I think back to this show fondly because Jen is awesome and I like having exhibitions with former students (and have done so a number of times, with Jane, Jacob, and most recently with Simon). I took a bunch of images during the installation and recorded some audio of us talking about the work. After listening to it a couple months ago I decided I wanted to celebrate our little show and the work we made there.
I was making my An Ensign for Miyoko Ito series, and experimenting with drawing robots – at the time very cheap ones that couldn’t make very large pieces. I was taking cues from Ito’s works and, as a response to that, Jen decided to use my artworks as the basis for her pieces. Using my work to create tessellated fields of colorful geometry printed on fabric, she then sewed cutting patterns onto them. The notion of a interference pattern felt particularly resonant to the work we both made for the show. This layering of influences and predilections still feels rich to me, and I wanted to share them with everyone again. Thanks so much for doing this show with me, Jen! Though her MFA was in a Fibers focus, these days she does a lot of dynamic photography, mostly in black and white. Check it out here!
Below you can see some images from our installation session and my statement for the show, as well as see more work and hear us talk about it in the video here:
Statement for BALLOU/BENNETT: INTERFERENCE PATTERN
In my recent body of work, titled An Ensign for Miyoko Ito, I seek out the compacted and the overdrawn; the enclosed and the layered; the transformed and the solidified. I look for shapes, colors, and spaces that go far beyond a simple tension between figuration and abstraction, trying instead to suggest a layered arena of observational and haptic information.
Miyoko Ito (Japanese-American, 1918-1983) – whose work has been a key influence on me over the last 20 years – was able to activate subtle surfaces with the illusion of space and an evocative sense of palpability. This is what I’m investigating: the experience of perception apart from particular, representational depiction. In my exploration, questions arise: Does flat form appear to move away from my angle of view? Will color resolve into both static surface and suggested movement? Can space and color align to reinforce both static structure and an expression of time? Might the poetics of silent, unmoving images actually produce phenomena akin to those found in dreams, memories, ecstatic sensations, and atemporal musings?
By pairing my work with Jen’s extrapolations from that work, I hope to suggest the multiplicity of information that may be gathered from surface, color, and texture. She perceives something of Miyoko Ito through my translations. Beyond this, Jen’s artworks add other layers – of visual logic, of aesthetic influences, and of categories of understanding. In this modest exhibition, Jen and I participate in the ongoing interrogation of received knowledge and sensation.
Receiving anything – taking it into our mind and heart – always changes it. It is what it is and it is what we perceive it to be. We are forever adding our own unique inflection to the language of the world pouring into us. That is why I see my own proclivities in the shapes and patterns that Jen uses… and so I see my heroes, my influences, and my hopes there as well.
I’m pleased to announce the publication of a catalog about the exhibition that Simon Tatum and I had at Vanderbilt University last year. Working with Oswaldo Garcia at The Riso Room, housed within Mizzou’s School of Visual Studies, I was able to produce a slim volume that highlights some of the work and writing that Simon and I produced for this show. We hope to take the exhibition around to other venues, and these catalogs feel like a great physical supplement to proposals. Click below to take a look inside.
The images show representative examples of the work we include, as well as updated texts that give an overview of the history and context we’re working within. I’m excited by how the risograph process has captured the documentary quality of Simon’s work and the surface development of my own pieces. I love the way the back cover shows Donald Crowhurst’s final coda, “IT IS THE MERCY.” Taken from his logs, this is Crowhurst’s actual writing reproduced.
If you’re interested in obtaining a copy for $25, please send payment via one of the options below:
The beginning of the third week of the month was best, with some striking observations made possible with a short exposure time. Each night the viewing has been a little more difficult, and the tail a little shorter, so it may be beyond easy spotting very soon. It’s worth it, though. Once in a lifetime event here, folx.
I’ve gone out each night just to put my eyes on this ancient thing. Perspective is a quality that exhorts and propels the human heart. Seeing our conflicts and passions in the light of cosmic time and distance offers us the chance for true reflection.
One of the weirdest objects that used to exist in Columbia, Missouri is pictured below.
Benjamin Franklin in a tub shaped like a shoe, conducting a meeting, all the while stoking a fire beneath his own ass. Just look at it. AMAZING.
Sadly, the painting is now destroyed. I took pictures of it in 2013 when I did some art conservation work for Riback Pipe and Steel Company. The image below is a digital collage of shots because it was so hard to get the right angle on the work (there was a large, north-facing window opposite the painting.
My understanding is that the tub DID NOT ACTUALLY look like a slipper, but was what is called a “slipper tub” and was fairly common. I can find no reference to a tub shaped exactly like a shoe/slipper anywhere. I think Larson was taking some creative license here.
“France, Late 18th Century” by Sidney Larson
Missouri painter Sidney Larson completed this painting entitled “France, Late 18th Century” in 1969 as part of the “The Riback Mural,” commissioned by Harold H. Riback for the Riback Pipe and Steel Company building, which is situated at the east end of Business Loop 70 in Columbia, Missouri.
The Ribacks sold the business to Plumb Supply Company in 2015. Eventually, the building housing the mural was remodeled and the paintings were destroyed. According to the State Historical Society of Missouri’s Art Collections Manager Greig Thompson, the mural couldn’t be preserved due to the methods by which it was installed.
Notley Hawkins took photographs of the mural in December 2021, at the request of Vicky Riback-Wilson to preserve a record of the paintings. Hawkins studied painting and drawing with Sidney Larson at Columbia College in the 1980s.
In 1980, Larson published a booklet entitled “The Riback Mural” which included the following description of painting:
“Benjamin Franklin landed in France in December of 1776 and soon after set up quarters at Passy outside of Paris. His purpose was to solicit aid from the French toward the defeat of the British during the American Revolution. He proved to be a very popular man and was in great demand. He did suffer from attacks of gout for which his doctor recommended hot baths. For this, Franklin had the slipper tub, pictured above, built for him. He took hot baths twice a week, each one lasting as long as two hours. Hence the occasional meeting held while in his tub.”
Top left quarter: Marie Antoinette prior to losing her head. Top right quarter: Empress Josephine looking a bit like “The Death of Marat” in her bath. Bottom half: Franklin taking a meeting in the shoe tub. So weird.
Since 2019 I’ve worked as a portrait painter celebrating Mizzou student athletes. This last year was a high mark for Mizzou Football, with four of the squad being named All-American.
The University has a posh facility located in the south end zone area of the stadium where they hang all of the All-American portraits, stretching back into the 1930s. The great illustrator Ted Watts (1942-2015) created most of the portraits over the course of more than three decades, so I’ve got a big act to follow.
The All-American portrait wall at Mizzou Football’s South End Zone facility.
The display is pretty cool, and it’s cool to have my work extend that tradition. Portraits of Kentrell Brothers and Harrison Mevis are two of my works currently on display, and four new ones will appear soon (Fall 2024).
When I began to create my paintings, I went on a tour to see the previous works up close and to evaluate the aesthetic through-lines (format of names, dates, poses, backgrounds, etc), as well as the techniques prior artists used.
I take a central role in the design process, creating digital mockups which are approved at Mizzou Football before I begin the paintings. I generally work with ink on paper, which is mounted on panel and sealed, then painted over with layers of acrylic. I try to maintain a painterly quality, with texture and dynamic brushwork on display. I also attempt to bring the digital effects which naturally appear in the preliminary studies into a physical realm with semi-transparent washes of paint.
Working on the portrait of Cody Schrader.
As the projects have developed I’ve found my own approach to the portraits. I want them to have kinship with the portraits of Watts and other previous artists, but I make sure to give the works my own unique inflection.
I’m excited for the new crop to go on display. Kris Abrams-Draine, Luther Burden III, Javon Foster, and Cody Schrader are the 2023 All-Americans for Mizzou Football. See images of the works below, but also be sure to stop by the All-American wall if you ever get into the South End Zone building!
MF DOOM (keep caps on that name!) was a highly skilled and influential British rapper. Throughout the years, fans have been drawn to creating various artistic interpretations of his famous mask, behind which the artist almost always appeared/performed.
My good friend Jesse Slade, proprietor of KING THEODORE RECORDS, got me more interested in MF DOOM years ago. I’ve created representations of the mask in the past for illustrations/artworks using in Jesse’s record shop, but I wanted to make a move into a Lego version (or two) after I saw some folx creating them online.
Shout out to The Canvas Don and u/vonaudy for their versions of a building block/Lego MF DOOM mask. Both are awesome. I also like the “blockheadz” versions here and here. These examples served as inspirations, but mostly I just played around with what I’ve got in the old Lego vault.
I created the two versions below in standard light blue-gray, dark gray, and white, but then spray painted them with a chrome silver for proper effect. Take a look and enjoy. The smaller one is 4x5x2 inches and the larger is 5x6x2.5 inches.
Smaller MF DOOM Lego Mask. Click to see larger versions.
Larger MF DOOM Lego Mask. Click to see larger versions.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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 Cheese Garage, September 2020The Cheese Garage, July 2022The Cheese Garage, November 2022The Cheese Garage, March 2023The Cheese Garage, April 2023The Cheese Garage, August 2023
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.
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.
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.
DETAIL of Portrait of Michelle R. Seat. Procreate, iPad Pro. 2022.
…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;
eikonktizo 