sbook 21

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another TPWC excerpt

...Though I tried to put it off for as long as possible, I soon realized that an encounter with these people was unavoidable, especially with Amanda on the prowl. I couldn’t keep my door closed to them for very long. Geography was partly to blame. Snowden stretches out only a couple of square miles, and subtracting both our property and the Nasserls’, there were precious few places for either party to blend into the background...

sbook 20

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Radius 250

The Radius 250 opening was fun and the show is really pretty good - much better than the images on the website make it seem. Many pieces I thought didn't look good online were actually really good to look at for real. The juror/curator John Ravenal gave a good gallery talk - he seems open and genuinely interested in what contemporary artists are doing, including those outside NYC. I saw some old pals from my ancient Richmond days, I met Martin Bromirski of ANABA (he had a really nice little painting in the show) and I won an award (and got some money!).

I'll write more about it after I visit again and take more pictures.

sbook 19

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sbook 18

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new Bailey project

Mighty blog-poster and crazed artist James Bailey passes along details of his latest project - I've always wanted to do something with those dead spaces inside highway cloverleafs... Here's the info:

Introducing: Temporary Anti-Public Art Project (TA-PAP ™)

The experimental photographer/littoral artist James W. Bailey is pleased to introduce Temporary Anti-Public Art Project (TA-PAP ™).

TA-PAP™ is a Littoral Art Project that attempts to reposition found objects as temporary sculptural creations in an environment that is extremely hostile to the public.

Project Location: Dulles Toll Road Interchange at Hunter Mill Road in Reston, Virginia.

Project Description: This Temporary Anti-Public Art Project (TA-PAP ™) consists of concept development for aesthetic improvements at the interchange of Hunter Mill Road (Route 674) and the Dulles Toll Road (Route 267) in Reston, Virginia. The project involved the relocation of cut tree limbs and arrangement of same in the form of a sculpture for temporary placement at the above location underneath the overpass.

Funding Considerations: The project is funded completely by the artist James W. Bailey. The total fully audited costs for design, development and construction of this project are $11.23. 87% of the project costs were expended for gas, food and drink for project assistants.

Project Timeline: Notice to Proceed was issued by James W. Bailey to the project assistants at 11:30 pm on July 09, 2005. The project was completed on time and on budget by 1:30 am, July 10, 2005. The project will remain available for anti-public viewing until removed by the Virginia Department of Transportation.

TA-PAP ™ Core Mission and Philosophy: TA-PAP ™ seeks to render unsuitably hostile anti-public environments as principal territory for aesthetic improvement. TA-PAP ™ intentionally bypasses the conventional public art context and practice of artist created/government sanctioned collaboratively approved taxpayer financed public art projects by asserting art in the anti-public sphere with no government approval or funding. TA-PAP ™ encourages viewers to risk their comfortable public art viewing patterns by stepping into hostile aesthetic terrain. TA-PAP ™ is inspired by the dearth of public art in the anti-public suburban space. Phase 1 of TA-PAP ™ is designed, planned and engineered to create and manifest art in the hostile anti-public bleak aesthetic suburban realm of Northern Virginia.

How Can I View a TA-PAP ™ Sculpture?
Upon completion of a TA-PAP ™ sculpture, viewers will be provided with the location of the art object in question on the TA-PAP ™ web site.

All TA-PAP ™ sculptures are intended for temporary display (for the most part they will be constructed on space that is anti-public by definition of being difficult, hazardous or dangerous for public access).

Interested viewers of the TA-PAP ™ sculptures will be encouraged to visit the disclosed sites ASAP prior removal by regulatory agencies and/or authorities that have legal jurisdiction over the space where the sculptures have been constructed.

All completed TA-PAP ™ sculptures will be photographed for archival purposes.

CONTACT FOR MORE INFORMATION:
James W. Bailey
TA-PAP ™

TPWC excerpt

...My wife’s attitude was different. The way she reacted that morning to the prospect of having new neighbors only illustrated this point, for it was Amanda who awoke, letting a torturous slit of sun creep in through the blinds as she gave me the blow by blow on the ruckus next door. I continued to doze, or at least tried to.
“I think there’s, what, maybe five of ’em in all,” she said, leaning against the window glass. From our second-story window, she could see over the hedge that divided the two properties.
“Yup. One, two, threeeee, No. Four in all.”
Having judged the size of this colony settling in on the opposite side of our property line, she continued, the little suburban anthropologist that she was, taking verbal notes, and relaying them to me as I shoved the pillows against my head.
“Listen, she whispered. “What’s that they’re speaking? They must be Italians.” She always pronounced the word “Italian” with a long “I,” as in “ice.”...

The Problem With Chemistry

Roger Noyes and I are releasing our new project The Problem With Chemistry. Noyes wrote the short story, and I added images which we are now publishing as a book.

The Problem With Chemistry is about a man's interactions with a new neighbor. 27 pages, black and white, 5.5 x 8.5 in.

The book sells for $4 from us but will be available online elsewhere soon - email me if you want to buy a copy. To launch it, we'd like to make 5 copies available for free to the first 5 people to email me with their mailing address.

Noyes and I previously collaborated on the poem/picture book Other People's Schemes (available from usscatastrophe).

sbook 17

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sbook 16

The day Violet was borned.



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2 things

Via Personism (nice O'Hara reference!), there's an opportunity to participate in Ryan Watkins-Hughes' Shopdropping project - he "relabels" stuff and then reverse-shoplifts them back into stores. He's doing a collab thing where you can send him 2 copies of art and he'll do the rest - one going into a store, one into a gallery show. Very cool sneaky scheme.

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The NYTimes has the opening of a Klee museum in Switzerland and the story of how much of a crazy drawer he was. I was randomly reading a Klee essay this weekend where he compares an artist to a tree.

news and hype

Pleasure in Troy, NY, 18 x 24


Some upcoming shows I'll have work in:

Radius 250
Group show at Artspace in Richmond VA, juried by John Ravenal, VMFA Curator.
Work in show: Los Arboles and Pleasure in Troy, NY
07.22.05 - 09.18.05


True Defenders of the Craft
Solo show at Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville VA
Opening 11.04.05


Space-Domestic
Group show at McLean Project for the Arts in McLean VA, curated by Jiha Moon
06.22.06 - 07.29.06


I've also started updating my website - news and press here, new images online next week.

sbook 015

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Violet

One month old today!

regionalism

Over at Artblog.net Franklin asks about regionalism and what a regional style would look like. I've lived in six cities in the past decade and didn't see a regional style in any of them - the closest was in Austin where many of my professors had a narrative painting style, but there were lots of artists there doing completely different things. The only regional differences were is how much money was floating around to support all the crazy stuff, but the styles were all mixed up.

The problem with regionalism now is how easy it is to find a community online for one's work when it doesn't fit into an area's narrative. I don't know many artists here in Charlottesville, but I've been able to hook up with people who do work right along the lines of mine via email, blogs and websites. It's might not be as rewarding as hanging out after openings, but I do have relationships (including collaborative art projects) with artists from DC to Denmark.

When people ask me where I grew up I say the suburbs of DC in northern Virginia, but I also add that that landscape and culture is remarkably similar to Richmond's West End, to North Austin, to the outskirts of Albany and the depths of Long Island. I have more in common with someone who grew up near the malls outside St. Louis than I do someone who grew up 10 miles from me in urban DC.

Regionalism in art is as meaningless as regionalism in politics - there really aren't any red or blue states, just shades of purple. In DC, Kelly Towles shows his graf-inspired work next to J.T.Kirkland's precise minimalist pieces. I'm not saying "Let's all get along" and "there's room for everyone" - I mean that it's mattering less and less where you are when you make your work when you can find support and community among people outside your immediate area. Besides, regionalism probably wasn't real anyway - I'm sure in the heyday of the New York School there were plenty of artists doing all kinds of different things - they just didn't make it into the history books.

PS: One exception though - money - that matters a lot and I am still learning that to get work shown and sold where you are really does matter. So my thoughts above are naive and hopeful but in the end kind of bone-headed.

sbook 014

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This post is part of a series documenting my current sketchbook.
Earlier entries: sbook001, sbook002, sbook003, sbook004, sbook005, sbook006, sbook007, sbook008, sbook009, sbook010, sbook011, sbook012, sbook013.