Ernie Button's "Vanishing Spirits"

Visual experiences are where we find them--and they can literally be anywhere.  Part of "seeing the world through the eye of the artist," (one of my mother's favorite phrases), is to pay attention to the visuals around us everywhere.

I'll give you a case in point: Ernie Button.

When was the last time you were inspired by dirty dishes?

Ernie Button is quite a wonderful photographer, as you can see if you wander through his website (I recommend it!).  But he didn't get picked up by National Public Radio until he neglected to do his dishes.

As Audrey Carlson described it, in her piece The Wonderful World of Whiskey Art, "Ernie Button was putting a Scotch glass left out overnight into the dishwasher when he noticed something — a white, chalky film on the bottom of the glass. He held it up to the light and, upon closer inspection, could see a series of fine, lacy lines running along the inside of the glass."

Aberlour

Having spotted (sorry) this interesting visual effect, he did what artists do: he explored it. Photographers, as their name suggests, work with the medium of light.  

Button shined different colors of light through the residue, looked at it from different angles and with different backgrounds, and--being a photographer--got out his macro lens and took pictures of it.

Dalwhinnie 122

As you might imagine, a scotch enthusiast could find this project irresistible.  While he seems, from a quick overview of the images posted in his Vanishing Spirits portfolio, to favor Aberlour (at least for his photos), he has documented his willingness to try other brands, such as Balvenie, Dalwhinnie, or Glenfyddich.

This admirable broad-mindedness has yielded a growing trove of images that range from the celestial to the otherworldly to the weirdly interesting.  Since he only posts the ones he considers most aesthetically successful, it has taken him about 6 years of drinking scotch (it stretches my credulity to think he'd buy top shelf scotch and not drink it) to amass the current collection.

I wish him many more happy years of photography . . . and a stout liver.

At L: Balvenie Double.  At R: Glenfyddich.

IMAGE CREDITS: The photo of the dirty dishes is courtesy of a Real Clear Science blog post by Ross Pomeroy, "A Scientific Argument for Cleaning Dirty Dishes." The images for Aberlour, Balvenie Double, and Glenfyddich are from the "Whiskey Art" post (although they also may be seen on Button's portfolio, along with Dalwhinnie 122.  Many thanks to all these sources!

The Curator's Eye

This is an installation photo from the Embarrassment
of Riches show, when it was on display at the
Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

I have become fascinated by the way art exhibitions are put together--and by the people who do that work.

As I see it, a contemporary art curator often functions as a sort of "meta-artist," when creating an exhibit.  The best bring together a group of artworks to create something with a meaning beyond the sum of the exhibition's parts.

A good case in point is Embarrassment of Riches: Picturing Global Wealth, 2000-2010, curated by David E. Little of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.  It is on display at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS, not far from my home.  The show runs February 25-May 29, 2011.

Fondation Pierre Berge and Yves Saint Laurent, Moujik IV,
Paris, by Alec Soth, from the Embarrassment of Riches
show.  Moujik, the bulldog, takes center stage, with his
bodyguard at left.  Little noted that Moujik was at the show's opening in Minneapolis, September, 2010.

I jumped at the opportunity to listen to Little's discussion of the thinking behind the show's development, when he visited the campus on February 25.  He described his process of realizing that among the great themes in contemporary photography there is rarely any examination of the "cultural impact of wealth."

This led him to seek out images by artists who "have captured the different ways that wealth manifests itself visually," and bring them together into a show.  Sub-themes such as "Currencies," "Spaces," and "Ritual, Style, and Fashion" emerged as he gathered the images.

When my husband and I walked through the show after Little's discussion, we interacted not only with the beauty and insights of the individual pieces, but also with the cumulative effect of seeing them brought together in a deliberate way.

A Lunch at the Belvedere, by Luc Delahaye, from the Embarrassment of
Riches show.  A group of businessmen join George Soros (center, in brown
jacket) and Pervez Musharraf, to his left, at a luncheon in Davos,
Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum in 2004.

Photos are from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts website.