The Fraud Issue: Idaho Center for the Book

Thanks to Stephanie Bacon, Faux is featured in the latest Idaho Center for the Book newsletter.

More stills of Lake Pend Oreille from the 8 mm video

Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho, 1955

Cape Horn Road, Bayview, Idaho: 1955 & 2014

 

Something must be done with this (an 8mm film my uncle recently emailed featuring my mother pointing at the sonar barge in Bayview, Idaho). I have a brick of 13 year old past expiration slide film, a newly repaired Pentax K1000, and a local camera shop that is willing to cross process. If my first trial (expecting lots of errors) works, this may be the key to approaching all the photographs of Lake Pend Oreille taken in May.

The Skeleton in the Drawing Closet

Once a few weeks before obtaining my undergraduate degree, I borrowed my father's keys to the art department. After midnight, a friend and I removed the skeleton on the right from the drawing classroom and installed it into the art gallery exhibition. It was placed prominently in the center of the space and was well illuminated the moment the gallery director turned the lights on the next morning.

When returning to Boise last month, I requested to photograph the skeleton in the drawing closet. It lives in another building now and is missing an arm. I was surprised to see that the once white anatomical man on the left was still in use. Its presence was often featured in drawings displayed in the hallways. It, too, was missing its right arm but I found it on the shelf above and reattached it for this photograph.

I was a child when I first encountered that skeleton. Back then I wondered who that person was before they died and how their bones came to live at Boise State. Last month these thoughts persisted: what does one do with an aging and decrepit skeleton in an Art Department? Can it be discarded or repaired? How long before its life after death has run its course? Many years later, I no longer recognized it as human and it felt as false as the model on the left.

Art Department: Further thoughts after the post a couple weeks ago

I was born into an Art Department and have spent all but two years of my life there. One evening while participating in the Surel's Place residency in May, I walked to Boise State and visited some of the classrooms where I spent many of my earlier days watching my father grade, helping him rearrange drawing chairs, and staring out the windows while he completed administrative tasks. Later on I would attend the same school, switch my major to art from creative writing, and enroll in the classes of the professors who had known me since birth. I moved to Arizona for graduate school, attended another department, then eventually became an art professor. After seven years as an adjunct (at University of Houston, Lee College, Washington State University Vancouver, Oregon State University, Lewis and Clark College, Oregon College of Arts and Crafts, and Mt. Hood College), I obtained a full time teaching job at Ball State University.

It wasn't until last May while wandering through the hallways of the past, did I realize how important it is to make art about this topic. I have tried to reconcile this, deciding if it is worthy to pursue (or too insular), but I can't stop thinking about it. The concept refuses to fade away and I keep taking photographs. I may post a few of them over the next week or two while I formulate the words to describe what this means.

The Return to Kirkham Hot Springs

Since returning from the residency in May, I have had a little time to assess the water images. It has become painfully clear that I had nothing to work with from Kirkham Hot Springs that was out of the ordinary. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to return to the Middle Fork of the Payette River last weekend. I am hoping to make something from the two photographs below. This may involve printing, rephotographing with outdated slide film, and cross processing. Not sure yet but film is on my mind lately (visiting the old color lab at BSU may have instigated this). Needless to say, they are more successful working images to contemplate compared to my previous outing.

Kirkham Hot Springs, Idaho

Kirkham Hot Springs, Idaho

Piling rocks into pools (photo by Marie Baldner)

"Faux" Featuring "Claimed" and "Nine Fake Cakes and Nine Bodies of Water"

Two years in the making... so happy to have this show with Alexis.

Boise State - Visiting Artist Gig with Alexis Pike

The posters and the contracts.

Alexis discussing we sagebrush folks in Jonathan's class (photo by Laurie Blakeslee).

Where I fell in love with photography and changed my major from English to Art. It hasn't changed too much since 1995.

The only Jobo left in the old color lab.

The first time I exhibited the cakes with an "archive" in a vitrine. More exhibition documentation coming soon.

Boise in September

Fire Alarm Dispatch cards at the Sesqui Shop. They are hand drawn maps showing the location of the box alarms in Boise.

Best paint by number artwork in Laurie and Stephanie's guest room.

Spotone on the bookshelf.

Laurie in the garden she has photographed for a couple years.

White cats left in a cul-de-sac.

View from the Boise Airport that I will never forget since I first saw it as a child.

"Faux" at Boise State University with Alexis Pike

I started packing today and am currently formulating a 30-minute presentation where I talk about nothing except cakes (and Ed Ruscha) and more cakes. 

I don't have an official announcement yet but here is the information for the exhibition, Faux, at the Hemingway Center on the Boise State University campus.

New Prints!

Knocking out some prints from May's residency and Lake Louise. I may have already eliminated the paintbrush but the rest are final prints for the autobiography in water series.

Still thinking about these...

Oh Canada

Good-bye Idaho.

Hello Canada (and summer vacation with artwork sprinkled here and there).

Precedent: The Kienholz House in Beyond Hope, Idaho

Ed Kienholz died in June 1994 from a heart attack while hiking near his Northern Idaho home. One year later, my friend John and I drove by the Northern Idaho house he shared with Nancy Reddin Kienholz. I still have the photographs I took nineteen years ago of the mailbox with their name on it and the airplane in the front yard.

I unexpectedly stumbled upon the house again last week. It was easy to recognize the airplane: the mannequin still resides in the pilot's seat and more rust has accumulated in the years since then. A simple thought occurred shortly after: this was my first artist stalking experience. Despite the fact that Ed was no longer alive, Nancy resided there in the summer months. I would see her in Houston in the winter at various gallery openings in the Heights, never revealing I knew anything about her Northern Idaho home. This experience of driving around Beyond Hope in search of anything that looked like a famous artist's home and finding this was ingrained in me years before the series Artist Stalking: In Search of Home began. If ever I do anything with this series beyond the essay in Art Review and posts on this blog, I need to include it in the discussion. 

Two Days on Lake Pend Oreille

  

I am still processing the Lake Pend Oreille photographs and will have more to say soon. So many memories are bottled up in a couple locations on one large lake splayed across the Panhandle.

Cape Horn Road, Bayview, Idaho

Navy sonar barge, Bayview, Idaho

Cape Horn / Bayview, Idaho

Cape Horn / Bayview, Idaho

Clear Water Sample for the specimen box, Cape Horn / Bayview, Idaho

My favorite documentation of Camden's Rock at Cape Horn / Bayview, Idaho

Lake Pend Oreille through the binoculars, Cape Horn / Bayview, Idaho

Clear water sample specimen bottle in the water (the bubbles give its location away)

This tugboat has rested here long before I was born and I was shocked to discover it was still there (the accidental trespassing view).

The normal view from every photograph of the past.

Sunnyside looking East.

Driftwood marker, Sunnyside

Sportsman's Access, Sunnyside

Beyond Hope, Idaho

Beyond Hope, Idaho

One final photograph from City Beach, Sandpoint on the final night before leaving for Canada.