So, after a long wait, with much suspense, I present to you the islands.  They are supposed to be mini art museums, thus the walkways and little doors.  My friend and fellow artist Krista Peel has challenged me and a two handfuls of other artists to come up with mini art museums for her latest calendar project.  She will harness her mad skills to photograph these little buildings with railroad people milling about them and assign them to a particular month in a glossy, glorious calendar.  My particular take on the challenge was obviously influenced by my recent work drawing and painting the islands. 

So though I always have fun making work for KP’s calendar projects (wow!  since 2004 now), they always reaffirm for me how much I love painting and drawing as opposed to working with 3D-oriented media, as in this case with pink insulation foam and plaster.  I had much more fun painting the surface of the islands than I did doing all of that sanding.  Still, it’s nice to be able to expand into whatever realm is presented and I am pretty happy with the final result which isn’t too far off than what I has envisioned in my drawing.  Plus, as I mentioned before, this was my first foray into model railroad land.  It’s quite a place!

There are a lot of artists out there doing this model railroad thing, and other work with miniatures.  I must say, in the following cases (and with Krista Peel’s work, which is, of course, a given), I am quite taken with it:

Thomas Doyle makes strange little events happen in snow globes.

Courier, mixed media, 12.5 x 14, inches diameter, 2007

Acceptable losses, mixed media, 16 x 13.5 inches, diameter 2008

Though these following images by Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz are c-prints, they are clearly taken using diorama-like sets.  Is it any coincidence that the title of this series is “Islands”?

A Winter Walk, 2006 C-Print 39 x 65 inches

Low Tide, 2008 C-Print 50 x 40 inches

Thanks to my friend Abigail for alerting me to these artists in her blog.  Let me know if you come across others…

I haven’t been able to write in awhile because of all of the end-of-summer activity going on right now.  I wanted to post about my weekend trip to Quincy, Illinois.  Why yes, that is the famous site of the Lincoln/Douglas Debate.  Glad you mentioned it.  I went because I wanted to see two dear friends from grad school who are seldom in the same place when I have time to travel to them. This time the stars aligned to make it so, such that Thursday I found myself aboard my first ever U.S. passenger train headed toward Quincy via Chicago.  It was a wonderful weekend of art, friends, good food, catching up, and a  lot of laughter.  I stayed at the impeccable 1914 bungalow of friends Jen and Todd and got to hang out with their kiddos Trevor and Joel.

Of course I was inspired by the people I was with, but since I am always mesmerized by other peoples’ spaces (thus my infatuation with sites like The Selby, Apartment Therapy and magazines like Dwell), I thought I would post about it.  Jen and Todd (and even her parents) worked hard to make their basement into a space where Jen would want to have a studio and where the boys can play year-round.  They sealed the walls, cleaned up a lot and spray painted the heck out of the ceiling.  The result is a clean, crisp space with painted walls, floors, beams and trim that coordinates with the rest of the house.

Jen's studio with completed and in-progress paintings

Jen's latest painting

To see more images of her work, visit her website.

The boys' "studio"- I love the colorful art lining the walls!

The occasion for my visit was our friend Kelly‘s exhibition at the college where Jen teaches and runs the gallery.  I got there too late to attend the opening, but did get there in time to: attend (even help out with)  Kelly’s mural painting workshop, go to the farmer’s market, do some thrifting ($25 pair of Lane end tables- score!), enjoy several delicious meals, play soccer with a pair of squirts, partake in raspberry AND lemon sorbet at a sci-fi/horror themed ice cream parlor (Eye-Scream anyone?).

farmer's market flowers

Indian corn

Saturday night we were awestruck by a breathtaking sunset.

sunset in the Q

Here’s my attempt at one of the photos that inspires Jen’s paintings:

Even with 18 hours on a train, it was a very complete and restoring weekend.

photo credit: Susan Tusa, Detroit Free Press

I am waiting for plaster to dry on some islands, so it’s as good a time to blog as any.  Lauren of Dear Golden tagged me with a “ten things” request.  Now my job is to post ten things about myself you don’t already know.  I think I will try to keep these art-related as that’s the nature of the blog.

1. I have attended four artists residencies: in Illinois, Newfoundland, Southern France and Budapest, Hungary

2. It must say something about me that I have twice been offered dead birds and have twice accepted.  In my freezer are a dead hummingbird and a dead cardinal.  They were that way when my friends found them, I assure you.  What will I do with them?  I’ll let you know when I find out.

3. I have been in academia since kindergarten with only summers off.  I went straight from high school to college, from college to grad school, from grad school to teaching adjunct and from teaching adjunct to assistant professor.  (Does kindergarten count as “academia”?)

4. I have taught three summers at Interlochen Arts Camp in northern Michigan near Traverse City (03-05)–painting and life drawing.

5. I have taught three classes that I never actually took when I was in school.  What are they?  Hmm… it’s a mystery.

6. My top three four favorite art shows I have ever seen are (in no particular order): William Kentridge retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago (2004), Mapping the Studio: Artists from the François Pinault Collection in Venice (2009), Drawing Now: Eight Propositions at Museum of Modern Art (Queens) in New York (2002), damn, I remembered another one (thus the strikethrough): Peter Doig at the Tate Britain (2008).

7. I am working on a video, and a sculpture (of sorts) right now and am pretty inexperienced in the particular media I am using.  I am googling a lot and relying on my friends for help.  Thanks guys and gals!

8. Despite the above statement, I generally don’t work collaboratively.  I tend to prefer working alone in the studio, usually listening to audio books, NPR or music.  I am currently listening to The Plot Against America by Philip Roth and The Terror by Dan Simmons.

9. I am starting four large scale paintings, and am a bit scared of them at this early point.

10. I have a REALLY hard time balancing  a regular work-out routine and an art practice.  I tend to be sporadic with both and can rarely sustain the two simultaneously, though they’re both so important to me.

So that’s it- my ten things.  Okay, I am going to pass the tagging love around to:

Mark from Irreverent Vegan

Val and/or Ryan from i’m just doing this thing

…to borrow a phrase from my friends Ryan and Vals’ blog, who in turn, borrowed it from our friend Jen’s mischievous nephew who uses the phrase to evade getting in trouble.  So, I am just doing this thing.  I kinda know what it is.  I know it has to do with art and that it’s due at the end of the month (yikes!).  I also know that this thing brought me to Home Depot, Michael’s, and the same hobby shop three times today, where each time, I had lovely chats about the hows and whatfors of model train building with some of the considerate and attentive members of the Ann Arbor Model Railroad Club.  Art causes me to wind up in the swellest of unexpected situations…

So, here is an image of “this thing” so far.  (And yes, I am being purposefully enigmatic to hopefully build suspense.  Of course if “this thing” flops, then I will feel a bit like a sheep, but c’est la vie, right?)

I have been noticing a lot of crystals, skulls and mirrors in art and design in the last few years.  It appears to be a “thing.”  I readily embrace this “thing” and have even busted out a skull or three in my recent work.  There’s a very The Dark Crystal / The Never Ending Story aesthetic to a lot of this work which can probably be explained by the fact that many of the artists embracing it are of the generation that likely grew up with those movies and other like films, books, programs (media in general)  ingrained into our consciousness.

While some incidents of crystalskullmirror I’m seeing are mediocre (one can apparently make abominably cliché work with mirrors, for example) I find myself gravitating toward a lot of this work.  If this post makes it seem like I am lumping artists using these motifs into the same aesthetic category, then please take a look at some of my favorite folks in this realm and judge for yourself.

I am a huge fan of the work of Will Yackulic.  He shows with two galleries I really like: Jeff Bailey in New York and Gregory Lind in San Francisco.  He uses ink and gouache (two media I like to work with) and, somehow, a typewriter to make these stunning two-dimensional otherworlds.

Bearings & Ballast, 2009, ink, gouache and typewriter on paper, 30" x 22.25"

Aspects & Allowances, 2008 ink, gouache, watercolor and typewriter on paper, 22 x 17.75 inches

Invocation 5th, 2008, gouache, watercolor and typewriter on paper, 10.625" x 8.5"

Then there’s the work of David Altmejd, whose work Mark and I first came across in the 2007 Venice Biennale, where he put together a fantastic, nay, phenomenal exhibition for the Canadian pavilion.  He uses mirrors A  LOT, but SO much better than anyone else out there using mirrors to do similar things.  They are just one aspect of the insane worlds he creates, which also include:  taxidermied birds,*  giants, genitals, both flora and fauna, fur, body parts, and YOU because there are so many mirrors in his work, that you inevitably become part of the work.  I could barely photograph it without getting myself in a shot.  Like this:

The Index, exhibition at the Canadian pavilion

Note please that I am not a professional photographer and that there are way sweeter images of his work online.  See? But I thought it would be neat to post some photos I took while experiencing the exhibition.

The Index, exhibition at the Canadian pavilion

a mirrored giant monster with Lee Press-On Nails (TM)

We like him so much, in fact, that we just ordered two monographs on him.  One is the catalog for this exhibition, and the other is this lovely book:

For example of this crystal mirror phenomenon in contemporary media, someone caught indie pop lady Mirah fiddling with these mirror pyramids and put the photo in the liner notes of her latest album.

Skulls.  Lots of skulls.  When in Europe, whenever I saw a skull in contemporary art, I photographed it.  Here are the results of my self-assigned scavenger hunt:

skull in a gallery window in Venice (as a bonus, it even has a skull tree growing from it)

butterfly skull in a gallery in Venice

glass skull on glass bones by Jan Fabre at the exhibition Glasstress in Venice

ceramic vessel by Miquel Barceló, representing the Spanish pavilion at the Biennale

skull in a drawing by Jef Geys, representing the Belgian pavilion

And now, my own contribution:

still life I composed out of a postcard and an eraser from the Pinault Collection gift shop

I am so enamored of people’s fascination with skulls (just go on The Selby and see how many skulls you can count in people’s homes alone), that I was making portraits of skulls in Budapest, remember? I’ll get back to those soon I think.

That reminds me, I need to get amakin’, as I am yet again a contributing artist to my friend Krista Peel‘s Calendar Project.  This time the theme is Art Museum, for which I have to create a mini model of a museum.  It can be ANYTHING I want it to be, can be made of any material, and, (blessedly) does not have to be in the least functional.  So, which will it be: Crystals, Skulls, or Mirrors?  I suppose we’ll see…

* Taxidermy is another “thing” in art right now altogether.  Perhaps I’ll tackle that stuffed, lifeless beast in a future post.

I was fortunate to guest blog about none other than… rings (of course!) on my friend Lauren’s blog Dear Golden.  She also has a top notch etsy shop by the same name through which she proffers vintage wares, and I am guilty of taking home a lot of the bounty.  I suppose I could have composed the same post for this blog, but I haven’t really written about fashion much here, and since her blog is geared toward it, specifically vintage fashion from all eras, we thought the guest blog would be a fun idea.

Lauren and I like a lot of the same kinds of vintage clothing, though her scope is much larger than mine.  Her tastes never fail to inspire me.

We have been thrifting buddies for awhile now.  I think the reason I like thifting so much is getting so much for so little.  Thifting allows one to find seemingly unique items, often in very good or excellent condition, for a low price.  I really like purchasing previously owned pieces that have a history, and in doing so, I am not encouraging the manufacture of new goods, or so I tell myself.  I know I am not alone in this practice (which, if you’re not careful can border on obsession).  And it’s not just clothing that I find in this way, but also house stuff.  We have a thoroughly thrifted house.  What isn’t thrifted is often from craigslist, garage sales, or antique stores.

Of course, buying from Dear Golden means that I am buying thrifted items, but it’s even better because I am getting hand-selected, often carefully mended clothing, about which Lauren knows the historical context.  And I’m supporting a friend too.  I model for her from time-to-time and am happy when she sends me home with “payment” in an especially cool skirt I modeled that day, or a pair of shoes.

Sorry to get a Meatloaf song stuck in your head.  But today I acquired some new stuff and it’s somehow all art related, so I thought I would share my successes and sorrows.  First here’s the stinker.  I ordered this paper from Canson in “indigo”

to make more island drawings and it’s not the right damn stuff.  It’s the wrong size and slightly the wrong color and there is a sticker annoyingly adhered to all 50 sheets.  But the kicker is that I can’t find the right paper anywhere online.  I guess that’s what happens when you pick up some single sheets of colored paper on a whim in Budapest–it’s ne’er to be found again–at least on this side of the Atlantic…or in cyberspace, for that matter, which I hear is a pretty big place.

But now for some good purchases.  I got this big blingy book that I had been drooling over for awhile and wanting since seeing the wonderful grotesque paintings in Italy:

I actually did two things:

1) I finally put the images of the work I made in Budapest onto my website.   That’s  an important step in the artmaking process for me.  Seeing the work together, online, is a way for me to digest it differently than seeing it on the wall.  It also officially puts it “out there” (wherever that is) for others to see and comment on.

2) Also, and bigger and potentially better (yet all part of the same package), the universe collided in such a way so that today I found myself writing an email to Richard Gillespie, TIGHAR‘s (The International Group for Historic Airline Recovery) executive director in charge of leading yet another expedition to what is now called Nikumaroro Island (formerly Gardner).  I am writing to see if I can go along on the month-long expedition starting in May 2010 to search for DNA on the island that could lead to knowledge of Amelia Earhart’s whereabouts at the time of her death and a big “mystery solved” stamp on one of the most compelling enigmas in recent history.

Now if I get a response at all from this supremely busy man, that will be great.  If I get an affirmative response from him, that will be epic.  Then I can start the extensive grant writing process that will consume me for the next few months.  Thanks to NPR’s The World for featuring an interview with Ric Gillespie about the trip and my friend Brian Spolans for alerting me to this article from ABC News.  These two bits of media helped kick me in the butt to write the email.

In other news, when I finally bring all of this work together in an exhibition, I hope to make it somehow museum-like in appearance and presentation, as though I am presenting artifacts rather than artwork, or a hybridization of the two.  On this topic I just received this book in the mail today:

which I am very excited to read.  The Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA presents fictions as though they are fact.  I am very compelled by this aesthetic of painstakingly contrived deceptions.  It is a historically rich, yet very current mode of presenting information.  I have witnessed this phenomenon in the writing of Ben Marcus, and the artwork of Hyungkoo Lee who’s work we saw at the Korean Pavilion during the 2007 Venice Biennale.  He creates realistic skeletal remains of cartoon characters.

Now, I am going to use all of this excited energy to head off to the studio!

I’m skipping Florence because we were only there for an afternoon and the museums wouldn’t allow photos, so I don’t have many.  But Venice is another story because we were there for the opening weekend of the Pinault Collection and the 53rd Venice Biennale.  Ok, art first, my photos next.

Here are three experiences with amazing art (it was hard to choose only three!) Mark and I especially enjoyed.  These choices are probably a little bit mediated, by the extent to which they were photographable.  Behold:

Lydia Pape at the Arsenale

Lydia Pape uses gold thread and light in a darkened space to create these ethereal prism-like shafts of majesty.

Grazia Toderi at Arsenale

Grazia Toderi has made a video project like no other.  Combining imagery of stadia, space, lights at night and god knows what else, she gives the viewer a reverse-symmetrical kaleidoscopic experience of another world.  For an idea of the way these videos move and shift, visit my flickr page, starting here and flip through the next few images.

Denmark and Nordic Countries (Finland, Norway, Sweden) The Collectors

The Nordic countries outdid themselves with their two pavilions invaded and transformed by the group The Collectors.  Creating a David Lynch meets mid-century homoerotic swingers’ loft, it is up to the participant to put the pieces together to form a sort of ramshackle pseudo-narrative.

And for my “artful” photos, which are, incidentally, of art:

Russian Pavilion- Anatoly Shuravlev

Korean Pavilion- Haegue Yang

Russian Pavilion- Andrei Molodkin

There’s so much more to include, but these are the images I settled on.  Here are more photos from our stay in Venice.

Next stop: Vienna!

So last night I got to go see this pretty lady:

Neko Case

and her misfit crew including Kelly Hogan and Jon Rauhouse.  It was a marvelous, colorful, complete show.  They blended a lot off of the new album, Middle Cyclone and Blacklisted, which felt wonderfully dark, and played some favorites from The Tigers Have Spoken and Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.  There were a few songs I love that I didn’t hear, but that makes me want to go back and see more shows, which is how it goes.

She played at Crofoot in Pontiac, Michigan, which is an intimate venue with a great set-up and a fantastic sound-system.  We were on the floor in the middle and could see the band pretty well for the whole show.  The balcony is a nice place to be as you can sit at a table while overlooking the floor and stage, but we didn’t get there early enough for that.  We saw Neko play there once before with The New Pornographers.  Okkervil River opened for them on that occasion and that made it an even more awesome show.

But back to last night.  The set was brilliant.  It was simple, but there was a giant screen behind the band projected with images and videos synced to each song they played.  Presiding over the screen was a giant owl wearing a crown.  There were also these primitive-looking gnarly tree banners on either side of the screen.  Of course the lights really enhanced the show as in the song I Wish I Was the Moon where the lights simulated bright moonlight shining on everyone on the floor.  Let me see if I can find a good photo of the set online… hmmm… here’s one from flickr:

thanks Christeena!

This image is from a show in Toronto, but this is pretty much what it looked like last night, but the Crofoot  is much smaller than the venue pictured and we were really close to the band.

In other Neko news, she happens to be a fellow animal lover, so she and her record label ANTI- are donating five dollars to Best Friends Animal Society for every blog that posts the mp3 for the song People Got a Lot of Nerve from Middle Cyclone (which we heard last night, I might add).  So here goes, for the betterment of people and critters alike:

People Got a Lot of Nerve People Got a Lot of Nerve

Download: http://www.anti.com/media/download/708