Engaging in Radical North Central Texas Regionalism
since 1979
HOME Calendar Index Art
Here Lately Opportunities Resources Feedback ThEdBlog Google
This Site Contact
Us Send
Us Stuff
Supporting
Members'
Art How
to Join Artists with
Websites J
R's Blogs ThEdBlog Art
Here Lately How
to Photograph Art Art
Schools & Classes
If Cura means “to
know,” then
Cura!
Cura! Cura! was an education
On This Page introduction
to the "To Know" series Tim
Harding Sunny Sliger and more
to come
Other Cura!³ Links My
first story about Cura! Cura! Cura! before it opened
The
Artists by Terry Hays and my Thursnight Addendum
Tanya Miller's Dallas Art
News review
of Tim Harding's work in Cura!³ and Glass
Tire recommends the
show on their DFW page.
Sunny Sliger Disco Chatelaine 2012 mixed media wearable $960
Early in our discussion of what she might create for Cura! Cura! Cura! Dallas artist Sunny Sliger talked about having water skiers on White Rock Lake splashing past the Bath House. The skiers would wear the colorful collage fabrics we'd seen in her work so many times before. Unfortunately, there's no skiing at White Rock because boat motors powerful enough to pull them are illegal. But just the thought of it made for happy daydreams — wild colors flailing in the wind.
Then she and her sometimes collaborator Marianne Newsom, were going to wrap the back porch of the Bath House in their densely colorful fabric. That was an exciting and doable notion that, though it would have required long hours and massive material, would only have been visible from the lake. Terry and I both love their medium, but I was afraid having artists we didn't invite in the show would tip our careful gender balance.
Much later, we learned on Facebook, that
invited artist Sam England had collaborated
with Eric de Llamas [pictured in my story about installing
the show] on their big, lush and partially gilded painting. Actually,
Eric said his work would be featured in the show, which startled us, although
he would have rebalanced my precious gender equation, and I again wondered about
the need to so carefully adhere to such egalitarianism. At our first meeting
with the artists to decide whose work would show where in the galleries, Sam
said he planned to collaborate with studio-mate Ashley Bryan, but that did not
work out.
Sunny Sliger White Tile Fob and White
Satellite 2012 mixed media sculpture $1500
and $150
Instead of collaborating, Sunny created new work. I had concerns about stopping her from working with someone she liked working with, but I was gratified when I realized what she had accomplished solo. But before we'd figured all that out, Terry and I pushed her to continue our needs for her older work, which bothers me now, though then it seemed appropriate.
The red piece in the lobby, comprising three types
of clothes forms covered with shredded, dyed fabric, was initiated by us over-collaborating
curators. I'm still promoting the notion that we chose the artists, then let
them do what they wanted, but we provided too much guidance for
Sunny's red piece. For it, we threw together the notion,
size and form, from what Sunny brought, then left her to make it happen.
Sunny Sliger Air Pudding and Wind
Pie 2012 fabric collage hats $250 each
"Why don't you," we suggested, "put some of those fabrics on one of those mannequins?" And, of course, we liked it when she did. Then the Bath House got carried away and put it up on a riser, setting it off like a museum piece and making it the only piece in the show on a riser. I suppose it does add pizzazz, but I liked it on the floor better. There, it was integrated with the reality of walking through the lobby.
Bath House administrators, afraid the next person
who bumped into it — at least one already had — might trip
and fall. So without consulting curators, they parked it up on the only pedestal
they could find, adding yet another level of unintended collaboration and forcing
visitors to look up at what I thought of as a human-scale object. It was not
what I hoped for but if we hadn't butted in, it would not have existed, and nobody
would have bumped into it.
Sunny Sliger Silver Fob and White
Fob 2012 collage, mixed media on paper $650
each
There was at least one more instance of us curators getting carried away with what we wanted. Sunny brought in several collages including these, which we loved the looseness and mixed-media melange of. For awhile, it was difficult to explain to others what those drawings were about. But later, during the opening reception, a serious artist friend asked, and I lead her across the gallery to stand before the wholly Sunny-generated figures. I hadn't known how to describe it, but in the moment, looking into the large, wall-filling forms, it just seemed obvious.
I told her Sunny called them drawings. And that what she was drawing with, were the same or visually similar materials as the two fobs she'd created on the center's front porch. Sunny thought the rope-hung fobs, rich with subtle colors, odd shapes and engaging textures would be obvious to anyone coming through the front door, although we did talk with one guy who had walked between them into the building without noticing. A matter of scale, I suspect. When one puts that much detailed time and effort into work, they grow larger and more obvious. Much larger and they would have created difficulty hoisting and may have blocked the way.
Bath House Art Coordinator Enrique Cervantes, who has been hoisting both fobs every day the Bath House has been open since, reported September 18 that one fell, and Sunny had been notified, so she's probably already working on new moorings, and it will be back up soon. I still like staring at the slowly circling, not-quite monochromatic multi-media ornaments swaying in the breeze. Leaving it out over nights was okay with her, but the Bath House wanted it safe, so it comes down every Saturday night and goes back up on Tuesday mornings. A lot of hassle, and with that much handling, a fall seemed more possible.
Terry and I were serious about finding
the right wall to hang Sunny's drawings, and we were pleased they
fit the space left of Bernardo Cantu's wall — together, they even seemed
color-coordinated. Bernardo nestled his major installation piece that I still
think is the best he's ever done, visually between the two of those squared-off
columns just into the main gallery. The same one Tim Harding is
leaning
on in the photo
below. Sunny's drawings pair for the two fobs
fit perfectly between Bernardo's and
Sedrick Huckaby's spaces. Terry and I had been excited about the placement, but
we were even more intoxicated by the wild shadows cast by the irregular
edges of Sunny's large collages supported only by pushpins in their tops. But
when Sunny saw them, she push-pinned them all the way around the two pieces,
rendering them nearly flat into the wall, so few such of the shadows we thought
so dynamic showed.
Sunny Sliger Gold Barnacle Fob 2012
mixed media sculpture on chain $1,500
We missed those wild shadows and told her. She didn't care. We were disappointed, but she got to show the three-dimensional piles-of-stuff drawings the way she wanted. I, at least, admire her gumption, although I still miss those shadows.
Later, when I wasn't there, and I don't think Terry was either, Sunny returned with an unanticipated and unannounced piece that should, by all reasons rational and fair, have supplanted the too-often collaborated-upon red one. I usually think of the new one as "the wedding dress," because it is mostly lacey white with dangling colors, reflective shapes, glitters and glitzes. But Sunny titled it Disco Chatelaine. You probably understand the disco reference, but chatelaine means "a woman in charge of a large house" with her keys and chains dangling from her belt.
I later heard that Sunny wanted it hung in the middle of the main gallery, but somebody — probably Enrique — instead hung it just outside the theatre door opposite side our red piece. Terry and I and Sunny had earlier discussed how theatric her costumes were, so that placement seemed thematically appropriate, but because it's on the other, unexpected side of the lobby, it is visually confusing. It looks okay there although it's too close to the dark piano, but distant like part of some other show or maybe a costume from a play. It would have better for us as curators, to hang it instead of the red piece, since we had no business directing her to do any work to please us, when she's so clearly on her own path. But we didn't even know she was working on it.
Much later, perusing the Exhibition Checklist to get correct caption information here, I noticed a strange new title. The red pieces are called hats, and the work is titled Air Pudding and Wind Pie, which seems somehow appropriate, even smile-worthy.
Tim Harding Ponders — the first time
I got plenty opportunities to learn while co-curating Cura! Cura! Cura! at the Bath House Cultural Center through September 29, 2012. Most of what I discovered was via interesting — often fascinating, albeit sometimes subtle — experiences with the artists Terry and I chose. Those ongoing circumstances are probably why I've hung onto this job so long. So the learning-from-other-artists part was hardly new, but though I've often promised to do a "carefully curated" exhibition over the past dozen years, this is the first one I've actually pulled off — We have actually pulled off.
Bath House Visual Arts Coordinator Enrique Fernández Cervantes invited me to start a new exhibition series called Curate.Collaborate, wherein I was to invite another curator, and we would collaborate to produce an exhibition. I choose Terry Hays, and we worked together to produce all aspects. Not that sharing responsibilities for such an undertaking was particularly easy for either of us. I'm not used to first finding out what somebody else wants to do about everything that comes up during the often long and involved process of producing an art show.
As great a procrastinator as I am, I love to get exhibition things done when they need doing without talking it over first. I usually would rather decide things quickly than be right all the time, so the show's progress continues. But we shared responsibilities on this one. All the way through. And no, we did not always agree, or else why bother collaborating.
I know I quote Phillip Glass too often about this, but I actually heard him say it at SMU's McFarlin Auditorium some years back, so it rings especially apt: "The best thing about collaborating is that you get to work with other people, and the worst thing about collaborating is that you get to work with other people."
I've blogged about most of the shows I've produced, because the artists who read these page want or need to know how they are executed. Studio visits are among this websites' most popular pages, and I missed sharing with you each step. But I decided early to stay covert about this show's inner workings. Maybe just because it'd be different. Maybe because it really needed to be collaborative, and I still don't know how much to share about that interaction. Maybe I don't know why I passed on the opportunity to write about it every step; then, of course, sometimes I do.
But I have photo-augmented memories of moments
to share about putting this show on those walls, and I've already procrastinated
too long, although it was nice to finally catch up on sleep, get a few birds photographed
and tell at least one Art
Here Lately tale. Now it's back to art show business.
Timothy Harding
Timothy Harding Scribbled Wall detail 2012
