Regarding the logo’s uniqueness among Christian colleges, there was a recent college president that apparently disliked the logo, and added a more traditional college seal to the school’s graphic representations, but the three-bar logo is the most common, and seems to be the most easily identifiable with the school… In case you missed it, I’ve included it again below, followed by some painters. I’m not going to identify the specific titles of the work, but I’ll put the artist’s name as a main heading.

Trinity Logo (artist unknown)

Brice Marden

Ellsworth Kelly

Ad Reinhardt

Mark Rothko

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

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.

1) Karen had auditioned in the early spring with Hubbard Street Dance Company, and last week they informed her that they want her in the company. If you’re not informed about dance, then you can have no idea how huge this news is, so I’ll forgo all of the pro sports and astronaut analogies. Here’s an excerpt from the website:

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, under the dynamic leadership of Artistic Director Jim Vincent, is celebrating 30 years as one of the most renowned dance institutions in the world, performing annually for more than 100,000 people. Critically acclaimed for its exuberant, athletic and innovative repertoire, the company features dancers who display unparalleled versatility and virtuosity in performances that inspire, challenge and engage audiences worldwide.

Aww, yeah… That’s my lady!

2) I’m still waiting to hear back about the teaching position I interviewed for. The interview was enjoyable, and I really love the school, but it’s out of my hands now.

Monogram, 1955 - 59

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: