Sleeping with Peaches: An Interview with Painter Lee Price
Lee Price is a figurative painter from New York. She has been painting women and food for over twenty years and continues to address the intersections of food with body image, addiction, and unabating desire. In this interview Price shares her trajectory as a painter, her personal struggles with food, and the ongoing battle of women and their bodies. The Other Journal (TOJ): Could... Read More
Gaga à Gogo
I remember the first time I saw Lady Gaga perform on TV. She was seated at a very large and very pink piano brimming with plastic bubbles. She had barely tickled the flamingo ivory before strutting center stage to engage in a most bizarre choreography. At the time, Lady Gaga was still becoming the icon she is now, and as I was about to press the worn-out channel button on my remote,... Read More
Anxieties of Influence: Performance Art, Celebrity, and the Self
I have one goal as an artist: not to sit on my ass. For me, art is action in all of its variety of forms. Performance artists, then, should be pushing the boundaries of action, daring to engage with the environment, culture, and most importantly, other people as intensely as possible. I want to do the most frightening things that I can. I want to move past these things. I want... Read More
Celebrity and Iconicity: Some Preliminary Sketches
That contemporary America is captivated by the phenomenon of celebrity is hardly a contestable observation. Even those of us who try to limit the impact of celebrity on our life find that its tenacity is hard to overcome. Some try to overcome the impact of celebrity by willing its insignificance. But that some energy is required to will its insignificance should be an indication... Read More
Curators of Beauty and Space
It is a rare and special treat to find a band that makes music, especially music that one might classify as religious music, which is wholly devoted to the pursuit of beauty. The Opiate Mass, a Seattle-based collaboration of musicians, songwriters, visual artists, audio engineers, and authors, provides just such a treat. In this interview, bandmates Zadok Wartes and Tara Ward muse... Read More
The Real Jeff Koons: Consumer Culture and the Grammar of Desire
In 1980 the young artist Jeff Koons presented his first major solo exhibition, a window installation at New York’s New Museum of Contemporary Art, titled, appropriately, The New. Alongside hermetically sealed vitrines showcasing “ready-made”1 household appliances like a New Hoover Deluxe Rug Shampooer and a New Shelton Wet/Dry 10 Gallon, there were images: meticulously... Read More
False Idols or Latter Day Saints: “Kurt & Warhol” at the Seattle Art Museum
Had Andy Warhol still been living when Kurt Cobain committed suicide in April 1994, the odds are he would have immortalized Cobain in his art. Cobain, with his short, tortured life and his brief but brilliant career, was the most iconic figure in rock music since the punk era of the 1970s. Dead at twenty-seven, like Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimi Hendrix before him, Cobain... Read More
Common Ground: Symmetries of Land and Culture after Economic Change
After living on a farm in Lockport, Illinois, for seventy-three years, Harlow Cagwin sold his family land to a subdivision developer. Shortly thereafter, Amanda Grabenhofer and her family settled into a newly built home upon the land that once housed the Cagwins’ cattle. Together, the stories of these families are the subject of Scott Strazzante’s fifteen-year photography... Read More
Collaborations on a Blue Jacket: Seattle Artist Spotlight on Tara Ward
Click play on the YouTube video below to watch the music video “Circles” from Tara Ward’s Revelations of a Blue Jacket. Thevideo was created by Chuck Potrykus. Revelations of a Blue Jacket is a concept album created, directed, and performed by Seattle artist Tara Ward. The album includes contributions from musicians and visual artists who tell the story of Cordelia,... Read More
Re-Imaging a Native American History of (Un)-Belonging
Click on the image below, “Incident at Fort Klamath,” to open an exhibit of Ball’s work in a resizable browser. Detail, “Incident at Fort Klamath,” from Circa Indian installation, 2009 Visual artist Natalie Ball has undertaken the creative task of re-imaging the Native American past through a process of visual deconstruction and reconstruction. As a descendent of African... Read More
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