Season One: What is the Difference Between Playing and Working?

News from Golgonooza will commence Season One; What is the Difference Between Playing and Working?; an unfolding of experimental programs exploring the three pillars of our organization: education, community, and artist resources.

The exhibition considers the lifelong project of Golgonooza as a place to begin thinking about how we construct our learning, teaching, and living environments. News from Golgonooza will showcase Eldridge’s expansive practice and explore the metrics with which academic and artist communities evaluate the systems already in place for forming our world-views and creating social space for the imagination to govern above all else.

In addition to this exhibition, Season One will also include collaborations with local and regional artists who aim to activate different approaches to educational practices.

News from Golgonooza; Æthelred Eldridge and Instructions for Imaginative Living

September 19 - November 24, 2019

Æthelred Eldridge lived and worked in Athens County, Ohio from 1957 until he passed away in 2018. He and his wife and collaborator, Alexandra Eldridge, along with several artist friends transformed 80 acres in Millfield, Ohio into a communal experiment in art, labor, and imaginative living they called Golgonooza.

The project included the restoration of a log cabin once owned and practiced in by the 19th century medium, Jonathan Koons, and a Scriptorium where the artists published William Blake-inspired writings, prints, and booklets. For over 50 years, Eldridge incessantly cared for the land, performed lectures at Ohio University in his courses, Autopsical Art and Art in Your Life, and produced thousands of artworks including paintings, prints, drawings, books, murals, sculptures, writings, and performances.

News from Golgonooza is only the second exhibition of Eldridge’s work outside of Athens, Ohio, and will highlight self-published and printed works, relief plates, archival photographs, wood carvings, and audio recordings produced by him or others on the grounds of Golgonooza.

Simultaneous happenings commemorating the life and work of the artist will also be taking place at Ohio University, The Dairy Barn Arts Center, and Majestic Gallery. More information on those events can be found on the Ohio University College of Fine Arts website.

Æ Listening Events in November:

Sunday, November 10, 17, & 24 | 11am-1pm

Join us for three listening events extending from our current exhibition, News from Golgonooza; Æthelred Eldridge and Instructions for Imaginative Living, on view through November 24.

In the spirit of the Sunday recitals Æthelred and Alexandra hosted at Golgonooza, visitors will listen to recorded lectures performed by Eldridge during his time as an Associate Professor of Art at Ohio University. The recordings offer sonic insight into the improvisational, compulsive, whirling speech performed and lived by the artist as well as a new perspective on the poetic printed work on display.

The Empty Days Library

September 18 - April 7

What are days for? Days are where we live. Where can we live but days? - Philip Larkin

When an artist dies (as did Æthelred Eldridge in November, 2018), the days of their lives become fixed and they are entered into the annals of art history. Yet when we write about historical artists, it is hard for us to imagine the days of their lives in all their empty, fresh and fleeting potentiality. The Empty Days Library is an attempt to breathe life back into the daily experience of past artistic creation through a process of engaged collaboration. When you visit the library, you are invited to record (in The Empty Days Library Logbook on its top shelf) a description of a day in the life of an artist taken from a book about their work (either from one you bring to the library or one chosen from its shelves), writing your name and the day you write your description (between September 18-April 7) as a header. Through this process The Empty Days Library will grow with each new entry into the Logbook and addition to the books on its shelves, becoming a living organism and a model for a sustainable and enriching art education in the process.

Richard Fletcher is an associate professor in the Department of Arts Administration, Education and Policy at The Ohio State University. He writes about contemporary art and education under the pen name Minus Plato. His book No Philosopher King: An Everyday Guide to Art and Life under Trump was published this year by AC Books and he is currently writing about the legacies of the 2017 exhibition documenta 14.

Print is a Pencil

October 19, 11am - 3pm

Join us for a free exercise led by Jon Flannery who runs the Cincinnati-based design and print studio, Cryptogram. Participants will begin each session with a poetic exercise, then spend time experimenting with using everyday materials to make prints as well as the paper stencil silk screen method. With a focus on fluid, associative, urgent making, Print is a Pencil will attempt to un-teach the rules of engaging with print, examine different printing methods as exploratory tools rather than systematic outputs, and create space for the personal proclamation to come forward in everything we make.

RSVP by emailing info@columbusprintedarts.org with your name. Limited spaces available.