Chelsea Thompto

Chelsea discussing her exhibit with everyone

Older, deeper, wiser. The words that artist Chelsea Thompto said about latest show at the CSUS campus library gallery. This show was way more then what meets the eye when you first enter. The first thing anyone would see is huge stomp of wood sitting by the entrance. From there everywhere you look is wood and few papers hung on the wall, nothing terribly overwhelming.

The whole show is about duality that is in every person, the male and female. Society is always trying to split everything down the middle, male or female but never both. When in reality there is both inside of every person and Chelsea was seeking to erupt the conversion on gender and identity.

Stomp with the burned message in it.

She choose to use the wood as her media because part of it was from her own personal life. Her father was an amateur wood worker. Not only that but the wood itself is a form of her message about being nature, and who were are inside. The wood was such an earthy medium and not something that is usually associated to identity but I loved the way that themes connected and how she used her own personal life to tie into it all. It makes the work so much more powerful, just standing in the room you can feel the power of her life and the topic being so close to her.

words projected in her code

One of my favorite aspects of the exhibit is the code she uses, it has as much meaning as the medium does. The code is a false binary, meaning it has slashes that slant to the right and slashes that slant to the left that form the letters of the alphabet. The binary part comes from the dual nature of the code which ties back into the subject of identity and male and female. My favorite part was on the far end of the room she had a projector that was projecting the conversation of people onto the wall in her made up code. It was incredibly metaphoric for how society is talking in codes and not saying straight forward what needs to be said about the roles of identity and trans genders.

 

 

Chelsea's poetry translated in her code

The entire exhibit was so naturalist and simple but still incredibly forceful and thought provoking. And listening to her speak about  the exhibit and the passion for her topic and having this conversation with society and there views.

 

 

Wood logs split into two with the poetry burned in to them

 The idea of the split logs was amazing as well the burned pattern of the code looks like it matches the idea of simple and nature both sides of the log represent the male and female them that both are needed to complete one log as well as the poems burned into them. They are poems from Chelsea's own journals and they are representations of her experience with both male and female being transgender herself. There is so much of herself into this exhibit that it was one of the better ones I've seen.

 

 

Code made from wood hanging from the wall with nylons

 

Sac State Student Show

Me next to Self-portrait by Josh Lyons

Sacramento State University every year likes to celebrate their more creative students with an amazing showcase of the students. I happened to stop by the student show in the Robert Else Gallery in the Kadema building and what I came across was quite interesting.

First off the show was a lot different from most of the other galleries I have been to, it was very basic, white walls everywhere and concrete floor. There wasn't a lot of the structures in the middle of the floor most of the work was hanging on the walls all around the room. I feel like this was more so the art would stand out bolder then if there was something more such as wall colors or fancy structures. Secondly, there was no titles or names or any sort of description of the works near the work of art. Instead in the corner by the side door there was a diagram of the room and lists of the artist, title, and description of the works. So it was sort of like a game to try and match the works with where they are on the wall. I liked the idea of making the audience interact with the works.

Spill, Va Vue, oil on paper, 33.5" x 21.75"

At first I didn't realize the list of works were in the corner at all so there was an initial walk through of the gallery just looking at the work objectively. It was amazing to see how the work from some many different artists flowed together and I began to try and guess if the artist did the same works or maybe they had a plan all along to collaborate on those specific pieces.

Some of my favorite pieces were done in simple acrylic but I felt they had such a bigger message then just the medium, because a lot of contemporary artists are making their statements through the use of the medium versus the actual work itself, it was wonderful to see it come back to the simplistic features of painting.  

There were some that were incredibly abstract like Mass by Shelby Lynn (below), at first glance it looks as if you can run your hand across it and feel bumpy and sharp. According to the sheet she used mixed media so my guess would be a mix between oil and acrylic paints to create the texture. I liked the feelings that evoked by this particular work it reminds me of a storm and an ocean battle the storm through her use of  colors and texture you get a sense of battle or hopelessness.

Mass, Shelby Lynn, mixed media on panel, 9" x 12"

Another work that really caught my eye was Entangled: 2 by Brett Melliar, it is oil on canvas a fairly large piece but struck me about it was colors. When I  entered it was the first thing I noticed on the wall after a few second the figures in the painting became clear to me, it has a messy elegance to it and makes me a little sad. I felt a sense of entrapment or like stuck but not like you couldn't escape it still felt like there was a chance that figure on the left could make it out. 

Entangled: 2, Brett Melliar, oil on canvas, 36" x 48"



There were other works besides paintings such as Figures in Gray Scale by Bruce Smallwood. Made out of clay, these little figures are the epicenter of thought. They may be missing limbs and have sad, almost lost expressions I didn't get any sense of sorrow more like wonder. Wonder at what they were thinking about or why they were missing their limbs, how did it happen, why those particular limbs? This piece left me with more question then I think answers, which is I feel like how these little guys feel, full of question.

"

Figures In Gray Scale, Bruce Smallwood, clay, 18" x 18" x 15"

Overall, I would recommend stopping by the Robert Else Gallery for a quick peak at the blossoming students at Sac State.

Heart, Va Vue, oil on paper, 23.5" x 7.5"

Pilot (left) and Window (right), Helen Lam, digital painting, 19" x 13"

Joseph del Pesco

They say that a picture is worth a 1,000 words but Joseph del Pesco says a poem is worth a 1,000 images. Del Pesco is a contemporary art curator and arts writer based in San Francisco, California, he was recently, April 21, down at U.C. Davis to give a lecture on the curatorial practice.

However, the lecture itself was quite different than I expected, I was more expecting a long winded, straight forward explanation of how he became a curator and all that was involved in beginning a curator. What we all got instead was a interesting look at how Joseph in his work is somewhat artistic in his own right. He started with a slide show that had no sound just images and words that were supposed to create connections using only visuals and language. Basically, his whole lecture was about how contemporary art is a form of communication. He said the film was about free association game similar to word association, that is supposed to show the importance that we place on certain words and how some tend to have higher priorities in our minds.

He goes on to discuss the idea behind the short film, how it uses a single word in a singular visual "about how it writes a whole story using one word." Del Pesco was incredibly passionate about the use of words and word play, which fits into the fact that he is also a writer as well. Del Pesco has had his writing published in Flash Art, Manifesta Journal, Fillip, NUKE, X-Tra, Proximity, NERO, Mousse, and TENbyTEN Magazines, as well as writting several short stories quite which he touched on during his lecture.

He talked about how he liked to write about stories that were somewhat

fantasy with plenty of elements of reality so that the stories weren't so far fetched from the truth. Sort of like creating a world in which the impossible isn't so impossible after all. I feel like this is a perfect representation of Joseph himself, because he isn't what someone would expect from a curator. 

The word alone tends to imply old man, maybe wearing a suit possibly glasses, but Joseph describes how curating now is much different then people would expect it is almost as if one must collaborate with the artists to create something together. However when asked if he would consider himself an artist as well he answered with a question, "well what is art?". He said that he would have to define the word art before he could describe himself as anything to know what the word would imply, he would rather consider more of a designer but was always "aware of the line". 

Lets just say that Joseph del Pesco was, like his works, outside of the idealistic view.