WRITING
February 2024, This is not a suicide note.
Febuary 2024
This is not a suicide note.
edited April 1st. 2024
I think I have to stop.
My practice, that is.
35 years of not being good enough, as an artist or as a person, to be seriously considered for exhibition and representation is finally wearing me down.
It’s starting to fuck with my sense of self-worth.
Nothing is worth that.
I think about all of the no-talent appropriating children and all of the pathetic old self-delusional lifer hacks out there - literally tens of thousands of them clogging the toilet of the art industry - and I have to face facts, that I was one of them and I am one of them.
This is not a suicide note.
edited April 1st. 2024
I think I have to stop.
My practice, that is.
35 years of not being good enough, as an artist or as a person, to be seriously considered for exhibition and representation is finally wearing me down.
It’s starting to fuck with my sense of self-worth.
Nothing is worth that.
I think about all of the no-talent appropriating children and all of the pathetic old self-delusional lifer hacks out there - literally tens of thousands of them clogging the toilet of the art industry - and I have to face facts, that I was one of them and I am one of them.
January 2024 “Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 4 )
January 2024
“Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 4 )
How do you embody sadness ? Violence, reward, corruption on a grand scale, paranoia, greed, loving the whole damn game ( so nihilistic ) ? You gotta feel it before you can make it.
It seems impossible to convey the magnitude ( on many levels ) of the flow of drugs from South America to North America.
Seems.
Actually, it is in fact impossible. But worth the attempt, and it is OK to fail. I’m failing.
The illegal drug trade/industry undergirds so much - migration, financial markets, political negotiations, military actions, culture, etc. Quite hard to see past all of that to the on-the-ground-grunt-level realities.
Just focusing on one person, at one moment in time, succeeding or failing at the task at hand, per work can ( I think, I hope ) be the correct path to follow. I would then have to trust that the cumulative effect of these works could begin to embody - or entomb - my ambitions for this particular exhibit.
I find myself resistant to a cleanly temporal academic narrative approach - starting a long time ago and ending in the present. This exhibit should be a raw and confusing jumble, maybe even to the point of people, plus their artifacts, appearing outside of their time, their society and environment.
After all, this whole thing does not make any sense, defies any logical and coherent analysis - people making and transporting an illegal product, which destroys them and their societies, to people in much wealthier countries who then destroy themselves, their families and their careers with said illegal product. AND this has been an unimaginably successful growth industry since day one.
Nonsensical to the point of dissonance.
Deep down, do we all want to fail ?
So trying to approach the making of this exhibit in any sensical manner does not make any sense at all.
Fuck.
After thinking about this some more, I think that my ‘out’ is to approach the entirety of this nonsensical thing ( nonsense ? ) as warfare.
After all, war always destroys whomever starts a conflict ( check with any historian ), so that tracks. Also, warfare can take many forms - economic, cultural, guns and bullets. Drugs as proxy war. That makes sense to me.
War can also exist within an individual, based on their needs, hope and desires.
And that is something almost laughably easy to manipulate.
“Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 4 )
How do you embody sadness ? Violence, reward, corruption on a grand scale, paranoia, greed, loving the whole damn game ( so nihilistic ) ? You gotta feel it before you can make it.
It seems impossible to convey the magnitude ( on many levels ) of the flow of drugs from South America to North America.
Seems.
Actually, it is in fact impossible. But worth the attempt, and it is OK to fail. I’m failing.
The illegal drug trade/industry undergirds so much - migration, financial markets, political negotiations, military actions, culture, etc. Quite hard to see past all of that to the on-the-ground-grunt-level realities.
Just focusing on one person, at one moment in time, succeeding or failing at the task at hand, per work can ( I think, I hope ) be the correct path to follow. I would then have to trust that the cumulative effect of these works could begin to embody - or entomb - my ambitions for this particular exhibit.
I find myself resistant to a cleanly temporal academic narrative approach - starting a long time ago and ending in the present. This exhibit should be a raw and confusing jumble, maybe even to the point of people, plus their artifacts, appearing outside of their time, their society and environment.
After all, this whole thing does not make any sense, defies any logical and coherent analysis - people making and transporting an illegal product, which destroys them and their societies, to people in much wealthier countries who then destroy themselves, their families and their careers with said illegal product. AND this has been an unimaginably successful growth industry since day one.
Nonsensical to the point of dissonance.
Deep down, do we all want to fail ?
So trying to approach the making of this exhibit in any sensical manner does not make any sense at all.
Fuck.
After thinking about this some more, I think that my ‘out’ is to approach the entirety of this nonsensical thing ( nonsense ? ) as warfare.
After all, war always destroys whomever starts a conflict ( check with any historian ), so that tracks. Also, warfare can take many forms - economic, cultural, guns and bullets. Drugs as proxy war. That makes sense to me.
War can also exist within an individual, based on their needs, hope and desires.
And that is something almost laughably easy to manipulate.
December 2023, “Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 3 )
December 2023
“Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 3 )
The first batch of works for the “Cortez, Motherfucker” exhibit that I have been slowly developing over the past two years ( and will need at least two or three more years to finish ) are now published on my website, in the site exhibit section. More works will follow, a new batch every four months or so.
There are actually at least twice as many works as seen already - ready to go but I really wanted to keep it tight, to start with, yet I also wanted to commit myself to the sense of an epic and extraordinarily messy sprawl. Too many voices, too much information, too many POVs.
I am finding the subject matter being explored, an overview of the realities various people(s) face while trapped within the context of the drug trade, as product moves from South America through Central America and Mexico, to America / Canada, to be both a very difficult and enthralling challenge.
NAFTAs shadow. Drugs north, money and guns south. Insane lucre, I don’t think anybody really has a true handle on the brain-melting mountain of gold involved. Weekly, never mind monthly or annually.
Aesthetically, I am constantly aiming for the raw content to be filtered through folk art and also more modern cartoon styles / sensibilities, this all has the advantage of softening the sucker punch of the content, which is only going to get more and more physically and psychologically grotesque as I continue. Counterintuitively, this approach also makes the works themselves seem all the more real to me, as if maybe people actually involved in the trade have made some ( or ideally all ) of the works involved. That would be the impossible ideal, for me, my hand, to vanish.
As hinted at above, this will ultimately end up being a very large exhibit ( close to a hundred works ) and I am beginning to think ( although I very much want to mount an actual CM exhibit ) that the ultimate format for this exhibit will be as a project available in it’s entirely - all works plus all of my accumulated writing / research - in book form.
Anyhow, please also see my last few months of site writings regarding this CM exhibit. I’ll continue posting, then later deleting, some of the exhibit works on my Instagram, often long before they will appear on my website.
There will be several more months worth of writing regarding this CM exhibit, in this section.
Thanks.
“Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 3 )
The first batch of works for the “Cortez, Motherfucker” exhibit that I have been slowly developing over the past two years ( and will need at least two or three more years to finish ) are now published on my website, in the site exhibit section. More works will follow, a new batch every four months or so.
There are actually at least twice as many works as seen already - ready to go but I really wanted to keep it tight, to start with, yet I also wanted to commit myself to the sense of an epic and extraordinarily messy sprawl. Too many voices, too much information, too many POVs.
I am finding the subject matter being explored, an overview of the realities various people(s) face while trapped within the context of the drug trade, as product moves from South America through Central America and Mexico, to America / Canada, to be both a very difficult and enthralling challenge.
NAFTAs shadow. Drugs north, money and guns south. Insane lucre, I don’t think anybody really has a true handle on the brain-melting mountain of gold involved. Weekly, never mind monthly or annually.
Aesthetically, I am constantly aiming for the raw content to be filtered through folk art and also more modern cartoon styles / sensibilities, this all has the advantage of softening the sucker punch of the content, which is only going to get more and more physically and psychologically grotesque as I continue. Counterintuitively, this approach also makes the works themselves seem all the more real to me, as if maybe people actually involved in the trade have made some ( or ideally all ) of the works involved. That would be the impossible ideal, for me, my hand, to vanish.
As hinted at above, this will ultimately end up being a very large exhibit ( close to a hundred works ) and I am beginning to think ( although I very much want to mount an actual CM exhibit ) that the ultimate format for this exhibit will be as a project available in it’s entirely - all works plus all of my accumulated writing / research - in book form.
Anyhow, please also see my last few months of site writings regarding this CM exhibit. I’ll continue posting, then later deleting, some of the exhibit works on my Instagram, often long before they will appear on my website.
There will be several more months worth of writing regarding this CM exhibit, in this section.
Thanks.
November 2023, “Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 2 )
November 2023
“Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 2 )
Prohibition never works.
Maybe that is the whole point of this CM exhibit that I have been working on.
Anybody who wants to get high, will get high. There is actually nothing to stop you from doing so .....
Think of the miasma of human misery that surrounds the illegal industry and trade, almost all of that would disappear if all drugs were made legal and regulated.
Worldwide, universal, level ( carpet bomb ? ) the playing field.
As to the misery of the addict, that will exist no matter what, and getting rid of all prohibition for both soft and hard drugs would create A LOT of taxable revenue to help ease that suffering.
And your average weekend warrior would be less likely to slide down the slippery slope into addiction simply because the romance surrounding doing drugs - plus that of the drug industry/trade itself on a cultural level - would vanish. I know that certainly has been the case with me. I hardly even smoke weed anymore, never mind the hard shit.
The lack of prohibition conjures a form of inhibition.
And that is a good thing.
“Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 2 )
Prohibition never works.
Maybe that is the whole point of this CM exhibit that I have been working on.
Anybody who wants to get high, will get high. There is actually nothing to stop you from doing so .....
Think of the miasma of human misery that surrounds the illegal industry and trade, almost all of that would disappear if all drugs were made legal and regulated.
Worldwide, universal, level ( carpet bomb ? ) the playing field.
As to the misery of the addict, that will exist no matter what, and getting rid of all prohibition for both soft and hard drugs would create A LOT of taxable revenue to help ease that suffering.
And your average weekend warrior would be less likely to slide down the slippery slope into addiction simply because the romance surrounding doing drugs - plus that of the drug industry/trade itself on a cultural level - would vanish. I know that certainly has been the case with me. I hardly even smoke weed anymore, never mind the hard shit.
The lack of prohibition conjures a form of inhibition.
And that is a good thing.
October 2023, “Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 1 )
October 2023
“Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 1 )
( This is just the first written instalment regarding this show, lots more to come )
A few months ago, I started to seriously consider an idea that I had been thinking about casually for a few years - to take the purely contemporary and individualistic viewpoint of my website exhibit ‘A MULE’ and expand it dramatically to encompass the entire drug industry, drug trade and drug wars within Mexico, historically through to current realities.
Within Mexico, because as a Canadian who has lived in America, I know that we only ever think of it as the the drug war against Mexico, never as the localized catastrophe that anybody who has done hard drugs ( as I have ) contributes towards. Never considering the truly horrid price that has been paid by the people and the institutions of Mexico.
Also, there are a lot of valuable lessons to be learned on economic, political, financial and cultural levels, by artificially cutting America and Canada from sight. Because we’re the assholes. To only consider the drug industry in aggregate, within Mexico, as a crucible for a deeper understanding of the meaning and power of cash, of pleasure, of control, of addiction.
I have started posting works for this exhibit on Instagram. I assume it will take two or three years to complete this exhibit.
Cortez, who brought disease and annihilation, also brought hemp. This created the very beginnings of the drug industry, drug trade and drug wars within Mexico, which began centuries later.
Motherfucker.
“Cortez, Motherfucker” Exhibit ( 1 )
( This is just the first written instalment regarding this show, lots more to come )
A few months ago, I started to seriously consider an idea that I had been thinking about casually for a few years - to take the purely contemporary and individualistic viewpoint of my website exhibit ‘A MULE’ and expand it dramatically to encompass the entire drug industry, drug trade and drug wars within Mexico, historically through to current realities.
Within Mexico, because as a Canadian who has lived in America, I know that we only ever think of it as the the drug war against Mexico, never as the localized catastrophe that anybody who has done hard drugs ( as I have ) contributes towards. Never considering the truly horrid price that has been paid by the people and the institutions of Mexico.
Also, there are a lot of valuable lessons to be learned on economic, political, financial and cultural levels, by artificially cutting America and Canada from sight. Because we’re the assholes. To only consider the drug industry in aggregate, within Mexico, as a crucible for a deeper understanding of the meaning and power of cash, of pleasure, of control, of addiction.
I have started posting works for this exhibit on Instagram. I assume it will take two or three years to complete this exhibit.
Cortez, who brought disease and annihilation, also brought hemp. This created the very beginnings of the drug industry, drug trade and drug wars within Mexico, which began centuries later.
Motherfucker.
September 2023, Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 6 )
September 2023
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 6 )
I have been thinking about AI-Machine learning, utilization of libraries and simultaneity in regards to ER/EP.
Continual coding within the actual ( natural ) ER/EP process, that is the goal.
It would appear that technology is at a point where a hardware and software system dedicated solely to ER/EP could utilize a ‘customized universal data language model’ that would allow it to, while in the act of processing all of the preloaded information towards ER/EP solutions to questions posed, constantly reprogram itself while actually within the torrent of information being processed.
This ‘customized universal data language model’ ( CUDLM ) would be built upon a massive library of sub programs that could, with near or actual simultaneity, constantly rewrite itself to better follow individual EPs once initial ERs have been ‘clocked’. This would also then apply to chains of EPs being linked to other chains and eventual solutions.
With each ER/EP process ( question-solution ) the massive ‘sub library’ and CUDLM would always act to support the very finely tuned customized coding-programs required for each individual ‘run’. These ‘uppermost’ customized programs would then be allowed to ‘sink’ into the CUDLM and eventually the ‘sub library’ - or not - depending on the generality vs specificness or proprietary nature of the solution.
Ultimately, there could be a ‘sub library’ that would be shared by all who utilize the ER/EP systems to better enhance performance of the CUDLMs and the even more finely ( task specific ) tuned coding.
I think that an AI would take to all this like a duck to water.
This would all draw ER/EP much closer to human intuition, as per my earlier writing on this subject. There is an analogy here to the different layers of human consciousness ( and icebergs ).
This would also work, as described above and within the context of the ER/EP process, both forwards and backwards in ‘time’ both as we do ( and do not ) experience time. I am talking here about human perception versus a purely mathematical construct. Both are important to ER/EP.
Quantum hardware systems and quantum computing/programming would easily accomplish what I am outlining here, but companies such as Arm and Nvidia are creating chips and entire hardware systems that could begin to do this continual coding within the ER/RP process.
We live in interesting times.
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 6 )
I have been thinking about AI-Machine learning, utilization of libraries and simultaneity in regards to ER/EP.
Continual coding within the actual ( natural ) ER/EP process, that is the goal.
It would appear that technology is at a point where a hardware and software system dedicated solely to ER/EP could utilize a ‘customized universal data language model’ that would allow it to, while in the act of processing all of the preloaded information towards ER/EP solutions to questions posed, constantly reprogram itself while actually within the torrent of information being processed.
This ‘customized universal data language model’ ( CUDLM ) would be built upon a massive library of sub programs that could, with near or actual simultaneity, constantly rewrite itself to better follow individual EPs once initial ERs have been ‘clocked’. This would also then apply to chains of EPs being linked to other chains and eventual solutions.
With each ER/EP process ( question-solution ) the massive ‘sub library’ and CUDLM would always act to support the very finely tuned customized coding-programs required for each individual ‘run’. These ‘uppermost’ customized programs would then be allowed to ‘sink’ into the CUDLM and eventually the ‘sub library’ - or not - depending on the generality vs specificness or proprietary nature of the solution.
Ultimately, there could be a ‘sub library’ that would be shared by all who utilize the ER/EP systems to better enhance performance of the CUDLMs and the even more finely ( task specific ) tuned coding.
I think that an AI would take to all this like a duck to water.
This would all draw ER/EP much closer to human intuition, as per my earlier writing on this subject. There is an analogy here to the different layers of human consciousness ( and icebergs ).
This would also work, as described above and within the context of the ER/EP process, both forwards and backwards in ‘time’ both as we do ( and do not ) experience time. I am talking here about human perception versus a purely mathematical construct. Both are important to ER/EP.
Quantum hardware systems and quantum computing/programming would easily accomplish what I am outlining here, but companies such as Arm and Nvidia are creating chips and entire hardware systems that could begin to do this continual coding within the ER/RP process.
We live in interesting times.
August 2023, What paths am I walking ?
August 2023
What paths am I walking ?
So yeah, this will be a continuation of last months writing.
NOTE - I want to mention that I am still developing the overarching concept behind Error Pathways / Error Recognition. It goes well and September’s site writing will pick up where I left off.
The July writing mentioned concerned a few artists who apparently question the legitimacy of my practice - that it is far too disparate, unwieldy, on both a conceptual and technical level. I still think that is bullshit, but nevertheless I have taken yet more time to think it through.
What paths am I walking ?
I think they are far fewer than it might seem, both to a viewer and to me ( for that matter ).
Painting.
I am steadily - if unsuccessfully - working towards making an amalgam of two main approaches; one very much a raw and funky folk art technique and the other a more technically slick manner of painting that has more than a whiff of the early 1970s to it - meaning the event horizon of minimalism is ever present although constantly fought against. This makes sense to me, because I was surrounded by 1970s art growing up and folk art always struck me as being ‘the real thing’ from a very early age. It also seemed ‘doable’ until I realized how infinitely challenging it is to do with real heart as opposed to irony.
Conceptually, I am mining a similar childhood territory. Now as then, looking around and wondering, who the hell are all these people ( adults ) ? Their motives and hoped for endgames a mystery being slowly revealed to me as I too became sexual, ambitious and manipulative. Greedy, like every other kid. But very aware of the consequences, both good and bad, of that constant yearning. I remember my parents telling me at a young age that I should choose very carefully what I will do that I know I would be punished for later - to only do it if the personal reward was greater than the hurt inflicted by others. Or better yet, don’t get caught in the first place ...... that line of thinking has had a much greater influence on my practice recently than I tend to recognize, as I want to create paintings that are a lot more risky, challenging, even offensive.
The artists mentioned at the beginning ( and in the July writing ) are all painters. Hmmmm, did not think of that until right now. And this critique of my practice suddenly came to my attention just after I started posting the first of the more challenging works .....
Drawing.
Ever since 2007, when it finally / rightly became the bedrock of my practice, I aim on a technical level to primarily explore structure and then immediately cover all of that same structure with a solid black layer of ink rendering the overall effect flat, yet somehow dimensionality continues to lurk within the drawings. The successful ones at least. The game being played to eliminate as much detail as possible to better, more powerfully, serve the concept behind the work. This comes directly, head of Zeus style, from one source only - Matisse. Specifically “Jazz” and his other late period coloured paper cut out / cut up works. I was gifted a copy of Jazz at a young age by a family friend ( an artist ) and she also loaned me a few other books featuring his late period work. In the early 1990s when I first saw Kara Walkers ‘Cameo’ works, something really clicked inside of me and I eventually embarked upon my own exploration of a deeply personal drawing style with a lot of confidence. Respect and gratitude to both of them.
So although the drawings might appear all over the place in terms of content, they are strongly linked by a shared technical approach, but also by the fact that remarkably few subjects are being explored. Incarceration and the many behavioural paths leading to that state, childhood memory when you are a child, and trying ( always unsuccessfully ) to decipher the various codes of existence, moral and otherwise. I think my drawings are all about the consequences of actions, while they are being taken.
Photography.
This one is simple. ( and the following is as true today as when I was a kid or teenager ) I am only interested in directly documenting the real world as I randomly encounter it. I spend so much time in my own head, in my studio, that photography is a much need release of pressure. I almost always only photograph objects, as my real interest is in the relationships we each develop over time with that which we see every day. So despite the fact my photography might seem to some as being totally scattershot - I am actually taking the same damn photo, over and over again, in essence. The same applies on a technical level as well.
NOTE - I am not going to get into sculpture or digital work here, as those aspects of my practice all started well into my adult years. I think that the best way to address the concerns of those few artists / painters mentioned was to go back to my childhood. The best way for me as well. So in closing, an artist can do whatever the fuck they want to do. To each their own. Your conservatism, and thusly your fears, are no concern of mine. Funny how that works.
Even funnier though - is how thinking this all through has made me realize that I am, in fact, deeply disappointed with what I perceive to be the inherent conservatism of my own practice. It is nowhere near as free, open, funky, raw and risk-taking as I want it to be. Technically or conceptually.
What paths am I walking ?
So yeah, this will be a continuation of last months writing.
NOTE - I want to mention that I am still developing the overarching concept behind Error Pathways / Error Recognition. It goes well and September’s site writing will pick up where I left off.
The July writing mentioned concerned a few artists who apparently question the legitimacy of my practice - that it is far too disparate, unwieldy, on both a conceptual and technical level. I still think that is bullshit, but nevertheless I have taken yet more time to think it through.
What paths am I walking ?
I think they are far fewer than it might seem, both to a viewer and to me ( for that matter ).
Painting.
I am steadily - if unsuccessfully - working towards making an amalgam of two main approaches; one very much a raw and funky folk art technique and the other a more technically slick manner of painting that has more than a whiff of the early 1970s to it - meaning the event horizon of minimalism is ever present although constantly fought against. This makes sense to me, because I was surrounded by 1970s art growing up and folk art always struck me as being ‘the real thing’ from a very early age. It also seemed ‘doable’ until I realized how infinitely challenging it is to do with real heart as opposed to irony.
Conceptually, I am mining a similar childhood territory. Now as then, looking around and wondering, who the hell are all these people ( adults ) ? Their motives and hoped for endgames a mystery being slowly revealed to me as I too became sexual, ambitious and manipulative. Greedy, like every other kid. But very aware of the consequences, both good and bad, of that constant yearning. I remember my parents telling me at a young age that I should choose very carefully what I will do that I know I would be punished for later - to only do it if the personal reward was greater than the hurt inflicted by others. Or better yet, don’t get caught in the first place ...... that line of thinking has had a much greater influence on my practice recently than I tend to recognize, as I want to create paintings that are a lot more risky, challenging, even offensive.
The artists mentioned at the beginning ( and in the July writing ) are all painters. Hmmmm, did not think of that until right now. And this critique of my practice suddenly came to my attention just after I started posting the first of the more challenging works .....
Drawing.
Ever since 2007, when it finally / rightly became the bedrock of my practice, I aim on a technical level to primarily explore structure and then immediately cover all of that same structure with a solid black layer of ink rendering the overall effect flat, yet somehow dimensionality continues to lurk within the drawings. The successful ones at least. The game being played to eliminate as much detail as possible to better, more powerfully, serve the concept behind the work. This comes directly, head of Zeus style, from one source only - Matisse. Specifically “Jazz” and his other late period coloured paper cut out / cut up works. I was gifted a copy of Jazz at a young age by a family friend ( an artist ) and she also loaned me a few other books featuring his late period work. In the early 1990s when I first saw Kara Walkers ‘Cameo’ works, something really clicked inside of me and I eventually embarked upon my own exploration of a deeply personal drawing style with a lot of confidence. Respect and gratitude to both of them.
So although the drawings might appear all over the place in terms of content, they are strongly linked by a shared technical approach, but also by the fact that remarkably few subjects are being explored. Incarceration and the many behavioural paths leading to that state, childhood memory when you are a child, and trying ( always unsuccessfully ) to decipher the various codes of existence, moral and otherwise. I think my drawings are all about the consequences of actions, while they are being taken.
Photography.
This one is simple. ( and the following is as true today as when I was a kid or teenager ) I am only interested in directly documenting the real world as I randomly encounter it. I spend so much time in my own head, in my studio, that photography is a much need release of pressure. I almost always only photograph objects, as my real interest is in the relationships we each develop over time with that which we see every day. So despite the fact my photography might seem to some as being totally scattershot - I am actually taking the same damn photo, over and over again, in essence. The same applies on a technical level as well.
NOTE - I am not going to get into sculpture or digital work here, as those aspects of my practice all started well into my adult years. I think that the best way to address the concerns of those few artists / painters mentioned was to go back to my childhood. The best way for me as well. So in closing, an artist can do whatever the fuck they want to do. To each their own. Your conservatism, and thusly your fears, are no concern of mine. Funny how that works.
Even funnier though - is how thinking this all through has made me realize that I am, in fact, deeply disappointed with what I perceive to be the inherent conservatism of my own practice. It is nowhere near as free, open, funky, raw and risk-taking as I want it to be. Technically or conceptually.
July 2023, Why Not ?
July 2023
Why Not ?
Other artists have mentioned to me over the past few years, and more so recently, that they think that I cannot and should not have a practice such as the one that I do.
That it is not advisable to so very freely and concurrently explore so many seemingly disconnected ( disparate ? ) threads amongst all of the various works that I produce.
I think they have a problem with my productivity, frankly.
And I have noted that gallerists and curators never ever bring up this subject with me.
But it is always a good idea to stop and think through something that you find objectionable - I sure as hell ain’t always right about everything.
So, upon some refection, I am going to continue on with my practice exactly as I have been since 2010 or so.
Because there are, in fact, several strong core concepts that I have been following for quite some time now.
1. The effects of drug manufacturing and drug dealing upon those involved in the trade, not drug addiction itself.
2. Incarceration, it keeps reappearing, albeit subtly.
3. The psychological effects of multi-partner sex, and other forms of sexual exploration, upon those not quite ready for it.
4. The price paid by everybody for the taking of people’s native land and culture away from them by force.
5. Homelessness, specifically the aftershocks of the total abandonment one experiences and can learn so much from.
6. Temple art.
There are other threads but those are the main six, from my perspective.
In other words, all my work centres around the gravity well of loss, due to conflict amongst ourselves and also within ourselves.
Yes, I do produce works based upon these reoccurring themes in short bursts of three or four works before moving on to a different subject BUT I always return and pick up again where I left off days, weeks, or months later. This temporal aspect of my practice always provides another layer of change that I think confuses some people.
The fact that I freely cycle through; drawing, wall sculpture, paintings, digital works and photography further confuses other artists. Varying content requires varying mediums.
So, too bad, because the world is a fascinating place and I got a lot on my mind. A lot to say.
I want for my practice to be radical and challenging in all the best ways ( for me and everyone else ) and for it not to be easily digestible - nor manufactured to order as part of an endless stream of identical works with no inherent meaning.
There is more than enough of that sort of work out there already.
And those are the artists trying to bust my chops.
Why Not ?
Other artists have mentioned to me over the past few years, and more so recently, that they think that I cannot and should not have a practice such as the one that I do.
That it is not advisable to so very freely and concurrently explore so many seemingly disconnected ( disparate ? ) threads amongst all of the various works that I produce.
I think they have a problem with my productivity, frankly.
And I have noted that gallerists and curators never ever bring up this subject with me.
But it is always a good idea to stop and think through something that you find objectionable - I sure as hell ain’t always right about everything.
So, upon some refection, I am going to continue on with my practice exactly as I have been since 2010 or so.
Because there are, in fact, several strong core concepts that I have been following for quite some time now.
1. The effects of drug manufacturing and drug dealing upon those involved in the trade, not drug addiction itself.
2. Incarceration, it keeps reappearing, albeit subtly.
3. The psychological effects of multi-partner sex, and other forms of sexual exploration, upon those not quite ready for it.
4. The price paid by everybody for the taking of people’s native land and culture away from them by force.
5. Homelessness, specifically the aftershocks of the total abandonment one experiences and can learn so much from.
6. Temple art.
There are other threads but those are the main six, from my perspective.
In other words, all my work centres around the gravity well of loss, due to conflict amongst ourselves and also within ourselves.
Yes, I do produce works based upon these reoccurring themes in short bursts of three or four works before moving on to a different subject BUT I always return and pick up again where I left off days, weeks, or months later. This temporal aspect of my practice always provides another layer of change that I think confuses some people.
The fact that I freely cycle through; drawing, wall sculpture, paintings, digital works and photography further confuses other artists. Varying content requires varying mediums.
So, too bad, because the world is a fascinating place and I got a lot on my mind. A lot to say.
I want for my practice to be radical and challenging in all the best ways ( for me and everyone else ) and for it not to be easily digestible - nor manufactured to order as part of an endless stream of identical works with no inherent meaning.
There is more than enough of that sort of work out there already.
And those are the artists trying to bust my chops.
June 2023, Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 5 )
June 2023
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 5 )
The commercial application of ER/EP hardware-software ( H-S ) involves providing many non-standard answers and solutions to any industrial, scientific and economic question or problem posed to it. Etc.
These alternate end-points are valuable, in that they can save a lot of time, money and effort in the real world. Never mind the inherent and invaluable ER/EP H-S ability to provide answers and solutions that were never even accessible before.
Think of it as a special application universal search engine.
After loading in the relevant and massive data set environment ( more on that later ) you pose a question or problem to the ER/EP H-S, think of this starting point as A.
Usually, through standard computational means, you would receive an answer or solution, think of this end point as Z.
We are all limited, except in rare moments of deep intuition, to a completely linear path from A to Z. Humans and computers.
I propose to create something that would deliberately avoid this trap.
Now think of the ER/EP H-S starting at A, and after hitting Z it freezes and copies the entire data set environment. That standard straight path from A to Z is always surrounded by gigantic furball of close-to-linear through to completely fragmented non-linear paths from A to Z ( commonly referred to as ‘loss’ ) there are a lot of paths from A that almost make it to the “Z-point” and those alternate answers/solutions, which are usually ignored, can be valid and are worth analysis. Furthermore, as you get farther from the Z-point, questions or problems - related to A - that you never thought to ask begin to appear. Those are definitely worth analysis.
There are fragmented chains of linear EP scattered throughout the entire non-linear ER environment, and those same linear EP chains can be connected, providing yet more answers and solutions to A. Plausible Z arrived at through an implausible pathway from A. This plausible Z might have utility only within the specific data set environment but that would also merit further analysis.
We, humans and the computers we create, have such a limited frame of reference, limited to the purely sequential, ER/EP is a way out of that standard framework reasoning process.
Break free.
Also, although ER/EP H-S is not an LLM, it is worth exploring LLMs ability to make mistakes and to experience ‘hallucinations’. I think that an ER/EP H-S can be a specific-purpose reasoning engine that can fully utilize mistakes and hallucinations.
My initial personal realization regarding the utility of ER/EP was purely visual ( it came from slowly learning how to create drawings using the ER/EP methodology ) and I think this is a key point. LLM ( large language models ) and such are based upon words and numbers, which are of course completely separate and discrete units of information. Whereas ER/EP would be based on purely visual ( and sound ) information which is inherently continuous and fluid. Included in this but not limited to the following would be; video, audio, graphs, ultraviolet, subsonic, etc, sources. Our perceptions of the world around us are reflected much more accurately in the ER/EP approach to handling the flow and parsing of information than in the LLM approach. ER/EP needs multiple overlapping, continuously shifting, freely recombinating, etc, information movement that is frictionless.
There is a way to render written and numerical data in a purely visual manner and that is called diffusion. That diffusion process will also need to be able to work in reverse, therefore a dual converter ( DC ) will be needed. As a side benefit to the commercial value of ER/EP I think that a DC would teach us a lot about the difference between what we perceive as reality and the true nature of that reality. Which would only increase it’s value, actually ...... hmmmm .......
In terms of the reality of creating the ER/EP H-S, fully synchronized and interdependent, I am intrigued by the inevitability of mistakes and ‘hallucinations’ that LLMs inevitably suffer from. That very suffering has to be openly incorporated into ER/EP, all data ‘loss’ is essential to the ER/EP process ( seeing as that is where it mostly takes place ). Stumbling blocks, false flags, optical illusions, misinformation, etc, all contribute to enriching the ER/EP process, which is after all a form of mirror held up to our own inability to effectively process unconnected chains of information in a way that is simultaneously linear and non-linear, then each collapsing into the other, to create an answer or solution to the original question or problem posed.
NOTE - ER/EP H-S is all going to need a post-transformer architecture. And as close to unlimited parameters of reasoning capabilities as is achievable.
It’s worth restating that there was an automatic commercial utility for me - my art work became way better immediately. That lead directly to galleries exhibiting my work for the first time and to sales for the first time. I can make ER/EP work with nothing more than some ink and paper, imagine what ER/EP software could accomplished hooked up to a very powerful hardware system twinned to it and then shot through with an inconceivable amount of information.
I also found the ER/EP approach to drawing to be much faster and used a lot less energy to get way better results for the artistic problems that I create for myself.
It is a creative tool with deep industrial, scientific, financial, etc, applications.
Next month I’ll tackle creating a model, etc.
NOTE - on a purely technical level, I am very intrigued by optical lattices and their potential here.
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 5 )
The commercial application of ER/EP hardware-software ( H-S ) involves providing many non-standard answers and solutions to any industrial, scientific and economic question or problem posed to it. Etc.
These alternate end-points are valuable, in that they can save a lot of time, money and effort in the real world. Never mind the inherent and invaluable ER/EP H-S ability to provide answers and solutions that were never even accessible before.
Think of it as a special application universal search engine.
After loading in the relevant and massive data set environment ( more on that later ) you pose a question or problem to the ER/EP H-S, think of this starting point as A.
Usually, through standard computational means, you would receive an answer or solution, think of this end point as Z.
We are all limited, except in rare moments of deep intuition, to a completely linear path from A to Z. Humans and computers.
I propose to create something that would deliberately avoid this trap.
Now think of the ER/EP H-S starting at A, and after hitting Z it freezes and copies the entire data set environment. That standard straight path from A to Z is always surrounded by gigantic furball of close-to-linear through to completely fragmented non-linear paths from A to Z ( commonly referred to as ‘loss’ ) there are a lot of paths from A that almost make it to the “Z-point” and those alternate answers/solutions, which are usually ignored, can be valid and are worth analysis. Furthermore, as you get farther from the Z-point, questions or problems - related to A - that you never thought to ask begin to appear. Those are definitely worth analysis.
There are fragmented chains of linear EP scattered throughout the entire non-linear ER environment, and those same linear EP chains can be connected, providing yet more answers and solutions to A. Plausible Z arrived at through an implausible pathway from A. This plausible Z might have utility only within the specific data set environment but that would also merit further analysis.
We, humans and the computers we create, have such a limited frame of reference, limited to the purely sequential, ER/EP is a way out of that standard framework reasoning process.
Break free.
Also, although ER/EP H-S is not an LLM, it is worth exploring LLMs ability to make mistakes and to experience ‘hallucinations’. I think that an ER/EP H-S can be a specific-purpose reasoning engine that can fully utilize mistakes and hallucinations.
My initial personal realization regarding the utility of ER/EP was purely visual ( it came from slowly learning how to create drawings using the ER/EP methodology ) and I think this is a key point. LLM ( large language models ) and such are based upon words and numbers, which are of course completely separate and discrete units of information. Whereas ER/EP would be based on purely visual ( and sound ) information which is inherently continuous and fluid. Included in this but not limited to the following would be; video, audio, graphs, ultraviolet, subsonic, etc, sources. Our perceptions of the world around us are reflected much more accurately in the ER/EP approach to handling the flow and parsing of information than in the LLM approach. ER/EP needs multiple overlapping, continuously shifting, freely recombinating, etc, information movement that is frictionless.
There is a way to render written and numerical data in a purely visual manner and that is called diffusion. That diffusion process will also need to be able to work in reverse, therefore a dual converter ( DC ) will be needed. As a side benefit to the commercial value of ER/EP I think that a DC would teach us a lot about the difference between what we perceive as reality and the true nature of that reality. Which would only increase it’s value, actually ...... hmmmm .......
In terms of the reality of creating the ER/EP H-S, fully synchronized and interdependent, I am intrigued by the inevitability of mistakes and ‘hallucinations’ that LLMs inevitably suffer from. That very suffering has to be openly incorporated into ER/EP, all data ‘loss’ is essential to the ER/EP process ( seeing as that is where it mostly takes place ). Stumbling blocks, false flags, optical illusions, misinformation, etc, all contribute to enriching the ER/EP process, which is after all a form of mirror held up to our own inability to effectively process unconnected chains of information in a way that is simultaneously linear and non-linear, then each collapsing into the other, to create an answer or solution to the original question or problem posed.
NOTE - ER/EP H-S is all going to need a post-transformer architecture. And as close to unlimited parameters of reasoning capabilities as is achievable.
It’s worth restating that there was an automatic commercial utility for me - my art work became way better immediately. That lead directly to galleries exhibiting my work for the first time and to sales for the first time. I can make ER/EP work with nothing more than some ink and paper, imagine what ER/EP software could accomplished hooked up to a very powerful hardware system twinned to it and then shot through with an inconceivable amount of information.
I also found the ER/EP approach to drawing to be much faster and used a lot less energy to get way better results for the artistic problems that I create for myself.
It is a creative tool with deep industrial, scientific, financial, etc, applications.
Next month I’ll tackle creating a model, etc.
NOTE - on a purely technical level, I am very intrigued by optical lattices and their potential here.
May 2023, Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 4 )
May 2023
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 4 )
So this month I am going to start delving into more practical matters surrounding ER/EP.
In the most macro sense, how is the algorithmic search set up - best described - in relatable terms ? I have found this difficult because the very nature of ER/EP is oblique and elusive.
It keeps vanishing.
# 1 and # 2 involve what are called ‘coordinate systems’. I will hereby refrain from using the term again.
1.
Imagine a computational / algorithmic / virtual grid, massive on both it’s x and y axes, which is then stacked equally massively up/down the z axis. The question or problem posed to the ER/EP system ( the stack ) is placed randomly on a point of the grid, topmost layer. The whole edifice, each individual layer, then begins rotating randomly, turning along their individual x and y axes. Some of the points on the grid contain information ( variables ) pertinent to the question-problem ( Q-P ) posed and some grid-points are empty and some grid-points contain information tangentially related to the pertinent information. Think of the original Q-P as a bumper car that does it’s thing but also falls through the random holes in the grid as encountered. Until it makes it’s way to the outermost edge or the very bottom, where the entire accumulated EP is harvested and stored for analysis. That would be an analysis of a potential answer ( A ).
When the original ER/EP/Q-P encounters the very first piece of information that it deems a potential partial pathway to a solution to the Q-P it locks on to it and drags it along. An accumulation of randomly generated errors results, which in aggregate contain potential pathways to an alternate solution ( A ) buried within the barrage of information described.
2.
The other visualization I have developed scares the crap out of me. My mind balks at the following. I find this difficult to think about or write about.
Think of ER/EP/Q-P/A as an evolutionary gambit. Break the whole thing down to a cellular type of computational / algorithmic / virtual structure, or a structure akin to an even smaller division of matter ..... the original Q-P is placed in the hollow center of cell type structure that has a permeable membrane that only the EP/A can broach. The structure is full of a randomly moving ocean worth of pertinent and impertinent information relevant to the Q-P with a lot of the volume deliberately empty ( as is the case in any cellular or molecular structure ). The Q-P is then sent roaming out towards the membrane, randomly connecting, or not, with the various nodes of information swirling around. Same as in #1, if some of the randomly encountered individual nodes of information are deemed as useful to the EP - unexpected as a partial step towards a solution - the ER/EP/Q-P connects with that node and drags it along in an ever growing chain of information, aka ‘the pathway”. Once it reached the membrane, the A is harvested and stored for analysis.
3.
What I am trying ( poorly ) to convey here is that ER/EP/Q-P/A might have mimic a fully randomized evolutionary process, contained within an unimaginably massive algorithmic construct and data environment.
I am of the opinion that the best framework is more along the lines of #2, because of recent advances in creating the ‘Cell Atlas’ and the ongoing refinement of the Human Genome Project, given the importance of RNA and the essential role ‘error’ plays overall in genetics and thusly evolution. If nature has already created a perfect framework/environment in which ER/EP/Q-P/A can be managed, why not attempt to duplicate that same system within a partially or fully controlled system ?
ER/EP/Q-P/A is nothing more or less than a duplication of an ever evolving, randomly ever changing, set of circumstances that face all cells, nervous networks, sensory networks, animals, individuals, machines, environments and consciousnesses ( organic or mechanical ).
ER/EP/Q-P/A would be set up to swim across and against a powerful currents of information, only rarely to swim with those same currents, as we inevitably have to do in reality. To introduce a form of nonlinear entropy. To search through, process and and resolve all the things that our mind ordinarily balks at as being either a mistake or dangerous to our mental or physical survival. There are answers well beyond that barrier. That barrier was created by evolution to protect both our senses and our consciousness-psyche from literal madness. And right there, unfortunately, is the direct link for ER/EP/Q-P/A to human creativity.
4.
No matter what methodology, or combination of methodologies utilized, the whole idea is to generate a solution ( A ) to the original Q-P that would not have occurred to anybody - creating close to infinite moments of completely artificial intuition and insight. Simply let all of the variables slam into each other ad infinitum until victors emerge and then store a copies of those victors and immediately send them back randomly into the data environment, to create further variables. ER/EP/Q-P/A could be set up as an open-ended system until you want it to become a closed system.
Perhaps this ‘corralling’ of information from an open-ended to closed system would be useful in eventually bring linear order to a non-linear system. In other words, to slowly make the unreal real. Seeing as we can only process and deal with the world around us in a linear entropic manner, this would harmonize the non-linear entropic abilities of the ER/EP/Q-P/A device and programming with reality as we experience it.
On occasion just let the damn thing run fully non-linear wild, flat out, which might tell us a lot about our senses and consciousnesses inabilities to fully process many aspects of the deeply limited reality we perceive all around us. This would have also have practical value as a ‘control’ ( or as a frame of reference ? ) to fully harmonized ‘linear’ answers.
5.
I have a growing feeling that the actual, physical and algorithmic, ER/EP device must be a ‘black box’ separated from all communications systems plus the internet. All data loaded in after having been loaded into buffer devices and similarly the Q-P/A solutions downloaded into another buffer device before being further analyzed and then put into real-world practice. A universal ‘air gap’ for all ER/EP ‘Black Boxes’. This has economic and security related benefits to the company that fully develops, markets and the sells/rents the BBs. It is also a completely intuitive decision, on my part, one that is hard to articulate at this point.
I would currently make the argument that letting the ER/EP algorithm(s) roam freely through the internet and all it’s databases of information would be counterproductive.
My own personal experience with ER/EP has been with freehand drawing, following the errors to a much better work than I would have originally conceived or would have been able to create otherwise. The playing field and attendant variables have definite limits but the decisions that can be made within that framework are close to infinite. This is a bit esoteric, but I think the ‘illusion of freedom’ to act in a fully non-linear manner is what is required for ER/EP, as that is exactly the case with the reality we experience when confronted with our own intuition and the Q-P/A solutions have to live within that context otherwise they are quite literally useless to us on a practical level.
6.
No use of programming / mathematical constructs such as ‘constraint equations’ which create funnels to shoot information along.
7.
ER/EP would be created as a form of deliberately unstable programming that deliberately allows the code NOT TO CRASH when confronted with ‘illegal things’ but simply to absorb them, adapting accordingly ( both algorithm and ER/EP/Q-P artificial neural network environment ‘reality’ ) and simply keep on exploring untethered and unhindered. Untethered from the limits ( guardrails ? ) of the neurological limits that ordinarily protect our consciousness.
8.
The whole ER/EP/Q-P/A hardware and software edifice is not interested in potential predictability but in the potential of unpredictability. That is exactly how you get wildly alternate answers that you never would have expected the existence of, because that very potential is deliberately ignored or eliminated in traditional computational processes.
9.
Next month I will tackle the reality of trying to create the initial error recognition ( ER ) algorithm.
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 4 )
So this month I am going to start delving into more practical matters surrounding ER/EP.
In the most macro sense, how is the algorithmic search set up - best described - in relatable terms ? I have found this difficult because the very nature of ER/EP is oblique and elusive.
It keeps vanishing.
# 1 and # 2 involve what are called ‘coordinate systems’. I will hereby refrain from using the term again.
1.
Imagine a computational / algorithmic / virtual grid, massive on both it’s x and y axes, which is then stacked equally massively up/down the z axis. The question or problem posed to the ER/EP system ( the stack ) is placed randomly on a point of the grid, topmost layer. The whole edifice, each individual layer, then begins rotating randomly, turning along their individual x and y axes. Some of the points on the grid contain information ( variables ) pertinent to the question-problem ( Q-P ) posed and some grid-points are empty and some grid-points contain information tangentially related to the pertinent information. Think of the original Q-P as a bumper car that does it’s thing but also falls through the random holes in the grid as encountered. Until it makes it’s way to the outermost edge or the very bottom, where the entire accumulated EP is harvested and stored for analysis. That would be an analysis of a potential answer ( A ).
When the original ER/EP/Q-P encounters the very first piece of information that it deems a potential partial pathway to a solution to the Q-P it locks on to it and drags it along. An accumulation of randomly generated errors results, which in aggregate contain potential pathways to an alternate solution ( A ) buried within the barrage of information described.
2.
The other visualization I have developed scares the crap out of me. My mind balks at the following. I find this difficult to think about or write about.
Think of ER/EP/Q-P/A as an evolutionary gambit. Break the whole thing down to a cellular type of computational / algorithmic / virtual structure, or a structure akin to an even smaller division of matter ..... the original Q-P is placed in the hollow center of cell type structure that has a permeable membrane that only the EP/A can broach. The structure is full of a randomly moving ocean worth of pertinent and impertinent information relevant to the Q-P with a lot of the volume deliberately empty ( as is the case in any cellular or molecular structure ). The Q-P is then sent roaming out towards the membrane, randomly connecting, or not, with the various nodes of information swirling around. Same as in #1, if some of the randomly encountered individual nodes of information are deemed as useful to the EP - unexpected as a partial step towards a solution - the ER/EP/Q-P connects with that node and drags it along in an ever growing chain of information, aka ‘the pathway”. Once it reached the membrane, the A is harvested and stored for analysis.
3.
What I am trying ( poorly ) to convey here is that ER/EP/Q-P/A might have mimic a fully randomized evolutionary process, contained within an unimaginably massive algorithmic construct and data environment.
I am of the opinion that the best framework is more along the lines of #2, because of recent advances in creating the ‘Cell Atlas’ and the ongoing refinement of the Human Genome Project, given the importance of RNA and the essential role ‘error’ plays overall in genetics and thusly evolution. If nature has already created a perfect framework/environment in which ER/EP/Q-P/A can be managed, why not attempt to duplicate that same system within a partially or fully controlled system ?
ER/EP/Q-P/A is nothing more or less than a duplication of an ever evolving, randomly ever changing, set of circumstances that face all cells, nervous networks, sensory networks, animals, individuals, machines, environments and consciousnesses ( organic or mechanical ).
ER/EP/Q-P/A would be set up to swim across and against a powerful currents of information, only rarely to swim with those same currents, as we inevitably have to do in reality. To introduce a form of nonlinear entropy. To search through, process and and resolve all the things that our mind ordinarily balks at as being either a mistake or dangerous to our mental or physical survival. There are answers well beyond that barrier. That barrier was created by evolution to protect both our senses and our consciousness-psyche from literal madness. And right there, unfortunately, is the direct link for ER/EP/Q-P/A to human creativity.
4.
No matter what methodology, or combination of methodologies utilized, the whole idea is to generate a solution ( A ) to the original Q-P that would not have occurred to anybody - creating close to infinite moments of completely artificial intuition and insight. Simply let all of the variables slam into each other ad infinitum until victors emerge and then store a copies of those victors and immediately send them back randomly into the data environment, to create further variables. ER/EP/Q-P/A could be set up as an open-ended system until you want it to become a closed system.
Perhaps this ‘corralling’ of information from an open-ended to closed system would be useful in eventually bring linear order to a non-linear system. In other words, to slowly make the unreal real. Seeing as we can only process and deal with the world around us in a linear entropic manner, this would harmonize the non-linear entropic abilities of the ER/EP/Q-P/A device and programming with reality as we experience it.
On occasion just let the damn thing run fully non-linear wild, flat out, which might tell us a lot about our senses and consciousnesses inabilities to fully process many aspects of the deeply limited reality we perceive all around us. This would have also have practical value as a ‘control’ ( or as a frame of reference ? ) to fully harmonized ‘linear’ answers.
5.
I have a growing feeling that the actual, physical and algorithmic, ER/EP device must be a ‘black box’ separated from all communications systems plus the internet. All data loaded in after having been loaded into buffer devices and similarly the Q-P/A solutions downloaded into another buffer device before being further analyzed and then put into real-world practice. A universal ‘air gap’ for all ER/EP ‘Black Boxes’. This has economic and security related benefits to the company that fully develops, markets and the sells/rents the BBs. It is also a completely intuitive decision, on my part, one that is hard to articulate at this point.
I would currently make the argument that letting the ER/EP algorithm(s) roam freely through the internet and all it’s databases of information would be counterproductive.
My own personal experience with ER/EP has been with freehand drawing, following the errors to a much better work than I would have originally conceived or would have been able to create otherwise. The playing field and attendant variables have definite limits but the decisions that can be made within that framework are close to infinite. This is a bit esoteric, but I think the ‘illusion of freedom’ to act in a fully non-linear manner is what is required for ER/EP, as that is exactly the case with the reality we experience when confronted with our own intuition and the Q-P/A solutions have to live within that context otherwise they are quite literally useless to us on a practical level.
6.
No use of programming / mathematical constructs such as ‘constraint equations’ which create funnels to shoot information along.
7.
ER/EP would be created as a form of deliberately unstable programming that deliberately allows the code NOT TO CRASH when confronted with ‘illegal things’ but simply to absorb them, adapting accordingly ( both algorithm and ER/EP/Q-P artificial neural network environment ‘reality’ ) and simply keep on exploring untethered and unhindered. Untethered from the limits ( guardrails ? ) of the neurological limits that ordinarily protect our consciousness.
8.
The whole ER/EP/Q-P/A hardware and software edifice is not interested in potential predictability but in the potential of unpredictability. That is exactly how you get wildly alternate answers that you never would have expected the existence of, because that very potential is deliberately ignored or eliminated in traditional computational processes.
9.
Next month I will tackle the reality of trying to create the initial error recognition ( ER ) algorithm.
April 2023, Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 3 )
April 2023
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 3 )
This time, a more technical approach to the subject of ER/EP. Last month was a bit too metaphysical. Perhaps.
Non-linear entropy.
Ordinarily, a measure of disorder ( a form of linear entropy ) is used to predict the likely state of a system at some point in the future. The sequencing required is created intentionally devoid of errors, or seriously minimizing and filtering out errors. I propose that this sequencing be deliberately fragmented, becoming constantly non-linear in nature. Fragmented by utilizing a massive amount of parallel processing, parallel algorithms, etc, which are then also allowed to randomly interact. A ‘master’ algorithm would have to be created to recognize and upload the most promising of the error pathways created. If an unexpected solution to a question then presents itself, that EP should be copied but then reintroduced to the original ongoing error-prone programming.
Anything to make ER/EP more closely mirror our nearly constant misconceptions, and the resulting corrections regarding our misconceptions, of the natural world all around us.
I think this important because the synaptic nerves, etc, in our brains, do misfire and thusly create an error in our thinking. I am convinced, through my own creative experiences using ER/EP - since 2006 - that error pathways can lead to completely unexpected solutions to all sorts of problems.
Our minds can produce both linear and non-linear entropy, but we almost always disregard the non-linear in attempting to resolve questions regarding all sorts of practical research and creative issues. ER/EP systems ( both hardware and software ) could be set up to fully explore non-linear entropy in a way that our minds just cannot, in ways our minds always reject, except in rare moments of deep intuition or pure creativity.
If you think for a second, of our consciousness as a form of operating system, then any ER/EP system itself must have deeply inherent flaws; built in, randomly shifting, errors. Our consciousness itself produces the linear entropy that we perceive and that allows us to function well, most of the time. But our endless mistakes and constant misunderstandings are constantly incorporated and re-incorporated into our own learning process and that is where we let go of non-linear entropy. We learn that one particular pathway forward is seemingly best. A self-learning algorithm could continue along ALL of the “wrong” pathways, which would literally drive most anybody insane, although the potential rewards are priceless.
Also, I want to add a thought in closing, that a temporal randomness could also be created within the ER/EP algorithm by randomly ‘freezing’ individual moments in the ER/EP processing of the original question posed and then re-introducing those random frozen moments into the program both before and after the initial frozen moment - all while the program keeps running flat out, constantly readjusting both it’s past and it’s future, as we do. This is very important, I think, in the promotion of creativity within a ER/EP system. Time is a very tricky thing that does not actually function in the manner we perceive. What I just described is a possible partial solution to that issue, as it concerns my arguments here.
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 3 )
This time, a more technical approach to the subject of ER/EP. Last month was a bit too metaphysical. Perhaps.
Non-linear entropy.
Ordinarily, a measure of disorder ( a form of linear entropy ) is used to predict the likely state of a system at some point in the future. The sequencing required is created intentionally devoid of errors, or seriously minimizing and filtering out errors. I propose that this sequencing be deliberately fragmented, becoming constantly non-linear in nature. Fragmented by utilizing a massive amount of parallel processing, parallel algorithms, etc, which are then also allowed to randomly interact. A ‘master’ algorithm would have to be created to recognize and upload the most promising of the error pathways created. If an unexpected solution to a question then presents itself, that EP should be copied but then reintroduced to the original ongoing error-prone programming.
Anything to make ER/EP more closely mirror our nearly constant misconceptions, and the resulting corrections regarding our misconceptions, of the natural world all around us.
I think this important because the synaptic nerves, etc, in our brains, do misfire and thusly create an error in our thinking. I am convinced, through my own creative experiences using ER/EP - since 2006 - that error pathways can lead to completely unexpected solutions to all sorts of problems.
Our minds can produce both linear and non-linear entropy, but we almost always disregard the non-linear in attempting to resolve questions regarding all sorts of practical research and creative issues. ER/EP systems ( both hardware and software ) could be set up to fully explore non-linear entropy in a way that our minds just cannot, in ways our minds always reject, except in rare moments of deep intuition or pure creativity.
If you think for a second, of our consciousness as a form of operating system, then any ER/EP system itself must have deeply inherent flaws; built in, randomly shifting, errors. Our consciousness itself produces the linear entropy that we perceive and that allows us to function well, most of the time. But our endless mistakes and constant misunderstandings are constantly incorporated and re-incorporated into our own learning process and that is where we let go of non-linear entropy. We learn that one particular pathway forward is seemingly best. A self-learning algorithm could continue along ALL of the “wrong” pathways, which would literally drive most anybody insane, although the potential rewards are priceless.
Also, I want to add a thought in closing, that a temporal randomness could also be created within the ER/EP algorithm by randomly ‘freezing’ individual moments in the ER/EP processing of the original question posed and then re-introducing those random frozen moments into the program both before and after the initial frozen moment - all while the program keeps running flat out, constantly readjusting both it’s past and it’s future, as we do. This is very important, I think, in the promotion of creativity within a ER/EP system. Time is a very tricky thing that does not actually function in the manner we perceive. What I just described is a possible partial solution to that issue, as it concerns my arguments here.
March 2023, Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 2 )
March 2023
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 2 )
Fluidity, that is the word I choose to start with.
Continuing my writing of February 2023 regarding error recognition and error pathways, I need to convey that what I am attempting to describe ( a process that has no need for words, a major component of it’s beauty ) is something that you slowly match speed and direction with, move alongside and join with - so this process involves a wave rather than a particle. A sine wave, buried deep within all of nature.
Not a square wave, seemingly.
Endless waves of information everywhere, embedded within everything; that seem to be all wrong, working at cross purposes, deliberately misleading, hiding buried treasures and resources. Until one massive wave arises from the quantum froth, a MASTER ERROR that has temporarily absorbed all of the surrounding errors and points to an underlying sequence of errors that lead to unforeseen creativity, unimagined partial or complete solutions to vexing questions.
I refer you here to two books; “The Wave.” by Susan Casey and “The Demon in the Machine.” by Paul Davies. Both of these fine works have had a major impact upon my general thinking about, and also the tentative beginnings of, my use of error recognition and error pathways, in terms of my own practice. The key piece of writing for me, buried deep in “The Wave.” is the section about the surfing spot off the coast of Maui called ‘Egypt’. It clarified a lot of things for me, mainly that you should always go ( be ) where you should not ( go ) be.
Then harmony, try to become an error yourself in order to create as little disturbance as possible. Yes, observation collapses the wave - but I think that the trick involves sensing the next error in the pathway before that happens. An error pathway is a process without discernible beginning or end and it is always happening. It’s always there.
We lack so much in the many ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, exploring and effectively processing our local environment that ER / EP strikes me as a shortcut through that seeming emptiness that we currently require technology for - to ‘give us sight where we are blind’ so to speak. And yeah, there are two methodologies here; purely human intuition and the one involving quantum computing, optical processing and artificial learning combined with some form of virtually instantaneous self-learning and self-correcting code writing. Both are equally valid, both are necessary.
Mirrors.
A sine wave that contains a square wave, which is also a square wave containing a sine wave, at the most granular of levels.
A chain of mistakes that contains a truth.
So much hidden creativity.
Egypt, that is the word I choose end with.
NOTE - next month, I hope to start writing in detail about the potential technological approaches to ER / EP. I needed to get some more personal metaphysical business out of the way here first. Clear out most of the underbrush and then a controlled burn.
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 2 )
Fluidity, that is the word I choose to start with.
Continuing my writing of February 2023 regarding error recognition and error pathways, I need to convey that what I am attempting to describe ( a process that has no need for words, a major component of it’s beauty ) is something that you slowly match speed and direction with, move alongside and join with - so this process involves a wave rather than a particle. A sine wave, buried deep within all of nature.
Not a square wave, seemingly.
Endless waves of information everywhere, embedded within everything; that seem to be all wrong, working at cross purposes, deliberately misleading, hiding buried treasures and resources. Until one massive wave arises from the quantum froth, a MASTER ERROR that has temporarily absorbed all of the surrounding errors and points to an underlying sequence of errors that lead to unforeseen creativity, unimagined partial or complete solutions to vexing questions.
I refer you here to two books; “The Wave.” by Susan Casey and “The Demon in the Machine.” by Paul Davies. Both of these fine works have had a major impact upon my general thinking about, and also the tentative beginnings of, my use of error recognition and error pathways, in terms of my own practice. The key piece of writing for me, buried deep in “The Wave.” is the section about the surfing spot off the coast of Maui called ‘Egypt’. It clarified a lot of things for me, mainly that you should always go ( be ) where you should not ( go ) be.
Then harmony, try to become an error yourself in order to create as little disturbance as possible. Yes, observation collapses the wave - but I think that the trick involves sensing the next error in the pathway before that happens. An error pathway is a process without discernible beginning or end and it is always happening. It’s always there.
We lack so much in the many ways of seeing, hearing, feeling, exploring and effectively processing our local environment that ER / EP strikes me as a shortcut through that seeming emptiness that we currently require technology for - to ‘give us sight where we are blind’ so to speak. And yeah, there are two methodologies here; purely human intuition and the one involving quantum computing, optical processing and artificial learning combined with some form of virtually instantaneous self-learning and self-correcting code writing. Both are equally valid, both are necessary.
Mirrors.
A sine wave that contains a square wave, which is also a square wave containing a sine wave, at the most granular of levels.
A chain of mistakes that contains a truth.
So much hidden creativity.
Egypt, that is the word I choose end with.
NOTE - next month, I hope to start writing in detail about the potential technological approaches to ER / EP. I needed to get some more personal metaphysical business out of the way here first. Clear out most of the underbrush and then a controlled burn.
February 2023, Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 1 )
Febuary 2023
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 1 )
I recognize that the following writing is a bit off the beaten path, as relating to an artists own practice. However, what is discussed here is pertinent to creativity, at least from my point of view.
I also think that the following has very real applications for computer programming, science / analysis of all kinds and artificial intelligence.
I think that a deep and true creativity can rise up from the quantum realm, then be harnessed / ridden to parts unknown, the art works that result being a ( successful, or more often unsuccessful ) report back from that exploration and extrapolation.
The methodology being that of; the entropy we create through observation can allow us to discern emergent patterns as they arise from the quantum realm into the very first millisecond of what our senses report as reality, that critical moment is when errors start to appear - error recognition and the error pathways they create can be recognized by any creative person as opportunities to be explored rather than the endless sequence of mistakes that they appear to be, accumulated errors can occasionally guide one successfully to a radically different result than preconceived before the process started - a result that did not exist, even in the consciousness of the person who triggered the process with that alternate endgame in mind.
Speed and risk taking are critical here, as the window of opportunity-time discussed above is vanishingly small, and you are following a constantly modulating trail of interlocked errors that constantly shift and jump pathways as the chain of error takes on a life of it’s own. You have to develop an intuitive sense of when to follow, when to jump, and when to abandon.
And this is where very impressive recent progress in technology comes into play ( aiding mathematics, physics, chemistry, archeology, economics, modelling and analysis of all kinds ) via a powerful hardware/software system, properly programmed and given free reign can explore error recognition and error pathways with incredible speed and precision, uncaring of time, expenditure of energy, or any human distraction or concern.
A trail of errors will most likely lead nowhere .... but on occasion a trail of errors, properly recognized and fully pursued, can lead to a completely unforeseen and valuable result. A revelation, minuscule or massive. Somebody creating a small drawing can be substantively no different than an ‘intelligent machine’ helping to solve a matter of great concern. Same process.
NOTE - the recent technological progress mentioned above includes artificial neural networks, the real possibility of quantum computers-computing and optical data-processing. The confluence of these three vastly powerful tools could lead to unimaginable error recognition / error pathway solutions buried deep in the seemingly chaotic randomized mess of the quantum as it becomes real ( to us ).
I’ll continue writing about this at a later date. There is a lot more here to unpack.
NOTE - I was going to leave this next point until next month, but nonlinear dynamics is a good example of the issues I’m trying to address here. Nonlinear dynamics is a major stumbling block for anybody engaged in trying to predict future outcomes of current courses of action in any open ended system ( let’s put side closed systems, for the moment, as they are artificial constructs by their very nature and thusly much easier to predict ). Error recognition and the error pathways they follow to the best - and most carefully hidden by nature - conclusions and results mimic our only purely human tool / defence against nonlinear dynamics, our intuition. This is exactly an artists best defence ...... follow the errors until they resolve themselves into a viable yet totally unpredictable artwork.
Error Recognition / Error Pathways ( 1 )
I recognize that the following writing is a bit off the beaten path, as relating to an artists own practice. However, what is discussed here is pertinent to creativity, at least from my point of view.
I also think that the following has very real applications for computer programming, science / analysis of all kinds and artificial intelligence.
I think that a deep and true creativity can rise up from the quantum realm, then be harnessed / ridden to parts unknown, the art works that result being a ( successful, or more often unsuccessful ) report back from that exploration and extrapolation.
The methodology being that of; the entropy we create through observation can allow us to discern emergent patterns as they arise from the quantum realm into the very first millisecond of what our senses report as reality, that critical moment is when errors start to appear - error recognition and the error pathways they create can be recognized by any creative person as opportunities to be explored rather than the endless sequence of mistakes that they appear to be, accumulated errors can occasionally guide one successfully to a radically different result than preconceived before the process started - a result that did not exist, even in the consciousness of the person who triggered the process with that alternate endgame in mind.
Speed and risk taking are critical here, as the window of opportunity-time discussed above is vanishingly small, and you are following a constantly modulating trail of interlocked errors that constantly shift and jump pathways as the chain of error takes on a life of it’s own. You have to develop an intuitive sense of when to follow, when to jump, and when to abandon.
And this is where very impressive recent progress in technology comes into play ( aiding mathematics, physics, chemistry, archeology, economics, modelling and analysis of all kinds ) via a powerful hardware/software system, properly programmed and given free reign can explore error recognition and error pathways with incredible speed and precision, uncaring of time, expenditure of energy, or any human distraction or concern.
A trail of errors will most likely lead nowhere .... but on occasion a trail of errors, properly recognized and fully pursued, can lead to a completely unforeseen and valuable result. A revelation, minuscule or massive. Somebody creating a small drawing can be substantively no different than an ‘intelligent machine’ helping to solve a matter of great concern. Same process.
NOTE - the recent technological progress mentioned above includes artificial neural networks, the real possibility of quantum computers-computing and optical data-processing. The confluence of these three vastly powerful tools could lead to unimaginable error recognition / error pathway solutions buried deep in the seemingly chaotic randomized mess of the quantum as it becomes real ( to us ).
I’ll continue writing about this at a later date. There is a lot more here to unpack.
NOTE - I was going to leave this next point until next month, but nonlinear dynamics is a good example of the issues I’m trying to address here. Nonlinear dynamics is a major stumbling block for anybody engaged in trying to predict future outcomes of current courses of action in any open ended system ( let’s put side closed systems, for the moment, as they are artificial constructs by their very nature and thusly much easier to predict ). Error recognition and the error pathways they follow to the best - and most carefully hidden by nature - conclusions and results mimic our only purely human tool / defence against nonlinear dynamics, our intuition. This is exactly an artists best defence ...... follow the errors until they resolve themselves into a viable yet totally unpredictable artwork.
January 2023, Consciousness / Creativity
January 2023
Consciousness / Creativity
What follows is a very basic outline of a long and complex essay, which I am royally fucking up.
NOTE - the above will be properly developed and expanded upon in the February or March 2023 writing section.
Consciousness / Creativity
What follows is a very basic outline of a long and complex essay, which I am royally fucking up.
- What we perceive to be reality is in fact not reality - time does not actually exist and any event is completely unrelated to any other.
- Our consciousness ( individual and collective ) creates the illusion of order and thusly meaning from this chaotic randomness.
- So when you create something, a sculpture for sake of argument, you are conjuring an illusion built upon an illusion.
- However, there is a liminal state moment in any real work of arts very earliest development where it is no longer quantum realm but is not yet on our plane of existence and understanding.
- The longer that moment is held on to, caressed, the more powerful the work.
- Let it create itself.
NOTE - the above will be properly developed and expanded upon in the February or March 2023 writing section.
December 2022, New York
December 2022
New York
I lived in New York for two years, in the late 1990s. I was incredibly fortunate to be offered a good job on my first day there ( thanks Meredith ! ) and to already have an apartment lined up ( thanks Mark ! ). Made friends easily, etc. Never got mugged, or shived, for that matter.
I know that is not exactly common experience, as I witnessed so many people getting chewed up and spat out - fast.
Blowing their ride or having it blown for them.
Produced only a few paintings during those two years, as I spent a lot of time in art museums learning much of great value. Sure as hell did not approach any galleries about my practice. I knew I was not ready.
However, I did gain access to a beautiful space in which to mount an exhibit of the paintings I had done. Only one person showed up ( thanks Tomo ! ).
Lesson learned.
Fast forward to early 2018. Living in Toronto again, when I suddenly realize that I have the chops, the works and the financial capability to go start going to New York every other month for a week, in order to ( hopefully ) find galleries to start exhibiting with and to eventually be represented by one of them ..... worked the rest of the year getting ready for all that.
Of incalculable value, I already knew New York very well, had kept a close eye on the art industry there and knew exactly how to approach it.
The first time I went was six weeks before the pandemic started ....... but it went well enough ( thanks Andrew ! ).
I cannot imagine what it must be like going to New York ‘cold’. Nobody, nothing. Fuck.
Once, I went to New York ( 2003 ) for a few days and did not reach out to any friends or visit any professional acquaintances, just me all alone. And I did catch the chill, that sinking feeling of what an insanely intimidating city it is for most people, impossible barriers to circumvent everywhere you turn.
I spent five years ( 2013 start ) slowly preparing for return visits to New York. Reaching out repeatedly, but respectfully, to galleries and museum curators. So I was lucky to have a handful of people that would actually be happy enough to speak with me, during that one trip before the pandemic hit, early in 2019.
The pandemic gave me more time to politely hustle more folks in NY, who in turn for the first time in their professional lives had the time to be hassled.
Coal can be turned into diamonds.
So I just started my regular New York trips again in September 2022. Good to see friends and their families happy and healthy. Good to feel New York all hustle and bustle again. Good to be able to wander into galleries and say hello.
Good to witness a classic NYC street diss - a large bulky older woman accidentally ramming into a very lithe and beautiful older woman and the lovely woman, stepping away and without missing a beat - “excuse me, SIR.”
I love New York.
Many years ago, in the Economist, I read that there is something like 40,000 unrepresented artists in New York seeking opportunities to exhibit their work ..... assuming that 95% of them produce shit work, that means 2,000 talented artists seeking ...... and there is what ? 50 worthwhile galleries in NYC ? ..... if so - that’s 40 artists per gallery ..... and those 50 galleries would maybe have the chance to take on one new artist per year, most likely one work in the context of a trial-run group show ....... damn, the math really sucks.
I am fortunate to have even gotten my foot in the door.
Just want to say a heartfelt thank you to that handful of gallerists who are willing to speak with me when I drop by, because the way everything is set up blows putrid chunks for you all as much as it does for artists.
Important to keep that in mind.
NOTE - Thank you Charlotte, watching you TOTALLY ROCK New York after such a brutal, lonely and dispiriting first few weeks was truly inspiring. That really helped me make the decision to finally start directly approaching people in the art industry in New York.
New York
I lived in New York for two years, in the late 1990s. I was incredibly fortunate to be offered a good job on my first day there ( thanks Meredith ! ) and to already have an apartment lined up ( thanks Mark ! ). Made friends easily, etc. Never got mugged, or shived, for that matter.
I know that is not exactly common experience, as I witnessed so many people getting chewed up and spat out - fast.
Blowing their ride or having it blown for them.
Produced only a few paintings during those two years, as I spent a lot of time in art museums learning much of great value. Sure as hell did not approach any galleries about my practice. I knew I was not ready.
However, I did gain access to a beautiful space in which to mount an exhibit of the paintings I had done. Only one person showed up ( thanks Tomo ! ).
Lesson learned.
Fast forward to early 2018. Living in Toronto again, when I suddenly realize that I have the chops, the works and the financial capability to go start going to New York every other month for a week, in order to ( hopefully ) find galleries to start exhibiting with and to eventually be represented by one of them ..... worked the rest of the year getting ready for all that.
Of incalculable value, I already knew New York very well, had kept a close eye on the art industry there and knew exactly how to approach it.
The first time I went was six weeks before the pandemic started ....... but it went well enough ( thanks Andrew ! ).
I cannot imagine what it must be like going to New York ‘cold’. Nobody, nothing. Fuck.
Once, I went to New York ( 2003 ) for a few days and did not reach out to any friends or visit any professional acquaintances, just me all alone. And I did catch the chill, that sinking feeling of what an insanely intimidating city it is for most people, impossible barriers to circumvent everywhere you turn.
I spent five years ( 2013 start ) slowly preparing for return visits to New York. Reaching out repeatedly, but respectfully, to galleries and museum curators. So I was lucky to have a handful of people that would actually be happy enough to speak with me, during that one trip before the pandemic hit, early in 2019.
The pandemic gave me more time to politely hustle more folks in NY, who in turn for the first time in their professional lives had the time to be hassled.
Coal can be turned into diamonds.
So I just started my regular New York trips again in September 2022. Good to see friends and their families happy and healthy. Good to feel New York all hustle and bustle again. Good to be able to wander into galleries and say hello.
Good to witness a classic NYC street diss - a large bulky older woman accidentally ramming into a very lithe and beautiful older woman and the lovely woman, stepping away and without missing a beat - “excuse me, SIR.”
I love New York.
Many years ago, in the Economist, I read that there is something like 40,000 unrepresented artists in New York seeking opportunities to exhibit their work ..... assuming that 95% of them produce shit work, that means 2,000 talented artists seeking ...... and there is what ? 50 worthwhile galleries in NYC ? ..... if so - that’s 40 artists per gallery ..... and those 50 galleries would maybe have the chance to take on one new artist per year, most likely one work in the context of a trial-run group show ....... damn, the math really sucks.
I am fortunate to have even gotten my foot in the door.
Just want to say a heartfelt thank you to that handful of gallerists who are willing to speak with me when I drop by, because the way everything is set up blows putrid chunks for you all as much as it does for artists.
Important to keep that in mind.
NOTE - Thank you Charlotte, watching you TOTALLY ROCK New York after such a brutal, lonely and dispiriting first few weeks was truly inspiring. That really helped me make the decision to finally start directly approaching people in the art industry in New York.
November 2022, An Amalgam of Influences ( 1 )
November 2022
An Amalgam of Influences ( 1 )
Last month I wrote a short missive regarding artists that I have met who falsely claim that their practice is without influence or precedent. Assholes.
So this month, I want to write about two primary influences upon my work and a totally unoriginal approach as to how to best incorporate ‘primary’ artists into one’s practice.
Moyra Davey.
Her fine work encompassing; film/video, extensive writing published in book form and her photography have all had a definite impact upon my practice and thinking regarding same. Differing contents often require different platforms to best convey a message, although a single message can sometimes be extrapolated across those same platforms to great effect. Her work has made me cognizant of this. Using the moving image / still image to document, often utilizing a very technically flat effect, that which you see around you every day while often eliminating a lot but not all of the surrounding environment is another key lesson I have learned at her knee ( so to speak ). The importance of minimizing but not eliminating situational context. A delicate balance.
She has created a series of photographic works - and exhibits of them - that involve folding the prints up, taping them, and then mailing them without an envelope. They are then reopened and the photographs are presented folds, stamps, tape, addresses and all. I saw a small, very elegant, exhibit of these pieces over twenty years ago and it really got through to me. The idea of allowing a randomized industrial process to play a part in a works development and presentation ..... damn ......
Michael Snow.
An obvious antecedent to Moyra Davey ( and fellow Canadian ) and again the same lessons apply as mentioned above. Best to be adventuresome with content and the platforms used, and what is the best content vs. usage scenario? Sculpture, film/video, photography, painting, drawing, digital realm? Etc. The essential lesson that I have picked up from my enjoyment of Snow’s practice over many decades is one regarding scale and placement. Not all works have to be grandiose, although sometimes they do. I once saw a regular small photograph of his exhibited on the same wall as one of his massive photographs presented in a lightbox - just those two works on that wall. And not all works by an artist have to be placed on a wall, some works can be freestanding - allowing for a quite different form of engagement. That has meant a lot to me as a kid, teenager and adult.
His use of slide machines ( remember that tech era ? ) to create an endless sequence of images that is controlled by when you walk into the room and when you walk out of the room always struck me as brilliant. The work had a life before you engaged with it and continues to have a life after you have left. That endless almost loom type sound resonating through the rest of the gallery ......
Again, the concept of allowing a random industrialized process to play a role in the development and final presentation of a work or series of works. Hot Damn !
MD / MS Amalgam.
As a teenager I revered Snow ( still do, especially his entire corpus of experimental films ) which primed me to be very open to and accepting of Davey, herself deeply influenced by Snow. Being aware of lineage is an important first step of making a successful amalgam of one’s own influences.
All of the lessons listed above are continually being churned into the vat of vaguely rancid butter that is my practice. Alongside lessons learned from the careful study of Kara Walker, David Hockney, Huma Bhabha, Richard Serra - artists that I have previously written about ( and there are quite a few that I still have to address ).
But the true amalgam ( for me ) here with Davey and Snow, is to incorporate industrial processes at some point in a works development but then let go of that and revert to more traditional modes of working and thusly presentation. We live in a world and culture where this is true of almost everything we come in contact with on a daily basis. Snow and Davey make work that seamlessly blends in with that. Also, they both keep a strong focus on the real world around us and our place and movement within it. Also, our relationships with objects and how we objectify others. In other words, politics.
Yet another lesson I feel strongly about.
An Amalgam of Influences ( 1 )
Last month I wrote a short missive regarding artists that I have met who falsely claim that their practice is without influence or precedent. Assholes.
So this month, I want to write about two primary influences upon my work and a totally unoriginal approach as to how to best incorporate ‘primary’ artists into one’s practice.
Moyra Davey.
Her fine work encompassing; film/video, extensive writing published in book form and her photography have all had a definite impact upon my practice and thinking regarding same. Differing contents often require different platforms to best convey a message, although a single message can sometimes be extrapolated across those same platforms to great effect. Her work has made me cognizant of this. Using the moving image / still image to document, often utilizing a very technically flat effect, that which you see around you every day while often eliminating a lot but not all of the surrounding environment is another key lesson I have learned at her knee ( so to speak ). The importance of minimizing but not eliminating situational context. A delicate balance.
She has created a series of photographic works - and exhibits of them - that involve folding the prints up, taping them, and then mailing them without an envelope. They are then reopened and the photographs are presented folds, stamps, tape, addresses and all. I saw a small, very elegant, exhibit of these pieces over twenty years ago and it really got through to me. The idea of allowing a randomized industrial process to play a part in a works development and presentation ..... damn ......
Michael Snow.
An obvious antecedent to Moyra Davey ( and fellow Canadian ) and again the same lessons apply as mentioned above. Best to be adventuresome with content and the platforms used, and what is the best content vs. usage scenario? Sculpture, film/video, photography, painting, drawing, digital realm? Etc. The essential lesson that I have picked up from my enjoyment of Snow’s practice over many decades is one regarding scale and placement. Not all works have to be grandiose, although sometimes they do. I once saw a regular small photograph of his exhibited on the same wall as one of his massive photographs presented in a lightbox - just those two works on that wall. And not all works by an artist have to be placed on a wall, some works can be freestanding - allowing for a quite different form of engagement. That has meant a lot to me as a kid, teenager and adult.
His use of slide machines ( remember that tech era ? ) to create an endless sequence of images that is controlled by when you walk into the room and when you walk out of the room always struck me as brilliant. The work had a life before you engaged with it and continues to have a life after you have left. That endless almost loom type sound resonating through the rest of the gallery ......
Again, the concept of allowing a random industrialized process to play a role in the development and final presentation of a work or series of works. Hot Damn !
MD / MS Amalgam.
As a teenager I revered Snow ( still do, especially his entire corpus of experimental films ) which primed me to be very open to and accepting of Davey, herself deeply influenced by Snow. Being aware of lineage is an important first step of making a successful amalgam of one’s own influences.
All of the lessons listed above are continually being churned into the vat of vaguely rancid butter that is my practice. Alongside lessons learned from the careful study of Kara Walker, David Hockney, Huma Bhabha, Richard Serra - artists that I have previously written about ( and there are quite a few that I still have to address ).
But the true amalgam ( for me ) here with Davey and Snow, is to incorporate industrial processes at some point in a works development but then let go of that and revert to more traditional modes of working and thusly presentation. We live in a world and culture where this is true of almost everything we come in contact with on a daily basis. Snow and Davey make work that seamlessly blends in with that. Also, they both keep a strong focus on the real world around us and our place and movement within it. Also, our relationships with objects and how we objectify others. In other words, politics.
Yet another lesson I feel strongly about.
October 2022, The Social Role of Influence
October 2022
The Social Role of Influence
A few years ago, I had the displeasure of having to speak with a really stupid and talentless ‘artist’ who was still in his teenage years. He was having an affair of some kind with my then landlords, who were such a creepy drug-assed husband and wife ( with kids ).
So I asked this amoral moron who his influences were and he replied haughtily that his work was totally unique and that no artist had ever influenced him.
My reply was “good luck with that.”
Of course, his arrogance was based upon the fact that he knew absolutely nothing about art or art history at all ..... apart from obviously having once seen a reproduction of an early super-crappy Basquiat work that he was endlessly regurgitating.
A few years prior to that, I was attempting to make painful conversation with an older ( male ) artist at a small dinner party who made the very same claim to having a truly unique and completely uninfluenced practice.
My reply, which unfortunately silenced the room, was “fuck off, bitch.”
Why deny that which cannot be denied ? You gain nothing and lose everything.
Your influences are always there - writ large - all over every piece of work you have ever created. And as anybody with a basic level of intelligence knows, originality stems from a very clever mixing of many individual artists work from many different eras / cultures. And that can only be achieved if you work very hard at it, for a very long time. Your forbearers are still very much present but sublimated in intriguing ways.
Always publicly and privately acknowledge your influences. Always be willing and able to discuss not only their individual practices, but also their obvious role in your own practice and that of your peers.
Don’t be rude.
The Social Role of Influence
A few years ago, I had the displeasure of having to speak with a really stupid and talentless ‘artist’ who was still in his teenage years. He was having an affair of some kind with my then landlords, who were such a creepy drug-assed husband and wife ( with kids ).
So I asked this amoral moron who his influences were and he replied haughtily that his work was totally unique and that no artist had ever influenced him.
My reply was “good luck with that.”
Of course, his arrogance was based upon the fact that he knew absolutely nothing about art or art history at all ..... apart from obviously having once seen a reproduction of an early super-crappy Basquiat work that he was endlessly regurgitating.
A few years prior to that, I was attempting to make painful conversation with an older ( male ) artist at a small dinner party who made the very same claim to having a truly unique and completely uninfluenced practice.
My reply, which unfortunately silenced the room, was “fuck off, bitch.”
Why deny that which cannot be denied ? You gain nothing and lose everything.
Your influences are always there - writ large - all over every piece of work you have ever created. And as anybody with a basic level of intelligence knows, originality stems from a very clever mixing of many individual artists work from many different eras / cultures. And that can only be achieved if you work very hard at it, for a very long time. Your forbearers are still very much present but sublimated in intriguing ways.
Always publicly and privately acknowledge your influences. Always be willing and able to discuss not only their individual practices, but also their obvious role in your own practice and that of your peers.
Don’t be rude.
September 2022, Regarding my most recent ‘wall mounted sculptures’.
September 2022Regarding my most recent ‘wall mounted sculptures’.
I guess the following writing is the first attempt at some jumbled notes regarding my most recent series of ‘wall sculptures’. Please see my Instagram account for more photos of these works.
This is also me trying to collect my thoughts, in order to begin the long process of creating a short exhibition proposal, while continuing to produce the actual series.
Anyhow, in the summer of 2020, I found myself unthinkingly folding up a piece of stray canvas on my studio floor - and when I was pleased with the shape - I gaffer taped it all and then applied a few layers of gesso to the front to further help glue it together. Proceeded to paint it and when dry and done I then stuck it to the wall with a strong archival tape on the back.
I was intrigued. I had never taken this exact approach before. Something new, something inherently challenging for both me and whatever audience this piece ( and it’s brethren ) might find.
Even though these works started out being fairly slick technically and quite adult / sophisticated in terms of content, after making a handful of them ( mostly for the “A MULE” exhibit on my website ) I pretty much stopped making them and turned back to photography, drawing, etc.
Willfully ignoring an ( art ) issue often helps clarify it for me, which was the case here. After almost two years, I realized that this new approach to my ‘wall sculptures’ was to be best done in a deliberately childish manner and as a pure distillation of my drawing and painting rendered through torn and cut materials such as cardboard, styrofoam, plus gaffer tape, acrylic paint, etc. Make them on the floor as quickly as possible, thinking as little as possible, letting randomness and luck guide me - gambling ! - duplicating the conditions, both physical and emotional by which I created art when I was very young.
Special mention must be made here for Huma Bhabha, Bill Traylor and Kara Walker. Their respective practices also gave me the inspiration to try this, after the basics had sorted themselves out in my subconscious.
The subject matter - so far - has often emerged as being things that really bothered me, or concerned me greatly, as a kid. Plus, I was always fascinated by religious artifacts when I was a child, although I grew up in a resolutely non-religious environment ( not ‘anti-‘ just ‘non’ ) and these works all seem to relate to that to varying degrees.
Mythology too.
And what happens when you feel the boot on the back of your neck ? What happens to you ? What happens to the motherfucker wearing the boot ?
When I was a kid my parents always let me watch the news, also documentaries on TV, no matter how rough the content. I am soon to turn 57, so Images from the Vietnam War and conflicts in Africa plus Central America really stuck with me. I think that was partly due to my enjoyment of ancient African art and that of the Mayan civilization, etc ( thank you yet again National Geographic magazine and for regular trips to museums ) and I sensed that a lot of people had been getting royally screwed over for a very long time. Plus, I just really and on a deeply intuitive level HATED the idea of one person controlling and manipulating another - especially through violence.
Yet that was everywhere.
So this series of ‘wall sculpture’ works is about exploring and then trying to express that initial horror. That internal horror. I had no idea if I would turn out any better or any worse than those people I loathed.
And as an adult, how do you make some thing beautiful out of all that ?
NOTE - the works in this series are all to be 3-D scanned and then 3-D printed in metal or a composite graphite material and then given duplicate paint jobs to the photos of them you see here on my website or on my Instagram account. So there is a carefully hidden technological component, which I will address in upcoming writing, alongside a host of other matters not mentioned here either.
August 2022, New ‘Old Stuff’ section added to website / I often suck
August 2022
New ‘Old Stuff’ section added to website / I often suck
Hooray ?
So, finally, after much procrastination on my part, there is a new ‘old stuff’ section added to my website.
Or maybe I should subscribe it specifically to a lack of enthusiasm, seeing as for me this section is all ‘old hat’ and I am forever surprising people with my complete and utter lack of sentimentality. I very much live in the present moment with a partial slitted eye towards the future, the past is there to rear it’s ugly head ( arse, actually ) only when absolutely necessary. Learn from past mistakes and all that ......
Also, it is difficult to go through old works, seeing as so much of it is awful and so little of it has any merit. My practice has always progressed at a very rapid clip and this whole hindsight / self-review / awfulness thing is a natural byproduct of that.
Time is a Bitch Goddess.
Respect.
I am starting off with works from the “Exhumed 2007 - 2019” catalogue, favouring pieces from closer to the beginning of that arbitrary timeline. That catalogue - in it’s entirety - provided all of the original content for my website. Pre-2019 works will vanish from the individual drawing, painting, etc, sections over the next three months.
Over the next year, I will slowly start adding in pieces from as far back as 1991, which was when I mounted my first ( self- produced and self-curated ) solo exhibit. I’ll maintain the other time limit at 2019 for this section, given how productive I am, and yes, even I find that productivity a bit disconcerting ......
..... and I have such a long way to go yet, as a person, as an artist.
Creating this new ‘old stuff’ section has made me way more aware of that.
And that is a good thing, in the long run.
New ‘Old Stuff’ section added to website / I often suck
Hooray ?
So, finally, after much procrastination on my part, there is a new ‘old stuff’ section added to my website.
Or maybe I should subscribe it specifically to a lack of enthusiasm, seeing as for me this section is all ‘old hat’ and I am forever surprising people with my complete and utter lack of sentimentality. I very much live in the present moment with a partial slitted eye towards the future, the past is there to rear it’s ugly head ( arse, actually ) only when absolutely necessary. Learn from past mistakes and all that ......
Also, it is difficult to go through old works, seeing as so much of it is awful and so little of it has any merit. My practice has always progressed at a very rapid clip and this whole hindsight / self-review / awfulness thing is a natural byproduct of that.
Time is a Bitch Goddess.
Respect.
I am starting off with works from the “Exhumed 2007 - 2019” catalogue, favouring pieces from closer to the beginning of that arbitrary timeline. That catalogue - in it’s entirety - provided all of the original content for my website. Pre-2019 works will vanish from the individual drawing, painting, etc, sections over the next three months.
Over the next year, I will slowly start adding in pieces from as far back as 1991, which was when I mounted my first ( self- produced and self-curated ) solo exhibit. I’ll maintain the other time limit at 2019 for this section, given how productive I am, and yes, even I find that productivity a bit disconcerting ......
..... and I have such a long way to go yet, as a person, as an artist.
Creating this new ‘old stuff’ section has made me way more aware of that.
And that is a good thing, in the long run.
July 2022, Canada / Eliminate Government Funding of Visual Art
July 2022
Canada / Eliminate Government Funding of Visual Art
For those of you reading this who are not Canadian, the entire Canadian visual art world subsists entirely upon funding from the Canadian government ( municipal, provincial and federal ).
I have come to the unavoidable conclusion that all this funding should be eliminated. Put the same amount towards medical research and care, environmental concerns, etc.
This would be the single best thing to ever happen to Canadian art.
And no, I am not being a hypocrite, as I have never applied for - nor received any money - to fund my practice or exhibits. Even when I was living out on the street, and then experiencing a period of catastrophic poverty ( during which I had a place to ‘hide out’ ) I still kept my practice going with some paper, pens, pencils and markers plus a small camera that I managed to hold on to. And all that was after having had to destroy most everything I had ever made, as I had nowhere to store my prior work.
As a result, my work became much better. Not worth the insane stress or malnutrition, but still .....
During that period I really began to notice the sheer mediocrity of Canadian contemporary art.
It occurred to me that nobody really has to try - not artists, not galleries, not MFA programs, not curators, because there is no art market here. The government covers the costs of all production for everybody, so nobody has to truly worry about actually selling or promoting work - locally or internationally.
Artists don’t have to survive a brutal Darwinian reality, not here, not now.
So they always dumb it down and keep on appropriating ‘safe’ art that already has a strong funding history. Galleries, etc, encourage this in order to maintain their own funding.
Circle jerks in white cubes.
By eliminating all visual art funding, you suddenly set everybody free to make the best work they possibly can, to exhibit the best work they can, etc.
Free to fight the good fight, because there is no other fight.
Once the quality rises enough ( that would take a few decades ), this country could then truly compete internationally on all levels. Canada could develop an actual art market, a strong one, which becomes a self-perpetuating cycle that is the mirror image of the current reality.
This would all rest upon artists shoulders, as it should. A commitment to originality, to clarity, to strength. If we don’t bring the heat in the first place ......
I know all this will never happen - but damn, wouldn’t it be beautiful if it did ?
Rock ‘n Roll. Fucking A, Bubba,
NOTE - Oh, and one other thing, practicing artists who teach in MFA programs should be legally barred from exhibiting with galleries and museums during their tenure, because it is a total conflict of interest.
Canada / Eliminate Government Funding of Visual Art
For those of you reading this who are not Canadian, the entire Canadian visual art world subsists entirely upon funding from the Canadian government ( municipal, provincial and federal ).
I have come to the unavoidable conclusion that all this funding should be eliminated. Put the same amount towards medical research and care, environmental concerns, etc.
This would be the single best thing to ever happen to Canadian art.
And no, I am not being a hypocrite, as I have never applied for - nor received any money - to fund my practice or exhibits. Even when I was living out on the street, and then experiencing a period of catastrophic poverty ( during which I had a place to ‘hide out’ ) I still kept my practice going with some paper, pens, pencils and markers plus a small camera that I managed to hold on to. And all that was after having had to destroy most everything I had ever made, as I had nowhere to store my prior work.
As a result, my work became much better. Not worth the insane stress or malnutrition, but still .....
During that period I really began to notice the sheer mediocrity of Canadian contemporary art.
It occurred to me that nobody really has to try - not artists, not galleries, not MFA programs, not curators, because there is no art market here. The government covers the costs of all production for everybody, so nobody has to truly worry about actually selling or promoting work - locally or internationally.
Artists don’t have to survive a brutal Darwinian reality, not here, not now.
So they always dumb it down and keep on appropriating ‘safe’ art that already has a strong funding history. Galleries, etc, encourage this in order to maintain their own funding.
Circle jerks in white cubes.
By eliminating all visual art funding, you suddenly set everybody free to make the best work they possibly can, to exhibit the best work they can, etc.
Free to fight the good fight, because there is no other fight.
Once the quality rises enough ( that would take a few decades ), this country could then truly compete internationally on all levels. Canada could develop an actual art market, a strong one, which becomes a self-perpetuating cycle that is the mirror image of the current reality.
This would all rest upon artists shoulders, as it should. A commitment to originality, to clarity, to strength. If we don’t bring the heat in the first place ......
I know all this will never happen - but damn, wouldn’t it be beautiful if it did ?
Rock ‘n Roll. Fucking A, Bubba,
NOTE - Oh, and one other thing, practicing artists who teach in MFA programs should be legally barred from exhibiting with galleries and museums during their tenure, because it is a total conflict of interest.
June 2022, "aA" site exhibit writing
June 2022
aA site exhibit writing
I am writing this on a beautiful summer morning at my studio, ordinarily a bastion of calmness and quiet. But not today, as there’s is some serious demolition happening right outside my windows ( involving a huge and very old air conditioning unit ), and that is making the children in the nursery / pre-school downstairs very antsy and loud, understandably so.
So I feel that I am suddenly fighting an uphill battle to write these words, which is funny, as the works in this aA site exhibit were made so fluidly, without viscosity of any kind.
I wanted the writing here to closely parallel that experience, but I ( unwittingly ) procrastinated until today and the writing is due tomorrow for my website guy.
Crap.
So I’m going to have to stand w-a-y back and take a very removed stance here.
Maybe not such a bad thing, seeing as Tauba Auerbach - the very fine artist who got me started down this particular path via my inhaling of the SFMOMA catalogue for her “S v Z” solo exhibit ( 2022 ) - produces work that conceptually embodies the mathematical, physical and metaphysical reverberations / data set remnants of her chosen subjects but also that the works themselves as physical objects seemingly have sweet-fuck-all to with their subject matter.
It is that very contradiction, itself an illusion, that hooked me.
Seems like Magic, which I do not believe in.
And also Alchemy, which I do believe in, as it is simply scientific progress cloaked in mysticism.
So her work is Alchemic, to me.
Awesome, those work-guys are taking a well deserved break from what I am now calling ‘the Egyptian job’ ( that old air conditioning unit looks suspiciously like a big limestone block for a pyramid ) and now the kids downstairs are loud but happy.
One cold yet crisp day this past winter, I found myself idly digitally screwing around with a photograph that I was quite displeased with, ripping it up and radically reassembling it. So therapeutic, like a cat slowly pulling apart a ball of wool thread, and I suddenly thought to myself ( and this is a game that I play sometimes as a creative exercise, various artist names can be used ) ‘what would Tauba Auerbach do ?’.
Well ..... she’d do exactly what I was doing ..... but the disassembly would serve a very real master, to show us the mirror side of the object/subject from the other side of the mirror, how it would look represented in higher-dimensional terms. I have always interpreted her ‘drawings’ and ‘paintings’ to be interpretations of the only way we could possibly ‘see’ a higher dimensional object/subject in our physical plane - and with our incredibly limited senses even within that environment - and that would be that we could only perceive a constantly morphing cross section of that subject/object as it moved through a vanishingly thin plane right in front of us. A ‘snout to tail’ animated series of full colour hyper-detailed ultrasound scans in fluid order. Just as the only way to see a representation of a three dimensional object/subject represented two dimensionally in a completely natural manner is via it’s shadow on a surface, the only way to possibly perceive a higher dimensional object/subject is via it’s shadow - cast upon our dimension, three dimensionally, in the air right in front of us.
There is something feline about her practice.
So, there I am, suddenly ‘happy enough’ with a thoroughly malated piece-of-shit photograph. Interesting, seeing as I always destroy “what would ________ do ?” pieces as they are appropriative in a manner that I am uncomfortable with. Until now. There is something here that could rapidly diverge from it’s point of origin and thusly become something exhibiting a semblance of originality .....
NOTE - there was no way to complete above sentence without an inadvertent pun. Weird.
Uh, the methodology here ( for me ) is to take a photo of something ( a shadow, as it were ) that I see every damn day, to then slowly tease it apart, stopping before it becomes thoroughly unrecognizable as it’s original self. In this, I succeeded with some of the works in the aA site exhibit but failed spectacularly with others in the show. Hit and miss, part of the process, one defines the other and vice versa.
Trying to get at the cross section.
Utilizing repetition of the subject as pure form, something so slippery you can never grasp it.
Addition, subtraction, division.
Addition, subtraction, division.
Addition, subtraction, division.
Which quickly became so natural. Fluid.
The work-guys never came back. The nursery / day care / pre-school downstairs is playing their beautiful ( an endless Brian Eno style loop of a Claude Debussy fragment ) ‘sleepy time’ music which makes me all nappy-time as well and it is a beautiful Friday summer afternoon.
In my own way, I think what I am trying to get at with these aA series of works ( which I will continue to make, same as my A MULE series of works ), is not that dissimilar from what Tauba Auerbach is trying to get at - what senses do we lack that we cannot see, hear, feel, another world all around us ? We ‘see’ a laughably narrow range of light, for example. But science, and occasionally mysticism, allow us to see representations / interpretations of that which is ordinarily beyond us.
And how do you attempt to smuggle a fragment of that across the great divide ?
aA = after Auerbach
I had been aware ( a fanboy, actually ) of her work for over a decade before pursuing that SFMOMA catalogue but it really clarified and deepened my understanding of her wonderful practice. So elegant, so oblique.
And I am clumsy, and forthright, but that is OK.
Ultimately, all paths have the same end.
Time to go for a walk.
aA site exhibit writing
I am writing this on a beautiful summer morning at my studio, ordinarily a bastion of calmness and quiet. But not today, as there’s is some serious demolition happening right outside my windows ( involving a huge and very old air conditioning unit ), and that is making the children in the nursery / pre-school downstairs very antsy and loud, understandably so.
So I feel that I am suddenly fighting an uphill battle to write these words, which is funny, as the works in this aA site exhibit were made so fluidly, without viscosity of any kind.
I wanted the writing here to closely parallel that experience, but I ( unwittingly ) procrastinated until today and the writing is due tomorrow for my website guy.
Crap.
So I’m going to have to stand w-a-y back and take a very removed stance here.
Maybe not such a bad thing, seeing as Tauba Auerbach - the very fine artist who got me started down this particular path via my inhaling of the SFMOMA catalogue for her “S v Z” solo exhibit ( 2022 ) - produces work that conceptually embodies the mathematical, physical and metaphysical reverberations / data set remnants of her chosen subjects but also that the works themselves as physical objects seemingly have sweet-fuck-all to with their subject matter.
It is that very contradiction, itself an illusion, that hooked me.
Seems like Magic, which I do not believe in.
And also Alchemy, which I do believe in, as it is simply scientific progress cloaked in mysticism.
So her work is Alchemic, to me.
Awesome, those work-guys are taking a well deserved break from what I am now calling ‘the Egyptian job’ ( that old air conditioning unit looks suspiciously like a big limestone block for a pyramid ) and now the kids downstairs are loud but happy.
One cold yet crisp day this past winter, I found myself idly digitally screwing around with a photograph that I was quite displeased with, ripping it up and radically reassembling it. So therapeutic, like a cat slowly pulling apart a ball of wool thread, and I suddenly thought to myself ( and this is a game that I play sometimes as a creative exercise, various artist names can be used ) ‘what would Tauba Auerbach do ?’.
Well ..... she’d do exactly what I was doing ..... but the disassembly would serve a very real master, to show us the mirror side of the object/subject from the other side of the mirror, how it would look represented in higher-dimensional terms. I have always interpreted her ‘drawings’ and ‘paintings’ to be interpretations of the only way we could possibly ‘see’ a higher dimensional object/subject in our physical plane - and with our incredibly limited senses even within that environment - and that would be that we could only perceive a constantly morphing cross section of that subject/object as it moved through a vanishingly thin plane right in front of us. A ‘snout to tail’ animated series of full colour hyper-detailed ultrasound scans in fluid order. Just as the only way to see a representation of a three dimensional object/subject represented two dimensionally in a completely natural manner is via it’s shadow on a surface, the only way to possibly perceive a higher dimensional object/subject is via it’s shadow - cast upon our dimension, three dimensionally, in the air right in front of us.
There is something feline about her practice.
So, there I am, suddenly ‘happy enough’ with a thoroughly malated piece-of-shit photograph. Interesting, seeing as I always destroy “what would ________ do ?” pieces as they are appropriative in a manner that I am uncomfortable with. Until now. There is something here that could rapidly diverge from it’s point of origin and thusly become something exhibiting a semblance of originality .....
NOTE - there was no way to complete above sentence without an inadvertent pun. Weird.
Uh, the methodology here ( for me ) is to take a photo of something ( a shadow, as it were ) that I see every damn day, to then slowly tease it apart, stopping before it becomes thoroughly unrecognizable as it’s original self. In this, I succeeded with some of the works in the aA site exhibit but failed spectacularly with others in the show. Hit and miss, part of the process, one defines the other and vice versa.
Trying to get at the cross section.
Utilizing repetition of the subject as pure form, something so slippery you can never grasp it.
Addition, subtraction, division.
Addition, subtraction, division.
Addition, subtraction, division.
Which quickly became so natural. Fluid.
The work-guys never came back. The nursery / day care / pre-school downstairs is playing their beautiful ( an endless Brian Eno style loop of a Claude Debussy fragment ) ‘sleepy time’ music which makes me all nappy-time as well and it is a beautiful Friday summer afternoon.
In my own way, I think what I am trying to get at with these aA series of works ( which I will continue to make, same as my A MULE series of works ), is not that dissimilar from what Tauba Auerbach is trying to get at - what senses do we lack that we cannot see, hear, feel, another world all around us ? We ‘see’ a laughably narrow range of light, for example. But science, and occasionally mysticism, allow us to see representations / interpretations of that which is ordinarily beyond us.
And how do you attempt to smuggle a fragment of that across the great divide ?
aA = after Auerbach
I had been aware ( a fanboy, actually ) of her work for over a decade before pursuing that SFMOMA catalogue but it really clarified and deepened my understanding of her wonderful practice. So elegant, so oblique.
And I am clumsy, and forthright, but that is OK.
Ultimately, all paths have the same end.
Time to go for a walk.
May 2022, Regression Therapy / Treaty of Aggression
May 2022
Regression Therapy / Treaty of Aggression
Over the past few years, I have felt successful in my ongoing experiment to occasionally create works as I might have produced them as a teenager. Indeed, why limit my practice to my current state of mind, my current being ? Why not regress ? Honour the past and utilize it.
This requires a real honesty when peering into the rearview mirror. You are moving fast into an imagined future, keeping your hands on the wheel of the present, and the mirror is often distorted and blurry. Driving like Mad Max in a Mad Max world.
Don’t let yourself off the hook. Keep truckin’ leadfoot, keep swerving, but the world vanishes the moment I try to regress further, I cannot produce works as I might have as a child.
Not yet.
Damn Chasms.
I have no issue with continuing to create works, here and there, that explore my ‘acnera’ but I would really like to get back to a huge sheet or roll of paper spread over the floor, sitting on it with a pencil, pen, crayon or brush in hand, to get back to the joy of struggling to form watery clay ( God knows ) .... into people, trees, cars, houses, animals ..... no use for perspective, no use for time ...... ignore all spatial realities ......
Wait.
To create as a Deity creates ?
Never thought of it that way until just right now ......
Regression Therapy / Treaty of Aggression
Over the past few years, I have felt successful in my ongoing experiment to occasionally create works as I might have produced them as a teenager. Indeed, why limit my practice to my current state of mind, my current being ? Why not regress ? Honour the past and utilize it.
This requires a real honesty when peering into the rearview mirror. You are moving fast into an imagined future, keeping your hands on the wheel of the present, and the mirror is often distorted and blurry. Driving like Mad Max in a Mad Max world.
Don’t let yourself off the hook. Keep truckin’ leadfoot, keep swerving, but the world vanishes the moment I try to regress further, I cannot produce works as I might have as a child.
Not yet.
Damn Chasms.
I have no issue with continuing to create works, here and there, that explore my ‘acnera’ but I would really like to get back to a huge sheet or roll of paper spread over the floor, sitting on it with a pencil, pen, crayon or brush in hand, to get back to the joy of struggling to form watery clay ( God knows ) .... into people, trees, cars, houses, animals ..... no use for perspective, no use for time ...... ignore all spatial realities ......
Wait.
To create as a Deity creates ?
Never thought of it that way until just right now ......
April 2022, The Ethics of Works in Edition.
April 2022
The Ethics of Works in Edition.
An original done-by-my-hand work, what is my responsibility to it ?
A long time ago, I allowed a gallery owner to bully me into producing some of my work ‘in edition’, which I had always refused to do before then, and I have always regretted the decision to cave in to that pressure. Cowardly of me.
On a personal level, I think of my practice as being comprised of ‘unique works’ in that I feel free to explore the same content through ‘one-off’ pieces all in different media and different scales - I think of this as a ‘series’ of works - but I have never felt free to duplicate a work through producing ‘editions’.
That being said ......
I am beginning to think that this responsibility does not necessarily apply to every single thing I make. Somehow, intuitively, some of my content is beginning to feel replicate-able. The dividing line seems to be centred on how fun vs. how serious the image is. Things that are more light hearted are now calling out for ‘edition’ and thusly greater availability and a lower price point.
My long-time personal ethical concerns regarding ‘editions’ unfortunately also serves as a financial ‘barrier to entry’ in terms of somebody who would want to purchase a particular piece of content of mine, and that is also a serious ( external ) ethical concern.
Damn.
So by making an edition of a work, what is gained and what is lost ?
I think of art, real fine art ( as in not commercial, there is far too much of that crap out there ) as being a true place-marker in time. An accurate recording of emotional and intellectual internal / external realities. An unalterable point upon an ever evolving four-dimensional map, never to be visited again. And if you produce something in edition it looses that one-to-one uniqueness, in relation to it’s origin. Something ineffable gets mutilated, dissolved, lost.
What can be gained, under ideal circumstances, is spreading joy.
And that is a beautiful and powerful thing.
NOTE - there is one more aspect to this issue that I have been considering lately, and that is that by producing some works in edition, an artist can to a certain degree forestall speculation / speculators. I cheerfully admit to having that mercenary an attitude because I really do not want some asshole uncaringly wrecking whatever career gatekeepers might eventually allow me to have in the art industry, as an artist, while speculators blindly pursue their own greed for maximum return on an investment.
The Ethics of Works in Edition.
An original done-by-my-hand work, what is my responsibility to it ?
A long time ago, I allowed a gallery owner to bully me into producing some of my work ‘in edition’, which I had always refused to do before then, and I have always regretted the decision to cave in to that pressure. Cowardly of me.
On a personal level, I think of my practice as being comprised of ‘unique works’ in that I feel free to explore the same content through ‘one-off’ pieces all in different media and different scales - I think of this as a ‘series’ of works - but I have never felt free to duplicate a work through producing ‘editions’.
That being said ......
I am beginning to think that this responsibility does not necessarily apply to every single thing I make. Somehow, intuitively, some of my content is beginning to feel replicate-able. The dividing line seems to be centred on how fun vs. how serious the image is. Things that are more light hearted are now calling out for ‘edition’ and thusly greater availability and a lower price point.
My long-time personal ethical concerns regarding ‘editions’ unfortunately also serves as a financial ‘barrier to entry’ in terms of somebody who would want to purchase a particular piece of content of mine, and that is also a serious ( external ) ethical concern.
Damn.
So by making an edition of a work, what is gained and what is lost ?
I think of art, real fine art ( as in not commercial, there is far too much of that crap out there ) as being a true place-marker in time. An accurate recording of emotional and intellectual internal / external realities. An unalterable point upon an ever evolving four-dimensional map, never to be visited again. And if you produce something in edition it looses that one-to-one uniqueness, in relation to it’s origin. Something ineffable gets mutilated, dissolved, lost.
What can be gained, under ideal circumstances, is spreading joy.
And that is a beautiful and powerful thing.
NOTE - there is one more aspect to this issue that I have been considering lately, and that is that by producing some works in edition, an artist can to a certain degree forestall speculation / speculators. I cheerfully admit to having that mercenary an attitude because I really do not want some asshole uncaringly wrecking whatever career gatekeepers might eventually allow me to have in the art industry, as an artist, while speculators blindly pursue their own greed for maximum return on an investment.
March 2022, "ISMAV THE IMPALER" - Site Exhibit Writing
March 2022
"ISMAV THE IMPALER"
Site Exhibit writing, plus a brief explanation of each work
The title of this exhibit, nine black and white photographs in all, is my most favoured ( amongst many ) of my nicknames for my sister.
She died in December of 2017, of a brain aneurysm. 50 years old. Healthy, no warning.
She was an incredibly difficult and complex person, but also remarkably funny and intelligent. We both loved books, music and travelling.
I attempted, last year, to create an exhibit that dealt with the passing and memory of my parents and of my sister. I failed, spectacularly.
I jumped the gun, so to speak.
Recently, I decided to narrow it down to just Ismay - and to start from scratch again - constructing an exhibit as she most likely would have, had she been an artist.
Which gave me an interesting, quite narrow, set of ‘her chosen’ parameters to work within.
Gothic / Not Gothic.
Photography, black and white, mid-sized prints, lurking between realism and abstraction.
Influenced by classic Japanese photographers of the 1960s and 1970s such as Takuma Nakahira and Ishiuchi Miyako.
Most importantly, say as much as possible with as few works as possible.
Exhibited in an appropriate room; small, relatively low ceiling, no windows.
My sister was always the last person I would let see an exhibit of mine, after the hang/lighting/etc but before the opening. Just her and me. She was always right on the money with her critique. Always.
We saw a lot of exhibits together over the decades and we thoroughly dissected them during and afterwards ......
So this is me thinking of my departed sister through the focused lens of her strong preferences.
Conceptually and technically, so easy to put together. A pleasure, in fact.
And yeah, I really like this show a lot.
And Ismav the Impaler; the oft self-proclaimed “judge, jury and executioner” ?
She likes it.
A brief explanation of each work follows - but in a nutshell, these are all photographs I can so easily imagine her having taken herself. She would have been most pleased by their aesthetic and their content.
“Natural Death.”
We grew up in a rural environment in Canada and witnessed the death of many animals - both domestic and wild. Although that could be frightening or saddening, our parents always made it clear that death was natural and a part of life. My sister was always fascinated by absence, especially in this scenario. Which gave rise to some very complicated questions for her, as she vehemently did not believe in God, nor an afterlife - but we were both deeply fascinated by religion, which both intrigued and repelled our parents. So this bird represents absence.
“Retching, Irked.”
My sister was a hypochondriac, and her narcissism flowered fullest in her obsession with her own bodily travails. She loathed my constant good health, both physical and emotional. I watched her retching into a sink once and she was irked that the only thing that came out of her was an impressive quantity of spittle - “but I wanted blood ....” I recall her saying and then laughing at her own folly.
“Oily Residue.”
We were both endlessly impressed with Buddhist Monks who set themselves ablaze in protest of the various wars / conflicts / genocides in Southeast Asia when we were growing up. Fucking Hardcore, Dude. Total Respect. My sister once mockingly yelled at me “you think you’re so tough ?” at which point she did a spot-on pantomime of a monk setting himself on fire, right in front of me. Point well taken. So this photo is meant to depict the shadow / oily residue of that self-immolation. Right then, right there, upon the pavement - from the point of view of a witness.
“Wasted Impersonator.”
Again, the hypochondria, this is a photo I took of an actual medical scan my sister had done long before she died of that aneurysm. She had convinced herself that she had a broken neck, when in fact she had a mild case of whiplash from a car accident we were in. No joke, a van containing a wasted Elvis impersonator and his very stoned band pulled out right in front of us. Anyways, I deliberately used a flash to ‘burn out’ her head to represent the aneurysm. This is exactly the kind of completely oblique, self-mythologizing, self-depreciating, self-portrait she would have loved.
“Pet Jail.”
We were both fascinated by incarceration of all kinds, her even more so than me. She mentioned a few times over the decades that she constantly felt ‘trapped’. This window ( which has a heavy metal screen over it ) would have been something that would have intrigued her visually, as a representation of something embodying both an opening and an enclosure. She was always very comfortable with duality and did not feel that photography had to be ‘in focus’ all of the time. One of our jokes was to refer to the house we grew up in as the ‘pet jail’ which used to annoy our parents but also make them laugh - they called the two of us ‘incompetent wardens’ in return.
“Brave Magellan.”
We both loved inclement weather, going for walks - alone or together - in shitty conditions was always a pleasure. She once joked during a storm that ended up being much worse than we expected that it was like ‘rounding the horn’. So I managed to fake a photo taken within that kind of maelstrom, which she easily could have done herself, and which she would have been deeply pleased by. Pathetic fallacy, and all. She majored in comparative literature in University and we both read a lot of history. Magellan in particular fascinated us, talk about leaping into the unknown .......
“Snake Grave.”
Our parents decided to build, by hand, themselves, the house we grew up in. On a very private, very quiet, property surrounded by nature. It was a wonderful house once completed ( which seemingly took forever ), but neither my sister and I had particularly fond memories of that process as it brought out the best and the worst in our parents respective characters. Her and I were never quite sure if it was all worth it ...... so this photo is me / as her, taking a snapshot of a trench for the foundation of the house. At a very young age, she was terrified of falling into one of the foundation trenches, which we referred to as the ‘snake grave’ in later years.
“Daft Celts.’
Ismay became deeply intrigued by our Pict-Celtic-Viking heritage in later years, and took a bunch of photographs at sites she visited in the very north of England and throughout Scotland. I always thought she should also have done rubbings - so here I am using a small part of a photo I found hidden within a book after her death. I took a photo of the photo, severely cropped it, and then made some subtle changes ( digital realm ) darkening and blurring it. Ending up with a ‘rubbing’ she might have made, which would have been a ‘memento mori’ that I would have wanted to keep as something created by her own hand. Plus, seeing as she was always quite amused by making subtle and gross additions to ‘found imagery’ as was our mother ...... beware any newspaper or magazine left lying around the house ...... it was difficult not to add in moustaches, silly hats, horse piss / shit, etc ..... alas, and to get back on track here, my sister really loved horses. Seriously, that is probably why she saved this particular image.
“Graveyard Shifts.”
In our early twenties, when we were both living in Toronto, my sister and I worked graveyard shifts at factories, often with skeleton crews. Amazing money, but very damaging. She had started taking courses in technology during the day ( which she excelled at ) and I was up all day, every day, working on producing and directing various film, theatre and music projects, plus trying to keep my art practice going ...... as a result, there were a few years when neither my sister or I seemed to sleep. This crated an odd bond, an understanding between us, as we ended up viewing the world around us through that shared condition/experience - or shared lens, if you prefer. We always ended up being the person given the responsibility of locking up, etc, and every factory always had a gate to a work/storage yard in the back that was always the last thing you would have to remember.
"ISMAV THE IMPALER"
Site Exhibit writing, plus a brief explanation of each work
The title of this exhibit, nine black and white photographs in all, is my most favoured ( amongst many ) of my nicknames for my sister.
She died in December of 2017, of a brain aneurysm. 50 years old. Healthy, no warning.
She was an incredibly difficult and complex person, but also remarkably funny and intelligent. We both loved books, music and travelling.
I attempted, last year, to create an exhibit that dealt with the passing and memory of my parents and of my sister. I failed, spectacularly.
I jumped the gun, so to speak.
Recently, I decided to narrow it down to just Ismay - and to start from scratch again - constructing an exhibit as she most likely would have, had she been an artist.
Which gave me an interesting, quite narrow, set of ‘her chosen’ parameters to work within.
Gothic / Not Gothic.
Photography, black and white, mid-sized prints, lurking between realism and abstraction.
Influenced by classic Japanese photographers of the 1960s and 1970s such as Takuma Nakahira and Ishiuchi Miyako.
Most importantly, say as much as possible with as few works as possible.
Exhibited in an appropriate room; small, relatively low ceiling, no windows.
My sister was always the last person I would let see an exhibit of mine, after the hang/lighting/etc but before the opening. Just her and me. She was always right on the money with her critique. Always.
We saw a lot of exhibits together over the decades and we thoroughly dissected them during and afterwards ......
So this is me thinking of my departed sister through the focused lens of her strong preferences.
Conceptually and technically, so easy to put together. A pleasure, in fact.
And yeah, I really like this show a lot.
And Ismav the Impaler; the oft self-proclaimed “judge, jury and executioner” ?
She likes it.
A brief explanation of each work follows - but in a nutshell, these are all photographs I can so easily imagine her having taken herself. She would have been most pleased by their aesthetic and their content.
“Natural Death.”
We grew up in a rural environment in Canada and witnessed the death of many animals - both domestic and wild. Although that could be frightening or saddening, our parents always made it clear that death was natural and a part of life. My sister was always fascinated by absence, especially in this scenario. Which gave rise to some very complicated questions for her, as she vehemently did not believe in God, nor an afterlife - but we were both deeply fascinated by religion, which both intrigued and repelled our parents. So this bird represents absence.
“Retching, Irked.”
My sister was a hypochondriac, and her narcissism flowered fullest in her obsession with her own bodily travails. She loathed my constant good health, both physical and emotional. I watched her retching into a sink once and she was irked that the only thing that came out of her was an impressive quantity of spittle - “but I wanted blood ....” I recall her saying and then laughing at her own folly.
“Oily Residue.”
We were both endlessly impressed with Buddhist Monks who set themselves ablaze in protest of the various wars / conflicts / genocides in Southeast Asia when we were growing up. Fucking Hardcore, Dude. Total Respect. My sister once mockingly yelled at me “you think you’re so tough ?” at which point she did a spot-on pantomime of a monk setting himself on fire, right in front of me. Point well taken. So this photo is meant to depict the shadow / oily residue of that self-immolation. Right then, right there, upon the pavement - from the point of view of a witness.
“Wasted Impersonator.”
Again, the hypochondria, this is a photo I took of an actual medical scan my sister had done long before she died of that aneurysm. She had convinced herself that she had a broken neck, when in fact she had a mild case of whiplash from a car accident we were in. No joke, a van containing a wasted Elvis impersonator and his very stoned band pulled out right in front of us. Anyways, I deliberately used a flash to ‘burn out’ her head to represent the aneurysm. This is exactly the kind of completely oblique, self-mythologizing, self-depreciating, self-portrait she would have loved.
“Pet Jail.”
We were both fascinated by incarceration of all kinds, her even more so than me. She mentioned a few times over the decades that she constantly felt ‘trapped’. This window ( which has a heavy metal screen over it ) would have been something that would have intrigued her visually, as a representation of something embodying both an opening and an enclosure. She was always very comfortable with duality and did not feel that photography had to be ‘in focus’ all of the time. One of our jokes was to refer to the house we grew up in as the ‘pet jail’ which used to annoy our parents but also make them laugh - they called the two of us ‘incompetent wardens’ in return.
“Brave Magellan.”
We both loved inclement weather, going for walks - alone or together - in shitty conditions was always a pleasure. She once joked during a storm that ended up being much worse than we expected that it was like ‘rounding the horn’. So I managed to fake a photo taken within that kind of maelstrom, which she easily could have done herself, and which she would have been deeply pleased by. Pathetic fallacy, and all. She majored in comparative literature in University and we both read a lot of history. Magellan in particular fascinated us, talk about leaping into the unknown .......
“Snake Grave.”
Our parents decided to build, by hand, themselves, the house we grew up in. On a very private, very quiet, property surrounded by nature. It was a wonderful house once completed ( which seemingly took forever ), but neither my sister and I had particularly fond memories of that process as it brought out the best and the worst in our parents respective characters. Her and I were never quite sure if it was all worth it ...... so this photo is me / as her, taking a snapshot of a trench for the foundation of the house. At a very young age, she was terrified of falling into one of the foundation trenches, which we referred to as the ‘snake grave’ in later years.
“Daft Celts.’
Ismay became deeply intrigued by our Pict-Celtic-Viking heritage in later years, and took a bunch of photographs at sites she visited in the very north of England and throughout Scotland. I always thought she should also have done rubbings - so here I am using a small part of a photo I found hidden within a book after her death. I took a photo of the photo, severely cropped it, and then made some subtle changes ( digital realm ) darkening and blurring it. Ending up with a ‘rubbing’ she might have made, which would have been a ‘memento mori’ that I would have wanted to keep as something created by her own hand. Plus, seeing as she was always quite amused by making subtle and gross additions to ‘found imagery’ as was our mother ...... beware any newspaper or magazine left lying around the house ...... it was difficult not to add in moustaches, silly hats, horse piss / shit, etc ..... alas, and to get back on track here, my sister really loved horses. Seriously, that is probably why she saved this particular image.
“Graveyard Shifts.”
In our early twenties, when we were both living in Toronto, my sister and I worked graveyard shifts at factories, often with skeleton crews. Amazing money, but very damaging. She had started taking courses in technology during the day ( which she excelled at ) and I was up all day, every day, working on producing and directing various film, theatre and music projects, plus trying to keep my art practice going ...... as a result, there were a few years when neither my sister or I seemed to sleep. This crated an odd bond, an understanding between us, as we ended up viewing the world around us through that shared condition/experience - or shared lens, if you prefer. We always ended up being the person given the responsibility of locking up, etc, and every factory always had a gate to a work/storage yard in the back that was always the last thing you would have to remember.
February 2022, The benefits and perils of documentation.
February 2022
The benefits and perils of documentation.
I added a ‘studio’ section to my website recently, after having started to post some similar images on my Instagram account a few weeks prior. The reason for all of this being that I am slowly upgrading my studio space with some professional caliber walls and lighting to better ‘exhibit’ my work within my own space, at my own pace. Also, to take my documentation, both photography and video, to a much higher level.
Put my best foot forward - and all that.
This got me to considering the benefits and perils of documentation, specifically in this new studio space.
The benefits include; being able to immediately view and self-critique my own work in a context much closer to that of a gallery or museum, being able to show my work to industry professionals at any time in that same context, being able to easily ( quality-wise ) document my work in this studio, the possibility of selling to buyers directly from the studio because of the upgrades, etc.
The perils include; all of the above ..... as I find myself already constantly thinking of works that I am producing in this new studio not as they are, in the moment, as they develop, but as how they will look when finally documented on my website and Instagram. Also, as to how they will look to clients when they are on the wall here.
Works need to be dealt with on a second-by-second basis, a minute-by-minute basis, a hour-by-hour basis, a day-by-day basis, as they shift and change and malate, they are - in their own way - alive.
So the path adjusts the end before it, not the end adjusting the path behind it.
But I am a fatalist, with this one single exception. My practice.
Sometimes it is best to ‘look the gift horse in the mouth’ long and hard. Always be wary of the gifts you give yourself, most especially.
Having recognized this issue, I can sidestep it easily enough.
I can put blinders on.
When I’m here.
The benefits and perils of documentation.
I added a ‘studio’ section to my website recently, after having started to post some similar images on my Instagram account a few weeks prior. The reason for all of this being that I am slowly upgrading my studio space with some professional caliber walls and lighting to better ‘exhibit’ my work within my own space, at my own pace. Also, to take my documentation, both photography and video, to a much higher level.
Put my best foot forward - and all that.
This got me to considering the benefits and perils of documentation, specifically in this new studio space.
The benefits include; being able to immediately view and self-critique my own work in a context much closer to that of a gallery or museum, being able to show my work to industry professionals at any time in that same context, being able to easily ( quality-wise ) document my work in this studio, the possibility of selling to buyers directly from the studio because of the upgrades, etc.
The perils include; all of the above ..... as I find myself already constantly thinking of works that I am producing in this new studio not as they are, in the moment, as they develop, but as how they will look when finally documented on my website and Instagram. Also, as to how they will look to clients when they are on the wall here.
Works need to be dealt with on a second-by-second basis, a minute-by-minute basis, a hour-by-hour basis, a day-by-day basis, as they shift and change and malate, they are - in their own way - alive.
So the path adjusts the end before it, not the end adjusting the path behind it.
But I am a fatalist, with this one single exception. My practice.
Sometimes it is best to ‘look the gift horse in the mouth’ long and hard. Always be wary of the gifts you give yourself, most especially.
Having recognized this issue, I can sidestep it easily enough.
I can put blinders on.
When I’m here.
January 2022, Regarding my Superkielbasa
January 2022
Regarding my Superkielbasa
A few people have lifted an eyebrow at my ‘overt deployment’ of cocks and balls in my practice over the course of 2020-2021.
Things like; are you a closet case ? Lacking access to Pussy ? WTF ? A general unease. Good.
The rail.
Third rails are meant to be stepped on, just make sure your timing is correct .....
But an explanation is due.
So, let’s start with truly ancient art, which was largely ( although by no means elusively ) preoccupied with fertility symbols. Both that of women and men. More recently, in the Rome that the various Caesar’s would have known, there were numerous ( which is to say A LOT ) of large publicly erect stone cocks on plinths everywhere. They were thought to provide good luck and protection. And as we all know, most recently that pornography has gone mainstream - schlongs spewing hot lava, at the touch of a button / click of a cursor / swipe.
As a straight male artist - and keep in mind I am 56 and grew up in a conservative environment - the LAST thing I want to confront or address in my art is the male appendage. Therefore, I felt that I must attempt to do so. Turned out to be liberating and hilarious. And yes, once out of the cage, it does seem to have become a bit of a conceptual monster running amok.
I do love women so, and I could happily produce nothing but slightly or highly abstracted representations of vulvas and breasts all day long, every day, but forcing myself to look in the male mirror - both individual and collective - is way more challenging.
Also more ridiculous, and that often makes for better art.
Challenge a ( seemingly large ) portion of the potential audience for my work, after having accepted the challenge to myself. Passing the buck.
So I think an entirely cock&ball-centric exhibit is in order.
The next step, right ?
The rail.
I have no sexual hang-ups, am very comfortable with ( and within ) my body, and thusly now quite enjoy deploying this new art-tool in my art-box, but these days it is obviously a conceptual, political, social and cultural lightning rod. Ouch.
Too bad, because it is the true symbol of one-half of humanity.
And I do loathe censorship so, self or societal. It’s ultimately detrimental.
The rail.
Regarding my Superkielbasa
A few people have lifted an eyebrow at my ‘overt deployment’ of cocks and balls in my practice over the course of 2020-2021.
Things like; are you a closet case ? Lacking access to Pussy ? WTF ? A general unease. Good.
The rail.
Third rails are meant to be stepped on, just make sure your timing is correct .....
But an explanation is due.
So, let’s start with truly ancient art, which was largely ( although by no means elusively ) preoccupied with fertility symbols. Both that of women and men. More recently, in the Rome that the various Caesar’s would have known, there were numerous ( which is to say A LOT ) of large publicly erect stone cocks on plinths everywhere. They were thought to provide good luck and protection. And as we all know, most recently that pornography has gone mainstream - schlongs spewing hot lava, at the touch of a button / click of a cursor / swipe.
As a straight male artist - and keep in mind I am 56 and grew up in a conservative environment - the LAST thing I want to confront or address in my art is the male appendage. Therefore, I felt that I must attempt to do so. Turned out to be liberating and hilarious. And yes, once out of the cage, it does seem to have become a bit of a conceptual monster running amok.
I do love women so, and I could happily produce nothing but slightly or highly abstracted representations of vulvas and breasts all day long, every day, but forcing myself to look in the male mirror - both individual and collective - is way more challenging.
Also more ridiculous, and that often makes for better art.
Challenge a ( seemingly large ) portion of the potential audience for my work, after having accepted the challenge to myself. Passing the buck.
So I think an entirely cock&ball-centric exhibit is in order.
The next step, right ?
The rail.
I have no sexual hang-ups, am very comfortable with ( and within ) my body, and thusly now quite enjoy deploying this new art-tool in my art-box, but these days it is obviously a conceptual, political, social and cultural lightning rod. Ouch.
Too bad, because it is the true symbol of one-half of humanity.
And I do loathe censorship so, self or societal. It’s ultimately detrimental.
The rail.
December 2021, My Photography
December 2021
My Photography
My photography has come to play a very specific role within the context of my overall practice.
I realized back in 2013 that I desperately needed to work outside of the studio on a regular basis, some kind of ongoing project done over a long period of time. This would automatically create a distance, a perspective, for the studio-based aspect of my practice. Seeing as I had hardly touched a camera in over a decade prior ( concentrating instead on drawing, sculpture and painting ) it seemed to best fit the criteria.
And I was not ready to start shooting film again, not yet. I’ll return to experimental film, where I started learning and creating art as an adult ( as opposed to the strong technical foundation in drawing and painting I received as a child / teenager ), at some point. Closure.
I quickly decided to limit my photographic subject matter to only what I noticed when out for walks - and this proved to be a great way to begin to see my daily environment ( Toronto ) in a new light ...... there is a lot of seemingly interesting stuff out there.
I also decided to never photograph people, only objects in their local environment, and that I could not ‘stage’ them in any way. Straight up documentation. Keep it all as real as possible and this has meant that a patina of blandness, homogeny and nothingness has become increasingly apparent. Rather than fight this, I have embraced it. Boring can be an legit aesthetic / conceptual angle, one I feel oddly compelled to pursue, at least in terms of photography although it is beginning to bleed into other aspects of my practice.
Interesting how some things just immediately pop out against the low-humming visual static that we all stumble around blindly within all day / every day. And those objects would be different for everybody, so dependant upon; mood, weather, light, traffic and people, plus other sources of randomness.
However, I’ll often walk right by a potential subject-object several times before I notice it, or is it newly there? A blank space filled? A bit disturbingly, I sometimes only become aware of the visual potential of certain object-subjects after they are removed.
Absence, damn.
And yeah, I like William Eggleston a lot, have for a very long time.
I’m starting to consider incorporating proper ( shot in my studio ) still life photography into my overall practice, while continuing with the ‘street stuff’. Early examples of this would be “Tumour” and “Implosion” on my website, in the photography section.
And some of my real-world photography has been getting seriously screwed with, within the digital realm. That will lead to collage, eventually. Collage is great fodder for formally-traditionally done paintings ........ etc.
Make the whole thing one big feedback loop.
My Photography
My photography has come to play a very specific role within the context of my overall practice.
I realized back in 2013 that I desperately needed to work outside of the studio on a regular basis, some kind of ongoing project done over a long period of time. This would automatically create a distance, a perspective, for the studio-based aspect of my practice. Seeing as I had hardly touched a camera in over a decade prior ( concentrating instead on drawing, sculpture and painting ) it seemed to best fit the criteria.
And I was not ready to start shooting film again, not yet. I’ll return to experimental film, where I started learning and creating art as an adult ( as opposed to the strong technical foundation in drawing and painting I received as a child / teenager ), at some point. Closure.
I quickly decided to limit my photographic subject matter to only what I noticed when out for walks - and this proved to be a great way to begin to see my daily environment ( Toronto ) in a new light ...... there is a lot of seemingly interesting stuff out there.
I also decided to never photograph people, only objects in their local environment, and that I could not ‘stage’ them in any way. Straight up documentation. Keep it all as real as possible and this has meant that a patina of blandness, homogeny and nothingness has become increasingly apparent. Rather than fight this, I have embraced it. Boring can be an legit aesthetic / conceptual angle, one I feel oddly compelled to pursue, at least in terms of photography although it is beginning to bleed into other aspects of my practice.
Interesting how some things just immediately pop out against the low-humming visual static that we all stumble around blindly within all day / every day. And those objects would be different for everybody, so dependant upon; mood, weather, light, traffic and people, plus other sources of randomness.
However, I’ll often walk right by a potential subject-object several times before I notice it, or is it newly there? A blank space filled? A bit disturbingly, I sometimes only become aware of the visual potential of certain object-subjects after they are removed.
Absence, damn.
And yeah, I like William Eggleston a lot, have for a very long time.
I’m starting to consider incorporating proper ( shot in my studio ) still life photography into my overall practice, while continuing with the ‘street stuff’. Early examples of this would be “Tumour” and “Implosion” on my website, in the photography section.
And some of my real-world photography has been getting seriously screwed with, within the digital realm. That will lead to collage, eventually. Collage is great fodder for formally-traditionally done paintings ........ etc.
Make the whole thing one big feedback loop.
November 2021, LSD Studio / RIP
November 2021
LSD Studio / RIP
The two photos above are the exterior and interior of the art studio I just moved out of ...... my new studio is the antithesis of this one, for better or worse.
LSD Studio, as it was branded by some mysterious tagger, was a concrete shell. Nothing more, nothing less. No sink, no storage, just two chairs, a ladder, the art supplies needed and whatever piece I happened to be working on. Minimalistic, rigorous. Casual beyond belief.
A beautiful, somewhat Asiatic, courtyard in the back and it faced onto one of Toronto’s more popular and interesting alleyways. Lovely women and random neighbourhood dogs would run in-and-out of the studio if the door was left open ( as it almost always was ). Extremely loose and surprisingly public.
Also, surprisingly monastic very early in the morning, which is my favourite time to paint or draw.
I could be either totally distracted, or suffer no distractions at all.
Never have had, never will have again, a studio remotely like it.
It’ll be missed but it is time to move on. I have different needs now.
RIP.
I did learn one thing at LSDS - that I am now truly committed to only making work that has emotional and intellectual content. No more pure abstraction. The last thing this world needs is another abstract artwork, so why bother ? Why heighten or broaden that particular trash mountain / funeral pyre ? There is already enough of that crap clogging the colon of the art world.
Oh yeah .... that’s right, almost forgot ..... because that is what people want to buy, mostly.
Pretty patterns and prettier colours. People do not want to be challenged or unexpectedly be cornered into thinking. Didacticism is a hard trap to avoid, admittedly, if you are playing with the firecracker of actual meaning.
Sadly, I have noted that I am getting less and less of a response from the majority of the art industry as I become more and more committed to the path that I am on. Funny, the minimal remaining positive response ( residue ? ) comes exclusively from the very highest-end of the industry worldwide ...... so maybe this approach to my practice has already inadvertently separated the wheat from the chaff ?
It would be sublime not to waste anybody’s time, nor have my time wasted. A blessing. Time is money, after all. Art is frozen time, framed.
Assemble my own small pyre in the empty concrete bunker of my mind.
RIP.
October 2021, Legit vs. Guerrilla
October 2021
Legit vs. Guerrilla
A while back ( January 2021 ) I wrote about public sculpture being torn down, worldwide.
I suggested that ‘counter monuments’ would be more effective. I still believe that but I am now considering a potentially deeper issue ......
The issue being that public sculpture is the easiest form of art to ignore.
You walk, cycle or drive past it every day and it becomes part of the scenery. It is only when somebody is visiting from out-of-town that you have the possibility of seeing it fresh again, through their perspective on your environment.
Only when a hometown public sculpture is ‘desecrated’ or torn down, do we tend to note it again, usually for the first time in years or decades.
So the Legit encounters the Guerrilla treatment and/or is cast out into the Void, thusly to regain it’s initial power.
Briefly, or longer term ?
So Guerrilla style ( protest, but not always ) installations or sculpture would appear to be much more effective - they do not stay past their welcome. It is better to leave the party very early, than to hang out to the bitter end. Better to be noted for your absence. We all instinctively know this but we all ignore it.
You go to a museum or gallery and check out some work, so the pieces in question pop in-and-out of your life quickly. A shard of time. Potentially a memory that will stay with you for a long time.
I had never thought about this particular time-based aspect of relating to / consuming / processing art until recently - and it is a bit unsettling but I think I’ll become a better artist for recognizing this and eventually coming to terms with it’s full implications.
The audience is a very tricky beast. Don’t ignore it.
Legit vs. Guerrilla
A while back ( January 2021 ) I wrote about public sculpture being torn down, worldwide.
I suggested that ‘counter monuments’ would be more effective. I still believe that but I am now considering a potentially deeper issue ......
The issue being that public sculpture is the easiest form of art to ignore.
You walk, cycle or drive past it every day and it becomes part of the scenery. It is only when somebody is visiting from out-of-town that you have the possibility of seeing it fresh again, through their perspective on your environment.
Only when a hometown public sculpture is ‘desecrated’ or torn down, do we tend to note it again, usually for the first time in years or decades.
So the Legit encounters the Guerrilla treatment and/or is cast out into the Void, thusly to regain it’s initial power.
Briefly, or longer term ?
So Guerrilla style ( protest, but not always ) installations or sculpture would appear to be much more effective - they do not stay past their welcome. It is better to leave the party very early, than to hang out to the bitter end. Better to be noted for your absence. We all instinctively know this but we all ignore it.
You go to a museum or gallery and check out some work, so the pieces in question pop in-and-out of your life quickly. A shard of time. Potentially a memory that will stay with you for a long time.
I had never thought about this particular time-based aspect of relating to / consuming / processing art until recently - and it is a bit unsettling but I think I’ll become a better artist for recognizing this and eventually coming to terms with it’s full implications.
The audience is a very tricky beast. Don’t ignore it.
September 2021, “A MULE.” - Site Exhibit Writing
September 2021
“A MULE.”
Note - there is detailed writing about individual works from the A MULE site exhibit on my Instagram account.
I believed her, when she told me she was a mule, and she seemed a bit surprised and intrigued that I knew what that entailed. Swallow packets of drugs ( cocaine, heroin ) then get on a plane and hope for the best. Gambling, very high stakes.
I met her at a party in New Orleans in 1992, we talked for a bit and I enjoyed her company.
Never heard mention of her, or ever saw her, again. Never asked.
Funny how certain people stick in your head and heart. She was lovely, forthright ( obviously, but there were ‘extenuating circumstances’ ) and intelligent.
A wild card. Bad-assed. Tougher and smarter than me,
I was working on a painting ( which became “A Mule passes the test.” ) in my studio, in 2008, when my mind drifted back to her - wondering how she was doing ....... I had thought of her from time to time over the years but this was different, for the first time it occurred to me that it would be interesting to explore her inner life through the twinned lenses of my memory and practice. I randomly produced a handful paintings and drawings over the next four years that touched upon this - but it always felt like a violation of her privacy and I would stop. Too intimate, perhaps. Too presumptuous? Maybe.
I had yet to hit rock bottom, to abandon everything, to vanish, to become part of the underground economy, to survive a very harsh education in survival.
Those “A Mule.” paintings were destroyed, due to homelessness, in 2012. They themselves passed into memory but the documentation still exists - and those photos are now the works themselves.
In 2021, I very suddenly returned to this subject ( the internal life, dreams, fears of the mule ) through creating a collage by firstly cutting up a painting on canvas, then photographing the result, then running that through some basic software to rework the image ( taking care with the resulting negative space ) to then have a completed work. I then repeated this process several times, starting with a quickly produced painting ( done in two days, max ) each time.
Some of other works in this proposal are my own real-world photography that I then subjected to the exact same process and software, as described above.
Two are my drawings that I minimally digitally processed ( the black & white pieces ).
These works, 2008 - 2021, will all be presented uniformly as dye sublimation on aluminium prints, within very thin white metal frames. I want a hard, cold, clean look.
Antiseptic.
The solitary exception to the above will be the ‘wall sculpture’ ( “A Mule Talismanic Diety, always pay a bribe.” ). This will provide a needed contrast by bringing a bit of her reality - as I imagine it - into the same context as the other works which solely inhabit her inner world. To make her inner world exterior, for just one piece.
Anyhow.
I think I ‘choked’ on the initial paintings and drawings in this series, back in 2008, because my intuition told me that she was still alive then. Frankly, I felt that she was long dead by 2021.
She had a daughter.
So this now feels like a memorial to her, to those who loved her, and to that era of my life. A goodbye to that whole era, of ‘pre-tech’, if you will. A time when privacy still existed, and therefor risk - rather than it’s pale shadow - still existed.
I experienced a sense of relief creating these 2021 works, which were all done in a three week period. That is blazingly fast for me, my practice. Something had been bottled up under a great deal of pressure, for a long time. That shocked me. It’s now evaporated, mist, so I have no idea what that pressure was, although it can be inferred.
Had not realized how much I cared. I am unsentimental and can often be cold, or so girlfriends have mentioned over the decades ..... but much less so recently ...... perhaps there is a connection between that and these works suddenly spilling out ..... throw yourself out of the plane without checking to see if you have a parachute. People do sometimes ( rarely ) survive the fall. Intact, or not.
Gambling.
That three week period, for the 2021 works included here, started with the “A Mule Talismanic Deity, always pay a bribe.” wall sculpture. I was standing in my studio holding a small torn up cardboard box - about to throw it away, release it, free it - when suddenly the whole piece just popped into my head. Hard on the heels of a sudden memory of the mule, whom I had not consciously thought of in quite a while.
It serves as an Icon, one she could have easily made herself and then taped to the inside of a closet door or a drawer. A reminder to be methodical, careful, but natural, aware/wary of chance and fate.
You can change your fate, but only at the exact moment it occurs. Chance.
I had mentioned that to her.
Something - someone ? - to leave an offering to, a ‘bribe’ if you prefer, before walking out the door to cross a border.
Imagine standing in a bathroom, staring at the lined up tightly packed condoms, glistening and ready to swallow.
Your cargo.
Ordinarily, that which you take within you, allow within you - literally or emotionally - is to sustain you, to keep you healthy and to better you, your life. But here you are standing in front of your sink about to ingest hard drugs, but you will not get high, but you will die if even just one packet opens up a little within you. Overcoming the deep instinct to puke, shit or run.
This in an era before radical improvements in all kinds of technology and screening - so it’s really just a matter of not drawing attention, in any way, to one’s self. To fully regulate your breathing, your tone of voice, your natural mannerisms.
Relax ..... you’ve done this before ..... and will do so again ?
Sitting in departures, pretending to read, same as most everybody else.
Kids playing tag in the distance.
Maybe - maybe not - you wonder for a moment about that Canadian guy you spoke with at a party a while back, you do so love New Orleans, and he obviously did as well. Wonder why he seemed so reluctant to introduce you to his friends ( two young women ), did he recognize that you were doing recruitment ? He had the best damn ganja ...... and that shit can make you sloppy ......
And yes, I would love to be wrong about her being dead.
But the kind of debt she faced is never fully repaid, not even after you are gone.
“A MULE.”
Note - there is detailed writing about individual works from the A MULE site exhibit on my Instagram account.
I believed her, when she told me she was a mule, and she seemed a bit surprised and intrigued that I knew what that entailed. Swallow packets of drugs ( cocaine, heroin ) then get on a plane and hope for the best. Gambling, very high stakes.
I met her at a party in New Orleans in 1992, we talked for a bit and I enjoyed her company.
Never heard mention of her, or ever saw her, again. Never asked.
Funny how certain people stick in your head and heart. She was lovely, forthright ( obviously, but there were ‘extenuating circumstances’ ) and intelligent.
A wild card. Bad-assed. Tougher and smarter than me,
I was working on a painting ( which became “A Mule passes the test.” ) in my studio, in 2008, when my mind drifted back to her - wondering how she was doing ....... I had thought of her from time to time over the years but this was different, for the first time it occurred to me that it would be interesting to explore her inner life through the twinned lenses of my memory and practice. I randomly produced a handful paintings and drawings over the next four years that touched upon this - but it always felt like a violation of her privacy and I would stop. Too intimate, perhaps. Too presumptuous? Maybe.
I had yet to hit rock bottom, to abandon everything, to vanish, to become part of the underground economy, to survive a very harsh education in survival.
Those “A Mule.” paintings were destroyed, due to homelessness, in 2012. They themselves passed into memory but the documentation still exists - and those photos are now the works themselves.
In 2021, I very suddenly returned to this subject ( the internal life, dreams, fears of the mule ) through creating a collage by firstly cutting up a painting on canvas, then photographing the result, then running that through some basic software to rework the image ( taking care with the resulting negative space ) to then have a completed work. I then repeated this process several times, starting with a quickly produced painting ( done in two days, max ) each time.
Some of other works in this proposal are my own real-world photography that I then subjected to the exact same process and software, as described above.
Two are my drawings that I minimally digitally processed ( the black & white pieces ).
These works, 2008 - 2021, will all be presented uniformly as dye sublimation on aluminium prints, within very thin white metal frames. I want a hard, cold, clean look.
Antiseptic.
The solitary exception to the above will be the ‘wall sculpture’ ( “A Mule Talismanic Diety, always pay a bribe.” ). This will provide a needed contrast by bringing a bit of her reality - as I imagine it - into the same context as the other works which solely inhabit her inner world. To make her inner world exterior, for just one piece.
Anyhow.
I think I ‘choked’ on the initial paintings and drawings in this series, back in 2008, because my intuition told me that she was still alive then. Frankly, I felt that she was long dead by 2021.
She had a daughter.
So this now feels like a memorial to her, to those who loved her, and to that era of my life. A goodbye to that whole era, of ‘pre-tech’, if you will. A time when privacy still existed, and therefor risk - rather than it’s pale shadow - still existed.
I experienced a sense of relief creating these 2021 works, which were all done in a three week period. That is blazingly fast for me, my practice. Something had been bottled up under a great deal of pressure, for a long time. That shocked me. It’s now evaporated, mist, so I have no idea what that pressure was, although it can be inferred.
Had not realized how much I cared. I am unsentimental and can often be cold, or so girlfriends have mentioned over the decades ..... but much less so recently ...... perhaps there is a connection between that and these works suddenly spilling out ..... throw yourself out of the plane without checking to see if you have a parachute. People do sometimes ( rarely ) survive the fall. Intact, or not.
Gambling.
That three week period, for the 2021 works included here, started with the “A Mule Talismanic Deity, always pay a bribe.” wall sculpture. I was standing in my studio holding a small torn up cardboard box - about to throw it away, release it, free it - when suddenly the whole piece just popped into my head. Hard on the heels of a sudden memory of the mule, whom I had not consciously thought of in quite a while.
It serves as an Icon, one she could have easily made herself and then taped to the inside of a closet door or a drawer. A reminder to be methodical, careful, but natural, aware/wary of chance and fate.
You can change your fate, but only at the exact moment it occurs. Chance.
I had mentioned that to her.
Something - someone ? - to leave an offering to, a ‘bribe’ if you prefer, before walking out the door to cross a border.
Imagine standing in a bathroom, staring at the lined up tightly packed condoms, glistening and ready to swallow.
Your cargo.
Ordinarily, that which you take within you, allow within you - literally or emotionally - is to sustain you, to keep you healthy and to better you, your life. But here you are standing in front of your sink about to ingest hard drugs, but you will not get high, but you will die if even just one packet opens up a little within you. Overcoming the deep instinct to puke, shit or run.
This in an era before radical improvements in all kinds of technology and screening - so it’s really just a matter of not drawing attention, in any way, to one’s self. To fully regulate your breathing, your tone of voice, your natural mannerisms.
Relax ..... you’ve done this before ..... and will do so again ?
Sitting in departures, pretending to read, same as most everybody else.
Kids playing tag in the distance.
Maybe - maybe not - you wonder for a moment about that Canadian guy you spoke with at a party a while back, you do so love New Orleans, and he obviously did as well. Wonder why he seemed so reluctant to introduce you to his friends ( two young women ), did he recognize that you were doing recruitment ? He had the best damn ganja ...... and that shit can make you sloppy ......
And yes, I would love to be wrong about her being dead.
But the kind of debt she faced is never fully repaid, not even after you are gone.
August 2021, “Bathroom Wallpaper.”
August 2021
“Bathroom Wallpaper.”
So it’s 1976, and a young me makes a wrong turn in some friends-of-my-parents house while looking for the bathroom - I went up the stairs, rather than down the stairs as instructed.
Walk into a darkened bathroom, close the door and turn on the light.
Naked vigorously copulating women and men ....... everywhere.
All the walls PLUS the ceiling.
I really wish I could remember if those good times extended into the shower, or not. I certainly hope they did.
Keep it clean where the sun don’t shine, orgy sluts.
Fine black line on a light cream ground. Very well done ( that’s hindsight speaking ) with an extreme degree of realism. Every orifice available was jammed up with every manner of appendage available ......
Wow. Blew my little mind wide open.
My very own ‘Age of Aquarius’ far too young and w-a-y too fast.
A formative influence upon me, personally, and also upon my practice, however.
So I just want to say thanks to those friends of my parents. I never said anything - and yes, they did cotton on to the fact that I had made a wrong turn.
My parents used the downstairs bathroom.
They were escorted down there, albeit subtly.
PLEASE NOTE - full disclosure, and in the interests of historical accuracy, and because you are wondering, it was a pretty white ( but not exclusively so ) scene, mostly straight ( hmmm, ‘experimentally straight’ ? aka some furtive bisexual stuff going down in the corners ) nobody in a wheelchair nor anybody with a prosthetic. Everybody was pretty fit and had been doing Yoga. Nobody with an obvious case of Down Syndrome. And no sex toys - they musta all been on coke ! We be Slammin’ ’ ! Oh, and uh, no indication of condom usage at all. Yikes. I have no idea if this was a custom job wallpaper, or if it was a commercially available product. But it was fucking awesome.
“Bathroom Wallpaper.”
So it’s 1976, and a young me makes a wrong turn in some friends-of-my-parents house while looking for the bathroom - I went up the stairs, rather than down the stairs as instructed.
Walk into a darkened bathroom, close the door and turn on the light.
Naked vigorously copulating women and men ....... everywhere.
All the walls PLUS the ceiling.
I really wish I could remember if those good times extended into the shower, or not. I certainly hope they did.
Keep it clean where the sun don’t shine, orgy sluts.
Fine black line on a light cream ground. Very well done ( that’s hindsight speaking ) with an extreme degree of realism. Every orifice available was jammed up with every manner of appendage available ......
Wow. Blew my little mind wide open.
My very own ‘Age of Aquarius’ far too young and w-a-y too fast.
A formative influence upon me, personally, and also upon my practice, however.
So I just want to say thanks to those friends of my parents. I never said anything - and yes, they did cotton on to the fact that I had made a wrong turn.
My parents used the downstairs bathroom.
They were escorted down there, albeit subtly.
PLEASE NOTE - full disclosure, and in the interests of historical accuracy, and because you are wondering, it was a pretty white ( but not exclusively so ) scene, mostly straight ( hmmm, ‘experimentally straight’ ? aka some furtive bisexual stuff going down in the corners ) nobody in a wheelchair nor anybody with a prosthetic. Everybody was pretty fit and had been doing Yoga. Nobody with an obvious case of Down Syndrome. And no sex toys - they musta all been on coke ! We be Slammin’ ’ ! Oh, and uh, no indication of condom usage at all. Yikes. I have no idea if this was a custom job wallpaper, or if it was a commercially available product. But it was fucking awesome.
July 2021, Influences # 2
July 2021
Influences # 2 / non-classical modes of presentation and the anti-frame, also, Basquiat
Although I have had some of my stuff classically-properly framed, over the decades, that is a mode of presentation that has never particularly interested me. Although it legitimately has it’s time and place - and I certainly enjoy a beautifully wrought wood frame, ornate or plain, that perfectly complements the work within.
I think my personal anti-frame, anti-formal presentation, bias goes right back to childhood ( and really, what does not ? ) and my deep preference for immediately taping or thumbtacking drawings and watercolours - upon completion - to any surface available. The inside covers of my parents books, the inside of cupboard doors ( which I still adore adoring with miscellaneous art ), the undersides of tables and chairs ( for the dog and cats to better enjoy ), my sister’s forehead ....... to the bottom of a friends underwear drawer ..... my sister and I took this all a step farther eventually and started tagging these same surfaces mentioned with drawings and/or paintings, mostly scatalogical in nature. Our parents quickly put the kibosh on this true golden era of uncensored, so very free, art making. Fools ! Should have just kept going with it ......
So, old-school credibility thusly established.
When I started film school ( mid-1980s, made/studied experimental film, which I want to write about in some detail at a later point ) I stumbled across the practice of a then emerging artist by the name of Jean-Michel Basquiat, W-O-W. The trains and the clocks stopped. Birds fell like stones from the sky. I ceased checking out women, for a few hours at least. Scrambled my brain-box in the best way possible. Seriously hot shit, not fooling around at all.
Content and process aside, I immediately discerned that this dude had no use for traditional framing or presentation. Those shipping palette paintings that were simply to be leaned up against the wall and they were good to go ? ( “Gold Griot.”, 1984 ) Hell Yeah ! Those paintings he created with the most rickety sticking-out-from-the-corners-with-a-string-on-top-to-hang-the-work-from-backing-frame ? ( “CPRKR.”, 1982 ) Double Hell Yeah !
So, alternate modes of presentation then. Rearing it’s ‘genius barely eclipsing the inherent and deliberate retardation’ head yet again. I was crushed when I discovered that Basquiat did not actually exhibit the palette paintings in actual loading docks.
Nevertheless, that such a gifted artist, who was showing with some really fine New York and European galleries, was flouting the ( from the perspective of my much younger self ) staid conventions of presentation made a deep impression on me.
Lesson learned.
Flash forward twenty years and I am drawing-designing-manufacturing my first batch of wall-mounted sculptural works ( see ‘sculpture/engraving’ section of my website ) which embody the joy of forgoing the frame ..... the joy of a work that frames itself. That cleans up it’s own damn mess. It took a long time for me to arrive at that particular destination but it was worth the cost of the trip.
For quite some time now, I have been doing all of my paintings on ‘back-framed’ birch panel, both oil and acrylic. I gesso and paint the edges white, so that the painting does not need a frame. I really enjoy the purity of this mode of presentation. So self contained.
Economical too.
And very recently, since October 2020, I have been producing paintings on canvas - acrylic only - and for the first time ever at very large scales. Well, large sizes relative to the history of my practice. H 36 inches X W 36 inches would have been a massive painting for me prior to this - but now a H 60 inches X W 84 inches work feels totally natural. Whereas before, that scale would have felt like I was YELLING. Anyhow, I mention all this as I made a decision when I started these canvas paintings to forgo the use of a stretcher and to forgo a traditional frame upon completion.
Not wanting to actually appropriate Basquiat, in this regard, I am developing alternate concepts to present these new paintings ..... I find myself thinking about and experimenting with tape, especially gaffer ( or if you prefer, ‘gorilla’ ) tape. It comes in lots of colours other than grey or black nowadays ........ place an archival ‘painters’ tape underneath the gaffer tape and just stick the damn painting to the wall. The tape providing a frame that also serves as a parody of the same ......
I also like the idea of some of these recent paintings to be presented in a whitewashed cinder block walled sub-basement space, like a hallway or a emptied storage room. Etc. Even just conceptualizing about this feels liberating.
Exhibit in the muddy ditch rather than the swept ballroom ?
Perhaps.
Basquiat, either way.
Influences # 2 / non-classical modes of presentation and the anti-frame, also, Basquiat
Although I have had some of my stuff classically-properly framed, over the decades, that is a mode of presentation that has never particularly interested me. Although it legitimately has it’s time and place - and I certainly enjoy a beautifully wrought wood frame, ornate or plain, that perfectly complements the work within.
I think my personal anti-frame, anti-formal presentation, bias goes right back to childhood ( and really, what does not ? ) and my deep preference for immediately taping or thumbtacking drawings and watercolours - upon completion - to any surface available. The inside covers of my parents books, the inside of cupboard doors ( which I still adore adoring with miscellaneous art ), the undersides of tables and chairs ( for the dog and cats to better enjoy ), my sister’s forehead ....... to the bottom of a friends underwear drawer ..... my sister and I took this all a step farther eventually and started tagging these same surfaces mentioned with drawings and/or paintings, mostly scatalogical in nature. Our parents quickly put the kibosh on this true golden era of uncensored, so very free, art making. Fools ! Should have just kept going with it ......
So, old-school credibility thusly established.
When I started film school ( mid-1980s, made/studied experimental film, which I want to write about in some detail at a later point ) I stumbled across the practice of a then emerging artist by the name of Jean-Michel Basquiat, W-O-W. The trains and the clocks stopped. Birds fell like stones from the sky. I ceased checking out women, for a few hours at least. Scrambled my brain-box in the best way possible. Seriously hot shit, not fooling around at all.
Content and process aside, I immediately discerned that this dude had no use for traditional framing or presentation. Those shipping palette paintings that were simply to be leaned up against the wall and they were good to go ? ( “Gold Griot.”, 1984 ) Hell Yeah ! Those paintings he created with the most rickety sticking-out-from-the-corners-with-a-string-on-top-to-hang-the-work-from-backing-frame ? ( “CPRKR.”, 1982 ) Double Hell Yeah !
So, alternate modes of presentation then. Rearing it’s ‘genius barely eclipsing the inherent and deliberate retardation’ head yet again. I was crushed when I discovered that Basquiat did not actually exhibit the palette paintings in actual loading docks.
Nevertheless, that such a gifted artist, who was showing with some really fine New York and European galleries, was flouting the ( from the perspective of my much younger self ) staid conventions of presentation made a deep impression on me.
Lesson learned.
Flash forward twenty years and I am drawing-designing-manufacturing my first batch of wall-mounted sculptural works ( see ‘sculpture/engraving’ section of my website ) which embody the joy of forgoing the frame ..... the joy of a work that frames itself. That cleans up it’s own damn mess. It took a long time for me to arrive at that particular destination but it was worth the cost of the trip.
For quite some time now, I have been doing all of my paintings on ‘back-framed’ birch panel, both oil and acrylic. I gesso and paint the edges white, so that the painting does not need a frame. I really enjoy the purity of this mode of presentation. So self contained.
Economical too.
And very recently, since October 2020, I have been producing paintings on canvas - acrylic only - and for the first time ever at very large scales. Well, large sizes relative to the history of my practice. H 36 inches X W 36 inches would have been a massive painting for me prior to this - but now a H 60 inches X W 84 inches work feels totally natural. Whereas before, that scale would have felt like I was YELLING. Anyhow, I mention all this as I made a decision when I started these canvas paintings to forgo the use of a stretcher and to forgo a traditional frame upon completion.
Not wanting to actually appropriate Basquiat, in this regard, I am developing alternate concepts to present these new paintings ..... I find myself thinking about and experimenting with tape, especially gaffer ( or if you prefer, ‘gorilla’ ) tape. It comes in lots of colours other than grey or black nowadays ........ place an archival ‘painters’ tape underneath the gaffer tape and just stick the damn painting to the wall. The tape providing a frame that also serves as a parody of the same ......
I also like the idea of some of these recent paintings to be presented in a whitewashed cinder block walled sub-basement space, like a hallway or a emptied storage room. Etc. Even just conceptualizing about this feels liberating.
Exhibit in the muddy ditch rather than the swept ballroom ?
Perhaps.
Basquiat, either way.
June 2021, “Mummy.” Painting Essay
“Mummy.”, 2021, acrylic on unstretched canvas, H 60 inches X W 84 inchesJune 2021“Mummy.” Painting Essay
So to celebrate reaching one year of monthly writing on this site, I am posting a photo of my most recently completed painting ( “Mummy.”, 2021, acrylic on unstretched canvas, H 60 inches X W 84 inches ) here and writing this piece about it. I have started doing very short versions of this on Instagram, to warm up, over the past few weeks. Here goes .....
This “Mummy.” painting is directly based upon a recent drawing, the only alteration I made was to add in the sun symbol. This preparatory materials approach is relatively new for me, before this any particular work always began as an entirely blank slate in terms of content - although technique and style would suggest consistency and infer ‘groupings’ of work.
The original drawing is small, the painting very large, relative to the norm of my practice. It is the largest work that I have ever attempted, completed and felt was a successful work. I am very suspicious of the utilization of larger scales in contemporary art, especially with paintings, as it mostly comes across as ‘sheer volume’ hoping to distract the viewer from the fact that there is often no real content present. Jerking off in public. Smaller scale seems more honest and human to me somehow, it welcomes you in - quite literally - rather than pushing you away.
The sun symbol felt necessary for the painting in order to provide a better sense of environment, most importantly, but it also resolved a compositional issue as I had inadvertently made the aspect ratio of the painting slightly different than that of the drawing. Happy accident. So the question regarding the sun symbol, for me, is wether it is a brutal reflection upon the desert sand, a bomb exploding, or is the central bird-mummy-oasis-etc figure floating above the desert floor alongside the sun symbol? For me, it is more the harmony of them both being in the air. Thusly the fortifications in the opposing corners are something in the past, not the present, nor future. Hopefully.
I had been thinking of the Middle East. As I have written before, I love ancient art of all eras and cultures. Persian being very close to the top of the list ( alongside Inuit and Aztec ). The brutal struggles in that region over the course of my lifetime, and throughout recorded history, are as troubling to me as to anybody else. The very recent escalation of brutality against the Palestinian people is especially disturbing. So I set out to create a painting that attempts to celebrate the beautiful, powerful and common shared culture of the peoples of the Mid-East. But a work that is also shot through with conflict and blood aplenty. A form of realism shot through with abstraction.
You crouch and hide, a bomb just went off far too near to you, waiting for your hearing to return.
A hollow silence that manifests as a roaring animal in your head.
That animal is so pervasive. It’s inside all of us. Fight it. Tame it. Make it wait.
The content is deliberately flattened and simplified, akin to an ancient painted shallow relief work on a stone wall - in order to draw attention to the macro-scale similarities between that manner of work and some contemporary art. Chain the present to the past.
On a different, but oddly rhyming tangent, I had also been thinking about my deceased mother and her love of nature, particularly her delight in birds. So that is where the initial idea for the bird-mummy came from. Mom always thought it was quite awesome that ancient Egyptians deified, actively worshiped and mummified animals ( cats ! ) she was also - from my childhood perspective - just a little too intrigued by the Egyptian Gods that combined the human and animal forms. As she pointed out once, there is no dammed difference ...... she grew up on a farm. Eldest of several daughters.
So my ( very Scottish, as was my father ) mother is a now a mummified bird in a flying sarcophagus, traversing the desert towards the sun. Wow. OK. In the drawing, I had opened her up - and just to be clear here FUCK YOU FREUD - which is either indicative of the embalming process ( which my sister was just a little too thrilled to learn all about ) or of grave robbers. What lurks within my Mummy ? The painting clarifies that to be the most priceless of treasures when travelling through the desert, an oasis. Containing; open water, a date palm, a building/rubble ( my parents built by their own hands the house I grew up in ), a snake with an egg, a furrowed field, subtle gold and silver accents all around. An ancient, and modern, paradise.
May we all gather in the shade and resolve our differences, our wars. Internal and external. Mirrors of each other.
My parents had a life-long great friend who was from the Mid-East, of exquisite Persian heritage, and I always adored that guy and his wife. They were so warm and cultured. But very realist, aware of the history, politics and economics of the region. Trade routes, control of access to water, blood and oil. Incredible art, literature, science and architecture. Beautiful religions. All of this potent, combustible.
So in the ‘opposing corners of the ring waiting to square off’ are fortifications, with an expanse of desert between them. These structures serve a few purposes; they compositionally balance the painting ( as they do in the original drawing ) and they create a big fat visual X with the oasis right in the center. Right in the crosshairs. It’s today .... not ten years, not a hundred, not millennia ago.
I can close mine and so easily through memory see the tired look in both my fathers and his friends eyes.
Open my eyes and it is nighttime, so quiet, now I am alone in the desert.
I miss them all. I guess that ultimately this painting is also about my family history, that which runs more perfectly parallel to the main subject matter of this painting than I care to admit.
Damn.
May 2021, “Octagonal” - Site Exhibit Writing
May 2021
“Octagonal” Site Exhibit
These eight photographs are of eight done-by-hand drawings.
I fussed with natural light until the individual works reached the point where part of the
drawings was black and part was much lighter toned, whereby you can easily discern the mark-making process.
From any distance, they read as solid black ink on paper, but up close - depending on the
lighting - you can see every decision that was made.
Addition or subtraction. That’s it. That’s all. Binary.
Seemingly quite open but a lot of content is being randomly withheld.
I did “Wren, Armoured.” soon after moving back to Toronto in late 2006. It was the second good piece of new work that I created after I resumed my own life - after having provided home care for my parents while they were both dying and then both of them passing on.
Those initial drawings that felt complete, whole and legitimate ( unlike any other art I had ever produced ) became the basis for all the work I have done since. A gate, forever locked, sprung open. I stepped outside of myself for the first time in years. I felt healthy for the first time in years. Freedom after so much horror and death.
Some ink on a small piece of paper. Damn, that’s all it took ? A treasure map that I clutched and followed. Still do.
Deliberately placing my practice under the harshest of constrictions - ‘solid’ black and solid white, ink and paper. That’s it. Nowhere to hide.
I grew up in, then returned to all of my adult life, a house on a very beautiful property about an hour’s drive northwest of Toronto. The surrounding properties, and much of my parents land, had been allowed to fully ‘wild’ or ‘re-wild’ and was full to the brim with nature / animals all year round ...... so wonderful. Magical.
Birds, constantly, everywhere. Year round.
I always liked all the different birds being around as a child and when older, so these eight drawings all came out of a deep and sudden absence.
Stand-ins in for others, it would be safe to guess.
Birds obviously represent certain freedoms as well. Liberation.
This series of drawings continues and I am starting to feel the need to translate a few of them into paintings soon. It’s time.
“Octagonal” Site Exhibit
These eight photographs are of eight done-by-hand drawings.
I fussed with natural light until the individual works reached the point where part of the
drawings was black and part was much lighter toned, whereby you can easily discern the mark-making process.
From any distance, they read as solid black ink on paper, but up close - depending on the
lighting - you can see every decision that was made.
Addition or subtraction. That’s it. That’s all. Binary.
Seemingly quite open but a lot of content is being randomly withheld.
I did “Wren, Armoured.” soon after moving back to Toronto in late 2006. It was the second good piece of new work that I created after I resumed my own life - after having provided home care for my parents while they were both dying and then both of them passing on.
Those initial drawings that felt complete, whole and legitimate ( unlike any other art I had ever produced ) became the basis for all the work I have done since. A gate, forever locked, sprung open. I stepped outside of myself for the first time in years. I felt healthy for the first time in years. Freedom after so much horror and death.
Some ink on a small piece of paper. Damn, that’s all it took ? A treasure map that I clutched and followed. Still do.
Deliberately placing my practice under the harshest of constrictions - ‘solid’ black and solid white, ink and paper. That’s it. Nowhere to hide.
I grew up in, then returned to all of my adult life, a house on a very beautiful property about an hour’s drive northwest of Toronto. The surrounding properties, and much of my parents land, had been allowed to fully ‘wild’ or ‘re-wild’ and was full to the brim with nature / animals all year round ...... so wonderful. Magical.
Birds, constantly, everywhere. Year round.
I always liked all the different birds being around as a child and when older, so these eight drawings all came out of a deep and sudden absence.
Stand-ins in for others, it would be safe to guess.
Birds obviously represent certain freedoms as well. Liberation.
This series of drawings continues and I am starting to feel the need to translate a few of them into paintings soon. It’s time.
April 2021, Influences # 1
April 2021
Influences # 1
This is the first ( duh ) in a series of monthly writings that will allow me to elaborate on artists and works that had a great influence upon my practice.
There is no ranking here and these “Influences” pieces will appear randomly amongst other subjects.
So, David Hockney.
Very specifically three works of his - all photo collages, all done in the early 1980s.
“My Mother, Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire.”
“Walking in the Zen Garden at the Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto.”
“Luncheon at British Embassy, Tokyo.”
I saw these three pieces before I started exploring experimental film in college but I was already familiar with multiple points of view, the use of multiple perspectives within a single work, through Cubism. The world went quiet when I was absorbing these Hockney collages for the first time, something on the order of predator/prey was happening. A creative intuition that I have learned to heed.
When you can literally see what somebody is seeing and can easily move through space and time with them, feeling the beauty, weight, lightness or strangeness of consciousness - that is a very rare gift for an artwork to impart. That, literally, almost never ever happens. But it does with these three pieces.
Hell yeah.
And this alchemy is achieved with a bunch of very quickly taken snapshots arranged upon a solid neutral ground - and that ground plays an unexpectedly important role, as that negative space strongly infers the transitory nature of our awareness. What we ( wrongly ) perceive as ‘before’ and ‘after’.
I also enjoy the singular difference between the two works here that have people as their primary subject versus the one that does not - ‘Ryoanji Temple.” is rigorous and formal in it’s structure whereas the other two at first seem deeply chaotic. A lovely and subtle comment upon our effect on each other and the world around us.
The takeaway for me, and my practice, was to be open to formal and informal experimentation. Just make that a true constant, to the point where you are doing it without conscious volition.
Hard to achieve though but worth the effort.
Influences # 1
This is the first ( duh ) in a series of monthly writings that will allow me to elaborate on artists and works that had a great influence upon my practice.
There is no ranking here and these “Influences” pieces will appear randomly amongst other subjects.
So, David Hockney.
Very specifically three works of his - all photo collages, all done in the early 1980s.
“My Mother, Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire.”
“Walking in the Zen Garden at the Ryoanji Temple, Kyoto.”
“Luncheon at British Embassy, Tokyo.”
I saw these three pieces before I started exploring experimental film in college but I was already familiar with multiple points of view, the use of multiple perspectives within a single work, through Cubism. The world went quiet when I was absorbing these Hockney collages for the first time, something on the order of predator/prey was happening. A creative intuition that I have learned to heed.
When you can literally see what somebody is seeing and can easily move through space and time with them, feeling the beauty, weight, lightness or strangeness of consciousness - that is a very rare gift for an artwork to impart. That, literally, almost never ever happens. But it does with these three pieces.
Hell yeah.
And this alchemy is achieved with a bunch of very quickly taken snapshots arranged upon a solid neutral ground - and that ground plays an unexpectedly important role, as that negative space strongly infers the transitory nature of our awareness. What we ( wrongly ) perceive as ‘before’ and ‘after’.
I also enjoy the singular difference between the two works here that have people as their primary subject versus the one that does not - ‘Ryoanji Temple.” is rigorous and formal in it’s structure whereas the other two at first seem deeply chaotic. A lovely and subtle comment upon our effect on each other and the world around us.
The takeaway for me, and my practice, was to be open to formal and informal experimentation. Just make that a true constant, to the point where you are doing it without conscious volition.
Hard to achieve though but worth the effort.
March 2021, Regarding the Golden Jock Strap of Ulysses
March 2021
Regarding the Golden Jock Strap of Ulysses
A primitive, or ancient, artist copies - working within established templates. So do the vast majority of artists right through to this very day.
The key difference being that making art until the early 1800s would have been - wIth incredibly few exceptions - a purely devotional process.
Today that same devotional mode of process-production has vanished, replaced with a void. Apart from a few brief and glorious spasms of content/technique originality over the past two centuries ( a form of revelation ? ) which immediately became part of the cannon and thusly copied ad nauseam by hacks everywhere.
Art is the fastest of cannibals.
The impossible task nowadays is to transcend the mere copy and mix influences until they are sufficiently blurred that something new emerges. Then grasp that ball ( balls ? ) like some scared shitless Aztec in the ball court, burning sun filling your eyes, crowd screaming from on high as you totally puppy-fuck the lay-up, falling hard upon the sand - tastes like Puma piss - after hitting the stone wall knowing that you are going to be horribly executed for letting down the team ....... such a small hole to fill, to slam your ball(s) into it’s maw. A void.
Actually, there is no team.
Just you and the sword that ain’t in your hands.
Jeez, it ain’t that bad is it ? Like some Kara Walker / LeBron James / Jordan Peele mash-up ?
Actually, all three of them are pretty damn funny. Might make for a good MFA graduate program training film.
So what are the differences between then and today, for the artist and for the audience ?
Then - an artist created a copy of an object which will be useful for his/her religious and societal leaders in maintaining a sense of communal joy or suffering. Minimal variation, don’t piss anybody off. For the audience, the object ( or painting ) created nothing less than a continually present point and place in time at which communion of all kinds could happen.
Today - an artist creates a copy of another artists work hoping that his/her business representative will pass it off as original and that the buyer will not know any better or will not care. It will then hopefully act as a ‘store of value’ and fill up some empty space somewhere ( a storage space most likely ).
So what are the similarities between then and today, for the artist and for the audience ?
Then and Today - the artist wishes to not be murdered, literally, or socially-politically by critics, or by art market devaluation. Thusly copying is safest. Stay in the center of the herd. The audience wants communion, then and today, but the law of diminishing returns has been in effect for two hundred years .......
So what is the role of originality in the present day ?
Originality is the only way in contemporary society to create an iconic work that can create a continuous point in place-time for communal shared experiences. The formerly singular face of the icon becomes many and changes randomly from time-to-time with innovation.
So the role is to bring back a sense of awe, a sense of something raw and honest. Not a shadow but a torch.
But don’t piss anybody off.
So don’t try it.
Puma piss.
I stand here regarding the Golden Jock Strap of Ulysses, tastefully lit upon it’s plinth, in a room in a building meant to invoke the memory of a Temple. I can buy a miniature copy of the GJSoU in the shop, same as I could in the temple bazaar over two thousand years ago. I have always left them w-a-y in the back of deep caves all over the world ........
storage .......
In all seriousness, this is a really difficult subject to write about. I try to create original work, knowing that it is virtually impossible to do so and not in my best art career / financial interests to do so either, but I think originality is more important than any other criteria or consideration. Damn. If-when I do create something original, it is going to be copied thoughtlessly by other artists and immediately be robbed of it’s very essence.
And a copy is going to end up on a plinth in the temple.
Regarding the Golden Jock Strap of Ulysses
A primitive, or ancient, artist copies - working within established templates. So do the vast majority of artists right through to this very day.
The key difference being that making art until the early 1800s would have been - wIth incredibly few exceptions - a purely devotional process.
Today that same devotional mode of process-production has vanished, replaced with a void. Apart from a few brief and glorious spasms of content/technique originality over the past two centuries ( a form of revelation ? ) which immediately became part of the cannon and thusly copied ad nauseam by hacks everywhere.
Art is the fastest of cannibals.
The impossible task nowadays is to transcend the mere copy and mix influences until they are sufficiently blurred that something new emerges. Then grasp that ball ( balls ? ) like some scared shitless Aztec in the ball court, burning sun filling your eyes, crowd screaming from on high as you totally puppy-fuck the lay-up, falling hard upon the sand - tastes like Puma piss - after hitting the stone wall knowing that you are going to be horribly executed for letting down the team ....... such a small hole to fill, to slam your ball(s) into it’s maw. A void.
Actually, there is no team.
Just you and the sword that ain’t in your hands.
Jeez, it ain’t that bad is it ? Like some Kara Walker / LeBron James / Jordan Peele mash-up ?
Actually, all three of them are pretty damn funny. Might make for a good MFA graduate program training film.
So what are the differences between then and today, for the artist and for the audience ?
Then - an artist created a copy of an object which will be useful for his/her religious and societal leaders in maintaining a sense of communal joy or suffering. Minimal variation, don’t piss anybody off. For the audience, the object ( or painting ) created nothing less than a continually present point and place in time at which communion of all kinds could happen.
Today - an artist creates a copy of another artists work hoping that his/her business representative will pass it off as original and that the buyer will not know any better or will not care. It will then hopefully act as a ‘store of value’ and fill up some empty space somewhere ( a storage space most likely ).
So what are the similarities between then and today, for the artist and for the audience ?
Then and Today - the artist wishes to not be murdered, literally, or socially-politically by critics, or by art market devaluation. Thusly copying is safest. Stay in the center of the herd. The audience wants communion, then and today, but the law of diminishing returns has been in effect for two hundred years .......
So what is the role of originality in the present day ?
Originality is the only way in contemporary society to create an iconic work that can create a continuous point in place-time for communal shared experiences. The formerly singular face of the icon becomes many and changes randomly from time-to-time with innovation.
So the role is to bring back a sense of awe, a sense of something raw and honest. Not a shadow but a torch.
But don’t piss anybody off.
So don’t try it.
Puma piss.
I stand here regarding the Golden Jock Strap of Ulysses, tastefully lit upon it’s plinth, in a room in a building meant to invoke the memory of a Temple. I can buy a miniature copy of the GJSoU in the shop, same as I could in the temple bazaar over two thousand years ago. I have always left them w-a-y in the back of deep caves all over the world ........
storage .......
In all seriousness, this is a really difficult subject to write about. I try to create original work, knowing that it is virtually impossible to do so and not in my best art career / financial interests to do so either, but I think originality is more important than any other criteria or consideration. Damn. If-when I do create something original, it is going to be copied thoughtlessly by other artists and immediately be robbed of it’s very essence.
And a copy is going to end up on a plinth in the temple.
February 2021, “Yellow Snow at Delphi.” - Site Exhibit Writing
February 2021
“Yellow Snow at Delphi.”
This exhibit is an open letter to my teenage self, or is it an open letter from my teenage self to the present day - present practice?
It is both, a feedback loop. One of the great art revelations of my teen years was hearing “Machine Gun.” by Jimi Hendrix for the first time. That performance is art of a very high order and I have loved feedback loops of all kinds, both artificial and natural, ever since.
NOTE - three months after writing this I feel it necessary to mention that the “Machine Gun” song/performance is impressively political and deeply atmospheric but what makes me consider it art is the final few seconds, where after the band fades to silence Hendrix ( solo ) breaks into pure raw sound, well outside of what most would consider ‘music’. It says everything that needs to be said and shocked the hell out of me the first time I heard it. Something completely unfiltered and unedited. Those few seconds helped open me up to the highest levels of human expression in a way that had been inaccessible to me beforehand.
American Hardcore / Metal of the early 1980s and also early Hip-Hop all opened me up to the fact that you could make your own art anywhere-anytime by any means necessary. With no money, on the run.
I was ( and remain ) totally nuts about music.
This has a lot to do with the works in this “Yellow Snow at Delphi.” exhibit. Photocopied black and white concert posters with tatters of packing tape rustling round the pole, grainy video footage of cool Black gals and dudes decked out in Adidas and Kangol getting their freak on, etc. I wanted to partially recapture that feeling. All that stuff was a huge visual ( and otherwise ) influence, in real time. All great art is folk art first, street level shit, so glad I got schooled on that early.
So then I find myself crouched on a bare wooden floor, it’s kinda cold, furtively trying to make art. I got nothing to say but that does not stop me.
What if I could re-inhabit that version of me, but with all of the technical and conceptual abilities I have ( painfully slowly ) accumulated over these past four decades? How do I say keep going, keep trying, despite the fact you are going to give up so many times? Despite the fact that you are lonely and scared. How do I say thank you?
Create a feedback loop.
Rip it up, make it raw, and most importantly don’t be afraid to be stupid and wrong. Fast and Dirty. Don’t edit. Don’t censor yourself. Fail, flail. You actually did get some things right back then ...... but this time don’t destroy it all immediately. Instead, immediately post it ( pole tatters and all, some old school reggae coming from a car down the street ) on this fucking insane thing called ‘the internet’ ....... of which you are going to have very mixed feelings about ......
Anyhow.
I like how Rap has now truly incorporated psychedelia into it’s own vernacular ( musically and visually ), bringing it all full circle to Jimi.
Anyways.
I knew a few free-thinking, subtly anarchistic, creative, ambitious, unbelievably funny and smart kids during high school. This proposed exhibit is for them.
“Yellow Snow at Delphi.”
This exhibit is an open letter to my teenage self, or is it an open letter from my teenage self to the present day - present practice?
It is both, a feedback loop. One of the great art revelations of my teen years was hearing “Machine Gun.” by Jimi Hendrix for the first time. That performance is art of a very high order and I have loved feedback loops of all kinds, both artificial and natural, ever since.
NOTE - three months after writing this I feel it necessary to mention that the “Machine Gun” song/performance is impressively political and deeply atmospheric but what makes me consider it art is the final few seconds, where after the band fades to silence Hendrix ( solo ) breaks into pure raw sound, well outside of what most would consider ‘music’. It says everything that needs to be said and shocked the hell out of me the first time I heard it. Something completely unfiltered and unedited. Those few seconds helped open me up to the highest levels of human expression in a way that had been inaccessible to me beforehand.
American Hardcore / Metal of the early 1980s and also early Hip-Hop all opened me up to the fact that you could make your own art anywhere-anytime by any means necessary. With no money, on the run.
I was ( and remain ) totally nuts about music.
This has a lot to do with the works in this “Yellow Snow at Delphi.” exhibit. Photocopied black and white concert posters with tatters of packing tape rustling round the pole, grainy video footage of cool Black gals and dudes decked out in Adidas and Kangol getting their freak on, etc. I wanted to partially recapture that feeling. All that stuff was a huge visual ( and otherwise ) influence, in real time. All great art is folk art first, street level shit, so glad I got schooled on that early.
So then I find myself crouched on a bare wooden floor, it’s kinda cold, furtively trying to make art. I got nothing to say but that does not stop me.
What if I could re-inhabit that version of me, but with all of the technical and conceptual abilities I have ( painfully slowly ) accumulated over these past four decades? How do I say keep going, keep trying, despite the fact you are going to give up so many times? Despite the fact that you are lonely and scared. How do I say thank you?
Create a feedback loop.
Rip it up, make it raw, and most importantly don’t be afraid to be stupid and wrong. Fast and Dirty. Don’t edit. Don’t censor yourself. Fail, flail. You actually did get some things right back then ...... but this time don’t destroy it all immediately. Instead, immediately post it ( pole tatters and all, some old school reggae coming from a car down the street ) on this fucking insane thing called ‘the internet’ ....... of which you are going to have very mixed feelings about ......
Anyhow.
I like how Rap has now truly incorporated psychedelia into it’s own vernacular ( musically and visually ), bringing it all full circle to Jimi.
Anyways.
I knew a few free-thinking, subtly anarchistic, creative, ambitious, unbelievably funny and smart kids during high school. This proposed exhibit is for them.
January 2021, An alternative to destroying public sculpture
January 2021
An alternative to destroying public sculpture
I am certain that I am not the first person to suggest the following argument against the destruction of public sculpture, either in the contemporary now, or in the historical past, or in the future.
That being said ......
I do loathe a slaveholder, a dictator, an individual whose company raped the environment ( or our right to privacy ), etc.
So do you.
But why are you busy destroying public sculpture of these individuals ?
I’d suggest that it is actually counterproductive to do so - it simply allows society to more easily forget about these beplinthed assholes, their foul acts, their horrid influence over others. And once forgotten, somebody else will capitalize on that social / political / economic vacuum further down the road.
Why not put these destroyed monuments back up, beautifully restore them, then create a counter-monument close by, a work that clearly calls out a warning against the initial sculpture ? And then guard both sculptures.
An alternative to destroying public sculpture
I am certain that I am not the first person to suggest the following argument against the destruction of public sculpture, either in the contemporary now, or in the historical past, or in the future.
That being said ......
I do loathe a slaveholder, a dictator, an individual whose company raped the environment ( or our right to privacy ), etc.
So do you.
But why are you busy destroying public sculpture of these individuals ?
I’d suggest that it is actually counterproductive to do so - it simply allows society to more easily forget about these beplinthed assholes, their foul acts, their horrid influence over others. And once forgotten, somebody else will capitalize on that social / political / economic vacuum further down the road.
Why not put these destroyed monuments back up, beautifully restore them, then create a counter-monument close by, a work that clearly calls out a warning against the initial sculpture ? And then guard both sculptures.
December 2020, Why do some political works age well while others wither on the vine ?
December 2020
Why do some political works age well while others wither on the vine ?
Like a lot of people, I have been ‘reading’ the New Museum’s catalogue of their recent Peter Saul exhibit - and also that for the ( stupidly almost banned, piss me off ) National Gallery in Washington’s Philip Guston exhibition. Although I wish the Guston tome contained an in-depth review of his drawings, both catalogues are superb.
This all got me thinking about Goya ( I love Goya ), et al, who have created work that addresses political issues of the day.
So much of that type of work done over the centuries had aged so poorly, eye glazingly and brain numbingly so, whilst other pieces have retained their considerable power. Why is that ?
The root issue is specificity, as in being overly specific will torpedo any work despite it’s purely visual merits. Content assassinating form. A certain generality has to be present, widening the focus and making the symbols used as universal as is possible ( or advisable ).
Even those overly specific works can have historical value though, as they can quickly convey things that writing often cannot.
I think that the cartoon - in the fully exaggerated present day sense - provides a modern or contemporary era artist with the political equivalent of what abstraction is for somebody painting a flower in a vase on a table lit by a nearby window ....... a shot at originality and a blurring of exact meaning. Saul on occasion was successful with this approach, Guston much more so with his ‘latter day’ work.
Sculpture, with it’s automatic embrace of the grandiose, implied or real, can also provide a way to address problematic issues of political specificity, or at least the inherent quality of historical / cultural / aesthetic expectation attached to sculptural works can make overly specific political work more digestible. Most folks become pretty docile when faced with a metal or stone Thingy on a plinth. And, as we all know, lately that inherent quality - cultural expectation has become a minefield. Sculpture seems to have had it’s dick and balls cut off, at least in the public realm, all over the world - in Afghanistan, in Syria, in the southern States, etc.
And seeing that all politics is ultimately personal, it helps if the work is obviously deeply felt while somehow not sinking into the quagmire of self-pity.
So ya gotta walk along and across several parallel tightropes. A thankless task, which is probably why most artists turn a blind eye to politics. Sorry, I’m busy painting this flower.
And yes, politics in photography-film is a whole other deal. I have enough of a sense of art world self-preservation that I am not going to grapple with Susan Sontag’s Culture Ghost - she’d totally whomp my butt, incorporeal or not.
Merry Christmas all, be good to yourselves and to others.
Why do some political works age well while others wither on the vine ?
Like a lot of people, I have been ‘reading’ the New Museum’s catalogue of their recent Peter Saul exhibit - and also that for the ( stupidly almost banned, piss me off ) National Gallery in Washington’s Philip Guston exhibition. Although I wish the Guston tome contained an in-depth review of his drawings, both catalogues are superb.
This all got me thinking about Goya ( I love Goya ), et al, who have created work that addresses political issues of the day.
So much of that type of work done over the centuries had aged so poorly, eye glazingly and brain numbingly so, whilst other pieces have retained their considerable power. Why is that ?
The root issue is specificity, as in being overly specific will torpedo any work despite it’s purely visual merits. Content assassinating form. A certain generality has to be present, widening the focus and making the symbols used as universal as is possible ( or advisable ).
Even those overly specific works can have historical value though, as they can quickly convey things that writing often cannot.
I think that the cartoon - in the fully exaggerated present day sense - provides a modern or contemporary era artist with the political equivalent of what abstraction is for somebody painting a flower in a vase on a table lit by a nearby window ....... a shot at originality and a blurring of exact meaning. Saul on occasion was successful with this approach, Guston much more so with his ‘latter day’ work.
Sculpture, with it’s automatic embrace of the grandiose, implied or real, can also provide a way to address problematic issues of political specificity, or at least the inherent quality of historical / cultural / aesthetic expectation attached to sculptural works can make overly specific political work more digestible. Most folks become pretty docile when faced with a metal or stone Thingy on a plinth. And, as we all know, lately that inherent quality - cultural expectation has become a minefield. Sculpture seems to have had it’s dick and balls cut off, at least in the public realm, all over the world - in Afghanistan, in Syria, in the southern States, etc.
And seeing that all politics is ultimately personal, it helps if the work is obviously deeply felt while somehow not sinking into the quagmire of self-pity.
So ya gotta walk along and across several parallel tightropes. A thankless task, which is probably why most artists turn a blind eye to politics. Sorry, I’m busy painting this flower.
And yes, politics in photography-film is a whole other deal. I have enough of a sense of art world self-preservation that I am not going to grapple with Susan Sontag’s Culture Ghost - she’d totally whomp my butt, incorporeal or not.
Merry Christmas all, be good to yourselves and to others.
November 2020, Environmental concerns.
November 2020
Environmental concerns.
Outside of constant questioning ( mostly internal review ) regarding one’s content, methodology, materials, plus political-economic concerns regarding sales and exhibitions, lies the terra incognita of environmental concerns. I refer here not to an important subset of ‘materials used’ and their potential negative impact upon the environment but to the very nature of one’s workspace and the people who have influence in your day-to-day operations, wanted or unwanted.
I recently moved into a new studio space, my ninth, and the immediate impact of this change never ceases to amaze me. I always realize what a rut -routine I have become mired in and this change of venue always shakes me out of that ....... thusly proving to me yet again the physical importance of the studio upon all else. And yes, I always very quickly forget about all this.
This is such a subconscious thing.
Is the new studio quiet or noisy?, Does it have a door or is it open to a larger shared space?, What time of day is it best used?, Static north light or the shifting light of other aspects?, Does it even have a window? Separate storage space or are you “Bacon”?, Are you surrounded by ignorant assholes or professionals?, etc, etc, etc.
All the yay/nay to the above questions pile up fast, way too fast, and have a profound impact upon one’s practice.
It took me a long time to realize that an artist does not always need a studio space, in fact sometimes it is better to just work on research-drawings-digital realm from home or library.
Better that than an unsuitable ( unsustainable, so to speak ) environment.
An artist does not always have to be working - simply taking regular periods of time to absorb the world around you - simply to take the time to live your life - undocumented - is best. Thusly, you can come back to your studio space refreshed and kinda trick yourself into the studio being “just moved into” again. Upend everything.
Akin to what a great vacation is supposed to achieve ( don’t take any cameras or computers and keep your phone turned off as much as possible ).
I used to fool myself into thinking that I could block out the outside world / studio environment and that my practice was it’s own totally independent beast. WRONG! All that achieves is to give the studio environment, etc, even more power and to drain one of a considerable amount of psychological power best reserved for one’s practice. Make that environment work for you, not vice versa. Or stated better yet, work with-within, in concert with it. Harmony, although dissonance can have it’s purpose too.
And if need be, move to a new studio.
Environmental concerns.
Outside of constant questioning ( mostly internal review ) regarding one’s content, methodology, materials, plus political-economic concerns regarding sales and exhibitions, lies the terra incognita of environmental concerns. I refer here not to an important subset of ‘materials used’ and their potential negative impact upon the environment but to the very nature of one’s workspace and the people who have influence in your day-to-day operations, wanted or unwanted.
I recently moved into a new studio space, my ninth, and the immediate impact of this change never ceases to amaze me. I always realize what a rut -routine I have become mired in and this change of venue always shakes me out of that ....... thusly proving to me yet again the physical importance of the studio upon all else. And yes, I always very quickly forget about all this.
This is such a subconscious thing.
Is the new studio quiet or noisy?, Does it have a door or is it open to a larger shared space?, What time of day is it best used?, Static north light or the shifting light of other aspects?, Does it even have a window? Separate storage space or are you “Bacon”?, Are you surrounded by ignorant assholes or professionals?, etc, etc, etc.
All the yay/nay to the above questions pile up fast, way too fast, and have a profound impact upon one’s practice.
It took me a long time to realize that an artist does not always need a studio space, in fact sometimes it is better to just work on research-drawings-digital realm from home or library.
Better that than an unsuitable ( unsustainable, so to speak ) environment.
An artist does not always have to be working - simply taking regular periods of time to absorb the world around you - simply to take the time to live your life - undocumented - is best. Thusly, you can come back to your studio space refreshed and kinda trick yourself into the studio being “just moved into” again. Upend everything.
Akin to what a great vacation is supposed to achieve ( don’t take any cameras or computers and keep your phone turned off as much as possible ).
I used to fool myself into thinking that I could block out the outside world / studio environment and that my practice was it’s own totally independent beast. WRONG! All that achieves is to give the studio environment, etc, even more power and to drain one of a considerable amount of psychological power best reserved for one’s practice. Make that environment work for you, not vice versa. Or stated better yet, work with-within, in concert with it. Harmony, although dissonance can have it’s purpose too.
And if need be, move to a new studio.
October 2020, A conversion experience, hard-as-nails.
October 2020
A conversion experience, hard-as-nails.
I have had exactly one conversion experience in my life.
James Brown and his Furious Flames live, in the early 1980s.
Hard-as-nails unrelenting funk, I had no idea such a thing existed and it changed me forever and for the better.
A different person walked out of that show than the one who walked in.
Powder blue tuxedos, sweating buckets, everybody onstage piledrivin’ on the one. Tight.
I grew up in a lily-white environment as a kid, although there was already a lot of Black Culture that I dug, albeit from a distance. Oscar Peterson’s “Night Train.” was one of my fathers favourite records ( and mine ) for example. I still listen to it.
But JB and band ....... Blackness, totally in my face, for the first time.
Wonderful, magical. Powerful.
Thankful always.
A conversion experience, hard-as-nails.
I have had exactly one conversion experience in my life.
James Brown and his Furious Flames live, in the early 1980s.
Hard-as-nails unrelenting funk, I had no idea such a thing existed and it changed me forever and for the better.
A different person walked out of that show than the one who walked in.
Powder blue tuxedos, sweating buckets, everybody onstage piledrivin’ on the one. Tight.
I grew up in a lily-white environment as a kid, although there was already a lot of Black Culture that I dug, albeit from a distance. Oscar Peterson’s “Night Train.” was one of my fathers favourite records ( and mine ) for example. I still listen to it.
But JB and band ....... Blackness, totally in my face, for the first time.
Wonderful, magical. Powerful.
Thankful always.
September 2020, “Same blood, different veins.” - Site Exhibit Writing
September 2020
“Same blood, different veins.”
I had been filing away works of mine relating to Black Culture, and my long-standing appreciation of such, starting around 2010. My practice-methodology often involves slowly producing works that relate to a certain subject ( prison, birds, staircases, etc ) and when critical mass is achieved I can then figure out how to massage everything into a cohesive exhibition.
The brutality of the summer, followed by the protests, of 2020 came as no surprise to me. I had spent enough time travelling, then living-working in America over several decades ( especially my time in New Orleans ) to be cognizant of a righteous cauldron of rage, centuries old, awaiting a trigger to boil over and scald all. From my current vantage point ( vanishing point ? ) in Canada, and with an odd mix of sadness and pleasure, I realized that this particular batch of work had been made cohesive - not by my own ability but by external events. Made cohesive by time.
When I was young, and to this day, I feel that ancient African sculpture is wonderful beyond compare. I grew up in a house that had ( amongst some Inuit and Japanese art ) two exquisite African wood sculptures, a warrior and an elephant. I inherited them from my parents and live with them every day. Talismans.
Visually, I wanted all these works to look somewhat like woodblock prints, some quite old and damaged. Black and white. Some realism, some abstraction. Uneasily seeking balance, confused by a terrible stasis. Beauty underneath the surface though ...... waiting to emerge. I filtered my own paintings, drawings and photography through some software - applying a strict set of rules - and that provided the cohesion I had been seeking for the content. I broke those rules for “Stop Sign.” as colour was absolutely necessary to make my point, admittedly with no subtlety. Also, “Empty Cell.” needed to be kept in the real world to provide contrast and context to the rest of the works which reside in a negative image / internal realm.
I will continue the writing regarding this exhibit at a later date - but I do want to make it clear now that I have no intention of profiting directly from these “Same blood, different veins” works. If they are sold, they are going to be sold as an entirety and the money will be donated by the buyer ( in my name ) to a charity - preferably one that gives kids growing up in the inner city the opportunity to spend some time in the countryside, learning about nature in that context.
“Same blood, different veins.”
I had been filing away works of mine relating to Black Culture, and my long-standing appreciation of such, starting around 2010. My practice-methodology often involves slowly producing works that relate to a certain subject ( prison, birds, staircases, etc ) and when critical mass is achieved I can then figure out how to massage everything into a cohesive exhibition.
The brutality of the summer, followed by the protests, of 2020 came as no surprise to me. I had spent enough time travelling, then living-working in America over several decades ( especially my time in New Orleans ) to be cognizant of a righteous cauldron of rage, centuries old, awaiting a trigger to boil over and scald all. From my current vantage point ( vanishing point ? ) in Canada, and with an odd mix of sadness and pleasure, I realized that this particular batch of work had been made cohesive - not by my own ability but by external events. Made cohesive by time.
When I was young, and to this day, I feel that ancient African sculpture is wonderful beyond compare. I grew up in a house that had ( amongst some Inuit and Japanese art ) two exquisite African wood sculptures, a warrior and an elephant. I inherited them from my parents and live with them every day. Talismans.
Visually, I wanted all these works to look somewhat like woodblock prints, some quite old and damaged. Black and white. Some realism, some abstraction. Uneasily seeking balance, confused by a terrible stasis. Beauty underneath the surface though ...... waiting to emerge. I filtered my own paintings, drawings and photography through some software - applying a strict set of rules - and that provided the cohesion I had been seeking for the content. I broke those rules for “Stop Sign.” as colour was absolutely necessary to make my point, admittedly with no subtlety. Also, “Empty Cell.” needed to be kept in the real world to provide contrast and context to the rest of the works which reside in a negative image / internal realm.
I will continue the writing regarding this exhibit at a later date - but I do want to make it clear now that I have no intention of profiting directly from these “Same blood, different veins” works. If they are sold, they are going to be sold as an entirety and the money will be donated by the buyer ( in my name ) to a charity - preferably one that gives kids growing up in the inner city the opportunity to spend some time in the countryside, learning about nature in that context.
September 2020, Undue, or is that unearned ? Influence.
September 2020
Undue, or is that unearned ? Influence.
Cults are so dumb. I am not referring here to interesting stuff like people exploring Paganism in the context of modern society, etc, but groupings of chaotic idiots who seek to separate people from their money, property, friends and family, in order to blindly follow the orders of a ‘leader’ who views them ( all ) as cannon fodder - at best. A sexual Ponzi scheme - at worst.
Isolation, sleep depravation, deeply empathic conversations ( you are nuts and only we can help you ), attempted conversion experiences. Most people can identify a cultist by stench these days - and by that I mean certain mannerisms, tone of voice, a lack of humour, etc. You betray yourselves in so many ways.
Sadly, the lower end of the art industry is rife with cult-crap. “Artists” deeply frustrated by their lack of immediate success and glory, confused and hurt, often with emerging drug and alcohol issues, are ripe for the plucking by people well positioned and trained to catch them ....... I was one of that very same type of artist for what ? Two, three decades ? Thank the Embodiment of the Higher Power of your Choosing though, as I turned out to be unpluckable.
I just used the ‘word’ unpluckble. I just want to state here and now how pleased I am by that.
Anyhow, and in all seriousness, I feel a tiredness deep inside when I review what I have seen and experienced in this regard over the years. Glassy eyed fools standing in my studio suggesting that I come out to stay at a place in the country for an unspecified duration of time. Being harassed as I am locking up a ( yet another ) rental space solo show in the evening by a really creepy couple who try to intimidate the hell out of me ( I had been warned that they / their cult might be visiting me ). No traffic, nobody on the street ..... etc. Witnessing artists being strongly encouraged to totally appropriate the work of other artists, to then be sold by certain huckster galleries, good luck getting your 50% dickhead. Give up on a purely personal practice, just give up. Women ( I’m straight ) who are so blatantly “followers” trying to fake a sexual interest in me, in order to what ?, have me compromise myself in some way that can be exploited ..... you’re the one being exploited ...... see ya.
Etc, ad infinitum.
I am writing this screed because I am currently enduring some cult-moronicness where I live ( also my studio ). No sound insulation and I am being “sonically exposed” to some very psychiatrically unwell individuals who claim to be in a cult and are trying to have an undue, or is that unearned ?, influence on my practice. Not to mention my psyche. This got me to thinking about the role of the cultist not only in the art world but also in society at large - a reminder that one should always have a profoundly questioning approach to one’s own pure and true internal faith, which we all have from birth onwards. And if that faith ain’t strong enough ......
One other thought.
There are as many different paths to God as there are people.
Undue, or is that unearned ? Influence.
Cults are so dumb. I am not referring here to interesting stuff like people exploring Paganism in the context of modern society, etc, but groupings of chaotic idiots who seek to separate people from their money, property, friends and family, in order to blindly follow the orders of a ‘leader’ who views them ( all ) as cannon fodder - at best. A sexual Ponzi scheme - at worst.
Isolation, sleep depravation, deeply empathic conversations ( you are nuts and only we can help you ), attempted conversion experiences. Most people can identify a cultist by stench these days - and by that I mean certain mannerisms, tone of voice, a lack of humour, etc. You betray yourselves in so many ways.
Sadly, the lower end of the art industry is rife with cult-crap. “Artists” deeply frustrated by their lack of immediate success and glory, confused and hurt, often with emerging drug and alcohol issues, are ripe for the plucking by people well positioned and trained to catch them ....... I was one of that very same type of artist for what ? Two, three decades ? Thank the Embodiment of the Higher Power of your Choosing though, as I turned out to be unpluckable.
I just used the ‘word’ unpluckble. I just want to state here and now how pleased I am by that.
Anyhow, and in all seriousness, I feel a tiredness deep inside when I review what I have seen and experienced in this regard over the years. Glassy eyed fools standing in my studio suggesting that I come out to stay at a place in the country for an unspecified duration of time. Being harassed as I am locking up a ( yet another ) rental space solo show in the evening by a really creepy couple who try to intimidate the hell out of me ( I had been warned that they / their cult might be visiting me ). No traffic, nobody on the street ..... etc. Witnessing artists being strongly encouraged to totally appropriate the work of other artists, to then be sold by certain huckster galleries, good luck getting your 50% dickhead. Give up on a purely personal practice, just give up. Women ( I’m straight ) who are so blatantly “followers” trying to fake a sexual interest in me, in order to what ?, have me compromise myself in some way that can be exploited ..... you’re the one being exploited ...... see ya.
Etc, ad infinitum.
I am writing this screed because I am currently enduring some cult-moronicness where I live ( also my studio ). No sound insulation and I am being “sonically exposed” to some very psychiatrically unwell individuals who claim to be in a cult and are trying to have an undue, or is that unearned ?, influence on my practice. Not to mention my psyche. This got me to thinking about the role of the cultist not only in the art world but also in society at large - a reminder that one should always have a profoundly questioning approach to one’s own pure and true internal faith, which we all have from birth onwards. And if that faith ain’t strong enough ......
One other thought.
There are as many different paths to God as there are people.
August 2020, A further comment on racism.
August 2020
A further comment on racism.
When I was first truly making my own way in the world, I lived-worked in several different cities in Canada, the States and Europe. I’m Canadian so I had a naive, country-boy, intellectual understanding of racism and it’s history. Encountering racism everywhere appalled me to no end - the real shock ( for me ) being that all segments of society have racists amongst them who hate other segments of society ...... a brutally powerful and endemic social disease, seemingly incurable.
I loathed the racists I crossed paths with and that only heightened my admiration for people I met who had sidestepped it and who were actively / daily practicing non-racism.
Most disturbingly in regards to racism, there is something buried so very deep in our common history as a species that we are finding it exceedingly difficult to evolve beyond it.
So back to art and problems relating to racism, ageism, sexism, etc, in the context of the “gatekeeper” ...... maybe develop a policy for all art professionals to first view all artwork with no information attached or proceeding the viewing of the work? No language. Just the work and only the work, only in relation to other work? Any written or oral information only obtainable after having made curatorial / business decisions based only upon the work itself?
This seems so totally implausible BUT it sure as hell would help start to eliminate privilege and bias of all sorts. No language attached.
Then again, any artwork has a visual “language” plus a “linguistic history” that anybody with the proper training-experience can easily decipher.
This blows - but all artists have to start throwing SPACE-TIME CURVING DEEP ON THE INSIDE HARD FAST BALLS at gallerists, curators, collectors, etc. Pitches they ain’t NEVER gonna hit. If we all make it easy for them, we ain’t helping.
I’m going to go work on some drawings and sulk for a bit.
Sigh.
A further comment on racism.
When I was first truly making my own way in the world, I lived-worked in several different cities in Canada, the States and Europe. I’m Canadian so I had a naive, country-boy, intellectual understanding of racism and it’s history. Encountering racism everywhere appalled me to no end - the real shock ( for me ) being that all segments of society have racists amongst them who hate other segments of society ...... a brutally powerful and endemic social disease, seemingly incurable.
I loathed the racists I crossed paths with and that only heightened my admiration for people I met who had sidestepped it and who were actively / daily practicing non-racism.
Most disturbingly in regards to racism, there is something buried so very deep in our common history as a species that we are finding it exceedingly difficult to evolve beyond it.
So back to art and problems relating to racism, ageism, sexism, etc, in the context of the “gatekeeper” ...... maybe develop a policy for all art professionals to first view all artwork with no information attached or proceeding the viewing of the work? No language. Just the work and only the work, only in relation to other work? Any written or oral information only obtainable after having made curatorial / business decisions based only upon the work itself?
This seems so totally implausible BUT it sure as hell would help start to eliminate privilege and bias of all sorts. No language attached.
Then again, any artwork has a visual “language” plus a “linguistic history” that anybody with the proper training-experience can easily decipher.
This blows - but all artists have to start throwing SPACE-TIME CURVING DEEP ON THE INSIDE HARD FAST BALLS at gallerists, curators, collectors, etc. Pitches they ain’t NEVER gonna hit. If we all make it easy for them, we ain’t helping.
I’m going to go work on some drawings and sulk for a bit.
Sigh.
August 2020, Language and it’s role in art ( 1 ).
August 2020
Language and it’s role in art ( 1 ).
For me, the process of making art, in it’s most pure state, does not involve words or language - in the sense that I am deploying that ability right now, as I write this. Although I enjoy writing ( and love reading ) creating art comes as a relief to me, as these endlessly repeating and reoccurring symbols on a page or a screen do not factor into it.
If I find that issues relating to “usage” are creeping into the work, or overtly into my creative psyche, I tend to stop and then promptly destroy the work in question.
However, I have seen individual pieces over the decades that incorporate text, or text-like symbology, very successfully into the overall intention. Hello, Jasper Johns .......
My personal methodology begins with outer quiet and internal emptiness. Calm the body, calm the mind. Ideally, little or no conscious thought that I am aware of, although the greater the subconscious turmoil the better ( I suspect ). This is precisely the point in time where language, oral and written, dissolve. I have begun to recognize that this is precisely why I so enjoy making art.
So how does one express that which does not involve words ( but does involve at it’s best a form of deeply felt and well developed visual grammar, a clear vernacular ) ? You gotta stand in front of the work and put the time in ...... me and you. Which, admittedly, is a lot to ask for.
Any mode of communication takes time to decipher. Maybe therein lies the difference between great art and crap art ...... that somebody has taken the time to fully develop something on a purely visual level that is a total pleasure to take the time to decipher?
The absence ( abscess ?, sorry, that is a bit gross ) of language is an interesting question - if one stops to think about how it has so thoroughly permeated our existence. For example, what was it like to carve into, or smear a pigment upon, a rock wall before the fully developed oral and written traditions started ? Words, a barrier that was then non-existent. The work itself, and it only, would have been it’s own completely self-contained syllabus and dictionary.
Titles and labeling. Ugh. Good Lord, where to begin when addressing that quagmire? Ideally, not right beside the work on the wall. Ideally, quarantined far from the room the work is in.
Ideally, non-existent. Although I well understand that for a lot of people ( art professionals and the public ) titles and labelling are completely mandatory. Cataloguing for the pros and a helpful guide for the viewer, etc, etc, etc. Just me - I want to have a non-language dependant relationship with work ..... let it resonate ( or not ) ..... move on ( or not ) ....... both with my own work and that of other artists. Even casually speaking about work leaves a bad taste, an unease that feels like a betrayal.
But again, I totally recognize that for everyone else involved in the process of creating, exhibiting, selling, commenting upon and viewing art written and spoken language is paramount.
And why should that be?
And yes, I cheerfully traffic in some full blown hypocrisy here, as I want to be really good at speaking and writing about art despite my deep intuition that it is wrong. Ya gotta give the industry and the audience what it wants, or ..... silence ..... and I need silence to create work in the first place. Hmmmmm.
It occurred to me, a day after writing all the above, that maybe my issue with titles and labelling ( and the role of language in art ) also has to do with wanting to take age, race, gender, etc, out of the equation when first viewing a work. A way to help level the playing field. Possibly.
Language and it’s role in art ( 1 ).
For me, the process of making art, in it’s most pure state, does not involve words or language - in the sense that I am deploying that ability right now, as I write this. Although I enjoy writing ( and love reading ) creating art comes as a relief to me, as these endlessly repeating and reoccurring symbols on a page or a screen do not factor into it.
If I find that issues relating to “usage” are creeping into the work, or overtly into my creative psyche, I tend to stop and then promptly destroy the work in question.
However, I have seen individual pieces over the decades that incorporate text, or text-like symbology, very successfully into the overall intention. Hello, Jasper Johns .......
My personal methodology begins with outer quiet and internal emptiness. Calm the body, calm the mind. Ideally, little or no conscious thought that I am aware of, although the greater the subconscious turmoil the better ( I suspect ). This is precisely the point in time where language, oral and written, dissolve. I have begun to recognize that this is precisely why I so enjoy making art.
So how does one express that which does not involve words ( but does involve at it’s best a form of deeply felt and well developed visual grammar, a clear vernacular ) ? You gotta stand in front of the work and put the time in ...... me and you. Which, admittedly, is a lot to ask for.
Any mode of communication takes time to decipher. Maybe therein lies the difference between great art and crap art ...... that somebody has taken the time to fully develop something on a purely visual level that is a total pleasure to take the time to decipher?
The absence ( abscess ?, sorry, that is a bit gross ) of language is an interesting question - if one stops to think about how it has so thoroughly permeated our existence. For example, what was it like to carve into, or smear a pigment upon, a rock wall before the fully developed oral and written traditions started ? Words, a barrier that was then non-existent. The work itself, and it only, would have been it’s own completely self-contained syllabus and dictionary.
Titles and labeling. Ugh. Good Lord, where to begin when addressing that quagmire? Ideally, not right beside the work on the wall. Ideally, quarantined far from the room the work is in.
Ideally, non-existent. Although I well understand that for a lot of people ( art professionals and the public ) titles and labelling are completely mandatory. Cataloguing for the pros and a helpful guide for the viewer, etc, etc, etc. Just me - I want to have a non-language dependant relationship with work ..... let it resonate ( or not ) ..... move on ( or not ) ....... both with my own work and that of other artists. Even casually speaking about work leaves a bad taste, an unease that feels like a betrayal.
But again, I totally recognize that for everyone else involved in the process of creating, exhibiting, selling, commenting upon and viewing art written and spoken language is paramount.
And why should that be?
And yes, I cheerfully traffic in some full blown hypocrisy here, as I want to be really good at speaking and writing about art despite my deep intuition that it is wrong. Ya gotta give the industry and the audience what it wants, or ..... silence ..... and I need silence to create work in the first place. Hmmmmm.
It occurred to me, a day after writing all the above, that maybe my issue with titles and labelling ( and the role of language in art ) also has to do with wanting to take age, race, gender, etc, out of the equation when first viewing a work. A way to help level the playing field. Possibly.
July 2020, Racism
July 2020
Racism
These works, plus a few more, are a very recent attempt to more straightforwardly deal with my life-long love of black cultures ( Ancient Egypt to Billie Holiday, etc ) although I recognize that I am as honkily pale as it gets ...... the title of the exhibit of these pieces would be something like “Same blood, different veins.”
The first time I directly experienced racism ( some deadly ugly words, spittle and burning breath in my face, that man had sober-glazed eyes) was for being white and living in an almost totally black ghetto in the southern States. It shocked the hell out of me. Tables were turned. I had always prided myself for being anti-racist. It gave me a lot to consider, to this very day. To feel and deal with that every day, I would never pretend to understand what that must be like.
So I knew these new works had to be white on a black ground and supersaturated ink on thick paper - but how to best process / filter the source material ( a seemingly disjointed bundle of my own drawings and photography ) to give the works a certain homogeny? A certain power?
Wallace Berman’s wonderful Verifax work from the sixties and seventies provided a visual out.
Or is that an “in”? Either way - gratitude, dude.
Abstract yet not abstract at all, just like the subject matter.
Got a long ways to go with this, just like everything else. Just like everyone else.
Racism
These works, plus a few more, are a very recent attempt to more straightforwardly deal with my life-long love of black cultures ( Ancient Egypt to Billie Holiday, etc ) although I recognize that I am as honkily pale as it gets ...... the title of the exhibit of these pieces would be something like “Same blood, different veins.”
The first time I directly experienced racism ( some deadly ugly words, spittle and burning breath in my face, that man had sober-glazed eyes) was for being white and living in an almost totally black ghetto in the southern States. It shocked the hell out of me. Tables were turned. I had always prided myself for being anti-racist. It gave me a lot to consider, to this very day. To feel and deal with that every day, I would never pretend to understand what that must be like.
So I knew these new works had to be white on a black ground and supersaturated ink on thick paper - but how to best process / filter the source material ( a seemingly disjointed bundle of my own drawings and photography ) to give the works a certain homogeny? A certain power?
Wallace Berman’s wonderful Verifax work from the sixties and seventies provided a visual out.
Or is that an “in”? Either way - gratitude, dude.
Abstract yet not abstract at all, just like the subject matter.
Got a long ways to go with this, just like everything else. Just like everyone else.
June 2020, Concerning self-censorship ( 1 ) ( 2 ) ( 3 ).
June 2020
Concerning self-censorship ( 1 ).
In the early 1990s I visited two friends of mine who had moved to New Orleans the previous year. Long ( funny ) story short, they got evicted - with extreme prejudice - shortly after I arrived....... this being NO and one of my friends being extremely resourceful, a new apartment wasfound within an hour.
The three of us go to check it out and open the door to some very fresh horror. No joke.
A troubled girl had been living there and her father had come to take her away. Everything, other than her wallet, had been left behind - and I mean everything. She had obviously been challenging herself on a sexual and neuro-chemical level to a degree that few achieve, let alone survive. I was, and remain, oddly impressed by her. It was like walking directly into someone else’s brain or their soul, if you will. Static, stasis. I am going to gloss over the exact contents of the apartment, apart from saying that there was one drawer that I so wish I had never opened.
The oven was hilarious though.
My friends ( both young women ) split, seemingly unfazed, to get cleaning supplies, a bottle of hard shit and some smokes. I was left to guard the fort, so to speak.
It was very quiet and a rather beautiful endless dusk. I walked back in to wander around and explore some more and then exited.
I had a good camera-lenses with me and plenty of film.
I had a truly great exhibit and catalogue right before me - mind blowing content - and I knew enough to take a Nan Goldin meets William Eggleston approach.
A career as an artist ...... guaranteed.
I was so poor and had been struggling for a long time. Damn.
As I sat there waiting, I realized that there are some things that you DO NOT directly document, or directly reference to make art from. Even though I never knew her name and still do not to this day, it would have been a grotesque violation of her deepest privacy. Taking naked advantage of someone else’s descent into the pit is unforgivable. She got out and I would not, as the stench ( a spiritual and karmic miasma if there ever was one ) would follow me forevermore if I went back in there with my camera.
As I write these words almost thirty years later, I am still glad that I did not start shooting, as that apartment / contents / girl, like so many other experiences I have had, has slowly entered my practice over time in oblique ways and has enriched my work.
Self-censorship can pay heavy dividends.
A bit over a decade ago, I found myself lying at the very bottom of that very same pit. I travelled a different path than her to get there though.
Concerning self-censorship ( 2 ).
If an artist attempts to document ( paint, drawing, camera / film ) an atrocity, a migration, a riot, a march, a beating, etc, in real time, they should stop.
Leave that documentation to the amateur and professional journalists already there, that is their gig. Leave it to the street artists, the immediately responsive folk artists of our era.
Lay down your art-shit and FIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS, FIGHT.
Your “art” ain’t going to help nobody then and there, or ever.
Join, assist, or walk away.
Don’t attempt to profit from somebody else’s attempt to better their society.
Your breath smells like crypt dust to me, you hacks.
Concerning self-censorship ( 3 ).
Don’t make “Coronavirus art”. It’s gonna suck. Guaranteed. Instead, take the money you would have used for materials and donate it to an appropriate charity.
Make the work before or after, not during.
Concerning self-censorship ( 1 ).
In the early 1990s I visited two friends of mine who had moved to New Orleans the previous year. Long ( funny ) story short, they got evicted - with extreme prejudice - shortly after I arrived....... this being NO and one of my friends being extremely resourceful, a new apartment wasfound within an hour.
The three of us go to check it out and open the door to some very fresh horror. No joke.
A troubled girl had been living there and her father had come to take her away. Everything, other than her wallet, had been left behind - and I mean everything. She had obviously been challenging herself on a sexual and neuro-chemical level to a degree that few achieve, let alone survive. I was, and remain, oddly impressed by her. It was like walking directly into someone else’s brain or their soul, if you will. Static, stasis. I am going to gloss over the exact contents of the apartment, apart from saying that there was one drawer that I so wish I had never opened.
The oven was hilarious though.
My friends ( both young women ) split, seemingly unfazed, to get cleaning supplies, a bottle of hard shit and some smokes. I was left to guard the fort, so to speak.
It was very quiet and a rather beautiful endless dusk. I walked back in to wander around and explore some more and then exited.
I had a good camera-lenses with me and plenty of film.
I had a truly great exhibit and catalogue right before me - mind blowing content - and I knew enough to take a Nan Goldin meets William Eggleston approach.
A career as an artist ...... guaranteed.
I was so poor and had been struggling for a long time. Damn.
As I sat there waiting, I realized that there are some things that you DO NOT directly document, or directly reference to make art from. Even though I never knew her name and still do not to this day, it would have been a grotesque violation of her deepest privacy. Taking naked advantage of someone else’s descent into the pit is unforgivable. She got out and I would not, as the stench ( a spiritual and karmic miasma if there ever was one ) would follow me forevermore if I went back in there with my camera.
As I write these words almost thirty years later, I am still glad that I did not start shooting, as that apartment / contents / girl, like so many other experiences I have had, has slowly entered my practice over time in oblique ways and has enriched my work.
Self-censorship can pay heavy dividends.
A bit over a decade ago, I found myself lying at the very bottom of that very same pit. I travelled a different path than her to get there though.
Concerning self-censorship ( 2 ).
If an artist attempts to document ( paint, drawing, camera / film ) an atrocity, a migration, a riot, a march, a beating, etc, in real time, they should stop.
Leave that documentation to the amateur and professional journalists already there, that is their gig. Leave it to the street artists, the immediately responsive folk artists of our era.
Lay down your art-shit and FIGHT MOTHERFUCKERS, FIGHT.
Your “art” ain’t going to help nobody then and there, or ever.
Join, assist, or walk away.
Don’t attempt to profit from somebody else’s attempt to better their society.
Your breath smells like crypt dust to me, you hacks.
Concerning self-censorship ( 3 ).
Don’t make “Coronavirus art”. It’s gonna suck. Guaranteed. Instead, take the money you would have used for materials and donate it to an appropriate charity.
Make the work before or after, not during.