brilliant blog: April 2010

Friday, April 30, 2010

Big Yellow Taxi vs. Nothing But Flowers

David Byrne performing Nothing but flowers

Lyrics from Nothing But Flowers

Once there were parking lots
Now it's a peaceful oasis
you got it, you got it

This was a Pizza Hut
Now it's all covered with daisies
you got it, you got it

I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
you got it, you got it

And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
you got it, you got it

I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
you got it, you got it

We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
you got it, you got it
Joni Mitchell performing big yellow taxi

Lyrics from Big Yellow Taxi
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees
Put 'em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see 'em
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got
Till it's gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

I have always thought that the Talking Heads song nothing but flowers was like a response to joni mitchells call in Big Yellow Taxi. In seeing just some of the images of the wall of fire in the gulf coast I wonder how true the visions put forth in these songs are. Will we finally eliminate all signs of our man made culture only to crave them like the speaker in Nothing but Flowers? or will we marvel at what defines the "natural" environment like the speaker in big yellow taxi?

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Getting started, making plans, and the last leg of the "Have Sticks Will Travel Tour"

This blog fits more in the category of studio ramblings, as I have gotten to fall back into a slightly less production, and a little bit more relaxed studio routine.

The image above are some sample lids with the larger solo writing and a scrap of some of the digital images i used in a recent printmaking experiment.

Below is an image showing the taxonomy of coffee cup lids. This and the stuff above are some of the things I keep around the studio for inspiration and such.

I think when I tell people what sort of planning I do for an installation they are always surprised, but not for the same reasons. People tend to be surprised either at how little or what they perceive as how much planning took place. I started many years ago treating the gallery floor plans I get as an integral part of my working process. For me each piece or show begins with the gallery layout. Even when I am installing objects I like to treat the whole gallery space as one cohesive drawing. For me the gallery is literally like the piece of paper the map is printed on and the gesture drawings I make are how the pieces begin. Above and below are the drawings and ideas for what will be the last installation in the Have Sticks Will Travel cycle of installations. This last show, coming up in September at The McColl Center, will hopefully encompass all the lessons I have learned so far in the work, and ones I will be learning shortly.

With the McColl Center show I will be creating a new woven piece, a new lid piece for the walls, a revised sleeve piece, installing prints and ephemera from the whole of the tour, and there is a dedicated wall in the space for videos where I will be able to make tour video journal. I suppose I am putting the cart before my horse since I still have a couple more installations to undertake before The McColl Center.

Above are printouts of the emailed images I got from the gallery in mexico, which is the next woven stir stick installation. It was actually the request of this gallery that prompted me to print the new shirts in green. The space I am being given is an unused retail space in san jose del cabo. I am pretty excited from what I can tell of the space as it has a column for me to interact with and plenty of natural light. I just got confirmation that the sticks are en route to this site and I shipped some works on paper, prints and other things for the gallery to frame before the opening on May 28. I will get there May 19 and at that point will be making work the closest to the equator I think I have ever been.

This printout above is the layout of the room I will be working in for the Bumbershoot festival in seattle in August. In planning for this one not only will I need to have a sense of the gestalt of the finished piece that i want, I will need to work faster and smarter than before. Because this is a festival I have a very tight install time on the ground. To work around this I will be using some of my bumbershoot budget to crate and ship several woven panels ahead of time, as i did with the norman, memphis, city gallery, and ft lauderdale pieces respectively. Although with each of those i only made between 7-10 panels, for bumbershoots I am hoping to get 20 panels woven and crated and shipped out by the end of July.

Speaking of crates, here is how every crate will now leave the studio. Thanks to the 18Rabbit gallery who stencil all of their wall texts for shows I now have a complete set of stencils of my own.

So the whole point of this is that when I titled this cycle of installations "The Have Sticks Will Travel Tour" last year I did not really know what form or where it would take me. I always knew that the McColl Center would be the culminating show in the cycle(or the end goal if you will. once I had been awarded the McColl Center gig and had the dates confirmed I always just figured I would work backwards and fill in my schedule up until then). Since I did my site visit to the McColl center last week I really got excited to use that opportunity to create a culminating installation for the sticks tour. The best part is that after the show opens I will then spend three months as an artist in residence working on new work and developing components for upcoming installations in the 2011 exhibition year. Speaking of which I just finished scheduling January, February, April, and June of 2011 for new installations(come on people who wants me in December 10, March 11, and beyond). It will be really exciting to take what I am learning with this cycle of work process it during my time at the McColl Center this fall, and then present the results all through out 2011. For better or for worse I know my strength and interest as an artist lies in the residency model of art making. By this I mean I prefer to intersperse periods of standard studio ramblings and production with more compressed intensive time working in new settings. In many ways knowing I will be making work every month in new locations frees up the anxiety that once drove my time in the studio, so I can now be driven by good old fashioned curiosity.

Thursday, April 08, 2010

new army green glow in the dark t shirts

an army of one if ever there was.

jonathanbrilliant.com/tshirts

To keep myself amused and to make the t shirts more of an " artist edition" I have been rotating colors and types of shirts with each batch printed. This new batch is currently printed on 100% ringspun soft cotton t shirts, in army green. I was really happy with the way these turned out and with the recent switch in glow product the night time effect on these is even cooler. still only $20 through the website.

Wednesday, April 07, 2010

the issue of authorship: art vs music

It is true that one of the things that seems to privilege visual art over other forms of expression is the issue of authorship. Although still an extremely conservative view to have, most art audiences cling to the academic idea of the author. The idea that the piece of art is some how a better experience if we know that the artist touched the work creating a physical record of the presence of the artist. Although many artists and curators assume the general public and larger audience for art are aware of the years of chipping away at this notion, the idea of the "hand of the artist" is still pervasive in contemporary museum and gallery culture. We need only look at the continued use of the term "masterpiece". Masterpiece is almost an entirely invented idea as most working artists past and present don't stop working until their dead. Therefore the idea of the masterpiece can be pulled back out of a career that is over, barring the return of a zombie giacometti. The logic to me would be that if the artist believed they had made a masterpiece wouldn't they stop and move on to something else? However in music one is perfectly able to accept a quality cover band playing the musical masterpieces of artists both living and dead. In fact take a quick glance at any local music venue in your area with a capacity of 1000 or under and at least a couple nights a month feature cover bands(yes there are no universals but in general this is true). Unlike the visual art world where a cover artist or a simple copy artist would never see their work in the same venue where original art is hung(accept maybe in an ironic curatorial gesture or if you are making miniature versions of said works), it is perfectly acceptable for a cover band to appear in the same venue where more legitimately authored works will appear. Since authorship has not dogged the music world as severely as the art world, we almost don't care who wrote or created a piece of music a cover or standard reworking of a tune can still recirculate with the same enthusiasm, witness the glee soundtrack. This is one of the nice things about academic music history being sort of impotent, the audience still mostly judges the music on it's own merits. In the art world however Academics still rules the roost, many strategies to put the focus on the work have arisen over the years. One of which is to work anonymously in a collective. The results of these efforts tends to be so-so at best with most collectives only being as good as their best members and eventually moving in separate individual directions that are more interesting. Like supergroups of musicians who make an amazing run but then ultimately take on various solo careers with the clear talents moving on to make their own work. The other solution, the one that got me thinking along this line is for the individual to somehow remain doggedly anonymous. With the current fascination with the once maligned "street art" many formerly faceless art projects now have proud authors, unconcerned with whether their presence taints the work or not. I recently saw a preview for the Banksy movie "Exit through the gift shop" here online. I for one am excited, I really don't care who makes the work for the Banksy brand, I just like the work, and for that reason I will definitely be seeing the movie, and not to find out the "author's true identity".