Thanks to everyone that dropped off magazines and catalogs yesterday. I the mags down to HVCCA today, and passed the mags on to an appreciative Chris Jones, the museum's artist in residence for the next several months. I spoke to Chris for a while on his process of creating his work and the transformation of his collage materials. I snapped these photos in his studio space in the museum's upper level gallery where he's been working for the last two weeks. An exhibit of work created during Chris' residency will open on May 18. So stay tuned. An earlier post, included an image of a collaged motorcycle sculpture made by Chris. There's a much more readable image on his home page, just click the link under his name above. 
Several pieces of different scale are in the early stage of development. Playing on the textures in the magazine imagery, some pieces are already taking on uncanny, decidedly un-paper characteristics.
The collection of materials will continue, so keep saving your magazines over the next several weeks, and I'll make another run down to Peekskill on March 30 for the museum's next panel discussion -more on that later. If you have magazines you want to pass along, let me know or take them down to the museum yourself.I was at HVCCA today to attend the portfolio review day. Nearly 100 artists had an opportunity to get 15 minutes of one on one time with one of six reviewers. I saw several familiar names on the posted lists of review time slots and reviewer assignments. I'm interested to hear how beneficial this event was for other attendees. Please feel free to comment below. I've never participated in one of these types of reviews and it's sort a blur to me. I think as with any good critique group, it helps to have clear questions you'd like answered in mind, and I didn't have any off hand. The main thing I came away with is an intent to refine the way I speak about my work, particularly with a very short opportunity.
image from Disney's "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" via Azathoth's Abode on the Plateau of Leng
Was it mere coincidence, or a knowing form of artworld commentary that the TNT network broadcast Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow last night just hours after Tyler Green served up a heaping MANscoop about Jeffrey Weiss stepping down as head of the Dia Foundation after nine months? Given the film is shown every three weeks on the network, the incident must surely be coincidental if not poetic. As I've only ever seen snippets of the film, and I've never seen the end, I don't know how fully fitting the analogy might be.
Anyway, Carol Vogel reports on the story in this morning's NY Times. Weiss told Vogel that he feels he was ill suited for the job, and it took him astray from the academic and curatorial activity he holds dear.
...that's the google search by which a visitor in made his or her way to maykr recently. When posed as a search query, it's difficult to decide whether the phrase is inquiring lamentation or wishful expectation.
It is a question that has been asked of me periodically. If indeed Beacon's art scene is now dead, then it was only ever alive in the flurry of press accounts surrounding the opening of Dia:Beacon touting this city's creative promise and in the lofty pronouncements made by Bill Erlich setting a level of expectation for the Beacon Art Society and the Beacon Cultural Foundation.
This is the headquarters of the Beacon Cultural Project [see "Artworld," June '02], founded in April 2002 by William S. Ehrlich, a collector, trained architect and principal in the real estate development firm of Milton L. Ehrlich, Inc., established in 1935 by his father. Ehrlich was one of the earliest Manhattanites to buy in Beacon after he learned of Dia's plans. At the time of the Project's announcement, he raved to the New York Times [Apr. 26, '02], "Once I knew Dia was a done deal, I ran around Beacon and bought everything I could. I'm now Beacon's largest taxpayer. David will be the impresario for culture." That is David A. Ross, director of the Beacon Cultural Project and president of its nonprofit sibling, the Beacon Cultural Foundation. Formerly the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and, before that, of New York's Whitney Museum of American Art, Ross is now engaged in collaborations between private, public and institutional sectors in a move to foster growth in Beacon. The Cultural Project's aim is to spur Beacon's revitalization through innovative cultural initiatives.
(Art in America, June 2003. by Suzaan Boettger)
The impending cultural shift implied in press releases and assorted travel articles of 2003 creating the notion of artdom's next bastion as a bucolic billyburg in Beacon belie the reality that the true march of progress is slow, and uneven. In addition, the development of a thriving and sustainable creative community must come more from a place of self fulfillment and less from a desire to put on a show that will draw the tourists.
I've been an advocate of working to increase the visibility of the artistic activity in this city, within and without, both for the sense of vibrancy I believe it provides the community, and for the enhanced experience it offers for those living and creating work as artists in Beacon. That said, there's a satisfaction in seeing that certain things take their natural course, defying attempts to engineer a "scene" that will result in an process of gentrification, genetically altered to achieve desired results in an abbreviated time frame while selectively omitting the unpleasant parts. This era of change in Beacon's creative life has thus far been short and uneven; many places have opened and closed since 2003; certain major initiatives have fizzled, and some promising creative endeavors have receded into convention. But such aspects of the very recent history do not erase the glimmers of expectation in new artistic enterprises that are still emerging, or the new energies of folks still moving into the city.
Over the past three years, there have been periods of both stimulating and flaccid activity, but what has existed here, consistantly, is a broad community of artists creating work which finds purchase both near and far. In spite of the promise of a euphoric art frenzy, what has existed is a steady growth of a population of capable, creative people - many from Williamsburg, but many other places as well, and the scene they've created is one that is much smaller than those in terms of public art spaces, but the true nature of the creative environment here is one that is diligent and intimate, with much interaction between artists occuring within their homes and studios.
Several pieces of different scale are in the early stage of development. Playing on the textures in the magazine imagery, some pieces are already taking on uncanny, decidedly un-paper characteristics.
The collection of materials will continue, so keep saving your magazines over the next several weeks, and I'll make another run down to Peekskill on March 30 for the museum's next panel discussion -more on that later. If you have magazines you want to pass along, let me know or take them down to the museum yourself.
