ART CHAT Central
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Art Fair Coverage
First Post
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News From Frau Kolb: Reflecting on Art Miami Basel 2012
Thank you Miami Basel! I visited, again, this year... I’ve discover the great truth: there is much more to art-life than partying.
Partying may be fun, but LIFE is not a constant party, even in the art world, even when the art world hits Miami and the parties explode. I have invested my life in enjoying the feast of senses which the art world delivers. Art is a delicious part of being alive but there is much more to caring about it than celebrating it over drinks.
Take for example, the museum... a place I love. I love most museums, that are well-run and grand, funded and integral. Art museums have formed a large part of my life experience. I’ve visited LACMA many many times. I’ve spent many days there. I’ve spent many many more days at the Met, at MoMa, and at the Tate in London. When I lived near Princeton, I visited the art museum regularly. My recent trips to Philadelphia meant visits to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Foundation. I’ve also visited encyclopedic museums in Germany and Dominican Republic (the later being feeble in comparison to the former). Yet, during this trip I attended, "Conversations," moderated by András Szántó with the directors of two museums I LOVE, Mr. Michael Govan and Mr. Thomas Campbell. I wrote about that experience in my most recent blog entry. The discovery of the museum as an institution run by actual humans is NEWS to me. I’ve enjoyed the product without thinking much about how it got to be a part of my reality, my being. I don’t think I will ever be able to wander in the garden without thinking about the story that each of these museums tells about reality.
The “Grand Narrative,” which each museum building tells is in an of itself serious import. Just as the story of art, “contemporary art,” is being told at art fairs and Art Basel Miami Beach is the MOTHER of all American art fairs. “Contemporary Art,” is defined in exhibition spaces, traditionally art galleries in which the work of living artists is shown and discussed by the interested. Who cares?
As an artist, I care. Artists care about contemporary art and even if artists are entirely invested creating work that is entirely traditional in content and method, they are still performing in the NOW within the material limitations of our shared reality. For artists invested in exploration, innovation, discovery, and expansion of artistic method, practice, and performance CONTEMPORARY art looms large as a monumental reality which is constantly in question, flux, and being defined by actions taken in the present tense by active humans, engaged in an intensely repetitive ritual of constructing meaning on a (sometimes) massive scale. Actions which are sometimes, rarely, rewarded with material success... and yet... there is clearly a very big business in art, art fairs, museums, antiques, and man-made treasures... we share this interest.
Thus, this year at Art Miami Basel I found myself looking at the show(s) and feeling wonderfully overwhelmed and completely without energy for the night life. I went out one evening, briefly for dinner with an artist from LA and his art dealer. After, an hour I realized, this is NOT why I came all the way over here. I came here to learn, to grow. I can socialize anywhere, but how often can I experience art of museum quality and the people that make it their business to define what is “museum quality,” and what matters in art today and in perpetuity.
Every year Miami explodes with ART INTENSITY. This year, my focus was visiting was the actual blue-chip, mother-of-all the art fairs, ART BASEL at the Miami Convention Center, a location that is growing in familiarity for me and that works well, in that it is spacious and can accommodate the hordes that come and see art on the weekend.
There is a great excitement among the members of the local communities and the global art communities and today, Friday 7th of December I saw not only families but school bus loads of kids, ready to take in the art. And, they DO! You see people, all kinds of people, not just art-school hipsters from all over the world, but retirees, and flashy men that look like they swallow bank-rolls for breakfast, in other words, swanky men, accompanied by with appropriately coifed female(s) . The general mood, is of profound excitement, curiosity, and amusement.
The fair caters to all kinds of people. Though, I did over hear complaints from some younger people that, "The salads are tiny and very expensive." But, I wasn't hungry for anything other than the visual feast spread before me.
On Conversations with Met Director, Mr. Thomas Campbell and LACMA Director, Mr. Micheal Govan
Gosh! Miami ART Basel 2012 offered the goods we are willing to travel for. I focused, this year, on seeing the main show. I saw it during the vernissage, or private, viewing and almost every other day during my brief, five day, intense trip to Miami Art Basel 2012. I returned to take another look, last night with art-pal, street artist and chalk activist, Alex Schaefer and his friend, the very bright, Nick Christos. Yes. The fair did not fail to razzle and dazzle the innocents, moi included. What a spectacle! So many layers of “value,” it was enough to boggle my monkey-mind. I hadn’t appreciated what a feat it is to create an art fair, before this trip when my focused shifted, TO THE BIGGER PICTURE.
On Friday morning, in the rush of the gigantic energized art fair, I met Geoffrey Dietch. We exchanged a few words. I had the audacity to ask him about his future at MOCA, my BAD. Dietch, made an immediate positive impression on me. I get the strong feeling of a his being a person I'd like to meet again. Earlier, the same Friday morning, I had the pleasure of briefly meeting Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and after Michael Govan, CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles at the "Conversations," section, Moderated by András Szántó, Author and Consultant to arts and philanthropic organizations, New York
“Conversations,” which I caught by chance, as I arrived early at the fair on Friday for a meeting that never happened. “Come in, YOU are press,” said the guard, and I figured he was right. Besides, “Conversations.” I like to talk and listen. Thus, I crossed the white curtain and found a place to stand. Much to my surprise, the director of The Metropolitan Museum of ART was speaking. Now... IF you know FRAU.... You know I’m NUTS for the MET! I’ve spent so much time there. As a kid it was a playground and when I came into some share of maturity it became a quiet hide-out, a place to go; NEVER on the weekends, but before college I was there almost every week, and during college, when I studied art history at Columbia University, i’d visit several times a week. Growing UP in NYC, the MET, like Columbia University, familiar as a mother. These grand institutions feed New Yorkers little bits of peace, quiet, reflection. They give so much food for thought, over and over nourishing the public’s curiosity and giving visitors vibrant samples of glorious past to chew on. Ah!
“Solace,” is a word that Mr. Campbell used to describe one of the many functions of the Metropolitan provides the residents of Manhattan. They visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in times of crisis, after a storm like Sandy or in the tear soak days after September 11. The stability. The peace. The bling of heroes, conquerers shining eternally bright and alluring. The treasure house reassures the people that life goes on. Empires crumble and in the rubble new sprouts of life.
I fell right into Mr. Campbell's narration of his vision for the museum and I found it... well... British. He is stuck in an ideal of EUROPEAN excellence and translating that glory is his mission. I respect that. I do. However, as he spoke of his pride to head the collection, without a moment’s reflection on the fact that the pristine, unending past which is celebrated at the Met must take into account alternate narratives of peoples not represented by the European hegemony.
Mr. Campbell’s speech, left me with a feeling that colonialism is not over. It has morphed to producing instructions in 18 languages and yet the perspective is that English, the more enunciated and Oxford, the better... and leadership, its sound and look hasn’t changed with the changes in who visits the museum. It has simply grown to embrace these hordes and educate them in standard Western idolatry.
“I am the child of the museum. The one that learned to play, gently, in its quiet halls. I am the one that loves the Pompeii Room, the Kouros, Gauguin’s carved cane form a part of my knowing, my imagining.” I realized that my favorite museum in the world, the MET, is a fabulous dinosaur, destined to LIVE forever but not necessarily leading in adaption to the current climate of multi-cultural interest in the European past as a PART not necessarily, end-ALL-be-ALL culmination of human potential. Before me was a man whose sheer training, the accent revealing a life-time of study in which FUN was never a priority, was palpable across time and space.
In contrast, Mr. Govan, director of LACMA looks at the world, from another perspective. His understanding starts with now and the past is not necessarily a relentless parade of European glory. The present, its light, and the importance of contemporary artists LACMA leads in vision of the world, starting with NOW and then filling in the blanks. LACMA serves the community from a place of interest in the present tense.
I see it very fitting that Mr. Govan began his tenure at LACMA with Chris Burden’s Urban Light (2008). The work is an absolute statement of JOY in the present tense. It is formal and unique. It moves and invites. Bravo, LACMA!
NOTE: one year later, the day before yesterday, I happen to return to LACMA, this time with my dear husband in tow, to see the Turrell exhibition for the second time. My eyeballs were tickled by a chance sighting of LACMA’s head, Mr. Govan in a well cut suit. What a dashing Male Muse for www.talkinggrid.com to focus ON!
Art Fair Coverage
Thoughts
Thinking may be overrated but for those that do not master this skill; cocktail parties in Manhattan are deadly events.
The Art Fair Orbit
Love them or not, Art Fairs are a prominent part of the contemporary art world. Collectors see them as an opportunity for "one-stop," shopping and artists see them as an essential means of self promotion and exposure. The galleries vie for inclusion in the most prestigious of the fairs. Whereas fledgling fairs compete for premium galleries to participate. More often than not art-fair energy is vibrant, frenzied even. Art fairs range from the blue-chip focused Armory Show in NYC, where commerce and art are one, to rouge fairs sprouting all over the globe. Here we have a few selections, from Frau's perspective on work that stands out from the multitudes of art objects on display and for sale at thriving pop-up art markets worldwide.
Perform Chinatown
Perform Chinatown
Saturday July 21st 2012
Special Thanks to Mat Gleason, founder of Coagula Art Zine now at Coagula Curatorial
LA's 4th Annual Showcase of Performance Art:
SATURDAY, JULY 21 | 4PM - MIDNIGHT
Over 40 actions, performances, installations, interventions and manifestations from performance artists from around the world.
Happening in & around contemporary art venues on Chung King Rd., in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles
Featuring Karen Finley's first Los Angeles performance in 14 years.
Last night, Perform Chinatown served up a flawless equisite corpse of refined aesthetic measures, gestures bold and narcissistically innocent, unknowable, complex rehersed downloads, swan dives into abysmal pools of cosmic information, loosely knit together diatribes and/or spirited dances, strechting toward ominiscience, absurd monolougues delivered with the ridiculous seriousness of state occasions, irrespective of the lack of tollerance for esoteric musing and bodily action, in society, at large, in the increasingly tattered basket, the catch-all art category: "Performance ART."
On a “T” of two streets, in a set-like playground of contemporary art galleries, entrenched among Chinese souvenir shops and restaurants featuring large round tables for family style banquets, all in collusion to create an otherworldly atmosphere, of mutual respect and artistic acceptance, which revolutionaries like most humans, crave. The satisfaction of a unnambable hunger may be found in living art, the experience of it is akin to the pleasure of finding a paradise where the odd, the nude, the strategically unwashed, the potentially unwanted, the children that scream too much, and yet have rhythm, a voice… they carry a tune, sing a song, write a poem, weave a blanket, paint a pretty picture, roll around on the ground, and look comely, adorable, or not… these artists are the adult children that never stopped playing, never stopped experimenting, and thus dedicate their lives to the exploration of ideas, and possibilities with whatever materials they define as relevant, the detrius of time and space which they simmer and serve in performances for others to savor or chew over, later.
It was hot and sunny until evening, when it became HOT and dark and sweaty, yet---somehow--- still pleasant, and even then it kept raining men and women, in and out of costume playing and performing for a wandering, blissed-out audience, of art-world folk and dazed passersby. "This is almost like a carnival." Somone says. The work presented varied from the deathly serious, “Erasing Tibet,” a physical ritual reminiscent of yogic practices, and prayer, which had participants performing on mat-sized photographs of Tibet strewn with rice, the food stock associated with weddings in the West, the staple grain of the East. This work we can swiftly decode as a gesture of solidarity with the people suffering in Tibet. The physical exercise, the kneeling, the sweeping away of the rice all amount to a dance of morning, a step toward peace and away from the oppression of the Tibetan people. http://www.jocelynart.com/
The audio-visual-kinesthetic-psychic smorgasbord served inside and just outside the contemporary art galleries of located in Los Angeles’s quaint-tourist attracting restaurant packed, Chinatown provide a psychic nourishment for the savvy citizens of the art universe that floated under the red lanterns and clouds of conversation sipping, perhaps, an intoxicating elixir of promise, talent manifest, and most of all, mutual respect for personal freedom and divergence from convention. Delightful.
The feast served all the ingredients we have come to expect from "cutting edge," performance art:
Performance ART Checklist:
Female Nudity √
Cross-dressing √
Exploration of Ethnic Identity √
Humanistic Political Activism √
Self Revealing Narratives so studied they are nearly embalmed. √
Martyrs in public flagellation √
Feminist critic √
Queer conciousness √
For spice, a few surprises:
Karen Finley did not fail to please. After 14 years without performing publicly the talented medium read her dead-celebrity automatic writings with passion and bite. She was fearless and willing to kick anyone out that took her picture while performing. Her "channeled," drawings from netherworld connections with the who's who of the deceased: Mary Kennedy (and her unicorn drawing,) John Belushi, Donna Summer, Micheal Jackson, Charles Buckowski, Vidal Sasson, Whitney Houston among other notable beloved stiffs, have made drawings through the medium, performance artist, Karen Finley.
La Suzy, artist Suzy Hernandez, opened for Finely, with "No Comas Tortillas," a tightly edited, well timed, stroll through the process of loosing a native identity and becoming one more American citizen, thus erasing a past with the ease of changing one cloak for another.
Steve Craig’s Automatic Abstract Drawing Machine, kept the kids entertained at the far end to the "T" that marked the spot, last night. The smoothly operating machine made of wood and bicycle parts holds great appeal and had visitors all evening. The idea of drawing upon a machine to produce (reasonable) drawings without the baggage, the hassle, the training, and other past narratives clinging to art practice.
The artist, Kate Gilbert, affectionately referred as “The Naked Lady,” by audience-bystanders-and impromptu co-performers- that performed nude just outside Colanga gallery from 6-8pm. Her inch by inch squirm across concrete, unprotected, nude, and horizontal, face mostly plastered to the sidewalk, sometimes facing skyward, rarely looking out… nude except for hot pink heals… danced the edge between purposely provocative, slickly calculated, and masterfully executed fine art performance for the hungry souls that gather at performance art events all over. Gilbert's performance reclaims the image of woman abandoned, abducted, and alone and replaces the icon of devastation with the truth of woman-artist in control of her body, determined, and perfectly comfortable to face the public's greatest fears with horizontal aplomb. Go to any major museum and the subject matter of so much traditional painting is women’s nude bodies. The determination to direct the fascination of flesh, rather than being objectified and not given a choice about how one's body is viewed by others, to rebel from the role of decorative vase on a pedestal or fancy spittoon, is commendable.
For LAUGHS: Margie Scnibbe.com
Ideal Woman: Outline is a continuation of Allie Pohl’s Ideal Woman series. During Perform Chinatown 2012, Pohl sketched participants’ bodies from waist to knee, similar to the iconic shape of Ideal Woman. Ideal Woman: Outline demonstrates a sampling of the different shapes and sizes of women in the city of Los Angeles, a city consumed by the idea of perfection. By outlining participants’ bodies in her iconic shape, Pohl continues her dialogue, which questions the idealized female form that has been marketed to woman and absorbed by society at large as a paragon of physical beauty.
Keith Walsh: cracked it OUT, playing a mean rendition of the Sex Pistols “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” One Man Band says that when he began playing on his own he thought he was the ONLY ONE. Later he learned that, “We are legion." He was featured in a “Encyclopedia of One Man Bands,” out of Chicago.
All in all the event was high quality comfort food for the performance art addicted.
There were too many performances simultaneously occurring for one to cover. I'm sure I missed a lot even though I darted from one daring performance to an another. Forgive me, if I missed you. Perhaps, next year… I'm looking forward to Perform Chinatown, year five.
I agree entirely with Michele Jaquis, Elizabeth Leister‘s Disapeared was "the most compelling and moving piece," among the many stand-out examples of possiblitiy in performance art served up at Perform Chinatown. It was, "Haunting to say the least."
Related LINKS:
Highlights from Perform Chinatown
©Frau Kolb 22 July 2012
Art Platform: Los Angeles
Carole Feuerman piece (gigantic swimmer in the back) getting attention. These works always draw people in. I'd like to dive into the artist's process in creating these hyper realist yet lively and inviting art works.
Remember this piece? This Brett Reichman painting caught my eye before. I overheard the word "exquisite," being bandied around by one of the men gazing intently at the eye of this centered storm.
Nice: Tom Wesselman still-life.
Ready, Set, and Go! To ART Miami BASEL 2012 with Frau Kolb and Special Guests
We prepare for the trip to ART Miami Basel 2012. The luggage is packed. Summer clothes in day-glow bright colors, skimpy shorts, swim suits, tuxedo, flask full of delicious whisky: CHECK √
We are almost ready to GO! There were a number of changes to our plans. We had to pay attention to the signs and go with the wind. Allow ourselves to relax into the experience of ART TRAVEL on our favorite air line: Virgin Atlantic! We aim for a smooth Bon Voyage. Thus, we prune the luggage once again and get our camera ready. Tripod: CHECK√
What art am I looking forward to? Specifically, NO THING! I am OPEN to art adventure and ready to be surprised. Who will I interview? The people whose art STOPS me in my tracks as I float, fast, bouncing from one attraction, painting, sculpture, person, performance, party, video installation, conversation, lecture, funny situation to the next.
Are you going to keep up with Frau Kolb and her art adventures in Miami? Please do if you have time and desire to experience the fair from Frau Kolb’s unconventional and occasionally informed, perspective. Other artists, public visual voices, will join me in documenting the world's largest and most prestigious yearly art event.
Forgive me in advance, the many typos and factual errors that are sure to come in with daily up-loads and video edits on-the-fly! Take it as proof of independent status and determination to overcome dyslexia, and English ass second language, by writing and self publishing like a fiend.
Oh AND let us know if YOU are attending the fair and want to see Talkinggrid there. We are available and delighted to attend you shing-ding or Miami ART hoe-down. Ja!
Thank you,
Frau Kolb
Zoom in With Frau Kolb!
On Blogging for Lunch Money
It LOOKS like this Blog is becoming MORE and MORE about blogging. Blogging is an interesting topic and I’m sure you could read up about it until the exploited farmed mammals come home. Yet, what is it, really?
For Frau Kolb, Talkinggrid, is in part a public diary, an ongoing and shifting record of emotional states… lately, it changes daily and has taken on an intensity which reflects my actual sense of self.
That happens, I guess, as an artist blogger finds time for sneaking more words on the “edges of days,” tucking them in while the children and husband sleep… I slip out of bed and into the infinite.. The words are a gift to myself. Yet, the thought of you reading them helps the words manifest in greater abundance… thus, I write more. You read… you send me LUNCH MONEY… Businesses buy ads, individuals create accounts, others LOOK at the art… the sketches, the drawings, the paintings… to be found deep in the bowels of this meandering way-too-personal intimate art chat web-site knit for you, nice & cozy, by your host, Frau Kolb.”Zoom In With Frau Kolb,” if you require more of this unique art infused spiritual spree through a garden of refreshing perspective(s).
Really, the freedom of independent blogging of it is almost too much, everyday, I can OPEN up like a morning glory and give you a look into the synaptic leaps the thunderous gray matter encased within the well rounded skull of everyone’s favorite self centered intimate art chat provide. This daily blogging experience is the equivalent of jumping into the Pacific and realizing how big it is.
ON THE CHANGING TOPIC
Dear Loyal Talkinggrid Readers,
There is so much to click and cling to on the internet. We can spend hours on-line getting a little of this and that out, a chuckle, an image, a lesson, a fun fact, a horror story… porn. The internet… I met my husband on-line and I go on-line everyday. I like typing, quick conversations over Facebook messenger with interesting artists, writers, art collectors, consultants… fill the corners of my day. I appreciate that anyone takes the time to visit this site and so many of you have expressed enjoyment, mirth, interest, and curiosity about Frau Kolb and The Talkinggrid, which is right now, me, myself, and I… keep writing… and I’m glad you keep reading and well… we continue.
Lately, I’ve been writing about some of the ways I turned having advanced cancer into an advantage or "blessing.” Discussing in public, personal health concerns is a bit awkward. Yet, I know, that I’m grateful for everyone that stands up and shows that life with cancer is just that, LIFE with cancer… Not a constant “fight,” but rather the JOY that it really is… even chronic illness should not inbibit your love of living. Yet, I must admit that writing about the horror, the horror… always brings back how hard it really was to be without hair and worse… the vomiting induced by chemo, the blackened nails, the surgeries,ect… I never really dove into it because when it was happening I was so present that I did not allow myself to anticipate pain or to experience anything that wasn’t actually happening. So, I could focus on “how pretty,” the MRI scanner was or how “Nice and kind,” my nurse or doctor was (thus, prompting better care). Now, I’m in a different place and I’ve gone into my memories and I find that my imagination can make it all feel as though it were happening now. Strange, right?
Well, I’m going to stop writing about this topic, even though I have a lot to share (because I wrote a whole unpublished book “Cancer with Style,” in which I had 100 Things I Loved about having breast cancer) unless it becomes clear that you really need me to continue, in that case, I will. Yet, I’d rather go back to investing my mental energy on how great it really is to feel the breeze, see the ice crystals, fire, light, sunshine, rain, and snow… oh! There is so much to write about and I’m still calling this the New Year, because… well… that works for me, anyway… we continue.
Now that I’m changing topics… What would you like to read here, on talkinggrid.com, what if Talkinggrid were your opperation would you like it to do for you? Do you have a project you would like help with or are you an artist interested in collaboration, cross promotion… well let us know, Talkinggrid, might take your flaky idea seriously and then we can gorge ourselves on cherry pie.
Ok?
Best,
Frau Kolb
PS: I’m very tempted to start writing about “lessons,” I learned from my X boyfriends… but that brings us back to well erotica, if not… porn.
ON Floundering
The focus I set for this page was ART. Contemporary, mostly. I planned on going out on an ever increasing ART-A-THON. You know, more and more ART adventure, culminating in an epic feast celebrating our BIG achievements and AWESOME art adventures. I was feeling so secure in my vision that I began to invite others into it, like a play structure in the middle of a city park.
Forgive me that I've lost my way.
I'm thinking more about THE HOME, lately. Since, March.
I've put my focus on HOME and HEARTH.
Once in-a-while, a news story… something juicy and controversial gets me splashing emotionally in the ocean of opinion, for a second or two… then I relax and I remember: my way is to FLOAT. I float over troubled times and swim above the clouds left by great bombs in history.
Successfully, I've re-invented myself dozens of times and keep discovering more talent within. For example: I LIKE to clean! My whole life I'd convinced myself that I HATED cleaning. Recently, I realized… NO! I LOVE CLEANING. The reason I thought I HATED cleaning, my whole life, until NOW, was that well… my mom LOVES cleaning… and I even though I really dig earsing famous artist's drawings and my mother always HATED my huge collection of erasers and random pieces of paper, from type to rag, I used to hoard, neatly in my closet, back when I was a smaller version of myself.
Anyway... write your own blog IF you don't LIKE mine. I keep writing here mostly because I sometimes have something to say on ART butt lately… I'm floundering. Oh well… Maybe I will enroll in an ART for ART fried ART folk-culture class at the local community college. Maybe… I will discover a more interesting direction for this freakin' web-site of writings and art by an independent female pigment slinger.
Yours truly,
Frau Kolb
A Lamentation for a DEAD BOY
Selfie by Frau Kolb, "IN HONOR of A Hoodie wearing human." © 2013, all rights reserved
Dear Freinds, Family, and OTHERS,
WE have come together on this morning to morn the death of a boy. Yes, he was killed. Yes, he was walking alone. Yes, he had a pack of artificially colored, flavor enhanced, plastic coated candies in hand. He did. He did ALL fo the above and NOW he's DEAD.
Of course, his family are upset. They say it isn't fair. They cry. They hurt. But, from a certain perspective, BROWN HUMANS serve well for target practice and the fact of killing unarmed brown children is A-OK in THAT twisted context.
NO PROBLEM!
NO ISSUE!
NO JUSTICE!
Ass, you can tell, I'm a little pissed about this latest NEWS story, butt I'm even more pissed to be pissed off angry, dejected, HURT by the NEWS of children dying just because, children killing is OK in video games and we all LOVE a good murder mystery. WE delight in the vicous triumph of GOOD over EVIL. To some people, Zimmerman, was justifiied in killing a traditional enemy, a pest, before it could grow more powerful and perhaps threaten the existing, "white," power structure.
Now, I put "white," in quotations, because I believe it to be a big part of the problem we face is that some people call themselves "white," whereas others are NOT, "white," they are sometimes called, "BLACK," or "RED," and even, "Yellow," in the same color-coded system that divides the pie in uneven slices. The function of the feast is to serve KINGS with almost the entire pie and for all the other people to get crumbs. It doesn't matter your "race," if you believe this BS you short change yourself becaue YOU isolate yourself and miss out on all the abundance of universal LOVE and happiness that could be yours and is mine, on occasion.
Even today, ass I write this angry letter to NO ONE in particular, I am content enough because I can write, read, and think. Mostly, thanks to my beautiful father, who was once a poor boy, near starving, shining shoes to help feed himself and family, growing up in a famously corrupt colonial power and YET kept afloat by his staunch belief that EVERYTHING was somehow…always, weirdly and wildly... alright.
Forever,
Frau Kolb
Dear Paula Deen,
Detail of, "Eat Crow, Paula," by Frau Kolb © 2013, Acrylic on canvas 12x9", all rights reserved.
I don’t know you. I did not even know of you before last week. Forgive me, but I don’t watch commercial television and I absolutely never would trust a cook that looked like you (overweight, flabby…) to instruct me on any issue related even tangentially to nutrition. In other words, even the junkiest comestible that I might consider ingesting is informed by my concern for the planet and my individual wellbeing. Moreover, it is likely to be the brand of gourmet and/or even organic junk sold at Whole Foods, where I most frequently invest the bulk of my sufficient grocery budget. Anyway, I cook. I cook everyday for my family, because I CARE about FOOD and nutrition. It is a spiritual concern for me. Anyway, Madame Deen, you have becomem pertinent, timely, of interest, since it became public that YOU causually use the N word with glib innocence of how very BAD a career strategy for a television/celebrity chef purporting to cook Southern FOOD, but actually altering the history of the southern cooking to erase the influence of African cuisine upon the dishes traditionally prepared in the South.
Now, I wouldn’t be writing you a letter IF I had not had the pleasure of reading a letter written by Michael W. Twitty.
I also, by the way took the time to see this nasty little clip where YOU humiliate a man, on camera, in order to "show," how harmless your verbal whip is.
Paula Deen Defended Souther Atttitude Towards Race In Fall 2012 by Joe Satran for Huffington Post.
Here is an article by Janus Adams, for the Huffington Post, examining both the letter and the incident.
For those of you that need more information about the details of this case: Here is a useful link by Daryl K. Washington for "Black Legal Issues," on-line.
The evidently brilliant culinary historian, Michael W. Twitty, and Souther Food, expert, eloquently addresses you and the public, with the aplump and verve of a diplomat, inviting you to the table of reconciliation, forgiveness, and mutual respect. This move, or action, has profoundly impressed me. This letter is a splendid piece of writing, delightul to read. I have rarely read such a moving letter, it is just short of the biblical… anyway… it is amazingly well written and reading it I learned that BBQ is a direct import from the people that were kidnapped and brought in chains like fruit stacked in the bottom of dirty disease ridden ships to the New World, the people that were scattered like seeds across the Atlantic (WHO KNEW?) the people that brought drum music and songs with that beat, the root of ROCK n’ ROLL, WE ALL LOVE.
(Oh, how proud I am that around fifty percent of my blood is of the beautiful ripe plum toned people of mother AFRICA!) I am proud of my color, my heritage, my accent, my good looks, my physical strength, verbal accumen, my English, my Spanish, my colonial past. I am also, like the vast majority of American African people, a mix of human stock. I am Anglo-Celtic (ethnically) and Spanish (language and blood line). I am at ease with being the child of multiple cultures, many peoples, at times enemies, at times best friends, lovers, HUMANS angry and bitter one second and sweet as cherries the next… OH, Paula…. You fat ugly cow! YOU got me thinking! Consider that! I am actually THINKING about YOU! Hah! Ass a classist elitist ivy-league Manhattanite ART brat, I look down on YOU! Get THAT! I think I am BETTER! (Butt not really, Paula, I know we know YOU know you are a bigger ass because YOU make tons of money selling your shit and I'm a little independent artist writing this shit for virtually for FREE) Hah! (WE humans LOVE being superior and I'm NO different, really.) NOW: I’m THE ASSHOLE, right?
Anyway, I think... we ALL take turns being assholes no matter how hard some of us try not to be because the price of civilization, thus far is SLAVERY. (Just go ask Plato how he got to The Symposium and he will tell you he was carried through the dirty muddy alleys of Athens via imported SLAVE labor.) Everywhere all over the world there are slaves working, RIGHT NOW to make the crap we buy and throw away without even thinking. YOU see ALL that garbage on the streets? All that shit was once shiny new shit waiting to be bought and discarded. It was made by workers, here with little and elsewhere with virtually NO RIGHTS in far away or "exotic," places we'd rather forget and therefore don't even bother thinking about. Tragic. Right?
I am annoyed by so many things, lately… I could go on and on Paula, but I won’t bore you with my superior rant. I will go out and pick up some garbage or play on electric keyboard some scattered lazy music. Or I might go play on Facebook with my fabulous artist friends. I am FREE so I can do whatever I want.
I know Paul that IF you could you’d buy me and my kids and whip us IF we did not dance fast enough at your freakin’ southern wedding.
I’m writing this letter to YOU. I know you will not ever read it. I know even IF did read IT (can you actually read, Dear? IF you can, read some Bell Hooks, why don't you?) you will NOT get it. I know that you KNOW that I know that WE know that it is a NO KNOW to say the “N,” word, for YOU or ME, ever again. You got that Paula? IF so, get your fat flabby melanin deficient self (I wouldn’t say all this to your diabetic face, butt I know you ain’t gonna be reading this random little web-site read mostly by artists like Terry Amig and other progressive smARTy pants. Hah!) go down, on September 7th 2013, to Shitoric Stagville, in North Carolina, so you can break some bread with someone that actually would eat with you. I am not sure that I would or could because YOU and I do not have the same diet.
Go cook and eat with a person that is willing to embrace you, forgive you. Please WILL some peace and love between us BLACK (bullshit! skin can be the color of coffee or night butt NEVER actually black) and WHITE (pretty piggy pink, like you or delicious cream like my loving German husband, butt never actually WHITE, call yourself WHITE and know I hear you thinking you are "pure," like SNOW and that you deserve more cherries in your freakin' slice of the United States of American pie, which we, actually, ALL bake together every day of every week, in perpetuity). "Cousins," sisters, twins ONE and ALL in THE Fun-House mirror, of the media where clowns like YOU and… perhaps… me (a little, LIKE you, ain't I?) are magnified and glorified and turned into people that pay other people’s bills (thanks for paying your "workers," Paula, unlike your granddaddy).
*Also special thanks to, artist, Dave Stull, for not allowing me to get all high and mighty about myself, ass though I don’t have my own prejudice and nasty side to contend with and, while I’m at it, special thanks to Joseph Campbell, Karl Jung, and YOU for reading this fairly flip and not entirely thought out semi-secret letter to Madame Dean.
**Also, thank you ARTIST BARRY. You got me to pay attention to the Dean debacle.
Yours truly,
Frau Kolb
On the Way Back to LA
Playa del Rey, California
2 May 2013
Try this next time you have a flight pending:
Go to a great restaurant and order yourself a great meal. Eat it. In the ideal restaurant, the meal is enormous. It is meant to fill you up with raw pleasure MORE than once.
The steak from Smith and Wollenski’s in Philadelphia made my flight home heavenly, ease. Yeah. Yes the porterhouse steak for two, was that good. The service, Fabian, was perfect: professional, earnest, and prompt. This location, over looking Rittenhouse Square is date worthy.
The cherry bloosoms in ripe fullness of SPRING! The image of joy on my husband's face as he sipped his glass of a bold deep red with hints of pepper and chocolate. YUM!
Or was it the memories of happy shopping in Philadelphia that make so happy on the flight home, back to LA?
In just 24 hours, I accomplished SO MUCH!
Thank you, Macy’s in downtown Philadelphia for the tremendous service. Specifically, Nicklaus was amazing. He was the paradigm of sales virtue helping me earnestly to collect the objects that will buffer my soul and comfort my body. His friendly, focused service made it possible for me to achieve the (almost) impossible mission I'd set before myself: create a wonderful HOME, a retreat, a secret sanctuary for my loving husband, for myself, and the kids.
HOME: a place to return to. It is the place where you base yourself. It is from where you grow and expanding reaching out to the dazzling universe with ever changing interests and goals. It is where your books are waiting for you to read them. It is where your clothing hangs. It is your nest, your hide-out. It is where you charge your batteries. It is where you hang out in your underware and eat cereal in bed. Home is more than an address, a roof, a fridge, and a shower stall. Home is one's own private paradise, a Utopian kindgdom, a perfect cubby for the brain and body. At BEST, home is sacred territory and must be treated as such.
I stormed through the store and purchased all the required elements for a domestic paradise. Breifly I was stranded, not trusting the rude boys that showed up to help me based upon my (BAD) Craigslist search for HELP transporting all my new treasures "back to the ranch." Thanks to Über, a marvelous on-line, ap-based service, I was able to use my iphone and call for a car, an SUV truck, in disco black and equipped with party lights and booze (I did not indulge, this time) precisely when I needed one. WHAT A WONDEROUS AGE we live in!
Exactly then LIKE a bling BLING BLACK man-knight-giant: Emmanuel C. came to my rescue. He is a hyper street smart, super ghetto fabulous, savvy, entrepreneur and business-man TAXI driver. He had, “no problem,” helping me to get my many new housewares back to the NEW HOME, a little rental somewhere in Philadelphia. He also recommended the precisely right furniture store.
AGAIN, I blitzed in and got the goods. Tamara, the saleswoman there really went out of her way to help me get the most comfortable and lovely home furnishings IMMEDIATELY. Would you believe that we arranged for delivery THAT VERY SAME NIGHT???
Yes, it is true. We did. Thus, after eleven pm the movers arrived and they delivered and installed everything before midnight. I was just about to turn into a pumpkin when WHAM! They were GONE! Presto. I had a room full of new furnishings. Amazing.
This morning, after a few important meetings, I went back to Macy’s where I dropped more cash on ideal home-wares, getting the final needed nothings, the little tools of the kitchen, porcelains, high thread count cotton sheets, and other everyday marvels that will make our world a cozy place. Based on the series of successful visits, starting with the first one, in the shoe department… on another visit to marvelous Philadelphia… (I'd popped into the crowded shoe department and the saleswoman was so patient and understanding of my skinny feet. She got me pair after pair of shoes until we found a pair I love. She persisted. She endured, like Nicklaus. He also gave of himself. Thus making my frenzied shopping extravaganza a productive and worth mentioning experience.
The sum of my growing experience of life in Philadelphia is that it is a city one can proudly call, “HOME!”
By the way, IF I’d have another day in Philadelphia there is no way I’d miss the OUTSIDER ART Exhibit.
And YOU know how much I crave dancing with the BRIDE.
(I’d LOVE to get nude and MOVE it around Duchamp’s cracked masterpiece…
Butt, that is another story… Hah!)
Love,
Frau
Getting READY to GO DOWNTOWN to ART WALK in Los Angeles.
Tonight we focus on Skip Snow's Project ART Exchange at Blackstone Gallery
Ja!
Blackstone Gallery
Fine Art Exhibitions
901 S. Broadway
Los Angeles, CA 90015
Thur - Sat / 1pm - 7 pm/ or by appointment
(310) 869-5799
(909) 746- 6308
blackstonegallery2013@yahoo.com
Join Skip Snow, Todd Gray, and Frau Kolb
Tonight, INDOORS for the first time!
A Bitter Winter Holiday Message
Photo published with permission of the artist: December 's Miracle.(©) Dec.17. 2012. Photo. By Selin Sinan Uz. For all the Angels I miss.
Dear Friends,
The last few days… well, we are a different nation, now. The HORROR! THE unbearable and almost unspeakable HORROR of the killing spree which took place a few days ago, leaving twenty-seven dead, marks the end of our ability to romp around the issue of gun control. We can no longer pretend that it is OK for the insane to easily access weapons with which they can and do, hurt en masse. WE are all hurting, reeling from the impact of this HORROR!
Of course, our pain is not in the same order of magnitude as the pain of the people who lost their children, so suddenly. We can pray for them and the children that survived the HORROR. We can send support and think of ways to help long term. But, what is most important is that all those people died for, at the very least, a change in legislation which will make this a nation where children can expect to come home from school.
Violent video games and movies that feature men mowing down men, in endless battles for drugs or honor, loot or points, worth nothing but the time wasted watching, acclimating to concepts of evil… making murder look normal, banal, and no more important than flicking a switch. The cracked skulls of football players, the broken faces of boxers, the continuing lust for entertainment which hinges on the possibility of impairment all need to be reconsidered. I know I'm not going to let my boy play with guns and go hunting. We don't kill for sport.
(However, we eat meat. We have canine teeth and we are carnivores. The methods by which animals are slaughtered in farms are not as cruel as the methods devised by animals in the wild and the animals we farm would not exist, cows for example would not be able to survive in the wild, they can not, after all run very far or fast. Moreover, animals in the wild generally die of starvation because, hunting is NOT easy or reliable. The reason I bring this up is because I've always struggled with the morals of meat eating, my mother was a---mostly---vegetarian, until one night in Montana I heard one animal killing another, all night, the prey cried and cried. I will never forget the HORROR of it. Yet, I know that one animal taking another's life to live, to feed, to stave off hunger is not the same as an being taking the life of another for sport, or worse, malice in my book. However, I respect and admire those that disagree with me and abstain from meat eating. YOU are doing something good for the planet and please continue. I want you to know I'm a friend and supporter of vegetarians and vegans. Anyway…)
The children and women that were murdered by the sick young man that had access to his mother's gun collection are the victims of a political indifference which must end NOW. The argument that guns play a legitimate role in civilian life holds no water. The second amendment was written with muskets and pistols in mind, not the kind of weaponry we know now and which has absolutely no place in contemporary society. None.
Now, that said, I want to wish YOU a HAPPY HOLIDAY, because we are here to LOVE each other and we are here to care about one another. The holidays are an opportunity to reflect on love. Love is the exact opposite and antidote of THE HORROR! Love is respect, cherishing, and nurturing for the divine in ourselves and others. I love. I care. I thank goodness that I am capable of loving and caring and I wish that every human on the planet find LOVE, caring, and compassion in their lives, in their hearts, and around them this and every holiday season in perpetuity.
Amen.
Best wishes,
Frau Kolb
Click Here to see pictures from the Art Miami Basel 2012
Click Here for Calder, mobile Sculpture, at Art Miami Basel 2012
Miami Images from around the ART Basel!
Thank you,
Frau Kolb
Just in case you missed this important Frau Kolb interview from 2012, during the Armory exhibition here is one of Frau Kolb's interview with power house artist, art professor, and, world class human, Kathy Goodell.
NOW! You can look forward to Talkinggrid's unique coverage of the Miami/Basel Art Fair, 2012.
Exciting!
Awesome NEWS: The Talkinggrid is expanding. Currently, we have an average of thirty original visits per day and most of you use macs, this means that many of you are creative professionals. Two thirds of you are based in California. One third of you live in the tri-state area. There are also some visitors from Great Britain and Germany. Go figure!
The best news is that many of you, more than half, return again and again. You spend an average of SEVEN minutes here. Now, we know your time is precious. We are honored to be so well received and that a growing audience of daring creatives have gathered around this site. Talkinggrid is very pleased that you are reading and watching these intimate art chats with vibrant professional artists and other leaders visual culture. These interviews are a source for understanding the why and how of art, today.
Other great artists, whose fascinating approach to art making, is lightly explored on this site are:
McLean Fahnestock
Rick Prol
Also be aware of original, exclusive, stories CONTRIBUTIONS, submissions by awesome artist/writer: Ola Mañana, and other SOON TO BE REVEALED, special guests.
Exciting!
You can look forward to our planned coverage of the Miami/Basel Art Fair, 2012.
This year, art critic, Ron Schira will add his seasoned, yet fresh, perspective on the show’s merits.
Exciting!
Da BEST NEWS is: Frau Kolb finished the short digital film, "Exchange; Intervention I," with Skip Snow.
Welcome to Intimate Art Adventures with Frau Kolb and the Talkinggrid, a flexible creative circle of art minds and clever smarty pants. The circle is forming around focused art adventures that will blow your mind and excite in you a passion for living NOW.
Live with Frau Kolb and her luxurious understanding of being here NOW. Her world is about loving and living with art and artists. Frau travels to chase down art adventure. She is a huntress for art knowledge and creative experience. Prowess for the art and craft of party and play propel this page. Share in the bounty of her keen eye and avid art enthusiasm. But don't be fooled into thinking that it is all fun and games. Frau Kolb is serious about ART. For this reason, she's devoted her life to the study of art and its history and present manifestations.
Here you will find interviews with contemporary artists, art fair coverage, art chat, and other intimate alternative ART news relevant to people invested in civilization and staunch in the belief that aesthetics matter. An ardent interest in creating fine art adventures and feasting on the delights of civilized life: antiques (coming soon), environmental concern (implicit in our choices), the educational and spiritual benefits of travel, domestic discourse(s), and thrills of museum going.
Contemporary artists vary in practice and purpose like stars differ in gaseous content and intensity. TALKINGGRID focuses on artists whose powerful work ignites reflection. To explore the mysterious drive, which prompts the talented individual to create portals into other (sometimes inner) worlds, new states, eternal dips into the abyss of possibilities, is our mission. Open. Ready. Fire!
Sign on, with Frau Kolb, on an ongoing expedition into a plethora of art worlds. Our host is famously spacey, light hearted, and unafraid of diving into the mysteries of contemporary art, as she explores the vast network of stars, mega-personalities, and blinking dwarfs, which make the vibrant international art community sparkle. Be invigorated by the bubbling stream of video visits with dazzling, interesting, and/or colorful creative individuals; sometimes celebrated, known, and unknown; artists at art fairs, in their studios, during exhibitions, happenings, performances, in galleries, at museums, parties big and small. You can count on Talkinggrid to keep searching for art-work which stops us in our tracks and demands COVERAGE!
"Going UP!" ©Frau Kolb Oct. 2012
This is a standing invitation to join perpetual art celebrant, Frau Kolb: artist, art commentator, art documentarist/digital filmmaker, on a splendid trip to the FAR OUT reaches of the uncharted orbits of remarkable people creating intelligent art work, today. Come into close contact with select contemporary artists via, Frau Kolb's unique understanding of art based on an intuitive grasp and sustained by lifetime of unwavering focus. Allow the Talkinggrid to be a site you frequent for intimate art encounters of unexpected poignancy. Talkinggrid is a site where you can sample a little of the immense spread of ideas, political realities, experimental methods, exotic and ordinary materials, meticulously planned yet apparently spontaneous performances, and ever-expanding technologies which distinguish contemporary art, now.
FYI
November 13th, 2012: Harvest Time! Expanding the Talkinggrid! Expanding into the Universe as Miami Basel, art fair, 2012 approaches.
FRENZY! The pre-MIAMI Basel excitement is building.
We are pleased to announce that Mr. Ron Schira, artist/critic of many years has come aboard! The trip we embark upon is to HIT Miami Beach, ART Basel 2012 in full force of LOVE and happiness. Ja! Based on all the fun we had, the last two years, we are EXCITED about MIAMI Basel 2012!
Frau Kolb is TUXEDO ready for the many events and parties. She is prepared to drink Champagne. TOAST the art market! Cheers to all the attending persons. She will meet UP with truly fabulous people! AGAIN!!! She will interview them and gain knowlege of WHY and HOW they shine, bringing ART brilliance to bare. Did you miss last year's coverage? Well click here if you would like to see her interview artist Trudy Benson.
November 10th, 2012: Harvest Time!
As we WAKE UP to our own potential. All changes.
Now... it is November 10th. The autumn is in full swing. We are getting ready for winter and we are in the middle of it. The leaves have changed IF they were going to and the nights are cold and longer.
Thank goodness for change!
Ah! The opportunity to purge. Yes, purge. Clean house, the autumn means, to me CHANGE is not only ubiquitous, butt always, welcome. Now, in the fall I review my achievements for the year. This year, 2011 was the founding of Talkinggrid as a website not just about Frau, Frau, Frau and her fabulous ART and Frau, Frau, Frau and her million and one amazing ideas, which grow like vines in the Amazon jungle. NO! I let go projects that were not working out and focus on the ones that I LOVE yet they languish, unfinished demanding my time and attention!
This month the Talkinggrid will publish video interviews with Los Angeles based performance artist, Kate Gilbert. This amazing woman artist works with her beautiful body as medium and is willing to push the envelope of meaning, in a pink-high heeled, inch by inch NUDE belly crawl on the sidewalk in front of Coagula Curatorial during Perform in Chinatown. The circumloquacious reasoning behind her enigmatic and impressive performance is revealed in this two-part interview with the artist in her sunny K-TOWN flat.
"Grafiti Queen," The End of An Era, at the Venice Art Wall with local legend graffiti artist, Jules Muck
* Editing and Tech Support: Dr. HC Kolb
This piece with artist, Jules Muck, in Venice Beach is a classic Frau Kolb interview. Enjoy!
Kathy Goodell at Causey Contemporary in Willamsburg
Kathey Goodell’s work, is “Mes-Merizing.” Enjoy this interview with the artist, by Frau Kolb in 2012
*Video Editing by Dr. HC Kolb, 2012
"Modern Breakdown!" with Mike Cockrill
Visiting Mike Cockrill's Gowanus stuido was a trip for me, Frau Kolb. I got lost, of course. I jumped down into the subway, then I felt I needed air so I got out and walked to a bus stop and then I walked the wrong way and then I asked a couple of ladies sitting before a restaurant enjoying a sunset bottle of red, "Which way to The American Can Factory?" I arrived at Mike Cockrill’s studio winded and sweaty but he was gracious and professional in guiding me into his studio, work, history, and present state-of-mind. It was an enlightening experience to visit the talented artist in his private work space.
My hair! Please forgive me for not getting it perfectly coifed before this historic and significant interview with an artist of note and merit. Butt, we know it doesn’t really matter what MY HAIR look like, right? Anyway....
This interview is great. Mike Cockrill, the painter of the American nightmare circus of unending grace, often comparted to Norman Rockwell for his seductive images of Americana nymphs, children on the brink of self-destruction, horror just a clown's mask away, takes Frau Kolb on a private tour of his creative crisis and the powerful output created by his willingness to DIVE back into the cosmic pool of creation and get a grasp of the essential, the primordial, the intensly insane and swirling core of powerful source material which burns like a fire at the center of an ancient cave at the pit of the abyss or infinite creative worm-hole of dawning dreams for his devoted fans and stead fast collectors.
His work has taken a dramatic turn for the way much BETTER in my little brown and pink leather trim ART book of opinions written in ornate letters, in an almost steady hand. Open to Cockrill’s art history rich painting practice RIGHT NOW and get it that some artists mature slowly over decades, and thus reaching a point when they EXPLODE into a new universe of ideas and experimentation! Thus, leading the way for other artists to discover their own path to buried treasure(s). Discovery is only possible in this extraordinary circumstance; of talent and experience coupled with knowledge and the courage to charge forward and explore new visual language(s).
Bravo, Mr. Cockrill for you excellent NEW work! Work which address the bigger questions in painting and addresses Western Civilization’s greatest issues and goes beyond this limit to the fertile source of all creative thinking.
Cockrill explores meaning, mythology, and his own twisted and dank shadow, as he dives DEEP into his “Modern Breakdown!”
The glittering visual art treasure, his NEW, powerful, cosmic world-class painting, is more than merely American genius. The work remains a little kitsch and is based on a cartoonist’s, storytelling sensibility, which is Super POP... in a sense... without the advertising angel. Can POP be a philosophy? Hum… It is work which wings forth toward the Velasquez, Picasso, and DeKooning as material ripe for plumbing and re-thinking. Cockrill is raiding the loot of inherited visual culture and creating totems to his painterly prowess.
Cockrill generously shares on how he has integrated the feedback of his on-line following into a research base for readings and dazzling New Age poly-neo-internet surfer religious iconography.
Now, THAT is impressive!
Anyway...
Traveling into Brooklyn is pretty new to me. Despite the fact, that I'm from Manhattan. (Imagine! I leave my warm cozy beach property in Los Angeles, and go out in the world to interview art personalities so powerful that they drag me cross-country out of my little bed, with my camera, tripod, high-heals, messy hair, and rushed make-up; drawn in by their powerful magnetism.
It is official: I’ve transformed myself from an almost matronly beach mama into a raging huntress of information, knowledge, art experience. Ah! Interviewing Mr. Cockrill at his spacious and bright Gowanus studio proves my claim, my cosmic point, and un-dying purpose as artist and alternative art NEWS source.
*Special thanks to Skip Snow.
Mike Cockrill and Rick Prol
Hello From New York from Frau Kolb!
Home. This is my base line. Here: I know the streets of Manhattan. I'm an urban girl. The grid of Manhattan is the map of my soul. "Broadway Boogie Woogie," by Mondrian is one of my favorite paintings. I digress…
Yesterday was an amazing day for this independent art journalist, blogger. She met with two AMAZING ART STARS: Mike Cockrill AND Rick Prol. Thanks to artist Skip Snow, collaborator/leader of the street intervention(s) "Exchange," currently in Los Angeles. (Read more below…)
Now, I sit down at my computer with so much to write about. These men are BRILLIANT ART MINDS. Thinkers. Paint philosophers, expressing it ALL in whatever medium they can and they do. Masters in communication, NYC visual artists strut a prowess of knowlege and historic significance that is dumbfounding.
I've collected some AMAZING footage of our conversations, with Mike Cockril in Brookyln and Rick Prol in a secret East Village location.
Skip Snow: "Exchange: Intervention I,"
UP early and writing, editing digital video, and wrapping brain around ART, again, in Los Angeles. Skip Snow’s, “Intervention I: Exchange,” demands attention. What is value? Does the market for art determine its value? Can there be value outside the art market for art endeavors? Snow’s “Intervention I: Exchange,” in which Frau Kolb and, fine art photographer, Todd Gray participated on the 28th of September 2012, on the sidewalk out side blue chip gallery Blum and Poe, currently showing Friedrich Kunath "Lacan's Haircut," a whimsical tour-de-force of imaginative punch and visual-linguistic pyrotechinics (a must-see for Culver City) explores these and other art world issues of entrance and recognition. In this street performance, Mr. Snow, invites strangers and friends to exchange their, “identity,” for an original high quality painting by Snow, an immediately recognizable artist. The idea is to involve passers by in a dialogue on art that is anything but casual. One of many questions which artists grapple with on a daily basis is voiced by Snow in the most public of places, the street.
Is financial return the only indicator of an artist’s success?
Clearly, we don’t think so... yet, we ALL welcome attention and the trappings of power. Right?