working on this thing and what not

so i have two crates of these spikes that someone gave and i started attaching them to each other
and i keep attaching more, I intend to use both crates of spikes but it will take awhile, this took me two days

i finally got my these lids cleaned up and i hope i can throw some into the reorientation show next week


i never put this up but this was the thermoplastic before it collapsed, i started building it back up to size, but it will take me awhile, i might take this stuff with me to the ox-bow residency and work on making the piece there.


i spent most of this week working on odds and ends, getting the truck registered, getting my first haircut since last year, starting some new work and taking care of applications. Everything was pretty routine except my friend owen from grad school happened to be in the south. His job had him traveling to birmingham alabama, and since he was the closest he would ever be to south carolina he caught a bus here and now we will do our best to inundate him with southern culture. I have only about 2 and half weeks left until i leave for ox-bow, so i will just try and focus and let things happen as it gets closer.

first glass stack and a fun week

This past week between working for the halsey gallery and working in and on the studio i spent a couple nights hanging out with old friends from college. The whole week has made me feel younger since I was working on my old college campus during the day and hanging out with the same artists i hung out with in the studio during college. All week at their beach house seth and jamie served their wedding leftovers to anyone who would stop by. I confess I went twice this week and crashed my diet on their food. I made some progress in the studio on the small room that was the office, but i am converting it into a clean gallery installation room. I have been thinking a lot about the upcoming residencies and how best to spend my time when i get there. I continue to work on applications and find that I am devoting equal amounts of mental energy to writing and applying for opportunities as I am to making art for said opportunities. Oh well, Today i am going to hang out with brooke since she has been in the field all week and has to go back on monday. holy crap lightening just struck the house and blew up the air conditioner and the phone, but the power and the internet, crazy!

congratulations seth and jamie

Today is jamie self's and seth gadsden's wedding. It should be a pretty cool event and it is on the beach so that will be fun. Last week after working at the halsey i managed to finish framing and packing the pieces for the show in california and managed to get them in the mail yesterday. The next thing I have to worry about is trying to get back to finishing the studio, and starting on some new work. My schedule will be pretty tight for the next couple of months, and i just have to write it out to make it seem real. This week I will be working down at the halsey gallery, next week I will be working in the studio and figuring out what I am going to do for my class for redux. Even though the class is an intro to printmaking workshop, i want to make a really useful handout/reference guide for the people so they can work on their own. Then on september 14th I take off for Ox-bow until October 12th, then October13th-28th I will be at the sumter residency. I will be back in charleston from Oct28th-November 24th, when we will have to finish all the wedding plans and hopefully I will have the first of three openings at my studio over the course of next year. Oh and the new media festival and computer conference at redux and the college of charleston will be november 16th. November 25th- December 21st I will be at the vermont studio center. Then from december 22nd until january 20th we will be working on the wedding. February is the caa conference and who knows what else will pop up between now and then. So I hope i can stay focused and keep up this pace. I heard a thing recently about creative idea and invention development, the writer was saying that nothing creative happens when the creator is under stress. so i am heading that warning and tying to let the new ideas just come from the quiet moments I spend with my cup of coffee.

the french cleat and other occurances

this is a french cleat
the wall mount for the french cleat...i mean freedom cleat.

taking a moment to admire my handy work, yep definitely levelso here are the two finished pieces for the paper cuts show, french cleat and all.
I have been finishing up the framing for the paper cuts show, and decided to use the most stable and reliable method of mounting work, the french cleat. I learned about the french cleat after many years of hanging art shows for myself and for others. the french cleat is a stable mounting system with a ledge on the wall and a ledge on the art. I know for a little while there was a movement in the artworld to rename it the freedom cleat but that seemed to peter out. It would be a good time to mention that all this week I am working down at the college of charleston's Halsey institute for mark sloan installing a show called the projectionist. After 3 years spent working as the preparator for the natalie and james thompson gallery in san jose it is refreshing to be in a new space. The halsey institute is kind of quirky, if the thompson galleries strangest attribute was the baby puke colored floor then the halsey's is it's bizarre architecture. I am really enjoying being in a gallery that has two floors, it is very different then the windowless white cube i worked in before. This gig is only temporary though and I don't anticipate being there much past next week. as with any gallery work, it gives me time to think about the gallery space itself and the way in which work looks in a white walled environment. oh well tomorrow we start to hang the works on the walls.
this just reminds me of a really great tony cragg sculpture stack.

so humid you can see the marsh evaporate

so i am starting over on the plastic piece since it collapsed under the pressure of it's own weight
the cat finally succumbs to the heat wave.

so i found out i will be an artist in residence at the ox-bow school of art in september and that i will have a piece in a show here in charleston that opens the same weekend as the show in california. This has me a little worried since the heat index has been so extreme that i have been staying out of the studio for health reasons and working on wedding stuff with brooke instead. I still need to frame the two rust prints for the california show, and on monday I start working for the halsey gallery here in town so that my time will become much tighter. I did get some really cool news from redux here in town when i confirmed with julie henson that I would be teaching an introductory print workshop. I am pretty excited since this will get me in the print studio and thinking about ways to develop some new imagery. The only setback is that the thermoplastic piece i was toying around with for the sumter show, collapsed and I will have to figure out something else. Another thing about that show is that the theme is kind of recycled or reclaimed materials, so i am pretty confident i can rely on my resourcefulness when i get there. in the meantime here are some alternate ideas i am toying with.


so my fallback plan for sumter is to weave stir sticks from the first floor through to the second flooranother idea is to create the mirror image of the ceiling on the floor, by building the oval piece and placing a large piece of mirrored acrylic down to create a reflecting pool.

brooke got back, and my autographed arnold schwarzaneggar paraphenalia arrived

i changed the shape of the thermoplastic piece and am using the ladder a s a brace to help shape the plastic in a more vertical direction.brooke and I enjoyed a picnic lunch in the studio today, before running various errands and what not



so yeah i got my degree in the mail, and brooke came back, so things are moving along pretty good. I started to change the shape of the green plastic piece and I think i probably won't use it for the sumter residency. I have a couple other ideas I want to test out involving plastic and one using cardboard. I realized that I need to mount and frame the two pieces for the show in california and get them in the mail soon.

Brooke returns tomorrow

so this is the plastic piece with all the green, tomorrow i will start adding the blue



so the boys from transit antenna are back in charleston and this is the dirty detroit diesel engine powering their livesof course seth has been back in south carolina for aprocimately 36 hours and that is his 40tth cup of sweet tea
this is bob and that thing on his lip is all that is left of his beard

bob and seth came by and saw the studio on thursday and then we (bob, dawn, taylor, seth and myself) went to bessinger's barbecue for lunch. While in bessinger's seth came to the realization that he was in fact back in the south. This truth was confirmed by the five gallon dispenser of sweet tea which was towering over the 1 gallon dispenser of un-sweet tea. After I finished lunch with them I headed over to phil estes' house to play music with him and his brother, and then I collapsed. Today I stayed pretty focused and finished up the rest of the green thermoplastic, tomorrow I will start adding the blue thermoplastic to the piece. Brooke get's back tomorrow night so that will be nice, because I could really use an extra hand around the studio.

a very plastic existence

i out the plastic object up on this board and boxes so i couid sit comfortably in the chair and build the piece.
so this is a detail of the plastic object it is really starting to take on a life of it's own.
the rust print on the far left is the newest one i just pulled it out today

this is a little video showing some of the process involved with this thermoplastic stuff


so i am knee deep in this plastic stuff, and I am realizing i may not have quite enough to do what i was planning for sumter so i might have to do something a little bit different. either way I am going to see this plastic piece through until the end. After working in the studio today I am headed to play music, and then I will collapse from an exhausting day of creative activities. Oh I almost forgot, I spoke to bob, and seth who are here in charleston with the the transit antenna bus. The bus is actually parked only a couple of miles from my studio so I am sure it will make an appearance here soon.