LookSee MakeReal

Precision

2012-03-08T22:37:00.002-05:00

What kills me about so many great artists is the precision of their words in handling difficult and elusive concepts. This is just tonight's example. There's always a little poetic joy in my mind (tiny parade) when I see another artist take a word like a pushpin to their work.

Jonathan Lasker

Productivity

2012-03-06T19:06:00.003-05:00

In regards to the last post-- Periods of rapid expansion can really take a toll on that 'protective' part of the identity. Rapid expansion also including paradigm shifts, large influxes of new information, new surroundings, new risks, basically-- change. I can say I've been through a lot of that lately and I've been doing a lot of really dingy things. I have felt amazing, but just really forgetful (more than usual) and a little scattered. It's not a totally unfamiliar feeling, but I can say that it's been awhile.

The problem is at the intersection of that expanding sphere of your creation-mind and your daily life. The rapid growth of one seems to render you childlike or even infantile as you're trying to digest the new information. Not only that, but the call of the growing creation-mind is so strong that many daily responsibilities seem pretty much irrelevant. Well, they might be irrelevant but it sure it nice to have gas, water and power. Plus you just become exhausted. Time to rest up and build back that adaptive, shock-absorbing part of one's identity.

Clarity?

2012-02-12T01:14:00.004-05:00

I feel a much clearer sense of how to proceed in the studio right now. Much clearer than ever, actually. There's no doubt that finding other avenues of expression has facilitated this clarity. Anxiety that one clings to ("I'm incapable of ....") outside the studio MUST inhibit creation within the studio. These self-imposed boundaries we all create serve to keep us comfortable (and in some cases focused, I guess) but also forever restricted.

It seems like an artist's identity has to be simultaneously focused and fluid to manage some kind of productive sanity. The focused part is... fairly untouchable, nearly indescribable. I imagine this like a hidden engine room where crazy amounts of fuel are being consumed. Then around that I imagine so much protective layering: adaptive, gel-like, seemingly casual and very absorbent. Anyone ever seen that old Kung-fu movie, The Drunken Master?? Yeah, like that.

Artist's Statement

2012-01-25T15:03:00.003-05:00

Here I go, at it again. I swear I've really nailed it this time. Before I edited, first I made a catalogue of all the paintings I consider "my best". Thankfully, they all made sense together AND erased a lot of the anxiety I tend to feel when the lesser paintings are included. This is the benefit to being brutal. So I'm not going to post the statement but I do think it's interesting to look at the keywords in it. This list could probably stand on its own as a statement.

Chasing, earnest, wonder, natural, frivolous, dark, brutal, power, nature, horrible, ridiculous, consumption, whipping, playground, mania, awe, clarity, humor, frolic, process, mastication, landscape, playful, stripping, abstraction, freedom, new, strange, specific, novelty, absurdly, project, discovery, painting, impossible, color, seduces, confounds, unseen, terrain, explore.

The 4 Pitfalls

2011-11-29T19:02:00.004-05:00

There are 4 things to watch out for in life. Allegorically, they are: Tigers, Poisons, Storms and Gardens.

Tigers are predatory individuals. They are spurned lovers, manipulative acquaintances, and the like. Poisons obviously represent health concerns- to ward off this one you eat healthy and actually go outdoors. It often takes years to see the damage. Storms are much bigger cultural events, let's say if you were an Egyptian right now. Political unrest certainly qualifies as a 'storm'. Even potentially positive things can have this effect on a person, such as OWS. Gardens are really tricky. Gardens are situations that lull you into a state of calm, which can be great for the moment. Unfortunately, they can also allow you to dismiss your more curious spirit and creative energy.

It's almost December now, a time when I feel this pull very much. Maybe some would think I'm odd for thinking of gardens as pitfalls, but most of the meaning in my life comes from things I create- things I have to get up and do, dream up, fight against doubt, not from the place where I clock in (not that there's anything wrong with that!).

I thought I'd share this little big of personal mythology. It really helped me to organize potential negative effects when I had a "tiger" in my life. I found to look at him in this way made him a little smaller and the pain easier to bear. It reminded me that these situations happen literally to billions of people, and that it's not so novel after all. I suppose it helped me not take things personally.

Fixing a hole where the rain gets in

2011-09-16T14:59:00.005-04:00

When Hurricane Irene's rains hit Richmond, they caused a minor leak where the newly installed Sean Scully painting was hanging and so it was temporarily removed. Today, I went to check on it and found it returned to the wall. I spent about 20 minutes looking at it and felt the time fly by.

I think it's important to have more conversations about what we think about when we look at art. What actually goes through your mind? I have a suspicion that a lot of folks project a great deal onto the work without letting it impact them too greatly. I also suspect that when I see or hear people get frustrated with a piece, that's them just beginning to allow the piece of art into their consciousness. You can look at a painting and get a sense that it's really offering something to you but maybe you try to put that emotion into words too quickly and it shuts down. And you get angry. I bring all of this up because I have had some trouble talking off the cuff about art despite my studies. And because I see such a disconnect between the people I know who have studied art (or who know someone closely who has) and people who have not.

It's like a language barrier. I find it so frustrating! Not against anyone, but frustrating due to my own inability to communicate the gravity of what I'm looking at. Paintings like the one I looked at today are....like an escape hatch to a place where you can look back out at the world, so not exactly escaping....but...see? Stupid, words. In other words, it would make sense to me if Sean Scully and other contemporary artists were revered in a more populist way. I imagined running out behind the art museum to the first person I saw, grabbing their hand and saying, "Come quickly, you have to see this". Not just because that would be hilarious, but because really, it deserves this kind of treatment.

But I've gotten off-track. Here's my best to describe what went through my head while looking at the monumental Sean Scully painting. Not because I am enlightened in any way but as an act of disclosure:

Giant painting! Then I noticed the triptych format, all three butted together. There are some weird spatial things happening at the top and bottom of the middle piece. They recede. I thought about the word, "impasse". Then I thought about the sky and landscapes. And how the top part could easily stand as it's own as a muted horizon. An American landscape of a distant sleepy town. I noticed the scale of the brush marks. All about 3". How he worked back into colors so there was a glowing effect to some parts. Especially the "white/grey" set. Then I thought about yellow ochre and how it does something very peculiar to me. Grounded, energetic, satiated. I thought about the three parts and how they had different temperaments and how if my mom were there I'd ask her which one reflected the most how she felt. I decided the right one was most like me at the moment. There was a lot of vertical pressure at the top. I imagined the middle piece as a stage persona. And the different expressions of black, some very bluish and I got lost in those for a while. Then I focused on this weird brushstroke in the middle of the painting and another in the upper right. How did that mark get made??? Then they receded. Some people walked in and I got self-conscious. I spent a lot of time finding groupings and patterns and letting them wash over me. And kept returning to the glowing blue around some of the stripes. I felt a certain intimidation from the red and black stripes in the very middle (stage persona) and noticed how they seemed figurative or at least sculptural. I thought about signs and why those longer thinner stripes seemed to signify a passage of some kind. The vertical ones and the horizontal ones would mean passage through different aspects, like one for time and one for space. I inwardly rolled my eyes at myself for thinking that way. I feel a connection to whoever created this- I feel so relieved to see the evidence not only of the hand but of a brain working around this space in the same way. Just moving around the space, considering color, considering marks. Painting reflects the world in a way that's neither high nor low. I imagined being surrounded by an encompassing wall of Sean Scully painting. Then I reminded myself that's not what I'm looking at, THIS is what the artist gave me. THIS is what I'm looking at. I couldn't stop thinking about the word "abutment". Because that was one thing that seemed to carry a great deal of meaning but I couldn't put into words why. I didn't really like any of the answers I could come up with. They seemed too definite. Too located. Too separate from the painting, such as: the sudden dramatic change of form and mark evokes the kind manner in which change affects our own lives. Barf, I thought. But still it is meaningful despite my inability to build a sentence around it. Don't push so hard. Just keep looking. Despite my reminder to myself, I thought about faith and how in abstraction there is so often this density, this 'hahaha' fluctuation of foreground and background. Faith, in the sense you know the answer to everything is probably right there but you can never quite reach it. A deliberate withholding. Every so often I would just become overwhelmed by the overall presence of the piece again but I could never hold onto that idea for very long. It was almost an animal or hormonal feeling, like I got startled by it all over again. I let it wash over me for a moment longer and then left.

There are dozens of fragmentary thoughts stuck in there too like: tapestry, earthiness, ground, sense of flight but stable- what the hell, passing through or looking down??, prison bars, contained but not trapped, and on and on.

That's all. Just do it! I suggest everyone go find a painting that makes you raise an eyebrow and spend at least 20 minutes looking at it.

Boom, shaka...laka?

2011-08-19T13:50:00.005-04:00

When I speak their language I fail

See me drift mid-sentence

Know where I am headed:

Between pages, between glances (how geometry was born)

Past that blinding light, there must be something to see

once your eyes adjust

The energy within and the energy around

Places your waking life has stolen

Something inside, something that must be freed

A rotten edifice that must be destroyed

A celebration hall, festooned but uninhabited

An abandoned house, deep within the woods

The flickering of light on the leaves

dancing, almost mocking

as they obscure but become your vision

A bed of many fabrics, an array of elixirs

Make-believe, a silly place, a sudden place

a realization, a recognition

a premonition, a pattern writ

A space destroyed with a wave

of an indelicate hand

A radical light, a power

A skeptic searching for a potent spell

Where any object can take on this living quality

this breathing color

This THING, this thing that sneaks up on me

This strange beauty that lurks around the corner

This shape-shifter of meaning, this house of lunatic potentials

and renegade spectrums and spectral renegades

You and I, the only eyes

You and I, the spark, the source

You and I, so patient, so HUNGRY

Picasso at the VMFA, notes, thoughts, etc part 2

2011-04-29T23:05:00.005-04:00

So I tried to approach the Picasso show with fresh eyes. I ignored most of the biographical content in order to simply look and respond to the work. The first piece that I felt a deeper engagement with was a painting of 2 bubbly abstracted figures copulating on what appeared to be a desolate seashore. The copulation wasn't sensual it was more violent, like they were attacking each other. What was so striking to me was the transformation of the scene. The background is simplified but not abstracted in the same sense as the figures. To me, this created a dissonance that was both exciting and melancholy. That doesn't seem to translate at all in this little jpeg. That dissonance really traps the figures in time in a way that seemed eerily familiar and somewhat ugly.

Two other pieces affected me in a similar way: there was a painting of a light in a wine bottle juxtaposed with a goat skull figure. He painted the emanating light from the candle in the wine bottle. Next to the painting was a sculpture of the same scene but with the rays of light made into physical brutal spikes. This represented to me another brutal transformation of the known physical, experienced world into limbo. I distinctly got the impression with these pieces that I was seeing a wholly realized, if terrifying, alternative reality. Not just the idea of an alternative reality, the actual thing. Like I had a portal to it.

Picasso at the VMFA, notes, thoughts, etc

2011-04-29T15:24:00.005-04:00

First of all, I'm not entirely sure Virginia is ready for 1910 based on the conversations I overheard. For example: "Well, TO ME, that just doesn't look like it should be in a museum". To me, that just shows that you're completely unaware of what it is an artist is trying to do. Drawing is thinking through the hand. Picasso's drawings are of interest because you can see that thought process in a stripped down form. Also, *BACKHAND*.

This is not to say I don't have questions, concerns, preoccupations with the show also. Unfortunately, I can't seem to separate my personal studio preoccupations with what I'm seeing at the museum. So let me get that out of the way and come back around to the show....

It's a problem of purity, a problem of everything's permitted so therefore nothing seems to matter in particular. This feeling is not limited to the studio. Within the studio, this is translating into a problem differentiating art from fashion. The general distinction is simple and well-understood: art carries meaning where fashion carries superficial contemporary aesthetics. But the specific is tricky, as always.

I'm craving a method, a recipe. I'm tired of what feels like random achievement. At the same time I am wary of abstraction with a system behind it. I can't think of artists I relate to that employ a 'system' to generate their work where the system itself actually contributes to my appreciation of the piece. (My recent addiction, Steve Roden below. Employs a system but what does it add???)

I'm also feeling very seduced by contemporary fashion. It just happens to reflect back my own sensibilities. In 5 years I'll be out of fashion, it's just coincidence, the wheel turning. Unfortunately, my own yearning for meaning manifests as an urge to mythologize. It's very hard for me not to jump straight from that urge into primitivism and symbolism. I keep hovering around the native american and Ife exhibits at the museum like some kind of nerdy ghost. Of course, this sort of thing happens to be in fashion right now. Are you feeling my frustration yet?? It does seem important not to be reactionary also.

Part 2 after work...where I will bring this all around to Picasso, I swear.

Disciplinarian

2010-05-03T03:10:00.005-04:00

So awkward trials gave way to a return to order, or a return to the need to organize thoughts, palettes, methods and the studio. I feel good about this- or I should say, I feel that intuitive pinch that tells me that this is correct. I think there can be this push to throw the baby out with the bath water in studio practice, when things aren't adding up, to keep asking 'why, why, why??' and continually redefining oneself unnecessarily.

Perhaps we do this in an attempt to hide our weaknesses from ourselves or in an effort to get somewhere quickly. Usually it drives us into increasingly tighter circles.

In either case, I'm glad to mix a wonderfully traditional palette with a full range, rediscovering some subtle colors that I appreciate in nature but haven't mixed specifically in a long time. Mmmm...purple. Yellow. And everything in between....

Awkward trials not awkward enough

2010-03-02T19:34:00.006-05:00

Letters- not words, he says. And although it did finish with one legible word, he's right. And why it took me 2+ years to try something I wanted to do, I don't know. I only know it has to be a lesson and a command to OPEN up. Yes, it's a mediocre painting but it offers up some possibilities.

First of all, the world didn't implode. When you go most of your life pinging from thing to thing and then find some measure of focus, it can be scary to throw something new in the mix. In fact, fear has trickled into everything and it is indeed the enemy.

So, there are some letters in the painting. I guess my fear was masked as an assumption. An assumption that 'why bother it's going to be too declarative, pin it down too much, too grounded, be a red herring, etc' was made. It turned out to be mostly correct. But I forgot all the things you learn on the way- it had been so long since I threw a wrench in my work on purpose (having to dodge incidental wrenches from outside).

I learned that it will be possible for me to work with letters but that it's going to take more time/trials. I learned that using letters could offer yet another tool, another dimension in the painting. If I play with signifiers of space, is it so off-base to play with signifiers of language/sound? And if it is, I need to learn that the hard way. In fact, this painting isn't awkward enough, it's just crap. Really. Garage sale $5.

be compassionate with your time

2010-01-23T14:29:00.003-05:00

I would like to hear something I've never heard before- but I can't go looking for it. I would like to see a place I've never seen but I can't go searching for it. January, I guess, is just a time for biding time and posing questions. It also seems like a time for quick decay, because every word, thought or idea seems to dissolve as soon as it exits the mind. They don't linger like I need them to- in order to move them around and arrange them into something cohesive. Nothing is leading into anything else, everything is self-contained. And that just doesn't work for me. C'mon March- and freedom.

I will not fight the season but I will try to ride it a little more gracefully. That is my promise to you, January. Febuary, I make no promises.

On the positive side, I can say that I have been honest with my words, which may explain the quick decay. It's amazing how many opinions I used to back down on just because I wasn't as loud. Maybe January can also be for agreeing to disagree and forgiving. I mean forgiveness in the small sense especially right now- forgiveness of the slightly awkward, strange, inappropriate, slow, dumb, snobbish or biting. I believe that I used to jump at every slight turn but that it really gets us nowhere to do so. The people I really like being around right now understand this or are also trying.

Now, if I can only escape the Death Star and get back to the studio. The Death Star sure has great health insurance.

Jessica Stockholder

2009-11-24T00:56:00.002-05:00

Stockholder!!!!

Here's one image to get you going. I like that she doesn't let people back her into a "junk art" corner and that she's not ashamed of formalism. And that her work seems like it's mad as a hatter but it has such an inner strength/logic that it almost laughs at you if you think, dismissively, "eh, mad as a hatter". It's going to start following you around, forming little clusters in your own home......

Bombastic Fantastic

2009-11-21T02:52:00.004-05:00

Just got done writing new artist's statement. It's a delicate balance between sounding like a goober and totally not getting your point across. I have to stop myself from getting sucked into the writing and making some huge arc in my explanation. I always think, "this time I got it just right, more direct and too the point" and then I come back later and read it. Yeesh. It's not that I ever get it wrong, per se...I just always want to roll my eyes at the language just a little. First sentence from my last one:

My paintings are born out of the friction between the epic and the absurd, the

grand and the mundane.

new one:

Through abstraction, I bring dimension to impossible combinations of color and form.

I really do just have to breathe a little before I write and not try to cram it all in one sentence. "Born out of the friction" though...how can you fight a phrase like that when it comes to you? for real though...nobody gets to use epic, grand, absurd and mundane in the first sentence of their artist's statement. Nobody.

Durr

2009-11-07T21:11:00.004-05:00

1. Radical Light.

2. In-deep color.

3. Weirdo sub-reality, sub-consciousness forms.

4. (or maybe =) The possibility for infinite engagement.

What the hell else is so important???

Durr

Radical Light (Sha-na-na)

2009-09-27T00:53:00.004-04:00

Quick photo of a weird painting in progress....

Beading Frenzy with special thanks to Miami Vice

2009-08-30T03:56:00.003-04:00

heavy synth tracks fuel heavy beading.

It's taking over my life

and I don't mind

Before and after

2009-04-04T18:05:00.004-04:00

Here's a little before and after. Not like a show on TLC, more like sideshow curiousity.

It's such a frustration being a painting czar and having to give up certain loved parts for the good of the many.

Now you can say you've traveled through space and time with me. That's all I ever wanted! The more greenish one is the latest.

Camera Shy

2009-01-10T14:21:00.002-05:00

My most recent painting....it seems to have taken a turn for the darker...

To me this is understandable and necessary. This photo kinda kills the blues in it. Stupid jpeg.

Victorious Spirit

2008-11-05T16:18:00.003-05:00

It makes me so happy to know that what I saw in Barack Obama about two years ago was seen by so many other Americans. I feel a renewed sense of kinship with you all that was hidden or discolored by previous elections and the climate of the last eight years. Last night, every state I ever lived went blue: Indiana, New Mexico, Virginia and (although I guess it's still not official) North Carolina.

I was in London when we began the wrong war and watched as the world's perception of our country changed from a beacon to a warning light. Now I know that we can begin to heal those relationships.

Yesterday in Henrico County (and a little in Richmond City) I spoke with so many Obama supporters and was happy to provide those people with a little bit of added enthusiasm by checking to see if they had already voted. Those that had were excited to see someone out 'working it' , many were literally on their way out the door and a few of them arranged for rides with us. The lead volunteers were organized, professional and determined. Kudos to them for opening their own doors to allow us to be more effective.

As the results of this election sink in for me and my eyes dry up from the tears of joy last night, I sense some ghosts of hatred fleeing the places where they had festered for so long. Roanoke and Richmond City both voted for the first African-American president (as well as many other southern cities). Wow. That diluted sense of darkness that has hovered behind me here in Richmond is gone.

And listen, it's not that I think he's going to build a utopia- it's more that I feel confident in his decision-making faculties. The things that he spoke about in his acceptance speech were idealistic and I like it that way. It's what I saw in him from the beginning. Let's not shy away from the best of all possible worlds, but let's not turn our heads when it inevitably something doesn't go as planned. For now, I will bask in this result and try to apply some of those grand ideals a little more in my own life.

On one sad note, proposition 8 in California did pass, revoking the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples throughout the state. It hurts me to see people actively taking away an existing right of another group. Shame on you. It's just meanness, prejudice, ignorance and fear. Results like this are sobering and remind us of the long road ahead. After all, it's not like Virginia even had this possibility on the table. What will happen to gay and lesbian couples who have already gotten married?

One more thing, speaking about people of the right-wing variety. John McCain's concession speech was very appropriate and I think he did an excellent job in trying to calm his *ahem* enthusiastic supporters. I heard them yelling things out during the speech, heard them booing and McCain very forcefully told them to stop. Now, certainly his tactics are somewhat to blame for stoking some of the fire in these people but at last now he can return to being John McCain and not whoever that was on the campaign trail.

Yes, yes, y'all. Let's hope now for the return of civility.

seek to uncover a mystery color

2008-10-20T20:55:00.005-04:00

The prospect of moving forward with your work can often feel like trying to perform magic, like trying to turn a wall into a door or window. You know you've done it before, but was it a dream? The questions you had put aside coming running to your ankles like little gnomes. Some of them are nasty little buggers!

The work I showed in Greensboro this fall was my first body of work post-grad school. I wanted to continue down a path of these strange deliberate marks that build up an uncertain and fantastic space. It was also very essential that I effectively stop myself- that I test my intuition to recognize something that works before I move past it and take the painting in another direction. There were two paintings that went past that mark and ended up being interesting, but more like my previous work.

I strove to make it a show about color, to use combinations I had felt to be important or rich internally but had previously left to the will of the painting. In other words, I somewhat let color be the dictator this time. Color certainly is the biggest of those gnomes and it tends to bite. Why is that? Because it's hard to talk about. It's very infuriating. You can find bits of text here and there that start to hit upon the importance of color.... (the 'haptic space' of Francis Bacon paintings)....but you still have to put it all together for yourself.

Everyone loves and talks about synesthesia, including myself, but there are particular reasons why this is important to painting. Dur, people, it's about illusion. When your brain senses the illusion of space but knows it to be a flat surface, it makes this great contradiction that your mind responds to by trying to involve all of your other senses. I know this happens in music too, through a different means but through an aspect that is as basic to music as flatness v illusion is to painting/imagemaking, but what is it? What is chromatic music? I keep thinking I've found the answer to this but I just find examples of it working....

Clip of the Presidential Debate

2008-10-15T23:54:00.002-04:00

Ok, so I saw this on Keith Olbermann, big whoop. I just HAD to repost it.

Whitewashing

2008-10-12T14:10:00.002-04:00

Can we go ahead and vote already??? The longer this thing drags on, the more insane I will become. You know, I've heard peers say 'you can't trust either candidate' or 'they're really the same'. Now, I don't see that as much in this election as in 2004, but it's certainly there. It's not their fault! Have you seen McCain squirm lately? He hates what his campaign is forcing him to say. Both candidates have been trimmed down so much that they appear similar. I hate that Obama is forced to denounce his pastor and spend time explaining his connection to Bill Ayres. Everything that is particular to the character of each man has been removed or distorted. The hype takes over and we suddenly look at our politicians the same way we look at Britney Spears.

They are statesmen. Statesmen!

Can we vote already??

Don't let America whitewash you. 'Radical' in the USA is like 'Thursday' in the EU. We are acting like an adolescent country, picking away at tiny unimportant things while the bigger picture is escaping us. We might be failing math class but all we can talk about is what a big slut Melissa is and how she's totally not a natural blonde.

Shake it off, America.

Eve Ascheim and Kiki Smith

2008-10-06T14:52:00.016-04:00

I am completely paranoid that people distrust and fear abstraction. In the Weatherspoon Art Museum this weekend, I went to look as the Eve Ascheim show and people just cruised through that gallery. I must remember that it is not my job to proselytize or carry the flag of a particular doctrine. If I start worrying about other people too much, my own work will never grow.

I'm just saying....talk about leaving room for the viewer! Her work was really inviting to me, that's why it's so surprising that everyone was zooming through. There was this surprising warmth in the paintings, or cleanliness without sterility. I felt relief in looking at this work, relief like some kind of mental stress or anxiety has just been removed. Like you woke up in a different (and better) room.

Kiki Smith is difficult for me, I won't lie. Several pieces in the room really challenged me while others fell completely flat. I should point out that these were prints. I think the pieces were the most interesting when they moved further away from more literal trappings of folk-tales and mythology, etc. The more the pieces move away from that, the more you can feel the presence of those myths.

If you're near the area, check it out.
Images, top to bottom: Eve Ascheim, Untitled and Convergence.

Kiki Smith, My Blue Lake.

my first first Friday

2008-10-04T10:25:00.013-04:00

The first couple of stops I made on Broad street left me wanting a little more...grit, I think you might call it. The work I mentioned in an earlier post, Rebecca Murtaugh's, turned out to be seductive, sure, but that is where the work remained for me. Her pieces were beautiful objects.

I really didn't feel 'at home' with any of the work I saw until I got to the Church of the Crystal Light. I wonder if this is just a superficial bias of mine- preferring a setting of informality to the polished veneer of the other galleries.

Nah.

Interesting work is interesting work. The scattered wall piece, made up of what might be called visual and textual 'one-liners' became more than just 'one-liners'. How? I think it was in the volume and diversity of the blips and blurbs, the spontaneous, scrawling feel of the whole piece. Each addition was different than the last in content, in material, usually scale, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that each 'statement' up there was done by a separate person. If that's not the case, damn....bravo. It was unpretentious and fresh, subtly aligning itself with politically minded sensibilty while simultaneously pointing out the ridiculous behavior of such people, or at least, their all encompassing statements.

Also included in that show were two wall paintings (Maya Hayuk) that were seductive in grittier way than the 1708 gallery. It's not that I have something against the meticulous or rigorously ordered as a rule- but like everything else, it's all about how those aspects are deployed. To put it simply, I thought Rebecca Murtaugh's works were closed to me while these wall paintings remained open.

The Transmission gallery offered me the best paintings of the night. It was immediately clear in viewing Alexis Semtner's work that the 'bar' of the whole evening had been raised, or at least, here's someone "really moving some paint around". Her work is such an interesting balance of control and release, surface and illusion. As a show, the inclusion of another installation by Maya Hayuk fit well just formally, tied as it was to a grid but not rigidly so. I guess it was also refreshing in hindsight to see work that looks at geometry in a non-purist light (both Hayuk and Semtner).

"Optical Illude this Biatch" by Alexis Semtner (rt)
"Teen Center" by Maya Hayuk (below)

Reading Rainbow - Rauschenberg leads to Harris

2008-10-02T15:49:00.006-04:00

This book I'm reading on Robert Rauschenberg keeps apologizing that he's not as shocking as he would have been in the late 50's, early 60's. Sure, probably not. Especially his later work in which he really tried to address the media assault. It's not his fault that the really relevant work centered around that subject would be addressed more fully by those who were born in the 60's. However...his early work to me is timeless. Maybe non-painters are tired of this kind of talk by 2008:

"I put my trust in the materials that confront me, because they put me in touch with the unknown....I like to start working...when my sense of efficiency is exhausted".

But I'm not. This kind of thinking is still relevant. In fact, the only thing trying to make it irrelevant is our fad-oriented culture (art world included).

Rauschenberg did not plan his paintings. Continual discovery = genetic makeup of paintings. This is why they can still appear so fresh. He offered you an alternative way of seeing your world by bringing outside objects into the works, and HOW he used those objects NOT to build up a representative whole (thinking cubist collage) but with "apparent indifference to their situation". Object is place is object is painting is color is mark is place...etc. Now that is simultaneity.

Stupid rabbit hole, now I feel like I need to talk about why that perception of simultaneity is worthwhile. You know what-- I'm going to leave that open, sort of...

I also picked up a book at the VCU library called "Discrepant Abstraction". I picked it up casually at first and flipped to an article called, "Quantum Ghosts: An Interview with Wilson Harris". Here's as far as I got:

"His novels breach temporal, geographic, epistemic and other boundaries to advance a complex mantling of inner and outer apprehension, narrative dispatch meeting metaphysical enquiry meeting lyrical compression meeting gnostic demur."

What you say??? So I absolutely had to go check out a copy of his first novel, "Palace of the Peacock". Wowowowow. If your sensibility is anything like mine, pick it up. Compression/Expansion. Our location in the book, or the story, I should say, haha-- I just picked it up as I was thinking of where I was going to go with this sentence and read-- "crash and collide and collapse". Yes, our placement in the narrative crashes, collides and collapses. The 'lyrical compression' seems to be key to my understanding of the book, acting like seductive vibrant colors do on my eye or vocal harmonies in music. You might find beautiful passages in any book, sure, I might even be able to wield one or two-- but Harris is acting like a maestro or shaman, wielding a force. There is no western 'overlord/author'- we are carried on a current.

"The boat shuddered in an anxious grip and in a living streaming hand that issued from the bowels of earth...The outboard engine and propeller still revolved and flashed with mental silent horror now that its roar had been drowned in other wilder unnatural voices whose violent din rose from beneath our feet in the waters."

"The rocks in the tide flashed their presentiment in the sun, everlasting courage and the other obscure spirits of creation. One's mind was a chaos of sensation, even pleasure, faced by imminent mortal danger."

Dagnabit

2008-09-30T16:45:00.005-04:00

<----'Portal', by me.

Le sigh. Every so often I stumble on an artist who has done something I not only think is interesting and enjoy- but is doing something with a material that I could see myself doing. This is a strange experience. I guess this Friday I'll see this woman's work in person and can actually talk about it:

RebeccaMurtaugh

Big differences, sure. My work isn't as polished- a quality necessary for the weirdo humor it carries with it. This work is also further removed from painting, although she's totally one of those painters who just happens to work with 3D materials. Not a negative, just an observation.

And, of course...the title of her show here in Richmond is SEDUCTIONS which is TOTALLY a word I played up in a recent proposal to a gallery down the street. Lucky for me, SEDUCTION is only half the battle. Lunacy, the other??

I am quite literally, talking to myself. Despite prejudices, I really have no problem with this fact.

The Magic Christian

2008-09-29T21:30:00.004-04:00

Now is a good time to watch this movie.
It's taking every ounce of strength not to go into a diatribe about the failed bailout plan and Kennedy's tv show, "Friend or Foe".

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

For your health and wellbeing:
Make some tea. Put on a Ravi Shankar record. I will be running on a platform of running, it seems. Escapism '08!

Barack Obama in Fredericksburg

2008-09-28T22:58:00.003-04:00

With great speaking ability (ahem, power) comes great responsibility. I agree with a person who recently told me that discussions about politics start to sound like religion. They can. These issues make us emotional, especially after 8 years of the Bush administration.

Political discussions are also a lot like alcohol consumption.

"Please use responsibly"

Obama is the have-a-beer-with-dinner to McCain's sloppy-drunk and Bush's puke-on-your-shoe-wake-up-in-the-ditch-covered-in-dog-pee.

On Saturday, I saw this speech:

I don't expect the man to fix it a day. I do trust him to make the right choices every step of the way, choices that reflect an America that has always existed in my brain.

Addictive Properties

2008-09-28T22:36:00.003-04:00

I caved. I now have a blog. The news, the political situation and my own personal searches (jobs and art) have kept me so stuck to the internet that you'd think it was a drug. So....it's time for a little personal oasis that hopefully will prove to be the same for others, over time.