September 2006 Archives

Last Monday Hans-Ruedi and I practiced out on his terrace, as we frequently do in warm weather. The day had been hot and still, and as we played we could see thunder clouds and occasional lightning flashes to the north over the Hegau across the Rhine, a plateau studded with ancient volcanoes. Hans-Ruedi and I have been playing together for two or three years now, more since Thomm Jutz moved to Nashville. A landscape gardener by trade, he plays upright bass in the Western Store country band from Schaffhausen, and in several Swiss folk music ensembles. We were remarking on the departure of our young friend, Tabea who used to join us for Monday night practice, recently departed for a job in England. “I’m afraid our friend, my neighbor Alfred is also gone. The family has been here since yesterday.”

“He came home from the hospital?”

“There was nothing more they could do for him. He was working until two weeks ago; and now…”

“That fast.”

“He was a good friend to me since I came here seventeen years ago. I’m going to miss Alfred. He may be gone already.”

Now that scientists with x-ray eyes are suggesting that the smirking subject of history's most famous painting may have been knocked-up while posing there will be a slew of theories suggesting the connection between her enigmatic smile and the babe within. As intriguing as that smile may be, I've always been drawn to her hands for some reason.

If memory serves it was only a few short years ago that some were suggesting that Mona was actually Leo in drag, and anyone who hasn't been living the life of Ted Kazinski knows that there's been a whole lot of hoo-ha surrounding the fresco known as The Last Supper. My question is this - what do you suppose accounts for the fame and relative longevity of this canvas? I'm certainly not the first to suggest that Mona is not Leonardo's finest painting, so what gives?

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He could go no farther. Exhausted, helpless, he sank
to the ground. No one would help him even if they could.

Several years ago I became the pariah of my social scene when I suggested to some painter friends of mine that painting was "dead." Far from being a celebrant of this news, I was more interested in engaging my brothers-of-the-leaf, all of whom were committed painters, in a vital and interesting dialog about art, meaning and the nature of what is "real."

I can hardly lay claim to the genesis of this argument, but I did think at the time that there was something to it, especially as it pertained to "objective," or "representational" or "realist" painting. No surprise then that this particular group of artists demonstrated nothing short of antipathy for me, not to mention anger and dismissal for the argument. I'm not sure if it matters, but I don't think any of them are still painting.

I was raised on matinees on Saturday afternoons
Looking up at Hoppy, Gene, and Roy, oh boy
I grew up a thinking the best a man could do
Was to be a rootin-tootin straight-shooting
cowboy buckaroo…
Mason Williams

I knew we were in for a long evening when we showed up to interview cowboy singer Todd Fritsch at the Bonanza club and the manager refused to let us in. It was going to be a long evening anyway but the fun went out of it after our run-in with this Arschloch.

Right now on Business POV you can watch a short, very nicely shot and edited interview with Sharkforum's very own Wesley Kimler. The topic at hand is pricing, but there's something much more important beneath this discussion - just how much is art worth? Have a look.

Michelle Noteboom won the 2006 Heartland Poetry Prize for her first book Edging (Cracked Slab Books), chosen by Ray Bianchi and William Allegrezza. Other work has appeared in Verse, Fence, Boston Review, Sentence, Columbia Poetry Review and Gargoyle, among others. She's lived mainly in Paris since 1991 where she co-curates the Ivy Writers Reading Series with Jennifer K. Dick. She works as a freelance translator in the French audiovisual industry. She also translates French poetry.


Chafed

In the stylized abstract chess I was the checkered queen.

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A recent review by Roberta Smith in the NY Times (Sept. 22) caught my attention. In part, Ms. Smith wrote: "Some younger painters seem to be countering the strictures of Late Modernism by revisiting the early modernist cusp between abstraction and representation...where the figurative, the geometric, the spatial, and the visionary still remain tangled."

Smith's comment reminds me of the situation in Chicago art over thirty years ago. At that time the Chicago Imagist style was at its peak. Less recognized Chicago abstractionists were divided between mainstream formalists (via the Chicago Bauhaus and NY) and what might be called quasi-formal-allusionists. This latter group was actually larger than the former but since the work was idiosyncratic, aside from abstract intent, individuals often went unnoticed.

A few months ago Dan Peterman and Connie Spreen hosted an open house at the still-under-construction Experimental Station, acknowledging the fifth anniversary of the predawn fire that left only a shell of brick from what was then mostly called "the Building," and which had formerly housed Ken Dunn's Resource Center and most recently served as Dan's studio and hosted a number of other community-based concerns.

I was surprised to learn it was only five years ago, April 2001. It seemed much more time had gone by. I remembered hearing about the fire from Stephanie Smith of the Smart Museum. She had just completed a project that featured Dan's work, and being on the south side, where the Building stood on the south edge of the University of Chicago's domain, she knew about it before most of the rest of us did. She wrote urgent letters to everyone she could think of who might help. Dan needed all that help, as apparently City of Chicago workers had showed up at 9 am the day of the fire with demolition permits in hand. Regardless of the cause of the fire, it seemed pretty clear someone wanted that place, and whoever that someone was had no idea of the integrity and tenacity of the admittedly ramshackle building's owners, Dan Peterman and his wife Connie Spreen. The help helped, but it was Dan and Connie that made the Experimental Station happen.

Just a little self-lampooning banner for Wesley (and Dave and Lynne). Although, yes, I take both this and my political blog below seriously too.

Last night I took my son, (age thirteen) to the Chicago Theatre to see a performance by a guitar player who, when I was young, (age thirteen) was one of my heroes.

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Courtesy of today's Chicago Tribune - ed.

Artist defends sculpture for CTA station
Sculptor scoffs at riders who say the piece is pornographic

By Virginia Groark
Tribune staff reporter
Published September 19, 2006

Lakeview artist Josh Garber insists his intent was to design a sculpture for the Brown Line's Kimball station that would inspire the community and give people a place to sit.

But the proposed piece, "Hope and Renewal," instead set off a mini-firestorm in the Northwest Side neighborhood after e-mailed images of it drew comments that it resembled parts of the male anatomy.

Despite the controversy and requests to alter the design, Garber has decided to stand his ground. He's not altering the artwork.

Read more here.

Paolo Javier is the author of 60 lv bo(e)mbs (O Books, 2005), and the time at the end of this writing (Ahadada, 2004), which received a Small Press Traffic Book of the Year Award. He edits 2nd Ave Poetry, and lives in New York.

Nocturnally
     for Bonnie Chang

A castle, hollowed-out, abandoned
of red brick, white ivy-scaled
     in the center of a swirling lake

ABC, renowned for its blatant pro-Bush and anti-Kerry propaganda during the last election, including its link to the Sinclair Broadcasting group, those radical conservatives behind the Speed-Boat smear, is up to similar tricks with a perfectly-timed, patently bogus "docudrama" on the 9/11 tragedy.

You know how it is. You’re superproductive, and then all of a sudden, you seem to get nothing done. Paperwork piles up. Faucets start dripping and the toilet clogs, and you vaguely think you need a plumber. But my god, getting a plumber. That’s almost a full-time job. You don’t have the time or energy. There’s so much to do, but school hasn’t started yet, and it’s really hot, but then all of a sudden you are behind paying your bills, and you haven’t kept up with your friends, and on top of it you pick up a bug that your son caught on a flight to Paris. Fever dreams, and you wake up to notice the weather is very cool, and it has been raining for days. Raining, raining.

There was plenty of blood in the water at the Cultural Center yesterday evening as Shark Ed, The Shark, StingRay and The Curadorsal staff all showed up along with our pals from Bad At Sports and Lumpen, the whole messy affair refereed by pelagiac researcher for an hour or two Allison Peters, to partake in a feeding frenzy; -complete with the marvelous scenic backdrop provided by Shark Theory himself......I leave this thread open and invite the other Sharkpack members and others present to discuss the proceedings....or,...er,.....swim around and luxuriate in all the carnage and krill!....

Sharkforum's very own John Kruth will be working with Shark-in-absentia Alejandro Escovedo (as well as husband of Shark Kim Christoff) in Brooklyn this weekend. Greatness is anticipated...

From September 16 - October 20th John Kruth will be co-producing a series of great concerts for the Culture Project's Impact Festival with producer/promoter Danny Kapilian. The first concert will be tomorrow afternoon:

CITIZENS BY ANY OTHER NAME featuring DON BYRON (MUSIC FOR SIX MUSICIANS), SUZANNE VEGA, AND ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO

Saturday, September 16, 2006, 4:00 pm
(gates open at 3:00 pm)
Free at Empire Fulton Ferry State Park at Brooklyn Bridge Park, Dumbo, Brooklyn (Water Street and Dock Street) This will be a free concert on the dramatic East River waterfront under the Brooklyn Bridge in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn (NOTE - in case of rain, the concert will be moved inside of the Tobacco Warehouse tent immediately next door in the Park, and will proceed in full).

I will let you know about future concerts which - 8PM, Saturday, October 7th - Protest:The Concert to Close Guantanimo at Town Hall with a great line up that includes:Angelique Kidjo, Tom Paxton, The Mammals, Rutha Harris, The Klezmatics, Marshall Crenshaw and the Urban Word Poets - more details to follow (Tix will be $25-65)

And the final concert will be Friday, October 20th at the fabulous Apollo Theatre in Harlem - Time for Change - A Tribute to Miles Davis (the line-up looks really great for this show as well, with Roy Hargrove, Gary Bartz, Badal Roy and many other greats of Miles' funk period - details to follow (Seats will be $25 -65)

Hope to see you at Dumbo tomorrow afternoon!

Editors note: We're please to announce the additon of William Conger to the Sharkpack. As both a painter and an educator, William has been a vital and essential player in the Chicago art scene for over 30 years. His work has been widely collected and reviewed, and we're proud to add him to our ranks. -Ed

Wesley has defended and praised Leslie Hindman, as do others. I am not one of them. She has posted her upcoming auctions, including one set for Sept, 26. Look at her site and review the pieces up for auction from various collections including the recently dismissed K-Mart collection. There you will see what I perceive to be the usual Hindman tactics: grossly underestimating values for art by established, collected artists (which I also perceive as a tease for eager dealers) and overestimating values for ordinary run of the mill prints and bad pretty pictures. For instance, there is a Richard Hunt bronze sculpture, a wonderful example of his work, estimated at $600 to $800! Who can justify such an insulting value for anything by Richard Hunt, especially any piece of his sculpture. even if it had been run over (which it has not) by the METRA express to Highland Park? There are a number of other egregious and utterly reckless estimates, including, you might guess, for two of my paintings (here and here) from 1992, little oils on wood panels 12x12 inches each. They originally sold for something close to $2,000 each in 1992 and the same sized work would be at least twice that today. But wait, these works are estimated at $800 to $1,200 by Ms. Hindman and her employees. What do they do to establish such estimates, roll tin cans or toss darts?

Cartoon by Mark Staff Brandl

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Clipped from the Chicago Artists Resource web site:

Artists at Work 9/14: Strictly Alternative
Thursday September 14
6 - 7:30 pm
Chicago Cultural Center
78 E. Washington Street

Mainstream media is rarely the place to find out what's really happening in Chicago's art world. Instead, there are several new alternatives that probe and stimulate, revealing and challenging the conventional wisdom and the status quo.

Join Allison Peters, Director of Exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center, as she referees a conversation between the folks at Bad at Sports (Amanda Browder, Duncan MacKenzie, Richard Holland and Kathryn Born), Sharkforum (Wesley Kimler and David Roth) and, representing Version Festival, Select Media Festival and Lumpen, Ed Marciewski. Whew.

Admission free.

11.5 weeks
a little over 2 months
since my dad died.

The following is clipped from the ever-so-indespensible Boingboing.net:

The First Amendment Project is auctioning off an opportunity to have your name and likeness appear in a Chris Ware comic strip. The eBay auction ends September 18 and the current bid is $1370. All proceeds go to the First Amendment Project, "a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and promoting freedom of information, expression, and petition." From the auction listing:

"The appearance in name and approximate drawn likeness, either as a 'supporting character' or more forthright personna, of the auction's 'winner' in an upcoming comic strip by the author/cartoonist, to appear sometime before the end of 2008 in serial (probably newspaper) form, and later to be reprinted in collected form at an unspecified, and probably quite alarmingly later, date." "I'll be happy to send a signed copy of the strip in which the person appears (which will likely be in the local weekly newspaper) but only on the proviso that the person in question doesn't get mad or otherwise grow to despise me if their likeness is construed as satirical, incorrect, unflattering or in any way unliterary. I'll do my best, however, to maintain veracity and allegiance to the general rules of propriety (unless, of course, the winner offends me, in which case he/she may appear as any variety of disagreeable and distasteful ruffian.) The winner should also realize that if his or her character ends up contributing significantly to the development of said story that the author/cartoonist cannot be held liable for any confusion, affront or life complication said appearance might subsequently engender."

For more click here.

Lampblack & Ash
by Simone Muench
Winner of the 2004 Kathryn A. Morton Prize
Sarabande Books
Reviewed by C. J. Laity

Before you read Simone Muench's new book Lampblack & Ash, take this little test. Define these words: adder, ferric, phosphene, scrim, stridulation, threnody, virga. Easy enough? Read the book then. Can't do it? In that case, I advise you to have a real good dictionary handy while you read this book for the first time, and use it often. It will be a rewarding experience, I promise. Then, read the book again without the dictionary, after you've familiarized yourself with detritus and alluvium and sediments and pigments used in ink as well as fertilizer, when you've practically become an amateur botanist. Now you can discover a beautiful love letter to Robert Desnos.

Read the entire review here.

These are not words set down for the rejected

Michael Anania is a native of Omaha who attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha (BA), and the State University of New York at Buffalo (PhD). He is the author of Selected Poems (Moyer Bell, 1994), the novel The Red Menace (Moyer Bell, 1986), and In Natural Light (Moyer Bell, 1999), among others. His most recent collection is Heat Lines (Moyer Bell, 2006). In addition, his work has been included in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. He is a former poetry editor of Swallow Press, director of CLMP, and member of the NEA literature panel. He is a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Illinois — Chicago and currently lives in Austin.

De Kooning

          NY, April 1997

How is it the light
grows furious once again,

The first time I witnessed our friend, The Shark, in action, Big Black was providing the live soundtrack in a loft somewhere west-Loopish (was it on Lake?- what year was it? My memory flags after so many years). Could you imagine anything more menacing? Albini, slinging his guitar from a guitar strap on his hip, scraping chords like rusted steel and The Shark, fin barely visible, weaving through the crowd. Back then you could be assured that you would see the same people at any underground event; and I’m not sure if Corey Rusk was there, but the attitude was what Touch and Go records has created for at least a couple generations of musicians, filmmakers, and artists.

This is a hugely important music weekend in Chicago, what with the Hideout Block Party devoted entirely to the Touch and Go 25th Anniversary. Anyone who's anyone will be there dahling, and it promises to be a smashing good time. KEXP, the much-loved FM station from Seattle (there was a bit of attention devoted to that city a while back...something to do with flannel) will be setting up a remote command post right here in Chicago at the oh-so-cozy Engine Music Studios.
The schedule follows, and it's a doozy (don't miss Sharkforum's very own Rick Rizzo and his partners-in-crime Eleventh Dream Day on Saturday). The only catch is they'll most likely be working with this guy. He's a real Svengali. (And no, I don't mean Svenghouli)

Fall comes on like a coma
a burden on the grass
to dress it, in quiet
the despair of a tortured debt
is blossoming. A flowery death
song of a thief waking me;
I leave with the coiled tear
and the cursing spit
from the widow's fire dream.

Memorial
By Bruce Wagner
507 pp.Simon and Schuster

One of the two or three best novels of the last five years, Bruce Wagner’s “Memorial” is a towering achievement on almost every level: emotional, linguistic, political and spiritual. Wagner is writing at an altitude which will make many readers gasp and others feel truly high.

Wagner’s tale is told in four contemporaneous parts. Each subsequent chapter is told by one of four different characters. There is Marj, a wealthy widow with two estranged children. There are her estranged offspring Chester and Joan. There is Marj’s ex-husband (and the two kids’ father) Ray.

My friend Josh Garber has a show opening this Friday, September 8th at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago.

Having watched Josh develop a unique and personal vocabulary over the past 15 years I've found his work to be increasingly interesting. His ability to manipulate steel and aluminum rod in a manner which is both fluid and honest is really something. The works are organic and flowing in form, yet they are not fussy, as they still show the unpredictable marking of the welding process.

For a guy who called himself "The Crocodile Hunter," Irwin was in reality a fearless champion of biodiversity and a living example of someone living a life of respect for all living things. Here's a link to the CNN piece on him.

THE GIG IS CANCELLED - SORRY. REFUND TICKETS AT PLACE OF PURCHASE, OR SOMETHING.

the issues: 2 sets

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 10TH
SIMON'S TAVERN
5210 N. Clark
(Clark and Foster)

9:00 Set 1
10:30 Set 2

Ray Hsu grew up in Toronto and studied at the University of Toronto. He is the author of a book of poems, Anthropy (Nightwood Editions), which won the 2005 Gerald Lampert Award and was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. His poetry has been published in Canadian, American and British journals, including Fence, The Fiddlehead, New American Writing, nthpposition, Exile, and The Literary Review of Canada. He is completing a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Many died.
        La Jetée

Ladies and Gentleman
on your right you will see foothills

I have a review in the current issue of Art in America (September 2006) of Swiss artist Leta Peer's recent exhibition at the Augsburg Museum for Contemporary Art in Augsburg, Germany. I would like to draw attention to that, to her, and to post a slightly expanded and personalized version of the review here.

Amidst the froth of so many meaningless "Hallmark holidays" comes one that really makes sense - happy labor day. Americans seem to have a very short attention span when it comes to historical and cultural memory, so it comes as no surprise that many have already forgotten the sweatshops filled with children which were a common site in this country not so very long ago.

I suppose we're not alone - it's probably true that any community which has enjoyed better-than-average success would forget so easily. But there are still those who remember, and in a round-about way it pertains to Sharkforum.

When we started this thing 10 months ago we had several things in mind, but pretty near the top of the list was the agreement that the one essential ingredient in any endeavor is good ol' fashioned hard work. This country is lousy with professional polemicists and pundits spouting platitudes about American Exceptionalism. But what, specifically are they talking about?

Possible Christoff / Wolfson Art Post in the works !