People that inspire people.

This is a cool teacher. When gimmick meets education.

Scratch that anti-aesthetic thing: An update to below

Last night I predictably decided to not leave the metal square frame bare and unfinished. After sleeping on the new ideas, I've made new crucial changes.
I've decided to paint the square frame yellow, leaving the sharp blade an exposed metal and to only sharpen one part of the frame.
And I was also thinking alot about how the horse hair will hold onto the wall as well. Right now I'd like to see the hair coming out of a hole on the wall.

I really like the ideas I've plotted out in the previous post. And right now I think that a demanding didactic title like "At some point, you will let me go and I will fall, but you will be the one hurt." feels appropriate for what I want to reveal in the conversation between the 2 objects.

The reason why I decided to only sharpen one part of the frame is to suggest that the horse hair has options. That it doesn't need to grasp the square frame on the sharp blade side, but it does anyways.
And I think that by painting the frame a dull yellow, the blade end will be revealed not shockingly or surprisingly, but not be predicted either. If that even makes sense. The paint I'm using is a non metallic car paint and it has a familiar gloss to it that acknowledges the material its covered is metallic.

At some point, you will let me go, and I will fall but you will be the one hurt.

I've been struggling a lot with this piece.
I think there's mental blocks that's keeping me.
1. I've began to question my art making process and its emphasis on the aesthetic
2. I'm getting bored of what I'm trying to say
2.1: maybe because I don't know how to say it
3. Do I even have anything to say?

I began this piece thinking it would be a faulty tower of sorts with magnets and forks and spoons and knives standing erect. I abandoned that idea 2 weeks into the project for several reasons, most of which are due to doubts caused by academic readings. I decided to approach the materials with somewhat news eyes, but instead I began to repeatedly hear what someone told me last year:

You know you'll eventually loose that interest in the aesthetics. Everyone becomes anti-aesthetic at some point.

So now as a result of an art school tantrum and pressure, I've come to what I think is my first anti-aesthetic piece. Although it's nowhere near done, it may well turn out to be my most aesthetic piece in the end.
I have big plans for it.
All the edges will eventually be sharp like the edge of a knife.
I'll also polish it to a shinier finish.
And the string holding it up will be strands of horse hair.
It's been a pretty convoluted process getting to this stage and I'm not entirely sure I know what I'm doing.
Here's my thoughts on this piece.
I see this piece as 2 separate bodies interacting; the horse hair and the square frame. The horse hair, which is only 6 strands thick, is holding up the square frame. But in that process the square frame is doing 2 things. It's straining the horse hair as it threatens to pull the hairs apart. While doing that, it also threatens to cut the horse hair with its blade when it grips the edge.
Although it seems that the square frame is completely dependent on the horse hair, I am intrigued by the dangerous play that the horse hair partakes in. Its dependence on the square frame is a questionable but defendable act.
This relationship, one of destruction and duel dependence built on issues of trust are all individualistic plains of exploration. This self referential attitude compromises the aesthetics that I often hold too heavy of esteem.

Floorboards

I've bisque fired most of the 64 clay planks and have started to colour them. I originally wanted to throw them in a fire and see what happens, but its started pouring and I got lazy. Instead I've been taking charcoal and colouring them instead. 2 things are important to me; the first is to respect the clay and second, I do not want to de-authentisize the nature of the impressions of wood by using a medium to imitate it. My goal is not to create wood planks out of clay, but to create a new representational object that has the vulnerable qualities of wood and clay. I've also began to experiment with the orientation of the pieces. I really like the gradation factor on a straight line look, but I'm not sure what that will add exactly, other than aesthetic.

PetMan, BigDogs brother.

Dave Salmoni as Tarzan.

Fluff

I've started working on a fluff piece. Its supposed to be a really bad but very decorative speaker. I needed to make something that just looks pretty, period. No concept, no symbolism, no meaning, no whatever. It's been a while.

Floorboards by chance.

I've recently started on a small floor installation of wood planks made from clay. I'm thinking of laying them out by 3s on the floor and hopefully fill a 3 ft x 3ft area. By leaving them bisque fired and then throwing them into a fire pit, I'm hoping to do 2 things. I'm hopefully letting the clay material speak for itself and allow its breakable vulnerability to filter through the smokey soot that then refers to the vulnerability of the mimicked wood material.

A week ago, I saw Mona Hatoum on a lecture about a large span of her work. I had already been thinking about intention vs. intuition in the last couple of weeks as a result of a very long critique and one thing that Ms. Hatoum said during her talk really keeps bothering me. When asked about the titles of her work, she replied by saying that in most cases she completes the work and then finalizes the intended meaning of the piece.

I feel like I've been struggling with this notion for a while now. How much can an artist rely on intuition before the piece begins to fall apart? And how much planning and deliberate intentions should an artist have before the piece begins to feel too didactic?

This particular piece with the floorboards has had a pretty shifty start. It began as a chair constructed from the wood clay planks and then I became ambitious and so it multiplied into 3 chairs. The decision to compose the planks into floorboards instead only came to when I began to lay the planks down to let them dry and I only honestly only decided to change the idea into floorboards because I realized that there is a poster in the studio of a piece that looks very similar to what I eventually wanted to do.

So what began as my intention changed only because of fear of plagiarizing someones work. And although I feel that I have made some intentional decisions, ie. using a rolling pin rather than the slabroller and not trying to hide the fact that there are very similar patterns on some of the planks, etc... I feel like this piece has been guided more by chance.

I now have a definitive plan for this piece and so I guess that there is a very strong intention to what I want to eventually do; which is to allow the piece to show vulnerability. But I really have no idea where that particular push is coming from. How did decide "vulnerability" as my intention?

And so I am left with this conundrum. Is this intention a construction of my intuition?

Oh yeah...

My man, David Altmejd, won the Sobey Art Prize. Le sigh.

An interview with David Chang.

David Chang is the owner of the Momofuku restaurants and bakery in New York. This 2008 Charlie Rose interview is a nice insight into his way of thinking. Chang is one of my inspirations. Lined up with seeing Guernica and reading Guns, Germs and Steel, eating at Momofuku Noodle Bar a year ago has to be one of the most surprisingly inspiring experiences I have come across in the last couple of years.
I know, I know. It sounds stupid and really pretentious go back to art school chatter.
But the way he composes complicated flavours, texture and technique in his work had such resonance. It was the first time I realized that eating can be an intelligent activity. I am still blown away by how his work interacted with me.

Door Ajar

I think I want to do this.

Here, there

There is stiffness in the damp wrinkled air of our sitting here
The smell of birch burning

heated embers linger in this white room
You sat across from me comfortable in your uncomfortable seat
I slouched
Cushions surrounding me
but I would rather have your elbow crooked on my right leg
In the crackling sound and heavy smoky scent the room is created
Here in this space I feel at my most ease
Here inside
the fire glows against the walls, shadows casting
I feel at my most ease
There in the shadowed darkness skips with light
There by the black cast iron fireplace
an orange glow attacks the blistering cold and gives it warmth
And when you're there
and I'm there with you
Here, there
is where I feel at my most ease.

Ex-Gay vultures and their babies.

If there is a such thing as a Divine Design, I think this is proof of the tragedy of star crossed lovers.

Creation myths.

I was listening to CBC's Writers and Company earlier today and someone mentioned that according to the Qur'an, Allah molded man and woman out of clay, earth, sand and water and then breath life into them. As a child I was told a creation myth of God molding men and women out of clay and baking the clay to life. It makes me wonder whether or not this use of clay was a direct influence from the Muslims of the deep south of the Philippines.

I found various other creation myths.
And from Plato's Symposium, a speech my Aristophanes pop cultured by Hedwig.

A Single Man

I have concurrent expectations for this movie.
Either its gonna blow my freakin' mind away or its gonna suck harder than one of his groupies.
I will be extremely disappointed if this movie was just mediocre.

Also judging only by the trailer, I see him channeling Almodovar, Greenaway and Kubrick.

She cries.

Nice to meet you.

GAZE

This, it sits.
In the background.
Like my grandfathers radio.
Or my fathers television.
To drown out the silence
of an otherwise empty room.