Museum of Everyday Life

Brilliant Claire Dolan has, somewhere in "the northeast kingdom" of Vermont, turned her barn into an exquisite display of curatorial genius.  She calls it the Museum of Everyday Life and visitors are welcome to turn on the lights upon arrival and close up when they leave.

the toothbrush sculpture was just out of the frame, closer to the road

Our visit overlapped with another couple of folks. We quickly bonded over the experience, the communion of a unique side road attraction. They were giggling with glee and the exhibit took us in as well. It was instantly obvious that we were in the presence of something really special.
Let me preface that last years exhibition must have been of the toothbrush. There was a giant wood and steel sculpture of one outside, and a few donated prison shanks (with letters from the makers) still on display right as you entered the barn. The printed manifesto on the toothbrush, "an object we put in our mouths every day", is worthy of framing for our own bathroom when we get home.
The entry way had a wonderful mini show of matches and pencils.

a roller coaster made up of thousands of matchsticks

the erotic matchbook collection for those 21 years and older

The current exhibition, and one you should not miss, is DUST. According to Dolan's manifesto: Dust, "the most ubiquitous  substance.. coats every surface of our homes, congeals in our nasal passages, floats across continents, settles onto the ocean floors, and rains down from the sky as a diaphanous reminder of the origins of the cosmos. The Bible reminds us it is the start and the finish of everything, and science agrees." The exhibition was full of the profound and the poetic nature of our relationship to dust. The signage is stupendous: "Dust also marks our time. Its inexorable accumulations make visible the minutes and the hours and years. As our bodies age, we witness our own parts turn to dust, as joints grind away, teeth crack and wear, hair falls out and becomes brittle. Watching dust slowly circulate in a shaft of sunlight can be melancholy or transcendent, depending on the moment and the thoughts in our head. Maybe that is because dust is essential, a basic ingredient in everything."
The barn has a thorough collection on display: a giant paper mache sculpture of a dust mite, a nook with fans swirling dust under glass domes, an interactive dust drawing table, dust from Katmandu, the twin towers, the moon, a microscope with slides of navel dust, and many items donated from the community. (Later in the same day we happened to run into the woman who loaned her duster mop and a jar of dust collected by not cleaning her house for 4 months. "Now five", she said.)

The exhibition is a must see unless, of course, you suffer from Amathophobia.

Visual Poetry and Colin Chase at #VermontStudioCenter

An awesome human being, Chase approaches his work and materials questioning each part- what it is, what it was, and what it could be. As a sculptor, he understands that materials all have a history and he hopes tap into that and at the same time to encourage new meaning. He can re-purpose four basketball hoops to become a mystical icon. By combining different objects into a new whole, the sculptures resonate with wit and spirit. His work is elegant and full of word play.

Elegy#2

Filter#3

Like my father, Chase equates living with learning. A lot of what he works with are games, codes, history, art history. He is a dumpster diver like the best of them, (including my father...) and I imagine he has warehouses full of collected parts that feeds his iconography in the right timing.
Living outside NYC, Colin teaches at City College and calls Home Depot and Lowes his jungle for roaming and attaining new ideas, resources, etc.
When he came to my studio to do the critique I found he was able to access the work, and understand what was missing and sense the trajectory I desired to be on. We had a great time and ideas soon flew back and forth between us. He talked about juxtapositions of different pieces that I have already made and that were hanging lifeless and isolated on their own. Together the works started to come together like poetry. It was all my language, I just hadn't put together the sentence. By stitching together smaller paintings I am able to create larger works. It is a method I used when the kids were little and I only had time to work small. I would create tiny paintings and put them in a shoe box until I had an evening when I could sew them together for a larger whole. They were fun to do, and held some dream like quality for me as they manifested themselves playfully.
It is all about showing up to do the work and then knowing when to play!

My work...Seeds: paint, embroidery, felt, plaster, burlap, paper, a found glove, plastic plants and apple on shelf

I hope this work of mine, SEEDS,  speaks tenderly of what it means to be human and cultivating a life of learning.

Painter Tomory Dodge at #VermontStudioCenter

A RISD and CALarts grad, Dodge gave a summarizing PowerPoint of his career path within hours of arriving from Los Angeles. Soft spoken and honest about his doubts, Dodge has always liked the precarious image and the, (his words) "materiality of paint." His large, (average 8 x 8 foot), paintings have transitioned from representation to abstraction since leaving grad school.

From Dodge's Space Junk series of 2008

Using a high contrast of lights and darks, crisp lines versus a soft-edge blend, and some nifty cartoon visual tricks, Dodge creates a foreground "figure" with receding windows and hallucinatory exaggeration. His work veers towards the philosophy of AbEx with a sense of the genius soul latent in every gestural mark and scrape, BUT he uses California candy colors- like hot pink and turquoise.
Only 40 years old, his work was early on snapped up by dealers. He is now in permanent collections everywhere ...
Berkley Art Museum, Berkley, CA
Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL
Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, WA
Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN
Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, C T
and... represented by galleries in London, Los Angeles, NYC and Zurich!

He will be making studio visits until next Wednesday.
Dodge came to my studio first thing this morning and it was good to get a response suggesting that there is way more work to do. Having painted straight for three weeks, I am slowing down. I am getting tired. I am, to be truthful, starting to look forward to getting the hell out of Dodge next week.

Can I still call him my "baby" after 20 years?

Time flies. Feels like just a few years since when I was so eager to first meet him.  Even though he was yelling when we first met, he has proved to be mostly the silent type. More often than not, he is always "fine", though this past year has been more challenging than he deserved. Lots of intense lessons. I guess that is a good way to leave the teenage years behind and move into the wider space of adulthood.

Goodbye teenager!!! Happy 20th birthday, Max, my baby, (always)

What a poetic evening!

An amazing performance of literature readings by VSC residents and guests left me pretty pumped up and speechless. I went through a roller coaster of emotions: from laughter to gulping tears, from shock to commiserate comfort. The energy in the church was raw and throbbing and at times, exploded. The place was packed. People were at the edge of their seats. We became a community of vulnerable tenderness and bonding. Still reeling from it, the poems and stories continue to be the conversation topic at mealtimes. I have a book list as long as my arm. Jerriod's poetry is in a few magazines. Beth read her hilarious poems made up from google searches and spying through trash. Her poem about the news of her dad's death left us breathlessly suspended similar to her spider like"fingers over the keyboard". Lesley had some really good poems about family gatherings, and I was glad to find that she has a wonderful website of her poetry. Alan, most notable as an actor, is working on a new collection of poems that are inspired by snapshots he has taken, where he both describes each object and spirals away in a line of thought, and excellent storyteller. Sanderia read an excerpt from her novel, Mourners Bench, which will be released this fall. Pre-order on Amazon. Demisty read three poems and I really liked the one about the inelegance and embarresment of merging bodies; it reminded me a bit of my layered life drawings. Stacy shared visions of growing up with angels and/or mental patients. And Matt, a very published poet, screamed some of his shorter  poems and an excerpt from his 180 page poem he is currently working on.
I think I am so moved because of the richness of the experience, the talent, the evident hard work and fearless searching... The evening was one vision that I imagine of Paradise.

Matt Hart performing poetry

Alan Cummings, Sanderia Faye, Jerriod Avant, Stacy Seidl, Demisty Bellinger, Lesley Wheeler, Beth Roddy, Matt Hart

*****All photographs by Maxwell Mackenzie*****

Figuratively speaking

At VSC, one of the many perks is access to live models every day! I've been going to the life drawing studio just to warm up. By repeatedly reusing the surface front and back sides as well, I loosen my expectations, and flow with the accidental intersections.

Inevitably there is some psychological drama created. Emotion is a reaction to a mental (here: visual) interpretation.

The Deana Lawson Questions

We had the privilege this week to have Deana Lawson, photographer, as a visiting artist to VSC. She shared her work with us on Thursday and then came to my studio on Friday. A lecturer and soon to be professor at Princeton and an MFA graduate from RISD in 2004, Lawson’s work has been shown all over, including at MoMa, the studio Museum in Harlem, and the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago.  Her photographs and stories have been featured in magazine such as the New Yorker and Time.  

http://www.deanalawson.com/

Question one, for both Lawson and for myself: Who are you to tell this story?

Lawson with one of her pictures

Working mostly in the Brooklyn, Rochester and New Haven areas, Lawson recently won a Guggenheim Fellowship that allowed her to travel to the DR Republic of Congo, Jamaica and to Haiti. A good storyteller, Lawson cited both a real and almost mythical Kodak photographic lineage and referenced the “photo Gods” at play in her work. When Lawson spoke of the designs and compositions of her shots she gave a nod to Hieronymus Bosch, Diane Arbus, Egyption iconography, soft porn magazines and, (in preparation for Haiti), Maya Deren.

Her images are mostly of nude women within domestic interiors and in contrast to clothed men. She celebrates skin and the dynamic relationships captured in the shot between multiple figures. I was reminded of Manet’s Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe. 

There is a definite shock value to the nudity as well as the prominent stare of the subject to the photographer /us. Being a beautiful black woman, Lawson is able, I might suggest, to tackle this subject and get away with not seeming to be totally exploitative.

Question two: How important is the story?

Lawson's appropriated photos of a cousin's jailhouse visits

Her photography practice, as Lawson tells it, serves to affirm the connection between black men and women and defy the stereotypical media emphasis on the separation of the black family, due to things such as the neighborhood prison pipeline. She both directs her desired scene, (hiring models and sharing a sketch with them ahead of time) and uses appropriated photographs and online screen shots.

Ms. Lawson must be an excellent teacher. Carting a three-month old baby daughter with her, she tirelessly visited studio after studio. Our visit resulted in a fruitful list of resources to check out: book titles, artists, etc. She questioned my multiple bodies of work and suggested that I narrow the focus for the next few weeks to just one aspect of the work, and that I take more time to suggest rather than illustrate. She asked me to answer the questions above, and, ironically those were the same questions I had for her work as well.