Ear Eater at ROY G BIV

Flyer by Samantha Rehark.

Ladydrawers: Just the Facts Fund-raiser

Other News:

* Ear Eater comes to ROY G BIV.

* Shaver tapes's People Mostly Suck It compilation leaked.

* Justin Clifford Rhody's book Sliding Glass Door is out. Buy here.

* Saintseneca named to 50 best bands in America.

* The Comics Reporter blurbs Aidan Koch's event at the Wexner Center.

* Pheramones/Amelia tape on No Idea Records's distro.

* Punk Porch is back.

ROY G BIV Panel Discussion

I will be a part of an upcoming panel discussion at ROY G BIV Gallery on February 15th entitled "An Artist's Basic Needs: Becoming a Professional Artist." The panel, which is an installment of the Greater Columbus Arts Council's OPPArt Roundtable Discussion Series, was curated by Samantha Rehark. It also includes ROY G BIV Gallery Director Emily Moorhead, and Stefan Hoza, whose joint show with Adam Johnson - Bright, Black and Veiled - recently closed at the OSU Urban Arts Space. Come - it's free, and I swear I will not utter the word "networking," though I will say "EBT" and "poverty-cultist."

Quizzes

Cassandra Troyan's Your Life is Not my Playground at ROY G BIV Gallery and Eva Ball and Ian Ruffino's Delusion of Eating at The Shelf (which included an exhibition catalogue I wrote an essay for) are both on the Columbus Alive's Best of the Arts 2010 list.

Is this A: a righteous commendation or B: a wicked damning?

Another Troyan (and Jordan Castro, Sara Drake (M.I.A), Lyra Hill, Tao Lin, et al) related piece of information from Steve Roggenbuck:

ROY G BIV: Small Works Show In December

ROY G BIV gallery in Columbus, Ohio, is hosting a group show of small works in December. The opening night of the exhibit is Saturday, December 4th during the Short North's Holiday Hop. I will be showing the above piece as well as the other prints that are after 'the jump.'

Conversation with Art Critic Lori Waxman

Read Waxman's reviews from the Columbus show at ROY here.

Art criticism is in a weird place. Lori Waxman's 60 WRD/MIN performance this past March at the ROY G BIV gallery made that clear by blurring the lines between art and criticism and mixing a bit of the past with the present.

Waxman is a professional critic and art historian who is an instructor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a freelance contributor to the Chicago Tribune, Bad At Sports and Artforum. With 60 WRD/MIN, a traveling performance underwritten by the Warhol Foundation, she visits isolated art locales like  Austin, Texas; Knoxville, Tennessee; and our own Columbus, Ohio to write short reviews on an appointment basis for that untouchable caste in the art world -provincial artists. 

So what's weird about that? Well, to start with, the reviews Waxman wrote in Columbus were published by a magazine that no longer has a dedicated art critic or arts editor on staff.* This is part of a nationwide trend among print publications to cut and/or water down arts coverage. Since art criticism has been amputated from our current media experience, part of the allure of being reviewed now lives in its near impossibility. Actually getting to have a serious review written about your work feels almost like a anachronistic novelty, like using a wind-up clock or going to a haberdashery to pick out a spic-and-span trilby. While 60 WRD/MIN clearly serves to invigorate local art scenes it also underscores that out-of-time je ne sais quoi of seeing actual art criticism in contemporary American media. The environment which makes 60 WRD/MIN necessary and intriguing also makes it a bit depressing, like "No, Lori, please don't leave - we need you here!" 

But it's also weird for the contradictory impulses that have always been constitutive of art criticism, as Waxman points out on the 60 WRD/MIN site:

"The short review is at once a challenge, an insult, a record, and a piece of advertising. Its purpose is debatable and arguably quite different for the various parties involved: the writer gets a tear sheet, a couple of bucks, and some editorial gratification; the reader, in the best case scenario, gets a succinct, opinionated description of a body of work they probably did not see in person; and the artist gets published recognition and an entry for their bibliography."

In our absolutely mammoth conversation after "The Jump" I ask Waxman about all of that and more - touching on long form versus short form writing, general readership versus professional readership, quality of artwork in regional areas versus metropolitan areas, her PhD dissertation for NYU on radical walking, the theatricality of 60 WRD/MIN, its critical reception and the particularly odd behavior exhibited by a few of our more uncouth Columbusites. 

*Arts Editor Melissa Starker left the Alive in December. Recent Artscape articles covering going-ons at the Wexner Center were written by freelancer Tracy Zollinger Turner, who is not listed as being a member of the Alive's staff on their site. And, perhaps tellingly, no one is listed as being the new Arts Editor.

Lori Waxman Reviews my Work as Part of 60 WRD/MIN

"Glitter and Xerox make an odd couple at first but not second glance. In James Payne’s Money Isn’t the Everything that Not Having It Is, 2009, conceptual and formal parallels abound between the two decidedly plebian mediums. Glitter, after all, is nothing if not cheap, accessible glamour. Xerox, after all, is nothing if not cheap, accessible printing. Money isn’t the anything of either of them, and in case the viewer doesn’t quite cotton to thinking about content through material, Payne provides the classic expression, “class war,” right smack in the middle of his print. Class party might have been a more apt turn of phrase, however, given the glitter and the Sex Pistols-esque aesthetic of collaged, black-and-white copied text. And what a party it is, down to the correspondence between rectangular pieces of silver glitter and the image fragmentation that results from blowing any image up over and over again on a photostat machine. It’s a getting at the heart of the matter old school style, not with digital pixilation but the flash of the copier. But why blow things up? To look closer at it, hoping that what gets lost in the expansion and repetition is replaced by revelation. If not, there’s always the pretty flash of glitter to make the emptiness of truisms ring anew."

                                                                                         —Lori Waxman

Full array of Waxman's Columbus reviews.

PICS FROM 2012

Below are pictures and a video from a panel discussion on 2012 & Apocalypse Culture I was a part of at ROY G BIV gallery in Columbus, Ohio. Aarthi Suguness was my proxy/harbinger as I was in Chicago and could not deliver my speech. The speech is about the right-wing hijacking subjectivity and creating a conservative disbelief of "Truth" in America. Cassandra Troyan organized the panel as part of her month-long spree of outrageous, "wild" actions, drunken/high Nietzsche rooftop antics and seedy erotica reading/touching. 

Read my statement.
See my flyer for the event.
Pictures and video after "The Jump/Rapture."

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.

MONDAY

20 Years of ROY G BIV

From Mark Van Fleet's 2008 show at ROY.

ROY G BIV recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, staying alive through a period of time which saw the Short North go from child prostitution central to "used to be cool five years ago" affluence. ROY saw it all and showed everyone in the process. It remains exciting and incredibly valuable to Columbus due to its actual openness to showing actually new artists. The next season's lineup - top secret of course - piqued my interest. Surprises abound. And Cassie has a show there in February with Daniel Hoffman. Here is what my show there looked like in July.

Interview MP3 with Daniel Work, a founding member of ROY and former director, here.
Interview MP3 with Justin Luna, the current director of ROY here.

I wrote the story below for The Lantern (Lantern version here. Somehow gentrification becomes "Arts District" - just like the real world!) It's after "the jump."

PORTRAITS

Justin Luna, who is the guy who does things at ROY, took some shots of me during my show there. I am a model. They are transparencies so it scans a little like this.











































AUSSI:
Gigantotomy.
Execution Broadsides.

ROY G BIV Artist Talk / Amelia

HERE is the link to a mp3 of my artist talk from earlier this summer. It is an (muffled, tangential, incomplete) explanation of a show that was at the ROY G BIV gallery during July of 2009.

This is the link to photos of the show.

And this is this (FROM):

 

We're (Amelia) playing D.I.T. Fest in Kent, Ohio on September 12th. Here is the lineup:


Friday Sept 11th, 2009 @ 6PM
@ the Vineyard (154 N. Depeyster, Kent, OH 44240)
6:00-6:20 – Zax Kelly
6:25-6:40 – Gabz Ciofani*
6:45-7:05 – Adam Klopp
7:10-7:30 – Ancestors
7:35-7:50- Ben Ryant*
7:55-8:15- Gabe Wolf
8:20-8:35 – Jordan Castro*
8:40-9:00 -General Ledger
9:05-9:25 – Toby Foster
9:30-9:50 – Nicholas Megalis
9:55-10:10 – Ryan Eilbeck*
10:15-10:30- Richard Wehrenberg Jr*
10:35-10:55- Letters to the Moon
11:00-11:15 – Matt Whispers*
11:20-11:40 – American War
*denotes poet
@ the Kent Stage Alleyway @ 11:45PM (175 E.Main St, Kent, OH, 44240)
11:45-12:05 – Bobby Stevens
12:10-12:30 – Andy Cook and the Wanderloons
12:35-12:55 – Pheramones
1:00-1:20 Annabel
Saturday September 12th
@ the Vineyard 1PM (154 N. Depeyster, Kent, OH, 44240)
1:00-1:20 – the Ghost of Asa Phelps
1:30-1:50 – Ashley Brooke Toussant
2:00-2:20 – Two Hand Fools
2:30-2:50 – Playoff Beard
3:00-3:20 – Signals Midwest
3:30-3:50 – Destroy Nate Allen
4:00-4:20 – Higher Fives
4:30-4:50 – Positive
5:00-5:20 – Dustin and the Furniture
5:30-5:50 – Saintseneca
6:00-6:20 – Busman’s Holiday
6:30-6:50 – Reverse the Curse
7:00-7:20 – Asinine
7:30-7:50 – Bethesda
8:00-8:20 – These Aren’t Candles
8:30-8:50 – the Menzingers
9:00-9:20 – the Sidekicks
9:30-9:50 – Underdogs of Nipomo
10:00-10:20 – Amelia
10:30-10:50 – Endless Mike and the Beagle Club
11:00-11:20 – Delay
11:30-11:50 – No Target Audience

ARTIST TALK

Tomorrow (Saturday) at 2:30 I'm giving an "artist talk" at Roy G Biv gallery for my show. I think maybe 5 people will be there. I'm planning to thrill those 5 people with stories about how my main influences are Wizard of Oz, the 60s, and thinking about drugs. And talking about the socioeconomic implications of the Xerox print. I'll be wearing non-prescription frames.

Maybe someone will film it and I'll put it here. It will be really embarrassing though because I'm trying not to be ironic or coy. Saying what you actually think about something is always a bad idea.