DaneLarsen.art

Idea Fund Grantee Reception

2012-01-26T12:24:00.002-06:00

I did a poor job getting the word out beforehand, but last night was the 2012 Idea Fund grantee reception at the Eldorado Ballroom in Houston. I drove 4.5 hours there and 4.5 back to make the 7:00 pm reception and am therefore a bit frazzled today. However, I offer this grainy photo, courtesy of @diverseworks, as proof that Scott and I were in fact there. Once again, Las Manos Negras is extremely grateful for the grant, and we look forward to executing the project this spring and summer. Hopefully it will draw some attention to the issue of wage theft and lead to enforcement of existing laws.

Most of the other grantees were in attendance, and while all of the projects seem fascinating I was particularly struck by Pastelgram's magazine as artwork cum archive project as well as Christina Sukhgian Houle's Migration Patterns During Wartime trilogy:

Invasionen Installation Views

2012-01-26T11:23:00.000-06:00

Invasionen/Invasions is closing at Galerie Carolyn Heinz in Hamburg, but the gallery has provided some excellent installation views as a parting shot. The show is looking for another venue, so if anyone has any ideas I'm more than happy to pass them on to Reinhold. The photographer does excellent work, so if you're in Germany and in need of an architectural photographer, send him some business:

* HAGEN STIER - ARCHITEKTUR +FOTOGRAFIE
FISCHERS ALLEE 70 - D-22763 HAMBURG
+49(0)40-39 99 90 795 - WWW.HAGENSTIER.COM

Drawings for a Sculpture

2011-12-12T22:16:00.000-06:00

I came across these figures while bored out of my skull administering a math TAKS test earlier year. The shapes were nice, and since I had far too much quiet time I schemed up a group of sculptures using these shapes made of 16x16x16 inch wire cages filled with rip-rap and hidden Opuntia pads. Eventually the forms would be covered in cactuses.

Crown for Bandsaw

2011-12-12T09:35:00.001-06:00

Las Manos Negras Receives Idea Fund Grant

2011-12-08T11:16:00.001-06:00

The official press releases went out yesterday, and our Las Manos Negras project has been funded by a grant from the Idea Fund, a regional re-granting program for the Andy Warhol Foundation. Scott got word a couple of days ago, and we've been anxiously biting our tongues until now. We'll be working up fliers for the project and fabricating lunch/toolboxes in the next few months, conducting interviews in the spring, editing and transcribing over the summer, and exhibiting in the fall. I'll set up a blog specifically for the project in a couple of days and link to it here.

We would like to thank the panelists for choosing LMN, and we would also like to congratulate the other grantees. The following is from the official press release:

The Idea Fund Announces 2012 Grantees

The Idea Fund, a re-granting program administered through Aurora Picture Show, DiverseWorksArtSpace and Project Row Houses, and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts,announces the 2012 The Idea Fund Grantees. The following ten Texas-based artists or artistgroups will receive $4,000 ($3,500 for the awarded project, plus $500 seed money for future work) tocreate and showcase projects in the coming year: Scott Gleeson & Dane Larsen; CarrieSchneider; Michelle Benaim Steiner, Lope Gutierrez Ruiz, & Alexander Wright; AaronDubrow, Xochi Solis, Jules Buck Jones, Drew Liverman, Scott Eastwood, Margit Raczkowski,Timothy Schmidt & Carlos Rosales-Silva; Alejandro Saenz Jr. (Kingspoint Crew); Lakes WereRivers collective; Ariel Evans & Richard Yanas; Nestor Topchy & Robert Rosenburg; LaurenWoods; and Christina Sukhgian Houle. Full descriptions of the funded projects are listed below.Of the more than 170 applications submitted to The Idea Fund from across Texas, these ten wereselected by The Idea Fund Panelists as projects that most exemplify artistic practices that falloutside the traditional frameworks of support, one of the main requirements of the grant. This year’spanelists were: Kate Hackman (Co-Director, Charlotte Street Foundation, Kansas City, Mo.), J. Hill(Houston-based artist and former recipient of Idea Fund grant), Noah Simblist (Austin/Dallas-basedartist, curator and writer; and associate professor of art at SMU), and Michelle White (curator at TheMenil Collection).
The Idea Fund is the second re-granting initiative of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts,following the pilot program, Alternative Exposure, administrated by Southern Exposure in SanFrancisco, CA. The Idea Fund is structured to provide artists with quick access to substantialfinancial support for projects that might not otherwise have access to funding.

Press Release:
No. 111201
Date:December 7, 2011
Immediate Release
Medium:Visual & Performing Arts
Destination:Houston, TX
Contact:Tracey Barnett at 713.223.8346tracey@diverseworks.org

2012 The Idea Fund Grantees and their Projects:

Scott Gleeson and Dane Larsen (Las Manos Negras): Las Manos Negras (LMN): A public artproject for the city of Dallas and surrounding municipalities designed to celebrate the invaluablecontribution immigrants make to our community and to educate the public about wage theft, workerexploitation, and work-related violence in the state of Texas. LMN will take the form of a series ofportable sculptural interventions, student workshops, and exhibitions. (Dallas)

Carrie Schneider: Hear Our Houston: Hear Our Houston is a hub of public generated audiowalking tours that should be amplifying more of our city’s incredibly diverse and fascinating voices.(Houston)

Michelle Benaim Steiner, Lope Guitierrez Ruiz and Alexander Wright: The Gopher Projects:The Gopher Projects promote arts-based dialogue across cultures by providing inclusive and highqualityplatforms for emerging talents in the visual arts and literature, produced with a generalaudience in mind and based in Texas. To achieve this, the Gopher will continue to publish the GopherIllustrated magazine. In 2012, the magazine will look to expand its current production to reach a widerreadership through Editorial Development and Special Programs. These initiatives aim to facilitatecultural dialogue between individuals through arts media. (Austin)

Aaron Dubrow, Xochi Solis, Jules Buck Jones, Drew Liverman, Scott Eastwood, MargitRaczkowski, Timothy Schmidt and Carlos Rosales-Silva (MASS): The Alleycat Project: Aseries of sculptures, murals and interventions situated in the back alleys of Austin’s olderneighborhoods that celebrate local history, liminal spaces, and unexpected beauty. (Austin)

Alejandro Saenz Jr. (Kingspoint Crew): Kingspoint: A warehouse/community center in SoutheastHouston that has featured over 100 graffiti pieces showcasing artists from United States, Mexico,Canada and Germany. The funding will support commissions for graffiti artists to revamp thecenter's facade as well as allow the center to host a variety of events including dances, art showsand performances, art classes, film premieres and fashion showcases. (Webster, TX)

Lakes Were Rivers: (Re)Collection: (Re)Collection is a lens-based exploration of the current stateof photography that examines the way photography is collected, interpreted, and valued in order tocultivate reflection, dialogue, and education about the contemporary impact of the medium relative toits past. The project will be comprised of three parts: 1) a book; 2) an exhibition; and 3) a publicpanel discussion. (Austin)

Ariel Evans and Richard Yanas (Pastelegram): Pastelegram no. 2, Solving Each Problem as itArises: Pastelegram, an online and print publication that offers a biannual print issue that is anartwork-as-magazine, will use the funding to support their second issue, where the artists willcollaborate with artist Richard Yanas. The magazine will be an investigation of advertisements andpopular magazines such as Time and Life magazine. (Austin)

Nestor Topchy and Robert Rosenburg(Gastronanza-Archetapas): Gastronanza: Thecollaborative team of artist and chef propose to create edible art from aromatic gelatin substratesshaped within a system of specially designed geometrical molds and serve it from a roadsidereconfigured shipping container in order to establish evidence supporting the theory thatinterdependence of archetypal geometry, associative subject matter, color and flavor, have an integral presence which may transcend a particular cultural perception and be universallyunderstood. (Houston)

Lauren Woods: Fountains: The civically-minded public artwork entitled Fountains offers a novelreflection on Texas as well as national and international civil rights history, public art, collectivememory, and social justice. The multi-faceted public project involves an interactive new mediamonument at the Dallas County Records Building that reactivates civic space, public programs associal sculpture that seeks to bring together diverse sectors of society for conversation oncontemporary socio-political issues, and a cartographic website. (Allen, TX)

Christina Sukhgian Houle: Exodus: Sequel to Migration Patterns During Wartime: A durationperformance art piece that will be documented with video, during which 12 individuals will travel andcamp in and around Big Bend while inside a large soft sculpture costume made primarily out ofstuffed animal pelts. (San Marcos, TX)

For more details, please visit www.theideafund.org or contact Tracey Barnett attracey@diverseworks.org or 713.223.8346.

About The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts was established in 1987. In accordance with AndyWarhol's will, its mission is the advancement of the visual arts. The Foundation's objective is to fosterinnovative artistic expression and the creative process by encouraging and supporting culturalorganizations that in turn, directly or indirectly, support artists and their work. The Foundation values thecontribution these organizations make to artists and audiences and to society as a whole by supporting,exhibiting and interpreting a broad spectrum of contemporary artistic practice.
The Warhol Foundation Initiative is a multi-million dollar capacity-building effort directed at smaller visualarts organizations. The Initiative has provided substantial support to numerous small to mid-sized artistbasedorganizations, helping them attain greater fiscal stability while improving services to artists andtheir audiences.

About Aurora Picture Show
Aurora Picture Show is a non-profit cinema dedicated to non-commercial film, video and new mediaartists, providing promotion, exhibition and honoraria. Aurora has distinguished itself as a home forvanguard work that falls outside of conventional moviemaking, and traditionally has fewer exhibitionoutlets. Since 1998, Aurora has presented over 3500 short films and videos from around the world.

About DiverseWorks ArtSpace
Known for its groundbreaking artistic and education programs, DiverseWorks is one of the premièrecontemporary arts centers in the United States. For over 27 years, DiverseWorks has been a hub for thepresentation of daring and innovative work, commissioning major artistic projects in all disciplines, and anadvocate for artists worldwide. Founded by artists for artists, DiverseWorks continues its commitment tobold artistic exploration, creative risk-taking, and building audiences for contemporary art.

About Project Row Houses
Project Row Houses is a neighborhood-based art and cultural organization located in Houston's ThirdWard. PRH was established in 1993 on a site of 22 abandoned shotgun houses (circa 1930) to connectthe work of artists with the revitalization of our community. It was inspired by the work of African-American artist Dr. John Biggers who celebrated the social significance of the shotgun house communityin his paintings. Our work is founded on the principle that art and the community that creates it canrevitalize even the most depressed of inner-city neighborhoods. Thus, the mission of Project RowHouses is to transform community through the celebration of art and African American history andculture.

###

Invasionen at Galerie Carolyn Heinz

2011-12-05T00:45:00.001-06:00

Invasionen/Invasions opened at Galerie Carolyn Heinz this past Friday 2 December. The show was curated by (the oft mentioned) Reinhold Engberding (video here), and includes the piece above (entitled 40 x 29 Extensions and Annexes) by your's truly. If anyone happens to be in Hamburg during December, please go. I promise the rest of the work is much more interesting than this.
The following is my short text accompanying the piece at the show:

40 x 29 Extensions and Annexes takes the given dimensions of the original linoleum block and then invades the space around it, colonizing, parcel by parcel, the walls of the gallery. In form the piece pays homage to the Bichos of Lygia Clark as well as the Relevos Espaciais of Helio Oiticica. Its materials are rooted in the specificities of the North American biota as well as the vagaries of international trade and supply chains: Yucca, Agave, and palm leaves provide the fibers for the paper, and black walnut, pecan, southern live oak, blueberry, and Mexican axiote tint its surfaces; while the gesso is "made in USA" probably from titanium dioxide extracted from the sands of Australian beaches, and the carbon black is made from the dirty and incomplete combustion of anonymous petroleum in an anonymous factory anywhere in the world, and then affixed with the moniker "India".

The only material I regret not mentioning is yellow ocher from Dixon Branch Creek near our house.

Crown var. 2b in Progress and Sketches

2011-12-05T00:22:00.001-06:00

A Kids' Table

2011-12-04T00:28:00.000-06:00

Made this for the boys out of cheap cedar left over from the dinning room table during Thanksgiving break. It's a significant improvement over the aluminum water-heater table they'd been using. Now Kels can't push Rhus over (from the other side of the table) when he's trying to get out of his chair

First Mural at BOMLA

2011-10-07T11:53:00.000-05:00

Our very first mural at Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy went up this week in anticipation of a possible visit from President Obama. The president, of course, did not come, but five of our boys were able to meet him at a fundraising luncheon, and the mural made it into the Dallas Morning News. Maybe next time. Believe it or not, one of our incredibly talented sixth graders came up with the design.

Las Manos Negras

2011-10-06T22:01:00.001-05:00

Buddy Scott Gleeson and I just submitted our Idea Fund grant application earlier this week. Over the past couple of months we have been collaborating on a project Scott conceived of which would work to draw attention to the crime of wage theft perpetrated against members of the day laborer community. Scott began the project by making visits to a day labor site run by the city of Plano, as well as informal sites on Ross Ave. near downtown Dallas. This past Saturday we traveled to one of the Ross Ave. sites to get to know some of the men that gather there, and to solicit clay hand impressions (which we paid for) from some of them as a sculptural element or artifact to be part of a future exhibit. The eventual goal of the project is to interview several men, at least eight, but hopefully more, about their experiences with wage theft. These interviews would be documented and transcribed, and incorporated into a of traveling lunchbox-sized exhibit Boîte en Valise style.

The stories we heard in casual conversation with the some of the men outside a convenience store on Ross were infuriating for the most part, and heartbreaking as well. Many were along the lines of being ditched at a restaurant during lunch on the third day of working a job, being picked up by a pair of men and robbed, or working for two weeks with no pay after driving to Montgomery, Alabama from Phoenix, Arizona. The worst story we heard happened just a few blocks away on Fitzhugh. A contractor had hired some guys to paint an apartment complex that had been renovated. After two weeks without pay one of the men began to argue with him. The argument became a fight. The contractor ran to his truck, took out a heavy tool, knocked the other man down, and beat his head in. He was immediately remorseful, and was found at the scene by the police. The victim had a wife and three children in Mexico, and the killer has a wife and children of his own. One of the men we met says he can put us in contact with a witnesses of the killing.

If our project is funded we hope to distribute questionnaires to possible participants and complete interviews with between eight and ten men. Each interviewee would be "reimbursed" for a day's lost wages at the end. Artifacts and documents of the interview would then be packaged in a custom built toolbox and placed inside of a metal lunchbox. The following photos are of different day laborer gathering places (the Plano office and an informal site off of Ross Ave.), a photo of myself talking to a future interviewee along with impressions of his hands, and a mock-up of a lunchbox and its suggested use. Above is a rough draft for a woodcut poster we'll be making to promote the project.

Some Works in Progress

2011-07-13T22:43:00.003-05:00

Crown Variation 1 [1a, 1b, 1c (degenerate heirs)]

Crown

2011-07-11T23:34:00.003-05:00

Winners From the "Ways to Kill Mr. Larsen" Contest

2011-06-15T00:58:00.005-05:00

Smothered With a Pillow

Dipped Headfirst in Acid

Pulled Between Motorcycles over a Fire

Crushed Between Cars and a Cinder Block Dropped on My Head

Farted on by a Sumo Wrestler

My 8th period class may have been a little rough around the edges last semester.
I drew these for the winners.

Gardens We Love

2011-05-27T23:01:00.002-05:00

We've wanted to see this garden for about two years now, and thanks to the East Dallas garden tour this past weekend we got to. To be honest it was one of only two gardens actually worth seeing. Soooooo glad they were on the tour. I loved the cactuses and yuccas (of course), and Jami loved the the box turtle habitat.

<3 Terrapene caroliniana

NBA Cares Finished Murals

2011-05-27T22:39:00.001-05:00

Notes on Reinhold Engberding at TJ Rusk MS

2011-05-14T23:37:00.000-05:00

Late last year I received an unexpected email from Reinhold Engberding who, through some judicious googling after viewing a cultural piece on Dallas, won himself a CentralTrak residency. He also discovered that we are here, and not likely to leave anytime soon. Last month, once he'd settled in, we had him over for dinner where he presented us with a handsome copy of the catalog from his solo show at Ahrensburg Castle near Hamburg. The show was entitled Our Vather is Undings Son, an anagram of the title of Goya's Saturn Devouring his Son. The title refers to an installation of seemingly autophagous trousers whose bound and partially inverted forms echo those of the Goya painting, and a body of drawings in shellac of young men who could be the age of Reinhold's son, were he to have one. The Is That My Son? series stems from the amusing questions two men of different ages might be asked while on a date together.

Jami and I were more than delighted to receive the catalog, and I was equally thrilled when Reinhold agreed to come speak to my advanced art students at some point in the remaining weeks of his residency.

Reinhold came to my class last Tuesday to presented a PDF slideshow of his work, and to share with my students a little of his own history and education. The following are my own idiosyncratic notes from the talk with amendments and additional information in brackets:

[at] 17 quit school
due to bad grades
studied l[and]s[cape] architecture

Davos - sanatorium
teddy bear

[the three main strands of his work:]
SELF PORTRAITS
WORK W/ CLOTHES
CROCHET

SELF PORTRAITS
double photos
↓
sewn [together?]
photos in frames
lead to 1st crochet piece
[Reinhold at one point had bought a number of skeins of black cotton yarn to sew together a number of photos for strange self portrait that rearranges his face in such a way that he appears to suffer from harlequin-type ichthyosis. After attempting to sew the photos together he quickly saw that it looked like a failed undergraduate attempt at a mixed-media piece. He remembered back to his school days, when the shop and the home-economics teacher used to swap classes. During one of those swaps he learned how to crochet, a skill he quickly put to use with all of his extra yarn.]

found photos from sanatorium
matching poses
overlapped

2006 Switzerland
residency
childhood photos [of the towns residents] mixed w/ his own

USED CLOTHES

jackets and pants
2 jackets from each place [thrift store]

embroidery -

2 men wearing jacket

double trousers
pants sewn and laid in a line

men's jacket
arms put through collar

[Crochet]

shellac and wax

[filled with] Marbles
Hansel and Gretel

Adam - [an Australian student traveling in Chiang Mai. They went out a few times, and were asked if they were father and son, leading to an entire body of work based on that question.]
replaced eyes
replaced face

is that my son[?]

looked [on websites] for men that could be the age of his son [were he to have one]

portraits on watercolor paper
in shellac
on glass
____________________________________________________________

[work done while at CentralTrak]
young men from yearbooks
early 60s
older than R
15 year-olds
photos from Vietnam

[At this point my kids began asking questions. I was proud that they were brave enough to speak up, and also, the questions they asked were excellent. For some of the kids having a real live artist in their midst was a bit like having a unicorn walk into the room.]

[What was the bear made of?]
wonderful calm inside the bear
child hugged bear on stool
industrial felt

[How long do you work on an individual piece?]
crochet 1 ball a day
to crochet
+
forming, filling and treatment

[In Germany do you have any type of mythology you use to inspire your artwork?]
Mythology
vs.
childhood
fabric - closeness to the body
[The answer here was "No," but that there are German artists like Anselm Keifer who are very interested in German myths. Reinhold himself is more interested in working from his own childhood and personal experiences.]

[The preceding question prompted me to ask how he felt being compared to Beuys, since that was the first comparison made when I showed his work to other teachers.]
Beuys:
likes drawings and some installations
Documenta [7]
but performances/lectures
"No. Bored."
[he is more interested in]
daily life
rather than
worldmaking
[Reinhold attended Documenta 7 where Beuys launched his 7000 Oaks project. He found Beuys's lecture to be rambling, disconnected, and simply boring. He admires the broad scope of Beuys's agenda and his desire to remake the world both artistically and politically, but has no desire to do that sort of thing himself.]

[A student asked, in a round about way, if he had created any work that he thought was bad, but that other people liked. This question was not well understood, and therefore answered twice once before and once after I clarified.]
some people like [the]
first steps in the process
better than the finished work
------------------------------------
serigraphs sell quickly and easily
[He has at times gone to a collectors house, found that they had a serigraph he was no longer fond of, and asked to replace it with something better.]

[Do you use psychology in your work?]
psychology
criticism
viewpoints
[We both answered this question. I told my kids that art critics often interpret art from a particular point of view, like psychology, Freudian or Jungian analysis (which tied back in to the mythology questions earlier), marxism, feminism, etc. The artist's job is to simply make the work that means the most to him or herself.]

[At this point one of the kids asked what his favorite piece was from his own work. While Reinhold fished for an answer I jumped in and said it's often whatever you happen to be working on at the time, since it's the piece you're thinking about the most. Reinhold agreed, but then said that if pressed he'd pick one of the crochet pieces.]

[Who's your] favorite artist[?]
DMA [there might have been something there that he'd liked, but I do recall complaining that lately the shows had been more like what you'd expect from a
Richard Serra [Adores the piece in front of the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art. He likes his work very much even though it is so unlike his own.]
Louise Bourgeois ([he mentioned that she held a] reception [sunday salon] at her house in [her] last days) [He admires her work, and how active she was to the very end, she's also a favorite of some of my students.]
Gerhard Richter [I asked which body of work, he answered the photo-based paintings]
-------------------------------------

[What was your] 1st art experience [?]
parents didn't like art
[but they had a] print of [Caspar David Friedrich's Cross in the Mountains]
Van Gogh
Picasso [taught him that art didn't have to look like anything in particular. A very important lesson]

__________________________________________________________________________________

We ended there, with Picasso. Reinhold said he was very impressed with the kids, how respectful they were, what good questions they asked. He was afraid they would be unruly.

After the talk we went out to chat a bit and stopped at my bank along the way. While I was at the teller a woman came rushing in, ran up to the window where her partner was and began explaining that there was a man out in the parking lot taking pictures of everything, the cars, the building, everything. Just then I saw Reinhold through the window taking a picture of a bunch of suckers at the base of a live oak tree. I asked the woman if the man had a beard. She said, yes, and a blue shirt. I laughed and explained that he was a german artist, visiting here on a residency, and that even though it might not look like it, he was in a foreign country and was therefore taking pictures of things in that foreign country. She seemed relieved, and we all laughed. Her partner shook her head and said, "That's pretty good." Osama bin Laden had been assassinated the day before, so she may have had terrorist retaliation her mind. Reinhold was quite amused to hear he'd been the cause of so much alarm.

Martin Creed's Work No. 1190: Half the air in a given space

2011-05-14T21:50:00.000-05:00

NBA Cares Murals at TJ Rusk Middle School

2011-05-13T12:30:00.000-05:00

This is one of the drawings for one of four murals I'm designing for our school. We've been unbelievably fortunate to be chosen as beneficiaries of the remarkable NBA Cares program, and their volunteers will assist in the completion of the murals. As events (and murals) shape up I will update this post and move it back to the top of the queue.

__________________________________________________________________________________

While the majority of comments from faculty about the mural have been positive, I wish to point out a few things to address some of the negative comments. Yes, the rams are the students' designs. This deals with a couple of key challenges; generating a lot of meaningful content quickly, and giving the school (which is largely composed of students, lest we forget) a sense of ownership. And yes, some of them are funny looking. I think it's charming. At first I was letting some of the students draw out their rams, but the results were too inconsistent. Placement and size were off, and the line quality was too varied. As you can see in the photo directly above, all of the student drawn rams have been edited out.

__________________________________________________________________________________

These are the final drawings for the murals in the new wing. Can you find which circle has the misfit? Every community has at least on person who feels out of place, but who is nonetheless connected to everyone else.

These are our fighting rams for the cafeteria, I'm not sure what else, if anything, I should add to this one. If anyone has a suggestion i'd be happy to hear it. For example, we have Mr. Ruiz to thank for the second ram on the right.

Out in the courtyard off the blacktop we're painting a Dymaxion Map of the globe. I made a deliberately weird choice for this location. Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Map, this being the most popular, but not the final version, is a projection of the world onto a regular icosahedron, which is then unfolded in a way that emphasizes the connectedness of the continents with the added bonus of showing them with minimal distortion. As opposed to a cylindrical or Mercator projection, both of which misrepresent the proportions of our globe, distorting the northern hemisphere to such an extent that Greenland is almost as large as South America, the Dymaxion map shows things in roughly the correct proportions, with distortion moving from the center to the edge of each triangle. This map is a more accurate representation of the actual geography, and makes for a fine teaching tool when it comes to discussing geometric solids.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Well, Wednesday has come and gone. It was remarkably busy, remarkably productive, and we are grateful beyond measure. I spent so much time running from mural to mural, answering questions and mixing paint, that I'm not entirely clear what else happened. Lots of painting, that's for sure. Possibly more than the volunteers bargained for. Some work remains to be done on the Community of Rams murals in the new wing, paint that lifted from the Dymaxion Map after the torrential rain that fell in the afternoon needs to be replaced, the fighting rams in the cafeteria need some touching up, and the ram on the front porch needs to be repainted where someone's parent stepped on it. My advanced art class and I will have our work cut out for us next week.

What follows are photos from the event in roughly chronological order. Again, many thanks to NBA Cares and the BBVA Compass volunteers, and it needs to be said that the NBA Cares organizers are genuine champions. It never would have run as smoothly (or happened at all!) without their hard work and organization.

Preparatory drawing for the ram on the porch.

Finished edges for the Dymaxion Map. This took up most of my morning.

Source material for the upstairs mural.

NBA Cares organizers prepping for the first paint stroke ceremony/photo-op.

Opening ceremony.

BBVA Compass volunteers.

These rams went up fast. I may have helped that happen.

__________________________________________________________________________________
The following were taken by Janice Heman. Proof I was there.

Hand

2011-05-04T08:23:00.000-05:00

Block

2011-05-03T22:20:00.000-05:00

Untitled [Assessment of Knowledge and Skills]

2011-05-03T21:20:00.000-05:00

creamos nuevos patrones
jamás vistos
nos dividimos
en módulos

nos modulamos

engendramos hijos e hijas
the model modules
los módulos ejemplares
de nuestra normalización
expansiva

we expand
and enfold
our sons and daughters
into the tight fitting places
at the front of our skulls

they slip like lizards
to the back

Proposition Punned

2011-05-03T21:09:00.002-05:00

hay muchos cuartos
desocupados
hay muchos cuartos
llenos de amantes
plens d'amants
full of lovers
plens de fulls de paper
reams of leaves
that ream between
the sheets
of empty rooms

HTML art from Look, See

2011-04-08T14:32:00.000-05:00

Record

Record, 20110321, HTML, 450 x 250 pixels

This is just so nice to look at. HTML art from Look, See.

6th Graders are Cute

2010-09-23T16:15:00.000-05:00

Aki Nagasaka's Mr. Jonsson's House

2010-09-23T16:07:00.000-05:00

Mr. Jonsson's House from Aki Nagasaka on Vimeo.

Aki Nagasaka has a video piece in the "Deconstruct + Construction" show at UT Austin's Visual Arts Center. It is a rambling rearrangement of interviews with ten Reykjavik city-dwellers and photos of their houses, all subsumed under the persona of Mr. Jonsson. We think Aki is as swell as beans, so if you're in Austin during the next month please stop in at the VAC to take in the show.

Leli Loro's Al Womad

2010-09-13T11:44:00.000-05:00

AL WOMAD from XOXÉ TÉTANO / LELI LORO on Vimeo.

A very forward radio...

Houses We Love #4

2010-08-29T12:46:00.000-05:00

Music and Imagination

2010-08-20T08:35:00.000-05:00

I just realized I never posted the final panel from the House of Blues project my kids did last year. Bravo, kids.

The Poons

2010-06-06T14:41:00.001-05:00

Photo by melb_ on flickr

Friends Annie and Kah Leong Poon have a very nice write up and interview in issue 9 of Mormon Artist. I've mentioned them both before in this blog, but in case you needed a reminder, they're awesome. Annie and I grew up together in Dallas. I even have the distinction of having been banned from her house, probably for helping dread her hair. Kah Leong is a ball-room dancing photographer who wooed Annie in the subway, and who's pick-up line was, "Hey, can I take your picture?" I mean, how many guys does that actually work for? Only the ones that genuinely kick ass.

Mojón

2010-05-27T12:34:00.000-05:00

Flickr Find: Eric Fischer's Geotagger's World Atlas

2010-05-25T00:20:00.000-05:00

These are just amazing: drawings written in perl. Fischer's photoset is here. I picked the cities out of his group I've actually spent some time in.

Unironic Bear

2010-05-19T13:19:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago we went to the Fort Worth Museum of Modern Art to see the Warhol exhibit. We also stopped in a the Kimble (where J was harassed by guards who spied on her while breastfeeding) and did a quick turn around the permanent collection. I was blown away, for probably the 50th time, by the Bernini terracottas, specifically his Modello for the Moor. Since my kids were making terracotta vessels I decided to channel my inner 7th grader and make an animal. I picked a grizzly. Where this sort of creature fits in to my own conception of my personal oeuvre, I have no idea. But I think I might like to make a panda next. And maybe an elephant. OOH! And Bigfoot!

Year-Long Once-a-Week Self-Portrait Series 17a&b April's Fools

2010-05-03T00:26:00.001-05:00

Year-Long Once-a-Week Self-Portrait Series 16a&b April's Fools

2010-04-28T23:44:00.000-05:00

Year-Long Once-a-Week Self-Portrait Series 15a-c April's Fools

2010-04-28T23:41:00.000-05:00

Year-Long Once-a-Week Self-Portrait Series 14a-c April's Fools

2010-04-28T23:39:00.000-05:00

Earthquake and Print Show

2010-04-22T09:14:00.000-05:00

These past few months I've been working on a woodcut for a print exchange with kids from Booker T. Washington, a school in South Africa, and an adult printmaking group that meets at Booker T. most Tuesday nights. The goal of the project is to publish a bilingual coloring book for elementary school kids in the Qinghai region of Tibet, right where the earthquake occurred two weeks ago. Since the quake happened when school was in session a number of the casualties were the very children for whom we've been making the coloring book. There will be a show at the Crow Collection of Asian Art on May 13th from 5:30 to 7:00 exhibiting the work and raising money with the goal of getting the coloring book to those kids still surviving. Anyone in the Dallas area should try to make it out if they can.

Year-Long Once-a-Week Self-Portrait Series 13a-e Foolish April

2010-04-11T23:39:00.000-05:00

Year-Long Once-a-Week Self-Portrait Series 9-12 Mirror March

2010-03-26T22:29:00.000-05:00

Q&A on Art and Seek

2010-03-22T00:56:00.000-05:00

Tina Aguilar has posted a second Q/A about the House of Blues Music and Imagination project my advanced art class is involved with. This time she interviewed students and teachers from the participating schools, including the five of my students that actually brought back their consent forms, and myself. My kids sound waaaay smarter than I do in the interview. Sigh...

Klu Naga Block

2010-03-22T00:37:00.000-05:00

Elaine Bradford

2010-03-18T00:10:00.000-05:00

I love it when I find out that people I knew once are still doing amazing things. While checking up on the Red While Yellow Gallery's website I stumbled on to Elaine Bradford's flickr stream. Elaine was wrapping up her BFA at UT my first year there. I remember her constantly rearranging the chairs in the sculpture studio late at night to create these odd scenes, as though the chairs had been fighting some epic battle and then frozen in place the moment someone walked in. Currently she is artist in residence at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. It looks like she's rearranging more than chairs there, and with great success.

Hágame el Amor Caballero

2010-03-16T18:17:00.000-05:00

de los Gru/Furallefalle

IHOB Music and Imagination Collaboration

2010-03-07T22:50:00.003-06:00

Our two advanced art classes at TJ Rusk are participating in a collaborative art project hosted by and benefitting the International House of Blues and organized by local artist Emmanuel Gillespie (BTWHSPVA in '85). I did a quick count, and over fifty people have their hands in this particular work of art. So the fact that it looks as good as it does here (our panel, lower right, is far from finished, and the one from Booker T. is missing altogether), is amazing to me. No one has even seen all of the panels except Emmanuel, and our get-together this afternoon at Rockin' Artists Studio in Little Forest Hills was the first time we'd ever put most of them together. Be very amazed that body parts even lined up right after two months of fifty people fiddling. Since Brenda and I have twenty-four kids from two different classes working on our portion we decided to do small (less than four inches) mosaics so that each kid could complete a part that was uniquely theirs, à la Tim Rollins and K.o.S. (but nicer). I'll post more once our kids finish, and then again once the final piece is installed.

Update (March 11, 2010): TinaAguilar has posted a Q&A with Emmanuel Gillespie and Nazenin Fatemian on the Art and Seek Blog.

YouTube Find: Vito Acconci's Open Book

2010-02-27T00:24:00.001-06:00

Year-Long Once-a-Week Self-Portrait Series 7 & 8

2010-02-25T19:01:00.000-06:00

28 of 16,000,000: Michael Craig-Martin's Goss-Michael Portraits

2010-02-20T01:10:00.000-06:00

Michelle Mayer's Root Boots

2010-02-20T00:24:00.000-06:00

Installing ROOT BOOTS at ITP from Michelle Mayer on Vimeo.

Root Boots video sketch from Michelle Mayer on Vimeo.

Just found this. Awesome!

Michelle and I went to both high school and college together. It seems right now she is doing admirably earthy stuff in a somewhat etherial place. She even got written up about it in Gizmodo.

Art and Seek Photo of the Week

2010-02-17T08:19:00.000-06:00

I am totally internet famous today. This picture of Rhus at the Jaume Plensa opening is photo of the week over on artandseek.org.

Block and Trunk

2010-02-14T14:21:00.000-06:00

Tom Shannon, TED Video

2010-02-14T14:18:00.001-06:00

This would be one of those examples of work I like significantly less than the discussion of the work. The discussion is pretty good, and hey, Parkinsons, props yo.

Plensa mès Plena

2010-02-12T16:41:00.000-06:00

Very nice review of the Jaume Plensa show up on the Art and Seek website.

Year-Long Once-a-Week Self-Portrait Series 4-6

2010-02-10T17:49:00.000-06:00

Notes to Michael Craig-Martin

2010-02-08T00:33:00.004-06:00

On Saturday the Nasher hosted a conversation between the artist Michael Craig-Martin and Jeremy Strick, their current director. The event was to celebrate the opening of a show of Craig-Martin's work at the Goss-Michael Foundation on Cedar Springs. I first saw his work in 2000 at el IVAM Centre del Carme, an old convent turned art school turned exhibition space, in Valencia, Spain. Just for fun I found my old sketchbook from back then and will probably type up my notes from the show in the next few days (more for my sake than anyone else's, since I can't imagine anyone actually reads these). We thought the talk was wonderful, and I got to enjoy it this time since we were smart and left the boy with his grandparents for the day. Notes below:

Michael Craig-Martin
and Jeremy Strick

[born] Dublin [raised in] DC [BFA and MFA at] Yale [Great] Britain [to teach]
Hayward [Gallery] New Art 1972
Goldsmiths College
Tate
Royal Academy
_____________________________________________________

Asked to have slides turned off
Goss-Michael Foundaition
*[Filippo Tattoni-]Marcozzi (preening - "eyes" [The curator arrived shortly after we did and sat on the other end of the row from us. He was clearly tickled that he could be responsible for bringing MCM to Dallas. He expressed his degree of ticklishness by giggling to the people in front of him that MCM had said that he couldn't look at him while he spoke because of his eyes. They were distracting.])

2 portraits George Michael
Kenny Goss
computer based works

1st show in "this part" of US

Bizarre personal life[...not a portraitist, however the]
Dir[ector] of [the] National Portrait Gallery [in London]
[asked him to make a] portrait of Zaha Hadid [was unsure/refused at first]
drawn like any object
"draw her like I draw an umbrella"

digital transitions
slow constant imperceptible changes of color
5-15 seconds
random, no repeat 16 million possibilities

JS - psychological state/affect on viewer [?]

MCM- Neutrality, room for the person viewing
remove any indication that they have been drawn.
"as impersonal as the objects themselves"
[the] drawing has the same character [a] chair has

early work, sculpture

constructions
1969 hinged boxes

minimalism was too purist
"must touch it"
[these days he] would be arrested himself [for touching one of his own pieces in a collection]

glass bottles

horizon line

4 buckets

water

[on a table top, as the water evaporated the table drops]

visual exp[erience is] part of phys[ical] exp[erience]
from minimalism phys[ical] engagement beyond looking.

ordinary objects.

everything is already available to us
[we] don't need magic

from real to pictures

---9ft

an oak tree

drawings are like readymades
ordinary objects that happen to be drawings

do as little as possible
while maximizing what happens

"what I've done is change a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree without altering the accidents of the glass of water."

controversy
Australia--work impounded
"no vegetation"
had to for the moment change it back

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

drawings on acetate, compos[ed then shot as] slides

later made drawings of metal sculpture[s] of drawing[s, that is the sculptures of drawings were transformed back into drawings themselves]
illusion in the drawing,
3-D but not same kind of 3-D as objects themselves

Blinds, equivalents of paintings

then more drawings

installations

Rome-[1st] site-specific [piece] vivid colors

never draw[s] an object you don't have a name for.
to get you to not speculate on the objects, but on other things.

pictorialization of rooms
paintings you can walk around in
arrived at painting through sculpture and installation

JS. - scale, position, expected relationships played w/

CM - the water glass in oak tree has been used up
can't use up a drawing is always a drawing,
no matter what size
can be reused unlike glass of water.

painting can be played with beyond what you can do putting real things together

Las
Meninas
!

historical play

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tate in liverpool
curated a show. sculpture and painting
each room painted a color
plinths the same color
works are liberated by the color.
become weightless.

1999 MOMA modernstarts
Frank Stella critical
last exhibition before close for renovation
[the treatment of the] Malevich got Stella mad:
works demeaned by this "cheap thing he'd done"

young artist[s], history is so fabulous
[and it's this giant] weight [on one's back],
["]where am I going to fit into this giant thing[?"]
nudge your way in
respect it, but treat it (especially painting) as a grab bag.
homage
"appropriate degree of disrespect" (-me)

tape on wall
[from] giant presences to little ball you throw away
french workers hated to take tape off,
wanted to save image,
[they] loved that they could recognixe the work, and that he did it himself

el IVAM [del Carmen] - Zurburán

public housing [illegible]

drawing in Corian set in floor or wall

BFA MFA @ yale
famous teacher to YBAs

[JS -] has teaching been important[?]

[MCM -] wanted to be an artist from 12-13
thought Yale was heaven
cried a lot because he wasn't as good at doing things as [well as] he wanted

live by your strengths,
don't worry about limitations
[it's a] waste of time to obsess about what you can't do
you'll never be any good at it a[nyway]
but anything you're even a little bit good at
you're better than most people already

[it was a] wonderful situation in England
treated undergrads like grads/like artists
but treated themselves like students

[a] teacher's job is to contextualize student's work
while learning from them

exuberance and restraint
opposed to self-expression,
implicating that you have something otherpeople don't have
but really it's the embarrassing things about yourself that you you can't help
[these things make it into the work no matter what]
you work in a way you can't help,
help students/people understand that/get there

[education] in England [has] gone from freedom to restraint in past years

Goldsmiths
studio space, tutor [for every student]
25 teachers,
[students] just wrote a note and [they'd] get a visit
no courses in [the] normal sense

at art school nobody cares but you
Goldsmiths created a protective environment
to allow you to create the kind of work you wanted to do after[ward]
enable[d] them to be students in the true sense

D[amien] H[irst] - and YBAs created a world in which they could exist
[during a time when very few galleries were interested in new artists]
supported each other,
generosity

[you're] lucky as an artist if anyone cares about you after youdie
trying to live in his own time
best not to think of posterity/legacy
History judges in its own way.

Swiss acrylic co[mpany]
use [the] best materials [you can]
[there are] lots of reds, [but] the best red is the best red

tries to make very little distinction between audiences (lay vs. cultured)
[during the] renaissance 98% of [the] population/audience was illiterate
[artists] showed them some of the most sophisticated works [ever made]
[the] best works [of art] should be rewarding to both audiences

Fish-Boy

2010-02-06T01:42:00.001-06:00

Die Antwoord

2010-02-05T00:11:00.000-06:00

A handful of Die Antwoord/MaxNormal.tv videos from their art school cuteness to Zef-Rap thuggish madness.

Wow.

Jaume Plensa at the Nasher

2010-01-31T22:45:00.002-06:00

Yesterday was the public opening of the Jaume Plensa show at the Nasher Sculpture Center. We arrived earlyish, though it ended up being too early for little R to make it all the way to the artist's talk while remaining civil. He and I were banished from the hall. So while I would love to treat you to my usual wacky lecture notes, Jami's scant report will have to do. According to J he was soft spoken and pleasant, with a throaty catalán accent (she had trouble understanding the word "girl" when he said it). He talked about a number of large public projects, including Dream, a 66 foot tall elongated head of a young girl covered in white dolomite and situated in former coal country in Northwestern England, and the Crown Fountain in Chicago's Millennium Park. While the Crown Fountain has only been up for five years, he was pleased to report that the day the fountain is turned back on has become a much anticipated sign of spring for many Chicagoans.

He also spoke of works as belonging to families rather than series, the eleven alabaster girls in the central gallery being little sisters or cousins of the enormous Dream. Interestingly when he uses the figure in his work the bodies tend to be male (or at least asexually humanoid as far as I have seen), but when he uses faces those faces tend to be female, particularly those of young girls. Jami reported that his partial answer to this is that he believes women are the future. Though somewhat of a cop-out, tending away from any use of the female figure at least allows him to make that statement unironically. Imagine hearing that come out of the mouth of Dalí, Miró, or almost any other male Catalán artist of previous generations.

We quite enjoyed the show. Not being able to attend the lecture was a bit if a personal tragedy for me, given what I have learned at the feet of Catalán artists like Maribel Domenech and Bartolomé Ferrando. Still, we are very pleased that the Nasher is one of the few local Museums that is still free on occasion, and they should be congratulated for a successful show, their very first of a living breathing artist (may there be many others).

Lililom

2010-01-30T23:53:00.003-06:00

Lidia Hortiz Maqueda my favorite Spanish ex-pat living in Turkey Pyrenean village-dweller (their town has only 60 houses) has a wonderful blog up of her drawings and collages. Lidia was the intrepid soul who helped me chop about sixty pounds worth of onions for an installation I did in my class with Angeles Marco many years ago after she and Iñaki (see the previous post) helped "liberate" them from a farmer when no one appeared who could be paid for said onions. I am lucky enough to own a tiny pillow she made that depicts the adventures of her Loplopesque alter-ego Lililom. Coincidentally, I also have to thank Iñaki for the particular pillow I own. Lidia had made one for me but Iñaki had misplaced it after Li went off to Greece and later Turkey (there forever to remain), so he gave me his. The following images are snagged from Lida's Facebook albums, but you can follow the link to her blog for further loveliness.

Más Circuit Bending de Furallefalle

2010-01-29T22:56:00.000-06:00

Year-Long Once-a-Week Self-Portrait Series 1-3

2010-01-22T23:18:00.001-06:00

Houses We Love #3

2009-12-06T23:42:00.000-06:00

There is a house we love very much in Highland Park overlooking Turtle Creek just below the dam. There is nifty nifty art all over and inside it, and I'm sure many people know who it belongs to. We just happen to be ignorant on that point. If anyone could wrangle us an introduction, we'd be more than grateful. Who wouldn't want to know someone with a Lawrence Weiner on their house? the full text of which reads:

   ( HEAT )

   WATER
   -------------- + CLAY
   ------------

WATER LADEN WITH SO MUCH CLAY AS TO ABSORB THE HEAT OF THE SUN

Two Birds

2009-12-06T23:12:00.004-06:00

The Stupid Crying Pumpkin

2009-11-07T23:39:00.003-06:00

Codex Samuellensis II

2009-10-24T00:40:00.002-05:00

All the Hot, Scary Girls: Recent Drawings by Jenny Cole

2009-10-19T22:30:00.001-05:00

Our college buddy Jenny Cole has been doing hot, scary drawings of all the hot, scary girls. Unfortunately most of her images are behind Facebook's walled garden, but I've been given permission to post some of them here. Enjoy.

Japanese Accordion Fold Sketchbook

2009-10-17T14:41:00.001-05:00

Homemade Inks

2009-08-29T11:26:00.000-05:00

DISD has a new art curriculum which is divided up thematically. The first theme is Labor and Craftsmanship, so I've been having my kids "labor" and make their own ink out of natural materials. The park directly behind the school has several pecan trees and exactly one walnut tree (thanks for finding it, 2nd period), and I had a baggie full of oak galls from live oak trees on Tom Hicks property where I used to work. We crushed up the various nuts and galls, boiled them to to extract the color, and then boiled down what was basically dye-stock until it was dark enough to use as ink. The oak gall ink, since it's a weak tannic acid solution, doesn't need any treatment to keep from fermenting, but I added salt and vinegar to the pecan and walnut so they wouldn't turn into a gross smelling wine. We have three different shades of brown. It would be nice to grow some indigo and get a decent blue.

Baby's First Automatic Sculpture

2009-08-29T10:48:00.000-05:00

Our one year old loves holding his own soap when he takes a bath. When he does he digs his thumb into it in the same spot every time, resulting in a very sculpture-like object.

Ivan Maximov - Fru 89 From left to right

2009-07-30T01:26:00.000-05:00

Great animation. Russians are weird (via Rhizome, thanks for sharing Roy).

Los Gru: Mucho Phillips

2009-07-22T17:15:00.001-05:00

Nice Lump

2009-07-22T15:57:00.000-05:00

This log scared me to death when I saw it in the middle of the night at our camp site. It was just a black lump in the dark, and was such an odd shape I had to kick it to figure out what it was. Menacing and inspiring.

P-a-t-i-o F-U(Ad-bot Spamvertisers!!!!!!)-r-n-i-t-u-r-e

2009-06-12T12:03:00.003-05:00

This is our new BLOOPETY BLOP (p-a-t-i-o f-u-n-i-t-u-r-e). My old boss gave me a bunch of cedar 2x4s about a year ago and I never did anything with them. Jami and I collaborated on the design, and all I had to buy were the 4x4s and deck screws. Each piece would fit inside a 26x26 inch cube.

26x26 by Dane Larsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Update: 11 August 2009

This post (title included) has been edited to remove key words that have been attracting spam in the comments (p-a-t-i-o f-u-n-i-t-u-r-e).

Silverpoints

2009-06-12T09:27:00.000-05:00

Codex Samuellensis

2009-06-02T00:08:00.001-05:00

This was my version of the assignment mentioned in the post below (hopefully this will keep Penny Nickels happy for a day or two, sorry for the drought). Follow the link for a more readable high-res version.

(This is up in Rhus's room and he LOVES it)

Re: Art Position

2009-05-26T18:53:00.000-05:00

The papier mache pieces are the end results of a semester-long project researching and inventing chimeras. The accordion-fold books on Nepal paper are from a project about hybrid cultures, and the mixture of cultures in our classroom. I can't claim full credit for that one since it was suggested by my grandfather as possible material for a paper he's presenting in Korea in the fall. In addition to looking at the works of Enrique Chagoya, Kara Walker (for content), Robert Rauschenberg and Joanna Greenbaum (for aesthetic/compositional cues), we discussed the different cultures we participate in or interact with (trying to steer them away from a narrow interpretation of culture as race), and how we could show kids and teachers in Korea what it is like to live in a hybrid culture.

Aki Nagasaka

2009-03-25T14:47:00.002-05:00

Our friend Aki Nagasaka has her website up and running. It includes documentation of her work from the past five years, including works from her time at UT Austin (where we met her), and more recent work from Berlin (where a Japanese fortune teller sent her after UT, and she seems to be thriving).

Reading Cell

2009-03-09T00:16:00.000-05:00

This is sort of the polar opposite of the Lugar Donde Tomar Sopa, a box I made for reading books, eating chicken soup, and drinking ginger, hops and poppy tea in Valencia, Spain while studying under Maribel Domenech. The Reading Cell was made in Austin during a class taught by Jill Bedgood (who I caught coaching a grad student to "slash and burn" before a class critique), a situation more conducive to disgruntlement and misprision than to reveries of comfort and intimacy. Instead of a bachelardian paradise in a cupboard, this was a transportable mini-prison, a place to read all the books I never get around to reading (among them, Joyce's Ulysses, Peckham's Man's Rage for Chaos, and Derrida's Postcards). As part of the Oiled and Spoiled art event put on by Jenny Schlief at her house in Austin, I spent 24 hours locked in the box, pissing in a hole, eating sandwiches, and reading Bachelard's Poetics of Reverie. Unable to document the event myself, I had to rely on Jami (an inexperienced photographer at the time, and she seemed to think the whole thing was an elaborate scheme by some weird guy to try and embarrass her before their date that night) and several people who promised they'd give me some pictures "later." So the photos of the event don't show much. The last photo is from the aftermath of the three car pile-up caused by the box when it fell out of my roomate's truck on I-35 the next day. I managed to salvage the books, believe it or not.

G's Movie

2009-02-18T17:00:00.000-06:00

Même les Chiens Comprennent

2009-02-14T01:44:00.004-06:00

As far as my faulty nocturnal memory will allow me to recall, my dreams about art are rare, but always punctuated with some odd significance, and often random acts of violence. A long time ago, probably back in '95 I had a dream in which I was reading a book on art. In the book, it was a large coffee table book with plenty of photos, was a black and white picture of Francis Picabia in his studio in Berlin during World War II (this should sound absurd to most of you already). The studio was inside a metal building with a wrought iron fence about twelve feet high and bushes, probably privet, in place of walls. After looking at the image I soon found myself inside it, seeing everything from Picabia's point of view. The studio was cluttered with books and paper and old-fashioned metal patio furniture. An old man and a young girl were in the studio along with a small whippet. I (Picabia) was complaining to them (in imaginary French) about Berlin, and how much I hated living there. The dog was running around the studio, jumping on chairs and tables, and generally making a nuisance of itself while I threw my tantrum. I was shouting to the little girl and old man that everyone in Berlin understood art (which infuriated me to no end), and as the little dog jumped on the table in front of me I siezed it by the muzzle and neck, strangling it while shouting, "Even the dogs understand!"

More recently I had a fight to the death with Salvador Dalí. We were in a sprawling wooden building that looked as though it had been painted by my teenage self both inside and out. I'm not sure what led up to the fight, but it ended with Dalí throwing me out the window onto the grass on the south side of the house. He then began throwing open gallon buckets of paint at me from the window. I had a triton, or spear of sorts, with a head in the shape of a fleur-de-lis that I tried to use to sling the buckets back at Dalí, but they kept bouncing off the shutters. Finally I sneaked back into the house, made my way through several paint covered rooms, and attacked Dalí with the spear. I stabbed him in the arm and chest several times, but barely even wounded him since my spear kept hitting bone. Eventually I backed him into another room and slid the spear right through his gut and into the wall behind him

Camera Obscura Experiments and One Monocular Goof

2009-02-13T23:40:00.000-06:00

Olafur Elisson

2009-01-22T07:29:00.002-06:00

Notes to Jeff Koons @ BTWHSPVA Take 2

2009-01-15T22:09:00.016-06:00

In 1991, my 9th grade year at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (the most-longest-named-school-in-Dallas), Jeff Koons came and spoke to the visual arts cluster. For many of my high school art teachers that day will live in infamy as the day Jeff Koons told all the kids that making art was like masturbation. Today, believe it or not, he made it past security and was allowed, once again, to speak to the kids in the visual arts cluster, and anyone willing to cough up the $30 as part of the Nasher Salon Series of lectures. Jami heard his interview on KERA's Think, and at the very last minute we decided to go. Notes and thoughts are as follows:

15 January 2009

Jeff Koons
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

'86 Louis XIV in Nasher collection [connection to Dallas]

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

[born in York,] Penn - father decorator w/
showroom ⇒ constantly changing display

pleasure of combination
___________________________________

stocks = self-reliance

Art - gave sense of self
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

[studied under Ed] Paschke [and Whitney B.] Halstead
CHICAGO - artist ⇒
bored - wanted to be part of "my gen[eration]"
heard Patti Smith - Horses & moved to NYC right after.

influenced by Smithson & Judd (Castelli artists)
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

MoMA - selling tickets ⇒ doubled membership

senior rep. - great salesman "communicator"
dialogue & interaction

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Vacuum Cleaner [New Hoover Convertible]

Renaissance - sculpture | pure, virginal, new
to make new visible - early 80s
______________________________________

Equilibrium - lasts 6 months before balls sinks

Tool for equilibrium
⇓
Bronze aqualung ⇒ Venus of Willendorf

⇒

create an object you'd want to take home w/ [you]

[Interestingly Koons feels that the aqualung and the Venus are equivalent objects in a sense, both about life, and sustaining life. Though, while the Venus is definitely female, the aqualung can't shake a certain maleness and artificiality, at least for me. Maybe it is like the Venus in the same way a male artist is like a mother: sort of, in a way, but not really]

______________________________________________________

readymade - Duchamp and Picasso
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Train - porcelain and plastic

change materials - stainless [steel] but keep "soul" ⇒alcohol
⇓
proletarian material - not luxury
__________________________________

find art not create art,
if you're trying to create art it's really just a decorative activity
what you want to do the most you have a certain anxiety about
art is about removing anxiety
trust yourself, you're perfect
accept yourself then you can accept the world
⇓
Zen
___________________________________

ad[vertisement]s - higher income more abstraction
lower income less
abstraction
⇓
to degrade and debase
____________________________________

inflatables - cultural history
rabbit ⇒ archetype

___________________________________

ushering in banality - wood

______________________________________________________

if you're perfect, whatever you respond to you're fine, you're perfect
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

self acceptance - coming into contact w/ your body in the bathroom

democratization of porcelain
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

⇒

MJ & Bubbles - pietà
⇓
spiritual figure -
adulation given to stars and celebs
_________________________________________

Puppy - Baroque

serve or be served
pet or demand
- control
⇓
60,000 decisions
_______________________________________

celebration, Balloon dog

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Ludwig - ("abducted" by Ilona [La Cicciolina])

play-doh
⇓
beautiful mound - no judgment - no crit[icism]
__________________________________________

Lips

- Dalí - met him in NYC
afterward he felt he could be an artist
spiral corn - Dalí
lips - Man Ray
shoe ad - Magritte
____________________________________________

Lobster - pool toy

"this is not a life saving device"
they're inflated, a symbol of life, optimistic

1st segregator [when viewing a work of art] is sexuality in the viewer,

objects that transcend sexuality

Dalí antennae [male] + feather fan tail [female]
art takes place in the viewer (Duchamp)
______________________________________________

building blocks 2012 [London] Olympics
[originally for Manhattan's twin towers site]
6,000 pods w/ 4 plants each
______________________________________________

train LA county museum

readymade crane + 1943 steam engine recreation
starts up 3x per day - breathes
big ball of steam - builds up then slows down
cow catcher 30 ft up
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

art brings all disciplines together
__________________________________________________

?s

Puppy - what plants & how do they stay?
what would Louis XIV want to see today?
Versailes - split rocker
27 varieties - different colors,
annuals for the time period
1 in Bilbao and 1 in Greenwich Connecticut
can't be done incorrectly, [but] can be done less well
____________________________________________________

Louis XIV? -
⇓    Bob Hope cast ⇒ masses
cast monarch
- freedoms -
artists use power & art
econ[omy] & art
how is it used?
_____________________________________________________

interacions w/ site?
[illegible] - scale change[s] piece
Beijing- reflection pond -scholars stones
[the pond was a known, the stones unexpected and delightful]

____________________________________________________

Warhol's Mylar clouds?

Stainless inflatables - Raushenberg's Art and Commerce
⇓
luxury & degredation
pig or rabbit? ["definitely the pig," but it ended up the rabbit]
_______________________________________________________

Muhammad Ali book
⇓
[Ali made] drawings [when he signed copies]
no fear

_______________________________________________________

"modern" artists you look up to?
you look up to everbody
embrace your generation
people walk away
society is always looking for people
everybody leaves
but if you want to part[icipate], society gives you the opportunities
_______________________________________________________

100 people in the studio
responsibility to communicate to people,
no problem repeating himself
people are fearful in communication
responsibility - never take anything for granted
people [illegible]
[assistants tend to have] figurative background
all [work] done on computer
_______________________________________________________

scanning [pink] inflatable rabbit to archive & reproduce
_____________________________________________________

[when] starting back up [making art after a break]
follow and focus on interests
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

low vs. high art
desire to have every one "get it?"
art can be used to disempower & intimidate
never wanted viewer to feel that,
[but to be] like a child, "pink! I love pink!"
empower viewer, never above them
mistrust of the hand (la pata)
no physical attribute [can] control his ability to make art
_____________________________________________________

[is Hirst a copycat?]
Damien's a friend - it's a dialogue
Andy wasn't about money, but about options -
variety to show that everything is equal
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

collects old masters
collecting contemporary [art] is big pressure
when you go out w/ friends [and they ask, why haven't you bought my work yet]
___________________________________________________________

5 years for train
________________________________________________

themes - intuitive
talks about [his] art whenever possible
critics talk from a position of power, but don't really have any
________________________________________________________

doodles, gestures, drawings
studied painter, sculpture easier

End of Dane's notes

Jami's notes:

* enjoyed display @ his father's interior decor store

* art gave him a sense of self because it was the only thing he could do better than his sister

* hitchhiked to NY after hearing Patti Smith on the radio & never went back to Chicago. worked in the ticket booth @ the Modern - ART IS ABOUT COMMUNICATION - so even if he wasn't making art he was informing others about it

* maintaining integrity of the object was his original intent

* thinks of Duchamp as a "grandfather" to his work

*what you want to do the most, you have the most anxiety about. when you have complete acceptance, then you're free of anxiety

* everyone's history/culture is perfect SELF ACCEPTANCE

* cultural reference - the Rabbit, if it's a chameleon, has a greater chance of surviving

* the democracy of materials - like porcelain

* Puppy is about control, to serve or be served. it's up to nature to control the plants that cover the form

* inflatable toys are a "lifesaver" for Koons b/c to him they represent life. the Lobster also incorporates male/female sexuality w/ the mustache-like tentacles & feathery fan tail

* mistrusts THE HAND, if he works conceptually is doesn't matter what happens to him physically

End of Jami's notes

At the lecture J and I sat next to the very same friend and art teacher that accompanied me to my first Jeff Koons talk 18 years ago. Koons disdain for la patte, his various copyright lawsuits, and his frank discussion of masturbation in front of a bunch of fifteen year olds have never held him in good stead at the Arts Magnet. Nevertheless Cha Cha conceded that he had mellowed with age. Jami though he was sweet, and particularly loved the art game that he plays with his younger children. I thought he did a good job tailoring the talk to a high school audience. However, I wish the Nasher would make the audio from his evening talk available for comparison (unfortunately Dallas's insufferable and insurmountable elitism make such a thing all but impossible).

Having grown up at least a little bit since '91 most of the material complaints against Koons no longer matter to me like they once did. Contemporary art-making has expanded in scope to the extent that many artists, like their renaissance predecessors, have moved more into the position of a director, somewhat analogous to that same roll in the film industry. Also, he really isn't doing anything Warhol didn't do, and nobody even bothers to hate poor Andy anymore. I went into the lecture completely willing to like him, which I did, and I also enjoy his work. My problem with Koons now is more along the lines of the poor man's mistrust of the rich man's noblesse oblige. What set me off was his notion that stainless steel was a proletarian material. I would say that stainless is an industrial material, but it could be argued that that amounts to the same thing. But really, what currency does the notion of the proletariate even have these days? Thanks to miniaturization, computerization, and new materials the means of production are being placed every year in the hands or more and more people. Granted this was not yet the case in the 1980s when Koons originally began having his stainless pieces made. Yet to imagine that he has somehow ennobled these objects with the spirt of the proletariate by transfiguring them materially is foolish. What he has done is transform a kitch object into a luxury good, and that is not the same thing.

Houses We Love #2

2009-01-15T21:19:00.001-06:00

This house is in our neighborhood across the street from R.T. Hill Middle School, on land that was a vacant lot when I was a kid. No idea what it looks like inside, but we're fans of the outside.

Rhus/Judd Again

2009-01-04T23:00:00.001-06:00

Rhus seems to have a thing for Donald Judd.

Autonomous Community of Greater Dixonia

2008-12-03T21:19:00.002-06:00

Neoopuntia cordiformis

2008-11-30T20:17:00.001-06:00

Unfinished and abandoned in Chiang Mai.

mmmmmmmmmmmmmimic

2008-10-21T22:50:00.001-05:00

Been enjoying Roy Stanfield's redesign of his website these last two months. Roy is a fellow UT alum, and used to ask the angriest/most interesting questions in our transmedia classes. Over the years I've quietly followed the strange and scrappy povera that he and Ian Pedigo and Jason Singleton have been making since leaving Austin. Hooray for leaving Austin.

Marfa '08

2008-10-16T12:42:00.004-05:00

This weekend we (DJ&R+J) took advantage of a friday fair-day and ran off to Marfa for the Chinati open house and to camp in the Davis Mountains. The show opening there was of paintings by Olle Baertling, a Swedish formalist who's visual vocabulary somehow spans the gap between Mondrian and Lichtenstein, almost a Pop formalism. Jens and I both noticed how in his earlier triangle paintings he engaged the frame but made interesting and inconsistent decisions about how and where to begin an angle, but in his later ones tried to pretend the frame didn't exist at all, while still sticking to the same format. Quite possibly everyone's favorite was Danse Lyonnaise (down below), due solely to its delightful clumsiness. We were later informed that this was one of his few paintings with circles. Rhus was fussing during that part of the lecture, so I can't quote you verbatim, but basically it comes down to Baertling's belief that circles suck and triangles rock.

From there we wandered the Chinati Foundation a bit, picked our favorite Flavin color combo, peeked in on the preservation techniques being applied to Roni Horn's massive lump of copper, and found a nice disappearing corner on one of Donald Judd's aluminum boxes. Last time we came to Marfa, during the summer of '06, we were part of a very small group, so it was interesting to see how the installation of aluminum boxes was changed by the addition of something resembling a crowd. I don't know how to explain it, other than that it induced upon us the desire to misbehave, to hide the baby in nooks and crannies of the boxes, or to fill them with grain for horses.

Unable to visit the Manzana de Chinati (our favorite thing from two years ago) we went and saw the John Chamberlain sculptures in the old Marfa Wool and Mohair building. Viewing just one or two of his car wreck sculptures in a collection at a museum makes them seem a little gimmicky, so it was nice to see so many together, and to get a better feel for his decision making process.

3 Small Cities

2008-10-15T21:10:00.004-05:00

Dallas Art #1: 500 X, Glenn Downing, and Edward Ruiz

2008-10-08T23:51:00.003-05:00

We have no great love for Dallas beyond the pleasure of having family nearby. Living here is to be swept continually by waves of guilt, familiarity, and bewilderment. So on our first weekend out to really look at art we set out with a mixture of anticipation and resentment (yes, we've been here since February, we suk mucho). If we'd been able to leave earlier we would have stopped at the And/Or Gallery (they've shown Jason Singleton and Roy Stanfield, and we therefore trust their judgment in some things at least), but after some baby juggling we just barely made it to the opening at 500X. Featured were works in white by Mathew Clark and Sean Ibanez, both of whom stray close to visual poetry, or poesía de objecto; Ibanez especially. I've known some really swell visual poets, but somehow their work never quite lives up to the hybrid vigor the name might suggest. It always seems to be lagging behind on ground already tilled by either Jasper Johns or Lawrence Weiner, and both on a bad day. Behind Clark's parachuting bicycles and Ibanez's oragami was the project gallery, which was full of cupcakes. I have nothing helpful to say about the cupcakes.

Upstairs, and this is where we began enjoying ourselves, were monstrous drawing by Glenn Downing, and I mean monstrous in the best possible way. The mark making was aggressive, and the subject matter was weird and perverse. We had a grand time making absurd observations about butt hats and baseball caps. Downing also had some sculptures, which we loved less. They felt a bit like David Bates gone mad, and my observation was that each sculpture was full of good ideas, but that the problem was that every good idea went into it, and none were left out. In other words, each component would have made a fine sculpture on its own but all together...mrrph. But then I tend to prefer specimens, so my judgment in the matter is not to be trusted. On his website are images of what must be earlier sculptures which, in their thrift store delirium, have more of the good qualities of the drawings.

Afterward we wandered up and down Exposition, which was in its usual State Fair funk, lamenting the ruination and demise of places like the Expo Lounge and the Bar of Soap. As we were about to leave we stumbled upon Jens's old buddy Eddie Ruiz at the door to his studio. Jens and I have both shown work at his space, and we were happy to see that he's making toys and doing tilt shift photography. Up top is a one of his faked miniatures of the lagoon at Fair Park.

Gay Cables

2008-10-05T21:29:00.000-05:00

These two are old, but they never received the recognition I thought they deserved. My sculpture teacher, knowing that I was LDS, wrongly assumed that the piece was homophobic. I just thought it was a wonderful pun, via the world of electrical engineering.

Burmese Saa Paper Prayer Book Drawing

2008-09-29T22:25:00.002-05:00

This is from late last year when we were still in Chiang Mai. The paper is from Burma, and it was a b!+(# to scan. I have another one I work on on Sundays (when I'm not holding the baby) full of nothing but disembodied hairdos.

Land Art

2008-09-16T21:09:00.001-05:00

The first post is up on my school blog, the one I will be keeping throughout the year with my students. The following is the post in its entirety:

Not quite sure what this is supposed to be, but this charming equalateral triangle occupies one of the courtyards at school; a bit of Michael Heizer land art in miniature. During inservice at the beginning of the year some students were carefully filling it with a layer of garden soil and then tamping the soil down with the backs of their shovels. That same courtyard is also occupied by a cadre of Miscanthus grasses placed in such random locations that they, coupled with the triangular trench, act as signifiers in some obscure text on the symbolic order of the adolescent mind.

Adolescent Land Art

2008-09-16T18:40:00.002-05:00

The Wifey

2008-09-03T21:48:00.000-05:00

Though Jami is primarily a crafty seamstress, now that she has bloomed into her full post-artschool glory, she is nonetheless a talented painter of miniatures, as can be seen here in this nifty gouache I scanned while testing our new printer.

Wilson Mesa Sketchbook

2008-08-18T17:51:00.000-05:00

The past two weeks have been an unexpected and anxious vacation of sorts (though as of today I do have a job). Between writing lesson plans and making fruitless calls to HR I've been deep in archive mode. Anyone watching the Flickr stream has likely noticed. This is a very old sketchbook, from late 1996. It was started at UNT and finished while at the MTC in Provo, cramming my head full of ungrammatical Spanish and LDS missionary discussions.

Damaged Video Archives

2008-08-16T17:09:00.002-05:00

These are both from 2002. The audio on the first one was damaged in storage at some point.

Hedgehog Houses

2008-08-15T09:49:00.002-05:00

Friend Annie Poon has been making cute little twig houses (1, 2, 3, 4) in the wilder parts of New York City. If you're up there maybe you can find one. I'm sure the rent is reasonable, and last I heard there were several vacancies.

Annie is also the creator of a number of short cartoons, a new comic, and she also blogs about artistic goings on in her corner of the big city. It should also be mentioned that her husband Kah Leong is quite the photographer.

Producciones In*visibles

2008-08-13T13:35:00.002-05:00

This is a homey, pillow-fort sort of intervention made to an apartment in downtown Bogotá by Carolina Pinzón and Adrián Villa of Producciones In*visibles. I must have found out about it on WMMNA late last year, since the photos date from last August. The pair live and work in Colombia, and their blog and Flickr stream are definitely worth checking out--especially if you read Spanish.

The City of New Jerusalem Descends Upon the Temple at Independence, MO

2008-08-11T01:39:00.003-05:00

I taught a lesson in church this Sunday, sort of on short notice, about Zion in it's various usages in an LDS context. In what little study I was able to do before teaching, I came across Joseph Smith's instructions for the construction of the temple at the temple lot in Independence, Missouri. The specificity of the dimensions reminded me of the "city four-square" from Revelations, the one that floats down from heaven. Since daydreaming is my primary activity at church, that set me on a reverie in which the city of New Jerusalem came complete with a slot to recieve the temple, in a clumsy sexual union. The drawing is based on the proportions given in the texts regarding each building. I was surprised how small New Jerusalem ended up being, and disapointed that the temple didn't have a penetratingly virile spire.