The Garage Cheese Tale

Posted on December 26, 2023 by matt ballou under Life

As 2023 rolls toward an ending, I want to share with you something I’ve been keeping to myself for a few years now.

Go back to the beginning of the pandemic. Schools closed. Information and misinformation flew back and forth. Of course everything was a political dumpster fire; a pervasive heaviness spread over the land. And don’t even get me started on the ritual of using disinfecting wipes on every square centimeter of grocery item delivered to our front door. Even on nature trails and in wild spaces we were warned to keep spectacular distance from each other.

It was the weirdness of being told we shouldn’t use the nature trails for hiking or triking that caused me to consider using the Hitt Street Garage as a place to get my miles each day. School had closed in March, and after finishing up that semester remotely I began to spend time in the garage. There were no cars there, and often my children got some out-of-doors time in by riding their bikes around the middle levels while I walked (click here to see evidence of one of my first workouts in the garage).

By the time May ended I was going to the garage several times each week. It was then that I took special notice of a denizen of that forsaken building: the cheese. That’s right: a slice of processed cheese product cheekily flung off a take out burger and – somehow – perfectly caught on the concrete wall. It was THE garage cheese.

I had seen it earlier in the year – perhaps the first week of March. I had no solid idea how long it had been there, but it was leathery and tough (yes, I touched it). It might have been there a month or two. It still had the strong, unnatural hue I’d come to expect from cheese like this. At first it was just a funny bit of ephemera living in the garage, much like the plethora of unused .223 bullets, spent CO2 cartridges, or carcasses of baby birds that hadn’t made it through the summer heat. But as I passed the cheese over and over again in my rounds up and down the floors of the parking garage, it began to take on more and more importance.

Crazy, right?

I shared my observation of the cheese only with family and a few close friends; I didn’t want it to be disturbed. Being early in our collective quarantine, I felt sure the cheese would be safe. But I was keenly aware that once things went “back to normal” there would be some frat-bros carousing in the garage. There was no way the cheese could survive the onslaught of undergraduates! I just wanted to see how long it would last, and I didn’t want any human intervention. There was an alchemy taking place between the cheese and the garage, a synergy that must be allowed to continue! I was committed to no engagement other than photographic documentation.

^{The Garage Cheese on September 12, 2020. Ballou.}

I began taking periodic shots of the cheese, with my first one from September 2020. I know I took earlier images, but I didn’t see the cheese as anything more than a humorous curiosity then, and so didn’t save them. It wasn’t until March 2021 that I made the decision to document the state of the cheese monthly, as well as make periodic check-ins every other week or so. I viewed the month of March as the anniversary of the installation of the cheese, and it felt right since that was when Mizzou closed down. In a way, the cheese was a physical artifact of the many ways in which COVID altered our experiences of life.

Over time, the cheese itself began to change. Flexing with the heat and humidity, cracking under the pressures fighting against its preservative-laced body, the cheese maintained its grip on the concrete. Something in the material nature of the porous wall and the glue-like substance of the cheese made their union not only possible, but hearty. By March 2022 the cheese was gnarly and swarthy, hung all over with dust and the debris of generations of spider webs. The darker coloration made me feel more secure that people wouldn’t see it.

This was important, because life was returning to the campus. The garage was being used more and more. By the fall semester, most people felt safe teaching and learning in masks. This was a tense time for me. I began to check on the cheese several times a week, certain that it would be gone one day. I took to obtaining photos of the cheese only when I would not be observed. I didn’t want my attention to a seemingly nondescript section of the garage to draw others near.

^{The Garage Cheese on March 14, 2023. Ballou.}

I got a bit more intentional with the photography in 2023. The shot from March that year is particularly nice. I began to think the cheese really would make it to the four year mark. People encouraged me to post about the cheese, to make an Instagram account for it, even to mark it on maps. But I knew there would be time later to show folks where it had been. I wanted it to make four – maybe even five – years! As Thanksgiving passed, I felt more confident than ever. After the first day of graduate reviews on December 1st, 2023, I made a pass by the cheese for my December check-up. It looked robust, confident. It was ready to press on toward another anniversary upon the wall. So it was that when the second day of grad reviews concluded on December 8th, I took one of my grad students over to see the cheese. I figured I could share the glory with more people. Surely that would be okay.

THE CHEESE WAS GONE.

Astonished, I rushed out to investigate the scene. There, amid a thick mass of trash and various organic detritus, rested the cheese. It was in a gap between the wall and the floor, and it seemed to be intact. No one had abused this artifact; it had let go of the wall on its own. Its time was up. The race was won.

I carefully rescued the cheese. It was rough and hard, as dense as holding a fragment of bone. Yet, like bone, I perceived it would be brittle. Maybe it had been the dusty garage trash that provided a soft enough landing to save the cheese from breaking against the concrete. Whatever the reason, after nearly 45 months on the wall, the garage cheese was now mine!

^{The Garage Cheese, framed in a shadowbox on December 26, 2023. Ballou.}

I quickly collated my photos of the cheese and obtained a simple shadowbox frame for it. Now safely transferred to the wall of my studio, the cheese can exist in perpetuity, assured the status of a protected relic. As part of the process of documenting and celebrating the garage cheese, I have created the GIF below. I did a modicum of image adjustment so that you can get a sense of the changes that happened over the course of the years. Of course, it’s not perfectly color-corrected, nor entirely aligned for precision, but you can definitely get the sense of how the cheese transformed.

While the cheese itself has left the Hitt Street Garage, there is something that remains behind: a kind of oily stain is still quite visible on the wall of the garage. If you look in this wide shot below, you can see it just a bit left of center. Follow the inner vertical line of the leftmost column downward, and you’ll notice the apostrophe-like arcing shape. That’s a ghostly shadow of the cheese, somehow still clinging to that precarious perch.

^{The location of the Garage Cheese, photo taken on December 26, 2023. Ballou.}

Click below to take a look at a curated selection of the cheese. If you’d like to purchase a print of one of these images, send me $20 on Venmo (here), and I’ll mail it out to you. Just be sure to tell me which one you’d like.

The distance between months and years, and all that we did and saw and felt… in one image. Maybe I should do some risograph prints of these, too… On to 2024!

A final thought, as I sit here with family and smile at my cheese…

Here’s hoping your ’24 is joyful, safe, and peaceful. We know it probably won’t be, though. At least not for most of us. So why do I offer the above trifle about faux fromage? Why present some cast off cheese as a visual metaphor or point of access for meaning? Well, I think the greatest part of our human experience is in the realm of attention. I teach my students this, and I try to teach my own children it as well. When we are attentive to the world around us, when we believe in the value of observation and awareness, then we are most able to be both realistic and hopeful. It is willful ignorance or chosen obfuscation that breaks the social contract, that causes us to care less about each other and the world.

We are living in times of serious violence against not only people but against our ability to apprehend true things. We desire to be told what we want to hear, rather than what we ought to hear. We ignore what should be seen straight on, seeking instead things that distract us from beingness. These are our great sins, particularly in America. We have allowed our politicians to be criminals. We enable them and they stroke our egos in return. Our domestic and foreign policies – for all of our posturing to the contrary – are not “pro-life.” We have become the arm of death. We resist over and over the chance to do what is right, because we know that will make us feel a little uncomfortable. Our comfort is our chief aim, and it’s obvious.

In light of all of that, perhaps everyone would do better to pay close attention to their own version of garage cheese. I hope we can get started on putting our collective house back in order in 2024.

Peace.

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.

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.

A Little Cartography

Posted on September 4, 2022 by matt ballou under Life

Many years ago, my Cousin Chris and I were constant companions in the woods around Camden, NY. In particular, we explored the region between our homes. His place was several miles away to the west if you took the old dirt road that emerged onto the highway 50 yards from the house I grew up. We also did a lot of camping and hiking in the woods east of my own home.

Here’s what that area looks like today (well, a few years ago via Google Earth):

I grew up along Route 70 – Wolcott Hill Road – about two miles from the town of Camden. Wolcott Hill Road runs roughly South to North away from Camden, so this view is oriented with East at the top and West at the bottom. You can see the small lake in the lower half of the image; that is a reservoir, and part of Camden’s waterworks system. If you were to walk due West from the South corner of the reservoir, you’d come out on Wolcott Hill Road right next to my childhood home.

From the ages of 12 to 16 or so, I started making maps of our haunts out in this section of land. When I was 19, I decided to make a larger, more refined version of the map, bringing together all of the various places we used to camp and hunt. The result is below.

Watercolor map of area around my home. 24×22 inches. 1996.

There are some obvious mistakes of guesstimation here, most glaringly in the position of Route 85, which we locals know as Skinner Settlement Road. There is also some distortion of the placement of various fields, and a bit of miscalculation of distances, but I’m pretty pleased with my effort since I did not use any proper map as a source.

There are some great memories here.

At Winter’s Night, we camped in -2° weather. In the morning, we were lying in impressions in the hard snow caused by our heat coming through the tent.

At Cowadunga, we cooked venison in beer and used hard, flat cow poop for fuel – hence the name we gave the place.

The Reservoir Cabin Site was a special spot, and we stayed there quite a few times.

One night, at View, we had amazing, super clear skies all night long. It seemed as if we could see forever.

Though we never camped at Lone Tree Hill, we often climbed the massive maple there.

At Earthview we had one of our strangest camping trips ever, when we were accosted by a large number of Woodland Jumping Mice. What seemed like dozens of them came through our area, but the issue was that this was in the wee hours of the morning, so it was very dark, and the rhythm of their jumps through the underbrush sounded like footsteps. Pretty wild.

I’m glad I made documents like this throughout my teenage years. Though most are in a more rough or not so presentable state, they represent my attention to and interest in my surroundings and experiences. I’m glad to have them.

Seize The Sixth, Again

Posted on April 6, 2022 by matt ballou under Life

Background

Eric L. Sweet left us suddenly on April 6, 2015, at age 44. Sweet was a beloved member of the MU Art faculty, having worked at MU since 2012 as an Adjunct Assistant Professor, teaching Printmaking, Drawing and 2-D Design courses. He was an alumnus of the Art program, having earned both his BFA (1997) and MFA (2011) from the University of Missouri. In 2008, he received an MA in Printmaking from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Sweet was an active member of the Southern Graphics Council International and the College Art Association.

The “Running Devil” icon that was embroidered on one of Eric’s shirts.

To celebrate Eric’s life and positive role as an educator, Sweet’s wife, Catherine Armbrust, established The Eric Sweet Exhibition & Speaker Series to continue passing on his gift. I have created a series of work celebrating Eric almost every Seize the Sixth, and this year is no different. I will be donating 100% of the sales of these pieces to the Fund. This program was created because he strongly believed in the importance of community accessibility to art and encouraged meaningful conversations about the state of contemporary art. Funding this annual exhibition and speaker series for the gallery is the perfect way to make contemporary work accessible to the MU and Columbia communities, and to honor this special man who made an impact on so many lives. In fact, the initial funding goal was met in 2021 and the very first iteration of The Eric Sweet Exhibition & Speaker Series took place on December 6, 2021. See the exhibition poster here.

Look over my limited series of CNC relief cuts, posted below. If you’d like one, contact me. You’ll get an icon of Eric’s life and students and community members will get to see art because of the donation I make from the sale. As Eric (and his 4th grade teacher) might say, “You don’t HAVE to, you GET to.”

The Artwork

I’ve made eight artworks for Seize The Sixth this year. There is one group of five CNC relief cuts that feature the classic “running devil” icon that Eric had embroidered on one of his work shirts. Below the devil is featured part of Eric’s axiom, “YOU GET TO.” It’s a proclamation of hopefulness and gratefulness. Here’s a detail of the Running Devil carving if you want to see a close up view.

There are three of these – just the Running Devil without the text.

How to get one?

I can take PayPal, CashApp, and Venmo (click each for a link to my info). If you’re local you can give me cash. The cost $50 each for these. Ones with text are 5.25×5.75 inches and those without text are 4.5×5.5 inches. Each piece is made on a PVC sheet and painted in gold spray paint. Each is signed and numbered. The ones with text are numbered 1 through 5 and the ones without text are numbered 1 through 3. First come, first serve. Feel free to email me if you have any questions – balloum (at) missouri (dot) edu.

Why no Sweet Audio this year?

Most of the time I’ve been able to put together a compilation of classic Sweet audio clips. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any more usable clips this year. There’s a chance I still have some in the depths of my files, but I just couldn’t locate anything for this year. In lieu of that, please head over to SoundCloud and check out the previous years’ offerings!

Ballou SweetTalk collections for 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

Now, go Seize the Sixth! Remember… you don’t HAVE to, you GET to!

A Talk at Missouri Valley College

Posted on March 8, 2022 by matt ballou under Life

On February 25, 2022, I had the privilege to meet with students and give a talk over at Missouri Valley College. It’s about an hour away from Columbia where I teach, and the talk was in support of my exhibition at the college, Digital Art: Exploration and Education. I gave a brief overview of my use of digital tools, from nearly 25 years ago through today. If you’d like to watch the talk, I’ve added in all of the visuals I used, but I also worked in supplemental videos and other support information to bring more background to the talk. Many thanks to Mary Linda Pepper Lane, Sarah Fletcher, and Mike McJilton for their hospitality and conversation during my visit.

Below are a number of the works I showed in that exhibition. Left to Right, Top to Bottom: “Young Joe,” “Cardiac ICU,” “Touched Pelvis,” “Color Figure Study,” “Hitt Street Parking Garage,” “Jesse,” “Self Portrait With Neck Girth.”

Subway Abstractions, Chicago

Posted on December 31, 2021 by matt ballou under Life

More than 20 years ago, when I first came to Chicago to study art at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, the city shocked me. I was constantly in awe of the people, the exchange of pressure between the land and the lake, and the iconic architecture and spaces that mark this quintessentially American city.

I spent a good deal of time at subway stations and riding the L train rails. So much of what I remember about Chicago is from the vantage points the CTA afforded me. A lot changed in the years I spent there, and I witnessed a lot of those changes aboard the L or from the buildings where I took my classes at SAIC. I was always seeing through the modulating weather and variances of sunlight and season. It all kept my attention. Light, glass, rock, water, cloud, steel, snow, or asphalt; they all intrigued me.

My dad’s trusty Minolta was with me during those years, and I took many hundreds of photos. It was an attempt to understand what my eyes were being drawn to, and how my Eye – my aesthetic sense – wanted to see. It’s wonderful now, in looking back, to see how I was being developed (through education) and developing (through instinct and choice) the categories of judgement and intuition that would inform all of my work right up to today.

Among those photos is a series of pictures of empty signboards within subway stations. Often they would be left open for a while when advertisements were being changed out, but many times they stayed vacant for weeks on end. They had an austerity, and seemed to me to speak the language of modernist abstraction and abstract expressionism. What was interesting to me, beyond that formal similarity to intentionally crafted artworks, was that these were the result of the natural environment of the subway. The dust and grease and grime combined with blowing air – almost like a lung or the systolic/diastolic rhythms of the heart – to create strange inflow behind the placards of ads.

In other cases, workers who routinely painted around the frames designed to hold the placards, would inadvertently create dynamic fields of shapes via over-spray. This was a rhythm, too, a movement of maintenance and service reflecting the attempt to keep these arterial passageways operating. The spaces within the ad frames were a different kind of arena, moving at a different pace from the rest of the L train structures.

Thus that area behind the ads became a kind of palimpsest of the subway, but also of the city itself. The deposits of dirt accumulated in swaths of gray scale gradients. Intimately connected to the subway tunnel textures and layers of paint, the dust-fields were allowed to stick, protected behind ad boards for who knows how long.

Once revealed, these delicate, dirty paintings, which had been made by the trains and the people and the detritus of Chicago, held (it seemed to me) beauty. I loved them. I rode the L looking for them at every stop. I took dozens of photos. Perhaps one day I’ll try to publish them in a better form – I still have the original negatives, after all – but for now, I present a few of them here.