October 2003 Archives

Last night, I had the strangest dream. I was alone in a desolate street. All of a sudden, a brightly colored spaceship lands, right in front of me. The outline of a door is all that I can really concretely understand; the rest of the ship is just some sort of material that quixotically changes colors at random - glamorously. As soon as I understand the door, it slides open and a bright, exhaustedly pure light shines out, blocked only by the silhouette of what I guess was some sort of humanoid creature, about to abduct me. The creature came closer, and I realized it was a spitting image of Ziggy Stardust. He put his finger to my forehead and said,

"You, you have been chosen, like those before you, to spread upon this Earth, our ideals of love, life and Rock and Roll. You must complete this task successfully before it's too late - if you fail, the world, as you know it, will seise to exist. You have five years. Good luck"

And with that, I woke up, pale as a ghost. I looked in the mirror and noticed my hair was cut in this sort of mullet colored bright red. A lightning bolt danced upon my face. I decided to explore the world as my new self:

I met people that were similar to me (surprisingly) and also very much different.

We discussed, as people of wisdom do, of the meaning of our sensory dimensions, and if time itself is cyclical - if it repeats itself, in other words. I had conversations with people I thought I had already met - perhaps in a past life.

Or, if life is like a fractal, that has a incredibly simple root to its pattern, but thus, never ends in its design.

I met others that had been changed in similar ways, and we both looked at each other with wild-eye enthusiasm.

The world it seemed was - at least for us, to be very different from now on...

Weird Things of Note From Halloween Warehouse Dance Parties (Weird as in I would only remember these silly things)

The woman with me that is posing as if she was Twiggy in the "David Bowie, Pin Ups" record cover didn't even know of the record (or even my character). Oddly, her "street" name is Bettie, as in another... pin up I can think of...

Two people who didn't know each other came to the party as two different characters from Cremaster 4. This is odd in the respect that the Cremaster Cycle itself is 9 hours long and had only recently been shown for the first time in completion in one small Denver theatre for a span of two weeks. To say only a few people in Denver saw the movie is... well.

It is also odd that The Laughton Candidate (Goat Guy - who was actually a girl), (one of the three) Fairies (who really was a girl, but was played by a guy in the actual movie, and my Ziggy character (who was neither all man, nor all woman, but an androgynous mixture of the two), all had the same hair color, and complexion.

I've resurfaced a painting project that I haven't touched since the beginning of April. It seems I've been incredibly wary about even doing this painting. I had the idea for it in July of 2002, had pretty much the means to pull it off that October, built the frame in November, streached, primed and gridded the canvas in January of 2003 and started the damn thing that March. I worked on it for a few days, crawling into April and then -

stopped. I forget why, but the painting lost my interest. Then, the school moved the next semester and all hell broke loose in terms of actual facilities I could paint. Basically, I didn't have a studio and the cubby hole I was given was in a place that they didn't allow the use of oil paints.

Then, someone stole my webcam at school, somehow, and even if I wanted to complete this painting/film, I couldn't. I bought a new one a few weeks ago and brought out this painting, psyched myself up and I've started again. Amazingly, the paints I premixed are still good enough to use! Well, most of them. Some of the ones that are almost entirely earth colors are nothing but dried paint in a container.

Of course, the new webcam doesn't work with my laptop, which is seeing the edge of end-of-life from the viewpoint of our throwaway culture of bigger,faster,newer,more! I've had to bring my main desktop to school and will have to each time I want to film. Considering that I've just gotten a different digital camera stolen right from my studio a few weeks ago - in the afternoon while people were working in and around the studios, doesn't make me feel too secure. Someone actually had their sketchbook stolen last week.

That's horrific.

To say I'm taking a risk bringing in my computer that has, basically my life's work for the past three years on it is a serious understatement. I'm crazy like that, though.

This painting project, when finished, will at least make it three actual paintings in this particular meta-project, and three, my friends, is the magic number. It's almost given that this painting will be shown in a gallery, it's just that I have about 5 solid days - meaning 24 x 5 hours of painting time of work ahead of me to finish.

It's absolutely disheartening to know almost exactly how long something will take, and also knowing I'm essentially painting blind. But, perhaps that's the whole point?

I have this weird idea that if I can master the techniques of the Old Masters, I can use that as a bargaining chip if I ever do something like say, piss on Mars (no ones ever done that!) in the name of Art.

I thought it may be a good idea to learn some techniques - any technique before I get out of school, so I don't leave school with the same level of technical skills as what I came in with - absolutely none. Ok, I guess, "bullshit you way through it" is a technique, albeit not a very good one. At least I know what, "Post modernism" means. Now I have to figure out if I believe in it or if it's one of those things that exists because you believe in it.

So I gave myself a challenge. In one of my classes, I made a rub out, which is basically a value study (lights and darks, no color), of the model.

I've made a few of these actually. I'm now, with no reference other than that value study, trying to complete the painting in full color. I'm not sure if I'm happy with the outcome of this first one as of yet, but it's only been one day of working on the painting and paintings seem to be one of those things that change considerably while they're relatively alive (wet, we'll say).

This may be setting myself too lofty of a goal, since I don't know if this particular circumstance was ever the norm, but I'm fairly certain the Italian Renaissance painters worked from charcoal sketches to render things like say, entire frescos on the ceilings of churches.

Mine should be cake in comparison.

I wonder if the how-to of this way of painting is almost lost, like the details and tricks at least. Just from wandering about the studios, it seems that craftsmanship is out the window when it comes to figurative things. The idea of layering and steps of painting an oil picture are unknown. Wrong color? Paint over it! I wonder if most of the things done by my peers and I will look completely shitty in 25 years. We'll see.

The painting Chair's aid at least keeps giving me - "This painting has no relevance in contemporary art", looks. Perhaps that's precisely the point of doing it. But then again, why am I always bouncing around between my druthers? I just think you need to paint the random half clothed woman in the middle of a cut down forest surrounded by pink bunnies looking curiously at her, from time to time.

I went to the last opening ever of the_wheelbarrow gallery. Sad to see it go. If anything, it gave me some inspiration. People my age were doing what I want to do in the very near future. Here's to luck in future projects. I ran into many people I knew. I ran into many girls that I didn't want to. I met a burlesque dancer that wants me to paint her. Your usual fare.

After the opening, I went to Ashley's Birthday party. I was specifically uninvited since I did not partake in the last party at Ashley's. I acted absolutely drunk, even though I was abstaining - and have been so, for months. I'm a good actor like that.

I'm a good liar like that.

People were truly concerned over my antics.

Kevin and Jerimiah recited Shakesperean-esque poetry they made up on the fly and I was seriously concerned over that.

Everyone else seemed very tired or very high, snoozing on the rug that had so many cheap jug wine stains as to make you wonder if the rug was originally red and now had tan stains of some unknown spirit.

I spent much of my time dressing people in my brown and orange sweater and hat and taking pictures of them.

At about two in the morning, I escorted Lauren back to her car. We talked. For some reason I asked her if she wanted to go to this truck stop near Fort Collins to eat the most delicious Cinnamon Buns in the world.

She was down, even though we both had school in the morning, Fort Collins is at least a hundred miles away and the Hell if I knew where exactly the truck stop is (or if it will be open). Details.

[...]

We got out of the car, both wearing wigs. I had the red/white/blue afro, she had on the purple mohawk. We walked in with nary a look. The place had a love tester, so I popped in a quarter while telling her that if I get a high score, she shall be mine that night.

I didn't.

I had one more quarter, so I told her that if she received a high score, she would be mine tonight.

She did.

We proceeded to feed ourselves one cinnamon bun.

While I was paying the bill, Lauren made friends with the Natives huddled around one lonely table, while I told everyone that she was the illegitimate child of Ziggy Stardust and that I was in a band - but I couldn't remember what band exactly.

This didn't seem important. I was going to tell them, "The MC5", just to see what they would say.

Half finishing our bun, we drove back to her apartment, but her roommate would leave us alone. We proceeded to my apartment.

While on the way, I get stopped by the police. My license plates aren't on correctly and actually can't be on correctly. The back license plate bolts were so rusted when I got my car that I had to cut them off to get the old plate off. What's left of the bolt just spins in place, never to be gotten out again. My front bumper doesn't have a spot to put a license plate.

The police officer didn't know what I could do about this, but urged me to get it fixed.

They also wanted to see my license, registration and insurance, which is normal, but my license and registration was in the back of the car. I asked them if I could get it. They said this was alright, as long as there was nothing in my pockets that they should know about - say a gun, an illegal alien, some sort of narcotic or a protected endangered species.

I got out of the car, and got frisked. I fumbled through my car papers and found what needed to be shown and got off without much of a warning at all.

Lauren and I got to my apartment and played

[...]

pirates. We then went to

[...]

sleep.

Then, went to Lauren's apartment so she could

[...]

shower. I then dropped Lauren off back at Ashley's so she could pick up her car and I went to school, where I was naked to the onslaught of, "Are you sure you got home safely? You were, plastered.

It was a Tuesday and I was sitting around Penelope's coffee shop getting caffeinated. She told me to come at a specific time because she's wanted to meddle. You see, she has a friend that has seem to take a shining to me and my wittiness and she told me that her friend would just so be happen to be at the shop.

So I sat down, with her friend on my left, wondering if I should ask her to a play and Penelope in front of me manning the expresso machine. I was listening to her talk about all the guys she's dating at the moment and so on and so forth. She then asks me why I've never asked her out on a date in a matter of fact way.

And I didn't know.

Walking to the video store afterwards, I felt the most horrific headache of defeat and lost chance. Of course I wanted to go out with her. I'm probably a few degrees below being boiling in love with her.

I rented a movie that I thought may be slightly above detestable and ventured to Antonios for a few slices. I should write her a letter I thought, tell her how I felt.

Instead, I watched that rented movie that turned out to be very much detestable and ate pizza that was very much lovely. At 2 in the morning I decided that yes, I was going to write her a letter, telling her how I felt, no holds bar - not caring that she's seeing at least two people at the moment, that she's in fact trying to fix me up with a friend of hers, that the jealousy of other people in our circle would get to warlike states of being, it didn't matter.

At 3 in the morning, I walked to her apartment to deliver it.

At 3:30 in the morning I got lost, but soon afterwards found her place.

It must have been worth it, if only because on my way to and from her apartment, I saw a small mouse scamper from under a rock chase a crumb to eat in the middle of the city and I happened upon some wet concrete on 13th that quickly bore my initials.

It really doesn't take much to make me happy, although it must take much effort to make myself happy.

I decided to do an experiment.

My idea was to film myself, drawing myself. For some reason, I've been taking much delight in connecting the old with the new and seeing what kind of relationships or contrasts/complements they give each other. I swear, I'm not trying to be egotistical, I'm just always available, it seems up to this point.

So what better and absolutely bare bones thing to do than to film myself; using a cheap, almost disposable, yet technologically advanced web cam while I draw myself using -

charcoal. Charcoal, basically being carbon, which you make by burning things, like wood. It's what makes 20% of your body. Ever see an image of a (even before) paleolithic cave painting? That's at least in part, charcoal.

The most basic ingredient in making a mark on simply anything used for thousands of years, coupled with cheap technology that has come to light and easily used by the regular consumer in the last thousands of days. Consumer computer equipment is synonymous with the silicon chip - really really refined sand basically - which itself makes up about 27% of the chemical composition of the Earth's crust - the part of the Earth we live on.

That's a totally random link between similar % of carbon in a human being and the % of silicon in the Earth's crust, which brings together life and its environment, it's actor and it's setting. And since I'm an "artist", I get to make those sort of silly connections to prove... points.

I've used cheap web cams before to film myself painting a self portrait, but instead of using a separate mirror as I've done before, I wanted to use the live feed from the web cam itself being shown on my monitor as the mirror. What I was to see would be recorded at the same time.

Here is my result.

I think I've hit on something pretty amazing. What you watch is what I'm seeing - no deviations really, except for the speed up in the middle, which is partly to save some file size, and partly because what you see is the same thing over and over again - me looking up at the screen that you'll never see, me looking down at the drawing to make a mark - repeat - and partly because it's got that whole, Warhol boring thing to it that my incredibly stereotypical short attention span just doesn't want to deal with at the moment - although it's interesting because at the end, you do see a change! The final drawing is revealed, like the person getting a haircut lighting a cigarette.

So here's the thing: the actual imagery that I'm seeing in my "mirror" can be viewed over and over! You get to relive the actual visual information that I used to make the drawing, as well as the drawing itself. Every time I Look, I get a slightly different view of myself, that's interesting to me. That means that every drawing that is drawn with more than one glance at the object is actually a montage of different, yet similar experiences - just like anything learned, like any sort of memory I think.

So now I have the Final output with the process saved! I've captured a memory in two different ways - objective and subjective. It's one step away from drawing from just a photo, as well as one step away from documenting the process of a self portrait. Just a little tiny baby step toward something really interesting that I cannot even fathom as of yet - but shit, I'm walking now, baby! I feel like I'm Marinetti emerging from The Ditch.

I filmed about 13 minutes of footage. This turned into 15 gigs of information! I wanted to film more, but didn't have any more room on my drives. I was able to compress that into less than 3 megs of information to show it in this medium.

That's amazing in itself.

The only software I used was the complementary copy of iMovie from Apple, a little app called, BTV Pro and Quicktime Pro. My computer is seriously grinding to the ground working with gigs of information. I may have to do something about that, since I find all this too exciting.

I know this is all coming out without any rhyme, but another thing that I love about the final drawing itself is it's not very precise - I was under the gun to produce a drawing in a short time while consciously knowing that I was being filmed. The drawing looks like something that Billy Childish would produce, yet the entire experiment is something he would avoid (or, avoid him). Oh I just love contrasts like this. Have you seen yet?

Randomly today, I picked up David Foster Wallace's book, "A supposively fun thing i'll never do again". I just walked down a street, realized that I was at a corner where there was a bookstore and went in, bought the book, ordered some tofu at a restaurant and began to read.

The first essay is about television and how it continues to be self referential to itself, as well as it's voyeristic qualities, although the actors themselves are entirely aware of their Audience (as well as a million other things - I haven't really hit on a thesis statement as of yet - which is in the character of the author, who wrote Infinite Jest that started with a Flash Forward of one character and ended in a Flash back of another character - who never meet each other throughout the 1000 pages in between). That to me is sort of interesting to this whole thing as well, although I can't yet figure out exactly why. I'm thinking of just turning my feeble TV around to point at the wall.

If none of this really makes you go, "huh", or, "hmm", or, "you need to get out and get laid, or at least make a new friend", I don't know what to do about you. I did the above experiment at around midnight on a Saturday night. I was so excited after it, that I went dancing at some random warehouse till about four in the morning. Here's a picture I took of my friend Courtney from that same night:

She thinks she's the ugly one.

I read in a recent article in the New Scientist about a new theory about the shape of the Universe:

According to Weeks, the WMAP results point to a very specific illusion - that our Universe seems like an endlessly repeating set of dodecahedrons, football-like shapes with a surface of 12 identical pentagons. If you exit the football through one pentagon, you re-enter the same region through the opposite face and you keep meeting the same galaxies over and over again...

Which is really interesting to me, since the Chair of the painting department of the college I go to uses the dodecahedron and friends in his artwork quite extensively, to issue connections between all sorts of things, the periodic table, the color wheel, time, space and yes, probably even the shape of the universe.

I saw him on campus and told him about the article. he gave me a big grin and started telling me a small tale that started with, "I I really shouldn't tell you this, but I had a hallucination [my note: during the 60's, at Drop City, the first "hippy commune" - hmmm?],that the universe was shaped like a four dimensional dodecahedron." I don't know what a hyper-dodecahedron would look like, but he then went on to tell me that the idea of the Universe being shaped as a dedecahedron wasn't a new idea at all, but is a very old idea indeed.

Like, really old. We're talking Plato old, who paired off the platonic solids with the four elements. There wasn't a fifth element, but "Heaven" was associated with the dodecahedron. Heaven, as in, Everything, The Universe.

What makes this still interesting is that I painted a ball-shaped object made up of pentagons one semester before I ever even saw a painting by my Chair. Mine had Bettie Pages all over it. I was trying to paint a tesselation in four point perspective.

I don't know what to make of this, it may be just a bunch of interesting related facts. But isn't it funny that thousands of years have spanned, and the same conclusion has been made about one very specific thing?

Holly Golightly came to Denver yesterday. Her show was amazing. Her husband is the ex-Headcoats (ex-everything it seems if you get down to it) Bruce Brand who played drums which was a thrill in itself to have seen, but Holly was just something to behold.

It's really hard to explain what it's like to see her perform without getting melodramatic and cheesy, but she is just simply an honestly Real person. The Holly Golightly of Breakfast at Tiffany's is known as the real-fake and it's a curiousity that the real Holly is named after her.

Holly came and performed without an encore, without any attitude, just the Love of music and a smile. She told me she'd play the show for free if they'd let her. Between one of her songs, she cried out to the crowd, "Any four of you can come up here and do this!", which I guess is really true - what's stops anyone from putting together a rock band? What stops anyone from doing anything?

It was somewhat interesting to me that playing in a rock band was more of a cultural thing to her, her husband and the rest of the band. It was just something they did and will continue to do. It's as if this form of music was their Folk or Country music. It's almost like, they won't get, "too old", for it. Am I making sense?

Holly told me that music was sort of her side thing, that she also works for social services, helping low income families make sure they pay their rent and such. "I also get to evict them."

Maybe it's odd to have such a person that means so much to me become demystified. I first learned of Holly from the Headcoatees, and then figured the deplorably obvious connection between the Headcoatees and the Headcoats and then stumbled upon Billy Childish and his Universe. She's just a regular person and that's what she wants to be I guess. I do wish their were more Holly Golightlys in the world.

She did assure me that they'd be back in Denver again sometime and that made me smile.

Jack is one of the most excellent liars I know. When people asked what his major was, he would tell them nonchalantly: Spirographer, with a straight enough face as to make it entirely believable.

We were sitting around Illegal Pete's and I was drawing in my sketch book. For some reason, Jack wanted to show a party trick to everyone. He wanted to draw a completely perfect circle without the use of an actual compass. He did this by placing his thumb on the paper and twiddling his index finger with the pen around his thumb just like, well, a compass. I showed the same trick using a Penelope.

Jack's trick reminded me of the story of Giotto (*), who was approached by a servant of the Pope to produce a drawing to show the Big Guy for a possible big commission. Giotto drew a perfect circle in red on a piece of vellum, using his elbow as the point of a compass and his entire arm as its axis. This was not what the servant had in mind.

I switched from my penny tracing to Jack's mini-Giotto technique, but the paper kept moving and I continued my circle from a different angle. It made a sick sketch though, which I kept in my bag. I find it's always a good thing to keep such things.

The next week at school I made a painting from the sketch, using Giotto's method and a little bit of nondetermination.

For some reason, I've become more interested in first why and second how you make "Art" and less on what the finished piece is. This most likely leaves out the viewer on what the piece is, "about", but I'm not sure that's the reason to do anything.

I bought a new camera today. It's the model higher than the camera that was stolen. I'm in the process of defacing it, so as to make it as ill attractive as possible for a would be thief. The entire couple of weeks I was without a camera were perculiarly unbearable. I always saw something I wanted to catch, some visual idea I wanted to store. Actually I also bought a new webcam as well, since my last one was also stolen on the same campus a few months before. It's sort of important for a project I'm starting to work on again.

It's sort of wild - I'm a painter that has 2 polaroid cameras, one SLR, a webcam and a digital camera. Perhaps, "painter", will not be a term for one who paints, but rather one who expresses their surroundings, whatever those are.

This is from Men of Art by Thomas Cravin; published in 1931 - page 42-43:

The Pope, Vasari tells us, proposing to have certain paintings executed in St. Peter's, sent a messenger to Florence to negotiate with Giotto and to procure specimens of his art. "Giotto, who was very courteous, took a sheet of vellum and fastened it upon the wall, and dipped his brush in a red color; then, resting his elbow against one side to form sort of a compass, with one turn of the hand he drew a circle so perfect and exact that it was a marvel to behold. This done, he turned, smiling to the courtier, saying, 'Here is your drawing.' 'And am I to have nothing more than this?' inquired the latter, conceiving himself to be jested with. 'That is enough to spare,' returned Giotto, 'Take it along and you will see that it will be recognized.' The messanger, enable to optain anything more, went away very ill-satisfied, and fearing he had been fooled." It seems that his holiness and "such of his courtiers as were wwell versed in the subject", were amazed at the red circle, and that they "perceived in it how far Giotto surpassed all the other painters of his time." The incident, needless to say, has no aesthetic significance. Any well-trained fresco painter could have done the same, and no artist, not even Giotto, could have imparted a personal touch to a perfect circle. Giotto was fooling that is to say, he was, in his own jovial manner, asserting his independence. The man who had designed the enormous frescos at Assisi needed no recommendation. If the Pope desired his services, let him say so.