The Reno Portraits at CCAI Courthouse Gallery

The Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] announces its exhibition, The Reno Portraits, by the late Gus Bundy [1907 – 1984] at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery from May 10 – September 5, 2013. CCAI will host a reception for the exhibition on Friday, May 10 from 5 – 7pm. During the reception, Molly Bundy-Toral and Tina Bundy Nappe, the artist’s daughters, and Jim McCormick will give an informal talk about the exhibition beginning at 5:30pm. The Courthouse is located at 885 E Musser Street, Carson City. The exhibition and reception are free and the public is cordially invited. The gallery is open to the public Monday – Friday, 8am – 5pm.

From his iconic wild horse photographs taken in the early 1950’s, Gus Bundy was known internationally as a photographer. But for more than twenty-years, he was also a prolific painter working with Reno’s Portrait Workshop. The Reno Portraits present a large body of the oil paintings by Bundy that have never before been exhibited. Bundy was born in Brooklyn in 1907 and studied art at the Art Students League in New York with some of the giants of the Abstract Expressionist movement. Following a trip to Japan in the late 1930’s, he and his wife decided to make their home and raise their daughters in northern Nevada where Bundy spent his life pursing his art career.

Active with the Portrait Workshop from the late 1950’s – the early 1980’s, Bundy painted dozens of portraits. Bundy aimed to capture the portrait sitters’ personalities and moods rather than giving viewers photographic snapshots. He used creative brushwork and lively color to paint a true likeness of each subject. The portraits also give viewers a charming reflection of the era through the individuals’ dress and hairstyles.

Professor Emeritus Jim McCormick, a long-time Bundy friend and colleague, has researched and written the exhibition essay, “Pose Please!” McCormick writes, “Gus Bundy rarely signed his work. Nor was it his practice to record the year of execution, or the models’ names, for that matter – all of which was perfectly consistent with his philosophy that making art was an activity in and of itself, ‘an enriching experience.’ The raison d’etre for his painting had little to do with documentation or commercialization. Bundy seldom priced his work. Sold few paintings. Held most of them in storage.”

CCAI’s group exhibition, BRIC Art 3, includes seventeen more Bundy paintings from the Portrait Workshop. This show is in the City’s BRIC facility at 108 E Proctor St, Carson City. The BRIC is open to the public Monday – Friday, 8am – 5pm. BRIC Art 3 is up through August.

The University of Nevada Reno’s Special Collections Department now houses Bundy’s large collection of photographs, prints, and negatives. Gus Bundy’s Wild Horse photograph is used with permission from the Special Collections, University of Nevada-Reno Library. CCAI is grateful to Mr. Bundy’s family for loaning the paintings for both exhibitions.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community building for the area’s diverse adult and youth populations through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

CCAI is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, John Ben Snow Memorial Trust, City of Carson City, Nevada Arts Council, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, John and Grace Naumann Foundation, and the Carson Nugget.

[top image: photograph, Wild Horses, Smoke Creek Desert, 1951]
[bottom image: oil on paper, untitled, 26" x 20", no date]

“Pose Please!”

The Reno Portraits offers a rare opportunity to examine the paintings of a man who gained international attention as a photographer. Maintained in storage by his family for several decades, Gus Bundy’s portraits, which date from the late-1950s to the last one executed in 1983, are just now being made available for public viewing.

In the late 1950s, at the time the Marilyn Monroe-Clark Gable motion picture “The Misfits” was being filmed in and around Reno, Bundy’s disturbing black and white and color photographs depicting wild horse round-ups on the Smoke Creek Desert southwest of Gerlach, Nevada, reached a wide audience. They were featured with articles that appeared in issues of Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times.

Bundy’s extensive collection of photographs, prints, and negatives numbering over 40,000 images, is now archived in Special Collections in the UNR Knowledge Center.  Curiously, Bundy vigorously resisted efforts to pigeonhole his activities during his lifetime, and denied that his profession was photography. Nor would he accept the notion that he was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, or jeweler, even though at one time or another Bundy devoted substantial amounts of time to each of these disciplines, and acquired or made tools necessary to practice them.

Gus Bundy rarely signed his work. Nor was it his practice to record the year of execution, or the models’ names, for that matter – all of which was perfectly consistent with his philosophy that making art was an activity in and of itself, “an enriching experience.” The raison d’etre for his painting had little to do with documentation or commercialization. Bundy seldom priced his work. Sold few paintings. Held most of them in storage. He reasoned – why do anything more than savor the act of painting, carving wood, drawing with a stick of charcoal or taking a photograph. Art and all the other aspects of his life were parts of a seamless whole. In more candid moments, he did concede his art training has been “handy” in sharpening his judgment in all kinds of challenging situations.

“Pose Please!”  When announced by the stocky man with a deep, authoritative voice, it must have seemed like a whip cracking behind the ears of the artists who had gathered to draw and paint. They knew immediately that the ten-minute break was over, and that it was time to turn their attention back to the model. The prompt timekeeper who alerted the artists was Gus Bundy; those at the easels and benches were members of the Portrait Workshop, an informal gathering of northern Nevada artists that had been meeting since 1957. On Wednesday mornings, they would pay a nominal fee to underwrite the rental of a room, and engage a sitter who would pose for three hours.

Marge Means, now in her 91st year, was one of the original Workshop movers and shakers. In 1957, a relocated Bay Area painter named Hall obtained the financial support from Harold’s Club that enabled her to start a portrait workshop. When Hall left in less than a year, Means and Bundy decided to continue the Workshop on their own.  Means devoted her next 33 years to directing it. Before his death in 1984, Bundy served as its regular facilitator – keeping the artists on schedule: drawing for twenty-minute periods, with 10 minute breaks between. This division of labor worked well, and, through the years, the portraitists appreciated Means and Bundy’s volunteer efforts.

From the beginning, there was one question that needed to be addressed regularly. It concerned
models. From convincing a relative to serve as a sitter, to corralling a total stranger in the aisle of a supermarket for the same task, Workshop members were continually on the lookout for persons with striking facial characteristics, and a compelling presence. Because sessions were held during morning hours, when most men were at work, a majority of the models were women. Because it was northern Nevada just after the half-century mark, the sparseness of Reno’s ethnic population often made it difficult to locate minority sitters. However, Bundy’s portraits reveal that persons of color occasionally did pose for the Workshop.

Most Workshop participants chose to paint heads and shoulders rather than to depict sitters from the waist up or full-figure. Because of time constraints, canvasses tended to be modest in size, and the artists devoted less time to rendering the backdrop behind the model. Occasionally, a subject would bring in some kind of attribute: a guitar, cane, hat, even a cat, or other object that would more specifically define his or her persona.  Noted Reno architect Graham Erskine once sat for the Workshop, and in addition to holding a pose, he cradled a book in his hands, and read poetry to the artists. Ruth Hilts remembers incurring Bundy’s “anger” when she posed wearing an acrylic leotard that appeared to him to be genuine animal skin. It wasn’t until the label on the garment was examined that Hilts was permitted to continue. It is apparent that with most paintings, attention was given over to obtaining a likeness – to the right relationship of eyes, nose and mouth, more than to exaggerating features that might attract a caricaturist.

After fifty-six years, the Portrait Workshop is still going strong. Thanks to the diligent leadership of Renate Neumann, the group meets in the back room of Nevada Fine Arts on South Virginia Street in Reno. Previous locations included the 1936 Art Deco Southside School Annex on East Liberty Street, and later, a classroom in the venerable McKinley Park School that faces the Truckee River.

August Bundy was born in the Greenpoint section of Brooklyn, New York in 1907.  Raised in a large family, and educated in public schools in Manhattan and on Long Island, by the time Bundy reached his mid-teens, he had been encouraged by a supportive teacher to take advantage of his obvious artistic talents. He heeded the advice, enrolled in Saturday classes at the Brooklyn Museum, then moved on to the Grand Central School of Art, and his first significant teacher, Arshile Gorky. Within a decade, Gorky was to become a seminal force in the Abstract Expressionist movement that virtually consumed the art world in the late-1940s and 50s. The Art Students League played an important role in Bundy’s formal art education. He spoke respectfully of his friendships with well-known artists on the ASL faculty, notably Thomas Hart Benton, with whom he worked on mural projects in New York City. Bundy also helped the acknowledged master of anatomical drawing, George Bridgman, set up for life drawing classes, and, at the end of his life, Bundy left a collection of nude drawings which reflect the Bridgman style of rendering.

Bundy’s journey from New York to Reno followed a circuitous route. On his way to Japan in 1939, Bundy stopped at his friend Jim Greil’s home in east Washoe Valley. According to Bundy, he intended to travel throughout Japan in search of  “curios.” In the process, he acquired an impressive collection of Ukiyo-e woodblock prints, netsukes, snuff bottles, and ivory sculptures. More importantly, he met and married Jeanne Amberg, who grew up in Japan. Widely diverse events conspired to hasten the Bundy’s departure from the Orient, among them evidence that Japan was moving more precipitously to a wartime-footing, and the fact that Jeanne was expecting a baby. Impending fatherhood?  The question was where to resettle. New York City was passed over; it was not a place in which to raise a child.

The 1939 visit to Nevada turned out to be one of the deciding factors. Bundy had been impressed with Washoe Valley, its sparse population and compelling scenery, especially as it was located on the leeward side of the Sierra Nevada. By 1941, Gus and Jeanne occupied the small house and 5 acres on the west side of Washoe Valley next to Bowers Mansion. Bundy began to expand the living space to accommodate two daughters: Leontine (Tina) and Molly, and guests who came to rent separate quarters while taking advantage of Nevada’s liberal divorces laws.

Bundy seems to have been inspired by the presence of Workshop participant Joan Shonnard’s guitar strumming son, Dave, deeply absorbed in his music. The artist’s brushwork is bold. The variety of colors, particularly the cool-warm contrasts in the face, bring to mind the palette of the European Fauvists: Andre Derain and Matisse. The countervailing angles of arm, sweater, collars, sloping shoulders, all heighten the monumental feeling of this uncharacteristically large painting.

Beth Isaeff modeled for the Workshop in the early 1980s. Sitting on a raised platform before the assembled artists, they peered from their canvases to Beth, and back, all very intent on “capturing” her likeness. Bundy transformed this petit woman into a formidable figure, made more columnar by moving her to the far left side of the picture plane. The decisive daubs of color that underscore Isaeff’s features convey the model’s resolve, and her smartness. Contrast that with the more fluid brushwork in the background, a treatment not unlike a photographer adjusting focal length to soften the area around his subject.

Gus Bundy’s daughter, Tina, contends that her father’s portraits never possessed the feel of other Nevada artists, that they had a decidedly eastern perspective to them.  Rather than adopting the earth tones and heft of local artists Robert Caples and Craig Sheppard, Bundy relied on rapidly applied expressionistic strokes, complimentary colors that gently vibrated rather than clashed. Witness Bundy’s sympathetic study of a youthful Edna Benna. Benna and her late-husband, Bruno, have been major contributors to northern Nevada’s cultural life. Bundy convincingly conveyed her essential dignity and reserve, while, at the same time, he suggested strength by sharpening her features, and by firmly delineating the contour of her head. Means recalls extending the invitation to Benna, who, in turn, purchased her portrait, which still hangs in the Benna residence.

The portrait of the unidentified African-American woman wearing the oval blue mantle is, in this writer’s estimation, one of the strongest paintings in the show. There is little apparent hesitancy as the artist thrust his brush at the canvas. He not only placed his model near the center of the picture frame, but, against this symmetry, established an emotional disequilibrium by means of the upturned corner of her mouth, and the sidelong cast of her eyes, both of which strongly suggest suspicion tempered with shrewdness. Would it be advisable for any viewer to intercept his model’s intense gaze?

The Reno Portraits exhibition is an important historic and artistic landmark because, over the years, Bundy served as an enthusiastic advocate for and motivator of artists in northern Nevada. This writer commends the Capital City Arts Initiative for bringing about this reawakening, for calling the community’s attention so deservedly back to Gus Bundy.

Jim McCormick
Reno, Nevada
March 2013

Jim McCormick attended the University of Tulsa where he received a Masters degree in art. He joined the faculty of the University of Nevada, Reno in 1960, and offered instruction in printmaking, drawing and art history prior to his retirement in 1992. From 1995 to 2005, he directed the Nevada Art Research Project at the Nevada Historical Society, a program that documented Nevada-related visual artists from the mid-19th century to the present.

A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California
CCAI Books & Writers Series Presents Laura Cunningham

In honor of Earth Day, the Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] invites you to attend a presentation by writer Laura Cunningham at the Carson City Library, 900 N Roop St., Carson City, Nevada. On Monday, April 22, 6:30 – 7:30pm, Ms. Cunningham will read and show images from her book, “A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California”. The free event is part of CCAI’s Books & Writers series co-sponsored with the Carson City Library. The event will be of particular interest to landscape and wildlife painters. CCAI and the Library enthusiastically invite everyone to attend.

Ms. Cunningham is a highly experienced and multitalented biologist and artist. Trained in
paleontology at the University of California at Berkeley, and in natural science illustration at UC Santa Cruz, Cunningham has brought her skills to a diverse set of scientific projects. She has worked with the US Geological Survey Biological Resource Division analyzing amphibian declines in the Sierra Nevada and amassing species inventories in Death Valley National Park. She has helped with habitat restoration for a variety of native fishes, monitored Tule elk in the Owens Valley, and studied mountain lion predation with the California Department of Fish and Game. With California State University, Dominguez Hills, Cunningham worked in conservation biology and genetic studies involving Desert tortoises, Panamint alligator lizards, and Mojave fringe-toed lizards.

As a biologist, Laura Cunningham was inspired to write a book that would present the California landscape before European contact took place. She spent twenty years researching California’s environment including its grizzlies, condors, and grasslands. After completing many field sketches, she painted all the images for “A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California”. Ms. Cunningham lives and works in Beatty, Nevada.

Ms. Cunningham has been a scientific illustrator for the Museum of Paleontology at University of California, Berkeley, and illustrated fossil invertebrates for the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. She has also produced mural exhibits for various museums and institutions, including scenes of fossil mammals at Badlands National Park, and murals depicting the history of life on Earth for the California State University Fresno Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. Her work has also been exhibited at numerous art shows and museums around the country, including the Pacific Rim Wildlife Art Show in Seattle, the Oakland Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and Carnegie Museum.

Following her talk, Ms. Cunningham will have copies of her book, “A State of Change: Forgotten
Landscapes of California” for sale. During her visit, she will also give her presentation to art and biology students at Dayton High School and at Douglas High School.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community building for the area’s diverse adult and youth populations through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

A Nevada Arts Council Artist Residency Express Grant partially funded this project. CCAI is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, John Ben Snow Memorial Trust, City of Carson City, Nevada Arts Council, City of Carson City, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, John and Grace Naumann Foundation, and the Carson Nugget.

Bay Area Contemporary Art
CCAI Nevada Neighbors Talk by Scott MacLeod

The Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] is delighted to present a public event with visiting artist Scott MacLeod. His illustrated talk, Bay Area Contemporary Art is the latest installment of Nevada Neighbors, CCAI’s ongoing series of illustrated public talks. The talk will take place on Wednesday, March 27 at 7pm at the Carson City Library. There will be an informal reception for Mr. MacLeod preceding the event at 6:15pm. The Carson City Library is located at 900 N Roop Street in Carson City. The presentation and reception are free, and the public is cordially invited.

How Not To Look Like A Novice: Avoiding Beginners’ Mistakes
CCAI Books & Writers Series Presents Marilee Swirczek

The Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] invites you to attend a reading and writing workshop with local writer and teacher Marilee Swirczek at the Carson City Library, 900 N Roop St., Carson City, Nevada. The writing workshop, “How Not To Look Like a Novice: Avoiding Beginners’ Mistakes,” will take place Saturday, March 9 from 1 – 4pm. The free event is part of CCAI’s Books & Writers series co-sponsored with the Carson City Library. CCAI and the Library enthusiastically invite all writers and readers to attend the workshop.

In the workshop, Professor Swirczek will present techniques of the craft of writing that will propel writers toward stronger work. She said, “There is no mystery to good writing. Sometimes even the most experienced writer forgets that it is the subtle revision that speaks the loudest.” Selected pieces from her writings will serve as examples of these various techniques. She has a collection of poems and several novels in progress including A Season at Tamarack and Coyote.

Professor Swirczek taught literature and writing at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu and California State University, Sacramento, before joining the faculty at Western Nevada College in 1989, where she served for six years as English/Foreign Languages Chair and Lead Faculty for Communication & Fine Arts. She founded Lone Mountain Writers (1991) and was recognized as Humanities Scholar, Nevada Humanities Committee (2003); WNC Instructor of the Year (1990-91), UCCSN Outstanding Faculty (1995-98); and Distinguished Nevadan (2001). Active in community affairs, she served on the Carson City Board of Supervisors (1987-89) and writes an opinion column for the Nevada Appeal.

Professor Swirczek is project director for Always Lost: A Meditation on War, an arts/humanities exhibition that originated in her creative writing class in 2009, received national acclaim, and was invited to Washington, D.C. by members of the U.S. Senate. Always Lost has been on national tour since 2010 and is currently on exhibition at Mount Mary College in Milwaukee. She was awarded a Medal of Honor in 2012 by the Daughters of the American Revolution for her contribution to the nation through her work on Always Lost. A Pennsylvania native, Swirczek has lived in Nevada since 1978.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community building for the area’s diverse adult and youth populations through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

A Nevada Arts Council Artist Residency Express Grant partially funded this project. CCAI is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, John Ben Snow Memorial Trust, City of Carson City, Nevada Arts Council, City of Carson City, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John and Grace Naumann Foundation.

The Politics of Storytelling
CCAI Nevada Neighbors Talk by Aaron Moulton

The Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] is pleased to present, The Politics of Storytelling, by curator Aaron Moulton as part of its Nevada Neighbors series of public talks. The talk will take place on Wednesday, February 20 at 7pm at the Carson City Library, 900 N Roop Street, Carson City. Preceding the talk, there will be an informal reception for Mr. Moulton at 6:15pm. The presentation and reception are free, and the public is cordially invited.

In The Politics of Storytelling, Aaron Moulton will focus on what art exhibitions and exhibition-making aim to accomplish using both narrative and historical devices. He will illustrate the processes artists use develop and deliver stories through exhibitions to viewers with three exhibitions that he recently curated. Cantastoria, an exhibition about the mechanics of storytelling, shows how artists tell stories through languages, technologies, and news media. Each Memory Recalled Must Do Some Violence To Its Origins is an exhibition with twenty artists’ work based on Cormac McCarthy being held in perpetuity at an undisclosed ghost town somewhere in Utah. Communism Never Happened, an exhibition about how communism is remembered that took place Berlin at a famous site of the Berlin Wall on the 20^th anniversary of the fall of the wall. Moulton will also present work by Utah artists Jason Metcalf and Bob Moss, artists whose work has become important to him during his time in Utah.

Aaron Moulton is the Senior Curator of Exhibitions for the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City. He received his Masters in Curating from the Royal College of Art in London. Prior to arriving in Utah he was founder of the exhibition space FEINKOST in Berlin. He is currently editor of the exhibitions quarterly AGMA as well as publisher of the satire anthology “An Art Newspaper: Special DECADE Issue”. He was editor for Flash Art International in Milan and worked as an editor for a variety of artist monographs in addition to working as an arts journalist around Europe and America.

As part of his Nevada Neighbors visit, Mr. Moulton will give his talk to art students and faculty at Douglas High School in Minden, Nevada and at Sierra Nevada College in Incline Village, Nevada.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community building for the area’s diverse adult and youth populations through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

The Carson City Library co-sponsors the Nevada Neighbors series with CCAI. CCAI is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, John Ben Snow Memorial Trust, Nevada Arts Council, City of Carson City, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the John and Grace Naumann Foundation.

[photo credit: Morganne Wakefield]

Luminosity Exhibition at CCAI Courthouse Gallery

The Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] announces its exhibition, Luminosity, by Cathy Breslaw at the CCAI Courthouse Gallery from Feb. 4 – May 2, 2013. CCAI will host a reception for the artist on Friday, February 8 from 5 – 7pm. During the reception, Ms. Breslaw will give an informal talk about her work beginning at 5:30pm. The Courthouse is located at 885 E Musser Street, Carson City. The exhibition and reception are free and the public is cordially invited. The gallery is open to the public Monday – Friday, 8am – 5pm.

In Luminosity, Breslaw presents a variety of wall pieces created from plastic industrial meshes originally
intended for commercial purposes. She discovered the colorful mesh in a factory on trip to Asia and has transformed it into an innovative art material. She says, “Color plays an integral role in enhancing the atmospheric transparency of the materials. The work, sharing forms of painting, sculpture, and installation leads the viewer to take an intimate look at seemingly ordinary materials . . . .” Using the transparent mesh, Breslaw builds each piece by splicing, sewing, and layering the different mesh colors and densities into delicate yet substantial abstract compositions.

Cathy Breslaw holds an MFA from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, an MSW (Master of Social Work) from Howard University in Washington, D.C. and a BA degree in American Studies from George Washington University in Washington D.C. She currently lives and works in southern California as a visual artist, arts writer and public speaker. Breslaw’s work has been the subject of over 30 solo exhibitions and has been featured in approximately 50 group exhibitions around the nation. Recent exhibitions include Above, Below and Beyond (2012) at the Walkers Point Center for the Arts, Milwaukee, WI; and A Matter of Space (2011) at the Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA.

Danielle Susalla Deery wrote the exhibition essay, Lightness of Being, for the exhibition. She is Director of Exhibitions and Communications at Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, California where she manages the exhibition galleries and oversees approximately 20 exhibitions a year. Deery also teaches art history at Fullerton College. She earned an MFA from California State University, Fullerton, CA and a BA from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, NY.

CCAI extends special thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts for its Challenge America Fast Track grant supporting Luminosity and to Molly Bundy-Toral and the Carson Nugget for their lead donations to CCAI for the exhibition.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community building for the area’s diverse adult and youth populations through art projects and exhibitions, live events, arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

CCAI is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, John Ben Snow Memorial Trust, City of Carson City, Nevada Arts Council, Nevada Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities, John and Grace Naumann Foundation, and the Carson Nugget.

[top image: Cathy Breslaw]
[bottom image, at the artist's reception, l-r: Sharon Rosse, Cyndy Brenneman, Cathy Breslaw, Glenn Clemmer]

Lightness of Being

Experimentation for artists, a key aspect of creativity that keeps them engaging with new materials and forms, enables them to continually push the limits of art. California based artist Cathy Breslaw, no stranger to experimentation, relishes trips to Home Depot where she may discover uncommon art materials in the building aisle. Committed to working with new industrial plastic mesh and netting from around the globe, Breslaw creates paintings without surface using surprising materials.

For her exhibition at the Capital City Arts Initiative (CCAI) Courthouse Gallery, Luminosity, a title that speaks to the importance of light, Breslaw has selected eight mixed media pieces. Engaging viewers not only with concepts surrounding illumination, the exhibition also invites contemplation about space and the possibilities associated with everyday plastic mesh materials typically seen wrapped around fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. According to Breslaw, “Concepts of virtual space, space around objects and outer space, all capture my thoughts as I attempt to visually create what we cannot see. Light, space and multiple dimensions form the undercurrent of my thought process as well as the transitory, fragile nature of life.”

Light, as experienced in nature or in artificial indoor conditions, has a powerful effect on the human psyche, and as a subject and object in art over the past two centuries, has been a critical catalyst for artists. The Impressionists sought to capture the fleeting nature of light in the late 1880s, while artists such as James Turrell of the 1960s Light and Space art movement focused on the perceptual phenomenon of light. With a nod to the Light and Space artists, Breslaw’s work seeks to capture the ephemeral lightness of her southern California environment through the use of transparent, translucent and reflective materials. Light also brings awareness to the rich textures and layers embedded within each piece, and encourages viewers to examine the volume, structure, shadow play and weightlessness of her work.

Born in Coral Gables, Florida in 1951, Cathy Breslaw was raised in Baltimore Maryland. Her childhood was spent immersed in her family’s chain of fabric stores that introduced her to a kaleidoscope of color, texture, and pattern, ultimately having a significant effect on her artistic vision. Breslaw’s distinct use of industrial mesh and netting began in 2004 after a family business trip to Taiwan and China exposed her to this ubiquitous commercial material. While touring numerous factories with her husband, who manages a manufacturing business that incorporates various types of commercial plastics, Breslaw was immediately drawn to this material for its translucency, versatility and flexibility.  Typically used for storing food and packaging fruits and vegetables, this plastic mesh and netting is seldom used in art making. Yet, with the eye of an artist, the variegated apertures (hole sizes), weight, color and thickness constitute an exciting medium not only to explore color and form, but also to communicate the globalization of manufacturing and its impact on the art world. Through a complex process involving slashing, twisting, weaving, painting, burning and sewing, Breslaw manipulates this atypical art medium, transforming it into ethereal abstract compositions.

The transparent quality of the plastic netting mimics Breslaw’s interest in painting with watercolors, inks and acrylics. Using her materials in the same method a painter would use a brush, she blends colors together by layering pieces of vibrant hued plastic mesh to achieve a very painterly approach to her wall and floor sculptures. Color and texture play an important role in enhancing the atmospheric quality of the materials. Lightness of Being #1 floats off the wall casting an intriguing shadow and a composition dense with various shades of red, purple, green and yellow. Each color subtly bleeds into one another without forming hard edges, recalling the meditative quality of color field images by many Abstract Expressionists. Sharing forms of painting, sculpture, fiber art and installation, the work leads the viewer to take an intimate look at the exciting tactile variations of seemingly ordinary materials. Distant cousins to the art quilt, these woven plastic works share a similar craft aesthetic often associated with fiber art, yet clearly function more like sculptural paintings. Each wall hanging and floor piece maintains the structure Breslaw was looking for in her painting but belies the heavy rigidness associated with a canvas or wood medium, allowing her to achieve paintings without solid surfaces.

Carousel presents unexpected combinations of plastic mesh, fabrics, beads, buttons and twine that activate the floor space provoking reflection from different vantage points.  Breslaw’s innovative combination of materials is reminiscent of the work of Judy Pfaff, an artist Breslaw cites as having an influence on her artwork. Recognized for her complex environments that involve a wide-range of eclectic materials, Pfaff’s large-scale pieces have a dynamic sense of energy and lightness paralleled in Breslaw’s installations. Like many of Breslaw’s works, Carousel involves multiple layers of meaning, speaking both to concepts surrounding entropy and Robert Smithson’s (1938-1973) iconic earthwork sculpture Spiral Jetty (1970) and to her interest in materiality and experimentation.

The drawings in this exhibition provide an important entry point to understanding Breslaw’s creative process. While her industrial mesh sculptures are often intuitively designed in response to the materials, Breslaw’s sprawling installations, primarily hung from the ceiling, are frequently derived from her abstract drawings. Taking inspiration from her imagination about space and time and an awareness of her surrounding environment, Breslaw’s drawings are full of playfulness and rhythmic balance. The drawings, created on transparent paper, plastic or mesh, are sometimes embellished with other materials that create a world of movement in two-dimensional space. Street Bubbles presents a great example of how Breslaw paints on plastic, using the reflective quality of the material to express an experience she had in Spain watching a performance artist create massive bubbles simply from two sticks and a bucket of soap.

Weaving together her interest in light, space, materiality, and experimentation, Cathy Breslaw creates a meditative environment in Luminosity through a dynamic array of work that radiates energy and color. While the scientific understanding of luminosity implies the magnitude of brightness often associated with a celestial body, in reference to Breslaw’s art, it reflects the light majestically emanating from her work.

Danielle Susalla Deery
Oceanside, California
January, 2013

[top image: Lightness of Being #1, industrial mesh, 99" x 96", 2007]
[bottom image: Carousel, industrial mesh/mixed media, 11' diameter]

Danielle Susalla Deery is Director of Exhibitions and Communications at Oceanside Museum of Art,
Oceanside, California where she manages five exhibition galleries and oversees approximately 20 exhibitions a year. She has been curating in her native state of California for over 10 years and maintains a strong interest in modern and contemporary art history with special focus on southern California artists. Since 2008 Deery has also maintained an Adjunct Art History Instructor position at Fullerton College, CA and serves as the Vice President of the San Diego Museum Council. Deery holds an MFA from California State University, Fullerton, CA and a BA from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, NY.

Cathy Breslaw holds an MFA from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California, an MSW
(Master of Social Work) from Howard University in Washington, D.C. and a BA degree in American Studies from George Washington University in Washington D.C.  She currently lives and works in southern California as a visual artist, arts writer and public speaker. Breslaw’s work has been the subject of over 30 solo exhibitions and has been featured in approximately 50 group exhibitions around the nation.  Select exhibitions include Above, Below and Beyond (2012) Walkers Point Center for the Arts, Milwaukee, WI; A Matter of Space (2011), Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA; Explorations: Space and Light (2011), Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA; Light Moves (2009), West Valley Art Museum, Surprise, AZ and Material Girls (2007) at the Riverside Art Museum, Riverside, CA.

In this FY2013 funding round, the NEA received 393 eligible Challenge America
Fast-Track applications, requesting a total of $3,930,000.  The NEA will award 153
Challenge America Fast-Track grants totaling $1.53 million awarded to organizations
in 41 states, Washington, DC, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These include 49 first-time
Arts Endowment grantees. The Challenge America Fast-Track category offers support
primarily to small and mid-sized organizations for projects that extend the reach of the
arts to populations whose opportunities to experience the arts are limited by geography,
ethnicity, economics, or disability.

CCAI President, Glenn Clemmer, said “CCAI is thrilled to receive the Endowment’s support.
This grant reinforces our work to enhance arts and culture in Carson City.”

“The NEA was founded on the principle that the arts belong to all the people of the United
States,” said NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. “We’re proud that Challenge America
Fast-Track grants bring more opportunities for arts engagement to underserved
communities.”

See the complete listing of projects recommended for Challenge America Fast-Track grant
support at www.arts.gov.

The Luminosity exhibition will open in the CCAI Courthouse Gallery on Friday, February 8
with a reception for the artist, Cathy Breslaw, from 5 – 7pm. The gallery is located in the
Carson City Courthouse, 885 E Musser Street, Carson City.

The Capital City Arts Initiative is an artist-centered organization committed to the
encouragement and support of artists and the arts and culture of Carson City and the
surrounding region. The Initiative is committed to community building for the area’s
diverse adult and youth populations through art projects and exhibitions, live events,
arts education programs, artist residencies, and online projects.

The Capital City Arts Initiative [CCAI] is funded in part by the National Endowment for the
Arts, John Ben Snow Memorial Trust, Nevada Arts Council, Nevada Humanities and the
National Endowment for the Humanities, City of Carson City, and the John and
Grace Naumann Foundation.

Why German Art Matters
CCAI Nevada Neighbors Talk by Dr. Brett Van Hoesen

Nevada Neighbors, the Capital City Arts Initiative’s [CCAI] ongoing series of illustrated public talks, will present a talk on contemporary German art by Brett Van Hoesen, Ph.D. Her talk, Why German Art Matters, will take place on Wednesday, November 7 at 7pm at the Carson City Library, 900 N Roop Street, Carson City. Preceding her talk, there will be an informal reception for Dr. Van Hoesen at 6:15pm. The presentation and reception are free, and the public is cordially invited.

This talk will introduce the Nevada Neighbors audience to one of Dr. Van Hoesen’s main areas of expertise and interest: German art and culture. In an era when German language programs are being cut or significantly reduced across the United States, Germany is becoming an increasingly important venue for the practice and exhibition of contemporary art. Dr. Van Hoesen will examine the way in which German art and German exhibition contexts dating from the early twentieth century to the present have played a major role in establishing the aesthetics and culture of today’s contemporary art world. She will discuss German-based art practices including Berlin Dada photomontage, New Photography from the twenties and thirties, Bauhaus innovations in architecture, design, and art school curricula, and Fluxus developments in performance and sound art. In addition, the talk will showcase recent exhibitions of contemporary art including, Documenta XIII (a major contemporary art fair hosted every five years in Kassel, Germany) and the Berlin Biennale.

Brett M. Van Hoesen is Assistant Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Nevada, Reno. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and an M.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research interests span a range of topics that explore the relationship between the visual arts and social history. She is currently preparing a book manuscript on the legacy of Germany’s colonial history in the visual culture of the Weimar Republic. Recent publications include contributions to the International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) and the international feminist art journal n.paradoxa. Recent book chapters include, “Re-Visioning Germany’s Colonial Past:  Tactics of Weimar Photomontage and Documentary Photography” in German Colonialism, Visual Culture, and Modern Memory (Routledge, 2010), “Postcolonial Cosmopolitanism: Constructing the Weimar New Woman out of a Colonial Imaginary,” in The New Woman International: Photographic Representations from the 1870s through 1960s (University of Michigan Press, 2011), “Sound Art – New Only In Name:  A Selected History of German Sound Works from the Last Century,” co-authored with Jean-Paul Perrotte in Germany in the Loud Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2011), and “From Pop Icon to Postmodern Kitsch:  Michael Jackson and Contemporary Art” in Michael Jackson: Grasping the Spectacle, edited by Christopher Smit. Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, forthcoming 2012.