Past Exhibitions—2009

September 2−October 18, 2009

Pae White
In Between the Inside-Out

Opening Reception: September 2, 5:30−7:30pm

Curated by Sandra Percival

White's practice is known for blurring any boundary that may remain between site and non-site, art and design, and the iconic and the everyday. Using a noninvasive data collection and mapping procedure, White had three-dimensional scans taken of an 800 year-old massive oak tree, a wild raspberry bush and a Manzanita grove in the landscape near Nevada City, California. White uses these topographical scans as conceptual source material, working with a Dreamworks animator and visual effects artist to create a series of color-treated, morphing point-cloud animations. Viewers enter into three glass trapezoidal chambers in which they become immersed in these images, surrounded by reflected and refracted light. Viewers are thus confronted with living organisms that are at once intimately known and yet untouched.

Collections are inherently embedded in White's work—from the rarefied and artistic to the humble. According to White, collecting and collections are both a way of begetting knowledge and of keeping knowledge at bay. As a material rather than an ethereal element of the installation, White incorporates two collections: one, an extensive, eccentric collection of ceramics drawn from the collection of Nevada City's Joseph Meade; and the other, drawn from the Mills College Art Museum's Antonio Prieto collection of ceramics. Both collections represent the American studio ceramics movement, which also reflects the rich history of ceramics in California. Meade's collection of over 1,000 ceramic vessels embraces anonymous and well-known ceramic artists, thrift store and flea market finds, shares some of the same names as the Museum's collection which also includes current and former Mills' ceramics faculty Ron Nagle, Carlton Ball and Antonio Prieto. Unlike the projected animations, these collections are resolutely physical and tactile. Displayed as massed fields on plinths, these stoneware objects deconstruct the relationship of nature to culture.

A scattering of leaves leak out from two rooms in the gallery—nature or artifice? The leaves are nature as artifice—every single leaf and its elements were crafted of fabric, metal and soot, and intimately touched by hand, echoing the transformation of clay into functional form. The poetry of the leaves lies also in their associative relationship to place: Sick Amour (Sycamore leaves of Los Angeles in the fall and November Gutter Leaves, Pasadena, 2009. Unlike the idiosyncratic nature of these works, the process of high definition 3D scanning depicts with total accuracy every pore, every crack, every leaf of the oak tree and other native species of the Sierras, yet they remain intangible in their constantly mutating digital form as Dying Oak and Ballerina (Wild Raspberry Bush). Set within the Art Museum's Beaux Arts architecture, and outside, its own emblematic landscape, White's In Between the Inside-Out allows nature in its multifarious forms to invade the normally sacrosanct space of the Museum as conservatory.

This exhibition has been organized by curator Sandra Percival who produced and organized the show at New Langton Arts, San Francisco, which was co-produced with the Mills College Art Museum. Major support has been received from the LEF Foundation for the MCAM show, and both exhibitions have been supported by the FOR-SITE Foundation, New Langton Arts and a San Francisco Arts Commission Organization Project Grant.

Mills College Art Museum's exhibition of Pae White coincides with White's participation in the 2009 Venice Biennal on view through November 22, 2009, Venice, Italy.

Public Programs

Wednesday, September 30, 7:30pm

Lecture by artist Pae White

Danforth Lecture Hall, Art Building
Followed by a reception and tour of the exhibition in the Museum

Multiple: Five Black Nesting Bowls

Pae White’s multiple, Five Black Nesting Bowls, precisely casts the metaphor of the double title of her two part project: In Between the Inside-Out and In Between the Outside-In. The exterior of the bowls document the interior of the grinding holes. Five granite boulders—bedrock mortars known as grinding rocks—remain scattered across the Sierra landscape, used for centuries by the Maidu as places to grind acorns and seeds for food. By press-molding the grinding holes of one of the boulders, White has fabricated a set of five black nesting bowls from hand-harvested clay embedded with cattails. The bowls are raku-fired using resinous plants including Kit Kit Dizzy, pine needles and cannabis.

Edition of 10, 2 APs

For price and availability please contact museum@mills.edu

Image: Pae White, Sick Amour, 2009. Fabric, aluminum and soot. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels.

June 17−August 2, 2009

Reverberations:
Japanese Prints of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake
Opening Reception: June 17, 5:30−7:30pm

Curated by Deborah Stein and the Museum Studies

The Mills College Art Museum is pleased to present Reverberations: Japanese Prints of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake curated by Deborah Stein and the Mills College Museum Studies Workshop, on view from June 17 through August 2, 2009. A public reception will be held on June 17 from 5:30-7:30 pm with a walk-through with the curator at 6:00 pm. A family printmaking workshop will take place on Sunday, June 28 from 3:00-5:00 pm with a film screening of Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes on Wednesday, July 22 at 7:00 pm.

According to Stein, "Reverberations is a collective effort to examine how art and natural disaster intersect in complex ways. Over the course of nine months, I worked with a team of dedicated students to research an unknown and unpublished set of prints in which we discovered a powerful response to a horrendous catastrophe."

The Japanese woodblock prints featured in Reverberations were created in response to the great Kanto earthquake that took place on September 1,1923, devastating many cities in the Kanto region of Japan, including Tokyo, Yokohama, and Chiba. Immense fires aided by strong winds engulfed the cities and destroyed lives, homes, and businesses in a matter of days. After the earthquake and its aftershocks had abated and the fires were quelled, the surviving citizens had to rebuild their lives in the wake of their ruined cities.

The Kanto earthquake was a significant part of the history of woodblock prints in Japan, as many print shops, including the famous Watanabe print shop, lost their respective equipment and blocks from the quake and fire. Like the rest of the citizens, artists and publishers had to begin anew. In the years following the earthquake, artists created works to document the disaster, as well as the rebuilding of their cities.

The prints featured in this exhibition were commissioned as a set to be executed by a number of different artists. These works convey multiple levels of emotion and a visceral intensity. As an historical and art historical reference to life and art in modern Japan, the works exemplify a wide variety of print styles and practices during the Taisho Era. This visual response to a natural disaster constitutes a record of despair and renewal specific to this period; yet, it is strikingly familiar record of human suffering and survival that resonates with the Bay Area's own experience with destruction wrought by earthquakes. Reverberations offers insight into tragedy and loss, making available experience of disaster in a way that scientific data and photographs alone simply cannot.

The Museum Studies Workshop is a course that is taught in the Art History Program at Mills College, encompassing both the theoretical and practical study of museums in historical and contemporary contexts. This year, the Museum Studies Workshop has been taught by Visiting Assistant Professor Deborah Stein, who worked with seven Mills College students to create the present exhibition.

Digital Catalogue and Exhibition Overview

Public Programs

Sunday, June 28, 3:00−5:00pm

Family Printmaking Workshop
Please join us for an educational workshop geared towards all ages presented in conjunction with our summer exhibition, Reverberations: Japanese Prints of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake. The afternoon will begin in Danforth Lecture Hall, Art Building with a PowerPoint presentation on traditional Japanese printmaking followed by an interactive team-taught course with Art Museum staff to learn how to create prints using everyday materials.

Wednesday, July 22, 7:00pm

Film Screening of Hiroshi Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes
The Mills College Art Museum presents "Woman In The Dunes" a film by Hiroshi Teshigahara July 22 at 7:00 pm, in conjunction with the our ongoing exhibition "Reverberations: Japanese Prints of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake." The film is about an amateur entomologist searching for insects by the sea who is trapped by local villagers into living with a mysterious woman who spends almost all her time preventing her home from being swallowed up by advancing sand dunes. The woman and the trapped man begin a strange relationship that stretches over years, as the man's hope for escape dims. Not suitable for children.

Docent-led tours of the exhibition are offered to groups and must be arranged one week in advance. Tours are approximately 30 minutes long. Please call 510.430.2164 or email museum@mills.edu for reservations.

Admission is free to all exhibitions and programs.

Above Image: Sengai. Disaster in Karyu-Gai (at Yanagi Bridge). Japanese, c.1923. Woodblock print. Collection of the Mills College Art Museum.

Below Image: Sengai. Shelter Behind Asakusa Kan-non Temple. Japanese, c. 1923. Woodblock print. Collection of the Mills College Art Museum.

May 3–31, 2009
Young Americans: Mills College MFA Exhibition 2009

Opening Reception: May 2, 7:00–9:00pm

Curated by Terri Cohn

Andrew Witrak, Annie Vought, Brian Caraway, Esther Traugot, Gina Tuzzi, Joseph Berryhill, Kate Pszotka, Leigh Merrill, Modesto Covarrubias, Steuart Pittman

The Mills College Art Museum is proud to present Young Americans, featuring works by the 2009 Master of Fine Arts degree recipients. This exhibition provides an opportunity to see works in all media created by a promising group of emerging artists eager to share what they have been developing during their graduate program with a broader audience. This year's exhibition is curated by Terri Cohn, Bay Area writer, independent curator, and faculty member at the San Francisco Art Institute.

In the brochure accompanying the exhibition, Cohn observes that the ten artists who will receive their MFA degrees this year are unusual in their choice to name their MFA show Young Americans. The title situates them as citizens emerging within a national context, and suggests that in addition to their collective experiences as youthful Americans-with the burden of history this implies, this identity also affords them an intrinsic right to personal freedom. A desire for a sense of security-articulated in various metaphoric and formal ways-is one fundamental concern expressed through their work.

Kate Pszotka's fascination with the idea of home and stability has motivated her consideration of family members, which she represents iconographically with everyday objects, realized as paper cut out line drawings. Gina Tuzzi's seemingly simple, naïve structures-houses, barns, huts-stacked on trucks to become rolling homes, or represented as drawings, underscore a sense of safety and comfort in the mythic past of coastal California.

In related ways, Esther Traugot's knitted tree sweaters and forest of trunks with projected flower pattern coverings suggest the utopian potential of the natural world, as well as her desire to protect and preserve it. By contrast, Leigh Merrill's large-scale photographs explore the relationship between fantasy and reality in our constructed environments, blending urban and suburban architecture and landscape styles, or cut and artificial flowers. Modesto Covarrubias has spent much time creating rooms and shelters as means to define and express his fears, insecurities, and sense of vulnerability, while Andrew Witrak's sculptures pose slightly ridiculous solutions to the question of what can provide some fleeting impression of safety or exit: lifejackets sewn together; a beeswax boarding pass. Annie Vought translates found handwritten letters to wall-mounted versions created with cutout text, fragile portraits of each author that are reminiscent of silhouettes.

Joseph Berryhill's paintings express a tension between order and chaos, proposing ways that animate experience can be distilled into visual experience. Steuart Pittman's abstract paintings reflect what he calls a "longing for quiet beauty in a chaotic, high-speed age," while Brian Caraway creates tools and rules to implement his mixed media works, relating his process-based investigations through texture as they change over time.

As artists who have come of age in the extraordinarily volatile circumstances of the 21st century, these individuals focus on singular modes of expression as a way to make sense of and stake a claim in their separate and collective futures. Their works express a sense of hope and possibility, going forward into their lives as young Americans.

In addition to an essay by Cohn, the illustrated catalog for Young Americans contains an essay by critic Glen Helfand. This publication will be available in the gallery during the course of the exhibition.

Closing Reception
Sunday, April 19, 2009, 3:30-5:30 pm

Please join us for the closing reception this Sunday, April 19 featuring presentations by participating artists, Cherise Bentosino, Danica Collins, and Meryl Rose Phillips, followed by a public reception with Michael Beller and food by Venga! Empanadas, SF.

Alison Ashcraft, Cherise Bentosino, Danica Collins, Cocoa Costales, Amanda Cronkright, Maryam Epting, Kathalina Ho, Amelia Hogan, Eunjee Lee, Sophie Leininger, Anne Magratten, Jennifer Martin, Lily Ann Page, Vivianna Pena, Meryl Rose Phillips

The Mills College Art Museum announces Meridian, the 2009 Mills College Senior Exhibition. Meridian features work by 15 undergraduate students who have studied with Mills College art faculty - Jesus Aguilar, Jennifer Brandon, Ken Burke, Freddy Chandra, Julie Chen, James Fei, Michael Hall, Samara Halperin, Hung Liu, Robin McDonnell, Anna Valentina Murch, Ron Nagle, Sean Olson, Dharma Strasser MacColl, Michael Temperio, Deirdre Visser, Catherine Wagner, and Ethan Worden.

Alison Ashcraft layers photographs of the American landscape with drawings that question the psychology of the national culture.

Cherise Bentosino uses ready-made materials in modular sculptures to bring a renewed scientific and artistic perspective on the unnoticed patterns of our universe.

Danica Collins works with clay and other materials to abstract memories and history.

Cocoa Costales confronts and dissects trends of addiction and methods of consumption in her work. Using painting and photography, she navigates the complex relationship between person and product.

Amanda Cronkright works with oil paint to come face to face with herself.

Maryam Epting works with photography and video to consider and accommodate contradictions.

Kathalina Ho's paintings explore the particulars of the ways we live as individuals and as a community.

Amelia Hogan's work consists of mixed media pine boxes referencing the tenuous subject of child abuse and the internal dialogue that is often forgotten in external discussions.

Eunjee Lee paints with charcoal and oil pastels on paper and mylar about the restoration of destroyed buildings to console people in their sorrow.

Sophie Leininger creates large scale paintings to explore how metaphor may construct myth and humanness.

Anne Magratten is a painter with an obsession for the body as a medium of emotion.

Jennifer Martin explores color relationships, the viewer's interaction with them, and emphasizes the creative process through using randomization and chance as a determining factor in her work.

Lily Ann Page creates fashion-inspired, ambiguous narratives through photography.

Vivianna Peña shares her history and personal experiences, which root from her Mexican and Chicano upbringing, through illustration in ink and paint.

Meryl Rose Phillips uses video installation to tackle the longstanding issues and connotations that come along with living above or below the social and federal boundary of the U.S. Interstate 580 in Oakland, California.

January 21—March 22, 2009
Opening Reception: January 21, 5:30-7:30pm
Join us at 6:00pm for a walk-through with the curators.

Painting the Glass House:
Artists Revisit Modern Achitecture

Curated by Jessica Hough and Mónica Ramirez-Montagut

Sixteen artists reconsider modern architecture and what it represents to a new generation in Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture.

Modern architecture is often identified with buildings by Le Corbusier, Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, and Frank Lloyd Wright, which represent a period driven by developments in technology, engineering, and the introduction of industrial materials such as iron, steel, concrete, and glass. However, architects at this time engaged in a practice that not only incorporated structural innovations, but also encouraged social change.

The artists featured in the exhibition are interested not only in the potential of utopian ideas that these buildings represent, but also the sense of a passing idealism and lost opportunity that modern architecture now embodies. Hough comments, "The artists are less interested in the built structures themselves and what it might feel like to be inside one, and more interested in the philosophy and idealism they represent. The way in which the buildings signal a possibility of utopia is essential-a future that could have been. Sentimentality runs through much of the work."

Ramírez-Montagut adds, "This melancholic remembrance comes at a time when great works of modern architecture are at risk due to neglect, deterioration, and demolition. Underlying all the artworks is a feeling of deep admiration for the architects who sought to elevate culture and bring it to the broad masses, yet their sense of failure is also prevalent; the artists' knowledge of modern architecture's crisis and demise tints their works with nostalgia."

Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture brings together two-dimensional works of various media (including video) that explore an interest among emerging artists in architecture of the modern period. The exhibition includes work by Alexander Apóstol, Daniel Arsham, Gordon Cheung, David Claerbout, Angela Dufresne, Mark Dziewulski, Christine Erhard, Cyprien Gaillard, Terence Gower, Angelina Gualdoni, Natasha Kissell, Luisa Lambri, Dorit Margreiter, Russell Nachman, Enoc Perez, and Lucy Williams.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 144-page book entitled, Revisiting the Glass House: Contemporary Art and Modern Architecture, co-published by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Mills College Art Museum, and Yale University Press. The book includes essays by David Auburn, Jessica Hough, Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, and Joseph Rosa (release date December 8, 2008).

This exhibition has been organized by The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and has been supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the LEF Foundation, the Joan Danforth Art Museum Endowment, and the Agnes Cowles Bourne Fund for Special Exhibitions.

Daniel Arsham, The M-House got lost found itself floating on the sea, affecting salination levels in the North Atlantic (2004) from the exhibition Painting the Glass House: Artists Revisit Modern Architecture; Private collection, Paris; Courtesy of Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Miami/Paris