Category Archives: Writing

The Ox-Bow Studio

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“Image-making in this place seemed axiomatic. You live to make. Or, at least, in living you make. Let us take the ninety-degree turn twice and go back to where we once were, shall we? It was fun, challenging, and worthy; the most worthy and real thing I did that summer. It is the most abiding thing I did, even now. Alas, all the rest is dust, chaff, and stubble – ‘which are burnt and which the wind drives away’ – though it all was so beautiful while strewn on the ash pile there. And we, like the old pagans, went down to color it and cover our nakedness with it.” – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.

Above: the studio I used during the Summer of 2001 while at Ox-Bow on a Fellowship Residency. Click for larger view.

Below: a sign one of my fellow Fellows left for me one day. I’ve saved it all these years. I have a feeling who left it on my chair that night, but was never sure. Click for larger view.

Two New Catalogs

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I’ve recently collected some bodies of work into small catalog format. The Lamentations 3 Series, from 2009-2011, and shown recently at Gordon College in Massachusetts, is collected along with images of the copper plates in process, some installation shots, and an essay that I gave as a lecture at Gordon during the opening for my show there. Click the image below for more info.

The second book is a collection of some of the 100 or so Locus Series works that I created between 1999 and 2001. I present about 20 images along with a short essay I wrote in 2001 when I concluded the series. I also wrote another short contemplation this year to reflect on what the Locus Series has meant to me. Click the image below for more info.

Into Dust

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“Can I remember it only in some half-form? Can I remember it only as a chimera, made of memory and will and hope? Can I not recall it totally, fully, being in myself as I was? Does no one understand the fullness of the emptying time? Does no one sense it in themselves, that time when they lost the tether? Let it loose again, to feel that it is gone! Alone. This is the deep pit of sensing, where I know the contour of death and dying. Suspended above the abyss. Glory.” – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.

“Look… an abyssal missive, a doctrine of smoke… ‘into dust.’

In the end I suppose that I wish for it, (and sometimes still seek it with nervous hope) that confusion. Sweet psychological instability – the wobbly legs of a newly drunken lad – here as the land curves away beneath me. I guess that, at times, the seeking is more interesting to me than the knowing. I’ve seen it here, right here on this land; is there self-loathing? What’s beneath the surface of us all? Did I see myself here for the first time, or was I just revealed anew, from a novel angle and in skewed light? The absolute beauty of being permissive, of stepping aside and watching oneself from the wings – it can’t be beat, though it stays with you in some way I can’t yet fully understand. I don’t think I ever will understand it. Watching others though – there’s the bittersweet fruit. The fallen human trembles and tumbles through life, and even at the lowest point renders to itself the most poetic, romanticized stroke.” – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.

Still falling
Breathless and on again
Inside today
Beside me today
A round broken in two
’til your eyes shed into dust
Like two strangers turning into dust
’til my hand shook the way I fear

I could possibly be fading
Or have something more to gain
I could feel myself growing colder
I could feel myself under your face
Under…your face

It was you
breathless and torn
I could feel my eyes turning into dust
And two strangers turning into dust
Turning into dust.

“Into Dust” by Mazzy Star

All images above are from digital photos taken between May and August 2001.

Sense of Place

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There is a great Bad At Sports interview with long time Ox-Bow cook and Director of Chicago’s Roots & Culture gallery Eric May. It’s awesome. Check it out here.

Above: Eric in his grilling glory, summer 2001.

A lot of what Eric talks about in the conversation with Claudine Ise reminded me of my favorite parts of Ox-Bow life… it creates its own micro-cultural climate, its own peculiar and special sense of place. Here are some of my thoughts on it…

“It is interesting that the wonderful mixture of scents is always with you: air, fire, dirt, grass, and water. There is the staleness of cigarettes, the pungency of weed, the hoppy brews left after the parties. There are dinners of steak, shrimp, pork chops, Portobello mushrooms and ever-present feta and peas. There are soups, fish, teas, deserts, additions, and all; delights each and every day. All manner of body odors redound. The lesser animals also make their presence known, as does the mildew. Rain always works its strange rejuvenations to counter the constancy of the Lagoon. There is the rotting wood, the wet leaves, the morning mists, and my hair with its own unwashed, unkempt glory.” – – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.

 

Ten Years Gone

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Ten years ago today – May 27th, 2001 – I arrived at Ox-Bow for a three month long fellowship residency.

It’s hard to express to everyone around me how important my time there was, how transformative it was, how much it has stayed with me and influenced everything that I am.

“It is a circus of cycles: rejuvenation and writhing. And each year new initiates take up residence even as the remains of those who had gone before continue a silent obliteration. To call its colors: all manner of greens and the diffuse, languid blues of late summer days, tinseled pinpricks of red and gold. It is a baptism of twilight and smoke, a romance – like long forgotten songs that still ring in the air – of memories echoing in a shell, of sounds muffled in the ear.” – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.

Above: The Ox-Bow Lagoon in the gloaming, summer 2001.

On Intuition and Analysis

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My latest essay, On Intuition and Analysis, is up over at Neoteric Art. Click HERE to take a look… and leave a comment there if you’ve got thoughts to add to the discussion!

“The ways that the human mind manifests itself in creative activity are vast and various. People have theorized about and argued over modes of creative impetus for millennia. Artists and lovers of art are constantly attempting to plumb these depths, always looking for some elucidation of the mechanisms and maneuvers our minds utilize when we are in that universally recognized but seemingly undefined state that is creation.” Click the link above to read more…