Welcome to Visual Hierarchy, an online visual playground. Gathered here are pictures I make. Visual Hierarchy is a laboratory. Research is done in a wide variety of mediums.
Kate Brandt Pink opens at the University of Wisconsin Union Art Gallery tomorrow (friday march 5th) from 5-8pm
MILWAUKEE—KATE BRANDT PINK, an international group exhibition, will take place at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from March 5, 2010 to April 2, 2010 in the Union Art Gallery. The art in the exhibition confronts power roles, gender, race, fame, and class issues within the perspective of the greater arts community. It opens with a reception from 5-8pm on Friday, March 5. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
In 1960, neo-Dada artist Yves Klein made a splash at an exhibition by using nude female models as living paintbrushes, making work with his signature color, International Klein Blue. UWM artist Kate Brandt comments on, confronts, and even exorcises the ghost of this “legendary” artist with a group exhibition of visual performance artists all of whom use her self selected shade of pink. In their work, these contemporary artists address ideas of gender, power roles, race, fame, class issues and more in a variety of mediums, including live performances (at the opening reception), photography, sculpture, video, and painting.
Artists include: Kate Gilmore, Ryan Trecartin, Franko B, Stuart Semple, Heather Warren-Crow, Kate Brandt, Kimberly Brandt, Cassandra Smith, A. Bill Miller, Emily Walley, Kristen Olsen, Naomi Shersty, Sarah Holden, Anna Helgeson, Richard Mutz, and many others.
***Heather Warren-Crow invites viewers to participate in her work by documenting her opening night performance using cell phone cameras. Please make her dream come true by posting a short video to YouTube and emailing the link to art_gallery@uwm.edu
Your video will become part of a playlist that will be exhibited at the Union Art Gallery.
The gallery I work at (UAG) has a pretty badass show going on currently called Flora/Fauna. If any of you are in the Milwaukee area or are passing through, definitely check it out. I did a post on Roxanne Jackson awhile back, some of the work in that post is worth looking at. Here is what we have in the show:
At the artist talk before the opening of the show Roxanne discussed the ideas surrounding her work. Transformation from man into creature or beast is a recurring theme as well as animal hybrids. I agree with Roxanne in that such a transformation is a fantasy, that we are already beasts, yet we often fear our animal nature in desperate attempt to feel superior. I don’t care so much for her works with wigs, but her ceramic heads and animals are fantastic. They draw on goth and horror aesthetics. Being a metal head I find much of her work exceedingly, specifically the black heads with jaws pushing out of the human mouth.
Kako’s usage of paper started in a happenstance sort of way. She’s always been using paper as a drawer, but many years ago she just sort of started cutting it one night. What ensued was a series of beautifully crafted and composed artworks. A large theme in her work is life and death. Life needs death and death life. To depict this she uses imagery of plants, insects, eggs, a skull, and faces. In her work “Totem” (the red paper cut outs above) are a string of narratives composing her own totem pole of sorts. Clown imagery is drawn from her mother’s interest and collection of clown dolls. The other narratives are privately inspired and we can only conclude them in our imagination.
Kako Ueda and Roxanne Jackson focus on physical nature and human nature in abstract and inventive ways. They share an interest in dualities, such as nature and culture, light and dark. In their work, the natural world is intricate, fascinating, grotesque, frightening – something to be drawn deeply into and sometimes shocked by.
New York artist Kako Ueda constructs her work from intricate hand-cut paper which references, in part, paper cutting from Japan where she was born. Minneapolis-based Roxanne Jackson works three-dimensionally with clay to form large compositions of human/animal hybrids.
Throughout my art history lectures on art in the 1970s to the present, lectures on issues in contemporary art focusing on “controversial artists”, visiting my local art galleries, and the Milwaukee Art Museum I am beginning to realize the insular, overwhelmingly liberal and white art world in America. I live in an area where the White population is 57%, Black is 25%, Hispanic is 12% and other minorities are 6%, yet in my entire art department there are only several black people and barely a handful of other minorities. The stark whiteness of my department is the equivalent of the white walls of Modernist America that continues to this day.
Today in class we discussed artists such as Santiago Sierra and Michael Heizer’s “City” and how controversial they are, yet looking further I begin to wonder to whom are they controversial? The illegal immigrants in several of Sierra’s performance pieces aren’t protesting or questioning his work (that we know of), yet the art world is aghast. Same with Heizer, the art wold has been abuzz with criticism of the man’s work, but who really cares (or knows about the project) outside of the art world. Instead of focusing on actual occurrences of worker exploitation or environmental ravaging, the art world seems more interested on debating and pointing out all the things other artists are doing “wrong.”
I don’t normally rant about art, but sometimes the art world has too many whiny, hyper sensitive, and disconnected people for my liking.
A new show is up in the Atrium for a couple weeks featuring some of Drawing and Painting major Francesca Cozzone’s most recent work. Here are a several samples of her work, of course not as good as the real thing. Go check it out!
Clark Stamm is a Milwaukee based artist whose drawings and paintings are inherently stunning in color, form, and craft. A selection of his works are currently being shown in the University of Wisconsin MIlwaukee Union Atrium space. His work will be up until the 30th, see it while you can! Here is a sample of the work on display:
Art-a-thon went on this past Friday at the UW – Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts and was a success for the Mud Stencil crew. Designing and cutting stencils was the first order, then learning how to put them up. Using a simple mixture: Earth + Water, one can easily make street art that is eco friendly, non-permanent, and fairly durable. Inventor of the Mud Stencil and instructor of this Art-a-thon workshop Jesse Graves has stencils up on campus over two years old. Stencils with rain cover last longest, those without much protection or on the ground last much much shorter. Here are photos of the event:
Today in Milwaukee were Labor Day celebrations including a parade, festival, and awesome weather. This is only a small chunk from a longer performance, but it was inspirational to see and hear such good percussion coming from these youths. These 6th – 9th graders are part of the drumcore of The Band of Southshore. Here is how they rock out:
Just finished revamping the drontlen.com domain into a Milwaukee Artist Forum. For those locals out there check it out and dive into the discource. Get feedback on your artwork, stay updated on local art news, and learn more/from your fellow artists.
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Just finished revamping the 
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