Ode to Mike Kelley

Mike Kelley, Catholic Birdhouse, 1978

Dreaming of seeing his retrospective. I will settle for hunting down the exhibition catalog.

Letha Wilson: The Photograph as Sculpture

I re-discovered Letha Wilson's artwork while perusing through the Higher Pictures website of their latest exhibition Photography Is.  My eternal quandary is how much do I integrate sculpture into my photographs and Wilson's work is a welcome addition to the group of artists I have been thinking about that are interested in this process (Amanda Ross-Ho,  Sara Vanderbeek, Jason Urban, and Adam Thompson to name a few).

Check out Letha's website. There are so many amazing works that it was hard to choose the following. I wish I could see the Photography Is exhibition but no trips to NYC scheduled this summer.  

Letha Wilson, And So On (California), 2007

Letha Wilson, Colorado Prop, 2010

Letha Wilson, Right Back at You, 2009

Letha Wilson, Rock Face, 2011

Letha Wilson, Two by Four, 2011

Letha Wilson, Vertical Horizon (White Sands), 2010

Robert The: Artist's Books & "Reader's Digest"

I first encountered one of Robert The's bookguns at the Chelsea Art Museum in 2007. He transforms the book into a sculptural object where the title, written across the top, becomes very important in reference to the violent shape. Here is the process gleaned from his website:







I became reacquainted with Robert The yesterday when seeing this glorious book posted on Twitter below:



The Reader's Digest (Cake Book) (from the Walker Art Center website): "...at first glance looks like a generous slice of layer cake resting on a robin’s-egg blue plate. On closer examination, we notice that artist Robert The created the piece from a two-volume bound set of Reader’s Digest magazines, jigsawed into a wedge and delicately frosted with wax. It’s not just a clever take on the adage about “having one’s cake,” but also on the “ingestion”—and perhaps more important, digestion—of knowledge."

Of course this book fulfills my love of cakes as sculpture but it also incorporates destroying Reader's Digest Books! The employees of Half Price Books in Houston were thrilled when I bought hundreds of them to shred and eventually make into artworks. Though nowhere near as interesting as Robert The's sculpture, the following images indicate where my love for his books comes from.



Jacinda Russell, Water Soaked Reader's Digest, 2002/2008



Jacinda Russell, Reader's Digest Untitled #4, 2002

In trying to find more information on Robert The, I discovered this blogpost which depicts quite the collection of books as sculpture including Robert The's Britannica Book Broom below.

The Original Copy: Photography of Sculpture, 1839 to Today

I am slowly perusing my Christmas book acquisitions. This was the exhibition I wanted to see at MOMA badly but was unable to go to NYC at the time to view it. Here are some images that I am interested in (scale and a beheaded perspective, an unusual Marcel Duchamp photograph and a photograph of his artwork displayed in a way that I had not seen before and the Bruce Nauman I could recreate in my house right now).


Alois Locherer, Transporting the Bavaria Statue to Theresienwiese, 7 August 1850


Marcel Duchamp, Cigarette Covers, 1936


John D. Schiff, The Large Glass Installed Before a Window Overlooking the Garden at Katherine S. Dreier’s Home, Milford, Connecticut, c. 1948


Bruce Nauman, Composite Photo of Two Messes on the Studio Floor, 1967