Introducing...

"Gross" by Chris Lin

Introducing…l-i-p’s hot new guest blogger series! The first of our gloggers is Chris Lin. A glue-gun slingin’ cardboard crafter, ukulele pickin’ song writer, word-player and boy (gasp!), he is a connoisseur of material engagement. From behind-the-scenes at Contemporary Art Workshop, he brings us his perspective.

The janitor used to come every two weeks. One day he left a note on my desk to tell me that one of the artworks is dripping red juice. The piece was Matt Davis’ multimedia photo collage, and the red juice comes from the chewed sugar-free gums which adhere to the surface of the photo. At some point there are flies stuck to it; it is summer after all.

“Isn’t this the grossest thing you’ve ever seen?”
~Trick-or-treat girl

Three months later, Matt shows here again, this time his solo show. The anchor piece was an installation entitled “Inheritance”, which is made of sugar-free candy, foam, sunflower seed shells, cat litter, fish oil pills, nylon strap, band-aids, super balls, toilet paper, and body hair mounted on a photograph of what appears to be a vagina or a very ripe fig, mounted on clumsily cut aluminum. The piece embodies danger and anxiety, and with its tangling foam tentacles, sharp edges and near-unidentifiable objects affixed onto it, it’s easy to overlook the grotesque imagery in the photograph.

“Is this thing archival?”
~Boss

Boss was born in the Depression era. She grew up to love art as much as life. To her, a piece of art is as important as a pair of wool socks or a heavy winter coat. She got married to Jack who builds chrome sculptures that are strong enough to brave the Chicago winter. Jack founded CAW with a mission to showcase young emerging artists with new ideas. It was the 1950s.

Nowadays, artists are finding new materials to use in artworks and it’s still a new concept for most of the art-viewing public. During the opening, one of the guests brought up the Unmonumental exhibition in the New Museum in New York and how it was target to outrage by many museum-goers because of its slacker aesthetic and unserious concepts. But even then, such style is widely accepted in the recently-artschool-grad circle. This is what they teach in school? What’s there to teach? How to mix epoxies and glue a bunch of shit together?

I’m biased, since I glue shit together in my own work, too. I have to say that this new aesthetic is totally relevant to our time. This is the era when consumer items define our lives and relativity is a mainstream belief. Things don’t just serve the purpose of being useful, they suggest a narrative to our identity. But it suggests a vague identity, more mystery -- a more fitting definition of personality. The fact that the materials are real doesn’t help make reading easier, but it provides a more full and open experience. Nothing else is clear-cut, so why should the art be?

Matt’s work is confounding not only in its material but also in its imagery. It’s gross, it’s beautiful, it’s overwhelming, it’s shoddy-looking, it’s lively. The red juice is absent from “Inheritance”, but the complexity of the materials guarantees a different reading each time. It’s aliiiiiiiive.

Matt Davis's show The End is the last for the historic alternative space CAW. Go see it before it closes January 23.

co-______?

synonyms of collaborate: be in cahoots, coact, cofunction, collude, come together, concert, concur, conspire, cooperate, coproduce, do business with, get together, glue oneself to, go partners, hook on, hook up, interface, join forces, join together, join up with, participate, team up, throw in together, throw in with, tie in, work with

other fave co's:
Coco (my cat)
coagulate
coalesce
cobalt
codex
coed
coexist
cohort
coincidence
collide
connect (as in early heads pictured above)

collabo wandering

Hey k,
Since we began discussing our show this summer and the workshop ideas, I've been hyper-keyed to collaboration. It's PeeWee's word of the day. AAhhHhhhhh! He he!

Go collabo!

1. My student's did a crazy joint drawing a couple weeks ago on the dry erase board. Two of us got it started, and the rest couldn't have enough marker time. It was good productive togetherness! (Reminded me of our instigating "Friday Night Dance Party" at Waterworks back in 2001.)
2. C and I just did a lil' drawin' for a friend of jumbled up people and cats and bling and pickles. Sweet fun.
   
3. Recently talking about my co-created and co-taught class with J at the MCA---a challenging and productive teaching strategy that continues to drive my philosophies on art education.
   
4. H, a friend from Memphis, posted his facebook status, "H is working on his Collaborative Painting & Drawing syllabus and is looking for examples of artists who've collaborated. Any suggestions?" Received responses from several "face-friends" like: Picasso and Braque, De Kooning and Rauschenberg, Abramovich and Ulay, Warhol and Basquiat, Bismuth and Gondry, Parreno and Gordon, Doug and Mike Starn, Dino and Jake Chapman, David Bowie and Hirst, Charles Long and Stereolab (the art guys), Bernd + Hilla Becher, Newton + Helen Mayer Harrison, Art Club 2000, Tim Rollins + K.O.S., Atelier Van Lieshout, Group Material, General Idea, Komar & Melamid, Gilbert & George, Bob & Bob, Terry Fox & Joseph Beuys, Fischli & Weiss, Seals and Croft, and I'm sure that Thomas Kinkade has collaborated with many - oh yeah, that's right, he has a staff that paints for him! UGH.
5. And most recently, I noticed an enews about a December 2008/January 2009 issue of Modern Painters that includes an article about "merging artists" (get it? instead of their usual "emerging artists" section). Really wonderful work by 9 artist-teams. Above pics: Nina Canell and Robin Watkins, still from Sea Chant (2006) + Benoît Maire and Falke Pisano, Organon (2008)

Plus I have my own on-going list of fave collaborators--will share later.

I'm glad in a time of technology-driven social connection that artists (and others) are finding more ways to physically coproduce. Especially with the cold months ahead, we need more warm body time.

Looking forward to our future co-adventures!
k

speaking of minis...

K,

C and I ran across a gang of mini-skirted, high-healed trixies on our way home from gallery openings last night. Maybe this was our little version of Miami Fair? Only one major difference--it was 13 degrees! It's funny to think of the bejeweled mini-skirt type as an art buyer. I guess if they can spend a couple thou on a tiny piece of fabric that almost covers their cracks, then for some new blingy beach house accessory, money isn't an issue. Then there is the matter of taste...hmm.

I am glad, though, that you aren't in the gallerina chair this time. Not that last time was any easier, but the pressure of "selling" art now seems more ridiculous than ever. Even J--my collector's perspective--says the economy has finally touched the art world. I don't know why, but this makes me feel a little better. At least the two worlds (art and rest) are somewhat connected and the repression isn't exclusive. J keeps me up on the auctions (esp. the online ones), and numbers aren't as high as usual for fame namers. No bailout needed, though, we're still talkin' big money. So...what does this mean, then? Is it too hopeful to think that this might affect value systems? Maybe with less buyers, lower spenders, the demand of making-to-sell will turn to making for other reasons? Will buyers break fashion trends and take chances on lesser knowns (because they are lesser costs)? May the business of art buy/sell die with the stock market? I can dream.

Anyway (Allora), grad school did make us take art too seriously, and I still have some major angst because of it. I think we had to completely immerse. And k, really, can you think of one task we've undertaken that we haven't treated too seriously? Just admit it, we're total nerds! Now we're 3 years coming out and beginning to find wholeness in other things. It's great perspective!

<3,
k

p.s. loved the collab. post---what an amazing interactive site! i have some responses, but i'm slow. will post again soon.

Bombarded, Bailouts and Basel-ed

Dear K, 

A quickie to mention the beginning of  "The week Miami was the center of the art universe." Art Basel and all of its associative fairs, festivities and fabulous people watching always seems so dramatic to me. The hype, the glitter-ridden couture mini skirts, the pretension... its fantastic and slightly disturbing. With the economy being the way it currently is, I'm actually glad that I am not that "gallerina" (See Ny Times article) that I was last year - timidly informing potential buyers of the completely out of hand art world pricing system. (Hysterically, I thought that this status meant that I had somehow "made it"... and this year I am thankful to not be involved.)

This year I will go as a voyeur... simply taking it all in, and taking it all with grains of salt on palm trees. Sometimes I feel like grad school forced us to take our selves so seriously, subsequently we started looking at the art world in serious and formal manner. The problem? - The art world is as problem-ridden as politics. And frankly, I think it needs a bailout. 

I'll be back with updates.. 

Love, 

K.

The Art of Collaboration

Dearest K, 

You said it best, my dear. . . We ARE suckers for heart. Character, hard work, the element of surprise, an interactive component - these are all ways that you and I can get INSIDE a work of art. A perfectly museum-quality, Brancusi-esque work is so slick that it lacks any tooth to grasp onto, to get into, to move around. This motion, this playful dance adds heart. . . an element that you and I can relate to. S is always commenting on how much more I respect people who have worked hard for their success (and worked hard with an element of shyness and quiet contentment) than the showy, flashy, "let me show you my work within 5 seconds of meeting you" kinds of artists. I admit, Mark Messersmith, whom you and I always love, immediately comes to mind. 

The last few days I have been thinking alot about the art of collaboration and why we are drawn to it. I think that it has something to do with being in our post-grad school phase - we crave like-minded folks because we are not necessarily surrounded by them all the time anymore. Those questions that haunt the inside of our minds, (To Whom??) need to be answered! And I am so thankful that we have each other to bounce off of. Speaking of bounce houses, I'm beginning our initial research for our collaboration class and wanted to highlight a few dynamic duos. 

I just received a chapbook of lovely and multi-talented friend Esther Lee's poems.. they gave me goosebumps and made me remember that she did a collaboration through Born Magazine that I loved. See it here and be SURE to watch the whole thing. It fantastic! And I love the way that the poems exist on an entirely different level than in my personal chapbook. - See interactive content.. and therefore, heart.

At the book conference a few weeks ago, I heard about an interesting project called "The Tract House" from Lisa Anne Auerbach. Familiar with her work, this brings about another element to the concept of collaboration. Collaboration can not only be within artists, but between an artist and an institution, an artist and a curator, and artist and a town. (think publicly funded sculpture). "The Tract House" is a project with the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore as well as Printed Matter which distributes tracts (religious, political, socio-economical, pure comical based) to the public. Each selected tract was printed 1000 times and is now available online. 

This blurring of the "rules" seems important to us. We don't just want to be artists (although the defensive person in me says that there is nothing wrong with this!), we want to be curators, educators, critics, instigators, etc. 

The slash (/) on my resume keeps getting longer and longer... and I couldn't be happier.

 

Love you and sending warm/cozy thoughts, 

K.

Cardboard is beautiful...simply exquisite!

Hey K!
Heard the author of Bird by Bird on "This American Life" earlier today and thought of you. Thanks for the tip on that book---it's good stuff! The theme of the show this week, music, was perfectly timed, as I seem to be falling into a music-centered season. You know how I always sort of trade off?---arty conquests vs. musical ventures. If only I knew how to combine the two. Anyway. You wrote about my new rules of art judgment: "Structure, familiarity, character, drama and heart - all things that we crave in our lives and in our creations." I love the idea of applying OUR rules of music/art-making and viewing/experiencing to larger understanding of others, situations, life. We're curating our preferred world, wouldn't you say? Appreciating the details, whether high or low.

I know that word-feud that you speak of quite well. I'm always in this conversation with my students, and with myself (with the critical voices in my head that were planted in art school). Too many vague words to define: art, craft, beauty. "To whom?" is always the circular issue.

Well, to me--someone who still laughs at poo jokes, listens to sentimental love songs and appreciates childlike wonder--using whatever material you can get your hands on to do your thing = beauty! Monet, Rothko, Brancusi techniques = tired. I think Jeff Koons proves a point about "high art" material. And I've seen an amazingly crafted oil painting that had nothing to say. It had structure, and that's about all. K, let's face it, we're suckers for heart. We like the sappy truth, in whatever form it comes.Yesterday, it came in the form of cardboard, yet again. The Viaduct Theatre hosted The Exquisite City. Around 40 artists made Chicago city blocks and windows almost entirely out of cardboard, organized together to make a collective city including all the banal (although cute-ified!) aspects of city life: street lights, speed bumps, sewer hole covers (which btw, immediately reminded me of the teenage mutant ninja turtles), parking lots, corner bars, churches, run down buildings, and power lines--even the cardboard covered entrance way had pigeons perched in the cracks with corresponding white cardboard bird poop on the ground. Totally tubular, man!And winding things up nicely, C and I agreed that the best works in Exquisite were the off-kilter blocks. The perfectly scored and assembled satellite dish was a quick pass to the trash-made sideways tilting brownstone. I mean, I have to appreciate the great skill and effort that goes into attempting the look and texture of faux-stone on a miniature art deco movie theater, but it's character I'm looking for.

Quarrel on, my sweet! It's worth it, if only to fuel your passion.
k

Go visit the Exquisite City! It's awesome! http://www.exquisitecity.com/
Read more about it: Chicago Journal article

Lizards in storage...

Hey K, 

     Love your post about the makings of a country song... and new work inspired by simple materials promoting big ideas. Today I had a word-feud with a fellow artist about the validity of contemporary art. After a heated debate, we agreed to disagree on the merits of craft, "low" materials and attempt at conveying an emotion through unconventional means. He is in the school of only accepting traditionally aesthetically pleasing work as "art". Saying "art should always be beautiful." I remain unconvinced. 

     If art is always subjective, then art can be anything. Aforementioned acquaintance seems to have rules as to what is beautiful, and he leaves no room for other options. This makes me crazy! Maybe we should publish your rules for a good country song as being parameters with which we judge artistic work?? Instead of the principles of design and antiquated notions of "the academy" - Structure, familiarity, character, drama and heart - all things that we crave in our lives and in our creations. 

     I've posted a few pics from wanderings of the last week. A trip to the zoo with S, and an evening of art in a storage center. I love the idea of art being shown in storage centers... think of all of the exposure we could bring to suburbia! One (of the many issues) that I have with suburbia is the lack of cultural contact. If we change the definition of viewing artwork - instead of just in art centers, galleries, museums - storage centers seem ideal. Small cramped spaces leading to more small cramped spaces, the perfect container for creation. Each space was interpreted by different artists, creating "high" and contemporary installations amid the sterile environment of sheet metal cubes. 

Predictably, I responded to the installations using natural fibers and themes. I seem to be on a white kick - hence the porcelain mushrooms as well as the condoms filled with sand surrounding a clock. Our clocks are ticking.... I can feel them. - But that's another post entirely!

xo, K.

gimme some lip! + Work Site

k!
yay! l-i-p is back! glad you had a book/art-filled weekend! i had some fun as well, and wanted to rave about one of my new fave artists. ;)

the show: Work Site
the artists: Chris Lin and Ben Brandt
the gallery: Estudiotres

There are a few key ingredients that go into making a good country song.
1. Structure: some sort of underlying form or loose system that holds it all together.
2. Familiarity: if the strange or absurd disrupts, often what we already know comforts.
3. Character: the personal, based on biography yet universalized (generalized) to relate on a larger scale.
4. Drama: exaggeration and elevation of everyday life--in an effort to make meaning, heighten, and slow those fast gone moments.
5. Heart: the sincerity and wisdom that only comes from someone who has truly hurt, lost, or failed.
And in this process, the writer finds purpose and release, romantically formalizing what might otherwise be a selfish tantrum.

This show is a good country song.

Lin and Brandt are both dealing with structure. More than the obvious architectural references, their work points to underlying surfaces, supports, and modular rhythm. The type of rectilinear plague we suffer daily (have you noticed?---everything is rectangle! ah!). The salvation comes in the imperfection of the system. The freedom lies in the cracks, the play is in the fissure. Brandt's scaffolds teeter with "almost balance", variable-sized canvases cluster together like loose communities or aerial shots of irregular plots of farmland. Lin's tenement blocks don't always match up, the chicken-wire foundation is exposed, and a city below is revealed.
An anthropological study would examine the layers, searching for clues of human life, the hand, the personal. In fact, the singular strange thing about this work is the feeling of people-less-ness. Talking to Lin about his work, he confided that several blocks are loosely based on places in Chicago where memory turned happy moments of the past into sad remembrances. His blues got to work, tediously constructing nondescript building after the next (he even lost sight of which was which soon after he made them). Tenements resting tenuously on a mountain of gray. The same gray of Brandt's textures. The same gray of the gallery utility doors. The city from the past is buried beneath, forgotten, and already purged.

This is a more serious play, wit is slight, less obvious. Yet there is humor in between. The sad homogeneity of the buildings (also goes for Brandt's surfaces) direct you to the "wonky" by contrast--holes, minute color details, dramatic peaks and valleys, scale, the tipping of blocks to extreme angles! They might just slide right off! Hee. Brandt jests, too, with a silly "walnut tongue" or tangled ball of string (noodles? worms? intestines?) protruding from the conservative tans, creams, browns, and grays (the colors of Eddie Bauer or maybe more poignantly, the working class uniform).
Both artists' work seem very much about material (low and high) and "boyness." Lin really knows his material. He should, he's been using it since he was little. It reminds me of one of my favorite students from Tally. Remember Jim Dolson, his cardboard space equipment, science experiments in the playground, and mission to the moon? Cardboard...it lacks pretension. There is a curious innocence in the meanderings of a 9-year-old boy with constructs, an erector set, Lego's or even just household objects. Brandt's work carries that mentality as well. Although his schooling is obvious, inscribing his name in every painting, he leaves a mark of naivete.

The "work site" is a place of vulnerability, unfinished thoughts and plans. Process and production. Surface and support. Creation from destruction (dramatic, I know, but that's history, man!). And maybe a few mountains out of molehills.

xo, k

More on the artists: Chris Lin---http://ahcri.com/splash.html
Ben Brandt---http://www.benbrandt.net/

The show will be up through Dec. 18---go see it! details---http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=36260886609

Back at ya, Panza...

Dearest K, 

Hello, long lost friend. Don't fret, I never forget about you, even when I don't post. Things have been quiet and crazy at the same time. Sometimes life gets in the way of art... except this past weekend! I had a great time at the Pyramid Atlantic Book Arts Fair in Silver Springs, Md. It was great to see so many books and bookish people. It gave me a little kick and I came home wanting to feel the sweet tactility of paper, the smoothness of my bone folder, and the intricacies of hand-bound texts. I have many new things to post about! Before I post a few links to fellow friends and new contacts - in addition to going to the fair, I squeezed an hour out for myself to visit the Hirshorn Museum and their newest exhibit, "The Panza Collection". It was a quest in text, linguistics and a feat in vinyl lettering. After spending a few hours installing vinyl lettering at my job last week, I was quite impressed with their largely scaled fonts splashed onto walls and around corners. 

I particularly liked a work, Box, Cube, Empty, Clear, Glass- A Description by Joseph Kusuth and a wall drawing, Wall Drawing #3 of Sol Lewitt. (I'm a sucker for Lewitt's wall drawings that he famously sends directions to install, not even making the actual work itself... This brings up issues of ownership, the delicate nature of the artist vs. the artist assistant, the role of the museum and the curators.) Other artists displayed included Lawrence Weiner, Richard Long's rocks and the above blue-light installation of Doug Wheeler. 

Although it was one of my quickest in time-duration museum experiences, it was lovely to be in such a space. Every once in awhile, I crave those massive museum's to stroll around, it always makes me remember my semester of exploring art history in London.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's post on book arts and artists. Hope you enjoyed your weekend of fun and art!

Love ya, 

K.

Lazy?

k,
we're slackin' (like Coco).
let's get back into it!

<3,
k

St. Louis Light Project

K!
I've been missing you! and blogging!...almost "back in business" as my favorite boss used to say. I have several posts on back order, and I'm not sure where to begin. Here's a little one:

When I was in St. Louis, A drove me to the St. Louis Light Project. A red-headed Social History Professor suggested I check it out, explaining his current writing and research over breakfast and toys in Edwardsville the day before. After 2 days of corn fields, a harvest fest, 4-year-old princess antics, an anxious lecture, and threatening racial tension, it was the perfect "relevatory" experience.

The church was a ghost, a grave for a historical social foundation. Only the main walls of the structure remained---the frame for so many. Within the old body, was an organized skeletal scaffold. Hardware, metal and stone, cold and vacant. Floating effortlessly above, in the form of the pitched roof, hung more than 200 lights. Warm liveness. A variety of shapes, colors, styles--they looked great together, a unified community of difference. Beautiful, magical, and conceptually minded--it reminded me of the majestic light that enters the stained-glass windows of a deeply Gothic cathedral, the sort of sensationalism and dramatic theater used to create an awakening of spiritual experience from an otherwise dark, wordly existence. Only this was outwardly glowing, and not consquentially pointed. It was like a memorial of the very human connection, the dynamic life that exists within a tired (and in this case, dead) institution. What's more, the lamps came from people in the surrounding community. (you know how I'm a sucker for inclusion!) With each lamp, personal current histories combined to reflect on the history of the church, dialogically celebrating the past and present. You can see many of the lamp donors and their lamps here: http://lamp-collection.pulitzerarts.org/category/lamp-project-at-the-spring-church/collection-process/donors-and-their-lamps/.

And learn more about the artists and other light projects around the St. Louis area here: http://lightproject.pulitzerarts.org/completed-work/kehres-hungerer/


You have some cute nostalgic lamps to offer, right k?
Good to be back!
k

Home Page

Dear K, 

Bookmarks are in! Check out my "Devouring a Book" here. It was oh so exciting to receive a full set in my mailbox recently. I loved being a part of this project... it got me making, thinking and making and thinking in multiples. 

Just keeping you in the loop. Busy times. How are you? How was your exhibit?

We should start noodling on our "Home Page"

Love, 

K.

Alternatives to the alternative

Dear K, 

Whoo.. We have both been so busy lately. In addition to everything going on down here, wanted to post about a major project happening in good ole Rochester that I worked on while assisting Nathan Lyons. "John Wood: On the Edge of Clear Meaning" is a major retrospective exhibition that is traveling around Rochester, NY spaces this fall as well as the International Center for Photography. A major project including a DVD with interviews of the artist, a forthcoming book published by Steidl and a plethora of mixed-media, photo-based prints, artists' books and drawings done by artist, John Wood. My mailbox is waiting patiently for my pre-ordered copy.

I particularly enjoy how Wood incorporates drawing into photography... a difficult task. From the VSW website: "John Wood's style refuses to be shoehorned into one category. A master of straight photography, collage, cliche verre, solarization, mixed media, lithography, drawin and more, he decisively incorporates a variety of media." 

Other things are swirling.. my life is so very mixed media these days. Talk soon. I promise to post again shortly.

Love, 

K.

Ode 2 Laff: A Laughony

Hey k,
I want to respond to your posts, but will have to do so later. Just a quick plug for an upcoming arty event.

Project “Ode to Laff Box” needs volunteers!

Come participate in a laughter symphony! All laughs, timbres and tones needed!

On Saturday, September 20th @ 6pm, in Logan Square, I will conduct a symphony of 4 movements roughly framed around Beethoven’s 9th (Ode to Joy). The orchestra will consist of volunteers (you) playing your own pre-recorded laughs with your cell phones (utilizing VoiceNotes/voice memo), arranged in orchestral sections based on tonal quality (pitch and texture). The performance will last 20 minutes—excluding commercial breaks between movements. (There are even opportunities for solos!)

We will sound together (phono sym) our individual “canned laughter” in theme and variation, sequence and imitation, rhythmically “sweetening” the episode and establishing the laugh pattern for the live audience (also you)!

Come for silliness, come for spectacle!

Laughers/Players/Performers and Everyone else wanted:
· No musical or performance experience necessary
· Bring your laughter and a cell phone that will record and playback your voice
· Only 1 hour of your time gets you a shared experience you won’t forget
Meet on the steps under the monument in Logan Square @ 5:45 pm for section placement, tuning and warm-ups.

Let’s fake-laugh in “sweetened” harmony, and then “real”-laugh at ourselves! Hope to see you there.
~Conductor Sit Com (Situationist Comedy) ....a.k.a. "k"

Email questions to: kaycebayer@yahoo.com

It's a political circus!

Hey K, 

What a weekend... full of many highs and lows. A high was seeing someone finally broaching the subject of art + politics. These two have co-mingled for a long time, and what better time to make work about/around/opposing politics, than now? FAU had a great show, Political Circus, that exhibited a wide variety of interpretations of art + politics. Faux campaign slogans and media slandering were all around. . . as were unusual materials. Above were hand-knit ski masks of all of the senators; coupled with pieces by Laylah Ali and Marcel Dzama (two of my favorite contemporary artists) and a big-whigs such as Kara Walker and Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung. A variety of media were shown, which was refreshing, and the audience seemed to really respond to the work. 

As you know, I always like exhibition titles that wrap around more than just a one-liner pun. Phrases like "sideshow freaks" and "the ringmaster" came to mind... holding up the performance aspect of politics. How much of it is show and how much is substance? Most of the time, I feel like I'm stuck in one of those carnival "house of mirrors"... luckily, FAU provided solid ground for me to stand on. 

In other news, we sideswiped a major hurricane... by the skin of our teeth. Classes are just getting into the swing of things, I had a great yoga class yesterday, and the clouds are looking quite poetic tonight. I'm starting a new photo-based project on clouds; a la Alfred Stieglitz's Equivalents.   I like the idea of starting fresh by capturing something simple again, a way to further integrate art into life. 

Love to you, 

K.

I too, am a Beautiful Loser

Dear K, 

Oh how I wish this film was coming anywhere remotely close to home. Good news: you can see it! Check it out for me and let me know how it is, looks great! Beautiful Losers features artists Margaret Killgallen, Barry McGee, Chris Johanson and more! Love their slogan, "Make something from Nothing." 

I'm preparing for a hurricane instead of making art. Sheesh. 

Love as always, 

K.

A shark bites the home

Dear K, 

Loved the shark reference. A perfect hysterical example of the occasionally oxymoronic art world. It's such a series of dichotomies - constantly contradicting itself. I completely agree with your correlation between art stars and celebrities, I'm sure it is a let down of sorts. Constant pressure and an inevitable hollowness that follows fame.

On a more down to earth level... Above are some photos from artist Roy McMakin. I was first introduced to him at Red Dot, where we had his ceramics piece, Untitled, (Vases about Language and Redemption). As much as I was attracted to these delicately simplistic forms, I wasn't sure that these vases had anything to do with "language and redemption". I find that this happens quite often... artists trying to make things into something they are not. Of course, the minute I see this title, I think that I might be missing out/missing the point. How can one be redeemed from the slight curve of a vase? Maybe some can... but I am left wanting either more explanation, or even less. 

Regardless, Roy McMakin has some interesting ideas. A recent NYTimes article highlighted his newest project, an "Alice in Wonderland" house of sorts. I like the hollowed out walls and the simplistic design, yet attention to purist architectural archetypes. He manages to be playful with the architecture, without going over the top. (A tendency used frequently with aforementioned Damien). Would you live here??

Where is the line? And is it the role of the post-modern art world (if we are even still in this category, which is also up for debate) to continually draw and re-draw "THE LINE"? 

Went swimming last night looking for sharks,

K.