Monday, June 30, 2008

Greetings from Upstate New York! (and Atlanta and Kitty Hawk, NC!)


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NYSSSA Faculty Show, July 2008
(at New York State Summer School for the Arts)
SUNY Fredonia, Fredonia New York


a little panoramic of my work hanging in the show




(Also, I recently realized my work in terms of wacked-out history reports)
(also, it is all red, white, and blue? who knew?)






another incarnation of "seven cliches I continue to romaticize"
this time with only 6 of the original keychains, displayed on one of the display units I found by the side of the road




"I Love Lex" as a 6x6 photo album




Billboard Embroideries
(the first in a series)
"Open 24 hours" 3x12 inches, cotton embroidery
"ATM, Diesel, Pizza" 8x10 inches, cotton embroidery
"Buses Welcome" 4x6 inches, cotton embroidery


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These are some photos I took along the side of the road the other day between Jamestown and Fredonia, New York


I love the "treasure hunt" involved with places like these, and the idea of "new and used" treasure.



I am also interested in the displacement/scattering of memory and physical place through the dispersement/circulation of souvenirs. Here is Florida in western New York.


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My former teacher Charley Camp, (also the "Maryland State Folklorist") might call these toy cars (a Hummer and a Prius that I saw at the drugstore) "Fugitive objects, " objects that inadvertently describe a society. I didn't even set them up this way ...

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In June I went down to Atlanta for a week and my friends that I stayed with took me to the Atlanta Cyclorama. Pictured above is my souvenir thimble... 16,ooo square feet compressed onto a fingertip of porcelain...
The Atlanta Cyclorama is a 360 degree panoramic oil painting depicting the Civil War in Atlanta, Georiga and is now housed in an enormous cylindrical viewing room in Atlanta's Grant Park. The painting is 4 stories tall, 398 feet in circumfrence, 16,000 feet squared, and over 9000 lbs. The cyclorama is said to have been originally commissioned in 1884 by (then senator) General John Logan as a booster to his campaign for Vice Presidency. However, since he died they day after Christmas in 1886, and the painting was not complete until February of 1887, Logan probably never saw the finished product. It was painted by the American Panorama Company Studios in Milwaukee, Wisconson by about a dozen artists, all German, over the course of 3 years.
(there is a much longer and more peppered history that I will post here soon)

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Total score! I found these old display units on the side of the road in North Carolina!




Another roadside mystery in North Carolina... There was a path cut straight from the side of the road through a wheat field, about 100 yards long. In the center was a grassy patch, with a few grave markers, a dollhouse church, and multiple angel figurines. It was the painted plywood rainbow arch across the back that caught my eye from the road...


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