mindsprinter

Nothing in Particular

2011-09-30T13:12:00.000-07:00

Starting a new edition collab project with fellow artists on the topic of no-thing. Today, just a bit of studio inspiration from Francis Alys to begin my day:

from Bolero (DVD animation: 511 drawings, varies dims)

Making Amends

2010-07-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

Making Amends. An act of mending as a metaphor for forgiving.

I have a lot of mending to attend to, starting with this little bird I found at a thrift store. It's taken me about 3 years to get around to it, . . . .finally.

BEFORE: Bird with the Broken Wing

AFTER: At the Precipice.

Interesting how a camera angle can affect mood.

Still(flight) from the imaginary film: (re)Learning to Fly

Random Paintbrushes

2010-07-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

Just working on more paintbrushes for a show in Dec. Feel slightly on this side of asian factory worker. But enjoying the fact that I am making small progress in my painting technique.

How it all starts. . . .

with crapped out paintbrushes ready for the trash.

I'm starting to run out of my own stash, andhave started enlisting people to give metheir throwaways. Anyone?? Anyone??

Found Objects

2010-04-08T13:18:00.000-07:00

Found in that jumbled up pile of books left in the hallway of my building (in that order). Couldn't resist bringing them back to studio.

My Sugar Doodles (Micro Drawings)

2010-03-18T22:56:00.000-07:00

Just quickly grouped and scanned on the copier (not the nice scanner). Not color corrected. A little tired today. Insomnia last night. Limbering up with little 3x5" drawings (ink, graphite, and/or latex on paint chips). Made fresh daily. These will be sold at the Fire Sale to raise money for my artist residency this summer. I'm thinking $25 each. If you are interested at all. Leave me a contact point in the comment section.

This one is my favorite.

click to enlarge

Random Studio Projects (book bindings)

2010-03-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

Another artist in the building thinned out his book collection and left some in the hall for the picking. I took some of the older hardbound books, removed the covers and started some rather sophomoric collages. Have to get mentally limber with it still.

In Progress

2010-03-13T07:22:00.000-08:00

Gold Leaf and Rust Paintings series inspired by Chinese garden architecture and the philosophy behind it.

(detail)

Safe Harbor

2010-03-13T07:03:00.000-08:00

An installation I did this last summer 2009 during a mini-residency in Equinunk, Pennsylvania.

A Site specific installation at High WaterMark Salo(o)n in conjunction with the release of Lori Anderson Moseman’s book of poems, Temporary Bunk, having to do with her experiences in the aftermath of Federal Disaster #1649, a 2006 flood along the Delaware River.

Aside from its narrative accounting of this poet and her dogs’ escape from the floodwaters by canoe, Safe harbor alludes to the safety of temporary realities set adrift, tethered solely by the belief of one’s convictions. Paper ships and sinking truths.

Mad Art Skills: Police Composite Sketches

2010-02-24T18:16:00.000-08:00

When artist skills go wonky.

The Artist's Joke

2010-02-20T11:16:00.000-08:00

The Pre-quel (Déjà Vu)

2010-02-19T17:10:00.000-08:00

Stone's Throw Scherzo

In reference to my last post, I just dredged up an old painting from circa 1999. Uncanny that there used to be a central figure in that painting too, and I also got rid of it.

Again with the dark lump at the bottom of the composition, implied gravity, and a hand (though the older ones look to be waiting for something).

What Makes a Successful Artwork

2010-02-19T12:46:00.000-08:00

I was de-installing an ugly, be-laboured steel wool drawing I made last year, Scherzo (The Joke in Italian. Ref: the myth of the trickster, inspired by a chinoiserie jester on a swatch of fabric someone gave me.)

CONCEPT: that creativity -the art part- is elsewhere. It's not the artwork itself, which is a container/medium for the message, but something -the essence- which is less tangible. [the jester points the way]

I'd always loved the concept and the steely crumbs caught in the paper tray at the bottom much more than the actual drawing itself, which I found . . . so cloyingly literal, fussy and academic in its rendering.

The more I de-installed that drawing,

the more a new drawing was emerging on its own.

Nearly all the pins came off and the jester began to sag {and seemed to exhale a sigh of relief}. . . .until he could no longer support his own weight (his own redundancy) and fell completely down. All that was left was the wrinkle of his simultaneous absence-presence and a telltale, pointing finger. Lovely performance-drawing, don't you think?

QUESTION: What makes a successful artwork?

ONE ANSWER: Chance and Gravity(Gravitas).

Illy & William Kentridge Team Up

2010-02-12T07:54:00.000-08:00

Not sure how I feel about that. Pretty sure I don't much care for it.
William Kentridge limited edition cappuccino set.

Soon to be sold on Amazon, no less.
Illy has a history of working with quality artists like Pistoletto, Maria Abramovic, A.R. Penck, Daniel Buren, and Jannis Kounellis, but must say the majority of the cups are superficially decorative (with few exceptions: Kounellis, Abramovic and Kentridge) and merely souvenir kitsch at mini-art prices. I'd rather have some local artist art myself.

Addendum: I just realized each cup/saucer is a mini replica of one of his video pieces. Wish the photographer had taken the picture of just one cup so the reflections of the other cups on the silver didn't create all that extra visual noise. Is confusing to look at.

Art21 snippet of the Kentridge piece I'm referring to.

This Bird Has Flown

2010-02-02T19:25:00.000-08:00

Funny thing happened on the way to the Bathroom.

I found Felix Gonzalez Torres in my stall. (As always seems to happen with his posters. . . they get left, somewhere.) I started documenting the "left behinds" at Venice Bienalle a few years back. And just today, I vowed I would reclaim all the lost felixes and make my own stack at home.

. . . . Only I took it, and accidentally left it at an Anthropologie store, when I put it down to take a picture of a display. HaHa.

Now, he's moved further up the street.

The rolled up print is this one:
Untitled 1992/1993

The two above were found on the grounds at the Venice Bienalle.
(left) behind the American Pavilion where FGT was being showcased.
(right) near the ....Danish? Pavilion 2007. That's nearly an origami crane.

Amnesia

2010-01-31T19:03:00.000-08:00

Finally reinstalled Adobe CS MX on the new laptop (other app. crashed and burned...hence no web updates).

Re-training myself in Flash in order to update my website, which has cobwebbed in the last 3 years, kind of . . . . sucks.

S(h)elf Portrait (2009)

2010-01-29T07:34:00.000-08:00

A mid-summer's night purging and painting project turned into a small self portrait series when it came time to return things to the shelf. The exercise: Pick something that was given to you. Then relate this object to a quality which the giver also gave to you. Sort of a round about game of (what) "superpowers" (do you possess).

My inner drag queen. Self Portrait as drag queen (shown) by Angela Ellsworth.

My (bio)mother gave me:
BRAVADA

Being that I'm such a sourpuss about her, I was trying to think of something nice (a quality) that she'd given me along with the often beautiful, though rarely thoughtful, durable goods and gifts throughout my life.

My grandmother gave me:
INTIMACY

These are the blues from my grandmother's collection of thread that she brought home from the sweatshop she worked in.

My (RosenClaire) mothers gave me:
CLARITY

They gave us each one of these glass eggs during a LaCip workshop. It's very sweet and small. The size of those Cadbury Chocolate eggs.

My father gave me:
TRUE VALUE

When I was around 8 yrs old, my brother and I were both sick. My father came home with a gift for each of us. Mine was a novelty pencil that had 50 interchangeable colored leads, which I likely pined for incessantly. At a very early age, I was taught the worth of a dollar (it cost $3.50, which was a lot), but I think what I carried away from that day was actually the true value of the gesture (the True Value MEDium).

Incidentally I tried for most of Friday afternoon to find a like version of that pencil. Most people knew what I was talking about, but hadn't seen them since the 70-80's as well. In the end . . . I grabbed a bunch of colored pencils from the studio as a place saver symbol. When I brought them home, I realized I had 39 of them (my age, at least until tomorrow, hence all this purging and introspection of late). I spread them out and by chance found . . . . "true value" among the lot. It's what I was thinking about, I just hadn't expected it to be so spelled out. (oh...I know, I spend way too much time reading into things, but I like fairy tales.)

Roger gave me:
LOVE/KINDNESS

This little pendant is shaped like an infinity symbol.

Jade in Chinese culture is said to symbolize enduring love. Curiously enough, I gave this gift back. Metaphorically, I still can't seem to own or accept it and struggle with it daily.

The Goodin-Cronans gave me:
HOPE

A wedding present of sorts. At their reception, I found a baby pearl in my oyster.

Toni Ann gave me:
SECURITY

Found in the rubble of a New Jersey construction site, it has followed me to all the places that I’ve lived. I’ve always felt I had a guardian angel. Even the sangoma in South Africa told me so.

30 works about 20 days (in china)

2008-08-17T10:02:00.000-07:00

just bumping along working on the series.....

starting from scratch

2008-08-09T20:16:00.001-07:00

Original Sin

2008-07-23T10:07:00.000-07:00

Was just reading/looking at a slide show, "Art and Advertising", in the New York Times online. Interesting that the slant on the short captioned story is Art:good, Adverts:bad, insinuating "those damn advert bastards are constantly stealing from us and Look at My Halo: I've got so much integrity I didn't sell my idea". Sometimes true, I suppose. However, what I find ridiculous is this notion of "the original" and that somehow Artists alone hold exclusive ownership to creative thought. (As if artists are never influenced by anything other that their own virtuous magical brain power or insular clique at the Kool-Aid watercooler. As if artists aren't selling a product....whether the payoff is in cash, exposure, newsprint, notoriety, what have you?)

The dialogue of ideas and influence travel both ways and in all (in)conceivable directions. People and things influence each other and at all times. (e.g. Warhol's brillo box... chicken and egg story. Yes, the box existed before. Warhol's addition was the concept, which changed everything of course, at least in the days before the whole pop visual (minus the theory) was co-opted and made inane, stupid and powerless (but that's a rant for the rest of the days in the calendar).
The label wars of Artist vs. Advertiser, Maker vs. Thinker are getting a bit dull. Whatever happened to creativity as open source. Whether the end product is deemed art piece or advert, so be it. The quality of the (thinking)process remains firmly the same in order to really affect people and the way they think.

Consumerism in the monetary sense seems to muddle people's judgment in terms of good and evil. Maybe like all things it's a bit of both. Aren't litigious claims to copyright as bad as the perceived consumerist evils in their most heinous sense? Is it so unlikely like more than one person can have an "original" idea....god forbid...the same idea? And the same idea for different reasons? Let's face it, we ALL consume, we ARE all consuming (mostly with our own vanity). Take what you need and want, know the difference and be disciplined enough to stop "investing" as warranted.

I mean Peter Fischli and David Weiss weren't the first to create a machine that does nothing. (We just have faulty memories and very short attention spans) Their Der Lauf der Dinge (translation: The Way Things Go. An excerpt from the 30-min video) is a "Rube Goldberg machine" after all. (difference being one is 3-D and the other is 2-D) Should the Goldberg Estate call their lawyers every time a Rube Goldberg machine is made, Intellectual thefting from the family vault of ideas, and demand licensing fees for the use of the words "Rube" and "machines that do nothing"? Rube was likely not the first to think of such a thing either. But you have to admit, the name is pretty catchy.

Ego-mechanical. HA.
Ego is the truly Original Sin.

Gone Fishing (for Ideas)

2008-07-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

People leave things in the hallways all the time. But being an art studio, most days you can't tell if things are just there temporarily, art materials, airing out, trash or what. . . so you don't want to move it.

Yesterday, as I was leaving studio, something just sort of came over me, I saw this bottle and cup (that has been on the floor the last two days) and decided spur of the moment to do something. What something. . . I wasn't so sure. The only parameter being that it must take 15-20 minutes to complete. So, I did something and left.

Why a fisherman sitting on a lager bottle fishing out of a cup of dried chalky paint?...dunno. My brain makes connections in strange ways.
(just part of my process to limbering up my dusty brain cells I suppose. Restless heads have to do something with their time.)

The Rapture?

2008-07-08T10:18:00.001-07:00

No....it was just an extended stay in Studio Purgatory (the experience wasn't so hot . . . so guess it wasn't exactly Hell, but close).

Recently endured yet another studio move. Hopefully this time 'round it's for an indefinite forever. It has been a rather unanticipated bit of a mental upheaval, not having a proper space for the last 2 years. (Has it really been that long?!)

Other areas of art/life were overtaking my so-called schedule for a while and that's ok. I needed the time. Just happy to be back in the initial art mix. Stirring ideas. Whipping out some quick mental snippets. Taking things off the back burners. Simmering, not quite cooking. Things are only lukewarm for the moment, working towards a boil.

It's a beautful space. Tall ceilings, big, bright view from the window, and heating. Put up my pegboard of tools, set up my kitchenette, some plywood walls...and off I go. One complaint: all concrete walls. But maybe this is a chance to rethink what needs to happen work-wise.

Funny that you always seems to start where you last left off. Ideas I had 7 months ago continue to stick like sap. My dreams of late remind me of the importance of staying true to the "long term" commitment in art(making) and being aware of short term flash in the pans (via curators, critics, galleries). Everyone it seems has an exaggerated ego and the last person who should take part in the balloon festival is the artist. Where's the art-part if the (mental)work(space) is full of shit?

Pop-Up Technologies

2008-07-08T10:16:00.001-07:00

Just doodling about with a new pop-up engineering book I bought recently.

Wanting to make a pop-up alphabet book for my brother's new kid and just
doing some sample structures. Rudimentary at best, but having fun.

I think, therefore I am (here).

2008-07-08T10:06:00.000-07:00

I've been located. I'm back on the radar, folks.

Gameboy 2000 - Alex Harris

2008-01-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

This photo documentary by photographer, Alex Harris, is both frightening and beautiful.

Instruction on How to Appy Your Aura

2008-01-11T19:13:00.001-08:00

Funny when you start seeing old things in fresh ways. . . Had to do a double take at the counter of my local paint store, Creative Paint, while waiting for stuff to be mixed. Benjamin Moore brand paints just came out with a new line of low-VOC (eco-friendly) paints called Aura and the store put out a lesson plan for its customers on how to properly apply your Aura. Wasn't necessary to know the background, but somehow makes it all the funnier when you apply esoteric ideas to ordinary encounters (studio-life).

pictures from the street

2007-05-15T21:50:00.000-07:00

schmooches

2007-05-04T16:22:00.000-07:00

I am feeling ill today. Had a few meetings, ran some errands, and now my knees won't stop chattering and I don't feel like using my legs.... so I am calling it an early day and consoling myself with (ever more) documentaries on Hitler and Nazi Germany (I am completely obsessed). Today, I'm listening to a program on the birth of Ferdinand Porsche's Volkwagen during the 3rd Reich, but I will refrain from drinking Fanta while I watch.

Curious....I've also always had some strange fascination with the Porsche 923. Almost bought one as a college student, till I dug around a bit (sans internet, alas) and realized parts would be hard to come by and settled on a Volvo P1800S (1966) instead. (though funny enough my first car fetish was for my cherry red Karman Ghia (also Volkwagen 1973).

makes me slightly uneasy thinking that these seemingly concentric circles of fascination and fright are all related somehow.

[thinking about propoganda and truth. . . KdF, German: Kraft durch Freude = strength through joy]

Finishing an old thought

2007-05-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

On inspiration and being oneself

2007-04-29T19:00:00.000-07:00

I just came back from the Vivienne Westwood retrospective at the De Young. It was one of those shows where you didn't have to know who she was, didn't have to be interested in clothes, be a punk or love England, to find some morsel of divine inspiration or strange to say, some strange sense of love (not for someone or something, but the feeling of love as a sort of openness).

What I found so inspiring were the side blurb placards, where Westwood talks about her thoughts/process very simply, in "human scale", by which I mean, just said in a very matter of fact and informal manner, as if you were talking to someone on a street corner [note: For the opposite of what I mean, check out Kiki Smith's captioned blurb on the 2nd floor, which makes you want to gag with all its goopy navel gazing disguised as artistic thought/theory, ... and again with the bad drawing. oy. but I digress...]

It was shortly after Westwood's punk/pirate period that she said "I realized that I didn't have to qualify my ideas. I could do anything I liked, it was only a question of how I did it that would make it original. I realized then that I could go on forever." For me it says something about belief in one's own ideas, creativity that is self generated (from within) even when working from a historical framework, and the "forever" I really took to mean, not so much about self agrandizement, but as the ability to be inspired and to create endlessly via the vehicle of one's own "brain-children".

What is stunning about her is her timelessness, . . . a kind of prescient au courant-ness of thinking. She's mainly known for her punk history. But somehow I feel it's her "mentality of punk" that is her real strength. (i.e. being ever culturally present to challenge the way we look at "establishment", whatever the time frame.

I'm left with a thought her friend and mentor, Gary Ness, taught her: "....there are no new ideas. We must all research the past, to be original in the present."

Blog of a different sort

2007-04-25T18:30:00.000-07:00

My (our) flat is the featured house tour this week on Apartment Therapy - the San Francisco one, though it's supposed to be slinked to NY tomorrow.

new toy

2007-04-03T08:19:00.000-07:00

Playing around with a new camera. Haven't quite got the hang of the macro lens. Reading the manual would help.

Still life

2007-03-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

found (at home): not yet.

Memento Mori

2007-03-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

lost and found in the rafters.
I took this picture yesterday morning. While posting, I thought of the Munch. Quite by accident, a near mirror composition. (missing puzzle pieces of another sort)

Just One of Those Days

2007-02-15T19:31:00.000-08:00

Ever have one of those days when you think you're just having a man come to take blood and urine samples from you for insurance purposes and he ends up trying to read your aura by looking to the upper left side above your head and "give you energy" by passing his hand like a wand around your body?

Yesterday was such a day. **gurgle**

Ingrained

2007-02-12T22:29:00.000-08:00

First real day in studio.

Pinned to the wall a few wood bits from a crate I've had for ages (and been lugging around with me for the last 15 years, from many a cross continental studio to the next). Collected over the years from random places (boat building workshops, italian wine cellars, dumpsters, remodel job site trash bins) with no real purpose in mind.

Spent most of my time just looking at them from the corner of my eye, while thinking and whittling a small paintbrush.

Managed to make a small maquette for a "marquetry object",
for lack of a more descriptive name, title or theoretical basis.

New Year, New Studio

2007-02-01T19:44:00.000-08:00

A studio move and upgrade: a professional building with professional management, amazing natural light, and a built-in industrial exhaust fan. Glad to finally be getting back to work after a long break (work in Seattle and some time in Argentina).

Renaissance (on the bus)

2006-10-29T17:00:00.000-08:00

I'm beginning to think that being on the bus (which I rarely am) is in some way a momentary incubation box for thinking. It's one of the few places/situations that I allow my mind to wander freely without guilt of "time-wasting". Heading towards east end downtown Seattle yesterday afternoon (sniffing around for visual art truffles), I looked out the window thinking about the architectural differences between Seattle and San Francisco. My eyes were drawn again and again to this wedge of sunlight on this cropped view of a baby's hand between passengers. Something about the way the light illuminated it, the lithe and strangely elegant, "mature" movements from such a young child. Realized they reminded me of the hand gestures in Renaissance painting.

Detail. Coronation of the Virgin. Raphael, 1503.

I couldn't resist telling the baby's parents. His mom found it interesting that I picked up on that because they had noticed from very early on that he had always been very expressive with his hands.

hmm.....a renaissance, humanistic principles and ideals, re-birth.
Something pertinent to ponder at this juncture in life/career situations.

Open Studios (Holding My Breathe)

2006-10-29T13:35:00.000-08:00

It was a tiring and stressful time. The crowds were thin, but apparently so were most of the wallets, though I did manage to sell. The main craze-induced blur was the unexpected and unwarranted eviction due in great part to a careless studiomate (after I JUST got the studio the way I've wanted it....oh well...I try to leave things better than I found them.) As a month-to-month commercial tenant, you pretty much have no rights, per legal counsels I spoke with. I had 3 days amid client meetings to clear out the studio before leaving for Seattle for work. Luckily I'd been preparing to move in the near future and have my eyes on some particular spaces. The bright side of things is that I save nearly $1K in rent while I'm away for work and travel and don't have to give one more red ¢ to that ridiculous landlord. It was sad not to have time to say goodbye to my studio properly.

The whole experience has left me a bit dried out. Here are some pics of the studio. The hazy blurriness is probably a more accurate depiction of my (mental) space in light of the situation.

Open Studios (this weekend)

2006-10-11T09:43:00.000-07:00

Procrastination has always been one of my stronger virtues, so prepping for Open Studios is always a spirited adventure. Tracy Grubbs (studioperson) and I spent a few hours yesterday culling and curating works from each artist in the building (13 are participating) to showcase in the main gallery for the opening on Friday.

Then there's the matter of dealing with the mounds of miscellanea in the studio itself. Nothing like a deadline to get things moving. I'm finally getting around to organizing the studio in a way I had envisioned (2 years ago). Am cleaning up all the avalanching randomness and somewhere in the middle I've managed to even get some new artwork done ('process', really, but since I don't have time to do my normal double-think, the ideas seem a little fresher somehow).

I'm not sure the general public who come out to Open Studios realizes the amount of effort that goes into putting these things on. We seem to start 4-5 months before the actual Studio Open. My old studiomate, Pete Howells, had the whole system working like a well-oiled machine: coordinating artists, press packet deadlines, mailing database maintenance, postcards (designed by our esteemed resident artist/graphic designer, William Salit), mailing parties, curating, hanging, labelings (and that's just for the main gallery). Now that Pete's gone, the machine's more like a squeaky wheel, but it still keeps rocking and rolling, I suppose. It's nice having the buzz of activity with everyone working in the building. (I love my studio community. such great people.)

This year it's a little more madness-making than usual as our fantastic landlord has decided to make yet another arbitrary demand that we pay $150 to simply "use our studios", which we already pay rent to have 24/7 access mind you, during this once a year event, and which each artist already pays the City $175 to participate. In the past, his one nice gesture was to give us the use of the main gallery for free, but this year we're being charged. Basically, he wanted to make $2100 from us....so that's what he calculated out per head. So, unfortunately the budget for the fabulous bound studio booklet/invites we normally treated ourselves and patrons to had to be slashed to accommodate the Artistic Open Pocketbook Greed. Sure it doesn't seem legal, or moral for that matter, but if the excuse wasn't to "use our own studios", it would have been some other cacamami reason from the netherworld, and we're helpless to really do anything about it (as he's been known to hold grudges decades long and we end up suffering for it. Also it's difficult to have the great sense of comraderie our building artists have built up, which has something to do with why we're all still there).

Anyway, I finished reinstalling the Safety in Numbers steel wool installation last night with a few new site-specific changes (5 hours, ugh), but I'm determined to have it seen. The studio work is coming along. Don't think I'll really have time to begin a new thorn piece. Long days lately. The low hum of what's left of my adrenaline keeps time with the incessant buzz of the fluorescent lights in my studio. 3 days and counting!

new territory & one non-sequitur

2006-10-03T22:52:00.000-07:00

In some ways I feel working from "memory", though there are no physical locations involved, is important for me in these little 'scapes. landscapes, mindscapes, e-scapes (...from landminds>>landmines). The exercise being one in which I get out of my head and generate place/perspective (emotional locations) from "rebecca", rather than channeling it through a single image/place from the "outside" world. I wanted to focus on the sense of space as a mood or atmosphere of experience. It's this unnamed place that is very much real, but somehow slightly elusive and non-tangible that I'm most interested in. In the Adyashanti video that I linked to in an earlier post, he refers to "vast fields of silence" around your mind as a place where you can let pre-conceived notions/ideals go. Whether or not you get into the oogey-boogeyness of the speaker, I think it's this silence/stillness (ie without overbooking your calendar with activites, making "busy" work, or basically making excuses to avoid being quiet, not distracted, attentive) that allows you to "see" what is actually there. It's like the line my mentors always say, "What are you without your problems?" I think about this often. I suppose these small works are my attempts to translate that as something "grounded", even if it's only a sliver of soil (the sky's no limit).

The usual: glare, extra blurry, bad lighting. too tired to properly color correct. Will probably have to reshoot/repost. Click to enlarge, refresh page as needed.

Reality Check

2006-09-28T19:37:00.000-07:00

"On Death" from The First and Last Freedom, Krishnamurti.
click to enlarge.

and "Welcome to Reality", Adyashanti
Thanks, SeekerAfterTruth.
(why do "sages" always have to adopt some non-western name? Can't someone with a name like Frank be enlightened and still be worth listening to? It's just a language label after all. Just wondering.)

Between Dusk & Dawn

2006-09-28T00:05:00.001-07:00

Just got in from studio and too fumed out to think...so not too many words to post. Been thinking more about movement and silence (going back to that inadvertent water feature in my studio a few months back when Steven LaRose asked what I thought about while staring at that pool of water). Metaphorically, I like the time between dusk and dawn - the closing of one day and the beginning of another, tying in what Krishnamurti says in his essay, On Death, about dying a daily death as a way to see with fresh eyes.

Here are a few landscape studies I made in the last 2 days. Ashes asked if I used photos. No, they are all imaginary places, based on a mix of intuitive moving of paint and happy accidents I gladly take credit for. Excuse the badly lit, glarey shots. Currently reviving all the failed canvases in the studio and those scavenged from the trash in our building (my studio is right next to the garbage bins). No more buying of fresh new supplies for the moment, just going to concentrate on fresh new eyes.

click to enlarge.

2006-09-13T22:55:00.000-07:00

ok go

Thread of Thought

2006-09-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Powervines. (detail) site-specific thorn installation
Big Softie. (detail) thorn installation
Ecowriter. mixed media
Tioga 2B Soft (Sharp). (in process) oil on canvas.

2006-08-26T00:29:00.000-07:00

Experiment: How to make a fake smile real

2006-08-19T09:45:00.001-07:00

I started painting again in studio (my method for warming up the mental back burners for ideas). I've been thinking about Ashes comments on some small works two weeks ago, "these paintings are much more "rebecca" than anything i have seen from you in a while", "you NEED color. . . it adds an emotional dimension that you run from otherwise". Part sour grapes and part constipated reflection over what makes me me.

It started with a small painting, where on a whim I added a pair of connected red dots. Not sure why I did it, but it's really the only thing I find compelling about the canvas. Image-wise I traced it back to my love of the "fake smile" and "false moustaches". I've always found something funny/attractive about their disingenuousness. A thought occurred to me, How to make a fake smile real? What makes something genuine?
I took the smile from a painting by Richard Ceely (part of my stash of fake smile artworks) as a start point and began some small canvases I had kicking around the studio. I don't really have a set method for working. It's been more about trying new ways to fool my brain into working less hard, so I can play. Haven't quite hit a stride yet, but I finally let up on a bunch of stubborness in thinking I had to work a certain way. Working on a range of sizes from 8"x10" to 4'x4' all at once. Just building up surfaces simultaneously. Here are some behind the scene nothings thus far.

On the way to my local big box

2006-08-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

the Corporation

OW. new mixed use luxury: strip malls + lofts.

D&G - a new and "improved" brand

2006-08-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

Diaspora & Gentrification seem the latest trends in the name of Progress. Artpowerlines' post on gentrification in NJ seems to parallel the happenings in SF, right down to a church named St. Brigid's.
San Francisco in some respects is still recovering from the boom and bust devastation of the .com fantasy bubble. Our elected public officials (former mayor willie brown) pushed through a lot of new development (palm greasing and padded pockets) that translated most distinctly as a loss of much affordable housing and art spaces for thousands of the City's diverse population and arts community. Developers out to make a short-term buck on ugly, cheaply made, "luxury" live-work lofts, which, adding insult to injury on a loophole, also got out of paying property taxes that would normally go towards communities and unified school districts because the buildings were zoned "commercial". Meanwhile, many of the bigger high rise low-income housing projects were being demolished and replaced with 2-story buildings (under one of many PR premises that density causes crime), effectively pushing out hundreds of residents, who were mainly black, to who knows where, even with relocation help. There was/is a mass exodus by the low to middle class to the East Bay+ and suddenly, places like Modesto 2 hours away, became 4hr-a-day commute towns. Many arts organizations disappeared or are currently hanging by a fingernail, forced to merge with other organizations for lack of low-rent commercial leases and rising expenses. All this recent gentrified city planning, which revolves mainly around economics and drawing in outside money, seems very short-sighted in terms of San Francisco's legacy to the future.

San Francisco (and possibly the country at large) is fast losing its middle class and the disparity between rich and poor is becoming more and more pronounced. I met a woman over the weekend at a friend's who talked about wanting to "live off the grid" ....buy a farm somewhere, grow her own food, have her own solar power. Well, my question is, Progress in a civilized society is . . .farming like in the middle ages? Seems crazy to me that civilization has made all these advances in technology, health, etc. (not all evil) so that we have to leave it to be sane? What's next in Progress, death by hanging like the Savage from Brave New World?

All this supposed progress-making also relates to a sense of isolation for me, where people are looking out only for themselves without seeing how a broader community is affected. The iPod silhouette billboard down the street from my house (like an ominous calling card of things to come in this rapidly gentrifying hispanic/immigrant neighborhood) comes to mind. Groovy and savvy at first glance, but look at it at face value: it's a singular figure all one color, without depth (flat), against a void of space. It scares me to think that that might be the City of the Future: everyone tuned only into their own thoughts (ipod=soma), no diversity, no sense of community. There must be some middle ground.

Seems pockets of people around the city are organizing and doing things themselves that affect change, ranging from crime watch, to community gardens/parks, from afterschool education to preservation of neighborhood buildings and families. By and for the people. Makes me wonder, what exactly our local gov't is actually doing. Like New Orleans Mayor Nagin's recent comments hailing "democracy in action". It's this illusion of choice that just kills me. We choose our leaders, to look out for our best interests, to make us that much closer to cutting thru red tape, to facilitate. And here are these scattered, homeless people in building up their own neighborhoods from stratch, right down to the street signs, without the help of their local gov't. Apparently, officials are too busy working on the semantics of appearing sensitive to the needs of the poor. They play hookie from their duties citing power to the people. So is there really power outside of grassroots efforts?

Bon Voyage!

2006-08-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

For the last year I've had the amazing pleasure of living with a viking ship (6'x6' painting) in my dining room. Interesting that you think you know a painting but every other day, something new comes to light. You discover a new paint drip, a pencil mark, a strange lint snot, something shiny, or something matte that you hadn't notice before. On temporary loan, it is set to make its return voyage back to the East Coast soon, so I threw an asian seafaring-themed gastro junk-et this last week to celebrate its time here, beginning with a visit to the SFMoMA to check out Matthew Barney's japanese whaling ship (all in good campy fun) and invite friends to come wine, dine and ogle a boat for a night.

The painting's artist thought I was a little nuts, but the boat's been such a lively, animated part of the household that I thought it deserved a fond farewell. I cooked, simmered, stewed and baked that morning (a valuable studio day of another kind), and even managed to make menus for each place setting. First time people wanted to take the menus away with them as souvenirs of the evening's events. (Thanks for humoring me, dinner people.)

Lately. . .

2006-08-05T11:01:00.000-07:00

I've been depressed over the relentless Hezbollah bombings these last few weeks. (Beirut artist, Mazen Kerbaj's recordings of the bombings hear (t)here). Why am I so moved by this particular situation? more than Iraq, say? or the Congo? Horrific enough, it's not the pictures of tanks, death and rumble that strikes a chord, but perhaps the marks of domesticity against the stark backdrop of war: lost high heel sandals and toys among rebar, brightly patterned bed linens in bomb shelters, birds in cages hanging on tree limbs. Something about a normalcy lost that I connect to or a everyday humanity that survives despite war, which seems very much an abstraction to me. Feeling helpless and existential about what seems the uselessness of artmaking and blogging about art concepts, change and power from the comfort of my studio. Then, when you want to just throw in the towel...you see some great art (smart, well-crafted and thought provoking), and a sense of hope is restored and an urgency to go forward takes over.

I saw Nina Katchadourian's multi-channel video installation, Installation of Accent Elimination. "Inspired by the posters advertising courses in “accent elimination,” Katchadourian’s multi-channel video piece Accent Elimination involved working with her parents and a speech improvement coach intensively for several weeks in order to “neutralize” her parents accents and then teach each of their accents to her. Both Katchadourian’s parents have distinct and hard-to-place accents, although they have lived in the United States for over 40 years. The very existence of these courses speak to the complexities of assimilation, self-image, and the tricky maneuvering between two desires: to preserve the distinctive marks of one's culture or to decrease them in order to seem less foreign. In Accent Elimination, the accent is taken up as a material object, an heirloom that can be inherited. Although accents are in so many ways clear markers of ethnicity, culture, and origin (things that are linked to a sense of identity inherited from a parent), an accent itself is extremely elusive. In this video, one sees how Katchadourian and her parents struggle to hear and imitate what is so close at hand and yet so difficult to access."

I happened to walk in on the videos as the artist and her parents in accented and "neutralized" tongues said, "Where did you meet?", "We met in Beirut." Something about that moment, wanting to find connection between my life here and a situation so far away, tragic, and (seemingly) foreign.

Killing the Buddha

2006-08-05T08:40:00.000-07:00

Speaking of the Inadvertent:
Slightly sad (but rather amusing) that my clean-up makes better sculpture than my intentional attempts at artmaking.

I was trying to draw a buddha with bronze recently,
having found bronze wool at my local hardware store.
Deemed unsuccessful, I left it hanging on the wall for weeks.
Decided in a fit of cleaning yesterday I needed to make room on the wall, crumbled it up, and left it on the table.

Later in the afternoon, I passed it at just the right angle. . .and chuckled (thinking of Sherry Levine's golden urinals). It wasn't even until I took a quick snapshot of it that I saw the shadows so defined and "chiseled" that it looked as if it had a face and body. ( I didn't fiddle with the clump...the inadvertent readymade came As-Is! Wishing I had a pic of the ineffectual art making attempt to compare.) Not bad for my first bronze.

Kill the Buddha. Find the Buddha.
Click to enlarge. Refresh page as needed. (physically and figuratively)

I put the kabosh on the buddha and it still managed to come back (in a different form). The universe has a real sense of humor and seems always on point.

Inadvertent Water Feature

2006-07-27T12:54:00.000-07:00

Iguazu Falls, Argentina.
Photo: Michael John Meehan.

Found a strange, still, stigmata of water on the studio floor when I got in yesterday morning. Traced it to the wall, but the water was also still (?) Mystified, I crawled under my storage shelving, head on bent elbows, stared at the pool of water for about 10 minutes, when all of sudden a micro-burp of water seeped in from the building next door. Rang the neighbor's bell. Their water heater blew a casket. Mopped for the next 3 hours and moved all the storage of paintings and papers from under the stair storage. hmmph. Today I have to move it all back.

Not quite as dramatic as Iguazu, but definitely time-consuming and annoying. Luckily nothing was damaged.

If you really set your mind to it. . .

2006-07-15T04:27:00.000-07:00

you can move mountains. Well, maybe not. . .(yet).
Paralyzed man uses thoughts to move cursor.

Bildung Biltong*

2006-07-15T01:07:00.000-07:00

I have a backlog of thoughts....but here is as good a place as any to begin: (a little german, christian and oriental gristle to gnaw on)

I've been working on a painting for a small group show about portraiture. The gallerists left it up to the artists to relate to the idea of portraiture as they saw fit. Coincidentally, I'm reading the essay, "The Traditional Conception of Ideal Portraiture" from Coomaraswamy's "Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art" (click to enlarge and read)

Thinking about the show theme, I had some preliminary thoughts on the individual, the universal (principles), and the definition of Bildung - a word in German meaning an account of how a person's character is formed. (I encountered the word while reading an article in a NYTimes Book Review, Becoming Jane Addams.)

An account... as in a build-up, accumulation of history? of thinking? If, as Joseph Beuys says, Thinking is Form, then is Character somehow manifested physically via the artwork? So a consuming question is, what I am forming-building? Character (inner qualities-feelings)? or Caricature (outer affectations-emotions)? How does an artist stay clear of narcissistic individualism, yet still incorporate something that is spiritually personal (not to be confused with idiosyncratically personal, the non-universal). What is said and left unsaid (visible and the invisible)? And how is it that both are still able to be "seen" by the viewer (art-savvy or not) optically, intuitively or otherwise? The sixth sense? Well, I suppose these are more inquiries than finished statements circling overhead.

These other two Coomaraswamy quotes also come to mind:
1. Human idiosyncracy is thus the explanation of style and of stylist sequences: "style is the man." Styles are the basis of our histories of art, which are written like other histories to flatter our own human vanity. But the artist whom we have in view is innocent of history and unaware of the existence of stylistic sequences. Styles are the accident and by no means the essence of art; the free man is not trying to express himself, but that which was to be expressed. Our conception of art as essentially the expression of a personality, our whole view of genius, our impertinent curiosities about the artist's private life, all these things are the products of a perverted individualism and prevent our understanding of the nature of medieval art, and becomes a pathetic fallacy when applied to it....It is by no accident of time, but in accordance with a governing concept of the meaning of life, of which the goal is implied...that works of traditional art, whether Christian, Oriental or folk art, are hardly ever signed; the artist is anonymous, or if a name has survived, we know little or nothing of the man. This is true as much for literary as for plastic artefacts. In traditional arts it is never Who said? but only What was said? that concerns us: for all this is true, by whomever it has been said, has it's origin in the Spirit. So the first sane questions that can be asked about a work of art are, What was it for? and What does it mean? We have seen already that whatever, and however humble, the functional purpose of the work of art may have been, it had always a spiritual meaning, by no means an arbitrary meaning, but one that the function itself expresses adequately by analogy. Function and meaning cannot be forced apart; the meaning of the work of art is its intrinsic form as much as the soul is the form of the body.

2. The anonymity of the artist belongs to a type of culture dominated by the longing to be liberated from oneself. All the force of this philosophy is directed against the delusion "I am the doer." "I" am not in fact the doer, but the instrument; human individuality is not an end but only a means. The supreme achievement of the individual consciousness is to lose or find (both words mean the same) itself in what is both its first beginning and its last end: "Whoever would save his psyche, let him lose it." All that is required of the instrument is efficiency and obedience; it is not for the subject to aspire to the throne; the constitution of man is not a democracy, but the hierarchy of body, soul, and spirit...It is under such conditions that a really living art, unlike what Plato calls the arts of flattery, flourishes; and where the artist exploits his own personality and becomes an exhibitionist that art declines.

Addendum may follow, once I get some beauty sleep and maybe a few more days/weeks/months/years of contemplation.

* Biltong: South African spiced beef jerky

For the Birds (a Guggenheim affair)

2006-07-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

. . .when zoos imitate aspects of the art scene.

Rockefelleresque Feeding Frenzy. If fish were artists.

Blueprints

2006-06-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

There was an NYTimes article today (Renewed Push for Artistic ABCs in N.Y.) about the Dept. of Education's attempt to introduce an ambitious k-12 arts curriculum into it's public school system. I read the article and then the Blueprint for Teaching and Learning Arts website in the hopes of getting more detailed info about the proposed program, but finished, still feeling vaguely dissatisfied. There are so many threads up for discussion, I'm not even sure where to start. Excuse the ramblefest.

To get a 1st hand account of teaching under the foundation of Blueprint, check out artpowerlines' post There is No Stick on the same topic.

Re: Educators
One sentence really struck me while reading the article, "The principal, Michelle Betancourt, said that though she viewed art as an an outlet for students, 'It's pretty separate because of the emphasis on the academic program. We used to have it before the emphasis on testing.'" I find it surprising that an educator (an educator?!) believes Art is separate from learning? The ed. system and the paranoid educators hoping to keep funding are so myopically consumed by the answers to the area of a rhombus and rote memorized definitions of pulchritude...that they miss the broader scope of what education is. Math teaches analytical thought, and Reading/Writing teaches critical thought. And yes, these are important, but Art which so easily falls into the category of lateral thinking, if not applied academics at the very least, involving not only the 3 sacred Rs (readin',writin','rithematic), but a personal context to boot, isn't considered a ying to vertical thought's yang? (That's a pretty big bang for your educational buck if you ask me) No wonder there is a dearth of great thinkers. Our education system certainly isn't honing superbrains to think out of the box. They apparently don't even think it's all that necessary.

The writer ends the article with a comment from the Dept. of Ed. Sr. Instructional Mgr., Sharon Dunn, "In every region I'm making the case: Do this because it's good for the kids." Maybe the writer lopped off some, more crucial, prequel to that statement? Gotta love those NYT writers. If not, that's tantamount to telling your kids "cuz I said so". That logic doesn't work on kids. How's that suppose to convince adults?

Re: Testing and Accountability
"The laziness of people wanting fast-food answers to gourmet questions." Part of the issue I have with the Ed. system is its impatience and empirical stance on learning. Why must they have proof positive NOW? How can they really gauge if a teaching structure is working over the course of one year in a K-12 scenario? Why can't they make a methodic and strategic long term plan and ride it out? Why all the quick fixes? Sometimes results don't surface for a while, each kid is different, and it certainly doesn't come about faster because of a fiscal funding calendar issued by the Wallace Foundation. Though it sure as hell makes teachers statistically lie and cheat about their grading more. The Dept. of Ed. should hold themselves accountable for how they set up (or screw up) the system, and not the teachers who are often the lowest cogs in the machine.

Re: The Blueprint
What's with this "it's only a recommendation" attitude? Either commit to a program or not. Otherwise, why waste taxpayer money for 5 years, planning what is essentially an elaborate wish list? I find the program a bit troubling too. They have all these activities. The superficial "look" of art: cut, paste, make paintings, play instruments. I'm wondering if consideration was given to the psychological development of children thru strategically placed, specific skill set activities k-12. I want to see delineated how using certain techniques of artmaking develop certain psychological skills, not just mechanical ones, and why it is appropriate to that certain stage of learning and age group. Not a blank WordDoc Template left up to individual teachers with no cohesive agenda. If they have, why isn't it mentioned in its Wishlist Manifesto? In that sense I feel there must be a required day to day, exercise by exercise schedule to be followed by teachers in order to truly be "uniform", as they mention, and gauge learning, if that is what they insist on testing for. How is the Dept. of Ed. supposed to truly monitor a unified progress if every teacher is doing their own thing? It's not just a matter of WHAT is taught, but HOW it is taught? There has to be a central referent, a register, where Quality is what is being judged and tested, not Quantity.

Re: The 5 Strands
The Blueprint is divided into 5 "Strands": I. Art-making (skills + knowledge), II. Literacy in the Arts (learning cross-disciplinary skills, observation reading writing), III.Making Connections (see the social cultural historical contexts) IV. Community and Cultureal Resources (NYC shares its culture wealth), then there's V. Career and Life-long Learning ("While some students will pursue careers in arts-related fields, most will regard the arts as a means of expression and a source of life-long enjoyment. The career-building skills learned in arts activities are those required in all other fields of endeavor: goals setting, planning and working independently and in teams".) This last bit reads like a sad resume.

It also strikes me as deflating. So all this intergrated Arts learning, this ambitious 13yr cumulative plan...it's just going to get that kid.... a job or enjoyment from art? That's it? It funnels down to money and status? All of a sudden, it's starting to sound like someone's being sold a 13yr supply of snake oil. What I mean by that is I feel Arts Educators themselves are debasing the value of art and an arts education. When can we start thinking about Art not just as an occupation or commodity, but as a way of digesting information, an interstice in our social, political, even economic landscape that allows for contemplation, reinterpretation and new ways of seeing. Expansive thinking and an appreciation of that, regardless of your vocation in life. Now that's ambitious!

Way before there was Beuys and his "everyone is an artist", there was Coomaraswamy (circa 1937):

The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man who is not an artist in some field, every man without a vocation, is an idler. The kind of artist that a man should be, carpenter, painter, lawyer, farmer or priest, is determined by his own nature, in other words by his nativity...No man has a right to any social status who is not an artist.

We are thus introduced at the outset to the problem of the use of and the worth of the artist to a serious society. This use is in general the good of man, the good of society, and in particular the occcasional good of an individual requirement. All of these goods correspond to the desires of men: so that what is actually made in a given society is a key to the governing conception of the purpose of life in that society, which can be judged by its works in that sense, and better than in any other way. There can be no doubt about the purpose of art in a traditional society: when it has been decided that such and such a thing should be made, it is by art that is can be properly made. There can be no good use without art: that is, no good use if things are not properly made. The artist is producing a utility, somthing to be used. Mere pleasure is not a use from this point of view. An illustration can be given in our taste for Shaker or other simple furniture, or for Chinese bronzes or other abstract arts of exotic origin, which are not foods but sauces to our palate. Our "aesthetic" appreciation, essentially sentimental because it is just what the word "aesthetic" means, a kind of feeling rather than an understanding, has little or nothing to do with their raison d'etre. If they please our taste and are fashionable, this only means that we a have over -eaten of other food, not that we are such as those who made these things and made "good use" of them. To "enjoy" what does not correspond to any vital needs of our own and what we have not verified in our own life can only be described as an indulgence. It is luxurious to make mantelpiece ornaments of the artefacts of what we term uncivilized or supertitious peoples, whose cutlure we think of as much inferior to our own, and which our touch has destroyed. The attitude however ignorant, of those who used to call these things"abominations" and "beastly devices of the heathen," was a much healthier one. It is the same if we read the scriptures of any tradition, or authors such as Dante or Ashvghosha who tell us frankly that they wrote with other than "aesthetic" ends in view; or if we listen to sacrificial music for the ears' sake only. We have a right to be pleased by these things only through our understanding use of them. We have good enough of our own "perceptible to the senses": if the nature of our civilisation be such that we lack a sufficiency of "intelligible goods," we had better remake ourselves than divert the intelligible goods of others to the multiplication of our own aesthetic satisfactions.

In philosophy that we are considering, only the contemplative and active lives are reckoned human. The life of pleasure only, one of which the end is pleasure is subhuman; every animal "knows what it likes," and seeks for it. This is not an exclusion of pleasure from life as if pleasure were wrong in itself, it is an exclusion of the pursuit of pleasure thought of as a "diversion", and apart from "life."

"Improving arts education remains largely a process of nudging schools down the right path." (NYT) Let's hope its path looks something like these: an 8-Fold Path and 10 Bulls*.

*note: ..and before you think I've jumped on some esoteric eastern philos bandwagon, understand what I'm talking about isn't buddhism or tao...but plain, non-culturecentric discpline.

Safety in Numbers

2006-06-22T20:21:00.001-07:00

Safety in Numbers, Steel Wool, Approx. 10' Hx 8.5' Wx 4"D

Latest piece in a show titled New Lines: Drawn, Stitched, and Sculpted that just opened this Tuesday. The Opening is next Thursday at Spur Projects near San Francisco, CA.

Detail shot (click to enlarge)

Statement:
Safety in Numbers is the latest installment in my Steel Wool Drawing series, Herd Mentality. Exploring the concept of Illusion, both as a visual and a mental construct, the series has grown into one of the main focuses of my artistic exploration. Everyone delights in magic, but no one likes to be fooled…Or do we? Do we spend as much time guarding against the truth slipping in, setting up barriers to protect ourselves from what are, as often as not, unpleasant truths? Playful yet ominous, I hope to reflect on the precarious balance that can be found between truth and fiction, conviction and delusion, strength and fragility.

In my process, I de-construct scouring pads, common household objects, and re-construct them as sheep, highly symbolic, even totemic animals, that were once more common in everyday life in many parts of the world than are the cleaning supplies under your kitchen sink. Illusionistic space is visual metaphor. It is the space where our mental gymnastics, pratfalls, and re-imaginings take place. Steel wool that might otherwise be taken for granted is animated here, imbued with life that is always metaphorically present in the inanimate world. In so doing, I hope to investigate the mental gap between easy assumptions or following blindly (socially, politically, economically) and stealthily, crossing a tightrope without doubt that, though gravity is real, determination can build a bridge to a truer understanding. And that understanding insists that metaphor is a tool rather than a deception.

You say you want a revolution

2006-06-17T21:48:00.000-07:00

I'm responding with some considered thoughts about Artpowerlines' post and comments from several days ago. (I am a slow digester.)

If a new revolution is indeed to take place, and who's to say it hasn't already begun, it will be (in mixing chaos theory metaphors with Muhammad Ali...) one that floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee. It will come about softly (without all the revolutionary exclamation points and trumpet fussing), but be carried out with a disciplined and exacting force. Relating this thread of thought with Fillou's comments on "covert fascism", per my last post) I think it's a matter of personal responsibility and taking art (if it is truly a way of thinking and not merely a material commodity) out of the context of the "institution" and bringing it onto a humanistic platform. (Joseph Beuys: "Everyone is an artist.") That's why I think the "artistic" transition Artpowerlines made from performance art to interactive participation with a broader community, not soley for and about the art establishment, is so philosophically deft and important in a lasting change. What we need to revolt against isn't the art system, but a stagnant and belligerent way of thinking. Paradigm shifts: It's not about reinventing the wheel, just learning to use it better.

By community I don't mean to single out artsy interaction, organized or nonprofit events per se. It could just be things you do yourself in your everyday. It could take many simple and seemingly meaningless and non Art forms: simply getting to know your next door neighbor in lieu of an arsenal of hi-tech home security surveillance systems as a way to fight crime; taking your ipod off once in a while and listening to what's actually around you, picking up trash on the ground even if it's not yours, reusing a paper bag even if you could easily "recycle" by throwing it in a bin, smiling on the street even if only to yourself. Call me a luddite, and maybe this is a somewhat obtuse connection to make....but whatever "force" keeps a Rembrandt painting relevant and beautiful today after so many centuries...has a little something to do with giving humanity a bit of quality face time in an era of on-the-go technology, perhaps? (and bringing that humanity, as a spirit and not necessarily as an action, back into the fold of Art with a capital "A", if this is your chosen voice. Here's to a kinder and gentler tour de force.

What is Art?

2006-06-13T21:51:00.000-07:00

One Excuse: Been trying to catch up with the momentum of life recently. work deadlines, art deadlines = dead air blogspace.

One Rant: We need it like a Hole-in-One's head -NYT's Ginia Bellafante and her article on Lisa Hartough. (Um...Has Bellafante ever looked at a Rembrandt? Hartough doesn't paint anything like Rembrandt, and I'm not talking about sepia tones. Mr. Van Rijn doesn't do stiff anal retentive brushstroke realism in flat plastic colors with no sense of dramatic (directional and/or inner) light.) Look at this detail of the hands from The Jewish Bride. Puhlease.

One Quote: [Was lucky enough to find a copy of Fluxist, Robert Filliou's 1970 book "Teaching and Learning as a Performative Art" and have been devouring it. more thoughts on this later.] "Sometime in the late 1960s, Filliou was talking with his friend Billy Kluver, a research scientist at Bell Laboratories. The reason scientists make greater strides in their field than artists do in theirs, Kluver told him, is that scientists ‘don't know what science is.’ (Filliou, 1970: 87). . .The book is in many ways Filliou's answer to Kluver's provocation. ‘It is true’, Filliou says, ‘that artists spend a powerful lot of time and energy trying to convince each other about what is art and what is not. They do not know that they don't know.’ (ibid) For Filliou this idea was more than something to muse about over drinks with his friends. Indeed for him there was something very serious at stake in his playful non-knowledge. ‘Every generation of young people’, he argued, ‘has to fight fascism. For mine, it was the overt fascism of the Nazis and their allies. For theirs, in relative peace time, it is the covert fascism of the square world. Usually this fight is lost, because young people fail to root out the seeds of fascism within themselves.’ (ibid) What he calls ‘relative peace time’ is peaceful only in that the covert fascism he describes now unfolds relatively discretely, and in a relatively bloodless manner."(Virilio and Lotringer, 1997) Who are the fascists today? As easy as it is to point fingers at Bush, art critics, gallerists etc., I/we (as artists or otherwise) should check the mirror once in a while. Does calling yourself art intelligentsia actually entitle you to free/creative thinking?? I'm not so sure. (see how winkelman thinks in "conflict of interest" or fischer6000's response to artpowerlines' "Socialist Art Public") They are trapped in a cycle of artspeak and old thought structures, trying to think outside the box while still living it in. S(h)amefully, so do I, most days.

and I leave you with. . . .
One Anecdote: With all this talk about, around, below and above the topic of 'what is art' on the blogosphere...this comes none too soon:

I ran into a friend recently. I owed him some money but forgot to bring an envelope for it, so I riffled through my bag and found a piece of scrap paper and quickly folded a little paper purse (like I used to make as a kid, at a time in life when I was easily entertained and mystified by the simple action of folding paper), put the money in the pouch and handed it to him later when I saw him.

Aeion: looks at me and says, "What's this?"
Me: "The money I owe you."
He turns it upside down, but the money doesn't fall out. He marvels for a quick second at the perfectly compact, utilitarian package. It even manages to have a happy happenstance abstract pattern on two of its corners (via whatever was on the xerox).
Aeion: turns to me again and says, "No, that's art."
Me: "No, that's not Art." (capital 'A' inflection in voice). It's just a coin purse."
He corrects me,"No, it is art. Art is a way of thinking.

Apparently your normal person at the bus stop knows more about art that the art peoples.

paper purse replica courtesy of NYT Hartough article scrap paper

Creatively Pasteurized

2006-05-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

The title comes from a great spam poem I received in my InBox and adequately sums up my feelings on mixing artmaking + moneymaking. The combo just curdles and neutralizes all the joy of doing art for me. Thinking and working in a honest fashion is hard enough without having to add making a serious career and/or living from it. So which will it be...Am I a thinker or a laborer? (as mia fineman puts it via artpowerlines) Fascinating.) Maybe it's destined to be a little of both (thinking AND doing, but not in fineman's art world), if I plan on keeping sane.

It's a very perverted system we have that attaches everything to money (corporate fashion funding, and corruption) as a rate of exchange. Let's be honest, the art market isn't selling artwork...that's just the fancy candy wrapper, what's for sale are levels of greed and egotism. I'm sure an economist, sociologist or historian would be better qualified to speak, but when did the barter system fade from the economic vernacular? Surfing through a slew of blogs during a night of insomnia, I found it curious that so many blogs talk about the values and virtues of collecting art as good investment. Invested in what, exactly? Status (of being so-called cultured)? The manipulations of certain gallerists, curators and their ilk, per Gusky's web of conversation? or how about the supposed non-elitist attitude Ashes discusses re: Winkelman? Not to be ignored, but certainly best to be aware of the system that plays like a broken record from traditional and alternative views alike (good to maintain perspective).

Drawing It Out

2006-05-24T23:12:00.000-07:00

Ashes' recent post makes some good points about honesty in art. I think it links into the meaning of generosity I've been ruminating over lately. Can you really give what you don't own? (re: HighLowbetween's comment on painting what you know). What is that missing link synapse that leads us to (unknown) breakthroughs? How do you keep artistic sincerity from becoming rote visual cues for the real thing?

Subconsciously, I seem to devote a bunch of time to sorting out truth. Two particular dreams come to mind. In 2002, I woke up in a half drowsy state and wrote in my journal, "Treasure hunt where we look for the right words, but soon come to realize what we are in search of is something beyond words, entering into the realm of (visceral) experience." In another dream in 2004, while on residency in South Africa, I was again searching for "the truth", this time at a thrift store. All these people were swarming around this wood barrel filled with shoes. I wanted to know what all the fuss was about and squeezed in. The shoes all had matches, but you had to dig to find the other side. One kept surfacing, it was a Mondrian painting shaped as a high heel shoe (not a shoe with a Mondrian pattern). Everyone wanted to fit them, but no one could. I picked them up myself wondering, "Who fits a shoe this small?" and turned them over to see the size: 4C. Out of curiosity, I tried them on. Surprisingly, they fit. When I woke up, I made some connections: what is the "other side" (of truth?); if the shoe fits, wear it; to foresee the truth(?!); what is it with my fixation on Modernism?; how about the unMondrian shoe form?; how does Derrida fit into all this?; what language are we really talking about here?

Another Bus

2006-05-18T23:12:00.000-07:00

On the way to Tanya Hastings' art opening this evening (beautiful), I saw a bus turn a corner. The destination on the LCD screen was NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR. Would have been nice to hitch a ride.

One's destination is never a place, but a new way of looking at things. - Henry Miller

Generosity

2006-05-18T14:57:00.001-07:00

Every now and again my head wanders back to the idea of generosity and what that means on a small scale, in my artwork, and more broadly, in the everyday. A self-less act (w/out ego), as a way of expressing beauty (per comments in last post). Lately, I've been drawn more and more to the idea of public art with a small 'p', no pronouncements, posturing or publicity. Thinking about works that quietly intervene in the landscape to be seen, not seen, destroyed or preserved by the random passerby. Looking for an ephemeral experience that allows nature to take its course.

Last night, I had a tiny rhinestone epiphany from a seemingly casual conversation with a studiomate about art outside the gallery and public service. It was interesting catching myself jumping automatically to words like 'the underprivileged' and 'non-profit' when doing charity or volunteering came up. (eeks. how totally embarassing and arrogant of me).

Sure, I read Lewis Hyde's The Gift, a good Krishnamurti book here and there, and a bunch of 'important' books (you know the kind...the ones that look good on bookshelves for the houseguests. HA), but how much of that turns into actual walk and not talk? I was reminded just yesterday of the correct attitude (spirit) of generosity vs. do-gooderism. In his usual, soft-spoken way, Chris said that he didn't volunteer at a place, but that he volunteered in his own way by fasting one day a week. At first glance that doesn't seem particularly charitable,...but as he said, it's one day that he can stop being a consumer (of food and consumerism). A sense of discipline comes to mind. So does quiet action. The value of small things. It really hit me that generosity as a form of volunteering doesn't happen at places, but in life, not once or twice a week at a designated time and place, but potentially everyday in all sorts of unexpected ways.

Cast(e) System

2006-05-15T14:35:00.000-07:00

This might be a bit of a ramble, but I want to pull together a variety of thoughts I've had swimming around lately that seem entirely separate, but in my mind are fundamentally the same. They relate to the recent NY Times article on "post-conceptual" art , Harper's May 2006 article about Pig Production, Art food chain postings by HighLowBetween (Preserving Our Cultural Heritage) and Art Powerlines (Post-Skill Era), Eye-drops' comments on the shape of a road, my new Coomaraswamy read: Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art, formerly titled: Why Exhibit Works of Art? (Thanks Ashes!) and the concept of instability (within my artwork.)

The Harper's article talked about selective pig making (ala Monsanto) and stud pigs that can't stand up or survive in the wild anymore due to too many genetic modifications to (ends justifies the means) produce pork that is as uniform and cost effective to package and profit from as possible. I think we are closer to cloning than we think....and it's not just our pigs. The story behind pig farming was terrifying, but not much different than our current social systems of thought (art, politics, consumerism, etc...) which seem just as artificially inseminated.

per ART
In the Beginning....
there was the thought, and what manifested physically.
(Now) In the Middle are all these people, further up on the food chain (supposedly) who are putting their fingers and angled cuts (commissions+hype) into every artistic pie, and artists, in turn....using the same mould, casting their own pattern for a food chain underling (fabricators are the new black in bureaucratic middlemen fashion)

per POLITICS
The public seems blinded by the bling of supposed safety and democracy, via war, torture, lying or by any means possible. Are people finally seeing the pyramid scheme that's been built up? Isn't it about time this illusion collapse and be crushed by its own weight?

In the End...what comes out the play-dough$$ extruder??

People and pigs that can't think or fend for themselves, nodding in sheepish agreement in pig-pen structures that don't support or offer constructive ins-n-outs. In an attempt to keep things predictable (i.e. safe), we've created/imposed upon ourselves a belligerently static dystopia based on fear and greed that seems anti-darwinian, anti-evolution and has made us hyper-vulnerable to ever-changing mutations (i.e. progress) that are beyond our control (try as we may).

I guess what I'm asking about is, ultimately, (the underlying) Structure (of thought - the foundation).
Just thinking about how similar, wonky and unstable the pattern of thought is behind all these seemingly unrelated actions of farming, art, politics (and everything, come to think of it). Wondering how to think not only outside the box, but perhaps re-think a whole new form. (What is the shape of the road?) Bring on the Post-Box Era!

(Artists by virtue of their vocation think they make a career of innovation and thinking out of the box....but is that really true?)

The difference between form and shape.
. . . content and contour.

(Click to enlarge. Refresh page if needed.)

If the way we think about things remains the same, whether it's uniform pig parts, gallerists + artists, Democrats + Republicans, then we're simply spinning our wheels like a hamster. A bit like musical chairs...everyone grabs a similar seat and someone's left out (the artist, the independent, whatever the label). Could it be that the best thing that could have happened to that person was that (s)he was forced out of the game? Maybe this is an opportunity to start a new game, with new rules.

Not so fast.....(this is) food?

2006-04-30T20:18:00.000-07:00

On a whim and a successful pre-screening, I took part in a fast food focus group last week. An independent research group was gathering information (for, what a friend deduced from questioning ~perhaps~Taco Bell?). They wanted opinions from "creatives" about their experience of fast food. They asked questions in the pre-screening like, "If you were a fast food, what would you be?" (ok, so I lied on this portion of the Q&A to ensure my participation in the focus group, and said I'd be a crispy taco bell taco and how many times I ate fast food (6 a month = 6 times a year, at best). During the 45min. in-home filmed interview, my friend and I were asked things by three interviewers like, "What do you like about the the meal you like to eat at your favorite chain?" (A: textures, food that looks like recognizable food parts with the option of eating in at a thematic (read: kitschy) dining area), "What constitutes a meal vs. a snack?" (A: Sitting down and taking time vs. squat and gobbling, respectively), "If you went to a Fast Food chain would you choose a burger or a salad?" (A: duh, the burger. I'm obviously not there for my health. guilty pleasures.) At one point I said that maybe super-sized fast food was a form of darwinian population control.

They gave me a questionnaire asking about the food I buy and eat (e.g. spices, veggies, snacks, etc…). There was also a section that asked that I make a collage about how I feel about food without any images of food. I ended up doing three. Yeah, they're hokey, but I kinda like the last one. Cut and pasting sans 'puter was very refreshing.
(click on image to enlarge, then refresh page if necessary)

1st collage: Comfort

2nd collage: Feel

3rd collage: Food Chain (distilled)

Surreal eState

2006-04-23T22:32:00.000-07:00

the install process

Weekend of April 22nd, 2006

Installing a commissioned piece entitled "Pyramid Schemes",
part of my steel wool drawing series: Herd Mentality.
A schwank house on a majestic patch of land
St. Helena, CA. Wonderbread Weekender town
where resident hoi polloi fill your gas, your shopping bags, your cup.
It runneth over with frothy lattes and egos.
Lucky for me it's quiet up on the hill, a sort of vibrant silence.
Nature, me and more surrealist essays.
(on Joseph Cornell, Francis Alÿs, and Black Humor)

Pyramid Schemes

Fluxist Tampons

2006-04-22T01:39:00.004-07:00

Q: What well-known fluxist filed for a tampon patent?

A: George Brecht, when he worked for Johnson & Johnson.

patent no.3015332 Jan., 1962 Brecht.
see: list of Tampon Patents

How did I find this tadpole of info? Remember that Surrealism Essay I was reading on the bus? (more on this later). Before Brecht was an artist, he was a full-time chemist for J&J. Brecht even included it in his mail-art exhibition, l'art du Tampon. (incidentally, the show was made up of mostly men. should be renamed male-art exhibition)

Bus Incident at Church & Market

2006-04-19T07:46:00.001-07:00

I was on the bus yesterday evening. A white man in his early 50's, thin and scrawny, and two black kids in their teens, also scrappy, board the bus. They are having some sort of heated argument. The two kids claim the guy had stolen something from them. And he claims he ran from them because he was scared. They threaten him and order him off the bus [where they would "handle" things]. His voice gets shrill/panicked. The man makes a run for the door. The kids block him. The bus driver won't open the door for him, even though he is directly to the left of him and sees the man. The two kids begin running back and forth along the length of the bus chasing/grabbing the man. People are also strangely shifting back and forth, quietly avoiding the situation, but never taking theirs eyes off of it. Not until then does the bus driver go on the intercom telling them to take it off the bus.

At some point, it turns to blows against the guy. I hit send on my cell phone, which I had pre-dialed for 911 earlier on (hoping it wouldn't come to this, but fearing it might). They drag him off the bus by his legs, he is screaming "Help me!". No one really moves or does anything. The two gay men at least hold on to his arms to prevent him from being dragged onto the street off the back exit stairs (but without getting out of their seats and with the urgency of holding onto a handrail). UGh, my reception is bad and it takes what seems like an eternity to connect; I finally do. I relay some basic people/location information. The operator tells me to stay on the line, but I'm entering a tunnel and afraid I will lose my connection. Then someone on the bus says...."I see the police". I look out the window..sirens. Someone got to 911 before me, thank god.

The bus continues on. The next set of passengers board at the next stop. Business as usual. The new people don't know any better, the old people act as if nothing happened.

If walls do retain the vibrations of all the experiences/sounds of things past, as some scientists speculate, it's a wonder than any sensitive person could possibly sit on a bus without a sense of distress.

How many things are wrong with this scene?
The possible stolen goods? The physical violence? The indifference/fear for personal safety, yet persistant curiosity of onlookers? Me, pre-dialing 911? Me, watching the people, watch the people? The one bus stop return to normal? The fact that while writing on this blog I have to think about using politically correct labels(words), which at the end of the day mean nothing unless you actually treat people with respect(action)?

Sadly, this is the second time I've had reason to call 911 on the bus. The first time I was about 12 and someone got stabbed and everyone climbed over me to get to the windows (to jump out). Life is far more surreal and twisted than the essay on Filliou/Surrealism that I was reading on the bus.

Dream Sequence

2006-04-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

Monoprint: Kontiki (Over Isla Mujeres), Terry Chastain, 1999

I had a dream I and others were transported by aliens (not a hostile abduction) in a blimp named Randy. They weren't here to harm or probe us, but to teach us how to find the meaning of (our own) life through exercises and activites. Led by resident alien, Brian Denehey, of Cocoon fame (yes, my alien visual dream dictionary is very limited, though it's interesting that the blimp is the same shape as the cocoons), the exercise given to me was a 'I start a sentence and you finish it'. He said, "When I die, I feel nothing....". I told him I couldn't finish it because I didn't agree with the statement (nevermind that it is already a grammatically complete thought.) I started my own sentence, "When I die, I feel everything."

Shortly after, I was lulled into wake-state.

The back burners of my mind have been on simmer mode lately: thinking about religion and spirituality, but not of any indoctrinated or oogey-boogey variety. Raised Methodist (at home), Jesuit (for 1-2nd grades), Secular (3-8th grades), Catholic (9-12th), World's My Oyster ( the Berkeley-Italy years), and Dabbler's Delight Yogic Practice (eastern slant with a twist of western urbanity), like it or not, religion of one sort or another has been a part of my life. Maybe not on a very conscious level...as I spent most of my early years fending off fanaticism from my father. But with a bit of time-distance (and a mix of skepticism and curiosity), I've been reflecting on what makes up my own personal sense of . . . religiosity, if you will.

addendum: My inner demons are still debating the nothing = everything formula. Clearly haven't made the connect yet.

Shake & Bake - 100 year Anniversary

2006-04-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning thinking, today marks the anniversary of the great San Francisco Earthquake. The City of grumble and flames, circa 1906. What better way to start my blog than with a little tremor of anticipation and a chance to shake my tree for ripe ideas and loose thoughts.