The Mourning Strip

I am currently working with collage, letters, advertisement, and scanning in the creation of a new series of work titled The Mourning Strip. This work examines how humor can be used as a tool for mourning and acceptance of death as natural.

Below is a quick scan of one of the prints in progress, For When It Hearse The Most.

Image: Nicholas Fenell, 2012. For When It Hearse The Most.

After A Response to Decoration Day

In an attempt to keep an active and creative mind post graduation from the Cleveland Institute of Art, I have spent the past year dancing around and stepping in and out of different mediums and projects while learning to adjust to full time employment with Starbucks, great involvement with The Sculpture Center, and the necessity of time for mental rest. 

I have a thoroughly active website that is updated with images of current projects. Recently, I uploaded images from my performance picnic piece A Response to Decoration Day. Unfortunately, the turnout was dismal and the white roses for each of the graves were not received on their designated date. Regardless, the planning of A Response to Decoration Day and its process from creation of invites to hand-delivery of each invite in a personal and intimate setting can be seen as an ultimately success first foray into performance art, via a picnic. 

In the coming year (2013) I have two major curatorial and fundraising efforts underway ensuring active involvement in the arts. I will continuing updating both this blog and my official website as I continue to forge my path in the deep and well rooted forest of the art world.

Image: Nicholas Fenell. 2012. A Response to Decoration Day.

Progress on A Response to Decoration Day

All six invites for A Response To Decoration Day have been hand delivered to their recipients. Images have been posted of the invite and handwritten note to my official website.

Much more work remains before the performance takes place in May. Look for image updates on this blog as the menu develops, the picnic setting unfolds, and the fresh white roses are ordered.

A Response To Decoration Day: the handwritten invite

The first of six invites for A Response To Decoration Day has been received. With five more to go out in the next week, look for images to be uploaded to my official website in the coming days.

However, here is a sneak peak of one of the handwritten notes included in the invites. Each invite also contains fresh bread/ pastry and fresh white rose petals.

Image: Nicholas Fenell, 2012.

Progress on A Response To Decoration Day

In May 2012, a performance with invitation only is scheduled for Orange Cemetery in Pepper Pike, Ohio. The work is a favorable response to research and study of the traditional Decoration Day in Southern Appalachia.

Since the invitation for guests is one of the main physical components, it must be more than an invite. The invitation is a sculpture in its own right, appealing to its recipient for its taste, smell, and warmth.

The standard bakery shop cake box will serve as the vessel for the invitation. Inside, the box will have fresh white rose petals, homemade bread, and text with all the information for the recipient. Each invite will be hand delivered to its recipient.

New Year, New Works

On the Other Side, a permanent outdoor installation at the East Cleveland Township Cemetery, has been approved. The work will examine the line separating the roads of life and death, in this case marked by a fence. Scheduled to be finished by fall 2012, look for posts on progress of project in future weeks and months.

A Response to Decoration Day is a performance by invitation only to happen in May this year. Look for photos and updates on both this blog and official website.

Projects in Proposal

Holiday wishes to all and warmth this season.

Two proposals have been reviewed by the East Cleveland Township Cemetery and I eagerly await the verdict.

A third proposal for a fundraising benefit and collaboration with fellow artist is nearing completion. This proposal shall be completed and sent out for review in January 2012

New Work on Website

Click here to visit my formal website and see new works added to a series of photographs, A Window Into Two Worlds.

Reflections: Animal Kingdom Pet Cemetery

Animal Kingdom Pet Cemetery, 2011. Image: Nicholas Fenell

In effort to understand the cemetery and its function to the fullest, I have spent the year visiting cemeteries across the north eastern Ohio region. Recently, I visited a pet cemetery (Animal Kingdom Pet Cemetery) in Mayfield Heights, Ohio. It was very interesting to see the differences in objects left in memory of the deceased. Many graves are very well attended, with plenty of flowers, statuaries, and personal notes/ mementos. The graves date back to 1946, with plenty of land for expansion. Some families buried their pets in a style similar to the family plot with a headstone bearing the last name and markers for each pet/ family member around the family headstone. The variety of pets was far reaching including dog, cat, rabbit, and horse. No matter the species, each marker paid enormous respect to the deceased.

Animal Kingdom Pet Cemetery, 2011. Image: Nicholas Fenell

Calvary Cemetery 2011

This past summer has been spent exploring many of the cemeteries in north eastern Ohio. In particular, points of interest include the area where the cemetery and the world of the living are in the same frame and the varied types of cemeteries and their respect purposes, markers, and layout.

In addition, I have been extremely busy interning at The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio for the past four months and will continue on through October. November and December will be dominated by studio time, so expect frequent updates and countless works on my formal website.

Currently I await approval for a permanent installation to be inside of the East Cleveland Township Cemetery. I will announce the verdict when it is released.

New work added to Unknown Certainty

Click here to see a new Unknown Certainty.

This ongoing series has granted me the ability to have a studio practice while volunteering countless hours as an intern at The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio and working full-time at a nearby Starbucks.

Look forward to seeing a series of paintings in November and December, as I will be taking some time away from the internship to further my studio time and practice.

Unknown Certainty (ongoing installations) Image Set 2

Note: Nicholas Fenell did not partake in the graffiti seen in above images. Rather, objects were placed in relation to the space and the text of the graffiti.

Unknown Certainty (ongoing installations) Image Set 1

Images of selected completed Unknown Certainty installations. 2011.

Work in Progress: Writings on Unknown Certainty project

This is a writing revolving around a project I am developing and currently making elements for. No Unknown Certainties have been realized yet but pictures will be posted as they come to fruition.



Project Statement:
Unknown Certainty is a series of outdoor installations that use the form of roadside memorial to investigate non-specific markers of death. Within the installations, the objects comprising the memorials give no mention to specifics of the one memorialized. No name, photos, or references to gender, race, sexuality, and age are found. The sites for these memorials are not spectacular but rather mundane niches of roads, underpasses, wooded lands, and public parks. Although the form is instantly recognizable as a memorial and reminds of the inevitability of death, the namelessness and lack of objects reflecting personality creates the unknown. Who the memorial is for, why it is there, and how the namelessness of these memorials incites a fear of being forgotten all center on the unknown and the unremembered. Often constructed of banal and some ephemeral materials, these works touch further on the unremembered through the unspectacular and non prestigious quality of objects in the memorials and the impermanence of their erection. Within the context of contemporary ways of mourning and grieving, the spontaneous roadside memorial has come to prominence over the romantic graveyard. Through Unknown Certainty, the impromptu nature of roadside memorials is addressed and a concern for long-term upkeep and existence of these memorials is illustrated by visual evidence of decay and neglect as well as the temporal nature of the installations.

Images of Cemeteries Recently Visited

Brookmere Cemetery

Certain aspects of these shots interest me and are being worked on for my proposal to this cemetery for a future installation. The stacking, the counterbalance of geometric and organic forms, and forms of the grave markers are the major points of inspiration.







East Cleveland Township Cemetery

I enjoyed working with the East Cleveland Township Cemetery greatly for Fleeting and am toying with ideas for another proposal for a future installation there. Points of inspiration here are the odd objects/ debris found throughout the grounds and the relationships between the grave markers, the banal of backyards and debris, and the potential art object.

Fleeting: Photos of Work Through Exhibition Duration

Somehow, I did not post these before. These shots are in no particular order and all where taken during the month Fleeting was on exhibit at the East Cleveland Township Cemetery.

Spomenik- Slovenian Monument

A few days ago, a brief entry on todayandtomorrow.net caught my attention. It's about the photographic work of Jan Kempenaers. Jan took the time to explore the ex-Yugoslavia region, examining in particular structures commissioned in the 1960s and 70s as monuments to sites of WWII battles and concentration camps. The structures are truly fascinating and very inspiring to me. Please enjoy the link.

Spomeniks

Fleeting: Viewing as a Happening

After experiencing the critique for Fleeting this past week, I have thinking of how the work on the day it was viewed and by who viewed it plays a dual role as a sort of happening in addition to its role as a site-specific installation. Through the dreary weather, the coldness and despair in the work became amplified. With their umbrellas and hunched bodies, the audience for the critique became active and further stressed this coolness and despair found in Fleeting. The visual of the hundreds of browned formerly white roses, especially the ones that fell off the brick structure, referenced this notion of being left with bone, the flesh all having been decayed and separated from the body. The wetness of the rain offered a physical coldness to match this cool read of Fleeting. The ways in which the weather effected the audience of the critique and the brevity of the critique are the two factors that lead me to view Fleeting as a potential happening.

Fleeting: Images from Critique/ Happening?