Ken Price in “Time” and Barbara Harmon in Taos

(Paul O’Connor’s photo of a Price Sculpture at Matthew Marks gallery in LA)

“No ideas but in things”—William Carlos Williams

In today’s world of confused concepts and claims, the reader and observer can take refuge in William Carlos Williams answer to general ideas. The poet said, there are “no ideas but in things.” He illustrated his notion of poetry with:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.

Williams notion of poetry matches the way Ken Price worked, creating stuff—poetic objects—for which there is no equivalent idea except a synthesis of the artist’s own particular notion of beauty, humor, and ingenuous expression (not unlike Barbara Harmon, see below).

In Time Magazine’s Oct. 1 edition, the one with former president Bill Clinton, gracing the cover, the art and culture section features a three-page story, illustrated by pieces of Ken Price sculpture, called the “Price is Right: A dazzling show sends an artist into the canon” by Richard Lacayo.

According to Lacayo, the Ken Price retrospective of the LA artist features the “witty and mysterious ceramic sculpture at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)…an event that settles him firmly in the canon of great American artists.” For a tour of Kenny’s early cups at the Frank Lloyd gallery with Larry Bell see: http://vimeo.com/49977613

For art aficionados here in Taos, you would do well to visit the Blumenshein Museum on Ledoux St., where a retrospective show of the “Magic and Mystery of Barbara Sayre Harmon” is currently featured. Though the show is called “65 years of painting in Taos,” and Barbara, the community’s favorite fashionista, painted in Taos, the work itself is otherworldly, full of fantasy, and deftly executed. She and Williams, above, were both part of the Black Mountain College sphere of influence.

Barbara has created an imaginary world, as rich as a child’s dreams—like the books she has written and illustrated for the small ones. She is a remarkable artist, whose use of various media are remarkable for her extraordinary attention to detail. The show itself features rarely seen works from the forties to the present.

And, on Friday night, Sept. 21, the indefatigable Barbara herself, a bridge between the Taos moderns and contemporaries, was there–as witty and stylish as always.