Chaos in Berlin

In April 2007 I spent two weeks in Berlin with my friend Sebastian Collett. We stayed at a squat called Tuntenhaus, went to a couple of raves, rode the subways, looked at art, etc. I also went to the craziest dance performance somewhere in East Berlin where we were blindfolded and then made to interact with the dancers. I loved all the graffiti, the Turkish food, and the way people are so candid and yet so guarded.

While I was there I filmed some of the sights, and interviewed a few artists, and when I got back to the states I used the facilities at the now defunct public access station, URTV, and put together this video. The sound quality of the interviews is quite atrocious, but the music -- by Sys-hex, Glossolalia and Pomme de Terre -- is pretty keen.

Link to video: Chaos in Berlin

One of the people interviewed is a choreographer, Tomi Paasonen. Check his work here: www.paasonen.com

Happy Holidays

Shout-out to the Piedmont Triad

If you find yourself in the mood for a road trip and craving some good contemporary art, it's worth taking a trip to the Piedmont Triad --referring to the cities of Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point.

First off, stop off in Winston Salem and visit the South East Center for Contemporary Arts (SECCA.) This gem of a center always has some captivating exhibits. Out of Fashion, curated by Steven Matijcio, is one of the current shows and features work by local artists, R. Brooke Priddy (pictured above) and Libby O'Bryan. Admission is free! www.secca.org

The soft sculpture works of Margarita Cabrera are also on display at SECCA. From the website: "Turning crafts and their manufacture into the vehicle for socio-political consideration, she questions con-temporary applications of post-NAFTA Latin American labor. Drawing upon local communities, Cabrera orchestrates the manufacture of soft, vinyl sculptures resembling backpacks, bicycles, potted plants, domestic appliances, pianos, and full-sized automobiles."

Next, visit The Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro. The museum was established to aid the MFA program at UNC Greensboro and houses six galleries. Currently showing in the main gallery is Persona: A Body in Parts, curated by Xandra Eden, which presents the opportunity to see some of Nick Cave's soundsuits among other compelling work. Admission is also free! Hurry, the exhibit comes down December 11th. www.weatherspoon.uncg.edu

In another gallery at The Weatherspoon I positively swooned over the paintings and drawings of Tom Burckhardt.

Visit www.tomburckhardt.com to see more.

Here's a link to his show at The Weatherspoon

Lines and Lives of the Face

If you haven't yet been to Tryon, NC, there's at least a one good reason for you to visit this month. Tryon is located about an hour south of Asheville, near the border of South Carolina. It's a lovely little mountain town, slightly warmer in climate than Asheville, with a population of approximately 1,700. It happens to be the town where Nina Simone was born and it is also home of the impressive contemporary art center Upstairs Artspace.

Currently Upstairs Artspace is exhibiting Lines and Lives of the Face, a group show curated by Margaret Curtis and Nancy Holmes. Curtis is an amazing painter who recently took over the role of managing exhibitions at the Upstairs ArtSpace. This is exciting because her knowledge of contemporary art insures some quality exhibitions in the future. Holmes is an art enthusiast who recently supported a new exhibition at The Asheville Art Museum, Homage2.

For LALOTF Curtis initiated a collaboration between NYC artist James Esber and 24 regional artists, "non-artists" and children. For it, Esber provided a drawing of Osama bin Laden to be traced by each participant of the project. The different interpretations that occurred in spite of the standardized form, were astounding. Some artists chose to incorporate literal symbols in their work; others went a more formalized or intuitive route. (The video above does not include the drawings from Upstairs ArtSpace.)

"Pube Patch" and "Brillo Head" paintings by Alli Good

In addition to Esber's project, The gallery contains work by 14 artists -- each presenting their unique approach to the "portrait." There are realist paintings, and stylized interpretations in media ranging from sculpture, paintings, drawings and woodcuts.

"Chill" by Taiyo La Paix. I just love that DQ logo and those faux fur cuffs.

Kindergarten series by David Slone

Drawings by Phillip McGuire


My paintings

Exhibiting artists also include: Kevin Clinton, Mathew Curran, Paul Flint, Dawn Hunter, Francesco Lombardo, Brian Mashburn, Tim Speaker and Bob Trotman

Tuesday, November 1st a panel of artists from the show will discuss traditional vs. contemporary portraits and the appeal of the subject. 7pm

Friday, November 11 Regional writers will read their poetry and prose in the gallery. 7pm.

Line and Lives of the Face hangs until November 19th

Upstairs Artspace

49 South Tryon Street

828.859.2828

The gallery is open Tues - Sat. 11am - 5pm.

Cruising around the City of Brotherly Love

I spent the weekend in Philadelphia, a city I've never visited before, and had a smashing time. I didn't go into any art galleries, but just walking around was a visual feast. I also learned heaps of interesting historical tidbits, like the fact that Betsy Ross was married five times.

For $5 I was able to hop on and off the city's Phlash Trolley at touristy hotspots like the Rodin Museum (free admission), The Liberty Bell (free), and The Art Museum ($16). I didn't tour the Art Museum but hung outside with the George Washington Monument. The sculpture's wild fetishization of colonialism provoked me to study it at length. Naked Native Americans lounge around with pacified indigenous beasts while the genteel Caucasian founders of this country are represented on a higher platform. A mammoth George Washington on horse presides over them all.

Down at Penn's Landing near the Delaware River, The Irish Memorial captured my attention as it tells the story of Ireland's potato famine and the Irish emigration to the US. Lots of children were playing amongst the tombstones, and happy couples were getting their pictures taken next to it. I love memorials that people can climb on.

Masonic Temple at left, City Hall at right

Center City is quite impressive with it's regal architecture and contemporary public art.The infamous Robert Indiana Love Sculpture is to be found in this part of town. The Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons that loomed a street over piqued my curiosity but unfortunately it's closed to the public on Saturdays. They offer tours Tues-Fri.

Walking around Philadelphia one notices a lot of outdoor murals and mosaics. The Philadelphia Mural Arts Program offers tours of the murals. On South Street I came across the Magical Gardens -- a labyrinth of mosaics of mirror, glass and found objects constructed by Isaiah Zager. Other mosiacs by Zager are scattered throughout The South Side neighborhood.

The Mutter Museum College for Physicians held a bounty of scientific and medical couriosities, and it was enthralling at first to look at all the skulls, deformed skeletons and gangrene hands, but after awhile I felt a little sickened by the multitudes of misshapen babies floating around in glass jars.

As captivating as the decapitated, was the museum's visual art exhibition: Corporeal Manifestations -- the first of it's kind for the Museum and hopefully they will run more in the future. I was particularly stirred by Tip Toland's sculpture, Survivor. I imagine it to be a physical representation of the gaps one lives with psychologically/spiritually after experiencing trauma.

In the end I give Philadelphia a hearty thumb's up for it's public art and cheap stuff to do on the fly. It kind of reminded me of Savannah Georgia with all it's history, cemeteries and squares. It also reminded me oddly enough of Berlin given it's sculptures, street art, grandiose architecture, and governmental monuments.

This World and Nearer Ones

18 installations comprised Creative Time's exhibition This World and Nearer Ones curated by Mark Beasley which was located mostly on Governors Island. "Governors Island is a modern ruin on the verge of rehabilitation" Beasley writes, "The works assembled employ Spiritualism, science fiction, poetry, spoken word, tonality and dissonance, temporary architecture, and the projected image to reflect displaced states and the neither/nor."

I wasn't able to see all 18 installations, but the ones I did have an opportunity to experience moved me deeply. The underlying theme primarily seemed to be that history is written by the winners, and here the artists are appropriating history in alliance with the losers, the marginalized, the unspoken for, and the condemned.

Between You and I Anthony McCall 2006

I started off going directly to The St. Cornelius Chapel that housed the video installation of Anthony McCall. Here McCall used a simple projector and vapor to create architectural cones of light. Projectors installed on the ceiling cast slow rotating beams of light which seemed to create walls when reflecting against the mist. There was a hushed reverence amongst the crowd of spectators who moved slowly through the cascading light beams. This exhibit garnered the loudest "oohs and ahhs" for its kinetic and visual excitement, though I found that the subtler installations on the island spoke louder to me.

"Insular Act" was performed by the Mexican artist collective Tercerunquinto. A few weeks before the exhibit opened they threw a rock through one of the islands historic buildings. The simple act was planned out through elaborate storyboards, and then filmed and photographed to prove it had actually happened. Soon after they threw the rock, a fresh pane of glass replaced the shattered one - and if the collective hadn't documented the act there would be no physical trace that it had ever happened.

Invocation of the Queer Spirits through a peephole.

Another installation/performance that occurred prior to the opening of This World and Nearer Ones was "Invocation of the Queer Spirits" by AA Bronson and Peter Hobbs. Here the artists performed a sacred ritual to contact the queer spirits that had once lived and died on Governors Island. The material remains of the seance were on view through peepholes carved out in locked doors - a metaphor of the marginalization of queer communities. Through the peepholes (drilled out at suggestive heights) one sees the burned down candles, empty booze bottles, tapestries, offerings, food, and ashtrays -- the ghosts of the happening that had occurred there. "Queer communities have often overlapped with the histories of psychics, spiritualists, witches, and shamans, as well as the histories of all-male communities such as explorers, traders, loggers, cowboys, and the military." (All of which Governor's Island had plenty.) The exhibit invites us to "Think again about what is valued and what is excised from our collective history."

Land of the Free Photograph by Josh Robinson

I was particularly moved by the video "The Land of the Free" by Judi Werthein. Here she collaborated with a group of Colombian musicians on a remix of the US national anthem. She gave the musicians a Spanish translation of The Star Spangled Banner and asked them to reinterpret the words to craft an original song. She films the front of the group and the back of the group which are shown simultaneously on a two-sided screen that hangs in the middle of the room. From the front we see the musicians in their colorful attire performing the song, and from the back we see subtitles of the newly interpreted anthem "You say you can see/Does the flag still wave over the land of the free?" The work suggests that cultural history is always subject to new translations; they may be appropriated, rewritten, and made to tell a completely different story.
You can watch a brief video of the original video here

Click Here to read about all of the works and artists of This World and Nearer Ones.

A Haunted Paradise: Part One

Governors Island

There I was in NYC trying to decide which galleries and museums to check out during my all-too-brief stay a couple of weeks ago. I had only a few days, and most of them were filled up with friends, parks, and food dates. I even got to play tennis at the courts in the Bay Ridge Neighborhood which was very funny considering the noisy traffic that prevented us from holding any interesting conversation beyond screaming out the score before serving. Also our newly purchased fluorescent green balls turned grey from the dirt on the courts after just one hour.

Spaetzle is a German noodle dish

While drunkenly scarfing down a late night (early morning) plate of spaetzle at Prime Meats in Brooklyn my friend suggested I visit Governor's Island to see the current art shows there. "What's Governor's Island?" I asked, and she proceeded to describe the fascinating history of this place that has served as a US military base since the 1930's. In 2002 the federal Government sold the island back to NYC for one dollar and since then the city has been trying to figure out its future design.

This was the first I had ever heard of Governor’s Island, and I couldn’t shake the dystopic images that kept coming to mind of abandoned military barracks and deteriorating colonial style buildings filled with artistic sculptural installations. It sounded like my dream come true and I couldn’t wait to get there.

This is what I imagined. I wasn't disappointed.

To my understanding the island had not been very accessible to the public before this summer. I've been hearing differing reports of tours offered in recent years on rare occasions or that its interior was closed off and that people could only walk or bike around it's perimeter. But this year Governor's Island has been free (free!) and open to the public Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays all summer and will continue to be open on weekends until October 11th. You can catch a ferry out of Brooklyn at the Fulton Ferry Landing or from Manhattan out of the Battery Maritime Building for free. (FREE!)

I did not take this picture but it looks similar to what I saw at the Fulton Ferry Landing

So the next day I’m waiting in line for the ferry looking around at all the gorgeous people waiting with me, at the wedding group that’s getting their photos taken on the pier while the Brooklyn Bridge looms gloriously in the background. Contrary to popular belief, people are really really nice in NYC. The sun is shining and everyone has their sunglasses on, talking excitedly about the art shows on Governor’s island, or waiting with their bikes to explore the island fully. So many people were waiting to get out to the island that my friends and I were unable to board the first ferry that arrived. When the second came we hopped aboard and merrily rode the waves over.

I wish I could impress on you the haunted paradise that is Governors Island. From the boat I could see throngs of happy people looking to escape the daily grind of city living roaming the lawns and crumbling sidewalks, luscious trees and quaint colonial houses dotting the grounds. My first impression was that I was back in Iceland where things seem simple and parochial, even innocent, but the military buildings were grave reminders of institutional and nightmarish things.

Hope for the future: abandoned military buildings

I step onto the island trying to wrap my head around this relatively small place (172 acres) that was originally occupied by the Lenape Indians, bought by the Dutch in 1637, (allegedly for two axe heads, a string of beads, and some nails.) inhabited by Dutch settlers, taken over by the British who surrendered it to NY State in 1783 and ultimately ceded to the United States for military purposes in 1800.

The Treaty of Penn with Indians by Benjamin West. One of the scariest paintings I have ever seen.

So much history, so much ghostly gorgeousness, and then there was the art… I’ll write about what I saw in future posts but lets just say that there was no need to visit any galleries or museums after what I saw that day on Governor’s Island.

Governors Island Blog

For the Love of Marshall

Marshall NC is worth visiting not only for it's gorgeousness and gorgeousity, but also for it's low-key cultural hiptitude. Reasonable rents and a small population (900) are what lure many an artistic individual wishing to escape the confines of city life.

The Madison County Arts Council frequently exhibits interesting art shows and acts as a music venue most Friday nights. Currently Laura Marsico is displaying her site specific installation, 33. (pictured above.) Says Marsico: "'33' is a reflection of the dichotomy between resources and resourcefulness, roots and growth, space and imagination, pattern and organization...and, ultimately, the plasticity of nature. Within a forest of collected and altered throwaways, all of the aforementioned relationships bring to light the question of settling, hiding and wandering in this existence."
The show will be on display until October 2nd.

Across the river from downtown sits Marshall High Studios - an old high school that has been renovated into 25 artists studios. It is a must-see for visitors. Rumors have it that the school was slated for demolition but through heavy donations and investments a group in town was able to save it. The history and integrity of the original school have not been lost in the remodeling - it is an amazing accomplishment that such an institutional building has been put to good use by artists.
Read more about the Marshall High Studios and Laura Marsico's installation:
Marshall: The South of France of the South MtnXpress 08/26/09

Iceland

In the spring of 2005 I did an artist residency in Iceland in the town of Akureyri. It was great. Iceland is super exotic and provincial at the same time. The landscape looks like I would imagine the moon to look. Things are really expensive there. and it is COLD. Even in May it's cold.
Not a lot of people spoke english well where I was staying or at least they didn't speak it to me. One of the things that kept me sane was a fabulous newspaper called the Reykjavik Grapevine.


I was really enthralled by the fashion and music scene in Reykjavik, while the Viking-inspired public art left me a little cold, which is fine because there were plenty of geothermal hot pools to bask in. The black licorice was my favorite food there though I survived on a diet of yogurt, lamb meat, and lichen. And a magic potion called Brennivin


Artist residencies are a great way to travel and get arty. While I was in Akureyri I completed a series of 15 small paintings, had a show, and even sold several. The art school and art museum were right across the street from my studio apartment. Matthew Barney actually opened a show at the museum while I was there, and that drew a lot of funky and freaky folk to the humble little Akureyri. Barney's show was an installation based on his film HOIST I liked it better than his show at the Guggenheim because the space was more intimate. Sometimes that man is just so over the top. He's a great example of what a person can do with unlimited resources. But I personally prefer low budget affairs myself.
Gabríela Fridriksdóttir was exhibiting with Mathew Barney at the museum and I was definitely more drawn to her work because it seemed more personal and organic.

The best thing about Iceland are the elves and trolls and goblins and fairies. They really do live there! I visited a neighborhood in Reykjavik that had a particularly high population of inhabitants from the other world. When I asked a man - a fisherman in fact - if he believed in fairies he just shook his head, and asked me, "well, do you believe in chocolate?"