Call for Issue 03: Summer 2019
Curated by Todd Bartel

Deadline for submissions: April 1, 2019

Erasure Leads to Blankness—a Tabula Rasa.

Cut Me Up, an amalgam of old and new, inspires! As the curator of Cut Me Up Issue 3, I envision a set of prompts to reflect upon the condition of the planet. Reinvent rethink reduce refuse reuse repair recycle replace rebuy →respond! Remakable.

Lately, I have been thinking about blankness and landscape through a few unexpected connections—Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, John Cage's Silence, and, Robert Rauschenberg's White Painting and Erased de Kooning Drawing. I consider white paper a tabula rasa. White as not only blankness, but also as readiness. White as simile. Half of Cut Me Up is always left blank. As John Cage remarked, White Painting[s] "are airports for lights, shadows and particles.” 

The spirit of the above criteria, I hope, will encourage reflections on land, resources, sustainability and redressing outmoded attitudes regarding the same. At the very least, I invite the remixing of previous Cut Me Ups to evoke or point back to the forest from whence this paper came.

Todd Bartel, Gallery Director
Thompson Gallery
The Cambridge School of Weston, Weston, MA

To submit artwork responses:

  • Erasure of some kind—magazine ink is encouraged—must be incorporated.

  • At least one-third of each submission must be white in color. White may be the actual paper color, erased color, or paint. White may be translucent, color-tinted, and/or coat any part of Cut Me Up Issue 2.

  • Submissions must be evocative of landscape imagery and/or address issues relating to any aspect of landscape history.

  • All eligible submissions must incorporate some portion or portions of Cut Me Up Issue 2.

  • Artworks responses may be in any media and may incorporate other materials. 

Issue 3 Curator Todd Bartel:

Todd Bartel received a BFA in painting from RISD (1985) and an MFA in painting from Carnegie Mellon (1993). He was a Jacob K. Javits Fellow in 1990 and received a Connecticut Council on the Arts Grant in 2000. He has been a guest critic at RISD, Vermont College and New Hampshire Art Institute. He teaches drawing, painting, collage and conceptual art at the Cambridge School of Weston (MA) and is the Founder & Gallery Director of the Thompson Gallery, now in its 12th year. His collage-based work examines the roles of landscape and nature in contemporary culture.

Instagram: @collagehead
Web: toddbartel.com


Cut Me Up Issue 3: Tabula Rasa was published on July 1, 2019.