Andrew Schroeder

Is a fantastic printmaker that I had the pleasure of working near while completing my BFA at the University of Nebraska. Check it.

josh_3020_P003 ® Geotypografika

There seems to be a relationship unfolding in my art and work life. When I’m actually engaged in what I’m doing/making I have absolutely nothing to write about. Hence, I haven’t updated this thing for awhile. At the moment, I am just reading and researching for my trip to Montreal next week. My reading list is topped off by books concerned with architecture/space/place/modernism-as-utopia. The question I’ve been asking myself this week: what exactly is my relationship with utopia? As a person that has grown up in the “post-utopian” age of postmodernism, is there any reason for me to be interested in lofty and impossible things like utopian thought?

According to Yi Fu Tuan in Space and Place “such places had to exist because they were key elements in complex systems of belief. To discard the idea of terrestrial paradise would have threatened a whole way of looking at the world.”  It is my hope with the new series of photographs I am undertaking I will be able to better understand/visualize that “whole way of looking at the world”.

In the meantime:

Check out the Flickr photostream of Geotypografika aka Erik Brandt. (CLICK IMAGE ABOVE FOR LINK) I find his work in Amsterdam particularly amazing… and his MCAD GD student’s work… fantastic. Cheers.

From Ex - Posed © ASBJØRN HOLLERUD

One of the great things about the post-MFA world is watching how far all of my colleagues have been able to travel in the last year. Printmaker, photographer, and friend David Stordahl has been living and working in Norway since January. Through him I have been introduced to the outstanding work of Asbjørn Hollerud. His portfolio site can be viewed HERE. (more…)

Justin Lentz

During the avalanche of work yesterday, my friend in Los Angeles – Justin Lentz, sent me this great photograph from a photo shoot he was conducting. I’m excited to see the actual photographs that will emerge from his working process… but this iPhone image has me captivated right now. This little juicy tidbit reminds me of a recent blog post about photography as a lifestyle vs. photography as a strict, project based discipline. Personally, I love it when artists using photography are able to blend it into their practices as a human being… not simply running through the parameters of a project outline. (I will photograph X in X style until someone pays attention to how great thousands of images of X are)

It is only Wednesday and I feel completely drained. This week has been an energy vampire of unrivaled proportions. (Speaking of vampires, I find this article about fried blood on the menu in Chad really disturbing).

*****

On a separate note: I am finally going to break down and check out the “Quick and the Dead” exhibition at the Walker Art Center this weekend. Perhaps then, I will finally be able to see which ideas in conceptual art are officially DEAD and which ones the Walker has decided are ALIVE. Remember – ideas are just objects.

Actually Evening in Brooklyn... But Today Feels This Good

All mornings are not created equal. This morning in particular has been exceptionally sublime… for reasons that usually go unnoticed. Listening to someone take a shower… putting the perfect amount of butter on a slice of baguette. These are the things that are outweighing all the stress, chaos, and financial burdens that have been pulling me under. On this fine, sunny Friday, I woke up, showered (ignoring my newly bald head) and decided to linger around Curtis’ place for breakfast. Absolutely perfect.

To make things even better, my first email of the day was a message informing me my friend and colleague Eireann had blogged about my work and linked to my Etsy store. Eireann is an incredibly talented visual artist, poet, writer, printmaker, and conversation partner. I remember sitting on the curb outside of the art building @ the U of M during my first weeks of grad school with her.  I had just finished my first “real” critique with a faculty member and was completely thrashed… Eireann and I started discussing what makes art a place for possibility, not just a place for production. Looking back, that conversation was one of the things that now offsets all my student loan debt (another being… running around the winding streets of Istanbul @ 1:00 AM with two German girls looking for lemon soda and vodkas).

Check out Eireann’s portfolio and site here: http://www.ohbara.com/
Her blog is also great! http://www.ohbara.com/weblog.html

London 2012, Diving

More HERE

Reminds me of the graphics from the Munich 1972 Olympics…

Munich 1972

I’m actually going to be good about selling work again! Please check out my Etsy shop for books, prints, photographs, and drawings from my overflowing flat-files. I need to keep clearing out all the work that I’ve produced over the years…

LINK TO STORE

Tim Hutchinson, Jason Edwards and Ben Prescott

I stumbled upon these excellent examples of contemporary use of the letterpress.

The Changing Face of Letterpress Exhibition

via Thomas Brasington on FLICKr

I’m almost finished moving… after bribing all of my friends with promises of pizza, beer, and women/men of loose morals, I was able to drag all of my insanely heavy objects across MPLS to my new home. To summarize: I love living in Whittier. It is the perfect neighborhood for a lover of both urbanity and steamed dumplings. However, more on that in another post.

Today I would like to address something that I found while moving.

Back in 2006, when I was working on the Stolen Identity Project in Bulgaria, I was given a couple of old photo-lithographs. I didn’t really give much thought to them as they were presented to me by some British folks that were renovating their new home near Veliko Turnovo. I almost immediately rolled up the two prints and placed them into a large Ouzo bottle case that I picked up in Greece. A few wine/beer/vodka filled days later, I learned more of the photographs I was given.  In conversation with the Brits, I discovered that the photographs were peeled off of the garden wall and front gate and wall of their new home immediately before they demolished the old masonry.

It turns out the images they gave me were actually Necrologues — images of the dead who inhabited either that house or the area nearby. Apparently in Bulgarian culture, the public announcement of a death takes the form of physically placing a small poster, photograph, or drawing of the deceased in the public sphere. Even during Communist rule, these images were posted. Bridges, park benches, walls of private homes, trees, fountains, the outer gates of luxury hotels — all of these structures that delineate public and private space in its crudest terms are receptacles for the personal statements and independent voices expressed about lost loved ones.

I was amazed to witness the indirect transcendence of property laws. Generally, no one made an attempt to remove the signs… they existed until they disintergrated…

{PICS TO FOLLOW SOON}