Leslie Hall is lovin' life.
The Ames performance artist with a fondness for gem-encrusted sweaters and metallic spandex has attracted an international following. The cable television network VH1 named her one of the 40 Greatest Internet Superstars. The kids' show "Yo Gabba Gabba!" invited her to show off her dance moves. YouTube even gave the artist her own channel, complete with satirical rap videos and tributes from her adoring fans.
But she isn't as famous here in Iowa, and she has yet to win over some of her neighbors.
"I think they're so annoyed with me," she said. "They think, 'Oh, she's at it again,' and then they roll their eyes. But I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to make them love me."
So watch out, neighbors: She'll give it her best shot in the 60th annual Iowa Artists show, which opened Friday and remains through Sept. 19 at the Des Moines Art Center. She offered some of her vocal stylings at a preview party Thursday and led a sold-out class last night, called "Leslie Hall's School for the Precocious."
It's probably worth quoting the course description in its entirety:
"Have you ever been touched by a diva? Smelled her breath? For one night only you can participate in an Art School Gem Sweater revival, where you work with diva Leslie Hall. Study her form and capture her tenderness - not in a jar, but with art supplies. Through sultry photo shoots and dance education, become a student of her wisdom while she feeds you snacks and beverages. Come dressed in tight apparel."
Those who missed the class but still want to study her form and capture some of that tenderness can see various photos and music videos in the Art Center's main gallery.
It's the funniest work in the show, but hardly the only example of break-out talent. Art Center curators selected work from 15 artists for the exhibition, from a statewide pool of about 200.
"I was overwhelmed by how much good work was out there," said curator Gilbert Vicario, who moved to Des Moines last year from Houston, where he worked at the Museum of Fine Arts.
The scope of the Iowa Artists show changes each year. Sometimes it focuses on a particular theme, sometimes it's a hodgepodge.
Since last year's show featured just three artists in the Art Center's now-closed gallery downtown, the curatorial team wanted to broaden this year's show to include more artists. So there's a little of everything: minimalist stick structures by John Shrosbree of Fairfield, enigmatic clay sculptures by Ingrid Lilligren of Ames, and carefully blurred drawings by Des Moines artist Larassa Kabel (whose paintings were part of last year's show).
There are swirling, intensely colored canvases by Kristin Quinn of Davenport, and, at the far end of the gallery, a virtual rummage sale of found-object sculptures by Daniel Weiss of Des Moines. He tucked a bird's nest in the toe of an old shoe. He captured the impression of a hug with a loaf-sized lump of clay he placed between himself and a partner. Everywhere you look there's some other doodad - an ice cream scoop, a vacuum attachment, a pair of maracas - cleverly twisted into something else.
There's too much good stuff to detail here, but here are three artists whose work deserves a closer look:
Josh Black
Iowa City
Since the floods of 2008 washed out parts of the University of Iowa, art students have taken studio classes in what was once a Menards building out on Highway 1.
"At first it was kind of a pain in the (expletive), but having everyone around, with all the departments intermingling, is really beneficial," said Black, a graduate student in sculpture, printmaking and art history. "It's a great situation."
It was something from the ceramics department, in fact - a pile of wood for kiln firings - that sparked the artist's imagination. (But don't try this at home, kids.) "I was out in the back lot just kind of moseying around. And for some reason, I have a habit of collecting or buying mass amounts of whatever, so I had five or six hatchets in my studio - not sure what I was going to do with them," he said. "The wood pile seemed like a perfect place to kill some time and throw hatchets." In his studio, he eventually embedded a few hatchets into a chunk of wood, mounted it on a discarded card table he had found at a frat house and framed the whole thing with stripes of paint.
The sculpture's "bright pink lines and polished-wood backing suggest a target for gaming in a home or bar, but the rough center and embedded axes contradict this playfulness, implying a more dangerous activity than is usually allowed indoors," according to a note in the exhibition catalog. Black's other two works in the show consist of a series of tree-trunk slices, into which he carved the word "forever" in an elegant cursive script. In one work, he painted the letters in hot pink. In the other, he connected them with trails of white-painted sawdust that subtly emerge from the white gallery wall. "It pertains to something that's bigger than me, something that has outlasted me," Black said. "It was sort of an evolution of ideas about what's taken place in my life. Wood just happened to be the material."
Teresa Paschke
Ames
Paschke teaches art and design at Iowa State University and spent the summer of 2008 in Prague with a faculty-exchange program. Her studio was a few blocks from the city's Old Town Square, where ornate centuries-old buildings and wrought-iron gates line the streets."It's beautiful, but everything from the sidewalks up to about 7 feet is covered with graffiti," she said. "There's this contemporary layer of decoration overtop an older one."
The artist, who specializes in textiles and fibers, took photos from her jaunts around the neighborhood and combined them into a collage on her computer. She then printed the composite image onto sheets of canvas with a special 10-foot digital printer at Iowa State.
"It can print fabric up to 64 inches wide," she said. "You just turn it on and let it go."
After steaming the canvas to set the dye - "that's where you cross your fingers" - she stitched the panels together and stretched them onto a frame, as painters do. She then embroidered the canvas with traditional Czech and Slovak designs she found during her trip. The final product reflects some the same layers of old (needlework) and new (digital photography) that inspired her on the streets of Prague.
Rodolfo Salgado Jr.
Iowa City
Salgado's "Watershed Fluid Dynamics" consists of about a dozen ceramic organs mounted on the wall and connected with a series of rubber hoses and tubes.
"A lot of my work tends to deal with bodily mechanisms and how machines relate to the body," said the artist, a graduate student in printmaking at the University of Iowa. "I have a specific interest in bodily fluids."
That interest, he explained, stems from a job he once had as a custodian at a bar, where he had to scrub all sorts of bodily fluids from the floor. And from his childhood, when he suffered from nosebleeds.
"
The bottom line is: The human being is a pressurized sack of fluid. We sneeze. We bleed. We go to the restroom ... and to me, it's sort of magical," he said.
He studied anatomy books, plumbing systems, car-engine diagrams - "basically anything that transports fluids" - to gather ideas for the sculpture, which isn't exactly pretty. But it's honest.
"We have this internal system that can be ungainly or embarrassing," curator Burkhalter said. "It's a part of life."
Iowa Artists 2010
Works by Benjamin Gardner, Larassa Kabel, Ingrid Lilligren, Nathan Morton and Daniel Weiss of Des Moines; Leslie Hall and Teresa Paschke of Ames; Josh Black, Micah Bloom, Megan Dirks, Laurel Farrin and Rodolfo Salgado Jr. of Iowa City; Richard Colburn of Cedar Falls; Jim Shrosbree of Fairfield; and Kristin Quinn of Davenport.
WHEN: Through Sept. 19. There are free gallery talks at 6:30 p.m. Thursday (with Bloom, Paschke, Quinn) and 6:30 p.m. July 15 (Colburn, Hall, Lilligren).
ADMISSION: Free
INFO: (515) 277-4405, desmoinesartcenter.org
The Ames performance artist with a fondness for gem-encrusted sweaters and metallic spandex has attracted an international following. The cable television network VH1 named her one of the 40 Greatest Internet Superstars. The kids' show "Yo Gabba Gabba!" invited her to show off her dance moves. YouTube even gave the artist her own channel, complete with satirical rap videos and tributes from her adoring fans.
But she isn't as famous here in Iowa, and she has yet to win over some of her neighbors.
"I think they're so annoyed with me," she said. "They think, 'Oh, she's at it again,' and then they roll their eyes. But I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to make them love me."
So watch out, neighbors: She'll give it her best shot in the 60th annual Iowa Artists show, which opened Friday and remains through Sept. 19 at the Des Moines Art Center. She offered some of her vocal stylings at a preview party Thursday and led a sold-out class last night, called "Leslie Hall's School for the Precocious."
It's probably worth quoting the course description in its entirety:
"Have you ever been touched by a diva? Smelled her breath? For one night only you can participate in an Art School Gem Sweater revival, where you work with diva Leslie Hall. Study her form and capture her tenderness - not in a jar, but with art supplies. Through sultry photo shoots and dance education, become a student of her wisdom while she feeds you snacks and beverages. Come dressed in tight apparel."
Those who missed the class but still want to study her form and capture some of that tenderness can see various photos and music videos in the Art Center's main gallery.
It's the funniest work in the show, but hardly the only example of break-out talent. Art Center curators selected work from 15 artists for the exhibition, from a statewide pool of about 200.
"I was overwhelmed by how much good work was out there," said curator Gilbert Vicario, who moved to Des Moines last year from Houston, where he worked at the Museum of Fine Arts.
The scope of the Iowa Artists show changes each year. Sometimes it focuses on a particular theme, sometimes it's a hodgepodge.
Since last year's show featured just three artists in the Art Center's now-closed gallery downtown, the curatorial team wanted to broaden this year's show to include more artists. So there's a little of everything: minimalist stick structures by John Shrosbree of Fairfield, enigmatic clay sculptures by Ingrid Lilligren of Ames, and carefully blurred drawings by Des Moines artist Larassa Kabel (whose paintings were part of last year's show).
There are swirling, intensely colored canvases by Kristin Quinn of Davenport, and, at the far end of the gallery, a virtual rummage sale of found-object sculptures by Daniel Weiss of Des Moines. He tucked a bird's nest in the toe of an old shoe. He captured the impression of a hug with a loaf-sized lump of clay he placed between himself and a partner. Everywhere you look there's some other doodad - an ice cream scoop, a vacuum attachment, a pair of maracas - cleverly twisted into something else.
There's too much good stuff to detail here, but here are three artists whose work deserves a closer look:
Josh Black
Iowa City
Since the floods of 2008 washed out parts of the University of Iowa, art students have taken studio classes in what was once a Menards building out on Highway 1.
"At first it was kind of a pain in the (expletive), but having everyone around, with all the departments intermingling, is really beneficial," said Black, a graduate student in sculpture, printmaking and art history. "It's a great situation."
It was something from the ceramics department, in fact - a pile of wood for kiln firings - that sparked the artist's imagination. (But don't try this at home, kids.) "I was out in the back lot just kind of moseying around. And for some reason, I have a habit of collecting or buying mass amounts of whatever, so I had five or six hatchets in my studio - not sure what I was going to do with them," he said. "The wood pile seemed like a perfect place to kill some time and throw hatchets." In his studio, he eventually embedded a few hatchets into a chunk of wood, mounted it on a discarded card table he had found at a frat house and framed the whole thing with stripes of paint.
The sculpture's "bright pink lines and polished-wood backing suggest a target for gaming in a home or bar, but the rough center and embedded axes contradict this playfulness, implying a more dangerous activity than is usually allowed indoors," according to a note in the exhibition catalog. Black's other two works in the show consist of a series of tree-trunk slices, into which he carved the word "forever" in an elegant cursive script. In one work, he painted the letters in hot pink. In the other, he connected them with trails of white-painted sawdust that subtly emerge from the white gallery wall. "It pertains to something that's bigger than me, something that has outlasted me," Black said. "It was sort of an evolution of ideas about what's taken place in my life. Wood just happened to be the material."
Teresa Paschke
Ames
Paschke teaches art and design at Iowa State University and spent the summer of 2008 in Prague with a faculty-exchange program. Her studio was a few blocks from the city's Old Town Square, where ornate centuries-old buildings and wrought-iron gates line the streets."It's beautiful, but everything from the sidewalks up to about 7 feet is covered with graffiti," she said. "There's this contemporary layer of decoration overtop an older one."
The artist, who specializes in textiles and fibers, took photos from her jaunts around the neighborhood and combined them into a collage on her computer. She then printed the composite image onto sheets of canvas with a special 10-foot digital printer at Iowa State.
"It can print fabric up to 64 inches wide," she said. "You just turn it on and let it go."
After steaming the canvas to set the dye - "that's where you cross your fingers" - she stitched the panels together and stretched them onto a frame, as painters do. She then embroidered the canvas with traditional Czech and Slovak designs she found during her trip. The final product reflects some the same layers of old (needlework) and new (digital photography) that inspired her on the streets of Prague.
Rodolfo Salgado Jr.
Iowa City
Salgado's "Watershed Fluid Dynamics" consists of about a dozen ceramic organs mounted on the wall and connected with a series of rubber hoses and tubes.
"A lot of my work tends to deal with bodily mechanisms and how machines relate to the body," said the artist, a graduate student in printmaking at the University of Iowa. "I have a specific interest in bodily fluids."
That interest, he explained, stems from a job he once had as a custodian at a bar, where he had to scrub all sorts of bodily fluids from the floor. And from his childhood, when he suffered from nosebleeds.
"
The bottom line is: The human being is a pressurized sack of fluid. We sneeze. We bleed. We go to the restroom ... and to me, it's sort of magical," he said.
He studied anatomy books, plumbing systems, car-engine diagrams - "basically anything that transports fluids" - to gather ideas for the sculpture, which isn't exactly pretty. But it's honest.
"We have this internal system that can be ungainly or embarrassing," curator Burkhalter said. "It's a part of life."
Iowa Artists 2010
Works by Benjamin Gardner, Larassa Kabel, Ingrid Lilligren, Nathan Morton and Daniel Weiss of Des Moines; Leslie Hall and Teresa Paschke of Ames; Josh Black, Micah Bloom, Megan Dirks, Laurel Farrin and Rodolfo Salgado Jr. of Iowa City; Richard Colburn of Cedar Falls; Jim Shrosbree of Fairfield; and Kristin Quinn of Davenport.
WHEN: Through Sept. 19. There are free gallery talks at 6:30 p.m. Thursday (with Bloom, Paschke, Quinn) and 6:30 p.m. July 15 (Colburn, Hall, Lilligren).
ADMISSION: Free
INFO: (515) 277-4405, desmoinesartcenter.org