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 JACKROAD:
Artist Blog

 

JACKROAD:  An Artist Blog

I am intending JACKROAD to be a platform for written and visual essays about art and the artworld as they intersect with our broader society. Its name is an offshoot of my first extensive writing project, MILEMARKER, a collection of essays emanating from a job I had in 1982-87 as a solo coast-to-coast truck driver for an art shipping company. Descriptions from those years morphed over time into fiction, and the results found their way into my various artworks. But today, surrounded by the internet and social media and the vast plethora of images from around the globe, I am hoping to reach, in some substantive way, down into the usual surf of publications that surround my armchair come morning, and offer you some shell to which you can hold your ear come night.

SPEAKEASY ­
A proposal to support artists from auctions

Published June, 2020
The New Art Examiner

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  AD_MISSION   (2015- Ongoing)

The ads here appear in various 2015-2022 issues of Art Forum (and one in Art In America). This occasional series is a natural outgrowth of my ongoing interest in magazine advertising and "visibility" in the large aesthetic, commercial and political landscape known as the "art world."

Consider the multiple meanings of the series title.
"Ad_Mission" sets a self-directed goal for the ads themselves to accomplish.
"Admission" also conveys an entry fee, as well as a confession of sorts-- but to what

 

CLICK HERE OR ON THE IMAGE FOR THE WHOLE SET

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THE WALL, NOGALES -- (LA PARED)
(AN ESSAY-IN-WAITING)

 

Crossing the US-Mexico border at Nogales, Sonora,
without a passport-- a meditation on immigration

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BRUCE WHITE: A LOVE LETTER,
OR, LET ME SHOW YOU THIS SMALL SUBMARINE

 

An essay on sculptor Bruce White
Spring, 2018

   

 

 

SHELF LIFE:
A CONTEMPLATION ON SEEING ONE'S
ARTWORK IN AN ART MAGAZINE AD

December 4, 2015

 

 

 

VIDEO INTERVIEW
FROM EGO GALLERY, BARCELONA
(on YouTube)

 

A four-minute interview in Balas's European solo debut at Ego Gallery in Barcelona, Spain, in 2009.

 

TROY'S PLACE

 

 

RADIO INTERVIEW ABOUT THE EXHIBITION AT
JAMES KELLY CONTEMPORARY
ON
"ART BEAT" with
KATHRYN DAVIS
KVSF 101.5 FM

PODCAST LINK HERE

October 29, 2015

 

 In this ArtBeat podcast that aired live at noon on
Thursday, October 29th, artist Jack Balas, discusses
the work he's exhibiting at James Kelly Contemporary,
and the lack of nude men as subjects for art. 



WHERE'S THE BEEF?
A LOOK FOR (AND LACK OF) THE MALE EROTIC IMAGE IN CONTEMPORARY ART.
IS THE TERM "HOMO-EROTIC" PEJORATIVE?

 

July 13, 2013


"An important issue I hadn't thought much about."
--Lucy Lippard, Independent Critic & Curator

"I read with great interest."
-- Raphael Rubinstein, Contributing Editor, Art In America

"You are a good writer."
--William Morrow, Curator, Denver Art Museum

 

 

 

A look at the subtleties of female vs. male erotic image representation in contemporary art-- a feast and famine, respectively-- not only in museums and galleries, but especially among the pages of the art world's chief ambassadors, the hard-copy magazines. In a broader society where the terms "post-black" and "post feminist" can be considered de rigueur, "homo-erotic" makes questionable assumptions about the viewer and is used to sequester male-themed work into a polite, p.c. and invisible pigeon hole where even gays (and the LGBT community as a whole) start to wonder if we actually exist. Beyond issues of parity, however, the author calls for male-image visibility for the sake of a reality beyond the material, one that is in fact constructed by the brain and nurtured by the images promulgated by artists, and one that helps allow all of us to thus construct our own being. Where IS the beef? We've met him. And he is us.

:

 

       


 

 

THE BLUE COUCH IS LEAVING: LAST CALL FOR EVERGREEN PARK
(with Errant Thoughts Regarding the Art Institute of Chicago, Nekkid Womyn, and My Kind Of Town)


An extensive essay from 2011 describing the cleaning out my parents' home after their passing, but segueing into a consideration of artworks in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

 

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BOOKS
BREWS
BEANS
&
'ZINES

 

ongoing

   

 

 

 

On
Thomas
Hirschhorn:

I LOVE
TO PRODUCE
MY WORK!

 

October 31, 2012

     

 



 

LINKS:

BOMB MAGAZINE

THE SILO by Raphael Rubinstein