ART:21 Blog!

Hi all,

I just wanted to share the news that the Meat after Meat Joy show in Boston made it to the PBS Art:21 blog!!!! Yeah! Below is the link...

Jenny

Meat After Meat Joy
By Sarah Sliwa
One of the last shows I saw in the United States before leaving for Belgium was Meat After Meat Joy, an exhibit of 10 contemporary artists who use meat in their work, that was on display June 21- July 20 at the Pierre Menard Gallery in ...
Art21 Blog - http://blog.art21.org

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www.jennywaltonart.com

I want to live my life not by the regret of "what if", but by its possibilities. -ME

What lies behind us and what lies before us are nothing compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Interview with Heide Hatry on Big Red & Shiny

There was a pretty great interview with Heide Hatry, the curator of the show "Meat after Meat Joy" by Christian Holland of Big Red & Shiny. You can read the article by clicking here.

The opening was fabulous and I was fortunate to be able to attend. There were a lot of people in attendance. I'm not sure if they came for the idea of spectacle the show presented, but I'm certainly hoping they came away with a much deeper understanding of the relationship between artist and subject.

I spoke with the director of Pierre Menard last week and they are extending the show's schedule in Cambridge through this month, so you may still have some time to go check it out. I have to say it is a true pleasure to be showing with the other artists in the show.

New work in DCAC Wallmountables

Including work by
Jenny Walton

with previously unseen
paintings on the East Coast
and a new drawing!

1460 WALLMOUNTABLES
July 18 - August 31
Opening Reception: July 18, 7-9pm

DC Arts Center
2438 18th St. NW
Washington, DC 20009

gallery hours:
Wed - Sun 2-7pm

to see more work by Jenny click here
to visit the gallery's website click here

More reviews

• Press from the Boston Globe for the opening
• New review on show in Weekly Dig
• Wicked Local
• College on the Record
• Boston Globe, July 1
  

Review in Cambridge Chronicle

Meat meets art in Cambridge gallery
By Christopher Loh
Thu Jun 26, 2008, 06:42 AM EDT

Cambridge -

The title of the art show at the Pierre Menard Gallery raises a lot of questions, and even fewer answers, which may be a good thing for the artists of the “Meat After Meat Joy” exhibition.

The 10 artists whose works decorate the exhibit, which opened Saturday, used animal meat as a medium in some form or another.

Some artists used meat as an actual tool to create their art — Zuang Huan filmed himself walking around New York City in a body suit made of meat — while others, like David Raymond, used meat as their subject matter.

“[Meat] struck me as having visual properties I had not explored,” said Raymond, whose paintings are featured in the show. “I was more interested in treating it like a post-life subject and began to use butcher cuts of meats — rib roast, pork chops, steaks — which struck me as something as a commoditization as a designed object meant for sale, meant to at first, attract someone for sale. I found that an interesting angle worth investigating.”

Raymond began working with meat intensely in 1990 when he noticed a piece of chuck steak.

“Up close, it looked like a piece of geography,” Raymond said. “If you think about the nature of organic things, they share properties, it’s that organic-ness, that soft-growth pattern of things. Now, they’re altered by someone making a cut or shape, like a road cutting through the earth.”

Visitors to the gallery can examine a flag made of pure raw meat and meat fat.

The flag’s sculptor, Betty Hirst, also produced an opened book made of frozen raw meat and, possibly disturbing, a baby girl on a pink blanket composed of dried meat.

The show’s curator and fellow meat artist, Heide Hatry, grew up on a pig farm and said for her, meat is a “primordial fact of life, even if it is a highly problematic one.”

Hatry said the show, entitled, “Meat After Meat Joy,” hails from a performance by Carolee Schneeman in the 1960s.
The show consisted of “scantily” dressed people “writhing and interacting” among dead animals and animal parts — the show, in some part seemed to be a celebration of life as the tone was joyous even though life ultimately results in death. The show also acted as a statement that people “embrace the forces of destruction.”

While Raymond’s exploration into the visual aspects of meat is not meant to be a political statement on the treatment of animals — Raymond does eat meat, although he finds the treatment of animals for slaughter disturbing — for some, the work displayed in “Meat After Meat Joy” will definitely raise those questions.

“We hope that this exhibit causes people to stop and think about the experience inflicted on millions of chickens, lambs, pigs, cows and other animals every day — and consider stopping this cycle of violence by trying a humane vegetarian diet,” said David Perle, spokesman for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals organization.

Nathan Censullo, who works at the gallery, insisted the works were not meant to be statements on the audience’s dietary habits.

“I don’t necessarily think this has anything to do with making a commentary on people’s diets,” Censullo said. “It’s a bunch of people looking at the same material and finding value for what they want to do. That’s sort of the interesting thing — it’s a bizarre, weird activity. There’s not a whole lot of people that are doing this. Not that this hasn’t been done before, but that doesn’t matter, it’s what we’re doing now.”

Meat After Meat Joy

Meat After Meat Joy

June 21 through July 20, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 21, 6 - 9pm

Curated by Heide Hatry, Meat After Meat Joy investigates the paradoxical relationship meat has to the body. Meat combines flesh, skin, muscle, organs, blood — yet meat's only reference to the body is as a once-upon-a-time living biological thing. By putting these artists together, Meat After Meat Joy seeks to investigate the uncanny effect meat has as a medium for artist and viewer. This group exhibition brings together the work of 10 contemporary artists who use meat in their practice

Nezaket Ekici / Anthony Fisher / Betty Hirst / Zhang Huan
Tamara Kostianovsky / David Raymond / Dieter Roth
Carolee Schneemann / Jana Sterbak
Jenny Walton

www.pierremenardgallery.com
Pierre Menard Gallery
10 Arrow St
Cambridge, MA 02138
p: 617.868.2033

Free museum entrance with Bank of America

So I found this while browsing. Its a really cool program from Bank of America that pays for your museum admission the first weekend every month in select museums if you have a bank of america card. Its really cool and actually real!

http://promotions.bankofamerica.com/museums/?cm_mmc=ENT-Funded-_-Google-PS-_-museums%20on%20us-_-Brand

Upcoming shows for Jenny Walton

Meat After Meat Joy art exhibit

Saturday, June 21, 2008 - Sunday, July 20, 2008

12:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Pierre Menard Gallery

10 Arrow Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Meat After Meat Joy brings together the work of 10 contemporary artists who use meat in their work.

Free and open to the public,
with an opening reception on Saturday, June 21, 6-9 pm.

Phone: (617) 868-2033

Age Suitability: 18 and up

Tags: visual art, contemporary art, experimental art

Meat After Meat Joy brings together the work of 10 contemporary artists who use meat in their work.

Curated by Heide Hatry, Meat After Meat Joy investigates the paradoxical relationship meat has to the body. Meat combines flesh, skin, muscle, organs, blood — each with its own relationship to the body, yet meat's only reference to the body is as a once-upon-a-time living biological thing. By putting these artists together, Meat After Meat Joy seeks to investigate the uncanny effect meat as a medium is for artist and viewer. This is not a show about meat as spectacle but about meat as signification, precisely because meat does not signify (a body) but its very annihilation.

Skin is the body's largest organ and greatest protection. It is the body's most public point of vulnerability and private realm of pleasure. Flesh is associated with the body; it cannot be separated from the body except when it is torn, crucified, burned, flayed. Muscle and fat are anatomy, as well as the fit body, the football body, the anorectic body, the fat body.

Meat is the body without skin. It has no identity. Meat cannot have a mood, cannot feel, nor have an intention. It cannot die or even remember having been killed. It is not a metaphor but matter. Meat cannot have a soul. When a suicide bomber blows up a wedding, a funeral, a café creating sprawling mass of bloody, fleshy, skinless, blobs and chunks human beings and animal are turned into meat. In William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984), when Cases's body is unhooked from the computer and no longer jacked into cyberspace, it becomes "meat". Meat has no notion of being-in-the-world.

And yet, an exhibition on meat seems like an obvious continuation of discussions of contemporary art and the body. Certainly in relation to feminism, meat has been an erotic and eschatological component of a liberatory, transgressive discourse of female sexuality and the body beginning with Carolee Schneemann's path-breaking 1964 Meat Joy. After Meat Joy, the female body was no longer the 'poulet" or chick but an erotic and political force of the laugh of the Medusa (Helene Cixous) — the writhing ecstatic female body freed from the constraints of patriarchal definition (meat is the indefinable flesh) that expresses an epistemology (Interior Scroll 1975) into ontology (the feminist movement). In Meat Joy, although controversial, raw meat — animal human — and the human body are at their most uncontested and merged, for meat is not the absence or the other the body but an act of reclamation and affirmation of all that patriarchy had previously "disemboweled" from the female body.

But what kind of commentary about being and the body is Zuang Huan's Meat Suit within the context of the body as meat of the suicide bomber? Both amusing and terrifying; beautiful and nauseating — Meat Suit is both super hero and carcass; literal description of the body as meat as well as explosive metaphor of the body as raw meat in the age of virtual reality and suicide bombing. Then again, what is Betty Hirst's crowned circumcised sushi penis asking of meat and the body in Penis. It calls up the penis of the female to male transsexual, a limb fashioned out of skin and muscle from other parts of the body. It signifies raw humor (literally skinning the phallus), and raw critique as it juxtaposes the skin of a body with the skinless shape, the act of sculpting and photographing, playing this skinless dick to the anonymous white skinned body on which it lays. But the body is never there in any of these interpretations – only the raw meat that has been carved(?) sewn(?) rolled(?) into this representation of the phallus which, for psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, was never the penis, but the Grand Signifier.

Besides the work of Schneemann (www.caroleeschneemann.com), Huan (www.zhanghuan.com), and Hirst (www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/Betty+Hirst/25929.html), Meat After Meat Joy also features work by the following artists:
Jana Sterback (www.janasterbak.com)
Tamara Kostianovsky (www.tamarakostianovsky.com)
Nezaket Ekici (www.ekici-art.de)
Dieter Roth (www.dieter-roth-museum.de)
Anthony Fisher (http://home.comcast.net/~a.anthonyfisher/index.html)
David Raymond (http://l5-din-a4.org/draymon.html)
Jenny Walton (www.jennywaltonart.com)
Following the run at the Pierre Menard Gallery, Meat After Meat Joy will travel to Daneyal Mamood Gallery in New York City in the Fall of 2008.

Background information:

Curator Heide Hatry is a painter, sculptor, photographer and performance artist, who has also been trained as a printer, art historian and rare bookseller. She curated the exhibition entitled SKIN, in which she assembled work by seven woman artists, whose primary subject, and in some cases, medium, is skin. The show was mounted at the Heidelberger Kunstverein, the Goethe Institute in New York, and several commercial galleries. She also published the book Skin, several catalogs for artists including Carolee Schneemann and is currently working on a book about portraits, as well as completing the exhibition catalog for Meat After Meat Joy. She curated a show for Elga Wimmer Gallery in New York about body-related performance art, which will travel during 2008. For more information on Hatry, visit www.heidehatry.com.

The Pierre Menard Gallery was founded in 2006 by John Wronoski, proprietor of the well-known international rare book firm, Lame Duck Books (founded 1984). In its first year, the gallery mounted an exhausting 17 shows. The gallery's space allows for multiple simultaneous exhibitions. Among the artists exhibited have been Lucien Clergue, Jim Peters, Hiroyuki Hamada, Jan Saudek, Josef Sudek, Christian Bastian, Matt Weber, Gordon Wagner, Rikki Ducornet and Elena Urbaitis. Exhibition catalogs have been produced to accompany the majority of its shows, often with contributions by prominent authors, art historians and critics. Nathan Censullo is the gallery's director. Log onto www.pierremenardgallery.com for more details.

I need your help to plant a forest

From my friend Justin:

Greetings,

I have some exciting news to share with you. The Baltimore Sculpture
Project has invited my project 7,000 Evergreens to be part of its
2008-2009 show, which will open July 17 and remain open through May
2009. The Baltimore Sculpture Project is a public sculpture show in
downtown Baltimore, so we are thrilled to have the opportunity to gain
exposure for our project and further explore the creative
possibilities for artificial trees in the landscape.

The 7,000 Evergreens project will install a forest of artificial
evergreen trees for the Baltimore show, and we are currently seeking
donations of unwanted plastic Christmas trees and other artificial
evergreens. We will accept trees of all colors, sizes, shapes and
varieties. If you have a tree that you would like to donate, or if
you know someone who does, please contact me to arrange pickup or
delivery of the tree.

Information about the show opening is forthcoming.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Want to make Art? We are always seeking volunteer planters. Now it
is easier than ever to plant a tree and send documentation to us. If
you have a Flickr account, simply add your photo to our 7,000
Evergreens Flickr group and the photo will appear on the 7,000
Evergreens website!

Best,
-Justin

7,000 Evergreens
www.7000evergreens.org

headed to P town!

I'm headed to Portland to visit old friends this weekend and pick up
some of my favorite Washington Wine by Waving Tree Winery. I'm hoping
to hit the Pearl District while out there and see what Portland has
been up to in the Arts since I left before grad school. I'm hoping to
get some great Northwest air and be in wide open spaces.

The Associated Press: Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg dies in Fla. at 82

The Associated Press: Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg dies in Fla. at 82

A true loss.

Announcing new website and shows!

Please check out my new website!
You can now enjoy my work at

www.jennywaltonart.com

detail of Barely Tethered, 2007

**Very special thanks go to Jeff and Daniel at J.S. Rum & Co. for their time and efforts!

_______________________________________________

Opening Today!!!

I can be found on the 9^th floor in front of the movie theatre.

The outsider's anatomy lesson II, 2008
wood, plexiglass, ink, light

You can check out the complete website for more info and
my page on the artist catalog at http://www.artomatic.org/user/592

______________________________

Closing Sunday May 11th!

Sparkplug Collective at DCAC gallery in Washington, DC (www.dcartscenter.org ). 
closes on Sunday May 11, so check it out soon!
_____________

If all of that has not kept me busy enough, There will be a day of workshops hosted by
Sparkplug members at DCAC May 10^th starting at 2pm in conjunction with Learnapalooza. 
A day of free workshops around the city.  We will be available to discuss our work in the show as well. 
For a full listing of workshops go to http://www.learnapaloozadc.com/workshops/list

Urbancode Magazine: DCAC's Sparkplug!!

Urbancode Magazine: DCAC's Sparkplug!!

Sparkplug mention in DCartnews and Hoogrrl

Thanks Lenny and Philippa for the posts!

http://www.hoogrrl.com/2008/04/arty-stuff-this-week_29.html

http://dcartnews.blogspot.com/2008/04/dcacs-sparkplug-opens-this-coming.html

Come see me at Artomatic!

DCAC announces Sparkplug Show, including Jenny Walton

DCAC's Sparkplug
Curated by Lea-Ann Bigelow
2438 18th Street NW
Washington, DC

May 2 - May 11

Opening reception on Friday May 2, 7 - 9 pm

DC Arts Center's resident collective Sparkplug launches its first exhibition as part of an ongoing pursuit of adventures beyond the commercial gallery system. Sparkplug is a gathering of a dozen or so Washington, DC metro area emerging artists, curators and writers that meet once a month to discuss their work, explore common concerns and ideas, grow their community, and dream up creative engagements both in DC and around the globe.

This inaugural two-week catalyst show will include work by: Deborah Carroll Anzinger, Peter Gordon, Lisa McCarty, Kathryn McDonnell, Michael Matason, Mark Planisek, Karen Joan Topping and Jenny Walton. What began as a collaborative pooling of images for submission to the rash of art slideshow presentations (popping up at venues all over the country) has morphed into a full blown installation of artworks; an investigation and discovery of entropy, place and system in the Nation's Capital. The goal of Sparkplug is to identify superior artists, curators and arts writers without current gallery representation or institutional employ, to provide them with an ongoing source of support, inspiration and encouragement, and to enlist them in the long-term development of a vital DC Arts Center collective. Sparkplug is still actively seeking members - dedicated visionaries with a broad range of backgrounds and experiences and a diversity of professional preoccupations and creative aspirations - from all communities in the Washington, DC region.

Some of the artists will be on hand on Saturday, May 10th from 3:00 PM to 6:00 PM to discuss the show, their work, and Sparkplug at the DC Arts Center.

a couple shows this weekend for thought

Hey all,

I think I'm going to try to hit these shows Sunday Morning if you want to come. 

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF WOMEN IN THE ARTS"The Book as Art," through April 13; "Louise Nevelson: Dawn's Wedding Feast," through May 18; "Paula Rego," through May 25. Open indefinitely: Selections from the permanent collection and the silver collection. Open Monday-Saturday 10 to 5, Sunday noon to 5. $10, students and seniors $8, ages 18 and younger free; free on first Sunday each month. 1250 New York Ave. NW. 202-783-5000.

NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY"Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture," through Oct. 26; "Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits," through Sunday; "Kate: A Centennial Celebration," through Oct. 5. Open daily 11:30 to 7. Eighth and F streets NW. 202-633-1000 (TDD: 202-633-5285).

** I attended the WPA sponsored talke by the Wooster Collective on Wednesday at the Katzen Museum and found it to be a great lecture by passionate supporters of street and ephemeral art.  Check them out online at...  http://www.woostercollective.com.  At that time I also checked out the works that were selected for the annual auction and found several pieces to be exciting and intriguing.  I know there are several talks this weekend by artists and curators for the auction 


--
www.jennywalton.blogspot.com

what is art?

There has been an incredible amount of change in the last few weeks. Currently I'm working approximately 70 hours a week tidying up the two jobs I'm leaving and preparing for the one I'm taking. My new position at International Arts and Artists is very interesting and I'm excited about the possibilities. Though I'm very sad to be leaving my current jobs, I do hope to stay in touch with the friends I work with and continue to see what is happening in their lives.

I'll be moving into my studio this weekend, which I'm looking forward to. As soon as my crazy work schedule eases up, I'll be spending a great deal of time over there creating my heart out. I'm looking forward to getting into the process of painting again. I'm not sure I'll be able to pour for a while due to weather limitations, but will certainly be working on the portraits promised to Mom and Dad for Christmas. . .

News in the life and times of Jenny Walton...

Hi all!

I needed to write this after the insistence of my best friend Kimiko. You can blame her for the novel to follow....

Just have to say what a topsy turvy life!

In the last year (2007) I have finished graduate school. Which is no small feat, I must say. I changed my art work entirely a week before the thesis show and also developed it much further at a residency program in upstate New York. I thought that those two things were the difficult parts. Oh, was I wrong.

It was when I was leaving my residency that life got more interesting. I suddenly realized I didn't really have an address, other than where my parents collected my mail for me in Washington State. I wanted to go back to the DC area, but was unsure of how that was going to happen with no money and no job. The week of August 18th held a lot of highs for me. I got my old job back, thanks to one of the best bosses that I've ever had. He called me and asked for me to come back (still part time) after my replacement up and quit, and I sold several of my paintings. Between these two financial boons, I was able to head my car tentatively in the direction of DC. I was able to find a pet sitting gig for a couple weeks and headed straight there from New York. I started pounding the streets for a full time job in hopes of being able to find more permanent housing. From the pet sitting gig I found a great, if not just a little too decrepit sub lease in the Dupont Circle area of DC for a month.

Then it was on to more searching for jobs and houses. I found another pet sitting gig, but it was really more being an actual pet nanny. All I'm going to say if you have to have a pet nanny, you have too many pets. But, it was a decent neighborhood, I got to walk dogs everyday, and the rent was decently cheap for the interim period of a part time budget. I won't say that the demands of sometimes at least 14 animals, most with special needs and better food that I could feed myself, didn't bother me, even though I had animals as a kid.

In desperation I started searching not just the art related jobs but also the secretarial job sections and managed to come up with an arts administration position working as an office manager in a literary non profit. It was great to have benefits and a full time job, but being a non-profit, I still had to keep the part time job as well to keep up. Once things started looking better financially I found a house in the Maryland suburbs of DC with some pretty great roommates. Its about a 20 minute (5 mile) drive to work in the mornings.

I even had a studio practically land in my lap. I've been working with a collective artists through a contact at my residency, and happened upon one of the fellow artists minutes after they gave up their lease on their studio. For those that don't know, finding an affordable studio space is like winning the lottery here in DC. I get to move in to my first professional studio on the 1st of February. I'm truly excited about it.

So...then things got even more interesting in the last week. From my plastering of resumes in August, I got a call from another non-profit that wanted to interview me. I decided that I would at least keep my interview skills honed, as some things at my full time job were becoming increasingly frustrating. So after finally getting a hold of the contact there I had one day to prepare for the interview. I desperately tried to find a place to get my hair cut at 7 pm that wouldn't sweep a Franklin out with my hair, but couldn't do it. It was then plan B to go buy a straightener and some humidity balm so I at least didn't look like I had a crows nest on my head. Well that didn't work so well. We had a big snow storm the day of the interview, so I actually walked in the office after thinking I would be late because traffic was literally going 4 mph, with a miniature snowman on my head! By the time I looked at myself in the mirror several hours later, I thought if I got a call back, it certainly wasn't due to my appearance. It was frightening! That was Thursday.

Friday I went into work and thought, "CRAP!" Especially after having a golden carrot dangled in front of me the previous day. I got a call at lunch time to clarify some questions from the Executive Assistant and by 6:30 on Friday, I had my first offer. By 7:30 I had my second offer as I was sitting down eating some of the best fish and chips around with my roommates. I thought I was going to be able to make the switch until I woke up at 4 am with night sweats that it just wasn't right and started crunching the numbers. I would have had to give up my new studio that was a dream come true and take a pretty big cut in my current earnings. Who knew how much a part time job could bring in?!

So.. I turned it down after having breakfast with a good friend who was there to support me saying no. It hurt. A LOT. Though they understood and said I couldn't give up my studio, it still hurt to say no. Saturday was spent in a big funk and even bigger when I had to go to to work and realize I was staying. While at work, I got another call. This time with something better that the full time job, but less than the two jobs I have put together. I was really excited. This guy really believes in me, not to mention he doesn't really take no for an answer. I kinda like that. After interviewing with him, he's got big plans and the drive to get there.

So Sunday after making a freezing cold, standing in line at #15 for an hour, sprinting to the last three rooms, and standing staring at Edward Hopper's Sun in an Empty room for 20 minutes before the THOUSANDS of people got there and made it impossible to see anything, I called my new boss, and said yes. Going to the Edward Hopper exhibit and literally seeing thousands of people standing in line wrapping every which way and out the doors to see art work helps me understand the power of art and why its important not just as an artist, but also to the public.

So after I turned down the dream job, they fortunately believe in me enough that they came back with an offer that I could accept financially. Thank goodness! So, I'll be handing in my resignation tomorrow. Its going to be incredibly hard and I hope wonderful new job that I can actually say is a career as well and not just a day job. I will be working with a visual arts non profit that promotes visual art and cross cultural understanding through art all over the world, AND they also promote and help local artists as well. Awesome! So for the next couple weeks I'm going to be working three separate jobs, the two I'll be leaving and the one I'll be training for.

You can check out my new adventure as Executive Assistant to the President at http://www.artsandartists.org/

Hope this finds you all well and happy in the new year!

And if you read all of this...you've got the patience of saint, and I thank you.