To New York.. and Summer

My dearest, oldest friend in life, Summer Kemick, has created a new website to go with a lot of the new work she's been making as of late. I love that we've known each other for 2/3 of our lives, that we've lived in California, Louisiana and New York together, that we traveled the country and lived in a car together for 45 days.. and that I can still learn new things about her and the way she sees by looking at her art. She's moving away from NYC in less than a month, giving me one more reason to flee to CA as often as possible.

Art and Obsession

Just stumbled across Vincent van Gogh: The Letters project, an extensive archive of the letters and sketches Van Gogh wrote throughout his life, commissioned by The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. I took quite some time scrolling through this. I wish more like this existed out there in the world. It's fascinating and goes quite well with the book I bought at the Strand recently, The World's Greatest Letters.

In a letter from Vincent Van Gogh to Paul Gauguin dated 17, June 1890

(2 years after a "frustrated and ill, Van Gogh confronted Gauguin with a razor blade. In panic, Van Gogh left their hotel and fled to a local brothel. While there, he cut off the lower part of his left ear lobe. He wrapped the severed tissue in newspaper and gave to a prostitute named Rachel, asking her to "keep this object carefully."- 23, December 1888)





A few translated excerpts -

"Thanks for writing to me again, my dear friend, and be assured that since my return I’ve thought about you every day. I only stayed in Paris for three days, and as the Parisian noise made a pretty bad impression on me I judged it wise for my head to clear off to the countryside – otherwise I would have swiftly run round to your place."

"we’ll try to do something deliberate and serious, as it would probably have become if we’d been able to continue down there. Look, an idea which will perhaps suit you. I’m trying to do studies of wheat like this, however I can’t draw it. Nothing but ears, blue-green stems, long leaves like ribbons, green and pink by reflection, yellowing ears lightly bordered with pale pink due to the dusty flowering."

The two artists never actually saw each other again after the incident with the blade in 1888, but apparently they kept in touch (though kept their distance).

Snow in your Eyes

It's not a shocker that the weather would go completely blizzard-esk in the midst of one of the busiest weeks in NYC for the art / photo world. It just makes the week all that more chaotic and sloppy. Get your running shoes on cause there's some events to go to! To name a few...


Unknown photographer. Boston Marathon,1904
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Wednesday, March 4

Amani Olu Projects is pleased to announce its participation in SCOPE Art Fair, which will be held March 4 – 8, 2009 in Booth D01 at Lincoln Center (62nd Street at 10th Avenue). amani olu will showcase works by Michael Bühler–Rose, Gerald Edwards III, Jon Feinstein, Alison Malone, Marc McAndrews, Bradley Peters, Peter Riesett, David La Spina, Tina Tyrell and Ann Woo.

For more information: scope-art.com

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Art Fair! (a group exhibition)
Michael Mazzeo Gallery
March 4 - April 11
Opening Reception, Wednesday, March 4, 6PM - 8PM

Featured artists include Juliana Beasey, Alison Carey, F&D Cartier, Caleb Charland, John Chervinsky, Rachael Dunville, Lucas Foglia, Jefferson Hayman, Yong Hee Kim, Sebastian Lemm, Chris McCaw, Leah Oates, Cara Phillips, Josh Quigley, Christopher Rauschenberg, Robin Schwartz, Will Steacy, Lacey Terrell, and Terry Towery.
Art Fair! will remain on view through April 11. For more information, please contact the gallery.

MICHAEL MAZZEO GALLERY
526 W.26 St. Suite 209
New York, NY 10001
+1.212.741.6599

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THURSDAY, March 5th

Humble Arts Foundation
The Collector’s Guide to Emerging Art Photography Launch Party
Thursday, March 5, 6 – 9 PM
VOLTA NY
7 W. 34th Street at 5th Avenue

In Regards of the Unknown...


Børre Sæthre 'Stealth Distortion'
Photo © Matthew Septimus | Courtesy P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center

I went to the big opening at PS1 yesterday and spent some time wandering in and out of all of the exhibits. The shows were all pretty fun and worth the visit, but the lucky bonus of the trip was that I was fortunate enough to see the last day of Norwegian artist, Børre Sæthre's installation, including this full size unicorn behind glass. I feel like quite often I get stuck inside being a photographer and most things that I see, though I enjoy it, feels so literal. It is nice to look at non-photographic work, or work that sparks ideas of the unknown or mythical realms of the mind. This installation did just that. It shook me out of my photo realm for a moment, something I feel I should try and do more often.

Starting my week on a Tuesday...
after spending the weekend absorbing Henry Darger, Marlene Dumas, Paul Graham and Cuben poet, Reinaldo Arenas. I feel charged with new perspective, as their desire to make work with such vigor has kicked me into motion during what feels to be a major lull. At times I feel I have to lose my mind a little or fight a little harder to make work that's real... but maybe that's just the romantic artist in me that feels struggle makes stronger work. At any rate I feel that absorbing works by artists and writers of all variety makes for a stronger artist core, and this weekend I felt I had just the right amount of diversity to start my week feeling motivated.

I highly recommend watching the documentary on Henry Darger, In the Realms of the Unreal. The movie is a serious visual delight and it gives such perspective on Darger's life and works.


Trailer from In the Realms of the Unreal.

The Paul Graham show is up at MoMA through May 18 and is definitely worth a viewing.


© Paul Graham

Unfortunately yesterday was the last day of the Marlene Dumas exhibition at MoMA, so hopefully you got to take advantage of seeing it. It's pretty damn amazing to see so much work of hers up close and personal.


© Marlene Dumas

And last but not least.. another film definitely worth viewing is Before Night Falls, a movie about Cuben poet, Reinaldo Arenas, by Julian Schnabel. It's beautiful and tragic.. and reminded me of how much I appreciate poetry.

Dance marathon couple, ca. 1925
Courtesy Library of Congress

I recently watched a documentary called Hands on a Hard Body. It's a film that documents twenty-four contestants as they compete in an endurance/sleep deprivation standoff in order to win a brand new Nissan Hardbody truck. The last person to remain standing with his or her hand on the truck wins.

As contests go, this sounds easy: Just compete with two dozen other folks to see who can keep his hand on a pickup truck the longest. The promotional event known as the "Hands on a Hard Body Contest," hosted by Jack Long Nissan every year in the east Texas town of Longview (125 miles east of Dallas, 60 miles west of Shreveport, Louisiana), turns out to be a surprisingly grueling event.

You get a five-minute break every hour, a fifteen-minute break every six hours. If you lift your hand for an instant, you’re out. If you’re two seconds late in getting your hand back on the truck after a whistle ends the break, you’re out. The film was made in 1995. The 1994 winner had stood there for nearly 100 hours. Some participants start to have visions and hallucinations, some suffer from heat exhaution (it was in the mid-high 90s during the day).. while others start to report numbness and swelling in their legs and feet.

The one thing they all have in common is desperately wanting to win the truck. Some of them describe needing it to sell so they could afford to live without having to work two jobs while others said a truck in Texas is needed to make money. The documentary made me incredibly sad. Though previous participants described it as one of the best moments of their lives, knowing that they could endure such mental and physical hardship, I couldn't help but be reminded of the dance marathons of the 1920s and 1930s in which people would dance or walk with their partner for up to two months without proper rest in order to win money. Actual footage can be seen here. An act of sheer desperation in order to finally feel like you can escape your own daily struggles. Sydney Pollack's film They Shoot Horses Don't They is a brilliant and sad fictional account of how desperate people can get.

As one of the contestants of the Hard Body competition described, "It’s a human drama thing; it’s more than just a contest, and winning a truck."


Trailer for Hands on a Hard Body
shot in 1995.


Trailer for They Shoot Horses Don't They
shot in 1969.

"Here they are again, folks! These wonderful, wonderful kids! Still struggling! Still hoping! As the clock of fate ticks away, the dance of destiny continues! The marathon goes on, and on, and on! HOW LONG CAN THEY LAST!" ~ Rocky from They Shoot Horses Don't They

Street artist Banksy hits New Orleans to commemorate the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina on August 29. Some of the pieces relate directly to the hurricane and its disastrous aftermath; others are targeted at the legacy of Fred Radtke, an infamous N.O. anti-graffiti crusader known as the "Gray Ghost" for his practice of painting over graffiti in gray paint—regardless of the color of the underlying wall.

“Three years after Katrina I wanted to make a statement about the state of the clean up operation.” -Banksy

This portrait of Lewis Payne was shot in April 1865, three months before his execution.
This triptych is amazing for so many reasons. The expression on his face... so calm, haunting, almost transparent, almost not there. I can't help but imagine where his thoughts were. Did he care that he was facing death?

For some reason it reminds me of this part of a book I read on the subway this morning... maybe that's what was reeling through my mind when I sought the image out in a google search. It was from a chapter in The English Patient that goes as follows:


© Alexander Gardner

"There's a painting by Caravaggio, done late in his life. David with the Head of Goliath. In it, the young warrior holds at the end of his outstretched arm the head of Goliath, ravaged and old. But that is not the true sadness in the picture. It is assumed that the face of David is a portrait of the youthful Caravaggio and the head of Goliath is a portrait of him as an older man, how he looked when he did the painting. Youth judging age at the end of its outstretched hand. The judging of one's own mortality...."

"He had felt like a man in the darkness of a room imitating the calls of a bird. But here they were shedding skins. They could imitate nothing but what they were."

Can't help but wonder if Lewis Payne felt like a man in the darkness of a room... shedding skin.. imitating nothing... facing death.

Another piece that keeps echoing for me is this video by Bas Jan Ader. His work is amazing and has influenced many artists since. There used to be a full length documentary about him available online that has since disappeared. Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, Jan Verwoert, ISBN 1-84638-002-2, May 2006. Incredible what drives artists to make their work. Ader was in love with the idea of gravity, weight, limitations, the vast.

Bas Jan Ader wasn't facing death in this video... but was later lost at sea while attempting a single-handed west-east crossing of the Atlantic in a 13ft pocket cruiser, a modified Guppy 13 named "Ocean Wave". The passage was part of an art performance titled "In Search of the Miraculous". Radio contact broke off three weeks into the voyage, and Ader was presumed lost at sea. The boat was found after 10 months, floating partially submerged 150 miles West-Southwest of the coast of Ireland. His body was never found. The boat, after being recovered by the Spanish fishing vessel that found it, was taken to Coruña. The boat was later stolen.

© Bas Jan Ader - "I'm Too Sad To Tell You"

"My old man's gonna be back soon and if we're still here he's gonna shit Twinkies."



When I was around 14 years old and living in Ventura, CA I was really into punk rock and skate boarding. Yes. I was a tom boy. My older brother was in a band called Patient Zero. We were in the suburbs an hour north of Los Angeles. We went to clubs that used to be XXX theaters. My friends were in bands with names like Dick Circus, Coat Hanger Kids, The Missing 23rd and Peter Pans Army. Ridiculous? Yes. My first show was D.I at the Mayfair Theater. I think it was shortly after my 13th birthday. I had just seen the original version of Suburbia (which D.I. plays a huge amount of the soundtrack for) so I was pretty fired up. I'm sure my brother and I drove our parents crazy with all of it. And seeing that it's Mother's Day I'll just go ahead and say "Thanks Mom for putting up with us during those years." Ha.. I think we both turned out ok.

At any rate... I've stayed in touch with a few folks from back in the day.. one being Jacob Rhodes who recently got his MFA from Yale with a degree in sculpture. An ode to Oxnard is on his site that I find quite humorous. Maybe you just had to be there.

MoMA- Opening Night..
Take your time: Olafur Eliasson
Quite a spectacle. I had an amazing time.. thanks to my gal Summer Kemick, who works as the registrar at PS1 (and worked with Olafur on the opening that occurred at PS1 yesterday) We celebrated with many friendly and cool folks from Berlin that worked hands on to make the show happen. Michael Stipe and David Byrne were in the house as well... though I didn't get to meet them (drats!!). Here are some snaps shot with color from the installations.

A few things for a Friday:

Sigur Rós's first film 'Heima'


I was an invited artist at The F Blog . They give a generous presentation to invited artists.. thought the whole thing was pretty cool.

Flak Photo is running a feature for 31 Under 31, so you can see some of the great work from the show there.

Timothy Briner is plugging right along on his Booneville adventures. Pretty damn adventurous!! Though it sounds like it's been tough... I have to admit I'm jealous of his roaming ways. Between having the flu for just under a week, having a day job and living in NYC, at times I feel almost paralyzed when it comes to making new work or doing something for myself.

Oh and lastly.. PDN 30 was announced. Some good stuff on there. Congrats to Shen Wei.

Talking bout this generation...
(not that this is new.. but it certainly is getting worse)

“They'll have to shoot me first to take my gun” ~ Roy Rogers







Yesterday I was upstate at a swimming hole that looked like a scene out of a Sally Mann photograph. Everything was completely peaceful, beautiful and... violent. There were four very young brothers ranging in age from 5-10 with an assortmant of fake guns racing after one another.. some of their guns looked like hunting rifels and had scopes on them.. some were pistols.. machine guns.. what have you. I watched as the youngest one picked up the fake pistol, holding it to the back of his mother's head as she watched those swimming. He silently mouthed the gun popping once, twice, three times before turning to point it into his mouth, clicking the gun several times. The oldest probably freaked me out the most though as he was pointing with his scope at every single person in the swimming hole and silently mouthing the gun firing before aiming at the next. I understand boys will be boys.. but this makes me feel sick.

This September marks 50 years since Jack Kerouac's On the Road hit bookshelves, stirred controversy and spoke — in a new voice — to a generation of readers. Today the beat travelogue continues to sell 100,000 copies a year in the U.S. and Canada alone.
His books have always been a fairly large inspiration for me... in my travels.. and the way that I write about traveling and experiencing life... as well as in my photographs when I'm on the road.

Silas H. Rhodes Dies at 91; Built School of Visual Arts.
My graduating class (2007) was the last class to have Silas Rhodes speak at the ceremony since the schools origins. My condolences go out to his family.

The New York Times, June 30, 2007, obituary

Color Palette and Form:
Always lured back to Dijkstra's work
and images from the book Ghetto by Oliver Chanarin and Adam Broomberg

These photographs of "The Vegetative Nervous System" and falling garden installations
created by young Swiss couple
Gerda Steiner & Jörg Lenzlinger seems to contain that
beautiful chaos I feel life is, and should be, made up of.




Quoted from their site:
"Unimpressed by will or order the vegetative nervous system (the autonomic nervous system) works autonomously in the body and takes decisions independently. Luckily - if human beings had to initiate the control of all the organs intellectually they would never have had the time to invent the refrigerator. Autonomous actions are the fertilizer of the inner garden."