Found in Austin

arthouse

Yesterday afternpon, I stopped by my favorite art space in Austin, The Arthouse at the Jones Center, to take a look at the current exhibition, New American Talent: The Twenty-fourth Exhibition curated by Hamza Walker. I first discovered the Arthouse during the summer of 2007 and wrote about that year's New American Talent show on my blog.

I didn't find as much good photography in this year's show, though I did like some black and white images of families shot by Amy Grappell accompanying a video piece. The other two photo series on exhibit involved considerably more stylization, campiness and staging. Amy's work is straightforward and curious - evoking early work by Bill Owens of families in suburbia.

Besides showing work by emerging artists, one of the coolest things about the Arthouse is the architecture of the space itself and its history. In the 1920's, the Arthouse was a thriving movie theatre on Congress Avenue, the Queen Theatre, which then became a Lerner's department store in the 1950's. Now a sleek contemporary art space, the Arthouse is currently undergoing a major expansion which will include three new galleries, two artists' studios, a 90-seat community/screening room, and a 5,500 square foot rooftop with a movie screen. Enough to make even Minneapolis and New York jealous.

The Arthouse also has a blog, THE ARTHOUSE BLOG, which is now listed in the Artist Resources section of Culturehall's homepage.

Pictured above:

"Space Suit Form with a Burden of Platonic Solid Talismans," 2009, Garland Felder

"The Kings of Hearts," 2008, Stephanie Bernstein

Texas State University

Damn - it is HOT down here. I drove out to Texas State University in San Marcos this morning with photographers and photo professors, Barry Stone and Ben Ruggerio, to give a talk about my work to a group of photo classes and to participate in a critique for Barry's summer intensive course.

As someone who is trying to shoot work in Texas, it was interesting for me to get an idea of what kinds of things Texans are photographing in their own region. At one point, we looked a work by a young woman who is shooting drag queens alongside work by a young man who is shooting Mormon missionaries. Both are hoping to portray their subjects in a sympathetic light. We also looked at interiors of a Baptist church, southern landscapes reminiscent of Walker Evans and William Eggleston, and a series of male nudes in lingerie quite unlike anything my green eyes have seen before.

Took an afternoon siesta in the A/C ... now I'm going swimming.

Matt Olson

A humble homage to one of my favorite photographers, Andrew Bush, and one of my favorite bloggers, Matt Olson. Matt is the brain and passion behind ROLU, a fantastic blog about art, architecture and design that has gained an international audience.

Matt and I are old pals from the four and a half years that I lived in Minneapolis. His background is in music, and I collaborated with his minimalist ensemble, Smattering, on two multi-media events at the Cowles Conservatory of the Walker Art Center.

I finally got to see Matt for the first time in fours years after corresponding through emails and keeping up with one another's blogs. It has been extraordinary to see his landscape and design company, rosenlof/lucas, grow and thrive along with his writing and documentation of art and design on his blog. Matt's enthusiasm for artists and designers is expansive and infectious, and I find myself discovering and appreciating all kinds of things that might never otherwise land on my radar.

Today is my last day in Minneapolis, and tonight, I fly back to Austin. I've had a great time catching up with friends here like Matt. And thanks to heavy doses of Caladryl, Benadryl, Hydrocortisone Cream, and Prednisone - I am almost human again - hoping I can survive the next few weeks back down there in the woods and water.

The latest from TX ...

I might have the swine flu. Or malaria. I definitely have poison ivy. I'm covered with itchy bug bites. I'm running high fevers and coughing and sniffling. My muscles are killing me. I stayed in bed for nearly two days.

I am flying to Minneapolis tomorrow - yay!

Snow's

Thirty-six hours after my flight was originally scheduled to leave LGA, I finally touched down in Austin last night with lighting bolts in the summer sky and one hundred degree heat and humidity.

My brother drove us to Snows's BBQ in Lexington to kick things off Texas-style bright and early this morning. Snow's is only open on Saturdays, and ever since the Texas Monthly and then The New Yorker exposed this little shack as the best BBQ in Texas, the brisket disappears by 10am.

Hershey above cooked the meat, and we put away several pounds of beef brisket, pork ribs and chicken. Afterwards, I watched my nephew snuggle with a baby calf in Snow's backyard, and I just might stick to smoothies for the rest of the month.

culturehall news

Smile When You Say Texas, (Clyde)
Austin, TX
2008
copyright Barry Stone


Turkey, Dyer Automotive, Highway 71
Austin, TX
2007
copyright Barry Stone


Draper, VA
2008
copyright Mark Burnette


Forrest City, AR
2007
copyright Mark Burnette

culturehall has recently added two new photographers to its community of artists, Barry Stone and Mark Burnette. Barry Stone is a former colleague of mine at the ICP who now lives in Austin and teaches at Texas State University in San Marcos, where I will be giving a short talk and participating in a critique for one of his classes at the end of June.

Barry's work is currently being shown at Privateer Gallery in Brooklyn in a group exhibition, Haunts, on view thru July 12th. I made it over to the gallery to see his prints during Bushwick Open Studios this past weekend, and I also look forward to seeing more of Barry's work in a two-person exhibition with Jonathon Faber called Broken Gold in the Courtyard Galley at the University of Texas at Austin on view thru August 28th. Barry Stone's portfolio can be found here: Barry Stone

I am very excited that Mark Burnette has also created a portfolio of his images for culturehall. I mentioned Mark's first trip to New York City in a previous blog post, and he has included one of his images shot in Brooklyn in his portfolio. We are happy to discover an artist living far outside of the urban art spheres who brings a compelling vision to culturehall's community. I first became intrigued with Mark's photographs and writing through his blog, Condition's Uncertain, and the relationship we have established is a testament to me of the internet as a platform for exchanging ideas and forming bonds in the arts.

culturehall has also added some new links to art sites we like in the Artists Resources section of our homepage. One of my favorite places to discover photographers and read excellent writing about their work is American Suburb X - the brainchild of a photographer based in California, Doug Rickard. His site includes interviews as well as evocative essays about photographers accompanying selections of their work. We are looking forward to including some of Doug's own photography when he contributes a portfolio to culturehall sometime in the near future.

We have listed blogs authored by two highly energetic art collectors based in New York City, Ruben Natal-San Miguel of ARTMostfierce and Mike of Modern Art Obsession. Ruben is everywhere and knows everyone and shares some of that art world love with us almost every day - his deepest passion for those emerging. I have especially appreciated Ruben's fantastic series of interviews with figures in the arts, The Current State of the Art Market, in which he raises insightful questions about how we are faring the economic crisis. Mike, who is similarly "obsessed," works on Wall Street by day and writes blunt and irreverent commentary about the art world from the insider's perspective of an avid collector.

Additionally, we are happy to list some other eclectic blogs about the arts: Baltimore Interview from Baltimore; ArtsPreserve from Nebraska; Eva Lake from Portland; Roman Blog from Philadelphia; Art Observed from New York; Art for Humans, TRYHARDER and Triple Canopy from Los Angeles; Lee Grant from Australia; GaliBlog from Norway; eyeCONTACT from New Zealand; and Alan the Gallant and Pop Pervert from Spain.

I am headed to Austin this week to focus on personal projects for the next month. David Andrew Frey and I will resume adding artists and artist resources to culturehall later in July. We appreciate the efforts made by all of those involved these past few months in making culturehall a new presence on the internet for promoting artists.

Motor City

Douglass Projects
Detroit, MI
2009
copyright Will Steacy

I grew up less than three hours away from Detroit, and the only reason I ever went to Detroit was for the Detroit Tigers. My dad and I were baseball fans, and the sounds of Tiger's games hung over our backyard in the summertime, mingling with the fire flies and crickets and humidity. I collected baseball cards and spent hours in my bedroom carefully organizing pictures of grown up men in plastic sleeves and Trapper Keepers. I was especially proud of my collection of Tigers - Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, Kirk Gibson - sly and slick and rough-around-the-edges, in that order. My neighbor, a sports memorabilia collector, was endeared by my tomboyish adulation and took me into his dark, wood-paneled, shrine-like basement to give me an autographed baseball signed by every Tiger along with Alan Trammell's sweat-stained cap from when Detroit won the 1984 World Series.

Believe me, in later years, I wished I still had some of those baseball cards and souvenirs. I could have paid some rents with those rookie-turned-superstars and Motor City heroes. But I blew it in the summer of 1992 when I advertised my collection in the classifieds of the Kalamazoo Gazette and sold my cards for a mere $200 to a collector who played dumb - like he had no clue how great these cards were - he was just buying them for his son. I knew he was ripping me off but I needed that cold hard cash to get on a train with my cover boyfriend from high school and ride across the country to visit my girlfriends from college.

Except for the Tigers, Detroit was a wasteland. It was like Gary, Indiana - where you rolled up the windows and locked the doors and wondered how people lived there and breathed the air and how so many blocks of houses and storefronts could be vacant and boarded-up. It was apocalyptic, sad, scary. Some of the drug trade and gang activity that passed between Chicago and Detroit stuck around in Kalamazoo as well. Sure, it was a quaint college town, but we had our share of drugs and poverty and shootings now and then. One of my pastimes in high school was driving the family car through the saddest neighborhoods in town and up a curvy road that I called The Crazy Street near the abandoned insane asylum even before I fancied myself a photographer.

Photographer, Will Steacy, has been making some trips to The Real Midwest this year to walk the streets of Detroit. And not just Detroit, but Philly and Atlantic City and Los Angeles as well. Like the tough and tender-hearted private investigator in the books my dad read when he needed a break from Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, Will is taking a hard look at American cities, and it's not a pretty picture.

See for yourself in Will's exhibition opening tomorrow night, Down These Mean Streets, at Gulf & Western Gallery.

And congratulations to my recently retired dad who will be honored the same evening for his three and a half decades of devotion to teaching at Kalamazoo College - yes, my parents read my blog from time to time!

And last but not least, Daniel Cooney is hosting an exhibition of emerging photographers, Some Place Like Home, with a reception on Thursday. Participating photographers include Jun Ahn, Jordan Colbert, Eva Fazzari, Jessica Hendrix, Lali Khalid, Sang-Min Kwak, Rachel Langosch, Sean Park, and Alice Rodriguez.

Will Steacy
DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS

Gulf & Western Gallery
New York University
721 Broadway

opening reception Thursday June 4th, 6-8pm


Some Place Like Home
Exhibition of Photography

Daniel Cooney Fine Art Gallery
511 West 25th Street, Suite 506

opening reception Thursday June 4th, 6-9pm

For Meaghan and Carlos

For Elsie

Tonight

Toys R Us
Cleveland, OH
2009
copyright Brian Ulrich


Sunset Park
2005
copyright Debora Mittelstaedt

Two great shows opening tonight: Brian Ulrich's Thrift and Dark Stores at Julie Saul Gallery and NYMPHOTO Presents at Sasha Wolf Gallery. I'm going to do my very best to catch them both.

Brian has been documenting the excesses and left-overs of American consumerism over the last decade, and his most recent and eerie images portray stores now dark and desolate in the economic down-turn. Read more in a piece about his work by Lyle Rexler in Photograph Magazine: Brian Ulrich.

NYMPHOTO will be exhibiting another round of work by women photographers, this time selected from an open call for entries. I am excited to finally meet German photographer, Debora Mittelstaedt, who will be exhibiting her dreamy and enigmatic photograph of a pair of red-heads - a brother and sister or a young couple in love?

Other photographers include Jennifer Boomer, Livia Corona, Katrina d'Autremont, Jen Davis, Lizzie Gorfaine, Victoria Hely-Hutchinson, Megan Maloy, Tiana Markova-Gold, Debora Mittelstaedt, Beatrix Reinhardt, Anna Skladmann, Malou van Breevoort, Corinne Vionnet, Sophia Wallace, Susan Worsham, Nina Büsing Corvallo, Rona Chang, Candace Gottschalk, Maria Passarotti and Jane Tam.

Brian Ulrich
Thrift and Dark Stores

Julie Saul Gallery
535 West 22nd Street

Opening Reception: Thursday May 28th, 5:30-7pm


NYMPHOTO Presents

Sasha Wolf Gallery
10 Leonard Street

Opening Reception: Thursday May 28th, 6-8pm

For Pete

For Kersten

For Oznur

For Francesca

Television Screens
Shin Her Hotel
Taipei, Taiwan
2002

The Ongoing Moment

I spent a sunny afternoon yesterday on the grass in well-documented Union Square finishing an amazing book by Geoff Dyer, The Ongoing Moment. A must-read for all obsessed with photography.

Dyer's writing style is fresh and engaging and often even funny. Weaving in narrative accounts of canonical photographers' lives and relationships to one another, The Ongoing Moment meditates on how these figures examined some of the same subjects: unmade beds, benches, windows, doors, signs, skies, hats, backs, stairs, movie screens, televisions, gas stations, the blind, the open road - and through this collective consciousness, defined American photography.

Here's a particularly quirky take on the psychology of William Eggleston's photographs:

Eggleston's photographs like they were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis. On the weekends he searches for that lost ticket - it must be somewhere - with a haphazard thoroughness that confounds established methods of investigation. It could be under a bed among a bunch of down-at-heel shoes; or in the Thanksgiving turkey that seems, somehow, to be 69ing itself; in the dusty forecourt of Roy's Motel; in the spiky ears of a Minnie Mouse cactus; in a microscopic tangle of grass and weed; under the seat of a kid's looming tricycle - in fact, it could be anywhere. In the course of his search he interviews odd people - odd in the Arbus sense - who, though polite, look at him askance. He suspects that some of them (especially the fellow sitting on a bed in what looks like the Motel Solaris) might once have been in a predicament similar to his own but have since put down roots. Not so in the guy standing naked in the red haze of a graffiti-scrawled room: he's gonna find that thing if it kills him. Trouble is, he can't remember what that thing is. Couldn't be an orange, could it?

(from The Ongoing Moment, Geoff Dyer, page 193)

Mark Burnette

Mark Burnette
Brooklyn, NY
May 2009

I wasn't really surprised to discover that my pen pal has a sweet and sensitive face, which I got to see for the first time this week after writing to one another for nearly two years. Mark is a photographer, writer and English teacher who lives in Pulaski, Virginia; and he and I struck up a lasting correspondence which has consisted of heartfelt emails, photos and music exchanged in the mail, and close attention to each others lives unfolding on our blogs. This week, Mark got on a Greyhound bus and made his way to New York City for the first time to pay a visit. It was remarkable that the person I knew from writing and images was exactly as I had imagined, and we were like two peas in a pod.

It is easy to be reminded of William Eggleston by this native Virginian who has been making prolific and artful snapshots of the small-town vernacular of his region, far removed from New York City's art world. Mark's primary outlet for these images is his blog, Conditions Uncertain, which also includes frequent excerpts from short stories, poetry and song lyrics, as well as his own beautiful and contemplative writing. Mark's blog consistently draws a relationship between American photography and American literature, particularly in its depiction of the everyday.

Like Eggleston, Mark is a loner and a wanderer, deeply passionate about the part of the country that he knows. Through his words and photographs, I have gotten a feel for places like Pulaski, Stuart, Radford, Fries, Galax, Blacksburg, Hillsville, Collinsville, Sweeney Hollow, and Cripple Creek. Sometimes, I almost envy his ability to roam through towns like these, and eventually, it's my turn to get on a bus to southwestern Virginia.

nofound(bedroom)

nofound(bedroom), a collective portfolio of images by international photographers, is scheduled to be released this month. This limited-edition book published by Kaugummi Books was the curatorial project of Emeric Glayse, based in Paris, who also maintains the nofound website ("Photographers whose work I love").

Emeric asked photographers to contribute one image of a bedroom. I sent him a photograph of a room at the City Center Motel in Provo, Utah - the site of one of the Gary Gilmore murders in 1976.

Other photographers who contributed images to the book include Henry Roy, Tania Theodorou, Chris Taylor, Agnes Karin Thor, Jeremy Liebman, Alec Soth, Alessandro DiGiampietro, Irina Rozovsky, Andra Chitimus, Andrew Phelps, Asen Ognyanov, Christina Maria Oswald, Chris Heads, Dana Goldstein, Elkie Vanstiphout, Knotan, Erika Svensson, Vincent Delbrouck, Jackson Eaton, JH Engstrom, Lina Scheynius, Julie Pike, Mihai e acolo, Olivia Jeczmyk, Tod Seelie, Vincent Ferrane, Philippe Gerlach, Maximilian Haidacher Kur, Monika Bielskyte, Rikki Kasso, Paul Herbst, Olivia Malone, Marianne Mueller, Raul Hofer Torres, Yiki Liu, Ryan Foerster, Margot Herster, and Osvaldo Sanviti.

Images from the book can be seen at: nofound(bedroom)

NYMPHOTO Exhibition at Sasha Wolf Gallery

Teenage Boy
Austin, TX
2007
copyright Tema Stauffer


Fishbowl
from Last Stop: Rockaway Park
copyright Juliana Beasley

NYMPHOTO's third exhibition opens tonight at Sasha Wolf Gallery in Tribeca and celebrates the release of a new book, NYMPHOTO Conversations: Volume 1, including images by and interviews with women photographers.

NYMPHOTO's inaugural exhibition in the fall of 2002 was my first experience showing work in New York City. I previously wrote about that fateful night on my blog, and if tonight is half as fun as that night in December, it's going to be a great time.

I am excited to be showing work with Juliana Beasley, among many talented photographers. I first read about Juliana's work through her NYMPHOTO Conversation and then met her in person at the opening for my show at Daniel Cooney in February. I have since fallen head-over-heels down the rabbit hole into the lovely land of neurosis, and what a fascinating place that really is.

The other photographers showing tonight include Michele Abeles, Rona Chang, Nina Büsing Corvallo, Candace Gottschalk, Jessica M. Kaufman, Klea McKenna, Michal Chelbin, Talia Greene, Maria Passarotti, Susana Raab, Emily Shur, Jane Tam, Garie Waltzer, and Jennifer Williams.

A slide show of images from NYMPHOTO participants was also recently featured on NPR's blog: NYMPHOTO on NPR

NYMPHOTO Conversations: Volume 1

Sasha Wolf Gallery
10 Leonard Street (bet. W.Broadway & Hudson)

May 6-20
Opening Reception: 6-8 pm

Down in the Basement

Fellowship Hall Stage, 2007
from Down in the Basement
copyright Sarah Madsen

I have an ongoing debate with one of my closest friends from Minnesota, Peter Haakon Thompson - who happens to be headed to the big city in a few weeks - about what epitomizes "The Real Midwest." Peter, who grew up in Minneapolis, claims that Minnesota is the real deal, and as far as I recall, the main and only point of his argument is that from a geographic perspective, Minnesota is centrally located between the East and the West.

While I, who grew up in Michigan in a town off Interstate-94 smack in between Chicago and Detroit, and then went to college in Ohio and graduate school in Chicago, claim roots in "The Real Midwest" for reasons that have more of a basis in cultural character. I'm from the Rust Belt - where the auto and steel industries collapsed and left cities full of holes, abandoned storefronts, crack houses, ever-rising unemployment rates - not to mention, the churches, thrift stores, sports teams, gray skies, dead malls, poor driving conditions due to rain from the Great Lakes, discount cigarette shops with names like The Butt Hutt, and some elite liberal arts colleges scattered throughout.

Most people out here in NYC probably don't really care and think it is all the same anyways - somewhere that exists between New York and Los Angeles, but I promise you, there are nuances. When I moved to Minnesota, I felt like I went on a long retreat in a Scandinavian enclave in what, to me, is a distinctly northern part of this country. It is bright and sunny up there. It's so clean, it is almost surreal. There are undoubtedly more blondes with cute, funny accents. And there is actually some money for the arts, even if it never came my way.

I didn't fully understand my own "Midwestern-ness" until I moved to New York City. Here, people frequently tell me that I seem very Midwestern. On one hand, I warily take that as a compliment to suggest that I might be nice, friendly, sincere, straight-forward, down-to-earth ... maybe even honest and reliable ... but invariably, it also means that I am not glamorous, savvy, sophisticated (damn). While in Midwest, I saw myself as a little edgier than the average Midwesterner, in New York, I feel almost folky.

One thing for sure is that Midwesterners have a keen sense of each other in New York City. We pick up on each others' biorhythms immediately and know that we will never fully be New Yorkers. It goes against the grain of our own sense of integrity, even if none of us actually want to live in Midwest. And Midwestern photographers in particular - can any of us shoot here? Is there ever enough space and time for the way we think and feel? Most of the Midwestern photographers I know return to places more akin to what we love and hate about where we are from.

When I met Sarah Madsen at Laumont, I knew she wasn't from these parts. She was way too sweet to be a real New Yorker. It made perfect sense that she is from Iowa - and even Iowa is more Midwestern in my book than Minnesota.

I asked Sarah and her friend and former co-worker, another midwestern photographer named Sara Code-Kroll, to give a talk about their work to a class I was teaching at the ICP in the fall of 2007 called Photographing the Everyday. Sarah showed images from her series, Down in the Basement, shot in the basement of a Presbyterian church in Iowa where her father was a minister. I know that the Midwest is not the only home to churches, and while perhaps the subject matter itself reaches beyond the Midwest, I still perceive a Midwestern sensibility in the way that Sarah makes photographs.

I don't know how anyone who has ever been to an AA, NA, SA, DA (etc.) meeting could not find something poignant about these humble rooms that Sarah has depicted so beautifully. And even for those who went to church upstairs, they must have gone down at some point for coffee and donuts, or to change into a choir robe, or just to use the bathroom.

Admittedly, I was never really a fan of church. My grandfather was a Methodist minister, and I was baptized in an Episcopalian church, belonged to a Presbyterian youth group that went on cool trips, and even went for a while to a futuristic Unitarian church with spectacularly cheesy light shows. There wasn't much about church services that kept me coming back. Sermons were inevitably boring, and the Bible had way too many characters and too thick of a plot. I have always preferred modernism and what followed in my reading material, and I've never had a taste for anything epic, except maybe One Hundred Years of Solitude and The Executioner's Song. Besides that, church was overwhelmingly heterocentric, like school dances and high school parties, and I hated to dress up.

But I always liked church basements, even as a kid. Beside the donuts, church basements meant art projects with markers and crayons and big rolls of paper. Church basements were an escape from all that stuffy formality upstairs. And in later years, church basements were a place that welcomed people to find their own sense of spirituality and community on much looser terms amongst friends and strangers who were struggling with the same demons.

Enough about me! Sarah Madsen's first solo show in New York City is opening tonight at Galeria Ramis Barquet. Whatever you might feel about church basements or Midwesterners, you might just appreciate Sarah's work as great photography that transforms something simple into something remarkable and full of emotional resonance. You might appreciate the subtle and well-rendered details of spaces worn by time and use. If I don't sublet my apartment soon, I might just ask Sarah to come over and photograph it for me - to show you all how lovable it really is - perhaps even, Midwestern.

Sarah Madsen
Down in the Basement

Galeria Ramis Barquet
532 W. 24th Street

April 30th - May 30th

June/July Sublet

I am leaving on June 11th to spend part of the summer in Austin and I'm looking for a good person or couple to sublet my apartment. I will return to New York on July 15th and I also have a place to stay in Brooklyn during the last week of July, so there are several possible scenarios.

My apartment could be available for one month from mid-June to mid-July, or available for both June and July. In the latter scenario, I could either share the space with the subletter for the beginning of June and one week in July, or I could potentially stay with friends if someone wants the space to themselves for both months.

About the apartment: It is located on Graham Avenue about five blocks from the Graham L-train (near Williamsburg/Greenpoint). It takes less than fifteen minutes to get to Union Square in Manhattan. It is a charming block with a laundromat, a bakery, a cafe, a nail salon, a hair salon, two delis, two vintage stores, a French restaurant, an Italian restaurant - everything you could possibly need.

The apartment is an older railroad on the third floor of a small building. There are three rooms - a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom/office. Plus a little bathroom with a shower and a tub. The apartment gets sunlight on both ends as you can see from the photos above, and the general aesthetic is very retro.

There is a double bed in my bedroom as well as a futon that folds out into a double bed in the living room, so it is practical for extra guests.

Other amenities include: wireless internet, air conditioning, old tv/dvd player, stereo/music collection, art books, lots and lots of photos.

I would love to find a friend of a friend to stay here, or someone who can assure me they are entirely trustworthy and responsible. Artists, students, international visitors are all great.

Please pass this information along to someone who might be looking to spend part of the summer in New York.

Please contact me at my email address to discuss the dates and the cost of the sublet.

Last Week

Tema Stauffer at Daniel Cooney Fine Art


Francesca Romeo at Daniel Cooney Fine Art

Our show at Daniel Cooney has been extended one more week and now closes on Saturday April 25th. Showing next at the gallery is an exhibition of drawings by Jason Francavilla, Rubens Ghenov and Michael Whittle from April 30th and May 30th, followed by an exciting summer salon of work by photographers Juliana Beasley, Felix Cid, Bradley Peters and Rebecca Sittler Schrock, opening June 25th.

culturehall news

Omar, Western Sahara, 2008
copyright Brandon Hale Holmes


Garage, Sheridan County, ND, 2007
copyright Brian Lesteberg

Founder, David Andrew Frey, and I have been busy making new developments to culturehall, an online curated space for contemporary art. We have recently added new artists and established an ARTIST RESOURCES section to culturehall's homepage listing some of the international blogs and websites with whom we have established relationships. We are currently featuring ArtWranglers and TransitLane from Australia, Brask Art Blog and Erik Sjodin from Sweden, Lalande Digital Art Press and Store Front Windows from France, Phillineum from Norway, Little Paper Planes from San Francisco, and one of my personal favorites, We Can't Paint, an excellent blog about photography written by Noel Rodo-Vankeulen from Canada.

Some of the artists who have contributed portfolios to culturehall are David Smith, Brian Lesteberg and Brandon Hale Holmes. David Smith's current exhibition, Before and After at HQ Gallery in Brooklyn, is featured on culturehall's FROM THE COMMUNITY SECTION of our homepage.

Brian Lesteberg is a young and talented photographer based in Minneapolis. His work was published in 25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers, Volume 2 released this spring by powerHouse and CDS Books at the Center for Documentary Studies. While I was still living in Minneapolis, Brian shot an unforgettable series, Raised to Hunt, about his experiences growing up in a culture of hunting in North Dakota. He has since further explored northern environments in his more recent projects: Places of Worship, Portraits of Home, and The Broncos of Miles City.

Brandon Hales Holmes was formerly a student of mine in a class I teach at the ICP, Photographing the Everyday. He was recently accepted to SVA's MFA photo program for the fall of 2009. Among his various projects are 97 Days in Egypt, shot on a journey last summer, and Junction, shot in his home state of Texas. Brandon, who is also an exceptional writer, maintains a blog about photography, in motion.

David and I are excited to have these three artists involved in culturehall's community and we look forward to adding more new artists in the upcoming weeks.

WIP-Lightside Individual Project Grant

Women in Photography is providing a $3,000 grant award to support the costs of a project by a woman working in photography. WIP's curatorial staff, Cara Phillips and Amy Elkins, will review applications from April 1rst thru May 1rst, and the winner will be announced on June 10th at the National Art Club, Grand Gallery.

More information about eligibility and submission guidelines can be found at: WIP-Lightside Individual Project Grant

Interview with Alex Segreti

Before I was Born
County Fair, North Carolina
Family Snapshot, 1972

My parents are driving from Michigan this week to visit me and to see my show at Daniel Cooney, so I have been trying to tie-up all loose ends before they arrive, including an interview with Alex Segreti. Alex, who is originally from Chicago, is now a senior in the photography program at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He was given an assignment to interview a photographer who has influenced/inspired him and whom he has never met, and I was flattered when he sent me a set of interview questions.

Alex: I am originally from Chicago and I noticed that you have a lot of connections to the city. What was it like attending UIC for photography (I had considered attending the school but opted to move to New York instead)?

Tema: I moved to New York City during the summer after I graduated from Oberlin College in 1995, but then I moved to Chicago a few months later. I grew up in the Midwest, and Chicago seemed more familiar and more manageable to me at that point in my life. I only applied to graduate programs in Chicago because I wanted to stay in the city. I liked the faculty at UIC, like Doug Ischar and Esther Parada, and felt that our critiques in the photography program were helpful and informative. And I liked Chicago then for its tough grittiness, which influenced what I was photographing. Now, I prefer New York so much as a city, it is almost hard to recall my former romance with the city of Chicago.

Alex: The Chicago Police ride-alongs sounds very interesting – how did it come about/how did you get started on the project? What was it like to actually be there with the police officers?

Tema: I shot the police ride-along images for an organization called the CITY 2000, which commissioned photographers in Chicago to photograph aspects of life in the city during the year 2000 for a series of exhibitions and for an extensive collection of images that now exists in the Comer Archive at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I originally met with one of the CITY 2000’s editors, and we arrived at the idea that I would make pictures of crime scenes.

In the beginning, I bought a police radio from Radio Shack. I drove around in my car listening to the radio, almost like a modern WeeGee, and tried to race to the scene of a crime, except I had no luck with this approach at all. It was pretty comical, really. Then I started contacting police departments, but no one would let me go on rides with them. I was discouraged, but I mentioned my situation to one of my photography students at a city college where I was teaching. My student was a police officer, and he talked to the authorities in his district, and eventually I got my foot in the door. After I went on ride-alongs in this district, it became easier to get authorities in other districts to allow me access as well.

I spent many shifts riding in the back of police cars in some of the roughest neighborhoods on Chicago’s south side. Often, for hours, nothing remarkable would happen, and both the officers and myself would seem to almost crave some drama and action, and I’d feel a little guilty for having these thoughts. Many of the calls were related to domestic violence, and I often watched officers perform the role of social workers. I saw a number of drug dealers get searched and arrested and I photographed an elderly man who had died in his bathroom being carried out of his apartment in a body bag. Actually, the saddest experience for me was watching a dying dog take its last breaths in the parking lot of a housing project. I had developed a special bond with a female police officer, and she was also disturbed by witnessing this death and commented that sometimes it was even harder to watch animals suffer.

While I was shooting this project, I was also at the lowest point in my personal history, and so these recollections of my own demons are inseparable from the experience of making this work in these environments. These are dark, ugly memories that I rarely recall anymore. I left Chicago at the end of the year 2000 to start a new life in Minneapolis.

Alex: My aesthetic is similar to your American Stills project, but in classes at Pratt, I have occasionally been told that it is too 1970s, not contemporary enough. What are your thoughts on that issue and what sort of feedback have you gotten on the American Stills project.

Tema: My American Stills series has never been subjected to a critique in an academic setting, so mostly I only hear the good stuff or nothing at all. I am sure I might hear some comments along the lines of what you are describing if a class or a critic dissected my work.

I was not consciously trying to make retro-looking pictures, but I am conscious of the work that influenced this series, like Eggleston and Shore and Sternfeld. I was interested in similar concerns with color and mood and the American cultural landscape as a subject. I am attracted to a straight–forward style that I associate with this era of photography, and I am not interested in incorporating some of the elements of what we might consider “contemporary photography” – like staging, or high-tech lighting, or digital manipulation.

I tend to be drawn to things with a lot of history and things that evoke some nostalgia. And not just where photographs are concerned. There are very few objects in my apartment besides my computer that were built in the past few decades. My own aesthetic is like a fusion of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. I love films like Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Terrence Malick’s Badlands, and Werner Herzog’s Stroszek. Most of the books on my shelves, besides a lot of art and photography books, are biographies and memoirs and novels by authors like John Updike, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, Raymond Carver, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer. All of these influences naturally carry over into what I choose to photograph.

Alex: For your newest project, The Ballad of Sad Young Men, what inspired you to get started (I notice that most of your work from your website is not portraiture)?

Tema: I had been shooting some portraits in Texas, Arizona and Utah before I started this project in New York, but there were only a few that I was happy with. One of portraits that I did like was an image, Teenage Boy, that I made at Barton Springs in Austin in the summer of 2007, and it was one of the sources of inspiration for me to shoot more portraits of young men. I knew for a while that I wanted to make photographs about masculinity and about adolescence, and a conversation in August 2008 with a friend about the song, The Ballad of Sad Young Men, provided the structure I was looking for to make pictures of these subjects on Main Street in Binghamton.

Alex: You received CAAP grants for your project, Dog Show. How did you go about getting the grants and do you have any advice for new photographers interested in receiving grants for their work?

Tema: Those two small CAAP grants are to date, the only grants I have ever received in support of my work, despite the many grants I have applied for in Minnesota and New York. I was a finalist for the McKnight Photography Award in 2005, and I was more disappointed when that grant didn’t come through for me than any of the others. So my advice to new photographers is the same advice I’d give to myself: just keep plugging away and don’t get too discouraged. Clearly, most photographers who do receive grants have a long list of grants they applied for in the past without the same success.

Alex: What are some challenges you faced when working on projects and getting your career started?

Tema: The most obvious challenge is finding a balance between making work and making money. It is still the most difficult challenge in my life as an artist. Besides my part-time positions as a photography instructor and some commercial and editorial photography assignments, I have supported myself over the past fifteen years through jobs as a record store clerk, a bookstore clerk, a waitress, a wedding photographer and a window-dresser. Trying to bring in enough income to survive, let alone to travel to work on photography projects, continues to be challenging – especially in New York City and in this current economy.

Alex: What has your experience been like teaching at the ICP?

Tema: I love teaching at the ICP and I feel very lucky to have established that relationship shortly after I moved to New York from Minnesota in 2005. The ICP anchored me to a photo community during a transition that was difficult and unsettling in many ways. I have enjoyed working with a diverse and international group of students for the past three years and have developed lasting relationships with some smart and wonderful people. I find teaching extremely rewarding and stimulating, and it keeps me even more engaged and organized in terms of my involvement with photography.

Alex: How important do you think education is for photography (undergrad)? Would you advise a student to go on to post-graduate studies?

Tema: I think that entirely depends on the student in question. I value the education I received at Oberlin College and UIC a great deal, and I certainly think that both undergraduate and post-graduate studies can be significant in leading to a career in the arts.

Does that mean everyone who completes a master’s degree is going to succeed in the art world or even work in his or her field of study? Of course not. Does that mean there haven’t been many photographers who have developed successful careers without getting a higher education in photography? Of course not.

Alex: The web plays an important part in today’s society – you have both a website and a blog; how important do you think it is to a career in photography? Has your blog helped you generate ideas? What are some of the benefits you have experienced by writing a blog?

Tema: I think it is crucial for emerging photographers to have a website or a significant body of work on-line, as yes - so much of the dialogue and discovery of photography these days does exist on the web. However, my website is static, and it is simply a resource for completed projects and a list of my accomplishments in photography. My blog is more active, and it reflects my day-to-day involvement in photography. It helps to give me structure for work-in-progress and to reflect about my relationships to other artists and to the art world. Writing has become as integral to my relationship with photography as taking pictures. It helps me to better understand myself and it helps, for those who might read it, to have a better sense of who I am and what I care about. As a result of that, I think it has lead to relationships and opportunities that might not have existed otherwise. And furthermore, a blog is the least expensive and most democratic way for artists to share their work and ideas with the rest of the world.

Alex: Is there any advice you would give someone coming out of school, trying to start their career in photography (networking, gallery representation, portfolios, etc …)?

Tema: Besides continuing to make work, I think the most critical aspect to starting a career in photography is staying involved in a photo community. The more effort an emerging photographer puts into things like writing blogs and supporting other artists and creating their own exhibition opportunities in the beginning, the more likely it is that a gallery will take interest in an artist in the long run. One small step naturally leads to the next, and it is a long and bumpy road, so it is important to develop some patience and endurance. Ultimately, artists make a leap of faith that their talent and passion and commitment to their medium will be recognized. It is important to be productive, visible, engaged – pay attention to your peers and how they are succeeding, and try to learn from them.

Alex: What is the current state of the industry? Where do you think photography is going – visually/aesthetically – in the next 5-10 years?

Tema: These are my least favorite kinds of questions. Photographers and galleries are facing major economic challenges and are trying to find creative and resourceful ways to survive and to move forward; so that’s my response to the current state of the industry. As for where photography is going in the next decade, if I knew the answer to that, it would be really boring and disappointing. Photography is going wherever photographers take it. I hope and trust there will be some good surprises.

LAY FLAT

Anna und Gero
1989
copyright Andreas Weinand

I had the opportunity to look at the images and read the essays in my copy of Lay Flat which arrived in the mail this week and I especially liked some of the exceptional writing about photography.

I was stuck by the beginnings of essays by Tim Davis and my friend, Cara Phillips, who writes regularly and thoughtfully on her blog, Ground Glass. In her essay in Lay Flat, she writes about the role of blogging itself in expanding the dialogue of the photo community and the potential of the medium.

As someone who also takes pictures, writes, and swims; I loved how Cara opens her piece:

When I am swimming laps, I exist in a different state of being. In the cool water I have no form. My limbs are heavy as I push myself across the pool, but in between strokes I float weightlessly on the surface. And while I methodically swim back and forth across the length of the pool, I feel totally alone and work at my own pace, even though I must negotiate my small space with several other people.

Metaphorically speaking, photography is like swimming; each person has their own pace, their own stroke, and their own rhythm, but they are in the pool together ... (from "The Secessionists Revisited: Artist Collectives in the Age of the Blog," Lay Flat, Cara Phillips, page 13)

And Tim Davis begins his essay:

There is one thing that separates us from animals. I know we have opposable thumbs and stock markets and hybrid SUVs. But the most essential thing line of demarcation between human beings and say, squirrels, is the stories we can tell. Animals don't have narrative. They can't turn the arc of their experience into a reoccurring tale. They know the scent of danger, but can't describe it. The narrative is the ideal housing for significance and it is significance that makes meaning and meaning that makes us matter.

I once worked at a publishing company reading the slush pile of unsolicited manuscripts and it was tragic and awe-inspiring how many people felt they had important stories to tell. But that is because we are pathological narrative makers ... (from "One Credo After Another," Lay Flat, Tim Davis, page 5)

More information about the content and sale of the inaugural issue co-curated by Shane Lavalette and Karly Wildenhaus at: LAY FLAT, 01: REMAIN IN LIGHT

The New Yorker

Photography critic, Vince Aletti, rocked our worlds with a review of our show at Daniel Cooney in this week's GOINGS ON ABOUT TOWN in The New Yorker. Here's what he wrote:

FRANCESCA ROMEO / TEMA STAUFFER

These two young photographers approach portraiture from very different angles, but because their pictures are similarly fraught, complex, and compelling they complement each other nicely. Romeo, whose subjects are mostly friends and lovers on New York’s bohemian fringe, combines intimacy and theatricality in pictures that make the most of available light, dark shadows, and tattooed flesh. Stauffer photographs strangers—young men she meets on the street of Binghamton, New York, who appear at once rebellious and vulnerable. This volatile combination is kicked up a notch by erotic tension, but Stauffer is tender rather than confrontational, and her work looks beyond the boys’ cool affect to something warmer. Through April 18. (Cooney, 511 W. 25th St. 212-255-8158.)


Thank you, Vince!

Emerging Photographers Auction at Daniel Cooney

Untitled (Man With Axe Under Apple Tree)
Sara Code Kroll
2007


Lau Fau San, Hong Kong: Three Stray Dogs
Jane Tam
2008


Back, Self-Portrait
Mickey Kerr
2003


Two Swimmers
Palmer Davis
2006

Daniel Cooney has recently opened bidding for his third Emerging Photographers Auction. Among the many wonderful photographers whose work is available are Sara Code Kroll, Palmer Davis, Jason Falchook, Mickey Kerr, Brian Lesteberg, Ellen Rennard and Jane Tam.

Bidding is open thru March 26th, 2009.

David Smith

tall one, 2008
copyright David Smith

Tonight brings the opening of the first solo exhibition of my very dear and old friend, David Smith. David was one of my students when I taught photo classes at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago after graduate school, and he was the first familiar face I saw at the ICP when I started teaching there in winter of 2006. He was working on his MFA and found me in the media lab, and we had coffee at a diner nearby and caught up on the many years and transitions in our lives in between Chicago and New York. My entire first year of living in this new city was wrought with massive anxiety and uncertainty, and David tried to reassure me that is was possible to live in New York City with its set of pressures and to make work as an artist. His sensitivity, intelligence and depth invariably have a calming effect on me.

I am so excited to see this beautiful new work he has been producing in his studio. David's work is thoughtful, quirky, conceptual - always evolving and transforming. He is an artist and a thinker - rearranging objects and fragments of images to be considered in another light.

According to the press release for this exhibition at HQ Gallery in Brooklyn, David B Smith performs and documents a highly self-conscious creative process. He begins by arranging blank canvases, like building blocks, into various structures. Starkly photographing each one against a black background, the resulting primal images, like seeds, inspire a variety of playful works in various media. Painting, digital imaging, and sculpture are all referenced and these experiments are installed opposite the original photographs to provide space to explore the dynamics of possibility.

In the end, the artist has developed a body of work that simultaneously straddles a variety of media, without actually abandoning the photographic image. Using this hybrid practice, Smith responds to the gallery format in two different ways. First, the artist challenges the "no paintings allowed" mandate of a sculpture gallery with a show primarily focused on stretched canvasses. Second, Smith utilizes the gallery format to show a chronological documentation of his work as it moves from one form into the next and back again. The result of Smiths work is an exhibition that defies his chosen media while carefully scrutinizing and exposing his methodology.

David B. Smith
Before and After

HQ Gallery
236 Grand Street
Brooklyn, NY

Opening Reception:
Saturday May 7th, 7-10pm
on view thru May 3rd

culturehall at Foundation NY

Art fair action kicks off today, and my head is spinning a little from sorting out where to go and what to see, but here are a few stops at the top of my list:

David Andrew Frey, founder of culturehall, a new curated site for contemporary art, can be found at Fountain NY at Pier 66. I have recently taken on the position of Assistant Curator for culturehall and look forward to inviting new artists in the upcoming months.

Amani Olu Projects will be exhibiting work by a group of artists at the Scope Art Fair including Michael Buhler-Rose, Gerald Edwards III, Jon Feinstein, Alison Malone, Marc McAndrews, Bradley Peters, Peter Riesett, David La Spina, Tina Tyrell and Ann Woo. I got to see Amani participate in a panel discussion last night facilitated by the Camera Club of New York that created a lively dialogue about collecting photography amongst gallerists, Daniel Cooney and Michael Mazzeo, as well as photographer and curator, Cara Phillips, from WIP and two prominent photo collectors.

Photographer, Jason Lazarus, a former student and old friend from Chicago whom I haven't seen in person in nearly a decade, will be presenting a solo exhibition of his work thru Andrew Rafacz Gallery at VOLTA NY.

And the previously mentioned Juliana Beasley will be exhibiting work from her Eyes of Salamanca series thru Group Station Independant Projects at the Bridge Art Fair.

All events thru March 8th, 2009.

Go Juliana!

Two Cowboys, from Eyes of Salamanca, 2006
copyright Juliana Beasley

My art crush on Juliana Beasley began when I discovered Doug Rickard's features of her work on AMERCANSUBURBX - "Last Stop: Rockaway Park" and "Eyes of Salamanca". Doug's passionate and poetic interpretation of the people and the pain in her Rockaway series brought to mind Hubert Selby Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn ... the mother who gets hooked on speed trying to shed weight to fit into a red dress to wear for her television debut while her junkie son spirals down with his girlfriend into their own hell of addiction.

It also brought to mind one of my earlier art crushes and now close friend, Emily Carter, whose memoir, Glory Goes and Gets Some, shares a similar honesty, boldness, vulnerability, compassion and fascination with the farthest reaches.

Then I read Juliana's own words in her interview with Nymphoto and I was riveted - picturing this kid in Philly catching fire flies in jelly jars and digging graves with sticks at the side of her house who grows up to find inspiration in a woman who collects a specialty brand of dolls at fairs and a man who teaches his dog to count to ten with his paws.

I think by now I've learned the hard way from internet dating and art crush disappoints and the like - don't come on too strong, too stalkerish. Keep it short and sweet. So I sent Juliana just a few words ... and she wrote back!

We have since become virtual pen pals - keeping tabs on one another's ups and downs and unraveling all kinds of subjects like mothers and relationships and road trips and past demons and present fantasies. I am such a devoted fan at this point, I even offered to come over dressed as River Phoenix to clean her messy apartment in Jersey City. But as we both spend much of our lives glued to our computer screens, who knows if it will ever happen ...

Juliana is coming to New York City this week for two big photo events. She will be showing Polaroids from her secret stash depicting her early days as photographer/stripper in a group exhibition at Michael Mazzeo Gallery opening March 4th. Her larger body of work about stripper culture, Lapdancer, is available in book form here: Lapdancer.

Selected photographs from her most recent project, "The Eyes of Salamanca," will also be exhibited later this week with the Group Station Independent Projects at the Bridge Art Fair. These strange and remarkable images examine a Mennonite community in the Yucaton Peninsula whose religious faith and relationship to the land could not contrast more starkly the stripper scene she previously explored. The sun-burnt faces, bright blue skies, looming white clouds are altogether of another time and place. And thanks to the support of a New Jersey Arts Council Grant, Juliana will return to Mexico in April 2009 to spend a month continuing to photograph and to write about the Mennonite community.

More information about these upcoming events, along with some incredible writing, can be found on her blog: Juliana's Lovely Land of Neurosis

Examined Life

During my first autumn in New York City in 2005, I met filmmaker Astra Taylor while shooting an assignment for the Village Voice. I was photographing Granny's Against War, a group of spirited and elderly war protestors who congregated near Rockefeller Center with signs and slogans denouncing the War in Iraq. Astra Taylor arrived with a super-8 camera and a small film crew to capture footage for one of her own films, and we had the opportunity to talk a little. The experience of meeting Astra left a lasting impression on me, and I wondered, who was this amazing woman with such a palpable and electric creative and intellectual energy?

I discovered later that Astra Taylor is the director of the acclaimed documentary, Zizek!, about the world's most famous philosopher, Slavoj Zizek. Zizek appears again in Astra's latest film, Examined Life, which premiered on Wednesday at the IFC Center in New York City. I got to see the screening and listen to Astra speak about the film afterwards to an enthusiastic audience of NYC intelligentsia.

Philosophy is again the subject of Astra's film, as she takes to the streets to examine modern culture with influential contemporary thinkers including Cornel West, Peter Singer, and Avitall Ronell. Peter Singer stands outside a Bergdorf Goodman window on 5th Avenue contemplating an expensive pair of shoes and the ethics of consumption - how that same amount of money could have a profound role in improving the life of a child in a struggling country. His comments evoked the many instances I have seen homeless Americans collapsed on the sidewalk outside of Bergdorf Goodman's store and the kind of startling and extreme disparities we witness day-to-day in New York City.

The most intriguing part of Astra's film for me was a dialogue near its conclusion between philosopher and feminist, Judith Butler, and Astra's disabled sister, Sanaura Taylor, who stroll San Francisco's Mission District discussing individualism and issues of gender and differences. The intimacy and exchange between Judith and Sanuara transcended the monologues of the previous thinkers, however stimulating and thought-provoking their ideas were as well.

Examined Life is showing at the IFC Center thru March 5th with appearances by the filmmaker and subjects at selected screenings.

You can watch the trailer at: Examined Life

And find a full list of national screenings at: Examined Life Playdates

You can also find interviews with Astra Taylor at: IFC News and SpoutBlog and Still in Motion

Women in Photography

Francesca Romeo and I are featured this month on Women in Photography's site: Francesca and Tema / WIP

Thanks again to co-curators, Cara Phillips and Amy Elkins, for their ongoing efforts to encourage dialogue about work by women photographers in the contemporary art world.

Sun Kissed - A Documentary

I recently became aware of a team of filmmakers trying to raise funds to complete a documentary about the last effects of American colonialism on the Native American community. Co-directed by photographer and filmmaker, Adi Lavy, and Maya Stark, Sun Kissed tells the story of the lives of the Sandoval family whose daughter, Leanndra, harbors a genetic disorder that makes any exposure to sunlight fatal. This rare disorder can be traced back 150 years to the most traumatic and defining moment in American history.

The production team of Sun Kissed is facing financial challenges in moving forward with their project and continuing to shoot in New Mexico. They are racing against time, as their subject, Leanndra, is very sick and her days are numbered.

The team is seeking support from organizations, foundations and private investors. They are also asking for donations as small as $5 - $10 from anyone who can help.

Information about the film, including a trailer and how to give support, can be found here: Sun Kissed Productions

GLBT Gallery Tour

GLBT Gallery Tour
Daniel Cooney Fine Art Gallery

I had the pleasure of speaking briefly about my work at Daniel Cooney this afternoon to a group making a gallery tour of shows including GLBT artists. Led by Rafael Risemberg, Ph.D., former gay studies professor and art critic for the NY Blade, the group meets once a month to visit and to discuss exhibits of interest to the GLBT community.

More information about the tours can be found here: New York Gallery Tours