Jodi Bieber, Sunday School, Nababeep, Northern Cape, 1998-99
I moved all the Nine Fake Cakes and Nine Bodies of Water posts from In Search of the Center to this site. Now it looks like I've had this blog for over a year but 29th December 2010 was indeed the first day Something Between Want and Desire went public. I haven't grown bored yet with this blogging business so here's to another year of seeing, creating, and thinking about art. Thank you for following!
If anyone ever asks me what my "dream class" is to teach, I would have to reply with this. From the New York Times: "Called Land Arts of the American West, the classes take place in a pair of heavy-duty Ford vans or wherever the vans and the camping gear they carry end up stopping during a 7,000-mile, two-month drive that a handful of participants — mostly architecture graduate and undergraduate students, but also artists, art historians and students recruited from other disciplines — make throughout the West."
It also exists as a terrific book which I wrote about here in November 2009. Ever since the New York Times article was published last week, I've received several emails asking if I knew about it. I have to say that Bill Davenport's reference below tops them all:
"3 weeks, 6 earthworks, 1 portable studio, & ALL that lies in between is an itinerant art and performance project by artists Jacinda Russell and Nancy Douthey that re-examines a group of American earthworks created during the 1960s and 70s. For three weeks during the summer of 2009, Russell and Douthey traversed the Western United States in a rented SUV on an irreverent, but celebratory pilgrimage to the following: Robert Smithson’s (1938–1973) Spiral Jetty (1970) and Amarillo Ramp (1973); Nancy Holt’s (b.1938) Sun Tunnels (1973–6); Michael Heizer’s (b.1944) Double Negative (1969); James Turrell’s (b.1943) Roden Crater (1979–present); and Walter De Maria’s (b.1935) Lightning Field (1977).In many respects “3 weeks” is a work of art captured in the shadows of giants. The picturesque photographs, antic videos, and conceptual artists books that comprise the project’s massive compendium wick their significance from the stoic and achingly monumental works they embrace and critique. Russell and Douthey question the persistence of the earthworks as works of art—under the pressure of the present— replacing their canonical representations (repeated in endless art books and articles) with images that cast the works as theatrical sites, autobiographical backdrops, and art historical “texts” calling for re-interpretation.In Russell and Douthey’s appraisal, the earthworks become characters in a decidedly feminine and experimental narrative. The artists photograph and film themselves engaged in all sorts of performance actions accompanied by kitschy store-bought props and artful handmade objects. Props take on particular importance as the artists transform the earthworks into ruins by repeatedly re-framing them within the technologies of the present.At their most theatrical, Russell and Douthey don costumes, make-up, and disguises, such as false mustaches to portray unspecific but stereotypical character types (villains, vagabonds, etc.) both within the landscape and on the journey. In one video sequence, Douthey—dressed and made-up like Anne Hathaway’s cowgirl character from the film Broke Back Mountain—attempts—and fails—to twirl a length of bright synthetic rope, as if she were lassoing a calf. The ersatz lariat falls to her feet like a cast-off dress. In the artists’ truncated, energized video dramas—and there are quite a few—the journey is often represented in inconclusive, interrupted, and incomplete narratives. Here, the impression of space and geography feels far more virtual—subject to sudden shifts—contingent, and decidedly unmonumental. The same is true of many of the photographs. Here, the frame of the landscape is transgressed by unexpected and disturbing textures and colors—billowing pink tulle, for example. In a particularly poignant image, Russell and Douthey straddle the gulley of Heizer’s Double Negative (emphasizing the feminine attributes of the work’s concavity) chatting on a “telephone” made of two tin cans connected by bright pink cord. Communication is a critical theme of the project. On their first road trip together in 2008, the artists played a game in which they screamed “GEODOME!” each time they saw anything resembling a mound or dome. These playful acts of exclamation flutter against the history of the American West’s representation in art and film. What fun to imagine John Wayne screaming “GEODOME!” in the red rock landscape of The Searchers.Tracking time and space in “3 weeks” is challenging—particularly in the project’s most comprehensive form as an online Blog. At times, it feels like trying to use a GPS system that has been hacked by a karaoke duo masquerading as art historians who are producing a television series about American land art for young girls in China. The narrative drift is palpable. If it weren’t for the conceptual weight of the earthworks, one might just float away into fantasy, or comedy, or absurdity. But that’s OK. There’s nothing better than being on the road."
Stephanie Snyder
Reed College RAW 2011
The catalog will soon be published by Matthew Stadler's Publication Studio. A hand-bound beautiful book coming soon to a Midwestern town near you. Thank you Stephanie and Matthew!
FEATURING: JEFF NILAN, JACINDA RUSSELL, and NANCY DOUTHEY"RR 2 Box 281 is a bi-monthly zine dedicated to photo-based contemporary art. Each of the six yearly issues will be focused on the work of two living artists working and living outside of traditional art centers. The title RR 2 Box 281 comes from the childhood address of the zine's editor Travis Shaffer. Travis and his wife/ co- editor, Angela, grew up in neighboring rural communities in southwestern Pennsylvania. Travis is currently an Instructor of Photography at the University of Kentucky and Angela teaches high-school art in the small town of Lancaster, KY. Through Digital and hard copy dissemination, RR2 seeks to increase the exposure of artists' working and living in the rural settings, thereby creating a dialog around relationships between contemporary art, regional identity and rurality.Six times a year a new issue of RR 2 Box 281 will be released as both a free .pdf file (to be viewed online or downloaded via issuucom) and a hand bound hard copy zine (to be sent via standard post). The hard-copy zine will be 15$/ issue, or 60$ for a yearly subscription."
ZINE -- http://issuu.com/travisl.shaffer/docs/rr2_v1_is1FACEBOOK -- http://www.facebook.com/pages/RR-2-Box-281/127947723918928BLOG -- http:rrtwo.wordpress.com
When google searching images for the last post ("Ed Ruscha Nine Swimming Pools"), a few dozen images also appeared on the same page. Oh my... I don't know what to think of this.
Half of the blog, "In Search of the Center" has infiltrated Ed Ruscha on Google. Yikes.
Dan Graham, Figurative, 1965Last year I was too scared to add up all the money I spent on the earthworks trip. My loss for not deducting it but I just didn't want to know. This year (because there is more documentation with these cakes than any other project I've ever done), I kept track. This is prior to printing & presentation.YIKES.$3775.43but.... every once in awhile you have to take the chance.
