The article discusses the initial funding strategies for the new GRAM, which mentions the

more than $20 million donated by Peter Wege - who also steered them to build 'green'. The rest of the article, as well as the entire Museum section, continues to focus on development and dollar amounts. The NY Times evens goes as far to provide online readers with an interactive map of museum expansion across the country.

Just a few days after this article ran, Michigan Governor, Jennifer Granholm, announced a moratorium on all state funding for arts and cultural organizations [see: Grand Rapids Press article]. The freeze on this funding will remain for the rest of the fiscal year which ends September 30th. This reactionary move by the state of Michigan is in response to the state's budget crisis, which is undoubtedly related to Michigan's new ranking as the state with highest unemployment rate. Michigan surpassed Alabama and South Carolina, with an employment rate of 6.9% [see: U.S. Dept. of Labor report, March 8, 2007].

What really seems to be the focus here? How is it possible that between $60 and $75 million is being dropped on a building to house art, when people who make art can't even receive a mere fraction of this money? Grand Rapids realizes the wonderful things that Peter Wege has done and continues to do for the city of Grand Rapids, the state of Michigan and the environment - but sustainability goes beyond the architecture of a building. If populations interested in frequenting buildings like the GRAM, or even producing objects to be housed there, can't survive - what is the point in creating something sustainable and long lasting?

LAMB calls for Peter Wege and other philanthropists interested in the arts to actively create an endowment dedicated to arts production in the city of Grand Rapids. Those interested please contact: LAMB.

by Kevin Buist

From February to March 2007, Khora, the Calvin College art gallery at 106 S. Division, presented Crossing the River, a solo show by Eugene Dening. The opening was accompanied by a performance by Peter J. Brant of Ben and Bruno. The collection of drawings and paintings suggested a loose narrative, exploring ideas of coming-of-age, transcendent encounters with nature, and male sexual identity. I recently spoke with Eugene about the show.

Kevin Buist: I want to start by asking you about the show, and how Crossing the River came about.

Eugene Dening: Well, I’ve been interested in ideas of coming-of-age, specifically American coming-of-age films. I’ve been looking at that and noticing a lot of recurring imagery. And so I wanted to take a lot of that imagery and sort of insert myself into that type of story, maybe as a way to look at my own coming of age, or even just to look at that genre of story telling and why we have these recurring images.

KB: Any specific films you were looking at?

ED: I was looking at a lot of them, like Stand By Me, obviously, Undertow, which is a more recent one, Days of Heaven, Mean Creek…there’s a lot of them, there are so many coming of age movies, but I think those are some of the most important ones. Ones where a landscape played an important role.

KB: Yeah, I was just going to say, it seems like with a lot of those films, and with the work, there’s an attention to a wilderness landscape, a forest, where there’s a sojourn into a wild area.

ED: Yeah, and one of the most important images that kept recurring in these movies was a river, as something that people would maybe walk down, or cross, as maybe a metaphor for a journey, or coming of age itself. And a lot of times there was a death in a river at the end of these movies, or a death in a river as a catalyst for more violence or for a journey. Like in Stand By Me there was a death in a river, and in Undertow the pursuer of these kids dies in a river, and in Days of Heaven also, and Mean Creek is another one where someone was killed in a river. Another movie that was really influential was Palindromes. And with a lot of these more recent movies I think that the filmmakers are really intentional about using that sort of imagery, or tapping into that sort of archetype, so I was interested in doing something similar to that.

As abstract expressionism began to take hold as the innovative style in the U.S. in the 1950s, there were some that felt otherwise. In Grand Rapids, a group of young artists began working together to maintain their realistic style of painting. William Kubiak, Reynold "Rey" Weidenaar, Thomas Hoover, Carl Forslund and Armand Merizon formed the Grand Valley Artists group and have been working together since with the association now reaching over 250 artists.

"Artists work alone. It's a cocoon-like existence," said Forslund, who still attends monthly GVA critiques after all these years. "This group gives us the opportunity to interrelate, work together (and find) camaraderie." (Grand Rapids Press, 2/18/07)

GVA will be celebrating their 50 years on April 27 at their new space located at 1120 Monroe Ave. NW

GRAM announces opening date

After minor delays, and waiting with anticipation - the Grand Rapids Art Museum has now announced an official opening date of October 5, 2007. If you haven't heard this a hundred times already, the GRAM will be the first and only art museum in the world to have its entire facilities LEED certified.

Impromtu collaboration at Mexicains Sans Frontieres; Jonathan Harnum, Johnny Unicorn and Hugo Claudin

by Hugo Claudin

I have been living in Grand Rapids for 26 years. In that time I have collaborated extensively with other artists in the area, why? Because I wanted to create an artistic community. Since I arrived in Grand Rapids people have asked me why I don't move to Chicago or New York? Why would an artist of your talent stay here where there is no so called "art scene"? And my answer was always "Exactly"...

Through March 18, you can check out new work from two local printmakers, Scott Travis and Evan Chamberlin. In most prints,the plate is largely forgotten. This is in spite of the inherent beauty that many artists find in the worked copper. The prints currently hanging up at the Division Ave Arts Cooperative [DAAC] subtly allude to the trace of process,being as conceptually important for both artists as the final work, though in different ways and in different contexts.

Scott Travis regards the plate as a sculptural object,and evokes a physicality in the print through an embossing. The emboss allows light to create a compositional boundary between figures in the image,while creating a push and pull between the window effect of the two dimensional with the objecthood of the print itself. There is no frame to give it added preciousness or distinction from its viewers, just a sheet of plexi to help it survive potential moshing or milling about at the DAAC.

The imagery is a combination of human, animal,and plant forms,all drawn from memory, rather than from any references. It is a means of drawing from the inherent perception and memory of these things.The result is somewhat surreal, without the Freudian hang-ups, and reminiscent of the completely immersed illustrations of the 1970’s, without the halucinatory hang-ups. The work itself is meditative for the artist, evidenced by meticulous line work and hatched texture in his dreamy depictions. His major influences are the writings of Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, with their heavy emphasis on collective unconsciousness and myths that cross time and cultural boundaries. These ideas have Scott seeking out archetypes and ubiquitous human experiences through his work.

In Evan Chamberlin’s prints, a solitary figure on a ground plane stand to the
fore of a square of mottled and suggestive ink. There is a dichotomy of an immediate and silly iconography, gleaned from Google image searches for self-improvement, with the more indelible square indicative of the printmaker’s process. Evan appreciates the history of a marked up plate, and even uses the “wrong”side of the copper. (Copper comes with a protective piece of plastic on one side that allows for an unblemished surface for the potential artwork.) The soft metal takes on serendipitous etching marks from traveling, in process, between home and studio space. Therein the mottled ink is imbued with markings of a passage of time, upon a shared map with the artist. When he is working with the material and the process,he can stop worrying whether he should be more manly and strong,or more sensitive like a little girl, or more free spirited like a bird. His work is largely about the material and the mixing of the ink – he feels that there is something more truthful in this studio practice than the silly little characters representing the sorts of things that he feels other people expect of him.

Theories of the Collective Unconscious: A Printmaking Exhibitions, is on view at the DAAC until March 18th. Gallery hours are:

Tuesday's 9:00 a.m.- 12:00 p.m.
Friday's 11:00 a.m.- 3:00 p.m.

In this month's Art in America, Frank Lloyd Gallery in Santa Monica. CA featured John Mason's sculpture entitled Grand Rapids in their advertisement. This piece was created for the 1973 Grand Rapids exhibition entitled Sculpture off the Pedestal which was organized by the Womens' Committee of the Grand Rapids Art Museum.

This exhibition also produced works such as Mark di Suvero's Motu Viget and Robert Morris' X, as well as works by 11 other artists.

Back on September 25, 2006, LAMB blogged about about an intervention that took place at Frederik Meijer Gardens called Paleta Grande [ read: old post}.
We emailed the staff at the Meijer Gardens Sculpture Park to verify if this was actually true. Today, 5 months later, we have the truth:

Officially for the record, rumors of Paletta Grande returning to Meijer
Gardens on its March 16, 6-month anniversary are untrue. Rumors are true
however that Paletta Grande was quickly sold to a private collector. Waste
Management of West Michigan secured the sculpture at private auction for an
undisclosed amount. Yes, even Meijer Gardens can have a sense of humor.

Recently the individual responsible for the exhibit was found to be one of
our own. Disciplinary action was swift and appropriately measured to deter
copy-cats. Increased security measures have since been enacted throughout
the park to protect Meijer Gardens exhibits and other interests against
theft, vandalism and Ashton Kutcher look-alikes.

Meijer Gardens thanks LAMB for their support of the gardens and the arts
and requests that readers refrain from contacting the park with inquiries
concerning Paletta Grande.

Dr. Joseph Becherer, Ph.D
Curator of Sculpture
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park

His most recent show at Rowland Contemporary, Color, received a positive review in Feb. 2007's issue of Art Forum.

"Dane has long been interested in the chromatic effects of various combinations of color. Painting on both aluminum and wood panel, he creates sometimes thick and sometimes thin bands of highly saturated color in both vertical and horizontal alignment. Both matte and glossy, these oil paintings construct formal relationships that reach beyond the surface and address superficiality and the politics of ambivalence through their insouciant qualities. As David Batchelor stated in his book "Chromophobia", color is "...a false addition to a surface and the truth beneath that surface.""

"Newcomer Rowley Kennerk has unlocked the vaults of private collections for the third exhibition at his gallery, filling his diminutive space with gems by Sam Durant, Robert Heinecken, Lee Lozano, Cady Noland, and Richard Prince. Much of the art riffs on the cultural climate of the '60s....

These regurgitated pop-culture images of flower-child counterculture, sexual revolution, and the pathologies of everyday life adeptly expose the collective perversions that lead to social upheaval, and set an interesting precedent for the gallery’s program."

Read the enitre review here. Visit the Rowley Kennerk Gallery online.

In his article Invisible States: Europe in the Capital Failure, Brian Holmes describes a Europe divided into three divisions; Core Europe, New Europe and Edge Europe; New Europe being the recent accession of 10 new to the EU in 2004 [and two more in 2007], Edge Europe being the non-member bordering periphery and Core being the original members of the EU. This integration of new members in the EU has created a fertile hinterland for transnational corporations, making it difficult to differentiate between citizens of actual nations and those of capitalist entrepreneurial systems. In 2005, the International Artists Studio Program (IASPIS) and the European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies (EIPCP) collaborated to produce a document for the Frieze art fair – European Cultural Policies 2015: A Report with Scenarios on the Future of Public Funding for Contemporary Art in Europe. This report is more than just a projection - it is an accurate reading of the current climate in much of Europe, specifically ‘New Europe.’ These forecasts are basically exaggerations of the present; increased difficulty in distinguishing the private from the public and the commercial from the non-commercial, focus shifting from the centers to the peripheries, increased Private Public Partnerships [PPPs], and museums and galleries becoming second to the art fair. A visit to Riga, Latvia has led me to empathize with Holmes’ somewhat pessimistic outlook for these new EU nations, who seem to naively believe they can finally establish a post-soviet national identity. These issues, specifically private versus public and those of national identity, are currently unfolding in a collaboration between foreign corporate investors and the national government in Latvia. This project, known as Riga Port City, is laden with contradiction and a closer examination may afford some clarity.

It is important to consistently push both the boundaries of curatorial practice and consider different ways to navigate both the institutionalized world, as well as those worlds which are developing [or will never develop, but always exist].

There are many different ways to approach this, whether it be like Nato Thompson, who calls for an alternative, or "radical," infrastructure to support work and ideas that may be too tactile for Museum or are counter to institutional frameworks, or Brian Holmes, who leans towards re-thinking and re-working existing structures. Lastly, there is the approach of Chris Gilbert - abandon the institutions and the murderous country that supports them.

Not able to make the opening? The show will be up until January 28th.

In 1969, the citizens of Grand Rapids dedicated a gigantic red stabile by Alexander Calder as the heart of an ambitious urban renewal effort. Designed to announce a new, spirited civic center, the sculpture embodies notions of the public sphere that are under much critical pressure today. Contemporary art historians often suggest that public sculptures of this type are passé, but how have citizen experiences with and responses to La Grande Vitesse developed over time? How do ordinary citizens define, use, and produce this arguably still quite prototypical public art work?

The researcher, Jennifer Geigel Mikulay, is a Ph.D. candidate in visual culture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is writing her dissertation about public art in Grand Rapids, and she teaches visual culture at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design.

Furthermore, the press release goes something like this:

GVSU students participating in a course called Civic Studio seek photographs of Alexander Calder’s Grand Rapids stabile. According to associate professor of art Paul Wittenbraker, “Civic Studio aims to document a full range of experiences with the Calder, from 1969 to the present.” The public is invited to contribute photographs that may be old or new, everyday or special occasion, print or digital, black/white or color. The project, entitled “Big Red Thing” after a common nickname for Calder’s sculpture, is part of a research project coordinated by University of Wisconsin graduate student Jenny Mikulay. Civic Studio will collect photographs between October 15 and November 15, 2006.

Civic Studio, a course that investigates the role of artists in their community, is led by Wittenbraker. Students Zyra Castillo, Jennifer Dunbar, Dean Foster, Giles Hefferan, and Sara Wassenaar are coordinating the photo drive in collaboration with Mikulay.

"I’ll be back. Don’t worry."

My first memories of art in Grand Rapids were from elementary school field trips to the art museum. I barely remember the small cramped gallery spaces and docents who explained the work of Dutch painters. Those days I was pretty distracted with dreams of becoming a superhero comic book artist. High school tuned me in to a little academic art history but it wasn’t until college that I was exposed to any actual living, breathing art world.