cultautobio

I grew up with Barbies. Family and friends would buy them for me without anxiety and my mother never hid them away while directing my attention to the birthday cake. I went through many phases with them, from an age where plain sheathed figures without accessory were chewed upon until the rigid support system of the leg was exposed to buying them swiftly with untraceable birthday card cash. I would arrange the special edition velvet gown with fake rubies on the bodice so that it looked like just another piece of old outfit in a pile of doll clothes to my family but distinct and preserved to me. To be one of the gang I consented to their use in my brother’s daily broadcast schedule. It was called the Barbie Freak Show and was hosted by a stuffed animal, a sea turtle we bought at the Baltimore Aquarium and named Fresca. I owned the pink motor home that opened up to a deck situation so naturally the reality show was placed in a nudist trailer park. Most of their clothes were missing or in tatters after leaving them in the garden overnight so the costuming worked. I was never into the little hairbrushes woven into the box either. We were blissfully ahead of the times.
Most of the plots fell into the themes most observable to us: How do all these teenagers date when all the female characters were related and all the males were as well? Was there incest in the history of Barbie and Ken? Were they a band of orphans, two families bunkering through the cold war, having to start over after the parents die, their emotional wounds cauterized to the outside world leaving only the bonds between each sister’s and her similarly aged companion as they try to make it in the world?
They didn’t confuse me, shatter my perception of self, or push me to dream of the day when I could wear neon orange pumps that match my lipstick. Barbie dolls did not matter one-way or the other. In my mind they were just as weird, and just as entertaining, as the Alien brand toys that began to dominate the soap opera world of New Pangaea as we moved into the afternoon time slots. (New Pangaea, obviously, is the future reconciliation of our continents, dinosaurs return, as well as many other mammal-like creatures with Napoleon complexes and grappling hooks. The Aliens attack several seasons in, this served in some ways to temporarily unite the carnivorous dinosaurs banished to Itchy Itchy Island with the mainland force of Pro and the other peace minded beasts. Two Popples served as defenders of the continent and are then forced to acknowledge their own other status while attacking the closer in appearance to themselves aliens. But I won’t pretend we know what the “other” was yet, despite referring to the Poppies only as “blue guy” and the newcomer “white guy”. )

…

I played in a way that only helped me to perceive the world and was not dictated to me by an object’s bias or image. We dictated its place in the ever-increasing detailed world constructed to contain it. What I could have been told by an unrealistic doll was not mirrored in any reality I knew. My dad cooked our food, took the most care with his work, picked us up when we were sick at school, but was also a carpenter. My mom worked late, went on business trips, but was a nurse. When it came time to translate play to real life actions and later into my artistic practice it was my father’s example I wanted to follow. Not a man’s role, not a woman’s, but the guy that worked on a piece of furniture until it was perfect and whose warm hand fit perfectly over my face when I had a headache. I would sweep up the sawdust in his shop, saving particularly long tendrils until my love for them meant their destruction in my clumsy hands.
As I became older the outside world began to seep into my family and make me aware of my gender. Aunts and Uncles would give me body lotion or glittery earrings while handing my brother gift cards to bookstores. Was I not supposed to like books? When did books become masculine? We used to combine what we cared for so well. Later on while taking art classes I felt for the first time that it was unusual for a girl to be in the woodshop. My professors were all male and paternal and I did not use the tools well enough and on the occasions I did was overly praised. I saw a lot of beautifully made wood objects and welded beings skulking about the studio, threatening to fall on me and generally being useless other than to tear the clothes of anyone who happened to brush alongside. Literally retreating into a corner, I set to work on being without craft. I would make spindly legged tables and write on the side that I was a student of so and so, put my wax dipped tissue papers and some baubles carelessly on top, and wait for people to tell me the table takes away from the pretty carelessness of the objects.
I started thinking more about Lee Krasner. I didn’t care much about painting then. But she was an abstract expressionist at a time when they still had to know the craft and then work if for themselves, appearing to many as if there were none. But I would never not think of her as Pollack’s wife. If someone is merciful about the first sentence in her biography it is the second, Pollack’s wife. Thinking about how detail was feminine when Krasner painted with it, when grandma embroidered with it, when I curled glue into thin gauzy sheets with it, I wondered why we felt the need to care so much about the little things.
After seeing one of her paintings in person, a dark number with hieroglyphic shapes, I found my answer. We needed to work intensely on small areas, prove our devotion and hard work, how much we care more, as if care was equal to value. We would earn our way through labor. I began to see my work as penance. I can work my way out of this situation and every knife slip, crock-pot of wax overturning, and pinprick would help me get there. Working my way back to a time when I didn’t see my play as different from my brother’s, when we worked together for fun, I started making my own skill sets. These are not particular to women, but to me. I can take a wrapper off a straw much faster than you. My muscle memory was just as good as someone accustomed to curling his or her arms around a band saw. My pieces provided me with the reconciliation of what I wanted and what I was told is valuable. I couldn’t deny the value they had to me, I knew how much went into them and anyone taking more than a glance would see it as well.
My conflict with woodcraft remains. But I take the time to appreciate their method of penance.

your obstruction

Askia: Start and finish 10 drawings defiantly about a single subject.

Brad: Everyday, for 1 week, take action on an idea by making something. Share each construction with someone different.

Charlie: Make an un-apologetically biased/opinionated video every day for a week. Shoot and edit each within 24 hours.

Erica: Write a play based on one of your paintings. You can be one of the actors for the play.

Michael: Define your home visually without reference to geographic place or the past.

Sean: Take a personal flaw and render it mortally serious.

Sarah: Go to someone else's lawn and make something explicitly playful and joyous without a hula-hoop.

Susan--5 drawings larger than your height in any direction, using any part f your body other than wrist and elbow as fulcrum.

Zhang: Build a city in your studio.

We'll look at these second week in December.

Host vs. Creator

Blue pen lines weave together like twisted fishing line, suggesting a pulsing network. The system is self-replicating and parasitic, feeding off its host and creator. As the organism grows on the page so does its dependence on its host and vice versa, but this is not simply an isolated entity. Similar creations exist on separate pages, each an instance of a different relationship and state of mind. Eventually these creatures will grow beyond the second dimension, forcing new relationships and new modes of replication.

These organisms are born from impulse, not intention, and they are steadfast in their sense of self-preservation. Their creator bends to their instincts and in turn feeds off their forward motion and drive.

The Marvelous Power of the Hoop!

Forget your responsibilities! Throw away your cares! Join this simple and energizing hoop class and return to your days of childhood bliss. There’s no need to feel awkward or embarrassed when dancing with a hoop. Everybody wins!

Students delight as hooping forces a grin ear to ear. All this can be yours at no cost! Wrinkle creams and exercise routines can return your body to a state of youth, but only this hoop class can return your mind to a time when life was this good.

Susan's waxy lumps

Four waxy, knobby lumps in various shades of craft store candle wax sit in a shallow, tabletop height container of black sand. There is a red one, a purple one, a caramel colored one, and one the color of coffee with cream. The lumps, each about the size of a child’s fist, are made up of smaller lumps, bumps, knobs, and protuberances. They sit perfectly still, evenly spaced apart in their container, which has plenty of unoccupied sand. One, however (the purple one) sits higher than others atop its own red velvet covered container to the far left side, allowing it to be about five inches above the others. It has its own pile of black sand to rest upon that it does not share. The sand does not look smooth, nor does it seem rough. It has the quality of beach sand that has not been traversed upon; it just lies where it was put. The container that holds this small scene has a grey rubbery lip that keeps the sand from spilling out onto the floor. The lip encircles all for sides of the rectangular, hand made display which stands waist high on four spindly wooden legs.

Something Marvelous for a Snowy Day

Royal de Luxe is a French mechanical marionette street theatre company. The Sultan's Elephant is the fifth in a series of giant pieces.
The Sultan's Elephant

birds, beautiful

Sarah shares her hoops.

Our familiar instructor directs us to a collection of hula hoops against the wall. Of the various diameters and colors, though most are black with bands of neon pink or green curled around the exterior of the tubing, we are advised to choose a hoop reaching our belly button. She says our belly button, not our navel. Matching her words, our instructor glides over to a boom box, pigtails waving, peppermint striped skirt floating.
And the beats start up. But lightly. The pop tunes hover underneath the instructions:
When the hoop touches you, you move into it. It helps some to keep one foot in front of the other.
Our communal gyrations begin.
The beats get louder as the instructions get more complicated. Through crashes, rogue hoops, and wall bumps, the group achieves a rhythm. We don't start or stop at the same time, but the process is constant. Where we come together is in noticing the achievements of one another.
We run through a series of tricks, the movement of our borders increasing with our foibles and smiles.
Now for the big hoop. We have a moment discussing strategy. How do several people hula hoop in an oversized model? Starting small we succeed through one member of our team. Add more.
And we succeed in a different way. The hoop falls, but everyone wants to figure out how we can make it work next time.

Sean Darby and the Maze of Mirrors

I am at the circus, watching a man trap himself in the maze of mirrors. Which mirrors tell the truth? Which ones lie? Do any of them? Do all of them? Lingering before each reflection, he poses. A portrait for each flaw. Overwhelmed by self-deprecation he contorts to exploit his every imperfection. His audience cringes as the folds of flab, sagging wrinkles, unwanted hairs and blemishes overpower the scene. He distorts his appendages, his feet, his nose, the curve of his spine. The room spins with the voyeuristic parade of hideous self-portraits. They confront him. They confront us. Begging to be challenged, or verified, accepted, or rejected. The bulging belly, rippling wrinkles, and drooping eyelids enchant me as I marvel in the splendor of their ugliness. The physical response of repulsion jolts me with excitement. To be marvelous is to reveal beauty in the grotesque.

Two Cabinets

Two closed, beige filing cabinets stacked on top of each other, slightly off-center. Small pieces of torn and crumpled paper pile up on top and around the bottom. The fronts of the filing cabinets are blank. The slots for content cards are empty, but the top one is painted blue. The cabinets are turned sideways. The sides almost entirely painted, mostly in shades of blue-green, with small areas of yellow, pink and cream. Each has a large head painted on them.

The top cabinet’s head is painted white and faces forward. It has no hair or lips, but an open mouth revealing skeletal teeth and black inside. Only one eye is painted, solid pink. Black lines run perpendicular across the top of the head, creating a pattern of squares. Black lines are also drawn out from the face, connecting it to numerous small squares with text written on them. Some read “export”, but most read “import, export”. The mouth is connected to a larger green square in the lower left hand corner. A detached, pink tongue is painted on it. This square is also labeled “import, export” as well as “Tongue- intelligent, tasting” and “Think with the tongue”. Surrounding these squares are 3-D rendered boxes stacked in rows on the upper left and extending along the edges of the cabinet. Some of the boxes are torn pieces of paper pasted above the painted surface. In the upper right hand corner are two larger pieces of torn paper. The largest is solid blue. The other has part of a completed maze printed on it, as well as a dragon in the middle of the maze.

The bottom cabinet's head is facing right, and drawn in outline. Inside the top portion are numerous outlined squares connected by lines. Below this, extending down the neck, are 3-D rendered boxes. Column shapes separate each box as they go down. Along side this form the word “engulfment” is written repeatedly in a faint cursive script. Two yellow lines are painted out from the mass of squares. One ends above, and the other behind, the mouth. The teeth are drawn with their roots extending up and down. The single eye socket is drawn as a similar, but smaller, row of teeth, painted green. Two boxes beside this have the words “eye teeth eyeteeth” and “eat with the eyes” written on them. Outside of the face outline are large swaths painted green and blue. A purple line extends from the smaller green teeth connecting to four stacked squares. The top square is small and solid green. The middle two together have a smaller, frontal face with open mouth and exposed teeth. The bottom square is made of green graph paper with a pink brain painted over the top. Next to it is written “the mind the intellect reason”.

one more

marvelous combination

To my point of view, the word marvelous should be the particular word to describe an excellent idea that nobody has ever thought about. And, it is also an adjective to describe the creative work that combine two totally different objects together and have a outcome like 1+1>2. The vision is not able to be understood at the first glance. However, it can encourage you to ask questions and induce your curiosity to explore the meaning inside and enlighten you in the end.
I found such marvelous thing in Charlie’s video work. The whole screen was divided into 9 sections and each section is a video shot by Charlie from 3 different cities. The main object which I saw is the road that he’s driving on. At the first glance, you may think that they are shot from same place. Then, you will not only found that the views are different and some of them are turned-off. Because that the driving speed were nearly the same when shooting these views and the main object is the road, every two different roads in different videos can be combined perfectly sometime. With the same speed and similar view, I felt that I am travelling in two different cities at the same time and on the same road. It seems that the border between different cities and the contradiction between time and space disappeared for a while. Different spaces were merged and created a fresh vision experience when watching this video work.

SUSAN: SIMPLY MARVELOUS

Her new drawings of cancerous cells utilize crisp gestural outlines containing a confusing array of repetitious tick marks and layered pointillism. From a distance there is depth created reminiscent of low relief sculpture. When closely analyzed, the textures become chaotic and muddled. Stylistically, from a distance, it appears as clean scientific illustration, but as one moves closer, the texture becomes less precise and reminiscent of histology slides. This duality illustrates Susan’s interest in the beauty of cancer and the mysteriously random, destructive nature of the condition itself, for this Susan is indeed marvelous.

MY CULTURAL INFLUENCE

I most artistically relate to independent exploitation movies of the 70s. The writers, directors, and actors had a certain rebellion towards authority, the mainstream, and traditionalism. They invented new techniques, aesthetics, genres, and a whole sub-culture onto themselves through experimentation. They proved that a lack of funding and general interest should not dictate whether art should or could be produced- they found a way to make films through pure ambition. That’s how I feel: ignore the status quo, redefine convention, depict unadulterated fantasy, and do it all with a sense of humor and naïveté.

Askia

Teeth and bones exposed, anonymous figures confront us with questions about their place and purpose. Individual identities are jammed into boxes that collectively form bricks used in the construction of something much larger. Insides become outsides and organic becomes geometic as a stream of consciousness manifests itself into layers of organized chaos. But how do these pieces fit together and why? Is this an attempt to contain and organize thoughts from some inner depth? Or are these erratic parts intentionally spewed out all over the floor and walls for someone else to make sense of?

The room immediately hurls its inquires forward without hesitation. I imagine the process of creation flowing from some inner maze of cognition to physical materialization as a hose with the water pressure so high it takes control of itself, spraying bits of information in every direction. But these bits, they understand one another and ask to be massed together so they can tell you what they are about. This is the way all things work if you think about it: pieces coming together to form structures, cultures, identities, and bodies. What is it that is being built here? Askia’s work may force more questions than it does answers, but it knows what it is talking about and begs for questions to be thrown right back.

from loving the hair of erica's women

smooth and sinewy or stiff and brittle or delicate and light
I would like to feel their hair. I would like to take a sample and compare it to the others. I would like to collect them all so I can demonstrate that we bring together not for the similarities, but for the differences revealed in trying to be so. I’d arrange by texture, color, length and width into rows and columns, clusters, venn diagrams, until I could be sure. Until I could be sure of what background produced the very best hair in the world. Hair for good girl exists in a free flowing environment, in a gridded one, from a delicate literalness.
I would like to propose the protection and preservation of these special environments. Locations in which the rarity and uniqueness of each area’s history is unavoidable yet on the point of obstruction by the demanding structures placed upon it. I vacillate between hierarchies. I can find the ideal in no incarnation, no best environment to act out an ultimate conception. But I don't want to lose the options under layers, obscuring the disparity between the associations that make it impossible for me to stop arranging the cherished pieces.

marvelous

Upon first glance, Xhang’s seems like your “conventional” art studio that you might expect to find on TV, what some set designer thought a studio should look like. You go in, and there are various works in progress. Preliminary sketches, tubes of paint scattered around an easel and palette with several uncleaned and hardening brushes laid upon it. Various seemingly random items tacked onto the wall. A mundane clock you quickly glance over because you’ve seen that kind of clock 100 times a day every day. As you absorb the space and let yourself become adjusted to it, looking around, you become aware of the quiet. The only sound is the quiet ticking of the clock somewhere in the background of your head. But the moment that the sound of the clock is brought into your conscious, it changes. You weren’t even aware of it a moment before. There has been no drastic change in the space and the sounds. It was as still when you entered the room as it is now. Or was it? How can you be sure that the clock just didn’t start ticking just now? You assume it hasn’t because that’s not what clocks do. It was ticking before the same as it is ticking now. So how come you didn’t hear it when you entered this room, the same as you do now? It’s so loud to you now, it slices through the quiet. You close your eyes and feel the ticking. You try to synchronize your heart with the tick, tick, tick. Now that you have become aware of the time, you open your eyes and glance at the clock. To see how long you’ve been there, or just out of habit. That’s when you notice. You squint as if there is a bright light or you have trouble seeing, but there IS no bright light and you DON’T have trouble seeing. You can’t read it. You can’t read the clock because the clock is not readable. It has your standard numbers in English, all in the right place. But there’s no minute hand, no hour hand. Just the second hand, quietly ticking away, business as usual. It seems to slowly smile at you. You become disoriented. You feel tricked. In a subtle way, like the way the clock revealed itself to you after hiding itself from you right in front of you. The peculiar time that it keeps consumes you now. Now it’s your turn to smile. The space has fully transformed. This is not an ordinary place.

train in the rain

Marvelous

I've tried to embed this audio file, but have not succeeded. You can download it
here.

Do you want to go for coffee sometime?

I know the agonizing experience of asking someone out. I feel sick, sticky with sweat, my stomach churning and my heart pounding. The build-up is painful enough. And then, in that final moment of asking, and giving up all agency, my heart stops beating. Time is still and I’m standing there, but I’m dead… waiting.

It’s terrifying and often we tell ourselves, or our friends, that it’s not worth it. Why does one go through all that? Is it hope that this could forever fill a void? Is it beauty so compelling that it replaces fear? Is it desperation with nothing left to lose?

This is the incredible chance that Brad Wicklunds work takes. It prepares painstakingly for that moment. There are plans, how to dress, where to stand. It has all its shit together. But there is also doubt. Holding its breath, it walks up to deliver its best line…

And in that moment it dies. Its heart stops just like mine, waiting in a state of half death for a response. A coffee container could be politely declined, or worse, used once out of pity. A guided meditation heard over a supermarket intercom could be ignored or laughed at. Maybe the audience feels they can do better, or prefers things the way they were. All the others in the room are waiting for someone to come to them. I don’t know if it’s compelled by hope, or beauty, or desperation but despite all the risks, it continues to take this marvelous chance.

from Detroit, 10/24/08