Marfa

I first learned of Marfa, Texas from conversations with my friend, Matt Olson, a musician and dreamer who in recent years has developed a company in Minneapolis for landscape design called rosenlof/lucas. He described this amazing little town in West Texas where Donald Judd lived and worked since the 1970's and ultimately founded the Chinati Foundation.

The Chinati Foundation is located on the site of a former military headquarters known as Fort D.A. Russell or Camp Marfa. In 1979, with initial support from the Dia Art Foundation, Judd converted these artillery sheds and army barracks into a contemporary art museum to preserve large-scale sculptural installations by minimalist artists including Dan Flavin, John Chamberlain, Roni Horn and Claes Oldenburg.

The Chinati Foundation now attracts thousands of visitors to Marfa each year and draws international artists to its Artist-in-Residence program. Scenes from a number of films have also been shot in and near Marfa, such as Giant starring James Dean, and more recently, both No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood.

A few days before Christmas, I drove across the desert from Austin to Marfa and spent a night in a room at the Thunderbird, an astonishingly sexy hotel influenced by Donald Judd's minimalist vision. I shot photographs in the area on film which I hope to look at later this month, but also took some digital snapshots at the Chinati Foundation for instant gratification and to share with Matt and anyone who might check into this blog ... thank you for looking and happy new year.

Twins Falls

Katie and Kevin
Twins Falls
Austin, TX
August 2007

Spotting this young woman on the picnic table in the woods at Twin Falls was almost startling - like love at first sight - I got instantly nervous and sweaty - but it was the same kind of attraction I felt towards the teenage boy at Barton Springs. It seemed like forever since I thought to take pictures of people, and suddenly, these teenagers at the river's edge revealed a beauty and awkwardness and sexuality that awakened a long buried desire.

Unfortunately, I didn't manage to get her face into sharp focus, which has brought me some real disappointment and frustration, wishing I could step back in time and change that moment ever so slightly.

But at least looking at this image reminds me that I discovered someone and somewhere that I cared about, and while I'll probably never find her again, at least I can finally go back to the woods to look. For four months, I've wondered who will be sitting at that picnic table when I walk into the woods, if anyone. What will the light look like on his or her face and body? Will anyone be swimming in the river nearby? Will the woods be deserted, or do some of them come around all year long?

Where I grew up, it was the cemetery, the lakes, the woods - these places of solitude and intimacy and rebellion - the first places I ever took pictures.

Living with Art

Unleaded, Unleaded, Premium Unleaded
Eric Graham
2006

I recently received my purchase from Jen Bekman's 20x200 project, an 8x10 print of Eric Graham's West Texas gas station, which is now hanging on the wall in the bedroom of my recently re-shuffled Brooklyn railroad apartment. I first learned about Eric's work on Jen's 20x200 blog, which describes her relationships to the artists in the this project as well as her insights into their work. Jen drew a parallel between photography of the American vernacular - things like parking lots, dusty small towns, billboards and gas stations - and Eric's paintings of the same subject matter. She mentioned her love/hate relationship to this type of work, and god knows I am a sucker for this stuff, but also recognize and struggle with the dilemma these subjects present.

Nevertheless, I simply couldn't resist Eric's cool and minimal painting. And as I am headed back to Texas in two days, his vision of romantic empty spaces and fragments of roadside architecture brings some inspiration and longing.

Saddle Muscle

Shane Ruth
Hackensack, New Jersey
October 2007

Regretfully, I will miss the opening tonight of Saddle Muscle at Sunday, a new gallery in the East Village. A very special friend, Shane Ruth, will be showing recent work in sculpture and video, and on a balmy afternoon earlier this fall, I had the privilege of accompanying him on a shoot for this exhibition.

Partly, Shane brought me along on this adventure to an equestrian park in suburban New Jersey to take pictures and turn a video camera on and off, but my real job was to play "girlfriend" in the event we ran into any trouble. As hard as I try, it's not often that I get to be someone's girlfriend, so I jumped at the opportunity. I wore cut-off denim shorts and a soft peach t-shirt, and he even drove me around in his car and bought me cheeseburgers and onion rings and took me to a Vietnamese spa afterwards. Wow. Why can't I find a girlfriend just like that?

Shane has charisma that makes almost everyone swoon, and watching him rock his home-made saddle half-naked out in the woods was a little moment of heaven. And when we were inevitably accosted by a concerned father whose house bordered the train tracks, I was prepared with my best midwestern smile and naivete.

To see more of Shane's cloth cowboy accoutrements, and the final performance on the equestrian field, stop by:

Project Space: Saddle Muscle
Sunday L.E.S.
237 Eldridge
Dec.14 - Jan 6

Back to Jail

Back to Jail
Angola Prison Rodeo
October 2005
(press arrow to play video)

Horse Parade

Horse Parade
Angola Prison Rodeo
October 2005
(press arrow to play video)

Line Dance

Line Dance
Angola Prison Rodeo
October 2005
(press arrow to play video)

You're in My Space

Water Park #1
Wisconsin Dells, WI
March 2004


Back Door
New Orleans, LA
October 2005

Two of my photographs, Water Park #1 and Back Door, are showing in an exhibition called "You're in My Space" which opened last night at Gallery 2 and Project Space at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago.

"You're in my space" explores and reinterprets our physical surroundings, drawing on personal, psychological and cultural relationships. The artists included in this exhibition investigate different notions of space: abstracted locations, remembered sites, and re-contextualized environments. Recognizable spaces are transformed, creating the possibility for an unexpected discovery.

Other artists included in the exhibition are: Rob Bos, Jesse Avina, Ann Toebbe, Angel Otero, Dan Everett, Gisela Instuaste, Valerie Magarian and Zachary Skinner.

I made a series of three images of the Kalahari Water Park Resort in the Wisconsin Dells in the late winter of 2004. I frequently drove by this water park en route to Chicago from Minneapolis on I-94 and was intrigued by this colorful play-land for Midwestern families. Often, I pass places at the side of the road with a sense of regret that these sites are so close and yet inaccessible, but on this particular drive on an overcast afternoon, I pulled off of the interstate and navigated my way through the resort's immense parking lot. It was off-season and the park was mostly deserted. Some of the pools where before I had seen bodies splashing in the sun-light were drained, leaving large and empty and modernist shapes, or where water remained, it was uncannily quiet and still. The absurdity of these giant plastic animals that embody Kalahari's allure seemed heightened by their aloneness in this dreary and desolate manufactured landscape.

Despite my wariness of a preoccupation with this subject matter, animal figures seem to inevitably creep into my pictures. In October of 2005, I made a short trip to Louisiana that was originally motivated by a desire to shoot video footage of the legendary Angola Prison Rodeo for a project that sadly never amounted to much more than a cool experience. Before the rodeo, I spent two days in New Orleans driving through the city with friends, absorbing and photographing some of the damage that Hurricane Katrina had left two months earlier.

D. and I spent the night with one of her artist friends from graduate school, and in the morning, I was struck by what I discovered at his back door. A taxidermy deer head hung above a dark puppet whose arms dangled from strings and which was illuminated by a slant of morning sun-light passing through the slightly cracked door. It was in this juxtaposition of these charged symbolic elements that I felt acutely attune to the mysterious and complex history of the region. It felt as though New Orleans revealed a sliver of itself to me in a quiet moment that might have been so much easier to overlook than the collapsed houses and stark contrasts of the surrounding neighborhoods.

A Field Guide to the North American Family: The Exhibition

Gallery Bar
120 Orchard Street
New York, New York
gallerybarnyc.com

Opening reception: Thursday, December 6, 7pm - 12am
On view: December 6, 2007 - January 2, 2008
Gallery hours: Monday - Friday, 1- 6pm

Press Release: Humble Arts Foundation and Mark Batty Publisher announce "A Field Guide to the North American Family: The Exhibition." An opening reception will be held on Thursday, December 6, 2007 at Gallery Bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and the show will run through Wednesday, January 2, 2008; this pin-up series features the work of the artists included in Garth Risk Hallberg's A Field Guide to the North American Family.

In sixty-three entries and an accompanying website (afieldguide.com) Hallberg's novella offers a collaborative portrait of two fictional specimens and the environments they inhabit. Both established and up-and-coming photographers contributed to this edition's lavish illustrations via the website, an ongoing, networked internet community. Part fiction, part reference work, part photo-essay, the book and the exhibition invite viewers to consider the contemporary state of the American Family.

Keeping with the collaborative, multi-media nature of the book, Mark Batty Publisher is proud to partner with Humble Arts Foundation, a not-for-profit that seeks to advance the careers of emerging fine artists by providing grants and exhibitions opportunities. Together, with the help of all the participating photographers, the Field Guide Exhibition showcases some of the freshest and most focussed photographers working today, including Amy Elkins, Jonathon Gitelson, Jason Lazarus, Matt Nighswander, Tema Stauffer, Alana Celii, Alexi Pike, Ben Huff, Brandon Sorg, Brian Sorg, Catherine Gass, Chris Eichler, Christopher Saylers, Christy Karpinski, Collen Plumb, Consider Vosu, Elizabeth Fleming, Grant Willing, Hans Gindlesberger, Jason Curtis, Jason Falchook, Jennifer Greenberg, Jessica Greenburg, Jessica Bruah, JJ Sulin, John Putnam, Kara Canal, Kevin Sisemore, Liz Kuball, Matthew Schenning, Maury Gortemiller, Michael Kwiecinski, Nicholas Meyer, Rebecca Blume Rothman, Sandy Carson, Shane Lavalette, Shawn Records, Stacy Arezou Mehrfar and Timothy Briner.

About This: The ICP Faculty Exhibition

I am excited and honored to have a piece included in the ICP Faculty Exhibition which opens tonight in the Education Gallery. When I moved to New York in the summer of 2005, I brought along a New York dream to teach at this incredible institution, and was amazed and terrified when this dream came to fruition in the winter of 2006. I spent my first many months in this city feeling like a cross between Dorothy From Kansas and Joe Buck, and still do much of the time, but my involvement with the School of the International Center of Photography has given me the opportunity to form meaningful relationships within a vital photographic community and to participate in an ongoing dialogue about photography.

The current installment of ICP faculty exhibitions explores the potent relationship between image and text. The works exhibited here use text in a variety of ways: to tell a story that may not be visible in the image, to undermine the conventional reading of an image, or to provide the viewer with extended interpretive information. The combination of image and text produces dimensions of meaning that would not be generated by either alone. And the artists' use of both visual and written expression provides insight into his or her motivation and process.

Curator: Stuart O'Sullivan

Nirvana

Installation of "Nirvana"
Jason Lazarus
D3PROJECTS
November 2007

Photographer friend and former student in a previous century, Jason Lazarus, began a project last spring asking friends and strangers to send him images of the person who introduced them to Nirvana. A group of these motley snapshots from the early 90's landed in Jason's solo exhibition that opened this month at D3PROJECTS in Los Angeles.

I sent Jason a pair of Polaroids of my high school "cover boyfriend," Dave, along with a short story about sexuality, friendship and painful transitions which you can find posted on my blog in July under "Break ups". Or you can decipher the story from my rough draft below, which gives you some idea of what my writing looks like until I sit down at the computer.

Dave is pictured above second from the right.

Confessions of a Window Dresser

Last fall, I was drawn into an unforeseen line of freelance work dressing windows and photographing windows at night for the downtown department store, Bergdorf Goodman. It was a bit like blindly falling in love with a lot of things all at once: an elegant old store, a team of creative people, an art director and his assistants, long and heated conversations in small and intimate spaces, and daily rituals that include ladder-climbing, painting, hanging, lifting, tiling, glueing, decorating, shopping and gazing at people on 5th Ave. and 58th Street.

The greatest efforts go into producing windows for the Christmas season, and this year's Christmas windows celebrate the late Tony Duquette, an eccentric and visionary artist and interior designer. Tony Duquette, like Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, began his career dressing windows for department stores. He later designed sets for Hollywood movies, Broadway musicals, ballets and operas, as well as interiors for commercial and public spaces. His Beverly Hill's estate, DAWNRIDGE, still serves as a design headquarters and was part of the inspiration for Bergdorf's DuQuette windows.

A book about this legendary figure written by Wendy Goodman and Hutton Wilkinson, his design collaborator and business partner, was recently released, and limited edition copies are currently on sale at Bergdorf Goodman for a mere $250. I have included some images from the book-signing party on November 14th depicting just a few of the many artists in the visual department whom are responsible for creating these magical windows, along with details of the windows themselves.


Hutton Wilkinson signing Tony DuQuette books


5th Ave. Window: "Earth"


Brandon


5th Ave. Window: "Light"


David, Dmitri and Shane


5th Ave. Window: "Light"


Jay and Donna


5th Ave. Window: "Light"


Kevin and Florent


5th Ave. Window:"Light"


Randy, Maureen and Rubin


5th Ave. Window: "Water"


Hutton, David, Wendy and Linda


5th Ave. Window: "Water"


Ron and Shane


5th Ave. Shadowbox


Linda


5 Ave. Window: "Air"


Johanna and Ryan


5th Ave. Window: "Air"


Douglas and Shane


5th Ave. Window: "Fire"


Rubin and friend


5th Ave. Window: "Fire"


Ron and Jay


5th ave. Window #8


Brandon and J.J.