I was shocked and saddened to hear that the Guadalupe Arts Center suffered a major fire at around 1:30 this morning (Monday). It looks as though it began on the second floor and was started by some linseed oil soaked rags. I've heard no mention of foul play. It took about an hour to contain the fire. The smoke was reported to be so thick and toxic that firefighters had to break out windows before they could even go in.

The main gallery downstairs had been closed for renovations and was due to reopen with a group show tomorrow (!) as Vin Gallery. Of the names I recognize, I saw that narrative painter Tonya Engel and Austin fashion photography legend Andrew Shapter had work in the show.

The damage to the outside appears minimal, but the news reporter on the scene told me that the inside may be a total loss. This is entirely unconfirmed. Fire burns up, not down, so it may be that some of the first floor was spared. From what I could see, it looked wrecked on the first floor, but it didn't look burnt. Plus, the reporter said that sometime after the fire, people (firefighters?) were seen removing intact artwork from the building. Still, the fire burned hot enough that some of the structural steel girders were found soft. The architecture firm next door appeared unscathed (window display lights were on), as was d berman gallery.

This is a tragedy. Chris Warner's Art Farm was downstairs, so I'm hoping for the best for him. Neil Coleman's Pro Jex was also downstairs, but I happen to know that he was already hurting financially from a soft economy. DiverseArts, which even in good times only exists by the skin of its teeth, is located upstairs. I assume the worst for them, but don't know for sure.

My very first public exposure as an artist was at the main gallery of the GAC, several years ago, and I also participated in Harold McMillan's "Fresh Black Paint" later that same year with Tonya, Charles Randolph and a couple of others. I also first saw the work of Deborah Roberts there. It was at Chris Warner's space that I saw Greg Piwonka's work for the first time. And I met Eric Gibbons during a group show in the downstairs space when he asked me if I liked anything in the show and I said, "Yeah, I really like this Gibbons guy. He's really good."

This is eerily similar to what befell Nathan Jensen's hard luck Art Hive space, which burned down a few years back literally as the first guests were arriving for the opening celebration party.

The thought of a bunch of artists losing everything was horrible back then and it's horrible now.

I will pass along any new information I receive in this space, plus any word I hear on how you can help.

It's been too long since I've really been out in the local art scene. Well, not in any real engaged way. I think I'd been mulling over a threatened move to Atlanta so much lately that I figured why bother?

Well, I look above my desk and see this sign that says "NOW," and that reminds me that there's no use in living in the future, time machine notwithstanding. It reminds me to be more right here, right now.

So in that mood last weekend I did a little mini tour of Davis Gallery and Arthouse.

Davis Gallery is filled to the rafters with the oil paintings and wacky sculpture of Sandra Langston. Apparently she lives part of the year in Italy and the other part in Austin. I believe the pastoral landscapes are all Italy-inspired. Well, they're nice, fairly competent paint handling but with almost nothing surprising or even that interesting about them. They are entirely adequate.

On the other hand, her weird narrative pieces seem to tap into the same kind of rich, personal, quirky mythologies that Amy Cutler's work does. It's goofy and not bad. She's at her best when she takes herself least seriously. Still, guess which ones were selling. (left, Sandra Langston, The Isolationists)

From there, I headed out to Arthouse. I had specifically avoided the Friday night opening since I'm vaguely avoiding Sue Graze now. No, I like Sue, but every time I see her I find that I end up promising to send some images of the latest stuff I'm working on, stuff that is taking longer than expected at the moment, so I never send the alleged images. And I hate the idea of not following up on my word. I think I make these promises with some dim notion that if I've promised output to someone, especially someone "important," well, then surely that will whip me into focus and I'll suddenly just be able to whip out an entire body of work. Well, that never really pans out.

My avoidance was all for naught anyway, because I ran into adjunct curator Regine Basha and before I knew it, I'm all: "Oh yeah, yeah, I'll definitely send you some images of the new stuff I'm working on." I have to be stopped.

Anyway, the current show, Life Drawings, was no bargain. Save for some interesting and weird and exquisite drawings by Eric Schnell, the show left me cold. This may well have been part of the point. (right, Eric Schnell)

Beth Campbell's work, a video and a couple of handwritten flowcharts that traced out all the possible outcomes from a single personal event (like buying a tube of tooth whitening toothpaste), all seemed to fall into that category of "great concept in the proposal," but once you read a description of it, the actual executed artwork is pretty much unnecessary.

Also, I couldn't help comparing the drawings to Mark Lombardi's compulsive, precise and paranoid flowcharts, graphing out global relationships of power, money and influence. In light of that, Campbell's work about the toothpaste just seemed an unwittingly sad and embarrassing reflection of just how self-absorbed we artists have become.

But hold on; the show is called "Life Drawings," right? The show is about individual lives, specifically in this case the life of the artist. OK, well if you let the title come to the rescue of the artwork, then maybe that makes it a little more tolerable.

In that vein Danica Phelps's massive installation (one of 3[?] works) succeeds wonderfully at the level of anthropological documentary, but not so much at the level of artwork. Composed of notes, rough sketches, cryptic personal symbols, hand copied daily schedules, and magazine cuttings, it was like emptying out an artist's filing cabinet and arranging it on a grid. OK, kinda cool, but not really transformative or insightful in any way. I could almost hear the artist saying, "Hmmm, well I don't really have any ideas...but there must be something here. Ok, I'll just throw everything on the wall and let you come up with something." Nice, but probably not as effective or interesting as a good PBS documentary on the same subject. If there is intention here, it's lost in the sheer clutter. (left, Danica Phelps)

I was glad to see this work, though, all in all. Glad to see Arthouse's risk taking. I'm not as quick tempered as I once was, as I would have been back when such art felt like a personal assault, like the artist was saying, "Fuck you and all the love, passion, grace and transformation you think is important in the world." My reaction back then was to shoot a "fuck you" right back. Now I realize that by and large these artists aren't even talking to me. For better or worse, they're mostly talking to themselves. I guess there's a place for that, too.

I'm more likely to see these works as experiments now--mostly failed experiments, but like all experiments, you know more having taken it on than had you not tried anything at all.

I joined Eric and Atsu for dinner tonight, where we had a nice paella and a chocolate cake for dessert that kicked my ass. Of course we talked about the art world, specifically the Austin art world. In some ways, a stark choice is before us: do we want to be artists living in Austin, or "Austin artists"? Two very different things. And unfortunately, probably very similar to the choice all non-New York artists face.

I gave him my early drawing "Arlo," which was otherwise just suffering wall-rot on my studio wall. He's always had his eye on that one. (left, Arlo, 2001)

By the way, Eric wanted it to be made very clear that he is not a gay, erotic artist, though he is a highly erotic individual. That got us onto the topic of Googlenyms and the need, in this digital age to have a completely unique set of identifying "search terms," so that people can find you and only you...that is, if you're trying to be found.

Check out the sidebar at left: I've added a couple of new features to the site that I've been mulling over for months. I especially like the "Bloglet" which I hope will serve as a repository for all those things I think about posting, but somehow never getting around to writing a full, legitimate post about, or those fleeting thoughts that really aren't worth a "real" post. Now they have a place to go.

current music: Danger Mouse, The Gray Album

Your Famous Blogger Twin is Moby

Creative, cosmopolitan, and a bit moody If something's on your mind, it's on your blog

I'm sure that I'm not the only art blogger who got James Bailey's indignant email this afternoon accusing Caryn Coleman of censorship. But I may be the only one who'll spend way too much time discussing it. (right, Chris Burden, 1971)

Without getting into all the details, the flap started when one of Chris Burden's art students pulled a stunt in a UCLA classroom with a loaded gun, calling it a performance piece of some kind, which caused Burden and his wife Nancy Rubins to resign their posts in protest over the administration's refusal to punish the student. (Check out Iconoduel for a summary of the shake-up, an epidemiology of the resulting rumors and a breakdown of the blogosphere's resulting chatter over the resulting rumors of the shake-up resulting from the shot that was fired by the art student.)

Well, Bailey apparently attempts to post a "Modest Proposal" style comment at Coleman's blog, calling for--among other things--the student to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay and forced into a duel with his former art professor using the 9mm pistol that Burden used in his infamous 1971 performance, Shoot.

Caryn was having none of it and barred the post from her site. So Bailey's representative "Stewart J. Kilmichael" writes a post in protest at Caryn's art.blogging.la calling her out on the matter, a post that is summarily removed by the web mistress herself. Thus the accusation of censorship.

Bottom line: Caryn Coleman can post whatever Caryn Coleman wants to post on Caryn Coleman's web site. And in fact, I thought her response to "Stewart" explaining why she removed the comment was WAY nicer than I would have been.

This incident of course points up the uneasy status of blogging as a quasi journalistic enterprise. It sorta looks like "the press" loosely speaking, so people expect some vague kind of "freedom of access" rules to apply. But at the end of the day, it's private territory, and no one has any presumptive "right" to express him or herself there other than the site owner herself. Other recent flaps further call into question whether the owner/publisher even has any responsibility to be accurate, to say nothing of inclusive.

Now I'm not sure if this Bailey dude is totally unhinged, or just a lovable loopy type. If you can wade through all the crazy on his web site, he's actually got some pretty decent photography. And it occurs to me that this whole thing reeks of a stunt designed to elicit blog postings like...well, like this one. Well, if so then ya got me; I fell right in the trap.

A side note: Bailey was the first to tell me via email about Electric Skin being listed in Art in America, to which I responded "Are you a bot?" mainly because of the list of links at the bottom of his email, which makes his email come across more like an advert for an offshore pharmacy than a communique from a human being.

Anyway, is this censorship? Yes, censorship with a little "c", the kind of censorship that takes place when a mother tells her 3-year-old to stop writing on the walls. But political dissident writing from a gulag in Siberia this ain't.

By the way, Stewart J. Kilmichael doesn't exist. He's a pure fiction. You know that, right? He turns up in no public records (driver's licenses, phone number, voter records, marriages, property holder, etc.) and online only seems to show up when someone is needed to validate James Bailey. Isn't it wonderful that we can all spy on each other now with the click of a mouse?

Came across this site in my daily bottom-feeding for art news. It's a thoughtful and well-done, low-tech web site that probes the work of Kara Walker and asks the by now familiar questions about whether her work is "offensive" or not. (right, "The End of Uncle Tom (Grand Allegorial Tableau)," 1995)

Most of the black women I know find her work offensive and one even finds her personally offensive due to some infamous comments uttered years ago at an SFMOMA show*

Kara Walker's work basically isn't interesting enough in my opinion to get offended over. It's boring. Relentlessly boring. It's well crafted (which is actually saying a lot), but at the level of concept, it is as thin as the paper it's made of. You can afford to be thin if your subject matter is, say, fish and lemons on a butcher block table. But if you're taking on the history of race in America, you better come prepared to do some heavy lifting, and that sister just ain't bringin' it.

Black artists and black people in general have a pretty thick skin when it comes to manipulated stereotypes in the service of a deeper idea. Artists like Michael Ray Charles and Bettye Saar employ this tactic frequently with much richer dialogues around the meaning and effect of their work. Walker's work is often reduced to being merely "controversial" precisely because she uses offensive imagery in the service of an idea that is at best poorly-articulated and at worst nonexistent. The work is lazy, simply reproducing stereotype in loving detail, as though merely stating an offensive idea constitutes a meaningful criticism of that idea.

Not to mention that she seems to employ the same nonidea over and over and over again. Sweet Jesus, how many times are we supposed to look at that same damn cutout?

Walker's great newsflash, if any, seems to be "Racial stereotypes are bad and slavery was awful and dehumanizing." No kidding! Does she really think we live in a society that would disagree with that rather toothless assertion? There is nothing new or revelatory in that. To be sure, racism is alive and well, but its touch is much lighter than Walker's ham fist.

And no, every work of art needn't shatter the earth with its insight into the soul of human history. But if you're going to use such charged imagery, the idea behind it had better justify and support its use or it falls apart.

This is the danger that all artists, particularly artists of color, face when taking on race as an overt subject matter. Unless one is going to say something more interesting, layered or subtle than "racism bad" then one will always run the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, and rendering oneself conceptually irrelevant.



*The alleged and wholly unconfirmed comments went something like this:

Questioner (who happened to be black): I feel that your work rather than being critical is actually often complicit in the dialectic of oppressive imagery that surrounds depictions of race in America. How would you respond to this?

Walker: Nigger, nigger, nigger! I'm so tired of black people always talking about "nigger" this and "nigger" that!

Questioner: Um...Ok. Thanks.

As I mentioned before, I dream about more celebrities than the average person. Here is a scene from a recent dream of mine. I and the other shadowy figures receive our instructions from John McEnroe as he sits in his wheelchair in the brick room.

current music: King Biscuit Time, No Style

Like many non-designers, Kazki labors under the delusion that just because I've been known to muddle my way through a print ad or two, or a website here and there, that that means I can automatically do an adequate job at logo design. Well, my past is littered with a whole string of mediocre logos circa 1998 that should put a stop to that myth.

Still, in the name of attempting to lend a hand to a friend, I'm taking another stab at it. Brian and I tried this once--to crashing failure as I recall--back when I actually thought you could make a living doing only kick-ass illustrations for neo-soul-techno-alt-rock bands.

Well, logo design is every bit as hard as I remember it being. Much harder than painting for those keeping score.

A propos of nothing, here is a link to the actual article at Art in America, highlighting Electric Skin among 9 other random blogs, that may or may not be more useful than any of the other thousands of art blogs out there.

current music: Andrew Baron, Century Plant

The era of the album began when The Beatles told some chick on Rubber Soul that she could drive their car. It ends fittingly with the remake of "Good Vibrations" on Brian Wilson's 2004 release Smile.

Technology has been moving us for a while now away from the album concept back toward the single as the major organizing principle of pop music. That's where pop music began, so dust returns always to dust.

Corporate radio conglomerates started the job; iTunes, iPods, bandwith limitations, and random shuffles on CD players came to finish it off. The job: to kill off the idea of the album as holistic concept. Music is now about the mixtape, taking single songs from various artists juxtaposed against the works of other artists in ways nobody can possibly plan on or predict. Albums are built like lines of a poem, each song gains in meaning from the songs around it. Singles stand alone, 4-minute commercials for the artist's brilliance, or fame, or both.

I've been listening to Brian Wilson's "Smile" nonstop all day. Wilson was supposed to have released this album back in 1966 or so, but he was too busy going crazy and it never happened.

VHS tromped the Beta format, even though the latter was technologically superior. Well, The Beatles became an institution to an extent that gave the Beach Boys a persistent hardon from about 1964 to 1972, even though artistically Pet Sounds kicked Rubber Soul's ass and Smile slaps Sgt. Pepper around like a little bitch.

Listen to Smile, though. It's beautiful. Really. Timeless and yet fittingly retro sounding. Ah, album I will miss you. Cats like Bjork and DJ Spooky will keep making albums--I mean real albums, not just collections of songs. But after those good vibrations a-happenin' at the end of Smile, such a thing can only be a gesture of nostalgia, a nod toward a faded cultural logic whose colors never again will shine as bright.

current music: Brian Wilson Presents Smile

No, seriously, if you live in Austin, you need to be checking out Gary Schindler's site on a regular basis. That is all.

Just 2 days left for unknown, underrepresented and underexposed Austin artists to apply to AMOA's "20 to Watch" show for next fall. Applications are due Friday (postmark). No, you cannot drop off packets at the museum, some auditing requirement I'm sure. So just drop the packet in the mailbox across the street from the museum, have some underpaid government employee schlepp it down to the processing center out on... what?... Burleson Road? Then they'll truck it back across the street 2 days later. A couple of little birdies tell me that the lineup is basically already a done deal. No surprise there. But, hey, throw in an application; you might surprise someone.

"Sisters," the group show of women artists, opens at Fresh Up Club Wednesday night as their famously LAST-MINUTE email bulletin tells me. Thanks Dave; I love how you assume none of us have already made plans for tonight. Okay, so I haven't--that's not the point. A couple of names hold promise, though I shudder to think how the work of 18 different artists is going to fit into that space...

Meanwhile, Americans for the Arts is holding its annual conference in Austin. They are also offering scholarships to attend, everything from a free ride to $500 reimbursements.

Finally, Teresa Ferguson from KUT announces AIR Interactive for the Arts, a program to provide low-cost (almost no-cost) websites to artists, non-profit orgs and the like. This being Austin, the accent of course is on musicians, but I suppose there's no reason a visual artist couldn't apply for one of these deals if you need help getting that web site together. Apply no later than January 25.

I'm still P.O.'d over the fact that Africana has "merged" with AOL's BlackVoices, but I've calmed down now to a point where I can at least talk about it without using the F-word.

For those who don't know, Africana was a rarity on the web: a popular magazine of black culture that routinely dealt with significant issues of artistic, cultural, historical and political import with thoughtful, original writing and active discussion forums. BlackVoices on the other hand is devoted to further canonizing Beyoncé Knowles and the latest Nike basketball shoes. I just hope that when this merger is a done deal, writers like Bethany Allen and Jelani Cobb still have a home.

I knew something was afoot when Zakia left last summer, but I had no idea it would come to this.

No, I don't think this is the end of the world. We somehow got by without Africana for, well, most of our history. But it doesn't change the fact that a valuable resource appears to be drying up.

Let's hope for the best. I'm sure that some incipient little Africana-like web site is spreading its nascent wings as we speak, free now to come out and fly. At least I hope so.

current music: Brad Mehldau, Largo

I wanted to post my utter rage over this situation at Africana.com, but I'm too tired from working on the latest round of the book project to start letting the expletives fly. This only means they'll be catching it worse tomorrow.

BEFORE*:




AFTER:



Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(*tho' I never let it down like this in public...)

Since we all know by now that Top 10 lists basically mean nothing except to the person who assembles them, here are 19 random things from my 2004 in no particular order.

1. Time travel
And the 4th dimension and Transmitters and Galaxy Walkers and all of that. Time travel is not only possible, but probable. (below, images from my time machine design notebook, including logo designs for Noircom Futures(TM), the Afrofuturist time travel tourism outfit scheduled for initial test flights in 2005.)

2. Prince in June
Prince rocked the house in San Antonio on a rainy day in June. Clint kicked ass for driving all four of us down there over rising flood waters and then to the BBQ place and then back to the arena and then back home to Austin.

3. Peat Duggins
Wasn't that a great show at the Fresh Up Club? Aren't the sketchbooks great? That big homemade desk that takes up half a room and does everything? And how 'bout that curating job for Arthouse's comics show? (right, image from sketchbook)

4. Kojo Griffin
Speaking of the comics show, Kojo's candor and intelligence at the Arthouse artist's talk got me right here. Also, I learned the trick to getting to go to dinner with artists: just hang around after the talk and then start walking with everybody to the restaurant like someone invited you.

5. Digital camera
I'm no G. Schindler (a man so mysterious his first name doesn't even appear on his blog anymore, though I seem to remember it was Gary), but my camera lets me see things I never saw before and also lets me make things that never were, which is just like painting. (left, view down Riverside Drive on New Year's Day. Here comes the sun, baby!)

6. Arguing
My argument with Tom Moody over the meaning of the presidential election results and just my generally expressing unpopular opinions on it wherever I went, like when I got eviscerated on the Afrofuturism list. Speaking of unpopular opinions, I also took an unpopular position on the whole Emily Jacir/Wichita State issue. Calling this a first amendment infringement issue, as some have, is overblown histrionics and makes a mockery of people like Steve Kurtz whose plight really does rise to the level of First Amendment rights issues. Plus let's not forget my little pissing matches with guys like Roy Stanfield and Brad Tucker. Everything was live and unrehearsed...

7. 6th Circuit Court
Speaking of unpopular opinions, what was with that shortsighted and racist ruling by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals over sampling and rights clearance? A single ruling has now rendered an entire swath of art practice illegal. Lawrence Lessig, help!

8. Andy Goldsworthy
Sublime at AMOA. (right, Hole in leaves sinking…, 1987)

9. M
Here's to M for her ridiculous and cowardly behavior. And also for being stupendously boring and predictable. Have a great life with him, M.

10. Goodbye, old wallet
This is the wallet I've used since high school, finally retired this year. Well, more like finally exhausted this year. (left, click to enlarge)

11. Prentiss Riddle's blog
Is just great and I'm glad I found it. Maybe someday we'll both be in the same room at the same time and actually know it.

12. Message dollars
After receiving this dollar in November, I got this dollar as change at the grocery store 2 weeks ago. Coincidence? I think not. The universe is trying to tell me something. First project of 2005: write a prayerful message to "St. Lazareth" on 10 new bills.

13. Cauleen Smith
Well, just Cauleen Smith. :-)

14. Philadelphia
The highlight, other than the art tour and Jenny's persistent company, had to be meeting that dude O-Sub, who got me into that private Philadelphia Inquirer writers' club where he proceded to get drunk and threaten my life before inviting me to the Yinka Shonibare show at The Fabric Workshop.

15. Austin art scene's pretty, pretty people
Including, but not limited to: Laura Balch, Regine Basha, Tonya Engel, Samantha Webber, PJ Raval, Jonas Koffler, David Wilcox, Jennifer Balkan, Atsu Don't-Know-Her-Last-Name, Jen Arntson, and many, many more.

16. Craig's List RnR
Okay, the classifieds are great, but how 'bout them Rants and Raves? A veritable clearinghouse for people's endless obsession with fat chicks, tiny dicks, big tits, inconvenient shits, and jobs that are the pits.

17. Dreaming of stars
Ever since my therapist suggested I start writing down my dreams, I've started remembering a lot more of them. And you know what? It turns out I dream about a lot of famous people. Here is a partial list of dreamed-of celebrities from the past 3 months:

Charles Grodin
Diane Sawyer
Colin Powell
Ken Lum
Manning Marable
Jamie
Erykah Badu
Christie Turlington

(above, Christie Turlington and Manning Marable)

18. Feng shui
Thanks to Kazki and his feng shui-ness, I've completely turned this place around. Got rid of all the old, dark, heavy stuff and replaced it with... well, space mostly, but also a fluffy, shagadelic rug, a pygmy date palm and a pleasant after-the-rain smell.

19. Slip of paper
When I first moved to Austin in 1997, I bought a bunch of sports jackets from the Good Will. I liked this one pine-green jacket because it reminded me of a jacket worn by one of the literature tutors in my department in college, and I always thought he seemed very wordly and cosmopolitan. So I bought it, but I wore it maybe a total of three times. Then I put it on last week or so since I had left my default jacket at a Christmas party, and for the first time I put my hand in the breast pocket--I still don't know why. This slip of paper is what I found.

Happy New Year everybody.