People ask all the time where I come up with ideas for my commentaries. Here's a good example of how I string ideas together.
I went to see an exhibition of photography by Ken Konchel at the Kranzberg Art Gallery in Grand Center. Ken is a local artist whose works have been shown in 19 cities around the country. So he's clearly not just a local artist.
Konchel refers to himself as an Abstracted Architectural Photographer and wants us to look at lines, colors, shadows and shapes and not see the actual buildings. He also talks about his methods and processes and about the fact that he still uses film in his work.
My next trip to see an art show took place in my favorite small Palm Springs Art Museum in California. It was another show of photography by the artist Kali. She was another type of photographer. Kali referred to herself as an Artographer.
Kali originally was Joan Archibald, a suburban housewife with two kids living in Long Island and in the 1960s walked out of her home and never returned.
She ended up in Malibu, California, changed her name to Kali after the Hindu goddess who represented time, change, creation, power and destruction. A year later, her mother bought her a home in Palm Springs where she became a photographer and used her swimming pool as a massive finishing tank. After developing her prints in her giant Roman bathtub, she would toss the freshly developed prints into the pool with buckets of dye, applying final touches of bugs and desert sand. She would swim among the prints to hand cure the colorization. She would then hang them on the deck to dry. Kali stored these prints in suitcases and they were not to be seen for over 40 years.
I then thought about a wonderful exhibition of photographs by Vivian Maier in St. Louis at the International Museum of Photography several years ago and sure enough, she was discussed in a book on Kali.
Kali's daughter Susan in a transcript says, "Since the discovery of the photographs of Vivian Maier, and the posthumous publication and celebration of her work, the thrilling prospect of finding other unknown or forgotten masters of the art form has more than ever been in the back of many aesthetes’ minds. The particular excitement derives from the utter improbability that there could be complete archives of unsung masters out there, either in attics or the cupboards of hoarder houses, or as was the case with Maier, in a neglected storage unit whose contents were put up for auction.
Both of these artists became sensations when their works were discovered.
I then walked in to the other special exhibition at the Palm Springs museum and saw yet another fascinating show titled "Mythopoetica" which connected in my mind to the "Kali" exhibition. Both of these shows showcased different aspects of the inland Southern California region. “Mythopoetica” features the work of ten contemporary artists who incorporate mythologies, iconographies and cultural codes to create new visual imaginings. They use diverse mediums such as photography, painting, sculpture and video to draw attention to the multiplicity of powerful stories that permeate the region.
So how does this ramble connect? Well, in my mind these are examples of how creative, artistic minds can use art in many different ways and different processes to help us open doors to our minds and ways of thinking and seeing the world.
Nancy Kranzberg has been involved in the arts community for more than forty years on numerous arts related boards.