Goodbye, Jackie, Nicole, and my Wednesday nights.

“Artsy fartsy in the woods” is what I typed as I was taking notes for this blog posting, as a side note, even before I knew what the challenge was.

Adbi, at the start of the episode, admits hes lost all knowledge as an artist because hes been in the bottom the entire time. How could this really be? Maybe it was good to be in that frame of mind before learning what the challenge was. He walked to the water, and meditated. In the end, he decided to go with his gut instincts and create a truly new vision/direction for his work to go. My friends don’t know this, but I also converse with God for new project ideas. Not kidding—but recently I’ve called so much he’s been putting me straight through to voicemail.

Abdi was finally true to himself, I thought his drawing was one of the more amazing works of art tonight. His piece was so beautiful to me that it makes me cry. I’ve written such horrible things about him and his work in past shows, but his work tonight was so realized. He didn’t use the materials as much as I would have liked to see, even before watching his choice of natural material I thought to myself, “I’d mix gravel into a medium to make some sort of mark with”… and then I thought, “that would be cheating the challenge.” My only other concern is that Abdi drew himself without any signs of male genitalia.

When I saw that it was JACKIE who was laying down under that cover, I was very let down… I could have sworn that it was Peregrine when I watched the preview commercials for the show. It just seemed so unlike her. She didn’t represent herself in the way that she had been doing in weeks previous. I am dying to read her explanation as to what happened right after I publish this post.

I was perplexed by Jackie’s image of the shower and the umbrella. I initially noticed the white umbrella when she was in ‘nature’ from a painting for hers that I have been familiar with for quite some time, and then, later on, the image source of the painting came right out of the printer, so naturally I became completely confused. Towards the end of the show it was apparent that she had not used the source image, but later on decided to go ahead and use that image in a future painting unrelated to the show.

That painting always held some mystery for me. I would like to ask Jackie, retrospectively, why she chose to create the painting of the herself and the umbrella even after the challenge. The painting always held something different than her other work for me, very shy and silent. It makes me think that this work was reflection of her experience on the show., but I might be reading too deeply.

Her piece that she ended up doing would have been stronger had she been more clever about interpreting the project in words. If she had only said something to the degree of what the piece had actually depicted, I think the work could have actually been very haunting. It’s like art school 101, she had to whip something up really quick because she was sick since the last challenege, so she did her best and turned out something pretty beautiful. But when you get to class and can’t talk it up to the class during the critique, all the minimalism turns into the viewer noticing how little effort was actually put in. The punctuation made with the hanging rock became empty; it could have held more weight, no pun intended.

Watching Nicole work on the show is always a kind of treat. You never really know exactly what she’s making until the final reveal. He use of making molds in her work lends itself to this. I am very sorry that she was not picked for the finale. As I have expressed before, her work is personal, and bold.

A side note about Nicole and Jackie: I really was set on believing that both of these artists would be in the finals. I was pretty happy about it too, while it lasted. I think that Jackie and Nicole, given enough time to work on actual art, that these artists could have given Miles a run for his money. (100,000 dollars to be exact) Nicole had commented on Jackie's DFN Gallery event on Facebook saying:

I thought this comment meant that they would potentially both end up in the finals, being as you wouldn't say something like that to someone who isn't on an equal playing field. Now I realize that the comment was made because both of them didn't make it.

This picture was too sweet not to post, I feel for the both of you for going home.

Oh yeah and Peregrine... I know Jerry Saltz had a lot to do with swaying the judges. I have to say that I completely disagree and am disappointed with Jerry at this juncture.

Miles sucks too. Good luck in the finals. I hope Abdi beats your white ass into the Wednesday after next. Yeah... I just brought it there.

As for my work this week:

I have been cheating myself this entire time with my WANGA weekly challenge. My initial plan was to make work during the hour of watching the show, but I've been so lax that it has turned into a posting of my past work that is relevant to the challenge. This work was completed last winter, with a shoot done once in the fall, and once in the winter. I was speaking to the cyclical nature of photography and life, and the continuum of life and death represented in nature.