Art in Other Places: Where Would I Go if You Gave Me a Plane Ticket? – July/Aug 1999

I think if I could spend my time alternating between doing sculpture and traveling to see art (or to do sculpture), I’d be very happy. Here are some thoughts on art that have grabbed me while traveling.

When I was a sophomore in college I lived in France for six months and got to travel in Western Europe. Among the highlights of the wonderful art work was getting to see Michelangelo in Florence, Goya in the Prado Museum in Madrid, and especially the Musee Rodin in Paris, which has his sculpture of Balzac out front.

Here in the states I used to visit the SFMOMA in San Francisco (does a 1 hour train ride count as traveling?). A show of Pop & California Funk artists there has really stuck with me: Oldenburg, Arneson’s Portrait of the Artist Losing his Marbles, Ed Keinholz’s Back Seat Dodge, William T. Wiley were all quite a revelation after Europe’s Renaissance and 19th century. The combination of off-the-wall playfulness and biting satire really resonates with me; I’m trying to figure out how to get it into my art these days.

It doesn’t count, I guess, to list the art in Seattle that’s affected me, but I used to always go visit the Cycladic idols in the basement of SAM when it was at Volunteer Park, after paying due homage to Noguchi’s Black Sun out front. I was also struck by a number of shows in the Modem Art pavilion at the Seattle Center, where I saw HC Westermann and James Surls. Somewhere in there was another trip to Europe where I ran into a show by Ed and Nancy Reddin Keinholz in Switzerland. I’d seen them in Seattle several times, but it was kind of a surprise in that setting. Also close to home is the superb collection of Canadian West Coast First Nations art at the VBC Anthropology Museum.

One of the most spiritual sites I have ever visited is the Stone Lion shrine at Bandelier National Monument in northern New Mexico. It is a hunting shrine of two mountain lions carved out of the native bedrock some 500 years or so ago and surrounded by concentric circles of antlers and rough stone. It’s still used as a shrine by the folks at Cochiti Pueblo. A magical spot, absolutely worth the 6-mile round-trip trek across the mesa and up and down the arroyos, through cholla and juniper, past unexcavated ruins of Anasazi dwellings littered with potsherds and flints from tool making. When I was there in 1982, I also saw an outdoor sculpture show at the Shidoni Foundry in Tesuque (near Santa Fe). There was a very moving series called “The Last SALT Talks” by Tony Price. He hit the Los Alamos version of Boeing surplus and made anti-war figures and assemblages out of the materials. A 20-ft wide peace wind chime out of missile nose cones is quite something! I also saw an abstract granite piece by Jesus Moroles that got me into trying stone seriously for the first time.

More recent travels include the Noguchi Garden Museum in Long Island City, Queens, NY. Noguchi converted an old parking garage into a studio, which became his museum after his death. It has examples of his work from all periods. Also worth repeat visits is the Storm King Art Center on the Hudson near West Point. Acres and acres of sculpture scattered across the meadows and through the woods, including Noguchi, DiSuvero and BIG Calders. When I was there, there was an exhibit of one of my favorite artists, Magdelena Abakonowicz: her Forty Seated Backs.

My most recent travels have been to southern Mexico: the ruins of Zapotec culture at Monte Alban and Mayan culture at Palenque. More architecture than art, I guess, although there were carved limestone stelae in both places that indirectly led to one of my most recent sculptures. Also the pre-Columbian art collection at the Rufino Tamayo house  in Oaxaca including a gorgeous jaguar carved out of basalt (without metal tools!) by an Olmec sculptor.

Where would I go if you gave me a plane ticket? A tour of the stone circles, menhirs, dolmens and cromlechs of the British Isles and Brittany is high on my list of things to do. Noguchi’s studio in Japan, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Egypt, Peru – both the Incas and the more recently explored coastal Chimu culture. And, I understand there is a valley in southwestern Costa Rica that has perfect spheres of granite, ranging from palm-sized to a meter in diameter, scattered across it. Nobody knows why they were made. The Stone Lions, always.

It strikes me that many places that seem to me like adventures to visit are where some of our members come from: India, Iraq, Switzerland, France, Germany, Ukraine, Norway, Japan [Editor’s Note: 1 think Kirk included this as a hint! He and I would both like to read about those places}.

A Note from Lee Gass: This is the second column of a new series that I’m editing. Several people contacted me after last month’s column, but there’s nothing “in the can” for next time. Please email (gass@zoology.ubc.ca). phone (604)322-1943, or write me (5205 Windsor, Vancouver, B. C. V5W 3H7) with your ideas. I’ll be happy to work with you to get them into print.