Cincinnati: PART 1

I'm splitting up my foray into Cincinnati for the International Sculpture Conference into two separate posts: one for the "fun" days of meeting folks and hanging out, and the other for some of the sticky issues that came along with the conference panel portion and which left me rather troubled and wondering if I was indeed, as someone from my audience declared me, "incredibly naive and misguided" (more on this in part 2).

So, onwards and upwards, let's all start with the FUN stuff, shall we? Click the link below...

Some background info: I was invited to speak on a panel called "Sculpture and Social Commentary" at the 2006 International Sculpture Conference which is put on by Sculpture Center in NY and Sculpture magazine. Every year it's held in a different city and this year was in Cincy, where I had never visited before. It's always a bit nerve-wracking for me to travel somewhere for a few days to get thrust into a new social situation, and especially when I have the responsibility of delivering a coherent and thoughtful presentation--ack! Luckily I met lots of lovely folks, along with some serious personalities which fit into some basic stereotypes of the ever-self-promoting artist. About 500 people total attended over a period of four days (I was only there for three), with about 50% being students (undergrad and grad), another quarter being arts professionals (art department faculty, teachers, art historians, curators, and administrators), and the other quarter "working artists" who were interested in furthering their thoughts on sculpture.

Unfortunately, I had forgotten to bring the charger to my digital camera, hence a dearth of any photos, actually. Damn! Next time, next time...But here's what I have:

Cincy is a seriously industrial-looking town in parts...one night we went to a portion of downtown which consisted of so many abandoned brick warehouses and boarded-up buildings that it was truly amazing. One night we were ferried to a very DIY artist space where they had transformed a few floors of studios into a big sculpture show...


I tell ya, it was *massive*. The work was generally OK, with a few standouts amongst the 31 local Cincy artists...






My new friend Nick who is the Sculpture Dept. head at the University of Washington. I told him to point at the artwork sitting in someone's studio in the warehouse. Don't ask me why...


Nick again with his head stuck between two Jessica Stockholder pieces. I really (heart) Jessica Stockholder. We went to Carl Solway gallery next to the warehouse, which has been in business since the 70s and started Nam Jun Paik on his early career days. They had a big room filled with several large-scale Paik video works, prints, and posters/ephemera that totally wowed me. It was like walking into a really really really bad part of town, going through a locked chainlink fence parking lot and into a big brick warehouse only to stumble across a NYC-worthy contemporary art gallery. There was also a big sculpture show in an adjacent room with Peta Coyne, Fred Wilson, Matthew McCaslin, Jessica Stockholder, Nick Cave, Nancy Rubins, among others--pretty amazing and great to see.


More shenanigans with Jessica Stockholder work...har!

Days were spent listening to panel discussions, networking with arts professionals, and making friends in general. None of us were very familiar with Cincy so we wound up getting lost quite a lot whenever we took off. I wound up making friends and hanging out with three guys from all over: Nick from Washington, Robb from Minneapolis, and Jack from NY. Robb had a truck and we all piled in to get lunch and go out at nights when the conference events ended. Hanging out with these three guys actually reminded me of when I was an undergrad in the sculpture dept at the SF Art Institute--there were way fewer women to men in the program so much of it was spent being "one of the guys" and almost the only girl in the group most of the time.


The last night the four of us went out to a pub/dinner place downtown, and then all piled into Robb's truck.

Trucks don't fit four people, mind you. Nick got stashed in the truckbed as we whizzed around Cincy...And no, we weren't drunk driving, if you have to know. Luckily, Jack was the designated driver and doesn't drink so the rest of us were off the hook...wheeeeeeee!


We saw some jazz on the recommendation of the waitress at the pub...honestly, I can't remember what it was called and by this time I'd had 2 dirty gin martinis anyway...double har! It was sadly an almost empty club with a darn good quintet playing on stage and we tried clapping as loudly as possible to support 'em.


Me, yes. It's dark, no?




Rob in the dark


Jack in the dark

I didn't take a photo of the rather drunk older waitress who served us at the later part of the night. Looks like she was both a worker and a patron at the same time. Yow.


Midnight bocci ball on the lawns of Xavier campus! No way! Way! That was the funnest part of my last night. I was being picked up from my hotel at 4am by my shuttle to the airport (eegads, what was thinking when I booked the 6am flight on a saturday???), and since we had just left the jazz club at 2am, decided we would all stay up until I had to go. Rob had a set of light-up LED bocci balls and we had so much drunken fun throwing them all over the wet lawns by lamplight. Surreal and fun at the same time. Perfecto!









Group shot of us at 4am in the Vernon Manor hotel lobby, taken by the airport shuttle bus guy. I hafta say, these guys were a ton of fun and I hope to keep in touch! I really love it when you make "surprise" friends in a random place and it just makes me feel good amount humanity in general :)

OK, my next post on Cincinnati (Part 2) will come up probably tomorrow night, and will be all about what happened during my panel discussion. Stay tuned for some "issue"-oriented blogging regarding art and politics, the "generation gap" (as I see it), and how the revolution today will not look like what happened in the 60s, no matter how much baby boomers complain about it.