Miniature Black Holes
Art belongs to every category of endeavors, and the diversity of artists reflects that. The artist acts as a special function of their environment; their talent is to understand what goes on around them, and to reflect back what deserves more recognition. The environment, combined with the artist’s discretion, molds the character of his or her art. My environment is expansive, not selective, and I have been given great freedom to explore it. My discretion is economic, preferring fulfillment over flavor. The combination results in plain, bland, powerful ideas. I have no place in niche art. If I were to try, my paintings would look like the murals of Italy found in Subway restaurants. My environment of endless opportunity gives me no special interest in anything. Why then do I remain an artist? My special interest is in fact, nothing.
I grew up in an upper-class family in the suburbs outside Chicago. I have two parents and a sister, and my father is a manager of architects. He taught me to be financially responsible. I have nothing in my life to complain about. The most I can say about my personality, my character that makes me “who I am,” is that I work hard. My friends call me a robot. My mind is built for the purpose of an artist, because as hard as I try, I can’t imagine doing anything else.
No matter how hard we try changing anything, it already happened. We focus to understand what’s closer to the present, but the end cannot be achieved. We are pieces of the earth, moving because we are moved, just as we were before somebody thought there was a choice. Runners are fast for the same reason that scientists are smart. The rich and famous know they are puppets better than anyone else, and the most powerful men on earth strictly follow the currents of nature that have existed forever. The earth is becoming aware, and those who understand are at the forefront of its development. But it’s not aware yet.
It looks as if we are creating earth’s greatest achievement. In all its history, little more excitement has happened than in the past million, thousand, or hundred years. The excitement is accelerating, and being the parts of earth that specialize in change, we can feel it. But in fact, we cannot take credit as the creators when we think with brains that can only work when forced to. Nobody has any more freedom than a wave. Call it slavery; call it inspiration. Every option has a consequence, and the best choice is usually chosen.
Since I was born, I’ve been swirled around into an artist, nearly with a mind of my own. Motion pushes my environment against me, and I understand as a result. Or I just curse. I actually bit myself and cried writing this. If it weren’t for my good heritage, I’d be a nervous wreck most of the time. So describes the excitement happening to earth. It’s like the words in this artist’s statement happening to the ink in this paper. The earth is being obliterated, and every individual is a mole working to make it happen. As an artist, I am as much motion as a piece of earth can handle. My job is to control it.
I paint to remind the viewer of their own flesh. I expand the interior of the body into spaces that are vast and luminescent. I make the microscopic visible to the naked eye. The body becomes landscape; the interior becomes the exterior. As paintings of the body, zoomed in illustrations of the intimate, my paintings are obscene without being pornographic.
I depict the abject, as Julia Kristeva describes it, in order to show the fragility of the barrier separating the inside of the body from the outside and keep in mind Edmund Burke’s concept of the sublime to prevent my work from becoming beautiful formally, in a way that would rob my work of substance. The photographers Jeanne Dunning and Emiko Kasahara, use the body as subject, showing the interior of the body as something luminescent and beautiful but still repulsive and uncomfortable. Kristeva and Immanuel Kant’s concepts of the sublime factor into my work. Kant describes the sublime as something vast that is almost incomprehensible. Once the individual can begin to comprehend the sublime, they are changed by it. Emiko Kasahara’s Pink series use the sublime in the same way that I incorporate it into my work. Keeping in mind the abject and the sublime allows me to move away from Georgia O’Keefe-like depictions of the beautiful natural body in order to examine the discomfort with bodily closeness.
Orifices are tunnels into the most intimate parts of people, literally and figuratively. They are hallways into the inner workings of the body. Orifices advertise the potential for genuine interaction. This opportunity is often missed. I meditate on orifices. The orifices I paint are imaginary. The colors are often too pink and pretty. They invite through their familiarity and repulse by their shape and juxtaposition.
My paintings are static documentations of the desire to reach out, without fear, and touch someone else. They understand that this is a bad wish, that this fear exists for a reason. The imaginary organs and orifices, though referential, are loosely based in reality. The oversaturated color and pastel disgust of these orifices and organs shows that a desire for intimacy without boundaries is heartfelt but ultimately destructive.
Over the past year I have been very interested in building upon fragments. I paint draw, crochet and sew. Drawing acts as a base that helps evolve the structure of the imagery. Adding black and colored line work allows the structure of my drawings to build and become a visual diagram for the eyes. When paint is included the piece breathes it’s own story for the viewer. This piece, named “Shrapnel”, is a portrait based upon a headshot of my father during his time in the army in the mid seventies. When beginning to create the piece, I began sketching from an older photograph. The process of manipulating the planes of the face through color with the tonal planes from the photograph created an array of dismembered, sharp edged fragments. Sharp edges, missing pieces, and an unclear placement of what lies in front of another created an interesting way of developing a portrait. The outlining of shapes was created with multi-colored markers and the shading was completed with Prismacolor.
Through my art practice, I am able to share with the viewer information about myself, where, each piece of artwork is, in essence, a story from my life with the narrative quality of the tale expressed somewhat ambiguously. For instance, in this piece, I am able to talk about my father and somewhat reflect his personality. Through the brightness of the colors, warmth and energy is generated, however, the brokenness of the half portrait renders an eeriness and morbidity. The direction the stream of shapes travels, from the top of the composition to the bottom, creates an aid for the viewer’s eyes. In this sense the viewer is able to create their own translation of why it is so bright, why only the jaw and neck are included and what the streams symbolize.
To explain the reasoning for these qualities, I need to explain my process. Many times I have an idea of what I would like to create and usually the outcome is exceedingly different from the original idea. However, as the piece grows into whatever it might become my thought process alters with it and so the possibilities of the project extends. At the time of creating this specific piece I wanted to capture some of the structures of the muscles in the face, while also abstracting something extremely representational. Another aspect of this evolution is the stories I develop while working. I find that nostalgia works best when creating works of individuals whom are familiar to ones self. So I remember moments and things about the person, or try to remember every single detail about their physicality in order to reinterpret it as true as possible. My father is a blue-collared worker who had to make a living with his hands. After welding for almost a decade, working in shipping and receiving for another twenty years his hands have become wrinkled, cracked and scale-like. Therefore, while creating this piece I wanted to develop something true to his body as well. Stories and tangents become my best friend while working.
This is an image from a project I am currently working on that is tentatively titled "foreclosure." This project like much of my other work deals with liminality and it's presence in the everyday. I am interested in the nature of things that are in between. Specifically with these images, the ability of objects to exist in an extended state of liminality, and a state of liminality in which the aggregation may exist in the form of complete failure.
For this project in particular I have been photographing the weathered and often defaced advertisements for high-end condo buildings that have been foreclosed. When these building become foreclosed the signs and ads are often left behind. These are spaces that often have only existed in the idealization and planning of them. I became interested in these posters as a way to think about failure and what happens to an idealization when it suddenly becomes deferred. Because of the recent economic slump many of these spaces exist in Chicago. They exist in various states; some partially constructed some just fenced off land. But all of these spaces represent idealized city life, or at least what these spaces appear to be. The advertisements and billboards that surround these building often show images that could be found on postcards for Chicago. They sell not only a condo but also a lifestyle.
I have been researching these spaces and photographing what is left behind of these buildings that never were. Each image in the series focuses on what could have been but also attempts to jolt the viewer out of the image by natural decay of this perfection. They are meant to confuse the abstraction and ask the viewer to unpack the abstraction to understand the interplay of idealization and failure within the situation.
To me these images also address the object hood of a photograph. They are photographs of images that have transformed in the 3D forms through their extended presence in a landscape. Yet the process of photographing them again flattens them. These images examine the objectness of a photograph in time.
I am not sure if I intend for these images to comment on the economic state the world we live in but they do seem to tie into the reality. In my mind they are more intended to examine a physical manifestation of a “dream deferred” as described by Langston Huges in poem of the same name. Huges describes a dream deferred as a rotting explosive object and these images also consider that. They explore the semi permanence of idealization or dreams and what happens when these idealization are pushed aside, they begin to rot in a way. In the case of these images they begin to rip and tear and collect detritus and the illusion of what they show becomes complicated. They begin to show what happens when idealization is materialized and they deserted.
Reid Peppard. Lady taxidermist-jeweler. Fashion badass.
This necklace’s pendant is comprised of a a carrion crow leg cast in silver and a squirrel leg. Peppard's work seems like a big F You to the fashion world, taking haute couture's extreme style to an even further extreme. Like good fine art, it stretches the boundary between what is art and what is not.
"By transforming creatures usually perceived as pests into beautifully crafted objects for human adornment she invites the onlooker to become a participant in the work, thus straddling the boundary between fashion and art. "
-www.rpencore.com
Who knew that 18 year old Dylan Baldi from Cleveland, Ohio could create such heart-smashing low-fi? Though, honestly, he’s probably 19 by now. Baldi started recording songs in his basement, playing every instrument on every track. After the tracks started attracting attention, he formed a band and began to tour.
I stumbled upon the music of Cloud Nothings in 2009. I was a DJ at the time for my college’s radio station, WWRM. The station’s board and I went to our local record store, Speakertree Records, and chatted with the owner about organizing a concert. He suggested we ask Cloud Nothings to perform and told us that his independant record label (Speakertree Records) was releasing Cloud Nothing’s LP, Turning On. I just about lost my shit. I had played songs from Turning On on my radio show the week before and had fallen in love.
Of course, Cloud Nothings got “big” (in the indie sense of the term) really quickly. Baldi’s sound’s popy low-fi fits perfectly into the scene but his echoing paranormal vocals and the feeling of barely held together instrumental pandemonium makes Cloud Nothings stand out.
Cloud Nothings' songs are really fresh. I mean it. Check them out.
Jónsi came to The Vic on November 3rd, bringing with him four other musicians (including his partner Alex) and Moutain Man, the female acapella trio that opened for him.
When I heard that Jónsi was coming to Chicago, I impulsively decided to go. In all seriousness, Go’s music has moved me to tears. It is the rare kind of music that is very honest, so honest that it risks sentimentality to create emotional, beautiful, and truthful art.
Jónsi Þór Birgisson, originally the main singer of the Icelandic group Sigur Ros, branched out in 2009 to create his first solo album Go. Jónsi’s stop at The Vic supported of this new album, whose grand orchestral sound differs from Sigur Ros’s quieter atmospheric style.
The stage, a landscape of instruments, held two pianos, a keyboard, a synthesizer, a drum kit, a stand of modified cymbals, a xylophone, a glockenspiel, and a harmonium. The lights went down after a brief set change, and when they came up, the stage had transformed into another world. Each musician was costumed. Jónsi’s costume dripped with fringe and feathers and was made with pieced together cloth. The projections behind the band showed fantastical animation of forestscapes and animals. Four barndoor lights illuminated the band from behind, creating glowing clouds when the fog machines were on. Though the set was simple and the costumes weren’t over the top, every aspect of Jónsi’s aesthetic coordinated with the music to transport the audience into a world that the music narrated.
No musician played only one instrument. Jónsi played acoustic guitar, electric guitar with a cello bow, ukulele, xylophone, and piano. The other members of the band alternated instruments as well. The movement of the band around the stage to different instruments (sometimes more than one per song) gave the feeling that the band, as well as the audience, was inside of some aural world being created at that moment. The use of these instruments gave the music a grand sound that, unlike Go’s orchestral strength, was nevertheless rich and moving.
The most powerful part of the concert for me was the encore. When the band came out again, Jónsi wore a green feathered headdress. After performing two songs, the rest of the band left the stage while Jónsi remained. He sang alone into his microphone, crouched over his KAOSS Pad (effects sampler) on the floor, playing his own voice like an instrument until it faded away. Even after the encore the crowd couldn’t stop clapping. When the band came out again to raised house lights, they stood at the edge of the stage applauding to the audience and receiving applause. At any other concert this might seem silly, but the Jónsi concert was such an experience that this felt like a moment of comradery. The audience thanked the artists for an aural and emotional experience and the artists thanked the audience for the opportunity to create it.
