Autobiography: 1999 - present

Left: Houston, Texas 1999-2002 (fingernails in jar)
Right: Muncie, Indiana 2007 - present (hair in jar)

Above: Portland, Oregon 2002-2007 (archival inkjet prints on panels)

Above: Portland, Oregon 2002-2007 (swimsuits in plexi-glass box on panel)

New Website

In the craziness that is October (one of the most hectic months of my teaching/artistic career), somehow I (with a lot of help) have managed to launch a new website. I miss many things about the old one but this template based new version features two important points: 1) I know how to update it (and will far more regularly) and 2) it will work on an iPad and iPhone. Yay! 

New projects and writing abound.  Enjoy. 

We Heart Interview

Check it out! James Davidson, the Editor in Chief of this English design magazine, asked to include some unusual images. I couldn't help but add a scan of my sketchbook in response to some of the questions either.

"Redheaded Peckerwood" Signed Second Edition

Thank you Christian!

I need to admit to a public audience that I am inept at acquiring books more often.

Nate & Marni's Print Framed at Long Last!

Unfortunately, I average framing two images a year of other people's artwork and it has been seven months since the last one was completed. Finally, Nate and Marni's print from Geolocation: East is hanging on my wall! Next up: the two prints in this post and one from Amelia Morris. Expect that announcement in two years.

Midwest Society for Photographic Education Conference - Cincinnati

Day 1: Amelia Morris as Robert Frank's Elevator Girl at the Hilton Netherland.

Instagram view of downtown Cincinnati, the Ohio River, and Covington, Kentucky from Room 2417.

Prime location: Carnegie Visual and Performance Art Center opening exhibition with Corrinne LeNeave (Photo by Matt Compton)

After the opening at Mt. Adams Bar and Grill with Matt Compton, Corrinne LeNeave, and James Luckett (Lighting by Amelia Morris)

Day 2: Lecture with a couple microphone technical issues but other than that I survived in the giant Pavilion with infinite seating.

Edible clay at the Contemporary Art Center's Green Acres exhibition (it tasted chalky = no surprise)

Amelia striking a pose in Image Machine: Andy Warhol and Photography at the CAC.

Defunct clouds in the Andy Warhol exhibition at CAC (another fan was desperately needed)

Anthony Luensman's Taint at the Weston Art Gallery (above and two below). The Weston always receives an A+  for alternative modes of presentation. Luensman's exhibition included video portraits, objects illuminated by light installed in unusual locations, and photographs. I wish I had time to return and study his art more closely - too many openings that evening.

Amelia Morris and Allen Morris (A. Morris^2) at the Senate featuring gourmet street food as witnessed by the Lindsay Lohan hot dogs above.

Day 3: James and Eve at the Cincinnati Art Museum (in addition to me holding hands with fake humans and animals, James posing with a serial killer expression became a popular photographic trend throughout the conference)

Jim Dine's The Red Bandana at the Cincinnati Art Museum

The most amazing disclaimer that each of us had to sign before entering Doug and Mike Starn's The Gravity of Light at the Holy Cross Church at Mount Adams Monastery.

The illuminating arc had technical malfunctions when we first walked into the space with our hoodies securely fastened and UV glasses on.

View from the platform overlooking Gravity of Light.

Detail of the tape holding the moth/fly print together.

Those uneven surfaces I could have tripped on mentioned in the disclaimer.

The Starn Triplets: JR, Amelia, and James. For more photos of this installation, see this link from the Starn's website.

Before the drive back, Amelia and I stopped at Jungle Jim's International Market (my twice a year run to one of the best grocery stores in the US). I accidentally discovered something I was looking for in May 2010. There were two on the shelf and they had a thick coating of dust as if they had been on display since I first heard about it 2.5 years ago. Needless to say, they were both purchased - one for Hannah for cat sitting and the other to  see if it tastes like visiting the Spiral Jetty on a hot August day in the middle of the summer.

Cat Claw Card in Progress

I'm trying to start this to include in my powerpoint for the lecture on Friday! I'll post the finished product hopefully by the end of the month.

Planning the Next Artist Stalking Trip

 I will find this house. Yes, I will.

Yes, I clicked on the "More Info" link above. Yes, I have a new website added to my blog roll.

An observation about mortality

It was a profound moment last weekend when I realized that unless these three boxes are lost or destroyed, I will never need to buy staples again for the rest of my life.

"Pocket Notes" Submission

A couple weeks ago, I received an email from the curators of a project called Pocket Notes. The concept fascinated me: "we want the notes in your pockets that go through the wash, the notes on the nightstand, tucked beneath a glass of water on the kitchen table, in the glove compartment of your car or rediscovered in a book you took back to sell. we're looking for illegible diagrams, incoherent lists, definitions, histories, broken budgets and maimed poems."

Even though I scanned a note I carried around in my wallet until I dropped it in the Prairie Creek Reservoir while floating a cake (thus ruining it), I knew I had to submit images of all my lists. I photographed them this evening. Here is the latest incarnation with an artist statement (gasp):

On 2 June 2010, I started saving all my lists. Whenever I am confronted by a mass of objects, I have an irrepressible urge to count them. School was out of session and I was confused as to why I had to catalog so many activities. What was I forgetting? What needed to be done? Why was I constantly rewriting one when it became too messy to see what wasn't marked off? Every list I made was saved: items purchased at the grocery store, student participation in critiques, my goals to accomplish for the year (or the rest of my life), and states and countries I had yet to visit.

They are written on college ruled notepads, post-its, and recycled copy paper in Sharpie, black Uni-Ball fine point pen, and pencil. Everything was treated equally and nothing was immune if it comprised more than two items that needed to be checked off. 

Two years, four months, and five days later there are 806 of them with the date of completion inscribed on the back neatly bound in order. This evening when I photographed them for the first time in several months, I felt compelled to examine the earliest one. It was a list of art related activities I had to accomplish at school while preparing for a trip to Austin, Texas to float a Styrofoam cake in Barton Springs.

I don't know when I will stop collecting my lists but I foresee an unceremonious trip to the recycle bin (after extensive photographic documentation in the studio) when that occurs. In the meantime, they are a chronological marker that defines a mundane aspect of my life.

Lecture!

Welcome to Round 2 of the Fall Lecture Series... I'm spending the day working on another artist's talk. This one takes place Friday in Cincinnati for the Midwest Society for Photographic Education Conference. It's at 2:30 PM at the Hilton Netherlands in the Pavilion Room.

It's my first opportunity to discuss A Tale of Two Obsessions: David C. Nolan & Marilyn Monroe and Arline Conradt & the Cat Scrapbook. Last month produced a few new David C. Nolan discoveries that I haven't included on this blog as I'm hoping for some element of surprise on Friday. Translation: I get to talk about pornography (and cats!) in front of the general public.

If you are in Cincinnati, I hope to see you there!

New Acquisitions: September 2012

Left to Right: Small Problems in Living by Sarah Hobbs (an impulse buy); I've read many Murakami books but have overlooked Kafka on the Shore; Pacific Standard Time (because I wish I could have seen the exhibition); I like your work: art and etiquette (the few clips I read were so funny that I couldn't help myself); and The Archive (because it's what I do).

The Box That Holds the Lunch Bags

Little did I know this box would play a role in Hannah's paintings of the lunch bags. She showed me a watercolor of it last week and my first thought was "how did you flatten that box so well?" Trompe l'oeil baby, trompe l'oeil.

She painted it because it is the container that holds the containers and that philosophy fits well with our upcoming exhibition. Above is a quick photograph of the box in Hannah's studio with a pile of the lunch bags deteriorating on a daily basis alongside. Needless to say, I borrowed the box back and photographed it. This object that I deemed so insignificant, I didn't even recognize it's importance until Hannah documented it, may be the cover of our artist's book.

Save the date! Echo of the Object with Hannah Barnes, David Hannon and Jennifer Halvorson and yours truly is Friday 2nd November from 4-6 PM in the Atrium Gallery at Ball State University. I found out this week that our exhibition is not only traveling to Poland in April but will also be exhibited in Knoxville,Tennessee next summer. These bags are going places.

Meriç Algün Ringborg - "The Library of Unborrowed Books"

For years, I have wanted to visit libraries across the land and find the book that has not been checked out for the longest time to claim as my own for two weeks to photograph. Why? I want to embrace the rejected, loving it for a moment before returning it to obscurity on a random shelf. I think about this often but am usually engrossed in five other projects and continue to put it off, waiting for another time.

I instantly fell in love with Meriç Algün Ringborg's The Library of Unborrowed Books not because the artist did it before me, but because she did it so well. I still plan on completing it someday - it needs to be included in The Library of Loss Part 3 focusing on the book as conceptual art.

[All images above are Meriç Algün Ringborg's from The Library of Unborrowed Books]

From Ringborg's website:

"The Library of Unborrowed Books bases itself on the concept of the library as an institution manifesting language and knowledge, of the passing of awareness and the openness to all types of people and literature. This work, however, comprises all the books from a selected library that have never been borrowed. The framework in this instance hints at what has been disregarded, knowledge essentially unconsumed, and puts on display what has eluded us."

"Why these books aren’t ‘chosen,’ why they are overlooked, will never be clear but whatever each book contains, en masse they become representative of the gaps and cracks of history, or the bureaucratic cataloging of the world and the ambivalent relationship between absence and presence. In this library their existence is validated simply by being borrowed, underlining their being as well as their content and form by putting them on display in an autonomous library dedicated to the books yet to have been revealed. The first section of The Library of Unborrowed Books have opened Stockholm with 600 books that are unborrowed from Stockholms Stadsbiblioteket (Stockholm Public Library) for a period of three-weeks."

Christian Patterson & the Studio Backdrop in "Redheaded Peckerwood"

There is a penalty of not buying any art books before checking them out at the library. I often miss my window of opportunity to purchase a book before it is out of print because it took far too long for a library in the region to acquire it before I could request it. These days Ithaca College via interlibrary loan has provided me with my favorite books (thanks Ron Jude!) including the much praised Redheaded Peckerwood by Christian Patterson. Needless to say, I will be the first in line if a second edition is printed.

You can view many of the images in Patterson's book on his website (link above) but in no way does it replace the experience of paging through it. One day in Digital Imaging, I let one of my students borrow it and she nearly ripped out one of the notes adhered inside because she thought I left it behind.

Yes this book redefines storytelling and the photographic narrative. Yes it is an excellent combination of fact and fiction as Patterson retraces the tale of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate. Luc Sante in the New York Times sums it up well in this review: "His photographs are of actual settings, actual artifacts, symbolic landscapes and metonymic objects; there are also archival photos and reproductions of documents. Mr. Patterson is attempting something that hasn’t been done much: subjective documentary photography of the historical past. This requires that pictures stick close to the physical details while remaining ambiguous; each of the pictures, no matter how innocuous its contents may be, is unsettling and anxiety-producing. The accumulation thrusts the viewer into the emotional center of the story, in a way you could call novelistic. It’s a disturbingly beautiful narrative about unfathomable violence and its place on the land."

There is something else about Patterson's book that I can't stop thinking about and shockingly, it lies in the form of technique. The way he documents objects with the studio backdrop drawing attention to the location and the act of staging a scene fascinates me. I continue to explore the white background with the Autobiography series and am inspired by his use of wrinkles, tape, creases, props to hold the paper in place, tacks, etc. It also reminds me of John Gossage's The Contents of a Laboratory (another blog post coming soon).

All the images below are by Christian Patterson and are from Redheaded Peckerwood. Check it out at the library if you don't own it. It deserves all the praise it has received. Unfortunately, I figured this out a year too late.