Monday, March 24, 2008 Valerie Fuchs :: Boys Don't Cry :: At Gallery Nulu, Louisville Kentucky
Closing reception: March 28, 2008 from 5-8 @ Gallery Nulu.
Described as a “prominent video artist” by Julien Robson, The Speed Museum's Curator of Contemporary Art , Fuchs offers her first solo exhibition in five years.
Fuchs has exhibited her work throughout the US, including Louisville’s 21C and Speed Museums, twice at the Santa Barbara Center for Contemporary Art, and several galleries in Chicago. Fuchs has also shown her work abroad, most recently in Estonia at the Parnu Film and Video Festival, as well as in Austria and Serbia.
Fuchs is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Al Smith Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, multiple Artist Enrichment Grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and a grant from the Sony Corporation. In 2003, she won a Prague Quadrennial Award for Video Design. In 2005, the Louisville International Airport commissioned the creation of her ‘Zero to Sixty’ project, on permanent display in the terminal.
She received a Bachelors in Architecture from the University of Kentucky, and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her latest collection offers several new video pieces, as well as other works.
This past Friday I got to feel as if I were in New York attending a movie premiere. I saw a film that was produced by the people who own the gallery that exhibits my work (Gill and Augusta Holland) and directed by Irena Salina. The film is called FLOW For Love Of Water and it proved an eye-opening journey into the world of this substance that we as human beings are made of; water.
From corporate conglomerates that control water and its distribution globally to touching stories of grassroots efforts from community members who make a seemingly impossible task of education and organization against the destruction of their local water supplies, the movie covers a broad spectrum of topics that show that the problems we humans have created with our water supply effect us all. Mix in some very scary scientific data and you’re on your way to thinking about your own consumption, conservation, and if you should be purchasing bottled water anymore.
The movie will be in Louisville at Baxter Cinemas for a week through March 28th. But will premiere all over the country within the next 3 months. You must check it out!
Visit the FLOW website to learn more about the film and keep your eyes open for its debut in your town.
Sunday, March 23, 2008 Contemporary Thoughts on My Animals
Happy Easter to all my Peeps!As a contemporary thinker, I'm constantly questioning the order and elements of my life and experiences therein. For example, every day — when I wake up and get out of bed, or come home, or leave, or stand up, or move for that much — I’m shadowed by two or three insane mammals who are just thrilled that I’ve made the decision to get up from my desk and go to the kitchen to fix myself a cocktail and sit down to do some work on the computer.
I’m typing on my laptop and I think to myself, “A nice vodka and cranberry juice would be just lovely right now. I think I’ll ditch the water and go make one”. Next thing you know two tiny mammals with beards (miniature and toy schnauzers and sometimes a Siamese cat) all jump up with excitement and fanfare to escort me to the kitchen. This all leads not only to my acquisition of a zaftig adult beverage but also a nice meat-flavored treat for all the mini companions.
All this action leads to those contemporary thoughts about my very odd relationship with my animals. Mainly: Are they all space aliens here to closely observe my life and report their findings back to some larger entity when I’m off at work?
Note: As I write this my Siamese cat is sitting in front of the computer screen staring at my words between my two hands typing. I’m seriously peering over his head as I type.
Creepy huh?
Next post:
... will most likely have to be titled: This week in Friends. This week has been an odd one for friends. Real friends. Fights (quickly healed), openness, hanging on by a thread because we’re-both-so-busy, reality, closeness, and loss. All these thing and more this week alone. If my animals are aliens then my friends are Gods. Maybe not Gods, but certainly accompanying me on Mt. Olympus as we all grow, argue, and get to live and learn with the struggle, joy and tragedy that are what we all know as life.
I wouldn't have things any other way.
Friday, March 14, 2008 Artist Pick
Brad Moore Photography
Artist Statement: These photographs were shot in modest, well-worn, suburban cities in central and inland Southern California. Built in the 50s and 60s, these cities provided a new home and future to a post-war population. While Southern California’s coastal cities flourish, cities in these inland counties struggle. Future prosperity and civic health seem to come primarily from growing ethnic populations, which are reviving and recreating these cities for their communities.
I grew up in North Orange County and attended school in inland Riverside County. After 25 years I returned, and was fascinated by their simultaneous decline and growth. I see these areas differently from places I have never been. Knowing what was, and now what is influences my approach. I’ve avoided traditional, documentary-style photography; instead I have photographed select buildings and shrubbery in primarily static, symmetrical compositions, reflecting change, irony and evolution.
If you don't know by now; know that Bryce Hudson loves a sex scandal, not just any sex scandal, but those involving politicians.
Prostitution is nothing new. It isn't called "the oldest profession on Earth" for nothing. So this Eliot Spitzer prostitution linkage scandal — that as of now has cost him his job (but not yet his marriage) — doesn't surprise or excite me, but the media coverage is like eating Lindt Chocolate Truffles while drinking Godiva hot cocoa (aka: heaven). CNN has got to be the best. How they can come up with so much information about the mysterious world of high-end prostitution rings is beyond me. I mean, quite literally, days worth of content. It's almost as through they'd planned it. Interviews, analysts, experts, all just waiting to pounce on someone the moment they get caught.
After his recent release from his lengthy prison term for — allegedly assisting in several suicides — Dr. Jack Kevorkian, also known as "Dr Death"
has announced his plans to run for congress.
Personally: I believe the world needs more people like Dr. Kevorkian. People who have an extremely justified conviction and who are willing to stand up to protect their rights. Do you remember seeing the videos of the people
he assisted? I was a kid when I saw them and I can still remember their power. They weren't people who were just down-and-out or depressed and wanted to end it all, they were people suffering from unimaginable pain and disease, the likes of which modern medicine could not comfort or alleviate. Disturbing, true, that he assisted people in taking their lives, but I feel it was justified.
Now, as for running for congress. I can't vouch for his political views, I know nothing about them. But I'll certainly keep my eyes and ears on the news reel.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008 Why Not Get a little random...
Well I've got two of the Holding Pattern prints blown up to mega-huge porportions (36" x 36") and I've got mixed feelings about them. They're a little too dark and red for my tastes. But — as a friend stated — no one will care about that but me.
I'm in the process of cleaning out the studio, removing the work that is either sold — or that will hopefully be sold before the month's end — and replacing it with some video work by Russel Hulsey and some prints from Valerie Fuchs more paintings by Nico Jorcino.
I will also soon post a series of 10 new prints which link my Equlibrium series with my Holding Pattern series. Very cool stuff;-)
Wednesday, March 05, 2008 The B in Bryce...
... is standing for Bitch right now. I have no idea, but I am so irritated with everything and anything right now it's not making any sense. Difficulty getting my pieces printed without loosing resolution, difficulty with medical problems (lovely teeth), and a general distaste for having to sit somewhere for 8 hours a day when I seriously have 200 other things that I really need to be doing. I think I need a vacation? I don't even know how to vacation! When I "vacation" I search for historical or architectural tours or read up about the history of the place I'm visiting and see the sites then go to as many galleries and museums as possible — insert "shopping like a freak" here. I need one of these All American all-inclusive vacations I always make fun of, where sitting on the beach soaking up UV rays and sipping on some fruity drink are all that's on the menu.
I think not.
Until then, I'll take a deep breath before speaking and hope that this too will pass.
Saturday, March 1, 2008 Ahhhhhhhhh... my sigh of relief
Finally! Life seems to have slowed down to a more manageable pace. A pace wherein I can make the decision to run by the studio or make a dinner appointment with friends. It's strange; the business side of things has a nice calm to it but the social calendar could not be more of a mess. Not that I don't like a hefty social calendar, but I've only had one night at home this week another party tonight.
On the bright side, the new stretchers and canvases are being made at the studio as I type, still having troubles printing out the Holding Pattern prints large without loosing resolution. So all is fairly balanced with positive and negative energy.
My artist pick for today:
Flying around the internet on my magic fingertips I ran across some work that really speaks to me. The work of Joey Piziali. Its visually stunning and I like the technique of achieving hard-edges and lines with colored tape instead of paint like I do. I think I'd like them even better if saw them in person, some are on rusty metal with pieces of billboards and advertisement media collaged onto them. I'm sure the contrast is sharp, the superbright colors of the tape and the dull rusty surface underneath. He's also a really nice guy, I sent him an email and said hello he checked out my site and wrote back, he's a gallery director in California.
Joey Piziali
OPPOSITE ORDER
Timely Materials
Essay by Daniel Coffeen
Surveying the room, we are confronted with two dominant gestures. There are the bright—even garish—lines streaming and ricocheting with an inhuman geometry, at an impossible speed. And there is the sluggish but persistent drift of decay, tinged with the whiff of this world, with humanity, urbanity, rust, and weather. We can even make out the traces of information as ghostly letters wink at us from the midst of their demise.
These are the materials Piziali works with: the impossibly swift angularity of the colored trajectories and the slow, sprawling patina of urban detritus. Piziali, then, does not work with line, form, shape, or even abstraction; he does not work with canvas, paint, paper, tape, wood. He works with these two speeds, these modes of movement. His materials are these figurations, these moving architectures, of time. We see the drift of decay and zooming, refracted light and the way the two, sometimes, interact. (continued)
Closing reception: March 28, 2008 from 5-8 @ Gallery Nulu. 
This past Friday I got to feel as if I were in New York attending a movie premiere. I saw a film that was produced by the people who own the gallery that exhibits my work (Gill and Augusta Holland) and directed by 
Brad Moore
If you don't know by now; know that Bryce Hudson loves a sex scandal, not just any sex scandal, but those involving politicians.
Joey Piziali 
