In a previous blog,  we wrote about Chris Drury’s Carbon Sink, an installation at the University of Wyoming that garnered the ire of local legislators who viewed it as a poor educational investment. Chalk one up to transformative power art.  As you can see from the editorial below, by Wyoming State representative, Tom Lubnau, in the Gillette News Record, (where Rhonda used to live) the controversy led to a valuable dialogue about art, education, energy and the environment http://www.gillettenewsrecord.com/stories/Trying-to-make-silk-purses-from-sows-ears,61404.  Here’s also an image of Chris Drury’s most recent Wyoming-inspired art work, On the Ground: Above and Below Wyoming.

topographical map woven with a Geological map of the state. The border is coal dust and Wyoming earth. The pattern is wind blowing off the Rockies. Size: 3'4"€ x 4'€™1.5"€

Trying to make silk purses
from sows’ ears

Tom Lubnau
Gillette News Record, September 6, 2011

A few weeks ago, the University of Wyoming unveiled a new on-campus sculpture entitled “Carbon Sink.”

The artist,  Chris Drury, is a worldfamous sculptor, the university paid $40,000 to install the sculpture on campus. The artist designed the sculpture as a series of dead logs arranged in a spiral pattern, which he hoped would symbolize the death of forests from pine beetles due to global warming.

On the Ground: Above and Below Wyoming Detail by Chris Drury

Much has been written by journalists, bloggers and in some tersely worded emails about the comments Reps. Gregg Blikre, Norine Kasperik and I made about the hypocrisy of accepting dollars derived from carbon fuels to put up an anti-carbon sculpture. People, mostly from California and New York told we told us we should be “ashamed of ourselves” and that we are “ignorant bumpkins because we hate anything that resembles culture” and referred to us as “cow flops and road apples.”

It is important to understand what we didn’t do. We didn’t ask the sculpture be taken down. We didn’t take any steps to remove funding from the university. And we didn’t engage in any form of censorship. What did we do? We defended our friends and neighbors. Prompted by the existence of the piece of art, we started a discussion. My old art teachers, from back in the day, told me that art was supposed to provoke discussion, to inspire and to affect the viewer.

And that is what we did. We used the existence of the art as an inspiration piece to let folks know that between 60 and 80 percent of the state’s budget is dependent on extractive industries. We asked for some appreciation and kudos for the hard-working folks in the energy industry, who go to work day after day, meeting America’s energy needs and funding in large measure the University of Wyoming budget. We told the university that we thought it was out of touch with the rest of the state, and that we wished they would spend as much time working with us to meet our educational needs as they did being critical of the industries that pay the bills in Wyoming.

And to their credit, the administration of the University of Wyoming listened. We engaged in a dialogue about the misunderstandings, misperceptions and missed opportunities that exist between the University of Wyoming and Campbell County. University President Dr. Tom Buchanan, Trustees Warren Lauer and Jim Neiman, and senior UW staffers Don Richards and Mike Massie took time out of their busy schedules to travel to Gillette, to tour a power plant, the college and other community facilities, and to meet with community leaders and energy company officials to discuss opportunities for UW to offer educational services in the Campbell County area.

Carbon Sink University of Wyoming

The discussions were positive. Dr. Buchanan left the citizens of Campbell County with a clear challenge. If we can define a specific set of needs that can be met by the university rather than a vague list of complaints, the university will work to meet those needs. The monkey is now on the backs of the citizens of Campbell County. We have a great opportunity to advance the education opportunities and the quality of life in northeastern Wyoming if we are wise, and if we can specifically define our needs and put a plan in place to accomplish those needs.

Thanks to Chris Drury for your sculpture. While I don’t agree with your science, or what you believe your sculpture symbolizes, the burnt logs laying in a circular pattern on the grounds of the University of Wyoming were a catalyst to open discussions on a greater UW presence in Campbell County. Art prompted discussion. If we accept the challenge, discussion will lead to better education and an enhanced quality of life.

Rep. Tom Lubnau represents Campbell County. Rep. Gregg Blikre and Rep. Norine Kasperik of Campbell County also joined with him in signing this opinion piece. (reprinted with permission).

For Chris’s views and more on the controversy, visit his blog: http://chrisdrury.blogspot.com/2011_09_01_archive.html.

“In strictly financial terms, art investing is unattractive. Its risks include attribution errors, fakes, forgeries, thefts and physical damage. Furthermore, it involves high transaction, insurance, maintenance and restoration costs, and it has no current cash flow––money comes only when works are sold. Artworks are heterogenous, illiquid and sold on the subjective, segmented and almost monopolistic market in which no valuation guidelines exist. Investors must perform their own due diligence. But art works, unlike stocks, bonds, real estate and certain funds, provide aesthetic returns as well as financial ones. It is when these aesthetic aspects are combined with the financial behavior of the assets that it gets interesting.” Roman Kraeussl, Professor at VU University Amsterdam, specializing in research on art investment.

From “A Conversation with Roman Kraeussl,” Art + Auction, April 2011, page 48. For more on art as an investment, track down Art + Auction’s April issue, which features the magazine’s annual art investment guide: http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/37392/april-2011-table-of-contents/.

The last couple of months have seen browngrotta arts and the artists whose work we represent make the news in periodicals online and around the world.  Lia Cook’s work graced the cover of the December 2010 issue of Textil Forum, published in Germany, as part of a fascinating article by the artist, “An investigation: Woven Faces and Neuroscience”
http://www.
exacteditions.com/
exact/browse/573/
911/7936/2/44?dps=on (more on that project in an upcoming post).The January issue of the always striking online magazine Hand/Eye included a piece on our singular business/life model, “Living with Art,” by artist and writer Scott Rothstein

http://handeyemagazine.com/content/browngrotta-arts. The related slideshow features dozen of art works on display in our barn/gallery/home. (You can read more by Scott Rothstein on his blog, http://artfoundout.blogspot.com, in American Craft magazine and elsewhere.) Meanwhile, the January/February of the UK Crafts magazine includes images from Lizzie Farey’s solo exhibition at City Art Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland http://www.craftscouncil.org.uk/crafts-magazine/latest-issue.

The January issue of Artist Magazine from Taiwan has a several-page article about Norie Hatakeyama by Ming-Whe Liou, with photos by Tom Grotta. We can’t tell you what it says — but it looks good. http://www.artist-magazine.com/magazine/index.php.
Last, but certainly not least, the cover of the Spring 2011 issue
of The Journal of Wealth Management, features Tom Grotta’s photo
of Christine Joy’s willow sculpture, Bundle
http://www.iijournals.
com/toc/jwm/13/4.

Basketry has graduated from country-fair staple to sophisticated urban art form, Emma Crichton-Miller wrote in Weave Arrived, an article in the December 5, 2009 issue of the Financial TImes‘ glossy weekly magazine, how to spend it. Over the last 15 years, Crichton-Miller observes, “basket-making has experienced not just a revival but a reinvention.” The transformation to an expressive medium has been led in the UK by Mary Butcher, recently designer-in-residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Butcher learned traditional skills from artisan basketmaker, Alwyne Hawkins, but as a research fellow she began to use the materials to create work that “slipped its leash” — cones that hang from the ceiling, chains of bark rings and densely woven sculptural shapes. Crichton-Miller notes that outside the UK, art basketmaking has had a high profile for sometime as a result of artists like Markku Kosonen of Finland, and John McQueen and Ed Rossbach in the US.

With the vessel no longer the “first priority,” says Butcher, basketmakers are able to address other exploratory concerns. Lizzie Farey’s willow spheres and soaring wall pieces are animated by her attachment to the landscape of Scotland, where she lives and works. Dail Behennah, who studied geography, creates forms of steel, willow and other woods that are constructed, rather than woven. Her grids, scaffolds and spheres explore ideas about line and light and shadow. Joe Hogan rescues ancient wood from bogs and the sea that he incorporates into his woven forms. The result is often unexpected, highly individual and energetic. Artists like these have ended “basketry’s 20th-century obsession with the past,” Crichton-Miller concludes, and entered “a new world of pure function-free aesthetic pleasure.”

Do you remember back in the 80s, when shelter magazines featured shots of art work leaned against the wall rather than hung? Two of our clients suffered art damage following this pet- and vacuum-level installation trend. Maybe art insurance would have softened the blow.

Bad Dog! (Reinactment: no actual artwork was harmed during the making of this post)

Anyway, if you’ve ever wondered if you should insure your art collection the September 2009 issue of Art + Auction features a helpful guide. The article includes a graphic quiz to help you decide if you need specialized insurance or if a renter’s or homeowner’s policy will do.

And speaking of Art + Auction, look for our ad for the 10th Wave III: In Person exhibit in the October issue.

photo by Shannon Tofts

We visited London in May for the Collect show at the Saatchi Gallery. While there, we had a chance to speak with journalist Emma Crichton-Miller about the fiber art field for an article on the state of contemporary basket weaving – not just in the U.K., but also in Europe, the US and elsewhere. The article, Willow Talk, appeared in the July-August 2009 issue of Crafts magazine. and in it, Crichton-Miller offers a positive prognosis for the art of basketry in the U.K. In the article, Crichton-Miller tracks the growing appreciation in the U.K. for basketry as an art form, comparing artists like Ed Rossbach and John McQueen in the U.S., Markku Kosonen in Finland and Shouchiko Tanabe of Japan, with artists like Lizzie Farey of the U.K., Joe Hogan of Ireland and Dail Behennah, Lois Walpole, Shuna Rendel and Mary Butcher of the U.K., for whom recognition has been more recently won. “Basketry, in an artist’s hands, becomes as richly metaphorical as any craft,” Crichton-Miller observes. Listing a series of solo and group exhibits, including East Meets West: Basketry from Japan & Britain and European Baskets, Crichton-Miller predicts that basket-weaving in the U.K., as in America, Europe and Japan, seems ready to leave behind “its hobby status, its nostalgia for the past, to join the contemporary conversation.”