Tuesday, July 29, 2008

collaborative show in T-minus one month

throughout the next month, i will be collaborating with several quad city artists and musicians on an installation / environment / event / "happening" that will use a portion of the Bucktown Arts Center as its venue. because this is so last-minute, this run in early september probably going to be a prototype for a more finished environment that we propose a year or so from now.

our little group:

Terry Rathje: sculptor, installation-er, professor at Western Illinois University, all-around good guy and bringer of delicious sweet corn.

Steve Banks: painter. didn't you hear? also, maker of mean flatbread pork fajitas.

Bill Campbell: composer, professor at Saint Ambrose University, film scorer. very musically intelligent. brings nothing but his own gatorade to the party.



i'll keep the small audience here posted as to what transpires. the overall piece might bring in backlit scrims that have low-tech animations of light projections, art-making/musical contraptions that beg for audience involvement, small-motor moving "scenery" and a bunch of other ideas. as you can see, it's difficult to explain, so think Ann Hamilton meets Rube Goldberg meets... a Pink Floyd show. a reception for the exhibit and a one-night special audience-participatory party goes down sometime in September. keep your eyes peeled.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

new painting: Hyzenthlay

well, i think it's finished.
click on either image for a larger 12x9 view.




















hyzenthlay
44 x 44 inches
oil on canvas
© Matt Pulford 2008
























hyzenthlay (detail)
44 x 44 inches
oil on canvas
© Matt Pulford 2008



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Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Steve Banks: Artist, Davenport Iowa

enough about me. let's talk about Steve Banks.






















Carnival
66 x 40 inches

(click on any images for a larger view)





i first met steve in downtown davenport a little over a year ago, as i was attending an arts party for a performance festival my wife had a hand in running. we got to chatting about being artists, and he struck me as someone a bit more informed than most other area artists. steve was actually in mid-conversation with one of his buyers, and was preparing to show the gentleman new work at his studio. he offered that i join in, so we all went for a walk of about three blocks to check things out.

the invigorating feeling of walking downtown late at night in the humid air of the late spring was mixing with the alcohol i had been drinking. i was starting to feel like i was back in chicago, meandering from gallery to gallery. i was excited to hang out with these peeps, because it seemed to me like really interesting visual artists had moved to the QCs during the time i was away. that feeling was further strengthened when i walked into steve's studio. steve rents out a space above a downtown business (that might not even be open anymore), and the place looks like what an artist's studio should look like. the stairs that lead up to his space are shoddy and uncomfortable, the walls are peeling paint, and there's shit everywhere. it's perfect.






















Babelmundo
70 x 48 inches






















Priestess
86 x 65 inches




after spending a good amount of time looking at a lot of work that night, and after having seen even more since then at area shows, i've become a big fan of steve's style. if one must categorize, his oeurve seems to have three different realms:

first, there are pieces that are straight painting. these pieces stand out from others rather easily, because there our obvious physical differences from the rest. simply stated, these would be paintings on canvas - sometimes with wacky, complex, wooden frames (check out "The Priestess" directly above).

next, there are pieces that are conglomerations of found objects, usually placed within some sort of a standard rectangular composition - a fixed frame, if you will. these found objects are almost always toys/remnants from the seventies and eighties — be it GI Joe™ figurines or Muscle Men™ — and they are spray painted to an almost monochromatic oneness. think louise nevelson's organization fetish meeting keith haring's or kenny scharf's sense of play and fun.

finally, there are hybrid painting-sculptural apparatuses. these have a similar look as the first "straight painting" category, but actually have a lot of 3D forms built into the framework. there are sewn bridges being traipsed and goofy puppet heads doing their thing (check out "...Mr Bombastico" at the very bottom of this post).



i tend to be drawn more to the first and third bodies of work, so i'll talk about one of my favorites before i wrap it up. check out "Carnival" - the painting i placed at the very top of this post. the artist has drawn up a narrative that you can almost follow like the page of a novel:

- a totem with a skyscraper headdress offers up a big mac, fries, and a cola ala some sort of magic "what do you want?" machine that Bender would conjure up in his abdomen and serve with the ding of an easy bake oven.

- some sort of many-footed creature marches towards the offering with gusto, and i can't help but think it looks like Ned Flanders (so of course, i think that's fucking cool).

- little ginger-bread fellas teeter back and forth on the roof of a classical-style building, their stylized wangs hanging out for all to see.

- a tiny little observatory watches the entire scene unfold, while hundreds of homogenized, soul-less "people" keep getting churned out by "the machine" (don't ask...).


so... this is what goes on in steve's creative inward eye, and i love it.

what do you think? take a look at the other images i've posted, and really sit and look. pay attention to his use of color. keep an eye out for interesting things going on in his custom, labor-intensive frames. and if you'd like to see more, go here:
Steve banks on The Art Feed.


thanks,
-matt























Ziggurat
66 x 30 inches






















Barbarians at the Gate
66 x 48 inches



















The Fantastico Mr Bombastico
60 x 35 inches

Friday, July 4, 2008

a little further along...

i thought i'd go ahead and continue to show in-progress photos of this particular piece, just for the hell of it.

it's probably about half-way done. the usualy roller-coaster ride has happened — i've gone from feeling pretty good about it, to not feeling good about it; lather, rinse, repeat. little changes here and there will probably happen - bringing the hot spots of the clouds back to more of a white instead of a yellow-white; more evening-up of the dispersion of the sky colors around the near horizon; more development of the foreground.

although... see that Turner-esque golden glow in the mid right of the earlier version of this (in the previous post below)? that's kind of nice. maybe i'll bring some of that back.


click on the image for a larger view: