ArtCity launch party was at the Marquee room is retro cool, with old furniture and Andy Warhol warehouse feel. Some of the furniture could have come out of my grandparent’s house. It made me think of sputnik and rocket ships.

While I don’t go in for loud (live especially) music, it was an interesting evening. I did see some people I knew, but it was too loud to meet anyone new. I could not even understand the introductory remarks. I did snag some of the small postcard / postery things they had and I did get necklaced.

I did like Randy Gibson’s aqua drawing wall. Someone had written Art City, so it was fun to watch it turn into fArt City, then FArt City, the FArt Tity. The chalk was also used to do actual drawings, but they were all small works. There was no one being bold enough to just take over and do something big. I was too chicken to go anywhere near that wall or the camera. I’m looking forward to the video.

I also caught Cipher the new graduate grad show at the university. It felt like everyone in this year’s show went for huge and sometimes complex installations. Everything felt expansive, the proximity of the pieces felt off and the organization lacked flow.

I could hardly stand in the same area as Adina Edwards’ Behind the Red Curtain because of the latex smell. The fumes made feel as if I would break out and I felt a little sick. There is also something about the shock value of all that latex that is a bit off-putting for me. Am I not interested in being confronted with ugliness? I wonder about my own reaction, but I also wonder about the artist and the decisions she made. Was she not looking for the beauty at all? Can I just not see the beauty? I could not stick around to delve into the piece at all because it made me queasy, is that my failure or hers?

I loved the intimacy of Kristin Smith’s Luminous Body where images of dancers were projected onto parallel hanging screens. Each screen filtered out the image so the last screen it was a ghostly moving figure. There is something about being able to enter a video work physically. So many times video feels flat, but this was like moving sculpture. You could directly connect with the life sized dancers. This is as close to holograms we will get right now.

I did not spend any time with Paul Bradley’s work. I did notice that most of the pieces invited the viewer to interact. This capitalizes on the new acceptance of viewer as creator and it was fascinating to see this outside the Internet.  He made an interesting choice to put the invitation text right on the works. I wonder about choices like that. I wish I’d had more time, and more time by myself, with these pieces.

I could not spare any attention for Lisa Borin’s cake destroying piece. It felt like old territory and not as effective as other pieces like it I’ve seen in the past. But I was so curious about the large installation with cutlery and sugar. I think it was called Cradle Song. I wanted to know so much more, but could find no text. The sugar seemed to be slowly falling from a large suspended structure, but there was no indication of how long the sugar had been trickling down, or why it seemed to fall sporadically. I wanted to know so much more but was frustrated by a lack of information. The piece itself showed obsessive collecting of a variety of cutlery, each spoon was different and they were appealing to look at.

A very satisfying visit on the closing night, but a bit frustrating for lack of time, space and information. Every year I go and I resolve to go earlier to spend a little more time before the actual closing and every year I seem to only make it on the closing day.

When did this happen? September 11, 2009.