Jeff Lovett

Thesis Proposal Abstract

jlovett11211 — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:04:02 +0000

Jeff Lovett Thesis Proposal Abstract

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Preliminary Coal Ball Scan

jlovett11211 — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:20:37 +0000

The above is a test embedded image using www.seadragon.com

Click on the Image to zoom and drag to pan.

link to full resolution image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/13756686@N05/4400942531/sizes/o/

A scan of three acetate / acetone peels that the paleo-botany department does on coal balls. Coal balls are the not quite coal cast off when coal mining on the fringes of a seam. This is a preliminary test scan for a future body of work inspired by: Thom Atkinson’s photographs of rock samples from Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition of 1908.

http://www.thomatkinson.com/#/still-life

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Big Muskie: King of the Giants

jlovett11211 — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:01:45 +0000

I just received a scanned copy of an article about Big Muskie!

citation:
Coal Age, 1969, Big Muskie; King of the Giants: v. 74, no. 12, p. 50-60

from:
Anne M. Huber, M.L.S.
Library and Public Information
Office of the Director
ILLINOIS STATE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN

Phone: 217-333-5110
E-mail: huber@isgs.illinois.edu

Big Muskie; King of the Giants

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Coal collecting and Mine Tour

jlovett11211 — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:51:57 +0000

Last week I drove to New Lexington Ohio to find a large piece of coal on the word of the old man that sells antiques in Shawnee. I talked my way into a tour of the Strip Mine / Landfill with Bill Glass the foreman of the landfill side of the operation. I did not take a camera but my phone did the job.

View Larger Map

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Archive Coal Cut-out

jlovett11211 — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:26:15 +0000

The following image is a test for a series of work in which I remove the image from a scanned archival image then rescan the image with coal in place of the original image.

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OU SoA Critical Regionalism Initiative Spaces Installation

jlovett11211 — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:34:57 +0000

The newly formed Ohio University School of Art Critical Regionalism Initiative focuses on this region and an examination of coal mining in Southeast Ohio. The group will premiere their project for this exhibition, bringing the ideas of site-specificity in contemporary art into fruitful contact with the work of both governmental agencies and nongovernmental activists on a range of regional issues.

The following images are from the installation at Spaces Gallery in Cleveland OH

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Strange Geoglyphs Discovered Beneath Clearcut Amazon

jlovett11211 — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:52:54 +0000

As reported by Treehugger

Strange Geoglyphs Discovered Beneath Clearcut Amazon

by Stephen Messenger, Porto Alegre, Brazil on 12.28.09

Because they are difficult to see from the ground, most geoglyphs went unnoticed by locals. Photo via Diego Gurgel

With the aid of satellite imagery from Google Earth, soon archeologists in Brazil will be finding more and more large geometric designs carved into the ground in the Amazon rainforest. The geoglyphs are believed to have been sculpted by ancient people from the Amazon region around 700 years ago, though their purpose is still unknown. So far, nearly 300 geoglyphs have been identified, but with advances in satellite imaging--and increased clearing of the jungle coverage--scientists are hoping to discover many more of these strange, geometric designs.

One of the factors that contributed to so many geoglyphs being undetected prior to the aid of satallites is their enormous size. According to leading geoglyph scientist Alceu Ranzi, his latest discoveries--five sets of geometric shapes, with circles, squares and lines--can measure more than a mile from one extreme to another.

You do not see them in field. There is a difference in the color of grass but is very thin. If there were no satellite images, there would be no possibility [of making these new discoveries].

Because they've been so hard to find, the first geoglyphs weren't discovered until the 1970s. Since then, scientists have been trying to piece together what significance they may have had to ancient Amazonians. What ever the purpose may have been, there's one thing that is certain: the ancient civilizations of the rainforest were more numerous and sophisticated than previously imagined.

According to a report from Globo, the new marks were only discovered because the jungle coverage had been removed to due to deforestation in the Amazon. These structures are deep, with grooves are as large as 12 meters wide and four deep, but it is believed that they were built when jungle abounded--which would make their construction all the more difficult.

Ranzi seems open to other possibilities:

Was it really forest [when the drawings were built] or did they occupy this area at a time of climate crisis, like that of 2005?

The world may never know what drove these ancient civilizations to carve the enormous geoglyphs, like the ones found recently using Google Earth. But, if it takes more clear-cutting in the Amazon rainforest to find out the answer, hopefully it will always remain a mystery.

Also reported by Ogle Earth:

Out of Brazil, a remarkable story, as reported by Treehugger blog: The deforestation of the Amazon has provided one unforeseen boon to archaeologists — the denuded ground has laid bare some amazing pre-Columbian geoglyphs, visible from the air, and thus on Google Earth:

One of the factors that contributed to so many geoglyphs being undetected prior to the aid of satallites is their enormous size. According to leading geoglyph scientist Alceu Ranzi, his latest discoveries — five sets of geometric shapes, with circles, squares and lines — can measure more than a mile from one extreme to another.

Treehugger doesn't provide locations of examples of these geoglyphs, but Globo Amazonia does. For the sake of convenience, here they are on Google Maps — click here to see them on Google Earth.

View Amazon geoglyphs in a larger map

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“… IN A MOST DANGEROUS MANNER”

jlovett11211 — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:41:33 +0000

Below is an Exhibition that I am currently preparing for.

"... in a most dangerous manner" serves as a working research archive that demonstrates how “economic crises” have often been used to restructure and restore class divisions. The exhibition seeks to recast current economic conditions as not quite a crisis, a temporal anomaly, nor a failure in governmental regulations, but as a cycle common to the last 150 years of American (and increasingly global) financial markets. Employing abstraction, metaphor, and narrative, the artists inject their work into current discussions surrounding economic recovery and stability, while imagining potential exits from this system.

Featuring projects from a mix of emerging and established national artists, "...in a most dangerous manner" showcases art, a publication, found objects, documents, screenings, performances, and town-hall discussions. The exhibition presents work that names and locates the various physical and material sites that have been invested, degraded, and subsequently contaminated by a culture of market-driven speculation.

Artists presenting in the exhibition include Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber, Julia Christensen, Elaine Gan, Benj Gerdes and Jennifer Hayashida, Lize Mogel, Claire Pentecost, Ohio University School of Art Critical Regionalism Initiative, Katya Sander, and Allan Sekula, among others.

Works by Lize Mogel and Allan Sekula look at the role of shipping routes in global trade. In Area of Detail, Mogel examines how the melting of the North Pole opens possible markets of transport and energy. In a similar vein, Sekula’s video, The Lottery of the Sea, expands upon a phrase from Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, while providing an illuminating portrait of various global ports.

Moving from the routes of capitalism to a grounded industrial footprint, Julia Christensen's The Futures Cycle provides a counter narrative to corporate divestment in the Midwest by projecting into the near future of 2040. The newly formed Ohio University School of Art Critical Regionalism Initiative also focuses on this region and an examination of coal mining in Southeast Ohio. The group will premiere their project for this exhibition, bringing the ideas of site-specificity in contemporary art into fruitful contact with the work of both governmental agencies and nongovernmental activists on a range of regional issues. Claire Pentecost explores the Midwest as it relates to other farming zones internationally. In her photographic series, Natural Relations, the mega-scale of agribusiness parallels the former steel and coal giants of the previous decades, as well as the social and ecological disparities that accompanied them.

Part of the curatorial impetus for the exhibition is to demonstrate how financial markets traverse and restructure global, regional, and personal scales. Elaine Gan's video installation juxtaposes footage from live satellite management systems. By extracting video and animation from these programs, Gan reveals how futures are plotted and predicted in the various information technologies available for corporate research. In a similar vein, Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber contribute work that reflects the last several years of struggle around displacement and privatization in Vancouver as the city prepares to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. In "We Declare" Spaces of Housing, Vancouver 2008, the artist team looks at sites and institutions where decisions regarding housing are made.

Some of the time-based media in the exhibition provides a poetic analysis of the contemporary moment. In What is Capitalism, Katya Sander touches upon subjective and cultural impressions of capitalism in its current state of crisis. Benj Gerdes and Jennifer Hayashida's Populus Tremula is a 16mm film loop that extends from their artistic research into the work of the Swedish industrialist (and founder of the Swedish Matchstick Corporation) Ivar Kreuger (1880 – 1932). In 2007, The Economist called Kreuger “the world's greatest financial swindler”. The film installation consists of contemporary footage shot in Swedish factories that have been active since the 19th century, but now have almost fully automated manufacturing processes. While Gerdes and Hayashida's project may seem removed from the present day, the financial practices upheld by the monopoly king, Kreuger, are currently enacted by the IMF and WTO, which provides a haunting coda to the exhibition.

Steven Lam is a curator, artist and the Associate Dean at The Cooper Union School of Art. He teaches at the School of Visual Arts, NYC. With a recent focus on geo-zones outside Euro-America (such as China), Lam has been involved with the curatorial team for the Third Guangzhou Triennial. Lam was a Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow at the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program and a Lori Ledis Curatorial Fellow at Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn. Recent exhibitions include Tainted Love (2009) at La Mama/Visual AIDS, NYC; For Reasons of State (2008) at The Kitchen, NYC; and Spectral Evidence (2007), Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn.

Sarah Ross is an artist whose works examine the visual culture of health, safety and cleanliness that manifest in everyday architecture and landscapes. She teaches at Illinois State University and works with local initiatives working to provide education and literature to prisoners in Illinois. Ross is the recipient of grants from the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts and the Illinois Art Council. She has exhibited work at the Armory, Pasadena, CA; Gallery 727, Los Angeles; PS122, New York; and Columbia College, Chicago; among others.

SPACES is a VAN Partner of the Visual Arts Network (VAN). This project is made possible in part through support from the Visual Arts Network Exhibition Residency, which is a program of the National Performance Network. Major contributors are the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation. For more information: www.npnweb.org.

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Shawnee Silhouettes

jlovett11211 — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 03:31:04 +0000

Hand drawn silhouettes of the porches of Shawnee Ohio. This architecture style is unique to the the micro region of The Little Cities of Black Diamonds in South-east Ohio.

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Installation: OU-SoA Critical Regionalism Initiative

jlovett11211 — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:50:37 +0000

The newly formed Ohio University School of Art Critical Regionalism Initiative also focuses on this region and an examination of coal mining in Southeast Ohio. The group will premiere their project for this exhibition, bringing the ideas of site-specificity in contemporary art into fruitful contact with the work of both governmental agencies and nongovernmental activists on a range of regional issues.

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