Monday, May 6, 2013

Visiting Artist


Visiting Artist Lecture Series
Blaine De St. Croix


Blaine De St. Croix is the second visiting artist for the MCA visiting artist lecture series this spring.  Blaine flew in from Cincinatti and I met him at the airport.  He was a very sweet, and cute guy, that was friendly upbeat and interesting.  I enjoyed hearing him speak about his teaching position in Cincinatti and his frequent trips to New York as well as I enjoyed hearing about his art.  I actually spent some time with him as I was deemed his “Chauffeur” while he was here.  I have a 1998 Volvo, and although MCA may have called me a chauffeur on his personal itinerary, it wasn’t a Limo in which we were riding around Memphis.

Blaine’s work has taken him many places and he has talked about many different things in the “dialogues” that he engages in his work.  What seemed most important would be his research and the idea of some ecologically unsound or environmentally slighted due to the consumption of people.  I asked the question “Do you seek out the topics that you involved with or are you generally called on by others to talk about a topic?”  He said it was definitely a bit of both.  

Blaine’s work can be quite large and he often makes use of entire teams of interns to have work created.  He said he was overwhelmed at the number of people that would come together to work on a project for him, and that all the labor was pretty much done for free.  I, personally, think he should at least provide some lunch for these artists.   It is true that they have a choice in the matter, but Blaine told me about his ‘flat’ in New York, and it is entirely true that this man doesn’t have a huge shortage of money. 

Many of the interesting projects he has worked on includes an upside down mountain that engages the idea of mountain top removal coal mining, soil erision and deforestation.  Another of the striking and memorable pieces that he presented included a mile long recreation of a fence/border in New Mexico  that runs for a mile.  He recreated the entire topography and fence as exact as he possibly could.  It looks like a toy train miniature, except it is 100 feet long and is in the middle of Smack Mellon’s Gallery.  It’s a really painstakingly well developed and executed project.  I was amazed. 

Blaine came by my studio and talked with me about my work.  He enjoyed the painting that I had on display in Rust Hall. I had not even shown him any images, but he knew from my concept that it was my work.  However,  when we got to my studio, he really enjoyed the pornographic Shunga pieces that I had done better.  He thought they were more “interesting” as he put it.  I was kind of sad to see Blaine go.  We are facebook friends, and I have sent him a couple messages since then.  J

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