15 March - How We Can Help

LAUNCHPROJECTS - I find myself at a loss for words as I watch in horror the unfolding catastrophe in Japan. The following is a list compiled by backpacker.com of known legitimate organizations helping the countries hurt by the earthquake and tsunami that occurred on March 11, 2011. CNN has also published an article on how you can help. To all of those who have been affected, you are in our thoughts and hearts.

“In charity there is no excess.” – Sir Francis Bacon

Red Cross: United States Residents – Calling +1-800-RED-CROSS for donation options. Text “Red Cross” to 90999. A $10 donation will be added to your cell phone bill. American Red Cross Online Donations.

Salvation Army: United States Residents - You can call +1-800-SAL-ARMY for donation options. Text “Japan” or “Quake” to 80888 to make a $10 donation. A one-time donation will appear on your cell phone bill. Respond “YES” to the thank you message you receive. Salvation Army Emergency Disaster Services

Save The Children: Online Donation

GlobalGiving.org: This project will disburse funds to organizations providing relief and emergency services to victims of the earthquake and tsunami. GlobalGiving is working with International Medical Corps, Save the Children, and other organizations on the ground. United States Residents – Text JAPAN to 5055. A $10 donation will be added to your cell phone bill. Online Donation

Convoy Of Hope: United States Residents – Text TSUNAMI to 50555. A $10 donation will be added to your cell phone bill. Online Donation

World Relief Corp: World Relief has been in communication with our partners in these countries including our alliance partner in Japan, the Japanese Evangelical Association, who is monitoring the damage there. United States Residents – Text WAVE to 50555. Online Donation

World Vision: Providing support to children and their families. Online Donation

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF): Has two three-person teams attempting to get to the worst-hit areas in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures. Online Donation

ShelterBox: Humanitarian response to the disaster began immediately and a three-person ShelterBox Response Team is already en route to Japan. Online Donation

15 Sept- Obits and (mini) Masterpieces

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Tomorrow is the opening of Patrick McFarlin's exhibition Obituaries and (mini) Masterpieces. The show is hung and looks stunning - Patrick added a bit of site-specific art to the space with a quotation from Faulkner written above the fireplace. The artist "knows he has a short span of life, that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion, and he wants to leave a scratch on that wall." This came from Faulkner's bio that Patrick was reading while putting this show together - had he read it a bit sooner Scratch on the Wall would certainly have been the show title... so fitting to this body of work and the concept of the series. The following is the catalog essay - the photos above are an installation shot, and McFarlin "scratching the wall" yesterday at LAUNCHPROJECTS.

Each year, Art in America publishes an “Annual Guide” that includes an obituary section memorializing the notable artists, critics, and curators who passed away within the year. In just two sentences (and sometimes less), whole lives and careers are abridged and packaged into laconic, reusable synopses. Stars of the art world, otherwise the subjects of voluminous biographies, retrospectives, and documentaries become distinguishable solely by an adjective here, an “ism” there. Robert Motherwell is an abstract expressionist while Willem Kooning (pictured left) is a seminal abstract expressionist. Joan Mitchell’s paintings are boiled down to “calligraphic” abstractions; Richard Pousette-Dart’s are “pointillist” abstractions. Lives that teemed with struggle and accomplishments are reduced to their most easily described art genre, a noteworthy exhibition.

Fascinated with the hollow languor of these obituaries, Patrick McFarlin began to meticulously translate such obituary descriptions with their accompanying portraits in a series of graphite drawings. His drawings retrace, with careful attention to detail, the ambiguity of the obituary, the detached, printed summations in pages of a glossy magazine. In this way McFarlin places the artist back within his or her original context—the world of art. McFarlin’s interest in his subjects deepened as the number of obituaries he rendered increased in number.

Haunted by the artists and the stories of their lives, he began painting flawless miniature representations of their paintings. McFarlin’s art expresses an homage in paint that the obituaries alone could not exact. The artist’s paintings are a virtuoso display of technical skill, re-interpreting the exact brush strokes of painters as diverse and challenging as Joan Mitchell (pictured right), Francis Bacon, Robert Motherwell, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Diebenkorn, and Willem de Kooning.

The formal rigor and intimate scale of McFarlin’s paintings are reminiscent of the miniatures made by Richard Pettibone (pictured left) a pioneer in appropriation art in the United States. Originating as they do from divergent concepts, the impact and poignancy of Pettibone’s perfect miniatures strongly resonate with McFarlin’s recent body of work.

In a 1995 New York Times article covering a Pettibone retrospective, art critic Roberta Smith asked, “What happens to visual experience when previously large, famous paintings are reduced to the size of the viewer's face, while, at their best, looking mind-bogglingly like the real thing?” She mused that the method is “a new, transformative, maybe original sense of intimacy and ownership that is unusually empowering. It is rather amazing to see art cut down to size with its integrity intact.”[i]

Empowerment is what McFarlin grants his viewers along with the artists he covers, while paying a tribute to all of art history’s painters of note. McFarlin’s unquestionable love for painting is balanced by his humility as he meditates on death’s inevitability. By imbuing these miniature masterpieces with precise brush strokes and conceptual integrity, McFarlin re-contextualizes many highly celebrated and iconic paintings in an intimate setting that allows for very personal contemplation and a space for transformation.

- Cyndi Conn, LAUNCHPROJECTS
September 1, 2010

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[i] Smith, Roberta. Imitations that Transcend Flattery. The New York Times. July 15, 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/arts/design/15smit.html web. 25 Aug, 2010

10 August - SFMOMA + Francis Bacon

LAUNCHPROJECTS - We spent 10 days traveling through Northern California - Sea Ranch, Napa Valley, and San Francisco. Ben will blog later about our culinary and oneological experiences. While Ben was reading of food, wine, and other sundry activities in Hemingway's Garden of Eden, I was consumed with Michael Peppiatt's biography of Francis Bacon, Anatomy of an Enigma. Fully aware of Bacon's penchant for drink and intense periods of masochistic

debauchery, this biography gave me new insight into why he painted the subjects he did and how his painting style paralleled his own carefully-guarded personal life. Peppiatt was a close friend of Bacon's and traveled with him for decades as both biographer and confidante. This book is not only a page-turning and well written tale, it also offers and tremendous details of one of the most guarded, enigmatic, and powerful artists of the 20th century.

While in San Francisco we toured the Fischer collection at SFMOMA. Doris and Donald Fisher, founders of the The Gap, built a stunning collection of over 1,000 works of art by the most iconic artists of the 20th Century including Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Anselm Kiefer, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, Gerhard Richter, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and many more. Many of these works had never been previously exhibited and it is truly inspiring to see them all housed in such a lovely museum setting. On loan to the SFMOMA for the next 99 years, it is a mini-course in the history of modern and contemporary art and absolutely worth a visit.

22 July - Patrick McFarlin's Art in America

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Studio visit today with Patrick McFarlin. Patrick is such an incredible painter and it is always a treat to see his latest projects. This trip blew our minds and prompted us to schedule a solo show for McFarlin this September, 2010.

Two years ago he began creating drawings based on Art in America's annual obituary section. The "all-stars" of the recently deceased, the practice was a sobering homage to the artists who had passed away that year. Patrick recently folded the project into something he had long wanted to do - painting covers of some of the most notable painters and paintings in modern history. As a musician covers timeless standards, this series "covers" such iconic artists as Francis Bacon (pictured above, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell, Allan Kaprow, Theodoros Stamos, and Larry Rivers. This new body of work is such a testament to his skill, and these little paintings are unquestionably masterpieces in their own right.