Historia de la Musica Rock Pt.1
Head on Horizon: Redux 2000-2009, light, (digital projection, 2009 in collaboration with L.J. Douglas), mixed media, dimensions variable
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Writing about one's own artwork is often difficult. The main task is finding palpable meaning to share with others when the work is familiar to the maker. Information can be left out, or omitted entirely, depending on the artist's literary inclination at the time of critique or observational writing.
John Gallaher is the author of the books of poetry, Gentlemen in Turbans, Ladies in Cauls (Spuyten Duyvil, 2001), The Little Book of Guesses, winner of the Levis Poetry Prize, from Four Way Books, and
Map of the Folded World, from The University of Akron Press. He is currently co-editor of The Laurel Review and GreenTower Press.
What We're Up Against
On the way home from the funeral
we stopped for lunch.
Lunch was like the singing. Lunch
Catherine Yass
Still from Descent 2002
Courtesy Alison Jacques Gallery © the artist
16mm film on projected DVD
New Media Poetics: a collaboration of poetry and sound arts in two parts. In collaboration with the Experimental Sound Studio and the SAIC Department
of Exhibitions.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 - 6:30pm
Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State St., 7th floor
Part one: Reading
Featuring Bill Allegrezza, Ray Bianchi, Justin Cabrillos, Steve
Halle, Philip Jenks, Simone Muench, and Lina Ramona Vitkauskas
This project is an artistic response to the Learning Modern exhibition, with
particular attention to modernist trends in poetry and the manner in which
design sensibilities translate across media and are even evident in our
understandings of the sonic landscape. Building on the works on display,
contemporary poets design texts, which are then read in the Sullivan
Galleries. Subsequently, SAIC sound
students engage these poems as material for further response, reframing the
auditory elements of each poem's structure into a new sound score. The
resulting projects will be presented in the lobby of the Sullivan Gallery as
a temporary sound installation November 6 - 25.
Lead (pronounced /ˈlɛd/) is a main-group element with symbol Pb (Latin: plumbum) and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal, also considered to be one of the heavy metals.
Small souls, extant and visible in the world, come around to fill in the gaps towards the fruition of our humanity. They offer small things that well founded, and confident people sometimes cannot offer, a recognition of suffering and injustice... and with gentle resolve, they lie quietly at our feet, dreaming magnificent combinations of swift motion, adoration, and devotion.
Photography: Reflecting on the experience of the "first" weekend in the new art year, it seemed good to compare and contrast the work of Leasha Overturf and Doug Ischar. Overturf, at The Family Room Gallery, presented black and white [still] film documentation of the bodies of her female family members--chronicling change across the generations.
Leasha Overturf @ Family Room Gallery:
1821 W Hubbard St, #202, Chicago, IL 60622
www.leasha.com
thepostfamily.com
www.paulelledge.com/blog
Ischar too offered documentary work--but his subjects were male, and his prints in color. Further, Ischar's candid models suggested only the flower of a certain species of manhood. So that while his handling was Mannerist, his study was of something like unto a Greek ideal: mind and body fully developed, then fallen one sun-drenched day into Elysium.
Time, in Ischar's work, was frozen. Twenty-five years having passed since the shutter was released: What became of the men depicted?
Doug Ischar @ Golden:
Marginal Waters
816 W. Newport, Chicago, IL 60657
Thursday, Friday and Saturday 1pm - 6pm
And by appointment: 773-209-8889
golden-gallery.org/home.html
In the unstructured dialogue between the antipodes of Overturf and Ischar--b/w and color, the passage of time and the moment, Downstate Illinois and Chicago, female and male, straight and gay--something near to the whole of the story is told.
Technically, these two are at the top of their game; they are mature artists. I thought that they were the "best" of what I saw on the opening weekend.
And a good curator might easily "say" a lot about the human condition with a juxtaposition of the two.
But, more often than not, in the effort to advance one cause, or career, omissions are made with as much care as lies are told.
Tags:
- 2009,
- 65Grand,
- antena,
- Art,
- Chicago,
- Craig Doty,
- Doug Ischar,
- Fall,
- Family Room,
- Golden,
- James Jankowiak,
- James Kao,
- Kavi Gupta,
- Leasha Overturf,
- Lloyd Dobler,
- Luis Gispert,
- Melanie Schiff,
- Michael Langlois,
- Mike Nourse,
- Molly Springfield,
- Monique Meloche,
- Objet Petit A,
- Opening,
- Paul Elledge,
- Philip von Zweck,
- Rhona Hoffman,
- Robert Davis,
- Robyn O'Neil,
- Roots and Culture,
- Spoke,
- Thomas Robertello,
- threewalls,
- Tony Wight,
- William Staples
It is a particular thrill for me to announce that the Art Museum of Thurgau in Switzerland has just acquired 20 paintings of mine! They comprise a representative cross-section of several years of my series titled "Covers." I am very pleased that they will be in such a great institution and under the care of its eminent director Markus Landert and curator Dorothee Messmer!
Tony Isabella, a renowned comic professional, does book and comic reviews on the website World Famous Comics. Here is a great, short and sweet one of a startling book.
After listening to one of the authors on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," I requested The State of Jones: The Small Southern County That Seceded from the Confederacy by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer [Doubleday; $27.50] from my library. The book is a fascinating and frequently horrifying account of the outnumbered, under-supplied Mississippi unionists defying the wealthy slave-owners who launched the American civil war to preserve their lavish lifestyles and their "right" to enslave other human beings. It's also the story of the heroic, remarkable Newton Knight and his two families, one white, one black.
This is a page turner, though the chronicles of brutality (on both sides of the conflict) and atrocities (more on the Confederate side) often forced me away from the book. At least when I was in school - and that was before and not long after the Civil Rights Act became law - our history books glossed over the darkest parts of this story. I never knew the Confederate leaders plundered the families of the poor soldiers pressed into fighting for a cause not their own or that those Southerners who sided with the Union were subjected to even worse treatment. I never knew that the racism of Andrew Johnson and the weariness of Ulysses S. Grant allowed these same Confederate monsters to reclaim their power shortly after the war and continue subjugating the poor. Sadly, the reality of the common man blindly following leaders who constantly act against his best interests is all too familiar to me. I see its like whenever the ignorant scream their Faux News talking points at "tea parties" and town hall meetings.
If I were a history teacher, The State of Jones would be required reading for my students. It's an exceptional work of non-fiction and, as such, it earns the full five Tonys.
Read more of his reviews here.
A fine review of an excellent book exploring Kierkegaard deeply, both his negative tendencies and his continuing (if not increasing) importance as the Modern Socrates of philosophy and theology.
JOAKIM GARFF'S justly acclaimed biography of Kierkegaard, published in English in the year marking the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hans Christian Andersen, invites us into the literary world of Denmark's golden age. It also calls us to ponder Kierkegaard in the context of his ambitious, anxiety-ridden life and through the eyes of his contemporaries. ...
Silent Pictures, running from September 1 through October 11 in the James Gallery in NYC focuses on aspects of comic book structure that do not depend on words to advance an image sequence. The exhibition is inspired by artist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Art Spiegelman's personal collection of wordless comics and graphic novels -- mostly black and white rare artist books from the 1930s. The show will feature a selection of these books, as well as more recent "abstract comics," and a related film program -- all of which investigate essential qualities and aesthetics of this hugely popular medium.
The abstract comics, compiled by art historian and artist Andrei Molotiu for a just released anthology, Abstract Comics Fantagraphics Books, 2009), call attention to the formal mechanisms that underlie all comics. The art gathered by Molotiu emphasizes the dynamic graphics that lead the eye and mind from panel to panel, suggesting that these structural elements are fundamental to the emotional register of the medium. This section of the exhibition features an old-fashioned wire magazine stand ("spinner rack"), which hosts a collection of paintings by Mark Staff Brandl called A History of Composition in Abstract Comic Covers. Done in oil, acrylic and collage on canvas panels, the 30 pieces in this series unite comics, pop art and Pollock-related abstraction with his actual interpretation of the history of composition in painting from Prehistoric times until now.
The James Gallery is located off the lobby of the Graduate Center at 365 Fifth Avenue (between 34th & 35th Streets). Hours are Tuesdays through Fridays, 12-8 pm, and 12-6 pm on Saturdays & Sundays. Admission is free; for more information call 212-817-7138 or visit http://www.gc.cuny.edu/events/art_gallery.htm An opening reception for Silent Pictures will be held on Thursday, September 10, 6-8 pm.
