Robert Plogman

The Night of Passing

Mayme Kratz, The Night of Passing, 1995, Oil on panel, 16 x 28 in. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art

The Night of Passing

Mayme Kratz

Musings | Monthly Muse November 2022

Upon approaching Mayme Kratz’s The Night of Passing, I feel more seen than seeing. From the center panel, a bright speck peers at me, as if through time, piercing layers of murky luminescence. I wonder about the source of the light. Does it emanate from a radiant hinterland? From within the blanketing clouds? Searching, my gaze dissolves into the crevasses partitioning the canvas sheets. To penetrate these gaps is to drown in whatever expansiveness holds the three panels: to submit to formless space, to the depths of deep night. I hold my distance, warily.

My eye searches for anchors: What is that gleaming on the left panel? A shape? An opening? A reflection? The horizon, delineating the light of a setting sun? Or is it a fragment of a larger form that holds the darkness within? I look for a story–bridging the panels, left to right. Does the light recast on each canvas portray process? The slow passing from sunset to dawn? The density of the present moment, which embraces both past and future? The pace of our ever-thinking minds? The obliteration and emergence of the self?

Does it move in any direction at all? Does night pass? Or does passing take me out of night, out of my intimacy with these ghostly canvases-made-one? My story begins to take form, dawning slowly. And, whooooosh! I’ve missed the night altogether. It passed as I was trying to make something out of the darkness.

Larisa Castillo
UCI Associate Professor, Humanities Core

Combers (No. 4)

Phil Dike, Combers (No. 4), 1977, Watercolor and graphite on wove paper, 22 x 30 in. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art

Combers (No. 4)

Phil Dike

Musings | Monthly Muse October 2022

I’ve always loved the fluidity of watercolor, those tinted liquids being pushed and pulled across the surface of paper and soaking into its fibers. A similar phenomenon happens at the beach, where ocean tides push water up against the land, some of it soaking in, some of it being pulled back out by the tide. Phil Dike was captivated by both, returning year after year to a summer home on California’s central coast to commune with the ocean and reimagine it in his favored medium of watercolor. Combers (No. 4) catches the dynamism of that environment, where land meets sea. Its horizon line is placed near the top edge of the painting, which focuses the viewer’s attention on the beach—an invitation to look out as much as look down. His view opens the flatness of the sand and water and reveals the layers of life that sustain the coast as a rich, complex place.

James Nisbet
Chair and Associate Professor of Art History, UCI

War Stories

Pat Gomez, War Stories, circa 1991, Serigraph on archival paper, 26 x 36 in. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art

War Stories

Pat Gomez

Musings | Monthly Muse September 2022

Pat Gomez’s War Stories (1991) initially caught my attention due to its striking patterns, colors, and stylized composition. In looking more closely at the heart and rose shapes, I realized that a family history of the artist was embedded within the design. The creation of the work coincides with the end of the Gulf War and the text reveals insights about her family’s involvement in military conflicts. As a former soldier myself, the work and the message resonate with me more than three decades later.

The repeating pattern of red hearts and roses on the purple background represents the narratives that soldiers tell to explain their experiences and trauma when reintegrating back into civilian life. When I look beyond, or within, that narrative, I encounter the small green rectangle with blue hearts and roses, which I view as a window to the personal moments during wartime—jokes told amongst soldiers or conversations with loved ones over phones and laptops. War Stories brings me back to memories never forgotten and stories told that illuminate the impact of war on individuals and families.

Spencer Gomez, '25, PhD (History)
Graduate Curatorial and Research Assistant, Langson IMCA

The Migration of Thought

Kim Abeles, The Migration of Thought, 2004, Serigraph, 28 x 36 in. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art

The Migration of Thought

Kim Abeles

Musings | Monthly Muse August 2022

In Kim Abeles’s The Migration of Thought, disembodied hands from the outer galaxy appear to steer artery-like tubes looping out from Earth. Silhouettes of objects, including a book, laptop, fork, and #235, float in space like constellations. Through this serigraph, I am reminded how much the networked environment and global exchange of information has transformed my field and career as a librarian. Is Abeles depicting the hands of an intergalactic Wizard of Oz or a higher being that circulates information? Is the imagery a playful metaphor for how knowledge evolves and begets new knowledge? For me, this whimsical artwork poses more questions than it answers. It appeals to my innate curiosity and interest in puzzles and paradoxes—the DNA of librarians and researchers around the world.

Lorelei Tanji
University Librarian, UCI Libraries

Sentinels

Henrietta Shore, Sentinels, 20th century, Lithograph, 14 x 10 in. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art

Sentinels

Henrietta Shore

Musings | Monthly Muse July 2022

As a research librarian for visual arts, I was intrigued by this lithograph from an artist I had yet to encounter. After doing some research, I felt an immediate kinship with Henrietta Shore—a Canadian expat who left for the Golden State in her early 30s, just as I did. These cacti may be literal in their form and rendering, but they also spark something more imaginative—tall sentinels, as the title suggests, keeping guard, thriving, blooming, and sprawling upwards. I sense the intense heat and the dry air in the expansive, cloudless sky. As each year passes, they extend their roots more firmly, more confidently. I feel akin to these magnificent plant forms, and I think the artist that created them did, too.

Jenna DuFour
Research Librarian for Visual Arts, UCI Libraries

Body Count Brand

Ben Sakoguchi, Body Count Brand, 1978 – 1979, Acrylic on canvas, 10 x 11 in. The Buck Collection at UCI Institute and Museum of California Art

Body Count Brand

Ben Sakoguchi

Musings | Monthly Muse June 2022

Two generations back, some of my family immigrated to the United States from Ukraine, and I find myself watching media images of the Russian invasion closely from my home in California. Ben Sakoguchi’s Body Count Brand—centered on a carefully painted rendition of a journalist’s gruesome photograph—exposes the tendrils that another far-off war sank deeply into California life. In this small work made nearly half a century ago, Sakoguchi injects imagery of the atrocities of the war in Vietnam into the format of an orange crate label. Oranges of Southern California meet Agent Orange. Death Valley, the great national park, frames the landscape of death along the Mekong. Who is painting California scenarios of today’s suffering in Ukraine?

Bert Winther-Tamaki
Professor of Art History and Visual Studies, UC Irvine