The last month has been a whirlwind of making art, final critiques, writing papers, and a canoe trip to Mississippi. I just haven’t had much time to blog. Now I’m faced with finding a job for this summer, but I still want to do a few posts to catch up… so stay tuned, I’m still here…
1. First of all, congratulations to my friend Eoin (pronounced Owen) for his acceptance into the Yale MFA program. Eoin interviewed at the Art Institute a few weeks ago and stayed with us while here, then went on to interview at Yale. I have an even deeper respect for him now that I know he was able to endure the Yale inquisition… er, interview. Looks like the dogs really do get the scraps off of our table! (I’m just messing around… Congrats!!!) Just Googled him to try to find an image and discovered he got a mention and an image on the Philly ArtBlog last Thursday. If you don’t know the ArtBlog, you should. I wish Chicago had a Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosof.
2. Re-Enchantment is the title of a panel discussion of scholars being held at the Art Institute next week discussing the place (or not) of religion in contemporary art. I’m participating in a reading group leading up to the event discussing texts by the panelists. James Elkins is heading the whole thing up, whose book On The Strange Place of Religion In Contemporary Art I very much enjoyed. What qualms I did have with this book revolved around his identification of several different ways that art students have dealt with/incorporated religious ideas into their work. Not so much that these were wrong, they were based on real students, after all, but that I felt (and some friends agreed - out loud, over beer at Standard Tap if I remember correctly) that there were other possibilities - like just about every artist I know in Philly, and many in CIVA. Anyway, he’s a great, patient teacher, and he did mention today that I’d caused him to rethink at least that one thing about the book. He’s also going to use a couple slides of Tilting at Giants for a lecture he’s giving the evening before the panel discussion. How cool is that?! Also, if I have any friends out there in Boston, Elkins will be giving this same talk (with the same slides!) at the Deus (e)X Historia conference (”a conference exploring divinity and reason in the production of knowledge”) at MIT which runs April 26 - 28.
3. World renowned violinist Joshua Bell gave a little incognito free concert last week… in a D.C. Metro train station… with his $3 million Stradivarius violin… playing some of the most complex music ever written for the violin: and was largely ignored by commuters. (He did make $35 in tips…) Story
Both receptions last Thursday night went well. The Northpark U show was short and sweet. The show was Tim Lowly, Bob Erickson, Jin Lee, April Wright and myself. There was some very short mingling, a short slide presentation by each artist and then some more mingling. Particularly fun was the fact that the whole family got to come along…
Shortly after the slides we packed up and drove all the way across Chicago to Hyde Park in the south for the second opening. The main difference between the two receptions was that one was fairly calm, with rootbeer floats, and the second was less calm, with real beer, athletic competition and vegetarian burritos/tacos which I heard were really good and would have found out had I not just finished a quarter-pound of delicious “beef” from McDonalds.
The golf was fun. Some holes were more playable than others, but they all made for a challenging competition. My favorite hole by far was by my fellow grad student Matthew Dupont, consisting of an AstroTurf quarter-pipe with a hole halfway up the face. This was also the hole that I watched a little white-haired lady get about a 30 on before giving up. Not the best “golf” hole, but definitely the best work of art. Other highlights included the two, two-story holes, one of which had a secret passage for a chance at a hole in one that you can’t even see, and the other, a two-story putter that you use from upstairs to putt on the green below.
My hole turned out fine, and proved to be very popular with the kids… so much so that it was hard to play at times. They liked putting the balls in the holes and running after them to watch them come out the end. You could play an entire 18 holes just on my hole, my brother and I decided. As you can see below, I abandoned the ramp for a raised putting platform.
Here’s a link to the blog for the experimental putt-putt course that I’m taking part in. There are some really cool holes, including some by fellow sculpture MFA’s.
How’s that for a post title?
Some blog readers may know that my nephew Ebenezer Breckinridge Castleman was born in a miraculous way, going nearly to full term as an extrauterine abdominal pregnancy and being perfectly healthy. This means that he gestated entirely outside of the womb, in my sister-in-law Rebecca’s abdomen. That’s right, Eben and all the organs and everything were all mixed together. My bro’ and I like to joke that ‘Eben’ the sperm swam right up into the girls locker room, but didn’t stop there, and kept right on going out the back door. We figure he’s gonna be an amazing athlete. A good outcome for both mother and child in this situation is nearly unheard of in medicine, with mortality rates being extremely high for both parties. Normally they terminate the pregnancy as soon as this is detected, but by the grace of God, no one ever noticed that he wasn’t in her uterus until they performed an emergency C-section.
So, recently, a medical journal article has been published related to his birth. It actually focuses primarily on Rebecca’s placenta, and it’s full of unknowable technical medical jargon, but if anyone is interested, here it is.
On a side note, as I was reading the references at the end (don’t ask me why I was reading the references of an article I could hardly understand in the first place), I noticed a name that I recognized: JK Sessums.
J. Kim Sessums is a surgeon in Mississippi, Belhaven College graduate (our ‘family’ alma mater), and, in his spare time, a successful sculptor who has done bronze busts of a number of notable figures, including Billy Graham, Eudora Welty and Andrew Wyeth. I like this quote from his website reflecting on sculpting Andrew Wyeth, who personally requested that Kim execute his sculpture:
“There we sat, a country boy from Pennsylvania and one from Mississippi, discussing Edward Hopper and Thomas Eakins; the history of American art at its best. No big deal, I suppose, except that one of us was Andrew Wyeth, himself an integral part of that same history.”
I emailed Kim, and he confirmed that he was the same that wrote the article on abdominal pregnancies while a med student in Jackson, Miss. I had seen a show of his at Belhaven while I was a student, but it was strange way to finally make a personal connection.
My recent trip to New York kicked off on Wednesday after a “Chicago Red-Eye” flight by doing a slide lecture about my work at the New York Center for Art and Media Studies (NYCAMS). I was invited by my friend James Romaine who teaches art history at NYCAMS and I then stuck around with my friend and NY-based artist Albert Pedulla for a lecture by critic Merrily Kerr regarding the College Art Association (CAA) BFA exhibition currently installed at NYCAMS.
Thursday, I was off to PS1 where I enjoyed the Not For Sale exhibition and then particularly the photographs of ViK Muniz. I’ve admired Muniz’ photographs in reproductions, but his large scale works are simply mindblowing in person. I highly recommend that you visit the site and peruse if you don’t know his work.
Thursday night kicked of the International Arts Movement conference, which was good to be at. I was part of a grad student panel of Friday, and then most of the days were filled with catching up and chatting with artist friends and going to the plenary sessions. The plenary highlights were an interview with Daniel Libeskind, the lead architect of the controversial Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center site, Jeremy Begbie, and a music set by New York based, Mississippi native Kelly McRae. Overall, the conference was encouraging, like most of these types of conferences; Nothing earthshaking, but a great chance for vigorous conversation and networking. The whole trip also provided a nice opportunity to get away from Chicago and my studio and do some good thinking about the direction of my work. These days were also highlighted by some awesome late-night convesations over good scotch with Albert, who graciously put me up at his home in New Jersey.
On Sunday morning, three friends from Philly, Rob Matthews, Scott Laumann and Rubens Ghenov drove up and we went to the Armory show. This is where I took all my pictures… Some highlights included: 1. an abundance of monkeys and simian-like creatures, 2. my first-ever official paparazzo shot after Rob spotted Glenn Close , and 3. just the spectacle of miles and miles of the art market laid out like a cattle show. I think someone in our entourage described it as something like a flea market for really rich people.
The crew, with me reflected in the side of this mirror plated garbage truck.
Glenn
Simian
Monkey
There was lots of good art, lots of interesting art, and lots of bad and boring art. Overall, it was fun, especially to hang out with friends from Philly!
My saga home began at 3:30 when I was dropped off at the subway for my train and bus ride to Laguardia. Laguardia is a nasty airport, but I’d rather be in Laguardia for three hours than crammed in the window seat of the last row of a stuffy plane on the tarmac. My seat didn’t recline, but the seat of the lady in front of me did. Oh, did it recline! Aren’t those things supposed to be up while we’re on the ground!? If I was from New York I would have told her as much, but being the southerner that I am, I suffered in long-legged silence.
Finally in the air, but no more comfortable, I decided to kill time by doing something creative on my computer. I looked like a praying mantis at the keyboard with the funny way I had to cock my arms to touch the mouse pad and keyboard. I’m a little nervous flying, especially with turbulence, so I ended up making a video dealing with the subject using the iSight camera built into my monitor. Actually, in the end, I could only do this because I was sitting on the last row. Anywhere else and I may have been arrested and institutionalized when I got off the flight… I guess this is my first short film.
Here’s a link to an unfinished short film by my friend Mark Dixon. It’s fimed entirely in and around the Church Studios, and much of it takes place in my former studio. About the short, Mark mentions: “Still working on it (the ending I don’t like)…” There is no music yet (at least not that accentuates the visuals) and this may have something to do with why Mark doesn’t like the ending. It’s intended to be a suspense/horror film, and it ends up being, well, neither very horrifying or overly suspenseful, but keep in mind that this is a work in progress. The highlight of the film is its most subtle moment, but no spoilers here. I know it will be fun to watch for anyone who knows the Church Studios or the Church Studio crowd. Rubens Ghenov takes a major role in the film. I was also excited to see that I designed and constructed some important set components, although I’m disappointed that I did not receive a credit. I can’t wait to see the finished product!
Justin Kay is an artist friend in Philadelphia and one of the charter members of the Church Studios. Karen and I, just yesterday, got around to watching Philadelphia based filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water. It was not very good, confirming most of the reviews, but the special features made the film for us when Justin showed up in the audition reel… puking. It appears that he was auditioning for the pivotal part of a drunken reveler whose ill-timed regurgitation distracts the guys who are supposed to be guarding the narf protagonist, and she gets dragged off by a magical foliage-coated rogue hyena. And the Oscar goes to… Justin Kay:
