can't really complain

this is the happiest cat in the world, he has a little bell around his neck and just pounces through the snow onto chipmunks.now i know i left my truck around here somewhere, maybe it is under that pile of snow
more of the filed behind my studio



yesterday i walked circles in the snow, kind of fun, this weekend after it snows i am organizing a croquet game in the snow

for the first time in a while i have really felt focused and less anxious. I am continuing to explore the welded spike piece and am moving it more in the direction of a basket. i continue to revel at the sheer amount of snow, there really is something about the crisp air and white landscape that helps focus the mind. Today I am doing laundry and fortunately the laundromat has wireless. Now back to the snow.

vermont i'm lovin it

this is the updated drawing of how the internet really works that i am working on here. this time i am drawing out every hit that comes up under a google search of my name.



the only sound for miles was the scraping of the plow blade against the road. I love fresh snow fall.

it is hard to tell but the coffee cup on the drawing on the right is drawn with this reflective pearl white guache i got.

while i was working on this piece today i placed that vice on the bottom to hold up and i think i like the vice there so i may just buy a new one to use as a support for the piece.

thanksgiving in washington dc and my first 8 hours at the vermont studio center

Thanksgiving was nice i spent it in washington dc visiting my brother. It was a great way to break up the drive to vermont. While we were in dc we had dinner with an old friend of the families, whose new business partner is the brother of connor oberst of bright eyes. I personally didn't know who bright eyes was, but we had dinner with him and his family and they are very nice people, he is very soft spoken and polite, and his mother was an art teacher and a painter which is okay in my book. After the dinner i looked him up and it turns out he really is a rock star, but i am so out of touch with todays rock music that I didn't know who he was. I guess if i had known who he was i would have asked him to pose for a picture or something.
here are some pictures from thanksgiving in dc

now on to vermont
I am very excited about the chance to be here at the vermont studio center. It is the first time in awhile that i have walked into a situation and everything seems really perfect. My studio is completely private, but still adjacent to the shop ie. from my studio door to the welding table and equipment is ten paces. I have two windows in my studio, which is the first time i have had windows in my studio in 6 years. the windows look out onto a snow covered field. I keep having memories of alaska from the 90's when i lived there. The cold weather is just so refreshing and it feels nice to hear snow squeeking under my boots when I walk. On the drive up here I stopped at the ben and jerry's factory to take a tour of vermonts most famous ice cream factory, pretty cool, and the free sample wasn't half bad either. For this resindency I only brought the steel spike piece and ten sheets of 38"x50" paper and some drawing materials. with any luck at the end of the residency I will have 10 new drawings and a finished sculpture to take back with me, if not though I will still enjoy living in a snowy town for a month.
getting to know my new studio in vermont.




this part of the country's coffee culture is dominated by dunkin donuts, not starbucks. there are 7 dunkin donuts within driving distance of here, while i don't care for dunkin's donuts their coffee and coffeee cups are pretty good. if you can't tell from this picture their lids are the deluxe lids with a built in spill proof snap down part for the mouthpiece, pretty snazzy.

when work wear becomes fashion wear

I love my carhart double knee work pants. i wear them basically everyday to the studio. they are truly work pants. But I have noticed a trend where people who work in gallery offices and arts administration where carhartt and dickie work pants as their daily wear. It is a strange moment in contemporary fashion when work wear, a practical no frills pant, becomes fashion wear. This past week I have been consumed with doing odd jobs and getting organized in the studio and getting ready for my residency at the vermont studio center which starts next week. I have promised myself and brooke that after the vermont studio center residency i would lay off the residencies for awhile and concentrate on working closer to home. This weekend has been interesting so far since I got to hang out with joel slayton from san jose state university yesterday. He happens to be in town for a conference here, so i got to show him the old city. I always forget how strange the architecture and sights of charleston are until i have to explain them to outsiders.

meanwhile back in the studio

I re hung the coffee cups so they could mingle with the related rust print and maybe give me some ideas
so I have been letting the plastic piece slowly consume my coffee cup collection and in the background i have been reorganizing the rust prints to create new groupings for future shows.
these are some nifty new coffee cup lids i liberated from a gas station in Tennessee. I really think they would make a great large scale public playground piece. the lids have a built in flap that makes a perfect connective system for chaining them together with other lids

so i started building the second half of this piece, and this will probably go with me to vermont studio center when i go on the 25th. Although I said i was taking this with me to the ox-bow residency, but this time i am 99% certain i want to finish it in vermont
i am master of my domain, a rat and roach infested domain, but master none the less.

so i got back in the studio and worked on some of the stuff in there. I have been agonizing over a decision and sometimes working in the studio helps clear my mind. To make matters worse tomorrow is my 31st birthday and I don't feel like i should be this old. I still haven't prepped for the print class i am teaching at redux on monday, but i think if i spend saturday and or sunday and focus i can prep all my demos and materials ahead of time. Unfortunately the moment i finish teaching at redux i have to hit the road and male tracks to vermont for my residency there. Oh well I guess when you get as old as i am you type things out so you don't forget them.

knoxville has got it going on

After sumter i went to Knoxville with brooke who was attending the southeastern archaelogical convention. While brooke networked with diggers and other science types I explored knoxville, and the university of tennessee at knoxville's, legendary printmaking program. Most of my time was spent working on applications and walking around the city of knoxville taking pictures of textures and other things that caught my eye



On friday night we went out for knoxville's first friday gallery crawl, which was really great we got to see the legendary yee-haw industries and many other of knoxville's finest art establishments. The highlight of the artwalk though was a swarm of bats that moved unlike anything we had ever seen, I tried to capture them on camera but it does not do it justice.