let me know what time it is.

i think i need this to save the country.

big ups to my aunt kathy simply for writing the words "obama watch." now i really want one.

whats good about painting with wine? you drink it.

two things out of about ten tonight stood out to me, enough to photograph badly and share (man, i need to get the photo stuff down)...

the first is something ive already written and come to terms with since: they're panties. ok? i know they are, you know they are. my approach isn't dirty but subconscious, and i know what youre thinking when you see the image. i still have some highlight work to do on the shape to provide more the definition of cloth and the sheerness, but im done trying to say its not what it is. im not that good of an artist to bullshit you into thinking youre not looking at what youre looking at. meaning is one thing, image is another. superficiality and the commercial world; they are one in the same.


calvin klein
25 x 19.5"
pencil, wine, gesso, house paint.


i also started with some marks on a sheet that i thought would turn into a logo of some sort. after some coverage and observation i found myself looking at a knee in the foreground and the rest of a thigh and torso in the background. i remembered how much fun it was to do the 'fake musculature' so i layed into the paper with a sharpened watercolor pencil. i have no idea how i will keep this thing from bleeding black after another coat of some background treatment and focused lighting work. a challenge. fine. i will take it.

fake knee
25 x 19.5"
guache, wine, watercolor pencil

these things were broken up by me trying to repair an old cassette tape i found title 17:22. i know its a sound work i did about ten years ago. in the past i would use the Playstation Music Generator to make beats and drones sampled from Fugazi instrumentals... i cant remember the theme of this tape, so i did my best to straighten out the warped/wrapped strip of tape. cassettes are a bitch because you CAN SEE THE PROBLEM through the plastic, so you keep pulling out tape, trying to pinpoint the problem inside the case, but you just keep pulling until something bad happens. i was about 1 cm away from snapping the tape, so i stopped in hopes that one day this year i will amass all of my broken tapes, open up the cases, repair the actual tape, reassemble and enjoy tones from the past. i know i have a problem getting rid of cassettes that may/may not have anything of value on them, but every once in a while i will find some one minute long song (or a ten minute jam) from when i was so concentrated on a theme that i really CAUGHT something, really recorded a moment that may resonate with someone besides myself. in my mind, that is one "truth" of Art and proof that someone IS an artist - the ability to bottle a moment (or a series of times) in a form of choice and have it mean more than just that moment.

man, i didnt have that much wine. wtf.

new (old) tools

kewl tewls
i just KNEW i had a heat gun stored away in my fathers air force issue foot locker (along with a sunny day real estate and sonny rollins lps)...

i have had two bottles of wine evaporating their last drips of merlot/cabernet goodness on my desk for about a month now. then, last night after going to see phoenix bodies play in a basement (the best way, by the way), me and the wife along with good friends jenny and antonio were smoking waaaaay too many cigarettes in the office when i decided to drop some wine onto a page of a new blank book i made this week. jenny was a little amiss that the line of concentrated, fermented grape juice looked a lot like an earthworm. she had been part of a childhood turf war in Muncie, IN and let me know that she once had a can of worms dumped on her head. no dirt, just worms. awwwww. isnt that cute?!? no. its gross (but kinda cute, right?)
wine on canvas (200?) 9x9

blah x 4. ive done two "real" paintings with wine on primed, white canvases. i love them. i would love to do more, so i bought a couple bottles of crappy wine at aldi (really, not that crappy since i will drink two of them) with the intention of getting some pretty layers of the earthy color that only wine on primed surface can provide. sloppy layers of wine (possibly cooked down for concentration this time around) can be dried with the heat gun in a few minutes. i like showing the process, the layering of color, but really, waiting around to watching wine dry is boring. use the technology you want to to make the image you want.

i wish i had a monotype press. i also happened across a post-card portfolio from 2000. herron and the university of tennessee did a little print exchange. i remember being so happy to get my classmates work and well, more than a little let down with the out of state mailings. maybe if i plug in the ole scanner i can share some goods and bads? you wanna?... my piece was an ink jet color print of a tank firing a big shell with a thick burgundy colored colograph on top. it looks immediate and is named after an Unwound album. yea! undergrad! i should get back to that kind of work. steal an image, crop and re-place on black background, place a violently drawn layer of line over it. simple. effective.

match this with a few (2) started underwear pieces. not as sloppy as the previous bra pieces, but still cool, to me, at least. a little more realistic, but de-sexualized as far as connotation and color choice. i would love to reduce the shapes to just that (a shape) and forget about the anthropological weight of underwear, while still letting the viewer know thats what it is. the challenge to illustrate the triangular shape of a pair of womens underwear, complete with lace trim, and expect viewers to NOT see a fetish-istic element? whatever. really, whatever.

oh, and that IS a managector in the top pic. hello contour!

Hokusai's most famous woodcut on a PSP? yes.

im not that big into hand held gaming, but this skin for a psp makes me want to ride the bus and play call of duty, just for fun!

neats

via: destructoid!

back to it (the IT being what you want it to be)

this past weekend andrea asked me to listen to the heat vent. of course she is crazy but i thought i heard something going on too, so i got on my knees and well...

i went to our basement storage area and saw nothing going on in the main room. the back room (my studio space) was a different story; on the left wall there was a hissing sound coming from the ceiling, mist in the air, and a nice stream of hot water falling right atop my prized "Dinosaur" strat copy guitar (best $35 spent ever)... the floor was soaked and everything in sight was moist. luckily there is a drain in the floor, uncovered by carpet remnants or cigarette butts, so most of the over flow was taken care of. some of the things not taken care of were a Bose mounted speaker i used to rock out to whilst painting and drawing (i plugged it in today and it gave me a nasty hum with moments of squeal), a receiver/tape deck/record player which im pretty sure is a goner, a fender sfx II amp which still works, some awesome pencils that decided to expand in hot water (thanks frenchies, your shit breaks).... and carpet... and some other throw aways like, well, nothing much.

the maintenance guy called back within minutes of me leaving a voice mail on some emergency line. he would be over as soon as he got some pants on (thanks dude, me and the lady really appreciate the thought)... they started work at 7:30 saturday morning and were done when i got home from work at 2:30. new pipe and they re-tubed a furnace duct that was all rusted out with, you guessed it, water.

why the hell am i writing about this? because i rearranged my studio, made two blank books out of the paper i use (small series, big sales) and am hyped to get in there and basically do some cool shit. im looking at the better series of the last year - i think i made about 5-6 strong, multiple piece works, but different people (whom i all listen to and respect) like the most disparate and 'not like the other' images...

how the fuck am i supposed to meld the imagery of an eagle with that of a victoria secrets bra? thats not a challenge, thats fucking dumb.

so i have more work cut out for me, maybe too much, but thats better than being a boring sap. trust me, it is.

a depressing song to listen to while contemplating the Israel/Palestine conflict

even if you cant dig on contemporary dance,
or if you dont like Antony's voice,
or if you think Israel has the right as a sovereign nation to kill for the sake of making a point (crusades anyone?)...

let the video play and think about what so many others must come to terms with; wether it be a sad teenager that cant grow into their feelings, a woman in Gaza seeing her children killed, or yourself on one of those dark days we somehow get through....



strings by Nico Muhly, my new favorite contemporary composer.

i kinda needed this to get my mind in check. my resolution for this year (that i CAN NOT BREAK is to take bigger steps to achieve what i want to happen in my life. i found this article about sins made in taking those steps. so you should make bigger steps too,but try to not fall down.

thanks shoemoney. you have a dumb name but have inspired me, in a way.

seriously. what the fuck. seriously

BART officer shoots unarmed man.

riots last night in Oakland.
this happened 2 a.m. New Years Day.

what the fuck.