Honolulu Academy of Arts Blog
If you hadn’t noticed, there is a new Artist in Residence in Gallery 31 Art Studio. Her name is Boz Schurr. What is she doing you ask? Well, for now I’ll let the work speak for itself.
With the help from Academy visitors, Boz will be on site, painting on weekends through December 20th. Come check her out and be a part of the process.
The day opened with a bang—students from The Pacific Buddhist Academy of Hawaii performed taiko drumming in Central Courtyard. The Bon Dance Club of Manoa and the Mo‘ili‘ili Senior Citizens Club did two sessions of bon dancing. There was so much to do—do shibori (Japanese tie-dye) with textile artist and Academy staffer Darius Homay, draw and color with Manga Bento, draw with and be drawn by artist Andy Lee, hear docent Tensie Lee tell kamishibai or “paper drama” stories, and cut out paper shapes for artist in residence Boz Schurr to incorporate in her paintings, while being videoed.
If you missed the fun, come next month, when the theme is Keiki Christmas—the only day the Academy’s super fun “Keiki Christmas!” show with Elfie the Elf (Susie Roth) will be open to the public (it’s just for school groups this year). Thanks so much to Bank of Hawaii and all the volunteers who make this free day possible.
The Art Studio is again dark (for just one weekend) as Allison Uttley has packed up her work and moved back to the University. As hoped, Uttley’s time here has garnered her some vision and clarity on future work. Keep an eye on this artist, she’s on the cusp of big things.
She left the Academy with this parting note:
All of the foil is flattened and Gallery 31 is empty. I admit that I felt that same sinking feeling as I pushed the helium methodically out of each balloon, as you might feel waking up to the remnants of a recently ended bash, all the while knowing that it was great while it lasted.
I wanted to take a moment to say that I am entirely grateful for the space provided by the Academy and the opportunities it afforded. I was able to work and install simultaneously as well as collect feedback from some excellent sources including my own thesis committee from UH Manoa (Gaye Chan, Charles Cohan, Mary Babcock, and Chae Ho Lee), and Academy professionals Steven Little, Shawn Eichman, Vince Hazen (at Linekona), and Theresa Papanikolas–who reminded me of my love for Dadaist traditions and encouraged me to set the sculptures free!
Thank you also to everyone in the education department, and especially Maika’i Tubbs and Aaron Padilla who were available for my every whim including some much needed encouragement and comic relief.
Finally, I would like to thank all of the visitors who engaged my imagination with their drawings and conversation.
My next step is to continue my research into the world of inflatables during my final months as a graduate student. I will be sure to keep you informed of future projects. All the best, Allison
In school, I had a professor use the term “Art Gap” a lot during critiques. Not sure if the term was of his own personal art vernacular (Google turned up nothing) as it was the last I ever heard anyone use it in a sentence. Art gap refers (so this professor proclaimed) to the distance between the artist’s intention and the viewer’s perception of a work of art.
“Art gap” is a tricky thing—if the “gap” is close, then your work is deemed “literal.” Too far, and the audience misses the point completely. What makes the alchemy of art gap so difficult to grasp is that it solely relies on the viewer. Being that (as viewers) we are all different, our mileages (or millimeters) will vary.
When you visit Gallery 31, think about how Artist in Residence Allison Uttley’s work affects you. Make note of what thoughts and memories race through your mind. Before you leave, read her proposal for the project and see how your art gap measures up.
Allison and Vince, discussing the finer points of metaphysical Mylar.
Last week, Vince Hazen, Head of the Academy Art Center at Linekona, and Shawn Eichman, Curator of Asian Art, visited Uttley and critiqued her work—one of the benefits of the residency. I sat in on the visits and found it fascinating to observe how Vince and Shawn digested and interpreted the work, and how they arrived at their critiques and suggestions. Sorry, I’m not going to go into what was said (they went deep), but I will say that the distance of perspective from a museum curator (Eichman) to that of an artist (Hazen) is pretty wide. Yet, their views were completely valid and very helpful to Allison; she has a lot to think over as she prepares for her thesis in April.
You have one more weekend to see Allison at work— her last day as Artist in Residence is Oct. 25. Drop by this Saturday and Sunday!
“Hokusai’s Summit: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” has been incredibly gratifying for Academy staff. Putting the exhibition together was a big team effort, and the curatorial departments—Asian Art, Education and European and American Art—collaborated and tried new things. But best of all, it’s a show that is completely from the permanent collection. We don’t need to bring in mummies or Monets from other museums to mount a riveting show. More than 1,300 members came for the special members-only opening reception on Sept. 23. It was so cool to see grown-ups doing the in-gallery activities conceptualized by the Education Department—making prints of “Red Fuji” at the four printing stations, writing haiku, and spinning the woodblocks ingeniously mounted by the Installation Department. And the interest hasn’t died—there is a steady stream of art fans drinking in the views of Mount Fuji every day. Here are scenes from the members’ opening. Photos by Shuzo Uemoto.
Yesterday, I popped in to see what Allison was up to. There were more balloons, the shapes and scale of them have gotten more diverse. A few touch both floor and ceiling simultaneously, which begins to toy with your sense of proportion. One balloon caught my eye.
“Hey, it’s Penelope!” I said.
“Who’s Penelope?” asked Allison.
“You know Penelope, our big bronze sculpture in Central Court.”
“hmm, I’ll have to go up there and take a look…”
Pareidolia is the phenomenon where something significant and profound is seen or heard in random and ambiguous sounds and sights. (Remember the Virgin Mary on a slice of toast? Pareidolia.)
Watching Allison’s work evolve in gallery 31, I can’t help but give each form a name, a personality, make them “real,” assign them as significant. These oddly shaped ballooned blobs do nothing but slowly sway back and forth. They make no noise, have no expression, but there is a life to them. They exist in the space, same as I, alone with my thoughts. It is not unlike riding the bus, only more quiet, more cool, and less stinky.
Check out Allison’s wonderland…three weekends left!
Gallery 31 Art Studio.
Saturdays 10am-4:30pm, Sundays 1-5pm
through Oct 18
Today is Museum Day, organized by Smithsonian Magazine, and people have been taking advantage of their free passes. So far more than 250 people have come with their print outs. Thanks everyone! So much is going on—there are a lot of ways to be part of the art at the Academy these days.
This is Nelson, who studies Japanese, in the exhibition “Hokusai’s Summit: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.” He’s carefully crafting a haiku—in kanji! He explained that one of the lines refers to Buddha Amida. What an extraordinary young man. Once he’s done, his haiku will be placed in a scroll that is part of the exhibition. Anyone can come and contemplate the woodblock prints and write a haiku about what they experience.
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There’s something bittersweet about balloons—they serve as fluffy milestones, marking times of achievement and worth, yet they also remind you that those moments are just that, and can unexpectedly pop, deflate or just float away. We live for moments, and in art it is often the moment of completion that measures its worth. For the artist, though, the brainstorm, the process, and the execution is equally important. It is more often than not, what keeps creative souls coming back for more.
Print and balloon maker, Allison Uttley is the first of four artists in residence this year here at the Academy. Funded by the Arthur and Mae Orvis Foundation, each AIR gets full use of the Museum Learning Center’s Gallery 31 and Art Studio for six weeks. The residency, which was conceived last June, is open to University of Hawaii–Mânoa art grad students and recent MFA recipients of the program. Unique to these islands, the artist in residence program offers a tremendous opportunity for fresh new talent to get their foot in the door of Hawai’i’s art scene.
Follow the signs and check out Allison Uttley as she creates balloons, er, floating sculptures in Gallery 31 Art Studio TONIGHT at ARTafterDARK. She will also be here every weekend through October 25.
“It’s much worse now,” says George Ellis, director of the Honolulu Academy of Arts from 1982 to Feb. 1, 2003, about the difference between the financial situation for Hawai’i arts organizations now and the economic downturn following the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
“It wasn’t a global situation, and it didn’t affect endowments,” explains Ellis by phone from his home in Florida. He sympathizes with what the Academy is going through now. While visitorship and giving took a dip post-9/11, the museum’s income from its endowment held steady. Today the Academy—along with all of Hawai‘i’s museums—face a double whammy of decreased giving and the evaporation of income, a result of endowments losing a third of their value.
In the meantime, the staff of all of the museums in Honolulu have rolled up our shirtsleeves and doubled up on our workloads to make sure that we can all still serve the community, through education programs, exhibitions, films, free activities, and a lot more. The Academy’s full-time staff has been trimmed down to 98 people, from about 130 at the end of 2007. Yet we have not reduced our offerings to adults and children.
But we’re stretched as thinly as possible. There is nothing better about working here than seeing kids—and their docent—lying on the ground looking up at the Chihuly glass “Reef” and shouting out what they see. Museums offer you an experience you can’t get anywhere else. Today alone you can come here and grab the tines of a Harry Bertoia sculpture to make a big noise in the gallery, see a film about the search for the reincarnation of a Tibetan lama, get a free Spotlight Tour on Roman art, go around the world through our museum-wide exhibition of Charles Bartlett works, have lunch in the Pavilion Cafe, attend a class at the Academy Art Center at Linekona, and browse The Academy Shop. It costs thousands of dollars just to open the doors of the museum each day and keep the art collection in good shape. Help us keep on serving you, and the children of Hawai‘i by attending our fundraising events, becoming a member, or simply giving a donation. Even just $5 can pay for a child’s school tour. We need your help!
About 180 people filled Doris Duke Theatre for archeologist William Kelso’s free talk, and the history and archeology buffs weren’t disappointed. He is the head of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project and is one of America’s foremost archaeologists in Early American history. He told the tale of how the milestone Jamestown dig started in 1994 with just him and a shovel in a public park in Virginia—colleagues were skeptical. (He showed a photo of him in a small cordoned off square on a green lawn, which elicited chuckles.) Going by 400-year-old maps and other documents, Kelso just went on a hunch that the very first British settlement in North America hadn’t sunk into the James River, as most people believed. That day in 1994, Kelso found a tiny shard of pottery. He was overjoyed. A woman who had been watching him asked “What ARE you doing?” Kelso excitedly showed her the shard and she backed away like he was a crazy man. Fifteen years later, Kelso and his hardworking team’s finds are rewriting history books on earliest Colonial America.
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