Wow, a Mind Set. Here is a lecture that sums up much of what has been gnawing at my mind for the past year & a half. I think it's incidental that it jumps off of the Burning Man event, it's much more phenomenological than that. This is the real millennium.

"remembering pleasure" GETS MENTIONED IN THE POST!!!!


excerpt from Art-O-Matic for the People


By Michael O'Sullivan


Washington Post Staff Writer


Friday, November 8, 2002


"Surprisingly -- or perhaps not, given Washington's artistic conservatism -- there is very little video art of note. Save for Renee Butler's flower-themed video installation (reminiscent of a poetic piece I saw last year by Cuban expatriate Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons at Baltimore's Contemporary Museum), and an abstract musing by Alan Callander (part of a strong, three-person room that explores the theme of "Remembering Pleasure"), the examples of interesting multimedia are depressingly few."

yay! Wow, but how great it feels to get mentioned in the newspaper in such a well thought out article. The funny thing is it's not ME that is is mentioned, but the show and the & idea that takes the precedence. And while it was Ian & I that started tossing the ideas around months ago the show became collaborative, taking on other meanings from George and Alan as well. And sweetly, so sweetly-O'Sullivan understood this!

'gone like my innocence'-November '02 Artist Statement

At a community art gallery opening for a group show (the worst kind of hang-it-yourself kind of random fiasco), at the end of the summer in 2002 a friend of mine overheard and elementary school aged child say to her guardian "can we make that when we get home" in reference to a 3-D collage that I had done on a plastic easter egg. When my friend told me about it, I suddenly realized how long I had been looking for that kind of justification for making art. Instead of the proverbial age-old "my kid could do better than that", an actual child upon seeing this work of mine not only thought she could do it, but found it interesting enough to want to do it herself. I take this as a huge compliment. Children are interesting and incredibly observant. On the same note, in a painting class in the late 80's/early 90's, the artist Glenn Goldberg said to me "to be an artist you have to be at least as interesting as your plumber". Odd sounding, but his reasoning was that he had never met a plumber who did not like to chat-ad infinitum explaining what went wrong with your plumbing, genuinely wanting you to understand his craft. After 10 years of painting on my own, I am finally starting to understand this. The message in art DOES NOT have to be a simple, it DOES need to be honest.

My first large scale sculpture 'gone like my innocence' takes three simple elements. Dead brown leaves, disc-shaped lollipops wrapped in cellophane, and an almost full-size matress shape constructed out of clear vinyl. The leaves and lollipops are contained in the matress, can be clearly seen, and their shear volume serves as the support and foundation for the matresss.

The piece began as a simple meditation on Autumn, as the show I was intending to use it for would open on October 31st, Halloween. It was not suprising that these three elements began to suggest some of the contexts, symbols and juxtapositions that have been running through my work for years.

Autumn is an overtly visible time of death in nature and time of transition in the calender year for us people as well. Metamorphasis, journey, and growth often figured into my paintings in the past in the form of butterflies, boats, and plants. But like Autumn, these other symbols also signify time dedicated to transition and transformation rather than being something or somewhere.

Yet to meditate on the transitory nature of things brings with it the worldly confrontation of pleasure and pain. The form of the matress indicating sleep, a non participation in the world like a hibernation, it's own kind of death. Or the matress can be viewed as the place of procreation in the modern home, the boudoire, a sex den, not for making babies at all. Again, the proverbial 'come-hither', the prophylactic of the clear vinyl keeping you from the dirtyness of sexuality or just from the the buggy leaves and seathing naturalness (one of the prefered interpretations of George Panagi in the text for the show 'remembering pleasure') though you can see it plainly.

The asseptic lollipops, heat sealed in cellophone for your protection like the doctor,dentist or bank teller would give to a child for behaving themselves. A reward of sugary candy, addictive candy, that many as a children would horde and devour in an orgiastic frenzy, eating it until it sickened you. This addiction to pleasures, even when they bring pain in rarely fully outgrown.

Individuals have no problem believing exclusively in the microcosm of their individual experiences and sensations, and base their perception on this microcosm. The breath like condensation that forms inside of the clear pillows gives the piece actual life. It turns out that you can see the insect tracks going through this condensation on the interior of the sculpture. They are like the memories and and sensations in or minds that make us perceive our waking hours through this filter of the past, our own past. A bubble we can never break free of that forms the microcosm of our individual perception. Microcosmic perception that makes each of us both special, yet separate.

PRESS RELEASE:

REMEMBERING PLEASURE
Video, Drawing, Sculpture by Alan B. Callander, Ian Jehle, Karen Joan Topping
Curated by George Panagi
Curated Exhibition at Art-O-Matic 2002
401 M Street SW, Waterside Mall
October 31, 2002 - November 30, 2002
For more information Contact George Panagi at kiosk@visionload.com
Digital images of the art are available upon request.

“Remembering Pleasure,” curated by George Panagi, gathers together the work of three Washington area artists, Alan Callander, Ian Jehle and Karen Joan Topping. Presented as part of Art-o-Matic 2002, “Remembering Pleasure” looks at the relationship between pleasure and memory, or more specifically, the differences between the experience of pleasure and our memories of pleasure.

Alan Callander presents his video FR01 as part of an ongoing experiment in the narrative possibilities of abstract video and sound. Technology and desire, landscape and experience, violence and memory are a few of the relationships layered into this visually arresting work. Alan Callander has shown work at film festivals in Washington DC, Toronto, Sydney, and Aukland, New Zealand.

Ian Jehle conceived the idea for his portrait of the art critic and writer Dave Hickey after hearing him speak in New York City in 2000. Hickey is known as a long-time advocate for “the art of pleasure.” While poking fun at Hickey and his idea of “if it feels good, it is good,” Ian’s portrait also manages to examine ideas of pleasure - physical vs. intellectual, visceral vs. remembered. Arecent graduate of the Visual Arts Program at Columbia University, Ian lives and works in Washington, DC.

Karen Joan Topping’s piece “gone like my innocence” included in this show is a deviation from her past painting. This work continues her exploration of perception and memory through symbols, materials and implied narrative. Simple juxtapositions challenge personal experiences of perception, memory, reverie, fantasy and fear. Other works by Karen have been seen in 2002 in conjunction with Ladyfest D C ’s District of Ladies and Velvet Hammer Auction. Karen lives and works in Washington DC.

George Panagi was asked to curate this show based on the themes of pleasure and memory which appeared in the works of the three artists. Relying on his experience as a speaker on the subject of modern art and his post graduate studies of contemporary art in London, Mr. Panagi has created an essay and installation which creates a theoretical dialog among the pieces.

“Remembering Pleasure” is presented as part of Art-o-Matic 2002 and is located in room Cheverly on the second floor of the Waterside Mall, 401 M St. SW.

The Press Preview for Art-O-Matic is on Wednesday, October 30, 2002. (Visit www.artomatic.org for more information.) The show opens to the public with a Halloween Costume Ball on T h u r s d a y, October 31, 2002. Art-O-Matic is open noon till midnight, Wednesday through Sunday until November 30, 2002. (Closed Thanksgiving.)

Art-O-Matic is accessible by Metro at the Waterfront/SEU Metro Station on the Green Line. Parking is also available on site.

possible names
1)misfit toys
2)raise the bar
3)smartypants
4)GORBY says "Naploeon's Academic Mother"

1/finish sewing sculpture
2/get leaves and cardboard
3/vinyl sign
4/pack
5/swim
6/do flo-do
7/statement for binder(?)
8/write about LTH at state
9/write about MUSE
10/get ff grafix

sleeeeeeepppy..................

so much time spent on this blog today-I have so much else to do....yet it is creative, and fun and communicative...

Girl-Woman-Man-Boy anyone can be a groupiegirl. Check out the listserve connected to the chronicles of my music compulsion, to see live and local music, in the Washington, DC Metro area. While a lot of the shows I attend will be Americana/Alt-Country/Roots Rock-or what ever you want to call it, you will also find forays into other Rock Music, some Pop, Punk and other solo-songwriter performers. Find out about venues and bands, new and old, in the DC Metro area from the audiences perspective, for that's all groupiegirl is, a glorified audience member, not a musician or critic. All you need to do to become a groupiegirl is:

#1 - LISTEN and people I can't stress this enough, step one is the most overlooked.

#2 - If you like what you heard, support the talent. Sure buy their stuff, go to their shows, but did you ever think of, hmmm, contacting LOCAL radio stations and requesting their stuff? I'm sure there are other ideas out there.

#3 - Subscribe to the listserve groupiegirls-subscribe@topica.com.

I hope to pass on my enthusiasm about the inspiring group of artists that are in our own back yard and I hope to continue my education in the rich music history that is still growing day by day in this region.

Rock On DC!

Talked to Ian today. Very happy he is up for the marketing thing, 'sooner rather than later'. Mentioned we should try to curate some artists for ArtOmatic. This will take some thought to decide who to feature (Ian, Allen, Me, Joan,. Phoebe-hmmm, Hennessy) and under what guise? How to bring out the work-do it well.

If I were to be in this and to start messing around with Installations I had better start preparing. getting the Plexi/egg things off the ground would be good-Ian is seduced by the plastic sheathes, they are a possibility as well. Having Allen project on our work would be smashing.

Lastly, Thursday, I want to go see shows, the ART ISN"T in G-town, the Tatlin at the Corcoran, and maybe Bucci's Party Animal.

This is taken from the Washington, DC City Paper, July 26 to August 1 issue, page 48, City Lights Column:

SUNDAY
(July 28)

MoMA doesn't want your plastic Easter-egg sculpture? Well, "1460 Wall Mountables," the District of Columbia Arts Center's annual fundraising exhibition, portions out 2-foot-by-2-foot squares of hip-gallery wall space to anyone with a fiver. With art stacked floor to ceiling, crowded conditions make strange neighbors: High school art projects hang beside Rape Series #5, a slashed-canvas painting by Manon Cleary, whose work hangs in the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The crush also forces the issue of placement, sometimes (however unintentionally) to the artists' benefit: Kelly Posey's handmade Mary Tyler Moore paper dolls shimmy in an air-vent breeze, and Rebecca Lowery's acrylic-on-wood depiction of a snow-bleached Minnesota landscape is its own quiet world at the bottom of a jammed wall. The exhibition runs to Sunday, Aug. 4, and today is open from 2 to 7 p.m. at the District of Columbia Arts Center, 2438 18th St. NW. Free. (202) 462-7833. (Shauna Miller)

I, I am "plastic Easter-egg sculpture" !!!! Ah, how beautiful that I irritated someone at the City Paper. I don't really know how to read this little critique. But over all I have a beautiful feeling about it, because it is definately has all kinds of interesting unspoken connotations. I am finally born into the 'the fringe' or the anti-establishment of the anti-establishment. wow. Welcome.

WOW, Reinvention. Again, what was the thing I was thinking of when I was talking Debbie last nite, people just taking advantage of each other, was that it? Look at Culture Flux, Bust, blogging, Cherry Red, Taka, Fugazi, Dischord, DIY-whoa, these are things that are pushing in the 'right' direction. They all use money, but resist taking advantage? Is this a true statement?

ya know, there is something even more here, it's phenomenology, (the study of all possible appearances in human experience, during which considerations of objective reality and of purely subjective response are left out of the account-per American Heritage Dictionary) It's one of the things that piqued me early on in my interest in painting, and it is still rearing it's head, I am just not 'clear' (haha) about it when I am working. The work is just happening without me.....is that right? Think about the German guy, Beuys-you/I just can't be afraid to do what ever it is we are going to do or make. Make or do it. I CANNOT BE AFRAID OF MAKING ART. I CANNOT JUST RELY ON THE IDEA OF MATURE WORK AND A HAPPY GOLUCKY PROGRESSION, MAKE THE THINKING BE A CHALLENGE

AH, dare I forget this blog exists? Reading interviews with Tom Friedman and Tony Feher are seriously affecting me. What started out simply as a kinship of physical materials (GARBAGE) being used in the art work, is blosoming into a very complex and seemingly latent yet revolutionary ideas. Reading Friedman from the last 5 years, he's got 'timeline's' or maybe you should call them scenarios for Physical Reality being taken over by Virtual Reality and Mental Reality. Also he states at one point art is most interesting as a vehicle for IDEAS, once you think that it allows the work to take any form!!!!!!!!!!

Then talking to Ian J. about context and reference and having an art work make references, open up contexts and ideas and complexities in order to be successful and meaningful. Needing to have more than one reading to be successful. Juxtapose this with the penchant for simplicity, for glam, for slippery thinking. It's like the art nouveau of the 21st c, this slippery PRETTY art stuff!!!!!

And what about critics, criticism, what does it matter? What if the artists become the critics? (Literally instead of Figuratively what if the artists got down to the serious business of criticizing, that's how we ended up with Duchamp and Punk. Two ideas, ideas that have generated objects and images that are mainstream and commercial and sold out, yet are as critical and real and vital as they were 30 yrs ago or 80 yrs ago. There is something big coming in ART.

Cultureflux "Sleepers" idea, places that should be something that 'most' people don't know about. 'Most people' is not who is on this list, most people are happy to employee a chain/franchise mentality to their life, their whole life. Most people go places because everyone else is going there.

But even on the fringe, isn't there a desire to have others like what you like, to care about what you care about?

Is Quality Subjective?

Why are objects or ideas of quality often not appreciated? Because they are challenging or expensive?

Hello, today I created an e-mailing list and in general attempted to streamline some of the things I have been working towards in my life. I seem to have lost my most recent sketchbook/journal, so this may be a good replacement. As live more creatively, doing the things I want to do and aquiring new skills, remember that "Investment requires time, energy and emotion as much as money", "Patience is a virtue" and "You can only do one thing at a time, well".