SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

Posted by Ray Pride at 04:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dust shaken out of a book into an empty skull.

—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Posted by Simone Muench at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

“What you make?” I knew she had me, I had been found out.

“I was just coming around by the Rodenberg when a panther sprang out of the woods and knocked me off my Velo.”

“You are a Luftgucker.”

“That means my head’s in the clouds?”

“Something like that.”

“No, it was a panther, I swear.” I didn’t want to tell her I had fallen in the full dazzle of light, in a fresh rain-washed sky, drinking in the sweet air… when Hans-Ruedi passed and honked; when waving back, regaining my attention too late to adjust, I hit the curb, spilling ass-over-teakettle in a heap up on the sidewalk. Disentangling myself from the bike, I was okay; not even shaken, really, with only a leaking silver-dollar sized strawberry on my elbow to show. The bike seemed fine. I wasn’t going very fast. But Edith would notice; that was for sure.

I found Hans-Ruedi unloading his truck. “Hallo, Sir,” he extended his hand in greeting.

“Hi, what’s up.?”

“I have a little time; do you care for a beer?”

“Sure. Hast du ein Pflaster?”

“I have somewhere… you fall off your Velo?”

“I hit the curb.”

“Let’s go upstairs, I’ll make a search.” I followed him and rinsed off the wound in the kitchen sink while he rummaged around. A collector of tools, appliances, musical instruments—he has ten upright basses—and memorabilia, Hans-Ruedi has a Celtic millwheel found in a load of stone taken from the shore of Lake Constance. Long before the Roman conquest—in 58 B.C. with the defeat of the Gauls by Julius Caesar—there were people here milling grain. The Romans stayed until 260 A.D. with the invasion of the Alemannians; perhaps the stone was ancient then. The kitchen was cluttered with dozens of pots, spoons, and ladles hanging from the walls. The scrape didn’t look too bad. I pulled away a hanging piece of skin. Hans-Ruedi kept up a running commentary from the other room. “Aha, I have found…”

“Great, let me dry this off with a paper towel.” We sat at the table while I put the Band-Aid on. Hans-Ruedi opened two beers. “I have only time for one.”

“Thanks for the first aid.”

“You must be careful on a Velo.”

“That’s what she’s always telling me… she’s going to take one look at this and know.”

Back on my bike I went on in the direction I’d been going, turning left just before the RR tracks, with fields stretching away on my left. The trail crossed under the highway, the bypass road that leads to Stein am Rhine, and along past a block of Schrebergartens, then left again along the base of the Rodenberg, the mountain east of town. Making a loop I was now headed back towards the river, re-crossing the highway, beneath me this time, past recently harvested potato fields, joining up with the old road leading back to town. I pedaled on, past houses on either side, then into the old Stadt, through the arch under the clock tower where the road squeezes to one lane. Pulling into the cobbled drive I could see our car in the garage. I was going to tell her, but waiting for the appropriate moment, it slipped my mind. “What do you say we go check out the garden; we still have plenty of daylight.”

“We have still tomatoes?”

“Lots… and we have celery; and a few jalapeños still.” A cold August notwithstanding, our third year with the garden has been a great one, giving us an abundance of organic green beans, beets, onions, leeks, endive, red cabbage, and broccoli. And yellow squash; we raised a ton of yellow squash. This was our best year yet for tomatoes, since we put up a plastic roof to keep the rain off. The garden looked good; resting under a fresh carpet of mulch we brought in from Hans-Ruedi’s chipping pile. We selected old chips from a partly rotted pile that had been there several years. I had read that chips need to season or they will rob the soil of nitrogen. In gardening, as in house keeping, my habits differ some between me and our neighbors, who keep their rows straight.

I had my pullover sleeve covering the wound, and had actually forgotten it myself, until just before we went to bed. But then I realized too late that the Pflaster had fallen off, and that’s when she saw it and found me out. I didn’t mention I’d had a glass of wine and smoked a joint before I went out, but she probably surmised that. I’ve long been out of the habit of driving a car stoned; but riding my bike was another deal, my thing. A rediscovered pleasure, I haven’t ridden a bike so much since I was fourteen. I don’t recall how often I used to crash back then; I was always getting into scrapes of one kind or another…. But Luftgucker, that was a new one to savor; sky-looker, that was me. I’ve always had my head in the clouds too.

Posted by Richard Dobson at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It hardly seems possible, but it's been exactly one year since my father took his life. Rather than serving as a creepy, public rending of shirts, the following is meant as a loving tribute to a truly unique man.

My father, Robert David Roth (Sr.), was a complex man - equal parts Marlon Brando rebel and Norman Rockwell conservative, Ray Charles hipster and James Taylor americana, Lenny Bruce iconoclast and Johnny Carson classic. He was a lover of jazz, fine chianti, travel, movies, gadgets, children and animals (in small doses), science. The Simpsons, The Sopranos, Stanley Kubrick, literature, art, ladies, history and blue humor. He was the most charismatic person I've ever met, and he was my favorite Republican. (Elvis Presley is a distant number 2)
As a boy I literally believed that my dad could stop the rain - really. I'll admit that it was a little tough growing up in his shadow. I was a strange boy who would become a strange man, and he was a guy who seemed to just "get" people. He made his living as a wholesale furniture rep, but that's not who he was. In my mind he was Joe Namath, Neil Armstrong and Jackson Pollock all rolled into one. Perhaps it's this rather claustrophobic melange of characteristics which made him difficult to disagree with. He was a jock poet - what's more confusing than that?

And boy did we disagree. As the years went on and I graduated from art school we had plenty to disagree about. In the fall of 1988 I moved from Detroit to Chicago. After having worked full time and carried a full load of classes I was primed and ready to party. I moved into an apartment with my lifelong pal Sully and proceeded to let the games begin. By this time Dad had calmed down a bit. The raucous late night blow-outs at Michigan State were behind us, and he was settling into his new life as a real estate man in The Sunshine State.

Not long after my move he called :

"David," he said in the dramatic, stentorian voice that was a little like James Earl Jones performing Darth Vader on ouzo, "I'm coming up there. We're gonna bury the hatchet."

"OK," I said, "but be ready to put it all on the table."

And that, as they say, was that. We had a great visit, and that weekend found us sitting in a beer garden on Broadway, talking frankly about all the bad mojo which had passed between. For the first time in my life, I felt that my father viewed me as a man.

There were other conflicts, and of course some were not so easy, but that's not germane, nor is it important. In the frenetic tumble of day-to-day life it's easy to focus on those things which slow us down and get in our way, but it is our good memories which sustain us in retrospect.

Dad was a real charmer, and I've been thinking about this aspect of his personality a lot lately, because it's rather incongruous with his intolerance for BS. But he was charming and charismatic, and I realize something now that I never quite got before. There's a reason people respond so favorably to charm and charisma, and it's this: somehow, someway, it fills you with hope. Charming people, at least some charming people, fill you with an innate sense of well-being and acceptance, and it's this sense of acceptance which can somehow convey that things can get better.

I had the pleasure of helping Dad move a couple years ago, and we walked into a Home Depot looking for tape and bubble wrap.

"How are you?" he said to a total stranger.

The woman looked at him, blinking.

"Are you having a good day?"

"Uhhh, yea." She was taken aback, but she smiled.

"Great!"

I did my best to blend into the drywall and two by fours.

Once, on a transatlantic flight, he was in the aisle, dancing to a Motown song on the endlessly looping in-flight radio. It was on that trip, at age ten, that my future came into focus. At the end of the trip we arrived at the Cistene Chapel, and it's the first time I ever saw him cry. Seeing that ceiling and the impact it had on him, I realized that I wanted to study art. And yes, I'm happy to report that both of my parents, and my two beautiful sisters were very supportive when I chose to chuck two years of pre-law for the highly lucrative bachelor of fine arts degree.

Dad was an artist, and a good one, at that. My sisters and I grew up with his work, primarily a large, monochrome, inscrutable abstract canvas called something like "Truth Shines a Light on The Darkness." It was a roiling black canvas with a swirling, bright white circle in the lower left, tethered to the upper right with a pristine white line. There were skillful renderings, too, and the house was filled chock-a-block with the work of other artists as well.

He was a lover of music, from Bernstien, to Beethoven, to the Beatles. From Ray Charles to Willie Nelson to Townes Van Zandt and back again. He was not a religious man, but, in his own way, he lived a profound spirituality of human-ness. "There's a beat," he was fond of saying "find yours and dance."

I have said that I have many, many fond memories of childhood with my Dad. We used to watch nature shows together, and I think he enjoyed it even more than I did. There was nothing to compare with seeing him get excited. Once, when I was probably 8 or 10, I walked by the bathroom one Sunday morning as he was shaving.

"Davey boy - get yourself dressed, and be sure to bundle up! We're going to see Broadway Joe Namath and the New York Jets play your Detroit Lions!"

In those days the Lions played at Tiger Stadium, outside. I have never been so cold in my life. Once again my father demonstrated his pragmatic side "here, have some of this, it'll warm you up." And thus began my rather long and storied relationship with bourbon.

If you ask me "what kind of man was your dad?" I could run down the essential telling details: 5' 9", thinning hair, frameless glasses, you know the drill. But none of that would lend any insight into the essence of the man. So, to that end, I'm here to tell you that he obliged the one lesson of existential wisdom. It's a simple dictum, and it goes like this:

Live until you die.

The effort to find meaning in all things is human nature. But it is not possible to know every chamber of the heart of another. In the end we are left to ponder the imponderables, to balance our knowledge of the wonderful chaos of life with the silent abyss that is death. "Truth Shines a Light in the Darkness," indeed. In this case we would all do well to observe the daily truth of Dad's life - live until you die.

There's a wonderful photo sitting on my desk of Dad from his glory days as a high school full back. It's a night game, and the glare of the flash bulbs has turned his fiery eyes white. Number 57 runs upfield, ball clutched tightly under his left arm, right fist knurled into an instrument of pain and will. Behind him, on all fours, is a dazed defensive lineman. In front of him is a hulking behemoth, easily 6' 6", and still convinced that he has the upper hand. Boy was that guy in for a surprise.

To me, this snapshot is symbolic, and it tells you everything you need to know about my old man. The soon-to-be-bruised defensive giant is the grim reaper, and number 57 is about to give him what for. Dad died as he lived- on his terms, the captain of his own ship. He lived until he died.

Posted by david roth at 08:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Kristy Bowen’s work has appeared in Diagram, Caffeine Destiny, Cranky, Another Chicago Magazine, and others. She lives in Chicago where she dabbles in collage/text/book art, edits the online zine, wicked alice, and runs dancing girl press. Her most recent chapbook, errata, is available from her website, and her full-length collection, the fever almanac, is due out now from Ghost Road Press. Her book, in the bird museum, is forthcoming from Dusie Press, and a chapbook, feign, is being released by Diagram Press.

sangria

Not red, not exactly. More like dawn,
or the illusion of it. Hummingbirds, humidity.
Azaleas splitting in your palm. In Texas,

the nights sueded, starlit.
There is no language for the soft
of your hands, their thunderous Braille.
Bruises ripen on my wrists like plums.

Nevertheless, I am sly, scarlet-lipped.
Gathering light in the folds
of my dress. Crossing my sevens
polite and girlish. I still dream

of the desert, the woman you once kept
sleeping in the curve of your body.
She slices peaches, pulls the hair from her face.

She sweetened and full of rain.
Even the coyotes have lost the scent of her.

Posted by Simone Muench at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Untitled 5

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Untitled 57

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Shot at SAIC, Sharp building, 4th floor, on a Sunday

Posted by Ursula Sokolowska at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nostagia has never served me well. Perhaps that’s why until recently I’ve been ambivalent about the closing of CBGB’s, which has been a fixture on New York City’s Bowery for over 30 years.

For the last 11 years I’ve lived just a few blocks away from the club. And for at least as long I’ve listened years to the stories of friends who experienced a rite of passage at CBGB’s. Whether it was being pelted with spit from the audience while playing on a stage sanctified years earlier by the likes of the the Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, or Blondie, or simply getting drunk and vomiting in the bathroom or on the sidewalk outside, where know your favorite punk rocker once did the same.

Having grown up in LA I didn’t have the same connection to CBGB’s as those who spent their formative years here, or at least moved to New York right out of college. My earliest encounter with the place is barely memorable. As a teenager while visiting the city in the late 70’s I went to see CB’s, but once my cab reached the Bowery I decided to find another destination. I was intimidated, not just by the club’s already legendary status as the punk vortex but by the Bowery itself. It was a rough neighborhood that made Hollywood’s Sunset Strip, the scene of my daring high school Rock & Roll adventures, look like the set of a Gidget movie.



By the time I moved to Manhattan in the early 90’s the punk scene was history and the club had taken a turn for the worse. I’ve been to CBGB’s many times over the past several years and other than a recent King Missile re-union gig, I don’t remember any of the names of the bands I’ve seen.



I almost found myself agreeing with those who’ve said CBGB’s is barely a shadow of its former self and should close because it had outlived its usefulness. But upon reflection I realize that’s nostalgia speaking. If we look at the present situation in downtown Manahttan, CBGB’s relevance is obvious. It is not just a historical landmark, but one of the last of an endangered species in Manhattan - a rock venue that books unknown bands while charging fans an affordable price.

The club’s presence becomes particularly important once you take a walk around the neighborhood. Hardcore punk has been replaced by hardcore real estate development. At first glance the change doesn’t seem so bad. I confess I don’t miss wading through the wasteland of junkies, pimps and dealers that once occupied the blocks between my home and CBGB’s. But in their place has come a different kind of degenerate culture, one based on cashing in on a bloated real estate market without regard for the history, culture or even the physical character of a neighborhood. Large blank condo complexes have replaced turn-of-the–century five and six story apartment buildings that defined the look of the area, a decidedly less commercial neighborhood than midtown or neighboring Soho, which underwent a similarly aggressive gentrification decades earlier.



How much does it cost to live on the Bowery now? Let’s just say that no hardcore band can match the obscenity of the neighborhood’s real estate prices.

Keeping CBGB’s open won’t halt excessive development or revitalize NYC’s rock scene, but it would remind those strolling down the new, sterilized Bowery that downtown was once culturally vital; that artists, musicians and poets once lived and worked here without commercial backing or a trust fund. That’s not nostalgia speaking, it is an acknowledgement of the urban pioneers who came here to make art and inadvertently created an environment that became attractive to a yuppie class with money. Stockbrokers and lawyers living in million dollar condos need to remember that the CBGB’s T-shirt they wear on the weekends isn’t just a hip fashion statement. It is the symbol of a creative force that was the result of an unusual coalescence of talented people in an environment that, no matter how economically depressed and downright hostile, allowed for a new powerful music to be created that was heard around the world.



Perhaps it is fitting that the interior of the club is being shipped in its entirety to Las Vegas, the place where family fun meets legalized prostitution. I don’t know where the club will fit into Sin City’s weird cultural mosh pit but it’s probably the best way to remember CB’s without auctioning off its hallowed urinals and barstools on Ebay.

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Posted by Marilyn Cvitanic at 06:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

BIRDS WERE DIVING a quarter-mile from the Farallones, and the Salty Dog headed for the commotion. It wasn't long before the charter boat crew spotted a deep red slick widening in the water.

Then the head of a frantic 400-pound white elephant seal of a curator popped to the surface, its tail twirling like a propeller, its shoulder bag/jet-setter on-the-go -style satchel slapping the water into an unctuous froth as it churned wildly.

Blood poured from a gaping 3-foot hole in the curatorial hide, with 3-inch-thick folds of white blubber split open to reveal the stricken creature's internal organs. Oddly enough, no heart or for that matter soul, was in evidence, the brain not suprisingly seemed atrophied, withered.....

A moment later, a 16-foot great white zoomed in. Then a smaller shark arrived.

Welcome to lunch at the Farallones.

The white sharks devoured the seal within 16 minutes, their meal marked by a widening circle of blood and blubber oil on an otherwise calm clear day.

"It was spectacular," said one onlooker, who watched in amazement as the drama erupted Monday. "It was absolutely awesome."

The curator fate sealed, came alongside the boat "still alive, looking up at us, it's tail flipping a mile a minute. You could see a hole in it 3 feet wide, through the blubber. You could see its intestines. His satchel was all mussed up!

"Within five minutes, the shark comes back and hits it again."

Salty Dog skipper Roger North, an old salt who has seen scores of shark attacks in 40 years at the helm, called it the most spectacular of his career.

He said the day was a "million-to-one shot." (which is really too bad since I'd like to have a ringside seat to watch a whole art world full of these creatures being eaten alive)

That's because his boat was chartered by a BBC television documentary crew that recorded the carnage for a series tentatively called "Wild in Chicago"

The British television crew had a day to devote to a hunt for a great white at the Farallones - and scored.

"It was really phenomenal," Thomas said. "I've seen lots of good shark attacks, but this one was just awesome.

"That curatorial farce was half alive, a couple feet from the boat, wiggling. The shark comes up and takes a hunk out of it. Then another shark comes up.

"What are the odds of having that happen for a TV crew that is out for just a day, trying to film a great white shark attack?"

The filmmakers, with two cameras blazing on board, and another on the main Farallon island, recorded it all.

The producer left the boat shaking her head in disbelief. 'what will they think over at The Art Institue?'

"We came back incredibly exhilarated," said BBC producer Hayley Moss. "All we had was one day, and we had no idea we'd get any footage that spectacular."

Also aboard the Salty Lady was noted naturalist David Wimperer of Inverness, who leads birding, whale shark watching and other excursions as part of his business. As the attack unfolded, he grabbed a digital camera and took a striking series of photographs.

"We saw one shark, then a second one came in, and they were eating big chunks of meat," he said. "The curator, fate sealed, has these big black eyes looking out at you, and you're kind of sad the animal is dying. (but not that sad!)

"At the same time it's exciting because you are seeing a predator doing its thing."

uurrrrrp!

Posted by The Shark at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

An intense persistent desire to drink alcoholic beverages to excess.

Posted by Simone Muench at 12:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's some themes I've been rolling around in my head for potential development as forthcoming posts on Sharkforum. Let's see which ones interest readers the most.

1. Clique Sleaze Cultivation vs. Actual Self-Confidence

2. Strings of Buzz Words: Why Can't Most Artists Make Any Sense When They Talk?

3. What We Need in Order to Develop a Genuine Art Scene

4. Why Consensus Reasoning Destroys Art

5. The "Death" of the Curator --- How The Old–Pal Network Determines the Limits of Their Options

6. The Neo-Conceptual Mannerist Academy

7. Let's define "CC" Art --- Curatorially Correct Art

8. Let's Define "TC" Art --- Technologically Correct Art

9. It's Your Artworld, Take it Back

10. What's Dead is Saying "The Death Of"

11. "Put in Our Place" --- Beyond Veiled Insult, What Would Genuine Overview Exhibitions of "Regional" Artists Look Like?

12. PoMo: Frozen in Neo-Neo-Neo-Neo-Neo-Dada?

13. Careerism, Sophistry and Art Potentates --- The Career Ladder Replaces Appreciation

14. Pintophobia, The Fear of Painting: The Greatest Neurosis in the Artworld

15. The Triumph of New Garage Rock --- Or, Why We Need "Garage" Art

16. Neo-Conceptual Artists as Wanna-Be Bureaucrats

17. Actually, Philosophically Observed, So-Called Non-Object Art is Still an Aesthetic and Mercantile Object, OR: Stop Patting Yourself on the Back for Making Non-Commercial Art While Selling it Through Grant Funding

18. Know Your History or You'll Fall for Lies

19. The Dominance of Theory is NOT the Same as a Supremacy of One Style

Posted by Mark Staff Brandl at 01:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Brandon Downing is originally from San Francisco, California, where he was co-founder and director of Blue Books, a non-profit literary bookstore and performance space in the city's Mission District. Since 2000 he has lived in New York City, where he works as an exhibit designer and researcher and spends his time on planes. A photographer, collagist and filmmaker as well as a poet, his books include The Shirt Weapon (Germ Monographs, 2002) and Dark Brandon (Faux Press, 2005).

Night of the Blood Beast (1958)

Most of the men disapeared from an open garage.
It is 7pm Thursday, workers are out together, afloat.
Did your hair stick up because we stayed in this room?
Rain shimmers in the gutters. Why?

For almost ever, you have imitated yourself.
But afterward, you will imitate me.
And your very cells will become morbido,
Slung into the compartment, a featureless face.

So it is, from a graveyard out in the hall.
Am I believing in death for the dead.
On Saturday the jeep hit me on the beach
When I was giggling at Will,
The calamitous, ghoulish pearls I wore fell off.
Pathos carried in the sword he stole from God,
This ended my dazzling talks with Leif

"No, Head!..." "Steal for as long as you dream..."
"I'm dead: I'm not sure what it means for us..."
Or peaceful fear endured by the thin.
On the overlook we talked about you magazine.
We had moved in, with our rocks,
To eavesdrop on the talking costumes—
'Fozzie', maybe some of the other muppets...don't laugh,
One of hose muppes was feeding on me when I came to.
That's when I stabbed myself, falling into a hanging wound
                                                             in the flaming ground.

Posted by Simone Muench at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1. To move with a bobbing motion.
2. Chiefly British. To lounge about; loll.

Posted by Simone Muench at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The morning in gloss, its hiding young.
The woodpecker's loose

robe in halves, until it writes
a paragraph inside a velvet pocket.

A fat lipstick smack for a head
took my throat when it flew.

Haven't I grown to like the sudden
stab. I've swallowed a field, as

dying samurai after a drawn sword
to battle. That startle odd red

a tassel dangling from a shield.
If I've stood up

like an obdient prisoner;
haven't I cradled any open light?

Circling eyes lined in the screech
of an owl. Haven't I remembered that

hollow tunnel my head unpatched
a galaxy through; the white inside

the tail fanning like an organ
cut. This can't be too good

to be true. It's no path.
It is how a field melts back

into grass with no movement;
and there

under moments.

Posted by Kim Christoff at 09:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by david roth at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Although the tempering my spirit received from my rugged peasant upbringing generally prevents me from speaking too freely of my personal travails, I have not been able to hide that I recently broke a bone in my foot and have thus been quite hobbled. Having had various episodes of infirmity in my past, including a previous crutchly passage that lasted eight long weeks, I have long been of the mind that being waylaid by an injury can be a valuable instructive experience. For if you have never been deprived of the use of a hand or arm or leg and thus needed the kind assistance of others, you haven’t had the privilege of being sadly helpless. And being sadly helpless allows you to realize that most people are kind and will lend assistance, even if being helped makes you feel more pitifully vulnerable than you ever wanted to feel. I’ve noticed that men are particularly kind, which makes perfect sense as I am a female and would thus tend to bring out a male’s protective qualities, while women, except one’s truest friends, tend not to want to be bothered, really. I understand this as well. Women generally have a lot of caring and helping already on their plates. And perhaps the supply of caring and obligation grows ever more limited in our modern times.

Being unable to walk very well, and able to stand even less successfully, I have retreated to a reclining position for hours at a time where I’ve found myself thinking about the state of things more actively than I might if I were, say, up on a ladder finishing my bathroom ceiling, which was my plan for these waning days of warmth and light. The premature end of the White Sox season (go Tigers) left little for me on the radio as the sports chatter definitely turned to football, a pastime I shall never feign more than a passing interest in. Flipping around for the first time in months, I discovered at the bottom of the dial WIND 560 and was pleased to find embedded in the Laura Ingraham Show traffic reports on the fives, which allows me now to switch between WBBM’s traffic reports on the eights next time I’m paralyzed with fear about how long it might take me to get to O’Hare by car.

I also found myself listening to Rush Limbaugh, whom many of you I’m sure consider my old friend, for the first time in months. And I was more than surprised to hear Rush in the midst of a passionate monologue not on the political timing of the Foley revelations, nor the spinelessness of the UN in dealing with North Korea, but on being liked. I pricked up my ears. I like being liked, tho’ I know I often am not, and thus my personal motto (which I see has been adapted as well by The Shark), “Do not mistake me for who I am not.” But even more than being liked, I like thinking about how people like being liked, and the behaviors they display towards this end. Rush was actually making a lot of the points I had long believed were true. The worse trap one can fall into is shaping one’s life around being liked. Relationships of all kinds, not just of the romantic variety, are often doomed by each party’s overwhelming urge to put his or her best foot forward and fail to reveal one’s true self in fear of not being liked, a truism that is widely exploited by advertising copywriters, but one that is in no danger of failing to be perpetuated even by folks who know better as they are no longer 15 years old. “You must make yourself happy,” Rush, the paradoxically self-proclaimed “lovable little fuzzball,” continued. “No one else can make you happy. You must be your true self in order to make yourself happy, and going around wanting to be liked, especially by people you know most likely really dislike you, will not enable you to be happy with yourself.” And so on.

Rush didn’t say this, but the notion of people really just wanting to be liked also made me think about public and private behaviors, and the increasingly blurred or nonexistent lines between them, leading me to the conclusion that the people who go into Politics and Art share one very important common characteristic — they do not wish to live in a world where there are “private” and “public” behaviors with the necessity of behaving differently in different situations. They just want to be the same no matter what. An artist revealing his deepest private essence alone in the studio isn’t thinking, “Okay, that was cathartic, now I’ll burn the damn thing and keep all these deepest, private things here.” No, he’s thinking, “I wonder when I’ll get the chance to see this thing on display over at the Muse-itute of Modtempo Art.” And on top of it he’s gone to art school to learn how to talk if not lucidly then rapidly about all the private things he’s revealing, such as bathroom habits, sexual matters ranging from peccadilloes to perversions, medical diagnoses spanning the panoply of physical and emotional syndromes and disabilities, and family secrets once deemed suitable only for the analyst’s couch. You know, it’s the modern cultural climate that allowed a young person to ask Bill Clinton the question “briefs or boxers” when he appeared on MTV lo these many years ago. Because of course knowing one’s preference in underwear allows for all sorts of insights into the person you are facing, who, also of course, you just want to like you. (While I’m sitting there thinking “those are the only two choices?”...but I’ve learned to think this way as a member in good standing of the art world where I’ve had the opportunity to view large color photographs by dozens of artists that show me other options in undergarments.)

It seems on this blog there is a leitmotif of the desire to be liked. One writer loudly proclaims that artists must be the apex creature while others suggest mutual admiration and cooperation are perhaps the better strategy. Another writer suggests boat-rocking is perhaps counterproductive, and we all need to get along. In the midst of these swirling waters, while doing some research, I came across the following:

“…the city’s rich people, unlike their counterparts in California, have always kept a close eye on the eastern establishment and eastern ways. They send their kids to eastern prep schools. They swoon in the presence of eastern art professionals, artists as well as art intellectuals. They rarely forsake the lakefront to venture west of Halsted Street where Mayor Daley’s [père, of course] real Chicago spreads for a light-year. Chicago’s patrons—whether the Art Institute’s Gentiles or the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Jews—are totally devoted to Chicago at the level of their business and commercial interests, but forever envious of the culture of the Atlantic seaboard. Hence, when supporting the arts in Chicago, their impulse is to go national, not native. The better collectors have bought most of what they own in New York…”.

As the source was a faded Xerox, I have not the author’s name of this published article. But I do have the date: 1976. That’s thirty years ago. Apparently what I shall dub the Shark Complaint has been a long-standing one in Chicago. And if this article is any indication, apparently others have been outspoken. Whether they mysteriously disappeared to have their broken bodies float up years later from some murky pond, I do not know. Apparently Derek Guthrie of the late New Art Examiner and quite the water-churner in his day is alive and well back in his native England.

But to return to my complaint: Being reduced to incompetence is rough. Yes, when one is flailing around on crutches, or is faced with a squalling infant and the diaper bag is gaping open while the two-year-old is running into traffic, or is temporarily blinded because one has failed to bring one’s reading glasses along—all temporary situations, of course—one realizes it is better to be helped than be liked. And while one is thinking, in a Chris Ware-like way, “This person is certainly despising me while he stretches out his hand to pick me up off the floor,” it is good to witness one’s fellow human being acting humanely regardless of whether they like you or not. It is good to realize that while one may not like a fellow human being, in fact one may very much dislike him and for sound reasons, one is better off for being in a community. Now what was that about Air America going bankrupt?

More later,

Lynne.

Posted by Lynne Warren at 12:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Untitled 39

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Untitled 43

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Untitled 36

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Untitled 32

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Untitled 29

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Untitled 23 - not a mannequin / actual human for reference

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The Constructed Family, 2006, 30x30", lambda prints.

“I started off by focusing on my childhood and my mother. But the work started to grow. Since my father passed away, I have been able to include him and myself at my present age.”

This work examines the trauma and uncertainty carried from childhood. In particular, I am referencing my own upbringing as a Polish immigrant. There is an undercurrent of helplessness and misdirection linked to a sort of schizophrenic parenting, excommunication, and constant movement. Typically, the perception of children handed down by my elders was that children did not have a choice. Frequently, I heard a Polish equivalent of the phrase “Children should be seen not heard”. I am attempting to give these children voices.

These photographs are projection-based installations. The models are mannequins and their faces are projections. The faces of the children are slides that my father took of me when he was still involved in my life. The other slides are present day images that I have shot of my mom, my dad, and myself. My goal is to reconstruct my own childhood, empowering the past for better or for worse. The result is a troubling recreation of events that may seem disturbing but are far less in context to the real events that transpired.

Posted by Ursula Sokolowska at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The branch of zoology that deals with reptiles and amphibians.

Posted by Simone Muench at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Judith Arcana is a former member of Chicago's pre-Roe underground abortion counseling service ("Jane"). Her newest book is What if your mother (Chicory Blue Press); others are Grace Paley’s Life Stories, A Literary Biography; Every Mother’s Son; and Our Mothers’ Daughters. She has taught literature, writing, and women’s studies in high schools, colleges, libraries, living rooms, a prison, and a jail. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in 5AM, Triplopia, Poetica, Junctures, Passager, Diner and three anthologies: Women’s Lives, Not What I Expected and Fresh Water. She currently lives in Oregon.

Snow, Fall

That one time you hit the baby, that one time
out on the street when the bus was so late
and then didn’t come and the snow
started falling; that time you lifted all
your food in bags, paper handles dampening
and she kept holding onto your leg, pulling
your coat and you couldn’t carry her too
while the flakes came thick and wet and faster.
That’s the time you remember, not all
the times you didn’t, all those times when
you didn’t hit the baby, times you both giggled
rolled in the grass naked of anger and fear
while the teddy bear and plastic chicken
slept on top of the rackety wooden dog
without fighting. Their toy allegory is nothing
compared to that time you saw her small face
inside the wool scarf, her wide open eyes surprised
at the slap under the hat with blue ear flaps;
you remember that time, sharp points on every flake, falling.

Posted by Simone Muench at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The first, official offshoot of SHARKFORUM! Can European and especially Swiss artworld denizens actually discuss and analytically argue about art? I think so.

I would like to announce the founding of a new, East-Swiss on-line art magazine. Titled "Swiss Art Sharkforum," it is, in fact, a so-called "blog-zine" or "blog collective," meaning a group of contributors will be semi-regularly posting their thoughts on art and culture, with an emphasis on Switzerland and an even stronger emphasis on the eastern, German-speaking part of the country. And it is inspired by SHARKFORUM, with special thanks to Wesley "The Shark" Kimler and Dave "Shark Ed" Roth.

The blog-zine is organized and edited by me, Mark Staff Brandl, also called the Ex-Pat Shark, who as readers here may know, is an artist, art historian and critic based in eastern Switzerland. Besides writing for the eminent Art in America "hard copy" magazine coming from New York City, Brandl is the "foreign correspondent" for the blog-zine titled SHARKFORUM: Opinion With Teeth based in the US and created by Chicago artists Wesley Kimler and David Roth. The very blog-zine you are now reading!

As many know, but may be new to some European readers, painter Kimler has long been nicknamed "the Shark" due to his fierceness in discussions. Kimler has been quite a controversial figure, known for giving very outspoken interviews in which he champions painting, attacks the artworld hierarchy and what he perceives as a curatorial, Neo-Conceptual academy, advocating independence and self-reliance on the part of creators. He is also renowned in the contemporary Chicago artworld for his work rallying for a new art scene. Thus, the blog-zine was named for him. Due to the success of that site in generating active critical exchange (even to the point of vicious argument), I have decided to attempt to tie into some of that energy and link it to my chief place of residence --- Switzerland. This new Swiss site will feature writing about art, the artworld and related entities from the perspective of both an insider and an outsider, being a dual-citizen US-foreigner living in Switzerland. Swiss Art Sharkforum is inspired by, linked to, and a sub-development of www.sharkforum.org. (Where, by the way, we get between 11,000 and 26,000 hits per day.)

For Euro-readers, let me add that Sharkforum, the original, together with other new artist-centered activities, such as the podcast Bad at Sports, the Chicago Art Project, The Art Letter, Iconduel, critic Kevin Nance, a barrage of new exhibition spaces, and other developments is generating a whole new, exciting, non-consensus artworld in the Windy City, rivaling that of Los Angeles. I hope these two sites will cross-fertilize, bringing Shark-dom to Europe.

Additionally, I will be joined by a group of other bloggers, such as Matthias Kuhn, Alex Meszmer, Steve Litsios, Daniel F. Ammann, Irene Mueller and others. Kuhn is an artist and the co-president of the artists association visarte.ost, well known for his analytical stance toward art. Meszmer is a German artist living in Switzerland with a performance-oriented artistic approach. Litsios is an artist from the western, French-speaking section of Switzerland, who will hopefully help contribute to a discussion between these areas, one long absent. Ammann is an author and theorist who will be the link to the literary world. Mueller is one of the best young art historians in Switzerland. These creators will be writing in their native tongues, hence this blog-magazine will be in English, German, French and maybe even Swissgerman. We will also be heavily featuring links to, re-publications of, and discussions of other printed discussions of art in and from Switzerland, and most of all the "Ostschweiz" (Eastern Switzerland).

As can be imagined, if you know SHARKFORUM, This site will also NOT be wishy-washy, it will not be a simple reportage on events; it will endeavour to offer authentic critical analysis and exchange, even to the point of dispute. This is VERY uncommon in Switzerland! Let's see if it works! The intention of Swiss Art Sharkforum is to draw attention to the exciting Swiss artworld, while stimulating open, critical discussion of art and art issues, something Switzerland sorely lacks. Join in! www.swiss-art.blogspot.com/

Posted by Mark Staff Brandl at 04:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s hard to get nostalgic about a place that smelled like piss and beer, but CBGBs, I’ll miss you. I’ll remember fondly how the house soundman asked loudly through the stage monitors, during the middle of an eleventh dream day encore, “Are you guys gonna be up there much longer?”

It was the classic New York rudeness a Midwesterner expected. Now everyone there in the city is so damned nice. The microphone was used by at least five bands a night and smelled like it. Many bands I know got their vans broken into by the crackheads around the corner while they played inside. The bathrooms required wading boots. But I loved hanging out backstage. I loved seeing a Tom Verlaine solo show in the early eighties as I kept getting burned by the hot water pipes next to the stage. My favorite thing though was hanging out after the show next to the Bleeker and Bowery street signs where an image of Patti Smith will always live in my head.

I haven’t been around there much in the last ten years, but I understand things look different. The first walk I took down there in 1980 took me past the Bowery flophouses that the Bowery was long known for. When punk rock moved in it was frontier land; where else can a scene start, but in a place no one else wants. Ask Sue Miller in Chicago, who booked clubs at locations that would be hard to imagine now as anything less than the high rent gentrified frat houses that they turned into. At one time the West End, Cubby Bear, and Lounge Ax all had the kind of vibe that made CBGBs a home, not a house. But neighborhoods change. Wicker Park? Ouch. So the new CBGBs is coming to Vegas. Just promise that when you use the bathroom, take aim a few inches beyond the urinal for old time’s sake.

Posted by Rick Rizzo at 10:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

CUT IT OUT! and NO, That's not a really bad toupee you see floating by -thats my dorsal fin- sheeesh! We, are at the beach, just out of reach of my screaming fans, NOT, as you presumed falsely, floating around the Chicago Art World...

My last little soiree here on Sharkforum came with the realization that what was necessary, was for me to do what I do best, and that is clear the water- by which I mean, to address any number of false ideas about The Shark, his likes and dislikes and, discuss for a moment just exactly how it is the Chicago art world functions -in all of its raging dysfunction that is....time for a little chalk-talk.

The first thing for any artist here to realize is what a completely second class citizen he or she is in the grand scheme of things here....that is, being from Chicago is a huge detriment to a. being taken seriously as an artist (especially if you stay here and don't migrate to either coast) b. being collected here by either major institution and c. being collected by top tier collectors here. We, dear people are summarily dismissed with barely a flick of Mr Curators wrist. -His hand is free to do so as he employs (as all boy-on the-go smart/jet set art mavens do) the ubiquitous shoulder bag style satchel -I mean you really cannot leave the country without one! Understand, what this acrutement allows, is an implicit understanding that todays curator -far from being arts care taker -is more of an art star tourista...crisscrossing the globe in an endless, never ending vacation/'journey' to satiate the bottomless pit of need for culture that emanates from these creatures -supposedly outward...

What is key to getting where we as artists stand here is this: local collectors -in particular the most affluent influential ones are for the most part deeply concerned with appearing hip and up-to-date in their collecting -as seen from New York City. The last thing any of them want is to be seen as podunks from the midwest -which, if you think about it explains;

a. why art movements from here have been pretty much greeted with an embarrassed silence, (please note the local plutocracy attempting to separate themselves from the hoi polloi -by barely acknowledging they even knew Ed Paschke in Jeff Huebners really unfortunate remembrance of Ed in Chicago Magazine -it was, disgusting). Or Jim Nutt -not until Lynne Warren showed his portraits in a small side-room exhibition at the MCA and Robert Storr showing them at Site Santa Fe...did they get any of the attention they deserve -or, as Robert Storr noted when he came here -(I paraphrase-) 'where is the Nutt Portrait hanging at the Art Institute ? Its criminal there isn't one!'

b. most major collectors do it (collecting) elswhere -NYC and the the art fairs, and for here just surrender their judgment over to people like Judith Kirshner and Suzanne Ghez (what are the students doing this week?) -Judith who specializes in presenting a kind of watered and dumbed down version of what was hip in Chelsea several seasons ago- has really defined and consulted on several very influential collections of local work here. Also of interest, its no big secret people that mr. Curator is in Kirshner's back pocket -that they roam Art Basil Miami -and doubtless Art Basil as well, in a rented limo together -this is simply, a fact.

c. Rather than allow Chicago to be a place with its own vision -and allowing that vision to compete in the marketplace of ideas nationally and internationally, these people have created and supported here a vapid, even pathetic imitation of what is considered current and viable -in terms of its hipness factor out on the international circuit, emanating for the most part from NYC. Thus, condeming us to a collegiate version of last years trends passing itself off as an art scene. We should be better.

d. Artists need to understand when you see that crummy piece of conceptual work -or a large bland colorfield/ seen it a million times type academic painting - the reason why it is hanging where it is, has nothing to do with its actually being good -but, signifies that ms Kirshner and others have influenced one of several collectors (-who themselves are quite sure they are the qualified not only as purveyors of Napoleonic complexes and hideous toupees, but arbiters as well, of what art is important here) -to buy and support this work.

Which, leads me to the title of this particular commentary: if its not too much to ask then, aside from having money, what exactly are the qualifications these modern day de Medici's Chicago Style possess in the realm of esthetics?....well lets see, one of the more egregious examples is rumoured to have made a fortune selling what must have amounted to mountains of really crummy cookies, while ironically enough -in what could be seen as light at the end of the imitiation oreo tunnel, another well known couple's expertise derives from the making of shitters -as in, what else could it be, but toilets!

Now, The Shark readily admits to occaisonally frequenting the old haunts of John Sloan/The Ashcan School when in New York, ducking in to the Salmugundi Club on Fifth Avenue to partake in a nice hot piss into some of the finest latrines know to man or beast ( don't worry Tony T-I'm not lifting my fin on your turf -The Shark having been potty trained from a young age and having no desire to impress the Wilmette crowd with his pants piddling ability, unzips his trousers and tries to hit pisser)...nonetheless, as fine in form and stature as these ceramic beauties are, I doubt seriously if that qualifies their creator as an esthete- but then again perhaps in this post duchampian world we habitate, its merely a matter of context......

And last, a quick note for those to thick to figure it out or, those who promulgate a retarded one -dimensional understanding to The Shark's positions, and even the occaisonal painter -bamboozled and duped into parroting this species of specious koolaid in a garbage can: The Shark nether opposes nor promotes any one kind or type of art or way of thinking about art. The Shark has a problem with the institutionalized art world, and, with the political thuggery/academic aggression that has been inflicted upon a wide array of artists here in Chicago by a chosen few. Also, The Shark happens to believe and think -that most of this select group are more minions, 'pets' than they are very good artists -safe to take to dinner parties- as safe as it is to hang their mostly bland work (with much talk of great import hovering around never to be seen or anywhere in evidence in the work itself.....Northwestern for example: those of you old enough to have been around in the 80's doubtless remember the brilliant Gary Justis exhibition at The Cultural Center..a dazzling show of enormous potential and absolute indviduality..unlike anything in NYC -not like anything anywhere. Gary was teaching at Northwestern -for a moment...think about how much more interesting and challenging his work is than the homogenized -got one in every art dept in the country type stuff coming out of there now...how did that happen? Think about it- instead of some poor facsimilies of 'what was 'hot' 15 years ago, we threw away our own voice -or, it was thrown away for us.

( a footnote -how many of you recall the curatorial/ department head muscle flexing session at the Terra Museum back in the late nineties -when to qualify for inclusion in the exhibiton -you had to still be enrolled in an MFA program here......I will never forget walking down Chicago Avenue and running into Judith Geichman -she was one her way to the shows opening and asked me if I was going -"of course I'm not going Judith -not a rats chance in hell' -or somethingto that effect was my response -I then asked Judith -a very reasonable artist ,if she had ever been included in a museum exhibition here -she answered no -but she was going to this one as she had students in it....does anyone doubt this was all and only about art departments/dept heads, and deans? That it had nothing to do with actual art or, artists? Think; museum as art dept showcase and make no mistake about it -the poor students were mere fodder -instruments to illustrate ms Kirshner and company's ambitions. That, is the way it is here.)

A final note, the title of this piece is dedicated to the hefty girth and looming presence that is, 'The Whale Shark' aka Tony Fitzpatrick. This ones for you pal!

Posted by The Shark at 03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

The Hypocrites theatre company invites you to join us for DADA CABARET, the first event of The Hypocrites 10th season. Please join us as we celebrate this milestone in our ten year tradition of innovation.

October 14, 2006
2046 West Carroll Ave., Chicago

A limited number of tickets will be made available for this event. Advanced ordering is recommended.

General admission is $75 and includes live performances, hors d'oeuvres, a silent auction and our 10th anniversary champagne toast. Ask about our $150 Patron Level.

To purchase tickets please visit www.the-hypocrites.com or contact us at 312.409.5578 for more information.

If you cannot attend DADA CABARET, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to The Hypocrites Annual Fund, accessible via

www.the-hypocrites.com.

Your donation will support the day-to-day operations of the company. The Hypocrites is a not-for-profit organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Posted by The Shark at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The gallery Art Forum Ute Barth in Zurich, Switzerland is currently exhibiting its second show of works by the American–Swiss artist Judith Trepp, presenting new, large-sized paintings, works on paper and prints. Trepp is a wonderful painter. She is mid-career, with many shows and sales, yet I would assert that she is still under-exposed — the quality of her paintings should be far more widely known and discussed.


Trepp’s techniques are a fusion of modern and traditional craftsmanship combined with eastern and western methodology. In the works on linen she creates a surface with egg tempera and charcoal or with egg tempera and oil. For her works on paper, Trepp uses an extremely fine Indian handmade paper that creates a lively surface and compliments the extenuated form executed in black ink. The pared-down images, in both works on paper and works on canvas emit a singularly clear, yet intense mood.

The artwork was predominantly created between 2005 and 2006. In each piece Trepp appears to ask herself, “How far can I reduce the line or image and yet retain a compelling visual, aesthetic and emotional impact— how minimal can action painting be?” The paintings generally feature a quasi-monochrome, yet highly atmospheric background, upon which a single variegated stroke sits. The imagery suggests a dance; but a slow, edgy, dance stripped of time.



Trepp regards the surfaces upon which she works as walls. The artist has travelled considerably throughout India during the past ten years, as well as in Japan. Both countries have offered her artistic insights and technical information which are clearly reflected in her paintings. According to the painter, in India the tribal people showed her new ways of looking at colour and texture; the walls of their houses are often painted in simple geometric shapes in natural tints. After the walls are dry, the women rub each section until it glows. Trepp has employed this technique in her paintings. Sections of the opaquely painted angular surfaces are burnished until the gouache or oil paint softly shines. Although egg tempera is a mineral paint composed with little oil, the viewer's eye is drawn into what seems to be a yawning well of pigmentation. Her oil paintings all have an underpainting of at least 5-6 layers of egg tempera that impart to the finished painting an unexpected glow, reflecting light in a unique fashion through the oil layers. The fragile strength of these subtly moving surfaces support and compliment the energized compactness of the visual images.



Trepp interest in wall painting has caused her to create site- specific works for inner and out space. In 2004 she completed her largest piece: a four-story high wall painting for outside space in Switzerland

Trepp has coined the term “Expressive Minimalism” to define her artwork. Clearly, her terminology is a reference to Abstract Expressionism (not German or Neo- Ex) and to Minimalism, two historic movements important to her work.

I once wrote of Trepp's paintings in London's The Art Book, that they present a plaidoyer for the rich artistic and intellectual possibilities available when a creator has a sense for and experiences of a cosmopolitan, intercultural global community. Aesthetic elements discovered in India, Japan, Switzerland, Italy and the US have been internalised and harmonized in Trepp’s painting, fused into quiet personal ruminations which joyfully invite viewers’ own broad associations.



In the newest works this ever more powerfully achieved. Trepp’s paintings, on whatever surface, are quietly rebellious. They unite ostensibly opposite concerns in a dance of beauty.
Galerie Art Forum Ute Barth.

Posted by Mark Staff Brandl at 05:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

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A show of 39 recent photographs will be at Atomix Cafe,
1957 West Chicago, through November, and will be part of Saturday's
"East/West" Ukrainian Village art walk. "Chicago 1900-1959 West"
is comprised mostly of pictures taken on the 1900 block of West Chicago Avenue,
and are part of a larger project capturing daily life in the neighborhood.

Posted by Ray Pride at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The comments by Bill Dolan, Newbie and others on The Shark's previous post may have swerved away from his point, but they raised an intriguing issue — the pressure on artists caused by simply having to make a living. This discussion reminded me of a fascinating blogsite, and a post on it. The site is called "The Intrepid Art Collector." It is by Lisa Hunter. Her mission is to create, encourage and assist new collectors. A worthy cause and she does it with panache on her enjoyable and readable site.


Lisa Hunter describes herself, saying, "I'm a former New Yorker now based in Montreal. My theory is that the day you realize everything in your wardrobe is black and everything in your apartment is white, it's time to leave Manhattan." She continues, " Have questions about the art market? Email me!" A brave statement, if there ever was one.

In my opinion, there are more than enough artists, there are many, many struggling galleries, what we need are far more collectors — and perhaps thereby a whole new world of more varied support for the arts, encouraging individualism instead of consensus in curators. Lisa has written a recently released book also titled The Intrepid Art Collector, about how to collect art. As she says of it " I wrote this book because when I was first starting to collect, I couldn't find any books to help me. Each type of art has its own quirky criteria that determine authenticity and value, and each has its own notorious fakes. I hope that with this book, you can learn in a couple of hours what took me a decade to learn. Art collecting is one of the most rewarding hobbies you can have. I'd like to help you get started."

There is a short interview with Hunter at another blogsite called Kate's Studio. One statement from Hunter will intrigue Chicago artists, especially of the Shark variety. Discussing the "hot" art scene in LA, she says " What LA artists did brilliantly was cultivate local collectors and not worry about the East Coast. In so many other cities, artists and collectors fail to connect because they're both too focused on New York as the only "real" art market." Some words to study closely, especially for my grade-B--NYC-copyist "friends."

The post through which I first became aware of Hunter's site and the one which has bearing on the comments mentioned above, is titled "Where does all the money go?" It makes a breakdown of the typical expenses of a recent art school graduate, beginning with the "cost of a Yale MFA — (tuition plus the “average student budget” for housing and expenses): $92,000. IF you finish in the minimum two-year timetable" — continuing through the cost of health insurance, (oh, that's right due to the infinite wisdom of our compassionate Neo-Cons, the US has almost no health system, I forgot,) — all the way to the cost of a business class ticket to the Venice Biennale — $5,900. Fun reading, ending with the "Schadenfreude that "non-hot" artists feel when collectors lose big money chasing art stars: priceless."

Of course, this last comment must be taken in context, for Hunter is absolutely pro-collector, simply having a little fun at the expense of those who neither think for themselves nor follow their own passions.

Check out her site and her book. They are worthwhile.

A few other facts about art-graduate life, not from Hunter's blog:

A degree in an arts subject reduces average earnings, a study shows. Graduates in these subjects - including art and literature - can expect to make between 2% and 10% less than those who quit education at 18, researchers at Warwick University found.

It is only the art professors who make out okay in the world of higher education, with jobs that give them the flexibility to engage in their own creative pursuits while enjoying the advantage of a reliable income and benefits. The students who do not become teachers fare far worse, with a miniscule percentage still making art 5 years after graduation. Don't forget that I, your Ex-Pat Shark, am, from time to time, one of these professor-types, thus am not decrying the job, everybody's got to have one — however, these facts mean the art education system exists primarily to create art students, not artists, even though more MFAs leave US art schools per year than there were artists as a whole in Renaissance Florence.

Within 10 years after graduation, on the average more than 99% of art graduates no longer make art at all — not just are not successful, but do not make art at all.

What are we creating here? Where should it go? Is it any surprise that there is a hidden classism in the artworld? Do we really need so many people trained in (the theory of possibly producing) art?

Posted by Mark Staff Brandl at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

1. A durable, loosely woven cotton or linen fabric used for curtains or upholstery lining or in industry.
2. A transparent fabric used as a drop in the theater to create special effects of lights or atmosphere.

"I stand in the mass of a crowded city. I see
A woman cradling tulips against a scrim of river.
Tonight I will dream
I have flown over the ocean."

--Magdalena Alagna, "Ash Wednesday"

Posted by Simone Muench at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two recent books make the same powerful case against the current administration in diametrically opposite ways.

“Destined for Destiny”
the Unauthorized Autobiography of George W. Bush
by Scott Dikkers and Peter Hilleren
pub. by Scribner, 167 pp., $19.95

“Out of Iraq”
by William Polk and George S. McGovern
pub. by Simon and Schuster, 143 pp., $15.00

It takes neither Sherlock Holmes, nor Dr. Watson, nor one of the Hounds of the Baskervilles to sniff out the foul stench that has come to comprise the American political debate. Two recent books make this point in different ways. “Destined for Destiny,” by Scott Dikkers and Peter Hilleren, and “Out of Iraq,” by George McGovern and William Polk offer, by turns, gut-busting and sobering views of our current malaise.

“Destined for Destiny” is the quicker read. It is some of the best and sharpest pure satire to land on the non-fiction shelf in years. This is not our parents’ political mockery. This is not the happily bumbling Al Franken lambasting FOX News, nor is it the sneaky, smirking know-it-all humor of Jon Stewart or Keith Olberman. No, at its best, “Destined for Destiny” has a savage edge that recalls vintage Bill Hicks or even Hunter S. T. So it was that while recently watching Stewart lob softballs at Sen. Trent Lott, I ploughed into chapter 8 (“The Clown Faced Zombie I Call My Wife”) the most fierce part of this hilarious book. This is satire at its most vicious. Remembering it is supposed to have been “written” by president Bush, here is a taste:

“When a man reaches a certain age, he feels an urge to settle for the closest woman around him who seems interested. He then embarks upon one of the most rewarding experiences in life.

I was blessed with the good fortune of meeting a wonderful small town Texas woman who had a dazed and clueless stare reminiscent of a goat that had been struck between the eyes with a tire iron – a halting kind of beauty every man desires in a woman. It was at a backyard Texas barbecue of mutual friends. The midday Texas sun shone brightly. Laura was gnawing at meat with her make-up caked face, much like the majestic condor might tug at the cartilage of a road-kill skunk.”

Whoa. That is some seriously nasty invective, and bringing the boss’s wife into it is awfully hard to condone. But it’s hard to say it’s not funny and politics is a bruising game anyway with every family member either fair game or sitting duck. I’m not sure I condone this barbarity in comic entertainment but it definitely made me laugh.

The McGovern/Polk book is a much more sober (and sobering) affair. Beginning with a fistful of chapters detailing the failures of the current war in Iraq and continuing with a grocery list of how the war is damaging our own interests, “Out of Iraq” eventually gets around to presenting a startlingly detailed program for troop withdrawal and Iraqi reconstruction. It is in this section that the authors’ thesis gets a bit shaky.

Up until then, the book is both an academic catalogue and a rollicking good history of American military misadventures and misdeeds. It is particularly incisive on the subject of guerilla warfare and the three guerilla wars in which the US has been involved. These are: the Phillipine Insurrection of 1899, the Vietnam War and the current Iraq war. Each was or has been an unmitigated disaster. The US military, as the authors eagerly point out, was not designed to fight guerilla wars. They are at the best and most eloquent in enumerating the myriad human rights failures of the current campaign; not just the torture which has become commonly known but also the use of white phosphorous (a poison gas) on civilians and the extensive deployment of depleted radioactive munitions.

McGovern and Polk have an admirably thorough and well-considered plan for the salvation of Iraq. The list of needs includes construction, education, profit-sharing between the Iraqis and US oil companies, environmental reclamation, even an official diplomatic apology to the Iraqi people. The plans are humane, sensible, expensive but much much cheaper than continuing the war. They are also completely unrealistic. What the authors propose is nothing less than nation building on a scale not seen since the Marshall Plan. While it is probably true that many of these strategies would save America money in the long run, what stateside constituency is going to get behind extensive economic assistance to Iraq when their own jobs are fleeing offshore and their children are getting shot? Politically, the ideas in this book are only slightly more than pipe dreams.

With McGovern on the bookshelf and Henry Kissinger advising the president, how can anyone deny any longer that we are, as a nation, re-fighting the Vietnam War?

Posted by Paul K at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Geoffrey Nutter was born in Sacramento, California. He is the author of A Summer Evening, winner of the 2001 Colorado Prize, and Water's Leaves and Other Poems, winner of the 2004 Verse Prize (Wave Books). His poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 1997 and The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, daughter, and son.

The Black Dog

When I was walking in the woods
with a gun and a great and undulating V
of ducks above me and the red

leaves of the maples sweet and crystallized
I saw a black dog come out of a pond
and break into a million light-tipped crystals

as he shook the water from his fur.
I was Distorted Man--distorted by what
I did not know. And what Avatar

came sparkling then? And what
spark-bedizened wand came shooting
off sparks and formed the Sparkling

Man? I was Blinded Man--blinded by
a great distorting thing. The black
dog came and licked my hand.



*Thanks to Greg Purcell for directing me to this particular poem.--sm

Posted by Simone Muench at 06:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This wonderful episode airs in Austin on OCT.28th.
Please check your local listings for YOUR air-time.



Link to the Austin City Limits page.......

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Link to the Austin City Limits page.......

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Posted by Todd V. Wolfson at 03:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Art in Display, a storefront art exhibition October 13-15, 2006
Opening Reception: October 13, 2006 6-9PM
Meet the Artists: October 14, 2006 3pm
Location: Participating stores on W Division Street between Damen and Ashland

Chicago, IL – Art in Display is an art exhibition curated by Kristyna Comer composed of storefronts along W Division St between Damen and Ashland. Art is Display features art installations by local and national artists in the stores’ display windows, placing art in a new, public venue. Media include photography, sculpture, drawing, fiber, video, mixed media, and more.

Art in Display is participating in the eleventh annual Chicago Artists Month, an event that showcases emerging and established local artists. The Chicago Artists Month featured artist and participant in Art in Display, Ursula Sokolowska, will be exhibiting her work that combines installation and photography at D/Vision, an optical boutique, located at 1756 W Division.

Art in Display is a curatorial experiment that utilizes commercial space for its visual dominance and accessibility to a wide audience, placing art exhibition in a public-viewing domain. The storefronts offer new installation possibilities and activate a new space for art exhibition.

The opening reception will take place at the stores along Division St. on Friday, October 13 from 6 – 9 PM, including Habit, Cattails, Casa de Soul, D/Vision Optical, Alliance Bakery, An Je Nu, Lola, Pump, Noir, and Nina. Artists include Peripheral Media Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Natalia Ivancevich, Karin Patzke, Ursula Sokolowska, Dee Clements, Uninhabitable Mansions (Brooklyn, NY), Ben Durham (Midway, KY), Package Deals (New York, NY), Kim Hoffman, Eric Portis (Denver, CO), and Anne Lass.

Please visit www.artindisplay.com for additional information and a complete listing of events.

Posted by ed at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.



Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.



To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.



I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.



Poem: "Lying in a Hammock on William Duffy's Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota" by James Wright
Bird: Cooper's Hawk, Accipiter gentilis (aka chicken hawk) killed by cold and disease December 2005. Now in a drawer with other chicken hawks at the Field Museum.

Posted by KC Clarke at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Texas-size career decision awaits Nicholas Tremulis

Andy Downing
Published October 6, 2006

By most standards, Nicholas Tremulis has lived something of a charmed life. The Chicago-born singer has recorded with Keith Richards at the Rolling Stone guitarist's house, performed live with Rick Danko just days before the Band bassist's death in 1999 and organized a series of charity shows for Neon Street for Homeless Youth dubbed "The Waltz." The annual event, which took place at the Metro from 2000-'04, drew the likes of Billy Corgan, Alejandro Escovedo and Jeff Tweedy.

For more of this piece go here.

Posted by ed at 09:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I get more people asking, “When are you guys going to play another show with Blondie?” than just about any other question.

Blondie is an old friend of mine that I met through producer Rob Fraboni. We wound up recording on an album together some years later just after Blondie had joined The Rolling Stones. This might seem an unbelievable situation, as it would for so many musicians out there, but a look at Blondie’s, “secret weapon” pedigree over the years makes you wonder what took the Stones so long?

After arriving in London from South Africa at the age of 16 with his group, The Flame, he and band were immediately discovered and scooped up for the Beach Boys label (Brother Records) by no other than Carl Wilson. They recorded a now hard to find self-titled record that did marginally well and played the west coast, quickly becoming a top club draw. But the band, like many thrust into a new environment, blew apart and were set to go back to Africa when Carl decide to get Blondie and drummer Ricky Fataar (Now with Bonnie Raitt) to become part of the Beach Boys. (He told me his first performance with them was on bass and vocal, live on Radio Berlin! A version of “Surf’s Up”)

From there came recording dates with the Beach Boys that culminated with the album, “Holland” and the hit single in which Blondie sang the lead: “Sail On Sailor”. This version of The Beach Boys can also be heard on “The Beach Boys In Concert”, (One of the best bands ever heard, in my opinion) as well as the “Carl And The Passions” record.

From there comes a messy breakup with the BB’s, a solo album on Electra and the beginning of a career as sideman/secret weapon for the likes of the Band, Byrds, David Johansen and countless other recordings all the way up to the Stones.

Blondie was also the first artist, along with Rick Danko, to sign on as a performer on the First Waltz concert series NTO put on some years back. He was on the road with the Stones at the time and sent me a copy of a solo record he was in the middle of finishing and said to pick a song to learn for the show. This is how our relationship as Blondie’s backing band came to be. We couldn’t settle on just one! Over the years, the band and I have learned nearly two albums worth of songs and have toured the country together as a two-headed show. (His and mine)

Our reason for playing together this time is two-fold: 1. The Stones are back in town, which brings Blondie back with them and a chance for us to play together. 2. The release of Blondie’s first solo album in over 25 years: “Between Us”.

Also of note: Blondie, John Pirruccello and myself along with a truly bad ass bunch of musicians recorded a gospel record with Keith Richards for Marsha Hansen, (Gospel singer and Keith’s sister in-law) which is available along with her book on gospel hymns, entitled: “My Soul Is a Witness: The Message of the Spirituals in Word And Song”. It was recorded in Keith’s home studio, where we all tried like hell not to swear our heads off in front of Marsha. For three days, the band from Hell, led by Satan’s pal, ran through a hit list of gospel songs. What came out was a wildly ambient recording produced by Fraboni and Keith, chronicling either the ascent of our souls or the decent of hers. (Strangely enough, I’d quit drinking around two months earlier. A baptism in fire!)

Won’t be playing any gospel stuff on this show, however. Just Blondie’s and my own.

These shows tend to sell out, due to the innuendo of a Richard’s jam session, so it might be a good idea to get your tickets early at Fitzgerald’s or Ticketmaster. Hope to see you there.

Posted by Nicholas Tremulis at 05:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

And I am not discussing that particular species of bland, tepid and unaccomplished, even unskilled, academic abstraction 'The Ren' trots out in various guises every year or two in lieu of anything even mildly interesting- You know, the same psuedo-conceptual innocuous drech that has been foisted upon us for the last two decades by a small group of academics, and dealers, and collectors -(think Howard Stone, and unfortunately (given his brilliant international collecting)-Lou Manilow)- and last and definetly least , the recipients of this unwarranted attention, the pet artists known collectively here as, 'The Smart Set' and/or, 'the Kirshner Clones'. Lets face it, the last painting exhibition with enough of anything worth sinking ones teeth into at the 'Ren', being Albert Oehlen over a decade ago in 1995.............

Why now? Why would The Shark attack an institution -particularly since one of its main denizens (Hamza Walker) just swam over to see me... -but isn't that what happens? The Shark sees and....attacks! Actually, the conversation Mr.Walker and I had was for me interesting in that he is such a nice man and, your basic academic when it comes to looking or thinking about art.....a painting really cannot be seen for what it is for instance without the context of the standard mumbo jumbo we at sharkforum are so fed up with..without getting into a one-sided thus unfair description of our dialog.....I will say it started with a painting of mine being discussed in terms of David Salle?.huh?!@!@!@# and progressed accordingly (downhill fast-) from there......

Peter Doig, Luc Tymans,.......these are not painters that painters actually find interesting -these guys are the type of 'artists' who paint, that people like Hamza can comfortably discuss...why? hmm, perhaps its because they are both kind of shitty painters -so that makes it OK.......

Time and again, I was reminded that painting skill did not actually matter.......excuse me, but since the language of 'paint' is spoken by a 'painter' -while painting with yep, you guessed it, paint(- I know I am generalizing considering the context of now....)..can you imagine someone saying to a Sonny Rollins or, a Jeff Beck....'it doesn't really matter how well you play your respective instrument'.........it doesn't matter that Jimi Hendrix was a great instrumentalist or that de Kooning was a beautiful master painter, they would have still just oozed out their essence all over the place, completely, (out of the ether no doubt), realized -or maybe, they should have just cut to the chase and used 'actual' language and told us what they meant...done an installation...I mean music is probably dead too right?-...........pretty dumb stuff no? Why is it that these people cannot get how process and intuition happen? How intuition without process or, with the limited process of theoretical construct coming via cognitive thought, subsequent linguistic diadacticism.....is kind of like.....let me pick the right signifier:.how about a stick, in the mud?

Fellow Chicago Artists! Hello! Process is good! Image making is OK!....if you are compelled by the international art market, don't worry! Charles Saatchi and his pals have all dumped their conceptual collections and are focused on...painting......LA, New York, London, Berlin.....painting is being shown.......its only here, and in other bastions of the academy, where we have the firmly ensconsed 'smart set' that no one really cares about anywhere else, clinging on for dear life....where things are still really ..not so interesting...

You can't really blame Hamza or ms Ghez...neither of these people have any training from what I understand when it comes to painting which goes a long way towards explaining 'The Rens' stodgy, uninteresting -one could say cautious and completely party line academic take on it...one must also understand the climate that surrounds that place: how many of you for instance have experienced Ms Deborah Lovely (the head of Mr Curators collecting group -and a Ren regular) for instance -or any of her fellow suburbanite art mavens from Wilmette? .....to understand where Chicago art has gone -you must get who the audience is. These are the people that find a cibachrome of some very average looking guy peeing his pants 'daring' 'provocative' ....or some art bimbo sucking her toe as an occaison to ooooh and ahhh...if you hail from the nether regions mentioned, apparently its either Kinkade, Painter of Light, or Tasset, Pisser of Pants...with seemingly no other readily available options..- and obviously an at best narrow middle ground, given the artists close proximity to one another, both employing a form of gimmickry in lieu of actual form... .funny, at least for me and most of the people I know and respect......most of this stuff is just embarrassingly dumb....in fact, if there was one revelation that came out of the exhibition last year of Lou Manilows collection of 'The Smart Set' -at the MCA, it was that it wasn't so much a matter of the work having not aged very well, or that the few painting in the show completely sucked, it was the realization that work this insipid and, specious could never have been anything but....

Perhaps I am being too harsh; maybe there actually is some semblance of self awareness within this group....when Gaylon Gerber 'hosts' other artists painting his paintings perhaps it is with the realization that his one high school level idea of painting some form of image and then covering it with 'Gerber Gray'...has really run its course. Perhaps dealers like Donald Young for instance, will consider the implications and, ramifications of this conceit and instead of providing the likes of Mr Gerber with future exhibitions, yet more squandered wall space, will actually take his notion at face value and going one step further, will break new ground and consider the apparently exotic, even wild idea of showing a painter who can actually do it -you know, paint.

Posted by The Shark at 02:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBacks (0)

1. Anatomy. the flat, movable bone at the front of the knee; kneecap.
2. Biology. a panlike or cuplike formation.
3. Zoology. any limpet of the family Patellidae.
4. Archaeology. a small pan or shallow vessel.

"licks you, puts its wet finger in your mouth. Swollen,
the poem fits itself around your patella."

--Wendy Carlisle, "Love Poem after Meta Kušar"

Posted by Simone Muench at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Brigitte Byrd was born in Paris, and worked there as a dancer before moving to the U.S. in 1988. She received her Ph.D. in 2003 from Florida State University. Currently, she is Assistant Professor of English at Clayton State University. Her book Fence Above the Sea was recently released by Ahsahta Press (2005).


From requiem series
           in memory of Bernard Fourneron (1932-2002)

1. (a breath)

          And then, there is another day

The father is a breath. This is not a mistake it is. There is a question that
is not answered and it is hard to turn away from moving water. Why no
chance no memory no incense no scent no sound. There is a father who
sleeps and sleeps and slips. Is this the answer. The father is not a priest.
If I dance are you dancing. J'aime la musique pour les morts. The air is
wind. His chest fills with requiem. The son sings. Another plane another
question. The daughter waves in my head like a performer. That I wear
my grief in my hair is not ironical it is there in the faucet. A mind is lost and
it is not a question in the sea. The hands are covered with freckles. Is
memory the future and it is lost. Another breath when a mind is not. One
of these mornings: (re)play: You will look for me. Streamsound. Replace the
words and I'll be gone.

                                                                                          And then,


2. (silence)


          And then, there is another day

Posted by Simone Muench at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

1. Performance of or skill in performing magic or conjuring tricks with the hands; sleight of hand.
2. A show of skill or deceitful cleverness.

Posted by Simone Muench at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Admittedly its a little early yet for Thanksgiving -nonetheless, -you can never predict when something smelly and blubbery to chomp on will come floating your way...and there I was circling around that bloated, boring and bland -(will this guy ever figure out that my argument pertaining to him as well as all Kirshner clones is essentially political, not, esthetic -I mean, aren't members of the smart set supposed to by definition actually be smart?)Tony Tasset interview on Bad At Sports trying to whet my appetite for an attack, when along comes this far more interesting and enticing rancid whale carcass...

Thank God for small or in this particular instance, rather large favors...saved by the smell-

Posted by The Shark at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

MySisterThatIsNotMySisterAndItIsJustSoWeirdThatWeEvenGetToBeFriends
BecauseSheLivesThousandsOfMilesAwayIAmSoHappyWhenSheComesToVisit
AndMickeyKnewHerRightAwayInHerHeartTooMySister...

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Posted by Todd V. Wolfson at 05:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)