thank you x a million!

This is long overdue, but THANK YOU to everyone who helped me with my show, offered to help me with my show, gave any input on my work at any point, walked past the gallery and glanced over for 0.2 seconds, read one of my postcards, or did anything else that could remotely be connected to the production of my senior thesis.

I deinstalled last Friday and just finished reading through the sign-in book and let me tell you – it was like reading a high school yearbook filled with notes and hearts and friends and people I don’t quite remember, only 9834285 times better. So many overly-nice things and words of encouragement that made my debacles with drawing and painting the walls and ESPECIALLY framing totally worth it.

My photos of the show are atrocious, but hopefully a combination of Photoshop and finding pictures taken by the gallery staff can amend that.

Thank you again to everyone!

Med school’s sure going to have a hard time trying to top this.

 

mark jenkins

Mark Jenkins is hilarious, in a slightly creepy but mostly genius sort of way. He is an American street artist who creates public installations by creatively placing sculptures in various cities around the world. Jenkins is perhaps best known for sculptures he creates out of clear mailing tape, but in my opinion the funniest and most subtle yet effective works of his are the ones in which he places very realistic looking people and objects in odd, questionable situations.

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All images property Mark Jenkins. Source: http://www.xmarkjenkinsx.com.

Rome

Rome

Rome

Rome

Rome

Dublin

Winston-Salem

Bordeaux

Malmö

Malmö

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

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These installations all incorporate a strong element of humor, but one that is inseparable from a simultaneous feeling of unease and slight discomfort. Especially with pieces like those in Rome with the person lounging in the hammock or the person with their legs sticking out of the dumpster, there is a realism to these people that is hard to ignore, despite the ridiculous situations Jenkins manufactures. While the absurdity is more obvious in pieces such as the one with the man’s head stuck in the wall of the building, there is still an element of belief that the viewer cannot completely let go of due to the perfect scale and casual placement of Jenkins’ sculptures. They are funny… but only after the feelings of nervousness, confusion, and/or uneasiness are induced in the viewer first.

The “people” are placed out in the open without any signs or wall labels or indication of them being part of any sort of artistic series, and cities with high volumes of pedestrian traffic are the perfect locations for them. Jenkins does a brilliant job of making just about every passerby a part of his work, whether they stop and look or not. Those who do stop and look participate by acknowledging the work as something that is just not quite right and something that was purposefully placed in the respective environment. Those who do not stop and look conversely participate by allowing the work to blend in perfectly with the surroundings, which is equally as important in order to maintain subtlety and the important element of trickery.

Ultimately, this generates a delicate but necessary balance in Jenkins’ work: his pieces must fit in to the city as generally inconspicuous objects, but also embody just a hint of quirkiness and strangeness just noticeable enough to make viewers do a double-take. Even after careful inspection, Jenkins still retains a sense of ambiguity about the work and does not ever fully give away that these are sculptures of fake people. He lets the audience figure it out on their own, working through their own doubts and uncertainty, which makes the work incredibly engaging to a broad range of viewers.

Aside from being so clever and also slightly awkward, Jenkins’ work also puts a whole new spin on street art. While graffiti is the classic vehicle of public art, Jenkins’ work retains that raw quality of graffiti, while incorporating the high level of craft and skill of the historically renowned high art of sculpture. His work has a completely different feel than pristine sculpture gardens or iconic pieces such as the LOVE sculpture in Philly, yet Jenkins’ pieces are just as well-made and just as publicly displayed. This work straddles the line between borderline-vandalism and professionally-presented art, which makes it all the more unique and striking.

Overall, I love these city installations and although they could not be more different from the art I make, I cannot help but sing their praises and be continually impressed by Jenkins’ creativity.

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artist’s website: http://www.xmarkjenkinsx.com

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crunch time.

My show opens tomorrow!

Just finished installing about 91% of it, but I don’t love the spacing so I will probably redo some or all of it tonight after work.

After a ridiculous and stressful fiasco involving buying frames, realizing they were cheap and worthless, being in denial and using them anyway, looking for new ones, not finding new ones, buying frameless clips, realizing the clips did not fit, and improvising with several yards of mailing tape, I CANNOT wait for everything to [hopefully] fall in place.

At least I’m serving chocolate at my opening reception. That’s one thing I know will be a success.

 

chris crites

Chris Crites is a bag painter, which is basically what it sounds like (he paints on paper bags), only much more interesting. In a longstanding series, he paints mugshots of criminals from the 1890s to 1950s on brown paper bags with brightly colored acrylics. His paintings resemble screen prints with their blocked colors and clean lines. The titles of most paintings indicate the crime the person committed, which adds just enough information to suck you in but not enough information to give it all away.

As Crites explains in his artist statement: “Each one of these images has a story. Often times I have no idea what the real story is, but it’s hard not to make one up. One of the reasons I paint them is to bring out another possible story, for people to look at and think about.” These bag paintings are immediately striking in their modern graphic aesthetic, while the content piques even more interest in the viewer after the initial visual appeal.

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Source for all images: http://www.bagpainter.com.

Polygamy. 2008. 5″x7″.

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Selling Obscene Material to Minors. 2007. 9″x11″.

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Beat Husband. Threw Body in River. 2004. 9″x11.75′.

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Theft from Coin Operated Device. 2006. 5″x7″.

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Rape. 2010. 9″x12″.

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Murder – Hammer. 2005. 8″x11″.

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“You got the wrong guy.” 2011. 13″x15″.

“You got the wrong guy.” 2011. Detail shot.

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As straightforward as the titles of these pieces are, they are totally appropriate to the work and provide just enough information to give the viewer an in to the piece, while simultaneously retain just enough ambiguity to generate continued interest. Just as Crites states in his artist statement, you can’t help but come up with possible scenarios about the crime and personally, my imagination and curiosity were sparked once I knew just one fact about the person in the mugshot. There are generalizations about the type of people that commit each type of crime and Crites takes advantage of this by using just a face and a crime as the two main elements of his paintings.

The fact that the paintings are based on actual crimes and mugshots also makes them that much more interesting. There is a contrast between subject matter and media: while these were real people’s mugshots, the method of painting is modern and very poster-esque – done in a style that even President Obama was depicted through in his 2008 election posters. The posterized look retains the signature portrait style of a mugshot, but re-represents it through a new perspective. Adding on the brown paper bag substrate prevents the screenprint aesthetic from becoming wholly clean and precise, and hints at the history of the likely forgotten mugshots. The paper bag, with its wrinkles and innate discarded nature, helps forge a link between the content and media.

In some of his recent works, such as “You got the wrong guy” above, Crites switches up his painting a bit. The titles become quotes rather than crimes, and the detail and shading of the person are created through written text rather than blocks of color. This adds another layer of complexity to the paintings, as it gives the viewer a slightly more intense look into the person’s story, yet maintains a certain distance that still leaves you wondering what happened.

This new style of combining painting and writing additionally adds in the element of secrecy, an inherent part of crime and punishment. Upon first glance, the writing may just look like normal shading but a closer look reveals the words hidden among the face, just as a true criminal’s story and methods are often slowly unveiled as a case is inspected over time. Even up close, many words are still illegible and will remain forever unknown to the viewer, just as there are elements of criminals’ stories that are never made public. The truth doesn’t always come out in crime, and Crites incorporates this idea in his more recent mugshot paintings.

Overall, I believe that the simplicity and seriality of Chris Crites’s mugshot works are two of their greatest qualities. No one painting is too overdone or overworked, and the volume of paintings Crites has created over several years mirrors the police system of archiving and documentation over time. Crites utilizes a similar style for several other works, but his mugshots series is still my favorite.

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All images copyright Chris Crites, 2000 – 2012.

Artist’s website: http://www.bagpainter.com