Monothons and Professional Curation

My son and I. The selfie was his idea.

Yesterday my son and I participated in the 2014 Monothon at [Press] at Untitled in Oklahoma City.  It's a yearly event that happens throughout the summer, where people can create pairs of monoprints.  The participants get to keep one print from each pair, while the other one becomes part of the Monothon.  In September, [Artspace] at Untitled will have the 2014 Monothon Exhibition, displaying prints created by those who attended.  Most of the participants are locals, but people are coming from Tulsa, OK, and Dallas, TX, to participate in this year's event.

"Catherine" a monoprint by yours truly. 

While we worked on our prints, we listened to probably one of the most eclectic mix of music I have ever heard, provided by [Artspace] at Untitled founder, print-maker, and professional curator, Laura Warriner. But as varied as the music was, collection flowed well together even on random play.  A few months ago, I created myself an Americana music playlist and I had to rearrange the order of the songs on it to keep from having jolts to the consciousness, but I don't have Laura's decades of experience of putting together exhibitions that feel coherent, while being full of variety.  Most of us don't pay enough attention to the harmony or flow of our environment to realize that it effects us, but it does.  While I'm not into feng-shui, I recognize the mental and sometimes physical friction caused from a disruption in my environment.  And I am very impressed when someone can create that flow, while still engaging and challenging my perceptions.

Some people think that they can put together elements based on solely what appeals to them and come up with something good, but I promise you there is a deep and rich difference between what an average person puts together as a collection and what a professional curator does.  A difference that can as profound as the difference between the glass animals at a carnival and the art of a professional glass-blower.

Modern Artist Spotlight - Marwin Begaye

Marwin Begaye is a critically acclaimed Navajo artist, currently living in Oklahoma. He teaches at both the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma City University. His passion is educating Native Americans and non-Native Americans alike on the dangers of the modern diet, particularly diabetes. His prints are full of pop-icon, corporate brands, and macabre imagery, all meant to drive home visually what we are doing to ourselves in regards to our dependence on over-processed foods.

On a more personal note, he's the guy who taught me lithography. And I can assure you that he's a real character, as the pictures in this blog post of another print artist will attest to. He teases people a lot. Especially painting students for not being careful enough with their images. You'd never know by listening to his teases that his first accolades were for his works as a painter. He often uses humor to get his point across. As long as you don't take any of it personally, you'll have a great time learning from him, because he really does want to make his students the best printmakers they can be. He also requires his students to personally relate to their own art, to actually create things representative of them. He's the reason that my American Mutt series focused on all of my ancestry, instead of just a juxaposition of Lenape and Pennsylvania Dutch images.

He doesn't really have a website gallery, so here's a slideshow of images from Flicker of his works, taken by other people. In the center of the show is a hummingbird print that I actually have on a t-shirt, from his class. Of course, having not been worn regularly, the print in the slideshow looks a lot crisper than my beloved t-shirt.