Ed McGowin: NAME CHANGE

Irby Benjamin Roy, Chicken Episode, 2008, mixed mediums, found objects

Ed McGowin's retrospective exhibition Name Change is currently up at Herron Galleries in Indianapolis through April 17. Upon entering the gallery, it is difficult to believe that all of the art on exhibition was created by one person. There is photography, bronze sculpture, painting, woodcarving, and minimalist sculpture. The subject matter is as varied as the media, ranging from iconography of dogs in odd scenarios to exploding ice cream cones to depictions of specific people and storytelling narratives. McGowin has had his name legally changed a total of twelve times, and creates art for each of the names (including Ed McGowin). Each section of the exhibition contains a framed, screen printed copy of the official name change document for the respective artistic persona. It is truly incredible how each "artist" has his own style, subject matter and quirkiness. The exhibition includes art that McGowin has produced throughout his entire career of nearly 40 years.

Alva Isaiah Fost, Four Modules, 1972, vacuum formed and painted plastic

The following is McGowin's own description of his artistic agenda, taken from the catalog:

This project was started in 1970 to explore a theory I conceived about the way art history would evolve in the future. I developed this theory as a means of freeing myself from a system that I found frustrating as a young artist at the beginning of my career: That my work should develop as a linear chain-link model with each creation leading logically to the next. Instead, I preferred to envision my work as a three-dimensional sphere getting larger over time. To demonstrate this theory I had my name changed legally twelve times in the District of Columbia court system. For each name I created works of art and exhibited them at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1972. For the past thirty-five years I have continued to create works for the twelve names.
Had I created all of these works under one name, I believe they would have been received very differently, with critical analysis of the development of the artist figuring prominently in the consideration of each piece. The different identities under which I made this art may allow for a broader approach to receiving these images, without tying them to past history or future expectations.

When the names of McGowin's eleven personas (his given name is the twelfth) are arranged in the following way, the first letter of each name can be taken to spell out "A line in time."

Alva Isaiah Fost
Lawrence Steven Orlean
Irby Benjamin Roy
Nathan Ellis McDuff
Euri Ignatius Everpure
Isaac Noel Anderson
Nicholas Gregory Nazianzen
Thorton Modestus Dossett
Ingram Andrew Young
Melvill Douglas O'Connor
Edward Everett Updike

McGowin is certainly a multi-talented artist, but his prowess in woodcarving stands out the most. Some of his art is embellished with elaborately carved frames, as in the second photo below. His art is extremely curious; it almost verges on kitsch at times yet it is so bizarre and interesting in its subject matter and execution as well as choice of materials that it has no trouble securing its place in the world of fine art.



Top image: William Edward McGowin, left to right: Musician, 2004, cast bronze. New Jersey, 2003, foam and board model. Librarian, 2004, cast bronze.

Bottom image: Nicholas Gregory Nazianzen, Workers Waving Goodbye, 1994, pastel on linen, carved and painted wood frame


The artistic persona that stands out the most is that of Thorton Modestus Dossett. "All of Thornton's work is about race. It's about the way that, particularly where I grew up in the deep South, the two races come together. One society that was occupied and defeated after the Civil War, another society that was enslaved; two badly damaged psyches in that respect, but yet they come together to create some really remarkable, interesting things," McGowin explains. The carved wooden pieces cast interesting and elaborate shadows onto the gallery walls when they are installed, which serves as an interesting metaphor for the shadows that racially charged incidents have cast over America.

The piece below tells the story of Oseola McCarthy, a washer woman who saved money from washing shirts at $0.15 a piece and gave the University of Southern Mississippi $150,000 in cash to help minority women go to school. The scholarship fund she set up now receives many contributions from around the United States.

Thorton Modestus Dossett, Oseola, 2001, carved and painted wood and urethane


This piece is about the coming together of music in Mississippi. The life stories of Robert Johnson (in black), Jimmy Rogers (in white), and Elvis Presley (in blue) are depicted. McGowin is attempting to show how blues and country music came together to form rock 'n roll.

Thorton Modestus Dossett, Johnson, Rogers, Presley, 2002, carved and painted wood and urethane

This painting depicts the murder of three young African American boys by the KKK. McGowin thus works to show a broad view of racial issues in the South encompassing both positive and negative stories, all told in his characteristically unique and quirky manner.

Thorton Modestus Dossett, McAlpin, 1999, enamel on canvas

McGowin has twenty permanent public art commissions and his art is held in the collections of The Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Hirshhorn Museum, and many others. He is Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York at Old Westbury.

I had a chance to talk with Ed about his art recently. See what he had to say:
*Note: At the beginning of the video when Ed says "non-linear," he meant to say "linear."

Conversations With Ed McGowin from Charles Fox on Vimeo.

NERS: Magical Wonderfulness

NERS currently has a solo show at Big Car Gallery in Indianapolis called Magical Wonderfulness. After his abrupt departure from Indianapolis on a Westward road trip to national parks and different cities which resulted in a blog called The Magical Wonderfulness of PBS Goes West, he has returned to his native Indianapolis and created this show of 28 new framed works, all of them inspired by and created after his trip. The works are all made with markers and discarded paper that often has printed text on the opposite side that still shows through. Seeing this text faintly on the other side of the paper sometimes affects his compositional elements, and also serves to remind the viewer of issues of sustainability, which is important to the artist. NERS explains, "I had very little materials to work with, which suits my work well, but just working with a few materials, being highly technical with graphite or Crayola marker."

The iconography in this body of work is largely based on animals, which is inspired by NERS' experiences in national parks during his voyage. Animals have often figured into his artwork in the past, but they are especially prominent here. The familiar rainbows that NERS loves to utilize are also present, but in Magical Wonderfulness the art has become decidedly more violent. There is lots of gore and disembowelment throughout the work, which provides an interesting juxtaposition to the rather light and flowery iconographic elements that the violence combines with in these drawings. There is also a great emphasis on what is drawn due to the large amounts of negative space, which is used as a compositional element. Since there are few backdrops or background details, each image commands the viewer's full attention.

Producing this artwork represents a sort of catharsis for NERS as he grapples with emotional strife and difficult life circumstances. His past work has included sculpture and photography, and it is interesting to see such a focused show from him that is all drawings and all based on a set of experiences and feelings. The well-chosen, bright colors and tight line structure in this body of work are excellent.

Care And Boo 2010
help a friend out. 2010
Desert Albedo 2010
Attack On Christmas. 2010

Ya I Shot a Bear Once, But Only Because It Shot Me First. 2010

I had a conversation with NERS. See what he had to say:

Conversations With NERS from Charles Fox on Vimeo.

Erin K Drew: METAMORPHER

Erin K Drew's show Metamorpher at Big Car Gallery in Indianapolis showcased various recent artwork including sculptural installation, site-based painting, and framed works. Combining what appears to be innocent, cartoon-like iconography on the surface with more cynical undertones, Drew says that this body of work is helping her to get the past out of her system and move on with her life. "There's a lot of oversimplification of imagery," she says to explain the juxtaposition between childlike forms and dark emotional backdrops. The work evokes the imagery of the Tom Tom Club's cover art and the work of artists such as Bruce Nauman, Christopher Wool and Richard Prince through its reference to neon signs, its semiotic wordplay and its sharp sense of wit and humor. Some of the images below showcase Drew's artistic process insofar as it flows from source research material to the artist's notebook and finally to the gallery wall. For an added bit of irony, Drew utilized rejected blends of house paint for the wall mural in this exhibition, slyly mirroring her feelings of dismay.


Gender relations are also at stake here; Drew appropriates the form of the obelisk and completely flips its usual connotations. Whereas such monuments usually are phallic and serious in nature and commemorate honor, success, and actualized events, Drew's monument to boys she has had crushes on is feminine and playful and commemorates dishonor, defeat, and fantasy.
"All binaries are illusory," she is quick to point out.


Drew's play on cliches and wording in Metamorpher is quite clever. "OPPORTUNITY" spelled out in metallic birthday party banner style lettering ends up signifying two words even though only one is written ("Golden Opportunity").


"Party of One" simultaneously plays on restaurant reservation speak and conjures loneliness and self-celebration.

The "Liquid Courage" piece is especially interesting because it appropriates the iconography of liquor store signs that is all too commonplace and renegotiates its signification to endorse and broadcast what is normally taboo and shameful, the notion of needing liquor to have courage. Liquor, a commodity, is replaced by liquid courage, a form of existential way-finding. Drew muses that she is "Facing my problems, but also not facing. There's a veil."

Drew succeeds in making what is truly a very personal body of work both accessible and thought-provoking to a wide audience through her wit, light/dark humor and reference to popular vernacular. Her command of multiple mediums is impressive and her use of colors and source material is unexpected and unique. I had a conversation with Erin in two parts about her show. See what she had to say:

Conversations With Erin K Drew Part One from Charles Fox on Vimeo.

Kathryn Refi: RECORDS

On Friday we debuted a new exhibition at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (iMOCA) featuring seven years worth of Kathryn Refi's art called Records. Refi is based in Athens, Georgia and holds an MFA from the University of Georgia, Athens. Her art investigates daily life through the lens of scientific processes. She records data from her normal activities and uses the results to create very controlled art, which ironically gives her more artistic freedom.
Beginning to question notions of subjectivity and objectivity helped lead Refi to the implementation of scientific processes in her art. Just as a scientific experiment must contain controls, so does the process of creating art for Refi; controls serve to make sure that she only collects and represents in the final artwork exactly what data is relevant to the question she is probing. "The controls I put on the work give me more freedom and actually allow me to be free to some extent from the academic training I received as an artist. I don't use many of those things I've been taught, so it actually allows more freedom for the work to just be itself and not have to conform to ideas of aesthetics," she says.

Refi, a self-described creature of habit, has noticed that her daily life is very routine as a result of her explorations. Although the data collected in most of Refi's work that is on display here are directly referential to her own experiences, they still make the viewer question their own personal experience and the world around them. Unlike many artists who focus on a way of working or a specific theme for long periods of time, Refi sets out to explore a question and then moves on. As a result, her body of work is constantly changing and reflecting new questions, ideas and processes. "Ultimately, the questions that I'm trying to answer in my work are unanswerable, and that's half the point, and half the point is just keeping on searching even if you don't find an answer," Refi explains.

Here are some pics of us at iMOCA installing Light Readings (September 17, 2001). As you can see, the work is so large that it takes up an entire wall.

Light Readings (September 17, 2001), 2002, india ink and graphite on paper. This piece involved Refi wearing a hat with a weather recording device that also registers light for a period of 24 hours, beginning at midnight. The data was converted into gray scale; each square in the picture represents one minute of time. A black square represents complete dark, so it is evident when Refi was sleeping.

Color Recordings, 2006, oil on panel. There are seven of these paintings, one for each day of the week. This project saw Refi utilize a hat-mounted device again, this time for recording colors she observed. A computer program interpreted the data using the red green blue color scale, and 729 hues were generated. Each painting is 100 inches across, so one inch is 1% of a day's worth of color observed. The smallest amount of color in each painting is 1/16 of one inch, and the seven paintings each contain between 75 and 125 colors. In the example pictured above, the brilliant band of blue represents the camera detecting Refi's umbrella on a rainy day.

Address Book, 2003, oil on panel. In Refi's My Address Book series of paintings, she juxtaposes technology and analog ways of doing things: she hand-paints satellite images of locations from her address book. Refi had no cell phone during the creation of this series; as a result of cell phones, address books are now nearly obsolete. The views of the locations remind us how much technology has infiltrated our experience of way-finding. We merely plug addresses in to websites that give us satellite images and directions and no longer have to carry hand-written addresses or use directions that we have gleaned from paper maps. The objective format of representation conceals Refi's relationships with the people whose addresses are pictured; some may be close relations while others are addresses she had not actually visited.

Refi's other series of work included in Records is called All Things Considered and takes its name from the NPR radio program, which Refi listens to every day. The series includes 12 works on paper in which Refi listened to the show daily for a month and plotted each geographic location mentioned on a paper by placing a 1/16 of one inch red sticker. Using the Mercator projection as her basis but placing only the stickers on paper, a skewed map of the world emerges that metaphorically conjures the Mercator projection: North America is incredibly well-defined and large, while Africa and many other areas of the world are much less noticeable. Refi has noted that this work is very hard to photograph. The All Things Considered series is the most concrete example of a large realization Refi has made through her artwork: Everything is subjective. Radio news shows, Mercator projection maps and scientific studies are examples of "truths" that Refi knows to be highly subjective, and thus she feels that the blind faith people often place in scientific studies is problematic. "We trust the numbers more than the experience now," Refi muses.

The body of work presented in Records is thought-provoking in its uncommon methodology used in dissecting what appear to be very mundane experiences. Truly beautiful art has emerged from Refi's explorations. The scale and meticulous discipline and detail in each piece in the show is very impressive. The art could function as aesthetically appealing abstract, minimal work even without its conceptual backing, which is interesting considering how grounded and controlled it is by its conceptual basis. Engaging Refi's art means reevaluating one's daily life and what happens within it, as well as engaging questions of subjectivity and objectivity in the world around us.

I had a chance to ask Kathryn a few questions after her lecture at iMOCA. See what she had to say:

Conversations with Kathryn Refi from Charles Fox on Vimeo.

C O L L A B O R A T E
The current exhibition at Herron Galleries in Indianapolis is called COLLABORATE. We also have "Friends First: Collaborative Works by Brian Presnell" and "Work Product: Designs from the Walker Art Center" currently on view. This post shows some of the process behind the current exhibitions. Collaboration is crucial not only in the finished product of the exhibitions (the artwork), but also in the process of mounting the shows. My post as a gallery monitor/installation assistant allows me to be a part of this collaborative process, which is largely murky and curious to the general public. I hope this post sheds a bit of light on just what goes into mounting exhibitions of contemporary art.

VINYL. Most exhibitions feature vinyl logos and blocks of text. Many people might assume they are painted on with stencils or the like, but this is not the case. They are ordered at print shops and come to us with adhesive backing. We decide how we want the vinyl placed, then carefully use levels, rulers and painter's tape to place it correctly. We then remove the paper behind the adhesive and use a squeegee device similar to a credit card to smooth any air bubbles out and keep the adhesive firmly on the wall. Then we carefully remove the top layer of paper, and the job is done. In this case, we mounted a tricky vinyl logo onto a window. The small arrows at the bottom made this one difficult but we successfully mounted it without damaging the vinyl.





This mountain was painted onto one of our movable walls, which allow us to divide up our gallery space as well as mount artwork.



FABRICATION OF EXHIBITION COMPONENTS. Here at Herron Galleries, staff collaboratively build a lot of our own components such as pedestals and housings for media elements within our exhibitions. We worked together to build, paint and mount the boxes below. There are two parts to each box. The top part was painted white and fits over the bottom, which houses a Mac Mini that feeds content to monitors that are mounted on the wall. This was for Ultra Red's portion of the COLLABORATE exhibition.

CHRIS VORHEES AND STEVE LACY/ACADEMY RECORDS used overhead projectors to sketch two images directly onto our walls and also contributed similar framed works on paper for their portion of the exhibition.  Using a computer program, they turned images into blocks of text and numbers and then enlarged these "new" images onto the walls using overhead projectors.  The art is interesting in its investigation of our use of land and its assertion that technology is both a paradigm for seeing, and also waste in the case of the Indianapolis mall that is now a computer dumping ground.  They also created a limited run newspaper based on discussions with people in Indianapolis that is available to visitors.  Below are some pictures of the artists' process and two videos where they talk about their art.

Conversations with Chris Vorhees from Charles Fox on Vimeo.