dayton is not in ohio

– 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:

Here’s a slideshow of images from the opening.

There’s a good reason for my infrequent posting lately. In addition to making plans and preparations for my MFA project, I’ve been hard at work curating a small show at Alogon Gallery here in Chicago.

The show is titled The Strange Place, a reference to School of the Art Institute art history professor James Elkins‘ book, On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art. In a nutshell, the show presents the artwork of eight Christians in a venue that is not religiously affiliated. Considering the discourse surrounding ‘religion and contemporary art,’ my goal was simply to bring the two spheres together, not in an abstract sense, but in a concrete instance. It’s not meant to be understood as a solution to the very complex dynamics of the relationship, or even as a proposition, but simply as an intersection and point of reference in the ongoing conversation.

I’ve invited three people to write essays responding to the show, and to each other: Elkins, Kevin Hamilton, asst. professor of new media and painting at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Daniel Siedell, asst. professor of art and art history at the University of Nebraska Omaha.

The artists in the show are: Wayne Adams, Keith Crowley, Mark Dixon, Rubens Ghenov, Tim Gierschick, Rob Matthews, Alert Pedulla, Gene Schmidt, and Ben Volta.

Here’s a really good piece by Daniel Siedell if you’d like to read a take on this intersection of religion and contemporary art from a very thoughtful Christian perspective. This nails it for me.

Check Philadelphia’s Matthews the Younger for my post on John Phillips and Ken Fandell at Chicago’s Tony Wight Gallery.

I’m gonna try to crank out a good run-down before Anna wakes up from her studio nap. Advising kicked off this week and I had great conversations with both of my advisers, Shane Campbell and David Raskin, both in the art history department at SAIC.

David taught my winter term art history class on Vito Acconci, and I was very impressed. He’s an expert on Donald Judd, and I’ve been influenced by Judd for all of the wrong reasons, so that ought to keep our conversation lively. He had some good thoughts and insights regarding my current project.

Shane is ABD for a PhD in Art History from Iowa, I believe, but more interestingly owns Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago. I met him last year at the Armory Show in NYC. He was the only Chicago gallery represented. He’s refreshingly irreverent, for an art historian, and that’s because he’s a gallerist first. He has encouraged his advisees to read Dave Hickey’s, Air Guitar, which I’d borrowed and read a couple of years ago, and which causes most of the respectable art historians at the Art Institute to cringe. Read the first chapter and you’ll know why. I’m also reading The Uncertain States of America Reader, a publication spawned by the exhibition from which it takes its title, curated at Bard College a couple of years ago. I’ve only read the first short essay, but it’s a spot-on, if somewhat clumsily written, account of what it’s like to be an art mover. It explains a bit about why I was eventually fired - only you have to also insert the character of the evil stepmother from Cinderella as my boss, give her a mustache, and describe all of her dialogue in profane, gravelly, guttural outbursts. And her pumpkin is a home-made race car.

Shane’s gallery has two locations. One in Chicago, and one in Oak Park, on Harvey Avenue. If Harvey Avenue doesn’t ring a bell to you: that’s the street we live on, several blocks south of the gallery. It’s not just any gallery, though. It is a part (shares space with, sorta) of the Suburban, a independent artists’/project space started by Chicago artists Michelle Grabner and her husband Brad Killiam after they moved to Oak Park. You must go to the website and read the history of the space. It’s really fascinating, and an amazing place to discover right down your average suburban street.

I’m enjoying going to art openings weekly. They are rapidly becoming less nerve-wracking. For those that have never been to an opening, the reason they can be nerve-wracking is that they are usually crowded, loud, and they are often lousy for seeing the art. In the past I would just pick the openings that I thought were interesting, or was invited to by a friend. But the last month I’ve been to probably fifteen openings and have been running into the same folks a bit, which makes it enjoyable. I’ve also started to realize that, unless I become famous, my work will never undergo the same relentless scrutiny that it has for the last year-and-a-half. You learn this by looking at the art that people make that gets shown in galleries, and knowing exactly how it would be dismantled at your school. I hope to always make good work and receive healthy criticism, but it’s still a comforting thought.

I saw a lot of work this month and it ran the gamut from really interesting, to forgettable. I had my own opening, and I’d give my work in that an okay. By far the most interesting opening was Clive Barker at Packer-Schopf. Clive Barker is probably best known as the author of the novel Hellraiser, and for his writing and directing the movie of the same name.

[Clive Barker Liar Oil on Canvas, 24 x 24 inches]

Well, the book/film has a cult following - a horror cult following - and I spent my first thirty-minutes at the opening wondering whether Barker was aware of how utterly boring his paintings were, when surrounded by his fans. On any other day the paintings might have been more arresting (although they still looked like board-book material compared to an average Odd Nerdrum), but that night they played second fiddle to the freaky, freaky fans. It took me a while to figure out who he was, but he turned out to be pretty normal looking guy.

Downstairs was work by Ron Bell. I enjoyed the work for its craft and complexity and meaningless machinery, but it ultimately felt like a side-show to the circus upstairs. I’d be interested to see a couple of these works in a large, open space, rather than a dramatically lit, white cube dungeon. They work perfectly in the dungeon, and that’s the problem, it seems.

[Ron Bell]

The show I was in was a group show at Gallery 2, one of the Art Institute’s exhibition spaces. I made two new pieces for the show, neither of which am I enthralled with. I don’t hate them either.

[Cargo, 2008, wood, digital video, monitor, peephole]

[For the Love of Guns, 2008, MDF, rhinestones]

The real highlights of the show for me were works by Tom Gokey and Daniel Lavitt. Tom graduated from the department last year and Daniel is a first year sculpture MFA.

[Tom Gokey]

Tom’s work stole the show for me. Tom’s a gimmick guy, but his gimmicks are always so good that I immediately forget whatever might be bad about gimmicks. As elegant as these four grey-green hand-made paper panels are, they are equally as ignorable in the midst of a sculpture show. It’s this type of aesthetic understatement that acts as a foil to the medium, as the paper is made from $49,000 in shredded US currency. In fact, it’s made from the exact amount of Tom’s tuition at the Art Institute, acquired from Uncle Sam, who constantly shreds cash, apparently. It reminded me of Tom Friedman’s work in which he places a microscopic ball of his own feces on a pedestal. Very understated. Very invisible. Very loud. Crap in public just is, tiny or not, and so is money, reconstituted or not.

[Daniel Lavitt]

I don’t have a detail shot of Daniel’s bronze cast McDonald’s cheeseburger, but it’s really nice, resting in its styrofoam nest. It reminds me of my own unapologetic affinity for McDonald’s burgers and begs the same question really: “How could something so bad, be so good?”

Finally, I’ll mention a group sculpture show at Kavi Gupta Gallery. The work that caught my eye immediately was a skeletal chandelier by Tony Tasset. I’m currently becoming interested in making skulls, and I recently discovered that Tasset lives in Oak Park.

[Tony Tasset, Capuchine Chandelier, 2006)

The work is well done, but not remarkable if you’ve, A) ever imagined what the production designers for Goonies could do with a chandelier while napping, or, B) seen any of Adam Wallacavage’s octopus chandeliers. However, I’m still thinking about making some skulls, so I was interested.

[Adam Wallacavage, Venus in Furs, 2006]

finis