____________

BARD MFA THESIS SHOW

2010-07-08T00:58:00.002-04:00

GERONIMAS GERONIMAS

2010-05-25T16:08:00.001-04:00

Big show tonite. Big show. See you there. Get there early. Big show.

Death in the Family

2009-06-04T00:24:00.004-04:00

At 11:11pm this evening, our favorite little cat Sabine was taken to some other place (she died), and her special little face and her happy little whiskers became none but accessories to a quickly stiffening corpse. As ineffective as it might seem to use your tongue as a primary means of cleaning yourself, I've recently come to the conclusion that it works. works well (for animals). I don't think Sabine had had the capacity to continue licking herself for the past few days as her health declined, and thus she bore the stench of demise well before she expired in earnest. Below are some images of our family's funerary preparations, although Sabine's remains will not be committed to the earth until tomorrow afternoon. Those who remember her will do so with a smile; those who never got to pet her, rest assured that she was much cuter than your cat. No joke. Was she the cutest cat ever? Possibly, but eternity is a long time, and time has run out for our little short-haired tabby.

Come Hither

2009-06-01T22:33:00.002-04:00

What are you doing Tuesday night?
Um, what if I told you there was this sculpture,
and some other sculptures, and they were all
fucking great, and you could come see them
tomorrow, Tuesday. What would you?
Would you come?

Why not eh?

CONTACT PHOTO FEST TORONTO

2009-05-03T21:44:00.004-04:00

Jeremey Jansen and I have just installed and opened our contribution to Toronto's month-long photo extravagasm at the Winter Gallery on Dundas St W (@ Rusholme Dr). The photographs being exhibited consist of three vegetable plants we extracted from the Winter Gallery Garden in the spring of 2007 after they had spent the winter dead and rotting in the dirt. Have a walk-on by...

BOX GRAPH

2009-04-18T09:42:00.006-04:00

This is one of the twenty four graphs that have been produced through the analysis of data from the Box Game. David Horvitz and I, and our traveling companion Julianne, collected these answers while touring America, visiting places and playing our game with whosoever would have us.

To read the graph:

FREQUENCY is the number of times people voted for each response (the number of times each response was found in the box);

SIZE corresponds to a value between -10 and 10 that indicates how big or small the answer is, relative to the size of the box (which is at 0 on the size scale);

MATERIALITY corresponds to how conceptual/abstract (-10) or how real/concrete (10) the answer is, relative to the answer ANOTHER BOX (which is at 0 and was chosen because it occupies both a real possibility space for being in the box, and also the conceptual space of asking, or deferring the real towards a potential for having the game continue, as another box is an idea that requires another game, or another attempt, to answer what's in that box etc.)

Cave of Wonders

2009-03-04T00:25:00.005-05:00

Another Piece made recently, the Cave of Wonders: a crash that perverts the good and kindly, that makes them dark, and also caring, and close to one another; a domestics and cigarettes.

Baltimore MD!

2009-03-03T01:55:00.003-05:00

Inner Harbor and Dee Dee's Place at the CopyCat Space. And now snow, as you all know.

BOX GAME

2009-03-01T08:14:00.002-05:00

www.boxgame.com

It Has Begun. See you on the Road

NEW Piece #1 - UhOH!

2009-02-24T01:24:00.004-05:00

I just got some images of a few new works, models, that I've been making. This is the Uh OH Box, or the Color Confessional... which side are you going to choose? This is choice outside logic, this is art choice. Choose wisely, or don't choose if you don't feel like it, its a free fucking country, man (1/10th scale). this is a box, but it is not the box game - www.boxgame.org [more on that later...

Look what my Friends have Done

2009-02-04T11:52:00.005-05:00

Lo and behold I learned this morning that, without my knowledge, three of my poster pieces were tacked up at the Winter Gallery in Toronto and touted as my First Solo show. My first Solo show was in a hotel room, and also there's a strange wiki out there that I've attached below with other information about my biography. Thank you Jeremy and Niall probably too, and third poster owner (images stolen from Jeremy).

CANADA NOW!

2009-01-19T23:20:00.004-05:00

Canada Now was the very last exhibition ever, as well as the very last HISTORICAL art exhibition of 2008. It included a collection of photocopied artworks stapled to a wall curated by Niall McClelland and I, and works by Robin Cameron and Jeremy Jansen. Super Exciting, here are the images and the nearly-illegible postcard:

press release - Urgency is the tone set by this impromptu exhibition opening and closing New Years Eve 2008 at the outdoor Winter Gallery project space located in the burgeoning cultural community of Toronto's Little Portugal. A Xerographic Historical Survey of Canadian Art from the Toronto Reference Library Book Collection, curated by Niall McClelland and Lukas Geronimas, will be on display along with swiftly realized works by Jeremy Jensen and Robin Cameron. This is the world's very last comprehensive historical art event for the 2008 calender year. Please refer to the invitation below for further details and a complete list of included artists.

)Video Aquarium PROJECT(%)

2008-12-21T22:46:00.003-05:00

What the hell is a video aquarium anyway?
LET'S FIND OUT! (Have a look at the image posted here)...

...video stills courtesy of the Field Museum, Chicago. Goodbye Chicago, stay warm.

++++LUKAS has a New WEBSITE++++

2008-12-06T00:55:00.002-05:00

Thanks to the magic of Indexhibit and the generosity of Kentaro Yamada's hosting, I've got something waaayyy more interesting than my picasa web albums.
Go have a look and have-a-fun time - Lukas Geronimas Official Fan Site -

VEN Heads [-:

2008-12-01T02:04:00.005-05:00

Set Heads: Intersecting tops and bottoms: The eye is shared territory: A good place to put an eye that doesn't see.
Works on watercolor paper: Materials - Coffee; Wine; burned area. Size - 12 x 16 inches.

ORDER your art show ONLINE!!

2008-11-24T01:57:00.002-05:00

A unique space for art can be found at your local pharmacy photo lab, where you can pick up your art exhibition after ordering it online. This is another project that David Horvitz put together, and includes one photo from 24 different artists. Follow THIS LINK for more details. The show continues until Dec 6.

GRANT SEASON's #1 BEST NUmber

2008-11-20T11:47:00.003-05:00

GO APPLY FOR A GRANT!

>Home Made FOSSILS pt 1: New Rocks?<

2008-11-14T01:36:00.007-05:00

I have many new rocks I've made to give away;
expect one in a box this Christmas if you are my
friend and I see you or have your address.

I've also made new animal fossils, or one new fossil:
check back next week to see the fossil(s).

*(In Real life they are white, but thanks to the magic of camera they look dirty and really exciting. Expect, if you ever see them, to see something that looks different but still good.)

!!!THINGS!!!

2008-11-13T01:45:00.003-05:00

These Drawings are things!
They may look like they're comprised of things,
but in fact they are THINGS in and of themselves.
(I've only made four just now but there will be more
on my PICASA WEB ALBUMS when I make more.....)

SO THIS GUY DIES, AND HE SEES ME AND SAys....(death on death stand up routine)

2008-11-12T20:12:00.004-05:00

Performed three times on the 4th of October At the Polish Combatants Hall in Toronto. The camera operator is my brother: he is drunk, and I think he did a great job given that. Apologies to the hard-of-hearing and the easily bemused. This is death the amateur/neophyte comic, not Death the professional reaper of SOULS.

!!POSTCARD COLLAGE ONLINE and INSTORES!!

2008-11-07T22:42:00.001-05:00

Head over to my PICASA WEB ALBUMS to view moreAvailable for Download: Available for purchase at GOLDEN AGE: May be Free @ the store, maybe not

The Story of INK

2008-11-05T11:52:00.003-05:00

What's happened HERE you see is that ink has come cascading down a small figure in a tub and as a result the ink got agitated and bubbly; as the hours passed the bubbles settled and moved away from the area of conflict towards the calmer outlying area, creating a bumpy ink skin on the surface of this bathwater that's changing always, as if there were no other option. The resignation to change rings annoyingly in the ears of many reticent losers today (Nov 5th), and the losers'd do better by taking a look at the fall colors outside their windows, colors almost gone, and they'd do well by saying they'll learn to cope with their loss of color, and trying hard to mean what they say, and shedding a tear for their solidarity as it bursts diffuse into the sky of opportunity that they've created for themselves and can still be happy to look up into, because it is bright and it is blue and it smells a little different but it's not going to curdle your milk any less than it did yesterday.

The Mediated Sphincter ERUPTS!!

2008-11-05T11:49:00.007-05:00

E-L-A-T-E-D O-B-A-M-A-N-I-A-C-S

LIONEL and LORI

2008-11-03T23:12:00.002-05:00

DANGEROUS MANIACS SHOOT FACE INTO BITS (I'm still alive but just barely feehuwff)

2008-10-27T22:35:00.002-04:00

Hotel Renovation (ultra temporary version)

2008-10-26T17:16:00.007-04:00

Hotel Art PArty

2008-10-24T18:56:00.002-04:00

Everyone, come by the Metropolitan Hotel tomorrow for art and Whiskey.
See invitation below. Zaaap!

Danger Face

2008-10-22T23:03:00.004-04:00

2008-10-07T18:26:00.003-04:00

The Best Brew Metal Fantasy Band in Eastern Canada is putting out a pre-album of their latest mayhem, and I was lucky enough to put together a dislodgingly equivalent cover for the cd. Look for

Barn Burner touring with Bison, Priestess and The Flashing Lights in a month.
Shrewl.

Images: Some Food We Could Not Eat

2008-09-29T02:25:00.005-04:00

This is a collection of images from the exhibition at September Gallery earlier this month, which was dismantled today. I wish I had better photographs of the other artist's works (Tim Ridlen, David Horvitz, Marco Braunshweiner, and Martine Syms) but I don't. The show was currated by Jamielee Polson, as the first of 12 shows in her roving 12 Galleries project. Links soon. Here is a brief description of what you see:

Ugolino - The tree eating a tree, oh how horrible, just like poor Ugolino having to eat the brains of his kids in Dantetown... but this time we don't really know who the kid is; Ugolino has been known to chew on his own fingers too (wiki Ugolino to learn more about his history)

Cool It! - This is a small scale sculpture of my friend Tim, who was chosen to curate this show but instead decided to pick artists he liked and we all di our thing, so Tim the currator was voodooed into this doll and put in the fridge to slow down his rate of spoilage.

Pod is in the Details - a complicated story behind this work, but what you see here is where to stand and what you see when you stand there: colors; my miasma palette.

Nickname Game - call the number from the phone to get a nickname, and then choose (if you want) to accept, reject or take no action on that name. Enpowering me to empower you to open up and vote (as an elective, not in an election)!

See you in Toronto!

*go see

PIGEON FUNK

in Ottawa on the 2nd, Montreal on the 3rd and Toronto on the 4th of October.

Bodega: By Luis San Bispe

2008-09-24T00:13:00.010-04:00

Wow, man, I mean, this, this is what I'm DOING every day - this is my job, and it's kinda, you know, it's bullshit, because these old dudes are sitting here beside me all day not doing a thing except they talk, talk, holy SHIT do they talk so much old dark language that they don't even realize it's nice outside, because they've got the same old stories about their first wives when they were younger and how they picked up these young girls, picked them up in the only new vehicles they ever owned, back when they were young and so horny their thighs would be red from rubbing them so much. They were riled up enough to go out and WORK, honest days and shady jobs for the old commanders, enough to put down payments on big Buicks and Chev-Rolets, with chrome trim and power steering and all that shit, just so they could holler at these young girls, turn them into wives, then turn them into women; so they could move a little weight and make a baby, which means they've got a legend (they mean 'legacy', but these old fuckers call it a 'legend'). So they do all this work to convince these girls to stock them for life, to give em life, and then they get all lazy forever, and they just want to sit here and not do shit but talk about the same shit, and I want to go outside but I can't cause I'm getting paid and nothing would get done if I left. These old fuckers and their women; some of the women, they leave, and maybe sometimes after that the old balls, older balls than before but sometimes they still get jumpy after the first wife and they become productive guys again, productive members of the community; labor poolers or janitors or working a deli, plus side jobs, even, for the commanders if they didn't fuck up too bad when they were younger. And they maybe they buy a little potential and get an act going enough so they can convince the girls, or A girl, not so young, maybe a woman (already once or twice, maybe now she's a pig, or a tramp), they convince SOMETHING to get back up on those balls and hitch a ride to the long life after together. And the dance stops, the balls stop bouncing before the song ends again, probably, but everyone's a little older this time, and maybe nobody's going to leave the party because they're afraid now, now that they've seen some days and lost the balls that would have put gasoline in their ambition. They are afraid to go outside again, and in the literal way too. Fuck, it's so sunny. Some of these dudes - the guy with the never-changing wardrobe: yellow short-sleeves shirt tucked sloppily into his faded jeans, with a Puerto Rico belt buckle and wearing slippers like he's enjoying comfort time in his living room (when actually he's sitting on some kitchen equipment at the back of the bodega) - this guy either owns five of each of the things he wears, or he washes his cloths every night after or possibly during the Eyewitness Sports wrap-up at 11. Or else he, this guy I've called Sanjo for years but who's real name I've never known, he just doesn't smell ever because his skin is made of plastic or something (his skin IS pretty shiny). He smells a little sometimes, Sanjo, but he'd smell much worse if he didn't do something to his clothes all the time, because I've never seen him wear anything different, except to church. Pepe smells WAY worse, and he wears a different Mets jersey to work (it's not work for him cause he just talks all day with Sanjo and Elia, but it's my place of work and he's here when he should be working, and I don't know maybe my uncle pays him, so I'll call it that), but Pepe wears a different jersey every day of the MONTH - he must have a walk-in-closet full of these smelly-ass jerseys, that he probably doesn't wash because he's superstitious, and thinks it's bad luck (and it's bad luck to work too, for this fucking fan). So he smells, and so does Elia, but not as bad because Elia, at least he cares a little bit about not being a total creepy fucker, and wears regular old man clothes, and changes them usually, and buys new shit once in a while. HE even helps me cook eggs or bacon or ham or whatever if it's a busy morning. And Elia's got the most energy, and talks the least bullshit, and HE's the one who's not been able to keep a wife for more than a minute, and he's still alone after like three marriages. He also has no kids, so maybe he shoots blanks, or maybe he's got no balls or something and that mellows him out a little (a little too much, so the wives run off with someone who smells worse but says nice things and can fuck, and make babies). But regardless, I'm stuck back here every day cooking these eggs and making these sandwiches, and it's SO NICE outside, and although I'm thankful to my uncle for giving me a job, and I get to hook this one fine girl up with free shit sometimes so I think she's maybe warming up to me (she is fine), this ain't no player's life, this ain't no life even for a fat video-game-player, and although it's my life for now, I hope it won't be for long.

Peace.

(I didn't take this picture of a bodega, I found it on the internet)

The Day the City of Chicago Stole My Car

2008-09-18T10:45:00.008-04:00

I park regularly on a street named Wolcott Ave; it's one of the only streets near my apartment that doesn't require a permit to park on. It is a short and generally timid street - its length is truncated by a park on one end and a dark gated alcove under train tracks on the other. Sides of buildings and fenced off parking lots occupy the properties bordering its sidewalks. My room mate Tim and I regularly vie for the closest parking spot to the house, and sympathize with one another when we're forced to park off of Wolcott onto 16th St., which is a barren road one block north of our street, running along the train tracks, devoid of foot traffic and thus vehicles are more susceptible to tampering. There's broken window glass lining the street always.

I left my parking spot, an undignified spot at the very south end of Wolcott, on the warm rainy evening of Friday September 12th with Tim in car to head to a video fundraiser and then an independent video store in Wicker Park. I rented 'Glory Stompers', a film starring a (pre-sobriety) Dennis Hopper as the leader of a biker gang called The Black Souls who talk a lot about snuffing and stomping and gettin' loaded, and end up doing each other in through various wanton activities. I was hoping to upgrade my parking spot upon our return to Wolcott, as there were empty spaces closer to the house when we left, but alas I was relegated to parking the same distance away from the house, on the far side of the street this time, even. It being rainy and late, I didn't notice, nor did I feel the need to notice any notices posted along the street indicating temporary changes to parking status on the street.

However, upon leaving the house the next morning at 10:30, I was met with an empty Wolcott where once many cars had been parked, including my own. At first I was hoping they ('they' being whoever it was that had the power to clear a street of cars, the city, or the cops, or a criminal maybe) had maybe just nudged the vehicles into one of the parking lots nearby or something, that my car had been moved just a little, because for some reason it wasn't quite in the right place, or something. At that point I saw the notices posted on a scanty few electric poles and stop signs along the street which I had not noticed or which were not there the night before: they read "NO PARKING TOW ZONE 9-13 6AM - 3PM POLICE ORDER City of Chicago Bureau of Traffic Services". The notice posted nearest my car had slipped from its spot at eye-level, to the bottom of the stop sign onto which it was strung. I understood at this point that my car had been stolen by the people who posted these signs, and that it probably wasn't nearby. Across the street on the sidewalk bordering the park I spotted two representatives of the Traffic Services Bureau. I asked them where the cars went and they said 'Sheit, were you the guy from NEW YORK' (I have New York plates) and I said 'Yeah man' and they replied 'Man, how do they expect you to see these little red and white signs here, and it's all rainy and shit...' and I asked where the pound was, and they told me to call '411' - 'No wait, it's 311 you ought ta call. Yeah call 311 and ask about the pound. Where's Western? Oh yeah thata way, there's the pound way down Western'. I asked them what was happening today, and they said some festival that was cancelled due to the rain. I thanked the yellow-slickered Traffic Men and went to find the pound, on the phone. But the phone service proved useless...my estimated wait time was to be 'more than three minutes' - I was waiting 'more than ten minutes' when I hung up. My license wasn't showing up on the pound database online, but I did eventually find some phone numbers that would connect me direct to each of the city's six pounds (they are paired up in three locations, though each pound, even those at the same location and office, has different hours of operation). I got in touch with a pound employee who confirmed that all cars from festivals were going to pound #6. I headed for pound #6, by foot and bus and then foot again. Walking from the bus to the pound was a fifteen minute bout through a torrent (brought on by the north-moving weather of hurricane Ike) and I was wetter than comfort could care to handle upon arrival at the pound.

The pound office was filled to overflowing with people put out by the many cancelled festivals across the city; it seemed that temporary tow signs city-wide weren't posted until late the evening before the events of the day. It was not a happy place, and I was unhappily stuck there for four hours, at which point my car still hadn't been inventoried (it was there, but it hadn't been bureaucratized yet) and I abandoned my post to go home and eat something. Tim had cooked a whole chicken and its skin and meat transferred heat and vitality into my damp defeated sad sack soul. My brooding had been softened significantly by the sympathy I received from my father over the phone, and I was at ease with my lack come bedtime. The next day, Sunday, arrived with no repast from the rains, and Tim drove me back to the pound in the morning. I met a man who was there along with me the day before, who had just at that moment, after waiting yesterday and coming back today, been informed that he would need a valid City Permit to drive his can off the lot (he didn't have one, and you couldn't get one at the pound, and it was a rainy Sunday). The man, who was tall and had fish lips and no definition in his jaw, berated the staff with comments like 'you people don't run a service here, you run AN OBSTACLE TO PEOPLE GOING ABOUT THEIR DAILY LIVES!' The staff, to their defense, were working very hard the entire time and showed nothing but courtesy and patience for individual predicaments; the tall man was an ass, and was told to go get a pass.

I paid $170 ransom for my car, and received an after-tow hearing date for the coming Wednesday. The penultimate challenge presented itself when I found my car in the lot, surrounded by a puddle four or five inches deep. I had the choice to ask the forklift driver who moves the cars around with his brutal machine and who had just moved a car out of the way so I could get to mine, to move my car out of the puddle, or I could forego my relative comfort (relative to yesterday) and save my car from further distress by wading through the puddle and soaking my shoes and socks. I chose the latter. I had my car again, and this was good.

The final challenge was the court case, and through some documentary evidence of inadequate marking which wasn't admissible because it didn't document the entire street, my neophyte Chicagoan status, and my description of collective frustration among all parties towed without adequate notice that day at the pound, I won my case (the adjudicating lawyer told me, off the record, that this was a gift, and officially welcomed me to the city). The representative of the city then took me aside and, as I had asked to have payment sent to my parents' address in Toronto four months from now, told me I need to give her the name of the best furrier in Toronto, which was an odd request but I obliged and will call her shortly to give her that information.

The city stole my car, and I'm not sure they feel bad about it, but my frustration has been put at ease now that justice has been served. Chicago still owes me a day, and so I'm expecting something municipally expedient to happen in the near future.

Department(Store) - SAIC

2008-09-11T00:05:00.004-04:00

There is a Show going on right now at the School of the Art Institute Sullivan galleries that is a game involving like a hundred and more of these really nice classic display cases, where anyone can apply for and receive a case and put whatever they want in it, and then the cases move around and touch each other and you're able to move your stuff into other people's cases if they touch, and it's great. J. Morgan Puett is the artist's name who has organized the show, and above you can see my case, which is an interactive case: Free drawings of Cigarettes and Signatures (head to my Picasa web albums to see all the drawings), a change x-change, and a really amazing book to look at, is what's inside my case. Below are a few other cases I took pictures of, including my friend and fellow MFA student (although now she's graduated) Julia Klein (directly below).

Dead Animal Zoo - Clear Creek PArk, PA

2008-09-09T01:36:00.008-04:00

These photos were taken at the lovely little lumberjack museum located at Clear Creek State Park campsite near Brookville, Pennsylvania. Brookville is about twenty minutes north of infamous Punksatony, home of Phil the groundhog, and Clear Creek is about twenty minutes North of Brookville. I stayed there on my way to Chicago from New York; my choices came down to Clear Creek or the less appealing Mosquito Lake just West of the PA border in Ohio. I arrived at the campsite office after hours, so was forced to use the honor envelopes to fill out my info and pay for the campsite. However, as I was about to slip my envelope, into which I had placed maybe twelve dollars, the local fee during off season, a park ranger came by and let me into the office so that I might pay inside. I hadn't yet sealed the envelope, to my relief, otherwise she might have caught me trying to shirk full payment. She asked if I was a resident of PA, and for the sake of conversation I told her I was out here looking to maybe set up shop. Upon this news the ranger lady began telling me all about the area's artisans and the little community festivals they have and all the lovely local craft shops, and that I'd chosen a great place to make an artist's living, even. Although I was lying to her (I had no intention of finding a studio in the Pennsylvania Wilds), I'm happy I did so, as it strengthened our repore and I was able to think about what it would be like setting up shop in rural PA; pleasant and dull and no doubt tolerable for most. The camping was extraordinary, btw.

Propping up the gift economy in Chicago...

2008-09-06T17:40:00.003-04:00

SEPTEMBER gallery presents...
SOME FOOD WE COULD NOT EAT

MARCO KANE BRAUNSCHWEILER
LUKAS GERONIMAS
DAVID HORVITZ
TIM RIDLEN
MARTINE SYMS

September 6 - September 28, 2008
Opening Reception:
Saturday 6th of September
6:00 - 9:00 pm

SEPTEMBER gallery
2023 south ruble
1st floor
chicago, il 60616
twelvegalleries@gmail.com
573.424.9320
hours by appointment only

...not as if this is going to get anyone out to the show, but just, you know, fyi...

Sponge (A waterfall Enema)

2008-08-31T17:24:00.004-04:00

The following is the journal entry that accompanied these images, which were taken by Chris Austin. The text was transcribed onto a wall in graphite, and the photos were hung next to it with tape:

On Sunday afternoon I spent two hours lying in a waterfall's flow in a missionary position, facing the strong current. The performance began when I climbed up the waterfall and tied a red line to a branch caught in the current. I climbed back down, found a large rock and placed in in the flow to act as a stop to keep me from being swept along by the current. I laid with my back to the rock and spread my legs, allowing the current to flow into my ass. I kept my hands cupped over my balls for the first fifteen minutes until they were numb enough to withstand the pounding of the current. I lifted my legs into the air every minute or so to test for exhaustion. After twenty minutes or so my back-rest-stop-rock was caught by the current and lost to the falls. I paused my enema to find another, heavier rock. The second rock did not slip. At around the thirty minute mark I began to shiver. At around the hour mark I lost a contact lense. When the sun dipped behind the trees my state quickly deteriorated, and I began to cramp heavily. At this point I felt my safety was becoming compromised, and I struggled out of the water and up the waterfall to tear the red line from its mooring. When I returned to my clothes I learned that just over two hours had passed since the beginning of the performance.

Ups and Downs: Three Up three down

2008-08-25T10:00:00.009-04:00

Having a digital camera and a working computer again, I am able to do this modern living breathing blogging thing with greater consistency, and this is a good thing. New entries ought to appear if not daily, then often, as I aim to amplify my digital savvy over the coming fall and winter months...

Here's something: three sets of photographs from the top and bottom of elevations I conquered through my own locomotive skills, which paired together emphasize how vertical movement and turning around can quickly reorganize spatial considerations. I consider these shifts to be blunt, but perhaps you might think them more subtle? These were photographed at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, which is a fascinating place: natural splendor set against a sympathetic industrial background - consider visiting if you're in Gary.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Can I Give You a Joke?!

2008-08-23T14:23:00.000-04:00

By dipping an inch of paper into a coffee cup I was able to make 'coffee that makes paper look like a cigarette' novelty art souvenirs for mass dissemination yesterday. I made them specifically for the Printer's Ball being held at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) here in my new temporary homeland of Chicago, but our Parisian house guests were making Peruvian-style rice and meat bowls for dinner and we ended up running too late to attend the event.

(Fake cigarette)

(Real cigarette)
(Fake cigarette pack. It holds 90 flat paper-coffee-cigarettes. If you would like a cigarette for free, or would like to buy a pack to give away for $30, please send address, money and return postage to:

Lukas Geronimas Giniotis

1849 W. 17th St

Chicago, IL 60608)

Pinocchio Pinpenose Household Dilemma Extended

2008-08-11T14:57:00.000-04:00

My friend David Horvitz and I decided to stave off boredom for an afternoon by staging a jailbreak (the jail being the Hessel Museum on Bard campus) for the Pinocchio costumes locked up to Paul McCarthy's video installation. We went to the museum with a note:
it read:
WE HAVE EVERY INTENTION OF RETURNING THE COSTUMES ONCE WE'RE FINISHED WATCHING "PINOC(C)HIO PIPENOSE" . BARD MFA STUDENTS

Using the photocopy machine installed at the Loompanics piece put together by Bik Van Der Pol, David and I photocopied a chapter out of a book telling us what to do if we get caught (the book was about stealing food, but we thought it could apply to this situation as well).
We put on the suits and watched McCarthy's video (which we had both previously watched) for a few minutes, then left the video room and handed the note explaining our intent to the attendant standing outside the video room. We shuffled through the museum at a normal pace until a security guard yelled 'hey there!' at which point we made a run for it! Into the lobby, where we startled another guard, and out the exit we scuffled as quick as we could with our big red plastic shoes on, but David was caught by the collar just outside the doors and sent to the ground by the guard's sturdy force.
I panicked as Pinocchio might when his buddy gets took down, and we were led back into the museum and stripped of our suits. We referred to the photocopied manual during their strip-down and denied the whole thing. They accepted our denial and told us to leave. Luckily by accident we got away with a pair of white Pinocchio gloves, which now hang as souvenirs somewhere in our storage boxes.Luckier even still, our friends Lisa, Chris and Anita documented the escape, and now you can watch the fun over and over on YouTube. Yipah!

Three Drawings

2008-08-09T14:16:00.000-04:00

These three drawings are on display at

L Street

gallery in San Fransisco for another week or so.
They are all 16x16 inches, india ink on paper. I sort of consider them as
spatial training exercises, and also as landscapes of the inside of living
things.

Iceberger Gallery, San Francisco

2008-05-30T11:37:00.000-04:00

By the way, you can have a look at a few small still life studies of mine that are on exhibit at the following address, until the following date (which is tomorrowish):

For The In(ter)dependence of Ideologies

2008-05-29T17:42:00.000-04:00

This is an irregularly produced etching depicting a cowboy wearing none but chaps and a noose riding a bear with a star on it's forehead, captured at the cowboy's point of climax. The etching is irregular first because it is crude and seemingly unfinished, and second because the technique used is unconventional - canvas board was gessoed and sanded and then covered in India ink, then pulled away with an exacto or safety pin or needle. What I think is precarious and likeable about this little etching is that without the rope round Marlboro Man's neck, the piece is propaganda (Caps over Commies and cum in your eye forever! Big Choice takes No Choice for a joyride); with the noose, which isn't all that obviously a noose but I drew the thing so I know it's a noose and I'm telling you so you'll know it's a noose, it's critical commentary and an ode to backhanded cooperation (Now Cappy's got good reason to keep riding, and now he's busted his nut not because he's a simple high-energy domineer, but cause he's all that and also he's into being left w/o a choice, which bodes well for any fatalist. He's balls-deep in a bronco-bear bustin loop of a relationship and it feels good!). Cap's fate lies in his rodeo skills - just how burly is he? How good is his grip on that mangy old fur, now that the fur's been greased by a few decades of private industry negligence because someone forgot to hire back the guy who shampoos the bear after perestroika? If this were an illustrative comic I'd have stuck an Obama in the back with a bow ready to pierce the rope, but it's not a comic, it's a bestial romance, a marriage without choice; a never-ending battle where Caps are always cowboys and Commies are always bears, and there's no compromise. This means I'll never have to submit it to the economist, and I feel good about that, because it leaves open the potential for further realizing the sketch (though perhaps the economist would appreciate it as is, seeing as to how as a comic it gives credit to the ball-busting antics of Buddy Bush and Jetman McCain, and even though some of them pretend not to those black-bitten pushovers in Britton love American Gall! Whipcrack!)

Studio exit: Final Performance

2008-05-11T00:20:00.000-04:00

This Tuesday May the 13th I invite you to join me and my friend Robin Cameron for a last little happening at my Dean St Studio here in Brooklyn. There will be a music(al); there will be black blood and free whiskey. I am shipping upstate for the summer to begin my MFA studies, and so I urge you to stop by and have a look if you haven't yet. Please see the image above for further information.

Robin Cameron and Lukas Giniotis are Shooting and Drinking
Tuesday May 13th
7-10pm
964 Dean St 2nd Floor Front
Musical Performance at 8pm

Drawing the Game: NCAA Final Four Finals 2008

2008-04-10T22:29:00.001-04:00

These are seven drawings tracing the game play during the NCAA Final Four finals, wherein The mighty JayHawks of Kansas University ousted the undefeated Memphis Tigers in an overtime end-of-the-bracket thriller. Sports are the modern-day civilized version of the old-timey game of war, right? A contest between the most skilled representatives of rival states, vying for ownership over the outcome of the game, which bears much significance among those participating in the 'thing'? Which is perhaps why we see so many of our fellow citizens concentrate much of their time and feelings, their joy and pain, criticism and applause and the space on their shirts and hats and jackets on the team they support? The human condition forces an aggressive set unto average Jim and Mr. Bill Regular, but progress has blessed their constitution with the desire to achieve victory without bloodshed. There is honor in the game, much as there used to be honor in battle. Todays wars, however, are an abstract lot - I heard we are currently experiencing the 4th generation of warfare; everyone is suspect, and the field of battle is global. Strategy is complex and theoretical at best. There is no theatre; the general isn't reacting to the play-by play; it's in the hands of bureaucrats, and it plays out on their timeline, which doesn't relate to average Jim and Mr. Bill Regular, because they like to see a charge, to feel momentum building on one side or another, to draw the line and understand the statistics and obtain closure within the hour. I think, though I wasn't alive back then (but I've seen the movies and read the books), that war used to be more like that sort of game - you picked your side, you put on your jersey, got your pep-talk, took to the field and set your line according to coach's strategy, then you did your best to execute, and maybe you got took, or maybe you did the taking, and you won or lost based on geographic gains and casualties. And the news made sense. Perhaps professional sports have become so popular because war isn't something we can get behind - first since, apart from the orthodoxy
(aka the fellowship of degenerates), we all agree that killing is bad, and second because democracy lets us speak out, to an increasingly greater critical degree than ever before probably, against our country's military efforts, or your country's efforts. Sports are a game, and there are rules, and there ain't no democracy, and so you really can be with us or against us (us being any of the teams you choose to support, which I would hope are the teams that you have some sort of a cultural or geographic tie to - anyone who picks a team at random is, in my mind, a loser. I would say with conviction that you need a pretty good reason not to support your home team. Logos aren't the best reason to pick your favorite team. I guess that is the democratic part, picking any team you please, but I don't like it, and I digress). With this in mind, this opinion that sports are significant because they are the new violence, and as such indicate our progress as a kindlier people, I decided that mapping the big game was a good way to take relational aesthetics to a new place - to humanize a statistic, and to give reason to making squiggles.
I have not fully developed this whole idea.

I was rooting for KU, btw, because I've been to Lawrence Kansas and have fond memories of the special night I spent there with three close friends en route to our second year of college in Vancouver, and I've a past history with KU alumni.

A Short Glide, A Zero Gravity Moment

2008-03-07T00:02:00.000-05:00

In Orderly fashion, in pairs or alone, skaters take to the languid glide in clockwise rhyme, and heaven shine down does it ever seem like the greatest stunt we've managed. A slow-going circle of bundled sticks, gleefully entranced by every allusive push towards freedom from the doldrums of friction. Skating on ice! Knives on boots, tied to feet, attached to thin legs thinly clad, attached to bodies layered like puffy onions, attached to smiles wide and warm; so many smiles, so warm it's a wonder the ice remains firm. Some of these revelers traverse the plain with ease, on a single blade - what strong, thick ankles they have. Others shake and stammer, stuttering forward awkwardly, crippled by their tools and well aware of the distance from head to toe - but oh how they manage to keep at it. I pray those cripples persevere and enroll the pleasure of effortless gliding before they give up. All this for a spectator to consider, plus the serene backdrop of Central Park's model nature and a Manhattan skyline hit smack in the nose by the sun's rays. And a warm coffee. And friends come from afar, and a camera to keep my words from the burden of painting their own picture. I'd call this a weightless moment, and I'd advise you to agree.

*sponsored by TRUMP

Invitation: Freedom Bell - Ghost Mountain

2008-02-27T22:12:00.000-05:00

You, reader, are cordially invited to a showcase of new work at my studio this Friday. It all revolves around the performance of a song I composed for bass guitar, which climbs frantically through serial riffs towards the tolling of a bell, rung at three stages of an ascent. Key descriptive words include emancipation, flotation and new action painting. Come over, even if we're not acquainted. There will be whiskey. Bring beers if you're not going to drink.

A Happening:

Freedom Bell: Ghost Mountain
February 29th, 2008
Performance at 8pm
964 Dean st #2F,
Brooklyn, NY

Illustration: Black Bads Mix Tape

2008-02-27T21:59:00.000-05:00

Here is a quarter page collage Niall and I did for Nylon magazine, the guys edition (clean and naughty versions). Along with the original (the one with more skin), the editors asked for a version without a nude, so we splotched her up with ink and gave them that as well, although they ended up using the original, complete with black cock writing and rats out the pudenda, so that was really nice of them. Please go ahead and flip to page 107 if you are bored and somehow find yourself staring eyes-to-tits with Hayden Christensten, who's boyish metroness graces the cover of this issue. This mens fashion shit, it is too much for me. Hairspray!!

Sculpture: Lamb Flying the Black Flag

2008-02-18T00:29:00.000-05:00

This is a new photograph of one part of a larger sculpture I produced in December. It stands alone just fine, especially against the fashion gray backdrop my studiomate Dylan had put up in our studio last week. For some reason fashion gray's got a bit of a blue-to-orange sunburst effect happening when exposed to natural light and digital camera sensors. The lamb has suffered a broken nose as a result of action in the sculpture in which it previously took part, one eye is now permanently cloaked in black ink. For more photos of the full sculpture, please head to my Picasa web albums site, located in the links bar to the right of this blog, and click on the 'Timepiece 1" album.

Boston, an Old American

2008-02-08T09:32:00.000-05:00

I consider the viewing of Super Bowl a necessary part of the American diet, and as I am a considerably healthy half-American, I took the necessary steps to ensure that my Super Bowl XLII experience would include certain degrees of comfort; a friendly couch, some minor wagering, kitschy snack dishes in abundance enough to ensure leftovers, and an ample viewing platform (meaning a good sized television that would do justice to recent developments in high definition broadcasting technologies). As New England was the heavy favorite over New York for this title bout, and as my old friend Jana has been living in Cambridge and studying at Harvard since the Fall semester began in September, I felt this Super Weekend, wherein Boston's favorite sons of the gridiron were to culminate their unbroken string of victories in a out and out thrashing of The Giants, would be capital time to take tour of the walking city and oblige Jana's offer to visit. Traveling by subway on Saturday morning across the Manhattan bridge to reach the Lucky Star bus, which parks on a Chinatown sidestreet next to the PACE University game field (occupied on this Saturday morning by masses practicing Tai Chi), I noticed that the Lower Manhattan skyline looked, well, normal - not the overwhelming mass of big sticks with sheer sides and generally conventional permanent haircuts that has awed me in the past (I would re-visit this image upon my return from Boston and it did once again command a presence of awe). There are certain yardsticks upon which I calculate my assumptions concerning life in New York, and when the skyline ceases to awe, I feel my laurels sagging under granted weight.
It costs $15 round trip to Boston and back on the Chinatown bus, and there is no better way to travel this distance. The seats have cushions that are plush, the toilet is clean, the buses run more frequently than late night A trains, and there's a stop at a Roy Rogers or a Burger King at the halfway point so that we might all have a stretch or a bit of greasy snack-in-a-box. It's not the jet set, but the Chinatown bus receives top marks for value.
This story would run far too long for its own good, so please allow these following bullets along with the photographs below to illustrate my favorite notions of Boston:
- The city is remarkably American, the model of US urbana: Despite its age, it is convenient in layout, thanks in good part to a no-nonsense transit system with a catchy name; it's sidewalks and boulevards are wide and clean, and its main park, Boston Commons, is a manageable inspiration; it is populated by a homely, friendly and educated lot, who are dreadfully proud of their franchises (baseball caps are no doubt held in perfect per capita ratio) ; Its history is evident and charmingly ostentatious; race is a non-issue, though the city remains segregated; the business district is empty as a banker's rhetoric of life on the weekend; Its municipal planners stick to their guns, as evidenced by the completion of the Big Dig; and a river runs through it.
- John Harvard's bronzed blood still runs blue as he stares, soft features and pursed lips, in nonchalance at his knee, slouching in his book-laden seat atop a square pedestal at the head of Harvard yard; the smartest kids in the world don't look any different from any other student body; The Fogg Art museum has a surprisingly strong collection of contemporary artwork, and magnificent examples of every important art genre, and receives my stamp of highest approval.
- I will return to Boston. I will never live in Boston.
Unfortunately Tom Brady couldn't keep the Giant's defensive line from gnawing at his chiseled chin, and New England lost its perfect record to the duck-and-scramble half-retarded brother of last year's Super Bowl champ and his marauding meadowlands go-getters. Nonetheless, the trip was a success, and New York feels like it should to me again.

Fathme Euro Tour Poster

2008-01-18T23:28:00.000-05:00

This is the Fathme Records European Tour Poster Niall McClelland and I drew just recently, although I think it is going to be a t-shirt and not a poster. If you are not familiar with Break Core music, then I think you are missing out on some heavy duty shit. Eustachian is a prime example of this genre which takes all the things you might hold sonically sacred and vomits atop them in most acidic and crudely potent a manner, stabbing your eardrums with little remorse and turning your notion of rhythm directly headward to a disonant maelstrom, and all with a grin and a wink. There are children in Spain who are compiling a book on the subject as we speak, and Niall and I have been kindly asked to contribute a portfolio, as much of our grotesque imagery, particularly the work we've done for Fathme, is visually complimentary to the Break Core sound.
Scares me.

Colourings: Comics

2008-01-07T17:03:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year. This new year begins with the generally frustrative frettings that are speciously bundled with the young financially insolvent artist package, into which I sold myself, upon moving to the land of thousand dollar rents and thirty hour days. A New York minute is not nearly as fast as you'd imagine, or it's not fast in the way that you'd imagine, unless you're treating it as a commodity and selling it to the highest bidder, someone who's looking to revamp their hook with that old 'say no more' sort of Broadway flair. A New York minute is fast because it requires effort, it is fast because it has so much potential behind it, potential driven by the cost of using up a New York minute. A New York minute is fast, and it's heavy. The overbearing mass of choices that stretch tall and thick as midtown and its traffic weigh on every decision, and the coupling of this weight with the pain of the money-lenders knobby shillelagh prodding at your behind, sticking you right through the padding of the wallet in your behind pocket, reminding you that you ought to plan your next minute before this minute is up or you'll be out two ticks on the big hand with no better handle on the matter, well, that coupling can cripple an honest man (given time). The two little men or women sitting on your shoulders, the angel and devil characters in the polarizing theatrics of popular culture - here in New York they are elephants! Big old imported-direct-from-the-dark-continent lumbering savannah crawlers that treat your back like an orator's stump. One's spouting off about how the weather's nice and there's a brown bag with a mickey in it waiting for you at the liquor store and a patch of grass just your size in Central Park, and the other's reciting verbatim the 'raisons pour habiter a la metropole' - to get ahead, to learn, to make progress towards sustaining your niche vocation, and neither is wearing a costume; they're just two huge stinking elephants, naked and invisible as radio, crushing your hope for building momentum. The real rub is that they don't smell peanuts on your yoke and come propping themselves atop your perch unless or until you stop moving.
Were I a decadent man, bent perhaps on self-destruction, I'd bask in the waste and weight of a New York minute spent in a quandary. But I ain't one. So, through the struggle of small steps, and the hope of those elephants finding someone else to bother, and news of some way to pay that money-lender with the knotted stick, I'll make my away along the string of New York minutes that weigh the day into relative stasis. This is a long segue into explaining why I decided to make some more Complementary Colourings yesterday, despite them not doing a thing for my wallet or my penchant for merrymaking. I made then because I had to get my mind off the malingering bulk of the New York minute. Whew.

Collage - East vs. West

2007-12-16T12:42:00.000-05:00

This coloring here was cut in half and put into our Fighting Graves zine #5, but I'd like to show it here as a whole. It is a fairly self-explanatory contrast that I've created, and speaks the most basic language of my critical ethnocentricity: The West is fucked and redrawn toward this allusion, the East is something I can't comment about, so it remains unaltered by my hand. Commenting on one hemisphere provides plenty enough effrontery for my tastes.

Sublime Depths

2007-12-15T13:28:00.001-05:00

You might not know what this is a picture of, but rest assured it is a picture of something. It's not a composite; it was taken from above the water tank I had created for the large sculpture I made for my open studio - A suitcase was lined in black material and attached to a 30 gallon aquarium, inside which was suspended a National Geographic magazine (attached with invisible wire to the Bottom of the suitcase), and that magazine was opened to the spread in the photo above, of an Arctic Canadian Park. When the piece was completed, inside the circular hole you see before you sat a weighted pickle jar full of rusty and clean nails, onto which was attached a 1/5th scale black corpse cast of polyurethane, so this particular view was never on public display. But I think it was a view worth noting. Someday hopefully someone will set it as their wallpaper; that is my dream.

Open Studio - Wed Dec 5th

2007-12-02T15:29:00.000-05:00

You are all invited (although I doubt many of you are in New York) to come and have a look at my studio this Wednesday - there is a special large work that I have produced for this event. See above for details, and it was snowing earlier. Heavy Snow (today's accumulation was not heavy, but I think any snow in New York is a burden on the municipality) on Sunday is really fantastic for adults, but I seem to remember that as a child, I felt it was just my luck that the streets weren't generously blanketed on a school day, when there might be a chance that classes would be cancelled.

Process - Hermaphrodite Corpse

2007-11-25T21:40:00.000-05:00

This corpse I am just about finished sculpting is one part of a larger work I am in the process of putting together. I thought it interesting enough to post by its lonesome. It is a mummified, corpsified androgynous figure, built out of a material called castilene (medium hardness). The final version will be cast in plastic and colored with graphite, and it will have a nice head of hair I think. The hermaphrodite corpse is, for me, kind of a symbol of a maximum entropic human state, which is going to help level the work into which it will be incorperated.

Complementary Constructions - Isreal Series.

2007-11-25T12:11:00.000-05:00

Another series of add-on paintings, this time consisting of selected pages revolving around the holy spear of the Mid-east: Moderen-day Zion. The age of the pages might not translate to the scanned image, but know that the pages look old, and that the transparent watercolors and ink I used to place my optical 'comments' are fitting. Framed and placed on a wall, these pieces look very good (framed and placed on a wall, everything looks good; the quantifiable measure of comparison is found in 'very').

Burning Down the House

2007-11-22T14:25:00.000-05:00

This photograph of a smoking pumpkin was taken after I had completed filming a video bit incorperating the 'fire on fire' pumpkin and some plexiglass with a patch of dialogue from the film "This is England" by Shane Meadows. After taking this shot, the cord attached to the light behind the pumpkin caught fire and extinguished the light, and now, along with the smoky aroma of charred pumpkin and burnt newspaper, the air in my studio carries a darting hint of immolated electrical conduit.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Gaze

2007-10-24T00:24:00.000-04:00

Here it is, captured in greys! I know who these people are, but you don't, until you read the next post down and sleuth it out. The fact that you don't know makes it an interesting photo, and the fact that you will find out (which will ruin the distance required to look at the photo successfully, making it less interesting), means that this is a special moment for you. Enjoy the ephemera.

Lake Michigan Shoreline

2007-10-23T17:23:00.000-04:00

You wouldn't expect to find yourself in such a green, temperate, tranquil environment of the sort in which I found myself just a handful of miles North of the great Midwestern city of Chicago, along a secluded beach path at the end of a sleepy, wealthy dead-end street, off of which stands the crafts-modern styled house owned and occupied by my Godfather. It is a vision of the Pacific Northwest that I see along the path decending to the beach at the end of this street- hearty mosses grow well upon the forest's detritus; prehistoric ferns splay themselves across large sections of brush; a creek and birds and shorebreak provide an essential soundtrack; it's a rainforest, on Lake Michigan. The vision changes to something even more bizarre as the path opens to a lake view; corrugated iron breakwaters jut out into the blue and grey, and the beach, dotted with stones and dried sea plants, bends slowly, revealing the trees that shingle their way up the coast's bank. And its' quiet. And it's dull, but it's still green. And it feels far away, but there's a campfire, and wrought iron chairs, and an old Hilton Head tourist cap left on a log, and my mother and Godfather are there for a swim. The sky is a blanket, and I know I'm not found my way to some exotic littoral. Still though, it's an impressive morsel of America, here on the banks of Ravinia. The following pictures do their best to capture the mood (though the photographs make it seem more drab than lush. Concentrate on the grades).

Fighting Show Images

2007-10-23T01:05:00.000-04:00

I did not put any images of our recent Fighting show up on this blog. Here are a select few now. The show turned out great, and it is still up until the beginning of November. Go see the show, and buy something - the framed pieces are pretty as, well, pretty as pictures.

(You can see more images on the Fecal Face site, under the guest blogs section, and also at the OKOK Gallery site).

Album Cover - Stop Die Rescuscitate

2007-10-23T00:59:00.001-04:00

This is a record, put out by SLUM, that Niall McClelland and I did a while ago, but it is the first time I've seen it with it's type and LP sticker thing. Visit Niall's Blog to read about how he (and I also) feels about doing things like album covers and then never seeing the product.

Ghost Book/Scroll - Canadians Dead in Afghanistan

2007-10-18T10:48:00.000-04:00

This is the fully extended scroll version of a large book I produced a while ago. It is about 25 feet (8 meters) long, or possibly even longer. Each ghost is a representation of a Canadian soldier who fell between the war's onset and the time production began on the book. I think this interpretation I've provided is supposed to bring light to a solemn situation which requires attention, but not in a reactionary manner. Nothing's sacred though, eh.

Jawbone Study Collage

2007-09-20T00:33:00.000-04:00

This is a collage consisting of a number of old cromagnon and ape jawbones reproduced in a number of mediums, staged within the spread of a book. The book is still intact (it's cover and pages are still attached, although a number of pages have been cut out to reduce bulk), which has allowed me to cut away to reveal hidden things found on underlying pages, and also the hardcover provides some rigidity. This book is now something of a frankenstein - it is mangled, but it's alive.

Complementary Constructions - Mountains Series.

2007-09-17T02:17:00.000-04:00

A while back, while preparing collages which went unused for our show at OKOK Gallery, I decided to add colour, line and form to a title page that already looked very nice, as I felt I could add to the design and give it a new life. It turned out looking kind of beautiful, so I recently decided to further explorr this process. My first series of these 'Spring Drawings' (since they are once again fresh and lively pages of dormant imagery) consists of seven works - three of which are black and white. I did my best to make them look, well, really complimentary, and I had fun doing it. Any comments?

OKOK Gallery Opening tonight

2007-09-08T15:19:00.001-04:00

We're having a show tonight - Niall and I - Fighting.
I wrote something nicer but the stupid computer was
being a grade A asshole. Fuck.

OkOk Gallery
5107 Ballard Ave NW
Seattle America

Sat Sept 8th, Opening 6-10 pm.

Ok great.
Man.

Posting in August

2007-08-25T14:32:00.000-04:00

The summer months are not condusive to writing and posting blogs. They are, in fact, not all that condusive to any sort of productive activity (exempting the growth of plants), and require tremendous amounts of willpower from you and I to refrain from spilling our resolve and having it mellifleuntly seep its way to the beach and barbeque.

Expect Semptember on through to bring more frequent posts.
Here is something old which I never posted. It's a giant wall mural painted by Niall McClelland and I at Mark James Gallery in Brooklyn, entitled "The Gauntlet". The piece took us the greater part of each day of seven days. It is now a white wall in a vacant space marked for demolition or heavy renovation. The same space, in Williamsburg, also houses a Basquiat wall mural covered in coats of white paint.

snakes and ladders

2007-07-27T08:59:00.000-04:00

This is an old-time sort of style illustration that Darcy from Top Shelf MF commissioned me to do. The original reference was a snakes and ladders board from England which had a Railroad theme - two children are playing hobo, riding railcarts, falling from tracks and getting misdirected and mugged as they proceed up and down the game board. It's an awefully mature theme for a kid's game, as it seems like an attainable sort of fantasy situation that the children are in; but I guess kids grew up fast during the age of iron and coal.

The theme for this board is 'Always a Raw Deal' - The ladders to all the good things; making out with the girl on the train, relaxing after a long day's work, and cashing in that winning lottery ticket, are broken. Only the bad things; house burning down, getting fired from work, getting mugged, can happen. It's a sad state of affairs for the players in this game.

Fecal Face Group Showpiece, and a word on 'friends'

2007-07-17T09:54:00.000-04:00

This is a rather large piece I've painted for a group show (Fecal Face's annual show) at 111 Mina gallery in San Francisco (located at 111 Mina st). The show opens August 2nd. There are 40 artists, and It'll probably be a shit show - like a drunken stumbling people-out-the door party - the show is not actually going to be shit; I think it's going to be very good.

Not having been back to the West coast for a few years now, I have entered into a handful of new friendships with people whom I've yet to meet, or even talk on the phone with, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. I think it's fantastic to have friends in as many places as possible - it is a testament to the positives of our current age of communication. But can the friends we've made through the sinews of cyberspace find their way into our hearts without us actually experiencing their presence? The answer is 'yes, obviously. This happens all the time". But does that make it right? No, not in my opinion. There is no good word to describe the people we know and like, but, as a result of geography and circumstance, we have yet to impirically shake hands, exchange glances and generate impressions with. Perhaps there is nothing wrong with calling these people friends, as it is a sign that we trust their character based on what we know of them through virtual arteries. 'Friend' is a term of endearment assigned to the majority of people we have met (virtually or in the flesh) and carried on an amiable dialogue with, be it a brief exchange of wit, a discussion of purpose, or whatever. But it seems an unsettling paradox to be a person with many friends who is often left feeling alone. And this is the case among many of the patrons of the virtual web of friendship - we are walkie-talkie people who get satisfaction from the commitment to responsd more than the content of the response, and we spend far too much time in a void (any time spent in a void is unfavorable). Perhaps we should further increase the graduation of adjectives given to friends - middle friends, small friends, old friends, new friends, good friends, best friend(s), close friends, far friends, bar friends (indeed, the socialite may experience the aformentioned paradox more often than the internet conversationalist), family friends, half-friends etc, so that we can get a handle on having so many friends. Let's use our language a little better and pay respect to the levels of community that surround us and the people that make up our relational circles, so that we can best understand why having friends and having fun don't correlate as strongly as they used to.

How does this relate to the piece I have just posted? I guess the only thing the objects in the still life have in common is that they were available for me to paint, and I felt like painting them, as they either posed a challenge or tickled my fancy, and now they are brought together and forced to support one another, while nothing is actually supporting the whole lot, and that is what friendship's all about - life support, often at random.

SHalf a kate Deck - Creature

2007-07-06T00:31:00.000-04:00

Here is my half of a skatboard deck Niall mcClelland and I just finshed for Creature skateboards. It is the zombie giant John Bonham come back from the dead. A leviathan in his reincarnated state, Bonham is seen here rotting and being torn apart from the inside by small men that comprise his necrotic matter. Bonham is not one to be hindered by his dire deconstructive state, and continues his develish drumming despite the distractions. Niall drew Keith Moon, as a medeival skeleton warrior hellbent on pounding the heavens out of the sky with his rhythmic onslaught. Whew!

Paranoia Poster

2007-07-06T00:10:00.000-04:00

This is a strange one, and you will see it in the Graves zine section of our Fighting website, which will be updated shortly. I think it's supposed to feel old, and a little unnerving, although the rhetorical tongue-in-cheek quality of the text gives the photograph more of a modern, college poster fair sort of flair (if you can call that sort of thing 'flair'). And I guess that's what satisfied me about this piece - that it could act very well as a large glossy poster in a dorm room next to a che poster, a vintage beer add and some other freshman wallpaper that completes the stereotype. This is an altered image, by the way - the shadow man was digitally added to the very dim shot of the hallway in my old apartment. I felt a presence, though, while looking at this photograph of my hall after I'd taken it, if that's any consolation.

Birds Of The World

2007-06-20T11:14:00.000-04:00

This is an example of one of the pages of my next small publication, which incorperates the pseudo-science of collage with the pseudo-science of wit and humour. I will post more of these as they are created. I'm not sure how you'll be able to get your hands on a copy of this book once it is published, but we can figure that out when the time draws near. The distortions here are done on the photocopier, not on the computer. A comparative note: I have yet to visit the Main Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library (of Ghostbusters fame), but the Central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library makes meager effort to provide its visitors with comfortable photocopying space. Their copiers pale in comparison to the Toronto Refence Library's quick-zoomng, feature-packed xerographic workhorses. I hope Manhattan's main branch can provide for me what I require, else I'm bound to find my way to Toronto a little more often than what's obliged by family and friends.

Update on Art Exhibition

2007-05-26T23:04:00.000-04:00

I am currently in the process of moving into my new residence in Brooklyn - it is a long and ardous process which began several weeks ago, and will continue through June and into the brooding heat of July. As a result posts have been and will continue to be infrequent/non-existent. Here is a link to a 360 degree tour of the work of Niall McClelland and I that is currently on exhibit at LE Gallery. My father put the images together. The show is up until the 2nd of June, although I'm sure anyone reading this who is in or near Toronto has already seen the work. You can view photos of the opening on Niall's blog here. Since my Artist's Statement is not available anywhere else on the internet, I am posting it here. Here is my Artist's Statement (unabridged):

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

My work for this exhibition involves art that is presented in the form of books, layer paintings, and high context installation, all of which I feel share common ground in their packaging. I have put the majority of my effort into providing the art’s packaging with a great deal of impact by including all of the necessary ingredients to allow you, the viewer, upon first impression, to take from the work the most concise amount of information that I am able to provide you with, and to continue the story of each work as you proceed further into examining its content. I am interested in providing you with work that is efficient in its use of time and space. I am not interested in providing you with the burden of my compulsion for line and shape and representation (for burden it would be were I to force you to view all of my ghosts or all of my growing forms or all of the elements of my writing desk at the same time on a single surface); rather, I would like to provide you with the opportunity to take what you can from my work for the amount of time that you are willing to spend with it, and to use your imagination to consecrate the experience. Although some of the innards of the works you see before you might be more difficult to access than others (for instance, it is impossible for you to physically remove the tabbed layers in the layer paintings without attracting attention, as the pieces are behind glass), I’ve made an effort to provide you with enough information to understand what charges the surfaces you see before you. The contemporary political philosopher Jaques Rancier has framed the challenge of contemporary art as ‘knowing what kinds of surfaces to construct in order to disrupt the normal functioning of surfaces and depths”, and although I only recently read these words, I certainly take them to heart.

Here is a brief synopsis of each group of work, starting with the most universal and ending with the most personal:

The layer paintings – Recordings and Observations - are an effort to engage objectively in a process which is obviously subjective, as even the most automatic drawing requires the intuitive motion of putting tool to paper and marking the surface. These pieces also work to efficiently exhibit a series of pieces within a single, highly charged work. The pieces explore growth as a fact of life, confront traditional concepts of animation, and try to achieve mindful balance by filling gestural outlines with a linear grid. The recordings and observations are behind glass to challenge the psychology of the viewer and not the physical temptation to refrain from pulling tabs and demonstrating the ephemeral qualities of the work.

The Books - Portraits of the Dead - are an exercise in figuratively representing statistics of human casualties without wholly personalizing/individualizing them. I believe this is the most human way to consider the impact of violent conflict without doting on something that we cannot intrinsically understand without having been personally affected by the violence (by either having experienced violent conflict firsthand or having an attachment to someone who has). Although these casualties often spawn from unnecessary military action, these deaths are not in vain, as they lead us to understand the severity of the repercussions for our commitment of troops to theatres of conflict. The causalities I chose to represent were chosen with consideration towards the comparison of significant human loses over contrasting periods of time, the importance of engaging in a concerted effort to criticize certain conflicts, and the amount of casualties I felt I could successfully represented in the time available to me.

The high context installation - Artist’s Desk - is the most concise portion of my life that occupies a tangible space, and is primarily a reaction to the notion of art as simulacra, although it also serves other functions. I have given this installation the prefix of high context, as it is looks to allow you to internalize the sate of culture through the act of viewing the piece, and this relationship can develop further the longer you spend with the piece (this is pretty much the same thing I wrote about earlier; all of my works here in this show fall under the category of high context art). This desk contains the majority of the small things that carry great importance to me, which I have collected over many years. I have committed myself to putting a price on these most important things; they are not, in fact, invaluable. In intimating that no material items are invaluable, no matter how unique, I am putting a price tag on life as property. Since I have all the things I need to live in relative comfort, the concept of marginal utility (the idea that things that are more luxurious become more valuable as things that are necessary become more abundantly available) allows me to equate my writing desk (full of objects that would prove useless for survival, save for perhaps my waterproof pelican camera case, my many unused prophylactics, and perhaps, if I had a walkman and a lifetime supply of batteries, the mix tapes made by old girlfriends and my copy of ‘Surf’s Up Dude’ – the first cassette, I ever bought, were I to find myself on a desert island) to an income of $1000 per week for an entire year, which I, being a human who values ‘things’, feel is reasonable compensation for these sentimental bric a brac. The gallery in this case also functions as a temporary storage facility for my desk, as I am in the process of moving from Toronto to New York City, and my car is already full.

I hope this summary has provided for you some insight into my reasons for producing and exhibiting the works you see here. I am sure you will also find your own reasons to appreciate or deplore the work.

This month's work: A concise Description

2007-04-29T00:03:00.000-04:00

In preparation for my exhibition which opens on May 11th, a two-man show with Niall McClelland at le gallery in Toronto, I have been spending the past number of months, and this month in earnest, producing work for this exhibition. The work isn't being shown on this blog, but here is one page out of roughly 650 that I have painted of specific groups of people who have died in specific conflicts over a specified period of time. For the coming show, I have painted portraits of Iraqi Civilians who died violently during the month of October, 2006; coalition casualties between the onset of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 and the end of 2006, and Canadian soldiers who perished in Afghanistan since our forces arrived a few years ago to help out. The first two volumes have been compiled into books and will be for sale shortly. The above image is from the books; the real life ghosts are painted on craft paper, so the paper is brown.

Poem: Pan Fry 'Em

2007-04-15T18:03:00.001-04:00

This poem contains my arguments for waking up at a reasonable hour
and for eating relatively healthy. You could consider it an aphorism, but
you would do better to consider it a joke:

Pan Fry ‘Em

Dreaded Chefs of Breakfast foods
Cook a heartfelt disaster
For less than you’d expect.
And it goes down easy,
But it doesn’t all come out,
And if you wake up late
Too often,
The last little bits won’t ever leave,
And you’ll be up to your tits
In little bits of breakfast.
And you’ll never get hungry,
But you’ll never be full of anything
But little bits of
Dirty
Old
Eggs n’ Bacon,
And lunch
Will never come.

Art at Receiver Gallery, SF

2007-04-12T11:39:00.000-04:00

San Francisco's Receiver Gallery, located at 1415 Valencia st. and open from 10-6 during the week, is showing work by a number of artists that collaborate with Vancouver-based Lifetime Collective. Among these artists are myself, Niall McClelland, Ben Tour, Humanfive, Joseph Hart and Ryan Wallace. Above is one of the pieces the I have in the show (it's similar to a work I had posted a while ago, and is a theme I plan on exploring in the future). I pretty much just framed and sent away some of the ink drawings I've done over the past while, and I hope they don't come back. Also, Kurt Vonnegut is no longer with us, so that's a shame, although I don't think he cares all that much anymore. If I were, for some unimaginably akward and unfitting reason, to speak at his funeral, I would say: "Well, I never met him, but I liked his books".

Africa Bike

2007-04-05T02:14:00.000-04:00

This is a bit of a strange one - it's Africa, separated into its politically defined pieces and colored to look fun! I'm not sure why this was the only way I could think of drawing a map of Africa, and why I've ended up drawing two maps in as many months, when I've never before been required to employ my previously dormant preternaturally savvy cartographic skills (that's pushing it a bit, huh?). The bike is there beside/below the map because people in Africa - Senegal specifically - can now get a bike from Kona through an organization Kona has set up that takes donations and manufactures bikes, not-for-profit, made special for African village conditions , and Niall McClelland and I get to do a shirt to celebrate the effort. This is not the completed shirt, but it is the graphic element I put together to which Niall will add his whimsied Irish flair.

I just realized after first publishing this post that I definately chose the colors in this map because they were successful in my food pyramid illustration. I did not realize the similarity in their palette until seeing them near one another. This sort of undersight can lead to some disastrously redundant choices if not discovered quickly. Thank goodness for our ability to recognise patterns.

Food Pyramid Cont'd

2007-04-02T19:06:00.002-04:00

Yes, here is the still-life photograph of my food pyramid, accompanied by a completed illustration of said pyramid, and process scans of the food groups piling atop one another as they are inked. The food in the photograph is real; once the shoot was complete, four of us (Jeremy, who brought the lights and equipment, was accompanied by his girlfriend Sarah, and my roomate Keith Jones, squared the group) dismantled the posed comestibles and ate them in a fashion attributed to homeric or Baroque times - as gluttons starving of manner but making ourselves full nonetheless; hands covered in sauce, eyes bigger than saucers. If you are ever interested in an interactive feast that's not normal and a castle of fun, prepare a meal that's got good representation from all food groups and lay it out a la nu, without plates or decorative elements, and eat with blatant disregard to inhibition. I found it to be more exotic than pickled squid and beetles in a lot of ways.

Root Specimens

2007-03-24T22:27:00.000-04:00

In the Spring of 2006 my mother and I planted an assortment of vegetables in our garden, which lies in the virile southeast corner of our lot at 2 Rusholme Dr. In order to keep our neighbours from violent retaliation (as they are predominantly Portuguese), we were forced to plant many tomato vines in our garden. But we also decided to plant red and romaine lettuce, eggplant, purple kolrabi, red cabbage, and various herbs to pepper the gaps. Since our garden received more than its required share of sunlight, and since last summer was a wet one, our garden grew as if it were some poor farmer's hot-ticket science expirement gone terribly wrong - our lettuce stalks grew almost four feet high (if you are imagining a four-foot head of lettuce, please stop and imagine a wilted head of lettuce with large shoots bearing small yellow flowers growing out the center of the head instead. That's what it looked like. Or imagine the giant head of lettuce, because it's more fun), and the cabbage leaves made bosky allusions to elephant ears.

Ah, but The Kolrabi, it turned its energy towards producing swollen red bulbous nodes the size of footballs from which its leaves could sprout, and resembled something more alien than even the pugs and curious muts that sometimes trounced our small latticed garden fence. Most of the garden plants were either eaten or pulled in the fall, and most all the rest were quartered and dissolved by the processes of winter months. But the three mutant Kolrabi, they survived through to three days ago, when I finally pulled the stalwarts from their soil because the snows had cleared and the sun and warmth had thawed the plants and they were starting to stink, like rotten cabbage. These plants were unique, and I thought they should be documented, so I called my neighbour Jeremy Jansen, and he brought over his equipment and we shot our specimens hanging from a string (which was Jeremy's idea). These three photographs are the result of almost nine months of preparation on the part of the Kolrabi, and a few serendipidous moments on our part.

Food Pyramid part 1 - Bread.

2007-03-23T02:48:00.000-04:00

Here is the first part of one of the new designs for the next run of Fighting shirts Niall McClelland and I will be releasing in short order. This is going to be a food pyramid, like the ones you might know and love from your school years, but drawn as a still life (sort of) with all real food. There is a photograph to go along with the drawing, and I will post that shortly. But for now, it's just breads and cereals done with brush and ink. You're supposed to eat 6 or more breads and cereals a day. How many do you eat?

Poem: The Seduction of Captain Hamm

2007-03-23T02:08:00.000-04:00

This is a very good poem; it is a tragic ode to the capitulation and resulting emasculation of a most revered leader, told by a lowly but sexually charged gay Able Seaman (Second lowest rank in the old time navy):

The Seduction of Captain Hamm

Yes Oh Captain!
Oh my Captain
Whose sails pregnant
Take us South

I've browned my neck
Took hand to Deck
Bled through to please
Your supple mouth

A brazen brine
Would taste as wine
Were captain's blessing
Brought to cup

A swollen stew
The god's own brew
Were Captain's river
Summed with sup

Have at thine self
For higher shelf
The triden't spires
Hardly reach

Have at thine heart
for heaven's art
your crossing hands
confiding preach

But have at me
and feel the sea
as moves within
a charg'ed nother

And have at mine
For clouds divine
Your moment as
A common brother

Yes oh captain
Oh my man!
Whose power lost
With harbored lust

Thine legs are gone
and sails are long
And North, true North's
Relieved of trust.

Map of Eternia

2007-03-16T21:40:00.000-04:00

There is a fictional far-away place called Eternia, a realm of magic and wonder, that lies at the center (roughly) of the known universe. It's inhabitants are a very concise microcosm of all things living carbon and breathing something in the universe. It is the planet where the saga of the ever-popular He-Man cartoon series takes place. It was created by Mattel.

Here I've produced a map of Eternia's Light and Dark Hemispheres from the facts and figures I found online, in episode guides and on the Eternia Wiki. The piece was made for a Masters of the Universe charity Art Show happening here in Toronto on the 29th of March at Magic Pony, 694 Queen street West, and although you won't be able to bid on the original work (this guy is like 60 inches wide and 70 long), you can bid on one of ten prints of the map that are a more manageable size (24"x28"). All proceeds go to the Sick Kids Foundation (Sick Children's hospital, by the way, is one of Toronto's most amazing architectural gems. It is THE place you want to go if you're a sick kid anywhere, especially if you dig Harry Potter - it's almost a castle). I think the show starts around 7pm. It costs money to go, which I don't approve of, but I think it goes to charity too.

I have never been more certain than anything in my enter life than the fact that, were this theme-show not about Masters of the Universe, during the course of my long life I would not have created or ever considered creating a detailed map of Eternia.

Tangent Theory

2007-03-10T17:00:00.000-05:00

A tangent is a line that intersects a curve at some point where the slope (angle) of the line and the curve are equal, and continues on in either direction, away from the curve forever if that curve is part of a circle. That's why when people talk about going off on a tangent, it means they're heading off topic, and at some point they'll have admit they've digressed (usually by saying 'but I digress') and turn back around in order to stay the true course (this is all common knowledge, yes, but why not start simple). Now, let's imagine that when we talk on a subject, in conversation or in debate or in lecture, that the substance of the subject comprises the volume of a cone. A cone is a three-dimensional shape that's comprised of a great many circles that get smaller and smaller as they move up a line (the cone's height), eventually arriving at a point. Let's say that arriving at this point is the ultimate goal of any purposeful discussion, and we get there by working our way up the concentrically shrinking/rising circles. We always start on a point along any given circle's circumference (it's perimeter), and if it's a new(ish) topic, we're generally starting at the base of the cone. As we take wind and start to speak, we can move the conversation in a number of ways. I'd say the most common way is to tarry along the circumfence of the circle, until a point (not THE point, but a point - there are a kajiliion of them on every plane; the surface of the cone is a plane) is made that belongs on a higher level and elevates the conversation to a higher ring. We then continue along this ring until that happens again, and this is how we elevate the conversation. The conversation could continue entirely along the surface of the cone and eventually reach THE point without ever heading towards the center of the cone, where deep conversations take place, and I'll tell you why that's a tough place to be in a minute. This type of upward-spiralling circumferential discussion, I would posit, is a healthy discussion, as discussions almost always take place in a circular fashion, and thus require the path of circumference to keep them moving. My case is that a circular discussion is never a bad thing, but it wanes when you make it all the way round and discover it hasn't moved upward (as you may see, you can make it almost all the way around a circle and still keep from taunting futility if you're able to gain a touch of higher ground before you close the gap on any given ring; and since there are a seemingly infinite amount of rings that make up your topic cone, it really doesn't take much more than a small step to keep you moving in a positive direction). Up and up and round and round we travel, until we reach the summit, plant our flag of reason on it's verbose perch, and ramble on along our new learned level of understanding to find another topic to conquer. Yes, this is a precipitous place to be, at the height of conversation, but there are many cones to climb.

So, you'd like to get off the circular surface of a topic (it can get dizzying) and plod through it's skin to taste it's sweet innards? Well, you're in for a treat, as they taste pretty good, but they don't provide you with much direction. You can crawl into the voluminous expanses of a topic's substance and become lost forever - to take a linear approach to a conversation is to behave in such an efficient manner that it's almost beyond human capability, but should you succeed in going the straight and narrow, there are these items to which you ought to pay heed: Your direction - are you headed along a radial path, or are you cruising along a chord (see circle diagram. A chord is a straight line between any two points on a circle's circumference). And if you're on a chord, well then you're going to come shooting right out the other side of the mountain at some point, and you'd better know it, otherwise you're doing no better than the man on a tangent. If you stop at any point during your linear journey to the center of argument, then what? You'll be terribly hard-pressed heading straight up - like making your way to the tip of an iceberg by digging a long tunnel and then chipping away at it's ceiling - there's a lot of topical weight bearing down on that central matter; it's a heavy place. And, if you decide to stay where you are and start in a circle again, well then you may do so, but you've created a new surface for yourself and the slope is much steeper, or THE point is of a lesser quality of air (see diagram). Mining your topic is bound to get you into trouble, but it's one hell of a trip. The nice part is that you shouldn't have much trouble retracing your steps if the canary quits chirping. I hope you can see why deep conversations rarely get to THE point, although they are rewarding in the sense that thay offer overwhelming perpsectives and provide plenty of mindful exercise.

Consider these notions next time to set off to find purchase on a greater topical slope among the foothills of small talk and idle banter (Ide banter isn't even a foothill - it's the Nebraska of conference, where you're apt to dig a trench in order to climb a hill. But hey, the corn is sweeter than candy, and there's plenty of room for all). Also, consider that I may have just wasted a hunk of your time if you don't take adsurdity seriously.

Magical Nature Specimen Mobile

2007-03-05T00:54:00.000-05:00

Here is one of two Free-floating Mobiles I have drawn/painted (you see, this is still a bit of an issue for me - I used a paint brush exclusively to render these twigs and leaves and strings, however they don't really look like paintings, do they?). The mobile is made up of little specimens of things you might find outdoors, in nature, and they are all tied together with a fine gossamer thread (my father alerted me to the fact that these threads are more gossamer than twiny or stringish). There is some evidence of gravity in the way the specimens are connected, although nothing's really holding them up. This is the part of magic realism which I enjoy.

63 - The Maple Leaf

2007-02-28T00:48:00.000-05:00

With service from New York City (Penn Station) to Toronto, stopping in between at Yonkers, Croton-Harmon, Poughkeepsie, Rhinecliff-Kingston, Hudson, Albany, Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Rome, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, St. Catherines, Grimsby, Aldershot, Oakville. A few things worthy of note; they still call 'all aboard' at Penn station, and Via rail still uses steel-wheeled pull carts to transfer luggage. There's a big whistle that still blows hot air out its nozzle to give warning that something big is coming along fast and there's not much chance it'll stop if you're in the way. And the conductors still banter on wittily with passengers who are eager to make small talk. The train is still a classic mode of transportation, and offers an affordable luxury to those who are not opposed to spending a day travelling.

The Maple Leaf runs an old route out of Manhattan under the George Washington Bridge, along the Hudson river Valley, up through the Finger Lakes Gorges and right near past the Great Falls of Niagara, parrallel with the Niagara escarpement and into the golden Horseshoe, coming to settle at Union station. Its predeccesor was the laudable Empire State Express, which was inaugurated in 1891. The Maple Leaf provides its passengers with twelve hours of roomy bliss, provided that you enjoy finding something productive to do with yourself while sitting in a recliner for half a whole day (examples of productive activity might include reading, listening to music, imaginatively opening and exploring small sacks of ponderables etc), soft scenery, moderately priced pre-packaged foods and beverages, and the rickety-roo toilet game. It comes even more highly recommended if you're willing to take the risk of getting stuck sitting next to some blind old goat who has nothing better to do than bother you with their absolutely assinine running commentary of whatever stream of thought comes dripping off their tongue when they open their gummy mouth.

If you don't mind having to answer questions like "You said you're from Toronto? I'm thinking of maybe going to Toronto, Maybe moving there for a bit. Yeah, it's nice. It's been a while since I been there. I'm just headed back to Rochester. Ooh, yep, my sons gonna be home when I get in, and he's gonna bug me you know, about dinner, first thing when I come in the door. He moved back in recently, back home, after school. He's doing some courses and he's gonna take his public service exam pretty soon now. I don't think he knows exactly what he wants to do. But he thinks he's smarter than me, now that he's finished school. He's always telling me to focus. I tell him, that's not why we paid for his education. When I want to know something, I'll ask it, hehe. But you say, you said a good place to live in Toronto is Dale..." at this point you could repeat the same thing you'd said before a few times - "Parkdale." And he'd chime in "that's where you live." And you'd say "Yep" even if it wasn't where you live, because getting him to remember the name of the neighborhood where you live is a whole nother dog and pony show. And he'd continue "And then you said, on the West, no, East side...." and then you'd state, methodically, the name "Riverdale". "Right Riverdale" He'd say. "Or LeslieVille" you'd add, cause you're trying to anticipate his next question, cause he's already asked it about three times now. "Right, LeslieVille..." and so on. and if you don't mind showing this blind old gruff back to his seat everytime he gets up to take a piss or get a little stretch going, then you're going to have a blast.

And then on the way back, if you don't mind seeing a gaggle of old broads get on your car in Albany, and hearing one distinct voice that's louder and more obnoxious than the rest, already complaining about something - the temperature or the seating arrangement or the location of the stairs and the little differences between this train and the last one they were one or whatever; if you don't mind somehow by the luck of your self-absorbed bookish behaviour getting picked by this old galloot to be seat buddies, and having to deal with the retelling of every scrap of detail that a weekend at the VFW (Veteran's Fund for Women) state legislative assembly entails - for example, the pain and agony of an uncomfortable hotel bed and what walking a mile has done to the woman's back, and the mental anguish suffered unjustly but dutifuly by the woman due to the selfish and anal behaviour of each of her fellow legislators at various points throughout the event. And if you don't mind having your reading interupted at steady intervals by reminiscent diatribes lasting anywhere from two to thirty some-odd minutes, then boy oh boy are you in for a ride.

I didn't mind dealing with the old folks (they've got big hearts, its just that their brains have gone rusty), and and the constant stopping due to freighter priority (you see the rails on which many Amtrak trains ride are owned by another company; in the case of the Maple Leaf the tracks are owned by Conrail, and as a result any of their Conrail trains - freighters for the most part - get to head on uninterrupted while the Maple Leaf has to stop and wait), and the long wait at the border, and I had myself one hell of a ride.

The following set of four photogrpahs I took are pushed and grainy, and they are meant to act as antiqued compliments to the softer photos you've seen so far, that might look old, but not quite so old. The majority of these photographs were taken during the first leg of the trip back to Toronto on an impressively foggy Tuesday morning.

PSNCTRL Spread

2007-02-24T16:49:00.000-05:00

Half of this half-drawn half-traced illustration has already been added to this blog, but the whole thing's much nicer. The issue of PSNCTRL that this will be appearing in is all about "Fame and Misfortune" - media frenzy, subjectivity donning the costume of factual facsimile et al, so I decided to use ink to build a Populoray that shoots dense dense lasers of media into the monstrous maws of the masses. The control panel on the ray tower allows for a choice between a number of themes of output; here's the list of choices: violence, violcence, terrorism (which is different than straight broadbased violence), breach, fear, fear, sports, sports, crime (which is often violent), gossip, gossip, violence, celebrity, celebrity, celebrity, fortune, fortune, gossip and violence. This list is probably just as subjective as anyone else's, and perhaps this is just one of many ray towers that shoot content at the public, as there are in fact many more topics available in the news than the ones I've put in the list. BUT, my list is more poignant, and also mindlessly reactive, which is a bad thing, but people like that sort of thing, and I was being lazy. The news does provide rays of hope often enough, and I hope that every news story's silver lining is that its audience will learn something as a result of their time spent absorbing its content.

Album Cover Art: Deathstorm

2007-02-14T02:26:00.000-05:00

A new album cover for the next of a series of Fathme records releases that Niall and I will be doing over the course of a year or two or more. They all come out on vinyl, so this art won't get squished and discredited by being placed behind a jewel case and printed on a glossy leaflet. Also, below is the first album cover we did for Fathme, about 10 months ago? I'm not sure - time is only important in that it moves forward, from our point of reference. I think the easiest way to live in the now is having a bad memory. Then it's inevitable that you forget the past, and you can concentrate on making really sweet looking Kraken tentacles and zombie faces.

A Short Poem: Three Things

2007-02-10T01:12:00.000-05:00

Three things

French Kisses
Filthy fools
And Crates of Gold
Are all dirty in one way
And hopeful in another.
I’ll take the first and third.

Excerpt: Boxmaker's Book

2007-02-07T02:44:00.000-05:00

Here's a pair of pages (the only finished pages really) of a little childrens book I started a while ago and am planning to complete in the future, when I feel it's time to sit down and write some gushingly adorable little titbits about the silly characters I've named 'boxmakers' - it's a literal sort of name, as not only do they look like boxes (which, unfortunately, is perhaps a little too similar to old Spongebob), but they also make boxes and work in a box factory. Now, this physical resemlance to lifestyle and trade is nothing new; we see it all the time: blacksmiths are brawny and sooted, post officers are either thin as a letter or fat as a sac, and milkmen are reknowned for their virility. When you look in the mirror, do you resemble your profession? If not, you should either consider a change of office or consider the ramifications of never being typecast.

Trans Fat

2007-02-05T00:49:00.000-05:00

A greater number of food products in Ontario are starting to advertise, in larger and larger letters, that they contain zero Trans fat. The reason for this new trend (in Ontario) is a result of legislation brought to voice by Jack Layton that was passed about two years ago requiring all food labels to list the amount of trans fat on their packaging, and allowing products with less than 0.2 grams of trans fat (per serving) to be labelled free of trans fat. As a result of all this hoodelaley I'd guess it means that this type of fat isn't a good thing, as advertising the absence of something generally confirms that the something missing is something you in fact will not miss. So, we know that Trans fatty acids aren't good for us. There is a difference between something being 'not good for you', and something being 'very bad for you'; Trans fat falls under the latter category - it is very bad for you. It has absolutely no nutritive qualities. It is the tool the devil would weild were he able to fashion something frightening out of it (unfortunately for him/her it melts pretty quick, though not as quick as natural fat). Let's do the list of things consuming even a smidge of Trans fat can cause: Coronary Heart Disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, liver dysfunction, and infertility. A 2% increase in Trans Fat intake vs Carbohydrate intake (aka eating a burger on occasion vs. some pasta) will double your risk of heart disease. It takes a 15% increase in Saturated Fat vs. carbohydrate intake to cause the same damage, and replacing your carbs with unsaturated fats will decrease your risk. Retro-actively, if you replace 2% of your Trans fat intake with unsaturated fats, you halve your risk of heart disease. For all intents and purposes, Trans fat (which does occur naturally in cow and sheep milk at a level of 2-5% of total milk fat, but is found no where else on God's unmodified earth) is a very effective poison. It helps kill hundreds of thousands of people a year (30,000 Americans alone die every year exclusively from the abuse of Trans fat). This is a bad thing.

Now trans fat is found in its greatest concentration and quantity among the juicy burgers and fries that constitute our ramblin' Betty of a fast food industry. That is because it can be chemically produced, it's cheap, and it effectively reduces rancidity (much the same as does wrapping something in plastic, although we generally unwrap things wrapped in plastic before eating them). Eric Shlosser, author of "Fast Food Nation", gave us this comparison in a lecture given at Princeton University this past fall, "if it was a foreign government responsible for 30,000 deaths a year, and 200,000 heart attacks and casualties, we would bomb the hell out of them". For companies to tell us they are removing the Trans fats from their products and receiving praise for doing so is like a crook getting a pat on the back for refraining from stabbing his victim more than once or twice. Please don't clap your hands for the Golden Arches, ever.

This isn't to say, however, that McDonalds needs to change its ways. There's nothing wrong with selling dangerous food, so long as people know they're buying food that's not meant to be eaten. I don't think fast food needs to change one iota. I'm all for choice, and I think everyone, including those of us that find it really hard to satisfy our cravings, I think we might want to consider the consequences, and, should health overule taste and impulse, choose to keep from eating the stuff. People will sell you anything, and it's easy to buy whatever's cheap and available, and if you're able to refrain from complaining about absolutely every little tittle of vice and sin that occurs all across this land of the free, and how it's all a rip-off, then by all means - shut up and eat your burger. Otherwise, talk a little jive and have yourself a bowl of rice.

Foerster Cabin

2007-02-01T02:02:00.000-05:00

North of Montreal, on the cusp of "la campagne familier", lies a small road off a winding street off a suburban thoroughfare off the highway, and off this small road there is a mailbox with the numbers one, five, and seven just about worn away, and beside this mailbox there is a drive with enough snow cleared to park two cars end-to-end. At the edge of the parking area the snow rises sixteen inches, and the drive continues on down along a detour past a giant fallen pine, and eventually arrives at an Old White Little Anglophone Farmhouse or Cabin (OWLAFOC).

Green trim lines the house's framing, and mossy shingles cover the side of the screened-in porch. Mossy shingles might also cover the roof, but at the moment snow covers what might also cover the roof. There is a pond just past the cabin, down a slight hill. Snow might cover the pond, but at the moment darkness covers what might cover the pond, though the moon is more a great gas lamp than a tallow candle this evening, and it is easy to follow my host and guide.

Ryan Foerster is my host and guide. He has been living up at the cabin for two weeks now. His beard is thick, as are his layers of long johns. It is thirty below zero tonight, which makes it the coldest night of the season thus far. Even the wind stayed in on this crystaline eve. Ryan has made his way here to this Central Quebec 'tindage' to take advantage of his natural rights and freedoms; primarily his right to live like a real Canadian (this includes daily bouts of ice skating, lumberjacking, admiring the wild, Stompin Tom), and his freedom to refrain from communicating in the modern way and to refrain from paying rent. He is also here to take pictures of nature and youth interacting with nature.

Although he has enjoyed the company of his girlfriend, Julie, on several occasions this past fortnight, he has seen little else but Julie, the spruce, and the pine swaying at intervals. This is not entirely true - Ryan has also seen: his neighbour (also the owner of the cabin); some chipmunks; a tadpole; the mail truck; some birds; and a Norwegian Ice rat. Him and Julie bought poison to kill the Ice rat, and since then he hasn't seen the beast.

I am the first to arrive at the cabin; there is a car with Julie and four other friends on their way. Ryan uses a Black plastic sled to transport items from the car to the cabin, and this adds a good teaspoon or more of 'over the river and through the woods' to the whole experience. The rest of the cabin-goers arrive shortly. Their names are Scott, Marianne, Iris and Juan, and they are all very good people, and I'm sorry that I spelled some of their names wrong. This marks the end of my use of the present perfect.

Throughout the weekend, we were able to participate in the full gamut of Nordic activities; skiing, skating, hatcheting ice to draw water from the frozen pond, gathering firewood, drinking, fireworks display (to substitute for the Aurora), hiking, slingshot, toboganning, being cold, and warming up. None of us turned out to be cry-babies, and that made the whole weekend run easy as syrup on flapjacks (which we ate. We also ate a lot of campfire sausages, salad, and soy-based products, which gave me gas).

Many events could be noted at this point, but our time at the cabin was more relaxing than sensational, so I'd rather just let the photographs I've included clue you in to the love.

At the beginning of this blog entry is a pen and ink panoramic drawing of the Cabin vista as seen from the middle of the frozen pond. It was drawn quickly with a cold hand on a sunny day, and the drawing is now in the custody of my mother. Mothers. If it were up to mothers all their sons would practise, exclusively, the art of capturing nature.

Shield

2007-01-30T11:36:00.000-05:00

Our friends at Fathme records have commissioned Niall McClelland and I to do their next ten album covers and backs, which is alright by me, as they are always over-the-top gnarly and fun to make. Here is the back of Vankmen's new album "Carpathian Death Rights". Now, Carpathia is not a real place, although it certainly sounds real, and Ghostbusters II gave it real evil conotations. There is a mountain chain called the Carpathian Mountains that runs through Romania, Poland and the Ukraine, but these mountains are about half the height of their neighbour Alps, and are barely evil, save for their ominous cragginess. The Romanians get a bum rap for being evil, but it's only because they look like they've been wrought from the dark stone of the Earth's mantle, and because they don't smile a lot.

Clock

2007-01-25T23:13:00.000-05:00

This is a clock, which is very badly designed by the way - it is a wall clock with a plug - but it was given to me to paint for a useless art show, and the proceeds go to charity, so both the designer of the clock and I have done a good thing. In fact, the designer of the clock sent one of these time boxes to a great many artists, thus despite his lack of oversight regarding the impractical design (which I'm sure was a result of budgetary constraints), he has done a very good thing. You can do a good thing too, by purchasing one of these clocks, or by donating your time or money to any one of the vast number of registered charity organizations that work very hard to keep people out of harm's way. Don't have a bake sale or go collecting door to door though; you'd be better off working a day and giving the money you'd earn to your favorite cause, and you wouldn't be having so much fun. Charity isn't supposed to be fun; it's supposed to be satisfying. Hard work is satisfying. Having a laugh and raising a couple bucks is nice, but it's kind of self-serving, right? Maybe not; maybe people can have fun and be charitable all at the same time. Do want you think best, but try and understand why you're doing it. I painted coloured shapes on this clock because I thought it would look pretty. That's the only reason why I painted these shapes. They are meaningless in so far as prettiness is meaningless. I'm sure you can find meaning in pretty things, but I'd be wary to dig an inch.

A Poem: Givers Circle

2007-01-25T22:50:00.000-05:00

Givers Circle

If you’re hungry
There’s always food
Always plenty
Of bread,
Wine,
Fish
And Potatoes
At the park across
From old St. Annes Church
Where the circle of givers
Give what they can
And the crowd of Takers
Take what they want
All in good grace
It’s a give and take kind of place.

If you’re looking for something
There’s plenty of something
Trinkets and blankets
Sticks,
Stones
And Wallets
At the that park
Just across from old St. Annes
Where the circle of givers
Meet on the weekends
And leave plenty of offers
For the rest of the week
Full of good grace
It’s a give and take kind of place.

There’s an old French woman
Baking cookies
For sweet teeth
And a farmer with a
Tophat trading Barley
For a smile,
The nationa’s flag is
Handed out on little sticks
And used for either
Silent prayer or
Firewood (kindling)

All in good grace
It’s a give and take kind of place.

Dislexia

2007-01-20T01:59:00.000-05:00

Are you one of those people who doesn't read all that fast? Do you have trouble putting letters together in sequence accurately even though you know how to spell a word? Do some words allude you when you need them most? Do you have a tough time understanding specifics, but can full and well grasp the big picture? If so, then you may suffer from Dyslexia, and, according to some sympathetic professors at Yale University, you might be better off than you think. You see (according to Dr. Bennett Shaywitz), despite an acute inability to understand the written word, Dislexic people often have a creative capacity that dwarfs their (hold on I'm thinking of the word...I'm...looking...for, and it's...) apparent disability, and as a result many high-level thinkers and successful artistic and cultural innovators have been and are currently imbued with dislexic powers. Notable among the chronic mispellers of our time are John Irving (who scored a 475 on his SATS - which means he might have got his name right and successfully guessed at a few multiple choice questions), Pablo Picasso (although he hid it under the guise of the cubist approach) and Billionaire space invader Sir Richard Branson.

We value the ability to read very highly in our crusted culture. Upper crust is smart and special because it reads well. Lower crust isn't considered much good at any sort of critical thinking as it doesn't read well. Any way you slice it, it's difficult for any of us, even those of us who are dislexic and fully aware of a latent but potent mental capacity, to utter the phrase 'slow reader, smart guy' with any sort of conviction. It's doubtful that our standards for measuring intellect will renovate their testing space to allow for fair trial any time soon, and that's fine, as life is not fair, and life is not accomodating (that would negate a lot of evolutionary principle, right?). Rather, life is adaptive, and there is plenty of evidence to show that dislexics'll do just fine despite their societal stigma. In fact - we should pay heed to the little knowledge of Dislexic success that we have available to us; in fact, we should be gravely concerned. As the propensity to learn a spoken tongue has been hard-wired into our genes, therefore allowing us to automatically aquire language traits whether we want to or not, the ability to read is not intrinsic; it is a talent that must be learned. Should a dislexic trait (as dislexia is genetic) find an increasing foothold in the rock of our higher cultures, it could potentially reduce many many of our word-processing men and women to the already teeming position of illiterate free-thinkers, and this would be disastrous. Imagine a world full of mentally-eccentric unlettered geniuses and catachrestic executive-types, and you'll begin to understand why 'slow reader, smart guy' will never find purchase in our descriptive soil of success. If we have not the guidlines to measure intellect, then how are we to compare one another to a culpable standard mean? How are we to find our place among our peers? How are we to live, knowing good and well that our neighbor bumbles through newspaper columns like a third-grader, but not being able to lable him or her as unintelligent? How indeed. I'm a slow reader, by the way.

(Apologies to any dislexics that struggled through this blog and didn't find it rewarding. Know that I struggled to write it,
though I suffer only a mild form of the condition at worst)

The Lifetime Sewing Machine by Fighting

2007-01-16T02:24:00.000-05:00

I just got done with this old lady this morning. According to the Russian Junk collector who sold us this relic, she's a Singer peddle-op master seemster unit from before the turn of the 20th century. Everything about this machine is grand. A problem arises when you find yourself in the position of having to enhance something that is already extraordinary in its unmodified form. This sewing machine provided me with one of those problems, and I think the problem was solved by giving to the machine the things it didn't already have - colour, simple geometry and soft texture. Concentrating on symmetrical composition provided the necessary limitations from which good ideas could gel without getting out of hand, and now the Lifetime Collective has another sewing machine (Ben Tour did the first one) that fits with their brand concept and works well as an art piece. And that's a good thing.

Native Vee

2007-01-14T15:22:00.000-05:00

I made this sublime character for the Manvils and their new run of promotional items. Indians do not actually pray like this, or at least they've yet to be illustrated praying like this - but it isn't often you witness an Indian praying to the Gods of Rock and Roll. The typical sort of gestural native prayer is performed with arms outstretched from their sides, perpendicular to the body but slightly behind them, and palms facing upward. I understand "Indian" isn't the preferred nomenclature (Goodman, 15:43) in this day-in-age, but in attempting to preserve the sensational aspects of the stereotype (and by forcing an unnatural pose onto my model) I've drawn here an Indian, not a native American. Native Americans pray to the Gods of Rock and Roll just like anyone else: Fist in the air bearing the horns of the devil.

Friends

2007-01-13T19:07:00.000-05:00

These are photographs of some of my friends.
Their names rhyme so well I wouldn't dare change
their order. They go like so:

(From the Top):
Niall Catherine Chris Jana,
Lia Dylan Dan Roxane.

A Few Words About Collage

2007-01-13T12:25:00.000-05:00

Collage is a medium that can create some very unique creations. It's kind of the melting pot art form. Regardless of how you came to get to the pieces you've assembled, the pieces find themselves on a new plane, as citizens of a new kind of imagery. Your pieces may have been a photograph in a magazine, or a drawing in some scientific publication; they may have been torn from their home in an unspeakably violent manner, or carefully tabbed and photocopied, their shape surgically removed from its environs by a steady hand; they may have been a scrap, discarded and readied for recycling, or they may have been an important piece of something greater, without whom the something would cease to function as a complete thing. It matters not where or whither of whence they came - they are now part of a collage, and this is the only identity they'll keep in their current context.
You might well reason, and you're right to do so, that it's not always easy for collage bits to get along. As the builder of a collage, it is your responsibility to create a balanced and cohesive habitat for your displaced bits and peices. If your intentions are true, and your goal includes the successful coexistence of even the most meager of pasted scrap materials, then there is no reason your collage should not grow and one day become a full-functioning work of art.

The "Inked Collage" Debunked

2007-01-13T00:55:00.000-05:00

When you take a nice bunch of things and put them together and make a wonderful collage out of them, it's great. And then when you ink that collage using a pen and a light table and you're imagination to connect the muddy bits, then it's even greater! This is what I like to call an "Inked Collage", sort of a fancified name for a tracing. If you remember the character Jason Lee plays in Chasing Amy, then you might remember that he makes a big fuss about his job as an "inker" and how his skill plays a hugely integral role in the aesthetic of the comic, and it's true. However, there are less things to concentrate on when you're tracing, and you can do things much faster, and you can't call a tracing a drawing, though you can call it art. And a hundred years from now (or tomorrow for that matter) no one really gives shits and nickels as long as they like how it looks. I still don't like tracing, but it is often the most efficient way to achieve your result (and that's the bait - use it to acheive greater efficiency, not to acheive figuartive accuracy you'd not otherwise be able to achieve, and you'll swim clear of any of those Fraud anglers' hooks).

Evil Compass

2007-01-10T10:11:00.000-05:00

This here evil compass won't point you in the right direction; in fact it is sure to get you lost and into an awful bit of trouble. I wouldn't use it for orienteering this side of the old Acheron. But it was used as cover art for a Directors DVD collection from (Ican't remember the name this morning).