neo-vaudevillian performance space for more than twenty years, is made up of a sprawling complex of five contiguous buildings. The main house of The Pearl was built in 1799, and is one of the original Creole farm houses built along the river in the Bywater neighborhood just a few blocks from the French Quarter.

• by Reggie Michael Rodrigue on July 19, 2011

The video opens with the sound of the tide, and a tight close-up of the artist bringing a stone from a shoreline to her mouth. She licks it slowly. The act, along with the sound of the sea, is both primal and sensual. The ritualized action is repeated, establishing a deep connection between the artist and the sea, as well as the viewer—it’s difficult not to imagine the sensation of the coolness of the smooth stone and the taste of salt in one’s mouth while watching it. The video continues with images of water glistening on the rocks in the sun; then, the artist enters the frame walking back and forth behind a large sculpture resembling bull horns in the ruins of Knossos. It ends with a close-up of an olive branch and a massive wave of cicada chirps. This is New Orleans artist Anastasia Pelias’s single channel video “Alati”. (The term is Greek for “sea salt”.)

http://vimeo.com/23860442

Pelias descends from a New Orleans family of Greek heritage. In her youth, her father told her that their surname was a badge of honor which connected them to the ancient Greek King Pelias who was sired by Poseidon, the god of the sea. This connection made its mark on Pelias, and her love for the sea has increased ever since. The proof is in the current bodies of work Pelias has deployed in three separate group exhibitions that are running concurrently in New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama.

“Alati” is part of the exhibition “Mara/Thalassa/Kai: The Sea” at the UNO St. Claude Gallery in New Orleans. The title of the exhibition refers to three ancient goddesses of the sea with Pelias representing Thalassa, the primordial Greek goddess of the Aegean. (Coincidentally, or not, Thalassa also figures in another high-profile exhibition in New Orleans this summer.) Along with the video, Pelias is showing two large paintings from her “Washed” series – “Washed (Translucent Turquoise)” and “Washed (Green).” In these expansive, sumptuous and limpid monochromes, Pelias played with the liquidity, viscosity and translucency of her oils, coaxing the movement of water in ripples and waves across the canvases. Beside the sea, painting is actually Pelias’ first love. She considers herself “a painter who happens to engage in other media.”

A triptych of three paintings from the “Washed” series is her contribution to “Fresh! New Work by 9 Gallery Artists” at the Heriard Cimino Gallery on Julia St. in New Orleans.  The three pieces together give the viewer a watery tour through the various moods of the color blue.

Pelias is also part of  “Catalyst: Artists of South Louisiana Respond to the Gulf Oil Crisis” at Space 301 in Mobile, Alabama. The group exhibition is comprised of more than 80 artworks by 18 New Orleans and Louisiana artists and aims at continuing the dialogue concerning the Gulf Oil Crisis a year after the event. In keeping with the somber tone of the exhibition, Pelias has contributed a darker painting from the “Washed” series – “Washed (Golden-Green and Violet-Umber).” One half of the canvas evokes green sea and light while the other half evokes impenetrable murkiness and death. Along with this painting, Pelias is exhibiting an installation and a video, both equally chilling. The installation titled “Pensacola Beach” consists of an oil and salt encrusted hornet’s nest or barnacle-like object (retrieved from the beach during the height of the crisis) atop a marble slab and a large photograph of the object itself. The piece eminates death and disaster, yet it retains a peculiar beauty and preciousnes.

The 3-channel video installation “It’s Gonna Be Alright, Baby” is Pelias’ ode to the crisis by way of oyster shucker Thomas “Uptown T” Stuart, who works the oyster bar at the artist’s favorite New Orleans oyster house. The Gulf Oil Crisis left a pall across the Gulf seafood industry, devastating many seafood crops and practically ruining the lives of many fishers and restauranteurs. In the video, Pelias documents Stuart shucking oysters, discussing the love and pride he has for his trade, and consoling the artist herself. Through Pelias’ editing, this endearing documentation becomes morose and psychotic, pointing to the fact that the crisis is far from over. If anything, we probably won’t know about the full impact of the crisis for years to come. The effect of the video is devastating in its repetitiveness. Pelias stated that she wanted it to mirror the repetitiveness of the media coverage that came out of the height of the crisis.

http://vimeo.com/24443313

So Pelias is currently having quite a moment. She has never been what anyone would call a political artist: her oeuvre has always been more about a sensuous, deep, and visceral engagement with creation and form rather than politics. Yet, all of our lives have seemed to become more political in Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Oil Crisis. It seems foolish to think that anyone, including Pelias, could escape this. What is exciting about Pelias’s current work is that it engages in the political without completely succumbing to it. She is not making broadsides; she’s manifesting a personal as well as a universal sea change.

Published: Monday, July 11, 2011, 5:26 AM

By Thomas B. Harrison, Press-Register
Follow

Generic Art Solutions

‘The Raft,’ 2010, 82lb wet strength billboard paper, 126 x 186 inches.

(Courtesy Jonathan Ferrara Gallery)

MOBILE, Ala. — More than a year after the BP oil spill, Louisiana artist Allison Stewart has vivid memories of those harrowing weeks and months.

“I was inspired by all the silent devastation that occurred after the oil spill,” she says. “Marsh plants changed from verdant green to orange to scarlet to umber and finally to black as they absorbed oil from the water. Animals were captured in the oily muck along the shoreline. Birds engulfed in oil could no longer fly.

“All of this unfolded silently while oil continued to gush for over 100 days before being capped. Our fragile coastline was in a death grip and people were the ones making all the noise.”

Raine Bedsole says she “felt the depression and fear that was rampant in all of our communities — the feelings of utter helplessness in the face of a force that was destroying the very reason we live here.”

Robert Hannant says he was moved by “the human element of the spill . . . from both the BP side and the victims’ side. As we all saw many images of the oil and the birds and the marshes, there were enormous consequences for the families of those killed on the rig and the people who worked in the affected areas.”

The very mention of BP and the events of last year still evoke anger, disgust and outrage — and no small measure of sadness at what was lost and will continue to be lost in years to come. An impressive group of Louisiana artists have channeled their individual and collective responses through their art, and the result is “Catalyst: Artists of Southern Louisiana Respond to the Gulf Coast Oil Crisis” on view through Sept. 4 at Space 301 in downtown Mobile.

Robin Wallis Atkinson (robinwallis.atkinson@gmail.com) is curator for the exhibit, which opened July 8 during the LoDa Artwalk and features more than 80 works by artists including Ron Bechet, Raine Bedsole, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Skylar Fein, Robert Hannant, Rajko Radovanovic, Christopher Saucedo, Allison Stewart, Robert Tannen and many more. (See information box.)

Anastasia Pelias

“Washed” , 2011, 72 x 72 inches, oil and acrylic on canvas.

(Courtesy of Anastasia Pelias)

“Catalyst” presents more than 80 works of art in a diverse range of media, including photography, abstract painting, large-scale charcoal drawings, sculpture — both conceptual and representative, digital video and performance.

Public programming for “Catalyst” is co-sponsored by the Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans; educational material supplied by the Gulf Restoration Network. Educational programming planned in conjunction with “Catalyst” includes a film series that will run for the entirety of the exhibition, moderated public and an information lounge.

The film series will feature local and regional documentaries that directly relate to the topics addressed in the exhibition and will conclude with discussions led by local environmental agencies. Public conversations will pair speakers addressing relevant issues that affect the residents of the Gulf Coast.

The Catalyst Lounge will be an information center offering resource materials in a variety of forms that complement the exhibit and provides information and connections with organizations dedicated to rehabilitating the environment.

Artwork by these Southern Louisiana artists is a direct response to the BP disaster of 2010 and is meant as “a spark to ignite an environmentally, politically and socially charged conversation,” according to a CLA news release. Issues include “degradation of the Louisiana Wetlands, the crippling effects on the seafood industry and the historically insufficient regulation of the petroleum industry in the Gulf South,” the news release states.

“Catalyst” also examines “the endemic systems of neglect that have long plagued the lands and the people of Southern Louisiana.” The exhibit . . . is described as “a holistic examination of the many sides of this disaster.” : ]

Read more about “Catalyst” and additional comments by the curator and participating artists on the Press-Register blog site: http://www.al.com/events/mobile.

Allison Stewart says “Catalyst” is “an exhibit of art about life, as compared to art about art.”

All art is political, she says, “and all artists are reporters on the human condition. Artists can scream or they can whisper if they choose, but they can say something important about who we are and how we treat the world. Moreover they can say something about the world as we wish it could be.”

Stewart will have four pieces in the “Catalyst” exhibit: “Vermilion Canto #7” is a mixed media painting on canvas, 48 by 60 inches, completed in 2010 shortly after the BP oil spill.

“It is a metaphor for blood on the water, as the incident killed 11 rig workers and countless marine species and birds,” she says.

Michel Varisco’s “Edge of the Marshes” from his “Lake Borgne” Installation, 6 prints 138 x 45 inches, dye sublimated prints on polysilk. (Courtesy Michel Varisco)

Also on exhibit are three other pieces from her “Water Borne” series, completed in 2006. They are mixed-media works on paper, 23 by 52 inches, which allude to toxins in the waters of the Mississippi River and the Gulf as a result of fertilizer runoff, industrial waste and other things.

Raine Bedsole contributed two “long boat“ sculptures approximately 8 feet long made of paper and fabric “skin” over a steel structure, plus several watercolors on antique papers — ledger pages and London Daily News pages.

“The watercolors were a response last summer, to the overwhelming feelings brought on by the oil spill,” she says. “They are ‘portraits’ of the Forgotten Ones — the creatures not mentioned in the news because they aren’t seafood and have no economic effect on humans.”

Bedsole says her artwork represents an emotional response to the tragedy, and her work is not political.

“The watercolors are about the delicate beauty of sea life, memories of scuba diving and seeing this wonder, a reminder to protect the life we can’t see,” she says. “My work has always involved water; either as actual flow or as the ether of the psyche. This work is more specific than usual.”

Hannant has 12 pieces in the “Catalyst” show, all photographs shot on his iPhone. The images are 19-by-19-inches in the frame.

The oil spill “confirmed, once again, that the resiliency of the people of Southeast Louisiana should never be questioned,” the artist says. “Conversely, the greed and disregard of people in power in this country tells us that their ilk should always be kept in check.”

“As a pacifist and someone who has witnessed the human condition in times of disaster many times, the BP spill made me understand that in making political art my position will always be about the human element . . . as opposed to environmental or economic.

“I regard myself as someone who will ask viewers to consider what I propose as opposed to taking an angry or reactionary standpoint. It is always possible that at my prodding that the viewers’ conclusions may be stronger and more empowering than anything I could say in a more forceful manner.”

Dawn DeDeaux has two pieces in the exhibit: “Project Mutants,” which she says “addresses the larger geography of polluted waterways”; and “Family Legacy (Test Tubes)” for which she used a selection of photo-sculptures from a larger installation portraying a multigenerational family floating in vessels of water, “to illustrate our intimate relationship and dependency on water for personal survival and that of subsequent generations.”

“My core objective is to personalize the crisis via emotional resonance,” DeDeaux says. “I think the problem is not so simple as to only demonize industry.

“I imagine a more successful, far-reaching outcome to be derived from generating greater individual ownership and participation in problem solving; and the furthering of citizen-science and citizen-activists who can demand changes through our governmental processes; and through the advocacy of widespread lifestyle change to safeguard our environments.”

The artist says the BP oil spill magnified her concerns over water quality, and her recent exhibit, titled “Unseen,” was her immediate response to the disaster. For a “video walk” through of portions of “Unseen,” go to: http://www.arthurrogergallery.com/dynamic/video.asp?ExhibitID=189. Images of DeDeaux’ recent works can be viewed at: http://www.arthurrogergallery.com/dynamic/artist.asp?ArtistID=18.

Debbie Fleming Caffery says she is inspired by the beauty of Louisiana “and sadly inspired by the neglect (that) industry and our government have for it.”

Her work in this exhibit is titled “Giants” and is nine tintypes of fishermen/oystermen, each 8 by 10 inches — “these are sketches of images on tin that will eventually be made 16 by 20,” she says. “I made tintypes as they have an oily feel, and I thought this would be a good way to interrupt the work.”

Matt Vis and Tony Campbell of Generic Art Solutions will exhibit “Raft,” a 10-by-15-foot contemporary photographic representation (an “indoor billboard”) of Géricault’s 1818-19 painting “The Raft of the Medusa.”

“While Géricault was portraying the victims of a shipwreck, we are portraying the survivors of another tragedy at sea, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion,” Vis says. “Much of our photographic work is essentially contemporary interpretations of classical paintings with biblical and epic stories, put into contemporary context by weaving in current local events.”

Vis and Campbell in 2006 created “The Last Supper” as a crawfish boil in front of a FEMA trailer.

“With the media focused on the grossly understated and misnamed ‘spill,’ we kept reminding people that the tragedy actually began with a fiery explosion, immediately claiming 11 lives,” Vis says.

Also on view in “Catalyst“ will be the artists’ photo suite titled “A Body of Water: One through Eleven,” which Vis describes as “large, hauntingly empty photographs of the Gulf representing the human loss that the media quickly passed over.”

A piece from Dawn DeDeaux’ ‘Project Mutants’ series is part of the ‘Catalyst’ show at Space 301. (Courtesy of Dawn DeDeaux)

Robin Wallis Atkinson is an independent curator based in New Orleans, where she works for the nonprofit collective Antenna Gallery in the St. Claude Arts District. In 2008 she was curatorial coordinator for Prospect.1 New Orleans, the largest-ever contemporary art biennial to be held in the United States.

She says the title of this exhibition is a double entendre.

“It first refers to the source of the exhibition topic, which was the disastrous oil release by BP in the Gulf of Mexico during the summer of 2010,” she says. “Crude oil, in its refined states, is a common catalyst for many different chemical/physical reactions.

“It is my hope that this exhibition itself can become a catalyst for a larger and ongoing conversation about the perils of the petroleum industry in Southern Louisiana as well as issues about environmental conservation and proper balance between culture, nature and industry in this area.”

Artists were selected over the course of one year, according to Atkinson.

“The initial 15 were selected during the summer of 2010 with the additional artists added when the show was revived for Space 301,” she says. “Many of the artists are personal acquaintances of mine from my work with Prospect New Orleans as well as my involvement in the St. Claude Arts District. The process was very organic.

“I would have a studio visit with one artist, and as we were talking I would hear about the kind of work they were doing in response to the BP disaster, then they would tell me about another artist they knew of that was also working along the same theme.

“Eventually I found so many people working with such a similar ideological stance, I decided to get everyone (the initial 15) together for a group meeting and that is when I proposed the exhibition ‘Catalyst’ to the artists.”

“The art ranges from political to documentary to humanist, and is all extremely socially engaged.”

Although she declined to list the signature pieces in this exhibit, Atkinson says “each and every work in the show is as remarkable as the next.”

“With the largeness of the issues addressed in ‘Catalyst,’ I wanted to be very careful to pick artworks that were extremely well thought out, well executed and of the highest visual aesthetic,” she says. “It would be a disservice to the seriousness of these issues to do anything less.”

Atkinson hopes viewers will walk away from “Catalyst” with “a more cohesive understanding of the state of affairs in Southern Louisiana and the Gulf Coast — in relation to the BP disaster, to ongoing wetlands loss, to underregulated industrial practice and the fragility and interconnectedness between industry (petroleum, seafood, tourism) and environment.”

“I hope that each viewer will walk away with a petition that urges legislators to support the Oil Spill Commission’s findings and vote for putting Clean Water Act fines back into the Gulf ecosystems affected by the BP drilling disaster as well as the establishment of a Regional Citizens’ Advisory Council,” she says.

“These reforms are essential to the recovery and protection of the Gulf and the nation.”

 

’CATALYST’ at SPACE 301

 

WHAT: Centre for the Living Arts presents “Catalyst: Artists of Southern Louisiana Respond to the Gulf Coast Oil Crisis”

WHEN: through Sept. 4

WHERE: Space 301, Cathedral Square in downtown Mobile

ARTISTS: Ron Bechet, Raine Bedsole, Willie Birch, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Skylar Fein, Generic Art Solutions, Robert Hannant, Jennifer Odem, Anastasia Pelias, Rajko Radovanovic, Dan Rule, Christopher Saucedo, Allison Stewart, David Sullivan, Robert Tannen, Dan Tague, Michel Varisco.

CURATOR: Robin Wallis Atkinson

HOURS: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; noon until 5 p.m. Sunday

ADMISSION: free

INFO: 251-208-5671 or email space301@cityofmobile.org  or robinwallis.atkinson@gmail.com

NOTE: Public programming for “Catalyst” is co-sponsored by the Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans; educational material supplied by the Gulf Restoration Network.

LINKS: Gulf Restoration Network: http://healthygulf.org/

Press Street: http://www.press-street.com/

Space 301: http://www.space301.com/

Two Local Art Exhbits Explore Linking Power of the Sea

by Kathy Rodriguez

Swoon’s ‘Thalassa’

Rian Kerrane’s installation

NoDef Art Writer Kathy Rodriguez reviews Swoon’s Thalassa at NOMA and mara/thalassa/kai: the SEA, a travelling group exhibition at UNO’s St. Claude Gallery. 

In the Anabasis, Xenophon – a Greek essayist and historian concurrent with Socrates – relates the trials of ten thousand Greek merchants lost after a battle with the Persians. A famous scene from his account describes the resounding cry of the Greeks who, after losing hope and sight of their homeland, finally approach Greek settlements on the coast of the Black Sea. Their mouths open wide, straining their tear-stained cheeks with the bellowing call, “Thalassa, thalassa!” or, “the sea, the sea!”

Xenophon suggests the emphasis of the ocean in Greek life with this description of overflowing relief. The call is to thalassa, the water, not the settlements surrounding it. This speaks of the power of the water, its gravitational pull, as well as a society (among many) that places great economic, cultural, and historical significance on the ocean. Thalassa is also the name of the primordial sea goddess who represents the Aegean Sea, that elongation of the Mediterranean that stretches across the eastern coast of the Greek mainland. Yet another characterization of the Aegean: a waterway among multitudinous islands. Despite all its different names, the ocean is a great connecting force, linking land masses and their civilizations. Our contemporary societies are rooted in the civilizations established by ancient cultures, and it is these societies that projected a specifically female identification with the ocean as it relates to the goddess herself, cycles, and a source of nourishment.

Two exhibitions currently on view in New Orleans explore the subject of Thalassa with widely varying approachse. At its off-campus gallery on St. Claude Ave., the University of New Orleans hosts mara/thalassa/kai: the SEA, a group effort of Anastasia Pelias, Rian Kerrane, and Melissa Borman, with works in various media Now in New Orleans from Denver, the show moves next to Minneapolis, a city as spotted with lakes as the Aegean is strewn with islands. Thalassa, a monumental installation by New York artist Swoon, is a temporary, site-specific installation at New Orleans Museum of Art. All of the artists are female, which in part informs their singular interpretations on the shared theme of representing historical ties and individual identity with the iconography of the ocean.

Out of the three artists included the summer expo at UNO St. Claude, Pelias is most directly linked with Thalassa. Her video piece, titled Alati, Greek for salt, is a broad leap from the more formal abstract expressionist paintings and found-object collages familiar to her work. The video is an amalgamation of continuously looping, brief moments filmed on the Aegean island Skopelos, where her mother was born. Pelias symbolizes her family ties with intimate close-up shots of vegetation, rock formations, and moving water. She savors these moments, like the anonymous mouth that relishes worn sea rocks at the beginning of the video. The mundane images of local scenery, captured by friends and family and interspersed with an erratic soundtrack of washing waves, picture the soil in which Pelias’ history is rooted and the water which is such a strong part of her heritage. Though representational images, they are abstractions of her family’s growth from this landscape.

Like Pelias, Kerrane traces her own matrilineage in a recurring installation of a cast iron deck chair. In this manifestation, the frame of the chair is stretched with a swath of knit red hair meant to symbolize her grandmother. It anchors a sea of translucent plastic sheets that writhe over oscillating table fans. The plastic formally references the scintillating movement of semi-opaque waves, and the fans create a gentle sound likened to water. But, the sheets are bunched and flattened on the floor over snaking cords, making this association a bit of a conceptual stretch. The colorlessness of the plastic might symbolize the wasting of a memory, particularly of the ocean, which was near her grandmother’s home in Dun na Mara (“Fort of the Sea”), Ireland. Still, it almost seems too blunt, or even careless, compared to the obvious concern given to the chair.

Borman’s small-scale photographs mounted on aluminum detail the formal differences in color, size, and shape of ocean waves. They read like a story board, less about the specific lineage described by her two counterparts and more like stills narrating a personal experience. She took these at an up-close vantage point while swimming near Mexico using a little waterproof camera, licking the lens to keep it clean. These are the most directly personal images in the expo, as they document intimate and multiple encounters between the force of water and artist. They show a balance of power between the uncertain and ever-changing waves – and the dangers they might conceal – in the vulnerable but intrepid photographer. Borman documents cycles of change in her record of the waves over several days, archiving these memories with the greatest care.

At NOMA, Thalassa literally looms over the viewer, similar to the waves that overtook Borman’s vision. Caledonia Curry, better known by her alias Swoon, took over a Mid-City warehouse to prepare the monumental figure. From the ceiling of NOMA’s great hall, she and her small army of assistants installed the massive portrait, which stretches tentacles assembled from oceanic diecuts, intensely colored linoleum prints, and neutral-toned cloth and paper strips to the banisters framing the mezzanine. At first glance, Thalassa’s hopeful upward gaze appears to be Swoon’s own. Though a compelling idea, the face of the goddess actually belongs to performance artist Naima Penniman, half of the duo Alixa +Naima, who created a piece based on Katrina. Still, the resemblance indicates Swoon’s attachment to the water. Last year, millions of barrels of oil frothed into the Gulf of Mexico while Swoon worked on various humanitarian projects in Haiti. Her empathy for New Orleans and the Gulf during and after this disaster springs from her personal history as a native of Daytona Beach, Florida. With her site-specific representation of the goddess, Swoon suggests a protective and concerned force, differing from the destructive characterization water has earned locally.

Like the ocean, the subject of Thalassa literally links these artists. Somehow, they are all linked with New Orleans too. Pelias is a citizen of the city, who also earned her graduate degree at University of New Orleans like Kerrane. Borman is familiar with New Orleans through Kerrane, and the context of her photographs suggests an absence of boundaries. As member of a military family, her peripatetic existence has asked her to call many places home – New Orleans could be one. Swoon is linked to the city both through tragedy and concept. The sheen of oil that stretched over the Gulf grew into an awful island that almost linked our distant coasts. But the water underneath it constantly connects the shores, and Thalassa herself is a reminder that there is care and concern for our plight. Like the water, history ever changes, and – as represented by the work of these artists – art is the means to record those changes as they shape and define our existence.

UNO St. Claude Gallery
Opening June 11th

A three-person exhibition.

mara/thalassa/kai is conceived as collaboration between three
women and an embodiment of their connections to the Sea. The
origins of these memories, Hawaii, Greece and Ireland are bound to
each through ancestry, upbringing and cultural heritage.

Melissa Borman, Anastasia Pelias and Rian Kerrane utilize the visual
media of photography, sculpture, video and painting to conceptually
reference personal relationships to the sea through current reflections
on memories. Each artist uniquely focuses on association with
location, identity and the evolving exploration of self.