wonderroot

An interview I did with Floyd Hall for WonderRoot came out today.  I always get nervous about listening back to these things...I avoided it for a bit, anticipating a lot of fist-in-mouth moments and assumed I would probably end up making a post where I reworded or revised my answers. Who would of thunk, everything turned out just fine.  There's always more for me to say about everything we talked about, but overall, it was a pretty thorough sweep.  

Take a listen here!  And be sure to check out the rest of the podcast - there are tons of really great interviews with other local Atlanta artists.

THIN SKINNED

We will be sitting in the gallery Saturdays and Sundays until 6! Come by and check it out.  We have small, affordable paintings ($5 affordable…), pins, and patches.

We will be sitting in the gallery Saturdays and Sundays until 6! Come by and check it out.  We have small, affordable paintings ($5 affordable…), pins, and patches.

EMBROIDERY

I have been looking up embroidery, trying to decide if this is a medium I’d like to indulge and incorporate, or if I already have enough on my plate. I feel like it’s a natural progression of where my work is at already…but sometimes my ideas move faster than my output can handle. I look back and feel like I wish I had more work to evidence each of the concepts I digested at any given point. Will my mind ever slow down? There are worse things I guess…

I found this really great place NEAR ATLANTA! called Japanese Embroidery Center – I will let them describe themselves:

“The Japanese Embroidery Center (JEC) is a nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to preserve and promote the cultural heritage of Japanese embroidery through the pursuit of Nuido™, The Way of Embroidery. The word Nuido™ is made up of two parts; Nui, or embroidery (also shishu), and Do, the way of Nui refers to the acquisition of technical skills and knowledge. Do refers to the development, and constant discovery, of the spiritual components of the art of Nuido™. Nuido™ has three aspects: the acquisition of technical skills and knowledge (rationality), the development of artistic sensitivity and awareness (sensitivity), and understanding the spiritual aspects of shishu (spirituality), resulting in a state of peace, calm, and harmony.”

http://www.japaneseembroidery.com/

I am definitely drawn to the intention and ritual, the idea of meditation before working, having a sensei, everything about it really. And good on them for getting over here and further taming the wild, American beast. An information video on the site said the hardest thing about teaching students in the States was getting them to shut up during class – we can be so obnoxious as a culture, like a toddler. –I probably, wont be able to get in and take a class until next year, but I’m glad to know it’s there for me when I’m ready.

I love that the  students of the Japanese center learn gardening and appreciation for nature’s role in their craft.  It isn’t really clear whether or not they are introduced to silkworms and if that’s what they are working on maintaining in their garden, or if they are simply growing their own food.  Either way, I think hands-on interaction with the earth is essential in maintaining a tradition and culture of ‘big picture’ understanding.

There may come a time when I will only use found material.  This is hard for me because I love paint so much, but as a medium, it’s completely artificial…or at least in the ways I indulge it.  I want to find a more sustainable, but simultaneously archival, way around this.  I know I can make my own pigments out of plants and household items, but the way I’m painting currently, this isn’t really practical.  The dilemma itself really is the greater umbrella concept of my work: the intoxicating trap of artifice and the quest for ways to find the purest relationship with the natural world possible, coming from an honest evaluation of where we stand today on our journey as humans on earth.  I’m not too beat-up by the conflict as it applies to my personal work though – I’m confident I will arrive naturally and gradually at solutions that make sense and support my ideals.

…So do I paint on the fabric and then embroider on top? or do I pour paint on top of embroidery. Probably BOTH! Playing with stitches will be added to the bank of stuff to play with while I’m in Vermont. OH! This is perfect considering I will be meditating and yoga-ing daily. So excited.

the featured image:

from the series Red Sky at Night by Rebecca Ringquist — Bounty, 2011, 60 x 32, Embroidery and machine stitching on found fabric

http://www.packergallery.com/ringquist/index.php

YOLKspace

So it has been decided.  The name of my home gallery/studio/eventspace/what-have-you is officially YOLKspace.  Despite all the uncertainty, “yolk” was the original idea – funny how it always works out like that.

YOLK – I think of it as a sort of incubation chamber of concepts, a source of vitamins and minerals.  We will see what the future holds….

MULLED ART: dig myself out

what i'm interested in regards to painting:

• spontaneous gesture
• obsession
• compulsion
• neurosis
• self picking at
• self flagellation
• internal vs external
• alienation
• power struggle
• power play
• bursting at the seams
• over-pouring
• drips
• drops
• splitters and splat
• paint as blood
• paint as skin
• paint as mud
• paint as its own wild animal
• paint as snot and scabs
• paint as scum
• grit
• grime
• wabi sabi
• paint as easy to handle
• paint as hard to hold

this list makes me feel like i should be more abstract...

....it also makes me want to paint more portraits.

by: hannah helton

ART RANT: angry about art fees

I hate applications, they infuriate me. But it's much more than that.  Applications are just a trigger.  I guess I feel about it the way certain great nation folk feel about having their picture taken.   I lose a little bit of myself every time.

Ultimately, I mother.fucking.hate.this.system - the art world in general...

I guess I'll start with the first and most basic issue: APPLICATION FEES.  I don't think enough people outside of the art world know about this.  It's pretty simple: you have to pay to apply to different notable art thingies (residencies, gallery shows, etc). ... Because, you know, artists make enough money to shell out $40 here and there all willy-nilly.  I understand the galleries aren't making much money either and ultimately they need to pay people for the time it takes to go through all the applications or whatever, but fuck that noise.  I DONT WANT TO HAVE TO PAY YOU TO LOOK AT IT.  This is so deeply degrading I can't even stomach it.  In my sound mind I should consider it an investment.  I should say to myself, "This is just part of it, play the game, get your work out there."  But these rationalizations only further infuriate me.  I don't want to think of art as a game.  I don't want to comply with "the way things work" like some great hand of god designed some sort of fixed system. WE build this world. The way we encouraged primp and pimp our work and put it up against the others is only making group shows feel like pageants with no real intention other than to clumsily showcase 'the big names'.  Art is supposed to be the one space in humanity we keep sacred from that shade of bullshit.  Every chance to show work should be a chance for us to get together and make something really flipping cool.  I'd much rather us be a critical system that encourages conversation. Isn't that how it's supposed to be? I want an art world that comes together to create things that celebrate the individuals, rather than one where people work by themselves to celebrate themselves. (But this doesn't mean collaborating for collaborations sake.  I want to find people I can make something real with.  People to amplify one another's visions and voices, not names.  Actively challenge each other to move forward.)

But what actually challenges us often times first hits as a sense of repulsion.  Most people won't venture this far.  They comply and indulge in the comfortable and the palatable.  There is nothing wrong with this...I just wonder if people know that's what they're doing. For those who want to learn, who want to grow wild and free - chase fear.  Chasing happiness is like having a political debate with someone who agrees with you.  It can be really nice, and re-afirming, and there is definitely a place for it, but when over-indulged it becomes empty, non-productive and boring.

It seems that those whose work I admire the most are recognized the least.  But the things that hold them back are the things that make them great artists in the first place.  They are incubators, self-criticizers, never-good-enough neurotics. They tend to feel a desperate need to protect their art because every other part of them has been made to feel so deeply violated or under appreciated, it is the only thing they feel they really have. This is why their work is so important, and in someways to me, more important.  The current art world model not only refuses to nurture these people, it actively seeks to discredit them.  Like if they're good enough they'll learn how to fight their way up and out.  But I want an art world that doesn't ascribe to that bullshit idea of cream rising like every other depraved industry out there.  We have enough outlets to celebrate our cutthroat and competitive nature.  I want something better.  I wish people would learn to base the quality of the artist on the quality of the work, not how effectively they've learned to say their own name.  It should be the job of the gallery to find these people and expose them, not to shame them away with applications.

--Painting is my longest love.  And I hate the way I am asked to talk about it.  I took this last year off and refused explain myself in the traditional channels of the art world (and all its applications).  To wake up and just make, or even choose to not make.  To reenter a more organic and natural state of painting that doesn't require or demand "making it" or "selling it" or "showing it."  And in this time I still made. And I still showed. I found that I am not against the idea of communicating about my art, I am fundamentally apposed to the atrocity of "selling" it.  ...and to clarify, I am not the least bit opposed to people buying my work, rather I'm wary of feeling like I am MAKING them buy it.  I feel such a disconnect between the art and the non-art world.  Most people would rather buy an ikea print than a real painting.  Why?

I am not afraid of money, and I don't think wealthy people are intrinsically evil. I'm not upset that art and business are in cahoots with one another, I just want to be art to be valued more for what it is.  I want an art less manipulated.  An art less mindlessly appreciated.  An art less told what to do and how to be to get by. I know I'm not ready in lots of ways, and I don't pretend to be.  This whole thing drips with generalizations and contradictions and has no real specific examples to back it up.  I know this.  But it's a raw screaming feeling I can't seem to overcome and has been reverberating in my lungs for years.  This is not how it should be, this is not how it should be.  I want artists to take over the art market, but then who would pay for everything?  I want people with money and good taste to take over the art market, but would they further neglect the ugly things?  I feel so helpless I could cry.

...but while the coldest-air-in-a-long-time is upon us,  I want to stand outside and let it freeze-burn the tip of my nose.  I want battle scars.  I don't want to protect myself or my work anymore; I want to live a full life.  I want to react and enact and play and scream and sing and this must be why I paint.  It is basic, but I always need reminding.  THIS wild feeling is the only thing that really matters to me. fuck the whole need to apply.  fuck it.