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Showing posts from February, 2012

the night of the hunter

Robert Mitchum plays a poor country preacher just trying to administer to his flock in the only honest, totally not creepy and completely sane ways he knows how. Just look at those sad, searching eyes! Despite the fact that jobs are plentiful and everyone is basically rich, Shelley Winters pulls a complicated double-cross by tricking the preacher into marriage and then trying to frame him for murder by playing dead at the bottom of the river. Meanwhile, her two diabolical children steal away with his life savings. Also starring Lillian Gish, who runs a gang of fruit thieves and underage prostitutes.

returns

I remember, from a million years ago, attending a guest lecture by some photographer who put on a slide show of all the work he'd burned. In fact, he'd burned it all at once, in an attempt to be rid of it. The reaction of the crowd was somewhere between traumatized and offended, but these were mostly students and still of that (precious) mindset that all art is precious. I used to love burning the garbage as a kid. Mend or end; sometimes you can do both. Or at least see the end and plan for it. I've got roughly five months to deal with everything in my studio, not least of which is all this artwork , so I've started painting over some of the smaller pieces, in order to give them one last go. Again, people's reaction to this is usually bad but I don't see it as anything lost or defeated. Rather, only as things that had their day and, for whatever reason, did not work, or were not wanted (if you conceive of the art 'economy' as being based more on the wage

you win internet

The internet is a very efficient means of sharing artwork and ideas: here is my work, illuminated and explained. At the same time, however, the internet is a much better platform -- in fact a *fantastic* platform -- for sharing every kind of pornography you can think of and pictures of cats asking for cheeseburgers. If you imagined the internet as an ocean, almost every wave would be pictures of Kim Kardashian's ass or ugly people shopping at Walmart, and you'd have to go pretty deep to find meaningful (or successful) creative expression. So why do artists persist with things like portfolio sites and blogs and Flickr pages and Etsy shops and online galleries? Because they think they are sharing, and contributing to some kind of dialogue, and that this in turn validates their work, especially if it commodifies it and they can get paid. Artists (hopefully) create things to say something, to add their voice, to join a community. To express and share talent. But, at least as far t

untitled

An untitled collage (!?) for an upcoming project.

touch of evil

We watched Touch of Evil last night. O boy. It could also have been called Touch of Ridiculousness Having Charlton Heston Playing a Mexican Touch of Orson Looking Even Worse Than Usual Touch of Nordic Prostitutes Working -- Inexplicably -- in a Mexican Border Town (Zsa Zsa Gabor *and* Marlene Dietrich) Touch of Janet Leigh Being Weirdly Sexy Again Touch of a Mexican Crime Family Looking Laughably Like High School Greasers Touch of Female Members of Mexican Crime Family Looking Like Extras In A Joan Jett Video Touch of Villain Not Being Very Scary or Even Villainous Due to Being Overweight, Limping and Using a Cane Touch of Entire Movie Just Being Another Excuse for Orson to Show Off Fancy Camerawork And so on. Also, not only were there no apes on horseback, but at no point was *anyone* even referred to as a damned dirty ape.

stocking

Some things I've put in the shop this week. Over the next five months I'm going to stock my little digital shop with as much affordable art as I can, and then sort of go out of business for awhile (it will be summer, at which point everything stops in this country, and my studio budget will be exhausted anyway).

open it, open it

Someone got to open her Valentine's parcel yesterday , and the world was reborn in heart and pretty pony and sticker form.

war / hand-washing gods

This bit of sunshine is from my nephew Shawn. Thank you, Shawn! It's decorating my cubicle now. It's supposed to be a 'God of War' picture so I've taken the liberty of giving it the title I AM THE RESPLENDENT ROBOT GOD OF RESPLENDENT ROBOT GOD DEATH (AND WAR) AND I HAVE SUCH GLORIOUS STAINLESS STEEL SUNBEAMS OF DEATH-MAKING WAYS AND I WILL DEAL SUCH DEBASING IGNOMINIOUS DEATH TO YOU ACCORDING TO THE CLEANLINESS OF YOUR HANDS (DID YOU WASH YOUR HANDS?) THAT YOU WILL SHATTER AND SPLINTER AND SPEW ALL HEAVILY COMBUSTED AND FAIRLY ARGY BARGY INTO A MILLION SHAPE SHIFTING FLINDERS SO QUIT WHINING AND GET IN THE BATHROOM AND WASH YOUR HANDS ALREADY which I think is quite catchy.

nothing is illuminated

The coroner's toxicology report on Whitney Houston could take six to eight weeks. Thank you for that breathless update, mainstream media. In the meantime, I guess we'll all be forced to struggle through to our own conclusions. Is crack, in fact, whack? Like Celine Dion, Garth Brooks, Billy Joel and Mariah Carey, Houston enjoyed the kind of commercial success that will *never* happen again -- 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide, at a time when HMV was still a destination within the mall (instead of the curiosity it is today, as in, "How the fuck do they stay in business?") -- while all the time devolving and hardening into a diamond encrusted self-destruct button. Celine Dion -- married her grandfather's high school teacher Garth Brooks -- tried to reinvent himself as Chris Gaines (!) Billy Joel -- sad , bitter, sad, drunk, then bitter again Mariah Carey -- married Tommy Mottola (!), then made Glitter (!) And then Whitney. What happens when you give

I never thought it would happen to me.

There is no snow. The streets are dusty, dirt encrusted. The sky is that kind of heavy grey which is only fit for a Cormac McCarthy picnic. All the garbage so nicely illuminated. Everyone keeps talking about how warm it is but the wind is grim and insistent and the effect is like standing directly beneath a gigantic bridge. On the radio they talked to a Canadian parachutist who crash landed somewhere in the States; his hospital bill is enormous and he has no insurance. It's just one of those things , he said. I never thought it would happen to me. The forecast calls first for snow and then deep cold coming in.

and all before us was the long dark night

is it my fault that some days feel like murder? ; acrylic paints and inks on untempered masonite board, 6 x 8 inches. In the shop . * * * * * Do you ever wonder what happens to femme fatales? Like high school football stars, they have their glorious moment of mayhem and bending weaker-thans to their will, but then what? Do they just adjust their game, and prey on older fools? Or do they go the way of the shabby crowd, macerated by age and all the other heavy gravity forces that seep and wreathe their way into us over time, winding down our thoughts and dreams and movements until it's all some grinding miasma of just wanting some peace and quiet and a decent chair?

like a gun, you put it to your head

Do you ever see the light blinking on your answering machine but just walk away? I do this all the time. I've done it my whole life. Sometimes that light blinks for days. Who are you, and what do you want from me? Because I know you want something. Even the message just saying hi is never really that. Sometimes I even stop seeing the light after awhile. It's still blinking but I don't notice. Like a flaw in someone's face, it just starts being there. I think I might be the last generation that is partly repelled by the phone. I know there are good messages, things about winning or receiving, zipping around the communications stratosphere, but there must be something in my own phone that automatically deletes those.

ART LAB FOR KIDS

L O O K : It's Art Lab For Kids , a book by (my friend) Susan Schwake . Honestly (and I'm not just saying this because I'm in it, as that's usually a negative), this is a *great* art instruction book -- not only for kids but for everyone. Like the best cookbooks, Susan breaks things down into their component parts and steps in an easygoing, fully illustrated manner, while the 'lab' aspect is the fun/experimental part! Most of all, what you come away with is a sense that art is just something that we all can (and should) do .

squirrelly

Today I was *going* to post an entry entitled THINGS I HAVE TO STOP DOING SO I WON'T BE SO ANGRY ALL THE TIME AND I DON'T SPEND ALL DAY IMAGINING MYSELF AS A GIANT RADIOACTIVE BEAR THAT BREATHES FIRE AND CAN MAKE PEOPLE'S EYES BLEED JUST BY THINKING ABOUT IT AND WHILE THEY ARE BLEEDING FROM SAID EYES I ENVELOPE THEM IN FLAMES AND THEN FEAST ON THEIR FIRE-BLACKENED BONES and it was going to be quite a list, let me tell you. But then Oona and I stopped to watch some squirrels this morning. There's a sprawling house just a bit kitty-corner to her daycare (I say 'sprawling' because it has, for example, a side veranda that goes on for about fifty feet) and it made C cry when it went on the market and it was too expensive for us (I didn't cry at all, having seen The Money Pit ) and it's home to about a thousand squirrels of all shapes and sizes and many days these squirrels run relays on the telephone lines over the street, these leaping silhouettes racing bac