Polaroids: Coyote

I recently scanned a bunch of old polaroids I've had around for a long time. Not all are scanned, just the ones that seem relevant. Photography was one of the first places I started finding my voice as an artist when I still lived with my parents. I will be periodically posting them here.

a coyote, cut in twain by a train, in Coal City, Illinois

hyperobjects, hyperreal?

Google image results for "climate change"

The trouble with global warming is not just that it's real—the trouble with it is that it deals a deathblow to “common sense.” [...] Common sense tells you that things you can see and feel like snow are more real than things like global warming, which must be abstract and thus vague. But global warming turns this false immediacy inside out. Global warming is far more real, while things like weather—things that appear to be immediate in our experience—are actually the abstractions! Local weather is a kind of snapshot of larger processes, a snapshot that's pretty much out of date by the time you notice it.

-Timothy Mortin, from his blog, The Contemporary Condition

In this post Mortin is talking about "hyperobjects." In short these are things which are too large to be comprehended by people (such as nuclear bombs and climate change). The prefix is shared with hyperreal, and I wonder if he would make the argument that these two are related. He does say that hyperobjects are "real" and maybe the case could be made that they can be seen as "real" because we don't have a way of fully understanding them - we don't have a way to bring them into full semiotic view. (But, we do give it a name, so it is in our linguistic bag.) This is a big stretch, but it is interesting to think of "things that appear to be immediate in our experience" as abstractions, and these abstractions as simulation. (e.g., the polar bear stranded on an ice-berg or the parched earth.)

heat shrink tubing

things that, as of yet don't have, titles... but have a lot of potential 

[materials (so far) - dried mango, cock rings, sheathing, pig hoof, weather alert radio (cut), Starbucks dark roast coffee beans, broken shingles, compass, chicken feet, glacial float copper, light bulb, memory card, liquid tight 90 degree tube, plywood, heat-shrink tubing, and hardware]

[references - snakes, staff/stick/charm, Jim Lambie, André Cadere, time capsules]

:: cache :: lay by :: salt away ::

catalog + time capsule + rations = ???

:: kit :: list :: stock :: survival :: permanence :: share :: store :: measure :: dole ::

diviner (too to the point, but a nice title)

ab ad

Publix - Weekly Ad - Maitland.jpg

December (in Florida) notes

12/5/14

black ice

black ic

black i

black-

black

blac

bla

bl

b

sassafras

sassafra

sassafr

sassaf

sassa

sass

sas

sa

s

12/7/14
@ the Rubell Family Collection
dirty abstraction (via the show at Mana Miami, maybe)
- marks, but absent of people (the man-made)
Remain(s)
Bound

12/14/14
stencil of the moon / placed on floor / dust Hurricane Sandy silt over it / remove stencil
Surge
[love - Sayward]

Confidence & An Inconvenient Truth

"Awareness of our highly destructive pollution levels has been key to our becoming more environmentally responsible. When Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary on climate change (appropriately named An Inconvenient Truth) was released, it alerted millions of people to a potential man-made catastrophe - global warming. The message was quite apocalyptic, yet it helped create a positive change in people's attitudes toward the environment, increasing recycling and decreasing pollution.

So the truth is often painful, but less painful than ignoring it. It may seem preferable in the short term to be overconfident (whether that relates to phenomena such as health and global warming or to our own abilities), but ultimately, being aware of our own limitations - and, in particular, our defects - can help us reverse and combat their effects."
- from Confidence, by Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic

Florida talisman

Abracadabra (for Florida)

gypsum board

gypsum boar

gypsum boa

gypsum bo

gypsum b

gypsum_

gypsum

gypsu

gyps

gyp

gy

g

hydrogen peroxide

hydrogen peroxid

hydrogen peroxi

hydrogen perox

hydrogen pero

hydrogen per

hydrogen pe

hydrogen p

hydrogen_

hydrogen

hydroge

hydrog

hydro

hydr

hyd

hy

h

kpeng.pdf

kpeng.pd

kpeng.p

kpeng.

kpeng

kpen

kpe

kp

k

silt

sil

si

s

stone washed jeans

stone washed jean

stone washed jea

stone washed je

stone washed j

stone washed_

stone washed

stone washe

stone wash

stone was

stone wa

stone w

stone_

stone

ston

sto

st

s

heat lightning

heat lightnin

heat lightni

heat lightn

heat light

heat ligh

heat lig

heat li

heat l

heat_

heat

hea

he
h

Window Proposal

Witch's Brew (Milk Lake Glacier) [proposal mock-up]

Witch’s Brew (Milk Lake Glacier)

for Window, Asheville, NC

“When President Taft created Glacier National Park in 1910, it was home to an estimated 150 glaciers. Since then the number has decreased to fewer than 30, and most of those remaining have shrunk in area by two-thirds.”[1]

In an effort to neutralize fears caused by global warming threats, society creates fictions designed to exorcise, to relieve, or to ignore the anxiety caused by these fears. The novel The Road, the movie Interstellar, and the television series The Walking Dead are recent examples of such narratives, where the arc of the apocalyptic story is designed to lead the audience to solace. Threat is avoided in each instance because it is created and resolved within a short time frame. This gives the readers/viewers only a glancing and safely disengaged non-encounter with fear and, in the end, leaves them with the feeling of reprieve.

Witch’s Brew (Milk Lake Glacier) presents a threat in the form of a specter, which resembles both the No Fear logo and a jack-o-lantern. However, this apparition does not bring reprieve; it becomes a harbinger for the real future of our planet.

The build-up of greenhouse gasses since the industrial revolution (circa 1760) has heavily contributed to the retreat and extinction of glaciers worldwide.[2] The Milk Lake Glacier, of Washington’s Cascade Mountain range, disappeared some time between 1988 and 1995. The appropriated photograph in Witch’s Brew (Milk Lake Glacier) was taken during Milk Lake Glacier’s retreat. The combination of the red tint, timeworn print, and layered graphic presents this glacier as a harrowing example, a specter, of climate change.

The final piece for Window Contemporary will utilize a re-photographed image of the Milk Lake Glacier. In enlargement, artifacts from printing process will be present in the image. As “photography is the inventory of mortality,”[3] this places the glacier further in the (dead) past.

---

[1] Glick, Daniel. "Global Climate Change, Melting Glaciers." National Geographic. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Nov. 2014. ‹http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/›.

[2] National Snow and Ice Data Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2014. ‹http://nsidc.org/›.

[3] Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Picador USA, 2001. N. pag. 70

FL abracadabra

a beginning

this object

[no title yet] (shell, magnet, & cock ring)

Conceptual Expressionists, part 2

Becky Beasley - Buan, Night (Level 1) (acacia hardwood, black glass) 2006

Brian Kapernekas - Owl (mortor, pigment, straw, horsehair, twine, wood and nails) 2007

Laura Judkis - Phobia Box (wood, latex paint) 2013

Helen Mirra - Forest, vestige of; which doesn't actually look vestigal at all, 74 (shipping pallet, wool blanket) 2007

Roger Hiorns - Untitled (atomized passenger aircraft engine) 2008

William Pope L. - Correct (from the Semen Picture series) (c-print) 2005-2006

Abraham Cruzvillegas - The Invincible (rock, feathers, and mixed media) 2002

"at hand"

perhaps one is a set of drawings that i will exhibit together - made on and with stuff that i have around. [but this is also how i almost always make drawings, so perhaps this is just a blanket name for my drawings.]

conceptual expressionism

I have decided to do something about the fact that I am drawn to expressionist art (meaning that emotional affect is often the first response one has to the artwork) by finding a way for me to try to use it in my work. This is a quality that I not only admire, but would like to include in my work. This seems pertinent because I have been stating, for some time now, that my work is about the fear and anxiety (emotions) caused by climate change and the hype around it. If this emotion is important for me, then why are my pieces often foregrounded in cool/conceptual remove? This might be a question that leads to a dead end, it may be just another thing I incorporate into my work, or it may be a new direction.
Either way, I am using this post to begin to describe what I mean by "conceptual expressionism" by including artworks that I feel like are parents to how I would like to find my "expression." Broadly, I define contemporary expressionist art as artwork that initially presents viewers with emotional affect first, while longer reads lead to conceptual depth and emotional complexity. It should also be said that (given my interest in fear, anxiety, and death) that most of these works have some relation to the concept of the abject.

Josh Tonsfeldt - Perpetual Summer (tire and fruit) 2011

Bill Conger - the night sweats (wall paper, foil, plastic latex paint) 2009

Michael E. Smith - Dave (helmet shell, pigeon) 2013

Richard Hawkins - Scalp 3 (Remember the wonderful days when "the abject" had the ability to "corrode" hegemony?) (rubber mask, painted paper, pencil and paperclips) 2011

Richard Hawkins - Scalp 13 (Remember the wonderful days when "the abject" had the ability to "corrode" hegemony?) (rubber mask, painted paper, paper clips, shoebox) 2012

Oscar Tuazon - I gave my name to it (steel plate and fluorescent lamps) 2010

Isa Genzken - Hospital (Ground Zero) (artificial flowers, plastic, metal, glass, acrylic, spray-paint, mirror foil, MDF and casters) 2008

Tracy Thomason - Untitled (spray tanner, and presence on paper) 2008

Li Gang - The Big Dipper (tbc) (stones and glue) 2013

Kelly Jazvac - Plastiglomerate and Plastic Samples (detail) (conglomerate rocks gathered on Kamilo Beach with geologist Patricia Corcoran, Hawaii, and ceramic stands) 2013

Jay Heikes - Creeply (dyed porcupine quills and driftwood) 2011

Sterling Ruby - Ashtray 72 (ceramic) 2010

Richard Nonas & emotional objects

"Language and culture are tools to take a complicated world and make it understandable, break it up and categorize it, understand it. But there are things language can't say easily that I feel the need to say. So in every culture we find that there are built-in escape valves: religion on one hand, art on the other. The production of art, in my mind, thinking as an anthropologist, is a way of saying the things that can't be said directly, or evoking the complex emotion between the named emotions, or combinations of the named emotions that themselves don't have names. Perceptions and emotions, those are categories that need to be broken into, or skewed, and art is an acceptable way to do it, a way that you are not punished for. The only visual art that interests me is the art that is conveying something that it would not be able to convey directly with words."

When was the first time you had the impulse to create an object that conveyed something without words?
"Before I worked in Mexico, I was in north Canada. I brought back a sled dog. And I found myself picking up pieces of wood for him to play with. One day I picked up two pieces of wood, and there was real emotion there, and not story, no narrative, no reason for that emotion. I could describe the emotion, not in a single word, but there was real emotion. Not fake, not conceptual. But it was just two sticks. I thought, Wow, maybe it's possible to communicate abstract ideas directly with objects, in a way you can't with words. I got really excited, trying and making things, but I never thought about art. Then, two or three months later, a friend of a friend came to my apartment and said, 'You idiot, it's called sculpture!'"
- from a Scott Indrisek interview with Richard Nonas for Modern Painters, September 2014

Richard Nonas - installation view of Between Old Times: Sculpture for a Changing Castle-for Bronilow Malinowski (birch logs, each three fee long) 1991

Tomorrow Research - new elevation painting, Daytona Beach

bookmarks & invasive plants

Here are a few invasive plants I found just outside of the Cornell Fine Arts Center, and along the path by Lake Virginia, Rollins College campus.

young Camphor Tree

Wild Taro (or Arum, but I doubt it)

Wedelia or Creeping Oxeye [blurry]

Japanese Honeysuckle being printed (photogram made with the sun and black construction paper)

frond & black paint

wishbone / fingernail

hangnail, wishbone

angnail

wishbone

from James Schuyler's poem The Crystal Lithium

"i have windows [in my hospital] but they're painted black" 

- my brother Matt, while driving in the rain during a black-out

new studio work(ing)

been settling in in Winter Park; looking at some Cy Twombly, Daniel Dezeuze, and Aram Saroyam. I haven't figured out what my "Florida" work looks like yet, but I think I'm on the way.

I have full access to the Rollins wood lab, so I've been working in there on some things that I probably would have made as drawings otherwise 

a new version of KT Boundary (Kudzu) 

photo/sketch - a page from a book on Cy Twombly's drawings and 3 pieces of glacial float copper 

Mirage (canteen, 24 rabbit's feet, and water) 2014 [bad photograph, though]