I’m one of several artists in town who’ve been nominated for the San Diego Art Prize, an annual opportunity for long-established local artists to partner with newer emerging talent and hold a joint exhibition that will rocket everyone to fame and fortune–or at least that’s the idea behind it.
Even though I’ve been around town for a few years, I’ll be showing as “emerging talent” along with a dozen others who’ve been nominated by various artists and art professionals around town. The show is the speed dating exhibition, where the established artist can get to know the nominated artists and select their choice of the person they’d like to exhibit with. It’s also a chance for folks in town to take a look at our work.
I’ll be showing part of a photography-based installation that looks at the names people have given to features in the landscape, particularly to features that bear a resemblance to humans. Some of the names are fanciful and fun, others march pretty quickly into territory that’s pretty rude or offensive. Landscape photography that takes on issues of racism? Well, why not? (My recent blog post on culturally offensive plant names comes from the same place in my brain and deals with some of the same issues.)
Here’s a recent image that’ll be in the show, one of the more fun ones, a formation up the coast at Dana Point.
And then there’s this one from Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains, one of the potentially more offensive ones. Although the name probably dates from the 1930s, when people thought a name like this was okay to use, the name still appears on signage to this day.
I did a post on this body of work a couple year ago [ here ] but this is the first time it will be exhibited.
The scoop:
New Contemporaries III runs Sat., April 24 – Sat., May 22, 2010
at Project X: Art, 320 S. Cedros Ave. Ste. 500 , Solana Beach, 92075
Exhibition hours: Tue – Friday 10 – 5, Saturday 11 – 4 pm
Opening Reception: Sat. April 24, 6 – 10 pm
Panel Discussion: Saturday, May 15 at 6 to 8 pm
Drop on by to the opening and introduce yourself if an Icelandic volcano isn’t getting in the way of your air travel!
Congratulations, James! What a fascinating concept for a show, too. Wish we could take it in in person, but a volcano my as well have erupted for all the non-travel going around here. Hope the attention gets you the rocket ride you’ve been looking for.
Congrats! James,
Wish I could be there to cheer you on. And I hate to miss the opening reception to raise a glass in your honor. One of these days I have a feeling I’ll get to meet you AND see your art in real life.
btw I’m unfamiliar with the process of a pigment print. Does the ‘on board’ refer to the print being transfered to wood? Alice
p.s. I’m suddenly having major problems w/spam on my new wordpress site. There must be a setting, one requiring subscribers? … to avoid getting 60 comments in a day!
Sounds cool. I’d check it out, but it’s a little far. I find it hard to be either an effective groupie or stalker from the other side of the state, alas. The faces show up quite distinctly.
Congratulations are in order! Congrats!
A little far for a weekend bikeride… I hope you’ll show a few more of the photos on your blog. What an interesting idea.
Lynn, thanks for the good wishes. It’d be nice if this is the big breakthrough show, but most things in the art world seem to be achieve a piece at a time.
Alice, I’ll lift a glass in your direction. These are prints using one of the inkjet printers that uses the archival pigment inks. Instead of paper, I’ve printed the images to heavy paper board. The terminology is a little confusing when you put it up against the traditions of painting on panel. I left you a quick note at Blotanical re the spam. I hope things are a little quieted down. I get waves of spam, though more like 15-30 a day at the crests.
Ryan, I wasn’t sure how well the faces would show up without me pointing them out. I’m glad they’re distinct.
Tina, thank you! It should be a fun show.
TM, just think what a great workout it would be, and it’s maybe 3-5 miles closer than to San Diego proper. Piece of cake! I’ll have installation photos up on the blog before too long, maybe after the opening.
Congratulations! This is exciting.
So they call that rock formation China Boy? WTF?