is education killing creativity?

Filed under: art+photography, artsy., life, youtube , art, creativity, education, life

a selection of new work

Here is what I’ve been up lately——well, at least what I’ve been up to in the studio. I am in the process of applying to MFA programs and have been developing a new series of works, completing applications and writing program proposals and artist statements.

a bit about this new work (and what I propose to do in an MFA program)

I have these memories, horrible memories from my past— I’m huddled in a phone booth with my biological father, a hard cold receiver pressed against one ear, the scruff of his face grating against my cheek and his hot whisper in my other ear. His words described the atrocities he would commit if my mother wouldn’t come back to him. He wanted to hear his words come out of my mouth; he needed my mother to hear these horrible things in the small, trembling voice of a four-year-old boy. Even now as I type these words, my hands shake. I have relived, this memory and others like it in sweat-soaked slumber for most of my life.Each of these memories represents a separate existence, a self-portrait, encapsulating my thoughts, sensations and emotions from a moment in my life. They are the architecture of my identity. If time can be understood as the space that our consciousness travels along then these memories also occupy a specific location in space-time. And while our experience of times passage may be universal our perceptions of those moments are highly personal.As we move through our lives the external world provides each of us with an incessant stream of stimulus and sensations that are processed by our minds and encoded as memories. These processes of memory formation, their subsequent degradation over time and the impact of memory on ones perception of self, fuel my current work. Informed by Hume’s Bundle Theory of Identity and Kant’s concept of Transcendental Idealism, my work seeks to give form to the substances of memory and their corresponding internal locus, representing memory as a substance that occupies a space in time, encapsulating the sensations and cognitions of a moment and forming our self-concept.Through my work I explore metaphors for the internal sites of memory capture, containment and collection from my personal history as a means of connecting with the universal experience of memory formation. The act of drawing is at the center of my process and is a way for me to examine, understand and articulate the vessels that hold the substance of these recollections and access their content. In the drawings, text and image often work together as a means of depicting the markings in ones mind from the processes of cognition. Hand-written text functions as a representation of speech itself, a kind of narrative simultaneously documenting the past and attempting to record perceptions as they happen in the present. In this way the drawings themselves become vessels—filled with idea and image and encapsulating the moments spent embedding them on their surfaces.The vessel as locus for memory imparts associations with containment, circulation, distribution, and transportation on the work and offers an opportunity to play with binary oppositions. Concepts of strength and fragility, fullness and emptiness or presence and absence, create hierarchies in our minds implying that the second term is inferior, almost parasitic, to the first, and are employed in my work as a means of giving voice to the impact of time on anamnesis and the duplicitous nature of memory.Presently, I find myself in new territory, delving deeper into this vein of content, influenced by artists like Wolfgang Laib, Ann Hamilton, Gary Hill, Louise Bourgeois, Nedko Solakov, Doris Salcedo, Ernesto Neto, Anselm Kiefer and Marina Abramovic, I see my role as an artist shifting from the making of images to the fabrication of experience. In my most recent works I have begun to utilize the drawings as plans for the construction of 3-dimensional objects and small installations. If accepted as a participant in an MFA program, it is from this point that I propose to move forward and further pursue the exploration of installation-based work as a means of giving form to my content.Hume describes man as a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and that are in perpetual flux and movement. In our current culture many of these perceptions happen in front the flat screens of televisions, cell phones or computers, where our personal sense of perspective is lost, where we communicate through the push of cold buttons and where we publish our most intimate moments for public consumption and commercial gain. It is for these reasons that I seek a more intimate means of engaging the viewer and propose to produce works that allow the viewer to physically move through a space and encounter objects, in much the same way that our consciousness travels through time. By engaging them in an experience that is simultaneously physical and temporal, communal and individual, it is my aim to cause the formation of a new memory within them.

 

Filed under: art+photography, artsy., kevin townsend, life, personal., pics , art, drawings, images, new work

greener graffiti

I love the idea that graffiti artists are thinking greener and as a result raising new questions about the line between vandalism and artistic expression. By using a glorified version of the “wash me” graffiti usually found on the back of dirt and dust covered 18 wheelers, artists like Alexandre Orion (see a video of him in action here) or Moose, of Symbollix, make their art by cleaning surfaces covered in dirt, dust, grime and soot or power-washing dirty side walks. This kind of graffiti raises questions in the minds of the anti-graffiti activists. Questions like: Is the selective cleaning of a dirty surface vandalism? or Is it possible to fine or otherwise penalize someone who has done no damage to public property?

The practice of reverse graffiti is not new, just think of all of the times you drew on a dust covered surface with your finger. But these guys are stepping the concept up a bit and using it to produce work that is evocative on both the aesthetic and social level.

Then there is Edina Tokodi, who I learned about on Inhabitiat and whose work is pictured above. Edina employs a different method of green graffiti that is literally green in both form and content. Her method seems less like graffiti and more like site specific installation art that relies on the contrast between her medium, her imagery and the setting in which they are displayed to draw attention to the insufficient relationship between its city dwelling audience and nature.

This is the kind of thing I used to love to talk to my Humanities classes about when asking them: What is the role of the artist in contemporary society?

Filed under: art+photography, artsy., pics, random, thoughts , art, graffiti, green

not so mini cooper?

So I was gently surfing last night and happened to catch a glimpse of something that might make my dream of owning a mini cooper much more realistic and practical.

Filed under: art+photography, family, life, personal., random, thoughts

back to school

I have reached a point where in order to move forward I need to go back to school for my MFA. Both as an artist and an educator this is the next step I need to take in order to elevate my thinking, understanding and making of art. I am looking at low-residency programs which will allow me to participate in intensive study periods in the summer and winter with time between to work in my own studio on my own terms, while maintaining a regular dialogs with a mentor here in Portland. Now I just need to get to work, and make it happen.

from : Some Rules and Hints for Students and Teachers
By John Cage

RULE 7:
The only rule is work
If you work it will lead to something
It is the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch onto things.
You can fool the fans – but not the players.

Filed under: art+photography, artsy., life, personal., portland., thoughts

Miss Teagan’s 1st tea party

last weekend we went to Binghamton to visit my family and so that Teagan could attend her first tea party. Despite the fact that she was not interested in any of the non-sweet food she had a great time.

Filed under: art+photography, family, life, pics, travel

grilled portabello quesadillas

One of the most simple, quick and delicious grill recipes I have ever come up with is this Portabello quesadilla served with grilled asparagus. The prep work for this recipe is simple, all of the cooking is done on the grill, the whole thing takes less than 15 minutes to pull together and it is healthy. We end up eating this a lot in the summer as a light lunch or dinner (with grilled corn on the cob) so I thought it was worth sharing. If you try it let me know what you think …

Filed under: art+photography, cooking, eating, food., pics, recipes

new drawings (by: Teagan)

Filed under: art+photography, artsy., family, life, personal., pics, sketch

wow.

Teagan isn’t feeling well today and is watching the movie Cars for the gazillionth time. So I fired up Virgil, my trusty ibook, and began cruising for new-to-me art sites. In the process of searching I found a lot of great sites (see the del.icio.us links) but I also came across a name that sounded familiar: Tara Donovan. This is some one who graduated CCA+D two years before us and went on to do grad-school at VCU with one of our former professors: Kendall Buster, who’s work is incredible and incidentally she now has a book out on critique. Back to Donovan’s work— it has grown and changed so much from her under-grad thesis exhibition that I saw as a sophmore, and now she is getting amazing solo shows and producing works that are sublime. Finding her work is just another in what is beginning to feel like a string of inspiring moments.

Filed under: art+photography, artsy., backstory, life, personal., pics, portland.

portfolio site

I am putting together an interim portfolio site for my own work, Karen’s work and our collaborative pieces.
Incidentally here is our latest collaboration : suspension of emotions
Any way, it is slowly getting filled out and you can check it out here if you like.

Filed under: art+photography, artsy., backstory, life, personal., pics, sketch