#woodmere

Two women stand in a field of flowers at the entrance to Woodmere Cemetery in Detroit, Michigan. Recorded in glass negative ledger: "D/Cemeteries-Woodmere."

The show at the Woodmere was a walk-by show for me. A pandemic has now made a vaccine-card a requirement. No card, no entry. So, the only art I could see was the kind of art I would see at Storm King in New York--Outdoorsy art. Outdoorsy art here, though, seemed like an echo of artists like Richard Serra or Tony Smith.  Though it took nine years to finally visit this museum, the outdoorsy art and the fact that I couldn't get in was sort of anti-climatic.

 One of the sculptures seemed like a Rodin and Giacometti hybrid. But it didn't have the 'hook' of either, the unabashed trajectory of either, oozing out of the medium. There was an aluminum sculpture colored in sixties vogue--flat shapes and curves, the whole color spectrum, once a contrarian shot at the status quo. It's positioned here as prescient, made in 2017. It reminded me of those decorated calf sculptures I've seen all over the world; they don't seem out of place in cities like New York, where the avant-garde is a fashion statement after a generation or two. In suburban Philadelphia, it still makes for a remarkable impact. Everything else is dull, so what's not dull is an excitation, an optical alkaloid. It doesn't feel right, though, for me, to let this arts locale take the brunt of this visit's commentary. Here's what I mean:

The museum’s free on Sundays. This is what I know. So before a hour-long trip on foot, I'm mildly elated, burden-free. I don't have to pay to get in, which works for me. I'm broke. In the past few years, this pandemic has altered a lot of ways I've encountered destinations; more of a sure-thing in the past for gallery visits, has changed to hit-or-miss. Hit-or-miss has become the-way-it-is, so even with no pay-break on getting in, I'm focused on the trip itself. This jibes with the way that I've been seeing art. It jibes with the way that I review art now. And like I said, I didn't have a vaccine card, so I wasn't allowed in this time. This is how the trip itself becomes important. This is what I see:

The sky is a big dome of blue with no clouds. I walk. The sun belts out Celsius notes. It's a solar outreach. Sunny rays land on the top of leafless grey branches, like snow. Sunlight on cars and on homes, homes and tree, serenade the eyes with a mean squint-making trill. It's winter. It's sunny. The streets are Cathedral-sapped. Underused. with only a few cars at a time, anywhere, so never a traffic jam, or a sense that a lot of people are eager to get to some place. There aren't a lof of people making a day of it outside of their houses. For a city of millions, this isn't a truthful sample.

 The parking lot of the museum is mostly empty, which is a little odd for a day when nobody has to pay to get in. Dead leaves and empty trees neutralize a burgundy sculpture of roots in front of the Woodmere. In the spring or summer it would be a stand out amid bright green grass and bright green tree leaves--a ruddy complement. Now it looks like a blushing 3D life drawing, a presentation of burgundy--the scraggly and sinusoidal form it colors, cancelled out by a stark wintery backdrop.

After I head back home, I stop at an Acme and buy some lotion (it’s on sale). It gets to be that a supermarket is a bank of an eyeful, when I haven't visited galleries for a while. I was anxious  for a stellar painting at the Woodmere, a rescue from scenes like this, the best commercial art in the world, in Acme, for aisles and aisles. Killer branding. A reluctant high. Buy this food! It's then that I like to imagine a visit one day to some gallery or museum to view some work of art: Levitating Mass in LA, the School of Athens in Paris, The Annunciation at the Philadelphia Art Museum. For now, it's a waiting game. I hope my eyes can take it.

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woodmere

Hungry Harbor Rd.