The opening of an installation at the University of Chicago Renaissance Society.

Y’know, the more art I see, the more I realize how little of it interests me. There are only three types of work that tend to catch my attention these days (with rare exception): photography (naturally), video and installation art. Video has the ability to draw you in, often creating a package that makes you think what’s happening on screen is (or could be) real. But an installation can actually do it. Transforming a space, even into something normal but different, can often have such a jarring effect as to make the viewer question what’s real about the space and what isn’t.

I know this isn’t always the primary role of installation art, but many times it’s what I find most intriguing. Sometimes sculptures will embrace this transportational quality. I saw a show a few weeks back when my friend Eric Hancock was in town. The artist had created some type of treehouse in the clouds (although the whole thing looked eerily like a mushroom cloud), and even though I couldn’t climb in it, the scale made me feel like I could have. I instantly forgot that I was standing in a gallery, just looking at a piece of art. This doesn’t happen to me so much with paintings (or photography for that matter).

That’s probably not the best way to judge art, but it’s at least caused me to consider different ways of art-making.

I’m here in Milwaukee at the 2nd Annual Coalition for Photographic Arts Juried Exhibition. I didn’t even know about the show until today when Daniel Shea (a photographer I literally met for the first time this morning) told me about it, and offered me a ride. It’s been a great show, and I’ll be posting a video on photoawesome from it soon.

On my ride home from work. Just the way I like it: empty.

Now that I have wordpress on my phone, I think I’ll use it to post here more regularly. More semi-low-res photos to come.

We attended our first openings of the fall gallery season tonight, which was a lot of fun. It wouldn’t have been so, had our friends Katie and Eric not been there. They both left Atlanta/SCAD the same time we did, only Katie is now attending SAIC for her MFA, and Eric is racking up residencies and stuff left and right. I’m jealous of both. But we’re all here in a pretty great city, and it was a lively art scene tonight. Tons of people everywhere.

I’ve been teaching for three weeks now, and the possibility of another class at another school is possibly on the horizon. Steve (Aishman) always said they’d contact you at the last minute, and that advice (along with much other) has held true. So far the teaching has been incredibly rewarding. It’s weird, at times, to be completely in charge of the direction of a course. Not just the planning and syllabus and all that, but the simple direction day to day. I’ve been writing extensive notes about every single class meeting on the train home that evening, and I think that’s really helped keep me on track.

As a matter of fact, a student from another class was in the lab the other day, and when I asked her, she said that they were doing the exact same thing in her class that we were. It felt good to know we were on track.

The weather in this part of the country right now is phenomenal. It’s actually been a bit chilly lately (68°F high), but prior to that, it was around 90°F rarely, and generally in the mid to low 80s. I look forward to the snow for now, but I think I’ll live to regret those words.