Jennifer D Anderson

Phantom Sightings - LACMA

My recent exploration to LACMA to see the Phantom Sightings Exhibition, introduced me to the work of Ken Gonzales Day. The images, such as Tombstone, shown here are digitally manipulated photographs of lynchings that occurred in California. The photographs were actually postcards printed to commemorate the event and Gonzales Day's manipulation of the image is the removal or eraser of the victim.

The work is haunting in many ways. It seems to speak volumes to the validity of images, in particular photography and its ability to portray history and ideas. The original context of these images, to record the brutal murder of an individual for another's pleasure (a letter home to Mom), is absurd to a contemporary audience. Removed from the time period in which they were created, do these images have a stronger efficacy?

Does the removal of the victim remind us of how their life was cruelly ended, erased, if you will. Does this also let the victim become anyone the viewer images him or her to be, hinting at the fact of how many people have been the victims of cruelty and terror due to race, sex, social creed, and so on?  Or is the opposite true? Is the removal of the victim from these photographs taking the power away from the image and making it palatable to everyday museum goers?

I am unsure, but I keep going back and looking and thinking about what I am seeing. The composure of these people in regards to what they were seeing is so startling to me. And perhaps Gonzales Day has let me focus on that alone in these pieces, pointing out the spectator in us all. 

I Exist

So easy enough to say I have fallen off of the blogging bandwagon due to a very busy spring. But I am back and hope to get this rolling very soon. As one of my first returning posts, I thought I would share information on a project I am currently working on since it is about proving the one thing that my blog has not done in the past few months: that I do indeed exist.

I am participating in a workshop that has asked each participant to bring proof they exist to the first meeting. No perimeters were mentioned on how one would prove they exist only that they did. With a lot of brainstorming and deep thinking,  I came up with the idea of creating a document that others would sign to indeed verify I exist. I see this as mimicking the official government documents that serve for posterity that one is born, married or deceased. So rather than relaying on the bureaucrats paperwork to prove I do exist, I with the help of others am creating my own documentation. The form is here, if you would like to sign and make your statement that I exist!

Vivian Yonkey - Super Librarian

This is a portion of the text from a recent article from Emory and Henry College about my dear friend Vivian Yonkey and her great projects at the Knox County Public Library in Tennessee that I just had to share. Pictured is Vivian's puppet self-portrait and her reading dog! I don't get to chat with Vivian much these days, but when I do I can hear the excitement in her voice over each and every project she does with the library.

Librarians used to have a rather staid reputation: glasses on the end of the nose, severe hairdos, and a penchant for a stern “SSSSHHHHH!”

These days, librarians like Vivian Yonkey (E&H Class of ’86), a children’s librarian for the Knox County Public Library, are giving the profession a real make-over.  For starters she has a reading dog.

“She listens as kids read, in case you needed clarification about that,” said Yonkey.

Her terrier-mix named Maxie is a rescue dog. The library is working to become H.A.B.I.T. (Human-Animal Bond in Tennessee) certified so Maxie can travel to libraries and schools with Yonkey. According to its website, H.A.B.I.T. is a community group of volunteers working together to explore the circumstances and consequences of the human-animal bond. Members of the UT-Knoxville Colleges of Veterinary Medicine and Social Science are involved in the project.

Yet young readers seem far less concerned with Maxie’s credentials than getting to hang out with her.
Yonkey is also creating giant puppets for the library’s forth annual Children's Festival of Reading Parade. This summer's festival theme is space and aliens with "Starship Adventure @ Your Library," and will feature award-winning authors Mo Willems and Ruth White. The organizers are expecting to see more than 10,000 children and adults at this year’s event. Vivian is creating “giant alien puppets” to include a 3-foot tall baby, a set of twins measuring in at 6 feet tall and adults that will top out at around 12 feet.

“I am sewing them myself. Last year we learned the horrors of papier-mâché on this scale. The puppets turned out great in the end, but the building process was a nightmare,” said Yonkey.

She was originally hired to manage the Children’s Room at the main library, but when there was a recognized need for system-wide library programming and outreach to schools and community groups, library officials turned to Yonkey to fill that void. Now she’s the Children’s Programming and Outreach Specialist.

Yonkey designs programming for all 18 libraries that come under the heading of the Knox County Library system. She creates outreach programs for county schools, daycares, preschools, Boys & Girls Clubs, YMCA’s, YWCA’s, home-school organizations, and more. She teaches teacher in-service, teachers-in training, and parenting classes on early childhood literacy and library skills. She also finds herself working on committees and representing the library on television.

“I do storytelling, music, games, crafts -- anything and everything I can think of that is both educational and seriously fun,” said Yonkey.

Yonkey talks energetically when she describes what would, for most of us, seem like an exhausting list of events and activities. “I truly love my job and I hope that comes through. I honestly feel like I have lived my whole life preparing for it.

Jessica Curtaz

I thought I would give a shout out to Jessica Curtaz. Jessica was one of the first artists I met in the LA area when we were both hanging out at Josephine Press. Although the subject matter of her work has changed over the past now two and a half years, her careful and immaculate drawing style has not. The depth of time and energy placed into her drawings is amazing and  gives her work an extraordinary sense of  surface and presence.

Later this month Jessica and I will be showing our work together at CSU Long Beach in a show curated by Stacie Martinez on the Body Without Organs. 

Figure and Form Opening Tonight

I have an opening at the Brand Library this evening and have to wonder, since it is Groundhog's day, what will happen if all the participating artist's see their shadows?

Los Angeles Art Show and Fine Print Fair

Here are some of many things that caught my attention at last week's event.

Tobey C. Moss gallery has a wonderful collection of prints from the 20th Century and the lithographs of Ruth Asawa definitely caught my eye. Heavy handed and focusing on the rich velvety blacks and tusche washes which lithography is known for, these works show another side of the artist largely known for her intricate and delicate wire and paper sculptures.

Masao Yamamoto's photograph's at PDX where breathtaking especially the small scale pieces inset in old boxes and covered in resin. Beautiful and full of a nostalgia, the work  had me entranced. Caught within resin they seemed perfect little gems, a moment caught like a fly in amber.

Greg Kucera gallery had a nice selected of works including a few paintings by Darren Waterston. who has solo show at their Seattle gallery at the moment. With a wonderful sense of color and handling of paint, Waterston seems to capture a dream like ether in his work.  Also at their booth were pieces by Katy Stone whose recent exhibition at the Kucera gallery was poetically  titled Splendor Rot. Walking a line back and forth between two and three dimensions by creating her work through painting on and then cutting acetate, Stones work was wonderful. Cast shadows from each piece cascade across the wall creating complex and changing forms.

Boise

I am in Boise, ID for the next few days as a visiting artist at  Northwest Nazarene University. With a solo exhibition in their Friesen Gallery, I am also on campus interacting with students and faculty and enjoying the area. So far so good, the views are gorgeous and I am very amazed at what the powerhouse artist/department chair/gallery director Amanda Hamilton has done here with the program. She has shown some of my favorite artists here in Idaho! Including Megan and Murray McMillan and Alison Owen and believe me from speaking with Amanda the list will continue to grow, her students should feel lucky.

Kesha Bruce

Thanks to her comment to my blog about  Matti Allison, I recently discovered Kesha Bruce's work (her piece Sweet Sister's is shown here.) I found her work to be very engaging, a wonderful mix of nostalgia, longing and a poignant sense of honesty and disarming humor.  Her use of  digital media, and physical paint and collage is also something I resonate with.

New to LA

Checking happenings and such on-line recently, I found so many posts about Eli Broad and LACMA that I feel there is not much reason to add to the dialog especially due to all the wonderful questions Marshall Astor posted about the situation on his blog. My musings are only about whether this is the beginning of a new paradigm that includes among other things the collector's disregard of  established institutions and formation of their own system for public distribution and showing of work which would allow for any such incomes (think reproduction rights and entry fees to exhibitions and so on) to remain within the collector or the collector's family's control. Time will tell.

Otherwise, it was interesting to find April Street now lives in Los Angeles. Ironic to me, since April received her BFA just a few years before me from the same small art department in a smallish university. Also ironic since in different years, we both to Italy with the same study abroad program and somehow are both here in LA - small world perhaps. April has an opening this weekend at Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Bergamot just a short walk away from my old stomping grounds at Hiromi Paper - too many coincidences.

Announcement - Friesen Art Galleries, Nampa ID