Portents of Goodness

So I’ve talked a lot about how this past year was full of difficult family stuff. That while I was attempting to move in a new direction (and receiving some good feedback) emotional roadblocks kept throwing themselves in my direction. But I’m not the only one, 2009 was tough for most of the people I know.

In my first post of 2010, I hoped that 2010 would be a better year. And so far, that hope is bearing modest fruit. This past summer I had the worst vacation ever. I went to the family cabin in Northern Michigan, and not only is the cabin in horrible, uncomfortable shape, the weather was cold and rainy, and, I picked a screaming fight with my father then ran out of the house crying. Though my father and I made up, it was with a lot of trepidation that I invited my parents down here this past week. My nervousness was unfounded.

Though I think my parents could possibly send the Dali Lama into screaming fits of frustration, this trip went really well. The weather was mild enough that we spent most of our days walking the neighborhood and beaches. But the highlight of the trip was our excursion to Cumberland Island. For years my friends have been telling me what an amazing place the island is. But me being me, I seem to always think that tomorrow is when I’ll go have a Cumberland adventure. However, when I mentioned it to my family, my father said he’s been wanting to go to the island for 30 years. So we went. And it was an amazing, transformative experience. I think my family and I will remember it as one of our best times together for the rest of our life.

So, thus far, 2010 has started auspiciously. Hopefully the trend will continue.

*of course, that's not to say that there weren't moments when I wanted to scream, or, I'm sure, my parents thought me pretentious and a little OCD. But, if your parents define who you are (whether you react against them, or in line with them) the more I can be compassionate in my dealings with my own family, the more I can be compassionate with myself.

Making Marks: Jacksonville Creates

Some of you may or may not know that I was asked to help curate the above show (with Ben Thompson, J. Marshall Adams, and Matthew Clay-Robison). So far, it has been an interesting, exciting, and frustratingly fascinating experience.

I hope you will come out and support the museum and the local scene. There will be many new, and never-before-seen, works on display from artists both familiar and less so.

This is the first in a series of shows (to be held on a semi-annual basis) that examine works being produced locally. I hope it proves to be a satisfying experience.
Sept 19-Jan 4.

Solid Foundations...

Not to beat a dead horse, but I ran across this article concerning the development of young artists in the Wall Street Journal.

I remember how desirous I was to "shake off the shackles of conformity," when I was in high school, and later in college. However, the value in grounding oneself in solid practices can only result in stronger work, both aesthetically and conceptually later on.

Now I wish I hadn't rushed through my foundation courses.

Ambiguous Humanity

Self
Untitled Study 1
The Party Dress

A couple of days ago (March 28), UNF was locked down because of a bomb scare…later it was discovered to be an art project, Self. Justin Budwick had attached analogue-style phones—the kind available at Walgreens for about $10.00—to grey Tupperware boxes, closed with a tiny padlock, almost as an afterthought. Apparently he left the devices positioned around campus with the intension that passersby would pick up the phone and listen to a message, or two, or three from a complete stranger. Campus security didn’t see it that way.

At this point it’d be easy to devolve into a conversation about the redundancy of security, living in a culture of fear, or even the odds that UNF would be singled out for a terrorist attack. But those things seem pretty self-evident. A closer look at the piece is, however, in order. When the receiver is lifted, it triggers a recording: a short sentence at most, of a stranger sharing a bit of information about him/herself. It might be the voice of an old Southern lady remembering how hard it was when she was growing up, or the voice of a confident young man exclaiming over the depth and breadth of his magnificent vocabulary...or another of the people that rarely breach another's consciousness.

As a project, though it has NPR/This American Life-esqe overtones, it is successful in breaching the isolation people carry with themself throughout the day. Posing more questions than it answers: who are these people, how were they chosen, what do they think of the project, Self successfully inhabits an ambiguous realm that requires the audience to reconsider the teeming masses around them as actual people too.

Several other projects (all sculptural) stood out: Kristin Bartie’s Untitled Study 1 a nod to Jean Claude and Christo--though there seem to also be hints of Eva Hesse, and Jessica Carantza’s piece The Party Dress were interesting. Then there was Narooz Soliman’s piece, Stacked Ramen Noodles. In the wake of Sang Wook Lee’s highly satisfying installation still on view at MOCA Jacksonville, Ramen Noodles, Soliman’s piece reeked of a sort of last-minute desperation…not to mention the polyurethane holding it together (perhaps why it was placed outside of the gallery).

As a whole, the entire show hung together with the expected lumps and bumps of a student show. Curating the disparate visions, talent, and sophistication of an amassed group of students is no easy task. But sneaking around the shows of these fledgling artists yields surprises and sometimes, hope.