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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