Shana and I are currently in two group shows of somewhat random composition. One is a faculty show at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, and the other is an Alumni show at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. These are difficult shows to curate, with such a disparate group of artists, each with their own thematic approach. Any parallels must be merely incidental. One wonders if there is some magic configuration which could possibly make such a show coherent. If all the pieces were shuffled and rearranged a million times, would there be one sublime configuration? Walking into Continuum (UWM), I see our piece sitting on the floor amongst a sea of disconnected artworks. The sculpture, entitled "Hundred Year," is a meticulously crafted scale-model of a 19th century Midwestern farmhouse. It is cut off at about halfway up the first story windows and fastened seamlessly to a low pedestal. The effect is of a house being flooded by its pedestal. In this context however, it seems to have lost all presence - just another business card in a show that seems to be showcasing talent more than it is communicating ideas. It certainly didn't help that I neglected to mention to the staff that the wheels underneath its built-in pedestal were there for transport only, and were meant to be removed once the sculpture found its site. The result is that the pedestal hovers an inch off of the ground, as if the piece was ready to take off and float away. In and of itself, this could have been an interesting twist on the piece, but in the end, I think that it merely confuses its intent. In retrospect, I wish that we would not have submitted this particular piece at all. Instead I would have liked to take an approach that characterized the spirit of my thought process that I developed while attending UWM. I should have looked at the problematic nature of the show as a challenge. Rather than simply submitting 'something that I have made since graduating from UWM', I could have made an installation or a performance that was intended to speak to the randomness of the situation, meant to stand out amongst the cacophony, something that mischievously undermined the whole affair. Ah well, next time.
The Faculty Show at MIAD, despite the lack of attendance at the opening, was a more pleasant experience. Granted, the caliber of work was predictably higher, since the criteria for entry is 'art educator', which assumes an active art practice and some previous recognition for your work, rather than 'former art student,' which merely means that you graduated from college. We submitted two works for the show. I was pleased to walk in and see that "Burn," a piece consisting of a found hammer on a pedestal, seemed surprisingly commanding. The hammer was found deep in the woods on my grandfather's land, where my family has held seasonal bonfires since before I can remember. The hammer is severely pitted and rusted, to the point where the metal is changing shape. The handle has been burnt partially off, perhaps a victim of a forgotten bonfire. For "Burn" we simply placed the hammer on a tall, narrow pedestal and painted one side of the pedestal black to align with the burnt handle. I consider the piece a sort of memorial to my grandfather. The weathered hammer is an apt stand-in for Grandpa Ray, who was a rugged character who always worked with his hands. I was always in awe of his hands, so thick and meaty, like a giant's hands, calloused and weathered from a lifetime of chopping wood. When set down just so, the hammer's handle lifts off the surface, and the object seems to defy gravity. For me this is the spirit exiting the body.
The second piece, "The End of the Line" is a printed photograph of our original house model (the first scale-model we built) mounted in a found frame. The house was photographed on a frozen lake. This was an experiment in creating the illusion of scale. We wanted to see if we could make the model house look like a full scale house. In the end we chose an image that held its position somewhere between artifice and illusion, with the intent that the viewer would not necessarily be convinced that it was 'real', but would rather question whether or not it was, without ready access to an answer. In the original image, the camera was tilted, causing the horizon to appear askew. Rather than rotate and crop the image to correct the horizon line, we simply tilted the frame. Something strange occurred with this gesture. It was as though the house was asserting its reality as somehow more legitimate, more concrete than our own. The represented space trumped the physical space of our immediate surroundings.
The tilted frame has become a sort of inadvertent practical joke on the gallery staff, who are always remarking that they have to reposition the frame over and over again. Apparently, gallery-goers cannot resist the temptation to straighten the frame, despite the well established barrier that forbids the touching of artwork on display. I like to think of this as a kind of tug-of-war between the viewer and the viewed, each insisting on its own conflicting point of view.
