Zoe Leonard's "You See I Am Here After All"

Zoe Leonard's You See I Am Here After All is one of my all-time favorite exhibitions. Hannah and I saw it in May 2009 at Dia Beacon, one of the most wonderful places to view art (in addition to this and this). I waited patiently for the catalog to be published and two years later (at long last) here are some images from it. I am drawn to the repetitive reproductions that are hardly similar, the poetic title (from one of the authors on the postcard back), the use of found photographs (and the anonymity associated with them), the installation, and the sheer amount of time it must have taken to collect all of these cards.

The installation includes 3,851 vintage postcards and is roughly 12’ x 147’.

The need to document where one was and in turn, let others know, is something I've thought of recently as important in some capacity on the VB project. From Ann Reynolds's essay "Curving into a Straight Line": "Leonard's title, You see I am here after all, asserts presence where absence is presumed. She adopts this phrase from a handwritten and signed message on the front of a black-and-white postcard image of the brink of the American Falls. The author of this message, "Lulu," is the presumably absent person. Nothing else can be known about this author, at least in this context, but the message and its accompanying date provide a set of the simple, inevitable contradictions inherent to most postcard messages: I insist on my presence through a postcard message that speaks in my absence; I am still speaking of my presence when the date on which I am stating that I am doing so, September 20, 1906, is now more than one hundred years in the past."

Niagara Falls... One Year Later

A year ago yesterday, I floated a cake at Niagara Falls. It still remains an unforgettable experience. In homage...


Tadoanori Yokko, Waterfall Rapture Postcards of Falling Water: My Addiction to My Collection, 1996


The Art Guys, Niagara, 1997 (water and stones from the Niagara River)


Alec Soth, Falls, 2005

More tomorrow with Zoe Leonard (somehow I resisted including Marilyn Monroe).

Glass Puddles AKA Cake Plates

We are almost done with the glass cake plates. Since the last visit to the glass studio, I decided to go with the clear molten pours because they replicate water best. They have many imperfections (size, amount of bubbles, etc.) just like the cakes. Seven of the nine are complete. I will go back later this week to make the final one with the "shield" constructed yesterday. Brent requested photographs to be taken of this event for the glass website and Elise kindly was up for the task. All these images were taken by Elise Rorick. THANK YOU!


Brent and JR figuring out the diameters of the plates before the pouring begins.


Organization (no surprise there) and ordering from largest to smallest.


... and so we begin.


Pressing out the bubbles and pushing the glass outward to make a larger plate.


It starts to smell like S'mores right about now.


Using the torch to get the edges right.


Hannah was recruited to push the plates onto the plywood.


I became an expert kiln door opener.


We weren't getting large enough diameters of plates so Ben, the grad student, stepped in to help pour as well. This photo shows the order of operation: Brent poured first with JR manning the kiln door followed by Ben with Hannah at the kiln door.



Ben's pour for the largest plate 18 inches in diameter (and I can't imagine how heavy it's going to be).


This one had the largest bubble which popped in an irregular shape. It might fit the "Slice" well but I'll find out later this week.


Of all the images Elise took, I love this one most. It captures the difficulty of this task. When I visited Niagara Falls this summer, many people talked about the lure of the river and their desire to jump. I did not have this experience AT ALL but I will say that a desire quite similar to that was recognized today. I just want to touch that glass. Of course I wouldn't but the temptation was great.


Smile and Wave (spoofing the genre of images to be found on the school's website).

More underwater camera action at Niagara Falls

... no cake this time (it was too damaged and not worth bringing on the Maid of the Mist boat tour). Top of Horseshoe Falls at Terrapin Point:



Cheesy tourist photo (thanks Marni!):



My favorite from the whole camera of American and Bridal Veil Falls due to the fact that the color looks so 1970s:



Horseshoe Falls from Maid of the Mist boat tour:



The "water, color" was repulsive at the bottom of the Falls:

Fake Cake Float: Niagara Falls Bleeding & Broken

I once thought about exhibiting these cakes after the float alongside the photographs until Niagara Falls. The red acrylic paint bleeds, hot glue doesn't hold the topper on very well, and then I dropped the topper which produced an amputated bride. Yes, she successfully floated in the Niagara River above the falls before each of these events and I got into trouble (but you will never guess why).

First off, the cake visits Nikola Tesla:




The cake posing with Marni over Bridal Veil Falls:



Yes, the cake was top heavy for fast moving water and overturned many a time which caused it to bleed and bleed and bleed. It needed a rudder but here is visual proof that it was in the water right side up though it needed a rock as support:



The mighty pull of the river produced an indented wrist for Marni who hereby claims the title of "Cake Wrangler""



The End:



After the topper separated from the styrofoam, I decided that it was not worth bringing on the Maid of Mist boat tour even with another waterproof camera. Marni and I went as tourists instead of local with a tourist sidekick on an artistic mission. It was a great day to visit Niagara as the sun was out most of the time and there were not many people. We were first in line for the boat:



I thought we looked like recycling bags in our blue raincoats but I prefer Marni's description of "leaders of the Smurf brigade":



The last photograph I dared take with the cellphone on the Maid of Mist boat before getting too close to the falls. Hopefully something came from the waterproof camera - more on that after I return to Muncie and get it developed.



And this would be the photograph that caused a woman to yell at me and demand I delete the photographs on my camera. In turn, I yelled back, "It's all about the cake!" I turned indignant when she couldn't figure out how to advance the pictures on my digital camera and certainly didn't show her all of them (which were indeed mainly featuring the cake - who cares about the people behind it that are too fuzzy to recognize anyway?). In the process of yelling at me in her kiosk, she dropped a dozen photographs outside on the ground face down. Under any normal circumstance, I would have picked them up and handed them back to her but I walked off. The photographs were ruined and she had to reprint them all. Karma does work on occasion.

Niagara, NY

First we begin with the Niagara Wax Museum of History - the WORST and therefore the BEST wax museum EVER. This is up there with the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum that displays the glass that Bill Clinton drank from alongside a Skeletor castle from the old He-Man cartoons.



Marni gave me the "bad use of caulk" tour:





Since Annie Edson Taylor was mentioned in a previous entry, here she is emerging dazed and confused from the falls after her rescue:



The first white man to view Niagara Falls (political correctness is not in this museum's vocabulary):



A re-enactment of Devil's Hole Massacre:



Next to a display of "The Three Most Beautiful Women in the World" (Mother Teresa was wearing cheap, mens' hirachis):



Drag Queen Di!



and Julia Roberts (Have I mentioned this wax museum was last updated 20+ years ago?):



As witnessed by signage like this:



Proofreading is necessary:



We did get our "horrorscope" before leaving:



JR re-enacting the Devil's Hole Massacre or was it the dead Maid of the Mist (photo by Marni Shindelman):



One of many contraptions featured all over the town of objects people went over the falls in:



More contraptions at the Dare Devil Mini Mart:



This one went down on my birthday!



Everything I heard about the town of Niagara is true (it's sad and depressing while the Canadian side looks so much more inviting):



But at least the US side has floating ice cream cones... (but alas the foliage died in the planters underneath):