In Graces of Oxford

This article will appear in the latest issue of Number: magazine, celebrating its 25th anniversary. Below is the original essay. 

Oxford is a weird place. The typical definition of weird being strange, uncanny, or otherwise bizarre could be applied to almost any place people reside, with Oxford having its fair share of such. Though, the etymology searched for here being the archaic Anglo-Saxon use of the word wyrd – that pertaining to Fate or Destiny (removing all ominous meaning from the origin of the former).

Never were there any intents or reasons to attend the University of Mississippi, become enraptured by art history, to start writing for Number: or other art journals, or even to become taken with the art in Oxford and the artists who purpose it forward.  It just happened.

Rod Moorhead, James Meredith

Ever since its purchase from a Chickasaw princess, and the subsequent Anglicization of the town under the aspiration of becoming the site of Mississippi’s first state university, Oxford has become synonymous with culture and artistic heritage – an uncanny fate for a rural area beset on all sides by differing mentalities and having no river to bear it a port for cultural exchange. 

Its significance as the literary hub of the South is known the world over, and having the luck of being bonne située between Memphis, Atlanta, and New Orleans has allowed it the opportunity to bring in some great music acts – Fat Possum and Sweet Tea also producing some of the best Blues and Rock music of late.

Man Ray, a part of the
Seymour Lawrence Collection

Though, as an active community of the visual arts, Oxford is still much in its infancy – nearly instep with Number: in the progress of its chronology: the art department being given accreditation in 1982, Southside Gallery’s founding in 1993, and the University Museum receiving its incredible showing of Modern American Art from the Seymour Lawrence Collection between 1994 and 1998. Like Number:, the town has grown quickly in its appreciation of and participation in the Arts on account of increasingly accrued interest. The three persons that I’d like to identify as the guardians of what art means to the community and what community means to art, have proactively ingrained themselves in the art scene of Oxford -- as well as elsewhere -- and while doing so are establishing an image of a community mindful of art and its contents, along with its discontents. These artists are Rod Moorhead, Carlyle Wolfe, and Zach Tutor.

Over the past few months, I have visited with and interviewed the three with full intent and reasoning in writing about them and their work. However, it was only through coming to learn about this issue’s theme of Number’s anniversary, and the focus on its artists, supporters, and communities of affect that it appeared sensible to write of the three together, as if tied together by fate. Looking at each not only as an artist, but as members of the community and participants in its temporal contexts I noted their significance to the arts of Oxford – simply, its past, present, and future, respectively, and like any temporal process the three are inextricably linked, directly or indirectly.

William Eggleston
"Untitled "Glass in Airplane"
 Los Alamos series

For starters, all three are represented by Southside Gallery, the gallery Rod helped co-found in 1993. In its inception, as he put it, “there were just a bunch of artists hanging out,” displaying and showing new, great art to the community for the first time. Artists such as Sally Mann, Christenberry, Eggleston, Glennray Tutor, and Jere Allen were all shown at the gallery for the first time – artists now recognized across the South, if not the U.S. and abroad. “It was a learning experience,” remarked Moorhead, referring primarily on how to hang exhibits and the importance of placement, but I also took it as a nod to the community at large. As an example for both, he recalled a story where hanging a piece by Allen, in the central spot of the gallery, had drawn a visitor from across the other side of the Square -- the township icon of Oxford. The man had become mesmerized with the painting during his dinner, having never seen anything like it in the town. Another famous example, which echoes some present-day controversy, was of Mann's photographs of her children who appeared nude and were hung in the gallery. This prompted local authorities to browse the gallery and ultimately decide that they "saw nothing wrong on display." Rod handed over administration responsibilities in 1997, but has remained a fixture in both the gallery and city, figuratively and literally sculpting out his visions for Oxford as well as Mississippi.

I met Rod through his wife, Younok, whom I shared an introductory art class with. Her insight during class critiques was refined beyond most of the opinions given in class, and finally conversing with her and Rod during a museum reception I became enamored with their ideas. I soon began to find his work, and the inherent beauty of my surroundings, all around Oxford. Large, public works by Rod, placed around the university at some of the most important junctions, include the James Meredith Memorial – between the Lyceum and library – and the Gertrude Ford Center’s large sculpture, Concerto. The latter, of child and violinist playing together, bears the likeness of former chancellor Robert Khayat in his youth – who secretly sat and learned how to properly hold the instrument for the piece (both he and Rod later confirmed speculation as to the sculpture’s identity). Rod has captured much of the history of Oxford in his works, but it is in his personal work that he specifically revives history.  

Rod Moorhead "Seven Furies"
Mississippi Museum of Art 2011 Juried Show

The Furies, beastly Erinyes of Greek mythology which exacted justice and vengeance, have been the primary focus of Rod’s work for the past few years. It was entrancing itself to just watch Rod add and subtract clay from the forms – often stoically, classically posed in the vein of the Nike ofSamothrace (with the addition of a head) – the multitude of furies border on serial notions. However, it’s in the smoke-firing process where the pieces take on both individual personality and context.

In the smoke-firing, the Furies – often wrapped in pine straw, grass, leaves, hay –  are embedded with an element of aleatoricism. With this element of chance being imbued into the Fury, the piece finally takes on, and accepts, its fate. While he never creates art to have a specific meaning or symbolic attitude, Moorhead has taken a symbol of cruelty and fairness – justice incarnate – and changed its fate not by any calculation, but by chance. It was upon first meeting Rod that I was inspired to start on a new path – taken by chance and not unlike Frost’s idyllic path – that led me to the gallery Rod first helped co-found. There, I first took in the work of one of the most active artists around Mississippi today: Carlyle Wolfe.

It was only natural for Carlyle to be the first artist I wrote about, because it’s difficult to not find Carlyle somewhere around Oxford. As one of the Friends of the Museum, an Associate Professor at the University, a member of Number:, and regular at Southside it was only inevitable I would come across her work (it, too, being shown widely across the South).

Carlyle Wolfe "Late, Winter Evening" 2012

The work – or harvest as she called it -- then at Southside, was a calendar’s worth of monotypes changing between seasons. Titles of months in Hebrew circled around the gallery floor, twelve pictures subtly changing in color as easily as the leaves in Oxford did.  Upon visiting her studio, itself a quaint cabin of immediate warmth, it was apparent this is exactly what she tries to capture. Swatches of color covered entire swathes of paper, each row and column being a chart of the changing colors in leaves – evidence of the changes in Oxford. Taking in Carlyle’s studio, paintings for upcoming shows laid across the floor, and cutouts for her Zinnias series were stacked meticulously together.

The Zinnias, or cutouts and sections of flowers – stems, branches, leaves, petals – are an on-going idea of Wolfe’s, layering them over one another in a dense foliage, a thicket, that requires more than just the normal five seconds before a canvas in order to unravel it. The cutouts themselves, intricately drawn down to the minutest of details, take an incredible amount of time to cut by hand. Or, that is, when she once was afforded the time to cut them by hand. Now, the stencils are laser-cut, succeeding in perfection that only a machine could produce.

For both Carlyle and Rod, whom I spoke about New Media with at length, use new mediums to complete their works – Carlyle the laser printer, and Rod neon and computational algorithms. While both are quite common in other fields, they are still new fields of art in Oxford, and it’s for Carlyle that Oxford is the actual technical support.

Rosalind E. Krauss Under Blue Cup, 2011
Img: William Kentridge,
"Still from "Weighing  . . . wanting",  1998
Marian Goodman Gallery 

The technical support, in the terms of Rosalind Krauss, is an underlying ground for aesthetic practice that supports the work of art. The swatches of color and their use in paintings and monotypes, and the perfection of cutouts – indeed their standardization, too – are the perspicuous representations of Oxford. Carlyle has used the colors of Oxford to not only portray the changes of phenotype in the town’s flora, but its circular patterning – as well the mechanical perfection of cutouts – has commented on the manufacturing of culture in Oxford at present (most apparent in the idea of William Faulkner). Oxford, in its growth, has cycled through much of its original avant-garde and – at least for now – there is little room for the new to take hold.

The saving grace to all this comes from the Internet, or at least from another of Oxford’s own, Zach Tutor. However, Zach is not yet so well known within Lafayette county, but he is big in Japan, as well as the West Coast. That is, he is at least much more prominent in cities such as L.A., San Francisco, and various cities in Japan and around the world than he is in Oxford.

Zach Tutor, Supersonic Electronic, 2009

In 2009, after a trip to San Francisco and an excursion into the Mission, he saw the necessity to bring the art he saw lining nearly every gallery window – really great art – to areas that didn't often have the opportunity to see such. He created the blog Supersonic Electronic (SE) on Tumblr, and began exclusively posting art from artists he found on the Internet that echoed what he had seen. Today, he has garnered roughly 190,000 unique followers on SE, written for Hi-Fructose, and initiated the annual Supersonic Electronic Invitational – hosted again at SpokeArt gallery in San Francisco this January.

It was only by happenchance that I came across SE. During the snow storm of 2010, trapped in my room, and traipsing between different blogs, I came across SE – amazed by the art I saw, and even more so when seeing it was created directly in the town I studied. Zach has helped thousands of artists, even Oxford’s Allan Innman, come to a larger field of their audience, and in return has established relationships all over the globe with some of the leading contemporary artists.

Li Hongbo "Skull" Paper. 2012
Flexible paper sculptures

What these artists have in common, according to Tutor, is “a certain amount of experience with pop culture and access to the Internet for most of their life.” While the Internet is at once a source of infinite visual stimulation for artists, it is also an escape for many – an escape out of their normal confines. That escape can often times be detrimental, at least in the observations of those in the second-person role; however, that escape also allows for connections to be made from the Bosphorus to Bangkok and from Oxford to Okinawa. These connections produce information; that information produces ideas; those ideas – taking into account the participation and concerns of each individual no matter the geography – account for a progress between nations, between institutions, between individuals. This cross-platform, international and interdisciplinary approach is necessary for understanding the art of today.

This is something Oxford can learn, and this is something Zach can teach and give to Oxford, particularly in regards to contemporary art. The recent art department show at Southside and the on-going monthly Art Crawls are great indicators of increased participation and progress between the arts institutions around the city; however, there is a long way to go.

To end, there is an oft-quoted maxim from the renowned figure of Oxford, William Faulkner, saying “To understand the world, one must first understand a place like Mississippi.” It’s high time that Mississippi, and Oxford with it, explore the reciprocate of that quote to keep on a path of progress and to stay weird rather than common. Oxford is not common. Keep Oxford weird. 

SECAC 2013 and other episodes

A panel/session proposal I submitted before the New Year was chosen for this year's SECAC (Southeastern College Art Conference) in Greensboro, NC. This Monday, the call for papers went out to all colleges across the U.S.

My session, "SoCo: Southern Contemporary, Now",  is taken from an article in e-flux journal #12 where Hal Foster of Princeton transcribed excerpts of replies he had received to the question "What does Contemporary mean?" in an earlier October issue. I want(ed) to explore what exactly contemporary also meant in the South, not only in the mediums of painting and sculpture, but film, New Media, and particularly how artists have drawn intensely from the internet and the over-saturation of imagery from that.

I will be receiving, reviewing, and selecting papers from graduate students and professors from around the U.S. -- primarily the South, I'm sure, as my panel is most concerned with the region -- and then presenting the papers at the conference during Halloween weekend. 

To say I am honored -- excited more so -- to be given this privilege is an understatement (on both accounts).  I think it is only the beginning of asserting myself as a professional and art historian of modern and contemporary art, and not limited to just the South. To be holding a panel, as some of my past professors are this year, and held in the same equivalence as them, is a really grand feeling.

In addition, I am currently preparing an essay about Milton Babbitt, his scores, and young artists comparable to him practicing in Mississippi, today. The second installment of "Are all Memes Created Equal" is also forthcoming, with the next vignette highlighting artists who incorporate memes into their work, and how memes derive due to geography.