Megan and Murray

US Navy Submarine Force Museum

I dare you to not be interested in touring the first nuclear powered submarine to travel to the North Pole — complete with mannequins in bunks, operating machinery and plotting maps. A surprising delight, the US Navy Submarine Force Museum, in Groton, Connecticut, is the home of the USS Nautilus (SSN 571). It's also got real periscopes you can operate, models of subs, bombs and knowledgeable veteran submarine docents who were able to answer all of my lingering childhood submarine questions: like the rumor that nuclear submarine artificial oxygen generators created oxygen that was "horribly smelly" (not true). Here's the kicker: admission is free.

Keith Edmier at CCS Bard

Keith Edmier: 1991 - 2007, installation view of Bremen Towne, 2007 [source]

A few weeks ago, we took our first trip to the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College for the opening of its two fall exhibitions, Keith Edmier 1991-2007 and Exhibitionism: An Exhibition of Exhibitions of Works from the Marieluise Hessel Collection.

In the most comprehensive survey of the Keith Edmier's work to date, the artist has created "a full-scale sculptural reproduction of the interior spaces from the ranch house where [he] grew up in the southwest Chicago suburb, Tinley Park." Edmier's new work is layered with the simulacrum of the remembered colors and textures of his early life. By no means sentimental, this reconstituted "home" is meticulously catalogued with his trademark tongue-and-cheek authenticity. Like in his collaborative portraits with Farrah Fawcett, the artist both throws himself wholly into his own labor and allows the more awkward labor of others to speak without censorship, like the reproduced wall-hung paintings "after" Salvador Dali and "in the style of" Renoir.

With Bremen Towne as a literal frame of reference for the exhibition, it is enlightening and challenging to approach Edmier's earlier work with fresh eyes. To see Beverly Edmier, 1967 (1998), the artist's portrait of his mother while transparently pregnant with himself, just outside the context of her conjured home, which features Edmier's reproduced portrait of his mother's own painted reproduction of Renoir's Child in White, is to travel alongside the artist in a strange and articulate meta-journey "home."

Keith Edmier: 1991-2007
Sat. Oct. 20, 2007 – Sun. Feb. 3, 2008
The Center for Curatorial Studies and Art in Contemporary Culture at Bard College
http://www.bard.edu/ccs/

Exploring Art in New England

Since moving to Providence in August, we've begun to explore the rich art resources in our new surroundings. In the past two weeks, we've been to MASS MoCA to see the Spencer Finch show, to the ICA for Philip-Lorca diCorcia, to the MIT museum for the whimsical and Tim Hawkinson-esque Sculpture of Arthur Ganson, and to the South End Open Studios and most of the major galleries in Boston.

In the next few posts, we'll begin to unpack some of what we're thinking about the art we've seen.

Natalie Jeremijenko, Tree Logic, 1999 [at MASS MoCA]