Jason K

Say no more.

Getting away with it

I hate myself for my last entry at the Gallery Project. The theme of the show was “American Dream” and for a while, I struggled with what to submit for this rather open call for art.

But is it art?

In the end, I punted and dusted off a piece that has hung in our laundry room for years. It’s a washboard from my grandmother with a vintage photo of a strapping young man from a long time ago attached to it by a magnet. He’s in shape and you can see most of this ribs as well as his abdomen. I loved the photo, don’t remember where I got it, but he’s been hanging by a magnet on the board for about a decade.
I have called it “Washboard Abs” in my mind, never really considering it a piece of serious art, rather a thematic decoration for our laundry room. I photographed it and submitted it to the curators of the show and they decided it was okay for the show.

I sheepishly took it down and spent more time cleaning the piece than I ever did actually creating it. But I felt it did speak to our desire as a society to have a perfectly flat belly and washboard abs. Turn on the TV any morning and you’ll see countless devices and diets helping you towards that goal. The show was a critical success once again, receiving several reviews from the local press.

I decided to not get all serious with my artist’s statement for the show, instead opting for a more art history approach:

AMERICAN DREAM:

Washboard Abs

Thomas McMillen-Oakley

An obsession that has spanned the millennia.

                        

To quote Uncle Andy: Art is what you can get away with. Word.

Artwork in situ

So here are some shots from friends and family showing my artwork in its final resting place.
First up, the photo Tod took with his phone's camera. I tweeked it in Photoshop and sent it off to be made into a canvas print. We have one, as well as the grandparents.

And then this, a bowl purchased by a friend hanging under another local artist.

And yes, the card catalog is TO DIE FOR!

Clicky for animated goodness.

Post-Apocalyptic: Carson G: Zombie Killer

The installed piece @ Gallery Project in Ann Arbor.

So many things come to mind when we think about the end of the world, I hardly know where to begin. As I type this, REM’s “It’s the End of the World (as we know it)” is buzzing about in my head and images of burnt out buildings, smoking rubble, and the undead flash before my eyes. Growing up, I was haunted by the monthly air raid siren’s test. I would shudder in fear as it wailed each month, and I couldn’t wait until it was over. Back then, the end of the world would have been a nuclear attack or some other invasion from a not so friendly country to the east or west. Now, a spilled test tube or our food chain can cause our demise.

The bible was also a source for juvenile angst, as I came across an illustrated tract showing just what would happen via the book of Revelations. The portable guillotines to sever the heads of the non-Beast adopting Christians still hangs in my memory.   Then there is my love of horror movies and my way too early viewing of “Night of the Living Dead.” Our 7^th grade student council decided that we should have a movie instead of a Valentine’s Dance one year; they picked “Night of the Living Dead.” I don’t remember anyone on the faculty being fired for this, but I am certain that after all the screaming, the fake retching, and howls of disgust over the zombie’s feeding on the victim’s guts, parental phone calls were made in protest. For months, I imagined what it would be like to be holed up in a basement for the rest of my life, afraid to go out because of the undead and their proclivity for human chittlins.

Regardless of how it plays out, it won’t be fun.

The photo was taken at Carson’s 6^th birthday. We bought him the requisite art supplies (as is my want as an art teacher) but I sweetened the package with some rubber zombies bought at the local toy store. Carson was in love with his new gun, and was shooting everyone in its site. I was fiddling around with the zombies, trying to get them to look like they were actually at the party, and I noticed Carson pointing the gun at me. I asked him to wait and brought two of the undead up into the camera’s focus. He aimed, with great precision, and I snapped the pic just as the light from the gun went off. Not sure where the line of light came from, but I think it adds to the picture.

If I do end up sequestered in a basement somewhere, I hope I have Carson nearby with his amazing aim.

Artist’s Statement for “White Meat”

"White Meat" part of "Food for Thought" @ Gallery Project

I have had a keen sense of where my food comes from since I was a little kid. I grew up with a grandfather who was a 4H advisor, which meant my brother and I got to spend a lot of time at the annual Darke County Fair in Greenville, OH. I was never shielded from the slaughtering process, nor was I ever part of it. I just knew it happened. A local Polish Grocery on the corner of the street where I grew up had a hand painted sign advertising “Fresh Duck Blood” for anyone who would need it for their pot of czernina. I am not sure if they had a duck tied up in back that they bled for the shopper’s request, or if they would get it some other way. Regardless, it was odd.

As we talked about the various ways we could present this show at our Collaborator meetings, some very robust and often disturbing conversations came out. I wish we would record our meetings, as the process of getting the show ready is very intense. We were discussing the human/animal connection to food, and I brought up that we had bought a pig at our county fair from a 4H girl who raised organic hogs. Our five year old daughter was delighted and couldn’t wait to go to the fair to see the pig. I have a feeling that she thought we would go to the Pork Barn and she would slip a leash on the creature and we would all skip home with our new porcine family member. It was a quiet ride home as she contemplated the pig in our chest freezer in the basement and not frolicking in our backyard.

So how did this piece come to be? I had an interesting phone call with the meat processing place as I discussed how we wanted the pig cut up after it was killed. I had looked up all the butcher’s cuts in one of my cookbooks so I could talk about all the cuts and that image of the animals prepped for butchering lingered in my mind. Our friend Charley is an athlete and a gourmand, a great combination, as he can eat and then go work off the calories with his rowing. He is also a very large man. I shared with the collaborators that our group of friends have often joked that if we were stranded in some remote location, we’d want Charley to be with us so we could eat him. Within a second, the image of Charley with the butcher cuts marked on his wide back came to mind. I asked the curators if they thought that this image was appropriate for the show and I got an enthusiastic thumbs up. I quickly called Charley and shared with him the concept and he was more than delighted to help out. Aaron, a model from the college, came to the shoot to help out and easily slipped into the role of butcher. While my original idea of just Charley with the lines didn’t make it to the gallery, this final, more sinister piece did. My love of horror and slasher-films, as well as my rather macabre sense of humor took over as we played out the various poses at the shoot.

Is this piece meant to be anti-meat?  Not at all.

Is it pro-cannibal?  Possibly.

Is it meant to make you think about what we eat and where our food comes from?  Most certainly.

A review of my art from Between the Lines

Okay, this is a older review, but I thought I would share it here.

Dangerous Art

Social Realism exhibit aims to reveal societal truths - including ones about same-sex parenting

by Jessica Carreras

At first glance, Thomas McMillen-Oakley's photographs won't yield much response: They're photos of kids, sometimes with adults, sometimes playing outdoors with each other. Big deal. But a closer look at the Jackson-based artist's work - namely, a purposely blurred piece that shows him reading to his two kids - might startle you. The book isn't "The Berenstain Bears Visit the Dentist." It's a collection of works by notorious gay erotica photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Don't sic the American Family Association on McMillen-Oakley and his partner just yet: He never actually showed their adopted daughter and son those photos. But it sure is fun to make social conservatives think that he has, hence the idea behind the artist's photography collection, "The Dangerous Lives of Children," showing as part of the "Social Realism 2010" exhibition Aug. 7-Sept. 18 at Plymouth's Art & Ideas Gallery.

"There's so much fear propagated by the conservatives and by the religious right that gays shouldn't adopt because we're going to warp the kids somehow," McMillen-Oakley says of his work. "But yet, if you come to our house and sit down and have dinner with us, we are the most normal family in the world. (These photos are) playing with that idea and really giving the religious right something to think about.

"I'm feeding into their fears."

It's bold subject matter for the father of two and professor of studio art at Jackson Community College. He lives and teaches in a relatively conservative part of Michigan, but insists that the local community's reaction to his family and his work is nothing but supportive.

"There are very vocal anti-gay people (in Jackson) who show up whenever the civil rights ordinance tries to get passed," McMillen-Oakley admits. "But we've had a very accepting experience here with the adoption. The fears of 'Is this town too conservative for this?' are, to me, unfounded. We've never been questioned; we've never been harassed."

Likewise, he finds that art galleries are supportive of his work. McMillen-Oakley has exhibited at The Gallery Project in Ann Arbor, and Art & Ideas Director Mike Tolinski was equally thrilled to include the artist's work.

The Plymouth-based gallery is less than a year old, but McMillen-Oakley praises them for their already stellar commitment to diversity. "I don't want to be 'the gay artist,' because that smacks of tokenism, but I'm glad that they're letting other voices be heard," he says. "They're open to a diverse roster of artists, and I like that."

And equally committed to challenging gallery-goers with their "Social Realism" exhibition, which includes two artists in addition to McMillen-Oakley, Julia DeClerck of Metamora and Shaqe Kalaj of Livonia. Kalaj, the gallery's artist-in-residence and curator of the show, sought photographers whose work aimed to expose compelling social truths. "But in our case," she adds, "we were also looking for humor and irony depicted about our current situation in the U.S. and southeast Michigan."

McMillen-Oakley fit the bill perfectly with a collection of photos that focus on children as subjects, with all adults either absent from view, or blurred out. It's a commentary both on what's "normal" in family life, and the lack of biological parents that many children face - including his son.

"Our son was taken away from his parents because of abuse and ... we adopted him from foster care. So for Eli, the adults that brought him into the world are indeed absent," McMillen-Oakley shares. "He looks at us as the parents now. We're Daddy and Papa, and that's what he knows."

But through both his photographic work and his parenting, he tries to show that all types of parents can help nurture a child. "I think that's one of the big reasons that kids do get in trouble sometimes and why life can be dangerous is because they don't have an adult to help them make wise decisions," he explains. "They don't have an adult to be their Jiminy Cricket and say, 'Maybe you should think twice about doing that.'"

The message of McMillen-Oakley's work often has serious undertones. On the surface, however, it's all about showing kids having fun - another value he tries to teach his own children. "One of the things I want to instill in my kids is a sense of play and a sense of wonder, and I think a lot of these pictures reflect that," he says. "When kids are being creative and when they're letting their guards down, that's when the fun happens."

Social Realism 2010

Opening reception 6-10 p.m. Aug. 7

Runs Aug. 7-Sept. 18

http://www.artandideasgallery.com