March at ROY

Agnes Burris | Andy Plank | Kaveri Raina

Other News:

* V.V. BUTTONS has a Facebook page.
* I have work in Jackie Little's Rooms to Let exhibition 231 21st Street.
* History of Ohio comics lecture by Caitlin McGurk, and in the Alive.
* Columbus Alive Mark Beyer exhibition preview, Beyer in the Dispatch. I'm speaking about Beyer's work on February 23rd at the OSU Urban Arts Space.

ROY G BIV FUNDRAISER ON SEPTEMBER 27TH

I have a piece (of art, an art piece - a piece of artwork) entitled A Bunch of Dicks in an upcoming silent auction and fundraiser at Shadowbox Live for ROY G BIV Gallery on September 27th. 

Other participating artists include Mary Jo Bole, Molly Burke, Sidney Chafetz, AJ Fusco, Taylor Hawkins, Andrew Ina, John Malta, Shawn McBride, Erin McKenna, Larissa Mellor, Emily Moorhead, Jill Raymundo, Tim Rietenbach, Ian Ruffino, Boryana Rusenova, Aaron Troyer, and Ryan Walters. 

Come?

Jessica Langley's Killin' It

Jessica Langley's Killin' It opens tomorrow night (5/11) at Skylab Gallery. Pittsburgh-based artist Langley is Skylab's first artist-in-residence in an ongoing residency program at the gallery, which was funded by a Franklin County Neighborhood Arts grant administered by the Greater Columbus Arts Council. Langley will be in residence for the remainder of May, working on a new body of prints. The opening reception for Killin' It starts at 7 p.m.; refreshments will be provided. In addition, the exhibit may be seen by appointment until June 8th. To make an appointment, email skylabartspace@gmail.com.

Photos from Killin' It can be seen after the jump.

The World is a Wedding Opening

After the jump are pictures of Justin Clifford Rhody's The World is a Wedding exhibition at Skylab Gallery.

Other News:

* I featured Aidan Koch's Field Studies drawings on Beautiful/Decay.

* Wes Flexner writes about Slave Labia in the Other Paper.

* Elijah Funk has a new band, Alpha-Males.

* Zac Little recounts the story of Saintseneca.

* Chase Whiteside debates agent provocateur/hack James O'Keefe at Temple University.

The World is a Wedding: An Exhibition of Photographs by Justin Clifford Rhody

Justin Clifford Rhody, whose artwork I recently featured on Beautiful/Decay, is exhibiting his photography at Skylab Gallery on Saturday, March 3rd, from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. 

Other News:

* Austerity Pleasures is a part of the Jacksonville Public Library's zine collection.

* Two new Slave Labia videos have surfaced from SL's show at Club Sandwich.

* Saintseneca did a Daytrotter session.

* Elijah Funk is co-producing a hardcore compilation, People Mostly Suck It, with Eat The Life records.

* The _______ ____ did a feature on The Sidekicks.

Candace Corbin Collages

Ode to James Payne//provisional

  collage and highlighter on paper, 2011

Candace Corbin named a suite of new collages after me - ego successfully massaged/bolstered, thank you. It was needed.

One day, after one of our friends 'gets famous,' researchers will uncover the circle of our social relations through intertwining names and mentions in liner notes and blog entries. And by researchers, I mean unpaid interns.

Corbin just graduated from  MassArt - the only publicly-funded free-standing art school in America - how cool. Congratulate her. 

The Owlery Show

A sliver of s'me.

I have a number (24) of prints and drawings showing this month at The Owlery in Bloomington, Indiana. The Owlery is a new restaurant instigated by Ryan Woods and Toby Foster. It pays half of Bloomington to feed the other half vegetarian/vegan nibbles. May I recommend the "fish" and chips, the beer, and the nachos even. 

There was a faux-opening/poetry reading the night of April 30th featuring Ryan J., Matthew Whispers, Richard Wehrenberg Jr., myself, and the wonderful poetry of Bloomington's Tara J. Below are recordings of the readings, and after the jump are photos of the art installation. All of the work is for sale, at prices between fifteen and fifty dollars. I believe the show stays up until June 1st. Upcoming shows at The Owlery feature the artwork of Erin Tobey and Nate Powell - exciting.

You can visit The Owlery at its perch - 212 S. Rogers St. Bloomington, Indiana, 47404. 

The playlist is:

1. James Payne
2. Matt Whispers
3. Richard Wehrenberg Jr. part two
4. Richard Wehrenberg Jr. part one
5. Ryan J.
6. Tara J.

Scroll through to access all of the tracks or download.

Print

Lynda Barry at SAIC

Lynda Barry

Lynda Barry, of Ernie Pook's Comeek and One! Hundred! Demons!, graced the stage of SAIC's Columbus building in Chicago, Illinois, on November 15th. She spoke and joked about her working process, her desire to reclaim art-making for everyone and her new book, Picture This. It was the one artist lecture I've attended that could properly be described as 'rollicking.'

Or download: MP3

Delusion of Eating Exhibition and Essay

I wrote an essay for the Delusion of Eating exhibition catalogue entitled "People Eat so They Don't Die." You can read that essay after "the jump."

The opening of the exhibition happens October 7th from 6 - 9 p.m. at The Shelf on 57 E. Gay Street, Columbus, Ohio. The catalogue is limited to 75 copies and can be pre-ordered here. It includes writing by Eva Ball and Ian Ruffino (the curators), as well as Wes Flexner, Matt Morris, and myself. In addition to the writing, the catalogue has full color reproductions of the work in the show, including pieces by Grant LaValley, John Malta, Dan Olsen, Dina Sherman, and other Columbus-related artists.

The overview of the show goes as such:

"The Delusion of Eating exhibit presents a national array of artworks that eloquently use the marketed spectacle of eating as the material to explore how capitalism creates an isolating desire.Works include video, painting, photography, sculpture, performance, and text; all creating a discourse about our lives in the contemporary situation where ideologies about eating are shifting away from science-lab food products and into marketed desires for ‘natural’ ‘slow’ food stuffs, while for the majority of Americans these ‘local’ foods are out of the question due to geography and class."

The Delusion of Eating closes November 27, 2010. 
Lecture with the Curators: Thursday November 11 | 7 to 8pm

Delusion of Eating Performances: Friday, November 26 | 9 to 11pm

For more information go to the Vince Chocolate website or the Delusion of Eating’s Facebook.

THIS PIECE OF WORK IS PART OF A LARGER PROJECT THAT IS INDICATIVE OF MY PRACTICE

This piece of work is part of a larger project that is indicative of my practice

For most artists who go to art school to study art and produce what the outside world calls “art” it doesn’t suffice to say “this is my art” or “I am an artist.” Clearly, those wordings are just too clear.

Some straw men would say those phrases smack of pomposity and they would go on to repeat “I am an artist” using the French “artiste” to make everyone aware of the pretentiousness it entails. But if avoiding pretentiousness is the goal of avoiding the word “art” one would think the term “maker,” as it is one step away from the godly “creator,” would seem a bit inflated. But no, “maker” is trending toward ubiquity on art school campuses and “a creative” is already mainstream terminology. It seems anything – as long as it is not “art” and “artist” – is fine to call art and artists.

For those in the unlucky position of having to talk to the products of the artist-intellectual complex, those unwashed masses “looking for funding” because they are “working on a project,” you will be all too familiar with the following terms, which are usually preceded by a “my.”

  “piece”            “practice”          “work”          “project”

ARTY PARTY

Arty Party is out!

Arty Party is a collection of cartoon ha-has about contemporary artists like Lynda Benglis, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Jenny Holzer and Gordon Matta-Clark. Cornballs like William Wegman and Dale Chihuly are in the mix as well. Arty Party is 8.5 x 5.5 inches with a card stock cover and is completely hand drawn by the talented, farcical, slapstick Sara Drake. It also contains an essay I wrote on the art world, seriousness and class dispositions that ends with the line, "I'd rather a Jacques Tati than a Jacques David."

Arty Party started when Sara was having trouble writing one panel gags for her comics class. The easiest answer to this was, of course, to make fun of artists. I posted the initial three we made together here. We were tonally and visually inspired by The New Yorker cartoons but also by the over-the-top stupidity of Johnny Ryan's Angry Youth Comix and Ivan Brunetti's Haw!. The material came directly from the History of Art 541 course taught by Kris Paulsen that I took last fall. The class was based on David Joselit's book American Art Since 1945.

This is a blogger who wrote about Sara and Arty Party.

This is Bad at Sports which blurbed Arty Party.

Order Arty Party online here.

Arty Party is available at the following stores:

Quimby's (Chicago, IL)
Boxcar Books (Bloomington, IN)
The Curiodrome (Bloomington, IN)
Mahan Gallery (Columbus, OH)
Used Kids Records (Columbus, OH)
Wexner Center for the Arts Store (Columbus, OH)
Wholly Craft (Columbus, OH)

Arty Party is also available in person from Sara and I for $3.00.

2012 Statement

I wrote the statement below to be read, by Aarthi Suguness, as part of the 2012 panel at Cassandra Troyan's ROY G BIV show. It's about a lot of things, mostly the impotence of the American left to do anything outside of the realm of satire. There are a few blurbs after the statement about things I "felt" regarding 2012 as a phenomenon.

ARTY PARTY

Sara Drake and I have a new line of gag strips, "Arty Party." We are going to get fabulously rich off of The New Yorker's cartoon coffers. See us in the bougie pages. Also, watch for a blog devoted to them to drop on the world wide web. More below.

OCT. 31, 1978

I was forced to enroll in an internet class to keep my financial aid while I work an internship in Chicago that is the last requirement of my degree. The class has ridiculous assignments. This one was to write a story or narrative about a piece of artwork we had previously described. Here is what I rattled off,  A DEAR DIARY from On Kawara on OCT.31,1978. Why am I still in school? It is after "the jump" but I wouldn't bother if I were you.

Michael D. Hall's New Book on Emerson Burkhart

Michael D. Hall's new monograph published by Scala.

My last story for the Lantern is a preview of a book presentation by Michael D. Hall, the  Columbus Museum of Art's adjunct curator of folk art. Hall has spent the last ten years developing a book on Emerson Burkhart, an odd local/regional figure who didn't "fit" into the larger themes of the art world of his time. By all accounts he was flagrantly egotistical, arrogant, and stubborn. Also, a 20 year-old prostitute was the last person to talk to him before he fell into a coma and died in 1969. So, apparently, a personable gent. This info is a little annoying to know - I used to revel in Burkhart's paintings while in high school. He painted obnoxiously thick, something I was obsessed with at the time. His palette centered on hyper pastels, another tic I cultivated without regard for my teachers' eyesight. I stopped searching his work out when I stopped painting in oils but a recent visit to the Convention Center renewed my interest. His mural there, "Music," is really beautiful - though Hall and a few other commentators online seem to dismiss it as derivative - which it is - but so is his whole oeuvre. After all, he was a Columbus artist.

"Music" at the Convention Center. History of the piece here.

An MP3 of my interview with Hall here.
My story plus more of Burkhart's paintings after "the jump."

13 E. Tulane

Story below on 13 E.Tulane / itlookslikeitsopen project space/place. Sandy Plank and Jessica Alcalde have a show there December 5th that everyone should be sparkling about.

Lantern version here: (note - they are not current students.)

Andy tells me:

"I think I'm hanging some recent photos actually. And some paper things. All of it will be highly questionable of course.

Dale Chihuly - "Chihuly Illuminated."

Below is a very sedate and non-controversial review of the Dale Chihuly show at the CMA. I wrote it for the Lantern. Here are some insights I left out of it:

1. Sponsoring "Chihuly in Columbus" is a who's who of Columbus' large corporations - Huntington Bank, Nationwide Insurance, American Electric Power, The Columbus Dispatch, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, and others. Over five major exhibitions of his work have been held in Columbus since 1988. The Conservatory even bought a large part of his 2003 show to be a part of its permanent collection. The Conservatory, CMA and Hawk Galleries are all showing his studio's work right now. So much love because...

2. It is about nothing. Not in the Seinfeld way. It is empty aesthetics. It is ripe for corporate and institutional support because it says nothing. It is artwork for grandparents. His work is set outside of any contemporary art world considerations. It is nice looking, ornate glass. Sometimes it is neon. Sometimes his painting/sketches refer to Jackson Pollock, sometimes they refer to painting flowers. In the show his work is directly compared to Native American objects and designs. This is the rich, white, liberal, multi-cultural " I appreciate their artwork/culture/food" contempt/pillaging/appropriation/commodification/misuse of constructed authenticity, portion of the show. These white-bred conservative corporations (Dispatch: McCain in 08!) sponsoring the "remember before the genocide - their stuff looked nice" bullshit. The equation of nature in the tree with Native American life is unneeded + regressive + cynical.

Pandering to the idea of nature as inspiring. Quasi religious.

3. He has artist image branding a la Warhol + Beuys. Wacky hats and pants. Huge frizzy fro. It's just like an artist to be so unique in their personal style isn't it? That is something normals want/expect. Adds to stupid conceptions of creativity/"creatives."

4. One of the rooms shows work already shown  one mile away at the Conservatory. What?

5. Exhibition ends with a sign telling you to walk back through the exhibit to go to the lobby???

6. Dan Flavin's piece at end of show: hilarious.

7. By the way, let me emphasize that his signature on his painting/sketches takes up 1/6 to 1/4 of the picture plane and is centrally located in the bottom third of each panel. Not the lower right. It is as much of a design element as anything in any of the works - probably thee design element.

The Lantern Version.

My pre-editor review for the Lantern after "the jump."