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Thursday 'THINK'....
Thursday ‘THINK’….
It’s Thursday….and it’s time to ‘THINK’… Which room(s) is the MOST difficult to keep ORGANIZED and CLUTTER-FREE?
EXTRA CREDIT:
In general, how hard is it to keep each room in your house ORGANIZED and FREE of CLUTTER, on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being hardest. (Share in Comments)
PMo SUGGESTS:
De-cluttering your life is not just about getting rid of things; it’s about reimagining your life…
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We had another Thursday Think event today! Our guest speaker was C.H. Greenblatt (aka chgreenblatt on Tumblr) the creator of Harvey Beaks. He shared his story and gave some fantastic advice! He’s actually really funny in person too, no wonder he makes such great things.
You can find more gems on our Twitter feed: twitter.com/NickAnimation
bryankonietzko and michaeldantedimartino gave an incredibly inspiring talk at our Thursday Think / EMERGE event today. The audience was filled with interns/assistants/coordinators/managers/artists from the studio and everyone walked away that much more excited to make the best cartoons around!!
We live tweeted some of the best parts, so check us out on Twitter (@NickAnimation) if you want to know more!
Had an awesome Thursday Think mentoring lunch with philrynda, one of the VPs in our Animation Development dept. today!
We heard all about how he went from being an artist and character designer at many different studios to a development exec for us. The event was live tweeted so check out our Twitter page for more insight into his story!
Thursday Think – Interview with Curator John Weeden
by Jody Stokes-Casey
Present Tense: The Art of Memphis, 2001-Now
at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens
Sunday, February 03, 2013 - Sunday, April 14, 2013
My first visit to the Dixon Art Gallery was this year. Before moving to Memphis to attend school, I admit, I had not even heard of the Dixon. After my visit this March, I will not forget it.
The Neo-Georgian style home was opened in the 1970s for the public to view and learn from the original Dixon French Impressionist painting collection and beautiful garden landscape. When I learned about the current exhibition, Present Tense: The Art of Memphis, 2001-now, I'll be honest to say that I didn't see the Dixon galleries as the type of institution to be interested in showing contemporary Memphis art. After visiting the exhibition, it is clear that the Dixon Gallery is a fantastic place for such an exhibition.
image via Baxter Buck, courtesy of DGG
I was curious to know more about the exhibition: why the artwork was organized the way it was, who is the target audience, what are the goals of the exhibition, etc. So, I asked my professor, who happens to be the curator of the show, if he would sit down with me for an interview. Below is a transcript from my conversation with John Weeden on the Present Tense exhibition. I hope that reading or listening to this interview gets you exited about contemporary Memphis art and makes you want to, as Weeden puts it, “get off your ass” and get involved.
Jody Stokes-Casey : How did the ideas come about for this exhibit and what were the initial goals?
John Weeden : The idea came through a series of conversations with myself and Kevin Sharp, who is the director of the museum. He got here [Memphis] I think in 2007-ish, and he had a very extensive career in small museums and residency programs, often with a more contemporary focus. So he had new experiences to bring to the Dixon which had previously done Post-Impressionism and Post-Impressionism only. He wanted to make it more relevant, more engaged with the local community, as well as educate his patronage and his donor base, his membership and his board, specifically, about what was happening in their own front and back yard, so to speak.
My background is entirely contemporary. We had these conversations starting when I recruited him to the board on the Urban Arts Commission – when I ran that organization. Through our conversations of getting to know one another on that organization, we came to respect each other's ideas, shared stories, learned things we had in common, and shared connections of people we know, ect. So we always thought, we need to do a project. It was more Kevin's thing, “We should do a project.”
“Okay, great. Don't know what it will be...”
So then a few years later I rolled off the organization of Urban Arts and started doing my own thing. He [Kevin] had made a connection with a guy named Jim Meeks who is an insurance company guy. It's more dynamic than just insurance. It's what they call wealth management now.
JSC – Is this North Western?
JW - This is Northwestern Mutual. So he had moved to Memphis around 2009 or 10 and wanted to understand the local community. He had lived in other places with that company and had always been attracted to the art community wherever he'd been – as a collector, an emerging burgeoning collector as well as an art patron. They started talking about how he could help with funding. Could he make something possible? What elements of his existing program might be responsive. Kevin brought me into the mix, “Well actually, there's a really dynamic organization or series of organizations in the city, lots of things that are changing. There's some great art here. There's a person I know who is trained as a curator...”
It was mostly myself and Kevin, but the reason it actually happened at all was because Jim Meeks was willing to fund it, basically.
JSC - In your curator's essay, you talk about people and organizations who have made significant contributions to contemporary visual arts throughout Memphis starting around the 1980s. Was there a specific reason for beginning the exhibit with works made in 2001?
JW- Yes, because there's only so much space.
The first idea was to capture what is the “contemporary” in all it's diverse, sundry forms would be a massive undertaking. It couldn't be just what's happening right now. It would do the city a disservice, because it didn't happen overnight. It took a lot of work from a lot of different people, from a lot of different aspects and within a lot of different art worlds – plural.
There is no one art world within the universe or within Memphis itself. There are various communities within this city. They all generate activity and have a concatenate effect to build momentum to make all this verve and energy and possibility happen. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they have connections and correspondence with each other. Sometimes they work in complete isolation with one another, but they're all valid and all important.
So, we started trying to wrangle with what that would look like. How do you give credit to people that are kind of coiled in obscurity for years and yet capture the energy of what is new and avant-garde and breaking news right now? So it became this really messy, overwhelming problem. The question was “how do we define what's contemporary?” Because what's contemporary contemporary to me having done graduate work in Britain, having hung out with Sarah Lucas and Tracey Emin. And then what's happening with Artists' Link in East Memphis and the garden clubs is often very different, but to them equally valid and to their audience, more valid than my perspective. We were trying to give equal say, equal show space, equal validity to very diverse forms within the contemporary moment.
Starting in 2001 was a very convenient device. It's basically twelve - a dozen - years, changing of millennium, September 11, World Trade Center, lives are completely different. How have artists responded to the world since that era? What has been done within that time frame to generate the culture of now? But in the essay dating back to the 80s, I was trying to get to the point that it goes back further than just 2001. The art in the show was made in the city starting 2001 to now, but in order for that to happen go back to the people in decades previous. And even the 80s owed their presence to people in the 60s and on and on. History is...
JSC – a palimpsest
JW – Precisely. It's unending. It's impossible to encapsulate. You do something, you choose a device, an axis point around which to orient it for the sake of cataloging and that's what it is.
JSC – I think that answered my next question, because you say it's a device to catalogue, basically, but why did you choose to arrange the exhibit by year and to include text panels of monthly events within the years 2001-2012? And also you mention that the artists of Memphis tend to be wary of categorizations and definitions. Is all of that part of that choice to go by year and the events?
JW – Part of that has to do with the institutional venue. The Dixon is a historical museum. That's how they do things. They like timelines. Their audiences are fairly traditional in their experience with art. They're used to going to museums with text panels and some kind of guiding narrative. How to do that and give people at least an in road to interpretation...timeline. That's how we decided to do it. Chronologically, it was a traditional way of doing things. It could have easily been by subject matter or content or media or discipline or practice or age. They're all arbitrary, but they serve a purpose. It's just an organizational method. But primarily because the Dixon has a tradition of doing historical museum and organizing them by time frame. That's how they like to do things and so that's how it was done.
JSC – Fair enough. In a radio interview with WKNO, you talk about scouting works from over 300 artists who have made a big impact on the city and made the city “even more incredible than you realized it was.” How then did you come up with the works for the show? What was the ultimate criteria for inclusion? Because that's a lot of work to filter.
JW – It's a tremendous amount of work to filter. I have no doubt in my mind there are 300 more that I didn't find. I started just writing down names and I came up with over 100, just off the top of my head. And then I started looking, researching those people and realizing, “Oh my god, they actually went to school and I forgot about what all that group was doing and awwww shit.” And after you go down that path and then that path, there are endless rivets of activity and energy, of people that were very dynamic and very driven and very influential for a very brief period of time – until they realize that they couldn't do anything else and they had to leave town. There are scores of those. Scores and scores and scores. People leave town all of the time, because they get upset that there's not enough to do here. Some of them luckily come back. Although that's usually not the case.
The criteria was a moving target. It was partially what we thought was really well made, really well executed, really well thought out. Sometimes all three of those came within one person. Sometimes one person represented one element of those or two or different elements all together. In other cases, there were others that were very prolific and influential arbiters of the cultural scene. They're organizers of exhibitions. They were teachers. They were talkers. They were do-ers. And that was enough for them to... They need to be recognized, because their influence changed the outlook of all of these other artists that wound up doing all this stuff. So, they needed to be in there.
There were different reasons for different people being in there. It was not one rule of thumb. There was no checklist that everyone had to have their box ticked in order to be in the show. Just like history is malleable, the reasons one person was in that show was malleable. It came about through discussions and conversations with Kevin Sharp and Julie Pierotti, who is the on-sight curator [at the Dixon]. And what's going to be the most impactful exhibition that the Dixon can do? And have connection and provoke conversation within the core audience to reach out to other audiences. A lot of the reason the show came about the way that it came about is because it wasn't just this one person saying, “I want this to happen.” It's about what it could be to different people and what we wanted to hopefully express.
Overall, I think we did this. We hoped to convey that Memphis is much more complicated of a city. It's much more positive and dynamic of a city than the majority of traditional Dixon audience members would ever realize.
The feedback that I've been getting from traditional audiences is, “Oh my god, I had no idea any of this was happening.”
There's even a segment of that group that says, “I had no idea that any of this was happening and why is it art?”
So you have the traditional non-informed, but receptive and the traditional non-informed, but wary. And then you have the non-traditional, very informed and very wary – which represents a totally different audience than the Dixon's normal crowd.
I think it's accomplished what we hoped to do – to get people talking and to get people to realize it's a really complex ecosystem here – one that has never really, unfortunately, taken off. That being said it's more dynamic and interesting in some ways now than it has ever been, because there are more people that seem to be participating and expressing a voice and trying to do things on their own which is really exciting. At the same time, it's almost more depressing, because the few contemporary institutions that had a possibility to make a name for Memphis on the international scene and could provide an outlet for local people, and even international people coming in, have gone by the wayside. Because they couldn't sustain themselves.
There's a lot of hope in that show and there's a lot of sadness in that show from my perspective, because there's a lot about lost opportunity.
JSC – I think this is kind of piggy backing on some of the things you were saying and it might be an unfair generalization, but it seems that Southerners as a whole lean to the more conservative side of subject matter in contemporary art. And you mention [in your curator's essay] that the exhibit seeks to “inspire the broader public.” So, as you were choosing works for the exhibition, did you feel a need for censorship for the Southern audience in any way?
JW – I think that to a certain extent we weren't ever thinking about it in terms of Southern audiences. That was never a question. I don't think it ever came up once. I think that in the back of my mind there were certain works which I knew that even though I would include in the long list – I knew in the back of my head they would never pass muster. They were too avant-garde. Even for the remit of the exhibition.
It's like learning a new language. You don't start speaking fluently right off the bat. You have to learn vocabulary and syntax and sentence structure...then colloquialisms, then cadence, then intonation, then accent, ect, ect. You have to start small. You have to start with the basic building blocks of the language itself. So if you think about the exhibition having a sort of exhibitionary language, we're talking about basic building blocks of contemporary practice. We're not talking Joseph Beuys. Because we want to make converts. We don't want to scare people out of their pants the first time out. We want them to come back, try more, develop palate for it. So they're like, “Oh, I actually do like spinach. I think I'll try something else.” So hopefully, in the future when other curators come back around in a couple of years, or however long it is and they approach similar audiences, then they'll be able to up the ante, you know, show them even more daring, risk taking work. But, you have to lay the foundation first.
JSC – There are artists in the show who are from different countries like China and Vietnam, who worked in Memphis for a period of time. The diversity enhances the exhibition and provides opportunity for different voices. How does the incorporation of works from diverse groups of people throughout the country contribute to the goals of the exhibition?
JW – Again, we're trying to show the diversity of practice. Thereby, including people with a variety of different backgrounds and different life experiences and perspectives, I think is pretty crucial to that. It's not just for this exhibition, it's for any exhibition of that scale, that goal. Kong Wee Pang is very different from John Torina. They're almost diametrically opposed, but they're equally compelling to me. I've never been the sort of art viewer or audience or curator that likes one thing and one thing only. That's very dull to me. I love landscape painting and I love big abstract installations for very different reasons. Doesn't mean my love for them is any less.
Pixy Liao, Disco, 2008. Digital c-print. Collection of the artist
JSC – When I visited the Dixon for the exhibit, I came upon a tour group that had just started, because they were all like me and taking advantage of the “pay what you want” day. I spent a lot of time observing how us visitors responded to each other and the works and how the tour guide would ask questions to make them relate. Maybe it was just me, but there seemed to be this really [great] sense of pride and ownership that came throughout. They were excited and seemed to relate to the work. I was wondering if you been a fly on the wall in the galleries since the opening? Have you overheard conversations or comments from the general public or elsewhere that reinforced your ideas?
JW – The comments, and I'm glad you picked up on that, was to give people a sense of pride of place. Look, all of this amazing stuff is happening and this is only like a tenth of a tenth of a percent of what's happening. This isn't even all of it. This is no where near all of it. You need to be really excited. You need to get out there and find out more. You need to go to Marshall Arts. You need to go to Crosstown and these different places.
I have not been a fly on the wall, because every time I go someone points it out, “He's the curator, ask him.” So I don't get that fly on the wall perspective. But the comments I've gotten have been generally through email or voicemails from people that see it for the first time. They're likewise really proud of it, and they're excited by it. There is that kind of sense of ownership, pride, and ownership of their city and the creative culture of their city. So that is good. That was a big part of the point and the hope.
But then there are also the people that gripe at me for not getting in the show. Or why isn't there any performance work or relational installation or ect, ect, ect. Well, again, building blocks and institutional opportunity. That's a reason why it's not The Medicine Factory. If it had been down at The Medicine Factory it would be a different show all together. In all likelihood, there would have been very little figurative painting, but it's not at The Medicine Factory. It's at the Dixon.
If you want more avant-garde installation, ect. Go do that.
Be the curator of the exhibition you want to see in the world.
Go do it. Please. Because we need more.
We need everyone to get off their ass and start doing stuff.
That's the point. Motivate people. Whether it's by encouragement or by pissing them off. I don't care. I really don't. Just get off your ass and do something.
Beth Edwards, Sunup, 2004. Oil on canvas. Collection of The Rev. Audrey Gonzalez
JSC – This one kind of piggy backs on some stuff that you've said already. Another thing, I'd never been to the Dixon before I went to the show.
JW – Are you joking?
JSC – No. I didn't even know about it until I moved to Memphis.
JW – What?!
JSC – I had no idea.
JW – How long have you been here?
JSC – Just a year, just since I've started school. I didn't even know. But I was really interested in this
crown molding, pastel walled, gallery and former home with this cutting edge, contemporary and sometimes silly art sometimes, you know like Prince Mongo riding the UM Tiger. And I'm like, this is the perfect setting for “ultra-modern in one moment, old fashioned in the next” which is a quote from your essay. How did you, and I know that the people involved is part of this, but how did you use the space of the Dixon Galleries and Gardens to just expound on this idea or was it the space that inspired the exhibit?
JW – I don't know that it can be put into kind of chicken or egg terms, because you think about it in your head and the abstract art that's been made and then the reality of the space you have. So it's not the physical architecture of the space, but also the institutional [indecipherable] and ambition and possibilities. So yes, of course the space had something to do with it. We had a lot of ideas for these large scale sculptures and installations as well as video, but at a certain point, we entertained the possibility of having off-site satellite installations throughout the city. Until budget reality just was like, “No, that's not gonna happen. There's no way. This is not gonna happen.”
Curating an exhibition is not an intellectual aspect alone. Curators have to deal with real-world, nuts and bolts logistics. You have to deal with budgets. You have to deal with institutional visions and practices and regulations and possibilities. You have to deal with the architecture of the physical space. They're not gonna reconfigure the walls. They're just not. I was gonna say they're not gonna strip the crown molding, but in one case, they actually did strip the crown molding for Lester Merriweather. So, I mean there's only so much you can do. And yeah, it would have been great to have a satellite series of video installations, but it just didn't work.
JSC – Building blocks. It'll get there.
JW – Building blocks. But that's the overall point. The other point that I hope people walk away with is, “Wow. Damn, I had no idea there was so much happening in Memphis. What else is possible?”
If people wonder “what else?” then it is a success. Actually, it's not only a success. Not really. It's kind of like heartwarming that they think, “oh something else might be possible.” But it's only largely a success if people get off their ass and do something about it. I'm sorry to be vulgar.
JSC – It's ok.
JW – But it makes me mad that I think it's a reason why Memphis has been stultified for so long and all these stops and starts. All this energy and passion and then kaput. Because the people with energy and passion and ideas get completely burnt out and frustrated that there aren't any resources or they don't know how to make the connections to make resources available or they just get fed up with the sort of inferiority complex of the city in general or the sort of myopic vision of what art should be ect, ect and then they go someplace else. Or they sit around and they bitch about it at the P&H and then don't do anything about it. They hang out after the openings, get drunk and they let all these brilliant ideas pass away into the ether, because they're hung over the next day. And all your brilliance is bullshit. Unless you do something about it. So hopefully, some people will actually get pissed off enough or inspired enough to do something about it, but that remains to be seen.
Kudos to Dwayne Butcher for trying to do something about it already. I'm kind of surprised it happened that fast.
JSC – What is this that you're referring to?
JW – Dwayne Butcher did a show over spring break. I think on Friday trying to extend the conversation of the Present Tense show with other people that weren't included. Hopefully there'll be many more.
JSC – I'm a former high school art teacher, I don't know if you knew that. And so, I was really excited to see the companion show. It might not get as much recognition as the main event, but is still fantastic – the hallway full of [high school] student artwork. The decision to incorporate students seems like such a natural inclusion, but a lot of people overlook it. How did this decision come about and can you tell a little about the curating process for choosing these emerging artists?
JW – Well, we were keeping with the sort of ambition to demonstrate that this is a trajectory and that all this didn't happen in a vacuum. I'm trying to point to the future and that look, all this work happens from people that teach people how to make work and how to think about work from the fundamentals to concepts, ect, ect. What's going all within the local school systems? We could have easily have done just university students, but oddly enough university students have a fairly stable matrix of exhibition possibilities. They've all got a BFA show. They all have a MFA show and there are numerous other shows throughout the year that cater to university students. There's like one show that features local high school students – Scholastic at the Brooks
But we wanted it to be a curated piece. That's something I should mention in general, because people keep...This was a curated project. This wasn't a jurried project. It wasn't open to all comers. It was a curated piece. People say it was a jurried project. It was not actually jurried. It's not the same thing.
So we started looking at high schools. I contacted the director of the MCS and the Shelby County Systems to find schools that had good systems and to also learn then who some of the better private school programs were and contacted the programs and started going to those teachers and asking for their recommendations. Who are the students that are doing interesting things? We started looking and looking and looking and we got probably over a hundred students to look at as well, but ultimately found the ones from those schools who were doing what I felt to be the most compelling work. It may be compelling because it had this really great line quality or shadow technique or mastery of watercolor or this bizarre photo series of recycled paper plates fashion wear. What is that? I don't know, but it's really cool. So let's try that. I mean that's basically...It was done at the same time the larger show was happening.
I really enjoyed getting to know that work and understand the depth of skill that's being taught in foundations in high school. It's pretty impressive. Pretty astounding actually. So it kind of reaffirms my faith in humanity. Drawing still matters to someone. Which is nuts.
JSC – And then the last question is what we've kind of been building on the entire interview. In the WKNO radio interview, Kevin Sharp mentions that there was just so much contemporary Memphis art, there is a possibility for the exhibition to be revisited down the road. What are your thoughts on and do you have aspirations for working on a similar show in the future?
JW – oooh. It's too soon. There has been talk about possibly a recurring series, but it's all just ideas right now. Like I said earlier, until there are actual logistics behind it and resources lined up and people willing to do the work to make that come together. It's just conjecture right now. I think that he's receptive to it, because I think that majority of consensus has been positive towards the museum for doing it. That's often how museums decide to do exhibitions is that they think it's got the possibility for being well received. So I think it's possible. I hope that it will happen somewhere in the future. I would love for that to ideally happen...for it not to become an annual, but maybe every two years. But not looking ten years back, but more of a what's happening now type of show and for it to be a more concentrated piece of maybe top...I hate these kind of top 40 thing and top 30 and all that kind of rigmarole. I don't want to put it in those terms, but select twenty artists and not seventy. Give them space to really blossom within a larger area of the space. If I were going to do something like that, I'm pretty sure that's what I would do. Probably no more than twenty at a time within a two year period. Looking over the last two years. And do almost like a model like the British Art Show does – every five years. Looking back. Happens every five years in a different city in Britain. They have multiple satellite installations, and it's about what the curator believes to be the best work that's happened over five years. It'd be great if Memphis could do it every two years. That's almost more manageable in a way. It's on a smaller scale. To continue the momentum. To continue to inflate the balloon so to speak. If you leave it too long, it tends to die. Hopefully, that won't be the case.
image via Baxter Buck, courtesy of DGG
I don't know that I would have the desire to do it again, probably. I kind of left it all on the floor. I'd be happy to turn over my files to whoever wants to take it on, to point people in the right direction. Otherwise, suggest some possibilities, but as far as what I'm hoping to work on next it would need to be something of a smaller scale like a twenty person show or maybe a ten person show. I don't think it would be historical in nature. I think it would almost have to be working around media. Curators often have their own interests and fascinations. I've done the historical retrospective on a massive scale. I've done it. I'm ready to do something new and get into something different. Not to say I would't do it again if the right circumstances were in place, but it's not my first impulse.
JSC – Well, I don't have anymore questions, if you're satisfied with that interview.
JW – Sounds good. Thanks.
JSC – Thank you.
JW – You're very welcome.
Be sure and see the Present Tense exhibition at the Dixon Gallery and Gardens before April 14th.
J. Stokes-Casey is currently working on her M.A. in Art History from the University of Memphis and has a background in visual arts and art education.
Thank you to John Weeden for the great interview and to the Dixon for providing the photographs used.
Thursday Think: Art Wants to Play
by Jody Stokes-Casey
Very recently I attended a gallery talk with the artist Camille Utterback at the Frist Center in Nashville. Utterback became known in the art world for her collaborative piece with Romy Achituv titled Text Rain which was a part of the exhibit. Text Rain is an interactive artwork involving a black and white camera, a projector, a poem, participants, and some very clever coding – of which I won't even pretend to have a strong grasp of understanding.
So what is it exactly? There is a camera in the center of the projected screen which feeds your image to the projector – it feels similar to standing in front of a mirror. The projector is also running the program of falling letters. The coding of the program allows the participant's projected image to “catch” the letters as they fall – if you can collect enough you may be able to make a word or phrase. The piece invites a sense of play and experimentation. Camille described watching a child enter the gallery with an umbrella. The child opened the umbrella and turned it upside down in hopes to collect the text. Others have used scarves or coats as a means to collect the letters and of course, toss them up to fall back down. (See the video to hear the artist explain and watch interaction with the work)
While it is difficult to “catch” all of the words in the poem to read them, Utterback's gesture prompts a few thought provoking ideas. The first of which is how to read into this relationship between the human body and semiotics such as text/language. The second idea being the thought of what makes this piece so special to art viewers today. Both thoughts are entwined in each of the artist's pieces.
We'll start with the first as many Electric Beef readers may find it quite interesting. The actual poem used for Text Rain can be read as rather erotic if one chooses to see it that way. It is an important point to not overlook that you use your body to be able to create the words that you read. Click here to read “Talk, You,” by Evan Zimroth where the text from Text Rain was accrued.
The second point of why this work is significant to viewers in the contemporary world is most interesting. The artwork encourages people to interact with art in a way unlike traditional media has been able to do (so far). In the galleries adjacent to the Utterback installations was a vast collection of Dutch master paintings. While they are very beautiful, they can be (dare I say it) boring, especially to an audience used to the rapid speed and interactive nature of easily accessible technological devices. The juxtaposition of the two exhibits was quite interesting. Granted, it is very important to slow down to appreciate the details and beauty of such paintings. Yet in the same respect it is crucial to realize that the invitation to participate in art is in demand from contemporary viewers. To put it in the words of Camille from her gallery talk, “Good art has an openness for the audience to react to.”
What do you think?
http://camilleutterback.com/
http://fristcenter.org/
My personal favorite piece in the exhibit referenced Abstract Expressionist painters Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning in the fact that the work left signs of the artists'/participants' gestures.
http://camilleutterback.com/projects/untitled-6/
J. Stokes-Casey is currently working on her M.A. in Art History from the University of Memphis and has a background in visual arts and art education.
Thursday Think: Art and Electronic Media by J. Stokes-Casey
Through my graduate student experience at the University of Memphis, I have recently become acquainted with and assigned to work under Dr. Edward Shanken. This assignment opened my eyes to a new layer of the art world: art and electronic media. Dr. Shanken’s work centers around the formerly untold story of electronic art that parallels the canon art history printed in so many survey books. Of course, there are many parallel art universes that don’t get caught up in the Katamari of the mainstream canons. The same can be said for just about any study or practice in the sciences and humanities. But, as Dr. Shanken’s research points out, why would general art history texts exclude major works that center around the use of technology, and are often produced by some of the very artists in that canon? For example, the artist Robert Rauschenberg is often written in art history texts for his combines and silk screen paintings which began introducing images of popular culture into fine art, but those texts exclude his work with John Cage in the group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T).
Rauschenberg’s work Solstice is an artwork that incorporates technology and requires the viewer’s participation to be properly seen. Solstice is a series of sliding Plexiglas doors that react to the viewer stepping onto their designated platform – think of sliding automatic doors at a corner pharmacy. The doors are covered in various silkscreened images much like his silkscreen paintings. As the viewer walks through, the doors open and close surrounding him/her creating different images in every direction. Why is this work not talked about except in Rauschenberg retrospectives?
Dr. Shanken’s book Art and Electronic Media gives credit to such artists and their efforts in technological advances through art. Also, to not exclude artists working in electronic media and to provide an opportunity to enhance the book with non-static media, Shanken has also created an online companion for his text : http://artelectronicmedia.com/.
http://www.amazon.com/Edward-A.-Shanken/e/B002JVAE9A
J. Stokes-Casey is currently working on her M.A. in Art History from the University of Memphis and has a background in visual arts and art education.
Thursday Think: Locally by Jody Stokes-Casey
The Horn Island 28 Exhibition showcases artwork from students, faculty, and alumni of Memphis College of Art that is based on inspirations and experiences of a trip to Horn Island –located off of the coast of Mississippi. The works in the show include a wide range of media from steel to papier mache to woodcut prints.
The high quality artwork throughout the show gives insight into the various experiences the artists had on the island. There are traces of driftwood, the essence of an egret, and hints of coral. Perhaps it would have been even more interesting if there were an artwork or two that incorporated sound or video. Nonetheless, the talent was undoubtedly strong in all of the artworks. The two artists that particularly caught my eye are undergraduate upperclassmen: Jeff Muncy (junior) and Fidencio Martinez (senior).
Jeff Muncy’s painting David and Goliath stands out as his strongest work in the exhibit and one of the strongest pieces in the show. The high contrast of subject and background catches the viewer’s attention reeling him/her in to examine further. The background is treated very carefully with texture and color paying close attention to the precise wave of the bird’s shadow as it hits the sand. The bird’s plumage is treated with slight tints of blue and white to add just the right amount of highlight to identify the form and feathers of this (and this is a guess here) fish crow. The bird glares down its beak to the orange tinted crab that subtly compliments the bird’s plumage while not so subtly meeting its intense gaze. The narrative at play is further emphasized by the work’s title and sparks the imagination to continue the story both before and after this painted moment in time. Other pieces by Muncy contain similarities in figure-ground relations, brushwork, and high contrast, but the narrative of David and Goliath is what makes the piece highly memorable. Please visit http://jeffmuncy.blogspot.com/ to view more of Muncy’s work.
Fidencio Martinez’s work contained overall technical strength in every piece that he exhibited. His work explores themes of decay and entrapment with a contradictory sense of beauty. Subjects include fish carcasses, nets, seagulls tangled in fishing net, and a lovely branch that appears to contain buds of some sort. With the exception of Entanglement (seagulls caught in a net) all of the works are made from cut paper on panel. The skill of layering and attention to detail is what makes these works so stunning. The papers used for the works are clever assortments of maps, text, and solid sheets layered perfectly within the subject’s form. One cannot help but move as close as possible to each work to admire the craft and detail. Martinez expressed that these works were his first endeavor into working exclusively with paper. Considering the results, I hope it is not the last.
Catch the Horn Island 28 Exhibit (before it ends on September 28th at Memphis College of Art. Rust Hall’s Main and Lower Galleries are open 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday – Friday; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday; 9 a.m. to noon on Sunday. Admission is free.
J. Stokes-Casey is currently working on her M.A. in Art History from the University of Memphis and has a background in visual arts and art education. http://www.jodystokes-casey.com/
