a few minutes a day

Emerging Asian Art at SOMA Art Museum, Seoul

2010-04-25T05:32:00.009-04:00

The Loop Gallery, Seoul

2010-04-25T05:20:00.005-04:00

Move on Asia 2010

A single-channel video art festival.

Art Space Seogyo. Contemporary Korean Artist

2010-04-21T09:27:00.006-04:00

Seoul Art Space - Seogyo (서교예술실험센터) put up a show of some pretty interesting Korean artists in the summer of 2010. SAS-Seogyo is somewhat of an odd space - it is housed in a nondescript building; the main floor space seems more suited for a restaurant, with its patio area, desk by the front door, and kitchen stall at the back. There is more gallery space in the basement, and studios on the floor above. The belies the fantastic art the gallery contains.

I have no image of another

A3 - Asia Art award

2010-04-17T23:57:00.003-04:00

A3 - Asia Art Award

Soma Museum of Art (소마미술관)

The Loop Gallery

Seoul Art Space - Seogyo (서교예술실험센터)

Holly Ward - touching on Relational Aesthetics

2009-03-09T13:21:00.002-04:00

Holly Ward was born in the seventies and studied art in Nova Scotia and Ontario. She currently lives in Vancouver and her work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions across North America and Europe.
Ward is an interdisciplinary artist, who works with drawings, sculpture and multimedia installation. In her work, she is constantly questioning accepted notions, whether they are concerned with social progress and political power, or the transformational aspects of materials. Island (2005) consists of a mound of dirt heaped on the floor of the Gallery. This mound is moved around by staff and volunteers on a regular basis, leaving a trail of dirt in its wake. Ward is challenging the conventional notion of an art object as static and contained. Her drifting pile of dirt is constantly seen in relation to new works of art, and the viewer is asked to consider this ever-changing set of visual relationships.
from the VAG Teacher's Guide to the exhibition, "How Soon is Now"

Another RCA painter – James Bowyer

2009-02-24T07:46:00.014-05:00

Another RCA painter – James Bowyer

Light will be entering the top floor studio space from above for one more year before the Stevens Building and the Painting department it contains moves to the new Battersea site this summer. Design is popular at the RCA, and brings in big foreign-student rates, so the building will be refurbished to allow that programme to expand.
But I digress. This light, usually thinned during my visit by cold winter rain and snow, I share with James Boyer, one wall west of me. James seems to live in the studio; in there early, leaves late. He looks to the whole Leipzig/ Neo-romantic stuff for inspiration, and individual artists like Jules de Balencourt.
Industrial decay he takes as a subject, but it is the paint that really dictates his direction. Works get painted all the time, then buried under a new work, much the way a factory may see many businesses before one finds success and sticks: remnants of the failures remain as an obscured base upon which a winner is finally constructed.

The paintings are not titled. The last few works are quite small.

need more? Other works of James' can be found here, in the monster Saatchi site.

Artist Talks - Robin Footit

2009-02-23T11:57:00.010-05:00

installed - title unknown

installed - title unknown

The snowday a few weeks back has out the second years at the Royal College of Art behind on their artist talks. I managed to sit through two of four before deciding to go write about Robin Footit's work while his talk is still fresh in my mind.

Footit began his talk with a Rene Lalou film, "How Wang-fo was Saved", introducing the audience to a King raised in complete seclusion, his only contact with the world outside being his father and a large number of scroll paintings, done by the famous artist, Wang-fo. On his 16th birthday, he was released from his prison, only to discover that the real world did not measure up to the one presented in the works of art he had grown up with. He could never come to enjoy this world, and the disappointment it brought to his eyes at every turn. For this he planned to blind the Wang-fo, and cut off his hands, so that he too would exist in a world he could not enjoy.
Footit's work is all about what we see, how we see, and how to make us aware of our visual process. Footit's work typically consists of multiple images arranged in a space. He begins by making images - typically they are a collage of all sorts of things - that find meaning through the relationships found with other works. Self-curation to highlight visual connections usually comes long after a work is completed. Typically multiple works hang on his studio wall for some time before connections are made, or before future works are completed that highlight certain connections. The result completed works are commonly individual works hanging in pairs, situated among a larger installation. Also of concern at this final hanging stage would be how much space is a work given that invites the viewer to occupy the space.

Typical of his working process, not all work are successes, and not all failures are discarded. His attempt to turn a texture into an object is a good example: in the attempt, a bowling ball ended up cast in plaster, but could not be easily removed. The carcass of the experiment, a busted-up cast, still found a place in the work, leaning against the wall, on the floor below the paintings, highlighting a traditional artistic hierarchy of aesthetics and medium.
An example of the sort of visual trickery Footit is interested in is exemplified in the 1965 film by Richard Quinte, "How to Murder your Wife". There is a scene in this film where the main actor (look at about 2:13 of this clip), Jack Lemmon, is eyeing a dancing girl high on goof-balls, played by Virini Lisi. Behind him is a Caravaggio(esque?) painting of a young boy looking in the same direction, with the very same dreamy looking on its face. These two “looks” highlight many things, such as the Romantic idea of irony, remind the viewer that this is a production, and not real, question who is looking, and who is being looked at. This multiple read is further being expanded by Footit’s reproduction of a reproduction of a reproduction.

possibly titled, "How to Murder Your Wife".

His investigation into visual manipulation has also branched out to include how to influence a viewer's time spent in front of a work. To do this he teamed up with a group of sound artists to create a work consisting of a still image and a four-minute audio component. It is a work that benefits from having this extra time to ponder over it. What the viewer first becomes aware of is the depth of the work, and how that is often cancelled out by the odd shapes and handling of the medium that flatten space back out, reinforcing its actual two-dimensionality. After staring at the work for a couple minutes, it can become evident that there is a geometrical framework that also underlies the work, as illustrated in the sketchbook plan.

"Less Hope", minus the great soundtrack, which is approximately three and a half minutes.

“The Dark eyes of London” is one of Footit’s newer works. In it, he is hoping to create the feeling of looking through the work, as if the surface is a translucent veil that requires visual penetration. This work, in a way, reveals itself over time – a continuation of some of the concerns about duration that Footit has played with in previous works.

"The Dark Eyes of London". Spend some time looking at this work or you'll miss it!

Footit finished the presentation with footage of Wang-fo's escape from the vengeful King. Before subjecting Wang-fo to his punishment, the King kills Wang-fo's loyal aide and commands the artist to finish a scroll painting of a seashore he had left incomplete. While seeing to this task, the sea floods out of the painting and brings Wang-fo, undetected by those all around, into his painting, where he remains undetected by those that cannot really see what is right in front of them.

White cube shows - Georg Baselitz and Rosson Crow

2009-02-14T11:17:00.004-05:00

While I have been here, I have found two shows quite exciting for their handling of paint. Both are hosted in White Cube Galleries. In White Cube Hoxton, in the main space, is the work of Rosson Crow. A Texan of only 27, she paints large, powerful works that invite the viewer in with the idea of depth, then flatten with drips and arcing swipes that bars the way into the painted space. The show, titled Texas Crude indulges in the myths of the West - Cowboy country, big banquets, hunting, and the ever-present oil well. The work comes across as confident and proud, reflective of the artist, who has shown up at previous openings in full cabaret costume.

Georg Baselitz may be an old man, but that does not seem to prevent him from putting up a killer show. Over a dozen works comfortably fill what is one of the nicest galleries I have ever been in - White Cube Mason's Yard. The exhibition,
Mrs Lenin and the Nightingale, is simple in its imagery - Two figures sit on a couch, but, in typical fashion, are portrayed upside-down. An unpainted band greets the viewer at the bottom of the work. The image is blocked in first with colour - usually a very limited palette. The figures are loosely defined with black paint, which is applied with a thin brush overtop of the colour. This is how all the works are constructed, yet there never is a feeling of repetition. Each work stands on its own, offering intriguing and, again, confident handling of the medium. Baselitz is, I believe, plays up to his strengths. His painting is incredible, and he fits himself in to the history of painting with his cheeky titles - "Tracey looks behind the sofa where she finds his drawing, or rather, what Bob had left of it", "Sunning and mooning in the house of Jeff and Damien", etc. He seems aware that he is not about to change the world, but still has something to offer of himself. Tracey Emin was at the show. She casually glanced at the work that bore her name, but spent most of the time looking bothered and unappoachable. But when you're Tracey Emin, you can get away with that.

No images on the 'net, so you'll have to go to the White Cube website to see stuff.

David Rayson - Professor lecture series, RCA, Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

2009-02-06T09:25:00.012-05:00

Burning Sausage, 2008. Archival ink on paper. 51 by 64 cm. All images from Marlborough Fine Art, where Rayson's The Everyday Fantastic wraps up on February 7th, 2009.

From the Spread Eagle to the Queens,2008. Archival ink on paper. 51 by 64 cm.

The vast selection of drawings are snapshots of a typical day lived by Rayson. As straightforward as the day begins, the ordinary soon gives way to reveal a schizophrenic mash of idleness in the pub, off-license purchases, black and white T.V. movies and the always-present curbside litter. The works themselves are the conglomeration of these everyday objects and experiences. Often working intuitively, Rayson sits down in his studio and responds to his environment. Often what is present in the house alone, or viewable out the window, is enough to get the ball rolling. Throughout his presentation, Rayson showed pictures he had taken of the fanciful constructions his children produce out of their collection of toys. It is from this model of working with what is right in front of you that Rayson constructs all 100 of the works in his latest show.

The tongue-in-cheek approach Rayson takes to life in the suburbs is humourous and lighthearted to some, unsettling to others. When he interrupts an insightful commentary about a group of his work to make false, roughly–stitched together narratives involving Tesco shoppers, trash TV stories of cheaters, and cooking shows, some cannot but feel that he may be mocking a lifestyle some in the audience strive for, if not already comfortably enjoy.

These stories he describes as cyclical. Everyday presents new possiblities; new realities, even. As such, his works are not planned out, but directionless and fed whatever is available until the work is complete. The next day is as unpredictable and alchemical as his work, and dark days, it appears, are as natural as innocent ones. The occasional BBQ fire, common birdlife, and ever-present empty beercans, can sometimes become clouded by a more sinister side of suburbia. Rayson made a point to mention that, try as you may, sometimes you fish all day without a bite. This reality is illustrated in the work, Fishing the Coalhole. In it, a fisherman sits surrounded by an awkwardly high-contrast environment clouded by gloom and pollution. It is doubtful that, even if the hunt were successful, landing a catch would be anything but a revolting reward anyway. Luckily, each morning presents new possiblities - plastic bags dancing in trees, commercials full of exotic holiday destinations, and all other constant and unpredictable inhabitants of the suburbs.

Fishing the Coalhole, 2008. Archival ink on paper. 51 by 64 cm.

Flight 747, 2008. Archival ink on paper. 51 by 64 cm.

Music for Neighbours, 2008. Archival ink on paper. 51 by 64 cm

Artists from the RCA

2009-01-29T10:12:00.014-05:00

I should begin by stating that all can be kind of hesistant to talk about their work. They always have the opportunity to not tell the truth about their work, or to skip a question, or to choose which images are shown or not shown.

Anna M. R. Freeman

Her favourite colour is green.
Anna was asked to identify an inspiring artist. She recommended Machael Borremans.
Anna deals with ideas of nostalgia, memory, longing, and anxiety, and how spaces provoke such ideas. The works are meant to be viewed in relation to each other - these works would commonly be displayed as part of an installation. Works typically display a lack of grounding, resulting in a vertiginous space.

Gareth Cadwallader.

His favourite colour is blue
Gareth identified Neo Rauch as an inspiring artist.
Gareth's work is about a lot of stuff. It is quite often autobiographical, resulting in a deliberate, mostly personal collection of signs and symbols. People are allowed to read what they want.

The works are all small and intimate, worked up entirely in oil. Lots of effort is put in to the source material: they are not images all photshopped together, but constructed like a set and photographed.

Richard Diebenkorn. Oldie but a goodie.

2008-08-24T21:09:00.005-04:00

Whenever I really like something these days, It is either really contemporary, or from the 60's or earlier. This Diebenkorn caught my eye the other day - I had never seen this one before - and I figured I would throw up a couple images to remind myself of all the terrific, straightforward, and kinda passe yet undeniably interesting, art he has pumped out.

Albuquerque, 1951
Oil on canvas, 40 x 50 in. (101.6 x 127 cm)
Purchase, Washington Gallery of Modern Art Collection, 1968.

and representative of his best-known work...
Cityscape I (Landscape No. 1)
1963
Oil on canvas
60 1/4 x 50 1/2 in
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Qiu Zhijie. An artist I'd like to learn more about

2008-08-23T18:01:00.003-04:00

An Asian Studies conference is coming up in Colorado. I am presenting on the changing definition of appropriation, and how Asian artists are, in their own way, modifying notions of cultural appropriation through their art. With all the political baggage that goes along with Chinese artists, though, I am having a hard time finding Chinese artists that comfortably fit in with what I am going to talk about. Basically, I am looking for artists who demonstrate a proficient understanding of Eastern and Western art and culture, and use that understanding to enrich their art. Understandin Chinese art and artists is complicated by Tianamen Square/ dissidents/ anti-academic/ communism/ etc. Someone may consider themselves Chinese, but have not exhibited or lived in Chinese since getting the boot in 1989. Are they making Chinese art?
This does not seem to be an issue with most, just some of the most publicized "Chinese artists". With Qiu Zhijie, it is not an issue. I hope to fit him in, but he does not seem to have what I am looking for. All the same, his work is worth a gander.

Allegory (one of three, may also be referred to as Bridge. from artists' website (see link above). This does not typify his work, though, so do not stop here.

Nothing should be simple, right? Here is a video of Qui at work. It is in Spanish, and he speaks Mandrin. He does give english a go in the middle there, though.

Kim Joon. tats 'n ass

2008-08-19T15:50:00.005-04:00

Tattoos mean different things to different people. Who's sporting tattoos in North America? Everybody, it seems. WW2 vets of the Atlantic campaign have those faded blue anchors: their ship name and number blurred beyond recognition. Thirty-somethings, and younger seem to have had a thing for twisty, abstract lines, celtic flourishes, and intertwining barbed wire-type designs. The men have them around their all-too-often soft arms, while the ladies bare the rear runway peeking out just above the low beltline. Then there are the individuals who really saw tattoos as art - faces mix into romantic landscapes, meet up with animals of all sorts, the names of lost loved-ones (with dates like a living memorial) and people they admire. A friend of mine recently got flowers under each of her arms, filling up the little space left that has not been inked, her face and hands aside. basically, for a few generations, tattoos have been visible and commonplace. The fringe, the rebels, the outsiders, the hard-core fight society through new forms of body art (new to my culture, anyway) - scarring, branding, plastic bumps and ridges inserted under the skin. For body "high art", search for Orlan. IF you get grossed out easy, have a garbage can at the ready. She goes to some crazy lengths when she uses her own physical body as a canvas.

To sum up... Western culture has a history with tattoos.
Asia, on the other hand, has a much different history. When you see a person with a far-out ink job in Korea, it means a completely different thing than it does here. Tattoos in Korea (likely most of asia) mean gangster. And there is nothing typically subtle about gangster tattoos. Typically multicoloured figures and animals swirl all down the back, letting everyone know that the bearer is not the type of dude that should be messed with. If a korean gangster movie is to be believed, the pain control associated with spending hundreds of hours getting inked makes elaborate tattoos a badge of honour of sorts. "Normal" people simply don't get tattoos. Bad boys and other such rebels? maybe. Is this changing? of course it is, but it have decades to do before it is even close to mainstream

With that in mind, the work of Kim Joon seems quite a trip. How different the interpretation of his work must be to those of his homeland. Do Koreans even see it as a tattoo; something that is under the skin and permanent, or are they immediately seeing it as a covering - a costume of a different culture?
Tattoos to us, if I may speak for North Americans, are permanent things. They are a part of you - they make up or express parts of an identity. There is no going back from a tattoo - even if someone does got one of those new removal procedures, ther is still a remnant of that old person (like if a friend loses, or more frequently, gains a lot of weight. You cannot help but recall what once was there. It is still there, in a way). The idea of inking the name of a lost relative or friend onto the body takes on such a profound meaning if you think about it in this way: they may be gone, but their trace still exists. They have left an indelible mark, personified in ink.

Henna, i would say, is more common in South Korea. A week of rebellion right after freshman exams - Cool! Suntanning has only in the last couple of years become ACCEPTABLE in Korea, as has the bikini. Dark or blemished skin was left behind when Korea became the first class nation it has become. Peasants and country folk get tanned, civilized people do not. Or something like that.

With all that in mind, i associate the advertising angle in some of Kim's works with looking at his own culture for inspiration. Going back to the comment I made about koreans seeing tattoos as skins or layers (a gangster outfit), rather than a true identity, this could be seen as, as we in the West use tattoos to present elements of ourselves to others, Koreans do this through other means - one of the most popular being fashion.

party-prada
c-print
120cm x 120cm (cm)
2007

bird land-swarovski
90cm x90cm c-print 2008
All the images are taken fromKim Joon's website, where yo ucan also find lots more images.

Li Wei

2008-08-18T16:03:00.005-04:00

For ten years, the art world has been going nuts for "Chinese art". As a result, demand has soared, leading to the pool of genius becoming rather thinned with third-rate individuals from China looking to cash in on the lucrative market. Li Wei is not one of the hoard: he creates snazzy, interesting, and fun art that has some substance behind the playful veneer. Most iteresting to me is his awareness of Western art principles and art history, and his use of such information in his work.

Let's slide off-topic for a bit

A question I always toy with is, What makes a work of art specific to a place or people or whatever? This unsettlingly, leads to an ever-increasing range of further questions..
Just what the hell is Chinese art, or Western art, or Islamic art? What makes Chinese art different from other forms of art?
In this day and age, of interconnectivity, of a global village, of an internatinal art scene, is there such a thing as appropriation? Just what am I entitled to call my own, my identity? Am I able to add to this personal identity through education and experience?

The artists being looked at this week hopefully address these questions through their art. Comments will be placed, seemingly out-of-place, demonstrating how these works of art answer the questions listed above. This blog is not so much for others, but more as a visual diary of what is feeding my papers, and inspiring my art production.

Back to Li Wei.
Believe it or not, Li Wei asserts that the images he produces are executed without the aid of digital mainpuation: he uses mirrors and wires to hide his tricks. It seems that every article makes a big deal out of this - the fact that he doesn't use photoshop. If someone can tell me why this is important, please let me know.
The images themsleves are wonderful. A lot of contemporary art produced in China comes off as grand, hard, either very soft or very sharp. Lots of people. Cai Guo-Qiang drawing with gunpowder. Gu Dexin with rotting fruit and vaginas in the back of heads. Song Dong licking everything. Cao Fei's ambitious factory workers. This follows in that vein, without the grandiose-(and obvious)-in-your-face-ness found in the works of Sui Jianguo and, the granddaddy of them all, Wang Guangyi.

Li Wei's works often offer up someting legible to both an Eastern and a Western audience. The link to kung-fu-type movies is easily discernable. the "tricks" are accomplished using camera tricks and wires, giving the individuals who appear in the images the grace and poise of superhuman powers. Have you noticed that difference before, between hollywood and HK movies? There is nothing graceful to be found in the abilities of the Hulk or Spiderman: they still possess a weight that allows our mind to better buy in to the fakery. Superpowers of the East, if I may call it that, extend to balance and weight and focus, allowing for such a picuture as that directly above.

So, the top picture.. .. to what are you relating it? Yves Kline's jump from a second story window, maybe? Has 9/11 ruined your eyes, and all you see are world trade center jumpers? Do you see a perceive a population drunk on the vertigo of a society growing at an unbelievable pace, sometimes stumbling, sometimes stumbling to their deaths?
"My artistic language is universal and deals with themes about contemporary politics and society using symbols understood by everyone in every part of the world." says Li Wei, as quoted from the dailymail.co.uk

Other elements of the work also put it on the fence, as to which tradition it is following. The works are a mix of both performance and photography. This blurring of medium is traditionally found in Western works, though have become quite commonly found in the employ of Chinese artists who use video (think of Xu Zhen, and his fake expedition to Everset. In fact, think of all his video work, which is very performance-driven).

These images seem amateur and grand at the same time, and offer a lighthearted and understandable look at Chinese society of the early 21st century.

Li Wei's homepage

Buddha's Birthday...

2008-05-07T05:40:00.006-04:00

..is just around the corner.

I hate how blogs are all about the writer

2008-05-07T04:47:00.014-04:00

how self-indulgent blogs are - my opinions, my stuff, through my eyes. I promise it will all be about you-you-you when I get back. Here are some of my finished pieces. One of my professors gave me his opinion. In the first work he liked ONE LINE. But it is a pretty kickass line.. The line is on the left side of the pants. It goes thick, streaky/strong/thin, then thick again. I think he would have liked it if I cut it out and threw the rest away, because we hurried onto the next one, which he preferred for its varied handling of the ink and the composed handling of the various handling's.. this doesn't make a lot of sense unless you are looking at the work, i guess. (for those of you who do not know, you can click on the images to see a larger version)

Jump #2 (the one that got the thumbs up)

Jump #1(the one in which there is only a single effective line)

a sketch. One of many

One of my classes that I take (undergrad classes) is all about drawing with a brush. The weather is nice, so we tend to go on these far-flung day trips for some outdoor sketching. Typically following at least an hour on the subwayI emerge from the underground with a small group of fellow students to some small mountain or park, where we will draw whatever we are told to sketch. Last Tuesday we were told to draw pine tree branches. The following day I get a text message (everyone has a cell phone in korea, so profs will sometimes communicate by text message - COOL!) saying that there is a homework assignment - we have to do up our sketch in the studio. The somewhat appealing sketch is followed by the painstakingly finished work. Basically, my technique is pitiful, as I have not been taught any tricks, and I have never really practiced ink painting before. Grad students with whom I share a studio with will often walk up, sorta snicker, and then demonstrate some little trick to do this or that. All in all it has been a successful way for me to learn - try, fail, be humbled, tutored, encouraged (often at this spot i return to the beginning) and finally find success.

Children's Day/Hospital Day

2008-05-05T11:58:00.008-04:00

The plan was to take some pictures of the craziness that is Children's day in both Japan and South Korea (in fact, in japan, children's day has become a full week long holiday). Instead, i went to the hospital.

I have some weird growth on one side of my face. It began as a small reddish, itchy spot and spread over three days to turn one side of my face into a hard, hot, swollen elephant man-type disfigurement. ok - that may be a little over the top, but I got endless questions, lots of stares, and many recommendations on what to do next.

the evening of the second day I went to the pharmacy.the old woman there gave me a a korean knock-off version of that pinkish anti itch stuff. It occurred to me as I was leaving, rather disappointed in the diagnosis, that I see her HUSBAND sitting behind the counter during the day, meaning that some old bat who just happens to be married to a pharmacist feels that its OK for her to give out medical advice while here husband eats dinner or whatever. That buuurned me, and, like dirt in the wound, the pinkie stuff didn't help at all.

third day, children's day. Hospitals are mostly private affairs in South Korea and, armed with my wife's Blue Cross travel coverage, I headed out to Yonsei University's absolutly beautiful hospital. Spacious, impeccaably clean, and manned by people in full suits, I headed to emergency with my friend Miwa, a japanese girl studying at Hong ik. A quick wait and we sign in. after a short lunch, we headed back to the waiting room, but there was no waiting! Thirty minutes after arriving, and on a busy holiday, i see a nurse.
So far I am impressed! Then the snow job begins - urine test, blood test, x-ray (I put my foot down on that one. Christ; i have an isolated infection!)and spent over two hours hooked up to an IV drip after getting two needles of what I assume was an antibiotic. I slept most of the time away, and awoke just before the doctor came to talk to me. A full blood and urine test had been run in the time I was sleeping there, (how long does it take in canada, like, two weeks?)and the doc had news

Now, what is the most scary question you can be asked by a doctor? give up? it's this.. (in sort of rough english)

do you know Herpes?

..Now what's going through my head is; how did I get Herpes in Korea, and how am I going to explain to my wife that I got an STD while "doing reserach" an Hong ik university..

the reality was that it was just a missphrased question. After I shakily mumble, "umm, err yes, i do know herpes, it a a umm STD, correct?" He restates the question, "no, i mean, have you ever had herpes?"

a sigh of relief.

"no"

To add to the awkwardness of the situation, as I face one way, talking to the doctor in Konglish about my meds (and another appointment the following day), the nurse is taking the needle out of my arm. either carelessness or the masssive sudden rush of adrenaline caused by the herpes scare resulted in one of those squirting blood situations i believe, because when i turned back, there was a long line of blood droplets across the floor.

The result? no result - maybe an allergic reaction, maybe an infection. so, i get meds for both.
Hopefully tomorrow is just as amusing.

*update* How long does it take to fill a prescription in super-efficient Korea? Less than two minutes. In that time, three different meds were sorted, put into individual packages (each labelled), and put on the counter, where a pharmacist ran over the particulars. Basically, in the time it took to root through my wallet for the money, the drugs were good to go. Fantastic.

the North Korean story

2008-05-05T11:00:00.009-04:00

..this story may not be as exciting as you may have hoped. Sorry.

North Koreans do not escape all that often, but there are a fair number of them now kicking around the South. Arriving with no money, typically in so-so health (they ARE noticeably shorter than their Southern brothers and sisters), a distinctive accent, and a rather atypical educational background means that they are stuck with shit jobs, and often distrusted. Like all small pockets of foreigners anywhere in the world, they run with members of their own circle. So, it was no surprise that, as people appeared at the party my art buddy invited me to at his sister's small apartment, they all from the "Northern Side" of the wall(북안) of this divided country.

My buddy Ho min is forty i think. Looking through his photo album was quite a treat - the black and white pictures look like black and white pictures from South Korea of 40 years ago - the clothes are very traditional, furniture and decoration is strange - nut the y are not that old at all. They are mostly images from the late 80's and 90's (A positive way of looking at it is that the people of North Korea did not have to suffer through the terrible fashions of that time period. Small consolation, i know). the break in photos and change to colour leads me to believe that he arrived with his sister (if I understood correctly, his father, tragically, drowned on the journey) about ten years ago. There were some new arrivals, too. I guess that one of them recently arrived via the fortified and mountainous Northern region separating the North and the South, when those escaping in the past favour working there way to mongolia or SE asian countries where they can often find ways to South Korea. I get the impression that there are many groups, mostly religion-affiliated, that help smuggle North Koreans out of the North and through China. China's policy is to return those who have escaped back to their country of origin, which no doubt lead to certain repercussions. Craziness.
But, all in all, they are very similar to South Koreans in nature - they eat a lot, drink too much, and plan future celebrations before the present one ends. A couple guys got incredibly smashed on cheap grape juice with alcohol in it, and I managed to leave before I got dragged out to Karaoke and what would likely have been hours and hours more of drunken debauchery. I now regret passing on the opportunity, but the sweet crap wine was already carving a huge hangover into my brain.
Here is a picture of the group of us. This picture as taken at dinner, before the group arrived. Ho min is next to me. His art (his studies began at a university in Pyongyang) is in the article below.

People and art in the graduate oriental painting section

2008-05-01T21:44:00.014-04:00

two of Dong im's works

these two sketches are b Ho min (my N.Korean buddy - his work is really traditional because, well, Pyongyang doesn't exactly have a flourishing contemporary art scene). click on the pictures to see the finer details.

One of the dozens of works in Jung sue's space

So, if you are like me, you are looking at these and trying to find a way into the art. That has been a big problem for me here - a lot of our ideas of what makes art "contemporary" (or appealing, or good, or whatever)is absent from these works. Concept, for example: hardly any "concept" is present.
Even though i feel that this type of work can hardly be considered contemporary, I have seen magazines of huge exhibitions of Contemporary oriental painting. North East Asian countries seem to share a strong interest in oriental painting that manages to remain relatively free from the impact of the art movements around it. What I can make of oriental painting is that it is the personal style and technical know-how that puts one artist or artwork above another. Age too: the Confucius doctrine of respect for elders and teachers leads to the mature, long-practicing artists monopolizing the awards tables - it's like figure skating in that respect. The whole practice of this form of art is self-contained and continues no matter what happens in other art forms extraneous to it - follows its own rules, has its own influences, is shown in specific galleries. That being said, oriental painting cannot avoid influencing artists more in step with global perceptions of art. That appropriation leads to art that we can look at and evaluate using the appreciation system we have developed over our scholastic lifetimes. Much of this art (art that is "oriental painting"-ish, though is not really oriental painting) would never make its way into these contemporary oriental painting exhibits, because they do not fit the evaluation system.

confused? me too, and I have to have a work ready two weeks from now for an upcoming exhibit in June. Back to work.

Art - do people really care?

2008-04-24T05:07:00.002-04:00

The video below looks at the work of Luc Tuymans (which is worth getting to know, if not outright worshipping). he could drag his works behind the car on the way to a gallery and still get hundreds of thousands for them. But, what happens when he puts his work out in the street, on a concrete wall? out of context, how is his work viewed? the video reveals...

I also typed up a big long debate about how art should do more to entice the viewer, but it sounded cheezy, so just enjoy the video.

Screw Mathematics

2008-04-20T23:19:00.002-04:00

read this tube of toothpaste closely. Somebody needs a better translator

목켸 The monkey man

2008-04-20T22:58:00.005-04:00

..수,당,송,원,면,청..

..Soo, Dang, Song, Won, Myun, Chung..

I had a brief lesson about the different periods in Chinese history. I asked a studio-mate about a book he was reading that traced the history of chinese painting, and ended up in a discussion about a few of the works.
This was done by an artist with a name that sounds like "Monkey" after you translate it into Korean, and further degrade it into English. He worked in the Song dynasty, which falls in about 1200AD. The balance between detailed areas, and completely empty areas I find interesting in this work, as is the easy manner in the execution.

Calligraphy class

2008-04-20T22:32:00.006-04:00

Turtles and more turtles

the history of the symbol for turtle, as taken from various original sources. The childlike quality that the works possess are part of the style that an artist tries to capture when executing these symbols, as Professor Song demonstrated when he began his demonstration by smashing a brush loaded with ink onto a sheet of rice paper, violently working his way through one of the symbols, leaving rips through many spots of the practice paper. The class applauded.

Professor Song is a character. His classes typically begin with an hour of him running through a lesson - he sets up to demonstrate something, then starts talking, brush still in hand. then he'll make like he is going to demonstrate, only to dip the brush in the ink, hover over the paper, and return to talking. His english is terrible, but he loves to pop in english words while he is talking, just to make me feel comfortable. If he goes a while and doesn't come up with an english word, he pauses to ask me and the class what the english word is for whatever he is talking about, so he can add that to his vocabulary. He is amusing, patient, and friendly.
Here he is helping me,

and here is a little work he did for me, based on the turtle pages. The jealousy of the other students was palpable as he signed it and gave it to me.

Work for the sake of it

2008-04-20T10:05:00.005-04:00

Recently felt that I was not getting any real work done. I go through page after page of paper, practicing how to make a line, trying to duplicate what I see in other works or in real life, and then trying again. I talked to a friend who studied oriental painting. She said that, for the first year, she did nothing but grind ink and coloured pigments, and was allowed to only make single brushstrokes on a page. A whole YEAR of single strokes, over and over. I am beginning to understand why.
Anyway, practice is not really work, and I was starting to get the feeling that my peers were wondering when I was going to produce any more than crappy chinese letters and shaky sketches of trees. So I did the sketch above to simply have something to look at in the studio. I was told that it was timid. Supposedly the one below is better, but I still can't entirely figure out why.

Basically, everyday is like trying to figure out a puzzle for which I have not been given the guiding rules - its like being given a five-star Sudoku to solve without being told that you cannot use each number more than once in a row.

I am starting to make some good connections. I have met this Chinese guy named Ryang Sung Kim(김량성), or Curtis, as he intruduces himself to English native speakers. He is fluent in Korean (his parents are of Korean descent), and comfortable in English and Japanese. He is studying Western painting at Hong ik University, and has good ties to the Chinese contemporary art scene. He is currently curating an exhibition of 50 asian artists for a show in Beijing. He is also going to introduce me to a sculpture professor at the university the week. His art is similar to my tighter work, and I hope to do some work with him, or to see how we can help each other out in the future. I am also setting up appointments with various other professors at the university for this week and next. Connections, connections, connections.

Finally..

2008-04-17T03:26:00.009-04:00

..found what I was looking for. And even though I did not get to see Professor Kim Ho Seok (김호석) today, because I opted to eat lunch instead (the class ran until 1pm, and he was likely to be more concerned with filling his stomach than engaging in a conversation about his art with a foreigner with poor korean-speaking ability), I will likely arrange the opportunity to meet sometime in the future.

From what I understand, he was born in the 50's, and has spent the bulk of his career doing ink drawings of traditional houses, portraits, and peasants. Boring. Then, about five years ago he changed directions, and started interpreting the lives of the people of northern asia in his wonderfully composed, confident, sketches. Remarkable in their absolute mastery of line - the speed, pressure, flow, bleed, colour, consistency, thickness and weight of each is made to look easy and everyday. the works shown here are mostly just details. If you do not click on the images to see the larger versions, you're missing out.

SEMA Selected emerging artists 2008

2008-04-16T01:00:00.017-04:00

Located right outside the walls of a wonderful little palace is Seoul Museum of Art. Pardon the lack of names - On the museum website, in both korean and english, there is no list of the participants! I have a brocure kicking around somewhere, and if i can find it, i will update accordingly.

Our first no-name artist does these wonderful paintings. built of layers of movement, the depth surges forward and receedes, especially in this specific one, which appreas abstract. Others were much more obviously "something", like layers of outlines of a horse, for example, and the easily-recognizable subject sorta ruined it for me.

Emerging artists possess that quirky ability to surprices sometimes, and finding an interesting and fresh way to show basic geometric shapes after the 20th century is quite the trick.

Projected into the corner of the gallery space, and with the corner rebuilt so it juts back out into the viewers' space, is a slowly-progressing video. Every few seconds a small change or two can be detected - something will be added or taken away. I wonder if the changes are pre-programmed, or if maybe they are random, or better yet, somehow an external force is making the changes?

The Good Stuff
Somewhere in the middle of the exhibition was all the best stuff. This body of work was a series of crazy-thin lightboxes. the images, about six feet across, were made of tiny photographs of urban settings that shared a specific colour. In this case, the subject was powder-puff blue garage doors and storefront protectors, the kind that typically roll up or swing open.

While some rock n' roll song that sounded similar to a rough old rolling stones song played in the background, three videos on high speed and in reverse showed a handphone, and ipod, and a hand-held videogame starting as dust and getting a reverse-grinding to emerge whole and functional again.

The crappiest of protests, this artist displayed a collection of videos of short-lived, ineffective protest. repeatedly dragging a mop over his words to keep them from evaporating, the artist silently goes about protesting high tuition, American soldiers, and the Free Trade Agreement that has been coming into effect in South Korea (causing drastic changes) as people continue with their lives, oblivious to the words on which they tread.

A satirical ten-minute video looking at the us of the word "White House" in South Korea. A symbol of power, the name has been confiscated by those with wedding halls, restaurants, and karioke businesses. Some know that there is a White House in the US, in which the president lives and works, and some do not. (The consensus reached in the video is that, associating a business with the White House does not seem to affect patronage one way or the other)

Adina edwards' new work

2008-03-17T17:19:00.004-04:00

My buddy Adina. We exhibited our works together in mid-March. I was responsible for writing a critique of her work, but found little to criticize. The condom bed functions really well as a stand-alone piece. she debated putting up drawings with it, but correctly settled for the bed and the bed alone. Her work is concerned with social responsibility and harm reduction. Aids and STD's run rampant through through the low-class sex trade, and Adina has put together a piece that opens that seedy world to debate among the art-versed. It presents a new face of the use of the bed in the history of art, where it is most typically used as a prop-device for some too-young Venus.
and yes, those are hundreds of hand-stitched condoms.

cold in Calgary

2008-01-31T22:26:00.001-05:00

So I got a copy of China Art Book. It is not everyday that you find a book about Chinese artists.. ..written by two Gremans. It is kickass, though, and recommend the purchase to anyone interested in Chinese Art. It is kinda important, and there is nothing really out there about it, aside from superficial introductions in big galleries, in the West. More attention should be paid to the crazy cool stuff coming out of China, Japan, and South Korea. Taiwan too, I am more recently learning, has some impressive stuff to show the world.

from the book, I have found certain artists expecially deserving of a look (though it is trycky to find anything (in english, at least) about some of them.

sun xun
does animations, other stuff. likes mosquitos, but i do not know why. quoted as saying "each image is a negation of the previous one", which I thought is an interesting way to think about animation. It contrasts highly with my recent interest in Japanese Metabolism, which deals with capturing various speeds in the same time.

liu ding
likes strange lighting. most of his stuff kicks ass, but he did this one thing with artists reproducing works in 2005 that I think sucks ass

wang qingsong
i wish i had thought of that.

Zhou chunya
is sort of doing the same thing a lot. but the painting is so good, that it really doesn't matter. I saw his stuff in Seoul about five years ago, and really wish I had bought a work - it would be worth significantly more now, if i could part with the enchantingly-slick liquidy-oil paintings of dogs.

cai guoqiang
like zhou, has been around a while. Surprising, considering he works with gunpowder.

Good art Link

2008-01-04T22:45:00.000-05:00

The First Post
has a really good art site - lots of links to chinese artists, too.

pic is from the site.

2007-12-29T18:19:00.001-05:00

http://hunjang.blogspot.com/

this guy did a phd on korean society

Thesis work

2007-11-25T23:40:00.000-05:00

David Cushway does stuff about traces that are left behind by individuals. some of it is boring stuff, like shots of a pot getting smashed, but most of it looks pretty interesting

this is a work from 1996 - Cushway put unfired bricks down on the floor of his studio for six months to record what was happening.Then, he fired 'em, and called it art.

2007-07-21T22:05:00.001-04:00

Justine Kurland
http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424692791/568/justine-kurland-the-eel-swamp.html

2007-07-08T22:51:00.000-04:00

database of images WELLCOME -
says it has pictures of 2000 years of human history or something..

http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/indexplus/page/Home.html

Linda Christensen

2007-02-04T12:03:00.000-05:00

Though Linda writes something about trying to convey a feeling of fleeting moments... Blah blah blah... I feel she is a sort of kindered spirit - I too feel that people are looking for reasons why an artist chooses this image over that one. Truth is, when all that you are really interested in is paint and composition, the statement comes across as dry. Which, in Linda's case, is no big deal, because her compositions and handling of paint are first rate. I would love to spend an afternoon picking her brain and watching her paint.

Also in her shadow would be Shannon Craig, daughter of Philip Craig, who has the guts to drag a paintbrush from one side of an almost-finished painting to another, and just leave it there. here is a terrible example of her work. there is better stuffout there, if you look harder than I

Paul Fenniak

2007-01-31T20:26:00.000-05:00

Reuel Dechene

2007-01-28T09:27:00.000-05:00

this dude's art is interesting - He was in the candela art exhibit at Cube along with me, and many others..

http://www.dalesmithgallery.com/artists/artist.php?artistId=11&page=0
http://artengine.ca/xmaslite/main.htm

valuable links to all kinds of art stuff

2006-10-28T00:15:00.000-04:00

http://letracorrida.blogspot.com/

2006-10-27T23:13:00.000-04:00

i would LOVE to do something like this!

2006-09-06T21:23:00.000-04:00

check t his out
http://www.caiguoqiang.com/

2006-09-06T14:14:00.000-04:00

have you ever seen those South east asian lanterns that are made out of paper, and that are heated with a small cup of flammable oil? they're printed with prayers and blessings, and, when heated, rise up into the sky. they go forever! im picturing a surrealearly morning, maybe with a dozen of these things weighted so they can't rise far off the surface of a lake. it's misty this time of year in the morning. a still morning would give a really cool reflection too..
..these containers of light could be moved to different settings - rural, urban, the woods..

2006-07-21T21:44:00.000-04:00

sorry, SORRY Ming - it's been way too long since the update.

We've been busy, on and off...

we had an early morning sunrise shoot that totally didn't turn out, video or photos.

two weeks ago we had a late night shoot up at my parent's cottage - here are a couple of the images..

we'll end up using at least one of the images - we'll blow them up big, and make light boxes out of 'em

im thinking that combining two - invert one and have them facing each other - may be interesting, but , we'll see.

MORE ideas.

2006-06-27T23:47:00.000-04:00

ok - two ideas for photography.
it's 11:44 and this has gotten me out of bed.

go with it - again it's just a jumbled mess right now.

idea one

night shooting, long exposure. the shot is overlooking water. i want to somehow capture using a flash, a person walking across the surface of the water. this could be done maybe with a well timed jump from a boat, or rigged with someone standing on the bottom and supporting the person being shot. photoshop will fix up any little mistakes im sure.

this idea was the origional that has been brewing since saturday.

idea #2

night shot again, flash to capture.

first, i love this image

especially the pissed off st peter, forking over the money, "give unto Caesar that which is his..."

i see an open field, with this action in three parts - first, a group on the left, captured in a flast or two, a walk across by one, and then the money delivery on the right. playing with the intensity of the flash and people walking at angles to the camera (or curved paths) would also be interesting, i think.

BIBLE myths...
.. a good or a bad place to go?

update

2006-06-27T23:44:00.000-04:00

ok ming..

Ian and i had to put off the sunrise shoot a couple of times. on friday, we did make it out, but the clouds did not co-operate. we'll give it another go at a later date. I have some film that is not very good, and ian has some photos that show some time lapse that would be kinda interesting if not for the fact that clouds obscured the sunrise.

testing...

2006-06-06T20:16:00.000-04:00

just figure out how to add myself on this blog so i can actually post thing without signing in and out~

hey, thanks for showing up at the show~ really glad to have some trusty voice there to help me with the work.

another idea, involving the rising sun

2006-05-23T22:33:00.000-04:00

the rising sun, the rising sun...

how about a story about how the sun was created, or maybe how it appears every morning.

i was thinking that a small campfire, placed strategically on a high horizon and shot from a low angle, could have the sun rise exactly behind it, like the sun is emerging right from the source of the fire. in a video, possibly on high speed, you would see the sky gradually fade out of black to red with the construction of the fire, and get much brighter as the fire gets brighter, eventually having the sun rise out of it.

are all these ideas flakey?
this is likely a good one if we somehow turn it into more of a narrated video..

paul

2006-05-22T20:46:00.000-04:00

eeew....
this is way overdramatic, but i can't spend all night doing this up..

i wanted men and women being created from different places - one sex from above, and one from below. maybe they need to be different colours. i want to do a straight shot background, and insert the pics of people after - take pictures of one sex flying in by shooting people bouncing on a trampoline for the shots. i cheeze-ly thought that maybe they become the proper colour in the middle - maybe they embrace, or maybe they simply line up and hold hands.. i dunno..

nature myths!

2006-05-19T22:50:00.000-04:00

ok -

this stupid da vinci thing is messin with our myth ideas. i want to avoid any goddess references, for sure.

that being said, i am looking into myths that are nature-based. people in nature. streams and fish and water and maybe some nighttime stuff - i have ideas but not the skill to do it. damn, i need a video camera or something.

i've always been a star guy.
ok - in writing this down, i've narrowed things down to rivers, stars, and rain. i would love to have images with lots and lots of people in them, and then blow the images up really big and mount them in lightboxes.

.we could do some pretty awesome storytelling with this stuff too, eh? mr videoman - i need your input

rough ROUGH idea

2006-05-07T21:59:00.000-04:00

this is the beginning of an idea
this would be printed(i mena, an image LIKE this, that we'd do instead of stealing it.), plus someting at the top - either another picture of the "myth" for what causes rain, or a drawing of the myth.

myths and rellics and nature-goddess-idols

2006-05-01T21:21:00.000-04:00

i was listening to CBC radio this afternoon while in the car, and there was a woman on it talking about myths in books and how she researched that sort of thing. she said that many books could easily be understood in relation to the stories and myths and beliefs. She also said that some books - she specifically said that the origin of most of the myths that are evident in "King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table" are untraceable - where they come from is as much a mystery as anything else in those novels..
Which sort of re-peaked my interest in invent new myths. I'm gonna medidate on this for a while. I am also gonna mention our investigation to some budding art-types (are you encountering as many people who are closet artists, sometimes quite talented or well-versed, as i am?) if it is alright with you - "the more people to steal ideas from, the merrier", i believe Carl said. well, he didn't say it, just implied it. And i think it is a positive thing; not really stealing, just feeding off an energy - like going to NYC and living in the art community - it isn't steaing, just feeding off the vibe.

..MORE off the top of my head

2006-04-26T19:25:00.000-04:00

about six months ago I was dreaming of some BIG projects that would take months to prepare for, a couple dozen guys to pull it off, and about 20 minutes to execute. I had this idea of using the road as a sort of filmstrip, and lay consecutive images about ten feet apart down on the road. The cars driving over the images would see the images appear out from under the car ahead like a flip book, automating the whole thing. I was thinking about taking photos of people doing something (at about 2-3 images a second). i wanted to project each of the high-contrasted 50 odd images, lifesize, onto paper, then cut them out. Fisty images! - i figure fifty people with a dozen paint rollers and cooperating well could lay the images down on the road in 15 minutes in the middle of the night.

and have you ever seen the images of that artist who, using chalk, lays and image down on the sidewalk that, using really precise perspective, makes it look like there are 3D people/places/or things positioned there on the road. - i was thinking about doing the same thing with little animals (bunnies, small dogs, cats, raccoons) that's appeard to be real, 3D animals on the road, and make people slow down.

two weird ideas - where are you at???

2006-04-26T16:50:00.001-04:00

i've been looking at the photos that a buddy of mine have been working on (http://www.flickr.com/photos/blumsy/). and the idea popped into my head that it would be interesting to organize big groups of people together to do cazy things that couldn't possibly be done alone. the idea of finding a stream somewhere and throwing fifty-odd people in to it to dam it up. it sounds kinda retarded now that i actually write it down, but the image in my head is awesome! os something like a big group of people all cooperating to do something - like constructing something in a forest all in one day, or carrying a mossive tree trunk from one place to another, or going into an over grown field and flattening it all down or i dunno..
now i am thinking of something like my fence constructions in third year where i tore down an old fence and re-erected it somewhere else, sort of out of place. or NEVERTHELESS and there yellow book project. something involving cooperation and organization.
we will be starting our own traditions, eh?

epaul

2006-04-26T16:50:00.000-04:00

i've been looking at the photos that a buddy of mine have been working on (search for Blumsy on flickr). and the idea popped into my head that it would be interesting to organize big groups of people together to do cazy things that couldn't possibly be done alone. the idea of finding a stream somewhere and throwing fifty-odd people in to it to dam it up. it sounds kinda retarded now that i actually write it down, but the image in my head is awesome! os something like a big group of people all cooperating to do something - like constructing something in a forest all in one day, or carrying a mossive tree trunk from one place to another, or going into an over grown field and flattening it all down or i dunno..
now i am thinking of something like my fence constructions in third year where i tore down an old fence and re-erected it somewhere else, sort of out of place. or NEVERTHELESS and there yellow book project. something involving cooperation and organization.
we will be starting our own traditions, eh?

epaul

oh - i just figured out what you were doing..

2006-04-25T21:02:00.000-04:00

comments. you were leaving COMMENTS!

... any hidden narratives?? i mean..the gesture/posture seems to suggest certain action/reaction.... to what? are they meant to provoke such intepretation?? or not?......
hidden narratives - nope, worry - im too shallow - hence the need to work with a partner.
narrative/thematic stuff that i produce usually comes out not-very-figurative. Sometimes it's representational, but never figurative. weird how that works.

"outside looking in"
- -- - this would be awkard for me - if i wanted to describe this experience, i think that i'd want to be immersed in it - i just dont have enough reference material, i think.

portrait documentations - 4-5 minutes. folklore...
this sounds kinda interesting. the word "documentation" scares me though. there's been a decade of mostly terrible art.
"folklore", on the other hand, sounds cool. What are these portraits like? are they paint, video, wirtten? is your source member of the family sitting right there in front of you when you do this, or are you just sorta meditating on the specific person? New stories, new traditions, new stories - inventing these new things (documenting them?) - there might be something there..

2006-04-08T10:55:00.000-04:00

this is one of the images that im currently working on. I did this mostly to just figure out how to post images. SPEAKING of posting images - your website it nice and all, but where's the art, my friend?

2006-04-08T10:36:00.000-04:00

sure brotha! take some time.. no need to rush anything..

i have some new drawings posted on my site. check 'er out.

ok - thematically or physically. i prefer a topic of some sort. if i wanted to just create, i'd smoke drugs, make a huge mess and waste paint, and call it... ..abstract art.

i'd first like to look at what sorts of things we have at our disposal. i'll go first - my wife is going to korea in august, so she can get big huge lightbox printouts done there and bring them back with her. i have a cottage - lots of nature type stuff. i have a friend who's a graphic design teacher at algonquin college who'd be up for helping out (and then there's all the other ex-queen's kids). my parents will be building a house on four acres of land that they recently bought this summer, so there'll be lots of tree cutting and digging and stuff.

the outsider looking in idea is ok - it was different for me, though. i really enjoyed it, and felt comfortable and appreciated pretty much the whole time. My experience would come across more as a vacation than some "hardship" or "odd foreign experience". i'm hoping to go to university in korea in a couple of years from now - maybe that topic would be really good then! i'd be trying to fit in. I was considered separate from society when i was an engish teacher, rather than part of it.

though i bashed abstract above, im not totally closed to sqirly, swishy art.

ok. 'nough for now. gotta think more. and im hungry.

testing.... more than a few minutes~

2006-04-05T00:18:00.000-04:00

ok, this is kinda cool~

seeing that i am gonna excuse myself until i get through my hellish last 5 days of teacher's college, i will leave some thoughts for you to chew on during my potential absence.

there are couple way i envision this collaboration would work....
a. thematically: if we could somehow focus on a theme that we are both interested in, we could work independently while keeping each other informed with our progress~ so what are the possibilities?? i was thinking that since you just got back from your long oversea excursion.....any thought?? any memorable experience being on the 'outside' looking in?? Being perceived as the "Other'??(or being surrounded by the "Others".) Something we have in common, i guess..... experiencing that moment of 'transit'....that 3rd space between here and there..... displacement... evolution.....change..... becoming?

b. physically.... i guess we could decide on what we want to work on and actually WORK ON IT together (in kingston?? i dunno....but you are more than welcome to come and stay with me and paint here.. not paint... anything you want, i guess~) ...OR.... working on the same work through correspondance... kinda like that 'communication' show you were in, remember?? ( with somebody from Concordia..)

anyway.... let me know what you think~

cheers.

2006-04-03T21:49:00.000-04:00

a small, developing art collective. let's get some images up here, eh?