There’s something refreshing about a project that dares to be unapologetically political. In many ways, the spirit late-20th century counterculture persists in the Pacific Northwest, and that old Drop City mentality remains rampant among artists who prefer to retreat to the imaginary as a cozy site of resistance. Corvallis-based painter Julie Green has opted to address the deeply flawed system of capital punishment head on. Her ongoing series, The Last Supper, has been a twelve-year pursuit to reveal the humanity on death row through intimate portraits of last meal requests painted on ceramic plates.

The plates, currently numbering 500, are a dissonant accumulation of lives lived and lost. Displayed in clusters along the perimeter of The Arts Center, (Corvallis, OR), each constellation speaks to an ad hoc arrangement of family portraits, a domestic sensibility that is amplified ten-fold by the use of readymade tableware as canvas. Despite the gravity of the subject matter, there is a touch of whimsy to Green’s project. Her meticulously rendered pizza slices, honeybuns, and hamburgers are most often completed without any visual referent. Filtered through the artist’s memory, the foods are imbued with an illustrative quality that borders on cartoony, speaking to the endearing texture of Maira Kalman rather than the inherent gloom of the memento mori. Further, each object in The Last Supper is painted in the tradition of blue-and-white china, a hue that is simultaneously absurd and significant, drawing from one of the most recognized traditions in ceramic worldwide, from Jingdezhen ware to Willowware.

Despite her stylistic levity, Green’s project is compelling in its provocation of the limits of power and the nature of justice as it is dictated by the judiciary. Perhaps most importantly, The Last Supper seeks to locate the individual within the systemic, collapsing hegemonic ritual into everyday experience through the intimacy of a favorite meal served on white china.

I spoke to Julie Green at The Art Center in Corvallis, Oregon, where her exhibition The Last Supper was on view through February 16.

SMP: I feel as though I’m looking at a very systematized display resembling a geographic or celestial map of bodies. Does this installation represent a cartography of sorts?

JG: Yes, completely. The installation of The Last Supper is alphabetical and chronological; so alphabetical by state—beginning with Alabama—and chronological by date of execution—most recent first. Texas has been featured in The Arts Center installation, highlighted by the architecture of the space to be given the central location it deserves… My process is to continuously check when executions occur using a death penalty information website. There are generally under 40-executions a year now. I make about 50-plates per year: say 40 recent executions and 10 historical. From the web, I’ll find the individual’s name, Google him—it’s almost always a man—and find out his last meal. The last meal is public record and with the Internet, I can access that information immediately. It wasn’t this simple when I started thirteen years ago. Back then, I had to call the prisons and get faxes. I would say I was professor at University of Oklahoma doing research on capital punishment—I would never say that I was an artist—that would be a red flag. And you never want to talk to the warden—I learned to ask for the Public Information Officer—although, I have had some interesting conversations with wardens, particularly in Oklahoma and Arizona.

SMP: Do you feel that you gain insight into the individuals by painting such intimate subject matter?

JG: They’re very personal menus. This is the whole reason I began the project: six tacos, six glazed doughnuts, and a cherry Coke. I thought: why six? Reading that menu humanized death row for me. As an organic gardener, a cook, and a person who loves and appreciates food, I considered the absurdity of placing all this emphasis on a meal that a person wouldn’t even have time to digest. Food is sustenance, food is community, food is sharing ideas with friends and family, it’s a celebration, it’s joy, and even if it’s eaten alone, it’s still a ritual. I have much gratitude for the good food in my life, and this death row meal just stood in such contrast to that.

SMP: Thinking about the idea of the last meal, the practice seems so flagrantly, almost offensively, contrary to our cultural associations with food and meals, which are about the social function of coming together.

JG: Exactly: the whole ritual. Take a look at this plate here: “Indiana. 14 March 2001. German ravioli and chicken dumplings prepared by his mother and dietary staff.” The mother got clearance into the prison to prepare that meal, which must have been such an intense experience.

JG: This piece too: “He never had a birthday cake, so we ordered a birthday cake for him.” This may be, for me, one of the most telling plates. I had a birthday cake every year—most of us did—so on one hand, you have this positive reflection of family and the symbolic affect that food often has, or should have, particularly in the case of a last meal; and on the other hand, you have a instance that reflects very negatively on this individual’s history surrounding family and food.

SMP: Food has always been a popular subject in art making, from still life to Fluxus. Why do you think there has been a real renewed interest and reinvestment in food within contemporary art practice?

JG: We are a culture obsessed with food in positive and negative ways. We live in a time of luxury where, for most Americans, it’s not about survival it’s about choice. There’s a lot of joy in food, and it’s commonality—it’s democratic. If we were to stand out on the street talking about food, it’s like talking about the weather—everyone can relate—we all have food and the weather in common in Oregon right now.

SMP: Do you have you own rituals involving food that play out in your everyday life?

JG: Nothing but I’m afraid. I’ve had a slice of cinnamon-walnut toast with tahini, orange marmalade, nutritional yeast, and ground flax and sesame seeds, along with a cup of white tea every morning for breakfast for the past 12-13-years.

SMP: That’s interesting, that ritual started the same time as this project?

JG: I guess, yeah. I have a thing for routine; I wear the same earrings and same cherry red Mac lipstick every day.  This allows for less decision-making and facilitates getting the real work done.

SMP: I find that ritual can be a compelling way to bring together grand, socio-politically-charged myths with the stuff of everyday life, and the space of art making is a natural place for these two worlds to come together and play out.

JG: Perhaps that’s what draws people to this project—that’s certainly what drew me to it—this relationship to food, ritual, and memory embedded in larger issues relating to justice and ethics.

SMP: Where does the final meal ritual come from?

JG: Every country with capital punishment seems to have a final meal of some sort, [view Mats Bigert and Lars Bergström's film, "The Last Supper," for reference]. Much of our legacy of capital punishment comes from England. There’s that whole ritual of the gallows were the prisoner is walked to the bars and everyone drinks together before the prisoner is publicly hanged. We have built upon that type of tradition and, along with that, there’s a morbid curiosity that compels public interest in final meals. I once asked a warden why the final meals are printed in newspapers and he said it’s because the public wants to know. I’ve found that even highly educated people are surprisingly unformed when it comes to capital punishment practices in our country, to the point that they’re not aware that a death row sentence is more expensive than life without parole. When I began The Last Supper project, painted a few plates—there was no plan to make this my life’s work or anything—but when I got deeper into it and realized the extent to which this subject is marginalized politically and socially, I had to carry it on.

JG: At one point, I contacted prisons in the thirty-three states using capital punishment, and asked them about their prison’s ritual, and the response was: we’ve always had it, it’s a tradition, it’s special, it’s an effort to do something nice for the inmate. My take is that it alleviates guilt and is something positive for prison staff to focus on during the day of the execution.

SMP: I have to say, that there is real comedy—a touch of absurdity—in your depictions of food. It’s blue, nothing is to scale, there’s so much emphasis placed on some objects and then little placed on others. What I’m saying is this is not your typical vanitas—there’s a distinct lightness, and I’m curious about your aesthetic choice there.

JG: George Carlin said, “There is no blue food.” For one thing, I’m mono-vision, so I have no sense of space whatsoever and there is a natural awkwardness to my work. In painting, we translate 3D into 2D, but I’m 2D all the time. A friend once called my painting faux-naive, but no way: I am naive.  I never wanted to paint realistically—nature is already perfect and beautiful still life paintings exist. I am interested in the process of memory, and the early plates are painted without photographic references. I haven’t eaten red meat since high school, so painting ribs from memory may cause them to turn out looking more like tubas or something—there’s no way it can look right.  As the project grew, and I wanted to differentiate salmon from catfish, and started looking at photo references and The Joy of Cooking illustrations; for example, I could have never painted that lobster from memory.

SMP: It’s interesting knowing that these are filtered through your own sensory experience and memory of these foods.

JG: I’m quite good at painting chocolate cake—I know chocolate cake. But, yes, I think that’s true. I often say that everything that we make is a self-portrait—we can’t get away from it—I grew up with blue and white plates in a food family. My family was Midwestern, conservative, and Christian. As a kid, I was pro-capital punishment and pro-Nixon. These days my mom shares my opposition to capital punishment, so I like to say: if you can change your mom then you can change the world. My own food experience definitely forms how each plate is painted. You can’t get away from knowing barbeque ribs and chocolate cake.

SMP: Do you feel that there’s something in the traditions and material-associations of the decorative arts and craft-based media that allows you to approach this project differently than, say, if you were painting last meals on canvas?

JG: I couldn’t work on final meals all the time. Half of each studio year is spent on lighter projects, such as personal narratives in egg tempera. A few months back, for the first time I combined narrative painting on to functional dishes. Compared to centuries of tempera and oil painting traditions, this process feels wide open and exciting.

JG: I was born in Japan and raised among Midwestern quilters—people with a real appreciation for craft. Growing up, my family had beautiful Johnson Brothers and Noritake china, Japanese prints, quilts, and strange objects handmade by my male relatives, who were carpenters. Down the street, one of my neighbors made things out of ears of corn; I’m talking life sized Abe Lincoln and Paul Bunyan figures being the first installation art I ever saw.  (You wouldn’t believe how many colors of corn there are.) Anyway, I didn’t have much exposure to “high” art until I went to The University of Kansas.  At the time, there was this recurrent conversation about what you “could and couldn’t do as an artist,” and even then, I thought it was ridiculous… People respond to this work because of the political content. They would respond, I’m sure, if these were small paintings on panel, but using plates as the surfaces for meals just makes sense.

SMP: You do maintain a distinctly painterly quality, not only stylistically, but also in your choice to display them on a wall versus on a large table or in a vitrine. You’re definitely using the plate as a canvas and, in a way, stripping away the objectness of the plate.

JG: The Last Supper has been exhibited 24 times. Each installation is unique, depending on the space. These days, wall mounted has the biggest punch. Whatever your stance on capital punishment, there is no denying there are a lot of plates. The ceramic dishes are all white, but vary in material, weight, size, and decoration. They speak to a collection of individuals within a system, of course, alluding to the institution of death row. They’re almost like portraits, and perhaps are more confrontational hung on the wall.

JG: I study with Toni Acock, who is my technical adviser. She taught me mineral painting, and she fires every plate.  But, I break the rules for paint application, preferring thicker, frosting-like application. Part of the reason why I’ve taken to this project is because I allow myself to experiment—I don’t have any technical or traditional baggage hanging over my head.

SMP: Are they always displayed as a complete group? It seems as though the installation needs the to express a certain volume and weight—almost like a Felix Gonzales Torres—where you need the pile for the gravity of the piece to come across.

JG:   Last year, when nearing plate number 500, I contacted the Art Center in Corvallis. It’s an ideal venue, a former church here in the town where we live. In the past, small groupings of the plates have been shown—it’s an expensive undertaking for a venue to ship 500-ceramic plates across the country—but I don’t separate the plates anymore. I do want people to see them and, recently, I made a facsimile set of 160 Texas paper plates. The paper plates have just come back from Holland and are heading to Texas in March.

I haven’t sold a final meal plate—they’re not for sale. These days I’m looking for a permanent home to donate The Last Supper, a museum or institution to provide the public consistent access. It’s time for them to have a home other than my basement!

The Last Supper: 500 plates will be exhibited at The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, (Eugene, OR), in March, and travel to The Art Gym, (Portland, OR), in April, 2013.

Julie Green was born in Japan in 1961. An Associate Professor at Oregon State University, she lives in the Willamette Valley with her husband, quilter Clay Lohmann, and their small cat, Mini.  Half of each year, usually winter months, is spent on The Last Supper. In summer, Green paints personal narratives. Her egg tempera is included the 7th edition of A World of Art published by Prentice Hall. Green has had twenty-seven solo exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, been featured in The New York Times, a Whole Foods mini-documentary, National Public Radio, Ceramics Monthly and Gastronomica, and recently received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors.

I came across the following essay about performance (and its relationship to the institution) on The Weeklings. Since the subject has come up — even obliquely — a few times on B@S in the last month or so, from Tanta’s conversation with performers last week (asking them about how protest functions, if at all),to Göransson’s discussion of ASCO, and Gutierrez’s performance at the MCA, I wanted to link to Amy Sherlock’s essay here:

Is He For Real? The Blurry Boundaries Of Contemporary Performance

AN ODD THING just happened to me. I am writing this essay at a desk in a public library, the British library, no less, the largest public building built in the UK in the 20^th century. I’m sitting, in silence, in a busy reading room, surrounded by literally hundreds of people. Most of  us are tap-tap-tapping away at their computers, each in our own world, near enough to hear one another’s breathing and yet entirely isolated in our silence, the contractual silence that is the condition of our being here. Not that this is anything out of the ordinary. The “funny thing” happened outside in the café, where, having eaten alone and also in silence, an unknown man at a facing table called me over as I was leaving and asked, in flagrant contravention of unspoken library protocol, what I was working on. He invited me to sit, which I did, and we proceeded to chat with the superficial, stilted brevity of such awkward encounters, until sufficient time had elapsed that I felt able to take my leave without appearing rude. Now installed at the silent haven of my desk, I’m trying to work out what to make of this unexpected, unsolicited encounter. I was uncomfortable, and wary about why this stranger called me over and the demands he might make of me. I was also slightly irritated, unfairly disinterested, from the outset, not wishing to confide or to be confided in, eager to return to myself and my own thoughts. I also had the niggling suspicion that this was some kind of set-up, a trick to make a fool of me or to get something out of me. I was waiting for the punch line to this protracted, unfunny joke; for him to ask for my money, or my number; for his friends to appear and make a scene. Perhaps cynically my first thought was “is he for real?”

And, all those feelings – they could be ascribed to contemporary performance art. There’s been a huge surge in performance’s popularity the past few years. This summer Tate Modern opened their Tanks as a dedicated space for performance and video installations, while in the museum’s Turbine Hall Tino Seghal staged These associations , the first live art piece to be performed in the towering, empty space. In 2010, his This Progress, spiralled up the central rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum, and there were seventy-seven days of Marina Abramovic’s mute, immobile presence in MoMA’s atrium (The Artist Is Present). Here on this side of the pond, the Hayward Gallery in London staged Move: Choreographing You, while,. this year a whole floor of the Whitney Biennial was given over to performance, and in LA, there’s even a new gallery set up by hip young artists dedicated to, guess, yes, performance.

The Abramovic phenomenon in particular has come to exemplify the complicated alliance between performance, the museum, and institutional and commercial gallery spaces. For all its professed immediacy and the emphasis on the ephemeral “present,” MoMA did a good job of packaging up  “the moment” and circulating it. There are photographs, official catalogue and the feature-length film. And, then there were the follow up shows later that year across both of Lisson Gallery’s London spaces exhibiting documentation from earlier Abramovic performances. All of which seems to scream, precisely, that the artist is not present. However you choose to evaluate the work and despite any reservations you may have about the mythical status of the artist or the art institution as a sanctified space, what’s undeniable is The Artist Is Present celebrated the face-to-face one-on-one encounter. And, that exchange is at the heart of the performance revival. (read more)

A graphic, editorial overview of art, artists, and visual art events, found in and around Chicago over the course of the preceding month. All artwork copyright original artists; all photography copyright Paul Germanos.

Thelonious Elliot and Wray Morgan Herbert-King @ ACRE Projects

Above: Theo Elliot at left; Morgan Herbert-King at right; opening night at ACRE Projects.

Thelonious Elliot and Wray Morgan Herbert-King
“Moving a Hole”
January 20 – February 4
ACRE Projects
1913 W. 17th St.
Chicago, IL 60608
http://www.acreresidency.org/

Dmitry Samarov @ Chicago Public Library

Above: “Algren” 2012

Above: “Morandi” 2011, top; “Entrapment” 2012, bottom.

Dmitry Samarov
“Bookshelf Paintings”
January 11 – March 1, 2013
Harold Washington Library Center
400 S. State St.
Chicago, IL 60605
http://www.dmitrysamarov.com/

Goshka Macuga @ Smart Museum of Art

Above: Exhibition closing and curator talk (MCA curator Dieter Roelstraete, left, and Smart curator Stephanie Smith, right) January 13, 2013

Goshka Macuga
“Of what is, that it is; of what is not, that it is not,” panel 2
(wool tapestry from photo collage, approx. 11 x 38 feet, half of diptych)
December 13, 2012 – January 13, 2013
Smart Museum of Art (lobby)
5550 S. Greenwood Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637
http://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/

Robert Chase Heishman @ Roots & Culture

Above: Robert Chase Heishman with artwork at Roots & Culture, opening night.

Robert Chase Heishman
“Fractal Semblance”
January 18 – February 16, 2013
Roots & Culture
1034 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago, IL
Curated by Eric May, Stephanie Cristello and Allison Glenn
Artwork by Robert Chase Heishman, Jessica Labatte, Alistair Matthews, and Liz Nielsen
http://www.rootsandculturecac.org/

R. H. Quaytman @ The Renaissance Society

Above: Peeking inside the piece “Public Space/Two Audiences”

R. H. Quaytman
“Passing Through The Opposite of What It Approaches, Chapter 25″
January 6 – February 17, 2013
The Renaissance Society
5811 S. Ellis Avenue
Bergman Gallery, Cobb Hall 418
Chicago, Illinois 60637
http://www.renaissancesociety.org/

Deborah Baker @ Packer Gallery

Above: Cotton on linen, embroidery, under glass, framed.

Deborah Baker
“Zodiac”
January 11 – February 16
Packer Schopf Gallery
942 W. Lake St.
Chicago, IL 60607
http://www.packergallery.com/

Sarah Mendelsohn @ The Plaines Project

Above: Sarah Mendelsohn with her artwork at The Plaines Project, opening night.

Sarah Mendelsohn
“Stretches Topless”
January 19 – February 8, 2013
The Plaines Project
1822 S. Desplaines St.
Chicago, IL
http://plainesproject.wordpress.com/

Tom Torluemke @ Hyde Park Art Center

Above: Tom Torluemke with his horrific vision of environmental degradation, shot at the opening reception.

Tom Torluemke
“Fearsome Fable – Tolerable Truth”
January 20, 2013 – April 28, 2013
Gallery 4
Hyde Park Art Center
5020 S. Cornell Ave.
Chicago, IL 60615
http://www.hydeparkart.org/

Teruko Nimura @ Roxaboxen Exhibitions / ACRE Projects

Above: Hummingbird in flight, floral origami aim, installation at Roxaboxen.

Teruko Nimura
“Potentialities,” a two-person show with Milcah Bassel
January 20 – February 1, 2013
Roxaboxen Exhibitions / ACRE Projects
2130 W. 21st St.
Chicago, IL 60608
http://www.terukonimura.net/

Scott Hocking @ Chicago Artists’ Coalition

Above: Scott Hocking with artwork at opening reception for “EXCHANGE: Chicago-Detroit”

“EXCHANGE: Chicago-Detroit”

CHICAGO: Chicago Artists’ Coalition, Chicago IL
January 11 – 31, 2013
DETROIT: Cave Gallery and Public Pool, Detroit, MI
February 23 – March 16, 2013

Chicago Artists’ Coalition,
217 N. Carpenter Street,
Chicago IL 60607
http://chicagoartistscoalition.org/

Edie Fake @ Thomas Robertello

Above: Edie Fake at opening reception; artwork in background.

Edie Fake
“Memory Palaces”
January 4 – February 16, 2013
Thomas Robertello Gallery
27 N. Morgan St.
Chicago, IL 60607
http://www.thomasrobertello.com/

Lauren Payne and Erin Washington @ Johalla Projects / ACRE Projects

Above: Lauren Payne and Erin Washington’s collaborative installation, opening night.

Above: Jenny Kendler (ACRE Board of Directors) left; Lauren Payne, right; opening night.

Lauren Payne and Erin Washington
“As Above So Below”
January 25 – 31, 2013
Johalla Projects / ACRE Projects
1821 W Hubbard, Suite 209
Chicago 60622
http://www.johallaprojects.com/

Harvey Moon @ Hauser Gallery

Above: Harvey Moon with “drawing machine” installed in gallery, opening night.

Harvey Moon
“Transpported Wind”
January 25 – March 22, 2013
Hauser Gallery
230 W. Superior St.
Chicago, IL
http://www.unanything.com/

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Paul Germanos: Born November 30, 1967, Cook County, Illinois. Immigrant grandparents, NYC. High school cross country numerals and track letter. Certified by the State of Illinois as a peace officer. Licensed by the City of Chicago as a taxi driver. Attended the School of the Art Institute 1987-1989. Studied the history of political philosophy with the students of Leo Strauss from 2000-2005. Phi Theta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi. Motorcyclist.

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Endless Opportunities: Call for Works – Proximity Magazine

February 17, 2013 · Print This Article

Proximity Magazine is now accepting proposals for the upcoming edition on the intersections of art, food, politics and social practice. Proposal deadline is  is March 15, 2013. Completed texts and works are due by April 15, 2013. Issue release will be this Spring at Version Festival 13.

Full information here: http://proximitymagazine.com/2013/02/call-for-works-proximity-number-11/

As always, good luck!

 

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