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Sunday, 9 December 2007 Awhile back now Nate and Cassie were back in Dodgeville, from DeKalb, for the weekend. Cassie and I knew a visit (read bitch session) was past dew, and decided Mineral Point would be the ideal place to get together to chat it up, seeing as it was between Dodgeville and Platteville, and it has, what I would call, a folksy art scene. (See the pictures.) State Street in downtown Madison ("70 square miles surrounded by reality), would have perhaps been a more obvious choice for art and culture is also the home of many independent art studios and galleries, and is always alive with the roar of Wisconsin (read progress, liberalism, the avant-garde). Still the Madison is home to a decidedly more chic, glossy scene. Once a hub for lead and zinc miners, Mineral Point is now known for its historic preservation efforts and thriving arts community. Over the last 15 years the city has come to life, and many who have migrated there are involved with the arts. The town has been attracting artists and artisans since the 1930s, and now more than 20 own galleries and studios while others work out of their homes.
Today, it seems for most communities, growth is defined by the addition of subdivisions, strip malls, and a Wal-Mart, but in Mineral Point (one of the oldest towns in the state) growth is more closely associated with words like redevelopment, restoration, and preservation. Mineral Point is one of the few places where you can feel like you’re in a different time. No traffic lights here. The closest this city of just over 2,600 comes to fast food is a couple of competing sandwich shops. The artwork in the Mineral Point galleries, of course, aren't as “challenging” (read pretentious) or "out there" as what you'd see at, say, at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art or Chazen Museum of Art. But what does that word – “challenging” even mean; what does it imply? Cassie and I talked to a handful of artists, who own galleries there, about this (cultural?) distance between the Madison and Mineral Point art scenes. The two scenes seem like different planets, each with a people who have different artistic ends than the other. This makes the galleries of Mineral Point very accessible to those who may have been turned off by the aesthetics of avant-garde art in the past. Most galleries are staffed by the artists themselves, so the person behind the desk is uniquely poised to talk about their art and approach. Taste is no longer reserved for those “in the know,” academics or the connoisseurs. You’re going to get a different crowd in Mineral Point than at a Madison gallery. You’ll get all kinds of people (read folks) who aren’t in the art world. Perhaps no one typifies this move, and shift in thinking, than ceramic artist Bruce Howdle, who recently left his ceramics lecturer position at UW-Madison to return to his alma mater in Platteville to teach ceramics and sculpture. It’s a story of a professor and artist who leaves the capital city university (read elitist liberalism) for the (conceptual?) tranquility of a small, equally bohemian-artistic town in southwestern Wisconsin. Visitors to his restored 1875 studio and gallery may find him working on drawings for new mural commissions or, like when Cassie and I visited, he was covered with wet clay from a session on his potter's wheel (despite so, he was stillmore than happy to oblige us with the full tour of his studio). Bruce sculpts big commissioned relief wall murals which he installs in public locations around the country.
To some Madisonians, Mineral Point is immediately suspect, probably seen as a backward city of beer, babushkas and bowling. Meanwhile, there is similar criticism (typecasting) from some of my old acquaintances in Mineral Point, who see Madison as a politically correct back-water of vegetarian, tree-hugging, wine-sipping, liberal bureaucrats. Madison can at times be hopelessly clueless; a town of pretentious people, who think they have all of the answers. This state, of course, is home of the Wisconsin Idea, the notion that the “best thinkers” at the University of Wisconsin (-Madison) should help solve the citizens’ problems. Many campus leaders believe the Wisconsin Idea Project has the potential to promote a “transformative” cultural shift. And, as a result of the Wisconsin Idea Project, Wisconsin citizens will become more aware of how UW-Madison impacts and benefits their lives. It is bizarre. Two cities just 40 miles and minutes away from each other seemed more like different continents, separated by the state’s own Mason Dixon-styled line of misunderstanding. The caricatured view each city has of the other can be amusing but in the long run hurts our conception of what art is (and isn’t). Avant-garde art also faces political dangers rooted in its own practice: its tendency to define its audience as necessarily inferior and ignorant. The problem being, this attitude reestablishes the hegemony of elitist, high culture. The avant-garde itself is eminently vulnerable to social and historical amnesia, forgetting traditions and relations outside the confines of its own artistic discourse. The avant-garde has always been stuck in the world of art rather than the real world as a basis for the work. The necessary result however, is the “elitist” categorization of culture either leaves out the contributions of others or marginalizes them as “folk traditions.” However, the avant-garde notion of art, which asserts the value of pure creativity, and (un-coincidentally?) regards itself as an elite at war with all of society, is no longer considered a credible explanation of how visual art is generated and communicated. The argument follows the premise that art is not made in a vacuum; there is no possible way to break the unity of art and life. Certainly art should be should have meaning; it is to be rooted in life experiences and interests. Hence, art is a means of communication between one man and another. Just as language transmits thought, so does art. Indeed, the avant-garde has the imagination to challenge passivity and uniformity, but addresses itself only to the art world (for no other purpose than itself). Would it be possible to overcome the contradiction between folk and avant-garde, to confront bourgeois hegemony over its own middle-American audience? One thing art, that involves itself with society, can do is to temper excessive individualism and anti-traditionalism in art. Thus, in true existential fashion we may look on the stuff on our own lives as food for probing reflection (and the argument follows, that we will find it not untypical of what the mass of mankind has known). When that begins to happen, who knows what kind of art might be possible. Friday, 16 November 2007 Now for some shameless (tactless) promotion of Alyssa’s and my latest The title of the exhibition is Desktop Landscape and Transculture, which attempts to talk about the function of art as it exists, intervenes, and operates in our lives. (More about Transculture to come...) The rhizomatically How do these I don’t want this post (indeed, this blog) to seem as crass self-promotion, so I think some reason must be provided to justify the post (or rather, myself). The show has been up for a couple of weeks now, and I hadn’t originally intended to blog about it; the show can speak for itself, just as this blog does. And for that matter, I think my Sketchblog does a fair job at communicating many of the same ideas, save for the way the images are presented to the viewer, but alas, we are working with different platforms, and each platform (the large space of a wall, where all of the images are seen at once and simultaneously versus sequentially dated web pages to note the date and order of the thought process), despite having their own attributes, and thereby merits, are still aptly able to speak (roughly) about the same ideas. The wall has the merit of seeing the whole, their unity, how the mind juggles all of these images; the blog, the merit of sharing the experience of the thought process, how ideas come to us, come back to us, linger, and eventually stick. I have already been carried away from my reasoning for the post. I unrepentantly, (though very pleasantly) received a couple of emails from friends who went to the show’s reception, and took the time to offer some feedback. I, unfortunately, couldn’t be at the opening reception, during the November Art Walk, so I couldn’t speak with viewers in person. Posted below is the email (review?) from Vicki, a painter and friend living in Oshkosh. I have also linked to her blog, so you can check out her lastest artistic endeavors. Tony~
Have you found a teaching position yet? How is Platteville treating you? I just finished visiting your blog, and had to give you a high five for watching the L Word. One of my favorite shows, for various reasons. I can't wait for it to return in January, and I hear rumors that Dana will frequent the show in the future, which made me giddy. She was my favorite character! Namaste~ Vicki P.S. See the picture version of this post. Sunday, 11 November 2007 Laim, I couldn’t agree with you more. I have been ruminating over your emailed response to the blog (I love receiving responses; that way I know I am communicating, albeit indirectly, with someone.) I hope my follow-up helps to elaborate on what I meant by my original sketchblog post. Let me just say before I begin, I hope the sketchblog becomes more of a springboard for the ideas I write about in the regular blog, like they have (will) with this post. I get these ideas, suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, and feel the urgency to get them down on paper, make them manifest, as a record of their existence. I suppose because the world is subtle, riddled with details, and we’re lumbering creatures whose senses fix on what they need and ignore the rest, we need time to let ideas soak, simmer, and incubate. With so many of our ideas and plans for life, there is never enough time to implement them all. We’re selective, not comprehensive. And for that matter, a good deal of our ideas turn out to be bad ones, and thankfully never come to fruition. Thus, the job of the unconscious (sketchbook) is to act as a workshop for rough shaping ideas, storing observations until something relevant appears in the landscape. But alas, this one has stuck to the wall like spaghetti noodles ready to come out of the boiling water. (Really, I just like that image. I am reminded of my eccentric aunt from Vegas who told me on a visit out to see her, when I was five, that you know the noodles are ready to eat if they stick to the wall. Much to my surprise, upon saying so, she threw some noodles to the wall.) I am here, interested in these common roots in terms of the relation between Midwestern criticism and Coastal critical theory. The idea of a “Midwest culture” never really occurs to most. However, this ‘Culture’ comes intuitively to those of us living in the Midwest and so I (we) don’t consciously think about it. Certainly, given the high degree of ignorance (or is it simply lack of exposure?) of the West Coast/East Coast-ers concerning Midwesterners – who are often stereotyped as unsophisticated and stubborn – I feel obligated to detail the Culture of upper Midwest. Though, by taking a closer look at Midwestern culture should help to clarify the record and realize certain things in the upper Midwest, particularly Wisconsin, are actually culturally progressive.
CNN recently conducted a survey to discover readers' favorite American cities, based on certain aspects like culture, people, dining and shopping. The list is supposed to serve as a basis for travelers who are looking to visit different parts of the country and experience the richness and benefits that each city has to offer. Unsurprisingly, the list, both frustrating and annoying, focuses on the "culture-rich" coastal cities like New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, while almost entirely ignoring the whole Midwestern United States. In fact, the only two Midwestern cities that were even considered for this survey were Chicago and Minneapolis. There's so much going on in the Midwest, it's a shame that, as a region, we are constantly maligned and designated as "fly-over states" just because we don't have the hustle and bustle of the big coastal cities. *This dialogue continues for some length, and so only those who are interested may continue reading here, and those of you who can't be bothered at the moment may continue without scrolling for a day and a half. Sunday, 4 November 2007 I sit entertained, in front of the computer screen, Youtube-television. This summer and into the fall, the days were more long and empty, animated only by occasional visits to Madison, Leisha’s house, or elsewhere in Oshkosh. Typically an active season, summer has been for me a time of gestation, whose knowledge arrived whole and at once, though its meaning would take months. I guess technically, the Dog Days of Summer are kind of hard to pin down. I had thought they were the last couple of weeks in August, but apparently they can extend from August through October. Though I employ the term to mean more of the stagnant feeling you get (read endure), and not the actual stagnant heat. I know now my mind has changed modes. There has been a connection to fecundity – as my existential opposite. (Perhaps this has a correlation with supporting Hillary as the presidential candidate for the Dems.) Which bespeaks the question with Hillary: why is America skeptical of her? It seems obvious: she is – gasp – a woman! Since August I’ve been wondering when the nation is going to bring up The Woman Question. That is, when is someone going to start asking if Hillary can lead because she’s female, or pointing to sexism, or looking at her female support, or asking if she’s too manly/not manly enough. Clinton has needed to cultivate toughness because she has been constantly attacked by the media for years - remember all the broughaha over her coral suit?
A few days after the 30 October Democratic debate in Philadelphia, that day has arrived. There has since been a flurry of postings about Hillary’s masculine and feminine qualities after, according to one journalist, “[John Edwards] set out to prove it’s OK to hit a girl.” Edwards hit Clinton so many times that as the night wore on, she began to seem punch drunk, unsure of what was on or off the table. But I think Tuesday proved Clinton is too clever. We know she has a thin skin. Hours after the debate, her campaign released a video on Youtube called The Politics of Pile On. We've always known she was smart, but are “we” skeptical of her because she is “hormonal.” I think in the back of many minds we wonder if the person whose emotions run the gamut from A to B, for one week of the month, is too fickle/irresolute (read prone to instablility)? But such a declaration is too politically incorrect to mention, though by comparison, Bush has enough testosterone to sweep into the entire Middle East to eradicate what the neo-cons like to term “Islamofascism.” I can only hope the nation is able to see her for what she is: tough with a heart.What I’m surprised by, actually, is how men are supporting her, too. I was sure they’d put her into the “cold hard bitch” bracket. Instead, her careful maneuvering seems to be working. She isn’t too angy; she isn’t too passive; and she has long been an advocate for women’s and children’s issues. It’s a hard line to walk. But Hillary is showing herself to be a woman who can do the job. P.S. I've missed (regular?), as opposed to sketch-blogging in this month-long interim. I'm back; stay tuned. |
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