Will Michael Photography

From the Karma Loop

Shot Through the Heart: 2
2006, glass and rum

Kambui Olujimi Walk the Plank
April 20 - May 18, 2006

From Objects & Pixels 2005.

Our favourite artist Dune-Micheli has some interesting writings that can be found on Contemporary Beatnik. Definitely check out the site if you have the time and aren’t scared. The “CB” is a great source for art and writing, with a lot of work out of the Houston art community. I don’t know if you guys have been noticing, but the art scene down there has really grown in the past couple of years. Most of the art you will find on the site is out of NY, Italy and Houston.

These excerpts/Proverbs are from my ongoing anthology I have titled “SayN Writings”

-“IMPORTED FEET MADE AME[R]ICA HISTORY WITH FEAT.”

-“CAUSE AN[D] EFFECT, FOR REAL.”

-“THE PLACEBO AFFECT.”

-“DIE-A-GRAM OF ‘THE SEVENTH SON’
EGYPTIAN
INDIAN
GREEK
ROMAN
TEUTON
MONGOLIAN
7.THE NEGRO”

-“NOT EVEN AN ISRAELITE DOES NOT KNOW THE NEGRO PLIGHT”

-“W.W.W. [WORLD-WIDE WEB, ON THIS CONTINENT].”

-“SAYN USE OF THE APOTHECARY MAN”

-“DE-FILE-MENT OF SINGLE FILE PROFILES”

-“DE-FILE-MENT TO ORGANIZE SINGLE FILE PROFILES”

-“CENTURY SHACKLES HAND AND FOOT, WAITING”

-“THE OASIS SIMPLY IS FAITH IN THE DESERT OF DOLLARS AND SMARTNESS”

I decided to start posting great photography I randomly come across here on WPS. The first image I chose was from one of my all-time favs, Ansel Adams.

Adams’s vast archive of papers, memorabilia, correspondence, negatives, and many “fine” photographic prints, as well as numerous “work” or proof prints, are in the John P. Schaefer Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson. A portion of his papers relating to the Sierra Club are in the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley. Adams’s Ansel Adams: An Autobiography (1985) was unfinished at the time of his death and was subsequently completed by Mary Street Alinder, his editor. An Autobiography offers a somewhat rose-colored and selective view of Adams’s life. A selection of correspondence, Letters and Images (1988), contains a small but interesting fraction of the estimated 100,000 letters and cards that Adams wrote during his lifetime. He wrote and contributed photographs to hundreds of articles and reviews from 1922 until 1984. He published eight portfolios of original photographic prints (1927, 1948, 1950, 1960, 1963, 1970, 1974, 1976). Nearly four dozen books bear Adams’s name as author and/or artist. Those not mentioned in this article include Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail (1938); Michael and Anne in Yosemite Valley (1941); Born Free and Equal (1944); Illustrated Guide to Yosemite Valley (1946); Camera and Lens (1948); The Negative (1948); Yosemite and the High Sierra (1948); The Print (1950); My Camera in Yosemite Valley (1950); My Camera in the National Parks (1950); The Land of Little Rain (1950, new ed. with Adams’s photographs); Natural Light Photography (1952); Death Valley (1954); Mission San Xavier del Bac (1954); The Pageant of History in Northern California (1954); Artificial Light Photography (1956); The Islands of Hawaii (1958); Yosemite Valley (1959); Death Valley and the Creek Called Furnace (1962); These We Inherit: The Parklands of America (1962); Polaroid Land Photography Manual (1963); An Introduction to Hawaii (1964); Fiat Lux: The University of California (1967); The Tetons and the Yellowstone (1970); Ansel Adams (1972); Singular Images (1974); Ansel Adams: Images 1923-1974 (1974); Photographs of the Southwest (1976); The Portfolios of Ansel Adams (1977); Polaroid Land Photography (1978); Yosemite and the Range of Light (1979); a new technical series, including The Camera (1980), The Negative (1981), and The Print (1983); Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs (1983); and, posthumously, Andrea G. Stillman, ed., The American Wilderness (1990); Stillman and William A. Turnage, eds. Our National Parks (1992); Harry Callahan, ed., Ansel Adams in Color (1993); and Stillman, ed., Ansel Adams: Yosemite and the High Sierra (1994). More than a decade after his death, there was still no biography covering his entire life. Nancy Newhall, Ansel Adams: The Eloquent Light (1963), is a relatively short and adoring biography of Adams’s first thirty-six years, written with zest and insight, as well as Adams’s full collaboration.

Be a part of Harlem history….

Be a part of the Safanova Inc., photoshoot at the infamous Hip-Hop Cultural Center of Harlem. The Center is making history with the recent continuous 24hr “Rap-a-thon” that broke a Guinness book of World Records event, as well as joining NYC’s radio station Hot97 in the recent “Summer Jam 2007″ and other events & educational venues.

The history begins now…!!!

The Center is scheduled to officially open in September 2007, and we are honored to host this event at this historic site. With the “rebirth” of Harlem coming to life, the teams of Safanova Inc., Mistic Motion Multimedia, Inc., and the Cultural Center of Harlem have joined forces to make this event possible.

Attendees and sponsors of this event will be preferred to be a part of future events and possibly get support and exposure through the HHCC, Safanova Inc, and Mistic Motion Multimedia.

“Get your fashion Photo” on, as well as being part of history at this venue that Safanova Inc., is putting together…

Interested models; check out more information on the shoot HERE!!!

“Treasures in Jars Of Glass: Modern-Day Essenes”; video of Dune-Micheli’s installation at Project Row Houses, Houston, Third Ward, TX; circa 2grand3. Click on “View All Images” to check out the slide show.

For those of you who never had the chance to check out Wet Paint Syndrome last year, you should definitely check out the Summer 2006 issue which was a PDF based zine. We have since decided to keep the publication web based.

Wet Paint Syndrome 2006

“By the time Robert Rauschenberg completed the first of his Cardboards in 1971, he had already been breaking ground as an artist for twenty years. He first gained international acclaim in 1958 when he exhibited twenty of his Combines at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City.”This is how the programme reads for the retrospective exhibition of ‘Cardboard Combines’ which are on exhibition at The Menil Collection. Cardboards and Related Pieces, at The Menil collection is on view through May 13th; so if you haven’t yet seen this wonderful exhibition then I strongly suggest you go. It was much better for me, as an artist, to forgo looking at the works during the opening hoopla and come back to experience the works on a personal and intimate level. Once you see these works I am certain you will instantly come to know what I mean in regard to a personal and intimate experience with the works.

Robert Rauschenberg
Monogram, 1955-1959

The title of this exhibition is rather simple but to the point I think. Just as the title suggests, the entire exhibition is comprised of Rauschenberg musings- the use of mixed materials- earlier in his career; but the main component being the stuff that we pack and move our possessions within.

Who would have thought of ‘art’ being a carrier to or host of wares?!. As a matter of point to bring up, back in the time when he was producing these works [circa 1971-73] people spoke of him being foolish for working with such a silly material; but he kept going with it.

So my hat tips to Mr. Rauschenberg for showing us how ‘keeping it simple’ can resonate so profoundly. He takes cardboard boxes- the refuse of city life- and turns them into significant works of art. Rauschenberg tears, flattens, bends, and cuts the cardboard [boxes]- even applying charcoal dust and sand- to give them more pronounced shapes and texture.

What’s more, he seems to refrain from overworking the aesthetics by not only working with the boxes in their original state- in an assemblage construct, but also by allowing the original stains, tears, dents, and scratch-marks to give the work character.

The Original Art Car
Robert Rauschenberg 1955-1959

Additionally, he takes academic techniques, such as printmaking and silk-screening, and applies them to the surface to give these ‘relics’ a contemporary re-connection. between two-dimensional painting and drawing and three-dimensional sculpture and installation.

And in all of this ideal, Rauschenberg presents us with a message of validation to connect our past to our present. And the real beauty of this ideal, this connection of past-to-present, is that despite his fame much of the works in this exhibition are practically unknown.

The exhibition is supported by Fayez Sarofim, Schlumberger, The Brown Foundation, Inc., TOTAL and the Texan-French Alliance for the Arts, Maverick Capital Foundation, Louisa Stude Sarofim, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, SYSCO Corporation, Windi and David Grimes II, Christie’s, Sara Dodd-Spickelmier and Keith Spickelmier, Janie C. Lee and David B. Warren, Lester Marks and Dr. Penelope Gonzalez, Herbert

Send Comments to TRP: review@theredpub.com

Art History Guide would like to thank Dune for writing this great piece and The Red Pub who was the original publisher. Article was used here with permission from Dune-Micheli Patten. Do not re-publish this article in it’s entirety without permission from the owner.

[Via The Red Pub]

[tags]Rauschenberg, art, art history, Dune, Patten,Menil collection, Houston art, artist [/tags]