Wednesday, January 23, 2013

No Kidding, It's F--king Freezing Up Here

Chicago might be the coldest place I've ever been in January, but the people are some of the warmest I've ever met. Here's to the UPS guy who rebuilt my shipping box for free and to the artists and arts educators who have been so generous with their time, food, and ideas.

If you're in the area, you should get out of the cold and go see this show:

 
 
RH Quaytman, Passing Through the Opposite of What It Approaches, Chapter 25, Watch the Doors Please (2012)tempera, gesso on wood, 52 3/8 x 32 3/8 inches. Up through Feb 17.





Saturday, January 19, 2013

With My Back To The World


There are some heavy utterances traveling through Threewalls. They are the sounds of Mary Patton’s multi-channel video, Panel; a re-interpretation of a 1975 panel discussion on the relationship between doctors and torture, and coercion therapy used in prisons and institutions.

When you are in that little jewelry box that is my gallery/studio, Michael Foucault and Judith Clark echo through as if they are shouting “how can you allow yourself this ambrosia when there are power imbalances to think about?” If I were ever going to be embarrassed by beauty now would be the time.


                             Agnes Martin, With My Back to the World, 1997



Friday, January 18, 2013

Tribute Album

-->



I have just made eighteen paintings based on the work of another painter, Karl Benjamin, and let me add, not Benjamin’s real work, but reproductions of his work. It would be one thing if I had seen the work in person but I didn’t. I’ve never seen a Karl Benjamin. I’ve seen reproductions on the Web and in his book Dance the Line. So how can I pay tribute to this work that I’ve never seen?

If you think about it in terms of music it wouldn’t be weird at all. Young musicians who never heard them played live by their authors reinterpret songs all the time. We expect it mostly because music is ephemeral. Like Joni Mitchell said, that’s what makes the performing arts and painting really different. “A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that's it, you know. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But he never, you know, nobody ever, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint a Starry Night again, man!' You know? He painted it and that was it.” We understand that music exists in the moment and that the only way to capture it is either through re-interpretation or recording. We understand this about music.

But we think painting is different. We can go to the Museum of Modern Art and see the original Starry Night, IF we’re in New York.  But most of us are not in New York or if we're in New York the work we want to see is in New Zealand.  The way most of us absorb painting is through reproductions because most of us don’t have access to the museums or galleries that house the specific works we’re interested in at any given moment.  So why not validate this experience most of us have with painting, so long as we understand that the reflection becomes a thing of its own?

The eighteen paintings in this project describe my experience of looking at reproductions of the work of Karl Benjamin. Just like we incorporate the pops and crackles on old recordings into our understanding of music we’ve never heard live, I’ve incorporated the flatness, the skewed scale, distorted color into my understanding of Benjamin’s vision. I even began to invent my own images once inspiration took hold.  So thank you Mr. Benjamin -- your work, the reproductions of your work, have moved me to show my appreciation and has inspired me to re-interpret your work in the tradition of music.

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Today is another day

One of the things about "the artist residency" is that it is a time for reflection, exploration, and through these things, creative expansion. I took the idea of reflecting literally for my Threewalls residency. For the next eight days I am turning my focus away from the idea of building with painting, and taking a closer look at images, and then reflecting them with mirrors.

Uncomfortable with creating images myself anymore, I decided to pay tribute to the abstract painter, Karl Benjamin. I've re-interpreted his paintings, and in some cases I've used his work as inspiration to create my own images. The idea of using mirrors occurred to me as a way to make a strong break from my obsession with the physical architecture of paintings, to dissolve their physicality. Of course, mirrors are a strong metaphor, and  I also like them in context of the tribute -- that I am reflecting Benjamin's work (and the work of so many other greats) in my own creations.








Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Greetings from Chicago

I arrived at Threewalls on Monday. My box of panels arrived ahead of me and was waiting in my room, damaged.  Also, my studio was not ready, so I spent the afternoon and Tuesday working between the small woodshop and bedroom repairing the damaged panels. As of today the studio was still not ready. Good thing I'm in Chicago instead of a residency in the woods! No worries, I headed over to the Art Institute where Richard Artschwager and Eva Hesse socked me right in the gut.

Artschwager's campy Table with Pink Tablecloth (1964), is a solid box sheathed in Formica.

So much of contemporary abstract painting/sculpture (Rachel Harrison, Donald Moffett, Nancy Shaver) owes a ton to the poetic spirit of Eva Hess and her willingness to nail her balls to the wall.



And as I finish this post, my studio is still being prepped. There is always the night.