Don Mangus' "It Only Hurts When I Smirk.": November 2018

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Susan Shiels Johnson: Recent Ceramics and Paintings

Susan Shiels Johnson

Here are some recent works by my long-time classmate (in the mid-1970s-to early-1980s) in SMU art school -- Susie Shiels (Johnson).

Artist's Statement:

I have always been interested in color and form studies, as well as pattern, previously working in the representational realm of still life and landscapes painted "on site." Recently, I have extended this inquiry to ceramics, at first focusing exclusively on functional work. While I continue to make cups and a few other objects for the table top, I am also making forms for purely visual exploration, with a departure point informed by natural objects, such as seashells and other organic forms. Firing some of the components in atmospheric kilns seems to be particularly conducive to realizing the surface and random patterns that I am chasing.

Monday, November 26, 2018

Sukiya: Traditional Japanese Architecture

Sukiya style

My new new thing -- traditional Japanese architecture. This is the high-end style, "sukiya" (as contrasted with "minka")...

Sukiya style architecture

The true spirit of Japanese architecture can be found in the Japanese house and the sukiya style of residential construction. Japanese houses come in many shapes and sizes -- but for 400 years the majority of them have been built in the sukiya style. Anyone interested in the architecture of Japan should become familiar with this vernacular.

The sukiya style Japanese home is a refined and graceful living space that employs elements of the Japanese tea house. Characteristics of the sukiya style include delicate proportions, the ample use of natural materials, the integration of interior and exterior spaces, and a general sense of quiet elegance with rustic overtones. In the traditional Japanese house, moderation is of key importance. In addition to slender wood elements and the lack of ostentation, the sukiya living environment strives, not to overwhelm, but rather to harmonize with the human scale and human sense perception.

The Boy Wonder Uses "Systematic Desensitization" to Treat the Cowled Crusader's Bat-Phobia, 1957

Batman co-creator, writer Bill Finger, was celebrated for his well-researched thrillers. Here he showcases a legitimate therapy for phobia and anxiety disorders. Perhaps he had first-hand experience.

Systematic desensitization is a type of behavioral therapy based on the principle of classical conditioning. It was developed by Joseph Wolpe during the 1950s. This therapy aims to remove the fear response of a phobia, and substitute a relaxation response to the conditional stimulus gradually using counter-conditioning. There are three phases to the treatment:

First, the patient is taught a deep muscle relaxation technique and breathing exercises -- .e.g. control over breathing, muscle detensioning, or meditation. This step is very important because of "reciprocal inhibition," where one response is inhibited because it is incompatible with another. In the case of phobias, fears involve tension and tension is incompatible with relaxation.

Second, the patient creates a "fear hierarchy" starting at stimuli that create the least anxiety (fear) and building up in stages to the most fear-provoking images. The list is crucial as it provides a structure for the therapy.

Third, the patient works their way up the fear hierarchy, starting at the least unpleasant stimuli and practicing their relaxation technique as they go. When they feel comfortable with this (they are no longer afraid) they move on to the next stage in the hierarchy. If the client becomes upset they can return to an earlier stage and regain their relaxed state.

The client repeatedly imagines (or is confronted by) this situation until it fails to evoke any anxiety at all, indicating that the therapy has been successful. This process is repeated while working through all of the situations in the anxiety hierarchy until the most anxiety-provoking.

Thus, for example, a "spider phobic" might regard one small, stationary spider fifteen feet away as only modestly threatening, but a large, rapidly moving spider three feet away as highly threatening. The client reaches a state of deep relaxation, and is then asked to imagine (or is confronted by) the least threatening situation in the anxiety hierarchy.

The number of sessions required depends on the severity of the phobia. Usually 4-6 sessions, up to 12 for a severe phobia. The therapy is complete once the agreed therapeutic goals are met (not necessarily when the person’s fears have been completely removed).

Exposure can be done in two ways:

In vitro -- the client imagines exposure to the phobic stimulus.

In vivo -- the client is actually exposed to the phobic stimulus.

Research has found that in vivo techniques are more successful than in vitro (Menzies & Clarke, 1993). However, there may be practical reasons why in vitro may be used.

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Brian Carlson: "Aparecidos (the Appeared)", 2015

Brian Carlson

Between 1976 and 1983, somewhere between 9,000 and 30,000 Argentinians “disappeared” in the so-called “National Reorganization Process,” or what is more commonly known as "the Dirty War." The reigning military junta took people they considered political dissidents, brought them to detention centers, and then tortured and killed them.

The journey to healing from this tragedy has been a long road that has yet to reach its end. Military officials are still being prosecuted, while memorials to the lost are finally being made. As it happens, one of the people working on the memorial lives in Ozaukee County, Wisconsin -- Brian Carlson.

"The tour of ESMA,” Carlson said, “was profoundly moving to me. In these spaces, nearly 5000 human beings, following abductions, had been tortured, held in the worst circumstances and then taken to be executed. I haven’t been to Auschwitz, but this is Argentina’s Auschwitz. I promised the disappeared that I would respond with a memorial and return to exhibit it, if possible, in that space.”

Carlson held true to his promise. He began to paint the portraits of the Disappeared and, as the portraits began to fill his studio walls, they created a “garden of memory.” Carlson could see the possibility of what the portraits could do. He entitled his project "Aparecidos (the Appeared)." He wanted to, symbolically, bring back the people who had disappeared -- to ensure that they would not be forgotten, and that their lives may serve to warn people everywhere of what can happen when governments are allowed to oppress freedom.

“The opening of my exhibit at the Museo de Memoria in Rosario,” Carlson says, “was the most incredible experience I have had in 35 years of professional art. To see members of the Madres de la Plaza looking at the faces of their lost ones, wearing their traditional white scarves; to have an overflow, standing-room-only crowd of guests -- most of them relatives of the disappeared, and many relatives of victims I had painted; to be thanked by so many for work that has been an honor for me to do -- is something I can’t describe.”

Aside from some professional development grants and the generosity of Argentinians who have welcomed him into their homes, Carlson does his work without any funding. He paints every day of the week, but the schedule and finances are not as draining as the emotional aspect of painting the portraits.

“I believe Aparecidos and its mission will spread and contribute to the decades of courageous human rights efforts in the involved countries,” says Carlson. “The message is memory, truth, justice and the sanctity of human life. It’s a critical message.”

Monday, November 19, 2018

Ruth Asawa

Ruth Aiko Asawa

Activist, sculptor, and educator Ruth Aiko Asawa was born in 1926 in Norwalk, California to Japanese immigrant parents who made a living as farmers. As a child, Asawa dreamed of being an artist while she helped out on the family farm.

In 1942, she was separated from her father when he was arrested in February under emergency legislation that authorized the detention of Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Four months later, the rest of the family was taken to the internment camp at Santa Anita Race Track, where they were housed in former horse stalls for five months, before being moved to another internment camp, in Rohwer, Arkansas.

Among the many people detained at Santa Anita were two cartoonists from Disney Studios who held daily art lessons for the children. Despite the trauma of internment, Asawa was able to draw for hours every day. When she was moved to Arkansas, she became the art editor of the camp’s high school yearbook.

In 1943, Asawa obtained permission to attend college. With funds from a Quaker scholarship, she enrolled at Milwaukee State Teachers College in Wisconsin with the intent of becoming an art teacher. However, she was unable to complete her degree because prejudice against Japanese Americans prevented her from getting the classroom teaching hours that were required.

In 1946, Asawa transferred to Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where she studied with Buckminster Fuller and Josef Albers. While she was at Black Mountain, she took a trip to Mexico in 1947. While there, she attended a workshop on how to create baskets by crocheting wire and was inspired by this folk method of basket making.

After graduating from Black Mountain in 1949, Asawa moved to San Francisco, where she settled permanently. She began experimenting with wire crocheting techniques, creating sculptures that, “turned inside into outside and . . . made no distinction between interior and exterior so that a free flow of form and space was produced.”

These intricate works began to earn her recognition in the 1950s with her first solo exhibition taking place in 1956 at Peridot Gallery in New York City. Afterwards, her work was included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in 1958 and 1959 respectively.

In addition to her crocheted works, in 1962, Asawa made a series of large wall-mounted sculptures inspired by the internal structure of a desert plant. Initially, she had tried to sketch the plant but unsatisfied with the results, she decided to “draw” it in wire instead. The results were beautifully intricate multiple forms that, while made from metal, were delicate, organic shapes. With light and shadow play these metal wire sculptures seem to exist in two worlds, both corporeal and ethereal.

Don Mangus' "It Only Hurts When I Smirk."