This poem uses the ends of books rather than beginnings:

Civilization,
Fulfilling the demands of
Your friend, Jesse Helms.

current music: Radiohead, Kid A

Tina Gonsalves makes art in Australia and participated in Global Nomads last year. Her brand new art show just opened in London (left).


This article has some great observations about how the center of visual culture has shifted from art to graphic culture, a category in which I would include illustration, comics, and consumer industrial design along with type-and-image graphic design. I came to art through graphic design and this article adds fuel to my secret desire to publish a daily web comic. Because, you know, I don't already have enough to do.

By the way, read below to see why this post contains no forms of the verb "to be."

Franklin Einspruch has posted a thought-provoking and tantalizing look at E-Prime on his blog, a kind of thought and language experiment that rids English of the verb "to be." There's a good essay on E-Prime here.

I take two lessons from E-Prime:

1) Losing the verb "to be" forces a writer (or speaker) not to lapse into the passive voice, as in, "This portrait was painted with great skill." Instead you have to say, "Mary painted this portrait skillfully." I've noticed in my own writing and speaking that getting out of the passive voice feels different. The active voice is scarier and more satisfying at the same time. You have to assign agency--blame or praise--as the case may be. The active voice is more precise and keeps me from hiding behind vague imprecisions. It's one of the very things that's gotten me in trouble on this blog, because using the active voice leads you to name names.

2) Losing the verb "to be" can release a person from the Aristotelian logic of all-or-nothing, yes-or-no, black-or-white. In E-Prime "John makes paintings" replaces "John is a painter." The first allows for alternative options to be simultaneously true about John, a more complex reality, it invites further inquiry; the second places boundaries, oversimplifies and prevents further inquiry. I could use more of the former in my bag of tricks.

I chuck the part about "be"-less language being more modest, so to speak, less likely to offend since E-Prime encourages first-person observations over God-like pronouncements (e.g., "I don't like this art movement" versus "This whole art movement is shit-on-a-stick"). That distinction is useful as far as it goes, but there are certainly times when I want to make pronouncements, when I want my words to reverberate strongly and without equivocation. Sometimes, I want to imply something that is eternal, unchanging and absolute, even if it isn't. Sometimes I want to say something like: "Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, we ARE free at last!"

Good luck, Franklin!

Check out more pics of the old house here. Meanwhile, just snagged a backdated version of Adobe Premiere on eBay for $2. Now the real fun starts.

I can't resist old, decaying houses and buildings. I passed this one yesterday on the way to Half Priced Books.

current music: the birdy breaking of dawn

A bunch of stuff on my clipboard that I've been pondering or noticing.

Angolan artists impress me--not the art itself, of which I have yet to see a single piece, but the fact that they are constantly fighting for and winning support from their government, making waves internationally in Cuba, Germany, South Africa, advocating for better education, better critics, more respect. Why is there no SAG, AFTRA or Equity for visual artists in the U.S.? Or is there?

I was all prepared to be annoyed by Holland Cotter's survey of current black art shows on the east coast a couple of weeks ago. But no, it turned out to be refreshingly honest and unassuming. It has the most earnest conclusion I've read in an art review in a long time.

Score one for the little guys. JibJab is honoring the legacy of Woody Guthrie a zillion times better than those pointy-headed fucks at the record companies.

This is why middle America hates the art/media establishment. Some dude comes over from Austria, records the stupidest rural Americans he can find and then premiers the movie to a crowd of self-satisfied New Yorkers so they can point and laugh and feel good about their own enlightenment. In the East Village no less! (My old stomping grounds.) This is the exact opposite of Michael Moore, who--whatever you think of his politics--always, always has a kind and compassionate eye for the regular guy.

A great article on how our collective fear of chemical and biological weapons is wildly misplaced. And yet we went to war over imaginary ones that even if they did exist have a crappy record for killing large numbers of people.

Similarly, here are some more largely imaginary threats:

West Nile Virus: 264 US deaths last year

compare:
flu deaths last year: 63,000
alcohol-related car wreck deaths: 17,000
Let's not talk about cancer or heart disease

Mad Cow disease: 1 US death ever

compare:
about 24,000 people die every year falling down their own stairs, electrocuting themselves, or otherwise causing unintentional lethal self harm in their own homes.

Terrorism: 625 deaths worldwide in 2003

compare:
murders with handguns: 12,000 in one year in the US alone (1998)

One of the great western art traditions is to go crazy and destroy one's entire previous body of work. For best results, do so the night before a planned solo exhibition in the style of Jean-Michel Basquiat.

I got in touch with that neurosis tonight. Going through all my old work in the process of updating my website, the whole exercise felt so oppressive. A simultaneous feeling of "that's all?" and "so much stuff, and all of it bad!" The saving grace was this detail shot from a recent painting, which makes me believe there's some hope:

It was the kind of story that sets
Interpretation of history,
Not long ago,
About the middle of October.
This work spans more than
I am omitting.


current music: Shane Martell, Too Soon to Tell

A bunch of us got together last night to say goodbye to Harold Chaput, founder and erstwhile president of the Austin Museum of Digital Art. As of today, he is off to Canada to work with a gaming company, I forget which. In a jarring turnabout from U.S. life, the Canadians are emigrating Kazuki from Japan with a work visa given that they are married under Canadian law. Socially, we are 20 years behind the Canadians.

An early morning workout, a trip to the dentist for a cleaning so deep it required anesthesia, a trip to the grocery store and then a session on the therapist's couch where we discussed the psychological damage done to me by the fact that my mother insists on pronouncing the second "c" in Connecticut--all of it left me feeling a little beat up. So it was with pleasure that I watched this beautiful lightning storm just north of Austin.

I love this camera. I don't love my tripod.

Trend alert: This article in today's LA Weekly seems to be part of a growing trend of gay rappers and hip-hop-inistas. I saw the cultural space for this trend about 10 years ago. Unfortunately, back then nobody was ready for the hip-hop act I was producing: the Booty Boyz.


Seriously, I'm enthralled with Deadlee for his fuck-you brand of tenacity to his own vision, just like Gallo. On one hand, it's a little problematic that some gay artists are endorsing the same violent, hyper-macho brand of masculinity that has come to define rap. On the other hand anything that breaks up the monotony of those nazi-inspired images of washboard abs that the gay media considers normal is a good, good thing. (left, Deadlee)


I took this photo of Paul's hand last weekend when we went to see Farenheit 911. This one has the warm feeling of a contrasty, fast film stock. I love the flexibility of digital images.



First Lieutenant Jim,
There were ninety-seven new.
This is the saddest.

current music: KOOP radio blues show

The story of art
as we near the completion:
Andy Warhol. More.

The books for yesterday's poem were:
The Dialectic of Decadaence, Donald Kuspit
Bush at War, Bob Woodward
The Struggle for Black Equality, Harvard Sitkoff

"The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit... the arbitrariness of the constraint only serves to obtain precision of execution."
Igor Stravinsky

This picture was made in natural light at dusk with a 1-second exposure. I desaturated the color in Photoshop and then bumped the yellows and blues back up. Then I added a little vignetting by pulling down the high end around the edges.

This is what I've been thinking about a lot lately. My library. Its life, its subconscious.

I wrote some haiku. The way I did it was to take three books at random and, in the order found, take the first 5 (or so) syllables from the first, the first 7 from the second and the first 5 from the third. And there's the poem.

Here's one based on the 3 books that happen to be sitting in my nightstand:

According to Don,
Tuesday, September 11,
Nourished by anger.

There's the subconscious of the library. Freed, right?

I spent hundreds of dollars the other day on a new digital camera. I'm still learning all the ins and outs of it, but I've been having fun experimenting and playing around with it. It's a mid-level model that kicks ass on quality. It's got most of the manual controls of an SLR, but not the expandability or speed of the high-end digital models.


My first stop was by the Camera Co/op, where the staff was ultra friendly and accomodating. They had me take several pictures with different cameras and then load them onto a computer to see the differences in image quality and resolution. Though I wanted to stay on the low end, I was disappointed with what I can only describe as the noisy, digitally look you get with many such cameras. And I do have designs for screen-based projects such as this in the future, so I knew I'd have to hit the mid range at least.


So I pop over to Precision Camera to see what they've got for more selection. And mostly what they have is rude salespeople. The guy first argued that all digital cameras produce an identical picture quality, which is patently untrue. But then when I questioned this and told him I'd just come from doing a series of side-by-side comparisons, he suddenly had to argue that in fact yes, there are differences in quality. But since he had already staked out the opposite territory, he now found himself having to argue both positions. The more I tried to understand him, the more frustrated he got, and the more confrontational. I swear I wasn't trying to start trouble. He reacted to me as though I were trying to catch him in a lie, which I totally was not. I was just trying to understand what the hell he was recommending. Unfortunately, he had painted himself into such a corner that he couldn't really logically recommend anything.

And then I asked if there were any way I could see sample shots, any way to download pictures and do a side-by-side comparison for myself. Of course there was not. Fine, but then he went so far as to tell me that the time it would take him to set that up wouldn't be worth it to him because he's only getting an $18 commission and can't be bothered. For the love of God! That may well be true, but you don't fucking tell a customer that they're not worth the time it takes to help them.

The highly-skilled and highly-knowledgeable staff at Precision Camera are a lot like auto mechanics. They're hired for their expertise and then they end up resenting the fact that most of their job is actually customer service.

So I high-tailed it across the street to Wolf Camera where Alicia, the sales clerk made it extremely easy to find the right camera. I heartily endorse Wolf Camera. True, their selection is about a third of Precision's, but I don't care. I'm starting at Wolf from now on.

Did a life drawing session tonight that was not bad. Tomorrow, I'll play around with the camera a little more.

current music: Joni Mitchell, For the Roses

Thanks, Prometheus 6, for the link to BBS. When I started blogging I knew I couldn't do the political thing as well as some others, e.g., Prometheus, Negrophile, Allaboutgeorge, but I do hope I've filled in tolerably well on art schtuff.

current music: the haunting gravelly voice of Mavis Staples, saying "Yes, no, yes, no..."

I read a couple of books today. First was Rich Dad, Poor Dad, all about the differences between the ways in which us poor and middle-class folk think about money versus how the rich think about it. Horribly, horribly written and edited, but not without its "a-ha" moments.

Basically, people are never really taught about how money works. Instead, we're taught to just work hard and save, work hard and save. Consequently, most schlubs never break out of the "rat race" where wages are everything and jobs take on an almost mystical importance. That all sounds very Marxist, but the author keeps reassuring you of his capitalist creds.

Next up was Dave Hickey's Air Guitar, which this interview made me want to read. I wrongly thought it was going to be all about art and art criticism. And it sort of is, but in that vague, sprawling, cultural criticism way that was popular in the 90s. So I gave that one a light read.

The title essay did bring some things to mind. It talks about art critical writing, its impotence, the fact that as a parasite, it will always be outlived for better or for worse by its host.

It brought this article to mind, in which the various critics at City Pages go back over 25 years and show where they said that Vanilla Ice will revolutionize music or that Cindy Sherman is a flash-in-the-pan who won't amount to much.

I of course have never been wrong about anything. But if there's one criticism I've leveled that doesn't seem quite apt, it would have to be this one of Zack Simpson's Lombardi show. I spent quite a bit of time defining what is and is not Art, when in the end it did not really matter. Which I sort of stated at the time, but really it mattered so little that it wasn't worth bringing up. It would be one thing if I thought that some crap were being cynically foisted upon some hipster audience too insecure to challenge its status as art, but that's not what was happening there. It was just one type of positive experience, by whatever name.

I'd kill for a decent blog skin. Something that doesn't look like it was designed by or for a 14-year old. Something without reference to anime, Orlando Bloom, or Carmen Electra. Something with dark, legible type on a light background, so it can be both read and printed easily. Something where the design-y-ness doesn't take up 80% of the screen...

If I still care about this in a week, maybe I'll tweak this one out until it works. Then again, maybe I won't.

current music: Erykah Badu, Baduizm

On my daily jogging route there is an artless graffito on a low wall that says, "What dreams apply take for what they are." I've been working on that for months, but tonight it finally started to make sense to me. It's fine to live in the future for a little while, but dreams don't come true there, they happen now--or they happen never.

I met the girl Kazki's been hanging out with lately, and we got to talking about such things. Years ago, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor and immediately she was pissed off. "If this has been the last year of my life, how pissed off I am that I spent it this way!" was her reaction. I'd have felt the same way. The diagnosis later turned out to be false, but that lesson remains: if this is the last year of your life, is this what you want to be doing?

Alex has just left for business school in Singapore. (I sent him the first e-card I've ever sent anyone to say bon voyage.) Eric Gibbons is doing an artist residency in Connecticut.

Am I doing what I want to be doing?

I'm currently fascinated by Vincent Gallo. I've always liked his whole...thing. His mojo. His kind of frightening sex appeal. But I was particularly taken by this snippet of praise in Papermag: says the writer, Gallo is "one of the great independent humans."

Isn't that the dream of every artist? Every person, in fact? How do you make of your life a manifesto of pure, independent vision? How do you create yourself with every breath? To be a great independent human, that is the thing.

For most of us, this year is not likely to be our last. Odds are pretty good I'll still be around next year, as will most of the people reading this, God willing. Still, what if this were the last year? What excuse would there be for waiting for the "right moment," the "big break," the big day that is always out there somewhere? Dreams are process, not events. They are felt in the everpresent moment, not in their reduction to anecdotes. They happen now, or they don't happen at all.

Life is not short. It is long and the universe is gracious. All the more reason to drink in every minute of it. All the more reason to feel now what is now and let tomorrow be tomorrow. I am alive right now. What dreams apply take for what they are.

Here are some drawings from the AVAA life drawing session tonight. They're kinda sorta... I've discovered that when I get out of the habit of life drawing the first thing that goes for me is not line, not rhythm, not proportion, not composition--it's stamina. I maxed out at 2 hours 20 minutes and I had nothing left. Same thing happens with that cello. I get on after a month and I find that I actually sound much better, but I can't play longer than 45 minutes before I'm winded. I'll need to build back up over a few sessions.

It's been a while since I've subjected myself to an art opening, but I left the cave last night to go to the Creative Research Laboratory's UT MFA student show. It was nice catching up with Cauleen who is as obsessed with Kung Fu movies as ever and working on a couple of her own. For once I wasn't at a loss for words with her as I usually find myself, perhaps because I had used up all my awkwardness with a former intern of mine, whom I also adore, but am always inexplicably nervous around. I think back to how Kazki tells me that I just can't relax around women...


The art was rangey but there was some good stuff. Michael Osborne's monumental photographs turned me on in the same way Bernar Venet's massive cor-ten sculpture did in Chelsea. All swaggery and unrepentently masculine. I'm trying to figure that out now--masculinity and what it means, where it comes from and how we measure it. (left, Michael Osborne, Interchange #1, 2004)

Eric Zimmerman's weird schematic-y drawings were interesting if a little inert. What I did like about them was that they seemed very thought through and finished, unlike a lot of art both by students and so-called professionals, which so often seems not quite whole or finished.


Meanwhile, Erick Michaud's multimedia installation came across as a listless pastiche of every art world microtrend of this exact nanosecond all crammed together: the goth sensibility, the I-just-don't-give-a-fuck video production, the bits-n-pieces scribbly anti-aesthetic, etc., etc. It never had a chance; it expired the moment it was installed. (right, Erick Michaud, Performance Ritual #1, 2003)

I loved Thuy-Van Vu's drawing of clumped chairs, even though I met her later and she gave me nothing when I tried to ask her about the work. She asked if we had noticed the title. Someone said no. She says, "It's called Kinship Chart." I guess that was supposed to explain everything because everyone nodded solemnly and knowingly. She seemed genuinely surprised though when I asked for more since just restating the title didn't really tell me anything that I didn't already get for myself. She may have just been shy or unprepared because she made it pretty clear that she wasn't interested in talking to me any more about it. Whatever. The work was still good.

Anyway, all in all, it was worth the trip out. I didn't get by the Texas Biennial fundraiser, in which I actually had some work, but I should get a full report tomorrow from someone who did go.

Current Music: Erykah Badu, Mama's Gun

A while back Joseph Phillips of the Sodalitas collaborative asked if I'd be interested in doing a show at their space, Bolm Studios, in the fall. I jumped on it once I saw how nicely cut up that space is over there. Well, I looked up the other day and realized that the fall is, like, basically now in show preparation terms, and I'm nowhere near far enough through my current body of work to be ready. So we're postponing until the spring. Hate doing that, but it's also nice to have the pressure off. Especially given that I spent 3 hours last night on one page of the book design. I did, however, come up with a way to shorthand the rest of it, which should have me finished by tonight.

Looking forward to seeing Andy Coolquitt's work at Fresh Up Club. I'll be interested to see how much my sensibilities have or have not changed in the last year.

current music: Honey Barbara, I-10 & W. Ave.

I've now spent over 11 hours on part of a book design job for which I had budgeted 4 hours--and I'm only one-third of the way through. Half at most. Once again, I realize I should have quoted a much higher price on this job.

One of the reasons my freelance graphic design business folded back in '01, aside from an economy that had been in the toilet for over a year and the fact that there are too damn many freelance graphic designers out there, was the fact that I never really understood my own value. Even though I was very conscious of that and fought against being exploited all the time, I think I never did get a grip on it in the end. I was inching up my hourly rate by dollars when I should have been increasing it by tens of dollars; and being "flexible" when I should have been saying "screw you" to clients who wouldn't pay well. When you're a freelancer, there's nothing worse than the self-defeating thought that "if I ask for what I'm worth, no one will hire me."

current music: Flaming Lips, Fight Test

If you've ever lived in Texas, you know those days where going outside feels like walking into a broom closet--even at 10pm, it's hot and close and the air is completely still. These are the days when I will order in pizza for a week straight rather than deal with facing the grocery store parking lot.

I spoke with Deborah Roberts, who's putting together this huge art symposium that's a day-long forum with practically every curator in town--from AMOA, from the Blanton, from Arthouse [thank you, at last, for the web site, by the way], from hither and from thither. She called to ask for my input on getting some digital artists involved... pshhhtt. Like I know any digital artists. I did tell her that AMODA really ought to be invited to be part of this. It's really about time that people thought of AMODA in the same mental breath as, say, Gallery Lombardi or IDEA. Never mind the interesting art they consistently show, the social experiment alone is worth paying attention to.

Around the Net:
Artblog reviews the Altoids Collection here. Roberta is much more charitable to Brad Tucker than I was, but is equally put off by the ever-pointless Aida Ruilova, and seems in fact much more disenchanted by the whole affair than I ever was.

Dan at Iconoduel takes Adbusters to task. I have a love hate relationship with the 'busters. At one time, being a culture jammer was a career aspiration of mine. Seriously. Then I realized that if I'm going to play with symbols and metaphor why not do it in a way that builds some actual new thing instead of taking such pains to essentially adore the objects it claims to destroy?

Meanwhile, I'm keeping a sideways eye trained on ArtJournal's 10-day blog on contemporary classical music. Not that I follow or know anything about that subject, but I'm studying it because this strikes me as the exact sort of thing the Net is perfect for that doesn't get exploited often enough.