Jason Middlebrook, Submerged

This past week was deFine art, a small art festival, at SCAD.  There were many artists here, including Jonah Bokaer, Jason Middlebrook, Dustin Yellin, Alfredo Jaar, Nicola Lopez, (and more), visiting, performing, and installing their works.  I helped Jason Middlebrook and his assistant Anna work on and install his work, Submerged.  He used reclaimed wooden spikes, that 200 years ago helped build up the bottom of the Savannah River, for a large scale installation in the tower of the SCAD museum.  We painted these pieces of wood and then they were suspended upside down in a tiered system to resemble some sort of chandelier type of structure.  It was very  fun to get to talk to Jason and Anna about the going ons of their studio work as well as how their personal lives affect their studio.  Here are a few pictures during the install.  

A Birthday Present

I just took official pictures of the shuttle that Zach made for me for my birthday.  It is made primarily out of an African wood and a few small details of walnut.  

The Transformative Home

These are my newest works that I have been working on the past week or so.  

           “I imagine each planted life as a surrogate for a human form.  I am interested in the intimacy and fragility that the anthropomorphic pile of seed and dirt create.  Placing it in the visual landscape is a way for me to engage in a conversation about the life and the temporary environments we create, occupy, and share with other living things.

           I imagine each discarded blanket as a specific memory of a part of life that was lived through these objects.  It is my opinion that entropy explains the state of the present human life.  It is while we are engaged in living that we are fighting that state of decay and attempting to control our own conditions.  I want to highlight the significance and extent of the time, protection, and attention that must be spent in order for things to grow despite the aspect of chance and chaos. These fundamental inconsistencies in the transformation of a home fascinate me and continue to fuel my curiosity to seek the patience involved to find potential beauty in the decay and growth of the future.”

                                                            -Frances Russell

The Gap, Sheldon Vanauken

“ Between the probable and proved there yawns
A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd,
Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse,
Our very standpoint crumbling. Desperate dawns
Our only hope: to leap into the Word
That opens up the shuttered universe. ”

Ken Price

This summer I got to see Ken Price's retrospective at the Met.  After that I was able to spend a week in Taos where his home was for the majority of his later years.  He grew up in Los Angeles, got his MFA in New York, and worked in Taos.  He very rarely used glazes on his ceramics but instead used layers and layers of acrylic paints which he later sanded to reveal a great depth.  When visiting the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, Price's death shrine to himself was installed, which was so fitting to see just a year after his death.  

Rona Pondick

I recently came across Rona Pondick's work in my Gender and the Body class as she deals with the feminist critique of Freudian theories of sexuality.  She is an american sculptor who studied under Richard Serra and went to Yale to get her MFA.  She deals with a wide range of imagery including teeth, trees, human/animal hybrids, beds, etc.  You can see all of her work over at her website. 

Sterling Ruby

Sterling Ruby is an artist working in Los Angeles.  He works in a wide range of media including ceramics, sculpture, painting, and video.  Being inspired by the graffiti culture, his work seeks to confront the psychological space where individual expression meets social constructs.