My studio/living space on 2/20/2010


Sketch 2/20/2010


Gift from Joshua


Start of collaborative drawing between Joshua and myself. Joshua began it now I am working on it.

My studio/living space on 2/16/2010

Brite Ideas

Durham Museum.

Covered Wagon

1949 Ak-Sar-Ben Coronation

Italians

Grate under former ticket booth.

Birds

Exercise


Today I finished with the collage portion of 9 drawings. I have posted images of them here. They are portraits of characters I have been thinking about and some of them are mutations of beings that I have been working with.

I may very well ruin them in the next layer of working.

Desire and gifts.

I am starting to work on a structure and costume (top image 2/10/2010). Hoarder fortification.

Friday afternoon I visited the Durham Museum. The museum is housed in the former Union Station. I received a brief history lesson on Omaha. I didn't know about the Omaha Stockyards and was surprised by the picture of the Stock Exchange building set in the middle of hundreds of livestock pens. The building is now condos. When I walked into the room that housed information on the Stockyards a sensor switched on a recording of a cow mooing, I was startled.

There is a diorama of the 1898 Trans-Mississippi and International. On the wall there is a sample of how the buildings were constructed to look like white marble. The structures where made of wood slats with three layers of plaster and fiber spread over them.

One of my favorite things in the museum was a 3-D black light mural of the Italian section of the city. It was housed in between a trolley car and the wall. When I entered the trolley car and had a seat it looked like I was riding through a neighborhood. The mural was made by Bill Shook.

At the end of the month a new exhibition opens called "Are We There Yet?". There will be dioramas and 30 pedal cars: I will go.


ps.Wuthering Heights

Sketch 2/10/10

Sketch as of 2/10/10

Washing Mylar (Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate [boPET]) chip bags.

a sketch as of 2/7/10


a sketch as of 2/8/10


I have been trying to substitute images of objects for hoarding actual objects in my studio (I can tell you it is only working so-so). This weekend I decided to lay out about a quarter of what I have cut out onto pieces of paper.

A rule that I have for myself is that I am not to purchase the magazines. I have to find them or they have to be given to me. This is to, hopefully, diversify what I have in my stock of images. But I will admit that while going through the magazines I tend to gravitate towards the candy colored glossy "girly" shapes and colors.... and to the images of food.

I am a vegetarian but I am so attracted to the images of animal flesh in magazines it is unreal. I don't desire to eat it as much as sit down and stare at it. It is a combination of horror and desire. I always think of Carolee Schneemann's Meat Joy and how it made me so mad the first time I saw it but also how I desired to be naked and have a chicken slapped against my body.

The problem that I am finding with my collection of cut-outs is that I am being a bit fussy about them. I am a little afraid to use them and worried that I might run out of them or not use them to their fullest extent. As a kid I would cut images out of catalogs and newspapers and just staple them right into the wall, my room was covered from floor to ceiling and on the ceiling with cut-outs (my parents let me because I was afraid of the oak walls with their knots that looked like fierce faces). I think that I need to approach my current collection in a similar way otherwise they are just going to keep being tucked away in envelopes and eventually yellow and crumble....we'll see.

On magazine images Isa Newby Gagarin has a collaborative piece up at the Rochester Art Center. Smells Like Teen Spirit is a collaboration with students from the Rochester Art Center on collecting pictures and appropriating them into an artistic book/installation. The show is up until April 11th, 2010 in the Atrium Gallery.

Blanket I am sleeping with.


My studio/living space on 2.2.10


My studio/living space on 2.4.10


Book on Lucas Samaras. I never really read anything about him until now. Feel like this was a mistake on my part and should have read about him a while ago.


Tonight was the Bemis Center's ArtTalk Lecture. Callyann Casteel and Ben Kinsley presented their work.

Callyann creates these incredible costumes/sculptures that are amalgamations of pattern and shape. They are distortions of the figure and many are bound or have layered objects placed upon them. These beings are very large, around 8ft tall. She doesn't have a website at this time so the selection of images at the link I provided is limited in scope compared to the images she showed tonight.

She began and ended her talk with images of the landscape near Eugene Oregon. She and her fiance just moved to Omaha from the Eugene area. She talked about while she was in Oregon she didn't produce a lot of work but instead spent a lot of time hiking and being out in the landscape. She showed pictures that she had taken of the Oregon landscape.

Ben's work is very exciting to me because I am too shy to ever orchestrate anything like it. I find his work funny but also thoughtful. Tonight he talked about three projects: Skagaströnd Yee-Haw!, A Sea-some Medley, and Street with a View

Street with a View was a collaboration with Robin Hewlett. The project injects situations into Google Street View images of Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh, PA. I recommend going to the website and looking at the google street view.

I am leaving for the Bemis Center in Omaha, Nebraska in the morning. I will be participating in their residency program for the next three months.

ps. The due date for the next round of applications for a residency here is February 28th.

Doll fort being interrogated and prodded by the Gunderson Family. The gentleman with the beard is trying to explain that we are harmless, I think she mistook us for a doll rock.
Visitors outside the Tiny Shanty.
Outside the Gunderson's shanty with their penguin.

These are pictures from last weekend at the Art Shanty Projects. I performed with my portable doll fort on Sunday (Saturday it rained). I was surprised how warm it was in Minnesota. The lake had so much water on top of it. I got very wet. I think the temperatures have now dropped so the ice should be back to firm. I had a really great time and was so happy that I got to go. These pictures were taken by Joshua Vrysen.

Something I have been noticing when performing in public is that people want to take your picture. This is fine maybe even great, but sometimes I worry that they just take your picture but really don't think about what is happening in the performance and why you might be doing it. I wonder if it gets thrown up to being wacky and that's about it?

Also a very nice thing: I am mentioned in this months featured article in Art Papers on Elsewhere in Greensboro, NC which can be found here. I had done a residency at Elsewhere in 2005 and 2006. The organization has grown and received several awards in the past couple years including an NEA grant and an Andy Warhol Foundation grant. It is amazing to watch an museum/program begin and grow. Here is their revamped website.

another note:
Um, I live in Massachusetts and I voted on Tuesday. I am somewhat surprised.

Happy new year a day late and a dollar shot... I mean short.

the nights are getting shorter

photo credit: Joshua Vrysen


cosmic craft crap

sometimes when I feel like punching myself in the face I put this nice bag on


Myself and my relationship to my work;
joy (back and forth)
anxiety, accumulate material, accumulate motion
willingness to fail.

Please come over sometime. We can eat something crunchy and go for a walk and look and find. I want you to see it and I want for you, if nothing else, to appreciate. I know that is a grand desire.

Welcome hands this is how this feels, and for right now you can put that there and that there and that there.


Two exhibition catalogs I found yesterday that I am excited about:
Beyond Desire (2005)
Beyond Green toward a sustainable art (2005)

"the bear is in the igloo"

I know you said just war as in "I support a just war"

Did you ever see that episode of "Night Court" when someone became possessed by a ghost and everyone kept thinking that the ghost wanted "just ice" because of the way the possessed wrote down justice on a piece of paper.

just in justin

I am going to Minnesota in January to perform at the Ice Shanties. I will be performing January 23 and 24 on Medicine Lake in Plymouth Minnesota between the hours of 1pm - 4pm. If you are in the cities or around it would be nice to see you. I am going to perform with my portable doll fort pictured here.

Here is a link to the Art Shanty Project website.

Eat Me.




.......on another note, if you are around the Amherst area Tom Friedman is speaking at the University Gallery today at 5:30 pm.

Link to the University Gallery:
http://www.umass.edu/fac/universitygallery/highlighted.html

Link to Tom Friedman on the Gagosian website:
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/tom-friedman/

When One Is Trapped Inside A Rock


Things we are thinking about today:

Infantilism

It is snowing today but it was 70 degrees Fahrenheit two days ago.

Rita MacDonald's video interview http://www.vimeo.com/7832385
Janelle Iglesias' video interview http://www.vimeo.com/7555655
Yoko Inoue's video interview http://www.vimeo.com/7552965

Tumble Cat Poof Poofy Poof in Palmer at the bowling alley.

smoking or non smoking

Have you ever watched Guy Madden's The Saddest Music in the World?

I think I might not be using time well.

CALL AND RESPONSE



This is the show card for Call and Response and my response piece to Sara Veglahn's piece of writing called Mayflies.

The show is curated by the artist Diana Simard. It opens on November 14th and will be up until December 10th at the Central Gallery located on the University of Massachusetts at Amherst campus.

Here is the link to the blog that Diana Simard has put together for the show http://call-and-response.tumblr.com/

This blog has images or text from all of the artists/writers participating in the show and a synopsis of the concept for the show.

grab your wing and run
my tail is strong and will fuck you up

Tonight, Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Hillside Salon at Umass Amherst.
I am speaking for 6m 40s
Showing slides and video excerpts
Pecha Kucha (“pe-chak-cha”)

The event is being held from 6-8pm at the Chancellor's home at Umass Amherst. The other 4 artists talking about there work are Amy “BannerQueen” Johnquest, Silas Kopf, Chris Nelson, and Shona Macdonald.

you can read more here:
http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/newsreleases/articles/92359.php

I am in the new Gladtree journal along with many other wonderful wonders of western mass and beyond. It is edited by John Shaw. If you would like to learn more about The Gladtree Collective or purchase a journal please go to http://www.gladtree.com/print.htm#journal3


Also I have uploaded 2 videos on my vimeo account, if you would like to see them please go here http://www.vimeo.com/user394020

My profile picture on vimeo was taken by Molly Roth on our visit to the Minneapolis Science Museum so long ago!