Deep Life Indy #2

Branded!

Prior to In Vivo Gallery, William Adkins formed a group called the Indianapolis Artists' Forum. As with the other groups, Bill was the little engine that could, while the rest of us went along for the ride. “We” were a group of artists currently in Indianapolis. I believe it included Steve Paddack, Brian Fick, Ed Sanders, Becky Wilson. I had just moved back from Texas, so it must have been around 1990.

In our first meetings, we grilled Bill about the name, specifically, about the “forum” requirements. Just what do we have to do? What sort of forum? Bill kept explaining that it was informal, no expectations, just that we get together and talk about art...We still didn't get it. 

Finally, an exasperated Bill threw his hands up and said, “You don't have to talk about art, it's just to present ourselves as a group who talks about art!”

We found this hysterical. Every meeting afterward began with some shtick where we pretended to talk about art.

Such branding is so pervasive now. I'm not sure others will understand how comical it was at the time. 

Deep Life Indy #1

431 Gallery, Indianapolis, 1984

In June, the Indiana State Museum will honor the 431 Gallery with an exhibition including members' art. 431 was a cooperative gallery which Bill Adkins formed, led, and fueled for many years. It formed in 1984 and continued through the early 1990s. I was a founding member and participated in the first auction and show, but then moved to Austin, TX. I returned in 1989 to find a vibrant, concentrated art scene along Massachusetts Avenue. Denouement (Francy and Stephen Stoller), Patrick King, Ruschman Gallery, and 431 Gallery co-existed within the block. In Vivo opened over 431, before moving around the corner. For a couple years, art opening crowds would overflow and block the sidewalks. 

During the ISM exhibit, I will be showing some paintings at Indy Reads. Until now, I was oblivious to the obvious - that the Indy Reads venue is on Massachusetts Avenue, just a few blocks from the old arts area. The entire MassAve is now designated the arts district, but is mostly retail, dining, and pubs. It's easy to forget the past. 

The ISM show will coincide with the much anticipated Ed Sanders retrospective, which will be at Herron School of Art and Design, just a few hundred yards from the ISM. I can't wait to see this show!

Herron "Beyond Campus" Shows + a rant

A nice list of shows featuring  Herron-linked artists, including the above. For some time now, I've noticed that the academic realm of art has become more progressive and alternative than so-called "cutting edge" art. I'm speaking mainly of local developments here in the Indy art scene ('development' being a very apt term here). Cutting edge entertainment art has become a hot commodity, and is linked both to specific real estate investments and to a broader drive to pump and pimp the city.

On the social conscious front, others are trying to guilt us into making our art "do" something that provides a tangible, overt community benefit.

And sometimes these "help our neighborhoods" people, and the investors, are the same folks.  

Neither drive is the world's worst evil, but both are parasitic. Art has worth without these justifications, and while it can be used to many means, it also has an amazing intrinsic value. Few things in our modern life have intrinsic value. Most have value that is derived from context, or branding, or some sort of identity-dependent system of belief. The academic art system, with all its dogmatic tendencies, provides a buffer against all the opportunistic bullshit. It has become an oasis of sorts, where art can flourish as.....art.

I spent 10+ years after graduation trying to unlearn so much, but now the university system seems to hold so much potential for real artistic investigations. I'm going to try to see as many of these thesis shows as possible.

"Night Driving" at Dewclaw

 Anita Giddings' painting show opened at Dewclaw last Friday night, with a really nice flow of guests. "Night Driving" is a group of paintings that were triggered by a drift-driving experience she had had a few years ago. It's a really nice show that works very well in the space. More here and here.

"Hashtag Life" - works by Kamilah Gill at Dewclaw

Kamilah Gill opened a solo show of her work at Dewclaw. I'm excited to have my first guest artist in the space.  "Hashtag Life" is a collection of her paintings, where she uses an online search process to find and build her imagery. Here are some installation shots of the show.

And here is her wonderful drawing from the opening.

Wins and Losses

Wow, Matthew Eickhoff scores big with these new paintings at Indie Indy Artist Colony. His cover story is that he's replicating these key moments in Super Bowl history, and yes, he does that. These paintings will rightly be appreciated on that level, but there's so much more to these.


The painting execution is shockingly similar to the very moments depicted. The paint handling has a frenzied casualness to it, where years of training and experience come together in one revisionless moment. His process seems to be one of pure momentous inspiration; of moving forward without question or doubt.

These works are carefully planned, with dynamic compositions and interesting, rather high contrast color schemes. From a distance they read as very solid, almost conventional, depictions. But Matthew also takes these works on a rather courageous and raucous paint ride, and this becomes apparent when one views them close-up. The entire dimensional illusion breaks apart into abstract areas of varying surface treatments. It is all very dynamic, chaotic, and visually stimulating. Out of this melee one starts noticing areas and figures which are startingly distorted. These are not calculated, intentional distortions, nor do they occur from ineptitude. They are something else. They are truthful distortions; they honor an intense moment in paint. These distortions reveal the soaring ego-less innovations that process painting can sometimes yield, on a good day, after years of practice, if you're lucky, and have been a very good lad.

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This is why painting is so exciting. It is capable of so much. The flip side is that the best that painting has to offer, is usually not readily comprehensible. I don't fully understand these moments, even in my own work.. I love that there is always more there, than I will ever fully understand.

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The amazing potential of painting also makes it very difficult to critique. Recently the Nuvo reviewers gave this show, and another painting show, devasting reviews. Many commentors championed this new audacious approach to reviews. The thing is, in each case it was a show where the artist “scored manna”, in painting terms. Some of these works had truly exceptional moments, and showed intriguing developmental leaps forward for these artists. This was a moment for celebration, for both the artist and the viewer. Often there are not a lot of tangible rewards for being an Indianapolis artist. The goodie bag for explorative painters is particularly sucky here. We kind of live for great moments in paint, because it's all we really get. I am disturbed at how a misinformed review may tarnish these rare artistic highlights. I'd rather indulge 10 unmerited favorable reviews, than risk one unmerited bad one. It's simply too devastating when we artists so often get no other real rewards.

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To be very clear: I'm not saying go easy on us painters. I'm not saying everyone is an ignorant doofus who can't possibly get it. I'm saying it's often very difficult for someone with a generalist knowledge of art to get the more profound stuff in painting, on those rare occasions when it happens. It's difficult for us who are deeply engrossed in it to understand it.

If you are going to harshly bash someone's work, please make sure your assessment is informed.

That is all....

Oh yeah, one more day to see Matthew's show. Saturday hours are 12-5, I'd call first.

Fountain Square Don't Care

 "Sugar Tattoo" from the cover of "FSDC"

Review: FSDC Book Launch: Shared Heritage premieres a rarity in the Indy world: the artist-produced zine. 'FSDC,' or 'Fountain Square Don't Care,' incorporates the work of eight promising artists. (Nuvo review link)

The zine title cracks me up and this seems like an interesting new art endeavor at the Murphy Center.

"Sill Life" Chad Gallion at Editions Limited

Invention within convention. You have until 3:00 pm today to catch this show at Editions Limited (sorry, I meant to post much sooner). Chad Gallion's still life paintings have a lot of very intriguing spatial and tactile things going on.

He inverts the layering process, so that highlights are created from the earliest and thinnest painted areas. These thinly coated areas glow through, much like in a watercolor, and the unlit areas have a heavier, more opaque buildup. The visual impact is striking, and also a mindtrip. From a distance, one reads these from a conventional mindset, then as you approach, all those nearly bare areas that were saying "I'm real close to you", suddenly break away into abstract shapes that go way back in the painting.

The surface handling also reads differently from various distances. Upclose it reads as a dry, patchy, awkward surface, but then it melds quite beautifully into a lushly lit, cohesive vignette.

These also have bright blue outlines in various areas. Somehow, these charge the images without destroying the representation of a still life. I don't have the best interpretation for how/why these are working. They are still a bit of a mystery to me.

It's always exciting to view intellectually engaged work such as this.

Austin Dickson, Herron Senior Photography Show

Austin Dickson Photo BFA Retrospective 2007-2011

Sharper Image digital keychain

Austin Dickson's piece currently in the Herron Senior Photography Show, at the Indy Indy Artist Colony gallery.

Indy Indie Artist Colony Flower Show & Harrison Center

"Budding", 8" x 6", oil on wood, 2011

"Alms for Aunt Bea", 10" x 10", oil on wood, 2011

Two recent paintings of mine, each tweaked towards inclusion in the "Flower Show" at the Indy Indie Artist Colony. Opened tonight, April 1. The Herron Senior Photography show next door has some really good pieces.

The Harrison center has some recent work by Susan Hodgins in Gallery 2 which kickboxed butt. "Institutions" by Austin Dickson is in the main gallery. These photographs must be seen in person, they're paradoxically magical and urban-realismy and utopian. He also had a great piece in the Herron Photography show - his entire BFA portfolio on a ______? (some common electronic device with a 1 or 2 inch screen, the name of which escapes me now.....god, I'm so old). Kyle Ragsdale has amped up his imagery into an extreme levitating Rococo thing.....

Spring art has busted loose, at least in the Delaware-Penn corridor. I'll hit a couple more shows on Saturday.

*Update: Austin Dickson's piece, along with materials info (digital keychain....)

Ed Sanders Photo Shoot

Thanks so much to everyone who helped with this photo shoot. Extra, ultra thank-you to photographer Wilbur Montgomery for donating his time, skills, and studio. We shot about 80 of Ed Sander's paintings last Saturday, all re-grouped from various collections around the city. We are in the very early stages of organizing a book and exhibition of his work. More background here.

I found it personally satisfying to see so much of Ed's work again, and to work with others on this project. The ridiculous 105 degree heat index seemed weirdly appropriate to the task at hand.

Mama, Don't Let Yer Babies Grow Up To Be Artists

We all felt like vultures. I tried so hard to not show up right at 11:00 am, but I couldn't help myself. I hadn't seen the stored body of art work, and it had attained such a mythic status. It was an exciting vault of all of Ed's work, it was a sad reminder of his passing, it was an ominous symbol of futility, Ed's and our own. I was determined to not lose it. Others seemed to be in a similar state. The room was opened and it was an incredible sight. An overwhelming number of paintings (about 200?) packed the 14' x 14' room (which had at one point been my own studio, and Brian Fick's before that...talk about layers of history...). The work was so impressive and exciting to see again, all at once, that the sadness and weirdness disappeared, for me anyway. I was so relieved that people showed up and I was also so relieved that the work was largely intact. I had nightmares of very different scenarios. I didn't realise how much this vault had been haunting me, and likely many others, for the past 3 1/2 years.

The Descent, 48" x 40", 1998

I felt inappropriately giddy. Despite the method with which it happened, this dispersal of Ed's work was a good thing. It wasn't ideal, but it wasn't a total legacy collapse. I saw most of Ed's best paintings go into the care of people who cherish them, who appreciate them for their artistic value, and who will be eager to pursue any exhibition opportunities which may arise.

Family Gathering - With New Abstract Painting, 22" x 30", early 2000s

"The Final Dissolution of Ed Sanders"

This morbid epitaph has played in my head since I received a letter in February, inviting a group of Ed's associates to select work from his collection. Since Ed's death in August 2006, his massive body of work has been stored at the Murphy Art Center, in Indianapolis. An early attempt was made, by those close to Ed, to responsibly document and manage his work. *This fell through and his work has been in deep-limbo storage ever since.

Personally, I didn't fully "get" Ed's work until the mid-1990s. I admired him; he painted daily for three decades, and so I always considered that I may be missing something about his work. It did finally start dawning on me that the style genres in which he worked (which then seemed retrogressive to me) were less relevant than what he was doing within them. Or rather, any critique of the genre was irrelevant. He was way past that. He was developing highly personal and masterful methods for creating psychological moments in paint. The places in many of his paintings, the illusionistic space in them, seem very similar to the places we envision when reading a novel, or remembering something. They are vague, yet definitive and poignantly rich. These paintings are more than depictions of a place from a memory. They trigger the very experience of visual memory in the viewer.

....in the receptive viewer.

One can look right over an entire row of his paintings and never quite catch this. It certainly doesn't translate into electronic media. Try to brand this experience in a meaningful way. You cannot. These paintings require physical viewing. It's devastating to see such an artist be so under-recognized, and it's devastating to know his work is now being .....almost discarded.....I was deeply grateful for the invitation to select work, but also saddened. I believe an upcoming exhibition may be worked-over Ed drawings, possibly collected from a trash bin, so can one really raise hell about it? Heavy, heavy sigh.........

Call For Blessings, 18" x 24", early 2000s

More work here: Ed Sanders Paintings on Flickr

*A Lesson For Us All: Make plans for your work now. Your assigned legal trustee may have little or no idea how to deal with your work. This can be difficult for both that trustee and for those who do know how to best deal with your work, but legally cannot.

Bootleg Exhibitions and Mt Comfort Gallery

Jenny Buffington at Bootleg Exhibitions Vol.1

Aaron Schmidt at Bootleg Exhibitions Vol.1

Tyler Meuninck in "Public Works" at Mt. Comfort

Saturday, I hit two closing receptions at the corner of English and State St. .

Tyler Meuninck was showing some great paintings, done mostly with a beautiful palette of pinky browns. These urban landscapes combine atmospheric space with abstracted space, which works especially well with the mid-value, low contrast paintings.

I had heard and read from many different sources that Bootleg Exhibitions, across the street from Mt. Comfort, had hosted an excellent inaugural and second show. There is so much local marketing bs pushing entities to succeed by blowing hype, that, to some degree, I blew off the input I receive on this gallery. I shoulda listened better.

The space is so exciting that the work shown forms a symbiotic relationship with it. Well, I should say, the artists are intentionally working with and within these conditions. The space is raw, and display decisions are brilliant. The rawness is embraced and played upon, but not in a precious manner. Rather the arrangements are unselfconscious, direct, and efficient. I can't really address the work shown, because I stupidly waited until the closing to see this show (and missed the inaugural show entirely), but what I saw was very good.

Steve Paddack at 4 Star Gallery II

Flight of the Reliant, 10" x 8", acrylic on canvas

Expedition! 8" x 10", acrylic on canvas

Temple of Unspoken Opinions, 36" x 48", acrylic on canvas

Redundancy of Errata, 60" x 48", acrylic on canvas

Residence of Smithee, 36" x 48", acrylic on canvas

You'll have a second chance to see Steve Paddack's Redundancy of Errata, this Friday, Oct. 2 5-9pm, at 4 Star Gallery, 653 Massachusetts Ave., Indianapolis.

These pieces are painted in multiple glaze layers, with unusal color combinations. They are cringingly beautiful and strange, and best seen in person.

"A Taste of Sugar", An Inaugural Show

Artist Gwendolyn Skaggs has a new space in Brooklyn, NY, "Sugar", which will open this Saturday, September 26, 6-9 pm. Location is 449 Troutman Street.

I'm very excited to see familiar faces in this inaugural show, including former Indianapolis artists David Frye, Steven Stoller, and Jacqueline Skaggs. Oh yeah, I'm in it too!

"Sugar" is an evolution of "Alcove", (formerly at 547 W. 27th St., 6th floor, Chelsea, NY.), which offered an interesting exhibition "challenge" of sort. The gallery was a hallway, with one artist on each side, face to face.

Congratulations to Gwendolyn.

Pursuit/Refinement/Culmination

Not sure what to title this post. Greg, a close friend, has been working away at an evolving personal concept for well over ten years now. It's roots may be his own emergence as a hippified persona, living within a conservative Christian community in Illinois, but he really has gone beyond that. I've watched as he has transformed his gallery/picture shop, forever tweaking and adjusting and organizing. He has used this physical location, through his constant manipulation of its purpose, to flesh out his own philosophies.

It's so interesting to see an artist push on for so long, towards an unknown, and possibly unstate-able goal. It's so interesting to watch someone who has something to figure out, and is compelled to do so. He may well be there now. He has melded together truly original visions of subcultural and religious philosophies.

This property is up for auction Sept. 16. If he does get booted out, it will be at a remarkably appropriate time in this process. If not, then be sure to visit the shop in the next year or so.

"Behind the Sign"

"Sign of Jsu is located at 3318 E. Tenth St., Indianapolis, IN USA (46201). On the sign is a little box containing free copies of parable doctrine (help yourself). Behind the sign is a subcultural thrift shop. I have for sale many back issues of 'Art News', 'New Yorker', and other magazines, a nice collection of experimental international music from the sixties and seventies on CD, over on hundred cassettes of the jazz greats from the Forties and Fifties, many Lp's with cool cover art, buckets of beads and beading supplies, pictures, and several examples of what is probably the only fiber craft practiced widely on a local level, the inexplicable 'afghan'. I accept donations of books, magazines, disks, and tapes. I am presently looking for introductory liberal arts text books. I would like to put sets of these together, like a B.A. in a box, for local distribution. The shop is theoretically open Fri. Sat, and Sun noon to seven (call ahead for the real hours and to hear Duoot play a tune on the message machine).

In the shop there is more parable literature including Hala Maloki's "Commentary on Parable Doctrine" and his "Application of Parable Doctrine to the Alternative Subcultures" (both in final draft form). There is online versions of parable literature at http://www.parabledoctrine.blogspot.com/, http://www.halamaloki.blogspot.com/, and http://www.signofjsu.blogspot.com/.

I welcome anyone who has something for Sub Art to give me a call, I am particularly interested in local art histories, especially any that involve the 'cheap art' movement of the 1990's, Contemporary art that is below the applicable standards, or anything that addresses subculture. For the religiously inclined; who would like parable literature mailed to them, who have a commentary or application to publish, or who might put up a sign, contact Greg @(317) 684-9883. telephone"

Steve Paddack at Four Star Gallery

Simplicity of Low Naught, acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48", 2008

I am soooo stoked for this show. I haven't seen the work in person, but know from conversation with Steve that it's built up from multiple-multi-months of glazing. Also, this work is a jump from oil to acrylic. Also, Four Star Gallery is re-opening and this is it's first show. Also, Steve always puts out in a major way, though we may have to wait for it, as is the case here. Steve and I went to Herron School of Art in the early 1980s. He went on to grad school at University of Illinois. I cannot even pretend to be objective here, I am sooo stoked for this show.

Four Star Gallery, Redundacy of Errata, September 4 - October 10

I should clarify. I'm not certain that Four Star is re-opening, or if this is a one time thing. I could have researched this, put the post would have lost it's zany impulsive nature.

Mary Yeager - Sailor's Valentine

An amazing Sailor's Valentine by Indianapolis artist Mary Yeager.

"Why did I do this? It seemed like a great opportunity to explore 3-d design primarly through texture. I loved the combination of sentiment and absurdly man-made use of natural materials- abundant and stunning natural materials. It was a great deal of fun and more difficult than I imagined. Sea shells are recalcitrant!"

Carolyn Springer

Red violet Roses with Lambs ears, 23 3/4 x 48 in.

encaustic, sea salt, and gold leaf on plaster and wood panel

French Mauve Still Life, 38 x 48 in.

encaustic, sea salt, and gold leaf on plaster and wood panel

Flowers for Antoinette, 16 x 16 in.

encaustic, bees wax, sea salt, on plaster, canvas, and wood panel

Flowers of Anais, 42 x 42 in.

encaustic, silver leaf, plaster, on canvas and wood panel

A new favorite local artist! View more of Carolyn Springer's work here. She is currently a faculty member at University of Indianapolis and at Herron School of Art & Design.

I happened upon some of her paintings in person, at the Harrison Center. As you can imagine from the materials listed, these works have an amazing physical presentation. I love the combo of such lavishly rough handling with the naive rendition style. In person these have some very intense optical spatial characteristics; the table planes cut your face in two. You gotta love that.

New American Paintings

Mount G, 10" x 10" , oil on wood

In August, be sure to browse your art magazine rack for New American Paintings (No. 83). I'll be in it, courtesy of my "Mount" series.