New Day

I’m formally declaring my bad luck streak is over. HEAR THAT?
Happy bday Gram, miss ya.

Fun with Trash

Going through my backup hard drive, I came across a video I made in Turkey that I never uploaded to my Kloeamongtheturks YouTube channel. It’s sort of fun. Most of the students are Turkish, except for two women, one of whom ended up marrying a Turk and now lives over there!
Happy Earth Day this weekend...

Sanctuary

My studio is fast becoming one. I’m teaching less now, as my winter quarter classes have finished and one school hasn’t hired me for Spring. Although I definitely need the money, time off allows me time to breath, and work. I’m spending several hours each day within these comforting walls, feeling more and more at home.
What am I working on?
• Society Pictures (you can see them on the wall, they are miniatures)
• Regular nudes from models (my figure drawing group is now meeting in my studio)
• Greek Paintings (am trying to finish up the last half dozen, and maybe do a few more. But what I really need to do is show them, have tentative plans for June.)
• Trade Show, California – Turkey (this is a BIG project, will post about it soon)
• Plaster Drawings (still in design stages)
• Trauma and Bedroom Series (only planned)
Can’t wait to go there tomorrow.

Days and Knights

So what have I been doing in these days without a computer? What else but go to a Greco-Roman battle re-enactment (I fit right in)…

Society Pictures

I’m in my new studio now, but haven’t done anything big. I’m getting used to the space with some fun little gouache paintings on paper taken from a society rag. I’m very intrigued by the relationships of people at parties, what they wear, how they hold themselves. The magazine I’m using covers “Latino” and “White” events, without much overlap, which is also fascinating.
Congrats to me, this is my 700th post.

Another Post Computer-less

Ok.
So almost a week ago my mac stalled and stopped.
I took it to a shop.
A day passed.
Another day passed. I'm not getting a good feeling.
They can't back up the info.
A third days passes and they call with the bad news, obvious at this point. Hard drive is done-for.
Nothing retrived.
They can install a new hard drive, but the guy apologizes that it's a bit expensive, recommends I shop around. I tell him, just install the damn thing, I can't shop around. FIX IT NOW, I NEED MY COMPUTER.
So I picked up my now totally nude mac, and pay the nice man...
Imagine a fire guts out your entire office. Or your closet with all your clothes floods and everything has to be thrown away.
That's the way it feels--liberating in some ways. But you know you've lost a lot, you just can't remember what.
And now I have to track down all the software, drivers, etc. I've never done this before.
I'm just a Bratz, after all.
But I'm reinstalling Photoshop, and should be able to post again tomorrow.
In the meantime, Happy Passover and Happy Easter.
Eat chocolate matzo and eggs like this is the end.

That Thing You Know is Inevitable Happened

I've known for a while that I've become dangerously dependent on my Mac and the web. It was in Turkey, that I started to do most of my communicating online. Before that, the computer was not in the living room, the bedroom, the kitchen or studio. It was in a far off office, and if I spent time in front of the screen, it was not a priority.
In the space of two and a half years I've become utterly dependent.
Yesterday my computer just went blank. I was trying to help a friend and attached a foreign camera. I also downloaded a software update. Everything slowed, and stopped. Not good. I didn't even have a yellow pages to track down a shop.
Bad, very bad.
It's spring break so I don't have school computers to check online. What a strange feeling, to be so detached.
Anyway, if you know me, don't email. Thank goddess I don't have an iphone that depends on my computer.
And take a lesson: back up (I do this regularly). It could be worse.

Full to Bursting

I’ve seen six art exhibitions in less than 24 hours and my brain is about to explode with the highs and lows. Plus I’ve started a new artist group that I’m very excited about, a women’s figurative collective.
However, an experience sticks out and must be addressed immediately, a gallery exhibition of one of my favorite local artists, Richard Allen Morris. Several years ago I took a group of students to see his retrospective, and it was fantastic: the students were both outraged and intrigued by his experimental sensual abstractions. Morris has been a constant presence in the local art scene, but has only recently gained national and international acclaim (meaning: there is always HOPE). This show was full of tiny works, like little cakes, with thick impasto and taffy colors.
Anyway, I asked the gallery director for permission to take photos, and he said yes, but when he saw me in my cute little pirate outfit, he said that I/Kloe in the photo might demean the artwork. Which of course is utterly the opposite of what I intend. By inserting myself in every photo in this blog I only show I’ve really been there, and hopefully get my readers to participate in the artwork differently than a straight review with artwork-only photos.
But in deference to Mr. Morris and Mr. Stevenson, I’m breaking my rule and publishing the photos without my image. I do hope they will read this and see that I mean no harm, that in fact I am deadly serious about living and breathing art, albeit with a bit of sexy playfulness thrown in.
Anyway, Mr. Morris, I lurve your work!
With respect,
Kloe Among the Turks

The Next Istanbul Biennial will be POLITICAL

The September 2009 Istanbul Biennial is being curated by a Croatian Group, all women, called What, How & for Whom. The theme of the Biennial is “What Keeps Mankind Alive?” from Brecht and Weill’s “Three Penny Opera” (which I recently saw live, dark and fantastic).
I’ve edited WHW’s essay on how the Biennial will address the Opera’s themes:

The 11th International İstanbul Biennial takes its title from the song 'Denn wovon lebt der Mensch?', translated into English as 'What Keeps Mankind Alive?'. The song closes the second act of the play The Threepenny Opera, written exactly 80 years ago by Bertolt Brecht in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill.
...
Isn't the question (What keeps mankind alive?) posed by Brecht equally urgent today? And is it not true that we live haunted by the fears of approaching global changes, consequences of which could have lasting disastrous effects, not unlike those that transformed the world after the economic collapse of 1929? And aren't today's questions about the role of art in instigating social changes equally pressing as they were in the 1930s, when the Left confronted fascism and Stalinism? ...
...
The Threepenny Opera thematicizes the process of redistribution of ownership within bourgeois society and, through a literary narrative, offers a still valid 'representation of capitalism itself—how to express the economic—or, even better, the peculiar realities and dynamics of money as such'.1 ...

'What Keeps Mankind Alive?' will serve as a trigger, as well as a certain script for the exhibition, allowing us and the artists to pose questions of economic and social urgency today. Even a quick look at the lyrics will discover many possible themes, such as the distribution of wealth and poverty, food and hunger, political manipulations, gender oppression, social norms, double morality, religious hypocrisy, personal responsibility and consent to oppression, issues certainly 'relevant' and almost predictable, which many exhibitions—especially contemporary biennial exhibitions—set out to engage with.
Today, biennial exhibitions are elements of cultural tourism through which cities attempt to use their benign and internationally communicative regional specificities to position themselves on the map of the globalized world; they are manifestations tending to 'cultural shopping' in which art is often presented as cool, fun, entertaining... Brecht was certainly critical of what he called a 'culinary' treatment of art solely as a means of entertainment, but he did not shy away from the entertaining role of art. In the popular and mass culture, as Brecht warned us, the problem is not pleasure, but its function...

Brecht invites us to rethink our position again and again, to see the world as amateur actors, without dulling our critical faculties or our potential for intervention and change by learning the rules all too well. As a writer and a director, Brecht continuously sought to slice open and display, then deconstruct and transform the theatre's 'production apparatus'—it is this approach that should lead us out of the current deadlock of 'contemporary art apparatus.' At this time, the question of 'usability' of Brecht means first and foremost a repeated need to observe the interaction of art and social relations. And in İstanbul and Turkey, where 'the conflict between an orthodox left position and contemporary art plays a critical role today in the understanding of contemporary art,'4 to exit the impasse of double-bind discourses of global neoliberalism and local ethno-nationalism seems to be the only endeavor worth all the trouble.

I’m Under a Dark Star

Last week I had to suspend a student for continued disruption of my class. Today, at a different school, I caught a student cheating on a test. Not only do these issues cause me tremendous stress, they also involve meetings and paperwork and officials.
And of course, one worries about getting shot…
What are these students thinking, that they can just run me over and I won’t mind?!?
Do they know they are ruining the course for their fellow students?
Are they just high on drugs?
Simply incredible.

Normal Art

I know many people not in the Art World are surprised at what passes for normal. Take this painting at a recent opening in a rather conservative gallery. No one even batted an eye. Other work verged on pornography, but that’s the point—it’s playing with porn, it’s not porn.
Of course, some of this stuff can’t be shown in schools or public places. But shouldn’t artists be permitted to make this kind of work, if that’s what they feel they must do?
Ongoing discussion.

Strike Me Down

Lately, I am a walking lightning rod for contention. How can one little Bratz cause so much trouble???

Performance Wheels

Finally gave in and ordered new skates, only available online. I needed to replace my fitness wheels anyway, and figured I’ve been skating for two years on these Rollerblades, so why not try racing skates. My Goddess, it was like going from an old VW bug to a Porche. And I got the lowest grade racing skates. You stand in them and you roll.
I have skated with racers a few times. They left me in the dust in a blink of an eye. I thought they were just in much better shape. Now I know the skates are partly responsible.
Which makes me consider, if I have better brushes, pigments, canvas, do I paint better? No, the sports/art correlation doesn’t fly. But why then do we have art competitions? Purely politics.
Anyway, I am flying down the highway now, getting addicted to speed.

Candied Hot Wheels

Amazing art piece. All my students went bonkers over it (not a cool way to express enthusiasm, but apt). Some looked at each car, wondering about the inspiration. Others noticed the color gradient. Collecting obsession, gender issues, and merchandising also came up.
We even liked the price: $12,000 for the entire sculpture, $100-500 per car. C O O L.
Artwork by Shane Swindler

Right in the Kisser

Kids today have a healthy sense of what’s important and what’s not. Most seem not to sweat stuff much. When younger, I gave equal importance to just about everything, aka perfectionism. Which gives one ulcers.
I just watched a kid type an essay, and he’s got the bad-speller gene. So what does he do? In 15 seconds flat completes spellcheck for the entire essay. It took me ages to proofread my childish writings, first trying to weasel the correct spelling out of an elder, then forced to look in the dictionary or thesaurus.
I was in class recently walking around helping students with two-point. A talented student had done a mediocre job with mistakes, which I pointed out. His response? “I don’t like perspective.” And he just sat there. On a certain level, I think, wow, he’s really strong. But then I get outraged at the lack of respect when I go out of my way to help her.
This is not to mention my really big discipline problem, a student who is so disrespectful other students have finally spoken to me about it. Now I have to do something. It’s my way or the highway, I guess…

Black Womanhood

This show really surprised me. I’d been warned it was mostly “anthropology.” But for me, the African craft, and the nineteenth century photos of African women "on display," were only background to the main event: a beautifully edited group of works by international, contemporary, black women. About themselves.
I just loved seeing these bodies. Photography, video, costumes, totems, installation… as a figurative artist, there are so few shows to inspire me. I understood that as banal as the white woman’s body has become, the black woman’s body is still taboo and dangerous. Black women can be Nude, and with that power these artists deliver strong punches. The work was lovely and shocking at the same time.
This is partially what I’m afraid of: making work this strong.
All images from the catalog, Black Womanhood.

Rich

Overheard while reading the art label…
“Oh Marge, look at that skill!”
“Such talent (ach, the dreaded T word), it almost looks like a photograph.” (duh).
They get closer.
“Yes, and what’s she holding?”
“Why, isn’t that a… whip?” (I feel them back up in horror.)
("Baby Back", photo by Renee Cox. Free day at the Museum, took my class to see “Black Womanhood,” excellent show, will write a short review soon!)
(And sorry for the bad catalog image--no photos in the exhibition.)

McM

My Irish grandmother, Frieda McM, circa 1915. I also have and wear the locket in the photo—it contains a tiny photo etching of her mother, whose name I don’t know. That’s the extent of memory.
Happy St. Patrick’s.

Borrowed Time

Should we live like we’re on it all the time? Why am I so afraid?

Ides of March

Busy weekend. Am emptying out my house of art junk, and filling up my studio. Both things feel great! Also setting up a special area in the studio where my kids can make stuff, although today they just wanted to have target practice in there (with easels…)
A new friend dropped by with a painting she was working on and we talked about what was right and what felt off. I think I was able to help. And in turn she looked at my work, picking out what caught her eye—very helpful to me.
I’m thinking about starting a figurative drawing group for women only, where we can model for each other. My other drawing group couldn’t meet last month, and am anxious for them to see my new space.
If you want to join either, please contact me!
Here’s a funny photo of my Art Orientation class. We studied sculpture, and for a break, made bugs out of candy.

Recession Hits Kloe’s House

Yeah, so I knew it was coming. The parking lot at my private school is no longer full, not by a long shot.
Last term I taught three courses there.
This term two.
Next term I was only scheduled for one.
Which yesterday was canceled.
Conversely, the student enrollment at community colleges is bursting, up 10-20%. But there’s no money for extra sections. Our classes are just fuller. And of course there’s a hiring freeze.
In fact, I haven't applied for a tenure-track position in over three years, because there haven’t been any.
I’m going to get very skinny indeed…
(student drawing)

Pray Street

I don’t believe in living with one's own art. I’ve spent the past few days debulking my house of paintings, drawings, frames, and supplies. Canvases rolled up under the bed, paintings stacked in the hallways, closets filled with stretched work (I hate stretched paintings, so easy to damage, so awkward to transport…)
All that stuff now has a home in my studio, where it can be properly inventoried, stored, and looked-through. I can begin to think straight again.
The artwork I want to live with is that of others, my friends and colleagues, inspiration and memories.
Here’s an exception, though. I did this painting of my grandparent’s backyard almost 20 years ago. I remember the afternoons I spent on the patio making it. Now their house is empty, unsaleable in this economy. My relatives still hope it’s valuable, when like all property, it’s not, and moreover, the house if falling to ruins.
But my memories of it are like this painting, dotted with sunshine, softened with a martini, sharpened with practical advice and intelligent conversation. I don’t even feel it's my painting, it has so many other meanings in it now.

Happy Birthday, Barbie

You look fantastic! So slim, so perfect, so unchanging. You were my childhood idol.
I hope I’m like you at 50.
Many kisses, always,
Your Bratty Sister

Matador

You know when you’ve seen something and you just know it's right for you? When you’ve been searching and researching, hoping to find just that perfect thing, and finally you go in a door, and there it is, in all its ruined glory? And it sort of comes on you all at once, but only later you realize that yes, it's not an illusion?
That’s what happened to me today. A perfect thing.
Now let's see if I can get it.

Studio Inauguration

Spent the first day in my studio today with crew and friends shooting videos. Have no idea if they will turn out. The light in the studio is quite good for filming, but I underestimated the ambient street noise—my studio is on a busy urban corner.
Have been so worried about multiple things lately—slept badly—and therefore wasn’t at my best for the shoot. I don’t think I’ve talked about it on Kloe before, but I’m making drawing videos to teach online. A sort of fallback if the academic gig doesn’t work out (read: sarcastic understatement).
Now I need an agent. Got any ideas???

Kloe Likes to Party

I know it may look like I’m at a bar, drinking scotch, but it’s really an art opening/event, that only took place at a bar…
And yes, I’m celebrating metaphorically, as I’m now officially moved into my studio! Going to do my first work, a video shoot, this weekend!

Don’t Hate Us

This is what our urban community garden looks like now.
In my own little garden I’m growing arugula, romaine, parsley, anise, beans, and radishes. Flowers are out because of the rains, but the snowpack still isn’t up to normal, so the California drought continues. Hard to appreciate when the weather is so utterly beautiful.

Marching into March

This is quite an amazing little discussion (dated Feb. 28, see comments, too). Good for my town, normally so complacent.

Whoo Hoo!

Painted floor today, a lovely chocolate brown! Now the space is empty potential, waiting for all my supplies and paintings.
Start of a new chapter!!!

Today was full of contradictions.

I got called into talk with one of my bosses cause I got a “less that favorable” student evaluation. I almost laughed. She may have sensed I didn’t take it seriously, but really, a few failing students say I’m a bad teacher, should I care?
I graded my art history test. Several students got perfect scores, but many more got less that 20% correct. Does that mean I’m a bad teacher?
Anyway, what I really want to say is that my studio floor is in! And the landlady paid for it!!! Yeah! Tomorrow I’m going to paint it, then I can move in.

Student Work on Steroids

Sometimes a student goes so far beyond what I ask for I am stunned into silence. The other students aren’t even jealous, they just stand in awe.
One-point perspective “Retail Space” assignment.

Studio Still not There

Still no doors. Defective windows have to be replaced. Floor turns out to be sub-flooring, and I have to put in my own (am I supposed to take it when I move out??). Got a quote for plywood, but will look into linoleum tiles.
Dang.
Loved this show of photos by Lee Materazzi: funny, naughty, scary. A Francesca Woodman for the 00s. Feel like doing just this right now.

Kloe Talks Sculpture, Sometimes

Daniel Ruanova’s sculpture “DEFEND” is a shiny crystalline structure welded together inside a small gallery. It barely fits in there; you have to duck to get around it, and the wall is scratched where the metal scraped white paint.
The work is supposed to be about violence, “a monstrous, multi-spiked barricade…bomb frozen in mid-detonation,” especially in relationship to the American/Mexican border. I found it more comic book, a phallic explosion rigged by some crazy frat boy in the middle of the night in a professor’s office. Cool and silly, not scary. I don’t think it would read as well in a large space, it needs confinement.

Cupcakes!

Fun little show by Jennifer Bennett. I love how flat the paintings are, surface and form. She is mostly interested in abstraction, but sometimes we all need to paint something sweet and silly. And because they are small, she selling, quite a feat right now.

I promised I wouldn’t complain.

I did.
My legislators are locked up trying to cut thousands of state jobs, and it’s very real I might soon have time on my hands.
But today I was stressed. I taught four hours of linear perspective, hopped in my car for a half hour drive to my next school, eating en route, to teach another three hours on the same subject. Which, if you’ve ever tried it, is hard to learn, let alone teach. Vanishing points, cast shadows (did you know that sun and artificial light function differently when rendered in 2D?)…
So I’m taking roll in my afternoon class, and notice a student absent for a second day. Maybe he’s dropped. I call his name to make sure he’s not there. A moment later another student comes and whispers in my ear that the absent student died last week. Some kind of accident. He was 18.
And then I had to continue to teach the class in a shock at the loss. Sort of put things into perspective.

Not-Quite-White Studio

My studio is almost finished. I’m pretty tired of being in the downstairs space, totally exposed, no heat, no light. Details remain: no door or jams yet, no screens in the windows, worklights to be installed. I’m going to stain the floor.
I was surprised a few days ago to find the walls painted tan; I’d assumed they would be left raw and I’d do white both for looking at artwork and for easy touch-ups. But it’s too late now, I’ll just repaint when I can.
It’s a scary thought to take on such expense in this economy, but I’ve needed a space to make art for years. If I can’t handle the rent I’ll sublet one of the rooms.
I’ve so many projects to finish, start and store, I just wish I could be in there, tomorrow…

Short Blogger

The other day I met a friend at an opening. He’s been reading Kloe, and it helped him to start his own blog about art and stuff, something he’d been meaning to do. But after his initial post, which was great, he found himself intimidated, thinking each entry had to be perfect, well thought-out, and lengthy. I murmured that some blogs, like mine, are more like twittering, little ideas about what I’m thinking or doing. I told him I like blogs where the writers post often and regularly, if sometimes cursorily.
My friend complimented me that I write about so many different topics, but may have just been being polite…
However, he got me thinking about my “lack” of long, in-depth posts. I used to believe I could be an author, that I enjoyed writing and had something to say. Keeping Kloe for the past two and a half years has cured me of literary aspirations. I don’t care about words enough—I often find them burdensome.
What Kloe has helped with, whether I have readers or not, is clarifying the important threads weaving through my life…

Blurry

I had a dream that my grandmother came back to us as a physical spirit. My mother, aunt and I waited for her in a house, and heard her walk up to the door. We opened it to find a woman, about the right height, with little glimmers of her about the eyes, but it was not her. She told us that she was “soft” and unformed, the product of our shifting memories. That she’d come into focus as we thought about her in more concrete terms, like the shape of her eyebrows, or how her wrists were boney with arthritis.
I think I’m missing the way she saw things so clearly.

Chocolate and Perfume

Happy VDay.
I hope you both gave to and received kisses from the ones you love.

Why Teach

I just love it when I reach a student. Sometimes it takes most of a semester, but gradually I can tell they are INTO what they are creating. They hang after class an extra minute, they make eye-contact, and say, “have a great weekend.” I hope I give them something that will stay with them, a passion for making or thinking, or maybe the confidence to do what they want to do in life, in spite of what others want or expect.
Drawing by a student, based on a Bouguereau and “Princess Mononoke.”

Tiger

Have I mentioned how much I strongly dislike Elizabeth Peyton, artwork and artist both?
And what is up with the redesign of Art in America? Don’t they realize sans serif type hasn’t gotten easier to read?

Beautiful Rainy Weekend

I’m still getting used to my new schedule, which is crazy: five different courses at four locations. I have to look at my calendar each day to remember where I’m supposed to be.
For the first time in a while I have Saturdays off, so I can work in my “studio.” I continued on with my plaster experiments, drawing and sanding.
I also went skating in the rain, which was lovely, and walked in our big park. Everything is turning green.
The only sad thing is how many businesses are vacant, in both ritzy and poorer neighborhoods. The tourists are almost non-existent. What are people doing? Staying home and watching tv? Twittering and Facebooking? Self medicating? Where is everyone?

Lamassu

My Greek Series guardians.

Plaster Experiments

While I’m waiting to get into my studio I’m starting to play with plaster. The Greek paintings were supposed to be white, but I couldn’t really get them there, so I’ve decided to try working with white material.
I got the idea from a documentary about Chartres Cathedral, which I teach in my art history survey. Apparently the 13th century architects etched their floorplans and elevations into plaster trays, creating a sort of primitive blueprint. I’m also interested in the idea of sacred geometry, circles inside of circles, the golden proportion and such.
Anyway, have no idea how to finish it yet, and it might not work, but the plaster is dusty and fun.

Lux

In my sunny corner of SoCal we have a new art complex. Lux Institute, ultramodern architecture tucked into an exclusive canyon neighborhood, is a small museum, a learning center, and an apartment for artists. It’s our first residency program, and it ain’t for locals… not that I’m complaining…
The two shows I’ve seen have displayed exquisite workmanship, in both 2D and 3D work, and dealt with landscape. You can’t take photos, so see them here.
My problem with the place is its exclusive nature. Openings are by invitation only. There’s a free day each month, but it’s “family night,” which is off-putting to many artists, with good reason. And regular tickets are $10, for one small gallery.
I complained, and they invited me to bring a class of students for free, which was nice… We met Jolynn Kristosek and talked with her as she cut paper (this is the concept: meet the artist and watch him or her work).
Kristosek makes low-relief sculptures based on Dutch flower still lifes. They are impressive, if a bit funereal. She’s only 26 and has been making this work for five years (started it as an undergrad and continued it through grad school). And now she’s hitting the bigtime in NYC. I wonder if she’s painting herself into a corner that she’ll never get out of. The sculptures are a bit of a trick: the wax mold is cut away and re-added intact. For example, she gouges out a petal and then attaches that petal.
It remains to be seen if Lux will reach out to the local art community, while keeping its prestige and ambitious charter. After all, it’s not every day you see this kind of investment in art.