Day/Day
Day/Day
Artist: Joshua Blue
SEASON 2 IS COMING SOON!!!!!!!!
No More Masters, No More Memes
No More Masters, No More Memes; a slogan of pursuit.
These selected works present both pivotal developmental steps in, and the summation of, artist Joshua Blue’s five-year commitment to explore this series. Employing techniques from Abstract Expressionism, Post-Painterly Abstraction, and Pop Art; Blue’s work proposes to leave the viewer a visual record of action. It seeks first to draw the audience into a state of inquisitiveness, casting a web of gestural line over bright colors- wrapping it all neatly in hard edged planes. It then attempts to challenge the viewers perceptions of foreground and background- which layer came first and which came last. In some cases, leaving behind found objects meant to carry that curiosity out of the painting and into life.
The devices deployed throughout the work intend to reflect the multitude of layers through which we view our everyday lives. The multiple ways we are being unintentionally or willfully distracted by the creations of the culture industry that keep us binge watching, endless feeds that keep us scrolling, profit-based news that implores us to stay tuned and the properly advertised cocktails that take off the edge. The questions impressed on the viewer of the painting are the same questions the artist seeks to have his audience ask themselves about their own existence. What is the foreground and what is the background? What is the distraction and what is it distracting me from?
No more masters, no more memes, I will not touch that screen.
Joshua Blue's No.321
Joshua Blue’s newest work seen below (No.321 -Waiting on Greener Grass and Praying for An Itchy Palm. Or Walk the Wrong Way on Momma and She’ll Make You Swallow Your Teeth.) is one of the best representations we have seen of his current style. Look out for more new work on the site later this month!
Introducing The Digest Show!
The Digest is growing! We are very happy to bring you the first in a family of podcasts, hosted by the Editor and Chief of The Digest, Chase Ricker. Whereas The Digest brings you written testimonials and profiles on all things art, The Digest Show will specifically examine movies and films, the people who make them and the stories that go along with it! “We’re not critics, we’re lovers and we’re gonna have a lot of fun” the show’s tagline is all you need to know!
First episode is up on Spotify now - There Will Be Blood.
The Digest - No.3
Nude Models and White Picket Fences
The next artist I wanted to introduce everyone to is my friend Bryan Hammond. A founding member of the Collective and an artist who’s journey is a story about the push and pull between conventional and experimental. Bryan can paint you a beautiful pasture scene in the style of an accomplished landscape artist, and then turn around and use that same technique to push the boundaries of figure drawing in the sense of texture, size, and concept. I’ve seen the man create a massive four panel painting influenced by the style of abstract expressionist Richard Dieborken, and I’ve watched him construct some manifestation of the darker side of the subconscious, in the form of a wooden hut inside my garage. I’ve seen snapshots from a night we barely remember, frozen in laughter on the canvas; and I’ve seen idyllic scenes from California’s golden coast. The common thread of this duality might be the most common thread throughout his path as an artist.
Having showed interest in fine art from the very beginning, Bryan found himself under the tutelage of a premier landscape artist as a young teen in rural California. Not only did this experience afford Bryan exposure to “professional” instruction at such an impressionable point of his life, he was also able to see first-hand the second part of being a working artist: showing and promoting your work. Howard Reese, Bryan’s private instructor, gifted Bryan the opportunity to be shown alongside artists with the functionality of working creators and the sophistication of seasoned makers. Now, where would a young man with a foundation of such mature complexion go next? But to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art of course.
Now here’s the part of Bryan’s story that I begin to relate to. Despite attending the oldest art school in the country and living for a year in one of the most interesting cities on the East Coast, Bryan felt as though his freshman year at art college was a failure: A stumble in self-awareness and identity as a young man and artist, coupled with a decline in productivity. Bryan found himself in sort of lost period in which my guy followed a love interest back to the West coast (haven’t we all?), only to find himself returning East to Charlotte, North Carolina of all places. Who am I? What am I doing? What the fuck is going on? We’ve all been there. Shit, you might have been there last week.
But up until this point Bryan had been working within the confines of traditional establishment: private instruction and prestigious academia. Now, things were about to get a little more interesting. Bryan enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and it was here that he would meet the afore-explored Joshua Blue. It was at this juncture that Bryan’s boundaries of concept in his work and bravery in his ambition would reach a place exploding with color and tenacity. Bryan’s instructors at this school were encouraging him to find his own voice, instead of cramming his identity into the tired old world he had been toiling in. His peers were live action characters chomping at the bit to grow, instead of men three times his senior, sizing up the Pacific Ocean from an upper-middle-class perspective. NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Hammond would not be the artist he is without the beginning he had. But he would not be the artist he’s become without challenging and expanding the expectation of himself with what he could achieve.
Next, Bryan established himself in the Charlotte art scene with a number of successful, self- produced shows, alongside his contemporary Joshua Blue. It was his first foray into making art and showing it of his own accord. A liberating moment for an artist who had at times struggled with believing in his own voice,
What happened after that may come as a shock to you: Bryan moved back to the West Coast. He’s settled in Portland, Oregon now and still exploring the world of abstract expressionism, landscape and memory; twisted veneers and augmented surfaces. This self-described “plane-jane” has had a journey through the traditional, all while searching for a way to let his inner freak flag fly. That struggle between perfectly fine artist and marauding conceptualist has created some beautiful stuff, and there aren’t many things I want to see more of.
Chase
Birds of a Feather - 2012
Birds of a Feather
Paper collage made from photographs of mixed media assemblage displayed at the 2012 Democratic National Convention
10” x 12”
2012
The Digest - No.2
Now That We’re Here, We May As Well Go Too Far
I’m 39 years old. Ten years from today. I’m in a home that’s mine and I’ve just finished dinner. Maybe with my family? Maybe not. Too soon to tell. It’s time to unwind and clean up. I put on a record I’ve heard a thousand times, but still crave every now and then. It’s from my youth. It’s comfort food. It’s Arctic Monkeys’ Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not. For you, I think it might be The Strokes’ Is This It, let’s say you were a couple years ahead of me in school. I might alter my memory to Turn On The Bright Lights around 2012 or so to make some girl think I’m as smart and full of mystery as I’d like to be. My point is the music of our youth has legs and stays with us until were nearing middle age, washing dishes and staring listlessly out the window. For my dad it was Air Supply, and when he really wants to let loose, the ever-present Eagles’ Greatest Hits. Thank god cooler shit came along.
I’m not going to sit here and act like the music critic that I’m not. I’m not going to waste your time dissecting some album or band you already have an opinion of, scripted to a tee and ready to whip out at a moment’s notice at parties. But something happened in the mid 2000’s: the guitar came back to popular music in a very real way.
I remember the NSYNC being piped down my ears as a young man in a car full of sisters on various family vacations. I won’t lie to you and say I don’t know the lyrics to the majority of NYSNC’s songs as a result of this travesty. At some point I found Led Zeppelin. I started taking the Beatles way too seriously. I found my own genre, with which I would break free from the shackles of the mighty pop overlords Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez. My point is I found my thing in rock music, but the majority of the records I loved were from antiquity. They were draped in the mystique of decades long since gone, lower gas prices, and black and white rock docs on VH1 classic at 2:00 am. Worlds collided when my older sister brought back Arctic Monkey’s first LP from the UK. When this kid that lived down the street that I didn’t really like (he had a guitar amp and I had motive) burned me a copies of the Stroke’s Room On Fire and King’s of Leon’s Aha Shake Heartbreak, I felt like I had finally found my people. I felt like now I didn’t have to stay after class to talk to the kind of creepy 58-year-old history teacher about how important and misunderstood the Who were to get my fill of geeking out about music. Obviously talking about music was that important to me, I was willing to risk my safety and reputation for god sakes. I had always loved rock music and I knew I could talk about it for hours with anyone who would listen, but there wasn’t a tangible, current reference for me to call my own. Until there really fucking was.
I understand this is a tired story brought to you by another middle-class white kid from the tough streets of suburbia. But its real to me dammit! I don’t think it was the same for contemporaries of my father who heard Hendrix and the Stones for the first time. That shit was a revelation. This was different. This was mystery come to life in real time, at the perfect time. I hadn’t wised up and found the beautiful lineage of music between that time and my teenage years that were the mid 2000’s. Later I’d go on to fill the gaps, when I was younger the 80’s just seemed too horrible and over saturated with chorus reverb to produced anything worth my time. I later learned from my mistakes (looking at you Johnny Marr).
Everyone looks at the soundtrack to their youth with reverence and pride, as if it was born of their own personal need and conscious. I’m getting to the point in my life where I get angry at teenagers in public, I’m starting to see a light at the end of the student loan debt tunnel of death, and sleep is not something I avoid like the fucking plague. My priorities in life are not solely comprised of “pizza” and “getting laid”, but let’s not get carried away with this whole maturity charade, those things are still important. And I’m not quite sure how a mortgage works, but I am regularly googling how to get involved in one.
I have eras of my life to look back on now. I can string together cause and effect without therapy. I can “remember when” for the first time. My favorite era so far is the one in which I heard In Rainbows for the first time and my heart exploded and I thought the Red Hot Chili Peppers were the greatest band on the planet. My opinions and emotional reactions were as unadulterated and as sincere as it could possibly get. Things might get more complicated as time moves along, but sincerity sounds like a good goal to me.
Next month I’m going to introduce you to Bryan Hammond, another member of the Black Rectangle Collective. I hope you’ll join me. Thanks for reading this month
As sincere as I can be in spite of myself,
Chase
p.s. If anyone ever wants to share their story or connect with what were putting out here at BRC, please feel free to reach out: chaserickerbrc@gmail.com
SIGNALS - Reception Photos
Pop-up Gallery Reception 01.17.20
SIGNALS - Gallery Photos
Pop-up Gallery on 01.17.20
Joshua Blue on Jelly Filled
Artist and Director of Black Rectangle Collective, Joshua Blue sits down with Isaac Moreno of Jelly Filled to discuss art, work flow, life and politics.
Check out B.Hammond in Portland at Bula Kava House: Now through March!
Bula Kava House
3115 SE Division ST
Portland, OR 97202
Welcoming Seth Allen to Black Rectangle Collective
Seth Allen
#45p
48” x 60”
SIGNALS - Artist Promo's for Instagram
