TONIGHT--seriously this time

Material is excited to announce its forty-seventh exhibition: Amanda McKnight and Rebekah Laurenzi: Your Epidermis Is Showing.

The exhibition will run for one night only on Friday, August 28, 2009 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.

Valhalla Y'all

I think I've found a fun subject for the next few months.

I just finished reading Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange, a book about pre-Mayflower America and I got excited about all of the different voices that are included in the story.

So now I think I'll make a painting or thirty about conquistadors and vikings and I think I'll replace their halberds and, uh, "viking-whackers" with protest signs. Like this:

And, value-added, if you see these pictures on facebook they'll have extra tagging baggage!

Back to School

I'm teaching two studio art classes at the University of Memphis this semester and I'm having a great time pouring over old syllabi and looking over some of the project ideas I've come across in the past couple of years. I L O V E* teaching these classes because I get introduced to the newest of new ideas and the most surprising surprises every time we have a critique. Only in Foundations classes am I introduced to disposable camera tasers, spray-tanned inflatable girlfriends, professional drum kits made of professional kitchen supplies, ten-foot tall ping-pong paddles, and any number of surreal photoshop montages.

I'm introducing a new tool to my arsenal this semester--a (hand-me-down) iPod touch. My original plan was to use it just to take attendance, but then I found this great article: 30 Best iPhone Apps for Art Teachers! I'm especially curious about the Life Strips application because the Memphis Reads book this year is a graphic novel, Persepolis.

I'm also planning on bringing in some lo-fi Wallace Stevens jars. To place. In Tennessee.

*did you know that in German, instead of using bold, italics or underlining for emphasis, a space is added between the letters of important words. That means that the word love up there is emphasized in English and G e r m a n and (if you click the hyperlink) Digital-Nativish?

Surf

Surf photography meets Sally Mann--these beautiful photos are worth a second look.

Bok Bok

tiny houses

By taking the time to do those little etsy drawings in my sketchbook, I uncovered a new favorite artist! When I started drawing Amy Wilson's tiny felt houses, I kept thinking about "how they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same."

Amy Wilson, who teaches (a class on kitsch among other things) at the School of Visual Arts in NYC, wrote a great post about the success of her little houses project. The project seems simple. Wilson writes: "they’re little houses made out of felt and cotton; each one fits easily in the palm of your hand. The roofs come off and they can be used to store little things like paperclips or safetypins."

It turns out that Wilson's "real" work, documented on

her website and through flickr , includes everything from watercolor sketches out of Second Life to these beautiful, critical, hand-embroidered works that I want to wrap myself in--to touch and discuss and read and revisit. Wilson makes places; from little felt or paper houses to virtual worlds these places are intimate and rich. She has been compared to Henry Darger or Grandma Moses, but part of the work that most appeals to me is the self-conscious "insider" critique found in elements of the text.

Can you read what that says? "There was, I think, a question of sincerity, education, or maybe commitment on the part of the artist -- a sense that there are some objects that remain suspect."

Take some time to get to know this work.

Here are some places to start.

Installation at Hunterdon Art Museum

NYTimes Review: Meet Grandma Moses with an Attitude

NYTimes Review: Working Words Into Images, Artists Become Storytellers

issu

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

I just came across an online publication called CREO that has some really interesting ideas for a niche market: not just artists, but specifically art students. CREO is a quarterly, online magazine that explores the collision of art and culture from the student perspective. They are "dedicated to empowering burgeoning artists to interpret their world, cultivate discussions, and inspire others while sharing their art and writing."

CREO is published online through a service called issu. Mashable has a decent write-up of the service here, and this video does a good job of describing the service too.

I can imagine that this would be a fantastic way for artists to provide context for their portfolios by making online catalogs and portfolios available to anyone, simply and easily. CREO has done it--so can you!

The Front Page of Etsy

I made some drawings tonight of all of the featured items on the front page of etsy.com.

I have a store on etsy and I windowshop there every night, but I can't really buy all of the funny and beautiful things I see there. Where would I keep all of my apple jackets and hand-knit beards?

xlessthan3

wifeofbrian

rochelle's little ones

optic waste

modern fx

kate is great

frosti

ephemeral design

deadsquirrelgirl

barcode art

amanda jean

jacquelineknits

Making little drawings and tucking them into my sketchbook is much more feasible.

All drawings done with walnut drawing ink in a Strathmore 3.5x5" notebook filled with premium recycled paper.

Premium, man.

Gideon Rubin

The NYTimes "The Moment" blog features a studio visit with Gideon Rubin--I've never heard of Rubin before, but this work, faceless portraits painted from old photo albums, looks a lot like some paintings I did a year or two ago before I had my daughter. It's interesting to hear about how his experience of having a one-year-old seems to have affected his studio practice.

On his website, Rubin has posted some small gouache on cardboard portraits that are less specifically bound to particular "albums"--like this one of Obama, 8cmx7cm. The "throwaway" cardboard paintings intrigue me. They remind me of one of my favorite paintings from the permanent collection at the Dixon Gallery, a tiny Pissarro landscape done on the top of a cigar box.

We practice where we can.

Memphis Friday

OK, so here's three things to add to your to-do list today:

First, don't forget to go to Material tonight: (DOH--I mean in a couple of weeks!)

Material is excited to announce its forty-seventh exhibition: Amanda McKnight and Rebekah Laurenzi: Your Epidermis Is Showing.

The exhibition will run for one night only on Friday, August 28, 2009 from 6:00 PM to 8:00 PM.

Your Epidermis Is Showing is an exhibition of new work by Amanda McKnight and Rebekah Laurenzi that plays with the conventional roles of “insides” and “outsides.” Through sculptural installation, McKnight simultaneously conceals and reveals, exploring ideas of identity and perception. Laurenzi’s sculptures present cross-section views of everyday objects, exposing surprising internal patterns.

Both Amanda McKnight and Rebekah Laurenzi live, work and teach in Memphis, Tennessee. Your Epidermis Is Showing is the first of two collaborations for the artists. On September 3rd they will be showing work in One Night Stand in Oxford, Mississippi. For more information visit: www.amandamcknight.blogspot.com and www.rebekahlaurenzi.com.

Material is located at 2553 Broad Avenue. Parking is available on both the north and south sides of Broad Avenue.

Second:
I'm pretty sure there's an opening tonight at the P&H. Jason Cole.

Third thing:
If you are interested in learning about hidden art gems, mural making, and having a good time meeting new people, all while making Memphis a great place to live by making murals, consider joining the new Paint the Town group! First target: ugly underpasses. Dues of $40/year go to paying for paint and parties. For more information, send an email to info@urbanartcommission.org. If you don't feel like paying dues, at least become a fan on facebook.

Etsy picks for August 2009

This is what I love on etsy today:

Etsy Buy Handmade chandlerpritchett

dad and me

Here's a drawing of me with my Dad. Roll Tide!

snuggie

Check out the cut paper collages by Micheal Velliquette. Velliquette is from Madison, Wisconsin. This one's called Snuggie and has furry teeth.

Here's the gallery description of his latest show.

Abundant Creatures

DCKT Contemporary is pleased to present MICHAEL VELLIQUETTE’s second New York solo exhibition.VELLIQUETTE hand cuts and glues paper cardstock into complex dimensional assemblages reminiscent of the interiors of large-scale pop-up books or mosaics in high relief. In his current body of work Velliquette returns once again to garden and jungle settings where humorous and visually dense paper tableaux are populated with animistic spirits, beasts, goons and gods.

GOONS! That is SUCH a GREAT WORD!

Festive Deltiology

Deltiology can be fun thanks to design sponge. Hooray for postcards!

roosters

Here's the mess I'm making of that rooster sketch--I always feel a little uncertain when pieces are half-baked. This has a long way to go, but I'm interested in seeing what changes between unfinished and finished work. I'm trying to analyze ways I lay down color, mostly, but also trying to recognize Gee Whiz moments from which other pieces are can be born.

Art Papers take on It Is What It Is

A few months ago I wrote this post about Jeremy Deller's art project "It is What it is: Conversations about Iraq." The project consists of a trailer-full of "conversation partners." who were there to facilitate conversations about Iraq and the car-bomb they were toting around as a centerpiece.

Vesna Krstich wrote a great essay about the piece for the July/August issue of Art Papers. Krstich writes that "the project aims to fill the alleged 'information gap' between the American public, its grasp of the Iraq War, and the understanding of the customs and traditions of Iraqi citizens." Krstich then goes on to describe installations that include cozy cushioned chairs and hand-stitched banners in which people were "a little too intrigued by the aesthetic properties of the car: the rusted patina and the sculptural nature of the twisted metal."

It sounds to me like the project that Krstich saw was almost on a different planet from the one that I saw--a few gruff men with a folding table and little tent next to a trailer in a parking lot, and makes me wonder if there isn't a great deal of truth to the idea that the most complex and interesting conversations did in fact happen in the parking lot of First Congo as unsuspecting bike-riding dudes paused to find out what this scene was all about. How would the Memphis experience of this project have been different if it had been hosted at a venerable institution like the Brooks or the Dixon? What if the conversation shared on YouTube had been with one of the professorial types who were also in the mix or with the children they met at the Civil Rights Museum or with the sophisticates at the dinner party later that night?

I love the questions that are asked in this article: "How does one document or judge these types of collaborative, research-based or dialogical practices? How do we assess them if we did not participate in the discussions? . . . How will this conversations be framed once they are exhibited in another format? What of the other, off-camera conversations?"

I love the idea that this work is described as "research-based." Of course this is research, but to what end? I look forward to seeing the results.

I love photography!

My career as a photographer has been pretty short-lived. I worked as a Zap Girl for a while and I shoot a lot for fun and for research, but most of my experience with photography has been as a collector. I'm happy to have works by Yijun "Pixy" Liao, Raleigh Rodger, and Erin Tyner in my collection.

In the meantime, I wish I could add some of these great photographers to my walls:

Memphis Rockstars--

Lea Alexander
Amie Vanderford
Ian Lemmonds
Justin Fox Burks

Study Abroad--
Olli Kartunnen
Christian Chaize
Joseph O Holmes

and while we're making wishes
Sally Mann
Hiroshi Sugimoto

Did you know that if you tweet the phrase "favorite photographer" you get followed by a robot? Yikes.

Shots from today at DLG, Spruce and LRoss

IF you're in Memphis and you want to see a lot of awesome artwork RIGHT NOW, go here:
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Blogger/photographer Melissa Sweazy at Spruce. Check her out at http://bebedreamblog.blogspot.com/More Sweazy. The card from this show has been sitting on my desk all week. It's a lovely local wearing a couture outfit made entirely of plastic grocery bags. That beautiful bag monster is more lovely than any Azalea Trail Maid--if Sweazy can make trash bags look that good, I need her to take some pics of me in my fancy togs.
Kerri Dugan at Spruce. They also have great home accessories and perfect little pretty gifts.
Clare Torina at l. ross. I LOVE LOVE LOVE these.
Bobby Spillman at l. ross with towers of cake!

Lea Alexander, perfectly placed at l. ross above the front desk. these landscapes/bedsheets are AMAZING. They make me want to go to bed early and sleep late and build tents under my covers. So serene . . . oooh, aaah.

After that, you're going to want to head down the street to David Lusk Gallery:

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Hamlett Dobbins makes me wish I had the winning $750 lottery ticket so I could have this hot pink painting--it's a total steal. Maybe I'll dig through my couch cushions looking for change, because something that wickedly pink deserves a permanent place in my life. I'm sure someone else will beat me to it . . . (Price is Right, David Lusk Gallery)

Tad Lauritzen Wright's silly girls on graph paper with beers and bunny ears made me laugh out loud. (Price is Right, David Lusk Gallery).

Beth Edwards' elegant flowers steal the show. They took my breath away and made me want to feel those silky tissue thin petals. Amazing textures and light and color pull you right into the heart of the blossoms, into the company of a tiny little bee. Metaphors whisper, the images sing. (Price is Right, David Lusk Gallery).

Take time to see this stuff in person. My photos are really quick and casual; the depth and variety of what's up in town until the end of August deserves a thorough look!

Jeff Koons

I've been looking at a lot of Jeff Koons lately.

I've also been looking at musical balloons, mardi gras loot, and fireworks packages.

I'll show you some next week:)

sketch for three roosters

This is what I'm working on right this second.

The Blind Leading

If you've been to see the waterlillies exhibit at the High Museum in Atlanta this month, you're probably already mind-boggled that Monet was going blind as he worked on those amazing paintings. We don't often think of Monet's work as a product of deteriorating vision--blindness was not a part of his marketable identity, however today visually impaired artists are using blindness as an asset. Some of these painters, like Esraf Armagan--a Turkish man who has been blind since birth, have used their familiarity with the tricks of representational art to baffle Harvard neurologists. Others, like Lisa Fittipaldi, have explained the experience of painting as a blind person in books like A Brush With Darkness. Without the written explanation, these paintings seem to deny the condition. Scientists and researchers seek these people out to understand the way vision functions in the brain, but how does a blind artist function within our culture?

Contemporary photographers seem to have found a more multivalent way to investigate the conditions of blindness. Check out the work of the blind photographers featured in this exhibit at the California Museum of Photography called Sight Unseen. You may have heard about this exhibit from ArtSlant or on the npr.org blog called pictureshow or from Time magazine. The photos in this exhibit demonstrate extremely diverse approaches towards contemporary art. Some are made by artists using scanners or laser pointers. Others use the structure and talent found in collectives to make their images happen. Many of these photographs combine text with image in the form of Braille, particularly in the work of Gerardo Nigenda. This composition requires a braille-reader to assist in the interpretation of the photograph, just as a sighted person must assist with interpreting the visual content of the work to someone who is blind. When I saw this, I thought about how we are all experts at some things and in the dark about others--the title of the photo "Hay Enlace . . . Hay Fusion . . . Hay Interaccion (Oaxaca, Mexico)" translates to "There is interconnectedness . . . there is fusion . . . there is interaction."* Consider the ways this image of one hand holding another seems both strange and personal. The double-blind message speaks to our vulnerabilities while revealing the essential strength of humankind. Essentially, we each want to connect in any way we can find--visually, verbally, and authentically.

*Thanks to Richard Lou for the translation

Art 21: Memphis Edition

Check out this great Art 21 blog post about Memphis!

Art21 guest blogger & MCA Art History Professor Adrian Duran had a lot of great things to say about this city.

Drifting Creatives: Memphis Typography

I was really inspired by this post about Memphis typography by the itinerant designers at Drifting Creatives. Shocked that there wasn't a single example of a tag by NOSEY, I decided to spend part of my summer camera-out to pick up on the visual language that I walk past on a daily basis.  These are from the U of M.  More from the neighborhood to follow.

Memphis Mural

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