David Byrne!

I had to go ahead and nab this photo off John Pollard's blog (he's the director of ADA Gallery.) I could not let this go. It's David Byrne, of course, with John, in front of my work at Scope Miami in 2006. Too cool.

I only wish I could bump David Byrne over a foot and a half to the right so I could see how well the kidney wallpaper complements his complexion.

Spatial Art Faculty Show opens Tuesday

I'll be showing the two tire-tread pieces in the faculty show at the Thompson Gallery (SJSU Art Building) that opens on Tuesday. There's a gallery walk-through/ talk by the artists from 5-6, then the reception from 6-8. There will be openings for all of the student galleries also.

Okay, Okay!

None of my friends will be satisfied until I get the tire tread ONTO a tire. And I promise you, that's the next step on the agenda, and I'll be beginning the work as soon as classes are over. I did a large portion of the research toward this end, last summer. So, Jonathan, just chill, I'm on it already. And Christopher Tse, my trusty assistant on this project so far, is ready for me to throw him some more "OCD" jobs (like cutting 800 tiny nails down to 1/4" using a jig I made for this purpose.)

Reverse Alchemy

So, I've got every hour of the next two weeks accounted for, trying to meet my deadline for Scope Miami. I had previously given up on the possibility of showing anything at this Scope, because school had so completely derailed my work on the project. Now I'm trying to make the deadline after all, and it's a crazy feat because there is so much experimentation and trial and error necessary to figure this project out. The ridiculous thing is, I'm essentially trying to make an insanely expensive material look like a fairly cheap, common material. This is not by choice, but because the process of working the cheaper material costs exponentially more than what I'm currently spending, and requires specialized, heavy-duty equipment unavailable to most people.
Bad advice from a "tech support" guy yesterday, led me to ruin $120 worth of material in about three minutes! I called him back after this disaster, and he said, "Oh, maybe I shouldn't have suggested that."

D'ohh!

Thomas Huber

I'm on the email list of Galerie Akinci in Amsterdam. I received this announcement this morning, for a new show of Thomas Huber's work. He has amazed me since I first saw his work in the early nineties, and this new work is no exception.

Thomas Huber 'Messe', 2008, oil on canvas, 200x180 cm

Time for a New Wallpaper

When I drew the urinary tract wallpaper, it was as a superstitious/ preemptive measure-- sort of a celebration of the "god of healthy kidneys," since I have only one kidney and want it to function perfectly for the rest of my life. So far, the wallpaper seems to have "worked." Now it appears that the time has come for me to make a new wallpaper design, this time honouring the God of Patellar Cartilage. I knew I had lost a lot of cartilage in my knees (an MRI in 2000 confirmed this,) but now a new MRI shows that the cartilage behind my kneecaps is essentially gone ("stage three" chondromalacia.) Doctors all ask, "Did you have some bad injury in high school?" or something to that effect. "Nope," I answer. " *
Anybody else in your family have this problem?" "Nope."

Just bad luck, I guess. Nothing a good wallpaper design can't fix, though. I have to really, really mean it, for it to turn out good. The kidney wallpaper had a lifetime of fear and paranoia behind it.

The director of the gallery that shows my work is still waiting for me to make him a bronchial wallpaper to address his asthma. Looks like I have a lot of work to do (as soon as I finish my current project...)

* I was never an athlete. I was a furniture maker and wood shop manager: the equivalent of having been a professional "furniture mover" for about eight years.

A whole winter in Finland!

A couple of weeks ago I found out I was accepted to a second artist's residency program in Finland. The first residency kindly accommodated me so that I can do both residencies back-to-back. A solid, six-month period in Finland, from the beginning of next October until the end of March! I am super excited, both residency programs look amazing. I will need to learn some Finnish and some Swedish before I go. And buy a lot of down clothing. I've been researching the history of the locations, there's lots of cool info and pictures to post, soon.