Daughter and Dad in their cool shoes! (click the image for super-sized color and sparkle!)
Tag Archives: matt ballou
Into Dust
“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 – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.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 – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.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.
Former Grads Visit 930
My glorious former grad students (AND NEWLY-WEDS!) Natalie Hellmann and Ian Shelly visited my (and Tim Lowly’s) show at the 930 Art Center today. Yay!
Natalie likes to visit my shows. Here she is with one of my works at MANIFEST in Cincinnati!
Sense of Place
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.
Studio Visit From Keith
The talented and dinosaur-loving Keith Montgomery visited my studio last week to shoot some video and take some still images. Keith is a good friend and a former student of mine who has made tremendous strides in his photography over the last couple years. You can see a bunch of his work here, but also click on the images below for larger versions (there are also a number of other shots). You can also see our collaboration piece in The Larry Show, up at the University of Missouri’s George Caleb Bingham Gallery through August.
The Grand Studio
At Work…
Looks like I’ve got some new “at work” shots for my website, eh? Thanks, Keith!
A Poetry of Moments
“Time there flowed with poetic speech, allowing for the most alien peace, and yet… there was an intensity of desire present. It was leaden and thick to me, though still disembodied. And really, in light of that most heinous form of yearning, it must be noted that the peace was not the peace of knowing that all things will be well. It was rather a peace of no knowledge, of un-knowledge; mistaken, the misstep.” – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.
“Those trees and grasses root into a series of dunes, which are phenomena both ancient and youthful, responding to the world, examples of the physics of particulate flow and erosion. From upon them they seem like simple hills, sinuous and open, breaking easily apart. They are basic structures, with the normal number of flora and fauna. From space they seem to make more sense, a domino-set of waveforms dotting the edge of that glacier lake. They are there in the old photographs on the porch of the Inn, as old as the first land deed, as old as America, as old as the continent. There is a comfort in that continuity, in that destiny of place and time; you feel as if it could always remain or always was. – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.
Both images above are from digital photos taken between May and August 2001.
Talking About Tondos
Talk by Matthew Ballou at The 930 Art Center, June 10, 2011
I gave a talk at the 930 Art Center in Louisville, KY last week. If you’d like to listen to it (it’s only 16 minutes long), click above for the mp3 file. To see some of the work I was thinking about in this talk, click here.
Pyramid Song, Summer 2001
“Alone in the cabin, two in the morning… “black-eyed angels swam”* in the murk, delivering tinkling songs of love and death to our sleeping ears” – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.
“It has taken me years to process this experience. It was something that could not be known in the moments of living it, only remembered as a fleeting figment seen with the mind’s eye, felt like a dream but never realized fully. It was all ashes and phantasm, crystallized cataracts in the eyes of understanding. To aim for understanding of the ethereal encounter – to know it, integrate it, and interpret it – is the essence of foolishness; its distance from this world is so far as to confound all reckoning.” – from A Mnemonic of Longing, an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.
Alex, Ox-Bow Man and Boy of Summer
After Ox-Bow (3 months of glory, summer 2001), I made paintings of my friend Alex Herzog. Alex is amazing and I’m thankful for my long friendship with him. I present a few of the paintings below. Be sure to click for enlargement, and click Alex’s name for his website.
1) Alex Flipping Me Off At A Party, Acrylic on canvas, 10 by 8 inches, 2001.
2) Stihl, Acrylic on canvas, 10 by 8 inches, 2001.
3) Alex With A Streak Of Sunlight, Acrylic on canvas, 10 by 8 inches, 2001.
Also, here is a picture of him juicing.
…and a picture of him discussing art with me.
“did your rocket hit the box?” – ‘lex
“keep your station clean!” – ‘lex
Music for Reading A Mnemonic of Longing
Music for reading A Mnemonic of Longing,
an unpublished essay, 2002-2009.
THE OCEAN
by u2
FIRESUITE
by doves
FOX CONFESSOR BRINGS THE FLOOD
by neko case
BLACK MILK
by massive attack
HISTORY SONG
by the good the bad and the queen
MARY OF SILENCE
by mazzy star
PYRAMID SONG
by radiohead
WAITING IN THE KOUNTRY
by gram rabbit
HARES DON’T HAVE TEA, SILLY
by gram rabbit
OAHU
by menomena
M62 SONG
by doves
SHE’S GOT CHANEL NO. 5
by calexico
WILLOW SONG
by doves
SO TONIGHT THAT I MIGHT SEE
by mazzy star
KATMANDU
by cat stevens
eikonktizo 
