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October 06
October 31, 2006
For the past decade, the Gallery of Contemporary Art at UCCS has been one of the only pinpricks of light in the dark hole of the local art scene. Gerry Riggs, the curator and director since 1992, was a tireless advocate for local artists and a master at bringing in world-class shows on a dime-store budget. When he retired last year, many locals feared the gallery would fall into more complacent, mediocre hands and become an institutional dust-bin at a local university where there isn’t even an art major.
Fortunately for the entire community and for the students, UCCS seems to have chosen worthy successor: Christopher Lynn, a painter by training with an impressive resume as curator and gallery director at the tender age of 31.
After graduate school at Ohio State in Columbus where he studied painting and drawing, Lynn moved to Florida with his wife, Maria Samuelson — a performing artist with a Master’s in theater history and criticism — and took a job doing curatorial work for the now-defunct Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art.
From there, the couple moved to Chicago where Lynn worked at the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College where he was the lone staff member — curating, hanging and organizing all shows. After only a year, however, a political shake up in the administration eliminated his position.
The winds of curatorial fortune, as fickle as they had been, were still with him, however, and DePauw University offered him an assistant curator position in Greencastle, Indiana. Not unlike his other posts, Lynn was forced to do a lot with a little at DePauw. With only three staff people, they managed to put on 17 shows in eight spaces across campus per year. After two years there, the couple were again ready to move on and they’re now ready to settle here in Colorado Springs. I spoke to Lynn about the local culture, the legacy of Gerry Riggs, and his plans for the GCA.
Noel Black: So what brings you to Colorado Springs?
(more after the jump)
Posted by: darksandal in Uncategorized | Permalink 8 Comments
October 31, 2006
Zombie comics are all the rage lately, and The Walking Dead is the best I’ve seen yet. All of the tropes and plot points amalgamated from sources as infallible as Day of the Dead and 28 Days Later. Good Halloween reading!
Posted by: darksandal in Uncategorized | Permalink Comments
October 31, 2006
that the new blue cheese roast beef sandwich at Shuga’s is frackin’ deelicious. I recommend ordering it with a cup of the spicy coconut shrimp soup as a dipping sauce. Or, barring that, order mayo on the side and then mix in the extra horseradish and then spread them shits on there.
Posted by: darksandal in Food and Drink | Permalink 1 Comment
October 30, 2006
DO YOU:
Fancy yourself the voice of a generation and see its best minds lying face-down in Monument Creek?
Think that Dave Eggers is an old fuddy-duddy who wouldn’t know hip from his waist?
Worship at the altar of street art, yet Banksy is “so mainstream”?
Bemoan the absence of an art and literary publication in Colorado Springs?
IF YOU HAVE ANSWERED YES TO ANY OR ALL OR SOME OF THE ABOVE QUESTIONS:
You are now obligated to submit to Colorado Springs’ new lit zine. We want your drawings, comix, stories, poetry, art and music crit, lists, doodles, or anything you deem creative expression. We’ll scan it in and let the health consequences be damned.
Contact Lindsay at lindsayjpatterson@gmail.com if you have something to contribute or are just interested in the idea, or if you want to take a position on the political appropriateness of the name, Asinine/11.
Posted by: Lindsay Patterson in Art | Permalink 1 Comment
October 30, 2006
This sign in the sea of pollitical posters:
Anybody know wtf this is?
Posted by: darksandal in Uncategorized | Permalink 7 Comments
October 29, 2006
Me: Did you have any dreams last night?
Ursen: No. I just watched myself in the night.
Posted by: darksandal in Ursen | Permalink Comments
October 28, 2006
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Whatever. Apparently I’m an official contributor, or at least that’s what all the free drinking was telling me last night at the swank Newspeak part-ay at the Rubbish, before I a) grinded with Marcus, local anarchist ruffian kid b) creepily asked lesbian chick to be in a video of mine and c)…..fuck it. This type of self-incriminiating scata-narrative shit is better left to others with more time and drugs on their hands.
No, no as my first official venture into the newNewspeak blog world, I’ll start small and just tell you friendly readers what sort of media I have been injesting lately.
Movies seen:
Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (’71)
Maniac! (’80)
Music mailordered or purchased at show:
Radish on Light by Warmer Milks
The Wigmaker in Eighteenth Century Williamsburg by To Live and Shave in L.A.
some 3″ cdr by these dudes who play sax and drums called Ettrick
Whew and I’ve been reading some heavy academic wank about “body horror” and “gender” and “transgression”! It’s really weird to me though, how there’s so much really intelligent, if not overly dense, writing about like S&M and Japanese torture movies and so forth. I mean, there’s not a LOT, a LOT.
But what is it with these gender and cultural studies professors holed up in their tiny windowless offices in the basements of Maryland Institute College of Art or Bowling Green and and…actually I just made that up. I don’t think there are any professors at Bowling Green.
Hmmm, I’ll have to Google that…anyway, Mikita Brottman (she of the MICA) wrote a pretty snappy little book a few years back that just got “revised” recently called Offensive Films. It talks about everything from the old school (Tod Browning’s Freaks) to the new (Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible yeesh). Well it’s a cool read, very analytical, critical, etc. but not OVERLY academic. Good for the well-read fan. But she looks SO awkward on the back cover. It’s hilarious. Like she’s going to throw up or actually have to talk to someone for the first time in like 48 hours. (Sorry Bebe, that was snipy of me.)
Really though, there is something kinda s+m-y about criticism though isn’t there, using all these complex codes and drawing upon the knowledge of others and feeling pressure to “explore” new “avenues” of interpretation and study…I don’t think I’m stepping out on any sort of untraversed limb here in saying all this Higher Learning is some sort of a power game anyway. The writing, the sex, the violence: part and parcel. But then there’s a new fiction book on that I hear as well…Taming the Beast: A Novel (P.S.) Might suck though, can’t recommend.
Whatever. That To Live and Shave disc is the best listen I’ve had in a while. Two hours of bloody post-glitch effects and bass wrangling and murkiness and flamboyant poetic tortured soul lyrics/singing and Tom Smith (Om Myth to those in the know) spent like 5 years mixing it…while getting a divorce. So it sounds like a pretty painful time…but it’s really good! It’s not like new or anything so I’m not like jumpin a fad or anything, kinda missed that. But Menlo Park has it (same label as does some Deerhoof releases) and it’s worth the $14.
The Warmer Milks rec is also very good. That is new(ish). On Troubleman Unlimited. It’s good but like such a mix of “en vogue” sounds (noise noodling, psychedelic “freak” whatever, black metal vox) so I don’t know if I can fully endorse…naw actually it’s really interestingly put together.
Um, yeah Macbeth was awesome too. I don’t really like Shakespeare on film that much, but wow, it’s like exactly the same as The Tenant or something but with Scottish freaks. Which means those furry armor jackets and lots of beards and chicken legs and stuff. Awesome
Anyway, that’s my first post.
Posted by: JT in Art | Permalink Comments
October 28, 2006
Senor Padraig removed his own post titled “The New Banality” (and its comments went with it) about the Colroado Springs Independent’s new Arts and Entertainment Editor Pete Freedman. I’ll leave it up to him whether he wants to post about why he took it down.
What I wanted to say about the issue is this:
1). Very few people at the age of 22 are qualified and mature enough to take over the post of A&E Editor at a weekly in a market as large as Colorado Springs.
2). Very few people are stupid enough (I was) to take the job of A&E Editor at a weekly in a market as culturally stifling as Colorado Springs.
3). Very few people have the mental fortitude to put up with an editorial culture as staid and boring as the Independent’s has been over the past 5 years.
4). Just because Pete Freedman is only 22 doesn’t mean he should be exempt from criticism by any means; the fact that he holds the job makes him a public figure and subject to criticism in his professional capacity as A&E Editor. If he can’t take it, he’s definitely not qualified or mature enough to hold the post. That said, how much needs to be said!?
5). The real problem, in my opinion, is that Publisher John Weiss doesn’t give a shit about the local arts community beyond the listings and movie times (which are the bread and butter of the Indy’s circulation) and his philanthropic donations to arts non-profits, which shouldn’t be confused with an abiding interest or involvement. As such, he hired someone who has no apparent ties to this community or, to our knowledge, any longterm investment in its cultural well-being. This judgment is based the almost-exclusively flip and consdescending tone in the pieces of his about local musicians I’ve read so far.
6). That said, I hope he proves us wrong. It’s a big bullhorn to waste.
7). In the meantime, Bebe Santa-Wood, the A&E Editor at Palmer High School’s Lever and volunteer DJ at KRCC said it all better in the Indy’s own letters section:
Posted by: darksandal in COSsip | Permalink 4 Comments
October 27, 2006
There’s been some dispute about the time, but it’s pretty much open: 6 p.m. on there will be people at the gallery imbibing beverages and socializing. Please come by:
17B E. Tejon St. in the alley across from 15C Club.
Posted by: darksandal in Uncategorized | Permalink Comments
October 26, 2006
We’ll be posting it piecemeal into the blog throughout the month with a tag in the category section (which can be found in the left-hand column) that corresponds to the issue, i.e. “November 2006 Issue”.
Posted by: darksandal in Uncategorized | Permalink Comments
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