Viaggio Opening

Hello to Everyone!

I hope the change in the weather to the warm is bringing happiness in sloughing off this long winter.

Two things about my upcoming exhibit Viaggio con Le Viste:

I was interviewed this morning by Marya Morstad, host of Art Matters at KFAI radio. It will be played on air this evening (90.3 Minneapolis, 106.7 Saint Paul) from 7-7:30 pm. For those of you out of the range of radio signal, you can go to http://www.kfai.org/node/97 to listen online.

Secondly, the exhibit opens on Saturday! I hope to see you there!

Many thanks are in order to many people who have made this exhibit possible: David Heberlein, Morgan Clifford, Tim Old, Tom Arndt, Carl Toth, Margherita Guerra, Valeria Cossu, Archivi Alinari, Christian Korab, Gary Wolfe and Art Holdings, Nassim Rossi and the Italian Cultural Center, and many many others who have touched me and left a mark. Thank you for your friendship and support over the last four years of this project.


Brett

Solo Exhibition

Please join me on the evening of Saturday April 25th from 6-9pm to celebrate the opening reception for the first solo exhibition of my photographs made in Italy entitled:
Viaggio con Le Viste (Journey with Views).

The Italian Cultural Center of Minneapolis/Saint Paul is the shows sponsor, and the venue will be The Dining Studio in Northeast Minneapolis. My work will be up from April 24th to June 21st, and I will be giving a talk about the work on May 19th from 7-8pm with a reception to follow.

I hope to see you there!

Brett

Happy New Year!!!

For the sake of a new year...

Happy Holidays!

It's been a busy year....I'm generally not a fan of the "once a year catch up letter"...it's in the same ball park as Larry David's "stop and chat". So I'm not going to write one. Against my principles.

Here's a card instead. I hope everyone is well, and best of wishes for this new year and all that it brings!

Take a looksee...

Hello everyone!

My assistant has been hard at work and the big reveal of my website is now ready! To view it, you can go to www.brettkallusky.com. I have photographs dating from 1999 to 2008 (the span of almost a whole decade…) on the website. I am very proud of this work and hope you all enjoy. *

Regards,

Brett Kallusky

*dictated, but not read by Brett Kallusky

Keeping with Halloween

Can you tell me why in the Pampas, ay and elsewhere, there are bats that come out at night and open the veins of cattle and horses and suck dry their veins, how in some islands of the Western seas there are bats which hang on the trees all day, and those who have seen describe as like giant nuts or pods, and that when the sailors sleep on the deck, because that it is hot, flit down on them and then, and then in the morning are found dead men, white as even Miss Lucy was?"

"Good God, Professor!" I said, starting up. "Do you mean to tell me
that Lucy was bitten by such a bat, and that such a thing is here in
London in the nineteenth century?"

From Bram Stoker's Dracula

Not as gruesome as you might think....

This is a photograph made at St. Roch in New Orleans this past spring while teaching a Photo Essay class down there....

About the saint himself: A french nobleman who gave up his wealth at a young age to look after the sick, specifically those affected by the plague. The story goes that he himself came down with the plague, went to the forest to die, and met a dog. Apparently the dog brought him food, and nursed him back to health.

Upon recovery he returned to his home town of Montpellier and was promptly arrested for spying. He was jailed and died in prison five years later.

He is known as the patron saint of invalids, and dogs...

The Monster

I remember a photograph made by Dan Estabrook of his studio in the late 90's. It was the most frightening shot of a view camera I had ever seen. Dan explained to me the feeling of immobility in the face of trying to create in his studio. At the time I was incredulous at the fact...I thought if you have your own studio, everything must be great. Today I get it.

I made a similar photograph at Cranbrook in 2003...it has poignancy for me today as i strive to create new work. Everything you may want, or may be afraid of lie under that dark cloth, in that space that has been carved for light.

Seven Years and a day ago...view from my apt. rooftop in Brooklyn

Google Search: Disingenuous

Disingenuous

adj.

1. Not straightforward or candid; insincere or calculating: “an ambitious, disingenuous, philistine, and hypocritical operator, who … exemplified … the most disagreeable traits of his time” (David Cannadine).
2. Pretending to be unaware or unsophisticated; faux-naïf.
3. Usage Problem. Unaware or uninformed; naive.

Recent, Upcoming and Current Events

Last Saturday I took part in the MCP Portfolio Review along with gallerist and photographer Kathleen Day Coen. This was a great opportunity to see the work of several photographers with different bodies of work and give feedback. I would encourage anyone looking for some outside perspective to what they are doing to give this a try. Two peoples work who I was not familiar with but enjoyed....Michael McGraw and Aaron Bommarito.

Today I am a visiting artist at Bethel University and will be sharing my experiences from Cranbrook and the Fulbright with undergraduate students in the photography program under the charge of Lex Thompson.

Friday...Colleen Mullins will have a lecture and opening at 9th Street Gallery in lowertown St. Paul. The lecture is at 6pm with the opening to follow. In addition there are all sorts of photography shows going on right now in the Twin Cities...

Paul Shambroom at the Weisman Museum, August Sander at Weinstein Gallery, The Populated Landscape at Flanders Contemporary Art, JoAnne Verburg and Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscape at the Walker Art Center.

Also...don't forget to see Mica Lee Anders work in the group show Soul on Ice at the Soap Factory!

More Cuts

Fontana at work

Photographed by Ugo Mulas

Lucio Fontana and Francis Bacon walk into Mussolini's Kitchen...

Upcoming Event

Colleen Mullins will be exhibiting her work from a project entitled Elysium, a collection of images documenting and describing the landscape of New Orleans that has been overlooked in the tragedy of Post-Katrina recovery. Her images not only evoke a sense of the event that forever altered the landscape, but also pose the questions of where priorities and responsibilities lay in the stewardship of a distinctly unique urban forest. She will be speaking about her project on February 29th at 6pm at the 9th Street Entry Gallery in St. Paul, with a reception to follow.

Through the Looking Glass

Clean Slate

Neruda

My Aunt and Uncle just returned from Chile, where they visited Pablo Neruda's nautical themed home in Valparaiso. They said it was quite the experience, reflecting aspects of a ship in every room. My uncle told me that in fact Neruda was not a sailor, and was in fact deathly afraid of the water. I find this compelling based upon the imagery in so many of his poems is based on waves, water, and cyclical gravitation...oh the irony of fear and desire.

At any rate, a poem on a Sunday.

Love by Pablo Neruda

What's wrong with you, with us,
what's happening to us?
Ah our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.

What's wrong with you? I look at you
and I find nothing in you but two eyes
like all eyes, a mouth
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,
a body just like those that have slipped
beneath my body without leaving any memory.

And how empty you went through the world
like a wheat-colored jar
without air, without sound, without substance!
I vainly sought in you
depth for my arms
that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:
beneath your skin, beneath your eyes,
nothing,
beneath your double breast scarcely
raised
a current of crystalline order
that does not know why it flows singing.
Why, why, why,
my love, why?

Tangled