Time… what happened?

Well, it seems that the entire summer has come and gone since my last entry. What is that all about? My third sememster of graduate school is alreay underway (well, almost half over) and the work is starting to get better. I am excited about the new sculpture and paintings that are comind forth, as well as a few shows that I have lined up for 2007.

Overall.. things haven’t changed much. I still miss Seattle and am planning on going back for Christmas again on Christmas Day and staying for two weeks. It will be a nice get away for my mind. Wichita is still Wichita, although today seems odd. It was almost 100 degrees (Oct 2nd). The past few weeks have been filled with cooler weather, promoting jeans and jackets… I have been eating it up. Especially after the hot summer that we experienced. I look forward to this warm front moving along, and Fall in Kansas coming back into play.

I will post some new work pictures when I get some free time. Until then…

Paul

Check out the following pages… I love these people and know them personally.
Stephen Atwood (sculpture)

Linda K. Robinson (photography)

Scott Heim (author)

John Sutton, Ben Beres and Zac Cullor (performance and installation)

Diem Chau (sculpture, painting and drawing)

Fernando Mastrangelo (sculpture and drawing)

Juan Alonoso (painting)

AC… A Good Thing.

New Work Pics

Here are some pics of a new piece I finished a few weeks ago.

"7 of 33600"

Music box (Days of Our Lives), felt, aluminum rivets, mason jars, raw cotton, honey, polaroid photograph, zipper and human hair.

copywrite Paul D McKee, 2006

Upcoming Shows

Just a note of a couple of shows I have work in over the next week or two. The first is the last show at Tangent Lab; Chemical Burn. Stop by on Final Friday and have a look at a brand new piece of sculpture. This show is for one night only due to the gallery close in their current location. But, they are moving to a new spot soon. For info and directions to the gallery, go to http://www.tangentlab.com/current.htm.

The second is a one night event at The Shadow; Breathe. Organized by Cliff Bragg, the event is an exploration of the arts in Wichita as a springboard for more involvement and possibilities. A free for all of art, music and literature if you will. Stop by and say hello and enjoy a multi-platform event uncommon to the Wichita art scene. Sunday, June 4, 5pm-8pm, 550 N Rock Road (Rock and Central). There is a $10 cover for the event and it is all ages, so no booze will be served (sorry to my fellow drinkers). For info about the Shadow, http://www.wichitashadow.com/

Recipie for Firefly Environment Part TWO

An earlier blog talked about the building of the actual fire flies. This continues from that posting (4/26).

After the LED's had been soldered and heat shrunk to commincation patch wire, the other elements needed to be built. A shallow 4' x 4' box was constuced out of the 1/2" ply and the 1 x 1's using 45 degree angled corners and wood glue/ nails to hold. It is just like building a frame or shadow box. After the build, the top soil or potting soil was spread into the box and 1lb of seed (Rye or Oat grass) was spread evenly over the surface making sure to cover the entire area, especially the sides and corners. After a heavy watering, a tent was construced over the box with the clear drop cloth to form a make shift green house to accelerate the growth of the seed. Rye grass takes about one week to really look good. Oat grass is about the same, only wider blades. Here are a few photos of the planted box with minimal growth. A standard clip light with outdoor flood bulb was added to increase the heat in the greenhouse (I had less time to grow the stuff for the opening).

Now that the grass was underway, the 3 fans were painted flat black to prep for the installation. They were hung from the ceiling by their bases (upside down) on the three walls surrounding the piece. They are there to move the LED's hanging from the wires attached to the ceiling at varying lengths. Also, the speakers were hung the same way, just high enough out of the viewers site line. All al the wires were coated with liquid shoe polish (black) to hide them and create more of an illusion. Also, the two larger speakers were attached to the meeting of the floor and wall in two opposite spots in the installation. The idea was to create a "surround sound" of crickets to fool the senses of the viewer. Here are some pics of that and the grass at 4 days growth.

And lastly was the actual installation. Each of the LED's were stapled to the ceiling joists at random lenths and spaces with the breadboad and LOGO chip in the center of the room. Each LED was connected together and paired into 16 units to connect to the 3 chips. Muaz did this part really, so check out his blog as well (http://techartsound.tripod.com/). The grass box was placed on the floor off to one side and the CD player was connected the speakers. And B-24, BINGO! Here are a few more pics for you.

Recipie for Firefly Environment, Part ONE

I'm not really sure how to list the information for the Firefly Environment that Muaz and I produced for the WIRED show at Shift Space. Since much of our piece relied on hiding the technology and utilizing more art installation, it it difficult to show step by step. And overall, due to the low light of the piece, it is difficult to show in a photo. Here are the basics for your recipe:

48 Yellow LED lights

1000-1500 feet of communications "patch" wire

Breadboard, LOGO Chip and components (resisters, switches, etc)

Heat shrink

Soldering gun and supplies

5 computer speakers (small 2" round)

4' x 4' sheet of 1/2" plywood

16' of 1" x 1" pine (any wood really)

1lb of Rye or Oat grass seed

8-10lbs of top soil or potting soil

H2O spray bottle (for watering grass during growth)

Large clear plastic painters drop cloth

3 oscillating fans

2 cans flat black spray paint

CD player and reciever/amp

Sound clip of outdoor evening sounds/cricket sounds burned to CD

Wood glue and nails

Electrical tape

Staple gun and staples

So, go out and gather all of this shit, um, I mean stuff. When put together with some persistance and luck, you will end up with the following environment. Really.

Oh… not that. You might feel like that, but it won't look like that. More like this:

Review of “Semina Culture; Wallace Berman and His Circle”

I would like to write about some discussion this show has started in my immediate circle of friends in the graduate department. To give you a bit of background, the following information was taken directly from the Ulrich Museum's web page:

"This international traveling exhibition documents the community of creative people that coalesced around Wallace Berman (1926-1976), the quintessential visual artist of the Beat era. Showcasing the artists and poets who contributed to "Semina", Berman's free-form journal published in California in the 1950s and 60s, this multimedia exhibition includes rarely seen collages, paintings, assemblages and films by Toni Basil, Jay DeFeo, Allen Ginsberg, Walter Hopps, Michael McClure, Dean Stockwell, and Berman himself. Particularly exciting is the inclusion of works by two artists with Kansas roots. Bruce Conner was born in McPherson, grew up in Wichita and attended Wichita University (now Wichita State). Actor and filmmaker Dennis Hopper (Easy Rider, Blue Velvet) was born in Dodge City and as a child attended art classes at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. "Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle" has been organized for the Santa Monica Museum of Art by co-curators Michael Duncan and Kristine McKenna."

The show is extremely large and engulfs the entire gallery space with over 200 pieces of printings, photos, multi media collage, film and objects. These pieces, though really quite fascinating are not really the basis for this writing. Instead, the areas of Berman's photographs of each artist involved directly with his "circle" were the most interesting and provide the catalyst for the discussion that follows. Berman, took photos of each artist he was in contact with during the printing of the Semina Culture journal. Each artist is presented in their own environment or if you will, as a visual biography of that very second in their artistic lives. This is the part that I found most interesting.

I have always been fascinated by the ideas that the Beat culture revolved and grew from. The ideas that produced manifestos, writings, happenings and "beat" events seem to have been long forgotten in our modern society. Especially the idea of the artist as a viable subject for the artistic portrait (mind you, not the artist SELF portrait). The art society of today seems to have long displaced the ideas of being photographed as important figures for historical preservation and for the promotion of their work, ideas and lifestyle. These portraits taken by "outside" artists have been replaced with digital imagery that can be controlled by the self and relies on no one but the artist alone. It leaves out the view from the "forth wall" that an outside viewer can provide. It leaves out the content that the artist has decided to manipulate or ignore due to the belief that it is not important to their art making or personal invention. It leaves out the inner soul that they may not be aware of.

My fascination with this generation and many others for that matter has generally revolved around these photographic biographies that visually link their artistic culture with my own and seem to provide their "certificate of authenticity" in the world of art history. It is my firm belief that this documentation needs to find resurgence in our current artistic culture in order to facilitate the same authenticity for future generations. While present day art historians have no "ism" to place the current culture of artists and possible movements into, without these portraits, they will loose much of the historical documentation that will form that very "ism" in our history. And in all honesty, we as artists will loose the very stitching that binds our values, ideas and processes into one form, one movement, one generation. Berman had a vision of his artistic world of friends and thought it necessary to "speak" of visually. The generation of today needs the same voice. It needs the same vision of it's own future to be documented. It needs to be held in reserve for the next generation of voices to look upon one day.

Review of “Fighting the Minotaur and Other Fabels: A Stereotypical Landscape”

Friday April 28, 2006
Fisch Haus Studios
Work by John Hammer

John Hammer, WSU Painting graduate student, showed his recent paintings this past Final Friday. The show consisted of 7 large scale, oil paintings of all male, homosexually suggestive portraits of life. The works dealt with societal situations in the male arena. Several were of early 1950’s “Physique Pictorial” posed males. These pictorials were originally advertised as depictions of the perfect male body in magazine format and mail order postcards. But years later, the realization of the almost all gay audience proved them to be the early start of the gay erotica industry. The paintings that Hammer has produced are generally basic reproductions and color studies of these male models. But due to the other imagery included in the show, the viewer realizes that this isn’t just a male figure study, but an inside look of the homosexual male in American culture. The other paintings included in the portray imagery of the American cowboy and rodeo culture and the American male as soldier and protector in the time of war. Each painting is well executed with loose, modeled brush strokes and a limited, light color palette very representative of Hammer’s style.
Although the subjects rendered in Hammer’s work are everyday portraits of life (bull riding, soldier comradery and body building for example) together as a whole, they each allude to one another via the culture of the American male with a twist of queer culture. The bull rider has been minimized to nothing but “below the belt” rider and bull in mid ride and the soldiers placed in sexually charged close proximity to one another.
While these paintings are of everyday, masculine situations, I believe that they are an excellent insight to the ideas of our culture towards straight activities and the hidden homosexual parallels that coexist. Overall the show seems to be a successfully cohesive body of work that isn’t in your face, but cautiously standing in the shadows of life, waiting to be tread upon and discovered. Sexual gratification or just a male bonding experience is an excellent question that is presented therein.

Sleep

Long day.  It's 4:53 am and I just got home from Shift Space.  Everything looks great.. except the chip decided to not work at the very end of the test run.  It did fine all evening, but stopped.  So, another chip will be put in tomorrow afternoon.  The "flys" look great… but I am wondering if I need yet another fan… totaling 4.  I'll sleep on that one.  Tomorrow is going to be very long I have a feeling.

Wednesday

Tonight was spent gathering some items for the installation.  Two oscillating fans were purchased, grill guards removed and sprayed flat black to be installed on the ceiling rafters.  This is to give the "fireflys" a gentle push for some movement.  Although, I think I need a third.  I also placed the small speakers (two on the floor and two on the ceiling… there are supposed to be four on the ceiling, but I stepped on them… oops) and finished up the wiring on the "fireflys".  All that is left is to connect all the "flys" to the logo chip and BOOM… magnificent, lol.

Thursday will be spent tidying things up and troubleshooting.  And the grass will come along on Friday afternoon after getting another day of good, hot sunshine.  I also have more pics to download of todays events.