Art Criticism 101: You Too Can Be an Art Critic

I don't know how long Harold Pepperell's collection of critical statements was on my library list nor do I remember the source that initiated its addition. I can tell you that it was hard to find and it was only available through interlibrary loan from one place in the US. It arrived this week and Hannah and I deduced that it was indeed "funny."

From the forward: "About the author and this book: Perhaps the most notable thing about Harold Pepperell, the author of this scholarly work, is that he does not smoke. However, this seeming moral superiority cannot be ascribed to strength of character or steadfastness of purpose. It is the result of his experience as a twelve-year-old who tried smoking corn silk cigarettes. Their foul taste remains forever engraved on his tongue. His interest in the Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake prose of contemporary art criticism stems in part from his study of English Literature at UC, Berkeley. He had seen nothing even remotely similar in his years of wading through Shakespeare, Chaucer, Byron, etc. Even Coleridge, in his wildest drug-induced hallucinations, had failed to come close to the verbal pyrotechnics of contemporary art critics in full cry. They truly have made theirs a language apart, infusing into it magic, a puissance, a depth of psychological understanding (often at the expense of meaning) that boggles the mind."

Here are some highlights. Use them well.

Clear Creek, Indiana

Clear Creek, Indiana, October 2013

While on the Ucross residency, I stumbled upon an 1893 United States Postal Guide displayed in a glass case in the waiting area of the Big Red House. I was struck by the page it was turned to featuring all the places in the US with the name "Clear." Two of them were in Indiana ("oh, the irony" was my second impression).

Over the past year and a half, Brent Cole and I have experimented with exposing cyanotypes on glass followed by firing them in the kiln. The blue is quickly transformed into various hues of brown depending on the temperature. My concept involved using the clear water samples but it wasn't until Wyoming, did I realize that there was something more.

I visited Clear Creek, Indiana last weekend, collecting a gallon of water from the surprisingly translucent stream. I plan on making artwork with the contents, extending further than photographs of the sample. The end product will, in part, comment on turning the seemingly clear water (represented as blue) into the polluted cesspool that it really is (symbolized by brown).

From the City of Bloomington website:

"Riparian habitat damage, sedimentation, excess nutrients and algae, toxic substances, and sewage-related problems contribute to severe habitat degradation in some stretches of Clear Creek. In Indiana's most recent Integrated Water Monitoring and Assessment Report, Clear Creek was in multiple locations not assessed for its ability to support certain designated uses. However, the data that is available shows that certain stretches of Clear Creek are impaired by contamination from E. coli, mercury, and PCBs. These findings are consistent with the history of Clear Creek, which has consistently been described as impaired by the presence of toxic contaminants."

Clear Lake is next on the list before winter arrives.

Two Collections that are Well Padded Yet Difficult to Steer

Romuald Hazoumè, Pied à terre, 2004

If you think the bicycle in Hazoumè's photograph looks overloaded, wait until you see Noah Sheldon's video below. In the words of Wholphin #14 (that I finally viewed last week), it is indeed "a most unusual way to protect your bike."




Noah Sheldon on Vimeo

I cannot help but love the ingenious methods of transporting the collection, no matter how dangerous  it may be. I am also curious about the breaking point or when it reaches too difficult to handle. How was that lesson learned and was it inadvertently repeated? Hazoumè's photograph and Sheldon's video are my metaphors for the pile of 1045 lists that I ceased collecting and posted about last week. I was drowning, much like this, in their teetering mass.

Film Cannister #2

A little while ago, I wrote a post reminiscing about metal film canisters and the objects that are stored inside them. My mother found another one for me to photograph containing a disintegrating pack of sugar from Denmark. I am still on the hunt for more (for reasons that are not yet known).

Daniel Marchand on the Postcard Collective Blog

Read my interview with Daniel Marchand here, in which he discusses art inspired by -32º weather and "involuntary sculpture (as photographed above).

The Gradual Dismantlement of Camden's Rock

At this rate, I will be chiseling pieces for ten years until it disappears.

Human Eyes

Anonymous, When Being Expressed This Package Contains One or More Human Eyes, nd [via]

1045 Lists

I shipped my lists to Ucross, Wyoming and gave myself permission to cease collecting them while on the residency. Another artist asked me why I stopped and the reason is simple: they were taking up too much room on my bookshelf, in plain sight, and were making me uncomfortable. It is liberating to toss every list that I've made since into the recycling bag.

During Photolucida last April, I was told on a couple occasions to be as obsessive with my objects as David C. Nolan and Arline Conradt were with theirs. After fumbling around with a couple other ideas, I kept coming back to the lists. What could I do that was even more over the top than collecting and counting them? First step: photographing them in neat piles. I do not like what will come next but it will be challenging (and within that, I hope "interesting").

William Wegman's Untitled Contact Sheet, 1993

William Wegman, Untitled Contact Sheet, 1993

Sorting and Inventorying Books

I decided it was high time to take inventory of my books (since that is the only thing I permit myself to collect that is worth more than cat claws, lists, and fingernails). Even though this activity will take a very long time (more than I had in one day), it will be worth it in the end. In the meantime, I rediscovered two objects stored in a couple artist monographs that are worth noting.

Judith Golden's receipt inside a book she gave me in graduate school.

I am tempted to post the second thing but it's good enough to become the subject of my next Postcard Collective submission. It will make an appearance at the end of the month.

Basia Irland's "Gatherings"

While rifling through the September 2013 copy of Sculpture the other day, I discovered another artist who is collecting samples from the landscape. Basia Irland's Gathering of Waters is a site-specific, participatory environmental art project. Irland's first "gathering" occurred on the Rio Grande and she has since recreated many others throughout the US, including the Nisqually River below. All the actions include a canteen, logbook, video documentation, river maps, and a handmade backpack which also exists as a repository. She researches each site extensively, often working with ecologists.

Basia Irland, A Gathering of Waters: Nisqually River, Source to Sound, Repository/Backpack, 2009 [cedar frame with maps, hydrology reports, photographs, logbook, and canteen]

I am interested in her ritualistic act of walking and collecting, not to mention the portable objects she makes to house the containers. On the other hand, none of the backpacks look comfortable nor do they look like they would survive a fall on a slippery rock in a creek bed.

Basia Irland, Apothecary for Creeks and Other Living Beings, 2013 [wood, carrying strap, vials, and 45 medicinal plants in use in Glen Helen, Yellow Springs, Ohio]

Mark B. Feldman, author of the essay "Gathering of Waters: An Invitation to Know Your River," writes: "She restores a largely vanished ritual function to the art object, which tethers it to particular places and functions. The backpacks/repositories are like portable altarpieces or cabinets of wonder."

Basia Irland, Apothecary for Creeks and Other Living Beings, 2013 [wood, carrying strap, vials, and 45 medicinal plants, detail of ongoing work]

Basia, Irland, Tome 1, 2007 [250 pounds of ice and mountain maple, columbine, and blue spruce seeds, 28" x 20" x 8"]

Irland also creates "ice books" which are left in creeks to melt. They contain native plant seeds which are then carried down the river once the ice dissolves. Their temporal nature, mainly referenced in photographic documentation, adds to the beauty of these objects, while commenting on profound themes like river ecology and global warming.

Arne Svenson's "Strays"

Arne Svenson, From the series Strays

There is so much to love about Arne Svenson's latest project Strays. It is all I can do not to post every single image from his series (I will not so be sure to check more out here). From the artist statement:

"Strays are images of kittens that are photographed in such a way that denies the viewer the opportunity to see their faces. The heads are turned so far to the background so as to totally disengage the subject from the viewer. In many cases, the head is turned far enough so as to appear as though there is no face to the kitten as if it had slipped off, to be replaced by the blankness of fur."

Arne Svenson, From the series Strays 

I have known of Svenson's work since he exhibited Sock Monkeys in Portland, Oregon. I've avidly followed the controversy behind The Neighbors (finding those images to be some of the most elegant representations of voyeurism ever). Why not follow it up with studio portraits of cats? Thank you Mr. Svenson for finding great humor in such a challenging photographic situation.

Arne Svenson, From the series Strays

Teddy Bear in Progress

Coming Soon to Oregon State University

 
Via

"In flagrante collecto (caught in the act of collecting)"

I may have read about the sculptor Marilynn Gelfman Karp's illustrated catalog in the New Yorker a year ago. In any case, it moved up the Interlibrary Loan List and here are some highlights:

Marilynn Gelfman Karp, Framed Soap Shards, 1995-2004 and Group of Soap Shards, 1995-1999

Marilynn Gelfman Karp, Framed Soap Shards, 1997-1999

Marilynn Gelfman Karp, Framed Soap Shards, 1995-1998

"Robert G. is an artist, a painter fascinated by the way objects age and wear down. He collects nubbins of soap that are too small to be comfortably functional. Unlike the yellow laundry soap of yesteryear, these soap shards are softly curved and as polished as beach pebbles. Many of these soap bars started off with curved edges but all were molded from creamy skin-anointing unguents that yield to the human hand. Robert arranges his soap ostraca in much the same way that Victorians displayed geological specimens or fossils or seashell collections. They are framed in poetic passages that are evocative of the curiosity cabinets of an earlier time. Before I knew Robert, each sliver of my last soap bar was merged with the next as a smaller Siamese twin. Now there is symmetry to my lathering, and something that would have inevitably disappeared with use has instead become a lasting and artful artifact of our time."

Marilynn Gelfman Karp, Swimmer toothpick and snuff scoop (open and closed), 1925

 Marilyn Gelfman Karp, Group of Shopping Lists, 1988-2004

"The most primitive purpose of a list is memory prompting... Lists satisfy the collecting urge and are free. Lists themselves are material, though barely so."

Marilyn Gelfman Karp, Group of Shopping Lists, 1987-2004

"Shopping lists run the gamut of naïve to sophisticated, mundane to poetic, stodgy to flamboyant, offhanded to earnest, vague to obsessively specific. Written for oneself, there is no self-conscious reserve."

Past & Present: Art Historian

Past Reference Point (Postcard Collective Summer 2011 submission):

Current Reincarnation (completed August 2013):

Clockwise from top left: Monterey, CA, Marfa, TX, Ucross, WY and Bellevue, WA

I learned about the retired art historian who couldn’t bear to look at the artwork on her hotel room walls a couple years ago. She sought any article of cloth to drape over the printed reproductions before she carried on with her activities. This became known when she attended a conference and shared a room with a colleague who witnessed this behavior. She was no longer living when the Art Department shared this story but one additional phrase was used to describe her: “control freak.”

Three months later I began to replicate and document her actions. I started in Monterey, California and continued throughout Northern Italy (here, here, here and here). Intermittently over the next two years, I hung towels, bedding, clothing, and even a yoga mat over paintings of cupid, horses, flowers, golf courses, abstract geometric forms and bales of hay. I only hesitated at covering one print advertising a Josef Albers exhibition in Marfa, Texas. I felt certain this image was “art historian approved.”

Christine Shank's "Our First Year Together"

From Christine's website: 

"In this series, Our First Year Together, I am exploring ideas of time, place and the entanglement of a narrative, which occurs when images are placed next to one another. I am interested in the way photographs act as an indicator, a map, a marker and at many points a source of confusion. Images of landscapes, still lives, potentially overlooked moments in the domestic, alongside images made in museums and educational institutions, all come together to draw the viewer into the implied relations between these objects, places, and moments, to craft an expansive story. The title of the series, Our First Year Together, indicates a structure of time and alludes to an undefined relationship, while the images work to confuse this expectation and make openings for an individual understanding. Who "our" is is left undefined and therefore continually reconsidered through the relationship that can be draw between the adjacent image. These photographs were created from 2008 to now."

All photographs are by Christine Shank.

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.

Gayle Wimmer R.I.P.

I signed up for Gayle Wimmer’s fibers course as my very first elective in graduate school. The description emphasized installation and the use of photographic processes though I knew absolutely nothing about fibers. I would take this class four more semesters, still knowing very little about the medium by the end of my graduate degree.

Gayle turned into one my most influential mentors at the University of Arizona. I enrolled in her class every term and she would have served on my thesis defense if she was not in Poland on sabbatical. On a technical level, she taught me a process I utilized in my MFA show (ethyl acetate transfers onto cloth, Kleenex, and paper bags). Artistically, she helped place my interest in family as subject matter into a broader context. It was also through her thoughtfulness, kind demeanor and interactions with students that I learned how to become a better professor.

She had great impact on me as a woman with an international art reputation, one who lived alone with her beloved cat dedicating her life to her work, and one who traveled extensively to fuel her practice. I learned about grant writing through Gayle as she planted the idea that applying for Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships were essential. It was through her practice that I learned what I could become through hard work and dedication.

I became familiar with Petah Coyne’s installations with horsehair from Gayle. Whenever I see a photograph of an Eastern European haystack, I think of her. I can clearly see her staring at me over the rims of her glasses after asking a poignant question and I could recognize her distinctive blocky handwriting fourteen years after last seeing it.

Recently, I decided to make an artwork dedicated to our last phone conversation in January 2007. I searched for her online, hoping that I would not find an obituary, but that was indeed what I discovered. Last month while I was on the residency in Wyoming mapping out a plan for this artwork, she died at the age of 69 in Pennsylvania the very same week. This information brings great sadness and makes it imperative that I create this piece.

All the obituaries mention the impact she had on her students. I am not alone when I say that a great artist and professor passed away last month. Gayle Wimmer will be missed.

Response to "There are Precedents"

Sixteen months ago, I received this in the mail from James Luckett. I pinned it to the studio wall, vowing to answer it, knowing full well I could never do it with as much justice as the original.

Front of There are Precedents by James Luckett

Back of There are Precedents by James Luckett

My response is nowhere near as compelling as James's but it is done. I wrote the text at Ucross and printed it this week. I am looking forward to seeing what Jennifer Hall does with it next.

In the meantime, I have since received the artwork, postcards, book, and typewriter ribbon above from James. Too many things to like. Too many things to do.

On another note, we are participating in a panel discussion at the next Society for Photographic Education conference in Baltimore in March on the Postcard Collective. We will be spreading the love of Mail Art. Hope to see you there.