Hallucination invitation:

There is currently an excellent show open at Kent Place Gallery.
 
I am gallery director there -- the gallery is on the campus of Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, where I also teach art.

There will be a closing reception for the artist on Friday, March 11 (see below for details). Summit is not too far away (geographically-- i.e., it is in northern New Jersey), and Bruce is an amazing artist.  I hope will see you all there at the reception!

sweet stain, oil, acrylic, pencil & ink on canvas, paper, wood & cashmere 

Bruce Stiglich

click image to enlarge

“Accumulation/Hallucination”


Bruce Stiglich’s “Accumulation/Hallucination”
Kent Place Gallery Monday, February 14 – Friday, March 11
closing reception 6—8 pm on Friday March 11.


Works in the show combine painting, drawing and the gathering of found objects to create complex, beautiful and densely painted collections of surfaces and images.


“Sweet Stain” (above), uses a wide range of means, including oil paint, acrylic, graphite, ink, wood, and, crucially, cashmere. A tiny scrap of stained cashmere formed the starting point of this complex work. Stiglich painted a portrait of the scrap of fabric, enlarged and copied his own painting, represented it again in another way, again and again, and each new view became a part of the whole. The cluster of representations contains mirrorings and repetitions, but also surprises that open up space for the imagination. It is a kaleidoscopic outgrowth of remembering and reflecting. Yet the subject (if that shred of stained fabric is really the subject) remains enigmatic.


Such a ceaseless return to a mute and mysterious object, and the possibly obsessive circling around it with art, brings to mind Citizen Kane’s rosebud, Proust’s madeleine, that little scrap of blue velvet so prized by Frank in David Lynch’s film. The point for me is that Stiglich creates an exciting, almost hallucinatory visual world, and the work resists collapsing into an easy interpretation.

New York Times art critic Ken Johnson has said, “Style in Bruce Stiglich's work is psychological, as the seemingly obsessive repetition of tiny marks that build up into dense vibrating textures suggest the feverishly compulsive activity of an inspired monomaniac. You may be reminded of Jackson Pollock's drip works or folk artists who are driven to decorate their homes with countless polka dots or flattened beer cans.”


Bruce says, “My work is a compiling of personal history. I work in series. These series become installations. They span an extended period of time. It begins with a discovery of found images, objects and doodles that to me seem incomplete. The process of completing the images is self referential in nature.”


Bruce Stiglich’s art work has been seen in numerous exhibitions in recent years in New York City and the New York area, in Pennsylvania, and in Miami, Florida. He currently teaches at Parsons School of Design, and has also taught at Pont-Aven School of Art in France, and at the State University of New York. He has been a curator of several art exhibitions at MyPAC, in Miami, FL.


Kent Place Gallery
42 Norwood Ave.
Summit, NJ 07902

http://www.kentplace.org

 

--Ken Weathersby

I really like this breakdown of a workspace- it articulates reality as I see it-

A place of work: in this sense of the meaning, it is the artist’s identified location of work. It is an address, an office, a workplace. It is an actual and psychological place that compells the artist to go to work. It legitimises the artist’s practice. It locates the artist in a geographic place but also, by extension, in society.

A place to work: this refers to the physical studio, light, heat, equipment and facilities that enable the artist to get immersed in the artistic process and in the making of art products. It is also a place for other work to happen such as research and planning. This definition is about work happening.

A place for work: this definition brings in the other functions of the studio - a place where work is kept; where work is waiting to be finished; where collected references are displayed and stored; a place where work is exhibited.

PS- I am about to create this sort of rubric for my body, as current events unfolding seem to have been predicted many years ago by Margaret Atwood.

Beginning:

It was great to get started today officially on my February-through-August residency-- at least in the sense of getting keys and finding out which studio will be mine. I was glad to meet Emma and Evonne again, and to be introduced to the other artists.  Actual move in will be soon.

Ken Weathersby, painting / paper collage (acrylic & graphite over printed image of linen, with printed paper inset)

5.5" x 4.25" , 2-11

I've made some very tiny works lately, like the one above, and before yesterday I actually never thought about that being a reaction to the crowdedness of the rather small studio I've been painting in for the last ten years.  

These little pieces might be models or mockups, or they might be works in their own right. 

I am definitely thinking about a containing spatial element and aspects of architectural space in planning my next paintings, pieces I want to make at Aferro.  

So beginning to work in a different and bigger room might have more than simple practical advantages.


--Ken Weathersby
 

Grid with gold leaf.

Detail with gold leaf added.

Over the last several weeks I’ve had a chance to print out more than 30 images shot on Market Street of the varied and random chewing gum marks found on the sidewalk. It’s been an exciting project to pursue, and one that I'll continue working with once the residency is finished. My current approach has been to crop in closely to each section of concrete and view each as a separate composition.

In the next versions that I’ll pursue, I’ll be utilizing the expansion joints as compositional elements, which will allow me to incorporate vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines along with the random patterning created by the chewing gum markings.

It has taken quite a bit of experimenting to hone in on the post-processing of the images. Its important to me that there is sufficient contrast between the pavement and marks; I have taken a number of steps with each image to enhance the rich gray and black tones of each individual mark.

Each series of photos is displayed in a grid; while all of these photos document random mark making, I’m interested in the suggestion of order that a grid format provides.

The next step for this series involves adding gold leaf, by hand, to individual marks on each photo. My intentions are to re-examine familiar and overlooked relationships between social interactions and physical spaces. Gold leaf, in this project, functions as a signifier of value—raising questions about what has intrinsic worth and what is discarded, both materially and personally, in contemporary society.

Thank you!

I am delighted to become a member of your community! can't wait to start (my residency) and get to meet you all.

here are the images from my recent natural history museum project.

Northern Soul?

Snowing again.

It used to be, before the internet, that if you had heard a song somewhere, or a friend made you a mix tape with no papers, you might go years without knowing whose song it was. You would memorize the lyrics. I used to tape off the warping records (steam heat in the media room of the Morris County Public Library) and then not write down the names of the tracks. I'm not a musician, (or a hipster.) But I like spaces, corners, spatial relations. I'm a photographer of buildings. One of my major goals is to take a really great photograph of a corner someday. And I often think about the pictures as either poems, or songs.

You can stop gagging now.

I simply mean that what would satisfy, what would count as a good day's work for creative output- I want it to have the qualities that I find in, say, a Kevin Young poem's near rhymes, or the haunting quality of a live recording, by Champion Jack Dupree, of Frankie and Johnny. I didn't know who had sung this version, not for years. I just knew I liked it, how the sounds of a room were in the track, the sound of glasses or bottles, the way someone, probably a woman, yells towards the end. It makes me think of echolation, in water.

The room is in the track.

If you can put aside larger cultural debate on Robert Johnson for a moment, you have to admit that all the craziness with figuring out whether his tracks were sped up is amazing nerdery- they are remaking the room, inhabited by ordinary mortal breath.

I love cheap wordplay and I love covers. Forget Lord of the Rings, give me "Dempsy," which reads to me as a pastiche of Jersey City and the South Bronx, created by Richard Prince. I love the scene where high school kids make their own version of Spoon River Anthology but set in Dempsy, where they live.

Back to Robert Johnson.

E, who had a trust fund and thus was always coming up with criminal schemes (the edge is safer with a cushion) out of warner brothers, used to play a wonderful cover of Come on in my kitchen. He was very shy about playing in front of people, like it was obscene. He stole from us later, but that's another story.

Anyway, R., his friend, would say, "accidents happen", as he skinned rats from the apartment building. He was from the country originally. I have two pelts, the little feet are articulated so well. He would say that, but that was before he fell multiple stories onto his head, went to Bellevue, and now is a different person. When I first met him, we were listening the Ramones, I sometimes think of him when I hear Cretin Hop, though in some ways that isn't funny anymore. But really, that was the song that was playing, I swear. For some reason I always remember what song was playing when I meet people. Cretin Hop makes me think of summer, and Coney Island. Where it isn't snowing, because it's a memory and I can have it any way I want.


Te-na, Te-na-na
Te-na, Na-ne-na
Te-na, Na-na-na
Te-na, Na-na-n'-na


Te-na, Te-na-na
Te-na, Na-ne-na
Te-na, Na-na-na
Te-na, Na-na-n'-na

Coming Back to Newark!

What a happy soul you have made me, Aferro comrades! Thank you. I looking forward to coming back to Newark and working hard at Aferro. Emma's idea of artists' books intrigues me greatly. It's snowing up here in Providence. A real winter.

Night School / Art School

The unitednationsplaza archive is now online. Missing from the "night school" section, though, is the lecture by Walid Raad, No. 10, which was provocative and poetic. Adjectives, adjectives, I know. But it was. He described a scenario where authorities might instigate the creation of a art spot that would be open irregular hours and appear, in every way, to be avant, underground, etc...

Art School (Propositions for the 21st Century) edited by Steven Henry Madoff looks good.

also

I have applied to be an ArtReach mentor this year. I will be thrilled to be accepted, while I am of course busy I feel a significant debt to the sundry and various people who have helped me since I was a teenager. It would be great to try to pay some of that back in.

One of the ways in which mentors may work with their students in in studio assistant mode (old school!). In the case of my practice, the most pressing need in my studio is to wash and de-label my pint bottle collection, which must be damn close to 1000. This seems kind of unseemly though. Many art materials are "messy" and might require an apron and gloves, but not all art materials are loaded with specific signifiers, like say, a bottle of cheap fortified wine is. Probably inappropriate. But this is what I need help with. Do not want to be a thoughtless mentor.

Verbiage

My output at the end of the Newark Museum residency was a powerpoint I had created by retyping and collaging (zine copier style) different sentences, paragraphs and text fragments from manufacturer directories of Newark, mostly circa 1850-80, and many eras of histories of Newark, including books for children. Will get into why I work with specific time periods later, not in this post.

Anyway it was supposed to be a short film of sorts, allowing me to emphasize pauses and certain words to make a different, more doubtful and subversive narrative about my old standbys, failure and expectations. I can't say I succeeded. There is plenty of bad text art out there, and as a photographer the tension in working with words (which I love doing) is always there.

How about a palate cleanser?

However, I am bound and determined to try to make an artist book from these 2009 efforts. There is always so much text and reading behind every picture I make, it would be nice to show some of the source material. I've proposed to the Print Center that I work with an old, early survey of Newark, which is a beautiful piece of language. The last time I wrote about working with them, I was promising to grow things. The seeds grew sprouts, but I didn't get them into the ground in time. Going to try again this spring. I know, promises, promises...

persistence ...

Gallery Aferro, Lane Cooper, "Blindness"
Gallery Aferro, Lane Cooper, Studio View
Gallery Aferro, Lane Cooper, Studio View

Charing Cross: Newark - video link

I write you

you smile
you say wise things
and guide the orphans we’ve become

thin dry tendrils become fertile laughter
and rings like bells
now more than dogs
greet us at the door
there is plenty
more than enough

and we are not a burden

(The above is an excerpt from the text for the artist book I’m working on.)

The past few months have been amazingly productive for me. The atmosphere of working at Aferro and living in city have created for me an incubator of thought that has been profound. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and work with some of the most committed and thoughtful people I’ve ever known, really an inspiration. Seeing the commitment of Evonne and Emma … and then making new contacts through friends and people now becoming friends … all of this has afforded me remarkable opportunities.

Working with Margret Hjaltested, Malina Rauschenfels and Melissa Bybee has opened up tremendous possibilities in the sound for my pieces. All accomplished musicians, they’re incredibly generous in their time and energies. These connections would not have been possible had Aferro not given me the opportunity to participate in the residency.

My project, “What Persists”, has unfolded in ways that have informed all aspects of my work. The content and visual connections between sound, video, painting and writing have revealed themselves in a way that now I feel my work makes sense as a body.

All of my work productions stem from the understanding of reading and writing. Everything is a text of fragmentary information. We read and fill in the gaps, imaging the bigger picture, giving ourselves a means of understanding. It is why two people to do not, cannot, see the same painting, cannot read the same book, or even hear the same sound. We cannot meet the same person. Each approach fills the gaps differently. This is the home of wonder.

What persists? A infrastructure of meaning … a screen onto which we project … experience … and wonder.

The work continues and I can’t wait to see how it continues to develop from here.

--
so far - production – Extending from my so far while here I’ve produced a number of paintings and completed four videos with sound pieces. Two of the sound pieces were done for me by Malina Rauschefels. I’ve also made good progress on the text for an artist book, although this part of my project is perhaps not as far along as I’d like. In the end I foresee an installation centered around one or two of the videos.

Ecce Homo

On December 11, 2010 Gallery Aferro joined in expressing support for freedom of art and expression by screening David Wojnarowicz's A Fire in My Belly. It is a cause which demands attention and which shows us the same daunting and opportunistic politics which played so viciously in the 1980s.

It is a cause that demands we all perform gestures in the face of it. So for David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujur and my own well-loved Michael ... I offer my own thoughts ...

There is nothing which makes us so human as our awareness of the coming of death. There is nothing which binds us to our fellows so fully as the longing and desire that is grief. When one is so honest as to reveal the substance of this unspeakable, un-writable condition - when one has the courage to forego the affectation of coolness and aplomb and to take the risk of revealing this most fragile, telling internal dialogue that is the knowing of the coming of death and the insatiable longing of grief – we’d best do well and offer our hearts to it. It is only in this profound generosity, this hospitality of the soul, that there can be any relief from the infinite solitude which is the awake human mind. If we are so mean, so limited in our hearts as to not make room for the grief of an-other – then we risk the oblivion of a failed humanity.

...

further reading and writing ...

" The 'Fire' man, Essay by Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post

CBC News Article on artist AA Bronson's response to Censorship of the Smithsonian Exhibit

Website for Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture

Contact for United States House of Representatives

Contact info for the Senators of the 11th Congress

Contact the White House

article about NYC and life as an artist vs. other places

This was an interesting article about living in NYC as an artist. I think this kind of "artist exodus" thing comes up every couple of years, but this struck me because this year I did get to see more of/compare how artists are living like in other places, (berlin, kansas city, santa fe).
Worth reading. anyway all fleeing those people should check out Newark.
Crain's: Artists Fleeing the City

During the term of this residency the project that I am currently pursuing involves an investigation into the varied marks left on the sidewalks in front of the gallery and around the surrounding blocks by chewing gum. My interest here stems from the collective history that each of these marks represent. I’ve approached documenting them as individual compositions whose original authorship is unknown.

Two part silicone ready to be mixed.

Initially my approach was to make castings with flexible silicone rubber molds of the various patterns that I found on the sidewalks outside the gallery space.

Coddles set up to hold the mold rubber.

Silicone curing.

Back in the studio.

Although I liked the idea and process of creating a record of the chewing gum patterns through mold making. When I made castings from these silicone patterns I wasn’t at all interested in the results. The difference in texture between the gum and the concrete was too subtle, to the point of being undistinguishable. I tried adding color and tonal changes in a number of ways to the castings but it always felt like something artificial and disconnected was being added to the surface.

Currently I have begun using photography as a way to document the chewing gum marks on concrete that I was initially interested in. This approach has allowed me to document the random and varied patterns while preserving the high contrast graphic quality of the black chewing gum on near-white concrete.

These are 13" x 19" inkjet prints

hours of happiness below

Really.

http://www.nationalphilistine.com/oh/

Response to my query about female artists

I emailed female artists and curators known from working with Gallery Aferro a request to hit reply with names of female artists-in any media, era and continent-whose work and/or lives they had found meaningful.

This is the list right now. I have typed it in order of response, with any repeats from person to person retained.

I was overwhelmed by the thoughtful and opinionated writing, stories and commentary I got back. I do not have permission as of right now to print it all, but it was inspiring and will not go unused in the universe.

Thank you to you all for your time in sending names, links and stories! At the bottom is my original email, please continue to add to this list.

Sadie Benning
Lynne Hershman Leeson
Shana Moulton
Mary Coble
Rene Green
Marianne Amache
Pauline Oliveros
Kara Walker

Ana Mendieta

Niki de Saint-Phalle

Martha Rosler

Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Adrian Piper
Yoko Ono
Nancy Spero
Ana Mendieta

Paula Modersohn Becker

Elizabeth Murray

Lois Dodd

Joan Snyder

Louise Bourgeois

eva hesse
julia margaret cameron
elizabeth cotten
lady hawarden
adrienne rich
dorothea tanning
claude cahoun
agnes varda

Annette Messager
Cynthia Madansky
Martha Rosler

Yoko Ono

Yayoi Kusama

Lili St. Cyr
Jeanette Piccard

Nan Goldin

Ana Mendieta

meret Oppenheim

kiki smith

mona hatoum

Eva Hesse
Natalie Jeremijenko
Lee Bontecou
Mary Lucier
Steina Vasulka
Dara Birnbaum
Marina Abramovic
Louise Bourgeois
pipilotti rist
Kara Walker
Jennifer McCoy
emily breer
mary lum
Janet Cardiff
Kristin Lucas
shirin neshat

marjetica potrc
Alice Guy-Blaché

Catalina Parra

Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Maria Nordman

Joan Nelson
Eva Hesse
Louise Bourgeois
Lee Bontecou
Nancy Spero
Suzan Frecon
Ann Hamilton
Janine Antoni
Sarah Sze
Arlene Shechet
Johanna Drucker
Ghada Amer
Rosalind Krauss

Susan Sontag

Alluquere Rosanne Stone

louise bougeoise

kiki smith

doris salcedo

ann hamilton

janine antoni

harmony hammond

amy sillman

siobhan liddell

frances stark

tracey goodman

jillian conrad

sarah sze

uta barth

mama anderson

heather rowe

jessica stockholder

polly apfelbaum

linda benglis

sophie calle

ellen gallagher

jessie henson

rita mcdonald

rachel whiteread

mona hatoum

Nancy Spero

Lynne Cohen

Pipilotti Rist

Louise Bourgeois

Swoon

Carolee Schneeman
Ursula von Rydingsvard
Barbara Kruger
Laura Hauptman
Thelma Golden
Linda Nochlin
Carol Duncan

janine antoni
ana mendieta
Marina Abramović
Orlan
Patty Chang
Regina José Galindo

Frida Kahlo

Eva Hesse

Louise Bourgeois

The nameless women that have created the "artifacts" displayed today in museums, especially those that have created the intricate and beautiful textiles, jewelry, and pottery of the Pacific Northwest Native American tribes. African women artists' textile and pottery skills-- some of the most beautiful pottery pieces in the world have come from Africa and derive from women artists, who receive little credit for their inspired works.

Artemisia Gentileschi

Rosa Bonheur

Julia Margaret Cameron

Gertrude Stein

Imogen Cunningham

Dorthea Lange

Frida Kahlo

Meret Oppenheim

Martha Rosler

Hannah Wilke

Yayoi Kusama

Carolee Schneemann

Eva Hesse

Ana Mendieta

Annette Messager

Barbara Kruger

Lorna Simpson

April Gornik

Adrian Piper

Marina Abramovic

Kara Walker

Pipilotti Rist

Janet Cardiff

Jennifer Linton

Dana Schutz

Catherine Opie

Jenny Saville

Janine Antonie

Emily Kame Kngwarreye
patricia piccinini
polixeni papepetrou

Chantal Akerman
Gail Scott
Betye Saar
Ida Applebroog
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Viola Frey
Marisol
Helen Mirra

Ntozake Shange
Nawaal Saadawi
Alice Walker

Lillian Bassman

"Hi everyone

I'm writing female artists and curators that I know to ask for a quick
"hit reply" with a name or names of notable female artists in any media, era or
continent whose work and/or lives mean something to you. We are
developing materials to share with the junior/senior female high
school students participating in Identity Blueprint, our pilot
educational program.

http://www.aferro.org/websitebaker/wb/pages/opportunities/identity-blueprint.php

I am hoping to have our cool flyer and trifold online soon, but if you
would like this info I can share it with you via email more quickly!

We aren't aiming to develop an entire curriculum
per se but simply to have some interesting info about a diverse
selection of artists. Think about how you might have found out about
an artist who matters to you. It might have been in a bookstore or
from a friend. The point is you found out about them and it did
something for you.

The entire program is very much inspired by and shaped around the
activities of working female artists that we have been lucky enough to
get to know through Gallery Aferro. We therefore want to continue this
approach by asking you to contribute names. My personal contributions
include Carrie Mae Weems and Marjane Satrapi, but I think it will be
much, much better list if everyone joins in.

Thank you so much for being who you are, and for contributing to this
project! If you would like to share this call for names with friends,
please do so.
Thanks!"

objects needed

Hello out there. I'm preparing for a show at the Providence Natural History Museum. The museum collection is made up of a lot of things collected by amateurs, and pretty much anyone who wanted to donate to the museum could do so. So they have enormous archives of bugs, butterflies, nests, eggs, rocks, etc, some of which are rotting away, or unlabeled, or stored in cigar boxes. I am soliciting donations from people, and am creating a vitrine that inserts my new donations into the museum's collection. Also, there is a large collection of disassociated labels (lovely phrase!) which are labels- some of which are over a hundred years old- that have been separated from their objects. I am classifying them according to handwriting/label type and installing them in a display case in typical insect-display format. They are so pretty! Anyone who wants to send me an object for the museum collection (your favorite shell or rock, pressed plant, vial of sand or dust, etc) please contact me and I will let you know where to mail things. Or studio residents, you can put things on my desk in my studio. Please include your name, what you know about the item, and where it was found. I'll start installing in about three weeks.
thanks

work ii - persistence

Notes On Derrida, l cooper
Notes On Derrida, l cooper
studio view

We had open studios as part of the Open Doors 2010 event ... alas I didn't take pictures as it was happening. I did make Pen Poems featuring clips of Derrida. It was funny when I gave them out, people often expected my name to be in them. I never thought of that actually. I'll have to consider it.

work

I understand my life and my work as a crocheted crazy quilt. The thread changes, stitches vary in size and spacing, ripples form throughout the fabric even as it grows. The end of each thread is tied to its predecessor, each stitch dependant on its confederates. After a while and with practice it begins to even out, growing into substance. Beautiful here, failed there. My work in every way is a series of minute tasks, deeply linked, one end to another.

In the studio there is the neuroticism of being alone with what one has made and trying to divine its merit. To see what one has done.

And then there is comfort in the comings and goings of others invested in this same way.

Blindness show- Participants needed !

BLINDNESS

MARIA JIMENEZ, MAURA GUYOTE, HEATHER WESTON

SEPTEMBER 20- OCTOBER 2, 2010

Please join us for the opening reception September 20, 6-9 pm

There will be a live performance September 20 at 6 pm, PARTICIPANTS NEEDED!

25 EAST GALLERY

25 East 13th street, NYC

web holes

I spend a lot of time webbing, too much time probably and often it's random stuff. Tonight it was baby jaguar videos on you tube, an article on hand washing, new fall fiction...you get the idea. anyway I came across this art magazine from Canada, Fillip, and it was really fun to poke around. Some of the articles don't appear in full in the online edition, some do, but there was some good reading.

a fine thing ...

It is a fine thing to celebrate art and people on a day like today... its been wonderful the energy around the building as everyone has prepared for tonight’s opening … It looks pretty amazing. Going to my studio has been great watching the galleries transform as work has been installed and everything readied for tonight. I'm looking forward to seeing everything light and inhabited ...


In other news …
Residencies often feel like graduate school … the energy of other artists in close proximity, even when they’re absent, contributes to the work and the thinking.

I’m finally settling in here and beginning to make progress. Today, this morning, as I was preparing to head to New Jersey I think I solved my “book problem.” I have a mental image now of the two books I’m planning. I also have a lead on some music/sound folks to work with for the video project.

In the meantime painting is as painting … and I expect it to move closer to what I need.

So by the end of this residency I should have some success with my “ghost hunting” … video evidence, written documents and some surplus paintings. We will see.

until tonight then...

burgers at tops, from another angle