Art Department: Confetti in the Desk Drawer

I am slowly working on the section of the Art Department series that features a letter outlining outrageous activities that occurred in one department in the 1970-1990s. This circumstance featured a stolen master key and confetti dumped into the drawers of all the faculty members' desks after hours. I purchased $25 of confetti and fortunately, my friend David let me use his office for the photo shoot. I didn't want to buy pink confetti (which symbolically represented the person who originally did this in the 1970s) and opted for bags that described me. I was thrilled to find saguaros (Viva Cinco de Mayo!) and also purchased anything that was predominantly blue.

I spent time separating a few of the cacti from the chili peppers before I tossed all of the confetti into one ziplock to mix them, thoroughly convinced that it was sealed properly before I turned it upside down to shake.

Wrong.

There went an hour on a Sunday afternoon picking confetti out of the kitchen sink with tweezers.

At least it was good practice for the real event three days later.

Here is the image that I am contemplating using in the series.

I left David a few surprises in his tack box after spending an hour cleaning up the confetti.

David's lunch bags or my audience during this 2.5 hour affair.

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.

Five Exhibitions, Five Configurations

This is the first time that I let chance play a role in an installation of an artwork. 12 for 7 Years as an Adjunct Professor was exhibited in five locations over the past year (I am fortunate the prints generated that much interest). I was responsible for hanging the grid in Vincennes, Muncie, and Tennessee while someone else installed them in Poland (their method resulted in twelve destroyed prints) and Oregon. There were never any instructions other than an inch apart, at least a foot off the floor, and two rows of six. I have looked forward to assembling these images to see if there were any commonalities and whether or not I could learn from this experience in future installations of my artwork.

12 for 7 Years as an Adjunct Professor, 2000 - 2007, 2012
Vincennes University, Vincennes, IN
September 2012

12 for 7 Years as an Adjunct Professor, 2000 - 2007, 2012
Atrium Gallery, Muncie, IN
October 2012

12 for 7 Years as an Adjunct Professor, 2000 - 2007, 2012

Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Fine Art and Design, Wroclaw, Poland

April 2013

12 for 7 Years as an Adjunct Professor, 2000 - 2007, 2012
Downtown Gallery, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
September 2013

12 for 7 Years as an Adjunct Professor, 2000 - 2007, 2012
Fairbanks Gallery, Oregon State University, Corvallis
October 2013

"Two, Nine, and Twelve" at Oregon State University

All photographs by Doug Russell (who also thought of the title: two series, nine cakes, and twelve lunch bags). Regrettably, I am not able to attend the exhibition. I never anticipated having a show at Fairbanks Gallery when I taught at Oregon State ten years ago and am very pleased to return in some form or another.

(Two) Origins

I have a vague recollection of owning an old typewriter in graduate school. Perhaps I left it in Arizona or Oregon - I am not very sure. The last serious project that featured typing was Alive in Every Closet, an artist's book in my MFA thesis show.

Aunt Eleanor was a paranoid schizophrenic who unwrapped cigarette packs and wrote descriptions of people parked in front of her property on the foil. While sorting through the house where she died, I discovered similar characteristics between us - she was as orderly within her chaos as I am in my cleanliness - sometimes too fearful a prediction. In this series, I question my relationship with a woman I met only through the remnants of her possessions. She is my symbol of excessiveness and obsession - the one familial guilt shoved aside in a refusal to acknowledge her mental illness.

I miss the days of making ethyl acetate prints on kleenex and bags in the printmaking studio. I was fascinated by brown paper back then too. After completing this series, I challenged my future self to create a project focusing on my orderliness (AKA the neat freak disease). I'd like to think that Autobiography does that, not overtly but the white backgrounds are symbolic of all that is clean and organized in my world.

Coming Soon to Oregon State University

 
Via

Press from "Echo of the Object" in Knoxville

Mathew Blanshei wrote a review of Echo of the Object at ArtKnoxville.com:

The article focuses on deconstructing Lara Kuykendall's essay and sadly, fails to mention Jennifer Halvorson's artwork. This month we are working on a catalog of the exhibition featuring an interview by Natalie Philllips. Hopefully this will redeem some of the oversights above. In the meantime, "press is press" and we are thankful for outside recognition as this exhibition comes to a close.

Paper Bags by Jennifer Halvorson

Check out Jennifer Halvorson's new glass cast paper bags - two of which are featured in the Echo of the Object at the Downtown Gallery in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Jennifer Halvorson, Provision, 2013

Jennifer Halvorson, Bounty, 2013

 Jennifer Halvorson, Benevolence, 2013

Jennifer Halvorson, Disposition, 2013

This is my favorite new work (four jars cast in bronze and one in glass) included in the Knoxville exhibition. Installation images coming soon!

David Hammons' "Bag Lady in Flight"

I cannot believe I forgot to post David Hammons' Bag Lady in Flight last summer when I was researching artists who incorporated paper bags in their art (better late than never). I have always loved this sculpture due to the absence of the woman represented in the title yet her presence is defined by the stains on the paper.

David Hammons, Bag Lady in Flight, 1982

Oregon State University - Fairbanks Gallery Exhibition

Coming in October. More information here.

Images from "Echo of the Object" in Poland

I wish I knew who to give credit for these images. They were emailed to me earlier this week. 12 for 7 Years as an Adjunct Professor: 2000-2007 is featured in addition to Jennifer Halvorson's sculptures.

The Wroclaw Academy of Art

I suspect that I will be reprinting these photographs this summer as serious warping is occurring in the presentation. Their next stop is the University of Tennessee in September and Oregon State University sometime in the 2013-2014 academic year. I never knew they would see this much of the world. 

"Echo of the Object" in Poland

Grateful for the exhibition and wish I could see it. Part of me also desires my name to be spelled correctly but that is minor in the grand scheme of things.

Poland Exhibition is on the Horizon

Echo of the Object is traveling to Wroclaw, Poland very soon!

Hannah's Tupperware watercolor painting & my 12 lunch bags rolled into two tubes.

I felt like I was building a cooler for 5 Objects Photographed Before Thrown Away (AKA the tight squeeze).

Due to the expense of shipping overseas and the sheer amount of work we made for the Echo exhibition, this is a smaller version of the show.  Each one of us pared down our selections and will only be showing 1/3 - 1/2 what was initially exhibited in the Atrium Gallery.

Thanks Texas Gallery for teaching me how to build boxes and ship artwork. Thanks Photo 2 students for putting up with me constructing these during lab last week (and the rest of the Photo Department tolerating the Finishing Room's transformation into a UPS store).

Now to see if Jennifer, Hannah, David and I can get our shipping estimate well under $10,000.

More Paper Bags

Jerry McMillan, Untitled, 1978 [image via]

Jerry McMillian, Torn Bag [image via]

 

Union Paper Bag Manufacturing Company, 1939

The image above comes from a great article on the MoMA blog published two years ago on the history of the lunch bag. I accidentally found it while looking for Song Dong's installation Waste Not and wondered why I hadn't seen it earlier. I particularly love Charles Stilwell's drawings for the patent in 1889.

David Hannon and Fred Bower made this artist's book for the Echo of the Object exhibition. David is assembling 500 copies and 25 were available at the opening. Each book is encased in an embossed paper bag.

The bag turns converts into the Optimist once opened, complete with painted eyes.

The interior depicts David's paintings in a woodcut format with text. From his artist's statement:

"This series of narrative paintings entitled the Optimist Club explores the complex relationship between the seemingly opposite view points of an Optimist and Pessimist....These observation based paintings have a simple compositional structure to allow the viewer to focus on the interaction of the two sides and the various symbolic elements introduced into each still-life. For the main characters a bronze of Abe Lincoln’s head plays the role of the optimist contrasted sharply by a paper bag head with a mysterious identity as the pessimist. Although both characters in the series oppose one another in superficial ideals humor and insight allow for a closer examination of the truths each stands for."

My favorite painting from this series is depicted above in the book and below in the exhibition.

David Hannon, In the Classroom, 2012

I am enamored with the replication of the landscape pinned to the wall and how as a viewer, we too are forced to wear the mask of the miniature Abe Lincoln when standing in front of the artwork.

Fred Bower's diagrams featuring the mini paper bag and Abe Lincoln bust are both ingenious and charming. The back page includes a blank page to list signs that the reader is an Optimist. I'm not sure if a No. 2 pencil should be included or a Sharpie since many of my memories of writing on paper bags are my Mom's depictions of summer vacations drawn on my elementary school lunches with permanent marker.

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Hannah and I are also working on a collaborative self-published book featuring the lunch bags with the goal of finishing it by winter break. Here's to more brown, wrinkled paper in the immediate future.

Stamped!

Thanks to Autumn, all the bags are stamped and ready to pass out at the Echo of the Object reception tomorrow afternoon.

Hannah took this photograph (and also designed) our lovely 2" stamp.

A plastic sack full of old lunch bags ready to photograph.

The pile.

The bleed.

We are saving one that will be framed and will travel to the next two locations. Now the hard part - choosing which one that will be.