The old dime bag collection

Is really coming together.

New Collages, Let's Get Tropical

These new collages are inspired by my trip to Miami and Key West in the winter of 2010. I started making them tentatively then, and have now come back to them in earnest. Instead of exclusively using images from recycled luxury magazines, I began to combine them with images from found National Geographics of undersea creatures like tropical sea slugs and octopuses. Octopi? Octopod? One of the old Polish men selling mysterious junk and treasure every day on Manhattan Avenue has become my Greenpoint magazine benefactor. He likes to be involved. He keeps secret vintage copies of Nat Geo for me under a tarp in his flatbed.

One of the older collages has been purchased by Solange Knowles (yesss), and three of them are brand spanking new as of this week. I don't know if it's the cool fall air, making a sale, having my studio table in the apartment, or having a new show to work towards, but I am pretty into it. I should also credit a great studio visit with Erno Enkenberg last month, just before he boarded his flight back to Finland, that was pretty inspiring. I loved his idea that I make various series of collages, culled from different types of magazines: nature, science, fashion, art, etc. Thanks man.

Shout out to G. Herms.

Jesus and the The Pawn Shop

 

 

Two little boys, ages 7 & 9, came into the Museum of Art in Bangor. Have I told you this story before? They were greeted by the gallery technician, who helpfully held the door for them. Inside, the docent gave them a children's scavenger hunt, and let them loose in the galleries, even though it was posted that children must be accompanied by an adult. The went in armed with a blade, and found my piece, Rosary, on their scavenger list of things to spy. They took out some kind of a blade, sliced off eight items, and pocketed them. At some point soon after (within the hour) they arrived at the Frati Pawn Shop up the hill, and presented part of their treasure: 

one peacock feather (crown only)

one "brass knuckle" (actually a paintbrush holder)

one antique key

one glass prism 

one rhinestoned bow-shaped pendant

one washer

and one very shiny, bling-y Jesus medallion. 

This is only seven items. The eighth one they kept as a souvenir: a brand new condom,

 still in it's wrapper.* Even so, the pawn shop owner took one look at their curious loot and called the police.

The police brought the little brothers into the station and questioned them. It has been reported that they alternately claimed that they thought the museum's scavenger hunt wanted them to take the items, and also that the list of  rules I printed on aluminum which accompany the piece, told them to "pick up one object a day." ONE object. I am not buying any of that nonsense, and apparently the cops didn't either. At that point the Bangor Police Chief called the Museum Director at his home, and let him know what had happened...and the museum staff still had no idea that anything had transpired.

Since I declined the offer to sue or press charges, the cops were free to sit on their hands and forget the whole thing. I was refused a copy of the police report (requested with the names blacked out) because the anonymity of the children needed to be protected (?!). I asked that the cops demand answers to three questions (How much did they think they would get, where did they get the idea to go to a pawn shop, and what kind of art do they like), and the cops refused. I was told that the parents were "not so good."

I liked my friend Autumn's idea that the kids spent their afternoons at home watching Pawn Stars.

When George and I went up to Maine to take our shows down this weekend, I was presented with a cracked plastic to-go container with my items inside, and a childishly scrawled handwritten list of contents. (Condom omitted again**) We went to the pawn shop to thank the owner, and maybe take his portrait, but the shop was closed. It looked like all he sold inside were guns and guitars, but more on that later. When we returned to the gallery to resume our laborious packing, the museum tech showed us an article in the local paper over lunch. The article recounted a crime, perpetrated by two little boys, ages 7 & 10, who had stolen a laptop from an unlocked room at the local middle school. Perhaps one of them had a birthday?

* ** The purple wrapped Lifestyles condom was one of the multiple offerings left by visitors at the RISD gallery where I first exhibited the piece two years ago. Easy come, Easy go.

George Herms Broke My Heart from 3000 Miles Away

The LA artist George Herms, who has been making work since the 1950's, started making collages last year. When I prop-styled a Paper Magazine fashion shoot for a friend last month, I was given a courtesy copy of the previous issue. In a taxi on my way home, I discovered what I thought was my own work on the back page. It was, in fact, a George Herms. After some more research, I discovered that all of Herms work is wonderful (installation, sculpture, collage, etc), and all of the press he's been getting is so great for an overlooked artist in the cannon.

However, it also sent me into a tailspin. His new foray into collages look exactly like the collage series I have been working on since 2008. Now, to be fair, there are some differences. Where I let recognizable objects sometimes creep into the collage, he does not. My pieces therefore have more narrative content. He is looser and more fluid with his resulting edges and shapes, and I have started to control them more. His collages may be a bit better than mine in their fluidity and total rejection of the source imagery's origins. His collages are also more directly relatable to his found object sculptures, which he doesn't disguise and alter with resins and paints and plasters, as I do.

I think the takeaway here is that as a younger artist, I must accept the fact that I am not yet visible enough in my career to be recognized in the discussion of his new work. He should gain recognition for his long and disciplined practice, and maybe I should be more nimble – I should be able to switch feet and dance a little differently in response to these recent developments. It burns, but it's maybe it's a challenge.

Windham

Herms

Windham

Herms

Octopus Prints

Printing real tentacles with squid ink was stinky and gross- especially when 

the tentacles stuck to the paper. I kinda can't wait to do it again. I love the immediacy 

of it, and can't help but imaging a wall drawing or wallpaper.

I Eat Electricity

From the back room gallery at Andrea Rosen ...

Key West

Key West (Brett) 2011 from George Terry on Vimeo.

Southpaw (Redux)

Rosary

My Friends and Me

Hotel Studio

George and I spent a week in a huge logger baron suite at the Charles Inn in Bangor.
We turned it into our ad-hoc studio – it was awesome!

Rosary Resin Hand

Face Off

The bottles in my magic desk should feed directly into my face, so I can suck up the energy 

collected therein. An old friend stopped by the studio last week and remarked that now he 

understands why I didn't do too many drugs in college (with all my other friends) - because 

my brain is already that psychedelic. I don't know about that, but here's what it took for 

Gabriela, George and me to make a mold of my face:

pouring on the alginate

adding the plaster strips

the inside of the mold after de-molding from my face

pouring FGR plaster into the mold

since the sides of the mold weren't steady, it expanded.