You could spend your life in pursuit of genuine wilderness, without the promise that you’ll ever actually experience it. The buffer between humans and the rest of the natural world is, if incomplete, fairly ubiquitous, even when we don’t detect it at first. The revelation of this illusion is what kicked off “Glass Mountains,” Sean […]
Visual Studies Workshop
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Projection and perception
Visual Studies Workshop’s current show isn’t really representative of Tara Merenda Nelson’s film work, most of which is in Super 8 format and tends to follow a “film diary” tradition: “intimate portraits of friends and family, travel diaries, confessions, secrets, that type of thing,” she says. Just three strange, cinematic installations comprise the show, each […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
“Of the Ordinary”
Without the few wall-mounted paragraphs, which provide minimal information about each of the artists and their corresponding projects featured in the show, the current exhibit at Visual Studies Workshop would merely be a collection of baffling pictures unattached to meaning, an almost alien encounter. “Of the Ordinary” is made up of photographic imagery, largely unshackled […]
Posted inSpecial Sections
ART: The end is the beginning
Even though autumn heralds the close of the year, and the death, decay, or otherwise slumberfest of nature, to me the crisp, fresh air always feels like a beginning. This probably comes in part from our everlasting association of autumn with going back to school. Now that school is back in session, many of the […]
Posted inNews & Opinion
City forecast: bleak
There are some bragging rights you’d just as soon avoid, some things you wish you were wrong about. Rolf Pendall has as much right to say “I told you so” as anyone, except maybe Buffalo Bills naysayers. But like a prescient Bills fan, he’s not in an enviable position. Pendall, who’s a city and regional […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Visit the documentary buffet
With 22 television monitors relaying images at once, More than Moore, a video installation at Visual Studies Workshop, instills a feeling of sensory saturation, even though the TV sets are all silent. (Headphones are provided.) VSW Associate Gallery Director-Acting Gallery Manager Bleu Cease is trying to make independent political documentaries more accessible to the public. […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
When art speaks louder than words
It’s hard to write about art that is just beautiful. Or perhaps I should say, mostly beautiful. The artists whose work is on show at the Visual Studies Workshop are variously able to elaborate on spiritual dimensions… philosophical connections… historical underpinnings. But I find most of it unnecessary. For me, the value of their work […]
