Archive for the 'San Suzie' Category

Ask the Art Nurse: One word, plastic.

By SanSuzie on October 5, 2011 in Ask the Art Nurse, Conservation and San Suzie. Closed

DEAR ART NURSE:

We have several Arman Lucite boxes with objects suspended within layers. Many of the “boxes” have yellowed. Is there someway to restore them to remove the discoloring?

Yours,
Mellow Yellow

Dear MELLOW:

I take it that you are referring to one of the sculptural “accumulations” produced beginning in the early 1960s by the French-born American artist Pierre Armand Fernandez who went by the moniker Arman. These compositions of objects were placed by the artists either into acrylic (Lucite being a brand name for cast acrylic, much like Plexiglas) or cast directly into polyester resin.

The question here is which type of object do you have? If it’s the acrylic variety, there’s a good chance that the yellowing is a surface discoloration or even an accumulation of dirt that a conservator might just get lucky enough to be able to reverse. If it’s polyester, it’s more likely to be an irreversible photochemical condition caused by exposure to light or poor catalyzation (as in: Part A was not mixed correctly with Part B and it didn’t set right when it was made) — or any number of other factors. A pro might have a chance of reversing it, but my guess it’s more or less a snowball’s chance in hell since polyester resins, like ladies from Beverly Hills, aren’t exactly known for aging gracefully.

In any case, I don’t recommend you taking a stab at this yourself.  Chances are you’ll stain it or make the plastic cloudy or sticky — or poison yourself in the process.  This one calls for a professional.  You can find a live and willing Art Nurse in your area on the website of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works.

Cool looking as they are, plastics are tricky materials to safeguard. Though there are no hard and fast rules for maintaining them in museum-quality condition, one thing that always helps is keeping them away from sunlight. And heating ducts, extreme cold, dog hair, cat hair and commercial cleaners not specifically tested for the plastic in question. And whatever you do, don’t ever smoke around them, no matter how good the bud.

Rx,
San Suzie

Have a question for the Art Nurse? E-mail her at suzie [at] c-monster [dot] net.

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Miscellany. 08.08.11.

By c-monster on August 8, 2011 in C-Monster, Photography, San Suzie and Travel. Closed


Havana Hot Rod: A 1957 Dodge Coronet on the street, in Cuba. (Photo by San Suzie.)

On Curls

Wigs (Portfolio), 1994, by Lorna Simpson. (Courtesy of MoMA.)

It’s my spoken rule never to actually read the New York Times Style section, just look at the pictures. But I couldn’t resist poking into Judith Newman’s essay on curly hair. As a sporter and supporter of all things big and curly, I’m always happy to see someone call the blowout mafia on the bullshit. (Seriously, formaldehyde??? That’s so Damien Hirst.) But the piece, I thought, overlooked what I think is an ethnic issue that is also tied to curly hair. We live in a society that prizes WASP standards of beauty above all. I think there’s a certainly undesirability to curly hair because it’s seen as too ethnic, too Jewish, too Latino, too Black. Too, well, unruly.

It still feels like a bit of defiance to wear hair that is big and curly. But not for simple aesthetic reasons. This story could have been an interesting dissection of what we as a society consider beautiful and why. Opportunity missed.

Now, back to looking at the pictures.

Random Linkage

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Haiti Report: Saving a country’s priceless murals.

By SanSuzie on July 26, 2011 in Conservation, Deep Thoughts, Murals and San Suzie. 7 Comments


Cracks in the Wall: Philomé Obim’s Last Supper at the Sainte Trinité Cathedral in Port-au-Prince, display the damage of last year’s devastating quake. (All photos by San Suzie.)

Almost one year ago today, I set foot in Haiti for the first time — six months after a 7.0 earthquake had practically leveled the capital. I was in Port-au-Prince at the request of the Smithsonian, with my colleague Viviana Dominguez, a painting conservator, to examine what remained of a series of mural paintings at the Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. At that point, I was quite familiar with the televised images of the devastation. I had seen the bodies lifted from the rubble and the shots of the crumpled presidential palace. But nothing quite prepared me for the state of need we saw as we drove out of the airport and into the snarl of traffic.

Everywhere around Port-au-Prince there are reminders of the devastation.

Six months after the earthquake, much of Port-au-Prince remained in ruins. Though the air was thick with the dust of demolition, many collapsed buildings still lay where they fell on January 12. The road from the airport to the cathedral was a sea of tents where people lived without running water and electricity. We saw fax machines and barber chairs set up along the sidewalk, people bathing out of buckets, cooking over charcoal fires and washing clothes in muddy urban rivulets. Because so many roads continued to be blocked by rubble, it took nearly an hour to drive just a few miles.

Sainte Trinité, as it is locally known, had once been a simple but beautiful art deco structure. In the 1950s, the building’s walls were decorated with 14 murals depicting New Testament scenes. Done by a collective of Haitian artists associated with Port-au-Prince’s Centre D’Art, these energetic, color-saturated paintings quickly became something of an international sensation — one of the must-see sites for Haitian painting. For locals, they had a deep spiritual importance because they used Haitian people and settings to illustrate the life of Christ. This went well beyond the skin color of the biblical figures. For example, in Rigaud Benoit’s Nativity, palm trees, a thatched building, baskets of pineapple, and a waterfall that bears a distinct resemblance to a local pilgrimage site frame the baby Jesus. In Wedding at Cana, artist Wilson Bigaud set the miracle of turning water into wine in a Haitian hilltop village, complete with musicians playing conga drums and flutes of local origin. (See a pre-earthquake view of some of the murals here.)

The remains of Sainte-Trinité, Port-au-Prince. At rear, Prefete Duffaut's 'Native Procession' sits behind scaffolding.

When we arrived at Holy Trinity in the summer of 2010, both Benoit’s and Bigaud’s murals had been reduced to fragments the size of my hand. Gone also were paintings of the Annunciation, Temptation of the Lord, and Crucifixion, not to mention the building’s walls, roof, and pillars. Only three murals — Castera Bazile’s Baptism, Prefete Duffaut’s Native Procession and Philomé Obin’s three-walled Last Supper — clung precariously to walls that looked about as stable as the piles of debris that surrounded them. Doused by rain and baked by the sun for six months, the paintings were starting to fade and powder. They had to come down immediately. The question was how to do it without destroying them.

Continue reading ‘Haiti Report: Saving a country’s priceless murals.’

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Ask the Art Nurse: Stinky Feathers.

By SanSuzie on March 4, 2011 in Ask the Art Nurse, Conservation and San Suzie. 1 Comment

DEAR ART NURSE:

I have a random conservation question for you: A friend of mine just returned from an African safari and brought back some fresh guinea fowl feathers from a bird that she shot. She said that the feathers really stink and she’s trying to get the smell to go away. (Ick. Don’t get me started.) She said she’s tried dish soap, laundry soap, Woolite (which seemed to work the best), but they’re still pretty stanky.

Do you have ideas on what would work best without damaging the integrity of the feathers?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Sincerely,
Stinky Feathers

DEAR STINKY:

Back when I was starting out as a conservator I worked in an ethnographic museum where I recall treating feathers — the most delicate of materials — with the most delicate of techniques. The reason is that any aggressive cleaning strips the feathers of their oils and they are then exposed to damage, drying, and all manner of deterioration. I’ve since gone on to work primarily on detritus and organic matter used in the service of contemporary art, so I thought it best if I posed this question to my pal Dana Moffett, formerly of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. She is now a private conservator working in Washington, D.C., on the artifacts of cultures that have better things to do with skulls than encrust them in diamonds.

After expressing horror at the use of dish soap, laundry soap, and Woolite — which probably completely stripped the feathers of their oils — Dana suggested placing the feathers (properly wrapped, of course, in a few sheets of Japanese paper or acid free tissue) into a sealed container (Ziploc bag, Tupperware) that contains an odor scavenger that will absorb the foul odor, like zeolites, activated charcoal (not the kind with lighter fluid), or even kitty litter (seriously). She also warned that she was not sure how long it would take to work. It all depends on the source of the stench.

If it doesn’t go away, there’s always the possibility of recycling the feathers — perhaps as a fragrant work of contemporary art. The next Whitney Biennial isn’t until 2012. There’s time…

Rx,
San Suzie

Have a question for the Art Nurse? E-mail her at suzie [at] c-monster [dot] net.

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Ask the Art Nurse: How to get chewing gum off your art (and your shoes).

By SanSuzie on October 13, 2010 in Ask the Art Nurse, Conservation and San Suzie. 1 Comment

DEAR ART NURSE:

I’m a New York City-based arts blogger who recently invested in a pair of righteous grey-felt sneakers — a purchase that may have been subliminally inspired by a recent visit to the Joseph Beuys installation at the Dia Beacon.

Well, on my first day wearing my smokin’ new kicks, I stepped on a giant wad of chewing gum. Not realizing that I was sporting this sticky parasite, I then paid a visit to a prominent Manhattan arts institution, where I stood on a brand-spanking-new rug that was intended as a fuzzy stage for all manner of cutting-edge relational aesthetics (i.e.: thing to sit on and talk). It was at this moment that I discovered that my foot was attached to the rug by a string of chewy chicle. In good starving-writer fashion, I quickly made for the exit.

My question is this: How do I remove the gum from the tight tread of my insanely rad footwear? And what suggestions would you have for the venerable downtown arts institution that may find itself with a mess of Double Mint smashed into their social sculpture?

Love your work,
Hapless in Brooklyn

DEAR HAPLESS:

First of all, you can’t write to me mentioning something as sublime as felt sneaks without a picture. So pony up and tell me also where you got them. [Hapless in Brooklyn has acquiesced with the image at right, though she refuses to reveal her retail sources.]

Secondly, in this case, ice is your best friend. Rub a cube on the gum until it gets hard, then take a knife and chip away as much as possible without hurting the rubber sole, of course. The residue can be cleaned off with ethanol (denatured alcohol) or acetone (nail polish remover) on a Q-tip. Test a discreet area first to make sure the solvent does not dissolve the shoe bottom.

The same is prescribed for the venerable arts venue. However, they will have to work around the fuzz (e.g. possible hedge-trimming) and might face issues of discoloration if using a solvent. It’s the type of tricky work, naturally, that is best left in the hands of a pro.

Rx,
San Suzie

Have a question for the Art Nurse? E-mail her at suzie [at] c-monster [dot] net.

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Foreign Dispatch: From the world of Doga

By c-monster on September 24, 2010 in C-Monster, Florida, Miami, San Suzie, Sublime ridiculosity and Travel. 3 Comments

Look at what San Suzie found: The above is a screen grab of the spa menu at a Miami hotel where it is possible to do yoga with your dog. We are in awe.

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Havana in the ’60s: The photographs of Jose A. Figueroa.

By SanSuzie on September 22, 2010 in Galleries, Photography and San Suzie. 3 Comments


Waving goodbye, possibly forever. Olga, Havana, 1967, from the Exile series by Jose A. Figueroa. Part of the exhibit Mis 60/My 60s at Couturier Gallery in Los Angeles. (Images courtesy of Couturier.)

During the mid-1960s, when Jose Alberto Figueroa worked as the studio assistant to renowned Cuban photographer Alberto Korda, he regularly shot photographs of friends, family and his daily life in Havana. Figueroa never printed those negatives and never considered them aesthetic material, worthy of exhibition. As a photographer, he is generally regarded as a product of the ’70s, when he began working as a photojournalist for Cuba magazine — where he covered Cuban involvement in the Angolan Civil War and various aspects of domestic life. (Some of these images will be on view in a show that opens at New York’s International Center of Photography this week.)

The 1960s photographs were long forgotten by Figo (as he is known to friends and family), and only surfaced several years ago, when he and his wife, curator Cristina Vives, began searching through his archives for material that would become the book Jose A. Figueroa: A Cuban Self-Portrait. “We realized right away that there was important material here that had not been seen before,” Vives said of the images — which include photographs of friends going to parties and hanging out; of carnival and beach parties. Most striking are images of the artist’s mother preparing to leave the country.

First exhibited in Cuba in 2006 when Figo turned 60, and later in Finland, the collection Mis 60/My 60s, now on view at the Couturier Gallery in L.A., constitutes an intimate and unique portrait of Cuba in the 1960s. They are worth seeing not only for their beauty, but for the exhilarating counterpoint they provide to a place that is known almost exclusively through a near-mythical revolutionary lens.

Mis 60/My 60s is up at Couturier through Oct. 16.

Continue reading ‘Havana in the ’60s: The photographs of Jose A. Figueroa.’

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The Day in Bad Ideas: Shining Path Montessori School, for your budding little ideologue.

By c-monster on August 24, 2010 in C-Monster, Los Angeles and San Suzie. 5 Comments


We’re not making this up.

San Suzie sent this photo along to me this morning and, well, I just can’t resist imagining their sales pitch:

At Shining Path Montessori, we take brainwashing seriously, which is why we’ve named this Los Angeles pre-school after an Andean terrorist group renowned for its brutally violent tactics. In combination with off-hours re-education at Potemkin Village Day Care, we’ll get your little Maoist zealot ready for graduation to Red Brigade Elementary and, ultimately, Long March High. Shining Path Montessori: For when you want only the best for your pillager-in-training

Seriously, though: What the fuck are you guys thinking???

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Ask the Art Nurse: A crumbling work on drywall

By SanSuzie on May 4, 2010 in Ask the Art Nurse, Conservation, San Suzie and Street Art. 1 Comment

DEAR ART NURSE:

I’m an avid follower of C-Monster and have an art conservation query: Before shuttering their doors for good, my favorite street art gallery in Brooklyn invited the public to help demolish some of their walls. As the walls were painted with murals by notable artists, this was an attractive proposition.

Happily, I am now in possession of a heavy, largish chunk of painted drywall. However, the drywall is awfully fragile – the piece was not so delicately hammered out of the wall – and I’m wondering how best to stabilize it and prevent further crumbling. It goes without saying that I do not have a museum-scale art conservation budget.

Your advice, please?

Best,
Luna

DEAR LUNA:

My two favorite things on earth are hunks of concrete buildings and graffiti, so you are talking about restoring something quite dear to my heart. It would be helpful to know if the damage you are talking about consists of fragmenting edges or wholesale cracking of the piece itself. If it’s the former, what we conservators would do would be to consolidate the edges of the fragment. This means applying some kind of adhesive in thinned down form that would solidify the edge and keep if from crumbling. The trick is to do this using something that will not stain or damage the original and — most importantly — could be removed and redone. In other words, making it reversible, in case you screw it up.

If you are talking about big breaks in the piece, however, then you are looking at something called a structural repair — and that requires a bit more thinking through. So first tell me which it is. Also tell me if the area to be repaired has paint on it or not. (Or feel free to send me a link to a photo.) And then I can give the patient a proper diagnosis.

Rx,
San Suzie

Have a question for the Art Nurse? E-mail her at suzie [at] c-monster [dot] net.

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Marcos Zimmermann’s South American Nudes.

By SanSuzie on March 25, 2010 in Galleries, Los Angeles, Photography and San Suzie. 5 Comments

The first thing that entered my head when I stood in front of Marcos Zimmermann‘s astonishing silver gelatin portraits of nude working class men from South America was, How the heck did he get these guys to do this? This is not a part of the world known for embracing male nudity (especially in traditionally modest societies like Bolivia). The answer to my question was pretty simple, however: Zimmermann paid his subjects–all working class men who needed the money. It was well worth it. Best known for his dramatic landscape photographs, the Argentinean photographer manages to capture these men at their most vulnerable, but also their most powerful.

The photos are on show as part of the exhibit Desnudos Sudamericanos, at Couturier Gallery in Los Angeles, through April 17.

***

Top to bottom: Mario, changador, Mercado Rodríguez, La Paz, Bolivia (2006); Pablo y Marino, malabaristas callejeros en una casa tomada, San Isidro, provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina (2002); Muchachos en una terraza, Favela Cantagalo, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (2006). (All images courtesy of Couturier.)

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