Surprise

Hello Society for Photographic Education website. I was looking up a conference detail for next week and forgot this was one of several variations of the SPE homepage this month. David C. Nolan strikes again.

Promo Cards are Here

Ignore the institutional background. So glad I went with the two-sided approach. Marilyn is a little more yellow than I would have liked but overall, I am pleased.

Promo Cards Ordered

I am raising the bar at the Society for Photographic Education this year. I am not printing my own promotional cards but ordered two sided ones (A Tale of Two Obsessions is the obvious choice for this format). Here's to hoping they arrive on time and look close to the colors below.

Next up: apply for exhibitions to show this series together at long last.

Voice-over: David C. Nolan

In addition to exhibiting Nine Fake Cakes & Nine Bodies of Water in the White House, Mary Wright was hard at work making these videos for the next Space Object auction. She asked her neighbor to read David C. Nolan's text and it is effective (read: creepy). There are three below and more can be found here.







Videos by Mary Wright.

Auction at Space Object

There is a month long auction happening at Space Object. This week Nine Fake Cakes & Nine Bodies of Water.  Next week A Tale of Obsession: David C. Nolan & Marilyn Monroe.

Mary created some hilarious photoshop collages for the cakes. I am looking forward to her neighbor reading David C. Nolan's text as a video component in next week's feature.

Collage by Mary Wright for Space Object.

Lenscratch Post This Week

A Tale of Two Obsessions: David C. Nolan & Marilyn Monroe and Arline Conradt and the Cat Scrapbook along with Autobiography were featured on Lenscratch this week. Thanks Aline!

Plates to Pixels: July 2013

I met Blue Mitchell at Photolucida and he kindly chose A Tale of Two Obsessions for exhibition on his website Plates to Pixels for the month of July. It is the first time both David C. Nolan and Arline Conradt are seen together beyond my website and may it not be the last!

Stutz Gallery Installation

Better late than never OR the artwork that went with the fake and real cakes. Fair warning: I used a tripod but the floor was uneven.

This was the first exhibition for both Nine Fake Cakes & Nine Bodies of Water and A Tale of Obsession: David C. Nolan & Marilyn Monroe. I oscillated between showing all of the latter or a small selection. Since the second gallery space is more of a work in progress compared to the first (the lighting and quality of the walls), I experimented with a grid layout. I took Amelia's suggestion and emphasized the three missing in the chronology by not hanging a photograph where one would think it would be. I might try that in the future if they are on view again.

My favorite question during the reception: "What is the connection between these two projects?"

Answer: "Me."

Stutz Gallery Exhibition: First Friday in Indianapolis

If you are in the area, come to the opening! There will be 3.33 real cakes to eat at the reception (replicating styrofoam fake cakes inspired by Wayne Thiebaud's paintings of cakes that were in turn, influenced by real cakes).

More information found here. 

Cat Scrapbook In Progress

In April, I tried to complete the cat scrapbook before attending the Photolucida portfolio reviews. Assembling 3770 cats was a task greater than the time I had allotted and I only finished 1/3 after many 2-3 AM nights up late gluing. My goal is to finish it before the end of June.

The paper for the cover arrived yesterday. I noticed that my version of Arline Conradt's cat scrapbook will have far less pages. Why? I tend to go for quantity of cats rather than including many pages with 1-2 big cats.

However, this did not apply when my brother and sister-in-law gave me a belated joke Christmas present while I was in Oregon: a cat book larger than my suitcase. I spent two days cutting it up, cropping the bigger images to the size of my 13x19" portfolio. Part of me wished I purposefully left all the cat cut-outs in the box when I met with the reviewers just to see their faces.

Looking at how other people have referenced the scale of Alice Buckman's Cats on Amazon is amusing.

Here are some individual pages that are complete. Like Arline, I have divided mine into sections but have plans to depart from her process considerably at the end.This page is from the post-its and note cards "chapter" and is one of my favorites (in addition to nearly every reviewer at Photolucida).

There are several pages devoted to cartoons from The New Yorker.

Stickers and small cats cut nearly the size of stickers.

Blue paper as background and postcard section.

From my childhood stationery that I rediscovered before this event two years ago. 

More postcards including a $7 one purchased at the ICP a year ago strictly for this book on the top right (it moves!).

This page marks the departure from Arline's sections into something that is more "me." I found two images of Marilyn Monroe with cats and wrote a small paragraph wondering what David C. Nolan would have said about these two images if they were in his collection.

More to come as I reassess all the feedback from Photolucida and wrap this up (at long last).

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).

Herron Lecture

I had a good time at Herron School of Art last week when I delivered my lecture A Tale of Two Obsessions... It made my day to see a large faction of friends from the Ball State Department of Art and some past students in the audience. In addition, I saw an old friend from an Anderson Ranch residency who I hadn't encountered in 10 years who now teaches at Herron. Roughly 50 people attended and I was able to say two dirty words in an academic setting without getting into trouble. Overall, it was a success.

(Photographs courtesy of Natalie Phillips)

According to the specifications in my Indiana Arts Commission grant, I have to do one more presentation. The next one will be a guerrilla projection in downtown Muncie as soon as the weather warms up. Looking forward to seeing David C. Nolan's quotes on the side of unsuspecting businesses.

Lecture This Week at Herron School of Art

In conjunction with the Indiana Arts Commission grant, come see my artist's talk on A Tale of Two Obsessions: David C. Nolan & Marilyn Monroe and Arline Conradt & the Cat Scrapbook.

Above image courtesy of Amelia who is having a show at Gordy's Fine Art and Framing that opens this Thursday night in Muncie.

Frames!

I am so grateful for having shared a studio assistant with Hannah this semester. Guess what Autumn made for me this past month? Twenty-nine frames for David C. Nolan & Marilyn Monroe prints. This will be my first task as soon as school ends this week!

Lecture!

Welcome to Round 2 of the Fall Lecture Series... I'm spending the day working on another artist's talk. This one takes place Friday in Cincinnati for the Midwest Society for Photographic Education Conference. It's at 2:30 PM at the Hilton Netherlands in the Pavilion Room.

It's my first opportunity to discuss A Tale of Two Obsessions: David C. Nolan & Marilyn Monroe and Arline Conradt & the Cat Scrapbook. Last month produced a few new David C. Nolan discoveries that I haven't included on this blog as I'm hoping for some element of surprise on Friday. Translation: I get to talk about pornography (and cats!) in front of the general public.

If you are in Cincinnati, I hope to see you there!

Indiana Arts Commission Grant

Finally some good news on the application front:

"The Indiana Arts Commission is pleased to inform you that you have been selected as a recipient of an IAP Grant for grant period July 1, 2012 - June 30, 2013 (FY2013)."

Now I have to make frames for 29 Marilyn Monroe prints and find a location to give lectures in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, and Muncie. I am excited that it's my first breakthrough in receiving a grant outside a university. May there be many more to come!

Henry Darger & David C. Nolan

Henry Darger's apartment (image via)

More Henry Darger's apartment (via)

This is where Darger created the 15,145 single spaced work The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.  On my list of things to do in Chicago last month was visit Intuit which has a replica of Darger's apartment (image below from their website).

It's a little deceptive because it gives the impression that the space is more vast than it actually is (and far more clean than it once was). Unfortunately, this is as close as one can get inside the reproduction which is surprisingly accurate to the black-and-white photograph above.

I was able to hover over a typewriter which is just to the left of the mirrored dresser and snap a crappy i-Phone photo. One of my favorite details was the boxes full of rubber bands from what I presume to be from newspapers. Every time I see something like this, my first thought is "product of the Great Depression."

As I type this I realized that Henry Darger lived at 851 Webster Street (Chicago) and David C. Nolan's hidden stash of Marilyn Monroe photographs resided at 104 Webster Street (San Francisco). The street name isn't the only similarity. Both Darger and Nolan were obsessed with females and amassed gargantuan collections of them over the decades. One could also call their activities perverse and were meant to be private yet both are now in the public domain. I wanted to see Intuit's version of Darger's space to get an idea what Nolan's basement could look like. As one of my dear friends and mentors told me two weekends ago, I am "interested in the weirdos." The last couple month's blog posts certainly indicate that.

Review of "Lust" Exhibition in Arts ATL

Link:

"Sexual obsession is also addressed by several artists, but by none more so than Jacinda Russell. These two altered images of Marilyn Monroe (“A Tale of Obsession: David C. Nolan and Marylin Monroe #15 and #10″) are part of a large, private collection of erotic photography owned by Nolan, who spent many years cataloging and captioning the thousands of images he hoarded and filed away. The back story behind this secret cache of erotica speaks volumes about the obsessive/compulsive psychology of desire and the need by some to contain and control it."

Christina Cotter

"Lust" at Jennifer Schwartz Gallery

Two David C. Nolan and Marilyn Monroe photographs hidden in the installation view above (image via Jennifer Schwartz Gallery). More on the exhibition here.

Society for Photographic Education National Conference

This is the first time Amelia and I stayed at the conference hotel since Denver in 2008. This is our view from the fifth floor (we didn't have the spectacular balcony that all of our friends and Sally Mann had for their viewing pleasure).


Hyatt Regency reading material as displayed by Amelia Morris.



Staying near the Ferry Building on Embarcadero was very convenient as there was good food to be had relatively cheaply for a downtown SF location (hello Cowgirl Creamery). Here is the Vaillancourt Fountain view from the Hyatt.


I would imagine that this was the most photographed lobby at any SPE conference in recent memory. Amelia and I stood here for 20 minutes staring at the light show our first night (we learned that it changed colors and shapes every few days). Amelia and I didn't spot one burned out bulb either!


The Hyatt Regency light show as Las Vegas also from the 5th floor.


My portfolio box with Amelia's business card, Amelia's Photoshop extravaganza printed on Photo Tex adhesive paper (my first attempt at this material in preparation for cat wall paper) and my Ed Ruscha postcard from SFMOMA.

Overall, this year's lectures were hit and miss. Many of the ones I wanted to see took place in the middle of reviewing student portfolios or having my work reviewed for the first time in ten years. The dominant theme (much to our annoyance) was photographers not showing any images choosing instead to talk about their work with the lights off (= instant snooze fest).

Amelia, Alexis, Laurie and I (along with two of my students and one of Alexis's) crammed our work into one large table at the entry way of the open portfolio walk-through Friday night.


I spent a lot of time looking at Laurie Blakeslee's new work (I love this print - the image is from an old Montgomery Ward catalog).


Amelia getting ready to show her portfolio. The big disadvantage of the Hyatt lobby was very poor lighting!


Cass Fey listening to Matt Compton talk about his BFA thesis work Average American.


Kellie Kuratko and her thesis work Memory Distortion.


The next day I showed my work to Chuck from SF Camerawork. He was relatively speechless with the David C. Nolan / Marilyn Monroe photographs and kept referring to them as "strange." The highlight of his conversation was mentioning the "physicality and materiality" of photographs as something he is seeing a lot of now. Because photography is immaterial (primarily seen virtually), more and more photographers are gravitating to making photographs about photographs and that is where this work fits in.


I had a great review with Chris from the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. He continually referred to the series as "strange." He had a number of ideas for presentation which I am seriously considering: it should exist as a book first and secondly in display case vitrines as an archive. He thought they were incredible from a design sense and liked cropping portions of the text. We ended our conversation with him telling me that the "photo's final resting place is as important as the photo itself" which I continue to think about regarding this work.

In any case, I promised both Chuck and Chris images of Aline's cat collection by the end of May. Self-imposed deadlines! No traveling in sight! Here's to getting some work DONE on this series!

Another one of my favorite memories of this conference was meeting fellow Postcard Collective participant Sheila Newbery who spent a very long time looking at my portfolio. She emphasized the need for the Marilyn photos to be seen in a book and presented the idea of it being poster size. That plan may be implemented soon!

Amelia and I also decided that Photo Lucida is in our future.