Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Mark Bradford Project at the MCA

My current job has involved many unrequested days off. Contrary to my wishes, I have most of this week off. I could use the money but I’m making the best of it – which brings me to my rant.

I went to the MCA today to see the Mark Bradford exhibit, knowing little to nothing about him. The first thing I saw was a short story etched into the wall. On first glance the size of it was overwhelming and it looked (to me) a little too cutesy with so many colors. It turns out the reason it’s so colorful is that workers cut and peeled through years of paint, forming the text through removal, rather than addition. The colors throughout the text are bits of everything that has ever been painted on that wall. This installation represents the heart of Bradford’s approach – he works in mixed media collages/décollages, in a constant cycle of building up layers and removing them. Time, its effect on social/political conditions, the tension between identity and expectation, are at the center of his “paintings” which he says “can be seen as a layering of present experiences over a past that either fades or is reconstituted.” I can already feel this turning into an essay, but I can’t help but ramble. The scale, the detail, the complexity…so good. See it if you can!

Black Venus, 2005
Black Venus, 2005
Strawberry, 2002
Strawberry, 2002
The Devil is Beating his Wife, 2003
The Devil is Beating his Wife, 2003

Click here for his website, or here for a link to a sorta spinning preview of the MCA exhibit.

Envelopes Documentation (Part 1)

I know, I know…they’re getting sent out finally…

My dude Mike Mirza was nice enough to shoot a bunch of photos for me packing the envelopes in my own improvised office at North Park. Here’s a few of them, with more on my flickr. Also, thanks in advance to everyone who’s volunteered to participate. I hope that it’s fun and I can’t wait to see what happens with them.

Sample Poem and Maps I ruined for Kiersten

Bird's Eye View

Andy Goldsworthy

This is what i’m excited about these days. His work is really unique in that most of it is meant to be both temporary and somewhat private. Although the sculptures are constructed in public spaces, they are generally so remote that most of the time the artist is the only one to see it, photographing its existence and destruction and moving on.

Bright sunny morning, frozen snow, cut slab, scraped snow away with a stick, just short of breaking through. Izumi-Mura, Japan. 19 December 1987

this one is actually moments from falling apart, which can be seen in the movie. he handles it really well.

Like nothing else…except Richard Long

better (two months) late than never…

Although my Valentine’s Day imaginary deadline is now in the distant past, I’m finally finishing my envelopes project this week!

A bit about the project:

Reading a fifty-year-old National Geographic at the kitchen table one night I had a thought. Inspired by fridge magnets and surrealist games I began to cut out words, almost at random. Whatever word or phrase jumped out at me was put into a pile. Oddly, after just a few of these pieces were removed from an article a theme would begin to emerge. What had been a story of a young couple circumnavigating the globe or a lone arctic explorer quickly morphed into a half-finished poem about childhood nostalgia or the feeling of slow recovery from illness. The shift from the original intention felt so powerful that I wanted to pass these unfinished poems on to someone else, to get even farther away from the author’s intention. This led to a planned collaboration with friend and poet Dylan Zavagno. As I worked on his ten envelopes of half-poems I realized how much I enjoyed the process of creative destruction. I didn’t want to stop, so I recruited other artists, contacting old friends and asking them about their work and interests. My goal is to partially destroy and also partially finish something, to send something that is meant to be both a gift and a curve ball. And now here I am, with fifty envelopes in hand and a mountain of messes in my recent past.

P.S. If I have not contacted you and you would like an envelope, please send your address and the specifics of your request to Dylanmaysick@gmail.com and I’ll do my best to surprise you.

P.P.S. Many/much thanks to Mike Mirza for shooting all those photos. Which I’ll try to post soon.