Vacation was very good for me

I think I can now finally do some strategic planning... thanks to going to Chicago!


Here's where all the inspiration came from:

The new modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago was amazing, reminded me of having the potential of being a mini-Tate museum at one point I walked into a room that had 3 of my favorite painters in one room, Sigmar Polke, Albert Oehlen and Ellen Gallagher, almost crapped my pants. Highlights for me were reading about the meaning behind Robert Gober's pieces, reading about the meaning behind Philip Guston's individual pieces, seeing a whole room dedicated to Gerhard Richter, a gorgeous gigantic tree by Charles Ray that was hand carved out of Cedar by japanese workers based an actual decaying tree that was removed and cast that this artist found in the woods one day.

I fell in love with the color transitions in Claude Monet's Branch of the Seine near Giverny, every time I saw a circle in Max Ernst's work, The cracks in Harold Sohlberg's Fisherman's Cottage, Gino Severini's Centrifrugal Expansion of Color, Matta's Psychological Morphology and I'm totally going to make these stools Konstantin Grcic made out of two tires and a circular piece of wood, and attempt to make his water/wine glasses (you just flip them over to change which one it is) they were totally what minimalist dreams are made of. Also memorable for me were Hella Jongerius embroidered tablecloth and staring at sketches by Louis H. Sullivan. Dear Art Institute of Chicago, please make postcards of all of these pieces, I would buy them right now, I have cash.

Saw a picture of the marble statues made by maurizio cattelan, loved it.

although still a little upset that I missed Cy Twombly, Olafur Eliasson, and Matthew Barney...


Watched the movie 2012 and Red Cliff on the big screen, both movies involved filling up a cup of tea way too much and then explaining a moral lesson while doing so. It reminded me that there's a bare bones screenplay I want to look at again and I really want to exercise daily in order to be able to fight for my life better when the time comes, I'd hate to be one of those people that die just because they weren't constantly fighting for other people to survive.


Visited galleries in the West Loop of Chicago, the best stuff I saw was Casey Riordan Millard's forgettable shark, Ann Worthing's untitled turtle, everything by John Delk in the Robertello Gallery, Deborah Dancy's abstract paintings in G.R. N'namdi and Frank Connet's resist's in the beautifully hidden Douglas Dawson gallery. I also enjoyed a postcard thingy I picked up of Zach Taylor's work from the Linda Warren gallery, and a postcard thingy of Ruijun Shen and Tom Van Eynde, so a word to galleries, you should keep all of your postcards out! Oddly, there were about 5 galleries that weren't even open... it was 3 o'clock on a Saturday, shouldn't they be open? For some reason seeing John Delk's work really struck a chord with me, the gallery reminded me of a place that would show Mike Smith's work, and the gallery owner explained how even very conceptual work is sold, however with a much slower process. He also explained that all the work had the underlying theme of how in this day and age of information, the more information over time, the more everything just kind of greys out, and he also described how John Delk worked in some kind of archiving for Jasper Johns and it probably informed his body of work. For seemingly no good reason, it just hit me that rather than thinking about what the ideal theme of my work would be, I would need to look inward unabashedly about what I actually do most of the time when I make art, not what is the statement I want to make, but where do I come from that informs my art making? It hit me on the ride back home on the Megabus. My work comes down to reacting and collecting... knowing that I can distill my practice to those two words make me so confident, I can't even explain...

Thinking about artists I like

I was looking through art links and found this: http://www.artcyclopedia.com/mostpopular.html
If I had it my way, I'd educate students so that the list looked like this:
1. Replace Picasso with Duchamp
2. Vincent Van Gogh
3. Leonardo da Vinci
4. Henri Matisse
5. Claude Monet
6. Salvador Dali
7. Georgia O'Keeffe
8. Andy Warhol
9. Michelangelo
10. Replace Rembrandt with Helen Frankenthaler
11. Replace Alfred Stieglitz with Louise Bourgeois
12. Replace Peter Paul Rubens with Basquiat
13. Wassily Kandinsky
14. Replace Cezanne with Hiroshi Sugimoto
15. Replace Jackson Pollock with Cy Twombly
16. Joan Miro
17. Piet Mondrian
18. Rene Magritte
19. Replace Raphael with Mel Chin
20. Replace Renoir with Sigmar Polke
21. Goya
22. Edgar Degas
23. Albrecht Durer
24. Paul Klee
25. Marc Chagall
26. Replace Titian with Maurizio Cattelan
27. M.C. Escher
28. Edward Hopper
29. Frida Kahlo
30. Caravaggio

who would you replace?

woah, did I just get my first gallery representation?

I think I just did, but I can't believe it! And now onto a pre-thanksgiving feast!


Checkout Re:Collect 2009, opening December 5th, 5pm - 10 pm


Re:Collect is Re:View Contemporary’s special end-of-year group exhibit showcasing works by 21 Detroit area artists. The works, which observe a size limit of 12" x 12" x 12", include painting, sculpture, and mixed media.This event also marks the celebration of the gallery’s first year anniversary and grand opening of its new extended spaces: a NEW Exhibitions Gallery and a NEW Design Store, showcasing art and functional items by local designers.


Thursday, 2 p.m. - 6 p.m.
Friday, 2 p.m. - 6 p.m.
Saturday, noon - 6 p.m.
or by appointment.


Re:View Contemporary Gallery
444 W. Willis Street, Unit 111
Detroit, MI 48201
Tel: 313.833.9000

Maybe the trick isn't giving up, but getting a bigger dream.

I am stuck, hit a wall, part of me is still winded from being awarded the fellowship, anxiety gripping me from doing what I said I would be interested in doing. At first I thought that I need to break this mental block about how I need to make even better work than I've ever done before, and in order to do that, in a way... I need to give something up, like I need to give up my belief in doing what has proven to work, or give up in my pursuit of an impossible goal, or give up on believing that I have to know what I'm doing... but after listening to NPR, an episode about people who really did things in big ways, I want to be doing the opposite. I need inspiration right now on overdrive, I need to be hungry again. I want to be dreaming bigger, thinking bigger.

crap it started and I didn't even think about it.

so I guess now I'm blogging regularly. if I think about it long enough, it kindof sucks. Mostly, because everyone will know how much time I actually waste, there's a time signature attached to these things... I get sick for four days and next thing I know I'm making a blog, imagining a better blog, updating my bloated webpage with new thumbnails, adding new pictures of work on deviantart, creating a 2nd clean looking portfolio through deviantart, trying to get another recommendation on linked in, figuring out how to make everything get posted through tumblr to show up on facebook, getting confused about how many new programs there are and thinking to myself how to download a podcast or how to use wordpress, finding out what new gadgets the internet has to offer because people keep moving from one thing to another within 3 months, staring at other artists' webpages to dream about a world where I could literally steal how their website looks and is formatted by pressing command + F4... all because I'm avoiding doing the strategic planning workbook from the creative capital workshop... what was I supposed to do today again?

ok, I'm already bored and discouraged with how this blog looks, I'm moving on to tumblr... I still don't know what the hell rss feeds are on any of this, but I'm going to get something that looks cleaner, similar to how vimeo has overtaken youtube as being the best way to post artistic videos

Grad Schools

Grad schools I will be looking into shortly to pair down to just a list of 8... if you have any suggestions let me know!

Carnegie Melon
Cranbrook
Duke University
Glasgow School of Art
Goldsmiths School of Art
Maryland Institute College of Art
Minneapolis School of Art & Design
Nova Scotia College of Art and Design
Ohio State
Pratt
Rensler
Rhode Island School of Design (thanks ian)
Roman Institute
Royal College of Art, London
Temple University (PA)
Tisch ITP
UCLA
University of New South Wales, Australia
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Virginia Commonwealth University
Yale

Finally figured out how to update my webpage easier... by not updating my webpage.

Testing testing.

Very proud of myself lately, talked myself out of buying the Fein Multi-master because I just thought it would be fun to use, not because it's actually practical for what I need to do...

My new form of to-do lists makes me actually think I'm being more productive while probably actually doing less, but more directed... If anyone wants to hear about it, e-mail me, it's a culmination of 3 different people's advice mishmashed into one clean document!

Um, also there's a couple shows coming up if anyone finds this blog in time. (I swear, I never give ample time to let people know about my shows...) anyways, there's one at Re:View gallery, I'm trying to mull over having work at the Magic Stick, because although Pure Detroit likes my art, it is going to be shown on a pool table...

Also, while in the midst of being really sick, I quickly curated a show that will take place at the Ladybug Gallery!

And finally! I'm looking forward to a secret group show. With amazing secret artists! See you there when it's officially announced?