Maquette for Proposed Giant Baseboard, 1998.   Painted wood  realized size: 7 x 3 x 3 ft.	Untitled Baseboard  (Wooster Gardens Installation), 1997  Painted wood  intallation approximately: 7 x 20 x 2'	Untitled Baseboard (detail), 1997  Painted wood  7 x 20 x 2'
Landfall, 1996  Painted wood, electrical outlet, nightlight, and light projections  "Lighthouse" is aprx. 19 x 66 x 7-1/2"	Landfall (detail, light fades off and on) 1996  Painted wood, electrical outlet, nightlight, and light projections  "Lighthouse" is aprx. 19 x 66 x 7-1/2"	Landing, 1996  Painted wood, lights  29 x 37 x 49"
Landing (detail), 1996  Painted wood, lights  29 x 37 x 49"	Landmark, 1996  Paper, wood, lead, light  20-1/2" x 27 x 27"	Landmark (detail looking inside box), 1996  Paper, wood, lead, light  20-1/2" x 27 x 27"
	Installation of:  Margin for Error, 1995  Painted wood  68 x 81 x 47"  Untitled, (I do), 1992  Painted wood  7 x 50 x 46"

The things that I make have been described as "episodic"
Which is defined as:
     "1. A portion of a narrative that relates an event or a series of connected events
          and forms a coherent story in itself.
      2. One of a series of related events in the course of a continuous account."¹

This is a key to understanding my work, as each piece inevitably refers to and has bearing on all the others. The individual pieces, be they room size installations or tiny drawings all relate to one another and play a role in depicting a larger drama. Because of the very specific range of materials and images that I employ, virtually any combination of works is possible, each of which would create a different installation but related scenario.
 

Edward Weston once said that his goal was to "Take a picture of a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock."   My aim is similar: To make a _______ , have it look like a _____ but be more than a _______. Be it a cakebox, a nightlight, a baseboard, or a flight of stairs verisimilitude is not the point. Each object I make² is a representation of a real-world object, but rendered as an impression, not abstractly styled, but a hazy recollection.  Just enough information, but not too much.

Untitled Baseboard is just that -- a basebord: painted wood molding applied to the seam where wall meets floor. It also happens to be seven feet tall and 20 feet long. Why? What does it mean? One answer is simply that I really like baseboards! And when they're this big we can really see how beautiful they are! Another answer alludes to the sexual politics of architecture, specifically the historic modernist edict "Ornament and Crime"³ wherein moldings are identified with the feminine and banished from the (masculine) modernist interior. The "white-cube" gallery space is a direct product of this concept, a space devoid of any signs of domesticity, or for that matter to the real world at all! Perhaps this giant baseboard maybe should have been titled Untitled, Crime Scene. Then again there's the Alice-in-Wonderland answer, wherein gallery patrons are reduced to the point-of-view of a mouse (or a cockroach), skittering around trying to make sense of it all.

Landmark, Landing and Landfall. Three destinations, three directions -- each is a navigational device. A streetlamp, a lighthouse, a flight of stairs.  But where are they? And where are they leading? The steps of Landing lead exactly nowhere! But looking closely you might discover that you're already somewhere! The lighthouse of Landfall morphs from the baseboard, enlisting an ordinary night-light to be its warning beacon, a sweeping light drawing you with slow insistence. Wall becomes sky, floor becomes ocean; and you find yourself at sea, having to navigate your experience.

And what of Landmark? A lonely streetlight inside a ridiculously large cake-box. Its dim glow casts a circle of light but there's really nothing to see. Sometimes, it seems, even though we can see where we are, we remain lost --absolutely.

I make these dramatic episodes searching for answers that I don't expect to find. This ambivalence, I suppose, is manifest in the works themselves. As one critic observed, my work is situated "such that it constantly defers conclusions, or destinations. And so nothing has been settled."⁴ I like to think that this is a good thing, because I don't have the answers.
 

N O T E S:
1. American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition. Houghton Mifflin Co., 1992

3. There is a highly personal taxonomy to the elements (characters) of my work that succinctly encapsulates the concerns that I'm trying to address:
baseboard molding -- symbolizing the domestic home interior.
nightlight: -- safety and security, or the lack thereof.
lone streetlight -- symbol of loneliness.
cake and cake-box -- symbols of hope and expectation.
Big Dipper -- representing a higher truth, a constant.
White room -- Solitude, generally in a positive sense.

4. Adolf Loos, "Ornament und Verbrechen" (1908); English translation as "Ornament and Crime" in The Architecture of Adolf Loos: An Arts CouncilExhibition (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1985).  "The lack of ornament is a sign of intellectual power. Modern man uses the ornament of past and foreign cultures at his discretion. He concentrates his own power of invention on other things." page 103. "The First ornament that came into being, the cross, had an erotic origin> The first work of art . . . was in order to rid himself of his natural excesses. A horizontal Line: the reclining woman. A vertical line: the man who penetrates her. The man who created it felt the same urge as Beethoven. . . . But the man of our time who daubs the walls with erotic symbols to satisfy an inner urge is a criminal or a degenerate." page 100.

5. Ronald Jones, "Joseph Rhone at Margarete Roeder Gallery"  Frieze, November-December 1998. Page 79.

A R T I S T ' S   R E S U M E   :   J o d y     R h o n e    1 9 9 8
 

Born in Euless, Texas.
Lives in New York City.
BA: Austin College, Sherman Texas, 1987.
MFA: The Rhode Island School of Design, 1993.

Solo Exhibitions

1998        Devin Bordan / Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, Texas.
                (scheduled for October) Devin Bordan / Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, Texas.

1997        Landscape, Ida Green Gallery; Austin College, Sherman, Texas.

1996        Paris Texas, Margarete Roeder Gallery, New York City.
                Project Room Installation, Margarete Roeder Gallery, New York City.

1995        Belong, Printed Matter Bookstore. New York City (installation).  The PM Windows
                project is curated by Julie Ault.

1992        New Work (and old works), Sol Koffler Gallery, The Rhode Island School of
               Design. Providence, RI.

                The Katsura River Project, Kyoto, Japan. A site-specific installation.

1991        Pine Street Project, Providence, RI. A site-specific installation (extant).

1987        Senior Exhibition, Craig Hall Gallery, Austin College, Sherman, TX.

Group Exhibitions

1999        (scheduled for March) Twilight, Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Texas (with Robert
                Montgomery)

1997        Wooster Gardens Gallery, New York City. (Two person exhibition,
               with Kay Rosen.)

1996        Gallery Artists, Margarete Roeder Gallery, New York City.

1995        Domestic Bliss, Margarete Roeder Gallery - with Julia Jacquette
               and Yvonne Puffer.
                The Multiples, 180 Gallery, San Francisco, CA.

1994        Margarete Roeder Gallery at the Cologne Art Fair, Cologne, Germany.

1993        Graduate Student Thesis Exhibitions, The Art Museum of the Rhode Island
               School of Design (In conjunction with a studio installation.)

1992        Graduate Student Invitational Sol Koffler Gallery, R.I.S.D.
                The Cabinet of Signs: A Reading of Japan Bayard E. Ewing Gallery, R.I.S.D.
                Presenting remnants and documentation of "The Katsura River Project," sketch-books
                and a video, all made while in Kyoto, Japan.
                1.5 Show  140 Duane Street Gallery, New York City.

1991        Sculpture Biennial, Woods Gerry Gallery, The Rhode Island School of Design. A
               collaborative installation with J. Brendan Ludgate.

1990        Auction for Action, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.  Auction to benefit ACT-UP New
               York. (Purchaser: Robert Gober)
                An  Army of Lovers. P.S. 122 Gallery, New York City.
                Images and Words: Artists Respond to AIDS, The Painted Bride Art Center,
               Philadelphia.
                Collaboration with Dara Albanese for Art+Positive. (catalogue)
                The Chair Show, The Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY.
                Small Works, 80 Washington Square East Galleries, New York
               University, New York. Ivan Karp, curator.

Bibliography

Jones, Ronald. "Joseph Rhone, at Margarete Roeder Gallery."  Frieze, November-December 1996.
Brody, Jacqueline. "Joseph Rhone, 100% Pure." The Print Collectors Newsletter, Vol. XXVI No. 4     September-October 1995.