Trio with beer

Here is another view of Big Chicks from yesterday, this time with the G10 rather than iPhone.  I think of it as a group portrait.

Context

Out the door at 8:00 AM yesterday for a full day in Chicago with members of MAM's Photography Council.  First stop was the Art Institute to see On the Scene, Playing with Pictures, and attend a discussion on perception, context, and reproducibility with Gaylen Gerber and Liz Deschenes.

Next stop was Big Chicks for Mimosas and Bloody Mary's and a jaw dropping photograph collection.  Arbus to Weegee...

 

 

Last stop was a visit to Brian Ulrich's studio for insight and information and new work.

 

An outstanding day!  Context became the recurring theme.

 

Lewis Koch

Touchless Automatic Wonder, Lewis Koch's web gallery created while Artist in Residence at the Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen, Denmark in May 2001 of "found text" photographs has been published as a book.  Touchless Automatic Wonder, Found Text Photographs from the Real World  (Borderland Books, distributed by UW Press) , 112 pp, hardbound, 80 duotone illus. The reproductions are very fine and the design is in keeping with the work giving it room and cadence.   At the risk or sounding like a Luddite; the opportunity to fully engage with the sequence, pairings, and individual images in a scale that makes them more accessible than the earlier web version is a great pleasure.  The book allows me to turn and re-turn the pages to absord the unfolding of this work while allowing room for my imagination and memory to also make it my own narrative.  

 

Kendra Green from MOCP wrote, "Lewis Koch plays at the borders of the incomprehensible and the inexplicable.  A open-air staircase seems to lead only to the sky; the question mark on a cart aptly remarks on its own mysterious placement at the center of a frozen lake; the view from a curtained window reveals the backward lettering of “YES”; on the glass floating in an inky night. Indeed, Koch’s gelatin-silver photographs often make use of odd or unexpected fragments of signage and found text to intensify the unsettling sensation of being radically out of place. Not merely quirky or coincidental, these single words or full phrases confront the viewer with all the authority of labels and directives, at once creating and commenting on the scene’s tension." 

 

It is fine thing to have a book inspire the emotion contained in the title. Curiosity, speculation, admiration, amazement.  In a word,  wonder. 

The book is available here and here.  You can contact Lewis Koch (lewiskoch(at)yahoo(dot)com) directly for a signed copy as well as inquire about a copy in a limited edition of 50 with choice of one of 5 images in editions of 10.

 

All black and white images copyright Lewis Koch and used with permission of the artist.

The kindness of neighbors

Any ideas on what to do with a 25 pound head of cabbage?

Challenging Vision

The issues in my work are often of a similar nature with an abstract edge. Though I build on past experience, I attempt to eradicate previous habits of seeing and thinking. I keep searching for what is visually new to me while always hoping that a fusion of form and content will take place.

Barbara Crane, 2002

Human Forms, 1964  Barbara Crane

 

Do you feel good about your work?  Do you feel like you are getting a lot done, moving forward, exploring new ways of seeing and making others see?  Do you feel pretty good about having a handle on the technical requirements of photography?  Then I advise you do not go to Barbara Crane Challenging Vision  at the Chicago Cultural Center through January 10, 2010.

I was there Saturday and felt as though I had been taken, metaphorically, to the woodshed.  No excuses, no explanations, no permissions asked.  Work, and more work, and more work.  Every thing, every form, every media.  Humbling, inspiring.

Spend time on her web site to get a taste of the experience.  A well made catalog covering the exhibit and her career is available through Amazon.

Security

Do we know when Amtrak hired Mad Magazine cartoonists for their graphics department or is that the international symbol for "bad guy"?

                                  

Mise-en-scène

with Dan, and myself as metteur en scène.

Dreams

I'm sleeping under Michael Kenna tonight. Nice when a hotel buys
original art.

Aspen Creek prints

Aspen Creek Photo had a sale a couple of weeks ago on 8 x 10 prints mounted and matted  at 16 x 20 for $12 a print.  Their product and service are every bit as good as their older sibling West Coast Imaging.  An excellent option for proofing at a good price and still having something usable.

Cash

Just when I was feeling disappointed that bidding on work in the Aperture Foundation 2009 Benefit  Auction was not in the budget....now I can bid on everything and still have enough left to buy a Hasselblad with a digital back!

Those were the days

Photo by Sonja Thomsen

Last night Curator Lisa Hostetler gave a talk to members of the Milwaukee Art Museum Photography Council presenting an overview of the collection.  How acquisitions came about, strengths and focus.  I love learning the back story to these things.  Example?  The Edward Weston (lower left) Bad Water, Death Valley, 1938 (printed by Edward Weston) was purchased in 1957 for $10.  The John Szarkowski, Grain Elevators 1, 1949 was acquired as a gift from Boston Store (a department store in Milwaukee) as an art contest winner in 1950.  That's what I call getting in on the ground floor.

Before and After

As I am getting caught up with life I finally had the time to frame 10 pieces from Sonja Thomsen's Petrified series for my husband (Is there a better place for a series that speaks to timelessness [by way of petrified shark's teeth] than a dental office?  Except perhaps a lawyer's?). Thank god for Ikea, pull out all their junk mats and backing and you have a very serviceable frame and glass for your own museum board.  It feels good to be industrious.

The High Cost of Film

My husband just paid $125 to have a 3 gallon container of used fixer picked up from his office. $30 to buy, $125 to have hauled away. Another reason (let's not even go into OSHA) he switched to digital x-rays. If you have a darkroom please don't tell me you just dump it down the drain.

My neighbors to the North

The Mpls Photo Center emailed to ask for help in getting the word out on their call for entries for a juried exhibition of portraits. The Deadline is October 24th so get your files ready for upload (yes you can submit by email!). I only wish they were 425 miles closer so I could avail myself of their facility and classes.

Ba ba ba ba ba......

Yo La tengo - A Take Away Show - Part 1 from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

I just found La Blogotheque. I love it. I love the production values on these two Take Away shows by Yo La Tengo.

Yo La Tengo - A Take Away Show - Part 2 from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Have a great weekend.

Ephemera panache

A wonderful surprise came in the mail. Thomas Allen was handing these out at the opening reception for his exhibit at Foley Gallery a few weeks ago. A friend was in New York and attended having gotten to know him when he did the cover of her book. Each one (obviously since they were cut from book covers) is different. I am thrilled with mine, very apt.

Art under water

I am working my through my inbox as well as my notes to self on items to link to. I found this clip from early summer to be entertaining in an "Art imitating life", "best laid plans" sort of way. Found at CMonster my favorite comment is:

"I hope they leave it there for the bienale. It actually seems more interesting and relevant, a mcmansion underwater in debt to poor planning." Elbowtoe

Art and policy

Yellowstone 2004

I've been watching Ken Burns' The National Parks: America's Best Idea this week. Tyler Green has a great post making the point that indeed there was a time in this country when artists were able to sway opinion and policy.

Speaking of...

photography and painting. The always thoughtful and educational but does it float (an excellent curatorial blog, put it in your subscriptions!) recently put up this collection of Gerhard Richter paintings on photographs. Sometimes things just come in waves.

Love at first sight

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster at Dia, Gus Powell for The New Yorker

The September 28, 2009 issue of The New Yorker has this image at the top of the Goings On About Town page. It stopped me in my tracks and I have returned to examine it daily since. The image is in conjunction with the opening of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's chronotypes & dioramas at Dia at the Hispanic Society in New York. A very intriguing statement and examination on what is geography.

What keeps me coming back to the photograph is the apparent summation of Sommers' idea that painting is additive while photography must make sense of what exists for framing, and thus by re-framing that existence, becomes something new.

I have long admired Gus Powell's work. This photograph was love at first sight.

Side Note: be sure to follow the above link to the Dia Art Foundation site to read the exhibition introduction by Curator Lynne Cooke. Did you know that dioramas were first devised by Louis Daguerre? Neither did I!

Painting the town red

There seems to be a trend afoot....

Keeping it in context

So I opened my mouth and said "Yeah sure, I'll pick up the blog again." and I find myself at a loss for conversation. A while ago I had made a note to myself on Neil Freeman's Contextual Calendar from his Fake is the New Real site. I was happy to find it again since it very well sums up the sense I have of this year.

My thanks to all who wrote to welcome me back. This is the generosity of spirit I was referring to.

Now where was I?

The summer of 2009 is winding down and the circumstances and demands which have prevented me from posting have abated. My husband has hired staff, last weekend was my daughter's wedding. I have spent this week seriously considering whether I wanted to come back to the blogosphere, both reading and writing.

When Cigarettes and Purity started it was my first successful attempt at any kind of journal or regular writing. I have had countless false starts in my life going back to childhood and never got beyond 3 entries before I bored myself with what I had written. Somehow the keyboard has succeeded where the pen and bound book did not, at least in volume and regularity. This blog has served as a junk drawer (which is in no way meant to infer value) of sorts. It is the place I can throw ideas, writing (other's) and images that have caught my interest to the point of not wanting to throw them away (given my terrible short term memory for names). I can then come back and do a search for a book, an exhibit, an article or the name of the artist who's making the wonderful prints of .....(fill in the blank). Through this space I have met virtually and then actually with a large number of remarkable people who have been generous of spirit. I have not engaged in self promotion nor do I aspire to be a "force" in the Fine Art Contemporary Photography Web Based Wish We All Lived In New York/China/Germany Blah Blah Blah. It is what it is.

I was continuing to go round and round in my head this morning over whether to resume posting or just let it go (Have I bored myself sufficiently? Had the Law of Inertia come to bear? Given the volume and speed of the internet does it feel too much like "jumping in" on Double Dutch?). I looked up to see my husband, just returned from running, sitting across from me wearing the t-shirt pictured above. I picked up the dictionary to fully examine the origin and meaning of illiterate (etymology: 1556 from the Latin illiteratus meaning not furnished with letters). Happily this led me to the word aliterate, defined as a person who is able to read but chooses not to do so. I guess this post means that I am choosing not to be visually or conceptually aliterate and further, that I will continue to use this space to make notes on what I learn. As always you are welcome to drop in and look over my shoulder.

"Affectionate and alarming"

An occasion as momentous as Susana Raab coming to town brings me out of hibernation. What a pleasure to pick up the newspaper (yes I still receive a newspaper delivered to my door) on a Monday morning and see a nice spot on her upcoming show. If you're within the sound of my voice be sure to come out for the Gallery Night exhibition opening of her Rank Strangers work this Friday, July 24 from 6 - 9 PM

(Regular posting to resume soon......probably)

Excuses, status and amazement

The days and weeks are continuing to pass with the doppler shift being the main attention grabber.

We found my husband at work as photographed above. It was the end of the day. It was, he admitted, the second day he had worn these shoes this way. While both are, indeed, brown they are completely different shoes. I rest my case. Perhaps we have come to the point of transcending details, only able to discern or process them once they have passed. There is a body of work in this but I'm too tired to grab on to it at the moment.

You'll never believe what just came in the mail...

A Pink Slip! Because of the crappy economy and my inability to find work, I decided to do what any smart business person would do--I laid myself off. This is the letter I just got from my formerly financially stable self. You can click on the image to get a closer look.

But seriously, the N.E.A.'s recent report, mentioned above in my pink slip letter, does paint an extraordinarily grim picture of what life is like for American artists during this recession. If you are an unemployed artist, like me, and have some extra time on your hands, become an advocate. Write a letter to your legislators encouraging them to support art programs. Tell them that the arts are an industry, like any other, and that when they allocate money to the the arts, they are creating jobs. Here is a link to Americans for the Arts. They have a great page that will give you all the information that you need to find your legislators and get started.

Also, if you are a teaching artist, performer, writer, or musician, then sign up for this University of Chicago research project. The researchers are studying how artists who are not employed full-time get by. The results will be used to advocate for better benefits and wages for this often overlooked and underpaid group of creative educators.

This was posted by Shawnee Barton, an artist who keeps a blog on other people’s blogs. If you have a little nook of cyberspace and are open to welcoming a guest poster, please email her at shawneebarton@gmail.com. She will be grateful. To see where she is headed next, check out shawneebarton.com.

From the Management: I could get used to this! Thank you Shawnee! Mel.....

Abe's Penny

I am still in over my head concerning day to day life but wanted to post on Abe's Penny. At the end of April I received an email from Anna Knoebel, Editor of Abe's Penny. She wrote:

"Collectible and temporal, Abe’s Penny is like a flash card – quick to experience – and taps into a pre-email love of receiving mail. Each volume contains four postcards that subscribers receive one by one, once per week, for one month. Each postcard features an image and a few lines of text. The full set of four postcards is a full story. Our idea is to keep it short and frequent."

and went on to say that if I would send my mailing address she would send me May's edition(s). Let me state right here and now that I CAN be bought. Let me further state the the concept and execution of this micro magazine is absolutely wonderful which is why I want to let others know about it (and subscribed to keep the stories/photos/poems coming). I am not even close to keeping up with this (or other) blog and email. I am beyond tired of bills and junk in the mail. Subscribing to Abe's Penny assures a tangible bright spot in the mail box once a week. I am taken with the serial approach to the images as well as the narrative text unfolding over a month's time. I think this is a brilliant, somewhat retro, approach to publishing.

You can view the first two editions here (1.1) and here (1.2).

P.S. I have a few more weeks of mayhem and then hope to get back to regular posting. Be well.

Niigata (Not Niigata), Japan

Andrew Phelps

"My way of working is a bit like making a poodle or a swan out of a shrub. Small bits of the mess are snipped away until some sort of form starts to take shape. The fine-tuning is thus the most difficult, and great plans often fall away to luck and circumstance. A bit of vision is required, but paying attention as I move along is infinitely more important. I stumble with a map, make a wrong turn and bump into someone who gives me a half hour of their time or points me in a new direction. In the end, if all goes well, I end up with something that may slightly resemble a poodle or a swan. But it’s definitely neither a poodle nor a swan, and it is certainly not Niigata."

Sado Island, February 2009


Andrew Phelps has made another beautiful book, Not Niigata, through a commission by the European Eyes on Japan festival. While the release is not set until fall you may now order a Special Edition which will include a print of any image of your choice from the book. I can tell you from experience that the only thing more lovely than his books are his prints, so this is a win/win proposition. I wouldn't put it off until late summer, the exchange rate may go up.

No crisis is too

Much for baseball. It's also an easy post to make from my phone.

Due to circumstances beyond

beyond my control I find I must put the blog on hold while I help out in a family crisis. Talk amongst yourselves, but not anything too interesting because my reading will be as limited as my writing.

Under I 95 debriefing

Zoe Strauss' Under I 95 event is unlike any other. On the first Sunday in May hundreds gathered in the rain to view, experience, buy, and pull down a collection of photographs which speak to humanity and inhumanity, community and individuality.

Culture, landscape and structure are all examined. I felt very familiar with the work having collected several prints as well as the book, America (not to mention having printed the 3 photographs censored by the printer), so was unprepared for the feeling of reverence which accompanies seeing these pieces in what I have to consider their natural setting.


White walls and bad wine are not the background for this work. The pillars supporting the cars carrying people, the noise of the interstate, the rain leaking through is the setting which allows her images to fully realize themselves.

Over breakfast Monday morning she told me the homeless man had asked her if she wanted him to leave. She told him "No, you live here." This was, in fact, his gallery.

At 4:00 PM, just like at a Phillies game, a wave started from Front Street rolling back two blocks with people taking down the prints, holding them delicately to protect them from the damp as well as due to the adhesive. Treasures with bits of paint adhered to the back.


The 2009 iteration of Under I 95 was finished. Zoe still had at least an hour's worth of signing, greeting and hugging to do. I am very grateful for the opportunity to be there. An "Art" event unlike any other. It deepened my understanding of her process and work. It deepened my understanding period.

It was my very good fortune to spend time with Mike Macfeat, Justin Reed, and the divine
Ms Strauss. I see that I missed meeting a whole lot more, much to my disappointment. The size of the space and crowd intervened. I am hoping to make the trip for the final Under I 95 next May.