My Blog List

Thursday, August 29, 2013

=mail art to Public Storage=



The last time I paid my bill in person, the lady said they keep a gallery of my envelopes in the breakroom, which I found embarrassing while standing there in front of her, but later I found it flattering and sweet. "Art," said Diego Rivera, "is like ham. It nourishes people." I'd like my art to be like a Reece's Peanut Butter Cup. Anyway, it makes paying this stupid monthly bill more fun.

=history on a placemat: the assassination of Trotsky=


Monday, August 26, 2013

=postcard/collage=


because the world is going to the dogs...   and then...

Saturday, August 24, 2013

=lint roller painting #7=





upstairs bathroom floor

=3 more trash collages=


I've been picking up trash lately and gluing it to these cards. It's something I've done sporadically in the past, but lately it has developed into a consuming but quite rewarding practice. There are entire museums worth of collages, quite literally, everywhere, just waiting to be found in the litter people leave on the sidewalks. The gutter, for instance, is one never-ending, ever-flowing collage. I'm just extracting details from it.  

The master of this sort of thing is Diane Keys. You can find an entire blog of her work at http://dianekeys.blogspot.com/. 

Guided by principles of chance, her work nonetheless often has a formal and painterly beauty that is hard to describe. Enhanced as it is by the fractured text in the torn receipts, advertising flyers, tickets, etc that comprise her compositions, her work exhibits an additional poetic element that has come to be known as "trashpo." These poetic fragments often take on a "3rd mind" quality: a sense that a non-temporal, non-linear voice is speaking through what is in effect a new language unbounded by semantic convention.

My recent discovery of her work has been instrumental in my re-absorption into this practice.    

Monday, August 19, 2013

=sketchbook stuff=



=Lint roller painting #6=



Upstairs bathroom, floor detritus with dead ladybug

=Lorca=




28,124 days ago, on this date, in 1936, Federico Garcia Lorca died.

It’s not accurate to say that he “died” as if the cause of death were a car accident or meningitis or a broken neck resulting from a careless trip on the stairs over an untacked corner of carpeting.

His full name was Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca.

He was born near Granada, Spain.  He was killed on his way back to his home in Granada. He was murdered somewhere near Alfacar.

Everything in Spain seems to have so many names. Names piled up like an accident on a California freeway. The full designation of Lorca’s birthplace is Fuente Vaqueros, Granada, Andalusia, Spain.

He was born on the 5th of June 1898.

He was 38 years old when he was murdered, execution-style. He’d lived 13,955 days. He might reasonably have been expected to live at least 10,000 more.

He was killed three days before the Spanish Civil War broke out. It is generally thought that he was arrested and summarily executed by the right wing Nationalist Militia.

It is argued that Lorca was a Marxist.
It is argued that Lorca was sympathetic to members of the Falangists before that largely idealistic group, originally a haven for modernists, futurists, and other artistic types, was co-opted by Francisco Franco who transformed it into a paramilitary political organization on the order of Mussolini’s fascists and Hitler’s Nazis.
It is argued that Lorca had friends among both groups.
It is argued that Lorca was basically apolitical, a romantic naïf, a champion of beauty, freedom, and the imagination who couldn’t properly belong to any political party.

He was a homosexual.
He tried to seduce Salvador Dali (unsuccessfully).

He traveled to the United States in 1929, staying mostly in New York.
He sailed on the SS Olympic, a sister liner to the Titanic.
He didn’t seem to like New York, or America, very much.

The Titanic sank on the 15th of April 1912.

His homosexuality caused him a great deal of anguish.
He was not living in a culture that accepted homosexuality.
It is argued that his sexual orientation played a role in his murder.
It was not likely the reason for his murder, however.
There are accounts that before his execution his homosexuality was referenced, disparagingly, by his killers.
In all probability, Lorca’s murderers used his homosexuality, not as a cause to murder him, but as a means to dehumanize him further before shooting him.

He was a poet and a playwright, known initially for his revival of the gypsy ballad tradition.
He was subsequently worried that he would be “typecast” as a gypsy poet.
He wrote “The Shoemakers Prodigious Wife.”
He took the Dali and Bunuel’s film “Un Chien Andalou” as a personal attack.

He was, as photographs attest, an exceptionally handsome man.

His best known plays make up what is called “The Rural Trilogy.”
They are: The Blood Wedding, Yerma The House of Bernarda Alba

He was a visual artist but his work as a visual artist is generally overlooked, arguably with good reason.

In 2008 an investigation into his murder was re-opened. Nothing was concluded. A potential gravesite was excavated. Nothing was found.

Some things Lorca said and/or wrote:

“Besides black art, there is only automation and mechanization.”

“As I have not worried to be born, I do not worry to die.”

“The only things that the United States has given the world are  skyscrapers, jazz, and cocktails. And in Cuba, they make much better cocktails.”

“The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love and the voice of art.

“I've often lost myself, in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake”

“Only mystery allows us to live, only mystery.”

Lorca died today, 28,124 days ago. He still helps keep everything awake.










=envelope art (to Auburn, NY)=




Saturday, August 3, 2013


"Patapsychology begins from Murphy's Law, as Finnegan called the First Axiom, adopted from Sean Murphy. This says, and I quote, 'The normal does not exist. The average does not exist. We know only a very large but probably finite phalanx of discrete space-time events encountered and endured.' In less technical language, the Board of the College of Patapsychology offers one million Irish punds to any 'normalist' who can exhibit 'a normal sunset, an average Beethoven sonata, an ordinary Playmate of the Month, or any thing or event in space-time that qualifies as normal, average or ordinary.' In a world where no two fingerprints appear identical, and no two brains appear identical, and an electron does not even seem identical to itself from one nanosecond to another, patapsychology seems on safe ground here." 

Thursday, August 1, 2013

=envelope art (on its way to Auburn, NY)=


=never be at a loss for inspiration again!!!=



That's right! Now you can be postmodern author just like that!

Simpler than 1-2-3!

Here's how it works:



Take cards out of pouch. Really,
this would seem unnecessary to
say, but you can’t believe how
many people get stuck at this
step and then wonder what went
wrong. You should see the letters
we get!

Mix and lay out cards in any
order, in any formation or pattern,
it truly doesn’t matter!

Look at them for a while sipping
tea, eating a sandwich, toking on
a joint, etc.

Watch a story emerge. Speak to the
Dead. Or even see into the future!

Use again and again!

The possibilities are endless, like
stupidity in the world!

Use with imaginary gameboard!
(gameboard included in deluxe
edition only)

Over 54,132 cards available!
Collect'em all!
You'll have a bona-fide oeuvre quicker than you can say the words "James Patterson"! 


=games of chance 4 of clubs=