0 Meet Me at the Center of the Earth

Syncretism, Symbolism, and Similarities in Seattle

Meet Me at the Center of the Earth is an amazing new exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum.  It’s advertised on TV, posters, and flyers all over town, but the photos can’t prepare you for seeing the real thing.  Nick Cave (not to be confused with the OTHER Nick Cave, of the Bad Seeds) is a Chicago artist/sculptor/dancer/fashion (?) designer - and I use that word “fashion” advisedly and somewhat ironically - who works mainly with found objects, and has an incredible sense of which crazy disparate elements work with what.  His work draws on syncretism, symbolism, and similarities of materials with costumes and ceremonial garb from all corners of the earth.  The pieces are displayed on life-sized mannequins, and all are wearable (more or less).  They can alternately (and sometimes all at once!) be reminiscent of African and Papuan-New Guinean raffia clothing, Haitian sequined banner work, Mardi Gras-Carnivale costumes, Native American Shaman regalia, and the elaborate vestments of mediaeval European clergy, complete with bishop’s miter-shaped headdresses.  Elements of pop culture are also liberally sprinkled throughout the designs. 

            Cave created these outfits as an antidote to the modern male business attire, which has become ubiquitous around the world, replacing indigenous clothing for men even in very traditional societies, and much more often than women’s clothing is replaced by Western wear.  Cave’s designs are certainly an antidote to business wear!  Just walking around the galleries is enough to make you feel that you look very drab, indeed, regardless of what you are wearing that day.  His "Soundsuits" are total sartorial splendor.  He calls his works “Soundsuits” after the sounds produced by wearing and moving in them.  One of the best parts of the exhibit were the videos of people wearing the costumes and dancing/prancing/jumping/rolling around in them, especially the feathered and raffia ones that really moved.  In one segment, several of the feather-garbed people rolled around on the floor, and the camera was filming them from above.  The only way you could tell that these rolling colored feathered forms were actually people inside of these concoctions was every once in a while you would glimpse a foot sticking out.  Another segment had several of the large pink feathered beings jumping on pogo sticks in slow motion, and you could just make out the tip of the pogo stick from under the feathers. 

Here’s the soundtrack to the video, a nice example of pseudo-mid-90’s Deep House, by Phonique, featuring Ian Whitelaw, called “Our Time, Our Chance,” and it is appropriately dreamy music with a back beat to accompany the jumping feathered figures: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXkTWRzlJLo&feature=related

            Here’s a slightly longer version, the Andre Lodemann remix:

http://soundcloud.com/lodemann/phonique-our-time-our-chance-andre-lodemann-remix

            The found objects used in the designs include everything from tinsel and yarn mandalas en masse, to dozens of Hummel-like porcelain bird figurines, arranged in a cage-like structure around the mannequin’s face.  In another, the face and upper torso was surrounded by a constellation of tin toys, mainly flying saucer-like objects from the 1950’s.  Several of the outfits were completed covered in mother of pearl buttons, all sewn on with bright aqua thread.  These outfits reminded me of the English Cockney button people (the "Pearlies") of the 19^th century.  Some of Cave's pieces were made entirely of crochet hats and bags and doilies all sewn together, very expertly so that you could not tell where one object ended and the next began.  One (and this was a personal favorite of mine) was constructed completely of tiny stuffed animals.  In almost all of the pieces, the face is obscured. 

            The title of the show, “Meet Me at the Center of the Earth,” brings to mind fantastical places like those encountered by falling down the magical rabbit hole in Alice and Wonderland, or Journey to the Center of the Earth (a movie that scarred the bejeebers out of me when I was a youngster).  It evokes a world of altered reality, where nothing is as we know it - where discarded items and objects of distain become treasures, objets d'art, and things of beauty.  In the exhibit, the individual works have no labels, and there is hardly any wall text “explaining” the pieces to us.  We are left to interpret them on our own, and to wonder about the cosmic questions of “What is beauty?” “What is art?” and “What is fashion?”
A couple of short videos from the Museum's website:

http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/exhibit/interactives/nickCave/index.html

http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/exhibit/interactives/nickCave/beinspired.html

 Below: Mother-of-pearl button detail; Embroidery/applique collage detail 

Left: Nick Cave standing with one of his works.

At the museum restaurant, they make special drinks to go along with the exhibits, and the one they created to match up with this exhibit is called the Cave In.  It consists of pepper-infused vodka, blue curacao, mango puree, and pomegranate juice.  In coloration and layering of the elements, it was very much like one of Cave’s feathered beings. 

Photography in the Nick Cave exhibit was not permitted, so the photo images of his works shown here are by James Prinz, Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.  The Seattle Art Museum also has quite nice collections of Northwest Coast Indian art, African, and Pacific art, by both traditional and contemporary artists, including many traditional costumes.  As you walk around the galleries,  you can really see some of the influences on Nick Cave's work.

Below: Paul Simon on stage at the WaMu Theater, April 15, 2011

 I had the good fortune to snag the very last ticket (and on the aisle!) to see Paul Simon last night at the WaMu Theatre.  He has a masterful group of musicians playing with him, and performed a number of songs from his new album, which was just released this week.  This is his first major tour in 4 years, and Seattle was the first night of the tour, so it was very exciting.   After playing a full set, they did about half a dozen encore songs, including a solo “Sounds of Silence.”   Below is a link to a video of a rehearsal for one of the new songs “The Afterlife.”  If this doesn’t get your toes tapping, then, man, you might already be in the afterlife, and don't even know it yet! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVTlueB-ReI

“The Afterlife” by Paul Simon

After I died, and the make up had dried, I went back to my place.
No moon that night, but a heavenly light shone on my face.
Still I thought it was odd, there was no sign of God just to usher me in.
Then a voice from above, sugar coated with Love, said, "Let us begin".

You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.
You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.

OK, a new kid in school, got to follow the rule, you got to learn the routine.
Woah, there's a girl over there, with the sunshiny hair, like a homecomin' queen.
I said, "Hey, what you say? It's a glorious day, by the way how long you been dead?"
Maybe you, maybe me, maybe baby makes three, but she just shook her head...

You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.
You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.

Buddha and Moses and all the noses from narrow to flat,
Had to stand in the line, just to glimpse the divine, what you think about that?
Well it seems like our fate to suffer and wait for the knowledge we seek.
It's all his design, no one cuts in the line, no one here likes a sneak

You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.
You got to fill out a form first, and then you wait in the line.

After you climb, up the ladder of time, the Lord God is here.
Face to face, in the vastness of space, your words disappear.
And you feel like swimming in an ocean of love, and the current is strong.
But all that remains when you try to explain is a fragment of song...
Lord is it, Be Bop A Lu La or Ooh Poppa Do
Lord, Be Bop A Lu La or Ooh Poppa Do
Be Bop A Lu La

Doors to the Longhouse (Coast Salish tribe)

            Then, this being my penultimate day in Seattle, I took a boat ride out to Blake Island, the reputed birthplace of Chief Sealth, a man of peace and great wisdom, after whom the city of Seattle was named.  On the island is a recreation of a Coast Salish tribe’s longhouse, where we had a traditional salmon bake, clam and venison stew with root veggies, and watched a dance performance with sound-producing masks.  Since it is a tourist attraction, I’m dubious about the authenticity, but it was enjoyable nonetheless, and the narrator said the performance was designed in collaboration with tribal elders. 

Above: Salmon Bake in the Longhouse;

Above: one of the performers in the dance showing how the mask works.  By pulling hidden strings, the beak makes an alarmingly loud clacking noise;
Left: A Transformation Mask (the mask opens to reveal another character within). 

Photos by the Map Monkey, April 15-16, 2011

Detail: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth

0 Greetings From Seattle!

Metsker Maps in Pike Place Market – The Map Monkey likey! 

I had forgotten how lovely this city is!  I got out here a couple of days in advance of the official start of the AAG conference, and have been spending some quality time reacquainting myself with Seattle.  A lot has changed since I was last here over 20 years ago.  For one thing, the last time I was here, the original Starbucks coffee shop in Pike Place Market was the one and only one in existence, and now look what happened!  All over the world!  About 1,700 stores in at least 55 countries. 

Starbucks - World Domination in Coffee Houses

Seattle reminds me of a slightly less glitzy and more gritty version of Vancouver, British Columbia.  And demographially, of course, it's much less Asian than Vancouver is.  But Seattle has, to me, a very Scandinavian feel – it has lots of interesting modern architecture, a great public park system, lots of public art, and is very clean and tidy and lively.  Window displays tend to be well-designed, and the city is busy but not frenetic.  And like a lot of Scandinavian cities, there is water (and boats) everywhere you look.  I also like the nice mix of age groups that you see all over the city.  All in all, it’s a swell place! 

I love how the city has gone out of its way (or so it seems to me) to commission and collaborate with innovative and somewhat unconventional architects to design their public museums, library, and so forth.  For instance, Rem Koolhaas designed the new Central Library, a LEED-certified ediface built in 2004.

Frank Gehry designed the Rock and Roll Museum (there is an exhibit going on right now about Nirvana, arguably Seattle’s most famous export after Starbucks, Boeing airplanes, and Jimi, and this is the first time the museum is featuring the band, for some odd reason, even though the museum is over 10 years old).  What an incredible building!  The monorail goes right through the building!  It is an undulating, city-block-sized sculpture, more than it is a building.  All I can say is that the engineers must have hated doing the working drawings for the structural, HVAC, and electrical systems! Not a 90 degree angle or flat surface anywhere! The museum, also known as the “Experience Music Project” or EMP, was the brainchild of one of the Microsoft founders.  Apparently the inspiration for the museum’s design came from a film that Gehry watched about Jimi Hendrix smashing a guitar, as he was wont to do back in the day.

Seattle’s Experience Music Project – the Rock and Roll Museum (built 2000), by Frank Gehry

The Seattle Art Museum (SAM) (built 1991) by Venturi and Scott-Brown, (of “Learning from Las Vegas” fame). 

The Seattle Art Museum also has an outdoor sculpture park down at the waterfront, (the Olympic Sculpture Park) with huge pieces by Alexander Calder, Claes Oldenburg, Louise Bourgeois, Richard Serra, and the like. 

Polished Stainless Steel Tree, by Roxy Paine, the branches are made of 5,000 pounds of cantilevered steel. 

Alexander Calder sculpture in Olympic Sculpture Park

Details of the 1933 Art Moderne-style Seattle Asian Art Museum

And the original building of the Art Institute of Seattle, designed by Carl Gould in 1933 in the then-au courant Art Moderne style, now houses the Seattle Asian Art Museum.  The building is a wonderful period piece, and all the stylistic details are meticulously maintained.  The rounded forms, the stepped surfaces, streamlined modernity, and the use of typical Art Moderne materials such as stainless steel, wood marquetry, and metal banding applied on top of travertine.  Carl Gould, who graduated from Harvard with a B.Arch. and then attended the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, apprenticed under McKim, Mead & White, and worked as a draftsman for Daniel Burnham.  Gould was active in Seattle in the early 20^th century, designing many of the terra cotta structures that Seattle is known for, as well as the master plan and several building for the University of Washington, where he also started the Architecture Dept.

View from the steps of the Asian Art Museum, looking towards Volunteer Park Reservoir with Isamu Noguchi's "Black Sun" sculpture in foreground, and Space Needle in background.

The Seattle Asian Art Museum is in a beautiful location overlooking a small reservoir in one of the parks that the Olmstead Brothers designed as part of the master plan of park landscapes and boulevard system for Seattle in the early 1900’s.  Olmstead père, of course, famously designed Central Park and Prospect Park in NYC.             

View of Water Tower

Also in the Volunteer Park is a fabulous old water tower - the façade is made of brick, but it surrounds a metal water tank that goes up the full height of the building.  You can climb up the spiral metal stairs to the top for wonderful views of the Seattle cityscape, the Space Needle, and the snow-capped mountains on a clear day.  Also at the top is a small exhibit on the Olmstead Brothers’ plans for Seattle’s park and boulevard system, from 1903. 

The water tank itself, just inside the brick outer skin of  the building.

Left: The spiral steel stairs encircling the actual metal water tank, between the outer brick walls and the tank itself. Right: View from one of the arched windows at the top of the water tower, Seattle's Space Needle (1961) in the distance.

Left: On top of the water tower. Right: The Olmstead Brothers' preliminary plan for Volunteer Park, named after the volunteer soldiers from Seattle who fought in the Spanish-American War of 1898. 

Left: View of downtown Seattle and port from the Space Needle, built for the 1962 World's Fair, and at about 600 feet tall, was for some time the tallest structure west of the Mississippi; Right: Brass Compass Points embedded in the Space Needle observation deck walkway.

Pike Place Market on a rare sunny spring day

Contemporary Northwest Coast Indian Carving, Steinbrueck Native Arts Gallery

Detail of terra cotta decorative element.  Terra cotta became very prevalent as a building material in Seattle after the Great Seattle Fire of 1889, since terra cotta was considered to be a fire-proof construction material.

Photos by the Map Monkey, April 10-11, 2011

Detail: Greetings From Seattle!