No flags involved

On Friday I took advantage of "summer hours" - summer hours are the best thing that has ever happend to me - and went to Long Island City to do some third borough art perusing. (in case there is any doubt about my numerical system: 1. Bklyn 2. the Mall 3. Qns 4. Bx 5. Shaolin.) Yes, I went to PS1 and saw the show of dirty pictures, ahem, "Into Me/Out of Me, a group exhibition about the imagined, descriptive, and performative act of the passing into, through, and out of the human body," and a boring but significant show of Ron Gorchov's boring but significant pictures. (Best thing at PS1 was a 1959 Stan Brackage film, "window water baby moving", and the most stupid-yet-I-can't-look-away (there were too many to pick a worst) was a RISD-project-looking video of a girl being fucked while boredly and clumsily putting on makeup, by who knows)
But Sculpture Center made my day. First of all, Sculpture center has by far the cutest front desk boy of all arts organizations in the tristate. Second of all, he gave me some free postcards 'cause I told him one of the projectors was broken. Third, the show - Grey Flags - was super. I didn't think I like the Atlas Group, because in the last year they have been a little overexposed and nothing ever resonated with me, and plus I don't really understand if they are telling the truth or not, but in the (scary) sculpture center basement, next to a lovely Tacita Dean film of a sunset, they had a really great little film about a Lebanese security-camera operator who went off his intended target to film the sunset every day, and got fired but was allowed to keep his sunset footage. So the film is his sunset footage. And it's super. And I hope they are telling the truth.
Kelley Walker's installation was also super, and did I mention the front desk boy?
On that note, the Public Theater's MacBeth last weekend was fine, a little on the mediocre side, except for Liev Scheiber in knee high boots. Yow. Worth every penny of the beer, ice cream, starbucks, and lawn chair the 'free' ticket cost. And the agony of yet another dry-ice filled boil, bubble, toil and trouble. Or whatever.

back to the 9 to 5 grind

(actually, it's 10 to 6, but I don't want to make anyone jealous)

And I'm back to the blog, and the world, after June vanished into a crazy working-every-day vortex.

I have am master’s degree, and therefore should be too smart to write about work on my blog. So I’ll do my best to avoid it. But, as some of you know, I have a new job to go with my new degree, new roommate, and still kind of shiny single status. I started full time on Wednesday, as the museum professionals from former Communist countries have gone home, and therefore I am (mostly) done with that project.

For the past month, I have been squeezing in a few days a week at the new gig, but it felt like I was temping for myself. Now I hope to get down to business and figure out what I am actually supposed to be doing. In the meantime, I am re-learning how to pass for a professional, refining my pre-walking on the subway, and researching lunch places uptown. (Best so far is Kitchenette, even if it is a little pricey for nonprofit everyday.)

But, most happily, I reinflated the tires on my bike, purchased a NOVEL (Apex Hides the Hurt, it's fantastic so far), drank a lot of beer at the World Cup (Viva France! I mean Italy! I mean, penalty kickoffs! Whatever! Woooo!) and got from ebay the remaining yarn for my niece's first present. Soon I will visit museums again, so look for a ramp up on exhibition reviews on this page.

Mother's Day

Jose at Castro Food Center said, "Happy Mother's Day - I don't know if you a mother or not, but ..." Some mother I would be, since he only ever sees me buy Ballantine Ale, cafe con leche, and toilet paper.

I've been in a strange mood all day. In Josef Joffe's The Way We Live Now in the New York Times Magazine today, a phrase really affected me. "Between Vietnam and Iraq." Not as in, the similarities between the two, but as a chronological period: "Between Vietnam and Iraq, America's cultural presence has expanded into ubiquity, and so has the resentment of America's soft power."

I have never seen this phrase used this way in print before but it was instantly familiar. Four words that describe the time period of my life (our lives, most of us) thus far.

It made me really sad.

New observations

I didn't notice in the last post the parallels between getting a (master's) hood and leaving the (neighbor)hood. I guess no one else did either.

Other notes: Fortune 500 company apparently hates me. I hate them back (unless they change their mind). Looking for a job is worse than dating, seriously, in both situations you try to look pretty and sit across the table from someone and sound interesting, but no one even buys you a drink at a job interview. (If they do, please forward listings asap.)

And, finally, an observation during the research for my last paper of grad school: There is now one whole entire room on the fourth floor at MoMA devoted entirely to a single female artist. Ok, it's the smallest room in the place and it only has three pictures, but Bridget Riley wins this week's token prize. I honestly wasn't paying enough attention to the permanent collection galleries the last ten times I've been there, so I can't say if it's new or not. Heartening or disheartening, maybe both.

DONE

I am finished with graduate school. Tomorrow I will put on my pretty dress, my shiny shoes, and my rented polyester robe. Then Dr. BA will "hood" me and I will go eat fancy mexican food with my family and drink with my pals.

I am terrified of this. Today at the Sopranos bar I cried because of the whacking-Adrianna flashback sequence, but that wasn't really it. I cried because I don't have a permanent job or a significant other or a grandma.

I am done with the 'hood. I am moving next week. I haven't packed. I have reached the same level of education as my parents and my beautiful pregnant sister in law.

I am having seraration anxiety. I think I might get another Master's, this one in actual "art history." Maybe at Hunter. Maybe a pH.D. after all. I am a lifelong learner. I listen to the French PodClass.

I'm scared and excited and lonely.

Tomorrow I get my M.A.

I (heart) 95

Chatty valiantly agreed to drive down to Philly to see Zoe's show under I-95. And it was the greatest thing ever. As we all know, I am slightly prone to exaggeration, but I really mean it this time. I bought eight $5 pictures (a huge expense on my finishing-grad-school budget, but I did manage to snag two pretzels, about a dozen hugs, and three sticky pieces from the pillars at 3:05). Zoe is pure f**king genius, I say this because of her impeccable eye, her phenomenal cuteness, and her commitment to art in (and ABOUT) public spaces. But most importantly, Zoe is the rarest of fancy artists today: she appears genuinely, deeply in LOVE with what she is doing. She obsesses about the tiniest details of the hanging, freaks out about her cool new printer, does not appear to ever stop talking to random members of the public about her work, and best of all, smiles. Smiles! constantly! And I have never seen her wear black. Here, my friends, is the perfect example of the post-postmodern artist. Somebody who gives a shit and wants her work to actually say something.

By the way, I called the Bucksbaum! Congratulations Mark Bradford!!

Mark Bradford
Originally uploaded by markart.

Lizzy's picks for the Bucksbaum

After several five-minute bursts of thinking, I have my picks for the Bucksbaum Award. Since I am (clearly) not a juror, these choices are of absolutely no consequence, which is why I am sharing them with y'all. These do not necessarily reflect my favorite artists in the Biennial - that award goes unequivocally to Zoe Strauss - but rather a completely arbitrary mix of whose work I like in and out of the show, who I think might have a chance of winning, who I think will be a fancy famous artist someday, and, most importantly, who I think could have a decent exhibition in the sort-of-crappy lobby gallery at the Whitney.
They are, in no order:
Mark Bradford
Otabenga Jones & Associates
Cameron Jamie
I hate to admit it, but they are all dudes! In fact, Otabenga is actually FOUR dudes.
Runners up included Trisha Donnelly (whose work until yesterday I wasn't even sure that I liked), Anthony Burdin (who I think is amazing but doubt will win), Marilyn Minter (like they're going to give to someone who actually paints nice pictures), Paul Chan, Ann Collier, Jutta Koether, Dorothy Iannone, and Billy Sullivan (he actually was not a runner up but I added him to the list just now because I actually stood through the whole slideshow yeaterday when I was giving a "tour" to Chris-n-Chris and it was just super, high-quality solid super, not trendy or achingly innovative or anything, but great juxtapositions of goregeous photos accompanied by reasonable music and the satisfying click of slide projectors. I was close to tears several times and I barely even recognized any celebrities [that's probably why I liked it so much, I just thought they were regular people])
I sort of have my heart set on Otabenga, maybe a little bit because of diversity but probably just because I think they ROCK and would like to see what they would make for a new show, and if it would involve any Nichiha. I don't think Mark will win because he already had a show at Altria and Cameron loves in Paris (loves was a typo but I'm keeping it) so I think they'll avoid all the post-America bullshit if they don't pick him.
If someone else wins, I am positive that I left them off the list accidentally because I am tired and stressed out 'cause my day just had surgery (he's okay, I hear, don't worry).