October 16-19 -- Wyoming to Denver

The middle of Wyoming looks the same from the ground as it does from an airplane.  That is part of its austere, unavoidable-respect-for-nature charm.  

The occasional detail:

I drove a long day through Wyoming en route to Denver, where I was slated to speak at the Dikeou Collection, as a guest of Devon Dikeou, and at Tattered Cover Bookstore.  A big thanks to Mary Barone for connecting me with Devon, and to Devon and her mother Lucy for hosting me.

Devon is an artist whose practice encompasses two unique projects: Zingmagazine and the Dikeou Collection.  The former is a beautiful, very high production value periodical, a bit in the mode of Parkett, in which Devon extends an invitation to artists, writers, collectors, filmmakers, poets, critics, designers to create projects.  Zing also sends around one of the most comprehensive weekly art event listings emails I have seen.

The collection is a space on the fifth or so floor of an otherwise nondescript office building.  You walk through the hall lined with display cases that are a work by Devon, "What's Love Got to Do With It?" listing every show she has ever been in:

and then come upon the collection rooms:

You'll note in the background above that they were early collectors of Vik Muniz's work (the Last Supper recreated in chocolate syrup and rephotographed).  Here is a sampling of what else is there, starting with the bunnies, a piece called Somehow I Don't Feel Comfortable, 2000, by Momoyo Torimitsu:

You can play these bottles like chimes (His Truth Is Marching On, 1993, by Paul Ramirez Jonas).

This man, Miyata Jiro, 1996, by the same artist of the bunnies, lives on the floor next to video installations showing his placement on urban sidewalks.  

The whole time I was in Denver anytime I went past this room, I jumped, as if there were a real person on the floor.

I really loved this airplane (Untitled (Large Plane), 2002, by Misaki Kawai).  What follows are close-ups of the elaborate interior.

Moving on from the airplane. . . 

When this piece is turned on to play, it makes as much noise as a full marching band and construction site combined.

Ford, 2006, as it appears, in cardboard, by Chris Gilmour.

Elaborate paper sculpture, with some trompe l'oeil features and "juxtapositions" achieved by collage, details below, Newspaper Ruined, 2008, by Johannes van der Beek:

Gertrude Stein, 2002, by Sarah Staton, and the Room Moved the Way Blocked (Stage 1), 1998, by Wade Guyton:

Think About Tomorrow or Don't, 2007, by Margaret Lee:

And, if you can judge an art gallery by its bathroom:

On the screen in the bathroom, when it is on (a piece by Serge Onnen called Break, 2004):

Everyone should be lucky enough at some point in their lives to speak in front of looming, sixteen-foot-tall inflatable pink bunnies. 

Because of the sound of the air pumps, you speak in front of the bunnies deflated.  (I had first thought the bunnies deflated slowly while you spoke, like sands through the hourglass, or the music that comes up to full volume to edge people off the Oscar acceptance speech stage, but the process was near instantaneous.)  At this stage, only one bunny had been deflated:

I had met Devon at the collection earlier that day and been taken around.  

I met Jessica, who runs the collection, and hung out in their office:

Jessica, pictured with Devon:

Then Devon, in height of hospitality, spent the afternoon personally cooking up a storm for the event -- pork tenderloin and meatballs and all kinds of other things.  Devon's taste runs similar to my own in things like 1950s kitchen tables and chairs that add a homey flavor to the Dikeou events stage.  Alongside the homebaked goodies, appreciate this touch:

I had been staying with the Dikeous in Denver, guest of Devon and her mother Lucy, who is originally from Kentucky.  Lucy is a charming reminder of a 'Northern wits, Southern charm' approach as she: made some of the best eggs I have had in my life (she is a Cordon-Blue trained chef) and showed me decorating flourishes in her apartment (the intricacy of a Faberge egg, the workmanship of a Renaissance cathedral, the clear adherence to artistic vision of a military general).  Then she proceeded to discuss insider trading stories from the morning's Wall Street Journal, the implications of Coke's removal from Costco's stock, and the local political landscape in Colorado.  There was a Sarah Palin story in the paper, and when I said I thought a lot of people liked Palin because she was like the friend that arrived at the dull party at 11.30pm and livened it up, Lucy simply replied, "She's not smart enough to be friends with."

On the local political landscape, it turns out my college friend Walker Stapleton announced his candidacy for State Treasurer.  I called to invite Walker -- Lucy knew him already.  And so at my reading that night at the Dikeou, my usual introduction about how widespread creativity is in the population at large, far outside the arts, took a turn:

"Most everyone I know has a creative project, whether that's gardening or how they raise a family, or how they get up in the morning, or a company they are starting, or. . . running for political office.  Vote for Walker for State Treasurer.  He's fiscally conservative and socially liberal, which anyone can get behind for a Treasurer role."

The Dikeou reading was a really special, intimate gathering that including some of Devon's really old friends. Here is Devon with Woody:

Mary with Will, another very old friend:

Mary talking to David, a curator from one of the local museums:

Mary also documented it for her lovely and entertaining column, Out With Mary (www.outwithmary.com)

The next day, Devon, Mary, and company went on a museum day, starting with the Vance Kirkland Museum, based on the life, painting, and decorative arts collection of the Colorado painter.  

It is the first museum I have ever been to where you have to be at least thirteen to enter.  This is because the place is a series of glass cabinets full of beautiful breakables, a domino rally waiting to happen.  

(If they had known what a klutz I can sometimes be, I might have been queried more entering the museum myself.)

We were treated to meeting the director himself, the other Hugh Grant.  

He is largely responsible for parts of the collection, which has grown in leaps and bounds since Kirkland's death.

I had no idea these Eames chairs had such funny names, Bikini on the left, Potato Chip on the right:

And I love open storage, in this case with the gate pulled down.  It's hard to appreciate the scale in this picture, but appreciate the child-sized chair on the end.

And everyday design items like a wooden leg splint, still the design used by many mountain patrols:

Here is the gang in the courtyard, including Woody's lovely wife Mitzi, in blue:  

Woody is the most entertainingly plain-spoken art critic I have encountered in a long time.

Here is Vance Kirkland's studio where, fascinatingly, he painted by laying his canvases flat on the table and suspending himself in rubber straps, horizontally:

Here is the surface of one of his paintings.  They have a signature "dot" texture:

The studio was full of lots of other interesting stuff to look at:

As filed under 'which thing is not like the others?' we appreciated the Monet mug of old coffee left on the desk, by Hugh Grant, we imagined.

After lunch at this great diner called Steuben's,

Devon, Mary, and I headed to the Denver Art Museum to see a contemporary show called Embrace, which was to highlight their new building expansion.  It is rare that I hate a show and building so much.


It's hard to hate something that much unless it activates your sense of opportunity cost -- what might have been, what got lost in its place -- what artists might have gotten shows, what space would be more conducive, and what could be done there under different decisions, as if imagining a dinner party as it would have been without the one annoying person who monopolized conversation.  Let me just say, in honor of my mother who always sees the best in things, here is something I did really like, experiencing a Cindy Skoglund installation in person for the first time:

The building entrance begins with a vertiginous staircase.  (I don't like being in museums where I am constantly asked to climb stairs.  It makes me feel like the architect's vision is more important than the user's experience, like the whole thing is one big uncomfortable chair.)  This museum addition was designed by Daniel Libeskind, whose Jewish Museum in Berlin I have been in and whose angular style works affectingly there.  Here, having that many triangles and asymmetrical features can make certain installations of art look a bit like bad Eighties clothing.  The art is always subordinated to the architectural form:

 The whole museum gave the appearance of wannabe creative people, not blessed with good aesthetic judgment.  Here is a sign for a different exhibition; I don't know why this graphic is necessary:

I don't know how long staff spent placing "Updated Traditional Forms" on the rear end.  We saw staff in the museum otherwise, but they were in a flurry of activity planning a photo shoot to enlist fee-paying rentals of the space for weddings (I asked, though waited long into the hallway to photograph them):

Here is some other staff design in the museum.  (1) The donor wall, made of handprints:

Including one paw print:

(2) The coffee bar, which is caddy corner from the donor wall in a vast, unusable reception space with the feel of a midwestern university library--a rare place you see "killer" and "Quixotic" next to each other:

The show, Embrace, (the font of the show title itself offputting in its over-familiarity and excessive design consciousness) was a collection of contemporary works starting with this Jessica Stockholder piece next to the staircase:

It was painted shapes and a wrinkly blue tarp with a hole in the middle.  My favorite part was a yellow extension cord that looped from an outlet (in the middle, green section above) all the way through the ceiling into the main part of the gallery where one confronted the remainder of the work:

an uncanny combination of low and high workmanship, apparent consideration and haphazardness.  I get the sculpture, made my suspending like-colored plasticware from the ceiling with light wire, but then it has this papier-mache-looking rock form underneath, covered with fluorescent yellow paint.  Then, there was a perfectly soldered swing set frame that grew from short (out of the frame of the picture) to tall on a diagonal.  That seemed to take planning, but then inexplicably there were plastic shower curtains propped over it and secured, seemingly as an afterthought, with huge plastic bulldog clamps.  I should point out that our group were fans of the artist otherwise, and not everyone was as miffed, or at least mystified, by this piece as I was.  Here is its neighbor, also by a currently "hot" artist:

This work reminds me of a guy from art school who said his work was about time, space, and the cosmos, with a nod to the politics of his country of origin.  Someone piped up, "Actually, your work appears to be about taking old pillows, tying them up with string, and spray-painting them silver."  

Their neighbor to the other side was comically bad, pastel sci-fi corn people, with flourishes from the paintings extending onto the walls, a bit like a cartoon on a Hallmark card whose scallops are echoed in the background.  Lots you could write about it, nothing to look at.  Unfortunately my camera battery died in protest.

When have you seen carpet like this in a museum?

The sad or even tragic part was that this building and this art and attitude dislocates the old building:

which is curious and beautiful, and ugly, and complex and fully formed, as if a person.  It was designed by the Italian architect Gio Ponti in 1971.  The windows above look strange and angular, at times, but they are beautiful from the inside, framing parts of the landscape or views of the city as if they were paintings themselves.  A longtime DAM docent attended my reading and said each floor of the Gio Ponti building is 10,000 square feet, because that is what the architect thought was the limit of a person's museum attention span.


Just the fact that this beautiful doorway is no longer the entrance to the museum, or really accessible for museum foot traffic at all. . . .

That night, I spoke at Tattered Cover, one of the most iconic independent bookstores in the country.  I was hosted by the kind and lively Marty (Marti?) who let me sign their author log book and welcomed me into a vast speaking space:

Touching special guests included the family of Greg, my publisher; I was really honored, and nervous speaking for the first time in the trip, wanting to do right by Greg:

And Jenny Seed, college classmate who is working on fascinating writing project herself, and with whom I got fun drinks afterwards with Mary:

Special thanks also to longtime docent Karen (I think!) who stopped by before the reading to get signed copies.  

She and David, the curator, came to both events at the Dikeou and the bookstore.

The next day, I visited the MCA on my way out of town.  It is a beautiful and compellingly plain yet unusual building by David Adjaye.  It calls to mind the adage that it is hard to be simple and interesting at the same time.  The library works as an installation site, each shelf like a room:

The cafe and and education and garden spaces are beautiful; you'd want to hang out in them:

I had played email-tag with Adam Lerner, the director, who had kindly offered to take me around.  We had not successfully connected but then I ran into him in the gallery giving a tour to this group:

I think he had no idea who I was but then I gave him my card and he was really kind, even--in the long line of people who run arts organizations and are themselves amazing PR's--telling the whole group about my book in this still slightly surprising 'she's a real author' way.  

A woman at the Tattered Cover reading told a story about Adam Lerner in the Q&A, that she told Adam she didn't relate to a work of art and Adam's response was, "You just haven't looked at it long enough."  With that, here is one to stare at.  it's all sound and moving parts:

Postscript: Special thanks again to Devon and Lucy for hosting, to Greg's parents and to Jenny for attending, and to the inimitable Mary for teeing up the whole thing, wonderfully enthusiastic and knowledgeable connector that she is:

Vote Walker Stapleton for State Treasurer.