New Video work #2
In progess Fabrication
Here to There as Place (Readings from Alexander Wilson)
New Video Work!
View of Giving Attention at GSU
Essay on BurnAway: "Contradictions"
Progress on a new sculpture. To be a part of a series of "Fabrications"
Giving Attention at Georgia State University
I am excited to announce that I was invited to be a part of a group show titled Giving Attention at Georgia State University's gallery.
Statement:
Curated by Mike Wsol, Assistant Professor of Sculpture and Welch Faculty Research Grant recipient, this exhibition includes work from artists that give attention to overlaps, distortions, and mutations of nature and the artificial. Supported by Georgia State University’s Center for Collaborative and International Arts (CENCIA). Participating artists: Kellie Bornhoft, Amandine Drouet and Leisa Rich.
http://artdesign.gsu.edu/artgallery/giving-attention/
The included works are Perched, IT'S AS REAL AS YOU MAKE IT and Saving the Lost
Studio Visit with Stacey L Kirby on Burnaway
I had the opportunity to meet with Stacey in her studio and discuss her recent show at CAM Raleigh as well as her other work.
Residency at Artspace
Week 1
Balloons with a Z
Happy New Years. I got to collaborate with a bunch of Raleigh artists on this fun installation at Flanders Gallery in Raleigh.
www.flandersartgallery.com/exhibition/balloons-z
Camp
Review on David Colagiovanni's The Shredder Sessions
http://burnaway.org/shredder-sessions-david-colagiovanni/
Reading Adorno on Beauty
In the process of considering our attraction to Nature or False Natures I have been investigating the concept of beauty. This morning while reading an excerpt of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory from Documents of Contemporary Art: Beauty I came to some reflections I thought I might share.
Beauty is the pleasure giving quality of an object, place or experience. It is entirely subjective yet culturally agreed upon. While the shallowness of our cultural defining lines that come to mind give me the feeling of disgust, without the concept of beauty our interaction with the world would convert goodness to greedy survivalist motives and barbaric sensibilities at best. Beauty is the appreciation and even intelligence humans respond with to our environments.
The concept of beauty in itself has been so far over romanticized that the "exodus" from the "realm of practical ends" that beauty has turned on itself. What was once pure and beautiful has been seized, marketed and sold at the high cost of the original.
Beauty itself has been falsely impersonated by greed. We are told what is beautiful, where to get it and what it costs. But that is not true beauty. The florist sells lies and the make up counter sells packaging.
Beauty happens when we exceed the practical. That doesn't point to impractical but something else. Beauty is not what doesn't make sense, but what goes beyond sense.
When applying these ideas to my work I have grief. At one time the perfect landscape was beauty. But the moment when we try to attain, recreate or impersonate it the original is stained.
Video Stills
These video stills were taken from the North Carolina Musuem of Natural Sciences.
Lawn
In and Out of Borders
In the past year, my life has consisted of traveling to over a dozen countries and moving timezones three separate times. Space has become present in the forefront of my mind and the identity that space itself adopts seems to come from a combination of both Nature and Culture and the combat between the two. Meanwhile across the world missiles are flying, people are being executed, and violence is escalating due to the definition of borders. The emphasis on ownership and use of space seems to be ingrained into our identities.
Questions I'm Exploring:
How do we categorize the value in a bordered space? Resources? Recreational use? Demand? Historical (Spiritual) Memory? Cultural invention? Educational and preservation potential? Ownership and size?
Why do we construct and elaborate scenery in some places and neglect others?
If the borders tend to fall on what we do and do not own, then are we looking to build up our corner of land to view for ourselves or for others to view us?
Why do we more often look to enclose and draw borders than to join spaces together?
"Captivity"
In progress screen shots of new video work.
cut in & cut out
Just some play with images in my sketchbook.
Studio Window Sketch
After researching landscape paintings and spending a suspiciously long time in front of them at museums, I feel like I have come to very few conclusions about why they exist, how they effect us, and the extension of their honesty. I have done a few quick exercises of making them myself. There is an astounding since of accomplishment in feeling as though you can mimick greatness. Almost like a feeling of conquering a beauty as your own, while simultaneously neglecting to realize the emptyness of your creation in the midst of the real thing.
Drawing is not my thing, really it's kind of like yoga for me; a practice that stretches and slows my mind even though the product rarely reflects the intention. Strange things happen in my mind when I am drawing. I start to see the image as a completely idealized version of what's on the paper. That's when I found the attractiveness of landscape. It's in the illusion. The painter is illusioned of conquest, and the viewer is illusioned of experience. All interest in the actual place is lost and in its place a hope for this imagined image to exist is gained.