CAGE / AMERICAN MASTERS

This is a great primer for anyone unfamiliar with John Cage, his works, his humor and his ideas. This documentary was produced in the mid eighties as part of the PBS/American Masters series. It features interviews with Calvin Tomkins (Rauschenberg and Duchamp biographer), Merce Cunningham, Yoko Ono, Bob Rauschenberg,  David Tudor, Leo Castelli, and many more.

Watch these, you won't be disappointed. Very beautiful and inspirational stuff.

WHAT THE FLOCK SUMMARY

Black Sheep skateboard shop in Charlotte, NC has just posted a summary of their 'What the Flock' art show. Owner/operator and old skate buddy, Josh Frazier, extended an invitation to me to participate in the event. I sent along some unique screenprints on wood as well as a stack of SK843 merch, all of which is available for purchase directly from Black Sheep. Thanks for the support.

(Also, kudos to the designer that generated the graphic above...I think Jeremy Dean would approve! hahhha)

 

IF I HAD A HAMMER

I am not a street artist; never have been, never will be. But if I was, I think my stuff might look something like this...made all the more beautiful amid the bustling, mid-afternoon French Metro masses.

HOUSE SALE

If you live near the Wilmington, Delaware area, you'd be well-served to go check out the 'clearance sale' over at House Industries this weekend. Only the Lord knows what kind of obscure typographical and cultural goodness is going to be available...

NEW SCREENPRINTS II

I am beginning a more, in-depth investigation of this imageless screenprint concept...of course, this concept isn't completely unfamiliar to me. I have previously deconstructed both form and content of other media (see Action Drawings, Drip Paintings, Nonrepresentational Photographs) using very similar conceptual rhetoric; Syntax as Subject. Example: ink forced through a tightly-stretched, synthetic mesh and deposited directly onto a substrate.  

And  this particular example, an opaque, black ink on inexpensive, and highly unarchival, newsprint. No defined, controlled or masked edges within each of the 19" x 25" sheets. And no print 'rejected' from the run, as each,  unique, 1/1 print is considered just as acceptable and valid as the next. 

When we start to see all of the things within our world as unique things (which, by definition, they ARE unique things; modern physics has proven that terrestrial matter cannot simultaneously occupy the same slices of time and space); we will begin to see that our world is a more beautiful and open place...

VOLUME TO 11

Skateboarding and The Sword. Enough said.

NEW SCREENPRINTS

Fresh from an inspiring trip to Europe, I am back in the studio and trying to challenge myself. Above are actual, unique screenprint works/series in progress. I am finding these very difficult to accept as finished works, but that is also what is so intriguing to me. Is a completely unique, non-repeatable, imageless, organic 'blob' of ink, forced through a finely-meshed, sans-emulsion screen with a squeegee, still a screenprint? Is it interesting? Is it art?

These are the kind of difficult positions I like to wander into...if I can push work into the realm of the completely absurd, seemingly meaningless and almost without function, the closer it is to the nature of life.