Descending Ashtray

While in Des Moines a few weeks ago (trip 1/3 if you’re counting along at home), Sarah and I visited two old friends: the twin locations of the Des Moines Art Center.

For those not familiar with Des Moines, the Art Center is two amazing museums: a large building on Des Moines’ west side, with 3 wings designed by I.M. Pei, Eliel Saarinen (shown, photo by Cameron Campbell) and Richard Meier, and a new branch downtown designed for “lunch-sized” exhibitions. Surprising as it may sound to non-natives, Des Moines’ Art Center easily compares with national institutions such as SFMOMA and any art museum in Seattle. It has a solid permanent collection composed of all the American and European greats, rounded out with a dense collection of African art. Exhibitions change frequently, and they routinely showcase internationally-known and just-emerging artists. Best of all, admission is FREE.

At that price, we were able to hit both locations, and saw two completely different shows. We started with the downtown branch, and so will these notes.

Hug: New Work by Patricia Piccini was easily one of the strangest shows I’ve seen in awhile, with her hyper-realistic sculptures depicting creatures of an imaginary and perhaps, a none-too-distant future. If this hyper-realism gave us shivers (and it did), we were equally impressed with the great stories her work told (read the wall text). The “cover” work for the exhibition was The Young Family, 2002, and its subject was described as part human and part pig, developed as a source for human organs. Contrast that knowledge with the familiar nursing mother-and-child relationship depicted, and the work provokes some interesting thoughts.

Another work whose work and backstory I especially enjoyed depicted the Bodyguard for Golden Helmeted Honeyeater, a real bird facing extinction in Australia. The Bodyguardwas genetically created to act as a protector for this rare avian species, and keep it from extinction. Several photos accompanying the sculpture showed the Bodyguard after its own unintended population explosion, frolicking in urban construction sites despite the presence of construction workers. More food for thought, especially considering Australia’s choice as the setting for this fictional work, and that nation’s struggle with the Cane Toad, introduced innocently enough to combat the cane beetle, and which has since become the poster child for a species run amok.

While this show has come and gone since I visited Des Moines, it will make another appearance in 2007, this time at Seattle’s Frye Art Museum, another gem. Check it out beginning September 22, 2007.

A visit to the downtown branch of the Art Center turned up another wonderful exhibit, and one that has had me thinking a lot since I saw it in person. The Oxford Project is something I mentioned several months ago, is a project that originally tripped my radar because of my personal connection to Oxford, Iowa, and the fact that I had photographer Peter Feldstein and writer Steve Bloom as instructors while at the University of Iowa.

It’s a project that I don’t want to describe too much, because it really speaks for itself. But I will give a basic setup.

In 1984, Peter Feldstein attempted to photograph every resident of Oxford, Iowa, a town about 15 miles from Iowa City, Iowa, the home of the Unversity of Iowa. 670 of Oxford’s 676 residents ended up participating. Then, 21 years later, in 2005, Feldstein returned to take another photo of any of the original 670 he could find. Stephen Bloom conducted a short interview and asked residents to talk about how their lives were in 1984, and how things had changed (or not) in the ensuing years. The stories told by the pair of photos, and in the residents’ own words, are hilarious, heartbreaking, and tell one of the most truly intimate human stories of any work of art I’ve ever seen.