It's Just the Beginning

Semester Summary

Group 1: January-June, 2010

Looking back at January's residency summary, I found this passage in the conclusion of the essay: “Through layered subtexts, there needs to be a mediation of the dialogue I wish to occur between the subject and the audience - whether it's about beauty or that the beauty of the execution points out other issues perhaps not so beautiful.” At the time of that writing, I was exceedingly unsure of just how to fulfill such a need in my work. Nonetheless, I stayed focused on the idea that this was a huge key to my evolution and growth as an artist. Lucky for me, both my advisor and mentor also agreed that this was the correct priority.

In many ways, I was led down this path by some very skilled hands. Kurt Kauper, as my mentor, is not only highly skilled as a representational painter, he is also immersed fully in the tenets of critical thinking and its relationship to the contemporary, not to mention his role as an artist and teacher. It surely gave me a sense that I was in capable hands, and I allowed that comfort to keep me focused yet objective. Upon my early forays into allegory and narrative multipanel concepts (a la Vincent Desiderio), Kurt directed me towards the criticism of Benjamin Buchloh, of whom I was unaware. Clearly, an encounter with Buchloh's arguments against allegory - especially allegory as regards representation and painting – created in me a heightened sense of insecurity about what I was doing. It was debilitating to feel such hard-line antipathy towards what I had originally perceived to be a thoughtful method of constructing a pictorial idea. Yes, Kurt put forth the caveat that it was a bit too over-the-top on Buchloh's part to suggest that every allegory engenders a sort of closeted fascism, but still, I need to be aware that this argument is the sort of thing that will be brought to bear should I keep to a neoclassicist's diet of pure allegory.

But, what was next? My artistic narrative language had been weaned on all things allegorical to this point. Thankfully, Stuart Steck, my advisor, had established a rigorous schedule of reading/critical analysis for me over the semester. The genius of this assigned agenda became clearer to me with each paper I wrote. Stuart had devised this series of tasks in such a way as to gradually acclimatize me to a more informed method of seeing painting (as well as other art forms) within the context of the contemporary. Moving from the more familiar (comparative essay on Desiderio and John Currin) to the unfamiliar (analysis of essays from the 1986 Endgame exhibition), I was able to develop a working knowledge of the modern historical drivers that suffuse painting today.

By the time I reached the final analysis, a critical look at the artists of Vitamin P, I was, to use Stuart's term, “on a roll.” Indeed, it was a fine choice of material with which I could test my newfound skills of rigorous scrutiny, as it is a recently published tome of contemporary painting. On one hand, it was heartening to see this medium so prominently featured, since it had been long declared “dead” by many theorists and practitioners of postmodern craft (such as video/ installation/performance work). The proliferative quality and variety of painting currently happening surely countermands such unnecessary cynicism. There is a pluralistic motif in the atmosphere of what is likely an era in which the axiomatic bombast of postmodernism has outlived its relevance to art objects, and merely addresses the aesthetic de-materialization of conceptualism. There is a down side to all this freedom, of course. It may well be that in this “expanded field” of art production, the seeming lack of boundaries could make it more than difficult to gauge how one's work has a clear sense of meaning and purpose.

In fact, despite this widened discursive realm of late, painting has not broadened in proportion to the greater context of contemporary culture. Realistically speaking, it has merely come out from under the radar due to the fading relevance of modernist conjecture. The postmodern world has moved on - much to the chagrin of some who would consider themselves craftspeople - and most information is consumed through electronic means via a video monitor. Somehow, though, painting has not been rendered “ineffectual,” as Buchloh would have it. It is still here, which must count for something. There is no doubt that the appeal – the very purpose – of painting has changed, and that its audience is far more modest and exclusive, but this does not leave it valueless. Truth be told, this precise state of limitation may allow for more clarity and import to enter one's art, once the artist can “see the walls,” as it were.

For me, there is clarity in this situation: I cannot go blindly in either direction. I cannot produce art that is rooted in a naïve, umproblematized past, nor can I blithely eschew all context and assume a mantle of auto-legitimatization. Neither of those things hold any real meaning. Perhaps the latter is reserved for a certain kind of kitsch, but I have little interest in expounding upon the mimesis engendered therein. What must be maintained is an awareness of the history and semantics of painting, and this must be addressed in such a way as to hold to a definitive thematic and aesthetic position. And the theoretical question that is still propounded - “How and why is painting still viable?” - must also be addressed. One part of the answer is in my belief that it is a more aesthetically engaging conveyance of the visual. The very “object-ness” of a unique, crafted artwork calls direct attention to itself on a humanistic, visceral level, vastly different than the response generated by a video or performance/installation piece. This remarkable idea has yet to be dismissed from the art-world vernacular, and it is this very staying power that emboldens me.

It has taken the length and breadth of this semester to do so, but my ability to concept within the “new order” of painting (with a more knowing eye on the past, mind you) has shifted. Rather than straddling a middle ground between a full-on baroque quality and an allegorized single icon – which is where my initial round of concepts led me – I began to simplify. With dual support and agreement from both Kurt and Stuart, I have stripped my concepts down to a simplified, “base” image from which both the viewer and I can derive a broad thematic. I have learned that the discursive nature of the image manifests itself far more definitively and – if I may say – poetically through the full inclusiveness of the viewer. Too often has the painter carried on a conversation with themselves, coming to their own conclusions and consummating all discourse long before exhibition. This leaves the viewer to parse out the conversation as a third party. Perhaps it is a very interesting and even stimulating conversation, but the viewer's own ideas and reflections are cast aside in the midst of such an exclusive colloquy. If I am to speak to a contemporary audience – be it however narrow - I should not leave them out of the dialogue. This give-and-take makes it far easier to expand and change my thematic in concord with the quickly shifting evolution of our current culture.

A final note on that idea --- At different times, my advisor, mentor and I have discussed at some length the solipsistic nature of recent cultural trends and the bolstering of such by instant gratification through high-speed electronic information. The cliché of “fifteen minutes” of fame has gone beyond Warhol's worst cynical thought: there is a sense of entitlement to being famous now. A pointed and challenging question was asked: “Do viewers still have an interest in looking at work that focuses on another person's experiences?” That is – do people care about art anymore? Even the most intellectual and studied young person coming through the artistic ranks today is hampered by the very way instruction, statistics and data are transmitted. All things are at their immediate disposal and are, to that extent, disposable. I contend that painting can transcend these things.

My goal in the coming months is to continue to evolve as not merely a representational painter, but as an artist. My hand skills are honed well enough, and this has shown itself to be useful in the crafting of an image, but that is through mere repetition and practice. The greater challenge is in the nature of the content and my intentionality. I must strive to delimit my artistic province with a definitive nod to the character of painting's strengths while acknowledging the history of its limitations. Ultimately, I hope to challenge myself to re-enter the realm of the narrative with multi-panel works without seeking allegorical crutches, opening up those very subtexts that allow for the presence and input of the viewer to incite and sustain discourse.

ENDGAME

A Response to Essays From

“ENDGAME: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture”

The complexion of Endgame, the 1986 Boston ICA show, and its operation within the coda of the traditional art disciplines of painting and sculpture, is posited in this candid statement by Sherrie Levine: “There is a long modernist tradition of endgame art... and a lot of artists have made the last painting ever to be made. It's a no-man's land that a lot of us enjoy moving around in, and the thing is to not lose your sense of humor, because it's only art.” (61). That said, the existence of this postmodern mimetic art seems quite serious, as it is primarily contingent upon diachroneity: modernism is swallowed and then regurgitated with a subtextually analytic proposition. Endgame proposes a sort of “anti-Kant” stance, wherein it seeks to endorse an invalidation of art/object in a declamation of original signification and strives to institute a “new and improved” point of view.

In point of fact, modernism sought, and perhaps achieved complete reduction in painting and sculpture. But in an artistic culture of pure asceticism and self-denial, vitality could not persist. In “The Return of Hank Herron,” by Thomas Crow, a rationalization exists that, within the art of Endgame there is indeed a vitality in the art of recontextualization. However, it may be equally arguable that a mimesis of known reductive artworks engenders reduction. In mimetically reproducing minimalist art, it may well be that the reductive qualities become inherently coded within the new work due to the formalist structure of a technical narrative.

The landscape of Crow's essay is dominated by a central field of gray that is the early '70s parody write-up “Fake as More,” which touts the fictive Hank Herron and his equally fictive show. A ten-year-old make-believe review is rather an odd genesis for an art movement, but it is clear that the fantasy article became a kind of artistic canon, a platform upon which postmodern artists could assail the mannered aesthetic of the modernists. This attitude is clearly delineated in Crow's statement that, “'Fake as More' is a thoroughly unsympathetic attack, displaying more than a tinge of philistinism, on the inwardness of modernist practice...” (15). In this case, we have a vanguard attacking the old guard, the justification for this being that, in the complex war of artistic progress, those who have fallen behind are weak and cannot contribute to art's advancement. The Greenbergian necessity to “make it new” was made nonviable. But this is merely a half-persuasive justification for collapsing 20th-Century modernism in upon itself. Endgame shows how modernism can clearly be re-presented in a contemporary paradigm, but the question remains: does this imitative art also travel down a limited path, keeping 1960s modernism on veritable life-support?

In Elizabeth Sussman's “The Last Picture Show,” high praise is given to Sherrie Levine for her utilization of key technical and theoretical components in order to arrive at her diverse imagery. As fascinating as this may be - in the context of modernist work transubstantiating into postmodern - the technical, formalist arrival at the works' distilled appropriation conceivably do not institute as dynamic a shift as Sussman sets forth. Levine's statement (q.v. - opening sentence of this essay) reflects an attitude not quite in synch with Sussman's assertion that the artist's efforts to level abstraction to a generic, commodified signifier is laced with a “tone of anger.” (62). The artist's intentionality is rendered rather imprecisely by her own words. Truth be told, Levine does not retain her “sense of humor” in that her work engages in a feminist discourse, copying works from a period dominated by men. Sussman confirms this: “Levine, who only copied male artists, explained her exercise as related to feminism.” A tongue-in-cheek approach is not inspired by feminist critique.

A more precise account of what occurred through Levine is that a precedent was set that has allowed for an arguably too-fluid methodology of appropriation 20 years after Sussman's encomium. In 2007, the artist Andrew Mowbray re-created Janine Antoni's feminist-critique-heavy performance piece “Loving Care.” It was, in its technical essence, the exact same work: the artists painted the floor of a gallery using the hair on their heads saturated with hair dye. The difference between the two pieces is a single contextual shift: Mowbray is a man (his piece is titled “Just for Men”). In this, one can see Endgame's purposeful rupturing of modernism reflected forward into a new splintering within the postmodern. Matthew Nash elaborates: “Mowbray's piece is not unique in its approach, nor is it a failed work of art. In fact, it is an ideal example of the state of Postmodern art, which has become thoroughly self-consuming... just as the Modernists rushed toward the "Last Painting" in that endgame, it seems that we are now involved in another endgame.” (Nash).

There is sustained and significant focus upon kitsch, commodification and fetishism in Hal Foster's “The Future of an Illusion.” The Duchamp-ian paradigm of readymade art looms large over most of the sculptural art of Endgame, and Foster duly notes the masterstroke of fetishism contained within that modernist master's work. Considering this, one wonders just what Duchamp would think if he were to see (for instance) Haim Steinbach's work nearly three quarters of a century after “Fountain.” Foster uses the example of Steinbach and Jeff Koons as artists who have purportedly transcended Duchamp with their readymades, but these artists have merely concretized the institutionalization of commodified fetishism in art. Koons, at least, makes it a little more fun than functional.

Foster proceeds, critiquing the work of late 1970s painter Julian Schnabel as lacking mastery due to his (barely) coded sexual fetishism: “Here, then, the work of art discloses what it disavows, and is again seized by fetishism with all the violence of its contradictions...” (95). Yet, when Foster continues along the same tack, using the commodity fetishism of Koons, Steinbach, etc., he describes it as “a fact at once obvious and enigmatic.” (95). It appears that, at some point in postmodernist critique, it needed to be suddenly understood that the sign/symbol had to be abandoned as an idea referent and re-instituted as a neutral and literal signifier. Therefore, it is within this specific mandate that one must approach Koons' “Two Ball Equilibrium” and not see testicles - just a couple of Spalding basketballs suspended in a tank. [This is decidedly more difficult with Koons, when one looks ahead to the hypersexualized fetishism of the 1991 exhibition “Made in Heaven.”] For all one knows, this forced state of insistence is the answer to Foster's query, “...the tension between art and commodity... has it somehow collapsed?” (96).

Concern over this may be a non-issue, however. Foster later espouses the nascent pluralism in the kitsch/commodity fetish work of Koons: “...it was precisely the commodity that destroyed artistic aura in the first place... it effectively turns the readymade from a device that demystifies art into one that remystifies it.” (100).

A“premature” argument that may now be addressed is Foster's distillation of Baudrillard's hypothesis that “all primitivisms are corrupt and all surrealisms are futile.” (103). Is kitsch truly outmoded as an artistically conceptual basis of hyper-realization? In the 25 years since Endgame, this argument may have borne itself out. Kitsch, in postmodern art, has moved far from the point of elevated, commodified fetishism. Contemporary subculture has seen to this, adopting and recycling kitsch as an irony-supersaturated meme, rendering it sufficiently neutral, if not neutered. When recontextualized cliché becomes itself outmoded, it becomes akin to salt that has lost its saltiness.

With the consistent appearance of readymades, the looming specter of Warhol, and the adoption of decades-old parodies as new paradigms, it might give one the impression that Endgame is inconsistent with the tenets of the postmodern. That is, postmodernism's ultimate goal (as with all art movements before it) is to advance itself, to further elaborate upon our changing contemporary condition. Yet, in mimicking modernism with a kind of nuanced imitation in mind, it is successful - in its time – but it is painfully short-lived. Contemporary consumer culture is rehashing itself at alarmingly greater chronological rate. In order to “sell” such a backtracking to the consumer, a heavy dose of irony must be ingested with our daily intake of culture. As the speed of salvage is ever increased, contemporary art must reflect these changes. The simple mimetics of Endgame are no longer enough; art can no longer respond with such axiomatic reflectivity. A far more pluralistic, all-encompassing approach must be taken to the artistic field of battle, as Martha Schwendener intimates: “Those battles are distilled into a different kind of mandate: It's more than just OK to conflate Ab-Ex and Pop, Burchfield and Mitchell, or Johns and Bridget Riley - it's expected. Painting now can function... at the center of the market or within the endgame of postmodernism (or post-postmodernism). Its status, like everything else in the art world, could change at any minute.” (2).

List of Works Cited:

Crow, Thomas. “The Return of Hank Herron.” Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture. Ed. David Joselin and Elisabeth Sussman. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986. 11-27. Print

Foster, Hal. “The Future of an Illusion.” Joselin/Sussman 91-105.

Nash, Matthew. “The Endgame of Postmodernism.” BigRedandShiny.com. Big RED & Shiny, Inc. 13 January 2009. Web. 25 April 2010.

Schwenender, Martha. “Eva Lundsager, R.H. Quaytman, and Mary Heilman Brush Up on Their Painting.” VillageVoice.com. The Village Voice. 20 January 2009. Web. 29 April 2010

Sussman, Elisabeth. “The Last Picture Show.” Joselin/Sussman 51-69.

Works In Progress

Big-time caveat here: SUBJECT TO CHANGE. I mean, really.

Definitely click on the triptych to see it in better detail.

I'm not going to explain any of this, suffice to say that I'm going ahead with the girl & bee & Laocoon painting (obviously, as you can see this is an underpainting). In fact, I'm not giving any titles out, either. Sorry, but allow me some public mystery, as these things have been/are being dissected by many professional eyeballs. Believe me.

Mentor

(Photo courtesy of Deitch Projects)

Just wanted to make sure things were firmly established before I let on...

My mentor for this semester is Kurt Kauper. NYC-based, he currently teaches at Princeton and Queens College. Prior to his current positions, he taught at Yale, New York Academy, UCLA, and The School of the MFA Boston, to name a few. He's shown solo at ACME in Santa Monica and L.A., and Deitch Projects - numerous times!

I'm in the midst of setting up a visit this month to his studio in NYC. I'll be preparing some concepts to show. But I shall post these concepts after I meet with him. Don't wanna give anything away, eh?

Group 1 AIB MFA Residency Summary - January, 2010

(Boston in January from The Buckminster Hotel, Kenmore Square)

The fact is, I entered the graduate program at AIB with no true expectations. This is not to say I was thinking the experience was going to be bad in hopes that it would be good, so I'd be happy in the end. No, this was not the case. Luckily, I was so out of my regular element, I had no idea what I was getting into - therefore, I had not formulated even an inkling of what I should expect. Truly, I was a naïf. And to be bluntly honest, I do not generally perceive myself as such, so this was a unique, not to mention genuine acknowledgement of my situation. It was this lack of the burden of expectancy that allowed me to approach the first residency at the Art Institute of Boston in a most pure way - that being one of complete objectivity. As grandiose as this may seem, one can see that it was a number of factors that organically mitigated the process. In other words: right place, right time.

Certainly, it was a rush. The sudden sweep into a 12 hour day, each one replete with canonical regimentation, definitely spun the heads of my fellow newbies and me (Group One students) around. Adhering to the bible that was our schedule packet mined one's personal stamina with its rigors - both intellectual and physical. In my estimation, it was exhilarating to be subjected to this total immersion. One could not help but ride the high of artistic endorphins released by such sudden and demanding activity. I suppose it was noticeable in me, as a Group Five (graduating) student warned me that sometime between Days 3 and 5 I would wipe out under the interminable weight of this big, beautiful wave. Forewarned, but heedless, I later blessed her accuracy (with a smile, I might add).

Speaking of assistance from my fellow students... Upon hanging my work in my assigned space, I was immediately aware of the consistently raised eyebrows of individuals passing by. Not a few seasoned students warned me that my depiction of the female form made me a target for the faculty to riddle with all kinds of critical darts. I came to understand that this was exacerbated by the fact that I was a representational realist, male and white. All told, this spelled big trouble for the little minnow stuck in his little current, surrounded by expert-class anglers.

Initially, I was pressed by more students in my crit group than faculty. I knew from general impressions and inside info who the more "hardcore crit" faculty members were (in other words, the people who can make you cry), and the nature of my early crits was merely due to a luck of the draw. At this time, I was unsure of where people were coming from, speaking of the "male gaze" and "gender mythologies." Regardless, I wasn't very defensive, taking in what the consistent reactions were and what kinds of opinions my work generated. One thing that did validate twenty-plus years of painting was the fact that, to a person (faculty and students), I was identified as a master oil painter whose skill was at least equivalent to not a few big names in the representational art world. Yes, that made me feel good, but as I came to realize, that is all that I had. That's nowhere near enough. Not for the program, and not for me, either.

My experience with Critical Theory 1 needs to be addressed at this point. The incomparable Stuart Steck, the professor of this class, happens to be my Advisor - a position of great importance in this program. He was a very unassuming Morpheus to my Neo, as it turns out (I had to kind of explain this allegory to him later - his "Matrix" recall was a tad fuzzy. He did agree with me, though.). In class, after the traditional beat-down of Bouguereau as the straw man for postmodernist thought, I began to see what I'd been missing as Stuart continued from there. I took the red pill. It was a big moment of clarity - one of which ran the gamut of emotions -- right there in class, day two of Crit Theory 1! When he stated that "culture builds filters at levels specific to the individual" as a way to explain/expound upon the heady "no act of the personal is truly personal," I got it. It was awful and totally liberating all at once. I was exhilarated to actually have a context for art in its evolution from the neoclassical through to postmodern/contemporary, but at the same time, I was almost in tears: I had not only missed out by failing to include such rich and relevant discourse in my work - I did not, at that moment, have a clue as to how to begin this task.

I knew now that my work was, when put up against 150 years of art since the Paris Salons, bereft of salient content. In a meeting with Stewart as my Advisor, I mentioned that I was now looking at my work through a sudden filter of nostalgia, knowing I could (and would) never work that way again. I think he found that terribly appealing, and I know he was happy about it - not in a mean way - just happy that he got through to me.

The crits, at this point, became very interesting, for my sudden "liberation" and awareness left me totally and utterly guileless with respect to defending my work as it now stood. I think it became a little difficult to crit my work for some people at this point. It became clear that I wasn't going to defend my choices, for I knew they were empty and indefensible. Ripping me apart would have been pointless. Some particular phrases and ideas became watchwords. "Smarter not harder" was one (despite the overused corporate connotations), the directive being: focus on the ideas and concepts with new reflectivity in mind, never mind the technique - it can take care of itself. Then came the notion that representational painting is - now - a signifier unto itself; it is self-referential. The languages of representation have changed, perhaps even become staid and bankrupt of power. The question kept rising in my mind: How might it be approached afresh?

Some rather serendipitous events gave this new tack some fresh wind. The first guest speaker happened to be Vincent Desiderio. Rather coincidental. I was fresh from seeing his Works on Paper at Marlborough (57th St.), and had seen the BIG show at Marlborough Chelsea at the very end of '08. His work has always been challenging, yet somehow irresistible to me. His writings were so abstruse as to be impenetrable; I could not negotiate his hyperintellectualism to save my life. But, there he was, moving through an abridged (still impressive) catalogue of his work, speaking with great authority and intellect, yet in a more layman-esque prose. His representational work, whose narratives seem so impermeable on the surface, is encoded from deep within, with the application of technique itself enforcing a hidden dialectic between the viewer and the artist. Indeed, that was something unknown to me as an existing device until this revelation. It is no mere sleight of hand, though. This sort of thing requires pointed and extensive research. Desiderio pulls it off with aplomb, since he is a veritable compendium of erudition and scholarship. At the end, I was far more informed about the capabilities of representationalism in a contemporary context. And I understood there is a LOT of work involved in getting to a place where I am capable enough to even begin to encode my paintings in such a way. Even his writing is becoming clearer to me.

But - beauty is not enough. It won't save the world, and it won't save painting. Not by itself. Sure, I'm fortunate enough to have a command of how to make things beautiful with slippery pigmented oil, and there is a value to that. It is mainly commercial value, mind. In an art historical context, it does little if nothing at all.

What is real desire - desire for beauty, desire for content, desire for painting (!) - and where does it lie? Through layered subtexts, there needs to be a mediation of the dialogue I wish to occur between the subject and the audience - whether it's about beauty or that the beauty of the execution points out other issues perhaps not so beautiful. My approach must have a more informed intentionality. Once I put brush to canvas again, it will. I can't NOT do it, now. It's like that old pictorial illusion of the two profiled silhouettes. Once you see that the negative space is the silhouette of a chalice, you can't un-see it. But this is just a vision of the Grail. Now begins the quest.

Artists online:

Kurt Kauper

Vincent Desiderio

Gerhard Richter

Ellen Harvey

Richard Estes

John William Waterhouse

Mark Tansey (excerpt on Artchive)

Books And Articles:

The Picture in Question: Mark Tansey and the Ends of Representation - Mark C. Taylor

Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting - Barry Schwabsky

Painting People: Figure Painting Today - Charlotte Mullins

Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture - ICA

Vincent Desiderio: Paintings 1975-2005 - Bradway/Archer, eds.

The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History - Broude/Garrard

The Endgame of Postmodernism - Matthew Nash (link)

Defining a New Paradigm

In the words of the true and faithful Samwise Gamgee, "Well, I'm back."

If you were wondering (all two or three of you - and you probably weren't because you know me well enough personally), I did get into the Master of Fine Arts program at Art Institute Boston. It is a low-residency program - which means - I attend 10 days in January and June each year for two years, with a 5th residency at the end to deliver and defend my thesis. During the rest of the year, I am assigned an Advisor and a Mentor, with the former acting as a guide for my research work and the latter as a guide to my artwork. It's actually a little more esoteric than this, but I'm going for a general description.

I have been home one week since the end of my January residency, and suffice to say, I am a changed artist. It is not yet clear how this change will affect my work, but there is no doubt that there will be some major shifts in the old paradigms.

In fact, one of my tasks is to give a summary of that very experience as my first piece of writing, so I won't give away all that much with this post. Consider it a preamble of sorts. It is more than worth mentioning at the outset here that I have encountered the most intelligent and focused people I've ever seen in such a large group. I speak not only of the incredible faculty, but the student body (about 85 +/- groups 1 through 5) as well. Also, I have made fast friends with all in my group. We all have. It's quite the bonding experience, when we're pinned like a herd of jacklit deer as the klieg lights of Critical Theory are suddenly turned on us en masse. We did indeed have to decompress in the evenings at various establishments in the Kenmore area, such as - Eastern Standard, The Lower Depths, Foundations, and of course, the venerable Cornwall's. More on this later.

Noteworthy, too, is the fact that I am back at MECA, teaching the Majors Studio in Illustration, as well as a CE course in oil painting. I still very much enjoy both, and am amused by my being in front of the class again, just when I was getting used to being in the class. It's a great contrast, and such lessons are not lost on me (not completely, anyway).

This blog, which has been on the outs of late, will begin its own new paradigm, documenting my current practice. This, of course, refers to my course of study and practical applications of such in my artwork while I move through this excellent MFA program. It should be quite a ride.