The Ballou Collection – Auxier, McMurray, Sandbothe

Posted on April 18, 2024 by matt ballou under Art, Life, Teaching

Recently I rotated a bunch of the art in our home, and so I felt that an update to my ongoing series of posts featuring various artworks I’ve collected over the years was in order.

My most recent purchase is this wonderful gouache painting on handmade paper by Mary Sandbothe.

Mary Sandbothe. Mystery Snowball. Gouache on handmade paper. 7x5 inches. 2023. — Mary Sandbothe. *Mystery Snowball.* Gouache on handmade paper. 7×5 inches. 2023.

Mary is an awesome artist and educator here in Columbia, MO, and has been a pillar of the art community here for many years. She had a wonderful show at the Columbia Art League late in 2023 that really stood out to me. Called “Heritage Unfolded: Gouache Interpretations of Missouri Quilts,” (you can see the works here), the show featured some evocative, intimate works. I knew I needed to jump on one of them, and I’m glad I did.

Next to the Sandbothe Mystery Snowball piece is a striking print on handmade Yucca paper by Caleb McMurray. The untitled work features a doorway or aperture, something that McMurray has returned to again and again.

Caleb McMurray. Untitled. Ink on handmade Yucca paper. 10x8 inches. 2014. — Caleb McMurray. Untitled. Ink on handmade Yucca paper. 10×8 inches. 2014.

I also have a sister print to this one, but it features an arching opening that is in the distance rather than up close like this one. Windows, doors, and other passageways are features of many of the works I’ve collected over the years.

Lastly, a small painting by Hayley Auxier‘s shares the wall with the two works I’ve shared above. Hayley was one of my stand out undergraduate students, and I love seeing her carry on her artwork as she has since graduating. This piece is one of a series she made celebrating National Parks and celebrating her experiences of them. Hayley shows a strong affinity for gouache, so I’m glad to have an example of her painting in that medium.

Hayley Auxier. Acadia National Park. Gouache on paper. 4 by 6 inches. 2018. — Hayley Auxier. *Acadia National Park.* Gouache on paper. 4 by 6 inches. 2018.

Acadia National Park is special to me because that’s where my partner and I went on our honeymoon all those years ago, so I like the piece because of it’s connection to my own history. But it’s also got a wonderful note from Hayley on the verso, and so the small work feels like it connects all of these different threads of my life: personal, professional, aspirational, and historical. That synergy of references – those that I bring to the work and those the artist embeds within the piece – is what makes art special.

I’m loving seeing these three works every day as I have a meal or hang out with my family. Art that lives with us is the best kind. Really thankful to have these pieces close to me.

Eight Years Overcoming

Posted on February 17, 2024 by matt ballou under Art, Life

Eight years ago today one of the few most significant pivots of my life happened. My cardiac arrest is intimately tied to the death of my sister, to my experience of my home town, to my understanding of life and spirituality, and to my way of moving through every day life.

This year I’m commemorating the traumaversary with a new version of an old work. I first created Situation and Circumstance Overcome in 2003. It is definitely my most successful and most owned work, as I’ve created many copies – both paintings and prints – of the work as fundraisers for adoptions and other charitable occasions. For this version I chose to use my AxiDraw X&Y plotter. Using a new print of my old mezzotint plate of the piece (fig. 1) as a visual source, I created a large vectored image in Inkscape that had roughly 30 layers printed upwards of 5 times each (fig. 2).

Fig. 1: *Situation and Circumstance Overcome.*
Mezzotint print on paper. 16×20 inches. 2023.

Ink the vectored image you can see many of the layers along with the direction of the hatch fills and choices I made for density of pigment load. Each color was created with Sharpies, Posca acrylic markers, and a few other ink-based markers. The layers shown in the Inkscape file don’t correspond fully to the final image (fig 3.) because I made adjustments/changes to individual layers as I moved through building the image. There is a call and response between the digital and physical realms here that I really appreciate. I’ve also included a few details of the piece so you can see the finer textures and lines.

Fig. 2: *Situation and Circumstance Overcome* (Inkscape layers version).
SVG file. 2024.

Fig. 3: *Situation and Circumstance Overcome (’24 Traumaversary Version).*
Ink and acrylic on Arches paper. 16×20 inches. 2024.

I like having a rich, sentimental image like this following me through life. I’m convinced we’re all sentimental (if we’re honest and not sociopathic). By this word I don’t mean any kind of unexamined, saccharine idealization of some past version of reality. Rather, I mean that we really did experience real things in our pasts, and those things carry with them real emotions, real artifacts of our real selves. In some sense, sentimentality can give us momentary access to who we used to be in the past. It is a simultaneous connection and rupture. We know we can’t return to that person or that experience. And we know that we can’t really feel anything the same way again. And yet… some part of that reality is there for us in our sense of sentimentality. It’s akin to a certain scent or song taking us back to a prior state of being. There’s nothing wrong with this. Moreover, I suspect it has some adaptive advantage for the species by stimulating social/familial/relational/tribal/spatial cohesion.

In any case, I think making the image of life in the form of tiny sapling breaking up between the bricks has been a worthy thing for me. It’s a little picture of triumph in the midst of hardship. I’m glad it resonates with so many people. I’m glad variations of this piece hang in homes all over the world. And I’m glad I’m still here to appreciate it and add to its legacy.

I’m glad I didn’t miss these last eight years. There have been a lot of situations to overcome, but the life I’ve seen makes it all worth it. Here’s to another year. Peace.

If you’d like to inquire about purchasing the traumaversary robot version of Situation and Circumstance Overcome, contact me over here.

Celebrating the Genius of Miyoko Ito

Posted on December 25, 2023 by matt ballou under Art, Life

I have mentioned the importance of Miyoko Ito many times before (here, here, and here), but there’s a little more to celebrate this Christmas day: I just received the new book Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts hot off the press.

Published by Pre-Echo Press, and featuring the research and writing of Jordan Stein, Heart of Hearts is the major publication that Miyoko Ito and her work deserve. Jordan Stein is an active and insightful curator who has developed a major presence nationally over the last decade. His research into and presentations on Ito are extremely significant, adding great depth to what is available on the artist.

_{Detail of Orange Cloud from 1977 by Miyoko Ito as shown in Heart of Hearts.}

Loaded with chromatically accurate images, Heart of Hearts is the most complete compendium of Ito’s work available. Beyond this, the book provides a single place from which students and admirers of her painting can find all pertinent information about her life and process. Stein’s essay provides key context, deftly connecting Ito to not only her roots in the Chicago art scene but the broader aesthetic superstructure to which she belonged.

_{Detail of Susquehanna (The River) from 1959 by Miyoko Ito as shown in Heart of Hearts.}

These two arenas – solid text and quality images – really set this publication apart. From the beautiful debossed cover (front AND back) to the matte surfaces of the large full color spreads, this book delivers. The sense of texture and painted action is wonderfully realized in these pages. I kept being surprised by the surfaces of the paintings coming to life. This is an ESSENTIAL book for anyone interested in mid-20th century painting generally, or Miyoko Ito in particular. To finally have one volume that really pulls it all together is just wonderful.

_{Front and back covers of Heart of Hearts.}

This book is an appropriate celebration of Miyoko Ito as a person and as an artist. It includes nearly all of her work, some of which have been lost. While not technically a catalogue raisonne, it might be the next best thing, as it provides the most complete picture of her work that we’ve ever had. For this, we can thank Jordan Stein and Pre-Echo Press.

In my opinion Miyoko Ito: Heart of Hearts is the most important publication dealing with American painting since Yale’s four-volume catalogue raisonne of the work of Richard Diebenkorn. Go buy it.

Poltergeist (1982) is really good.

Posted on October 31, 2023 by matt ballou under Life

I watched Poltergeist again this year, and am still so impressed with it. There are a lot of reasons, but a few things really stand out.

It’s not just the expertly crafted and paced music (Jerry Goldsmith).

It’s not just the practical, in-camera, optical effects (Richard Edlund, John Bruno, Nilo Rodis-Jamero).

It’s not just the fantastic physical and emotional presence of JoBeth Williams (an absolute classic performance that should have been rewarded).

It’s not just the introduction of one of the most compelling characters in all of cinema (Zelda Rubinstein as eccentric medium Tangina Barrons).

All of that is great and worthy of note.

But it’s also that the children and women are centered. They’re not “hysterical” nor are they “irrational.” They see and know deep realities, even if they can’t understand or entirely describe them (a theme borrowed from Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind). These characters are the central interpreters. They stand in for the viewer. We don’t dismiss the father as a moron, but neither do we have to make him the hero. Furthermore, we don’t have to MANUFACTURE the heroism of the Carol Anne, mom Diane, or mystic Tangina. The film naturally makes them function in ways that stimulate the narrative arc without BS or montage-based tropes. They don’t miraculously and instantaneously become triumphant; they live through a trajectory of growth. They don’t automatically know everything; they use their innate characteristics to attend to the film-reality in specific and logical ways.

_{Heather O’Rourke, JoBeth Williams, and Craig T. Nelson in Poltergeist.}

Sure, there are other examples of these qualities in popular (and more niche) media. But an average suburbanite mom coming into contact with a situation so physically and conceptually counter-intuitive gives this movie a sense of genuine humanity. Its influence is still palpable in the the horror genre some forty years on, and it’s an experience always worth a revisit.

See it if you haven’t yet (it’s available on MAX)!

The Body as Zone of Incident Guest Lecture

Posted on October 28, 2023 by matt ballou under Art, Teaching

This past week I gave a talk for The Honors College at The University of Missouri. The theme this fall was The Art and Science of Living, and they asked me to give a guest lecture about the nature of the body in the context of my work. I chose to focus on a number of artists who have shaped my ideas about the meaning of the body. – from Anne Harris and Robin F. Williams to Kathe Kollwitz and Charles White.

To hear the talk and see all of the artists and images I explore in the presentation, click the link here.

Andrew Wyeth. Spring. Tempera on panel. 1978.

Panel Discussion on AI and Art

Posted on October 19, 2023 by matt ballou under Art, Teaching

I had the opportunity to sit on a panel at The Columbia Art League on October 12, 2023. Moderated by Diana Moxon and including CAL Executive Director Kelsey Hammond, the wide-ranging talk engaged with a lot of what artists are thinking about in the age of AI. Watch the video below to see a visual presentation of our research, examples, opinions (and humorous asides) as you follow along with the discussion.

OK Computer Panel Discussion Video

Many artists were mentioned in this presentation, and many others could have been included. A few of them were Daniel Ambrosi, Joey Borovicka, and Geo K. Weissler.

Collab Update

Posted on May 9, 2023 by matt ballou under Life

Late last year I talked about how Geo and I were working back and forth with some artwork/carving/A.I./carving/artwork-type collaborative stuff. The process has continued.

A man holds a plank of carved oak. — Smelling the newly carved oak from Geo!

I know, I know. You see the initials A.I. and you’re skeptical. As you should be. I’ve been doing a lot of research on A.I. generated images, and while I think the majority of the A.I. space is trashy, there are a few people doing some amazing exploration. Joey Borovicka over in The Timeout Zone is doing quite interesting “synthography” using A.I. models. Wolfe von Lenkiewicz is also making intensive forays into image-making with precision A.I. models.

I have been interested in using image-generation tools in a limited way. Basically, I’ve been incorporating them into the workflow. This means we start with ideas, images that we’ve made ourselves, or carvings that Geo has made. Then, uploading the images as a baseline source for the A.I. generator to use, we add text prompts to encourage various modifications. In this way we use our own images in the A.I. system and calibrate them using the wording we input. Obviously, since the models have been trained on images borrowed from the wider world, we’re viewing this as a limited experiment, but I think it’s worth it.

Here’s a sequence of explorations that we’ve done with imagery of the acanthus and my own artwork: first, I used some wording from Geo in the Dream by WOMBO A.I. app, then I loosely drew over the generated images. After making a various edits and selecting one of the versions that I’d drawn, I sent a copy to Geo, who used it as a basis for his carving.

Quilt-form based on acanthus leaves. A.I. generated from Weissler prompt wording.

Drapes. Ballou. Tempera and oil pastel on panel. 2021-2023.

*Living Carve.* Ballou. 10×10 inches. Ink, colored pencil, gouache on paper mounted on panel. 2023. Private collection.

The image above, Living Carve, was built by using words of Geo Weissler in Midjourney, then modified digitally in Procreate on my iPad. I took that result, printed it on a large format Epson printer using Epson Enhanced Matte paper. I then used colored pencils and gouache to develop the image and enhance the richness of color and depth of surface. Below you can see a shot of the piece framed. You can see some of the surface treatment, the sense of the material accumulating to present the image. I like the chiaroscuro and quality of light. There is a subtle feeling of trompe l’oeil to this piece, which is something I’ve only tried to do a few times before. I may try a composition like this once again. If you’d like to inquire about work like this, visit me on Instagram.

BECOMING THE STUDENT #29: Michelle

Posted on December 31, 2022 by matt ballou under Life

I’ve known Michelle for many years now. She’s been a central part of the local art community for all of that time, and a dedicated student of painting as well. Beyond this, Michelle is someone who always has a kind word, and her encouraging, affirming presence is something everyone in our town knows about.

She also used to be my friend Mike, who I drew for this series here. Obviously, I will not try to tell Michelle’s story. It’s not mine to communicate. But I did think it would be appropriate to place a new portrait here in the Becoming the Student group.

*Portrait of Michelle R. Seat*. Procreate, iPad Pro. 2022.

Since I’m an educator, I’m sure you can imagine that I come into contact with many LGTBQ+ folx. Particularly in the last decade I’ve worked with trans people in a few different contexts, but most often in the graduate program where I teach. Just like anyone else who is human, the trans people I’ve known have exhibited a wide range of personality and affect.

Everyone comes with their own traumas and triumphs, their own unique inflection on life. And the fact is that simply being human is hard. People have to come to an understanding of themselves for themselves, and my primary obligation to those around me is to be kind. While that strategy hasn’t always worked, I think it’s an important guideline. And it’s framed the way I teach and the way I interact with people. It’s not up to me to define anyone else; it’s up to me to be kind and helpful.

DETAIL of *Portrait of Michelle R. Seat*. Procreate, iPad Pro. 2022.

(That’s central to how I see education. My teaching philosophy includes the concepts of “facilitation, encouragement, and tact.” It’s important for my interactions with people – especially students – to function as opportunities to support and enliven them. I want to aid their ability to understand themselves and help them develop strategies for building creative points of contact. Art – or really any form of communication – is worthless if it doesn’t offer access points for others.)

So, I offer up this new portrait of Michelle in celebration of her humanity and her winsome, joyful presence in our community. I did interview her for this entry in the Becoming the Student series, but I have decided to let that conversation stay just between the two of us. There are as many ways of being human as there are humans experiencing being.

…all is transformed, all is sacred,
every room is the center of the world,
it’s still the first night, and the first day,
the world is born when two people kiss,
a drop of light from transparent juices,
the room cracks half-open like a fruit
or explodes in silence like a star,
and the laws chewed away by the rats,
the iron bars of the banks and jails,
the paper bars, the barbed wire,
the rubber stamps, the pricks and goads,
the droning one-note sermon on war (…)

the invisible walls,
the rotten masks that divide one man
from another, one man from himself,
they crumble for one enormous moment and we glimpse
the unity that we lost, the desolation
of being man, and all its glories,
sharing bread and sun and death,
the forgotten astonishment of being alive;

to love is to battle…

From SUNSTONE by Octavio Paz, 1957

Impossible Interiors at William Woods University

Posted on September 27, 2022 by matt ballou under Art, Life

I’ve got a group of works on display at William Woods University in Fulton, Missouri. The show runs through October 6th, and I’ll be giving a talk that evening. For a preview, look below.

This is the third time I’ve shown this body of work, and I’d like to get the chance to show it again. The subject of the work – a “friendly-fire” bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. If you’d like to see more about this situation, check out my writing about it here.

Back of the card with description of the show.

Here are just a few of the works on display, along with some details. There’s a lot to see, so come on by!

I’m also pleased to have a small group of my collaborations with Joel T Dugan also on display at the gallery. These Phoneme works are some of my favorites, and there are a number of just finished works included.

ARTFORUM One-liner, 2002

Posted on July 26, 2022 by matt ballou under Life

“Oh, to have the sycophantic word-love of the curatoriate (à la Jeffrey Weiss) and willing accomplices in the art press.”

—Matthew Ballou, Evanston, IL

Written in response to Jeffery Weiss’s feature on Robert Ryman’s work from ARTFORUM Volume 41, No. 1. See the cover below. Available online here: https://www.artforum.com/print/200207/radiant-dispersion-robert-ryman-s-philadelphia-prototype-2002-3299

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