Andrew Schroeder

MY BLOG IS A TYPEWRITER.

Friend and fellow former Nebraskan, Chris Fettin, has a great blog reflecting on his travels throughout South America. (Trust me, I am infinitely jealous!) I’m especially smitten with his commentary on the iPad, books, and what happens to media when digitized.

Calhoun Square in Uptown, Minneapolis is undergoing a transformation to make it a viable commercial space. So far they have succeeded in making several transitional public spaces. We’ll see how this plays out. Will the tenants be drawn to these new spaces? Most importantly, will any people actually fill these new environments?

Organic Architectures - Petroleum Storage

I’m beginning a new series of drawings on vellum. Basically, I’ve been scouring the region, and looking at the mechanical arteries, hearts, and whatnot that make a convenient life possible. What if those forms (substations, pumps, onion domes) were given agency to grow and expand as needed? What forms would they take?

I am searching for inspiration this morning. Luckily, I didn’t have to look too far. Checkout this brief video about printmaker Karen Kunc’s work. I was exceptionally lucky to be an undergrad at the University of Nebraska and to be given the opportunity to both take classes with her and study abroad under her guidance. Her work is amazing and I have one of her small intaglio prints from my archives on display in my home. She has definitely influenced me – from my love of “printedness” to the way I see and understand the spatial properties of my surroundings.

Karen Kunc Print

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

And I don’t have any specific steps to take because I don’t start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it’s enough and you can leave it alone.

Bruce Nauman

Finally. After five long months of frigid, often painfully cold temperatures and people, the first hints of spring are starting to tease Minneapolis. Like a cheap hooker that only shows you she’s a tranny after you’ve paid your $50, the cityscape is beginning to reveal all of its dirty little secrets. These include the usual list of suspects that testify to survival strategies in what I can only call “The City Goes To Bed at a Reasonable Hour”.  Bottles of cheap Skol or Aristocrat vodka, lost photographs, a few stilettos that couldn’t pass through our record snowfall — these are all the flotsam and jetsam of the life of a contemporary Minneapolitan.

White Flower, 1960. Oil on canvas, 71 7/8 x 72 inches (182.6 x 182.9 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Anonymous gift 63.1653. © 2007 Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

As the slide into full-blown winter solidifies, the concepts of failure and reduction have taken over my thoughts. When one thinks of improvement, of being a “better person”, the tendency is to look at what we lack and emphasize what we can acquire. I feel like I have been caught in this quagmire of acquisition for way too long (perhaps roughly 27 years).

Reduction.
Simplification.
These are my new goals.
By all intensive logic, I want less.
I want to fail.

What does it mean to fail? According to Agnes Martin, failure is a state which exists only when one has exhausted all means and possible courses of action. Failure is a terminal condition–an end of possibilities.

Can one consider it a victory to stop doing something? To cease to acquire? To cease to care? Is that really failure? Or is the act of losing all choice, movement, and flexibility that elusive  apex of liberation I have been searing for?

Just a bit more Agnes and then I am going to call it a night, crawl into bed, and be blissfully unconscious.

“To progress in life you must give up the things you do not like. Give up doing the things that you do not like to do. You must find the things that you do like. The things that are acceptable to your mind.”

I really cannot think of anything I would like more.