Creative Thresholds

by Christopher Hutchinson

http://www.odditycentral.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Richard-Prince-Instagram.jpg

This essay is not about questioning the validity of whether or not Richard Prince is an artist; it rather examines Prince’s methodology in order to question to his “genius.” Prince has been a controversial figure since the re-photography in his most famous cowboy series. “In the mid-1970s, Prince was an aspiring painter who earned a living by clipping articles from magazines for staff writers at Time-Life Inc. What remained at the end of the day were the advertisements, featuring gleaming luxury goods and impossibly perfect models; both fascinated and repulsed by these ubiquitous images, the artist began rephotographing them, using a repertoire of strategies (such as blurring, cropping, and enlarging) to intensify their original artifice. In so doing, Prince undermined the seeming naturalness and inevitability of the images, revealing them as hallucinatory fictions of society’s desires.”- http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/2000.272

Process

Prince finds an image he likes, comments on it, makes a screen-grab with his iPhone, and sends the file — via email — to an assistant. From here, the file is cropped, printed as is, stretched, and presto: It’s art. Or stuff that’s driving others crazy for a variety of reasons.-Jerry Saltz http://www.vulture.com/2014/09/richard-prince-instagram-pervert-troll-genius.html

Price’s process has been validated for decades now through mandatory art school reading such as Roland Barthes’s The Death of the Author and Walter Benjamin’s Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. The issue here is the fact that the process itself is dated and offers no new insight responsible to this moment, except for the deliberate commercial use of iPhones and Instagram. What Prince’s process reveals is the nihilistic limits of Western art practice. Its constant reduction limited by rules provided previously. How is this new work more significant than the work he did in the 70’s? It’s sad really. Here we have an artist that is so tied his methodology that he relies on technology to give it relevancy. Adding technology alone, to any medium, will not magically make the artwork good.

Medium

Prince’s work has successfully affirmed the old belief that photography and the camera is a tool that cannot create art; it can only do its job- to reproduce. As a failed painter he has executed the tenet held so dear to painters in relation to photography. The debasing of photography is more important to Prince than copyright infringement and authenticity.

Prince calls his enlarged “screen-grabs” paintings and Jerry Saltz affirms this by comparing the out of focus enlarged photo to Lichtenstein’s intention with his Ben-day dots.   The problem with this is Prince’s intention. Lichtenstein’s work used that style to conjure a nostalgia that his artwork required. Prince’s use of the canvas, with ink-jet ink, is transforming the ephemeral life of Instagram posts to permanent nostalgic objects. The argument that Prince is using new technology is void when placed in a gallery on a canvas. It is no longer Instagram; it is tradition.

Whaam! (1963, Tate Modern, London[33]) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Lichtenstein

Artifacts

Prince’s work at best is a tableau attempting to be a simulacra/simulation of real life representing a scene from history. The Instagram pieces are a simulation of art. Prince’s simulation only succeeds as an artifact-evidence of internet culture. What would be the point of critiquing artifacts?-They are merely tools.

Christopher Hutchinson is an accomplished Jamaican conceptual artist, professor and contributor to the art community as a writer, critic and founder of the nonprofit Smoke School of Art. He is a Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and has been featured as a lecturer including prestigious engagements at University of Alabama and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. For two decades, Chris has been a practicing artist. His works have been exhibited in internationally recognized institutions including City College New York (CUNY) and featured at the world’s leading international galleries such as Art Basel Miami. He has always had an innate passion for creating spaces where Africans and people of African descent contribute to an inclusive contemporary dialogue—ever evolving, not reflexive but pioneering. This requires challenging the rubric of the canon of art history, a systemic space of exclusion for the Other: women and non-Whites, and where necessary he rewrites it. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.

Michelle Vitale (aka woolpunk) is an American artist, born in Summit, NJ in 1971. Inspired by an immigrant seamstress grandmother, who sewed American flags, she machine knits fiber installations and embroiders on photos of urban sprawl.  She is the founder of the Gimme Shelter Project and has created large-scale site specific forms for a variety of institutions including St John’s Cathedral, NYC; Hunterdon Museum, NJ; Lion Brand Yarn Studio, NYC; Casaterra Residency, Italy; and the Object and Thought Gallery, CO. Vitale has been included in numerous exhibitions including the New Jersey Arts Annual; the Arts and Crafts Museum, Itami, Japan; Grey Lock Arts, North Adams, MA, ABC No Rio, NYC; and Galerie Kurt I’m Hirsch, Berlin, Germany. Her work has been included in several publications and she has received numerous grants from the Puffin Foundation, Goldman Sachs and the Fine Arts Work Center, among others.

by Tempy Osborne

As a second generation adventurer and explorer I have always had the notion that anywhere in the world could potentially be seen as home. I live and work in Belgium but grew up in a family of artists surrounded by the sea and mountains landscape of the Beara Peninsula in West Cork, Ireland. In 1989 at the age of five I was taken on a year-long family adventure to the remote Inuit village of Grise Fiord in the Canadian Arctic. Here gleaning the experience of 24 hour darkness, temperatures of -40c and below, dog sled fishing trips, ice camping and the harsh reality of seal hunting, polar bear skinning and sea ice that breaks up a little earlier with every passing year. Since then I have been back to visit the Arctic many times and ideas of climate change, mass culture and fear of the unknown continually to surround my work.

I studied Fine Art specializing in painting at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland from 2002- 2006. Rarely painting on traditional canvas, instead I search for new ways of expression using wood, plastic, fabric and other surfaces.

Tigh, oil on fabric, 10x10cm 2015

Summer Hills, oil on wood, 3x3in 2014

About Dawn, oil on fabric, 15x15cm, 2014

Little Boat, oil on wood, 1x1in, 2014

Arctic Mars Research Station, detail, oil on fabric, 2014

Adrift, oil on wood, 2x3in, 2015

Unknown Limits, oil on fabric, 10x10cm, 2014

Big Iceberg, detail, mixed media on board, 2008

Iqaluit International Airport, oil on board, 6x4in, 2008

Artist: Tempy Osborne

Website and blog: www.tempyosborne.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Tempy-Osborne/157594580975060

Instagram: @tempyosborne, www.instagram.com/tempyosborne

Shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/PaintBoxStudios

by John F. Marok

The figures in my paintings have their origins from my own life. I begin with my friends, family and myself as a model but what transpires during my painting process always yields a revelation. The end result is a painting that solicits or awakens something in me … something that was not originally foreseen. I don’t fully “get” the painting immediately … its significance unfolds over time.

Often my paintings exude an enigmatic quality, which is not something for which I strive. However, I feel most resolved with a painting when it is imbued with elements of both ambiguity and precision. When a painting is completed, I feel as though I’ve met a stranger that I somehow know–a curious feeling of deja-vu.

I work with the belief that what is most personal is also most universal. My perception is that our vulnerability, our deepest innermost thoughts and feelings of the world around us can be common and shared.

66″ x 54″ oil on canvas

48″ x 36″ oil on canvas

48″ x 36″ oil on canvas

48″ x 36″. oil on canvas

40″ x 30″ oil on canvas

84″x72″ oil on canvas

84″x72″ oil on canvas

Artist: John F. Marok

Born in Montreal in 1960, John F. Marok graduated from John Abbott College and Concordia University with a special emphasis on painting. He is a recipient of the Queens Jubilee Medal, has been awarded Grants by the Canada Council and from Quebec’s ministère de la Culture and has painted and completed research residencies in Europe and Canada. An accomplished, full-time painter, Marok has been working and exhibiting for 35 years.

In 1980, Marok was jury selected at 19 years old (the youngest participant) for the 3rd Biennale of Quebec Painting, held at the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal. The following year he was represented by the Grunwald Gallery, a prestigious commercial gallery in Toronto and participated in an important exhibit of Quebec painting at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). At 22 years of age he was given his first one-man exhibition at Grunwald and received much critical acclaim and commercial success. Subsequent to several other exhibitions John’s work became nationally recognized and collected by several museums across Canada, namely: Musee d’art contemporain du Quebec (Montreal), Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa), Musee du Quebec (Quebec), MOCCA (Toronto), Nickel Arts Museum (Calgary).

During the 1990’s Marok’s work was purchased exclusively by Jean Lapointe and then by Gaetan Morin. These highly regarded collectors sold and distributed Marok’s paintings into private collections and the collections of The University of Ottawa, The University of Quebec, McGill University and also the collections of the City of Ottawa and the City of Gatineau which houses over 100 paintings by Marok.

For the past 25 years John has been living and working in Wakefield, Quebec where he maintains his full-time art practice. Of his paintings, John says: “My paintings are inspired, influenced and shaped through my experience of places, people and things in my life. I work with the belief that what is most personal is also most universal. My perception is that our vulnerability, our deepest innermost thoughts and feelings of the world around us can be common and shared.”

by Jon Davenport

Miss Golightly II 60×48

Rocket II 48×48

Southern-Fried-24×24

North-Carolina-Royalty-24×36

Orange-Soda-48×48

Artist: Jon Davenport

From biology student to owning and running a creative agency in London to a career as a fine artist, life has taken Jon Davenport on a rewarding and unconventional journey. Despite his scientific beginnings, he’s always had a strong artistic streak weaving its way through his different career paths.

Growing up in Ipswich, UK, Jon was always an avid drawer, and could often be found with a pencil and paper in hand. With the arrival of his first computer, he embraced the new frontier of digital art, and had work published in one of those early computer magazines. The stage was set!

His creative urges took a backseat to getting a biology degree at Brunel University in London. It was afterwards, in his first job working at Archant newspaper group in Ipswich, that he quickly progressed from plate maker to becoming an integral member of the art studio. It was during this time that he taught himself photoshop, desktop publishing and graphic & web design.

After a few years he setup a design agency, and eventually went full time and moved to London. This proved to be a successful move, working for a number of clients such as Nike and Virgin, and gaining praise from the likes of Richard Branson and Tony Blair.

It wasn’t until Jon moved to the USA to marry his wife, Atlanta artist Christy Kinard, that he began indulging his pure creative urges, with her constant encouragement. Thanks to all the previous twists and turns, as well as embracing a new found love for photography and the paintbrush, it was only then that he could truly begin to create artworks that he was proud of.

Website:  http://jondavenportart.com

by Christopher Hutchinson

Alain LeRoy Locke is heralded as the “Father of the Harlem Renaissance” for his publication in 1925 of The New Negro—an anthology of poetry, essays, plays, music and portraiture by white and black artists. Locke is best known as a theorist, critic, and interpreter of African-American literature and art. He was also a creative and systematic philosopher who developed theories of value, pluralism and cultural relativism that informed and were reinforced by his work on aesthetics. Locke saw black aesthetics quite differently than some of the leading Negro intellectuals of his day; most notably W. E. B. Du Bois, with whom he disagreed about the appropriate social function of Negro artistic pursuits. Du Bois thought it was a role and responsibility of the Negro artist to offer a representation of the Negro and black experience which might help in the quest for social uplift. Locke criticized this as “propaganda”-By Jacoby Adeshei Carter http://alainlocke.com/?p=166

ART or Propaganda?

https://www.aafcu.com/media/img/home_Start_Here.JPG

If there was a start here button on Black Aesthetics, an essay that should be a mandatory read for all artists of colour, it would be this. Alain Locke writes this simple five paragraph essay that is clear and easy to understand. This article is an attempt to unpack and apply the critique Alain Locke posed 87 years ago. Art or Propaganda? Alain Locke first posed this question in 1928 juxtaposing art and propaganda as binary opposites.   He positions his argument as a statement to where the question becomes rhetorical. Locke’s makes a statement in this essay as to the virtue of art as opposed to the vice of propaganda. The problem with propaganda is “It is too extroverted for balance or poise or inner dignity and self-respect. Art in the best sense is rooted in self-expression and whether naive or sophisticated is self-contained”. Yelling on your soap box is not art.

Dred Scott performance I am not a man
2009; duration 1 hour. Performance still 22 x 30 inches, pigment print.
http://felicityfenton.com/today/kxh3pxia6rpwnf3uqsjkn6gio0mkic

My chief objection to propaganda, apart from its besetting sin of monotony and disproportion, is that it perpetuates the position of group inferiority even in crying out against it. For it leaves and speaks under the shadow of a dominant majority whom it harangues, cajoles, threatens or supplicates. It is too extroverted for balance or poise or inner dignity and self-respect. Art in the best sense is rooted in self-expression and whether naive or sophisticated is self-contained. In our spiritual growth genius and talent must more and more choose the role of group expression, or even at times the role of free individualistic expression, ⎯ in a word must choose art and put aside propaganda.–Alain Locke http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/protest/text10/lockeartorpropaganda.pdf

How many times are we going to allow the same images to be so-called repurposed, and reinterpreted to the same “perpetuation of group inferiority even when crying out against it”? It seemed that Locke had his fill of this “monotony” in 1928 and yet this method is still a tried and true way to get a response as a Black artist-STOP IT! Even in cities where Black is the majority this practice is most sought after, it is most commodified.

Shift of Psychology

There is more strength in a confident camp than in a threatened enemy. The sense of inferiority must be innerly compensated, self-conviction must supplant self-justification and in the dignity of this attitude a convinced minority must confront a condescending majority. Art cannot completely accomplish this, but I believe it can lead the way.–Alain Locke http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/protest/text10/lockeartorpropaganda.pdf

The only negative to this essay is the overtly biblical context that assumes that everyone has this knowledge. Within this religious context Locke articulates “Art or Propaganda?,” more clearly into two camps, David or Goliath. David being Art and Goliath being the propaganda. This illustration points to the populous and plentitude of number that the camp of propaganda holds as well as the strength of one individual with carefully chosen “five smooth pebbles fearlessly”. Locke urges that the practice of David should lead us. Alone we should be willing to choose carefully five pebbles and stand without propaganda against any number army. Terry Adkins is such an artist, one of the David’s Locke foresaw.

“Recital” comprises a selection of work spanning the last three decades by artist/musician Terry Adkins. Born in 1953 in Washington, DC, Adkins grew up deeply invested in visual art, music, and language. His approach to art making is similar to that of a composer, and the exhibition is conceived as a theatrical score that punctuates and demarcates space, creating interplay among pieces in different media and from diverse bodies of work. Together they act as facets of a crystalline whole, reflecting and illuminating each other in ways that amplify their intensity.

Locke would be disappointed in the overgeneralization and lumping of the Harlem renaissance artists into a Black propaganda machine and Black art today largely falls into the camp of the Philistines. He credits propaganda as a necessary step in our development, as it is necessary for an infant to cry for milk. Art, on the other hand, requires much more than cry’s for necessities, it demands an honest dialogue that allows one to specify nuances of imagery,language, time, and music ones individual aesthetic within a populous culture. …the primary responsibility and function of the artist is to express his own individuality, and in doing that to communicate something of universal human appeal.-By Jacoby Adeshei Carter http://alainlocke.com/?p=166

Christopher Hutchinson is an accomplished Jamaican conceptual artist, professor and contributor to the art community as a writer, critic and founder of the nonprofit Smoke School of Art. He is a Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and has been featured as a lecturer including prestigious engagements at University of Alabama and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. For two decades, Chris has been a practicing artist. His works have been exhibited in internationally recognized institutions including City College New York (CUNY) and featured at the world’s leading international galleries such as Art Basel Miami. He has always had an innate passion for creating spaces where Africans and people of African descent contribute to an inclusive contemporary dialogue—ever evolving, not reflexive but pioneering. This requires challenging the rubric of the canon of art history, a systemic space of exclusion for the Other: women and non-Whites, and where necessary he rewrites it. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.

by Greg Gilbert

Priest and Rabbit biro miniature

Boscombe biro miniature

Bench biro miniature relief

Antlers biro miniature relief

Your Ma(jes)tye, Winchester, pen on card, 2013

Fusiliers, pencil on card, 2013

Artist: Greg Gilbert

My work is intimately connected to and influenced by Southampton; exploring notions of memory and its relationship to place. Primarily focusing on miniature biro drawings and reliefs, many of the pieces created for Through Sand have been inspired by the city councils extensive archive, using historic postcards and photographs as stimulus and creating images that are personal reflections on the city and its recent past.

by JT Winik

Needs

Child’s Play

King Ali

Mirage

The Mime

Posing

White Sheet

Day Dreams

Ecstasy I

Girl with Braids II

Homage a Degas I

King Stein

Mary Anne III

Swirl

Artist: JT Winik

BFA – NSCAD University, Halifax, NS

BEd – Western University, London, ON

JT Winik (BFA, BEd) is a Canadian visual artist whose figurative paintings explore themes of isolation, introspection and the fusion of contrary states of being. Her work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Canada, The Netherlands and Mexico and she is currently represented in galleries in Toronto, Prince Edward County, Montreal, and Amsterdam. Her paintings have been featured in national magazines, books and book covers in Canada, Holland, Turkey and England. She paints full time from her studio in Kingston and has spent extensive periods working at studios in Spain and Holland.

https://jtwinik.wordpress.com/

http://www.jtwinik.com/

https://twitter.com/jtwinik

http://www.armedartsalon.com/jt-winik—canada.html

http://oenogallery.com/artist/?ai=2533

http://www.musegallery.ca/featuredartists/painting/Winik/index.html

http://www.artinteriors.ca/artists/j_t_winik

http://www.galerieblanche.com/artist/18/jt-winik

http://www.artacasa.nl/artists/Winik.htm

by Alessandro Ciapanna

These photographs were taken in a train cemetery on the outskirts of Uyuni, a small city in the south of Bolivia. This series is entitled “Asi Es La Vida,” from graffiti scrawled on one of the rusting locomotives.

Artist: Alessandro Ciapanna

I throw myself passionately at life. And life often smiles back. When that happens, I like to have my camera ready.

In what is a perennially ongoing process, I have developed a sense of what works, photographically. I can sometimes perceive when a situation has the quid I like to call the “wow factor”. I have honed my ear to the sound of a ball bouncing or a child laughing. Because these are telltale signs that something wonderful is taking place. It is a miracle, happening, unscripted. And sometimes – if you develop and trust your serendipity – it’s happening right around the corner. It’s something universal, and fleeting. Therefore all the more wonderful. All the more worth capturing. This is what I most like to photograph. Some call it life.

Website: ciapannaphoto

In Post-Partum Document, artist Mary Kelly explores the mother-child relationship.

By Carla Aaron-Lopez

kingCARLA  writes about the experience of being an emerging artist. Her previous posts are  Notes from kingCARLA and Notes from kingCARLA 2.

Last time I was in this space, I was complaining commenting about being an emerging artist. I made statements about getting over rejection and pushing to make more work instead of being such a procrastinator. I’m still a procrastinator actually but soon after, I began working two jobs and my tune has changed a bit transforming into something else. At this point, I’ve joined the American workforce as a middle school art educator while I work the retail slave ship on the weekends slinging slacks to 40-year old men that wish to look younger. It’s a heavy load to work seven days a week constantly but I’ve got a child that needs stability. I’m a parent, yo. An artist and a parent. Add in the fact that I’m a woman and you’ve got a black unicorn on your hands.

And how is this possible, you say?

Like this.

Art is my life but my son is bigger than art. Sometimes, art has to be put on the backburner staying warm for him to have a home to live in, proper clothes to wear and yummy food to eat. I’m not breaking up with art. I just have to take long pauses here and there. Recently, I came across an article that I actually agreed with on Hyperallergic. It was a weekend long-read titled The Problem of the Overlooked Female Artist: An Argument for Enlivening a Stale Model of Discussion written by Ashton Cooper. Hell of a title. I commend Cooper or the copyeditor for thinking of that.

I became enlivened by her perspective on the redundant language used to talk about women artists. Cooper sourced numerous articles released about women artists throughout 2014 in which the language used to speak about them was either truly stale and unimaginative or spoke about a woman artist in a rediscovered fashion as if she was a fly on the wall during big historical moments in art but really she was an active and vocal artist the entire time the big historical moment in art was going down. Check out this excerpt from the article about Phyllida Barlow in which the author quoted an article from The Guardian circa March 2014:

She’s taught everyone from Martin Creed to Rachel Whiteread, but it’s only now, at 70, that Barlow is getting her dues as an artist.

Barlow, who turns 70 this week, has spent her adult life making sculpture, enjoying her greatest success by far over the last 10 years.

She went on to the Slade until 1966, and then began teaching, and having children; she and Peake have five in all. […] In those days, she was working in total isolation.”

The part I highlighted in bold stood out quite strong to me. Especially the part that says she was working in total isolation. I guess when you have five children, everything is all about your children. Hell, I only have one! My guess is that art never went onto the backburner for Barlow as it has for me but I know it wasn’t always on the forefront either with her being a teacher and a wife. My other guesses include that she was never in isolation with five children and she eventually had to learn how to become an effective teacher. I may not know much about Barlow but I can relate to her story if those are the only tidbits I ever learn about her.

The article comes to an apex while speaking about Barbara Hepworth, her married life and her cavorting with the international art world and comes to close with fascinating information around Judy Chicago, Isa Genzken and Sarah Charlesworth’s careers with some strong questions: “What was she doing then? Where was she showing? Who was she in community with? How did her practice change? What forces of exclusion did she face?”

I don’t know. The information just isn’t there. What I do know is that if reality showed up at any of these women’s doors looking like maternity then it is my hopes they assumed their new roles as mother to a child (or more) and truly began a new adventure, chapter, section of their lives. We already know the art world is notoriously white, male and sexist as well as racist. We also already know that many people believe that when a woman gets pregnant, her life is automatically over. That’s not necessarily true. If the lives of the women outlined in this article were over I think we wouldn’t be talking about them. There wouldn’t be a Tate retrospective on Barlow or MoMA’s current exhibition on Sturtevant (who’s completely new to me).

In essence, I believe they sharpened their metaphorical swords in the hours after the children went to bed or over to grandma and grandpa’s house for the weekend because that’s the only time I get to do anything regarding art. Everything becomes a juggling act that you just work out over time. I hope to make work as profound as these women but I don’t want to be 70 years old to get my recognition for it. That’s that bullshit if I have spent a lifetime possibly struggling to support my family on teacher pay. I’d rather take the recognition money now and create a trust fund for my son because that’s my reality in addition to art.

Too bad I wasn’t born with a dick because I wouldn’t have the ability to give birth and be weighed down with the overwhelming responsibilities of having child. Everything always falls on the mother whether a father is or isn’t present. While I care so much about art, I’ve learned that the art world doesn’t care about my child. Making the decision to sacrifice my love for art is constantly on and off the table. Every moment becomes a moment to create or think about art differently. I’m constantly sharpening my metaphorical sword as an art teacher to a group of students who could honestly give a fuck about art in the first place.

It’s hard out here for a pimp!

Based on that article and these words I’ve written, I guess I’ve got to pimp harder.

Artist: Carla Aaron-Lopez 

woke up with my horns on. fell in love with a cadillac. born/raised in charlotte, nc. baptized in the dirty south also known as atlanta.

@iamkingcarla
whoiskingcarla.com