sun drenched clouds will part like doves

I had my exhibition opening last Friday night. I think overall it went pretty well. It's hard for me to gage how many people came through the room throughout the night; my space was way too big and open to have any real number. But thataside, I got lots of good feedback and met a number of people coming through the space. The most surprising part was how many business cards / postcards I gave out. I had placed the rest of my postcards at the show (approx 60 of them, let's say), and they were all taken about halfway through! I also put two separate stacks of business cards out, probably coming to a similar count, and they were all taken, too. That was sort of exciting.

It's weird to be done. I have looked forward to my show for years, but I never had any real idea of what it'd look like or what kind of work I would show. It feels to early to be done, but I am ready to leave. I feel confident in my abilities to create and to challenge myself. From here on out, I think th

e hardest part will be really pushing myself to network, to apply for shows, to do all the things I need to do. School's kind of funny. It's where we learn how to do things, but it's nothing like the real world we'll be doing them in. I still need to figure all that out.

Here's another snapshot from the show, if you couldn't make it.

Pictured above:

Top: Larry, Sharpie, nutmeg, chili powder, Robitusen, ibuprofen, oil, water color, and tonic water on canvas, 2011

Middle: And so on, and so forth, sharpie and oil on paper, 2011

Bottom: Dale, Sharpie, nutmeg, chili powder, Robitussen, ibuprofen, oil, water color, and tonic water on canvas, 2011

all courtesy the artist, copyright Lauren Schleider

words are wild animals sometimes

Tomorrow is the last day of classes in my college career, and it has left me feeling funny. Not funny in a ha-ha kind of way but a i-sort-of-want-to-vomit-and-cry-and-drink-beer kind of way. I have spent countless hours of the last four years waiting for this moment to come, when I can shout "Sayonara, bitches!" at my peers on the quad and ride off into the sunset. Oddly enough, I'm not feeling ready to mount my white horse and trot away.

Having my thesis exhibition show after i finish classes is sort of making me feel crazy. In a sense, I have devoted my entire college career to my final show. I have not always been doing work directly related to my show, but it's always been on my mind. I remember finishing my first semester at the U of R and talking with the then-seniors of the studio arts department. They all somehow seemed to know exactly what they wanted to make and how to do it. It was a little inspiring. Since that time, I've been looking forward to my own show, and I've felt a strong necessity to "get my shit together" as they say, to make sure that my show is just as strong as those of the students before me.

Because I haven't had my show yet, I have no real feeling of closure, even in finishing classes. I have officially completed all of the work for my three other classes, and I've already received top marks on some of my final projects. I should feel good, right? I mostly just feel busy anxiety, a burning need to just keep moving, keep making, and keep working to make my show as best as it can be. But then the jarring worry comes in, reminding me that I'm full of steam now mostly because I have a specific show to work towards; everything coming afterwards is an utter mystery.

So what does this all mean? I think it's a swift reminder to stay active and to be proactive. I can get these things done when I have projects and due dates. This is the artistic environment in which I must place myself. Maybe I have a stronger work ethic than I do personal drive. Do you think I should put that on my resume?

Alright, now find me a job.

silently, and back to me

Today I had a conversation with Jeremy about some of my older blog posts. He was most interested in the one I wrote about a conference I attended to discuss some art research. Wetalked a little about presenting art at a research conference. I of course presented all my work as a body of research, but I hadn't actually considered it that when doing the concerned pieces (doing as apposed to making because they were performance-based).

Jeremy was interested in what actual research I've done on my area of focus, the body. The conference serves as an opportunity to do real research, to immerse myself in real biology instead of imagined bodyscapes. Just because I like to make up my own organs doesn't mean I should know about the real ones, right? Right. That's why I'd now like to talk about some actual research I have done to prepare myself for

the work I make.

For starters, I have a copy of

a detailed walkthrough of the Bodies exhibit, which featured a plethora of human bodies that have been stripped, dismembered, and wonderfully preserved. The show clearly

shows each of the organs of the body, not to mention veins, layers of skin, sliced muscles, and fragmented bones. I use this this as my main reference point for the pictures that I draw. I am interested in how bodily structures appear in isolation, frozen in time, and decontextualized, like the nerves on the skull above. Indeed, this is the impression I'd like to give with my work.

I also am interested in textbook illustrations of body parts, especially old ones. I think back to the Brain and Cognitive Science classes I've taken throughout college and all of the ridiculous pictures that have accompanied the classes' lectures. I remember thinking one picture looked like an ice cream sandwich with fields of giant asparagus growing out of it. (I still have no idea what this was supposed to be.) Even if they are "real," these images are silly, oddly colored, and, unless you know better, just plain bizarre.

I find this interesting.

These drawings are respectable because they represent real life. So what happens if they start making things up? Are they any more or less valuable to viewers? I suppose that's something I'm looking at in my work. I find it helpful to browse through old textbooks for inspiration. In this way, I have learned to mimic the basic forms that reoccur in the real body landscape while simultaneously learning how to separate my drawings from that of real biology.

Science 0, Art 1.

photo credit:

left: photo courtesy http://sassywire.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/bodies600.jpg

bottom: photo courtesy http://www.cool-layouts.net/comments/cat/Urban/BooYah.gif

i'm your black magic and your two dollar

What is with this new trend of quirky adult cartoons? Here's what I don't want to be: another cartoonist making graphic drawings of sick animals.

There's been a strange popularization of the "grotesque/cute" genre in adult animation -- not that it's a new thing, it's just entered the mainstream with a bang. I'm sure this coincides with Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming, which has been airing hours of adult cartoons and anime every night for the last 5 years. Before that there was The Simpsons (namely the interactions between Itchy and Scratchy), Ren and Stimpy, and Rocko's Modern Life. Cartoons seem to have a strange affinity with the gratuitous grotesque including eyeball humor, explicit excretory references, and plenty of guts under the pretense of humor.

The phenomena has hit the internet too. If you haven't seen the successful Happy Tree Friends series before, you may want to heed the warnings on its website which used to sport the motto "Cartoon Violence: Not recommended for small children or big babies." The show revolved around a plucky group of animals who, in a brief 7 minutes, get themselves into ... brutal situations. They basically all end up being gruesome deaths. Wikipedia writes, "Despite its childish appearance, the show is extremely violent, with every episode featuring blood, pain, and gruesome deaths." Bloodshed and dismemberment are depicted in a vivid manner but a comical tone.

These shows are fine and dandy by me. Don't get me wrong; I enjoy a good dark comedy as much as the next idiot (more rusty screwdriver to the tongue, please!). I just don't want to be mixed into the same graphic category. I feel inevitably linked to these cartoons in that I make illustrative imagery depicting innards.

Back to "grotesque/cute." This can be understood as when a seemingly "cute" thing (a wide-eyed anthropomorphized woodland creature, for instance) doing a seemingly "gross" thing (like pulling out its small intestines and strangling himself with it). My issues with the cartoons is that I just don't think they don't warrant any serious attention. Even if you like the toons, they don't beg any further thought or analysis. Each short animation works as it's own existing piece, only important for the few moments that they are played.

I worry that my work might fall into that category, losing any sense of immediacy or importance. For me, the pieces are imbued with said components, but I can't really be sure if they are reading that way. Overall, i don't want my work to be reduced into the "ghettoized" cartoon world which is popularly dismissed. I don't think I'm at risk of that now, but i'll have to make sure to steer clear.

photo credit:

top center: Itchy and Scratchy courtesy of http://drnorth.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/vlcsnap-6359056.png

right: detail from Happy Tree Friends, http://www.freevideogamestuff.com/wp-content/uploads/happy_tree_friends.jpg

i can tell you something, too

I'm going to talk, for a moment, about the term "visceral." According to the Wiktionary:

Etymology

From Latin viscera, plural of viscus (“any internal organ of the body”).

Adjective

visceral (comparative more visceral, superlative most visceral)

1. (anatomy) Of or related to the viscera—internal organs of the body; splanchnic.
2. Having to do with the response of the body as opposed to the intellect, as in the distinction between feeling and thinking. Often described as intuition; compare gut feeling, gut reaction.

It's that second definition in which I am interested, specifically the idea of "visceral" as the opposite of intellect. It seems fitting to think of my work in the context of so-called gut feelings and gut reactions. Gut feelings are regarded as reflections of some divine intuition instead of rationality. They may thus represent what is inevitably recognized without due logic. These are implicit thoughts, ones that we cannot easily shake.

How wonderfully appropriate that these are called gut feelings. It appears that there is indeed an intimate connection between what is visceral and what is inescapable. This is how I'm trying to present my work: the imagery represents the landscape of the body as a foreign but (dare I say it) simple a fact of life. It can only be understood to a certain degree and its associations cannot be ignored.

filtered smut on the TV set

Things are becoming clear.

Upon talking to my lovely girlfriend about my work, I have come to realize some new things. She has always said two things about my artwork: 1) it often looks like spaghetti (she's given all of my shapes and forms different names ranging from "Baby Fungus" to "Noodle Guts") and 2) it's very uncomfortable. I always shook both of these statements off with a sweet "Yes, girlfriendo, they are supposed to be that way."

Today I had the brilliant idea to ask her why the images are uncomfortable. She paused for a moment, and explained that in a way, the work forces her to revert to childhood. When we are children, we are less afraid of and/or intimidated by aspects of life and death. Kids are fascinated by the dirty, nitty gritty of bodies without, generally speaking, internalizing their deeper implications. They play with worms, enjoy discussion of bodily excretion, and like things reminiscent of bodily organs (consider Scabs N Guts, the meducational board game(!), or Trolli's Brain Surge). Whether this is due to ignorance or true courage, she told me, is unimportant. Guts are something we're interested in until they become "real," until we've had one experience to shatter our innocent perceptions. When our childhood bubbles burst, organs become scary and grotesque.

The bodily imagery thus reminds her of what she called the "softest, scariest, most sensitive parts of our being." The work evokes pictures of visceral circuits that clearly go together and make patterns but seem separate and broken (extracted and exposed, perhaps) from the body. The pieces therefore conjure up memories of childhood and nostalgia but presents them as unsettling and grotesque. Even in reference to a pleasant childhood, the discomfort of the body-esque landscapes cannot be avoided.

I had never thought about how the idea of childhood and nostalgia might affect my work, but I think she makes some good points here. While I never have made that exact connection on my own, my own drawing is a process that reverts me back to my own childhood. As a kid, I desperately wanting to be a cartoonist for some Disney-like company. This pipe dream stuck along for about fifteen years. My childhood was full of drawing cartoon characters and making my own DIY animations. In high school, however, I began painting and left the cartoon idea behind. My work became less and less illustrative as time when on ... until very recently, when the illustrative nature of my work has reached a consistent all-time high. I have returned to a process that very much mimics that of my youth to address "grown-up" ideas.

This is interesting. I have much to ponder.

it's counting, and be sure it counts

I've done it!

What have I done, you ask? I have discovered to cure to all of my darkest needs. We just got keys to the Hungerford Building [where I'll be holding my senior thesis e

xhibition in just over three weeks], which means that it's high time I start figuring out how I'm installing my work. The basic blueprint is as follows: My gallery space contains one long, white, paneled wall along which I will hang one work on canvas per panel. These pieces will also have sound installed inside of them. Perpendicular to and across from this wall are two a smaller white walls which will also each contain one of my works on canvas. Perpendicular to this wall is a dirty, peeling, white

brick wall, on which I plan to hang a site-specific paper

installation. This will consist of a collage of semi-transparent paper figures that I am working on now.

This is all straightforward enough. The big issue I've had in planning is figuring out how I'll be able to hang said paper pieces. They are coated front and back with boiled linseed oil to make the paper sheer. This allows for great layering, but it makes it very difficult to hang. The saturated oil in the paper requires an oil-based adhesive. This is all fine and dandy, but it would show through and be distracting [and utterly lumpy/sickening/awful] which would just not fly with transparent materials. What to do, what to do?

After an hour of effective experimentation, I found my winning combination. Glue Dots and basic multi-purpose spray adhesive. I am not quite sure why the two work so well, but they are like a dream. I think Glue Dots uses the same sort of glu

e that is used to seal all those pamphlets you get in the mail. You know, the kind that stays gooey and you peel it off the catalogue and play with it...? Right. It looks like that.

The biggest challenge I now face [in terms of the paper, of course] is figuring out physically how to hang these pieces. Some of them are over eight feet long, in windy, fragile shapes. The installation will require at least one large ladder, some helping hands, and a lot of patience. I've definitely got my work cut out for me.

On that note: