Summer Vacation

The studio beckons with a September show on the horizon.
I will be back at the end of the summer.
Time for a digital vacation….

Margaret Kilgallen / Giant Robot

Giant Robot has a fantastic feature (including cover) of Margaret Kilgallen in their latest issue #37.

From the editor’s desk of GR:

It’s an honor to have Margaret Kilgallen’s work on the cover of this issue. She was a Giant Robot reader, and we met her a few times too. Once she and her husband came to see us speak to a tiny group of Asian-American students at Stanford. Then we saw them paint a mural in a Los Angeles parking lot. After hearing about an upcoming retrospective of Margaret’s work at REDCAT, we took a low-percentage shot and asked her longtime friend and REDCAT curator Eungie Joo if there was any chance that original material existed. Not one minute later, an email came back: Eungie had just found an unpublished interview from 1999 on her computer. And it turns out it was Margaret who turned Eungie on to GR!

Since Margaret passed away in 2001, the art world has changed a lot. Street, folk and “outsider” art have found their way into the spotlight, and Margaret is often grouped with today’s most respected artists. Of course we wanted to feature her in the magazine, but Eungie put it well when she said, “I am really uninterested in feeding myth without material.” We feel the same way, and hope that the article will provide insight into her personality, while, at the same time, placing her work into context.

We don’t intend to over dramatize Margaret’s life in any way. Our intention is to treat her works like everything else we cover. It’s stuff that we find inspiring.

Only one slight misfortune, and I don’t think they were trying to be cheeky- the cover of the GR misspells her last name as Killgallen. No matter, if you are a fan of Margaret it’s a must read issue.

Other Kilgallen web coverage as an ode to the current REDCATretrospective that is up through August 21st:

SF Gate Culture Blog

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Sweet Bye and Bye Flckr photoset from sketchypad annex

(they have a Giant Robot scans too, help yourself!)

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To Chambers Gallery!

If I was in Portland tonight I would break a celebratory split of champagne against the building that holds the new gallery Chambers to wish them good luck. With the gallery and a great show opening tonight, if you are in the radius, stop by and wish Eva Lake and Wid Chambers the best.

Their opening exhibit is Cut and Paste, featuring new work by Eunice Parsons and Paul Fujita.

As PORT, Portland’s dynamic new sight reported, Eva ” is something of an art scene triple-threat as gallerist, artist and Artstar radio jockey“.

Sh!t!

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Probably the most remarkable thing about last night’s Sh!tstorm event, besides the fact that an overflowing amount of people tried to cram into the small Rendezvous Jewelbox theater, was that I knew almost no one in the room. Not that I am a social butterfly, but for someone who thinks they have been commenting about the Seattle art scene for the last two years (or something) it was a wake up call. An amazing range of people turned out, young, old, sober and not so sober. At one point I thought I might have been the only representative sitting there from the visual arts, forgetting that Seattle has an insanely dedicated theater crowd, but I imagine the actors just tend to be more vocal than most of us painters, etc.

Anyway, the good news is there certainly seem to be enough people this fine city here that I claim as my own that want to combat the ennui that the Seattle art scene gets tagged with constantly. There is another Sh!tstorm scheduled for October, we’ll see what that means. I imagine that some people who have been here for decades heard the same old axe being ground last night, but myself, being away and then still trying to figure things out since I came back a few years ago was surprised how different it all seems.

There is a website I found out about from attending, a guy was there last night from Seattleart.org. He was sound recording the event, but enough people seemed up in arms about being identified off the record that he has decided not to post it. Too bad, but then there was the argument that if people wanted to know what was going on they should have had their ass sitting there and then. I’m of the camp that thinks they should have gone ahead and hired a stenographer like evening moderator Matthew Richter said had been threatened.

 

State of the Critics

Awhile back, in the artdish forums there was a nice thread on the state of Art Criticism and blogs (in response to a Seattle Weekly story). Now this week the two worlds collide when Nate Lippens (our critic from the Stranger) and Steven Michael Vroom (writer of Vroom Journal and host of Art Radio Seattle) go toe to toe on the state of the arts and criticism in Seattle- check it out.

And speaking of, as Nate pointed out in his column this week, this coming Tuesday (7/12/05) the Rendezvous is hosting SH!TSTORM, which promises to be:

A no-holds-barred quarterly debate on the state of the Seattle cultural landscape, such as it is. July’s bone: All arts organizations in Seattle must be allowed to die with dignity.

Okay Seattle, I will drink to that.

Those Confederates and their Attics

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To appease my curiosity I was blessed with a copy of Confederates in the Attic as I made my way to the airport the other day. Since then I have had this book randomly referenced twice in conversation, and as a salve for my concern and have found it factually satisfying. I couldn’t help but pick out this passage for being so dead on the nail about what I had seen:

Awakening the next morning in a $27 room at Salisbury’s Econo Lodge (“Spend a Night, Not a Fortune!”), I recognized the appeal of dwelling on the South’s past rather than its present. Stepping from my room into the motel parking lot, I gazed out at a low-slung horseshoe of ferroconcrete called Towne Mall, a metal-and-cement forest of humming electricity pylons, a Kmart, a garish yellow Waffle House, a pink-striped Dunkin’ Donuts, plus Taco Bell, Bojoangles, Burger King, the Golden Arches of McDonald’s and the equally gaudy signs for Exxon, BP, and Shell hoisted like battle flags above the melee of competing brands. A few exhaust-choked bushes poked from the greasy asphalt.

I’d gone to bed reading about the Confederate general Albert Sidney Johnston, who urged his men into battle at Shiloh by declaring, “Remember the fair, broad, abounding land, the happy homes and ties that would be desolated by your defeat!” I wondered sleepily what Johnston would make of the view from the Econo Lodge.

-Tony Horwitz, page 27

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However, as I was reminded by one of my students who has lived here (in Seattle), that we have our own “what the fuck” peculiarities that probably do not jive with the rest of the country including incessant bike lanes, extremist thought on organic food and other items that have us slotted into the frivolous liberal category. She reminded me of this after I returned from Dollywood and was appalled by what I thought was a catastrophic health care disaster written all over a population that was greedily consuming deep fried Twinkies and Snickers, football field sized powder sugar funnel cakes and showed a complete lack of shame for riding those mall scooters in caravans instead of walking the amusement park.

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But we do have our strip malls and mall wastelands out here too, which I was abruptly reminded of as I got lost on a strip in Burien on my first day back. Just different signs and a severe lack of Waffle Houses.

Visiting Artist

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When I was at PS1 during my whirlwind stint in New York the days before going South, I came across what become a talisman of sorts for me during the next few weeks. In PS1’s cute little bookstore (new since I had last been there) I found a tiny book by painter Amy Sillman comically enough titled: Visiting Artist.

As time marched on and a bizarre homesickness settled in I found her book strangely comforting. Amy’s own predicaments, laid out in illustrated form develop a slight echo, her version horribly amplified which I found hilarious and true all at once.

Here is a sample:

I SPEND MOST DAYS AND ALL NIGHTS ALONE, EXCEPT FOR THE DOG.

I GIVE A SLIDE TALK ON MY WORK. THE DIRECTOR OF THE PROGRAM SNEAKS OUT EARLY. THE ONLY QUESTIONS AT THE END ARE ABOUT WHAT KIND OF PAINT I USE.

NO ONE SIGNS UP FOR A MEETING. FINALLY A FRESHMAN SIGNS UP BUT IT TURNS OUT HE WANTS ME TO COME TO HIS DORM PARTY AND GET STONED.

I EAT LUNCH WITH A STUDENT WHO ANNOUNCES THAT HE’S A GENIUS AND ASKS ME IF I HAVE ANY CHILDREN YET.

UNHAPPY FACULTY MEMBERS REVEAL THEIR LAMENTS IN THE FACULTY LOUNGE: ISOLATION, DIVORCE, DENIED TENURE, UNDERPAID, STAGNATION. TWO PEOPLE TELL ME SEPARATELY THEY WERE ABDUCTED BY ALIENS.

editorial footnote: I would have killed to have had my dog with me.

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Regency Art Press has also published other cool little books, one by Sean Landers that I almost bought, as they remind me of these Cartoons he used to have posted at Max Fish five million years ago that used to crack me up (one in particular comes to mind completely ridiculing a small baby back pack trend that didn’t look so great on most people). However that day, I left with only my one small purchase.

New Drawing exhibit at Highland CC

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After travel all day on Tuesday, a life of airports and shuttles, I touched down in Seattle finally. Very glad to be home!

Yesterday, after finding the drawings I had sent from North Carolina actually were in the vicinity (there is no such thing as overnighting anything from the Post Office there even though the Express Mail posters are hung front and center), I spent the day hanging my work at Highland CC, which is great as it is not often you punch out a new body of work and have the opportunity to exhibit it right away. The show will be up through July 31st.

Tuesday morning, sitting on my friend Harry’s porch before he took me to the airport, we were both trying to wrap our minds around the entity called the South. A friend of ours James who is from Kentucky used to spin the wildest tales about growing up there, I see now he was not using any exaggeration, I’m glad I got four weeks to try to decipher it for myself. In the mean time I came home to a garden fully in bloom and lots of peace and quiet.