words

can you deny a label or a word placed on you, not based on its actual definition, but because of its cultural associations and connotations? for instance, if i didn't feel like a woman, could i deny that i am a woman, based on what culturally i think a woman is? so in denying something, do you actually deny what it is or what you think it is? or are they even separate?

WPA/FAP

so i've been checking to both borders and barnes and noble almost daily to see if they have the new ReadyMADE issue in stock. it's obsessive, i know, but i've been trying to figure out what kind of bed/apt ware that i want-i am moving this week! (p.s. i will have a room!) so that said, i finally picked up a copy today and while i found no inspiration for my bed (my elusive ideal bed.... maybe i should just hang a definition of a bed where my bed should be and just go back to the couch), i did find some interesting posters. 5 graphic designers were commissioned , by the magazine, to look at some WPA/New Deal posters and create one referential to our time/current financial/environmental meltdown. i'm sure most of you are aware of this, but i was not: part of the New Deal included the FAP (Federal Art Projects)- which commissioned artists to create poster/murals to instill optimism in the public and offer slogans of change. all i could think of were obama posters and how he's become this jesus christ/fdr figure to us.

and all cynicism aside, change is needed. however much a buzzword that may be (runner-up to "progress").

i wrote my contemporary art research paper, a while back, on a specific muralist, but spent quite a bit of time researching populist murals. both murals and posters (and relevant to our time-graphic design) are for the people, regardless of class-they aren't meant to be covered in glassine, tucked away in a box and archived until it is sold someday at an auction at Christie's. Nor are they hung inside a towering office building representative of not missing a step when it comes to accumulating wealth. if anything, they would be painted on the outside of the building. the streets become the gallery of the people. i like prints (in the traditional sense) though. and i like painting. but that's not the point. the point is, who is it for? the FAP did support painters ,though, such as Jacob Lawrence, Philip Guston, Pollock, and Lee Krasner. surely, the work of those artists have at one point or another been sold for multi-millions at an auction house. i'm mostly interested, though, in the notion that FDR found it necessary to keep the artists as an important part of the New Deal, and what they found important to display to and for the public.




below, i have posted some WPA/FAP posters- the goal was to focus on nationalism ( my feelings on nationalism are another discussion ) and what each region/state had to offer, also encouraging travel, work safety, venereal disease awareness, basic health, art and education:










i'm not too excited by the idea of creating propaganda pieces, but sounds like a great idea for helping artists in the financial crisis that was the Great Depression.

some recent work

exciting things

so, it looks like these kids, whispertown 2000, are gonna play at my house (or someone else's house that would be better suited) for my birthday. or sometime in march. not sure. but so far things are looking sunny for us.



28 days until these people reenter my realm. so to speak.



my new apt which i will move into in 13 days. it's across from the provo cemetary, a nice place to jog. just don't go too late b/c i'm pretty sure i've narrowly escaped the closing gates a few times. not sure, but pretty sure.

subtraction

i've been playing with cutting into my paintings instead of really adding to them. here, an example. i kinda like it.

oh, and yeah, i'm done with my bfa application. what a relief.

man eating chair and ponies

my roomate vanessa drew this for me about a year ago. i have a habit of collecting chairs with no seat and this one was particularly devilish in intentions, as depicted in the drawing above. vanessa loves ponies. i just got this drawing today. i don't know how i didn't notice ths on my facebook page before.

the first thing i hate about...

let me guess. the title track is "wassail for my horses"? or perhaps "beer for my reindeer"?

Holidays

I really don't like holidays. Which is odd because growing up I sure loved them. I was the first the claim rights to decorating our house (which was a treat with its truly southern nature of having both a sitting room and a piano room; hospitality always in mind) and was a strong advocate of only playing Christmas music during the season(I was dubbed the Christmas Nazi by my sister, Heidi). Christmas, nowadays is a chore, really. It has always been a surface holiday and will continue to be a surface holiday for me. I think as a child I really loved it because I felt that beautiful objects and settings transformed people, if only for a day. And, you know, it kind of does. But, it seems very surface or at best, transient. I prefer something real. Something that can happen without the sparkling provocation of house lights and Christmas trees. I like to give gifts, but not on Christmas. And its heartbreaking to see people get stressed and depressed over it all.

That said, I do like a few holidays: Thanksgiving, New Years and Anniversaries of your own choice-relationships, accomplishments, etc. I like special days that involve food, family and friends.

2nd runner up to Christmas? Valentines Day. That god-awful tacky red ruins January/Feb for me.

I found this photo today randomly-which is awesome because I was thinking about this movie all morning and how much I used to LOVE it. It spoke to me as an angsty middle schooler, quite aware that I was different from "those stupid airhead girls"-what with my freckles and wiry hair that I tried so desperately to tame . It was a tragic sight, I am sure, for those who watched me grow up. :) So tragic. Kat, my protagonist, at least, was a vintage chevy driving, letters to cleo listening, simone de beauvoir reading, sarah lawrence hopeful- who I had a heart attack crush on. I still get giddy when I think about this film. She was angry-I was angry! She read Shakespeare-I read Shakespeare! She liked Letters to Cleo-I loved them! It was a friendship meant to be.

So this morning, a series of essays I was reading led me to feminism, to french feminism, to simone de beauvoir and naturally to Kat Stratford from "10 Things I Hate About You."

And to find this photo while searching for an "I Hate Christmas" photo. Fate.

i need a new bed

so, come december 15th or so, I will be moving from various friends/family member's couches (4 mo w/o a bedroom or a bed! I'm going absolutely insane) to an apt of my own. and in light of this upcoming golden era (obama will save the world :), new bed, marc flies back to utah, BFA, installation class, less time until spring happens...), i want to kick it off with an awesome bed. i have ideas. mostly involving cardboard. my thoughts are to make a bed frame out of cardboard, but can't help but think that would either be a really tall bed or a very-not-ergonomic one. i found this bed online. a student at RISD (ny times did a photo essay of art students from yale, risd and nyu; you know the ones with bedrooms and flats that i want to make love to), made a frame out of honeycomb cardboard. looks cool. not that comfortable. i don't want to just set the mattress on the frame. i want it to sit in the frame, so it's not too tall but i can still have a box spring/mattress. if you have ideas...post. photos? post. or if you can think of better materials, i'm game.

the possibilities are endless, but not all welcome

oh and yeah. why the fishing pole? or better yet, why not the fishing pole?

unless you are a masochist, please never purchase one of these:

an epiphany

so, i was replacing my tail and low beam head lights this morning and ran into a slight problem. the screws holding in my light casing were corroded. i recalled some information i received a while back that coca-cola is great for cleaning battery acid. so, i tried it on the screws. and it worked. so, i'm never drinking coke. ever again. i want to keep my teeth.



also, it occurred to me today that all the money i spend on my car could be better used to make me look hot. :) and by hot, i mean make me look like i'm wearing this dress. as in, i should have this dress.

the menace to society

this is the print of the sketch i posted about 2 weeks ago.

warning signs

but even then, can you ever be sure? talk to your kids about tagging. they'll understand.

hobby and the most ridiculous cat

i need a hobby. as if i really had all the time right now to take up, yet, another passion to consume my sleeping hours. but, none the less, i'm finding my projects to be so mentally draining (i do like the work i am doing) that it would be nice to take up something where i can keep my hands busy but go into auto-pilot. like knitting. except even knitting is a little too much thinking sometimes...

this cat is a charm.

the sartorialist and the femme fatale

the sartorialist in new delhi: here, a product of his findings. for those of you not in the know (and frankly it's easy not to be with this one), "the sartorialist" scouts the streets of almost every major city taking photographs of great style.

now that the introductions have passed, i will now say this: she has to be one of the most beautiful women i have ever laid eyes on.



i've been working on a drawing for my lithography print. i'm working with ideas of female/nature, nudity and animals as menaces to society. we have built in systems to regulate these things that are really out of our control: birth control, feminine hygiene products, clothing (and dress codes to boot), domestication and the manufacturing of meat. Animals can exist either as our pets, amusement at the zoo or on the way to our dinner table. There's no place for them otherwise. The cycles of the earth and the unpredictable nature of woman as a link between earth/life (fertility, cycles,etc.) are factors we live in fear of: accidentally getting pregnant, hurricanes, snowstorms, earthquakes, etc. as far as nudity goes, it has no place in society: "NO Shirt, NO shoes, NO SERVICE." that's pretty extreme, don't you think? it's really no different than "NO PETS ALLOWED." you, in all your "not fully clothed" glory-are an animal. i mean, it's just barefeet and bare chest/back. this ties into a big question with the piece i'm working on: what defines a human being? do true humans have a place in society? is nudity human? is nudity animalistic? what's so wrong with being an animal? where's the distinction? there are primates that have many of the physical characteristics of a human. are advanced societal humans just clothed _____? (pick an animal to your liking)

that said, I find clothing absolutely fascinating and absurd. theatre is just life magnified, collaged, or shaped in a way to re-represent it. clothing is costume. clothing shows what part of society, or what level, if we are talking about hiearchy, you want to participate in. even a clothing counter-culture, in all its rebellion, is a socially acceptable way of defining who you are, via how you dress. the true counter to culture is nudity. but that's not even in the scope of society; not even part of the discussion.

lola

so back to early this summer: me and marc were sitting on my bed discussing the benefits and pitfalls of having no arms or no legs. at work, i made a drawing of lola, the no arm prostitute. in a way, she resembles the remnants of a grecian sculpture, devoid of limbs ,much too delicate to withstand the test of time. but lola isn't made of marble. so how did she lose her arms? and she's still at it, on the streets, working the oldest profession. has she gone vigilante now? working the corners until she finds the man/woman that cut off her arms? shot them off? and what will she do when she finds him/her?

tbc....

walls, beds, teas and the fugees

spinach (washed and free of nasties) + e.v.o.o. + salt (kosher? iodized? it's your choice really) = delicious

better if it's arugula though.

i've been thinking a lot about walls and spaces. spent a lot of time on walls and why we put things on our walls. i've concluded (though not exclusively) that we place things on our walls to validate our existence and interests. family photos, diplomas, paintings, etc. i mean really, we wouldn't put our divorce papers on our living room wall. or a photo of the first time we got jumped in the park as a kid. it made me think of graffiti and how it's the antithesis of controlling ones space/environment, or organizing it to validate oneself. and it's been a hard thing to grapple with while currently working on a body of paintings. what place does my work have in a greater discussion? knowing that they will reside on a wall space, what does my work need to do to jump off the wall and attack the viewer with questions? i don't want my work to validate. i don't profess to have answers and i never want to. i want my work to be filled with questions that provoke further questions. i'm not really interested in answers to the questions i really value. i feel, they are unanswerable.

space. so yes, space is what i'm currently sifting through right now. literally and mentally. (well i guess with every "-ally", i am mixing through space.) going off of my works immediate location (wall space), i move to the bigger space: the gallery (hopefully? not sure if this would make me happy or depressed). what defines a gallery space. i mean, for all i know its as much a "white square" as mental hospital as prison cell. so what happens in a gallery? we put things on the walls, in the middle of the room to circumnavigate, and occasionally a performance will be had. sounds like a bedroom to me. photos of family, paintings, a bed to walk around and trip onto, which also doubles as the performance space of sleep, sex and waking up. i do realize that i am oversimplifying; i'm sure there's more you can do on a bed.

i was talking to my mom on the phone tonight and in the middle of the conversation, my tea kettle started screaming at me, so i set the phone down next to my computer. when i came back to pick up the phone my mom goes...

" is that RAP i hear? do you listen to that?"

"rap? yes i actually listen to all kinds of music mom.."

"that's not music. it's noise." (NOTE: this is an improvement; when i was in middle school, it was "filth", now it's just "noise"...)

"mom, it's just as much music as country as folk as rock as...it's lyric driven music..."

"no. no. no...it's noise" then an awkward conversation change onto the topic of her visit to see MoTab rehearse. fun times mom. fun times....it reminded me of the time she wouldn't let me buy TLC's "crazy.sexy.cool" because of the word "sexy" in the title. i was devastated. i wasn't allowed to go chase waterfalls in my room. i had to wait until sleepovers.


i need a massage.

meow.

i'm glad i have only a tea kettle to scream at me. it's the perfect alternative to a child. a puppy and a tea kettle.

bride of chucky

ehhhhhh. i can't look at her too long. what a creepy child.

what a ham

gosh. i'm so cute.

really?

the only thing funnier than seeing mccain embrace a child...





is seeing barack obama as one: a son of promise. they should have cut the crap and titled it "the newest testament".

broken circuit

i just keep pushing and pushing it, and, pffft. nothing.

calling all pussycats

So, about a year ago I found this on craigs list and posted it on my facebook blog. Well, I found it today and in honor of that occasion I have decided to repost it.

Girl Group
Reply to: crazy_lil_party_punk@yahoo.com
Date: 2007-05-05, 12:25PM MDT


I am starting a female pop/r&b girl group. The ages will be 16-19. I am 16 myself. I only want and will accept serious applicants. I want this to be the next big thing like the Pussycat Dolls. There will be a maximum of four girls. If you are interested please email me with :

1) Name:

2) Where do you live?:

3) Age:

4) Can you sing/dance?:

5) Can you write poetry or songs ( if not that is ok!):

6) Any other special talents ( rap or play an instrument):

7) Are you a teamplayer:

8) Why should I choose you?:

9) Looks:

10) Are you willing to work hard and achieve your dreams:

free chicken

really?



i went to go see sigur ros at the great saltair, and was quite taken not only with the music, and the expanse of the salt lake, but also with these window archways.



salt/air/lake



vanessa




some interesting shadow shapes



this makes me homesick. although, taken in utah, intense sunsets remind me of virginia.



a different kind of sunset.



sigur ros.



busy shoppers.



the new visual arts dept. t-shirt. i'm not proud of the shirt or the fact that we have "swimsuit" models and not nudes. this is a shame.

big sexy hair

you know what i really appreciate? honestly and straight forward advertising. so many hair products appeal to our ethos by making their advertising either scientific or french, or both scientific AND french (i.e. "biologe" and nexxus' "therappe"). but i recently discovered something new. something shamelessly honest. a brand called, "BIG SEXY HAIR." that's it. no pretense. pageant hair is the goal.

ah! look what i found!

me and my sister hollis, when we were little chimps. these dresses had white straw hats and gloves as well as a matching polka dot change purse. easter is such a strange holiday.

sunday, monday picture post

my three brothers.



my three brothers [the hardass remix].



my sister, hollis and her husband, jeremy.



me and mom.



my sister, rachel, and her husband, paul and the kids.



a painting i am working on.



a face that made my day. [john kovalenko]