List made in Coal City, IL and Florence, MA

phenomenological - personal

ephemeral - eternal
home - near
humble - transformative
everyday - everyday
myth - spirit

birth - death

Dots, Circles, and Points

I've been reconsidering the Dot series of works. They live as a strong aesthetic form, with some connection to found ephemeral objects and a type of idiosyncratic signature. In my search of the meaning of these forms I ask myself, 'What does the dot mean?' I think by switching the context (the paper the dot is on) can inform this. What if the dot appeared on a map?

The concentric circles mimic (although abstracted) the points that are locations on the map. There by the form of the dot becomes a strange place - such as a blast zone, abstracted roads/map-forms, or aesthetic intervention. Most importantly the form of the dot fits the context of the map through shape and colors.

Chernobyl fallout zone

Dot as place and location. The following Kleenex box was photographed in Florence, MA.

the gray is here

at 2pm today i went on the roof behind my apartment and tried to take a picture of where i thought the sun was. this was the closest of 10 photos. the gray is here. light that chills fingers and toes.

Abe Says...

So Abe was evidently a punk and Illinois needs another one of these sculptures.
Check out the list on the left:
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/art/sculpt.htm

A clementine, a pot of coffee, and Tom Friedman

I've made 2 food based works recently. The repaired clementine is made of the peel and tape. Below is a poem.
-----------------------

Morning Ritual

coffee
coffee
coffee
poop

----------------------
Both of these can be related to something I read in an essay on Tom Friedman called "Self-Portrait as Untitled (without Armature)" by Bruce Hainley:

"Some artists work at home. Even when they're in a studio, it's a home-made practice... Joseph Cornell, despite his dream travel, quite at home. Marcel Duchamp, quite at home too. The boîte-en-valise[directly translated as 'box-in-bag'], the museum in a suitcase, just an italicizing of this fact, as is his sister's being the one to assemble and label some of the readymades. Staircase, chocolate grinders, perfume bottles, drag accouterments, dust breeding, breathing: these are the stuff of a homebody.
...Everything that Freidman needs to make his work is at home. Yet it's uncanny how it never seems to be about the domestic... Nothing homey even though it's home-made..."

Tom Friedman - Untitled (soap and pubic hair) 1990

The notion of home and humble have been a part of my work for quite a while (in materials and occasionally content) and it can be a slippery place in my work. My work is always personal and made from what is at hand (near might be a better term). This has become more evident now that I have moved into an apartment with my fiancee where my studio and living space are one. In previous apartments I have viewed 'homey' creations such as this clementine as play and cursory to my practice. I am revisiting actions like painting lines on my former roommate's 3-day-old pizza left on our counter.

I'm black, I'm white

search 1
search 2

searches of "michael jackson" using Google image color filter

A Modern Monument

I created a new sculpture today.
A Modern Monument (4 feet, 33 inches cubed)
I can install it anywhere.
The size is 81" x 81" x 81"
The medium is space
Above is a computer generated model of the piece.

Contemporary and Modern Art in Beloit, Wisconsin

These are photographs I took while on my last trip to Beloit, WI.

Tacita Dean

Spencer Finch

Rudolf Stingel

Robert Ryman

Robert Irwin

Robert Frank

Richard Serra

Richard Prince

Richard Artschwager

Olafur Eliasson

Melanie Schiff

Martin Creed

Marcel Duchamp

Jim Dine

Jenny Holzer

Gerhard Richter

Eva Hesse

Ellsworth Kelly

Donald Judd

Daniel Buren

Dan Flavin

Damien Hirst

Christo and Jean Claude

Andy Warhol

Andy Goldsworthy

Aaron Siskind

Twombly

Cy Twombly Untitled 2001

this sculpture is a recent obsession of mine. it's currently on display in Cy Twombly: The Natural World at the Art Institute of Chicago. for me, the merging of conflicting ideas in this piece are really what interests me: celebration/funeral, death/life, and the acceptance of this conflict as part of being human.

this last photo is of some scraps in my studio: a found and faded piece of a lei or streamer, 2 used gold twist-ties, splatters of acrylic paint and a candy flower made by my mom

Wandering Light

A person walking rapidly through a heavy rainstorm with the drops falling straight downward, will have to tilt his umbrella slightly forward to compensate for his own motion. In the same way and for the same reason, an astronomer on a rapidly moving Earth must tilt his telescope slightly forward in the direction of the earth's motion in order to have the starlight fall exactly down the center of his tube. As a result of this motion, the apparent position of a star does not ordinarily coincide with its true position. We term this phenomenon the aberration or "wandering" of light. The maximum shift from true to apparent position is 20".47.

from A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets by Donald H. Menzel

Like Shooting Stars (digital photograph)
taken on the first Chicago snow of 2009

Learning to Swim

This is my new favorite poem in the newest publication Poetry, Volume 194, Number 4, July/August 2009.

Bob Hicok
--

Learning to Swim

At forty-eight, to be given water
which is most of the world, given life
in water, which is most of me, given ease,

which is most of what I lack, here, where walls
don't part to my hands, is to be born
as of three weeks ago. Taking nothing

from you, mother, or you, sky, or you,
mountian, that you wouldn't take
if offered by the sea, any sea, or river,

any river, or the pool, beside which
a woman sits who would save me
if I needed saving, in a red suit, as if flame

is the color of emergency, as I do,
need saving, from solid things,
most of all, their dissolve.

Paradise

steps 220 through 235 of the Google Directions for walking from Chicago, IL to Paradise, MT:
[somewhere in Southeastern Montana]

217.	Turn right		0.9 mi
218.	Turn right		4.8 mi
219.	Turn right		5.2 mi
220.	Turn left		0.9 mi
221.	Turn right		1.2 mi
222.	Turn left		5.2 mi
223.	Turn left		2.8 mi
224.	Turn right toward Sarpy Creek Rd		0.7 mi
225.	Slight right at Sarpy Creek Rd		0.9 mi
226.	Turn left		1.5 mi
227.	Turn right		0.6 mi
228.	Turn right		230 ft
229.	Turn left		0.9 mi
230.	Turn left		0.5 mi
231.	Turn left		0.9 mi
232.	Turn right toward Sarpy Rd		1.9 mi

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