Child's Play WANGA episode 7

Hello WANGA LANGAS!

We’ve been seeing some pretty deliciously ridiculous stuff on Work of Art and this week’s episode was no different. I enjoy seeing the group as a smaller cast as time goes by. We can really start to see them getting more comfortable with each other, and at the same time, you can see the artists’ anxieties about the challenges. It’s not like this idea is new in any way, however, because ALL the Bravo competition shows reveal this sort of comfort and anxiety around the seventh episode. I should know, I’ve been watching bravo since the very first season of Project Runway, then right into Top Chef, even watched Sheer Genius religiously. All of these shows are the same.

This week’s episode took place at the Children’s Museum of Art in SoHo. When China Chow stepped into the room and fed the challenge to the artists, she reminded me of every single elementary school art teacher I’ve ever had, especially Mrs. Ortiz. The challenge was to create a work of art inspired by the moment that influenced each cast member to become artists. They could only use the materials in the CMA. I think most of the artists got confused with this challenge, especially Ryan.

I actually think the problem with Ryan was that he was actually just too drunk to handle these challenges. If I was drunk and asked to make a work like this, my brain would also mix up the challenge, especially if someone sat be down at a desk that was colored in primary colors with chairs that are only a foot from the ground. Ryan, in the future, lay off the grain alcohol and just smoke a garden doobie—and like we all learned in college, don’t do both at the same time. I will miss Ryan very much; I think his presence on the show really defused any direct attention to Mark who I hate more than Puck…. I mean Erik.

Nicole had a good mental starting point. She initially mentioned Art Therapy, a growing profession recognized in both the art education world as well as in psychology. Art Therapy is a great field to get into if you want to actually help people with your art (as opposed to pretending you are helping people with your wall art). The main point of art therapy is that the patient is not making exquisite works, but that the expressions of emotion are eventually transferred into a visual state, whatever the state may be. Patients are not artists, and the therapist is never supposed to comment or critique the work aesthetically. I know this because for a short period of time I considered this as a career move.

Miles is a goober and a mathematician more than he is an artist. I will say that it is funny that most of the people (my friends) who thought he was cute the first week now find him to be extremely annoying, I wonder if that is just because of the way Bravo edits the show, or because of the fact that he’s actually…

retarded.

And one more thing, Miles, don’t make fun of Jackie’s artwork being cold because I’m pretty sure hell froze over when I saw your work.

Jackie was amazing this week as usual. Her second argyle sweater made its debut on the show tonight. Yeah, that’s right—the SECOND argyle sweater. Jackie stated that she had a really hard time channeling her childhood and didn’t really tell us why, and I think that is poignant considering her ultimate distance from really feeling anything real in her art piece. I am sure she will explain her work as more relevant on her blog, but really, we all didn’t see the relevance, and I think it speaks louder than if she had actually conveyed something. For me, I also would not be able to make a work about my childhood, because to be true about it would be to reveal an unwanted attention to the reasons as to why I really became an artist. [Even though I technically provide you with a piece about this below]. Who, who is truly an artist, would ever tell the real truth about that moment? (It's like telling your therapist what's REALLY wrong with you) There’s never a good reason for becoming an artist, is there?

Unless you’re talking about Abdi who apparently was cool when he was a child because he could draw the Nike swoop. His piece actually really reminded me of people I knew grammar school who thought they were artists and now work in business and finance. If one of those grammar school kids made this work, I would have been totally proud of them.

Mark’s piece was sophomoric.

Peregrine’s work never really rubs me the right way; I think I have a lot of aesthetic problems with her week after week. Maybe it’s just her weird little hat. Her concept was great, and she fulfilled the challenge to a T. I found it very interesting that she conveyed sadness about her life when in connection to the gay community retrospectively. Bill Powers apparently shed a tear at this work and it was probably the unicorn that did it. I wonder where those joints came from.

As for my work this week in response to the show, I have to refrain from creating a new piece about the moment I became an artist/childhood reflections because I have already made a work that speaks directly to this idea. Below is Time/Frame 2009, a work I made last year about September 11, 2001, the day I lost my father to rehab, and eventually his death exactly 4 months later to the day on January 11. Its about the congruence of world events with my personal history, the loss of childhood and innocence, and the storm that swept America away. I will say that I have used the Wizard of Oz in my art work since childhood, and that is no exception with this piece.

I have also included works from my childhood!

Episode 6: Open to the Public

I have to say that this episode has been the hardest-to-date to blog about because there was so much going on. Between the two groups working on two [bad] public art pieces, a debate between Erik and EVERYONE, Jackie’s poor wardrobe choices (sorry Jackie), and her strange note to Erik, and Yvonne Force Villareal in general, I actually ended up getting a headache watching this installment of WANGA. Let me explain.

To set the atmosphere, I can’t possibly leave out the fact that I watched last night’s episode with the Paige-Fischers in SoHo. I was helping my bestie Dena Paige Fischer with photographing her new sculptures—which for this blog posting I will include as the ‘art’ I did while watching the episode, being as I couldn’t fake an outdoor installation in an hour, please forgive me! But the photos were somewhat collaborative right?

Dena's face pieces

Also at home were Patti Paige and RM Fischer (click first or last name for images, websites and Jerry Saltz's 2009 review), Dena’s parents. Patti is the owner of Baked Ideas in SoHo, which is actually located on the same block as the public artwork they briefly flashed called “Scribble” that Villareal was responsible for. RM Fischer is a preeminent working artist known for his public works spanning across the US, so it was very cool to watch this episode in particular with them. ALSO I stupidly forgot to mention another friend and artist, Sarah Grace Holcomb was there with us, she had just moved here from Baltimore.

Back to the episode… ugh.

This challenge was a tiny piece of fantastic. There are obviously some sects of art that this show is trying to touch upon in a glossy kind of way, but public art is a unique challenge for artists because it really takes the final destination out of the gallery and forces artists to work with various restrictions such as… you know… real people, and a real place.

The Blue Mile Group, i.e. Jackie, Perregrine, Erik, and Miles were failing from the beginning. It became an issue when Miles interjected with his concept about closing up the sky to one axis point for the viewer. His concept seemed to be very unrealized, and I found his suggestions to be extremely un-investigative of the site in question. His intentions to lead the group were selfish, and you can see that in the critique with Simon when he describes this work as a continuation of his last piece. As a group, Miles, this work is not your work, and ultimately I believe that group works belong to no one and everyone at the same time. This work failed because it clearly belonged to Miles, and the aesthetic garbage of the piece came from the tid-bits that he allowed other people to throw on it so they could get their say in.

The Red Rock Group, i.e. Nicole, Abdi, Mark, and Ryan had an equally shitty idea that ended up winning because the other team needed to lose in order for the obvious loser, Erik, to go home. However, I think that this team worked more closely with the space, at least, even if it was as simple as blowing up gravel to a disproportionate size. For the record, the only obvious reason that people were around this piece is because the other piece probably became a ‘let’s take turns and form a line to get on’ thing. The work became the default on the site and people gravitated toward it out of sheer lack of options—or so I would imagine.

It’s all about Jackie-time now. What exactly was she wearing throughout this entire episode? I’m pretty sure I saw a flash of a neon pink argyle sweater, a neon pink shirt with a tiger on it, an oversized knit hat she styled more like an afro than a hat, and lets not forget about how cute all of it looked when she put the safety goggles on. But I think there is something delicious happening recently with Jackie other than her wardrobe. She is finally being portrayed as a smarter version of herself with a little bit more wit. I really liked that she apologized to Erik before the competition started, and I liked that she didn’t try to make everyone do a huge wooden sculpture of her body or something. She worked well in the team and I think she could have been Erik’s saving grace had he just listened to what she was really trying to tip-off in the note.

When Erik read Jackie’s note on camera he enunciated it as if he was a baby-retard so I couldn’t quite understand what she was trying to say. It wasn’t until after 12pm when the episode was available ‘on-demand’ that I realized what she had said to him. Essentially she was telling Erik to stick up for himself and be a real artist that makes intelligible interjections about how to affect the work. If I were to make an intelligent guess as to why she did this, it would be because she felt genuinely sorry for excluding him from the project and wanted him to participate, but did not feel that his useless banter towards the project was effective. If Erik listened to Jackie his voice could have been heard.

I found it upsetting to watch that Erik out-ed Jackie during the eliminations for the writing the note. By the look on her face, you could tell that no one on her team knew about the note. Erik obviously mistakenly took offense to it, and it looked a little like sabotage. The note was probably given to Erik in secrecy for purposes of hiding it from either the cast or the cameras, or both, probably because Jackie felt something was very wrong but didn’t want the attention—(if you hadn’t noticed with Jackie it will always be a push and pull about who’s gawking at her.)

To Erik’s aid, I will say that there was a lot of “typical art school crap” going on during Simon’s critique, and Miles is definitely a “stuck up art school pussy.” But when all is said and done in the art world, work like Jackie’s or Mile’s or Nicole’s will always get chosen over work as aesthetically tired, mundane, thoughtless, unrealized, and uneducated as Erik’s work. (Though I will say that there is a lot of work being done by the 'good' artists on the show that doesn't exactly surpass the list of negativity that I just described out Erik's work.) It is necessary to have an art education (or solid art background experience) in order to call yourself an artist. Erik does not have the mind of an artist; he has the mind of a slightly artful guy who’s been in too many motorcycle accidents. Plain and simple, and I have no idea how he got on this show.

And Jerry:

Why Not?

Why Not?

Why Not?!

WHY?!?

… just wondering…

I thought Jerry Saltz was trying to attack Erik here but I realized that he was legitimately asking Erik WHY he felt the way that he did so he knew how to judge this thing. Once he finally got out of Erik that his sole idea was to create vines, he simply stated that he was “just wondering”… which made me laugh because you could tell that Jerry was unimpressed and knew that the Blue Mile Group excluded him because his ideas were horrible…. Yup Jerry… THAT’S WHY!

And finally I have to make fun of Yvonne Force Villareal. I only know of her because of my past work at Todd Eberle’s Studio. I spent a very good portion of my time there trying to look through the archives to find a picture of her in her home holding a plate full of sausage while speaking on the phone looking at a picture of sausage on her wall. Yeah, I know. [Plug: The picture was to be included in Eberle’s new book titled The Empire of Space, which is available for pre-order and to be released in October.] Looking for that picture was impossible, but I did end up getting a rather intimate look at her home and her life. I have to say that she dresses like that even when she isn’t on television, and no, it’s not okay.

…

And no, it’s still not okay.

[Additionally, I think it's important to note that I read Jackie Santos' blog as well as Jerry Salts'; however, I do not read any other blog before posting my recaps. SO when I read Jackie's blog about the inside details of the project workings, I obviously get some things wrong, but after all, I am responding as a mere viewer of the show.]

Art That Moves You - Work of Art Episode 5

If I were Bravo, I would have named this episode Innie, Audi...

I like that Jaime Lynn was nervous about driving in New York. The way she said “I’ve never driven in New York” made it seem like she accepted this as her very own mini-challenge. I wish that was the only challenge she had to complete for this episode because her illustration was horrible.

Audi Forum? Now I have lost hope in the platform of this show, at least for a week. The challenge was based solely on the idea that Audi needed some face time on the show for being such a blatant benefactor; not only was this obvious, but the challenge had nothing to do with Audi, but the moments the artists spent in the Audi. Wow.

Of course Jackie has been inspired by men looking at her in the window of the Audi Forum. I mean obviously. What else was there?

and uhm... match made in Urban Outfitters heaven?

Or hell.

I've been reading, and I love, Jerry Saltz's blog on Vulture (Eating Pop Culture) NY Mag Online. Each week he responds to each episode, but he keeps refering to Abdi as this graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art, and I have to correct Jerry on that, Abdi did not go to MICA. If he did he would (hopefully and theoretically) know a little more about art history. He would maybe have been able to reference work like Hank WIllis Thomas, who has dealt with branding geared toward African Americans in particular, and would have known to surpass that expectation.

Erik is jealous of Jackie and I think it’s funny. As per his comment about Jackie not being smart enough and benefiting from everyone else in the studio for advice, I think that Jackie really already knows what she wants to do, she just wants to touch base with people in the studio, if not to bounce ideas off of her peers, its to make them watch her dance around the studio. (allegedly)

I loved Jackie’s piece this week. Not aesthetically. I think her use of the mirrors was tired and Jeannie’s reaction to them was startling given the fact that this ‘including the viewer with mirrors’ trick has been used widely throughout the art world. I like this project only for the fact that I haven't seen Jackie depict men directly with her art work. I am glad that she finally gave it a try and am happy that she got a win.

Mark’s painting would have been good if he was applying to art school—same with his photography.

Poor Ryan! He’s funny, I agree with the way Bravo has been editing him as the goofy funny guy, but his art is a little silly too.

Miles, honestly. I think I understand his project responses, though. He is smart at making projects that are interesting to look at with very little though as to how far he is actually delving into a deeper place. He glosses the surface with safe work that creates the illusion of a finished piece, which he ends up doing well, but like I said, it's an illusion. I used to do this kind of work in art school. It's work that you'd quickly think up the night before some random piece was due for whatever nuance-specific studio course you were taking. Its all about making the sweetest statements with the least amount of physical effort.

9.7710

If I had more time I would have had more fun with this project. I tried to mimic the show's challenge as best I could, sans the new Audi ride in the city, not only because I don't have access to an Audi, but I also don't have a license and am against the use of automobiles for personal use, ha, but because I also limit my art making to the span of the of the hour of each new episode. In the end I decided to take pictures of the nine different things I dealt with during the day, and made the layer's opacity correlate how how much that particular subject matter dominated the day.

I know. So wack. But so was the challenge.

Work of Art; Week 3; "A Shock to the System"

Let me start by saying that this posting will be a weekly venture. Every Wednesday after Work of Art, I will be posting a commentary on the show, and posting a work that I will make within the hour of watching the show as a direct response to the challenge. I became obsessed with the show since I auditioned for it way back when at White Columns. I actually saw Jackie that day during auditions and said hello. We knew of each other through going to MICA and it was an awkward moment because I’m not sure she really cares too much for me. Nevertheless she is the reason why I watch and am addicted to this show... Proud Pussy, caulk, self-aware whoreness, and all.

Let me explain to you a little something about Jackie. If you think Miles or Nao created personas for this show, I think you missed out on the biggest persona of all. Back at MICA I knew Jackie as the girl who always wore stilettos, and always dressed to impress. She carried herself as a woman who knew that men and women would look at her and acknowledge her aesthetically sexual and beautiful body, but there was always at least 25% of Jackie that will ignore the fact that she is responsible for this reaction, which is what I love about her. Her work is interesting in that it involves female empowerment through female oppression, but sometimes I think her imagery gets a little muddled with all the bras and thongs (and i think sometimes it gets confusing a little about whether it is empowerment or oppression that she is communicating)... any way, back to the show.

China Chow showed up at Phillips de Pury wearing an umbrella around her waist. Uhm. WTF.

I don’t agree with this challenge at all. Shocking work does not really exist- not to me at least. To be shocked, one would have to suggest that you have never even conceived of what you are being shown, and it is so grotesque that you can’t even handle the sensation. But with the rise of the Internet, I don’t think people are hiding themselves from visually explicit material anymore. I don’t really even find Piss Christ to be offensive or shocking in the whatsoever.

I remember giving a speech in high school, and an oral report at MICA about Andreas Serrano. Both times I had trouble with defending his ‘overly-shocking’ imagery as appropriate. Post graduating, I take a stand against his work. I don’t think that his work is all it’s cracked up to be. I don’t really want to get into it either. All I will say is that I remember when I first heard about the rapper Eminem, and I found his music provocative. Now when I hear of him I just wait and pray for the day when he actually kills his daughter Hailey, rips Kim up with knives, and commits suicide during an overdose like he raps about in his music. It’s like… all talk – no action, and I’ve been waiting for the punch line for way too long.

I dislike Miles Mendenhall. I think he is just like most of the white boy art school kids who play by the traditional rules of art in a very general way in order to make visually pleasing works that satisfy the mind and the eye. He is like one of those tightly wrapped conceptual packages that end up coming up empty to me. He makes art more like a math problem to be solved rather than a truly ephemeral creative intention. SO yeah. First erection – to last erection, and some genitalia/Mickey Mouse. We get it, you like layers of metaphor.

What was Peregrine wearing? It was obviously the same outfit her mom was wearing when she chose to name her Peregrine.

The fight between Jackie and Erik was absurd. Both of them should realize that artists working in within close quarters will be influenced by one another, and in no way does that bit of influence take away ownership over the piece. Simply acknowledge that the influence was there and move on. However, years later when the work is being viewed in a gallery or book, there would never be a tagline stating that “the interactivity of sharpie markers was suggested by Erik”.

Congratulations, Abdi. I do have to admit that I was sad that Jackie didn’t take this one home, though I wasn’t sold on her project until after she implemented what I will call “Erik’s Suggestion”. Abdi, on the other hand, had a very interesting concept from the get go, and I appreciate his honesty in regard to African American oppression and his bold statements.

Nao didn’t deserve to go home. Her performance was very ambiguous, and though we all know she had no idea what she was doing, it still wasn’t as bad as Erik's Sex Education.

John’s days were numbered from the beginning due to his uninteresting attempt at creating homosexually engaged artwork. I liked his general aesthetic, however.

I was actually interested in Jaime's piece a lot. The blanket statement of 'shocking' was looming over these artists far too much and did a disservice to the work. I thought her work was genuinely touching on some topics she seems to be interested in, and I liked to see her get more into herself as opposed to the past work this platform has brought out of her.

Erik really needs to stop making art in general. Some people are actually artists, and some people are just creative. I think Erik is just naturally creative. Maybe it would be best if Miles traded about 50% of his hyper-conceptualism with 50% of Erik’s tongue and cheek kitsch art making process.

And for my creation this week….

Palm Sundae

Now, Like I said, I don’t believe in shocking work. I don’t believe I failed myself in making shocking work either. I would say that the show failed at making a realistic challenge and harped over a long existing stereotype that art is supposed to ruffle up some feathers.

Unknown Artist; DJ Michael Anthony

I recently had a gig shooting with a friend of a friend for his DJ promotional material. He goes by Unknown Artist. I had this concept that we would try to conceal his face as much as possible to play off of his name. I also used his name in the headlines on the newspaper and included a picture of him there was well. I will repost when I finalize the card design. To be completely honest, I'm happy about these!

Leaving Oz

The title of this image is "There's No Place" from my series Heart of This Home which I produced in the summer of 2007. The series was shot with a 4x5 camera. I recently revisited this negative in the darkroom and wanted to expand it's definition.

I created Dorothy Leaving Oz, an 18 photograph series of images which started with a primarily with contact print from the original negative, secondarily with a contact print of the first print, and so on, (note the negative and positive flux), until the image became a harmonious grey tone.

(Each print was created with the print that came before it, in other words)

I wanted to visually express Dorothy's transition between worlds to parallel what is said in the text of the original novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The word "grey" is used ten times in the first chapter of Oz. Creating this work was much more effective for my than the overall impact; waiting for each image to go through chemicals and dry to be able to print the next slightly more grey image was silently haunting. (I made sure to create all 18 prints without leaving the room once for a personal effect!)

...

It took a bit.

Rectangular Reflection

Rectangular Reflections was conceived of when the tenants who lived below me moved to another residence and there was a period of time when I could enter the apartment and photograph. This was a new concept - not being able to enter the house for any period of time - being my cousin Michele used to live there my entire life until I was 21, and I'd frequently be found there. I chose to use mirrors because I liked the ambient light in the space and thought I would play around with it. Subconsciously, I found myself stealing back my childhood for these few seconds and had created evidence of it. It felt pretty good.

This mini-series is a part of my personal work that I produce with 35mm b/w film, which I develop and print traditionally in my home in Jersey City. The photographs are printed on 3.5 x 5 inch paper.

Ode to Morell

I've been trying to get back into the mood of making new work, but have been coming up empty in terms of what I want to do in the long run series-wise. Among the few works I've created during this artist block are photographs inspired by Abelardo Morell, Cuban photographer based out of Boston. His widely recognized for his work with creating camera obscuras in places around the world and taking long exposures of the rooms. The following images are my explorations with his process.

I took a mirror at one point during the shoot and reflected some of the light onto the ceiling.

I also took a large piece of paper and hung it in front of the hole in the window. The image projected itself much like the ground glass of a large format camera. So fun.

Thank You Larissa!

I wanted to write a short biography of Larissa and thank her for blogging about my work, but it seems that the biography on her website would beat out anything I could say about her.

"Larissa Leclair is an independent photography writer and curator. Her writings on photography have been published in the photo-eye Booklist and ArtVoices. She curated the exhibition Today’s Past: Images of Africa from 1952 to 1960 of photographs by David E. Apter at Yale University and re-appropriated the Zagourski postcard collection. She has photographed for the Chicago Field Museum and the U.S. State Department and has worked for Arena Editions, Outside Magazine, and the Santa Fe Workshops. She is on the Photo Book Committee for FotoWeek DC, a reviewer for Critical Mass, and assisted Philip Brookman with the exhibition Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change on view at the Corcoran Gallery of Art from April 10-July 18, 2010. Larissa is also a collector of photography and photography books. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography and a Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis and a Masters from Yale University."

Larissa will also be blogging about the participants of One Hour Photo, a show at the AU Katzen Arts Center in DC. You can visit her website here, and read her blog here.

One Hour Photo

One Hour Photo Project was something I hear of indirectly by my inbred lifestyle of being a MICA nerd—I usually check the MICA alumni facebook page about every week, and I click on the MICA website more than once a week. I saw that someone had posted about an open call for submissions on the alumni facebook page. The show was created by Adam Good and curated with Chajana denHarder and Chandi Kelley. I submitted a self-portrait about my father’s death, looking into his gravestone. I have been through a rather rough patch in my life recently and I want to lay this sort of expression making to rest because I finally feel like I have other things on my mind. I agree to never show this work from this point, so I cant show anyone.

May 8—June 6, 2010

American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center

Washington, DC

Hours: 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Tue-Sun

"One Hour Photo distills the photograph to the ultimate limited edition: 60 minutes. Photographic works will be projected for one hour each, after which they will never be seen again, by anyone, in any form. Each work will exist only in the limited moments of perception, in the individual and collective experience, then memory, of the observers.

One Hour Photo complicates the myth of photography as preservation, manifests the tension between the permanence of the medium and the impermanence of time, and subverts the profit model of the edition and the print.

Documentation of the experience will consist of signed release forms: each participating artist will pledge never to reproduce, display, or sell the piece they've include in the exhibition."