Wednesday, July 23, 2008

First Few Days

Obviously my plan to post daily didn't work out. Between working long days, excellent conversations over meals, and the mandatory minimum of two beers per night at a bar, I just never got around to finding the time. So here you go- I'm back in Richmond and will dole these out over the next couple of days...


On Sunday we were let in to the Sheldon at noon and began planning... this is one of three galleries and would be the "studio" portion of the show.


This is the innermost gallery and was used for sculptures and video. When we arrived two walls had been built in the space. There were 115 crates and boxes for us to unpack...


This is the outermost gallery and is entered from the Great Hall (as Johnson named it). It would contain sculptures and photographs.


On Monday we had our bearings and began installing work in earnest-- here Liz and Alison work on The Sizes of Things in the Mind's Eye.

Here they are in the outermost gallery working on Pupil. Each sculpture's pose changes from show to show.



Here Liz works on lighting for an untitled sculpture. Many of the pieces are lit from with in by fiber optic cables but still require quite a bit of treatment from other lights.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Day Five


And again from Nebraska, this time writing from a coffee shop in the Haymarket district called The Mill. All the youngsters in Lincoln are so clean and good looking. So far I've only spotted one hair cut heavily influenced by Conor Oberst. I'm sure there are others but I wouldn't know as I haven't seen a picture of him in awhile.

The installation of Liz's show is going well. We're working long days and I'll eventually post some images from the gallery but for tonight here's a very abbreviated walk around a small part of town.

Neihardt Hall, the dorm we're staying in (supposedly the most sought after b/c of it's governing council and proximity to Love Library) has a sun room.

The city, which is relatively small and tidy is full of buildings that were retrofitted w/ international style (?) facades. Lots of pieces of buildings that look like they are made out of marshmallow or covered in flaked coconut. Also lots of public sculpture that looks communist. I'll post more of this soon, it's no small thing.

It's not just the outside of the buildings that are cool. This is a gyro place that we ducked into for water (well, I got water).

The University of Nebraska Lincoln has an impressive sculpture collection scattered throughout a bucolic campus (Warren Buffet and Johnny Carson are alums). This stone Michael Heizer piece is really long and kind of canoe shaped. Lots of bird poo on the top ledge of it.

A "small" Richard Serra piece. That's Alison and Sean.

A really cool Roxy Paine piece (it's made of stainless steel). Its better than the one Kim and I saw in Seattle-- lots of broken limbs and even some fungus. Very tough to photograph-- especially when you don't try that hard.

There's also a lot of civic sculpture throughout the city commemorating all there is to commemorate. This low relief was made of cast brick and is down by the train depot and the tracks (which we've affectionately dubbed the river b/c it feels like there should be water where the train tracks are but there's not).

I really like the lights on the campus. Most are askew and look like giant map pins dotting the landscape.

A Little Something

We've been working 12 hour days and it's not too easy to find time to post, but here's a view from a parking garage I took last night at 9:45pm.

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Live from Lincoln



I'm in Nebraska for two weeks helping install Liz King's retrospective at the Sheldon Museum of Art in Lincoln. I'm staying in a small dorm room with Liz's assistant Sean. Allison, a student at RISD and a family friend of Liz's is up on the third floor. Liz is staying at the Holiday Inn a few blocks away.

So far so good. Without the students around Lincoln appears to be a sleepy town. Then again, this may be an unfair assessment as it's the weekend, we're in the states Capitol and a couple of days ago was a holiday.

The Sheldon was designed by Philip Johnson (and slightly resembles Lincoln Center) , the state Capitol building is the second tallest in the nation (after Louisiana's), and there are lots of catalpas and Chinese rain trees. Pretty good so far.