truth and change?

“When our lives and corporate profits clash, we will overturn the corporation.
When our lives and the government’s thinking clash, we will overturn the government.”

--Yasuji Hanamori

If only...

Instead, I draw and write. Maybe it changes something.

*image courtesy postsecret.

Soporific!

I have always been an avid supporter of the nap. In fact, it is not at all uncommon for me to average 1-2 naps a week, and friends know that if they call me during a certain time of day, its likely that I’ll answer the phone sounding confused/crazy/like Tom Waits.

However, since college, I have found naps to be a way of staying alert and feeling good (this presupposes I wake up and don’t sleep through ‘till morning). And though there are lots of articles out there to support my views, when I found the above chart, I thought it worth sharing…especially for those of us trying to find the time, energy, and clarity to work outside of the 9-5 grind.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go fluff my pillow (without shame).

*incidentally, the painting pictured is Lucian Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, it recently sold at auction for $33.64 million.

Quiet Resonance

When I first moved to Jacksonville, a million years ago, I was appalled at what I thought was worse than a dearth of art and culture, a void of art and culture. Those things weren't missed here because they never had been known here. Or so I arrogantly thought.

Then one of the first artists I became aware of was David Engdahl. An architect by trade, Engdahl builds sculptures with the most archaic of tools, resulting in works that are by turns sublime, straightforward, and somewhat redolent of the ’70s.

Engdahl’s work is the natural outcome of the ideology prevalent in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, that is sometimes hard to see built renditions of in an atmosphere that increasingly finds itself bound by code and regulation. Not to mention the arrival of the McMansion…

With his work, Engdahl is able to explore those forms that once seemed to herald the arrival of a new way of thinking about living…a thought process (I believe anyway) that is shared by architects Bob Broward, Bill Morgan, and Taylor Hardwick. Forms that mirror nature and are designed to work with the land, not to struggle against it.

In his studio, Engdahl’s tools, covered with a fine silt of sawdust sit as unprepossessing witnesses to his quiet process. A process that involves a monk’s portion of patience, and the willingness to distill forms to their most basic parts. In his most successful works, a simple form that references nature and logic in equal parts engages that part of the viewer’s mind that delights in the slope of a leaf, the sway of a boat’s hull, or the curled horns of a bighorn sheep.

So I was utterly delighted when an invitation to Engdahl’s April 11 show, “David Engdahl Sculpture,” arrived in today’s mail. The show, at the Ponte Vedra Cultural Center, opens on April 11, 6:30-8:00 p.m. I plan on going and taking in some tangible quiet.

Ponte Vedra Cultural Center, 50 Executive Way, Ponte Vedra, 280-0614.

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. 

Sanctified

In addition to three or four art shows, last weekend also saw the pinnacle of AIA Jacksonville’s lecture series, “Mid Century Modern: exploring mid-century modern architecture in Florida.” The event included a bus tour of some significant, and not-so-significant examples of modern architecture.

The highlight of the tour was a visit to the Unitarian Universalist Church designed by architect Bob Broward. As we filed into the space, and gazed upward through the skylights (a feature Broward used in other churches) with the warm scent of good intentions and dust in the air, Broward’s intent was clear: a simple, pared-down space that echoed elements of sacred grottos and pre-Christian spaces.

When Broward started to talk about the building, his face started to shine. He wasn’t just talking about ideas and formal construction, he was talking about a small community’s labor of love. A community he is a part of.

As he spoke, he looked around the main sanctuary, gesturing here and there, remembering buckets of concrete, touching the cypress timbers of the exposed gabling, and gesturing towards the overgrown pond saying, “when the church was originally built, it was reflected perfectly in the pond; like the Taj Mahal…you met it twice.”

Now, the pond is overgrown, full of lily pads and algae, it reflects nothing. The reason? Runof from nearby Arlington Expressway. The church has contacted the EPA for help with a clean-up...but its a slow process laments Broward.

Quiet and sincere, the church is as like the mega-churches scattered across Jacksonville, as ruins are like McMansions.

A space sanctified not by some overblown idea of a mighty God, but by the people it shelters.

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. 

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

“Seriousness” as a form of infectious stupidity

From the recent (amazing) article/interview with Dave Hickey by Sheila Heti over at the Believer (many thanks to Mark Creegan for bringing it to light).

"And you must want to win. I don’t want to be rich, but I want to win. I want my enemies to fall in shambles. I do not want to be fair. I want the art I hate to go away. If you want your art to stay around, and I hate it, get your own fucking critic! So I am not in favor of art—I’m in favor of the art I like."

Hell to the yes.

He also gave us that lovely line (co-opted from Alec Waugh): “Seriousness” as a form of infectious stupidity.

www.believermag.com/issues/200711/?read=interview_hickey

Baby-step subversiveness

Supporting my need to be (a least a little) subversive in a time of overwhelming blandness, I’ve stolen a cue from the kids over at Flufflife and taken the handmade pledge. I also take this pledge to mean supporting unpretentious small local businesses and (equally unpretentious) artists.

Hopefully I’ll get through the majority of the season sticking to my ideology and not buckling to the pressure to shop at Target and its ilk. If, as a community in a capitalist culture we were to use our discretionary income more thoughtfully, think of the changes that could occur! Okay, now I’m sounding dangerously utopian and socialist, so I’ll sign off with a simple thought from Jacques Cousteau, “If we go on the way we have, the fault is our greed [and] if we are not willing [to change], we will disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by the insect.”

So no, I’m not saying that shopping is route to saving the world, (though most of the stores in 5 Points will be open late tonight followed by a 9:15 showing of "Goonies" at the old 5 Points Theatre) I’m simply saying conscious consumerism is a great way to put community-centric ethics into action.

Now the horse is dead, ’nuff said.

Changing the Landscape

Beauty and impermanence go hand in hand. Capturing a fleeting moment or the attitude of a time can result in startling, wonderful revelations. That’s why, when I stumbled across this program, The Diesel Wall Award, I thought that something similar could be done in Jacksonville, especially with the preponderance of eyesore buildings here.

A juried competition, the Wall Award project invited artists from all over to submit their proposals, and the winners get picked to have their work on the entire side of a building in a globally-oriented city. Of course, this all plays into the branding program of Diesel itself, but I must say it’s a pretty smart way to engage artists in cities and cities with artists. And its inevitable that there are logistics to work out and payment to be met, but really, as an idea, it’s a kind of great one to steal.

And if the city couldn’t step up and do something like this, then perhaps a private enterprise could partner with the city, and say, the museum. It could even be a bi-annual thing...

The Inevitable Cascade

P-Jay Fidler's art is a non linear narrative unfolding onto canvas. The viewer is as important to the story as the painting itself. Because his audience brings with them a major part of the story, the results are often surreal, ambiguous yet very much familiar. His work reflects a mixture of adolescent archetypes with dark psychological aspects of the human condition. These images juxtaposed against a silent landscapes combine to create a piece of art work that is truly awe inspiring and thought provoking, while leaving the audience with more insight and questions about the work as well as themselves.

Studying illustration at Art Center College of Design, Fidler learned to tell stories effectively through imagery. Raised in a small farm community in central California, he was very influenced by his childhood surroundings. With animal imagery, landscapes, religious iconography, combined with his love of Flemish paintings, vintage children's books and contemporary graphic design, he creates a non-linear storyline of Life, Love and Death that is disturbing yet beautiful.

Fidler lives and works in Los Angeles. His work can be seen in galleries and national publications and is an active member of the Broken Wrist Project.

Mr. Fidler will be in attendance at the opening.

You may visit P-Jay at his website: http://pjfidler.com

Friday November 2, 2007 - 6pm - Midnight. Live DJs will be spinning music for the duration. Refreshments to appease the American palate will be served. The show will run thru November 30, 2007.

The Gallery at Screen Arts is conveniently located at 228 W. King Street, 2 blks west of US Hwy 1 in Beautiful West St. Augustine

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.