Strawberries in the Summertime

I went gallery hopping in DUMBO with a friend this weekend. To be honest, I didn't expect much... I thought it would be ultra-hip and less than inspiring... but I found an amazing gallery filled with prints and books! I think in the face of contemporary art making practices that I struggle with, prints, and books are a way for me to keep a foot in the traditional while exploring the contemporary. I got to think here. These are some images of pieces that challenged me or made me think more about my own art practices and themes.

Donna Maria de Creeft

Ellen Weiner- Blue History

Emily Martin- Siftings

Sarah Stengle- Five Fragments from a Forest Sanctuary

I'm losing my edge (to better looking people, with better ideas, and more talent)

Yesterday, I spent the day at PS1 with a friend that just graduated from our art department. We talked a lot about what art we like, what we make, and the discrepancies between our work and current "trends". I think this is something that people often don't talk about--I know I feel uncomfortable with the topic at times-- but something that needs to be discussed. Some of the work I saw yesterday (I really thought) was awful. It was devoid of context, conversation, or interaction with the viewer.

The number of "Untitled" works was infinitely frustrating. Why should the viewer spend time with your piece if you don't give anything back? If you are going to line up some objects against a wall that have no apparent similarities or interactions the honest viewer will walk right by and lose interest. The dishonest viewer will tell their friends they love it, and refuse to give any reasons-- saying things like "isn't it obvious?" or "well clearly you just don't get it".

Maybe I just don't get it. 

But if they provided a title, however abstract, I would be much more willing to give my time to a piece and really interact with it, try and extract something from it, if they provided ANY sort of context.

Don't get me wrong, there were pieces I really liked and enjoyed, but I feel, for whatever reason, that I need to challenge and discuss things that bother me about "the art world", if only to selfishly work through my own feelings about it. However, as I discussed previously, I feel there is a lack of honesty or forthrightness that is troubling in our contemporary art society. It frustrates and alienates "the average (interested) viewer" and as someone who views art as a form of communication, I find it appalling.

On a brighter note: here are some contemporary works I like and think work successfully around these complaints. They're the ones, in my opinion, who do it right.

(thanks, wired.com)

Isabella Rossellini

Green Porno

(thanks, PBS)

Alfredo Jaar

Also check out the "Lights in the City" project from 1999 under Recent Projects

(thanks again, PBS)

Laylah Ali

Read her profile at Art21.

You looked like a swimmer

After a few twelve hour work days, this is my first chance to post about my trip to the MoMA and The American Folk Art Museum last Friday. As I meandered about and inundated myself with the act of looking (as opposed to seeing, which we do all the time) I did something out of the ordinary for me and my sketchbook: I wrote about it.

I feel compelled to share it with you, if only out of a desperate desire for more honesty and more transparency between artists about their work and their process and their thoughts and their inspirations. Here are mine:

"I'm not sure if I'm on the right track or if I'm light years behind. As an artist, I must take comfort in the inherent uniqueness of my work being that it comes from ME and I DID IT. The things I like in these great works overlap with things I love in my own. Logically, I know this is normal, and possibly even a good thing. Themes and stories and patterns that occur and reoccur in art and history are great -- standing the test of time indicates that the content deals with questions of humanity-- yet, I find myself wondering how I can compete with the likes of ERNST and JESS and DALI? With the bookmakers, printmakers, and drawing-based artists who have years of experience, time, funding, training, patronage, and practice?

YET I CONTINUE TO MAKE.

I take comfort in the inherent me-ness of my work. I take comfort in the practice itself. and I take comfort in the knowledge that great artists make crap too, sometimes."

Here are some pieces I enjoyed and wanted to share:
Mona Hatoum (medium: paper and hair)

Rivane Neuenschwander- I love this. The colors, the idea, everything.

MAX ERNST and a biology poster. one of my most surprising finds. and strangely encouraging. (as in, if he can take an actual biology poster and dissociate it from its content this much, then I can definitely use organic-inspired elements and not have them just be illustrative)

I would love to hear your thoughts.

(all photos from MoMA's website)

Here I am

I will catch up on blogging.
I will catch up on sleep.
I will enjoy every minute.
I will solve a scientific problem (no matter how minor).
I will look, listen, record, and absorb everything. everything!

But for now I have more pressing needs, like groceries and shampoo. Thanks for being patient. Till then, here's a piece of KillTaupe's drawing a day project. It was so great to meet him! Plus, I love the drawing-a-day obsessiveness. After giving myself the week off, maybe I'll be inspired and try to make a (very small, simple) book a week for the next ten weeks.

like a monkey with a miniature symbol

Wow.
I should be (and am, slowly) working on this:

but instead have been focusing on this^

 I am so immeasurably excited to begin, so blinded by reluctance to leave what's good, and so wishing for more (time, space, lung capacity). There is so much to be discovered, so much to be written, and so much to be thought.

Tomorrow Tuesday (completely forgot that long weekend = no USPS) I'm shipping out my dearest belongings and praying they reach NYC before I do. I booked my train ticket yesterday to Rochester (yay for visiting friends!) and my ticket that will drop me in the middle of hectic, beautiful, adventure-filled New York City. I'm even budgeting out my stipend with major expenses in an attempt to keep some semblance of control on my impending city-induced money crunch.

-----------------------------------------

In the mean time, I want to share my love of and obsession with Eva Hesse's work. Partially a response to the impersonal nature of Minimalism, Hesse's work is soft, noncube, organic, and beautiful. As soon as I saw her work, I loved it. I felt immediately connected to it, enraptured by it, taken in by it. Then I saw one in person last summer at the MoMA. I just walked around a corner and it was THERE. Staring me in the face. The happiest surprise of the day (though seeing my first Rothko came in at a close second, but that was expected, planned, and this was not). 

(thanks, newsgrist.typepad)

I hope you enjoy her work, too. And please. Go see it in person. Now.

The chills

I love Michele Bosak's new work.

These gouache paintings feel intimate, feminine, and well cared for. They remind me of some books I'm working on about texture. (Yes, books. Books are my solution to my lack of space and money problems thanks to my impending city livin' situation).

Speaking of... 

               I've finally decided on my narrowed-down list of supplies:

               1. This series continued

               2. Books books books 

               3. Watercolor posters: somethings I've been working on for awhile, really detailed line drawings that may or may not become non-traditional prints

               4. The Necessities: a sketchbook to hold all of the my ideas that will undoubtedly involve large, costly materials; pastels, because they fulfill my color mixing needs when I'm away from tried and true paint; and my small-but-nice pencil and pen set that I've accumulated over the years.

it's a lot, but compared to bags and bags of paint, unstretched canvas, paper brushes, lino supplies, and screen printing supplies, I'm totally content. All that stands between now-art-making and then-art-making are four paintings and time. I can't wait!