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

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

The Digest - No.1

Young Lion

To persevere and adapt as an artist is one of a creative’s most important skills. Broadening one’s scope of purpose, maintaining a level of self-awareness, and applying lessons learned in failure is paramount to consistency and meaningful production. As I found myself soaking in that vein recently, looking for a tangible standard to reflect on, I kept coming back to one example. I kept coming back to someone I met almost ten years ago now, that over the course of our friendship has proven themselves to be, if anything, dedicated. Dedicated to not only art, but this very theme of self-improvement. Not only to improve for one’s own self- worth as an artist, but to be worthy of being a part of the very cause they are championing. And that brings us to Black Rectangle Digest’s first entry and artist profile, on BRC’s founder and my friend: Joshua Blue.

Born from the collegiate art school scene, Joshua has been honing his craft since an early love for giants such as Warhol and Pollack inspired him to pursue life as an artist. The standard was set, and the standard was high, and the guy has had no plans of backing down since. When I first met “Blue”, as he was affectionately known around campus, his personality was larger than life and rivaled only by his apparent fearlessness to speak his mind. In his bombastic youth, Joshua planned to follow in the footsteps of his heroes, creating work that openly challenged and questioned the rigor of art academia. At his heart the guy was and is a punk rock kid. The young man I met on a college campus in Charlotte, North Carolina wasn’t taking shit from anyone and he was going to tell you just that with a finger in your face if you tried to. He was going to do things his way, it was going to be bigger and better than your idea, and he didn’t give a fuck if it didn’t follow your rules. He was writing “I Will Not Make A Difference” hundreds of times in a row by hand on the back of discarded advertising banner, exploring the existential crisis that is our early twenties. He was hosting art shows out of the garage of the house we rented together. Inviting every interesting soul he could connect with to take the discussion about art to the next level and emulate the communities of his heroes: The Factory of Warhol and Black Mountain Community College of Rauschenburg and Kooning. He was up at all hours of the night at Kinkos printing fliers for my bands shows and throwing the best damn parties you’d ever danced at.  He was fighting. He was seeking. He was preaching art and truth. 

That was the unbridled forest fire of a singular ambition that I met ten years ago.  But now his flame looks more like a glowing and well managed campfire. His light is still burning as hot as ever, but his conviction has been tended to and sculpted. How’d we get here?

In an attempt to find the next challenge for himself, Joshua moved himself to the West coast with plans of art world domination. What happened instead was a re definition of success and a chance to test his mettle as he faced real artistic adversity for the first time. A slow crawl through the completion of his first short film. Honest attempts to build relationships in the art scene of Portland, Oregon. These amongst other trials and tribulations culminated in a self-examination, an ego check, and a professional and personal move to the more modest Oregon town of Salem, where we can find him now.  He calls success “the single most evolved concept” in his life over the past ten years. Before, recognition and ultimate fame were the driving forces behind the work. Now, through answering the call of his own will and pushing himself to participate in a scene with strangers his purpose has been molded into a clearer and more sincere vision: Build a brand from the ground up. Create work. Plan an event to share the work. Repeat. But this brings us to the most useful and endearing facet of Joshua Blue’s vision as an artist. It’s not just about showing his own work, it’s about creating a space to promote that of others. And it always has been. Joshua has always been about the bigger picture. The greater and larger cause that is promoting and breathing life into communities at the ground level. He is an independent art movement’s fiercest champion and defender. He will stop at no lengths to ensure the authenticity of a product with his name on it. The entire reason you’re reading this piece is his creation of the Black Rectangle Collective. A space to share, promote and discuss art and creativity.

In his sincere bravado and willingness to take a step back, look at himself and say: “How can I be better?”, my friend has gone from brash and ambitious art student to mature and focused maker. An unflinching will hasn’t hurt him either. He’s taken the time to find his voice and adapt it to not only work for him, but for others as well. That kind of broader vision is the kind of dirty work that makes the wheel turn, and I thank him for doing it.

Well, I couldn’t think of a better place to start. A better first story to share with all of you. At the heartbeat of everything here at Black Rectangle is the will of Joshua Blue. And frankly to witness it the past decade has been an honor. So, I’m looking forward to introducing the stories of all the artists that are a part of the Collective here, and maybe even some unsolicited opinions here and there (you’re welcome).

Talk to you next month,

Chase Ricker  

The Digest!

Black Rectangle Collective continues to grow as a space to recognize and expose artists, and promote their work in the community. We’ve been excited to be a part of more shows and welcome additional artists into the fold. But we want to expand the conversation.

Introducing The Digest: A monthly expose looking to dive deeper into the modern creative world. We’ll be offering critique on a variety of subjects, such as music, film, and the visual arts as well. The column will also give in depth profiles of the members of the collective along with more high profile artists and creatives. The Digest’s Editor in Chief is Chase Ricker, long time compadre of BRC, musician, writer and maker. Each month Chase will speak right to you, providing new content worth consuming.

We look forward to developing the creative discussion here at blackrectablgecollective.com, and giving even more space for art to flourish.