great new photo website:

http://www.reframingphotography.com/

http://nofound.tumblr.com

solo exhibition, first installation of TOO HARD TO KEEP

JASON LAZARUS--TOO HARD TO KEEP

The Riverside Arts Center Freeark Gallery
Too Hard to Keep, September 3—October 9, 2010
Artist Jason Lazarus
Curated by Anne Harris
Reception: Sunday, September 12, 3:00-6:00 pm.


The Riverside Arts Center is pleased to present the inaugural exhibition of
Jason Lazarus’s photo archive "Too Hard to Keep," a repository for
photographs both too painful to keep and too meaningful to destroy. This
on-going and expanding project will be displayed in two parts: an installation
of photographs from the archive and a “drop box.” Anyone can add to the
archive by depositing pictures in this box.

Jason's work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo
exhibitions at such venues as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Spertus
Institute, Kaune Sudendorf Gallery in Cologne, Germany; Das Weisse Haus,
Austria; and D3 projects, Los Angeles.

http://toohardtokeep.blogspot.com/


Riverside Arts Center
Freeark Gallery
32 E. Quincy Rd, Riverside, IL 60546
708 442-6400
www.RiversideArtsCenter.com
Hours: Tues., Wed., Sat. 1-5 pm, Fri. 4-8 pm

If you have questions regarding the show please contact Anne Harris at
aharri5@artic.edu

If you have questions regarding the Riverside Arts Center please visit
their website or call 708 442 6400.

introducing 200 prints / $50 each

Print Sale

I am introducing a new piece in an edition of 200 for $50...

I am raising funds for the production of a number of large pieces for exhibitions in the upcoming year.  One highlight in particular is a solo exhibition at Illinois State University, with an accompanying catalogue.  The program at ISU is remarkable--in the last few years have hosted solo exhibitions from Allan Sekula, Siebren Versteeg, Jim Lutes, Michelle Grabner, Stephanie Brooks, Julia Fish, Oliver Herring, and Tony Tasset among others.

The attached image "Untitled" was made in June, 2010.  The photograph is 11x14" (image area 7.2x10" with a white border).  The text on the banner is Walter Benjamin quoting Paul Valery at the beginning of his canonical 1935 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."  The banner was originally installed outside for a week at the Harold Residency in Chesterhill, Ohio.  This past summer I documented the banner while in residency at Ox-Bow.

A larger version of this piece is attached for closer viewing. 

Other work, bio, upcoming exhibitions, and cv information can be found at:
www.jasonlazarus.com

Orders will be taken via paypal
(you do not need to have a paypal account to pay via this service)...

please click below to purchase!

After purchasing, I can send a receipt and an email indicating which edition number(s) you have secured. 

Thanks in advance and please pass this along to anyone you feel may be interested.
Best, Jason

ACRE Residency - Materials Wish List

The following is a wish list of materials for the inaugural year of the ACRE, can you help?  If so please email info@acreresidency.org:

KITCHEN:  

• salad spinner
• lemon juicer
• cast iron pans
• immersion blender
• large food processor
• kitchen towels
• whisk
• baking pans (lasagna type)
• cookie sheets
• large mixing bowls
• large tupperwares
• big rice cookers
• spatula
• serving spoons (salad tongs, ladle)
• wooden cooking utensils
• big soup pots
• large frying pans
• set of sharp kitchen knives/sharpening stone
• peelers
• cutting boards
• large serving bowls
• oven mitt/pot holders
• strainer (large)
• mesh strainer
• can opener
• measuring cup (liquid)
• measuring cups (solids)
• measuring spoons
• rolling pin
• garlic press
• case of mason jars for spices
• tin foil/ plastic wrap/tape and sharpie for labels
• grater
• grill
• grilling tools
• wooden skewers
• Trivets
• Wok
• Griddle

WOODSHOP           

• Table saw
• Band saw
• Planer
• Joiner
• Stationary sander
• Drill press
• Bench grinder
• Miter saw
• Corded and cordless drills
• Nail guns
• Orbital/belt sanders
• Router
• Scroll saw
• Jig saw
• Sawsall
• Circular saw
• Chainsaw
• Angle grinder
• Soldering iron
• Chisels
• Screwdrivers
• Staple gun
• Hack saw
• Wrenches
• Pliers
• Channel locks
• Axe
• Tape measures
• Work gloves
• Scissors
• Tin snips
• Pipe bender
• Wire cutters
• Box cutters
• Vise grips
• Wood glue
• Safety glasses
• Hardware (nails, screws, etc)
• Pipe clamps
• Hand clamps
• Levels
• Horses
• Extension cords

STUDIO:

• Milk crates
• Tables

RECORDING STUDIO

• Microphones
• Field recorders

OTHER:

• Cleaning supplies (mops, brooms, buckets, sponges)
• Trash cans / recycling bins
• Tarps
• First aid kits
• Jars

from zoe strauss:

Dear Friends,

Many things. First and foremost, I am beginning to work on a project
documenting the BP oil spill and I'm fundraising for it because I'm broke.
I would be greatly appreciative if you checked out the project site, "On The
Beach."  I would be grateful for any support.


http://projectsite.unitedstatesartists.org/project/on_the_beach


While I'm coming at this environment disaster from a fine art perspective as
opposed to journalism, I think it's imperative to document this
environmental disaster as a historical record of what's happening in the
gulf.  Images and representations of this mess matter.

Also, any press people think they can hook me up with a press pass?  I would
be forever indebted.  I scheduled my BP flight over the spill and then they
told me I needed journalist credentials for when I get down there.  What the
hell is that?  Some lady from South Philly can't request a flyover, she's
got to be a journalist?  Whatever.


I thought I'd take a few months off after I-95 and not rush into anything,
but I have got to record what's happening down there, so I'm back on the
grind, baby.


With Love,
ZS


http://zoestrauss.blogspot.com/

Michael Jackson Memorial Procession, June 25th, 2010

documentation, Michael Jackson Memorial Procession, June, 25th 2010

On the night of the anniversary of Michael Jackson's death, participants drove in tandem from Michael Jackson's boyhood home in Gary, IN to Chicago. A playlist of MJ music was broadcast from a pirate radio in one car to the others in synchronicity. The procession was an act of harnessing, re-imagining, and memorializing the sonic space created organically around Chicago on the night of MJ's death.

This project was born the night Michael Jackson died, June 25th, 2009 (although I didn't know it at the time).  With text messages pouring in and media outlets carving out their own angles on the circumstances of his death, Chicagoans, as I imagined people all across the country did, played his music.  They not only played his music, they amplified it--windows down, the most popular songs curated, and their attention to the space around them as they announced their acknowledgment of his passing.  The convoluded circumstances of his death in this memorializing act became minimized.  For a celebrity who transcended normal categories of gender, race, beauty, and even transcended the normal category of 'pop star,' the music boiled down all the creature-curiosities to the end game of the music.

It's not my expertise to write about how Jackson changed music, but I can say that Thriller was the only album my father and I both had.  It's hard to think of another celebrity who dissolved so many marketing niches and demographics.  It is this phenomenon that allowed for such a thorough street response...and in this case it was a sonic response.  The interesting thing about a sonic response is that the music rarely fit the unique narrative of Jackson's life.  The energy is anathema to traditional mourning--it's celebratory, body-moving, infectious pop.  The sonic memorial became a bittersweet celebration whose rhythms defer our traditional notions of emotional processing.  The communal response to his death formed a temporal tribe...a street meditation.  Jackson's too fast for a candle-light vigil...he's airless, it's viral, and buried deep in our cultural consciousness.

Shortly after his death, I had many conversations about the street energy of the night of his death, about the unprecedented, unorganized, self-initiated participation and projection of his music, and the singularity of this death as uniquely capable of driving this kind of response.  The Michael Jackson Memorial Procession became a gesture toward tapping the residue of empathy, legacy, and response.

Starting the procession in Gary, IN at Jackson's boyhood home was the idea of a friend, and after resisting at first, I came to understand that the complicated logistics of organizing a performance in the midst of Friday night traffic was worth the symbolism, not to mention participating in the temporary community of memorial events and performances on his block.  A few days before the procession, my intern Jasmine and I drove to Gary to see the house and get an idea of how our route would take us toward Chicago.  Completely post-industrial, under-utilized, and marginalized, the community of Gary has a natural resource in the Jackson home.  The house itself, so modest it's almost inert, completely inverts everything Jackson was to become.  There were a dozen or so visitors and residents milling the area around the property.  Even in an ordinary afternoon the space felt quietly charged, and it managed to keep a couple handfuls of people around at all times.

Arriving close to 5pm in Gary, the media was everywhere.  Signal towers changed the modest skyline of Jackson's block.  A performance stage anchored an improvised community of commerce and fans.  Most compelling for sale were t-shirts featuring an embellished portrait of Jackson with the words 'fallin' angel' levitating underneath him.  The mostly black crowd was sweating in the heat, but committed to each contribution of the many performers--choirs, preachers, young dancing prodigies--there was no impatience--every moment carved out a different contribution to this anniversary.

As we left Gary, the procession became self-reliant.  Every car, decorated with an orange flag with the letters MJ screenprinted in black as well as personal homilies made with window-markers, became a moving spectacle.  The synchronized audio playlist of Michael Jackson music, curated by my friend
Emily (the biggest MJ fan I know) became secondary on the highway, but the slow-moving, marked, decorated cars created a form, and drivers around us mostly enabled the form keep its purpose.

At 87th and I-94, the procession started on the street-grid.  Driving north on 87th our music, broadcasting from my car's pirate radio station to the entire procession on the low end of the radio dial, became the sonic memorial I wanted--creating to the stationary onlooker a two or three minute procession undeniable in its purpose.  Most satisfying was the lack of preparation the communities had as we drove through...the event was a happening, one that had instant recognition whether pedestrians cared or not.

Moving north, through Pilsen, then east to Michigan Ave, and finally west to Wicker Park, there were so many moments of celebration, dancing, yelling, honking, fist-raising, and as always the unimpressed urban denizen, I knew every moment I experienced was only a fraction of the responses the procession had as it spread out, reformed, and continued on.

At the moment I have only seen the photo-documentation contributed by each participant, there is video footage and anecdotes to collect.  But I keep coming back to the image at the top of this post.  The procession itself is held at bay by the edge of the frame, a vignetting of light stages the mother, daughter, and baby.  A cross splits the space between mother and daughter.    The daughter's body language is respectful, the mother's is uncommitted.  We are a happening, a spectacle, a self-organized motorcade hellbent on celebrating and projecting while unprepared onlookers knee-jerk respond with a variety of celebration, respect, indifference, and sometimes pause.  A pause that I think is interesting, as it lurks at the edges of any self-important parade.  A legacy implicitly involves death--an ending.  This photograph adds meaning to the procession, it is more complicated than our street mission.  It reminds me that a sonic memorial, as any memorial, evokes deeply complicated feelings at its best, and serves to remind us we are always struggling to respond to our world and its predicament.

toohardtokeep!

i just set up toohardtokeep@gmail.com for the project for submissions...
i will be updating the blog soon with some great new photos for the repository...


spread the word about the project--i'm in to collecting these for the long haul!
xo, j

seesaw magazine features OCEAN

http://www.seesawmagazine.com/current_issue.html

opp

Hello -

I'm reaching out to update you on our 2nd Annual International Photo Competition EXPOSURE. The deadline has been extended to June 7th AND we have DOUBLED our prize!  It really would be an honor to include you, your colleagues and students in this opportunity so if you haven't already, please feel free to share the announcement! 

The Grand Prize winner will be awarded a Manhattan gallery reception, an international publicity campaign, and will receive both $10,000 in cash AND 1 year living rent-free in a $1.2 million apartment at The Edge in New York City.

NEW DEADLINE:
June 7, 2010 - No Late Entry Fee

Details are at:http://www.artistswanted.org/

This opportunity is open to photographers of all backgrounds and levels.  Rewards and benefits will be given to all who participate.

Our panel of judges including Photographer Lauren Greenfield, New York Times Photo Editor Maura Foley, MoMA Curator Nora Lawrence and JPG Founders Derek Powazek & Heather Powazek Champ, will choose one photographer for the Grand Prize:

   * $10,000 cash or 1-year FREE living at a $1.2 million apartment at The Edge in New York City
   * A Manhattan gallery reception
   * Airfare & shipping to and from New York City for the event
   * International publicity

With support from The Edge, JPG Magazine, Etsy, Resource Magazine, Zipcar, 3rd Ward.

Please feel free to contact me should you have any questions.

Thanks for your time, and good luck!

Suzie Ryu

Director of Communications
ArtistsWanted.org
suzie@artistswanted.org

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1569629484/acre-artist-residency-program

cheap photographs for auction to raise money for the ACRE residency program...
i bought my greg stimac cave photo from them tonight!

'Don't follow your dream, follow your wet dream (Los Angeles, 2010)'

'Don't follow your dream, follow your wet dream (Los Angeles, 2010)'
archival inkjet  30x40"  2010


new work in a series called MOTIVATION...this piece was made in Griffith Park in Los Angeles in January...each light burst is me popping the flash toward the camera.  the exposure was about 3 minutes...thanks to aron gent for assisting me!  please consider this jpg a motivational gift for your desktop!  email me if the file is too small to make a good background-jasonlazarus.photo@gmail.com

cheers!

http://www.toohardtokeep.blogspot.com/

http://www.toohardtokeep.blogspot.com/

call for photos!

I have started an archive of photographs deemed "too hard to keep."

This may include photos or photo albums of ex's, photos of deceased friends/family/pets/etc.

The reason you can't live with the photo or photo album I do not need to know...

I am creating a repository for these images so that they may exist without being destroyed. I can pay shipping costs or pick up the photographs personally (in Chicago).

I am happy to answer any questions and hope this project helps you part with something in a more graceful manner. 

Jason Lazarus

810 n Wood, 3f

Chicago, IL 60622

http://www.nocommercialvalue.org/

http://mjdq.tumblr.com/

my piece in berlin shows up in this video walk through....it's the video diptych of burning dates, the first is the date thriller was released, the second the day he died...

coming up...

invitation to apply/participate:
Michael Jackson Memorial Procession
June 25th, 2010

To mark the anniversary of Michael Jackson's death, a coordinated caravan of 50 marked cars (in the spirit of a funeral procession) will begin in the early evening of June 25th, 2010 from the childhood home of Jackson in Gary, IN, and proceed throughout the city of Chicago. Each participating vehicle in the caravan will play the same MJ song at the same time to provide a several block long audio blanket that will travel through most major neighborhoods in Chicago.

I still have about 15 open slots for participants, each of whom will receive a flag for their car and an editioned print. Participants will be asked to document their experience via photos, videos, sound or any other measure to contribute to the project.

Email me to RSVP or for media inquiries: jasonlazarus.photo@gmail.com
Please feel free to copy/paste/spread the news and excitement about this project!  Thanks and best, Jason

old friend / new work - michael gumhold

http://www.galeriewest.nl/site.php?idsub=exhibitions&single=10_01_Michael_Gumhold&show=pics

Anna Trier04 May 2010 at 21:51

Subject: Indication Clothing

Hello,

Nina Mayer and myself are working on a project together and we are hoping you will be apart of it, or spread the news to those who might be interested. The project is Indication Clothing.

Indication Clothing is a collection of mass-produced articles of clothing that have played active roles in an ephemeral work of art. This line is a collection of residual artifacts, evidence of past artistic actions. Each article is a marker, serving as testimony for art that has traditionally rejected the commercial art world. As such the clothing included in Indication has been transformed into one of a kind articles that values lies not in their construction but in their inherent narrative.

We will be selling this line of clothing (with most of the money going to the artists), and are hoping to feature a rack of it at my BFA show, clothing will be priced based on the artist. We are working with artists to determine prices but there will be reflection more or less of what there work would sell for it they were a painter, sculptor or maker of object based art.

All clothing in the line will be marked with a silk screened tag listing the artist connected to the piece and 2-4 sentence description of the performance that the clothing was apart of.

If you are interesting and can get me work in the next week I would love to have it available at the BFA show, but if not this is an on going project and we are happy to work with you at a letter date.

Thanks,

Anna

http://www.facebook.com/l/d0347;517.281.3530
annatrier@happycollaborationists.com

Art Fag City is seeking a Curatorial Fellow as part of a new program titled “Young Curators”. AFC is an award-winning New York-based art blog that focuses on art world news, reviews, and culture commentary.
Ideal candidates have a deep knowledge of contemporary art and digital media, possess excellent writing and editing skills, and either a degree in curatorial studies or experience curating. Applicants should also be extremely organized, self-motivated, and detail-oriented. Knowledge of Facebook, Delicious, Flickr, and Twitter is preferred. Interest in New Media is also a plus.
The Curatorial Fellow will work directly with AFC Editor-in-Chief Paddy Johnson on a project-to-project basis. The position offers valuable hands-on experience in the fast growing world of digital media and in-depth insight into a prestigious online publication. This position will give curators the opportunity to attend private tours and panel discussions as well as write original content for the blog.
Duties include:
-Masthead Curation/Featured Artist (Every Two Weeks)
-Gallery and museum preview posts (Seasonal)
-Independent curatorial projects for the blog
-Managing ongoing series
-Project-based research
-Best Link Ever
-Occasional posts
Applicants should expect to make a minimum commitment of 16 hours per week, for 6 months, beginning in April 2010. This position is unpaid, but academic credit may be arranged.
If interested, please e-mail cover letter, resume, and availability to artfagcity@gmail.com, with “Curatorial Fellow” as the subject line.