Monday, August 30, 2010

The Questionnaire: Miles Conrad

The Questionnaire is meant to be a lighter version of a bio, a little more revealing in some respects and personal without all the facts bogging it down. I supply the questions and the respondents supply the answers. Either one or both of us supply the images.


               M i l e s  C o n r a d              


What is your favorite color?

Almost any shade of green



What is your favorite word?

"Dad da" as pronounced by my daughter


Miles with daughter Alea, age 1 year



What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

The natural world


What turns you off?

Aggression


What profession other than artist would you most like to be?

Scientist


What is your favorite book or movie?

Love in the Time of Cholera




Who is your favorite musician, musical group or style of music?

Folk/Acoustic



What do you most value in your friends?

Intelligence, Humor, Honesty, Loyalty, Compassion




Name three artists whose work has influenced your own or whose work you most relate to.

Eva Hesse, Kiki Smith, Robert Gober, Louise Bourgeois


Eva Hesse, untitled (rope piece)




Kiki Smith




Robert Gober





Robert Gober




Installation by Louise Bourgeois





Name an artist whose work you admire but which may be unlike yours.

Lee Bontecou




Lee Bontecou



What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Cessation of fear and desire, family and friends, sunshine, the ocean and ice cream (in that order).





  Works by Miles Conrad  


Recurrent Infraction (Installation View) - Cast Soap, Fragrance, Light, Sound, 2009



Recurrent Infraction (Detail) - Cast Soap, Fragrance, Light, Sound, 2009



Recurrent Infraction (Detail) - Cast Soap, Fragrance, Light, Sound, 2009



Self-Help Series - Anxiety Disorders of Childhood - Wax, Hair, Found Book, 2008




The Psychiatrist as Ethnographer - Modified File Folder, Paper, Wax, Pigment, 2008


See more at: milesconrad.com

and

Icons - Part Two

I saw the work of Annette Messager and Lorna Simpson at the Museum of Modern Art in Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, still on view until March 2011. This was an extensive show that brought together many well-known photographs from photography's early history to the present. I chose to write about these two works because they combine sculptural elements with photography and the works are driven by feminist considerations such as identity and women's roles in society.


Annette Messager


Annette Messager, My Vows, 1988-91, photographs, colored graphite on paper, string, black tape and pushpins over black paper or black synthetic polymer paint.


Messager is a French artist, born in 1943, best known for her installations rather than for photography alone. She works in various mediums including found stuffed animals, puppets, textiles and photography of men and women. The striking installation of the small photographs in My Vows is what attracted me to the work. The string pushpinned to the wall that suspends the photos from above is such an active part of the work and reminded me of a chandelier.



Side view of the work

Perhaps you can see better in this photo that the small photos overlap against the wall and are formed into a circle by the length of the hanging strings.

The individual photos are body parts and repeated words written in colored pencil. Two of the words that I could decipher were (in French) "silence" and "pain."







A New York Times review of Messager's work from 2007 states that Messager's intention with her work is "to free women from the roles assigned to them by men, by the marketplace, and by society. And she tries to do so through satire and caricature, using the images and materials of everyday life." 

An earlier exhibition of her work at MoMA stated that through fragmentation of images and language, Messager explores fictional storytelling that refers to the dialogue between individual and collective identity. Her work "forcefully illustrates the idea that all things -- a child's beloved toy, a photograph, a piece of embroidery, a word with seemingly unambiguous meaning -- can be transformed into objects of potent expression."

Messager shows mainly in Europe but with Marian Goodman Gallery in New York.


Lorna Simpson



Lorna Simpson, Wigs (Portfolio), 1994: portfolio of 21 lithographs on felt, with 17 lithographed felt text panels.


This was another striking piece in the show that drew me to it because of the smooth, creamy felt panels with the interesting portrayal of wigs. (The whole piece is maybe 4-5' tall by 10' wide. Each one of the wigs is roughly life size as you'll see in a later image.)  

I have long been interested in hair as a cultural element, particularly for women, and have made work about it and from it myself. Additionally, I surmised that Lorna Simpson, whom I knew to be African American, had even more issues regarding hair and culture. 





Lorna Simpson is American, born 1960, and a photographer who has usually combined her photographs with text. Working mostly in large-format studio photographs, she has chosen textual fragments that allow free association of the images with racial and sexual issues. That is, reading the text loads the images with content and associations that change the viewer's perceptions of the images.





Some of the wigs pictured in this portfolio appear to be made from Black hair and some from White hair. The text alludes to the wigs as a means of disguise, sexual attraction and an aid to crossing over gender, class and racial boundaries.











However, in this work, I found the text to be less important than the images of the wigs and their geometric arrangement on the felt panels.










In fact, I thought that the text ranged over so much territory that it was difficult to interpret Simpson's intention with this work. I actually think that the two little text panels above express her mixed feelings about it all. They say, "strong desire to decipher" and "strong desire to blur."






Perhaps it's true that hair has so many associations connected to it that it's impossible to make a succinct statement about it all.



This is the shot I really liked with the viewer in front of the work looking like she stepped right out of it.


Simpson has had a distinguished career that includes a 20-year retrospective at the Whitney in 2007, being collected by the National Gallery, MoMA, the Whitney and other top-rung museums. She also has the distinction of being the first African-American woman to exhibit at the Venice Bienniale - disappointingly not until 1997. You can see more of Simpson's work here.




Thursday, August 26, 2010

A Few of My Favorite Things

After a nearly 12-hour day yesterday of working for money, I'm headed into the studio today to continue work on my new series. It's mixed media with encaustic and the encaustic is fused with a heated tool called a shoe (because it looks like a shoe or a boot). I'm excited about it and will be posting images soon.

Meanwhile, I wanted to update you on some of my favorite things.


The whole ball of wax via The Encaustic Conference blog


Where's Joanne?
In case you missed it, Joanne Mattera posted a new comment the other day on my Where's Joanne? post that related the latest event in the contretemps over Montserrat College of Art touting themselves as "the epicenter of encaustic." A local TV feature that Montserrat regarded as putting them in this position of prominence failed to even mention Joanne's name as the organizer and director of the encaustic conference, yet Montserrat linked to the TV piece and did not try to correct their egregious error. Here's Joanne's comment:

Everyone,
I thought you might like to know that as of today the the college removed the link to the offending video. A number of artists, myself included, had suggested that removal might be a good faith gesture. I'm pleased to see it gone. I think it means we can all move on--they on their own path, we on ours.AUGUST 24, 2010


Joanne is now organizing the next encaustic conference - Number Five - that will take place at a yet-undisclosed location that is not Montserrat. Stay tuned for the big announcement and, meanwhile, get the latest at Joanne Mattera's The Encaustic Conference blog, where ARTISTS CHANGE EVERYTHING.





Joan Mitchell, Ladybug, 1957, oil on canvas, 6'5" x 9'
'
Abstract Expressionism Makes a Comeback
You know how I like reading about those guys (mainly guys) from the '50s and '60s, well this morning  I saw a link that Mira Schor posted on Facebook to an article from August 17th in Lindsay Pollock's Art Market Views about a show being curated by Ann Temkin at the Museum of Modern Art this fall. Called The Big Picture: Abstract Expressionist New York, the show will take over MoMA's fourth floor and include 300 works by 40 artists, some well known and some not, but all from MoMA's extensive collection. Check out the link that provides a list of artists and works. This looks like a gotta be there show.








Be Careful When You List the Twinkies
And while I was looking at Mira Schor's link, I found a comment from Adriane Herman that posted something from the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian. Who knew what stuff they have in there! This is Franz Kline's grocery list crica 1962.






Catherine Carter, work in progress




A painter's moods
Then I saw a post from Catherine Carter about how mood influences painting. Oh, yeah. I've been there: the ups, the downs, the doubt, the enthusiasm - all in a day's work.





Artist's conception of the new Sperone Westwater building


The actual New Museum of Contemporary Art - right down the street from Sperone Westwater




Are We Moving Again?
Ever notice how artists precede gentrification? We are the pioneers. Who else would put up with the cheap but crappy places to live and work? But then when the money moves in, the artists get the boot. O.K.Harris Works of Art on Facebook linked to the Bloomberg story about the 20,000-square-foot, Norman-Foster-designed, new building that Sperone Westwater Gallery is constructing on the Lower East Side near the New Museum.

An excerpt: what it is and what it will be:
Most Lower East Side dealers rent modest spaces at prices ranging from $50 a square foot on Delancey Street to $200 a square foot on Bowery.

Excluding Foster’s fee and the $8.5 million Sperone Westwater paid for its narrow lot in May 2008, the building cost about $580 a square foot, or $11.6 million, according to Vincent Vetrano, president of construction consulting firm Wolf & Co. Around the same time, a 27,000-square-foot building in Chelsea was listed for $20 million (it sold in March for $8 million).




The pendulum swings and the focus of history moves on.


A work by Leonardo Drew that I photographed in New York last February. Unfortunately I don't have the number/title.

Thinking About September
It means more than school starting and falling leaves to me. It's also the month when Leonardo Drew's Existed  exhibition opens at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts (September 18 - January 9). This will be the only venue in the northeast and Drew will be giving an artist talk at the museum on September 25th at 3:00 p.m. (And this week is the last week of the Chakaia Booker exhibition at DeCordova. It ends this Sunday, August 29th.)





San Francisco in 1900 - see it live via the link below


A Glimpse of Another World
What was San Francisco like in 1905? Take a 7-minute ride on a trolley car and get a sense of it all.



And now, back to the studio...

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

The Questionnaire: Gregory Wright

The Questionnaire is meant to be a lighter version of a bio, a little more revealing in some respects and personal without all the facts bogging it down. I supply the questions and the respondents supply the answers. Either one or both of us supply the images.


            G r e g o r y  W r i g h t           


What is your favorite color?

Ocean blue/turquoise and blood red - depends on the day




Greg Wright, "Effervescent Ascension," 36"H x 30"W x 2.5"D, 2010
Encaustic, oil, pigment, shellac on birch



What is your favorite word?

Histrionic or pontificate - it’s a toss up.
Although, I use fabulous very frequently




Greg Wright in the studio



What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Fluid, sensual movement, safety, warmth, comfort, cheese, and my dog



Pecan, Greg's Shiba Enu 


What turns you off?

Wannabe know-it-alls who slaughter the English language (or any language) with nothing to back it up but FAKE bullshit! Do you think I know someone who fits the bill?





What profession other than artist would you most like to be?

I always wanted to be a chef. I love to cook and eat! 





What is your favorite book or movie?

The series Six Feet Under is my all time favorite.




Cast of "Six Feet Under"



Who is your favorite musician, musical group or style of music?

I have to have my House music and my Black Diva vocals. Whitney is high on my list (no pun intended).




Whitney Houston



What do you most value in your friends?

Loyalty, honesty, and tolerance (of me).








Name three artists whose work has influenced your own or whose work you most relate to.

Gustav Klimt - just because



Gustav Klimt, Adele Bloch Bauer, 1907




Georgia O’Keeffe - the mother of abstraction



Georgia O'Keefe, Jack in the Pulpit





Marlene Tseng Yu - intuitive organic and monumental work



Marlene Tseng Yu (See her website





Name an artist whose work you admire but which may be unlike yours.

Anselm Kiefer - for his monumental textural paintings/sculpture with a gritty beauty




Anselm Kiefer's work for Monumenta, Paris, 2007




What is your idea of earthly happiness?


Working in my climate-controlled studio all day long, going home (maybe I'm already there) and making something delicious on my Viking range (6 burners with double ovens), and then sitting in front of my 60" flat screen TV.







Greg's new studio in Lowell







View from the studio windows






Works by Gregory Wright


(See more at http://www.artgw.com)

Upcoming: "Microcosm/Macrocosm? A Fantastic Voyage" at the Carney Gallery at Regis College
November 12 - December 12, 2010. Opening Reception: Saturday, November 13, 12:00 - 3:00 p.m.
Artist Talk Saturday, December 4, 1:30 - 3:00 p.m.






"Refuge From Overcrowding," 48"H x 30"W, 2010


Encaustic, oil, pigment and shellac on birch






"Entwined by the Tempest Along the Way," 48"H x 30"W, 2010

Encaustic, oil, pigment and shellac on birch





"Reaching for a Certain Outcome," 36"H x 30" W x 2.5" D, 2010

Encaustic, oil, pigment, shellac on birch






"Tidal Dance," diptych 36"H x 42"W, 2009

Encaustic, oil, pigment and shellac on birch