Arrival

VAIL 2011

Spain 2009

Hasmik Arsen Barcelona

Summer 2008

Stanford 2008

SFMOMA - Chances that Occur

The great work of art's significance rests more in what it demands of us than in what we say about it or judge it to be using criteria. In fact the great work of art demands from us thoughts and feelings and the formation of concepts and evaluative criteria which do not precede its presence; it questions the adequacy of what we think and say. A truly great work might call one's very way of life into question. The ideal is a transformation...in which we do not remain what we were... (From Stanley Deetz's Effectiveness and Ethics in Interpersonal Interaction)

Robert Rauschenberg

Rauschenberg died on May 12, 2008, two weeks before our trip to San Francisco, so this is a tribute to him.

In the 1950s, Rauschenberg was one of the few emerging artists in the New York avant-garde who, as he put it, respected the Abstract Expressionists enough not to copy them. Throughout his long career, he has challenged the limits of art-making. In the early 1950s, his inclination to experiment with painting, photography, printmaking, collage, found-object sculpture, and performance art was already apparent. From http://www.sfmoma.org/

Collection, 1954
painting - oil, paper, fabric, wood, and metal on canvas

Rauschenberg led the art work into a new direction. Doesn’t represent anything. No longer a window into something else. It is an object itself. New tools, features, color, scale, brush strokes, interaction of the shapes and colors, creation of emotion, change without the use of anything representational.

White Painting [Three Panel], 1951

painting - oil on canvas

Shadows absorbing and reflecting back what is happening in the room, the mood in the room. Allows greater permission, breaking boundaries. Telling a story or asking a question. Ambiguity. Art is ambiguous. Reintroduced pop culture. A bridge between pop art, Warhol, and abstract.

Triptych is a work of art (usually a panel painting) which is divided into three sections, or three carved panels which are hinged together and folded. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works; the diptych has two panels. The middle panel is the larger one and is flanked by two smaller, but related, works. While the root of the word is the ancient Greek "triptychos", the word arose into the medieval period from the name for an Ancient Roman writing tablet, which had two hinged panels flanking a central one. The form can also be used for pendant jewelry.

The triptych form arises from early Christian art, and was the standard format for altar paintings from the Middle Ages onwards. Its geographical range was from the eastern Byzantine churches to the English Celtic churches in the west.

Janine Antoni

Lick and Lather, 1993-1994
sculpture - chocolate and soap

Uses her body as a tool to make her art to represent quality vs. individuality. Lick and lather. Soap – pure, clear. Chocolate – indulgence. Licking the chocolate defaces herself. Took a bath with the soap. Feeding and washing with herself. Gentle acts that are slowly erasing herself. Erasing the individuality that we have. How do we relate to our image? Are we only what we look like? Conflict of love and hate with our physical appearance. Performance art – making vs. sculpting.

Jim Hodges

No Betweens, 1996
sculpture - silk, cotton, polyester, and thread

Nothing is permanent. Representative of life in late 80s and 90s. Fading away of gay artists, AIDS. It is all connected like fine layers of silk thread. Fragility, beauty, pictorial vividness, intimacy.

January 2008

Surprising Dubai

Click Here to See Our Honeymoon Photos in Dubai!

Dubai is a city state, with population of 1.4 million and an area of 1,500 square miles and is one of the seven states on the south-eastern shore of the Persian Gulf that make up the United Arab Emirates. While larger Abu Dhabi floats on the money gusher from one of the world's richest oil troves, Dubai thrives on its commercial skills and imagination.

Whatever its entrepreneurial leaders conjure up quickly becomes reality. That could be anything from the tallest building in the world, the Burj Dubai, which is rising from the desert floor at the rate of a story every three days, to the ultimate monument to excess, the Burj AI Arab hotel. This 1,000-foot-tall structure is an abstract rendition of a ship, complete with a gigantic Teflon-coated sail. The Burj AI Arab's interiors drip with 22karat gold leaf, and its rooms, all suites, start at $2,000 a night.

Global banks are rushing to set up offices in the new Dubai International Financial Center. Corporations from Microsoft to Cisco Systems are opening regional or, in Halliburton's case, world headquarters there. So business travelers are increasingly likely to find themselves in the garish little emirate with its clogged streets and pricey hotel rooms.

A visitor will find plenty to do in Dubai. Restaurants of every description abound, from the superb but low-key Lebanese eatery AI Nafoorah in the mall beneath the Jumeirah Emirates Towers hotel to the haute cuisine at Vu's on the 50th floor.

Dozens of shopping malls feature just about every name-brand store from Harvey Nichols to Louis Vuitton. Prices are good, thanks to low import duties and a currency linked to the U.S. dollar. The malls are great places to observe Dubai's rich mix of people, from Saudi women in full black veils (though they're not obligatory) to local youths with spiky hairdos.

Dubai can be a painless introduction to what may otherwise seem a forbidding part of the world. A Muslim country, it stands out for its tolerance toward other religions. Unlike somber Iran and Saudi Arabia, Dubai allows alcohol consumption and turns a blind eye to a relatively unfettered nightclub scene.

To get a feel of the heart of Dubai, take a walking and boating expedition along Dubai Creek, the eight-mile salty inlet that used to be the emirate's commercial lifeblood. Start at the Dubai Museum, housed in a mud-walled fort in a part of town called Bur Dubai where the original settlement dates back to the mid-19th century. Its collections of antique watercraft and huts made of date-palm fronds are fascinating reminders of how much the once-sleepy trading entrepôt on the banks has transformed in a few decades.

From the museum, the route to the creek takes you through alleyways that boast Indian temples and colorful flower stalls-hints that roughly half of Dubai's population hails from South Asia. There's also a blue-tiled Shiite mosque built by the Iranian community.

At the creek you can board an abra, or 20-passenger water taxi, for the bargain fare of one dirham, about 25¢. You will be traveling with the people who do the real work: Indian and Pakistani tradesmen and laborers. Get off on the east side, known as Deira. In the vibrant and earthy souks, you can buy a traditional man's robe, called a dishdasha, or the heavy silver jewelry that has lost out to gold as the region has become wealthier.

In the spice souk not far from the abra landing, the air is full of the gray smoke of frankincense, available for purchase along with sandalwood, vanilla, and fancy little packages of saffron. Farther away from the creek is the gold souk, with some 400 shops offering an astounding array of designs. Dubai is one of the cheapest places in the world to buy gold, which is fashioned in India and largely sold by weight, not level of workmanship.

Another way of getting a taste of Arabia is a desert safari, around $80 per person for a group tour, including dinner. About 40 minutes outside the city, your driver will let some of the air out of the SUV's tires and take you on a gut-wrenching cruise up and down the dunes. At a desert campsite you will meet baby camels that are as friendly as puppies.

The beauty of Dubai is that you can do just about anything there, despite being on the austere Arabian Peninsula: play golf, go to the beach, and hit the racetrack. There is a snow-covered hill at Mall of the Emirates, one of the largest shopping centers in the world. When you see the boulders, fake pines, and real ice sculptures, it is magical-not less so for being totally incongruous in a mall. Kids in blue winter suits pound each other with snowballs as skiers rise into the distance on a chairlift. There is a toboggan run, even a busy ski school. A two-hour lift ticket goes for about $45, and Ski Dubai furnishes equipment as well as outerwear, although you need to bring or buy gloves and hats. The indoor temperature is 23F.

If you are staying in a top hotel, you can find a sufficient variety of restaurants to keep yourself satisfied for a day or two without leaving the premises. For evening entertainment, you can enjoy JamBase, a relaxed, wood-paneled club at Souk Madinat Jumeirah where you can have dinner and listen to an American live jazz band. Among the cool young locals, the preferred venue seems to be the Peppermint Club, which convenes on Friday nights at the Fairmont Hotel. The music is so loud it hurts, and young female employees in uniform white-denim hot pants slither among the crowd of black T-shirts and slinky dresses to encourage dancing. That's another thing you don't expect to encounter in this part of the world.