arkalangeles

MC Studio: What's Up Now

2012-02-08T10:28:00.001-08:00

The state of things right this minute in my studio. Big things, small things, watercolor, screen prints, black gesso.

New Year, New Digs

2012-01-17T15:32:00.001-08:00

I'll be serving as the artist-in-residence in the Cafritz Center at the Takoma Park, MD, campus of Montgomery College during spring 2012. Check out this beautiful studio I'll be working in:

I've also got a painting up in the George Washington University Faculty Show, in the Classroom 102 gallery. The show will be up for a couple of weeks as we settle into the new semester.

Lecture Notes: Elizabeth Peyton @ SAAM

2011-10-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

Last week I went to hear painter Elizabeth Peyton speak about her work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She used an unusual but lovely method of doing so. She made a short statement at the beginning of her presentation, then showed us over 100 images of her works in silence. They were projected large on a screen at the front of the auditorium; a few members of the audience seemed annoyed by the lack of narrative and departed. Most of us, however, sat in rapt attention watching the luminous images flash by.

After the slideshow, Peyton took many questions from the audience. Here are my notes on some of her answers.

-Painting is love & beauty & history captured two-dimensionally and telegraphed back to us over time.
-Literature (especially In Search of Lost Time & Balzac's writings) is very important to her, especially in understanding the life of the artist.
-She likes to work in a smaller scale and tries to make her paintings project into a room, to take up the maximum amount of space with a small amount of materials
-Printmaking generates a productive awkwardness. It is freeing because no one is expecting anything, and one can make a lot of work at once.
-She feels very connected to Romanticism, especially that Romantic sense of being totally alive.
-Painting communicated transcendence in human beings. It captures what is transcendent in an individual (beauty, vision, intelligence, etc.) and communicates that across time.
-The best things she got out of art school are good friends and learning to be self reliant.

(image: Elizabeth Peyton, Live to Ride (E.P.), 2003)

Press and Pics

2011-10-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

Some press about my recent exhibitions:
-Pink Line Project
-Washington City Paper
-Washington Post
-Washington Post Slideshow

And some pics!

Station Fire, part of Site Aperture at Flashpoint Gallery

Studio, in the Project Room at Harmon Art Lab

What I've been doing...

2011-10-04T18:43:00.000-07:00

Installing at Harmon Art Lab, opening this Saturday, October 8, 6-8 pm (paintings in the photo are by Michel Modell.)

(There was that thing last week also, at a little place called Flashpoint. It's a pretty kick-ass show.)

Lecture Notes: Ann Hamilton @ NGA

2011-09-19T13:57:00.001-07:00

Last Friday I was one of Washington's lucky few who got to hear genius/visionary/artist Ann Hamilton speak at the National Gallery of Art. AMAZING. I think the whole audience would have sat there and listened to her til midnight if the museum had allowed her to go on that long (unfortunately for us, they cut her off at 5 because the building was closing. Lame!).

She had a beautiful way of using anecdotes about her life, work, and creation thereof to explain her underlying ideas and philosophies of art making. Here are my notes:

-A studio practice allows you to pay attention to what you pay attention to. A studio cultivates the situation for this to happen.
-Art is a process of finding what you need.
-Conditions for that finding are created and cultivated in the studio.
-A studio is therefore a metaphorical space, and can be wherever an artist deems fit.
-Things she pays attention to: forms of attention, felt qualities, processes of accumulation.
-An empty table is like a blank page.
-Art can satisfy the longing for a presence so acute that you lose self awareness.

I only wish I had written more down!

< complaint > National Gallery, do us artists here in Washington a solid and publicize this stuff more, will ya? Act like it's the big deal that it is? And maybe also invite these major, major figures like Ms. Hamilton to speak at a time when more of us can attend? Because lots of us have day jobs. Also, universities? Why weren't more students in attendance to hear this contemporary master? Because I think it would have been educational for them. < / complaint >

Opening Tonight: HOPE CHEST

2011-09-15T11:10:00.001-07:00

I've got three paintings in a group show that opens tonight near Mt. Vernon Square in Washington. This show was curated by painter Rebecca Kallem, who has a great eye for juxtaposing artworks. Check out Hope Chest, then head over to WPA's Options show nearby!

HOPE CHEST
Group exhibition curated by Rebecca Kallem
With artists Elle Perez, Katherine Sifers, Dafna Steinberg, Erin Murray, Chandi Kelley, and Michelle McAuliffe
Greenhouse 11
1123 11th Street NW, Washington, DC
Opening reception: September 15, 2011, 6-9:00 pm
Exhibition available by appointment at other times.

WPA Options 2011
curated by Stephanie Fedor
629 New York Avenue NW, Washington, DC
Opening reception: September 15, 2011, 6-8:00 pm

Fleshing It Out

2011-08-04T06:01:00.000-07:00

i've been asked a lot recently (both on the radio and by others) about my newer paintings, what they are about, why so many of them contain kitchen scenes, etc. i'm trying to figure this out myself.

these paintings were all made within the last year once i got a studio set up here in washington. when we left LA, i was working in an abstract manner, using memories of my daily experiences driving around town....that meant i was looking at landscape, the outside world around me: neons, car crashes, wildfires, steep hillsides, tropical gardens, smog. once i got to work here in DC, i took that way of working that i had developed (really paying attention to visual experiences on a day-to-day basis and making an effort to file them away in my memory, then working from memory without outside references) and applying them to my daily life and studio work now. so, that's resulted in a greater attention to interiors and working from my memories of other dwellings i have lived in or had important experiences in. my focus has been on working on our house, and that has come out in my work too. i seem to be gravitating towards kitchens, maybe for the reasons i talked about in the audio clip. they are centers of intense work and creativity, just like a studio. they are rooms we associate with good things: nourishment, love, family, social connections. there are also just really complex places to look at, so many nooks, crannies, nobs, bells, whistles, etc.

the bold black lines and messy paint and patterns are a compositional device. i think they are also a way to convey the way memories are incomplete, incorrect, and very hard to get down on paper like they appear in your head.

so, that's me trying to articulate my thoughts as of now. i'm headed back to LA for the weekend and am interested to see how i will perceive that city this time around. ciao!

Recent Press

2011-07-26T08:47:00.000-07:00

DC Emerging at VisArts in Rockville, MD, has been getting some media attention. Here's the roundup:

Gazette.net:
http://www.gazette.net/article/20110713/ENTERTAINMENT/707139762&template=gazette

Washington City Paper:
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/visual-arts/2011/07/19/reviewed-dc-emerging-at-visarts/

And possibly the most exciting, since I am an NPR fangirl:
http://wamu.org/news/11/07/24/visarts_showcases_five_local_emerging_artists.php#.TixJqaR_jW0

(image is one of the paintings in the show: Night Kitchen: Chinese Dog)

Ketchup!

2011-07-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

Too many art things have been happening to quickly to blog about. So, here's a 30-second catch-up post.

Paintings that have been hanging around for months have been finished in a flash (Green Flamingo at left).

Some friends have left. Others have arrived. Others will be reconnected with next week over coffee.

Unexpected new favorite things have been found.

Shows have been seen.

And upcoming in the next few days:
DC Emerging at VisArts in Rockville (I have paintings in this one)
Porch Projects #3

Contain, Maintain, Sustain opens at Artisphere

2011-05-18T10:15:00.000-07:00

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 19, 7-10pm

Curator Talks: Saturday, May 21, 3pm with Sara Reisman; Saturday, June 11, 3pm with Welmoed Laanstra; Saturday, June 25, 3pm with Ernesto Santalla

at Artisphere, 1101 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22209

New Work at Artisphere

2011-05-10T09:01:00.001-07:00

I spent last week creating a new installation, titled Dredge, at Artisphere in Arlington, VA. This work is part of a large group exhibition opening next week, May 19. Here it is in stages:

Spring Solos 2011 Now on View at the Arlington Arts Center

2011-04-21T12:06:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to be part of the Arlington Arts Center's Spring Solos 2011 exhibition, which opened last Friday. Here are a few images of the new work I created for the exhibition, titled Forest of Correction. Spring Solos 2011 is up through June 5.

DC Women Artists Now Reception, 4/5

2011-04-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

The reception for DC Women Artists Now at Gallaudet University was a lovely time of hot tea and good conversation.

Work by Gretchen Schermerhorn in the foreground, and Carolina Mayorga in the background

Work by Annie Albagli in the foreground, and me in the background

Work by Michelle McAuliffe in the foreground, with the conclusion of Kendall Nordin's drawing performance in the background

Carolina Mayorga with work by Kristina Bilonick

Kristina Bilonick & Kendall Nordin

DC Women Artists Now at Gallaudet University

2011-03-30T07:14:00.001-07:00

I have two large works on paper up in the Linda K. Jordan Art Gallery at Gallaudet University right now. It's really nice to learn about and develop a relationship with this institution in my own neighborhood. It's also nice to show with such a great group of local artists.

Lecture Notes: Peter Doig

2011-03-18T06:41:00.000-07:00

A few years ago (really? already?) when I worked in museum education, I spent several mornings a week for a few months plopping kids down in front of this painting. It's Peter Doig's 100 Years Ago, and it was great for getting students' powers of observation, imagination, storytelling, and interpretation going.

I was excited to learn that Peter Doig was giving this spring's Duncan Phillips Lecture at the Phillips Collection. So, last night I ponied up $20 to go to the talk. Throughout the evening, I was impressed with Doig's easy going manner and no-pretense way of talking about his works and studio practices. Here are some notes I jotted down when I got home.

-Work should surprise you, you should do something in your work to catch yourself off guard, do something that you wouldn't do.

-Think about what is outside the painting, not just the little self contained world inside the frame.

-You need time to come to terms with a work (example he gave of this is 100 Years Ago, which sat around in his studio for 6 months without being worked on much before he decided it was complete).

-Memories attach to paintings based on what else is going on in an artist's life.

-A subject worth painting once is usually worth revisiting several times, otherwise you cheat yourself. There aren't that many subjects worth painting.

-You make art about things that you can't explain or talk about (so he didn't really, except to tell us about the experience of making a work or the experiences that lead up to it, visual experiences mostly).

-You can't teach art making.

(image taken from blog Contemporary Art Seminar; painting is in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, but they don't have an image available on their website.)

Springtime for Painting

2011-03-02T06:44:00.000-08:00

I admitted yesterday in a studio visit that I'm a prejudiced art viewer. I often eschew the conceptual or the difficult in favor of a hit of visual pleasure: I will go out of my way to look at paintings every time. Lucky me, right now is good time to do that.

There's a lot of pretty good painting on view in Washington right now. The Corcoran has Washington Color and Light, although you've only got through Sunday to see it. The Phillips has Philip Guston's works on paper from his time in Rome in the 70's (so, so good), plus a lecture by Peter Doig coming up on March 17. And the National Gallery of Art just opened a big show of Gaugin. There's even some good contemporary painting to see within this context. The DC Arts Center in Adams Morgan has Paint Mix, a well curated look at some locally made works put together by my friend Becca Kallem. This one's up til March 13.

(There was an amazing show of paintings by Laura Elkins up at the Fridge recently, but I didn't get around to blogging about it before it came down. If you get a chance to see her work in person, run, don't walk.)

(Image is postcard from Paint Mix)

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, The End

2011-02-15T17:57:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I deinstalled Fort Distraction. It was fitting, since yesterday was a beautiful, warm, spring-like day, and this installation was very much inspired by winter. It seems like it is almost time to come out of our caves and enjoy the sunshine. Goodbye pillow forts, hello backyard sheet tents!

Here's one last look at my Coup d'Espace.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 14

2011-02-04T20:36:00.001-08:00

Tonight was the reception for Fort Distraction. The WPA's front office was full of people for over two hours, and I was talking to one or more of them almost the whole time, so my crowd photos are not very good. So, check out the website of man-about-town Vincent Gallegos in the next few days; I think he took a few good ones.

Thanks so much to everyone who stopped by. I really appreciate your comments, questions, and felicitations. Cheers!

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 13

2011-02-03T13:45:00.000-08:00

Today was a day for details. It was the last real working day of my Coup d'Espace project, so I spent it working on some small areas to create more moments of sharper focus in my installation. Here are a couple of them.

Thanks to Michael, visitor #5, for helping me to think about the above.

The reception for Fort Distraction is tomorrow, February 4, from 6 to 8 pm. It will be in the WPA office space at 2023 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC, near Dupont Circle. Pencil it in!

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 12

2011-02-02T15:42:00.001-08:00

When I got to the WPA office today, I realized that the red wrapping I did at the end of the hall yesterday was distracting. It was too all-over one color, without the subtle gradation in color or wrapping patterns that I had developed in other areas. So, I spent the day reworking this area and expanding it a bit. Here are the results:

My fourth visitor, independent curator and critic Danielle O'Steen, talked to me about this project for quite a while this morning and helped me see some of the problems with the work I did yesterday. Like the conversations I've had with my other visitors, this one helped me reflect on and process the work I have been doing over the past 2.5 weeks. Here are some of my notes from our talk:

-When there are several like things (like office chairs or cardboard accordion benches), viewers automatically want to compare them, noticing how they have been dealt with similarly or differently.
-The scale of this work allows for both passages and focal points. What is the role of a focal point in a work like this?
-The moments of detail are more about where the sheets meet the office furniture rather than being intricate manipulations that I have created.
-The process of creating this work has been more painterly than my previous installations. That is, because of the duration of my work on the piece, I have come back to it over the course of many days as I would a painting, gradually changing, building on, or canceling out things that were done previously in order to move the work forward.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 11

2011-02-01T15:49:00.000-08:00

More red, down the hall. I'm almost to the trash can, and I can feel things drawing to a conclusion.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 10

2011-01-31T18:34:00.000-08:00

Today's work took me farther down the long wall, almost to the end of the front office area and moving from purple ever so slightly into maroon.

I decided to include the box of auction gala invitations in my installation since that is currently the main focus for the people who work at the WPA.

Sorry for the bad iPhone photos. Regular camera will return tomorrow.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 9

2011-01-28T16:47:00.000-08:00

My slow march down the office walkway continues, this time in purple.

I spent a lot of the day moving furniture around and staring into space. I think the work I did today may be more of a sketch to build on next week rather than work that is fixed in place. Time will tell.

Visitor #3 came by today -- thanks, Leigh!

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 8

2011-01-27T16:51:00.001-08:00

Today was definitely not a snow day for my project. I thought and worked hard today and feel like i made a big leap in terms of color and size.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 7

2011-01-26T19:10:00.000-08:00

Before today's Snoprise set in, I got back to work on Fort Distraction. I am finishing up the entryway area and moving into the office proper, as well as adding color.

Unfortunately, a dark and cold house greeted me and Mr. MJ when we returned home in the afternoon. We sort of camped out in here with candles and lots of layers for five hours or so til electricity was restored.

Today's snow and the events surrounding it (amazing traffic jams, early dismissals, Metrobus stoppage, socially networked snowball fights, etc.) are to me the perfect pairing for my Coup d'Espace project. I was thinking back to the wonder of last year's snowstorms, how they were this amazing break from the post-holiday doldrums that can set in during the hard part of winter. I wanted to conjure up the longing for such an event that I think a lot of DC residents have felt this year every time there is a hint of the white stuff. Here's hoping though that this is just a taste....I don't think we really want to spend a month digging out again.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 6

2011-01-25T14:30:00.000-08:00

On the sixth day I rested, since some repair work was going on to a key wall in the space.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 5

2011-01-24T15:26:00.000-08:00

Today was a short work day, since some repairs were happening to the office space during the day. So, I continued wrapping the cardboard benches that I had been working with on Friday.

I *think* I'm almost ready to begin with some color.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 4

2011-01-21T15:08:00.000-08:00

Today was about continuing to work on the bay window at the front of the office and finding ways to grow vertically.

First, here's a better photo of the table wrapping I did yesterday (without the strong shadows):

This morning I started with some little stacks in the window sills. These stacks are more intricate and precise (at least, in the way they are made, if not in appearance) than the other wraps and stacks I have made so far.

I began to use the pins holding up the holiday lights to get the sheets up the wall. I'm trying to echo the swooping shape from the cardboard bench/box stack wrap on the other side of the bay window.

And so, the piles and bags grow smaller!

That's it for the first week of Fort Distraction. I'll be back Monday with some new work.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 3

2011-01-20T14:52:00.001-08:00

Today was slow. I got caught up in some details. However, I think they are details worth keeping. We'll see what I think about them tomorrow.

The WPA has these amazing corrugated cardboard, modular benches that they can deploy in different configurations around the office as needed. I am using them as a kind of scaffolding for my work. The allow some beautiful, poetic moments to happen.

I also built upon my fortification of the reception desk, this time adding in some black and gray sheets.

Lisa Rosenstein was my second visitor. She talked to me about my work for quite a while and helped me process some of it. Namely, I realized how hard I am thinking the whole time I am working. (That's probably why I feel wiped out after only 4 hours.) Most of the time when I have a show and make an installation, I have a plan that I have tried out ahead of time, so I just work to get the plan realized. This time, I am making the plan up as I go along. It's hard work, but kind of fun too. I can feel my brain stretching.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 2

2011-01-19T15:24:00.000-08:00

On day 2, I turned my attention to the entryway of the WPA offices. The reception desk and big stack of exhibition catalog boxes seemed like natural places to start.

These two small interventions in the space seem a bit more comfortable and familiar to me than the work I did yesterday. They more closely resemble works I've made in the past. I need to figure out a way to get this dense-feeling accumulation, while at the same time deploying the sheets over a large area. For now, I think I'll sleep on it.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 1

2011-01-18T15:18:00.001-08:00

Today I began my Coup d'Espace project at the Washington Project for the Arts. Over the next three weeks, I will be building a large bed sheet installation in the organization's office space in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. Here's what I accomplished:

A car full of sheets (the trunk was totally full as well).

My bags of sheets taking over the space.

Me at work (thanks to Kendall Nordin, my first visitor, for taking the photo). I decided to wear a kind of uniform each day so that I contrast with my materials and the other people working in the space (this is an office, after all). All black seemed like an obvious choice for this: a little bit art-world cliche, a little bit behind the scenes stage hand.

Today's work complete.

I think the work I do during the first couple of days of my Coup will be like a sketch for what is to come. I am trying out my materials in the space, learning what I can attach them to and how to best deploy the elements already in the space (benches, boxes, shelves, other misc. furniture).

Studio Preparedness

2011-01-18T08:24:00.003-08:00

Ready for anything, come hell, high water, ice storms, or studio visits.

Washerwoman

2011-01-13T07:15:00.001-08:00

In advance of a project I will be starting at the Washington Project for the Arts offices next week, I have been washing my bed sheet collection. Yes, all 600+ pounds of it.

Turns out my washing machine and clothes dryer are pretty good sculptors in their own rights. Check it out:

Amazing twists and swirls! I'm going to have to figure out how to recreate some of this on my own.

Check back next week for daily posts about Fort Distraction, my Coup d'Espace at the WPA offices.

In Search of Q, Perfection Edition

2011-01-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

My Christmas gift to my tastebuds: a trip to my most favorite barbecue joint. It's down the hill from my parents' house in a strip mall in Little Rock. I don't have much other commentary....this place is pretty much perfect. Yum.

Looking @ Kendall Nordin @ Container Space

2010-12-21T07:47:00.001-08:00

Last month I drove out to the George Mason University campus in Fairfax, Virginia, to see Kendall Nordin's work at Container Space. This gallery is a converted shipping container outside the art building and is maintained by the art department. Its programming focuses on installation and site specific work.

When I arrived at Container Space in the middle of the afternoon, Nordin's work was quiet. The air was still and warm and bright outside, and the little shipping container turned gallery was like a dark cave; nothing was moving inside. I knew, though, that the artist had imagined periods of stillness and activity in her installation, so I decided to be patient. I walked all the way into the container, taking my time, looking at the strings of tiny acetate flags that were draped across the ceiling and down the walls. I thought of Tibetan prayer flags or Mexican papel picado banners, as if each little bit of acetate might have its own meaning or message that was hidden to me. This hidden information was like a challenge to me the viewer. I realized I would have to be quiet myself, and more open to my senses, before I could really understand this work.

Eventually, I turned around to face the doorway and the bright light outside...and then I began to see little flickers around the edges of my field of vision, pulling my attention this way and that. As I moved, the flags responded, waving, shaking, and catching the light. The work unfolded for me then, as I slowly circled the space, watching for it.

I really appreciate seeing work that asks me to be patient and wait for it. i feel like i don't get many opportunities here to see work like that.

A Little Bit of History Repeating

2010-12-02T08:19:00.000-08:00

The National Portrait Gallery has been one of my favorite museums to visit during my time living in Washington. The hours are convenient (it’s open til 7 most days), and it has that amazing painting of Walt Whitman (maybe it’s more a portrait of Walt Whitman’s beard….in any case, I love it). I’ve also felt like, of all the national/public museums here, the NPG has one of the better contemporary programs going (the Portraiture Now series, Self-portraiture in the 20th Century, the Outwin Boochever competition, Ding Ren’s recent performances, etc. etc.).

So, of course, I feel sad about the Smithsonian administration’s caving in to right-wing attacks on its display of David Wojnarowicz’s video work A Fire in My Belly. If you read or listen to the Catholic League’s remarks on the subject, it seems pretty obvious that the leader of that group is grasping at straws, making outrageous statements in order to garner recognition for himself and his group as much as anything else. Honestly, the whole furor seems like it might have been cooked up to sell newspapers, since the Catholic League’s leader wasn’t aware of the artwork until asked to comment on it by the New York Post. Yet it seems that, with the hopping-on-the-bandwagon of Reps. Boehner and Cantor, we are all set to re-wage the culture wars of the 80s and 90s anyway. So much for contemporary programming.

Oh well. Nothing like being a punching bag for the advancement of an unrelated and hostile political agenda. I’m sure this outrage will garner The Right lots of votes in the art-hating segments of our citizenry.

I read in the Washington Post this morning that the NPG is going to replace this artwork in their video kiosk with a selection from Pink Narcissus, a 1971 film about the fantasies of a young male prostitute, directed by James Bidgood. So that’s okay then. Goes along with the Pope’s recent okay of prostitutes’ condom usage. I hope we can all be happy about that.

***

Bravo Transformer!

Quickie Installation in Rockville

2010-11-03T10:36:00.001-07:00

Over the past couple of days, I made a new installation at VisArts in Rockville, Maryland. It is part of a two-person show with Baltimore painter Chloe Watson. Opens Friday, November 5, runs through December 17.

Looking @ Janis Goodman

2010-10-28T13:25:00.000-07:00

I went to Reyes + Davis Independent Exhibitions on F Street to see Janis Goodman's new show of paintings. Her abstractions were like a cool shady spot to my eyes after too much hot sunshine bouncing off the downtown pavement.

I did make the obvious mental connection to Julie Mehretu's work. However, these felt a little more grounded in personal experience to me, perhaps because of their intimate scale (is it strange to call a 5'x5' painting intimate?) and visible evidence of the artist's hand.

I really appreciate seeing some good abstraction in this town.

***

I also saw Adam de Boer's show at Flashpoint. This is the second of de Boer's shows I've seen in the year I've lived here in DC. He seems to be slowly working some things out, and I noticed a couple of strands of ideas that could become larger parts of his conceptual framework (the same area depicted over time with the same people moving around in it, wonky figuration, figures depicted in a brushy, idealized, Edenesque out of doors). I think he just needs to figure out, beyond subject matter, what he wants to say with his paint.

(image is from Goodman's Exploding Garden series, taken from the artist's website. Original painting is on view in the exhibition and is 60"x60".)

Looking at Art in Virginia

2010-10-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

I've missed a lot of art shows lately. Between working on the house, working on a potential new art space, and trying to fit in some studio time, I haven't been paying very good attention to exhibition dates. So, today I set off for points-across-the-river to see the new Artisphere venue and the Fall 2010 Solos at the Arlington Arts Center.

The Artisphere was beautiful inside: slick, clean surfaces, windows everywhere, and so many spaces, all nicely furnished with design-y pieces that made me want to lounge around with a book and a tea. A non-functioning snack bar? A theater? A ballroom? Office-y hallways stretching away into space? It was a little confusing since so many of these spaces (sooo many spaces) didn't have anything going on in them. The art gallery areas are tucked away upstairs with no signage pointing the way, so I had to hunt for them. The current show, Skateboarding Side Effects, is curated by Cynthia Connolly and is on view until November 28. I was transfixed by Tim Bearse's suspended dome sculpture blizzard. (Check it out here on slide 6 of his VCU portfolio.) This sculpture made me think back to the Dan Graham show that made it around to a few museums last year, with the tension it points to between beautiful, soaring object/space and possibly deviant behavior. I like those poetics.

The Arlington Arts Center is looking good as well, with nice new hardwoods in the main floor galleries. The current group of solo shows (up til November 7) use the space really well too, so that each artist's work seems cohesive and well organized. I especially liked the spare use of the lobby area, and even more so the art in it. I found Matt King's work transfixing in a way I can't quite articulate.... I guess I like the juxtaposition of the machined hard edges and polished surfaces with the crafty, glue-y handmade bits. (image is King's Desk Jockey, from his website.)

I also really appreciated John Henry Blatter's installation/sound work. It gave me that same feeling I sometimes get at parties or bars, straining to zone in on one person's voice as they talk to me, losing it in the all the other voices and stories around me, feeling overwhelmed by and cut off from my senses at the same time. The installation of the work here, a double wall of speakers, really enhances this feeling, because the sound is in my space and I have to physically interact with it. I like these poetics too.

Studio Update: As It Stands Now

2010-10-15T10:54:00.000-07:00

Here's what's up in the studio right now. These are paintings on paper, mostly finished. Commentary by Percy & Pete.

Photo Essay: Food in San Francisco

2010-09-10T07:23:00.001-07:00

Flavor:

Tartine Eclair:

Street Wok:

Plums in a Bag:

Happy Donut:

Late Summer Art Dregs

2010-08-31T06:55:00.001-07:00

Over the past few weeks I've been to some late summer gallery shows around town. There was a surprising amount of 2D work up, something I have felt a real lack of during my first year here in the District. Among others, I've been checking out G Fine Art, Conner Contemporary, Irvine, Transformer, Flashpoint, Arlington Arts Center, etc. etc. etc.

Something I have noticed: drawing/painting here seems to be more about the image than the paint. I find this a bit surprising considering DC's legacy of process oriented color field abstraction. Case in point is Matthew Mann's work up now at Flashpoint. Beautiful, funny images. I found myself wondering what they'd be like as frescoes or as silk screens or as pasted-up posters on the street.

A counterpoint would be Philip Hinge's paintings, two of which were included in Conner Contemporary's latest Academy show. He seems to be grooving on a David Hockney/Mary Heilmann tune. Nice.

(top image is Matthew Mann's painting from his Cinecitta Chapel series; bottom image is Philip Hinge's Lunch Table.)

Wait, what?!

2010-08-11T18:03:00.001-07:00

Why am I doing this? Where did this cartoony bad painting realism crawl in from? And why the sudden fascination with stoves? What?

Studio Re-do

2010-08-06T07:11:00.000-07:00

Last week's studio clean up turned into a full blown studio revamp, including rearranging the wallboards, furniture, and building a table. I had been mulling over this idea in my head for a while, because there was a large support beam in the way of one of my painting walls. So, I moved my storage/desk area to the blocked wall, freeing up the rest of the walls for work. I added some leftover paint from our home office for a little snap and energy (who wouldn't want a studio like this?). And now I'm back to getting some good work done.

Before

After:

I plan to open up the blocked basement windows at some point (currently serving as book and old work storage). But that's in the future.

Photo Essay: Things We Do at Home

2010-08-04T06:40:00.000-07:00

Franke's

Dillard's

Friends

Catfish

Community Bakery

Sweet Babies

I-40

Treat!

2010-07-08T06:57:00.000-07:00

I must be a professional since I just spent $200 on paper. Sweet, sweet, French paper. Mmmm.

Studio Update

2010-06-23T07:05:00.000-07:00

So, I’ve been quiet here because I’ve been busy in the studio. I’ve started some new paintings and have not been looking at too much of other people’s art. My new work is lumpy and awkward, and is hard to make, but I'm gnawing away at it anyhow.

I recently had a conversation with an artist friend in which he said he was bored of artists/students questioning what it means to make a painting now. (In his defense, he comes from the position of feeling skeptical of painting’s continued relevance, which is cool. I feel skeptical about it too sometimes.) At the time, I didn’t really take up the other side of this coin, and the conversation moved on. However, I was thinking about this later, probably while I was working on a painting. Why do we need to continue to question painting’s legitimacy as a vehicle for artmaking? Haven't we been wondering about this since photography was invented? Yet I ask myself this all the time and seek out the commentary of others on the subject. It’s like we need to undermine ourselves before we get down to work.

Since there are so many media options for art making now, especially so many that are cleaner, maybe faster, and much easier to disseminate to a large audience, I suppose we ask this question as a kind of reassurance for ourselves about our choice to paint. By asking ourselves “what does it mean to make a painting now?” we are consciously engaging with the history of this ancient medium. We choose the richness of old over the wildness of the new. It seems like there are restrictions and freedoms and wonderful discoveries to be made down each road.

Cornfield @ Transformer Gallery

2010-05-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

There's lot of good art up around town in the galleries right now (Conner Contemporary, Curator's Office, Hamiltonian, and Industry all have interesting work up). Take a friend and go check out Nancy Bannon's Cornfield at Transformer tomorrow, before it gets burned off. You'll feel like you're in Illinois in October.

In Memory of Nam

2010-05-11T08:02:00.001-07:00

So, I was going to write a post about the challenges of getting down to work in a new studio; about how I don't know where my brushes or pencils are; I occasionally bump into doors, lights, or tables; and I seem to have forgotten all my favorite color combinations and mark making techniques.

However, I learned last night that one of my grad school colleagues passed away a couple of weeks ago, making those new-studio concerns seem very small. Nam Clark entered the UIUC MFA program in 2005, during my last year. He was making funny, smart, politically charged paintings and drawings at that time. We were all amazed by his work; it was already so sophisticated and fully developed, we figured he had a lot more to teach us than he had to learn in our little backwater program. Plus, he was actually painting(!) and not listening to those voices in our faculty that continually cast doubt of the relevancy of this medium. It was clear that Nam had the chops and the attitude to go far.

He was initially given this weird, raw, semi-studio in the sculpture building, but clearly that space didn't fit with the work he was making. He soon moved into the vacant studio next to me. I really enjoyed having him as a neighbor for those last few months of school. I could sense all the hard work and good energy coming out of his studio, and he inspired me to work harder and dig in further to my own practice. I feel sure that as he moved into teaching at UIUC and later at ISU, he was able to inspire many many others.

If that in the end is the point of making art, then Nam was a wild success indeed.

See more of Nam Clark's work here.

First Day!

2010-05-06T19:26:00.001-07:00

Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction

2010-05-05T07:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the Phillips Collection to see the Georgia O’Keeffe Abstraction show one more time before it closes on Sunday. It was a bit less crowded this time around, so I could look longer and closer at the paintings on the walls.

My favorite rooms were the early and late ones, especially the watercolors made in Texas around 1917 and the cloud and door paintings from the 1960’s in the last gallery. (The middle rooms got a little muddled up to me as a viewer, all kind of running together; I needed more visual breaks or contrasts in there to mark the passage of time in O’Keeffe’s career.) I felt like I could sense the full force of O’Keeffe’s willingness to experiment and chart her own path in these rooms.

Some of the didactic material on the wall included quotes from O’Keeffe in which she talks about trying to paint the way something made her feel, rather than just painting the way it looked, in order to convey her meaning to the viewer. She wanted to not show us a picture of Nature but give visual presence to the feeling of being in Nature. Yes.

I’ve been thinking a lot about abstraction vs. figuration as I prepare my new studio so I can get back to work. I was starting to worry that maybe abstraction, a place I’ve been moving towards, doesn’t really have that much currency anymore. Georgia O’Keeffe’s work is making me think again.

(side note/complaint: I overheard some of the most cringe-worthy school tours while in this exhibit. The docents seemed like they had just memorized a script and couldn’t deviate or improvise. Instead of letting students revel in the color and wonder of this great artist’s work, discovering it for themselves, they were being force-fed this predetermined narrative about the art and its meaning. Very depressing.)

(Image is O'Keeffe's Black Door with Red, 1954, from the Phillips Collection's website. Can't you feel that hot Santa Fe sun beating down on your head?)

Lightness of Being

2010-04-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I went to (yet another) gallery talk by artist Andy Holtin, half of Causality Labs, about the duo's exhibition at American University's Katzen Art Center. (I guess I am making up for three years of almost never going to these things by now going to lots lots lots.)

I really enjoyed Holtin's talk; his presentation combined the best aspects of casual conversation with high academic discourse. However, what I've been turning over in my head ever since is one particular phrase he use at the beginning of his talk. He described himself as "trying to be an artist" rather than beginning with the assumption that he already was one. I am really enjoying thinking about the implications of this phrase: that this is an identity we can put on and take off; that identity as an artist is not fixed; that an artist is never fully developed, always growing more fully into his or her practice.

Dumbing down?

2010-04-15T06:42:00.000-07:00

I have been to a couple of different artist talks over the past week, one by Mia Feuer at Transformer (this show closes Saturday) and one by a panel of Christian Benefiel, Michael Enn Sirvet, and Katherine Mann at Hamiltonian (show is up for another couple of weeks). All of these artists work in abstract forms that seem to directly reference natural or man-made objects, although they transform these forms via scale, placement, and strange juxtapositions into things almost unrecognizable.

Both Feuer and Mann talked about cultivating chaos in their practices, Mann by pouring random pools of ink, Feuer by trying to overextend her own physical capabilities with the scale and complexity of her work. They talked about their desire to create these chance-directed situations that they then have to clean up and respond to in order to create their work.

However, both artists shyed away from the word “intuition” when describing their processes, and neither seemed to want to give their subconscious underworkings much credit. Instead, they talked about their efforts to regain control over the chaos in very pedestrian, physically oriented, one-foot-in-front-of-the-other terms. I have caught myself in this same kind of downplaying of my mental processes when talking about my work. Now that I hear what it sounds like, I am kind of annoyed. Isn’t being an artist having this really refined visual sense that allows you to create meaning through inarticulatable (is that a word?) means? Isn’t that skill what sets artists apart from everyone else? So why do we have a hard time giving credence to that ability? Why do we do the “aw, shucks, I’m just an ole girl who works with her hands and nice things come out of it, somehow” song and dance? Why do we strive to un-intellectualize ourselves?

In Search of Q, Inside the Beltway

2010-04-10T12:11:00.000-07:00

We've been told not to bother with the Q in the District. The good stuff is in deep far-away Virginia. However, necessity (an empty tummy after a day of moving) is the mother of invention (taking advantage of what's at hand), so this past Monday we tried Kenny's. It's around 8th and Maryland NE in Capitol Hill, so within walking distance of our new abode. We went with chopped pork sandwiches per usual, the standard against which I tend to measure a purveyor of Q. After a little wait and some super-sweet Nestea from the cold drink dispenser, we got massive sandwiches with sauce and slaw on the side. I could have used only about half as much meat, since the bun was so full it couldn't accommodate any slaw.

The meat was decent, not the best quality, but sufficient. (I think it isn't cooked in-house, since there isn't an overwhelming smell of it outside and it was served from a steam table. So it has that warmed-up-leftover taste that not-the-very-best meat gets.) The medium sauce had a little kick and was thin and runny, so it could get down in all the little runnels and rivulets in the meat. The bun was yellow and sweetish, like an egg or kaiser roll (weird). In all, a good place to scratch a sudden and ineffable itch, but perhaps not the place to go for serious, contemplative Q. I wonder how the beef is.....

postscript: Kenny's serves up a full compliment of meat-and-three sides, like greens, red beans and rice, macaroni and cheese, black eyed peas, etc. I noticed on the way out with our porky load that you can get a plate of three sides with cornbread for $7. Since I have recently been lamenting the lack of a good cafeteria around here, this will be m choice next time....

Sow's Ear

2010-03-15T13:13:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the silence. Mr. MJ and I have been busy acquiring said sow's ear. I don't know if we can turn this old girl into a silk purse or not, but we'll give her a try.

Snowmageddon!

2010-02-07T15:03:00.001-08:00

Snowmageddon!

2010-02-07T15:01:00.001-08:00

Snowmageddon!

2010-02-07T14:55:00.000-08:00

A Response

2010-01-05T14:25:00.000-08:00

Last night I attended the WPA-sponsored panel/town hall/free-for-all “Running for Cover(age)” with Kriston Capps, Isabel Manalo, Jeffry Cudlin, and Danielle O’Steen. This discussion was held in response to recent articles (WaPo and AiA) and a Facebook exchange about collector Mera Rubell’s whirlwind studio visit tour of the DC area.

Well, what did I think? I am a newcomer to our nation’s capital city, so I am loathe to step on any tender toes lest I cross myself off the local art list before I even get onto it. That said, the audience was full of a bunch of whiny-assed arts professionals!

Why such a combative relationship with local media? True, arts coverage is given few column inches and tends to have a national/institutional focus , but it’s not as if this situation is much different from that found in any other city. Our newspapers are under the knife, and arts coverage is an easy pound of flesh to give up. (For instance, the Los Angeles Times no longer has stand-alone book review or arts sections {much less a daily local news section!} despite being in a center of art production and display….it’s now all lumped together into a general culture section once a week.) Art workers here need to accept the power of the Post to direct viewers and audiences, and at the same time look to themselves to solve their own problems. Someone in last night’s audience suggested an artist run publication. Makes sense to me based on what I've seen elsewhere. Texas has Glasstire, Chicago has Bad at Sports, LA has Artillery. DC needs its own smart, local outlet, too.

Notice I didn’t put New York in that list. That’s because every other complaint I heard last night was directed at the NYC-art-media-money complex. Old chestnuts such as: Why do our young artists leave for Brooklyn? Why doesn’t our art scene have a Chelsea equivalent? Why does New York media treat us as unimportant and second class? Why didn’t ArtForum review my show?

As if these complaints are original, unique, or limited to DC. New York media treat us as provincial because they themselves are provincial. ArtForum gives only the briefest of nods to the other major art centers in this country, and barely acknowledges the West Coast or the South, so of course it’s not going to cover DC in detail. Young artists leave for New York because 1) maybe it’s closer than LA or Chicago, and 2) it appears from afar that it will be much easier to make and show work there. In reality, it’s really freaking hard to make and show work anywhere, including a cold, crappy loft in Brooklyn. Every city has its own special challenges for artists, and anybody who says otherwise is kidding themselves. DC art workers, realize that you are not in New York. You have your own thing going here, that is unique to here, with many jurisdictions, out of the way art spots, make-shift studio space, and the long shadows of museums of international stature. Use your special challenges as strengths and uniting factors, not as reasons to bitch and moan.

Raise your own flag, as Bjork would say.

New Favorite Art Hideout for the New Year

2010-01-04T09:52:00.000-08:00

For the new year, I've got a new favorite place to look at art. During a brief re-introduction to the National Gallery of Art yesterday, I discovered the Tower Gallery in the East Building. Wow! A tiny chapel for art, at the symbolic center of our nation!

From the second floor, I climbed up a beautiful, yet hidden, pink spiral staircase towards fuzzy sunlight. At the top, I found a small, high-ceilinged room, lit by skylights above, with a little cave of an elevator vestibule attached: inner and outer sanctums. The show on view was a tightly curated overview of Phillip Guston's work, with large paintings in the first room and drawings and lithographs in the cave. I could easily move back and forth between the two spaces, making connections and comparisons between their contents. I love looking at art in smaller spaces like these. The intimate confines invite contemplation, study, and deeper thinking than big white echo-y gal-arenas.

Yesterday was the last day for the Guston show. However, the Internet sez that a Mark Rothko show is next for the Tower Gallery. Hurrah!

(image is Phillip Guston's painting Ladder, from 1978, part of the NGA's collection.)

ps -- I was also reminded yesterday of the rad-ness of Andre Derain. Rock!

What I've Been Thinking About: Geography

2009-12-09T14:45:00.000-08:00

Seeing the Anne Truitt show at the Hirshorn took me back to wondering about the influence of geography and landscape on artists. Truitt is often quoted talking about how important the Maryland shore was to her work, her sense of color, proportion, etc. I had never seen very much of her work in person before, so I had had to accept this as a factoid without any other information to support it. After seeing so many of her works together in one place, I was really surprised by their specificity of color, shape, and line; this specificity helps me know that these artworks refer to something real out in the world.

I know that my work went off into wild, different directions when I moved to LA and got caught up in its pink light, palm trees, and neons.

So how will a new place change my work this time around? Jaime Castillo, a curator I worked with this summer, asked me that question in August. Here it is December and I don’t have a clue yet, except that working without a studio means finding materials that require only minimal clean up (sewing, drawing, digital photography).
*
I just finished reading Peter T. Kilborn’s new book Next Stop, Reloville and am thinking about how I do and don’t fit into that category. (The book profiles the lives of families who follow one parent around the country/world in the quest for the ultimate corporate job.) On the surface I do, because I’ve moved to a new place every few years since, oh….college? 1997? However, this book focuses on the “relo enclaves” in the far suburbs of big cities, like Fairfax or Loudon Counties here near DC, or the Woodlands near Houston, or Alpharetta near Atlanta. The MO in these places for the people who choose to live there is to replicated over and over the same experiences, architecture, and social groupings to make life seem more stable, as if they aren’t really having to make radical adjustments in the way they live their lives every few years. That kind of lifestyle is anathema to me; I want to seek out the sights, tastes, and sounds that gives a place its uniqueness. So, even though I choose to live in city centers and seek out neighborhoods with more geographically-related particularities, I end up wanting to be in the same kinds of spots from city to city: old architecture with “character,” independent small businesses, coffee shops, and a general air of bohemianism. So maybe I really am a relo. Maybe an Indie-Relo, or something.
*
I’ve also been listening to a lot of Bad at Sports, particularly the recent episodes about the Heartland exhibition at the Smart Museum, and interviews with Jonathan Watkins and Mary Jane Jacob. A common theme running through the episodes was the curators’ wish that geography become both key and unimportant for artists. That is, that artists no longer need to be in the centers of display (NY, LA, London, etc.) in order to be members of vital centers of productions (Memphis, Kansas City, Chicago, and Glasgow were mentioned). Their thinking seems to be that we all need to have a global view anyway, so your physical location doesn’t matter as much as what you do there, what you make of it.

As someone who recently left a center of display for someplace else, I hope they are right. However, I know and fear that for this model to be successful, it takes a whole lot more work on everyone’s part. But it’s good to hear curators espousing what hinterland artists have been hearing for so long, in this the Golden Age of Internet. Fingers crossed.

What I've Been Thinking About: Formalism vs. Conceptualism

2009-11-13T12:33:00.001-08:00

I’ve been reading some discussions on the art blogs recently about formalism vs. conceptualism and the artist's intent, ginned up by Roberta Smith writing about Roni Horn at the Whitney Museum. (Scroll down to see Edward Winkleman's posts from November 10 & 11, and the review mentioned here.)

I used to want to draw a bright line between these two camps also. I believe my thinking was encouraged by grad school and the kind of art I saw in the Midwest and in the East. Those examples showed me that art was either beautiful, or heady, but hardly ever both at the same time.

My time in LA revealed that the distinction between the two kinds of art might be geographical, and is certainly a lot more blurry than I had once believed. I think schools in LA must convey the attitude that all art made now will be inherently conceptual, because it is made in a Post-Conceptualism world. We’ve all learned the lesson that art must mean something besides or beyond the way it looks, so we apply that lesson to all future creations and viewing experiences. Conceptualism can be fun, casual, and hell, even enjoyable to look at.

I was confronted head on by this problem when I was trying to wrap my head around MOCA’s Index show of California Conceptualism last fall. As a museum educator, I was grappling with how to introduce this work to elementary school students without having to give them a fat stack of books to read first. The problem as I saw it was: how are we going to deal with the art of ideas based just on what we see before us, since that is all we are gonna have time to go on in a one-hour tour? What I discovered was that kids approach Conceptualism the same way they approach any other kind of art. If they like to look at it, they’ll talk about why; if they think it’s boring, well, they like to talk about that too. For young viewers, form contains content.

Last night I went to an artist panel at Hamiltonian Gallery with Anne Chan and Michael Iacovone. They both seemed to be struggling with the Formalism vs. Conceptualism problem a bit too, though he more than she. Iacovone’s project was in part an effort to remove the artist’s hand, eye, and choice from image making via a series of arbitrary rules and random dice rolls. He seemed very concerned that the resulting photographs should not be aestheticized objects to be appreciated for their formal beauty (which they had in loads), but invitations for viewers to engage the city in a similar ruled based method (in order, with luck, to experience their everyday space in a new way).

I kind of wanted to shake him a little bit. Why are we still thinking that physical attractiveness is suspect, or that beauty and concept cannot work together to form a more perfect artwork? If Michael Asher can create a seductive pink plastic square and call it high minimalism, then dammit, I can enjoy looking at a well-made rule based photograph. In fact, that little bit of beauty is what gets me to look in the first place. So yeah, the artwork might be showing a little leg….but so what, as long as it follows through with complex ideas once it’s got my attention? Because as a viewer, what I see before me is all I really have to go on in the end.

(image is Michael Asher's no title, 1966, from MOCA.org)

Capitol Hill Pumpkins

2009-10-31T14:19:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!

Street Photography Rule

2009-10-29T07:30:00.000-07:00

When invited to take someone's photograph, I always accept.

Unfinished Business: Dallas Photo Essay: Light & See & Shadow

2009-10-19T10:31:00.000-07:00

Unfinished Business: Dallas Photo Essay: Lines

2009-10-16T14:26:00.001-07:00

Unfinished Business: Dallas Photo Essay: Centraltrak

2009-10-09T08:19:00.000-07:00

Looking Back, Looking Forward

2009-10-08T07:51:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday I went to a lecture at the Phillips Collection given by one of my former professors at Illinois. I didn’t always see eye-to-eye with him on the fundamental matters of art making back then, but I did think it might be nice to see a familiar face (and hear familiar dialogue) in this new and different place.

But besides the feeling of being back in grad school for an hour and a half, what has stuck with me from this talk is the introduction the director of the Phillips gave. She talked about one of the purposes of this lecture series (and, it turns out, an alliance with my alma mater) as being to join the “two art histories:” the academy and the museum, theory and practice.

The director’s comments have made me think about my time spent under both of those regimes and how they each changed me as an artist. I came out of the university three years ago feeling bitter, stupid, and like a passé freak of a formalist. I just couldn’t get with the relational aesthetics program. However, I did have a strong sense of my own motivations as an artist, wrong headed as I believed those to be. My time as a MOCA educator worked to sweeten that bitterness, as I was then in the position of having to interface between difficult artworks and the public. I could share both my love of a Morris Louis (or Robert Rauschenberg or Laura Owens) and my puzzlement at a Cindy Bernard or Chris Burden, and in so doing created a richer experience of these artworks for myself and my tour groups. Perhaps my changing attitude had to do with gaining perspective and maturity; it could also be the difference in a top-down versus collaborative approach to challenging artworks.

***
(tangential rant to conclude)

During grad school, I was always frustrated by the insistence on projects that were as non-commercial as humanly possible, so collaborative and community-involved that little seemed to remain behind of the artist’s own self. I came to see this position as pie-in-the-sky delusional; professors could espouse such work, and make it themselves, because they had jobs with regular paychecks. Meanwhile, they churned out more of us grads with suspicion of craft, the object, and the hand beaten into our brains, to compete for the precious-few such academic positions, yet not equipping us with the career guidance we would need to chart our own paths. It was a trial by fire, but I think I came out stronger for it.

My time in LA, however, gave me the opposite experience. The LA art community is so frank about the money that makes it go ‘round, that I, at times, felt myself feeling wistful for those alternative-space, non-commercial, community oriented days of yore.

I guess the truth is that you need both commercial outlets and non-commercial aspirations to be a whole artist. The collapse of the LA economy had, even before I left that city, started me thinking about how to chart this kind of a course for myself. Perhaps I will figure more of that out here in another new place. Fresh start, fresh face, fresh ideas.

Time, it is Blowing in the Winds of Change

2009-10-01T17:05:00.000-07:00

Despite the radio silence, which may serve as evidence to the contrary, this Arkie is still adrift. However, after a five-day sojourn across most of I-40, she is now reporting from the Eastern Time Zone, specifically, Washington, DC.

Mr. Arkie and I arrived here nearly two weeks ago, he to fight the good fight in the national halls of justice, me to try again to make art and find community in another new place.

Stay tuned for future “Back East” adventures.

In Search of Q, Dallas Edition

2009-08-28T17:14:00.000-07:00

It’s my last day in Dallas, so I finally got around to eating some local barbecue. I’ve heard and read unkind things said about the local fair here in DFW, but I felt that I needed to give it a shot. Texas style barbecue is different from what I grew up eating, more beef focused and smoky mesquite flavored. But, you know, when in Rome…

In my neighborhood is a little place called Mac’s. Every time I have driven by it, I have made a mental note to try it later….which promptly gets tossed into my mental trash can. It doesn’t help that Mac’s is a workaday lunch-only place (11-2 Mon-Fri, or something like that), at which point I’m usually finishing up my coffee.

But today was the day! Mac’s décor is straightforward, fake-wood-paneled, cafeteria chairs, sit-down-and-eat style. I felt like I had stepped back into the employee lounge at my dad’s office circa 1985. I got a sliced beef sandwich, M got sausage, and we split sides of slaw and beans. The beef was tender and good, like a well-made roast; the sausage came thin-sliced and grilled on a bun, and with the hot-sweet sauce was a rare treat. The sides were straightforward and good also, complimentary but never distracting.

We ordered take out so we could wash it all down with our last two Shiners.

I hear the Frito Pie is good. Next time…

Mac’s Barbecue
3933 Main Street
Dallas, TX 75226
Open weekdays for lunch

Dallas Photo Essay: Graphix

2009-08-22T09:02:00.001-07:00

Dallas Photo Essay: Nature/Nuture

2009-08-20T08:41:00.000-07:00

Press!

2009-08-17T12:18:00.000-07:00

"This...is Your..., This...is My..." got a mention and a recommendation from the San Antonio Current. Read it here.

This...is Your..., This...is My...

2009-08-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

My work is currently part of a really beautiful group show in San Antonio. The curator, Salvador Castillo, is super smart. You should go.

This...is Your..., This...is My...
UTSA Satellite Space
115 Blue Star
San Antonio, Texas
through August 23
Gallery Hours Thursday-Sunday 12-5

Progress Report

2009-07-28T17:43:00.000-07:00

I have been in Dallas for a couple of weeks. What have I accomplished in this time?

-I’ve been taking photos of the neighborhoods I visit; at some point I will post some little photo essays.
-I’ve unpacked my sheets and made a new site-specific work in my space, along with a new chair piece and some shelf pieces for the San Antonio show.
-I’ve had Taco Cabana 3 times.
-I went to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Transcendent!
-I went to the old Neiman Marcus store downtown. Decadent!
-I’ve been doodling around with some small works on paper.
-I (finally) finished Infinite Jest. The end left me repulsed and dissatisfied, like all good postmodern fiction should. Hey!

Allison Schulnik at Marty Walker Gallery

2009-07-19T07:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I visited some Dallas art galleries. I was really impressed by the architecture of these spaces. They rivaled the expensive art temples of LA (I’m thinking of galleries like Acme or the new Roberts & Tilton), with their white floors, vaulted ceilings, and grand foyers/front desks. For me, the art took a back seat to the spaces this time around, except for a stop-animation video by Allison Schulnik at Marty Walker Gallery. (The video can be viewed at these links.)

Schulnik is a native Californian living in LA, it turns out, though I don’t think I have encountered her work there before. So, I was happy to find her Hobo Clown on a loop in this Dallas gallery’s project room. I was mesmerized by her characters’ rainbow tears and watched the video several times through as the clowns’ eyes excreted color after swirling color. They seem swamped by the beauty of the world around them, almost sorrowful at their inability to take it all in.

It occurred to me that the clowns’ tears could be a metaphor for my experience as a visual artist observing my surroundings. As my work has become more influenced by place over the past few years, I notice that my eyeballs often feel overwhelmed by the world around them, at the effort of taking in the details (such as when I travelled back to Arkansas in May and was shocked by the green). I want to capture everything around me with my internal camera so that I can accurately reflect a place and my feelings about it in my work. However, that internal camera is never fast enough, and its memory card is filled too quickly, so that I am often left with just fleeting impressions of a color, a pattern, or a shape. The paintings and installations that I make later are highly subjective products of this faulty memory and eye of mine.

So my sympathy went out to the poor raggedy claymation clowns in the video; sometimes I wish my eyes could regurgitate all that extra too.

(Image is a still from Hobo Clown, from the artist's website.)

Centraltrak Set Up

2009-07-14T09:39:00.000-07:00

I live in Unit #3 at Centraltrak. Here it is.

Notes on a Texas Return, Day 3

2009-07-12T18:35:00.000-07:00

I am feeling a surprising and deep appreciation for being back in Texas. The oaks and grackles and horsey drivers rise up to greet me.

***
All the weird and funky nooks and crannies are out for everyone to see and seem to be appreciated by everyone. I feel that maybe Angelenos miss out on large swaths of their city; there, we are separated by freeways, but here they corral us together in loops and pens.

***
Though the air shimmers above the blacktop, the heat just gives folks one more thing to talk about; it dampens foreheads and backs of knees, but not spirits. Everyone is just in search of a good time, a cold beer, or a margarita and happy to let you have yours.

***
When I talk I can hear that my accent has come back. It feels like talking with big blown roses falling out of my mouth. It feels good and lazy.

***
I notice that women are different here than in California. LA women are facially subtle, keeping their features still and cool. Women here talk with their whole faces. I wonder if I do this?

***
Men here are different too. They automatically hold the door to let me go first, never stopping to consider if I might be a radical feminazi and therefore offended by their politess. They are chatty like the women, and lean on things with one arm, and probably think I am a bad driver in an oh-shucks kind of way. But I'm actually a very good driver, since I can drive a standard and have only totaled one car ever.

A Whole 'Nother Country

2009-07-05T20:37:00.000-07:00

I grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, during the 1980s and 90s. I remember thinking of cities like Memphis, New Orleans, and Dallas as distant metropolises full of glamour, neon lights, and general excitement. These were the places where my well heeled classmates would be taken by their mothers to shop for new school clothes or one-of-a-kind cotillion dresses, or would accompany their fathers to attend action-packed sporting events. Dallas had a special place in this starry constellation because a picture of it entered my family’s living room every Friday evening (in the form of J.R., Sue Ellen, and company on Dallas) and sometimes, with luck, on New Year’s Day (in the form of an Arkansas Razorbacks appearance at the Cotton Bowl). To my mind, Dallas, with its distinctive lit-up skyline and Neiman Marcus catalogs, was the epitome of a city; New York might as well have been on another planet.

Well, now I have the chance to learn about the real Dallas, to replace this childhood picture of it in my mind. For the next two months, I’ll be living and working at UT Dallas’ Central Trak artist residency, in the neighborhood of Deep Ellum. I’m looking forward to learning about a new art community and reconnecting with my Texas ties. I’ll be posting about my adventures here. Stay tuned!

Monique van Genderen at Happy Lion

2009-06-22T18:43:00.000-07:00

I have been a couple of times now to see Monique van Genderen’s new paintings at Happy Lion Gallery in Chinatown, and I still don’t know what to think about them. I am seduced and repelled at the same time: the paintings’ slick, shiny surfaces and bright colors beckon but are ultimately inscrutable, like a tagged-up wall.

The 6’x4’ panels march around the gallery walls in lock-step, with flower forms, rainbow arches, and blocky areas of color flowing from one to the next. I kind of want to lick them (flavors like Tutti Fruitti and Daquiri Ice—Baskin Robbins circa 1985—come to mind), and I also want to wrap them around giant gift baskets for my girlfriends, like cellophane. The gallery space feels like a haute-couture fete. But in my jeans and t-shirt with fingers smelling like the egg roll I just ate, I am the frumpy girl at this party; I can’t untangle the refined language, perfect manners, and manicured surfaces of these abstractions.

After reading back over what I just wrote, I see that my interpretation of these paintings could be called feminine, as I have described them in the language of Vogue or the late Domino. I get the feeling from her artist statement that van Genderen would be okay with that. She describes her work thusly:

“Paint hangs on the surface, exposing the structure of the panel, not unlike the various states of dress a model for couture might display, showing contour and line through bone beneath the fabric.”

She goes on:

“Let’s say they have nothing to do with the figure at all, it is at least true that the works were made by a feminine hand, trying to carve out theoretical space in this world. For weaponry I resort to scale and boldness of color in order to cast about my subjectivity. Abstraction and materiality are the indicators and the language for what lies beneath.”

Subjective experience, beauty and meaning in pattern, idealization of feminine difference: aren’t these hallmarks of Feminist art? So maybe I was right after all to picture myself in a room full of beauty queens who are preening for my gaze yet are aloof from the need for my regard at the same time. I am still left not knowing what to think, but I really want to join the dance, all the same.

Van Genderen's work is on view through July 11. Image is an installation shot from the gallery's website.

Beyond Words (long ramble ahead...)

2009-06-01T16:06:00.000-07:00

Last week I was catching up on some podcast listening while I worked on some fabric pieces in my living room (sewing is easier when you have a soft, well-lit place to park your backside). Episode 191 (4/26/09) of the Bad at Sports podcast featured an interview with art historian James Elkins about a growing international trend in art education: the PhD in Art.

During the discussion, Elkins pointed out many of the problems created by forging ahead with this new degree, such as lack of standard agreement on what should constitute the Art PhD or the regular old MFA; and the class-like split that might occur between MFAs (makers) and PhDs (thinkers). He also outlined the different approaches to this degree that he has encountered at various institutions. One sounds a lot like an MFA: intense studio time and critique that results in a body of work and a dissertation-length artist statement. The second approach is more philosophical or critical, asking degree candidates to focus their research in a discipline that may lie outside of art (anthropology, sociology, computer science, etc.), and to produce a dissertation in that field while also producing a body of studio work.

Elkins advocated for the second approach, at least in cases where an artist’s work necessitates expertise in an outside field (he mentioned Mary Kelly as an example). But the greater questions he seemed to be struggling with were these: what is the role of research in art? Can the production of visual art be considered research, that is, productive of new knowledge?

A lot of this questioning seemed to center around the key component of the PhD: the dissertation. And this got me to thinking about my own thesis (a mere 20 pages) and the role of language in the visual arts. I keep this blog because I want to exercise my writing skills and give the wordy part of my brain new thoughts to chew on, such as expressing connections like what I am doing now or trying to articulate my thoughts about an art show I have just seen.

However, when I am working in the studio I am not using that wordy part of my brain. Sometimes when I am working I realize later that I have been thinking with a different part of my brain, one that doesn’t put its thoughts into words in the same way that the part of my brain that worries about the laundry piling up or the unpaid bill on my desk does. This part of my brain thinks in pigments and marks, it tells me what to do next by showing me a picture of how things could be. These pictures are dark and fuzzy around the edges, so that I can only see a step or two ahead of myself at a time. I must rely on intuition to follow through on the ideas from this part of my brain, trusting myself to figure things out as I go along.

I have lately been thinking that we make art in order to express ideas that are outside language. We create sculptures or symphonies because we want to share thoughts that are hard to put into words, that come from this pigment/mark/intuition part of our brains. But does this count as research? Does relying on my intuition to put red next to gray create new knowledge? And how can a dissertation on DNA sequencing lead to a PhD in Art? Why not a PhD in Biology instead?

Art Notes from Culver City

2009-05-20T17:14:00.000-07:00

When my landlords come over every so often to clean up the yard and look around the place, I make myself scarce and go see gallery shows if I’m not working at the museum (I guess I have a hard time getting studio work done when other folks are hanging around). Today was one of those days, so I lit out for Culver City.

I didn’t do my research very well ahead of time, as several galleries were closed for installation. But of the shows I did manage to see, it seemed like big, heavy-hitting dude art was an overarching theme—I’m especially thinking of Kehinde Wiley at Roberts & Tilton and Jedidiah Caesar at Susanne Vielmetter. I don’t mean this as a criticism. Sometimes hyper-real, towering paintings or hulking piles of trash and resin are just what you need to take you out of your own head and into another place, time, or existence. But a couple of group shows, that seemed to be involved with other concerns entirely, caught my attention more.

One was Keeper of Light at Sandroni Rey, an exhibition of smallish portraiture in diverse media. The one work in particular that I looked at for a long time I later learned is a daguerreotype made by Chuck Close; it is a small, mirrored surface imprinted with the image of a sunflower. A viewer can only clearly see the sunflower when she stands with her own reflection intersecting it. I felt myself to be part of this artwork in a very connected and intimate way, as I bobbed and weaved to see the whole image—maybe living with Dan Graham’s work for the past few months at MOCA has made me especially receptive to this line of thinking. (Keeper of Light up til May 23.)

I was also interested in the group photography show Mysterium at Kinkead Contemporary, around the corner on Washington Blvd. These were also small scale, and seemed to me when I was in front of them to be about the non-verbal, and unexplainable and ineffable beauty. Now that I am home and have read the online press release, I’m not sure I was in tune with the curatorial thread….however, still worth a look. (Mysterium up til June 13.)
***
I chose Culver City for my outing today because I had heard about a show of unmade bed paintings at Walter Maciel Gallery. However, I had to wait a while to see this one, as the doors did not open at 11 as promised by the sign on the door. So, I circled back and saw this show last.

Frank Ryan’s 20-odd paintings (all sizes, all surfaces, all times of day and night) of an unmade bed (his perhaps?) seemed to me to be meditations on the beauty of the mundane and the every day. The paintings are all of the same bed, in the same room, with the same linens; however, the objects, pets, and points of view change or move from painting to paintng. Taken together, they look like a choreographed dance of light (duvet) and dark (sheets) forms rolling, folding, and bunching around each other. Individually and up close, they are both fast studies of subtle and specific lighting situations and built-up abstractions of brushstrokes on brushstrokes.

I loved this show very much, but I am biased towards all things bed related. You should go see it for yourself (up through June 3).

(image is an installation shot from Frank Ryan's show at Walter Maciel Gallery, from the gallery's website.)

Travels and Brief Mentions, Long Overdue

2009-05-18T10:41:00.000-07:00

After a year-long exile, I went back home for my birthday at the beginning of this month. I’m a little ashamed to say that my memories had faded a bit. As soon as I woke up from the long, dark plane ride, I was gobsmacked by the green and the wet, like my eyeballs had been painted with chlorophyll. I marveled at the crazy, figure shaped oak leaves, the heavy, moist air, the big, muddy river. I missed out on barbecue, because I’d eaten too much Big Mista the week before (party leftovers!). Catfish, Franke’s, and red beans & rice were on the menu instead.

***
I saw a couple of art shows over a month ago at Jancar Gallery in Chinatown that I kept meaning to blog about, but clearly I’ve had other things (food! party!) on the brain. So even though the shows are down, I still want to give a shout out to Jancar for some rockin’ feminist presentations: Ilene Segalove upstairs (hurray for old-skool, patriarchy-skewering photo appropriation!), with Alison Foshee & Katina Huston downstairs (three cheers for obsessive, super crafty, mixed media blitz!). This show made me smile bigger than any has in a long time.

I’m going to check out some more shows this week, so stay tuned…

(photos above are of the Arkansas River, taken by me; and of Alison Foshee's works Basketroid and Supernova, both mixed media and 2009, from the Jancar Gallery website.)

In Search of Q, Part 2

2009-04-10T18:41:00.000-07:00

To any regular patrons of the Atwater Village Farmers’ Market on Sundays, this is old news. I, however, tend to be a weekend lay-a-bed, so it was not til a couple weeks ago when I had a craving for tamales that my nose led me to the source of my newest barbecue crush: Bigmista. That weekend I demurred, going instead with the old tamale standby for lunch (pork and sweet corn, obviously). M suggested that, even though my nose was swooning for the heady aroma of wood smoke and melting fat, I didn’t want to get my hopes up to have them dashed by subpar Q. So when we got home, I did some research and discovered other bloggers raving about Bigmista. I resolved to give him a try…

This past Sunday, we did just that. Two Mini Mistas (a sandwich, a side, a cold drink), both with pulled pork, one with beans, one with potato salad (cole slaw was gone by 12:30). I focused on the meat first, after pouring out my little plastic cuplet of sauce and dipping my finger in—sweet and smoky, black-peppery like what I encountered in Illinois. I sampled the meat with my fingers too, since it overflowed the bun. MMMM! Tender juiciness, just the right amount of slick greasiness, it rivaled Whole Hog, my personal back-home favorite, next to McClard’s (which, really, you go to for the atmosphere and maybe the tamales, which are wholely different from tamales as experienced out here, served with ketchup and Saltines).

I took home a catering menu, from which I can order meat and sides by the pound. I think Bigmista is going to be making an appearance at the upcoming Team M 30th Birthday Party. Be prepared with your wet naps.

***
ps – oh! The potato salad! So good, made with mustard like it ought to be, like my Aunt Inez used to do. I think she would approve.

Day to Day Rememberance (or, nerding out on NPR)

2009-04-03T15:26:00.000-07:00

It’s been two weeks now since one of my favorite radio programs, Day to Day, went off the air. Yet I still find myself feeling expectant around 9 AM, thinking, “oh, yeah, I’m supposed to be doing something right now….” That something always involved making sure I was tuned to Preset Station 2 (KPCC) instead of 3 (KCRW) and turning up the volume knob on my radio so I could hear Madeline, Alex, and Alex over my typing, or cereal crunching, or the traffic outside my car. Now I’ve got BBC News Hour or Morning Becomes Eclectic to toggle between….both good choices, but just not the same somehow.

I remember being excited when I moved to Los Angeles almost three years ago and realizing that I would again be living in a place where the public radio station aired Day to Day. I became enamored of this program when I was at home in Little Rock, where KUAR (89.1 FM!) aired it at noon. I think I liked this show because it listened the way a good website reads: a little hard news, a bit of obscure facts, a dollop of human interest, a pinch of snarky satire. I would hear about people, places, and events on this program that I probably never would have come across on my own. And I could hear about these things while being otherwise productive with my hands and eyes, unlike a book or newspaper. For someone who spends long, silent hours alone in the studio, this kind of aural stimulation is an important reminder of the outside world.

When I moved to Illinois, however, no dice on the D2D front, as neither WILL nor WBEZ aired it. However, during my second year, one of my fellow art grad students realized that we could pick up the AM station from Purdue U. (in West Lafayette, IN) in our studio building. One day I heard that familiar music from behind his closed studio door and immediately had him set me wise on how I, too, could tune in D2D once more. Of course, this station did not come in at my apartment or any other place in town—our studio was in a little radio sweet spot, and maybe that helped encourage me to get there a little earlier in the day than I would have otherwise.

I don’t have a good ending to this post, other than to say that I miss Day to Day very much. It has been a faithful and constant companion in my studio, in my car, and at my desk. So although I continue to be a loyal NPR listener (and member too! Support public radio and get a fabulous logo grocery tote like I did!), I now have one hour of listening to look forward to a little bit less.

Tomory Dodge @ Acme

2009-03-13T16:21:00.000-07:00

A week or two ago I was giving a tour of the permanent collection show up now at MOCA to a group of students from University High School. I was on my way into the blissed-out Marc Rothko room, when their attention was captured by the Jackson Pollock hanging nearby. At first, they were highly skeptical of this as painting….it didn’t seem to them to have any order or intention; they saw it as a canvas full of chaos and accidental spills, not much more. I remember one of the students asking something like, “Did he mean to do this?”

After a few more minutes of thinking, talking, and looking from different angles, the students began to cotton onto Pollock’s methods. They realized that the liquidness of the paint and all-over composition meant that he’s painted from above, with no real top or bottom to his picture. They began to find a visual order in the drips and splotches, noting that as the colors wove in and out, under and over each other, they could follow the artist at work

I had what I think was similar experience this afternoon in the Tomory Dodge show up through tomorrow at Acme. I tend to always want to look at paintings up close to figure out how they are made (I think when I go look at painting shows I am subconsciously searching for direction or instruction or a trick to steal for my own work). But up close, at least at first, the large canvasses were inscrutable. I couldn’t make out intention from accident from serendipity. I also couldn’t get a handle on the space; because of the flat black backgrounds in most of the works, I thought I should feel like I was looking into deep space. However, up close, the thickly applied multi hued paint slicks flattened out and just remained what they were—monster brushstrokes and knife scrapes.

As I walked back and forth, to and fro in front of the large paintings, trying to get a read on what I was looking at, I came across a small (about 14” square) jewel of a painting titled Curtain in the second room. Dodge’s red and blue brushstrokes gelled for me at this more intimate scale. I was reminded of some of the Monet water lilies I used to go look at in the Art Institute of Chicago; object and reflection merging and separating, flowing freely between figure and ground. Curtain was like a tutorial for looking at the larger pictures, which from a distance, became great tangles of stars, rainbows, and Light Sabers in the night sky. A second anomaly, and perhaps my favorite painting of the bunch, was Kicker, a huge painting installed opposite Curtain. This one had a bright pink, salmon, and blue background, with bright and neon vertical stripes running down its face. In this painting I get the same sense of the physical painter at work that the students sensed with the Pollock; huge giant’s brushes being lifted up with both hands, high overhead, on tip toes, dragged down to the bottom to rest in a yoga squat. Over and over.

Tomory Dodge, After Forever at Acme ends tomorrow, March 14. So shake a tail feather if you want to see it.

***
I’ve been gallery gazing on several different occasions in different locations over the past couple of weeks. It seems that what I read in dispatches from other art communities (New York, Houston, etc.) is holding true here—bad times brings out the better art. Whoop!

(Image is Curtain by Tomory Dodge, 2008)

Neighborhood News

2009-03-11T14:29:00.000-07:00

Last weekend there was a shooting in my neighborhood of LA, Echo Park. In total, two men were killed, one wounded, and one suspect apprehended. Police say the shootings were the result of an internal dispute among leaders and members of the EXP gang.

I was especially disturbed when I first learned about the shooting because of its location: in the middle of one of the neighborhood’s main avenues which is always covered up with pedestrians, bicycles, and cars, across the street from an elementary school and a coffee shop. Granted, it was Sunday afternoon, so school was not in session, but I’m sure there were still plenty of kids and other locals out and about. So what gives, gang bangers? Don’t shoot up the place, and keep your violence to yourselves.

However, I also know that these gang members and their gang are long-time fixtures of the neighborhood, just like the elementary school and the little markets that dot the avenue. I know too that they view the neighborhood as theirs, and a white-skinned, light-haired person like me is just one of those newbies who doesn’t understand, doesn’t want to be educated about the neighborhood’s real culture, and never will really belong here.

At least, that’s the message I’ve gotten from reading the postings on several neighborhood blogs and listservs in the past few days. Incidents like this one bring up to the surface our divisions, differences, and beefs, perceived or otherwise. Discussions about this event seem to have instantly generated comments about the increase of white residents in the neighborhood over the past 10 years, the lack of respect given the old residents by the new ones, and the ignorance of the new residents when confronted with the realities and mores of the previous generations.

I’m not entirely sure what the two things have to do with each other, or why these subjects are so quickly related. I didn’t realize any one race or ethnicity had corned the market on hopes for bullet-free walks down the street, or that the wish for such could be understood as disrespect. Isn’t it natural for us all to want a safe place to coffee-sip, porch-sit, shoot the breeze (not each other!) and watch kids play?

The recent conflict over these questions makes me feel bad. I'm pretty sure that we do indeed all want the same basic things in life, but our outside differences are just too much for us to overcome in order to find that common ground.

Art Pork

2009-02-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

I have heard on the radio and read in print several commentators, talking heads, and members of the general public lambasting the economic stimulus bill now grinding its way through congress as being full of pork. Item Number One on everyone’s menu of critiques seems to be the 50 million dollars of funding being proposed for the National Endowment for the Arts. I heard a radio talk show guest say something along the lines of: “Building sculptures and putting on operas does not stimulate the economy, does not create jobs.” (I heard this approximate quote on the Patt Morrison Show—1-3 pm on 89.3 KPCC—sometime in the last two weeks.)

Well, sir, I beg to differ. No, building a single sculpture does not create hundreds of jobs instantaneously. However, the money used to bring such a thing about does touch many hands and businesses, spreading out in a community like the tiny little hair roots of a poke salet weed in search of sustenance. For instance: the foundry and its skilled workers who fabricate the sculpture are paid, so that they can pay bills and buy groceries and maybe some new blue jeans at the national retailer who pays rent to the mall; the steel mill gets a boost from the purchase of the few tons of raw material needed to create the artwork, and therefore continues to pay for health insurance and matching retirement funds for its employees; the freight company that transports the material and the finished artwork gets to put its equipment and workers in motion, and in so doing buys fuel, antifreeze, and paper forms in triplicate; the artist and her freelance assistants (who she pays!) work in a town or a city for a few days, buying coffee, sandwiches, and the odd Danish from the locally-owned bakery down the street from their worksite. The arts stimulate our economy underground, lubricating those wheels and gears in small ways, like bacon grease left in the skillet used to cook up some eggs. It’s small, but it keeps us grinding forward like that bill.

I work part time in the education department of an art museum, and I just survived a round of layoffs there. $50 million is small change in the grand scheme of things; but it can buy an awful lot of coffee, pizzas, construction paper, masking tape, and photo paper (the kinds of things we are constantly buying more of for projects and workshops). So if we stay employed, we keep making those kinds of purchases, and they help keep both Office Depot and Joe’s Giant Slice in business.

(image is Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate in Chicago, from Wikipedia)

The Fruited Plain, Part 2

2009-01-23T08:24:00.000-08:00

Last week, I revised and completed The Fruited Plain, at Phantom Galleries LA in downtown Long Beach. Liza, Phantom Galleries' director, asked me to write a statement explaining the work's title and what I was thinking about when I made it. Turns out, like a lot of other folks, I was thinking about politics and current events. In the spirit of recent days, here's what I wrote. Hooray for new beginnings!

***

“O' beautiful, for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!”
--Katherine Lee Bates, “America the Beautiful”

During this time of historic change in our nation, I am filled with hope for my future as an artist and a citizen. I was inspired by my hope to create this artwork, The Fruited Plain. Our country is a place of abundance; we are blessed with fertile soil, fertile hearts, and fertile minds. I believe that in the coming days and years we will be inspired to work together to harvest this bounty for the benefit of us all.

***
The Fruited Plain
Phantom Galleries LA
340 E. 3rd Street
Long Beach, CA
from now til ?

Phantom Galleries in Long Beach

2009-01-08T15:07:00.000-08:00

I've been working in a Phantom Galleries LA project space in Long Beach, California. These shots are of my initial installations in the space, completed right before Christmas. I've started over this week and am working on a whole new piece in the space. As often happens when I work in a window, my visual art morphs into performance for the passersby, as they try to figure out what the heck I'm doing. I'm not too sure of that myself yet....we'll see.

Phantom Galleries LA Long Beach Project Space, 340 3rd Street, Long Beach, California. Thanks to Liza for setting this up!

Happy Late Christmas!

2008-12-31T18:28:00.000-08:00

I meant to post this closer to Christmas, but blogging on an iPhone proved challenging. I was in the greater Washington, DC, area for the holiday and was lucky enough to visit Mt. Vernon, George Washington's estate. It's a special experience at Christmastime, as the house is decorated in the historic, non-tree manner, and the estate hosts special guests and events (like a peek at the usually-closed 3rd floor). Special Guest #1, in my opinion, was Aladdin, the Christmas camel! Apparently this was a tradition in George's day, and one the Mt. Vernon Ladies' Association continues. Aladdin is one year old and a Virginia native. He is set to return home after January 6.

Happy New Year, and to all a good night!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-28T00:05:00.000-08:00

The day is nearly, or even just now, past, but the weekend rolls along....I made my first solo pan of dressing today (see photo, left). I am used to being the assistant on this type of project, but I muddled through alone and produced something quite tasty, even though I forgot the eggs. And, it was not dry in the least! The dish has come back home about 2/3 empty, so I guess even though my in-laws didn't seem to know what it was or what to call it, somebody at the table took a liking to it.

Even better, I have a third left all for myself. Whee!

ps -- Whooooooo........Pig! Sooie! (see photo, right)

How y'all doin?

2008-11-19T11:03:00.000-08:00

Hi blog-o-sphere! I didn’t forget about you, just taking a break during which I became hypnotized by our national political life and simultaneously mired in the cadmium-yellow-medium/dioxyzene-purple poo-brown muck of my studio. I’ve been kind of bogged down in there, so I haven’t felt like I had much to say with words, either.

So, I organized a crit group! I invited some of my fellow museum educators (who are also artists, but more importantly are extremely good at talking about art) over to have a look-see. Turns out things aren’t as dire as I thought. They helped me figure out why little things that start out with promise turn to crap, and they gave me a couple of insights into things I am doing that are starting to get somewhere. So now I feel like I can see a few more steps in front of me down the dark hallway of art making. I hope I also gave them some similarly useful feedback; I know we talked for a couple of hours, so with luck something smart came out of my mouth at some point.

***

I have been thinking more and more that I seriously lack in the personal connections department. Even though I have lived in LA for over two years now, I barely know any other artists (and if I do know any, I don’t know them “as artists,” if that makes sense, but in other contexts). It’s so dicey getting to know people here…it seems like everyone is afraid to make friendly advances, because they might be interpreted as concealing ulterior motives (like, can this person introduce me to that hot curator over there?). Maybe it’s just because of where I’m from, but I am used to sharing what meager art resources or knowledge I have, quite openly and with the intention of being generous. There was so little attention paid to art in my hometown by the general population (how 'bout them Hogs?...not that I don't love them too, but) that us artists had to really cling to each other for support. So I guess I am flailing around, trying to find some other people to grab onto. I hope I have found a few.

smelly memory

2008-09-09T22:36:00.000-07:00

a few days ago i went thrifting and came home with a few choice items. i hand washed these and left them to dry in the bathtub. afterwards, every time i went into the bathroom, i was hit with this certain smell....a smell like wet coats hung up in the hall to dry, with a touch of soap or dryer sheet. exactly like the smell of the hallway in my old illinois apartment building.

at this time of year as the season just barely begins to change, i think back to moving to illinois from arkansas, to my first good apartment, and being alone in it after my family had left. the promise of a fresh start, crisp blue skies, all walks through fallen leaves to the library or the parking lot or to a snug bar downtown...the future promise of good steam heat, promised by the wet coat laundry smell in the basement near the boiler the super will light in a couple of months, steaming up through my clicking, tapping radiator vents to fog the windows and turn the streetlights into fuzzy halos.

coming home from the library, wooly-gloved hands full of books to read in bed under blankets. sweet garret life, traded in for sunny skies and Santa Ana winds.

2008-08-25T07:58:00.000-07:00

I've been on a big roadtrip up and down the West Coast for the past couple of weeks, so please excuse the quiet. Before I left, I was over in Santa Monica and went to Bergamot Station to see the two shows at Ruth Bachofner Gallery: Gina Han: New Work; and Four Abstract Painters.

Gina Han's work is in the larger front gallery: squishy rainbow bean shapes everywhere, like a Fantasy Land for Jelly Belly lovers. These shapes appeared on canvases large and small, in carefully chosen color combinations. However, I was most drawn to the large installation of the shapes; the work, titled Flight, takes up one whole corner of the space, with the shapes flowing over the floor and up onto the wall. They operate here without any more ground than the space itself, so I was really aware of the physical nature of the paint itself (shiny, slick, plastic). Maybe because I think about similar issues with my own installations, work that deals with that fuzzy intersection of painting and sculpture always gets my attention.

The small back gallery holds the group show Four Abstract Painters. Here I saw just a very few works by artists David Allan Peters, Sara McIntosh, Robert Kingston, and Tony Beauvy. The gallery has just enough space for one or two viewers to enter and turn in place to view the work. This means that I was forced to view these paintings up close and personal, to really examine their surfaces and think about how they were made. When I was there, I felt like I was in a tiny jewelbox of abstraction, beautiful colors and inventive paint handling surrounding me. A nice jolt on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

This is the last week for both shows -- they close Saturday, August 30.

strange days

2008-07-29T16:49:00.000-07:00

This morning, I survived my first earthquake. It was almost over before I realized what it was....I guess I'm just not hardwired to think "earthquake!" when I hear strange grinding noises or feel a shimmy around me.

I was at the museum for a meeting, and we were in the galleries (at MOCA, these are at least partially underground). The rushing, gravelly sound made me think of the beginning of a hot & bothered summertime thunderstorm back home, when the rain starts hard and sudden out of a black sky. Or maybe the flushing of a giant toilet in a second-storey bathroom in an older house, water whooshing through the pipes. But outside the glass doors of the museum lobby, I could see the streetlights and buildings swaying, and the folks around me knew what to do. We stood in a gallery doorway until security had us move to the official gathering spot in the basement.

Turns out a relatively-new art museum is a pretty good place to be during a quake. It's built like a bunker, reinforced to hold up the artworks as well as to withstand the elements. And I learned that many of the newer high-rise buildings in downtown LA are built on a rolling mechanism, so they ride on the earth like huge boats. M, who works in one of these high-rises down the street, said it felt like being in a Chicago skyscraper on a windy winter day. So no biggie. An hour later, we were all back to work or out to lunch.

But the air vibrated with....strangeness. Downtown workers were out, on the street, talking on the phone, eating take-out, smoking, drinking coffee, and talking on the phone. They were taking it easy, like a Friday afternoon, but in a vigorous, amped-up way. It reminded me of snow days during high school, when we all scrambled to get home before the storm began. A free-for-all, an excuse to be frenzied or giddy, to step outside your normal behavior and do something a little bit uncharacteristic. I noticed this on my drive home as well. Folks walking in the middle of the street, folks who look like their faces don't normally feel the noon-time sun; the coconut juice man's upside down sign; cars running red lights, making left-hand turns into on-coming traffic. We are shaken awake, made a bit bold and crazy.

I was happy to get home and shut the door.

Table for One, Please

2008-07-23T18:31:00.000-07:00

My mother is considering a trip to China with her college's alumni group. However, my father doesn't want to go, and this is holding her up. I've been trying to convince her that traveling by oneself can actually be enjoyable, if you're prepared with a good book and a good map. I've been in a few different cities by myself (London, Paris, New York, Munich) and remember having a very different experience from when I was going someplace with a friend.

I was reminded of the pleasures of traveling solo a couple of weeks ago when I went to San Francisco to install some artwork (more about that in a future post). Here's what I noticed:

-I was more adventurous, because I was not able to rely on someone else to figure things out or to make choices. Everything was up to me.
-I treated myself to things I do not do at home, such as hot baths at night, eating lunch out, and drinking coffee whenever I felt like it (also purchased, not made by me).
-I wasn't being rude by reading at the table....after all, I can't talk to myself (not in public, anyway).
-I was more likely to have conversations with strangers.
-My attention was on the world around me, not on a companion. This made me much more observant of the people, architecture, weather, sights, tastes, and sounds around me.
-I could eat exactly what I wanted, even if that meant going to the same restaurant for dinner every single night.
-I felt very free to sit on a park bench, or in bed, or in a cafe, and do absolutely nothing. I realized that I never take the opportunity to do this at home.

Those all seem like compelling arguments to me for giving solo travel a shot. So come on, Mom, give it a try.

diggin' in the dirt

2008-07-07T21:56:00.000-07:00

tomorrow morning i head up to san francisco to install some work for a small solo show at The LAB. so in preparation, over the holiday weekend, i gardened (instead of packing, washing clothes, or getting my ducks in a row)!

we have a beautiful backyard spot, but it has some serious gaps in the plant department. i started the greening process by the path up to our front steps, with the help of some succulent cuttings from my mother-in-law and some cactus parts i found around in the neighborhood yard trash. turns out prickly pears are really easy to root.

grow, my pretties! quick, before the landlords come back! :D

We Are All Well and Fine

2008-07-01T13:45:00.000-07:00

My first solo show in LA closes a week from tomorrow. It comprises works on paper, two small sheet sculptures, and a large sheet window installation. I feel really proud of all of this work. Go see it if you're in the neighborhood.

We Are All Well and Fine, at LittleBird Gallery, 3195 Glendale Boulevard in Atwater Village. Through July 9.