Ready for my close up

As Part of the "Contemporary Charleston 2009: Revelation of the Process" exhibition, each participating artist is being documented in their process on the way to the exhibition. Since I plan to create an entirely site specific/site responsive installation, I won't begin the actual process of making until it gets closer to the exhibition. In the meantime the documentary film maker has met me at a coffee shop to do an interview and get some action shots of me liberating stir sticks from their natural environment. Additionally he came back to the studio to get some actions shots of me working on other things, as well he shot some footage of me taking measurements of the city gallery

you can see the pretty cool light ste up he brought with him.

I thought it might be a cool idea if he got some footage of me playing drums as well. It might be interesting to use some of my own artist generated audio as background for the documentary. To that end he also got some footage of me messing with my feedback loops and other improvised audio devices.

Obviously i set up my own camera and tripod on a timer to capture some of the process as well. All and all it was a fun day and it has me even more anxious/excited about the charleston installation. The Show Opens May 15th, but I should be able to get on site by May 4th to begin weaving.

Spring

Spring is here, sort of, and many deadlines and opportunities have sprung upon me. I am very grateful that "big ass water bottle" has been accepted into the north Charleston river front park sculpture walk,

Big Ass water Bottle will find a new home starting May 1st at the North Charleston River front park and will remain on display through March of 2010

I will also be doing an indoor installation for the city of charleston in their gallery at water front park as part of the contemporary charleston exhibition(opens May 15th and runs through July 26th). I love the balance that this creates with an outdoor piece in a park just up the river from the place I will be doing stir stick installation.

this is one possibility for the city gallery piece. I always enjoy using the cloning tool in photoshop , rather crudely, to predict possible forms I will generate once i begin work on site. But as is always the case I never know what is going to happen until i get started.

caa yearly wrap up

a blurry view of the flight in to LA. Although it wasn't my first trip to LA it was the first time since i left California.

This is one of those rare intersections of cultures that seems so LA. The convention center where the conference was being held also served double duty for the mass swearing in of new american citizens. There was something very cosmic about the two energies of these groups colliding at the convention center. I know there is a great punchline in there about the expectant citizen being sworn in and the eager art nerds waiting to be inspired by their peers and the location around them.

This one of my favorite things that happens every year, these tables in front of the bulletin board become a dumping ground for every possible leaflet you could imagine. By the end of the first day the organized piles just become this mass of printed matter like a mini David Mach Installation.

Of course I did manage to get over to the Broad Contemporary art center at Lacma where they had a couple new Richard Serra's. Big Papa never ceases to amaze, this set actually featured a triple curving form, with multiple interior spaces. Big Papa always brings it with his sculpture and these were no exception. Although this time I kept thinking about Roberta Smith's line in that ny times article about public art where she said that he has essentially been remaking tilted arc in various permutations since the first one was removed, and god bless him for it. I am sure as long as people are willing to build buildings around his pieces, he will continue to make them.

Another favorite aspect of caa is all the evening receptions. This is a quick shot of the spread from the reception at the LACMA, it included little sandwiches, some sort of rice salad, a great cheese and fruit plate, and really cool crackers for the cheese

the chris burden lamppost installation at the broad contemporary art center, which they call the bcam. the piece is a lot of fun and formally beautiful to walk through. It also seems to have some resonance with robert irwin's work, who it turns out was an early teacher/mentor of burdens. Although in his talk Irwin claimed no responsibility for the way chris burden turned out and in fact said he was already that way when he worked with him.

every year i look forward to the caa conference, and this year was no exception. I managed to hop from session to session this year and get a really great dose of art related discusions. I sometimes lose hope living in cultural isolated place, but being in LA, and seeing great speakers was uplifting. One of the nice things about the conference is it is a chance to put a face and a voice to the theorists i read. when I am reading many of these thinkers work I assign what i imagine their voice to be like or what their look is, but year after year i get that mental image shattered. In 2006 It was the discovery that when Arthur Danto reads his talks he sways like some sort of rabbi at a podium. This year it was the discovery that Grant Kester was in fact a pretty casual cool dude, despite his writing and ideas. I also got to see the exhibition art of the two germanys which really was both depressing and inspiring. I caught a really funny interview with Robert Irwin who is not only a funny insightful artist but in his early years taught artists like vija celmins, chris burden and ed ruscha, among others in his classes. He said of Chris Burden that he always had two questions about him, 1) is he sane? 2) is he dangerous? He shared many personal anecdotes about the california art scene and his early start with it. There were several panels focused on social networking and among the various takes were two intriguing presentations. The first was a talk on the ideas of race in a virtual or game environment like second life, the other was a british guy talking about the role of myspace in organizing civil disobedience and political protest. It is hard to encapsulate the experience but every year i am amazed at the random connections and meetings that lead to a follow up conversation the next year. Although next years is in Chicago, which means it will probably get snowed out like the new york conference in 2007, but we will see. maybe one year they will have it in miami, so all the pasty white art historians and theorists can let loose of the black wardrobe for a change. I am still fighting a cold/soar throat nastines that seemed to follow me back across country, i will consider it a parting gift of the conference. the caa also mainted a pretty sparse but funny blog of the conference here.

a brief history of the chairs in my studio

i can't remember where or when i got this chair, but it has been the one i sit in when i cut up found stickers and rearrange the letters into ransom note style poetry.

this one i found in the trash with a loose seat, a few screws later and it was as good as new.

I found this chair in a dumpster somewhere, all that was wrong with it was a loose screw, so i fixed it and now i sit in it sometimes.

This is a great stool that was being thrown away, it has become my soldering chair. I sit in it when i am soldering.

i found the remnants of this chair on the side of the road, along with the scrap wood that now makes up its "seat". I use it exclusively as a stand for that water heating contraption that goes along with that thermaplastic crap i have toted back and forth across the country never quite making anything with, but will someday...

this is my go to stool. I found the base in a dumpster and attached some 1x4 scraps to the top for a seat. I started using it as my welding stool but had to actually shave down the rough edges a bit so it was easier to sit on. These days if I am not sitting on it while I weld, i use it as a convenient stand for welding related stuff.

this has become a common motif for me, taking a crappy chair and affixing a piece of wood to it and using it as a makeshift drawing stand. the seat of the chair is the oerfect base for all dry and wet media drawing material.

I often times sit on this crate when working on things down low. it's funny in the routine of the studio i spend lot of time moving around from chair to chair, yet i never really feel like i am ever perfectly still.

these are a couple of subway benches i found. The bottom one serves as a cozy nap spot thanks to the moving blankets, and normally the upper level is used for seating and not as a sculpture stand.

these are actually the boxes that the spikes i got and used for making rust prints for the last couple of years came in originally. I now use them both as low stools and as props for unstable things.

this chair is a recent acquisition i got from the museum i work at. it has already been turned into some sort of hybrid drawings board/storage shelf. although this time an extra large drawing board leans against the other side, braced in place by a bucket of random rusty hardware i use for rust prints.

this is a recent creation featuring the frame from an old discarded breur chair and the circular pieces of wood from a display i found behind urban outfitters.

i am starting to over document the studio because i don't know what the future holds for my studio. The business in the front of the building went out of business and It is only me left in the back. The building owners are cool with letting me go month to month until a new tenant moves in. They want to keep me in the warehouse in the back and hopefully the new tenants in the storefront will be cool with a sculpture shop in the back. I am playing it by ear, but I am optimistic that if I do have to downsize or move the studio I will be able to make do where ever i end up. It is actually better than I thought, because initially I thought I would have to leave the end of January when the bakery shut down, but now I am clear until at least april or May-ish.

dave hickey's recent column left me thinking

what do i think about? Can someone still be critical and demanding of the art they consume and or make? Can I consume the art I make and what would that feel/look like?

I often times feel like an outsider to the exciting fast paced world that is supposedly swirling around out there in the ether. I live in a place that i often think of as the land where time stood still.I don't know why but a part of Dave Hickey's recent serial column in Art in America really struck me as valuable both for art and for general life. He asks the following series of questions:

I think this may be the most succinctly I have seen someone capture the internal dialogue that often accompanies the creation of art and most creative endeavors that are going to be shared with a public. I know for me this is the line of questioning that leads to the tremendous amount of doubt that accompanies the creation of new work. Oh well Dave Hickey does it again, proves he is writer that artists love to quote, and for good reason

superbowl commercials

I know nothing about football. and i know even less about cars. but none the less i felt compelled, as i do every year, to watch the super bowl and this year i took notes on what the commercials were. I still like to watch tv, and when i do i like to study what is coming at me and pay attention to what is being advertised, the following is compiled from my handwritten notes on super bowl commercials

below are my actual superbowl notes, sometimes i jot these down in my sketch book. Taking notes on the commercials i watch is a habit i developed when i though i might apply to go to graduate school at the institute for the study of popular television at syracuse.


and now the list with snarky comments and observations thrown in for good measure:

GI Joe- commercial for a movie that will most definitely ruin one of my favorite childhood toys
Hyundai- a car i will never need,
Bud Light.
angels and demons-should have titled this the bernini code
audi-using jason statham's transporter
pepsi-something i never have or will drink
doritos-yuck
bud light
year one-some sort of movie
toyota-influenced by the same art objects as modernist, actually compares grill of car to african mask
fast and furious-an ad for a 2hour ad for cars
oil- some oil company used inagadavida by iron butterfly as their music...wtf?
Land of the lost-
doritos- something about sex and money
go daddy- something about sex and a girl in a shower
diet pepsi-goes along with your motor oil, regular pepsi and doritos
pedigree-for your dog
budweiser- american beer, owned and invented by germans
budweiser- horse romance, because nothing says america like love struck horses
star trek- beam me up
gatorade- G a sexy new package for sugar water
cars.com-
hyundai- again
e-trade- those damn babies are fucking stupid
disney- really
bud light
h and r block- how are they not bankrupt?
flowers
cheetos- a product i understand
sprint
sobe-sexier sugar water
toyota-made in america designed elswhere
priceline- see star trek
overstock.com- because even in a recession you need stuff
universal orlando- like disney but without rats
ford truck- like a rock
hardees- because high cholesterol is for wussys
coca cola- more sugar water
bridgestone- tires for the hyundai and the audi you just bought
Denny's- we can't even give this food away
monster- you broke and unemployed and hate your life, we can help
Transformers- more toys from my childhood ruined
career builder- see monster
coca cola- used peter and the wolf for some reason
frosted flakes- cereal of my childhood
alltel-built tough and not weak like those other cars
ford-now with my circle
carmax- you really need a new car to go with your coke, cheetos, and new job
zaxby's- overweight celebrity motorcycle designers eat here and you should too
miller high life
hyundai
coke
cash 4 gold- you are a sucker and will do anything , send me your un wanted gold. is there such a thing as unwanted gold, it is the only thing that holds its value, soon it is all we will accept as payment
vizio-because you deserve a flat screen that costs more than your first car
taco bell-drink pepsi
ge- we own everything, deal with it.
hulu- alec baldwin is both ironic and relevant, we swear
ge-we still own everything
pepsi-we own taco bell
bud light with lime- yes we can
godaddy- we do something with stuff

so the superbowl's message, buy a car, drink pepsi, watch a movie,

feeling like nero but without internet access

Okay while the legend goes that nero fiddled while rome burned, the truth will never be completely known. I just like the analogy of someone who indulges in artistic and cultural endeavors while all around him infrastructure and practical things collapse. I feel like that person. Currently the closing/relocation/downsizing of two businesses has had an impact on my life. I feel a bit silly/selfish/shallow thinking of it in such terms but both of these businesses were my main hubs for internet access. First, the business that I rent my studio from is no more. For the last 18 months I have been occupying a modest warehouse that I renovated the summer of 2007. In the front of the building was the ladyfingers bakery and in the back was me. This situation worked well, rarely was i making too much noise for them when they were open and rarely did they bother me when i was working, they even had wireless internet, which i had actually quite using back in august of 2008, determining that not only did i need a windowless space to work in, but having no internet in the studio was the right choice for me. But knowing it was available when i needed it definitely helped if i wanted to update the website or draft a writing or idea when i was right in the middle of the process of creation. the second lost internet access has been the closing of the rutledge coffee and cream. I have known about the closing for over a week and still have not made alternate plans. we have shared a wall with the rutledge coffee and cream for about a year now, so we easily latched onto their wireless signal. In the past month or so his router has been spotty and he had swore up and down that he ordered a new one, but when he never fixed the problem we probably should have gotten the hint that he was closing down. When he finally told me, it came as no surprise. So now I have gone back to old techniques of internet access, namely leaving the house and going to a coffee shop to conduct all my internet related activities, this isn't all bad and definitely gives me some ideas for how to expand my work and my understanding of the coffee shop and particularly the current laptop farms of today, which i am now an overly active part of. On some level being forced to compute in public is a good thing. the previously private and anti-social activity of working on ones computer has become a public event shared by many. But the real reason i feel like nero fiddling is that when I have gone to the studio or worked on site for the last 4 years i have listened religiously to npr/pri radio. In fact it made my art feel less disconnected from the outside world since i listened intently to the world unfolding. Lately it has been difficult not to put down my tools and stare at the radio in disbelief, especially when the business closings are hitting so close to home and the news gets darker. I have no problem finding continued beauty and inspiration in the detritus of consumer culture that has sustained my art thus far, but i want less and less to know what is going on outside of the confines of the studio, gallery space, or dumpster i am working in. To this end I have been listening repeatedly to girl talk's upbeat albums. Not only is girl talk the perfect background noise for work, but the mixes are like a game of name that tune that flies by at 100 miles an hour. The irony of my substitution of girl talk for npr, is that i learned about girl talk from a review on npr, so as soon as i burn out girl talk i will have to get back to listening exclusively to npr in hopes of finding new musical inspiration.

red hot chili peppers videos, the art of erwin wurm, and self censorship

I was looking at this amazing music video for the red hot chili peppers

and was immediately struck with how familiar the actions and look of the video were. The first time I was watching it through I said right away these look like 1960’s performative works/conceptual art pieces. It seemed like an early nauman series of tasks or even some sort of full color richard serra esque or vito aconci video documentation, only a bit more playful. Sure enough when the credits rolled Erwin Wurm was acknowledged. I think for the people who might know wurm , they know him for his iconic fat car,

and other modified sculpture projects.


But his best work and most indicative of his line of thinking are his actions and interventions, especially the one minute sculptures referenced in the music video.

Rather than being left with my train of thought at the station, I became intrigued with what kind of filmmaker would encourage a band from the eighties to make a music video riffing on the art of the sixties. On the Mark Romanek's website (the man responsible for the video)I found my answer. He was educated at the school of the art institute of Chicago and he sights a long list of visual artists of the sixties as his influences. I was further intrigued to find out that he was the same person responsible for the full length film one hour photo(which i kinda dug). In needing to know more I dove right into his faq page and I found a quote he used as advice for aspiring artists/ filmakers, that resonated with me.

"you have to fight every day to stop censoring yourself. and you never have anyone else to blame when you do. what happens to artists is that it's not that somebody's standing in their way, it's that their own selves are standing in their way. the compromise really isn't how or what you do, the techniques you use, or even the content, but really the compromise is beginning to feel a lack of confidence in your innermost thoughts. and if you don't put these innermost thoughts on the screen then you are looking down on not only your audience but the people you work with, and that's what makes so many people working out there unhappy. these innermost thoughts become less and less a part of you and once you lose them then you don't have anything else. so many people have so much to say and there are so many really worthwhile things to say that it seems impossible that we could cut ourselves off from this whole avenue of enormous excitement." from cassavetes on cassavetes edited by raymond carney
i lifted this from the mark romanek website faq section

Self censorship is one of those areas I am incredibly familiar with. I am also incredibly conflicted about the function of self censorship. I am a big fan of art, music, literature and people in general who consider the context in which they are presenting themselves. Sometimes I think too much about this. I am incredibly concerned with the audiences experience of art and and the physical space it inhabits and give great considerations to this, but at the same time I am making work to satisfy myself. The trick is that half of my output is a body of work I have never shown as it’s own independent direction. That body of work includes sets of drawings, videos and photographs. These exercises help fuel my understanding of the more public work I have been undertaking. I always censor myself when considering shows and ideas to shop around, or more specifically showing these to people when they come for studio visits. On some level this has allowed my drawings, photos and other works to develop out of the light of total exposure. It is true that when I exhibit or show some object or work on paper, on some level it kills the work for me. I know these rules are arbitrary but I am able to put so much into the incredibly public art I have been making because I have the complete opposite work running in a different direction. If the installations are the ultimate blurring of the boundary between the space where the art is created and the place where it is exhibited , the drawings will always be bound to the mental space in which they were created and conceived. On a side note I have noticed a re-emergence of the hand in contemporary art and of works on paper in particular. My own idea about why this is happening is pretty simple, works on paper and drawings are the most sincere gesture one can make as an artist. As color photography, and design based art seem to capture the larger interest of the public, myself included, I think the natural reaction by artists, either consciously or unconsciously is to make more humble work on paper, or to present drawings as finished works. I can't be sure of any of this but sometimes watching a red hot chili peppers video on you tube the same week that I am reading over brian odougherty's essay Studio and Cube, the follow up to inside the white cube, can lead to a re-evaluation of what one is observing.

site specific and my very specific understanding of installation

I have a personal belief, backed up by things I have experienced, corroborated by work I have consumed, and confirmed by articles and books i read. This belief is that for an "installation" or work of site-art to be successful and fulfilling for the viewer it must be impossible for the work to exist anywhere else. That is not to say that work that is fabricated and exhibited for a specific location and then reassembled or reconfigured for another site isn't successful. I think of roxy paine's stainless steel trees as one example. While the trees themselves present as discreet sculptures, a tremendous amount of onsite fabrication and work goes into the realization of each piece. In a similar fashion Richard serra's current body of sculpture often times has to be placed on a site and a building is then built around the work. Unlike his first couple of stabs at site-specific work that seemed to be the same piece no matter where they were placed, despite his beliefs to the contrary. In an August article in the ny times, roberta smith talked about some new developments in public art and artists attitudes towards it. I bring all this up because i am trying to finish and articulate in my mind and in writing a proposal for two inter related temporary site specific works I would like to undertake in the spring. The indoor piece I believe will be easy to propose since I have a handful of successfully executed and removed temporary works, it is the outdoor proposal I am struggling with. For better or for worse I am really enamored with the idea of, whenever it is feasible, creating and showing new works when i exhibit. A practical solution to this desire has been to create work on site that is literally woven into the architecture of the space. This insures that the scale and relationship of the piece always seems appropriate to the space they are in. Since I create the work in place I am seeing the piece for the first time along with the audience. This guarantees that they experience the work in a similar way to me when i step back from it. Enter the need to propose an outdoor piece. While the area to work in and display the outdoor piece is devoid of architectural features to build off of, picture a large grass pad about 40'x20' completely flat, the overall layout of the park in which the pad exists is quite striking.

This area of the park is so precisely arranged and landscaped as to create a perfectly framed view of the harbor and ocean as seen through a giant pineapple fountain. This whole area of the park, and the city gallery bordering it seems to exist solely to service the view of the ocean as seen through the pineapple fountain. This is where the challenge arises for me. I have no vested interest in disrupting this order,as previous works on this site have, but rather i want to create a temporary work that enhances this view, and responds to the grass pad and pineapple fountain.
these are a couple rough ideas of what I want to create, although if all the material used is gathered from the scrapyard the way I want, the final form and look could vary a bit, but the general idea of having the work frame the view and the park will remain.


My idea is to acquire as much scrap steel as I can and create a series of bifurcating line sculptures, which will be painted white for increased visibility. I hope to build them off of the four corners of the pad in a similar method to some of my bifurcating rust drawings.

When viewed from different angles and levels the piece would appear as a visual mesh over the surrounding area, when viewed from the vantage point of the back porch of the city gallery the piece would frame perfectly the view of the pineapple fountain looking towards the ocean.

i haven't yet turned in my proposal and I am being realistic and running on the assumption that either budget or logistics might inhibit this project, but none the less thinking about it and solidifying my ideas has been a satisfying process. As an added bonus of this project i envision the destruction and crushing of this piece, as with my steel yarn ball in 2006, to also become an integral part of the work.
here i am using some scrap steel i found on the side of the road at a signmakers. I have cut the pieces into relatively uniform sections and am now welding them into the bifurcating line pattern. although not a direct copy, i am a bit indebted to john bruneu's infinitree animation i saw about 4 years ago and am still fascinated with.

although john's draws a line and splits, lately when i draw and make my line i draw in two directions at a time.
below are some shots of the woven coat hanger sculpture. I found these coat hangers awhile ago behind a strip mall in west ashley and they had been kicking around the studio until recently when i decided to "clean up" and i realized that if i organized and wove them together they would work structurally and visually as a sculptural object. I will probably paint them white at some point, as I have really become obsessed with the idea of all white objects(i had resisted this temptation for a bit and was even spray painting metal things different colors. although one of the rules i gave myself at one time was to never alter a material from its original color, i am finding the white to be an interesting rule as well, since in many environments white becomes even more unnatural and discordant with it's surroundings than the original materials or another matching color. )
detail of the coat hanger weaving. it is difficult to see the pattern, but when i am truly finished with this i will set it against a neutral background and photograph it.