The American Way

Ayin Es2 Comments

I have not much to say on the blog these days, but at least I’m fiddling with art again. I’ve been painting words onto the book pages of an American Way book from 1969 that was given to me by my friend, artist Baby Smith (thanks Beck!).

The American Way to True Fit Patterns was the industry standard in the grading business before computers took over. I suppose pattern makers who size the styles in manufacturing must still have to know the method because it was used in everything from Jordache jeans to high fashion runway clothing. I think Baby Smith found it in a dumpster somewhere and then she sent it to me as a gift. It sat in my studio for a couple of years until I was moving and I put it in the garage sale pile. Then the day of the sale my friend Beth Elliot came over and forced me to keep it. She said I could be making drawings on top of the pages or use it for reference in my art. Duh! She was right. I found a use for it after all.

Click here to see all of them. Some of them get a little weird, and I’m still working on them.

……………………

I also saw Rochelle Botello‘s show at Me & You Variety Candy Los Angeles
today. More on that VERY special occasion as soon as I get some food and sleep.

2008 Whitney Biennial Los Angeles Heavy

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The 2008 Whitney Biennial is Los Angeles Heavy

Congratulations to these Los Angelinos:

Edgar Arceneaux
John Baldessari
Walead Beshty
Jedediah Caesar
Harry (Harriet) Dodge and Stanya Kahn
Shannon Ebner
Amy Granat and Drew Heitzler
Rashawn Griffin
Fritz Haeg
Patrick Hill
William E. Jones
Alice Könitz
Charles Long
Lucky Dragons Luke Fischbeck
Daniel Joseph Martinez
Rodney McMillian
Julia Meltzer and David Thorne
Matt Mullican
 Ruben Ochoa
Kembra Pfahler
Stephen Prina
Michael Queenland
Jason Rhoades
Ry Rocklen
Amanda Ross-Ho
Eduardo Sarabia
Frances Stark
Mika Tajima
Mungo Thomson
James Welling
Mario Ybarra Jr.

These artists were either born in LA or they live here now, or both. I’d say Los Angeles is on the map now.

And I was happy to see that one of my most favorite and influential artists was at the top of the list: Rita Ackermann. If you didn’t know who she was before, you will now. And you might be able to see how many artists were influenced by her work, since she was the first to do the style she does. She is a true original. My Hungarian side would like to think she is somehow distantly related to me. In some universe, I feel we are.

GD6662576@Whitnye-Biennial-2008-2901
© Rita Ackermann

Yesterday

Yesterday I went to speak with students in the Fiber Department at Cal State University Long Beach. The chair of the Department Carol Shaw-Sutton (an incredible fiber artists who makes stunningly beautiful work) invited me to give a slide presentation and lecture there. Carol and I have shown together at the Riverside Museum of Art in a show called Material Girls, which got a lot of press and was a very good exhibition with a full color catalog and a perfect essay by Shana Nys Dambrot.

Anyways, I was nervous, but I had a good time. Some of the students really responded to the work. I brought some originals, including my books, and one girl said All Done But None was the greatest book she has ever read in her life. Granted she looked to be only in her early 20s, but it was definitely the best compliment I’ve received about the book.

Carol’s assistant is a graduate student named Susan Porteous who is also an incredible book artist. And I mean incredible. She took me back to her studio afterwards and I was able to see all the books she has made during her Master’s program, and I was just totally blown away at her originality and dedication. Her work is meticulous, and the handmade “books” are truly pieces of art. She has seemed to master letterpress, and uses found text within her art books, and plays with arrangements of making them thematic narratives by way of sculpting and using elements of bookmaking. She is going to be a Book Arts star.


© Susan Porteous

Afterwards, I saw my friend Kyle Riedel for a quick hug and headed out early to San Pedro for a meeting I had. I parked near my old studio at Angels Gate and watched the sun go down. My old studio, ironically used to be Carol Shaw-Sutton’s studio before it was mine and I thought about how we both read on out futon couches looking out into the sea. It was weird being there and seeing how a new artist is probably enjoying the hell out of the space now, as they should be. I’ll admit it was a little hard being there in the park and seeing how beautiful it is. A little hard is an understatement.

Awwww, isn’t that such a sad story? Ya well, get over it.

I’m slowly but surely getting back on my horse here in South Pasadena/Alhambra/El Sereno. It’s a pretty area. I have an amazing garden and this makes me happier than when I lived in my little house in Pedro. I’m just still trying to find my way. I have a little dream now about getting a cabin somewhere in Joshua Tree and just staying out there for weeks at a time and doing nothing but working. Kind of like a recurring residency retreat. It’s an idea, and it could wind up to be cheaper than renting a separate studio. We’ll see how it pans out though.


© Michael Phillips

chosen

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What is Art But Escape? 2008, Carol Es.

I have some great news to announce. I was chosen for the 2008 Maestra’s Atelier at Self-Help Graphics! There are 10 women in all doing this special residency with Master Printer Jose Alpuche. I will be making a large edition (80-100), full-color serigraph that will be 20 x 26 inches. The project will be completed this summer, although I will have my prints by May.

For this project I will be focusing on the concept of memory. My subjects are my parents. The image began as a photograph that was taken the first time they came to visit me in my house in San Pedro in the winter of 2004. It is the first time they saw where I lived, my artwork, my life. I was snapping pictures of them while they sat in my office listening to a radio interview I did on KPFK earlier that year. My mother was nodding off as she listened. My father had no idea I was talking about him in the interview. Anyway, with these photos I was snapping, I was able to capture the essence of this in pictures: the essence of the moment and the essence of them as people separate and together. It is an image that engenders memory for me in a whole sense, and for a viewer who has no relation to the image. I began sketching from that photo and presented it to the curator of the 2008 Maestra’s Atelier program, Yolanda Gonzalez. She seemed to really like the concept and the sketch and so now here I am about to embark on this wonderful learning experience!

I wanted to also mention a couple exhibits out there that are worth taking a look at, if not valuable to your innards:

Christine Nguyen at Michael Kohn.

Rochelle Botello at Me & You Variety Candy Los Angeles.

Edith Abeyta at Wignall Museum Gallery at Chaffey College.

Mel Kadel at Richard Heller. (Opens Feb 9th.)

And then some new discoveries:

Jennifer Febbraro, I just bought this amazing and inspiring painting that I can’t wait to hang on my office wall!

Tucker Nichols, who’s art was all over the Space Rabbit Ranch house.

And Amy Wilson; an old discovery turns new again. Just been revisiting her site and reading her blog. Her blog is putting me on the right track again because originally my blog began a lot like hers. It should be a place to post my new work, works in progress, and artistic concepts. Sorry for the recent personal dramas. My work/life has an awfully thin line between them and I’m always working on making that line thicker. So I’m off to feed the line now. Bye for now.

Braver than Before

Ayin Es1 Comment

Some shit dick made some comments on my last post about how much my art sucks. …As if i didn’t already know.

But anyway, i went to Joshua Tree yesterday to get some peace and molecular regenerations in my soul and all I got was this stupid t-shirt. Then I spent 50-cent on a local newspaper, but there wasn’t any news in the “all good news” Desert Star. There were few real estate ads. I’m so used to our papers being saturated with that kind of thing in LA, so i was surprised. I was looking for vacant land, which sounds a little boring, but on the way back I drove through a wind storm, a dust storm, a rain storm, a mud storm, and a rainbow.

we rented a house near Joshua tree called Space Rabbit Ranch. It’s on a 5 acre property and we were allowed to bring the dog. We saw bunnies, lizards, Eddy Izzard, dirt devils, and dancing stars.

So many stars, it’s a sin to try to describe them.

This morning I woke up just before sunrise and shot a picture of the well in the yard. It looked like a movie set. Something unsettling about it.

I filmed a little bit of nothing while I was there too. A little bit of desert schtick. I’ll edit it into something eventually.

Michael and I went back and forth between a couple of properties that we would like to try to buy and pay on for a while. We have a dream of one day building our own mud house on it and living off the grid when we’re 64. I will dream this until I get hit by a bus.

Before I left, I completed 1/12th of the painting I’m working on. The rest of the painting is the underpainting for your information! Not that I’m defending it, I’m just noting it here you bastards!

Well, I better get back to work. I have to prep for a lecture I’m giving this Wednesday at Cal State University Long Beach about my unsophisticated art that said meanie-commentor was apparently doing at age 14. I sure hope my lecture won’t be as grotesque and pathetic of a disservice to academia as my disgusting art has been to the genius world of anonymous art bloggers.

I will wear a plastic bag over my clothes just in case of any flying tomatoes.

If I sound mad at you, I’m not. I’m sorry. I’m mad at ghosts, not you.

Tomorrow I’m calling Mel Benson. I’m pretty sure we want the land that’s bigger and closer up to the park than the smaller one with all the incredible boulders on it that’s a bit too close to the highway. I’ll put in my very low, and possibly insulting, bid. All we can do is try, right?

Good night everybody. Goodnight Horsey.

PS: My friend Judith Hoffberg send me this today. Pretty funny!

Plain Brain

Ayin Es8 Comments

Happiness, still in progress.

I added a brain and a drum set to this thing I’m working on. It floats around the main composition, which is the Hebrew letter Lamed, which means a heart that understands knowledge. I sort of see it as Eve’s dilemma – perhaps a better title for the painting in the end. We’ll see. Because the literal translation of Lamed can mean either “teach” or “to learn,” I figured a brain was needed. Not a fucked up brain, or a smarty brain. Just a plain brain.

My parents are in there because I have learned a lot from them by example. The example of what not to be like. If Adam is the brain and Eve is the heart, then we are in big trouble if we apply this to my parents. In any case, I do not believe in the bible per se. I think Eve is the mother of both heart and brain, and the Earth for that matter. I think Eve hardly needs Adam. And two Eves together would kick Adam’s ass when he’s on his own just sitting around idle not using either his brain or his heart. What would he do without us? And who is his father really? I’ll tell you who his father was. His Mother! Before paternity tests, no one could ever know for certain who the father is. Usually some flaky schmuck who couldn’t step up. This is why in Jewish law the mother determines whether you’re a Jew or not.

Anyway, I’ve gone waaaay off track. I just wanted to post this work in progress. I don’t know where it’s going exactly yet.

In other news, I’ve had some work done in my garage so I can better store my art and make some room to work in. Thanks to my brother who did me the biggest favor on ever by hiring his construction guys to come make me some art storage cabinets and hook up electricity. Sounds menial, but it really helps.