AUSTIN spring/summer 2013

a visual arts dialogueaether

aeCollaborators

EDITORS

Rachel StephensPartner • Wally Workman Gallery

Amanda GorenceOwner • Amanda Gorence Curation + Production

Judith TaylorDirector/ Owner • Gallery Shoal Creek

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Copyright © 2013 by AETHER. All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part, without the express written permission of the publisher, is prohibited.

aether, spring/summer 2013, issue four • contact@aetherart.com • www.aetherart.com

CONTRIBUTORS

Marjorie Flanagan is an Austin art consultant with Art + Artisans Consulting. An avid art thinker and lover, she holds an MA in Art Education from UT-Austin.

Laura Harrison is Assistant Director of Gallery Shoal Creek and an artist with a BA in sculpture from Southwestern University.

Erin Keever is a visual arts writer living in Austin, Texas. In addition to teaching both online and on-site art history classes at Austin Community College,

she is working on a chapter for a book about artist Nancy Renfro.

Claiborne Smith is the Features Editor at Kirkus Reviews and the former literary director of the Texas Book Festival.

(left) David Everett, Javelin, 2008, painted wood, 23 x 16 x 9 in.(cover image) Suzanne Koett, You Take Me And I'll Be You, (detail), 2012, silver halide archival print, 27.25 x 39 in.

aetherTwo by two...without the floods.

In this spring issue of aether, we continue our conversation about the visual arts with pairs of articles focusing on three main topics—the fabric of our urban community, the impact of the land and natural environment on both two and three-dimensional art, and the relationship between creative expression and one's inner struggles.

Focusing on the city centre, Lady Bird Lake and the Seaholm/Second Street development, we explore public installations and their collaborative nature and ability to engage the community as a whole. Open Room Austin is the first of several Art in Public Places projects in the area encouraging interaction in public spaces, while THIRST, a collaborative initiative underwritten by Women & Their Works' recent Rauschenberg Foundation Grant, is issue-based. The thought provoking installation will examine climate change and the effects of the Texas drought.

Our states terrain, diverse and expansive, has influenced artists since New York trained painters settled in Dallas and San Antonio in the late 1800’s. Interviews with two contemporary artists—Katie Maratta and David Everett—confirm that for them the land has a strong draw and drives their creative processes. A native Texan, Everett's work is rooted in the swamplands of the Gulf Coast; Maratta, a transplant, began a love affair with the vastness of West Texas the minute she saw it and finds the solitude and never-ending horizon poetic.

To round out the issue, our editors discuss how the visual imagery of two young Austin artists, photographer Suzanne Koett and painter Patrick Puckett, reflect their personal struggles. Amanda Gorence reviews Koett's series, The Study of Aloneness, and discovers the relationship between the powerful imagery and the artist's own journey to self-awareness. Following the progression of a single painting, Rachel Stephens uncovers the emotional push and pull of Puckett's creative process.

It’s an engaging issue, and we encourage you to continue the dialogue.

–The Editors

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Contents

Katie Maratta, Distant Tree, 2012, mixed media drawing on panel, 2 x 3 in.

6 SUZANNE KOETT / The Study of Aloneness

12 JAMES SURLS / And his "New Model" 18 BOOM / THIRST, a Rauschenberg Grant Recipient 26 NICE, LONG SPACES / S.C. Gwynne and Katie Maratta

32 PATRICK PUCKETT / Beer+ Elvis:

The Evolution of a Painting

36 DAVID EVERETT / The Ties That Bind

38 AIPP / Art In Public Places

46 DESTINATION / Catucaba, Brazil

48 DATEBOOK / Recommended Happenings

S U Z A N N E

The Study of AlonenessK O E T T

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by AMANDA GORENCE

(left to right) You Fly Straight Into My Heart / I Don't Mind If You Forget Me / These Things Take Time, 2011, silver halide archival print, 27.25 x 39 in.

Austin-based photographer Suzanne Koett’s personal work often stems from a fear or conflict that she is attempting to demystify or settle through the artistic process. The Study of Aloneness, shot between 2010 and 2012, came about in this way when a life occurrence sparked a desire to look inside. Koett braved unknown territory and set out on a personal journey to explore aloneness and a deeper relationship with the self—and she did so with camera in tow.

The work reads like a visual diary, a journey combining color and black-and-white. Intriguing,

mystical, and otherworldly, the imagery summons a myriad of moods that seem to have transportive qualities. There is movement throughout with shifts and transformations you can feel, but there is also a sense of stillness and contemplation. The series is divided into small vignettes of three photos that work together to create what Koett calls a mini-narrative. Created in line with the stages of Koett’s personal process, these mini-narratives convey what aloneness might look and feel like—the ups and downs of the journey, the wax and wane of states of consciousness. The trio shown above is the second of eight

self.” Willing being the operative word here. Self-exploration and introspection require courage—we are often resistant to self-analysis mainly because of the workload it presents should we take it seriously.

Koett depicts the stages of her effort throughout the series, showing us elation, struggle, freedom, discomfort and relief. At a certain point, Koett says, there is a moment when aloneness is accomplished, you renounce your identity and reach a state of nothingness. She relates it to a meditative state—a state of de-attachment. “For me the most relieving part was being nothing and just sitting there. I found throughout the process that I’m not attached to things or identity, and that I actually really love aloneness.”

An evocative journey, The Study of Aloneness goes beyond just pleasing the eye with its mystical qualities, and operates on a personal and universal level. Koett has managed to create a visual language that simultaneously connects viewer and artist through the intimate reveal of her own transformation. The thematic stripping down of identity that runs throughout allows for that universality to take place—and it is powerful. Suzanne Koett is a photography teacher at the Khabele School in Austin. She is currently working on her next project on death and dying.

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vignettes in the series. The imagery here is simple and minimal and the faces are identity-less, intentionally tucked away by hands and hair. The two subjects seem one and the same, but by being two they represent the internal and external struggle or perhaps a reflection of the self.

Koett let us in on what each of these represented for her. You Fly Straight Into My Heart refers to self-acceptance and the freedom that it offers. “When experiencing aloneness, you constantly face your true self, it has nowhere to hide; you free yourself of identity and operate from consciousness,” says Koett. This moment is undoubtedly empowering—even blissful—and that feeling is reflected in the image.

But Koett says it can also be fleeting. I Don't Mind If You Forget Me illustrates the other side of the empowerment—the struggle, the moments when we choose not to face our fears and let our false identities sink back into place. These Things Take Time is about forgiveness and non-judgement of those moments. The three work together to depict the balance between freedom and struggle. For Koett, learning how to accept and embrace both were crucial.

As the series moves forward, the subject gets closer to losing itself, becoming no one in a sense; “the deeper into aloneness one goes ultimately paves the way of losing and unraveling the false identity created over a lifetime,” she says. “It’s about erasing the stories that you make about who you are and how you operate. You have to be willing to shed all of that stuff in order to get to the core of the

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Rejoice, We Made The Right Choice, 2012, silver halide archival print, 27.25 x 39 in. ae

For The Damaged, 2012, silver halide archival print, 27.25 x 39 in.

aether 11Suzanne Koet t • www.suzannekoett.com

You Take Me And I'll Be You, 2012, silver halide archival print, 27.25 x 39 in.

Award Recipient James Surls and his “New Model” by ERIN KEEVER

James Surls and his work, Seeing Around the Thorn Vine, 2012, bronze and stainless steel, 96 x 99 x 107 in.

In January 2013 the Texas Cultural Trust announced its biennial Texas Medal of Arts award nominees. The Trust was established in 1995 to raise funds for and awareness of the arts in Texas. They also work with the Texas Legislature to form student arts programs and encourage economic development through the arts.

This year James Surls received the Trust’s Texas Medal of Arts Award in Visual Arts. While Surls currently lives in Colorado, he has strong roots in Texas and has been a major figure in both regional and national contemporary art for nearly four decades. He is best known for his large-scale organic sculptures as well as his drawings and prints featuring figurative and natural forms. Surls was in Austin for a series of events hosted by the Texas Cultural Trust, including a Gala and Award Show on March 5 at The Long Center for the Performing Arts. I sat down with the artist, his agent, Linda Clarke, Tina Weitz and Katherine Brimberry of Flatbed Press and Galleries and Judy Taylor of Gallery Shoal Creek for a chat.

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EK: So tell me about this event. Do they honor other visual artists?

JS: This year some of the groups they are honoring are the Houston Ballet, the Kimbell Art Museum and Texas Monthly. They honor institutions, organizations, and individuals.

EK: That’s pretty nice to be alongside an entire museum.

JS: Yeah it actually is. It’s pretty amazing. God, it’s so, I don’t want to say it’s totally arbitrary, but it’s like trying to figure out who are the ten best artists in history. You can’t really do that. It’s like arguing about you know, who is better, Picasso or Van Gogh?

So if you give somebody an award it’s really nice, but you can’t take that stuff so personally, that you believe it to the point that you’re saying I am the

“Texas Artist of the Year!” It doesn’t really get you points at home.

But it’s a pretty impressive list of who has received it before, for example, Robert Rauschenberg, Ben Stephens in Dance, and James Drake.

LC: The awards raise the visibility of arts in the state of Texas. You know a lot of people don’t know how many artists in these various fields that Texas has produced. It really says a lot. They do this every other year, just the legislative years. The Trust is also a non-profit that supports the Texas Commission on the Arts in a number of ways. It raises money and visibility of the arts in Texas and they have different activities that go on.

EK: So we are sitting in the Flatbed conference room amongst a number of your prints. Can you tell me more about The “Heartland” series on view here?

JS: I think to tell you the truth the drawings were done in 2005 and the prints were done a year later. There are a total of 28. We chose 11 to work with. I got up New Year’s morning of 2005 and my New Year’s resolution was to do a series of drawings that year, to do a full exhibition, a full catalog of the drawings. I thought the drawings were understated. Galleries traditionally were not necessarily kind to drawings.

EK: Is that still the case today though?

JS: Well, I don’t know, I can’t speak of today, because I’ve pulled out of that system.

What I really needed to do, to make a personal statement for me, was to clean house. I’m changing. I’m casting my skin and going through this metamorphosis. Now I will be something else. Psychologically that is not an easy thing for people to do.

EK: So you’ve pulled out of the gallery system?

JS: In 2005 I was determined to change my whole demeanor if you will, to change the context of my drawings. I said I’m going to draw for one year and I’m going to have a body of work and I’m going to photograph them and have the best photographer take pictures and have high-resolution imagery. I’m going to have an essay and I’m going to do a book. The first thing I did is get someone to write an essay. I got a great essayist. Her essay is in the “Heartland” catalog now. And I started trying to put together a show.

I don’t want to present this as 'oh, I have found the model.' I have not found the model. I have found a model that works for me. I don’t necessarily know that it could or should work for everybody else. I don’t think that it is a model that fits all. But my model now is that I do not deal with galleries.

James Surls, The Flatbed Suite, 1999, colléd soft ground etchings, 12 x 12 in. each

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I am real good at making stuff. I really know how to do that. And I love doing it and I’ve gotten incredibly good at it; but if I am the only one in the business, I just stack it up.

EK: Can you tell me more about this particular series of prints here at Flatbed?

JS: We (Kathy Brimberry and I) talked for years about doing a suite or a book, a body of prints, so we did. We very carefully chose the paper, we chose the Chine Collé, which is green.

I don’t want to sound outside of the edges on my thinking. Because inside of the edges, I love to draw. I just absolutely love it. When I draw I don’t erase. I don’t go back and fix anything. I sometimes draw with my eyes shut. I sometimes draw with both hands. That drawing right there called Start to Finish, was done with both hands. One side was done with my left hand, one with my right hand. I love to draw about things with psychological ramifications.

The one next to it is called Skin Casting. It’s a snake that has a rhyme, a rhythm, a pattern and a

movement. I changed myself in 2005. I went through a radical physical change. It was a façade. I cut my long hair. I’d had long hair for 30-plus years. I had a beard. My children had never seen me without it. I looked totally different afterwards. And I think the physical change begets the psychological change and it was a change that I was after and I was trying to shed one coat or a skin. Skin casting is taking off your skin and throwing the skin in a way and getting a new one. That’s what snakes do. It made sense to follow the example.

In honor of Surls being presented the Texas Medal of the Arts award for 2013, Flatbed Press is presenting an exhibition of Surls' "Heartland" gravures. Surls’ “Heartland” is one of the most ambitious deluxe art publications in Flatbed’s 20-year history.

An exhibition of the gravures along with the letterpress pages that make up the deluxe artist book is on view at Flatbed Gallery through June 15, 2013.

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James Surls, Skin Casting from the “Heartland Suite”, 2007, chine collé polymer gravure, 20 x 16 in.

w w w.jamessurls .com

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Make.

BOOM!Following THIRST, a Rauschenberg Grant Recipient

by MARJORIE FLANAGANImages & illustrations by Cassie Bergstrom, dwg studio

If you seek strange and interesting art themes, tantalizing new techniques and mind-blowing collaborations, dig deep. Austin artists are carving out their niches with heartfelt vigor. Those who look will be rewarded with Women & Their Work’s latest highly charged art eruption, THIRST. As a recent recipient of an Artistic Innovation and Collaboration Grant from the Rauschenberg Foundation, Austin’s own Women & Their Work is raising its profile as a hub for creativity. The Rauschenberg Foundation provides artistic grants to help share with the world art that is fearless, collaborative and pattern-breaking in the vein of artist Robert Rauschenberg, whose artistic career spanned disciplines including painting, sculpture, printmaking and photography. He also worked

beyond the parameters of visual art to design album covers, create theater sets, and choreograph dance. With THIRST, the collaborators hope to create a dialogue that is a voice for positive change. With the grant, W&TW is helping create and launch a unique art experience on the shores of Lady Bird Lake.

The Rauschenberg Foundation grant process was not only a call to artists, but a challenge. The awarded art needed to be innovative, discipline-crossing, and imaginative. The Foundation wanted the participants to push themselves and take risks in the pursuit of more powerful work. Artists creating art for art’s sake can take on as much risk as they want, but public entities asking artists to push the boundaries is unique. As the only Texas

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arts organization receiving a Rauschenberg grant, pressure is on W&TW to perform. The art and social ideas that gave way to their final sculptural proposal came from round table brainstorming sessions with inspired minds from the Austin community, including artist and professor Beili Liu, Norma Yancey and Emily Little of Clayton & Little Architects, and Cassie Bergstrom of the dwg group, Landscape Architects. The questions echoing included: What is affecting Austin now? What can this artwork activate and provide exposure for? How can we create a challenging art endeavor? The

resulting proposal was awarded the grant. It is to be an activist earthwork sculpture titled THIRST.

THIRST will explore the loss of 500 million trees caused by the Texas drought in 2011. The topic of climate change will be addressed with the installation of a 30 foot dead tree in the center of Lady Bird Lake. The tree will hover over our rippling river, its roots reaching and yearning for the water—its thirst never quite quenched. The tree will be painted ghostly white in a memoriam of all of the trees that have fallen victim to our current

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drought. It seems THIRST aims to say: 'this is our state, these are our trees, and they are dying.' Along our beloved trail which encircles the proposed tree location will be fourteen thousand white prayer flags hand imprinted with a black image of the tree. These prayer flags reference the Tibetan ritual of creating flags that are hung and blow in the wind to spread compassion to all of the pervading space. Traditionally, woodcut prints and text are included on the flags. For THIRST’s installation, hike and bike trail walkers during September and October will be asked to help create personal script on each flag,

and the wind will carry their hopes and compassion to our city (exact timing to be announced). The art installation will create a heightened dialogue around water conservation and urges viewers to ask themselves, “How can I help?” The possible solutions generated from THIRST to help save Central Texas trees will become part of the artwork itself; an unknown that will only be understood in time.

The process to bring THIRST to fruition has been arduous. The team is working with city officials to

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pinpoint the tree at the heart of the sculpture. The phantom-like tree will be located among the strong but drought-ridden, dying trees somewhere along the Colorado River. The team has worked countless hours coordinating details with city officials and public art teams to ensure the safety of our beloved lake as well as the public and the art piece itself. The challenges include securing the artwork without damaging nearby historic pedestrian bridges, taking care of the surrounding delicate ecosystem, preventing possible vandalism, and providing nighttime lighting. Hands and heads are full finding solutions for these possible issues. That is part of what will make THIRST so stimulating. Most of the THIRST artists and collaborators find problem-solving as part of the process of creating art; finding solutions to art-challenges is fulfilling and builds amazing experiences for the creator and viewer alike. When Robert Rauschenberg was alive, his art and ideas were both challenging and crossed a variety of studies. The reward here is a spirit of cross-collaboration.

Chris Cowden, executive director of W&TW who has been part of the THIRST artwork since its inception, refers to the project as “Janus-faced. THIRST has the ability to both look back at the lost trees and look forward to water conservation.” As activist art, THIRST calls viewers to organize,

motivate and build solidarity surrounding climate change and water conservation. It is our responsibility to transform this inspiration into action. With a long history of great collaborative and activist art behind it, including works by Rauschenberg himself, Jean Claude and Christo, Robert Smithson and the muralists of the WPA, THIRST can address issues beyond the purely intellectual. Art is visual first and then speaks to our cerebral sides. The excitement is building to see how it might transform our city central trail as well as the viewers that happen upon it.

With publicity that includes multiple artist talks surrounding its installation and news publications in print, radio and web form, THIRST provides Austin art with the opportunity to become influential on a national level as well as a local one. As Austin quickly became America’s darling with the prosperity of the tech industry, music-centric festivals and livable wages for open jobs, why not an art boom as well?

Aether will follow the development of this ambitious project giving progress reports in upcoming issues as negotiations with environmental and city officials unfold.

w w w. w o m e n a n d t h e i r w o r k . o r g

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Change.

by CLAIBORNE SMITH

NICE, LONG SPACES S.C. Gwynne and Katie Maratta Found the Wellspring for Their Art on the Edge of a Vast Land Ocean

Katie Maratta, Shed and Downed Trees, 2012, mixed media drawing on panel, 1 x 12 in.

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Writer and journalist S.C. “Sam” Gwynne grew up in Connecticut; his wife, artist Katie Maratta, grew up in West Virginia. Those places must seem somewhat foreign to them now, so tied to Texas they’ve become. The couple first fell in love with the West when they moved to Truth or Consequences, NM so that Sam could work on an investigative book he was writing at the time about the corrupt bank BCCI with his then-writing partner, Jonathan Beaty. If you’ve ever been to Truth or Consequences, you know that it is a little, depressed town, but that didn’t matter to Gwynne or Maratta. It was the vastness and beauty of the place that hooked them. They both live in Austin now, and arrived here in an almost random way.

Now that they are here, they have become two of the most respected interpreters of the West working today. Gwynne, who writes for Texas Monthly, is the bestselling author of Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History. Gwynne managed to take a story–the abduction of Cynthia Ann Parker in the 1800s and her eventual, tragic return to white society–that had been written about many times before and make it seem fresh, partly because he expands the story of Parker’s kidnapping into the broader history of the entire Comanche tribe.

Maratta’s “horizonscapes,” as she calls them, are intimate, almost eerie recreations of epically flat West Texas land. Maratta uses graphite pencils to draw long landscapes across an elongated panel that is usually only one inch high: the effect is to cause the viewer to scrunch their eyes up as they approach her art to detect the small, telling details (a run-down taxidermy store, a tiny Dairy Queen sign) anyone from West Texas would immediately recognize. Because her pieces are up to 48 inches in length, though, the feeling of Maratta’s work isn’t at all small. It’s a canny and poetic recreation of the feeling this East Coast native gets when she hangs out in West Texas.

I talked to Gwynne and Maratta over dinner recently about why they first came to Texas, and why they've stayed.

KM: We were living in New York and Sam was a business editor at TIME magazine. You started on Tuesdays, working eight hours and then by the end of the week, you were spending the night in New York City to close the magazine by Saturday. It was a brutal schedule. We had just had a little baby and were living in Larchmont and my parents said, ‘You would be getting more help if you had just checked into a home for unwed mothers.’ Sam was just not around. When he got home, he was exhausted.

SG: It was the actual 80-hour work week.

KM: There were many, many divorces at that magazine.

SG: Alcoholism and divorces, usually both.

KM: The good thing back then was that TIME had a bunch of bureaus and you could walk in and say, ‘The New York thing isn’t working for us’ and in Sam’s case, they said, ‘We have Houston’ and we said, ‘Okay, we’ll take Houston.’ And then all of Sam’s friends said, ‘If you’re going to live in Texas, you need to live in Austin.’

SG: The only issue TIME had was, ‘How quickly can you get to a plane to cover a story?’ They said yes, so we showed up here, sight unseen. We drive in through Palestine and then we come down and we drive in on I-35, driving south, and we said, ‘Oh God, what have we done? It’s just like south L.A. or Detroit.’

KM: That wasn’t the way we should have come into town. We had lived in Truth or Consequences, NM for about six months while Sam was working on a book about BCCI, the “outlaw bank.” It was a little sabbatical out there. It was so fun, we just thought, ‘Anything that gets us closer to there would be a good thing.’

SG: [My writing partner at the time] Jonathan and I had an office on Main Street where we wrote our book.

KM: At one point, I took the dog for a walk and I get back to the house; the yard is full of police cars. I’m like, ‘What is going on?’ And they said they couldn’t find Sam or Jonathan. TIME magazine couldn’t find them.

SG: This was a story about a bank that killed people.

KM: There was a certain nefarious side to this and they’d gone to their office downtown and there was hot coffee in cups, cigarettes burning in ashtrays, doors unlocked, computers on. But no Sam and no Jonathan.

SG: And what happened was, we’d been working closely with Robert Morgenthau, the New York district attorney, on this story and Morgenthau pulled the chain. Morgenthau is a big deal. We got a big advance on this book and Jonathan bought a boat with it and he shows up at the office with this brand new Wellcraft and he’s dying to show it off and we just got in the car to go see the boat.

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Katie Maratta, Silos #2, 2012, mixed media drawing on panel, 2 x 3 in.

Sam started working on The Empire of the Summer Moon in 2005. They describe their mutual love and fascination with West Texas as a kind of aesthetic accident.

KM: We ended up covering a lot of the same ground.

SG: I’m writing about West Texas and she’s making art about it. It was not planned. Didn’t even occur to me until a few years ago.

KM: It’s not just Texas, it’s mythic Texas. It’s everybody’s iconic Texas.

SG: I’m sure Nacogdoches is somebody’s idea of iconic, but it doesn’t seem that way to us. For us Yankees, it’s West Texas.

KM: It still gets to me, the landscape and the sky.

SG: Katie grew up in a vertical land and I grew up near the ocean. It’s the opposite of where she grew up and it reminds me of the ocean. Joe Ely said that in Lubbock, it’s so flat that you can see 20 miles in any direction and if you stand on a tuna fish can, you can see 50.

KM: I realized I’d never really seen the horizon until I got to Texas. It doesn’t exist on the East Coast unless you go to the ocean. The ocean is stunning, it’s pretty powerful, but it’s better when it’s land.

KM: When Sam and I go out to West Texas, Sam’s my chauffeur but I go out by myself too and we head out on these roads and just head out in a direction. It’s great to have GPS and AAA to tow you out of ditches. I make photographs and sketches. I can’t tell you how many people have come up to me and said [about her finished artwork], ‘That’s my grandmother’s house.’

Kat ie Marat ta • w w w . g a l l e r y s h o a l c r e e k . c o m aether 31

I’m pretty sure it’s not but there’s a certain style, early ranch style, boarded house with a porch, a couple of trees. It is all over West Texas. Sometimes it has its own water tank, sometimes there are cows in the front yard. These places are so eternal. They’re very poetic. They’re extremely powerful little moments on the edge of this nothing. It’s just miles and miles of nothing and you see this little porch light and you see this little house with the wash in the side yard. It’s really evocative.

SG: But what you get, what you end up with, in the artwork is an idealized landscape. Elements exist–that fence line exists, that field may exist sort of, but Katie modifies things, too. I watched her do a tumbleweed from scratch, from nothing. What happens is you get a recombination of things. That silo was not next to that fence line, which was not next to that cow. So you get an idealized landscape. It is idealized because people in Texas who grew up there see it that way.

KM: And I’m not doing portraits. I came out of cartooning out of college and I was doing a lot of cartooning professionally and after the newspapers started to tank and I got out of cartooning, I thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ I knew I was going to do art, but what kind of art? I did some sculpting and painting classes and it’s so funny to come all the way back around to a black-and-white horizontal narrative, which is basically what cartoon is only it’s a little story line with punch lines.

I always had to put the punch line at the end in a cartoon but it’s basically the same format. That’s what I like about these pieces. I’m not restricted to a certain 1-2-3; I can have nice, long spaces where nothing is happening. I find all those broken-down ranch houses to be enormously appealing. ae

Claiborne Smith is the Features Editor at Kirkus Reviews and the former literary director of the Texas Book Festival.

Katie Maratta, Whataburger #2, (detail), 2012, mixed media drawing on panel, 1 x 48 in.

P U C K E T TBeer+ Elvis: The Evolution of a Painting

PATRICK

Patrick Puckett, Figures on a Beach, 2013, oil on canvas, 88 x 116 in.

by RACHEL STEPHENS

The conversation begins with popping a Tecate and turning on an Elvis record. It’s to be a long conversation, one with dark turns and pleasant surprises and an unknown end. A sometimes-painful conversation that aches until the next one begins.

Patrick opens his sketchbook, gridding out the figure in his head. Many pages later, he is ready to take the desired dimensions to stretchers and a canvas. Hard black lines scratch an outline. The figure’s eyes are dark and almost scowling. The posture is defensive and defiant against the artist’s gaze. It’s to be a stubborn exchange.

This is how it goes in Patrick Puckett’s studio after hours. Returning home from his day job to finally have the conversation that has been circling in his head all day long. Some may think it’s stereotypical, the “tortured artist.” But it’s true. You have to paint, but sometimes the painting hates you.

This struggle might not be evident on the gallery walls, but it’s there under the dozens and sometimes hundreds of layers of paint. In looking at the progression of Patrick’s paintings, you can see they start in a much darker place and painstakingly work their way towards the light–literally and conceptually. Patrick coaxes the menacing figures to soften up a bit with every layer. Scowls turn into questioning stares. Deep blacks and purples are replaced with soft reds, oranges and yellows. Scenes seeming to exist amongst dark shadows now exist on bright beaches. Blocks of clothing that before appeared to act as shields are playfully sprinkled with pattern. It’s as if Patrick has put his demons on the page and talked them into the sun for a beer.

It’s this back and forth that gives the work its depth. If one really looks, you can see the time pass on the canvas—the life of this figure born there. You can feel their ups and downs and the energy it took to get them to this place.

But Patrick won’t easily admit to this struggle. For him, it is a natural part of the process not unlike the bruises of a boxer.

“Painting is a tough sport...(but) I don’t want to give the impression that I’m liable to cut my ear off at any moment because I burned the risotto...I’m more baseball cap and margarita than beret and absinthe.”

Well, we’ll give him that. But we think there might be just a hint of absinthe in that margarita.

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aether 35Patr ick Puckett • w w w . w a l l y w o r k m a n . c o m

balance in the natural world where river basin, swampland, migratory flight patterns, and the Gulf of Mexico co-mingle. Each sculpture begins with a sketch on laminated hardwood. Using traditional mallet and wood gouges, Everett removes material slowly, revealing the rough forms of animals. As the process progresses, he draws directly on the wood to assist in visualizing the form he wants to achieve.

Coterie will be the centerpiece for Everett’s solo exhibition at the Art Museum of the Southeast in Beaumont this spring. Titled The Ties That Bind, the exhibition brings him home. Growing up in

by JUDY TAYLOR

David EverettThe Ties That Bind

David Everett’s animals have personality. Viewed in the round, one is immediately captivated by the playfulness of the quirky totem-like creations. Coterie, his newest piece, is “a tip of the hat to the world” he knew in the coastal region of southeast Texas. “The five animal forms in the composition—a Snowy Egret, an Alligator, a Dog Snapper, a Red-Eared Perch, and a Clam—each hold important positions in the region’s ecosystem,” he notes. “Ironically, each can be both predator and prey depending on the situation.”

The visual composition, graceful animals atop one another, parallels the desire to maintain the

Coterie, 2012, painted wood sculpture, 37 1/2 x 46 x 26 in.Photo by Paul Bardagjy

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Beaumont, David and his brother’s playground was the swampy marshland of the Neches River Basin. “We had a pet alligator, snakes, turtles and an egret.” In the fall, the skies of Chambers County were as fascinating as the swamps. The Everett boys would watch the birds headed south as they moved across Smith Point, a natural concentration area or southwardly moving raptors. It is not unusual to see hundreds of Broad-winged Hawks migrate through on a single day.

For Everett, the natural world of his childhood has been a constant in his creative world. “It was from this vantage point that I began a life-long

process of restating my observations into a visual art—[art] that explores an allegorical interplay of both human and animal forms and celebrates the natural history of a personal world.”

Everett is represented by Davis Gallery in Austin.

The Ties That Bind / David Everett is on currently view at the Art Museum of Southeast Texas in Beaumont through June 30, 2013.

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Dav id Everet t • w w w . d a v i s g a l l e r y a u s t i n . c o m

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photography by Travis Hallmark

AIPPArt in Public Places

You've seen it time and time again, either cruising by on bike or stuck in traffic on Cesar Chavez. You've noticed it's a table, admired those distinct lamps. But you've also probably wondered what it is exactly, and how it came to be. Nestled between the train tracks and the Seaholm Power Plant, the aptly titled Open Room Austin is a public art installation by Rosario Marquardt and Roberto Behar. The over-sized, open-air picnic table is made entirely of almuninum and features a lace-like "tablecloth", benches to seat 24, and four tree-like lampposts. Conceived as a social sculpture, it encourages a shared community experience in an unexpected setting, and as AIPP says, is "intended to dissolve boundaries between fiction and reality and limits between art and life." The piece is first come, first serve and currently awaits its next sitter. serve, currently awaiting its next sitter.

We at aether decided to take advantage of this unique meeting place and host a dinner party for members of the Austin art community. What better use of public art than to gather and commune over a meal? The night was one of a kind, magical even, and the setting ensured an incomparable experience.

Open Room Austin certainly proves to be an inspiring and successful project. Luckily, there are many more public art projects on the horizon. The following pages take a look at how we used the space, what our guests thought of the experience, and what's next in the public art sphere.

Open Room Austin is located at Sand Beach Park, just east of Lamar and north of Cesar Chavez.

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Public art is one of the elements that makes this city come alive. For those of us from smaller towns in Texas where public art isn't high on the agenda, driving past a funky art installation or a sculpture that we weren't at all expecting is a brief reminder that life here is more than routine. Public art reminds us that life isn't just ticking off boxes of errands that have to be completed, that we have something to give one another that's vibrant and reflective.

-CLAY SMITH, Kirkus Reviews

This public art space helps define Austin's unique ability to bridge together art with everyday life. The incredible setting was only surpassed by the inspiring group of individuals that made it happen.

-LISA ROGERS, R SQUARED Art Management

In our new landscape of fast cash, fast food, and even faster downloads, installations like Open Room are encouraging us to sloooow down! At this generous table you can share a meal, catch up with friends or make new ones, watch the sun set, or even the sun rise. It's not al fresco dining, it's al fresco art.

- CATHERINE ZINSER, Blanton Museum

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I think Open Room Austin can be filed under "making something ordinary, extraordinary." It's a somewhat simple idea, yet with more complex implications. What should public art be if not a meeting place? I like the aspect that you may have to eat or "commune" with someone else. Food and communion are important aspects of faith. (Jewish Feast of Passover, Christian Last Supper/Eucharist, etc.) This city loves being outdoors, loves food, and it combines the two. There's also this social relevance—sharing meals, food, nutrition with your tribe. - ERIN KEEVER, writer

Established in 1985, the Art in Public Places (AIPP) program works with local and national artists to create cultural landmarks that reflect the history and values of its community. The City of Austin was the first municipality in Texas to make a commitment to include works of art in its construction projects.

Here are three exciting projects in the works.

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PEDESTRIAN GEOMETRIES / 3rd St. Streetscape The 3rd St. Streetscape project combines the complete reconstruction of 3rd Street from Nueces to Trinity with the talents of Austin-based artist Erin Curtis and her teammate Nicole Blair. Curtis and Blair will construct multiple sculptures made of Elgin-Butler brick, a durable glazed ceramic brick commonly used for building construction. The brick will be cut and laid in geometric patterns inspired by a variety of sources—Navajo Rugs, Islamic textiles, Art Deco design and the natural geography of Texas—that channel Egyptian and Mayan ancient pyramids and the modernism of 20th century sculptures.

STREET SOUNDS / Brazos Streetscape

The Street Sounds project is an interactive sound installation conceived by the creative collaborative Sodalitas—Shea Little, Jana Swec and Joseph Phillips. Twelve microphone tubes designed to collect street sounds will line the east side of Brazos between 2nd and 3rd Streets. Sounds will be relayed to twelve corresponding speaker tubes stationed in a listening location. The tubes themselves will be sculptures, twisting and curving until they appear to dive underground through the sidewalk and emerge to connect the two locations. The speaker tubes will arch over benches and create a fountain of sound for listeners below, inspiring the public to take a moment and contemplate the power of sound.

BIRDS/ Central Library

Austin's new Central Library, set to open in 2016, will feature a 37 foot-high wall sculpture fabricated by California-based artist Christian Moeller. Preliminary designs resemble a cuckoo clock with a swinging pendulum. The wall will incorporate a computer animation screen showcasing a large black bird, paying homage to Austin's ever-present grackle, and referencing the importance of black birds in myth and literature.

A IPP • www.austincreates.com

destination

brazil

catucaba, brazil

Portal Do Sul sits atop the mountainsides of remote Catucaba, Brazil. Composed of ten interrelated sculptures, this installation by Pasha Radetzki at once contradicts and complements the landscape. Obviously man-made, with its right angles and painted surfaces, these pieces somehow seem right at home with the undulating landscape and roaming wildlife. They create passageways or windows to the far off ridges and quantify the magnitude of the space to a more human scale. Standing on those mountaintops, the eye can only grasp so much. Radetski's installation gives the viewer something to hold onto, a sense of place. It seems ironic that in this awe-inspiring landscape, one would need a structure to find a sense of place. But maybe as humans we need a marker to tell us we're really here and it's time to focus on what's before us. Radetski's work does this gently, an open door or window welcoming one to this point in time and space.

Pasha Radetzki was one of the first artists invited to a residency at Fazenda Catucaba in 2011. His landscape installation is spread over 250 acres. Seeing the sculptures from the valley, they summon one to take a closer look by horse or foot. Reaching them feels like discovering a silent Buddha meditating on the mountain-side. One stops looking up and is called to turn around to contemplate the ancient, never-ending moun-tain ranges at the same time as to feel rooted in that specific time and space. This is what owner Emmanuel Rengade strives for across the property. The historic Fazenda (farm) is a coffee plantation from the 1850s

by RACHEL STEPHENS

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that has been revived as a working farm and pousada (inn). The main colonial house is structurally much as it was 100 years ago; however, it is now thoughtfully populated with contemporary furniture and art—evoking similar sensations of history, time and place as does Portal Do Sul. These contemporary consid-erations juxtaposed against the deep history of Catucaba strike a rare harmonized balance that permeates the soul and implores you to remain thoughtful as you return to busy life at home—wherever that may be.

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Pasha Radetsk i • www.r a d e t s k i . n e t

datebookMAY

There's no race to the finish line here, not really, because art – like life – is more about the journey itself. And these five artists offer an array of delights from their own journeys to improve the mindscape, the visual experience, of everyone's runaway lives: Kaci Beeler's realistic oil-on-canvas renderings of desserts from local culinary hotspots; Katie Rose Pipkin's detailed pen-and-ink illustrations of fables renowned or obscure; Katy Horan's delicate and eerie lacework portraits; Katy O'Connor's brightly colored splashes of everyday existence; Kristin Hogan's fanciful 3-D fabrications of Our Cephalopod Friends … These are creations worth running to see, a curated rush of diverse wonders from five Austin-based "K"s of our very human race.

through May 5GRAYDUCK 5KgrayDUCK GalleryWayne Allen Brenner, Guest Curator

through May 11ARTIFACTTiny Park Gallery

through September 1OF A TECHNICAL NATURELaguna Gloria/Driscoll Villa

New sculptural works by Beili Liu, Scott Proctor, and Jonathan Dankenbring. Each of the artists in the exhibition use simple, familiar materials in their sculptural works. Salt, panes of glass, wood, and construction materials are transformed into objects that appear simultaneously ancient and futuristic.

through May 9LAST RESORTKelly O'ConnorWomen & Their Work

Resort: 1. To have recourse. 2. A place frequented by people for relaxation and recreation. Both definitions of resort apply to this exhibition. Collage and mixed media works framed on the wall will compliment the creation of a site-specific cave like geodesic dome.

A group exhibition that explores the increasingly integrative relationship between natural and technological systems and questions where this evolving relationship might take us. The show presents works from AMOA-Arthouse’s collection, as well as work by local, national, and international emerging and mid-career artists.

through May 19THROUGH THE EYES OF TEXAS:MASTERWORKS FROM ALUMNI COLLECTIONS The Blanton Museum of Art

An exhibition consisting of nearly 200 extraordinary objects from the art collections of University of Texas at Austin alumni across the country. Marking the occasion of the Blanton’s fiftieth anniversary, this special survey will include ancient Mayan vessels, tribal masks, Chinese jade, Renaissance paintings, and Old Master prints and drawings, showcased alongside modern and contemporary works by major artists such as Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, Ed Ruscha and Kehinde Wiley.

Katy O’Conner

(1)Barry Stone, (r) Young-Min Kang

JUNE

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June 23 through September 22LIFELIKEThe Blanton Museum of ArtThis international, multigenerational group exhibition considers the continued relevance of realism in contemporary art. From arresting paintings based on off-handed snapshots, to meticulously handcrafted sculptures of unremarkable objects, the artists in Lifelike transform the commonplace into something infused with narrative and metaphor, often mining unsettling terrain within the familiar.

June 11 through August 4CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHIC PRACTICE AND THE ARCHIVEHarry Ransom Center

This exhibition was created in cooperation with the Lakes Were Rivers collective, an Austin-based group of artists working in photography and video. Members of the collective created a body of work influenced in some way by the Ransom Center—its space, its purpose, its collections. Approximately 50 new works are displayed alongside Ransom Center collection materials chosen by the artists. The pairings highlight how archives and cultural collections stimulate new ideas and creative acts. The 11 artists in the Lakes Were Rivers collective focused on the process of discovery, on moments when the unexpected occurred and an unanticipated relationship between the Ransom Center collections and the artist's own work became apparent. Photographic concepts of material, time, and illusion shaped their encounters with the collections.

June 8 through September 15LUMINOUS: 50 YEARS OF COLLECTING PRINTS AND DRAWINGS AT THE BLANTON The Blanton Musuem of Art

As a way to honor the Blanton’s fiftieth anniversary, Luminous showcases some of the finest prints and drawings from Europe and the Americas in the collection.

June 1 through June 29IAN SHULTS: PARTY ANIMALSWally Workman Gallery

Party Animals is the gallery's third solo show with local painter Ian Shults. Being a painter who addresses d e b a u c h e r y and subversive behavior, what happens when Ian gets a hold of seemingly even keeled people? This show answers that question. Lets just say it involves trespassing. And a lingerie dance party...

June 1 through July 6DIANE GRAMMER RETROSPECTIVEDavis GalleryA native Texan, Dianne Grammer's pastels and oils depict deep canyons, tranquil lakes and shimmering creeks and rivers, all taking different expressions as they cut through the Texas landscape. Expanses of grasses and wildflowers are woven together with a sense of both order and freedom, set against broad distant horizons. Truly inspired by nature, her work is based on numerous sketches made while hiking and kayaking.

Adam Schreiber

next issuefall/winter 2013

aether (Greek αἰθήρ aithēr[1]) n. 1 the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere 2 a medium that in the wave theory of light permeates all space and transmits transverse waves 3 personification of the sky or upper air breathed by the Olympians.

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