My final post at FR33PR3SS?

I've found that too many social media can be the death of a person, or at least one creates all of these outlets that then one can't keep up, a.k.a. this blog. As much as I've been into doing this blog, I've been compelled to redirect my efforts. I really enjoy my new blog, and I may have another sprout up with a new job at a print shop. So here's a tidbit re-tweeted by my brother which has kept me occupied for about 30 minutes.

Look at that fucking hipster

and this site which I found today which had some pretty cool sounding workshops put on by an artist named Tom Thayer. I can't remember how I found him, but I liked his approach to class, and the way he described his interaction with students.

http://www.tomthayer.net/site/Teaching.html

More soon. Since I'm taking on the role at INKubator Press, I'll be shifting towards that and probably starting a new blog featuring our events and activities around the press. With that, this blog may end, so to my two followers, thanks for reading this, if you ever did. And to the rest, check out INKubator in Kansas City!

Up Against the Wall opens at the Rubin Center in El Paso

I see that there is a new exhibition in El Paso at the Rubin Center focusing on poster artists called Up Against the Wall. I have to commend the Rubin Center for always curating fantastic engaging exhibitions, each different, and contemporary. In a context of poster work, one would expect from most institutions the easy sell of having some Sheppard Fairey posters on the wall, with a few others, yet the Rubin Center succeeds in tying the democratic form of poster art to the borderland area that they serve. It's a great thing to see a museum so well tied to contemporary are while staying true to the southwestern culture which is so unique in the U.S.

The penny broadsides of Mexican graphic designer Jose Guadalupe Posada addressed the political and social issues of his day using imagery that was accessible literate and illiterate alike. His work was widely believed to have increased public support for the ideals that would spark the Mexican Revolution. Building on that history, this exhibition brings an international and contemporary framework to the use of design as social protest. This bold and colorful display of 100 posters from a group of 13 high-profile graphic designers highlights the power of design to engage people in creative thinking about world problems. If you can get down to there, this would be a show worth checking out.

Let's make a 10 year old photographer famous!

And let's over-publicize his photo! And put his photograph in all the major newspapers! Overlook lots of other thoughtful and challenging art and focus on the image created by a kid who is merely reflecting on a local event in a creative way!

I guess I just wanted to show this image, since some venues choose not too, ie., the major papers like the Wall Street Journal. I saw this on Art Fag City, a great art blog, and they made the right point. It's about time for someone to name a new art genius, and why not a 10 year old? Let's leave it at this. Maybe look up the kid in about 10 years and see what's come of him.

Rad Woodcut Animation

This video was featured at the Philigrafika Print fest recently taking place in Philadelphia. I was impressed with the back and forth between additive and reductive footage, done simply by reversing the footage as they carved down these black painted pieces of wood. They displayed about 400 of the blocks, but likely it took many more than that. Talk about a tough project to do and with outstanding results.

re: Control P(rint)

In 2007 London's Royal College of Art did a research project involving digital printing today, and how much of society considers printing as an accessible ubiquitous format for media multiples. Not only has it been streamlined for the home, but also for industry.

A widespread perception of digital printing seems to be one of high street convenience, where the emphasis is regularly placed upon affordability and functionality over and above an appreciation of production values or visual aesthetics. This attitude is of course understandable, given that the success of the digital print industry so far has been based upon its ability to provide practical print solutions for its domestic market in tandem with a commercially acceptable proofing systems for the professional sector. To continue to associate digital printing with only these qualities however is to miss out on the opportunities it is able to offer and more importantly under play its influence on the future of printed matter.

Following their treatise, it seems to me proper that in the digital age, printing is something to very much consider, especially for the average person, but for me as a printmaker as well. What I find interesting is related to something I heard a printmaker say the other day. She was proudly talking about some blind embossments she had done, but when queried about a different work, there was a total change in tone when she described her work as..."oh, that's a digital print." The tone of voice that separated and lowered the level of the digital versus the handmade was palpable, and something I'm not sure about. And this is what Control Print delves into, our obsession with the tactile, the hand made, and all things object.

In a digital age, information is infinite. I would say that the number one way of experiencing visual art of all types today is on a computer screen whether it's 2D or 3D. We all feel the need to place our images in the cloud, and thus our art exists in a very functional form accessible to all with a web connection. Pretty useful if you ask me. But what is the difference that I know I feel, that printmakers feel, and that artists take defense against time and time again? It's there maybe because we are physical entities, and we interact with a physical world and access the virtual one through a physical terminal. The web functions more like a brain, and is immaterial.

Download and read Control Print if you're interested in thinking about this more.

Dead Animal Hats

James Faulkner is getting press lately, though I think it may be for simply the shock value in the back story of how he got into hat making. His first hat was made from roadkill, literally a bird he found on the side of the road. He was broke, had to make a hat, and so used materials at hand. I can't attest for the quality of the hats, and he said himself that he is using more accessible materials; things with less gross out factors. Still, I thought about it as I drove through rural Iowa, where there are dead animals littering the road sides all along my drive. I had thought about what I might do as a reaction to seeing these poor animals on the side of the road, and a few days later heard about these hats. What a fitting response I thought.

Madoff Beaten in Prison

I read about this in the latest issue of the Wall Street Journal. I have to say a laugh slipped my lips before reading past the headline. The article details how a body builder, with a black belt in Judo, roughed up Madoff over a money dispute. Of course, nothing can be proven as is the code of conduct in prison life, but it seems probable that the fight happened. Can you imagine Madoff getting in a prison brawl? What an image that brings up. There are other stories worth noting including a former inmate getting investment advice from Madoff, and reports of the company he keeps including a pharmaceutical drug dealer and a crime family boss. I suppose it makes sense that such a prestigious criminal such as Madoff would want to hang out with men with similar devious ambitions. He continues to serve his 150 year sentence, and will probably live out his life admired by fellow inmates, at least in the near future, for the massive scale of his scheme that robbed investors all around the world for upwards of 20 million.

Emerging from the cocoon, the domestic male ties his apron strings

I'm starting out 2010 self employed. I'll just go ahead and say it, unemployment. Someone told me to say it the first way, and I'm not afraid to say what this really is. I have ample time to re-configure my life, I exercise, and I cook. What can I say, I'm in training to be a house-husband. I prefer to call it my emergence as a fully mature domestic male.

I've started a new blog where I explore this aspect of my life. It's been happening more and more over the past few years, but when I show up to a potluck with freshly cooked food, people call me domestic. At first I would laugh, then I got used to this label, and now I'm embracing it. As I said, it's a new lease on life having a month or two to re-group. I'm building a new website, acting as a new media intern at a local museum, finding amazing jobs that I would have never known about otherwise, and reaching out for residencies and shows in ways I never would have had time for.

To top it off, I feel that since leaving academia, I have a clear view of my work like I've not had before. Things have boiled down to key issues, to key words, and the ideas I have now are more easily executed. Proposals spin off my finger tips like never before, and I feel like I owe this to traveling, and to taking time to think. Traveling around India for the fall allowed me to not make anything for a solid amount of time and to think about what I have done in the past four years. What I do next will be different, it will be more complex, and the ideas will be simpler in execution and more fluid in the way they are seen and interpreted.

To read about my recipe experiments on my new blog, where I take random starting points from my kitchen and build meals around them, check out the Domestic Male.

Cornel West Reacts to Jung's Red Book

from Red Book, by Jung. Dragon illustration.

I've been considering my dreams today. Not just a daily thought to what happened last night, but more the reflection on recurring dreams that I've had over the past few years. I can't draw conclusions except for personal assumptions based on the metaphors that my dreams have presented to me over time. What got me thinking so deeply about it is a short audio interview with Cornel West. During a lecture series titled "The Red Book Dialogues" Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Ann Belford Ulanova discussed one of the folio images from Jung's Red Book which I'm finding is a fascinating book, as is Jung. As one reviewer put so well on Amazon:

The Red Book is not "personal" as we use that word now. It is "personal" in the sense that it details one individual's very unique experience of coming into relationship with what Jung termed the Self, and in prior times was referred to as God, but it is at the same time very impersonal, and actually universal, in cataloguing the drama inherent in any person's formation of that relationship. The book is at home with The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, Goethe's Faust, and, as much as anything, The Red Book is Jung's response to Thus Spoke Zarathustra and to Nietzsche's proposition that for modern man, God is dead. The response is that God is neither dead nor to be found in outer religious, national or political containers, but is to be discovered and struggled with in the living of each individual life.

A not uncommon dream is of stumbling upon a previously unknown addition or wing of one's dwelling, which addition is found to be many, many times the size of the existing structure, and to contain objects and treasures of previously unimaginable value, interest and numinousity. One is filled with awe and wonder at the new found wealth and possibilities. The experience of encountering The Red Book after spending 30 years in Jung's existing body of work is equally stupefying. That there could be so much more that Jung had to share and communicate about the human soul seems not just improbable, but impossible. Yet The Red Book is that much, much larger, more nuanced and tremendously numinous structure that is behind, under, around and the foundation for all of Jung's subsequent ideas, theories, publications and works. Extraordinary.
By: B. Hill of Pasadena, California

It's an expensive book to own, though it would be something great to view it in person, but it's also another addition to the base of knowledge we have on Jung. Since contemporary times seem to be divisive, I wonder what our dreams might tell us about the larger world we live in? How might my dreams reflect the outer world, where people staunchly differ in opinion, beliefs, and things only seem to get more divided?

20th Aniversary of Voyager Looking Back on us

It was not that long ago really, but it gives perspective that I find valuable. We need more of this viewpoint, and if we had it, maybe we on this planet wouldn't be so divided. We have so much in common despite our culture, language and religious differences.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
-Carl Sagan

I-Oh-Wha?

Yes, I've been rifling through perfectly preserved remnants of my old Iowa life. You know, that old junk that you stored in your parents basement years ago, and then you failed to retrieve it, so it's become obsolete, yet there are a few buried treasures there? Yep, you have that somewhere I'm sure. Well, what I found was a lot of pictures, old sketchbooks, and some of my old musings when I had plans to be a wordsmith. I never really did consider writing, but then again, it's no more realistic than visual art, though I feel much more adept at the visual side of things. Still, I dig some of these old poems. Out of each, there's about 1 line that is really good, so I'll do a few more, omitting the rest of the words.

Seizures are in my ears
Oddly melancholy
When things are gone the tan line mocks me
Auras exploding
Lips floating
Voices travel from no one's mouth
The middle man is always the wind

I just know that you smell, taste like shit, make me and millions of others feel like shit...
and I love you.
And in your eyes I'm weak.

Solitude lends itself to concealment

That's all I can glean from the He-Man notebook. I'll put up more, maybe an excerpt from my old incomplete novel Oblivion.

[Get By] by Nick Naughton circa 2001

Ferrari zooms by, no wait it was a Fiat
Breaths of fresh air pass by outside
Our air is regurgitated
Is it funny?
Who loves what?
Sperm.
Leaves.
Not vibrating, fluttering
Talk can be cheap
Some people's words are priceless

Death is tough
but living through it is tougher
Become stronger

"2 crit or not to crit" by Nick Naughton circa 2001

It's very rude to eat during critique;
it's rude to be writing during critique.
Don't say whatever about your work.
Meet deadlines.
Dogs bark at odd times.
I'm not sure I like when people talk about their own
We can tell 'em only what we think in their world, the world of origin
Eaters chew slowly and quietly/except when it's popcorn;
no words offered
I don't like the word tangible
Simple is better because you make deadlines.
Or is it.
Varying too much on the original idea scores no points.
Some aspects are a must
Cursive writing is hard to read when you cut it
When it seems like you and only other hardcore potheads like your work,
maybe it's a sign.
Thunder can be an empty threat
Some people
When talking about one person's work don't look at someone else's.
Rude
Straightforward when you mean to zigzag is an insult
There's nothing wrong with it, I heard.

The mascara giveth, and the mascara taketh

Matt, whose last name I forget, sporting a brilliant look.


Mathew Clark, asleep or reaching nirvana?


Mary Hill owning that faux facial hair.


Anya Liftig, somehow not surprised that we're giving her a fake mustache on a random night.

Is there something masculine about the addition of a fake mustache to a face? What about in the case of a woman? Let the firehouse decide...

Futility

Trying to draw a mustache on the face of an already bearded man.

Larry Lessig on congressional corruption and Obama

Watched a great video by Larry Lessig about Obama's first year. I always hesitated myself getting involved in the campaign last year, and I felt kind of like cynicism had won, but now I feel more like I had been right to be skeptical. Things haven't changed. Money still corrupts, and I'm still not sure that things can change. We have buying power, but we don't have a way to compete with the special interests that fund campaigns. Check it out if you have a minute.

Ukulele the hard way

The other night, our first sojourn into the wonderful world of the card game Asshole, a performance artist friend Anya Liftig (like Leftig with an 'I' instead of an 'E') came over with the gift of stale popcorn in a receptacle shaped like a ukulele with Elvis' face glued to the front. Not only was this a strange gift, and a much needed snack for us all as we played cards, we found that a day later, we had all regretted thoroughly our consumption of said popcorn, likening it to the "worst popcorn ever eaten" "styrofoam packing peanuts" and "Aahhgg! I can't believe I ate that popcorn!" Why was it in a ukulele? Why did Anya feel the compulsion to buy something like that on the 75%-off rack in a store like Big Lots? The stars aligned to bring us those munchies, and though we enjoyed it in the moment, we'll probably remember the entirety of our experience with fondness, possibly accompanied by an aversion for popcorn sold in strange yet appealing containers.


Note the way that Anya fondly clutches the popcorn as she discusses ice cream cakes and making out with trees.


This is just to show a pic of her post-performance where Anya she sat for 15 minutes while an ice cream cake melted on her head. Simple, funny, and disgusting.

Bring Back Bruce

As one can expect, getting the correct Visa for a visit to the USA can be a bit confusing. One of our studio mates, a resident named Bruce Montecombroux from Canada, made it here just fine, but after taking a brief sojourn to Canada for a show opening, he was denied return into this country due to the lack of a Visa which technically he cannot get. His first entry went just fine, and then they decided to demand a J-Type Visa which requires a host institution, which the Vermont Studio Center cannot actually provide, so in short, Bruce may not get back into the states. Another Canadian, whom I'll leave unnamed, though we find him very earnest for those of you who know him, is here with no Visa. I don't understand how this works, but if you feel compelled, write Senator Leahy of Vermont and help speed up this process of getting Bruce back. Our studio just isn't functioning the same way without the guy.

Shuttle run training, mid winter, Vermont Studio Center

Remember the shuttle run? We used to do it in grade school where you would run down to a line and grab an eraser on the ground and then run it back. We were timed; only the obviously fit kids really ever made the cut, and those of us who weren't physically inclined were made to feel like failures once a year thanks to the President's physical fitness tests. Last night felt like we were doing an exagerated adult version of that game.

We were playing asshole the card game last night, or Reagan as we dubbed our version, and the president made a rule that whenever 3 of a kind gets thrown down, which should be a rarity, we all have to run outside and run across the bridge near by. It's cold, it was night, we were getting really buzzed, and so at first it was just hilarious. And then it kept happening. We probably ran across that bridge, which is about a 200 yd. dash, at least 7 or eight times. During one of the last ones my 180 lb. frame got checked into a chain link fence as I made a move to pass this girl Mary who is about 5 feet tall and weighs a buck ten. That hurt. I got bandaged, had a numb hand, and it was kind of a sober moment. Still we didn't stop, and we proceeded to play some more. Another drop of 3 5's about 15 minutes later had us up and out again and as this girl Tatiana rounded the corner of our ice sheet walkway, she dropped on her knee and onto a rock. Quote of the week,

"I'm a wuse. I just haven't seen the inside of my own body for a while." She said this laying on the studio floor as we cut off her pant leg to clean her wound and apply bandages.

Fun times here at the studio center. Tonight, for a change of pace, we might have an AA meeting for all of us regulars at the firehouse. Something different, ya know?



Tatiana and I showing our war wounds.

More from studio night

A really sweet vintage record player in Dave Kearns studio.


J.T. Kirkland, who has these interesting panels of wood ply and gloss or mat polyacrylic. The dude has been pumping out work as he is "not here to socialize."


Marin Abell's jean suit being cut apart to repair itself, soon to be a majority of stitching while still wearable.

The studio tour was as if we got to peer into the minds of our fellow VSC denizens. Or maybe we just got to see some of the artwork up close that we've only glimpsed at through windows from the street near Wolf Kahn. These images are as I said, just a taste of what I saw. When looking back through the pics, mostly I had lots of images of paint filled cups, colored scraps of tape, and people looking extremely unprepared for being photographed. I shoot from the hip, what can I say. Still, we here at VSC sweat creativity (along with a bit of alcohol from the night before) and even our refuse is potentially the makings for greatness.

From the great white north

Not the first hanging banana piece at Vermont Studio Center, I'm sure, but part of Seung Ae's installation on open studio night. The band-aid demonstrated a softness and caring for the aging fruit.


Tatiana Berg, commenting on the gorgeous pour traveling across the floor of her studio.




Well, not actually that white as of late. The weather is actually in full thaw, which is a let down to some of us who've gotten accustomed to the daily snow fall. A soft drifting of flakes that we've all gotten used to. I enjoy seeing the snow when I really have no where I need to go. Sleep, food, and work. Those are my main concerns.

In case you're wondering, Titty Hammer has become a bit of a celebrity. Her name becoming infamous for just the quality of the wording. She arose from an excerpt in a novel being written by a guy named Scott here, and though we don't know the trajectory of his writing, Titty has lasted, will probably be created in T-Shirt form, and will remain as a piece of folklore in VSC history for years to come. I'll update with more elaborations on the forms that Titty has inspired during my time here, but for now, ponder the question, "What would Titty Hammer do?

Cold outside=studio incentive

I find the cold and snow here in Vermont to be not only a reason to stay in and work, but a different kind of inspirado. It's great to be surrounded by creative people, and the environment for us all to engage our creative ideas is fulfilling in many ways. Artist's names are flowing around us, stories of the trade, and wisdom from those further on than some of us is turning out to be invaluable perspective. If you haven't gotten on this residency train yet, Vermont Studio Center is only one of the very very many. I would say this is as good as I could imagine, but the varied locales, the different mixes of people and cultures would probably make all of these great in their own ways. I'm happy to have this chance to work, and to be around so many people who inspire me in unexpected ways.

Vermont Studio Center Begins

Driving through horrendous weather, I finally arrived at the residency I've been waiting for since last spring. The Vermont Studio Center welcomes us as the first group of residents in the year 2010. It's cold, and when I say that, it's about 15 or so degrees out and it's only going to get colder, at times maybe reaching 30 below zero. I hope my car survives. Already, one day in my computer has died, not due to cold, but just my over-taxing of its systems. Quite a fate when much of my research is done with my computer, with photos, and many of those draw from the database I've collected over the past three years. Gone, at least for now. I hope to see improvement, and hopefully work will go well here. Things are always an adjustment in a new setting like this, but it's inspiring as well and the people are better than the food, which is pretty awesome so far. Loving those little green sprouts. More as it develops, but enjoy a picture of my storm that I drove through for 13 hours, and also a video which dizzyingly depicts my studio setting in the midst of becoming a work loaded space.




*Warning: this video can make you sick if you watch it too much.