Now, 22 years later, 15 of my photographs are in the permanent collection of the North Carolina Museum of Art. One of them—Reidsville, North Carolina, June 2003—is included in the exhibition Landscape Sublime: Contemporary Photography, which closes November 13.

I have met some very good souls along the way. One of them is Huston Paschal, a long-time associate curator (now retired) at the Museum. When I began exhibiting my photographs in 1990, Huston, unbeknownst to me, started following my progress. I was exhibiting everywhere I could (photographs I’d made on Ellis Island), including the just-opened Cup A Joe on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh and the Weems Gallery at Meredith College. When I began to photograph around the Tar Heel State, Huston quietly watched as my new work—and I—progressed.

On the eve of my 50th birthday in 2003, I received a fateful phone call: Linda Dougherty (the NCMA’s current curator of contemporary art) was on the line. Would I like to schedule a time to bring a selection of my work? She and Huston wanted to see it, with a purchase in mind. Well, happy birthday to me!

I am grateful to Linda and to the NCMA and, now, to Jen Dasal, assistant curator, for including my work in the current exhibition. But mostly I am grateful to Huston, who saw in my work, and in the work of other North Carolina artists she watched grow and mature over her years as curator, something worth paying attention to.

David Simonton is a photographer living in Raleigh, N.C. See his work in the exhibition Landscape Sublime: Contemporary Photography through November 13.

Image: David Simonton, Reidsville, North Carolina, June 2003, 2003, printed 2004, gelatin-silver print, 9 11/16 x 9 13/16 in., Purchased with funds from the William R. Roberson Jr. and Frances M. Roberson Endowed Fund for North Carolina Art, © 2004 David Simonton

Trotman calls his figures embodiments of a “dystopian America,” a foil to Rockwell’s utopian images of the American Dream. Toppled housewives and sinking businessmen make up his vision of 1950s cookie-cutter convention. He turns static material—wood—into figures that vibrate with tense energy, so confined by their roles that they threaten spontaneous combustion. The only interruptions in his pristine craftsmanship are strategically placed splits in the wood that call attention to the unease that is hidden beneath the starched shirts, sensible pumps, and strained smiles of his characters.

When we all stood looking up at Vertigo, Trotman’s first self-portrait and a new addition to the NCMA’s collection, Linda noted its reference to Yves Klein’s iconic 1960 photograph Leap into the Void. The visual and conceptual resemblance is clear—an ordinary-looking man in a suit triumphantly breaks free from life’s constraints as he plunges off a building. But a darker parallel exists underneath the obvious similarities. Klein’s photograph was fabricated, a lie. This “staged lie” is the truth behind Trotman’s Inverted Utopias—the uncomfortable reality that one cannot really leap off the building, sink into the ground, or hide beneath the sheets. There is no escape for his characters.

No escape. I went back to the exhibition with that in mind. Is it really that dark? Trotman has a beautiful way of exposing the sad realities of everyday life, our hidden agendas and concealed burdens, with just enough humor to help us pretend we only imagined that glimpse of ourselves in Arden or Martin. Am I Janet? I think I am wearing her shoes. Perfectly camouflaged in my badge and business attire, I can’t help but feel exposed by her presence, as if I, too, am beginning to spin off my axis into the Void. I turn away only to find myself scrutinizing the exhibition as if I were a member of Trotman’s Committee, ready to offer up my art-savvy intern input like the Cake Lady’s chocolate confection.

I think we, as museumgoers, often get caught up in the appeal of collecting experiences. Seeing works of art and high-profile exhibitions becomes a part of that pressing “better-yourself” checklist. We start darting around, snapping photos and referencing our list of the museum highlights without really seeing anything. Check, check, check. Bob Trotman’s characters do not allow this type of detached viewing. Instead, they mirror back to us that delusion of checkboxes against which we all measure ourselves and confront us head-on with solid, tangible personifications of our own flawed realities.

So, art nerd, housewife, professional, adolescent, and museum wanderer, unite—Trotman has something for all of us. Take a moment with Inverted Utopias to put down the checklist and help Olive Suit find his shoe, picture the faces under Cover Up, and wonder what Stu might look like, if he just opened his eyes.

Laura Ritchie, Curatorial Intern

Sotheby’s was offering the treasure as “the world’s most expensive book.” Even that doesn’t do it justice. As can be seen in our gallery, the thing is four volumes, each about 40 inches high. Altogether there are 435 hand-colored plates. The set has the presence in the room of a great object.

The main reason we prize Audubon around here is that his drawings are dramatic, aesthetically exciting images. But there’s always a story attached to every plate. Audubon was an adventurer and international entrepreneur as well as an artist-ornithologist. He spent one winter marooned on a frozen river with Osage Indians. During a Kentucky trip in 1813, he witnessed an overhead migration of the now-extinct passenger pigeon that continued constantly for three days. He wrote that everyone in Louisville dined on nothing but pigeons for an entire week. This is the same character who later shared dinner with Andrew Jackson in the White House, when the two swapped stories of the frontier, and who lectured to a Cambridge University audience that included Charles Darwin, as Darwin mentions in On the Origin of Species. There are good biographies of Audubon’s life, but some ambitious novelist really ought to see what can be done with his story. The challenge would be to give continuity to the far-flung episodes of Labrador and Texas, Haiti and Edinburgh.

Acquiring an Audubon set for North Carolina was the idea of a governor, William Alexander Graham, only a few years after the work’s completion. The cost to the state was believed at the time the lowest price ever paid for Birds of America—$650. The recent London auction did, in fact, reach an eight-figure price. When Audubon was surviving on swans and pecans with the Indians, he couldn’t have imagined such success. Maybe it’s time for that novel.

The latest installation features work by Raleigh artist Nancy S. Baker. You may be familiar with Baker’s work; her painting The Betrayal is part of the Museum’s permanent collection and is on view on Level A in East Building.

Nancy’s billboards are fun and funky, an interesting take on existing works. “Borrowing from three exalted artists from the NCMA’s American collection, mingling highbrow and lowbrow taste, I offer up three reinvented and reconfigured tableaus of the American tradition of landscape painting,” Baker says.

Her willing (or unwilling) subjects? Bierstadt’s Bridal Veil Falls, Mignot’s Landscape in Ecuador, and Inness’s Under the Greenwood. But viewers might not recognize them—the paintings have been bisected and then digitally reflected back onto themselves, as if by a funhouse mirror or a kaleidoscope. Suddenly something familiar becomes something new, strange, and even a bit disturbing. Surrounding the altered landscapes is a border of jewels, flowers, staring eyes, and other strange elements, acting, as Baker puts it, as “a Looney Tunes memento mori, in stark contrast to the dreamy realism of the [original] paintings.”

Baker links this memento mori theme with the title of her billboard series: Home Sweet Home. As she notes, “The title, appropriated from John Howard Payne’s ubiquitous poem, reminds us that ‘Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.’ However, the idea of home in [works such as] Mignot’s Landscape in Ecuador has become an historical rendering of a world now on the verge of self-destruction. Through no fault of Mignot, this unreliable narrative of fecund nature is testimony to our desire for fantasy. Like the oeuvre of Norman Rockwell, art can be the greatest and most convincing propaganda.” Baker’s works allow us to ponder important questions of reality vs. fiction, and how that distinction—or lack thereof—affects the natural world today.

This work, made possible by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, is part of an ongoing series of outdoor art projects, Art Has No Boundaries, commissioned by the NCMA to encourage visitors to actively explore the Museum Park.

Our Bierstadt has a history in contemporary art! Check out this post from 2008, which links the painting to an artist at the Brooklyn Museum–Ed.

“I feel like some of the pieces look like they are ready to return to the earth, while others seem to be growing from it,” the artist notes. “Sometimes I see [the larger elements in the work] as lichen or fungus, or even decaying leaves. The small pieces relate to growing roots or decomposing plant matter.”

The many forms that compose Cycle differ in appearance because of the various techniques used to create them: the two types of clay have been combined in both fired and raw forms, with a number of patinas providing a range of colors and textures in the final product. The connection between Brown’s chosen medium—clay—and the environment is not accidental. “When I am immersed in clay, I feel like I am connected to the earth,” Brown says. “I utilize the clay in an organic, flowing, natural manner. In my work I use deep, dark, and bold texture to reflect nature, giving my pieces life.”

Brown’s installation won first prize at the Caldwell Arts Council’s 25th annual Sculpture Celebration, one of the longest-running sculpture events in the Southeast, which was held in September in Lenoir, N.C. Museum Director Larry Wheeler presided over the competition, choosing Brown for the top honor—a prize that offered the opportunity to install the work at the NCMA.

Though Cycle itself is not going to decay and return to dust like its organic representations, visitors are urged to see the work soon, as it is on view for only a limited time. Cycle will be deinstalled on December 3, 2010.

Hundreds of photos poured in to Flickr, and a 10-foot-by-10-foot cube was born. Open at the top and tied around the middle with an oversize bow, the installation became the centerpiece for the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the opening of the Museum’s new West Building on April 23.

Wayne Henderson of Chapel Hill, a graphic artist and blacksmith, crafted the project and managed its installation on the Museum lawn. He worked with a team of students at N.C. State’s College of Design to create the bow. Under the leadership of professor Vita Plume, the students–Jessica Odom, Veronica Tibbitts, and Jenna Bost–designed and fabricated the large cloth bow and added it to the gift.

After the ceremony, Linda Carlisle, secretary of the Department of Cultural Resources, asked what would be done with the cube. Upon hearing it would go into storage, she said, “Oh, no, this is much too wonderful to put into storage. It should be in the lobby at DCR.”  Thus began another art movement project for the Museum’s art handlers.

The piece has been installed in the State Archives and History Building at 109 E. Jones St. in Raleigh, in numerous locations. A very pleased Wayne Henderson says, “While I had designed the panels for some flexibility, your creative triangular towers in the lobby were not something I had even considered. Great job! It’s wonderful that the faces and places of this great state will live on for a while.”

While the installations are well underway in the white galleries, another dimension has begun: installation of the first of 2,000+ square yards of curtains. They are specifically designed and fabricated to control light for the collection, while softening the contrast between interior and exterior thus helping the eye to adjust for art viewing. They are three varieties of white.

Silver

The new building canopy at the entrance is nearing completion. Semi-reflective glass is being installed into the polished silver framework, reflecting the building and landscape on either side. The most dazzling aspect of the canopy is the polished stainless steel ceiling, reflecting visitors moving in and out of the gallery building.

Green

While the new building is green in the “eco” sense of the word it is also being surrounded by a green landscape. The first trees have arrived on site! Finally. This is the icing on the cake. During the next few weeks, over 200 trees will be installed and will radically change the context of the building. By early December the site will be green with all the landscape elements complete.

Red

The pond project is entering its last phase after final design approval. This is not only a landscape project that will help connect the park and buildings, but a progressive demonstration of sustainable design. The pond and swale are integral parts of a global water management system for the entire site from the “rings” to the new building.  Some 20,000 plants will be installed, with a new path connecting the Museum trail to the Amphitheater. It will be North Carolina red clay for just a few more months.

Gray

Lots of noise in the Museum’s existing lobby is due to jackhammering as part of the existing floor is removed to make space for a white oak floor, just like in the new building. It’s a very strange sight to see the lobby completely gutted back to the exterior walls. By January the space will be complete but for now it is about as gray as gray can be with concrete and dust.

The interplay of traditional craftsmanship with contemporary art and architecture has a fascinating history in North Carolina—Black Mountain College is a prime example—and Jack has his own place in that story. And now, in a serendipitous sequence of events, Jack’s legacy and some 100 tons of Western North Carolina have found an unlikely home in the sleek new building at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

The intersection of art and nature is a hallmark element of the new building. No where is this to be more evident than in the narrow glass-clad South Court—which slices into the building, bringing the surrounding landscape into the middle of the classical gallery. And unlike the new building’s four other courtyards, which feature paved surfaces and sculpture, the South Court is intended to be a natural, contemplative space. And large native rocks are the central element of that vision.

Jesse Turner, a landscape designer with Lappas + Havener, knew that the Museum was looking for large-scale boulders. He immediately thought of the Owen family, close family friends from his childhood in western North Carolina. Jesse called his father, John Turner, director of the Southern Highlands Reserve. John worked with Jack for more than 30 years at the Reserve, where Jack was responsible for all the rock work throughout the 120-acre private native plant garden and research center. John contacted Jack’s son Travis, who followed in his father’s footsteps and runs the family quarry and rock business, located 50 miles southeast of Asheville, N.C.

Travis agreed to donate 14 boulders from Canton, N.C. in memory of his father to the Museum. He selected each of the rocks, and in June came to the Museum to direct their placement in the narrow strip of dirt, in a careful, thoughtful arrangement—just as his father would have done.

Transporting and placing the granite rocks, some as heavy as 15 tons, is no easy task, and required the goodwill and help of many. Travis enlisted the help of two cousins, who drove all the way from Florida to lend their 18-wheelers. Once the boulders arrived at the Museum, placing them inside the glass courtyards required the expert use of a crane donated by Earl Johnson of Southern Industrial Constructors.

John Turner couldn’t think of a more fitting tribute for his good friend and colleague. “Jack had a unique ability to see rocks in their natural environment and picture them in a placed setting, in a way that made a statement.”

The late Jack Owen

In April 2010, when you gaze across the new building’s South Court, you’ll see more than a bunch of moss-covered boulders—you’ll see an installation that celebrates the people of our state who create art out of their everyday work.