today's version of the velvet elvis.

WHO KEEPS PUTTING THESE GUYS ON HORSES?!

i bought this book

i've lived here for years and only just now gone to the natural history museum.  all i was interested in were the sea creatures.  

i'm pretty sure i have a phobia about being near whales.

forgot my camera so i had to take a bunch of mobile ones that i'm not into uploading right now.  bluetooth is acting up...

i sketched this little guy while there earlier this week:

today i went through part one of two, of getting my tooth fixed.  afterwards i had nowhere to be and all my errands pretty much were taken care of via the phone.  sooooo what better place to waste some time in than Strand.  i went straight to the art books (tunnel vision - a blessing and a curse);  i pretty much looked at EVERY page of the vice photobook (i want it so hard).  and i bought this book on photography today, "the photograph as contemporary art".  i don't like to spend money on any book i am not sure i'm going to like buuuut i saw a few pages: 

 

mostly it's like a survey of a lot of photogs i like:

ryan mcginley

nan goldin

greg crewdson

just to name a few...

if i had to pick a medium...a camera would be it.  otherwise every thing i find is a medium.  yes, models with very little creative inhibitions and a sense of adventure are welcome...

xoxox

ohhhmmmm

Taking time out is important.  That's why I took off a couple of days and finally slept in for the first time in weeks...

I'm also getting really good at throwing out things that are no longer useful: brochures from a million different yoga places nowhere near my job, scraps of tracing paper and gift bows from like six years ago.  i decided to do something fun with the bows before turning it into garbage...

 xoxo

(the center of the universe)

I helped Roman Ondák measure the universe...

i'm going to the uncanny valley

I asked my teacher would taxidermy be considered realism and he said it's uncanny. Someone actually made a chart exemplifying this:

This unicorn (like all!) is spectacular...

It's by Børre Sæthre. I love things like this and being that I love diaromas too I should probably go to the Natural History museum soon. Any takers?!

I remember one spring break while everyone else was boning locals in Cancun I took myself to the Natural History museum in Philly (where I was going to school at the time). I just geeked it up that year...

THIS is also awesome!

so over damien hirst

i used to like Damien Hirst now I'm not so into it. It's not that i'm a hater now it's just that i'm seeing it in a different way than before. i'm not so impressed by it. back when i first realized who/what i was looking at in 2007, i thought it kind of genius. mother and child or the thing with the cows stuck with me - in fact most of the formaldehyde animal cross sections intrigued me. i saw it as: hey mother and child yet somehow this is very sad and creepy. like their dependency on each other is somehow their demise. maybe it's just a predisposed awe with the connection it had to scenes from The Cell (a visually stunning movie with a whatever canned plot) which took a lot of artistic references from works of art and an REM video. but anyway NOW it seems a lot are not liking him anymore. maybe he broke the dam that flooded the art market with dribble (sorry for the metaphor) overshadowing (drowning) some really exceptional emerging artists in its wake. i'm not sure i'm a sophomore at this. aesthetically i am over hirst though. there's only so many ways one can cover a skull in non-organic material and he's not innovative to me now.


i had this conversation with a guy i worked with in the village over the weekend. turns out he studied art and worked the industry yet he's so over new york and can't find a gallery job so he's booking farther north. when i said damien hirst is over rated he got a second wind like i'd said what he's been waiting to hear for a while. then he asked me what i did like and all i could think of was Fragonard. i think i like the colors and the flirtatiousness of it. it's not very sad and it's very organic.

i think a modern day version of this would be lastnightsparty or nickydigital where you see a slice of life that's very carefree and not at all moralistic. ha, Merlin is Fragonard...or is he caravaggio? hmm.

i didn't think i'd like renaissance all that much but i'm liking and re-liking some of the artists in that time. after all they are still influencing todays artists.


I saw something soooo absurdly amazing on BOOOM - where I get a dose of art every day (most local and emerging) -by artist Joshua Bronaugh and there seemed to be minimal brush strokes yet you knew exactly what it was... amazing.

MA|Art Market Principles show FIT.

Peter Kreider:

Christina Gundersen

I like the painterly strokes in this.

Jeana Baumgardner

Mary Temple:

an illusion of sunlight when there is none.

art at FIT

Fafi!

My first introduction to Fafi was entirely random (or just a cunning eye for the next whatsit!). I went to Colette in Paris and saw this shirt that had a girl on it with macabre maracas and it was enough for me to want to pay $40 for it. I thought, 'I'm in freakin Paris when am I ever going to see this again?' It was a shirt by an artist called Fafi and little did I know she'd reach blowin-up-shit proportions later across the pond.

She'll be exhibiting along with other ladies who are mostly in the street art set at McCaig-Welles in Williamsburg. I'm going to try to make it out there next Friday but can't promise anything...

If anyone is into illustration or street art: the genre, should take a look though.

squeeze

there are not enough hours in my days! i hope to go see some work by Caitlin Hurd. i can relate to the suburban ennui it looks like she represents in a lot of her artwork. i love her aesthetic and colors. also i want to see Lisa Lebofsky's work at the gallery in BK.

working 7 days and going to class in the eve is time consuming. i don't know how long i'm going to keep it up but i'm surprisingly not that tired, but i'm going to try and squeeze in some art things this week: looking at and creating some; i have an idea i want to do thanks to a certain Muppet i saw last week. There's something comforting about sitting around watching Muppets.

and here is a picture of my Blue Russian

cat wearing my legwarmer as a gentleman's scarf...

he's handsome.

balance

and i was going to post about the james jean exhibit at jonathan levine gallery...but...it's so not timely at this point. it was the last show i've been to in a bit.

i will catch up and go to some more soooon.

but i have been thinking about twins a lot lately...or some derivative (our other selves) and it made me think about duality. it's hard to blend two contrasting ideas but if cooperation is sustained both parties can come out swimmingly or in some cases a person can be their whole self if they are willing to acknowledge all parts - even the darker sides. i think my twins would come out looking something like the twins on the left.

material world

photos: orly strings; derick's wall; soft meat

at the last minute i ran over to the IMMATERIAL exhibit at Black & White Gallery. Glad I did; rarely do I like mostly everything in the entire exhibit. What attracted me to it was Orly Cagan with what I felt were beautifully loaded embroidery everywhere; I felt like I was seeing the thoughts of every girl (universally speaking) when she meets a guy she likes: a progression of phone calls, extra time doting on image, sex, aprons, planting seeds (literally and figuratively) and all the while worried that it won't be enough to keep him from thinking about how you two used to be just minutes before - or years before the present moment you are (still) together.

whew...

and...Adam Niklewicz made me smile cos I felt the sculptures were so sweet and innocent and apparently based on memory of things (real or imagined) he's experienced. read on his website; it'll make you take notice on the little things (or not. whatevs). The lighthouse arm was my fave of his. Derick Melender made a wall that was tempting to touch and snuggle; everyone was 'listening' to it as if the shirts, sweaters and jeans would tell you who wore them last; i wanted it in my room, as a bed post, the place where i'd put a setee - yes. apparently it's for sale for $17,000! what recession?!

Tamara Kostianovsky made meat and it was great. meat has so many connotations and somehow this makes me feel like i like meat and it is not inhumane to do so. maybe because it was so soft and made of fabric. something about non-fabric things made out of fabric that i really like. making something out of fabric that isn't naturally so strips it of it's guilty associations...

like this:

I can be a vegan and snuggle up with a plush cow carcass. i can enjoy a three-layer cake if it's crocheted and not in my bloodstream. Orly did the same with cupcakes, pies and fancy dishes. go see her page if you like cupcakes and pink things (Guys, this includes female parts - go! and delete your web history after your're done - or not cos you're secure in your masculinity and you can look at art full of pink things and cupcakes! when your girl sees your web history she'll think you're really in tune with her and her battle with the virgin/whore conundrum.

Kristian Kozul's boots stood out and were so fun. thank you kristian for creating this out of your head. it's like i know they have spikes in them but i still want to wear them. girls bleed into their heels and stomp new york streets every day - how will these be different...??

Boots taken with my camera phone suprisingly came out decent - I LOVE how it sparkles in this photo! Brilliant!

And Kaoru Hirano to sum up: beautiful destruction of things of material value. the dress took up a lot of space...and is $12,000. for that much i'd like to wear it out though.

by the power of greyshkul

okaay, so it's been a while...

the holidays are over and party season is winding down and galleries are opening up from a long vacation again. my first one this year was a success. just enough eye candy to make the walk in 20º weather worth it.

Guild & Greyshkul was a nice space over in SoHo. One of the entrances was a screen door (creeky wooden porch-style) and near it a tin tub full of ice and brew. classy. oh and there was a pianist playing in an alcove above us the whole time. he could be seen in the window outside too almost as if he was part of the exhibit.

art was dispersed in such a way that many including myself almost stepped on them. but it's all part of the exhibit right? i took pics of some of my faves that stood out. the picture on the left reminded me of an industrial city and the one on the right looked like ice cream scoops arranged on the floor. i love those colors together (pink, cream, chocolate). I thought the sculptures by artist, Trenton Duerksen were beautifully loaded with references to school my fave included a stack of horses in front of a chalk board (no pic). hmmm...

art doesn't give you immediate answers all the time it's like realizations that come in waves if you're lucky it comes at all.

Another realization I came across this weekend

was that impromptu Cheese & Wine nights are brilliant!

i've got it all.

I'm not a fan of T.E. just because of my tastes, but I saw this one photo of

hers - her art, and it caught my eye. I've been wanting to do my interpretation of that photo ever since...

This is what became of it.

In your face exhibit

So I made it out to BUIA Thursday night and saw a glittery obama painting (which i'm curious to know how it would be received/explained had he lost) and a large beautiful painting from Rachel Schmidhofer. I was talking to the subject (ms. venus) about the omission of name plates near the art; it appears some galleries make it a rule to not have them, maybe for aesthetic reasons. i'd love to hear what the artists would want. i also liked daniel and ion exhibiting there. i went to three all together and lastly to the MFA exhibit at Parsons.

On the

way from Chelsea

i saw this on a wall:

There were some good things at Parsons. it felt like going to someone's loft- it was kind of intimate, like going into someone's room. it was a maze of artists and hard to remember everyone but i do recommend snatching up some Parsons grad for something...

Today I'm hoping to get to the Hunter College gallery uptown and back down to Nurture in BK.

more to come soon when i have more food and less alcohol in me!

not remembering you were yesterday or forgetting you are tomorrow

when I get a great thought or see something and need to write it down, I write it in this notebook I always carry with me; I always seem to be in a retail environment when I think of these things. And when I went into my bag to get it I thought they might think I'm stealing. Did this in Strand today. Too many artists names to remember and not enough brain space in short-term memory to keep it in.
And will anyone ever trust Winona around retail again?

absinthe you're pretty...

tonight i squeezed in a trip to 3rd ward after work and was interviewed like 30 seconds upon entering. it was interesting - a reception for sean fader.

ooh and they had cupcakes! peanut butter was my favorite and it went really well with the absinthe they had there. absinthe is not for the timid, i think the bartender said it was like 135 proof or something, yet my brain may have been kick-flipping at that first sip and i may have heard something different.

it was a good crowd.

chocolate, fake movie stills and neon lighting the way...

i was wondering what this was all about...

i may go to this gallery to see some stuff by vik muniz and gregory crewdson they have there; it ends in December. also i seem to like a lot of things from Gagosian gallery.