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.
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Morning Ritual

coffee
coffee
coffee
poop

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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.