Shrimp gives up.

Oscar Wilde

“If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life but what I will call the artistic life, if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know, you will never become anything, and that is your reward.”

Another in-progress critique?

Are we in trouble?

Why don’t you just CANE us?

progress?

5. Mike Kelley

“One always has to hide one’s true desires and beliefs behind a façade of socially acceptable lies.”

Honorary fifth artist. No, he’s not actually new to me, but I don’t care.  More on him later; some slides for now….I kind of want to co-opt a little of his “materialist maximalism” for this project, but not as…maximally. I’ve also always liked his utilization of everyday/personal objects, some of which are demonstrative of collective neuroses or which examine social dysfunction that we collectively ignore.

Kelley, “Memory Ware Flats”

Kelley, “Memory Ware Flats” (detail)

Kelley, “Endless Morphing Flow of Common Decorative Motifs”

Kelley, “Let’s Talk”

Kelley, “Mooner”

Kelley, “Catholic Birdhouse”

(On Christianity: “It’s just hateful, mean-spirited and hateful, and I don’t want any part of it.” Ah, the joys of growing up in a religious household. I don’t always agree with the man, but I’ll be damned if this didn’t make me smile.)

4. Robert Rauschenberg

Rauschenberg, “Canyon”

Rauschenberg, “Charlene”

Rauschenberg, “Bed”

3. Leon Golub

Golub, “Disappear You”

Golub, “The Brank”

Golub, “Dog and Skull”

Golub, “Interrogation”

2. Nancy Spero

Spero, “Space Wars”

Spero, detail from the scroll “Torture of Women”

Spero, “Hours of the Night”

Spero, detail from the scroll “Torture of Women”

1. Kiki Smith

Smith, “Born”

Smith, “Pool of Tears II (After Lewis Carroll”

Smith, “Daisy Chain”

Smith, “Shift”

Smith, “Hanging Woman”

Smith, “Unknown (Woman with Man in Coffin)”

Smith, “Deer Things”

proposal

Whether I’m working visually or I’m working with words or music, I’ve noticed my work has a tendency towards a similar theme: examination of how we treat one another. With words, this examination is more direct; with the visual, this exploration is more oblique/abstract. I like the idea of using the personal (or the seemingly personal) to explore this theme.

More recently, I’ve been looking at the effects of trauma/experience/memory and how it affects current behavior. To me, that’s a way of delving into the intricacies of how (mis)treatment of a person can affect his/her psyche. (I guess that’s my PROMPT.) I’ve actually been doing this type of work for the past ten years, albeit not exclusively. I’d like to continue that work and make it more effective. On a related note, the 100 word exercise didn’t exactly enlighten me about anything super new, but it did help me to come up with some semi-consciously derived metaphors that will be helpful in expressing what I want to convey.

With the visual, I’m interested in raising questions, but I’m not bent on offering answers. In fact, I’m not sure I know the answers. A past professor of mine, Ron Milhoan, emphasized the importance of raising questions in one’s work in order to draw the viewer in (and, potentially, to get him/her to think about the questions), but said it wasn’t necessary to offer answers, and this has made a big impression on how I approach art in general.

Material-wise, I want to continue working with both found objects and my own drawings. This will include objects I gathered for the last project; I only used about 20% of what I gathered. I want these pieces to have a strange intimacy – like something found when poking around (uninvited) in another person’s house. I plan on making several pieces of varying sizes and working on them simultaneously. This will require some experimentation on my part, as I’m still developing my instincts about how to incorporate found elements and collage into my pieces. Media studies will center around practicing how to meld collaged elements into a composition that coalesces into an effective one (formally and otherwise).