Timothy Gaewsky -- Can You Dig It Too

Newly-found art blog -- can you dig it, too?

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Shunpikers -- an exhibit curated by RL Croft at School 33 Art Center, Baltimore August 7 - October 3

My good friend Robin Croft invited me to participate in an exhibit in Baltimore. If you haven't Robin's website, you need to check it out. I've been a fan since stumbling upon his work some years back. I have no idea why we don't hear more about this intriguing sculptor.

At any rate the show's called Shunpiker, and it features Christine Hahn, Ken Huston, Janet Van Fleet and yours truly. I'll be showing some urethane pieces, aluminum cut-outs and drawings from the Channels series.

Here's a description of the show -- and if you're in Baltimore Friday night August 7, I hope you can stop by School 33.

Shunpiker is defined as one who travels the side roads, avoiding traffic and turnpikes.

In an effort to avoid cherry picking particular elements of artists' work to force-fit them into concocted themes, this exhibition attempts to restore the individual as the point from which all themes flow. It consciously aims to be "anti-thematic", so that the artists' individual journey is not sacrificed for the marketing strategy of a unified front. This proposition's somewhat reversed approach has been to invite underknown, veteran artists to exhibit their work, bringing with them all the arcane details of unique life paths. Since the deciding factor in selecting each artist unavoidably rests within the scope of this curator's tastes, the participants lean toward the conceptual rather than the retinal in their chosen media, favoring introspection and privacy over gnawing demands for self-promotion. This exhibition features mature artists tempered by a strong sense of individuality, who make a deliberate, noncommercial art in spite of our culture's increasing fascination with instant gratification and untried youth.

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Lisa Call's blog "Make Big Art"

This one's news to me. The post she titles "The Power of Responsibility" lays down the facts. Lisa's a highly successful artist, so I'll be studying her advice quite closely. I'd advise you to do the same.

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Kat Payne

Blew my mind to find out that one of Boston's funniest stand-up comedians keeps a blog. Twisted. Brilliant. Payne will assassinate you. Cool thing is the momentum's building. Get in early so you can say you knew her before she was on Comedy Central, before the HBO special, and before the NBC series.

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Dig Nancy Ewart

I like the voice of her writing.

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Artists -- Get involved in the Benefit for Artist Nicole Gagne

From the website:

Postcard show and sale of original postcard-sized pieces of artwork created by both emerging and established artists to benefit Nicole Gagne, a fellow artist seriously injured in a staircase collapse in LIC.

Artwork will be sold at $40 per piece. Artists who donate will get excellent exposure in a show in NYC, and collectors walk away with a great piece of original art. All funds raised will go to help Nicole with her immediate expenses.

Submission Deadline: July 23, 2009

For details clicky clicky --> http://benefitfornicole.blogspot.com/

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Tim O'Donnell: "All that is art"

My friend Tim O'Donnell passed me a link to his new online art project. Here's the blurb -- you need to check it out --

"Artist Tim O'Donnell has invited you to an online project. Each day Tim will post a 2-D work, photograph, and video during his spring residency on the Cape. It will be posted on the blog: All that is art."

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The New Star Trek Movie

JJ Abrams doesn't really love James Tiberius Kirk. He just keeps him hangin' on.

I'll tell you what I mean by that in a minute. But it bears noting that Motown's auto industry could learn a lot about making old models newly relevant from the way Abrams has taken Star Trek the Original Series and retooled it for an entirely new generation. And he did it without most of the usual cheap clip-on concepts that most screenwriters and directors have used this past couple decades:

• Hip-Hop music
  
• Characters who were originally boring now infused with dance funktasticness
• Anyone on a skateboard or skateboard-like appliance
• Background characters who look like cartoon characters or Muppets
• Fart jokes, poop jokes, bathroom humor
• Lots of swearing
• Characters who originally ignored each other now sexually involved
  
• Sassy characters who exude Jerry-Springer-audience-member attitude
• Well-known comedians performing some version of their own schtick
  

Actually, Abrams does use one of the devices listed above, and it's a bit painful. I'm letting it slide for now; decide for yourself if it works.

It's almost, but not quite, as if Abrams had taken Roddenberry's development concept from the 1960's 'as is' and executed it using tons more cash -- the early Star Trek episodes filmed for $80,000 each, if I recall correctly from David Gerrold's book The Trouble with Tribbles -- and using early 21st-century cinema culture, referring now to cinematography and special effects in particular.

And it's even more than that. Star Trek the Original Series was developed at the end of the Modernist narrative, when great technological progress was mated with a strong faith in the ability of humankind to improve itself. The idea was, more or less, that we'd become better people as our technologies eradicated disease, starvation and war. There was a Utopian gleam, if not really a Utopian ambition, to the Modernist project. And The Original Series is a pure expression of that. This is a galaxy united in peace, with warring factions who still haven't picked up on the enlightenment making things difficult from time to time.

Well, Abrams literally blows away one of the supposedly most enlightened symbols of that Modernist world in Act I. It was quite unexpected for me, and I'm not going to blow it for you. At any rate, in doing so, Abrams hurled the entire Star Trek premise deep into the much more skeptical 21st century. And in my view he made the Star Trek premise his own.

The cast he's chosen is quite strong. Chris Pine does a convincing job owning the Kirk role, and he does it confidently enough to fling a few Shatnerisms along the way. Zach Quinto's Spock is just plain eerie in its semblance to the young Nimoy's version. I particularly enjoyed John Cho's Sulu; he pulls that role off with a seriousness that not only makes me buy into it completely, but really adds a lot to the atmosphere of the bridge. He's got military gravitas down. Karl Urban seems sometimes to be acting by the skin of his teeth as McCoy, and I'd almost fault the writing at those points where it gets too thin. And for my money Abrams plays the "I'm a doctor, not a _______" line a bit too much, reaching almost beyond the boundary of pastiche's Neutral Zone.

I have only two serious grips with the casting:

My first gripe would be with the vocal tones of key cast members. Yeah, sounds trivial. But Pine's voice has a bit of a boozed-out quality to it. Fine, he's depicted as a heavy drinker early on, but it takes the edge off of some lines in a way that I wish it wouldn't, because over all the writing's pretty good. I want to hear a more Shatnerian sonorousness. And he's always so dead-certain, too -- perhaps as would be the manner of a young hotshot, I suppose, but for me it peels away the illusion just a little bit.

Quinto's voice is just too high for Spock, in my opinion. Even when young, Nimoy's Spock got a lot of mileage out of vocal tone, or monotone. It's just a bit tough to hear excellent Spock lines from a voice that could have come out of any given member of an 80's boy band.

And my second gripe with the casting is that Abrams unknowingly touched the third rail of legitimate Star Trek productions. This law needs to be written in bold type at the top of every script he directs: In the Star Trek universe there is no Winona Ryder.

While I like the script a lot in its general thrust and in many of its particulars, things in my view got a bit out of control in several areas:

• I'm seeing too much of Leonard Nimoy as the old Spock. The script's reasoning on this is fine. But Abrams flings him around a bit too much at the end for my taste. I'd have allowed his presence here to be a bit more enigmatic, a bit more ghostly. Also there are some pretty big plot holes surrounding the manner in which Nimoy first appears.
• There are at least 3 times that we see Jim Kirk hanging on to the edge of an incredible drop. OK, we get it: "Kirk lives life on the edge." Move on.
  
• The premise surrounding the bad guy character is pretty thin, in my view, although Eric Bana plays him quite effectively.

Kudos to make-up and special effects. It's the usual Star Trek Mardi Gras xenomorphology -- various combinations of wacky head on human body -- and while that always annoyed me from the point of view of realistic expectations, nowadays I consider it to be part of the brand.

It'll be interesting to see where Abrams takes the property now. Over all this was a very satisfying night at the flicks. So long as he can stay away from HoloDecks, Sherlock Holmes, Baseball, and all the crap that infested TNG -- and so long as Kirk never wears a baseball cap backwards, Spock stays off the skateboards and McCoy doesn't lay down any freestyle raps -- I should think this new iteration of Star Trek will play out well.

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Nick Ferris and Rani Free: "Regrets" -- at Chacala May 13 - 14

My friend Nick Ferris shot me an email about a big show he's cooking up with Rani Free -- read and be enlightened!

I’m putting on a charity exhibition next week in New York on the theme of “Regrets” which I wanted to invite you to. Since we launched the show’s website we’ve been inundated with people sending in anonymous regrets and it seems to have really struck a chord with people.

Myself and the other artist, Rani Free, have put this altogether in our spare time over the last 8 weeks, including taking all of the photography. The show comprises of photography, sculptures, video installations, audio installations, an interactive “Stage of Regrets”, a specially commissioned children’s book and also a Wall of Regrets where visitors can post their own regrets at the gallery. Myself and Rani will also be on NBC Nightly News Monday to promote the show. There are about 250 regrets in total featured in the show. The show’s website is www.nickandrani.com

It’s free to attend and proceeds from any picture sales go to charity.

Many thanks

Nick
212 224 3507

More details are below:

………………..

Regrets
Chacala
394 Broadway, 4th Fl
New York, NY 10013
The gallery is located in Tribeca on Broadway between Walker and White Street at: Chacala Art Gallery - 394 Broadway, 4th Fl, New York, NY 10013

(Canal St Station – N,Q, R, W and 6)

May 13th 12-5pm
May 14th 12-5pm

Regrets Exhibition Opening in New York May 13/14 2009.

A new art exhibition entitled “Regrets” is opening in New York for a limited run in May. The theme has captured the imagination of people worldwide with hundreds of visitors to the show’s site listing their anonymous regrets in life – from the deeply personal to the highly superficial.

As well as featuring regrets from the website, the exhibition captures the personal regrets of the artists through a variety of media including photography, poetry, short films, sculptures, audio and even a specially commissioned children’s book (Rated R). The exhibition also features interactive artwork - a stage of Regrets where people can overcome some of their regrets in life and a “Wall of Regrets” where visitors can list their own regrets whilst at the show. In total over 250 regrets (both positive and negative will be in the show)

Regrets is a fun, sad, challenging, heartbreaking and highly unique exhibition – where guests can be both voyeuristic and introspective.

The show is free to the public and proceeds from any sales go to support two very important charities - You Can Thrive and Sense.



Even more about Regrets:

“I regret not being myself. I hide myself. Always”

This is just one of the many regrets posted anonymously on the official website - nickandrani.com. As soon as the theme of this exhibition was announced, one thing became apparent - nearly everyone has regrets of some kind, but very few share them, with anyone. Until now.

As well as the unprecedented public feedback to the idea of Regrets, the artists have done a remarkable job in putting this exhibition together in their spare time in just two months. All of the works of art were produced in this timeframe. Once the show is over, a charity Regrets book will also be published that will capture all of the regrets listed both before and during the show.

If you would like more information or to talk directly to the artists, please contact us at nick@nickandrani.com. The exhibition is highly unique and for great cause, and we would appreciate all the support we can get.

The artists would like to thank the following people and companies for heir support, generosity and belief in Regrets:

Amanda Zizgen, JustCalmDown.com, Clifford Endo, Lenny Zinnanti, Rich Strait, StockChoiceToday.com, Madame X

Please note all proceeds go to some very worth causes. The two charities supported are:

• You Can Thrive! Foundation supports an innovative multi-tiered quality of life program to help alleviate unnecessary pain, disability, and psychosocial that often accompanies a diagnosis of cancer, and resurfaces after treatment or during extended living with disease.
• Sense is the leading national charity that supports and campaigns for children and adults who are deafblind. It provides expert advice and information as well as specialist services to deafblind people, their families, carers and the professionals who work with them.

For more information about the artists please go to www.nickandrani.com
For press enquiries please contact Nick Ferris: nick@nickandrani.com

Nicholas Ferris
Group Publisher
emii.com
212 224 3507

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Reid Stowe - The Oceanic Heart Part 2

Reid Stowe, The Oceanic Heart -- 2009 --

GPS markers on Google Maps describing a heart-shaped path 2,600 miles in circumference

Considering all the problems he's had to deal with alone on his twin-masted schooner, artist Reid Stowe's Texas-plus-sized conceptual piece is a triumph.

Check this latest entry from day 745 on 1000days.net:

It seems perhaps bad news has replaced our search for the miraculous and our human myths, and I am left to think we are an intellectual society in fear, with many suffering a sense of personal meaninglessness. Those who went to our website and looked at our Google map may have been surprised I am now completing a giant heart with my course in dedication to Soanya and as a gift to the world.

Stowe has stepped off the civilization-sanitized plain most Americans inhabit, where a meal is a few microwave minutes away and distractions abound.

He's dropped back deeper, to a level not usually experienced by other-than-tribal people in this hemisphere, at least not since when -- the seventeenth century? And it saturates his writing, which reminds me of John of the Cross, "The Cloud of Unknowning," and others who have sojourned long in a place where each continued moment of life seemed like a gift.

The thing is, he always sounded this way, even in writings before the 1000 Days voyage.

I've come to believe that the things you learn in your early 20's are the ones that stay with you for the rest of your life. During those years of his life, Stowe was criss-crossing the Atlantic in small sailing vessels, often solo. He spoke to me once of the way you become one with your ship -- drifting off to sleep and suddenly sensing something that needs attention high up on a mast.

Long weeks alone on the sea, your mind wrapped up in survival moment by moment, facing storms of lightning, wind and rain, and also of doubt, and yet living through all of them: there's no way that that isn't going to affect your outlook. In my opinion it was highly transformative.

Stowe learned the mystic's appreciation for life and the universe not through books, or at the feet of a guru, or because it was a really cool fad. He really didn't even try to learn it in the first place. It came to him through protracted, sometimes gruelling day-to-day experience. And it never left him.

Unlike so many similar gestures made in irony or with hypocrisy, this Oceanic Heart is real. The only question remaining in my mind is can the world accept it?

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Verena Dobnik / Associated Press article published this past May 3 on Reid Stowe's "1000 Days" voyage

Here's a snippet:

Also monitoring Stowe’s travels is Charles Doane, editor-at-large of Sail magazine. “I check his positions every day,” he says.

Already, Stowe “has set the record of the longest nonstop, unsupplied voyage at sea,” says Doane, adding that proof the schooner has not touched land comes from a GPS satellite system tracking the voyage, along with regular photos and videos posted on the Web.

“I want to inspire people to follow their dreams,” Stowe says. And in fact, the voyage serves as a vicarious adventure for some young virtual sailors — second-graders at a Virginia school whose teacher, Mindy Morrison, wrote to the wandering mariner that his Web site was helping them locate continents and oceans, making geography “more tangible and more importantly, FUN!”

On the newspaper's blog one of the commenter's left something that really resonates with me, partly I think from having worked with Reid all those years ago:

As I try to imagine the perspective of Reid Stowe as he sails into the fringe of our worlds, I find myself surrounded with images of classic adventure tales from my childhood; like The Little Prince by Saint-Exupery, telling the story of a lonely boy from another planet who fell in love with a mysterious rose, or the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor of the Thousand and One Nights who goes to sea to repair his fortune. I hear sounds of Rimsky-Korsakovs Scheherazade and remember how I used to fantasize about what would do when I grow up.

Reid Stowes quest is profoundly idealistic and makes a point about life and human nature.

Can I get an 'amen,' somebody?

Read the article -

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Matt Sardinia

I found out about Matt Sardinia while cruising the social news sites. Call the influences -- for me it looks like science fiction, robotics, movie posters --


Matt calls himself an artist and illustrator. Illustration now is such a broad field, and for me anyway, there's a lot of overlap with, in many cases, only the bogey of 'artist's intent' to discern if a work is 'fine art' or 'illustration'.

There's definitely been art in NYC galleries over the past decade that's highly influenced by illustration of various sorts-- magazine illustration from the 40's and 50's, science fiction paperback covers, sci-fi magazines from the mid-20th-century. We're doing a lot of ransacking of the past century. I think Matt's onto something. He's a young guy so he's got a lot of time to work out the kinks.


For some reason this one reminds me of Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion animation. Go figure.

See more at Matt Sardinia's website.

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Reid Stowe: The Oceanic Heart

Today was day 729 for Reid Stowe out in the vast Pacific. He shot me an email and I wanted to pass it along -- it's called the Oceanic Heart, and it's a drawing of a heart hundreds of miles across, made with his schooner and plotted by GPS and satellite. He refers to it as a 'gift to his loved ones and the world.'

Artworks like this intrigue me in a kind of ticklish way -- ticklish I suppose because they don't fit purely and easily into any category of art or art-making. They're largely conceptual, living in the mind pretty much like any emotion or memory. And yet the means for creating them is heavy, vulgar and material. See for example Jeremy Woods' GPS drawings -- Woods has been at it for quite a while and has made a real name for himself. You have to travel to make these things, and even if you're on foot, you've got to bring things along: equipment, food, water, clothing. Hence the materiality that must accompany the concept that functions as the main part of the piece.

Reid's Oceanic Heart drawing, like the Sea Turtle and Dolphin drawings before it: layers of complication make its creation all the more interesting to me. Instead of walking about or driving on dry land, he's got to deal with ocean currents and winds that might not always favor the path he wants to take. The main piece of equipment, the schooner-as-stylus, is subject to all sorts of breakdowns, each of which must be dealt with by hand and ingenuity, using whatever is available. And making all of this even more complicated is that he's working completely alone.

The Oceanic Heart combines Reid's almost ridiculous danger and solitude with the kind of cliche'd gesture usually made by young naive lovers, carved in trees along with the tacit or written suggestion of 'forever' that both know but won't admit is tongue-in-cheek. Funny thing is, I think Reid means it.

Here's the last part of his email to me -- see if you don't agree:

Humbly I proceed because the schooner is worn out and anything could break and the sea sweeps away the plans of many men. My plans could be swept away. Rather than keep it secret incase I fail, I am taking a chance and sharing so we can all create the Heart of the Ocean together.

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UConn's Undergraduate Student Government voted to move Randall Nelson's art to "a more non-public area."

Hard on the heels of my last post about Randall Nelson's controversial work and the treatment it's getting at a university comes an article by Katherine Smith in UConn's Daily Campus Online Edition, a large piece of which I'll excerpt here:

After a heated debate last night, the Undergraduate Student Government passed a position of statement regarding an art display in the Homer Babbidge Library some felt was controversial.

The statement called for an art showcase by Randall Nelson to be moved to a more non-public area. Nelson's art in question includes a caged brown bird hung from a noose with the phrase "some bird get what they deserve" etched in glass over the caged bird. The other piece is an obelisk soldier's monument with various homophobic slurs of graffiti across it.

The display was scheduled to be taken down at the end of the semester anyway.

Many senators were quick to agree with the resolution, claiming the pieces to be obscene and offensive.

"This isn't just offensive…if you walk through the library and you're gay and you see the word fag you're thinking that's an attack on my character," said Multicultural and Diversity Senator Mary Lorenz. "These aren't offensive…they're attacks."

According to the statement of position, USG senators felt the art was homophobic and racist.

"How would you like to be remembered as the school with the birds hanging from nooses?" said Mansfield Apartments Senator Donald Richard.

As Randall has explained, the bird 'got what it deserved' because it's an invasive species from England, and was responsible for the displacement of many native Connecticut species. This obvious metaphor for the displacement of Native Americans, and the guilt of those who did the displacing, was clearly lost on the student government, whose members instead preferred a much more simplistic interpretation: that the artwork represents the murder of a brown human because the bird's feathers are brown.

In my opinion, such a simplistic approach to art is really not worthy of university students. But all that aside, let's suppose for a moment that the USG is somehow correct, and Randall Nelson is showing us a metaphor for an African-American becoming the victim of racism. Haven't similar subject come up in other works of art -- literature, music, theater, cinema?

When Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn, was he trying to further racism against African-Americans? Was Steven Spielberg promoting anti-semitism in producing Schindler's List?

In these works hatred and intolerance are presented in sometimes gruesome detail. But the context and structure of literature and cinema make it plain that Twain and Spielberg aren't siding with the evil they portray.

Just to be clear, what I'm pointing out is the fact that the presence of an ugly act in an artwork of any kind is by no means an indication of the author's approval of that ugly act.

Visual art is often more challenging than literature or cinema, because it doesn't tell you through its dimensions -- book thickness, movie duration -- how long it takes to get the full message.

In a sculpture or painting the dimensions of character arc and story development must be dissected, compressed. They only unfold with time, consideration, and most importantly of all, openness.

In literature we talk about the willing suspension of disbelief, which is predicated on a kind of trust the reader gives the author at the outset that resolution will be provided by the last page, no matter what mayhem ensues. A similar suspension and a similar trust -- a similar openness -- is also required to appreciate visual art, particularly if the work in question is challenging.

Here's an example:

Winslow Homer's 1899 painting The Gulf Stream: is this painting...

a. confirmation that Homer was a racist because of its clear and obvious depiction of a black man mere moments away from being torn apart by a school of sharks?

b. a dramatic depiction of a terrifying situation that Homer wouldn't have approved or wished on anyone, but which was known to sometimes occur?

Ms. Smith's article continues:

"Sometimes artists cross the line but Babbidge isn't the Met or the MoMA [Museum of Modern Art]," said Commuter Senator Jason Abbott. "There are better places [for Nelson's art], it doesn't need to be in such a public place."

"This is the most controversial issue we've ever had to deal with," said College of Agricultural and Natural Resources Senator John Hogan.

Free speech is sometimes challenging. That's the point. In a free-speech environment all ideas are up for examination. Free speech in all its aspects was partly responsible for making America a world leader in the arts and sciences.

Of what use is free speech if it's only permitted in major art institutions?

It seems a shame to me that in the context of an American university -- and Connecticut's flagship university, no less -- the student body designed to provide experience in leadership and governance chose to restrict free speech, not based on an actual, clear and present offense to liberty or the well-being of others, but on the basis of a perceived offense arising from a rather obvious misinterpretation.

Perhaps these conscientious students will give Randall Nelson a chance to explain his work to them in person, prior to any movement of his exhibition. They may find good reason to reconsider their position statement.

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"Monoprints of Surgical Scars" by Ted Meyer -- May 4 – June 30, NYU Langone Medical Center

Ted Meyer sent me the email below about his monoprints of surgical scars, which will be on view at NYU Langone Medical Center.

For all three of my regular readers, you'll recall I'd mentioned in a previous post that I thought the concept of monoprints from physical scars *might* trivialize the experience of trauma associated with deep physical scarring, and hoped for feedback from people who had seen the work in person. No one really took me up on it, but instead what I got were in some cases ten hits a day of people looking up information on the show.

It's clear to me that Ted's tapped into something that resonates with people. I'm hoping to see the exhibition below in mid-June. Check it out yourself if you're in the city. Like the saying says, "Fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong."

Good luck, Ted!

---------------------------

I will be showing a smaller selection (12 pieces) of this scar work at NYU Medical School Gallery.

Everyone is welcome to come to the opening

Monoprints of Surgical Scars
by Ted Meyer
May 4 – June 30, 2009
NYU Langone Medical Center
550 First Avenue
Smilow Gallery, adjacent to Ehrman Medical Library
Please join us for artist’s lecture and
opening reception on Wednesday, May13
6:00 – 7:30pm
sponsored by Ehrman Medical Library For more information:
http://library.med.nyu.edu/library/libinfo/events

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Landfill Art

My good friend Robin Croft sent me this link along with some notes:

Bill,

Thought you might be interested in this. I participated and one of my "wattle walls" is on the site. I made it clear to Ken Marquis, a very kind and well meaning gentleman, businessman, frameshop/gallery owner in Wilkes Barre, that my work has almost nothing to do with environmental concerns, though made from mostly recycled materials. He was inviting anyway, and I need to find meaningful exposure somewhere. Your latest "sculptural" efforts might find an outlet with this. Just passing it along.

--Robin

Here's the email Robin forwarded from Ken Marquis -- check it out and if you're interested, get involved:

Hello Landfill Artists,

As a result of the global art community embracing the Landfillart Project, my life is totally consumed. I am not complaining...I am exuberant about the project and find myself going to sleep and waking up thinking about it!!

There are now almost 500 artists involved covering all fifty states of the United States & forty-six countries. Artists from Switzerland, Suriname, Azerbaijan, Tunisia, Chile and Serbia have recently signed on.

A number of artists have mentioned that they are particularly proud to be a part of the largest artist initiative ever!! Over 1,000 artists worldwide will have worked on this project of re-claiming, re-cycling and re-purposing.

"Our" website is updated at least twice weekly to add the latest completed Landfillart Projects.

If you know of a fellow professional artist that you feel could enrich and embrace our project, please feel free to pass along the website www.landfillart.org and have them contact me. Please have them mention your name for immediate credibility!

A sincere "thank you" for your participation!

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Connecticut Wilderness: Sculpture and Mixed Media Installations by Randall Nelson at Homer Babbidge Library Stevens Gallery and West Alcove

My good friend Randall Nelson called late this afternoon to direct my attention to his exhibition currently at UConn's Homer Babbidge Library.

You may recall Randall's earlier experiences that developed from the response to sculptures he made that featured road-killed birds. Ridiculous as that response was, and as hot as the water was that Randall was forced to cook in with a veritable alphabet soup of government agencies, well -- any ordinary rational artist would have gone into painting duck stamps or whittling tribal flutes. But Randall is no ordinary artist, and maybe he's not rational, either.

Or maybe he is rational; in fact he certainly possesses greater sense than the legislators who authored and passed inane laws that say it's OK for an ordinary Connecticut citizen to kill starlings and sparrows, but it's a criminal offense to pick a dead starling up off the road, or for a pest control company to transfer ownership of exterminated birds.

Regardless, things are a-cooking at UConn, thanks to Connecticut's controversial avian cadaver colorer. But before I get into that, here's Randall's statement about the show, as pulled from UConn's website:

“Connecticut Wilderness,” says Randall Nelson, “is an oxymoron that refers to the sense of confusion and ambiguity that prevails in our lives, and that I try to portray in my artwork through multi-layered meanings and unusual visual imagery.”

Ten of the fifteen pieces in this show are recent. “In some ways,” Randall says, “these new pieces are more difficult to create than my carved pieces. Many of them deal with abstract or social concepts--world hunger, morality, family obligations, guilt and personal responsibility--that would be almost impossible to do as woodcarvings.”

There's a dry humor that threads its way through those snippets of thought, a humor that was abundant in our conversation. And, let's face it, what sane adult can work with dead birds without laughing at least a little?

Some of the controversy now brewing over his work at UConn seems to stem from the college culture. Here are some notes from an email Randall sent me this evening.

"...it seems like anyone who walks in the door there is able to have input into which pieces can go into the show, and where they can be sited. The Vice-Provost for Student Affairs rejected one of the pieces, called Choices, because she said it is illegal to offer "unsupervised food" anywhere on campus, since it could be tampered with, then a student could decide to eat some of the art and get sick and the University would be in trouble."

You can't write gags this funny. Here's the sculpture in question, which is pulled from UConn's website:

So what the Vice-Provost for Student Affairs wants you to believe is that someone will walk up to this piece in the context of an art exhibit, pop off one of those translucent lids and eat the sculpture.

Now, I realize that not all UConn students are terribly bright. They're not all bound for stellar careers in the medical, dental or legal professions. Perhaps the VProvost is thinking of the UConn students that set fire to cars, or kill people while driving drunk, when he or she expresses a concern that some UConn students might like to eat the artworks.

But, people, if we base our entire world on the lowest, most slack-jawed, knuckle-dragging contingent, then art doesn't even come into the equation. In that lowest-possible-denominator world there's no time or inclination for intellectual engagements. There's only the dogged pursuit of the next idiotic entertainment, the next excuse to get drunk or high, the next morsel of flesh to pound one way or another to alleviate the groaning animal desires.

If the Vice-Provost really believes UConn is a microcosmic Idiocracy, maybe he or she is in the wrong job at the wrong place and time. Or, maybe UConn really is a much more animalistic place than I'd ever imagined.

Randall's emailed notes continue:

Most of the concerns are of this nature, silly complaints that are all based on the possibilities of lawsuits or insurance problems. Even the security guards have been able to demand changes in my displays.

Security guards calling the shots on artwork. Who'da thunk it?

There are other controversies going on with this work, but unlike some controversial work, its value lies in the fact that it's rich, challenging and compelling -- not to mention well worth your time.


Connecticut Wilderness: Sculpture and Mixed Media Installations by Randall Nelson
March 16 - May 15, 2009
Homer Babbidge Library Stevens Gallery and West Alcove
369 Fairfield Way
Storrs, CT 06269
(860) 486-2518
See the hours they're open here.

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The Idea of North -- Cyrilla Mozenter and Michael Brennan at 210 Gallery opening April 18

My friend and former professor Cyrilla Mozenter just shot me an email about this upcoming show with Michael Brennan at 210 Gallery in Brooklyn. Check it out and see if you can make the opening -- it sounds awesome! Photo above from Cyrilla's show More Saints Seen at the Aldrich Museum.
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The Idea of North

Michael Brennan - Painting
Cyrilla Mozenter - Sculpture

210 Gallery
210 24th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11232
718.499.6056

Opening Reception: Saturday April 18 3-7

Hours: Fri-Sun 12-6 or by appointment
R Train to 25th Street, Brooklyn

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Sholem Krishtalka at Jack the Pelican Presents

My friend Helene DuMenil is pushing the vision now over at Jack the Pelican -- congratulations on the cool gig, Helene! Check out this email she sent me about Sholem Krishtalka's show that opens next Friday, April 17, and hit the opening if you can.

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Hello Bill,

I wanted to let you know of our next show with Sholem Krishtalka which will open on Friday April 17th. I am including his artist statement to this email, I hope you enjoy it and that you might join us for the opening.

Artist Statement:

The title of my current series of paintings is An Opera for Drella (after Lou Reed’s Songs for Drella). It is based on a bit of gossip that I came across concerning Andy Warhol: that Warhol wanted to befriend Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg (who were dating at the time). He wondered why the pair were so stand-offish with him, and he asked the documentary filmmaker Emile De Antonio (known affectionately to the Factory crowd as Dee), who told him the awful truth: that Warhol was too gay, and the closeted art power couple feared that proximity to Warhol’s swishiness would ‘give them away,’ reveal their homosexuality to their milieu of dealers and collectors. I have created an opera out of this bit of gossip, a cycle of narrative paintings whose story of unrequited love unfolds as a series of tableaux and vignettes. It is an opera of looking but not touching, wanting but not having.

The Warhol in my paintings, as well as the Rauschenberg and the Johns (and the rest of the minor characters that make up my opera) have been cast from my friends. In addition to the surface narrative, these paintings are a mapping of my social circle, my community.
I avow the use of camp as the means and the end of my opera; camp provides a theoretical bridge between Warhol’s world and mine, a means to collapse and fold the iconic into my own personal vernacular, and also to project my persona onto larger public cosmologies. Generally speaking, my work is a deconstruction (or, perhaps more aptly, a reconstruction) of my own life; it is a document of my relationships, and an attempt to create a kind of philosophy of my queerness.
-Sholem Krishtalka

If I can answer any questions, please feel free to contact me.
Best,
Helene

Jack the Pelican Presents
487 Driggs Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 1121
718-782-0183
646-644-6756 (off-hours)
info@JackthePelicanPresents.com

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"The Rhizome 50,000 Dollar Webpage" -- Rhizome at the New Museum

My friend John Michael Boling over at Rhizome just sent me an email about an interesting project. What do you think?
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Dear Bill,

I wanted to contact you and let you know about "The Rhizome 50,000 Dollar Webpage" a new initiative that we have launched in homage to one of the web's great memes, "The Million Dollar Homepage". Equal parts fundraiser, art collaboration, billboard, classified ad and community builder "The Rhizome 50,000 Dollar Webpage" aims to raise 50,000 dollars for Rhizome by selling 1,000,000 pixels of webspace at 5 cents per pixel.

The Webpage builds upon Rhizome's 13-year history as a community website dedicated to internet art, while providing important funds to a non-profit organization at a crucial time. Participants are able to promote an idea or project--be it art, an organization, a band, a blog, a store, etc-- at a multitude of tax-deductible price points and, at the same time, contribute to a collaborative picture that will remain live on the web in perpetuity as part of Rhizome's archive.

As with the original Million Dollar Homepage, the success of The Rhizome 50,000 Dollar Webpage relies on the involvement of individuals from every corner of the web. It will endure as a snapshot of art, design and collaboration in 2009 and, pixel purchase permitting, help stabilize and sustain a non-profit organization in a challenging economic climate.

Pixels are available for purchase until May 28th 2009, the night of Rhizome’s annual Benefit. On this date, the page will be locked and presented at the Benefit which will be held at the New Museum in New York. To purchase pixels, or check in on the progress of the site please visit http://www.rhizome.org/50k

I sincerely hope you will take the time to visit the site, spread the word, or donate some money and receive some tax-deductible promotion for your exploits!

Best Wishes,
John Michael Boling
Associate Editor & Special Projects Manager,
Rhizome at the New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
212-219-1288 x 302
jm.boling@rhizome.org
http://www.rhizome.org

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