Causing Trouble in New Jersey

Earlier this year I entered the members show at the Print Council of New Jersey, a wonderful group of artists and programs for printmakers. I entered a show and was accepted last year and so I thought I would join them this year. My piece Contesting Cyprus was chosen for their annual show entitled "Where have we been" or something along those lines.

The other day I received an email from the director saying that one of the venues for the show had deemed my work as "inappropriate," had been removed, and I was expected to make arrangements to come pick up the work. The County of Somerset Cultural & Heritage Commission sent us both letters notifying us of their decision. Hers got their faster since PCNJ is 10 minutes down the road while the time to get the letter to North Dakota took a little longer.

Ive attached a picture of the letter. I've gone back and forth with my emotions between thinking its funny and then being angry, and yet understanding. I don't deny that the piece is controversial. Its meant to be. I understand that the piece taken literally might be offensive...hey its got the F bomb in it. I understand that it might not be appropriate for all venues. I get that. But its what the letter insinuates about me and what that suggests about their utter failure to understand the piece that makes me angry.

"The [SCCHC] will not permit the C&H Gallery to participate as a platform for individual's political protests, promote hate speech or allow the display of obscenities. Your artwork has been removed as inappropriate for this venue."

It is the misguided assumption that these are my particular views rather than my effort to document graffiti as a sign of the many political, religious, and ideological contests marked upon place.

Along with the entry, I was asked to write a small statement on the work. This is what accompanied this particular print.

"The print takes two urban landscape images; first, of the Turkish North and one of the Greek South and placed them next to each other as in a diptych. I then used Photoshop to cut and paste the copious amounts of graffiti that covered most city blocks in both the North and South. The graffiti represents literal plurality of contests marked upon the landscape."

Now, I dont know if this statement was hung with the work or not. If it did not accompany the work, it makes their decision perhaps less offensive to me. Perhaps my current location within the safety of a university has heightened my idealism and I've forgotten to think about the impact that the literal words and statements might have upon and individual or community.

Oh well...Im still putting it on my C.V.

Landscape and Politics

One of the things that came out of my summer residency in Cyprus with PKAP was the awareness of the contested nature of place and landscape. Cyprus is currently divided in half by a United Nations guarded neutral zone cutting the Turkish North from the Greek South. In recent years the gates have been reopened for residents to pass back and forth more easily. I made two prints with these ideas in mind. The first is a blind embossment of the island of Cyprus with a series “X’s” embroidered along the green line in such a way that it mimics not only the guarded barbed wire strung along this artificial line, but also the utter geographical, political, ideological, and religious divides that continue to plague these landscapes. My hope is to continue this series a little further as well by exploring other contested spaces/places which may well extend beyond landscape into ideological spaces/places.

The second print takes two urban landscape images; first, of the Turkish North and one of the Greek South and placed them next to each other as in a diptych. I then used Photoshop to cut and paste the copious amounts of graffiti that covered most city blocks in both the North and South. The graffiti represents the literal plurality of contests marked upon the landscape.

Rich 2 Visit to UND

This week has been a busy for the department of Art & Design who has played host to a visiting artist from Norway, as well as a beloved U.N.D. alum, Rich Patterson.  Rich earned a Master of Science in Early Childhood Education from The Graduate School at University of North Dakota in 2008.  Rich is also known as Rich 2; a well known graffiti artist in the 1980’s from New York City.  While his life has changed drastically from those days to teaching today in North Carolina, Rich has gifted the university community with several wall-sized works of his former handiwork.  For many years Rich had left the graffiti world behind him, but recently, in certain contexts, Rich is using his artistic gifts as a platform for his story and education.

Rich returned to campus to a full schedule including lectures in the department of Integrated Studies with Tami Carmichal, and for the Outsider Art class within the art department, in addition to creating a 8’ x 10’ foot work on canvas for the Integrated Studies Program.

Earlier this fall, just prior to school starting Rich's work was at the center of a small controversy.  As the school attempted to renovate OKelly hall, one of Rich's works was threatened.  Those who follow AoA might just remember a posting and nice following discussion back in August.  As Rich is a proud UND alum, the provost Paul LeBel (bottom photo Paul and President Kelly) and his wife stepped in and commissioned another piece for the school (see below).

Contested Spaces: UND's OKelly Hall and its Graffiti

Today I heard some disappointing news that Dean Martha Potvin recently discovered this wall commissioned by the Integrated Studies Program (ISP) of a UND graduate and well-known 80's graffiti artist from NYC. Her reaction is to paint over it because it apparently is not fitting to an academic institution. This is the 3rd or 4th of such pieces the artist (I cannot think of his name right now...I think its Rich something.) has done for the deparment. The painters are working down the hall and as I snapped a few photos of this street art, the one quipped, "We're gonna paint that."  This event only secures in my mind that graffiti is a potent form of protest and art.  This small hallway is now an ideological and aesthetically contested space. 

 The ISP department is a creative educational process that flourishes in the face of traditional academic isolation.  This creative work appropriately marks the space of this non-conventional program.  A simple text panel could be added to the hallway to help educate passersby on the gamut of what is currently considered art and highlight, rather than alienate, the creative work and inspirational story of an alumnus.

Cypriot Anti-Consumerist Graffiti

One of the things that struck me about Cyprus were the ubiquitous American consumer logos...Coca Cola, Starbucks, TGI Friday's, Bennegins, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and the list goes on and on. I should not have been surprised given the state of globalized commercialism. And yet, I found signs of displeasure with it. Within moments of our arrival in Nicosia, I saw the "McCancer" stencil not far from the a tourist area near the border. I began to see more and more of these subtle stenciled works.

I began to think of these not simply as graffiti dirtying up the walls of the city, but as contests over place. In my posting from 2 weeks ago about Cyprus and contested space, I noted that, "the island rests divided by political, religious, and other ideological space imprinted upon the literal space of the island." Here is a physical space that has come to carry an ideological critique. An "anti capitalista" ideology must live among some segment of this community to emerge into an attempt at claiming space.

I find these subversive and witty little stencils compelling evidence of contested space.