Archives for 2009

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From C-Monster:

The graffiti artist who stole a buncha pencils from a Hirst installation at the Tate Modern is now threatening to sharpen them.

In response to my reposting C-Monster, an artist emailed me:

That’s cute, Regina, but you’re missing the point. One artist vandalized the work of another. The pencils aren’t just pencils, any more than Claes Oldenburg’s bat is just a bat. In a more rational world than the one shaping up online, art critics would support the artist, not the vandal.

I think it’s worth remembering that Damien Hirst started this fight when he took teenage street artist Cartrain to court for copyright infringement, and, in an astonishing miscarriage of justice, won.

Copyright? Cartrain’s collages are satires.

An example of what Cartrain was forced to hand over to Hirst’s lawyers, posted by Jonathan Jones:

I love Hirst’s work, but he’s in danger of becoming the Dick Cheney of the art world.

As Jones wrote:

Damien Hirst‘s feud with teenage street artist Cartrain could yet become the most controversial story of Hirst’s career.
It really is vile for a rich man to use his power to bully someone who,
after all, is just trying to emulate him by making art with found
materials.

Presumably, what irks Hirst is that Cartrain used
Hirst’s diamond skull in a series of collaged portraits of the skull’s
creator. Hirst successfully demanded that all the young artist’s works
incorporating the diamond skull should be handed over, presumably to be destroyed. (more)

(That’s two presumablys in one paragraph. Doesn’t the Guardian employ editors?) Of course Cartrain should give Hirst back his dick pencils. But Hirst needs to stop being such a dick. One Cheney is more than enough.

Faught, from Eugene, is an unraveling fabric installation artist.

More on Betty Bowen Award for Northwest artists here, now in its 31st year. Faught receives $15,000. Seattle’s Jenny Heishman and Matthew Offenbacher each get $2,500 special recognition awards. The trio will speak at the Seattle Art Museum Oct. 23, 6-7, followed by a reception. Free admission.

…is a newspaper. (via)

Email from a friend:

When it is time to pick up your kids, try pulling a root beer from the back of the refrigerator. Watch the glass milk bottle slip and fall. Try to catch it! Watch it break into large, clear pieces. Watch the milk, glass and blood pour through your fingers. Drop your keys into the recycling can. (You will find them in a few days! They will be sticky.)

Run to the bathroom, leaving a trail. Decorate the entire bathroom in red. Watch the toilet paper disintegrate into bright red mush. Put on more and more toilet paper. Try to figure out how to stop the bleeding in two different hands at the same time. Try to dial a cell phone to call your spouse. Hear the fear you’ve put into her. Try paper towels. Watch them turn cherry red.

Ride shotgun and fetch the kids and a pizza. Watch as others clean up the milk and glass. (Clean up the crime scene yourself.) Study the wounds. Find slashes on pinky of left and thumb of right. Tape them up. Try learning to a) go to the bathroom b) wash hands effectively when the leftmost digit of each extremity is bandaged. That night, watch The Wrestler. Sit back and relax as our harassed hero begins to slice meat at the deli counter. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!

It could happen to anybody, but it tends to happen to glass artists, maybe especially artists who are only dabbling in the medium.

Take Jason Hirata at the Dirty Shed. (Story here.) Below, he and Sol Hashemi improvise with florescent tubes.

That’s the told story. The untold story is that Hirata dropped a light tube and caught it as it crashed, turning the shards red.

I know an artist who almost bled out when a glass shard cut into her thigh. Fortunately she called 911 before fainting. In Hirata’s far less serious case, no harm done.

Gretchen Bennett placed her memorials to weeds and rubble amid weeds and rubble at the corner of 12th Avenue and Jefferson Street in Seattle. If Joseph Cornell’s cabinets could be found inside curio shops instead of museums, the effect would be similar. (Her gallery here.)

(A project for Capitol Hill Housing with assistance from Steve Zielke.)

In Seattle, both left James Harris to sign on at Ambach & Rice. More on Ambach & Rice’s expanding empire here.

 Mitchell:

McMakin :

Katy Grannan:

I will walk upon the beach… (via)

Zoe Strauss

Bare ruin’d choirs where late the
sweet birds sang (via)

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.(via)

Sometimes they do.

Elizabeth Sandvig

From email: 

The NYTimes recently published an image of Ambroella trichopoda as the sole surviving member of the oldest extant family of flowering plants, “a small shrub found only on the island of New Caledonia in the South Pacific.”

I am reminded of our good friend Wes and his
accosting Kathryn Hepburn on the stairs of the Burke Museum, giving her
a fossil flower from Republic, and in his charming but star-struck
manner, inadvertently comparing her to same.

Ou sont les fleurs d’antan?

I responded:

Wes was so star-struck. Reminds me of the Leigh Bowery-Mick Jagger exchange. Late one night in
a bar in London, Bowery turned around and bumped into
Jagger. Jagger said, “Out of my way, freak.” Bowery responded, “Out of my way, fossil.” (Image via)

From C-Monster:

The graffiti artist who stole a buncha pencils from a Hirst installation at the Tate Modern is now threatening to sharpen them.

(Jonathan Jones opines. Art Observed.)

Or at least rotate it.

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (via)

Standards and Double Standards is an interactive installation created by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer which is comprised of fifty buckled belts that hang from motors in the ceiling and a computerized tracking system. The belts will slowly turn so that the buckles face people walking by. If only one person is in the space, all the buckles will face him or her. If several people are present and moving around, there is more movement, as the belts closest are the ones influenced by each new presence. The belts are at waist height, so the effect is of a crowd of ghosts wearing belts whose invisibility wore off. An interesting idea presented by Lozano-Hemmer is that the belts represent a fetish of paternal authority.

Debra Baxter, at Or Gallery through Oct. 17. Earlier review here.