Collections Photographed on the Front Porch

I fell in love with the blue square of paint that appeared on the front porch prior to my residency at Surel's Place. It is my backdrop for items I have collected or those that I discovered in the house that I wanted to remember.

Unfortunately, I never found another piece of sagebrush that was as potent as these three photographed on a cloudy day.

My father had the "Women" sign identical to this above his studio door and visitors always confused it for the bathroom. I wondered where the "Men" sign went as a teenager and then I found it in Surel's garage.

Wishing I was a painter (only on occasion) because I would have a collection of paint brushes like this.

Fake and real. I need a lunch bag like the one on the left because we all know I have plenty like the one on the right.

Day of the Dead

 Manual Alvarez Bravo, Day of the Dead, 1932 (via)

Marilynn Gelfman Karp, From In flagrante collecto (caught in the act of collecting), Group of sugar skulls, 1995-2003 [sugar paste, royal icing, and metallic foil, 1.75" x 3.25" high, Ocotlan, Puebla, Patzcuaro, and Morelia, Mexico]

Two Collections that are Well Padded Yet Difficult to Steer

Romuald Hazoumè, Pied à terre, 2004

If you think the bicycle in Hazoumè's photograph looks overloaded, wait until you see Noah Sheldon's video below. In the words of Wholphin #14 (that I finally viewed last week), it is indeed "a most unusual way to protect your bike."




Noah Sheldon on Vimeo

I cannot help but love the ingenious methods of transporting the collection, no matter how dangerous  it may be. I am also curious about the breaking point or when it reaches too difficult to handle. How was that lesson learned and was it inadvertently repeated? Hazoumè's photograph and Sheldon's video are my metaphors for the pile of 1045 lists that I ceased collecting and posted about last week. I was drowning, much like this, in their teetering mass.

"In flagrante collecto (caught in the act of collecting)"

I may have read about the sculptor Marilynn Gelfman Karp's illustrated catalog in the New Yorker a year ago. In any case, it moved up the Interlibrary Loan List and here are some highlights:

Marilynn Gelfman Karp, Framed Soap Shards, 1995-2004 and Group of Soap Shards, 1995-1999

Marilynn Gelfman Karp, Framed Soap Shards, 1997-1999

Marilynn Gelfman Karp, Framed Soap Shards, 1995-1998

"Robert G. is an artist, a painter fascinated by the way objects age and wear down. He collects nubbins of soap that are too small to be comfortably functional. Unlike the yellow laundry soap of yesteryear, these soap shards are softly curved and as polished as beach pebbles. Many of these soap bars started off with curved edges but all were molded from creamy skin-anointing unguents that yield to the human hand. Robert arranges his soap ostraca in much the same way that Victorians displayed geological specimens or fossils or seashell collections. They are framed in poetic passages that are evocative of the curiosity cabinets of an earlier time. Before I knew Robert, each sliver of my last soap bar was merged with the next as a smaller Siamese twin. Now there is symmetry to my lathering, and something that would have inevitably disappeared with use has instead become a lasting and artful artifact of our time."

Marilynn Gelfman Karp, Swimmer toothpick and snuff scoop (open and closed), 1925

 Marilyn Gelfman Karp, Group of Shopping Lists, 1988-2004

"The most primitive purpose of a list is memory prompting... Lists satisfy the collecting urge and are free. Lists themselves are material, though barely so."

Marilyn Gelfman Karp, Group of Shopping Lists, 1987-2004

"Shopping lists run the gamut of naïve to sophisticated, mundane to poetic, stodgy to flamboyant, offhanded to earnest, vague to obsessively specific. Written for oneself, there is no self-conscious reserve."

Wunderkammer (again and again)

After reading Umberto Eco's Infinity of Lists, thoughts of the wunderkammer reappeared (as they often do) in addition to the presentation of collections based on old curiosity cabinets. Here are some images that I have pondered over the past couple weeks featured in Eco's book.

Johann Georg Hainz, Collector's Cabinet, 1666, Hamburg, Hamburger Kunsthalle

From Eco (page 203): "Most of what remains of the Wunderkammern are pictorial representations or etchings in their catalogs. Sometimes they were made up of hundreds of tiny shelves holding stones, shells, the skeletons of curious animals and sometimes masterpieces of the taxidermist's art capable of producing non existing animals. Other times they are cupboards, like miniature museums, full of compartments containing items that, removed from their original context, seem to tell senseless or incongruous stories."

Reliquary Urn with pebbles from the Holy Land, 17th century, Paris, Musée des Civilisations de l'Europe et de la Méditerranée


 A place that I must visit someday: the Museo del Tempo Ozzano Taro.

The three images above come from this source.

Part of me wants to spend years toiling away on a site-specific wunderkammer that no one is aware of much like Marcel Duchamp's Etant Donné.

Tanya Gadbaw: "A Collection of Sweets and Memories"

This week during a pause in the installation of the Echo of the Object in Knoxville, Jennifer introduced me to the paintings of Tanya Gadbaw.  I am drawn to both the subject matter (objects instilled with memories) and the use of a recognizable, yet abstract material as background.

Tanya Gadbaw, Disappearing Generation 8, 2013 (oil on canvas and found object)

Tanya Gadbaw, Leaving Grandma's, 2012 (oil on canvas)

Tanya Gadbaw, Mom, 2011

From Tanya's artist statement:

"A family member once described our family as the “kids from the woods”. This statement reflects my choices aesthetically and conceptually within my work. My family, headed by my grandmother, grew up with many values, different cultures, and a strong work ethic. I have Blackfoot Indian heritage, an African American father, a Mennonite religious grandmother, and surroundings of the Amish and other cultures.

I focus in on my multi- cultural background to produce beautiful paintings and drawings that reflect objects, home cooking, canning, sewing, quilting, patchwork, patterns, and sensational colors. I take traditions, memories, and elements that might be considered as ‘folk’ or ‘old fashioned’ and incorporate them into my work."

 All artwork courtesy of Tanya's website.

The Collections of Susan Hiller

I recently discovered Susan Hiller on one of my new favorite blogs, Nihilsentimentalgia.

Susan Hiller, Homage to Joseph Beuys (felt lined cabinets of bottles of holy water collected by the artist from around the world), Ongoing from 1969

Susan Hiller, Painting Books and Painting Blocks, 1972-1984 (previously exhibited paintings reconfigured as sculpture)

 Susan Hiller, Homage to Marcel Broadthaers: Voyage, 2009

 Susan Hiller, The Last Silent Movie, 2007/2008 (20-minute single-screen video, continuous soundtrack of extinct and endangered languages subtitled on black screens)

From the artist's website:

"Each of Susan Hiller’s works is based on specific cultural artifacts from our society, which she uses as basic materials. Many of her works explore the liminality of certain phenomena including the practice of automatic writing, near death experiences, and collective experiences of unconscious, subconscious and paranormal activity."

132 Cat Claws & 2 Teeth Are Not Enough

Still collecting...

Postcard Collective & Collections

Clockwise from top left: Sheila Newbery, Amelia Morris, and Camden Hardy.

I was so busy this summer that I knew I didn't have time to participate in the Summer Postcard Collective exchange. I didn't realize it until much later that the theme was "collections." I could have whipped something out in my sleep had I known that! Just kidding - that's not the way I operate. Many thanks to the people that sent me a card anyway. I'll be back for the Fall exchange. Indeed I will.

With all these interlibrary loan books coming in...

... it's beginning to feel a lot like Wang Qingsong's photograph below from the series Follow Him.

Robert Morris's "Card File," 1962

Once upon a time while researching Herbert Distel's Museum of Drawers, I read about Robert Morris's Card File but was never able to find a decent reproduction of it until today. From Phaidon's "Themes and Movements" publication on Conceptual Art:

“First exhibited in 1963 at the Green Gallery, New York, Card File is a vertically mounted wall file of alphabetically indexed cards which record the steps the artist followed in the conception and making of the work. The cards range across quite different categories of thought and action which are randomly systemized, as evidenced by the sequence of labels, such as “Index; Interruptions; Locations; Losses; Materials; Mistakes; Names; Number: Owners; Possibilities; Prices; Purchases; Recoveries: Repetition” and so on. One the cards themselves are typed an assortment of remarks that indicate the artist’s thought processes and chance circumstances which contributed to the process. Thus we are informed of where Morris bought the cards, that he lost some of them, rediscovered them, conceived the work in the New York Public Library, was interrupted by the artist Ad Reinhardt, and so on.”



I've always been fascinated by process and I like the concept behind this work, however, I keep thinking it has to be experienced to fully understand it. It does have a detective-like quality about the making of an artwork - informing the viewers on every aspect of the creation process. The sheer act of recording all of this information ultimately becomes the most interesting part of Card File.

Books and Shelves

I have new bookshelves thanks to Matt Compton. For the first time since I was a kid, I am now able to alphabetically organize books both tall and short next to one another. I have so many shelves that can fit large books, I don't have to worry about saving them strictly for oversized editions. I've been thinking a lot about cataloging and organizing them lately and artists that deal with this as subject matter.

Buzz Spector's My Ruscha from 2001 first comes to mind (particularly because I love the "brick" which is now depicted as another shape altogether and I own two of the ones featured below):



Nina Katchadourian's series Sorted Books is also an inspiration. Shark Journal from 2001:



Organizing books by color has always been an option I like to imagine but would never do.

I felt like my old organization system was quickly approaching The Basement Stacks by Wary Meyers:



Thankfully it did not reach the point of "The World's Most Dangerous Bookstore:"



"You Never Know What You'll Find in a Book," a NY Times essay from 2008 outlines several collections found in book pages: "Sherman Alexie figured out a way around botched safekeeping during his hard-drinking college days at Gonzaga and Washington State Universities in the 1980s. Fearful that he would spend all his money during a bender, he would “slide tens and twenties into random books in my apartment.” Months later, having forgotten about the money, he’d find it again. “It was like winning little jackpots,” he wrote in an e-mail message, adding, 'I’m sober now, have been sober for many years, and I keep my money in banks.'”

I am also completely enamored with Penelope Umbrico's Embarrassing Books. From her website:

"Embarrassing Books are re-photographed details of bookcases in home-improvement and décor websites and magazines that have their books turned spine in. Only someone who is deeply embarrassed by the content of his or her books would turn them around this way – or, perhaps, these books have turned themselves this way because they are embarrassed by their owners. In the never-ending variety of perfectly appointed, vapidly flawless rooms in these virtual spaces, this refusal of content actually makes sense. Subservient to the decorative, these books have become nutrition-less, emptied of purpose and content, and erased of meaning - a sedated empty exchange which produces a valueless object from the apparition of an object of value."



The New York Times "10 Best Books of 2011" is out too. Uh oh. I am looking forward to more end of the year art book lists. Extra room on the shelves = Hello Christmas!

Cheryl Shurtleff: A Collection of Cat Hair and Real Fur Postcards

Cheryl Shurtleff: "I have collected cat hair for years. The hair comes from my own pets and from cats owned by my friends. The texture of cat hair varies from one animal to another, but overall the hair's fineness and softness is attractive to me as an art medium. I use specific brushes to collect the hair so that it can be hand shaped into interesting forms that when combined with other found elements, produce anthropomorphic structures such as the ones seen here. As an advocate for the humane treatment of animals, I have proposed a project which will involve brushing (and petting) cats at a local animal shelter. The result of this project will be an archive of cat hair structures lovingly harvested from incarcerated cats, together with additional documentation explaining the eventual fate of each animal."



Cat Hair Doll, 2011 from the series Cat Hair


Twist


Cat Hair Pendant, 2011



Also on Cheryl's blog, check out this link to "real fur postcards" from her collection. It includes the above image of "Bear Going to Church."

Obsessive Collections by Sarah Hobbs

Sarah Hobbs, Denial, 2008

I have always loved Sarah Hobbs's Untitled (the perfectionist). Upon perusing the Critical Mass finalists, her portfolio is one that struck me the most with examples of mass collections of the same object all relating to eccentric behavior.


Untitled (paranoia), 1999

From her artist statement: "These photographs are the result of an ongoing exploration of the neurotic tendencies that exist in all of us. The images represent the psychological arena as opposed to real space. The carefully staged photographs depict phobias and obsessive-compulsive behaviors and how we attempt to deal with them. Set in domestic spaces, the images illustrate the idea that even the most comfortable spaces can house our uneasiness...."


Untitled (indecisiveness), 1999

"My process begins by researching human behavior. I then set out to put my concepts into three-dimensional form. Sometimes this process comes quickly, but other times it may take months to translate a mental image into an environment. The interiors create a mood in the work that aptly mirrors what is going on inside one’s mind while experiencing a certain condition."


Escapism, 2009

16 Hours of the Last 28 Spent on This...

Fun times if I am blogging about tenure notebooks and faculty retreat doodles. Excuse the BAD, blurry photos. They were taken late at night in my school office. Should have used the flash. I printed 22 pages of imagery (student work and yours truly) from the past year.



I'm finished with the exception of the fact that I am waiting patiently for my peer review to appear. I don't know if it's acceptable to have a notebook this fat or whether or not I'm supposed to have two.



The (can't believe I'm admitting this) fun fact about all of this is that I started my own version of a tenure notebook the day after I graduated from high school. The proof lies here (home again with a flash = hi wrinkle!). Apparently I teach photography yet one would hardly know it from this entry.

Hannah Barnes's "Drawings of Collections of Things"

Hannah has a new website! I'm really excited about her latest project Drawings of Collections of Things. Of course I could be very biased since one of them includes my lunch bags. From Jacinda's Lunchbags:



Here are two from Stephen's Ropes.