building as painting

Kaylee Pickinpaugh at Casablanca Coffee

Dennis Matthews and friends have taken over a spacious coffee house and are having shows there. The current show consists of fifteen different artists and is probably closing soon, because the next show opens on February 4th.

Kaylee Pickinpaugh has a weird painting in the bathroom. I like her stuff a lot, I remember seeing two of her paintings more than a year ago in a VCU student show. The painting up now is a skewed interior of some kind of disco palace-like living room, with a big round fluffy chartreuse rug on the floor and a grotesque lady-man, or manly lady, sitting in a big stuffed chair wearing a little dress and glittery ruby platform shoes, with a cat on her lap. The perspective of the disco paneled floor is all screwed up and there is a big golden gilt mirror on the back wall reflecting a twisty disco hallway. The mirror is hanging on a wall on which the wallpaper pattern seems to be drifting into the corner like jellyfish.


I googled Kaylee to try to find some of her paintings but only found her contributions to Miranda July's site. This one is from Assignment #11: Photograph a scar and write about it -

"Molly, Amy, Nina and I all got these heart brands as a symbol of our friendship. We all took turns giving them to each other. It was pretty painful, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else, but we figured that it was all about the crazy experiences we've had together, and the stupid things that we'll always laugh about. Plus now we're all super tough."

1106 West Main Street, Casablanca Coffee. Next opening is Feb 4th, First Saturday at 5 PM it's at 1106 West Main Street.

sculpture something

The second annual sculpture something is accepting proposals. I'm not sure what it is called now. The first one was called 2005 Sculpture Invitational, but this one might be called Richmond Outdoor Exhibition or 2006 Richmond Outdoor Sculpture - I'm just not sure. Here is all the entry information.

The deadline is March 1st!!!

First year Sculpture Invitational posts - here, here, here, and here - and the Sculpture Invitational website is here.

PS - hey, anonymous militant artist ladies, look at the bad sign I wrote about in this initial Sculpture Invitational post from last year. Solidarity!

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Rebecca Winston at Diversity Thrift

I've finally scanned the other prints I got when I bought the Lester Van Winkle piece at Diversity Thrift. I've never heard of Rebecca Winston, the artist, but when I saw these little paper pieces crammed into a rack with a bunch of other stuff I had to save them, especially when I saw that some were signed and dated 1964. How have these little unframed things survived so long, uncared for?

These are the three that I bought. The biggest one here is the nativity scene, only about nine by eleven inches, the other two are postcard-sized. All three were priced at five dollars each, but because the bigger one is signed, titled, and dated while the other two are only initialed I was able to talk him down a buck on each.


I think this one is my favorite. It has a sad fairy-taleness, and you can't quite tell what she is doing. Washing clothes, or drowning a baby? She looks so sad, like something has happened to ruin the fairy-tale. All of these pieces feature a woman sitting or kneeling over a baby or possible baby.


This image is the smallest, probably about actual size on your computer. I see a lady but I don't see the baby. Is the crib empty?


The nativity pieces were the only ones that were signed. This is something that fits into her theme, but that she may also have had hopes of selling. There were more of these same nativity prints available, all hand-colored differently, all signed, dated, and titled.

Warren Rohrer

A few weeks ago I was on the Skowhegan website checking to see who this summer's faculty will be and discovered that Phong Bui is a 1985 graduate of my alma mater, The University of the Arts. I've also learned, in the past few years, that both Joe Fyfe (class of 1976) and Christine Hiebert (class of 1983) are also alumni of The University of the Arts* - that means we must have all studied under the same person, the late Warren Rohrer, who taught in the painting department from 1974-1992. Recent posts on Lester Van Winkle and Richard Carlyon and responses from their former students have got me thinking about some of my old teachers.

I'm not sure to what extent these other artists interacted with Warren, or how much influence he may have had on them, but when I was there Warren was very much a leading figure in the department.


Warren Rohrer - more images from Artnet, reviewed on Artcritical, his biography and some images from Marian Locks Gallery, an Art in America article by Miriam Seidel.


Joe Fyfe - Yes, I chose this recent Joe Fyfe image for it's resemblance to the Warren Rohrer piece directly above it. From what I understand Fyfe was making photo-realistic paintings until about ten years ago, when he made a big switch to the very casual, rough, elegant paintings he is now known for - paintings which make me think very much of Warren's work.

Warren's paintings were often many layers of paint applied like stitches, you get a sense of the weave of the canvas underneath all the paint, or his marks added to the the canvas so you were aware of both the canvas and the paint marks, becoming one thing; or he would leave the canvas visible at the edges or someplace. The canvas was important, the painting wasn't just an image placed on top. The whole painting was one thing. I think he worked slowly and meditatively. Joe paints quickly and thinly, but his paintings have a similar physical presence and "zen" quality. I say zen because that's the word to use, but Warren was a Mennonite.

I'm really curious about Joe's photo-realist work and why he made such an about-face. He seems to have been doing okay before, he was a 1994 artist-in-residence at the University of Tenessee "as a painter of photographically derived imagery". It's weird to hear someone speak with so much conviction about art knowing that only recently they were doing - and probably thinking and saying? - something completely different.

(I've studied under both Warren and Joe, Warren from about 1988-1990 and Joe in 2004).


Christine Hiebert - Christine Hiebert on Artnet, Christine Hiebert in The Brooklyn Rail - that piece illustrated in The Brooklyn Rail article looks like the same one as the image above from Artnet, but with a much yellower background. Is it the same piece?


Phong Bui - This Artnet photo is from his 2005 installation at Sarah Bowen Gallery. Phong Bui also publishes The Brooklyn Rail.


me

Are there any artists reading this who studied under Warren? I am out of touch with the kids I graduated with, and the recidivism rate is very high, but it would be nice to see what people might be doing now.

*or Philadelphia College of Art, it underwent a name change. I entered The Philadelphia College of Art in 1986, then it became The Philadelphia Colleges of the Arts, and I graduated from The University of the Arts in 1990.

PS - Skowhegan looks really good this summer, they have Phong Bui, Nicole Eisenman, Lisa Sigal. I'm not applying, it costs too much for me right now, and I want to raft. Plus, maybe my Skowhegan moment has passed? I've applied so many times and am tired of it - but I recommend applying to my younger artist friends who might be reading this. I think if you can get accepted at the right time in your life it would be a wonderful experience.

Richard Carlyon

Melissa (from Nonesuch) has e-mailed to say that local artist Richard Carlyon has passed away. Carlyon was a long-time VCU professor, not sure how long ago he retired. I've never met him and don't know much about his work, but it is my understanding that he was an extremely well-respected artist and teacher.

Here is an excerpt from a Richard Carlyon testimonial I've found on-line, written by former student Carol Sutton, and which pre-dates his death -

"One of my great teachers was Richard Carlyon at RPI, now called VCU. Mr. Carlyon opened the door to art history for me. He taught me to seek an art full of purpose and feeling.

Richard Carlyon always impressed me with his razor sharp mind and insights into art history. I remember his vast personal art library, his love for books and learning. The dedication that he gave to his art, painting and drawing. I remember his great sense of line and his bold shapes, his great drawings. What a great and intense time. Students lined up for and packed his art history lectures, which often were in such demand that it was standing room only if you arrived a bit late."

Another former student, now living in California, has posted an obituary on his blog -

"I received notice yesterday that Richard Carlyon passed away recently. Anyone who went to school with me will remember Mr. Carlyon as an incredibly animated and highly heady professor at Virginia Commonwealth. He was of great inspiration to me and taught two of my favorite classes while I attended VCU. His Abstract Expressionism class brought understanding to an incredibly illusive mode of painting that I have come to appreciate much more. He also taught a class called Conceptual Thinking that had us creating things like Comic Books with no pictures and the like."

Melissa says that Nonesuch will be closed tomorrow (Wednesday) for funeral services but that she would like to invite those of you who knew and loved Richard to join her at Nonesuch at 7pm for a toast of wine in his honor. Bring your memories and stories to share with the wine. Nonesuch will have regular Wednesday movie night after that, around 8pm or so. January is Uncomfortable Movie Night.

sidebar

I've changed the sidebar a little bit, putting up some links to my own work and switching the archives to below the list of other artblogs. Not sure how long I will keep all those links to my non-recent stuff, just putting them up for a little while probably. Fun to see the old stuff, and easier than going to the storage locker and unrolling it all.

Also have been slowly adding other artblogs.

UPDATE: A lost review has been found! Peter Naumann has made a website and posted his review of a show I was in in Tokyo maybe four years ago, with a picture. That review originally ran on TokyoQ.com but has since faded away. Tom Sanford was also in that show.

art basel anaba

This is Marina Abramovic, not Joseph Beuys.


This is (Elaine) Sturtevant, not Andy Warhol.


This is Eric Doeringer, not Dana Schutz.


This is Earl M. Washington, not Rockwell Kent.

Earl M. Washington was selling prints at bookstores and on e-bay that he claimed were made by his great-grandfather in the thirties, mostly copies of other artists. The print pictured above is after Rockwell Kent, signed Earl M. Washington and dated 1931. BUT... the guy made up the whole story about his great-grandfather and was making the copies himself, in the nineties. So it is not a Rockwell but looks like one, it really is by the artist who signed it, but the date of 1931 is not true.

He has sold about 60,000 prints so far and is still doing it. You can buy them at Black Swan Books, where I took this photo. The back of the print has some explanatory text but no credit at all is given to Rockwell Kent. I said something to the owner about that but he got defensive.

Forbes published an article called Catch Me If You Can.


This is Thomas Moses, not Grandma Moses.

Thomas Moses and his brother Will Moses both learned to paint from their grandfather Forest Moses, who was the son of Grandma Moses.

I love the paintings of Grandma Moses, not so much Forest Moses, and Will Moses' stuff feels like hack-work; I very much like the paintings of Thomas Moses. Thomas is Will's older brother and they both began painting at about the same time, but Thomas had to stop for personal problems or something, and has started back up again relatively recently after a thirty-plus year break.

Grandma Moses painted mostly from memory, so although she was working in the 1940's and 1950's, the scenes depict life much earlier. The two living Moses brothers are both around sixty, but although they are painting scenes that pre-date their own births, they are also painting from memory - having spent their childhoods surrounded by the work of their grandfather and great-grandmother. I am fascinated by the whole Moses thing.

Thomas Moses has made a website, and I think he is even starting a blog!?!?


This is Richard Pettibone, not Frank Stella.

I told Richard Pettibone about Eric Doeringer and Richard Pettibone asked, "Does he do me?". That was funny.

Another lady at the same lecture started asking Richard Pettibone questions as if he were Ray Pettibon, it took her a while to get that she didn't just have his first name wrong, but that this was a completely different artist and she was at the wrong lecture. That was really funny, for Richard Pettibone HIMSELF to be confused for another artist, in the flesh!! Woah.

There was great deal of confusion about names and I am not sure what he was asked next, but he responded "you don't think I made up the name Pettibone, (do you)?". This was getting so weird because Raymond Pettibon did assume the surname Pettibon, his real last name is Ginn.

I got so dizzy with it all.


This is Vincent Van Gogh, not Millet.

Gert Folmering, German Painters, NYC Painters

Hans Heiner Buhr has posted a bunch of good paintings by artist and friend Gert Folmering.

Corny is featuring a different German painter each day this week.

PaintersNYC posts a different NYC painter every day.

Enjoy your painting!

Beq, Diane Derr, Rachel Hayes, Timothy Michael Martin, Ryan Mulligan, and Amie Oliver at Spaces, Places, Centers, and Fairs

Here is a picture of Rachel Hayes' Sculpture Center installation. Looks GREAT, Rachel, and I love the slightly crooked flourescent light line and it's reflections on your hanging. Is that a hallway? Congratulations for making a hard space sing and hum and buzz and zip. There is something musical happening; something electronic, tonal, and rythmic. I bet Tom Moody would enjoy this piece.


Diane Derr is included in The Mind/Body Problem at Artists Space, January 12 - February 18, with an opening reception TONIGHT from 6-8pm.

Diane is a Richmond native currently living in Chicago.


Timothy Michael Martin and Beq are both included in the Mid-Atlantic New Painting 2006 exhibition at University of Mary Washington's Ridderhof Martin Gallery, January 26 - March 3, with an opening reception on the 26th from 5-7pm.

I have a Mike Martin painting!

Amie Oliver's work is up at The Painting Center, in a show called Grand Allusions. Heart as Arena recently recommended visiting this show to see the work of Maria Pia Marrella.

Ryan Mulligan is, I think, collaborating with Marc Horowitz on a performance piece at ArtLA, Jan 19 - 22. Wow, good for Ryan.

the Genji Monogatari and Sunflower

Scene from the 1120 illustrated version of Genji Monogatari; this scene depicts a young woman sitting on the balcony, looking at a tree, waiting for Genji to return.


Waiting. I copied the tree from the Genji scroll, but mine is cut paper with green thread for pine needles. All of these are mostly cut paper, her hair is black thread.


Sleeping. This is the sweetest one.


Reading a book. I did some white ones, like ghosts, fading away or in another dimension from the "here" ones. Here is the "real" one; she is sitting by a space heater with a cup of something on top keeping warm.


Depressing one. This is the most depressing deathly one. I made a a few of these with just a sprinkle of (or no) gems on the figure, and they are like healing magic crystals, some kind of transformation may be taking place. That is the same tree again.

I made similar work in other mediums also, all using the same model. We made photographs, and I made a creepy video by shuffling the photographs, and then made digital prints from stills of the video. All the different mediums are different works, existing only in that medium. The prints are not the same as the photographs at all.


Smoking in the kitchen, blowing the smoke up the exhaust fan.

There are twenty of these total (I haven't scanned them all in yet) and they are considered one piece, to be hung together, not individual pieces. The order or format doesn't matter, they can be in a grid or wrap around a room, but they all have to be in the same room.

These are the exact same size as One Day in the Garden, also made of twenty images and considered a single piece, not something that is to be broken up. One Day in the Garden does have a very specific order, and I prefer it to be hung in a grid.

i keep finding treasures

I keep finding treasures.


Something caught my eye walking by this little tree in the middle of a parking lot on Sunday.


It looked like trash, but it was little birds, made of metal, wire, hot glue, and some kind of tape. I didn't have my cell phone with me so I couldn't take any pictures, but I thought about them that night and decided to go back the next day.


Here is one.


Here is the underside of another.


I was looking at the birds and almost didn't notice the flowers, they weren't noticed at all the first day, the colors blended into the twigs and leaves on the ground. I picked up one flower, then another, then another. There are five altogether.


I saw that one of the flower bulbs had a baby, or a fetus, shape. This was such a sweet surprise. The baby shape is cut metal, with paper around it. Metal stems with metal roots. Sorry my camera is not so good with detail.


So then I looked carefully at all the flowers, to see if they also had baby shapes. This startled me, it is a girl's profile. Can you see the ponytail?


This one is a dancing girl. The photo is awful, and the metal shape is difficult to distinguish from the paper surrounding it. They all have special shapes.

This experience had everything.

wizardless

Here's a still from Chris Maybach's Art City of Richard Tuttle with Herb and Dorothy Vogel in front of the Met. It's like something from The Wizard of Oz.

Chris Maybach's Art City

Some quotes from Chris Maybach's Art City (1996) -

Pat Steir - "every day when I go to the studio ... (I'm) insecure or elated at the end of each day and that feeling the next morning changes, what I was elated about the night before I can be insecure about that morning"

"It's a strange time for art, now. I think it's a time that people prefer hard labor to genius attacks, you know? The audience wants to see something worked on, that looked like a lot of work. They don't want to see a genius attack at the end of the century. It's too threatening."

She has a good laugh.

Ashley Bickerton - "The artists I most envy in this world are the ones that actually like working, they wake up and they go to their studio and it's pleasure.

It comes and it goes. That's the process of... artmaking."

Elizabeth Murray - "I don't really... try.. to.. think about them. I try to just do, to act on them."

"I like to tussle with them. I like that feeling of them being.. battles."

Emma Amos - "I think it's a political statement for an artist, for a black artist, to walk into the studio, because basically, nobody gives a damn."

"People I've seen who've had that early early early success, uh, have burnt out so fast. So, in a way I think early success is just as dificult as having to wait."

Brice Marden - "I do find that negative criticism is the most interesting criticism... for me. It's what tends to stick with you."

George McNeil - "How old am I? I'm eighty-six. I've been ill for the last two years, so I work two, or three hours a day, and sometimes if I'm not feeling well I just go into the studio and sit there and look at my pictures."

"I have something of a shoe, and a leg, fixation. A nice old man like me."

"Normally, a painter comes into, uh, his or her greatest strength when their about fifty-five, or sixty-five, but I wouldn't say to any eighteen year old student, what you're doing now is fine, but you'll have to wait until you're fifty-five. I wouldn't say that at all, because the same kind of effort made at fifty-five is what she's doing at eighteen."

"Long ago, I realized that there was going to be a certain kind of.. jousting.. between the painting and myself."

Neil Jenney - "I believe that you only have so much energy each day and you really have to put it all in one direction, and.. it's a big mistake to have full-time employment, it's a big mistake to have a wife and a family... before.. you know.. you've made the work."

"If you can't talk about your work you don't know where you're at."

Louise Bourgeouis - "As you grow more successful you don't have to spare the feelings of everybody, very specially the critics, and you can say what you think."

"The cluttering of the... and all the pressure that I feel under. This pressure that I will never have enough time to do what I want to do. So if I do not have enough time then I have a tendency to keep it for tomorrow."

Ivan Karp - "An artist who reaches out into an audience is going to make much more rapid progress in his or her career than an artist who decides to hang around the studio all day long and wait for something good to happen to him or her. It's not necessarily the merit of your achievement that's going to make it happen for you."

"Some of the artists of the most remarkable talent get practically no attention from the art community, while other artists of very little consequence get a great deal of public attention."

"All artists of course are innately ambitious or it just wouldn't work for them, and we think it's a critical factor in an artist's character to retain that surge of ambition. It doesn't work otherwise, you know."

Jay Gorney - "One wants to have a balance of men and women, and artists of color... and on the other hand, you can't run a gallery or create a program with an eye solely to statistics."

I'll update this later.

UPDATE: Anna Conti wrote about this last year!

Knoxville!

John Perrault writes up his recent visit to Knoxville, TN and the new Art Gallery of Knoxville, comparing it to Philadelphia's Slought Foundation.

Jered Sprecher, the painter whose work I saw in Wendy Cooper's room at Scope Miami, is based in Knoxville. He's one of many good painters on faculty at University of Tennessee. They have an excellent artist-in-residence program also. Look at that list of painters.

Hey! Sukenya Best is studying printmaking there!

mean me

Is this the same Roberta Smith that wrote -

"Swoon has been known for the large-scale linoleum block prints of expertly drawn city folk that she has been plastering around the Lower East Side and Brooklyn for several years"

but didn't write that until covering Swoon's solo show at Deitch? Why not just write about the art, why follow the market all the time?

mean me, part ii: That part about being "daring young pioneers" moving from Brooklyn to Chelsea... that's a joke, right?

mean me, part iii: Someone who went to those openings please tell me that Nick Lawrence's work is much much better in real life. Are these the best slides crossing Bill Brady's desk? This is the same Nick Lawrence that used to be a partner in LFL and now owns Freight + Volume, right? This is the same ATM Gallery that... never mind.

Lester Van Winkle at Diversity Thrift

Look at this print I bought at Diversity Thrift today. It's a 1981 signed, dated, and titled (No Bother) artist's proof by Lester Van Winkle, inscribed with thanks to someone (I forget the exact words right now); it must have been a gift. It cost fifteen dollars but it was a white tag special so it was twenty-five percent off of that.

This is my second happy Diversity Thrift find, the first one was a Tom Harte painting two months ago. I need to rummage through their more often. Actually, I bought three other little prints today also, but I will scan them and show them later.

FYI to Non-Richmonders: Lester taught in the VCU Sculpture Department for something like thirty-five years, he just retired a couple years ago and I think he's moved to Texas. I've never met him, but here is a post about him on a former student's blog.

FYI to Everyone, Probably: Lester was included in the 1973 Whitney Biennial.

Man, there are probably some lessons to be learned here, like never give anything away. Sort of depressing to know you can go from the Whitney Biennial to a Diversity Thrift white tag special.

Edouard Vuillard

La Porte Ouverte, 1892, Edouard Vuillard

Still thinking about the two small Vuillards I saw at the Met, after seeing the Fra Angelico show. They were so good.

They were both in a tilted case, side-by-side, part of the Robert Lehman Collection. One is mostly yellow, with a yellowy wallpaper pattern, lamp, and a woman at a piano. The other is mostly green, with a window and a melancholy man. Both paintings are very small and simple, and perfect. I can't find any images on-line or in any books, and don't remember the titles or dates. If someone goes please take a picture for me.


Mme Vuillard Remplissant Une Carafe, 1904, Edouard Vuillard

Maix Mayer

This scene from Werner Herzog's Grizzly Man made me think of one of Maix Mayer's Surface Charge movies, the one shot from below a frosted glass floor. The still below doesn't picture it, but my favorite part of this quiet video of a crowd entering a small room and milling about before exiting is the entrance of a presumably older person with a cane. The little dot of the cane touching the floor, disappearing, then touching the floor again was very nice.


still from Maix Mayer's video, Oberflache


This fox is what was pawing at the tent (in the first still above). This scene had a sense of magic, mystery, wonder, tenderness, and possible danger. The tent was being poked and the film-maker, Timothy Treadwell, is in the tent poking back at the paws with his finger. Have you seen this movie?