Katharine Whitcomb and I are team-teaching a new genres course called Hybrids & Collaborations. The students are fantastic and this event promises to rock. Check it out.

The CWU Writing Center and the students in ART/ENG 498 Hybrids and Collaborations invite you to an evening of allegorical tableaux in Hertz Hall.

Wed., May 23rd, 7-8 p.m., Hertz Hall Writing Center, Central Washington University

ON WRITING
Participating Artists:
Stephen Ellis
Tammy Fortin
Jay Hollick
Pat Hutchins
Aaron James
Desiree Jarboe
Jeff Lane
Kale Lemmon
Justin Martin
Jessi Nelson
Lauren Norby
Melissa Nott
Rachel Pybon
Lisa Ritchie

Sunday Portrait (#14), watercolor on Arches paper, 12.25 x 12.25 in., 2006.
Sunday Portrait (Record and Album Cover), Vinyl LP and Screen printed flocking on record cover (Ed. of 2), 12.25 x 12.25 in., 2006.

The show is up through 5 May 2007. Also on view are Sunday Paintings by Michelle Forsyth.

Project Notes:
Sunday Portrait is a multimedia, multi-sensory engagement with people who are loyal readers of the Sunday edition of The New York Times. By posting a classified ad in Seattle newspapers, I established a network of people who have developed rituals of reading the The New York Times every Sunday. After a preliminary telephone conversation with participants, during which time I explained the terms of my project, I arranged to meet them on a Sunday of their choice. I met with participants every other Sunday for a year. I met them at the location where they normally read the Sunday Times, and conducted a recorded interview with them in an attempt to tease out their specific reading rituals. I found these rituals to be both visual (where they read, what time of day, how they dress) and nonvisual (appropriate dispositions of the mind, organizational control of time and space). Following the interview, I photographed the participants while they read. Working creatively from photographic documents and digitally recorded interviews, I developed 24 watercolor portraits and an audio collage (remastered for LP records), which, when taken as a whole, suggest how personal taste informs daily rituals related to consuming the news. Sunday Portrait is my attempt to reflect on who consumes these texts and images (many of them horrific), and in what context they do so, ultimately redefining the relationships between consumption, leisure, and education. The project exists as an exhibition of 24 watercolor paintings and an edition of 2 LP record albums, each with a flocked album cover.

December 6, 2006

"On Institutional Wellbeing and other Service-based Corporate Activities" will be a lecture performance sponsored by Centrum Beeldende Kunst Utrecht and Grafisch Atelier Utrecht. I just checked out the venue today and it looks great. Thanks in advance to philosopher, Tom Dommisse for the post-performance interview.

TRUNK SHOW , four stills from DVD (edition of 6), duration 12:30 minutes, 2006

TRUNK SHOW pits the social benevolence of community-based art practices against the trickery and spectacle of the aesthetic or designed environment. The video is constructed from footage collected during two performances which took place during the construction of Contraposto Home Decor's new boutique, c (pronounced /k/). For each performance Contraposto staged a product-test-and-display-environment in the front lobby of the boutique, in which we introduced the new editions of soap and hand lotion. During each product test an actor playing a consumer scientist would engage consumers in a partially scripted product test. Each test consisted of consumers verbally responding to questions regarding personal hygiene and cultural taste while they participating in various sense-based experiences. The relationship between the highly sensual activities and the frank, intellectual dialog created tension that was often exacerbated by the actor's talent for extemporaneous conversation.

Many thanks to Professor Simeon Hunter for being a gracious host and an informed tour guide. It was a pleasure to work with his architectural theory students and to see the articulate ways they are making sense of post-Katrina New Orleans.

Duo exhibition with Michelle Forsyth opens May 11, 2007.
The show is about news. I'll paint 53 watercolors portraits of avid New York Times readers, reading. Sundays focuses on the social and material rituals involved in reading the Sunday Times. It is my attempt to reflect on who consumes these specific images (many of them horrific), and in what context they do so, ultimately redefining the relationship between consumption, leisure, and education.

PS: The current show at the KAC is called Pattern. See it!

Broadly investigates the social benevolence of community-based practices vs. the trickery and spectacle of aesthetic/designed environment. (Collaborators include Jacon Baron-Taltre, Amy Goeltzenleuchter, Caley Lents, Dylan Neuwirth)

Opening performance is a soap test/trunk show, March 2, 5-9 pm, at c's new space at Tashiro/Kaplan (312 S. Washington, in Seattle's Pioneer Square)

See it before it gets closed down.

I think I will submit my resume at Starbucks, Waikiki.

on amateur photography and construction of self