Tag Archives: Writing

Mix CD Era Glory

Posted on by under Life, Teaching

I make playlists every semester for my classes. These collections of songs are largely built from the ice-breaker/introduction discussion assignment I give to my students on the first day. I want to know what they listen to, what moves them, inspires them, sticks with them. And then I want to serve up songs during focused working time. With studio art classes at Mizzou lasting about 2 hours and 20 minutes, there’s plenty of time to get a vibe going. This way they can be both exposed to the things their peers love but also get the excitement of hearing their own personal deep cuts. I love the feeling of sharing some of my favorites with them, as well as discovering what “the youth” like today.

My interests in music are very eclectic, and that’s down to my exposure to so much variety through my students. But it didn’t start there. Below I am featuring a few of the most iconic Mix CDs I’ve been given over the last 25 years. I’m including Spotify playlists for each one. Go! Listen to them! In situations where the original song is not available on that platform I’m linking to YouTube videos.

I also want to shout out the amazing people who shared these four mixes with me. They are creative people and much cooler than I ever could be. I will link to some of their current projects. I’ll also talk about some of the tracks in each section and give some background on how these united groups of songs have stayed with me for a quarter century.

Ox-Bow 2001: DANCE, DANCE, DANCE – Eric May*

Created in 2001. Spotify link to this playlist.

  1. Armand Van Helden – You Don’t Know Me
  2. Folk Implosion – Nothing Gonna Stop The Flow
  3. Outkast – So Fresh And So Clean
  4. Outkast – Ms. Jackson
  5. Stardust – Music Sounds Better With You
  6. Beck – Beercan
  7. Beastie Boys – Sabotage
  8. Deee-lite – Groove Is In The Heart
  9. Daft Punk – Around The World
  10. Fatboy Slim – The Rockafeller Skank
  11. Madonna – Ray Of Light
  12. Groove Armada – I See You, Baby (featuring Gramma Funk) – Fat Boy Slim Edit
  13. Daft Punk – One More Time

I had a fellowship at Ox-Bow for three months in the summer of 2001. It was a very important time for me. A lot changed in me. You can read about my experiences here.

Ox-Bow is a lot more institutionalized now. Back then, it was a true bohemian type situation. What happened at Ox-Bow, stayed at Ox-Bow. The vibe there was a hold over from the 60s and 70s in a lot of ways, and this was before the world was really turned on its head by the US response to 911. The internet was still new and slow, there was practically no social media, and almost no one I knew had a cell phone. It was just a different time. There was room to go a little wild as well as room to explore your own thoughts and perspectives.

One of the best things that we did at Ox-Bow was have intense, blow-out parties every weekend. The cohort of fellowship residents did work during the main part of the week (maintenance, housekeeping, kitchen duties, etc), so when we partied, we went hard. A large meeting tent would be raised in the central field, a few turntables would be installed, and speakers deployed. Then our resident DJ, Eric May (with help from others) would spin records and CDs deep into the Michigan night.

I discovered a lot of great music that summer (The Beta Band, AIR, Massive Attack) and fell more in love with acts I’d always liked (Mazzy Star, Radiohead, PJ Harvey, Cat Stevens). Most of that stuff wasn’t being played at the parties, though, as they’re a bit too contemplative and musically less conducive to drunken dancing and themed costumes. Hence, the mix we all left with was something closer to late-90s college party than artsy hipster fare.

We definitely burned some calories to these songs…

*Eric checked in with me about this mix – he mentioned in the comments that Mikey H. and Reid T. had a larger hand in crafting it than he did! Shout out to Mikey and Reid! Reid has gone on to an amazing career as a scenic designer and has an amazing portfolio of exceptional design work. Go check him out!

FHS’s Mix – Fred Sturkey

Created in 2002. Spotify link to this playlist.

  1. Archers of Loaf – Scenic Pastures
  2. Kitchens of Distinction – Railwayed
  3. Drop Nineteens – Winona
  4. Gang of Four – Cheeseburger
  5. Gang of Four – Paralyzed
  6. Talk Talk – Eden
  7. Television – Marquee Moon
  8. Kitchens of Distinction – Gorgeous Love
  9. Kitchens of Distinction – Drive That Fast
  10. King Crimson – Larks’ Tongues in Aspic, Part 1
  11. Talk Talk – It’s My Life
  12. Butch Walker – Hot Girls in Good Moods
  13. HUM – Green to Me
  14. HUM – The Inuit Promise
  15. Kitchens of Distinction – Polaroids
  16. Drop Nineteens – Kick The Tragedy
  17. Drop Nineteens – My Aquarium
  18. Kitchens of Distinction – Under the Sea, Inside the Sky

Fred Sturkey worked with me at Good’s of Evanston. I started overseeing shipping and receiving for the art and frame store a couple weeks after 911 and about 4 weeks after the end of my Ox-Bow residency. I’ve written about Fred a bit before, and was very sad when he died in 2019. He was a high quality human, and was always happy to hold forth about music or politics, history or philosophy. Just a gentle, sweet guy.

This mix CD is one of the greatest gifts anyone has given me. This introduced me to HUM and Talk Talk and Kitchens of Distinction, three bands that have been in my life ever since. So different from one another, but totally unique and important. KoD is particularly interesting as a group from the late 80s/early 90s that championed the expression of queer relationships and perspectives. They did it in a matter-of-fact way, with a sense of imagery and poetry that draws the listener into shared human experience. I really love the texture of the guitar sound and the soaring vocals.

Structurally, the mix isn’t tracked perfectly, but it stands out for me purely because of the music it introduced me to. I’ll be forever grateful, Fred. RIP, sir.

The Art is Hard Mix – by Nikki Maloof

Created in 2004. Spotify link to this playlist.

  1. The Starlight Mints – Submarine #3
  2. Wilco – She’s A Jar
  3. Appleseed Cast – Fishing The Sky
  4. The Shins – They’ll Soon Discover
  5. Mike Doughty – The Rising Sign
  6. Rilo Kiley – It’s A Hit
  7. Nick Drake – Northern Sky
  8. Spoon – Anything You Want
  9. The Long Winters – Scent Of Lime
  10. Phoenix – Run, Run, Run
  11. Owen – The Ghost Of What Should Have Been
  12. The Smiths – Cemetery Gates
  13. Badly Drawn Boy – Once Around The Block
  14. Clem Snide – Better
  15. Modest Mouse – Paper Thin Walls
  16. Paul Simon – Mother and Child Reunion

Nikki is a successful artist who was also in the first drawing class I taught while in graduate school at Indiana University. She was dedicated, confident, and effortlessly cool. Those qualities have stayed with her as she built her career, had kids, and mounted major international shows of her work. She gave me this CD after we compared notes on music in that class, and she really got me hooked on The Shins, Spoon, and Nick Drake. An interesting combination of indie rock and mainstream(-ish) alt-pop, this mix is just a rich, comfortable listen. There are some great gems here, like Soul Coughing’s singer/creative engine Mike Doughty’s solo work in The Rising Sign.

The Close to Totality Mix – Tina Casagrand-Foss

Created in 2008. Spotify link to this playlist.

  1. Yeasayer – 2080
  2. Blitzen Trapper – Black River Killer
  3. Spoon – Bring it on Home to Me
  4. Donovan – Celia of the Seals
  5. Old Crow Medicine Show – Cocaine Habit
  6. McLusky – Day of the Deadringers
  7. The Pixies – Down to the Well (Peel Session)
  8. Queens of the Stone Age – Someone’s in the Wolf
  9. Sigur Ros – Fonklogi
  10. Serge Franklin – KKK
  11. Saul Williams – List of Demands (Reparations)
  12. Blur – Out Of Time
  13. Ugly Casanova – Spilled Milk Factory
  14. Modern Lovers – Pablo Picasso
  15. Ima Robot – Paint the Town Red
  16. Kings of Leon – Pistol of Fire
  17. Johnny Greenwood – Proven Lands
  18. Tom Vek – That Can be Arranged
  19. The Black Keys – Till I Get My Way
  20. Radiohead – Idioteque
  21. Miwa Gemini – Traveling Man
  22. Foo Fighters – Stacked Actors

Tina has an amazing energy. She’s a true go-getter, someone who is actively working to make the world better. As the founder and managing editor of The New Territory, she’s forging a space for the stories of the people and places that make up the Midwest to shine. She was a stand-out in my classes way back when, and she’s always a treat to collaborate with. I have written for The New Territory and made artworks for the magazine, as well as spoken at the Missouri Scholars Academy, which is one of Tina’s favorite annual summer projects.

This mix is highlighted by driving, raging, bloody tracks like the Peel Session version of Down to the Well by The Pixies, Saul Williams’s – List of Demands (Reparations), Ima Robot’s intensely violent Paint the Town Red, and Pistol of Fire by Kings of Leon. There’s definitely some serial killer vibes going on in this mix, but interesting moments of calm are interspersed throughout (Donovan’s Celia of the Seals or Blur’s Out of Time). There’s a variety of attitude in this mix – some of it is very serious, or even anxiety-producing (Greenwood’s Proven Lands or Williams’s List of Demands) – while other songs are tongue-in-cheek or just hilarious (Modern Lovers – Pablo Picasso or Miwa Gemini’s Traveling Man) I like the range of time across the tracks, as well as the tension between related genres/styles.

It’s loaded with bangers, all-time classics, and deeper cuts that stand the test of time. I’ve kept bringing these songs into my classroom since the day Tina handed the CD to me!

For some reason, the track order that was burned onto the CD itself is not the order that Tina wrote on sleeve – I ended up listening to it wrong for all these years…

The best part about these mixes is that they are palpable, physical artifacts made for me. Sure, we can listen to the music without the object, but the object is proof of something. It was there with me, and it was there with the people I mentioned. It shared space and time with us, and it travels along with us. The meaning is not only in the music, it’s in the fact of human interaction and sharing deeply human concerns.

Marvin Glenn Smith, 1942-2025

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Matt Ballou, Portrait of my Father, Marvin G. Smith. Oil on panel, 20×16 inches. 2014.

Marvin Glenn Smith died on Tuesday, August 12, 2025. He was 83 years old. Marv was born on May 24, 1942 in Camden, NY. He loved Studebaker cars, bawdy blues music, and the aircraft of World War 1. In many ways these things framed the contours of his life.

Known for his love of fast cars and racing, Marvin survived a horrible accident at the age of 19, an event that left him with extensive, permanent injuries. He spent the rest of his life going to auto shows, attending and watching races around the country, and collecting manuals and other materials related to cars and the racing world.

Mom and Dad, mid 1970s.

Marv went on to a long career at Camden Wire, working in the quality assurance area, where he was able to use his sharp skills in analysis and mathematics. He took an early retirement in 1995, eventually settling north of Camden in Empeyville, NY.

It was at this time that his decades long passion for studying World War 1 became a main focus for him. He filled his time with reading and research, amassing a collection of WW1 books, objects, documents, firearms, and art. He traveled extensively to explore military history at museums and trade shows, but perhaps most cherished was his trip to Germany in 1997, where he visited many battle sites first hand.

He had a unique personality – a calm, pleasant demeanor with a touch of nihilism sprinkled in. He would constantly drop catch phrases into conversations: “Nothin’ serious” and “Another day in paradise” came up often. As a “live and let live” Libertarian, Marv often found himself at odds with the dominant, invasive politics of his adult life. Though a quiet, reserved man, he always enjoyed conversation and could hold forth about the blues or history any time. He loved discussing items in his WW1 collection and possessed an exhaustive knowledge of the people and places of that time.

My last chat with my dad, 2025. Photo by my sister.

He is survived by his sisters Linda (Leon) and Martha, his children Walter, Matthew (Alison), and Stacey, and many grand kids. He was preceded in death by his parents and beloved daughter Denya. At Marvin’s request, there will be no funeral service.

My sister Stacey was able to retrieve a piece of dad’s WW1 trench art, a 50mm artillery shell decorated in a floral motif with an eagle. This will serve as dad’s urn when he is buried in his family plot. It’s wild – and sort of perfectly poetic – that something made by a young man in the tumultuous trenches of a world at war 110 years ago, will now go into the ground in upstate NY with my father. In a way, he got to take one part of the collection he built over a lifetime with him.

Colonial Debris, Imperial Fragments – A Catalog

Posted on by under Art, Life, news, Writing

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:

Impossible Interiors at William Woods University

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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.

The card for the exhibition.
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.

Come so close that I might see…

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Recently, my friend Aarik (whom I haven’t seen in person in about two years, which is a travesty) made an intriguing post on Twitter. He was musing about the idea of publishing an anthology of reflections regarding an important single line from some song, film, poem, or other source. He suggested calling this journal Hold The Line and I’ve been thinking about the idea every day since I skimmed my eyes over his tweet.

It goes without saying that each one of us could offer many dozens of lines from the treasure trove we carry in our minds. Lord knows I’ve been moved by everything from scriptures to contemporary internet memes. When I glide back over my life, though, it’s clear that some lines are held more closely to my core – to the experiences they influenced – than others.

Lying in bed last night I decided to make an entry in Aarik’s theoretical journal. My Hold The Line for today (for right now, since probably it would be something else in 20 minutes), is from Mazzy Star’s 1993 masterpiece, So Tonight That I Might See.

“Come so close that I might see the crash of light come down on me.”1

There’s something so powerful in the idea that when we come together we approach transcendence: come so close that I might see. It’s a proposition, a hope. If/Then. If this other entity is close enough to my core, then perhaps I may experience a charged glimpse of something beyond me. Then it would also be within me, a kind of multiplicity that blows out me-ness with all-ness.

Even so, my perspective – my sensate awareness – is also central. This is like Annie Dillard’s “tree with the lights in it”2 or Moses’s burning bush; the intimate presence, both terrifying and awesome, brings astonishment. Come so close that I might be more than me. Ego death. Samadhi. A disappearance of masks and pettiness in lieu of some true (if only momentary) unity.

Let there be light – and it crashes.

There is a bit of an out-of-body charge to the order of operations in Hope Sandoval’s mumbled words, in the “gothic hallucination”3 of Roback’s droning guitar tone. From closeness to sight to the mystical crash of light. Closeness catalyzes an outside, transmundane experience. I see the light come down on me in that moment. Sharp, electric, like an accidental brush against a live wire or the vertigo of a hypnic jerk.

I have felt that pulsing disorientation a few times. With Robin, her blond bob, and the small of her back all those years ago. With Miranda, born like a bomb, a modern Minerva bursting fully-formed into new reality. Even last week, suddenly seeing a former student after years and almost bursting into tears over it.

Maybe the crash of light always carries tears along with it.

Cliché, I suppose. But also real experience and astonishment… moments of enlightenment brought on by the presence of another real person.

Album cover for Mazzy Star’s So Tonight That I Might See.

1) Mazzy Star. “So Tonight That I Might See.” So Tonight That I Might See, performance by Sandoval, Hope and David Roback, Capitol Records, 1993.

2) Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York, NY: Harper, 1998. Page 35-36.

3) Moreland, Quinn. “Review – Mazzy Star: So Tonight That I Might See.” Pitchfork, Pitchfork, 14 June 2020, pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/mazzy-star-so-tonight-that-i-might-see/.

Another Ten Years

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Last month marked ten years of writing posts and posting pictures here. In most ways this site has become my de facto artist website rather than a space to post observations and non-art stuff. Kind of lame, I know. But I’ve had a personal website (and domain) for almost 22 years and I have administered it in a lot of different ways. But at some point – particularly after getting deep into full time teaching – I decided to lay aside HTML and CSS and private hosting.

I still have all of those older versions of my websites. Sometimes I browse them from their resting places inside my hard drives. I think about the effort and consideration that went into them. Thankfully I never committed the Geocities and Angelfire design atrocities… maybe WordPress is just the more contemporary version of those gaudy old things, I don’t know.

I have not written much in 2019. It has been a hard, strange year – emotionally, professionally, physically.

Physically, I have been sick and run down a lot this year. The medications I take to manage my heart disease are rough, and they constrain my metabolism and energy level; I have fallen asleep without wanting to a number of times this year. Though I work out every single day, my endurance seems to be sliding lower and lower. Normally I teach a course or two over the summer, but the reality is that I know I couldn’t keep up with that at this point. There’s more to say… but I won’t.

Professionally, while I’m not sure exactly where my artwork is going, I have a good body of work underway and am getting it out for people to see. I was recently promoted to Full Teaching Professor, which is the terminal rank in the Teaching Line. It took nine years to achieve. I feel secure and thankful for Mizzou, but there are a lot of pressures that rest on the shoulders of professors in a time when Universities are trying to do more with less. As someone who understands the importance of mental and physical health, well, those pressures can be life-threatening. I know that being an educator is not just time spent with students. If it were, I think I’d generally feel much better. God knows that I am still encouraged by being in the classroom – each and every time.

Emotionally, I don’t think I am the same after the heart attack. My general affect, emotional intelligence, and responses were dulled significantly. After two years it seemed that I had returned to normal. But have I? In 2012 I had a pretty major crisis of faith – one that corresponded with the onset of depression. There were other factors during the period of time between 2012 and 2015… then 2016 came with the death of my sister and my cardiac arrest mere days later. There have been a number of other things in the 3 and half years since then that have made impacts as well. Perhaps I am being changed by the medications and the inertia of routines… At least I am getting joy from working on LEGOs with my kids.

So I haven’t been writing. Maybe more will come.

2017 Pride

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I completed a number of projects in 2017 and started a few more. Setting goals and keeping an eye on the prize during the vicissitudes of daily life can be hard, but I’ve gotten better at it over the years (thanks mostly to my loving partner, Alison). I already mentioned stuff about my exercise routine, and posted about my exhibition of recent work (that opens today!).

Back in May I set some goals for the year while at the Wakonse Conference on College Teaching in Michigan. Here are my written goals:

I’m happy to say that I’ve worked to complete most of these items and even those I’ve not yet finished have been pushed forward. I’m glad, given how agitating 2017 was socially and politically, that at least in terms of family and my work I’ve been stable and focused. The results are things of which I am really proud.

Probably highest on my list is the publication of my essay On Scholarship: Empathic Attention, Holy Resistance. It appeared in SEEN Journal and explores the importance of attention in an environment of political vitriol and “fake news.” I hope you’ll pick up a copy and read it – it’s one of the best things I’ve written in years, and it shares space with artists and writers and thinkers I admire. I’m really thankful for the opportunity to have this piece out there.

A shot of the cover of the SEEN Journal and a copy of the first page of my essay. Above is a copy of The New Territory.

I am also super excited to be working on a piece for The New Territory. If you are a Midwesterner, you need to get this publication. I am working on a piece exploring the work of Joey Borovicka and adjacent ideas about interiority, Midwestern space, and solitude. I can’t wait to get it finalized and ready for the editors to sort through. Getting to write about key ideas and the work of others is very important to my identity as an artist and educator. I also just love being involved with publications like The New Territory and SEEN. They are labors of love and works of passion that really do the hard work of shoring up meaning, intellectual effort, and spiritual yearning.

I hope to continue this trend in 2018, as I’ve got the Promotion to finalize!

 

 

Recent Publications

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13725109_10154344363709491_3439759102298509937_oCollaborative digital artwork featured in the neotericART piece. See below.

I’ve had the great pleasure of having a few publications this year. I’ve always got 2 or 3 pieces in the works, so it makes sense that they’d come out from time to time. This year sees a brief but prestigious invitation and two wonderful panel discussions that I coordinated. If you’d like to check them out, see below:

Nerdrum Bio for Grove Dictionary of Art

Dr. Judith Rodenbeck of the University of California invited me to write a biography of Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum for the Grove Dictionary of Art, an imprint of Oxford University Press (online version is here). Dr. Rodenbeck is the lead editor of the 2016 Grove Art update. My piece will be published in the next couple of months. I’m pretty excited about this!

A Non-Verbal Debate: Digital Collaborations

This piece, created for neotericART (where I have contributed for many years), is a discussion of online, live collaboration tools – digital whiteboards – and how artists are beginning to adapt them into their work. Just the tip of the iceberg on this developing practice!

You Make The Work By Performing It: A Roundtable Discussion on Oblique Perspective

The Finch is an amazing online publication co-edited by Richard Benari & Lauren Henki. They invited me to lead a group of my graduate students in a panel discussion about some of the ideas that Dorothea Rockburne brought up in a recent interview. Our far-ranging conversation was one of the best I’ve had in a long time.

New Collaboration For 2014

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Joel T. Dugan is Assistant Professor at Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kansas, and we have begun a series of collaborative paintings. It was great to meet and hit it off with Joel during my recent exhibition at FHSU, and I’m excited at the prospect of working with him. I’ve decided that, much like my new series of portraits (Becoming the Student), I’m going to keep a record here to show how our work progresses.

The first six pieces have begun, three started by Joel and three started by me. These are the first states of the works. We’ll alternate working over what each other has developed and, hopefully, come to a mutual conclusion about the work.

collab01

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In other news, I’ve had two pieces of writing made available on the neotericART website recently:

Below the Blue Line: The Recent Work of Allison Jaqueline Reinhart

Trying to Get a Sense of Scale – Tim Lowly’s Precious Labor

~

Matt Ballou: RANGE – Reception at William Woods University

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My exhibition – Matt Ballou: RANGE – is still up at William Woods University until December 16, 2012. I hope you can go see it if you haven’t yet. Below are some photos of the space, both after the installation and during the reception. I want to thank everyone who came out – friends, students (graduate and undergrad, current and former), and colleagues – and especially Jennifer Sain for her help in making the exhibition happen. Special thanks to Jane Mudd for encouraging William Woods to host this show.

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Installation, back on November 12, 2012.

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Three panoramas of the installed work.

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Two of my all-time favorite works… Locus #77 and #78

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Beautiful angles and shapes during the reception…

At the reception I gave a brief impromptu talk that led into some interesting questions from the audience and my own musing on the work.

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Me during my talk – Photo by Kevin Larson.

Click here to download the talk and Q+A session (42 MB MP3 format, 50 minutes long).

Some notes about the talk:

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Photo of me at the talk – Photo by Eric Norby.