[ Lost in the Landscape ]

an invite to my groupies and stalkers

I’m one of sev­eral artists in town who’ve been nom­i­nated for the San Diego Art Prize, an annual oppor­tu­nity for long-established local artists to part­ner with newer emerg­ing tal­ent and hold a joint exhi­bi­tion that will rocket every­one to fame and fortune–or at least that’s the idea behind it.

Even though I’ve been around town for a few years, I’ll be show­ing as “emerg­ing tal­ent” along with a dozen oth­ers who’ve been nom­i­nated by var­i­ous artists and art pro­fes­sion­als around town. The show is the speed dat­ing exhi­bi­tion, where the estab­lished artist can get to know the nom­i­nated artists and select their choice of the per­son they’d like to exhibit with. It’s also a chance for folks in town to take a look at our work.

I’ll be show­ing part of a photography-based instal­la­tion that looks at the names peo­ple have given to fea­tures in the land­scape, par­tic­u­larly to fea­tures that bear a resem­blance to humans. Some of the names are fan­ci­ful and fun, oth­ers march pretty quickly into ter­ri­tory that’s pretty rude or offen­sive. Land­scape pho­tog­ra­phy that takes on issues of racism? Well, why not? (My recent blog post on cul­tur­ally offen­sive plant names comes from the same place in my brain and deals with some of the same issues.)

Here’s a recent image that’ll be in the show, one of the more fun ones, a for­ma­tion up the coast at Dana Point.

And then there’s this one from Arizona’s Chir­ic­ahua Moun­tains, one of the poten­tially more offen­sive ones. Although the name prob­a­bly dates from the 1930s, when peo­ple thought a name like this was okay to use, the name still appears on sig­nage to this day.

I did a post on this body of work a cou­ple year ago [ here ] but this is the first time it will be exhibited.

The scoop:

New Con­tem­po­raries III runs Sat., April 24 – Sat., May 22, 2010
at Project X: Art, 320 S. Cedros Ave. Ste. 500 , Solana Beach, 92075
Exhi­bi­tion hours: Tue — Fri­day 10 — 5, Sat­ur­day 11 – 4 pm
Open­ing Recep­tion: Sat. April 24, 6 – 10 pm
Panel Dis­cus­sion: Sat­ur­day, May 15 at 6 to 8 pm

Drop on by to the open­ing and intro­duce your­self if an Ice­landic vol­cano isn’t get­ting in the way of your air travel!

April 18 2010 06:30 am | Categories: art • photography | Tags: New Contemporaries III

7 Responses to “an invite to my groupies and stalkers”

1. Lynn on 18 Apr 2010 at 6:53 am #

   Con­grat­u­la­tions, James! What a fas­ci­nat­ing con­cept for a show, too. Wish we could take it in in per­son, but a vol­cano my as well have erupted for all the non-travel going around here. Hope the atten­tion gets you the rocket ride you’ve been look­ing for.

2. Alice Joyce on 18 Apr 2010 at 7:40 am #

   Con­grats! James,
   Wish I could be there to cheer you on. And I hate to miss the open­ing recep­tion to raise a glass in your honor. One of these days I have a feel­ing I’ll get to meet you AND see your art in real life.
   btw I’m unfa­mil­iar with the process of a pig­ment print. Does the ‘on board’ refer to the print being trans­fered to wood? Alice
   p.s. I’m sud­denly hav­ing major prob­lems w/spam on my new word­press site. There must be a set­ting, one requir­ing sub­scribers? … to avoid get­ting 60 com­ments in a day!

3. ryan on 18 Apr 2010 at 1:47 pm #

   Sounds cool. I’d check it out, but it’s a lit­tle far. I find it hard to be either an effec­tive groupie or stalker from the other side of the state, alas. The faces show up quite distinctly.

4. tina on 21 Apr 2010 at 3:32 am #

   Con­grat­u­la­tions are in order! Congrats!

5. Town Mouse on 21 Apr 2010 at 6:46 pm #

   A lit­tle far for a week­end bik­eride… I hope you’ll show a few more of the pho­tos on your blog. What an inter­est­ing idea.

6. lostlandscape on 21 Apr 2010 at 8:03 pm #

   Lynn, thanks for the good wishes. It’d be nice if this is the big break­through show, but most things in the art world seem to be achieve a piece at a time.

   Alice, I’ll lift a glass in your direc­tion. These are prints using one of the inkjet print­ers that uses the archival pig­ment inks. Instead of paper, I’ve printed the images to heavy paper board. The ter­mi­nol­ogy is a lit­tle con­fus­ing when you put it up against the tra­di­tions of paint­ing on panel. I left you a quick note at Blotan­i­cal re the spam. I hope things are a lit­tle qui­eted down. I get waves of spam, though more like 15–30 a day at the crests.

   Ryan, I wasn’t sure how well the faces would show up with­out me point­ing them out. I’m glad they’re distinct.

   Tina, thank you! It should be a fun show.

   TM, just think what a great work­out it would be, and it’s maybe 3–5 miles closer than to San Diego proper. Piece of cake! I’ll have instal­la­tion pho­tos up on the blog before too long, maybe after the opening.

7. Wendy on 28 Apr 2010 at 6:32 pm #

   Con­grat­u­la­tions! This is exciting.

   So they call that rock for­ma­tion China Boy? WTF?

Trackback URI | Comments RSS

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (hidden) (required)

Website

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail