globobusted?

Jerstin Crosby/Team Lump (2007)


Byron King/Jaxcal (2008)

"I think we all should define what we believe in yearly or quarterly. Especially artists. If you aren’t then it’s really hard for some folks to take your art seriously."
--Globotron, 4 June 2008 at 1:14 p

I miss everyone

I left work early yesterday and scooted out to the beach to watch the ocean, to watch the storm roll in. And as I watched the sky turn fantastic shades of grey, I was struck--not for the first time--with how it is the simple things that make us/me happiest.

Shortly thereafter, the wet sand soaked through my jeans and I took my soggy bottom home, but not before reflecting on the essential absurdity of my life and what I do: write as a means to understand the world.

Then, today, on American Craft Magazine's website, I stumbled across this mini-manifesto by Daniel Eatock...and it seemed to strike to the core of what I hope to be doing...it's kind of perfect because there is room for give, take, and even compromise...but not at a cost no-one really can afford to pay: personal integrity.

* I especially like the idea of honesty as a solution.

“Mini Manifesto
Begin with ideas
Embrace chance
Celebrate coincidence
Ad-lib and make things up
Eliminate superfluous elements
Subvert expectation
Make something difficult look easy
Be first or last
Believe complex ideas can produce simple things
Trust the process
Allow concepts to determine form
Reduce material and production to their essence
Sustain the integrity of an idea
Propose honesty as a solution”
—Daniel Eatock

why America is graphically fucked

A friend of mine sent this to me. It features designer Aaron Draplin, the founder of Draplin Design. The video is salient for alot of reasons, but as I watched it, I felt like I was watching Levi Ratliff's spiritual older brother: a designer with a strong point-of-view and aesthetic, combined with a great storyteller who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty.

Plus, he's saying things that matter...or should.

Jesus Loves You and I Do Too

Al Letson

Willie Evans Jr.

In the book The Corner, writers David Simon and Edward Burns chronicle a year in the life of the McCullough family—DeAndre and his divorced parents: Gary and Fran. The book is wrenching in its unflinching look into life at the nexus of drug life in Baltimore. The Corner acts as a chronicle of events, neither condemning nor endorsing the actions of its principle characters. In approaching the book from a neutral angle, the authors convey the endless cycles of hope, addiction, despair, and crime that is a reality for tens of thousands of people. Really it’s a glimpse into another (hidden) culture.

So perhaps it was providence that poet Al Letson launched his newest piece, Summer at Sanctuary in Baltimore, a city not unfamiliar with grinding poverty. “Letson is a powerful performer who tells his story by moving fluidly from one role to the next . . . A show full of gems,” The Baltimore Sun.

Summer at Sanctuary is described as a choreopoem, but in truth Letson does very little dancing. What he does do is take the story of his time at spent at Springfield’s Sanctuary at 8th Street, and use it as a lens through which he tells fragments of his life story, and the lives of the children he was working with.

Though he tells us that the consensus from the kids was that “Mr. Al” was corny as hell, the larger story he is telling is one where grown men confront children in the street, with guns drawn. A story where the 15 year-old boy, Biko, must seriously consider whether or not he’s going to kill the man who threatened and shamed him in the street.

These are the kind of dilemmas that most adults are never forced to deal with, let alone a child. So without proselytizing or beating his bear breast, Letson opens the lid of Springfield—and by extension poverty-stricken neighborhoods across the country—and shows the audience how truly bad things are, yet they are not without hope, its just a different and much reduced kind of hope.

The success of Sanctuary rests largely on two things, Letson’s own observations turned into brilliant wordplay, and the production skills of Willie Evans Jr. Consider this: in describing his initial forays into performing in Jacksonville, he cites Stephen Dare as a huge supporter, “one part Beelzebub and one part St. Luke.” It’s as perfect a description as one could desire for the omni-controversial Dare. While Evans, a member of the A.B.’s (formerly Asamov), a producer, and solo artist, brings a light touch to the score that accompanies the work. In fact, it was because his name was attached to the project that my interest was piqued.

Though there are places where the work runs a little long, overall it is a highly cohesive show that does more than memorialize a middle-class poet’s stint as a do-gooder. Indeed, Letson plans to return to the Sanctuary this summer. One wonders what his days there this time around will be like. Will he once again find himself and another staffer holding on to a thrashing eight-year old girl who wants to die, promising her over and over again that “Jesus loves you and I do too?” Or will he, once again by the grace of fate and the universe, be able to hold his own on the b-ball court against a 13 year-old who makes lay-ups look as easy as the simple, laconic flick of a wrist?

Of the piece, Letson wrote on his blog: “Government can’t change the story of Springfield, of poverty, of lost children. Only people can. God may work through governments at times, although evidence of that in recent times is slim to none, but I think it’s in the heart of man, where he whispers his providence. I hope this piece will soften some hearts so they can hear that whisper and do something.”

Though I am not sure when Summer in Sanctuary will be staged again, I suggest that those people who read and listen to David Sedaris, get out and support Mr. Al when it next goes up.

*apologies for the sorry pics. I promise, I am working on getting a better camera.

Tan Lines

A couple of months ago, I posted about the Dan Colen, Dash Snow show Hamster Nest at Deitch. In that post, I made a brief mention of Ryan McGinley. McGinley became famous with a body of work that has been compared to that of Nan Golden (i.e shocking, confessional). But in his recent body of work, I also see a similarity to Slim Aaron’s photographs of the very rich, privileged, and beautiful of the ’70s.

Staged yet intimate the pictures provide an idealized glimpse into an exclusive world. For the past two summers, McGinley has embarked on a cross-country road trip with gaggle of models and assistants. The idea? To create multiple settings that were reminiscent of nudist magazines from the early ’70s. He shot 20-30 rolls of film a day, believing less in composition/waiting for the moment and more in editing. Incidentally the entire project cost McGinley about $100,000 per summer.

“His subjects are performing for the camera and exploring themselves with an acute self-awareness that is decidedly contemporary. They are savvy about visual culture, acutely aware of how identity can be not only communicated but created. They are willing collaborators,” said Sylvia Wolf, in the New York Times. She is the former curator of photography at the Whitney, who organized his show there (he was 24 at the time) in about 2000.

However, looking at his work, I can’t help but thinking of two things: the first, the Lomographic images that one sees on the eponymous site, and a series of watercolor drawings that local artist-turned-nightclub impresario Ryan Rummel was making three or so years ago. Rummel’s imagery was populated with the same waif-thin, androgynous, sexually-charged imagery. So I can’t help but think that not only has this been done before, but also it has been done better.

The Times further quoted McGinley saying, “My photographs are a celebration of life, fun and the beautiful,” he said. “They are a world that doesn’t exist. A fantasy. Freedom is real. There are no rules. The life I wish I was living.”

The sepia-toned, cyan-infused over-and-under exposed prints, though undeniably lovely, are nostalgic and seem a little like Polaroid outtakes from a college photography class. Though they are staged, and there is something inherently decadent and privileged about them, I still find myself liking them more than I dislike them–-or even the premise of the project. Then again maybe I just like tan lines.

The project, I Know Where The Summer Goes, is on view at Team Gallery, 83 Grand Street, cross streets Wooster and Greene, on the ground floor until May 3. And unlike paintings, sculpture, or installation I’m pretty-sure photographs are fair-ish game for online commentary.

One last note: He will be honored as Young Photographer of the Year next week at the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Awards dinner.

*click on the title to go to his website.

This just in!

Natalie McCray is a Jacksonville-based artist, illustrator, designer and (when the occasion calls for it) stylist. Her commercial work can be seen in many of the area’s local publications; it has a strong visual link to fashion and editorial work because that is what McCray got her degree in: fashion design.

However, like fashion itself, McCray has evolved beyond sketching away in a cubicle for another, instead she makes public and private work. She doesn't often show her private work, so tomorrow's event should be exciting and illuminating...

Merging fine art, fashion, and oblique social commentary McCray creates images that are at once arresting and breathtakingly dramatic. She reminds me of one of the artists in the Saatchi stable, Wangechi Mutu, or of Kara Walker. Both of the aforementioned artists synthesize information in a way that is initially alluring, yet tells a deeper, often darker, story.

McCray’s reception will be at Jaffis at the beach (200 First Street) from 5 p.m.-9 p.m. I urge those with an interest in fashion, design, and sensuous line to come out.

Oh, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I count her among my oldest and best friends

...my soul from 'neath that cold dark ground

Sunday was an NPR day. Truth be told, most days are. But yesterday, in addition to the previous post which caught my ear, the group The Honey Dewdrops performing on PHC stood out. Sounding like a cross between low-fi folk and country, with a sprinkle of bluegrass, their rendition of Dwight Yoakam's "Miner's Prayer," is heartbreakingly beautiful. Laura Wortman's tremulous vocals soar over the guitars like a canary seeking the light, while Kagey Parrish's voice fills out the spaces in between with a voice that makes promises of a better tomorrow.

Yoakam originally wrote "Miner's Prayer" for his grandpa, Luther Tibbs, who was a Kentucky coal miner for 40 years. The Honey Dewdrops' decision to cover that song, as well as Johnny Cash's "Long Black Veil" is smart; it allows them to reframe two ballads of Americana within their own sensibilities. Sung by Wortman, they are stripped down to the bone, allowing them to take on an additional sort of resonant dimensionality that is filled with a sweet kind of melancholy. Then their own songs, seem not like contrived throwbacks (though even without the framework of Cash and Yoakam, their work would stand on its own), but as music that is part of a long and continuing tradition. As they say on their myspace page theirs are "songs that link images of a forgotten past with contemporary words."

To listen, click on the title of this post. 

Cry Havoc

"Cry havoc and let loose the hounds of war!"

This is taken from Marc Antony's famous speech in Julius Caesar.

Reading Shakespeare can be confusing, an exercise in frustration as his words are meant to be spoken. So it it appropriate then, that a spoken-word poet, retranslates one of Shakespeare’s most famous (many of us were forced to read it in high school) plays, the aforementioned Caesar as the play/poetical Julius X. It is a recasting of Malcom X’s final days through the framework of Julius Caesar.

Al Letson is known across the country and here in Jacksonville as a powerful, clever, and insightful poet. I also have the good fortune to count him as a friend. He has been working on the form he calls a poetical, for several years now. I saw his first effort, Chalk, and I have steadily watched the progress of the poetical Julius X.

Julius X debuted this month in Jacksonville at Players by the Sea. Last weekend, I went out to catch it, and was, with very few exceptions impressed. The cast worked together, transitioning seamlessly between Letson’s words and those of the Bard with clarity and ease...one often forgot that this performance was two ideas become one.

Using minimal sets that echoed the shapes of Harlem, ancient Rome, and Mecca, the director, Barbara Williams (who has directed Letson many times before) created an atmosphere tense and melancholy. There was no promise of a happy ending here, but Williams managed to make the journey to the final tragedy compellingly terrible--laced with betrayal. The result was a play that the audience could not tear their eyes from.

There were a few dissonant notes, the seers, while effective in conveying the terrors ahead in the Ides of March were, at times, a bit too dramatic, verging on camp. But praise certainly goes to David Girard’s Cassius; as Cassius, Girard seemed to savor his own cunning evil, holding it in his entire form the way others experience a fine wine.

Brutus was played with convincing anguish by actor Larry Knight, who realizes only too late, that perhaps Juius X must not die. Cast in several smaller parts (Marullus/Caius/Reverend), Ryan Sinclair emanated gravitas and wisdom; even if that wisdom (as Malcolm X would surely argue) was misplaced. And Renee Freeman as the Soothsayer is clearly that being who thrives on others' misery.

Letson’s play covers the few months between X’s return from Mecca and his death. It chronicles the man’s epiphany that Islam—as he experienced it--is a religion of inclusiveness, and his own personal transformation in regards to race relations in America. It is also an effective glimpse into the power-struggle that was occurring inside the Nation of Islam.

But more than anything else, the play reminds the audience--whether one agrees with the title character’s views or not--of the imperfect nature of humanity, the lessons that history carries, and the lengths that the power-hungry will go to to condense and maintain that power.

It is also worth mentioning that the 43rd anniversary of Malcolm X’s assassination has just passed, February 21. This year, he would have been 83. One wonders what the organization he formed after breaking with the Nation, the Muslim Mosque Inc., would have accomplished. That of course, assumes another assassin’s bullet would not have found his heart.

On a personal note, it aroused enough curiosity in me to finally sit down and read Malcolm X's autobiography. More than just the tale on one man's life, it is an anthropological snapshot of a time consigned by the history books as *literally* black and white, when in reality there were many, many shades of grey.

Drawing: Personal and Practical

According to Holland Cutter, "For Michelangelo drawing was the most practical and personal medium; it was a laboratory, a diary, an end in itself. If you could do a perfect drawing, he came to think, why bother to turn it into a painting or sculpture? Perfection in any form was the goal."

The show up at the Morgan Library and Museum in midtown Manhattan, examines the role of drawing in 16th Century Florence. It triggers thoughts of the current role of drawing; what an intimate gesture, unaffected by artifice it is. How immediate and wholly satisfying it can be, and how the disparity between the formal works an artist presents, and casual drawings and studies can be quite startling. 

Closer to home, the best example of this I can think of is the Lucian Freud etching currently on view at MOCA. Freud's paintings are celebrated as violent, deliberately ugly and ungainly portraits of the human body on par with those of Titian, Rubens and Velázquez, but the etching on view (in this case taken as an example of the artist's drawn work) lacks the power of Freud's paintings, and instead exists for the viewer as an example of process. 

Perhaps that is the crux of the drawn line, it is a look behind the curtain into something honest and unadorned; relying on a quality of of line and an arrangement of form in (or against) space.

  

Simple. Lovely. 

Public vs. Private

Sometimes the things you say in private, to friends over drinks, aren’t the things that you bring to public discourse. Over at Jaxcal, Byron King recently posted a rant saying that in all of Jacksonville, there is no arts writer; no-one whose insight and commentary should appear any other place than that august institution that is Jaxcal.

Wait.

Jaxcal is a blog. Jaxcal is ostensibly a community effort. Jaxcal is King’s baby and the place he is wont to post whiney and mean-spirited tirades before getting the whole story, then pull them down in a fit of regret. Perhaps King hasn’t realized that it isn’t that there are no art critics in Jacksonville, merely none that care to be associated with the pet project of a tactless cannon.

Good luck finding “your” art critic Jaxcal.

http://www.jaxcal.org/uncategorized/wanted-art-critic

Ride de Riddim

images thanks to Urban Art Warfare and 74 Soundsystem

I remember when I learned how to dance. Specifically, I remember when all the things my best friend and her brother taught me came together, when I let the music lift me up, and out of myself. *No longer so painfully self-concious that I assumed everyone within my sightline was discussing my various shortcomings, not just as a dancer, but as a person, I became “that white girl who could dance.”

I still am. Maybe less so, maybe with a little more jiggle in my jiggy, more bottom in my windin’, and less hot in my drop. But dancing is still that one thing that I love, and what’s better to dance to than dancehall and hip hop--when you can feel the bass in your chest and in order to talk to people you need to lean in close? Not many things.

So I exhort you to come out and check out 74 Soundsystem, Jacksonville’s best reggae crew, and ride de riddim.

TSI, tomorrow night.

*Incidentally, I can still remember dancing with a group of girls at my 8th grade dance, that’s where it came together for me. The song? “Atomic Dog.”

Woof.

Christmas Cheer

I love this short film by Guilherme Marcondes. I've seen it before, and posted it several places, but I thought it'd make a nice re-entry into the world of blogging...that I seemingly uncermoniously left last month.

While that wasn't/isn't the case (I was traveling) I do have some writings to post. Especially my thoughts on the recent Winter Selctions over at J.Johnson...better late than never. Maybe?

Until then, enjoy this:




www.guilherme.tv

Yellow Handed

Over drinks tonight, a friend (check out his work here: jiffyfeet.com and here: www.urbanartwarfare.com) mentioned that Banksy had been caught. Not caught and cuffed, caught on film/digital in the act of wheatpasting.

According to londonist.com, “Reader Chloe sends us these images of what is surely a new Banksy piece in Bethnal Green. And she seems to have captured the face of the artist, hitherto unseen. (However, we've seen that flower shape before, around Shoreditch—perhaps Banksy is here teaming up with someone else).
The work seems to be some kind of riposte to Tower Hamlets council, which recently declared it would erase all of Banksy's graffiti in the borough.”

In an interesting sidebar, because this isn’t a city-sanctioned sign: “It is a requirement of the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2002 that yellow lines must be correctly terminated with a T-Bar. If the T-Bar is missing or incorrectly marked then it is not legal. This double yellow in Bethnal Green is not correctly terminated.

So, if you have received a ticket at this location http://www.parkingappeals.co.uk/ will handle your defence and prepare your case for you free of charge,” reports neilherron.blogspot.com.”

But, back to Banksy caught in the act, after looking at the artist’s set-up-- visible in the images--its entirely possible that this was an event structured by the artist himself. The genius here is that Banksy has established such a mystery around himself and his identity, that it could be a case of “we are Banksy, or I am Banksy.” Either way it’s a moot point. Which further lends itself to the artist’s or artists’ success. And ultimately it doesn’t matter.

Though personally, I prefer my Banksy masked. I really don’t want to find out that he’s just another (hugely talented) sneaker nerd or worse, a prick.

It's also interesting to note that the photographed image is very similar to the wheatpasted one. Coincidence?

*UPDATE*

In response to Tonya Lee’s comment, I was forced to think about my role as a blogger and therefore disseminator of media. Initially my response was that of a journalist: as a successful artist with a personae that plays with the media, he brought this on himself…its all a part of the game, and it makes for an interesting and timely discussion.

But then, in a later conversation Tonya made the point that she likes what Banksy does and thinks it’s important but, it’s still illegal. I thought about that point and agreed…so in the spirit of not contributing to his possible apprehension by the authorities (and because I am the boss-lady of this tiny sub-corner of the interweb), I’ve fuzzed out his face. The interesting thing for me is not, in fact, unmasking him, it’s in considering that he stage-managed this whole thing.

My name is Peter, and I'm an Aesthete

The "Village Voice" just wrote a really good profile on Peter Schjeldahl. I can still remember the first time I read his work. It was shortly after my mother had given me a subscription to the "New Yorker" for Christmas.

Since I like to leaf through magazines backwards, I ran into his piece first, and was immediately absorbed. Thereafter I would look forward to his pieces with excitement. And though anyone who has ever subscribed the "New Yorker" knows that the magazines inevitably pile up in a "to-read" pile that never sees a real dent (until one summons the force of character to be honest enough to say to oneself, "You are never going to read all of those; get rid of at least half")...I still hoard the magazine and devour his work first.

It's worth noting that my reading of the magazine didn't start at adulthood. When I was little, I used to look through the “New Yorker” for the cartoons. I didn’t understand all of them, but I loved the fact that so many ideas could be expressed through the right combination of pen strokes and verbs. In fact, some of my best memories of growing up are of leafing through a compendium of “New Yorker” cartoons, with my brother, on the daybed in my grandfather’s house.

The never-quite-comfortable itch of the red and black L.L. Bean Hudson’s Bay Point wool blanket that grandfather covered the daybed with, the sun going down across the lake, and the grown-ups talking about interminably boring things like taxes, bills, and health, heightened the sense that my brother and I were doing something that was somehow subversive (not to mention incredibly entertaining).

In the cartoon compendium, there was a marriage of wit, style and occasionally, a bit of grown-up naughtiness that I understood. And it wasn’t until I began reading Schjeldahl that I experienced that feeling on being “on the inside” of the “New Yorker” again.

So it was with real pleasure that I read the “Voice’s” piece. My only complaint? That it wasn’t longer.

Rent a Negro

Kara Walker at La Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, (the City of Architecture and Heritage)


Interior of La Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine


Damali Ayo on Bill O'Reilly

I was just in Miami visiting a friend of mine, Russ. We've been friends since like, the second week of college freshman year. Now he's a NYC police officer. I say this because the school we went to (Clark University) is a bastion of liberal thought, with a small student body and overlapping social groups; nevertheless there was a fair amount of self-segregation between the innermost circles of students (everybody partied together, but didn't necessarily study together).

At Clark, while there were organized discussions of race, class, and gender, there wasn't a whole lot of discussion outside of the classroom...though in a few memorable instances there were fights. Sometimes over racial issues, sometimes over a boyfriend or girlfriend where race and ego played factors.

So it startled me one day when we were out drinking, that he began to talk--in a very candid way--about the inherent societal advantages that I, as a white woman, had over him. It was an uncomfortable and heartbreaking conversation; I was forced to confront my own assumptions and biases, including my never-really-articulated ideas about what his life was like, coming from an upper-middle-class family and having a prep school education.

Since then, we've talked on and off about race and gender, how they've affected our lives, how our own ideas have changed. Then this weekend, he told me about a book he'd read "How to Rent a Negro" by the artist Damali Ayo. In short it talks about the cultural cache of having a black friend, and in fact, how to rent a negro.

The book is satire, but raises intriguing questions about the perceptions of race in America, and the expectations between races: i.e. a white woman making the assumption that is okay, appropriate even, to call a black woman she has just met, "sister," or "girl" when in fact, they are not even friends.

So it was a coincidence that while reading the blog, bronxbiannual.blogspot.com, I stumbled across a short recording of a conversation with Kara Walker about her work which was installed at La Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine museum in Paris.

Walker's work is projected onto a screen and slowly moves over the walls and architectural elements in the room, it's a simple use of technology, but very effective. Though unlike Ayo's work, it does not force the viewer to cast a light on his or her own (racist or not) ideologies. Her work, while jarring and graphic is also startlingly beautiful and because of that beauty, it is initially more palatable.

However, the success of both these artists does imply the question: Where are Jacksonville's black artists? I know that once a year, the Ritz Theatre mounts the show, "Through Our Eyes" --a group show designed to spotlight some of Jacksonville's African American talent, but really, save for one or two people, I can't think of any artists of color participating in the Jacksonville scene.

I wonder what that means.