The Almost Metal Collective
J A N U A R Y 10 – F E B R U A R Y 16 , 2 013
Curated by David Jones / Anchor Graphics
The Almost Metal Collective
In The Reenchantment of Art, Suzi Gablik writes,
“What happens to a culture without a living mythology
is that it gets addicted to whatever numbs the pain of
archetypal starvation and the vacuum of meaning.”1
In this exhibition, The Almost Metal Collective, we have a loose-knit group
of artists whose members are: Krista Hoefle, Jason Lahr, Sheilah Wilson, Rudy
Shepherd, and founding members of the Impractical Labor in Service of the
Speculative Arts (ILSSA) Bridget Elmer and Emily Larned. Through their various
practices, a cacophony of images and meanings is made manifest. Their activities
are directed by a personal inner commitment to expression, artistry, and
inspiration utilizing ideas, experience and various technologies to create their
highly individualistic pieces. The Almost Metal Collective exhibition was initiated
out of the desire to create something spontaneous and transformative, turning
the gallery into an environment conducive for both contemplation and exploration.
“What ties these artists together is that they are invoking the audience through
performance, process, and narrative. They are attempting in their various ways
to make sense of personal identity as it is impacted by cultural and social
influences. In the works that employ photographic (or other) performance
documentation (Sheilah Wilson and Rudy Shepherd, ILSSA), the camera or
other documentation device becomes an avatar for the audience. Objects in the
exhibition (Krista’s, Rudy’s and ILSSA) act as ‘bread crumbs’ that the audience
can follow towards participatory events—or the act of following these bread
crumbs is the participatory event. Dislocated images or imagery (Jason’s work,
the exhibition as a whole) requires the audience to piece together meaning
or narrative for themselves from a closed set. As such, the audience becomes
participatory and contingent in our works in a variety of ways, through our
diverse working methods and aesthetic approaches. As artists, we’re calling the
audience forth through aesthetic incantation. We’re conjuring the audience into
action, not through any overarching political rationale or directed manifesto, but
rather as aesthetic guides/mediums.”2
This work has been created out of a desire to make things for the love of making.
The participating artists come from very diverse backgrounds, and their working
methods are just as varied. “I love gadgets and gizmos, but I hate directions,”
says Krista Hoefle, an associate professor of art at Saint Mary’s College, Notre
Dame, Indiana. “When I’m teaching a particular technical process, I’ll show
students the ‘proper’ way, but if that way isn’t working out for them, we’ll adapt,
experiment, and uncover a new and inventive way of working.”3 Play enters into
the work; there has to be a willingness to be surprised by the burps of technology
and the happy accidents that result. But all is not entirely fun and games; Krista
Hoefle has created fictional characters who explore cyborg identity. She uses
electronic objects, prints, video, and large humanoid figures fashioned out of
large screen-prints on paper, as well as Poser-based digital (3D) “zombie-pose”
figures, which are digitally unfolded using Pepakura Designer. Ms. Hoefle created
a course at St Mary’s College called “Cyberfeminism_Creativity_Connectivity,” in
which Hoefle discusses gender roles in gaming as well as in film and literature.4
Fittingly, Hoefle’s Respawn consists of paper sculptures based on her online roleplaying game World of Warcraft character Kryzzik, a Mage Goblin.
Krista Hoefle
Intelligent Agent, 2012
video performance. Head sculptures fabricated using blender,
Pepakura Designer, and printed on paper
Suzi Gablik, The Renchantment of Art, (New York, Thames and Hudson Press 1991), 51
Krista Hoefle. (2012)
3
Krista Hoefle, About Me, http://kristahoefle.com/v3/aboutme/ (2012)
4
Krista Hoefle, Ibid
1
2
Jason Lahr’s work can be jarring, unnerving and humorous at the same time.
To put it mildly, it’s like putting your eyeballs in a blender, clicking the setting
to purée, then pouring them back into your head and looking at the paintings
anew. Lahr takes statements out of context and juxtaposes them with abstracted,
pixel-like forms, pop era drips, blobs and other visual references then paints
them alongside heavy metal band logos and other cultural signifiers. “The old
man grinned from behind the counter;” “Damn you just don’t see that everyday;”
“She bit her lip and thought to herself, Buddy you have no idea…” and other
phrases in Lahr’s paintings could have been taken from a dime store novel or
TV dialogue, or overheard on a train or while waiting in line at the grocery store.
Shapes and forms are juxtaposed with high-key colors along with rectangles and
squares, much akin to the pixilation you might see while watching cable when
the picture starts to lose its signal. Lahr’s paintings take pop culture motifs and
dare to update his work with images taken from contemporary culture, with its
signifiers and references to the digital age intact. Lahr states: “The images are
pulled from a wide range of popular and sub-cultural ephemera while the texts
are fragments that suggest their excision from a larger story, and give the reader/
viewer flashbulb glimpses at moments of narrative action.” He plucks and pulls
from the traditions of narrative painting but propels the work into a world built
from Generation X symbols with pop references; as Jason says, he works “like
a vulture picking through a mountain of cultural detritus. Centering on female
characters who occupy positions of authority and male characters who are
injured, inept, defeated, or perplexed by their dealings with women, the texts and
images combine to form narratives which question the wash of expectations and
assumptions we experience and create through popular culture.”5 Jason Lahr
received his M.F.A. in drawing and painting from Penn State University and his
B.F.A. in painting from Clarion University. Since 2004, he has been represented
by Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago.
To put it mildly, it’s like putting your eyeballs in a blender,
clicking the setting to purée, then pouring them back into
your head and looking at the paintings anew.
ABOVE: Jason Lahr
Hole in the Sky, 2011
oil & acrylic on canvas over panel
60 x 45 inches
RIGHT: Jason Lahr
Signal Jammer, 2012
oil and acrylic on panel
20 x 18 inches
Sheilah Wilson and Rudy Shepherd embody
the shaman and the oracle, mining the rich
field of the unconscious, both creating work that
blends the physical with the ethereal. They use
contemporary recording technology to document
events in attempts to capture the spirit. Sheilah
Wilson “acts as liminal ethnographer—adding,
deleting and imprinting as the unconscious image/
experience is translated into a photograph. First,
the line drawn by the participant is traced onto
Mylar and then exposed onto black and white
fiber paper. The resulting image exists as a thin
line of white on black. This line holds body to
experience, memory to desire for memory, the
possibility for one experience to mirror, and yet
be different, from another. I act as the medium
through which the verbal story passes as well,
transcribing the recorded stories into text, then
hand-deleting most sections to create a mirror of
areas of black; sections where the body rejoins the
mind are left visible.”6 Wilson uses photography,
5
6
Jason Lahr, http://www.jasonlahr.net/blog/?page_id=5 (2012)
Sheilah Wilson, http://sheilahwilson.com/short_statement.html (2012)
Sheilah Wilson
A Line Drawn Continuously and Without Looking
While You Tell Your Out of Body Experience, 2012
digital prints on fiber paper
20 x 24 inches each
video and text as a performative and documentary
tool in her attempts to pick through the seams
of narrative and image. Her Memory Translation
Machine further explores the ideas of memory, the
body, and imprinting directly onto the photographic
paper medium. “In this body of work, I have taken
memories submitted and then slept directly on
the printed memory and a roll of color film. After
a night’s sleep, the color film is processed. The
resulting light leaks and color variations are the
result of memories as translated through sleep.”7
“This body of work further investigates the role
of performance in photography, using the early
spiritualist photography as a starting point.
Spiritualism in the late 19th and early 20th
century used the medium of the body to try and
communicate with otherworldly presences. The
photograph was tangible proof that the spirit had
passed through the body of the medium, been
translated and become material again. This is an
intriguing way of subverting the ‘truth factor’ of
photography to yield a tenuous bind between
the image and the afterworld, or in Wilson’s case,
memory, photograph and the body.”8
Wilson creates an aesthetic based on paradox
and disparate themes to find her voice and speak
through lines of memory. With her marks and
photographs, she occupies the place of dreams,
that hallucinogenic place just before you nod off,
where dreams and reality mingle and one is hard
pressed to discern what is what. Wilson’s work is
a conscious effort to explore that place where the
unconscious thoughts and dreams mingle with the
known world. The artist acts as interpreter and seer.
Rudy Shepherd’s The Healer looks to the clouds and
embodies a divine character; absorbing negative
energy is his burden and task. There is no hectic
pace of consumption, no frantic rush to meetings or
appointments—rather, an intentional effort to heal,
to allow the blackness to absorb rather than reflect,
to be that outcast who walks against normative
behavior and says, “I will heal by my presence, my
blackness, my difference.” Blackness becomes
a positive metaphor for absorbing the negative
and harmful energies and hopefully emanating
positive or healing energy in return. He is currently
represented by Mixed Greens Gallery, NY.
artists in The Almost Metal Collective exhibition
are addressing their various realities in ways which
allow them to be participants rather than observers.
They are taking dreams, memories, turning water
to vapor and then back again, using Blackness
to absorb energy with an uncanny ability to tune
the frequency to absorb only the negative, and
emit healing energy. Each one of these artists
has created a role for him/herself to address the
mysteries of his or her time. They have each in
their own way broken the spell of disenchantment,
and are creating new myths and stories which will
create space for reflection, laughter, and healing.
Finally, there are the local shops of the ILSSA,
a membership organization for those who make
experimental or conceptual work with obsolete
technology (AS MANY HOURS AS IT TAKES!) The goals
of ILSSA include: (1) the establishment of a Union to
foster community, solidarity, and peer review; and
(2) the formation of a Research Institute to support
new ideas, communications, and resources.
—David Jones is the Founder and Director of Anchor
Graphics. Raised in the San Francisco Bay Area,
he moved to the Midwest to pursue studies in
photography and printmaking. He attended the Center
for Photographic Studies, Louisville; Banff Centre for
the Arts; the Vancouver School of Art; received his
BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute, and is currently
pursuing his MFA at Columbia College’s Center for
Book and Paper Arts. He has taught printmaking at
the Chicago Art Institute, Columbia College Chicago
and MIAD. Jones serves on the Advisory Board of the
Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis and
the Board of Directors of Southern Graphics Council
International. He was Interim Director at the Robert
Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, NYC, prior to moving
Anchor Graphics to Columbia College in 2006.
“Impractical Labor is a protest against contemporary
industrial practices and values. Instead it favors
independent workshop production by antiquated
means and in relatively limited quantities. Economy
of scale goes out the window, as does the myth that
time must equal money. Impractical Labor seeks
to restore the relationship between a maker and
her tools; a maker and her time; a maker and what
she makes. The process is the end, not the product.
Impractical Labor is idealized labor: the labor of love.”9
Throughout history there have been individuals
who define their time, and strive to put the work
that they create in the context of that time. The
Sheilah Wilson, Ibid
Sheilah Wilson, Ibid
9
ILSSA, http://www.impractical-labor.org/ (2012)
7
8
ILSSA
State of the ILSSA Union, 2012
installation view
dimensions variable
ILSSA
State of the ILSSA Union, 2012
works on paper
dimensions variable
As artists, we’re calling the audience forth through aesthetic incantation.
Rudy Shepherd
The Healer Emerges, 2012
3 channel video
ILSSA
State of the ILSSA Union, 2012
installation view
dimensions variable
A+D
ar t
+
design
AVERILL AND BERNARD LEVITON
GALLERY HOURS
A+D GALLERY
TUESDAY – SATURDAY
619 SOUTH WABASH AVENUE
11AM – 5PM
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60605
312 369 8687
THURSDAY
COLUM.EDU/ADGALLERY
11AM – 8PM
Krista Hoefle
Sheilah Wilson
Jason Lahr
Rudy Shepherd
Local shops of the ILSSA
(Impractical Labor in Service of the Speculative Arts)
This exhibition is sponsored by the Art + Design
Department at Columbia College Chicago and Anchor
Graphics. This exhibition is partially supported by an
Illinois Arts Council Grant, a state agency.
F RO N T COVER ART WORK: Sheilah Wilson
Memory Translation Machine, 2011
inkjet print, 42 x 42 inches
ANCHOR
GRAPHICS
BA C K C OVER ART WORK: Krista Hoefle
Respawn, 2012
screenprint on paper
site-specific installation; dimensions variable