efflorescence, to flower out

Today I went to our new place to clean and paint. I knocked a lot of this white salt-like stuff off our 2 brick walls. I later searched to see what it was, because I inhaled a lot of it, and I found out it is efflorescence, which is a French term and translates as "to flower out." It has this name because the salt seems to bloom out of the wall. This happens when masonry is flawed and thereby becomes internally wet. When the water evaporates out of the cement it pulls salt with it. The notion of a building blooming an ephemeral and crystalline substance that results in an unwanted and 'ugly' form seems beautiful to me. The French name and it's translation seals the deal - so I need to make something with this stuff...

Polaris, birds of a transient nature

Adam Farcus - Polaris (acrylic, pen, and plaster on wood panel) 2003?

I re-found this painting (from 2003?) when I was forced to clean out some rubber-made bins that were in my parents garage. I remember having a hard time talking about it or convincing anyone in undergrad that this made sense, or was good. It maybe got chocked up to kitsch (which I appreciate actually). Looking back now I think this painting was important for me and my conceptual development - which led me to where I am now. I made this because I had moved away from home and was living on my own in a new place (a dorm, then an apartment in Normal/Bloomington, IL). I felt like I was loosing what I considered home. The Polaris is represented here by the word "polaris" and the star's astrological number, αUMi. The symbol marking it's location is a green shovel and pick-axe - a major part of the iconography of my home town, Coal City, IL.
The road map highway line, with the shield for an instate number, is a facsimile of RT55 - the interstate that connects Bloomington/Normal to Coal City. The other graphics are two birds: a red-wing blackbird and a bluebird. The bluebird and (in particular) the red-wing blackbird are birds that are often seen along highways. The red-wing blackbird nests in marshy areas, like the ditches and streams that run parallel to major roads. Thereby, I came to see these birds as symbols of transience - they were the guide to my home, and my new home. Polaris and Coal City are also guides (both for navigating); for travel and as a metaphor for finding my way into adult independence. It's kinda hokey, but honest. Also it is romantic, but I haven't lost that, and hopefully never will. The layering of colored plaster was a slight object-pun to painting. The first layer is white (gesso), the second is red (under-painting), and the top is tan (the final layer). I decided to try this gloopy technique out after seeing and loving some paintings with a similar effect in a River North gallery - only later did I find out that they were made by Steve Zieverink, a fellow MFA student at UIC. I gave this painting to my father-in-law-to-be this week for fathers day - he studies red-wing blackbirds in Beloit, WI.

New Apt

Allie in our new industrial loft apartment in East Garfield Park, Chicago. So awesome, I can't wait to move in. Photo taken from the bedroom loft space.

Construction

The following are images from the construction set of my source materials photographs. I think of these as formal studies; after long deliberation I cannot draw much content from them. All of these arrangements are found and photographed as are. I like them because they seem to be slightly détourned from the banal, everyday, and overlooked to something sculptural; or at least somewhat out of the ordinary (dare I say uncanny?). In associative moves my interventions and to some extent my performances function in the same way - although my work draws more attention to it's self than these temporal arrangements/accidents do. I do also greatly appreciate the at-hand utilitarian inventiveness that I often find in construction (and the like) settings. Represented here are 8 of 89 construction photos I have collected.

Artists I Kinda Wish I Was

Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Gabriel Orozco
Joseph Cornell
James Schuyler
Richard Long
Fischli & Weiss
Kay Rosen
Ellsworth Kelly
Yves Klein
Robert Gober
Giuseppe Penone
William Carlos Williams

[I tried to be honest here. Perhaps the art world favors white dudes, or maybe I'm just unknowingly sexist. Crud.]

Lighting as Witchery

"MAGIC FOUNTAIN AT PARIS SHOWING THE WITCHERY OF MODERN LIGHTING" - from Great Inventions and their Inventors. John A. Maloney. University of Knowledge, Inc. Chicago,1938

Magic Fountain of Montjuic, Barcelona

James Turrell - Skyspace (Chicago)

http://www.intp-worldsource.com/fountains.html

Full Circle

Adam Farcus - The Earth Below (digital photograph) 2010

I am an American. And I think of myself as a populist artist. A populist artist makes work that is about and for the majority of his or her culture and public (in my case both are American). Therefore I should always make art that is ephemeral and about commodity culture.