End of Silver Gelatin Prints at the Library of Congress

Start of a glide, Orville and Wilbur Wright, collection of the Library of Congress

My recent article for Washington City Paper is this week's arts feature. You'll need to read it before reading the blog post.

PROPS TO THE EDITOR
Initially a 2800+ epistle was whittled into a 1500-word essay, and stands as another testament to the relationship between writer and editor. I've been lucky enough to do some freelance writing for CP for the last 16 months, and Jonathan Fischer has been a heckuvan editor (not to take anything away from Erin Engstrom and Ally Schwartz, who have edited most of my smaller ditties for City Lights). I don't know if he has made me a better writer, but he has certainly made my writing look better in print.

THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR
Two elements didn't make the print edition.I thought I would share them here.

The first bit was about Jantzen in the 1980s. His first job was working as a preservation technician for the Library of Congress.

The negatives he worked from were not the original negatives. Jantzen knows this first
hand; he used to be employed by the Library in the 1980s as a contracted preservation
technician. One of his responsibilities was quality control on negative duplication. “Part
of my job was to make certain the duplicate matched up with the original. You know. No
big hairs [on the duplicate negative].” Because materials become brittle as they age, the
Library of Congress duplicated the negatives in their collection so they could continue
to provide duplicate prints of work in the collection without damaging the primary
artifact. “When I first heard of it I thought it was bull shit – that you could not have a
duplicate that would behave the same as the original. And, I was stunned [ at the result].”
He wondered what it would be like to print with the duplicate. 20 years later, he became
that guy.

The second bit that was not included was a note on the developing process.

The process of developing a silver gelatin print lacks the immediacy of digital
photography. The film, a negative image, is dusted off and set in the negative carrier,
which is then placed in the enlarger. Light shines through the negative and projects an
image onto an easel below. To figure out the right exposure, a single sheet of silver
gelatin paper is placed on the easel, and strips are exposed to various durations of light.
The paper is developed through successive liquid baths, which reveal the image and
desensitize the strips of silver within the paper to any further exposure to light. The
various strips determine contrast and brightness, and allows Jantzen to make an informed
decision about how long to expose the print. That first print he likens to a rough draft. Usually
those are good enough for a basic print. However, since he does not know what client
requested the image from the Library of Congress, he has to assume the print must be
exhibition quality.

A second print is exposed, and Jantzen goes through steps called dodging and burning.
Dodging is a process of blocking light to allow more detail to appear within darker
sections of the print. Burning is a process of over-exposing very light sections of the
print, again to allow more detail in those areas of the composition. . “If there was a slight
difference between an almost perfect print and a perfect print, I’ll expose more paper.”
Detailed notes are taken throughout the process. In the end, the prints that require it will
receive spotting and etching. Spotting is the process of adding dabs of dye to the print to
obscure dost spots that affixed to the negative when the original negative was initially
processed. Etching is the process of taking a knife to the final print an scraping away bits

of silver gelatin to reveal more details and value within the darkest parts of the print. The
final step involves toning the prints to give them a warmer quality. 

On a final note: One thing I constantly find of interest is how quickly digital has evolved. This might be the reason why I have chosen to write about the issue with the Library of Congress as well as an early critique of the Photo Annual at Artisphere. I bought my first digital camera in 2003. It was a 5 megapixel (mp) point-and-shoot (pas) and it cost $800 refurbished. Today 5 mp is standard on an iPhone and you can buy a 16 mp pas for around $100.

I Got Vandalized

In April, Christopher Knight via the L.A. Times CultureMonster blog tossed some criticism toward the Washington City Paper (specifically Kriston Capps, Jeffry Cudlin, and I), for an article that made fun of an unsuccessful attack on a Gauguin painting. (Unfortunately we couldn't become web-famous for a day, because he didn't mention us by name... he did call us dumb.) The biggest offense in our blog post was not that we pretended there were other works of art we'd destroy first, but that I claimed to defacing a Sol LeWitt wall drawing weekly. (Which is ludicrous on many levels.) Several other art blogs were upset at us because they expected better. Perhaps they were right. (Though, in our defense, I still maintain that we wrote the piece for the blog of a weekly tabloid four days after April Fool's Day, and that the tabloid gets a large sum of revenue from "adult" shops. The New York Times the Washington City Paper is not.)

Christopher Knight might be tickled pink to learn that Karma has turned its ugly head. Last week,

Friday, a group of MoMA Young Associates came down to see the WPA's Options 2011, amongst a few other stops. They toured the exhibition and listened to some of the artists discuss their works. When it was my turn to speak, I stopped mid-sentence and noticed that someone had amended my installation.

My past couple of blog posts have mentioned this work. It's a series of collaborations with day laborers, whom I hired for 30 minutes to complete an hour of labor, and to discuss their experiences. Most of the laborers are immigrants, and some I learned are illegal. We've discussed labor issues, abusive treatment, sneaking into the country, being unable to sneak out as easily, and personal stories about family, lost love, and politics. I've been fairly fortunate that my work in the exhibition has received some mention in The Washington Post and on Pink Line Project.

The work in the show is an installation of completed projects - documentation, if you will. On the wall behind the saw horses, lumber, fasteners, and tools, are accounts of my conversations with these men. One of the men told me a story about the woman he intended to marry upon his return to Mexico. He hoped to return to Mexico a year after he left. He's been stuck in the States for four years, and she has since married and had a child. He called her Ani, and he wrote her name on a board in nails. As I began to talk about the projects to the MoMA Young Associates I looked down. Some ass hole added a series of nails in the shape of a triangle.

I've worked as a carpenter's assistant. I know it's not uncommon for crews to "correct" the work of a "Mexican" (as some of these men are called by passersby - a lot of them are not from Mexico). This was not work that needed correction. Alas, it is now a part of the piece.

Considering the work is conceptual, and that the story is the more profound piece of art, I don't really think of the work as getting defaced. And, considering the climate of hostility toward illegal immigrants, I think its addition is fitting. I'm still peeved, though.

Here ya go, Google

I was thinking how Google might respond to the passing of Steve Jobs. So far they simply have a link to Apple's home page. I anticipate seeing something like this tomorrow morning, or on the next anniversary of Jobs' birth.

Hours of Labor - WPA's Options 2011

The above piece is from a series of work titled Hour of Labor, wherein I approached a Day Laborer at Home Depot and worked with him for 30 minutes (combined = one hour) on a manual task (sanding, driving screws, building a saw horse, sawing a board, driving nails), while I asked him questions about labor conditions. If he was from another country I might ask him about what brought him to the United States (contrary to some popular belief, not all day laborers are "Mexicans."). Ideally, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between my work and my collaborator's work. The above image is certainly one exception.

Four of the five works from the series will be on exhibit beginning tomorrow in Options 2011, the Washington Project for the Arts' biennial exhibition of emerging and unrepresented artists in the region. The exhibit runs through October 29 at 629 New York Avenue NW, 2nd Floor, Washington, DC 20001. (Next to the Midas shop and near Marrakesh restaurant).



The work displayed above was completed with the help of Mauricio, a man from Bolivia. His contribution is on the right, and as you might assume, he was a bit engaged, politically. Of course, we were also using screws, so while he argued in defense of Socialism, he was simultaneously screwing Socialism. Anyway, his story is below the break.

The first in the series exhibited at Aqua Art in 2010 as a part of William Brovelli's Coil Contract installation with Horse Trader Gallery in Brooklyn, New York. The Coil Contract - roughly put - contractually links artist and collector together in a manner that prevents the artist from making a duplicate of the work sold, and prevents the collector from selling or loaning the work. The contract nullifies upon the death of one member int he contract.

So, while Hour of Labor is partly about labor issues and immigration, it also has to do with the art market and art as commodity. So, the work sells for the cost of parts and labor (+ gallery mark-up). So, while the project gets into that Duchampian/Manzoni space of "the artist declares the hammer is an art object," a hammer is still a hammer whether I declare it is art or not, and it would be bullshit to pay $1000 for the same hammer you can buy at Lowe's for $5.


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BOLIVIANS DON’T PLAY GOLF

It had been nearly a year since I produced a work in the series, Hour of Labor. Back then, no swarm of men approached the car. This time it was completely surrounded, as if we were rock stars surrounded by masses of adoring fans. One man tried to get in the car. After some effort we finally got out of the car and negotiated with the mob for one interested person to work for 30 minutes. Expecting to receive hourly wages from the day laborers, most of them insisted I give them a quote for how much the job would pay. Considering the nature of the job, $15 seemed reasonable, and several men returned to the shade of a tree to play cards. Several men seemed to linger to watch, but it was clearly down to two guys – one loud who seemed to know a lot of English, and another guy who was more stoic, and visibly weary of the other loud boorish guy.

The quiet guy won out. He assessed the job and gestured to the drill in his bag. I said we would only use manual screwdrivers. He wanted to know how far apart they should be, and my translator, Ramon, clarified that the placement of screws was entirely up to him. For the next 20 minutes I tried to engage this man in conversation. Every question I asked him received evasive responses. He is who he is, and he was from his country. His family is back home in his country. Often the loud guy answered for him with more specific information, which made my working companion rather frustrated, to the point where he began yelling at him in Spanish. Ramon would later tell me that some of the onlookers would apologize for the loud guy, who apparently was drunk. “He does not represent us,” they said. After 20 minutes had passed, the drunk walked to the card game, and soon after my colleague warmed up enough to tell us his name.

Mauricio was from Bolivia, and the design in his board reminded me of Pinocchio in profile. I had asked some frivolous questions about food and futbol, which resulted in vary unsatisfying answers. Since our half hour was nearly over, I asked if he had questions for me, and he wanted to know why we were not using drills. I explained that I found some parallel between how laborers felt at a disadvantage when they began to be replaced by machines, and how some people claim that imported labor puts domestic laborers at a disadvantage because they might cost less. When I saw that the half hour had concluded, I let Mauricio know we were finished.

He wanted to keep working. He wanted to finish his design.

Mauricio came to the US for work. In Bolivia there was no work. For years the government had been corrupt and there were no jobs and no money. I asked if Morales was to blame for the lack of work, and he said he thought things were beginning to improve under Morales because he was a democratically elected Socialist, and he got rid of all the corrupt politicians that preceded him.

Mauricio railed against Capitalism, which I described as a vicious circle of the people blaming the president, the president blaming business, and business blaming the need to satisfy investors and patrons – which are the people. It’s a system that works great if you are at the top, but someone always has to be at the bottom. “Exactly!” Mauricio said, loudly, slapping his hand on the trunk of my car. Capitalism makes rich states and poor states, and capital enterprise, from his perspective, has turned Bolivia into nothing but golf courses; the only jobs for Bolivians are maintaining the golf courses (for foreigners), and Bolivians don’t play golf. The conversation remained political throughout the next half hour, and it became clear what Mauricio was designing: a sickle and hammer.

With his design finished I pulled out my wallet to pay him. Mauricio just shook his head. For him, this was not a real job. “I no take.” Ramon, my interpreter, and I just looked at each other, dumbfounded. I urged, “how much?”

“No. I no take. I’m a Socialist,” replied Mauricio, and he walked away, disappearing in the parking lot.

Art Shows, Past and Present

The Gun Show at the WPA is technically still up. Though the run ended on Sept 2, they are busy with organizing Options 2011 and preparing for the (e)merge arts fair, and I am busy getting work ready for Options 2011... so it is still up through Monday, Sept 12. Buck Downs had some nice things to say about it in a rather thoughtful review, and I was fortuante enough to have the exhibition selected in weekly round ups on DCist, WAMU, and Washington City Paper (for whom I also write).

I mentioned Options 2011, curated by Stefanie Fedor, formerly the Assistant Director of the AU Museum Katzen Gallery, and the new executive director at Arlington Arts Center (AAC). I'm still finishing up a project where I hire day laborers at a Home Depot to assist me for half an hour; together we make up one hour of labor doing manual carpentry tasks. While we work I ask them about their treks to the U.S., their working conditions, their experiences, home life, and so forth. The only remaining document is the labor. the show opens next week, September 15.

Speaking of AAC, Planning Process, curated by Helen Allen ((e)merge, PULSE), is still up and running through September 25. There I have a bunch of erased newspapers. When I installed the work in their Tiffany Gallery, a couple came in to set up a birthday party for their daughter's sixteenth. The husband took special interest in the erased Minneapolis Star Tribune and pointed it out to his wife. Transplants from Minnesota, I asked what brought them to DC. "Oh, she's the Senator," her husband replied. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, MN (D) then introduced herself.

Erased Newspapers are also part of a show at CCBC, Catonsville, titled "Text Me: the Art of Words." They are also exhibiting a few series of Four Letter Words.

And, finally, Moment of Zen is on display at Brentwood Arts Exchange.

Flash Suppression: Getting Ready for a Gun Show

Last September Maura Judkis at TBD.com broke the news that I was planning to do a gun store for my next project (so was Cory Oberndorfer... my ambitions alone do not garner media attention, but two = trend (sorta... anyway)). Currently I am preparing material for the exhibition, which is slated for exhibit at the Washington Project for the Arts on August 12.

The last several months I have been collecting data, and one of the goals is to make several Flash animations illustrating where violent crime (with a gun) occurs within Washington, DC. Needless to say I am learning a lot about the program Flash.

Top 3:
1 - Flash has a limit of 16,000 frames; it will not publish anything over that quantity. My project looks at 5 years of violence in DC (Jan 1, 2006 - Dec. 31, 2010), and I had dedicated 10 frames per day, at 30 frames a second, which resulted in over 18,000 frames (for a total running time of just over 10 minutes). Fortunately I was not far along in my construction, and I needed to rebuild. Shaving 2 frames off of each day dropped the total below 15,000 frames. Score!

2 - Sometimes text does not animate very well. At least, it might not when exported to a Quick Time Movie. In an early test, all of my text disappeared. This would include counters for date and crime, which comprises an abundant amount of content in these videos. I attempted to break apart the text, and that appears to have done the trick.

3 - Exporting to Quick Time Movie is ridiculously slow! I have yet to search for a solution to that problem, but needless to say, it is quite aggravating. A video that is less than 9 seconds in length takes several minutes to export to QTM. Imagine how long that export rate will take when the full 10(ish) minute video is completed! I could tour Italy for a week!

Wesselmann Review Overdue

The back story is as follows.

April 16 I went to see the Tom Wesselmann drawing exhibition at the Kreeger Museum, took part of that weekend to write a review of it for City Paper, and then went back to the business of being an art professor the following week. The following weekend, the Washington Post surprised readers with Jessica Dawson's (I think) final exhibition review (she had announced her departure from WP weeks earlier, and to the best of my knowledge everyone thought she was done).

I submitted my write-up that weekend (April 23/24), and my editor suggested I re-work the review the following week (around April 28) to address some of Dawson's comments. Instead I tabled the review to write a couple other pieces, prepare and grade final projects and exams, pack and move, finish a commission before I lost my painting studio, and a few other odds and ends.

Then it was July, and I thought that "I better finish the Wesselmann review." So, I finished it up and submitted it. My editor liked it, but wondered how he could justify publishing to the blog a review for an exhibition that opened in April. So, the review is below. Enjoy.

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Placing an exhibition of Tom Wesselmann's drawings in the Kreeger Museum seems as logical as placing a smart phone with touch screen in a museum dedicated to the rotary phone. Wesselmann's "Pop Art" is out of place in the same building that houses a collection of late 19th Century and early 20th Century European masterpieces. Or, is it? Jessica Dawson's review of the show on April 22 asked one major question, "how Pop was he, really?" Though she lets us decide for ourselves, she did note that, "Wesselmann owed more to Matisse than to the 1960s avant-garde." (Note: Roy Lichtenstein was also fascinated by Matisse.) In the context of the exhibition on display, the relationship between Wesselmann and the 19th Century European Avant Garde is probably closer than we might consider, and Wesselmann is revealed as the artist of still life and nudes that he had always been.

How did Wesselmann become a Pop Artist? Better still, how did many of the artists we identify as "Pop" become Pop Artists? In 1962 and 63, when exhibitions of new, often American art (mostly painting), were organized in LA, New York, and DC, curators and organizers summarized what they saw with descriptive titles like "New Painting of Common Objects" (Pasadena Museum of Art), "New Realists" (Sidney Janis Gallery), "Six Painters and the Object" (Guggenheim Museum), and "The Popular Image" (Washington Gallery of Modern Art). All were significant exhibitions that included some artists we continually label as Pop Artists: George Segal, Wayne Thiebaud, Robert Watts, Jim Dine, and Jim Rosenquist, to name a few. However, like Wesselmann, Segal, Thiebaud, and Watts showed a greater commitment to interests other than Pop: genre, still life, and Fluxus (respectively). Jim Dine could also be considered to have a greater interest in still life than to Pop, and would probably find a better fit in the quasi-category of Neo-Dada with Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns (artists who were also included in the seminal shows of Pop, who also hated the label of Pop, and probably also hate the label Neo-Dada). Even Jim Rosenquist in his recent autobiography fights the label of Pop artist. As Donald Judd noted early in 1963 the "various artists are too diverse to be given one label..."

Unfortunately, one label stuck, and that label was Pop Art. Alan Solomon also recognized the limitations of the so-called movement's title, and in his essay "The New Art," (first published as the catalog essay for "The Popular Image" at The Washington Gallery of Modern Art), "Like all vital new movements in the modern period… it has quickly been assigned a pejorative title – or string of titles, in this case … emphasizing the wrong attributes of the style." Wesselmann gets lumped into Pop Art because, amongst other things, he wasn't bashful about collaging elements from billboards into a composition that reflected what should be a contemporary still life: a hoagie, a pack of Pall Malls, and a can of Budweiser. So to look at Wesselmann at the Kreeger, it is necessary to remove that rubbish Pop Art label and heap it into Lawrence Alloway's dustbin, where it belongs.

"Drawing," at the Kreeger, contextualizes Wesselmann in the great tradition of reinventing Classical art traditions. In the late 1950s, when Wesselmann was studying at the Cooper Union, art students throughout the country were being trained to become the new generation of Abstract Expressionists, and it became essential for many of those artists to abandon that training in favor for something different. At the same time, it was essential not to return to old methodologies of painting. But returning to old subjects was permissible, and for Wesselmann the great challenge in his mind was to make a drawing or painting of the nude female form that was just as beautiful as the nude female he was drawing or painting. Often his subject was a model named Claire, a woman he eventually married.

Every reclined female Wesselmann painted is reminiscent of Manet's "Olympia," which in turn reference's Titian's "Venus." Neither Titian nor Manet is remotely Pop, but referencing either establishes Wesselmann's interest with art history. His relationship with art history is further cemented in several of the works on display. "Great American Nude #20" quotes Van Gogh's "Sunflowers." A study of "Judy Trying on Clothes" is reminiscent of Degas' drawings of women preparing for the bath. Matisse is also a reoccurring name in many of Wesselmann's titles.

What the exhibition does as a whole is deny Wesselmann as a painter. He seldom challenges the medium in the way that Sisley, Chagal, or Mondrian challenged painting, - works by artists you can view in the Kreeger's permanent collection, upstairs. Wesselmann's use of painting is often flat, and seems only in the service of applying color to an otherwise exquisite drawing. Color in service of the drawing is best illustrated in his later cut steel pieces like Hillside Farm, Callicoon Center, 1990, and Still Life with Fuji Chrysanthemums (double layer) 1985/92.

Drawing Version of Bedroom Painting

With these cut steel pieces we truly get a sense of what Wesselmann was attempting with his work: challenging the limitations of drawing. As Richard Serra demonstrated with lead, unless molten and fluid, you can't draw with steel. So the challenge of these later works is to maintain the sensitivity and grace of fluid line in an otherwise inflexible medium. Throughout the progression of the exhibition we see how Wesselmann challenged the notions of drawing, by denying their flat surfaces with works like Drawing Version of Bedroom Painting #24 (1973), or Drawing Maquette for Still Life #59 (1972), both of which take a series of flat drawings and stack them into sculptural compositions.

All of the work on display stresses Wesselmann's unmistakably traditional interests, as Dawson points out, but it hardly seems to be an albatross. The only Pop in the show is one of expectation: Wesselmann's label as a Pop Artist, despite how the show was promoted, is a bubble that bursts. His practice gave a breath of new life to Classical themes of still life and the nude, and it pushed the boundaries of two-dimensional surfaces. Through Wesselmann we can actually learn something about art and its history, as opposed to some mimeographed day-glow portrait of Marilyn Monroe, which teaches us more about marketing.

Strictly Painting 8 and Planning Process

Tonight I'll have a couple of new ideas on exhibit at Strictly Painting 8 at the McLean Project for the Arts, running through July 30.

Ideas? Yes. Ideas. Or, rather, idea (same idea but two different pieces). As a graduate student I made paintings that referenced collages of torn advertisements that simulated torn posters that found along the streets of Rome. And, of course, I got raked over the coals in critique for one of three reasons: 1) the work was too close to Rotella, Rosenquist, etc, or 2) I wasn't defying Cubism 3) I wasn't being didactic enough with the narrative. After graduate school I chose to stop painting (I teach more digital courses, anyway), until I could figure out the kind of painting I wanted to make.

The pieces on exhibit in McLean are ideas that step toward that goal of making the paintings I want to make. Or, at least, the paintings that I would like to be making now (I'm fickle). Unfortunately, the work might make people think I am trying to tackle Elsworth Kelly or (more locally) J.T. Kirkland - artists I like, but not work that I want to create.

Despite the work on exhibit, I'm holding my cards close to my chest before revealing my hand - I don't want to write about the work, yet.


Also on exhibit in Planning Process at the Arlington Arts Center, are pieces from Out of Print, my series that explores the slow, agonizing death of the newspaper, which is represented by my efforts to erase the front pages of various newspapers from across the country. I'll have 17 papers on display, plus some early digital drafts of the work (the process). Planning Process won't open until June 22, and the work will be on display through September 25.

If you're not busy next week... lectures at PGCC

The academic year has forced this blog to grind to a halt, (postings and musings to come this summer), but I do want to announce that Prince George's Community College has a couple of speakers next week, on May 4 (Jeff Gates) and May 6 (Victoria F. Gaitán).




6:30 P.M., Wednesday, May 4, Marlboro Hall, Room 2055
Jeff Gates -- Using Design for Change: the Chamomile Tea Party Posters

Founder of the Chamomile Tea Party, artist and designer Jeff Gates will discuss how effective design can be used to influence change. The lecture will examine his use of Photoshop, social media, and political activism. Jeff Gates' work was recently nominated for a People's Design Award from the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, and has been featured on the Huffington Post and Boing-Boing.com.




1:00 P.M., Friday, May 6, Marlboro Hall, Room 2080
Victoria F. Gaitán: process and obsession

Victoria Gaitán will discuss her photographic process, how to get something from seemingly unusable digital files, and her photographic obsessions with illness, memory, interpretations of pain, private and public intimacies, trauma, beauty and conditioned responses. Gaitán’s work has been written about on Brightest Young Things, and TBD.com.




Directions to Prince George's Community College

Purge

In preparation of a move, things are getting pitched. And since artists tend to be pack rats, it's essential for things to be re-evaluated from time-to-time.

Why are artists pack rats? Good question. Somewhere down the line, some professor once planted the seed in the heads of all his students that it was important to save everything in the event that you get or want to get 1) a show, 2) a grant, 3) a retrospective, 4) a book written about you. Somehow this also translates into saving every magazine you've ever bought because it has a little something about art. Meh.

What got tossed:
Upwards of 400 slides. Remember those? I have no clue how many hundreds of dollars were spent on those. But I have not taken a slide, converted a digital image into a slide, or sent out a slide for nearly five years (if not longer). If an exhibition asks for slides, or a college job opening only wants to see slides, I ignore them. All of the slides tossed were duplicates of about 185 original works and details. None of the work was created after 2006, which means most of the work was created as an undergrad or a grad student. What is even more interesting is that some of that work has been destroyed or lost. Some got damaged in floods, some got pitched in moves, some were given to friends as gifts (and I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere along the line Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so asked each other if they really wanted to save the large contour drawing of a nude woman in a Unibind frame that has warped the Plexi and board off the wall).

Magazines. Some get saved because there is an article I haven't read, or because there is some current event that makes an already-read article seem relevant.

Old class projects. I still have my Art 100 stuff -- from undergrad. Even then I thought I might teach and that it might be a good idea to save some stuff. So, everything (or most everything) from my painting and graphic design majors has been preserved. Until tonight. Some of it is in a big dumpster out back. Some of it gets saved for students to look through (to see process). Some of it gets incorporated into instruction.

Old sketch books. Only a few are going in the big bin. Some are going to get examined and interesting notes will be re-posted here. What I found interesting as that in the beginning of graduate school I burned through a sketch book a month. Semester 1 = 4 sketch books. The rest of graduate school fits into two sketch books.

What else goes? I have a feeling there will be a bundle of painting supplies that find their ways to happy homes. Time will tell.

Artist Fellowship and Dying Newspapers

A couple weeks ago I received word from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities that I will be awarded one of the FY11 Artist Fellowship awards. the excitement that underlies this award is the potential (and hopeful achievement) to open "The Gun Store," a work that examines the second amendment and the practicality (or lack there of) of gun bans and restrictions.

Already this idea has gained some traction, and as I learned in the days leading up to the grant announcements, I am not the only DC artist who has this idea in mind. Cory Oberndorfer, another DC artist and American University alumnus who has made a name for himself around town by painting murals of roller derby girls at an incredible scale, was conceiving of a similar idea, except he wants to open a gun store that sells nothing but toy guns... or is it a toy store that sells nothing but toy guns? Either way, the stream-lined direction of his store, I must admit, is enviable.

Maura Judkis caught wind of the news of these "dueling" gun stores and wrote about it on TBD.com. So, the ante has been raised in terms of perceived expectations and accomplishments. Time to get the ball rolling!

An exhibition of grant recipient work will be on view in the Corcoran's Gallery 31, which is typically their student gallery, October 21-31. I believe admission is free. No gun work will be in that show, only newspapers from my series of erased newspapers in honor of the dying medium. For this exhibition I have acquired the final editions of the Honolulu Advertiser and Star, and the first edition of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. The papers merged in June signaling the death of two and the genesis of one. For many cities around the nation that have two newspapers, the market place is like the thunderdome: two papers enter, one paper leaves. Such is the death of print journalism in the past and future decades. It probably won't be long before newspapers have dwindled into state newspapers, rather than city newspapers, with regional inserts to cover local news. I know I am not helping; we haven't subscribed to a paper in several years. If we had more time to read the Washington Post we would still subscribe. Or if we had a parakeet.

Conspicuous Absence? Not Really.

Previously, on absent postings on this blog, I was remiss to post anything because I was too busy writing content for Washington City Paper's Artsdesk Blog. Now, I have a new excuse.

The good news: I was recently hired as an Associate Professor at Prince George's Community College (PGCC) in Largo, Maryland.

The bad news: my writing for Washington City Paper, like this blog, will languish. CP will actually get more stuff from me because this blog does not pay (though, some might argue the pay at CP is almost like not getting paid... hey, they admit it too! So, it's not like I am revealing anything new.).

The worst news: my daughter is now in day care. Heart wrenching!

Future posts will mention upcoming shows or some thoughts (like the long overdue "how passing out buttons at Metro stations is art" posting... I have not forgotten). For now, know the following:

1. Three of my erased newspapers are in a show at Pittock Mansion, Portland, OR, through November.
2. I'll be installing "America's Grave," a collaborative work with Randall Packer first installed in 2006 at the Katzen, at Zero1 in San Jose, beginning September 11.
3. I'll be in the PGCC Faculty Show in October
4. I think the Post Conceptualist show is still on for March '11 at Univ. Maryland (organized by Mark Cameron Boyd).
5. I was in an exhibition at Healing Arts on U Street (DC), which comes down on Monday and Tuesday of next week.
6. Speaking of the gallery PGCC, you should check out the current National Sculpture show. The gallery is open until 8:00 Mon-Thur. In the words of Cartman, it is "pretty kick ass."

An Introduction to Conceptual Art

A few days ago we (here in the States, anyway) celebrated the birth of our nation 234 years ago.

Though, there is one fact we tend to overlook. July 5th, 1776, most of the citizens in the United States awoke as subjects of the crown. Only a handful of guys, who were present in the room during the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, awoke with hearts lightened with the murky vision of what America might look like (as well as a lump in their throat for the potential penalty worthy of treason: beheading).

Actual independence as a nation state did not come until the Treaty of Paris in September of 1783. Or, some might argue it didn't come until January of 1784, when our Continental Congress was able to ratify it, or April of 1784 when the British King did the same. But, as true Americans, we celebrate our initiatives, not the initiatives of those aided by the French (thanks during the Revolution, BTW), or the blessings and acceptance of foreign kings. It's like celebrating budget surpluses (which are projected).

We celebrate the idea.

But, my question is, if it is possible to unify 300 million people around July 4th, 1776 as the birth of our nation, why is it so difficult to get even 1/10th that number of Americans to embrace some of the simplest conceptual works of art as "works of art."

Perhaps we should take up arms and fight it out for seven years. Though, as F.T. Marinetti discovered after his Futurist Manifesto, artists make lousy soldiers.

An Interview with Chuck Close

As June has become July, with projects in various stages of wax and wane, and with the knowledge that I will remain only a semi-finalist for the Trawick Prize (i.e. I was not selected as a finalist), I began writing for Washington City Paper as their new art critic. I use the term "art critic" loosely since it is difficult to be overly critical of anything in 150 words, which is the ballpark figure I have been given for writing one gallery pick a week for the print edition (plus a few more for the on line version).

I started writing for City Paper in mid June, and have managed to churn out about 10 pieces since then. But, to my surprise one week into the gig, I was asked by my editor if I would be interested in interviewing Chuck Close. Uhm... SURE!

The Corcoran and Close had arranged for a handful of press to come and receive individual 20-30 minute tours of the show with Mr. Close as guide. At least, that was the idea. The result was a little different. Most members of the press requested to walk through the show prior to their appointed times, and as a result, Mr. Close was barraged for over an hour starting at 9:00.

When 10:30 rolled around, and it was my official turn to meet and speak with Chuck Close, I almost did not get a chance to do so. He was clearly fatigued, and concerned about his lecture later that evening. He agreed to a few more questions, and Janet Anderson (no relation, writing for Washington Print Club Quarterly) and I began firing away.

Prior to interviewing Mr. Close, Janet and I had been going over some questions we had in mind, and discussing our research leading up to the interview. Both of us wanted to avoid the answers we had heard repeated, so we quickly abandoned questions about abstract painting (he didn't have any angst), his process (golf and inverse Pollock metaphors), and so on.

The net result of my interviews with Chuck Close, and later with curator Terrie Sultan, can be found at Washington City Paper's Arts Desk Blog. These were trimmed down from a 4200 word piece, and a couple things got removed in the process (for instance, Close laughed when I said his work is indirectly a record of aging, and he offered that his birthday was "next Monday" (July 5))

And, unfortunately, the net result also yields nothing new, as I have learned from watching his interview with Charlie Rose, and reading an interview with his biographer, Christopher Finch, on Guernica.

Oh well. Below is a list of links of most of those who had a chance to speak with Chuck Close and Terrie Sultan.

Sophie Gilbert at The Washingtonian
Brendan Smith at Pinkline Project
Philippa Hughes at Pinkline Project
Frances Chung at Brightest Young Things
Jordan at Ready Set DC
Max Cook at We Love DC

Mid June Odds and Ends

All right: recent happenings.
Kate Mattingly wrote about the JOB Creation Project for The Pink Line Project: here

My website is finally redesigned with new content up, including documentation on projects (Building Blocks for Child Literacy and Out Of Print) and notes on recent events.

I've also had a couple pieces on The Pink Line recently: one on Daniel Dean and the Container Space, and one on Elisabeth French's exhibition at the American University Museum.

The Daniel Dean article was started in February. Then came snow storms and a snowbound house guest, which was followed up with projects ramping up (Maintenance Required at Arlington Arts Center, JOB Creation Project), teaching, and that full-time stay-at-home dad thing.

JOBs Article in Washington City Paper

A couple weeks back I had a conversation with Maura Judkis, who writes for Washington City Paper, about my JOB Creation Project. Nearly 2 hours of conversation have been distilled into this linked article.

The American University Museum in the Katzen Arts Center has a couple of shows opening tomorrow (May 8). One Hour Photo, a project conceived by Adam Good and curated Chajana denHarder and Chandi Kelley, has been getting a lot of buzz of late (articles have popped up in The Washington Post and Pink Line Project). The concept: each photograph (of the 128 photographs created by 128 photographers) will be on display for one hour during the show. Each of the artists have signed a (moral) contract never to exhibit the work publicly again. I am one of the artists, and if you are interested to see my image of the hotel and opera sign across the street from the Amargosa Opera House, you can view it on June 1st between 2 and 3pm. (After which I can show you a print, I can e-mail you an image, I can sell a print (I think), but I can never exhibit it).

I love the concept of this exhibition, which is why I submitted a work. I don't consider myself a conceptual artist any more than I consider myself a political artist (see the WCP article). But, I do know my work rubs elbows with those labels from time to time, since it might comment on something "political," or it might be concept-driven. Since I don't consider myself a photographer, just an artist who happens to use photography as a medium of executing and articulating an idea from time to time, I have no qualms with exhibiting and then "destroying" the image of the opera house sign.

The other exhibition to mention is of Emilie Brzezinski's Family Trees. Last November I had an opportunity to see this work first hand; Barbara Rose had contacted me looking for someone to make a video of the work and of an interview about the work. I spent two days out at Ms. Brzezinski's home and studio and had a pleasant and interesting time. Of course, between the time I was asked to do the shoot and the time I got out there, I completely forgot that her husband, Zbigniew, was Carter's national security advisor. So, there I was, meandering around the home seeing these photographs of her husband with Carter and the Pope (J.P.2). Kind of a Twilight Zone moment of the fish-out-of-water scenario... the kind where you have to ask yourself, "how did I get here?"

Side note: Emilie grows her own mushrooms and makes w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l mushroom soup. We had a bit of wodka with lunch. So, I can say I've done shots with Barbara Rose and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Long story short, the intention of the video documentation was so that it would play inside one of the trees of the installation when it exhibited in New York in February. Barbara didn't think my rough cut set the right mood or was in the appropriate direction for her vision. So, I mailed all of the video files to her around Christmas and haven't heard boo about the project since. I am curious to see if any video is included in this installation. And, I'd like to see Emilie again, too; she's a sweet woman.

Finally, I look forward to seeing "Convergence" one last time. I happened upon the exhibit as it was being installed, and Jack Rassmusen gave me a sneak peek of the show. The shows Jack has been able to assemble in his tenure at the gallery never fail to impress me, either for the work on display or for the unusual nature of the work exhibited.

What do I mean by unusual? When was the last time you saw a group show of Lebanese artists? The fact that Jack is willing to go to Peru or Norway or wherever to put together a show is fabulous, and far more interesting than the National Gallery of Art having another exhibit of Jasper Johns work. So, stepping off the elevator, onto the third floor, and seeing a video triptych by Jean-Pierre Watchi blew me away. I walked into the rotunda and scattered around the floor was Mario Saba's "The Temple," with a projected blue screen on the wall, noise - noise - noise, and a couple of assistants tasked with the busy work of putting it all together. He graciously spent a few minutes discussing the work with me, though the chaos of sound and the erosion of memory make me recall only this little bit: an allegory about the collapse of the Tower of Babel, hence the noise.

Why do I mention this now, one week before the close of the show? I heard the exhibit reviewed on NPR. That sort of takes the steam out of writing about it on this little blog. But, the show is quite remarkable, and a public needs to be reminded it is still here, even if for only a little while longer -- and that it is worth seeing.

Maintenance Required at Arlington Arts Center

Early last autumn I learned my work, Maintenance Required, was selected for the Spring Solos, on view through June 5, 2010 at the Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA.

Beginning in late March, 2009, I began taking walking and driving tours of various neighborhoods throughout Washington, DC, documenting my tour and the various broken hydrants I found along the way. Since 2007, Washington has come to grips with the state of repair of its fire hydrants, determined which organizations were responsible for testing and repairing the hydrants, and set out a plan to replace about a quarter of its 10,000 hydrants in the next five years. According to a message I received from the DC Water and Sewer Authority, as of the beginning of March, 2010, DC WASA has replaced approx 3100 hydrants, which is well ahead of schedule.

189 Hydrants, 2009-2010

While my tours were initially devised to find as many hydrants as I could, I very quickly realized that though I had been in these neighborhoods many times before, I knew nothing about them. The work became as much about getting to know the neighborhoods as it became about finding the hydrants.

Seeing the educational possibilities of the work, for this installation I wanted to turn the gallery into a classroom. I painted a 70' chalk board across four walls of the space and framed it with base board. A mini gallery (of sorts) existed in part of the space, and I thought it was a fitting location for a bulletin board closet for 189 of the nearly 200 hydrants I had documented since the beginning of the project. (Why 189? Well... the 190th probably got misplaced along the way by the printer between the cutting mat and FedEx.) The bulletin board is nothing more than wrapping paper and some cheesy border trim I found on line through a teacher's supply warehouse.

Throughout the building are fire hydrant sculptures in various states of repair (tacked together with wood, duct-taped, stapled, stitched, filled with HVAC foam). Located near each hydrant are call boxes. People walking through the building can push the call box buttons and listen to a little clip about my reflections on the project, DC, and hydrants.

Reflections on JOBs at the Capitol

What a disappointing day!

Question: how many JOBs did law makers and their staffers make today? None. And, the sad thing is they didn't have to debate, didn't have to vote, and didn't have to worry about deficits or tax-payer money. They simply had to pull a lever twice – more times if they wanted to make more JOBs.

I set up my little stand on the corner of Independence Avenue and 1st Street, SE, between 7:55 and 8:00 AM this morning. "Business" was at a trickle. Eventually a walker passed and asked a few questions. "Is this some sort of right wing thing?" "No, sir." I replied. "No right wing. No left wing. Just makin' JOBs."

See... if you drop your Gs, people think you are folksy and can relate to you better. At least, that's what I've heard.

He chuckled and made a JOB, and then took another JOB for a friend.

Then the Capitol Police showed up and asked me for a permit. I stated that I did not have a permit, but that I did receive permission from Officer... McDonald, was it?... on the phone last week.

"You mean O'Donnell?"

I suppose that was her name, I responded, and fiddled with my audio recorder, trying to get it in my pocket.

"Can you please keep your hands away from your pockets, sir?"

So, there I was chatting with one officer, arms akimbo (or on my pedestal), while the other officer radioed in. Fun times. I was told about the things "I wouldn't believe" people do while they are on patrol. Apparently one time this officer was asked for directions while he had a gun on a suspected felon, patting him down for a firearm.

I had to move. I could not be on the sidewalk. I had to be on the grassy area. So, I moved away from the street into the land of little traffic and no interest. A couple of staffers, when asked if they would like to make a JOB, declined saying, "No thanks, I already have one."

Nice. The JOB is for you to make and give to someone, not for yourself.

To paraphrase James K. Polk, people in Congress busy themselves with making jobs, and then hurry to fill them themselves.

Other Capitol Police approached. Some walked away. Officer Gallagher talked to me for a while and told me where I was supposed to and not supposed to be. However, since I was one person (and since I was leaving at 9:30), I could kind of be wherever, so long as I was in the grassy area.

There seemed to be a lot of foot traffic near the middle, and I asked if it was okay to move over there. Sure! Then, Officer Gallagher made a JOB and took another.

I moved toward the middle, and once there people were a lot friendlier. Of course, by then I was calling out to passersby like Dan Ackroyd with a Bass-O-Matic (minus the cocaine buzz). People smiled, laughed, said "good one!"

Still... only one other couple made a JOB. Vacationing tourists are more interested in making JOBs than people walking past with badges and pins on their lapels.

So it goes.

Next JOB action: Wednesday, March 31

We'll have two JOB distributions this week. A future post announcing location two to follow.
This Wednesday, if you want a JOB, look for me at Farragut Square, most likely near the NW portion of the square. Again, JOBs are available while supplies last.

In the mean time, images from last week's JOB (laissez) Fair(e)

photos by Jesse Kimes

JOBs at Gallery Place Metro

Today represented the second artistic act of job distribution, this time at the Metro entrance at 7th and F streets, NW, Washington, DC (Verizon Center/Gallery Place/China Town).

Because of a slight snag in my commute, or my planning, I started about 5 minutes late. Interestingly enough, more people took JOBs at Gallery Place, despite coming up the escalator at a trickle. They were friendlier than Dupont Circle's audience, and within 30 minutes 200 people had JOBs.

Photos will be posted by Saturday. And, at some point, I'll have a response to a criticism questioned by a granting committee that denied funding for the project: "What is the definitive artistic merit of this project?"

To put it another way, as a friend of mine once asked, "what makes this art and separates you from any other ass hole handing stuff out?"

An answer to come in the near future.