Oo. That stung a little bit.
Okay, so give me a sec here to peel myself off the floor , wipe off, and let my, One Glorious Reader!, know that I have a new article up at the Kansas City Star.
And someone read it. There's a comment . . . there . . .
"Dalton Howard stands, sometimes shakily, sometimes with brazen confidence, between the carefully rendered line and the paint drip, between geometry and the doodle."
A new art review. Whoop.
Oh, that?
That's just the video projection screen at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. So let me tell you about last nigh. . .
I'm sorry, what? Oh, the picture, you say?
Lovely, isn't it? It's by an artist I know. You may have heard him mentioned in these here parts. We call him BEAR.
Barry and I went to the opening gala the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art last night--another coup and must-see for KC. A curator stopped me to tell me he read this review I wrote for the Kansas City Star. Before he was pulled away into another conversation, he said something about me being "brave."
Not quite sure how to take that. Maybe you'll know.
Want to read it?
My editor--and I do drop this to toot my horn, I like self-tooting--thinks it's my best review to date. (And here comes the not-so-cloaked plea for compliments through the lost art of self-deprecation), I don't know that I agree . . . .
Finn: "Mama, you're not an artist."
Me: "No, Finn. I'm not."
Finn: "You're a visitor."
So let's say, hypo, that you're coming a visitin'. What shall I reveal to you about my Midwest digs? What will I show you? What will I feed you?
Here's my meme. My KC tops. Spread the word, and then share the word.
In no particular order, except for the fact that I, well, ordered them:
1. Nelson Atkin's Bloch building. We have a new addition in town to our city museum. And if it's not fab--that's under discussion--it is unique and the hands-down hottest thing we have going. It's been covered in NY Times, New Yorker, and other sundry estab'ed pubs.
2. Boulevard Brewery. Actually, we haven't been there, but we've sampled its wares quite often. In fact, right now! (Ah, the gratuitous exclamation point. How I abhor thee. And yet, how useful you are!) We do have a rockin' brew. And that's not just because I'm drunk.
3. Record Bar. Which must have the best logo (recordbar) and slogan (eat. hear.). Their menus are posted on vintage 70s albums, like those real gatefold things. Great indie bands, great trivia nite. We like The Nuge sandwich. You post the cash for the 'sitter. We'll buy your sammie.
4. Murray's Ice Cream and Cookies. OMG, my peeps. It's the Amy's of the Midwest. Not as good, granted. But we're at least 10 hours away. My favorite flaves: Truffalufagus, Citrus Avenue, Malt Licker, Smitty's French Lemon (creamy, baby), Fred & Ginger. And the Snickerdoole is a half-inch high.
5. 18th and Vine. Our own little Hollywood and Vine, Haight-Ashbury, Beale Street, etc. It's Peach Tree Restaurant (re: sweet potato muffins), it's the Jazz Museum, the 24-hour jazz jam that we've never been to but we'd like to be invited to (members only), Negro League Baseball Museum. Charlie Parker, among others, started here. See Altman's Kansas City. We should split this out, but we've only got 10, so I feel the need to conflate.
6. 18th and Wyandotte. As weird as KC gets. And we, as former Austinites, like us some weird. Birdie Panties, Spool, and YJs. Lingerie, baby goods, and caffeine. Back to back. It's the nexus.
7. City Market. Here we go. First, we'll do breakfast at Succotash and see Sean Ward's painting of Jamie Warren eating tomato soup. Then we'll buy heirloom tomatoes from the Amish. We'll buy a bedley of spices at the Middle Eastern shop, eat risotto gelato, grinders from the vendor stands, spring rolls from the Vietnamese restaurant, and whittle away whatever cash we have left on the scarified juggler of knives. Oh, yes, Baby Cakes, the yummified morsels of glory are here.
8. 39th Street. Vintage shopping at Revue, Boomerang, Prospero's Books.
9. Christopher Elbow's Chocolates. Objet d' art chocolate. Seriously, they're almost too purty to eat. But somehow I get past that. We're actually looking toward a second mortage on our house to finance my obsession. Fleur de Sel turtles. Chocolate and salt. Nuff said.
10. And the cliche of Kansas City. BBQ. We'd take you to Gates. "Hi, may we help you!" Being the Texas expats we are, we'd never say the BBQ here is better than Texas (e.g., Coopers, Rudy's, Salt Lick, Green Mesquite, Lufkin BBQ Company). But KC comes close. Closer than say, Nashville. (Game on!)
Okay, it's your turn. I meme you Austin, Fort Worth, Portland, Bloomington, Houston, Omaha, and my lone China reader. Crank out your tour. I'll even post the worthy right here.
But we've really been busy bees--social fluttering, working, and a couple o' thangs on the presses.
First, from me, because, you know, I write the blog the mostest and I simply got here first: my latest art review.
And this excerpt is from a review written by Nick Malewski about Barry's Always Becoming Something at the Dolphin:
"Barry Anderson’s pair of archival inkjet prints, Always Becoming Something, is derived from his video (not on view) by the same name. Two long, narrow and horizontal images of young adults, hung side by side, show the expanse of what is experienced in the high-definition video as a slow, steady pan from left to right. The figures of varying ethnicity, in a sterile space without a horizon, at various distances from the camera, stand in place and face in numerous directions. Neither in the video, nor in the composite stills do the people seem to interact with or even notice one another. Their facial expressions are that of boredom, impatience and anticipation. Their implied lack of trajectory suggests that they are subjects caught in what Fredric Jameson calls “postmodern hyperspace,” which has “succeeded in transcending the capacities of the individual human body to locate itself.”2 Such a condition might evoke the recent development of Second Life, an Internet-based environment full of human-controlled avatars, together but alone, at times paralyzed in a space of boundless possibilities."
I have yet another art review in the Kansas City Star. Let me know what you think.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it's best if you keep those thoughts to yourself. It's probably more fun for both of us that way.
For those inquiring minds, a little light on the editorial process: It's not my title. It never is. I think I gave it the much more substandard and Johnny Cash-y title of "KC Artists Walk the Lines."
And I was damn proud of it. Sure, not deservedly so, but I really thought that would be my first title to make it into print.
Not so much.
But wait till next month. A real doozy awaits. We'll see if they bite.
Sol LeWitt died on Sunday. Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday.
And as I write those two sentences and think about the first time I read Vonnegut (Bluebeard, not Cat's Cradle, something like 10th grade) and the first time I saw Sol LeWitt (yummy art candy, probably my junior or senior year of high school on one of those many occasions when my sister made me choose art stumping over my biology final--and thank you, by the way), I question my own tact in mourning two relative strangers on my mother's 70th birthday.
What's up with that?
I could pretend to know. I could even write some stuff and maybe figure it out. But that's not going to happen. Instead I share this, by way of remuneration (a word I was doomed to misspell had I not just looked it up):
My mother lives in unassuming landmarks.
The high chair by the telephone, where she smokes her cigarettes, talks on the phone, drinks her orange juice, coffee, iced tea, coffee, water (in that order) and makes her holiday lists in stitchy, small and now nearly illegible letters. The chair used to be fashionable avocado vinyl, once upon a time, when my dad used to sneak up on her and plant raspberries in her neck, to crescent-scrunched, close-eyed giggles (my most treasured inheritance). She traded up for a tall wood chair, often caressed by small hands begging for a piece of her Hershey bar. The kind with almonds.
The left cushion of her plaid couch. Always the left one, always plaid, with tissues tucked in the cracks. Me or my sisters would sit on the right cushion and drape our short and then very long legs across the gap between us and my mother's lap. She'd tickle our feet with her long nails, until we tucked them, like her tissues, in the space between her back and the sofa's.
The chair on the right side of our oval kitchen table. My sisters would sit at the heads of the table. My dad and I shared a bench opposite my mother. It was probably covered in plaid. Or roosters. My mom has a thing for roosters. We'd inhale her pork chops with rice or her enchilada casserole or my dad's overcooked hamburgers, reaching for seconds, dropping scraps for the resident dog, reluctantly taking the dishes to the counter, fighting over who had to wash them, and rushing to watch Love Boat or Dukes of Hazzard, leaving my mother still eating, bite by excruciatingly and seemingly inhuman, slow bite.
The right side of the bed she shared with my father, accompanied by a pile of John Grisham or Patricia Cornwell books on the bedside table and one, open and face down on her chest as she sleeps, gently snoring. (She never could compete with the bear rattle of my dad, although she seemed to unconsciously try.) This is where I'd come for comfort, after pushing out of a nightmare , and this is where I found her, sitting up, her head in her hands, the night my dad died.
The porch. Or the sidewalk. Or the driveway. And for some reason, always in her slippers and robe. She's one of those people who believes a nightgown by itself is too immodest. Anywhere. Even in the house. She doesn't take more than two steps from bed without being more suitably, if not fully, dressed. And yet, she'll stand almost in the street and wave goodbye in her robe and slippers as, over the years, we have driven farther and farther away, to Austin and now to Kansas City. And as we pull out of the driveway and onto the street, she keeps waving, never leaving her post until we turn the corner and disappear.
I don't know what that means. I'm hoping the euphemism goes my way.
Anyway, Barry's in the news: check him ow-ut
I'm not saying our leaky faucet is leaving Madonna stains or that our fiberoptic Jesus has recently escaped the cupboard we keep him in. No miracles. No bold strokes of divinity.
I'm just saying how gosh-golly fun it is when life imitates art--
--and how large our son's head is.
This post is long overdue. (And just plain long.) I shall remedy that oversight and overdewiness forthwidthit.
First, you must understand that the following statement carries no bias, no traces of fierce pride of parenting. It is said with honesty, with carefully observed scrutiny, and using the powers of analysis that I hold as a published art critic.
My son is a frakking art genius.
And after three years of studious art making, it's damn well time we present to the world his first retrospective.
So here I offer you, the birth and evolution of an Artist. (Notice the capital "A." I don't capitalize willy nilly. I apply that not with hippy liberalism, although I have been endowed with lovely, curvy hips, but with compassionate conservativism.)
Finn is a deliberate artist. Since his earliest encounters with pen and paintbrush--his artistic tools of choice--he has always held them gingerly, resting them in the crook between his forefinger and thumb, never full-hand gripping them with the violent passion of most toddlers.
He works in phases, exploring media and technique until he has utterly exhausted their allure. First, it was pens, then paints, markers, pencils, playdoh, and most recently he has returned to pens--this time branching out into red gel--in what we call his Blood Phase. He has dabbled in crayons, but never fully committed. I suppose the quality waxes too uneven. And crayons are just so common, aren't they?
His first notable study of color and form came in his Circus Period (ca. 2004/5). He had been applying thick swabs of paint to large pieces of butcher paper, crawling and walking around it, exploring all its edges from nearly every perspective. That kinetic dance of paint left him besmeared. And he never looked back.
We'd strip him down to his diaper, and let the happiness in.
Arms, tummy, calves, thighs, feet--Finn would end up totally covered in paint (notably one of the only times he'd work with multiple colors on one "canvas")--and come out the other side looking like a top candidate for the cover photo Bradbury's Illustrated Man (or the more popular and current Ink).
His gross motor skills turned fine in his American Flag Period (ca. 2005/6). And I have evidence of its exhaustive exploration in more than half of my Moleskine. He drew in journals, mine mostly, stitching and looping delicate lines. He called it his American Flag. We still can't figure out why. I would describe it as curvaceous grids. He'd start with a Rubenesque circle and then cascade semicircles, tiny and large off that central form.
His Neoclasssical Period spun off of those first explorations in form. He started coloring in his "flags," drew his first rocketship, and then promptly moved to coloring books. Here, he was more concerned about mastering form than about bold applications of color. Marvel Superheroes, Superdog and friends, All-Star Sports, Spiderman--all these books reveal, page after page, a deliberate application of just one color, markers, sometimes crayons, often pen that, uncharacteristic for his age and without urging from us, stayed within the lines. This, to date, marks his most profilic creations.
Finn then took a break from these flat fields of deliberate color and moved to scultpure--legos, playdoh, and puzzles--and even dabbled in a little performance art, a tribute to his Circus Period. In hindsight, this detour pushed his boundaries of self-expression and creativity, getting him off of the page and on the stage. He traveled inward, and like the Romantics who rebelled against the didactic forms of their Neoclassical brothers, he broke out of the lines and into the realm of pure color and emotion.
In Finn's Albers Phase, he moved away from the big sheets of butcher paper and the formula of color books to small sheets of notepaper, scraps of napkins, anything that would hold pigment. He'd chose one color--purple, red, yellow, brown, something bold--and cover the paper with it, leaving just a little white space at the margins. From those bold and uniform applications of colors, he immediately went minimal: just a line, just a curve, just a thought. Delicate, always deliberate, and expressive of his attempt to lose or find control in a single mark.
But not even that would contain him, for the past two days, Finn has returned to the pen. He's kept the boldness--red gel--but returned to the scrutiny of what can only be described as a culmination of his artistic expressions.
He's even more meticulous, yet even more brazen with his red gel, bleeding his color into forms and onto paper, claiming the violence of his toddler years and yet tempering them with restrained (com)passion.
March 15 comes only once a year.
In this year's wake comes a new season of Buffy and a new art review. Joss Whedon and your local comic book shop will have to supply the Buffy.
Sorry.
But I got you covered on my art review.
Last night, our wee crew slapped on snow boots, heavy coats, and mittens to go see some art in a bustlin' little Kansas City.
Now, I want the next line to sound as Hallmark Movie of the Week, sappy sweet as possible, although I'm not sure how to strike the right tone. Let's see if I can nail it:It was a bittersweet experience as wWe bid adieu bid a fond farewell swapped saliva like parting lovers who have to make it to seventh period on time for once made our tearsoaked goodbyes to our Society for Contemporary Photography (re: the bitter) and then darted over a few blocks, swabbed our eyes, and hootenannied our helloes and welcomes to that sassy young thing (re; sweet), Jamie Warren's Whoop De Doo.
It was a special night.
Jamie Warren's Whoop De Doo ("De" may have two Es), if you haven't caught one, is billed as an art event.
Indeed.
Think about it like a younger, less accomplished, and less scripty Saturday Night Live (with a more challenging production quality), conducted by art school kids for a live art audience (including toddlers) and you'll be not quite, but slightly there. It toys with the ironic, delves with two fetish-booted feet into the funny, and offers some interesting sets and interpretative dance along the way.
The portion of this installment that we squatted for (maybe about an hour) included these crowd-pleasing highlights, if I may dip into a bullet list:
