Gita Lenz Exhibition at Gitterman Gallery

Last week, we went up to New York for the exhibition opening of Gita Lenz and the book release party for Candela Books first release, Gita Lenz: Photographs.

The reception was great. A lot of people made it out to the gallery, we sold a bunch of books and all in all it was a really good time. We had hoped to get Gita out to the show but when we visited her, it was too rough on her just moving her around the nursing home really. On Tuesday, Timothy and I visited her for about four hours and it was the most lively I had seen her in a long time. We took her outside to the garden but she was too cold in the breeze, so we moved back into the lobby. We went through the book a couple of times and Gita was pretty animated by the whole experience. Towards the end of our visit, when she seemed to be getting tired, she asked a couple of times "Who took these pictures?" She wasn't looking at the book though and was asking about the windows in front of her and the scene outside. It was a strange moment. Sort of poignant... We would repeat to her that what she was seeing was the world out side, to which she would say... "hmmm."

On Wednesday, the day of the opening, Carrie and Woody and I went back by the nursing home and had another nice visit. We only stayed maybe an hour and a half or so as she was less energetic than the day before. But she had a nice visit and we got to sit outside as the weather was maybe ten degrees warmer or so. When we left, we were sad to be heading out to her exhibition without her but the truth of it is that she wouldn't have remembered it the next day and the trip would have been too painful.

The show was great though and by the opening, several photographs had already sold. It is nice to see our effort and belief in this project is being validated a little bit. And it is very cool to see Gita begin to receive some recognition finally, long overdue as it is.

The Gita Lenz Book Has Landed

The first published offering has arrived minty fresh to Candela Books international headquarters. And it looks great. 100 pages, beautiful tritones, spot-varnishs, printed by the good folks at Meridian Printing and designed by my good friends at Scout Design.

The book release party and exhibition reception is next month in New York at Gitterman Gallery.. The Candela website. will soon be commercial ready. I delivered a book yesterday to Gita and though the visit was a poignant one, she really does love looking at her photography. It is strange to say but after so much work on the book, I am only half done with the project. Now to get it out into the world...

Upcoming NY Exhibition

image copyright Gordon Stettinius

Passing this along. I am excited to be showing in New York next month though I am a little stymied by all that needs to be done between now and then... but it will be done.

Exhibition runs from January 20th - February 28th, 2010

Opening Reception will be Wednesday, January 20th
from 5:30 to 8:30pm


(from the RRG press release...)

The Robin Rice Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition of photography by Gordon Stettinius.

In his new body of work, Gordon Stettinius presents Notes From US Route 1. This collection of color and sepia toned images, lies somewhere between Robert Frank’s, The Americans and Alec Soth’s, Sleeping Along the Mississippi. Stettinius has given us a memorable and clear eyed meditation upon the American road trip and a particular moment in time, awash with motels, roadhouses, wanderers, and characters that would have to be included in any modern back road odyssey.

Stone Crab Traps, Florida, featured on the exhibition announcement, is indicative of the power of observation that Stettinius possesses for his surroundings. The simplicity of the composition is underwritten with an incredible amount of detail and a sensual presence and becomes an image that is understood immediately but then refuses to let go.

In another image taken at The State Fair in Virginia, Bottle Tree portrays a tree in the foreground adorned with wine and liquor bottles set against a red and white striped circus tent. His expert handling of color, line, and frame creates a statement piece that evokes thoughts of both the carnival and restless energy of its gin-soaked revelers.

David, Kingsville Maryland, shows a poetic yet un-glamorized view of a man dragging a larger than life wood cross with a backpack tied to it. Stettinius takes this subject and not only looks but also assimilates him to a modern semi-Christ. His images are more than an anthropological examination they’re an intimate experience between a photographer and his chosen subject.

Stettinius’ work reveals in real-time what Ronald Barthes called the reality effect in 19th century art, making the content chosen relatable to all viewers, even out of context. None of his visuals are arbitrary, nor are they staged. Stettinius takes all of his subjects and brings their intrinsic meaning to the forefront; he has a true understanding of and respect for the power of the visual, the power of suggestion.

Gordon Stettinius lives and works in Richmond, Virginia. His undergraduate degrees in Art & History are from the University of Virginia and he is currently taking a year off from teaching in the Art Department at Virginia Commonwealth University to start an independent publishing company focusing on fine art photography primarily. Gordon has exhibited his work nationally and internationally and is one of this years recipient of the Theresa Pollak Award for Excellence in the Arts. His work has been featured commercially on book jackets, CD covers, and national magazines as well as being represented in various public and private collections. This is his third solo show at the Robin Rice Gallery.

For more information or printable images please contact Robin Rice at (212) 366-6660 or email info@robinricegallery.com All the additional images of this new work can be found on our website at www.robinricegallery.com.

U.S. Route 1 Project promo [1 of 6]

I have just put together a leave behind, a trifold promo card, for the U.S. Route 1 project. Essentially what I will be using in reviews and meetings and such trying to get the word out I guess you might say. Have been working on other cards also. More to come...

U.S. Route 1 Project promo [2 of 6]

This is one facet of a trifold card with normal boilerplate contact info and five images on it... I needed something more than a single image card because there are no images that stand in for such a varied collection of work...

U.S. Route 1

Stone Crab Traps, Florida
copyright Gordon Stettinius

This past summer I started a new project documenting U.S. Route 1 from Canada to Key West. Essentially, i drove the whole length of road... which runs some 2,300+ miles. The road hits a number of significant metro areas... starting in Richmond, Virginia of course; Baltimore; Philadelphia; Washington D.C.; New York City (through the Bronx), Boston; Miami; Jacksonville; New
Haven; and more. And so the road is part scenic and part sobering reality really and the idea of doing a photo survey seems to me a bit over-reaching. I feel as though I have gone to the ocean and having been impressed I irrationally decided to try to bring it back to the studio.

But... the die is cast as they say. Or the buns burned maybe. So, while I am not sure I am completely finished shooting the project and there are a few things that might still add complexion or color or integrity... I am definitely sitting on top of a mountain of interesting work which is in dire need of sober editing. The first opportunity to exhibit the work is coming up in January 2010 at Robin Rice Gallery, so I am definitely crackling along right now. And I will be showing the work also here in Richmond eventually at Page Bond Gallery though that hasn't been specifically scheduled as yet. And I hope to add additional galleries to the schedule as well and have, I am thinking, at least one other likely exhibition in the works.

I haven't decided how much of the work to put online just yet. For the moment, I am trying to figure out what a show might look like versus how a book might look. There is a lot of analog (film) work and there is a whole lot of digital work. So, the immediate learning curve for me is trying to determine how I want to output the digital work but those are coming along really well. So, more images and information to come as I catch up with the darkroom side of things...

And if you should have a pithy title for the project then let her rip. I am still not quite sure what I want to go with. Whether I want to go with something simple and explicit like "U.S. Route 1 Project" or something more poetic like "The Long and Crinkly Thread of Time and Transportation" or maybe something more cryptic like "Cobalt Wails of Ecstacy" or... Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Was able to visit with Gita last week...

Visit with Gita; part 1
Originally uploaded by eyecaramba

I was in New York for a few days last week and had the opportunity to visit with Gita Lenz and give to her a blurb book we produced of her work. I have been working with her images for a couple of years now and we have managed a fairly decent book dummy courtesy of Blurb, though the quality is not quite what I would have liked. Because the print quality of Gita's work is very, very good and the work has suffered a bit with our initial attempts at self producing the work, we are looking into a better published book and will start to get the word out about that very soon.

There are other videos over at Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyecaramba/


Also there is more about this project over at gitalenz.blogspot.com

Toy Cameras; A Personal History

Victor, circa 1990
copyright Gordon Stettinius

Prompted by a question found at Four Corners Dark, a blog by photographer Nic Nichols, essentially asking how it is a person might come to embrace the nature of toy camera photography.

So, here, I reminisce...

The year was 1990 and I was a mere pup, still wet behind the gear. Back then, I spent most of my days, skipping innocently around, making photos of cacti or stoner friends or reflected light and shadows that felt, to me, like poetry, which I would then accompany – of course! - with mindblowing poetry. Very questionable mindblowing poetry. These were my salad days… living in Tucson, a geographic misanthrope of a town in which I landed bright eyed and by accident. A town with a history of lawlessness, desperate characters, a place danced upon by shimmering visions riding upon throat clenching heat and dust and spelled by the fleeting relief of monsoons and mescal, a place of high desert and mountains and dealers and thieves and siestas and All Souls and cultural renegades… at the foot of the black hill, a dormant volcano… But the place was then, and remains, a very generous homeland to photographers. A beautiful place really. There has always been there a healthy subpopulation of imagemakers, and many institutions and galleries of the town still genuflect before the silver altar of fixed imagery.

My gear, then, in the year of my random relocation, consisted of a Nikon FM2 with a couple of lenses and an old Rolleiflex TLR I had bought the year before in San Francisco, from a time when I had been busy kicking the training wheels off my liberal ideology. I still have and use these cameras today but I was newly open to any kind of suggestions because I very much enjoyed mixed media work – painting, drawing, printmaking - and wasn’t really averse to new experiences. As Vonnegut said, “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” And road trips and photography were my church so to speak.

The actual moment of my discovering toy camera photography was a fairly prosaic one. I saw a hand written flyer, made a phone call, met a man on the north side of town who claimed to be holding and we made the exchange beneath a purple sky in a Circle K parking lot. It was a small cardboard package, plastic wrapped goods, smelling slightly of laudanum and black earth. Cost me ten dollars. A dime bag. And it was highly addictive. A Holga. I have probably purchased 200 or more of these since that first night, so many cameras I have used myself or have given out to students and friends… the first one is usually free just to give them a taste. But I know that a black passion will infect most of them… and that they in turn will spread the word about a good buzz… and I am twisted up inside with pleasure at the thought.

The Holga immediately required a great deal of attention. I found that I wanted to use it daily. I tried other cameras around this time as well. Somehow, something had been cut loose inside of me and if something like the Holga could be out there, then there might be other cameras, better cameras even, out there and waiting to be used, waiting to lend their own distorted ripple upon the waters of recorded imagery. I tried a few of the bakelite Brownies and they tasted pretty good and mushed up my reality for days at a time. A friend of mine was pushing homemade pinhole cameras pretty hard about then and this too had a nice drunken pictorial undertone… I was quick to try anything really. But the Holga was the first toy, cheap, easy camera that had any real sustained effect. I was loaned a Diana, soon after, by a friend and there was a camera that also had a kick, a soft and subtle claret note… this one, I knew, would be an interesting fix.

Finding a Diana of my own was going to be a trick though. They were not common, there was not yet an internet or ebay or any big box corporate markup refab retail store. I had to deal with another somewhat shady character to get my first one but Mr. Bubbles was good for several others after that. Bubbles ran an antique outfit on Congress called Used Cars. Mostly this guy would troll the southwest looking for neon signage to resell to the Japanese for extraordinary profit. But he was a photographer in his own right and tended to pick up all the photographic whatnot he encountered as he traveled around in his pickup plus trailer. One day, I was hanging out in the shop, surrounded by missile casings and bumper cars and gramophones and all manner of disheveled temporal castoffs talking up my ten dollar Holga while making a portrait of Victor, Bubbles’ real name, when he broke out with a box of recent acquisitions to see if I might have any interest. And there it was. A Diana. I had only just learned of the camera a few weeks earlier. Five dollars was all he asked for the first one and probably thought he was screwing me pretty. Once Victor realized I would buy any Diana or knock off he could find, he marked them up pretty quickly. But the damage was done and I had a small stable of about six or so Dianas, a couple of Holgas plus my old gear. I was using pretty much all the time by then.

Ironically, when I managed a trip back east to see my family later that year… I discovered in my parent’s upstairs closet… a minty Windsor clone. My parents were users! It was a pretty delicious moment for me. Grounding even, to realize that my own subversive tendencies came from somewhere else. I am free to blame my parents for fuck sakes! And that is pretty much the american dream I sometimes think. And so, that very Windsor became the lead camera for a while, at least until I melted it in a regrettable Volkswagen camper episode. And then others took its place.

And now, almost twenty years later, life goes on but I still thrill to see all these new converts to the old siren song and it warms my black plastic heart to see it. It is funny, really, that the experiments with other photo substances continue for me but the hook of the cheap stuff still appeals.

Sincerely,

Gordon S.

a.k.a.

Another friend of Nancy R.

a.k.a.

Eye Caramba

a.k.a.

Gringo Starr

101 Things To Do In 1001 Days

Take 2


copyright Gordon Stettinius, Terry Brown


Because I feel like I could use a little self-improvement. I have put togther a list of goals for the next 1001 days. Originally, this idea comes from triplux, who has started a movement of sorts, it would seem, as there are a lot of these lists out there.

For the record, this is my second attempt at making such a list. My first attempt was fairly successful in that I knocked off about half the list and managed a few things that I may not have without the ongoing reminder. And before you castigate me for my blatant pandering to my own self-interest, I would like you to take a long look in the mirror and then, give yourself a big hug because you are truly o.k.. I mean that.

Anyway, this is not simply a list. This is big picture stuff. This is man-making, life-fulfilling, by-the-balls-grabbing stuff. And I am commencing directly. Living at the behest of a pure and unadulterated mania.

Completion Date: October 4th, 2011

The Criteria: Tasks are ideally specific (i.e. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks should also be realistic and a bit off-task from the regular routine (i.e. represent some amount of work which must be done).


1. Write Something Meaningful (2/3)
~ 2. Go to a Drive In
~ 3. Each Room, Five things to Charity
4. Go to a Comedy Club (1/2)
5. Picnic Three Times (2/3)
6. Scuba Dive
7. Two Day Fast (1/3)
8. Get Myself Set Up to Weld
9. Get Rejected 24 times (11/24)
~ 10. Finish Book About Gita Lenz
~ 11. Exhibition for Gita Lenz
~ 12. Give Blood
13. Travel Somewhere by Train
14. Make Short Film
~ 15. Clean Garage
16. Get Photo Book Published
~ 17. Training for a Certain Dog (…and she knows she is. )
~ 18. Go to the theatre five times (5/5)
19. Visit Mexico City
20. Visit Spain
~ 21. Visit Boston
~ 22. Visit Fallingwater
23. Take Dance lessons
24. Paint a portrait
~ 25. Show Work in Three New Cities (3/3)
~ 26. Frame five Photos Collected from Other Photographers (8/5)
27. Frame a new drawing
~ 28. Buy Art (5/3)
29. Barter/Trade Artwork (3/5)
30. Submit Images to Blind Spot
31. Submit Images to Aperture
~ 32. Read five Books Recommended by five Friends
~ 33. Get a physical / G.I. exam or whatever you call it
34. New Volunteer Gig ( Habitat 4 Humanity or new / different )
~ 35. Go Snowboarding
36. Return to Bonnaroo
~ 37. Organize My Old Writings
38. Write / Record a song
39. Begin Family interviews
~ 40. Spend the day walking
41. Spend the day biking
42. Go to Southside Speedway
43. Attend services / visit a Mosque
~ 44. Support the Farmer’s Market
45. Make Homemade Beer / Wine
~ 46. Re-establish Garden
47. Public Karaoke
48. Run a half marathon (or better)
~ 49. Photograph/Interview a Psychic
50. Go Horseback Riding
~ 51. Go to a Vikings game
52. Burning Man
53. Spend Day with Dad
54. Spend Day with Mom
55. Spend day with Brother
56. Spend Day with Sister
~ 57. Get House Painted
58. Cook for Eight people (2/3)
59. Write a Children's Book
60. Collaborate with Another Artist (2/3)
~ 61. Go Ice Skating
62. Walker's Mix #7, #8, #9
63. Firefly
64. Paint or Buy Vintage or Vintage Style Backdrops (0/2)
65. Throw a Party (1/2)
66. Crash a Party (0/2)
~ 67. Get Together a Promotional Something (4/3)
68. Bake Yeasted Bread (0/3)
69. Go Camping (1/3)
70. Make Sushi
71. Don't Speak for an Entire Day
~ 72. Celebrate Solstice
73. Write Thank You Note to Former Teacher
~ 74. Locate an Old Friend (Actually, Real World) (3/3)
~ 75. Find / Use one of those Deodorant Stones
76. Hot Springs, Somewhere
77. Host a Mystery Dinner
~ 78. Take Yoga Classes
79. Make an Artist’s Book
~ 80. Go Naked
81. Sunday Roadtrip (14/25)
82. Get Photos to Someone Who Has Given up on Them (2/3)
83. Read Five Books I Already Own (3/5)
~ 84. Design / Produce a Small Run of T-shirts
85. Make Pesto (1/3)
86. Sky Dive
87. Take a Class in Ceramics
88. Curate a Toy Camera Show
89. Cirque du Soleil
~ 90. Finish Infinite Jest
~ 91. Find/Make a Quality Lamb or Bear Costume
~ 92. Get some Photo Swag Going (…via CafePress or similar. )
93. Swim in a Lake
94. Organize Family Photos
95. Earth Art or Plan for Empty Field
~ 96. Website Redesign
97. Massage / Accupuncture (2/5)
98. Go to Cuba
99. Go White Water Rafting
~ 100. Re-certify for CPR
101. Make Chile Relleno

Where Trouble Melts Like Lemon Drops...

Earlier this past year, I did a podcast with the good folks over at Filmwasters.com. I have done a couple of these recorded sessions actually, but will gloss over my debut appearance, because in my ignominious first podcast, I drank a couple of tumblers of Bushmills during the ninety minute episode and by the end of the broadcast it was all I could do not to belt out sea shanties. Anyway, during the second podcast, I referenced something that I still think about a lot… Mary Ellen Mark’s work photographing various Senior Proms. I saw this work last summer at the LOOK Festival of the Photograph in Charlottesville, Virginia. There were a number of featured exhibitions in the festival and some great photography in various venues in town.

James Nachtwey’s exhibition was the most compelling to me as a human. Nachtwey is a photojournalist and war photographer and his website will do more to explain the power of his work than I can ever get across in a quickly crafted internet treatment… his work encompasses the larger issues facing this world: Afganistan, Kosovo, Aids, addiction, life in american prisons, Rwanda and that is all that I can remember off the top of my head of what was a essentially a survey of his work over the years. So, to spin this the right way, let me say that this work blew me away. Choked me up. The images are beautiful and saddening and frightening and worth checking out if you are somehow as yet unfamiliar with his work.

Joel Peter Witken’s exhibition at 2nd Street Gallery was also very compelling in its own right. I must say that I have seen better collections of his work but as a craftsman and as a conceptual artist, Witken is also an amazing personality. The work in here was significant in that there were some digital creations alongside his earlier style of in-camera compositions. Which is really neither here nor there w/r/t what I want to think out loud about, but I thought it interesting to see what Witken was doing with contemporary tools. And the inner cynical adolescent in me was pretty amused by his digital work.

But the work that was most affecting for me was a bit of a dark horse really. I have enjoyed many of Mary Ellen Mark's books and essays over the years. I have a great respect for her as a photographer. And like Nachtwey, she is a renowned photojournalist that has explored very challenging subjects and given us indelible images from all over the world. But what the Prom Portraits did for me was to renew some tired aspect of my own dedication to photography. Because these images came from such a ‘normal’ place… a high school dance… I could imagine myself or any number of my photographer friends being given a similar assignment to photograph. Namely, to make images at some random institutional function. And I can further imagine that prospect , at bottom dollar, would sound about as appealing as a mason jar full of monkey urine. I am not always so jaded but I find that I don’t always approach commercial work with the same enthusiasm as I do personal artwork. And that is my problem. And a problem that this show of prom images is actually helping me with.

The images were not incredibly innovative by most measures… very large prints, probably from 4x5 polaroid pos/neg film, very sharp, studio lighting, simple backdrop… BUT the kids are amazing. There is a modicum of editorial manipulation going on by the artist in that the kids seem a little more toward the margins of ‘average’, what with the gay couple, the mixed race couple, the physically mismatched couple, the dateless kids, etc. And there were other stereotypes that also played nicely, the good looking kids with questionable skin, the oddly fitting clothes like the kids have been stuffed into misshapen adult suits, the awkwardness of standing next to one’s date and forever being associated with that person even though you hardly know them, its all in there… nervousness, lust, tough shit brio, bored indulgence of a photographer that these kids must probably have assumed was a hack straight out ofWalmart. There is a lot going on in these photographs. And so, even though Mark’s photography feels a bit like a humble sequel to Richard Avedon’s In The American West, damn if I didn’t get all excited by the work. These photos make me actually excited to shoot the next boring ass event that comes my way... Can you say weddings! Or maybe bar mitzvahs or kids’ portraits or pet portraits or insurance claim documentation. It just doesn’t fucking matter! It is not what you shoot but how you shoot. It matters what you bring to any given subject. It matters who you are as a photographer. It matters where you are. And it matters that you pay attention. In the moment.

So, to Ms. Mark, thanks for that. I am somewhat renewed even just thinking about it.

A friend once gave me a whole CD of musical covers of Over the Rainbow. And that, too, was really sort of a lesson for me about interpretation. Originality is so often inside the voice and not so much in the concept. Freshness can be tone, color, inflection, cadence, tempo, attitude, character… Traditionals. Covers. There is, of course, no shortage of uninspired interpretations of old standards. If I never hear Mustang Sally played by a bar band ever again, it will be too soon. But with a little insight into how we approach our life and work, we might be able to avoid the tired and commonplace and embrace the crystalline brilliance of the close at hand.

Write what you know.
Photograph what you know.

There is saftey in numbers but it is hard to dance that way without looking like the cast from Thriller.

Charles Traub wrote in a series of maxims on photography:

"Do something new in an old way.
Do something old in a new way.
Do something new in a new way
Whatever works… works."

Just maybe.

A Soupçon of Winter Relief

What to write… Somali pirates, Gaza rockets, Israeli reprisals, new year’s resolutions, vanity projects, Bonesy the dog, magical powders, unfinished screenplays, upcoming shows, my life of soup… Soup! I have made the following recipe a couple of times in my efforts to knock back the winter months…

A soup recipe from my friend, Kirsten:

Autumn harvest stew

1 medium sized onion, chopped
about 4 cloves garlic, crushed
4 cups vegetable broth, plus water if too thick
one can diced stewed tomatoes
one butternut squash, peeled and cubed
about 3 cups shredded greens (I use combo of kale and chard, etc., etc.)
about 1/3 cup fresh rosemary, finely chopped
2 pkgs baked savory tofu, cubed
about 2 TBSP maple syrup
salt and pepper


mmmm.
in large saucepan, heat olive oil and sauté onions and garlic until softened and fragrant. Add remaining ingredients except salt and pepper. Bring to a slow simmer, cover and reduce heat to low. Cook until squash is cooked through and flavors blended, about 45 minutes to an hour. add salt and pepper.

Serve with unsweetened yogurt or sour cream on top; pine nuts or roasted pumpkin seeds; raisins or chopped dried apricots.

Nobody to blame but my elf.

Just Take a Little Off the Sides

copyright Gordon Stettinius

Okay, since I have decided to pimp my blog... I probably should occasionally update it. I have been shooting here and there. A wedding, Best Friends Day, ladies arm wrestling, etc. Pretty much the same old for me. Trying to slip along the margins of things. But also for the last couple of months, I have been doing some self portraiture. Or not exactly self portraiture because I am going to a commercial photo studio for the actual photos. But I have been styling and art directing the shots I guess you could say. It started with a perm I got a couple of months ago. Then I did kind of a private school girl's senior portrait which was sort of a beehive and drag kind of thing. Then I did a Duane Allman meets Bret Michaels sort of thing. Last night I shot a couple more which I will probably put up somewhere before too long. A mullet which, if the character had to be described somehow, would belong to an early nineties fitness instructor perhaps. And then we did a skullet which I hope came off well enough. That one had something of a western theme. Maybe what I should do is write a little fiction piece inventing the character of each photo subject. That might be fun.

Anyway, today, I am off to get a trim to take advantage of my current baldness with a combover and then I will season the look with a spray tan... hopefully a nuclear orange or an unholy umber. So, as always, stay tuned.

Rapture Dollar

copyright Anonymous Fundamentalist

Here was a pleasant surprise I received in change with a cup of coffee recently. A rapture dollar! If the scan doesn't hold up so well, it reads:

"Rapture May 21, 2011; World Ends Oct 21, 2011"

I am now wishing that I had saved some of the other random altered monies I have received over the years... seems I have seen some Anti Bush Money and some Lesbian Money in years past. But Rapture money raises the bar, in my opinion, and helps put the fun back into fundamentalism.

And now I have a firm deadline for my current project also! Maybe I should pre-sell copies...

Gone Fission

copyright Gordon Stettinius

August means summer has turned the corner. Life has been really good to us of late. A lot of travel and low stress have made for a pretty good stretch. I had hopes for another trip at the end of summer to Burning Man but just don't think I will be able to swing it with the childcare for such a nine or ten day stretch. And then finding substitutes for my first classes, which while doable, doesn't feel quite right. The theme this year is American Dream which pretty much has me salivating. But... hey, it is only an art+altculture+technology+survival congregation of muses, musicians, artists and majestic offerings, right? Bums me out that I haven't yet made it out there. I had a small crew out of Minnesota I was likely to hook up with but they have decided to stay at home this year so that they might help to artistically subvert this years Republican National Convention. The duties of an artist are not really written down anywhere but I am thinking that creatively tangling with the RNC would be somewhere near the top of the list.

Anyway, an easy recap of the summer breaks down into an extremely busy June with two bigger shows and three group shows... Richmond, Zurich, Charlottesville, New York and somewhere else which I cannot conjure up just now. Which all sounds great apart from the fact that I have almost nothing on the schedule going forward apart from a show next April at Page Bond Gallery.

While my son went to camp for a couple of weeks, I did a roadtrip through the bible belt. Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri more or less. Meditating mostly upon God and barbecue as I was also picking up imagery for a barbecue restaurant job. I am trying to cobble together a body of work that explores the intersection of religion and entertainment. Suggestions are welcomed.

Then my son went to the beach with a friend of his that he plays music with and I took a shorter trip into the hills of North Carolina where I tried my hand at shooting some digital video. Basically, I have three or four somewhat solid video/film ideas but have very little to offer in the way of video/film skills. I am trying to learn a few things while writing/developing these ideas. I feel strange and blustery attempting narrative tale spinning but I may yet break out of my solitary 2-D visual artist groove. More on that maybe or maybe I'll never speak of it again. Do you care though? Are you there even?

And now... a small commercial job is on the schedule. And then also, I am getting ready finally to make some headway with the project involving the photographic work of Gita Lenz. Later this month, a New York gallery owner is coming down to spend a couple of days with her archive - which is really just a large set of shelves in my office - to determine what he would like to take on in terms of a show and potential sales and possible catalog and such. It has been over a year since I have had any movement on this one and I would really like to do something concrete with her work.

Blah, blah, and oh yeah! Working up a self portrait series... will maybe follow up with a few blogposts about that. Not revolutionary mind you but semi entertaining.

Undead Ambitions

copyright Gordon Stettinius

Saturday morning here. My blog has been coming back to haunt me of late. I have recently had two different people contact me about older, long forgotten loose threads. One person was kindly interested in a long stagnating attempt at some longer fiction and the other person was using my admittedly lifeless blog as an example of solid self promotion ( which made me laugh because the three posts I have managed in the last year or so hardly represent a man on top of his game ).

As for the old writings, it was strange for me that I couldn't remember much about these and so I went and read them with some interest. I have been writing a lot lately and so it was interesting to find someone else, namely me from three years ago, that writes so much like I do. It is kind of like that classic movie, The Lake House, where I am both Keanu Reeves' and Sandra Bullock's characters. Have there ever been two more wooden leading actors in a romantic smarmedy?

So, in this charming tale of misbegotten cross-temporal love shenanigans, Keanu and Sandra carry on a written relationship that involves mostly hockey and mutual masturbation... okay, I never saw this movie actually... but the movie, if the advertising is to be believed had something to do with two people living in the same place and writing letters to each other that somehow travel through a magic mailbox or something such. Which is just like me! But without the paranormal post office bit. Basically, this is all to say that I reread some old stuff and even though I may not resuscitate that specific literary effort - found in January 2005 - I just may breathe a little life into this blog's dead body. Thus the zombie image above - from Richmond's 2007 Zombie Walk.

If you are interested in a recent story, you might hyper your attention on over to Like So Many Broken Toys, which is a little strange something that I sort of enjoy.

Otherwise, I am basically writing a lot these days and though I am going to keep some of it to myself for now, I can certainly see spilling my guts here now and again.

Upcoming Posts May Include:

Suddenly Gordon
Meditations Upon Me
Why I am Significant
Recent Stool Diary Entries
Me, A Primer

...and so much more. Nice to see you again! I know I will have to regain your trust. I want you to like me.

The Long Emergency

Read this book. I am finding myself repeating myself so often these days because I am continually promoting this book or discussing the concerns that it presents.

Here is a short synopsis of The Long Emergency, by James Howard Kunstler, which was run in Rolling Stone. Basically, it is a chilling collection of thoughts as we turn the corner in our ability to pull oil out of the ground and what that may mean for everything from the suburbs to transportation to alternative energy to medicine to agriculture to social and political landscapes...

Also, I have recently read The Ominvore's Dilemma , by Michael Pollan, which serves up an effective indictment against large scale agriculture and what passes for diet and nutrition in this day and age.

Usually, I read fiction and am an escapist by nature but these books, and a couple others recently read, have me rethinking a lot of things. My son went vegetarian about five or six months ago and so I am really overhauling my efforts in the kitchen and have established a fairly ambitious garden at our new house. I am now vegetarian myself, though I will eat seafood on occasion, and though I don't much miss the meat, I do miss the variety of dishes but I have picked up a lot of new wrinkles in my cooking repertoire.

Naked Pilgrim ~ Opening Friday, April 6th

Here is the exhibition announcement for a show I have opening this week at 1708 Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. There is an opening reception this coming Friday should any of you be in the area for any reason. It will be Good Friday in fact which was coincidental but seems perfect somehow given the amount of religion in the show and the Naked Pilgrim theme.




This is the cover to the catalog for the show. The flip side gives the other artist, Gareth Jones, top billing and the book pages in both directions.

Gita Lenz, Project Begins

copyright Gita Lenz

Last week, I met with my interns for the first time, to begin the project of conserving and organizing the work of photographer Gita Lenz. Below, is a very loose chronology of her life as I understand it so far. There are some large holes but right now we are trying to read through old correspondence and notes and pay stubs, etc. in hopes of pulling together a better understanding of Gita's life.

Anyway, here is the Chronology:

Gita Lenz, Photographer, Writer

Born Gertrude Maslow October 9, 1910 to Louis Maslow (seamstress) and Yetta Youkeles (piano teacher), in New York City. Parents immigrants from Ukraine. One younger brother who later died in car accident in Los Angeles (date unknown).

Married George Zoul, a Czech immigrant, in mid 1930’s. He was a communist and later joined the Lincoln Brigade with whom he went to Spain in late 30’s to fight against Franco. He was shot in combat and was buried in Spain.

Married Richard Lenz in 1940. Marriage lasted 18 months or so.

Moved to 65 Carmine, in the East Village, in 1940. Lived there until October 2001.

Some correspondence with Mel Most (died 1990) a foreign correspndent and PR agent.

Friends with:

Julien Beck, founder of the Living Theatre
Bayard Rustin, a prominent civil rights and worker activist
William Packard, poet and playwright, founder of NY Quarterly
Aaron Siskind, photographer

Part of Brooklyn Museum photography show titled ‘The Third Eye’ in 1952
Part of MOMA ‘The Family of Man’ show
Published in ‘Modern Photography’ monthly periodical in a few issues early 1950’s.

Held odd temp jobs entire working career. I think was an officer with “NY Quarterly” from inception in the early 1970’s Wrote poetry and studied under William Packard in 60’s / 70’s.

Was interested in socialism and anarchism as it applied in the 30’s through 1960’s.

Only known travels were to Mexico in 1960’s (?)

Gita Lenz, Photographer

copyright Gita Lenz


Short story...

A friend of mine who lives in New york, called me a year or so ago and said that he was helping a friend of his into an assisted living situation. He said that she was a photographer and he thought a very good one. His friend's name is Gita Lenz and I had met her about four years ago at an opening for a show I had in New York in 2002. She is beautiful really. I made the trip to New York to take a look at the work and see what my friend had in mind. Gita has boxes of work, boxes of negatives, correspondence, the whole thing. It is a life in images. Well, actually we feel that she might not have been a photographer for much of her life. But the images are likely from the late forties and into the sixties. Since Gita was moving out of her place, we needed a place to store the work. Ultimately, we decided that I would make a good temporary home for them in Virginia.

So, jump to the present and I recently checked in with Gita again up in New York while taking down a recent show. She really is amazingly sharp and funny. I have begun to do some editing with the work and I took a lot of images up to her so that she could see them and talk about them and basically just to visit with her. It was very cool to see how much she enjoyed the photos.

For me, visiting with her, looking at the work, it stirs up all kinds of thoughts. Why is it we do what we do? When we are gone, is anyone really going to care? Gita has an amazing range of work... street stuff, abstracts, experimental images, portraits of artist / dancer types, documentary work. She was a student of Aaron Siskind's, she was in the landmark 'Family of Man' exhibition in 1955. She was also a published poet. And yet, here is her work, in boxes, in some random guy's house that she has only met a couple of times and the work is still trying to get noticed. It kind of tears me up really.

Anyway, I have only just begun trying to figure out what to do with the work but I will try to keep this online diary going because I think it will be an interesting trek. For next spring, I have a couple of interns from the University where I am teaching and hopefully they will help me get further along. Ultimately, I hope to get together some tight portfolios and see them accessioned into notable photo archives or appropriate museums. Then, if we can put together enough of the story, I could imagine a book might also be a possibility...

So, more later on Gita.