Scott Ingram

2010-10-25T20:08:00.002-04:00

I feel pretty bad having this blog and not having a chance to keep up with it. There is so much going on right now but I am really going to try to make a better effort to write, at least to keep people plugged into all of the crazy things that are going on. So quickly i will tell you a little bit about what has been happening.

First and for most, I'm going to be a dad. So that will be very cool. I've never done this before, but everyone tells me it is great. I'm sure it will be.

Late in the summer I was nominated for a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant. The application is in and I am waiting for the results. Fingers crossed.

The next crazy thing that happened is that the magazines are totally pushing my work right now. As you can see, Atlanta Homes and Lifestyles put me on the cover with my installation at Spa Sentio. It turned out beautifully and I am told this is the first time the magazine has focused on a piece of art for the cover.

944 Magazine (Atlanta) has also written an article on my work for their most recent issue. It is a great piece by a fellow midwesterner. Fahamu has also contributed to the magazine which has a feature article on Kehinde Wiley.

I've also done an interview for Points North Magazine that focuses on the Hudgens Prize. I think it will be out any day now. I haven't seen a copy of it yet. The final magazine spot is the November issue of InStyle. No photo credits but it is from an interior Susan Kassler did a few years ago with a fantastic pink nail polish drawing. oddly enough the article is about framing.

So back the the Hudgens Prize mention. I am one of the 5 finalists for Atlanta's first Hudgens Prize. It is the largest prize for a single artist in the Georgia. I am please to be exhibiting with Hope Hilton, Gyun Hur, Jiha Moon and Ruth Dusseault. The exhibition will feature not only some new works, but some new mediums that I have never tried before. I'm adding stone carving to the equation. That exhibition opens on November 30th, when the announce the winner. Seriously people, cross you fingers, do something, i mentioned the kid right.

Today I was asked to take part in FAU's 2011 version of southXeast: Contemporary Southeastern Art exhibition. Opening in Late January, I am hoping they except my installation proposal.

I'll try to post the results of everything as they come up. Watch my FB page to find out dates on exhibitions.

New photo edition.

2010-06-09T16:57:00.006-04:00

I took this photograph at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin in 2008. I printed a small version of it for an exhibition at Indiana State University. Recently, I've been thinking about how photography could benefit the conversation between objects in my shows. Adding Julius Shulman photos to the "Building Futures" show at Solomon Projects in 2007 was a huge step in that direction.

I saw these two chairs and they haunted me for about an hour until I went back through the museum to shoot it. I originally took the photo as a document, not a piece of art. I love the story it tells, or the one you could make up. It could almost be a black and white photo. So many questions come to mind for me when I see it. Two chairs would suggest a couple, but I assumed the chairs were for security staff. So why two? If they were for the public, why not a bench? The chairs are slightly askew and appear to have sublte differences. The institutional feel of the marble floor and white chairs is somehow offset by the heat radiator on the wall and the warmth of the light coming through the window.

The window sill is illuminated, carrying the eye to the control knob at the right edge of the image. In many ways the knob controls the composition for me. Without it, the image would be rather symetrical. I loved my trip to Berlin and this image captured the essence of what i enjoyed about the city.

This image is now available in an edition of 10, with 2 artist proofs. The image is 4"x 6". They are framed alike in a narrow flat white frame, with a 1 1/2" 8 ply mat, with museum glass. It is approximately 8"x 10" in the frame.

Extending ...through line...

2010-03-22T21:55:00.004-04:00

February 13th, 2010 ...through line... opened at Solomon Projects in Atlanta. This exhibition was the first time I took an honest look back at why I make the work that I make. Not only did I explore the process, I also examined the sources of content. One of the central pieces in the show was a set of four drawings on watercolor paper depicting the north, south, east and west elevations of the first modern home that I came in contact with as a kid growing up in Winterset Iowa. I've posted photographs of the house before on the blog.

The largest piece in the exhibition was a 17' drawing of Quai St. Michel, the entire street elevation of the street on which Matisse housed his first apartment studio. Directly across the Seine from Notre Dam. In the exhibition, the drawing hung directly across the gallery from an etching of Notre Dam by Matisse. Ironically, this etching was removed from a book containing a suite of etchings.

Seated to the left of the gallery entrance was "Charlie, meet Malevich" 2009 The introduction to the show. Modern art literally and humorously meeting modern architecture, creating a jumping off point for the show. You can't help but notice the I-beam column as you walk into the space. Painted as though an intoxicated abstract expressionist worked late into the night applying the finish, creating an obstacle in the way, giving the viewer a choice of approach to the work. There were four columns, one in each corner. They assisted in dividing the planes of the walls by hiding the corners of the gallery. This allows the viewer to almost see the space in the round, erasing the hard edge corners of the gallery. As you examine the works in the space you begin to notice that many of the works have been completed on book pages. Torn from exhibition catalogs, sketch books, and luxurious coffee table books by Taschen. All of the pages are altered by cutting, drawing, painting and collaging. I'd like to think that my artistic statements begin with creative observations.

Book pages have been a big part of my work since the beginning of my career. As a self taught artist, books were my studio, my museum, my classroom and even my professor. The investigation often leads to a need to physically alter the material to better understand what I am seeing.

It is not a surprise that I chose the works on book pages when Anna Kustera asked me to do a two person show with Charles Labelle. Opening March 26th, 2010 at the Anna Kustera Gallery in Chelsea. The front gallery space will be used as an extension of the ...through line... show. I will be focusing on altered book pages and the first generation of drawings out from the book pages. The various drawings will talk about the relationships between modern art, architecture and the iconic decorative objects of the era of modernism.

Visual Acoustics

2009-12-13T22:04:00.007-05:00

Visual Acoustics opened this weekend at the Plaza Theatre in Atlanta. Visual Acoustics is a documentary about the life and work of the greatest architectural photographer Julius Shulman. I have been a huge fan of Shulman for years but never had the opportunity to meet him. It is a fantastic film of a life full of vision and clarity. He died on July 17th, 2009 at the age of 98.

As I watched and listen to Dustin Hoffman recount this great life I couldn't help but think that the hour and 23 minutes of film that I am watching is a meer fraction of the experiences that Shulman had. This is a man that traveled the globe single handedly documenting the modern world. In many cases his images were used to rebuild what had been altered or destroyed.

The film shows the humor and free spirit of the photographer as it documents his interactions with architects and book publishers. He often seems surprised that people are interested in the work, but is always aware of his place in history and very proud of it. Shulman lived long enough to watch retro become retro.

I can't encourage you enough to see the film, it is moving when Shulman receives his honorary degree in his 90's after dropping out of school as a kid. It is a true American film about a wonderful life that actually took the time to take a picture.

A meeting with the Pope.

2009-09-24T22:23:00.005-04:00

So i got an email a few weeks ago saying that Mike, one of my best friends, was coming back to the states for three weeks. I hadn't seen him in about 8 years. Of course I had to drop everything and drive back to Des Moines and hang out for a few days before he went back to Hong Kong.

It made me start thinking about my past and how being away from everything I once knew makes me question what I really know or believe. Since I was going back, I thought what the hell, lets go back... way back.

So on Sept. 17th. I got in my truck at 8:00 in the morning and began the drive 14 hours north west to Des Moines, Iowa alone. It gave me a lot of time to think about what I was going to see and how I might feel. At 40, my conscious thoughts of Des Moines and Iowa are equal to my time in Atlanta. I grew up in Winterset and Des Moines, but my life started in Atlanta.

I pulled into town around 10:00 pm, picked up my great friend Tony and went to meet Mike, play pool and get caught up. We hung out until 3:00 in the morning before going back to Tony's house to crash on his couch and chairs. Mike said it best the next morning, "if you could forget for a second about the last 15 years, the fact that we live in different states and countries, forget about jobs, relationships, all of it... nothing has changed". It was the most pathetically wonderful thing I have ever heard and he was right.

So we decided that since we were going back we needed to catch up with our old neighborhoods, family and friends. We had the idea to have lunch with our High School art teacher. Without a doubt, one of the most important people in our lives. We took her to lunch at the Winterset golf and country club, which sounds really posh on a blog. but we ate pork tenderloin sandwiches and sweet potato fries and began to get caught up. The weather was beautiful, sunny with a fresh breeze.

The last time we saw her she was still teaching art in Winterset and we crashed her class, which was always fun. She is in a different place in her life now as she is teaching kids with special needs. When I look back she always had, some were just a little more special and some had more needs. But you could see the joy on her face that some of her favorite students wanted to spend an afternoon having lunch with her, and genuinely wanted to know how she was.

I also went by the Des Moines Art Center where I worked for three years before cutting my finger off in their tablesaw while installing a Warhol show. I love that museum, it is everything a museum should be without trying to be something it isn't. It has an amazing respect for the art it collects and for the architecture that houses it. At a time when so many museums are stopping short of rollercoasters and bears riding bikes, the DMAC pulls out an Isa Genzken or a Rita McBride. Did i mention it is free?

The DMAC was also recently given a collection of outdoor sculptures that were being installed in a 4 acre greenspace downtown. I had helped John and Mary Pappajohn install 12 of the original sculptures on their property before I left Des Moines 15 years ago. I worked on the Kelly, Serra, the Smith and others. but it was wonderful to see them in the publics eye. Now the Pappajohns have given a true gift not just to the DMAC, but the city as a whole.

After two days of reconnecting with my roots, on Sunday morning I got back in the truck to drive home. Driving back through the countryside, passing Pella's Dutch windmills and the Amish buggies on their way to church, listening to public radio and recapping the weekend in my mind. I couldn't help think about how lucky I was to have the friends that keep you grounded and want to you succeed.

Jennie C. Jones on www.throwsheet.com

2009-09-15T22:19:00.003-04:00

It's funny to me that people continue to ask me to write things for magazines, websites and blogs. I can barely write my name or a complete sentence. But i have a new project that i am very excited about. I have teamed up with Mark Liebert ( Mark obviously taking the lead) on a new site on which we have conversations with artists that are exhibiting or living in the Atlanta area. I am most interested in a conversation after a time of settling and reflection.

I am so excited to announce that my email conversation with Jennie C. Jones is the first entry in this new endeavor. This discussion follows her beautiful show at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. I think Jennie's work is wonderfully inspirational, as if i had a kindred spirit in Brooklyn.

I hope that you enjoy the new site and check back for new entries that i am currently working on. The "punk rock wanderer" Bill Daniels is up next. we will be talking about his new show at Get This Gallery and discussing photography as documentation.

Thanks Jennie!

www.throwsheet.com

My Modernism

2009-08-14T21:19:00.003-04:00

I mentioned this house the other day in a post. I grew up about 6 blocks from it and was completely obsessed with it. i had forgotten about the M*A*S*H* styled sign post that sat on the corner of the property at the street. i have always assumed that the cities listed were visited by the home owner. That on it's own was of interest to me. We occasionally made the drive back to Oklahoma to visit family friends. Once in awhile we'd go to Omaha and visit the zoo. My father was not much for travel, still isn't. He claims to be happy where he is, my mother however, doesn't share this contentment in the same way.

Back to the house, one of the things i loved about it was that it was a perfect solution to my escapism. The day dreaming about the home owners and the travel sign, and their adventures. I look back at the sign now and none of those cities seem as far away. Maybe because i have been to most of them for one reason or another. Sometimes i think the most important part of this sign was just putting the idea in my head that there was so much more out here.

I think it would be great to build a sign like that one day, but i'm not ready to stay home yet.

Highline NYC

2009-08-13T18:23:00.006-04:00

Your looking at pictures of the new Highline project in New York. The first section opened this summer and it is about long 5 blocks in length. Cutting through the Standard Hotel as well as two other older buildings. One of which Spencer Finch has created a beautiful site specific installation in the windows.

The Highline is a project using elevated abandoned trainlines to create a greenspace/park. It is brilliant! It is like taking an old car on blocks laying on the side of the street and restoring it to the better than original condition, then letting perfect strangers take it for a spin. I absolutely loved it. The design is amazing every detail that was needed was handled perfectly. If it didn't need to be touched, it wasn't. An amazing balance with so many surprises. Including a rare view of the Statue of Liberty that far north in Manhatten, which is perfectly framed with vintage architecture.

I walked it the first time, turning around I walked back. I could have done it again, But we had people to meet. It's like a wonderful ride with views of the city that you don't get on the street or even from a window.

The next day i found myself at galleries in Chelsea and realized that i could enter on 19th, so i walked it again.

At no point do you forget you are in New York, like the rest of the world you realize that New York is changing too. It is making choices that other cities need to be making to improve the quality of life.

It is also great to see the contemporary architectural history lesson popping up around you. It reminded me of Berlin in that way, the old sitting comfortably with the new in conversation.

The Highline was not only a treat, but the highlight of my trip. It will become a part of my future trips to New York, just like the Met, MOMA or the Whitney.

cinder block photo series

2009-08-10T18:19:00.006-04:00

I've been thinking about posting these photos for awhile. You are looking at two photos from a new series of photos that i took last spring in Atlanta, just off of Marietta Blvd. I was driving by the site and the sun was hitting this massive pile of blocks beautifully. It was like a rolling hill in a cemetery with the light reflecting off the stones.

I dropped everything I was doing, went home, and grabbed the camera and tri-pod and headed right back. A half an hour later the light was even better. I took about 30 pictures and everyone of them is incredible. This mass grave of material was lifeless and I was torn between capturing the moment and documenting a loss.

I turned 40 last year, and got married this summer. My life is changing and I have spent much of it running from the first half. Sometimes I feel as though I have entered my work at a half way point, or rather that the viewer doesn't know the whole story. Most people don't know me or my work before I moved to Atlanta in 1995. Oddly, I'm not sure I knew me, but I was searching. I have been thinking a lot about why I am interested in architecture, art, and cars. It could be home remodeling projects with my father or car restoration with my brother. Obviously my high school art program had a huge impact.

I remember a house on my way to school or church. I rode my bike by it everyday, even in the summer on my way to the pool. It was strange by small town Winterset, Iowa standards. It was two stories high, and the only home in the whole town that had a flat roof. With the annual snowfall a flat roof is asking for trouble. It was modern and stood out like a sore thumb. Built in the mid 40's at 420 E. Court Street. i rode my bike by that house for years and could only imagine the celebrity that lived in that house. Probably summered there between shooting movies. I wasn't old enough to understand California modernism at the time, but I was sure the person that lived there was from California, a fantasy land far away from my bland life in Iowa.

The house had a porch on the second floor and a wrap around patio that was covered. A real party house I'd think. Fellow celebrities drinking martini's smoking cigarettes late into the evening without a care in the world, because they were in the middle of nowhere.

A few years ago I was back in Winterset, I took my then future wife to see where I grew up. I took her by the house almost before I went by my own. Winterset was famous for the birth of John Wayne and the 13 covered bridges that Clint Eastwood made a movie about. Its nice, but even with all of its "culture", it wasn't enough. I've always wanted more.

I took pictures of the house, all 4 sides, in preparation for a series of drawings, maybe even paintings. I took the pictures because there is one thing i have learned living in Atlanta. You take pictures of modern buildings because they may not be there when you drive by again. They become rubble and they scoop them up and fill an empty hole in the ground with them. Developers don't think twice. The lives that were lived in those buildings are no match for the profit they will make. So it is interesting to think of a building in terms of a life.

The new series of photos above are the first into my look at the past. I know they seem quite final in their view of destruction. I would really like to focus on what is here now, a documentary process of capturing what is left. I've missed so many. Many of these buildings are not even important examples of modernism, but the more they take down the more important the mundane becomes.

2009-08-09T19:08:00.003-04:00

So summer has been pretty crazy so far, still gotta get through August though. I was in New York last week hanging out and talking with some artists about the future. Things have been better, but i think it is making us better artists. It is certainly pushing me in directions to explore some things in a depth that i have never been to before.

This photo was taken by my friend Drew after our conversation about a new photo project i am working on. I've never been interested in photography beyond a tool for documentation. Oddly enough, i see these new photos as documentation even though i am not sure what they are capturing aside from debris.

I am exploring the cinder block as a symbol, a bland, cold hard, gray symbol. I am very interested in the utilitarian design and its functionality on an individual basis. One cinder block is pretty useless unless you are holding a door open. Add a companion and a board and you can make a bench or shelf for a dorm room. Add more blocks and you can construct anything you want. A retaining wall, a structural wall, shelter, on their sides they become a screen. I am obsessed with them and their ability to humanize and dehumanize at the same time.

I am collecting photos such as the one above to talk about just that idea. In art history when artists moved from the church taking frescos and paintings from the wall to wood panels and canvas it gave us the ability to move the earth. From one place to the next, we could suddenly take a picture, a window to the world, and move it. Our favorite landscape, still life or portrait was moved around the room or around the world. A picture window of perfection, and it could be changed, traded, bought and sold. The picture's frame itself created the window's frame and the artist gave us an aesthetically pleasing view of life.

It is interesting to me, as i see more and more actual windows boarded and bricked up. What does that say aside from, "you are not welcome". I have trouble thinking about an architectural space that you can not see out of. No contact with the outside world. We've come so far with our painted representations of life just to brick up the real thing. I think it says something about safety and security, but i think it also says something about the way we want to live. Boards can be removed,bricking up a window seems so permanent, so final, much like the bricking of a crypt.

The new pieces i am creating work in this thought, the picture is gone, the view is bricked up and the future seems cold and gray. I am finding myself at an odd crossroad where the symbol of what i am creating is not only actually taking place, but i am recording it as a gesture or thought that i don't even like. It is an idea that can easily be removed for the wall and replaced by a lush green Struth forest or Gursky's dimestore.

Stay tuned, i'll post one as soon as it is finished.

2009-03-24T10:11:00.002-04:00

ART LIES is out!

Stuart Horodner came to me many months ago and asked me to write an article for an issue of Art Lies Magazine that he was guest editing. The topic was "Second Acts" in other words, what are you doing when you are not doing the thing you are known for. For me my "second act" is working with artists, collectors and galleries with efforts to present exhibitions and works of art.

The issue launched last Thursday at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in conjunction with the Avant Garden event. A panel discussion revealed many things about our passions aside from art.

I encourage you to pick up a copy and enjoy the articles. There are some incredible things to learn, like spear fishing for octopus, and the painful events in Joe Sola's tennis career.

Check out the Art Lies website and get a subscription, it is a great magazine.

www.artlies.org

A new I-Beam Sculpture

2009-02-10T22:54:00.004-05:00

So as many of you know that have been following my work. i have been working with wooden I-beams for several years. Today i think they turned a corner. Actually i have been anticipating the corner for while now but today it happened. As you can see in the image on the left from ARCO last year the beams have been positioned on the floor and rather functionless. Today came the next step in the process.

The I-beam is something much more simple than the support in a building, it is a line. it is a material in the most literal sense of the word. The I-beam in modern architecture allows you to follow the hand of the architect as the pencil hits the paper, designing the house. It is erected like a toy, yet can bear the weight of a tree 4 times its size.

For those who saw my installation at the Atlanta Contemporary last month or the larger one at Indiana State University, you will remember i was playing with ideas of support. Haphazardly leaning the beams on each other in a temporary non committal kind of way, or shoving them completely through the wall cantilevered in drywall.

Today the beams were cut, drilled and bolted together. It brought to mind Mark diSuvero's large I-beam pieces, but at a closer look the order simulates a detail of a structure. a fragment of modernism discarded.

The I-beams have an elegance and lack of detail that i think only leaves content in the arrangement. It is the reason Mies van der Rohe used them, for a lack of detail, and the grace of a simple line. the more i think about my I-beam work the more rigid i want to get with them in a textbook fashion. I look at the new structural fragment and think more of a modern Gordon Matta-Clark than a diSuvero, cutting the corner from a modern home set in the hills of California, or the ceiling of a warehouse.

Thoughts on Dave Hickey's Orphans

2009-02-02T22:43:00.005-05:00

i'm excited about this new piece that Dave Hickey has written for Art in America (Jan. 09, page35). its the first thing that i have read in awhile that has frustrated and inspired me in the same article. i haven't decided if i want to agree with Hickey or not, which is where i am finding my inspiration. My frustration comes with the notion that Hickey seems exhausted with the current state of the art world. how can you not be? Younger artists no longer seek out a "revolutionary precedents" not because they are not there any longer. they may be, but it's not profitable. the attention span is not there financially for that kind of commitment.

Artists today find their rut and stay in it as long as they can. it is part of the "branding " process. to develop over time means that you may miss your opportunity in the market. i believe most artists working today would probably not be making the work they are making if money were not an issue. That is not to say they are all making money, but they are re-creating art that has a market in an attempt to get a piece of the pie, or at least their 15 minutes.

As an artist working today Ruscha is my Cole, or Church. I mine the fields of modern and contemporary work, stealing, borrowing and cross-pollinating in what are now appropriate ways. I see the art world in it's current state as a reflection of the mess that our world and country is in. We have accepted the fact that we can all do whatever we want, whenever we want to do it, and it is not only perfectly fine, it is our right. The problem isn't really that the art world has gone to hell, it's that everything else has lead the way. The reality that i think Hickey is feeling is that he has been around long enough to watch it all go down. The bitter pill is that permission has been given to these young artists, they have all been given a license to do and say what they want. the truth is that most of it isn't worth paying attention to.

At the end of the day it was probably free enterprise that shot art in the foot. if you put a Cole or Church on the auction block you could probably strip it of any integrity it has with the drop of a hammer.

2009-01-15T22:20:00.003-05:00

So many of you know my amazingly good friend Drew Conrad. you'll usually find us kicking around Art Basel together or the bars and galleries in NYC. Drew has decided to revisit the ATL scene and present a show of new work for the grand re-opening at Get This! Gallery. i am really excited about this show. it gives the gallery a great energy to start off with and it allows us in Atlanta to see something fresh from NYC.

i have been watching this show come together in his Chinatown studio over the last year and for all of the irreverence that Drew appears to have for almost everything, you will find a very sensitive side that is showing maturity and growth in his work. it's still got all of the edge and grit. and don't worry he may end up serving drinks behind the bar. Come on out. the show opens on Jan 24th and runs through Feb. 28th. Get This! Gallery 662 11th ATL, GA 30318

Also watch out for the fantastic programing that is coming up at Get This! this year. your going to see work by, Fahamu Pecou, Bill Daniel, Ben Roosevelt and more.

2008-12-29T21:44:00.002-05:00

For all of the cool kids and collectors in the know. our new frame shop is officially opening the first week of January. if you can reach me on my cell or personal email, i'll give you the address.

2008-12-29T21:10:00.003-05:00

So it has been over a month since i posted anything to my blog. oddly i haven't heard any complaints. Anyway, i have been running for a month.

First to Miami for Art Basel, personally i thought it was great, it was serious and all of the hype and gimmicks were gone. it was all about the art, and there was plenty of beautiful stuff. It was so real and approachable for me. it finally gave me the sense that the beast could be beaten. Maybe the dealers will turn into people again. great year, great art, i wish i had stayed an extra day.

Second, New Orleans and Prospect 1. LOVED IT!!! i have worked in museums and galleries for years. i know what it takes to put up a show. this was so impressive on so many levels. but the number of venues and the quality of the work. everything, right down to the signage design. hats off to you New Orleans, for a city that has been through so much, you have given so much back. We, of course, were there as a surprise to me. Saskia took me for my 40th Birthday, our best friends Deane and Adrienne came along. i had the best time. we ate at some of the best places. i don't care who you are, you gotta go. i will never forget it. the whole thing was incredible. New Orleans, Deane takes his hat off to you.

So now i am in Atlanta, back from Christmas in Indiana and St. Louis, getting some writing done. (i am working on an article for Art Lies magazine) the new frame shop is ready and open. We are working like crazy, seems like around the clock. 2009 is days away, after the holidays clear we will be on to bigger and hopefully better things in the screwed up economy.

stay tuned, i will be posting details on the grand opening of Get This! Gallery's new space, with one of my other great friends Drew Conrad as the opening act. not only will it be a show, it will be a party. no joke.

2008-11-16T22:40:00.002-05:00

This new cinder block sculpture is created from a piece of Douglas Fir that i reclaimed from the walls in the new studio after demolition. it is 6.5"x 3.25"x 3.25". i made 8 of them from the single piece of wood. the scale is very playful, and gives me many different options for presentation. i guess the first one is pretty obvious.

2008-10-20T17:25:00.001-04:00

How cool is this?

Thanks Wade. if anyone knows anything about this please email me.

2008-10-16T19:41:00.005-04:00

Sunday I returned home from my new exhibition, "Building Futures" that opened last Thursday night at Indiana State University. i would like to thank everyone there for a wonderful week of beautiful weather and great conversations.

This show is a continuation of the architectural series that i have focused on for the last few years. the major departure is the inclusion of "raw" building materials juxtaposed with the actual elevation paintings from the Case Study series. Playing with content and construction materials along side role reversal, The works talk to each other and don't need to struggle for individual identities. giving each piece room to not only speak for itself, while complimenting it's neighbor in the main gallery.

The show is broken into three spaces. The media room was turned into a reading room. Adding my concrete and pine block shelving unit as well as the Audio Buffet, i put books in the room. maybe a little too literal, actually putting books about architecture and favorite artists on the shelves. the humor comes in when you realize the drawings on the wall are all on book pages. Including my earlier series of Ellsworth Kelly Re- drawings, that i haven't shown since Franklin Sirmans included them in the Atlanta Biennial in 2002.

The final installment of the show was a complete architectural dissection of a home i found in Terre Haute, Indiana. Just down the street from the University i discovered a very modern home that spoke to me from several blocks away. A beautiful bright red ranch with a roof line that reads like the current housing market's finance charts. i wanted to do a local home so the students could walk completely through the process with me. From the conceptual graph paper drawings and color studies, to the photo collages and final constructed painting. the series of 5 drawings and 1 large painting just over 9 feet long sit alone in a small 16x 16 ft. gallery space that is included in the main gallery yet separated by it's geometry. The space creates a focus on my process and continues to inform the rest of the show.

The show runs through November 7th, if your in the area.

2008-09-07T22:40:00.007-04:00

Just got back for another trip to NYC. We only hit one opening on this trip. Dropped by Deitch to see Ridley Howard participating in a group show. as to be expected, 2 beautiful paintings. sorry, my photo couldn't do them justice.

We were in town with friends from Atlanta who are preparing to build a modern/contemporary house. the whole reason for the trip was the Home Delivery show at MOMA. i have to say, it was worth the trip. very inspirational for someone as interested in residential architecture and building materials as i am. Of the 5 prototypes that were commissioned. this was my favorite, it was fantastic. it really was everything you need and nothing you don't. the only real problem i had with it was that it was so beautiful that i would feel bad putting a hook in the wall to hang my Ridley Howard.

2008-08-24T22:40:00.004-04:00

The K-9 portfolio is available. The project consists of 9 screenprints created by First Hand Editions in Charlotte, NC. The portfolio includes 9 images of iconic furniture by Mies Van der Rohe, Warren Platner and Eero Saarinen. All of which are produced by Knoll. The portfolio is an edition of 40, with 5 A.P.'s and 3 P.P.'s. each print is signed and number on the reverse. Please go to Solomon Projects in Atlanta or to www.firsthandeditions.com if you are interested in the portfolio which retails for 1000.00.

2008-08-24T12:40:00.003-04:00

so we spent last weekend in San Francisco and Napa Valley. had an amazing time. It was great to see SFMOMA again. it had been too long. great to see a concentration of California artists too. Bruce Connor, Wallace Berman, Baldessari, and of course Ruscha.

i found this massive pile of I-beams on the walk to dinner on Friday night. pretty impressive and quite inspirational. the wheels are turning already.

Napa Valley was great. saw some beautiful wineries, tasted some delicious bubbles and ate like a fool. it was so good. we also took in the Hess Collection it was nice to see a collection of Franz Gertsch prints. i forgot how large they were.

all in all a fantastic trip with great friends. i wasn't ready to come home just yet. but of course i have that pile of I-beams to work on.

Sneak Peak

2008-08-10T22:38:00.001-04:00

Sneak Peak of a future installation

starting my blog

2008-08-10T12:58:00.000-04:00

hi welcome to my blog, this is a new adventure for me that i am looking forward to. As many of you already know my framing operation has closed. Sorry, but the Saltworks building was sold rather suddenly forcing all of us to find new homes/studios.

i am happy to say we are all on our feet and moving forward. i have taken a new studio at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center in the old Nexus Press building. i am very excited about this space as it is the first time in several years that my studio is 100% dedicated to the fabrication of my work. i'd like to thank the Contemporary for allowing me to use such a great space.

new equipment has been arriving and i am hoping to be operational by August 14th. just in time to finish up the last few pieces for the show that opens at Indiana State Universities gallery on Oct 9th.

This show is going to be very exciting as it is an continuation of the Solomon Projects show last year. It will include modern houses from the area as well as the California houses that i am so fond of.

stay tuned for exhibition photos and information about the other shows i am currently working on for next year. i also have news of new print projects. One of which will be released in the next few days.