So Much to Catch Up On

Roger Minick, Woman with Scarf at Inspiration Point, Yosemite National Park, CA, 1980

... but first a well deserved vacation. I will be back in 2.5 weeks. I promise. I will be a blogging fool for the next few months. 107 Days of Summer starts today. Off to be a tourist on a continent far away.

Hiraki Sawa's "Lineament" at James Cohan Gallery

This post is belated (from the Ball State University Field Trip at the end of March) but important nonetheless. Hiraki Sawa's Lineament is the artwork that made me want to learn video (not even Christian Marclay's The Clock has done that).  Hello one of this summer's many activities that I must accomplish.

From the James Cohan Gallery Press Release:

"Lineament is a two-channel video installation in which a male protagonist navigates a white apartment. Like the intricate clock-like mechanisms that appear before and around him, his memories unravel and snap back together. The grooves of an LP record uncoil to become a line, then travel around in this liberated but perhaps indecipherable form. The audio— performed by Dale Berning & Ute Kanngiesser— is a palindrome, with a modified turntable in the gallery space playing a record forward and then backwards."

"In his catalogue essay “The Line Describes a Circle,” Tom Morton writes that 'in common usage, the English word ‘lineament’ refers to a line that describes an object, often a human face or body. In its more specific geological usage, however, it refers to a topographical feature on the surface of the earth that indicates an underlying fault. Lineament is a film about what happens to an individual when his internal narrative is erased. At first glance, the boy appears unchanged by his sudden bout of amnesia, but surely, his outer contours betray a subcutaneous breach.'”

 Still images via the James Cohan Gallery website.

and a small video clip via the iPhone.

The Cat Scrapbook was a hit at Photolucida

People think I should make a cat video (I'm not sure I think that but we will see). Perhaps I should consider it if Paul Pfeiffer is making gifs like the one above.

Images from "Echo of the Object" in Poland

I wish I knew who to give credit for these images. They were emailed to me earlier this week. 12 for 7 Years as an Adjunct Professor: 2000-2007 is featured in addition to Jennifer Halvorson's sculptures.

The Wroclaw Academy of Art

I suspect that I will be reprinting these photographs this summer as serious warping is occurring in the presentation. Their next stop is the University of Tennessee in September and Oregon State University sometime in the 2013-2014 academic year. I never knew they would see this much of the world. 

"Echo of the Object" in Poland

Grateful for the exhibition and wish I could see it. Part of me also desires my name to be spelled correctly but that is minor in the grand scheme of things.

Multnomah Falls: I am here and it is beautiful

Found postcard

Anonymous, Double Exposure, Multnomah Falls, 1937

Carleton Watkins, Lower Multnomah Falls, Columbia River, 1867

"Spiral Jetty" Receipt from 2005

One of my favorite activities this time of year is shredding documents from previous tax seasons (yes, I do throw things away). This year 2005 disappeared with the exception of one receipt that caught my attention. It marked the first time I visited Spiral Jetty except that the ink had faded and my sloppy handwriting is the most visible.

It's not quite a list but it may have a place in that section of Autobiography.

Frantically working on the Cat Scrapbook at Every Possible Minute

It is taking far longer than I ever imagined to assemble my re-interpretation of Arline Conradt's cat scrapbook. Here is a sneak peek of one of the pages:

Hoping to be 1/4 done before Photolucida (and that will be an accomplishment).

Jacqueline Suskin's "Go Ahead and Like It"

Oh how I love lists as an art form. Check out Jacqueline's new book project Go Ahead and Like It:
 

Her blog hosts an array of other people's lists in many formats (computer monitor, smartphone, and real pieces of paper). You can send your own to this address: listoflikes@gmail.com

It took me two months but here is mine:

Many feature activities that can only be done in the summer. I am trying to be patient as I only have two and a half more weeks of school (minus the one I am taking off for Photolucida). I am hoping to experience some of them very soon!

Art Desserts on My Mind

Today I should be in Columbus, Ohio at the Wexner watching another 5 hours of Christian Marclay's The Clock. Alas, the NYC field trip set me back and I must spend the weekend catching up on the cat scrapbook and my portfolio for Photolucida. In the meantime, I live vicariously through SFMOMA's installation of Marclay's video this week and the cookies that were made for the opening:



(via)

Also, in conjunction with Kenny Scharf's opening at Paul Kasmin Gallery, the Doughnut Plant and Kreemart reproduced Scharf's doughnut paintings in an edible format.

All of this is making me look forward to my once a year doughnut that will soon be consumed here next week.

Easter 2013

Gordon Parks, Bethune-Cookman College School, Daytona Beach
 

Bobby Doherty

Jefferson Hayman, Three Eggs

Jefferson Hayman, Egg

Marcel Broodthaers, Maria's Dress, 1968

Karen Messerman from Object, Text and Collage

Mitsuko Nagone, I am More than My Face, 2010

Field Trip!

Saul Leiter, Foot on El, 1954

A day after I returned from New York City two weeks ago, I learned that I was going on a field trip with my best friend and 12 students. Where? New York City. This time I promise to see the Ed Ruscha exhibition, Books and Co. at Gagosian. Unfortunately, Hannah told everyone to leave their "mischievous tendencies" in Muncie (alas, no artist stalking this trip).

Saul Leiter, T, 1950

"Love Potion Specimen #1"

Brent Cole invited me to participate in this. I wish I had more than a weekend to work on it as the concept would be more developed. In addition, this was a challenge considering I never make artwork about this topic. The above tweet sums up the experience.

It will be exhibited, along with several other artists creations, at this exhibition next week in Indy. Here is a portion of the audio that will soon be available on the website:

For the past two years, I have collected water samples around the world in small glass vials. When thinking about the topic of love, Venice, Italy - the "city of love" - immediately sprang to mind. Incidentally, I also had a water sample from the canal, Rio d. Carmini in front of the Palazzo Zenobio that I collected on 21 July 2011.

The book is one that I have held onto since 1997. I wanted one that looked worn (= well loved) and it fit perfectly with the concept. The best part is that it is a sculpture (hooray!).

Two of my favorite artists and friends from grad school are featured in the archive: Adam Davis and Io Palmer. Check out their books here and here. 

Society for Photographic Education National Conference: Chicago

 Valuable information learned at this year's conference:

1) The Photobook: A History Volume 3 will be published next year! I am a big fan of volumes 1-2 as envious as they make me of Martin Parr's book collection. Who wouldn't love a publication that prints photographs of opened books like this:

Daido Moriyama, Bye Bye Photography, 1972

2) Speaking of Mr. Parr, he is an endearing lecturer (by far my favorite talk of the conference). He showed his undergraduate school installation of photographs displayed in a living room, discussed Bad Weather at length, and his infatuation with collecting political ephemera, Saddam Hussein watches (he owns 85) and Osama bin Laden paraphernalia. So Long Osama Blood Orange Soda was the biggest oddity. Throughout most of the lecture, I dreamed of where Martin Parr stores all his objects (what does his house look like? how does he organize them? does he have room for more?).

 Martin Parr from Parrworld: Objects and Postcards

He also stressed that he is photographing fictions not realities as he intentionally captured litter at its worst in the image below.

Martin Parr from The Last Resort, 1983-85

I immediately placed Autoportrait on my interlibrary loan list when returning. Ending his lecture standing under a photograph of his head superimposed on a muscle man's body was the perfect conclusion coming from a soft spoken Englishman who excused himself for "having a frog" in the middle of his lecture.

 

Martin Parr from Autoportrait

3) Garry Winogrand is on everyone's mind since his first retrospective in 25 years opened at SFMOMA. I tend to love the photographers who make/made work vastly different from mine and he is no exception. Cass Fey and Leslie Calmes delivered an informative lecture on his archive at the Center for Creative Photography. His contact sheets are labeled PD if they are posthumously developed. If a print is made from one of those thousands of undeveloped rolls of film he left after he died, it can never be sold or de-accessioned. It exists only in the CCP archives. Small facts about printing work posthumously that I had always wondered about.

Garry Winogrand's Women are Beautiful on view at the Art Institute

4) Why or why wasn't Kate Palmer Albers teaching the history of photography at University of Arizona when I was in graduate school? Her lecture Abundant Images and the Collective Sublime resonated with me on so many levels. She discussed one of my favorite contemporary photography installations:

Erik Kessels, printing every photograph uploaded onto Flickr in a 24 hour period (image via)

Kessels piece, Penelope Umbrico's millions of sunsets, Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe's 100 Setting Suns at the Grand Canyon, and Gerhard Richter's Atlas were her primary examples of artists establishing mass.

Penelope Umbrico, Suns from Sunsets from Flickr, 2006-ongoing

These artists obsessively mark time with photography. She also stressed that the "self-archive is rapidly gaining headway" as a viable form of art. Albers' talk validated my current interests in masses of objects and introduced me to new artists like Hasan Elahi who explore surveillance and tracking in a contemporary way.

5) Richard Misrach's keynote lecture reminded me that I have to watch Spike Lee's follow-up to When the Levees Broke - If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise. I've refrained for a few years but after hearing Misrach discuss his latest photographic series, Petrochemical America, the time has come.

Richard Misrach, Untitled, February 14, 2012, 6:19 PM

Misrach is getting closer to making portraits of people as he zooms in on the faces of swimmers. He returned to the same hotel room where he photographed On the Beach (above) with a digital camera and telephoto lens. I don't know how I feel about those and am looking forward to seeing how they are received when he publishes them soon. I am so enamored with the vulnerable human surrounded by the sea (substitute me), I am not sure I want to know their identity.

6) SPE brought so many of my wonderful photo friends to Chicago some of which are pictured below.

 James Luckett, Laurie Blakeslee, and Amelia Morris

Adam Neese in the Empire Room

Mark A. Lee after winning the Richard Misrach raffle photograph

Sneaking an image of a famous photographer...

the back of Jerry Uelsmann's head.

Wishing I had a photograph of...

me talking to Richard Misrach about our meeting in 1996.

7) The biggest surprise I received will be featured in a post next week. I am not opposed to a sneak peek however:

Chris Toalson's A Long Overdue Artist's Book, 2011-2013

Richard Prince Also Lives Here

Last fall, I inadvertently paid too much attention to a GPS location in my twitter feed. That action produced this piece for the Postcard Collective.  Since then, I noticed that in addition to Richard Prince's Long Island house, he also tweets from a Manhattan address. It was near the Museum of Modern Art and proved to be easy to find. Here are some quick snapshots from the iPhone (note the sculptures on the rooftop).

Realization #1: I am acquiring quite the mailing list if ever I had the guts to use it.
Realization #2: I need an old school Rolodex to store the Artist Stalking addresses preferably in the style of Phillip Johnson's:



"I know where you're going because I'm right in the middle of it." from The Philip Johnson Glass House.

(video still from above link)

Mine requires no white labels.

Photographs from the Museum of Modern Art

Let it be known that anytime I see Ed Ruscha's Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass and can document it, the results will be presented on this blog. Wishing for summertime as I type this on a below freezing evening.

This version of Edvard Munch's The Scream (of Nature) is far more colorful than the one in the National Gallery in Oslo. The latter was far less crowded when visiting in 1997, yet that came at the expense of watching the never ending stream of goofy poses waiting to be photographed in front of it.

Ever since last year's Whitney Biennial, I have been amazed at how many presentations of artwork include the slide carousel. Here is one showing the photographs of Helen Levitt.

Marcel Broodthaers, The Belgian Lion, 1968

Robert Rauschenberg's Bed viewed from the side (this belongs in the category of uncomfortable sleeping arrangements).

Three photographs of Wolfgang Laib's Pollen from Hazelnut (the final one, resembling a Rothko painting, still gives me vertigo).