shade balls & bungee guts zombie

recent found & source material

at 39th St. and Greenmount Ave, Baltimore, MD

sign at B'nai Israel Cemetery, Baltimore

pre-Iftar, the Ngaiya's house, Baltimore, MD

knots

sketch for a sculpture, lumber crayon on wood

 &"Plank" from Ed Edd 'n Eddy

to the first man on the moon

Adam Farcus - First Quarter (Neil Armstrong) (digital image) 2013

the source materials:

the day and moon phase that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon

At 02:39 UTC on Monday July 21, 1969, Armstrong opened the hatch, and at 02:51 UTC began his descent to the lunar surface. The Remote Control Unit controls on his chest kept him from seeing his feet. Climbing down the nine-rung ladder, Armstrong pulled a D-ring to deploy the Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA) folded against Eagle's side and activate the TV camera, and at 02:56:15 UTC he set his left foot on the surface. (source: Wikipedia, Apollo 11)

 

source material gif vibrations

wrapped things (DC/Chicago)

trucks on RT5 between Portland and Seattle

propped things (Toronto/Chicago)

signs in downtown Joliet, IL

circles (Galveston/Portland/Chicago, IL)

I'll see you at the end of the world

a collection of pits, monuments, fountains, planters, benches, and lights that seem to resemble cairns, altars, and sacrificial slabs.

One of many cairns marking British mass graves at the site of the Battle of Isandallwana, South Africa

 Carl Andre - Equivelant VIII, 1966

 Richard Long - Blue Stone Circle (40 stones) 1995

 an intervention I created a few weeks ago

some inspiration

Michael Queenland - Meant Every Other Way (detail) (constructed box, cats, cotton Lycra fabric) 2007

Abraham Cruzvillegas - The Invincible (rock, feathers, and mixed media) 2002

Abraham Cruzvillegas - Menu in progress (set of 60 boxes, acrylic paint on cardboard, wood, paper, plastic, and polystyrene) 2005

 

Alexandra Bircken - Stammgäste (wood, wool, acrylic paint) 2006

Jeppe Hein - 360 Presence (steel, sensors) 2002

 Suchan Kinoshita - Gordijn (Curtain) 2006

report after ACRE

My time at ACRE this year was much different than last. I was more introspective and private. I guess I had a lot of personal/studio things to work on. I didn't make much, but did research, plan, work on ideas, have studio visits, travel around (lots), and talk with Allie a lot about how our practices work and work together (collaboratively). Here are some images and notes from my 12 days in Southwestern Wisconsin.

 farms outside Bloomington, WI

8/6/11 - ACRE

some notes from a studio visit with Jan Tichy

"The Stars I was Born Under" - he saw this as a talismanic object - because people enjoyed it and took them away - balloons are give-aways.

what does it mean that I'm interested in portals (hexes) now that I am "cleaning my space"

is kitsch not already spiritual, talismanic, and magical?

notes on hexes and White Hex:

-does it need to fit the space?

-permanence vs. ephemerality

-portal = door? window? person sized?

One Day at a Time (in process - I think it needs to be much larger - it is still at 'craft' scale)

laundry along Rt. E between Steuben and Boscobel, WI

8/9/11 - ACRE
some notes from a studio visit with Brandon Alvendia
"poetry" - artists often use this work incorrectly
mining - digging up
- I'm an anthropologist who joined (or came from) the tribe
what is the material link to the place my work/inspiration comes from?
thread to real life can deal (attend to) kitsch and irony
- where's the tell

Sentinel (for ACRE) - in the ACRE studios at the Steuben Lodge, I left him there

 
8/13/11 - ACRE
some notes from a studio visit with New Capital (Ben and Chelsea)
One Day at a Time - showing the/a dark underbelly of Midwestern America
cultural scale - is constructed of individual's opinions of cultural scale (melting pot)
Ben gave me a question from a psychology test - white rabbit in a white room - what do you do? A: I try to pet it but it hops away from me. (I evidently am not afraid of death, and want to know it, but it is elusive)
*they agreed that something else needs to happen to One Day at a Time - they suggested a scale shift - to take it out of the craft/folk realm.

me and some other resident artists watching the 32nd ward recall election debate at a bar in Steuben

detail of a wall at the Dickeyville Grotto, in Dickeyville, WI

8/13/11 - ACRE
notes from a studio visit with Duncan McKenzie
One Day at a Time - funny, but cute
-participates too much in the folk space
-it needs some "tooth"
irony gives you a (critical) distance - and enough distance to access nostalgia (in the avant-guard) art world
-enough to look at it / cold reflection / because it's scary and rich with meaning
he said that I'm replicating emo values
"you have no God before art" - art world's slogan - it is anti-dogma
belief - not theism
what have we lost by not having belief?
is there belief now?
art is good at exploring what can be "Art"
-doesn't/can't change the world
he wanted to know how do/can I live off of (have a career) with an intervention based practice?
-Conrad Bakker

an eagle, flying over the lock and dam on the Mississippi River at Davenport, IA

SW WI

 a house near Bloomington, WI

 a sign in Pairie du Chien, WI

a picture found in a Life magazine in the Community Thrift Store in Boscobel, WI

faith and support

 

 (photographs and notes from when I was driving from Chicago to ACRE [Steuben, WI])

• with help from some great people, i'm becoming a better person.
• so, i'm making work about help and support (for others), because thinking of others is a thing i'm trying to improve in myself.
• but, these pieces are also for me - to help me help myself.
• i find source materials and inspiration in places of support in our culture: Pennsylvania Dutch, Christianity, witchcraft, AA, counseling, astrology, and belief systems. i look to these things not to create my own faith, but to use them as a model for associative moves in my studio.

EST.10-23-1982

new research images

some things that have been sticking around, either in my head or on my computer:

Astronomy One. J. Allen Hynek & Necia H. Apfel. W.A. Benjamin, Inc. 1972. (photos by Thomas E. Graves)

Hex Signs. Don Yoder and Thomas E. Graves. E. P. Dutton. 1989.

damaged/fixed wall in Chinatown, Chicago (duct tape on tile) - 2010

*and what it looked like a year ago! - 2009