CONSTRUCTING A THOUSAND WORDS By Ken Bloom

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SEPTEMBER 2017

In the process of curating A Thousand Words: Photo-graphs from the Tweed Mu-seum Collection, serious con-sideration was given to the who, what, why of each pho-tograph. Because each print in the show represents both a photographer and a subject, in each case there is only one image to do all that work. An understanding of photo-graphs is contingent upon context. Single-image repre-sentations can easily be mis-

UPCOMING EVENTS

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ADVISORY BOARD

Florence CollinsBarb GaddieBeverly GoldfineBea LeveyPeggy MasonAlice B. O’ConnorMike SeyferDee Dee Widdes

Patricia BurnsMary EbertTom EllisonDebra HannuBruce HansenJane JarnisJohn LaweinRobert LeffAlice B. O’ConnorTerry RobertsDan ShogrenSusan VandersteinMiriam Sommerness

DIRECTORS CIRCLE

TWEEDA QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER OF THE TWEED MUSEUM ADVISORY BOARD

MUSEINGS

read and will certainly adopt the tone and connotation de-rived from the collective sense of other images on exhibition.

Photography offers countless views on the human subject from the familiar to the exotic. From its very inception, pho-tography offered the oppor-tunity to regard the appear-ances of others for pleasure, curiosity, and proof. However, throughout the short history of the medium, photographs

have been understood as true representations of things real and indisputably present at the moment of exposure.

If we forget that someone aims the camera and chooses what will fill the picture frame, there’s no thought of the in-fluence of a bias. Yet such choices are based on the per-ception of individuals and are thus neither neutral nor univer-sal. Photographs present the topography of exterior facts. Time frames and emotional interiors may only be inferred.

This contrast between ap-pearances and perception underlines why photogra-phy has become the subject of much social controversy. Taken out of their original context, photographs can mislead, especially in the rep-resentation of the subjects’ sense of reality and culture. Typical would be an unequal power dynamic between an image-maker of a dominant culture while visiting the lives of those with a different sense of belonging. The resulting appearances could inten-tionally or otherwise seem to corroborate and thereby per-petuate misunderstanding.

According to Teju Cole in his essay “Getting Others Right” for the New York Times (6/13/17), “Sympathy is often not enough. It can be conde-scending. But taking on the identity of others, appropriat-ing what is theirs, is invasive and frequently violent. I have heard appropriation defend-ed on the grounds that we

Endia Beal, Mel from the Am I What You’re Looking For? series, 2016. Archival pigment print. Collection of the Tweed Museum of Art, UMD. Sax Brothers Purchase Fund. D2017.26.Sharon Mollerus - Editor

Sept. 12 | 6:30-8pmBook Club: Yanagi Leach

Sept. 22 | 5-7pmOpening Reception: A Thousand Words and Plein Air

Sept. 23 | 7-10pmPlein Air Reception at The Great Lakes Academy of Fine Arts

Oct. 3 | 6:30-8pmTweevening: Plein Air

Oct. 19 | 6-8pmOpening Reception: Chance

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Chance is a synergetic in-stallation that combines code, image, and sound to create a cross-sensory, polyphonic experience. A landscape of painted walls and multi-channel sound en-closes the viewer. Choreo-graphed by code, a circle of machine quartets investigate chance, emergence, fric-tion, resonance and change, a cloud orchestration.

Chance opens October 19, 2017. The year-long exhib-it will be a living, evolving space: a residency / habita-tion / research lab / perfor-mance space. Printed arti-

facts will be left in the space to give the feel of blueprints notes, a score. The Sax gal-lery at the Tweed is a lumi-nous space. Its many sky-lights filter shifting seasons and variable weather pat-terns: a photosynthetic recita-tion. It provides a sanctuary, a place for rest and reflection.

This is a time of great plan-etary change and political turmoil. Chance has evolved under these skies. There is a machine / human friction present in the space. As the work evolves I have a sense of trembling before god, a struggle towards language

CHANCE: A CROSS-SENSORY, POLYPHONIC ExPERIENCE By Kathy McTavish //////////////////////////& coherence, an ongoing rit-ual of conceal & reveal / im-print & erasure / struggle & resistance. As a queer artist I inhabit a landscape of the infinite between. This work embeds an infinite series of choreographed transitions. Machine renderers will per-form their twists and turns (their monitor-bound be-tween-ness) 24/7 for a year. The marks across the wall echo the arc of my body.

Chance explores the inter-sections between art & tech-nology / humans & machines / polyphony & mathematical systems. My generative art-

work is inspired by the math-ematical representations of ecosystems that I studied while a student at the Uni-versity of MN, Duluth. Math-ematical models are often used to represent physical systems, our ideas about how the world works. They are like a score / orchestration / script / generative code. Algorithmic blueprints draw the contours of change and movement: convergences, divergences, emergent patterns and cas-cading, system-level impacts. Mathematical models can depict the complexity and profound tension between independent threads and the bounds of interconnected webs, the polyphony of life.

Code is a literature, a pattern language, a score. It is a cho-reography, a performance. A code renderer is the weaver, the mill, the alchemist, the wiz-ard. Code is a spell, an incan-tation, an intent. When code is performed, it is an activation of text, a linguistic gymnastics.

In a perfect confluence of electricity, network, rhythm, memory, processing, action & reactions a program comes to life, Pinocchio, a real boi at last. The program (the cy-bernetic ze) speaks to us, calculates for us, responds to our touch, our keystrokes. It becomes our mirror, our cyborg self, our memory.

have a responsibility to tell one another’s stories and must be free to do so. This is a seductive but flawed ar-gument.” He goes on to say, “Telling the stories in which we are complicit outsiders has to be done with imagina-tion and skepticism. It might require us not to give up our freedom, but to prioritize jus-tice over freedom. It is not

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about taking something that belongs to someone else and making it serve you but rather about recognizing that history is brutal and un-finished and finding some way, within that recognition, to serve the dispossessed.”

These considerations un-derline why, wherever pos-sible, the choice was made

to provide selections where the image represented a photographer who was close to the subject in knowl-edge and background.

else and making it serve you but rather about recogniz-ing that history is brutal and unfinished and finding some way, within that recognition, to serve the dispossessed.”

These considerations un-derline why, wherever pos-sible, the choice was made to provide selections where the image represented a photographer who was close to the subject in knowl-edge and background.

photographer who was close to the subject in knowl-edge and background.

Meryl McMaster (Plains Cree, b.1988), Anima (from In Between Worlds series), 2012, Digital chromogenic print, AP 1/2, Collection of Tweed Museum of Art, UMD, Marguerite L. Gilmore Charitable Foundation Fund, D2016.15

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“Anima means soul or life in Latin and in many cultures especially in my Plains Cree heritage butterflies represent the souls of your ancestors. I was also drawn to the symbolism butterflies have in connection to metamorphosis, which had significance and correlation to the story I was telling with-in this series. Through this body of work I want to transform the way the viewer and I understand the past from the perspective of the present. Throughout all the images there is an ethereal feeling occurring. I wanted to continue this feeling and give a surreal qual-ity to the image by having vibrant colored butterflies in a wintery landscape. Butterflies fly south for the winter and wouldn’t survive the cold days and nights of Canadian win-ters. I am also turning into icy figure or fad-ing away and they are landing on me to al-most bring me back to life or even to feed off me like they do a flower to keep their spirits alive. So we almost need each other for sur-vival.” – Meryl McMaster

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ARTIST STATEMENT By Meryl McMaster ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Meryl McMaster (Plains Cree, b.1988), Anima (from In Between Worlds series), 2012, Digital chro-mogenic print, AP 1/2, Collection of Tweed Museum of Art, UMD, Marguerite L. Gilmore Charitable Foundation Fund, D2016.15

ELECTRONIC SERVICE REQUESTED

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AmericA’s industriAl lAndscApe By Ken Bloom //////////////////////////////An exhibition of paintings opening September 19th explores the industrial land-scape and its influence on the environment. Painting American industrial subjects was taken up by the Ashcan artists in the early 20th cen-tury. The artists went into the streets to paint gritty every-day scenes from city life and working class people. This tradition has been brought forward in time to include new technologies and changed conditions of work and its impact on the environment. As Rose Fredrick writes of this movement, “Though not the usual subject matter for artists who derive their pri-mary inspiration and income from painting landscapes, a number of contempo-rary realists have chosen to turn their attention to urban sprawl and industrial blight, painting scenes and plac-es, some shuttered and de-caying, others functioning yet considered eyesores or environmental problems without solutions, and still others incorporating new clean technology and how it crops up in the natural landscape. The resulting paintings depict subjects that challenge both artists

and patrons alike, done in a way that finds beauty amid the chaos, to reach beyond the mechanics of art into the realm of truth-seeking.”An accompanying program will feature artists painting in Duluth the week of Septem-ber 18th at the Glensheen Mansion and Duluth Timber. This collaborative project is offered by the Plein Art Painters of America, the Du-luth Art Institute, the Great Lakes Academy of Fine Art and the Tweed Museum.

Join us for this exciting week with an exhibition from the Plein Art Painters and a dis-play of new works completed from days of painting on site. The free opening reception at the Tweed Museum will be held on Friday, Sep-tember 22nd from 5-7pm with a one-time chance to view the new works at the Great Lakes Fine Arts Academy on Saturday, Sep-tember 23rd from 7-10pm.

In fall, there are cool evenings and crisper days, then the start of school and the leaves beginning to change.

This brings changes to the Museum Store too! We have delightful fall décor and beau-tiful new scarves, jewelry, al-paca socks and many other fun new things to look at!

We rotate seasonal offerings for all those special occasions. Stop by to find the right gift for

that particular person or stock up on our reasonably priced, artsy greeting cards!

Hit a payday sale and get 20% off your purchase. We do have a hold shelf where you can keep items until the next pay-day sale!

Come Shop The Fun!All proceeds go towards our programming at the Tweed Museum of Art.

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DOCENT TRAININGA new program for stu-dents and the communi-ty starts September 12!

The Tweed Museum of Art is starting a new and ongoing Student and Community Docent pro-gram this fall to train do-cents to lead tours, fa-cilitate discussions, and design museum activities for children and youth.

UMD Art Education Profes-sor Alison Aune is offering this program to students from all majors and com-munity members with an interest in learning and sharing about art at the museum. The trainees will volunteer to help on three tours a semester, at-tend at least one meeting monthly, work on a team, and receive a certificate of completion in December.

The bi-monthly meetings will precede art events at the museum and UMD in-cluding the Tweevenings on Plein Air and A Thou-sand Words, and VCLS talks by artist Jaime Lo-gan and art educator Dr. Jim Bequette. Training will feature methods of touring and using gallery activities and Nordic mod-els of museum education.

For more information, join our September 12th 5-6pm kick-off meeting, “What Is a Docent?” with Dr. Aune. Also see our Facebook page at https://www.face-book.com/tweeddocents.

Joe Paquet (American, 1963), Lake and Rail Elevator, oil. 24” x 30”, Collection of the Artist, L2017.12.20.