www.sage.edu/opalka
November 1 - December 16, 2009 NOW at the Opalka Gallery
Albany, NY
DONA ANN McADAMS: "Some Women"
This exhibit surveys 35 years of this significant photographer's work, exploring this artist's deep interest in women which threads through all of the portfolios of this keenly engaged observer. The show consists of 35 gelatin silver prints dating from 1974 to the present. This exhibit is the first full career survey evidencing the constancy and growth of this artist's vision.
December 9, at the gallery: GUEST of CINDY SHERMAN "Guest of Cindy Sherman" takes an eye-opening look at what happens when a skeptical outsider finds himself romantically involved with the ultimate insider. Present for the screening will be the director of the film, Paul H-O, and photographer Dona Ann McAdams, who appears in the film. There will be a question and answer session after the showing.
PAUL HASEGAWA-OVERACKER PHOTOGRAPHED BY DONA McADAMS AFTER HIS BICYCLE ACCIDENT, 1984
"THE GHOST OF CINDY SHERMAN RIDES THE BIG ONE"
75Grand.posterous.com
12-10-09
Albany Patrick and I, having learned at the last minute about the showing of Paul H-O's "Cindy Sherman" documentary, rushed over to Opalka gallery for the screening. The weather had been crappy all day, slush and sleet still filled the streets. Parking at the gallery was simple. Parking slots were numerous. We slogged through the muck, tracking snow and ice onto the gallery's polished hardwood floor. Every time we stood still for a moment, to look at one of Dona McAdams silver gelatin enlargements, a puddle would form at our feet. "Oooh, this one's nice," says Patrick. I slide over beside him. A lonely prostitute stands, deep in the space of an industrial streetscape in Barcelona. As we're moving around,
I'm noting the locations where the photos were made: Fiji, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Barcelona, Madrid, and a few places that remainded unidentified. "This one's pretty interesting," Patrick says. I cut across the gallery to see what he's looking at and the gallery lights start flashing, telling us it's time to find some seats, as the film showing is about to start. Because of the lousy weather, turnout for the showing is light, and we have no problem finding seats in the front row. In fact, we've got the first two rows to ourselves. Patrick shucks off his knee-high Wellingtons, dropping them in a puddle by the seat next to him. I toss my hat, coat and scarf onto the seat beside me. He leaves his fedora on his head and two scarves wrapped around his neck. "Hey, you might get heat stroke," I tell him.
"I'm cold," he replies. I'm still dripping, so I know what he means. Jim Wilson, gallery director introduces Paul "Aeicho" (at least that what I hear) producer and director of the Cindy Sherman
documentary. Paul then mumbles a short lead-in to the film we're about to see. Actually, he has a kind of conversation with someone in the back of the auditorium. The space is small, about 100 seats, so conversing is not too difficult.
"We were a lot younger then," says Paul. "Yeah, and cuter too," says the woman in back. Patrick and I shoot each other looks, wondering what this is going to be about. Lights out, roll the film. We're watching a surfing documentary. "Ride the Wild Surf" or "The
Last Wave" or "Surfer, Dude" or "Beyond Paradise" or "Liquid Bridge" or "Have Board Will Travel" or "Cat on a Hot Foam Board" or "Waterlogged" or "Walk on the Wet Side" or "High on a Cool Wave" or "Sacrifice for Surf" or "Gone with the Wave" or "Ride on the Wild Side" or "A Life in the Sun" or "Going My Wave" or "Huh?" or "Splashdown" or "Some Like it Wet" or "Bottoms Up" or "Stop the Wave, I Wanna Get Off" or maybe even "Dr. Strangesurf." "Hey, I thought this was suppossed to be an art movie," says Patrick, a little too loudly for my comfort. "Uh, yeah, that's what I thought," I whisper. "Do you wanna leave?" "Yep," he says, "I'm hungry." We stand up. Pull on our coats and hats, still dripping with snow and ice, and head off for CCK, the new Chinese restaurant on Central Avenue, where I've heard,
the food is incredible. "Oh yeah," says Patrick, "we eat there all the time. We'll have Crispy Duck with Taro, Whole Flounder in Black Bean Sauce, Pepper with Salty Soft Shell Crab, Conch with
Golden Mushrooms, and maybe a side of Sauteed Snow Pea Tips." "Are you THAT hungry?" I ask him. "You bet," he says. "Snow and cold always gives me an appetite."
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artnet.com
04-25-07 by Paul H-O (Hasegawa-Overacker)
"STREET SHOTS" In 1984 I ended up living in New York. I didn't have a plan. I was an artist and I had a show at P.S. 1, and when the show moved on, I stayed. I didn't have anywhere to live, and this photographer I knew had a basement darkroom in the East Village, so I crashed there for a couple months until I found a place in Brooklyn. Then that winter I started working as a bike messenger, and after five road-rashing months I got a job with an art mover from Queens. Four days before I was to start my new gig I was blindsided by a car while on a messenger run and I woke up in Bellevue Emergency Room. My face was a mess and I was missing a tooth and a half. When I showed up at the new job, I was a big hit. Everyone thought it was funny, including the photographer, who took some headshots of me, and now when I look at them it reminds me of the good old days. That photographer -- Dona Ann McAdams -- is having a long-overdue exhibition in New York at the Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center on Manhattan's West Side. Her photo of me didn't make the cut, but I think you should check out the show all the same... Though it emphasizes photographs of the downtown New York performance art scene in the 1980s and 90s -- Dona Ann's specialty -- the show also includes pictures that have nothing to do with staged performances. In fact, McAdams best work is the street stuff, the part of real life where the staging has to do with how the shooter frames the action. The action taking begins when Dona Ann was attending the San Francisco Art Institute and running all over California shutterbugging that wacked-out decade. McAdams pictures from the 70s are old school black-and-white American cultural landscape, with the usual subjects from the history of photography, but McAdams shots are seriously wry, postmodern, bisexual and feline. Dona's pictures are full of quirks, framed with humor and pathos. I'mfascinated with the UCLA Cheerleader (1976) because it's sexy, and the crowd is vast and all over the frame. I know I'm not alone in liking a good cheerleader picture. When Dona Ann returned to her hometown of New York at the end of the 70s and into the 80s, she shot the mean streets of Loisaida's Alphabet City, patients in a mental ward, the Hasidim in Williamsburg, Barcelona before the Olympics and more. But especially she more or less became the top photographer of downtown performance art. Now when anyone needs pictures of the outrageous talents moshing the club scene and PS 122 in the East Village, Eric Bogosian, Holly Hughes, Ann Magnuson, Meredith Monk, Ethyl Eichelberger, David Wojnarowicz, etc., McAdams is the one they go to. That work became "Caught in the Act", published by Aperture in 1996. One sharp picture in the show is the now-classic 1987 photo of Karen Finley, her topless bod covered in raw egg and glitter, shoveling handfuls of Easter candy at the frightened but excited audience at PS 122. Dona Ann was and is the only shooter to capture Finley's infamous early performances. Senator Jesse Helms waved
Dona's photos of Karen around on the Senate floor in an apoplectic rant about the NEA 4 (and then no doubt used them to fan himself later in the Senate toilet). Look at the pictures and you understand how much Dona and her Leica quietly collaborated with artists performing live and with the extreme power of youth. The performance photographs capture stage scenes that were notably stellar, and often excruciatingly politically and sexually indulgent. Attending art performances back then was a dicey undertaking, but McAdams photos are symbiotic with their subjects, and convey the passion and beauty of the best and most outrageous talents that did their thing during that turbulent Reagan era. Not to mention the flopping dicks and hairy pussies flaunted in stark defiance of good Christian morals. You had to be there. PAUL HASEGAWA-OVERACKER (H-O) is presently in post-production on the
feature documentary, "Guest of Cindy Sherman." 
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