June 30, 2006

Band (Joe Strummer)

 

 

 

Band (Joe Strummer), 20060630, HTML & JPEG, 360 x 300 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 02:09 AM

June 29, 2006

Fruit (Navel Orange)

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Fruit (Navel Orange), 20060629, HTML & JPEG, 560 x 480 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 09:46 PM

Myths about the "developing" world

 

 

Hans Rosling is a public health expert, director of Sweden's world-renowned Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, he debunks a few myths about the "developing" world. (Recorded February, 2006 in Monterey, CA.)

This video is about twenty minutes long, and demonstrates how to use data in ways to better understand and dispel myths related to wealth and health, for example, that improving a nation's health actually winds up lowering its population. Hans Rosling is a very engaging speaker and uses data to make amazingly illustrative animated graphics.

Via David Pogue, who explains in another post the TED (Technology * Entertainment * Design) conference and that these previously inaccessible talks are now streaming video or downloadable video and audio. Al Gore is quite funny.

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:17 PM

June 28, 2006

Player (Roberto Clemente)

 

 

                                                     
                 
           
           
           
             
             
                   
           
                     
                 
                       
               
                         
                     
                                   
               
                                 
                   
                                 
                   
                                     
                   
                                           
                 
                                         

 

Player (Roberto Clemente), 20060628, HTML & JPEG, 520 x 540 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 11:21 PM

Mel Prest: Alignments

 

 

View of Mel Prest: Alignments, Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco, April 2006. Photo: Alan Bamberger, artbusiness.com, 2006 (used without permission)

 

Mel Prest: Alignments

Mel Prest's paintings are pictorial and physical, visually rich and optically complex, sensual and emotional, and engage the viewer in evocative experiences of time and place. In the paintings shown in an exhibition called Alignments at Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco April 4-29, 2006, there was much work evident in both senses of the word: many pieces of art, and lots of labor and time invested.

Mel Prest: Ladder, 2006. oil on 28 panels, 112 x 13 x 2 in. overall (Photo: Gregory Lind Gallery)

The paintings are oil on wood panels. A work may consist of a single panel measuring up to twenty four by thirty inches, or two or three smaller panels hung side by side either abutted or slightly apart, or multiple arranged panels in the five or six inch range that border on installation.

At a glance each painting's palette may initially appear somewhat narrow, but this is actually not true- a range of color within a painting, and from one painting to another, is extremely important to Prest's work because each work's subject, or intended sense of place or mood, is distinct.

One constant among the paintings are painted lines of mostly uniform width. These lines appear to be the width of the brush used to make the line, meaning that, in a sense, the lines themselves are actually brushstrokes. These lines are hand-painted, and slightly wobbly or tremulous. The surfaces of many of the paintings comprise a field of either vertical or horizontal lines, though a few others combine lines of both directions. Often these lines continue onto a painting's side. These painted lines are drawing, are carriers of color and indicators direction, and when combined in a field they become the painting's image.

As an example, Ladder (2006) is an installation of twenty two panels hung high on the wall in two aligned columns of eleven panels each, making a single work measuring 112 x 13 x 2 inches overall. The panels subtly change color in a gradation from very pale blue at the bottom to a dark blue gray at the top. Thin painted lines span the surface of each panel's front and continue around to the sides, ending at the wall.

Mel Prest: Pale Dusk, 2006, oil on two panels, 16 x 24.5 x 2 inches (Photo: Gregory Lind Gallery)

In relation to Prest's work one might immediately think of painters whose work is highly optical, such as Bridget Riley (1931, Britain), Victor Vasarely (1906, Hungary - 1997, France), or Richard Anuskiewicz (1930, US). But Prest's work isn't intense and busy in the way of these three artists; her work is warmer, softer and slower, more about place, time breathe, and the peripheral. One might think of the systems or processes of Sol Lewitt (1928, US) and Josef Albers (1888, Germany -1976, US), but Prest's intentions are not diagrammatic or schematic. Perhaps in terms of light one might think of Mark Rothko (1903, Russia -1970, US), but Prest's paintings are more crisp and intimate rather than gestural and heroic. I mention Agnes Martin (1912, Canada - 2004, US) not because of any grid-based relationship, but rather because of an attitude about paying attention at a slow rate of speed. Martin said, "Anyone can look at a waterfall all day"; she does this with restraint and dryness, while Prest's paint has more body and is lustrous. It might seem a reach to invoke Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840, Germany) or Albert Bierstadt (1830, Germany - 1902, US), but I think one can find in Prest's work these two painters' qualities of light and air, luxurious nature, and relaxed wonder. I would call this Romanticism.

There are four key characteristics of these paintings on which I'd like to focus.

  1. Time & Place: Prest's drawing and rigorous use of color and gradation creates effects that convey a sense of time, movement, place, and atmosphere.
  2. Order: sequence, progression, and disruption are primary structural components in the physical, drawn, and pictorial aspects of the paintings.
  3. The Wall: the painted sides of the panels relate to and use the wall to:
    1. Infer the image's continuation beyond the painting; or
    2. Exert movement or energy towards, or transfer pressure onto, the wall; or
    3. Demarcate more specifically where a painting begins and ends and its separateness from the wall, which reinforces the painting's containment by the wall
  4. Recovery: Prest's paintings revive and recuperate the use of modularity and a certain expressive geometric imagery in abstract painting which was debased by populist misunderstandings during the late 1960's and early 1970's of modern or minimalist art as public art or decoration. This last characteristic is probably not something intended by the artist, but it is something I find interesting.

Time & Place: Prest creates mood and space through a deft and confident control of color. The hand-painted, evenly spaced colored lines are precisely placed, but contain the presence of human movement. Colored fields and lines shift subtly across a panel, or from panel to panel. Occasionally, color may suddenly make a huge transitional leap from one hue or value to another that pulls the eye along, making the painting a time-based experience- a moment- in a specific but unnamable location.

Some paintings depict and feel like the space and light of landscape, while others look and feel more urban or structured, perhaps architectural. One might say that Pale Dusk is the fading light along the Pacific coast, that Black Rainbow is urban nighttime, or that the colored lines building a vibrant concentration of luminous blue with a hint of rose in Twin Rainbow represent several moments during a brilliant spring day. The range and control is impressive, and the results are varied and surprising.

Mel Prest: Black Rainbow, 2005, 16 x 16 x 2 inches (Photo: Gregory Lind Gallery)

Order: Prest's paintings are structured in parts and wholes. Physically, multiple panels are smaller parts of a single larger piece, although Prest's work could not be called modular, because each piece has its specific place; parts are not interchangeable. Drawing and composition are sequential progressions- lines accumulate and build progressive transitions across surfaces that create movement and changes in light. Symmetry is hinted at or implied, but also disrupted because not strictly adhered to, making the seeing experience non-static. In paintubgs where panels are immediately side-by-side there is both continuity and the briefest recognition of parts and wholes; in paintings where panels are slightly separated we have a gap to work across and reconcile. Color makes light, and structured, orchestrated, gradated color makes a pictorial kind of light. Together line and color create a visual sense of place and atmosphere.

Each painting's making is at least superficially evident: there is a background color on top of which colored lines are painted. These are paintings made in steps, but while one might assume there is a plan, they actually feel intuitive. Regarding paintings that are composed of either vertical or horizontal lines, the label stripes might be used, but the range of color and the hand-painted qualities prevents this somewhat restrictive reading. The paintings are more complex than can be conveyed by a description of how they are made.

The Wall: The painted lines continue onto the painting's edge. Looked at straight-on, as a flat plane while ignoring the sides, there is the implication that a painting is a detail of a larger continuous image. But paintings on which the lines continue onto the side call our attention to the fact that the painting is an object, a shallow rectangular box. Given this, the viewer must consider whether these lines wrap around to the back of the painting and are constrained to this painted object (either actual or inferred), or if what is being suggested, or pictorially hinted at, is that the lines continue onto or into the wall.

In the latter case, a painting like Ladder hints at the possibility that the lines continue off the edge of the painting; the lines in Ladder seem to transfer a kind of energy into or pressure onto the wall on which it hangs, not only making the wall an essential part to the painting, but also imaginatively implying that the wall itself has pictorial possibilities as an extension of the painting. These imagined continuous lines simultaneously anchor the painting to the wall and exert a kind of force that seems to lift the painting off the wall. In contrast, the horizontal and vertical patterning on the nine-panel The Things that are Missing contains the lines within each panel, so that the role of the wall is as a container of or buffer to the painting's energy.

Josef Albers, Mural, 1968, Brick mural, 8' x 50', Study Center, Gosnell Building, Rochester Institute of Technology

Recovery: An initial encounter with Prest's work might create an immediate reaction to, or feed assumptions about, her work as decoration, but with even a bit of close looking it quickly becomes clear that her work goes far beyond this. Her paintings can work on both of these levels without compromise- and isn't all painting in some way decoration?- which is a genuine achievement. It is interesting that her work might flirt with a way of making paintings that has descended to the level of cliche and kitsch, but that she makes this approach extremely viable. I don't mean that Prest's work is quotation or re-use, or that she uses this approach with irony; instead, I think she has circumvented the cliches and made this way of working- modular and optical- relevant and meaningful again.

In the late sixties and seventies, perhaps lasting into the early eighties, many popular forms of "abstract" art for mass consumption as installation, or murals, came into use. At the same time, one found much "modern, abstract" art made by amateurs or artists less-schooled in history and theory that often used geometric form and line, and the use of multiple canvases or panels. Much of this work is made in response to a misunderstanding of the work of, for example, Piet Mondrian (1872, The Netherlands – 1944, US) and Josef Albers (1888, Germany - 1976, US). For this viewer, Prest's paintings revive, work against, and overcome a form of decorative public art that rapidly became cliche in the late 20th century.

Jan van der Ploeg, Wall Painting No.116 'Wave', Acrylic on wall, 336 x 300 cm, 2004; Michael Lett, Auckland (photo Minus Space)

For example, during this period it was quite common to find that the lobbies, hallways, and parking lots of government and medical buildings, airports and banks in North America and elsewhere contained enormous wall-sized, patterned abstract images, typically in earth colors, often consisting of parallel, straight, and arcing lines in gradated colors. I think Jan van der Ploeg's (1959, The Netherlands) wall installations, intentionally or not, refer to this period.

Another example from this period is the use of printed, patterned fabric stapled to a stretcher and hung on the wall like a painting. It was quite common to see these in offices and furniture stores, and one still sees them for sale in thrift stores.

Other common techniques and materials employed by the amateur painter of the period was the use of wood panels, flat color, modular units that could be hung in various configurations, and painted sides of the canvas. Common issues with this art include a failure to go beyond design to compositionally address the rectangle; a lack of understanding of color dynamics; a crude handling of paint; a failure to understand

Example of a decorative modular painting from michaels.com.

paintings as a highly visual and physical medium; and an attitude that defaulted to thinking of paintings as merely personal expression and/or decoration without a responsibility to the medium and to history. Prest easily succeeds in addressing all of these areas, which is why I state, to repeat from above, that her "paintings revive and recuperate the use of modularity in abstract painting which was debased by populist misunderstandings during the late 1960's and early 1970's of modern or minimalist art as public art or decoration."

Conclusion: What we call Abstract Painting is a difficult area to work within. The viewer might think the painter is making something out of nothing, but often the painter is inventing an image in response to something real, whether an object or place, some quality of light or color, an idea or concept, or perhaps a person or a memory. The painted image may not look like anything we ordinarily recognize, and it may not look like anything at all; instead, it might be something completely new. The meaning of what the painter makes- this new thing- hangs on or is found in something that the painter wants to trust that the viewer will engage in: looking, observing, noticing, reacting, thinking, reflecting.

A good painter gives the viewer something worth looking at. The painter must present the viewer with something intelligent and thoughtful which the viewer can recognize and experience. And while meeting certain expectations the painter also wants and needs to surprise the viewer. Prest does all of this. The conceptual basis of her work is sound and consistent and resolved. She fully considers every aspect of making a painting, from size, surface, and edge to color, paint quality, and effect. The paintings are beautiful, and they reward the viewer's investment of time and looking. The paintings are surprising, not only because of her use of what might have been an outmoded way of making a painting, but because the image and mood of each is so unique and specific.

Mel Prest: Beacon, 2005, oil on panels (diptych) 24 x 30 x 2 in. overall
(Photo: Gregory Lind Gallery)

 

All images of Mel Prest's paintings from Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 06:45 PM

June 27, 2006

Band (Neil Young & Crazy Horse)

 

 

 

Band (Neil Young & Crazy Horse), 20060627, HTML & JPEG, 220 x 760 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 09:35 PM

June 26, 2006

Fruit (Avocado)

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

Fruit (Avocado), 20060626, HTML & JPEG, 480 x 640 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 09:04 PM

June 25, 2006

Player (Wang Nan)

 

 

 
 
   
 
     

 

Player (Wang Nan), 20060625, HTML & JPEG, 280 x 350 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 08:00 AM

June 24, 2006

Band (Charlie Parker)

 

 

 

Band (Charlie Parker), 20060624, HTML & JPEG, 400 x 560 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 01:56 PM

June 23, 2006

Fruit (Santa Rosa Plum)

 

 

                                                           
             
           
                   
           
     
       
     
                 
         
   
     
   
             
             
   
       
     
                 
           
   
 
           
                               
 
             
                               
 

 

Fruit (Santa Rosa Plum), 20060623, HTML & JPEG, 380 x 600 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 11:52 PM

June 22, 2006

Player (Roger DeCoster)

 

 

                               
             
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           
           

 

Player (Roger DeCoster), 20060622, HTML & JPEG, 240 x 320 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 01:30 AM

Pete Baldes: Hypertemps

 

 

Still from "Prosthetic Leg" by Pete Baldes

Pete Baldes slices video into thin horizontal strips of animated GIFS that are stacked back into the original video's frame, but the GIFs are out of synch, coalescing into a image and then falling apart again.

Prosthetic Leg is a terrific example (warning: large download)- the figure is constantly moving but pulling in different directions so going nowhere, stuck in time, barely pulling parts of itself together and never quite being whole again. The way it moves is like what one sees looking down a straight road in the desert, mirage-like.

The image itself reminds me of a scene in the film Contact, starring Jodie Foster: when she travels forward in time and lands on a beach she sees in the distance a hazy amoebic form moving towards her which gradually turns into her father. It's a very moving moment. Prosthetic Leg reminds me of that moment, but without the culmination- there's a different emotion here, more having to do with a kind of desire that cycles over and over, and also pleasure in the constantly shifting, fractured form of a moving figure that we recognize but never quite see. It's like Baldes has captured a ghost.

Something I can't shake: the term "prosthetic," and the idea of the desert mirage, make me think of a wounded soldier who, for obvious reasons, will no longer see active duty. The emotion of that association on my part, whether intended or not by Baldes, and one of many possible associations, attaches itself to my viewing of the video and won't quite let go, lingering, embedded. All of that is reconciled or put aside if one watches long enough- at times the image comes together just enough, and there is a momentary glimpse of a figure striding forward carrying a golf club. Ah, so this is leisure, but is the club the prosthetic?

There is also a tremendous sense of play at work here in the distortion achieved through a fractured funhouse mirror effect, similiar to seeing a reflection in a piece of coated mylar slowly shifting in an intermittent breeze.

Film, or video, is a succession of frames. What happens in Prosthetic Leg as we watch it is that we see a succession of frames within a larger succession of frames. There is the overall video, which is an accumulation of a number of animated GIFS, and each animated GIF is its own small video. Baldes has simultaneously made one large video, and a number of small videos. The larger moving image is the maxi-video, and each animated GIF that makes up the larger video is a meta-video. Prosthetic Leg is a sum of parts, but each part can stand alone, and all the parts can make a single larger piece.

Perhaps one could call this Cubist video. There's a bit of Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase. This is truly digital imagery, but a pixellation in rows rather than on the horizontal and vertical grid. It's like the file is corrupted- it's distorted but plays and keeps it's neatly defined edges.

At Baldes' Hypertemps also see Segway Scooter #1, a ride that almost goes in circles, and almost goes nowhere (and then, kind of tangentially, read Joe McKay's letter to Dean Kamen about the Segway).

An earlier version of this post was reblogged at Rhizome, 20060620.

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:20 AM

June 21, 2006

Band (Dooley Wilson)

 

 

                                                           
                       
             
           
             
           
                     
             
             
               
               
             
         
           
       
         
         

 

Band (Dooley Wilson), 20060621, HTML & JPEG, 340 x 460 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 10:06 PM

June 20, 2006

Fruit (Cashew)

 

 

                             
                         
                   
             
                   
           
                     
         
                       
       
                         
     
                           
     
                             

 

Fruit (Cashew), 20060620, HTML & JPEG, 300 x 300 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 11:47 PM

Chris Ashley - A Case Study

 

 

A team of students in COMM2320 - Media Industries at RMIT University, Melbourne chose the following topic for their research project: "How well do various Internet-based media exploit the affordances of the Internet, and what recommendations might be made to media practitioners who seek to utilise the full potential of the Internet as a medium and as a distribution entity?" I was contacted by one of the team members, Laura Lancaster, about being interviewed. I agreed to participate. The following case study is published on their project wiki. Laura's post-project self-assessment is on her own weblog.

I answered Laura's questions via email on June 5, 2006, and the interview itself is basically an unrevised, unedited, first-thought first draft with several typos and sentences in need of a little straightening out.

Chris Ashley - A Case Study (link)

I think a vast component of what the Internet affords greatly benefits the creative media but in particularly independent artists. The independent creative media are able to exploit the affordances of the Internet to gain recognition, distribution and commercial/critical success. In contrast to pre-existing mediums, the Internet is especially valuable to the independent creative media who find they are able to fully exploit it within their personal confines. The Internet has become a solution to the many problems this minority has faced before, including lack of recognition, high cost of exhibition and distribution and many more. Though large and leading creative media companies have fully exploited the affordances the Internet has to offer, it seems independent practitioners are finally not being left behind and are able to utilise the affordances without their previous limitations. Whether consciously or inadvertently, independent creative media practitioners have found ways to exploit this medium and gain opportunities that would previously not been available to them. For these people, the Internet offers what no medium before it has.


I researched a visual artist, Chris Ashley, who furthered his artistic career by starting a blog on which he displays his art. As you can see his blog, entitled Look, See contains many abstract coloured drawings in hand-coded HTML tables. He also writes a lot of commentary about other artist, including other online visual arts bloggers. I chose Chris as I thought he has exemplified our research by utilizing the affordances we’ve identified practically. The blog is a great example as it is a tremendous tool that is often overlooked, although it is exemplar of what the Internet affords to its users. What’s amazing about Chris is that he is one of the few emerging artists who is using the weblog unconventionally. Traditionally, blogs area a publishing medium, with ‘diary-like’ qualities in which individuals can create a personal space to express ideas and opinions. Recently, the role of the blog has changed, and has been used for other purposes: as a knowledge management tool, primarily to make money. These aspects are only just being realized. Chris Ashley uses his blog to promote and advertise his art, and also uses its social aspect of linking and commenting to gain contacts and to communicate with people with similar interests. In an interview we conducted with him he stated:

"Most art-focused weblogs are not a tool for an art form; in fact; the most common use of a weblog in the art community fill some pretty obvioius functions that are basically time extentions of print-based publishing: commentary, reviews, news, promotion, gossip, and pictures. A second common function of weblogs among artists are for studio views – showcasing work in progress or finished, installation views, a kind of window into the artist’s working world"
"And I think what sets my weblog apart is that it has not been a place to merely talk about or link to other art. The images are not incidental to my weblog. My weblog has become an art practice, and it is one part of my overall art practice."

One of the key affordances of the Internet is that it is a network and in this sense Chris Ashley’s blog is extremely successful. It has become a way for him to gain contacts he would otherwise not have. In our interview with him he expressed in his ‘pre-blog’ days he found it very difficult to gain contacts in the artistic world, but since he started his blog he now has countless contacts and is in touch with people that share common interests. This is a result of the power of the blog as a tool that can be commented on and linked to as well as commented and linked from. In an interview we conducted with Chris he emphasised the importance of the blog as a network:

"My consistent and long-term online presence has brought me some attention and opportunities"
"As with any other popular weblog, the attention consists of and is promoted primarily by links from other over time to my weblog; without that there would be no traffic beyond the handful of friends and acquaintances who might check-in anyway. Without other people linking to me and commenting on my work there wouldn’t be as much recognition, although by now I also get a tremendous number of hits daily from search engines, too"

Another reason why the blog as a medium can exploited so tremendously is that it is essentially free. If you have something to say or something to show you can do it at a no cost. This is how the Internet differs so greatly from other mediums. Users have the ability to exhibit and display their work for free to an enormous audience. The blog is also exemplar of how the Internet is used as a personalized space. Bloggers are able to make it fashion it as they wish, and more importantly have full control of the content. Again what is successful about Ashley’s blog is the way he has taking this idea further to benefit his career:

"I have long thought of my weblog as a studio, a gallery, an archive, a study, and a library. It is part of my art practice. Much of the contents of my weblog are not about art; the content is the art. The weblog is a tool to sustain and improve my own practice"

If you are looking to exploit what the Internet offers for your various personal benefits whether they be artistic or commercial you need not look any further than the weblog.

 

Chris Ashley: Complete Interview


1) Your blog is somewhat unconventional in terms of the earlier purposes of a weblog (i.e diary-like confessions, personal opinions). Do you see blogs as having specific conventions or restrictions?

I’m not sure that the original purpose of weblogs was for diary-like confessions. Weblogs- not just web-based writing in a daily or serial format, but writing done for and in an actual weblog application- originally gained hold in the tech world during the late 90’s dotcom world, specifically through an application called Manila developed by a small company called Userland.

Early on, weblogs were very tech-centric; they were used primarily for listing and linking to tech and general news, very brief commenting or editorializing, news and updates. In some ways a weblog was a one-person message board that both acted independently of and referenced other one-person message boards. Weblogs also began to fill a social function during these rather heady and intense times, when tech companies were popping up like crazy and scores of people moved around the country to these new companies. Small communities would develop around a ring of weblogs that might emerge out of a circle of friends or co-workers, and the weblogs would be full of information concerning the logistics of work and social life, inside jokes, and, increasingly and inevitably, I think, personal information. One started to note several strains of writing: opinion pieces, diaristic writing, journalism-like writing, jokes and pranks. Much of the writing in early weblogs, perhaps until 2001 or so, was still tech- and business-centric, and there was a lot more focus sense there were so few weblogs.

A fairly natural outgrowth of the tech-centricism of weblogs was an interest in the use of weblog in education, both as sources of information and dialogue about educational technology in general, and as tools themselves for teaching in learning in K-12 and higher education. Early on a number of educational technology weblogs emerged, including mine at UC Berkeley; the original purpose of my weblog, begun in March 2000 was to explore it as a tool for schools (I had just come out of teaching elementary school and began work at UC Berkeley on a technology-based K-12 outreach project).

As an artist, however, it wasn’t long, sometime in late 2000, before I first began to use my weblog as a place to research and talk about visual art, but very soon after I began to think of it as a place for my own art, and this is when I stumbled on using HTML to make browser-based images out of colored table cells, a really dumb, obvious, crude, not terribly flexible medium; I call them HTML drawings, other people call them HTML paintings- I don’t really care what they’re called. After a year and a half or more my weblog began to increasingly be art-focused, and beginning in July 2002, I think, my focus shifted nearly exclusively to art. And I think what set my weblog apart is that it has not been a place to merely talk about or link to other art. The images are not incidental to my weblog. My weblog has become an art practice, and it is one part of my overall art practice (I’m a painter). Most art-focused weblogs are not a tool for an art form; in fact; the most common use of a weblog in the art community fill some pretty obvious functions that are basically more timely extensions of print-based publishing: commentary, reviews, news, promotion, gossip, and pictures. A second common function of weblogs among artists are for studio views- showcasing work in progress or finished, installation views, a kind of window into the artist’s working world.

So, now having set a little context, you ask if I “see blogs as having specific conventions or restrictions?” I’m not sure of the usefulness of this question, because now weblogging is so broad that having expectations or upholding standards across a general population of webloggers seems no easier to apply to the online world than it is to offline writing: some people are clear, diligent, thoughtful writers, and most people simply aren’t. That’s just the way it is.

One convention includes more compact writing: shorter paragraphs which allows scanning and supports the readers quicker, easier grasp of contents and weight. Certainly, there is the convention of the reverse chronological structure of a weblog. And there is the convention of linking: quoting something and linking to the source as a reference; hyperlinking embedded in text; the use of linking as a compliment or validation; the use of linking to generate traffic, increase search engine results. An important convention is that as a reader of a weblog I expect content to be fresh; rarely updated weblogs lose their readers quickly. In my case visitors know that everyday there is a new drawing on my weblog. They know that it is live. A weblog is a living thing, in that sense, and many weblogs, though not all, seem to have a limited shelf-life.

Another convention is the ability for readers to comment on weblogs they read. Some weblogs get lot of this kind of activity and little communities build around them. After a few attempts I made a decision early on that I did not want any commenting or a guestbook- I prefer more one-to-one interactions, I don’t really have time to keep up with comments, and having been in the position of moderator for other online forums I know from experience that it is something I no longer want to do, ever.

When I think of restrictions I first think of the various weblog applications and the kinds of functions they support: drafting; timed-publishing; ease of posting images; ease of modifying templates; and so on. I don’t think this is what you’re asking about. As far as the restrictions of a weblog as publishing medium, well, my expectations are realistic. What is a weblog supposed to do or be? That’s up to the weblogger, I think. If you want to be some kind writer, or want to post photos, or you want to run a news and information source for some purpose, then it’s quite possible and easy do so: identify your audience, do what you do with this audience in mind, do it regularly, link to others, keep up with your email correspondence, be nice and courteous, give credit where credit is due.


2) How has exhibiting your art for free affected your career in terms of recognition and promotion?

My consistent and long-term online presence has brought me some attention and opportunities. I assume that there is some quality to what I’m doing on the weblog- something that is attractive or interesting to others- that is that causes this. As with any other popular weblog, the attention consists of and is promoted primarily by links from others over time to my weblog; without that there would be no traffic beyond the handful of friends and acquaintances who might check-in anyway. Without other people linking to me and commenting on my work there wouldn’t be as much recognition, although by now I also get a tremendous number of hits daily from search engines, too.

Opportunities come in a couple of ways- seemingly out of the blue and through relationships. For example, a few opportunities seem to have come to me out of the blue- someone contacts me and offers an opportunity, and it turns out that they have been watching what I’ve been doing for some times, and that they have been aware because of links to me, so they know that others are paying attention; this implies some kind of reputation. For example, I was on a panel at the New Museum in New York, Blogging and the Arts, last spring- that invitation came out of the blue. The invitation to show in Richmond, VA at 1708 Gallery, which just closed May 27, also came out of out of nowhere from my point of view because I wasn’t aware that the curators of that show had been looking at my weblog.

On the other hand, probably a better way of having opportunities occur is correspondence beyond the weblog- several people who are aware of my weblog and who have written have become regular correspondents- friends- and those relationships are very important. Just to be clear, yes, they have been important in that opportunities have come out of those relationships, but much more important is the relationship itself; the weblog is part of it, a part of being available, being within someone’s field of vision, but the more personal contact- email and occasionally phone, is really a more fruitful way to make things happen. For example, and opportunity to show in Philadelphia last October came about both through my presence as a weblogger and through a relationship via email that developed after someone contacted me about the weblog and we began corresponding.


3) What other aspects of your blog do you find beneficial?

The most beneficial thing to me, which I have written about a fair amount, is that it is a tool that forces me to do something everyday, and that the tool, the weblog, has become for me a studio, and exhibition space, and an archive. Pulling a quote from my introduction for an online panel from the –empyre- mailing list last June, I wrote:

In the past three years my weblog has become my studio, an exhibition space, and an archive. I show work everyday, seven days a week. The idea of an audience, no matter how small, motivates me. I have total control over showing the work, storing it, and saying what I want about it in public. The archive aspect is important- I can easily go back through my work and compare various bodies of work.

Read the complete intro


4) How has being online assisted you in coming into contact with other visual art bloggers with common interests?

For a long time, in the early days of weblogging, perhaps up until 2003 or 2004, there were very very few visual arts webloggers. Eventually search engines and RSS feeds and other tools helped people with common interests find each other.


5) Do you find it important for artists to be in communication with people that share common interests? Is belonging to a group important to you artistically?

Maybe it’s just my personality, but belonging to group is not important, and may not be such a good thing for the art. A few good trusted relationships, are invaluable. It is important for an artist- and anyone in any field- to be able to talk to with others with whom one shares a common language, history, or outlook. As you know, I’m sure, all people tend to towards birds of a feather. It’s important to have another pair of eyes looking at your work, to have someone asking tough questions, who has another point of view. It is also important, perhaps more important, to be in the position of having to do the same for another artist, to get outside of one’s own expectations and to try to experience and articulate what one sees in someone else’s work.


6) How does your artistic career compare between now and your pre-blogging days?

After living and struggling with the artist’s life for many years in my twenties and early thirties I decided to be a productive citizen and teach elementary school. During my ten years involvement in the schools art became something put way on the back burner, at times so far back the burner was off and it was off the stove. Restructuring my life to re-establish my art practice as the center of my life as much as possible while still working, coincided with uses of technology over the past six years. The use of the web, my weblog, and email come pretty naturally to me, and I can’t imagine having accomplished much art career-wise without these tools. I think I’m a better writer than a extemporaneous speaker, and I can be a little shy and take time to form relationships. Establishing relationships that come from my other strengths are a big bonus for me. Other people who are very good a face-to-face right from the start, who don’t mind telephones, who are naturally at ease with others don’t understand that well. These tools allow me to establish a presence and some relationships more easily. My discomfort with schmoozing was always a handicap to my art career when I was younger.


7) If you didn’t have a blog, would you continue utilizing the internet to benefit your artistic career, and if so how?

Yeah, sure- if you don’t have a web site you don’t really exist, right? Without the weblog I would work harder at a regular web presence. Because of my weblog I feel like I don’t have to worry about that so much. And email is an essential tool- make polite inquiries of others, send brief email compliments- “I just wanted to say that I like that new painting you posted”-, say thank you, and be understanding when someone doesn’t reply right away. Build a mailing list using every email you can and use it to announce shows, events, the completion of a new body of work, web site updates, etc. One way to establish a presence and relationships would be to participate in discussions on other people’s weblogs- that can lead to personal contacts.

Here’s what I would never do- I would never, ever use one of those web sites where artists register and post their work, like it’s some kind of art community, you know these places where artists post their work fishing for sales. Sorry, those are rinky dink. You have no control over who you area associated with, and you have no control over the look of the web site.


8) You have said that HTML is an extremely limiting medium for making images and that these limitations can be immensely freeing. What are the major limitations you have identified and how have these been beneficial?

Excerpt from - https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2005-June/msg00008.html:

HTML is a really limiting medium: all right angles; flat hard surfaces and edges; limited color with uniform intensity; the size of a browser window on a common monitor. And just about every time I've thought, "OK, I've done this long enough, time to stop," I find some little twist I want to try out. I just keep getting more comfortable with the medium and keep pushing it to be more painterly. And I think the fact that I do approach this as a painter has made the images much more expressive than they sound on paper.

Sometimes when you find the rules in which you’re operating, and there’s no way around them, you realize that having all of those other choices taken away is a good thing. You don’t have to think about them anymore. You make do with what you have, and you find lots of different ways of using those simple means. It’s very freeing because you already know what’s not possible, so fine, and you end up pushing what you have to find what is absolutely possible.


9) Do you believe the benefits blogging are only now being fully recognized?

Well, I think there are benefits that many people will never realize because they are too busy thinking about how weblogs are the new journalism and how they can make money off of it. Or even worse, that thanks to the popular press weblogs are misunderstood as simply places for overly sensitive dramatic personalities to attempt to get attention.

Excerpt from - http://www.artblog.net/?name=2006-04-03-16-09-panel:

I'm a long time weblogger (not blogger)- began in March 2000. One of the things that always annoys me about the discussion about art and weblogs is the focus on things external to art practice- the market, criticism and art journalism, the social aspects of the art world, gossip, etc.

Here's the thing I want to hear artists talk about- why do you do what you do (weblog), and what has it done for your art? Forget about all the rest of what most weblogs are about- what are you documenting; what are you learning and thinking about through you're writing, photos, and linking; how are you assembling ideas and knowledge about your work and yourself over time in the weblog as a kind of learning portfolio? How do you use the archive that you are building up- do you reflect back on your activities, do you look over your archives, do you have a goal for building creating a body of work or ideas for which your weblog is an integral tool? What are you and your work getting out of it?

I have long thought of my weblog as a studio, a gallery, an archive, a study, and a library. It is part of my art practice. Much of the contents of my weblog are not about art; the content is the art. The weblog is a tool to sustain and improve my own practice.

I also think a weblog can be a good way to form relationships and create discussion. It's very grassrootsy. I have found great value in that. But to expect a weblog to change an artworld largely driven by money, a world that, at the higher stakes level, increasingly seems to be turning into one of entertainment and social privilege, is hoping for a lot. The idea that weblogs in the hands of people with "truer artistic intentions" or whatever will change the artworld seems naive to me. Rich and/or socially connected will also use the same tools to continue what is in effect the Society Page. Witness Artforum's Diary.

Writing on weblogs has to reach a point of achieving validity as informed, authoritative, well-written, and accepted. There is no system for this yet- no editing, no publisher's stamp, no peer-reviewed process, and even very little of the kind of approval that lots of people understand: advertising dollars.

As you can see, I think they have tremendous potential for individual, small group, and special interest research and documentation. The other uses that many hope for them, as money makers, smells like business as usual to me. The can be tremendously useful for getting news out in a timely way that would not ordinarily get reported- in the US we are seeing that with a few weblogs focusing on politics and government, like [Dailykos.org http://www.dailykos.com/].


10) Do you see any further advances being made in visual art blogging? In terms of new media do you think the future is promising for independent artists?

I see a bright future for arts writing, for sure. One can already see that happening. But most of that art writing is about fairly regular art forms, especially that with commercial potential. Most art magazines are big luxury items with lots of ads and very little content. I can read an art weblog and get almost nothing but content- Roberta Fallon & Libby Rosof (http://www.fallonandrosof.com/artblog.html) do an amazing job of covering the Philadelphia scene.

As far as weblogs as an art form, or a tool centrally to an art form, it’s hard for me to say. There are few people using weblogs in a way central to an art practice, and much technology-based art is still being made mostly for other artists, it seems. It’s hard to imagine a crossover to a more general audience, especially when one is competing with video games, special effects, pop music, etc. Perhaps that’s why so much technology-based art references those things, too- so they can compete. I don’t see the point in anyone trying to make more HTML drawings; it’s a small area to mine. And I’m about making images that appeal to people- I’m not a programmer and I don’t make interactive, or web-based, or net art, or whatever it’s called. Artists will be posting photos and video and audio and manipulated images, and will build sites and environments for the web. Tom Moody regularly posts animated GIFs and music to his weblog. Just today I received an email from jimpunk announcing (http://dvblogh4ck.blogspot.com/), which carries hacked Quicktime videos from (http://dvblog.org/).

What do you mean by “independent artists?” Does that mean someone not affiliated with a gallery? If so, there are way more independent artists than there are non-independent artists (I don’t know what to call them- dependent, affiliated, sanctioned, professional, official?). There are many art worlds and many different communities. There is a huge, barely known art world of programmers, web designers, people using audio and video and performance, all kinds of image makers, etc. Most artists don’t become non-independent artists. They either get into academia or get day jobs and continue doing what they do. Some artists using technology are getting shown and sold, but it seems to me that the commodity being sold still has to have the aura of being a valuable object to it. That’s pretty hard to say about a colorful abstract image that is made of code and doesn’t’ really exist, or an animated GIF projected on a wall, or an interactive web site.

Retrieved from "http://media.rmit.edu.au/students/projects/wiki/index.php/Affordances_commercial"

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 06:24 PM

June 19, 2006

Player (Bill Walton)

 

 

                               
       
   
 
         
     
 
         
     
 
         
     
 
         
     
 
         
   

 

Player (Bill Walton), 20060619, HTML & JPEG, 400 x 320 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 11:04 PM

Steve Karlik: Shift

 

 

The Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York) is pleased to present SHIFT, an exhibition of acrylic and oil on wood panels by artist Steve Karlik at Gallery Three in South Oxford Space, located at 138 South Oxford Street in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. An opening reception will be held on Friday, June 9 from 7pm to 9pm. The exhibit is open to the public Monday through Friday from 10am to 4pm and Saturday and Sunday from10am to1pm.

Steve Karlik created SHIFT specifically for the space at Gallery Three. The paintings on display in SHIFT explore the chameleon-like nature of colors in relation to each other and visual tensions existing in a very shallow plane. There is a delicate balance between the paintings' competing elements. In this exhibit, the two dimensional plane leans vertically against the wall to converge with the personal space of the viewer.

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Karlik studied at Portland State University under Mel Katz before attending graduate school at Pratt Institute, studying under Linda Francis. His initial work was in landscape painting before coming to Modernism as a direct result of seeing an exhibition of Mark Rothko's later work. He currently lives and works in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (See my interview with Steve Karlik, Sept. 2005.)

Karlik's work has been shown in Rio de Janeiro; Philadelphia (Pentimenti Gallery); New York; Richmond, VA (Richmond Biennial of Emerging Artists); Portland, OR and Brooklyn (DUMBO Arts Center). He was recently included in the Hunter College exhibition "Presentational Painting III".

For more information or directions, please contact Stephanie Bok, Assistant Manager of South Oxford Space at 718-398-3078 or email sbok@art-newyork.org.

See also 20060609.

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 08:32 PM

June 18, 2006

Band (Pablo Casals)

 

 

                 
         
         
         
         
         
         

 

Band (Pablo Casals), 20060618, HTML & JPEG, 140 x 590 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 08:29 PM

June 17, 2006

Fruit (Gravenstein)

 

 

               
             
         
         

 

Fruit (Gravenstein), 20060617, HTML & JPEG, 80 x 320 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 07:41 PM

June 16, 2006

Player (Ronaldinho)

 

 

                                           
   
 
       
       
         
       
 
 
 
 
   

 

Player (Ronaldinho), 20060616, HTML & JPEG, 240 x 440 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 11:59 PM

June 15, 2006

Band (The Shaggs)

 

 

                                               
                           
         
         
       
                 
           
         
         
           
         
             
       
             
                 
           
             
         

 

Band (The Shaggs), 20060615, HTML & JPEG, 360 x 480 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 11:21 PM

June 14, 2006

Fruit (Banana)

 

 

                                                   
                           
                 
                   
         
         
         
         
                         
         
         
       
                                 
         
         
         
                         
     
     
     

 

Fruit (Banana), 20060614, HTML & JPEG, 400 x 520 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 11:11 PM

June 13, 2006

Player (Wilma Rudolph)

 

 

                           
   
           
       
   
       
     
       
   
       
       
     
       
       
       
       

 

Player (Wilma Rudolph), 20060613, HTML & JPEG, 320 x 280 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 11:39 PM

June 12, 2006

Band (Johnny Cash)

 

 

                                       
           
 
 
       
       
       
               
 
   
   
   
     
       
     
       
       
 
 
     
     
     
     
 
 

 

Band (Johnny Cash), 20060612, HTML & JPEG, 499 x 400 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 07:19 PM

June 11, 2006

Fruit (Strawberry)

 

 

                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       
                                       

 

Fruit (Strawberry), 20060611, HTML & JPEG, 480 x 400 pixels (image used without permission)

 

"Strawberry pickers work bent over double all day. It is painful work, and after a few years, can cause permanent damage to a worker's back. Pay systems use a bonus for each box of strawberries to ensure that workers pick as fast as possible (source)."

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:53 PM

Guitars & Mandolins

 

 

Harmony solid top 6 string, early 60's, my main guitar, neck reset, new bridge and tuners, solid and loud, percussive and tight Harmony solid top 12 string, 60's, neck reset, original tuners, great action- plays sweetly and well up the neck, loud and jangly Harmony solid top mahogany 6 string, completely rebuilt, soft sound, good strummer, beautiful mahogany body, rounded (no binding) where the top and back meet the edges
Supertone Parlor, late 30's or early 40's, neck reset and new bridge, original tuners Yamaha solid top 6 string, mid-70's (acquired by my older brother while stationed in Thailand ca. 1974), all original Yamaha solid top 12 string, ca. 70's, all original, booms and rings
Yamah nylon string, ca. mid-70's (acquired by my younger brother plus assorted tools in trade for a wrecked Triumph two seater convertible), plays nice Harmony archtop tenor guitar (4 strings), all original, soft play, good sound
Harmony F-hole all solid carved-top mandolin, late 50's or early 60's, all original, plays nicely Harmony Stella round hole 70's mandolin, all original, cheap & playable Johnson resonator mandolin, ca. 2000, all metal body, great metallic banjo-like sound

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:38 AM

June 10, 2006

Player (Miguel Indurain)

 

 

                                               
           
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
   
 
 
 

 

Player (Miguel Indurain), 20060610, HTML & JPEG, 300 x 480 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 07:10 PM

Forty Nine Birthday Drawings

 

 

             
             
       
   
   
       
   
             
       
 
   
   
 
   
             
           
 
 
 
 
   
             
       
 
             
         
   
             
             
     
   
   
   
   
   
             
   
 
 
 
 
 
             
     
 
 
 
     
 
             
             
       
       
       
       
   
             
   
 
 
 
   
 
             
     
           
   
 
 
   
             
             
 
   
             
 
 
             
         
   
     
   
     
   
             
             
 
 
 
 
   
             
             
   
 
 
   
             
             
   
   
   
   
   
   
             
   
 
   
 
 
 
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
             
     
       
         
   
   
   
             
             
       
       
       
       
       
             
       
   
             
       
   
   
             
       
 
     
     
 
 
             
     
   
       
   
   
 
             
   
         
   
   
   
   
             
     
   
   
   
   
   
             
       
 
 
 
 
 
             
             
     
     
   
   
 
             
   
             
       
   
   
       
             
   
   
     
   
   
   
             
       
         
   
   
   
   
             
     
       
 
 
   
   
             
   
     
     
     
     
     
             
   
 
         
       
       
     
             
       
 
 
 
   
   
             
   
 
 
 
 
 
             
     
     
     
   
   
   
             
       
   
       
   
     
   
             
         
       
 
         
 
       
             
   
       
     
 
     
   
             
       
   
 
         
   
         
             
           
     
   
     
   
   
             
       
     
           
     
     
 
             
             
 
 
 
 
 
             
             
 
             
 
 
             
             
             
 
 
 
 
     
             
   
   
   
   
   
   
             
     
 
 
     
     
 
             
       
         
     
     
     
     
             
     
   
     
   
   
   
             
   
       
             
     
     
   
   

Forty Nine Birthday Drawings (I was born June 10, 1957 at 3:17 p.m. PST), 2006, HTML, 140 x 140 pixels each

Forty Eight Birthday Drawings, 2005

Forty Seven Birthday Drawings, 2004

Forty Six Birthday Drawings, 2003

Drawing for a Forty Fifth Birthday, 2002

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:21 AM

June 09, 2006

Band (Billy Preston)

 

 

                                                                       
             
   
           
       
           
       
             
     
           
     
         
     
   
   
     
     
       
   
         
   
       
   
       

 

Band (Billy Preston), 20060607, HTML & JPEG, 460 x 720 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 10:41 PM

Steve Karlik: SHIFT, Brooklyn

 

 

Steve Karlik: SHIFT
Gallery Three at South Oxford Space, Brooklyn, June 5 through August 25, 2006

Steve Karlik, Series SHIFT, Colonna, 2006, acrylic and oil enamel on wood pane, 16 x 40 x 2 inches

The Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York) is pleased to present SHIFT, an exhibition of acrylic and oil on wood panels by artist Steve Karlik at Gallery Three in South Oxford Space, located at 138 South Oxford Street in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn. An opening reception will be held on Friday, June 9 from 7pm to 9pm. The exhibit is open to the public Monday through Friday from 10am to 4pm and Saturday and Sunday from10am to1pm.

Steve Karlik created SHIFT specifically for the space at Gallery Three. The paintings on display in SHIFT explore the chameleon-like nature of colors in relation to each other and visual tensions existing in a very shallow plane. There is a delicate balance between the paintings' competing elements. In this exhibit, the two dimensional plane leans vertically against the wall to converge with the personal space of the viewer.

Originally from Portland, Oregon, Karlik studied at Portland State University under Mel Katz before attending graduate school at Pratt Institute, studying under Linda Francis. His initial work was in landscape painting before coming to Modernism as a direct result of seeing an exhibition of Mark Rothko's later work. He currently lives and works in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (See my interview with Steve Karlik, Sept. 2005.)

Karlik's work has been shown in Rio de Janeiro; Philadelphia (Pentimenti Gallery); New York; Richmond, VA (Richmond Biennial of Emerging Artists); Portland, OR and Brooklyn (DUMBO Arts Center). He was recently included in the Hunter College exhibition "Presentational Painting III".

For more information or directions, please contact Stephanie Bok, Assistant Manager of South Oxford Space at 718-398-3078 or email sbok@art-newyork.org.

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 07:15 PM

Popel Coumou

 

 

Above: untitled, 2005, 87x130 cm

Popel Coumou: Solo Exhibition
Gallery 32-34 Amsterdam-Osdorp
June 17 till July 1. 2006
Opening June 17th at 4pm.
Keurenplein 32-34
1069 CD Amsterdam Osdorp
The Netherlands
+31(0)20 619 57 82
http://www.de40eurogalerie.nl/expo.html?id=3234&xp=45
Hours: Tuesday till Saturday 11am – 5pm


Saudades
Collectietentoonstelling in Museum CRAC Alsace en Museum Het Domein
14.06.2006 - 17.09.2006
Onder de titel Saudades wordt van 14 juni t/m 20 augustus in Museum CRAC Alsace in Altkirch (Frankrijk, nabij Basel) en van 26 augustus t/m 17 september in Museum Het Domein een deel van de collectie van Het Domein gepresenteerd. De getoonde werken zijn afkomstig van Ed Templeton, Kim Gordon, Bjarne Melgaard, Doug Aitken, Arno Nollen, Fiona Tan, Lidwien van de Ven, Rineke Dijkstra, Risk Hazekamp, Rita Ackermann, Anton Corbijn, Popel Coumou, Jimmie Durham / Maria Thereze Alves en Mark Gonzales.

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 07:00 PM

June 08, 2006

Fruit (Cantaloupe)

 

 

                                     
     
 
 
       
 
       
 
 
 
 
 
   
 
   
 
   

 

Fruit (Cantaloupe), 20060608, HTML & JPEG, 360 x 380 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 11:37 PM

Denis Peterson: "Don't Shed No Tears"

 

 

Above: Denis Peterson, "The End of It", 2006, Acrylic and oil on canvas, 20 x 36" (source)

In recent years we have witnessed genocide via first person accounts, news stories, television, radio and film, and, increasingly, nearly real-time through the Internet. We have watched the international community's slow, indecisive recognition of this genocide, and felt anger and despair at the inaction. How does one respond to crises in the world? A privileged citizen of a Western(ized) country can read, vote, write letters, write checks, tell others and speak out, participate in boycotts, etc. But as the bumper sticker says, "If you aren't outraged you aren't paying attention."

What more can one do, throw his or her body in between a victim and a machete? Because of geography and fortune and circumstance we are lucky as individuals to be far from these things, though we are left in the position of being so far removed that we can merely stand by and wring our hands. Some people pray. Maybe that does some good.

As an artist, what more can one do? As a citizen the artist can donate or sell work to raise funds. This is not uncommon, and it is worthwhile. But what if one wants to do more, to make the art part of one's action?

Does one turn one's art, it's subject matter, its reason for being in service of justice? As a painter, does one go the more didactic, activist route of, roughly, Gericault[1], Spero[2], or Sue Coe[3]? Or does one take a more poetic route à la Jacob Lawrence[4] or Guston[5]? An exemplary artist to think of here is of course Goya [6]. I think of some of Joy Garnett's[7] work as being in this vein. In all of these artists there is a unique aesthetic approach and a conceptual grounding on which hinges whether or not the work of these artists is art or illustration. How a painting is conceived, how it is made, how it exists as a painting, and how it engages a viewer in a complex experience of looking, discovery, and psychologcial and emotional dynamics is the territory where a painted image becomes something much more than a picture of something.

Perhaps one approach an artist might take is sheer commitment. One might make painted images that are so highly crafted, detailed, and labor intensive, that so earnestly suggest every pore and thread, that the message is simply, "I believe, and I care. Look at this. It is important." To do this, the artist lives with images so intensely that they become familiar and internal, alive and emotional. Maybe the viewer picks up on this, and maybe it becomes part of the viewer's experience.

Perhaps this is what Denis Peterson[8] has done. He is showing paintings through June 30th at Next Gallery[9] in New York depicting people and places where genocide is a fact: Rwanda, Darfur, Ethiopia, Haiti and Cambodia. A press release says that this show, Don't Shed No Tears, "is a unique solo painting exhibition focused on genocide. Denis Peterson’s masterful photorealist airbrush paintings are metaphoric silent witnesses - quintessential portraitures of salient human beings and stunningly incorporeal landscapes." The exhibition's title is a call to action- it's not enough to cry; as Philip Guston[5] said, "What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything - and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue."
Right: Cactus Flower (2006), acrylic on canvas, 24 images of prisoner children, taken from their identity papers (source; more detail)

Paintings like Peterson's face a dilemma. When a painting is brought to such a high degree of finish and photographic resolution there is a risk that the painted surface is seen as a fetishized object made by a person of privilege. When images of other are used- exotic locales, people with cultural differences, those without a voice- there are potential issues around power and use; there is the risk of accusations of exploitation or glamorization. And it can be very problematic when painting appears to be a photograph, when it appears to be a copy of a photograph, and also has the appearance of photojournalism, which has a whole different contextual frame around it that we use to see and assess what we see. A painter working in this territory can be accused of uncritically using something horrible to make something beautiful. This is a difficult area to work within. I have not seen these paintings first-hand, and so am not able to judge them as paintings, to account for any painting decisions Peterson has made in response to use his of photographs. Paintings that appear to be photographs don't necessarily impress me. My tendency for now, however, is to see Peterson's labors as evidence of his commitment. And by making something beautiful and hyper-real in appearance, I think he attempts to remind us that people suffering terribly are living, breathing, thinking, and feeling individuals in need of our attention and help.

Robert Ayers wrote about Peterson's show in Art Without Edges: Images of Genocide in Lower Manhattan for Artinfo.com. Peterson told Ayers, "The body of work was created for humanitarian purposes, and proceeds of certain works are going to victims and families." More images can be seen at denispeterson.com.

[1] "A number of painters in the Romantic period, and some before it, believed imagery should present situations, states of suffering, and outrage in forms that were extreme and compelling in themselves. These images, they thought, would stimulate the sympathy and satisfaction that were regarded as salutary and sublime - indeed they envisaged a situation in which agony as such would create a demand for experience that would in other contexts be intolerable. The Artchive. http://artchive.com/artchive/G/gericault.html

[2] "Nancy Spero’s innovative language of printed and stamped text and images has both celebrated the human and often specifically female, experience, as well as expressed outrage at violence, war and inhumanity. Galerie Lelong. http://www.galerie-lelong.com/newyork/artistes/fr_encours.php?artiste=72

[3] "Sue Coe is one of the most important politically oriented artists living in the U.S. today. From the outset of her career working as an illustrator for such publications as the New York Times and Time Magazine, Coe was committed to reaching a broad audience through the print media." Galerie St. Etienne. http://www.gseart.com/coe.html

[4] "Over a sixty-five year career, Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) was an impassioned observer and storyteller whose art documented both the African American experience as well as the larger human struggle for freedom and social justice." Whitney Museum. http://www.whitney.org/jacoblawrence/

[5] "If the return to the world of things, as the 'dark pictures' make clear are based in part on the painting process itself, what was certainly essential was a lively political awareness that Guston had shown since his artistic beginnings. In 1977 he retrospectively spoke of this aspect in a quite clear-cut way: 'So when the 1960's came along I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening to America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything - and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue. [..] I wanted to be complete again, as I was when I was a kid.... Wanted to be whole between what I thought and what I felt.'" Artchive. http://www.artchive.com/artchive/G/guston.html

[6] Goya seems to have come to take it for granted that a human being with power or authority over another will abuse it to ruin the other to dismember, deprave, despoil, relentlessly, gratuitously. Maybe the scenes in The Disasters of War of the pointless butchery which the victors inflict on the vanquished tell us no more about Goya himself than that, like any humane and rational being, he loathed the excesses of war." Artchive. http://www.artchive.com/artchive/G/goya.html

[7] "Garnett's subject is the apocalyptic-sublime and the intersections of media, politics and culture. Her paintings, based on documentary photographs she samples from the internet, exploit the accessibility and malleability of images in the media." Joy Garnet: artist bio. http://www.firstpulseprojects.com/joy.html

[8] Denis Peterson. http://www.denispeterson.com/

[9] Denis Peterson: Don’t Shed No Tears; 6 May through June 30, 2006; Next Gallery, 75 Varick Street 12th Floor (One Hudson Square), NYC; M-F 9-9 Sat 9-6; Contact Faye Ran, Director, 212 343-1234 x2209

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 06:37 PM

June 07, 2006

Player (Reggie Jackson)

 

 

                                           
         
     
                       
           
         
         
         
       
                               
           
       
       
       
             
       
     
                                           

 

Player (Reggie Jackson), 20060602, HTML and JPEG, 360 x 440 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 08:55 PM

Artists Interview Artists: Chris Ashley

 

 

Artists Interview Artists: Chris Ashley

Originally published Thursday, May 25, 2006 at Thinking About Art.

Chris Ashley, an artist and blogger from Oakland, CA, participates in the Artists Interview Artists Project. Below Chris responds to another artist's five questions (Eileen Wold from Washington, D.C.). In order to participate, Chris had to provide me with five questions for some other artist to answer. The assigning of questions to artists is completely random. If you're an artist and interested in participating, let me know.


Chris_ashley_1

Untitled, 2005, oil on canvas, four panels - 18" x 14" each, 18" x 62" installed


1. What did your parents think about you becoming an artist. What do/did they do for a living? Has this affected the path your art has taken?

I think at times, up until my earliest college years, my parents' felt pride that I was a creative person; my mom used to often tell the story of how as soon as I was able to as a toddler I carried pencil and paper everywhere. I drew at home, at school, in church. But looking back I can see that they expected me to outgrow this focus and desire and to eventually lead an ordinary, non-intellectual life. They were puzzled by how I chose to spend my time, were mystified at some of the kinds of art I tried and admired, and were concerned, even appalled, by some of the directions I took, none of which, to be clear, were at all really radical or risky or rebellious in any life style terms.

My parents were married in the mid-fifties. I was born in an era when a family could afford for the mother to stay home with the children and be called a "homemaker." My mother came from a large family whose aspirations, to my mind, seemed limited to having a family and being a good Christian. My father was the plant carpenter at a huge factory. He came from a family of public school educators; both of his parents and three siblings were teachers. Instead of going that route he dropped out of college in his sophomore year, got a job in a factory, married young and started a family. I think he wanted to do things on his own terms, and I also think that he resented how that decision put certain options beyond his reach. I believe I share some of his character. So, my immediate family was blue collar and striving towards lower middle class, and I was extremely aware from adolescence of class and of aspects of a blue collar outlook that do and don't run in me.

The family member who has had the greatest impact on me was my grandmother, my father's mother. She was widowed quite young with four children, taught second grade for over thirty years, and was the strong center of our family. She lived nearby, was loving and generous, and deeply understood child development. She provided many opportunities for my brothers and I, and recognized my interest in art early on, taking me to museums, buying me my first set of oils at age 11, keeping and framing my drawings. She thought Norman Rockwell was a great artist, and didn't understand what I would later do, but I always felt her moral and spiritual strength, honesty, and extreme kindness, and that has always been something that I've carried, even into my art.

I eventually taught elementary school, just like members of my father's family, and I've always felt that some part of that was because of the model my grandmother provided for me. Teaching nine to twelve year olds taught me a great deal about learning and cognition, process and routines, observation and assessment, and community and relating. I'm still finding ways to use this in my life and in my art. For example, my weblog is a direct extension of the uses of portfolios for reflection and evaluation that I used in education.


2. In your opinion, what is the most troubling thing about "the business of art?"

There are several art worlds and various levels of business in the art world. There are many different paths to take, and with these options there are inevitably also many inequities to encounter, just like any other area in life. Ultimately business is of course about profit, and profit doesn't always follow what's best or fair; profit follows what is popular. The art world is highly unregulated, which makes for a way of working that is very fluid and difficult to pin down, but I'm not sure that it is a kind of business world where much regulation is even possible.

I could complain about how the art world, like much of the world, is obsessed with youth and this year's fashion, about art that I think is uninteresting and unworthy of critical comment, let alone buyers, and about how large segments of the contemporary art world seem to be increasingly veering into entertainment and illustration, but if that's what is profitable that's where the business side of art will go, at least for now. One can choose whether or not to participate at all, and there are always ways that artists can exercise different kinds of control over their place in one or several of the various art worlds; it's time-consuming work, but it's possible. Someone told me that an art career takes patience, and even though I am often impatient I think it's good advice to think of the long term.


3. Name a few contemporary artists that you are following the work of and tell us how or if it relates back to your own work.

This should be an easy and direct question to answer, but I actually find it a little difficult. I know what you mean by contemporary, but I prefer to think of what is interesting or useful to me, which may not match typical notions of "contemporary." I look back and forth a lot at painters from past to present, and the more I look the more I see that painters from different eras and locations have much in common.

I have spent the past couple of years looking at and thinking about 17th century Chinese painter Shitao, and I've had some revelations this year about Thomas Gainsborough. All of this relates to my own work in terms of intent and purpose, a time in history, conventions and invention, feel for material and scale, what paint does, and how to make images.

Since Clyfford Still was alive at the time I first recognized my identity as an artist (he died in 1980) I can consider him a very senior contemporary, especially in relation to artists much younger than me. I began looking at Still around 1976 when I first saw his work at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which owns nearly thirty of his paintings and which always has some on view. He is a difficult, not terribly likable, and uneven artist who seems, at a superficial glance, to have simply made variations of the same painting over and over beginning in the early 1940's. But his work has been in front of my eyes and in the back of my mind for thirty years, and in the past couple of years I've wrestled quite a bit with trying to experience his work and to describe that experience and what it means. I haven't completely pinned down what his paintings are about and how they work, and I expect to keep working at that.

Belgian artist Raoul de Keyser (born 1930) is someone whose work one doesn't often get to see in the US, especially on the West Coast, but I have been fortuntate to see some of his work and I've also read a great deal about him. His work interests me because he doesn't seem wedded to a particular style other than making what one would call "abstract" images while still referencing real things. His subject matter has personal origins without being hermetic or self-centered, he works in series or small bodies of work, and he has a sense of scale about his overall project: he doesn't make large paintings for the just sake of making large paintings, and there is a kind of self knowledge, modesty, and openness in his work. Much of what I wrote here could apply to another painter I follow, Thomas Nozkowski. Three other people I'll name whose work shares some of these qualities and who I will always go see are Mary Heilmann, Pat Steir, and Louise Fishman, all painters.

More locally, my friend George Lawson is someone whose work I follow closely. We look at and talk about art in general, and the work of each of us. That dialogue is extremely valuable. In the past year the interviews I've done with a number of artists have been published online, and that conversation, and looking closely at the artists work, and the new relationships established with some of these artist has been very important to me.


4. Does "creating" in your studio space energize you or wipe you out? What is it that does energize you or wipe you out in life?

Well, "creating" involves both. I mean, working in the studio, when it's going well, creates energy, but there is always some point of exhaustion or ending, whether at the end of a day or at the end of a particular body of work. On a day to day basis, if the session is short it can be energizing but also frustrating because of the time limitation. If time allows for a long session it can be energizing but eventually physically drain me; my head can be buzzing but I'm exhausted- that's a kind of euphoria. If things aren't going well then it's just frustrating and draining, and I have to work through that. Sometimes that might only last for a few minutes, and other times it can last for weeks.

What energizes me sounds like a personal ad: laughing, playing the guitar, walking, reading, writing, and of course making and looking at art. What wipes me out in life isn't unique to me: working full time.


5. What is the best thing about your life outside of your artwork?

I love my wife, I have a good job, we have a house in a good neighborhood, I'm healthy, and no great tragedies have come my way.


6. Has your artwork ever affected the life of someone else in a profound way? Explain.

Profound? I have no idea. My tendency is to say that I would be surprised to know that my art had a profound effect on someone, but that sounds lacking in ambition, which is something I don't lack. I have done things that people have liked, that perhaps have stretched expectations some. I know that a few people close to me have been surprised and pleased by things I've made. I do sometimes have an audience in my head when making or writing something, but I think as a starting place I'm more interested in having a profound effect on myself first. A big part of making art is connected to the quality and satisfaction of my own inner life, the questions I ask and the way I'd like to see things. I will say that I am honestly profoundly affected on a daily basis by the art I see by artists of all ages and eras, and what I read and think about this art, even work I don't particularly like, so perhaps it isn't ridiculous for me to think that I may be able to do the same for someone else. This is a good question, and having to answer it I think I've learned something about myself. Thanks for the opportunity to talk out loud about myself.


Chris_ashley_2

Red Machine, 2006, HTML & animated GIFs (10 seconds, looped), screen capture, original 380 x 380 pixels posted 20060326


 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 07:15 PM

Artists Interview Artists: Michael Grayeagle

 

 

Artists Interview Artists: Michael Grayeagle

Originally published Friday, May 05, 2006 at Thinking About Art.

Michael Grayeagle, a Harrisburg, PA based artist, participates in the Artists Interview Artists Project. Below Michael responds to another artist's five questions (Chris Ashley from Oakland, CA). In order to participate, Michael had to provide me with five questions for some other artist to answer. The assigning of questions to artists is completely random. If you're an artist and interested in participating, let me know.


Michael_grayeagle_1

The Barnyard Sunset
Arches 300gsm using Daniel Smith paints
18" x 24"
12/2005


1. Let's say I'm someone who knows next to nothing about art, but I am genuinely interested in hearing you talk about your art. Leaving all jargon and assumptions behind, how would you describe as clearly and plainly as possible what your art looks like, why and how you make it, your intentions, and what you believe your art means?

I believe that being Native American brings a spiritual aspect to art. Other ethnic groups may believe this too, but I can only speak for myself and my own people.

When I paint, I am pouring out from my inner being what my spirit sees and wants to show you. How successful I am at that remains to be seen --- but I want to show you what my spirit sees. I once did a painting called “Coming Home” and to some it is nothing more than a bird trying to land in the hollow of a tree where its nest is. What I saw and wanted to portray was the determination that that bird had in coming --- not to some hole in a tree --- but to its home --- family --- its purpose for being at that time.

My art is my story to you about something.


2. How would you describe the art scene where you live? What is your relationship to that scene, what kind of relationship would you like to have, and how do you think you can you achieve that?

I happen to live in a very active art community where one can become a little overwhelmed with so much art you wonder if there really is any room for me. I am a member of the PA Watercolor Society for several reasons: 1. I believe I need to suppose the arts, and in particular my segment of the arts. 2. When one is part of a group he/she gets to become an insider and is afforded information others do not immediately know. Now, I don’t mean that in a snobbery kind of way --- but it does give one and edge on the person who does not want to belong to any group. 3. I also like to have my work critiqued by my peers. I believe that is something that those of us who have been at this for awhile often neglect and suffer because of it. I find it a tremendous help to hear what other artist have to say about a piece that I have done, because I think everyone of us would have done one or two things differently if they would have created the painting. The trick here is, of course, to take the critiques without being offended. In fact when I find someone who repeatedly seems to be nasty about the entire thing, I either totally ignore everything he/she say or I try not to allow them to do a critique.

Everyone loves to give advise and this is a great way to find acceptance.


3. What role do you think current technologies, for example email and the web, and tools like weblogs, Flickr, Del.icio.us, and My Space, for example, and the near ubiquity of digital imaging, are having and can have in the making, distribution, critical dialogue, marketing, and social networking of art? What are you using, and what would you like to see happen?

This is the future! I am not sure that brick and mortar galleries will ever go away because there is a certain --- class (I dislike using that word) that finds this the only way to buy, but even galleries are going on-line. I have a web site and 99% of my sales are from that site. How important is my site? I gets hits from literally around the world everyday. People from many countries view my artwork that would never in a hundred years see any of it.

Spam is a real problem and needs to be --- and I believe will be controlled. Blogs are helpful because the greatest enemy of an artist is anonymity. You’ve got to get your name and work out there before people. Blogs can help do that. However, this can backfire on you if your art is not very good or if the information you’re giving out is obviously flawed. You can only fake it for so long.

I flinch at the digital art programs that I have seen out there. They are so sophisticated many of them can take anyone’s hard work, copy it and sell it as one's own. On the other hand, I must confess I use some programs to set up my projects. Almost all of my paintings are done from photographs and I generally run those photos through a program to sharpen the image, to get gray scale prints, color prints, and I can crop, change view and re-crop again and again until I get the story I am looking to portray. I guess, like everything it is simply a program and good people will use it wisely and bad people will misuse it. That’s the world!

The social networking that the net allows for all people is fantastic! I have met and made so many friends through the net that I have never personally seen nor probably ever will. We have swapped photographs from around the world so that we both can paint pictures of places neither of us can afford to get to.


4. What is something about your art that you think is important that viewers generally overlook or misunderstand?

This one is easy. We are a flash - flash world --- everything instant, a quick look here, a snap decision there, a quick okay or a fast Ugh. Art, in my opinion, is meant to be stared at. It is meant to evoke an emotion and thought. That takes time. That takes looking carefully at the picture and thinking --- which we just don’t do anymore. I find it amazing to go to a museum and watch people look at a painting for about 20 seconds and move on to the next and then the next.

I have stats on my web page that show me that more than 80% of the pictures viewed are viewed for 30 seconds or less. What they “overlook or misunderstand” is there is an entire story being told if they just took the time to ask the right questions.


5. What are you doing to get your art out in public? Do you have a plan or are you just winging it? Have any hot or unusal tips? What is working for you, and what is something that definitely doesn't work?

Let me answer the second question first --- if you don’t have a plan your father better own Micro-Soft because you’re going to go nowhere! Yes, I have a short range plan, which I call goals, and I have a long range plan/goals --- but I never go any farther than four years. There are too many changes in four years time. I keep that plan/goals in plain view so that I see them frequently and often have to change one or two for whatever reason.

Now to your first question: I have a public view web page that I work very hard at. I have learned that you cannot put out a web page and then expect the world to come to it. I have put effort into studying things like SEOs, Page Ranking, Links,Robots, Meta Tags, DMOZ, (if none of these sound familiar and you are trying to sell by a web site --- you’re in trouble) and networking your net work.

Hot and unusual tips: if you are interested in selling your work then notice I used the word work. It is a job --- a very hard job being a professional artist. Work hard at your painting but work hard at your business and remember it is a business.

What is working for me? Being open and being myself. Working hard and continuing to learn my craft and my business.

The final question: Don’t fall into that artistic jerk attitude. I have come across so many singing the blues about not selling and when you go to their web site and look at their BIO or Statement they have comments like “My work speaks for itself” or “Buy it if you like it otherwise don’t”. When you do a show, be friendly, open and available to answer questions. In other words be a normal person who happens to be an artist. And always --- be gracious!


Michael_grayeagle_2

The Mighty Matterhorn
Arches 300gsm using Daniel Smith paints
18" x 24"
4/2006

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 07:00 PM

A Hard Look at Haditha

 

 

New York Times
June 4, 2006
Editorial
A Hard Look at Haditha

The apparent cold-blooded killing last November of 24 Iraqi civilians by United States marines at Haditha will be hard to dispose of with another Washington damage control operation. The Iraqi government has made clear that it will not sit still for one, and neither should the American people. This affair cannot simply be dismissed as the spontaneous cruelty of a few bad men.

This is the nightmare that everyone worried about when the Iraq invasion took place. Critics of the war predicted that American troops would become an occupying force, unable to distinguish between innocent civilians and murderous insurgents, propelled down the same path that led the British to disaster in Northern Ireland and American troops to grief in Vietnam. The Bush administration understood the dangers too, but dismissed them out of its deep, unwarranted confidence that friendly Iraqis would quickly be able to take control of their own government and impose order on their own people.

Now that we have reached the one place we most wanted to avoid, it will not do to focus blame narrowly on the Marine unit suspected of carrying out these killings and ignore the administration officials, from President Bush on down, who made the chances of this sort of disaster so much greater by deliberately blurring the rules governing the conduct of American soldiers in the field. The inquiry also needs to critically examine the behavior of top commanders responsible for ensuring lawful and professional conduct and of midlevel officers who apparently covered up the Haditha incident for months until journalists' inquiries forced a more honest review.

So far, nothing in President Bush's repeated statements on the issue offers any real assurance that the White House and the Pentagon will not once again try to protect the most senior military and political ranks from proper accountability. This is the pattern that this administration has repeatedly followed in the past — in the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib, in the beating deaths of prisoners at Bagram air base in Afghanistan and in the serial abuses of justice and constitutional principle at Guantánamo Bay.

These damage control operations have done a great job of shielding the reputations of top military commanders and high-ranking Pentagon officials. But it has been at the expense of things that are far more precious: America's international reputation and the honor of the United States military. The overwhelming majority of American troops in Iraq are dedicated military professionals, doing their best to behave correctly under extraordinarily difficult circumstances. Their good name requires a serious inquiry, not another deflection of blame to the lowest-ranking troops on the scene.

What we now know about the events last Nov. 19 in Haditha, a town in Anbar Province in western Iraq, the violent epicenter of the Sunni Arab insurgency, essentially boils down to this: A roadside bomb struck a Humvee traveling in the vicinity, killing one of the marines on board, and sometime later 24 Iraqi civilians were gunned down, many in their homes. The victims included women, children and grandparents. We know this not through the original Marine Corps report on the incident, which claimed that all the Iraqi deaths resulted from the bomb and an exchange of gunfire with insurgents. We know it because reporters from Time magazine began challenging inconsistencies between eyewitness Iraqi accounts and the Marine Corps version.

We still do not know how high up the Marine Corps chain of command the original cover-up went, nor do we know how the president, the defense secretary and other top officials responded when they first learned of the false reporting. Americans need to be told what steps are now being taken, besides remedial ethics training, to make sure that such crimes against civilians and such deliberate falsifications of the record do not recur.

It should not surprise anyone that this war — launched on the basis of false intelligence analysis, managed by a Pentagon exempted from normal standards of command responsibility and still far from achieving minimally acceptable results — is increasingly unpopular with the American people. At the very least, the public is now entitled to straight answers on what went wrong at Haditha and who, besides those at the bottom of the chain of command, will be required to take responsibility for it.

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:04 AM

June 06, 2006

Band (Stanley Brothers)

 

 

                                 
     
         
       
       
   
         
       
       
     
 
         
 
   
 
 
         
       
       
     
   
   
   
   

 

Band (Stanley Brothers), 20060606, HTML & JPEG, 480 x 340 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:13 AM

Steven LaRose: Art for the Masses

 

 

From Steven LaRose's Art for the Masses II, acquired via his The First Fish or Cut BaitArt For The Masses Auction or Give-Away and now in my collection, lucky me:

 



Chinese Pagoga, 2006, pencil on paint card (Miller Low Hide 7416N Chinese Pagoda LRV 19), 2 7/8 x 6 1/2 inches

 

Honeywind, 2006, pencil on paint card (Miller CW055W Honeywind LRV 71), 2 7/8 x 6 1/2 inches

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:10 AM

Interview: Tilman Hopefl

 

 

Published at Minus Space, June 2006

 

Introduction
Tilman has stated that his art has completely moved into the three-dimensional realm, and that his use of and response to architecture requires finding a balance between various environments and the objects that he makes and situates in these environments.  Inspired by everyday objects and structures, his goal is to present and represent light using color and form, which is mediated through the objects he makes, the structures in which the objects are located, and the overall integrated installation.  As René Kockelkorn writes about Tilman Hoepfl’s exhibition F218B-BXL, at CCNOA, Brussels in 2004, “in short, this is not merely an art to look at, but a physical and psychical space of experience.”

In the following interview the reader will find the word location used several times, and there are two instances where this word is extended to locational and locationality.  In reference to a pink shape he saw on the side of a building in New York which later influenced an art work of his, Tilman says, “somehow it caught my eye and I was fascinated by its awkward shape and color, and also its locational relationship.”  It wasn’t merely the pink shape that mattered, but also the place where it was situated and what surrounded it.  And in our discussion about site-specific and installation art, he says, “a work which is truly site-specific for me is a work which is locationally immanent, if one can say this, rather than a work which can be transported to any other location.” 

In particular, I am very fond of his use of the word “immanent” here, meaning indwelling; inherent; or all-pervading, which perhaps even carries a sense of transcendence.  “Locationally immanent” would mean that something is where it is meant to be, and that it can’t be anywhere else.  Much of what Tilman attempts in his recent work is the use objects and color to create situations that feel natural and original, yet are structured and heightened places in which the viewer experiences form and light; one might call these immanent locations.

Right: Tilman: "Look Awry" retrospective at Kunsternes Hus, Oslo, Norway, May-June 2006

—Chris Ashley, June 2006


The following conversation between Tilman Hoepfl and Chris Ashley was conducted via email in English between April and May 2006.  For further information about Chris Ashley, please visit www.chrisashley.net.


Chris Ashley: Your work F218B-BXL installed at CCNOA, Brussels in 2003 incorporated video and sound by Johan Vandermaelen.  What was your thinking about including environmental sound in your installation?  Is this the first time that you've included other media in an installation of yours, and is it something you intend to do again?


Tilman Hoepfl: F 218 B-BXL was the first site-specific installation; its basic aim was to create a dialogue between certain elements in my work, but also of perception itself.  I found it interesting to include also various media into my process to add another layer of possible perceptive momentum.  Sound, for example, became by bits an architectural structure and yet another element in these rooms on the same level as maybe a flat wall work.  It definitely is not meant as an atmospheric addition.


CA: During 2006 you have three solo exhibitions scheduled in Oslo, Dusseldorf, and Sydney.  Can you tell me about the work you will be showing in these different locations, how the work is different or the same, and if these different cities affect either the work you are showing or the installation?


TH: Oslo is a rather involved project.  The show will contain seven stacked and layered wall objects, two floor objects and one large floor/wall object.  All works are made for the space, some beforehand in my Brussels studio, and the large objects here in Oslo, on-site.  The other gallery space will be occupied by a large installation similar to F 218 B-BXL.  This installation will also contain different media, like video and a sound piece by Belgian composer Aernoudt Jacobs, who composed this piece especially for this space and installation.

The show in Dusseldorf will be hosted by a rather small gallery, Konsortium, and in this venue I will show drawings and one wall object deriving from those drawings.  The series of drawings is called Fundstueck/gridworks, and is based on an object my eyes caught in New York two years ago—a mimetic relation, maybe.

The SNO (Sydney Non Objective) show later this year will most probably be a site-specific installation, due to the location and also due to the practicality—Sydney is a bit far away.  But no specific plans are made yet for this show.

In general I could say that a special location does not influence my work in particular, except that by traveling far distances to have exhibitions I got into working site-specifically and also more experimental lydue to this situation, a flexibility which I had to get acquainted with first, but now I feel very confident with this process of art-making; the post-studio thing, to maybe call it, helped me in some ways in the creative act and broadened my ways of approaching and dealing with the process of making a work of art.


CA: What was it that caught your eye in New York on which you based these drawings?  Do you often get ideas like this from your environment?  Is much of your work based on other objects or something in the environment?


TH: That specific image I detected in New York was actually a huge pink shape consisting of isolation panels mounted on the outside brick wall of a building under construction, and somehow it caught my eye and I was fascinated by its awkward shape and color, and also its locational relationship.  But it is not that I am specifically looking for images like this—they just occur, and if they are strong enough, they find their way slowly into the process.  So I am trying to say that especially the architectural objects are not entirely dependent on this process of seeing.  This also can happen by working on drawings and making sort of loose sketches, especially when it comes to larger artworks.  But yes, I cannot deny a relationship to daily life objects, or at least the impulse I get from looking at things, objects, and my environment.


CA: Let’s talk about this idea of the “post-studio” practice, a not uncommon practice for many artists now.  I see a breakdown of art that is made in the studio, or made outside the studio, or is half-and-half.  There are artists who don’t have a studio beyond, say, a laptop, and who work with teams or fabricators.  Can you say more about this, and how it broadens your practice?  You’re still working in a studio, too, so are these approaches ever really separate, or is it more porous, something shifting back and forth?


TH: “The world becomes the studio”—this is a line used by a New Zealand-based art critic, and I can definitely relate to this quote.  So in my case, this became an issue after being invited to places like Australia, or in cases of working with art-spaces that run on a low budget.  The works I execute then are usually made site-specific, or I find a place where I can continue the regular studio practice, so in this case I can set up a temporary studio wherever I want.  Maybe the idea of working in one place—the studio—is a very romantic idea in these times and days, and then may be one day it becomes important again.  The intimacy of the studio is still important, so to say, but also the flexibility of location, time and space are a big part of my working process, without interfering with the essential idea of my work.


CA: The literature about your work and your own statements emphasize your interest in color and light.  Your realization that light and color were your main concerns came over time, and through painting, and in some ways you are still involved in painting, but also sculpture.  I'm curious to know about why and how you make solid colored objects in order to get at the effects of light.  What result are you after in setting up for the viewer a situation where light is made with objects?


TH: I guess my early interests in light stem from my concern for photography, which developed very young, also always painting at the same time.  Working with photography ended basically in doing very experimental photos about movement of light.  Photography seemed not the right tool for me then, and I turned to painting to explore light and its essential visual quality.  Sure, for a long time I literally painted and tried to paint/catch light, and through years of working and researching in different modes and styles (bad word, I know), I arrived very slowly at a much-reduced form to give light its platform.  So in this term, I understand my works of art as more carriers for existing light, and they can be flat, three dimensional art arranged in an installation.  A strong point in this mode of working is to invite the viewer to participate in this physical experience, to look and understand the subtleties of light and the objects and, in general, I think this can also spur more philosophical or even psychological points of understanding than the work of art might offer at first sight.


CA: What do you see as the philosophical and psychological aspects of experiencing and understanding your work?  Perception of light and color are primary experiences in your work, and these take place through certain forms.  These forms are hung or installed in specific ways, and may be integral to an architectural setting, perhaps bearing the influence of architecture.  We are all familiar with and can deeply experience architectural spaces—we move through them, live in them, work in them.  Our experience of space, and much of our lives, is shaped by architecture, and color and light.  In “The Poetics of Space,” Gaston Bachelard applies the method of Phenomenology to examine our experience of architecture, looking closely at various kinds of shapes and spaces.  Some of our experience is less conscious, even automatic, but at some point we become more aware of our interactions with various kinds of spaces.  Our reactions are at first physical, gradually turning to awareness and meaning—which might be a psychological recognition—and then as we process this it becomes an idea or an ideal, entering the realm of philosophy.  Our looking translates into an intellectual process and vice-versa, and it can be a very interesting process.  How does your art act in the continuum from the physical, to the psychological, to the philosophical?


TH: I find your reference to Bachelard`s book very interesting.  Once I bought this book, about a half a year ago, but didn’t yet find time to focus on it.  The short rundown on Bachelard`s thoughts and ideas definitely reflects some subjects I am dealing with in my work, although I am missing subjects like personal physicality, sensuality and above all the factors of time, but, well, I haven’t read it yet.  Also, he is maybe more referring to the architectural space compared to the architectural/intimate space of a work of art.  For me, those questions evolved over a period of time, and the observations I made regarding the viewer’s act of seeing.  Once my works developed into three-dimensional objects I observed that most of the viewers still perceived those works as two-dimensional works, which deeply irritated me and raised a lot of questions about perception.  I then introduced those rather small boxes, called Volumina, and besides their own autonomy as works of art they also helped to seduce the viewer into another act of seeing and perception.  The viewer all of a sudden understood the three-dimensionality of the other works—looking behind, creating a curiosity—and once being three-dimensional those works created also a physicality within the viewer, which led to questions of psychology and, last but not least, philosophy.  There is sure more to say towards that subject, but maybe you get an idea of what I am aiming for.


CA: There are other artists with a strong psychological and philosophical foundation, who also deal with light and color.  How do you see your work in terms of the history of other artists for whom pure color and light are central, for example Robert Irwin, Dan Flavin, or James Turrell?


TH: Well, I think history is long and there are many artists I am interested in from Renaissance to today, and I think this is a quite complex question.  The three names you mention are sort of tied into Minimalism, and sure I respect their work in their own form of dealing with the phenomena of light, but I do not understand myself as a Minimalist.  There are certainly thoughts which I am very interested in, and also a certain aesthetic, but I wouldn't nail down my approach to them.  A very strong influence was a rather unknown artist who died recently, Robert Fosdick, and maybe also Belgian artist Marthe Wéry, who also died last year.  I can definitely say that there is a tradition in my language of art starting more precisely maybe with De Stijl and Bauhaus, for example.


CA: Can you say a little more about Fosdick and Wéry, their work, and their influence?


TH: As for my friend Robert Fosdick, I have to say that it wasn't necessarily the actuality of his individual works, it was the ideas he gave me about, let's say, possibilities for understanding the subtleties of light.  Deeply embedded in the dialogue between the realistic, scientific understanding of the natural phenomena of light itself, and on the other side a philosophical, spiritual approach towards it, the conversations with him supported my own development and triggered a manifold of questions in me.


As for Marthe Wéry, I guess we met just like that, a deep understanding in what we were both after in terms of physicality and intellect, the relationship between an art object and its function in architectural space, the importance of light as a mending plate between those entities, an almost sensoround experience, the questions of one's own physicality, one's own physical position—where do we stand?


CA: Going back to Minimalism, in his well-known essay “Art and Objecthood,” first published in “Artforum” in June 1967, Michael Fried used the word “theatricality” to describe, and criticize, Minimalism’s phenomenon of an object or form in real space experienced in real time.  This attribute eventually came to have many positive connotations.  When I mentioned Irwin, Flavin, and Turrell, I wasn’t really thinking of your work as Minimalism; I asked about them because light and perception are central to your work.  But now, given your use of installation, I’m wondering whether or not you incorporate this “theatrical” aspect of installation into your work.


TH: I think the term “theatrical” in this respect is theatrical in itself, and also maybe the term “installation” is wrong to describe those spaces I create.  They are clearly site-specific in their nature, which I think installation art is not.  The spaces I create are clearly connected to its location.  They never can be set up again in the same manner once they are standing in an important dialogue with its architectural environment and the existing light conditions.  I do not understand the architectural environment as a setting or stage in that sense.


CA: How is it possible that an installation is not site-specific?  I wonder if what you mean is that installation art doesn’t have to be site-specific.  It is dependent on the location, which can change each time the work is installed, in different conditions.  Regarding your work, do you mean that the architectural environment in which you install your work is not a backdrop or a platform, but is integrated into something larger— the entire work would include your objects or interventions, plus the environment?


TH: Sure, all installations are in some way site-specific; I just wanted to draw a line there between installation and site-specific, which you actually answered with the second part of your question regarding this subject.  A work which is truly site-specific for me is a work which is locationally immanent, if one can say this, rather than a work which can be transported to any other location and re-installed in a maybe slightly different configuration within any given space.


CA: Much of your work certainly shares the essential characteristics of de Stijl: pure abstraction; a reduction to essential form and color; an emphasis on vertical and horizontal, and individual, discrete works.  The Bauhaus’ key characteristics are architecture and function, and the philosophy that the practice of art is situated in a greater totality.  How do you see your work in relation to this?


TH: I guess there is definitely a relation to those thoughts.  Josef Alber’s quote that “art shall open eyes” is also very important in the bigger picture to make art accessible.  And I truly believe that the idea of reduction and the search for the subtleties in reductive art can open doors for understanding the bigger picture in a visual, physical, intellectual way.  This art is not aiming to be self-contained; it wants to relate, to give, to breathe.


CA: Do you arrive at the format and sizes of your work intuitively, or are proportion and numbers important drivers for your work?


TH: My process of working is usually a very loose one, very intuitive.  I seldom work on proper sketches although, sure, when it comes to large-scale works I have to sort of plan them out.


But there's no math or any relation to math involved.  I could say more that there is a definite relationship to architecture and building and creating spaces.  The objects actually could be described as micro-architectures, and I also believe there's a sort of architecture, or maybe better structure, in the chaotic, incidental appearance of things which constantly find their way into our eyes.


CA: The idea of micro- and incidental architecture is interesting.  For example, a work like 4103, which is a small box open on the top and bottom hung high on a wall near the ceiling could be initially taken for a sign, or a fire alarm, or some kind of sensor or detector.  What look like large colored sheets of fiberboard in E472C-BSL lean against the wall or are propped up off the floor on small planks, like sections of wall waiting to be installed.  The stacked pieces in F218B-BXL are placed like construction materials that have just been delivered to a site, ready to be used.  Elements : Squares are like colorful aluminum window frames on display at a home design convention.  Besides the forms you use, I think I see in your use of color a connection to very contemporary, popular architecture.


TH: I think there is definitely a connection in my works to architectural space in general, as a physical space in relation to one's own physicality and its relation to it: what do we see, where are we standing, what is going on?  There are those kinds of thing around us, those relationships, to discover and see.  Things that look awry are the concerns of this work.  As for the use of color, I don't really know whether there is a direct connection to architecture.  In architecture, yes, color gets used in many different aspects—as form, as decoration, etc.  In my work color functions under a very different umbrella—it is light.


CA: The color is material, first.  It could be the natural color of the material, or painted, or printed, or the color is applied in some way.  It’s a property of the object.  Of course, color is made possible by light, but how does the color move from being a physical thing to being simply light?


TH: In early Greek philosophy, light is described as the fourth element, the ether; they called it Olkas, a carrier which holds all together.  That’s what I am trying to say with simply light, making a reference to this thought.  So color, yes, as a material it becomes a carrier of thought, something essential, so to say.


CA: After all of these exhibitions, what next?


TH: Well, first of all I need a break, but in general I might say that I haven’t played out all the possibilities which my work process offers.  After all, it is slow, art, and I cannot just produce, period.  So I guess I will keep on researching my own possibilities.

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:03 AM

June 05, 2006

Fruit (Mango)

 

 

                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           
                                           

Fruit (Mango), 20060605, HTML & JPEG, 300 x 440 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 01:38 PM

June 04, 2006

Player (Pelé)

 

 

                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 

Player (Pelé), 20060604, HTML & JPEG, 540 x 500 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 04:07 PM

June 03, 2006

Band (The Jam)

 

 

                                             
                                   
                           
                         
                         
         
                                 
       
                     
                       
             
                               
                   
                             
             
                               
             
                                   
         
             
                                     
             

 

Band (The Jam), 2006, HTML & JPEG, 440 x 460 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 12:13 AM

June 02, 2006

Fruit (Lemon)

 

 

                                             
   
 
 
                       
                   
                                   
                               
                                   
                                     
                                   
                                   
                                   
                                   
                                     
                                 
                               
                           
                     
   
 
 
 

 

Fruit (Lemon), 20060602, HTML & JPEG, 524 x 280 pixels (image used with permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 07:00 PM

Kevin Finklea

 

 

Revised and reposted

Kevin Finklea announces:

Three paintings will hang in a show at Pentimenti in Philadelphia opening, June 2.

Also with Pentimenti at the Affordable Art Fair in NY in mid-June.


The paintings in the two images below will hang at Emma Hill in London, opening June 22. The installation will include drawings on the walls just as Kevin does in his studio, as seen in this recent photo (both acrylic on shaped plexiglas). As Kevin writes, "I'll be drawing on the walls live when I arrive in London. I have 3 days to pull that miracle off." The Shift pieces, which have the aluminum painted grounds, are paired with the new White Room pieces.

I took the photo below in Kevin's Philadelphia studio on Saturday night, October 7, 2005 (the red and blue paintings above are the same ones as below):

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 06:00 PM

June 01, 2006

Player (Mays & McCovey)

 

 

                                       
       
   
             
     
               
             
                     
       
   
                   
           
       
           
         
             
     
                   
           
             
           
             
           
         
     
 

 

Player (Mays & McCovey), 20060601, HTML & JPEG, 524 x 280 pixels (image used without permission)

 

 

 

 

Posted by chrisashley at 09:55 PM