I have a new friend. It is the Ole Miss Art Department. After spending Thursday down there doing critiques with art students, giving a gallery talk and going to a faculty party (and birthday celebration) I feel a real fondness and respect for the whole community there. The vibe is distinctly positive and warm. At the party, all of these colleagues seemed to feel genuinely pleased to be in each other's company. It helped that we were surrounded by these huge, exuberant, mouth-watering (and way-goofy) paintings by Lou Haney. They set the tone nicely. It also helped that there were three or four awesome kids cruising around through the party and snaking under table-legs. I was very impressed by the student art that I saw in the critiques I had with BFA and MFA students. Even if the quality of the work had not been high (it was) the diversity of the work would speak highly of the quality of teaching going on there. The main painting professor, Phillip Jackson, paints representationally and in a traditional mode, none of the students that I saw did. They all had carved out very unique directions for themselves.
Now I have to admit that there is a certain glory to being able to parachute into a place, offer the key nuggets of teaching that I have up my sleeve (mostly stolen from friends) and head out. I can also say things that are very blunt, being that I am free of the concerns of the regular faculty, that of carefully building a relationship of trust by slowly increasing the intensity of criticism. I can just say something like, “What are you doing with wood? These are very boring and seem like you don’t know why you are doing them.” And then I leave. Well, I try to actually be useful. So it was fun. I felt like an art super-hero.
I do also feel compelled to mention that when I was down in Miss. a few weeks ago to set up my show I saw the campus a bit and then when I was back here in Memphis in my classroom I was SO happy to see all of the misfits and the quirky weirdos that make up the student body here. The diversity in my classes really makes teaching a joy. I don’t mean just racial diversity either.
Oh, here are a few animal videos and kids things that my son and I watched together.
Incy Wincy Spider (Indian Style)
Moose Soccer
Elephant Painting
Monday, September 28, 2009
Friday, September 18, 2009
I dreamed last night that I was at a huge wedding. At the wedding we had arranged a blind-date for our grandmother. It went very well. The wedding was aboard a yacht and there was a hot-tub in the back of the yacht. We got caught up in something and almost missed the buffet. By the time we got in line, the caterers were packing up the food and we had to move quickly and in some cases beg. When I got through the buffet I realized I'd lost a plate and it had on it the most amazing little tropical fruits, like lychees.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Ahhh, this is a match made in heaven, I was born with a hunger for preaching, since I was a little tot I was filled with a tendency towards the self-righteous pedantic rambling that is the life-blood of blogging! So here we are. I suppose what I just wrote has probably sent any reasonable reader clicking off to any other tributary of this cyber-river, but if you are still reading, I am going to just put my thoughts out there and maybe initiate discussions in the manner of the talk-radio show I wish I had, on politics, ethics, art, culture and minutiae of Memphis and the greater universe.
I thought I'd start by sharing my thoughts on claims that the opposition to Obama and his programs is fueled by racism. I have to disagree with our fine former president Carter. I think that the opposition to Obama's programs initiate from those that fear a change in the status quo "trickle-down" corporatocracy in which we live. I think those psuedo-Darwinistic, let-them-eat-cake, corporate-wellfare-freeloaders are using Goebbels-style ("Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose.") media strategy to rile up an assortment of fears of Obama as "Other" in the already anxious public. This strategy is a shotgun approach, not limited to inciting racial fear, but every kind of fear possible, even contradictory types, the whole shmorgasborg of Otherness-- he is called a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, a Muslim, a non-citizen, Barak Hussein, a "magic negro," etc. I think that these politicians, holders of large capital, lobbyists, and radio personalities enjoy a certain success when they can activate the public's latent racism, to be harnessed into a mob-like outcry, but that the furor doesn't originate as racism. It begins with greed and a desire on the part of the powerful to maintain power.
Also, I think it's possible that on a certain level we like to be afraid about the government. I think it feels good, in an era characterized by mass-disassociation-disorder and media-induced numbness that we feel very reified by the sensation of any number of passions, particularly feelings about our wider communal memberships. I think that the feelings associated with seeing one's self as oppressed are reifying, empowering and closely tied to the heart-swelling sensations of patriotism. I think this is a lot of the magic of the narrative that Limbaugh has woven, he has woven a narrative in which his listeners feel that they are the besieged resistance, the "Inglorious Basterds" of American Freedom.
On another front, as sad as it is for any individual human to die of a disease (Patrick Swayze) or in a skiing accident (Natasha Richardson), should it not be of greater concern to us when individuals without the wealth of movie stars, who are healthy, in the beginning of their lives, are killed by the hundreds or the thousands? Think Gaza, Darfur, Afganistan, Iraq. If we are deeply saddened by the pain in the hearts of the family members of Michael Jackson or Patrick Swayzee or even Jaycee Dugard, should we not also be deeply saddened by the pain in the many families of people like Mohammed Jawad, the innocent Afgan 19 year-old who was recently released from Guantanamo after seven years of torture and beatings*?
*interestingly when I Googled this heavily reported story, the best thing I came up with (in the immediate few minutes) was an article in the magazine of the John Birch Society!
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/1792
I attended a meeting of the JB society this past July and plan to go to more. I was very surprised by how much common ground I found between my beliefs and the Birchers. (minus the Jewish-Communist conspiracy and the fondness for handguns!) actually the meeting was at a Memphis firing range.
I thought I'd start by sharing my thoughts on claims that the opposition to Obama and his programs is fueled by racism. I have to disagree with our fine former president Carter. I think that the opposition to Obama's programs initiate from those that fear a change in the status quo "trickle-down" corporatocracy in which we live. I think those psuedo-Darwinistic, let-them-eat-cake, corporate-wellfare-freeloaders are using Goebbels-style ("Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose.") media strategy to rile up an assortment of fears of Obama as "Other" in the already anxious public. This strategy is a shotgun approach, not limited to inciting racial fear, but every kind of fear possible, even contradictory types, the whole shmorgasborg of Otherness-- he is called a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, a Muslim, a non-citizen, Barak Hussein, a "magic negro," etc. I think that these politicians, holders of large capital, lobbyists, and radio personalities enjoy a certain success when they can activate the public's latent racism, to be harnessed into a mob-like outcry, but that the furor doesn't originate as racism. It begins with greed and a desire on the part of the powerful to maintain power.
Also, I think it's possible that on a certain level we like to be afraid about the government. I think it feels good, in an era characterized by mass-disassociation-disorder and media-induced numbness that we feel very reified by the sensation of any number of passions, particularly feelings about our wider communal memberships. I think that the feelings associated with seeing one's self as oppressed are reifying, empowering and closely tied to the heart-swelling sensations of patriotism. I think this is a lot of the magic of the narrative that Limbaugh has woven, he has woven a narrative in which his listeners feel that they are the besieged resistance, the "Inglorious Basterds" of American Freedom.
On another front, as sad as it is for any individual human to die of a disease (Patrick Swayze) or in a skiing accident (Natasha Richardson), should it not be of greater concern to us when individuals without the wealth of movie stars, who are healthy, in the beginning of their lives, are killed by the hundreds or the thousands? Think Gaza, Darfur, Afganistan, Iraq. If we are deeply saddened by the pain in the hearts of the family members of Michael Jackson or Patrick Swayzee or even Jaycee Dugard, should we not also be deeply saddened by the pain in the many families of people like Mohammed Jawad, the innocent Afgan 19 year-old who was recently released from Guantanamo after seven years of torture and beatings*?
*interestingly when I Googled this heavily reported story, the best thing I came up with (in the immediate few minutes) was an article in the magazine of the John Birch Society!
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/politics/1792
I attended a meeting of the JB society this past July and plan to go to more. I was very surprised by how much common ground I found between my beliefs and the Birchers. (minus the Jewish-Communist conspiracy and the fondness for handguns!) actually the meeting was at a Memphis firing range.
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