Roblog

As many of you may know, thanks to financial support from the Rosalie Chauncey Scholarship, I was able to study painting in Paris this summer. As a service to prospective students applying for the Chauncey this year, I will be giving a presentation in Melchers 207 Thursday September 25th, at 5:00 PM. I will briefly present on my experiences in Paris and the opportunity provided by the Chauncey scholarship, which will be followed by a question and answer/discussion section. All are welcome. More info and images below… (more…)

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.

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.)

At the moment I have a static image, but when I revise the work I will include streaming video.

The song can be streamed or downloaded here.

My statement can be read here.