Sunday, May 27, 2007

GLAD TO SEE YOU









Glad to See You Video, created by Libby and Roberta

Teamlump Presents: "Glad to See You!"

Space 1026
1026 Arch St.
2cd Floor
Philadelphia, PA

Through the month of June.

Teamlump is Lump Lipshitz, Jerstin Crosby, Stewart Sineath, Tory
Wright, Allyson Mellberg, Gary Smith, K Whole, Josh Rickards, and
Jeremy Taylor.

We join together around the Raleigh-based Project
space Lump Gallery founded by Bill Thelen aka Lump Lipshitz, but not
everyone lives in Raleigh or North Carolina. We put together
collaborative group shows that allow our individual voices to remain
sticky, gooey, sexy, robotic, bleeding, redneck, bald, diseased,
beautiful, and campy.

'Glad To See You' embodies a sense of nihilistic transience. For
Space 1026, Teamlump is creating a big country squater environment,
complete with full size truck camper, constructed from cardboard and
wood scraps. Behind the camper will be a small crop of marijuana
plants and coming from the corner is a infinite highway that stretches
across the gallery floor. This atmosphere along with all the other
great work going into the show, creates an omni-present loner and
celebrates those who exist 'off the grid', and live off the land.

www.space1026.com
www.teamlump.org

Friday, May 18, 2007

David Ellis + Kiku Yamaguchi = Doodle Crush





Jerstin Crosby shot the shit with artists, David Ellis, and Kiku Yamaguchi on on the eve of their collaborative exhibition 'Doodle Crush' at Lump Gallery/Projects. Part of the audio recording is indecipherable due to Ellis' SKDubs Double Bass Boombox Fiddle, blasting on shuffle in the background. You can check out this sophisticated ghetto-blaster fiddle as a feature in this month's special design edition of PAPER magazine.

JC: So you put those albums together with shrink-wrap?
DE: No, no, I glue them together with liquid nails, and then a resin coat.
JC: That’s funny because when I was looking at it, when I was in NY in February for the Exit Art show, I started photographing those loading dock things, the pads, the pads that keep you from hitting the dock when you're backing your truck up.
DE: Yeah.
JC: I started thinking I could put together magazines like that. Then I saw these and was like, dammit!
DE: Do it!
JC: I think the albums were a better choice, but that’s what it looks like to me is, your piece looks like those loading dock pads.
(the boombox bumps, "hotel, hotel, holiday inn")
DE: Hmm. Oh, how was the, how did the Prints Gone Wild thing for you?
JC: Uh, yeah good, we actually made some money. It's amazing, people will throw down on a twenty-dollar print.
DE: Oh yeah no problem.
JC: Even almost more quick than they would buy a twenty-dollar drawing, one of a kind.
DE: Yeah.
JC: Weird. People like prints.
DE: Som'n about it.
JC: It's like commerce, the mere fact of making multiples.
DE: How much did you make?
JC: Teamlump?
DE: Yeah.
JC: Everybody together made seven or eight hundred bucks, and dude, you know we make, like, zero dollars. (laughs)
(indecipherable chatter about VISA machines, and the ugly condos being built down the street from Lump.)
JC: I found some thing in German, was there a video on Barnstormers in German? (on youtube.com)
DE: I just saw that, somebody just hooked that up, that guy was in New York like four years ago, Christian (dude's name).
JC: Yeah, it looked older.
DE: Yeah, its old, I was like, super skinny, and, that was a fun day though, I had forgotten he had gotten all that footage.
(boombox bumps GZA)
JC: Where do you get the trucks that you paint on?
DE: Oh, yeah.
JC: Do people just loan those out?
DE: Yeah. I actually have a friend who owns a trucking company.
JC: And he just keeps them that way (painted), right?
DE: Yeah.
JC: That’s one thing, when I'm watching those videos, I'm like, where the hell does he get those trucks.
DE: Yeah. One was his truck, one was (indecipherable), and one was a delivery van in, Osaka.
JC: Where?
DE: Osaka.
JC: What was the one you did in the art parade last year?
DE: Um. That was, last year was one of my friends trucks.
JC: That works out. Get friends with a truck dude.
DE: Yeah.
(indecipherable)
JC: It should be a good opening tonight, the girls at the coffee shop knew about the show.
DE: Oh, yeah, how'd they know? Max, and Stewart?
JC: Yeah, probably, there was a napkin taped to the register that said, 'hot show at lump tonite'.
DE: laughs.
JC: What's the name of this show? Is there a name?
DE: Uh, "Doodle Crush".
JC: "Doodle Crush". That's right
KY: I call it "Crush".
JC: Huh?
DE: She calls it "Crush". I call it "Doodle Crush", she tried to change it.
JC: Is it because ya'll are crushing it?
DE: laughs. It's because we've been a couple for, literally, for like ten years, so, and we've work together but not, not that much, so we're trying to see if we still have a crush on each other.
JC: Oh, I see, doodle crush. Okay.
KY: Is that like a 'scribble jam', a doodle crush?
JC: laughs. What does everything in the show mean? laughs.
DE: laughs. What does everything in this world mean?
JC: I'm just playing. Can you just tell me the meaning of each piece? Ha. People are funny like that though.
DE: What's that supposed to be? What possessed you? I had a guy do that on one of the barns we were painting.
JC: You should be like, what, besides demons?
KY: laughs.
JC: I'm possessed.
(indecipherable conversing about how much Stewart Sineath helped out with their show, and what Med Byrd, (co-owner of Lump), teaches at NC State.
JC: Has Med cooked for ya'll yet?
DE: Uh, he offered to, and we couldn’t leave here, too much work to do.
JC: He made some good ass Thai food last week.
KY: He said he makes some good chili pepper sauce.
JC: I haven’t had that.
KY: Oh, he's got a bunch of pepper plants in the back.
JC: Oh yeah….My grandma, my grandparents, in 'bama, they make pepper sauce. It's just like, when you grow those little peppers and you put them in vinegar. And you let them sit for a while, it just makes the vinegar hot as shit.
DE: Yeah.
JC: This is the first year they haven't been able to grow peppers, they are officially too old to grow peppers.
DE: Oh, no.
JC: Yeah, it's really sad. They can't get out in the garden anymore.
KY: My grandma came to visit, to New York last year, sometime last year, she's eighty-eight, so that will be her last time she can, travel.
JC: Yeah.
KY: How long have you had a space over here? (a studio at Lump)
JC: January. I've been working out of….
KY: Your house.
JC: Yeah, I've been working out of my house, and my band kind of took over that space, and I finally started getting paid enough where I could afford…he only charges seventy-five dollars a month.
DE: That's really cheap.
JC: Yeah, I do what I can to keep Bill happy and keep my studio for seventy-five bucks a month.
KY: It's one-fifty?
JC: Yeah, I split it with Stewart.
(At this point in the recording I can't make out anything else, but there was only a few minutes left, and I'm pretty sure we were just talking about something irrelevant like how bad the Olive Garden is. Regardless, if you missed their show, then you really missed it. Installation shots coming soon.)


Visit David and Kiku at:

www.babyalpaca.org
www.freshwatercatfish.org
www.b-stormers.com

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

"Heroes"

"Heroes" opens May 5 at Bryce's Barber Shop and across the street at room 30, with an opening reception Saturday May 5, 6-8pm. Here is a little bit about the show, provided by elin o'hara slavick.


When Laura Sharp Wilson and I first began our collaborative series of Heroes (that includes heroines), it was out of a need to name, recognize, honor and remember people who influence, inspire, change, educate and amaze us in our wreck of a world. We have grown accustomed to a comfortable disappointment in, lethargic shock of and a seemingly eternal dissatisfaction with this late-capitalist, “free trade,” global economy world that rewards corporate and military criminals and punishes the poor, the imprisoned, the victims of this system and anyone who tries to make it better, fairer, or a tiny bit more beautiful.
Exhausted, depressed and almost hopeless – or as Helen Caldicott would say, “in a perpetual and survival state of psychic numbing” - Laura and I decided to begin a series of poetic, spontaneous, simple and honest tributes to those who inspire us; who refuse to fight the rich man’s war; who sing truth to power; who write manifestoes of hope; who lead and fight and refuse to let power corrupt; who help the hungry and sick and maimed and poor; visionaries; poets; artists; historians; doctors; activists; Rachel Corrie; Josh White; Frida Khalo; Mother Jones; Paul Farmer; Ina May Gaskin.
We exhibited the first twelve or so of our heroes at the beautiful Bryce’s Barbershop Gallery in Olympia, Washington. I take my hat off to my comrade Laura Sharp Wilson for always meeting me halfway as an artist, mother, teacher, friend, activist – through thick and thin – but especially for taking this project on. Laura is the reason why the Heroes project is growing and hopefully, traveling. She invited 50 artists to respond to the idea of heroes and the heroic, to join us in our efforts to offer glimmers of hope and resistance in our dark and troubled times. The response includes a heroic wonder woman, Louise Bourgeois, Dennis Kucinich, abstractions, Marguerite Barankitse – who saved 25 children during the Rwandan genocide – among many others. While some may claim that we do not need another hero, I think we need and have many in our daily lives. If this project helps artists to focus on something bigger than themselves, gives the audience some light and inspiration amidst the gloom and desperation, then it is had done a good job.
Certainly, Heroes will not end the brutal, senseless and immoral war in Iraq, but it may help us to fight harder to end it sooner. Heroes might take us by the fearful hand to block the road to Caterpillar bulldozers on their way to destroy Palestinian homes. Heroes may open our eyes enough to see that we can be our own heroes. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what makes a hero. For me, she is usually someone who would do something I do not have the courage to do. While I want to be a war tax resister, I am not because I do not want to go to jail (leaving my two small children). He is someone who consistently sees and shares the optimistic light despite criminal genocides, the capitalist victory of greed over community, the endless examples of cruelty, selfishness and ugliness. Heroes shine. They may have that Gramscian “pessimism of the spirit,” but they practice his “optimism of the will”.
At the time of this writing I still have not decided who my hero will be for this manifestation of Heroes – either Howard Zinn (I just want to sing his name) for making anarchy and impeachment sound like the most rational, logical and democratic things on earth, or John Berger (I just want to sing his name too) for always offering intense critique and steadfast solidarity through his generous writings, or mothers trying to protect their children beneath American bombs, or Sue Coe, Cesar Chavez, Student Action with Farmworkers, my parents, Sacco and Vanzetti, Subcommandante Marcos; Billy Bragg, Woody Guthrie, Bayard Ruskin, Junius Scales, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Susan Sontag, people all over the world marching against war, people who believe that ending and abolishing war is not only possible but necessary.

Written by elin o'hara slavick
Artist, Activist, and Professor of Art at UNC-Chapel Hill

Artists Included in "Heroes":

Josh Abelow
Becca Albee
Nicole Awai
Leah Bailis
Amanda Barr
Judith Bauman
Charles Parker Boggs
Martin Bromirski
Tammy Rae Carland
Wendy Chien
Koren Christofides
Jerstin Crosby
Kimya Dawson
Julia Elsas
Paul Evans
David French
Pete Froslie
Joy Garnett
Beth Grabowski
Joanne Greenbaum
Eleanor Grosch
Harrison Haynes
Adrianne Herman
Hope Hilton
Andrew Johnson
Fay Jones
Jenny Laden
Michael Lease
Jane Marsching
Marisa Ann Martino
Hong Ngo
Paul Nudd
Ashley Oates
Beth Piver
Brian Reeves
Josh Rickards
Amie Robinson
Lisa Sheirer
elin o'hara slavick
Susanne Slavick
Carl Smith
Allyson Mellberg Taylor
Jeremy Taylor
Bill Thelen aka Lump Lipshitz
Paul Valadez
Silvia Velez
Stacey Lynn Waddell
Jeffrey Waites
Laura Sharp Wilson
Tory Wright