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nmf016
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Jed featured in art exhibit/Amungus and MIA
« on: Mar 13th, 2009, 8:20pm » |
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http://www.niagara-gazette.com/nightandday/local_story_071102052.html
Quote:The story begins with Goo Goo Doll Robby Takac’s “Music is Art” concert fundraiser and roadshow Friday at Niagara University. The college is also the location of the Castellani Art Museum, whose curator, Michael Beam, was a student of the artist whose “Arkansas Sunset” painting appeared on the cover of the Goo’s first album (so was Takac — two different schools). Thus, while the campus rocks this weekend, the Castellani will present the opening of “JED: 30 Years of Painting by Jed Jackson.”
There is more to Jackson than merely serving as a Goo Goo’s muse. An accomplished and prolific painter, author of art history books and currently a professor at the University of Memphis, Jackson “has three other shows about to open, two in New York City and one in St. Louis,” according to Beam, in addition to the Castellani exhibition.
In the 1980s, he was a fixture in Western New York’s cultural constellation as a painter with exhibitions at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Nina Freudenheim Gallery, board member of Buffalo’s celebrated Hallwalls art space and instructor at Medaille College. It was at Medaille that he inspired Takac and former Goo Goo Doll George Tutuska in ways of looking at art.
Said Jackson, “Several of my best paintings were executed in Buffalo, in my studio on Lexington Avenue. Openings at Hallwalls, fish fries and Polish and German food and lake effect whiteouts. It’s great to be able to return to refresh those memories.”
The Castellani show begins with a Sunday afternoon reception — Jackson and Takac will be in attendance — and runs through Sept. 20. The celebrated “Arkansas Sunset” will be on display, as well as 24 other paintings, a number of them loaned by local collectors who obtained them during Jackson’s Buffalo days.
Jackson is originally from Arkansas, with stops for schooling and teaching across America. His expressive and colorful work has been shown in more than 100 galleries, in solo and group exhibitions, throughout America and Europe. There is a vibrant appreciation of popular culture in Jackson’s works, what he calls “a manner of image-sorting, a kind of improvisation.” The observer will note cues from literature, movies, fashion magazines, music and politics in his work.
Although politics informs many of Jackson’s works, the most blatant will not be at the Castellani.
“We took the overtly political pieces out,” Beam said. “The serious, mysterious pieces are what’s in the show.”
Mysterious indeed. The artwork embodies realism with a twist and a startling sense of color. “Arkansas Sunset,” for example, depicts a pickup-driving good ol’ boy, surrounded by a luminescent and dynamic through-the-windows panorama in hues that match the dashboard dials, a liquor bottle and a packet of chewing tobacco with him on the seat. It at once seems so familiar and so otherworldly.
This weekend’s confluence of art and music had its start in the 1980s. When curator and Philadelphia native Beam was offered the Castellani position in 2003, he phoned Jackson, his teacher at Southern Illinois University, for advice about life in Western New York. The topic of the Goo Goo Dolls kept coming up.
Back before the south Buffalo band was internationally known and respected, Takac considered Jackson a mentor at Medaille (hence, the album cover as an homage). This weekend’s events, then, are something of a reunion for all three men, as well as a homecoming of sorts for Jackson. It’s nice when students remember their teachers that way. |
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http://www.niagara-gazette.com/nightandday/gnnnightandday_story_07110151 3.html
Quote:The midst of a recession might seem to be the worst time to expand the business operations of any organization. Robby Takac disagrees. The Buffalo native and founding member of the Goo Goo Dolls will be in town this weekend to see his Music is Art charitable group reach out into Niagara County for the first time. Starting with a concert Friday and continuing with a new art exhibit that opens Sunday, this weekend’s festivities are the first of what Takac hopes will be many ventures north for his group.
The idea for the Niagara County event was sparked by Fred Heuer, Niagara University’s assistant vice president for marketing. The school had hosted many of the bands on Takac’s Good Charamel Records label over the years, Heuer said, and talks with those musicians led to the desire to do more.
“They’ve all told what a great cause MiA is,” Heuer said of the charity, which was founded in 2004 to encourage and enable people to get involved with music. “After reading about MiA’s goal of using the arts as a key part of an individual’s education, it was an obvious fit with Niagara University’s mission of educating the whole person.”
After hosting a couple benefit shows earlier this academic year, it was decided to put on this weekend’s celebration. While apprehensive about extending the charity’s resources too far, Takac is excited to finally reach out into Niagara County.
“I like to see things grow, but I like to see them grow at a natural pace. You’d hate to see it try to grow and see it implode upon itself” he said during a phone conversation from his home in Los Angeles. “To see this happen with an established institution ... that’s what led me to moving forward.”
The group’s continued forward momentum, while difficult during the ongoing economic crunch, is more important now due to the tendency to put the arts on the backburner when money’s tight, Takac said.
“I didn’t have the football team to teach me teamwork. I picked that up in music,” he said. “An organization such as this exists for those reasons.”
Friday’s concert will feature 15 local bands in all genres, including Bear Hunter, Wenzday Atemz and Inlite — what Takac called “a good cross-section of Western New York music.” The concert serves as a “mini version of the bombardment of acts” the charity rolls out every year during its main festival in Buffalo, Takac said. Artists will also be on hand painting throughout the night.
Events continue Sunday with the opening of a Jed Jackson art exhibit at the university’s Castellani Art Museum, which is discussed at length in the accompanying story. Takac said he will be in attendance at some point this weekend but couldn’t say for sure when he’d arrive.
This weekend is MiA’s first Niagara County venture, but the charity’s second local act is already in the works. MiA is set to sponsor the Rusted Root concert taking place March 27 at the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Niagara Falls. NU officials are happy to contribute to the charity in any way they can, Heuer said; the school is one of MiA’s main sponsors for the 2008-09 academic year.
“Strategically, I feel Niagara really fills a void in the Music Is Art program by giving them a stronger presence in Niagara County,” Heuer said.
“Just like us, they are dedicated to community involvement and to making sure young people find their voice,” Takac said of the school. “We have a pretty cool idea put together at this point.” |
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| « Last Edit: Mar 13th, 2009, 8:23pm by nmf016 » |
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nmf016
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Re: Jed featured in art exhibit/Amungus and MIA
« Reply #1 on: Mar 13th, 2009, 8:20pm » |
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http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/606424.html
Quote:It all started in the mid-’80s, when a pair of wayward young musicians wandered into Jed Jackson’s introductory painting class at Medaille College.
“Neither one of them were particularly gifted visually,” said Jackson, a painter and former Buffalonian who now lives and teaches in Memphis, Tenn. “But I could tell by the way they were dressed that they were amusing and interesting fellows.”
Soon enough, the trio became thick as thieves. Jackson took his young proteges on their first road trip to New York City — where they crashed on the floor of a friend’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen — to check out the city’s galleries and museums. But as hard as Jackson tried to open their eyes to the art world, the pair was inexorably drawn to the music scene.
Not long after, Jackson’s students — Robby Takac and George Tutuska — went on to form the Goo Goo Dolls, the most successful rock band ever to emerge from Buffalo. The band, completed by frontman John Rzeznik, named its second album (1989’s “Jed”) after the professor and featured one of his paintings on the cover. (Tutuska left the band in 1995 following the completion of its breakout record, “A Boy Named Goo,” and was replaced by current drummer Mike Malinin.)
On Sunday, the trio will reunite at the Castellani Art Museum for the opening of an exhibition featuring Jackson’s work. And at 7 tonight, a satellite version of Takac’s “Music Is Art” festival gets under way at Niagara University’s Kiernan Center. (Admission to tonight’s event is $5.)
The whole affair is the brainchild of Castellani curator Michael Beam, a former student of Jackson’s at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. When Beam first met Jackson — whom he described as a “cigar-somking, jazz-listening” bon vivant — he learned about the artist’s association with the band.
“I thought that was interesting and just sort of packed that away in my head,” Beam said. When he moved to Buffalo for the Castellani job about six years ago, Beam called Jackson and got the full story about his influence on the musicians.
Knowing that the centerpiece of the exhibition would have to include the famous album cover — which had long before been sold — Beam undertook an extensive search to track down its owners. He had it on good authority that the painting was somewhere in Arkansas, and so he sent out news releases to every Arkansas media outlet he could find. Several newspapers ran stories about Beam’s quest, and finally, a private collector came forward and agreed to lend the work for the show.
“He’s a very subversive kind of character if you get to know him,” Beam said of Jackson’s artistic bent. “His paintings are almost like mini-mythological stories that he creates, and they’ve got all sorts of subtle innuendos within them.”
Jackson, a former Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center board member, has exhibited widely, including shows at Nina Freudenheim Gallery in Buffalo and galleries in New York City, Miami, Chicago, St. Louis and as far away as Zurich.
“He’s not just a painter whose paintings are fun to look at,” Beam said. “He inspired a number of people, from me, who’s now a curator, to these guys who are musicians.”
So attention, future rock stars, artists and curators of Memphis: If you happen to wander into Jed Jackson’s classroom, don’t expect to wander out the same.• |
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*I think I bowled on a league with the guy who wrote that article and that weirds me out for some reason.
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/niagaracounty/story/605324.html
Quote:LEWISTON — The Goo Goo Dolls’ Robbie Takac has been looking for a way to merge the concepts of art and music for more than six years, and accidentally found the perfect way to do that in concert with Niagara University this weekend.
A two-pronged program will reunite Takac with Jed Jackson, the well-known artist who was his art professor at Medaille College during the early 1980s and a mentor for the Goo Goo Dolls. Jackson also taught original band member George Tutuska.
Takac and NU will sponsor a “Music Is Art at Niagara University” festival that starts Friday and features 15 regional bands, including Takac’s own local group, Amungus.
The groups will play from 7 p. m. to midnight on campus in the Kiernan Center. Other bands include Wenzday Atemz, Crooked Letta and American Sunseekers (formerly Klear) from the Niagara Falls area, Takac said.
Admission is $5. The proceeds go to help fund Takac’s community organization Music Is Art, which finances music projects in the Western New York area. For example, Takac’s group has sponsored music initiatives in the Starpoint and Lockport school districts.
On Sunday, the university’s Castellani Art Gallery opens its new exhibit that features 20 works by Jackson. The show is entitled, “Jed: 30 Years of Painting by Jed Jackson,” and admission is free.
Jackson, who will be with Takac on stage during the concert to talk about their experiences, was so close to the Goo Goo Dolls that the group used his painting, “Arkansas Sunset,” for the cover of its second album, entitled “Jed,” said Fred Heuer, the university’s assistant vice president for marketing.
The exhibit, which will open from 2 to 4 p. m. Sunday, will feature the original painting “Arkansas Sunset,” a self-portrait of Jackson as a rice farmer driving home in his pickup truck at the end of the day. A pint of Jack Daniels bourbon sticks out of a paper bag on the seat beside him along with a pack of Beech-Nut chewing tobacco. On the dashboard sits an empty can of Budweiser beside another can that appears ready to be consumed. The paintings will be on display at the Castellani through Sept. 20.
“Arkansas Sunset” was borrowed from a private collection in Fayetteville, Ark., after Michael Beam, the Castellani’s curator of collections and exhibitions, found it. He said he struck gold when Arkansas Business published a story about his search, a friend of the owners read the story and passed along NU’s interest.
People attending the exhibit will be able to purchase one of 50 posters especially made to celebrate the two events. They will be autographed by Jackson and Takac and cost $20. The proceeds will go to help fund Music Is Art programming.
Takac said Heuer approached him about bringing his show to NU after the university became a sponsor of the Music Is Art festival last fall at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.
“Niagara officials said they were interested in doing something similar on a smaller scale at the university and that kicked the wheels in motion,” Takac said.
Takac said he liked the idea and hand-picked 15 bands to play at Niagara.
The thing that made the difference, according to Heuer, was that Beam heard about it and decided to add his two cents.
“He told me, ‘There’s a connection with what you are doing and Jed Jackson and the Goo Goo Dolls,’ and suggested the Castellani host a Jackson art show in conjunction with the live music program,” Heuer said.
It turns out Beam also had Jackson for a professor while he was a graduate student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and had consulted with Jackson about the Buffalo area when he was offered his current post at Niagara.
“I called and asked him, ‘What’s this place Buffalo like?’ He told me it was great,” Beam said, “that he was a teacher there and all about the Goo Goo Dolls and how they used one of his paintings for an album cover.”
Susan J. Clements, the museum’s publicity coordinator, said, “What’s really intriguing about this is it gives us a way to connect music and art, which is what Robbie is always trying to do. We also think this is a great opportunity to get college and high school students interested in coming to the art museum because they can connect a rock band, which is something they are interested in, to a living artist whose works are being shown here.”
“Niagara University seems to really want to touch those same concepts that we focus on . . .,” Takac said. “This is what we are always trying to do, connect music and art.”
As for the Goo Goo Dolls, he said, “We are working on a new record and hope to release it this summer.” It will be the ninth album in the band’s 23- year history. |
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| « Last Edit: Mar 13th, 2009, 8:24pm by nmf016 » |
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nmf016
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Re: Jed featured in art exhibit/Amungus and MIA
« Reply #2 on: Mar 13th, 2009, 8:33pm » |
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I just thought this set of articles is kind of a cool read.
Also, Robby called into WEDG this morning. He was in LA and it was just before 8 AM ET, so it was 4 AM where he was. You could tell it was early because he wasn't making a whole lot of sense during the short interview. For example, he didn't know when Jed was released.. 
Anyways, he talked about this whole event at Niagara University, though mainly promoting the bands playing and Music is Art. He confirmed that the next Music is Art festival will most likely take place at the Albright Knox Art Gallery again this September. He also said that while Amungus is playing at the event tonight, he WILL NOT be there. He made some vague reason for not being there, but I didn't really get the whole thing. It will only be Brian running the performance (I doubt anyone here was planning to attend, but just throwing this out there in case someone was going for the sole purpose of seeing Robby).
At the tail end of the interview, Bull (the radio personality) asked him about the Goos and he said that they were finishing rehearsals of the new material in the next day or so and then coming to Buffalo to start recording next week. He named the producer as 'Jim Palmer' but I can't find anything about a producer by that name, so i could have misheard... I stumbled upon the interview by accident while driving to work, so there's no recording to go back and double check on the name. I am 100% certain he did not say 'Glen Ballard' though, so I think that is worthy of some dancing bananas.
** Jim is probably Tim and from doing a little research, I am totally jazzed if that's the guy.
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| « Last Edit: Mar 13th, 2009, 10:46pm by nmf016 » |
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Shannon
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Re: Jed featured in art exhibit/Amungus and MIA
« Reply #3 on: Mar 14th, 2009, 3:42pm » |
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Thanks for all these articles Nicole. The one with the artist Jed Jackson was the one I posted yesterday that vanished.
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nmf016
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Re: Jed featured in art exhibit/Amungus and MIA
« Reply #4 on: Apr 4th, 2009, 7:06pm » |
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I took a little trip to Niagara University today and I took some illegal photos for you all.
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DWG
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Re: Jed featured in art exhibit/Amungus and MIA
« Reply #5 on: Apr 4th, 2009, 7:41pm » |
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Wow, thanks for posting the articles and your pictures Nicole.
Somehow I missed reading this thread...I must have been working or filling out a billion scholarship applications or I thought I'd read it before.
Very cool articles indeed. I really enjoyed reading about the artist Jackson. (and his protoges)
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Shannon
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Re: Jed featured in art exhibit/Amungus and MIA
« Reply #6 on: Apr 4th, 2009, 10:35pm » |
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Thanks for the illegal pics Nicole. You know we always appreciate it here 
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