Deus Ex Machina's Annie Lopez was a featured artist in the University of Arizona Museum of Art's exhibit "The Border Project." This article includes a video of an interview with Annie.
Annie Lopez Challenges Cultural Identity
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Article: Annie Lopez Featured in the University of Arizona Museum of Art
Deus Ex Machina's Annie Lopez was a featured artist in the University of Arizona Museum of Art's exhibit "The Border Project." This article includes a video of an interview with Annie.
Annie Lopez Challenges Cultural Identity
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Video: A Blast from the Past
Last Wave at Deus Ex Machina, September 3, 2010. Featuring images of works by the members of the gallery.
Last Wave Plays A First Friday
Last Wave Plays A First Friday
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Notes From the Studio: Steve Gompf
Steve Gompf
(Photo by Diane Banyai)
During Deus Ex Machina's openings, Steve Gompf often continues to work on generating new video imagery to play inside his Televisors.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Artists: Joseph Cornell
"Untitled (Cockatoo Corks)"
"Shadow boxes become poetic theaters or settings wherein are metamorphosed the element of a childhood pastime."
- Joseph Cornell
Friday, March 23, 2012
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Establishment "Art" : Ellsworth Kelly
"In 'Red, Yellow, Blue,' the square panels present color."
-Ellsworth Kelly
There's the old insult about something dull being as interesting as watching paint dry. But in the museums, universities and galleries, there's a whole tradition that is as exciting as watching paint that is already dried. Call it high modernism, color field, minimalism, whatever-in this area, vacuum is virtue. The focus is very literal-on the material and physical properties, characteristics that can be gleaned immediately. This is Formalism.
In art, Formalism is not enough, just like Conceptualism is not enough. Concepts and formal qualities are a given in a work of art. To emphasize these aspects to the detriment of all the other qualities art can convey is terribly limiting. It's taking one component of art and all blowing it all out of proportion.
This type of work creates a need for experts, specialists who thrive on opacity and obscurity. Works concerned with conceptualism and formalism thrive in academia and the culture industry. This specialist mindset treats life like a laboratory, a controlled environment where elements can get isolated and sliced and diced and examined. But to dissect something is to kill it.
Remodernism is about art engaged with existence, an integrated approach, a balance of not only form and ideas but feeling, spirit, life. Art dominated by formal/conceptual concerns do not succeed in connecting on those levels, hung up as they are on just a piece of the puzzle.
-Richard Bledsoe
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Video: The Dry Surfinis at Deus Ex Machina
The Dry Surfinis play Art Detour 24
Covering the Langhorns' "Mother of Earth". Dan Keegan-bass, Greg
Roberts-drums, Brad Woodward-guitar.
Covering the Langhorns' "Mother of Earth". Dan Keegan-bass, Greg
Roberts-drums, Brad Woodward-guitar.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Saturday, March 17, 2012
The Falling Darkness and Appearence of Mystery Cat XI - Finis
When the man had found Clio's strange leaf journal in her bed she had already
gone.
The mystery of how or why a cat would care to keep a journal of her life and adventures
was pretty much unfathomable. Some would call it a miracle. That such a thing, if it were
even remotely true or even possible, showed that there was a side to animals we didn't even begin
to understand. That in some impossible way they wondered about the world as much as us.
Asking questions as the people animals do. What is this life? Why are we in it? Is there meaning
to any of this? And, if there is, what is it? But different than the view most people animals have of
this life was the curious attention Clio had paid to the world around her.
Watching the breeze turn through the leaves of a sunflower during a full moon night.
Admiring her sister, Shadow, and seeing the beauty and worth in another being. Knowing, in a way,
that even though she might never have answers to all of her questions and wonderings about
everything that this was indeed an amazing world.
The man still keeps her bed in its place in the kitchen. Knowing that she is gone.
But it reminds him of the magic of this strange thing called life. And the importance
of writing one's own history down. For in doing so perhaps we can understand who we are.
One sunny morning near the first day of spring that year, as he wandered down by the creek,
he found a small paper package lying in the dead grasses. He saw its color first. Though faded
there was still enough red in it to catch his eye. He picked it up. It was a package of Black Cats.
Firecrackers. He had loved shooting them off when he was younger. Their sound and smell.
He smiled to himself. Then studied the ferocious looking black cat face on the package.
Odd. It reminded him of a black cat he had seen many times over the years. Sitting quietly
amongst the sunflowers and hollyhocks. Once he found Clio skulking in the grasses along
the creek. A black cat crouching in the grasses near her. They seemed to be hunting birds
together. Wow. This must have been Shadow, her sister, that she had written of.
He shook his head in disbelief. He hoped he would see Shadow again.
He stuffed the firecrackers into his coat pocket and wandered home.
gone.
The mystery of how or why a cat would care to keep a journal of her life and adventures
was pretty much unfathomable. Some would call it a miracle. That such a thing, if it were
even remotely true or even possible, showed that there was a side to animals we didn't even begin
to understand. That in some impossible way they wondered about the world as much as us.
Asking questions as the people animals do. What is this life? Why are we in it? Is there meaning
to any of this? And, if there is, what is it? But different than the view most people animals have of
this life was the curious attention Clio had paid to the world around her.
Watching the breeze turn through the leaves of a sunflower during a full moon night.
Admiring her sister, Shadow, and seeing the beauty and worth in another being. Knowing, in a way,
that even though she might never have answers to all of her questions and wonderings about
everything that this was indeed an amazing world.
The man still keeps her bed in its place in the kitchen. Knowing that she is gone.
But it reminds him of the magic of this strange thing called life. And the importance
of writing one's own history down. For in doing so perhaps we can understand who we are.
One sunny morning near the first day of spring that year, as he wandered down by the creek,
he found a small paper package lying in the dead grasses. He saw its color first. Though faded
there was still enough red in it to catch his eye. He picked it up. It was a package of Black Cats.
Firecrackers. He had loved shooting them off when he was younger. Their sound and smell.
He smiled to himself. Then studied the ferocious looking black cat face on the package.
Odd. It reminded him of a black cat he had seen many times over the years. Sitting quietly
amongst the sunflowers and hollyhocks. Once he found Clio skulking in the grasses along
the creek. A black cat crouching in the grasses near her. They seemed to be hunting birds
together. Wow. This must have been Shadow, her sister, that she had written of.
He shook his head in disbelief. He hoped he would see Shadow again.
He stuffed the firecrackers into his coat pocket and wandered home.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Artists: Henri Rousseau
Henri Rousseau "The Football Players"
"Nothing makes me so happy as to observe nature and to paint what I see."
- Henri Rousseau 1844-1910
Monday, March 12, 2012
Notes From The Studio: Artists At Work
February 2012-Richard Bledsoe painting "Among the Fortunate"
February 2012 - Michele Bledsoe doing the initial drawing of "Lavinia"
Sunday, March 11, 2012
The Falling Darkness and the Appearance of Mystery Cat X
The long night passed.
I did not see Shadow again before the light came.
She had her favorite places to sleep. Where I did not know.
I made my way home before the sky lit up so bright and yellow.
The great fire ball chasing our holy silver cat away.
I could sit at the closed back door of my people animal and speak once or twice
asking to enter. Most times the door would open soon enough. But not
always. Patience is an attribute most of us cats have although we get
no credit for it from other animals. They act as if we are unfocused, selfish, flighty
and uncaring. All those things we certainly can be. But you have never
sat at a door on a cold morning or freezing night waiting for your people to open it to you.
I can wait a long time. A very long time.
This day my human opened it quickly. I spoke thanks to him as I entered the welcoming warm kitchen.
He was busy making food in the hot box thing in the room. From up top of it I could hear and smell
meat frying. A good smell. Sometimes he gave me a bit of the delicious meat. It was always
very hot, almost too hot to eat. He is kind to me. He talks to me. I talk back. He gives me a place to
sleep in my good little bed in the corner. The people animal is odd but we are friends I think.
He scratches behind my ears and gives me milk when I ask for it.
Shadow has never liked the people animals. Cats are not her friends either.
I don't know why.
But she believes she is meant to be alone in this world.
Prefers it I think.
She talks to me. Puts up with me but that is because we are blood.
Oh I think in her own way she cares about me. But it is hard for her
to say so.
I think some part of Shadow got broken when she was small. I recall her
as playful and hopeful as any kitten. For some reason she always asked about our father.
Wanted to be with him I think. Sometimes he would appear in our lives ever so briefly. So much so that
I thought for a long time that he did not exist.
Then I would notice his black shape barely hidden in some flowers at the edge of a
bright meadow where a bunch of us would play.
He would watch through the shade of the plants. Never coming out into the light.
Watching. He called to us once. Just to let us know he was there I think.
But he did not say much.
I could tell Shadow was bothered by this. She would stop
in mid play and stand stiff still, eyes wide open with ears up. Whether she was scared
or in awe I don't know. He would look at us once more and then growl deep in his throat
and then slowly move away through the field. I knew Shadow wanted to go with him.
But she was a little bit scared I think. So she stayed with us. That day anyway.
I must stop my writing now.
I am tried and my bed is so warm and soft I must lie down.
Tonight will come soon enough.
And perhaps I can find out about the appearance of the mystery cat
on the package Angel brought us. I hid it beneath some leaves
under the sunflowers where Shadow and I meet.
NEXT: THE ONLY BRIGHT SPOT
I did not see Shadow again before the light came.
She had her favorite places to sleep. Where I did not know.
I made my way home before the sky lit up so bright and yellow.
The great fire ball chasing our holy silver cat away.
I could sit at the closed back door of my people animal and speak once or twice
asking to enter. Most times the door would open soon enough. But not
always. Patience is an attribute most of us cats have although we get
no credit for it from other animals. They act as if we are unfocused, selfish, flighty
and uncaring. All those things we certainly can be. But you have never
sat at a door on a cold morning or freezing night waiting for your people to open it to you.
I can wait a long time. A very long time.
This day my human opened it quickly. I spoke thanks to him as I entered the welcoming warm kitchen.
He was busy making food in the hot box thing in the room. From up top of it I could hear and smell
meat frying. A good smell. Sometimes he gave me a bit of the delicious meat. It was always
very hot, almost too hot to eat. He is kind to me. He talks to me. I talk back. He gives me a place to
sleep in my good little bed in the corner. The people animal is odd but we are friends I think.
He scratches behind my ears and gives me milk when I ask for it.
Shadow has never liked the people animals. Cats are not her friends either.
I don't know why.
But she believes she is meant to be alone in this world.
Prefers it I think.
She talks to me. Puts up with me but that is because we are blood.
Oh I think in her own way she cares about me. But it is hard for her
to say so.
I think some part of Shadow got broken when she was small. I recall her
as playful and hopeful as any kitten. For some reason she always asked about our father.
Wanted to be with him I think. Sometimes he would appear in our lives ever so briefly. So much so that
I thought for a long time that he did not exist.
Then I would notice his black shape barely hidden in some flowers at the edge of a
bright meadow where a bunch of us would play.
He would watch through the shade of the plants. Never coming out into the light.
Watching. He called to us once. Just to let us know he was there I think.
But he did not say much.
I could tell Shadow was bothered by this. She would stop
in mid play and stand stiff still, eyes wide open with ears up. Whether she was scared
or in awe I don't know. He would look at us once more and then growl deep in his throat
and then slowly move away through the field. I knew Shadow wanted to go with him.
But she was a little bit scared I think. So she stayed with us. That day anyway.
I must stop my writing now.
I am tried and my bed is so warm and soft I must lie down.
Tonight will come soon enough.
And perhaps I can find out about the appearance of the mystery cat
on the package Angel brought us. I hid it beneath some leaves
under the sunflowers where Shadow and I meet.
NEXT: THE ONLY BRIGHT SPOT
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Friday, March 9, 2012
Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning in Arizona
Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning in Sedona, AZ 1946
In the late 1930s and early 1940s there was a mass exodus of artists out of Europe, fleeing expanding Nazi power. Many came to America and settled in New York City, and went no further. They kept aloof from the local art scene and showed little interest in learning anything about their host country. Surrealism was the dominant movement at the time, and most of the leading figures were present; they spent their time playing cruel parlor games, complaining about their exile and marking time until the war was over and they could return to true civilization on the Continent.
One notable exception was the German Dada artist Max Ernst. After the Allied victory he didn’t go home-he headed west to Arizona.
Ernst had lived a stormy bohemian life. After serving in the German military during the First World War, Ernst had helped found the Cologne Dada group. He worked with many experimental techniques, and became one of the earliest visual artists associated with the Surrealists, which had been a mainly literary movement.
In Paris Ernst met the French poet Paul Eluard, and his Russian wife Gala. This relationship grew into a longstanding passionate ménage a trios. The wealthy Eluard helped Ernst get out of Germany by letting him use his passport. Ernst lived with them in their Paris home, covering the walls with murals. The three traveled as far away as Saigon together.
After this trip Ernst moved out on his own, and within a few years the Eluards marriage ended. Gala went on to become Salvador Dali’s wife and muse, and Ernst and Eluard stayed friends for the rest of theirs lives.
As World War II began, Ernst's position was becoming less stable. As a German with ties to the radical Surrealists, Ernst was arrested by the French as a hostile alien. The well-connected Eluard managed to get him released, but after France fell, Ernst was in jeopardy again, pursued by the Gestapo. Ernst had been one of the artists singled out by Hitler’s Degenerate Arts exhibit, and he was in danger of being arrested. He fled first to the south of France, where he was taken in by the American heiress and collector Peggy Guggenheim. A romance bloomed between them, and Guggenheim took Ernst with her back to America. As the United States entered the war, they got married-“I did not like the idea of living in sin with an enemy alien,” Peggy joked.
This marriage also did not last, and in 1946 Ernst was married again for the final time, to the American Surrealist painter Dorothea Tanning. While traveling across country to California, the couple drove through Arizona, and Ernst was amazed to find himself in a rugged landscape that could have come out of visionary world he painted. The couple ended up moving to remote Sedona, Arizona, where they remained for the next seven years. Ernst said Paris and Sedona were "the only two places in the world that I would want to live."
Ernst built a cabin for a home, and continued to paint. Influenced by the Hopi Indian culture he encountered, his work came to show new geometric forms. He used cast concrete and found objects to make sculpture that showed Native American elements. Ernst also used his time in Sedona to write his manifesto, “Beyond Painting.”
During these years Ernst traveled extensively, which led to complications regarding his US citizenship. In 1953 Ernst and Tanning moved to France, where they lived together until his death in 1976.
Dorothea Tanning died in New York on January 31, 2012. She was 101 years old.
-Richard Bledsoe
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
The Falling Darkness and Appearance of Mystery Cat IX
Shadow looked after the departing Angel cat.
She did not seem bothered by his leaving. She has never
suffered fools well and she thought him a great fool. To me he
was just a troubled soul. Like most cats not quite sure of his place in the world.
But I could tell she was troubled by the strange package he had left us.
The image on it bore a strong resemblance to her. Or maybe it reminded
her of her father. We never really knew our parents. Did we have the same father?
Doubtful. But she had seen a black cat around for many seasons now that she believed
was her father. She wanted to stop him and speak to him I know. But he never stayed anywhere
very long.
She began to get up to leave. As she did she turned to me and spoke.
"Beware sister. There is much to pay attention to now. Be
brave." At this she jumped through the brush
and disappeared.
I was left to sit by myself. Thinking and wondering.
I looked at the package before me. I leaned down to examine it more closely for myself.
I extended a paw to bat at it. I sniffed at it. It did smell disturbingly human. But what was it for? And the image
of the cat? It seemed so terrible. Was it a warning? Was it the face of some cat
to come?
As I thought on these things the breeze picked up. The chill of the coming
autumn tainted the air. The sound of rustling leaves all around now.
The world around me lit by the holy silver light.
I looked up through the shifting leaves above me.
I saw the glowing face of the great cat in the sky.
He seemed to wink at me.
I hoped it was a wink.
I really did.
NEXT: MEOW I SAY
-Jeff Falk
She did not seem bothered by his leaving. She has never
suffered fools well and she thought him a great fool. To me he
was just a troubled soul. Like most cats not quite sure of his place in the world.
But I could tell she was troubled by the strange package he had left us.
The image on it bore a strong resemblance to her. Or maybe it reminded
her of her father. We never really knew our parents. Did we have the same father?
Doubtful. But she had seen a black cat around for many seasons now that she believed
was her father. She wanted to stop him and speak to him I know. But he never stayed anywhere
very long.
She began to get up to leave. As she did she turned to me and spoke.
"Beware sister. There is much to pay attention to now. Be
brave." At this she jumped through the brush
and disappeared.
I was left to sit by myself. Thinking and wondering.
I looked at the package before me. I leaned down to examine it more closely for myself.
I extended a paw to bat at it. I sniffed at it. It did smell disturbingly human. But what was it for? And the image
of the cat? It seemed so terrible. Was it a warning? Was it the face of some cat
to come?
As I thought on these things the breeze picked up. The chill of the coming
autumn tainted the air. The sound of rustling leaves all around now.
The world around me lit by the holy silver light.
I looked up through the shifting leaves above me.
I saw the glowing face of the great cat in the sky.
He seemed to wink at me.
I hoped it was a wink.
I really did.
NEXT: MEOW I SAY
-Jeff Falk
Monday, March 5, 2012
Notes From The Studio: Deus Ex Machina Gallery and Studio
Deus Ex Machina is located in the La Melgosa building on Grand Avenue, in downtown Phoenix. We are one of 5 studio/gallery spaces located here. We are open every First and Third Friday of the month, and on Second Fridays we host Caffeine Corridor, a poetry reading that has both open mike and featured performers.
The gallery is also my oil painting studio, and I leave my works in progress on display. When we aren't open I drag my easel and table out into the room to paint.
-Richard Bledsoe
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Artists: Paula Rego
"The Policeman's Daughter" Paula Rego
"We interpret the world through stories... everybody makes in their own way sense of things, but if you have stories it helps."
-Paula Rego
Friday, March 2, 2012
Thursday, March 1, 2012
THE FALLING DARKNESS AND APPEARANCE OF MYSTERY CAT VIII
My sister stepped forward to examine the package more closely.
I could tell she was curious. I know the people animals think cats are curious
and sometimes it gets us killed. If they only knew how uninterested most cats are.
But I could tell Shadow was more than curious about this package.
Mainly because it bore the image of a cat that looked like her. A message from the
Cat God? In the moonlight beneath the sunflowers the mystery of this face before us
appeared even more mysterious.
Shadow sniffed the package as it lay upon the ground. This thing had many colors
on it. Bright yellow like the sunflowers above us. There was some green like the grass in
summer. The cat's nose was red. Hmmm. Shadow's was black. I wondered if she took
notice of this?
Shadow walked around the thing on the ground. She jabbed at it a few more times with
her paw. She sniffed it again and made a face.
"There is something wrong with this thing." she said.
"Look. Do you see the many short dark little tube things in the red paper? They smell the worst.
They are tied together by string. What in the name of Great Cat could they be?
They are not food. They do not smell good. What is their use?"
"I know you are fond of the people animals but they can be very crazy and
very mean. This thing is pure people animal. And they have used the
face of one of us to adorn it. This makes it even worse.There may come a time Clio,
when you must make a choice between us and them."
I was shaken by this. I knew of her dark distrust of the people animals.
She could not see the good they sometimes possessed. She was right though. They are
crazy at times. And mean. As I sat and listened to her and looked at the odd package
the wind blew ever so slightly again rustling the leaves above us. Animated points of light
from the moon above danced across the face of the cat on the thing making it appear
alive. Its angry looking face seemed to move and it seemed as if it was looking right at me.
I shivered and looked at Shadow. For a brief moment I could not tell her face from the cat's on the strange package.
NEXT: SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY...
-Jeff Falk
I could tell she was curious. I know the people animals think cats are curious
and sometimes it gets us killed. If they only knew how uninterested most cats are.
But I could tell Shadow was more than curious about this package.
Mainly because it bore the image of a cat that looked like her. A message from the
Cat God? In the moonlight beneath the sunflowers the mystery of this face before us
appeared even more mysterious.
Shadow sniffed the package as it lay upon the ground. This thing had many colors
on it. Bright yellow like the sunflowers above us. There was some green like the grass in
summer. The cat's nose was red. Hmmm. Shadow's was black. I wondered if she took
notice of this?
Shadow walked around the thing on the ground. She jabbed at it a few more times with
her paw. She sniffed it again and made a face.
"There is something wrong with this thing." she said.
"Look. Do you see the many short dark little tube things in the red paper? They smell the worst.
They are tied together by string. What in the name of Great Cat could they be?
They are not food. They do not smell good. What is their use?"
"I know you are fond of the people animals but they can be very crazy and
very mean. This thing is pure people animal. And they have used the
face of one of us to adorn it. This makes it even worse.There may come a time Clio,
when you must make a choice between us and them."
I was shaken by this. I knew of her dark distrust of the people animals.
She could not see the good they sometimes possessed. She was right though. They are
crazy at times. And mean. As I sat and listened to her and looked at the odd package
the wind blew ever so slightly again rustling the leaves above us. Animated points of light
from the moon above danced across the face of the cat on the thing making it appear
alive. Its angry looking face seemed to move and it seemed as if it was looking right at me.
I shivered and looked at Shadow. For a brief moment I could not tell her face from the cat's on the strange package.
NEXT: SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY...
-Jeff Falk
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