Tuesday, 13 Sep 2005 | 9:52 PM

The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston announced last Friday the launch of the Katrina Artists Trust (KAT), a grant-making trust to provide financial support for visual artists in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama who were affected by Hurricane Katrina. "By focusing its support on the painters, sculptors, and other visual artists who lived in the regions damaged by the hurricane, the Museum’s KAT program provides a unique source of revitalization for a community with a long artistic tradition." More info here: http://www.camh.org/kat

Also, the Austin Convention Center still needs computer volunteers for the evacuees still housed there. http://www.austinfree.net/katrinavolunteer.htm

current music: 2001: A Space Odyssey (in my head)

Monday, 12 Sep 2005 | 9:13 PM

Checked out the Texas Prize show the other night at Arthouse. Robyn O'Neil's drawings were sublime, though I admit I may be biased because we share the same obsession with environmental sci-fi wierdness. Everything else I will have to go back and see another time as I seem not to have learned my lesson yet about openings. They are the worst possible time to try and see art. (left, Robyn O'Neil, "Prelude #2, 2003")

Meanwhile, I have been spending more time in the new studio, getting used to the larger space. Continuing to do more drawings (and minimal painting) of towers, power lines and such. I'm focused in now on executing these as illustrations to this vast and sprawling mythology I'm developing--designs for the Transmitter machines, Star Tripper towers, etc. Previews to come soon.

One thing I notice while in the studio is how reluctant I've become to go for the jugular, so to speak. I'm very careful, and not in a good way. This is interesting to me, because when I first started doing art this was not a problem. Is this something that happens to all artists? It's like I became of aware of what I was doing and so suddenly there was much more at stake, and it became harder to do truly off-the-wall stuff. This is what I think was the genius of Basquiat--that he so thoroughly worked through that self-conscious stage (or never experienced it to begin with) to get right at the one true and immediate impulse of speaking.

Anyway, so now I find all my work feeling very restrained and constrained. I'm not fighting that tendency so much as noticing it and living through it. See, aren't you proud of me, Bob? No judging, just noticing...

Wednesday, 7 Sep 2005 | 10:15 PM

OK, so I'm rather proud of my alma mater right about now. Sure, Harvard was among the last of the major US schools to stop doing business with South Africa. Sure, its relationship with the surrounding community is inconsistent on a good week. But the university is now, among other things, offering 50 tuition-free enrollment spots to students who would otherwise have gone to school in the Katrina flooded areas, but are now homeless.

If something this horrible happens to you, you might as well get a free Harvard education out of it.

UPDATE: MIT is doing something similar. (Yale is, too, but sloppily of course.)

Previous page (newer posts)

Next page (older posts)

The last-minute push to finish the house

I've been a little quiet here, but not for lack of doing things. School begins next week, and about a month ago I realized that if I didn't finish the never ending house remodel now, it would never get done.
Read more...

Responses to a response to MODA

We got drama. A number of responses have emerged to my savaging of the latest MODA show – a richly deserved savaging, by the way. I'm hoping that more turn up over time.
Read more...

Carrie Mae Weems and NBAF cover story

Other work and projects have me completely jammed up at the moment. But my over-ambitiousness has paid off in a cover story on NBAF for the Loaf showing up on newsstands sometime today.
Read more...