living in charleston, looking at charleston

sometimes for me living in charleston is like being in a difficult relationship that should have ended years ago. Charleston is a beautiful place to live, and a unique place to be raised and come of age. I can look at charleston in all sorts of ways, point a camera in any direction and you have a great shot. the word picturesque does not even begin to cover the true look of the city.
Even our trash piles our beautiful.

But sometimes it feels like too much of a good thing. I find myself spending an inordinate amount of time in my studio. Somedays I leave my apartment go to the studio and stay until dark and then go home. I never really think of it as hiding, the isolation in a windowless room just seems a necessary function of my commitment to art making. But if the art i make is to be a reflection of the life i live and the interests and discoveries i make as a result of that life, how quickly will the work reflect my relationship to charleston? It is true that since we moved back from California last june I have been in and out of town so much that I barely noticed we were living in charleston again. After i got back from Vermont in december it was wedding time and since then i have been working on applications and chasing more stable income sources here. It is the process of interviewing, writing and applying for jobs and residencies that has me so introspective. I am fortunate in one way since i have always questioned, to a fault, what is happening around me in my environment. The problem is when i look too carefully at Charleston, She starts to look stale and rotten. I love her too much to rail against her the way i did when I was younger, but the problems are still in my face. I wonder if i will just use charleston as a perpetual pit stop in our life travels. As brooke looks towards more education in the next 2-5 years we will just continue to shuttle between here and someplace else. In the end I don't know if it matters. but in the interim wandering around looking at things in charleston gets me thinking.

on any given morning in charleston you can find the empty bins of trash strewn out on the doorsteps of any of the hundreds of bars and restaurants we have here


here is a typical sight. Native Palm trees are often times systematically planted along the streets to give a "natural" feel to the city. I really liked this one the way it was, laying down on the job.


this is something you will see in any historic town with buildings that have had upgrades. All the plumbing and pipes are on the outside of the house, sort of like a shit pipe exoskeleton

one big ass water bottle, and several tiny water bottles

so here is the casting area after a bit of use. I keep saving all the scraps and chips that break off of the molds, because i know i will need them for an upcoming installation.


this is the painting area, where i apply my colors assembly style, by hand .
here are some shots of the ever growing army of water bottles drying in the studio

brooke says that these remind her of the juan munoz sculptures at the hirschorn museum in dc, i tend to agree.

here is me with the big water bottle,and the water bottle from vermont that started the conversation that is guiding this piece
i still need to finish up the bottom, and i keep crossing my fingers that i will not run out of material before i reach the end.


so i have been a water bottle machine lately in the studio. I keep popping out an army of little plaster water bottles, and i keep working on the giant welded steel water bottle. I think it is amazing how i always find the materials i need. the steel water bottle is a great example, all those pieces were given to me for free,and the plastic i am using as a mold to make my small water bottles is leftover packaging from stuff i purchased for the studio. i keep hearing stuff on public radio about how bottled water is wasteful of resources and what not, so it seems timely that i countinue to obsess on water bottles. water bottles, coffee cups, rust, plastic, and compact flourescent light bulbs, these are a few of my favorite things.

the duel

I went to visit my wife Brooke on saturday for the public day at the historical kolb site where she is digging this week. For the public day they had several people demonstrating historic technologies. One of the people was a revolutionary war re-enactor dude, who was letting people shoot a 1762 era powder musket.

casting about for all sorts of shit

here are numbers 7, 8 , and 9 of an edition of 10 works on paper i recently completed. Each piece consists of a series of archival inkjet prints on paper, and includes a laser inscribed cd and each piece is signed and numbered, and in case the collectors don't want the pieces each comes with a self addressed stamped envelope to facilitate a smooth first right of refusal.

Seriously in the last 6 weeks i feel like i have produced as many of these(application packets for jobs, residencies, and exhibitions) as i have artwork.

some of the results of my new casting project. I have been saving all the plastic packaging that comes with so called environmentally friendly lightbulbs. I don't know why but it strikes me as funny that the plastic packages make perfect molds for casting objects. I haven't decided yet if i am going to paint these or not, but i do know i will use them as elements for arrangements and patternmaking

this my new casting area, right here on this square of plastic, if casting is done off of the plastic it will not work...no really, the plaster of paris only sets up properly when it is mixed on top of plastic sheeting. it's a french thing.

i keep dinking around with the greem plastic coffee cup mass.

so i have been working on six things at once for a change, which is strangely satisfying. but i have not neglected the water bottle, I managed to fashion the cap and continue fleshing out the body.

I always think of the way i live my life and make my work as a bit of an unmitigated stream of consciousness. It is true that sometimes my stream consists of pop-culture, 80's television, games shows, the internet and art. My stream is no less valid than people who have existential streams of consciousness. I sometimes think of it as my very own scream of consciousness. In the process of living my life and doing my work, both the paid kind and the unpaid kind, i "discover" things and ideas that i haven't noticed before. Lately one of these things has been the way i remember things i see and record them in my memory. Often times when i make art I don't make preliminary drawings or i sort of draw what is around me in the studio, coffee cup sleeves, water bottles and what not. All of these things end up in my output. Now while I am thinking about it I still don't like the idea of calling artists works output, but it sort of lines up with what i do and think. I like to take in stuff, both physical and mental, and spit out something in response to it, sculpture, music, writing etc. Brooke and I were carpooling to work the other morning and she pointed out how they had painted this one particular charleston row house green. I didn't think much of it until i found a pile of scrap wood and some old broom handles, and then it hit me I should make a 3-d sketch of the house, and so i did, and that was that.

um yeah and then there is this

i made these compaccino flourescent bulbs the other day, just doing my part to help out the environment
when i told the electrical dude at home depot what i neded the ceramic light fixtures and black 12/3 electrical cord he looked at me strange , like he had never heard of a coffee cup lamp before, oh well. i will have to photograph it when it is dark it puts out an amazing light.


so i have had a string of setbacks and rejections since i got back from caa, but i guess life wouldn't be interesting if there was not some balance to it. After i finished working in the studio the other day I couldn't get a certain song out of my head, so i made a video with it, enjoy.

and yesterday i got to indulge in a little drumming. instead of playing his guitar phil occupied much of the time and audio scape with loops and noises

today i have to drive all day delivering art for a curator here in town, by the end of the day I will have been to the edge of south carolina and back, aproximately 8 hours round trip.