Danny Kern directed a video that won honorable mention in Herman Miller's 2012 student video contest. The theme for the contest was "What Makes Your Campus Green?" Below, the green man will let you know:
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
Congrats to Glen's First Place Award
Congrats to Glen Cheriton, who won first place in Sierra Nevada College's second annual student symposium (and congrats to art major Jessica Hayworth too, who got third place – and to Troy Mott as well, who placed second). Here's a short interview with Glen:
Maurice Sendak 1928- 2012
Sadly Maurice Sendak died- best known probably for his book, 'Where the Wild Things Are'. He has written and/or illustrated more than 100 books during his career. He was also a very charismatic and articulate when talking about his life and work. Posted are two interviews that played on National Public Radio. The first was in 2003 and delves into his younger memories which inform a lot of his writing for children. He has been described as transforming children's literature as he addressed the 'psychological intensity of growing up'. (2003 interview)
The second interview is from 2011. The interview initially sets out to talk about his latest and last book, Bumble-ardy but ends up in reverie. Just a warning, it's a tear jerker but worth while listening to. (2011 interview)
(Thanks Chris for introducing us to his interviews)
Oz blog
One of the places I have visited is Narek Galleries. The building was originally a church built in 1899 (that is old for Australian history) and is now a gallery that supports and displays established and emerging artists. Karen O'Cleary, the owner and curator, moved to the area, already established in the gallery world, with connections and an established clientele. She wanted to prove you can run a high quality gallery in a remote area.
She bought the space saying you need to own your space if you're going to make it as a gallery/ studio. Also, the road was about to be paved- travelling to the area was made easier. Tourists from Melbourne and Sydney were starting to make the trek. There was a group of artists practicing in the area. Reasons, she believed, that would support the venture.
Like all small towns keeping talent in the area is a problem. People typically are heading off into the wild blue yonder in search of opportunity. Karen, along with five or six interested art entrepreneurs got together and wanted to do something to lift the game of arts in the area- they created created the Living Artist Award.
The Living Artist Scholarship was set up to provide on going support for talented artists from the Far South Coast. The major objective of Living Artist is to provide opportunities for visual artists to develop excellence in their practices by providing mentorship, education, and financial and marketing support in a bid to retain them in the region whilst they work towards supporting themselves from their own art practice!
Approximately $30,000 is raised in the local community every two years. This is not done with grants or government assistance- it is purely with the assistance of other artists, donors, sponsors and volunteers.
The artist has 12-18 months of assistance and then has an 'outcome' event or show.
The artists who have received the award are ceramicist Poppy Benton, print maker Tanja Riese and painter Matt Jones.
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| Poppy Benton |
| Matt Jones |
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| Tanja Reise |
I'm inspired by the art community creating their own opportunities- worldwide.
Friday, May 4, 2012
Thomas Kinkade 1958-2012
Thomas Kinkade died
in early April at age 54.
You may know his work? 'Sentimental
scenes of country gardens and pastoral landscapes in dewy morning light that
were beloved by many but criticized by the art establishment.’
Reviled by the art establishment, a kitschster without rival, mall-art....
I don’t
like Kinkade’s work- at all. However, I almost didn’t like it before I had even seen a single image due to classroom joke’s and derogatory references.( I also didn’t understand
the references to Bob Ross either ). I would usually snort and nod in agreement
and then write the name down so that I could look the person up that night on
the internet. I hate the idea of disliking someone and their work intensely
without, in Aussie terminology, giving them a fair go. Like a good critique.
So I looked him up on the internet....
He was practically a local, born and raised in 
The sketch book helped him land
him a job creating background art for the animated film, ‘Fire and Ice' by by Ralph Bakshi and and Frank Frazetta. Bakshi wrote ‘Thomas Kinkade
was for me at his very young age already a brilliant painter…. I gave him
the job of painting backgrounds for my movie. He nailed it, which really
was impossible for anyone else with no experience – but not for
him.’
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| Kinkade left, Gurney right |
Paul Chadwick, an
old roommate from the Art Centre College also
wrote recently “His frontier scenes, in the manner of John Stobart and
his Bierstadt influenced Yosemite paintings, were great. Anybody repelled
by his shining, cute cottages should reserve final judgment until they’ve seen
these…the guy could paint....”.
I can’t find images of these paintings. However, he did paint under the ‘brush’ name of Robert Girrard (1984- 1989) for awhile, in order to to experiment with impressionism.
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| Robert Girrard piece |
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| Robert Girrard |
| early self portrait |
| early work called 'Two Cats' |
In the 1980s Kinkade became a born-again Christian. The change
coincided with a shift in his career path- he moved his focus to retail, not on
the traditional gallery system. He sold his work through a franchise
of galleries, cable television home shopping networks, and eventually online. He
made no apologies for commercializing the art.
Apparently a Kinkade picture hangs in one out of 20
American homes. His images are reproduced in books, on posters,
canvas prints, hand-signed lithographs, collector’s plates, postcards, calendars, coffee
mugs, puzzles, snoglobes, home furnishings and, the pièce de résistance, a
gated community in Vallejo
Sales for his works and
associated products were reported to have reached $100 million
annually.
Perhaps the most succinct summation I have found was from the Daily Beast- 'He captures, with chilling accuracy, a strangely American combination of blinkered nostalgia, blind complacency, and a ferocious resistance to change. And then he packages and sells that vision within a no-holds-barred consumerist culture that you wouldn’t think compatible with pictures of commerce-free townships twinkling by snow light.'
In the past couple of years Kinkade has had dubious business dealings, galleries have declared bankruptcy and people have gone unpaid.
Knowing more does not change the fact that I find his work insipid....I do wonder though, if I hit upon a 'winning formula' would I pursue it so formidably?
Monday, April 30, 2012
Annual Student Exhibition: With Guest Juror David Horvitz
It is time again for the annual student show here at SNC, and this year our guest juror is David Horvitz. David is a Brooklyn-based water color painter, photographer, and performance artist. He is known for his DIY instructional projects, including some work on the Wikipedia website.
Along with the student work displayed in the gallery, David has been working on his own project to collaborate with those works. A piece from each artist had been taken around the Lake Tahoe area and photographed somewhere. The coordinates of the location in which the photo was taken had been noted and are plotted on a map of the lake. You can view this on the Flickr page where they have been geo-tagged here.
When walking into the gallery one would easily notice that it's not in any sort of a "typical" set-up. There are images hanging from the ceiling, ceramic pieces on the floor, and even a photograph displayed outside the gallery itself. The reason for this being that the work was placed in a similar way to the location in which the work was taken to be photographed. Almost as if the map of Tahoe were super-imposed onto the gallery floor.
During the talk David was asked how he went about jurying the show and if his choices of letting some pieces in affected other pieces that got in. David was also asked about his own work and how social media can play into it. A lot of his projects happen online and this is also how he does his advertising and spreads the word about his work.
To view some of the projects he shared with us click here: Pinocchio video, Bas Jan Ader film, 241543903.
To see David's website click here and Wikipedia page click here.
Make sure to stop by and see the work in, and around, the gallery! Work will be up through graduation.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Glen Cheriton- BFA presentation images
I'm posting Glen's presentation images in conjunction with the other great pictures that are in the previous post.
Much of Glen's work and presentation was a discussion of the fine line between art and science. The meticulous documentation of his work is as much apart of the show, as the show itself. So much of science is the documentation of process. So much of Glen's art is the experimentation of process- mutual dependence, action and influence- reciprocity, the title of Glen's blog.
I think I was most caught up in the discussion of time. I have always had a strictly linear view of time- like many, I imagine. Our society and relationships and experiences operate on the premise of past, present and future. However, recently I have come to view time, or emotions in time as being something far more fluid and cyclical in nature. The idea of a linear quality to time is perhaps a construct to deal with the emotional nature of existence.
Glen's time lapse photo of the stars (below) gives time an orbit. The images of stars that exist now to us, are potentially long gone. The 16mm film reel loops, no beginning, no end. The cup exists always as matter is exists infinitely.
In the words of Carl Sagan, a 'humbling and character-building experience'.
Monday, April 16, 2012
Glen Cheriton BFA
Glen’s show, Aggregate: of all our joys and sufferings, displays many different photographic processes that work out his interests in both space and time. A flickering 16 mm movie reel, star-like pin holes of light coming from the window and wrapping around the body, negative strips of warped sequences, and a very large image of stars in their orbit were all a part of the gallery space. The title of his show comes from a quote by Carl Sagan, about an image of earth from taken by the Voyager space probe when it reached Saturn, in which Earth is just a mere blue pixel.
“If you look at [the picture], you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.”
Glen spoke about how he believes time to not be a linear and how photography does not just capture a moment in time – every photograph is of a duration of time. He showed how it can encompass a whole event. One idea that came up during his talk is how art and science can mix with one another. One of the reasons Glen enjoys photography is that it uses an instrument – the camera – which has been used for both artistic and scientific ends.
Art is often used to display scientific processes, or to simply illustrate an organism. Film and photography have been integrated into many scientific explorations to obtain footage for research, and to share with the public. Since we began exploring the moon – some sort of photographic process went along with us. Photography helps to connect us to the world we live in- but Glen wants to see it even farther, connecting us to our entire universe.
JAPR Spring 2012
A partial list of topics broached:
The sound rain makes on a tin roof
How to weave baskets out of clay
How a kid from Vermont connects to hip hop
Edible architecture
Getting to a silhouette’s essence
Post apocalyptic map-making
Mountains and memory
Making clothes in two dimensions
The hidden stories in found objects
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