It's a little bit of a late post but yes, the logo leaves did make it back to the Aspen Ideas Festival.
So it's a bit like "Where's Waldo?" except it's with the logo leaf sculptures- we keep moving them around the Aspen Institute campus every year for the Ideas Festival.
Yes, there are two in Anderson Park on either side of the bridge catching a nice little reflection off of the pond.
The Aspen Leaf Sculptures reappear in Anderson Park for The Aspen Ideas Festival In 2015 the sculptures were sharing the gentle hills with JR's fantastic photographs... this year they're back but in a more playful mood... with large balls in bright colors rolling through the gentle hills of Anderson Park
The logo leaf sculptures from 2014 came back for 2015 but this time they migrated to Anderson Park instead of lining the entry to Paepcke Auditorium.
They "grew" nicely
I particularly liked the way they were reflected in the water…
with ducks… of course….
Anderson Park was also the display area for an exhibit by J.R.
… and now a little bit about this year's process …. because… you know… it's always a process…..
One sculpture needed a repair which involved aluminum welding (beyond my poor welding skills) so the fine folks at Myer's took care of that for me.
As any painter will tell you white comes in many colors- thanks the The Paint Store in Carbondale there was an exact match…. (they don't do web much- they don't have to)
Then it was a matter of cleaning and resetting any plexi pieces which were missing…
…and finally for something a little different… the bases were covered with sod last year but that yellowed pretty quickly and wasn't at all attractive so I decided to go another way with the bases for this year.
Give them a nice degreasing and then suit up…
which is what you need to do when ever you're playing with heated plastic.
There we have it- leaf logo sculptures 2015 safely back in their crates waiting to be called out for next year if needed…. (Back to Back Trucking is da bomb)
Thanks to the inimitable Allan Trumpler for his help with the crate repair and install….
The new Aspen Art Museum has two staircases, one accessed from the cash register* and one from the street. If you prefer you may use the elevator and get shot to the top (or the bottom).
(*let me be clear- there is no entrance fee- but there are still things for sale)
August 2 I went through the doors of the Aspen Art Museum with the rest of the hoards. It was the "must see" event of the summer in Aspen. This was supposed to be a "members only" preview. In reality it was an "anyone who wants to enter" preview.
I felt sorry for the tortoises.
After all it wasn't their choice to be surrounded by iPhone wielding art lovers.
I hope they don't turn into soup.
It is a great view from the top floor (as we knew it would be).
There's been plenty of controversy surrounding the museum.
(...and this one posted on August 4 two days after the Museum "pre-opening" as reminder that the Kids Valley Art show was discontinued under Ms. Zuckerman Jacobson's watch http://www.aspendailynews.com/section/letter-editor/163308 )
Even our former Mayor the famous (or infamous) Mick Ireland has asserted on his Facebook feed that someone "punched him" yesterday due to the Art Museum (don't you love this town? I just can't make this stuff up).
Most of this has centered on the "view plane" from the street and the loss of parking spaces. The museum does a fine job of blocking out the mountain from it's neighbors and from pedestrian traffic. As I've stated previously the building is all about admiring the view in the mirror or to quote Rembrandt "Vanitas, vanitas."
Vanity in Aspen? The .01% of the .01% opting for exclusivity? "Locals" railing against change and privilege (whilst pocketing the profit)? I'm shocked. Shocked I tell you.
After my quick perusal of the museum my head hurt. I was squinting. My sinuses throbbed and I had that all too familiar feeling of a migraine hovering on the edge of my eyebrows.
I can forgive much. I can forgive the mixture of hastily crafted wooden handrails and the paint not quite dry yet on the "permanent" handrails. I can forgive the unfinished edges, the unwashed glass, the construction dust pooling in the cracks and corners. I can almost forgive the bad craftsmanship. (The display boxes for the minerals are shoddy, just plain shoddy.) Sigh….this is, after all, a "pre-opening" opening. The windows can be cleaned and the display boxes can be replaced.
What I cannot forgive is poorly displayed art. The color temperature of the lights alone is enough to induce the mother of all migraines. (Don't lecture me about low light to protect pigment- this isn't it- by a long shot- this is simply the wrong LED and the wrong throw distance and the wrong angle of illumination) The objects are anchored in acidic white more married to the wall than to each other. There is no attempt to focus the viewer's attention on the art.
Then there are the choices within the show itself. There is normally a logic in the juxtaposition of objects which contrasts the aesthetic , conceptual and historic. This allows a viewer to bring their own level of understanding to the show. What on earth do Klein and Hammons have to say to one another?
At first glance the answer is "nothing". Simply put Klein worked the system and Hammons worked outside the system. Klein was a colorist, a lover of the female form and an extremely witty provocative marketeer with the full support of the French Government. Hammons punched above his weight for Civil Rights and jabbed at the Establishment every chance he got. There is not subtlety or wink wink nod nod from Hammons. There is no Civil Rights commentary from Klein. The fact that Hammons substituted red white and blue in the American Flag for green black and red doesn't make him a colorist.
The fact that Klein got the French government to honor stamps he'd painted with Klein Bleu doesn't make him an activist. (Lest we forget there was plenty of opportunity in 1950's France for activism- days after "The Void" opening on April 28 came the Algerian coup on May 18.)
They shared a technique,
Klein had naked women rolling around in pigment
and Hammons used his own body to do the same.
(Guess which sold more)
Yves Klein and Iris Clert once had a good joke by announcing his "new look" which, once revealed was a gallery with freshly painted white walls. Everyone leaving the exhibit assured all those still waiting that it was a "must see".
"The Void"
It was the ultimate "Emperor has no clothes" triumph.
In contrast Hammons wry humor of selling snowballs on the street satirized the art not the cognoscenti.
M. Klein and Edouard Adam developed a new "Bleu" with full government support. Here's a lovely video on M. Adam- it's in French and blogger won't show the direct link- but it's worth it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyLpQ6S4YzA
Mr. Hammons did not rely on expert craftsmen to manufacture his art. He used found objects.
So, yes you can put these two together in the same show if for no other reason than to illustrate their differences; but it's heavy lifting. It could have been a lot easier.
I would have welcomed a show of Hammons and Benton.
or Klein and Koons (and I do actively *loathe* Koons)
…and there it is… there is no attempt to make this "comfortable" or "easy"… there is no place to take a breath in this new museum. One of the joys of "museuming" is to see a work up close, and from afar, to take your time in a room to breathe in the essence of all the walls. There is no intimacy here. Placing objects in a white void is not enough. You have to say something with the relationship of objects to one another. You have to give the viewer the opportunity to see and understand, to love it or hate it. Time, Art needs time, and patience, and breath.
At the Aspen Ideas Festival there was a panel of museum curator super stars discussing "The Museum as Citizen". Panelists were Michael Govan of LACMA, Glenn Lowry of MoMA, Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum in Harlem, Lisa Phillips of the New Museum, Paola Antonelli of MoMA and our own Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson of the Aspen Art Museum. The question was what is the responsibility of a museum to the community? The answers were pretty homogenous and could be summarized in two objectives "art education" and "community involvement". The rallying cry was "Create Social Spaces!".
All the answers that is except for those from Ms. Zuckerman Jacobson. Her answer was that the primary purpose of Art is to create "frisson". Friction, disquiet, terror all those elements of shock which rock us out of our comfortable existence and make us reevaluate our world that is the primary purpose of the Aspen Art Museum.
Frisson has certainly been achieved. Congratulations Ms. Zuckerman Jacobson.
It doesn't take much for my natural cynicism to overwhelm any desire for being open to "the new" it doesn't take much for me to leave vulnerability at the door. It doesn't take much for me to dust off that old New York armor and strap it back on my tired shoulders. I know it well it fits like an old overcoat in the rain, damp and smelling of wet wool. Do I really want to do that in Aspen? Do I really need to remember my cynicism in order to fully rejoice in the optimism of these glorious mountains?
Nope, not so much.
I think I shall revisit the Doerr-Hosier and the excellent Herbert Bayer exhibit. That is an art exhibit which heals instead of fractures.
I expect nothing less from the "humanist" Mr. Bayer
I will continue to quote M. Voltaire, "je me suis mis à être un peu gai, parce qu'on m'a dit que cela est bon pour la santé." or as is more commonly translated : "I have decided to be happy because it's good for my health". Enough "frisson" will find me without my looking for it.
In January Kitty Boone contacted me about designing something special for the Aspen Ideas Festival's 10th anniversary. She wanted something for the entrance to Paepcke Auditorium.
Cool! Yep, I jumped on the chance, I love my home town of Aspen and Aspen Ideas is tailor made for the polymaths amongst us. Perfect.
This would turn into much more of an Art Installation than a Scene Design.
For the 10th year there was a new logo design from Infinia Group.
new logo
old logo
I loved the new logo and thought it would be great to "riff" off of that. So I came up with a few ideas:
The idea was to line the entryway with "people size" logos which would be sleeved in a white spandex. These would be lit from below with color changers and the negative spaces in the logo would be filled with mirror. The mirror would have quotes from the past 9 years.
Kitty wanted to see a prototype so that's what we did. Dimension Design has done fabulous work for me in the past and they can sew spandex into some pretty intricate shapes. The logo may look simple but ask any stitcher- getting a smooth fitting on that shape- not so easy.
The prototype arrived in April.
As much as I liked the look, I was even more impressed by the welded frame.
Kitty liked it too. She picked up a piece of blue cellophane wrapping and held it in front of the leaf. As the blue shadows fell on the sidewalk, "What if we could have it like this?"
Colors like the logo inset into the frame? Like stained glass? Great idea! (Difficult, pricey, but a great idea.)
That's the fun, Design is a collaborative process or as Amanda Boxtel put it in her presentation at this year's conference Design is "co-creation"
Now there were a few problems, like that pesky thing called gravity and it's equally pesky parent physics. Aspen Ideas has a history of reusing design elements and changing the colors on their logo so I wanted to make these stable enough for the 10 day event and removable if the colors changed for next year.
The two big questions were
1."Do the right colors of plexiglas exist?"
2. "Can I find a way to make it float inside the frame?"
The biggest choice for plexi colors came from Solter and I could also get the plexi pieces cut at JetSets.
Better yet 3 of these were "neon plexi" which gives a hot neon glow edge. That made it even more important to get some air around the plexi inside the frame.
"Will it stick?" First I tried a little clear silicone: clamping it in place with PVC until the silicone had set. That worked on a small sample and gave me enough confidence to go ahead with the project.
Eight new leaf frames were ordered and I started on the R&D process in my studio. Did I mention that I was both Designer and Scenic on this? Well, I didn't plan it that way but that's what the deadline will do. I don't like to do both on a show, I use different neurons for these tasks and sometimes changing lanes becomes challenging.
Forty-two plexi inserts in each leaf, nine leaves 378 pieces of plexi and one week of build time.
While waiting for shipments to arrive I experimented with different methods of making the process faster: A "negative" of the leaf which would hold each piece of plexi in the right position while I glued seemed like a good plan.
The plexi arrived before the 8 leaves
so I started working on the prototype:
This didn't work. The glue wasn't stiff enough and made quite a mess.
There wasn't enough uniformity in the leaves either. I won't bore you with all the other failures but you should know that this is a process. You try something, you fail, you learn, you try something else.
The crates with 8 leaves arrived. That's the big difference between Entertainment Industry Design and just about every other type of Design. We have deadlines which do not move. The tickets have been sold and there is no excuse. Opening is opening.
The best solution was taping the plexi in place while the leaves were standing.
There's a famous story about John D. Rockerfeller. The kerosene kegs were sealed with 40 drops of solder and John D. asked if they could do it with 38. Thirty-eight drops of solder leaked, 39 did not.
I tried using silicone around all 4 sides and the neon lost a lot of it's glow.
Then I "tabbed" the 4 corners with silicone
39 drops of solder: piping Crystalgel on the short sides only.
(it's stronger than silicone)
Crystalgel is thick enough to pipe and a quick wipe with a rubber smoothing tool will keep it clean.
39 drops of solder- pop out the silicone tabs leave the crystal gel…
Repeat.
Repeat again
and again
Late on Saturday night Allan Trumpler (who happened to be in town painting for John Kasarda's production of Eugene Onegin at the Aspen Music School) and I put the leaves in their crates. Monday at 7am the truck arrived.
The load-in for Aspen Ideas is one day.
It did not go without incident. I made a huge mistake trying to place the leaves before driving rebar stakes into the ground. Up came the wind down went the leaves. I reglued a lot of these on the spot. That's another reason for bringing everything with you in the "kit".
Here you see the mirror pieces reflecting onto the sidewalk
The prototype went into the Doerr-Hosier building since it couldn't be secured outside.
Even inside "stained glass" effect seemed to be work well.
It gave a festive feel from many angles.
Ten days later the crates are back in the shop.
Will the "stained glass leaves" come back next year?
No idea.
I just know I have some plans for making them better if they do.
Very good.
Very, very good
