Author Archives: mveitch

April 4, 2012

Wrought from the ghosts of card catalogs past: David Bunn’s Subliminal Messages

Card catalog drawer, Uploaded to Creative Commons by Kevin Harber, 2011

Card catalog drawer, Uploaded to Creative Commons by Kevin Harber, 2011

Once upon a time, before computers were everywhere, looking for a library book required real preparation. To have any hope of success, you needed to be ready with a title, author, or official Library of Congress “subject” in mind.

The catalog you consulted was a hefty piece of furniture filled with endless index cards. There was nowhere to type your stream-of-consciousness haiku, that eminently Google-able mush we all hastily deposit into online library catalog search fields now.  No autocorrect options ever popped up to suggest what you might be looking for. That was the librarian’s job.

Library patrons search the catalogs of yesteryear. (uploaded to Creative Commons by Providence Public Library, 2004)

People spent time with these card catalogs. They spilled coffee on them.  Pawed through with grubby fingers. Leaked ink or made stray marks with their pens. Sometimes, they even editorialized on cards by adding a comment or crossing out words.  Paper card catalogs were imminently hack-able, no programming knowledge needed.  Brevity, however, appears to have been an important skill  – you might only have time to quickly scrawl a word or two without being noticed.

I often wish I could have been a librarian back in the heyday of card catalogs and so David Bunn’s Subliminal Messages, one of the many gems in our collection of artists’ books, holds a special appeal for me.

In a series of high-resolution scans, he presents noteworthy specimens from the discarded catalog of the Los Angeles Central Library.   A progression of elegant pairs, one page will feature a card in its entirety while the next presents a full-page close-up of whatever mischief may have befallen it.

Ink smears between pages look like Rorschach tests. Two stray marks on the “Vampire” title cards look menacingly like teeth.  On the card for a 1966 volume titled Mexican American youth: Forgotten youth at the crossroads, a simple editorial note appears: “Racist.”

The oscillation between close-up and long-view scans creates an intriguing tension between the anthropological nature of the project and the abstract beauty of marks on paper fibers. There are bleeds and blots, quick dashes of ink or mystery sauce.

Today’s online catalogs facilitate improved searching, but there are fewer twists and turns along the way — less commentary, fewer signs of encounter.  Luckily, art can always help to rescue the physical and tactile from the force of forgetting.

– Madeline Veitch

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January 31, 2012

From the Studio to the Stacks – A conversation with George Jenne

An altered film poster from George Jenne's 2010 exhibition Don't Look Now

This post is the third in a series focused on MFA students and their research

For first-year MFA student George Jenne, films are not just for watching – they are landscapes in which to explore new ideas: “In terms of working out ideas and getting synapses firing, I do drawings from film stills.  I have this digital library of images taken from the Internet – a lot of them are campy or B movies, but drawing them is a way to pull back and work through an idea – to meander for a while and find a focus point.”

Prior to starting at UNC-Chapel Hill this fall, Jenne spent ten years doing commercial prop and set work alongside his own art, basing his operations out of a studio in Brooklyn, New York. During that time he learned how to work with a variety of materials and tools, including wood, metals, plastics, and textiles. Since starting the MFA program, he has been challenged to simplify his approach to art-making. “I’ve been shedding some technical stuff, paring down. For instance, I just did a piece for which I shot a bunch of video of existing objects but decided that I couldn’t make any sculptural elements. It became more of a collected assemblage.”

Don't Look Now, installation view

Jenne’s work deals with memory, mortality, fetish, and – he reports with a glint in his eye – “notions of fakery.”  In Don’t Look Now, a 2010 exhibition in Washington DC, he revisited films that had affected him as a child, deliberately misinterpreting works like Treasure Island and Dawn of the Dead to create an eerily beautiful collection of sculptures and two-dimensional works.  Of the films themselves, he noted “they’re films that feel like they were made in a vacuum; the ambient quality is super quiet.”

The installation dealt with the monstrous in a way that suggested an “abject nostalgia” for pre-adolescent ways of seeing.  In a room adjacent to the main gallery he screened clips from the films themselves, revealing to viewers the reference points from which he had spun his imagery. The screening served as an archival accompaniment to the work, bringing the artist’s research process to life.

Clean Cut, 2003

Detail, Mechanism for Innocent Obscenities

Detail, Mechanism for Innocent Obscenities

With regard to his research process, Jenne has a longer history with UNC libraries than most graduate students.  His dad was an Urban Planning professor at Chapel Hill, so when George was growing up he spent afternoons and vacations with full run of Davis Library. When he moved back to the area from New York he resumed a weekly study routine, this time at the Sloane Art Library.  

There are still corners of the larger collection he’d like to get to, including the Stetson Kennedy files, which are held at Wilson Library.  Kennedy was an author, folklorist, and activist known for his undercover infiltration work to expose Klu Klux Klan groups in the 1940s and 50s.

Jenne’s use of the library includes fiction as well as exhibition catalogs and artists’ writings. Currently he’s reading  Mark Rothko’s Writings on Art and Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Breakfast of Champions He has also been looking at Sterling Ruby and Jack Goldstein.  

What would he check out from a fantastical library in which anything was possible? Probably a submarine. Or maybe some kind of space pod.

– Madeline Veitch

old school submarine

"First Ever Submarine." Photo by Matt Debnam, Creative Commons, 2009.

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December 9, 2011

Provenance, memory, and mystery: Reflections on cataloging auction catalogs

Got provenance?  Custodial history?  Though they’re born out of art markets rather than academia, the 9,000 auction catalogs we have stowed away in storage could include valuable information for students of art history – a color reproduction of a work, dates of auctions, or the name of an elusive buyer or seller.

One of the nearly 9,000 auction catalogs being made more accessible through this project.

I should know – I’ve spent the last few months up to my knees in these lovely volumes, creating records so that you’ll be able to search for them in the library catalog.

Until now, this large collection has not been represented in the library catalog. The only way to access it was to consult an out-of-the-way spreadsheet and request the materials from storage. Once we received a request, finding a single volume could be a Herculean task.  An intrepid library staff member would bravely wade into a sea of over two hundred boxes only loosely organized by auction house and year.  Unable to find specific volumes easily, our adventurer had to locate several boxes which might contain the right materials and haul them across campus to the Art Library.  With each box weighing in at over forty pounds, exploratory ventures required some serious brawn. As we give each auction catalog its own record, though, the process is becoming much more user- (and staff-) friendly!

Another, from 1956.

So what exactly does cataloging entail?  This is a common question, although it usually results in immediate regret on the part of the inquirer.  I’ve tried to discuss this project at potlucks and family dinners alike, and at the mere mention of “adding fields and updating formats” most people make a mad dash for the nachos.

I’ll spare you the technicalities – in short, there are a lot of rules and coding standards – because cataloging has a beautifully tactile and historical dimension. Over the course of the project, I will touch every volume of the collection that I create a record for, most of which were produced by Sotheby’s and Christie’s between the 1940s and 2010.  You can see revolutions in printing unfold, as exquisite black-and-white plates are replaced by color plates, and finally full image reproductions embedded with the text on the pages themselves.

Wouldn't you love to bid on something from this house? I mean, this 'palatial mansion'?

The language and tone of “the sell” has also shifted over time.  In the 1940s, catalogs often featured pictures of the estates from which the works came, a habit that was phased out by the 1970s, along with elegant fonts and wordy titles.  Adjectives have been worn out and replaced over the years. Works that were once “notable” or “fine” are now “important,” “very important” or presented sans modifier.  In the 1990s, Christie’s apparently thought that a hot pink typeface might help to sell neoclassical decorative arts — a bold move into uncharted territory.

I hope they remembered what it was they wanted...

The catalogs donated to UNC were no doubt used by prospective buyers, many of whom absentmindedly stuck papers between the pages. Letters, postcards, notices, and notes-to-self slip from between the volumes as I flip through, trying to decide whether I’d characterize the illustrations as “col. ill.” or “ill (some col.).” One of my favorite finds, from between the pages of a 40-year-old catalog, is this yellowed note that reads simply “DON’T FORGET.”

–Madeline Veitch

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October 28, 2011

Filing Cabinet as Treasure Chest: Diving into the Artists’ File

There’s an unassuming row of grey filing cabinets along the back wall of the Art Library’s first floor.  In their quiet nook beside the scanners, these cabinets house a veritable treasure trove of artifacts.

Image copyright Creative Commons, Origamidon, South Burlington, VT, 2004.

Packed away, you’ll find the creative detritus of over 7,000 artists – including exhibition invitations, small catalogs, newspaper clippings, and posters.  You almost expect to happen upon a lucky shoelace or a tube of Pantone 292.

The collection of ephemera in the artists’ file has been built up over the course of several decades. Most of the materials come to us via UNC’s Ackland Art Museum, but some also come directly from artists themselves and other donors. No matter the source, the file offers the researcher or browser an opportunity to come across unique and unexpected artifacts.

The materials are mostly loose in the file cabinets – no library of congress call numbers to tame the riotous explosions of colorful paper.  Every artist with three or more “objects” has been given a file folder with a name label as well as a record in the online catalog.  For artists with fewer than three artifacts, each floats freely, filed in alphabetical order by the artist’s last name.

This relative chaos is no tragedy, though;  in fact, it derailed my own searching in the best possible way.   Having read through the list of all artists represented in the file I thought I knew exactly what I was looking for.  But once I dove into the packed cabinets, I quickly stumbled on work by over a dozen artists that weren’t on my list.  What follows are some of the highlights.

Christo and Jean Claude's "Wrapped Mirror," 1963.

In a folder containing Christo’s documents, I came across a clipping from Time Magazine, dated February 7, 1969.  Reading through, I encountered this little zinger: “Christo – he never uses his surname – knows how to muffle a rampant motorcycle so that it acquires the petrified dynamism of a stuffed buffalo or a blind-folded rhinoceros. He can embalm a slender sapling so that it lies with the mute pathos of Pearl White bound and gagged on the railroad track.”

In case you’re as out of loop as I was, Pearl White was a star of silent movies, known for her sassy stunt work.  Included alongside this article was a mailing from an art dealer advertising the sale of a piece entitled “wrapped mirror.”  In a humorous twist, the shift of scale from architectural to domestic renders Christo and Jean-Claude’s work almost ordinary, the mirror looking as if it were ready to be loaded onto the U-haul, driven across town, and unwrapped.

Elin O'Hara Slavick. (1998). Post colonial girl: paper doll. Glen Mills, PA: Paper Crane Press. pp. 2-3

UNC’s studio art faculty have some of the more complete files, and it was exciting for me to learn new things about their work.  The artists’ book Post Colonial Girl Paper Doll, in elin o’Hara slavick’s file, features a host of colonial outfits that might be “appropriate” for “Priscilla” to wear to some of the darkest events in the history of advanced capitalism.  The effect is powerful, poignant, and eerie.  Slavick’s file also includes some wonderful volumes of writing and art produced in association with the University Program in Cultural Studies.

Wenzhi Zhang, Life Sea (No. 1 & No. 2). 1998

Other North Carolina gems include catalogs from various museums and galleries in the state.  “Affinity with Water and Fire: ceramics by Wenzhi Zhang and Wenying Xiong,” is a catalog from an exhibition hosted by St. John’s Museum of Art in Wilmington, in 2001.  With text in Chinese and English, it not only includes beautiful color reproductions of Wenzhi Zhang’s work, but photographs of her working alongside students and mentors in the studio.

Whether you’re in the mood to browse, or are on the hunt for something quite specific, consider checking out the artists’ file.  You might just find what you’re looking for – or something else entirely!

– Madeline Veitch

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October 11, 2011

From the Studio to the Stacks: a Conversation with Travis Donovan

This post is the second in a series focused on MFA students and their research.

Travis Donovan (MFA 2011) makes sculpture that is powerfully infused with cross-disciplinary research.  Recently, I was able to sit down with him to learn a bit about how he integrates a wide variety of sources into his working process.

"Molt", by Travis Donovan. 2011 (Materials: Down Feathers, Mattress, Mechanical Components. Dimensions: Variable.)

Donovan’s interest is in creating “poetic image[s] through the exploration of materials and processes.” In his current work he is dissecting feathers from a multitude of angles, examining “comfort, sensual qualities, but at the same time this history of loss.” His creative process involves gathering a wide variety of information, then “letting that come together in an image – a new experience but referencing back to its echoes in history.”

Although his undergraduate work focused on ceramics, Donovan’s research process has become increasingly cross-disciplinary during his time at UNC.  In his first year in the Master’s program he began to explore materials and processes more broadly. His research has taken him all over the UNC library system, including to the Kenan Science Library and the former Brauer Math/Physics library. Delving into scholarship ranging from philosophy to fluid dynamics, he’s interested “not just in the scientific and mathematical properties of material, but also the symbolic, poetic, and literary connections they might carry.”

Current reads? “Fragments of a Poetics of Fire” by Gaston Bachelard, and various works by preeminent phenomenologist  Henri Bergson. He has also been researching whiskey distillation and the thermal properties of certain minerals in North Carolina clays used for brick-making.

"Illuminationem", 2010. (Materials: Monofilament, Light, Motors, Wood. Dimensions: 20’ x 16’ x 17’.)

Of the resources that have proved especially useful, UNC Master’s theses and dissertations from various disciplines rank high on his list. “They present such a specific, condensed form of research – and local as well.”  While Donovan’s research draws on materials from across campus, Sloane Art Library is his home base:  “This library is my hub – where I start research, but also the place to get stuff and bring it back…it’s allowed me to feel comfortable checking out strange, odd books I wouldn’t otherwise access because I don’t know where they’re at.”

"Prometheus", 2009. (Materials: Fire, Acetone, Steel, Glass. Dimensions: 6’x 8’x14’.)

What would he check out if the library’s collection expanded beyond the usual media? “There are certain tools like microscopes that I wish were available – everything from electron microscopes to vibration sensors, things that allow for the dissection of a phenomenon.  It’s hard to get access to tools like that if you’re not in that field of study.  In an ideal world, there would be some access to those types of tools – with training, of course.”

– Madeline Veitch

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Filed under MFA student work, Patron interviews

September 13, 2011

From the Studio to the Stacks (and Beyond!)

Talking about research with MFA student Neill Prewitt

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from talking with UNC graduate students in studio art, it’s that their research process knows no bounds.  From colleagues to community members to obscure volumes in far corners of the UNC Chapel Hill library system, these students take an ambitious and tentacular approach to source gathering.

Working at Sloane, I’ve been lucky enough to witness small moments in this unfolding narrative. Curious about the bigger picture, I will be writing a series of blog posts about MFA students and their research – both in the library and beyond.

Dream Acts (installation view) at the former Chapel Hill Museum

Neill Prewitt, a second year MFA student, recently co-organized the exhibition “Dream Acts.” “Dream Acts” was a project featuring art made by and with residents of the Abbey Court apartment complex in Carrboro. The show was held at the former Chapel Hill Museum in June and July, and featured a wide variety of media.  Walls were covered with portraits of Abbey Court residents posing in front of fantastical backdrops. Fully furnished living rooms evoked a sense of home, while video footage made in collaboration with children from Abbey Court danced over walls and floors.  On the night of the opening, the space was filled with the sounds of celebration and sharing – communities meeting in a liminal, creative space.

I asked Prewitt how he prepared for the project: “There was a lot of primary research, visiting Abbey Court two or three times a week for a while before we started,” he explained.  He and collaborators Eleanor Blake and Lincoln Hancock also worked with UNC professors from a variety of disciplines.  Judith Blau, a professor of sociology at UNC who also serves as director of the Chapel Hill and Carrboro Human Rights Center, was a particularly important resource. The Center, which is located right at Abbey Court, has collaborated with residents on projects such as festival-planning, computer literacy programs, and fair housing advocacy.  Prewitt feels strongly about learning through interaction and dialogue: “So much comes out of it – it’s a living relationship that just grows and grows.”

Yuxtapongo Translucence, The Block Gallery, 2009

When Prewitt heads to the library for resources, he casts a wide net. “It’s hard to know what’s going to be useful…  I’m a big fan of checking out like 12 items and then maybe one of them might work out.” Though he reads a wide variety of literature (at the time of our conversation he was looking at two Bertolt Brecht plays and “The Shadow Factory” by James Bamford), there are particular sections of the Art Library that he frequents for both targeted and serendipitous finds.  “It’s important for information to be online but there’s no substitute for being in an environment like this [where you can] stumble across something on your way to getting what you were looking for.”

Hot tub for checkout.* (*Not yet available at time of publication...)

In an ideal world, what else would he like to check out from the library? “I would love a tool-sharing library along the lines of the tech shop in Durham – though that would require instruction.”  On a more serious note:  “I want to check out a hot tub for the weekend.”

-Madeline Veitch

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