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.

WANGA RELATED:

I have a job interveiw tomorrow so it might be a little bit before I am able to post my Work of Art visual response/recap. But rest assured that I am typing tidbit notes as I am currently watching the show... I can't believe that Peregrine is in the final, I don't even really want to talk about it.

Until tomorrow, here's a picture taken recently at a Chelsea gallery opening last Friday when I met WANGA contestant, Judith Braun. She was really great to meet!--Very animated and exciting to talk to.

She was accompanied by Robin Rollin, (Judith in the zesty colors, of course), Bill Benson, and Paddy Johnson who, among her many endeavors in the arts, is the creator of Art Fag City. All of these people started chuckling at me when I tapped Judith as asked if I could please take a picture of her. (and it was great... because I totally expected it)

JACKIE ON CHELSEA

In other news, Jackie Santos gained some airtime on Chelsea Lately, which airs on the E! network. Click on the following link to watch exactly how 'inspired' Chelsea was after viewing Jackie's feminine control piece.

Road Side Memorial - Gabriella Giselle Camejo

Roadside Memorial

Gabriella Giselle Camejo

My good friend Gaby was killed our senior year at MICA when she crossed the street with my other good friend Kent Miller who was injured, but survived. For whatever reason, ever since then I periodically write my thoughts about the experience, or create visual works expressing my concern about the situation. I never truly was able to recover from the experience as I am sure many of my friends who were close to her also cannot. Emotions that could never truly be expressed through a blog. I created this work for Suzanne Camejo, Gaby's mother.

The print is a pictogram of a tracing of an image of Gabriella, with the following flowers overlaid on the print. A negative was created with Ilford paper in the dakroom, and a positive was printed from the paper negative.

World Trade Center; ongoing b/w project

It's been a while since I wrote about something that I've done personally. In the next few days I will be posting some ongoing projects, and my reviews of some exhibitions I went to in Chelsea within the past two weeks.

The following images are from an untitled series about life at the World Trade Center construction site, with an emphasis on pedestrian traffic. I believe that the magnitude of the events at Ground Zero have obviously affected the site's pedestrian traffic and demeanor, but the gate around the site specifically creates mystery, and a temptation for onlookers to reach over the gate to photograph. My focus in this project is about the site in general, the onlookers, the photographers, and the construction workers. I have been photographing this series since the winter of 2009. This project was shot with 35mm b/w film and printed at home in my darkroom in Jersey City.

Let's Agree to Disagree: WANGA 8

Opposites don't necessarily attract. Neither do random pairings of artists via paint tubes. The only reason why artists collaborate in the first place is because they decide for themselves that their work informs each other's vision. It is hard to force that, or base an elimination off of it.

Let’s get it out, loud and proud: I AM SO GLAD THAT MARK IS GONEZO. As I have stated in previous posts, I have no idea how he got this gig. Mark’s been overwhelmingly negative throughout the entire show about everyone else’s work and process, even their state of being. (I think that’s a job solely reserved for the spectators of the show) But I’ll be fair and give his work a final critique.

HEAVEN AND HELL: (or hell and more hell)

Mark and Peregrine’s work essentially became a photographic diptych, It was interesting to me that Peregrine chose to allow Mark to have such a heavy hand in this work, when she also has stated in the past that she doesn’t trust his vision. It was obviously anything but her naked body that was up for grabs. What Mark should have known was that if Peregrine was going to just draw and barf all over the photograph that he should have suggested a medium other than photography. His photographs aren’t fine art in the whatsoever. Work of his nature is good for things other than this.

I like Peregrine as a personality, but her work in this show never struck me as any better than standing in the shadows of the best and worst artists. Now that there are less artists to go around, Peregrine is becoming revealed—I’m not sure this falcon ever lifts off the ground.

Btw- I love the ‘art gab’ segment during the commercial break. Total hoot for people who now will look back and say ‘does it really sound that pretentious when I say those things?’ Well I mean yeah, sometimes it’s necessary.

ORDER AND CHAOS: (or kudos for trying)

Nicole let her hair down for us at the critique and it was hair for days and days. (probably 5 days.) Unfortunately, Nicole, this was not your challenge, but I do think that you make work that is extremely personal and beautiful—even though I’ve seen this concept done before by my friend who crated an interactive changeable gear-art piece establishing a more permeable order. She always manages to make these challenges about her life, and she often seems to use text directly in the work, which is bold. I do, however, have one criticism about her effectiveness in this duo; If Abdi was having such a hard time with ‘chaos’ she should have switched with him. We already know Abdi is obviously a right-brained artist if anything, so I am suggesting that this would have been great for the two of them.

Abdi obviously has no idea what the allegory of “The Cave” is about. He created a green blob of nothing in sculpey clay. I asked my friend Sarah where she thought he gets that from and she suggested that it’s because he went to Carver Center for Arts and Technology in Towson, Maryland. She says everyone that goes to that school uses sculpey non-stop for no reason at all, and paints figurative paintings… it’s apparently the only thing they teach at that school. I suggest a curriculum change to prevent reoccurring mistakes like this one.

MALE AND FEMALE: (or male and YOWZA WOWZA!)

I have to say that I bit the bullet and not only asked Jackie a few questions before I blogged about her, but I also read her blog before writing this segment of this post, which is against my rules of blogging. I have to say that her blogs are written mostly in defense of her representation on the show, whether forced or implied, is extremely interesting to me given my recent obsession with Bravo reality television and their casts infiltrations in platforms like facebook and twitter. Her blog can be taken as an extension of her art—a constant need to expose the truth about herself while being unfairly portrayed as this huge bimbo dimwit.

In her blog, she states that she was extremely upset with Miles because she had no idea he was back-handedly making comments on-camera about how this work was his manipulative idea. I have to say, I believe you, Jackie, because you obviously would have taken this opportunity to do something like that anyway.

And here’s some proof:

Last week when I went to Jackie’s opening at DFN Gallery, Jackie and our friends posed in front of this painting she placed in the corner of the room. The painting, as shown here, seems extremely reminiscent of the ideas proposed in this week’s piece, both aesthetically and otherwise. I asked her last night if this piece was created before her adventures on Work of Art and she replied ‘yes’ in more than one word. I wonder who had the truer influence in this piece given this tidbit of back history

I would also beg to differ that Miles created this piece to be a literal ‘reflection’ of what he assumed Jackie would create given her past experience with the ‘feminine mystique’. If Miles did get his way, and was paired with Nicole, I would have to argue that I don’t think that the piece would have been as effective as it was—and he probably wouldn’t have acted nearly as masculine with her.

Given Jackie’s piece at DFN Gallery, and her blog post, I have to say that I wonder who really lead who in this project… I think if Bravo reversed the story, it might have been much more interesting to see Miles being overcome by Jackie’s sense of femininity. I am going to get hate mail for this, but I’ll deal with it.

I think I should stop being so harsh on Miles, however. His work is very contemplative and poetic, often using a uniform method of communication with the materials he chooses. His work is better than I give his personality credit for.

Between Jackie and China Chow:

It’s a sexual act. So you were masturbating?

Yeah! (as excited as she could possibly sound)

Between Jackie and Ryan McGuiness:

Jackie, have you masturbated standing up?

(Long pause) Yeah, I have. (Shoulder shrug)

On a side note: My friend Kate Burnley sent me a text message after the show had ended. It read: And the Oscar goes to… … … China Chow.

For my piece this week I have decided to combine all three pairings as the title for my two diptychs. When in doubt, its better to make simple poetic statements with the least amount of fuss, and dirty used cigarettes.

DFN Gallery Opening: Jaclyn Santos

Anybody who has been following my blog knows that Jackie Santos is pretty much the only reason why I became a fan of this show in the first place. I would say the same thing about some of my friends too, who watch because we knew of her at MICA. But I don't think that I have ever been able to call myself a groupie until tonight. I practically idolized her and retrospectively feel embarrassed. My love for the show and my love for her exists in the fact that she's on my channel: BRAVO, pretty much the only television I watch other than Six Feet Under which went out years ago. [If Jackie was a Real Housewife of New York City I would be going equally bonkers for her] I can't stress enough how sweet she actually was to me and all our friends and it was truly a pleasure, she really made sure she was covering all her bases at the show the entire time with everyone that came to show support. The following pictures are from Jackie's opening at DFN Gallery on the Upper East.

Of course, a lot of MICA kids came out to play

Left to right: Beth Rush, Kate Linder '08, Jackie Santos '07, Emily Matles, Michael Ciancio '06 and Gant Powell '07

Myself '09, Emily Addis '08, and Kate Linder '08

We pretty much found some new ways to spread the Jackie love by embracing the new signature poses.

Nicole Nadeau's awesome overalls.

Jackie Santos, Lisa Levy, and Nicole Nadeau

Jackie and her sister Heather Santos