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.

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.

National Endowment for the Arts Announces New Artists In The Workforce Study

Sarah Atlee working in the studio, 2007. Photo by David L. Gray. (Click image to see full size.)

The National Endowment for the Arts has just released a comprehensive new study examining the role of artists in the American economy. In a nutshell: We're more important than we thought. From the NEA's website:

“Artists now play a huge but mostly unrecognized role in the new American economy of the 21st century,” said NEA Chairman Dana Gioia. “This report shows how important American artists are to both our nation’s cultural vitality and economic prosperity of our communities.”

Numbering almost two million, artists are one of the largest classes of workers in the nation, only slightly smaller than the U.S. military’s active-duty and reserve personnel (2.2 million). Artists now represent 1.4 percent of the U.S. labor force.

Here are some other factoids (that I kinda already knew, and that the NEA has kindly confirmed):

* Artists are entrepreneurial – 3.5 times more likely to be self-employed. * Artists are underemployed – one-third of artists work for only part of the year. * Artists generally earn less than workers with similar education levels. The median income from all sources in 2005 was $34,800 for artists, higher than the $30,100 median for the total labor force, and lower than the $43,200 for all professionals.

You can download the entire study in PDF format from the NEA website.

This came to me via the OVAC Blog, a great resource for Oklahoma artists.

"Know Thyself" Reviewed in Daily Oklahoman

Know Thyself, a show of self portraits by Oklahoma artists, is showing at the IAO Gallery in OKC through October 10. Here is a review by John Brandenberg for the Daily Oklahoman. Snip:

Sarah Atlee pokes fun at herself by exaggerating her laughing teeth to the point viewers may think she's going to come out of the picture plane and bite them in her acrylic "Self Portrait: For the Record.”

rraarrr.

Special thanks to Romy Owens for inviting me to participate in this show.

RAINN Benefit Show Tonight at IAO in OKC

The IAO Gallery in OKC is hosting a one-night-only event of art and music to benefit RAINN, The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. This effort is headed up by the marvellous DJ Ostara and includes an auction, poetry reading, DJ sets, and more. Tickets are $10.

Here are just a few reasons to support RAINN through events like this.

Betty Louise, mixed media on masonite, 2007.

Betty here will be a part of the show tonight. There's a secret little connection here that I'm going to go ahead and release. In 1994, musician Tori Amos* cofounded RAINN as a means to overcome the experience of her own sexual assault and to help others through that process. It happens that Betty Louise here is based on two themes: the suffragist Amelia Jenks Bloomer, and the lyrics of a Tori Amos b-side called Humpty Dumpty. There, it's been said.

*Yeah, Tori and me used to be real tight. We grew apart over the years. I haven't heard her latest album yet, so maybe a spark or two could be rekindled. Never say never...