...mexico?
i don't want to get in the habit of posting things like this. But the whole world needs to see this clip from The Daily Show. And it's about propaganda, so it fits right in...
4.21.2006
Iran, U ran, we all ran for
birds
oil on wood panel. diptych. @3x4'
in my recent return to paint, i decided to work on this older painting i had started years ago. the story goes that i put the first layer down and decided, no... i want to do this big. So i did a triptych that was 6x12'. It took me a hell of a long time and i ended up with hundreds of birds.
remembering scientific specimen trays of dead birds i had seen in a museum in South Africa, i was thinking about mortality in the face of all of the corruption and greed that was pouring into the news. Heirarchies and classification, signifigance and insignifigance, and more obviously nature and culture. lots of "male" issues in there for me, though i know every artist and their mother has worked with dead birds at one point or another.
the form stays with me, as seen in other posts here... boats and the like. (i'm sure it's just my vaginal fallus over and over... but ah well, we make what we make sometimes.)
diary paintings 1&2
trying to get used to this being my online sketchbook. So i thought i would post these even though they are not really "done" and because they will most likely change. they are "diary paintings"... kinda more for letting some things out and to get the brush moving a bit. they have already taken on several other lives in layers beneath these, and may continue to do so.
I've been away from painting for awhile and am sketching and starting work again. It's taken a bit to jump back in... more like sticking a toe in, and then a foot... my own silly blocks and fears popping up along the way. But i am getting more loose with it daily. Thinking/feeling what and how i want to paint. more on that later...
4.18.2006
Everything in history is present.
i can remember daydreaming in South Africa about the dutch coming to the shore for the first time. It may have looked like a few ships coming in from over the horizon, but really they were towing behind them a blanket of history. A membrane, another layer added or subtracted. Same for the americas...
I imagined this huge wall behind these boats, like tidal waves look in the movies. All the molecules of history in the air, changing their polarity with one sweep.
I remember the same feeling when the world trade towers were detonated. Watching them fall, i could see a new horizon descend on the landscape at the same speed (10 seconds). Like those old time plays where the set manager would drop a new curtain and the background would change instantly, only now in 4 dimensions. I could feel it tear down my body from my head to my feet.
colonialism is the opposite of absorption, yet it can absorb everything.
more here
Everything is in tact. Everything is in ruins.
Been rolling this phrase around in my head for awhile now. It came to me from a quote from Maurice Blanchot while reading about ruins... "the disaster ruins everything, all the while keeping everything in tact."
ruins of a disaster are overwhelmingly defined by time and space, but they are also out of time and place.
nothing is actually missing here
4.17.2006
the Ministry of Truth
You know... keeping up with all of the evils "these people" weave can get to be a chore. But the nice thing is the whitehouse sees that too, and they have created a way to help the weary fascist/patriot keep it all straight.
Since what looks like November of 05, the whitehouse has been "setting the record straight". aka Talking Points Central. Now, I'm trying to figure out the best part here... is it that they have given what reads as a rap sheet of their greatest hits? Or is it that folder at the top, in that edgy little header with the "fact sheet" clipped to it, which on closer inspection with a magnifiying lens reads: Winning the War on Terror. Strategy for Victory. Democracy and Freedom... subtle. I believe the folder is that actual size, too.
As an aside, I'm not really sure how i can find things like this website, and at the same time leave most art openings today without any idea that there is anything actually "happening" in the rest of the world. What good little germans we are shaping up to be...
on edit: read this too
4.14.2006
Felix in Venice
untitled (USA today)
Beautiful artwork is work that is compassionate. For me, that is the whole essay.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres would be my choice for the Venice Biennale too, because i am in awe of him. "What Would F G-T Do?" something i ask myself quite often in the studio.
That said, perhaps the State Department believes Felix is the safe choice because, although his work is political... he is dead. He died in 1996, right around the time one Governor Bush was cutting his political teeth with ideas like “Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.”
There will be no finger pointing this time, not that felix would have done that anyway... what made him brilliant was that he never had to.
It will be interesting to see what he can bring to us from the great beyond. i guess it has been said that work will be realized from a sketch felix made... i dunno. But i really hope they get it right.
Anyway, this interview says it all.
4.11.2006
more pocket lining
Sikorsky Aircraft makes the Black Hawk helicopter. The CEO is George David ( i was always a bit freaked out by people with two first names). in 2005 George David made 58 million dollars. Yes, over a million dollars a week.
over $25,000 an hour.
near $500 a minute.
Over 5000 times the annual pay of a minimum wage worker.
He has an apartment in Manhattan with 9 bathrooms.
In 2004 he was paid 88 million.
for the past month, the 3600 workers at his company went on strike because David demanded they pay twice as much on their health care co-pays.
it would have cost him 31 cents per hour to keep the worker health benefits whole.
the workers lost.
and that is the USA today. good times...
First off... how much money does a man need to make this life comfortable enough to live in? I mean really Mr. David, is this cushy enough for you yet?
Second... Do you really think that men who get paid this much money won't falsify evidence to go to war so they bankrupt a surplus and give it all to their friends? Won't steal two elections by whatever means necessary? Won't use tactical nuclear weapons on Iran? Won't let a city flood so they can make money off the reconstruction? Won't kill their own soldier/NFL football hero who would have come home and protested the war? And finally... Won't sacrifice the lives of 3,000 people by crashing planes into two towers in order to get EVERYTHING THEY EVER WANTED?
I'm irrational right? Has it come to that? I'm irrational and war is rational. George David's paycheck is rational. American Taxpayers paying 5 Billion last year in defense contracts to murder innocent people while they don't have enough money for health insurance...
rational.
Above are the insides of men's suit pockets, cast in stone. I have been making them without getting paid for the past two days.
George David made over 1000 dollars while you read this post.
a ship, for kasimir
i'm posting this because i didn't want to.
i had a revelation today that i'm about as precious as any anal retentive white american virgo can be. i make me ill at this point. "pussyfooting" is what i believe the term is. (i have no idea where the hell that term came from so if i just crossed into some feminist no mans land, i am carrying a white flag..) I actually think it comes from how cat's walk across wet grass or something they are unsure of.
all this trepidation... i have canvasses i won't touch until i know what i'm going to paint, paper i won't use, good brushes that are waiting in plastic... for what? the masterpiece i suppose. my great opus.
so i don't want to make a blog that just waits to show the good work. the done work. the work that is fit to see.
This is my process. My sketchbook and my world. And this is a boat i put on a board and just duuuumped and painted black enamel all over. my god it was exciting.
4.06.2006
recent monoprints
these were a few recent monoprints. more studies for paintings than anything else... when i say that i mean that these may not necessarily be what i paint, but I'm more looking at different qualities and new marks.
4.04.2006
color by numbers
carla's recent posting at Art Powerlines of her coloring books has inspired me to post something i've been playing with too. The old color by numbers fun pages...
(Really, between coloring books and paint by numbers, could there be any more lazy way of teaching our kids "creativity"? But what were ya gonna do, i mean after all, we didn't have LCD monitors in the backs of the headrests to keep us entertained back then. anyway, i'm not going into that rant right now.)
so this color by no.s thing is still in the works. i had played with it for a bit a while back in the painting you see below, and i've always wanted to take it a lot further, the start of which you are seeing above... i began working with the haunting images coming out of New Orleans after Katrina, turning them into color by numbers pages.
It still feels too easy, maybe too much of a one liner (made uneasy only by how horribly beautiful the photos are). but there is something here that is a great reflection of the period in which we are living. the over simplification of issues that are so complex, the ideal images we project and the realities that won't be confined to them, flat color vs. atmosphere... on and on, there is somewhere to take this...
And i felt that Katrina is the perfect symbol for all of it. A broken levee... nature's way of painting outside the lines.
lack of imagination. 2004. oil and transfer on wood.
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