David Petersen Artworks

Goddammit, I swore that September would be my month to catch up and get out and be back on track, doing all those things that I wasn’t doing for about 6 months. Crap, I have let everyone down again. Again!

First update: I have been a stay-at-home mom for three weeks now and let me begin by saying that I love the awful, thankless and ungratifying drudgery that leeches the mind/body/soul of any extracurricular energy to accomplish anything more that putting a couple slices of semi-stale bread in the toaster only to not hear it ‘pop up’ because the two-month old is wailing in your ear again. Oh I love her so.

Second update: I was able to steal away last Saturday night to attend the Soap Factory’s opening event for the show entitled, Host. Curated by some fancy-pants New Yorker in the tight black dress and stiletto heels, the show was pretty rich and varied in the artworks presented, and the theme of the show was stretched and not completely predictable. The first word that popped into my head upon my initial survey of the grounds was ‘layers.’ Which doesn’t by any means summarize the difficult to summarize show, however, much of the work was layered physically, conceptually and contextually. Of course I am also going to totally plug the show’s ‘best’ piece, my favorite piece (which I may not have even had the patience to view if not for the totally smokin’ curator who was talking about it with some well-wishers) that was a sculptural video contraption involving two 70’s era televisions (large and wooden like pirate ships), myriad stereo/vcr components and speakers, and a grip of rachets and straps that not only held it all together but also hooked up to a pulley system that led to a harness for a person (provided the rachets, straps and pulleys were properly installed) could climb into and (provided a certain amount of human strength) elevate the media mass it was connected to. And this is just the physical structure of the work. On the monitors played synchronously a rather simple but elegant video presumably featuring the artist (it is) David Politzer who gives a lovely, heartfelt and hilarious lecture on the ways to get ahead in the world. Check him out, he has a great website although this particular piece, “Weight,” has not made its way onto the web yet.

Update #3: Today’s word from DFW’s Infinite Jest was ‘meatus,’ which I feel I should have known but he used in the strangest context. If you didn’t know what it means either, my sources tell me it is a bodily opening, usually in a bony structure, such as the ear or nose. But any opening will do.
Fourthly: I have completed reading the most recent edition of ARP! (Art Preview and Review!) and it was very informative, as advertised, about the history of Twin Cities art, its people, places and spaces. Unfortunately, and I have not the time to get into it right now, a couple of the writers raised my hackles with either some pretentiousness, laziness, and/or sloppiness. Which I did not expect. But these were just a couple of specific writers who I will totally rip on another time, just not now because I am not getting paid for this. Great job Tiff and Ariel!

Update #5: The arrival from Brooklyn of our good friend Jade Townsend is just days away. He is visiting Minneapolis on business, to create and install artwork at Art of This Gallery. The show opens Saturday, October 6 at 7pm and you’d all better be there.

Last Update: I received word late Wednesday night that the art show that was planned for myself in Brooklyn at the Arm Letterpress Gallery and Studio in April, has been moved FORWARD to December 1. The show opens December 1. Why on earth am I still typing?

As reported earlier, I have begun the eleven hundred-page journey that is Infinite Jest. At the rate at which I am reading this monumental block of what can only be described thus far as a very heavy convoluted post-modern headache, such that because of its giant, cuboid mass, has reportedly been used, against its intended purpose, as a step to help Dad get onto the roof of the garage, the material for the world’s longest Paper Football game, and as one of those blocks that they stuff under the wheels of jetliners to keep them from rolling away, the likely date of me completing what has been promised to me as “totally worth it,” is the same day that my two-month old daughter enrolls in Kindergarten. Because of my parenting duties I am able to read, usually aloud to said daughter - she enjoys my narrating voice - no more than 3 pages an afternoon, and because of my cooking duties that wholly satisfy the tastebuds of my beautiful, bread-winning life partner, absolutely zero in the evening. Feel free to do the math.

Much of the problem is all DFW’s doing, using words that are either not used for good reasons or completely imagined by the imaginative author, as well as complementing his fictive with nearly one hundred pages that are the tomes 388 endnotes, causing the reader to collect painful paper cuts flipping back and forth while cursing under his breath that footnotes would have done the trick. And so of course because the reader is making a diligent effort to read the entire book, text and endnotes, as well as comprehend the forearm toning literary masterpiece (supposed anyway), a second couch-sized book is required by the reader’s side, none other than the current edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, to look up words such as ‘fantod,’ ‘phosphene,’ and ‘baud.’ My favorite word today was ‘bolection,’ a raised molding that frames a panel, doorway, or fireplace, a word that I might actually get to use some day, moments before being socked by a cranky carpenter. Don’t get me wrong, it is almost comically enjoyable learning the meanings of these smarty-pants words, despite the frustration of not being able to just read the damned book. It is like being in a traffic jam in a car that is in constant need of an oil change or tire inflation. But I will get there dammit and when I do, you will be the first to know. Stay tuned for many, many more updates.

Well leave it to me to jinx the weather into returning our town to a sweltering furnace of godawful-I-can’t-take-it-anymore summer. Goddammitgoddammitgoddammit.

Let’s just get this over with. I am officially employed as the ’stay-at-home mom,’ left to my own devices in the rearing of our small child. So far so good. I am about to take her on a walk in the stroller down to the local coffee shop to see if the latest edition of ARP! has been dropped off by either of its publishers, Tiffany Hockin or Ariel Pate. It’d better be there. Not that I have any free time for leisurely reading, but I always want to see what the ARPsters! are up to. Plus I can find out if there are any other shows to go to this weekend other than the Soap Factory’s group show, HOST, which we will be attending. And the criticism, everybody loves art criticism!

Finally, in what shall be a daily, or everyotherday feature, I have begun reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I know, I know, it is already ten years old and everybody and their little brother has already gotten through it but me. Anyway, at the moment Orin Incandenza is having some awful dream where his and his mother’s heads are melded into a floating orb of head, the Arabian-Canadian medical attaché is watching some mysterious video that came in the post, and my OED is getting a workout. Christ, Dave, ‘phylacteryish?’ You gotta be kidding me!

Lastly, for those of you who have doubted the efforts of the Artworks, I have news from the front. You may recall the video of young Aaron Steffes, ‘Trophy Room,’ that was featured on these pages back in February. Well, we have just learned that, directly due to the feature of his fantastic piece of art, he has landed a job teaching video to a bunch of snot-nosed brats at some very prestigious high school in Chicago, USA. Take that! Needless to say, we here at the Artworks are ecstatic at this glorious development, and we will be redoubling our efforts with the certainty that there are more riches for us all if we just keep on keeping on.