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

Karen Savage Blue, The Past is Prologue

Part of what I'd consider my "job" in Duluth is to call attention to the uniquely talented individuals of the region. Karen Savage Blue is a soft-spoken, articulate artist deserving even greater prominence. I've linked below to the full article on MNartists.org below; here's a small excerpt:

"Savage Blue's images are often small — not diminutively so, but they don't require scale to overwhelm a viewer their virtuosity. She depicts the things right at our feet, just out the window, and farther afield. Surfaces are at times glassy and serene, rough-hewn and hatched-into at others. Her palettes range from dusky tones punctuated with high-key flecks to the luminous, and nearly fauve. Her subjects vary from the minutely observed, as in Dakota Fruit, to expansive views of Lake Superior.  Even her name underscores this range, conveying the heavily-freighted admiration/derogation in tropes of noble savagery tempered by “Blue,” together suggestive of balancing alternations between the wild and the somber." Full text here

Duluth, So Far.

Image credit: Aaron Reichow Photography

This blog has lain fallow for far too long, but I've been anything but dormant. This past August I was awarded a grant to produce my first book of photographs, captioned by 21 highly-gifted poets, songwriters, and authors from the Northland. We're near to going to print, and I hope to have sample pages to share soon. I've also just finished a year's worth of a weekly photo feature called "Selective Focus" for the website Perfect Duluth Day. I'm proud how we've shifted the visual discourse from pretty pictures of the region's abundant natural assets, to foregrounding the people that live, work, and play here. It's often stressful, but I'm used to "herding cats" from my collective's past exhibitions. I've also been sowing the seeds for alternative shows that return agency to viewers, and employ art to build community, and was honored that the Duluth Art Institute allowed me to blather on about these beliefs in their current news magazine (DAI FAll News Magazine). I'm also happy to announce that two of my works were recently acquired by the Tweed Museum of Art. While validating on a professional level, it is even more gratifying personally to have found a place for my work here in my new home. Bracing now for an interesting Winter.

The 60th Annual Arrowhead Regional Biennial

A very long road took me to Duluth, Minnesota. That is why it's especially gratifying to at last (in print at least) begin giving back to my new home, and to be able to call merited attention to the work of people who've become friends, advisors, and allies in realizing positive change. To say that devastating personal losses are an opportunity to build our resilience is kind of a tired cliché for anyone mired in them. But I can now vouch, having come through another side of grief, that there's some truth in this bromide. Art is a tonic for struggle, a way we leave our metaphorical and literal marks, and it is sustenance. Here's to all of us still striving. 

"Having an ever-changeable body of water like Lake Superior in your midst on a daily basis affects people, perhaps in particular those committed to making art. It  creates an awareness of matters that are tenuous, conditional, and frequently shifting.  The artworks chosen for the 60^th Annual Arrowhead Regional Biennial demonstrate this cognizance in subtle, at times funny, sometimes sobering ways.  It is notable, the number of objects that have been torn into, abraded, and otherwise distressed. Their recurrence calls to mind the precarious balances artists negotiate -- between expression and income, prestige and self-regard, utility and uselessness." Full text here

Kip Praslowicz, "Lake Effect," B&W Magazine Issue 103

Though I'd hoped to be be looking back on this frigid trip from a sunny Spring vantage (nope: still Winter now 3 days from April), it's still fun to re-visit. Thanks again to Kip, Will & Wendy, The New Scenic, Rich Narum, Emily Norton, Gaelynn Lea Tressler, Alan Sparhawk, Chris Monroe, Kevin Kling, Fitger's forgiving staff, Big Bill Meier & Ami Stenseth, Roscoe's Pioneer Bar, and that generous nurse at St. Scholastica. 

"Like his art, Kip's hometown oscillates almost effortlessly between the grounded and the buoyant, the lofty and the low; after all- the distance from the manor to the dive is more proximal there, the divisions less stark. Again, I credit that grand horizonless lake- a thing to make one recurrently mindful of their relative significance, a great leveller of hierarchies, and one hell of a view." Full article here

B&W Magazine Issue 99, October 2013

It must be mid-Autumn in California, because the profile of Alex Veledzimovich in the October 2013 issue of B&W Magazine is on newsstands now. It was a privilege to bring this highly original, photographer from Belarus to the attention of a wider audience. If what Alex considers "world dharma" has any suasion, his path should only become more brightly illuminated. 

 "...the theatrical elements of his work have moved from the margins to become more strongly foregrounded. Props are given 

greater prominence— a paper moon, a cardboard rocking horse, a doll, or wings made of cardstock— while his images’ themes are less escapist counterpoints like coupling, occupations or parenthood. Despite the more burdened postures of figures in these recent works, the grace notes they hold do not look to me like flags of surrender, and seem more like emblems of protest— asserting that no matter how we arrive at our individual entropy, we will carry a vestige of something not as jaded, something more uncritically hopeful, and engaged." Full text here.

Alex Veledzimovich, coming to B&W, October 2013

Covering Alex Veledzimovich for an upcoming issue of B&W Magazine presented one of those rare opportunities to merely bring a deserving artist the attention of a wider public:

"...There is a directorial mind at work here, one of an auteur who creates what could only superficially be taken for incidental while making highly deliberated artistic statements. Through their staged qualities, Alex’s works accomplish something beyond mere documentation. Werner Herzog once flogged Cinema Verité for confounding fact and truth, stating that “fact creates norms, and truth- illumination.” While ostensibly documenting mere facts, Alex’s most successful works reach that something more- illumination."

"Useless, useless" opening May 3rd, California Building

I am reluctant to share the origins of this exhibition, however, after so many of our contributors offered deeply personal, sometimes heart-rending stories of their relationship to our theme, I could only try to do likewise. I have stated before that "Useless, useless," the last words of Abraham Lincoln's assassin, came starkly to mind at a friend's memorial service last year. I saw how profoundly her one life had affected so many, and it staggered me to consider Booth's inability to recognize how a single hateful act had galvanized so many conflicts. I realized that "the better angels of our nature" have a comparable capacity to accomplish the opposite- resolution, even harmony. This much you know. What I have not shared so far are the griefs and joys that preceded me to this place.. full text here:

Osama Esid, B&W Magazine, 2013

It's astounding how what was true just several weeks ago can so radically alter, but life can be a capricious bitch/bastard; friendships are made and lost, groups cohere then fragment, love turns unexpectedly to acrimony. The only constant is constant change. This should be reassuring, but it seldom is. Still, the sense we make of our lives, and the lives of those around us at a given point in time doesn't lose its valency, or poignancy for having moved past us. We can only aspire to meet life stride for stride, and to keep our hearts and heads in step with its sometimes perilous transformations.

"It is this capacity to combine the rich cultural history Esid comes from with the prospects for self-invention promised here that distinguish his homebound body of work. The banality of the elements he chooses to photograph does nothing to diminish his pictures' effects. What could be a more engaging, challenging image of liberty than a Muslim-American man standing atop his motorcycle, flaunting a headless eagle? In this portrait with its seemingly simplistic pieces, he conveys abundant signifiers- mindless freedom and issues of self-representation while precariously perched on a perilous vehicle. Would that we all could see that the things that make the most potent meanings are often as close at hand as home." full text: here

Art in the Age of Algorithmical Reproduction, or "Tragically Hip(stamatic)"

This winter I've watched now former friends literally pour their souls into wet collodion plate printing, and in the course of watching I've significantly damaged my internal organs by huffing the technique's requisite ether, bromide, silver nitrate, and etc.. It seemed not incidental that at the same time Hipstamatic (what a conflicted neologism that is) deployed their "Tintype SnapPak" app, which affords iphone users vaguely credible approximations of the process which consumed my gizzards and associates. I threw up just a little bit reading some copywriter's hyperventilations that this filter would ""capture the true essence of your subject with haunting clarity (of) this ancient lens." My instinctive reaction is to be revolted by something which will give one's breakfast at Denny's the patina of a Matthew Brady, but I'm inclined to reassess after this season's ongoing consequences. After grousing on Facebook, a photographer I greatly admire relayed this article from the Guardian U.K. whose author raised this point; "One of the problems I have with creative photographic processes and smartphone photo filters is that they are nostalgic, and place the aesthetic over the content. They also seem to surrender a large part of the creative process to the camera program." In this I recognized my own struggle to avoid mediating my own images- to the degree that any digital photographer can. I try to ask whether an image would have the same valency if it weren't rendered in some atypical color, or 'enhanced' by some other means. In many ways though, my work is stymied by the current glut of artificiality- I find it difficult to articulate a sensible alternative. A recent New York Times op ed by Christy Wampole titled "How to Live Without Irony" tried to account for photographer's (and who isn't right now?) attraction to contrivances. She noted that "nostalgia cycles have become so short that we even try to inject the present moment with sentimentality...by using certain digital filters to “pre-wash” photos with an aura of historicity." It is no longer enough to merely hold a moment- we require our every quotidian doing to appear sufficiently hip. To me, this belief that your life as it happens is somehow insufficient, and the consequent obsession to augment it somehow is just sad and ultimately vapid. But so also is clinging to fossilized constructs like 'truth,' or 'authenticity' that are themselves nostalgic and often outright dangerous depending on who is enforcing the definitions. The questions raised have so addled me that they've only served to rekindle my inclination to go live in a yurt on one of Ireland's Skelligs until all of this sorts itself out. app: here. 

"An Unfinished Woman"

One of the greatest difficulties I find with reviewing art is having to cover work that I don't ardently love. What do you say of someone's work when they're evidently sincere, and committed to a vision, but little connection has been made to my subjective tastes? One approach that I found is to answer that sincerity without snark, and with equal commitment to one's own capacities as a writer. I try to discern without falsely waxing rhapsodic, what the images might have meant to the maker. I'm grateful to Catharine Carter, and her art, for teaching me this.

"In our era of digital cameras, artists like Carter strain to escape that technology’s clinical means of representation. They prefer to transact in allegory, raising questions as opposed to presenting truths. In times wherein our agency is so constrained, where our ability to effect change in our lives and those around us is so thoroughly hindered, to say that the world needs less of this inclination would be churlish. " full text: here

Angela Bacon-Kidwell, "Travelling Dream"

2012 was a year of profound personal dislocation. Amid tumultuous changes, I contrived many unconventional means to continue producing work. I was especially proud of the days spent escaping my hometown’s 110 degree summer in the Walker Art center’s air-conditioned Flat-Pak prefab house with one of the museum’s ipads, composing essays wirelessly in this infrequently-visited, ad hoc office. When assigned to cover Angela Bacon-Kidwell’s work, I knew that it reflected much of the grief and loss that I’d experienced that year. But it also re-affirmed the tenacity with which we must cling to the things that keep us hopeful. It was a pleasure, even under duress, to work with her. From a coming article:

“For centuries, people have created and kept Memento Mori, representations of death as reminders of their mortality. Photography made possible even more literal manners of this art, affording the bereaved a portrait of their loved ones before they passed eternally into memory. In a like way, Angela Bacon-Kidwell is at war with oblivion, although she aspires to retain and manage her emotional relationship to painful memories, and the ineluctable reality that loved ones depart…Her best works have an acquired poignancy, like smoothed stones that arrive on a beach, scoured of their incongruities yet indelibly marked by the agitation that formed them.” full text: here

Greta Pratt, "Taking Liberties"

While spending part of this winter in Richmond, Virginia, I was fortunate to find Candela Gallery which was featuring Greta Pratt's "Taking Liberties" series. The works have remained very much on my mind, even months after first viewing them, life-sized, hung heroically- their faces just slightly above eye-level. Though the show closed before the essay I wrote could be published, I see no reason to not call attention to this fine work:

“It is apparent that underneath so much tactless raiment are strongly individuated people- clearly someone’s mom, daughter, nephew, or son. Rodney Parker’s probably-homemade “pain” tattoo is visible at his wrist, and Christine Sweeney’s doughy hands sport gecko-green manicured nails. Pratt deftly manages to humanize these figures without reducing them to typology. We don’t learn whether one is a recovering addict, or another a battered mother; we’re “told” only that these are people were compelled to cede a degree of dignity for a nominal wage. It’s a trade off nearly most of us- those who remain employed- can deeply empathize with. The fact that these particular people embody “liberty” only makes the realization more acute.” link

Mike Dvorak, "Amish; one God, one family"

Issue 94 of B&W broke a longstanding precedent of not revisiting artists that had previously been featured. I proposed that Mike Dvorak’s work among a particularly stern Amish sect certainly merited a departure, and this was favorably approved. He and I both negotiated a tenuous balance between romanticizing this way of life, and acknowledging its harsher truths. 

"However artfully rendered Dvorak’s Amish series is, contemporary curators, and collectors tend to view documentary photography as having little current merit, or of having passed into history… Photographic art has frequently shown us what is enduring as well as what is imperiled. Given America’s current struggles, would that it had invested even a modest amount in the country’s artistic capital, rather than limiting its vision to bolstering banks and fortifying Wall Street. Fortunately, a few stalwart traditionalists believe that it remains a relevant endeavor to better acquaint us with the experiences of our fellow citizens.” December, 2012 link