Portland, OR

the 'rose city' - because roses happen to grow well here

repetition and form - simple but effective

sunrise over Portland - Mount Hood in the background

xmas curse and ∞

Don't Open 'Till
tag, ribbon, paper, box, curse
2010

i'm not the Grinch, each year i make an 'i really dislike xmas' piece (sometimes a few). i don't let my thoughts on the holiday ruin it for everyone (thereby, this year's piece is fairly conceptual, and only exists on my blog). but the looks on everyone's faces for this gift would be pretty amazing. also, here's a fitting poem by Michael Earl Craig:

Christmas

A man falls in a parking lot, he
has been out Christmas shopping.
His eye is right down there,
down there against the asphalt.
When he opens his eye he sees a crack.
A regular thin crack in the asphalt.
Cars go around him. He won't get up.
For it is Christmas.

He looks directly into this crack.
He does not shy away.
What he sees there even a poet could not pretend to translate.

The edges of the crack bend his eyelashes a bit.
It is cold out and the various shoppers
drive left and right, around him.

paint spectrum poem

Behr Premium Plus

150 B

Pink Eraser
Cherry
Firecracker
Poinsettia

250B

Coral Gold
Orange Spice
Poppy Glow
Crushed Oranges

350B

Lemon Souffle
Straw Hat
Wildflower Honey
Chickadee

450B

Green Trance
Lady Luck
Formal Garden
Green Grass

550B

Costa Rica Blue
Windjammer
Isle of Capri
Blue Ocean

650B

Violet Fields
Garden Pansy
Elite Wisteria
Mystical Purple

750B

Prestige
Castle Hill
Tree Bark
Thick Chocolate

*****************************

i've been considering this poem, or some variation of it, for quite a while. in an advanced creative non-fiction class i took during grad school i wrote a similar piece about 1 sheet of 4 colors of green (each color was written about as a color/trigger for a memory/story). this may not be the final form of this piece, but it is a nice start. as i use found things (objects/images) in my visual practice, i am here using the found as structure for writing - in this particular case the found IS the writing.

when it is too cold to go outside

Eliot "_______"

"poetry can communicate before it is understood"
-T.S. Eliot

in Beloit

Stump and Walnuts, Beloit, WI (photograph) 2010

Outer Space (digital photograph) 2010

* * * * *

Ill-Starred

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November 19, 2010

: expecting a shadow to be as warm as the body that cast it

1 in 4.17

for a possible new project about chance and astronomy i bought a Cosmic Chance $1 scratch-off Illinois Lotto ticket a week ago. i haven't scratched it off yet and am not sure if i need to/should yet. below is some research i've done on this scratch-off.

from the IL Lottery site

from the Book of Odds - this ticket has the same odds of a married male 15 - 44 using a condom during his last sexual encounter

leaves

a lot of poetry can probably be read with Gabriel Orozco's work, but i have run across one Orozco-conjuring poetic instance in particular today. from Leaf-Stalks by Ágnes Nemes Nagy, a poem that describes the beauty in the fractals of a tree.

"Who sees the designs of trees? Appearing readily in material form behind the leaves, the web of sticks, stalks and tendons; precision ticking, raising and placing the leaves in position; accurate to the last mm. no matter how high it is raised. Precisely as far as the light. Each to it's proper place, to the geometrical point it must occupy. Whose concern is this transaction between branch and leaf, who is concerned with the network of auxiliary lines? With the precision hidden within the pathos of this leafy crown which is length, angle, and direction?"

Gabriel Orozco - Light Though Leaves (iris print) 1996

over-emphasized poetic tropes

I don't understand why some poets (it seems like the old ones) read poetry with wispy, drawn-out, voices. This type of reading seems to wildly emphasize words to the extent that the filigree and over-design of the reading gets in the way of the poem. I can't help but think what Alfred Loos would think of this. Don't words carry their own emphasis? Because poets are working in a publicly exclusive medium anyway, shouldn't they try to open up their work for the widest audience? - by making at least the tone/feel/meter accessible. I have been to five readings in the past week, and two (by Naomi Nye and Linda Gregerson) have read in this manner. This way of reading doesn't keep my attention and at times seems like a parody of itself.
Here is one that follows a speech patter that seems normal. James Schuyler - Freely Espousing. Recording of this poem as read by the author.

Affect

Jennifer Reeder - Tears Cannot Restore Her: Therefore, I Weep (video still) 2010 (image from Andrew Rafacz Gallery)

After a few experiences the past week, I have found myself considering affect in various expressive forms; like how a mixed-cd or tape represents the aura and intentions of the giver.

1. Jennifer Reeder's exhibition, Tears Cannot Restore Her: Therefore, I Weep, at Andrew Rafacz. Initially the objects in the gallery seemed kinda odd and idiosyncratic; really I couldn't place them or give them much time. I found myself in the screening room fairly quickly. There I was assaulted with a distraught never-ending-narrative that pitted my uncertain emotions for the characters against one another. It was the kind of piece that leaves you spinning like a dream that boiled up from somewhere between showing up to school in your underwear and an erotic nightmare. After viewing this nicely disturbed video the sculptures and print seemed to be effected. The feeling from the video carried through into the personal undertones and subdued color of the object.

Jennifer Reeder - installation view of a sculpture in Tears Cannot Restore Her: Therefore, I Weep

2. Joe Grimm's piece, It's Gunna Rain 2: I Make it Rain, in Ornament and Crime (and Crime) at Adds Donna. A chaufured Escalade ride around Garfield Park and under the CTA Green Line over Lake St, to the soundtrack of an art-remixed version of a rap song.

3. Listening to OK Computer by Radiohead on the Rock Island Line of the Metra, from Joliet to Chicago.


4. The Bad at Sports interview with James Elkins, about the Stone Summer Theory Institute and what comes after the anti-aesthetic (affect?).

5. The Danney's poetry reading series. Featuring Lagunitas beer, Joel Felix, Michael Earl Craig, and Lisa Olstein.

Michael Earl Craig
Night Visit

I'm awakened at 3 a.m. to the sound of an owl.
It takes me a minute to find my glasses.
I press my face to the window.
A silver flash crosses the yard.
It settles into an owl shape on a nearby post.
My nose and eyes are stinging.
A stinging behind my face.
Like some kind of problem behind a billboard.
Why would a man look at an owl and start to cry?
My body is trying to reject something.
I have no idea what it is.
The owl is sitting in the moonlight.
The yard is completely still.

USF Collages

collages made at the University of St. Francis - either during class when i'm trying to stay out of my students' hair (to let them work) or between classes.

air as an object and place

after reading about Ágnes Nemes Nagy on steve roden's blog i asked Allie to check out a collection of Nagy's poetry (titled Between) from the UIC library. one thing (of many) that i've really picked up on is her descriptions of air as a somewhat solid form:

The great sleeves of air,
air on which the bird
and the science of birds bear
themselves, wings on the fraying argument;
incalculable result
of a moment's leafy silhouette
bark and branch of a haze living upwards
like desire into the upper leaves
to inhale every three seconds
those big, frosty angels.

-----

This will be the ... do you see? Up there, where entire cubic meters
of air are still vacant, up there is nonexistence. Transparent still, open to
question. Too much wind blows through it. But nothing that a good lens
couldn't fix. With an adequate intensity of light, of course. Because such
a thin layer excludes it, such a thin layer preventing existence. The edges are
almost visible up there in the space between certainty and doubt so that it
almost becomes describable while this inverted diminution (a large dim body
of a ship) floats into the picture with its pre-natal and impenetrable storeys.

-----
the first excerpt is from the poem Between and the second from The Transformation of a Railway Station. i hope to soon be able to translate air into sculptural form in the same manner - as ephemeral phenomena and experience (to the extent of non-existence?) are becoming more and more important to my practice. i see this related to my recent obsession with earthquake lights and ball lightning.

image from the New Mexicans for Reason and Science

Update 11/12/10:
I think I made this piece (kinda) already. here. It just needs a better title and some documentation.

halo

anthelion: noun pl
A luminous, white, halo-like area occasionally seen in the sky opposite the sun on the parhelic circle.

image from here

play, rocks, and the lake

me and a group of guys on the beach of Lake Michigan at Sheboygan, WI. stacks by me and Brian Biskie. smiley rocks by me.

James Schuyler love

i was digging for my old photocopied copy of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," and instead i found a half-page note from my graduate school advanced poetry class. it follows:

2/11/08
James Schuyler - Quote from Diary

On the surface of the bay
the sun counts change,
quick and expert, and with
dignified stealth
the water pockets
its tributes.

new book covers

Astronomy One. J. Allen Hynek & Necia H. Apfel. 1972.

Bright Peaks. Paul McKee, Annie McCowen, M. Lucile Harrison, Elizabeth Lehr, William K. Durr. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1966.

Bright Peaks really gives me an itch to curate an exhibition (about explorers/the future/utopias/voyages) of the same name with this image as the show card. Astronomy One has yielded many great illustrations and old science data, let alone the amazing cover.

Truisms for Myself as an Artist

(or letter to an artist, myself)
the beginning of a poem/letter/list/writing:

Artists are Magicians
Make the Most Obvious Thing in the Most Surprising Way
Making Art is Always a Personal Battle
Embrace the Suck

flag / marker

i went for a walk today and found this brilliantly red plastic in a vacant lot (my new favorite place to explore). i made this sculpture on a fence from a long-gone building or property, and left it there. Curating National (two works from the show follow my piece) has led me to further consider cultural markers of many sorts - in respect to the exhibition, it seems that flags are the most ubiquitous forms. so i've gather a few of my favorite pieces of artwork that involve flags (this is not an exhaustive list at all).

Adam Farcus - Marker (intervention and digital photograph) 2010

Allison Yasukawa - Eclipsing a Sun (ladder, light, thread, altered Japanese flag, daughter [absent]) 2010

Rebecca Mir - Flag for the Nation of Rubaccaquon (green, silver, and purple fabric, flag pole, and flag mount) 2010

Rebecca Mir

Tobia Blaise - This is not a flag, 1990

Mark Wallinger - Easter (flagpoles, woven fabric) 2005

Vince Dermody - Altered City Flag (for D.M.) 2005

Gardar Eide Einarsson - Burnt Black Flag (cotton and grommets) 2005

David Hammons - African-American Flag (dyed cotton) 1990

Jasper Johns - White Flag (encaustic and collage on canvas) 1955

new research images

some things that have been sticking around, either in my head or on my computer:

Astronomy One. J. Allen Hynek & Necia H. Apfel. W.A. Benjamin, Inc. 1972. (photos by Thomas E. Graves)

Hex Signs. Don Yoder and Thomas E. Graves. E. P. Dutton. 1989.

damaged/fixed wall in Chinatown, Chicago (duct tape on tile) - 2010

*and what it looked like a year ago! - 2009

Preemptive Drawing and Small Sculpture Sale!

Announcing the Adam Farcus Preemptive Drawing and Small Sculpture Sale!

To fund some apartment renovations, artistic and curatorial projects, and living expenses, I am announcing my Preemptive Drawing and Small Sculpture Sale. If you wish to make a purchase of a soon-to-be-created piece of artwork please follow the instructions below. I will send you the work in a few short months. Please inquire by email at:
adamfarcus (at) yahoo (dot) com

12" x 12" drawing (unframed) - $50
no larger than 6" x 6" x 6" cardboard sculpture - $100

How it works:
1. Decide which type of artwork(s) you would like.
2. Tell me your preference by email.
3. I will send you a bill through Paypall, or by mail if you prefer to pay by check.
4. I will make your piece(s).
5. You get your artwork.
6. You bask in the joy of my work filling your home (or a friend's home) for years to come.

Below are some examples of my work. More can be seen at adamfarcus.com

Adam Farcus - Owl (cardboard, hot glue, latex paint, acrylic paint, spray paint, marker, rhinestones) 2008

Adam Farcus - Bluemoondog (spray paint, watercolor, pencil, tin foil on paper) 2010

trip to Jo-Ann Fabrics

RAW

IT'S RAW WEEK. ONE WEEK OF RAWNESS IN THE STUDIO. AFTER TEACHING A BUNCH, ORGANIZING AN EXHIBITION, AND CLEANING MY STUDIO I NEED TO GET SOME BUILT UP ANGST AND SHIT. MUCH MESS, METAL MUSIC, AND MAYHEM.

"National" and David Hammons

David Hammons - Concerto in Black and Blue (mixed media) 2002 : visitors to the gallery were given small blue-bulb flashlights to navigate the dark and empty rooms of the Ace Gallery, NYC.

"It is an unfortunate fact that in this country, black artists' work seldom serves as the basis of rigorous, object-based debate. Instead, it is almost uniformly generalized, endlessly summoned to prove it's representativeness (or defend its lack of same) and contracted to show-and-tell on behalf of an abstract and unchanging 'culture of origin.' For all this, the art gains little purchase on the larger social, cultural, historical, and aesthetic formations to which it nevertheless directs itself with increasing urgency. And in the long term, it runs the risk of moving beyond serious thought and debate. Viewed this way, the given and necessary character of black art - as a framework for understanding what black artists do - emerges as a problem in itself."
-from How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness. Darby English. 2007

In a forthcoming ammendment to my curatorial statement for National, I hope to borrow this notion of culturally pigeonholed artwork that only comments on "culture of origin" to challenge expectations of what the artists in my exhibition are doing.

installation view of National, at University Galleries, Illinois State University; left to right: Rebecca Mir, Flag for the Nation of Rubaccaquon (green, silver, and purple fabric, flag pole, flag mount) 2010; Allison Yasukawa, Eclipsing a Sun (ladder, light, thread, altered Japanese flag, daughter [absent]) 2010; Maria Gaspar, Untitled [as of yet] (latex paint on wall) 2010

Play in Empty Lots

all made around Lake St. and Campbell Ave, Chicago