Newman's own

John Newman is a materials guy.

His small, quirky sculptures mix different materials in strange ways that create particular little worlds. Things that don't ordinarily go together - like heavy bronze and Japanese paper - somehow play nicely.

Over a dozen of Newman's sculptures are on display in a show at the New York Studio School gallery.

From a distance the room looks like a high-end toy store, with bold colors and strange forms. Up close, each work reveals itself slowly in the materials.

One work, "bamboo from sail to plow," uses bamboo in a way that compliments and supplants nature.

We know how bamboo grows, but Newman cuts it and reassembles its sections in a related way to natural bamboo sectioning, as if twisted while growing.

It's this eye for the natural behavior of materials that lets Newman pull this kind of cheeky behavior. It's not about accumulation of different objects, or the pastiche of unlikely partners.

Newman sees the properties in different forms and materials and respecting them enough to see a conversation with other materials. In the end, there is an organic whole not because of the materials but because of something else that's embedded in them.

In a video produced for the show, Newman says "All the sculptures have disparate things in them. It's kind of how believable - if that's the right word - is it that these foreign materials have been captured in this complete structure."

brass braid and yellow sketch, 2007

When beauty is enough

Painter Pat Lipsky gave a talk last night at the NY Studio School on "The Right Color."

Ms. Lipsky, whose work is mostly abstract and geometrical, gave a cool and elegant defense of painting as the formal practice of creating beauty. She quoted Mark Rothko, saying, "An expression of beauty is an expression of rightness."

"There has been a devaluation of beauty," Lipsky said, referring to a review by art critic Robert Hughes where he asked if creating beautiful objects is enough to make good art.

She recalled creating her early color field paintings in 1969, which were made by applying acrylic paint to wet canvas with sponges.

These were "one shot" paintings that she would do in one sitting in order to capture a particular spirit (and they were very big, some as long as ten feet or so).

If she made one of these paintings and it didn't work, she threw it away.

"There was nothing else to do with them," Lipsy said. "Either you hit it or you blew it."

A painter to the core, Lipsky gets excited at the technical details. She enthusiastically recalled creating over 100 different tones for her painting "Episcopalian Pandemonium," which is based on a watercolor she did. When she talked about switching from acrylic paint to oil, it felt like a moral choice.

Because she is so connected to materials, she has no time for conceptual art.

Talking about Marcel Duchamp putting a shovel on display as a piece of sculpture, Ms. Lipsky said the shovel is, to her mind, "the perfect instrument to handle his work."

Lipsky, looking elegant in a black suit, quoted Proust at one point during her talk. "I never saw the same sea twice," the French author said.

For Lipsky, we never see the same color twice. One color put beside others changes the value. Like the sea, color is very specific -- but very vast, too.

Pat Lipsky, Spiked Red, 1969

Spring lectures schedule at the Studio School

The agenda is on at the NY Studio School. Artist lectures every Tuesday, scholars and critics every Wednesday. David Salle, Mark Greenwold, Joyce Pensato, Jerry Saltz and more. Full schedule after the fold-

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Finding subject matter

Given the infinite number of possible subjects in the world, it's hard to believe any painter has ever been strapped for an idea of what to paint. But it happens. It's happened to me. Last night, painter Wolf Kahn gave a talk on "Finding Subject Matter," along with a four-point program to get through the problem.

Kahn is a total pro. With his shock of white hair and a grandpa sweater, he speaks with the ease and assurance of an artist who knows who he is and who has done this kind of talk over and over again. He is a funny storyteller and an engaging personality.

He began his talk by apologizing for repeating anecdotes, but that certain stories are the best illustrations of certain point. He said he tries to keep people from taking his workshops more than once because the facade of clever spontaneity crumbles once you've heard the same story a few times.

His four ideas for finding a subject matter were:

1. Explore the visual field. Look around you, and try to paint the things you don't know the name to (his examples were the space between a figure's ear and shoulder, and the space between the lowest branch on a tree and the ground). "There's nothing more useful in art than what you don't know," Kahn said.

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When to say when

Painter Leopold Plotek reflected on his early work last night during a lecture at the New York Studio School. Skipping over the first five years of his "juvenilia," Plotek showed slides of paintings based on shadows and fragments of architecture he saw in Italy. Although the paintings might look abstract they were based on things he saw in reality. "I've never actually painted a non-depictive painting," he said.

After working in this particular mode for years, Plotek said he reached a point where he wasn't interested in painting like that any more.

"You run out of steam when you can actually give instructions to someone else to do your painting," he said.

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'All painting is abstract': Ruth Miller at NYSS

In an artist talk at the Studio School Tuesday night, painter Ruth Miller boiled down her life's work: "I love still life. I love objects. I love looking."

That affection has carried Miller, 78, a very long way. She returns to the same subjects, painting the same tree over and over, or doing multiple canvases from the same still life set-up.

"I never tire of working from the same tree, as long as I can find more challenges," said Miller. "It's like entering a world that I can slowly take possession of."

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Art's long, strange trip

In 1957, psychiatrist Humphry Osmond coined the term "psychedelic," a conflation of two Greek words meaning "soul manifest," to describe drug experiences that altered one's perception of reality. The same year, Life magazine published an article on the visionary qualities of hallucinogenic mushrooms. "The genie was out of the bottle," said New York Times art critic Ken Johnson, in a lecture at the New York Studio School on Wednesday. And art hasn't been the same since.

To be sure, Johnson wasn't talking about the commercial excesses of psychedelia, or art meant for stoners. It's more about a theory of mind that shifts after using drugs like LSD, shrooms, mescaline, or pot. Johnson's idea about the post-psychedelic shift in art is interesting and far-reaching, and difficult to talk about if only because of the stigma that comes with talking about drug use -- even if it was mild experimentation 30 years ago.

Johnson has interviewed a number of artists for whom the psychedelic experience permanently changed the way they perceived the world. Artist Chris Martin said "For many artists of my generation, it is crucial."

Art by Chris Martin

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Ron Gorchov, doing what he wants to do

Speaking at the NY Studio School last night, artist Ron Gorchov recalled seeing a frustrated painter friend kicking work off a balcony in the mid-1960s. At that moment it occurred to Gorchov that "It's important to do something you really want to do." For Gorchov, the elusive goal has been to get fields of color to float in a room. At 78, he feels like the work he's doing is the "most fluent and fertile of my life."

Gorchov first came to New York in 1953, meeting Mark Rothko on his second day here. It was a different time, he explained, and meeting famous artists was as easy as going to their bars. At the end of meeting Rothko, Gorchov made an overture and said they should get together soon. Rothko balked, saying "No. Have a few gallery shows. It's a small place, and we'll meet."

When Gorchov tried to get an introduction to painter John Russell through a mutual friend, the friend said no. "Nobody would introduce each other," Gorchov explained. The atmosphere was competitive. "They were all jealous of each other."

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Go west! Don't go west! Alison Elizabeth Taylor's bind

Artist Alison Elizabeth Taylor came to the NY Studio School last night to talk about her work, which is full of contradictions. It's full of wildness, but also tight control. Sometimes her work, which these days is made of different shades of wood veneer, seems stilted. Sometimes it seems crazy and out of control. Her medium itself demands purposefulness and planning, but her imagery is wild and seems very personal.

When she was talking about her early work, she called them her "anti-history paintings." Of course, to have such a thing means you feel burdened by history. The object of disaffection becomes a kind of controlling factor. Call it a theme.

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