Spencer Finch's "Great Salt Lake and Vicinity"

Spencer Finch, Great Salt Lake and Vicinity, 2017 (Pantone chips and pencil)

Laurie Blakeslee sent me a link to Spencer Finch's Great Salt Lake and Vicinity on Instagram yesterday. I haven't stopped thinking about it mainly because it is an ingenious example of site specific artwork featuring a collaboration with the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Secondly, I quickly fall for re-purposing Pantone colors and making them into a vessel to describe personal experience. It involves studious observation, a journey, and a collection ending with 1,132 chips traversing the landscape from Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty to the UMFA.

Spencer Finch, Great Salt Lake and Vicinity, 2017 [Image via Hyperallergic]

From The Utah Review:

"The work constitutes a richly detailed field observational guide, created as Finch spent several days circumnavigating the Great Salt Lake. Finch selected Pantone swatches that corresponded precisely to the meticulous scientific-like observations he made of the colors during his trip. He also labeled in pencil each swatch with the originating source of color, which included trees, lake algae blooms, native birds of prey and other elements he observed as he circled the Great Salt Lake."

Kate Johnson - Moving

Kate Johnson, a former student of mine, made the above photograph for an assignment in Special Topics in 2010. The goal was to create an installation that existed only as a photograph. She wrapped everything in her bedroom with newspaper as she was preparing to move back to Lafayette, Indiana after graduation. The blinds, to this day, astound me.

One of the reasons I was interested in this piece relates back to an old family photograph I have of my Aunt Eleanor who resided in a floor-to-ceiling cardboard covered house in the 1940s. It's the obsessive nature of the action and the sheer amount of detail Kate portrayed that drew me in.

A couple weeks ago, long after Kate graduated and moved away, she sent me another version. She's moving again and this time she wrapped her living room. Part of me wishes that there were blinds on that window or at least the lovely blue of the light outside but overall, I am enamored with the scale (larger furniture, a bigger space, etc.). It's also ironic when one thinks how little newspapers are read and here they aren't used for learning the news or advertising. Instead they serve a functional purpose - protection of the objects they cover. They also conceal and make generic everything in the room which is also fascinating.

I am hopeful that Kate moves several more times in her future. I'm counting on the seeing a kitchen, dining room and bathroom someday! Thanks for sending me the image Kate.

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

The many exhibition faces (and otherwise) of "Strange Artifacts: A Found Object and Photographic Wunderkammer" Part 2

Today I put away the last piece of the wunderkammer. Yesterday's post and this one are in homage to the many ways it's seen the light of day. Who knows whether or not it will be exhibited again? Maybe someday I'll have one of those retrospective "things."

Harold Jones took this photograph in July 2006 in my converted garage studio - the first ten pieces in the series that began in mass that summer (the 50th one was finished in January 2007). I was proud to show one of my grad school mentors that I was still making art!



A quick set-up around the half way point in the cold studio in Portland, Oregon. Fall 2006 (way too orderly):



When I wanted legit photographs (49 completed), I packed everything up and headed to Astoria, Oregon and the YMCA for walls that resembled a gallery In November 2006. If I only knew how to make a gif (kidding):



















Detail with identification numbers that were never used again (at the Y):



I converted the spare bedroom into a "bring everyone to my house and show them my art project space" in Portland, Oregon in February 2007. This image was taken moments before all the artwork was packed in preparation for my move to Indiana. I miss those yellow walls (though not with artwork).



That remarkably led to my Reed College Case Works exhibition in May 2007 and an entirely different method of installation. [I am in negotiation for an exhibition at Reed College in March so that is another reason why these images were unearthed and the wunderkammer is on my mind.]







Then it traveled to JCrist Gallery in Boise, Idaho in October 2007 (my favorite installation and a homecoming of sorts for JR):





Most recently, it was exhibited at the New Harmony Gallery of Art, New Harmony, Indiana May 2010 following the format above.



Boxing up the keys that were returned from New Harmony last month:



It numbers 45 (not 50) now residing in various closet shelves and floors in 8 different boxes. It was the one project that I sold one of a kind pieces from and to this day wonder if that was the right thing. Ah... what would sculptors do?

Scott Hove's "Cakeland"

Hove constructed the cake from: wood, cardboard and paint.

From the artist's statement: "Cakeland is a sculptural installation resembling a collection of perfect delicious cakes-- wall mounted, hanging and standing-- a walk-through cake environment complete with its own lighting. It is a sweet refuge, an endless kaleidoscopic landscape of cake, a respite from the grinding realities of the outside world. The sculptures have all of the appeal of the best cake you have ever tasted, but can never be eaten. Whereas the nature of edible cake is fleeting, lasting only as long as the brief celebration it was made for, these cakes last as long as the artist or society have the wherewithal to preserve them, in order that they remain a place of pilgrimage, a seemingly idyllic oasis."