New Year's Resolutions

In Alain Botton's essay "Making Resolutions" he states: "We don’t tend to make resolutions about things we completely believe in. It just comes naturally. But we do resolve all the time to be kinder or more hardworking, because a sizeable part of us loves being cruel and sitting around. A resolution always hovers over a grave inner conflict and constitutes a vow by one part of ourselves against another. Which is why – according to some - we should never be so foolish as to make a resolution. And yet we need resolutions - even if we don’t actually manage to carry them through or rather, precisely because we rarely manage to do so."

I always hated this action and spent many years avoiding it (because it ended in failure every time), preferring to assess the next year on my birthday, looking not only into the next 12 months but 24, 60 and beyond. It makes more sense particularly since that date coincides with the start of the academic year.

Last year, two things happened. I only saw one movie in the theater in 2012 and vowed to change that. I reinstated the end of the year resolution with something that would be easy to achieve: see one good movie a month that was not viewed on my laptop but in public on a big screen. It started off well but along came the summer blockbuster rut and in early November, there were seven weeks left to see six films. Fortunately, there was a plethora and the cramming began.

I should have realized how impossible it was to see one a month (with the good stipulation) and accepted the fact that twelve over the course of the year was sufficient (hell, it beats one). Needless to say, mission partially accomplished. A new goal is set for 2014 featuring an activity that I have grown to love out of the necessity of living in a small town: cooking. Here's to improving the quality of life outside breathing art and school every hour of each day.

Belated NYC Post (quickest trip yet)

Winter Break ends so early this year that I have been inundated with syllabi, handouts, committee work and powerpoints since the day after Christmas. Wishing I could write more about this post but before it gets lost in the wayside, here are some images.

Mike Kelley's retrospective at PS 1 was first and foremost on the list. Another post is in the works featuring a handful of his drawing but this cartoon like signature was a favorite.

Mike Kelley at PS 1

Mike Kelley, Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites (and detail of hanging tails), 1991/1999

Most chaotic / crazy / can't imagine being a museum guard working this room all day / didn't get enough of installation: Day is Done.

 

Entry installation and video to Day is Done.

  

In light of a recent visit to Kelley's Mobile Homestead in Detroit, photographing this model of all the artist's schools he attended (and family home) was essential.

Another must-see was Scott Reeder's People Call Me Scott at Lisa Cooley Gallery (installation view). Who doesn't like witty text paintings and spray-painted pasta?

 Scott Reeder, Alternate Titles... (spent the rest of the day thinking of additions).

Some Chelsea gallery highlights:

Tony Feher at Sikkema Jenkins Co., Untitled, 2013 (glass bottles with water, food dye and aluminum caps)

Tony Feher encore, Parlor Trix, 2013 (loved the suspension of glass work)

Richard Serra at Gagosian Gallery

Most sought after and appreciated souvenir: any brochure from David Zwirner Gallery especially if it features an exhibition like Ad Reinhardt's "black" paintings and comics.

Julie Cockburn's hand embroidered found photographs at Yossi Milo.

Finally, a visit to MoMA during a snow storm. I had the great fortune of seeing the last two versions of New Photography and was particularly interested in this year's because of the dominant use of analog processes. It did not disappoint.

Anna Ostoya used all the overlooked corners at heights far greater than centered at 60".

Brendan Fowler's "crash pieces" combined multiple picture frames.

Mariah Robertson's 11 from the XL: 19 New Acquisitions in Photography exhibition (using all 100' of a roll of photo paper)

Reflection in a detail of John Baldessari's Throwing Four Balls in the Air to Get a Square with gallery lights interfering with the shape in Ileana Sonnabend: Ambassador for the New.

Jeff Koons, Pink Panther in the Sonnabend exhibition

Year Three

Somehow this blog marks its third birthday today. To celebrate, some of my favorite found photographs via (this book that keeps on giving) featuring Edward and his birthday cake.

John Divola's Studio

I have studio envy organization. Image via.

Christmas Studio Day

The Atrium Gallery before I installed artwork to document.

Finally photographed this group the way it should be exhibited (on a better camera).

 Organized prints including the four in Clear Water Samples.

Printed San Solomon Springs/Balmorhea with Amelia posing before it and then realized that this print is indeed too large. I will start contemplating other methods of presentation that do not involve this scale.

 

A funny photograph of a partially ruined 20"x30" print sitting on top of a perfectly fine 40"x60".

Christmas 2013

Anonymous, 1940s

Anonymous, Hollywood, Florida, 1937

Joel Meyerowitz, Christmas, Kennedy Airport, 1967

"Clear Water Samples"

It took a very long time to conclude that this series is 1) very small with four images and a sculptural object and 2) a segue into an as of yet unnamed series which features this and this. I am not even sure if it is worthy enough to put on the website but I will include it on this blog as a finished document with an artist's statement. [The sculpture is coming soon as the wood shop is closed for the week.]

Clear Water Sample: La Jolla Cove, CA, 2011

In Werner Herzog’s “The Truth of the Ocean,” he describes two members of the Peruvian Machiguengas tribe visiting the sea for the very first time:

“They went silent and looked out over the breakers…Then one asked for a bottle. I gave him my empty beer bottle. No, that wasn’t right, it had to be a bottle that you could seal well. So I bought a bottle of cheap Chilean red, had it uncorked, and poured the wine out into the sand. We sent the bottle to the kitchen to be cleaned as carefully as possible. Then the men took the bottle and went, without a word, to the shoreline… They waded, looking over the expanse of the Pacific Ocean, until the water reached their underarms. Then they took a taste of the water, filled the bottle and sealed it carefully with a cork. [It] was their proof for the village that there really was an ocean. I asked cautiously whether it wasn’t just a part of the truth. No, they said, if there is a bottle of seawater, then the whole ocean must be true as well.”

Clear Water Sample: Jordan Pond, Acadia National Park, ME, 2012

The series, Clear Water Samples, began two years before reading this essay while traveling up the coast of California photographing borrowed containers filled with the Pacific Ocean. A few weeks later in Northern Italy, I collected water in specimen bottles, a pseudo scientific analysis of whether or not it was clear enough to set an artwork free. Two summers passed and soon there were sixteen samples existing as a physical object or a photograph. No longer where they all from the ocean, rather any lake or pool that was transparent.

Clear Water Sample: Neskowin, OR, 2012

I am from the Pacific Northwest and my relationship with place is defined by clear water. I learned how to swim in cold rivers on hot August days and every family vacation featured a blue expanse as the final destination. Standing on Galveston Island looking into the Gulf of Mexico was my first experience with a brown sea and I was repelled. It was there that I resolved never to touch water I could not see through. Years later, I moved to a Midwestern town where not only are the rivers brown but there are traces of mercury, PCB and E. coli flowing through the streams. 

Clear Water Sample: Triple Creek Park, Ucross, WY, 2013

I constantly search for clear water in an attempt to find the places where I belong.

My “truth of the ocean” lies in the fact that it still exists despite my minimal contact. It still elicits wonder and the small part I take away represents the whole of which I must remember. 

Emoji Art + Design Exhibition at Eyebeam

One of the most surprising things about this exhibition was walking by the window in Chelsea and seeing something familiar on the wall.

Wall text with hand silhouettes during the opening.

A small section of the exhibition was dedicated to Emoji Art History with Man Bartlett's piece above and my work below. I was surprised the curators choose the old operating system but it is fitting since that is where the work originated. 

Check out the press:
Fox News
Wall Street Journal
Hyperallergic

Operation Gregory Crewdson Postcard Collective Entry a Success

Last month I posted my submission to the Postcard Collective featuring an old image of Gregory Crewdson. I hoped for one of the 50 cards to make it into the front pages of Crewdson's Twilight. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there are now two that reside there.

Abbey Labrum (as posted on Twitter)

Allen Morris (as posted on Instagram)

Off to See Emoji

I am crossing off my Winter Break list. More after the weekend.

Zoe Burnett, Emoji Wallpaper

"Mapping Manhattan"

I read about Becky Cooper's Mapping Manhattan a few months ago, added it to my library list and it thankfully appeared in my stack yesterday. I love all maps, especially ones that are based on memory rather than functionality. In her essay, "Making Invisible Cities Visible", Cooper states: "Instead of striving for one giant 'complete' map, I should aim for many little portraits. I would ask people to map the essence of who they are and what a location is to them, and out of the mosaic of these personal visions, the place would emerge."

Cooper printed each map on a letterpress and distributed them on Broadway, Houston, and Central Park: "I gave them to as wide a variety of New Yorkers as I could find... Sometimes I chose a person because her heels were awesome. Or because he was carrying a plastic tube, and I was hoping he was an architect. But most of the time, I just chose people who looked open to the world - without headphones, curious."

Here are some of my favorites:

 Anonymous

 Philippe Petit

 Markley Boyer

 Liana Finck

Anonymous

 Caio Fonseca

 Anonymous

Allen M. Hart