Satans Hand With Show Stamp Painting Exhibition Mesa Arts
In 1974 the San Francisco Museum of Art accepted an unusual exhibition proposal from Bay Expanse–based artists Robert Moon and Gage Taylor: along with artist friends Robert Fried, Gerald Gooch, Neb Martin, and Richard Lowenberg, Moon and Taylor would take a month-long expedition to Baja, Mexico, covering ii,500 miles in two vans and a pickup truck. The resulting exhibition, Baja, offered the artists' personal interpretations of the desert environment through approximately 80 works in various media fabricated on location and afterwards in the studio. Straddling offsite and onsite creative production, Baja and, later, Richard Kamler and Elison Elisofon'south The Desert Project (1979) were two of the major projects that the Museum's auxiliary SECA cosponsored in parallel to its ongoing Art Award program.
Exhibition postcard for Baja (December 27, 1974–February ix, 1975); from left: Bill Martin, Gage Taylor, Gerald Gooch, Richard Lowenberg, Robert Fried, and Robert Moon
Tanya Zimbardo, SFMOMA assistant curator of media arts, invites artists Gerald Gooch, Richard Lowenberg, and Robert Moon to reflect on their experiences of an SFMOMA-sponsored trip to Baja.
Tanya Zimbardo:
In 1974 the San Francisco Museum of Art accepted an unusual exhibition proposal from Bay Area–based artists Robert Moon and Gage Taylor: along with artist friends Robert Fried, Gerald Gooch, Bill Martin, and Richard Lowenberg, Moon and Taylor would have a monthlong expedition to Baja, Mexico, covering 2,500 miles in ii vans and a pickup truck. The resulting exhibition, Baja, offered the artists' personal interpretations of the desert environment through approximately 80 works in diverse media made on location and afterwards in the studio. Straddling offsite and onsite creative production, Baja and, afterward, Richard Kamler and Elin Elisofon'southward The Desert Project (1979) were 2 of the major projects that the museum'due south auxiliary SECA cosponsored in parallel to its ongoing art award program.
Baja has been of particular involvement to me since I learned that it was among the first exhibitions at SFMOMA to include video and film in the gallery context. I recently located several videotapes from the exhibition in our library archives, including Moon'due south filmsBreath (posted beneath) and The Unabridged Trip (at lesser), as well every bit Lowenberg's three video journals. These sequences of water, the road, and other scenes and situations were equanimous to play at random on monitors in alcoves within an adobe-like construction, part of an immersive environment that included holography, objects, prints, and sounds.
At the opening the artists learned the shocking news of Fried's expiry at age 37 from a stroke earlier in the twenty-four hour period. Fried was known in the San Francisco psychedelic music scene for his concert posters, and members of both art and music circles organized benefits (including the Grateful Dead and Friends' "Bob Fried Memorial Boogie" at Winterland in 1975) to support his widow and children. Visionary painters Taylor and Martin passed away in 2000 and 2008, respectively.
Here, Lowenberg, Moon, and Gooch share their recollections of the journey.
Robert Moon; photograph: courtesy Richard Lowenberg
Robert Moon:
And then many years agone and yet many of those memories are and so articulate. I month with five friends traveling and camping in the Baja desert before in that location was a paved route. The flavor of the Wild W however lingered, though it was clear even then that those days were numbered. Of grade, as soon as the paved route was in, there was a alluvion tide of campers and Americans bringing with them civilization and development. Cuff Taylor and his wife and son spent a week touring Baja with myself and my son. Fourth dimension was limited, so we were only able to meet the northern part of the desert, but we saw enough to want to return and see more. We were sitting around a campfire on our last night when the idea of an artists' bout of Baja came to us. Every bit soon equally we got dorsum to Marin County nosotros began formulating a plan and discussing who nosotros wanted to join united states of america. Bob Fried, Gerald Gooch, Richard Lowenberg, Nib Martin, Gage Taylor, and myself made up the tour members, and the museum graciously provided the finances, the space, and time for a bear witness of the piece of work we would produce. When we returned to the Bay Expanse we had six months to put together a major show; though a daunting prospect, personally it was one of the almost productive and creative periods of my career as an artist. I can't speak for the others, just from what I saw it was a very creative time for them, too. Notably, Bob Fried seemed especially motivated and produced a large body of work in a very curt amount of time. Later we would find out why, although we should accept known the reason for the many hints that he dropped during the trip. Bob had a terminal illness that would consequence in his decease the afternoon before the opening. I remember walking in to the museum opening of the Baja bear witness so elated and full of expectations, simply to exist plunged into grief at the news of my friend's passing.
Robert Fried with his walking stick; photograph: courtesy Richard Lowenberg
The trip itself was filled with hazard, vehicle breakdowns, a case of severe sunstroke, and just the day-to-day problems encountered while traveling in a desert hundreds of miles from the paved road and any kind of settlements. The month flew by very rapidly, and we were able to see only a few of the sites that were on my list. This was my 3rd trip to Baja, and so I was familiar with all of the areas that we explored, though I saw them in a unlike way through the eyes of my friends. It was an experience that I will always look back on as one of the finest.
Robert Moon, Jiff , 1974; Courtesy the creative person and SFMOMA Library Archives
Richard Lowenberg; photo: courtesy Richard Lowenberg
Richard Lowenberg:
The Trip
The half-dozen of united states of america in three vehicles left the Bay Surface area, driving due south on Interstate Highway 5. Crossing the border, we proceeded south, stopping in Ensenada to buy needed gas, food, refreshments, and supplies, and to accept a delicious south-of-the-edge fresh seafood meal and overnight stay earlier continuing on the journey.
Earlier leaving Ensenada, Bob Fried, by pre-engagement, arranged to meet with the postmaster of Northern Baja, to formally offer a signed canvass of BAJA stamps that Fried had designed and printed prior to the trip. Subsequently documenting their official "thank-y'all" handshake, we departed.
Bahia de Los Angeles
Driving downwardly newly paved Baja Highway 1, nosotros reached a giant boulder field, which we explored in the late afternoon amid brilliant sunset light, and where we stayed overnight. The adjacent morning we headed on to Bahia de Los Angeles, on Baja'due south e declension, along the warm Sea of Cortez.
Gage Taylor; photo: courtesy Richard Lowenberg
On approaching our destination, we drove through deep, soft beach sand, to go as close to the bay every bit possible. Purposely beached, we knew that we would spend each morning for the adjacent v days conveying rocks and branches to build a track that would allow united states of america to drive back out onto the solid roadway. It was midsummer and daytime temperatures reached 115 degrees. There was no shade — other than Fried's parachute, which we stretched between our circled vehicles — to cover our primal camping ground area. Much of each day was spent in the h2o, as flies and swarms of small bees were attracted to us (and to our colorful paints) when we were on the beach. Wearing broad-brimmed straw hats, Neb Martin and Gage Taylor sabbatum on lawn chairs in the water with floating pads, doing watercolor sketches.
I hiked around the bay in the heat of the twenty-four hours, exploring other isolated beaches, one of which was widely strewn with shark carcasses and large bounding main turtle shells discarded past fishermen. I set up props, photographed and videotaped environmental installations, and took lots of scenic shots.
Gerry Gooch had hardly traveled far from the Bay Surface area in his over 40 years. Baja was far afield. On our first day camping and working at Bahia de Los Angeles, Gerry spent also much unprotected time in the sunday, got badly sunburned, and by 24-hour interval two began to endure from the increasingly debilitating furnishings of sunstroke. By twenty-four hours 3, he was unable to care for himself. We and so made the difficult decision to get off the beach as soon as possible to get him to critically needed medical care.
At this point, less than a week into the proposed iii-week journey, we assumed that the trip might have to be aborted. One possibility was to go Gerry to the nearest drome and onto a flight dorsum to San Diego or Oakland. The nearest airdrome was beyond Baja in Guerrero Negro.
San Borja
We headed west on a road that Moon knew. Along the dirt road that would pass through San Borja, nosotros sighted a bent-over curved Boojum tree, which became an immediate group photo-op. The paradigm of the six of us under the Boojum was used for the exhibition annunciation card.
San Borja is the site of an onetime Spanish mission ruin, located on a small, fertile, palm-treed haven, forth a rugged dirt road cutting across central Baja. Two families, seeming not to care for each other, lived at the site, caring for their spring-fed fields and watching over the mission. We befriended Belizario Smith and his family, as his muscular teenage son helped u.s. reinflate our truck tires with a hand pump. The libation, higher-distance inland air seemed to be making Gerry more comfortable.
Guerrero Negro
Guerrero Negro turned our journey into what seemed similar a bad "gringos south of the border" movie. A Japanese visitor–supported common salt mining town, located halfway down the Baja Peninsula's absurd Pacific coast and on the eastern shore of Scammon's Lagoon, Guerrero Negro is famous as the spawning waters for migratory Pacific gray whales.
We were desperate to get Gerry onto a aeroplane and back home for needed intendance. He was feeling meliorate and expressed his not wanting to return or to scuttle the trip. While Gerry and others waited in the plaza, two of us went to the airdrome to bank check on next flights to San Diego or n, and to phone his wife. Wandering in the plaza, Gerry was picked up by the local police and their grey-suited Japanese "advisors" for his peculiar "anti-social" behavior. We retrieved him past like-minded to all get out of boondocks immediately. We high-tailed it, merely covertly camped in the Guerrero Negro city dump overnight, in lodge to take hold of the only scheduled flight the next day.
Gerald Gooch; photo: courtesy Richard Lowenberg
The side by side day, the flight never came. Gerry, feeling better, wanted to stay on. Change of plans. Moon arranged with a human being named Pedro, who had a small open line-fishing boat, to take the states about 30 miles out beyond rough waters to an incessantly windswept, sand dune coast, where the Japanese current has done upwardly Pacific flotsam since earliest times. After a scary body of water crossing, nosotros spent the adjacent many hours hiking forth the white dunes under a stake blue sky, covered from caput to toe to keep our skin, easily, and faces from being painfully sand-blasted amid the high winds.
As we had gotten out of Pedro's line-fishing boat, an unexpected airship-tired ATV with hooded rider had zoomed past. Along our path lay whole whale skeletons, an endless blanketing cache of sand dollars, and, half-submerged in the dunes, a marooned old fishing boat: "Satan's Bride." On our way dorsum to Pedro'south boat, the ATV passenger passed us on his render, this time carrying what looked similar a space capsule. A large seagoing landing arts and crafts pulled onto shore and the ATV drove up a lowered ramp, the coiffure suspiciously eyeing us as they efficiently set up off to body of water again.
El Arco
The next day, we drove southeast to El Arco, the heart point on the border of North and South Baja, in a vast, parched, open expanse of geologically shaped desert landscape. Climbing to the superlative of a loftier mesa, we viewed a 360-degree panorama of the expansive wilderness. Moon set up his specially synthetic moving-picture show box, containing a Bolex 16mm camera, motor drive, and fourth dimension-lapse unit, to shoot continuous single frames at fix intervals during days and nights in the landscape. He did then at all of the locations where we stayed, afterwards to edit them into a time-lapse film of our journeying.
Gerald Gooch; photo: courtesy Richard Lowenberg
The Return
On our way back due north, we stopped virtually another boulder field with a small hot-leap puddle. We cavorted, swam, and soaked in the warm pool waters, sleeping that night on top of giant boulders. Exploring the area, Gerry institute a painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe on one of the boulders.
We finally headed back somewhat brusk of our intended stay, with some in the group having had enough of what had get non simply an artists' journey, simply also a difficult survival take chances.
Studio Work
Between the end of July and installation of works at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in Dec, the six of u.s.a. retreated to our lives and our studios to create, develop, and finish works for the scheduled exhibition. Museum staff collaborated closely and creatively with u.s.a..
Richard Lowenberg, site performance, 1974; photo: courtesy Richard Lowenberg
Tanya Zimbardo:
Gerald Gooch spoke with me by phone. He observed, "You lot tin't separate what happened in Baja or isolate it from an evolving life, but information technology was a firestone in my feel." After taking time to recoup and digest his personal ordeal in the desert, a "heavy and enlightening" trip, for the show he created several sculptures with inscriptions that symbolically echoed his spiritual journeying — a fisherman communicable himself, a wrapped effigy with fragmented mirrors pouring onto the floor. Baja had besides turned out to exist a "crash course in what my paintings were most" and an extension of sure ideas present since the sixties. Paintings that were in flux, like The Son Created the Male parent Two — begun years earlier with numerous friends collectively contributing vibrant marks from paint-filled cake decorating tubes — took on a new meaning in this context.
The watercolors and gouaches past the other artists in the exhibition were largely based on imagery of the unpopulated desert mural, with its unique vegetation and derelict automobiles, only several works, like Gooch's, were instead evocative of infinity, timelessness, and energy. Fried, for instance, had created a series of sculptures based on his wooden-shoe walking stick and its associations with divining tools.
Robert Moon, The Entire Trip, 1974; Courtesy the artist and SFMOMA Library Archives
Source: https://openspace.sfmoma.org/2012/02/baja/
0 Response to "Satans Hand With Show Stamp Painting Exhibition Mesa Arts"
Post a Comment