The Utterly Naïve "Artist" Redux: The Re-Artening

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be participating in my second art show this weekend; at the Des Lee Gallery, 1627 Washington Avenue in St. Louis. Another of my collages has been accepted in this year's Washington University graduate student art show, Parabola. The show opens Friday, 11/30 from 6pm-9pm, and can also be viewed on Saturday, 12/1 from 1pm-6pm.

If you're in St. Louis this weekend, please stop by. Parabola is always a fun event and here are some pictures of me and Laura Isaac arting it up at the show last year. (Photos courtesy of Laura Isaac, who is a fabulous artist; follow the link to check out her thoughtful and beautiful work).

If for some reason you can't attend the show--maybe you exist in some incompatible spatio-temporal dimension, or you have been called away on an urgent mission to forge peace in a war-torn land, or you can't walk because your bookie broke your legs (always pay the man on time!)--below you'll find a photographic facsimile of the collage I submitted, along with a description of the piece.

Dissertation Citation, mixed media collage, 9" x 12"

The academic dissertation is the culminating project in any Ph.D. program in the humanities. It must summarize and scrutinize the scholarship to date on the given topic, while also contributing some original and useful knowledge to the field. The writer accumulates knowledge, selects, cites, and interrogates the existing body of scholarship in order to construct this new work. Citations form the intellectual genealogy behind the dissertation; they are the breadcrumbs leading both writer and reader through the forest of research, thought, and literary labor that constitutes the Ph.D. 

Dissertation Citation is a mixed media collage that represents the intellectual work of dissertation writing. As a medium, collage is an act of visual citation. By selecting images and words from printed materials and arranging them in an original way, the collage recontextualizes familiar images and forms, inviting the viewer to scrutinize them with fresh eyes. It is a process of composition done via editing and creative reorganization. 

In Dissertation Citation, pages from magazines, business cards, maps, credit card receipts, museum tickets, advertisements, transit cards, and other ephemera constitute a series of frames within frames. Each layer becomes both an object of inquiry in itself, as well as a contextualizing frame through which to view the subsequent layers. Within the regimented rectangles, randomized bits of color and texture combine in surprising ways, forming unexpected symmetries and patterns. These layers emphasize the analytical rigor, as well as the creative serendipity, that are necessary to write the dissertation.

Recognition! or, The Utterly Naïve "Artist"

Now this is really weird: On December 2, 2011 I will be participating in my first art show at a gallery. One of my collages has been selected for display in a graduate student art show at Washington University in St. Louis. Here is some more information about the show. It is open on December 3 as well.

If you are in St. Louis that weekend, please stop by and see me performing the role of "artist." I am still not sure what this word means, or whether I can be comfortable self-applying it. But I am choosing not to worry about that right now. If you cannot be in St. Louis that weekend (and I can think of no reason why you wouldn't), you can see the piece that will be on display below, along with the explanatory blurb I composed about it for the occasion.

“Your Beautiful Exploding Cerebrum”

            The human cerebrum: home of language, sensory perception, memory and knowledge. As a student and instructor of literature, my work seeks to engage these critical areas as they have been expressed in language across time and culture. My research asks the question: How does literary fiction represent and embody the operations of the human mind, including memory and the imagination? My work analyzes twentieth-century novels written in English and French, which trace a narrative of Transatlantic travels and find the Caribbean as a point of convergence. 

            In “Your Beautiful Exploding Cerebrum,” Caribbean corals mimic the intricate folds of the human brain. Books glow with the illuminating power of the island sun, and also form an arm from which a rebellious hand emerges. A woman expresses her mission: “Freedom Thru Books Not Murder,” an appeal to language, art, and reason over hate and violence.

In a period of history possessed by international terrorism and economic disaster, the study of literature might seem to be a frivolous, academic indulgence. However, the novels I study—primarily written by members of the African diaspora—show us that literature, artistic expression, and the life of the mind each plays a role in the quest for liberty, self-determination, and social harmony. These concerns also lie at the core of the university’s educational mission. I ask my undergraduate students to engage literature as a way to productively “explode” their own cerebrums, in order to better understand the way that we all interact with language and thought on a daily basis.

Collagista

First of all, I know I've been neglecting my lovely blog lately.  But rest assured that there is some major weird in the works, and that I'll be able to report on it soon.  In the meantime, I've put off telling you about my new hobby long enough.

In January, at the birth of The New Weird, I started tinkering with papers and glues, and have been making collages ever since.  My technique is still pretty poor, but I'd like to think that my composition has improved somewhat in the past seven months.  For someone who has (as of yet) shown very little aptitude in the visual arts, this is a weird and fun adventure.  And the images that I'm creating are very weird indeed.  Here are some that I've completed in the past month:

Fidelity in the Age of Digital Self-Reproduction

Collage of magazines and crêpe paper

 Your Beautiful Exploding Cerebrum

Collage of magazines and cocktail parasols

  Hungry Eyes Part 2

Collage of magazines

I like to work in materials that I find in magazines.  They tend to carry a potent graphic punch, and (as you've no doubt already detected) I have little patience for subtlety.  I find idealized or stylized images of the human body to be especially interesting.  These get very weird indeed when you mess them up a bit.  There is probably some critique of some gender/consumer something in these works, but I have to admit that I prefer to leave my analytical hat in the intellectual hat box while creating and considering these collages.  For once, I will leave the interpretation up to others, preferring to bask in the unbridled weirdness that results from the simple combination of papers and glues.

If you'd like to see some more of my collage work, you can find it here.