Praeterita

"in their clothes", branches, shrink wrap, tape, 12' x 18' x 14', 2015 Oak Park, famous as the home of the young Ernest Hemingway and the slightly less young Frank Lloyd Wright, is a separate township about ten miles due west of downtown Chicago, though it merges almost seamlessly with the city in a way that makes you feel you’re visiting a leafy Chicago neighborhood. Speaking of leafy, Josh Garber ’s installation at Terrain , Oak Park, consists of tree branches and limbs connected by shrink wrap and tape that clamber up off the ground and claw spikily at the air, denuded of foliage but seemingly revivified into a new stage of growth. Titled “in their clothes,” the sculpture is 12 feet x 18 feet x 14 feet, and is placed like all of the exhibitions at Terrain on the streetside lawn between two houses, opposite a local school and open to all weather which on the day I visited was warm, but not enough to melt the piles of surrounding snow. The whiten...

From last Thursday through yesterday, Sunday, I had a weekend that was filled with lots of good art, and a feeling of advancing significantly with my own work. The fact that the clocks went forward in the USA and that the temperatures rose after a horrible February helped, too. First was the A+D gallery, for a group show called Scaped that included an artist whose work I know, and whom I am acquainted with personally: Neha Vedpathak . I met her via the Paul Klein art advisory seminars, and her stunning work is in good company in this show organized by curator MK Meador. Neha is an artist who is clearly going somewhere big, so make note of her name now. Next, on Saturday, I had a great studio visit with curator Teresa Silva , who is writing a catalogue essay for my upcoming show at Corner . It's not just that she's a great person to talk to: she says things that reflect your work back to you in a way that makes you subtly improve it.  On Sunday, I met someone w...

Bequeath , 51" x 48" x46", tree branches, electrical cable, electrical conduit, coaxial wire, packing tape, bubble wrap, shrink wrap, magazine paper, t-shirts, shoes, beer cans, soda bottle, stuffed animals, injected ink I attended a gathering in the studio of sculptor Josh Garber about a week ago, and this piece caught my eye. Close-up It's a wild, free form accumulation of the cheapest, throw-away materials, wound round tree branches and taped any old way to hold them into place. The list of materials on the caption to the first photo suggests that they might be a classic representation of what an artist wears, eats, and drinks nowadays (with the exception of electrical wire, perhaps). If you follow the link to his website, then look again at this new work, you'll see that it's a departure from previous work. But the more I look at it, the more I see the relation to Josh's other sculptures. His public art pieces may be made from aluminum...