09.07.2011

09.21.2011 (page for a book project organized by Emily Smith and Alex Moore)

09.28.2011 (Estonian mitten)

------------------------------

Saturday October 1, 2011 there will be town wide open studios here in Easthampton, MA organized by Easthampton City Arts.

Joshua and I will be in the studio from 10am - 3pm. Our studio is #3-32 located in the 1 Cottage Street Studios building.

A list of participating studios can be found here.

------------------------------

I Will Swallow It closes this Friday, October 7th. If you are in the Springfield, MA area and have time please take a trip over to Springfield College's William Blizard Gallery.

------------------------------

Doris Salcedo

Atrabiliarios, 1992-2004, shoes, animal fibre, and surgical thread


------------------------------



wall [wawl]
noun
1. any of various permanent upright constructions having a length much greater than the thickness and presenting a continuous surface except where pierced by doors, windows, etc.: used for shelter, protection, or privacy, or to subdivide interior space, to support floors, roofs, or the like, to retain earth, to fence in an area, etc.

2. Usually, walls. a rampart raised for defensive purposes.

3. an immaterial or intangible barrier, obstruction, etc., suggesting a wall: a wall of prejudice.

4. a wall-like, enclosing part, thing, mass, etc.: a wall of fire; a wall of troops.

5. an embankment to prevent flooding, as a levee or sea wall.

EXPAND

6. the Wall. Berlin Wall

7. the outermost film or layer of structural material protecting, surrounding, and defining the physical limits of an object: the wall of a blood cell.

8. Mining .

a. the side of a level or drift.

b.the overhanging or underlying side of a vein; a hanging wall or footwall.


street [street]
noun1. a public thoroughfare, usually paved, in a village, town, or city, including the sidewalk or sidewalks.

2. such a thoroughfare together with adjacent buildings, lots, etc.: Houses, lawns, and trees composed a very pleasant street.

3. the roadway of such a thoroughfare, as distinguished from the sidewalk: to cross a street.

4. a main way or thoroughfare, as distinguished from a lane, alley, or the like.

5. the inhabitants or frequenters of a street:

09.02.2011 (watcher in petals)

09.08.2011 (small piece)

09.17.2011 soap box derby
09.10.2011 busy beaver storage rt 20

09.18.2011

08.20.2011

09.02.2011 install

09.04.2011 ICA Boston

08.16.2011 mash up

08.17.2011 wunderkammer

08.27.2011 fair
08.27.2011 fair

08.26.2011

I have a show up now at Springfield College called "I Will Swallow It". Below is the statement from the show and more information. I will post pictures and write a little more about the work in my next post.

-----------------------------

The space that we built to protect ourselves we have decided to break it apart. It will do us good to move out of this place. We have stewed in our own juices long enough.

-----------------------------

“I Will Swallow It” is the sixth installment in a series called “All the Trappings”. The characters involved in this body of work have been trying to find a home for themselves by constructing fortified spaces out of cardboard, textiles, collaged imagery from shopping catalogs, and found and homemade objects. The spaces end up being isolating neurotic boxes of great pleasure and disgust.

The structure “I Will Swallow It” seems to be the beginning of a change in direction for these characters. The structure seems to have been opened up and is in the process of being dismantled or maybe it is being reconfigured.

I Will Swallow It
September 6 - October 7
William Blizard Gallery*
263 Alden St.
Springfield MA 01109


Gallery reception for artist and public:
Sept. 25, 2-4 p.m.

07.31.2011

My seat mate poked my lap when I was riding the train home from Chicago.
She was taken off the train in the early hours of the morning.
Not for poking my lap, but for something else.

-----------------------------

I met the woman who was the baby that wore these 08.??.05

Made in Minnesota (I think)
handmade baby slippers
found in the trash August 2005

These baby slippers I submitted for "Art-i-facts: An Unconventional History of MCAD". The show is in conjunction with MCAD's (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) 125 anniversary. Kerry Morgan, the director of the MCAD gallery, asked alumni to submit a single object or expression that would best represent one's experience while in school.

When I moved to Minneapolis in August of 2005 it was to start the MFA program at MCAD. I had never been to Minneapolis before. Luckily I had met a really lovely woman named Megan earlier in the year in Vermont who lived in Minneapolis with her boyfriend. They were kind enough to let me sleep in there living room for a couple of weeks while I looked for a place to live. Other than Megan I didn't know anybody else in the city. I would bike around Lake Harriet for hours and then I would bike up and down the alleys looking in trash bins for stuff. I moved out to Minnesota with one suitcase so I was trying to find materials to work with in the studio and housewares. I found so much stuff. Most of it I didn't take, sometimes I would just look. I remember three trash bins from this time in particular: the wiglets/smutty book/giant Garfield head pillow, an empty dumpster except for a huge birthday party bag filled with baby sleepers and dresses, and an overflowing dumpster filled with the life items of a couple moving out of the country (where these slippers came from).

I had visited the dumpster once and didn't take anything because I was afraid it was someone's who had been evicted from their apartment and I didn't want to take what could very well still belong to someone. But I decided to go back the next day because there was so much. This time a woman came up to me in the alley so I asked her if she knew what was going on. She said that the stuff was hers and that she and her partner were (and I assume still are) musicians and had decided to move to Mexico. They couldn't take much with them so they donated some things but still had to throw so much away. She said she would be very happy for me to take as much from the pile as I wanted. At this time I still was looking for a place to live so I couldn't take too much. I took the slippers, the woman's baby book, a notebook, and a blue cotton shift with strawberries embroidered on the yoke.

These slippers I keep pinned to the wall of my studio. I have always wanted to "do something" with them but have felt funny because in some ways I feel they are not mine to do anything with.

Art-i-facts: An Unconventional History of MCAD

August 26 – September 18, 2011
MCAD Second Floor Galleries

Exhibition reception: Friday, September 9, 6-8 p.m.

2501 Stevens Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55404

08.12.2011

washing well 08.12.2011

ar and jg inside charcoal kiln 08.05.2011


in progress watercolor 08.15.2011

Josh collage 08.02.2011

08.01.2011



I am not cleaver my laundromat is called the Washing Well.
(really I am not clever as my typo shows 09.03.2011)

-----------------------------

ames anxious

-----------------------------

"instead of saying watch your mouth i say watch your fingers"

-----------------------------

My piece "All the Trappings: (s)wallow" was named one of the village VOICE's favorite art pieces at the Wassaic Project Summer Festival. Thanks to Jessie Henson for letting me know.

The Summer Exhibition is up until August 28th.
Gallery Hours: Saturday and Sunday 11 am - 5 pm
Maxim Mills
37 Furnace Bank Rd.
Wassaic, NY 12592

The Wassaic Project Summer Festival starts this Friday (August 5) and runs until Sunday. It is 3 days full of music, performances, art, films, dancing, camping....... The festival is free but there is a suggested donation. For more information about the festival go here.

The Wassaic Project is located:

The Maxon Mills
37 Furnace Bank Road
Wassaic, NY 12592

and

The Luther Barn
15 Furnace Bank Road
Wassaic, NY 12592

I have work in the summer exhibition along with 99 other amazing artists!

07.30.2011
where the party's at 07.30.2011

-----------------------------

07.26.2011
07.29.2011
07.31.2011
07.30.2011

These are the watercolors I am in the midst of working on right now.

Bye Chicago, thank you for a nice visit.

07.28.2011 (adams and jefferson)

07.26.2011 (putter)

07.26.2011 Crown Fountain (way better pictures are to be found online than this one)

07.26.2011

07.27.2011 Calvin Black (see below)

07.26.2011 "Ridin' Dirty" Mark Bradford

-----------------------------

I am in real sponge mode right now.

-----------------------------

My foot got run over by a young man on a skateboard today, luckily he wasn't too big or he would have broke my foot.

He didn't even look back at me.

-----------------------------
Yesterday I went to Intuit - The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art.

The image above labeled "07.27.2011 Calvin Black" is from the show "You Better Be Listening: Text in Self-Taught Art". I was excited about this sign and wondered what it was for, luckily the Intuit provides a lot of information on their didactic plaques. I learned that Calvin and his wife Ruby ran a rock shop in the Mojave Desert. In 1954 they started building Possum Trot as a way to attract customers. They created animated displays that ran off of wind power. Calvin carved over 80 life size dolls that each had their own function and personality. Ruby sewed their clothing. He would put on shows with them in the "Bird Cage Theater".
Today I watched Possum Trot: The Life and Work of Calvin Black, 1903-1972. I couldn't have imagined what their home looked like, it was way more than I had thought. Calvin got the wood to carve the dolls from telephone poles that had been knocked down by car accidents. Many of the dolls are based on friends and all the dolls have name tags. The documentary was filmed after Calvin had passed away and Ruby is alone taking care of Possum Trot.
The Intuit also houses the remaining contents of Henry Darger's home space in Chicago. The exhibit is permanent and houses his furniture, personal items, one of his typewriters, bundled stacks of coloring books, magazines, other paper source material, and his cakes of paint. On the Intuit's website you can take a virtual tour of the room by scrolling down to the second image on the page.

-----------------------------
A list of things for me not to forget:

Western Exhibitions People Don't Like to Read Art
Rebecca Blakely - Lichen Books: On the Road
Deb Sokolow
Band of Bikers
Goshka Macuga: It Broke from Within
Eiko & Koma

07.25.2011

07.25.2011 obligated

07.25.2011

07.25.2011

07.25.2011

07.25.2011 here i am

07.24.07

07.24.2011 studio

-----------------------------

Oh Michigan, Michigan, Lake Michigan

-----------------------------




Image from Shaun Gladwell's video Apologies 1 - 6, 2007-09

I saw this piece a couple of weeks ago at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT. I have been thinking about it a lot. It is one of two videos in the show from Gladwell's "MADDESTMAXIMVS" series. The figure dressed in black is holding the corpse of a kangaroo that had been struck by a vehicle. Everything is slow and looks hot. When there are big trucks that go by in the video it feels like they are never going to pass. I sat a long time with this video. I wonder how the kangaroos smelt. The figure in black shoos away the flies and picks up the kangaroo. Each time is as deliberate and careful as the time before. The kangaroo is brought to the middle of the road they pause, the figure in black leans in closer to the kangaroo and then they drift off screen to the right.

"Gladwell's Apologies refers most strongly to contemporary Australian issues - the destruction and deforestation of the land in the name of progress. Even more, through interaction with the kangaroo, Gladwell symbolically apologizes to the indigenous peoples of Australia who were mistreated under colonization." - Patricia Hickson, Emily Hall Tremaine Curator of Contemporary Art

This piece was presented by Gladwell for the 2009 Venice Biennale a year after the Australian government issued a formal apology to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island families.

Shaun Gladwell's videos are currently on view in the Matrix space until September 18, 2011.

(The color is off in this image, sorry about that.)

07.20.2011 House on the Rock

07.20.2011 House on the Rock

07.20.2011 House on the Rock

07.20.2011 House on the Rock

07.21.2011 Milwaukee Art Museum


Midwest tour, yes!

-----------------------------

I am in Chicago for the week at 3 Walls doing a residency through the Tinkertank program. So maybe I will write a post every day? Maybe two a day? Will that drive you a little bonkers? But with my track record we will see if I actually do another one in the next two weeks.