Wall Text for the Home

As demonstrated by my earlier post on wall text, I love to geek out on museum and curatorial type humor. I suspect that not too many people find these things funny, but I do know that it make me a huge dork. I recently pulled Steve Martin's book Pure Drivel off my bookshelf, which has several hysterical art related essays, and of course I also own the Museum of Bad Art's original collection handbook, now out of print. Is there something about springtime that makes one seek out humorous material (and blog about it)?

I recently stumbled across the below on McSweeney's, a site that I should visit more often, and found this witty take on wall text. Enjoy!

WALL TEXT FROM MY HOME. BY GRAHAM T. BECK
Read more wall text here.
- - - -
Brown Couch, 1999
UPHOLSTERY, WOOD, POLYESTER FILL, ASSORTED STAINS.
PERMANENT COLLECTION.

Undoubtedly one of Beck's best-known works, Brown Couch, 1999 was first shown at the Salvation Army in Poughkeepsie, New York, and has since been a centerpiece in all but one of his full-scale exhibitions.

Its distinctive form, created by the absence of one armrest, draws viewers in and allows sitters to choose between a chaise-longue position and a more conventional posture. Although it has received critical acclaim from all his tall friends, and is where Jack and Kate first made out, recent revisionist critiques by his girlfriend have focused on its threadbare cushions, which are stained on both sides.

------------------------------------------------------------

Jade Plant, 2006

JADE PLANT, SOIL, TERRA-COTTA POT.
SEMI-PERMANENT COLLECTION.

Jade Plant, 2006 is the last surviving part of the Window Sill exhibition of the same year. Started as a way to showcase responsibility and give off an earthy, environmental vibe to his not yet live-in girlfriend, the vegetation-based display failed when he went away to New Mexico for three weeks and didn't ask anyone to water the plants.

Despite long periods of continued neglect, Jade Plant, 2006 has remained alive and mostly green. It frequently elicits the question
"Is that thing dead?"

Art Grab Bag from "Indexed"

All found (and laughed at) on indexed.blogspot.com

Missed the boat on this one...

UPDATE 4/21: Missed it again! Today was a holiday in Massachusetts, so I was doing a little spring cleaning. Low and behold, I didn't check my email until later. Yes, Jeremias, I think we're not meant to have a Starn Twins print. Apparently, Colin and Luke missed the first one too.

So, I didn't check my "personal" email yesterday until after dinner because I was working on our newsletter. When I did, I found the 20x200 special email sitting there in my inbox.

Seeing that it was a Starns Twins Blindspot benefit edition, I knew right away when I clicked on the link that they'd be sold out, and of course they were. A month ago, somehow I did check my email at exactly the right time and was able to snag a Brian Ulrich, which is also totally sold out in all sizes. Alas, I missed this one. This is what I get for not signing up with my work email and attempting to keep work and home spearate...who am I kidding?!

Congrats to those who did get one of these vellum prints, and a huge high five to Jen and Blind Spot!

New England Survey in the Globe! (written by their Pulitzer Prize winning reviewer)

Tuesday was an important newspaper day in Boston. Gracing the front page of the Boston Globe was the Red Sox's opening day at Fenway and the announcement that their own Mark Feeney won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, as noted in the last post.

Humbly for us, Mark Feeney's review of the current PRC landscape exhibition, New England Survey, also ran in the very same Globe. (And super luckily for us, he liked it!) I am thrilled at the confluence of events. I wrote to congratulate Mark, and he modestly replied that it's a win for the paper and different than organizing an exhibition. To his and their credit, we had several people visit today because of his review and lots of calls. Here's to the power of well-crafted words and the media!

You can read Mark Feeney's review of the PRC exhibition New England Survey here.

You can read the official Globe story on Mark Feeney's Pulitzer Prize in Criticism here.

You can read some of his nominated stories here.

Mark Feeney of Boston Globe wins 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism

I am delighted to report that Mark Feeney, resident art, photo, and culture critic at the Boston Globe, has won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism! I just learned about the great news. Congratulations Mark! You so richly deserve it!

I am also honored to report that one of the 10 stories with which Mark was nominated and won was his review for my PRC exhibition Picture Show. I had previously gone on about his insightful commentary and ability to create brilliant turns of phrases before.

You can read all of Mark's nominated, prize-winning stories here, including his reviews of the photographic efforts of several PRC friends -- Kim Sichel's aerial photography show, Arlette Kayafas's Charles Teenie Harris show, and Abe Morell's Mead Art Museum show. Being that we are a smaller non-profit in a largish city, I am thrilled and humbled that Mark has written about our shows so often, or even at all. You can read 5 of Mark's reviews of PRC exhibitions at this link.

I so very much appreciate the time that Mark spends in understanding an exhibition, something that not every critic does, and I know the artists do too. He always asks for all of the wall text and artist statements and spends a long taking in a show. In his writing, you can tell how much he enjoys pondering ideas of all stripes.

Here are some excerpts below from the Boston Globe story and above, a photo by another of my favorite Globe staffers, Dominic Chavez.

From the Boston Globe, Globe writer wins Pulitzer Prize for criticism
By Don Aucoin, Globe Staff, April 7, 2008

Mark Feeney, an arts writer and photography reviewer for The Boston Globe, today was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

It is the 20th time the Globe has won the Pulitzer, which is considered the most prestigious award in journalism, and the second time in the past seven years that the newspaper has won the award for criticism.

Feeney, 50, won for 10 essays on visual culture that ranged from photography to painting and film. A self-described Globe "lifer'' who began working at the newspaper shortly after he graduated from Harvard in 1979, Feeney noted today that the Globe has long made arts criticism a cornerstone of its identity.

"More than anything else, it's about the paper,'' he said of the Pulitzer. "There are so many people who are deserving who don't get it. It's a crapshoot. I'm just amazed, overwhelmed, and really, really pleased that the dice came up for me this time. But it's not just for me. It's for the paper.''

The awards were announced this afternoon at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. ...

Feeney won the Pulitzer for 10 critical essays that suggest the fluency and brio of his writing style, and the range of interests on which he brings that style to bear. ...

"The Globe has a great tradition of reviewers, not just such prior Pulitzer winners as Robert Campbell and Gail Caldwell, but so many others, going all the way back to Michael Steinberg, Robert Taylor, Richard Dyer, Margaret Manning, and several current colleagues whom I will not embarrass by naming,'' said Feeney.

Feeney was born in Winchester, Mass., and raised in Reading, Mass. His mother, Agnes, who still lives in Reading, will turn 90 on Saturday."I've been at a loss as to what to get her for a present,'' Feeney said. "I guess I'm all set now.''

I'm going to New Jersey in my mind...

I won't be able to make it to NJ physically tomorrow, but will be there in spirit. Laurel Ptak (of my fav blog i heart photograph) will be opening her unique show "IS IT POSSIBLE TO MAKE A PHOTOGRAPH OF NEW JERSEY REGARDLESS OF WHERE YOU ARE IN THE WORLD?"

One of my fav artists Pelle Cass will be in the show with the below photograph (along with 189 artists and 1,000 photos). I showed Pelle's work at the PRC in 2003 and sent an email to Laurel on the suspicion that she'd like Pelle's work (she did and featued it online twice!). Pelle came to me in a portfolio review circa 2002, after he had just started working again after 10 years. He blew me away then and just keeps getting better and better. Pelle is one artist that keeps trying new things, something us art types love. His series are different, but related philosophically. We are hungry for new images and ideas and Pelle always delivers (another artist who comes to mind is Neeta Madahar who we've also shown and now is getting the international attention she deserves). You can explore Pelle's work at his web site and see his newest work here.

I love what Pelle said to me about the current PRC exhibition, New England Survey, and my shows in general. He is a great artist and great person. I am a huge fan. To me, it's the best compliment I could ever receive as a curator: "I really like how you can span the poles of photography--wacky and far out to traditional." Yippee!

ABOVE IMAGE: Pelle Cass, DETAIL OF New Jersey Teams (in color order)

BELOW: The whole thing!

A New England poem by a New England poet

Inspired by the current PRC exhibition, New England Survey, and a recent sharing of a Frank O'Hara poem (and perhaps my humble attempt to fill the vacuum left from the Poem of the Week), I share with you a poem by Amherst poet Robert Francis (1901-1987). This landscape photography show was inspired by Francis's poem "New England Mind" (you can read my essay and see images from the show here as well as check out the opening reception snaps here). In addition to his gentle approach to nature, Francis used rhyming, puns, and humor in his work, as demonstrated in the title of autobiography, The Trouble with Francis. Below, I present another Francis poem, the wonderful "The Two Lords of Amherst."

As Bruce is traveling often to Amherst for his memory panoramas and reading lots of Francis himself, I feel like I am getting to know this New England town and alternative to the other Amherst poet quite intimately. For those that aren't familiar with Amherst's town center, you might enjoy knowing that Francis is referring here to a tavern/inn and a church that are actually across a street from one another. Lord Jeffery Inn is named after the founder of the town, Jeffery Amherst; the "Jehovah" named below is Grace Episcopal Church. Both are still in operation today. Enjoy!

"The Two Lords of Amherst"

The two Lords, Jeffery and Jehovah, side by side
Proclaim that hospitality lives and Jesus died.

Jeffery in whitewashed brick, Jehovah in gray stone
Both testify man does not live by bread alone.

From sacred love to bed and board and love profane
One could dart back and forth and not get wet in rain.

How providentially inclusive the design:
Here are the cocktails, here the sacramental wine.

Here is the holy, here the not-so-holy host.
Here are the potted palms and here the Holy Ghost.

Tell, if you can and will, which is more richly blest:
The guest Jehovah entertains or Jeffery's guest.

- Robert Francis


"To make anything interesting," Flaubert says, "you simply have to look at it long enough."

For those interested, we're working with a local writing non-profit, Grub Street, to co-present a workshop in and about the current exhibition on May 3rd. Called Staring and Wonder, the workshop will discuss ideas of staring and looking in literature to kick start the day and then turn to the photographs in the shows for expository inspiration. I am terribly excited by the whole idea and intend to sit in on the first half of the day. More information here.

New Blog & Flickr pics from Fotofest and SPE

The PRC is test running a blog, which will launch SOON...ah the anticipation. All four of us have been secretly posting for a month or so, so when we do announce the url, be sure to read all the posts! The long and short of it is, I am having trouble knowing what to post there and what to post here! As many folks who work at small non-profits, small departments, or just plain small places, life and work mix readily. As a proud blog "mother," I want to give fair time and effort to both (my heart is, of course, still with my first born). I think I've decided the tone will be different, so even if I post on a topic on the work blog, be sure to tune in here for the other side of the story and more fun, witty banter. I'll post the "birth" next week.

Below is my recent post announcing some pics from Fotofest and SPE on flickr.

LKB here again, aka the girl whose brain is mush from being gone for most of March and then deinstalling and installing the next 2 weeks. I promise that I will write many inspired posts giving you the inside scoop as well as tips for these two important industry events in the coming month. However, until I regain my brain cells after looking at what I estimate to have been over 100 portfolios, my flickr pics will suffice.

I just posted on the PRC's flickr site dozens of fun photographs of Fotofest and SPE. Both were amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Houston and Denver, especially the latter. You can see the company with whom I reviewed in Fotofest's Meeting Place session one here and see an overview of all of the SPE 2008 sessions and events here. So, go ahead and enjoy the PRC's flickr pics here or by clicking the above montage!

(To entice you further, there are some great pics of new SPE board member and recent PRC lecturer Arno Minkkinen and some behind-scenes party pics.)

ABOVE FLICKR MONTAGE - CLOCKWISE STARTING IN THE UPPER LEFT:
David Coleman of UT's HRHRC photography collection chats with former Bostonian Jim Stone at Fotofest;
A Fotofest opening - that is Aperture's Lesley A. Martin on the right, our next juror for our PRC juried show!;
Jonathan Singer, John Craig, and new SPE board member Arno Minnkinen look at their fuji prints at the SPE closing dance party;
At the SPE opening reception, from left, Thomas Gustainis, and MassArt alums Caroline Burghardt, Rebecca Sittler, and Bruce Myren (latter now an MFA student at UConn).

Happy Easter/ Happy Spring!

Hope you enjoyed a sunny day! To help celebrate, I went on a holiday picture hunt. Pictured above is an installation from the Annual Washington Post's "Peep Show" contest. You can read more about the creation pictured above, below. Read more about the contest here and see a slideshow of 37 of the more than 800 entries here.

"'Peep Art' -- a reinterpretation of the Pop Art movement and homage to Andy Warhol and his muse Edie Sedgwick -- is a revolutionary concept taking the Peeps Diorama Contest to an entirely different level." ...

What would Warhol think of the diorama?

"He'd think it was awesome," Greenstein says. "Don't you think, Jane? I think it's like the embodiment of his concept of pop art."

- Jane Dokko, 30, Washington, and Ilana Greenstein, 31, Alexandria

AICA awards update! Picture Show gets silver but feels like gold

Here is an update on the 2008 AICA USA awards from the New England region, which were held about 3 weeks ago at the end of Feburary. Yep, you can always count on me to post on the latest, most fast breaking news. HOWEVER, yesterday, an audio review of our awards was released on Chicago's super online arts podcast mag, Bad at Sports. (Well, actually, there is a reason - I was gone for 10 of those days...and promise to do a roundup soon on Fotofest & SPE.)

I am proud as a peach to report that the exhibition Picture Show that I curated at the PRC (and Boston Cyberarts) was mentioned very positively for 4 minutes! In the category of “Best Show in a University or College Gallery," Picture Show took second place at AICA NE, but as stated above, I feel like gold. Thanks again to AICA NE, George Fifield of Cyberarts, and all of the artists in Picture Show.

Art critic Greg Cook (of the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix, and of course, the blog, New England Journal of Aesthetic Research) joined Matt Nash, James Nadeau, and Christian Holland of Big RED & Shiny for the Bad at Sports roundtable at MIT's Stata Center. You can listen to the roundtable of these fine folks discuss all of the shows and more here. If you want to hear the Picture Show part specifically, fast forward about 20 minutes in.

Supposedly, the AICA New England awards won't be held next year so they can concentrate on getting more members (they don't have any $ to do the awards, but each host museum, this year the Rose, helps out). I hope they continue it, as the evening was great for the whole community, allowing big and little guns like me and us to come together. It was truly great. Big RED and Greg Cook hope to maybe have the ceremony morph into something, read more about that here and here.

Here is a round up of AICA and Picture Show links:

• Greg Cook posts on the AICA awards the night they happened
• BRS's blog Our Daily Red gives the AICA rundown as well
• See pics of the Picture Show installation at the PRC here
• Boston Phoenix named Picture Show one of the best of 2007
• Matt Nash's review of Picture Show in Big, Red, and Shiny
• Mark Feeney's review of Picture Show in the Boston Globe
• Greg Cook on the Musee Patamechanique in the Boston Globe

Go west!

I am off on a whirlwind tour -- first stop Houston, Texas for Fotofest, then to Denver, Colorado for the Society of Photographic Education conference. Overall, I'll be gone half of March. So, posting and blog maintenance will be few and far between. I have never been to Fotofest, so I am hoping to pace myself for what will be around 50 reviews over 4 days. I'm in session 1 in good company and look forward to seeing many reviewer and reviewee friends and meeting new ones.

Bruce and I are arriving in Denver early to hit a few confluences on the 40th parallel. (Watch for a pic from the road.) It's always fun at SPE and gets better every year. Highlights of the schedule are sure to be Patrick Nagatani and Edward Burtynsky, as well as welcoming new board member Arno Minkkinen (who recently spoke at the PRC to a sold out crowd) and catching up with SPE friends. Yeehaw!

ABOVE IMAGE: Santa Fe Trail, from the library at my alma mater, University of Texas at Austin's PCL map collection. Hook 'em horns.

Remain in Light

I am always a fan of artist-led, grass roots projects. Recently, I got an email from some fine folks launching a new publication for emerging photographers called Remain in Light, including Boston's own Shane Lavalette. You have until midnight to submit a handful of jpgs, with no trip to the post office needed. (Given the PRC's recent submission postmark deadline, I can only imagine the scene at Boston's main branch on Feb. 15th!) Read more about Remain in Light and the submission specs here.

Photography before Photoshop

The amazing photographer/blogger Amy Stein had a recent post that pointed me to the fascinating blog, Modern Mechanix. This blog purports to showcase "Yesterday's Tomorrow, Today" and features scans, summaries, and entire articles from a variety of old tech magazines. I encourage you to browse the entire photography category, but I will share a few articles that give us an insight into camera and photo trickery before Photoshop...hopefully to remind us that this wasn't that long ago!

From Popular Mechanics, "How to Make Incredible Pictures" (1955). Read the whole article and see the entire spread here.

From is another fun one, Modern Mechanix, "Tricks of the Composite Photograph" (1938). Read and see it here.

Powerpoint punniness

This post is in honor of Bruce, who was just on an ARTspace panel at the College Art Association conference with fellow UConners in Dallas, TX (and got even offered a job in the elevator even though he's not looking and went on to meet the renowned Annie Sprinkle).

It's also dedicated to all of those artists and art historians giving Powerpoint presentations this season at conferences (and my friend Kimberly who just gave a lecture in Europe this week). Without further ado, I share a very funny standup bit about Powerpoint presentations. That is what I said, Powerpoint. Yes folks, it's not only fodder for artwork, but also for comedy. Now watch!

Firefox seems to be having none of youtube and is going in fits and starts.
I recommend re-launching this post in explorer or safari to watch the video.

Digital vs. film storage...

Although not the newest news, the following is worth repeating (and presages my pending post about Polaroid). The New York Times recently reported on the afterlife and storage of cinema, digitally-born vs. film-based:

To store a digital master record of a movie costs about $12,514 a year, versus the $1,059 it costs to keep a conventional film master. Much worse, to keep the enormous swarm of data produced when a picture is “born digital” — that is, produced using all-electronic processes, rather than relying wholly or partially on film — pushes the cost of preservation to $208,569 a year, vastly higher than the $486 it costs to toss the equivalent camera negatives, audio recordings, on-set photographs and annotated scripts of an all-film production into the cold-storage vault. ...

To begin with, the hardware and storage media — magnetic tapes, disks, whatever — on which a film is encoded are much less enduring than good old film. If not operated occasionally, a hard drive will freeze up in as little as two years. Similarly, DVDs tend to degrade: according to the report, only half of a collection of disks can be expected to last for 15 years, not a reassuring prospect to those who think about centuries. Digital audiotape, it was discovered, tends to hit a “brick wall” when it degrades. While conventional tape becomes scratchy, the digital variety becomes unreadable. ...

For now, studios are saving as much of this digital ephemera as possible, storing it on tapes or drives in vaults not unlike those that house traditional film. But how much of that material will be migrated when technology shifts in 7 or 10 years is anyone’s guess.

Of course, still digital photography will also suffer a similar storage dilemma. Besides massive offsite and online storage, which are only bandaids, are we running headlong into a major preservation disaster?

ABOVE PHOTO: Detail of film and ephemera storage in a salt mine, by Mank999. See his Kansas salt mine storage flickr set here, fascinating!

You have 3 days left to be exposed

Although in theory this is a personal blog, life and work merge together when one works at a small non-profit. I want to remind folks that you have until February 15th to get your submission in the mail for the 13th Annual PRC Juried Exhibition, EXPOSURE. Seriously photo folks, don't let this one pass you by! It takes but a second to burn 10 images to a cd and gather your materials! Run, don't walk to the post office. (Not that I am encouraging procrastination, but you can find the branch that is open til the wee hours online for that coveted postmark).

The juror this year is Lesley A. Martin of Aperture, who was recently named one of 2007's "Innovators of the Year." Aperture! This is a golden opportunity for an amazing publisher/book editor to see your work. Aperture has a venerated history and also a track record of discovering new talent (and did I mention, they also publish a magazine and have a gallery??). Not only that, but all of us jurors are a part of a secret society (just kidding), but understand that we do talk to each other and recommend artists to each other. Who knows what this might lead to? Not only that, but gathering up a handful of juried show wins at places like the PRC and its other kindred spirits speaks volumes on your resume. A good investment, to be sure.

Read about the submission details and get the required entry form as a PDF here. See pics of last year's show here. Now, git!

ABOVE: Our poster boy from last year, Jim Turbert. Did you notice how Jim exploded onto the scene after this? We're so excited for him. Visit his fan club and more of his work here.

The Future of Photography at the PRC

Over at the PRC, it's one of our favorite times of the year when even more creativity and boundless verve adorn our walls...that's right, it's the PRC Student Exhibition! 18 of our institutional member schools brought us their 5 best pieces (yes, that is 90 works). Because each program juries as they see fit, we don't see the pieces until they show up on our doorsteps! Our favorite art installer Vinnie and I had a blast playing with the works this past Saturday.

You can check out some of the student work at this audiovisual feature on BU Today. We gathered over a dozen images and students together and the nice folks there did their magic. Click here for the slideshow and here to listen to the students speak quite eloquently about their work. For local folks, there is also a smashing, full-page spread in the Weekly Dig.

Pictured above is the work of our poster child Alan Alan Arsenault, a junior at New England Istitute of Art. I was immediately smitten with this image and knew that it had to be on our postcard. People have been going ape over this picture and deservedly so, it's an amazing piece and series. If you look twice, you realize that this is not an Edgerton: the "bullet" is hanging on a string and there is cotton stuffed into the apple. We also took a lot of behind-the-scenes pictures, installation shots, and portraits of the students and posted them on the PRC flickr site.

Our Daily Red (the blog of Big Red and Shiny) gave us a shout out early on. Mr. Matt Nash points out that the PRC Student Show is "a great chance to see the work of upcoming artists -- and many of the artists we write about on Big RED got started at the PRC." Thanks Matt! (He also has a interesting essay on the future of photography in the current issue of BRS.)

Join us for the dry opening Thursday, February 7 from 5:30 - 7:30pm, where we'll have izzy drinks flowing freely and way more hummus than you can shake a stick at.

ABOVE IMAGE: Alan Arsenault, Exploding the Forbidden, from the series “Edgerton Follies,” 2006/2007, Inkjet print, Junior Photography major, New England Institute of Art