Turning around, turning off

I've been answering all my emails on my phone lately with single sentences, opting off the computer, and writing my blog entries on pieces paper.

Here are my off-screen observations:

Keep turning around, metaphorically speaking, so that my Pocket Utopia endeavor looks at art through "the back door."

Confront irrationality.

Move forward with ideas of opposites: positive negatives, contemporary history, serious curiosity.

Make the backyard at Pocket Utopia a pocket utopia (remember Socrates Sculpture Park was once a dump).

Go to Sal Randolph's studio!

Organize a salon at Andrea Claire's studio and spend that evening working in my own studio.

Utopic Vacation

I'm back. Last night I met up with Molly Larkey and Valerie Hegarty. They are both amazing artists and I'm grateful for their constructive suggestions to what I'm working on right now.

I'm also pleasantly surprised by Richard Serra's commencement speech at Williams College, excerpted below:

I have no problem with the virtual reality on your screens as long as you are aware that it is virtual. My concern is that experience by proxy is a poor substitute for the reality of the interactive space we inhabit.

As a sculptor I believe that perception structures thought and that to see is to think and conversely to think is to see.

The virtual reality of the media, be it television or Internet, limits our perception in that it affects our sense of space. It immobilizes our ability to apprehend actual physical space. Don’t let the rhetoric of simulation steal away the immediacy of your experience.

Keep it real, keep it in the moment. No one perceives anything alike; we only perceive as we are and it is our individual reality that counts.


I couldn't agree more!

Leaving

I just drank a cup of coffee so that I could stay awake to type a few words before going to sleep because I'm leaving on a four-day vacation at the crack of dawn! I wonder if I'll be able to fall asleep? Now I'll probably be up all night worrying about Grant's sty, what to bring our hosts, the weather, and that I don't have time to return any of the calls I received today (sorry Elissa and Fred).

A new show opened at Pocket Utopia this weekend and features the work of 3 photographers; Luke Abiol, Eric Hairabedian, and Kristopher Graves. It's a great show, good work and thankfully a few pieces have sold!

I never worry about leaving my art practice behind because it goes where I go. Even before my bags are packed, I've planned out a vacation art project. With ideas ready for a get-away, I prepare supplies.

I'm starting a new sketchbook, which I've tricked out with pre-collaged pages. I'm focusing on faces, doing "portraits." Maybe I'm being inspired by Pocket Utopia's summer artist-in-resident, Matthew Miller (his backpack of paint pictured above), for his potraits loom and move around my mind.

The current show is also heavy on the portrait with Kristopher Graves being the leading contender (photographically) in this department. He is commissioning portraits through Pocket Utopia and it looks like we may have some sitters (or would that be takers). Either way, more faces with their collaged-imperfections (freckles, speckles, smallness, largeness, and mediocrity) will be photographed to perfection.

The artist Sharon Butler has written an article on the post studio practice for the Brooklyn Rail. If I can't sleep there's plenty to read there. And if I'm really too caffeinated to sleep, I can always have a late night booty call with Hrag's blog! Good night (I hope).

I have to write quickly this morning for I need to get Grant to school (I'm typing and eating a little oatmeal at the same so I apologize in advance for any typos), then I want to go to the studio and later I need to start installing the next show at Pocket Utopia. (So much for those plans, I just got interrupted with storybook reading and now toy trucks are swirling around my computer, plastic cups are falling to the floor and more typos are about to be made.)

Let's see, where was I...My computer crashed. The screen went zebra, meaning black and white stripes replaced text. Now, my computer is back to its supposed normal state, but I am now hurried, and typing at an anxious pace with only a few minutes to say that Andrea Zittel's new project caught my eye and lifted me up: titled "Energetic Accumulators and Token Exchanges," it asks participants to replace objects (stones, photos, and felt pieces) placed on the most amazing tables with something deemed of equal value. The overall piece directly questions ideas of value, commodity, and exchange.

Also, at the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore, the artist acts as agent of social exchange, with 6 artists (one of them also Andrea Zittel ) focusing on small businesses to get ideas out, which is great!

Along a different line, and not a zebra stripe running across a screen, but a new blog by Audra Wolowiec. And this is where I must draw the line and get out the door! We love it Audra and YOU!

Oops! Almost forgot, pictured above a painting from the amazing Amy Sillman from a show curated by the brilliant Anne Ellegood at the Hirshorn.

Obama Post

Obama in Bushwick. And Hillary sporting an Obama cap on 39th street.