Classic American Playgrounds and Skies Seen Through the Lens of Brenda Biondo

Brenda Biondo: Play

San Diego Museum of Art

Gallery 15: Mrs. Thomas J Fleming Sr. Foyer

Through January 7^th, 2018

Article by Cathy Breslaw

Brenda Biondo, Burlington, CO, 2009. Color photograph. Image courtesy of the artist. 

Colorado photographer Brenda Biondo’s constructed abstractions and playground images fill the Mrs. Thomas J Fleming Sr. foyer of the museum with a combination of fascination and nostalgia.  The Paper Skies series are a group of formal minimalist abstractions which at first glance resemble paintings.  However, they are printed photographs created as the result of paper being cut, folded and then re-photographed against the sky. Biondo begins by photographing the sky at different times of day. She then prints out the desired photographs, manipulates them, and then re-photographs the shaped photographs against a sky. The photos are then printed onto thin aluminum using a dye sublimation process, lending a slight metallic sheen and a polished quality to the surfaces.  This series also reveals atmospheric color as well as noting the ambiguity of the real versus the reproduced. These images brings to mind modernist painters like Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly who used geometry in rather simple and straightforward ways but are also visually compelling images.

Biondo’s second body of work comprises 15 photographs depicting the evolution and obsolescence of the traditional American playground.  Her photos unearth memories of early and mid century playgrounds made of mostly metal and materials no longer used in contemporary play structures. To prepare for her photographic series, Biondo researched vintage catalogs and historic photos from the 1920’s to the 1970’s including classic seesaws, slides, spinners and whimsical animal jungle gyms. Her photographs using iconic American symbols like rocket ships, and lunar landers were popular because of space exploration  during the 1960’s, while other photographs depict structures from the 1950’s when cartoon characters, cowboys and Indians, Cinderella and other pop culture references were widely used. Her photographs allow us to revisit icons of childhoods past as well as documenting their place in American culture. Biondo’s playground photographs share similar geometric and minimalist compositions with the paper skies series and the use of light in an atmospheric way.

Brenda Biondo, Paper Sky 7, 2013-16. Dye sublimation on aluminum. Image courtesy of the artist.    

Brenda Biondo, Paper Sky 27, 2013-16. Dye sublimation on aluminum. Image courtesy of the artist.

 

 

Brenda Biondo, Colorado Springs, CO, 2006. Color photograph. Image courtesy of the artist.

Brenda Biondo, Hudson, CO, 2011. Color photograph. Image courtesy of the artist    

Monet Paintings On Exhibit at San Diego Museum of Art

Reflections on Monet

Gluck Gallery, San Diego Museum of Art

Through January 21^st, 2018

Article by Cathy Breslaw

Claude Monet    Haystacks at Chailly   oil on canvas     1865

 Inside the Gluck Gallery at the San Diego Museum of Art, is a small but powerful collection of mostly impressionistic paintings dating between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.  This intimate, low-lit setting is a perfect place to view three important paintings by Claude Monet, each representing different stages of the artist’s career. The earliest oil painting, Haystacks at Chailly was painted in 1865, towards the beginning of Monet’s painting career, and is thought to be the first of his many ‘haystack’ paintings.  As one of the San Diego Museum of Art’s collection, this small painting is a realistic rendering of a landscape by comparison to Monet’s later more ‘loosely’ painted impressionistic works.  The gorgeous color palette, a range of blues, purples, pinks, yellows and blues light up the skies while a range of greens, yellows and browns emerge from the ground as grass and fields with hills in the background. The haystack is a point of interest but not central to the composition as in Monet’s later haystack paintings. Moving on chronologically, Eglise de Varengeville was painted in 1882, and as most of Monet’s paintings was created outdoors on location.  Upon observation of the coastal cliffs painted from below, the viewer sees active and energized brushwork in several colors as the artist breaks down the rocks into sections of an array of whites, oranges, yellows, reds, browns and greens. The last of Monet’s three paintings exhibited is Le Bassin des Nympheas created in the latter part of his career in 1904. By this time, Monet was fully into Impressionism, using the play and qualities of light, mixing colors on the canvas with thin visible brushstrokes to create movement, and an open composition while depicting unusual angles of the subject matter. This larger painting, also called The Lily Pond, was painted in his garden at Giverny and is a subject he repeatedly painted in his later years.  On loan from the Denver Art Museum, it captures only a small section of a lily pond, focusing in on floating flower pads as well as the water reflections of bushes, brush, and trees on shore.  The blue-greens, greens, yellow-greens, pinks, lilacs, whites and yellows are a sea of multi-dimensional brush strokes activating the surfaces of the painting, adding movement and creating a kind of surreal atmosphere. Also in the exhibition is Notre Dame(1900), an oil painting by French artist Maximilien Luce, Late Afternoon, Giverny(1905-1913), an oil painting by American artist Guy Orlando Rose, and an oil painting, The Edge of the Forest( 1887-1892), by American artist Theodore Robinson – all painted in the Impressionistic style.

Guy Orlando Rose   Late Afternoon, Giverny   oil on canvas   1905-1913 SDMA collection

Claude Monet   Le Bassin des Nympheas   oil on canvas    1904   Denver Art Museum collection

Maximilien Luce   Notre Dame   oil on canvas   1900    gift to SDMA
by Ambassador and Mrs. Maxwell Gluck