In “Sex & City” at the Mill Gallery, prepare to meet favorite body parts, some exuding steamy essence, perhaps in closeup or on figures in interlocking embrace; extended tongues in cheeky gestures; a neon phallus; red vinyl lips. If it all becomes exhausting, there are twin bathtubs inviting visitors to step in, relax, lean back on the cushions, hold hands and—what are these pills? A twisted torrent of limbs—swans wearing the torsos and legs of ballet dancers— tumbles down two stories at the center of the space. Indeed, this exhibition of work by Sheila Halligan-Waltz and Eike Waltz screams SEX. It doesn’t mean it. The works are erotically posed but not erotic. They are stories circling a central idea. “Sex & City” is not an exhibition of art objects. The exhibition is the artwork, and the subject is living passionately.
Articles by Maureen Davidson
The Exhibitionist: 01SJ
In order to use the Zip Line suspended over a wetland that had appeared overnight I joined the Imaginary Airforce. After wetland education and a thrilling ride, I chatted with Angel Borrego Cubero, architectural design professor at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. We talked about bridges as metaphors for connection but in loco usually separating people, neighborhoods, ecosystems. His Mutant Bridges fit into the ecology of a place.
Santa Cruz Fall Arts: Visual Aesthetics
There’ll be no rest for the visual art consumer in and around Santa Cruz County in the upcoming months. Indeed, the remainder of 2010 is packed with great shows and significant artists. The following represents just a fraction of the season’s opportunities.
MAH Explores The Santa Cruz Surf-Art Link
The overflow crowd at the opening of “Surf City Santa Cruz: A Wave of Inspiration” was a tsunami of positive energy. The Museum of Art and History’s three jam-packed floors of galleries held some 700 excited people greeting each other warmly in their outdoor voices as if after long separation: telling stories, promising to meet, exchanging opinions, issuing invitations, dropping names that even the uninitiated recognized—Jim Phillips, Boots McGhee, Eddie Aikau, Doug Haut—and swapping accounts of recent events at places like Steamer Lane, Maverick, Manresa and Four Mile. A sunny bonhomie was the order of the evening. With slide show.
Kessler’s Santa Cruz Tale
The photograph on the cover of The Mental Traveler is an extreme close-up of a young white man of indeterminate age, thick black beard and moustache bristly and unkempt, forehead knotted, head bowed toward the camera. He appears consumed by his thoughts, overcome by deep emotion, his forehead ready to burst.
Exhibit Examines the Book as a Medium
Within the next two decades, books as we know them will likely become curiosities, artifacts of an old way of life. Paper books, which set forth ideas in a linear manner, have already given way to the omni-directional, multi-media internet as a means to reach and teach the rewired human brain in the digital age: goodbye, printed newspapers and textbooks; hello, “Please enter your library card number to download Fahrenheit 451.
The Pulsating Landscapes of Artist Richard Mayhew
LANDSCAPES, they’re called—but the toneful, moody, electric pieces in Richard Mayhew: After the Rain, at the Museum of Art and History through Nov. 22, are not portraits of topography. In an interview in the intimate Art Forum gallery, on the museum’s top floor, the slender, elegant Mayhew discusses his vivid, animated works, which lifted my spirits the first time I saw them.
