a multi-disciplinary dialog
A controversial sculpture by “book artist” and Cornell University Art Department head Buzz Spector. The C-shaped structure is made up of over 800 books, all of them authored by Cornell faculty, students or alumni. The piece was originally installed in downtown Manhattan (pictured above); recently, it was reconstructed here in Ithaca, New York. More information, pictures, and an installation video can be found here.
Any thoughts?
David Palmer’s show at the William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica opened last weekend. I’ve been intrigued by David’s work since I first saw it on his web site, and I’d been pestering him for an interview, which we finally did by email. I found it a fascinating view into the ideas and materials and process of David’s art making. It came out long, but it’s all good stuff. Just cowboy up and read it!
Major Motion Picture (Forever Almost Falling, 2006)
Tina now hangs in my bedroom at the foot of my bed. Tina is a painting done by Paolo, my ex-lover of eight years and the emotional and sentimental favorite among my varied works of art (I suppose I refer both to the painting and Paolo.) Tina, Paolo’s muse and my competition, is the subject and the meaning of the painting. Tina is the reason the love of my life and I didn’t survive in a relationship.
I surprised Paolo one evening, arriving home a day early from a business trip. A classic set up. I was asking for it and I knew it. His drug habit and infidelity were no secret and just something that we worked around. In fact, we had been working to incorporate the infidelity into our sex life. Tina was another matter and eventually she beat me hands down. I despised Tina: The severe mood swings, the rages, the depressions, the lunacy. But I was no match for her influence. Like too many artists, Paolo could not find his muse without drugs or alcohol. Part of me was fascinated by this dynamic, and also oftentimes sexually aroused–which pathetically helped enable my lover’s drug habit. But Paolo’s use of crystal methamphetamine, known as Tina to her closest friends, eventually drove a wedge between us.
So I knew and I knew even more than Paolo realized I knew. However on that particular evening my premature return home delivered huge surprises for both of us. Yes, indeed, I did “catch” him, but not in the “anticipated” sense.
I walked through the door, and looked directly down the hall into our living room, our newly remodeled living room, I might add, and remodeled in my absence. I later learned that most of the furniture had been piled up in the guest room and not, fortunately, carried away by the Salvation Army or an antiques dealer.
Around the perimeter of the living room, Paolo had propped up a total of nine mirrors including the six bathroom cabinet doors. If nothing else, Tina was the mistress of industry. In one corner of the room, he had placed the TV and VCR on a cart and 
was playing porn, Ken Ryker to be precise. I remember this for a very good reason, as you will discover. Paolo had positioned his easel in the exact center of the room. He was hard at work on Tina, wearing nothing but a beret (a little affectation of his), a Marlboro Light dangling from his lips, paint smudges wherever he had rubbed or scratched himself and, uh, a significant representative part of porn star Ken Ryker. Paolo was athletically squatting over a stone pedestal from our garden that had a Ken Ryker Signature Collection 9 1/2 Insertable Inches Dildo stuck to the top. Mounted on this enormous sex toy, Paolo was riding it slowly up and down while he painted, smoked and listened to the actual Ken Ryker grunting and groaning on the television set off to the side of the room. The mirrors were of course positioned so that wherever Paolo looked, he would see a reflection of some angle of himself riding Ken Ryker’s plastic penile doppelganger.
When I was growing up, I was led to believe that the first baseman for the Baltimore Orioles, Eddie Murray, was a jerk. Not a fan of the Orioles, I had no reason to disagree. Later, I learned why I had been told this: he didn’t like talking to the Media. And who told me this? The Media.
How we position ourselves between the lives of others is significant and I think important to consider. What are our intentions? more… »
Reflections inspire much of my work, both in my photography and in my writing. I’m much more intrigued by the subject’s reflection than I am by the subject itself.
Mirrors
My maternal grandmother Luba Abramanova (made Lilly on 1922 Ellis Island) maintained an uncomfortable truce with mirrors and cameras, anything that would reflect her image. Mirrors served an occasionally necessary function and were to be barely tolerated. Shop windows and reflecting pools were easily avoided. Cameras were–in her estimation–nothing more than mirrors that rudely captured a permanent record of the reflection. We’ve all heard stories about primitive tribes and their superstitious notion that cameras can steal the soul. And then of course we have legends of vampires and their inability to even cast a reflection. Jews have no depictions of humans in their art for fear of violating the Ten Commandment’s prohibition against “idolatry”. Narcissus couldn’t free his own gaze from the reflection in the pool and now he lives in flower pots. Medusa, rendered powerless by her own reflection, was easily slain by Perseus. The mirror defeated the Gorgon. Lilly was clearly on to something important.
Other than the customary bathroom cabinet mirror, the only other mirror in Lilly’s home was a huge Venetian smoked glass decorative mirror hanging over her living room couch at an angle rather than flat against the wall. The mirror was unapproachable. Tilting off the wall as it did, it seemed an odd position for such a big and ominous slab of glass and as a child I often wondered when it would come crashing down on the sofa and some foolish shortsighted victim. For that reason, I never sat on the sofa. If all the chairs were taken at a family gathering, I would sit on the floor pretending to be an Indian. Adults would buy that and think it cute.
Occasionally someone would comment on the Venetian mirror’s limited decorative role. Why not hang a painting instead? Between the odd angle, the couch that kept you at a distance from the mirror and the muted lighting in the living room, you really couldn’t see your own reflection in any practical sense. It wasn’t until I was 16 that I realized that the mirror was deliberately angled in that manner so that Lilly could see the dress she was wearing, but not her own face. She had hung the mirror according to her own height so that her reflection was effectively cut off at the head. more… »
” …There are two prominent myths about photography: the myth that it tells the truth and the myth that it doesn’t.” This quote, from artist Jeff Wall, is from a deceptively small book with some big ideas, “Photography: A Very Short Introduction,” by Steve Edwards. The semiotics of photography has never had such an accessible vehicle as this book, which is largely the structure of it: the nature and meaning of the photographic artifact and act. That tension between truth and artifice, across the duality of documentary and artistic intent, has existed from the beginning of photography and before, and still confounds us. There is no one answer, only paradox and ambiguity.
Thanks to J.P. Caponigro for turning me on to this wonderful book. There’s a deeper look into the book over at “Politics, Theary and Photographs.”
If a Tree Falls in the Forest Does it Make a sound? Only to the trees with ears. I am not at all being funny. Everything is dependent on a tuned in listener. When it comes to art, sometimes there is no one there, meaning that those who can or want to understand what it is that you are up to, are not in the room. There will be others in the room who find your work similar to learning that there is “only” broccoli left in the refrigerator to eat. (Sorry broccoli lovers). This is not the feedback you need.
When having your worked critiqued, here are two questions that need to be in the mix
If the answer to number 1 is nothing, then by-pass 2 and go directly to finding another critic.
Now for some Turkey.
