letter blocks say what?

"Film lovers are sick people"

2012-02-24T12:45:00.003-05:00

Francois Roland Truffaut, the influential French filmmaker, says "film lovers are sick people." If he is right, then Zach and I must be under the weather 24/7. We love film. Short films in particular. The kind where interesting stories are told creatively, beautifully, enthusiastically, and succinctly in less than an hour. The kind where big name movie stars, box office numbers, bling, hype, accompanying promotional merchandise, and special effects are optional.

Last year, we caught the Oscar Nominated Shorts (Animation and Live Action) when we were in NYC.

God of Love, by writer-director Luke Matheny, won the 2011 Best Live-Action Short Film

The Lost Thing, based on the book by Shaun Tan, won Best Animated Short Film

This year, instead of fighting the limited release of those films in Indiana, we downloaded them from iTunes and are going to have a viewing party right in the comfort of our living room! I can't wait!

p.s. You can view one of the nominees for Best Animated Short Film (2012), The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, here.

p.p.s. Midnight in Paris is one of the nine films nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards this year. In an ideal world, it would win. View trailer.

Recipe of the Week: Slow Cooker Madras Curry Chicken

2012-02-22T16:45:00.000-05:00

Slow cooker Madras curry chicken tastes better than it looks. If you are having a bad case of spring fever, you'll be cured by the savory, sweet, mildly spicy and tangy taste from the mango chutney and granny smith apples.

Serve it with steaming hot rice or with naan ...

I followed this exact recipe from Food.com but tweaked the portions of some of the ingredients ...

Ingredients

2 small onions, finely diced so they will melt during cooking

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 jalapeno pepper, finely diced

1 tbsp ginger root, minced

1 tbsp tomato paste

2 tbsp Madras curry powder

3/4 cup mango chutney

1lb boneless skinless chicken thights

1 granny smith apple, diced

Directions

Lightly spray the interior of the crock pot with cooking spray for easier clean up later.

Cover the bottom of the pot with onions, garlic, and jalapeno pepper; top with chicken thighs. Place the diced apples on top of chicken.

Combine curry powder, chutney, tomato paste and ginger together and pour over chicken.

Cook for 4-5 hours on high until chicken is cooked and tender. Mix the sauce together so all the ingredients are blended well.

studio moving day one

2012-02-21T08:31:00.001-05:00

studio moving day one: the basement flood

we've been out of the clay studio in portland for a month or so now, however, we haven't moved anything to the new location yet. last night we came back to begin packing up equipment and to finish out the last few custom orders from etsy and some student work from the previous semester. what we found only created more work.

the basement flooded sometime in the middle of last week. all the of the carboard boxes are soaked to the rim. thankfully they are mostly packed with ceramics and not paintings, prints or the water-destructible like. but the mats, the buckets, the clay, the plaster recycle pans, the tools, shelves, and tables are all sitting in water. the sump pump died, just in time to flood my shit.

Food for Thought ...

2012-02-19T12:14:00.001-05:00

Zach and I are self-professed foodies. We love to eat and have adventurous palettes that are always up for something new. We plan our weekly menus and try to shop for our food as conscientiously as we can. Lately, that has been a near-impossible task. When did it become unreasonable to ask for REAL food at the grocery store, something that is not a GMO or laden with poison?

(link to sign the petition is here)

It is hard to live in Indiana and have to see big corporations take over the farm lands. The beautiful dark soils are destroyed in the name of greed. Farmers are exploited in the name of profit. This behavior is a direct violation of the ethics of life. You either have to be ignorant or misinformed to be apathetic about the food you ingest.

Here are some links on the topic of food from around the web:

a new film in the works

a great resource about real food

a shopping guide

a scary list. You'll look at this and wonder what's left to eat ...

feed yourself!

facts

organic food recipes to try at home

be afraid. Be very afraid.

mission accomplished!

2012-02-18T11:44:00.001-05:00

Zach accomplished the mission to print 20 wholly different shirts based on his new color palette. We've shared some in a previous post, and here are the rest!

I love that all of the shirts are one of a kind. The subject matter may repeat, but the colors and placements are new on each shirt. If you're interested in purchasing some or seeing these t-shirts in person, we'll be taking them to Artists' Own in the spring.

Now that the t-shirts are done, we're packing up and getting ready to leave for Portland this evening. We'll be celebrating Matt's birthday on Sunday and then again on Monday! Hope you have a fun weekend!

Recipe of the Week: Italian Wedding Soup

2012-02-16T11:44:00.002-05:00

Italian Wedding Soup, also known as Minestra Maritata, sounds romantic but all it actually is, is a combination of meat and vegetables in a clear broth. This soup is great for nights where you just want to whip up something cheap and easy. Both Zach and I love this soup and we overload ours with kale. This is the version we make at home ...

Ingredients

For the meatballs:

1/2 pound extra-lean ground beef

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 tablespoons dry bread crumbs

1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/2 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

a pinch of nutmeg

salt and pepper

For the broth:
5 cups chicken broth
2 bunches of kale, or escarole, or spinach
1/2 cup uncooked orzo pasta
1/3 cup finely chopped carrot

Directions

Mix the ingredients for the meatballs and form into 3/4inch-size balls.

In large saucepan, heat broth to boiling; stir in kale/escarole/spinach, orzo pasta, chopped carrot and meatballs. Return to boil, then reduce heat to medium. Cook at slow boil for 10 minutes, or until pasta is al dente. Stir frequently to prevent sticking.

color palette

2012-02-14T23:15:00.006-05:00

designing t-shirts has made me consider something that has, at best, been simmering on the back burner: color palette.

hirst and neon-pastels
in beginning a series of t-shirts, bags, dresses, and shoes, i must think about what i'm making in terms of a fashion INDUSTRY, which has a commercial palette. and if i hope to sell a 'look' as much as an image, i need to have a defined idea of color palette.

these days it seems that damien hirst and his brightly colored dot paintings are the toast of the industry. i call them neon pastels and they are everywhere. they are all over the boutiques in soho and on 5th ave (some right across the street from galleries where hirst's dot paintings hang in the window). they are on the runway. they are in the malls and on their way to wal-mart and target.

these gridded, mechanized (assistant-made) paintings are created with commercial enamel paints. but the white background is important to understanding how these colors effect the viewer. it makes the colors very bright and cheery. even the darker and more muted tones take on this 'neon' effect with the white background and space surrounding it. many of these paintings have 'pharmaceutical' titles and one can certainly see the neon/plastic/spin-wash of drug commercials in these works. the dots can even act as a metaphor for pills. but beyond whatever sub-meanings these paintings do or do not have, the actual effect of these works is their assault on fashion and pop culture.

color/consumerism

where do our color choices in clothes/home decor come from? i've been in the market for t-shirts lately and i can't help but see hirst's color palette all over the stores and streets. few of us dye, print, and develop our own color palette in our clothing. most of us buy our clothes off the rack. and that being the case, one's choice in color and style is very limited. and that limitation in turn defines the 'look' of pop culture.

why neon-pastels? its not necessarily the return of the 80s, but a return to the washover. the coverup. the spin. when shit looks shiny its smell is some how much less offensive. and this is what commercial fashion tends toward. dress happy. dress fun. dress colorful. even if you can't pay your mortgage. these colors look suitable for the office. approachable with a good attitude and pleasant demeanor. eventually these colors will go out of fashion and look cheap and kitchy, but for now this is the tacky gloss of cocaine commercialism coated in neon.

i most certainly hate damien hirst's color palette. i feel like its cheap, shallow, and mechanically devoid of humanity, like commercialism itself (perhaps that's its intention and why its so popular). i aim to develop a stronger, more self-aware, hopeful, and honest palette. and all i can do is hope that the next round of commercial colors will replace these tones with something richer. grunge will come back. or at least the muted colors of grunge will come back. hopefully the flannels will stay in 1992.

albers, psychological color, and my own color palette

Josef Albers' Homage to the Square series

josef albers is a huge influence on my color palette, not so much in the way he used color, but in the way he thought about color. his scientific studies in paint taught me that color is, at least partly, defined by its surrounding colors. and combinations of color are innately tied to emotional connections of place and identity (you'll have to ask mindy to delve further into the art history and philosophy here, she knows more of this than i). however, with the idea that color is affecting in mind, i experiment with mixing, to create new colors, and combining colors, to create visual language that is indicative of the life i live in the place i live it.

i attempt to truthfully represent the midwest in my color palette and the muted colors of the place i live provide the background of the aesthetic i build. the midwest has a deep, rich history. its written in the rusted tools and buildings, rivers and skies, barns and cities. it would be shameful to make this place look gleaming in bright colors. i try to develop a color palette as rich and deep, and as layered as the stories and the sediment in the flood plains. here's a little poem about a midwestern palette:

the midwest is painted
in muted tones of town heroes

told in folktale stories

as deep as sediment

in the flood plains.

it is layered in

broken-down cars and barns

cul-de-sacs and city skylines

and quiet clouds

blowing dusted breezes

through hazy skies

a million miles wide.

putting it into practice

so in thinking through the colors and meanings, i tried to put the palette i made to work by trying to make something cute that's not princess slut pink or sparklingly annoying. i printed this grey crinkle polyester dress we got for eleven bucks at old navy. it's just a pillow sack dress, but dressing it up in these muted deeply rich tones gives it a lively vibrance. it's fun and it's cute, and its color palette is not cheap commercial crap, even though the dress itself is.

Have a sweet Valentine's Day ...

2012-02-14T00:00:00.003-05:00

Regardless of your current relationship status, here's a powerful, love-affirming true story and beautiful portrayal of marriage that will warm your heart, make you cry, and help renew your faith in love ...

new developments

2012-02-12T14:32:00.001-05:00

soon we will be moving our studio out of the garage in west lafayette and basement in the house in portland and into a great new space in downtown lafayette...details to come in the next couple of weeks as we get moved in and set up and running...

...but because we are moving into a new space, i've had to go through a lot of old stuff and try to get rid of much of my collection of 'materials.' so, the last couple of weeks, and the next couple of weeks will be spent prepping the new space and getting it ready-to-work in time to get new work made of the indiana artisan marketplace at the end of march.

in cleaning out the garage this week i got rid of a lot of trash by putting together 9 new assemblage structures to paint, then started in on something new: T-shirts.

(also, some onesies for Russel and Leia):

i've been making my own t-shirts for a few years now, and have done workshops with kids, but recently i decided to make them to sell. in the past i've used spray paint and stencils on shirts, but while enamel paint works, it's not the best material for jersey cotton shirts. so i've been using heat-set silkscreen ink and linoblocks, which is a lot more permanent, and doesn't smell like enamel paint. its always difficult to know what images are most popular and sellable, so i'm trying to be more graphic and 'designy' with the overall print. sure the image is still the focus, but the layout of the shirts are becoming more deconstructed and blocked out rather than clean isolated landscapes. i'm trying to use elements from the landscapes to create graphics on the t-shirts instead of printing a landscape.

ch-ch-ch-chia!

2012-02-11T15:15:00.002-05:00

** dorky post alert **

I got 2lbs of chia seeds yesterday and they are the most fascinating things to look at!

You can get chia seeds in black or white, or a mix of both. Put them in water (or any drink) and see them grow to 9 times their size as they form a gel-like exterior! So cool!

The web is all abuzz with these wondrous chia seeds. Since we've only just gotten some we can't attest to their health benefits/effectiveness. For now, I can only say how entertaining these chia seeds have been! :)

Have a happy and restful weekend!

why do you make art?

2012-02-10T17:24:00.004-05:00

We had a wonderful time at the closing reception for county fair yesterday. The good-sized crowd of students and faculty were welcoming and generous with their thoughts and comments on the show. Zach gave a little talk, fielded some questions from the audience, and got stumped when a woman asked him why he made the piece! So profound, this Socratic "why." How do you explain to someone that you made a particular work because you were compelled to?!! Making art, for Zach, is simply an affair of living ... I think. He observes, he reflects, he brainstorms, and he makes. It is not a cathartic process, but rather, an experiential concept that includes an involvement of the mind and the spirit of creativity.

We are bringing county fair back to Portland tonight. If the weather is nice next week, we'll set it up in the parking lot by the furniture store and just wait to see what happens! We think the work will be at its best in a non-gallery setting. No intimidating white walls and watchful eyes. Perhaps people will be more inclined to really interact and play with the piece!

Thank you Rachel Ray for giving us this opportunity to show the work in Elizabethtown! :)

Recipe of the Week: Spicy Sausage Stew

2012-02-09T06:42:00.003-05:00

Last night I made a delicious stew that would make my brother, Leon, cringe. Growing up, we were always the exact opposites, right down to our tastes in food. Leon loves pork. I hate pork. I love shellfish. Leon hates shellfish. Leon hates desserts, I live for sweets. You get the idea. Suffice to say, our fussy eating habits trained our mom to become a patient and creative cook!

Actually, the stew with the spicy Italian turkey sausage alone would have suited Leon's taste. It's the whole pound of mushrooms I added. He hates mushrooms. So, of course, I love mushrooms! Zach is indifferent about mushrooms but he loved the stew ...

Ingredients
2 small onions, thinly sliced
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1lb spicy turkey Italian sausages, remove casings
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup chopped celery
1lb of 2 different varieties of mushrooms
1 bay leaf
1 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1/2 cup uncooked pearl barley
3 cups chicken broth
2 tbsp brandy
salt and pepper
parsley for garnish

Directions
Cook onion and garlic in a Dutch oven over medium heat until golden.
Add sausage to pan and cooked until brown and crumbled.
Add celery, carrots, mushrooms, fennel seeds, crushed red pepper, and bay leaf; cook 10 minutes or until mushrooms release moisture.
Stir in barley, chicken broth, brandy, salt and pepper.
Bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 1 hour or until barley is tender.

Serve immediately.

trash treasure trove

2012-02-08T11:56:00.001-05:00

fly over, 2010

it's snowing in indiana today...just a bit only though. it has been a very mild winter thus far and we're getting down into february. hopefully more snow will hold off until the weekend when we've returned from the closing reception for county fair in kentucky.

yesterday i decided to venture into cleaning up the garage/print studio/woodshop and instead of making headway packing up tools and toys, i decided i'd try to get rid of some 'trash' by creating some assemblage frames to paint. i got 4 layed out and 3 put together yesterday, i hope to equal that today. i haven't painted one of these structures in a couple of years, but constructing the form is at least as challenging as putting paint on the canvas. i like to reuse materials when i can. i paint over canvases and rework sculpture. i use as much of my scraps and trash as is possible. i even picked up some guy's table base from off the curb last night when mindy and i went for our walk.

untitled, 2010

these paintings have been wildly popular for me. they look quite interesting as they are, even with out paint on them, and that can make me a bit timid to paint them, but once i get the gesso whitewashing all the surfaces, the shapes really pop out. then i can manipulate the way the colors and images play. the way they are put together, combined with the color palette i gravitate towards, and the 'print' imagery create an incredible cobbled-together-from-collected-shit aesthetic that is quite definitive of the environment i come from. keep an eye out for where this next series will show up.

crows in the corn, 2010

city of wind, 2010

we'll keep you posted! :)

closing reception for 'County Fair' ...

2012-02-07T13:59:00.005-05:00

If you live in the area ...

... we hope to see you there (Thursday, 9th Feb)!

Super Sprawl Sunday

2012-02-05T13:17:00.001-05:00

i finally finished up the section of sprawl to go to mudfire studios in atlanta for an upcoming show. the piece is 42 houses arranged into cul-de-sacs on a 24"x24" panel. this smaller version of sprawl was a struggle to make. the hundreds of houses all grouped and stacked together look, well, sprawling, but even packed full with houses the panel looked small and undefined. pointless. so i marked the footprint of each house on the panel to make it easier to re-assemble, then taped off where the road portion of the cul-de-sac would be and sprayed a white outline for the curb. i re-assembled all the houses back on the panel. and this is the original image that i submitted for the show. however, the work still didn't have the aesthetic that i was seeking. it still needed upgrades. i started thinking about how i could make a fence around the houses that wouldn't obstruct the view of the houses around the outside of the panel. instead of making a fence i decided that power lines could also play that role. so i cut and assembled 4 poles and strung wire between them. still it was lacking. naturally, the power lines needed birds. so, i added some 2 sided block-printed paper birds that i glued to the wires. i was surprised at the effect of power lines acting as a 'ceiling' frame around the work. it gave the work a sense of space by defining where the sky begins.

the show at mudfire is multiple clay interpretations of 'home' and 'house' and what those words mean. this was my definition. this, of course, is one of those wonderful bits of finite math that comes with a matrix of answers. some people will make a house, some will make what's going on inside the house, some will deconstruct it, some will reconstruct it, some will fantasize it, some will realize it. all will be different. mine is less about those words and more about the mass production of living in the suburbs. the repetition of the block printed houses allows me to repeat forms easily, like there are model homes you can choose from and slight variations in the construction to make it your own. it isn't weird to see housing editions pop up in a summer in the suburbs. it is common, you barely notice the missing fields. what is interesting to me is how quickly they go up. and how shitty they are built. yards of hydro-seeded mud, black plastic mail boxes, and cheap tiny trees. the insides are no different, with plastic mouldings, and prefab particle board everything. this is what "from the 150s" gets you. as a kid, when my own 'old' neighborhood grew a new cul-de-sac edition, it was like the neighborhood got commercial plastic wash-over. there was no character in many of those houses. they felt 'modeled' and homogenized and had an bit of blank distance when i ran through the neighborhoods. i imagined they all watched the same tvs, drove the same black/grey/beige car/van/suv, and worked in the same blank office building. there is a loss in the wildness of living a manufactured life with every resource at your beckon call. in this sense my piece is a reflection of the domestication of humanity.

From the print studio ...

2012-02-04T14:21:00.006-05:00

From the print studio (also known as the garage), emerged these new and awesome linocut collages ...

The fog of the writer's block seems to have lifted. Now that these prints are done, I still hear Zach out in the garage sawing, hammering, spraying, and working hard to put the finishing touches on his piece Sprawl ... stay tuned ... Zach will be sharing more about that project in his next blog post.

When he's done in the garage, we'll spend the rest of today prepping for our mini Super Bowl party! We're marinating 2 different flavors of chicken wings, making pico de gallo salsa and guacamole. Tomorrow we'll broil the wings, make nachos, blue jello, and parsnip truffle fries. Major yum. If you're searching for healthy Super Bowl recipes, I really like this site!

Whatever your plans are for the weekend, we wish you much joy!

Recipe of the Week: Slow Cooker Red Beans and Rice

2012-02-02T15:52:00.006-05:00

What's better than red beans and rice? Slow cooker red beans and rice! You throw all the ingredients in the crock pot and your steaming hot meal is ready in a couple of hours ...

I combined two recipes from myrecipes.com and ended up with this list of ingredients:

1lb dried red beans

3/4lb smoked turkey sausage, thinly sliced

1 red pepper, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

1 sweet onion, chopped

3 celery ribs, chopped

garlic, minced

1 tbsp Creole seasoning

2 bay leaves

1 tsp dried thyme

hot sauce (optional)

Combine all the ingredients with 6 cups of water and cook on high for 6-7 hours.

Serve over rice.

'atmospheric indiana'

2012-01-31T10:15:00.002-05:00

mindy gave me an early christmas gift last year. it was a tiny sketchbook, to be part of the art house co-op and the brooklyn arts library's traveling sketchbook show. it was 32 empty pages of frustration. it was a sweet gesture on her part, but when she gave it to me, we were in the middle of finishing everything up for the christmas season. i know she worried that i didn't want to do it. i did want to do it. i just couldn't think of anything i wanted to do. i thought i should maybe turn it into a sculpture or make a pop-up book. i couldn't decide if it should have a cohesive theme or just be random images. should i blockprint in it? i thought it could be a travel log (which it is to a certain degree). i really didn't know what it could be. i didn't make a mark in it. by christmas we had resigned ourselves to the idea that it probably wouldn't get completed by the january 31st deadline, and certainly by the time we got back from new york, i'd give up on the idea of even remembering where the sketchbook was at.

a few days ago i decided i'd try to get it done. what came out was a cohesive short story of the indiana sky in 32 spray painted backdrops and simple silhouetted images that i titled: 'atmospheric indiana.' it is not unlike a travel log, but it's not a travel log. it's an observation i guess.

i took the book apart and spray painted both sides of all 8 pages, then put the book back together with a needle and thread. the pages all looked like the sky at different times of the day. i started drawing images into the faded spray paint, recalling everything i drive through regularly. i tried to mix 'traditional' icons, like the barn and the old windmill, with images of what is actually out there, like CFOs and traffic, all under hazy colorful skies. the skies are beautiful, but those colors come from contamination in the air from the images in the foreground. mindy's favorite was the fence row. my favorite were the airplane contrails.

it was a lot of fun to do this project. i'm happy that i finished it, and i'm happy with the finished piece. it is simple and quiet, but maybe that can stand out amongst everyone trying to do something different and unexpected. i know mindy is happy that i had fun with it.

On using video...

2012-01-29T13:48:00.004-05:00

last year we began using video in our art. it all stemmed from getting an iPhone. mindy got one first and had way too much fun playing around, then we invested in a flipcam (which was a piece of shit). then i got an iphone. then everything changed. we started making short 'process' videos of some of my ceramics techniques, as little educational films, which forced us to become more involved in the editing process. then we started playing with soundtrack. then, after seeing the oscar nominated shorts last winter in NYC, we became interested in how film tells stories.

last winter was our first real experience with video. we were snowed in under about 14" and drifts up to the windows and in rural indiana, you stay like that until the sun melts some of that shit away. so to break cabin fever we got out the county fair toys and made little video clips of them. we created little stark sets on the shelves, stairs, and pedestals in the house. then used the iphone and the snap-shot camera to film everything. we edited everything in iMovie and used garageband to create the soundtracks. looped it all together and ended up w/ a 15 minute collection of short clips.

i make interactive works and filming them being interacted with and moving around and being more than static helps remove some of the preciousness of the work. i watched alexander calder's 'circus' films when i was in grad school, then we saw them again in NYC at a retrospective show at the whitney a few years ago. and it was eye-opening to see calder, some drunk old fella playing with the toys he'd created. in the same way i felt that county fair should also have that element of 'play.'

Alexander Calder's Circus (Part 1). View Part 2 here.

this project led into making cartoons, and then led into shooting other video for other installations. i used video as a main portion of my installation from last fall, post-industrial, to give a sense of space and distance in the piece. we basically drove through the indiana countryside filming the horizon line, covering the different kinds of human habitats here, from the rural to the suburban to the city.

Post-Industrial, 2011.

people respond to moving images more than they respond to static images, the challenge is in keeping their attention. most people who walk into an art gallery are not going to spend 5, 10, or 15+ minutes standing in a dark room trying to figure out what the artist is trying to say. i find that video can be more effective by embedding it into a 'static' work. so there's more to it than just the 'film.' in most galleries and museums that show video, the 'video' is the work. i use video in the same way i use everything else. as an element that contributes to the whole.

detail from County Fair

county fair now features a talking 'carnie' at the food cart and a collection of animated and live-action shorts that help to grab the audience and pull them into the work. give them something to interest them, but don't make it demand their attention. i, instead, ask for their attention by making the video a simple element of the overall piece. and with that, i can, more adequetly involve an audience with my ideas about art and life.

p.s. some more video shorts from county fair can be seen in this previous post.

a treasury

2012-01-28T22:25:00.004-05:00

An Etsy.com treasury inspired by this blog.

Speaking of Etsy, use the coupon code 'WINTERBLUES' to receive 15% off everything in the shop from now till February 7th!

writer's block

2012-01-26T10:37:00.000-05:00

it's raining grey and nasty in indiana and i haven't made anything in 6 weeks. not a mug, not a painting, not a print, not anything. i re-worked my county fair installation, but mostly that was just re-hashing ideas and re-configuring layout (not that that is easy or mindless). and this is where i am at. nothing on tap, nothing in mind, just nothing. but then i believe that is how creativity works. it ebbs and flows like the sea. it breathes in and it breathes out.

i imagine that the majority of people do not understand this phenomenon. most 'artists' even probably do not understand this. we go to grad school in search of our voice, but end up getting caught up in creating an identifiable form, technique or idea. then we spend the rest of our careers working within those fenced in borders we've put around ourselves, producing work that will support our lifestyles. this is what the world expects from us: to be producers of art, like we are some machine that shits out beauty. or at least buyable, recognizable, and finished relics of thought.

this is not art. art exists in a realm of experimentation, everything else is production. for example: my pottery is quite unique, and it took me several years of practice and trial and error to develop a form, image, technique that works. that sells. that is accessible to its audience. but in making and re-making and re-making, the art becomes lost in production. to crank out mug after mug or print after print, or anything in quantity simply takes the thought out of making. it becomes mindless repetition, no different than pushing a button on a factory line (the only difference is that i own my factory).

so i haven't made anything in 6 weeks. my stock is dropping at my co-op gallery, and my shelves are beginning to look a bit sad. but i believe this down-time is an important part of creating. closing oneself off from spewing forth 'art' and stepping back and breathing in for a bit. observing, and struggling with vague ideas and images that must be worked into something meaningful. the point for me is to avoid the one-dimensionality of artists who discover a marketable niche in their work. of course, i want to be able to support myself with my art, and that typically means selling things the public already knows you make. but for me that is secondary to thinking about new ideas and ways of affecting an audience.

most people refer to this as writer's block. and the thing about writer's block is that you are not creating nothing. you are making all kinds of things. you are rarely, however, finishing anything. you put down something vague in hopes of working out a complete idea, but it just doesn't happen. my sketchbook is filled with scribbles and sketches, but they simply have no meaning at the moment.

Soho Graffiti Album

2012-01-24T09:29:00.003-05:00

we returned to Indiana from NYC last night. it was a great 4 days. above are several examples of the graffiti we found in soho. we had planned to get to 5 pointz and williamsburg, but mindy's ankle was not in the mood for walking. next time we'll go explore the other neighborhoods for some more good stuff. there is so much there. so much bad stuff, but there is a lot of good stuff too. the piece carved into the concrete is a keith haring. the only person we were looking for in soho that we didn't find was invader. we've seen him before (i believe on lafayette st.) but we couldn't find him this year. so please enjoy our little walk through the graffiti of soho.

Happy Chinese New Year

2012-01-23T10:20:00.007-05:00

Happy New Year! Or rather, gong xi fa cai!!! Today we welcome the year of the water dragon. Mindy and I spent a good part of our day in Chinatown yesterday wandering around looking at ang pao and all the little toys, dresses and heng heng items to bring wealth and good fortune in the new year. We ate dim sum at oriental garden on elizabeth st. where we were seated at a large round table with another couple and an old woman and a young white boy who spoke impeccable Chinese. after dim sum we wandered up Bowery a bit after I stopped for a few moments to draw the entrance to the manhattan bridge.

We ended up at uniqlo and bought some great and affordable basics and then stopped in to muji for some notebooks I hope to turn into something i can sell.

Then we went to kee's chocolates on Thompson. We read many reviews about this place and since it is just a couple of blocks from where we were staying we decided that it would be our chocolate for the trip (mindy and I always try to find a local chocolate shop when we go places). Her speciality is a creme brûlée truffle. You had to eat it in one bite so the liquid creme center didn't run down your chest. Oh lord was it good. Once you break the dark chocolate shell the sweet creme pours into your mouth, then as you swallow it the bitter dark chocolate begins to melt playing nicely off the sweet. Delicious delicious delicious.

after chocolate we walked back to the apartment and watched the end of the first football game. Then we were growing hungry again and decided to walk up greenwich ave to the meatball shop for an easy dinner. We ordered similar dishes, mindy had root beer I had real beer and we sat in the window watching the people pass by on the street.

After dinner we walked to the IFC theater on 6th ave and bought tickets for the 10:10 The City Dark show. While we waited, we went to Grom for some gelato: yum yum. Then we walked back to the theater and went in and found our seats. The 20 seat theater was mostly empty, just two other couples. As the lights came down to start the show the couple to mindy's right became increasingly annoying, talking and playing with their phones with her head in his lap. The guy behind us kept kicking our chairs. What the hell!? We were apparently in douche bag theater. Either way the show was great and I recommend it to everyone. It is about how electric light effects not just the night sky but human biology and animal habitats and migration. In other words we need the dark and we are losing it to "progress."

After the show we walked back down bleeker st. to the apartment. I checked to see who won the NFC championship game. Too bad SF, I really wanted y'all to win. Then we began packing up our shit to come back to Indiana.

We fly back to Indiana in a few short hours after our little trip to NYC. We covered several museums, a soho graffiti scavenger hunt, some research, Chinese New Year, a bit of shopping and a whole lot of eating. we love NYC but are looking forward to being home and hanging out with our big gray and white cat.

Snowy NYC

2012-01-22T11:05:00.005-05:00

Saturday morning we woke up to glistening flecks of snow falling to the streets below. New York in the snow is quite magical. That is until about noon when everyone has taken their dogs out, trampled the white snow into a dirty mix of unmelted snow ice salt sand and general NYC dirt and soot. So while mindy was wiping the sleep from her eyes I walked in the quiet streets for some food. After breakfast we took the train uptown to the museum of art and design at columbus circle and to the Guggenheim. Mindy's ankle has been sore with a bit of tendinitis so we decided that a day of traversing the snow laden streets would probably not be the best idea in the world, so we tried to stay inside on solid ground as much as we could.

We started with MAD. They ended up having half of the museum floors closed for installation, so the price to get in was also cut in half, the work we saw was well worth the price. First we saw a show about the Japanese aesthetic, which was surprisingly inspiring. There were many different media in the show, but in particular some of the ceramic forms were screaming at me to investigate making some new shapes for printed surfaces, something more elegant and less about its useable function. An Akio Takamori piece featuring the inside of the figure's head was a favorite in the show.

We then went down stairs to a show entitled "the Korean eye," which featured many postmodern and post-postmodern works from korea. This show was very well put together in that it really gave a sense of Korea as a hip, electric, plastic, pretty and fad oriented place, but the art work was very strong and accessible from mechanical insides of fish to a mass of tiny smiling brightly colored molded foam figures traveling up the walls and around the staircase. One piece in particular was quite moving. A piece by lee leenam called "Ming and Chung dynasty paintings: cross over." The work featured 5 ancient Korean/Chinese scrolls side by side on 5 LED TVs. Over top of the images the artist had animated the changing seasons as thoughtfully and subtly as the scrolls themselves ending with winter falling into a moonlit night. We had to wait to view the work however, as the asshole docent stepped her group of morons right in front of our first attempt to interact with the work, sparking an apology from one of the tour participants. But it was well worth the wait.

Hong Young In, Procession, 2010
acrylic, embroidery, scenic fabric

We then trekked down a few blocks for our annual trip to hale and hearty for lunch, then hopped a cab to the gugg.

Arriving at the gugg we were greeted by a block-long line in a bitter cold wind, but it moved relatively quickly and we were inside in about 15 minutes or so. Once inside the place was so crowded it was hard to move around with out running into people, so I simply stiffened my shoulders and went where I wanted to go. I'm an asshole like that in overcrowded places. The show was Maurizio Cattelan, featuring his entire body of work hanging from ropes seemingly haphazardly in the rotunda. WOW. What a fun way to view a retrospective show. We started at the top. Mindy took the cramped elevator to the top. I took the twisting walkway, because there is no way in hell I'm packing myself into an already packed space. So I met her at the top in front of a horse's ass (part of the exhibit not a person). We made our way down the ramp and saw new things at every angle. It really was a genius way to look at all this work. Cattelan's cheeky humor and political satire were quite evident and despite the masses of morons in headphones listening to what someone wants you to think about art, we really enjoyed the work. I tried drawing some of the show in my sketchbook, but the gugg has such weird perspective and angles I ended up making mostly a mockery of it on the page. It was beginning to get dark when we left the museum, so we walked down to Lexington and hopped a train back to the west village.

We made reservations for a poorly yelp-reviewed place on bleeker called the mussel pot. This is why you can only half trust yelp reviews. The food was wonderful, but then mindy and I both love mussels. It was a bit pricy but we left full and happy. So, to anyone reading yelp reviews: mussel pot is good. Eat there.

NYC Day 2

2012-01-21T12:34:00.028-05:00

Day 2 in NYC was mindy day. First was a stop into Cutler salon for a cute new do, then noodle bar for lunch, then to the upper west side to meet with an independent curator who was a close friend of Norman Lewis.

Staying in the west village means I get to eat breakfast at my favorite fastest food in the city, bagels on the square on carmine and 6th ave. every time I eat here I get pissed at einsteins, because I can get 2 huge bagels slathered in DELICIOUS homemade cream cheese, and 2 large coffees for less than $10 including a tip. This is one of the few places in the city that the coffee doesn't taste like diesel fuel. At einsteins I get half of that for double the price and a third the quality. The people who work there are friendly and fast and I just love it.

While mindy was getting her hair cut I wandered all around soho looking for more graffiti and freezing my ass off in the process. Looking at all this stuff really makes me want to paint on these walls. A lot of the stuff out there is dogshit, tags and an inundation of stickers that no one even looks at. But then you look up and find katsu's paint hose sprayed 20 feet up the wall. Or a stencil of a machine gun with the words "art is my weapon." There is an early sine tag halfway up the wall of a parking lot on Wooster. The screwsacer and dash snow at the top of a wall on canal. it's amazing to see tags that you know have been there for a decade or two. Then the newer paste-ups that are billboard sized looking like some kind of advertisement for counter culture. And there is of course Shepard fairey everywhere.

After freezing and a new do, we went to have lunch at noodle bar on carmine. We found this little gem last year and for less than $30 we stuffed our faces with deliciousness.

Then we stopped back at the apartment for an hour or so before we hopped the 1 train to the upper west side to meet with Susan Stedman, who is an independent curator and a close friend of Norman Lewis (mindy's dissertation topic).

Her apartment is a sight to behold piled with books and art everywhere, something right out of the movies, the IFC kind of movies though. We sat and picked her brain on everything from art and culture to general living. She told us many wonderful stories of the Spiral Group artists and their successes and struggles in the art world. She was married to Indianapolis born and Herron educated artist, William Majors, who was a member of Spiral and a best friend and confidant of Lewis. We talked about their creating methods and interests and lives. After Majors death in 1982 she married the philosopher Alfred Prettyman and the two often host Sunday philosophy round table discussions in their loft. What a joy and an honor to get to meet with her. We stayed quite late into the evening laughing and telling stories, but still had to leave before Dr. Prettyman arrived home.

After we left her loft we walked up the block a bit and ate a late dinner at a Turkuaz, which you can guess is a Turkish restaurant. We were greeted by a belly dancer and a disgustingly touchy-feely couple at the table adjacent to ours. The food was underwhelming but not too overpriced and we left full. We hopped the train back to the west village and awaited the coming snowfall.