Inspired by "Urban Tundra"

I exhibited the above painting "Urban Tundra" at the Stark show at Foothills Art Center last year - while it was there some class groups came through and wrote about different works in the show. One nine year old student by the name of Roxi wrote a really touching story about this painting;

During the winter in the school year my mother sends me to school with two warm biscuits and half an apple. When I'm walking to school sometimes I will stop walking and eating to close my eyes and listen to the trains pass by and the mills working away. I can smell and almost taste the smoke in the air. I can feel the snow crystals piercing my skin. I wonder if I can see Papa working at the mills. I wonder when Papa will have a vacation to spend time with Mama, my little sister Mary, and I. When my Papa will say "Tell me a story, Elanor." But Papa never gets vacations from work. Almost everyone's dad works at the mills. When I go home Papa is tired and won't talk to me. Mary is tired too. A few years later the mills shut down and father has more time with us. Father will finally say, "Tell me a story, Elanor." Now we can see the stars without the mills. Mary has gotten older and is going away for two days for a camp at the museum made out of the mills. I could never forget what they looked like when the mills were still running. I have this feeling that the mills will open up again.

True Art Speaks Plainly

"The sum and substance of literary as well as social morality may be expressed in three words - tell the truth. It matters not how the tongues of the critics may wag, or the voices of a partially developed and highly conventionalized society may complain, the business of the author as well as of other works upon the earth, is to say what he knows to be true, and, having said as much, to abide the result with patience."

"Truth is what is; and the seeing of what is, the realization of truth. To express what we see honestly and without subterfuge: this is morality as well as art."

from the short essay "True Art Speaks Plainly" by Theodore Dreiser, 1903

The Storialist

I just got an interesting email from Hannah Stephenson of the Storialist blog - she wrote a poem inspired by my "Kairos" painting, called "Timing is Everything, Nearly". Thanks Hannah!

"Timing is Everything, Nearly"

When to
make a thing
of an idea,
to manifest
what your
mind has
until now
only murmured.

When to
pounce.

When to
trust the
thickness
of ice
to hold
you, when
to give your
weight
and when to
move.

When to
reveal
the four
of diamonds,
the duplicate
of the card
the girl
had chosen.

When to
pause
in order
to notice.

When to
sew your life
to another
person.

When to
pause
for effect.

When to
go to
the doctor,
a cough
crouched
in your
throat.

When
to rush.

When to
drive home,
and when
to wait
for the sky
to empty itself.

New Eyes

source.

The Echo of the Place We Are In

City Park, Denver - photo by Lorna Cochrane

Henry David Thoreau - October 30, 1850 (yesterday, 159 years ago)

"I used to strike with a paddle on the side of my boat on Walden Pond, filling the surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, awaking the woods, “stirring them up,” as a keeper of a menagerie his lions and tigers, a growl from all. All melody is a sweet echo, as it were coincident with [the] movement of our organs. We wake the echo of the place we are in, its lumbering music."

I love that last sentence.

Art and Meaninglessness

Medardo Rosso - image source.

The Guardian's Johnathan Jones wrote an article today called "Why the Best Art is Meaningless." In it he elaborates on his belief that once the concept or meaning of a work of art is made clear then, "what is left to say?" To Jones, "beauty is better than a big idea," going on to say, "Real art doesn't have a message, doesn't necessarily say anything."

It is interesting to read the comments on this post as well - poster BestoftheBest writes, "it's possibly the abstraction of a meaning or intention and the involvement this beckons, rather than the bleeding obvious, that nourishes. The veneer of meaningless is a bluff. But if there's nothing there, it evaporates pretty quickly." Another comment by shakinwilly reads, "Not meaningless but ambiguity is a characteristic of great art."

In undergrad I was frequently asked what are my "concepts" and even in grad school it was a very concept-driven program - I'm not saying these are bad things but the freedom of making art that doesn't have to push an idea is very appealing to me as an artist.

I have been having this constant quarrel in my mind about my next show - whether I should have a more defined concept or not. The statement I wrote for the upcoming issue of New American Paintings reads, "These images are a response to natural processes and the noticeably unnatural human habitat. They depict the effects of construction and destruction – each image functioning as a visual pause; a contrast in this persistent turbulence." I stress the visual image in this statement - perhaps more than a clear concept.

I personally agree with the sentiments of Jones and as it stands right now, my next show will be "about" ambiguity - with what Jones calls, "real art's difficulties."

A post at Learning to Stay blog called, "Why We Need Art" goes on to stress more than our desire for mystery but our need;

• "We now know enough to know that we will never know everything. This is why we need art: it teaches us to live with mystery. Only the artist can explore the ineffable without offering us an answer, for sometimes there is no answer. John Keats called this romantic impulse 'negative capability.' He said that certain poets, like Shakespeare, had 'the ability to remain in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after facts and reason.' Keats realized that just because something can't be solved, or reduced into the laws of physics, doesn't mean it isn't real. When we venture beyond the edge of our knowledge, all we have is art."

~ Jonah Lehrer, from Proust Was a Neuroscientist

Airless: Wallace Stegner on The American West as Living Space

photo by Nathan Abels

I'm reading Wallace Stegner's The American West as Living Space from 1988 -taken from a series of lectures made in 1986. It is a really informative book. I've been writing down a lot of quotes or experts from it and I wanted to share this one in particular:

"...the rootlessness that expresses energy and a thirst for the new and an aspiration toward freedom and personal fulfillment has just as often been a curse. Migrants deprive themselves of the physical and spiritual bonds that develop within a place and a society. Our migratoriness has hindered us from becoming a people of communities and traditions, especially in the West. It has robbed us of the gods who make places holy. It has cut off individuals and families and communities from memory and the continuum of time. It has left at least some of us with a kind of spiritual pellagra, a deficiency disease, a hungering for the ties of a rich and stable order. Not only is the American home a launching pad, as Margaret Mead said; the American community, especially in the West, is an overnight camp. American individualism, much celebrated and cherished, has developed without its essential corrective, which is belonging. Freedom, when found, can turn out to be airless and unsustaining. Especially in the West, what we have instead of place is space. Place is more than half memory, shared memory. Rarely do Westerners stay long enough at one stop to share much of anything."

Jenny Holzer on Twitter

This is kind of old news, but we were talking about her in class today so I thought I'd share. Twitter is the perfect extension of her work.

Tuesday's statement was, "DECADENCE CAN BE AN END IN ITSELF"

And if you're wondering - no, I don't twitter.

Dark as Pitch

photo by Nathan Abels

"There is something worth living for when we are resisted, threatened. As at the last day we might be thrilled with the prospect of the grandeur of our destiny, so in these first days our destiny appears grander. What would the days, what would our life, be worth, if some nights were not dark as pitch, - of darkness tangible or that you can cut with a knife? How else could the light in the mind shine? How should we be conscious of the light of reason? If it were not for physical cold, how should we have discovered the warmth of the affections? I sometimes feel that I need to sit in a far-away cave through a three weeks’ storm, cold and wet, to give a tone to my system."

Henry David Thoreau, March 31, 1852

Elger Esser

Ed Schad at I Call it Oranges writes this about a recent Elger Esser exhibition of photographs, "I love that in this world where constructed images reign [in reference to Andreas Gursky] (at the moment I hope rather than forever) that someone like Esser can show us the dazzling font of reality mixed with human vision. I like this photography of co-existence. I like its prospect, I like that the real is now emerging as something forgotten, something buried, something uncanny. I like that reality can still surprise us."

This Date, from Henry David Thoreau's Journal

This Date, from Henry David Thoreau's Journal:

"How simple is the natural connection of events. We complain greatly of the want of flow and sequence in books, but if the journalist only move himself from Boston to New York and speak as before, there is link enough. And so there would be, if he were as careless of connection and order when he stayed at home, and let the incessant progress which his life makes be the apology for abruptness. Do I not travel as far away from my old resorts, though I stay here at home, as though I were on board the steamboat? Is not my life riveted together? Has not it sequence? Do not my breathings follow each other naturally?"

Thoreau talks about a question that I think a lot of visual artists ask themselves as well - "is my work cohesive?" or "is this new work too much of a diversion from the previous work?" or to put it plainly, "does this all go together?" I often tell my friends (and reassure myself) that the artist is what ties the work together and not the visual sameness or similarity...as Thoreau so well put on this date 167 years ago.

Screamo and the American Suburbs

photo by Nathan Abels

Brad Troemel recently wrote this excellent blog post about the genre of music most often referred to as "screamo" (screaming + emo -emotion) and how this particular genre has originated and thrives entirely in the suburbs of the American landscape. It's a well written discussion of the music, lyrics, and some of the reasoning for its existence. Troemel writes, "The true reason for this self-pitying, emotionally introspective type of music is boredom. The uniformity of scenery, lack of youth venues (beyond sports), and cultural stagnancy of the suburbs make for a confined existence." He contines by saying, "The solution to boredom for this generation of musicians was twofold: 1. to over exaggerate existing relationship dramas to the point of absurdity or 2. to create new, unfounded social dramas as a kind of self destruction to perpetuate the meaning of one's own existence- sort of like slapping yourself in the face to stay awake."

Having experienced a small corner of the hard-core/screamo scene in the 1990s, Troemel's writing resonated with me. I remember the frequent weekend rock shows in youth-group centers, basements, and one of our favorite venues - the "back door" (the back room of a tattoo parlor in Fort Wayne). Each show with it's own tormented/heartbroken singer, ironic t-shirts, tattooed sleves, and asymmetrical hair. How suburban.

Trevor Appleson

Trevor Appleson: Los Loss
images from Hales Gallery

Death at sunset (pig)
2007
C-type print
126 x 158cm
Edition of 3 + 1AP
Crack (eggs)
2007
C-type print
106 x 84cm,
Edition of 3 + 1AP
Fallen in the morning
2007
C-type print
126 x 158 cm
Edition of 3 +1AP

In last weeks Westword, Mark Dragotta wrote, "What is it about Trevor Appleson's new exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver that reminds me of Cormac McCarthy's prose? Is it the intense quiet, the obsessive detail or the undercurrent of violence? Honestly, it's probably a little bit of each. Edging out all background distraction with a large black screen, the images highlight the still-life poverty, dirt and death in his otherwise commonplace subjects."

I couldn't have said it better, comparing these images to Cormac McCarthy's writing seems very appropriate. Looks like I'll need to get over to the Denver MCA to see this.

John Tranter: A selection of poems

Full books in pdf format here - free to read. Well written, approachable poems/prose without an air of pretension. Take a break. Read a poem.

Blurb dot Com

I've recently been informed of Blurb.com - a self-publishing site that allows users to make small run, quality books. Users download their program Booksmart and you can put together a book with little or no experience ever doing so perviously. I'm currently working on a book of aerial photography and one of my portfolio - more news on that coming later this fall/winter. Their website and program are both extremely easy to use, and most examples of photography or portfolios in their bookstore look very professional. I would recommend this process to anyone who may be considering making or writing a book, especially artists. Their book-making software has many layouts that are conducive to artists and/or photographers. Why not? Their pricing is very affordable. Go for it.

Check out this book by Jeff Page - a collage artist based here in Denver.