post cerealism

Today's bees knees award goes to the clever, the witty, the oh-so-magically-delicious Ernie Button. Even his name is cool.

Some images from his cerealism series. (Visit his site to see them all.)

(french toast canyon)













(cheeramids #3)

something new under the sun

I've been cooped up in the 'Horse for so long now that new discoveries have been few and far between - until this happy day. I'm in love with David Graham Baker.








































Thanks Paul for the find.

for the love of awkwardness

When it comes to portraits or any artistic genre really, I couldn't be less interested in "pretty". I'm particularly suspect of anything purporting to be unstaged, natural, or candid as (to my mind) those images tend to be the most infused with artifice. I like a good staged narrative. Highly posed, unapologetically constructed, these images expose the uncomfortable truths that we might not care to reveal about ourselves.

Here are a few examples from some of my favourite photographers:

Jeff Wall's "Mimic"


Tina Barney's "Jill and Polly in the bathroom"


Nic Nicosia's "Like photojournalism"


Recently though, my sister tuned me into a hilarious new website devoted to (unintentionally) awkward family photos that give new meaning to the word uncomfortable. Simply put, you can't make this shit up.

A few selections from the website.

"Family tree - even the tree thought this one was awkward"


"My two dads - feel free to use your calculators for this exercise"


"The closeness of you - when you're madly in love..."


There's one image on the site for which there simply are no words. Even I hesitated to post this one - "The Wonder Years" . Yikes.

stuck between the moon and new york city

This is the time of year when I really rack up the mental travel miles. The snowdrifts continue to climb higher and the mercury shows no signs of rising above -10c so I hit the road and go wandering.


Today I wandered over to the Jen Bekman gallery in NYC and found that she's hosting a solo show for one of my favourite artists, Sarah McKenzie. At the risk of repeating myself, she's still the bees knees in my book.















So, if you're lucky enough to find yourself in new york city this month, check it out and drop me a line c/o my outpost, (they'll know it at the post office as the the last stop to on the way to the moon) and tell me how they looked up close and in person. Until then, off to the next destination.

leah giberson: little boxes

Leah Giberson's mixed media studies of suburban houses and landscapes bring to mind one of my favourite tunes about conformity and the pursuit of progress. Unlike the ticky tacky houses in the song, Giberson's subjects are raised out of their suburban drudgery to become unique and beautiful vignettes tinged with nostalgia and loneliness. I love how she incorporates and embraces what would traditionally be considered awkward or aesthetically unseemly artistic elements such as intrusive shadows and power lines. A few of my favourites from her etsy site.

duane michals: putting fartsters on notice since 1932

I have a bit of an obsession with the notion and experience of memory (is a memory something you have or something you've lost?) There are some moments I hold so dear that I wish I could wipe clean my memory if only to be able to have the chance to go back and experience them again for the first time. The first time I saw Han Solo on the big screen. The view from our tent that first morning at Galla Camp in Kenya. The first time I saw a Duane Michals photograph, specifically, this series of photographs, "chance encounter".

Who can say what it is that causes that jolt of electricity and recognition when you connect with a person, place or idea on such a cellular, cosmic level. Whatever it is, Duane Michals' work does it for me.










Madame Schrodinger's cat:





Or this one: "No American has the right to impose his private morality on any other American."



Or this one from his recent book, a biting satire "how photography lost its virginity on the way to the bank" a send up of some of the biggest photography art stars going (many of whom I really quite like). Who is Sidney Sherman?

The accompanying text: "Sidney paints his fingernails shocking pink a brilliantly audacious gesture that exposes the dis-corraborative gender bias of Revlon's vacuity, while trenchantly confirming lipstick as a phallic ploy of alpha males vis-a-vis Derrida's strategies of dis-corraboration."

His tattle-tales from the land of fauxtography includes such gems as:

• Never trust any photograph so large it can only fit inside a museum;
  
• The announced demise of the decisive moment is premature; and
  
• Museums should never exhibit photographs of visitors looking at art in museums to visitors who are looking at art in museums.

Beware, he warns, of fartsters (aka those who confuse fashion with art). Words of wisdom indeed.

a pram in the hall

I'm not afraid to say it. I loathe Anne Geddes. Well, her photographs anyway. This admission may have cost me a few potential life-long friends among my portrait photography classmates, 99% of whom cited her as their creative inspiration, but I'm ok with that. (Seriously, you'd have thought I copped to enticing cherubs to feast on my candy house so I could further fatten them up and eat them.)

There's an old and oft quoted expression in the art & literary worlds: "there is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall." Maybe it's true and maybe it isn't. I admit, there was a time when I lost more than a few hours sleep pondering it but that's neither here nor there for the purposes of today's favourite things posting.

Without further ado, a few of my favourites ranging from the horrifying to the hilarious to the sublime brought to us by Diane Arbus, Martin Parr, Simen Johan , Loretta Lux and Ruud van Empel.

my man nic

For some people it was Ansel Adams. For others, Dorothea Lange.

For me it was Nic Nicosia.



Check out ColdBacon's ode to Nic here:
http://www.coldbacon.com/flash/nicosia.html

If bees had knees

Sarah McKenzie's fabulous piece, "Site".

(In case anyone's wondering what to get me for Christmas...)

wehringer for art thou?

A few of my favourite things. Anyone out there have a wehringer of your own?