Thursday, April 30, 2015

Football vs. soccer

I'm not a fan of a football game, American style.
But I do watch a few soccer games, aka Football, world style.

Sepia Saturday invites submissions on this topic HERE.

And I just shared a delightful Saturday morning watching Liverpool vs. whoever that tied with them 0-0. Uptown Bar, or pub, or whatever, has a great Saturday brunch and shows the games, for my youngest son, Tai and his friend, Keegan, who have a regular thing there.

Tai in foreground, Keegan in grey next to his dad in green.

My latest house sculpture

A tiny house...in a way.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

What he says about his art

My son, Tai Rogers was interviewed for the campus newspaper at Indiana University last week. We looked for the article, but didn't find it on the 24th. But the date is the 23rd? Anyway, I'm posting it in entirety here so I have an archive, to the link HERE.

Final MFA exhibits shown at the Grunwald

By Sanya Ali

The pool of inspiration for bachelor of fine arts and master of fine arts exhibits was wide this year. Projects ranged in subject matter from mythological poppies to images of the self to  philosophy and beyond.

On Wednesday, the Grunwald Gallery of Art opened up their final display of MFA thesis exhibits across genres, including works from printmaking, ceramics and textiles, among others.

Tai Rogers, a graduate student working for his MFA in ceramics, displayed a group of sculptural pieces made of materials such as wood, steel and artificial lighting. Topography, maps and cartography were the  focus of inspiration.

“My objects become abstracted because of the removal of specifics like names and numbers,” Rogers said. “They become these aesthetic objects that are just about the lines and the spaces that they create.”

The show, titled “Fabricated Landscapes,” includes large-scale pieces inspired by actual locations on maps, but are given a whimsical makeover.

“I’m creating these spaces that are fantastical and imaginary,” Rogers said. “In a sense, they’re creating their own worlds.”

The pieces, Rogers said, follow a similar trajectory he established throughout his time as an artist at IU.

“I’ve been investigating ideas related to identity and navigation all through the avenue of understanding our place in the world and such,” Rogers said.

“It’s not particularly new, there are new elements to them; there are new kinds of techniques that I’ve explored.”

Rogers said the inciting event for this inspirational path came during his time in the Peace Corps after undergraduate school.

Stationed on a coffee farm in Jamaica, Rogers was not in the United States during the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

“My whole sense of the world was shifted, so I started really searching for understanding my place,” Rogers said. “I started with the local, really understanding where I was living, which wasn’t on a map.”

After that, Rogers said he moved on to investigating other locations in the quest to combat the sense of dislocation he felt being so far away during such a major cultural shift.

From Mosul, Iraq, to Washington, Rogers said, all land looks the same when you strip away the objects on top. Through his work, he has been able to become more at peace with where he has been and the universality of a place.

“The land becomes this sense of, it blends everything together, people  become one, in a way,” Rogers said. “For me, it allows me to explore, look at places where I want to go or where I’ve been.”

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Shelbyville, KY

It's Tuesday, so I share a few photos of the region around me.

I wandered a bit further away from home than my usual day trips...last week I went to see my son's latest sculptures as part of his Masters in Fine Arts at Indiana University.

But you know I can't drive straight on the route that takes 8 hours steady driving. I'm an "old lady" who does things as they occur to her, thinking I might not pass this way again.

So Shelbyville, KY was a great stop for getting out and stretching my legs. The fact that I had previously tried to find the resting place of my ancestor, Isaac Norman, nearby several years ago, and failed, might have something to do with urging me forward. (See this post about that adventure.)

I had plenty of time to drive just once up and then down the nice one-way streets, and found a parking place easily across from the Historical Society.

Yes, the old lady's reflection shows in the map and locator of historic buildings

All of this was a bit too involved for my quick visit, though it shows that there are a lot of buildings preserved for the public to visit when they have more time.

So I decided to try the door-knob of the Historical Society Museum, and it opened.

I was gawking at various maps and displays when a nice young man came up and introduced himself...Fred Rogers. When I gave him my name, (Barbara Rogers) I explained I was a Tennessee Rogers, and was looking for an ancestor in this area named Isaac Norman. Mr. Rogers said he works with the Historical Society and the preservation of buildings, and wasn't a volunteer for the society, so didn't know much about it. But he turned the lights on upstairs for me to quickly look at the displays.

I found the timeline most interesting.

My ancestor who is buried in Elk Creek Baptist Cemetery would have been around about the same time as the left-most entries, but about 20 miles down the road in another area, which originally had been in Shelby County, but then was portioned off into Spencer County.

I was sure to have a chance to look for his grave on my way back home..and I took off to Bloomington, IN.

Monday, April 27, 2015

Watto the Star Wars creature

Home for a huge 4 foot plastic hummingbird for the last 5 years

While my son was off living in many places from California to Colorado, Arizona and Montana and Florida to Indiana...as well as a couple of years in the Peace Corps in Jamaica, he left his Star Wars creature with me in storage. Well a few years the creature was stored in his brother's attic also.


Watto, a computer generated creature in Star Wars, The Phantom Menace

So I carried this strange creature in the back seat under a sheet from North Carolina to Indiana for my son to make a sale or trade with a collector.

Watto, the model about to go traveling

Here he is in Tai's studio at Indiana University. He caught some students (and teachers) eyes. Not your ordinatry sculpture! And not of clay either!

Saturday, April 25, 2015

A gallery talk, an opening, and something unexpected

Tai Rogers and other MFA candidates gave their short talks to an interested public this afternoon. The audience was other students and teachers, and some of their friends and families.

I was stunned when I saw Tai's installations. As you open the doors to the Grunwald Gallery at Indiana University, you see his work immediately.

It's stark. It's huge. It catches your eye. These are two of the pieces you first see. Then a third is on the right wall.

Clay construction with bent wood framing

		The Caldera opposite the doors, is huge, but with interesting details. This is not a blurred shot, but with different levels showing so close together that it almost looks blurred.

Constructed of wood and small metal rods, against the natural marble setting.


Tai was patiently waiting to give a 10-15 minute talk, and he was first of 6 talking about their works.


The man in the plaid shirt was there to keep people from stepping on the Charcoal Island piece as people milled around.

Wooden dowels and shaped flat pieces of wood create a topographical depiction of an actual island which Tai gives the GPS coordinates to.


This is my last picture of the sculpture


Because suddenly a man walked right through the middle of it, seated over against the wall where he took off his shoes with charcoal on the bottoms.

You can see his footprints across the middle of the charcoal, then scattering it away along the edges

My son, Tai went to get something to clean the man's shoes with...some wet towels, and asked him to take them off so he could clean them.

Then they sat and talked about how it happened

And Tai assured the man that it was an accident and he didn't blame him for ruining his sculpture

The whole episode was over in 2-3 minutes, and it was time for Tai to give his talk, so he did, right next to "the Elephant in the Living Room," as he called it. And he also said he had no hard feelings toward the man who caused the accident.

The rest of the day, people were commending Tai on the calm way he handled the accident.

And Tai continued to be subdued. Some of it was the shock of a piece of sculpture being obliterated so quickly, and some of his quiet was his own feelings having settled after the build-up and adrenalin prior to this big event. But this was all around noon, and the opening wasn't going to occur till 6 that evening.

What should he do with the piece? He had major decisions to make. Sweep the charcoal up. And pile the pieces of his sculpture into a container. But should he try to add another piece to his show?

He finally decided not to.

Did the gallery insure his work which had been destroyed? It turned out it hadn't, so he won't receive compensation...though when he spoke with the director, there was some talk about doing something for him. Student work isn't insured, and there wasn't any paperwork prior to the exhibit giving details of any liability.

So the show continued, and Tai's MFA exhibition was more memorable, and for entirely different reasons than he anticipated. He demonstrated that he is a very capable artist, and a very mature man who can cope with an unexpected crisis.

Incidentally, it wasn't until a half hour later that I went up to the man and asked him if he was OK, the one who walked through the sculpture. I apologized for not having asked him earlier. I was simply taking pictures.

Friday, April 24, 2015

Tai Rogers, Ceramic Artist

Last week at the Grunwald Gallery at Indiana University...running till May 2.

My youngest son, Tai Rogers, has installed his MFA exhibit after 3 years work.

I'm so proud of him!

Here's his web site where he writes the following:

Artist Statement

I am drawn to working with maps because of their innate functions as tools for navigation and orientation; tools that are necessary for physical location as well as personal bearings in life. I work from a process of selection, taking maps that hold significance to broader ideas or personal inquiry and abstracting what appeals to my aesthetic curiosity. I act as a lamppost in my own universe of maps, revealing what I wish to highlight about a place. My work acts as a landmark itself, in guiding a discussion that is the journey of the viewer. Information is lost in translation as I make choices in presenting an object stripped of, or imbued with particular details depending on my intent, but communication remains of paramount importance to me. I enjoy the manipulation of the map’s ability to outline information through its universal lexicon or recognized features.