While coming out of a dream this morning, it occurred to me that these two objects might occupy the same space in their respective cultures.

Catch(up)all

Greetings, negligible amount of blog followers!

I have been incredibly lax in maintaining this blog, but I take solace in a statistic pulled from Harper's: “Estimated percentage of all existing blogs that have not been updated in four months: 94%”.

I have been spending my time starting and soon after aborting several large-scale paintings and drawings. Something doesn't feel right about the size. I think I'm going to pack them away temporarily and for the time being focus on pieces of art that are small enough to be held in my hands while I work. I'm certainly out of practice at large-scale image-making but I don't believe that to be the real root of the problem. I'm feel myself at a transitional stage as far as imagery is concerned and it feels disingenuous to be making larger, more confident pieces.

I'm also at a point where I'm looking to be less of a painter. To put it perhaps more accurately, I'm NOT a painter. I'm an artist who paints (occasionally) and doesn't do much of anything else at all. I don't especially identify with the history of painting, though I find it fascinating, and refrain from making work in other media largely because of the difficulty of working in unfamiliar ways. Through the help of a friend I'll soon have my darkroom set up and hope to develop and improve my photography skills. If not an end in itself, I've always found photography a good way to improve my visual thought processes and a good way to test out ideas.

I'm also making small steps toward audio work, though I must emphasize the smallness of these steps. Vocolo.org is an offshoot of Chicago Public Radio (my local NPR station) which has an open format where listeners and producers of audio occupy the same space. I've been playing around a bit, trying to be a bit more literal in my storytelling as I try to be a little bit less narrative or explanatory in my visual work. As a side note, I've also been listening to old podcasts of Radiolab, which I highly recommend.

All in all, the summer has been extremely busy and only moderately productive. Part of this is my own willingness to socialize rather than work, part of it is the seasonal nature of making one's money doing wedding decor. I find myself looking forward to winter. After this comparatively chilly summer, it doesn't feel like it will be much of a transition (though, of course, it will). But I hope to make a trip to San Francisco to look at grad school options there and (though dreading the lack of income) look forward to working less and having more time to focus on creative endeavors.

Also, here's this:

My work is too literal, my practice too controlled. Perhaps part of this is the start-stop nature of my working time. Most likely, that's a justification. I am going to make a series of pieces for no reason other than their creation.

It has always been, and continues to be, the case that I am afraid of failure.


Cecily Brown, Lagoon 2004


I've let the image take over the canvas, when in fact the WHOLE POINT is that the image means nothing. But I've never been a 'painterly' or expressive painter.

Hello, wall, my old friend. Can I beat my head against you one last time?

My excitement was short lived today when the 24 by 36 silkscreen I found in the old 'dungeon' at work turned out to have tears in the screen.

Currently working on:

I've been lax in my blogging lately. In point of fact, I'm currently a schizophrenic mix of busy and productive but also descending to new levels of laziness. I've been mining a taxidermist's supply catalog for imagery, to add a bit to the museum pieces, but I fear that the work is becoming too image-based. There is something a bit dicey about painting all these animals, it's not imagery that's been taken seriously when I've shown it. Perhaps I am copying too directly from my source imagery.

To hopefully alleviate this effect, I've recently taken up etching, taking a class at Spudnik Press here in Chicago. I like the idea of working some of this imagery into a book with a bit of abstract text that might serve as context for the rest of the work. There must be a way to force people to focus less on the recognizable subject matter and more on why it's being presented. I should clarify that I see this not as a flaw in the viewer, but a flaw in what they are being shown. (Although my opportunities for productive critique are few these days.)

Also, I have begun to read Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. You can get an idea of the 'seriousness' in which Thornton presents her subject matter from this (and other) videos of the author I found on YouTube. I find her smiling and cutesy mannerisms annoying, and they are also somehow discernable in her writing. But it's a pleasant change to read about the art world in a way other than the hyper-verbose, dictionary-requiring style presented in ArtForum and many other magazines.



I should mention that I read this book in anticipation of AArt Chicago and the other, smaller fairs tied in with it which are set to descent on Chicago in about two weeks time.

Last Thursday I attended a lecture given by Phillippe de Montebello (en)titled Encyclopedic Museum: Enlightened or Entitled? De Montebello, in a voice akin to Patrick Stewart doing his best Patrick Stewart impression, preached largely to the choir on the subject of the ethical debate involved in 'discovering', purchasing and showcasing antiquities in modern encyclopedic museums.

De Montebello began his lecture with a brief history of museums in general and the development of the concept of the 'encyclopedic' museum- one intended to showcase and explain virtually all the cultures of the world and their artifacts. (One imagines this stems from the same impulse for amounts of information so large as to be unprocessable that brought us the internet.) Mr. De Montebello, the former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, cited shows that he presided over at his museum to illustrate the educational and cultural benefits of exposure to these antiquities, notably the Year One exhibit which took place in the year 2000 at the Museum and included a glimpse at what the craftsmen and artists of cultures worldwide were producing at or around the time of the year 0.

De Montebello approaches his topic with a love and nostalgia for the encyclopedic museum that can hardly be faulted in a man who has spent his life advancing its cause. The Metropolitan did nothing but flourish under his guardianship, and as one who spent formative years within visiting distance of the Museum, I must (and do) thank him, deeply. In point of fact, I have very few qualms with the concept of the encyclopedic museum, either on personal, ethical or cultural levels. I agree with Mr. de Montebello's assertion that national museums - or other museums devoted to one narrow place, artist, time or cultural movement - do not permit the comparison necessary to fully understand the place that an object holds in the entire span of human cultural history. Museums such as the Metropolitan (and the Art Institute here in Chicago, where I attended his lecture) provide a certain kind of context that facilitates a deeper understanding of the works they show. At least historically.

The problem that keeps coming up for museums such as these is the pedigree of the works they choose to display. De Montebello repeatedly referenced a carving of the Code of Hammurabi which was originally carved in a country we now know as Iraq, but wound up buried beneath a country we now know as Iran for 3,000 years before being unearthed by Western excavations. Sadaam Hussein's request for the return of the piece to modern day Iraq provoked questions of who can really claim to be the cultural heir to such a piece. Does it belong to whatever country is now on top of the nation in which it was produced? Does it belong to the place where it has spent the most time (in this case, Iran) or to the country that financed the excavations which led to its (re)discovery? Do we need genetic testing to see which country is the most genetically tied to the Babylonian empire?

De Montebello poses these questions with only slightly less exaggeration and disdain than I. He is a humanist at heart, one who solidly feels that the ends justify the means. And when the ends are the cultural enrichment of the people of the world over the national pride of the people of one country, I am inclined to agree with him. But he makes another point, subtly. In the history of museums that began his lecture, de Montebello refers to museums not as a part of our way of life, but as a part of our urban way of life. He also makes several allusions to the idea that "to the victor go the spoils." The interesting twist on this debate is who that victor is, exactly. We are no longer talking about the ancient Romans raiding their Barbarian neighbors, or the Muslim artifacts taken as trophies in the crusades. This is not even a matter of the booty brought back to France by Napoleon, or the looting and raiding of museums during the military maneuvers in Iraq. The real victory here is one of class over class and culture over culture. While I am generally inclined to agree with Mr. de Montebello in his stand (at least in part due to my own love of seeing beautiful pieces) I do find it hard to avoid the fact that collecting is a game for the rich, and exoticism a passion of the bored. The hordes of young white Americans who flock to Buddhism, Rastafarianism, or even something as simple as backpacking through Europe are all examples (and I include myself among them) of those who seek out new cultural validity when they feel their own cultures have failed them. The difference is that thoughts can be absorbed and left to remain in the place where they originated. Objects, naturally, must be brought back. To the enlightened (or entitled) go the spoils.

Consumed with domestic issues lately, a large part of which is an upcoming move. I move at least every 12 months. Since 2005, i have lived in six places. Before that it's just as bad, but I was in school so that doesn't count somehow. I hope to stay in this new place for a while. I think I'm getting frustrated with not having any roots. I wonder if it's natural to be afloat like I sometimes think I am. Although there is no doubt in my mind that soon I will be restless again, I'm looking forward to something tying me down a bit.

I will be setting up a darkroom in the bathroom attached to my room. There is some extra space at the top of a stairwell that I hope to use to visualize some installations. Assuming I get it together and register for the class, soon I will be learning etching.

Pull it together. Pull it together. Pull it together.

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I have just read (in five hours) Haruki Murakami's Dance, Dance, Dance. The man is amazing, although after reading a few of his books there is a tendency for too many plot points to be the same. Not enough to be formulaic, but enough to illicit a sort of, "Oh, that again" feeling every time a character walks into another world or there is a precocious and beautiful teenage girl. For that matter, every time a thirty-something man living alone eats well, appreciates jazz, elects not to sleep with a beautiful woman, drinks some whiskey and goes to bed only to have surreal dreams that he can't quite interpret and decides to go along for the ride.

Not that I could write any of this any better. And not that it stops me from devouring his books. But I wonder how many more I can read before, like Tom Robbins, they all get a little less revolutionary.