on sugar mountain. up shit creek. Catalogs are in!

photo: Allison V.Smith

I just got my copies of the "on sugar mountain. up shit creek." exhibition catalog my friend Eric Zimmerman designed for the Road Agent show I had in January. The layout beautifully describes the show with images taken by Allison V. Smith and Christina Rees wrote a thoughtful and funny essay.
The catalogs look fantastic and I am excited to get them out into the world. There should be some over at The Public Trust by the end of the week as well as Domy, in Austin and Houston, very soon. You can always contact me via my website if your interested too!

Jum Nakao

Jum Nakao, the Japanese Brazilian-based designer whose S/S 05 collection A Costura do Invisível was a temporal moment in fashion. A paper collection, that more than 700 hours of intricate work went into it. Then in final moments, after the models went down the runway, the paper dresses were ripped off, torn and destroyed by the models. So shocking and fabulous. There is a video on his website that documents the destruction.

Finals Week!

First drawing class I've taught in 10 years. Fabulous work from my students. I hope I taught them something... these are a few drawings done in graphite and charcoal from an architectural foamcore model they created after researching assigned architects.

Dead Man Walking. Social Justice in Art.

Sister Helen Prejean
Scene from the Opera "DEAd MAn Walking"
Sister Helen Prejean, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States, spoke at SMU last night as part of a panel discussion, "Arts, Social Change, and Human Rights".

The panel was moderated by Rick Halperin, director of the Human Rights Education Program in SMU's Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. The other panelists included Darren K. Woods, general director of Fort Worth Opera; and Jake Heggie, composer of the modern opera derived from Dead Man Walking.

Sister Helen is a force! Funny, insightful, intelligent and human. She is a former teacher from Louisiana who joined the Sisters of St. Joseph of Medaille at a young age and dedicated her life to the poor of New Orleans. She began a prison ministry in 1981 and became a pen pal and spiritual adviser to convicted felons, which led her to share her experiences through Dead Man Walking. The book was made into an amazing major motion picture in 1996 with Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. In addition to the panel there were 4 sneak previews performed from the Opera based on the book. It was so powerful to watch the singers perform parts of Sister Helen's life while she looked on behind them. In the audience was a man, named Kerry Max Cook, who had been imprisoned wrongly for 22 years of his life. He thanked Sister Helen for her work and for seeing men like himself who whether innocent or guilty had the right to be treated as human beings as opposed to disposable human waste.

Whether for or against the death penalty. Touched by violence or spared that unimaginable pain, the evening gave everyone a lot to think about and consider.

Inside Grey Gardens- Home & Garden The NY Times

"A 1975 documentary captured the eccentric lives of Edith Bouvier Beale, known as Big Edie, and her daughter, Little Edie, in Grey Gardens, the filthy, dilapidated mansion they occupied in East Hampton.

Two years after Big Edie died in 1977, Little Edie sold the house to Sally Quinn and Benjamin C. Bradlee, who undertook a massive renovation. These photographs, which have never been seen by the public before, were taken by a photographer hired by Ms. Quinn at the time she and her husband purchased the house, in order to capture the extent of the decay." Click here to see SLIDE SHOW!, the original trailer, and here for the article.

Anne Wenzel

Anne Wenzel'shttp://www.annewenzel.nl/ ceramic work and installations. Art crush of the week.

"On Sugar Mountain. Up Shit Creek." - Charissa Terranova -in Art Lies #61.

Colliding two layers of disparate culture—high Victorian and Goth subculture—Margaret Meehan punk-ifies the past in On Sugar Mountain, Up Shit Creek, a mise en scène of quaint oddity. Pale pink walls with dainty white chair railings enclose the entrance to the space. Centered on the wall is a small heap of misshapen stuffed balls. Each bears a row of what look to be very English teeth—somewhere between the maw of Austin Powers and the rictus of the very real Prince Charles. As though a display in a Victorian salon, they sit matter-of-factly mounted on the wall within a small, curvilinear wooden display. Surrounding them are small stereograph cards—old photographs of children from the late eighteenth– and early nineteenth century, which Meehan has reclaimed by drawing on them. Wavering between graffiti and deliberative commentary on the oddity of fin-de-siècle photographs of children, some have open mouths with big teeth and others have perspective lines jogging to the back of the photo. READ MORE...

Music crush. tunE-yarDs.

My friend C.J. just introduced me to the most amazing voice. The tUnE-yArDs and more specifically the woman behind it, Merrill Garbus. She blew me away. Then I went to the link he posted for me to hear more of her songs. (Hoovesontheturf.com) I found a whole world of artists I was unaware of. Check out Matt Jones and the Secret Garden video series produced by Hooves on the Turf, they film bands performing songs outside the context of a regular venue.

Dallas Pottery Invitational

Amy Halko
Liz Lurie
Friday Evening, April 3rd
7pm - 9pm
Reception - enjoy fine wines and hors d'oeuvres with the artists. Music will be provided by the Greg Ray Combo.

Saturday, April 4th
10am - 5pm
Sunday, April 5th
noon - 5pm

Janette Kennedy Gallery at The South Side on Lamar
1409 South Lamar
Dallas, Texas 75215
For more info visit their fabulous website at:
www.dallaspotteryinvitational.com

The Thing

THE THING Quarterly is a periodical in the form of an object. Each year, four artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers are invited by the editors (Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan) to create an everyday object that somehow incorporates text. This object will be reproduced and hand wrapped at a wrapping party and then mailed to the homes of the subscribers with the help of the United States Postal Service.

THE THING’s current year of subscriptions(issues 7-10) will begin with an issue by the writer Jonathan Lethem, due out in late April. The subscription year will continue with issues by the experimental geographer, artist and writer Trevor Paglen; visual artist Ryan Gander; and writer/radio personality Starlee Kine.