Fluxus

‘Fluxus’ is the name of a transatlantic art movement that first came to prominence in the early 1960s. Its name which derives from the Latin word for ‘flux’ or ‘flow’ was coined by the artist George Maciunas in 1961. The many artists linked to the movement sought to blur the divisions between art forms and erode the boundary between art and life.¹ Initially recognised for its street and stage concerts, which combined elements of visual art, theatre and musical performance, the movement later gained attention for its multiples, with which it hoped to democratise the art market.

Fluxus multiple examples:

http://www.publiccollectors.org/Steven%20Leiber%20photos%20web/Steve%20Leiber%20fluxus%20web/StevenLeiber_Fluxus_SMS.htm

WHAT ARE MULTIPLES?

As the name itself suggests, ‘multiples’ are artworks of which many copies are produced. Each copy is typically identical, with none considered the original. Romanian-born Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri is credited with introducing the term to the art world in 1959, when he began a publishing initiative called Edition MAT (Multiplication d’Art Transformable).¹ The purpose of this venture was to produce small, three-dimensional artworks in editions and sell these at lower prices than unique works.² In this way, art would be made available to a larger audience and thus be rendered more accessible. While prints, books and sculptures have been replicated for centuries, Spoerri helped expand the horizons of editioned art to encompass modern art forms, such as sculptures using found or ‘readymade’ objects, and kinetic art, in which Edition MAT specialised. In doing so, he took a cue from the French artist Marcel Duchamp, who between 1935 and 1941 had produced small-scale copies of his own readymade sculptures and other works, issuing them together in a box entitled Boîte-en-valise.

Spoerri’s embrace of multiples was connected with a democratic impulse that would resonate throughout the 1960s. As the decade progressed, the art world would expand considerably, and so too would the market for multiples. By the end of the 1960s, young gallerists specialising in editioned works, along with dedicated art fairs, large-scale public exhibitions, and displays in popular venues like department stores had helped place multiples in the hands of a new and larger audience for art.³

A key facilitator of these developments was the Fluxus movement, which emerged in the early sixties and with which Spoerri was affiliated. Multiples played a central role in Fluxus, and were the focus of the publishing activities of one of the movement’s founding members, Lithuanian-born American artist George Maciunas. In 1963, as part of his initiative to break down the elitism of the art market, Maciunas opened his ‘Fluxshop’ in downtown New York. From this base, he produced and sold so-called ‘Flux Boxes’ and ‘Flux-Kits.’ Typically no larger than a briefcase, these compact containers housed a wider variety of multiples, created by many different artists.⁴ In the context of Fluxus multiples assumed a range of new, and often humorous guises, including scores for events and performances, interactive games, small booklets and other forms of printed matter.

As an affiliate member of Fluxus in Europe, who worked with Maciunas on several occasions, Beuys was well aware of his colleague’s activities and in 1965 began producing multiples of his own. In contrast to the works that Maciunas published, which often fit snuggly in the palm of one’s hand, Beuys’s first multiples were larger and were often more complex to produce. In place of small sheets of printed paper or boxes containing simple, prefabricated objects, Beuys favoured work with a more sculptural character, in which found materials were combined with hand-formed elements. This latter trait also set his works apart from Fluxus multiples, as well as those of Edition MAT, which avoided suggestions of hand-production. Many of Beuys later multiples also bore signs of the artist’s hand, in the form of signatures, inscriptions, and manually applied stamps. Like both Spoerri and Maciunas, Beuys had a strongly democratic vision for art, to which end he conceived his multiples as ‘vehicles’ for increasing art’s accessibility and distributing his ideas to a wider public.⁵ When his work began to take an explicitly political turn in the early 1970s, multiples became an ideal means of publicising his social concerns.

Fhttp://pinakothek-beuys-multiples.de/en/what-are-multiples/

I Really Should… – 2002 Audio CD, 48+ minutes, unlimited edition  Audio recording of 1000 things I really should do…

Not Fragile – 2012 Water-jet cut, powder coated sheet steel, plexiglass, LED lights & electronics  12″ diameter x 2″ Edition of 25 + 5 AP Co-published with Paul M Conway Editions Photo credit: Toni Hafkenscheid

1/3No Tofu/No Yoga Mat (Zippo) – 2009 Brushed stainless steel Zippo lighter w/ laser engraving on both sides  1.5″ x 2.25″ x .75″  Edition of 25 + 5 AP

1/2God Damn (Watch) – 2018 Custom designed laser engraved watch 40 mm diameter, 20 mm onyx black leather strap Edition of 25 + 1 APExhibition History: 2018 Olga Korper Gallery (Toronto, ON);

1/3Everything is Interesting – 2003 1.5″ diameter Produced for the Ikon Gallery. Birmingham, UKGill Saunders & Rosie Miles: “Prints Now” London: V&A Publications, 2006 (excerpt)  As part of her 2003 exhibition at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, Canadian artist Kelly Mark used badges, postcards, interventions and installations to extend the reach of the work beyond the institution. Badges and postcards printed with the statement “everything is interesting” (also the title of the exhibition) were circulated around Birmingham – they were on sale at the gallery but also distributed through letter-drops and mailings. Mark saw these anonymous statements as small works of art feeding into the fabric of life in the city, circulating her message by an ephemeral low-key strategy characteristic of her focus on the minutiae of everyday life. By disseminating the idea way beyond the circles of the initiated and those who visited the gallery, the badges offered a modest epiphany to an unknown and random audience.

Kelly Mark | Exist

Kelly Mark
Exist
Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 2009
7.5″ x 12″ x 2″
Edition of 25 + 2 AP

Altered exit sign, water-jet cut powder coated aluminum w/ LED lights

Shay Donavon, Nihilist Celebration, 2019

An End

ArtistSam CotterPrice$25.00Date2017PublisherSam CotterFormatMultiplesSize5 × 1.9 × 0.7 cmGenreMoney Clip, JewelleryDescription

A money clip bearing the small inscription “I too dream of an end to capitalism” — a signal of concurrence and a reminder of complicity. – Sam Cotter

Angelina Kiriakos,

Money Isn’t Love, 2019

The artist changed the text from Happy New Year to Money Isn’t Love on a template for making a Chinese money envelope, given at celebrations.

I Heart Conceptual Art (wristwatch)

ArtistMichael BucklandPrice$100.00Publisherself publishedFormatMultiplesDetailsWristwatchDescription

Wristwatch with black leather band, in a roundplatic watch case, with printed paper insert in bottom. The white watch face is printed with the moniker “I (red heart) Conceptual Art.”

Yinka Shonibare MBE | Kaleidoscope

Yinka Shonibare MBE
Kaleidoscope
London, UK: The Multiples Store, 2014
8 x 8 x 27 cm.
Edition of 45

“…Shonibare playfully reclaims an object from a familiar British tradition and subverts it through the use of batik patterns and by transforming the shape into that of a phallus. The opening at the head of the phallus reveals a distorted image of Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Shonibare has replaced the familiar image of the ideal female nude with a photograph of a well-endowed male, subverting the image and preforming an act of reverse objectification. This object can also be seen as a subversive take on 19th century Victoriana, and specifically the “peep show” images of women viewed through devices such as a kaleidoscope.”
– The Multiples Store

George Brecht
Closed on Mondays
New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1969
10 x 12 x 1.6 cm. (sizes varied)
Edition size unknown

An opaque plastic Canal street box contains adhesive material to secure itself permanently shut (it can only be opened very slightly). A black and white image designed by George Maciunas (see his mechanical for the layout, above) is adhered to the lid in which five children gather in front of two large double doors, with two of them doodling on the ground. The title appears as part of the graffiti on the doors, “Closed on Mondays, A Fluxgame, by George Brecht.”

Brecht’s original prototype (above, bottom) was a wooden box held closed with a rubber band.

The idea comes from seeing signs in restaurant windows (Ferme le lundi), but functions just as well as a comment on the inaccessibility of art on Mondays (when many galleries are closed). The work also sits along other Fluxus kits which comment on their own opening and closing, such as Ken Friedman’s Open and Shut Case.

“I made a box in Villenfranche – it had a rubber band inside. And then George came with this other thing using rubber cement and he had this photo made. That’s more or less his recreation of the original model [which] has a little plastic sign on it with engraved white letters.”

– George Brecht, 1983

Micah Lexier
Envelope Sculpture
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2012
15 x 20 x 0.2 cm
Edition of 50 signed and numbered

Archival pigment print on paper, a reproduced shred of comic with the onomatopoeia of title. From the collection of the singer George Michael.

The 7th Nothing Else Press edition (and Lexier’s second) is a cardstock envelope printed with a set of instructions for making a sculpture using the six letterpressed, glueless envelopes enclosed. Star and Hexagon versions are available, each in an edition of fifty copies.

The works are available for $30.00 CDN each, or both for $50.00, from www.nothingelsepress.com or at the London Art Book Fair in two weeks time.

FIONA BANNER: TABLE STOPS

Edition of 100

Inquiries: http://www.fionabanner.com/vanitypress/

TABLE STOPS is a collection of seven ceramic full stops. Each full stop is taken from a different font: Klang, Slipstream, Avant Garde, Nuptial, Formata, Optical and Courier. The full stops are all enlarged to the same scale, though each is a very different size and shape.

See Fiona Banner’s Instagram – For examples including above: https://www.instagram.com/fionabannerakathevanitypress/

Ligorano/Reese, Fuck Snow Globe

Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese have been collaborating since the 1980s. This best-selling multiple, from their limited edition series, showcases the designers’ sense of humor and multidisciplinary work using unusual materials and industrial processes.

Shannon Gerard and her crocheted multiples!

Guts multiples

Like my other crochet projects, Plants You Can’t Kill are attractive on the surface while also speaking to our human insecurities. These pretty little cacti, aloe plants, flowering pots, ferns and other botanicals look darling on the windowsill but are particularly resonant with those of us who can’t keep the real thing alive.

After dozens of failed attempts at indoor gardening, I just decided to crochet plants my own damn self.

These plants are for sale in my online shop, and in several stores across Canada and the USA. See Stockists tab for locations. See: http://www.shannongerard.org/plants-you-cant-kill-1#crochetedcacti

New Museum Store:

https://www.newmuseumstore.org/limited-editions

See Dave Dyment’s site:

http://www.nothingelsepress.com/

See John Marriot’s site:

http://www.johnmarriottstudio.com/

Art Mutters

ArtistJohn Marriott

Don’t it feel like the truth.

1.25 inch button taking its starting point from the PR button from the Art Gallery of Ontario that boldly proclaims “Art Matters”. Marriott’s version reflects the agony and intellectuality that at times seems to haunt it all.

Burnable Contemporary Art Gallery

ArtistJohn Marriott

Build your own burnable contemporary art gallery with this do it yourself kit from John Marriott. Kit includes a template for a multi-story public gallery of brazen contemporary architecture along with a sheet of tinfoil to create your own free-form addition that tastefully reflects recent movements in blobitecture.

See ART METROPOLE – Artist Multiples

Make an Artist Multiple

RECOMMENDED MEDIA: Posters, post-cards, T-shirts, mugs, a set of stickers, banners, matchbooks, artist books, modified products, small sculptures or other commercially-printed or mass printed media.

Due: See schedule for details

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Since the 1950’s artists have been making accessible works in a series/edition intended for wider distribution than an expensive “original”. They would undermine the idea of precious/one-of-a-kind artworks, and be related to everyday objects and operations.

They have been made as prints, small manufactured sculptures, pins, artist books, magazines, postcards, t-shirts and other commercially reproducible media.

Artist multiples are sometimes playful and mischievous – exploring new and surprising manifestations of commercial goods – for example they are personal, satiric, highly conceptual, queer, alternative to mainstream ideas etc. They can also convey activist messages intended for wide distribution.

Students will create a playful artist multiple in a form intended to be made in “multiple”. You can create one or more of your multiples, or a few items in a series – and consider the ideal “edition” size when you show your work in critique. Your work should be finished like a product in a store, and this may include packaging to finish the work.

Consider artist multiples by some of the following artists:

Hiba Abdallah

Sandy Plotnikoff

Dave Dyment

Yoko Ono

David Shrigley

Kelly Mark

Adam David Brown

Roula Partheniou

Paige Gratland

Micah Lexier

Jessie Eisner

Tracey Emin

Piero Manzoni

John Baldessari

Fiona Banner

Germaine Koh

Jenny Holzer

Fluxus (various)

Students will document finished works at the studio with a backdrop/or in action for addition to the blog.

Two “commercial” style photos of your multiple must be posted on the blog with a title and short description by the end of the day on December 1, 2022 to receive a final grade.

Maggie Groat:

Maggie Groat
flowers also gardens, gardens also seeds

Billboard
June 2020
curated by Tarin Dehod

The frame of this moment is part of who we are, and part of who we have always been even if we have ignored it in the past. It is once again exposing to the privileged the worst of ourselves, and the necessity of showing up, with our bodies, our words, our resources. It is weaning us down to the fundamentals: the value of life.

In the fall of 2019, Maggie Groat and I started talking about ungendered fertility and production. fertilities>twins>swings>sings (2019) was the core work in a knife, a project I curated as part of Gallery 44’s “A Maze of Collapsing Lines,” an online series also featuring the work of Amalie Atkins and Soda_Jerk. We envisioned fertilities> installed on AKA’s billboard this summer, but after months of pandemic life in all of its complexity and constraint, we had a gut feeling, a pull toward flowers also gardens, gardens also seeds (found paper, 2020). This collage was originally made as a pattern for fabric, that intention was clear; the work enveloped us, like something we didn’t know we needed. The AKA and Paved billboard has naturally gathered its own mandate, layered by the artists who have contemplated its presence on a street in Saskatoon with a history of extreme prejudice, violence, and now shared by gentrification and many essential non-profit services. Artists tend to address this space either through an image that offers beauty and contemplation or something pointed, hard, and inescapable.

I’m writing this statement now in another world. Not new, more raw, less obscured. And flowers also has been up on 20th Street for two weeks. The work is a utopic vision; an impossible garden. I’m not sure what it means to present art work right now, but I am sure that fertility and growth, and life and death are ever present.

Flowers also gardens, gardens also seeds is an offering, a memorial. And like all things that are relegated to the ground, it is fertilizer for something new to grow.

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Maggie Groat is a visual artist who utilizes a range of media including works on paper, sculpture, textiles, site-specific interventions and publications to interrogate methodologies of collage and salvage practices. Her current research surrounds site-responsiveness, shifting territory, associative logic, decolonial ways-of-being, gardens, slowness, margins, and the transformative potentials of found and ritual materials. The approaches and perspectives demonstrated within her practice are informed by her Skarú:ręʔ and Settler backgrounds, her roles as mother and environmental steward. Her work has been shown at institutions across Canada, including The Western Front (Vancouver, BC), Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff, AB), Art Gallery of York University, Art Museum University of Toronto (Toronto ON), SBC (Montreal, QC), and has twice been long-listed for the Sobey Award (2015, 2018). She is the editor of The Lake (2014) published by Art Metropole (Toronto ON) and ALMANAC (2017) published by the Kitchener Waterloo Art Gallery (Kitchener ON). She is currently a lecturer in the Visual Studies department at the University of Toronto and lives with her partner and three young children on the land between two lakes, the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee, Chonnonton and Anishnaabeg.

Jennifer Murphy:

Based in Toronto, artist Jennifer Murphy has been continuously engaging the art industry with her display of delicate craftsmanship and fervent expressiveness.  Her work is a composite of small cuts outs, which Murphy had hand stitched from intricate spans of thread to eventually form whole compositions that create the semblance of skulls and birds in large unframed collages. There appears to have a level of consistency in the styles and types of imagery that the artist has accumulated. On inspection of these collections, a strong inclination for spiders, snakes, cats, butterflies, birds, mummies and jewels is revealed. Ranging from delicate webs of animal life to the kaleidoscopic spheres of text the artists has attempted to move her strategy into installation and sculpture employing newspapers and books as well as magazine cutouts.

Murphy’s art resonates the disturbing imagery of the poetry of Li Ho, a renowned poet of the Tang Dynasty. Li Ho’s brilliance was not at the time accepted in any way by his contemporaries and was known as a ‘Ghost Poet’ in part due to his name as a dark figure on the literary fringes. His literary imagery of life under the constant threat of decay is seemingly prevalent within Murphy’s work, her collages working as a visual realisation of the Li Ho’s poems.

Murphy’s collages are peppered with references to decay and morbidity yet simultaneously emanates a light and certain sweetness whilst capturing an essence of the exuberance of nature. This equilibrium formed by the melding of macabre and the exquisite acts as emulation the natural world. As death cannot exist without life, it is presented through Murphy’s collages that these two forces of existence entwine and embrace.

Delicate Nature Collages Held Together by Thread Reflect a Time of “Ecological Mourning”

By Kelly Richman-Abdou on October 26, 2019

Collage artist Jennifer Murphy is inspired by interconnectedness. While this interest informs much of her work, it is particularly evident in The Shadow of Sirius, a series of delicate nature collages comprising flora and fauna cut-outs held together by thread. “Wedding the specimens of the naturalist with the visions of the fantasist,” these eye-catching pieces explore our real-life environment through a surreal lens.

Each of Murphy’s collages is made up of a collection of photographs that work together to create a bigger picture. In order to aptly illustrate the artist’s focus on the natural world, these smaller images exclusively feature animals, plants, and organic objects, like sticks, stones, and seashells. Once artistically arranged by Murphy, these photos form silhouettes of similarly-themed subjects, with butterflies, birds, and branches among her most revisited motifs.

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In addition to showcasing the beauty of nature, these collages speak to more existential themes—namely, of loss. Relevant to the artist’s personal life and to the world as a whole, this concept has recently given new meaning to Murphy’s lifelong practice. “Although I have worked in collage since I was a child, I really began to explore large-scale, sculptural collage after the death of a dear friend and close collaborator ten years ago,” she explains. “This series comes at another time of loss, both personal and I believe collective. We now live in a time of ecological mourning and are in desperate need for paths to rediscover hope.”

It is this pursuit of hope that has inspired Murphy to create The Shadow of Sirius, a project that creatively shines a light on the earth’s diverse ecosystems and, most importantly, reminds us that everything is connected.

In The Shadow of Sirius, artist Jennifer Murphy crafts delicate nature collages that reflect “a time of ecological mourning.”

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These exquisite pieces were recently featured in a solo show at Toronto’s Clint Roenisch Gallery.

Sameer Farooq and Mirjam Linschooten

The Museum of Found Objects: Toronto (Maharaja and—)

In collaboration with Mirjam Linschooten
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Installation and book.
Curated by: Haema Sivanesan

The Museum of Found Objects: Toronto (Maharaja and–) was completed upon invitation from the Art Gallery of Ontario. Responding to an exhibition in a neighbouring room entitled Maharaja: The Splendour of India’s Royal Courts, our goal was to cleverly update the colonial exhibition with contemporary, everyday objects from South Asian communities across Toronto. The result was an installation and bookwork of hundreds of objects which drew lines between itself and the neighbouring exhibition. On the last day of the show, visitors were invited to “Loot the Museum” freeing the objects and releasing them back into the city.

Download full curatorial essay

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№ 1/1

Next project: → The Museum of Found Objects: Istanbul

Previous project: ← Kashgar Commons

Object photo 86 (makeup)

Object photo 34 (telephone)

Exhibition view at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Toronto, Canada, 2011.

Publication cover

Publication interior showing Grooming Set (No. 56) and Paper Dinner Service (No. 57)

Publication interior showing Bingo Cage Set (No. 37) and Alcohol Collection (No. 38)

Publication interior showing Metal Skewer (No. 60) and Duster (No. 61)

Loot the Museum event at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), Toronto, Canada, 2011.

Mark Dion:

https://imagesfestival.com/submissions/on-screen/

Let’s do this in class together, with mine and Nathan’s help!

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200617-eyes-as-big-as-plates-remarkable-photos-of-people-in-nature

MAKE TWO one-shot VIDEOS: 1-5 minutes each (one-shot or minimal editing) in the Arboretum.

Perform a FEAT, and a DISCREET INTERVENTION – in nature.

Brainstorming, testing and discussion on MONDAY in next class. We will go to the Arboretum together.

On Wednesday, we will be shooting video during class time. Be organized for your shoot.

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A FEAT: Is a gesture you attempt that is heroic, challenging, special, difficult, impossible – you may or may not accomplish your feat. It may be absurd, it may be funny, it may be critical – and you may fail. The failure might be part of the work. You may use your body to perform a feat, or objects/materials/things.

A DISCREET INTERVENTION: Is where you go somewhere that you should not be.* Somewhere exceptional. Somewhere out of bounds, or unusual, or unlikely, or impossible. Some place funny, or surprising, or absurd, or out of character. You may use your body to cross a boundary, or use objects/materials out of place.

Videos should be shot in the arboretum. You will work with a partner, and share the labour of shooting, performing, editing, posting. The works must include natural materials/sites. How does the inclusion of environmental sites/things contribute to a conversation about nature and culture, and our relationships to land, water, plants, fungi, weather, trees, sky… etc.

Consider artworks discussed in class presentations, and refer to environmental artists in your final video descriptions on the blog.

Be adventurous, but SAFE and RESPECTFUL at all times. See below:

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*IMPORTANT NOTE:

As with all student projects and activities in Extended Practices and while a student at the University of Guelph you should never do anything illegal, unethical, or that can harm yourself or others in any way. And dangerous/hazardous materials and tools are not allowed on campus or in the studios.

By agreeing to participate in this course you must adhere to these guidelines.

You must discuss your idea with your instructor if there can be any question about the safety of your projects. Students who do not follow this process will receive 0 on assignments, in addition to facing other academic or legal consequences.

Be careful, be safe, use good sense, and be considerate of others always.

1. Read the article attached:

What is the ethical duty of artists?

Environmentalist Bill McKibben asked –

“Where are the books? The poems? The plays? The goddamn operas?” he wrote in an op-ed for Grist. “Compare it to, say, the horror of AIDS … which has produced a staggering outpouring of art that, in turn, has had real political effect.” For future generations looking back on the present, “the single most significant item will doubtless be the sudden spiking temperature. But they’ll have a hell of a time figuring out what it meant to us.”

What can art and artists actually do?

Chicago-based curator and early supporter of environmental art Stephanie Smith cautioned that a glut of superficially righteous exhibitions could give hits of easy virtue to viewers and museums alike –

“If sustainability or climate change become art trends du jour, we risk providing a palliative to ourselves and to our audiences without contributing much to artistic production, nuanced debate or lasting social change”

How are artists representing the environment?

Representing nature as the sublime and untouched – Thomas Cole

Spoiled and poisoned, developed – Ed Burtinsky

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/solitary-confinement-edward-burtynsky-manjusha-mail-tent-cities-anne-carson-1.3820890/the-beauty-and-the-horror-in-edward-burtynsky-s-photographs-1.3822594

How are contemporary artists re-imagining our place in the natural world, and proposing alternative relationships with our environment?

Imagining alternative relationships – Mary Mattingly, Future Farmers

https://www.artnews.com/gallery/art-in-america/aia-photos/swale/2-12165/

Educating/making the scope of the catastrophe felt – and ACTUAL remediation: Alana Bartol

https://alanabartol.com/home.html

Bartol is interested in reciprocal relationships to land, and asks – “How do (I and other settlers) actually relate to land, and to what it’s already communicating?

She is exploring “extractive capitalism” while simultaneously “entangled with and benefitting from it.”

Transform our experience of time/scale of our lives relative to the world – John Cage, Katie Patterson

https://www.nytimes.com/svc/oembed/html/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2020%2F09%2F07%2Farts%2Fmusic%2Fjohn-cage-as-slow-as-possible-germany.html#?secret=AdVKnomLifhttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/arts/music/john-c.https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/arts/music/john-cage-as-slow-as-possible-germany.html#:~:text=The%20long%2C%20slow%20performance%20of,change%20%E2%80%94%20the%20first%20since%202013.

KP: Fossil Necklace

KP: Future Library

https://www.mindfood.com/article/smart-thinker-katie-patersons-future-library/

Modelling/embodying alternative cultures and worldviews –Tania Willard, Bush Gallery

BUSH MANIFESTO:

READ THE MANIFESTO:
https://cmagazine.com/issues/136/bush-manifesto

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Protest, as a public performance – Public Studio

Was really surprised to find two different books with Liberace LOL. I these books are all from the Scottish History and Food sections on the second floor. I was really curious about representation and abstraction with the books and how a lack of text can be just as powerful a tool. In trying to connect the first and last book, I worked to assemble books to tell a story of Liberace cooking, something going wrong, and then him dying and becoming a ghost.

I tried to illustrate this idea through colour and book size juxtaposition. The first is happy, floral (also about geography) as if he’s happily performing. The next two are exactly the same size but different shades and quality, as if to represent the cooking has begun but something goes sour. The large red book is much bigger and louder in my mind, representing an explosion. The black to me represents a kind of stasis..the white book following is haggard, brighter, and same length as the black, representing a kind of harmoniousness.

Looking at it a week later, I agree that the story doesn’t really come across through…However, fun warm up and I enjoyed getting to surf through the stacks!

I branched out from the second floor and looked at titles from the military, social studies, and women & gender studies stacks on the third floor.

I think at this point, I got too focused on the text and creating a poem. I was feeling reminiscent and cumbersome while making this. I was thinking about some kind of tumultuous affair between two enemies/lovers. Loved finding two different, yet connected texts that had to do with dance. I was also very curious about the use of punctuation….do you read it as the end of a sentence? or can it just be ignored. In the case, I tried to use the punctuation to illicit a break in the sentence.

Seeing how the stacks tilts from weight distribution is making me think I should look at smaller stacks.

I ran out of time at the library and sought to play around from the books in my apartment. These…don’t really have much connection to nature but I had fun coming up with different arrangements. In this stack, I was thinking of myself….First week of classes are always a bit chaotic and I was finding myself running late, having tech problems, and apologizing a lot….Feeling like Wendy Master of Art, The Disaster Artist. This to me reads like an omnipresent voice giving some kind of prophetic or spiritual advice. Not bad advice for sure. I’m curious by the shape of the stack – how it descends and returns to place at the last book.

At the top is “13 ways to kill your community” and 13 books below describing just that. I loved the mix and contrast between the fonts and subject matter. As I built this stack, I began thinking of this more from a writing perspective and less of a visual or material perspective. I used to write satire part-time and so to me, the stack took on more of a script.

While assembling the stack, I was thinking a lot about the fonts could work with and against each other . I began thinking through the voices of two characters that would be on a  “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” sketch. I was imagining two men filming some kind of Alex Jones-ish propaganda ad. The first guy is really mad, listing off progressive things that would contribute to a community’s decline. The camera would flip to the second guy, and carrying the same energy, he would list off things that just make him mad; “GRAPE FRUIT” “DUTY FREE AT THE AIRPORT” “LARRY GORMAN that sonofaBItch”.

I thought it would be funny to add a (fittingly New Brunswick centred) cookbook underneath a book about publicized family conflict as if to stick a quaint, nostalgic, maybe even satirical PR bandaid over them.

I also don’t consider NB as a great food hub so the idea of a New Brunswick centred cookbook from from members of a rich, white, loyalist family who probably have hired cooks is funny to me. Like something out of Succession.

Shawna Dempsey and Lori Millan Presentation

Collaborative Artist Book Assignment:

See ongoing deadlines for work in progress, design workshops and final templates on class schedule.

Together with the class we will create the content for, and design and publish an original artist book on the motifs of “The Wind”, “The Weather” and “The Water”.

The artist book for our class will emphasize image over text and be an artwork in its own right. It can be any length or size available on Blurb.com under a budget of $30.

Throughout the term we will be collecting images from class exercises, field trips, assignments and research. You can also capture new images and spontaneous moments related to the themes. Post high resolution images on your blog pages, and prepare to share them, and potentially have them used in spreads along with other images in our final book.

In class we will participate in a book publishing workshop, and see a collection of artist books, in addition to the works of other artists on the theme.

Assignment: ARTIST PRESENTATIONS

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DURATION: 5-10 MINUTES (presentations will be strictly timed)

Present the work of a contemporary artist working with environmental themes and materials.

You must present images and/or video to illustrate the work of the artist. Describe three  of the artist’s works in detail (or ONE major project), from past works to more recent projects.

Discuss the themes, ideas, and media at play in the works, and the artist’s unique methods of producing and presenting artworks. Select works that specifically deal with themes from nature and the environment, weather/climate, or other relevant topics.

All of the works should be presented as a concise post on the course blog. Use images and embedded videos as needed. You may cut and paste descriptive segments, but this must be indicated and sources should be linked/credited.

Presentations will be evaluated for:

 Evidence of intensive research, depth of engagement

Understanding of ideas, artistic strategies and external contexts at play in the work

  Readability of images/texts/video as posted

  Comprehensibility and flow of oral presentation

Artists (will be assigned in class):

Future Farmers

Shawna Dempsey and Lori Milan

Jae Rhim Lee

Jason Logan/Make Ink

Nina Katchadourian

Tim Knowles

Ron Benner

Mark Dion

Mary Mattingly

Andrea Zittel

Terrence Houle and Trevor Freeman

Ursula Johnson

Jenny Kendler

Lindsay Dobbin

Monday:

Critique for Book Stacks on the theme of WEATHER.

All work must be posted on blog.

Assignments:

1. THE WIND/THE WEATHER/THE WATER: Collaborative book project- see ongoing deadlines in schedule. Students will post works and images on the themes on blog page – throughout the term.
2. ENVIRONMENTAL ARTIST PRESENTATIONS: Due Wednesday Sept. 28th in class.

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Wednesday:

Meet in the class – discuss snapshot exercise.

SNAPSHOT EXERCISE Take snapshots of the following things during our arboretum walk:

1. Round things
2. A piece of sky – let’s try to capture the whole thing together
3. WEED NOTICING – see Alana Bartol:https://alanabartol.com/section/514344-Weed%20Notice%21%20%26%20Other%20Acts%20of%20Noticing.html

Walk together to the arboretum to meet Michelle.

All photos may be used in our class book.

HOMEWORK: On Monday next week, you will be discussing this reading in class: How Should Art Reckon with Climate Change https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/25/t-magazine/art-climate-change.html

On Wednesday your ARTIST PRESENTATION is due – maximum time is 10 minutes!