The Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild’s Artist in Residence Program 2008

We Are Brave

We Are Brave

With the show “We Are Brave” I wanted to create an atmosphere involving many forms of expression and free for all to experience. For experience brings inspiration and truth. 

Thanks:

To all who came.

Katie Branham, Ashley and Ross Epps, and Eugene for the space. Your triangle pieces were awesome Katie—I want to see more.

Brown Honey for all the fermented beverages! 

Adam Knight, my dear Abe, for the Whitman reading and performance.

Horatio for gathering the musicians and taking photos, they look great.

And, of course, all the great musicians, you guys were the show! I hope we get to work together soon again!

Above are photos Horatio took of the musicians:
The Square Struts: Hubby Jenkins and Jessy Carolina
The Cowboy Killers: Micah Ellison and Noah
Feral Foster
Willy Gantrim & Micah Ellison

Jack Whitten

Check out Jack Whitten's show up at PS1!!!

Jack Whitten's has achieved the poetical sublime. Most of the work are from the 60s; A time when there was conflict with the new generation tearing itself away from tradition and conformity. His work is more directly influenced by the assassination of Martin Luther King and JFK, but there is civil rights, war and resistance weighing his thoughts too.

Confusion brings a strange friction in his canvases (like a stream of consciousness, one may write in a journal), but resolution through the movement of paint and color prevails; bringing these paintings through as much struggle as the times.  

Critiques in class, he would always draw attention to the center of the canvas where the artist would stress their most emotional attention. He did just that. One canvas is torn in the center and sewn together again deciding he must continue or complete the painting.

That's the thing with Jack's work—you can really follow where he was moving in his work. Where his concerns were, where they were directed, and where they continued into a mystical repressed to released dream.

His enormous 911 painting took me a minute to understand. There was no saturated color like the work in the 60s. It was like Anslem Kieffer using a different medium. It's a painting that you get close to and pick out the different materials and techniques he used: stepping on the painting, newspaper, apparently blood, my friend Andre Martinez's painting of bricks, etc. But more visable is the painting below it all, and it's exciting because there's that same vibrant color that you see in the other paintings but it's covered in all that filth and crud. After my second visit, I decided I really liked it for just what it was: a classic composition, the same complicated struggle Jack always seems to challenge himself with and the material of those WTC buildings, heavy... He really grabs you and shows you what's going on if you let him.

Great Experience and there's a lot of feeling in this show. Just go see it before it closes, Sept 24. Number 1 on my list this year! Good Job Jack!