Archive for October, 2008
Paho Mann and Dylan Bradway, My Famous Friends
Untitled (Re-inhabited Circle-K Store, Albuquerque), photograph by Paho Mann. Click image to visit the artist’s website.
Two things happened on the internet this week. (That’s right, just two. This blog post makes three.) Two of my artist friends, Dylan Bradway and Paho Mann, have been recognized on blogs with startlingly high readerships.
Dylan Bradway is an up-and-comer here in Oklahoma City. In addition to quality graphic design (such as the catalog for Art 365), he creates evocative paintings incorporating stylized characters and street-influenced calligraphic line. He and his partner-in-life Amanda Weathers-Bradway recently set up shop in OKC’s Plaza District.
This morning I got a text from Dylan instructing me to “check out Juxtapoz.com.” Sure enough, the Juxtapoz blog is featuring a group show of train car designs that includes a piece by Dylan. (That guy in the green hoodie on the red car? That’s Dylan’s.) The Train Car Project will be on display at Papa B Studios in Brooklyn, October 10-22.
Paho Mann is an old friend and colleague from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. A precise formalist photographer, Paho has long been interested in typologies — objects that are of a category and also have unique characteristics. My favorite series of his is the re-inhabited Circle K stores, a staple of Albuquerque’s accidental non-architecture.
This week Paho’s Junk Drawer series was discovered by a New York Times blog called The Moment, a kind of digital-state-of-the-union roundup, followed by Kottke.org. Here is a transcript of the email I sent him upon learning this news:
YOU HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED BY THE NYTIMES BLOG AND [redacted] JASON
KOTTKE DUUUUUUUDE THE ENTIRE INTERNET KNOWS YOU NOW OMFG YOU ARE
FAMOUS
Splendid job, guys. Keep it up.
Xerox Transfer Workshop at Untitled Artspace, OKC
Gift, oil and alkyd on canvas, 2004 by Joe Ramiro Garcia. Click here to visit the artist’s website.
I mentioned in an earlier two-part post that there are many ways to transfer an image from one surface to another. Untitled Artspace in Oklahoma City is offering a workshop on one of these methods, taught by visiting artist Joe Ramiro Garcia.
Xerox Lithography Workshop
October 18 – 19, 2008Joe Ramiro Garcia will teach a two-day Xerox Lithography Workshop on Saturday and Sunday, October 18 and 19. The workshop will have sessions from 10 am – 6 pm each day. Xerox lithography involves using a Xerox copy of an image and transferring it with gum arabic. Garcia is a Santa Fe-based artist and exhibited his art at Untitled [ArtSpace] in May and June 2007. … Supplies will be included.
If you’re in the area and interested in this method of image transfer, a workshop at Untitled is a fabulous way to leapfrog into some new work.
Normal, OK Characters Appear In Nimrod
Two characters from my series Normal, OK appear in the Fall 2008 issue of the Nimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry. To purchase a copy, follow this link.
Normal, OK: Peoria Jenks. Mixed media, 2007.
Peoria Jenks, 72, carries on the family tradition of bootlegging. (Opteemah County is dry.) She does not sell to “drunkards.” One day, while having her hair set, she overheard a call on the salon’s police scanner noting suspicious activity at the Slim Pickens Mo-tel. On a hunch, she went over. Onlookers say she got a shotgun from the trunk of her Dart and walked purposefully past Sherrif Ardmore into room 112. No shots were fired. Ms. Jenks reportedly walked out shaking her head and saying, “Not in my town. Not in my town.” The headline in that week’s Porcupine read “Meth Lab Seized With Help From Locals.”
You can learn more about the people of Normal by reading the book.
My series of works titled Normal, OK was part of the Art 365 exhibition sponsored by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition. Art 365 travels to Legion Arts in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to open on October 15.