Roblog

The innate abilities of human beings to see certain objects as something else, the part of thought that turns the surface of the moon into a face, is a defining interest of most of my work. Therefore, in any medium I work in, I repurpose the human experience, with its jumbled elements of language, communication and past associations, in order to create open ended visual shorthands in a minimum number of steps. 

A Pile Of Valuable Things
mixed media (books, cabinet light)
2008

In this work, the cord to an electric light is threaded through a stack that constitutes the artist’s collection of (relatively) expensive art textbooks, which are the artists most valuable possessions, both fiscally and sentimentally. The drilled hole inherently devalues the resale value of the books, and, to a degree, diminishes their usability, incorporating destruction of worthwhile materials into the junk-art idiom.

This Could Be The Hole Ball Game
baseball with pencil, suspended by fishing line
2008

A Little League baseball pierced with a red pencil and hung from Jeffersonian-revival architecture offers a menacing look at the heavy-handed nostalgia of Americanism: as the title implies, this sculpture could be a jury-rigged version of the colonial hole-ball game where children idly attempted to catch a small wooden ball on a stick (a game mainly preserved in nostalgic toys sold in places such as downtown Fredericksburg and Colonial Williamsburg), but even so, this game has been repurposed: it is in midair, suggesting flight, while the pencil becomes an arrow which dually suggests direction and harm. The additional duality of the title refers to the weighty phrase uttered by play-by-play announcers at particularly important moments in a baseball game, one where the outcome can be essentially decided in what would otherwise be an ordinary event. Taken together, these elements inform a larger theme: a deadpan satire on the direness of American nostalgia,  collecting (European-influenced) American iconography that is heavily dependant on reverie for the past and placing it squarely on the shoulder of generations that have not experienced that past.

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For the record, I almost critically injured one of my esteemed professors while setting this up.

Support Group I (My Arcadian Woods)
site specific installation, Melchers Hall (9 wooden studs leaned against arcade columns)
2008

Like “Storm Tossed Ship,” the title of this work alludes to an art historical standard: in this case, the Arcadian landscape. The tradition of Arcadian landscape incorporates the idea of nature as a pastoral extension of man’s dominance of the earth; this work casts such support relationships into doubt: is the wood holding up the architecture or is the architecture holding up the wood? By extension, the classical-revival architecture plays the role of the Arcadian society, while the wooden planks take on the role of the natural world, greatly undermined by their subjugation to human purposes. Finally, the exposed wood suggests the whole structure is decaying or sinking into this dangerous earth, a feeling of uneasiness reinforced by the precipitous location of the viewer inside of the architecture.

Now that CANNONCANNONCANNON (take a breath…) has closed, I just wanted to thank everyone who made it to our senior exhibition, whether you came to our opening, First Friday reception, or daily visiting hours. All the artists were thrilled about the enthusiasm we received from all visitors, art-goers, non-art-goers, Fredericksburgers and out -of-towners alike.

If you missed it (and shoo-ee, boy did you miss it: them tunes were hoppin’ and the bar-b-que was fan-tas-tic!), take a look at these photos from the opening. Later this week I hope to put up some more shots of the artwork itself (in case you were in Australia or something).

Steve Griffin & The For Rent Band (Thats the Williamses on Fiddle and Banjo)

The artists collected in the opera-box

A behind-the-scenes installation shot. That’s Molly Sheldon’s unicorn transported by Eric Norman and Mike Mosley.

Drawing Pictures of NASCAR With My Friend Kyle
crayons, plastic, feather, caution tape, paper clip
2008

from the SPORE COLLECTIVE! exhibition at Randolph-Macon (March 2008)

Piss Break (Robert Lynn Sucks Cock)
site specific installation (wooden boards in men’s bathroom, Melchers Hall men’s bathroom)
2008

(Just as a point of reference, The title of this work incorporates both the intervention of the boards in the functionality of the bathroom stall, but also the found graffiti in the bathroom stall homophobically insulting the artist.)

ANNOUNCING CANNONCANNONCANNON:

A UMW Honors Candidacy Art Exhibition

This year, those of us senior art majors applying for honors have taken the unusual step of taking our show off campus, in a space generously donated for the occasion by the inimitable Thomas J. Mitchell at the Galleria on Caroline Street. We’ve re-purposed the old-movie-theater-stage-turned

-defunct-purse-shop into a quirky gallery space that fits our work.

I’ve got nine works exhibited there (including painting, video, printmaking and ceramics) including the unveiling of my Dangerfield Newby installation.

The show will be on display from March 28 to April 9 (Hours: Noon-5, with extended hours until 7 PM on Fridays and Saturdays). Our opening on the 28th will feature Allman’s Bar-B-Que and a live bluegrass band. Don’t miss it!

First of all, as far as I’m concerned, the Spore Collective! has an exclamation point on the end. Second of all, here are some photos from the SPORE COLLECTIVE! exhibition currently on view at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. Special thanks to Katherine Shaw-Sweeney of the Flippo Gallery.

One of the absolute best parts of my recent gallery-hopping trip to New York was catching the inaugural exhibition at the new location of the New Museum of Contemporary Art (newmuseum.org), which, in an effort to deliberately avoid the gentrified, domesticated art scene in its native SoHo, relocated to a purpose-built six story structure in the Bowery, a gritty district otherwise only notable for its Chinese restaurant equipment suppliers and smattering of punk-rock clubs.

The building itself is fantastic looking: from the street, its glass storefront blends in (to a degree) with the format of the rest of the shops, but it rises in a series of staggered boxes (lit by skylights) that create large, glowing “white-cube” style exhibition spaces inside. The space is quirky enough to be interesting, but these quirks are kept (in a very modernist move) very separate from the art (a contrast to the Guggenheim, for instance, which forces artwork to conform to its irregular spaces). These quirks include a bright green interior elevator, corrugated metal stairs (which match the metal sheeth of the building), and some bizarre elongated stairways.

We happened to go when the sky-room on the sixth floor was open. (This was an awesome way to see the city and a real “ooh-ahh” moment for a little redneck child like myself).

I’m devoting a whole presentation later this semester to the exhibition itself (”Unmonumental”), so I’ll touch on that in a later post.

Perspectives:

The Washington Post

The New York Times

The New York Times raves about the architecture

The Wall Street Journal