Love is the movement of the heart.

I wanna be a hockey player when I grow up.

I wish I could take some of your fears away.

Matining Codex 3

Study for Codex

I finally got off my ass started to test out my theories. I'm excited about this study. I'm hoping to make more a cylinder type shape.

I'm with you in Rockland.

     I'm with you in Rockland
            where we hug and kiss the United States under
            our bedsheets the United States that coughs all
            night and won't let us sleep
     I'm with you in Rockland
            where we wake up electrified out of the coma
            by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the
            roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the
            hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls col-
            lapse O skinny legions run outside O starry
            spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is
            here O victory forget your underwear we're
            free
     I'm with you in Rockland
            in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
            journey on the highway across America in tears
            to the door of my cottage in the Western night

Ain't nothing like the real thing, baby

Whats going on in America?

I woke up today to find the end of the Democratic filibuster. Scott Brown, a Republican has taken post of Kennedy's old spot in Massachusetts. A spot that has been occupied by the Democrats for over 40 years. And then this. Cindy McCain posting for the NoH8 Campaign.
What the what?

Google: How it read my mind.

Sorta.

I am sitting at my trusty coffee place again at 1 in the morning and I see this great thing in front of me. Stopped at the red light was a yellow VW Westfalia with an ebony coloured canoe on its roof. For some reason it made me laugh and I knew I had to take a picture, but I forgot my camera again and I debated using the camera on my laptop. but I convinced myself it wouldn't work. It sped away 2 seconds before the actual green light.
I immediately went to Google image that scene. I typed "canoe" and "westfalia" and lo and behold.

Matining Codex

I have begun work on what I deem to be a pretty ambitious piece. Last November I began to seriously research creation mythologies of the Malay-Philippine region. I was looking specifically for stories that were somehow uninfluenced by Spanish colonization in the early 16th century. Here is the proposed proposal.

-------------

The Philippines is comprised of 7,107 islands with 170 different languages, it is a country created from the arbitration of the Spanish Dominion with regard to the bounty of the natural resources of the land and not the distinct cultural and ethnic peoples that inhabit the islands. Their society was organized by barangays (villages) and their property and population was determined by how much they could fit into their barangays (barangay also mean boats). Because of the archipelago configuration it isolated groups of barangays and as a result creation myths became abundant in types and variations throughout the country. The Catholic friars saw the importance of these folklore to exist alongside Catholicism. These heathen stories still exist today and influence the complexity of contemporary Filipino culture.

The Boxer Codex is a manuscript from 1595 of 75 illustrations of people in the Malay-Philippine region. Its namesake comes from Charles R. Boxer, a professor at Indiana University and owner of this manuscript. The codex involve 15 illustrations of the peoples of the Philippines before the first onset of the Spanish Catholic colonization in the beginning of the 16th century. This codex contains a lot of our modern understanding of the Filipino peoples before Spanish colonization in 1521.

The Matining Codex is a collection of found objects and assemblages that speak about the existing relationship of Filipinos to faith; heathen and Catholicism. It is comprised of 12 objects sitting on a low plinth/altar with a Christian cross rising in the middle. Each of the 12 objects is an idol-like representation of a common heathen God or character from the varied creation myths of the islands. Their physical image are based on the literal contemporary translations of their names or descriptions from archived oral histories.

20 years ago today, I walked out of YVR with my family and saw my breath for the first time.

Broad Way Sleep - Too Late

Happy Face of Mars

Rugby guy: "Im gay!", Elfred rejoices.

Balled my eyes out reading this.
Im first in line for a date. But seriously though, heart warming story.

Carlos

Mount Mayon

Creation Myths

Everything there is.

Untitled

The Length of Vulnerability and Strength

A Single Man.

What could be better than being tucked up here with you?

I love love.

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.

Bill on DADT and DOMA

Ummmmmm...

Im virtually here 3

Im virtually here 2

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus

He beat me to it.

Although I doubt I couldve made it any more interesting that him. Chad States takes his models from Craigslist. His ad asked them what masculinity is.

Who's gonna save soul now?

I woke up really wanting to see this video.

RIP John Hughes

3 things I'm actually working on in the shop.

1- The shop itself.
Ive been working on my studio space since the first hour I got back to Vancouver and I am only now really just getting going. I pulled up the flooring, prepped the raw concrete to be stained and sealed. I still need to build a wall and paint the walls and the ceiling. I have plans for a retractable wall so that I can shrink or enlarge the space accordingly and hide stuff for storage. But the deal is, I also needed to get a job to pay off my massive debt. So progress has been a tortoise pace. I plan to have the entire thing completed by August 15.

2- Thin man/Fat lady chair.
I am going back to my furniture making roots with a new piece. This one is more furniture than art. And yes, the third chair related piece in the last 9 months. I found a great 60's Canadian/Danish influenced armchair frame and I still have 2 massive cushions that I acquired from my days working at Bensen. I am mainly inspired by an image that has been in my head for a couple of months now.
Sitting on a park bench, a tall thin man embraces his short, fat wife who sits on his lap. I want him to be the thin wood sparse chair frame while she is the over sized cushion.

3- Nothing is abstract anymore.
In my last months in Toronto, I started to experiment with drippings of watered down acrylics on paper. I was then taking lyrics from songs and adding the lyrics on top of the abstraction. I was hoping that the juxtaposition would create organization aesthetically and in meaning. I have started working larger scale now on stretched cotton and watered down acrylic reductions. I have canvases that are 4ft x 8ft of stretched grey cotton and white vinyl.

Bouroullec Brothers - Vegetal Chair

Norman McLaren - A Chairy Tale

Arthur Ganson - Cory's Yellow Chair

RIP Cory Aquino

Sobey Art Prize Shortlist (2 months late)

Graeme Patterson is one of the shortlist finalist for the 2009 Sobey Art Prize. He will represent the East Coast. Winner announced October 15. Other Finalists are; for the West Coast and Yukon, Luanne Martineau (who? but cool); for the Prairies and The North, Marcel Dzama (snore); for Ontario, Shary Boyle (!YAY!); and for Québec, David Altmejd (le sigh)

Time

Another idea that Ive been thinking a lot about is time. In the sense that time doesn't really move forward like how we customarily visualize time to behave. Time actually more accurately explodes. And not just for me or you, it explodes from every atom and when it begins to exist it explodes again. I wanted to really think about that idea, and in doing so I have been doing a lot of sitting and observing and recording the most seemingly mundane things. For 24 minutes on Wednesday I filmed a Smokie vendour setting up on English Bay for the fireworks festival. It wasn't until I got home and played back the video that I realized a story of the Smokie stand from the beginning set up and up to its first customer was all neatly encapsulated in that 24 minutes. And things existed around it; in the background and to the left and right of it, but it was the Smokie stand that still exists in my head. Time is constantly creating presence, it doesn't discriminate between pivotal historical events from the everyday mundane. Time only grows significance once we package it up and convert it into memories.

Im virtually here

I have been completely out of it for the last couple of months.

I moved back to Vancouver in the beginning of June and have been slowly renovating a space for myself in the back of my parent's backyard.

In a failed attempt at cutting out phone and internet for the month of July, new ideas have emerged. I was already thinking about the idea of using internet spaces like comment areas in blogs and using them as a place where stories unfold.

In this new work that Ive been toying around with, I plan on taking screen capture images of spaces in the internet that I have intervened in.

Stewart Brand on real city planning.

I spent an afternoon handing out my resume.

Availability and Reality

Cathedral

Inspired by Philip Johnson's Crystal Cathedral in Orange County, Cathedral is the first of a body of work in which I hope to explore relationships between religion and spirituality; substance and the immaterial, structure and the sublime. My intent is not to critique Catholicism or spirituality, but to explore how the 2 work in relation with each other; how one produces the other and how one propagates the other. Installed in the interior of structure are a system of mirrors and glass. In the process of creating the interior mechanics of the structure, I realized the importance of the audience interaction to look into the Cathedral. In peering into the cross of the structure, a blinding kaleidoscopic light can be seen. Physically, the audience is allowed to see how the piece works. This process became important to me because it allows the audience to see what I perceive as the bridging element between the 2 dynamics. To me this action is my metaphor of how I began to explore religion and spirituality. A peering into and understanding and not understanding how it all works at the same time.

Jonathan, just because.

My old stomping ground.

In my new work, I am continuing to explore the idea of a self portrait. Again using landscapes connected to identity as my central starting idea. I have been doing a lot of research lately on cartography, specifically on the neighbourhood that I grew up in. It's still a strange thing for me to look at a flat aerial Google map image of my childhood neighbourhood. There's a sense of a foreign terrain, an unfamiliarity in the angle of shadows, but once I start to see the shapes of the houses and remember old routes, I start to make sense of how I used this terrain. I think theres also something profoundly pretty about surburban aerial shots. Perhaps it's the added narrative that I've implied in the image, but to me rooftops of houses are way more interesting than rooftops of high rises.

Missing you.

Rationalizing Modern Art

Finally, a response to the Filipino Awareness Forum. Kinda.

Here is I guess the complicated process of how I came to start calling this puppet a self portrait. Around the time I started doing research on puppets, I attended a forum discussion on Filipino Identity in Canada. I have been doing a lot of work on identity beforehand, but nothing about my Filipino background. During the forum, someone mentioned the thousands of islands that are strung together to make up the fabric of the Philippines. When I saw images of the unclothed Bunraku puppets, I started to associate each segmented limb as an island part. That is why I originally wanted the puppet to be naked and for the construction of the body to be seen. But when I performed with the puppet, he felt really incomplete. I guess this was around the time I started to call the puppet "Little Elfred" and in that process, the final direction of where the piece is headed was decided. I am notorious for always wearing black and aesthetically I thought that the puppet would look better wearing all black. Naturally, I started to make an identical outfit of the clothes that I was wearing when I planned out his clothes. I put a hole on the elbow of the cardigan, just like how my cardigan has a hole on the elbow. I scuffed the back pocket from wallet wear. I even rolled up the pant legs cause mine are always rolled up from biking. I could only relate to what I know, and I only really know the wear of my clothes. So I came upon this new position; his body and face doesn't even vaguely resemble me, but his clothes are identical to mine. I guess what I eventually want to say is that the body of the puppet conforms to the idea of segmented body parts like how the Philippines is built from segmented island parts. The body is the core, the structure that allows the puppet to move and make gestures. And the clothing is the layer that works around the shape of the body. It is what you see, it is what creates the idea that the puppet has mass and a personality. And together they work to create a self portrait of who I think I am.

Not the rebound. A new relationship.

BSG is over. Kings, check it out. (via Ninjavideo, you'll need DivX and to launch their beta)

My pepper heart.

No skid marks in sight.

Underwear for charity in eBay from mostly British celebrities for the New North London Synagogue. Daniel Day Lewis' is by far the raunchiest. Ricky Gervais' is oddly boring. And not surprisingly, Fergie's is the tackiest and all she did was sign it.

Bad paintings of Barack Obama.

A satisfying finale.

I went to bed last night at 4am. It took 2 hours to fully download the streaming video for the final episode of Battlestar Gallactica. Upon finishing the semi-tearful good bye, I went to bed with a confused smile on my face.

This morning, having slept on it, I felt that the ending was very satisfying. Yes, a little cheesy at too many moments, but what finale isn't. My main concern before watching the episode was that it might feel crammed and rushed. They have to do so much in the mere 1 hour, 35 minutes and 34 seconds, but while watching it, I didn't feel that rush and shortness at all, like I have with some BSG episodes.

I feel like I should see it again today, despite being extremely excited for it before and during viewing the episode, I think I may have granpa-ed out in some scene and dozed off. That is a fault of my own, and not the holy makers of the show.

I am extremely sad to see the end of one of the best shows I have ever seen. I think the ending left enough and revealed enough to keep the story to exist in my imagination, and that is why I think the finale was satisfying.

Spoilers ---

Here are my thoughts.
1: I think its hilarious that Galen is suggested to be the Highlander.
2: I'm not sure if I missed it, but Starbuck as the harbinger of death? Was that ever explained? She brought them back to Earth. I don't get it. I liked how she just disappeared though.
3: I thought all the flashbacks were kinda pointless when I first saw them, but I think it had to be used to create the feeling that the story wasn't being rushed.
4: Rosalyn's boy toy - hummana hummana.
5: I still find it hard to believe that Ellen was smart enough to create the other Cylons.
6: I was expecting something cooler with the death of the Kavil and the other Cylons and I thought that the final 5 would create some sort of miracle, but I liked what happened instead.
7: I don't think they have anything to worry about with the Cylon Centurions, they won't be back.
8: I cried a little when they shot Boomer.
9: The whole Opera house thing felt a little like they were trying to fit something in that didn't fit in properly.
10: Final minute with the Asimo type robots - brilliant.

The school girl crush continues

An interview with Queerty reveals even more about my Subway Hero. I was giggling like a school girl while reading this interview. *sigh*

Underwater volcano eruption

This eruption may have caused the 7.9 earthquake felt in Tonga 2 hours ago. Tsunami warnings have been made. This may explain the tremors felt in Australia that Ive been hearing friends talk about as well.

1. Technology is amazing. We can witness this eruption of a pretty remote place half way around the world and know about an earthquake that happened just 2 hours ago.
2. Nature will always kick Technology's ass big time.

A different way to think about creative genius

I'm gonna have to apologize. Im pretty sure that the next couple of posts are gonna be TED videos. A whole slew of TED videos just got released because the February conference just wrapped up.

Im inlove with this man.

Her super legs.

Should I stay or should I go.

I have been in Toronto now since August and aside from the last bit of summer and OCAD, I really can't say that I like this city at all. I find myself constantly talking about Vancouver and consequently annoying myself and making Torontonians mad.

Last Wednesday I came home and saw the letter from Emily Carr University that I was told would arrive mid-April. I was beginning to get really comfortable in the in limbo and my routine of 17 hour days at OCAD was something that I absolutely loved. In the in between space of not knowing what I'm gonna do come September, I guess I started to feel stability in uncertainty. It was strange. Mistaken or not, I found the structure that I had been asking for. Perhaps I was so desperate to find it in a person, that it manifested instead into something else. And in that strangeness and uncertainty I began to like Toronto through the windows of OCAD. From the angle of the 5th floor window of the school's "tabletop", Grange park and the cityscape looked perfect. The weather is warm. Warm enough for me to ride my bike, Chaplin. The glint of the sun against the metallic blue of the AGO was almost Scandinavian, I bet I could fool myself. And it has been a while since I last seriously thought about Cory.

I tore the letter open and read the words that after 3 attempts were finally in front of me.
"Congratulations, we welcome you to Emily Carr University."
And as the words passed through my eyes, I set the letter down on my desk and walked towards the washroom to fix the broken toilet that Amar, my roommate, had texted me about earlier in the day. Perhaps its because it was 1 am and my mind was reeling with a combination of financial problems, excitement for a new piece and the butterflies of having to show my new work early the next morning, but the word "Congratulations" just seemed lackluster. Like instead of it made of solid silver, it was hollow and covered with aluminum foil instead.

I went to bed, defeated by the broken toilet and needing to go.
The next morning I woke up, the letter forgotten, already lost under books and bills somewhere on my desk.

He can do no wrong to me.

I don't care what this man has done, he makes incredible music.

In Here We Sit at Six o'Clock

In doing this piece, I thought a lot about the passing of time. The 2 main found materials used were a rocking chair and 3 Afghan blankets, both items that can be found in a nursery and a nursing home. I tried to commit a lot of the aesthetic towards a type of playfulness that I thought would work inside those 2 very different spaces. The title refers to both morning and night, as times that I felt when the chair and blanket would be used in those 2 worlds.