dayton is not in ohio

Check out the small t-shirt business that my friend Wayne Adams and a friend in Brooklyn have started. To be honest, when I first heard the idea I thought that the world probably already had enough t-shirt companies. But Wayne’s a sharp guy, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Enter Umami. I like it. Three forms: Sheep, Goats and the Jolly Rogers. Two colors: Black and White. Hand sewn. Check it out. Umami.

Karen and I just negotiated a trade of one of my smaller sculptures for a painting by Jonathan Anderson. Jonathan teaches art at Biola University. Here’s our new painting:

Contraction, 2007, Oil on Panel, 21″ x 15″

My work to prepare for teaching at Trinity Christian College is really ramping up. I’m teaching three courses this fall: 2-Dimensional Design, Figure Drawing, and a combined 3-Dimensional Design/Sculpture.

None of this stuff is new to me, except the 3-D/sculpture stuff.

It seems like it was just yesterday that I was camped out in the old maintenance-building-turned-art-department at Belhaven College beginning my first semester by taking 2-D design. No. It actually does feel like 15 years since I drew in black and white, cut construction paper and learned the nuts and bolts of picture making. I remember my teacher, Jon Whittington saying, as we freshmen lamented the drudgery of such a course, that once we had mastered these elements and principles of design we had our entire lives to go about bending and breaking the rules, or forgetting them altogether. The problem with internalizing these very important concepts is that while you retain the concepts on an intuitive level, it’s daunting to dig them up for the purpose of teaching. So I’m reading and digging, and enjoying having the particularities refreshed.

As far as the 3-D stuff goes, I have a bit of work. See, I never actually took a 3-D design class. I had a one-semester sculpture class, within which I learned several technical skills that I’ve never used, and since forgotten. Most of my sculpture education has taken place in the real world, or translated in my own way from an understanding of designing in two dimensions. But I can’t “intuit” things to students, so it’s going to be a year of tremendous learning for me. I stand to come out a very different person by the end.

This is the three bar logo of Trinity. I love it. I was really drawn into sculpture by the work of minimalist sculptors, in particular Donald Judd. They would have approved…

Donald Judd

Dan Flavin, The Nominal Three (To William of Ockham), 1963

Eva Hesse, Aught, 1968

Carl Andre, Three Right Threshholds

If he had lived long enough to witness the relegation of Pluto to the status of a dwarf planet in 2006, Lewis would have been secretly pleased. He would have taken it as confirmation of his view that a ’scientific fact’ is not necessarily the immutable , universal truth that it is popularly believed to be. The glory of science is to progress as new facts are discovered to be true, and such progress means that ‘factual truth’ is a provisional human construct. Which is why the wise man does not think only in the category of truth; the category of beauty is also worth thinking in. And it was because he thought it beautiful that Lewis so reveled in the pre-Copernican cosmos. - Michael Ward in Planet Narnia

Urs Fischer, “You” at Gavin Brown

Olafur Eliasson, “The Weather Project” at the Tate Modern, Turbine Hall

“Look papa, it’s Duchamp’s fountain!”

Fountain, Marcel Duchamp, 1917. Duchamp signed the work with the pseudonym R. Mutt.

These were the words of Anna, my 3 1/2 year-old, as we entered a men’s restroom at McDonald’s today. She’d learned about Duchamp’s famous work in a children’s book, which I had then shown her in one of my art history texts. It’s a joy to have a kid who identifies famous modernist artworks, openly (and mistakenly) attributes all Baroque orchestral music to Bach, and distinguishes between ballet, modern, and jazz dance.

There’s a chance that I wouldn’t be doing the kind of sculptural work I do if it had not been for artist Robert Rauschenberg. New York Times article.

Monogram, 1955 - 59

– Thanks, to those who have left kind comments on my previous post about my thesis installation! All is well, and my thesis defense/final critique went well. I was given plenty to process by the crit, nothing overly bad (I know some folks that had nightmare crits). I wasn’t showered with sunshiny praise, or attacked — just constructive criticism and feedback, which is helpful. A few folks asked about the title, which is Seasons Such as These, taken from a famous monologue, and favorite of mine, in Shakespeare’s King Lear.

The thrust and motivation for the piece was driven by the original installation of the tower, with surveillance cameras mounted on top to grant me a view of the outside world from my studio. My early critiques were focused on the cameras and the implications of surveillance. These were very good critiques and had me thinking of the nature of the tower’s being, and its read as an artwork, wrapped up in the structure’s function. There was little to no attention paid to the form itself. I, being interested in form and structure, was a bit dissatisfied with this. The solution to reinvigorating the tower formally was removing the tower’s function. By toppling the tower I hoped to push an engagement of the tower as an object, and also raise some questions related to being, and purpose. A long time ago (my sophomore year of college) I was part of a formal debate surrounding a paper that a friend wrote, arguing that a wristwatch which no longer told the time was not watch. I disagreed (still do), but it was that conversation that first got me interested in philosophy.

– I finished my final day as a Teaching Assistant yesterday. This was the end of my official career at the School of the Art Institute. All that I have to do, from this point on, is clean out my studio. It’s been very a good education. That might be it for my formal education, which makes me a little melancholy.

–I have applied for a teaching position here in Chicago, and I have an interview for that next week, so I’ll update the blog on that as I have news.

–In the “news of the strange,” I discovered that I was mentioned in an article in the Dayton Daily News of Dayton, Ohio, as a Dayton-Chicago Connection. Kinda funny. Now, do I put that in my vita?

– I have a couple of friends in a drawing show in Philly at Jenny Jaskey Gallery. The Drawing Narrative opened last night. It was curated by Rob Matthews. Rubens Ghenov is one of the Church Studios artists, Rob and Rubens were in The Strange Place, and Jenny is a friend as well. Rubens is detonating. He just got into the grad painting and drawing program at the Rhode Island School of Design (ranked #1 in the latest US News grad rankings), and he had a pretty awesome video profile done for Studioscopic by David Kessler, a Philly-based artist and video producer. Studioscopic simply presents artists in their studios, talking about their work. Rubens gives a nice shout-out to the Church Studios. Thanks, bro’.

– Finally, I’m excited to be able to post a little bit of Karen dancing. Most friends know Karen dances, but very few have ever seen her do it. I think this is the first time that we have ever had any decently shot video of her doing what she does. Here she’s working with a small company here in Oak Park, performing the work of Ron deJesus:

If you’re reading this I know you must all be concerned for our well being right now…

I’m just kidding, but it WAS a little scary to get shaken awake.

Karen, the California girl, thought: Earthquake, and went right back to sleep.

Dayton thought:

1. Plane crash in the neighborhood 2. Bulldozer crushing house 3. Tornado 4. Apocalypse 5. Earthquake 6. Factory exploding 7. Nuke in NYC 8. Obese intruder

Actually, I was dreaming, and I began to notice shaking that was pulling me out of my sleep… I remember thinking that Karen was shaking the bed in her sleep, and I was just about to tell her to stop, when suddenly I realized OH-MY-WORD-THE-ENTIRE-HOUSE-IS-SHAKING-BACK-AND-FORTH!!!! The house is old, so everything was creaking, and and the doors and appliances were shaking back and forth. It was noisy.

Karen is sleeping again. Although, the earthquake being near Louisville caused her to quip before going back to sleep about God’s judgement on the Presbyterian Church. She also thought about the apocalypse, but to her that was a scary thought. I was thinking “Apocalypse. Awesome!” And remembering the last verse of “It is well with my soul.”

This is actually my second earthquake, the first being while I was in Azusa, CA two years ago, but I was outside and didn’t feel a thing. I felt gypped. Well now I can say I’ve felt one.

I can truly say that the MOST interesting thing about this thing is how many people have called the TV station and mentioned that the first thing they thought was: Ghost. I’m not kidding. I did have the quick thought that maybe Haley Joel Osment was the one shaking the bed, though.

And what does this have to do with art? Well, take a guess what I just heard has to undergo inspection this morning… All of the cranes in downtown Chicago! Good thing, but there’s one structure that didn’t make it:

I’m at home today, Sunday, just enjoying a day of rest, watching golf, and hanging out with Anna, my daughter.

Just got an email from my friend Matthew DuPont about an eBay listing for “Spindle,” the car skewer sculpture located nearby that I’ve written about before (1,2,3)

Here’s a slideshow of images from the opening.

It’s go time for my MFA project. I start the construction for my thesis show this afternoon. I’m going to be pretty much completely consumed by that until Wednesday. A fair share of that time has to be spent waiting for drywall joint compound and paint to dry.

The main problem is how to simulate the smashed wall effect in my maquette. The walls are plywood, and you can’t just smash plywood. Basically what I’m doing is sawing out two rectangular cross-sections of the walls. They are built like two-sided stage flats, with plywood over 1 x 3 poplar frames. Then I’m drywalling over the entire walls, so that they look normal, but have the hidden gap that I’ve sawed. Then I smash the drywall, which is very smashable and creates lots of good debris.

Here’s what the final arrangement looks like, with the tower coming to rest in from of a large window:

Here. Click on the image with the colorful rulers.