iconographilia

Bloodlines, Emmanuel Gallery, 12/2/2010

2010-12-11T07:04:00.002-07:00

Here are some photos of my performance art piece Bloodlines, at Emmanuel Gallery in Denver. Video will be up on my website eventually, as well as a statement about the piece and my thoughts on human DNA, violence and religion. Thanks to LOGOS for doing the sound engineering, and to everyone that helped with documentation.

"Global Proposal for a New Emoticon" (BFA Thesis Installation/Performance)

2010-11-29T15:26:00.005-07:00

Thesis Statement

Digital communication, textual and pictorial, is the daily bread of contemporary life in a techno-enthused society. In Global Proposal for a New Emoticon, the relationship between the psyche and popular methods of digital expression are explored through performance, video, and installation. The use of a YouTube channel as medium provides an intentional documentation on modern-day narcissism and the failings of instant-gratification communication devices.

Where there is a limitation of language, there is a void of expression. My installation is a large sculptural environment that reflects this concept, and is designed to house a performer (myself). I use my body in my art as a tool for pictorial narrative and a vehicle for complex emotive expression. Until an object-body becomes a subject-body, the body will only ever be acted upon by outside forces. Once the body realizes its objecthood, it becomes a subject and can thus begin acting upon its environment. Through the act of food preparation, where a kitchen becomes a metaphor for activity, I become an agent of creation. Through the act of attempting to consume these foods while watching television, I become an agent of consumption, where the living room is a metaphor for passivity. Through the binaries of participation and spectatorship, technology is convicted in a case against digital communication dependence. Sherry Turkle - writer, professor, psychologist, and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self - writes about technology and its psychological effects upon the human mind/spirit, especially regarding the internet, the personality, and the culture of instant-gratification. We are now living in a culture where the instant gratification from communicating feelings through text and SMS messaging becomes dangerous; the danger is in having become dependent upon technology for the expression and edification of feelings.

As I blindly consume the objects of my installed habitat, I point to the absurdity of trying to convey deep feelings through digital communication. My actions within the habitat point to a relationship between being "logged on" and being temporarily isolated from my immediate surroundings. I chose the medium of a YouTube channel, to upload 400 of my own home videos over a year's time. These videos aim to demonstrate the lack of insight resulting in non-reflective narcissism and the instant-gratification of uploading the 'self' and of communicating digitally. With these stockpiled videos, I created two videos for the installed environment, and designed a new emoticon after scrupulously analyzing the visual data. From this data, I formulated a ratio of mind, body and spirit 'incidences' based off of each video's predominant content, and that ratio mathematically informed the design of the new emoticon. The three parts of the ratio were the basis of the three structural components of the emoticon for 'psychospiritual transformation.' The emoticon is a parody on the complexity of feelings and the void they encounter when using digital technology. The post-performance environment will become a deconstruction zone. It serves as evidence of the trace of a psychospiritual, transformative act against emptiness in all its forms.

Global Proposal for a New Emoticon considers how technology may or may not evolve to meet the needs of the human psyche that is evolving along side it, and if and when digital communication could ever match that of verbal or body language. By way of using my body in my art, I point to the complexity in communication that is lost through those digital devices that are so pervasive today, but I also point to the sterility of the contemporary 'white cube' gallery. Parody is an ingredient that I find works well with the state of questioning, and my body questions the sedentary states of digital consumption that are the trademarks of the twenty-first century, as well as the over-institutionalization of art.

Golden Ratio of the Self:

Mining the Video Journal Data for an Archetype
of PsychoSpiritual Transformation and It's Visual Expression

New Emoticon

)))(((([oø/]))))(((

psycho
)))(((

(mind)

spiritual
((()))

(spirit)

transformation
[oø/]

(body)

mind:spirit:body ratio = 15:13:12

where 15:13:12 is the basic expression of relationship of the 3 components above, as mined and identified over the course of reviewing 400 instances of daily routine (the video-stock YouTube channel)

psycho - short for psychological, or mental processes; act of will; ego; vibrational 'outward' energy expression (not an object)

ex: "((((o))))" where o = object

spiritual - long word for spirit, or spiritual beliefs or experiences; act of service; subservience or non-ego; vibrational 'inward' energy expression (not an object)

ex: "))))o((((" where o = object

transformation - to transform is a verb, and verbs (actions) need bodies (nouns); all physical bodies transform (molecules, eg.) and all non-physical bodies transform (thoughts, eg.); bodies of material and bodies of knowledge; both are stagnant; objects, or bodies, are either acted upon or act upon another body

ex: "[oø/]" where [] indicates a unified body, a message, a strand of imprints that communicate the nature of the body and where oø/ symbolizes the word 'transformation' through a series of visual steps (circle, circle plus slash, slash minus circle)

Special thanks to John Davenport for event photography.

Duchamp's Obituary

2010-10-14T20:00:00.001-06:00

Mining the video data for the magical video mosaic (kitchen) and video narrative (living room), I came across this...

((((( May all beings be happy. )))))

((((( May all beings find that special love for Duchamp. )))))

---------end transmission----------

zodiacical ˚∆

2010-08-27T21:34:00.001-06:00

A previously compounded video-stock, claiming 400 videos in all, was only 385 total, after all. My Youtube stock site for a large, 400-video mosaic (video projection component to an installation and performance project, Global Proposal For a New Emoticon) has a minor error. A human error. A human error in the age of the post human. The age of computation! And why can I not compute a simple number such as 400? YouTube privacy settings, that's why. It's explained in video journal #389. See above or below.

twelve is a good number (zodiacical ≈ of the zodiac, maniacical)

Imagine animated parodies that mock human emotion and are constructed entirely of standard keyboard symbols. They're almost about to be born. Nine months down the birth canal. One dozen videos left to go, after adjusting for human error.

At the heart of the concept are themes around networked, online applications and hosting. A critical look at the cult of YouTube through the lens of keyboard culture. Welcome to the age of emptiness. (But does it have to be this way?) You can run from yourself, but you can't hide from yourself. Global Proposal For a New Emoticon will address such things, in a medium that I like to call theatrical, time-based sculpture (my combining of installation, performance, subjects, video, and objects).

The basic, unexciting and seemingly pointless fragments of the video painting (what I prefer to call the video mosaic) are abstract, decontextualized and empty when looked at under a microscope. A Gestalt perspective on the relationship of parts-to-the-whole leads me to other conclusions, however. Pixels, fragments, mean nothing when in isolation of relationship to one another, yet viewed simultaneously... they disappear and paint a picture, tell a story. The whole is more than the sum of it's pathetic little parts. The mass emptiness that the pixels appear to embody when disintegrated is replaced by substance when combined... and recombined... into a panorama of concentrated points in space, or rather, points in 'time'.

So too, human life can take on the persistent mask of uneventfulness and banality. However, when compiled and viewed simultaneously, there is much to be said. Some might call it the work of God, some might sell t-shirts, some might call it coincidence and some might call it psychology. (I call it psychospiritual transformation.) All in the same, it's perspective due to information compression. And it's definitely visual.

Post-Duchampian perspectives on the teaching of art

2010-07-15T20:52:00.006-06:00

So I decided to lay claim to some of my recent and/or edified influences upon my actions in the world as an artist, a cultural agitator, and a consumer of a BFA in digital art. These are some notes from a long session at the College Art Association Conference in Chicago this last February....

Post-Duchamp, Post-Production: Delineations of Media in Art Theory and Pedagogy

I took a lot of notes on this session... it was probably one of my favorite panels at the whole conference, hands down. Ideas about how the teaching of art in institutions is evolving were prevalent on this panel, and most engaging was the discussion & debate of the new PhD in Fine Arts or Studio Arts or whatever it's being labeled at this moment. What a time we are living in!

______________________________

Mariah Doren (Columbia University and Purchase College, State University of New York) presented a paper, titled Post-Duchamp Critiques in Art School: Following the Narrative of Originality, and she spoke of the readymade as political gesture. Duchamp shifted the focus from the art object to the art gesture and it was this very gesture that became the cause for us to stop and look and reflect upon our experience, rather than the art object itself.

Applying this to how critiques are run in art school and it is not difficult to see that a shift was necessary in the way we approach the structure of feedback between peers and professors; trying to define meaning in an artwork is an obsolescence that only produces vague and idiosyncratic critiques empty of value. Greenbergian-esque claims of impartiality, universality and objectivity put static meaning upon the work of art and produces not so much of a professor or teacher, but a connoisseur that simply reinforces an outdated hierarchy.

Over time we see trends in art practice and theory whereby as artists we go through cycles of building up value around a distinct theory or trend and then we later break down that value... over and over again. In this way, value becomes a performative act; it is a constant reorganizing of building and breaking. Value becomes a verb; we now have a non-linear, non-hierarchical practice of art production and evaluation based on the idea of the rhizome. The rhizome represents the structure known as network where related concepts branch but do not compete for power. Value need not be linear in the teaching and administering of art.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sean C. Lowry (University of Newcastle) presented his spin on artistic production, The Agnostic Readymade: Beyond Art and Anti-Art, keeping me on the edge of my conference seat like some kind of geek. I highly recommend checking out Lowry's website and seeing his history in music and experimentation. A lot of what he was experimenting with back in the day - music appropriation and experimentation in melody matching - is very similar to the mission of today's internet site Pandora (Music Genome Project).

Lowry spoke of his earlier projects while in art school of strategic concealment of music appropriation (music sampling based on key, melody, etc.) which he is calling "subliminal appropriation". The main difference between the readymade-type appropriation and this type has to do with the intention of the artist. Blatant appropriation is different than concealed appropriation because of the differences in the self-consciousness of the artist. Lowry played samples of the musical experimentation that he examined while still in school. He gathered musical data (songs) that had similar melodic properties and played in similar keys, blended the data together to create a montage sound of familiarity, and had musicians play their instruments on top of those montage tracks... creating and essentially curating an entirely new sound that ended up getting him signed on to record deals.

Lowry said something profound that got my total attention and has been resonating in my mind ever since... he said that in a post-Duchamp world, we are agnostic. We don't believe in art anymore. We believe in the idea of art. No longer is it necessary to continue to enforce the binary of art and anti-art, where the aesthetic is a belief in art as an index of culture and the anti-aesthetic is a belief in art as culture itself. Art and anti-art are now entering the pluralistic state of being equivocal, of being companions and no longer opponents. In Lowery's opinion (and I completely agree), the most provocative art refuses to exist at either end of the binary. The agnostic readymade is about finding peace between cynicism and anti-cynicism.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Natalie Loveless (University of California, Santa Cruz) presented her written work titled Participatory Dissent and the Fine Arts PhD and I swear to you my NERDA friends, though she calls herself Loveless she is very far from it. The passion this woman has for the discourse around institutionalized artistic practice has gotten me to start seriously considering the possibilities of a much different future for artists in the United States... a very bright future.

Where to start? Well first of all, Loveless began the presentation of her paper with a call to action. Her first slide was a quote from one of my deeper and more potent influences in artistic practice...

Every human being is an artist... called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives. - Joseph Beuys

Loveless began by posing a very serious question:

What is the definition of PhD labor, or, what are the limits of PhD labor?

She spoke of the process of research being at odds with the process of making art, that art is at odds with the university proper because art itself is messy, indulgent and creative - far from research practice. She took a very critical look at the fine art PhD, calling it a candy-like degree that takes away the artists' creativity and economy. Calling for a new way to look at the degree, she laid the foundation for something she is calling "participatory dissent", a model for institutions to follow that supports and allows both dissent and libidinal investment on the artists' behalf, a model that would allow for all participants to reconfigure themselves in incredible ways. Using a Lacanian psychological model as the grounds to understand participatory dissent, we can transform antagonism into agonism.

Practice and theory need not be separate endeavors. One is not the instrument of the other. Using theory to make art or making art to create theory is not as transformational and engaging as living in a world where practice and theory envelop one another, become one another, and shape the way we live in profound ways. Practice becomes theory and theory becomes practice and there is no real boundary between the two. (One is not organized and one is not messy. One is not above and one is not below in a hierarchy. One is not words and one is not visual. That is my own interpretation of the idea.)

Loveless reminded us that pedagogy is a political act; it is social sculpture.
And she reinforced the important question in regards to the PhD... What is that labor that we call research?

It is important to remember that the PhD is not the same as an artwork. It is not an MFA in Studio Art. It's more of a question, a philosophy, a research practice where theory becomes practice and practice becomes theory without a collapsing of either of the two. The current structure of the Fine Arts PhD as a justification of disciplinary labor in art that entangles us in relations of debt, and it needs to updated to reflect the interests and needs of the artist.

"Bloodlines" (video that wants to be a painting, and vice versa)

2010-06-18T05:00:00.007-06:00

Bloodlines

drafted scene from non-act 1: zen of mechanism

The following themes are begging examination of me right now, and thus they are feeding my next video + performance...

- ancestral projections
- cultural extinction a.k.a the problem of assimilation
- evolutionary psychology
- transpersonal psychology

I'm merging them into a live installation narrative, including but not limited to: acts of body, acts of mind, and acts of craft.

There are 4 non-acts in Bloodlines (installation + performance):

non-act 1: zen of mechanism
(crayolas)

non-act 2: Operation 'DNA' - release ancestral; retain astral
(a spill)

non-act 3: get in good with an indigo
(a clean up)

non-act 4: ((((o))))
(pastels)

Now, it is very real to me that some of my work as of late has taken such measures as trying to jump out of illusory 3D space and into the realm of painting, whatever 'painting' is or ever was. And the paintings/illustrations... they're trying to get into the moving frames. I've been determined to let this evolve naturally in the work, but I have also literally tethered myself to a time-frame of a 40 - 50 minute performance, compiled in 4 acts, ( yet non-acts).
I chose the model of theater to contain the emotive content of this work.

When video and physical drawing mingle (my exploration), I suppose I will answer some questions about what on earth they want from each other (my analysis). Those are the points of departure for a rather intense gesture I'm conjuring up. (BYOT... Bring your own tissues.)

Drawing paper, meet video. Video, meet drawing paper. My body is pleased to introduce the two of you, finally.

Dhamma time! (thoughts on grants, graduating, and suffering)

2010-06-05T12:23:00.003-06:00

A friend texted me... "How was your day?"

My immediate reply... "Not spacey whatsoever. Sobering, it was. And yours?"

After some silence I thought about the question further, and re-submitted an answer... "Salty. Like my name. Pools of emoting fishes, some swimming easy and some swimming upstream. I have always been the latter. There's an art to struggling, and I think I would like to master in that."

************

So I was going to expel something trance-like, lyrical almost, about the nature of suffering and somewhere between getting my laptop out and sitting down to dazzle the keyboard, I must have remembered why I never write about suffering anymore, not post 21 anyway, and not in a poetic way. It's just so overdone. So instead I'm rambling.

My whole first half of the decade was an existence spent stiffly practicing Vipassana while helping people die in their homes (hospice work) and taking care of those whom had begun losing their minds and bodily functions. Suffering was my psychology. Theory and practice were completely indistinct. Vipassana gave me great insight and almost an indifference towards pain and pleasure. Thank you, Satipatthana Sutta. It was a serene five years with you, begun at the turn of the century. My perfect encyclopedic lover - a text, universes long - on the condition of suffering... manifesting as experiential knowledge through meditation... much different than the void of intellectual concept.

My primary relationship was between myself and Dhamma. (Woe was any lover that tried to change that.) That Theravadic romance left me with one very tough lesson about the way in which my psyche works. That my existence is now and has always been a constant appraisal. An appraisal of the self.

In this moment... Am I seeking suffering? Am I relieved of suffering? Am I currently suffering? Am I anticipating suffering? Am I evading suffering? Am I postponing suffering?

Am I running from pain or running towards pleasure? (The teaching, and my experience, begs me to be neither.) I need to be in the now. Such a cliche to say it... it's so over-exposed in the synthetic light of new age rhetoric. Still, I am returning to that existence... after a painful yet eye-opening ass-fucking from an institution of higher education in a generalized 4-year undergrad endeavor. I have just put myself and my artistic insight, talent and specialty all up for grabs while enrolled in years of state-funded college. Mostly I have been greatly rewarded for my efforts. But I did what they said. I prepared for the future. I looked back at my past to help accomplish many academic projects, drawing from experience. But never did I let myself live in the moment... for if I had, I would have never gotten through my degree. Now here I am (and several changes in major later), a semester away from getting it with nothing left but a thesis class and a portfolio class.

Time to return to that special robot blend of human that I once loved masquerading as! The buddha in me is stirring again. Rise and shine to the salty ocean, constantly changing.

In this moment, I am evading suffering. I am forsaking all committed love and romance, for my Big Love. What's my Big Love, at the moment? It's simple. It's the idea of delving into two years of advanced study in the very things that move me... and in the form of visual art and narration. I'd like to focus on this thing of suffering. I'd like to tackle it. It's been my specialty all my life.

I can not escape it and I have many stories to tell of it. And so, thinking about a master's program that is right for me and what I have to offer, I have had a couple of eurekas...

First, that I must honor my struggles by acknowledging their influence. Minorities and others less fortunate, that show promise for community, would be wise to approach endowment and grant proposals with an honest history of the self and it's advances in the world, physically, intellectually, socially, spiritually, professionally. My approach to letter & essay writing for the following are highly influenced by trials of pain and trials of pleasure...

a) private/corporate or government funding for academics
b) applications for academia-related entrances and opportunities
c) everything other endeavor that demands of you the detailed proof of your worthy existence, in exchange for privilege

I'm applying for the big leagues now. I'm no newbie to writing essays asking for other people's money. It's what got me funded through my undergrad. And it's funny how Vipassana was the reason that I got a full ride... that's a story for another day. Or maybe an essay. But really, as I sit here sifting through bits of scrap paper, emails, links, brochures, conference materials, napkins, notebooks and websites - looking to painfully narrow down the list of desired grad programs - it hits me. I thrive in strife. In 2005 I was majoring in Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing. I was prepped to professionalize in a realm where existential human concerns were the absolute zenith of my future work.

I never admitted to wanting to create any art other than for myself. My creative expression was the most important part of what I called my 'art'. The process was really all I cared for. That cathartic chunk of time in the studio (or often the tent and sometimes the meditation centers) was a medicine with no substitute. The end result was only an empty index of those moments that culminated in a 'final' product. I never aimed to create a stable, unchanging object. I never had commerce in mind, and certainly not collectibility. I had my own needs in mind. My need to create. It was and is selfish. And it will never change. If I keep creating, I keep existing. I create, therefore I exist. And being a creature of strife, what I create inevitably, always, ends up addressing concepts in the pool of conscious and unconscious thoughts regarding human, psychological suffering. We are hard-wired to perceive pain and pleasure and move around in the world based off of those basic functions. I am now discovering a way to bring attention to it and thoughtfulness to it through my work and my art, without necessarily making it "sad" for people. Meaningful and relevant, that is what I need for my work to ever be, in it's 'end state.' In my selfishness as an artist I must know that someone, anyone, will get it. And will be altered by it.

In this moment, I am diminishing my own suffering.

(And just for fun... here's the first painting I ever did. I was 16 and it was winter, 1996. This was the first time I experienced the therapeutic application of art. A far cry from setting cars on fire in collaboration with others.)

~ Miami heat ~

2010-05-28T12:04:00.001-06:00

So I've been sifting through all this great footage of the funeral for Meg last weekend (my 1996 Kia Sephia that quit on me in March), and I realized a few days ago when a proposal for an art performance in Miami was requested and due within days, that the footage was perfect for the anticipated collaboration with artist Joey Meyer.

The anti-spectacle of Meg's funeral took place on a windy, hot day on the plains of eastern Colorado. Dirt flew into my Sony Handycam on several occasions, rendering it useless. However the footage I ended up getting was not of the initial shootings (note the hundreds, perhaps thousands of ammunition trace marks on the frame of the vehicle), nor the world war two army canon that was aimed at it in the end ($125 for one piece of ammunition that looked like a bullet about the size of an infant). I much rather preferred the Flame. I was unhappy with the sensation of shooting the 223 or whatever it's called, or the shotgun even. What I was really after was the feeling of destruction, Kali style.

"Dammit boys! It's not fucked up enough. Why don't you try aiming for the gas tank? I need a climax. Blow some shit up already."

So they did. I believe it was Matt that took the the glory of the credit for doing Meg justice. Oh, how she burned!! Enter cathartic change... and the end of part one to my thesis research. Psychospiritual transformation target hit. Proceed with next target. Over.

Some sweet video stills... footage looks funky from the batch capture screen in Final Cut Pro. Actual footage is pretty sexy. Perfect for this performance we're trying to land in Miami. Back to Eden, Miami heat style...

video composite of transient psychological states & circumstances

2010-05-27T00:13:00.006-06:00

Finished the first and most important part of my thesis (Global Proposal for a New Emoticon) which is the 400-video stockpile of daily banalities captured via web cam. (Okay it's at 399, but I am kind of having anxiety about the last video, so give me a minute). Next step is to merge them into one massive video mosaic. FUN! (Or headache?)

     Been reviewing the footage every month or so since the project began last November. A symbol is slowly emerging out of my psychological database. Tracking change is a tricky task. Each day means nothing, but woven together over time, they merge and reveal an altered psychological profile. It's as if the psyche sees everything before we do, acts on everything before we do, knows everything that's about to happen before we do. Seeing the 'seeing' becomes revelation-like. Thus ensues the collapse of previously outdated versions of self-helpedness and the emergence of a new mastery (the classic psychological breakdown).

     The videos are part of a multi-sensory experience constructed from video documentation of growth and development within my own psyche from the last 7 months. The resolve and realization manifested from a barter system - alive, well and running smoothly within the collective unconscious, thanks to satellites and networks - is represented in my thesis as a global proposal.

     I wish I could get YouTube to give me some better options on the About Me / Profile section on underscoreblank. You know, like have it at the top of the page rather than the bottom. I would switch to Vimeo, but my web presence - specifically at the address youtube.com - is an intentional one.

     On another note...

     ...I picked up my Jung books recently and am seriously downloading conceptual frameworks for all this omni-amory that is going on in the collective unconscious that I need a place for in my mind. (Thank you Rose for "omni amorous"... I couldn't have said it better myself.) Better than even the thickest of his original writings and concepts, is Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1961. He was much older, and his essence was captured in the pages, not his theoretical by-product. Here, Jung was talking about the end of his mandala period.

"The years when I was pursuing my inner images were the most important in my life-- in them everything essential was decided. It all began then; the later details are only supplements and clarifications of the material that burst forth from the unconscious, and at first swamped me. It was the prima materia for a lifetime's work."

"this thing we did" net presence, net art

2010-05-26T23:38:00.000-06:00

http:// this thing we did

A group of artists gathered 'round an internet table and discussed practically nothing... fulfilled as it was, in that moment... eagerly consuming, and gracious to be spoon-fed a delicious philosophical and practical diet from the hands of an energetic professor. The last time I was that entertained while simultaneously challenged was when Prof. C.C. taught Understanding Visual Language. Oftentimes the best are the most provocative.
Still, being busy with heavy class loads and a variety of end-of-semester burdens, we all pulled off this little stunt. Created a collective web presence for each members' solo digital art exhibitions. The kind of exhibitions that never happened. But now they have. Get it?

"...the video projections exacted onto select walls and spaces within the Denver Art Museum's Frederic C. Hamilton Building. The projections were plotted and integrated into the geometric architecture, constantly streaming and sourced from a real time feed of the artist's web cam. The anti-performance took place via two IR motion sensors that tracked the artist's movements from room to room in her Denver apartment. The sensors were networked into 5 laptops, one for each major traffic area, and triggered a public access internet channel to switch it's broadcast from one area to the next, thus tracking the artist during the museum's hours of operation throughout the duration of the exhibition."

"...from some random gallery. I was compelled by the natural light's effect within the interior. Nevermind the seating that was never pointed in the right direction. Coincidentally I just finished video recording one dozen instances of relieving myself of pee (potty time) over several weeks and I had footage I wanted to utilize while it was fresh. After doing the math of the 12 videos, I discovered that it takes me an average of 1:23 to go from pants down to pants up (including full flush). The numbers of 1:23 add up to 6, which is the number of videos I chose for compiling into multichannel video projection. In the end, I noticed the fountain in the courtyard. Like I really noticed it. And I called it the Fountain of Piss."

Censorship of an Artist at Metro State

2010-04-06T01:03:00.002-06:00

What can be done to change this?

I hear there are talks about the artist having his own area, sectioned off by walls, with a disclaimer about adult content. That seems fine, but the artist is still being told how his nude models can and can't be posed. This makes no sense. Censorship. That's all it is. And it is such an academic no-no to censor someone's ideas for their very own senior thesis.

Students should be flying right behind the soaring wings of their superiors, not being held back in time and in philosophical progress by them. We should be led into a path of an evolving art dialog and not be shoved ten steps back into art history.

What is the real issue here? Naked people in the arts is nothing new. Why is this a problem in an art department?

From video journals to painting the icons of a new religion...

2009-12-11T15:57:00.007-07:00

An ongoing video art project that should take me well into half of the year 2010, "Global Proposal for a New Emoticon" (working title) will address issues of human adaptability in an increasingly techno-based socio-cultural experience that marks the 21st century as a cybernetic one. Out of the cold emptiness that is satellite, networked connectivity... comes the emergence of new symbols and icons that are rapidly being downloaded into the collective psyche. From a realm where nothing is real, symbols are born into the real, and then recycle themselves again and again back into the unreal, until eventually all symbols are an untraceable mix of culture, technology, science, politics, religion and human emotion... the latter of which is the area of interest that I base this video project upon.

Out of context and out of place, many of the daily uploads on the project's YouTube channel - underscoreblank - are intensely personal, while others are over-generalized, banal daily experiences. A further description of the project can be read about in the "About Me" section on the channel's homepage. The culmination of about 400 video uploads will result in one final video painting... a didactic icon that moves with the times.

I am very concerned about transparency in art production and exhibiting, and this informs my rationale behind my commitment to keeping my process public and available to everyone (everyone with an internet connection, hardware and software... that is). Process is the bulk of the message - both psychological and technical - and the final product, an index that points to it.

Keep up with me on my channel, or just wait for the exhibition in 2010.

_c0da: Colorado Digital Art

2009-10-27T22:39:00.001-06:00

So, my latest NERDA endeavor is the _c0da show opening up this week at Object + Thought. Thanks to Ryan Pattie for fantastic flyer design. We were scheduled to open to the public on Wednesday morning, but with the snow and a few more tasks with projectors, the show may open mid-day, although visitors will not be turned away... just a matter of tidying some video up.

We've been planning this event for months and we're finally glad it's on it's way to being seen. I can't believe how much work is involved in producing and designing a show... even when you have jurors to choose the work for you. It's still conceptually a lot of work, and I have learned SO much from this process. I finally have been able to use my gallery skills outside of work and school, and I hope we have a packed reception.

The _c0da show is representing artists from MSCD, CU Boulder, UCCS, UCD and RMCAD. I really hope to put together more shows like this again, creating place for art students to have a discussion in the way that they know best. I think it makes much more sense to get your work off campus and see it up, and only then can you really talk about it and get feedback. The classroom is terribly limiting when it comes to critique, in my opinionated opinion.

At least in the gallery the discussion can be done over beers. The mind needs proper lubrication for contemplation. The MCA was giving members each a free drink with the B+ Lectures and I think that's some damn good planning.

I also have a video work in the show as well, a remix of an older work I did in 2008. In a way, the video makes more sense as a remix.

Friday we'll be handing out hilarious awards, too, and celebrating all things NERDA.

A Motley Effort gets review...

2009-10-10T00:11:00.013-06:00

The installation that Melannie and I collaborated on - called Wombtomb - as part of a warehouse installation show through Metro State Sculpture Department on First Friday in October, got posted up at denverarts.org. Check it out.

photo by Susan Porteous Evans

photo by Steve Gottshall

It is hard to see from these photos, but the electrical/network cables were attached to the inside of the cast and extended out to the eggs on the side walls.

The animated video I built was 4 minutes long with audio that Melannie provided, and it looped seamlessly. Three candles in a triangle pattern were placed on the floor near the cast. We also had a space heater in the room, to render the warmth of the womb.

Wombtomb was inspired from Donna Haraway's book Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, especially the essay "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,"

Additional inspiration was taken from several lengthy entries in a hefty book by Barbara Walker called The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, including the entries: womb, cave, wine, menses, salt, and honey. This is an insanely researched encyclopedia that I recommend everyone read.

Video documentary is being put together for both my solo project from the last installation show in May (see my earlier post on Steady Decline: New Religion) and for this last collaborative project. I don't post any of my video work / digital work online in photo-sharing networks or on blogs. I prefer to own my work. I do put up some analog works, such as wet photography, painting and drawing.

When my official website is up and running, you'll be able to see my portfolio there. This blog is for writing and learning about visual art - both my own and the works of others.

Thank you for reading.

Barnaby Furnas at MCA Denver

2009-10-07T10:55:00.016-06:00

Detail of Furnas' untitled (Flood)

Furnas' Flood series is showing - or rather, emanating - in the Large Works gallery at the MCA right now. I just went to see it yesterday, an hour prior to the B+ lecture, so I had some time explore the four pieces (five paintings total, one work - Red Sea (Closing) - is an unhinged diptych).

The water media paintings are massive, carefully choreographed by the artist with directional movement of water, much like a flood. I can see in Furnas' work a dedication to a process and a mastery of his materials. He understands both the predicatability of his pigments and how they will react with differing amounts of water, as well as the uncalculated actions in the process of allowing liquid pigment to travel across a canvas, gently guiding it to move and blend with splashes of freshly poured paint. When a choreographer designs a performance and casts the talent to animate that performance, she is managing the balance of control and chance; the dancers follow a pre-formed plan of action, but to varying degrees (depending upon the choreographer) they are always going to add more to the movements than the choreographer had planned due to the nature of the performer's body and personality. Chemistry between performers (or between pigment and water) also adds further to chance, all the while guided by a director with a deliberate and well thought out formalistic plan of movement, color and rythym.

So I see Furnas as more of a choreographer than a painter, more of a director than an actor. I see his ability to design an overall story and execute that story with the raw talent of pigment and water. But the overall effect of all of those elements working together under his direction ends up being something much more than the sum of the parts. Furnas' hand is difficult to find in these paintings, except for the ocean segments in Red Sea (Closing) and Dead Day VI, where he's painted probably thousands of half circles - receding in size towards the horizon - to represent the crest of the waves or perhaps the tranquility of the untouched sea. For the most part, Furnas is not in these paintings. Like a good story teller, he has left out his personal life and has rather chosen to show us the bigger picture.

Blood is the universal fluid that we all understand. It can too often connote tragedy and terror, but somehow Furnas has avoided that and provided us with a different reading of blood... a mythical and symbolic reading. Blood becomes the messenger of change. Life and death are superceded and blood starts to carry more of a meaning of grand transformation in huge doses. There are hints of terror but they are replaced with a larger beauty that transcends tragedy and enters the realm of what I can only describe as political myth.

One thing I continually kept coming back to in his paintings (all except for Whale, which didn't fit into the series as well) was what I am calling the 'omniscent presence', or the vertical line segment (perhaps created by masking tape) that cut the painting in half down the middle to the center of the canvas. That same vertical line is halted half-way down the canvases by another line segment dissecting the paintings entirely in half, horizontally, creating sea and sky separations. Sort of an evolved "zip" that hopped away from a Barnett Newman piece and got tangled up in the biblical fantasmagoria of Furnas' works. Suddenly a zip is not just about separating and uniting a canvas... it's animated and emanating from the painting in a top down manner, much like a mythical omniscent presence. Then add the kinetic process of getting the pigments to move across the canvas/dance floor under Furnas' guidance and direction, and you've got an action-type process in painting. So we can see several historical references in the family of Abstract Expressionism throughout this series, at least formally, but like his earlier paintings depicting war, this series - depsite what the description on the wall says - is narrative.

Furnas has embedded simple movements of line and structure to mean many things (just note the titles of the pieces), and those things have a life of their own and a myth that magnifies them to a level of universal understanding. Such universality needs simplification, and he delivers that with broad suggestions that combine with clearly defined horizon lines, ocean, sky and omniscent presence. The glowing, emanating vertical 'bands of light' are all too similiar to the idea of a dimensional transport in sci-fi circles, to the idea of god/man or here/there or above/below... a connection between two worlds... a conduit.

Perhaps I'm reading into the symbols too much. But that's what you ask for when you paint only in symbols and riddles. Add contemporary politics and you've got a grand narrative that starts with untitled (Flood), moves rather abruptly to Red Sea (Closing) and resolves, for a time, in Dead Day VI. But even in Dead Day VI, there is a continuining story, as a new element has entered the painting and begs you to reconsider all that you thought about the series. And Whale doesn't quite fit into the narrative, nor does it have the life that the others do, but it acts more like a cover image to a good book. It has the elements of the story enough to draw you in, but it does not necessarily have a place in the story... it's more of a catchy melody to draw you in to the dance... it wants to be a part of the story, and tries to make up for it's lack of narrative presence by being gigantanormously grand in scale, but it seems more to serve as a support for the story than as a part of the story itself. Like the book binding. Framework. And all that aside, it was painted for the MCA on the spot, so I can't be too harsh.

Dead Day VI looks to be painted completely on top of what could be a painting very similar to one of the canvases involved in Red Sea (Closing), especially if you note the textures underneath the black pigment that contradict the top level streaks of paint. Regardless, the title makes clear that this could very well have been the death of a painting, intentional or unintentional. What appears to be a carefully applied layer of fine mica dust (fancy name for glittter) on top of the sky portion in Death Day VI further adds to the mythologcial grandeur of the series... death and irriversible change become less edgey and panicy, more ominous and intentional. Or could it be a last minute addition to balance the flat black that would otherwise stop the story dead in it's tracks? Speculation aside, the hole in the top-center of the canvas (black hole, at that) and the sparkly delights put the abstraction right back into a narrative and symbolic reading.

But now my reading has tainted your reading. And that's okay. I'm interested in decoding, for my own mental practice of following cultural symbols, archetypal symbols and personal symbols... and entering a space where all three intersect. That space is the space from which all things reveal themselves anyway, even if it is meant for only one person at a time to come to their own realizations, each uniquely different yet all - if given enough time and space - pretty much the same damned thing.

Go see Barnaby Furnas' paintings at the MCA, and plan on taking some time with them. I almost never recommend a painting exhibition. My own distrust and foul taste from painting curricula in the past - as well as having been an illustrator and painter since I was 17 - have tainted my kinship with the medium, and thus the digital kick I currently find myself within.

Furnas makes me reconsider why I left painting behind. (And why bigger is indeed, sometimes better.)

The compound . . .

2009-09-06T04:43:00.003-06:00

So this is where I should be at 4:37 am, Sunday on Labor Day Weekend... not posting pictures of my sleeping quarters but actually sleeping in the quarters. In Pike National Forest, where my aunt and uncle live and frequently house me and generously feed me while working on projects. Unfortunately when I have 'net work to do I cannot do it there; there are only a few solars to give power and there's no wifi, that's for damn sure. Thank god some places are still sacred.

Been working on a video up there this summer. Can't wait until I can finish and show it. It's all about psychological projection and human adaptation to mobile electronics... and the inherent flaws of internet communication.

On that note........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Where We Meet

2009-09-06T02:00:00.005-06:00

Empty Orchestra was a mutlimedia performance night at the Center for Visual Art that was concepted by Rebecca Dolan and created by individual artists studying at Metro State in the digital art program... specifically, students undertaking Video Art II. Performances ranged from spoken word to sing-alongs to rap to more traditional, narrative performance.

Mine was sort of an anti-performance, addressing the anxiety and incompatability of pigment and video. In a private performance at my home, I filmed my hand painting over canvas that led to an old television set (on and off) which eventually got painted over as well, and I poured paint onto a black dress. The documentation of the performance was then edited and further manipulated, and turned into the video backdrop to the performance I did at the CVA, "Where We Meet." I wore the same dress.

As the video (with sound) played I had Melannie hold a roll of green duct tape for me so that I could wrap myself in it. Once I was bound (ran out of tape a bit early... you'd think those rolls are longer than they are) I stood at the microphone and proceeded to laboriously breathe. I'd planned for a large amount of time for only my breath to be heard (I was taped up at the mouth), but I did not plan to be strangled at the neck like I was (bound myself a little too tightly). I struggled to breathe, the air from my nostrils loud and amplified. I held my breath for a while for a break but then I realized that passing out - although a potentially nice touch to my piece about struggling between old and new media - probably wasn't a good idea with electronics and expensive equipment sitting at my feet.

Video stills from Where We Meet

2009-09-06T01:49:00.001-06:00

Family Portrait (originally 2007)

2009-08-20T00:39:00.007-06:00

An examination into the generations of American immigrants (and their children) that dealt with an onslaught of cultural prejudice by means of assimilation and disintegration of cultural values, languages and traditions.

This is a sample of some of the objects in an installation I'm working on that deals with psychological discordance and dysfunction between members of an American family that has been stripped of cultures of origin. My own experience of being a Mexican-Polish American facilitates this project, where both my Mexican and Polish grandparents spoke in their native tongues but somewhere between theirs and my generation, the language and culture was set completely aside.

Objects and rooms in the installation are destined to be misinterpreted, misunderstood, confused, seeking identification, out of place, discordant and disordered. Objects relate to one another only through psychological proximity, or mental alliance.

Self Portrait (Voyeur Series)

2009-08-13T15:04:00.001-06:00

This was taken in 2007 with the Canon AE-1 SLR (35mm) that you can see in my hand. Nearly dropped it in the tub a few times. Took this series by submerging self under water with a hand propped outside tub ready to shoot when I emerged from the water. The high gloss look on my face was from the thin film of water on my skin. Flood lights provided highlighting.

Multimedia performance Steady Decline (New Religion), 2009

2009-08-05T13:11:00.002-06:00

The fully installed church, located in a warehouse for the Antithesis Exhibition on May 1, 2009, was a piece that explored the repercussions of addictions to online social networking sites through the lens of instituionalized religious practices. Video projections involved animated emoticons (icons) interspersed with snapshots of my facebook contacts' status updates. I did 4 different performances/rituals throughout the opening night - mostly appropriated from my memory of Catholic mass as a child - where I paid homage to the icons/emoticons/prophets of a new religion, blessed myself and the church-goers with water, beer, bubbles, silly string, pringles, and candy. Gregorian chanting played in the church throughout the night.

: \

Video stills from Steady Decline (New Religion)

2009-08-04T16:43:00.000-06:00

There were two videos projected onto large white screens (fabric) on left and right of the altar in the front of the installation/church environment. These were some of the icons that built and animated in After Effects for the projections, which also included facebook status updates from my contacts. The videos themselves, as a relic of the performance, are jointly titled "Icons of A New Religion."

Wafaa Bilal

2009-08-03T17:54:00.004-06:00

http://www.youtube.com/mewafaa

While touring the technical facilities and labs at SAIC recently, my tour guide gave me a reference to a really awesome Iraqi artist, Wafaa Bilal, that moved to the US and gave a lecture in Chicago about his work. He wrote a book about his art practice as well, and now teaches in New York.

I was most interested in his project titled Domestic Tension, an interactive video installation where people could gain access to Bilal via the internet 24 hours a day, while he lived in the gallery. People could chat with him, but more importantly they could aim and shoot a paintball gun at him, as many times as they wished.

My tour guide mentioned to me that it became a huge ordeal, and that people ended up hacking into the system to stop the mechanism that allowed the gun to fire, as a protest for peace.

His work is incredible, check him out!

Bedazzled and Bejeweled: Olafur Eliasson Exhibit at MCA Chicago

2009-08-03T16:15:00.009-06:00

Appropriately titled Take Your Time, the exhibition highlighted some of Olafur Eliasson's work from the last 15 years, all on the grand first floor of the MCA, with some work having been designed specifically for the MCA's exhibit. I got a chance to see it when I went to Chicago to vist SAIC, a potential grad school on my list.

From afar, it's as if dinosaur-sized jewels were assembled to form sacred structures for worshipping some kind of omniscient being in a sci-fi religion. The sparkling colors and bright gleam draws you in closer.

Up close, the mesmerizing jeweled structures are actually cleverly constructed 3-dimensional objects, following geometrical patterns found in nature. These human-scale sculptures, made of reflective materials such as stainless steel, color-effect acrylic, color-effect glass, and acrylic mirrors, were definitely some of the blockbusters of the exhibit.

One-way colour tunnel was one of my favorites, as it put me right back into 2001 Space Odyssey or some other sci-fi classic. As you walked through the tunnel you could see hundreds and hundres of fragments of your body against the dazzling mirrors. And similarily, every other shiny structure put me into a magical realm of my own inner world, in awe of both science and nature.

But just as there are those who are drawn in to shiny objects, there are also those who spent time in the more pensive areas of the exhibit. For me, this was the falling water mist, dimly lit, in an isolated pitch-black room, called Beauty, originally created in 1993. Rainbows of light were subtley morphing with a slow, hypnotic rate of falling mist. The body in space was a mystery when I first walked in, since there was no light except for on the mist. All that could be seen was the reality of the slow water dispersion from the ceiling, the body invisible. In the room I didn't know where I was in relation to anything but the lighted mist. After about a minute though, my eyes adjusted and I could start to see the boundaries of the room and the other people (oops!) that I didn't know were in the room as well.

Also just as serene and silent was Moss wall from 1994, where live reindeer moss completely covered a vast wall of the MCA in an otherwise vacant room. The room had a light green tone to it from the the reflected moss tones. The temptation to touch the moss was relieved when I discovered later in the eduational zone of MCA that there was a box with some of the reindeer moss in it, made just for touching. Ahhhh. So soft!

Everything about the exhibition was about taking your time, being present in your body, and experienceing your own experience. Eliasson called it "seeing yourself seeing" but I think he underestimated it because the exhibit is definitely more than seen, it's felt. I would say that it goes as far as feeling yourself feeling or experiencing yourself being.

There's a pretty sweet TED talk onilne that I found, where Eliasson spoke about how art today is deliberately engaging people in spaces and how art can do more than just decorate the world.

The exhibit at MCA Chicago is up until September 13, 2009, and if you can make it, there's a Curator's Tour on Saturday September 12th. If you love installation art, science and art intersections, contemporary art theory or sculpture, I wouldn't miss out on this exhibit. There's a lot to experience, and it's the perfect place to chill.

P.S. Room for one colour uses the same monofrequency lights that Eliasson used in his installation The weather project at the Tate Modern in 2003. It's pretty neat seeing yourself and others in black and white! Check your hands and limbs - you can actually see the blood flow in your body.

Impromptu Still Life Diptych

2009-08-01T21:23:00.001-06:00

2008, digital point-and-shoot technology and found objects manipulated in a root cellar

Pills and Candy

2009-07-26T20:09:00.001-06:00

"Pills and Candy"

2007

chalk pastel on paper

18" x 24"

Self Portrait (The Shadow)

2009-07-26T19:24:00.000-06:00

"Self Portrait (The Shadow)"

2006

graphite on paper

18" x 24"

Breaking Cycles

2009-07-26T18:57:00.001-06:00

"Breaking Cycles"

2007

watercolor and color pencil
12" x 32"

Kevin O'Connell at MCA Denver

2009-07-16T23:05:00.006-06:00

Flat + Pulsing = Eerie.

To use psychological terms, the flat affect occurs as a symptom of depressive patients and a few other psychological disorders, where the sufferer exhibits little to no emotion of either positive or negative leaning. A zeroed out, flat state of mind where nothing seems to penetrate or cause any amount of cognitive stirring. Depression, severe.

"Everything Comes Broken," the title of O'Connell's photographic body of work freshly on view at the MCA, invokes a psychological state of mind that tempts stillness and inertia of action, or at least implies it, as it relates to human consumption. The photographs, taken of wind farms and their enormous impact on the landscape of the West, were accompanied by a poetic text by Jules Gibbs. The photographs were not, however, what I was absorbed by.

In the New Media room, just next to the Photography room, was a video installation by O'Connell of the same content and subject matter - cropped wind turbines - but here they were frighteningly alive. With any given onslaught of opening night visitors, a healthy amount tend to find themselves confined to short attention spans (or maybe just impatience) and spend little time absorbed in media that appears to be banal, or self-explanatory in a few seconds glance... "oh, wind turbines, cool."

The attraction to media has two sides. It satisfies the standard of communication, and when art is intended to communicate an idea, a feeling, anything really, then media such as video packs a big punch. Standards of art production keep increasing with new technology, so video is that breath of fresh air that provides relief from the stillness of other modes of two-dimensional work. The other side of attraction is obscure and not so readily available. But it's there. It's that side that compels you to absorb yourself in something or someone. It's not immediate, nor is it relief. It's sort of painful, sort of immersing, and anything but easy. But that side of attraction is the side that, if engaged, is longer lasting and holds more impact and residual memory for the visitor. Or so I presume.

The latter type of attraction is the type that video art, when seemingly banal and raw, can provide the psyche with enriching, lush emotion.

The video component to "Everything Comes Broken" activates deeper recesses of the mind and stimulates primal reactions to something new, something foreign. As you stand in the middle of the New Media room, there are 3 video projections, one on the left wall, one on the front wall, and one on the right wall. All are wide screen format and cover most of the walls. An audio channel accompanies the 3 projections, and takes center stage in the exhibit by filling the room with the pulsing of one of the wind turbines. The sound was exquisite. It was everything.

Surrounded by 3 camera angles of the turbines, none of which actually showed the full image of the engineered marvel, I was overwhelmed with my earlier decision to use a plastic cup and then later throw it away after only having had a few cups of diet soda inside it. The tragedy of the commons, it is called, when humans rationalize their waste and consumption as unimportant in the bigger scheme of things, not realizing everyone else is rationalizing the same thing. The compelling dissonance that I felt with my spiritual self and my actual self was magnified in the center of the room as I became bound and frozen by the hypnotic pulsing of the turbine, of the sickly monstrosity that is supposedly going to solve all of humanity's consumption problems.

The pulsing of my blood couldn't help but move with the pulsing of the wind as it moved the turbine's blades around and around. Mesmerized, I looked left. Soothing wind, that machine seems to be slower than the others... perhaps the wind died down. I looked ahead. Looming, foreshadowing machine. Uncomfortable in my shell, the human skull that I temporarily own finds itself wandering into a world where technology has overtaken our lives and the tickle of aspen leaves singing in the ears on an autumn day is long forgotten. So this is what's it's coming to. I looked right. Menacing machine alongside a highway. Menacing cars go by in the distance, offering carbon dioxide as the backdrop to this sustainable option, this green machine.

The overwhelming audio seemed to be taken from the center video, the most vivid of them all, as only shadows of a turbine pass over the camera's viewpoint, onto a vacant dirt road. The turbines signal a sort of new industrial evolution, a branch of industry designed to fix the mistakes made in the steep learning curve of human industry.

But like the title implies, everything indeed seems to come broken, even the solutions. Even the hope we build in towering green machines seems to loom over us. Our own consumption is menacing.

We can walk in unknowingly, lose attention to the matter quickly, and go on with our consumption and fall into the tragedy of the commons, or we can sit with it. We can sit with the discomfort, the eeriness of our own mistakes and the looming, frightening future, and perhaps walk away with a sense that our strongest resolves are only as good as our weakest actions.

Go see the wind turbines. Go be uncomfortable. It's good for you. :)

Upcoming project requires trips to the valley...

2009-07-09T12:28:00.008-06:00

So Melannie and I spent some time at my aunt and uncle's compound over the 4th of July. I did some filming in the morning on Saturday, and realized that I would need more time filming up there in that remote part of Colorado, as well as more camera batteries! Or some kind of adapter to work with the 2-prong system that the solar panels feed into.

Melannie's work can be found here http://shescreamssilence.blogspot.com/

We are planning a trip in the next few weeks to return to the site and film. We are interested in working individually on our projects, however assisting one another and bringing others with us to join in the fun of the location, with the possibility of exhibiting our work together - a 2 person show (more if another artist wants to jump in) - thereby providing a parallel between formal elements and location but allowing for multiple interpretations of similar subject matter.

However since we both read Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, I can not promise that our work will be entirely different. Ha!

This place has always fed my appetitite for black & white photography in the past. I have a special connection to it, having found old, unopened letters (typed on a typewriter, that's how old) to the past resident, and postal stamps that were labeled as 4 cents and 7 cents for air mail. Also found barbie doll heads, and old dolls with nails in them and the eyes poked out. The person that used to live there really primed the place for investigation, interpretation, and infatuation. Good place to film, nonetheless.

Monster Artifice Series, 2008

2009-06-24T01:02:00.001-06:00

Silver gelatin prints (35mm) taken with a Canon AE-1 SLR. The outfit consists of a Speedo, those little white ringlets that stick on to hole-punched paper to keep them from tearing, swim goggles, and wings crafted from plastic wrap and wire. I think I was reading Donna Haraway and Orlan at the time. This was late 2008.

Objects of Study / Men: Young & Old

2009-06-21T13:12:00.001-06:00

The first two are the same young man.
The third is a guy from a burlesque show I photographed and then drew my own thoughts.
The last two are different older men.

These were all studies done anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes, done in 2006-07.

Conte crayons, chalk pastels, charcoal.

Ah, to draw men.

a diptych, 2007... on the idea of painting

2009-06-17T16:44:00.005-06:00

"What It Is and Is Not"

Acrylic and oil on canvas. Each are 4 ft. x 2 ft. These were the last real paintings I did before switching to digital & video art. Still haven't really picked up the brush, except for some recent video/performance pieces that mock my old painting endeavors. It's a tired old medium, but it won't ever lose it's appeal. Especially now that we have CONDUCTIVE PAINT!!!

2007 Alexan Collegian Mural Contest, 1st Place Winner

2009-06-15T22:40:00.003-06:00

Out of submissions by Colorado undergraduates, three finalists were chosen to paint their proposed murals on the inside walls of the fairly new Alexan CityCenter in Englewood, CO... each muralist had roughly 45 days to complete their mural, a dimension of 30 ft. x 10 ft.

I wish I had more photos of the mural... keep meaning to go back and take more pictures. I researched and photographed about 50 key locations in Englewood that had either public art or art & recreational ammenities & events, and included more than half of those references in the mural proposal (and final painting). The panorama was of Englewood and as you walked down the hall you could see the changing of the seasons occur throughout the mural. It's a slender hall and you can't really see the mural all at once; the photo tells the story.

On top of four other classes and a job and the Drawsome organization, I would go here at night and work late late late. I was a slave to this project. On the reception night I got first place, and the funny giant check to go with it. And I think I gave a half-drunk acceptance schpeel on public art and community engagement and education and what-not... whatever man, they clapped.

Paintings, 2007

2009-06-15T22:06:00.004-06:00

"Christopher Lee" oil on canvas (one pigment: cadmium red and lots of turpentine)

"Cesqua" oil on canvas

;) Welcome to Iconographilia...

2009-06-13T15:06:00.007-06:00

My web site will be up and running soon. It is currently under construction, and a bit slow because I am learning how to deal with large video files, so sorry for the wait.

Iconographilia is intended to be a supplement to my portfolio/web site, www.salinagomez.net and I will be expanding upon project explanations here.

Here you'll find photo essays, art writing and ramblings, exhibitions I've recently viewed and liked (or seriously disliked), links to other artists, art works, videos, galleries, museums, zines, web sites, and blogs.

Iconographilia.

What does that mean?

It is the affliction/addiction of studying icons. At least that's what I want it to mean. It explains what I am interested in as a visual artist. I take hyper notice of many forms of media, but text and iconography, I especially love to analyze. The icons of the 21st century are increasingly being defined not in terms of reality, but hyperreality, as they are being born of the nothingness that is the internet, are propagating within that realm, and then ultimately jettisoning out of that realm and into what we call reality. Icons for happiness, sadness, laughter, confusion, anger, frustration, fatigue, goofiness, surprise, fear, etc. are all universal human emotions/traits.

What once took the great writers and philosophers hundreds of pages at a time to convey timeless human emotions, now takes one or two seconds to convey through a keyborad or handheld device, and takes the receiver just as quickly to decipher it's meaning.

:) = happiness

:\ = confusion, hmm...

>_< = thinking really hard, squinting eyes And so on... The effective transference of specific, universal emotion from one person to the next - or, from one online social networker to the next online social networker - in a matter of a few seconds both in communicating and receiving said emotions, is fascinating to me. I was born in 1979 and grew up using DOS. I was using computers long before the internet was first launched for the public in the mid 1990's. I saw everything change - very, very quickly. I am very interested in where this huge social change is leading art. New media, installation art, interactivity, performance and mapping all suddenly seem to have forced a seat at the dinner table of 'fine art.' But even now, that is not enough. Soon this New Media creature's offspring will be old enough to demand, each one of them, their own seat at the table, for they will have grown strong enough, competitive enough and capable enough of providing what everyone wanted in the first place - great conversation. You just didn't know how big the party was going to get by inviting New Media to the table. News flash, New Media's got lots of babies, and they're all hungry. Just wait until they can talk. ;)