Cupped n Capped

Photograph by Nicole Craine

This image makes for an excellent object to have a bit of controversy surrounding it. It's beautiful, innocently so, endearingly honest, and dare I say tastefully executed. Any vulgarity of subject attached to it, any sense of shame, is constructed completely by those attempting to censor it - in the end only making the censors themselves look absurd.

Image taken from Creative Loafing site

I'm not sure if this is driven more by a shame of one's own body or a fear that other's may be inspired into an awareness of their own.

Censorship is fascinating. Speaking of, I'm reading this excellent book at the moment.

It gives an argument for the pivotal role censorship has played in relation to modern art. Censorship may be inherently bad but it's spawned many an incredible thing.

Having now become a bit of a martyr Craine's image stands a chance of getting the attention it deserves.

It really is lovely.

No Day

The weekend started out innocently enough.

Allison Smith, A Good Haul (Or, an inventory of objects found by Huck and Jim in the house that was floating down the flooded Mississippi River), 2010, mixed media

The Contemporary

for the Stephen Schofield and Dana Schutz talk.

Both of whom were incredibly genuine and open to discussing studio practices (which, interestingly, greatly differ: Shutz a more traditional painter working in the studio long hours under superficial lighting while Schofield draws much inspiration and material sources from his home, and other facets of daily life).

The question came up of defining success and both artists nimbly worked their way around answer it. Though it was reaffirming to hear Shutz say she very rarely tasted a feeling of success in her studio and whenever she did it was fleeting at best.

The struggles of an artists.

What else? For her personally, Shutz does not think the word "process"appropriately describes the act of painting. Mixing the paint is a process, but the somewhat subconscious act of actually painting is an organic, fluid, action; a set of responses as the painting unfolds.

That night the Skulz and I made our crawl down Ponce.

Tamara Argo "Untitled"

Look at this penguin with C-cups at Young Blood. No doubt a monstrous foreshadowing of things to come.

Jennifer Jenkins, "Hang II Stage" Intaglio, 17"x14"

And there was this nice diptych at the Kibbee Gallery print show "Glitter and Ghouls".

Cats.

Who needs 'em?

Had to pay our respects at Church.

I swear these exact same lights hang in the sanctuary of my grandmother's Baptist church is South Carolina.

Though I don't remember a rooster in the bathroom.

Speaking of Sundays and the evenings therein.

When the sky dumped a short burst of snow

and the last place you'd want to be is the interstate

and the first place you'd want to be is Grant Park around 2am.

Who's got the half broken trashcan lid?

Turns out sledding on an old baby crib mattress really pads the ride down.

Fresh powder

and frolicking deer-like creatures.

Food goes gourmet when you're snowed in

and the sleds get inventive. Baby pool might have been my favorite (at least in theory).

Air mattresses did not seem to hold up as well as one might have hoped.

Trees shed ice leaves

Someone turned a BMX bike into a sled.

After sliding down a hill using my face

we retreated and made biscuits

or whatever

Done and done.

Horse in a sweater

Junior gets so excited when it snows he can barely contain himself.

He was humping every snow covered thing in sight.

Talk Sweet Nostalgia

Maybe the blog ought to be all blown out foetoes.

Your imagination can conjure all the details.

Truths illuminated. Life's subtle nuances laid bare.

"Clearing" 2010, oil on canvas, 24"x36"

Or there could be pictures of paintings that make me think of pictures.

"Snag" 2010, oil on canvas, 20"x16"

Like this gem of a painting.

"Obstacle" 2010, oil on panel, 24"x39"

Mark Leibert's show Interstices at Sandler Hudson Gallery seems like a reverie through some idyllic past. Story book quality in thin brushy layers, filmy as memory itself.

"Dragon Lade" 2010, oil on canvas, 18"x26"

And tinged with a yearning for what may have been lost - or more realistically - never was. The paintings feel like daydreams; escapist and wistful, though less than hopeful in their stubborn longing.

Maybe it was the jet flying through a green-tinged aged sky, or Leibert's ability to capture a nostalgia within the paintings that is more often found in photographs, but it brings Wolfgang Tillmans to mind.

Specifically his Concorde series. Tillmans would photograph the jets flying overhead from varying vantage points, presumably as he went about his daily routine.

Photography as a medium is enriched by time, becoming increasingly surreal and layered as it ages. Tillmans had a way of making the iconic jets look like relics of the past, packaged memories, even before they were permanently grounded.

Interstices: an intervening of space or an interval of time.

Despite the comparison I would say Leibert's paintings touch on nostalgia in a very different way than photography - it's a construct rather than involuntarily attached. The paintings exist outside of time to some extent, daring to be flamboyantly irresponsible in their attentions.

An adolescent boy who misses summer.

Yearning to fly somewhere exotic.

Eat fresh fruit again.

To go for a walk in a warmer place.