The Candor exhibition at the Long Beach City College Gallery closed yesterday. It was a homage to Mike Kelley, featuring former students of his. Please find a few images of the show below. I took them at night, so apologies for the yellowish tinge in all the picture. It was a really nice show, very tight and holding together beautifully.
Lisa Ann Auerbach
Andy Alexander
Daniel Mendel-Black
Kurt Forman
Sharon Lockhart
Pam Strugar
I didn't get the exhibition's checklist so I cannot give you the titles nor the dimensions of the works. I know that most artists showed recent work, with the exception of Pam Strugar who decided to show a piece she made for her final MFA show at Art Center when she was Mike's student. The exhibition is over but there are talks about maybe doing a web catalog in the future.
I recently made the cake above for friends who came over wanting to reminisce about Mike Kelley. It's basically this cake, topped with cream cheese icing, and LOTS of green food coloring dumped into the batter. It was surprisingly good. You can also see from the picture above I lack fine motor skills and cake decorating abilities.
Today for the first time in my life I'm celebrating St. Patrick, for the first time because I don't have an ounce of Irish blood in my veins, I'm not even catholic, and I don't like beer. Irish whiskey will do nicely, thank you. I'm really celebrating in Mike's memory, because he loved St. Patrick's Day and I guess from now on, for me it will be National Mike Kelley Day forever. And for you too, if you wish. Kelly green is really Mike Kelley Green.
Here are below a sample of Irish bands that are not U2, if you need some musical accompaniment to the day. Also, if you wish to bake some dessert today, I recommend this recipe. The smell in your house will be totally insane. As for drinks, aside from the ubiquitous Guinness and Murphy's, I suggest you sample the Irish single malt they carry at Trader Joe's. Much better than Bushmills and slightly cheaper!
The Virgin Prunes, Down Memory Lane:
Them And Van Morrison, Baby Please Don't Go:
The Undertones, Here Comes The Summer:
And that's all for the Irish music sampler today.
Before I leave you celebrating National Mike Kelley Day, a few things. There's an opening tonight at Richard Telles, a group show that looks very interesting.
There are a few things that should be coming up on FBC! in the next few weeks, depending on where I am with the shitload of non art-related paperwork I have to do; and also depending on how my back pain is evolving. Right now, it's not looking too good, so I'm not sure how much posting I'll be able to do.
I intend to write a double post on Jennifer Moon and Andy Alexander's current projects, also to write something on the Mono-Ha exhibition at Blum and Poe. There are several interesting things coming up in the next few months, like the Jennifer Moon solo show at Commonwealth and Council in mid-April, and the Will Fowler one at Kordansky in May. Also, as you may know there's a new Biennial coming up at the Hammer/LAXart, etc. with a big cash prize attached, not that I care about that part, but since I have quite a few friends whose work will be featured in the Biennial, so I'm crossing my fingers for them. And, the event everybody has been waiting for: the Jack Goldstein retrospective at OCMA opens on June 24th. Don't miss it!
Lastly, I've been asked recently if there was a Facebook page for FBC! The answer is, no, and I don't foresee one in the immediate future. This blog was started as a personal outlet almost 5 years ago after a devastating car accident, merely as a way for me to fend off the boredom during the many months that recovery took. It's not a way for me to "make it into the art world", as too many blogs - mainly based on the East Coast - were created for, just a way for me to get some personal writing out once in a while. If it touches some people, I am glad, but I don't want this to become a gigantic piece of work, especially work that doesn't bring in any income. It's just a space for me to have the freedom to write whatever I want, and as stated in the header, it's unresearched and un-edited. Warts and all!
If you would like to keep in touch with updates, I believe there's an RSS Feed button somewhere (I don't use RSS myself, so I have no idea if it works or not), and I use the Networkedblogs app. to import it on Facebook. If you don't want to use these, I'd say just check in once or twice a month to see if there's an update. It's very rare that I update more than twice a month anyway.
Happy National Mike Kelley Day everybody, and happy pagan Persian Norouz to all as well!
I would like to thank all of you who sent me very sweet messages after my very personal (and emotional*) post last week. I have been especially moved by the numerous former students of Mike who gave me their testimonies about how their whole lives has been touched by Mike's teaching. I also came to realize that there wasn't a public outlet for everyone's grief. It is my understanding that per Mike own wishes, there isn't any public, official service or memorial to be planned. I am not going to speculate about his reasons, I just decided to interpret it as Mike's way of telling us to organize ourselves, and not to rely on, I don't know, some designated social outlet he would have hated attending himself. So it's up to us to remember him in what we feel is more adequate, and I cannot see anything better than the concerts and performance organized in his memory at the Box Gallery in Chinatown this Saturday. Please click on the photo above to see all details.
If you need to leave tangible manifestations of your appreciation for Mike somewhere, there is the makeshift shrine in Highland Park on Tipton Way, that seeks to recreate his More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid/The Wages Of Sin (1987). It's on Tipton Way, way up the hill on your left. If you decide to go, please respect the neighbors and come only between 8.30 AM and 10.30 PM. Be careful not to place candles near flammables.
It is a wonderful place to go, as people chose to put objects and inscriptions pertaining to whatever part of Mike's work touched them. Above, a view of a "Destroy All Monsters" dragon. I especially like that the "shrine" appropriates Mike's uncovering of vernacular culture to revolve it full circle; and make use of that secular gestures people have in the US of depositing teddy bears and flowers in public places in the memory of the recently departed.
It's raining today and likely all the blankets and the stuffed animals are going to get soaked, then dry up and become smelly and dirty... which is exactly how Mike would have wanted it!
This is a blanket and platypus contributed by yours truly, while the other two stuffed animals (the ones not in the row near the wall) have been donated by the Alexander-Crosby family, Andy Alexander being a former student of Mike. The lovely thing about this memorial shrine is that within 30 minutes of being there, I've met with quite a few people who I know were close to Mike. More blankets were added as I was leaving, which is good as there are already quite a large amount of stuffed animals, but maybe not enough blankets.
Special thanks to whoever organized the Mike Kelley shrine. I think Mike would d be pissed off that I call it a shrine... but I don't really know what else to call it.
In the next few weeks** I am going to talk to you about two different projects started by formers students of Mike, Andy Alexander with werk.by and Jennifer Moon with The Revolution. Both are projects that try to engage the art community as a locale for collective reflection and action, and to shift the discourse back to what an artistic practice aims to do, as opposed to "having a career and making it in the art world". Many thanks to them for bringing us back to reality.
[I've just been reminded that many artists make work because they enjoy making work no matter what, whether they get recognition or not. It should go without saying].
* I was crying my heart out while writing the post, I had a migraine on top of it so I couldn't wear my glasses. And I had written it on a Word. doc format, which fucked up mightily with the html when I pasted it on the blogger interface, hence the crappy editing and weird formatting. I still can't read it now, so this post is going to stay as is in all eternity. ** I have a few deadlines coming up, so posting will be very irregular. Sorry about that.
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