Off Center

Before catching his Walker-commissioned the break/s, April 10-12, catch this glimpse of Marc Bamuthi Joseph. This video, mixing an interview with footage from a 2006 performance at New York City’s Lincoln Center, is part of Encounters: USA Fellows, a series of video shorts by the nonprofit United States Artists and film company City Projects.

Click back here next week to check out video documenting Bamuthi’s Walker residency in January and February with local teen poets and filmmakers, who show off their creations 7 pm April 3 at a free program in the Walker Cinema.

According to Jessica Armbruster's March 19^th City Pages review of Richard Prince: Spiritual America, on view at the Walker, "those familiar with the incredibly varied work of Vincent Prince have seen appropriation, pop culture, and cultural criticism battle it out over the span of his 30-year career."

Prince is known for being cagey about his biography, so this typographical blip is particularly amusing. Perhaps we can't say with any degree of certainty that Richard Prince is the artist's given name. Armbruster may be on to something, or she may be conflating Richard Prince with Vincent Price, which is an interesting marriage when you consider the string of celebrities present in Prince's work. I'm not sure Prince would be opposed to keeping company with a horror film legend, and the cackling voice behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

All right, forgive the six degrees of separation, but didn't Michael Jackson date Brooke Shields? Miss. Spiritual America herself.

• “I’ve heard its very unique:” Vbs.tv has a four part interview with Richard Prince, discussing the way he works at his his studio in upstate New York. Prince’s show, Spiritual America, opened here last weekend.
• Maiden & Moonflower: Art21 lets us know that Kiki Smith has just produced a collection of hand-screened wallpaper for part of her new exhibition, Kiki Smith: Her Home. According to Art21, “Her Home spans a woman's life from birth to death. Using domestic existence as a starting point, Kiki Smith revisits her own history rooted in protestant New England.” No word if there are temporary tattoos available.
• Paydirt: Mel Chin, who completed a residency at the Walker in 1991, has a lengthy two part interview up on Art21. The interview covers his new project, Fundred Dollar Bill, a public generated art project on a national scale. I have a feeling that as the US dollar declines, Chin’s bills will hold their value.
• Reap what you sew: Kara Waker was also featured in the latest issue of Flaunt Magazine. Walker’s Walker organized show, Kara Walker: My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love recently opened at the Hammer Museum in LA. [via]
• Invented a Toy? Just Print It. Wired has an interview with the creators of Q-BA-MAZE profiled by Matt in a video blog last month, currently featured in the Walker Shop window. Wired asks them about how rapid-prototyping assisted their product development process: “Rapid-prototyping made it possible to physically test each new generation of the cubes by building with them and rolling balls through. The design evolved in response to the lessons of each RP generation.”

Wolfgang Puck is among five finalists for the James Beard Foundation’s 2008 Outstanding Restaurateur Award. The Beard Awards, according to the foundation, are “the country's most coveted honor for chefs; food and beverage professionals; broadcast media, journalists, and authors working on food; and restaurant architects and designers.”

The nomination isn’t really news — Puck is an annual nominee of the Beard Awards, which recognized Puck in 1991 as Outstanding Chef of the year and bestowed Puck its humanitarian award in 1994. Puck’s 20.21 opened at the Walker in May 2005.

Here’s a list of all the 2008 Beard Award nominees. Winners will be announced June 6.

Lee Rosenbaum, author of CultureGrrl, blogs about spotting a Richard Prince “joke bag,” sold and marketed under the Louis Vuitton tag, at her neighborhood mall. Rosenbaum wonders “whether a Vuitton boutique may be added to the Guggenheim-organized Richard Prince show that opened Saturday at the Walker.”

A quick answer to Rosenbaum’s query comes with a stroll to the Walker shop, where a table of products timed to the Prince exhibition is stocked with dozens of posters, postcards, DVDs of films Prince selected as personally inspiring, and stacks of handsome, shrink-wrapped exhibition catalogues. Alas, no handbags.

“It’s a very high-end line and a very specific distribution. It’s not something (Vuitton) would just sell to anyone, anywhere,” says Nancy Gross, director of merchandising and facility rental at the Walker. “Will I look into it? Maybe.”

Philippe Vergne, the Walker’s deputy director and chief curator, led a press tour Thursday of Richard Prince: Spiritual America. The exhibition officially opens Saturday, with self-appointed hipsters taking a sneak peek at our After Hours party tonight.

• “Strip Malls tends to incite disregard, if not outright disdain:” Flip A Strip is a reaction to this, an interesting competition to redesign the Strip Mall, put together by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. The registration deadline has just passed, but the project is a foray into dialogue on the places we inhabit and their imact, a mode of civic engagement often lacking.
• Sky Circles: An quick collection of circular communities and developments as seen from the sky. Are they Zoomburbs or Boomburbs?
• Rice Paddy rice using the ancient art of conducting: Despite what the google translation may bungle, the images are worth a look just for the novelty.
• Pre-Fab Futures: Walker design director Andrew Blauvelt will be sitting on a panel at Pratt in April, discussing pre-fab architecture. [via]
• Don’t sell skittles: My google alerts went crazy this week, apparently because a honors student in New Haven Connecticut bought skittles from another student, a clear violation of school rules, landing him a suspension. This turns out to be not art related (though colorful), but the school’s spokesperson, Catherine Sullivan-DeCarlo, set my google alert for Catherine Sullivan afire. At least our schools are leaving candy behind.

Molly Priesmeyer’s MinnPost post turned me onto Phil Hansen, who is capturing international attention–one click at a time–for the self-made YouTube videos documenting his artistic process. Hansen recasts existing works of art (or pop art) from a pallet of paint, chalk, pencil and clever wit. He renders Chuck Close’s Big Self-Portrait with thousands of stick figures chalked onto blacktop asphalt, paints a mural of Bruce Lee by karate chopping paint onto a wall and uses matchsticks tipped in red, white and black for a portrait of Jimi Hendrix. More than 1.1 million people have viewed Hansen creating the Hendrix piece and then setting it on fire. Watch these and dozens of others on Hansen’s YouTube channel.