you do not me
ink, gouache and correction tape on collaged paper
22″ x 30″
2011
For an exhibition centering around Borges’ “The Library of Babel” coming up at the UM Residential College Art Gallery, curated by Jason Wright. Opening Friday night, December 2, 5-7 p.m.
Mark, my brother, and I visited my parents in their new home in Mason City, Iowa for Thanksgiving this year. As it turns out, with all of the activity that surrounded Island, I didn’t have much time to dedicate to a new drawing I’m making for an upcoming show surrounding Borges’ “The Library of Babel,” so I found myself packing up my studio and in-progress piece so as to work on it at their house over break.
me and my dad, working away
My folks are really hospitable, and allowed me to abscond with several lamps and bring a folding table upstairs to set up a makeshift studio in their living room so I would be in the middle of the familial action while getting work done. I’m happy to say, that I think I finished it tonight. Now to get it aboard two planes and framed by install on Monday.
This last week, 12 artists (of the 22 in the show) descended on the Ypsi/Detroit area to install work, conduct crits and attend the openings and lecture surrounding this exhibition, curated by myself and EMU’s Gallery Director Greg Tom.
Island has been a year in the making and the week involved group dinners, lazy European breakfasts, tours of galleries, museums and other sites in Ypsi, Ann Arbor and Detroit. It was a wonderful reunion for those artists who were all at SÍM together last June and a great opportunity to meet new people for everyone else. Thanks to all who were involved and attended!
If you’re in the area, the shows will be up through December 12. Check EMU’s Art Department website for hours and contact someone at ‘CAVE for an appointment to view that exhibition.
I have work (Net 1) in the upcoming group exhibition Other Possible Titles coming up at Grizzly Grizzly in Philly.
Here’s text from the press release:
October 18, 2011
Grizzly Grizzly is pleased to present our inaugural call for entries, ‘Other Possible Titles,’ a survey of
contemporary art juried by the members of the collective. The thirty-five artworks selected — culled
from nearly 250 submissions — represent the wide range of artistic strength and thoughtfulness we
witnessed from our artistic peers throughout the process.
By far our largest exhibition to date, ‘Other Possible Titles’ will utilize the entirely of the gallery
and spill out into the adjoining floor. Although incredibly divergent in media, the work on a whole
demonstrates a particular intelligence and awareness of material and play within contemporary
practices – whether it be through installation, photography, sculpture, video, or painting and drawing.
Selected artist locations range from Philadelphia to New York, Ypsilanti to Los Angeles, Barcelona to
Ireland.
Throughout the duration of the exhibition, Grizzly Grizzly will encourage visitors to vote on their
favorite work. The artist receiving the most votes will receive a solo exhibition in the 2012 gallery
season.
Our hope with this exhibition is to extend the boundaries of the call for entries group exhibition
through risk and audience engagement. Grizzly member and exhibition programmer, Jacque Liu,
states that, “Our gallery is a meeting-ground for dialogue. We know that our viewers see vast amounts
of art — by giving them the ability to determine a future show, we hope to leverage their knowledge,
experience and passion to help us define our audience and in turn, to create a deeper and more
meaningful relationship to the work.”
Included artists are:
Aggtelek, Amy Sacksteder, Ana Galan, Analia Zalazar, Anders Johnson, Andrea Mcginty, Angie Zielinski,
Areca Roe, Ben Will, Benjamin Farnack, Caitlin Lennon, Carly Glovinski, Christina Day, Christine
McCauley, Dana Lok, Dave Kim, David Welch, Dennis Ritter, Eimearjean McCormack, Joanna Platt,
John Jodzio, Liz Davenport, Matt Brett, Michael Ohgren, Olja Stipanovic, Peter Morgan, Rachelle
Beaudoin, Run Shayo, Samantha Mitchell, Scott Giblin, Shelby Donnelly, Stephanie Norberg, Trevor
Amery, Wendy Wolf, Yoorim Park
For further inquiries or to arrange an interview, please contact cindystocktonmoore@gmail.com
“Other Possible Titles”
November 4 – November 263, 2011
First Friday Opening, November 4th, 6-10PM
Grizzly Grizzly, 319 North 11th Street, 2nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA,
www.grizzlygrizzly.com
Hours: Saturday and Sundays, 2-6PM
Grizzly Grizzly is a project space in Philadelphia, PA. Since 2009, Grizzly Grizzly has programmed monthly
exhibitions, screenings and performances. The gallery is currently under the direction of artists Mike
Ellyson, Jacque Liu, Dennis Matthews, Matthew Price, Ruth Scott, Mary Smull, Cindy Stockton-Moore and Josh Weiss.
My summer studio transformation was featured on Design*Sponge yesterday. Thanks to people for their kind comments. Some common questions kept arising, so I thought I would address them here and post a few more photos for clarification.
I’m paraphrasing some of the questions and include responses below:
1) I see a bunch of art supplies in the “before” (read: ridiculously messy) image; where did they all go?
Well, this image was taken awhile ago. It was the only image I had that showed this much of the space from the doorway. I guess I was never happy enough with my studio want to photograph it. I may have hoarding tendencies, but most people who know me know that I am actually a pretty neat and organized person. I probably took this photo because of the remarkably messy state of the studio. As I recall I was framing and shipping a batch of drawings all while completing the mammoth task of my third year document (pre-tenure) document for school (I teach at a local university).
Anyway, here are some images of organization and storage solutions, i.e. where I put a lot of that stuff (the stuff I didn’t haul away, discard, take to the basement, etc.):
The shelves we built now hold my small framed work and much of my paper work and application supplies are vertically filed on the gray-ish blue shelf under the Ikea magnetic boards. The shoe organizer holds all of my office supplies and other random stuff like my glue gun and glue sticks (all with blue tape labels). That’s Wobbly Bob, one of our cats.
I used the closet to house cans of paint, a wall-mounted drawer system for organizing small hardware, and many labeled plastic crates, totes and drawers for various odds and ends, all categorized. I took off the closet door to have easier access to all of this stuff and to reveal more wall space for hanging work.
Also, that’s Ramona, and that’s her chair. I can’t take it out of the studio for fear that she would perish of sadness, as it’s her favorite place to be ever. I should mention that I have no personal need for this chair anymore since it’s too tall for my work surfaces. So in my highly efficient new studio, I have a chair just for a cat. At least it keeps her from walking all over my drawings.
2) How in the heck did you do all of that with a 500.00 budget (also where did you get your flat files)?
I put together a budget afterward to see what I had tallied. Here’s how it breaks down:
-Wood/doors–used for the table tops
(Home Depot): 115.
-Table legs and brackets x6 (”): 60.
-Paint: (Benjamin Moore): 50.
-Flat file (craigslist): 160.
-Small file cabinet (local Re-use center): 10.
-Sandpaper, paint rollers, casters, etc. 100.
About: 500.
We designed our own shelves and supports, but you can find some pretty great pre-made shelves and brackets out there. I first sanded and primed, then sanded and painted the worktable and shelves with Benjamin Moore’s GRAHAM Ceramic Satin Interior water borne enamel in Decorators White. Little foam paint rollers gave the surfaces a pretty smooth finish.
I looked all summer for a flat file on craigslist. I found one that was the right size for my small studio (in the bedroom of our ranch house) for a decent price. It’s precisely: 40-3/4″ W x 28-3/8″ D x 15-3/8″ H. It had to be cleaned up a bit, but serves my purposes perfectly.
3) (From Lauren) Can I have your sweet orange chair when you’re done with it?
Yes. And I probably won’t be. I’ll will it to you though. It’s from the University of Michigan’s very excellent property disposition center–from their dental school I think. It cost about 15 dollars as I recall and badly needs to be reupholstered.
4) It looks too clean now; where did your mess go?
Naturally I took the photos at the completion of the project when everything was shiny and pretty. Now that I have had some time to live in it, there are little scuffs on the tables and my stuff is getting spread out everywhere again. When I want to reign it in between projects though, it’s that much easier now. Here are some images of my slightly more lived-in space with drawings in progress:
After the craziness of the start of school, having friends in town for labor day weekend and some traveling this weekend to drop off work for a show, I finally get to spend Tuesday all day long in this space. I can’t wait. I promise to make it even messier.
I have work in the upcoming five-person exhibition Of Land and Water at the Noyes Cultural Arts Center in Evanston, Illinois.
Here’s the front and back of the postcard with the pertinent info:
**update**
This studio transformation was recently featured on Design*Sponge. I wrote a follow-up post answering some of the questions that arose in the comments and also posted a few more images here.
With the help of Mark, I spent the entire last month in major house studio overhaul mode. I had five year’s worth of paperstuffs, random art supplies and countless odds and ends to sort and either discard or organize. It all started with my desire for a flat file, since all of my flatwork and papers were sloppily vertically stored against the wall behind a closet door.
The organization project evolved into ditching my drafting table and our old kitchen table I was using as a desk in favor of clean, white tables easily made out of doors and painted white. Mark built me wall shelves for storing small, framed work and we got them installed yesterday. Now the studio feels so much better, I want to be in here all the time. Just to show you how far it’s come, at one point, it had devolved into this:
Here are some overview shots of the new setup:
…and some detail shots:
Now to start making a mess again.
Net 1
ink, gouache, blue tape and collage on paper
18″ x 24″
2005 and 2011
Land Blindness (for R. Smithson)
ink, gouache, salt, gold leaf and correction tape on paper (not pictured: accompanying rock from the site of Spiral Jetty)
drawing 30″ x 22″, installation dimensions variable
2011
I was very affected by our sojourn to the Spiral Jetty on our recent southwest road trip. As much as I was taken with the life and death of Amelia Earhart, last year’s oil spill, the Icelandic volcanic eruption, and responded to these events in my recent work, I am currently working on a drawing in that loosely engages Spiral Jetty and the life and untimely death of Robert Smithson. The book Mirror-Travels | Robert Smithson and History has been informative, imparting the significance of the building site of the monumental earth work: close to the site of the driving of the Golden Spike, where the continent was joined via railroad. Also today’s Daily Serving article about the potential fate of the piece is quite timely, yet unsettling.
Here are some images of sketchbook collages I made on the trip from the vast amount of magazines we took with us for the long car rides.
So it is happily between the drawing and painting studio that I will spend the rest of the summer, amidst gardening, sun tea making, gathering with friends and planning a large international exhibition for the fall (this time with my curatorial hat on). As I see it, that’s a pretty good place to be.