Emvergeoning

Just a quick note that the San Antonio Potter’s Guild (their pots are better than their web site) is having their annual juried exhibit tonight at Parchman-Stremmel. Last year I helped install the show, and it was a little cluttered but had some strong work, with a good mix of functional and sculptural pieces. Hopefully this year they cut down on the volume while keeping the quality. If you are curious about what San Antonio Potters (aka Ceramicists) are doing, drop by Parchman-Stremmel from 5:30-7:00 pm.

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Here’s what I know. I know REM is showing Jessica Barnett DeCuir’s Viva Leon.

Viva Leon is the artist’s new series of white line drawings on black board that are inspired by her late great cat, Leon of Hyperbubble fame. The abstract line drawings focus on shape patterns that show DeCuir’s interest in optical art illusions, gestalt theory, and formal and conceptual issues of design and drawing. An original Hyperbubble soundtrack featuring the Leon song and Leon Catnip Remix will play throughout the receptions.The artist’s proceeds from the sale of any art or Cd’s at this exhibition will benefit the Southern Animal Rescue Association (SARA), a no kill animal sanctuary in Seguin,Texas.

I know Cactus Bra is showing HOST (pictured above) by Jasmyne Graybill.

In her exhibition HOST, artist Jasmyne Graybill continues her exploration of biology and man’s relationship with nature. She furthers this investigation at cactus bra, focusing on the relationship between host and guest by cultivating “organic growth” in the context of the gallery space. She presents an altered environment that fluctuates between organic and synthetic, utilizing ambiguous forms that tickle the viewers nerves with a combination of beauty and repulsion.

I know Three Walls is showing Wild Style: The Fog of War, Mix Tape Vol. 1 by Regis Shephard.

Shephard will combine his unique drawing style with mix tapes he has been working on, but never shown. This mix of visual and aural style is a new direction for Shephard, and will surely prove to be humorous, political, and biting, dealing with cultural/racial issues in America.

I know Gemini Ink is hosting their First Friday Reading featuring novelist Amy Wallen at . This event starts at 6:30 pm. According to Booklist’s review of Wallen’s MoonPies and Movie Stars:

Wallen doesn’t stereotype her southern characters but rather infuses them with personality and pokes fun at their flaws. Wallen launches a funny, touching, and bittersweet ride in search of family, but what her characters find is bigger than Texas and better than Moon Pies.

I know Blue Star will be showing Lost and Found.

I know other things are happening, but I don’t know what they are. If you know what they are, I await your comments.

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Applications for two significant grants from the Dallas Museum of Art are due March 1st. The Degolyer and Kimbrough Funds are separated by age range as well as state residency. If you’re between 15 and 25 years of age and you’ve been lollygaggin around Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona or Colorado for the last four years, then you’re eligible to win $1,500. If you’re a Texan and you haven’t hit the doomsday age of 30, well then, you could be the lucky duckling that lands a golden egg of $3,500 courtesy of the Kimbrough Fund.

If you’re a Texan and you’re now living in the Stygian landscape of the 30+ demographic, then the joke’s on the younguns cause you’re eligible for the Dozier Travel Grant which tips the benevolent art scales at $6,000. Cue Steve Miller Band here.

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In case you were wondering who is behind the Emvergeoning curtain…Here’s a group photo from our last meeting. Keep San Antonio Lame, Lamer, & Lamest.

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Local artists are popping up on the international art radar. Zane Lewis bubbled to the European surface with a little bit of humor and ipecac. His recent, painterly rendition of a regurgitating Pope was part of the international, invitation-only Arte Fiera in Bologna, Italy. Looks incredibly delectable for holy bloviating and dribble. Somebody needs a bib…
Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

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For those of you who missed the Han Bennink + Arthur Doyle show at Trinity on Thursday, or just want to relive it, here’s the beginning of the third set.

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These piggies all have something to say…but you have to go to the Mcnay this month to listen. This little piggy [Basquiat] went to marketing class, this little piggy [Warhol] stayed home, this little piggy [Wyeth] painted portraits and they all frolicked in a Manhattan play pen called The Factory.

Everything about “Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth & Basquiat” hovers around the alluring glow of the cult of personality. Given that caveat, Jamie Wyeth takes the blue ribbon for his portraits of subjects as disparate as John F. Kennedy, a smirking swine and a she-male in a ball gown. His oil paintings and pencil drawings exude a sense of classically trained talent with a mischievous twist. The show itself is a mixed fruit salad of taxidermied pets, toy train sets and painfully outdated haute couture. Continue Reading »

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discuss.

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I pulled a classic emvergeoning sneak* peek* this afternoon at Blue Star while they were still hanging the show that opens on Thursday night ( Lost and Found ; curated by George Neubert ) .. The show is looking good, I plan on taking a good luck at it later on when its all hung, however, I’m totally scared of the show thats still being hung in the Project Space room.

See Below :

hmmm.. kind of looks innocent, not to intense.

digging through…

getting hotter..

save yourself while you still can.

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I’ve long considered tattoo flash sheets to be fascinating art objects. With their repetition of similar or related images, they often riff on visual themes in a quite poetic way. These dragons by E. C. Kidd (dated 1912), for instance, chart a conceptually nebulous course between the serpent and the bird. For the artist, the various permutations of the dragon flesh out the significance of the image as a psychic construct. As each drawing (potentially) expands the concept, the mind is able to approach the problems posed by the image from new angles. It becomes, ultimately, a cycle of creative expansion, traditionally symbolized by the ouroboros. For the tattoo patron, the hundreds of sheets lining the walls of the shop convey the frenetic atmosphere of a bazaar, and discourage contemplation of the individual pieces. Yet the customer will presumably choose one image to be imprisoned in his skin. In a way it’s like going to the pound and trying to pick a puppy to nurture while hundreds of dogs stare at you through steel bars. But in another, probably more significant way, combing through tattoo flash could be compared to sifting through dreams to find that rare image that is a passageway to deeper meaning. I don’t think it coincidental that traditional tattoo imagery is often as violent and raw as the most disturbing manifestations of the id; but it should not be forgotten that these images also often embody a deep spiritual awareness (demonstrated, I think, by Kidd’s dragons). These artists paint and repaint archetypal creatures and sirens onto the skin of people who are willing to absorb quite a bit of pain and expense in order to transform themselves in some way through an image. And no one, neither the artist nor the one being marked, really knows what this transformation entails. The ink is pushed into the skin, the image is pushed into the spirit — and the process of digesting this image is one of mystery and faith. So the composition of these sheets of tattoo flash, and their installation in the shops, plays an important role in encouraging an unconscious selection of images. As the psychic projection then becomes manifest, the boundary between spirit and flesh is transgressed.

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Apparently the city planners, in their wisdom, have decreed that San Antonio requires a master plan for public art. They are now seeking the counsel of artists, architects, and designers to aid in the institution and melioration of said plan. To articulate your vision for the art schema to be adopted, convene at the Central Library Auditorium on February 13, 2007, from 7-9 pm. Parking validation and refreshments will be provided.

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Someone has been kind enough to upload a bunch of short, abstract Harry Smith films to YouTube (the lazy blogger’s best friend). Harry Smith is known to fans of folk music as the compiler of the Folkways anthology, an important document of early American folk. But his film work, inspired by alchemy and the occult as much as it was by modern art, is just as important. Kenneth Anger referred to him as the “greatest living magician.” But for Smith, the music he loved and the films he made went hand in hand. Many of these early films were screened during jazz concerts in San Francisco and New York. Smith said that he made the work for contemporary music, and talked about the films in terms of synaesthesia of color and sound. For this reason, his work is considered a precursor to ’60s psychedelic culture. You can read more about him and his work at the Harry Smith Archives. This particular film, Color Study, was made in 1952 (the music was added by the person who stuck it on YouTube):

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Thanks to local radio shows like the Hillbilly Hit Parade, I was reminded of Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys. The improvised, falsetto “ahas” in this video are nonpareil…

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If you drive down South Flores on the edge of Southtown, you’ve seen it. Covered in graffiti and the citys answer to it (the subconcious art of graffiti removal) .. The Old Judson Candy Company sits high on the horizon near the intersection of Guadalupe and South Flores. (a few blocks down from South Alamo) . For years, this building was left virtually wide open to the world while it fell into disrepair, Lots of people & animals passed through it, including a large number of graffiti artists from all over the country (remember clogged caps 1,2,3, and 4?). As a result the walls inside are literally teeming with life .. About 6 months back, I introduced Future Worker Girl of Potter-Belmar Labs to the site, by showing her a random assortment of photos I had taken traipsing through the candy house early one morning. While I took the photos during a time that the building was literally wide open from the front, back, and sides.. It has since been carefully sealed off from all unwanted intruders. As a result of her new interest in the site, she proclaimed a gathering of data towards a renegade video projection onto the building. After last nights Bozo Texino film screening she popped the question on us, would we accompany her down to the sight of the old candy factory to view a projection of a melding of photos of the inside of the now sealed building on the outside? Of course.

The results were beautiful.

Future Worker Girl:

her “Something out of ghost-busters” vehicle.

Andy Benavides, Mike Casey. and visiting resident artist to UTSA, Chris Kubick view the projection from the bus stop benches.

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Although I could write pages and pages about Bettie Ward’s incredibly precious and profane show at Southwest School of Art and Craft, I’m giving you 15 reasons to go see this show:
1. Embroidery can be subversive.
2. Where else will you see a peppermint striped dick?
3. Breasts become rosettes; become targets.
4. Our Lady of the Cupcakes
5. Picasso, Miro, sexual imagery full of flying genitalia
6. Look for the arbor of fluffy penises
7. A video of Patricia Pratchett singing Guantanamera
8. Smudgy drawings that are mimetic of Darger or miscreants
9. Heart shaped doilies sprouting cacti and fellatio
10. Tiny golden shoes
11. Birds flying out of a woman’s mouth
12. The titles: The Girl who had a relationship with the Spiney Tree of Life Cactus
13. The Marvelous Hysterical is better than porn
14. Imaginative scenes of apocryphal beings
15. Bettie Ward is a San Antonio gem.

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Sometimes you come across an artist web site that is so exhaustive you can spend hours dwelling in this visionary world, tracing out a career or leaping across decades of creative activity in an instant. The first site I found like this was Gerhard Richter’s elegant online document of his paintings, his Atlas, his editions, and even tours of select exhibitions.

Today I finally visited the Vasulkas’ site, which may not be as impressively interconnected as Richter’s, but presents and astounding document of their body of work, dating back to the early ’70s. Apart from a large number of videos and stills, their site provides PDFs of books and catalogs they have produced, photo documentation of installations, and an archive of the early years of The Kitchen.

For those unfamiliar with their work, here’s a little synopsis, courtesy Gene Youngblood:

Using the video synthesizers and image processors that were the user-built folk instruments of electronic culture, Woody exhaustively explored, demonstrated and categorized the “primitives” of electronic imaging. The visual manifestations of this research he called “artifacts” rather than art. But the material was so hypnotically beautiful that almost everyone else called it art—and it lived as art in the art world. Thus, a man who claimed to be uninterested in an art career became one of the seminal figures in the history of video art.

Steina, meanwhile, pursued two related paths. In a series called Violin Power, which began in the mid-70s, she “performed” video by using her violin to control real-time image processing. Later, she controlled laser discs with her violin in live performances. She continues to refine both techniques today. Her other body of work, called Machine Vision, involved robotic camera controls that removed human intentionality from the camera’s point of view. Together, then, the Vasulkas participated in developing (when they didn’t single-handedly pioneer) almost all the audiovisual possibilities intrinsic to video as an electronic moving-image and performance medium.

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I know we’ve all been REALLY WORRIED (about bird flu) psssstt..they just found a probable cure in Cod enzymes from Iceland.. Just thought you might find that interesting, seaing that is been quite icy in San Antonio as of late. Myself, I’ve been holed up in my little warm home, fighting off the chills and talking shop to my marnball. This morning, though I was so excited to see the light of day (err.. gray) that I dove into my camera and shot some photos of silly winter stuff, like icicles, and lamposts and hockey pucks.. (uh wait, no hockey pucks.. ) but lots of icicles. OH , yeah I also dove through the last issue of the SA Current, and lo and behold there was a small blurb style writeup on Emvergeoning. Yeah, go us! We’re famosos. soo.. if your interested.. heres some photos of San Antonio under ice..

The Photo below is proof of the cheesy icicle photos I speak of..just click on the link below..you know its killing you..

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Announcing: The Official Emvergeoning San Antonio Gallery Map. Using Google Maps we have mapped out all of the San Anto galleries we could think of. Wherever possible, we’ve included a link to the web site, address, phone number, and hours. Some of the locations are slightly off (e.g. wrong side of the street), and we couldn’t figure out the hours for some galleries that we know have regular hours. We’ll fix these problems when we get a chance, but for now it should help you locate the city’s many gallery spaces. If you think of galleries that are missing, please note them in the comments to this post.

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I went to the Steiren Compound Halloween Party this year doing my best to look like Krazy Kat; the reference was lost on all but a few. This puzzled me, as I always think of George Herriman as one of America’s most striking and original artists, despite his predilection to work in a maligned art form. To spread the word, I thought I’d write a little post on Krazy Kat. But E. E. Cummings beat me to the punch about sixty years ago, so here’s an excerpt from his essay on one of America’s first works of surrealist art:

What concerns me fundamentally is a meteoric burlesk melodrama, born of the immemorial adage love will find a way. This frank frenzy (encouraged by a strictly irrational landscape in perpetual metamorphosis) generates three protagonists and a plot. Two of the protagonists are easily recognized as a cynical brick-throwing mouse and a sentimental policeman-dog. The third protagonist — whose ambiguous gender doesn’t disguise the good news that here comes our heroine — may be described as a humbly poetic, gently clownlike, supremely innocent, and illimitably affectionate creature (slightly resembling a child’s drawing of a cat, but gifted with the secret grace and obvious clumsiness of a penguin on terra firma) who is never so happy as when egoist-mouse, thwarting altruist-dog, hits her in the head with a brick. Dog hates mouse and worships “cat”, mouse despises “cat” and hates dog, “cat” hates no one and loves mouse.

Ignatz Mouse and Offissa Pupp are opposite sides of the same coin. Is Offissa Pupp kind? Only in so far as Ignatz Mouse is cruel. If you’re a twofisted, spineless progressive (a mighty fashionable stance nowadays) Offissa Pupp, who forcefully asserts the will of socalled society, becomes a cosmic angel; while Ignatz Mouse, who forcefully defies society’s socalled will by asserting his authentic own, becomes a demon of anarchy and a fiend of chaos. But if — whisper it — you’re a 100% hidebound reactionary, the foot’s in the other shoe. Ignatz Mouse then stands forth as a hero, pluckily struggling to keep the flag of free will flying; while Offissa Pupp assumes the monstrous mien of a Goliath, satanically bullying a tiny but indomitable David. Well, let’s flip the coin — so: and lo! Offissa Pupp comes up. That makes Ignatz Mouse “tails.” Now we have a hero whose heart has gone to his head and a villain whose head has gone to his heart.

This hero and villain no more understand Krazy Kat than the mythical denizens of a two dimensional realm understand some three dimensional intruder. The world of Offissa Pupp and Ignatz Mouse is a knowledgeable power-world, in terms of which our unknowledgeable heroine is powerlessness personified. The sensical law of this world is might makes right; the nonsensical law of our heroine is love conquers all. To put the oak in the acorn: Ignatz Mouse and Offissa Pupp (each completely convinced that his own particular brand of might makes right) are simple-minded — Krazy isn’t — therefore, to Offissa Pupp and Ignatz Mouse, Krazy is. But if both our hero and our villain don’t and can’t understand our heroine, each of them can and each of them does misunderstand her differently. To our softhearted altruist, she is the adorably helpless incarnation of saintliness. To our hardhearted egoist, she is the puzzlingly indestructible embodiment of idiocy. The benevolent overdog sees her as an inspired weakling. The malevolent undermouse views her as a born target. Meanwhile Krazy Kat, through this double misunderstanding, fulfills her joyous destiny.

– E. E. Cummings

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If you never lookit the Day in Pictures [DIP] on BBC or elsewhere, then there’s something missing in your daily cathode ray indulgence. Listen, mouse potatoes of America, for the caveat of impending thumping is upon us…Behold the biggest bunny this side of the Black Forest…

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Since not too many people seem to be familiar with the net.art genre, I thought I’d link y’all up to one of the classics, Jodi.org. Jodi is a two-person artist collective that plays with perceptions of personal computers, often by either mimicking glitches or exploiting pre-existing bugs. Their web sites and programs are sometimes impossible to control, making a force-quit necessary (I lost an earlier version of this post when I had to shut down Firefox due to one of their web-shenanigans – turn of pop-up blocking if you want to check it out). They tend to use an aesthetic derived from the early days of personal computing, with lots of text-based layouts, and green-on-black or white-on-black color schemes. In recent years, they have done a lot with video games, either modifying popular games or posting glitchy screen grabs from actual game play. They also created a number of pieces using Google’s Blogger service. That should get you started, but if you want more Jodi, check their Wikipedia page for links to other pieces.

If you have a favorite net.art site, let us know in comments.

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