Searching for Micro-Utopias, Quietly

Beehive Woodpile, Camp Tintype, Wet Plate Collodion Tintype © Nick Olson

Nick Olson visited campus on Monday and Tuesday, February 13-14, 2012 to talk about his experiences since graduating Lawrence University summa cum laude with a Studio Art Major in 2008. Trips to Europe and road-tripping across the USA ushered the way for his MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2011. He continues to practice an antiquated photographic technology, Wet Plate Collodion, learned from tintype master John Coffer between his Junior and Senior undergrad year. He now teaches the medium on the road and most recently at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Says Nick of the process, "it forces me to slow down and contemplate the implications of time, place, an cultural shifts which have occurred over the past century." The resulting images are unique objects with a hand-wrought appearance. The mammoth 20x24 inch plates displayed under spotlights in Lawrence's Wriston Auditorium framed his peers in the idyllic Cranbrook grounds ever so isolated from nearby urban Detroit. Within Cranbrook's gates stand historic and charming buildings that transport the visitor to another time with the "real world" held at bay. The details of personal grooming and accoutrements of his sitters betray their contemporaneity. Olson will head to Mildred's Lane come spring where he will spend a few months building a replica of Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond cabin from a kit--although it should be noted that he has built cabins from logs found on-site. In his evolving pursuits, Olson seems to search and create the sort of everyday micro-utopias described by Nicolas Bourriaud in his 1998 book Relational Aesthetics (31).  Olson's gestures transform stacking firewood into sculpture and baking bread into relational art.

But Is it Art? Artists & Books

Books by Ed Ruscha including Twentysix Gasoline Stations

From Ed Ruscha's historic Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) to the more contemporary Maurizio Cattelan Toilet Paper Magazine, artists have used the printed page as a disruptive vehicle. Called "hotly subversive" by art historian Margaret Iversen in her esssay "Auto-Maticity: Ruscha and Performative Photography" from Photography After Conceptual Art (Wiley-Blackwell 2010), Rusha's books, she argues, are "products of rule-governed performances" like driving in a car along Route 66 and taking "neutral" black-and-white pictures of 26 gas stations. Cattelan's bi-annual, picture-based publication co-created with photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari pushes in another direction. "Every issue starts with a theme, always something basic and general, like love and greed," Cattelan told The New Yorker recently. Whereas Ruscha worked to make "neutral" photographs, Cattelan & Ferrari works toward "uncanny ambiguity". The "magazines" sell for a reasonable $10 on amazon, though reflect lush production values like full color bleeds, luxe heavy stock, and reviews in fashion magazines.

Cover of But Is It Art? by Joachim Schmid

The Internet has liberated books from the realm of functional reference books (e.g. catalogs, cookbooks, and manuals) to dysfunctional objects in service of an idea.Taking Ruscha's rule making to a 21st century level, German artist Joachim Schmidt mines Flickr for images following a theme often executed through a search then publishes them using the print-on-demand service Blurb. Schmid's But Is it Art? (2011) points to the ubiquity of artistic aspirations and how the Internet provides a forum for such aspirations. Like Ruscha's books with their plain white covers and bold typography, Schmid uses words rather than images on the cover of his books. Like Ruscha, whose books sold for $3 upon publication, Schmid makes his books available for around $13. Schmid's performance lies in cruising the Information SuperHighway to critique notions of originality an update perhaps on Rusha driving Route  66 nearly 50 years ago to "convey the results of his experiment." Writes Schmid "Each image shows people’s attempts at creating photography “after”, “based on”, “in the style of” or “inspired by” well-known artists, to varying degrees of success. As individual attempts these samples may be charming, hilarious or bold (and sometimes embarrassing), as a group they raise more interesting questions of originality and authorship." Diminutive in size (Ruscha's books are 7x5-1/2 inches while Schmid's are 8x5 inches), these nearly sacred projects provide an affordable and accessible space for exchange outside the art gallery setting.

The Marriage of Sight + Sound

Promotional photograph for "June Brides" © 1987  Cathy Cook & Claudia Looze

Baltimore film maker Cathy Cook examined the role of sound design in an intensive video workshop presented on Thursday, January 12, 2012. The abrasive sound of sirens or buzzing flies set viewers on edge while the soothing sound of cascading strings evoke surreal fantasies. Cook described her long term collaborative relationships with sound artists such as Paul Dickinson who have worked on her films over a span of time. In June Brides, a 1987 critique of the marital industrial complex, Cook designed a score that revolved around the off-kilter voices of multiple women singing "Going to the Chapel" (originally sung in a finger-snappin' sugary harmony by the Dixie Cups) exacerbated by a drunken sax solo to communicate the bridal dream gone bad. This pop song that made the Billboard Top 100 in 1964, one could speculate, marked the emergence of Cook's own awareness of the staid roles of women in mid-century America and pushed her to push against the grain as many women of her generation did. The song became a "text" inspiring a visual and aural examination of the meaning of marriage twenty years later. Cook based another of her works, "Immortal Cupboard", on the poetry of Wisconsin poet and recluse Lorine Niedecker. Cook will work with Digital Processes and Electronic Composition students to create collaboarative videos inspired by literary sources with a screening on Monday, March 5, 2012, 7:00 pm in the Warch Campus Center Cinema.

The Farther One Travels, the Less One Knows

"Strange God" copyright 2010 Estate of Bernard Gilardi

Gallerist and art historian Debra Brehmer of Portrait Society Gallery, Milwaukee drove home the point that Bernard Gilardi (1920-2008) focused his imagination in the space of a basement for four decades to express the world within his head. His identities as father, husband, Italian, war veteran, lithographer, Milwaukee, Wisconsin resident informed his work as reflected in an exhibition of his "religious" paintings on view at Lawrence University's Wriston Art Center Galleries January 6-March 11, 2012. Pop culture infiltrated and informed his nirvana from blow dried hair and unisex fashions to Jesus Christ Superstar and the Wisconsin State Fair. His art practice, though without support or detraction from the art establishment, enabled him to fully articulate an inner universe his family described as "primitive" in his obituary. "Inner Light", the old Beatles 45 RPM flipside of "Lady Madonna" written by George Harrison, drones: "Without going out of your door, you can know the ways of heaven" bringing to mind Gilardi and his sacred cosmic comic basement space.

Avant Garde and Experimental Video?

George Kuchar

The "tradition" of experimental and avant garde film is described on Wikipedia as being "opposed to the practices of mainstream of commercial and documentary film making." Can home made video continue this tradition? In case of the work of George Kuchar (b. August 31, 1942 - d. September 6, 2011), his film making was about sheer joy--and maybe this is exactly what most people are trying to do within the typical YouTube video "genre." Kuchar's 1977 10 minute film, "I An Actress" shot on one length of 16 mm film under pressure--at once reveals the aspirations of an actress and the directorial techniques of the young Professor Kuchar. Kuchar's cinematic vision is one based on pop culture, specifically comic books that reflect his idiosyncratic sense of humor.

Experimental Videos Screening

(or why go to an art museum to watch TV?)

Lawrence University Warch Campus Center Cinema
Sunday, November 20, 2011, 6:30-9:00 PM


ART 240 Digital Processes students will screen their 1-minute experimental videos. Each will introduce their video before and take questions after from the audience about their content, meaning and artistic process. Pop corn and slushies! All are welcome!

6:30 - WELCOME - J. Shimon & J. Lindemann

6:40 - Zhan Guo "Dizzy" about tbeing overwhelmed by books and escaping into the world of nature

6:50 - Natalie Fordwor "The Simple Joys" about the joyful moments of life

7:00 - Briana Harter "From Yourself" about not letting anyone hold you back from expressing your individuality and passion

7:10 - Jessica Meissmer "Take a Moment" about taking the time to relax

7:20 - Aisha Eiger "Self-Portrait in Charcoal" about exploring video through exploring self

7:30 - Deborah Levinson "The Descent" is a humorous take on the impact of desire (It could also be about bestiality)

7:40 - BREAK

7:50 - Christine Seeley "The Meat Department" about the grocery store meat department in relation
to excessive production, overeating, and consumerism in America

8:00 - Chelsea Lee "Skin" about beauty and emotion, and how we express them

8:10 - Geneva Wrona "Stranger and Stranger Strangers" about the surreality of the process of knowing people

8:20 - Rachele Krivichi "The Fight" about the decreasing ability to communicate directly with another in the digital age

8:30 - Sara Sheldon-Rosson "I Want to Line The Pieces Up" an exploration of the human condition and the curiosity and fear of death

8:40 - DISCUSSION

9:00 -  FINI

What We Find

Since the dawn of the industrial age, artists have used the cut/paste action to digest material ranging from newspaper clippings to tape loops or digital audio/video tracks. In Remix: Making Art  & Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (Penguin, 2008), Harvard Law Professor Larry Lessig argues for avoiding a "permission culture" as he calls for a revamp of copyright law so: "More people can use a wider set of tools to express ideas and emotions differently." According to Lessig, artists could reference the "aura" of cultural objects through their remixes to create new meaning and perhaps help us all sort out the sheer volume of cultural production over the past century. Negativland has called for  "mass culture" to be returned to the masses through rethinking intellectual property law. They wrote in a missive on Fair Use: "We now exist in a society so choked and inhibited by cultural property and copyright protections that the very idea of mass culture is now primarily propelled by economic gain and the rewards of ownership." Web 2.0 platforms such as YouTube combined with digital video editing software have made critiquing moving images as easy as making a photocopied zine was in the 1970s.