B&W Issue 136: Tim White, "Small Wonders.”

"The result is a body of work that feels akin
to the echoic unfolding of a Gertrude Stein
poem, wherein the richness of its content is
derived from the calm sustain of what Stein
calls “insistence.” White’s photographs are an
insistence to look closely, until the stem of a
ripe fruit becomes the curve of the body of a
loved one...

This is the language of poetry—the reconfiguration
of a rigid structure into a new form." Full text here

Dialogue at JNG, 5.19.18

I'm struggling to discern how images- colors, subjects, values, theme...- fit within this, these current matrices; learning how to convey what my work can mean given the visual glut. A colleague recently quoted Richard Dawkins in relation to whatever it is I/we apparently do: “There is an anaesthetic of familiarity, a sedative of ordinariness which dulls the senses and hides the wonder of existence. For those of us not gifted in poetry, it is at least worth while from time to time making an effort to shake off the anaesthetic... but we can recapture that sense of having just tumbled out to life on a new world by looking at our own world in unfamiliar ways.” Thanks Allen.

 

Video here.

B&W Issue 127: Joe Aguirre, “Your memory, your everything, and the in-between.”

"Few photographers can move so fluently between images of children, coitus, fellow commuters, or natural disasters as Aguirre. His balance of the chaotic and static, the ordinary and extreme, and our public and private selves is adroit, and expansive. Like the world’s shortest story, apocryphally attributed to Hemingway, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn,” unwritten volumes, and worlds exist before and following his shutter’s comprehension. Aguirre initiates, rewards, and places faith in our own potential for developing, and exchanging voluble, wordless stories." full text here

Oh, you again.

Nice accidentally running into yourself; this from a didactic at the Tweed Museum's "1000 Words" exhibition, which opens formally September 22. "Vance Gellert's body of work, titled Sleeping Giant (from the Ojibwe word "Mesabi"), shows a people struggling with economies of dwindling scale, resource management, and  conservationism coming into conflict with entrenched practices. Though he describes his subjects as “indomitable,” mythically heroic in their efforts to wrestle a meager living from rock, his photographs navigate a terrain caught between the brute scale of mining operations and an imperiled middle-class existence — as in a panoramic image of backyard playgrounds perched atop an open ore pit... Even while heavily focused on matters concerning industry and extraction, Gellert’s attention to ways of life that merit retention — high school hockey, porketta, civic engagement, Finnish heritage — show just how tenuously held such things are." From Well Beyond Lake Wobegon, MNArtists.org. Full article here

Common Threads Uncommonly Seen

"Like ancestry, the arts we sometimes diminish as decorative, or domestic are powerful conduits of inarticulable meaning. Such things sustain us, transmit lore, and retain traditions. They aren’t immutable law, or impenetrable doctrine; they’re matters that sustain, enfold, and nurture us without demanding genuflection- just engagement. We do so unwittingly, at times ungratefully. 4North affords the opportunity to hold offerings we seldom notice in higher regard." Full text here

Well Beyond Lake Wobegon

Here is my most recent article for MNartists.org on the Tweed Museum's reopening (where I hope you'll make time for their sweeping new offerings). I've tried to at least glance on three themes: that the Arrowhead realize aspirations to have a more critical arts culture, that its various arts organizations continue to recognize the diverse public they serve, and that we remain committed to stewarding our vast creative resources. "Whether the Tweed Museum can maintain the precarious position it has placed itself in, as both stewards of contested notions of culture and promoters of a wider discourse, remains to be seen. That said, it is off to an engaging new start, and credit is due for its willingness to pose complicated questions. Museums can and should provide more than merely balming experiences. The Tweed’s offerings boldly remind us that a more nuanced, larger world exists and that, whether we are encouraged or goaded by what we see there, we are obliged to engage it." Full text here. T.W. 7.14.16

Shawna Gilmore's Peaceable Kingdom

I've again had the good fortunate (on St. Patrick's Day, of course) to call broader attention to the Arrowhead region's unique creative culture; this time covering the charming work of Shawna Gilmore.

"Gilmore's works don't lament innocence as a quality lost, but rather as one allowed to atrophy  — still within our grasp if we can resist a need for certainty and prescribed meaning. Her representations prompt such curious questions as: What would a young girl and a bear have to say to each other (Speaking With Bears)? Or, why might masked pixies be circling a bonfire (Firelfies Around the Flame)? What possibilities might arise if we were to cede to ambiguity and become comfortable with less than absolutely knowing? I appreciate the trust she places in a viewer’s own imaginative capabilities. Full article: here