PHXations, January 13, 2010

In 1992 much of the art world was surprised to learn of one of the major art bequests of the time, from a couple most people had never heard of. A New York couple—she a librarian, he a postal clerk—had spent decades assembling what turns out to be an important collection of modern art, all in a tiny apartment they shared with a menagerie of animals.

The couple’s odd life is told in the film Herb & Dorothy, which is showing at the Phoenix Art Museum under the auspices of Contemporary Forum today at 4 p.m. It’s free. Details on the showing here. NYT story on the pair here. Trailer for the film here.

---

“”http://s3.amazonaws.com/phxated/assets/50/jen_urso_white_space_logo_small.png" class=“left” alt=‘jen_urso_white_space_logo’ />":http://jenniferursoart.com/art-whitespace.html
Scott Andrews, at Hearsight, has a conversation with Jen Urso about her work “White Space,” which she has chronicled on her web site here.

Parts of it will be up at the A.E. England Gallery (that’s the building on Civic Space Park, next to the jellyfish sculpture on Central) for the next month. The opening is Friday, part of Third Friday.

The project is centered around a walk Urso took through central Pennsylvania, tracking a journey her family made when she was growing up. From the interview:

I noticed that the Schuylkill River [pronounced skoo-kull] was almost a direct route from the town I lived in as a kid—Reading and Sinking Spring—to the town where I spent my adolescence, Lansdale.

I imagined that I could have floated down river from Reading and ended up in Lansdale. It seemed like such a basic journey, but it was actually very complex. You start out as this innocent, hopeful kid and then things happen that damage and change you—affecting the rest of your life. I went back because I wanted to see things new again. I thought the best way to do it was to travel that distance in a way that I could notice the most detail—walking. It’s slow and almost tedious, but eventually you get there