brilliant blog

This Blog Has Moved as Of May 20, 2010 + new website

2010-05-20T20:33:00.007-04:00

I Thank you Blogger for 4 wondeful years of hosting My Blog. In an effort to consolidate my digital presence I have permanently moved my blog to my site
http://www.jonathanbrilliant.com
to follow my blog posts in the future please bookmark the following page
http://jonathanbrilliant.com/blog/

For good measure I will continue to cross post on this blog, and will leave it online indefinitely for the many posts that are linked, but please be aware that the archive of blogger postings also appear on the new site.

Los Cabos Day One

2010-05-20T20:33:00.001-04:00

Los Cabos:Day One

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Today began like this.

every gallery worth it's salt has a gllery dog, and Pez Gordo is no exception as Chuy the gallery dog offers his services.

Today ended like this.

los cabos arrival

2010-05-20T10:32:00.001-04:00

Los Cabos: The Arrival

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

I think the view from my bedroom speaks for itself.

Since "Have Sticks will travel" does not translate into spanish too well, the gallery and the marketing people re-titled it "Beyond Words". I believe this will also be the text that will appear on the highway banner(which by the way will be 2 meters tall).

After a day of travel I am greeted by what looks to be a really great space. I have this entire empty store front with industrial floor, and fresh white walls, plus in the distance is a bathroom i have all to myself.

and right on cue as we approached the city limits a herd of goats crossed the highway.

I am so tired i will now count goats until i fall asleep and begin weaving tomorrow.

Viva Los stir sticks

2010-05-18T16:31:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, May 18th, 2010

What I am taking with me to San Jose Del Cabo. One suitcase with a weeks worth of clothes and one duffel bag with 30 jonathanbrilliant.com glow in the dark t shirts, a tripod, and some tools and things.

Tomorrow I leave for San Jose Del Cabo Mexico. I will have a week to create the Los Cabos Piece. As is my nature I use the moments before I travel to take stock of my studio and to think about what I am about to do. I guess it is the process of thinking about what I am leaving behind and what I am taking with me that keeps making the work interesting. In a very real way I can see where the work is leading me while at the same time continually being surprised by where it has taken me.

One of the things I am leaving behind is the unfinished crate for the bumbershoot festival piece. In order to maximize the time I have in Seattle this august I am crating up several panels to ship out ahead of time for the Bumbershoot piece. So that all I have to do is focus on making the component parts for the installation. I made the crate this month so I can fill it throughout the month of June and ship it mid July.

Another piece left behind is the Iced Beverage Basket. It has been slowly accumulating a nice coat of rust since it was moved outdoors in December. But When I get back it will be getting cleaned up and heading out to the powdercoater before being installed in it’s new home in an outdoor sculpture park in Georgia.

Another something I will be coming back to is a new steel stack piece. I cutup and reused a previous steel basket that never saw the light of day to begin the structure for this piece.

Related to the new steel piece is a new drawing I have been working on.

the drawing is a series of lines laid into the paper the same way i would lay material into an object or installation.It has been nice to work on the drawing in tandem to other things I have been doing and since i won’t be looking at it or working on it for the next week it will be nice to see it with fresh eyes when i return from Mexico.

For the Mexican version of the Have sticks Will Travel show I won’t be moving too far from the original idea. The only key difference will be that the gallery in Los Cabos that stocks my work will be next door to where I am doing my installation. It will be interesting for me to see a variety of my work existing in the same context beyond my studio. The Gallery has several recent rust on paper works, as well as some older sculptures from 2005. It will be interesting to see if this has any effect on the formal qualities of the Los Cabos Piece.

Big Yellow Taxi vs. Nothing But Flowers

2010-04-30T17:37:00.004-04:00

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?

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

2010-04-14T16:13:00.014-04:00

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.

new army green glow in the dark t shirts

2010-04-08T15:09:00.006-04:00

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.

the issue of authorship: art vs music

2010-04-07T08:49:00.009-04:00

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".

latest tour videos

2010-04-01T13:12:00.002-04:00

here are two links for the two most recent tour videos from the road as well as a link to my youtube page to see the rest of the videos

The Arkadelphia Piece

http://www.youtube.com/user/djbrilliant

The Fort Lauderdale Piece

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRaSFFGq14o

Have Sticks Will Travel@18Rabbit Gallery Opens Tomorrow

2010-03-25T13:07:00.003-04:00

Hey if you are in the ft Lauderdale/Miami/greater broward area, come on out for the opening of Have Sticks Will Travel@18Rabbit Gallery

16 NW 1st St, Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33301

in downtown Ft Lauderdale tomorrow night from 6-9. Otherwise the exhibition will remain on view through April 18.

The show was a great opportunity to not only build a new site-specific piece, but also provided an opportunity to hang some of the recent prints in context with the installation. I am very pleased with the overall rhythm this creates within the installation. As well I took this opportunity to bring forward some of the experience I gained with the Sticks Straws Sleeves and Lids installation in December by incorporating a meandering green straw line throughout the installation.

Fort lauderdale day 5 into 6

2010-03-24T21:48:00.005-04:00

I started the meandering straw line through the piece yesterday, so far so good.

I have spent the last couple of days resolving the structure and tending to the installation of the new arkadelphia prints. I also gave an artist talk at Florida Atlantic University today and got a peak into the amazing Jaffe collection of artist books housed there. The collection was really spectacular and i hope to come back in the future and really spend sometime with their collection of work. Tomorrow I am hoping to finish mounting and hanging the variable coffee cup lid prints so that friday I can pay a visit to the museum before my opening, but for tonight I am going to sleep.

Fort lauderdale day 4

2010-03-22T20:23:00.003-04:00

Today I started hanging the walls, but am still waiting on the last couple pieces from the arkadelphia prints to return from the framer here.
I started working on resolving the rest of the stick piece
I began seeing if the lighting conditions in the gallery will allow for the proper installation of the variable coffee cup lid print, which is printed in white making it very sensitive to light conditions. I hope between now and friday to resolve the lighting issues, but if I have to cut the prints between everything else I would like to do it will not be a total loss,as I can use them in a future installation.

Fort lauderdale day 3

2010-03-21T20:50:00.004-04:00

Today was a good day I managed to resolve one area of the installation and begin work on the next section. I should get the works on paper back from the framer by tuesday or wednesday and begin installing those. I have now spent enough time in the space that I have an idea of the layout I want for the show. At this rate the work should resolve itself by wednesday or thursday.

Fort lauderdale day 2

2010-03-20T21:44:00.003-04:00

day 2 was this day.

Fort lauderdale day 1

2010-03-19T21:09:00.003-04:00

the end of day one. next stop day two.

being on more of a tight schedule also necessitates what will be the first of many pb and j artist treats consumed over the week.

after an easy drive down 95 I arrived at the gallery yesterday and started by unloading and un-packing the truck and setting up for the first day of work. I of course wove the first section before taking off for a lovely dinner of cuban food.

Ft Lauderdale day -1. or This is how it starts.

2010-03-17T16:11:00.003-04:00

I returned from arkadelphia saturday night and am now prepped and ready for my trek down to ft lauderdale. This stop of the tour will be at The 18Rabbit Gallery in Ft Lauderdale, a brand spankin new exhibition venue run by a woman I met a few years ago at an installation residency. I managed to make a few woven panels to take down with me along with a couple framed prints and the sticks to build the "fort. Lauderdale piece". I am sort of excited and anxious about this one. I am excited about getting a little road trip in down there. The drive down will be especially helpful for letting my mind wander and devise a strategy for this piece and ease some of my anxiety. With my wounds barely healed from the arkadelphia piece at obu and the ink barely dry on the prints I made at Henderson State I am stepping off into this one already in work mode. I plan to hang several of the finished prints from Henderson with this installation and am kind of curious to see what a show with just the woven structure in the center and walls lined with prints will feel like. I usually enjoy the walls blank so as to draw attention to the space and the physical work within, but since I made all of the arkadelphia prints while working on a woven installation it only seems fitting to install them with similar work. Now to rest up and hit the highway early, good thing i have the npr station locator map for my drive

arkadelphia, day eight, a day no prints would die

2010-03-10T18:08:00.003-05:00

With the sculpture out of the way today was earmarked for a printmaking bonanza.

per david warrens input, rather than let lighter litho proofs go to waste I did a little monotyping on top of the proofs, It was actually pretty nice and made me wish we had the time and the plates to do a multi-color lithograph, oh well maybe next time.

Tomorrow at 11am I will be giving my artist talk to the faculty and students of obu and henderson state, and anyone else who is in the area, then later that evening at 530pm we will have a reception in the gallery. At the reception we will have a table set up showing some of the finished prints, along with my rapidly dwindling inventory of glow-in-the-dark t shirts. After tomorrow the rest of the prints are being shipped home so I can take them to Ft Lauderdale for my show at 18Rabbit Gallery that opens on March 26.

arkadelphia, day seven, "No Tape, No Glue, Just Sticks"

2010-03-09T19:29:00.004-05:00

i reworked the litho drawing adding a couple more elements and now tomorrow we will blow through the edition, I still can't believe I got this whole stone all to myself I feel like I should have shared it with someone at some point.
this is the coffee cup lid printing plate and some of the prints pulled, I intend to use these for an installation later this month.

Today was a marathon day. I finally resolved the form of the sculpture, I did a video segment for the NBC affiliate in Little Rock, and I worked on some more prints at Henderson. The quote in the title is from the correspondent who came out to do the interview, I think it might find it's way into future work. here is the link to the full news segment

No tape, No Glue, just sticks.

arkadelphia, day six

2010-03-08T23:16:00.004-05:00

I am hoping to resolve the sculpture today and leave tomorrow for cleanup and prep for the opening. I will also be churning out some more prints over at The annex printshop at henderson state too.

the bench in it's current spot where it will remain until the end of the show.

arkadelphia day six was another day with half weaving and half printing.

the first etch and proof of the lithograph came off nicely. I will probably add a little bit more to the drawing then master printmaker david warren will begin editioning.

the five color screenprint printed in a corporate pallete inspired by coffee shop packaging also came out well. today i will work on some unique screenprint works and another collage relief print as well in the printshop after resolving the sculpture in the morning.

arkadelphia, day five

2010-03-07T20:30:00.004-05:00

Day Five comes to a close. I am about two work days away from resolving the sculpture, I think. I still need to secure one precarious section. Tomorrow I will resume printing at Henderson State. After a pizza party with the art faculty I am taking the night shift off site to sleep off the effects of too much pizza hut.

arkadelphia, day four

2010-03-06T19:43:00.004-05:00

The end of day four.

arkadelphia, day three

2010-03-05T20:40:00.003-05:00

my current blogging station.

I made some headway defining the form on the arkadelphia piece today. I am hearing some creaking and shifting that makes me nervous but I am ignoring it until something actually falls. i also began working more on integrating the bench into the piece.

arkadelphia, day two

2010-03-04T21:09:00.006-05:00

here's the litho stone in progress for one of the prints I am working on at Henderson State, below is super student Brittany proofing the first of six colors for a screenprint.
more progress on the lithograph

here is a working proof of the coffee cup sleeve print.
here master printmaker david warren is inking the coffee cup sleeve collagraph
the already levigated stone awaiting the drawing. As someone who processed my own stones for lithography you cannot imagine what a treat it is to have a prepared stone waiting for you to do whatever you want to it.

Today I did my first split day, weaving in the obu gallery in the morning, and printing at henderson state in the afternoon, and boy are my arms tired, thanks to master printmaker davdid warren and super print assistant brittany.

Tomorrow I will be spending the day weaving in the gallery beginning to resolve the form and further integrate the bench into the installation. On Monday I will resume work on some of the prints in addition to the coffee cup sleeve collagraph, the screenprint, and the lithograph, we will be making some new lid relief prints, and maybe some other works as well.

arkadelphia, day one

2010-03-03T21:25:00.004-05:00

i arrived last night, my luggage finished arriving this morning. I started building the piece at OBU today, tomorrow I will continue working on the piece and start the prints at Henderson State. I just realized that this is the third piece I have made in the central time zone.

Preparing for Arkadelphia or this seems to be how it starts

2010-02-27T17:56:00.005-05:00

here are the cases of sticks and printmaking materials i have already shipped ahead to Arkadelphia

On Tuesday I well be heading off to Arkadelphia Arkansas to embark on the 8th stop of 13 for the "Have Sticks Will Travel World Tour". Once there I will have ten days to create a new site-specific installation at Ouachita Baptist University and edition and develop some new prints at Henderson State University. I could not be more anxious and excited about this opportunity. As a self professed "artist residency bum" I am ecstatic to have what is essentially an elaborate artist residency in printmaking and installation, compressed into ten days in two different universities. I am really excited as the successful prints pulled at Henderson State will be included in my Solo Exhibition at The 18rabbit gallery in Ft Lauderdale later in March. I am anxious, as is par for the course, because I am really interested in making a sculpture in place this time. Although in my mind the process of weaving sticks in the gallery is akin to making an abstract drawing in space, I am incredibly seduced by the idea of creating a monumental object that is integrated into the gallery space. I am also very fortunate to have the experience of the previous installations feeding the ideas and images of each subsequent installation. Since I abandoned the idea of pre-drawing too much of the piece ahead of time I am simply relying on my own sense of space and movement within the gallery. This is why the related prints really excite me. I see the patterns and materials I apply to the prints as occupying the same space as the installations and materials in the gallery. I have learned that even when I am drawing in my sketchbook or on a piece of paper, my overall sense of blank space to material or image seems to be the same. I think a couple of years ago I was still suffering from a mild brush with horror vacui, or fear of empty spaces. I think this manifested itself in my all over drawings and slightly chaotic installations of my own work. With the recent slew of installations I have seen my interests evolve from not only the physical occupation of space in the gallery as a direct result of my time and labor, but a real interest in compositions within the gallery space. I find myself more and more looking for the gestalt of a piece rather than the particulars of where it bends or moves within space. I am still digesting the lessons I am learning along this journey but am fortunate enough now that I can let the work feed the work in order to keep this body of art moving forward and developing. I find that the galleries i visit continue to feel like second studios and that once i am in the gallery space working i feel as comfortable and at ease as I would working in my own studio completing a project.

responding to snow

2010-02-27T17:32:00.006-05:00

I am not a snow virgin, far from it, but I have been snow abstinent for the last couple of years. This abstinence has made me more appreciative of the times when i do get to engage with snow. These snow affairs usually happen when i am in some far off snowy locale like Vermont, or Alaska, where i lived briefly in the 90's. But the last place I expected to have a genuine quality snow experience was in my native south carolina, but that is exactly where i got a recent fix of snow. Like many southerners it is hard not to view the snow with wide eyed wonder, and this time was no different. At first when the flurries fell I figured it would be the usual south carolina snow fall, a couple of non-sticking inches, but then it just kept coming. I knew in advance that I wanted to make some work in response to the snow fall, and i knew I wanted to make some sort of drawing or work on paper. So I left a piece of paper in the yard and let snow accumulate on it then observed and digested the results, which were the source for this piece.

here I am applying some quality spray celing texture to the paper the same that the clouds apply snow to the earth.
below is the snow melting away from the paper
at the height of the snow fall the snow drawing under 8inches of carolina powder.
another real treat was watching the snow accumulate on the iced beverage basket which is hanging out in the yard until it goes to it's next destination. although I was really tempted to use fiberglass and spray texture to create the layered snow look that nature created.

the view from the studio when i realized this was going to be a real stick to the ground kind of snow.

The beginning of the snow and the snow drawing

Post modern tv commercials and methods of gallery interventions

2010-02-03T09:13:00.018-05:00

This is another train of thought inspired by a casual conversation with my wife. She was reading me a passage from an introductory anthropology textbook. in the passage there was something about the different ways of ordering a drink in a bar/restaurant so as not to get carded, one of which is ordering by brand rather than item, i think. What I heard and what sent my mind spinning was a passage where someone ordered a "schlitz" which not only dated the book a bit, as did the other language, it also reminded me of those old tv commercials from the 80's. As a young kid I hadn't a clue what the product was I just loved seeing the bull burst through the wall. You know the moment when they say "nobody does it like the bull". The wall bursting bull then made me think about the other iconic wall busting beverage from tv land "kool-aid". So this is my point of departure. below are the two commercials.(if you are reading this where it has been aggregated like facebook, tumblr or another place you might have to click a link to see the videos, or just bookmark my blog http://blog.jonathanbrilliant.com to see this in it's original context)

the kool aid commercial is embedded above, if you are viewing this post somewhere other than my blog(aggregated into facebook, tumblr, etc, you will need to click the original post to view the video, or view it on youtube here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBeUGqeYsQg)

this is the bull commercial again if you are not seeing the video view original link or view video on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo0X2KV4tkU&feature=related

So of course these videos reminded me of many artists who have literally and figuratively broken through the walls of buildings to quench the thirst of viewers. Foremost on my mind is a recent example, Urs Fischer(pictured below)

I am not going to delve into fishcer bashing as has become the sport of art enthusiasts in regards to his recent show at the new museum, which i was fortunate enough to see. I am just interested in this gesture of cutting through the wall, and how the bull, and kool-aid pre-figure his strategy. So thinking about urs fischer and his slice of wall leads to the inevitable origins and works his gesture owes to. Case in point Gordon Matta Clarks excavations of buildings pictured below.

While it would be easy to bash and talk about the derivative nature of Urs Fischer I actually have a great appreciation for the logistics involved in his generally casual and simple ideas. Fischer has enjoyed a brief and active career of high budget simple gestures like excavating the entire floor of a gallery or fabricating absurdly large metal sculptures based on smooshy globs of clay. He is able to dispatch teams of people and financial backers to realize his vision. This task alone, navigating the boards of people who facilitate his work would easily break a lesser artist. For those of us who have worked in galleries, museums or institutions the sheer amount of bureaucratic BS Fischer has to navigate is the highest art going on in his studio. That is not to excuse the often times lack luster results, but hey getting to do what you want, how you want and when you want does not mean you will be universally popular. Unlike Matta-Clark who had limited budgets and helpers for his interventions(I believe it was Matta-Clark and his trusted assistant the Milwaukee Brand Sawz-all, otherwise known as a sculptors best friend.) Fishcher seems to do less with more. I rather like the ideas in Matta-Clarks work as he knew up front that you would probably experience his work through documentation or simply legend. In Matta Clark's day there was not a tremendous amount of support or funding for his work, none-the-less his wall breaking still holds sway. After following this thought I remembered another work which pushes through the walls of the gallery, literally and conceptually. Below is Chris Burden's Samson.

Having only experienced this work through documentation, I can only comment on the ideas and imagine what the actual experience would be like. In the piece the arrival of the viewer through the turn style activates a mechanism which pushes against the gallery walls. This literal act of pushing against the space is the same way that fischer's and matta-clark's work pushed through the walls of the space . The one added feature of Burden's wall work is the inclusion of the viewer activation. By coming to view the work, the viewer activates the piece and hastens the implied destruction of the walls. but there is a catch the whole work is conceptual and the jack within the work is geared in such a way as to limit the pressure exerted on the walls. So again like matta-clark before him burden's is a work that can exist in the mind of the viewer more than in the actual creation.

watch a video of burden explain this piece

so in thinking about the ideas of the walls as the site of the sculpture I though of one of my favorite british artists, Anish Kapoor pictured above. I thought about Kapoor's pregnant wall piece where rather than excising a mark in the wall or removing the wall all together, as he had done before, he has given life to the wall itself. the simplicity and beauty of the wall growing on it's own is something that is really quite striking and beautiful to see. The final stop on this train of wall defying images is an older piece by Robert Irwin I saw a few years back. It really is a nice subtle piece that makes a wall come alive.

robert irwin's, Untitled of 1969

I suppose the point of following this thought all the way through is two-fold. One it helps further my belief in a google free train of thought. Yes I use google to find images and videos, and yes I use google as the platform for my blog, but the thoughts and connections drawn are all my own, suggested by my own highly inaccurate search algorithm called "my memory". And Second I have just reached the first lull in the "Have Sticks Will Travel World Tour" work in a awhile. I depart again March 2nd. After a year of working on my installations with the next year just as full of adventures I was trying to assess the lessons I have learned so far in this process. with 7 installations out of the 13 scheduled down, I can feel and see the change in my work and my approach to being an artist. I continue to find just as much interest in working on site in response to space as i do working in the studio in response to materials and situations i create. I guess this bit of writing attests to the results of working on the have sticks will travel cycle of work, I now can't help but see even the slightest spatial intervention as somehow relating to working within the white cube.

Eternal Return opening was Eternally jam packed

2010-01-23T13:16:00.004-05:00

I was truly astonished at how many people just kept coming and coming to the opening last night. Thank you to all who braved the tight quarters it was really an overwhelming experience, I hope that those whoe missed the opening will make time to go see the show in person as it will remain on view through February 27.

Eternal Return Opens Tonight, Sticks Straws Sleeves and Lids lecture next week, and In Her Nature at Plum Elememts

2010-01-22T10:46:00.005-05:00

The Eternal Return Piece, opens as part of Eternal Return at NURTUREart in Brooklyn and remains on view through February 27, 2010. a full image gallery of the piece is linked here after the jump.

Sticks, Straws, Sleeves and Lids at The University of South Carolina remains on view through February 23, and I will be giving an Artist Talk on Tuesday January 26 from 4-5 followed by a reception in the gallery from 5-7pm, the reception will have tasty refreshments and such. to see a full image gallery of the Sticks Straws Sleeves and Lids installation click here

Finally I am very excited to find out that a suite of recent rust on paper works have been hung at Plum Elements in Charleston South Carolina as part of the show "In Her Nature" which will be on view through February 28 2010, to see more recent rust on paper works click here. Next Stop on The Have Sticks Will Travel World Tour will be Arkadelphia Arkansas on March 1, I can't wait to make my third installation in The Central Time zone. Until then I will be working on a couple of one off projects that i will post here when they get finished.

Eternal Return Piece: day five

2010-01-19T22:36:00.004-05:00

stacked in front of the piece are the empty boxes of sticks. I am always amused by how little space the boxes of material occupied compared to the piece itself.

Eternal Return Piece: day four

2010-01-18T21:06:00.003-05:00

day four comes and goes

Eternal Return Piece: day three

2010-01-17T17:51:00.002-05:00

now working on the ground and done with the ladder, form continues to reveal itself.

Eternal Return Piece: day two

2010-01-16T22:32:00.003-05:00

day two,i managed to get a good bit more of the form established, and i am looking forward to starting back up tomorrow.

Eternal Return Piece:day one

2010-01-15T22:15:00.007-05:00

today I flew on a plane, then i told a taxi driver where to locate williamsburg, after convincing him that it was in fact in Brooklyn, then i wove and hung some stir sticks from the ceiling, now i will sleep until i weave tomorrow.

Eternal Return Piece: how it begins

2010-01-14T09:06:00.003-05:00

This is all the material loaded up and ready to ship to brooklyn for the Eternal Return group show at Nurtureart in Brooklyn. I will be making a suspended woven stir stick structure for this one. The materials should have arrived yesterday and I arrive tomorrow. I have exactly 7 work days on the ground, which should be enough. I am still processing the lessons learned during the installation of "Sticks, Straws, Sleeves, and Lids". It will be nice in this situation to just have to worry about making my work and not deal with any other aspects of the show or the space. I have seen images of the skylight I am to work from and assuming I can get started as soon as I hit the ground it should be a pretty interesting piece. Since I committed many years ago to use this blog as a way to record any sort of significant or not so significant events in my artistic process, I would be remiss if I didn't talk a little bit about the role of uncertainty in my work. Although I am certain that i will be creating a woven tensile structure suspended from the ceiling using my medium of choice, that is all that is certain. As is the case with many of these opportunities I am counting on the kindness of strangers who believe in my work to help make this possible. For many years now I have found myself more comfortable making my best work in a gallery space, rather than the studio space. I find the studio continues to function as a practical place to make things and experiment, but more and more the best work I make happens when I am "out of my element". There is something about the impending deadline of an opening, and the newness of a space when I walk into it, that focuses me like nothing else. I suppose this is more a case of knowing what allows me to make the best work I am capable of making. As I do more of this work, the work is feeding the work more and more, and each time I think I i know something about what makes this work interesting to me, I find a new interest. At first I was tickled by the macgyver like challenges i set for myself; me verse the sticks, a gallery, and a deadline my only tools are my hands, and a knife. Although I only use the knife to open the boxes, it was still pretty cool. Then it became about using the the materials as a way to make drawings in space that i couldn't possible render on paper. Now it is somewhere between both of those experiences(although it seems to be unconciously alternating between closed and open form structures, but i won't really decide whether the eternal return piece will be closed or open until sometime next week). The galleries I work in feel like a second studio(or an extension of the studio), where upon arrival I am immediately sizing up the way I want to make work in the space, the same way I do in the studio, or anywhere i work, including when i do preparator gigs dealing with work that is not mine. In fact the many years off and on that I spend working locked within a gallery as both a preparator and an artist the more I find that the gallery space is an incredible place. I enjoy the focus i have found and continue to think of the gallery as a piece of paper and the materials and processes i introduce into this situation as mere tools for mark making. I say all this because tomorrow morning I will board a plane to new york and be faced once again with the ticking clock and uncertainity that seems to be as ever present as my imagination when making art.

Sticks Straws Sleeves and Lids on View January 15-February 23 2010

2010-01-05T14:59:00.011-05:00

the most important part of the process is always the cleanup.

it almost feels like I am cheating since I am finished with this installation a week before the opening rather than the day before. This has been the biggest advantage to working both during a break when the university is closed for an extended period and when i am living where I am working.

There will be an artist talk on Tuesday January 26 from 4-5pm in room 214 of the McMaster Building followed by a reception in the gallery from 5-7pm click here for a map with directions

I have finished up working on the installation at USC and am now prepping for the trip to New York next week to begin work on "Eternal Return" at Nurtureart.
above is the press release and info for Eternal Return.

I am looking forward to people getting a chance to experience Sticks, Straws, Sleeves and Lids as it brings back many of the elements I have missed from the beginning of this body of work. Although after only 5 years of work in this direction I feel as though I am just scratching the surface of what is possible. I am always surprised at what direction this work takes me in as I learn something new with the completion of each installation, and looke forward to the lessons I will learn this coming year. I am particularly pleased to include some of the recent prints in this show as they reflect new directions I would like to take with the work.

These prints will be the starting point for the new prints I will be making in March when I am visiting Henderson State University and Ouachita Baptist university both in Arkadelphia Arkansas. I hope I will be able to include those prints in subsequent shows after that. Of course all the prints are available for purchase please just contact me directly if you are interested in those or if you are interested in booking me to do an installation or Artist Lecture for you or your organization email jb@jonathanbrilliant.com

sticks straws sleeves and lids finishing out the year

2009-12-30T13:59:00.005-05:00

this bright spot on the wall is where the prints will go when they get back from being framed.

this is how the year will end and it is also a little bit of how the year will begin.

sticks straws sleeves and lids: progress on straws, sleeves and sticks

2009-12-27T19:25:00.004-05:00

the straws are starting to take shape. the trick has been to make them long enough that they hold a curve and themselves up but short enough that they do not snap and make an angle.
been working on the interior passage of the sticks.

the sleeves have decided to stay in place for the moment but I am keeping an eye on them as I am convinced they are secretly working themselves loose.

I actually wove me cell phone on the other side of the piece and didn't realize until someone called.

Tomorrow I will continue to resolve the outer edges and form on the sticks, I will resume work on the straws, and I will tinker with the sleeves a bit just to make sure they are stable. I hope by early next year to have the installation finished and the lighting done, so I can focus on preparation for the installation at Nurtureart in New York that starts on January 15th. It has been a really different experience after doing almost all of my installations as traveling gigs to be working where i live, it really allows me to step back at the end of the day and make a plan for the next days work, and in the case of this show even take a day offsite, a luxury i usually don't have.

sticks straws sleeves and lids: more progress

2009-12-24T07:21:00.004-05:00

began work on the straws yesterday.

decided to turn off the fluorescent work lights for a bit just to see what some of the finished shadows and lighting might do.This is one of the nicest features of this gallery, the track lights. Unlike most galleries where you can either turn off or on or dim all the tracks at once, this space has individual programmable dimmers for each row of track lights. For anyone who is a gallery nerd like me you know how pimp that is.

the sleeves are starting to take shape, i hope to finish this gesture in the coming week.
lids are done except for tweeking lighting and getting the framed works on paper up on the adjacent wall.
have been enjoying the less than insane pace of this installation. working like this with a few days and nights off i should have this installation resolved sometime next year.

sticks straws sleeves and lids: progress

2009-12-21T20:09:00.006-05:00

So far work on this show is moving along without incident. In honor of the solstice I am making it a short day and staying home for the evening,

sticks straws sleeves and lids, laying the groundwork: first day on site

2009-12-18T19:02:00.008-05:00

seems like this is how it always begins, pictured are cases of sticks(courtesy of perfectstix.com), cases of lids(courtesy of solo plastics), and in the distance cases of sleeves(courtesy of java jacket).
Today I began installing Sticks straws sleeves and lids in the McMaster gallery at The university of South Carolina. With this installation I am very fortunate to not only have a beautiful gallery to work in but a generous amount of time to work and the comfort of sleeping in my own bed throughout the process. I spent today prepping the gallery and beginning three of the four major elements of the show.

The Sticks

the sleeves

The Lids.

the tried and true simple circle compass using wire,a nail and a mechanical pencil.

vibrating coffee cup fabrication time

2009-12-17T13:45:00.007-05:00

So, with the impending end of my kickstarter fund drive, and the start of the installation of "Sticks, Straws, Sleeves and Lids" at The Mcmaster gallery at University of South Carolina, it was time to start making some vibrating coffee cups.

At the heart of each vibrating coffee cup is the very special "mocha motor", which has been modified from it's original intent and now drives the coffee cup.
here is the full set of vibrating coffee cups for the pledge drive including one special cup i am holding back as an artist proof. (coming soon for the holidays is a video of 8 cups a vibrating, isn't that what you give on the eighth day?)
Although there are four more days of pledging I believe most people who wanted a vibrating coffee cup have pledged, and I still have some time after the pledge drive ends to get make more I already have everything else for the pledge rewards packaged and ready to go once the drive ends and the funding clears. Tomorrow I start weaving, stacking, arranging and otherwise affixing, sticks, straws, sleeves and lids to the McMaster Gallery which I will be doing until next year. It is very liberating to say "I am spending the rest of the year working on one installation and nothing else..."

The Morton Piece, 2009

2009-11-29T11:47:00.007-05:00

In between consuming tons of good food, and most of the free art Washington DC has to offer, i Managed to make a small thanksgiving treat of an installation for my brother's apartment. The piece was created to accompany one of the Norman Prints that he purchased and I am pretty happy with the results. full image gallery is viewable here
http://www.jonathanbrilliant.com/morton
Up next I need to finish mounting a triptych of drawings for a group show that opens this week at plum elements in charleston, then I begin preparing for Sticks, Straws Sleeves and Lids which opens January 15th at The university of South Carolina. In between that I also need to figure out the final logistics for the stir stick piece for Eternal Return at Nurtureart in Brooklyn(a curated group show i have agreed to do a woven stir stick piece for). I am mostly focused on the USC show right now as it will be the first time in a couple of years that I will have enough time to present my expanded vision of what an installation drawn entirely from the detritus of the coffee shop and my ideas about british and southern sculpture. Plus it might be only the second time in working this way that throughout the duration of the install i will be sleeping in my own bed and won't need to travel more than ten minutes between studio and site. below are some process shots of the install in the apartment and an image of the print that the piece will accompany.

I did the bulk of the weaving in a couple mornings, then adjusted the piece to fit the space around the window.
This is actually the couch where i stayed for thanksgiving, doing double duty as a sculpture stand and a guest bedroom.

this is the norman relief print/embossing that will accompany the Morton piece in it's new location.

A view of My Favorite Things

2009-11-18T08:08:00.013-05:00

THiNGS
on View November 21 2009-January 2, 2010
Eyelevel art 103 Spring gallery
103 spring street, Charleston South by-God Carolina
curated by Jonathan Brilliant
artists include

Sean Ahern- Charleston SC
Jonathan Brilliant Columbia SC
Jarod Charzewski- Charleston SC
Philip Estes- Charleston SC
Ashley Harwood- Charleston SC
Sarah Lowe- Oakland CA
Daniel Mcsweeney- Charleston SC
Michael Moran- Charleston SC
James Morgan- San Jose Ca
Michael Morrison- Charleston SC
Owen Premore- Portland Oregon
David Walen- Charleston SC
Sean Williams- Charleston SC

It was a tremendous honor and a huge learning curve to get to curate this show. Most of the hard work was done about six months ago when we nailed down a date when i would be free to install the show. This show was sort of like my off time between the berlin stop of the Have Sticks Will Travel World Tour and the beginning of the install at The McMaster Gallery at The University of South Carolina. The goal for this show was to use the space as a way to highlight a disparate but related arrangement of objects. I had envisioned being able to use the work of the other artists in concert with each other and the 103 spring gallery to create an overall sense of one cohesive installation. Throughout this process I think I learned that my approach and vision for curating, is to utilize other artists work to create a site responsive installation. I did have many limitations, not least of which was a non-existent budget for shipping, and my relentless installation and travel schedule for my personal work. None the less my west coast artists managed to come up with elegant solutions to this problem by creating work that was shippable in small packages but could take ownership of the space provided. I was equally surprised by the local artists, who when asked for specific types of work often times surpassed their previous work. In a couple cases I was completely unfamiliar with the artists work but their descriptions of what they were planning were enough to re-assure me that I would be able to create the installation I was imagining. The end result is that I've got a show which has a little weaving, a little welding, a little stacking, a little arranging, some found objects, a couple cubes, and a nice mix of work with the artist "hand" at the forefront and a lack of the artist "hand"(something i strive in my personal work as well). I had solicited cube or cube related work from 4 of the artists and was very happy to still see that vision carried through for the first passage of the show, then in the next section the show transitions into a still life/archaeological arrangement area. This flow was a response to the shear beauty of the 103 spring space. Inside the space is the facade of an 1830's era house which the former car garage was built around. Opposite the facade is this amazing wall of many colors. This lived in post-industrial space with the ghost of a former home was already a tremendous work of art in it's own right. I knew that any object I added to the space would immediately begin to dialog with this space. I hope the viewer has a chance to experience the show in the relative isolation that I was afforded as the curator/preparator/exhibition designer. It was a nice "break" from my work and still kept the part of my mind that is interested in shaping and engaging architectual spaces active. I am looking forward to my next challenge in Early December when i begin installing "Sticks, Straws, Sleeves and Lids" My new installation for the University of South Carolina which opens January 15th.

it's all part of my NPR fantasy.

2009-11-11T10:26:00.017-05:00

I am openly hooked on npr as an integral part of working in the studio. It is true that npr can be thought provoking and stimulating, but I like it because it is the audio equivalent of a screensaver. You know really fascinating to observe, everyone has it on in their office or worksapce, and we are all guilty of staring at it and enjoying the unintended entertainement value. It is all these qualities and the even nature of the timbre on all of npr's programming that make it the perfect background noise for certain types of work. Particularly when i am weaving on site running up against a deadline the audio metronome that is public radio is just what i need to help me focus and feel less isolated. I am at my happiest working on site when i can listen to the public radio feed for kqed on itunes, because i am addicted to joe mcconnell's tarffic updates. It is also true that when I was younger I thought radio reader was the worlds greatest super hero. The other thing I have always loved about npr, and it's cousin etv is pledge drive season. That's right that one time of year when you see amazing concerts on etv, that one time of year that ira glass actually says something funny. You know that bit where he calls the child of someone who listens to npr and asks them to pledge for their parents, or he calls and guilts someone into joining. Well these are all the things i thought of when my npr fantasy became that much more real with the acceptance of my project by the startup fundraising website kickstarter. I know it probably is more appropriate to call it a crowd sourcing platform, but this is my npr fantasy and we call it fundraising(although one of the webby things about kickstarter is it is all or nothing, meaning if i don't make my goal, no money changes hands. I guess like ebay but I have never bought or sold on ebay before so i can't be sure). So following the npr model I have several different gifts for various levels including the ubiquitous "whole hog" pledge that ends it all at the bottom(meaning if someone pledges for the total amount we reach the goal and everything else is just gravy). In keeping with the npr model I will be going about my regular content creation as an artist but will occasionally interupt my programing for pledge breaks npr style(you know laden with guilt, wit, and tons of enticements based on your level of pledge). The pledge drive actually ends December 22 right around the time i start weaving stir sticks for The Sticks, Straws, Sleeves and Lids show at The University of South Carolina, because i figured that was more npr style to resume regular programming after the drive, rather than having it run into the real content.

Pledge $2 or more
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-travel-world-tour

every 2 dollar donation gets you a signed stir stick and a jonathanbrilliant.com sticker

Pledge $3 or more
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-travel-world-tour

LIMITED REWARD 32 of 33 remaining

If you pledge $3.33 in honor of my 33rd birthday I will send you a special limited edition birthday card. On the cover is an original drawing, and inside is the text "Happy Birthday from those who adore you", I will also throw in a signed stir stick, and a sticker. The cards will be printed with soy based inks on archival paper using a local mom&pop shop wedding invitation printer. They will be signed and numbered and include a standard invitation envelope. My way of saying happy birthday to you for saying happy birthday to me. Pledge $5 or more
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-travel-world-tour

A selection of jonathnbrilliant.com stickers and a personalized postcard will be mailed to you

Pledge $10 or more
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-travel-world-tour

LIMITED REWARD 47 of 50 remaining
A selection of jonathnbrilliant.com stickers, official tour poster(designed by Sarah Lowe), and a couple postcards

www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-t...
Pledge $20 or more
LIMITED REWARD 5 of 5 remaining
Brilliant the Blinding elightenment- Is one of five unique compact flourescent ultrabright desk lamps featuring my favorite portable consumer fetish object as lightsource.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-t...
Pledge $30 or more
LIMITED REWARD 29 of 30 remaining
A glow in the dark Jonathanbrilliant.com t shirt and A selection of jonathnbrilliant.com stickers, official tour poster(designed by Sarah Lowe), and a couple postcards

Pledge $33 or more
www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-t...

Brilliant 33rd Birthday vibrating Pledge- In Honor of my 33rd birthday on November 9, I am offering the following special: Your very own vibrating coffee cup. The cup is created from a genuine to-go coffee cup from any one of the many fine coffee establishments I frequent. The cup is then modified with it's very own vibrator similar to the cups depicted in this installation http://www.jonathanbrilliant.com/vibrating.html plus you get all the gifts listed at the ten dollar level. Show some vibrating birthday love won't you.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-t...
Pledge $75 or more
LIMITED REWARD 7 of 10 remaining
A one color screenprint emblazoned with the woven stick patter plus A glow in the dark Jonathanbrilliant.com t shirt and A selection of jonathnbrilliant.com stickers, official tour poster(designed by Sarah Lowe), and a couple postcards
Backer 3 BACKERs

www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-t...
Pledge $150 or more
LIMITED REWARD 10 of 10 remaining
everything from the $75 level, plus a dvd portfolio with all the documentation of the project a digital catalog of the tour to date and all videos in full quality,plus i will send you a coffee mug from all the places i visit on the second half of the tour in 2010(limit ten prizes at this level)

Pledge $175 or more

LIMITED REWARD 3 of 3 remaining
www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-t...
The Zinnia This Pledge level entitles you to your very own custom woven acrylic wall panel. The panel will be created by weaving and plastic welding custom milled clear acrylic strips into a panel approximately 36”round. The weaving pattern used is the same one I use for the woven stir stick installations. The advantage of the clear acrylic is it’s permanence, and the beauty of the shadows cast directly on the wall. To see an example of a larger 85”x85” woven panel go to http://www.jonathanbrilliant.com/clear Of course I will still throw in a poster, postcards, stickers, and maybe a little something extra if your nice…

www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-t...
Pledge $250 or more
LIMITED REWARD SOLD OUT (might release a tall, but this was the only venti and someone got it)
1cast aluminum coffee cup, postcard, stickers, and a signed stick This unique casting is created through the lost latte process of aluminum casting. This venti coffee cup was actually destroyed through the metal casting process in order to release it’s true essence into the atmosphere, creating this very sacred portable consumer fetish object which is now available to you only if you pledge at this level.
Pledge $500 or more
www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-t...
a very special stir stick embossing monoprint(created by inking and running the actual woven stir sticks through a printing press) plus A one color screenprint emblazoned with the woven stick pattern plus A glow in the dark Jonathanbrilliant.com t shirt and A selection of jonathnbrilliant.com stickers, official tour poster(designed by Sarah Lowe), and a couple postcards

www.kickstarter.com/projects/brilliant/have-sticks-will-t...
Pledge $2,500 and end this pledge drive now.
you get all the awards mentioned above, plus i will create a portable installation in a crate for you. I will take an old art travel crate and convert it into a portable gallery complete with motion activated lighting system. The crate will contain a woven stir stick installation built directly into the crate. It will be shipped to you (sorry us locations only) and all you will do is simply open the crate plug it in and enjoy your very own installation to-go.

Iced beverage basket

2009-11-05T18:52:00.006-05:00

Since I got back from Berlin I have been catching up on applications, proposals, and some studio work. On The 21st of November a small group show that I helped select artists for will be opening at eyelevel art in charleston sc. I gave the show the theme of "things". Loosely based on my misunderstandings and mis-interpretation of martin Heidegger's essay of the same name. I liked the gist of his concept as a thing or vessel acting as a gathering force for community. I extended this to my view of the gallery as a blank sheet of paper or vessel for artwork. I tried to select a disparate but related body of objects by artists, across disciplines and am hoping once all the work is assembled in the space I can create interesting relationships with the things represented. For my part i have taken this opportunity to investigate my idea of seeing all objects that i touch as natural and hand made objects. this led me to investigate an idea i had a couple of years ago that still holds my interest. I liked the idea of seeing all portable consumer fetish objects for dispensing liquid, water bottles, coffee cups, gatorade bottles, etc as being baskets. This is a conscious decision to pursue the idea of what is touched by the hand today being a "natural" object. What I am currently working on is My iced beverage basket.

The image is based on the to-go iced beverage cups, with the dome lids.
I particularly like how the dome lid makes no attempt to hide its relationship to similar portable fetishes in non-consumer society's. I am still resolving the form, and of course i will be painting the "straw" green.
I like the possibility that the piece can be presented either as the tipped over iced beverage,
a fetish image of loss and despair, or
as the upright with the lid removed to access the sweet nectar found within. But with a week left to work in between everything else i am sure i will find a comfortable resolution for this fetish.

Das Berlin-Stück opening tonight at east/west project berlin

2009-10-23T00:25:00.008-04:00

reconstruction opening tonight 1900-2200 east/west project Memhardstr. 1,10178 Berlin on Alexanderplatz
artists
Jonathan Brilliant, Eric Hollender & Ruth Marshall (Dam Stuhltrager/ East Coast, USA)
Sean Healy & Joe Thurston (galleryHOMELAND & Elizabeth Leach/ West Coast, USA)
Sven Stuckenschmidt (Berlin, Germany)
curators leah stuhltrager and paul middendorf

das Berlin-Stück. Tag vier (the berlin piece day four)

2009-10-21T15:33:00.004-04:00

getting pretty close to resolving the form for this one, but i am getting even closer to collapsing for the day.

das berlin stuck Tag drei (the berlin piece day three)

2009-10-20T17:44:00.004-04:00

not only was this the first day where i really started to see the possibility of resolving the form before the opening, but an old friend from high school who is based in berlin came by the gallery and showed us a little bit of the real berlin. the real berlin included dining in a white trash themed restaurant that serves german style american food. tomorrow i will finish fleshing out the form and hopefully we will see a resolved installation by friday.

das Berlin Stück Tag zwei(the berlin piece day 2

2009-10-19T15:48:00.004-04:00

judging by the spent latte's up in this piece it must be the end of day two.

the legs in the corner belong to paul middendorf the co-mastermind along with leah stuhltrager behind the east/west project that is hosting this installation.

Das Berlin-Stück, Tag einer (The Berlin piece Day one)

2009-10-18T15:40:00.004-04:00

one of the best things, and most noticably different things for this space is the storefront window. It has been an interesting turn after working inside so many windowless cubes for so long.
the gallery also came with this readymade dan flavin installation on the celing which i have begun to integrate into the berlin piece.

as the sun began to set the reflection in the window became a sort of lee friedlander-ish image, except i am on the inside of the gallery looking out.

the end of day one.

The Berlin Piece, arrival, plus a little work

2009-10-17T13:22:00.009-04:00

after traveling 20hours total, the best i could do was sit down a bit while i wove.

it is fall in berlin, which is pretty cool. i am pretty tired, so until the start of official work day one.

Preparing for Berlin

2009-10-15T09:33:00.004-04:00

in order to maximize the amount of sticks i can fit in my wal mart duffel bags I have been taking them out of the cases and bagging them 1000 at a time in ziploc storage bags

the giant paper bag in the foreground is something else i am playing with for a future non-stir stick show.

Since I have a limited amount of time on the ground in Berlin before the opening, I have tried to prepare as much as possible ahead of time so that I can maximize my work time. To do this I have packed my sticks into ziploc bags then packed them within duffel bags to be checked through to berlin. If I had more time there I might have secured a source for my sticks, but since my time is incredibly limited i.e the show opens on the 23rd and I have grown quite fond of the line of sticks I have been getting I figured it would be best not to tempt fate. I have a full day of travel ahead of me tomorrow and then if I am not too wiped out when I land in berlin I have my first day of weaving on another continent. This first day will be followed by six more days of weaving in Berlin, most likely interspersed with breaks for german coffee, bratwurst, bread, and the occasional siesta depending on the effects of jet lag. I am looking forward to getting some drawing and reading done on the flight too as airplanes tend to be incredibly interesting and fruitful grounds for creativity and idea generation.

Wreg Live at 9 Memphis

2009-10-12T14:36:00.004-04:00

enjoy and here is a little behind the scenes
imagery

the memphis opening

2009-10-08T21:13:00.004-04:00

this is the opening food about 10 minutes into the opening

and here is the same food 30 minutes later. In case you were wondering the menu was, meatballs, eggrolls, seven layer dip, a vegetable plate, brownies and iced tea.

notice the sweet tea on the left is completely drained, while the unsweet tea remains partially drunk,note this was the only consumable left behind after the swarm of students descended upon the food.

imagine the chocolate brownies that once stood upon this spot

and a good time was had by all.

The Memphis Piece+Brilliant Stuff Merch Booth

2009-10-07T19:00:00.006-04:00

these are a couple of shots i took on the drive in to memphis in the town of brilliant alabama, i definitely need stop back through there if i have time and weather permits on the way back.

I managed to get the merchandise display put together and have already seen a few of the glow in dark t shirts head out the door. unfortunately i wasn't able to get my new stickers here in time, but I should have some of those ready by the time i go to Berlin. After this show I will set up a proper online order system so people playing along at home can get shirts posters and other brilliant stuff being produced along the way.

The opening is tomorrow night from 5-7. I will do my best to get a few action shots from tomorrow nights opening and hopefully get on my merry way back to SC by friday morning.

memphis day 8 on day 9

2009-10-06T10:19:00.005-04:00

Richard Lou the chair of the department, and the one who invited me here, checks out the progress on the memphis piece.

the little stick that got away

I have reached the end of construction on the piece and need to resolve the lighting, clean the gallery and finish something else before the opening. I am giving my artist talk today. giving a talk is something that always bookends a project for me. It causes me to take stock and think about how I got where I am now. In this instance I can immediately see the lessons learned in the making of the city gallery piece and the norman piece synthesized into the memphis piece. In particular is the intersecting planes woven back through the structure that emerged in the norman piece, and the severe curves and lyricism of the city gallery piece. I am continually amazed by the variations and discoveries i am making along the way.

the boxes of sticks used to create the memphis piece have been inserted one into another to form a meandering line, then promptly flattened and recycled....

so I am rearranging the component parts of the styrofoam travel crate i made in order to make something special for the opening.

memphis day 7

2009-10-04T23:13:00.003-04:00

and on the seventhe day a laundry and powerpoint work day was created. I actually did sleep in a little bit this morning, alarm bell at 8 rather than 6. I managed to runa load of laundry and do some other work and still make it into the gallery by 1. I worked on fleshing out the intersecting planes and resolving the leading edge and cleaning up a bit. At first I was unsure about the industrial carpet floor, but have warmed up to it as it allows for a little more grip along the foot of the piece. I am enjoying the direction this piece has taken and can see it being resolved very shortly.

memphis day 6

2009-10-03T20:06:00.004-04:00

todaythe intersecting planes from norman piece made an appearance in the memphis piece. only a couple more work days before this is resolved.

memphis day 5

2009-10-02T23:53:00.003-04:00

today's inspirational lesson from the university of memphis holiday inn.

memphis day 4

2009-10-01T18:53:00.004-04:00

so today i worked on the left side bringing it closer to the other side, tomorrow i will try and take the piece in a new direction, with only 5 work days left until the opening i need to pace myself now that we are at the half way point. I did find out today that the day after the opening i will be on a morning tv news show weaving my way through their segment, that should be fun.

I have some amazing accommodations for this gig. The university of memphis has me a room in the university of memphis holiday inn. Not only is this the nicest holiday inn I have ever seen, like my room is a suite with a living room and a kitchenette, it is also the holiday inn museum. The floor i am on houses a gallery full of the holiday inn founder's personal relics and a wall of text panels with his inspiring adages and aphorisms. The hotel actually doubles as their school of hotel and hospitality management. It really gives me that little get up and go that it takes to get through day, especially the panel pictured here.

i will try and snap images of all the different ones in there.

Memphis day 3

2009-09-30T22:03:00.004-04:00

my primitive time keeper.

based on the cups of coffee consumed it must be day three.

so i brought the edge of the wall out and connected it to the other section, I think I will work on resolving the other edge a little bit tomorrow.

memphis day 2

2009-09-29T22:11:00.005-04:00

today i began to understand the room a little bit better, until day three.

Memphis day 1

2009-09-28T19:38:00.004-04:00

so this is how it starts.

until tomorrow

Memphis on the horizon, and what i am leaving behind.

2009-09-25T18:25:00.008-04:00

just some shots of the "finished" studio. more accurately the state i got to before i needed to work on other stuff.
this is the idea wall with images and plans for the gallery spaces still to be tackled on the next leg of the tour, and i seem to be adding more all the time.
so i decided to cover the exposed insulation in more insulation, actually sheets of blue foam insulation. I am finding that the color combination of bare sheetrock grey and light blue foam insulation reminds me of a mid-6o's brice marden color scheme,so yes i like it.

I took apart what had been a false start for an unrealized installation of woven ribbon stock steel and am now re weaving and welding it into the image of a fallen iced coffee drink.

I still have a ways to go in terms of weaving the structure fully in with steel, but the piece of 2" conduit turned out to make the perfect straw. i should point out that the circles of steel helping to define the shape of the cup and lid are from an old display stand I found behind urban outfitters last year. I toted the circles with me when i moved because i knew they would be good for something. This piece will make it's debut in the things show in November, if I can get it finished in time.
I made myself a new studio chair. the ingredients a discarded breuer chair frame, some plywood and blue foam, good as new.

These are the woven stir stick panels I made ahead of time for the Memphis piece. Since I am driving I will be able to load them myself into the truck and won't have to build a proper crate

I have been trying to develop a proposal for an outdoor piece I would like to make. in order to understand my ideas better and to facilitate the proposal process i made a simple scale model with some scrap wood and photos of the site. I even got some of that train set grass and the miniature people. I have three distinct ideas for this space and will submit them to the people who make the decisions and let them decide which if any they would be most interested in developing.

this is the lightweight blue foam and 1x4 travel package for the stir sticks. It is sized to fit the bed of the truck with no over hang...i hope.

So I always have these moments before installations where I take stock of what is going on in the studio and what is going on in my head art-wise. Each time I get the opportunity to build a new woven stir stick piece I learn somethings new, either about space and the interaction of artwork and people within it, or lately about systems of drawing. With the recent shift in my practice from spending extended time working in the studio punctuated with occasional site work, to now focusing on multiple installations of my work punctuated by occasional bouts of studio work I have learned something new about how I think. I find myself, thinking more and more about drawing. For me drawing a line, whether on a page in my sketchbook, or in the gallery with sticks and shadows, is what it means to be an artist. I am also open minded enough to understand that "drawing a line" can be metaphorical. I think that new media artists, institutional critique practitioners, painters, performance artists and others who don't present drawings as finished work still draw a line either to history, ideas, the audience or simply to themselves. It is in my nature to immediately try and understand the context for which works of art and design exist in the world. I long ago embraced the idea that art is everywhere, and I can have just as moving an art experience in wal-mart as i do at the met. This is possible because I am constantly drawing a line between what I am seeing and what it's place is in the larger universe of culture, objects, and things. This is a strange thought to have on my mind as I scramble to get the last loose ends and materials packed in the truck before I hit the road for Memphis on Sunday. I am particularly excited for the trip to Memphis as I will be driving the route that takes me through Birmingham, then through Brilliant Alabama, then into the end of Memphis that has the FedEx headquarters. I like these long drives as I have time to watch my train of thought move across the landscape and draw new connections between what I see and what I do. I especially enjoy this chance to draw a line of thinking as I notice more and more how technology and google in particular deprives humans of the ability to draw their own conclusions. It is very precious to me where a train of thought goes, and for me the google algorithm, especially the new google caffeine, is not where my mind goes. As a way to ween myself off of allowing google to find the answer, I have stopped "googling" for useless facts I cant remember. A case in point was a couple of weeks ago when I was trying to remember a very important sci-fi movie that dealt with cyborgs, and post-modernism and it starred Harrison Ford and was just re-released, it was on the tip of my tongue. I could easily have googled this but instead I let my forgetfulness linger and the next day while I was working in the studio, the name "blade runner" came back to me. But more importantly what came back was the last time I attempted to watch it and couldn't finish it, and how robocop 2 made a much stronger and for me more watchable critique of modernism. I suppose this is a simple way of saying I am looking forward to a brief road trip as a warm up to Memphis, as a way to help me focus and prepare mentally for the challenges that lie ahead. I for one can't wait for the train to leave the station, and maybe miss a few stops along the way. and if the train gets lost i can always use googlemaps to help me find my way.

8 years on

2009-09-11T08:15:00.003-04:00

i still find that much of my motivation is related to this experience. As someone who lived/lives life with no particular plan for what is coming next, I remember my cage being rattled by this moment. I was in the studio, in college that morning. someone brought in a radio and said we were under attack,and i remember the moment I said to myself what difference can i make in a world where this happens. I remember going back to the studio that evening to process what had happened and for the first time feeling how incredibly powerless art making made me feel. It was in the following weeks that I cut my dreadlocks, and made a commitment to produce art that was impactful to me and felt more of this time than of the turn of the century. Ironically this desire to connect so sincerely with my time led me to an in depth investigation of the art of other times, particularly the art of the late 60's in america and the early 70's in england. For some reason I felt a kinship with these two moments and places. Through this process I have found my own voice and interests. Not least of which is to engage with my audience as directly as is possible. Although I am fortunate as an artist to experience the transcendence that comes from art making on a daily basis, to share some amount of these feelings with an audience is the real gift of making. As I continue my travels over the next year taking my "shtick" on the road, I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to acknowledge one of the profound events in my life that gave me the motivation to commit to art making. I remember reading an article following semptember 11th that said the purpose of terrorism is to terrorise, and disrupt life. I imagine if I had followed my line of thinking after september 11th I might have taken a different path in life, abandoned art, music and expression and figured out what my purpose was in a different way. Fortunately the listlessness and anxiety I felt after September 11th led to a stronger commitment to my studio practice. This is what I think about each year that passes, and I think about this moment as the beginning rather than the end of an era. If the time before September 11th was the age of anxiety, than Post 9/11 is the age of commitment and resolve for me.

some of the norman prints

2009-08-29T23:18:00.006-04:00

this is the collagraph plate for the "sleeve mandala" print. the plate is an arrangement of coffee sleeves with a central coffee cup lid, which is from my mocha i drank before the printing day.

a screenprint of an image of a portion of the norman piece.
the sleeve mandala print.
this is the printing plate for the norman print.

these are my new t-shirts, printed with glow in the dark ink.

I spent all day today printing in the ou printshop. I began the day making a collagraph plate of collaged coffee sleeves and the lid from my mocha. I worked on another layered collage screen print, and further explorations of printing directly from the inked panel of sticks. I worked so late i actually did not get a chance to take pictures of all the prints before i packed them for return shipping. So concludes my norman stop of the tour, next up I will see you in memphis.

The norman piece opening the norman prints being made today and tomorrow

2009-08-28T18:22:00.013-04:00

i started bt making some coffee cup sleeve collagraphs, but later moved into screenprints and stir stick prints.

Today I ducked into the amazing ou printshop to work on some prints and ephemera related to the norman piece. i started messing with making a suite of norman prints. I played around with inking up a small woven section of sticks.cant thank curtis jones the amazing printmaker and jared the super print assistant for their help in facilitating the printing madness.

so i created a woven stir stick printing plate inked it and ran it through the press. I will be re-investigating this process a little bit more before i leave norman.

of course it wouldntbe the same without a few of these.

the view through the cheese cubes.

norman day 8 and 9 feelin fine

2009-08-27T22:09:00.004-04:00

Well I finished working on the norman piece this morning. I spent the day working on and then giving my artist talk, and just sort of hanging out around the ou art building. Tomorrow I am going to try and get in the print shop and pull some prints before the opening. I still need to clean up the debris and try and get a good nights sleep before tomorrow but otherwise things are well. I think one of the biggest things I found out with the norman piece is that it felt like I had taken what I made for the city gallery piece and split it in half. Where the past three stir stick installations had central forms that defined them, the norman piece feels more like a return to my interest in defining space the way the redux piece did in 2006. I also discovered the joy pf creating the intersecting planes that appear on one end of the piece. The intersecting planes felt a bit like I was finally letting out my inner maya lin. I will try my best to get some action shots during the opening tomorrow night, and look forward to getting some time back in the studio at home before heading off to The University of Memphis for the next stop on the tour.

norman day 7

2009-08-25T23:24:00.002-04:00

the end of day seven, until eight.

norman day 6

2009-08-24T18:29:00.002-04:00

managedto get

i am taking the evening off to go see matt&kim, in concert...until tomorrow.

day five of norman

2009-08-23T20:09:00.005-04:00

so today is the day that I began to turn a corner with the form. I should be finished with the mechanical lift tomorrow morning and moving on to ladder and ground work from here on out.
one the best features of the lightwell is the ability for me to step way back from the work and begin to see the whole gesture and overall composition of the piece, something that is a rare a opportunity.

this is tomorrows first priority, bridging this corner and beginning to shape this edge, hopefully i can get these two points to meet without any major incidents.

norman day 4

2009-08-22T19:05:00.005-04:00

what's a day 4? why it's for weavin stir sticks what else. until tomorrow

norman day 3

2009-08-21T20:50:00.009-04:00

the sound of a tornado siren in the distance, apparently a tradition every friday at noon in norman. I am beginning to see some familiar shapes in this installation and am finally getting comfortable with the direction this one seems to be taking.

Norman Day two

2009-08-20T20:47:00.005-04:00

day two , the sound of trains in the distance, thunderstorms, and crickets. Oh and some headway with the form. until tomorrow

day one in norman

2009-08-19T20:33:00.003-04:00

day one in norman and the crate and materials arrived safely. I also found out that matt &kim are playing a concert here on monday, what a great break to look forward to.

more images of the adorned shack studio

2009-08-18T10:40:00.006-04:00

essentially this is a 16x20 prefab structure on blocks transformed into my dream studio, at least for the next two years until we move again. This is what is waiting for me when I get back from norman.
the sheetrock is half finsihed, i blame my sheetrock guy, so i blame myself for not finishing before i left town for oklahoma. I did manage to get all four of the fluorescent lights wired up without electrocuting myself, which is a real accomplishment.

another one of my patented found-object-found-stereo-speaker combination npr receiver/ipod external speaker station assemblages.(patent pending)

currently this half of the idea wall is being used even before I finish hanging the other half of the idea wall. Most of those scraps of paper are for upcoming installations and gallery maps of various other works in progress.

leaning against the wall over there are some of the component parts of the vibrating coffee cup installation at redux, which will be recofigured for a show in the future, and the wood from the resonator box/cube is being re-used for a newer project.

pretty self explanatory.

well i have a plane to catch to the middle of america and some stir sticks waiting to be woven on the other side of that trip, but I know what I will be doing when I get back to south carolina...sheetrockin and workin in the adorned shack studio.

counting down to Norman, counting down to a finished studio

2009-08-16T13:16:00.009-04:00

the u of O exhibition postcard design, courtesy of jonathan hils' facebook page.

some doodles on the wall of what I am thinking about the oklahoma piece.
Although I never follow a preconceived site plan too closely, I still like to make them in order to filter out any first impulses that might not suit the site I will be working in. such is the case with the norman piece. I fly out tuesday and by wednesday morning I should be on site and getting down to the business of making the piece for the u of oklahoma.
In the three months since finishing the city gallery piece I have seen a tremendous amount of upheaval and change in my personal life but not so much in my studio practice. the reason for this is because I am moving forward with the next half dozen or so installations and the couple of odd sculpture projects as well whether or not i have a formal studio situation fully resolved. Beginning the day after the city gallery piece opened i moved out of my charleston studio and into a nice transitional space(read spare bedroom for indoor work/carport for outdoor work) building up to working in my as yet unfinished columbia studio(which I have christened "the adorned shack studio" as a statement of what it is and a reference to a popular critique of modernist architecture).

a view of the adorned shack studio from the spare bedroom where I was working.

one of the first things I did in the adorned shack studio, which is still in need of complete sheetrock, and at the point this photo was taken complete lighting, was finish crating some woven panels for the norman oklahoma show. I have since these photos were taken finished the lighting and begun hanging sheetrock, but I can work anywhere and once the walls and the electrical were in it was good enough for me.
My approach to the norman piece is similar to my approach for the city gallery piece. I have made some woven panels ahead of time, but this time i had to ship them rather than deliver them myself. In a cool bit of unexpected symmetry these panels are also comprised of some of the sticks from the city gallery piece that were returned to me after the closing. Although the crowd at the closing reception made short order of the piece and took home many souvenirs I was left with enough boxes of "used" sticks that I was able to re-weave about ten 4footx7foot panels, which will give me enough "oh shit" material that I should be able to work comfortably over the next nine days in norman.

the panels have been sandwiched lovingly between layers of 4mil plastic sheeting then closed snuggly within a beautiful travel crate of my own design and making. The theory holds that as long as no one drives a fork lift through the crate they will get there in a usable fashion. If someone does drive a forklift through the crate then I will have one heck of a collaborative sculpture between myself and the fork lift driver.