Nelson Algren - Chicago - City on the Make

 

Nelson Algren, Chicago City on the Make (1951/1961/1983/2001)
Cove Photo: Art Shay

Epigraph

With heart at rest I climbed the citadel's 

Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower, 

Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells, 

Where evil comes up softly like a flower . . .

Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full, 

Sodden with day, or, new appareled, stand 

In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,

I love thee, infamous city!

-Baudelaire 

 

From Page 60

Every day is D-Day under the El.

 

From Pages 72 - 73

By nights when the yellow salamanders of the El bend all one way and the cold rain runs with the red-lit rain. By the way the city’s million wires are burdened only by the lightest snow; and the old year yet lighter upon them. When chairs are stacked and glasses are turned and arc-lamps are dimmed. By days when the wind bangs alley gates ajar and the sun goes by on the wind. By nights when the moon is an only child above the measured thunder of the cars, you may know Chicago’s heart at last:

You’ll know it’s the place built out of Man’s ceaseless failure to overcome himself. Out of Man’s endless war against himself we build our successes as well as our failures. Making it the city of all cities most like Man himself -- loneliest creation of all this very old poor earth. 

 

From Page 76

A rumor of neon flowers, bleeding all night long, along those tracks where endless locals pass.

 

From Page 77

While we shall leave, for remembrance, one rusty iron heart. 

The city's rusty heart, that holds both the hustler and the square. 

Takes them both and holds them there.

For keeps and a single day.

Art Making Purgatory

Larry Wolf, Transient Utopias (2022)

Printing t-shirts has become an exhausting challenge - logistically, technically and emotionally - much more than I imaged it would be. The phone photo looks more like what I want than the actual t-shirt. Learning. Learning. Learning. 

Transient

Larry Wolf, Transient Utopias (2022)

I'm working on a silkscreen for a black t-shirt. The source images include two photos taken on/from the Metra Electric platform at 51st, an image from the JWST a million miles away; the text is inspired by an essay in Ten Years of Chances Dances (a queer party that spanned ten years and resulted in a catalog which I came across this week)... the essay by John Neff and Lorelei Stewart references a quote from Chances: "temporary utopias are time machines"... which is kind of fascinating.

I hear echoes of an essay by Ocean Vuong about fire escapes as a place where we have necessary and challenging conversations. The font is Be Oakley's Act Up Protest font... and it's all a riff on the art of queer failure... or the queer art of failure... or the failed queer agenda... or ??? ;-)

There's a further personal commentary about the fracturing of visions for a better future, the ground becoming unstable as institutions fail and the ripples that each of us makes as we walk through our lives. It's all transient. This is the third or fourth iteration. 

For now, no t-shirts, though several very nice prints on black paper. Pretty good for a first time ;-)

Larry Wolf, Transient Utopias (2022, silkscreen)

Larry Wolf, Transient Utopias (2022)

Larry Wolf, Transient Utopias (2022)

Early Views from L2

NASA, Webb Team Brings 18 Dots of Starlight Into Hexagonal Formation (2022)

NASA, Webb Mirror Alignment Continues Successfully (Post-Image Stacking image) (2022)

NASA, Webb’s Fine Guidance Sensor Provides a Serendipitous Preview (2022)

Filter Members Exhibition 2022

I submitted this work to V: the Annual Filter Members Exhibition. 

Larry Wolf, Washington University Track 1946 (2022)

Six hurdlers are all airborne in a photo by my father from 1946. Each athlete, or in one case, three of them, has been cropped from the full image and printed individually. Each sheet can be folded into a hyperbolic paraboloid, informally called a hypar, a surprisingly curved shape constructed from nested squares. Here the hypars are suspended, moving with the air currents.

This work continues my interest in how photographs incorporate time, the moment of exposure with the athletes all in the air, the moments of viewing – the photographer’s and subjects’ now, the viewers' now, the artist as an intermediary time machine.

The source photograph was found recently with other slides from 1946 to 1957 – a lost family archive found as we emptied my deceased mother's apartment, a survivor of a nasty divorce. My father spoke with longing for his student days at W. U. – the image exudes youthful energy years after his death – as desaturated images, the people become ghosts in the light and dark of the hypar’s folds.

Like my other works, these are single sheets of paper, folded according to a set of rules that creates a three-dimensional object. Folding adds human touch to mechanical reproduction. Copies of the work are available for the viewer to take. The act of folding is centering, requiring patience, attention and caring, allowing the form to emerge. It invites the audience into an active intimacy, participating in creating the work.

For more info, see my page DIY SIP Hypar Zine.

House Divided

Bruce Nauman, House Divided (1983)
Photo Larry Wolf (2022)

Bruce Nauman, House Divided (1983)
Photo Larry Wolf (2022)

Nauman draws on his roots for the form of this sculpture, a large white building typical of Midwestern farming sheds. Yet inside, the structure has been divided in half, diagonally. The carefully considered placement of three entries creates an uncomfortable space with no corners. Fully half of the structure has been rendered useless. 

Dick Burd,
Construction of House Divided (1984)
CARLI Digital Collection

By associating the piece through its title with Abraham Lincoln’s House Divided speech, the artist forces a consideration of the significance of this unassuming work on a new level.

Catalogue Text

Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park 

Governors State University

Sand

At the edge of the Atlantic, a slip of land, open ocean all the way to the horizon and beyond, as fragile as a sand castle between high tides. Paths through the underbrush of a gay cruising ground, seeking to find and to be found in the safety of invisibility. 

Larry Wolf, Fire Island (2004)

Larry Wolf, Fire Island (2004)

Larry Wolf, Fire Island (2004)