I got a great haircut today at the William Byrd Hotel Barber Shop. I'm not sure what my hair actually looks like, and to be honest, I generally go to a salon or barber w/ no idea of what I want my hair to look like (other than this) so usually just say something vague and let them decide. Not to brag, but I'm blessed w/ a classically shaped cranium so most haircuts work just fine.
Back at the Wm. Byrd, a guy named John cut my hair. He looked to be in his mid to late 80's, small clip-on bow tie, white barber jacket, smart haircut (I told him that I liked his hair and that he should make mine look like his).
He was generous in his questions of my life, his pace was refreshing, and his handshake gracious. He came to Richmond in 1949 to go to barber school (he's from Westmoreland Cty, Va.), and has been at the Wm. Byrd since 1951. It's astonishing to think of all he's seen out the window of that barbershop.
Labels: barber shop, men's haircut, Richmond, virginia, westmoreland county, william byrd hotel
¶ 8:24 PM 3 comments
I'm currently working towards a synthesis of imagery that bolsters my idea of an analogy between the vernacular images we live amongst, and the vernacular structures we live within.
Are photographs an invisible architecture, influencing the ways in which we move through the world?
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Labels: espalier, futon, harvey ladew, Maryland, sleeping woman, topiary gardens, upper marlboro
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Labels: coal mining, Frostburg, Hotel Gunter, miner, Western Maryland
¶ 9:10 PM 0 comments
It's come as a bit of surprise to everyone, but just so you know:Kim and I are getting married this Saturday, May 15 at 4:30, in a small field, in a small town, next to a small tree.
It's a bigger deal than the small details may let on. ¶ 6:37 AM 2 comments
POSTHUMOUS Michael Lease
May 8 - June 6, 2010
Opening: Saturday, May 8 6-8 pm
American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20016
www.american.edu\museum
202-885-1300
Hours: 11am-4pm Tuesday-Sunday
Image: Rachel (detail), 2005, color thermal print, pencil, Sharpie, wheat, water, 11x14 in.
Through the combination of snapshots and texts, Posthumous distills years’ worth of intimate moments between Lease, various friends, and lovers. Wheat-pasted directly to the gallery walls and coupled with hand-written vignettes, the intimate yet familiar images belie a mountain of experience beyond the frame. Simultaneously personal and universal, Posthumous asks viewers to reflect on their own pictures, weighing the similarities of these stories against their own.
Like the obituaries, public memorials, and remembrance walls that Lease credits as inspiration for the work, the gallery is used as a space in which a story about the past can be told. By inserting private images into a public space, Lease pays homage to the people that shaped him and reminds us that, no matter how we tuck them away (in boxes beneath the bed or buried on a hard drive), photographs play a pivotal role in structuring our histories
Allison Peck, Curator
Labels: American University Museum, art, Creative Writing, Katzen Arts Center, Memorial, Posthumous, Vernacular Photography, washington DC
¶ 11:14 PM 1 comments
Roof Top Garden Club, Hotel Utah", 2010 by Anthony IthuraldeArtist, hero, and friend Laura Sharp Wilson has spent the past 6 months putting together The PDA Show in her new home, Salt Lake City. She and husband Robert (former drummer in legendary Western Maryland band Sadhu), and their son Owen moved there (maybe?) a year ago from Olympia, Wa.
Spurned on by the news of a gay couple being arrested for a peck on the cheek while on the grounds of the Latter Day Saints temple in SLC, Laura placed a call out for artists to respond to the news, and to the idea of public displays of affection in general. 50 of us responded. The show opened last weekend.
Laura has done a great job communicating with all of us during the lead up to the show (she created a blog and posted all of the work submitted) and has sending us updates about how the work was received. Q Salt Lake, SLC's featured the show on the cover of their recent issue. Read the article.
For my part, I sent two images from a series that I'm calling Reading Blues.
Untitled (Richmond Reading Blues #1, 2), 2010These are images from a collection of pictures clipped from newspaper obituaries. I have been clipping and saving for a number of years, and this is the first that I've enlarged and printed any of them. I collect all kinds of obituaries, but for The PDA Show I thought it would be interesting to focus on images of African American men. Enlarging the pictures emphasizes the newspaper's half-tone printing process, and like the reading, clipping, scanning that I do, there is a kind of unlikely communion that happens as a result of the isolation and enlargement of the image. I took Laura's question of PDA to be a question not of others but of myself. I can't undervalue the opportunity that the daily perusal of the obits affords me. In their pages, I have the uncommon - and in Richmond, the unlikely - opportunity to look into the eyes of these men and wonder in which ways we are the same.
There's lots of great work in the show. Here's a favorite by LA's Paul Evans (I like those little flags in the corner):
Hope Springs Eternal (Gay is Good), 2010 by Paul Evans¶ 1:50 PM 0 comments
Here's short slide show she put together.
Labels: allegany arts council, Hunt or Gather, Leah Scarpelli, Morning Edition, NPR, saville gallery
¶ 2:05 PM 0 comments
Here are the words I wrote about the project:
Send Me the Pillow that You Dream On is a continuation of my interest in gathering photographs from vernacular, or everyday, collections. Previous projects include: snapshots of people blowing out birthday candles; a grouping of pictures of ex-girlfriends and ex-best friends; and my largest collection – and longest on-going project—hundreds of photographs of strangers, their pets, their vacations, teenagers in their bedrooms, and pictures of their cars, found while walking, riding my bike, perusing copy shop trash cans, peering beneath the lids of supermarket photo scanners, walking through parking lots, riding trains, shopping...
As a person who makes art, I am concerned with making the act of making make something other than the thing made. Or, to put it another way, I want the work I do to work in a way that makes it something other than a piece of work. That being said, many of my projects are collaborative and make plain the relationship between the components.
For Send Me the Pillow that You Dream On I solicited pictures from friends, family, former students, and acquaintances in an effort to create a multifaceted group portrait. Participants were asked to send 4 photographs: a school picture from between the ages 13-17; a picture of the pillow on which they sleep; a picture shot though an oft-viewed domestic window; and a current picture of themselves.
Here is a list of the participants:
First row, from left George Allen, Prague, Czech Republic
Greg Auldridge, Rockville, MD
Robert Barrientes, Hopewell, VA
Jen Berlingo, Richmond, VA
Arlen Bolstad, Richmond, VA
Jennifer Browne, Frostburg, MD
Jason Burnett, Penland, NC
Drew Castillo, Washington, DC
Ed DeWitt, Cumberland, MD
Michelle Dove, Washington, DC
Paul Evans, Los Angeles, CA
Sharyn Frederick, Alexandria, VA
Chris Freeman, Richmond, VA
Travis Fullerton, Richmond, VA
Seth Glass, Boonsboro, MD
Second row, from left Langdon Graves, Brooklyn, NY
Heather Guhl, Fredericksburg, VA
Butch Haggard, LaVale, MD
Jessie Henson, New York, NY
Traci Horne, Richmond, VA
Michael Huggins, Berlin, Germany
Darrin Isom, LaVale, MD
Megan Kress, Bowie, MD
Kate Lacey, Brooklyn, NY
Debbie Lease, Montvale, NJ
Donna Lease, Arlington, VA
Ken Lease, Upper Marlboro, MD
Michael Lease, Richmond, VA
Peter Lease, Montvale, NJ
Serafina Lease, Upper Marlboro, MD
Third row, from left Kate MacDonnell, Washington, DC
Meg Mack-McAbee, Huntington, MD
Stephen Manger, Frostburg, MD
Susan Manger, Frostburg, MD
Sherrie Noonan, Frostburg, MD
Tiffany Seay, Farmville, VA
Todd Shelar, Baltimore, MD
R.S., Rawlings, MD
Brigette Thomas, Richmond, VA
Brad Walker, Baltimore, MD
Liz Wille, Rome, Italy
Laura Sharp-Wilson, Salt Lake City, UT
Labels: art, found, photographs, saville gallery, send me the pillow that you dream on
¶ 9:02 PM 0 comments
“Sidney paints his fingernails shocking pink, a brilliantly audacious gesture that exposes the discorroborative bias of Revlon’s vacuity, while trenchantly confirming lipstick as a phallic ploy of alpha males vis-à-vis Derrida’s strategies of discorroboration.”
There a post worth perusing about Duane Michal's book Foto follies: How Photography Lost its Virginity on the Way to the Bank over at PPV
Labels: Bank, Duane Michaels, Paul Thulin, Photography, PPV, Sidney Sherman, Virginity
¶ 5:25 PM 1 comments
This is Mark- he's the generous, mind expanding photo-studio coordinator that Alyssa and I both fell in love with. When you and I are together I'll tell you about the time we spent at his home. A truly great person that I'm looking forward to knowing for a long time.
Being such a social place there was lots (and lots) of dancing.
Here are some of the people from the class. From the left: Alyssa; Frank, a former Richmonder who has (quasi) dropped out in the mountains of North Carolina so he can be near Penland; Ebony, just back from three years in Angola - the country, not the prison, and originally from Baltimore; Suzie, from California, lived for many years in Winston-Salem, now retired with her husband to Floyd, Virginia; Becky, one of our classes main attractions, a recent graduate of the College of Charleston and student of Michelle Van Parys, Ashley, from Maine, one of the funniest people you'll meet, attending Maine College of Art this fall; and Liz recently back from a jilt inducing road trip, a bad ass hipster w/ Richmond roots, and also a student of Michelle Van Parys.
The paper class made a hot air balloon that was fueled by hairdryers. Beautiful. There was a huge loving crowd who cheered as the balloon made a slow, tumbling descent down the hill. If I went to Penland again and took a class I'd take a paper-making class. The class was chock full of good people. 
Watching the balloon launch. Top row: Ashley (see above); Liz (see above); Jackie, in the painting class, we enjoyed a ginger aid soda and a meal together but otherwise I know little of Jackie; Shelly, Shelly was in Arthur Hash's class, from Olympia WA, in the band Razzmatazz there and an amazing singer - more about her later; guy I didn't meet; Suzie (see above); front row: ?; Alison, another of Alyssa's students, lives in Raleigh, is truly her own person and a DJ of a Monday morning (9-12) show on WXDU, Alison was happy to be away from home, citing that at home she's "mama-san" and that at Penland she got to be her own person. 
As we drove off these were the faces that bid us farewell. Additions to the crew are the two on the right. In the brown tank top is Megan, a recent graduate of Cranbrook and the studio assistant for the paper class, on the first day we met Megan called me out for mentioning suicide twice during dinner; and Jason, a Penland core student who, like all the core students, did an amazing job making sure that all of us had an amazing time during our class, and also took the time to let me in and show me his Penland.
Labels: Alyssa Salomon, Jason Bige Burnett, Megan Heeres, Michelle Van Parys, Penland, Penland School of Crafts, WXDU
¶ 8:45 PM 2 comments
