Spent the morning at the Detroit Institute of Arts. For the past month, I have been trying to get there to see the Julie Mehretu exhibition, and I finally found a window of time to do it. I’ve heard Mehretu speak before, and seen her work reproduced, but have never been able to see it in person. The full scale pieces did not disappoint.

As an undergraduate math major, I’ve always been attracted to Julie’s ability to distill larger patterns into discrete chunks, and think her work is quite brilliant (the MacArthur Foundation apparently agrees with me). 

I also spent some time in the contemporary galleries and am appalled to report that there was not a single photographic piece in the five galleries of “contemporary” work. The DIA is opening a “separate but equal” photography gallery in the museum on some undisclosed date in 2008.

I drove home from school today in a snow storm almost identical to the one in which I made “The Seeming Impenetrability  of the Space Between” (yes, I’m aware that spring began a week ago, please don’t rub it in).

Wow. I am stunned and ecstatic by the outcome of my 20×200 edition. In my most optimistic hopes I saw the small edition eventually selling out, but never in anything close to 28 hours. Thanks to everyone who made it a success- Liz and Amy for their blog postings (I hope I am not missing any other posts- much to my continued annoyance pingbacks are still not working on my blog), everyone for their comments and encouragement on my blog (for 12 hours I actually received more legitimate comments than spam!), and of course everyone who snatched up a print- I hope you enjoy it (I think you will).

If there are any high rollers out there who missed  out on the small edition, there are still plenty of prints left in the larger sizes…

Which is worse, ego surfing, or neurotically watching the remaining prints go down on your 20×200 edition? I never really took to googling myself, but with Wednesday afternoon being work time for me when I’m usually glued to my computer, I’ve found myself guilty of the latter. Thanks for everyone’s support!

I’m going to get away from my computer now and enjoy what’s left of the day- it’s supposed to be cold again tomorrow with snow forecast for later in the week.

 I have an edition with 20×200 launching today. Very cool. I’ve admired the program since its inception, and am the proud owner of 6 or 7 prints. I really believe it’s a great thing both for artists and art in general. Having now seen things partly from the inside, I am all the more impressed. Jen and company really have their act together in terms of the logistics needed to make something like this run, and getting ready for the edition was a really enjoyable experience.

Now, about the edition…

 Most of you familiar with “Somewhere in Middle America” know this image well. It has become something of a centerpiece for the project. “The Seeming Impenetrability of the Space Between” is a perfect image for the edition, as it looks great even in the 8.5×11″ size (really sharp!), but has a presence in the larger sizes (especially 30×40) that can’t be matched. Eric Recktenwald, the printer for the edition, uses the exact same printer and paper I do for my own prints, so the edition matches exactly the prints I make myself. My thanks to Eric- the print quality is fantastic. Check it out! I’m surprised and excited by the rate that the prints are moving (62 had sold before I even had a chance to see the launch), so don’t delay!

 Great news! I fixed the broken locking mechanism in my camera…

This morning when I came in to work it was in the low 20’s, and there is around 4″ of snow on the ground right now. The projected high over the next two days is 50°. That means the 4″ of snow will become 4″ of mud. Gotta love Michigan.

Here are a few recent images of our winter here, which has had an abnormally high amount of snow (which I must say is preferable to the continuous snow/freeze/thaw cycle we’ve been getting for the past couple of winters: 

A lot of rejections recently. Everyone’s doing email these days, so I can’t post my normal picture containing one of the rejection letters:

1. Print Center’s Photography Competition- things  are bad when you get rejections from competitions you don’t even remember entering (sort of the reverse of the “wow, I just found $20 in my pocket” effect)
2. PDN30- Actually, I never officially got a rejection for this, but found the list of winners on their website and I was not among them.
3. Center for Photography at Woodstock’s PhotoNow- Juried by one of the editors at PDN who also juried PDN30- two rejections from one person.
4. Waitlisted at Review Santa Fe- ok, so this one is only a half rejection. I guess where this stuff is concerned I have a tendency to be a glass half empty kind of guy.

It’s been 6 months and counting since my work has been up on a gallery wall outside of my immediate local area.  I’m getting pretty tired with the impersonal nature of all the juried competitions. I’ve really enjoyed the more personal interaction I’ve gotten with people like Andy Adams, Jen Bekman, and Leslie Brown. I think I need to keep figuring out ways to develop those more personal relationships. Review Santa Fe would probably do me some good if I can get off the waiting list. Hopefully I’ll get some feedback from my participation in Critical Mass as well.

I really enjoyed this article about Jen Bekman in the New York Times last Thursday. It’s so easy to look at the curators, gallery directors, publishers, etc as the ones with all the power, it’s good to be reminded that they face many of the same challenges us artists do. The same struggles for recognition, for others to respect their vision, for financial solvency, etc. Jen works amazingly hard, and her success is well-deserved.