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Showing posts from 2007

on EXPLODING, not nice...

thesisXantithesisXsynthesis... after 10:00am coffee and thievery after that cologne... lunch, dinner, beer, then bed hurray

offering the limp version first

...umbering word trains pointed at objects...they were meant to bounce here...and there with slit tab preciseness... It was a Gallery...white. “Drab pisser. Dank and brown, it smells like ammonia.” I heard after a, “Hurm... But I didn't happen to chance upon any empiricist, inst...

instant, slow, and boring (The L Train to Jefferson...Meek)

meek like a soft brown habit I saw Paul Chan Sleeping on the L train the other day. He smiled. I wrote aimless prose in my blackberry. Gallery's suck.

Uncle Russian Cowboy...

Trash from the dry streets lingers here in the grass You're going home Second City. Gonna be a princess... That's right, pretty little tsarevna. That's you Second City. The purple flocked poster over the urinal is tattered with staples and dry gobahgoo. There's a big ol' smiley face in the middle. Puff, puff, puff goes the nose. My fingernails feel like they're slipping off a little bit. My foot's bent up underneath me and its filling with sand. The girl in the stall beside me is throwing up. That or she's talking to some really deep deep sheep. What's that Second City, Second City, if it can't be done then it can't be done yeah no... That's so not so here in New York, New York, New York. The place where Crocodile Dundee slept and Washington ran away from. See my I-Heart-Tee-Shirt Second City, Second City. Now Get the fuck out. Uncle Russian Cowboy stuffs his cotton shirt back in his pants. blahblah, blah, blah, blah... U

The Way Home From Mars

In the ways of steve, bad is the key of cowards... I liked the tin music from my flat speakers, it sounded like rolling fuzz on a fat sleeve. My record player was as old as my oldest sister and as orange as a plastic sock. It was on my desk beside the bowl of shells and the odd bits of glass that I found in the field behind our school. No one ever liked being inside as much as I did but if they did it must have been '66 and they were reading, The Way Home from Mars. They were lost. They needed to make a difference and Buzz the Johnson was going to set them straight. "This is a democracy for leaders Mary," his eyes glinted. "There's no lip gloss where we're going." My ball glove was on the bed beside me. The leather smelled warm and fragrant like it had been hiding under cornflower. It rained during the day so dad called our usual game early. There was a Gainsborough hanging over my desk, it was all tobacco and cool silk that made me hate horses

Tomorrow Now

...scratched knees on palm suffering drunkard nights. Our drafts are saved autoly. Corrosive Dee'n Agents reminding kids of our spilled evil in their marrow. Better than color its Black n Dubya, sifting the trim end of life with a hammers wit, all golden and viral when we meet. Genes in hand, knees in broken denim and a sloppy pour too near the bed. Todo... Todo... little house, red.

In the Future, this happens more than you might think

After MomJean's Ashing

"This house is old enough for all of our mothers party's," John agrees enthusiastically, it's like he's suddenly a ticket to a holiday box that's filled with slander, audacity and many shades of pink. He's poking inside of a brown box that's sitting in the front room where the wood paneling seems to hold the windows just enough, but somehow they still manage to slip around. Then he announces to no one at all, "it's an old place!"  The sofa's stained enough to match it's broken state, where it's arms were once pious, the center now sags brazenly and there's a  suggestive sense of elopement or worse that's creeping over what remains. All of the walls have been tanked with drawings and incidental paintings are on every other kind of surface around the room. There's even bits of curling paper that are hanging from filament that's strung from muslin hanging overhead, like it's the ceiling's second skin

Rusty George and the Cartographer's Tale

For sweet sweet Otto, With death from above George is large and as whole as an entire room of Benjamin's he sniggered softly to himself. I hope he let's us have the eggplant in the French room again? Please, god no, Random turned and shook his head. Look company or not what about that Rothko. The one that's in the passage outside, He asked.  Let's switch sides at least, He suggested. This whole campaign is making me uncomfortable now. Plus, On the train. Now that's for Heroes. What an unfortunate name? Poor kid can't even shorten it.the only Otto I know is the bus driver for the simpson's. and Anne franks dad. he was named Otto. what? Anne frank her dad was named Otto. what. you know the little girl that died in world war 2. see it's the 18 hundreds all over again.

GloryHollow

The Hopper from the Lac to GloryHollow is straight all the way. The Hollow sets in the soggy bottom land about 30 miles from the big river. There's hills and tree's and birds all around it's high wire fence. The Hollow is a single simple construction with long low lines built up from the local sandstone the lime and and mineral resins. The worn photo’s from back then make it look washed and green with a pale flag on it's top. For contract work the nearby villages were turned out. After that the Neoists sent couriers further down the river to gather every green sleeved grant writer and sling armed accountant they could find. Once the shape was sketched out the whole thing went clickity-quick. Soon enough the first truants moved in.

Bah... What's my Line?

Search & Destroy

In the Tradition of Conceptual Geography

Like a tilted breeze

Little Machines...Yesterday and Today

happy and thoughtful still

Open-source Fairy Tale

fig.1) Reluctance of the kind elector fig. 2) Farmer's wife Cutting knife Mmmm ickey mice All the cradles rage, an open door feels all alone beside a house where no one's home - From April's streaking meth habit.

New York New York New York is all about Ruby Bear

assembling my review Her purple and green eye's are bolted to the marble head on the shelf up above the stove. The yellow foam in her brown chair smells like the cat's stomach. Ruby's singing mad singing like she's gone home drunk, Everyone likes the soup and Everyone's in the shower she'll Close the flat glass door and Turn on all the weather   She lives in the Brooklyn with a man that knows her guy. Once it happened she was in love, Oh sentimental me. Nobody does it better, she say's to the tall floating whistle of steam in the dripping black window. Her house is blue. It's a little bit like a cold vein or a jagged crook of stream in a winding country novel. Ruby likes to think that she knows all of the winding words in that heavy book but all she gets are the pictures and maybe the place in the map. The scale is under the sink. She sets it on the table with a plate of small carrots and warm hummus. At nine she exchanges

nearly up there...

CC Beck, absent the cause Open and then thwart the same as Solomon Heracles Atlas Zeus Achilles and Mercury Oh the speed with which this happens is Location Location Location and again This goofy pillar of zen is a rose drawn on craft paper in a heavy book. I thought of this thing looking back at me like history looks back from under the rug. Look at me you bastard. Look at me. But it's only a balloon that needs to be red, I don't have a crayon or chalk. Do you... I would carry a pen in my bag and that day I made it work. Just to be sure, to be sure it was done and done old.

pepper's greed 03-93

sketch (performance draft) name tag

untitled (name tag) (1999)  indelible ink on bound cotton rag    This design is from the Book of Bobby . It was done prior to the millennial rollover at a time when I was reading a lot about utopia and structure. While the road to hell is believed to be paved with good intentions I reasoned that rational thought is in reality also a huge sham of crumbling cookie that could easily be illustrated by inviting a large group of prognosticators to a hotel banquet room and serving them coffee and baked treats but providing their gathering with no other explicit purpose. The name tag devised here is itself a deepening of the debacle's fiction that was intended for the gathering's invitations and not for it's guests.  Because it felt reducibly clunky I abandoned the idea for this type of plein air performance sometime later. However the thought of utopia would continue linger at the periphery of many of these projects as time moved along. Until eventually it becomes eclipsed by

Cow Wheel, making every day ordinary...

Shortened to simply, Cow Wheel... Its from the Book of Bobby. This book is a large book of many blank pages that are bound between 2 slabs of smooth maple. On the front of the Book is an adhesive foil medallion of a cowboy boot adorned with a 10 gallon hat encircled within a lasso's loop. The Book of Bobby is a place to put things. It's a place for fancy intentions and Cow Wheel is one of them that was conceived on or near 2001. Cow Wheel, it should work if its yellow but if it happens to be white then that's fine too (ca.2001) wood, cow, paint Cow Wheel, a life sized object without guile. It's intention is to strip the pretense of causation from the artifice of chance. It proposes a consistent and dynamic feedback of laughter resulting from the pairing of a wooden wheel within which a walking cow is housed. The constancy of this premise acts as a means for interpreting and potentially discrediting the model of dipolar theism.     

love letter .002

  My wit is screened in with a pen My love is not lost Constantly a blur I am Tuesday  I felt so pink. We talked all night about everything we could. There was an old and racist joke a wet submarine with a deep reservoir of courage and the last race that Paul ever ran in. We talked about the last stage of cancer until you cried and I held your hand. I was terrible, a drunk without shame. I shared my cigarettes and we cheated on your wife until morning. There is nothing to fear. God is lonely, just like you. All she wants is to watch TV, Happy Days I think.  You said, Amen. Then I did too. It was funny so we laughed at the same time, naked and warm. 

Rule .1) A bigger map is more stuff

future imperfect Drawn to email scale, where this long always equals fuck you: So what your guy is saying in so so many words is that he doesn't really agree with disagreeing; particularly if disagreeing interrupts his ability to say yes to getting a show in any space he chooses. But the caveat is that he might not except an invitation to a show if he hasn't like'd the work there enough to review it before he's been invited. What he seems to be saying here is that if he likes the gallery then it must show good work because he's written about it (or showing there). Good of course being his definition and a very critical one because it is defined by his thorough experienced and this experience and critical thought are one and the same thing. What... What makes this even noteworthy is that an inexperienced artist that speaks poorly for themselves was pulled out of a bar to trawl your comments in the face of a community that would rather ignore you entirely. So let

A wad of Chan (FINALLY)

detail, numbered notes on utopia, ink on post-its (lost map pins) From didactic text related to the August, 2001 program: HAPPINESS (FINALLY) AFTER 35,000 YEARS OF CIVILIZATION [BETA V.1] How long does it take to build utopia? Who is going to build it? Most importantly, will the food and sex be any good there? In HAPPINESS, Chan reinterprets and animates the drawings of outsider artist Henry Darger (1892-1972) and the writings of utopia socialist Charles Fourier (1772-1837) to explore our western conception of utopia and the struggle to create a more equitable, pleasurable, and self-sustaining society.

love letter .001

explaining stuff pt.2

Buster, Finch, Robison, CHOnPS, drawing from sketchbook

that's him... No not random at all, Right away Finch let’s me know what he’s thinking about. He starts with the airborn scrubbers, Way up high in all of that punchy space above the clouds there are fat loopy chains of carbon. They’s got nothing to do all day long but gang up with whatever neurotic bits of hydrogen are trying to make time with whatever oxygen is floating around. No platitudes can keep the nitrogen from jumping the fence and making a mad beat for the jinky the sulfur. So they all set a date as timid Tuesday. That’s when the great catalyst called drama, the (equation+lightning=pop) happens. That’s when all of this otherwise inert stuff gets to meet Senior Phospherus and it all spins up into a whimsical new machine. It's construction shouldn't be this exciting but it is, it is-it is. Because soon after it starts tumbling down like a rain cloud. It’s just like very tiny laundry being kicked into metaphorical hot air by a fleet of metaphorically sprinting g

Bang (bomb)

graphite on paper from an unfinished series (ca.1997) This image is from a larger series of drawings that were based on great explosions of the 20th century. The intention was to devise a graphical lexicon that was immediately recognizable as modern without necessarily identifying as universal experiences. It was an important function of these drawings to be recognizable but not be relatable as pop or kitsch. The lexicon itself was to serve as the basis for a deeper look into the practical function and limits of collage.  This particular piece was used as the preparatory drawing that was then transitioned onto a tabletop. The final image was executed with india ink and acrylic paint with some additional support from gel medium to extend the life and the body of the 2 water based mediums. When the final painting cured it was covered with an acrylic clear coat.  The table itself was constructed from rough cut planks and repurposed plywood. It was situated in the 2nd floor kitc

The Human Torch

12 step program (drawing)

untitled (12 step program) graphite on paper, 1995 When I moved to Chicago I had a small pile of cassette tapes and a shoe box that was full of charcoal and some gummy tubes of oil paint. I was a painter some but I came to the city for its weather. I wanted to live next to a park and have better access to public transportation. So I moved to an apartment on Augusta Boulevard. I've always kept books for drawing and writing in. They were in my backpack or on my lap when I commuted across town on the Chicago Avenue bus every day. Then when I moved from Humboldt Park to Bucktown the books traveled with me there. I was in the backseat and they sat in the trunk of the cab when I rolled by the Western Round Up for the last time. We went up Western Avenue and turned right onto North.  The apartment that AN and I were splitting was right there between Bell and Oakley. It was a smart 3 story building and my room was in the back of unit2 right over the recording studio. I slept on th

A marvelous spray of salt shakers

Bus Station

waiting (1995) graphite on paper

couple

welcome to Daley Land

instead of taking better photographs

untitled abstraction (real) latex, aluminum, wood 

Untitled (painted shadows) preparatory drawing for B'Low Me, The Fire Show (1999) group show

illustration for, untitled (painted shadows) installation  Oh such wonderful failures are we. This is a preparatory drawing for an untitled installation planned for The Fire Show at B'low Me in the summer of 1999. This timely little space occupied a smallish 2 bedroom apartment that was located on the edge of Wicker Park in a house set back from Bosworth Street north of Blackhawk. The main event for the Fire Show was several artist performers that had travelled up from St Louis. They would be displaying pyrotechnic based work along with a few other Chicago artists that were also invited to participate. The untitled installation in this drawing consisted of a wooden harp back chair that is painted red and superimposed with a black floor painting of the chairs shadow. Behind them was to be wall painting of an empty text balloon in both red and black. The piece in the drawing was passed over in favor of another work, Hot Foot. It incorporated an empty bookcase and several ceda

pixle dust

Truism (from the essay, Willem DeKooning is Dead)

so gone Just because we have the keys to every car Just because we can Lets pretend we're better than this Let's be better men Let's remind the world that it is part of something too That even standing here alone Our penises are here because of you, Oh Hey by the Oh Hey Gang on Turn Around Vinyl. Astride the sunny bafflement in the tower of keeps, there's everyday spent above the dirt. There's every fucking day spent listening to Clement Greenberg whine and whine. There's, Woman of 1950. She's a great sizing of colorful slashes and brutal reversals on adamant thought in general. In the beginning Bill could draw but now he would make them dance and sing for the pleasure of his pony. Historical, meaning social, meaning political or right. De kooning would like that. He would. He would certainly see the mantle as big enough for all. It's why Elaine married him. She likes his passion for the work but she loves his acceptance. The way he can sit do

Lady O'Lady hey

fig 233.) twines the dot The river rises among everything It's the storm of the great with quick of it now It's the storm of the quick that is here Send my worry on to the farm but worry not for me dear I've got a restless heart that's been faceless and weird its seen your eyes in the rain and its laughed just the same Call me another then call me once more I've left out the door This is the side of my day that's random and bored, On we've sung this before. On we are here. Hands at rest my foot glides to its stop. The sweater's dark, it's dismal and fast. No, I think this is best, The light is bright enough to make out the six straps beneath your owl pattern.  The sudden swoop of the rock. There's loud enough and loud enough to fall. It's the nature of me, for sure. I'm not so sure anymore.

Drunk of the South

fig. 1) adios rosetta  Sitting on the bench of the bar, really a sweet stool and drinking us some draft beers. We had us some Old Styles, some Honkers, and some rich and complex Bells with high and hoppy finish. Then we sat at this tall table for awhile, there was me and Jack and Francis. We had us a bright enough time playing with books of matches and trading some energy around, When is it all going happen?  The Range of the day wasn't as long as it could have been. Our deeds seemed short as well, school was only just begun. We had just turned nerd and were paying for the privilege, Francis rolled loose tobacco into swift white papers. I watch him and say something about the stones, or the ears of holes in the timeless tray of the day. I say, Blank in the park again. Not very in a pitched tent with the weather or not. Jack said, Dope. The sun, and then he laughed again and again. I think it's right. You know I looked into that. The whole thing. It's not always li

Living room with Windows (1822 S Desplaines)

tax pork A graphite drawing of PC from a notebook that I was keeping in 1997. He's sitting on a our green sectional sofa here. The sofa was just outside of AN's room at the back of the first floor at 1822 S Desplaines. We also had a pivoting rocking chair upholstered in velveteen that would have been sitting beside him just outside of the frame. A portion of this space is also visible during the interviews contributed to, The Exotic Body Politic or A Short History of M.E.D.I.C.A.R.E. a video that documented our time spent at the 1996 Democratic National Convention here in Chicago. M.E.D.I.C.A.R.E. or Male Exotic Dancers In Coalition Against Right Wing Extremism was a collaborative performance project that was developed with PC, AK, AN, EP, DS. 

turkey season