report after ACRE

My time at ACRE this year was much different than last. I was more introspective and private. I guess I had a lot of personal/studio things to work on. I didn't make much, but did research, plan, work on ideas, have studio visits, travel around (lots), and talk with Allie a lot about how our practices work and work together (collaboratively). Here are some images and notes from my 12 days in Southwestern Wisconsin.

 farms outside Bloomington, WI

8/6/11 - ACRE

some notes from a studio visit with Jan Tichy

"The Stars I was Born Under" - he saw this as a talismanic object - because people enjoyed it and took them away - balloons are give-aways.

what does it mean that I'm interested in portals (hexes) now that I am "cleaning my space"

is kitsch not already spiritual, talismanic, and magical?

notes on hexes and White Hex:

-does it need to fit the space?

-permanence vs. ephemerality

-portal = door? window? person sized?

One Day at a Time (in process - I think it needs to be much larger - it is still at 'craft' scale)

laundry along Rt. E between Steuben and Boscobel, WI

8/9/11 - ACRE
some notes from a studio visit with Brandon Alvendia
"poetry" - artists often use this work incorrectly
mining - digging up
- I'm an anthropologist who joined (or came from) the tribe
what is the material link to the place my work/inspiration comes from?
thread to real life can deal (attend to) kitsch and irony
- where's the tell

Sentinel (for ACRE) - in the ACRE studios at the Steuben Lodge, I left him there

 
8/13/11 - ACRE
some notes from a studio visit with New Capital (Ben and Chelsea)
One Day at a Time - showing the/a dark underbelly of Midwestern America
cultural scale - is constructed of individual's opinions of cultural scale (melting pot)
Ben gave me a question from a psychology test - white rabbit in a white room - what do you do? A: I try to pet it but it hops away from me. (I evidently am not afraid of death, and want to know it, but it is elusive)
*they agreed that something else needs to happen to One Day at a Time - they suggested a scale shift - to take it out of the craft/folk realm.

me and some other resident artists watching the 32nd ward recall election debate at a bar in Steuben

detail of a wall at the Dickeyville Grotto, in Dickeyville, WI

8/13/11 - ACRE
notes from a studio visit with Duncan McKenzie
One Day at a Time - funny, but cute
-participates too much in the folk space
-it needs some "tooth"
irony gives you a (critical) distance - and enough distance to access nostalgia (in the avant-guard) art world
-enough to look at it / cold reflection / because it's scary and rich with meaning
he said that I'm replicating emo values
"you have no God before art" - art world's slogan - it is anti-dogma
belief - not theism
what have we lost by not having belief?
is there belief now?
art is good at exploring what can be "Art"
-doesn't/can't change the world
he wanted to know how do/can I live off of (have a career) with an intervention based practice?
-Conrad Bakker

an eagle, flying over the lock and dam on the Mississippi River at Davenport, IA

Jesus and Mary

i took these photos along Augusta Blvd, near Western Ave, in Chicago today. Jesus and Mary live at neighboring houses. the lens-flare in the Jesus photo was an (amazing) accident.

 Google Street-View of the location (with the crucifix and altar)

SW WI

 a house near Bloomington, WI

 a sign in Pairie du Chien, WI

a picture found in a Life magazine in the Community Thrift Store in Boscobel, WI

faith and support

 

 (photographs and notes from when I was driving from Chicago to ACRE [Steuben, WI])

• with help from some great people, i'm becoming a better person.
• so, i'm making work about help and support (for others), because thinking of others is a thing i'm trying to improve in myself.
• but, these pieces are also for me - to help me help myself.
• i find source materials and inspiration in places of support in our culture: Pennsylvania Dutch, Christianity, witchcraft, AA, counseling, astrology, and belief systems. i look to these things not to create my own faith, but to use them as a model for associative moves in my studio.

new in my studio - hexes

Adam Farcus - White Hex (pencil, nails, and thread on wall) 2011

Adam Farcus - White Hex (pencil, nails, and thread on wall) 2011

sketch for a video

 

Adam Farcus - Magic Perfecting Base (acrylic on magazine page) 2011

 Adam Farcus - Magic Perfecting Base (2) (photograph) 2011

chain letter

this may be my piece, Package to Paradise (for Gavin Bunner), at the "Chain Letter" exhibition at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles. i took this off of a youtube video of someone clumsily walking the the (apparently) bombed mess of an exhibition. i also sent Gavin a part of a collaborative piece for our (me, Gavin, Dan Mrva) group, John Rainbow - i didn't see our sculpture anywhere in the litany of videos and photos on the web. oh well.

living like a weasel with tooth decay

And once, says Ernest Thompson Seton - once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky. He examined the eagle and found a dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eagle hand pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won. I would like to have seen that eagle from the air a few weeks or months before it was shot: was the whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant? Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel with his talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautiful airborne bones?
-Annie Dillard. Teaching a Stone to Talk. 1982.

the quote above is from Annie Dillard's story, "Living Like Weasels", plays a primary role in Laurie Anderson's Speechless (Eagle and the Weasel) from the album Bright Red. both address passion and impulse and holding on to life, no matter what happens. this is important to me, this week, because i just went to the dentist and found out that almost all of my teeth need dental work:

some teeth are not represented, because they're ok, or (as in one case) missing. the teeth that need anything with "resin" in them have surface cavities that require drilling and filling. the two that need to be extracted are rotted wisdom teeth. tooth #3 has a large filling that i had worked on when i was a kid - it is evidently "leaking" now, and requires a lot of work. in total it would take 4 visits (one for each quadrant of my mouth), and total $3658.00 - for someone with health insurance that does not cover dental. i now know what is wrong with my teeth, and thereby have a goal. before this i lived in denial and fear of what might actually be happening in my mouth. so i'm going to latch onto this, save/find some money or other dental options (UIC clinic?), and hold on. hopefully i won't be gutted - but if i were it would be a good case for how our health system in the US needs to be fixed. (really, i could only dream to live, or die, as a martyr for my liberal beliefs.)