3 posts tagged “art”
Last year we were lucky enough to visit an art ranch. This year, an art cave.
Last weekend I took a trip with a group from the Berkeley Art Museum to visit "Stonescape," which is the Napa farm of Norman and Norah Stone, who have a completely off the hook contemporary art collection. (A few years ago we got to tour their house, and their entire fourth floor is full of Matthew Barney stuff.)
The place in Napa features an "Art Cave" that they bored into the side of the hill on their property. It has 26 foot ceilings. The cave. And this great Cady Noland piece outside the cave. Here are some pics.
That multi-paneled Baldessari is a Big Deal, it's one of the ones from the first series that he started after he destroyed all the work he had created up to that point. Oh, and they have this James Turrell sky piece that is part of their pool that we weren't allowed to take pictures of because Turrell had it in his contract that only his photographers could take pictures.
The whole thing was profiled in the Sunday Times magazine a while back; their photos are much better than mine. But I love this one of Norman Stone (who leads all the tours of the place and talks at length about the art, and how they bought it, etc., he's a great story teller) holding court in front of the group.
He's holding his dog in his arms, because he's worried that if he let the dog loose in the cave it'd potentially knock over the 3000 lb free-standing Richard Serra sculpture and kill someone.
It's official -- I want my own art ranch.
Friday afternoon we trekked up to Geyserville for a benefit for BAMPFA (UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive) at Steven Oliver's ranch. Oliver has about 100 acres of land in Geyserville where he's collaborated with some of the world's best living artists to commission site-specific architecture and sculpture. (Check out this sculpture.org profile / interview with Oliver for context.)
Oliver has just completed a 13 year collaboration with installation artist Ann Hamilton on an 8 story concrete tower that's now situated on the ranch. Hamilton is more well known for producing experiences than things -- and has never designed an outdoor architectural structure, as far as I know -- which is what made this piece so special. Dubbed "The Acoustic Tower Project," the tower is nestled in the hills on Oliver's ranch, is approximately 40 feet in diameter and 100 feet tall. The tower is lit inside through indirect windows, the bottom of the tower is a well-like pool of water, but the most amazing thing is that along the inside of the cylindrical tower are two staircases which wind in a double-helix structure from the water to the top of the tower.
Since it's an "acoustic" tower project, the whole point of the piece is to create an environment for sound. As part of the debut of the piece last night was a performance by the Meredith Monk Ensemble, with a set of new work composed by Monk. Monk has been a staple of the new music scene for 40 years, but I'd never heard her in person. And my God, I'd never heard anyone do anything like that with their voice. It was literally breathtaking. The performance lasted about an hour, with the audience was on one set of of the double helix stairs and the ensemble on another.
Here's Oliver in that sculpture.org interview from October 2002 about the (yet unbuilt) tower, and the relationship between it and a well on a piece of land they own in Italy:
We own a home near Orvieto, the site of the so-called Well of St. Patrick (1527–40), which was built by Clement VII to provide the city with a water supply in case of attack. The site has a traditional connection to St. Patrick. The well descends more that 60 meters: in order to get enough water to the surface the architect designed a double helix staircase. This means that the mule goes down one staircase, loads up with water, and comes back up the other staircase. The two staircases never touch; they are interlaced with each other so that the mule never has to turn around and never meets another mule. It’s the same form as DNA. Ann proposed a double helix staircase inside the stonework, descending to a water source: into the ground and up out of the ground. It looks rather agricultural in form, like a silo, and she wants to put it down by the barn. It will be a performance space, and she will curate poetry readings and concerts of a single voice or a single instrument.
Oliver does tours of his ranch about 35 times a year. I want to go back. Because even with the hour plus in the tower, I want more. Plus, I want to walk the Bruce Nauman steps, see the Richard Serra pieces Snake Eyes and Boxcars as well as the pieces by Martin Puryear, Fred Sandback, Andy Goldsworthy and a bunch of others. As I told Trina, I'm not the guy for a ranch with horses, but I could handle a ranch with sculpture.
Date nights rule. Went to the annual Southern Exposure auction Saturday night - the place was chock full of SF artscene hipsters -- lots of black, lots of kiss kiss. Ran into some old friends (not wearing black), and saw some nice pieces... Todd Hido had a great photograph in the live auction, and Terry Hoff had a nice small painting up as well. The silent auction piece was hit and miss -- so many pieces with guns! -- but it was still great to see so much "emerging" work in one place, and to see a packed room of people supporting SoEx.
I fell in love with a little (4" x 12") Laurie Red drawing and succumbed to the combination of alcohol and competitive bidding. So now one of her small Liquid Landscapes is ours.
