Paving the road to hell since 1989.
Week three starts with thesis presentations by the fourth year superstars: smart, thought-provoking, and gorgeous work. I’m happy to be in this company.
I spent last week in seminars and lectures, and haunting loading docks looking for boxes to build this thing.
Now I have to figure out what to do with it. I have a few ideas, but—as with any new technology—it’s best to proceed with caution.
More photos on Flickr.
The MFA program I’ve started runs for six weeks each summer for four years. I meant to post this update over the weekend, but I was trying to squeeze in a glimpse of my family. I’m blessed with an absent friend to house-sit for in Baltimore, a dog to walk to get me out of the studio, and more visual and intellectual stimulus than I can process.
Here’s what my studio(s) looked like on Saturday.
Just before school ended, I gave my International Baccalaureate art students a summer assignment to keep them out of trouble. Those who have already been with me for a year took home a length of rope and some instructions for making art with it. I can’t wait to see what they come up with. I usually do the assignment myself, but this guy totally stole my idea.
The first-year students presented our work today to each other and the rest of the MICA program. So I was going through photos last night and found this one of an installation I did in 1999.
I set this up in the window of an abandoned department store in downtown Montclair, NJ. A motorized goose flew around in a circle trailing objects that clinked and plunked on bottles and glasses below, filling the cavernous space with a beautiful music.
The funny thing was that you couldn’t hear it from the sidewalk outside the window unless you put your ear up to the glass. After a few days you could step back and see dozens of ear prints ranging from child-height to adult.
I was driving to school yesterday (for the last time this summer) when I saw what looked like a blue plastic anatomically accurate heart in the gutter. Realizing the enormous metaphorical potential, I pulled over. And when I walked up the median, I found this.
My friend Peggy just posted some sweet finds about Paul Klee, one of my all-time favorite artists as well. That reminded me of a book I saw a couple of years ago, of puppets Klee made for his son. The book was wrapped and expensive, but this great collection of LIFE magazine images is online and free. The Klee Google bonanza goes on.
I’m starting an MFA program at MICA next week, so I’ll get to spend a lot of the summer in the Greatest City in America. I was thinking about my love/hate relationship with Baltimore when this photo popped up on the screen saver. I took it in 2001, on E. Lombard, I think.
Take me down to ol’ Charm City, where the houses are vacant and the vandals are witty.
I just like setting up the still lifes.
This is what we’ve been drawing in my classes this week. More views here.
We’ve been drawing skulls in my Foundations of Art classes. I started this one as an example, and then broke most of the rules I had set for my students: Fill the entire paper with values, shade from light to dark, blah, blah, blah.
If I say one thing and do another, it’s like getting two teachers in every class. Choose the one that’s making the most sense at the time, please.
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