garden royalty

on saturday, me and dan swung by the national arboretum
and happily stumbled our way through the azalea collection
which is basically a small mountain overflowing with
hundreds of varieties of these captivating flowers...

i think the best part about the trip was that i forgot my camera.
because instead of scrambling to digitally capture every inch
of the garden, i let my eyes absorb it all on their own,
allowing me to bask in the flowery glow of the moment.

last year a dream revealed some strange truths...
one of which involved my having a secret identity.
i was posing as a reporter for some gardening publication,
who's job it was to cover everything azalea.
my first story would delve into the flower's poisonous powers,
exposing the azalea's known history of laying armies to ruin.

azaleas not your cup-o-tea? check out these lovely lupines.

pixelated shape-shifter

so the other night while seriously pondering my next artistic direction,
i started thinking about the exciting world of super mario bothers 3...
what sparked my thinking on the subject was the flatness of the mario universe, all those one-dimensional shapes & harsh drop shadows...i have been drawn to that aesthetic lately.

while i would actually consider mario 2 my favorite of the old school mario games... 3 really seemed to take mario to a whole new level (ha ha). one of the most exciting developments was the magical secret of the white blocks: if mario jumped onto a white block and crouched down for 5 seconds, he would fall right through the block and suddenly have the ability to move about behind the scenery!

it was as though you were suddenly transported behind the scenes and moving about in some parallel universe...this was simply unheard of, and it added a whole new dimension to the very flat world our little hero inhabited. i want to tap into that in-between layer... insert myself/the viewer/my subject into such a space where unknown possibilities lie just under reality's surface.

or maybe i just need to play some old-school nintendo..

speaking of books...

i must tip my hat to the amazing JT Kirkland of Thinking About Art
for seeing his One Word Project from an online experiment
all the way into a wonderful new book you can now order!
Thinking About Art: The One Word Project

after viewing a sample of their work, JT would give each artist one word that came to his mind, asking them to respond to that word and how it relates to their work. the book pairs each artist's response along with a reproduction of their work. i got a cheap thrill that my very own entry appears in the preview!
so do support some self-published artistic action,
at $20 it's quite a steal...

in other book news...i finished reading kornwolf the other day and this crazy little amish/werewolf/boxing story has really stuck with me. I do have a soft spot for dark tales with a touch of apocalyptic insanity. the werewolf in this book represented some kind of cultural/individual unrest that went on right beneath the societal surface... the kornwolf is a menace that is almost tolerated & encouraged until it spins out of control. the book ends with a primal gathering that i can only describe as a "teenage riot."

while researching my previous post that i discovered the author had committed suicide just after the book was published. i can't deny that this knowledge might have colored my feelings toward the book. i'm glad that i didn't know this until i was almost finished reading. it's too easy to project all of these suicidal notions onto the book and rob it of its merit as a separate entity from its creator. but i can't help feeling that it adds some authenticity to the dark neurosis of the book. here is a tribute to the author, tristan egolf.

if you can put down your book for a minute, i totally recommend
seeing Brick, a noir-ish detective drama set in the mean halls of high school. i was at first distracted but ultimately awed by the simplicity of the setting: bleak school walls, sparse parking lots, tacky basements and football fields were shot with such honesty they took on monumental stance. the space around the characters was an integral part of the drama.

over-under ocular

"he closed his eyes. the opening shots of an inner-eyelid movie in lavender --which felt to be warming up to a great escape in blue--appeared to him just as he started to drift..."

a quote from kornwolf, a strange book i stumbled into recently
it draws attention to the layers that make up our visual field.
this secret layer beneath the eyelid where milky darkness presides.
one could get lost back there, swirling, unfathomable depths & all... staring into that space is kind of like suddenly loosing your bearings and drifting down some donnie darko kind of
space/time portal at full speed.

i'm also fascinated by the strange little disruptions
that lazily float their way through my vision from time to time..
like liquid cave drawings set to motion across some jellied surface,
another layer between our inner sanctum & the harsh glare of reality, a network of squishy mechanics, absorbing/transforming light into ocular cinema.

monday monday

although i had already assumed that i didn't get my installation proposal accepted to the conversions show, i just got the damming email that confirms it all.

i think the phrase is something about the hazards of loading up all your eggs into just one basket... i was using this possible show as an excuse for the art work that i have not been doing lately... i was telling myself and others that i was just waiting to hear if i would have to start mass producing work. it was kind of true, but rejection colors it as the weak excuse that it already was...

the proper thing to do now would be to make my installation proposal a reality anyway... who cares if some gallery in virginia doesn't want it, this was an idea that i wanted to see through. perhaps a quote from an interview w/ christo & jeanne-claude will eloquently illustrate who artwork is really made for...

"We want to create works of art of joy and beauty, which we will build because we believe it will be beautiful. The only way to see it is to build it. Like every artist, every true artist, we create them for us."

vacation fallout

there's a lot to take in while transversing san francisco
you walk down a dirty city block and then you reach a gap
through which you can see forever, slicing through neighborhoods
dramatically ending in a spasm of stacked houses skirting
the massive, undulating green hills reminiscent of hawaiian slopes.
the sky ranges from friendly blue to ominous mist that swallows the hills. the plantlife competes with the architecture for your attention. block after block of buy-sell-trades, coffee shops & graffiti murals

also got an eyeful of visual pleasures as i stumbled down the aisles of the comic convention, peering down bashfully at the wares of hip young kids, i always love being an exhibitor because it feels like your behind the scenes and connected with a whole group of artists with DIY mentality and fresh ideas i wish the visual arts had a similar venue to exhibit at and attending panel discussions about artist-appropriate topics...

I guess Crafty Bastards is the closest thing i've got...and it's a long way off but the preparations are already in motion at work for the 3rd & biggest one yet. monica has already agreed to do it with me again this year.

san francisco treat

we entered san francisco through a shimmering gate of
metallic movement & metro motion...set off by partly cloudy skies
we were on a monica mission: to live it up in san fran,
buy clothes, etc & sell some comics!

the sun would come and go with the convention crowds.
we were picked up from the holiday inn by a red hummer
people seemed to be more forthcomingly friendly,
while vegan food & soymilk flooded the streets...
cab drivers floored it down vertical hill drops,
quietly delighting in our wide-eyed terror in the rearview.

from hot cookies down in the castro to the stunning
discovery of a bio-graphic novel about david wojnarowicz
translated from his journal writings into comic form...

i am severely time warped and must now retreat to bed.
more "true travel tales" tomorrow...

traveling, leaving logic and reason

it's about time for me to blast off,
break up into light particles & transport my matter
to explore distant locals & immeasurable wonders!

yes, it's that time again...to travel back through time zones
to the magical world of california for APE 2006! it's the
alternative press expo, it's like the indie world of comics and i get to peddle the wares of the ultra talented & hardworking monica!

i knew the seasons were changing in the city when
i witnessed something i had seen about this very time last year
i heard a noise from the fire escape of the building next to ours,
a kinda run down place who's curtains/windows are always shut
and very rarely do i see anyone come or go from its doors...

so this guy appears from the 2nd floor and shuffles down into the backyard, an overgrown patch of grass littered w/ trash from the alley, closed in by a high chain link fence topped w/ barbed wire.
and he proceeded to gather up all the trash and yanks out all
the overgrown weeds and dead brushy stuff to reveal this
15ft. strip of cleared garden which is inhabited with a
slightly pathetic cluster of 2 snapdragons & 3 tulips..
and then he disappears back into the dark building
and i don't seem him out there again for another year.

i am fascinated by this guy's ritual impressive yet anticlimactic landscaping. it's not much, but it does give our little, crime-ridden alley some color... it's always nice to see some green amid the rampant gray of the city.

speaking of green, my fave part of san francisco is how the dense mass of city sprawl is surrounded by these fairly unpopulated rolling green hills that tend catch light perfectly...
oh, and this awesome sculpture around the escalators down
to the BART station at the airport, made of thousands of metallic discs that are manipulated by wind and train movement to shimmer the senses.

disa-reappear

in my ongoing cherry blossom thought process
i think about how effectively the blossoms playfully
blot out and distort our visual perception...
they push and shove the clouds vying for
the best contrast against blue sky backdrop,
they steal the monumentality of our proud city,
they soak up all the sunlight for maximum luminosity,
they bend and shape reality for their own gain.

the whole effect reminds me of the brilliance of a
couple of shots from michael gondry's video for bjork's isobel.

day two: cherry syrup sirens

i woke confused and foggy...shoes still tainted with dust kicked up in a yesterday's cherry blossom frenzy. from the bed i was immediately drawn to my window to bask in sun glow. work wrenched me out of my happy stupor for awhile but all the coworkers reported the same conditions: dazed and drawn to the outdoors, hatred for walls & cubicles.

we all could subconsciously hear the high pitched wail of the cherry blossoms. they transmit a high frequency signal that interferes with daily routines, wooing us to shuffle down the dusty pathway of the national mall, dodging several lanes of hectic traffic & down into the tidal basin to stumble comfortably down & nestle in their root system. slowly swaying dappled light and hovering blossom clouds hypnotize. while light breezes ruffle a rain of pollen & petals down from above microchemically dissolving human matter down into a potent fertilizer.