The Basement Gallery in the Art building – what you've been missing.....

Ever heard of the basement Gallery on the Art Building? Until a few days ago, neither had I.

Now, many people in the UCD community have loved and enjoyed the Nelson Gallery for years. I myself have been there many times making my way downstairs to see everything from a collection of hand turned wooden bowls to the recent(and favorite so far) Merch Art exhibit. But that's not what this entry is about. I am talking about a room that is located at the far end of the basement hallway in what looks like a forgotten corner next to a boring supply clos

et. The room is simply called “The Basement Gallery”.

The Basement Gallery is however anything but boring. It s a simple format featuring budding artists from the UCD art program. Often their work is hanging crudely with simple paint smudged push pins or binder clips. Some sculptural work is suspended from the the rough exposed rafters with crude bailing wire. Labels for the pieces are often hand written and sometimes in pencil.

The art itself is an exciting mish-mash of works from every medium and any genre. Whatever students are working on. I particularly loved the works of a student named Liam O'Donnell who had both black and white photos of athletes and paintings made with prismacolor pastels, the two types of work having no apparent connection except perhaps to the artist himself. Two feet away from these were 2 large iron girder-like sculptures that seemed to be swimming up stream of all the other displays.

There is no attendant on duty. It's truly a “do it your self and view it yourself” kind of exhibit. One of my favorite things about the exhibit was the visitor's lor which was simply a cheap sketchbook picked up

most likely from the art supply section of the bookstore and tossed onto a small worn table with peeling paint near the entrance. Perhaps because it is a sketchbook with blank pages and no lines, visitors have taken it upon themselves add their own “art” to the exhibit, or at least to the log book. As you thumb through the pages you see a lot of quick cheap comments like “nice work” or “thanks”. Not exactly earth shaking stuff but the illustrations people have added are curious and thought provoking. One picture shows a severed hand with long talons and the words “Haitian Divorce” written on the palm. It's possibly a reference to the Steely Dan song of the same name?

The overall impression you get is that the museum is in a constant state of flux and it's wonderful. You feel that pieces are constantly coming and going as students bring them in fresh from their class reviews or pack them off to their portfolios. The exhibit is a fantastic peek into the life of the art student and perhaps even more the “mind” of the art student.

Photo at top left: Untitled - by Liam O'Donnell , conte and prismacolor pastels

photo at lower right: a page from the visitor's log

The Basement Gallery is located in where else? -the basement of the Art Building at UC Davis and is open all year whenever the building itself is open.

Tapestry of Heritage-African American Quilts at the Nelson Gallery

African American Quilts at the Nelson Gallery

The Sandra McPherson Collection and the Avis C Robinson Collection

During the days of slavery African American

women not only worked the fields and cleaned the plantation houses but were the last line of defense against the bone chilling cold that crept into the cabins and field houses where their families lived. They sewed by hand not only the clothing the me

n, women and children wore in the day but also the bedding that kept them warm at night. As good material was hard to come by, they collected scraps of whatever they could get; recycling worn out thread-bare clothing, beddi

ng and even flour sacks. They would

carefully take apart the material and collect it until they had enough to make the heavy quilts that kept them warm at night. Out of these hard beginnings came the tradition of African American quilting.

This week at the Nelson gallery in the basement of the Art Building you can see a fantastic collection of these quilts from the slave era until now. When you walk into the exhibit you see an As you weave through admiring amazing array of colors and intricate repeated patterns. you might be tempted to quickly walk past a more simple quilt hanging in the middle of the room. However a second glance at the nearby information placard reveals it to be made by slaves almost two hundred years ago. Suddenly you can't take your eyes off it and it all the other quilts disappear. You can feel the heavy air of history hanging around it as you get an overwhelming urge to touch it in hopes of feeling a connection to that long ago time. You hold your breath and try to imagine the quilt lying across a bed in a field cabin....

Over time the tradition of quilting evolved spawning colorful repeating patterns and designs. Many examples of these can be found at the exhibit this week at the Nelson gallery.

upper right: various quilts at the exhibit

- photo by Dave Tipton

lower right: Quilt by Rosa Ella Kincaid made around the turn of the century -photo by Dave Tipton

Vinyl Records - A Lost Canvas

I remember when I was a kid laying on the floor of my mom's little apartment in Concord with half her record collection strewn over her 1970's avocado toned shag carpet. She had an old combination unit stereo that had a record player on top, a radio for FM and AM and a eight track tape player- state of the art for the time. My mom was a returning student, having dropped out of high school to give birth to me. Now she was going back to get her high school equivalency certificate and eventually she would go on to get first her Bachelor's Degree from Mills College and then her Master's Degree from UC Berkeley. I would spend hours looking at the covers of the albums while the sounds of Led Zeppelin's grinding guitar or Simon and Garfunkle's smooth harmonizing drifted out over the green landscape.

The Album covers were amazing to me. The pictures and the art work were magical and transported me to whatever mystical land was depicted. It's a ritual that is dying out in the age of digital music. The act of actually holding the large cardboard sleeve in your hand and running your fingers obver the images or feeling the innovative textures that were often incorporated into the sleeve so you could “feel” it as well as “see” it.

On a recent visit to the Nelson Gallery in the art building there was a great selection of these albums as apart of the Merch Art exhibit(See Merch Art Blog previous). Lots of musicians were hiring real artists to design there album covers such as “Sticky Fingers” by the Rolling Stones. The album cover was designed by the excentric Andy Warhol and featured a picture of a pair of jean with a real working zipper that could atually zip down to revel the “naked” album underneath. This haptic/optic approach makes the viewer want to do more than view.  I remember my dad had this album and used to scold me and say I was going to break the zipper.  Plus I think it made him uncomfortable that his child was playing with the zipper on this pair of a stranger's pants.   Big Brother and the Holding Company lead by Janis Joplin came out with an album called Cheap Thrills in which they hired. Local Winters underground Comic book artist Robert Crumb to pen a comic across the cover. An album by the Talking Heads featured a see-thru yellow plastics jacket. The designs and art chosen use several Gestalt principles to draw the eye to images ides.  Isolation of a single subject from the haze and business of the rest of the photo causes you to wonder about the small character in the middle of one Blue Oyster Cult Album.  All these techniques were completey original in their time and they paved the way for artists and musicians to work together to bring us the music in extra dimension. If you haven't been by the Nelson Gallery to check it out make plans to do so because looking at the tiny thumbnail attached to your mp3 file is not the same!

Artists For Sale?

When you think of an artist's work what would you imagine? A painting hanging in a museum? A sculpture next to a pond? That makes sense, but how about a Wayne Thibaud wristwatch, or an Andy Warhol handbag? Those are probably not the first things that come to mind.

Right now over at the project room in the Nelson Gallery is a fantastic exhibit where you can find all these things and more. The exhibit is simply entitled “Merch Art” but packs a vibrant technicolored punch.

Why would famous artists so blatantly delve into the commercial world? There are a few possible reasons; on the advice of their agents, for extra publicity, contract obligations or perhaps one of the oldest reasons in the world – to pay the rent. - good old “quick cash”.

Whatever the reason, the Merch Art exhibit has a fabulous display of a variety of artists lending themselves to the commercial design art world. It's the perfect answer to the question “Design or Art?” these products are both. Hands down my favorite in the building, the exhibit features everything from Record album art by the likes of comic artist R. Crumb and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe to plush toys by Jeff Koons. There are running descriptions of why the artists did what they did, how they were inspired and how the products were used and enjoyed.

There were a couple of brightly colored golf balls with quotes about life on them. At first glance you couldn't they didn't seem very interesting but the accompanying literature told a different story: a collection of artists in New York joined forces with each designing a different hole for a miniature golf course. The course itself was actually playable and the museum housing it charged $5 per game. The exhibit was so successful that the museum reportedly made $85,000 in three days. This just goes to show that stepping outside conventional design and marrying together less conventional mediums can yield fantastic results.

Photo 1 - "Bunny Rabbit" (2004) Cookie Jar by Momoyo Torimitsu, photo by Dave Tipton

The Merch Art exhibit runs from September 24 – December 13, 2009 In the “Project room” of the Nelson Gallery in the basement of the Art building at UC Davis. Items on display are from the collection of Lawrence Banka and Judith Gordon of San Francisco

The Coffee House Comes Full Circle

At some point after coming back to school for the first time in years, I decided the experience wasn't complete without a visit to the UCD Coffee House. Now to be honest, although it's been a long time since I had taken classes I have been on the campus off and on teaching at the Craft Center, guiding trips for Outdoor Adventures and a variety of other activities. I mean, let's face it, if you live in a college town it's pretty hard to avoid “The College”. So after about a week of classes I was feeling the need for caffeine and I thought with great excitement “hey – I can go to the Coffee House”.

Now when I first got here as a student years ago the Coffee House was sort of a shack on the east side of the Memorial Union which like most of the rest of campus had not been updated or remodeled in years. They were always battling cockroaches and barely staying ahead of the health departments's axe. It had old beat up wooden paneling, worn out tables and chairs, thread bare thirty year old couches and an old upright piano sitting off to one side and never quite in tune. Amateur “Chopins” would randomly come in, sit down and play everything from “Moonlight Sonata” to the ever hated “Chopsticks”. So the place had issues but it w

as all part of the charm and we loved it.

At some point later after I had left school I heard that they day had come when the Coffee House had come head to head with the health department and lost. The campus administration had always had a tenuous relationship with the Coffee House but the students loved it like an old flea bitten dog and if it were to be closed down the resulting protest would likely make the six o'clock news destroy every last bit of lawn in the quad area. Two thing motivate college students: the first is the promise of free beer and the second is any sort of interruption in their supply of caffeine.

So the administration opened their purse to help out the Coffee House for the first time since Amelia Earhart went missing. Once the resulting moth cloud dissipated they got to work and started a remodeling and upgrade process that stretched over twenty years, cost millions of dollars and saw the Coffee House move to several locations.

The first big renovation lasted on and off over the next 5 years and when finished unveiled a bigger brighter, all new state of the art Coffee House on the west side of the Memorial Union. Upon returning for Picnic day visits aging alums grumbled and groaned that it looked like a shopping mall and had been completely stripped of it's “homey” charm – not to mention the cockroaches. New students, however loved the new building having known nothing else. Eventually, however there turned out to be construction issues due to cost cutting misjudgements that seemed to plague many of the new projects in the late nineties. So soon talk began about remodeling and moving the Coffee house once again to make it “stronger, faster and sleeker” then ever before. The more recent students picked up the “grumble” baton from the alums and ran with it, taking their place in a long line constant construction critics.

Fast forward to now, and the Coffee House has been through several moves. When I returned recently to get my all new 2009 cup of adrenaline I was amazed to find the Coffee House where?......right back where it was 20 years ago. Not only that, but it had been divided into a half dozen small shops categorized by the different products they sell so that if you wanted a cup of coffee, a piece of fruit and a sandwich you would literally have to go through three different small shops each with their own cash register. With horror I sat contemplating how this could possibly be an improvement when I noticed a display in the hallway that ran between all the shops and explained everything. I sighed in relief as I realized this location was temporary. The newer more bionic coffee shop would be unveiled back on the west side of the MU in 2010. Further, the display was actually quite delightful and had a great collection of articles and photos chronicling the trials, tribulations and travels of the Coffee House from it's humble roach hotel beginnings to the soon-to-be-unveiled “Taj Mahal” that is apparently underway only a hundred feet away.

upper left photo - the recent, compartmentalized coffee house

lower right photo - display of pictures of the coffee house over the years

The UCD Coffee house is open Monday through Saturday 7 am to 6 pm – if you come by bring small bills and some patience

Campus Parking - The Step Child of UCD

Tried to get a parking spot on campus lately?  Try again!

Campus parking has always been a  source of friction at UCD - Anyone who has ever had to park here knows that it's hard to find, expensive and if you mess up - really expensive!

I thought I would take a look at the different aspects of parking from a design perspective and see what I could come up with.  

Historically as the campus has grown "real estate", or the  space available for buildings and classrooms has become a hot commodity.  Often, parking lots have been sacrificed to make way for new residence and instructional halls.  With enrollment continuing to increase almost every year since Davis started this had exacerbated the difficulty of providing enough spaces for all the cars that need to be on campus.  Wait a minute...do all these cars really need to be on campus?  Probably not.  

One of the most overlooked potential solutions to the parking problem is simply sliming down the number of cars that are on campus at any given time.  But how do we do that/  Well, here's one solution.  

For an answer we can look to UC Irvine - At UC Irvine  Freshmen or sophomores are not allowed to have cars.   When compared to other schools their parking problems are much less.  The system is less impacted.  

So what other problems are there ?  How about bad publicity?  The parking program has a bad reputation.  Not what you would think of as a normal problem but it's true.  If you look at it from a standpoint of negativity.  People commonly refer  and the parking attendants as Parking Nazis.

Rather than blame them, a solution might be to change the scope of their job.  For one thing, they are required to fill a quota for tickets.  This is to generate funds and the campus has actually come to rely on the funds.  The thing is, their job should be to enforce the rules with the overall goal being everyone following the rules and things running smoothly.  If officers have imposed quotas then it puts them in the position where they want people to violate the rules and this stands in direct opposition to the goal of having everything run well.

So the solution to this - remove the quotas and start a more positive based training for the enforcement officers.  Sounds a little mushy why not try it.  If it doesn't work, try something else.

A Man in Touch with Nature– British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy

"Roof" (2005) by Andy Goldsworthy; photo by Lee Ewing, courtesy of National Gallery of Art

Perhaps one of the most unique Sculptors of our time is Andy Goldsworthy.  Most people in our country have seen one or more of his sculptures,  or at least in the thinking of comics commentator Scott McCloud, a digitally reproduced image of a photograph of one of his sculptures.  

Goldsworthy is one of the purest e

xamples of an artist who draws his ideas from the world around him rather from within.  His eyes are always open and looking for new subjects with which to apply his hands to.  His method is a multi part process beginning with long walks in nature and observation of the natural world. He considers whatever he finds to be potential canvas, media, backdrop or even a tool with which to construct his natural sculptures. 

A freshly blanketed field of snow might become the setting for a mammoth pattern of snakelike trenches which when viewed from a distance take on a mesmerizing pattern.  Scattered willow branches might become an interwoven basket-like creation that suggests a nest for some mythical dinosaur-sized 

      bird.  A long black thorn might become a piercing or scratching tool for making patterns on  palm leaves.

He sees shapes, colors and potential in the smallest of items collecting them and rearranging them so that they form beautiful patterns which stand in 

contrast the natural patterns around them.   The effect is that the sculptures seem to have magically created themselves. 

Goldsworthy can spend hours and even days on a sculpture and if he feels it isn't quite right he will take it apart and re-do everything.

Most of his sculptures(but not all) are temporary, often created in places where

 the where the surrounding elements themselves will soon reclaim them.  They are recorded and brought to the world in photographs.  Goldsworthy himself is often the photographer, waiting hours for just the right time of day to get the best light with which to bathe his creations.

A documentary of Andy Goldsworthy's works entitled “Rivers and Tides”(2003) is vailable at video stores and on Netflix(also available on Netflix for instant viewing)

* Photo - "Pebble Circle" by Andy Goldsworthy 

Rusty and Creaking - The re-admittance Process at UC Davis

Recently I had the "pleasure" of going through the re-admittance process at UCD.  Why "pleasure" with quotes? Because it was anything but a pleasure.  In fact it was downright painfully and possibly treacherous to your health.  

It all started when I realized Davis had opened up the Interior Architecture program through the Department of Design.   I had just been getting ready to leave Davis for good when this new program caught my eye.  After trying a couple of classes during summer I decided I might checking into how difficult it would be to re -enroll.  After meeting with advisers it seemed like a possibility.  So last June I filled out an application and mailed it to the registrar's office along with a check for $70.   

Well, summer went by and Fall was beginning and I still hadn't heard anything.  I had called the registrar's office early on and each time they said they would email me as soon as they processed my paperwork.  With classes starting in a couple weeks I thought it might be convenient to know so that I could plan accordingly.  This time I was forwarded to the person who was processing the applications for re-admittance students.  She didn't answer and I got her voice mail so I left a message.  Later I called and left two more.  To these I also got no response.  I thought they had either lost my application or decided to turn me down but I figured either way someone should talk to me because  I had paid them $70 and they owed me that much.  

So I went to the registrar's office and waited in line for a 45 minutes before finally reaching the front and telling them the story.  This time I got results  one of the desk attendants ran in back and a minute later came back out.  She informed me that I had been approved but they were not processing any of the re-admittance students' paperwork until a few days later, nor were they letting any of them know whether they were accepted or not.  

The Problem - classes had started a week before.  The person at the desk  advised me to keep going to classes that I wanted to get into and as soon as they processed me I could go online and enroll.  That sounded good except that the classes were already full and had been for a long time as previously enrolled students had filed them up.  I met two other people who had applied for re-admittence and they, like myself had been attending classes not knowing whether they were wasting their time or not.  I wished them luck.  

Eventually,  after calling a few more times I found out I had been processed and was in the system.  No letters or emails ever came.  To this day I have received nothing "official".  No "Welcome back Dave"  no congratulations, nothing.  Just a bill for $3500 on my campus accounting page with lots of descriptions of the horrors that await me should I not pay in time(that path I am well aware of)

I fought for awhile and go tint the two classes I needed.  Because I work 30 - 40 hours a week I can only go part time so two classes was enough.  

As a system the design of UCD re-admittance program is a failing.  But it's just one small part of a larger design that also seems to be rusty and falling apart.  After getting in I encountered difficulties and friction with all the other step - financial aid, application for part time status, declaration of California residency, etc..  The people working in these areas all seemed to be tired, disgruntled and generally unsympathetic to any complaints I had.  If I mentioned that fact that I paid a lot of money and was it too much to ask for a little assistance the answer usually was something like - "That's just the way it is" or "budget cuts" followed by a grown or "we do that to everyone".  One woman in the Student accounting department boldly told me that they figured if I wanted to get back in bad enough I would do what they asked.  

I have to say it was a rough an depressing re entry into school.   I spent hours over the first two weeks standing in line, arguing and writing on hold.  Meanwhile I had to work and homework was already piling up.

Solutions?  Well, the most common problem I kept hearing was "budget cuts" so I guess more money would be a solution if they could find some.  But wait, don't they raise registration  fees and charge us a lot of money?  So maybe they problem lies in how they are spending it.  I see a lot of remodeling of buildings going on that wasn't happening the first time I was a student.  

I'm sure it's more complicated then that but what I fear is that behind the scenes they are arguing much like they way our government is arguing over health care.  

The effect of all this-  I know I almost gave up but somehow I am still here.  I wonder what happened to the other re-admit students I met.  Why did I keep going?

The Answer - there has however been a ray of light.  After all these the educators are still the same,  not the same people, necessarily but they same great attitude.  Their classes are overbooked, and people are sitting in the aisles.  Many of them could be making more money in out in their fields but they are still here.  They are still kind and they still care and they made me feel like it was somehow a good idea to keep fighting my way back in.

*Photo- "Bureaucracy" courtesy of Mommylife.net

The John Natsulas Gallery – Designing the perfect Art “Environment”

Recently on a visit to the John Natsulas Gallery in downtown Davis I took notice of  a lot of things I wouldn't normally thinking of when visiting a museum.   For one, there was a small coffee shop up front and they made great cappuccino.  So that might not be completely unheard of but I was surprised w

hen the ba

rista behind the counter urged me to take the cappuccino on into the gallery.  I thought there might be some sort of issue with bringing in potentially staining drinks and food.  Happy to carried my cappuccino everywhere throughout the museum. 

While checking out paintings and other items I noticed  a sign on the wall that indicated the museum had a free wi-fi signal and and comfortable couches and various floors. I asked the attendant about it and she said that they had been encouraging students and other community members to come in and just “hang out”.  The idea being that if you had homework to do or a paper to finish for work why not come in and do it in a relaxing environment surrounded by art and listening to relaxing classical or jazz music?  

In a town where coffee shop owners were constantly battling it out with students over whether they were just clogging up the tables doing their homework or actually spending money this by contrast was a vastly different approach - actually encouraging them to come in and do it along with a free wireless signal so they could browse the internet to their heart's content. 

Other programs included a demonstration and music night on Thursdays where local artists would come in and work on their pieces in the studio so the public could view and be a part of the process with live music playing in the background.  

Rooftop Sculpture Garden – making smart use of the entire building the roof top sculpture

 garden offers a collection of outdoor sculptures by local and international artists.  Visitors can get a view of the surrounding city that they might otherwise never see. 

I asked one of the curators about their process of designing the museum.  She said they originally had a much smaller museum that was more traditional in nature with the standard simple gallery.  When they designed the new museum they made it a point to bring two main concepts into the process:  First - to consider other art forms such as writings, music and poetry and bring them in to the museum to make the experience “more complete”.  Second – to constantly re-evaluate what role art could 

play in our daily lives and bring it to us in new and more creative ways.  

Does this approach work?  I'd say so, I couldn't wait to go back with my homework....

The John Natsulas Gallery is located at 521 First Street in Davis.  Hours of operation are Wed-Thurs: 11:00am - 5:00pm, Fri: 11:00am - 10:00pm, Sat - Sun: 12:00pm - 5:00pm

  Photo Courtesy of John Natsulas Gallery

“The Beat Generation and Beyond” - a perfectly designed exhibit at an gallery near you

The Natsulas Gallery's latest: “The Beat Generation and Beyond” is a beautifully designed exhibit combining a collection of paintings and sculptures with well essays and information about the time and people.   The exhibit pays homage to the heroes or rather “anti heroes” of the post war era who shoved aside the Norman Rockwell concept of art and embraced the abstract and the notion of an uncertain future. 

The creators of the exhibit chose painters and sculptures with a variety of distinct styles.  There were a multi media sculpture/paintings created by George Herms in the 60's which combined together discarded iron rings bits of driftwood and other “found items” which would be considered trash and overlooked by much of society but were given life and expression 

"Altar" (1960) by George Herms                                                    in the hands of the artist.  A painting by                                                                                                            Tom Holland entitled “Frontal” (1964)  experimented with tones and color that seemed to be applied by “marking” the canvas in long gentle strokes that jumped across raised levels on the canvas and suggested a calm, focused sense of peace.

The exhibit included backgrounds of the pieces and gripping mini-biographies of some of the painters such as Horst Trave who fled Germany at the end of the 1930's, disagreeing with Hitler's politics and disapproving of the direction Germany was going in and eventually landing in the United States and actually fought for the American forces.  

Other essays about the period in general,  provided a glimpse at a time when poets, painters,  musicians and writers formed supportive communities where they combined together their arts, supported each other and traded with each other for their creations.   

The design of the exhibit draws the visitor in and paints a complete picture of the period, the people and their art.  It stands in contrast to the typical display that gives you the art piece little more than a quickly printed label with basic information.  All in all it makes for a much more enjoyable experience and leaves the “would be” art lover wanting more.

The John Natsulas Gallery is located at 521 First St in Downtown Davis.  The Exhibit “The Beat Generation and Beyond” runs from September 24th through October 24th , 2009.