_This is impressive! The A Book About Death, MuBE edition video is fantastic. The Um Livro Sobre a Morte video produced by Dacio Bicuda stars my friend Angela Ferrara introducing the project. Even if you don’t speak Portuguese you can sense the excitement from Dacio's camera work. Congratulations to Matthew Rose for the initial vision and to those like Angela who work to bring our group of international artists to venues worldwide.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Video from MuBE
_This is impressive! The A Book About Death, MuBE edition video is fantastic. The Um Livro Sobre a Morte video produced by Dacio Bicuda stars my friend Angela Ferrara introducing the project. Even if you don’t speak Portuguese you can sense the excitement from Dacio's camera work. Congratulations to Matthew Rose for the initial vision and to those like Angela who work to bring our group of international artists to venues worldwide.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
! Brazil !

_I cyberwatch as Angela Ferrara works to install the latest edition of A Book About Death. Um Livro Sobre a Morte opens February 3rd at MuBE, the Museu Brasileiro Da Escultura in São Paulo, Brazil.

_The idea I’m most taken with after seeing pictures of the installation in progress is the uncanny resemblance to a war memorial. The installation shots are very austere; very orderly; and very respectful. While individual pieces may express a range of visual expression from regret and loss to hilarious and wry observation, the overall impact is a collective one. For me, they evoke the orderliness of the Vietnam memorial or Arlington cemetery where the fallen soldier resides.
_This memorial is different. It is not, in particular, for those who have served in battles or war. This memorial is for the ordinary; our common fate, common bond and those highly charged personal battles that we experience as humans. A memorial not of or for a particular group but an exhibit that has come to symbolize the continually growing and evolving creative energy of artists world wide.
_Common subject... common people... heroic struggles.
__The story continues to expand. A further edition of A Book About Death will be exhibited at MOMA Wales and curated by Sonja Benskin Mesher. This exhibit will feature the original ABAD as well as new “pages”. Gratitude to Matthew Rose whose vision and guidance ha made these exhibitions possible.
‘A BOOK ABOUT DEATH ‘
International art project
THE TABERNACLE
MOMA WALES,
MACHYLLETH
27 APRIL – 8 MAY 2010
CALL FOR WORK ON PAPER
ONE. POSTCARD SIZE
4 X 6 INCHES
BASED ON THE THEME OF DEATH.
ALL WORK IS SUBJECT TO SELECTION.
SEND SMALL JPEGS TO sonja@ sonja-benskin-mesher.com
Deadline for jpegs is 16 March
Successful applicants will be expected to have their cards sent to Sonja by 13 April 2010
Work sent will not be r returned, as it will become part of the ‘Book About Death’ collection held @ MOMA, Wales
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Ironing Picasso

_While working on the Dream Rocket quilt square, Karen took some pictures of me; when we downloaded them, one in particular looked familiar. It took a second look and a bit of googling but sure enough in bearing down to press a hem into one of the fabric appliqué pieces I came to resemble Picasso’s Woman Ironing. (Minor cropping required) From smarthistory - There is an old anecdote that tells of Picasso, who, upon emerging from an exhibition of drawings by young children, says, “When I was their age I could draw like Raphael, but it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like them.” This link also shows a nice comparison of this work to a Degas.
Sometimes I wonder how weeks pass so fast. This past week was one of those. Too many projects and not enough focus?…hours in the day? Travel the last two weekends meant a bit of catching up on the banal but necessary list of household to do items. So it was actually with a sigh of relief that I found that my Dream Rocket panel has some extra time for completion. Good news for others as well as coordinator Jennifer Marsh has extended the submission deadline until March 15th.
_Some other news on this project: smaller 1 x 1 sq. ft. squares are now available and best of all is that Marsh is organizing several venues for the display of quilt squares after display on the Saturn V in Huntsville this summer. The Earlyworks Children’s Museum in Huntsville as well as Eclipse Gallery in Algoma, WI are two of the post Space Museum locations already on board. Jennifer will soon announce what international locations will be displaying the works.
Since two of my previously posted works are in openings this week - a recap!
_This Friday is the opening of the Sketchbook Library Project in Atlanta. This will be the first in a series of travels for this project. It shows up in Brooklyn during February as well as a visit to Los Angeles, St. Louis and Chicago. The project will finally reside in the Brooklyn Art Library as part of the Art House Co-op permanent collection. Bar codes identify the volumes, which are searchable by artist.

_February 3rd is the opening in São Paulo, Brazil of Um Livro Sobre Morte. Brazilian artist Angela Ferrara, whom I met through working on the A Book About Death project, has been organizing this show for MuBE (Museu Brasileiro da Escultura). Angela has been documenting new submissions to this expanded version of the original exhibit first installed this past fall at Emily Harvey Gallery in NYC.
Monday, January 18, 2010
A Mobius Weekend

_ I returned from my trip to Boston and my performance in the Mobius Work in Progress series feeling elated. The Ox and O’s piece was well received and seemed to engage the audience as participants as I had hoped. There is always some trepidation when attempting to encourage the audience in a participatory event. Beyond the “will they participate” jitters lies the wondering if they will engage on the level you intend or horrors… engage in ways not intended or imagined.
My work on this project, while being essentially worked out here on the blog still has many aspects that I was pleased to have an audience; for the experience of this feedback aspect. Initially thought of as personal symbols, my handstamps developed a game aspect as well as becoming a vehicle to examine identity and the role of choice. At Mobius I decided to present this as a game performance with the audience invited to use 40 of my carved pieces on prepared tic tac toe grids as a collaboration. The audience was simply invited to play with no further instruction and could take the collaboration home at the end of the evening. Three other artist were simultaneously performing their pieces as the audience freely moved about either observing or engaging the artists.

I had a chance to get some insight as to what people found interesting in this piece. Luckily people did seem to find it interesting... on two levels; both how the game operated in relation to choice and how the stamps were beginning to function in a semiotic sense. The fact that I’m starting to have enough symbols to evoke a nascent vocabulary seems like an avenue for further exploration. One question pertained to whether I would begin using contemporary symbols. This also seems like a great area to explore as there are certainly current events and choices therein that continue to form and change the identity. A further suggestion on future display of audience produced works has led me to consider another video highlighting the play aspect of this piece as people became more adventurous "outside the grid".

Monday, January 11, 2010
Next !!

_This week in the studio I’m working toward putting some parentheses around my Ox and O's work in progress for this weekends exhibit at Mobius in Boston. My current work on hand stamps, choice and identity will be on view Saturday the 16th at 8pm at 725 Harrison Ave. in Boston. I say parentheses because the exhibit is part of the Works in Progress program running at the gallery this month and my work on this idea seems to find new tangents to explore. So I’ve got to wrap a cover around where I am at this particular moment and present what I’ve got. Those that have followed my thinking out loud here have seen the personal mythology symbol stamps and Ox and O's game box. I’ve also produced two videos and an handmade artist accordion book. This weekend I want to explore an aspect of choice that I need an audience for: how our identities are constrained by the choices we are NOT allowed to make.

_When I think about this game (or life) played with choice I think of the tic tac toe grid as a structure which constrains the freedom of expression and identity. There are many things we are not able to choose; our place of birth, our sex or orientation, our parents or their status and many others. So to further this idea I want to involve others in a dialogue in order to gather material via photos and video for the next phase in this project.
_From the press release: “Simple tic tac toe grids on paper are provided as well as a selection of the artist’s hand-carved symbols. The audience completes the work by playing the game and taking the art home.” So perhaps by next week this will evolve from constraint, choice and personal identity to the interlocking grids that form our social mesh.
_The windy city title that Chicago bears could be applied to my weekend trip to NYC. Braving the cold was a small price to pay for slipping into the the Big Apple for a couple of shows. The main mission was attending the preview party for the Visual AIDS benefit at ZieherSmith gallery in Chelsea on Friday night. Packed doesn’t begin to describe the gallery as Karen and I arrived around 6:30.
The exhibition consists of postcard-sized works created by artists both well known and not so well known. All the work sells for $75, with the idea that you could pick up a work normally out of ones league; except that the pieces are signed on the backs. So if you’re looking to collect Ed Ruscha or Ida Applebroog you better have a good eye.
_No sales were allowed during the preview and all works were on display, if one could get close enough to see them. A perimeter trip took about an hour with a couple of time outs for refreshment. Karen and I were on the look out for my piece and those of several artist friends that we knew had contributed to the show. I managed to locate mine as well as one by Keith Buchholz.
_Earlier that day we had also faced crowds at MoMA to see the Tim Burton and Bauhaus exhibits. Burton’s was approaching unviewable status because of the number of people allowed in at a time. Still with selected slipping and jostling we were able to see enough to confirm my admiration for Burtons creativity. From his early years growing up in Burbank his sketches and other works on paper show the arc his career would take. Many early ideas eventually find their place in later movies or animations. I hope to get another look before this closes at the end of April.
_The Bauhaus exhibit will only be up until Jan. 25th so if you haven’t seen it yet…! The exhibit struck me with the feeling that so many of the ideas worked through during its existence seem so integrated in our design sense as to be like the air we breath. It simply is there.. all around us. The implications of the artist commanding the machine and production has now spilled into our information culture although one wonders whether we will ultimately have inexpensive but beautiful information or corporate noise.
Entrance to Bauhaus exhibit
_As a side note I have always loved the work of Paul Klee and to see his puppets right after the Burton models and props once again proves there is nothing new under the sun.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Irons in the Fire



Monday, December 28, 2009
A Million Little...Choices


This blog has documented this work in progress from its beginning as hand carved stamp designs to conveying a simple symbolic language with the designs acting as pictographs intended to represent moods or ideas. I introduced the grid on the blog simply as a way to showcase different stamp designs. My way of thinking evolved so that I began to see the grids as fields where the choices we make in life begin to overlap and form our makeup as individuals.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Um Livro Sobre A Morte at MuBE

One of these is the artist call for works to compliment the A Book About Death exhibit that will open in São Paulo, Brazil at MuBE, Museu Brasileiro da Escultura this February.
A new blog by Angela Ferrara details information for the call as well as the continuing life of the ABAD project, originated by artist Matthew Rose.
A Book About Death is Um Livro Sobre a Morte in Portuguese and seems to roll off the tongue as it highlights the international contributions of this exhibition.
Ferrara’s blog continues to build on the original ABAD blog with the new works submitted to the project exhibited online as they are received. The blog is nicely done with information about MuBE, the original exhibition of ABAD as well as downloadable poster art. The artist’s works as well as links to their websites and blogs are posted making this a great global networking opportunity.
With many new artists contributing to the MuBE project the range of dialogue and voice continues to expand and refresh the original exhibition. Submissions deadline is January 30, 2010 but be forewarned that regular mail to Brazil can take several weeks.

Both my original piece for the Emily Harvey exhibit and the second piece I made for the Queens Museum’s Dia de los Muertos exhibit contained a insert with poetry. This latest piece continues the insert tradition while the imagery diverges. Although I’ve long used type, topography and words in my art, it really has only been in the last year or so that I’ve had any confidence or desire to include any “real” writings as part of a work. Thinking that the images needed to stand-alone for the viewers interpretation to work, I avoided the literal use of words in favor of their shape or their use as a compositional element. An element that usually played a rather minor role in the overall effect I wanted in a work. The mail art nature of this project allows me to use the envelope nature of my images to include a “letter”.

The three pieces I’ve created to date for the ABAD projects involve differing methods of creating the word and image interaction. My original piece began with the writing portion. Afterwards I staged a photograph to accompany the word. In the second piece (for the Queens Museum) I created the image and worked out a poem based on the image. In this piece for MuBE, the image and word creation intermixed and I found myself back and forth as I modified each in tandem.
Sitting in front of the TV and watching death a step removed from its reality is something we live with at an ever-increasing rate. Never mind make believe video game violence; we are exposed to sanitized death at a velocity unimaginable to our generations before. Welcome to virtual death or abstract death. The individual visual and sound bite describing extremely horrific events are sandwiched together; and glossed until the scale of our collective death toll is incomprehensible. A famine, a genocide, a homicide and war casualties can fit easily in the first five minutes of news spilling from the lips of our news anchors.
In our surreal situation, death is not real unless it happens to you on TV; and a significant market share sits back and watches.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
And Much Much More..

_The 12th annual Postcards from the Edge event will preview January 8th at ZieherSmith in NYC. My contribution to this years benefit is based on my work in progress on games. My Hand ᔓtamps that evolved their pictographs, that led to a game, that led to a video and an internal dialogue concerning choice. My work (above), created to benefit Visual AIDS is based on my progression of thoughts on choice or more to the point; artificial choices that are sometimes placed before us. Since 1988 our response to AIDS has progressed, yet there is much more that remains to be done. World wide infection rates continue to rise faster than those receiving treatment. So while leaders in most countries acknowledge the threat and have national policies, many are not implemented or funded. Some countries continue to stigmatize and the resultant discrimination proves a threat to universal treatment access. My message: accept the choice for treatment and cure.
Visual AIDS was one of the first national initiatives to record the impact of the AIDS pandemic on the artistic community. It brought together the arts and AIDS communities through its renowned national projects DAY WITH(OUT) ART, Night Without Light, and The Ribbon Project.
Some thoughts on my videos about choice from 12/3 and 11/25:
_I use the grid as a metaphor for choice. In my art game of Ox and O’s the outcome is not so much the game as the choice of a mark. The original X and O are marks that signify a separation of me from you; my self from your self. We are two unique identities with our purpose being to block another identity from winning. In OX and O’s the purpose lies in examining the relation of the pictographs chosen for game play.
Now – Why I like Jackson Pollock. We love to categorize and separate things into boxes. We love to create these categories and examine things in isolation. I love to think about symbols and their meanings. I liken these symbols to zip files that unbundle into wonderfully complex fully functioning programs. You can examine these in isolation or you could create myths and allegory. You could pick them up and dash them on the grid. Mix them up, drip into each other, overlap; let them create their own mythologies.
My contribution to her fire/totem project consisted of a croquet ball I used in the 2006 Nightball Tournament. It already shows plenty of fire damage already and seemed appropriate. Regular visitors here have heard a bit about Nightball but for everyone else: Nightball is a game, loosely based on croquet, originated by myself and a small group of equally creatively challenged friends. The game is played at night, follows croquet rules except cheating is allowed (encouraged actually) with the only additional rule being don’t get caught. Since the game is played at night all sorts of improvised lighting is used with flaming equipment being a sure crowd pleaser. This annual NightBall performance (over 25 years) also produces a variety of spin offs like t-shirts and zines which I used to carefully pad and protect the ball on it’s trip via mail to Christine.
☛ Hands Around the Web: ☚
Since I've been using hands lately in my work serendipity has led me to many other artists doing interesting "hand" work. One very nice blog I've come across is Seth Apter's Altered Page blog.
Another great use of hands is the public sculpture Flock of Hands by Olga Ziemska which was installed in Yellow Springs Ohio this fall. I saw this first on jafabrits blog (photo by Corrine Bayraktaroglu)
Mail Art Received:
bit of a mystery as I started with an image by Ria Vanden Eynde, added to it and returned it to her. Now I receive a version with additional art from Jennifer??? How this happens is beyond me but it makes for some big smiles.
_My new mail art friend Igor Bartolec of Serbia also posted me some work. Collages and photocopier work that I've been admiring for a week or so and am starting to feel a bit guilty that I haven't made a return by now. This weekend maybe.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
The Choice is You

_I spent more time this week exploring the Ox and O's box work in progress. I started thinking about how to expand my thinking from a simple object - the box, to how it could function in a setting where people were actually encouraged to use the stamps. My first thought was how chance occurrences would lead a group to begin using combinations of symbols that would go beyond my personal free associations that create the carvings. The grids of the tic tac toe pattern are beginning to function as decision fields where all sorts of possibilities exist.
The grids as fields also act as personal fields of decision making. As children we learn game play with simple combination games. When our moves are blocked we learn strategies for overcoming obstacles. Of course as adults our decisions are complex and multi-layered.





















