imitation pumpkin

happy halloween.

kate gilmore

"if humor isn't involved, i'm not interested" ~kate gilmore


i found kate gilmore to be humbly brilliant, and very honest in a very comical way. watching video pieces like "main squeeze" and "star bright, star might" i myself became very tense and even a little claustrophobic, but i still viewed them as more funny than disturbing or unsettling. it almost pained me to watch, but at the same time i wanted to laugh.


the first video shown, " my love is an anchor" i read in a much more literal sense, most likely due to the title of the work. i related it "maybe even to a fault) to real life relationship issues of attachment, dependency , and being content to be miserable. i saw this girl, all dressed to step out into the world, yet she was held back (by her love, the anchor......) although i received it with these undertones of relationship issues, it still achieved a great level of humor, unlike the more raw drama and emotion-filled relationship studying photos of nan goldin. i thought of the two artist as dealing with the same subject matter, only with different techniques; representational vs documentary, funny vs sad, etc.....

my favorite pieces of hers were "heartbreaker" and "wallflower" (particularly the latter purely because of the aesthetic).... i enjoyed the split screen action reminiscent of 70s video performance pieces, and of course the objects used and their quantity and cluttered -ness.
it all kind of reminded me of a more funny and female chris burden, only less violent.
also, specifically "heartbreaker" made me think of my friend whitney, who also uses shotty construction and destructive deconstruction , only her work is much more dark (and more bloody). the breaking apart of the wooden heart was very similar to whitney breaking out of a wooden crate she had built, made dead bunnnies to go inside, and which she herself sat in wearing a tattered innocent-looking dress before she hammered her way out.
unfortunately, it seems the sculpture kids apparently aren't really made to explain their work, so i still cant quite get her to talk about it.

fishbowl

i visited tom condon's studio on its opening night and was delighted to see his work up close and in person. i had previously only seen pictures and the one piece that was behind glass in the hall at school. being in front of them only reaffirmed the importance of that way of viewing artist's work
(as opposed to viewing them in a book, on the internet, etc); with tom's work it is the texture that results form his burning which begs to be touched. i thought about how he could be questioned as to whether his work "fits in" to the category of photography, when the realization occurred in me that he is most definitely painting with light, or more so exposing by his own hand, which is a key technique of traditional photography. the process in creating the pattern detail also very much resembles that of making photograms........ which of course that reappropriation of a photographic technique in itself intrigues me.......

entranced by the almost psychedelic koala bear-ish figures, i began talking with an old friend of the artist about myself, my own work and what is going on in my own personal life. we discussed my frustration of my being in a relationship with a non-artist (and its failure to progress), my fears of not having enough time for my art, and the issues of raising a child in a non-traditional family setting. her responses were very positive, encouraging, and reassuring. she then pulled out a work of tom's was not on display; a work that dealt with amnesia and the 3 second memory of a goldfish. (in much more eloquently spoken words than how i will describe here,) she proceeded to explain how a goldfish circles through life, always changing, going through one phase of life to the next. he is never stuck in one place for very long, and he is never the same goldfish twice.
in so many words, she, who herself is a teacher of autistic children (and therefore has to be very calm, soothing, and optimistic) let me know that, even if i dont like where i am at in life right now, it will surely not be that way forever.

mind boggle

(that was the worst blog post ever; this is the only portion left that is worth keeping)




i am sitting in front of andre's mother's computer, and there is a half of a Polaroid of a man, stuck in the corner of a picture frame. (although i do not know the story behind it) i wonder at this familiar occurrence; it seems a blatant action of selective memory. why do people cut other people out of photographs? this is yet another reason one might say, "there is no truth in photography" , hmmmm. maybe half-truths?

artist lecture #2: adelaide paul

a proud horse with no bones in her legs to hold her up

"30 days" ; a 432 urns numbered, with corresponding photos of the dogs each represents



as with james hyde, i knew nothing of adelaide paul's work before attending her lecture, aside from seeing the handbill showing a sculpted figure of a greyhound with leather sewn on like skin. it caught my eye instantly, promising to be atleast somewhat more interesting than the last lecture. the title of a series of hers contains "animal souls" .....
there is something about animals used in artwork (when done right) that creates a mood of quiet mystery; its as if the animals could talk but chooses not to, or humans choose not to listen, yet the artist has discovered some secret that only the animal knows.

i was intrigued all the way through adelaide's talk, from her beginnings in what one might refer to more as "craft" in ceramics, to the later more skillful forms, figures, and figurines, that took on an air of more conceptualized pieces.

the work which stood out to me as one of the most charged was called "30 days"; over 400 small clean white urns, each numbered and displayed on long shelves. in one gallery they were displayed against "hopital green" walls, another against a more calming lavender. also in the room were a few photo albums of 432 dogs (one for each urn) who had been "destroyed" in a months time. adelaide preferred this word as opposed to "euthenized" because the latter refers to animals who were put down due to suffering; these animals were healthy yet simply overpopulating the shelters in the town where adelaide lived.
adelaide dealt with ideals of interactions between humans anmd animals, and even gave many of her later figurines some humanly forms.
two greyhounds were "anthropomorphisized" ; one was given female human-like breasts , the other human-like male genitalia.
some figures have eyes that are sewn shut, others are given real animal antlers.
she most recently has been working with veternarian students and professors of anatomy to gain the most accurate knowledge of bodily forms, and noted how really similar so many creatures are underneath their skin.
i found her and her work to be oddly beautiful, her animal obsession paralleling the creepiness of a mortician working with corpses.... she did say that she had a puppy fetus in a jar at her studio.
later i thought of sally mann and her greyhound, the dog bones she dug up and photographed in "what remains".
even closer to home, i thought of shanna merola's work, (that which is rarely seen by many in the photo dept) which incorporates skeletal remains of small animals, next to pretty pieces of fabric and ripped out pages of old encylclopedias.......
it all inspires me to start a series of images of two-headed animals.......

Artist Lecture #1: James Hyde

(had i not found it so dull) i would have found the painfully modern-art frescoes and sculpture of james hyde humorous.
not that they were comical in any way, but that it is 2007 and some artists still are preaching and making (what i find to be) such minimalist conservative works that "make you aware of the space in, around, throughout"............. its like the fried guy (art critic) just now recognizing photography as art.....
i feel like such notions are so outdated; they are the important periods of art history that bore me to tears.

the whole lecture brought to mind the word "beautiful" and its now almost negative connotation because of its lack of meaning. Hyde described himself as a formalist, being that the meaning of his work exists "within the forms". maybe i have become over-cynical because of the CONCEPT pushers in my own department, but i honestly had that feeling of "its not enough".
its not enough anymore to rely on meaning within forms, there must be something outside of that.
hyde did though, make a comment that resonated somewhat with my own ideals;
he stated that "anything that is important is invisible".
on that note i agreed to an extent. it is like in a photograph (or moving image) where what lies outside the frame holds the most fascination, what happened a moment before, the moment after, who took that picture, what were they thinking..........

overall i personally cannot decipher what exac-atic-ally distinguishes hyde's, and other renouned artists like him, from those like myself when i attempt to paint and end up with a weird abstract mess of color..... why do they become so highly praised for it?