george carlin vs. bruce nauman

it is no secret that i enjoy contemplting the orignal context works of art were presented in historically in order to better understand them, but it is unusual that the death of a comedian would prompt me to re-evaluate the context of another artist. George Carlin, was a wordsmith through and through, a punster with a penchant for opining his views on everything from drugs and suicide to the way popular prhases sound. His hippy dippy persona was in conflict with the way he used words. Carlin was truly erudite in his approach but down to earth enough to reach everyone.

a classic george carlin bit playing with words and their meanings


Bruce Nauman is also an artist of george carlin's generation who drew ideas from the sounds of words and the way we say them. Like George Carlin he based his work on his own direct observations of the artistic practice.like george carlin, bruce nauman's early youthful experiementation paved the way for the rest of his career. In this piece nauman has actors conjugate a series of action verbs in monotone repetitive phrases. in the same way that carlins rythmic recitation of the 7 words you can't say on tv creates content, nauman's script for his actors creates the piece
a nauman piece playing with words

thinking about george carlin's passing and nauman's develpoment i realized that wordl play and reevaluation of meaning were actually generational during the sixties and seventies. I think in a less profound way the new wordsmithing of compulsive text messengers is also changing the way we perceive language like carlin and nauman did. I think a good contemporary representation of both carlin and nauman's influence is this video by julia bradshaw

to see bradshaw's complete explanation go to her website juliabradshaw.com

for my part i have been working at my new job at the museum,
here are a few shots of my desk

these are some of the office supplies i found strewn about

and this is a monument to september 11th utilizing some of the other office supplies i found laying around

trying to play music and keep my studio in order. after the big rainstorms several of my walls got soaked with water and now a small growth of mold is on them. i will either have to pull them out completely or cut out and replace the moldy sections. I went into the studio recently thinking i would work on some new stuff but instead i made a shelving system for my drums

so i could store them in the apartment. I have been working on some new ideas for objects but got too focused on searching for new imagery. I feel pretty good that in the coming months i will resolve the water bottle works and create a cohesive suite of work out of the large bottle, the small cast bottles on the shelves and some works on paper. once i resolve them i will set them all up as one big installation in the studio and photograph them together.
this is a picture of the storefront i was going to renovate and turn into the brilliant gallery.
I had even made this photshop image of what the gallery sign might have looked like with the blinking red arrow(if you can't tell the text says "brilliant gallery").

The building owner was talking to me and i told him i needed to think about it and he rented it to some one else, but the other day i drove by and the for rent sign was still in the window, so who knows maybe i will still get it. I had all sorts of ideas and designs and i even had a nice mission statement worked up for the gallery. so the next time a little store front comes up for rent i will not hesitate to jump on it.