new in my studio - hexes

Adam Farcus - White Hex (pencil, nails, and thread on wall) 2011

Adam Farcus - White Hex (pencil, nails, and thread on wall) 2011

sketch for a video

 

Adam Farcus - Magic Perfecting Base (acrylic on magazine page) 2011

 Adam Farcus - Magic Perfecting Base (2) (photograph) 2011

chain letter

this may be my piece, Package to Paradise (for Gavin Bunner), at the "Chain Letter" exhibition at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles. i took this off of a youtube video of someone clumsily walking the the (apparently) bombed mess of an exhibition. i also sent Gavin a part of a collaborative piece for our (me, Gavin, Dan Mrva) group, John Rainbow - i didn't see our sculpture anywhere in the litany of videos and photos on the web. oh well.

living like a weasel with tooth decay

And once, says Ernest Thompson Seton - once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky. He examined the eagle and found a dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eagle hand pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won. I would like to have seen that eagle from the air a few weeks or months before it was shot: was the whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant? Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel with his talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautiful airborne bones?
-Annie Dillard. Teaching a Stone to Talk. 1982.

the quote above is from Annie Dillard's story, "Living Like Weasels", plays a primary role in Laurie Anderson's Speechless (Eagle and the Weasel) from the album Bright Red. both address passion and impulse and holding on to life, no matter what happens. this is important to me, this week, because i just went to the dentist and found out that almost all of my teeth need dental work:

some teeth are not represented, because they're ok, or (as in one case) missing. the teeth that need anything with "resin" in them have surface cavities that require drilling and filling. the two that need to be extracted are rotted wisdom teeth. tooth #3 has a large filling that i had worked on when i was a kid - it is evidently "leaking" now, and requires a lot of work. in total it would take 4 visits (one for each quadrant of my mouth), and total $3658.00 - for someone with health insurance that does not cover dental. i now know what is wrong with my teeth, and thereby have a goal. before this i lived in denial and fear of what might actually be happening in my mouth. so i'm going to latch onto this, save/find some money or other dental options (UIC clinic?), and hold on. hopefully i won't be gutted - but if i were it would be a good case for how our health system in the US needs to be fixed. (really, i could only dream to live, or die, as a martyr for my liberal beliefs.)

at sea

I am thinking of making a piece with international signal flags. The flags are the form, but that form doesn't have any specific content yet. I think I want it to be a message of longing - one which not too many people understand... or only sailors understand. Or for the love of the sea (via Rebecca Mir?). The language is similar to the one I used in the poem Civilian Camo. So here is a message to Bas Jan Ader (who was lost at sea).

"COME HOME"

Gary Snyder
Things to do Around a Ship at Sea

Go out with a small flashlight and a star chart, on a good night, and check out the full size of Eridanus.
Sunbathe on a cot on the boatdeck
Go forward and talk to the lookout, away from the engines, the silence and shudder
Watch running lights pass in the night
Dolphins and sharks.
Phosphorescing creatures alongside the shipside, burning spots in the wake.
Stag, Argosy, Playboy, and Time.
Do pushups.
Make coffee in the gallery, telling jokes.
Type letters to his girl friend in Naples for the twelve-to-four Oiler
Sew up jeans.
Practise tying knots and whipping
With the Chief Cook singing the blues
Tell big story lies
Grow a beard
Learn to weld and run a lathe
Study for the Firemans Oilers and Watertenders exam
Tropic- and sea-bird watching
Types of ships
Listening to hours of words and lifetimes–fuck & shit–
Figuring out the revolution.
Hammer pipes and flanges
Paint a picture on a bulkhead with leftover paints
Jack off in the shower
Dreams of girls, about yr girl friend, writing letters, wanting children,
Making plans.

light in solid form

When a gas changes phase into solid it is called deposition (or desublimation). Examples are frost, hoar frost, and snow forming in clouds. Each of these changes are from water vapor to ice. So what would it be called to go from energy and light to a solid (kinda-of)?

Fulgurite (image from the NASA blog)

Fulgurite - created when lightning strikes sand or silica rich dirt. The silica it turned into glass due to the high temperatures of the lightning. Otherwise know as "fossilized lightning". Some of this stuff is for sale - for fairly cheep on eBay... I'm considering getting some.

exit through the vomiting

i just finished watching Exit Through the Gift Shop, with a glass of wine. i have to say first: i like some graffiti art (when it's smart, or fun, or original), and even do some of my own, but there is something about the story of Mister Brainwash (Thierry Guetta) that makes me feel physically uncomfortable, sicky. like i fear becoming him.

still from Exit Through the Gift Shop

the way he functions as an artist, and the money he spends, seems anti- everything i think an artist should be. he seems to be fully and blindly absorbed in the "hype", decadence, and glamor of being an artist (or rather, a sensation). in graffiti, and art, i hope to see (and strive in myself) for passion, and at least critique - this guy's practice (after his "film-making") seems completely devoid of all of this. but hey, maybe Banksy wanted to make him look like a fool. either way, i need to purge these gross feeling by reading some soulful work (i recently bought Sherman Alexie's, Ten Little Indians), thoughtful making, and love.

rayons de lune

Aux rayons de mémoire et aux temples de l'armoire

(On the shelves of memory and in the temples of the wardrobe)
-Colette Wartz, Paroles pour l'autre, p. 26.

But the real wardrobe is not an everyday piece of furniture. It is not opened every day, and so, like a heart that confides in no one, the key is not on the door.


* * * * *


André Breton, with a single word, shows us the marvels of unreality by adding a blessed impossibility to the riddle of the wardrobe. In Revolver aux cheveux blancs (p. 110) he writes with typical surrealist imperturbability:

L'armoire est pleine de linge
Il y a même des rayons de lune que je peux déplier.

(The wardrobe is filled with linen
There are even moonbeams which I cannot unfold.)  

-Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, 1994, p. 79-80.

Girl, here's a list

Jamaica Kincaid
Girl

     Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don't walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn't have gum on it, because that way it won't hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won't turn someone else's stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don't sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn't speak to wharf–rat boys, not even to give directions; don't eat fruits on the street—flies will follow you; but I don't sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a button–hole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father's khaki shirt so that it doesn't have a crease; this is how you iron your father's khaki pants so that they don't have a crease; this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don't like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don't like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well, and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don't squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don't pick people's flowers—you might catch something; don't throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don't like, and that way something bad won't fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man; and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn't fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near the bread?

humble superstitions

Adam Farcus - Humble Superstitions (digital photograph) 2011

and an in-process poem, started at the Neighborhood Writing Alliance (NWA - for serious, that is what they go by!) last week:

* * * * *

Coal City Superstitions

"It brings bad luck to play cards across the grain of a table."

Kentucky Superstitions. Daniel Lindsay Thomas, Ph D. 1920.

If the cows are laying down in the pasture, it will rain soon.

A girl thrown from her bed by a ghost will grow freckles over her bruises.

If you stomp on a rat, and it doesn't die, your mill is in trouble.

A neighbor's haunted attic should always be unfinished on the west side.

A lucky penny, once washed, will no longer be lucky.

Falling into a mine shaft is a bad omen.

A broken bone, caused by falling into a mine shaft, will heal with guidance of drowned miners. When the weather is wet, the bone will hurt in memory of the mine's spirits.

The backyard of trauma will always be dug up.

The left thumb will turn black in sympathy for a smashed right one, and vice-versa.

EST.10-23-1982