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Wait, is it really September already? It must be, because there is a slight chill in the air, and all of my summer weekend guests have come and gone… and they were fantastic! Thanks so much to all of you! You were jealous of some truly amazing artists, you did some very clever writing, and you even tidied up on your way out… right?
xo
If you live anywhere even kinda close to Portsmouth, New Hampshire I know what you should do tonight! It’s the opening of The Enormous Tiny Art Show at Nahcotta. Yes, that’s right, there will be an enormous amount {50 artists are participating} of tiny original art {10″x10″ or smaller}. The line-up of artists is insane… insane I tell you!!! I managed to control myself and only show a few of my favorites pieces, but I could have easily shown work from all 50 artists! Seriously. Ok, so back to planning your Friday night for you: Tonight, September 2nd from 5 ~ 8pm… but if you can’t make it to the opening, don’t worry, the show will be up until October 2nd. Have an enormously fun, yet tiny, time!
{A few of my favorite pieces by: 1. Shannon Rankin 2. Jennifer Davis 3. Stacey Durand 4. Amanda Blake 5. Sarajo Frieden 6. Leah Giberson}
So, for whatever reason, I was in the mood to write about something golden, or glittery today {fall trend?}. Anyway, I spent hours searching for just that, and of course, who hooked me up? Yes, one of my favorite artists ever… Martha Rich. I have never seen these pieces before, but they have totally hit the spot for me today. Gold, sparkle, a big mouth, a tiny lady head, a hot dog, and a very structurally sound bra… ahh, exactly what I needed. Thank you Martha. Again.
{These pieces were part of a show called “Nuts, Charm & Rejection” at CultureFix, in collaboration with Sloan Fine Art Projects, in New York last January.}
Where are my scissors?!? Seriously. I need them right now! This collage work by California based artist Jessalyn Aaland has totally inspired me to get back into the studio… I must start snipping magazines, books, and stickers immediately! I had such a hard time deciding which of her hilarious / beautiful series to show… so I just picked a whole bunch. These images are from ACCUMULATIONS {1, 2, 3} DREAMHOUSE {4, 5} and DIYSAFESPACES {6, 7}. On second thought, forget the studio time – now I just want to do some major hoarding in my dream house, and then talk about it in a DIY safe space! So. much. love.
{via Junkculture}
Beautiful, ghostly, illuminated shapes that hover weightlessly over large scale c-prints… oh yes, I’m jealous. Canadian artist Claire Falkenberg applies highly mineralized oil paint to her photographs of dark, abandoned, over-grown, trash-filled places, and transforms them into an ethereal experience! I would love to see this huge work in person… the last image is titled Thorns, and is 59″ x 58″. Stunning!
{Thank you so much to Tiffany for sending me a link to Claire’s work.}
I would love to spend the afternoon with American artist Kirstin Lamb so we could talk beauty queens, pastries, and raw meat. Apparently she “became obsessed with classical still life and notions of stacking and heaping during her final year of graduate study in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005.” But I want to know why she’s stacking the things she’s stacking! Yep, I have a lot of questions about these beautifully bizarre gouache drawings. First question… where can I get one?! Oh, and look at that, the answer is right down there:
{I found Kirstin’s work [for sale!] on the always amazing Little Paper Planes.}
I met the lovely Anne Cottingham this spring when she was nice enough to write about me on Vancouver is Awesome. We met up in a coffee shop to do the interview, ended up walking & talking for hours… and by the end of the afternoon, we were friends! Now, I’m not totally sure how to describe Anne… she works at a gallery, writes an art column, and does some photography on the side. Hm, let’s go with “renaissance woman” and call it a day! When I asked her to write this guest post she immediately asked “Oh! Do you know Gilbert and George?” I didn’t. But I do now…
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I’m jealous of Gilbert and George
Crass, pointedly honest and big, bold and colourful – I just can’t get enough of Gilbert and George. Perhaps it is their insanely organized work space, with boxes of negatives labelled as “Shit, 1980” (meaning photos of quite literally, shit from 1980). Or the delightful maquettes they make mocking up their exhibitions, perfectly to scale and with multiple little printed copies of their artwork to place inside. Or maybe I just have a deep appreciation for two people who have never seemed to waver in expressing who they are to the whole world, no matter what that world might think of them.
{Gilbert & George at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, 2008-09. Photo credit: diegoluis}
Gilbert Proesch (b. 1943, Italy) met George Passmore (b. 1942, England) at St Martins School of Art in London in 1967. It was “love at first sight” in the corridors according to George, and not long after they began creating art together. They started with singing, living sculptures and a dinner with well-known British artist David Hockney, and later moved on to produce the huge, photo-collage grids that have made them famous. The live sculptures remained though in the sense that they stopped separating their life and their art, insisting that one is synonymous with the other. Asked by Francois Jonquet whether they are still living sculptures today, George has replied, “I believe so. In my opinion, it’s our greatest invention.”
{Flow, 1988, White Cube London}
G&G’s large-scale photo works are known as The Pictures, though that encompasses many different series’ over a number of decades. They often feature the artists themselves, dressed or undressed, against a background photo of shit, piss, plants, London… creating thousands of works that fill some incredibly heavy volumes. In the 80’s they began to use a broad range of colour where before they had limited themselves to red. They also started using models and other objects, illustrating their zest for the beauty of life. That zest took a darker turn when the AIDS epidemic broke out and they lost a close friend.
{Nettle Dance, 2008, White Cube London}
Since that time they’ve eschewed models and used themselves, objects and many bodily fluids to cover any range of topics, from the 2005 London bombings to Britishness itself. In Six Bomb Pictures, G&G collected 136 sandwich board posters from the London Evening Standard, and layered them around computer-manipulated images of themselves. Each piece organizes itself around a singular word found on the sandwich boards – the largest a tripych entitled ‘Bomb,’ followed by ‘Bombs,’ ‘Bombers,’ ‘Bomber,’ ‘Bombing,’ and ‘Terror.’ They commemorate recent and past threats to London safety (from 7/7 to the IRA to World War II), but also paint a picture of the daily lexicon of life in London and its impact.
Gilbert & George are nothing if not controversial. Love them or hate them, you have to admire their quirks and their fierce devotion to each other and their art. They are everything I value most not only in art, but life – honest, passionate, unique and open. And exciting! Life is boring enough – why spend it looking at boring art that has nothing to say? As Gilbert notes, “we’ve simply given up on being boring, we don’t want to be like all those boring artists shut up in their studios, who lead middle-class lives and have nothing to say, and are happy to stay on the surface of things each day.” Thank goodness for that.
Recommended reading:
Gilbert & George
intimate conversations with Francois Jonquet
Phaidon, 2004
Recommended viewing:
The Secret Files of Gilbert & George
interviewed by Hans Ulrich Obrist
JRP Ringier, 2000
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Thank you, friend!
Hm, I don’t think I have ever shown work this way before… in context, inside someone’s home. I have to say, it really makes me want to have Chicago based artist Alex Menocal come over to install a few of his very bold, complex/yet simple, triangle configurations on my wall… pink & yellow for me, please!
{first three: tape // middle three: screenprint // last one: vinyl paint }
Reconstruction is a lovely, yet haunting, series about the construction and reconstruction of memories through “photographic suggestion”. I was trying to figure out how American artist Naomi Vanderkindren created these mixed media pieces, and I can safely say, this would not have been my first guess:
“Anything that makes a shadow can form an image in the darkroom, and I create my negatives using multiple layers of collage, pencil drawings, and photographs printed on typing paper. I titled these “photogenic drawings” after the early inventor Talbot’s description of his first experiments using the shadows of objects to make images.”
Nope… I never would figured that out on my own. Ever.
Oh my delicate, golden, feathery goodness! I absolutely love this work by American artist Jaime C. Knight… and possibly Lena Wolff. I know that they had a collaborative show, titled In the Beginning, last December at Lake Gallery in San Francisco, but I’m not sure if these pieces were done by both of them, or if these are Jaime’s solo works*. Either way, I truly do love them {…and all of their delicate, golden, feathery goodness!}
*Just got a comment from Jaime, and sure enough, these are her pieces! Thanks Jaime : )
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