Creative Thresholds

by Nicholas Quin Serenati

Locating Place: Fragments of an Illness is the beginning of a three-part series. The next installment is Reclaiming Experiential Residue: Misconceptions.

About the series: Illness experience is a resource for experiential knowledge. To that extent, it is important to understand that life has infinite spaces which can be experienced. My work is concerned with phenomenological experiences that transform these spaces into places. These places become the foundations in our individual lives – the construct of our identity. The work in this series is intended to ascertain an understanding of the ways meaning–making functions as a method for healing, and how the creative process operates to uncover and identify new metaphors that best communicate illness experience to others.

Screenshot 1, Fragments of an Illness, 2011

We all have bodies. This is not a truism. It is not an exercise in the obvious. It is a fact – and a fact of a special kind. It is an incontestable fact. Everything we do, we do as or by means of our body. We cannot get beyond the fact that we are bodies. The body is, simply put, where everything in human culture begins and ends.     

(Tobin Siebers, Disability Aesthetics)

Screenshot 2, Fragments of an Illness, 2011

When I look at the work that I have produced as an artist, I have come to realize the importance of the body as the locus for inquiry and discovery. The idea of the body as a critical lens for investigating the theoretical and philosophical implications of representation and voice in illness experience is a common thread in my work – whether consciously or subconsciously. My unrelenting interest of the body can most easily be attributed to a personal experience with illness when in 2001 I was diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML).

Screenshot 3, Fragments of an Illness, 2011

Being a young man at the time, the profundity of this experience sparked a curiosity of the human condition that has lingered in many ways over the course of 13 years in remission. Most notably, my illness experience has emerged as a significant preoccupation in my research and creative work. Mortality, representation, voice, identity, humanness, Buddhism, metaphors, illness and disability studies as well as the formal and experimental aesthetics that encompass my art practice, have all played a vital role in the identification of place in my life.

Screenshot 4, Fragments of an Illness, 2011

The study of the body – my body – as a territory occupied by illness is my attempt to pierce to the marrow of the questions that inform my art practice. That is why I believe it is through the study of illness experience that a deeply engaged and meaningful source for experiential knowledge can be achieved.

In this particular exploration, I employed video and sound design to execute a reconstruction of experience.

Screenshot 5, Fragments of an Illness, 2011

The result is my 2011 film, Fragments of an Illness. This film came to exist as a final research project in my doctoral course, HMS 711: The Human Condition: Pursuit of Happiness. Fragments of an Illness situates specific recollections as a metaphorzed-reality within the film. Presented with a concentration into the blending of speed, color, composition, language, sound, and narrative establishment(s), these fragments were my attempt to bridge a dialogue about illness with the aesthetics of the medium and conceivable metaphorical notions.

Nicholas Quin Serenati is an interdisciplinary scholar-artist whose work is defined by arts-based research that explores the potential of medium and discipline in liminal spaces. With a practice rooted in locating one’s place, Serenati employs video, creative writing, photography, sound, installation and performance to investigate forming situations that direct his research around illness and metaphor.

Serenati’s intellectual practice deeply engages the creation of meaning – form and function – and the articulation of story throughout the investigative process. Themes of trauma, identity, illness, disability, experimental narrative, social constructivism, sound and language are all contributing factors to Serenati’s work as a critical discourse. Serenati’s scholarly-art practice is intended to investigate phenomena as a way of achieving profound knowledge of theory, philosophy and art.

Based out of St. Augustine, Florida, Serenati holds a BA in Communications from Flagler College, an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College, and is a candidate for his Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies: Humanities and Culture from Union Institute & University. He is currently the Art Director / Dept. Chair of the Cinematic Arts program at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts and an adjunct professor of media and cinema studies at Flagler College.

Serenati’s dissertation, ReFraming Leukemia: Metaphorizing Illness as Windows, will be completed May 2014, and the installation of the project is set for early 2015 in St. Augustine, Florida.

Twitter: @nqserenati
Website: nqserenati.com

by Carla Aaron-Lopez

They call this the beginning of a career. Even though my resume is already a mile long, I believe it to be the start of getting to that “emerging artist” label. Somewhere in grad school, I attended a lecture from an artist who asked my class what we were going to do once we graduate. We all agreed that he was crazy and answered that we were going to get jobs and go to work. At the time, it seemed like it made sense and that’s what some of us went off to do. We graduated, got jobs and became professors at respective universities.

However, for some of us, those cards didn’t stack that way. In my case, I was an adjunct at a historically black university for three years until I was cut. I still don’t know why. My unemployment says I was cut because of low enrollment and since then I haven’t been able to pick up another job. I had no choice but to do what I had been trained to do which is be an artist and when I look at the art world in motion I see less of me and more of those that taught me.

Lots of old white men and women. Ain’t nothing wrong with that but it forces me to wonder if I should do this at all. My ego is too big to let appearances cause me to quit. Therefore, I can’t help but to ask and investigate what it takes to be an artist of color in the 21st century. It’s 2014 and I find I still have to play cute little games to get accepted into this centuries old world. I come from a different place. I call it the dirty South, others just call it Atlanta. I’m not much into creating works that examine the place of black women in America or the African diaspora. I’m also not interested in making works that dog the sh*t out of men. I prefer making works that reflect my Southern background just like the ignorant rap music I love listening to while I create works. If you want a postcolonial discussion from me, I’ll direct you to my homie, Christopher Hutchinson, because he has the words you can’t run from.

In the meantime, this post is being created to help you (and me) explore what it takes to be an artist. And here’s the first step. Explore your influences. It doesn’t have to solely be artists. It can be writers, thinkers, dancers and/or rappers. As much as I love rappers is as much as I love Jean Baudrillard and Michel Foucault. It could even be television characters like the great Doctor Who. Examine why you are drawn to these influences. Is it the confidence you’re attracted to? Is it theories that you’ve read and you want to create something that reflects what you’ve learned? Is it history of a person, place or thing? I don’t know. It’s your world coming to life as an artist. We all have a world we live in that separates us from the next person. I believe that’s how we all keep our sanity. Don’t believe me? Check my next paragraph.

When I graduated with a MFA in photography in 2009, I ended up with a crappy job at TSS Photography transferring children in sports photos to products like keychains, dog tags and mugs to name a few. I hated it. I also didn’t have a camera and I was driving myself crazy. One day, I came across Romare Bearden again and remembered how my favorite black artists could only work using few materials because they had regular crappy jobs and families to feed. I looked around my apartment and saw that I had scissors, glue and plenty of collected magazines. If I couldn’t shoot the photograph then I figured I could make a new image using ones I found in magazines. It was at that moment I realized that I was more than the photographer that some cute little sheet of paper declared. I realized that I needed to investigate image making. In 2011, I started a new body of work that has taken me in a direction that I never anticipated. I dropped a baby from the womb in 2012 which led me to think about the nature of creation. OF COURSE, I knew NOTHING of what it meant to be pregnant. Let alone a mother of color in a world that believes itself to be post-racial. No. I began to think about what images and influences I will be bringing around my son based upon the things I had grown to like. None of them were very pretty, soft or becoming of a woman. They were quite hypersexualized, crude and rude. Just how I like my life.

That woman you see in strip clubs laughing with the dancers? Yeah. That’s me. I love being your family’s worst nightmare walking through your house for dinner. A dirty intellectual. The work I created ended up being bodies that were imbued with power because they appear to be powerless. What happens when you flip a world upside down and inside out?

You get the beginnings of an emerging artist. Take a look and tell me what you think. If the work makes you feel uncomfortable then my job as an artist is complete because those are the images I have to deal with on a daily basis.

– Carla Aaron-Lopez
@iamkingcarla
whoiskingcarla.com

original mother, 2011

biggie alone, 2011

black girl jesus, 2012

queen vanessa, 2011

duality, 2011

garvey fart, 2012

zombie shaman, 2012

By Daniel Boscaljon
Image by Melissa D. Johnston

“the me that i most long to give i give to others instead” is the sixth letter in a series of posts called Letters to You written by Daniel Boscaljon with images by Melissa D. Johnston (from one of her ongoing projects). Letters to You began in July with “everytime i write i feel myself disintegrate.”

i wish that it were easier for me to reach out to you in comfort and in love, but you make it so incredibly difficult to love you that i must admit that your efforts have become more or less acceptable.  i believe that you do desire to be loved, in your way…but of course only insofar as it meets your expectations.  You have a list of rules about what loving you must mean, and insofar as i am not designed to follow a program of rules…i fear that i will continue to be a disappointment to you.  Why must you insist on finding things which you can take personally, or reasons that will allow you to feel wronged?  Is it as simple as the fact that you would rather stew in a justified hurt than enjoy the world?  That you would rather clothe yourself in the humble garments of the put-upon saint than expend your energy in serving the others in the world with actual sorrows?  That you would rather be the object of pity than love?  If only you could see that your rules for others are what hurts you, and not the intention of those who are moved (in their own ways) to love!  i cannot be sorry that i offend you for i feel as though the offense is solely YOURS.  my intention is always to love you, always and in spite of your reactions to my desires: i know not what more i can do.  even though you clearly desire unhappiness, i nonetheless cannot be one to mistreat you directly for i feel as though there is enough misery in the world. 

but for this i am sorry: i lack the courage to confront you with these facts.  perhaps if i were to call you and explain to you why others are slow to embrace you, and quick to move away from conversation…it would help.  perhaps if i were to go for a coffee with you and speak softly to you these hard truths, there would be time enough for a change.  the rare moments when you sparkle forth with a genuine smile–the ones you cannot help but control, the ones that take you by surprise–i know that you are worth saving; however, i always come against the fact that it truly is not my place to have this discussion.  the suspicion about you that you have taught leads me to believe that my words will be twisted and misinterpreted, and that i will become one of the legions in this world which plot against you.  your ability to deceive yourself is a powerful one which not even the truth, in this case, can overcome.  and so instead of being your true friend, or at least a true enemy, i suffer the thrusts of your unjust tongue in silence, preferring to be lashed rather than lash back.  i wish that i could help you, but you have neutralized every attempt to be aided.  you are in complete control of your life: those things which you do not control you ignore.  although i wish that i could know you better or love you more, i content myself with superficial greetings and a hug hello and goodbye.  the would be gifts of love that i would offer, the ways i wish i could delight you, the me that i most long to give i give to others instead.  you leave me no room to do otherwise.

Daniel Boscaljon has Ph.D.s in Modern Religious Thought and 19th-century American Literature, both from the University of Iowa. His interest is in the fragility and liminality of human experiences. His first book, Vigilant Faith: Passionate Agnosticism in the Secular World was published by the University of Virginia Press this past August.

In November 2011, I began talking about the Arab Spring in my classes and found myself looking out at blank stares. I asked my students to raise their hands if they had not heard of the term Arab Spring. Surprisingly, all the students’ hands in two classes went up, except for one, a member of the military. As he sat there looking down shaking his head, I realized that my students were completely unaware of the current global political and economic unrest almost a full year after it had started. Most, at that point, were also oblivious of the three-month-old Occupy Movement that was spreading across the U.S.

Because of this, I began to ask why it was, in the age of social media and instant information, that many people in this country, not just my students, were unaware of current global events — events that included economic collapses, toppled governments, mass civilian deaths, and the overwhelming use of force against civilians. I observed that American mass media, specifically the network news shows, provides a minimal, glossed-over account of world conflicts, restricting the viewer’s knowledge and understanding of events beyond their television screen.

Focusing on the conflicts and uprisings of the past year in Greece, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain and New York, PreOccupied brings to the forefront how consumers of American mass media are distracted by entertainment and disconnected from empathy.

These particular images were appropriated from first person videos that were shared via YouTube and social media outlets in order to serve as eyewitness accounts of the conflicts occurring in their respective countries.

The installation features live, broadcast television in which the viewer is free to “channel surf”.  The sound projected in the space is a mash-up of the audio that accompanied the selected YouTube videos.  The viewer’s experience of watching American television is challenged by the gunshots and screams that play on a continuous loop.

PreOccupied will be featured at the Rebecca Randall Bryan Art Gallery at Coastal Carolina University May 19 – June 28, 2014.   http://www.coastal.edu/bryanartgallery/

“Greece 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

“Bahrain 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

“New York 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

“Syria 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

“Egypt 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

“Libya 2011”, 48”x48”, pastel, graphite, charcoal, oil pastel

Michael Dickins is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is created with a variety of media including photography, printmaking, drawing, installation, sound and video. His balance of both digital and material processes allows him to create pieces that are both expressive and engaging.

Dickins is interested in the impact that the technological advances of photography has had, and is having, on our visual culture. His current work focuses on the importance of the snapshot and vernacular video both as art and as an influential medium in historical and contemporary societies.

Dickins holds a BFA in photography/printmaking from Georgia Southern University and an MFAIA from Goddard College.  He is currently the gallery manager of the Curtis R. Harley Art Gallery and an adjunct professor of art at the University of South Carolina Upstate in Spartanburg, South Carolina.

http://www.michaeldickins.com

https://www.facebook.com/michaeldickinsart

twitter: mdickins

by J. Adam McGalliard

“Pink Magnolias,” Oil on Linen

“Sunflower Fields,” Oil on canvas

“Troche”, Oil on canvas

“Allison,” Oil on Linen on Panel

“Antonia,” Oil on Panel

“After Arcimboldo 1,” C-Print

“After Arcimboldo 3,” C-Print

“Headless,” C-Print

“Intake,” C-Print

“The Scream,” C-Print

J. Adam McGalliard received an MFA from the New York Academy of Art with a scholarship for study and a BFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where he was the recipient of the Myrtle Reeves Scholarship. McGalliard taught painting, drawing, and printmaking as a faculty member at the Sawtooth Center for Visual Art in Winston-Salem, NC. In New York, he taught as an Adjunct Painting Professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York. He also worked as a Post Graduate Teaching Assistant at the New York Academy of Art, NYC.  For Five years he worked as a painter and sculptor for world-renowned artist Jeff Koons.

His latest work is a series of photographs and paintings involving the projection of images on figures. The photographs are works in and of themselves while also informing the painting process. The projected image works as a double-edged sword. It can starkly reveal something that is hidden, like the writhing tattoos of the Illustrated Man, or it can mask an individual as a concealing veil or garment that creates a protected outer hull.

Learn more about Adam and see more of his work at his Website or visit his Facebook page.

by Rebekah Goode-Peoples

It started off serious, this year. Long, late night drives listening to the modern spirituals of Phosphorescent and Nick Cave and writing in a pool blue basement room to Daughter. Last winter wasn’t particularly cold, and nothing particularly harrowing happened to me that season. Nevertheless, I hardcore wallowed. Stayed inside.

It didn’t help that I was finishing the last few songs of Oryx and Crake’s next full-length album, a concept narrative exploring commitment, from brief moments of comfort and security to long, bottom-of-the-well places. The chokehold of bondage. It wasn’t an easy story to tell. And I dreamt of summer.

Maybe I wasn’t the only one–seems like many folks in my circle had a tough year.

Things have been hard, right? Syria, Sandy Hook, the government shutdown, whatever other horrors make you shy away from the news stations’  Twitter feeds and turn to pop culture demerol.

So maybe you push play on Icona Pop’s “I Love It.” All flashing lights, so swirling that you can’t focus on anything for more than a fraction of a second. The neon, the thumping glitter distracts us from disaster, both our own and the world’s. Makes it unreal.

See, we’ve been hurt, and hurt again. We know everyone’s tragedy all of the time. So we run. Matthew Houck of Phosphorescent sings in my favorite song of the year, “Song for Zula, “I will not open myself up this way again…And I am racing out on the desert plains all night.” It’s a love story, sure, but it’s also our story. Of being too tender, too raw to handle it all.

Sometimes you need to take a break, but you have to be careful.

Stuff happens under the surface for all of us–that we try not to notice as thumbs slide away on Candy Crush or scroll through tumblrs of gif after gif of adorable dogs and sloths–that we don’t discuss, or even notice, because we’re so tied to our black screen holes.

We forget to look around, know each other. To feel things. We just follow the formula.

But we don’t have to.

We can pay attention. We can dance it off. We can be who we want to be.

This is the only life we get–yell loud and make earthquakes.

NFL Fans In Seattle And Kansas City Battle Over Who’s Louder– NPR Morning Edition, December 18, 2013:

—————————————————————————————————————————

PLAYLIST:  Five fingers of one hand (Spotify)

Albums:

Daughter “If You Leave”

Phosphorescent “Muchacho”

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Push the Sky Away”

CHVRCHES “The Bones of What You Believe”

Lorde “Pure Heroine”

Rebekah Goode-Peoples is a teacher and writer who lives in Atlanta, GA. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram at @goodepeoples and her band, Oryx and Crake, at @oryxncrake

“Scintillula”
Oil paint and pencil on paper
ca. a4
2012

“Double flute”
Oil paint and pencil on paper
ca. a4
2012

“O courageous”
Photography
2011

“Birds in a tree”
Acrylic painting on canvas
size 40 cm x 30 cm
2013

“Arch brown gold”
Acrylic painting on canvas, monotype
70 cm x 50 cm
2007

“Linguistically”
Photography
2010

“Carriage”
Acrylic painting
30 cm x 40 cm
2008

“Street refuge blue pink”
Acrylic painting on canvas, monotype
50 cm x 70 cm
2006

“Sphere 4”
Acrylic painting on canvas
55 cm x 46 cm
2007

“Aureous being”
Oil paint and pencil on paper
ca. a4
2011

“The open”
Photography
2012

“All about women”
Pencil and oil paint on paper
ca. a4
2012

“Oyseaux, arbres”
Oil paint and pencil on paper
2011

“How”
Photography
2013

“Silk apple-tree”
Acrylic painting on canvas
40 cm x 30 cm
2013

Swiss visual artist, Verena Baumann, was born in 1964 and has been working for thirty years with paint, pencil, scissors and a camera. After beginning her career as a graphic designer she expanded her interests and activities towards the freedom of a more personal art form. By living a less compromised life, she began to discover and explore a more instinctive use of line, shape, color, texture, and composition. Balancing the union of harmony and fragmentation is a primary motivation in her search for artistic truth. Today she explores spontaneousness and improvisation as a transforming fuel, nurturing her love for painting. The pursuit of ordinary magic became the most valued attribute for her creations. Find out more about Verena at http://about.me/verenabaumann.

by Anne-Martine Parent

My work consists mostly of two types of photography: street photography and self-portraits. Although these two genres may seem opposed to each other, they are, for me, inextricably linked in that my concern is always to explore and interrogate life, from the everyday to the life-changing experiences (loss, mourning, trauma). Opening myself to the others, using myself and the others, I try to record and document the insignificant and the trivial as well as the defining moments of our existences, the strength and the tenuousness of our lives.

Le vieil homme et les pigeons

At the Ritz London

Another red umbrella

La passante de Bruges  2

Smoking

School’s out

À bicyclette 2

Blue bag on blue wall

Nighthawks

Window shopping at night

Insomnia

As I lay dying

Surrender

Don’t you see that I’m drowning

Some mornings never come

Waiting

Artist: Anne-Martine Parent

I am a literature professor at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (Canada), specializing in Contemporary and Women’s Literature (in French), with a focus on autobiographical practices. I rediscovered photography with my iPhone. I only do mobile photography (or iphoneography as it is often called). At first, I was only interested in Hipstamatic (the classic version) ; there’s something very melancholic about it that got me hooked. Gradually, I started processing my pictures with apps like Snapseed, BlurFx, ImageBlender, DistressedFx, and so on. The ones I use regularly now are Snapseed, VSCOcam, and Mextures. I still shoot most of my photos with Hipstamatic, although I now use oggl instead of the classic Hipstamatic app.

Flickr : http://www.flickr.com/photos/martina-p/
EyeEm : http://www.eyeem.com/u/martina_p
IPA : http://www.iphoneart.com/MartinaP
Oggl : Anne Martine Parent @martina

Claudio Parentela is an illustrator, painter, photographer, mail artist, cartoonist, collagist, and freelance journalist who’s been active many years in the international underground scene. During 1999 he was a guest of the BREAK 21 FESTIVAL in Ljubliana (Slovenja). His obscure & crazy artworks are featured and shown in many art galleries,  endlessly on the web, & in the real world too…. Selected galleries and publications: Furtherfield, Mysupadupa, Saatchi Online, Graphola, Virtual Shoes Museum, One Five4 Gallery, Art Setter, Aoa Collective, Rise Art, Wallery, Blue Canvas, Rojo Magazine, Nakedbutsafe, Hollow Magazine, THVUNDERMAG,Revista Metal, Lasso Magazine, Nasty Magazine.

http://www.claudioparentela.net 

http://claudioparentel.altervista.org/

https://www.facebook.com/claudio.parentela.1

http://claudioparentela.tumblr.com/

http://twitter.com/claudioparentel

by G. E. Gallas

Selections from G.E. Gallas’s ongoing graphic novel The Poet and the Flea, an ode to Willam Blake.

page 4

page 20

page 22

G. E. Gallas is a screenwriter and graphic novelist (writer/illustrator) best known for The Poet and the Flea (http://thepoetandtheflea.wordpress.com), a fantastical reimagining of the life of the poet-painter William Blake. Originally from Washington D.C., she spent her year abroad in Tokyo, Japan and graduated from New York University: Gallatin School of Individualzed Study with a major involving cross-cultural storytelling. Spring 2013, she attended the Cannes International Film Festival and spoke upon invitation to The Blake Society, London. Next year, her illustrations will be featured in the young adult title Scared Stiff: Everything You Need to Know About 50 Famous Phobias

Kyle Duke Adamiec as Robert Louis Stevenson in Gallas’s short film *Death Is No Bad Friend*

 (http://www.amazon.com/Scared-Stiff-Everything-Famous-Phobias/dp/1936976498/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383004778&sr=8-1&keywords=scared+stiff+50).