Spencer Mont­gomery Pre­pares for Open­ing of Sok Gallery

If every­thing old is new again, then my cre­at­ing artist’s books from dis­carded text­books is Vin­tage NuvoFluxus in its essence. The artist for­merly known as me com­pleted 15 Artist Books last week, com­plete with a sok for each and a cotton-​string tag explain­ing the idea behind the book. Por­trait of same to be included in Sok Gallery of Out­sider Texts* which is sched­uled to go online early April 2010. *that’s not a link

Speak­ing of me.

No, let’s talk about other artists, behind their backs, the way you’re sup­posed to talk about people.

Don’t you find it annoy­ing when writ­ers and artists begin their “about” with coy dec­la­ra­tions of how hard it is to explain them­selves and their pur­pose? This post’s orig­i­nal inten­tion and focus began as a quick burst of “me” *gig­gle gig­gle* and how “I” am not wor­thy. So to this, to you and me who claim to find it dif­fi­cult to write about the you and me, I find it pru­dent to advise us: “Shut up and get on with the busi­ness at hand.”

Stop the gig­gle gig­gle coy pro­nounce­ments of how it’s so very very tax­ing to cre­ate a page about your­self, myself. A friend recently remarked on how those who attend “art school” must learn to write about art. The super­flu­ous “how the artist inspired the artist” and what became of that inspi­ra­tion… the kind of dia­log I used to write under the Soci­ety for the Preser­va­tion of South­ern Ver­nac­u­lar range of interest.

Com­pletely lost my train of thought when dogs sprung up from deep sleep to leap from bed to couch to bark out of win­dow at neigh­bor kid on skateboard.

(just like the google ads knock your brain into another sphere while you’re try­ing to read my posts)

spent the last few sen­tences try­ing to get back to the orig­i­nal premise … point­less. Now a muffler-​less hog dri­ves down East 2^nd St., cir­cles the block via McNair and returns down E. Main St. car­ry­ing any cogent idea along with it.

Yet I love Spring and the open win­dows of tem­per­ate sun­shine days.

Ahh, the orig­i­nal bit of plagma behind a Sun­day blog post. I have a day-​trip goal for 2010. Vis­it­ing art gal­leries and muse­ums within a 3-​hour drive radius of the Ass-​End of the Lesser Dis­mal Swamp, an area also known as east­ern North Car­olina. Speak­ing of ram­bling thoughts, it’s gram­mat­i­cally cor­rect, oddly enough, to cap­i­tal­ize the “E” in east­ern NC. I find that rather pre­sump­tu­ous and annoy­ing. The Assem­blag­ist Tour is geo­graph­i­cally lim­ited in 2010 but with a lit­tle pluck and deter­mi­na­tion — overnight trips can be accom­plished eventually.

Trip coor­di­nates, date of arrival unknown, a few des­ti­na­tions revealed:

Gregg Museum of Art, NC State, Raleigh
Raleigh City Museum
NC Museum of Art, Raleigh (Grand open­ing April 24 – 25)
Ack­land Art Museum, UNC-​Chapel Hill
Every County Arts Coun­cil east of I-​95, some of which will be named here
John and June All­cott Gallery, UNC-​Chapel Hill
East Car­olina University’s Art Gal­leries and exhibits
Pocosin Arts in Colum­bia
Durham Arts Coun­cil
NCCU Museum of Art
Nasher Museum — Duke
Hugh Mangum Museum of Pho­tog­ra­phy — Durham
Touch­able Art Gallery — Duke Eye Cen­ter
Ala­mance County Arts Coun­cil
Greens­boro, NC — many art oppor­tu­ni­ties
Craven County Arts Coun­cil — New Bern
Wilm­ing­ton, NC’s var­i­ous and var­ied art oppor­tu­ni­ties
more…

One item to note: Many rural NC county arts coun­cils are served by vol­un­teers who do not pos­sess web-​skills. The coun­cils are not ade­quately rep­re­sented online. This is a sorry state of affairs for both artists and patrons. If your county’s arts coun­cil web­site is not vibrant and timely, invest some time, money, and inter­est in mak­ing it so.

c