Habitat improvement

More updated photos of my habitat over at Spire. I've rigged up a transparant roof, and temporarily blocked up some of the open areas just so I can get to using the space, and continue working on the structure at a more leisurely pace.

I'll be adding one more of the Garden Variety pieces to this facade, an arm that will protrude to support a hanging sculpture I'll be working on.

You can see the Habitats of Marnie Hillsley and Sara Mussen to the right of mine. We've got a regular village developing now.

A great silhouette cast on this face of the structure as the sun was sinking behind the hill.

What they don't teach you in high school - oh, they do teach that.

image source

Last week I was struck with a revelation that isn't so much a revelation as a realization, one which I've had in the past, but this time it was particularly profound. Once again, I found myself acutely aware of how valuable the Pythagorean Theorum has proven to be in my life. Not on a daily basis, but frequent enough (ie, more than once) to be surprising to me, and perhaps utterly nonshocking to my fifteen year old self. I remember being somewhat interested in the rational nature of the laws of geometry in high school, but I generally struggled with it as I recall. In general, my tolerance for math subjects was low, as was the bar I set for myself for achievement in those classes. It was thrilling when I was able to grasp a concept and solve a problem. So now, periodically, I experience that same sense of accomplishment in surmounting some logistical hurdle in some building a sculptural element in the studio, or as with last week, calculating the placement of two wall anchors from which a screen for a video projection was to hang, bisecting the corner of a gallery.

Greater self esteem through achievement in basic math. That's what it's all about. Even for an artist.

Looking back, I would never imagine the range of knowledge and skill sets that are drawn upon, however infrequently, in the practice of making my art. That's what I'd like to have been made aware of at the time - that those subjects I couldn't wait to get out of would have value in pursuing that one subject I felt I had a passion for.

A space of my own

A few days ago, I assisted Simon Draper in putting up a couple of structures that are part of his Habitat for Artists project. The two structures we put up in next to the parking lot of Spire Studios will serve as a studio space for me, in one, and a writing/work space for musician Dar Williams.

We transported the materials up from Simon's studio in Peekskill on Tuesday, when Dar's structure went up and mine was erected on Weds. I ran over today to throw a little paint on the outside surface, which will undoubtedly be covered and transformed.

I'm excited to get the joint finished and start working. This project will run through mid May, and I'll try to get myself in there as much as possible during that time.

I'm pleased because I can just walk over to the shed, and as you can see from the image below, I can just see the structures from the porch of our apartment.

Shortly, there will be a few other structures put up on this same location, and we'll have a regular lil community. Marnie Hillsely's structure will be adjacent to mine, and Sara Mussen will also be at the location. Lil' Alexis Elton will be partaking in the project remotely, working in a structure that she'll construct out in NM. I envision our little corner of Spireland looking a bit like a the little village in Babette's feast.

A face in the crowd

In Feb of 2007 while waiting for a train home I witnessed a frozen action in Grand Central. Soon afterward I posted a blog entry on the happening and even searched the internet for any mention of it; there was none. Then just last week I perused Bruce Molsky's facebook page where another friend of his posted a youtube video that caught my eye. Eerily familiar, I knew this had to be the action I watched. As it turns out, Improve Everywhere is the group that instigated the "freeze." I was visiting Bruce Molsky's facebook profile.....this took me to the Improv everywhere site, and I saw myself there. Scrolling down the page on the Improve Everywhere site, I found this photo that caught me standing beside the stairs watching the event.
It's weird to find how your experience of your experiences can be informed, and even played back to you through the ever more pervasive eyes of the internet.

Quaykr in the Maykr

Early this year I began attending Quaker Meetings every week in Cornwall, NY. The meetings are a time for silent worship. Occasionally, when someone is so moved, they speak. This past meeting, one friend spoke of current developments in her life. She was asking about relevance and what is relevant in one's life and then she said that death asks us to ask difficult questions.
This phrase struck me as a rather poignant personification of death.
It got me thinking of the analog between making art and living one's life. Creation is the thing. Making art is a concentric inner life within life. Without killing spontaneity,ideally, one is constantly picking through elements of this or that piece, checking the relevance of each action to the whole of the composition. If at the end of this piece, I've not made an act of relevance - what then? I try doing it again. If on the other hand, I have made something embodying a level of relevance for myself - what then? I try doing it again.
Art is not only the act of creating but the act of dying. Constant pre-deaths, the repeated cycle of crucial struggles between effort validated and effort regretted. In the midst of it and through the completion of a painting there is present the possibility of outcome not expected and a possibility of the expected not living up to snuff. In either case, the questions need then be asked; Is it there? Is it any good? Can I live with this? The completion of a painting is a death. The end of a process. The end of one existence and the beginning of another. The process comes with satisfaction and some pain, but in facing these difficult questions, in time I find the answers are not so scary. If I die enough times on canvas or in the crusted paint roller covers I assemble together in an installation, the notion of this other big sleep can feel less like a deadline, and more an arbitrary, extended, hiatus. It's the random, and happenstance married with the intentional that creates and makes this artsy corpse of mine so exquisite. Good or bad, you just make another. In the face of it all, one can see that the search for relevance can be futile. Relevance is transitory, futility, endemic. Crafting relevance is presupposing an outcome, and unnaturally so. Relevance is the residue, not the catalyst. It either fits your taste or not.
Such are the lives we create for ourselves. Each day a new piece in an extended oeuvre. I feel fortunate that I'm pursuing a discipline that evokes such an intense process of reflection and query.
That type of honest assessment for which death prompts us to seek is mirrored by the artist's search for resolution to a particular visual problem.

Artma benefit, Feb 23, 2008

Ligature:umiekjr, 2007 oil on canvas 11"x14"

The above image is the piece that will be included in this year's Artma auction which will be taking place in Denver on February 23 from 6-10pm.


This piece is among the work that, as a body, is the latest iteration of of the work begun with the spamwerk paintings and more immediately, the Ligature studies, all of which are born from my recent habit of collecting subject lines from spam email.

Before a captive audience

Ms. Cramer - er Mrs. Rosenberg's art classroom.

In connection with the SOTT exhibit in November, I met several times with an upper level painting class at Littleton High School. Mary Rosenberg contacted me about talking to the students about the exhibit, and helping them embark on an assignment that dealt with personal more thoughtful personal interpretations of a literary source. I was a student of Mary's when she was still known as Ms. Cramer, sometime back in the 20th Century. The class made a trip to the Curtis Center to see the exhibit, and I attempted to explain the origins of the work in a way that, hopefully, would be interesting and perhaps enlightening. I didn't succeed in neither goal.

I then visited the school on two occasions, the first was more jabbering, this time with visual examples that demonstrated how various artists took inspiration, or responded to a literary work, or even an event in a way that went beyond simply regurgitating some narrative with images. On the final visit, I was able to spend more one on one time, hearing about what they were trying to do with their assignments and offering my input.

The concept of creating an adaptation of a source material rather than illustrating that source was not an easily transmitted to the students, but I was very impressed by the way many of them were able to grasp the idea as they progressed on their projects.

Oh Christmas Thing, Oh Christmas Thing.

Since I've been on my own, I've never had a Christmas tree. I love the season and my nostalgia for it seems to grow every year, but my experience of it is pretty internalized, and this has continued since I've been living with Angelika. We don't do much for Christmas generally, and usually drop out of the broader xmas machinations whirling around us, finding a serene corner in which to pass the holiday.

I love the smell that xmas trees and garland bring into the home, and the most that we've done consistantly decorating-wise is stringing up some natural garland, and trying to keep the cat from constantly eating and puking up the stuff.
I very nearly bought a tree, and I was envisioning the compositional potential of christmas lights. But putting all that together from scratch on short notice was more than I wanted to commit to, so I improvised and utilized what was on hand.

Thereby was born, The Christmas thing.


I strung the garland and colored lights around a contraption that I had built to support a sculpture that is in progress, and was originally intended for possible inclusion in the SOTT exhibit in November. Unfinished, the plaster sculpture, which is inspired by the graceful tendrils of ligament, blood and flesh flowing from Medusa's decapitated head in Benevenuto Cellini's sculpture, has assumed the mantle of holiday significance.
I think I've discovered my special holiday tradition. Look ahead for future renditions of new and varied Christmas Things in the years to come.

Final Days in Denver, Nov 07

William Stockman Puddle, oil on canvas 2006

My final days in Denver in November allowed me a chance to stop into the opening ofWilliam Stockman's "Nothing is Hiding" in the Singer Gallery at the Mizel Art Center at the JCC. I have always been taken by Stockman's drawings, and I've not coveted an artist's work more. I can't say why I never bought any. I remember stopping into Ron Judish Fine Art several times during a Stockman show back in 2000, and simply not being able to decide which I wanted more than another.
I guess I'd make a crappy collector.
Oddly, in a very indirect way, Stockman is responsible for me being in Beacon, NY now. I've never met him, but sometime soon after his aforementioned show at Judish, I read in Michael Paglia's column in Westword that Stockman was gearing up to move to Philadelphia. I was itching to leave Denver, need a landing spot and notice of this caught my imagination. I envisioned carving out a little to live and work in some anonymous and neglected corner of the city where real estate was cheap, and I was close to NY, but not too close. That's where it started, then by way of a pinball-like action, my attention was shot to rural Pennsylvania, up to Coxsackie NY (for the wedding of the inimitable David Kimmett) and eventually down to Beacon.

Still today, looking at Stockman's scratchy figurative drawings brings me a real visceral pleasure. I haven't seen his work since that 2000 show. This show at the Singer Gallery includes the black and white sketchbook pages, but the space is predominated by large canvases. The paintings' Twomblyesque accoutrement's are attractive, but feel obvious. Although beautiful and elegant, most of the paintings exist as large scale translations of the drawings. The paintings offer little new to the territory staked out in the drawings save the larger, color infused format, and all but a few of them make me think more of the sketches from which they were born. Still, its' a beautiful show, and it's on exhibit through January 18. Michael Paglia's write up of the show features a slide show of the exhibits' paintings.

On my last Sunday in town, I ran up to visit Dea and Dave at Plastic Chapel in their new location on East Colfax. Unfortunately, the joint is closed on Sundays. I snapped a couple of pics of the joint's new digs. Lauri Lynnxe Murphy's installation on the walls.

The Golden Fleece

Angelika flew out to join me for a few days around Thanksgiving, and with her came wintery, snowy weather infused with wonderful holiday atmosphere. The weather prior to her arrival had been in the '60s and 70's which is nice, but I was ready to feel the impending holiday season.


The plaza outside of the Denver Art Museum.

On Friday after Thanksgiving, we headed down to the Denver Art Museum. It was her first time to see the new Hamilton building. Currently on view at DAM is an exhibit of Color field painting, and an exhibit of objects from the Louvre called Artisans and Kings which required an additional special admission ticket of $8 over the $10 museum admission. Our friend John had an allotment of additional tickets to the exhibit so we didn't have to pay which was fortunate, because that would have been a horrendous waste of money had we had to shell it out ourselves. I have no problem paying an additional amount for a special exhibit at a museum, and I can appreciate the circumstances behind bringing a truly special exhibit to a venue. However, charging a premium for this exhibit is an extraordinarily cynical manuever on the part of the museum; throw the Louvre's lable on an exhibit, and the yoekels won't care what they're seeing. Hell, it's from the Louvre. Dig some crap out of the closet ship it to the new world and hold a glorified antiques road show in a $90.5M home? for contemporary art. The majority of the exhibit consists of well crafted over-the-top tacky decorative objects that had been personal possessions of of Louis and Marie Antoinette. As Angelika said, the history behind the objects is far more interesting than the actual objects. We were far more interested in the drawings included in two small galleries downstairs. Two small galleries. Sort of slim pickings to warrant an additional charge, and time stamped tickets. There's an uninspiring Titian painting, and a Velasquez portrait of La Infanta Margarita, the distinction of which, as promoted by the Museum, is that it was kept in Louis XIV's mother's bathing chamber.

How enlightening.

The additon of small oak curbs on the museum floors helps prevent folks from bruising their heads on the angle walls.

I guess I hope that the scheme to charge an extra premium was planned from the beginning, and it didn't arise as a strategy to make up for any shortfall in revenue given that this year's attendance numbers fell far short of projections, particularly as staff levels were drastically cut after the opening of the new wing.

It's an ok show-of decorative work, with some wonderful drawings, but there's no way in it warrants time specific tickets......

The Hamilton building's best interior attribute; the staircase.
The upside of Artisans and Kings being shown in the Anshutz Gallery is that Color as Field exhibit benefits by being seen in a gallery that does not detract from the work on display. This is a beautiful exhibit with many powerful paintings including a stunning, large ochre Motherwell, (the title of which I forget) some great Olitski's among many others. The Color as field exhibit is more than worth its price of admission. As this exhibit is tucked away in the main floor gallery in the North building, three or four paintings from the show are actually on display back in the Hamilton building, in order to draw traffic across the bridge to see the rest. Unfortunatly, these paintings play the role of sacrificial virgins which fare poorly at the hands of the killers of the sublime that are the Hamilton's galleries. Color as Field is on exhibit through Feb 3 and is worth a visit.

MCA's rooftop walkway as seen from below.

After leaving the valley of the DAMned we feasted on bison burgers in Larimer Square and then off to the newly opened but not quite finished MCA . The new building designed by David Adjaye sported unpainted joint compound patches on the walls and unpainted grinded down welds on the metal handrails above the atrium. The building provides a maze-like unfolding as you move from gallery to and floor to floor. The current offering is the inaugural exhibit "Star Power: Museum as Body Electric", featuring the work of seven artists from seven countries.

MCA's cafeteria

Before I was politely busted for taking photos in the rooftop museum's cafeteria I did manage to snap a few shots. I look forward to returning to this space in the future. The scale of the building is such that provides succinct a dose of contemporary art with out being overwhelmed right in the heart of LoDo.
From the MCA, we stopped into the Tattered Cover for hot beverages and extendsive magazine perusal. And I bought a book.

More Denver

Veteran's Day Parade on Nov. 10th. 2007 in Denver, afterward, I wandered around my old neighborhood for a bit.

Kids on cow.

The sculpture is "Cow and Calf" by Dan Ostermiller, located just South of DAM.

Plus+Gallery, sculpture by Michael Whiting.

After visiting with Michele Mosko at her gallery, I went up to Plus+Gallery to see the

exhibit of sculpture by Michael Whiting and paintings by Frank T. Martinez.

The next day, I headed over to the Lab at Belmar for the first time. For a couple of years, I've heard of the Lab's Mixed Taste Lecture series which combines two talks on disparate topics into one grand evening. The entity has only been in it's permanent space for little more than a year. I guess I was expecting more of an improvised, diy-type space carved out a store front in the newly developed, former Villa Italia Mall site, but the Lab is an honest to God REAL exhibition space; a petite contemporary kunsthalle. The proper name of the joint is "The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar," and the exhibition of art is only a portion of the activity there. I'm really taken by the spirit of the space and its mission as conveyed via the promotional material.




As stated on the website, the Lab is: "Part Art Museum /Part Public Forum/ Wholly Mackeral" and it's portrayed on the website and in its Notebook publicaton, the Lab is an open, irreverant and broad platform for the sharing and nurturing thought.

A view of the Lab's Poop Deck.

Shot of installation in Melanie Smith's exhibit Spiral City/Ciudad Espiral
on view through Dec 30.

In the Spirit of the Text exhibition images

Here are some images from the exhibit, I'll be posting other views and other pieces soon.

View from the outside: we placed quotes from Calvino's Six Memos on some of the gallery windows.

My Spamwerk paintings line the entryway, well above eye level.

Looking from the South gallery into the North gallery. My piece untitled(backmount) is in foreground, Marc Willhite's "Diagram for a Gesture" and "A Grand Fragment" can be seen through the doorways.

Marc's "Two Widths Seamed" on the left, and my "History Painting 2" on the right.

Marc's "Diagram for a Gesture" on the right, and my "History Painting 1" on the left.

Marc's "A Grand Fragment."

Looking from the North gallery into the South gallery.

My "Ground Cover."

Blesse 1 & 2 set in the wall in the background.

A small drawing, and a plaster piece, both called "Ground Cover."

Marc's "A wall of differing shades of grey."

"History Painting 1" butted up against the plaster "Ground Cover."

In the Spirit of the Text opening reception images.

Here are a few images from the opening reception of In The Spirit of the Text at the Curtis Arts and Humanities Center on Nov 3.

Day of Rest

One of the ceiling sections at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse.

In the Spirit of the Text opened Saturday night (images coming shortly,) but on Sunday, for my special-after-opening-treat, I headed up to the Boulder TeaHouse for a little Sunday Brunch and quiet time. It's been years since I had last been there, but for a while, some time back, heading up there was my Sunday morning ritual.

The setting, and the significance of the time I've spent there means a lot to me, and to go back, downing a couple of pots of tea, writing and reflecting at the bar was wonderful. Plus, BMOCA is just next door, making for a perfect package excursion.

Mary Miss' "Connect the Dots: Mapping the High Water, Hazards and History of Boulder Creek."

I headed over to BMOCA to see "Weather Report" the exhibit on Climate Change curated by Lucy Lippard. It's a great show, and a sprawling one at that. There are several offsite pieces, the documentation of which is assembled in the lobby. The one site specific piece that I did see, as part of it was placed at the entrance of the Museum is Mary Miss' "Connect the Dots..".The piece consists of metal paint can lids painted blue mounted on trees and buildings around town at heights representing the predicted height of flood water in those areas. This piece initially grabbed me because of the use of the paint can lid. As I've been incorporating various castoff elements from my housepainting gigs as possible fodder for my artwork, I've often thought about those metals lids, not sure what I'd do with them.

The exhibit assembles a number of artists that are approaching the topic of climate change in diverse, informative and beautiful ways. Given the amount of work in the exhibit, one might expect that inevitably, some of the art work might exist simply as visual prop for representing scientific information, but I didn't find this to be the case. BMOCA is far from big, but I strangely began to drift mentally, distracted a bit as I passed into the rear gallery. Perhaps it was the load of information coming at me from the artwork, I'm not sure. Still, I think that the exhibit deals with the subject matter in a sophisticated and striking way.

Judit Hersko's "Seven Days of Dissolution"