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River Report at the End of the Year

Posted in Absurd, Art, art and environment, Art and Nature, assemblage art, creativity, environmental art, Falls of the Ohio, flip-flops, found materials, Found objects, Installation, lost and found, material culture, nature photography, Photograpy, plastic, Plastic art, recycled art, repurposed art, repurposed materials, sculpture, sense of place, Site specific art, tagged Art, artist at exit 0, creativity, environment, Falls of the Ohio State Park, flotsam and jetsam, Life on the Ohio River, Plastic litter, sculpture, sense of place, site specific art, Styrofoam art on December 29, 2017| 5 Comments »

Artist at Exit 0 site the day after Christmas 2017

It’s the day after Christmas at the Falls of the Ohio on an admittedly nippy day. I stopped by my trusty site under the now bare willow trees to see how this latest group of sculptures and artworks are faring? Each time I come out here, I’m just as likely to find things knocked down and destroyed. A couple of posts back, I documented my site and the figures that were created there beginning in May of this year. I initially called the Styro-figures “The Assembled” and after they were vandalized they became “The Re-Assembled”. Well, even this group is now history after every standing figure was decapitated and speared! Here are some before and after images. I used this final image of “The Re-Assembled” with the peace sign on my Christmas cards this year.

Final View of "The Re-Assembled" with Flip-Flop Peace Sign, at the Falls of the Ohio, early Dec. 2017

"The Re-Assembled" decapitated and impaled, Dec. 2017

Every head was destroyed and that is where much of the personality of each figure resides. I gathered what remained of the heads and bodies and added them to the pile. I picked up what loose fishing floats that I had adapted for eyes and other plastic parts I used that were still in the area and placed them in my collecting bag. The found flip-flop peace sign was obliterated. It wasn’t up a week yet! Interestingly, the colorful plastic container arrangement I have on site has survived three attacks! It has essentially remained intact with me adding to it every once in a while.

Scrambled found flip-flop peace sign at the Falls of the Ohio, Dec. 2017

Of course we can’t leave things there! I visited my site in early December with Jason Moore, an art student at Murray State University who came to my presentation there last October. He was in town on winter break and asked to tag along. Together, we started the process of straightening things up and beginning some new pieces. I put him in charge of the flip-flop pit which was a very new medium for him. The only guidance I gave him was that he needed to use every sandal on site! He had one false attempt before arranging the flip-flops in this design.

Jason Moore, first attempt at a flip-flop design at the Falls of the Ohio, Dec. 2017

Jason Moore with his found flip-flop design at the Falls of the Ohio. Dec. 2017

As Jason tries his hand at this site specific piece, I set to work on creating what turned out to be an imposing figure that towers over you on site. After pairing a new head with a new body I began creating this figure’s features. As I’m doing this…I’m also aware that I am now re-re-reusing many of these materials. Some of this stuff has played a part in multiple figures.

A new head begins, Falls of the Ohio, Dec. 2017

This is where a new work begins. I searched through my collecting bag looking for the found components to make up the eyes, mouth, nose, and ears. I then find a stick to attach the head to the body and then look for driftwood, tree roots, etc…to make the limbs. Here is how the head eventually presented.

Detail of my new figure's head, Falls of the Ohio, Dec. 2017

I thought the toe thong “thingie” from an old flip-flop made a decent mustache! Let’s pull back a little to take a wider look at things. This image shows the new figure dramatically illuminated as the sun sets.

New Styro-figures just before the Winter Solstice, Falls of the Ohio, Dec. 2017

Jason created the small figure with the plastic squirrel and I added the round-headed, portly figure. Another week later I would add a fourth this time blue-bodied figure to bring us to the present.

Styro-skulls on the polystyrene pile, Falls of the Ohio, Dec. 2017

It has been a very interesting year and as it ends it’s good to reflect a bit. Perhaps creatively… this has been one of my better years. I think the work overall has taken on a more formal look as I continue to work with different materials. I’m out here as often as I can get away. A big change is in using other social media platforms to “publish” what I’m doing which was something I once reserved exclusively for this blog. I’m on Facebook and Instagram regularly which has been a fun way to share pictures. I’ve had a couple of exhibition opportunities this year which was great and unexpected. I’m even ending the year and this post…with some very positive press which also serendipitously came my way.

Here is a link to a lot of content that the News and Tribune, a southern Indiana newspaper, put together about my Falls of the Ohio Project. Albertus Gorman News and Tribune Article This link has a video shot at the Falls of the Ohio as I demonstrate what I do.

I will leave it here for this year and hope that everyone out in the wider world has a very Happy New Year. See you at the river during 2018.

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A Short History of “The Assembled”

Posted in Absurd, Art, art and environment, Art and Nature, art and the environment, Artist at Exit 0, assemblage art, creativity, Falls of the Ohio, flip-flops, found materials, Found objects, Installation, lost and found, lost sandals, material culture, Ohio River, plastic, Plastic art, public art, recycled art, repurposed art, repurposed materials, sculpture, sense of place, Site specific art, Styrofoam, tagged "Folk Fiction" exhibit Clara M. Eagle Gallery, "The Assembled", Art, artist at exit 0, creativity, Falls of the Ohio, lost and found, material culture, Murray State University art department, nature, plastic legacy, public art, sense of place, site specific installation, Styrofoam, the absurd on October 8, 2017| 2 Comments »

While my poor riverblog has been waiting for me…I have quietly been having one of my more creative years at the Falls of the Ohio State Park. When I visit the river, I’m making several projects with the junk I find as I walk along this familiar landscape. My previous post shows some of the ways I have played with color and form using other commonly found and mostly plastic materials. I also had fun this summer creating my own absurd brand of figurative sculpture from the river-polished polystyrene I have collected and stored out here. Beginning in May of this year, “we”, meaning myself and the public, have successfully added new figures to a growing site-specific installation at my favorite outdoor atelier under the willows.

One wonderful development is that on three different occasions, visitors discovering my site have interacted with or added their own figures to this group from the materials I have left behind for that purpose. I did “harvest” a couple of figures after they made their first appearance here for a group show I’m participating in October 2017 at Murray State University. That exhibit is entitled “Folk Fiction” and I’m elated to be showing at my old undergrad alma mater. Besides, it’s always good to have survivors.

Autumn began with a visit from my equally anonymous nemesis…forever branded by my sons as the “Smashers”. Whomever they are…they don’t play well which has resulted in the recent vandalism of several of these figures. More about them later. Now seems as good a time as any to provide a short history of this figural Styrofoam group I call “The Assembled”. This story begins at the river on May 14, 2017 with the creation of the first sculpture.

After a wet spring with frequent bouts of high water, I was able to configure a site under the trees and near the old railroad bridge. Over the next several months I kept adding recently found materials from the area while I pursued different art projects. This was the first Styro-figure I created here and he’s a bat-earred naturist! After he explored the landscape of this day in many other images, he eventually took his position greeting visitors to my outdoor studio and soon to be growing gallery. As this installation grew, each new figure was photographed in different contexts at the park before joining the others back at my eastern most studio site.

"The Naturist" stands watch over the Styro-larder during May 2017

“The Naturist” was the first figure to join “The Assembled”.

My next figure is also the largest. I remember needing to wait until enough of the absorbed water was gone from this big hunk of Styrofoam to just be able to lift it. I call this piece the “Queen of Clouds” because the sky was so beautiful on the day it was made.

I remember that the wind kept blowing this figure over and it was difficult to get it to stand in place while I shot this short video. The large fan blades that make up this sculpture kept falling off until I found a better way to attach them to her head. The nose is a large wooden fishing float I found out here. It’s mouth is the plastic cap from a deodorant stick.

Two Styro-figures at my outdoor studio during June 2017.

The “Queen of Clouds” parked at my studio under the willow trees.

Here’s another large figure from the month of July. I really like how expressive the head turned out on this one. His mouth is a red reflector that really caught the light well. I dragged this one down to the Ohio River and documented it with this short video and lots of photos. Afterward, it too joined “The Assembled” at my river studio.

One of the fun moments during this project was discovering visitors had added two new figures enlarging this group to four! By days end, it was five figures with my latest absurdity with the bright red reflector mouth. I was starting to get excited by the opportunity to create a nice little crowd this summer since plenty of Styrofoam remained to be used and people were playing along instead of just destroying what was on hand. I also started to piece together a couple of other projects nearby. One began at first with just a handful of found flip-flops of various colors and sizes. Each visit to the river usually resulted in more found foot wear to add to the design. I also created a colorful rainbow-like arrangement from discarded plastic containers that also was a stand alone piece, but also went well with the other projects. As the summer was approaching its height, wild grapevines were beginning to frame my grouping at the Falls of the Ohio.

Styro-group "The Assembled" in July 2017 at the Falls of the Ohio.

Three more figures joined the group.

As the summer wore on I couldn’t wait to visit my spot and listen to the oriole’s call and the sound of running water. My site was always changing and my sculptures had survived a few summer storms as well as being vulnerable to vandalism. So far, so good and so I continued to add new pieces here when I visited this section of the park. Here are a few more for your enjoyment.

Small Styro-character I called “Mr. Mosquito Nose”.

Rare view of “The Assembled” with “Mr. Mosquito Nose”.

I took “Mr. Mosquito Nose” home with me after this picture and he will reappear in an exhibition I’m participating in the early fall. This next piece turned out to be a visitor favorite. He began with me finding a flipper that I used for his headdress and the fishing lure that became his nose. Between what I found that day and what was already in my collecting bag…I soon had the makings of an orange and greenish-yellow theme for this shamanic or high priest figure. The staff he sports is capped with a found plastic jet toy I came across on the riverbank.

"Shamanic Figure with Staff and Flipper Headdress"

Shamanic Figure carries a staff capped with a found plastic jet toy.

Here he is in context with the other figures as the month of July began to pass. If you like trains crossing over bridges then you might like a couple of the videos I have here including this one showing an early flip-flop project at this site.

Another day and another figure and in this sculpture’s case…it’s pretty silly and strangely neurotic looking with its crossed fishing float eyes! Here he is posed sitting on a driftwood log with one leg crossed over the other. Soon he too would be added to “The Assembled”.

"Indecisive Dude" at the Falls of the Ohio.

“Indecisive Dude” sitting on a weather-bleached log.

Here is a video that is a good overall site view of my outdoor atelier and it shows this latest figure in the fold. It also features a passing train crossing over the old railroad bridge and yet another flip-flop arrangement in the form of a large spiral in the sand.

I like the way the spiral turned out and I tried working with the found colors as best as I could. There is so much individual variation between each sandal…right or left, large or small, bright blue versus dark blue, etc… I do feel that this piece really added to what I had already started here with “The Assembled”. Here is a still image from that moment.

My outdoor studio site at the Falls of the Ohio, August 7, 2017.

Spiral flip-flop arrangement along with “The Assembled” at my studio site, August 7, 2017.

We are into the month of August now and I keep adding figures and rearranging my site on a regular basis. It’s generally a very good month for me if I can get out to the river three or four times. Plus, I like to also do projects in other areas of the park and so a few weeks might pass before I next visit this particular studio site under the willow trees. I thought this next figure turned out nicely. It was aided by finding a nice hunk of polystyrene that was irregularly shaped enough that it could imply motion. He has a friendly demeanor to him if you can ascribe such qualities to an altered chunk of river-polished Styrofoam?

Smiling Figure next to discarded cooler.

Smiling Styro-figure next to an old cooler that washed into the park.

Here is the video from the end of this day showing this piece in the context of my studio under the trees. This clip also reminded me that it was a hot day peppered by annoying gnats that also buzzed around the camera. I will mention that generally speaking…biting flies and mosquitoes are not usually an issue to visiting the park.

Still two more figures to go before the fateful day the Smashers appear and reality reasserts itself. I improvised all my figurative sculptures on site from materials collected out here. I still feel it’s important for me to respect the hard-won shapes that nature has provided. Interestingly, I still feel that the river “humanizes” Styrofoam in particular by knocking of the hard edges and generalizing the overall forms.

"The Happy Hunchback" listening to birds singing.

“The Happy Hunchback” strolling through the willow woods listening to bird song at the Falls of the Ohio.

Moving very slowly and deliberately, the “Happy Hunchback” cranes his neck toward the treetops. It’s late August, have the orioles and indigo buntings already left? If it weren’t for the other life forms also inhabiting the Falls of the Ohio, this multi-year “art” project would not have sustained my interest alone. I can’t believe my luck! Between the time of this figure and the next…a visitor added another sculpture and awarded my Shamanic sculpture “Best in Show”!

“Best in Show” Award…presented anonymously.

I had stashed this green plastic ball with my rainbow-colored plastic containers. Makes a fine award and I have to admit, that I did put a lot of time into this particular figure. I’m sure I had the biggest smile I can muster when I first saw this. Whomever you are…thank you!

"The Assembled" at the Falls of the Ohio, mid September 2017.

“The Assembled”, mid September 2017 with “Best in Show” figure.

Another view from that day showing my overall site with a different found flip-flop design and my plastic container color spectrum on the left.

Outdoor studio and gallery, mid September 2017 showing "The Assembled", heart-shaped flip-flop arrangement, and plastic container color arrangement.

My outdoor studio and gallery with heart-shaped flip-flop design.

Just one more figure to go before that fateful day when the Smashers stop by and temporarily put a hitch in the magic that was this summer at the Falls of the Ohio. I am amazed that nothing negative had happened sooner. In the back of my mind, I understand that the river always has the last word in this process and so I don’t get too attached to the things I make out here. Weeks would go by before I would re-visit this site in the eastern section of the park. I was also spending a lot of time in the western section of the Falls of the Ohio which has a different quality to the landscape and receives fewer visitors. I like to visit there when the purple loosestrife flowers are blooming because they are magnets for butterflies and other insects. Moving on, here’s the last figure to officially join “The Assembled”.

"Raccoon Eyes" sipping from a found cup at the Falls of the Ohio, September 2017.

“Raccoon Eyes” enjoys a found beverage at the Falls of the Ohio, September 2017.

With his spiky hair-do and wide smile, the likable “Raccoon Eyes” likes to pause for refreshment when he can at the Falls of the Ohio. Locals visiting the park bring these giant cups and I guess seeing all the other debris that has washed into here makes it okay to leave more trash behind? The world is just absurd…and hence this project. Old “Raccoon Eyes” took a hit, lost and eye, along with one of his arms when the Smashers came by. Here is one more video this time showing my site before fate intervenes.

The little figure I ended the last clip with went on to have an adventure of his own and didn’t become a part of “The Assembled”. He’s a close if diminutive cousin. The Smashers came and went and it’s fortunate that more wasn’t actually destroyed. My naturist character, who was the first character here, had his head split in half. One of the volunteer figures that appeared was decapitated and I found its head in the tree branches above where it once stood. The “Happy Hunchback” lost all the features in his head and was rendered permanently senseless. The “Best in Show” figure lost and eye and his staff, but looks repairable. I think whomever did this ( teenage boy(s) loom large) must have had second thoughts while in destruct mode, because it looks like some sculptures were barely touched. I like to think that this is what happened and perhaps a little remorse set in before complete havoc was wrought. I found a nearby stick that I remember setting aside for future use that more than likely served as the weapon. I can imagine the temptation to not “light saber” all of them into bits must have been great. This is my best interpretation based upon reading the scene.

"The Assembled" after being visited by the Smashers. Early October 2017

View of “The Assembled” after recent vandalism.

Of course you know that I’m not going to leave it here. When I came upon the scene, I took some pictures and then off for a trek across the fossil beds and had a great day walking to the hydroelectric plant. Yesterday, I brought my friend Peter Erwin along for a visit to the Interpretive Center and afterward we visited my studio site. Using what I had on hand…I repaired what I could and recycled other parts to create new personas to replace the previous ones. I think it’s going to be okay and I look forward to experiencing the continued evolution of this developing site. I still have a little more work to do, but this is where I left it yesterday. As for this post…one of my longer ones…reveals the level of engagement that this special place still holds upon me. I think it also appropriate at this time to rename this group of survivors…I’m now going to call them “The Re-Assembled”! Until next time from the Falls of the Ohio.

"The Re-Assembled", Found Styrofoam and other materials, Falls of the Ohio, October 7, 2017

“The Re-Assembled” at the Falls of the Ohio. October 7, 2017

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Update from a One-eyed, Blue-tongued River Rat

Posted in Absurd, animal art works, Art, art and environment, Art and Nature, art and the environment, Artist at Exit 0, assemblage art, creativity, driftwood, environmental art, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, lost and found, Louisville, Kentucky, material culture, nature photography, Ohio River flooding, public art, recycled art, repurposed art, repurposed materials, sculpture, sense of place, Site specific art, Styrofoam, tagged art exhibition, artist at exit 0, driftwood, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, Kentucky artists, material culture, plastic, river art, sense of place, Styrofoam, the environment, trash on April 30, 2017| 4 Comments »

The One-eyed Blue-tongued Devil at the Falls of the Ohio

The river is rising as I write this. Just the other day…we had a storm that just sat on us and poured down a massive quantity of water. This is to my count, the fourth time this year that we have experienced high water on the Ohio River. Fortunately, none of them have been true floods on the big river. All the art projects and the materials I have collected and cached at my various sites this year are gone or in different locations within the Falls of the Ohio State Park. Having the time and opportunity to access the life at the Falls is a still a big priority for me, but the river and weather don’t always cooperate.

One-eyed Blue-tongued Devil with Blue Ball

I’m out here as often as I can get away and since time is usually limited…I work quickly forming plans for projects as I take advantage of what that day presents. A typical visit starts off first with a walk checking out what’s new in the area for potential materials and sites for projects. I’m also looking for new birds, what fish the fishermen are having success with, any new flowering plants and the insects they may attract. Because of the river, the areas I frequent are dynamic and change frequently which is a big part of the attraction. After making the rounds, I will return to one of my outdoor studio sites where I store materials for later use or to take home with me at the end of the day. If there is one change in my creative process over the past year, it is on relying on my home work space more to get things done.

Petrochemical Rainbow in progress in my home studio.

Work in progress, late January 2017

And, as you can see by these especially well-curated and selectively chosen images, there’s also plenty to work with here! If the river was to evaporate away tomorrow…I will be in good shape for a while as far as materials go. Drinking water and taking a hot shower, however, may be another story. Since I participated in a recent two person exhibition that I haven’t mentioned yet, this looks like a good opportunity to share something about that.

Post card invitation for Cross Currents exhibition, Feb. 2017

My friends David McGuire and Karen Welch formed Craft(s) Gallery and Mercantile in Louisville to help promote the work and sale of Kentucky’s creative people. I accepted their invitation to show with Mack Dryden who is another Falls of the Ohio enthusiast who also happens to be a professional comedian. Mack likes to collect the driftwood that he finds and makes more formal compositions with them. We decided to title our exhibition “Cross Currents…” since while we appreciate nature and what the river gives us…our approaches to art making are different. Here are a few installation shots from this show.

Taking my "Foamies" to market, late January 2017

I threw this picture in here because this is something most people don’t see or consider…how an artist gets their work from one place to the next. Fortunately for me, most of the shows I participate in are within a day’s drive of Louisville. In this case, I’m just going across town. Shipping can get problematic and costly. Ironically, since most of my Styrofoam projects don’t weigh anything…they do however, take up “dimensional space” meaning I’m charged for how much room my box occupies on the truck or cargo jet regardless of the weight. As you can see, I’m rather careless with my own work with minimal or nonexistent packaging. I think there is something about knowing where my materials come from that causes me to be casual and not at all precious about what happens to my projects. I still leave a lot of stuff behind at the river.

Cross Currents exhibition, Crafts and Mercantile Gallery, Louisville, KY, Feb. 2017

Cross Currents installation view, Craft(s) Gallery and Mercantile, Louisville, KY, Feb. 2017

Installation view of Cross Currents exhibition, Craft(s) Gallery and Mercantile, Lousiville, KY, Feb. 2017

Our exhibition was up for the month of February and was well received. I brought projects that hadn’t been seen in Louisville before including some new colorful, plastic bottle pieces I had been working on during 2016. My bird sculptures also did well and they seem to be many people’s favorite works by me. I also included new dye sublimation prints on aluminum that I had made of river works that no longer exist. Most of my Falls projects after all these years of doing this project remain preserved as images only. Styrofigure with found, plastic battery operated car, Falls of the Ohio 2017

Relatively speaking this has been a warm spring and delightful when it wasn’t pouring buckets of rain on occasions. When the opportunity presented itself…I started several new series of works taking advantage of and calling attention to the many other materials that I find in the park. I look forward to sharing them with you and hopefully…I won’t let so much time go by. Until then….

One-eyed, Blue-tongued Devil holding a white bottle, Falls of the Ohio, Feb. 2017

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A Reality Check by the River

Posted in Absurd, Art, art and environment, Art and Nature, Artist at Exit 0, assemblage art, collections, creativity, driftwood, ecosytem, environmental art, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, Found objects, fresh water, Green, lost and found, Louisville, Kentucky, material culture, nature, nature photography, Ohio River, Ohio River flooding, photography, plastic, Plastic art, public art, recycled art, repurposed art, repurposed materials, sculpture, sense of place, Site specific art, Styrofoam, watershed, tagged Art, artist at exit 0, box turtle, Dakota pipe line, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, Genius loci, material culture, nature versus culture, photography, power of place, sculpture, Styrofoam on November 7, 2016| 10 Comments »

Well, the season for grand political theatre is almost over. I’m feeling like most of the country who are so tired of the divisiveness that has defined this overly long election. Certainly, a major disappointment is the lack of any real environmental dialogue or engagement from either of the parties. Three national debates…and hardly a mention of climate change at all. We were much more preoccupied by Hillary’s emails than we are the fact that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere passed a historic and negative 400 parts per million this year for the very first time ever! We have no idea what this will ultimately mean. We believe that this can’t be a good thing, but we are willing to take the chance? Do facts matter and are we close to a point where it won’t make much of a difference what we think and feel? Nature has her own schedule and we have been consistently wrong in guessing what time it is.

I find going out into Nature breathing deeply and keeping my eyes open helps a great deal. This is my restorative. Walking parallel to the Ohio River and atop the Devonian limestone, my eyes register the circling Osprey looking for a good fish in the shallows. The nearby purple loosestrife flowers are alive with insects of many species doing what is important right now which is attending to life. Cooling its feet in a shallow spring, I come across one of the park’s box turtles. I give it my full attention and love. It’s life amazes me. Once it was a leathery egg laid in a dirt hole. When it hatched, a tiny, nearly exact replica of its parents emerged from the shell debris and soil. Instinct led it to seek shelter and to react to that gnawing sensation in the pit of its stomach by eating something. It’s alive and has its own reality deeply rooted in the history of life.

Living with the seasons, the turtle puts on a new growth ring for another year of life. I have caught up to this one…decades after it left the egg. I feel at peace and a feeling of well-being when I see Nature going about its daily and routine ways of life. This is the way it has been before there was an us to proclaim ourselves to be the height and purpose of it all. One needs to go out into nature more to fully appreciate creation beyond the strictly abstract and intellectual.

Plastic flower blossom in the sand at the Falls of the Ohio, October 2016

Our ability to transform our world is so complete that we can use a material like crude oil to create plastic flowers! But should we and why would we want to in the first place? It is specifically the effects of using fossil, hydrocarbon-based energy sources that have led us to the situation we now find ourselves. Collectively, we have let oil and coal become more important than clean air and water. Here in Kentucky, the political campaigns are fueled by the so-called “war on coal”. What most people miss, is that this has less to do with environmental regulations and more with market forces. Coal is a dirty form of energy that has been supplanted by the use of natural gas which is much cheaper. Ordinary citizens are not taking down the old coal-burning plants and replacing them with natural gas burning utilities…big business is. Coal jobs started to really disappear when it was discovered that you could reach a lot of coal quicker and employ fewer miners with mountaintop removal. The fracking techniques used to obtain today’s boon in natural gas are also fraught with huge issues which are now coming to light.

We have the current and not fully resolved situation involving the Standing Rock Sioux people and an ill-advised and designed pipeline that the big corporate world have decided needs to go under the Missouri River. Despite all our vaunted technologies, we lack the ability to make a pipeline that won’t eventually break releasing its poison into the waters. What is so hard to understand about that? I stand with the people who know that clean water is life. For awhile, it looked like the Ohio River was making progress, but in a way, the changes we are seeing in the climate have affected us here. Currently, we have several large basin projects under construction in Louisville to deal with the reality that it rains more and a lot harder now which now overwhelms our sewers sending untreated waste directly into the river. It will take billions of dollars and a lot of resolve to fix this, but I suspect, we will limp along trying to convince the people who make money the measure of everything to act sooner than later.

So, here I stand on the wrack line between land and liquid. I will continue to come out here and record with my camera and pen, the anecdotal changes I see happening in the park. I come out here to challenge my creativity, see what there is to see, and restore my spirit. Ultimately, the quality of our water and the environment at large is a referendum on our collective spirit. We certainly have been found wanting and another election cycle is going by without so much as an acknowledgement that there are big challenges to the very substrate that sustains us all. I will try to curb my disappointment, by immersing myself in the moment. So long for now…until next time from the Falls of the Ohio.

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Feeling Grateful

Posted in Absurd, animals, Art, art and environment, Art and Nature, Artist at Exit 0, assemblage art, ecosytem, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, Found objects, material culture, nature, nature photography, Photograpy, repurposed art, repurposed materials, sculpture, sense of place, Site specific art, Styrofoam, tagged Art, artist at exit 0, Artists' Own Gallery, butterflies, culture and nature, ecological story, Falls of the Ohio, figurative sculpture, found materials, Genius loci, material culture, nature story, photography, purple loosestrife, recycling river junk, rose mallow, sense of place, site specific art, Styrofoam, the environment on September 5, 2016| 9 Comments »

We have had some stellar days of late with the air so crystalline and fresh that it has been an added bonus to be outside. The temps have been manageable as well. I began this post more than a week ago, but put it on the back burner until now. I am no doubt busier now than I ever have been (particularly at work), but I’m still finding the time to be involved with my own art. And I must confess…if I have to prioritize whether to stay home and work on a blog article or go to the river and participate in life at that level…well, I think you know what my answer will be! I have enjoyed blogging, but must admit to myself that what I do will never be most people’s’ idea of a good read, especially since there are now literally millions of blogs out there! I do still hope, however, to occasionally connect with folks who are creative and just plain interested in nature.

Recently, I went to the river to find a wealth of Rose Mallows in bloom. That is not always the case and there have been years when I did not see any. They have become among my favorite flowers that I can find at the Falls of the Ohio. Their blooms are huge and there is some variation in our native hibiscus. In a relatively small area, I found a patch of Rose Mallows showing off those colors which can range from a solid hot pink, to a snow-white blossom. Usually, most of the mallows will sport some combination of white or pink with a deep scarlet throat. I couldn’t help collecting a few seed pods and scattering their seeds in other locations I frequent at the Falls. I don’t think this is technically legal since there is a park rule against collecting wildflowers, but since none of their seeds went home with me…I’m hoping I’ll be okay to do this?

Late summer is also a good time to see which butterflies are around. The Falls of the Ohio certainly has its regular species who inhabit its various ecological niches. Here is one of the park’s Red Admirals and it is visiting a “willow lick” to drink up the sugary exudence seeping from a wound in this tree’s bark. These wounds occur in various ways, but the most common one is with collisions with large floating logs that crash battering ram-style into these willows during flooding. This happens mostly in late winter or early spring and it is not out of the ordinary to have these willow trees be completely submerged by the Ohio River. These willow licks attract a variety of insects ranging from butterflies, ants, hornets, and many different types of flies.

Of course, every year is different from the last one and so far I have to say I think this has been just an average year for butterflies. Usually, one species will be found more commonly than the other species. For example, I can remember certain years where the Viceroy was the most common butterfly. I have also seen it when the small Pearly Crescent or the larger Buckeye Butterfly were the most plentiful individual species. This year I can’t tell that one species is more numerous than another. I like visiting the Purple Loosestrife stands particularly in the western section of the park during the height of their blooming period. I know this plant is highly invasive, but it also attracts a large amount of insects and butterflies in particular. Multiple species gravitate towards the nectar these plants produce. It’s interesting to watch different species feeding on the same plant like in the above photo. A skipper species (on top) and fritillary species (on the bottom) are coexisting on this flower because this resource is plentiful and the butterflies are focused. What these loosestrife stands also attract are predators. It’s common to come across large orb weaving spiders and praying mantises waiting to ambush a meal. I have come to think of these loosestrife stands as being important feeding areas for the Monarch butterflies that migrate through our area and this has mitigated my feelings towards this invasive plant.

Another reason to be feel grateful is that I have another solo art exhibition and it is currently up at the Artists’ Own Gallery in Lafayette, Indiana. It’s a co-op space and the duties of running the gallery fall upon the member artists. I was invited by one of the members to show at their downtown, Main Street location. The exhibit which is entitled “At the Intersection of Culture and Nature” features a selection of my Styrofoam sculptures along with a few more dye sublimation prints on aluminum I had made of site specific projects that are now gone. It is all stuff I have found and experienced at the Falls of the Ohio State Park. On the morning the show opened, I gave an artist’s talk and had a nice group present to hear more about how this work came to be. I even sold a few pieces to help offset the costs of printing my photos and renting a van to haul it all around! I really liked having the opportunity to show off my “Crying Indian” sculpture once again and it looked completely different in a gallery context as compared to where it was first shown outdoors earlier this year at Hidden Hills Nursery and Sculpture Garden. All the Artists’ Own artists I met were welcoming and I appreciated their hospitality! The exhibit will remain up until mid September and so if you find yourself in the area…please stop by and enjoy all the great art on display throughout this beautiful gallery. Meanwhile, back at the Falls of the Ohio…

On my first visit back to the river after my show opened, I had this general feeling of well-being. I went over to my stash of Styrofoam that I had collected this year and starting putting shapes together. I soon came up with the requisite head and body for a new and large figurative sculpture I wanted to make. The large chunk of polystyrene that I used for the figure’s body had been collected months ago, however, it was still a bit waterlogged and heavy to move.

Without doing any direct carving, I just accepted the forms that the river had provided for me and went with that. I did make a few small holes to insert the found objects that would serve as this figure’s features. The mouth is a piece of wood that looked like a “mouth” when I found it. The eyes are part of the hull of a Black Walnut that I split in half and inserted into the head. The nose is a bright orange, Styrofoam fishing float found that morning. For the ears, I used parts of the sole of an old shoe and then I added a small plastic ring to separate the head from the body which has become my custom over the many years of doing this activity. The rest is just driftwood picked up on site.

The resulting figure is much bigger than me and after I assembled it…I went scouting for a good location to make my pictures. As you may remember, the large piece of Styrofoam that is the figure’s body was water-logged and so I set it up relatively close to my outdoor atelier. Although the figure looks to be praying, what I was going for was a trance-like state of ecstasy? I know I have felt this sensation of being outside one’s self where you feel a part of or kinship with the other living things around you. Behind the figure is a large log with intact root mass that washed into here during the last good flood. In this photo, a small flock of Canada Geese does a respectful flyover of their own.

I seem to have started a personal blogging trend where my posts are getting on the long side! So, this looks like as good a place to wrap this up as any. By now, my ecstatic figure is probably history and martyred like so many other figures I have left in the park before. I tell each piece I make and leave behind that this will likely be its fate unless some kind soul takes pity and takes it home with them. These figures seem to understand. It’s all about being present in the moment when we are at our most alive. I have more stories to tell and art to share, but will hold of for now. Until next time from the Falls of the Ohio.

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At Hidden Hill Nursery and Sculpture Garden

Posted in Absurd, Art, Art and Nature, art and the environment, Artist at Exit 0, assemblage art, creativity, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, material culture, nature, Photograpy, recycled art, sculpture, sense of place, Site specific art, Styrofoam, tagged Albertus Gorman, Art, artist at exit 0, Bob Hill, Falls of the Ohio, flotsam and jetsam, found objects, Franklin Tree, garden art, gardening, Hidden Hill Nursery and Sculpture Gardern, Jerry Voyles, material culture, nature, plastic trash, public art, recycled art, recycled materials, sense of place, site specific art, Styrofoam, Utica, Whimsical art on June 10, 2016| 4 Comments »

In many ways this post is a continuation of my last published one on “The Crying Indian”. I made that sculpture for this occasion which was a cart-blanch invitation from owner Bob Hill to place my river art in the context of eight acres of wonderful plantings that include many unusual and rare plants. My work is far from the more durable art made from metal or stone that you would expect to see in a garden, but I’m always interested in placing my art in a less than typical gallery situations. Hidden Hill is located in the tiny town of Utica, Indiana very near the Ohio River and not too far from my home in Louisville, KY. To be on the grounds of Hidden Hill is a true delight and it’s easy to imagine that you are in a far more remote place than you actually are.

Bob Hill is a well-known personality in our area. He was a long-time columnist for Louisville’s Courier-Journal newspaper which in the days before Gannett took over was a Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper with a big and loyal following. Bob is now “retired” from the paper, but he is still an active author of books and articles and a big advocate for the joys of gardening. When he opened Hidden Hill with his wife Janet, he realized that if they were going to compete against the big box stores selling bedding plants and more that they needed interesting stock that you just can’t find anywhere else. Garden aficionados know who he is and will travel throughout our region to see what new specialties he is cultivating. At the opening of my show, two gardeners who traveled from a distant Kentucky county went home with one of the two Franklinia alatamaha trees that Bob had in stock. The Franklin Tree was named after Benjamin Franklin and is a small flowering tree that is now extinct in the wild and was last seen in its natural habitat during the early part of the 19th century. A few timely cuttings and seeds taken upon discovery have kept this pretty tree alive to the present day.

Great plants are not the only attraction at Hidden Hill. Bob’s idea was to create a destination that would also be fun to visit and he has invited many artists over the years to place work on his property. If there is one word that would describe the kind of garden art that Bob likes it would be “whimsical” and his grounds are full of examples. Hill is fond of creating mini-environments where the plants and art work in concert with one another.

I love this figure made by artist Jerry Voyles out of welded and painted watering cans. Voyles is particularly well-represented at Hidden Hill. Other area artists of note who have work at Bob’s place include Matt Weir, Caren Cunningham, John McCarthy, Jeff Reinhardt, Samantha Grifith & Jen Pellerin, Joe Autry, and many more including yours truly now.

This is another of my newer sculptures made for this show. I call this one “Earth Knight” and it is made completely from materials I scavenged off of the riverbank at the Falls of the Ohio State Park this year. “Earth Knight” is about 7 1/2 feet tall and is mostly made from Styrofoam. The body is embellished with the bottoms of aluminum cans which turns out to be the strongest part of the can. Often, it is the only part of a can left after the river has its way with it. Embedded among the can bottoms is a plastic gray heart that I also found at the river. I thought the head seemed somewhat “helmet-like” and I went with that idea for the whole figure. The Earth after all is in desperate need of defenders and protectors. Other materials used in this piece include found plastic, driftwood, and coal which are in both eyes. This piece is located next to a marvelous Weeping Katsura Tree and a large evergreen which form the perfect background for this piece. Here are some other views of this work.

When I sited this figure, I wanted to see if I could work with the mirrors that were mounted by another artist on a nearby tree. This was the best of those images that shows “Earth Knight” in context, but reversed due to the reflection. Here is another recent big piece. I call this figure “Flora” and the numerous flower references on her are why she has this name. Again everything I have used was found at the river.

“Flora” speaks the language of flowers and I have numerous found references from the Falls of the Ohio on “her”. The main material is river-polished Styrofoam and the body was also found this year. I also found the plastic planter with the bright pink sand shovel and was delighted when I came across a large root that I could use as an “arm” to hold these two elements with ease. I have embedded found rubber balls around her waist line. “Flora” is the second largest piece I have out at Hidden Hill and is about 6 1/2 feet tall. Again all the elements that comprise her including the wooden base were found at the Falls of the Ohio. One good aspect about my art is that I spend nearly nothing for art supplies because the world is already full of free stuff all around you. “Flora” has a silk flower emerging from her mouth that was also found by the river and has traveled some unknown distance to finally reach this place. And now, for the last of the four large works I have out in Bob’s gardens.

The smaller of the four new garden pieces is this one entitled “Figure with a Red Ball” which is about 5 feet tall. Among the materials used in its construction include Styrofoam, plastic, coal, a glass marble, driftwood, and aluminum. This piece has a very different “persona” from the other new figures I have made for Hidden Hill. I do have other works on display and Bob has a covered shed where he let me set up several other more portable works from my Falls series. Here’s a glimpse at that display.

So far, I’ve given a short tour for visitors and did a demonstration where I made a small, absurd figure from found river materials. It was a cold and rainy day when the show opened, but some intrepid souls came out to say hello which I appreciate greatly! I love that there is no definitive ending date and the figures in the shed will be available to be seen for about a month. Certainly, not the art world as usual! I will probably leave a couple of the larger figures out at Hidden Hills for a longer indeterminate time. Bob and Janet’s place is open Thursdays through Sundays and by appointment. If you are curious to learn more about their plant nursery here is the link to their website: http://www.hiddenhillnursery.com I have since continued my river forays to the Falls of the Ohio and I look forward to presenting those posts on this blog. Thanks for checking this out! Until next time…

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The Crying Indian

Posted in Absurd, Art, art and environment, Art and Nature, Artist at Exit 0, assemblage art, creativity, ecosytem, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, Found objects, fresh water, Louisville, Kentucky, material culture, nature photography, Ohio River, plastic, recycled art, repurposed art, sculpture, sense of place, Site specific art, Styrofoam, watershed, tagged Art, artist at exit 0, driftwood, ecostory, Falls of the Ohio, flotsam and jetsam, found materials, Genius loci, green-washing, Hidden Hill Nursery and Sculpture Garden, Iron Eyes Cody, litter, Louisville, nature, photography, plastic bottles, plastic containers, pollution, polystyrene, repurposed materials, river materials, sculpture, sense of place, Styrofoam, The Crying Indian, trash on May 29, 2016| 12 Comments »

I touched on this briefly with my last post, but it has taken a couple of weeks to return to the story of “The Crying Indian”. This post is both about the figure I created from found Styrofoam and the true story about one of the most successful Public Service Announcements of all time. A few months back, I accepted the invitation of Bob Hill to show some of my river creations at his Hidden Hill Nursery and Sculpture Garden in Utica, Indiana which is just across the river from my home in Louisville, KY. After the high water we had in late winter and early spring, I had the opportunity and collected several large pieces of Styrofoam off of the riverbank with the intentions of making a few large figures that I could use for the Hidden Hill show. I was successful in accomplishing this goal and the first figure I made was to become the piece I call “The Crying Indian”.

I really don’t have a proper studio. Just a basement at home that I hoard all the materials that I bring home from the river and the few finished works that I keep. I really do prefer working outdoors at the Falls of the Ohio where I can work relatively quickly. On occasion, I have a need to create work that is a little more formal or ambitious and requires more time to put together. With a deadline approaching for a May 21 opening and weather unpredictable…I set about creating what I could in this cramped space. There are some advantages like being able to listen to music or moving the laundry along and snacks are just a short staircase away. Sitting at the foot of those basement steps, I weighed my options and introduced elements that may or may not become a part of the finished work. The large chunks of Styrofoam that I had brought home from this year’s flooding were outside leaning against my house. I selected the third largest piece and brought it into the basement. It was time to go to work.

Going into this sculpture, I knew that I wanted to keep it fairly “classical” meaning that most of the elements I used were white in color in “imitation” of marble statuary. I chose a river-polished hunk of Styrofoam for a potential head that felt somewhat in proportion to the figure I envisioned. I sifted through bags and boxes of river collections and chose two hollow, plastic, and crushed fake golf balls for eyes. The nose is a piece of polystyrene that is cone-shaped. The mouth is a plastic and foam element from an old football helmet and the ears are pieces of Styrofoam. The element that would become “the feather” in the Indian’s headdress was a broken plastic kayak? paddle that I had recently found and thought would look great in this context. I would later use glacier and river worn quartz pebbles for the tears, but this was one of the last elements I introduced into this piece. The rest of the work would be Falls of the Ohio driftwood and plastic elements collected in the park.

As I’m working on this, I’m also having an internal conversation with myself. Talking to my materials I silently ask, “What do you want to be?” I’ll pose questions and trust my subconscious to help me out by providing a few clues that become ideas that can be elaborated upon. In this case, I was remembering that great Public Service Announcement from 1971 that is known as “The Crying Indian”. I was wondering why there weren’t similar ads on television now decrying pollution and litter and extolling the public to do what they can do to help which is also the right thing to do? What seems to rule the air waves now in the way of public service has more to do with finding cures for cancer and other maladies that afflict us…and that is important too. Another little voice within me also feels that many of these physiological problems we endure will find their root causes in an increasingly degraded and contaminated environment. For old times sake I looked up that original Crying Indian ad that was sponsored from the Keep America Beautiful folks and found it as effective as I had remembered it. During my search, I clicked on a few other stories related to the Crying Indian and that’s when my jaw dropped in amazement.

The first big surprise is a story full of ironies beginning with the actor playing the”Crying Indian”…he was not a Native American in the first place. “Iron Eyes Cody”, America’s favorite movie and television Indian was born Espera Oscar de Corti in Gueydon, Louisiana in 1904. He was actually a second generation Italian American. He had a rough upbringing and when he was a child he left with his father for the American West. It was out there that he first experienced indigenous cultures as well as the entertainment industry where he was to find life-long employment. His first role, playing a Native American child happened in 1919 in a silent film entitled “Back to God’s Country”. Iron Eyes Cody’s film and television career ultimately spanned the 1930’s to the 1980’s. He claimed to be of Cherokee and Cree descent, but he needed his braided wig to become at least the image of an Indian. Apparently, he never quite confessed to his deception and even lived to the ripe old age of 94. Although Iron Eyes Cody was not a real Native American, he seems to have lived his life otherwise respecting the indigenous cultures. He married a Native American woman and they adopted two Native children…one of whom became one of the best Native American musicians. Perhaps it was the times, but I have to believe that if this ad were to be remade today that the public would insist that the Indian be at least genuine.

I didn’t feel that this figure was complete without photographing it in the context of the Falls of the Ohio where I originally found the materials that comprise it. The addition of the white jugs became important not only because I have recently been doing a lot of outdoor assemblages using plastic containers, but returning to the fascinating story of “The Crying Indian”. As was mentioned, this PSA was sponsored by Keep American Beautiful and the Advertising Council did the ad for free as a way of stimulating business interests in our country. The Ad Council also created Smokey the Bear, McGruff the Crime Dog, this is your brain on drugs with the egg frying in the pan, buckle up for safety which was an early seat belt public service announcement and many more. As for the Keep America Beautiful folks….well, they actually represented an organization consisting of companies that produced bottles and containers of all kinds which make up a huge part of the litter you see everywhere but in the PSA crafted for them. The Crying Indian ad is now considered a classic case of green-washing. What occurred with this PSA was to put the responsibility for litter square on the backs of consumers and deflected any blame away from the manufacturers that produce these containers in the first place. Once upon a time, containers were returned to their point of origin to be cleaned and reused, but there was a lot less trouble and more money to be made in convincing the public that single use containers were the way to go. We are still in that place forty years later. You can never underestimate the power of ad agencies to understand human behavior and psychology and use it against us to further the goals of their clients. A good part of the shame people felt upon seeing trash being thrown at the feet of Iron Eyes Cody had to do with the subtle guilt that many people feel for displacing and persecuting the original inhabitants of this land. That added ingredient helped make this one of the most successful public service announcements ever made.

Here are a few images of the finished piece in place at Hidden Hill Nursery and Sculpture Garden. It looks great where it’s at and I will do another story soon that will include the other sculptures I made for this occasion. Some of them turned out very well, although they don’t quite have the back story that the figure does. Hidden Hill is a special and beautiful place and I look forward to sharing more pictures with you.

I used Ginger Brand’s great article entitled, “The Crying Indian” that originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of Orion Magazine for much of the information included in this post. Brand really goes much farther than I could go here and I highly recommend this read. Here is a link to that story…https://orionmagazine.org/the-crying-indian/ Another good source of information came from Priceonomics and the link to that story is http://priceonomics.com/the-true-story-of-the-crying-indian/ And, if you want to see the original one minute long public service announcement, it is available on YouTube and at the end of this post. Until next time…

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May in Kentuckiana

Posted in Absurd, Art, Art and Nature, art and the environment, Artist at Exit 0, assemblage art, creativity, ecosytem, environmental art, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, Found objects, fresh water, lost and found, material culture, Ohio River, Ohio River flooding, Photograpy, plastic, public art, recycled art, repurposed art, repurposed materials, sculpture, sense of place, Site specific art, Styrofoam, toy horses, tagged Art, artist at exit 0, Bob Hill, creativity, Crying Indian, driftwood, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, Hidden Hills Nursery, nature, plastic horses, plastic pollution, repurposed materials, sense of place, Styrofoam, the environment on May 14, 2016| 2 Comments »

I’ve been remiss in posting new stories although I remain as busy as ever with my river art. Of late, I have had fewer opportunities to go to the river because of rain, work responsibilities, and lots of family birthdays…which are all mostly good things!! In this post, I will compress a lot of goings on starting with a quick trip to the Falls of the Ohio a few weeks back. It’s officially Spring because the migrating birds have been through and the resident Baltimore Orioles have returned to build their hanging nests and raise their young. Hearing the orioles’ calls is something I look forward to every year. It seems we are having a bit cooler Spring which to my mind seems much more “seasonal” as my memory of this area and time of year is accustomed to. As with any trip to the river, I begin by searching for the latest junk that I either overlooked or has just arrived. Here are pictures of some recent finds.

My sharp eyes spied this among the driftwood. It’s a plastic, fluid-filled “citrus slice”, perhaps an orange. If you freeze this little item until the fluid becomes a cold solid…well, you have yourself a novelty “ice-cube” for your drink. I intercepted this on its way to the ocean and now is in my collection of odd and particularly useless plastic junk.

Of course, in this part of the country, the first Saturday in May also means the Kentucky Derby. On this particular foray to the river, I found two horses whose races have been run…so to speak! They are now river trash that have been discarded and happened to wash up here from who knows where. This stuff may have just traveled from across the river in Louisville, KY or floated hundreds of miles to reach this destination. My intuition tells me that this stuff has traveled far.

This is the first of these items that I have ever found. It’s a plastic pump bottle for what?…soap, hand lotion, or what have you? The snowman image is kind of fun. Finding this item is just a short leap of the imagination to this temporary creation.

Scouting around the immediate area produced enough detritus…I mean art materials to create this figure. I have become quite quick in being able to make an absurd sculpture from most anything I find around me. These figurative pieces are meant to be seen as absurd because I feel our handling of our environment is both silly, stupid, and ultimately tragic. I try my best to let my figures “communicate” this on their own through their “very being”, but occasionally, my true feelings come out and besides people are becoming more and more literal. These works are meant to call attention to the types of materials that make it into our environment, particularly through our precious waterways and as such help to build awareness of this situation. But, by now, if you don’t know that this form of degradation is happening during our time…then you simply prefer not to know. For me, it’s not enough to call attention to this problem, but to try to at least suggest something hopeful. I know this is very idealistic…but there you have it. What these artworks also try to embody is a call for creativity. Anybody and everybody’s creativity is required if we are to have any kind of future. What artists can do is take the same information that everybody else receives and by turning this information on its head…perhaps come up with something different and unexpected conclusions or applications. Creativity, however, is not just the province of a gifted few. It’s truly in everybody if folks could just recognize it in its many forms and try to cultivate it just a little bit. Creativity is our kind’s “ace in the hole” and is probably why we have evolved this far in the first place. What I do at the river is as much a demonstration project where I have been willing to engage these often poor quality materials in the hopes of forming some kind of meaning from it all. I keep looking at the image directly above this paragraph. There’s smoke rising from a big fire on the Kentucky side of the river and the plume as I remember kept getting larger and darker.

The last time I made it out to the river I went by my absurd friend to see how he was doing. Predictably, he was in a sad state of affairs. His head was completely missing except for the broken snowman bottle that was lying on the ground. I just moved on. It’s always about moving forward and I had another mission on this day. This year we have had some decent flooding, no records mind you, just activity that is normal to this river. Each high water incident deposits something new upon these fabled shores. Today, I’m looking for large branches that have the potential to be arms or legs for some big figures I’m making at home. I have a new opportunity to show some work in a context that is a bit different. Retired Courier-Journal columnist, Bob Hill, has invited me to place work at his Hidden Hills Nursery in Utica, Indiana…just across the Ohio River from Louisville. Bob wrote a very nice article for Southern Indiana Living about my artwork and I want to have a nice showing which will occur on May 21. It’s a Saturday and if you are around and interested…the fun will start about 10:00 am. I have collected three particularly large sections of Styrofoam (probably old boat docks) and I’m using them for the bodies of figures I’m making to be placed on the grounds of his plant nursery. Bob specializes in hard to find flowers, trees, and shrubs. I’m really curious to see what I have in mind will look like on his property.

For the moment, the scene has shifted from the river to my basement studio at home. I call it a studio, but it’s really evidence that I have become a hoarder! It’s also proof that I don’t leave everything behind at the river. Believe me, I have taken more than my share of river crap away from the scene of the crime. My poor suffering wife and family. Anyway, here’s an in process view of a figure that became “The Crying Indian”. It’s a meditation on the old public service announcement that appeared around 1970 or 71 and if you were around then, you probably have vivid memories of it. I look forward to telling you more about this particular figure which has an interesting back story, but for now will just tease you with a sneak peek. When I finished this piece, I couldn’t help but take it out to the river to photograph it in the environment where I found most of the pieces. Here’s the proof. I will leave it here for now, but if you want to see the real thing…consider this your invitation to visit Bob Hill’s Hidden Hills Nursery. Hope to see some of you then.

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Plastic Arrangement in Black and White

Posted in Absurd, Art, art and environment, Art and Nature, art and the environment, Artist at Exit 0, assemblage art, collections, creativity, environmental art, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, Installation, lost and found, Louisville, Kentucky, material culture, nature photography, plastic, Plastic art, public art, recycled art, repurposed art, repurposed materials, sculpture, sense of place, Site specific art, watershed, tagged Art, artist at exit 0, Bernheim Arborteutm and Research Forest, Bernheim Artist in Residency Program, Chiel Kuijl, driftwood, environmental art, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, Genius loci, material culture, nature, nature and culture, photography, plastic bottle, plastic container, plastic pollution, public art, sense of place, site specific art on May 1, 2016| 6 Comments »

April was a busy but mostly productive blur. Lots of balancing went on encompassing family, work, loss, art, birthdays, and spring transitioning to summer. We had an issue with our family computer that kept us quiet for a while, but hopefully that has been resolved. At this point, I have thousands of photographic images scattered everywhere and if by chance I happen to lose something…well, chalk that one up to the will of the digital gods. I had this strange realization about being a survivor of a by gone analog era that my sons don’t understand or have much experience with. These digital images I have been creating at the Falls of the Ohio can be as transient as the artworks they document. Fortunately, for my sanity, I was able to get to the river on a couple of occasions in this month, breathe deeply, and relax with my art. The last two visits I made to the park in April were gorgeous days and productive. Here are images made from that day’s project.

I have been having fun gathering up the different plastic bottles and containers that I have been coming across the last two years and making something with them. The arrangement I made today was composed of black and white plastic junk I came across after a few hours of work. All the black and white containers were found in the general area of where this piece eventually came together. I moved around a center location and after fanning in and out found enough stuff to bring back to “base”. I had previously picked out a place where I wanted to make something because I liked the view with the railroad bridge and the City of Louisville behind that.

I found a couple of nice plastic buckets and a nice fairly straight wooden plank and set the arrangement up with its back shielded by a huge log. There was an even larger log that had an end on it that had been scorched by fire, but it worked with the scene. First, I arranged all the black bottles up and moved from left to right and kept the large containers on the bottom row. I set the three “grayish” containers up next and that including the two silver jugs I came across. At least they seemed to represent some value between black and white and I took several photos with them in the configuration. Later in the day, I did return back to this spot and shot a few without the gray containers in the pictures…just the black and white ones which I liked too.

Here’s an image with a train crossing the tracks. Unfortunately, I did not get a shot before my piece was set up. Now for a progression of other work in progress photos documenting the brief peak of the “Arrangement in Black and White Plastic”.

While I was working out in the driftwood, new friend and fellow artist Chiel Kuijl came out looking for a few choice pieces of wood for his rope installation. Chiel has been the Artist at Residence at the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest and is originally from the Netherlands. We have crossed paths out here at the Falls of the Ohio as well as socially with mutual friends. He has returned to Holland, but is due to return to Louisville this year to work on a recent commission.

Chiel later built a beautiful rope installation over water as well as distinctive “furniture” from ropes and driftwood. Park of this busy April included visiting Chiel out in Clermont, KY to see what he accomplished during his residency. I look forward to showing you a few images of his work in a later post. First!…let’s get through this one. I did remove the “gray” containers so it is just black and white butting up to one another.

I week after I made this piece, I returned to check on it and inspect my base studio. Here is an “after” picture. I already have plans in mind on how I can reuse this black and white plastic. One other fun development…I am working towards my show at Bob Hill’s Hidden Hills Nursery in Utica, IN. That will open on May 22 after some of the Kentucky Derby madness has subsided some. I have three very large figures I have been working on and you will see those soon. Have a wonderful Sunday…from the Falls of the Ohio and the Artist at Exit 0 Riverblog.

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Late March Petrochemical Color Composition

Posted in Absurd, animals, art and environment, Art and Nature, art and the environment, Artist at Exit 0, birding, collections, creativity, environmental art, Falls of the Ohio, found materials, Found objects, Installation, lost and found, material culture, nature photography, Ohio River, Ohio River flooding, plastic, Plastic art, public art, recycled art, repurposed art, repurposed materials, sculpture, sense of place, Site specific art, watershed, tagged Art, artist at exit 0, discarded Teddy bear, Falls of the Ohio, Genius loci, lost and found, material culture, nature, petrochemical junk, photography, plastic, plastic art, public art, rainbow spectrum, site specific art, toy bear on April 3, 2016| 2 Comments »

It’s the end of March and Spring is in full swing at the Falls of the Ohio. Today, I have a bigger block of time and so I’m going back to the western section of the park to see how flooding has affected this area. I am expecting to find lots of plastic and who know’s what else…and this trip did not disappoint. Just about everywhere I looked, I found plastic and other trash. I will begin with a few images of stuff I came across.

Quite unexpectedly, I found myself immersed in a bear theme. I found this little blue plastic bear intermixed with the driftwood. It may actually represent a panda, but I think the latest thinking on this unique animal is that it is indeed more closely related to bears than to raccoons. Looks like it’s sucking its thumb. And now for bear number 2.

Here’s a piece that was originally intended for a little person. I’m going to venture that this is a teething ring. From the wear on the surface of the plastic, it looks like this object has spent some time in the river. If this is not a teething ring…I have no idea what it was originally intended to be? Okay, here is bear number 3 and it is a lot larger that these first two examples.

This piece is spectacularly integrated into the surrounding gravel! About half of it is visible and the rest is hidden by gravel deposited here during the last Ice Age glacier. I posted this image on my Facebook account and it resonated with a lot of my friends. I could go on and on with the junk I’ve found out here, but I think I can also do that by showing you my latest artwork which is of course, composed of found junk. On this beautiful day, I decided to continue my explorations using colorful found plastic and made a new variation on this theme that I think turned out pretty well. I’ll start with a few in process shots.

This is some of the found plastic I came across on this day. I brought two collecting bags and filled them both up. I then scouted around and found a large blue plastic tub that I pressed into service before incorporating it into my finished arrangement. The yellow object on the left is a water cooler minus the lid. I had to do a bit of navigating around an obstacle course of downed trees and built up driftwood. I’m usually still stiff and tired the day after I do one of these because I guess I’m not used to getting that much exercise anymore! My two sons are quick to tell me that I’m not a young man anymore and yes I do get goaded by their trash talking into trying stuff that on occasion is more physical than I need to attempt.

After selecting a site to build my latest arrangement. I separate out all this gathered up plastic into their various color groups. On this day, orange and purple items were in short supply, but I worked around that. I set up this piece next to a log that looks to me like it was split in half. The side you can see that is rough and beautiful and takes the setting sun well. From the opposite side of this log…you wouldn’t be able to see any of the plastic. It is intended as a surprise for those who come across it on this side of the park.

I will begin with a view that incorporates more of the local scenery. This piece is located next to an old cottonwood tree that has a severe lean to it. I can imagine that at some time in the not too distant future that this tree will eventually fall over. Even from this far away, you can see the color introduced by these plastic containers and such. Let’s get closer.

Now you can get more of a sense for the degree in which this tree is leaning towards the river.

There are essentially two layers stacked up here. The big blue plastic tub has a found board that finds its partner consisting of the yellow water cooler sitting on a plastic yellow child’s chair. The span is pretty level. The rest is a matter of picking and choosing color hues that you think will work best together. These plastic elements are not fixed in some way. Everything is free-standing or leaning against what is next to it. I have by accident…set off chain reactions where the whole arrangement collapses down like dominoes. That is where a little patience comes into play by beginning again and hopefully learning from each individual situation.

I can see elements in these three details that I know I have used before in other projects and were later scattered across the park when the river floods. Perhaps you might recognize the green plastic Tug Boat or the “Hulk Hand” also found in the green section? They have appeared in other posts in my riverblog.

I hung out by this piece and the river for many hours. A few people came by, but nobody said anything. Perhaps this comes across as being an example of “unusual or eccentric behavior” to some people? Best to provide a wide berth around this one! Who knows…couldn’t be any stranger than the people who make all this plastic and set it free into the world. At the end of the day, I could not make up my mind which I thought provided the definitive view of this project? I think some of the more successful arrangements look good in their contexts, but also provide some information on what individual elements have been brought together to create this “whole” experience. After I felt I had enough pictures and the thought of a shower was sounding good. I picked up my stuff and headed home.

The trees are just budding out and this past week took a significant turn towards the green. I’m still on the lookout for migrating birds that come into our area. I often wonder about the Heisenberg’s Hammerkopf I had the distinct pleasure of observing and photographing out here a few weeks a go. I wonder where in the world it flew off to? I was just alerted by WordPress that this week is my seventh anniversary of blogging with them! For all the people who have dropped by and sampled something from the Falls of the Ohio State Park through this riverblog…I give my heartfelt thanks! I hope to continue out here for a bit longer still. This is the Artist at Exit 0 signing off for now.

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Update from a One-eyed, Blue-tongued River Rat

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At Hidden Hill Nursery and Sculpture Garden

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May in Kentuckiana

Plastic Arrangement in Black and White

Late March Petrochemical Color Composition

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