Abstract Creation

Industrial Architecture: Geometry and Light

2009-11-30T18:37:00.000-08:00

1. geometric and angular sun, white radians radiance.

2. Intestine, warped corroded lungs.

3. suspension, time, space, motionless, cabled

4. Lost luminous, sun ultimate entrance

Mosaics

2009-10-17T12:29:00.004-07:00

These are made with a new technique I am trying out, combining 250 photographs or so, out of a sample pool of about three thousand of them, and recreating the textural and tonal values of an original seed image.

The poet David Acevedo.

The Audubon sanctuary, a small patch of old growth forest, at the top of the hill, above Forest Park. Original photo was taken in half light, close to sunset.

Steam coming from an industrial building on the OSHU campus.

Tessellations: Math and Art

2009-08-27T09:24:00.009-07:00

I have been reading about and studying mathematical symmetry, the theories of tiling on the plane, and pattern in Islamic art and attempting to create images using my knowledge.

The mathematics is fascinating, one of the greatest accomplishment of 20th century mathematics was the classification of the finite simple groups. From the French revolutionary and mathematician Evariste Galois, through a quirk of numbers, 1² + 2² + ... + 24^{2 =}70² that enables 24 dimensional grocers to pack their oranges in a small box, to the discovery of a strange and beautiful 196, 883 dimensional snowflake, it's a fantastic world. I would very much recommend the book Symmetry: A Journey into the Patterns of Nature, Marcus du Sautoy.

The art can be beautiful, I spent a lovely week in Granada, visiting the Alhambra, which is tiled with patterns of great complexity and beauty. (and on Saturday night pretty Spanish girls walk down the street, past clubs and discos, hand and hand, singing songs and laughing - hola)

In New York, I spent many an hour in the usually empty Islamic art section of the Met.
And in Istanbul, not enough time at the fantastic museum of Islamic art on Sultanahmet Square. I still can picture in my mind a piece of calligraphy, that seemed to spiral and twist from meaning, to pure mathematical form, with pattern that I could not resolve, but must have come from a deep understanding of possibility and application.

Anyway, with all this behind me and in my mind, I tried to make something. I figured out how to do it, threw myself into the fugue of creation, using what I had, and what I could do, made about 35 pieces so far, these two turned out.

If you save these images, you can set them as your desktop image, set it to tile, and the Zhalih's lips, or the spinning head of corrosion and Aimee will tile an infinite plane.

Architectural Mask and Lichen

2009-02-24T23:27:00.001-08:00

I have hiked up and down Swale Canyon twice in the last two weeks. Clean air, it's up above the SO2 contaminated Columbia Valley airshed, so the sensitive lichen are large and of many species. Beautiful. I have combined the lichen with a photo of the facade of the Rem Koolhaus Library in Seattle, (a fantastic building - I photographed it at dusk as light shimmered across its surface) and with a photo of Aimee, who loves to paint masks, and is off in Philadelphia now. The glowing light was from a beautiful, convoluted, crystallized, columnar basalt formation, just before sunset.

Dusty Santamaria

2009-01-12T13:02:00.000-08:00

I got to know Dusty when David Acevedo lived with him in the house at 10th and Oak(some wild times - I have photos). Since then we have been on quite a few road trips together, and he has been working very hard on his music (and reading a lot, listening to music, and stealing everything he can) (he just said he has 75 songs now).

Friday night he did a show at the Sidedoor. After, he couldn't stop playing, brought out his guitar and played a new song. I hit record on my camera and this is what I got. Gaylin dancing along, Walt playing harmonica in the background, an artist friend of Dusty's leaning against the wall. I could use a better camera, but I work with what I have. The light was dim, colors turned out all red, so I brought it into photoshop and turned it in to black and white (and the quality is not good, it's just not as bad as it was before) I do like it though, nice feel, I think I caught the moment. A last winter night in Portland, before Dusty heads back to New Orleans.

Portrait with lichen and striated leaf

2009-01-12T12:05:00.000-08:00

Since the New Year I have been creating new pieces. Somehow a new flight of creativity has come my way. This uses two types of lichen (from the Native American fishing grounds of the Klickitat river, and the Deschutes) for color and texture, and a striated banana leaf (from the botanic gardens in Sydney). (and again the lovely Zhalih)

I use lichen because of the visual forms and metaphoric connotations. Mutualism, slow growth in time, complexity of form and pattern.

From Dictionary of the Fungi (Hawksworth et al., 1995)

"A lichen is a ecologically obligate, stable mutualism between an exhabitant fungal partner and an inhabitant population of extracellularly located unicellulary or filamentous algal or cyanobacterial cells."

A Leaf for Sokhak

2009-01-06T10:41:00.000-08:00

Blue Period

2009-01-06T10:14:00.000-08:00

Recombined and reenvisioned, with the color blue, architectural textures, for a New Year.

And a "real" photograph with leaves, reflections, a fall day at the holding pond at Eagle Creek. I have lately been finding photographs to take that are like my experimental portraits; layered, with reflection, decay, pattern.

Experimental Photography Show

2008-12-20T20:23:00.000-08:00

Last month, Heather Browne and I put on an Experimental Photography show, at Melissa Sillitoe's Gallery at the Everett Street lofts.

We had a fantastic opening and closing party. Read the review.

The Show and Tell Gallery Podcast #6
By Luke Lefler November 8, 2008

A warm, drier evening had replaced the cold drizzle of the afternoon. "These are my FRIENDS," James Honzik exuded, among them Heather Browne`whose black and white photography graced the walls of The Show and Tell Gallery, along with James' portraiture. Walt Curtis misbehaved his ever-charming self, while Heather and even Melissa Sillitoe each read a poem. Crow Canyon brought a whole bunch of people (as well as
the PA - thanks!) and deliberated over surf-folk and electro lullabyes. Dusty Santamaria sang, read poems, bled black tears, and backed up James' broken blues and Walt's bitten ballads. A couple of songwriters-in-attendance enlisted towards the end - the very end, when they lock the doors and everything. In the end, it was just another passion-fueled First Thursday opening. For now, The Show and Tell Gallery Podcast lives here.

http://www.brokenhours.net/podcasts/ST/ST-0006-1.mp3
http://www.brokenhours.net/podcasts/ST/ST-0006-2.mp3

Heather's black and white, hand printed work is exquisitely beautiful. She utilizes multiple exposures, overprinting, and painting on negatives to make her abstract, yet evocative work.

an experiment in progress

2008-10-10T18:05:00.000-07:00

2 solid nights, busting my chops, making this in Processing. It needs a little work, but I like it. I need a piece of music for this. Watch it in the full screen mode (click the 4 arrows by the lower right hand corner)

experimental video

dissolution and composition from James Honzik on Vimeo.

Post Singularity - two visions

2008-10-08T12:07:00.000-07:00

Two visual science fiction stories.

Lichen, rust, and corrosion.

Rust is slow fire and lichen, the symbiotic fusion of fungi and photosynthetic bacteria.

Lichen colonies have been found to be 5000 year old; slowly growing their way through an eon, and somehow, layered on skin, rust has turned golden.

The metal framework appropriated from Rem Koolhaus and Frank Gehry, (I wandered through dusk in Seattle for these architectural fragments) along with crystalline basalt.

Experimental portraits

2008-05-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

A video of my work.

Winter in Yellowstone

2008-01-15T12:17:00.001-08:00

I spent two days at Yellowstone National Park this winter, January 7th and 8th, 2008. I've been driving back and forth on highway 90 for years, seeing the exit signs for Yellowstone, not realizing it was so close. You drive into the park from Livingston, Montana. It's about 60 miles south.

The park's headquarters is at Mammoth Springs, and in winter, the only park road open for automobile traffic is through the Lamar Valley to Cooke City, on the Parks NE corner.

It's a fantastic landscape. Brutal, stark, severe, eerie, awe inspiring, otherworldly.

The first day I stayed close to the headquarters, walking around Mammoth hot springs. Steam and limpid pools, subtle colors and skeleton trees. Terraces of milky stone.

Second day, I drove down a two lane blacktop, dusted with snow, curving through a forest of ghost tree skeletons, remnants of the fire 0f 1998, into the wide spaces of the Lamar Valley. It's winter, and the animal population have moved down from the mountains. Elk by the side of the road. Hundreds of buffalo graze on the plains, plowing through the snow with their thick heads.

At the end of my drive, I stopped to look through a telescope, and saw a fantastic vision of nature. A wolf had killed an elk, and about 40 ravens were swirling densely around in the air, some were perched on the antlers of the downed elk. The wolf was on the carcass. Wolf and ravens were dark, in motion, silhouetted against the white snow. It was a vision into primeval nature. I stepped back from the telescope, stunned. (and then a ranger explained the complex interdependence/relationship, between wolf and raven.)

That afternoon I took a Snocat tour into the Norris geyser basin, walking through thick powder, past subtle and beautiful colors in pools, hues of archaea, bacteria, eukarya; whiteness of steam, ice and thick powder snow, stark silhouetted trees, wilderness pure and beautiful under cool, luminous sun.

More Photographs

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower

2007-12-19T21:02:00.000-08:00

Corrosion, Reflection, Dusk Blue Light

2007-12-13T23:58:00.000-08:00

This is the current experimental portrait, transfiguration, metamorphosis.

Still working out these themes.

Remnant structure of corroded metal control box, reflection of through truss, double lift bridge, skyscraper facade matrix, dusk light, Zhalih.

Evening Star

Over the winter twilight,
Venus
reigns as
queen of the night sky.
brilliant, glittering
her acid clouds shine
over early evening traffic
and skyscraper windows
that spell out characters
of an unknown language
that can only be understood
by the river and the bridges.

Under sky: dusk, rust, stone

2007-11-30T16:11:00.001-08:00

This is the new piece I am working on. Fractal reflections, corroded metal from an industrial disaster, lichen coated gravestone, worn by weather and time, the color of the sky at dusk, grid work skyscraper arrays, and the beautiful Zhalih, a part-time muse who lives around the corner.

Zhalih, the curvature of an aluminum sculpture, and reflections in a skyscraper facade, as viewed from the steel bridge at dusk

2007-11-21T15:49:00.000-08:00

I've reworked this piece. I think it is better.

Art and Corrosion: Portland Graffiti

2007-11-09T14:15:00.003-08:00

The abandoned wastelands of industrial america, chainlinked art galleries on corrosive edge. Artists up against decay, fire, oxidation, and time. Here is some work I have found. McCormick and Baxter Superfund site, and Taylor Electric.

.

Reflection and corrosion,
after the fire, time, the rain and the wind

Surrealistic wheat paste, contrasted with the decay of old posters, faded paint, narrow lathe.

I dream of rust and fall

2007-10-18T15:31:00.000-07:00

language of the birdssuffer the time

While you are here, if you want, you could look at my best work.
Experimental Portraits (Visual Art)
Epistemic Purchase (A poem)
Borges: The Golem (My translation)
Eagle Creek (A hiking essay)
The Time Factory -SF story and video

Close to Abstraction

2007-09-19T17:57:00.000-07:00

The response of the mockingbird.

2007-09-19T17:54:00.000-07:00

In the response of the mockingbird I could not find connection.

On the grey road back
from New Orleans,
to Jackson,
to Tupelo,
to Memphis
to Chicago and
north to Wisconsin

All SEcReT DREaMS are unCoNCEALED,
ReVEALED
In rolled up blankets ,
packages tied with string ,
cardboard boxes wrapped with duct tape,
over stuffed hefty bags,
and unmatched salvation army luggage.

Just clutch your ticket
be glad if you have a destination,

As I sit on the cold and hard plastic seats
under the cold and hard fluorescent light.
A guy collecting cans asks me for spare change,
everywhere I stop
50 cents will get you a play
on the pinball machines,

A pregnant woman, traveling alone
shufflles through some papers in her purse
looking for a dollar she hopes
she might have lost to spend
as ex-cons whisper through thin lips to
sailors on leave,
and Hmong kids with heavy metal T-shirts eat
cold cuts wrapped in plastic
under the “Arrivals and Departures” sign.

I drink whiskey in the back seats out of a passed half pint.
Get out at the stops and smoke.

I watched all day for junk yards
or beauty salons or
fishing tackle suppliers or
“Home Cooking” or
juke joints or
people sitting on the porches watching the bus go by
lost America.
Sometimes I can see it

But in the 4:00 a.m. half lit ride thorough furtive sleep and dreams
the miles are an endless stream of strip malls and chain stores,
with duplicated facades preaching an infinite echolalic neon text,
chanting exile in aluminum and plastic, as the diesel engine thrums spasmodic clockwork sleep.

Talking Earth Podcast: Noah, Otho, James

2007-09-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

Podacast of TheTalking Earth, on KBOO, hosted by Patrick Bocarde, with buffalo poets and myself. It's not bad.

http://www.archive.org/details/TalkingEarth-September172007

Tel: Notes from a Labyrinth

2007-09-10T11:21:00.000-07:00

During a day of dark and spine and bone, in the sixth year, in a place where the disconnected heads mouth soft, innumerable chants, as they float in groups along through the tunnels, you are passing alone, tooled up and wired , through a long sequence of repeated monotonous interchanges of open straight passageways, the ground, grit of broken numbers (tangle of hair)
and the walls, a slate gray intricate pattern (mosaic of bone) and at length; miles; days; years; data, find yourself, at nightbreak; as the mouthers of chants (flesh chants) retreat into their niches, within the edges of a network, based upon a towering house (fractal
scape of steel and glass and flesh), surrounded by a few spare data trees, and reflected in a black, barely rippling random sea, mathematical mirror.
................
................
Never and less, here is where you will be scanning the next few weeks. The operator of the site, Tel, has worked with you before, but you have not been on site with him for a few years. A message rider from him, image, sound and data files, has gotten past your filters,
and offers you no other alternative than a reply. The rider was detailed, in convoluted form, sound files montaged with the vision and data bits.
...................
...................

The software was all wrong, the circuits and memory ran fine, but there was a wild inconsistency between the types of software tools. What was a volume simulation of downtown LA doing wired together with a database of Japanese bond transactions in the 1960's and some early 21 century 3-d porno loops?

...................
...................

An avatar of death white face, liquid luminous nitrogen eyes, thin curved lips, and hair softer than the web.
....................
....................

He spoke.
"All the creation here is not simply of one single substance. All you see and feel is a pattern of remembered codes, objects painted and recorded, parts of their qualities preserved, and merged for example, a sound recorded on lower Broadway at two in the morning,
placed into a spreadsheet and merged with the architectural plans for the world trade center, while this mixture is painted on the pattern of sand in the Gobi desert after the Romans destroyed the ecology. We have interlaced this on a digital framework of the
taste of the milk coming from your mothers breast, and feel you will be well pleased. The more desires and urges and sacred objects, the more detailed plans and histories and contents of libraries, the more complexity placed into an object, the more fascinating and powerful and endlessly variable it can become."

.....................
.....................

The soft space was patterned from pleasure as well as from need; all interfaces became games of joy to play. The data was enclosed in Andalusian castles of flowing water and music, where information came as your own true song.
.................
.................

And with digital bits; chaos and complex deep to the linked clone minds the seething net was wired, simulation wrapped tight to; across all natures world close touched; a mime of simulation, joined to the real, the hard and quick of this once only world.

...................
...................

And now through this valley, through red dimmed windows. vast forms move fantastic, to music of machineries and the throng moves ack and forth and does not smile.

.....................
.....................

No sooner than the control commands had entered the surface fractal structure, and you speak these words, then, as if the entire network had crystallized into a metallic state, you can feel the chain reaction of screens and images locking across the entire network.
You become aware of hollow echoing inside the room. like an entire Balinese Kepchar orchestra is clanging. Screens across the room go blank or flicker with hundreds of images, and all the images start to become the same, simultaneous. multiple merger, you stare across the room at Tel staring at all the screens, like stone, you place your pseudo hand, on the image of his shoulder, and he speaks, almost grimly, monotonously staring ahead and as he speaks , he relays a sequence of repeated images, simple and direct, and you drink in the portent of the words.

“Can’t you hear it? You have heard it for many nights. but I did not speak. They are locked up, alive.”

And tonight, the door breaking down. The death cry. Struggles within the metallic archway.
“Where will you go?”

"They will be here soon.” Footsteps.
A heartbeat. He flashed a whole sequence of hitherto concealed images. “It's all over. They stand outside the door."
....................
....................

The computer network starts to fall apart. The simulated room starts to flash images of the room it is inside of. The walls were being broken down. They burst in.

......................
......................

The electric storm was still raging.
The world shot full of wild light
You turn back to look.
The radiance is the blood red moon.

Experimental Portraiture

2007-08-28T14:08:00.001-07:00

The images on this page are some of the art/craft I make. When I do these the visual elements: rust, moss, corrosion, water, stone, and portraits of friends, feel like words in a poem. I employ combinatoric techniques with many attempts, of masking, layering, multiple exposures (or the digital equivalent), until new pieces appear.

If you want to buy a print email me.

james

the music forbids deep silence

Leonardo da Vinci
From his Treatise on Painting

"You should look at certain walls stained with damp, or at stones of uneven colour. If you have to invent some backgrounds you will be able to see in these the likeness of divine landscapes, adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, woods, great plains, hills and valleys in great variety: and then again you will see there battles and strange figures in violent action, and expressions of faces and clothes and an infinity of things which you will be able to reduce to their complete and proper forms. In such walls the same thing happens as in the sound of a bell, in whose stroke you may find every named word you can imagine."

span of days

Susan Sontag
From Fragments of an Aesthetic of Melancholy

1

Because, first of all, they are a compendium of desires – contrasting, contradictory, impacted, immobilizing.
The desire to become fully visible, to be seen (at last) as one is, to be honest, to be unmasked.
The desire to hide, to be camouflaged. To be elsewhere. Other. The desire to impersonate someone else, but that is not other enough. The desire to escape from a merely human appearance: to be an animal, not a person, an object (stone? wood? metal? cloth?), not a person, to be done with personhood.
The desire to be emblematic. Impervious to age and the distress of flesh.
The desire to accede to the ruins of time, to be reconciled with the depredations of time, to become a ruin.
The desire to punish the self. The desire to place no aim before that of gratifying it.
The desire to dissolve the self into the world, the desire to reduce the world to matter, something one can inscribe oneself on, sink into, be saturated with. The desire to compete with one’s own image, to become image, artifact; art; form….
The desire to be stripped down, to be naked, to be concealed, to disappear, to be only one’s skin, to mortify the skin, to petrify the body, to become fixed, to become dematerialized, a ghost, to become matter only, inorganic matter, to stop, to die.

fall glintsilver

Transfigurations 3

2007-08-06T13:26:00.000-07:00

Most of my creative work lately has been involved with experimental portraiture, where I take photos of friends, layer them with moss and rock and stone and city fragments, with rust and corrosion and decay, with light reflections and trees and water.

They are a joy to do.

Some of them are available at this link.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jamzik/Transfigurations02

This one is a picture of my friend Charles as a Dostoevskian sinner saint, genius clown. I suppose that it could be said, however, my work, and my friends, are a portrait of myself.

This one is of Aimee, as a 21st century Mona Lisa. I don't think I have this one right yet, it's version ten, but I am working on it.