James Brown (1933-2006)

Superbad

Olafur Eliasson

Dutch artist Olafur Eliasson who makes my stomach hurt with how good life can be.

Shift Megaliths

So, after essentially melding the former sight specific piece and the latter object oriented piece I came up with this. Anne Lindberg was kind enough to give me some dielectric film. It was quite difficult to contend with the power of the material. I really think some interesting things are happening with the light, there is a certain beauty to be found in its shifting, a certain way it comes to life with the pulsations of the sun and clouds.

'Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea' -- 'You Could Grow Infinitely, It's Not as Hard as One May Think'

The second piece by Sarah Luther. Both featured in the KCAI Miniature Show the two of us organized and hung on Friday.
Plexi, mirror, water.
Paper, heart punch, mollusk shell, fabric, tracing paper, ink.

Videos for you to see

Just ran across Julianne Swartz. Someone with a similar sensability.
sun capture (1999, 9.6 MB, 1:23 min.) Transferring the reflection of a natural occurence (the movement of the sun) from outdoors to indoors, Brooklyn-based artist Julianne Swartz creates her site-specific installation “Sun Capture” with existing architecture, metal pole, mirror, sun, and wind. (thanks jillian).

Also Baldessari Sings LeWitt (excerpt) (1972, 30.5MB, 3:38 min) In which John Baldessari sings Sol LeWitt’s sentences on conceptual art. From the indispensible Ubuweb.

Untitled: As of yet

My latest accomplishment.
Just returned from a fantastic critique with heated dialogue over this piece.


(9' x 4.5', Plexi, Aluminum, Fiberboard)

Frederic Rzewski

Hear a sample from: The People United Will Never Be Defeated!


For you Kansas City Folks. As brought to my Attention via Dr. Mara Gibson.
I'll see you there.

'On October 16 from 12-1, Frederic Rzewski will be giving a free, noontime
lecture titled, "Nonsequiturs" at KCAI in Epperson. Rzewski is a VERY
influencial American composer and pianist that has agreed to come to
come talk with us about the creative process. He is also doing a residency
at UMKC.

Rzewski's music deals with improvisation , the use of language as a
structural element and often the overtly political. Some of his
better-known pieces include "The People United Will Never Be
Defeated!" (1975)(a set of 36 piano variations on the Sergio Ortega
Chilean song "El pueblo unido jamás será vencido"), written as a
companion piece to Beethoven's Diabelli Variations; "Coming Together,"
which is a setting of letters from an inmate at Attica State Prison,
at the time of the famous riots there (1971) and more recently, "De
Profundis," a 30 minute piano piece that requires the pianist to
recite a text by Oscar Wilde while playing (1992). Rzewski was also
co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva (MEV) in the 60s which conceived
of music as a "collective collaboration process" bringing together
improvisation and electronic instruments.

Also, don't miss the concert with Frederic Rzewski on Saturday,
October 14, piano (as part of the Vanguard Series at UMKC Conservatory
of Music). A rare public performance by the legendary
composer-pianist. "...combustible energy...anarchistic tendencies - he
can take off into a free improvisation at any moment." Music by
Rzewski and others.

7:30 p.m.
White Hall in the Performing Arts Center
general admission $8, seniors $6, all students FREE with 24-hour
advance reservation, that INCLUDES KCAI students'

North, South, East, West

Dipping favorably into the realm of Land art once again. Michael Hiezer’s negative spaces do indeed hold an air of awe. On permanent display at the Dia Beacon.

“It is interesting to build a sculpture that attempts to create an atmosphere of awe. Small works are said to do this but it is not my experience. Immense, architecturally sized sculpture creates both the object and the atmosphere. Awe is a state of mind equivalent to religious experience, I think if people feel commitment they feel something has been transcended. . . . I think that large sculptures produced in the '60s and '70s by a number of artists were reminiscent of the time when societies were committed to the construction of massive, significant works of art.”1

"Sixth Mirror Displacement, from Yucatan Mirror Displacements (1-9)," by Robert Smithson, 1969,

I was fortunate enough to see this show "Moving Pictures" at the Guggenheim in 2003, and fortunate now to read A Heap of Language: Robert Smithson and American Hieroglyphic. Posted HERE at Growing Nation.

The Space Between

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art East Annex Art
Installation - flock
Architect: International Architects Atelier
Artist: Anne Lindberg

With thanks to Anne Lindberg who offered a wonderful critique of my work last week with tangents ranging from African dance that has an emphasis on the space between the dancer and the earth, to Japanese MA, The Japanese spatial concept experienced progressively through intervals of spatial designation. MA, the word for space, suggests interval. It is best described as a consciousness of place, not in the sense of an enclosed three-dimensional entity, but rather the simultaneous awareness of form and non-form deriving from an intensification of vision.

The Nelson-Atkins, Shuttlecocks -- a stripper and a couple of acidheads.

Recently Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes posted a bit on the Nelson Atkins museum of Art which will be re-opening the Sculpture Park as well as the new Steven Holl-designed Bloch addition next year.

Reading Tyler’s post of his childhood memories of the Nelson did indeed spark some of my own: I was probably four or five years old when my mother took me to the Nelson to peruse the art. What I liked most were the Giant bronze Buddha in lotus position and the tiny ancient Chinese cricket cages complete with food bowls. When we came to Duane Hanson’s security Guard (Roy) my mother told me to ‘go and say hello to the nice man’ which I hesitantly did. A second later we were asked to leave the museum as my screaming and crying was disturbing the other visitors.

Much later, in a not so bright high school state of mind, my friends and I would drop acid and camp out under the Henry Moore sculpture. At dawn we would climb into Oldenburg’s shuttlecocks (apparently those pieces have really been around) to watch the sunrise. I often wonder what Claes and Henry would have to say about that.

So thanks for sending me down that avenue Tyler. And cheers to the Nelson and all its new endeavors.

Also for those of you in the area, tomorrow from 6 to 7 pm is a lecture by sculptor Tony Cragg. Tickets can be purchsed on-line here
Mary Atkins Lecture Series A View of Sculpture Speaker: Tony Cragg 6-7 p.m. Atkins Auditorium Single ticket cost is $10 members/$15 nonmembers/$5 students.

Two bronze works by Cragg, Turbo and Ferryman (below, but in NY), are the latest additions to the Kansas City Sculpture Park. Cragg's lecture is the premier event in the September reopening of the Park

The 2006 Charlotte Street Foundation Awards

Anthony Baab: A sacred place: Military tents

I know it's a little more review than press release but I couldn't help myself.

Currently on exhibition at the H&R Block space, a show representing work from each of the five local artists who recently received the Charlotte Street Foundation Award. Get beyond Andrew Wrinkle's brazenly haphazard installations with their somewhat tired and truculent political messages forming on the surface like pudding skin, and you may enjoy Justin Gainan’s punctilious dot portraiture. Needling clouds of pencil dots hover along the wall showing true compulsive dedication. Nearby stretches of paper with rubbed out pencil markings harbor a complex subtlety and reflect the delicate lucidity found in the drawings of Agnes Martin. An unusually large sized monolith supports his ink drawing sprayed with holes and lit from beneath. Anthony Baab woos us with an intricately spaced tape painting that undulates at just the right pace accompanied by some quirky sketches. Though hung without much consideration, these sketches reflect his process of finding pattern and in the end are delightfully eccentric. Baab’s installation propped in a dark backroom made of military tents lends one the impetus to enter or at least to know what’s going on inside. The ominous stagnancy seems to dissipate a bit with the in-too-clear-view black lighting, but the piece is chillingly effective as a whole. Also on display, intimate familial photographs by Deanna Dikeman, and Aqueous inkjet prints by Elijah Gowin. Now through October 14th.

H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute
16 East 43rd Street, Kansas City, MO 64111
www.kcai.edu/artspace

The Charlotte Street Foundation annually presents
monetary awards to Kansas City-based visual artists.

about 1:30

beginning stages

The Dark side of the shadow

Atomic shadows.
"Shadows" were left behind where objects shielded a surface from the heat.Where this happened, the shadow is the original color of the surface, and the area outside the shadow has been turned to a different color by the intense temperatures.

Aproximations/Contradictions

Belgian artist Ana Torfs and
Hans Eisler's Hollywood songbooks

(brought to you by Dia Beacon one of my favorite places so far on earth)

Some that I Love

Anish Kapoor
Rachel Whiteread
Wolfgang Laib
Other great and not-so-great contemporary designs

wry ry

As a dedicated, though sometimes-reluctant member of the Midwest peoples, I must admit Bill Gusky has a point.

Growing up in a place so plane, so continuously horizontal, one must draw up a wry sense of humor just to survive.

The flatness almost seems to seep into your being after a few years; your voice becomes flat, your hair flattens out, you and your loved ones may become flat chested or flat-footed. In many cases your general personality seems to flatten a bit.

I think as far as Bill is concerned, though he seems to genuinely miss these parts, his escape from St. Louis County which landed him in New England (a place I secretly wish to spend my later years) has lent him an equally valuable perspective.

Aside from the junipers and mountain laurels, (which I think sound lovely) you’ve got your maple syrup, your clam chowder, top o’ the line Universities, Emerson, Dickinson, Melville, the home of American Literature.

This quality and variety is emulated in Bill Guskys Artblog Comments, where he writes candidly about anything from the reciprocal values between braid theory and post-structuralism, to the playfulness of Tuttle’s paint on wood.

To be honest Bill, I could do without ever having to hear the words “PorkSteak” again.

David Harrison

Untitled, Acrylic on...plywood?

In the new gallery space of kcai
(still cubing it)

Beginnings Agains

still cubing it so far

Daytrotter

Many thanks to Sean Moeller of DayTrotter.com who is one of those responsible for the previous video post as well as this fantastic websight he has just introduced me to featuring well written reviews and free intimate recordings of artists such as Mr. Oldham.

Bonnie Prince Billy My Home is the Sea, Iowa City

The possible top of Jordans head?

Dan Walsh