Visiting Art-Heaven: Inhotim

It's like as if the Jardini of the Venice Biennale moved to the tropics, got more color, more polish and a much more cutting edge architectural style, and was lavishly dressed for a wedding. I've been told repeatedly that one couldn't be an artist in Brazil and not visit Inhotim. Some local friends have called it a pilgrimage that one has to make before dying and I've also heard it unflatteringly nicknamed as the Disneyland of the artworld. All of above are true together. 

It's a magnificent and magical place, an artist geek-out in the middle of "nowhere" in rural Minas Gerais (MG), a state northeast of the state of Rio de Janeiro. It's an hour flight from Rio to Belo Horizonte, the capital of MG, plus another 2 hours drive on badly marked, insanely rolling rural roads. It took both of us  to navigate these roads, in addition to a rental car GPS and many carefully selected printed google maps (thanks to Sandor's excellent planning) that showed every possible intersection and turn to be encountered. 

As a gift for my birthday, we took a 3-day trip to MG, visiting the historic town of Ouro Preto, the Serra de Moeda mountain range, and Instituto Inhotim.

According to their website, "Instituto Inhotim began to be conceived in the mid-1980s by Minas Gerais businessman, Bernardo de Mello Paz. With time, this parcel of private land was transformed into a unique place, with one of the most significant collections of contemporary art in the world and a botanical collection containing rare species from every continent." Paz commissioned architects and landscapers for making "temples" for the significant artworks that were already in his collection, as well as over the years he has continued to commission many more of the leading contemporary artists for making site-specific works, many of which enjoys the benefit of a close collaboration between artist, architect and landscape architect. The result is a mind-blowing exploration of space and the senses, the visual just being a tiny fraction of this equation.

A long palm-lined path leading up to the entrance of Inhotim. 

Groundkeeper at work in the magical landscape of tropical colors and textures.  Among the trees, there are hundreds of hidden sites for resting. Clever nooks landscaped from plants, rocks and roughly carved tree trunks provide well-disguised shelters for a quiet enjoyment of the park.

The pavilions and the surrounding landscape are custom designed for each of the artworks; often in a close dialogue between artist and architect. This striking red and white space is housing True Rouge by Tunga. 

Matthew Barney's De Lama Lâmina (Mud Slide) in its geodesic glass dome. 

Each pavilion deserves not only to be visited but to be carefully and meticulously explored. Delicious architectural surprises await on rooftops, in corners, passageways, and even in the minute lunchbars that are part of some buildings. The artworks are showcased, celebrated, and made love to by the architecture. For example, Janet Cardiff's two sound installations are overwhelming and momentous in their cavernous but otherwise empty halls. One can make out in a hammock while slides flash through and Jimmy Hendrix is playing or take a dip in a dimly lit swimming pool while listening to John Cage in one of Helio Oiticica's Cosmococa environments. (Do your part to erase the division between art and life!) Smell the flowers, or better yet, plant them in Marilá Dardot's installation, Origem da Obra de Arte; listen to the belly of the Earth growling 200 meters deep in Doug Aitken's Sonic Pavilon or be shaken to the bone by the darkness emitting from the photographs, installations and corten walls of the pitch-black galleria Miguel Rio Branco. The exploration of the park is a step-by-step process, and there is a great joy in not knowing what is up next. Inhotim is simply insane, and it is impossible to put into words or present through a few badly composed photos taken from the outside (the Institute forbids taking pictures of the artworks inside of the buildings). Inhotim is simply a must see.  It takes two days to get through it and it could possibly take a whole week to leisurely and fully enjoy every bit of what the park offers. 

Helio Oiticica's Magic Square #5 is a proposition for blurring the division between sculpture, painting and architecture, between space and object.  

Pavilion designed to house one of the major works by Lygia Pape, Ttéia 1C.

Paying homage to the artist, not only the walls make a 30degree twist between the square of the floor and that of the roof, but the passage way between the entrance and the gallery is shaped like it could be one of her characteristic geometric forms.

Here is a blurry photo of the piece itself. The whole thing is made of nothing more but lights and metallic threads. It is mesmerizing and breathtaking. 

Olafur Eliasson's Viewing Machine

The inside of Olafur Eliasson's Viewing Machine

Marilá Dardot's participatory work in which visitors can plant seeds in letter-shaped pots and place them out in the pasture. This sign must have said "Obrigada Deus" (Thank you, God.) until the R and the U were pirated by other participants.

Some of my favorite flowers from the park (I don't know any of their names... I have about ten times as many photos of plants that I took.)

We toasted my birthday on the "top of the world" in the Serra Moeres mountains. 

The amazing view from our window of the fog slipping through the valley at 6:30am in the morning. Inhotim is at the opposite end of the valley, about 35Km, 1 hour driving away. 

En route to Inhotim, we stopped for a day in Ouro Preto, the center of gold and silver mines in the 18th century. This city was made rich with gold that was mined from its mountains, washed from its rivers and picked from its land. Lavish architecture was comissioned by the Portuguese, which is well preserved due to the city's status as one of the World Heritage sites. Ouro Preto (Black Gold) is a marked contrast to the dirty, ignored, run-down, unhealthy cities and villages that are a majority in Brazil. 

View of Praça Tiradentes (the main square) in the Center of Ouro Preto. 

This may be the steepest incline that any street on this earth has. The sidewalk (aka the narrow catwalk by the houses) has many steps to prove it. The road itself is barely passable. While climbing up, we met a car which was driving down. It was 1degree away from free fall.

Igreja S. Fco. Assis (Church of Saint Francis of Assisi)

Ceiling fresco in the Church of Saint Francis of Assisi. The style and symbolism is very particular to this area of Brazil. The combination of reds and blues make all the decorations quite lovely. There are expressive hand and facial gestures and Christ is often symbolized with a pair of crossed (wounded) hands placed over a heart. 

The fountain in the back of a garden. Notice the decoration of broken plates and seashells and the blue color. 

An architectural detour

I had two research plans for coming to Rio: The first one was to learn more about Neoconcretismo (Neo-concretist art, such as Helio Oiticica and Lygia Clark's work) and about contemporary artist who follow in their footsteps in exploring logical—almost mathematical—constructed systems in experiential and bodily ways. 

The second research plan was to look at architecture, especially 20th century modernist architecture. For the past years, I've been making miniature sculptures that started out as nothing more but studies in structural composition but became increasingly inspired by real and imaginary architectures. I've been fixated on 50's architecture in Brazil since watching Flores Raras (Reaching for the Moon), dir. Bruno Barreto.

Panorama from Parque das Ruinas in Santa Teresa. Click on the photo to make it larger.

A quick look down at the metropolis from any of it's high-perched observation points reveals a sea of drab concrete blocks, dotted with red tile roofs, occasional romantic cupolas, squares of green parks and tight vertical patchworks of raw masonry and intense wallpaint color in the favelas.

Rio was discovered on January 1st, 1502 by Portuguese sailor Gaspar de Lemos, who gave it the name, River of January. It did not get settled by the Portugal until 1555 due to turf wars between the native Tamoimo, the French and Portuguese. Jesuits arrived in waves followed by other religious orders, such as the Franciscans, and by the 17th century, Rio was established as the 3rd biggest settlement in Brazil. Millions of slaves from Africa were brought to provide labor for sugar cane plantations and in the newly discovered gold and diamond mines in Minas Gerais, making Brazil the largest of slave holding nations. For rough comparison: Between the 16th and 19th century, North America imported about 600 thousand, while Brazil took almost 5 million people from Africa as forced labor. The turning point in the development of Rio came in the early 1800's when the Portuguese regent prince, Dom João VI, fleeing from Napoleon set up his court in Rio. He eventually became the king of Portugal but being in love with Rio so much, created an exception and ruled from the Colony. The 19th century brought new waves of immigrants not only from Europe but also resulting from internal displacement: veterans from the civil wars, rural population and former slaves from the failed sugar and coffee plantations and from the exhausted mines all came to seek new prospect in the rapidly expanding city. Brazil was the last country to abolish slavery, in 1888.  These poor migrant laborers finally set up camp on the steep mountain sides creating somewhat isolated and, as such, autonomous enclaves under extremely rough conditions – this was the birth of favelas.

In the early 1900's Rio continued to expand and modernize, resulting in large scale urban projects such as the expansion to Copacabana. These moves were not trivial: because of the scalloped shoreline and dozens of small mountains that dot the landscape, each expansion required a tunnel or landfill. Early maps reveal a disjointed urban fabric, and this is still true today both geographically and economically. While the government moved to Brasília in 1960, the mid-century saw an even more intense architectural program lead by star architects, such as Oscar Niemeyer, Lucio Costa, Roberto Burle Max, and Affonso Eduardo Reidy. During this time, interior migration to favelas has also intensified resulting in a total of 763 such enclaves by 2011 with an estimated 1.8 million people living in them (that is almost 1 in every 4 people in Rio de Janeiro).

This history shows up everywhere:

Convento de Santo Antônio is the earliest Franciscan convent. In its original form it was completed in 1620. Behind it, the headquarters of Petrogas, Brazil's oil monopoly. 

Convento de Santo Antônio is actually 3 different churches built in different styles in different centuries, including the most lavish baroque one, Igreja da Ordem Terceira de São Francisco da Penitência.  

View of Centro from Santa Teresa. The main landmarks include Aqueduto da Carioca or also called Aqueduto da Lapa (Lapa aqueduct, built in the middle of the 18th century to bring fresh water from the Carioca river to the city. To the left of the aqueduct is the stunning Catedral Metropolitana de São Sebastião (Metropolitan Cathedral of Rio de Janeiro) designed by Edgar Fonseca, finished in 1979.

Street view of colonial mansions in the Santa Teresa neighborhood. This street used to have a quaint old tram that climbed from the bottom to the top of the hill through Santa Teresa's windy streets.

Street in Santa Teresa. Not obvious from the photo but there are 4 levels of streets in this spot. Each is accessible with a flight of stairs cut directly into the walls (no handrails). Many of the colonial building are in the state of severe disrepair.

Street in Glória, close to Lapa. The city lives on many levels. 

Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM). Located in Flamengo Park, which was one of the mid-century urban planning projects. Flamengo Park was envisioned by landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx with Lota de Macedo Soares, whose life story made the film, Flores Raras. The Modernist concrete museum building, designed by Affonso Eduardo Reidy was completed in 1955.

Interior staircase of the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro. I'm fascinated by this building's perfectly cast elegant staircases. 

Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói or MAC (Niterói Contemporary Art Museum) is situated across the bay, in the city of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro. It was designed by Oscar Niemeyer and completed in 1996.

The spiraling walkway that leads up to the entrance is painted red.

The shape is so lovely, makes me think of a Lucie Rie ceramic vessel more than a UFO or a spindle (as the bus driver described it to me with wild hand-gestures).

One of the fancier apartment buildings by the Lagoa (lagoon) in upper middle-class Gavea. 

Nicer apartment buildings overlooking the Lagoa on the Ipanema side. On top of the mountain is a scrappy looking concrete monolith. As often is the case, it goes unnamed on the Google map, so I could not figure out what it was. I'm guessing it may be a government (police or military) complex, a school or community center located on the edge of the Cantagalo favela of Copacabana. 

This graffiti is on an abandoned building near the ferry terminal in Niteroi. The signage translates: "50 years of military coup" and "Remember and Resist". 

This is one of the most upscale neighborhoods, a fancy street in Leblon. From the buildings to the landscaping, everything is well kept, clean and maintained in a sparkly state. The street is empty, scrubbed clean. The trees have orchids growing on them.
So different from the rest of Rio!
Even in middle class neighborhoods such us ours, while the streets are litter free for the most part, there is so much disrepair,  broken sidewalks, cheap useless fixes, stench of excrement (with no actual excrement in sight), and a large number of homeless sleeping and living everywhere. 

Community and Craft: Ellensburg - A History Lesson

Ellensburg may not seem like an exotic destination for someone from the Northwest but the small Central Washington town (population about 20,000) offers much in terms of its history, a beautiful location in the otherwise arid landscape, and its thriving community arts and culture.

Davidson building from 1889. Now home of Gallery One.

This year, Gallery One Visual Arts Center inaugurated a new ceramics residency program in order to reinvigorate its clay studio. I was excited to be offered an opportunity to visit and create work there, since my work of the past few years is strongly oriented towards building structures, architecture, and interaction with various communities. In our discussions about the scope of the residency with director Monica Miller, we had discovered common threads in our goals: to create an engagement between my research and Ellensburg residents, by drawing people into the studio and also by hooking me up with some members of the community, in order to mine and record some of the oral history of the town.

Kittitas County Historic Museum

My residency takes form in three stages: First stage is a preliminary research, which, by now, I have completed. The second is a community workshop, which will take place at the end of July, and the third is a public presentation in August of the pieces made in the workshop.

Barge Hall on the CWU campus

During the past week, I've been wondering around town on my own photographing the buildings, getting tours from generous and knowledgeable gems of Ellensburg residents, like David Wheeler, a local historian and building aficionado, Mollie Edson, proprietor of the historic 420 Building, and Jane Orleman of Dick and Jane's Spot, a painter.

The Art Deco 420 Building.

From what I was able to observe, Ellensburg is a combination of three things that signify the place and keep being intertwined mutually facilitating the growth of one another over the past century and a quarter: community, culture and history, - creating a perfect place for an artist.
Another facet of a small town is the unhurried way of life, and the social contract created by everybody knowing everyone (for better or worse).

After I settled into the studio and made a few tests with the materials available, I headed out in the company of David Wheeler to get my first history lesson on Ellensburg.
While the Kittitas tribes has used the valley as trade and council grounds for many decades before the first white settlers laid an eye on the beautiful location by the Yakima river, it was not a permanent settlement site until the mid 1800s. In barely more than two decades after the first permanent white settlement was established, a flourishing town complete with a bank, a few hotels and eateries, many saloons, stables, schools, stores and various other businesses was welcoming the travelers en-route in their grueling journey from the Midwest to the Pacific Coast or from the traders conducting business of cattle, and natural resources from the Columbia river northward. The Northern Pacific Railroad built a depot in 1886, and the town was growing so rapidly that in 1889, when Washington territory became a state, Ellensburg became a strong contender in a bid for the state capital. The milestone moment came 125 years ago, on the 4th of July, in the form of a blazing fire that destroyed much of the downtown core. The expansion was only momentarily stunned by the destruction, but only to rebuild with even more resolve, quickly and furiously. Much of the building materials had already been ordered amidst the vigorous expansion and these became the fundamental first-aid during the process of the rebuild, which actually happened in only 90 days!!!
In the following decades, many other events promoted the renewal and redevelopment of the town, now shaping itself to be a center of education (Washington Sate Normal School in 1891, pilot training during WW II. - now Central Washington University) and trade (a special type of hay for race horses).

Downtown street corner with mural.

Dick and Jane's Spot.

Dick and Jane's Spot.

Looking at the details of the buildings and listening to David retelling these stories, two things stand out for me from all this history: Community and Craft.

Community:

The old YMCA building now.

Both after the Independence Day Fire and upon the return of the veterans of World War I and II, or even now during the time of our current economic ailments, a strong sense of inter-reliance and shared responsibility for the future permeates all the discussions. One example for that is values and ideas represented and promoted by the stellar Gallery One Visual Arts Center and the other is the brand new community radio station.








Craft:

Check out the brick work!

During my week-long residency, I've met more artists, crafts people, makers, creative-types, innovators and entrepreneurs - both living in Ellensburg or visiting, than I meet in a usual week back home in Seattle.
Another aspect of Craft comes from having only limited resources, creating a more resourceful approach to making it due with what's available. This is clearly visible in the brick work on the building fronts. This kind of resourcefulness of pushing and pulling the bricks to create endless variations of patterns is a testament to the craftsman's technical savvy and design ingenuity.






On one of my walks I found a curious looking residential home, affectionately named Dick and Jane's Spot. On the fence is a loud sign: "What is This?" - exactly a question in my mind. The next day, I was lucky enough to meet Jane Orleman, the lady of the house, for a discussion and a tour of her home. Jane gave me another chapter to Ellensburg history: from the 1970's to the present. As young artists and graduates of CWU's art program, she and Richard C. Elliott bought a run-down house, which over the following three decades they developed into a whimsical sculpture garden, equally for their own amusement and that of the tourists' who have been curiously peeking over the fence ever since.

Dick Elliott's trademark pattern work with reflectors. He developed a mathematical algorithm to produce permutations of the design. One of his public artworks is on the North part of the Henry Art Gallery on the UW Seattle campus.

Jane spoke about the local support she received in showing her then "outrageous" paintings about domestic violence and child abuse, and how Dick (who was a renowned public artists with numerous commissions nation-wide) and her considered Ellensburg their home-base and center.

Jane Orleman in her studio.

While I was working in the Gallery One clay studio many visitors made a stop for casual or inquisitive conversations.

This is one of the larger and more complex pieces. It's not directly referencing any of the buildings but still has a few design elements mixed together.

I learned about "moon gardens," the local hay business, a general lack of art education in the school system, the efforts going into making the town a cultural center and a destination, the Ellensburgians wary to utter the word "wind". (Instead you have to spell it out: W-I-N-D, in order to avoid it returning. The wind can be quite unsettling in its relentless presence. I went out for a run on a moderately windy day and got almost blown off my feet while going through the open fields. I felt like a fool out there struggling to move forward while barely keeping my balance.)

Although I made quite a few things in the studio while there, much of this experience will shape into its final form later in my own studio and during the community workshop at the end of the month. Again: Ceramics is such a process! - from start to result. Takes a while to test and get the materials ready in the beginning, and it takes a while to get the end result fired and finished.
I also noticed a certain adult bias to relegate working with clay to be either a functional craft or children's art. It may be just some shyness, the adults thinking of purpose and utilitarian product.
I hope the upcoming workshop to sway that. Here is a great inspiration:

I actually found this picture in the Ellensburg online archives. It is so intriguing. I believe the building was on fire in the dead of winter, so the water froze on it as it was being sprayed by the firemen. The ice has a visual relationship to the way I use the slip to hold the pieces together in my structures.

And below are some work in progress:

Working with slip and glaze inlays to add pattern. These are stoneware slabs, a lot thicker than my usual work with porcelain.

Little structures are going into the kiln.

Out of the kiln.