Serious business deteriorating

24 hours ago I stood on the high ground of important paperwork achievements. I was serious, organised, focused and ... achieving goals. Kick kick kick. In one afternoon I had submitted 3 different exhibition applications, an application for funding, sent follow up emails to numerous arty possibilities and was kicking though tones of papery bits of importantness.

Today. Same deal. More applications, more please give me money, more replying to emails.

And then.....



I cant even join the dots....



I started thinking about lyrics to songs about NY....



and then I started recording myself...



it was bad...



but i did some more...



they were worse...



so I did some more...



no better.

But i thought that maybe a tiny tiny number of people might find them funny and release us all from trying so hard. I titled the album 'It's Worth Tryin'".

Happy to email some tracks if your curious

Biological Biography

I have lived 14,600 days. I have spent about half an hour as a single cell. Since then 6 billion, 3
hundred and 7 million, 200 hundred thousand cells have died in my body. I have shed and regrown
my outer skin 504.74 times. I have lost 1,168,000 strands of hair and more than half of
my taste buds. My heart has beaten 1,471,680,000 times. I have walked the globe about 3
times. When I die my ashes will weigh about nine pounds.

Preparing for Artecycle Exhibition

24 Hour Drawing Project

The 24 Hour Drawing Project was established by Kendall Nordin and myself in 2005 during our MFA as a method for generating a large volume of unedited work within a short period of time. Since our first courageous effort it has become a more complex project in which intensive effort, attention to process, action and time are explored. It has also expanded to include artists in various states of Australia as well as Washington DC and Shanghai. 

The 9th iteration of the event took place with Jenny Hector and myself earlier this month. Here are a few pics.

hout ever looking at the paper.

Then after 24 hours

Jenny's project was divided into 4 painting actions in which she coloured in the scuffs and pits of her studio wall

sometimes the 24HRDP is pure exhaustion but this time it was exhilarating

It's you, not me

First things first a few corrections. The windows of the gallery aren’t frosted, the blinds were simply down. Huge difference! The stream of visitors to the show has been constant and contrary to my expectation it has been a very engaging time. But at least once a day I am baffled by a misunderstanding or misjudgement in a conversation which often leaves me wondering ‘Am I the weird one or are you?’

Here are some of those moments.

MOMENT 1

I put a large sign in the window ‘Artworks made from Dust and Ash’. Thought that was pretty succinct. Then a guy comes in…

“Hey, I saw your sign in the window, so do you like make that with spray paint?”

“Um no. I made it from ash and dust”

“Yeah I saw the sign”

“Ooookay”

He leaves. I reconsidered the wording of my sign, evaluate the conversation and conclude it’s you not me.

MOMENT 2

Around the corner of the gallery is a construction site and every day clusters of workman walk passed on the way to the deli. 90% of them stopped, watched and pointed. Now I’m sure that at least some of you are thinking they were looking at me and not the work, and I don’t think it would be too arrogant of me to confess I wondered the same thing. But one day Im in the back room and I see a few of them looking in the window  pointing and talking so I hesitantly invite them to come inside to look, still slightly unsure if they’re about to try chat me up. But it turns out I am resistible and construction workers in New York like contemporary art. They also like swearing. A lot.

“We’ve been watching all week, and you’re really making that with dust?”

“Yes”

“F*@! Me! That’s f*#!ing awesome!”

“Hey Stevie. You hear that. She made it with dust”

“You’re s*#!ing me! That S*#!s dust. That’s F*#!ing amazing!”

And on it went every day. One of them would come in with a new bunch of guys to show them the exhibition.

“She made it with dust”

“Holy C*#!! Wow!”

I have never had so much positive praise via profanities, and certainly never in the lofty halls of academia have I ever heard a critique session compacted into the singularly expressive word that New Yorkers so love. It was quite a nice change to have such a gobsmacked excited audience and perhaps we are a little weird with our cautious wordiness. Conclusion its me not you.

MOMENT 3

Another day my friend M and I were sitting on the couch in the gallery talking through the possiblities for a performance at the closing reception, some type of walking talking circular cleaning action, when a guy walks in, doesn’t notice the work, comes up to us and asks

“Are you the work?” Not a completely foolish thing to ask in a contemporary art gallery, but no. We point to the work.

“Are you going to interact with it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well you could walk around it like this”

He commences stomping around the artwork

“Or you could go the other way around”

He changes direction

“How long should I walk around it for?”

“Until you get bored of it I guess”

“You could stand on one side and wave”

He waves

He thanks us and leaves

Conclusion. He was definitely the crazy one. 100% no doubt. Accept for the fact that what he had done was very very close to what we had been contemplating doing for the performance, so guess that makes us crazy too.

MOMENT 4

“I really think this work is beautiful, I mean it really speaks to me. I really get it. You know you would love this video its exactly like your artwork” He hands me an iphone and plays me a youtube video of a toddler sitting in a kitchen sink full of water and playing with toys and a breast pump. Conclusion: It’s you, not me.

MOMENT 5

Trying to locate dust in this city of perpetual decay and construction was easy, but the ash was much harder. No bushfires, open fireplaces, or fires in general, and no cats in trees either which makes it doubly strange that I have to dodge a screaming speeding fire truck almost every day.  There were two solution; the first option was to become a fire truck chaser but I might risk third degree burns and worse still I’d have to run down cobbled streets in high heels, the second option would necessitate me getting into an awkward conversation that would undoubtedly leave the proprietor perplexed and looking at me like I was crazy. I like where possible to keep my strangeness under a bushel but alas my long term commitment to avoid running resulted in me sitting on the subway carrying two gigantic cooking pots and locating the nearest wood fired pizza restaurant where my all out strangeness would be publicly displayed. Sheepishly, I approached the counter with my prepared speech and a folder of visuals to offer clarification as proof of sanity and authenticity.

“Excuse me” I start “I know this might sound like a strange request, but umm… could I please have some of your ash”

“Sure. You must be an artists”

“What? umm, yes, why?”

“I sometimes have photographers asking for ash, so I keep a bucketful aside”

CONCLUSCION

 

God I love this city. Normality has fled to New Jersey with the receding tide of Hurricane Sandy and only the weird and wonderful remain. Please let me stay.

Gathering

Collecting carpet/wallpaper patterns for the design.

Collecting dust from the studio vacuum cleaner

Collecting snow from the roof

Cutting stencils

Probably need twice this amount

Next stop Lombardis Pizza restaurant to ask for ash from the wood fire pizza ovens.

Greener grass

I have a solo exhibition opening next week in Chelsea. 

I'm just going to let that sentence hover there. 

"I   have   a   solo   exhibition   in   Chelsea. " 

When it’s all by itself, floating in the emptiness of white space, I'm impressed by it. It's the kind of phrase that if thrown into art circle conversation makes you sound like a serious international artist. People will finally believe you're a legitimate artists rather than secretly thinking you're a waitress/trustfundchild/hipsterfashinist/flakey/sundaypainter. And regardless of postmodern decetralisaton, some may still say I have arrived at the center of the art world.

But… yes I'm sorry there is a 'but'. I wish I could take you on a swooping story of glory, however, that time is yet to come. Instead I’ll give you the honest truth, show you the pro’s and cons, let you see the quiet joy, the hope and disappointments, the labour the love and the mediocre outcomes, as there are asterisks,  clauses and footnotes to this sentence that even David Foster Wallace couldn't compete with.

So lets look at the details:

*The foundation that I’m exhibiting with is called Chashama. They are a not-for-profit group that find vacant properties for artists to exhibit. They’ve been going for about 20 years and are well established, highly regarded and as an entry point into exhibiting in NY it’s pretty solid. Click here for a link

*The space they have found me was previously an art gallery. So as far as vacant spots go it’s pretty sweet. It’s also on Tenth Ave between 28^th and 29^th, so I’m in the gallery district zone.

*except that I’m not in the zone of visability. The windows are frosted, there is no signage and I’m not listed in any gallery guide as a destination. Chances are no-one will notice I’m there.

*It’s a not-for-profit gallery so I do and pay for everything myself; invite and catalogue design and printing and posting, media release, opening night party, and sitting the gallery for 30 hours x 3 weeks. This is just Blah!

*I’m spending most days and nights creating the work, which is very very enjoyable.

*but I’m also slightly conflicted as its art week in NYC and everyone is out and about at the Armoury, Scope and Spring Break fairs, and I’m home cutting stencils.

*This scenario makes me question my intentions. On the one hand it matters that I make work which is fragile and visibly disappears into its environment and mostly I hope for just one person to deeply enter into thinking about the piece. On the other hand I’m here to expand my career so I need the crowds, need the ‘right people’ to come. Therefore there is no harmony between the philosophy of the work – creating works that might be overlooked, and the pragmatism of arts business – look at me look at me.