ardour

Serra's Houses

2011-04-19T16:08:00.000-07:00

taken from Serra's tree house at Art and Architecutre at The Gowanus Ballroom

...and...

inside her Baba Jaga house at the convent

a light in the basement

2011-04-04T14:11:00.000-07:00

watch a video here

oro

2011-03-27T19:17:00.000-07:00

shangri la

2011-03-27T18:47:00.001-07:00

2011-03-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

Another beautiful issue of Fibra

Coincidence of Wants

2011-03-26T15:10:00.001-07:00

Hand collaged buttons for Tradeschool's A Coincidence of Wants at the Whitney Museum, March 25th, 2011

Anna Hostvedt

2011-03-07T13:47:00.001-08:00

documented some of Anna Hostvedt's work recently.

question / answer

2011-03-01T10:57:00.000-08:00

White Ring

2011-02-01T14:48:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I participated in the Sequence of Waves exhibition organized by the collective Rabid Hands. After a 10 day residency in the St. Cecilia's convent in Greenpoint, the show opened for 1 day only on January 29th.

I collaborated on an installation with Phillip David Stearns. Our project was inspired by the meditative, hyper-aware state one experiences in a remote winter time setting. Phillip constructed a string instrument tensioned between the floor and ceiling that was triggered by stillness. Motors with fishing wire attached to them were set off in succession, striking the strings to build a layered and dense sound. I constructed the crystalline light boxes that ran around the room in a dark to light gradient, suggesting peripheral vision and highlighting natural textures. These structures were joined in the center by a backlit seamless, an infinite space. Movement that altered the light from these fixtures would in turn silence the undulating strings.

Here is a write up on the Rhizome blog.

EOC

2010-12-20T06:30:00.001-08:00

the cantry

2010-12-12T11:28:00.000-08:00

the cantry

Jenn Su and friends have organized a POP UP shop and communal space in LA. I submitted a small run of a zine I'm calling Już Dziś (roughly meaning now/today/already in Polish), each example is paired with a 1 1/4" button of a collaged image.

Fibra

2010-11-22T16:31:00.001-08:00

featured in Fibra

holyholy

2010-11-16T23:33:00.000-08:00

Sibo

2010-11-15T16:41:00.000-08:00

shot at fort tilden.

Alexander Campaz

2010-11-15T16:32:00.001-08:00

recently.

End of Century

2010-11-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

collages are up at End of Century in the L.E.S.
175 Rivington street between Clinton and Attorney
small blurb in TimeOut too

bulletin

2010-07-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

meals

2010-07-06T00:18:00.001-07:00

some meals prepared during this summer's travels.

dream pizza mirage

2010-07-05T01:37:00.001-07:00

klein garten

2010-07-05T01:28:00.000-07:00

...goodbye green, hello sun...

deam pizza

2010-06-12T09:10:00.001-07:00

aaron's house

2010-06-10T03:49:00.000-07:00

made it.

put my bike together.

it was touch and go with the weather for a bit.

hanging out with these guys.

and this guy.

backpack

2010-05-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

Packing up for my summer trip.

Garden tent dwelling photo odyssey.

berlin//poland

2010

I'll try to post regular updates on my progress.

going under

2010-04-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

For Annabel, Rina, Tomashi's senior show.

•

2010-03-24T22:56:00.001-07:00

epilogue

2010-03-15T01:22:00.001-07:00

Getting ready for the show.
Field Trip to Point Reyes.
Epilogue Magazine featured a couple of my collages.

showwohw

2010-03-09T04:17:00.001-08:00

Flying out to sf this friday.
My collages and some new and larger work are going to be shown at Tartine Bakery in the Misson.

trade school

2010-02-19T07:29:00.000-08:00

Taught a class on portraiture at TRADESCHOOL a project by OURGOODS.
Here's a link to some of the classwork.

rorschach forest

2010-02-05T13:34:00.000-08:00

cardboard forest diorama. the deer is a cardboard cutout too.

the set up.

red velvet

2010-01-24T07:35:00.000-08:00

Causes celebres.

I turned 26 today.
Baked a 6-layer red velvet cake.
Photographed countless people eating it.
and
TRADESCHOOL opened.

spinoza's ethics

2009-12-13T21:13:00.000-08:00

helped Louise Ma document her book

A BRIEF GUIDE

to spinoza's ethics

I bartered my services for a copy of the book using

OURGOODS

we're beta-testers

2009-12-12T23:14:00.000-08:00

territorial pissings

seriuosly

2009-12-02T08:48:00.000-08:00

bone diamond

2009-11-28T20:37:00.000-08:00

set of three

welcome to jamrock

2009-11-26T06:17:00.001-08:00

one of my favorite songs when i was travelling.

cranksgiving

2009-11-25T18:50:00.000-08:00

I was interviewed by the new york times before the start of this alley cat...

i sound like a wizard.

also, those are my electric blue tights off to the side in the running start shot.

and he spelled my name right.

thank you very much.

ecstatic peace

2009-11-23T10:57:00.000-08:00

Attended the book release party for Michael Lavine's Grunge book.
Sonic Youth was in attendance, neat.

Friday I prop styled a shoot for Michael and Violent Soho.
Had to build a bunch of cool slingshots and make 5 kids look like extras in Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Here'd some photos of the two slingshots I made: One a gen-u-ine Louis Vuitton limited edition, complete with serial# tag wound into the handle, all the leather and canvas stripped from a bag I had lying around. Note the clasp in the foreground. The other, a prop straight out of mad max, metal pipes and red suede. Also made a box cutter with a coon tail dangling off the end.

I think it came out really well, excited to see the finals.

sklejki

2009-11-22T06:49:00.001-08:00

new collages.

sklejki

Light Sail 1

2009-11-16T14:45:00.000-08:00

wow.

start here

2009-11-16T07:42:00.000-08:00

moss and national geographics.
makes me feel great.

chaos reigns

2009-10-26T22:21:00.000-07:00

Saw von Trier's Antichrist.
It was probably the most entertaining movie-going experience I've had this year.
Von Trier claims making this movie pulled him out of a serious depression.
It was funny, There Will Be Blood bludgeoning in the bowling alley funny.

bad photoshop

2009-10-18T13:49:00.001-07:00

png. clipping paths. quick masks. is there anything i won't do on a rainy day?

eye

2009-10-14T21:26:00.000-07:00

spilling out

2009-10-09T20:09:00.001-07:00

this was in the Quixotic show organized by Andrew Graham and friends

harvest

2009-10-08T12:06:00.001-07:00

reap what you sow

pyre

2009-09-24T11:58:00.000-07:00

duh.

the casera era

2009-09-13T08:16:00.001-07:00

repurposing community.

on the horizon

2009-08-07T11:43:00.001-07:00

on a collage kick...

yellowstone

2009-08-07T11:41:00.001-07:00

tilden at sunrise

2009-07-19T07:15:00.000-07:00

interventionists

2009-07-08T00:26:00.001-07:00

IDOK

2009-06-11T21:22:00.001-07:00

proposal for the IDOK collective in SF

pixels

2009-06-08T09:17:00.001-07:00

new.

casera era

2009-03-13T00:22:00.000-07:00

building the show. then packing it down.

and!

2009-02-05T14:24:00.001-08:00

for This Frontier Needs Heroes

frontiersome

2009-01-08T12:40:00.001-08:00

from a collage i did for the new THIS FRONTIER NEEDS HEROES record

hinter

2008-12-29T09:40:00.001-08:00

Pouring off old worries and obsessions.

I'm very optimistic.

loose in the air

2008-11-26T07:46:00.000-08:00

will i ever get my head around designing a better website?

notebook

2008-11-23T09:19:00.000-08:00

Working on scanning the contents of a tiny sketchbook. Unfortunately, the scanner I have is terrible and they need to be re-done.

great north

2008-10-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

Visiting upstate with mom and dad. Relearning key survival skills as I get ready to set down new paths...read: i need a job.

golden gate

2008-10-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

From the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate park. To get the best seats in the house to see Will Oldham all you had to do was walk into the surrounding woods. Without a doubt, my last two weeks in San Francisco were nothing short of magical.

double feature sleepover

2008-09-03T22:56:00.001-07:00

A poster for the Club Sandwich Jem Cohen double feature screening and sleepover at SOL. Due to a horible twist of fate that had me locked in my own bike chain for a day, I am also without keys to my studio and the silk screened version might not see the light of day...eeep.

deadline

2008-08-28T23:23:00.001-07:00

For tickets, applications, projects, homecomings. Time just twist around itself, and amounts to nothing at all.

wallpaper

2008-08-28T11:21:00.000-07:00

end of a summmer

2008-08-25T01:05:00.000-07:00

Shot these photos of my windsock sculpture at Fort Tilden right before going on my trip. They've been sitting on various CDs and hardrives for over a year.

Yesterday was the first time I watched Herzog's Fitzcarraldo. I watched it twice, actually, the second time to hear Herzog's commentary. It was at once amazing and incredibly sad, according to Herzog himself this was Kinski's only role in which he actually smiled and played a relatively up beat character. Everything in the production, from the shoot, plot, to leading character always veered on the edge of collapse and chaos. And even when the impossible was done, in the fictionality of the screen play and the reality of the shoot, an actual ship moved across a mountain in the deep Peruvian jungle, only more complications. The shoot took so much out of Herzog, that when the boat finally slipped back into the water, he couldn't even muster a shred of joy. He was just done. And then they sent the ship through the rapids...twice.

I really needed to see this movie. I just didn't realize how much until I actually started watching it. Because I have seen it, I kind of feel permanently on the verge of tears now. Listening to Arvo Part too, a strong combination. I feel like him and Herzog have certain aspects of their aesthetics in line with each other, asceticism and faith, though not necessarily a religious one in both respects.

quixotic.

Murmured

2008-08-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

Recently got accepted into a group photo show at Rock Paper Scissors in Oakland. The opening was during this month's Art Murmur. My image ended up being sent out with the show press release which was a really nice surprise.

Getting my work ready for this was not unlike a recent uphill slog to Bolinas by bike. There were a couple of moments where I was not entirely sure that I'd make it or if this had been such a good idea in the first place. But it worked out in the end, sort of.

The curators accepted two photos which I had copies of on my flickr. When I went through my archives to track down originals I found that my Argentina archives were missing a critical folder, July 15th, 2007 to be exact, the first day in Buratovich, the day I took this photo.

Not that I didn't back it up, but those back ups were on a CD carousel that seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. The other image selected, incidentally, was also on this carousel. That only left the original negative...except that I had left this negative box in the photo department at Cooper over a year ago. Fortunately, Caitlin held on to it for me. She gave it to my brother and then he mailed it to me, along with some Amol.

The negatives arrived in the nick of time, they got scanned and the next day the file was printed. Then mounted on foam core. Then dropped off at the space with 24 hours to go until the opening. Then it fell, got dented and re-hung, albeit a little crooked, with alligator clips...sigh, more dents in the image area. But I didn't know about any of this until it stabbed me in the face the minute I walked into the gallery...

Club Sandwich

2008-07-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

The finished version of the Club Sandwich and Canyon Cinema screening poster. A two-color silkscreen. Nick helped me print it over at Patchwerk Press.

Unfortunately, I never made it to the screening itself. Instead I rode my shoddy Schwinn up the 1 and Panoramic Highway all the way to Bolinas for Kelly's show.

Which was great.

With live music to boot.

The after-party was around a neighbor's fire pit on the night of a full moon. We ate popcorn and grilled mutant zuchini the size of water melons. The next day Kelly and me hiked to Bass Lake and swam with the mist as it rolled off the blanket of trees to study its reflection in the glass of the lake's surface.

No sleep

2008-07-12T03:36:00.000-07:00

Things I learn here in San Francisco: a brass monkey is a mixture of malt liquor and orange juice and a brooklyn is two cases of beer and a handle.

Coming up this Friday at the Horseshoe Grounds in Golden Gate park is a screening of several 16mm silent experimental films accompanied with live improvised music by Extra Life and Nat Turner. Jenn Su helped organize it, and I made a flyer for it. While I haven't had a chance to sleep much in recent days, I did figure out the secret to post collegiate all nighters: Austrian white wine that is corked with a soda cap...classy.

Kelly Nicholson is also going to have the opening for her crazy sculpture at the Commonweal Gallery in Bolinas. I think I want to try and bike there, but lazyness will probably take the best of me and I'll take the bus...or hitchhike...

E S P

2008-06-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

Channeling my brother.

Last week or so in honor of his 30th birthday. He planted a tree with a time capsule and I found this. Shot it in faux stereoscope so that it's almost the same as actually being here/there.

a distance

2008-06-23T00:23:00.000-07:00

I shot this video in February of 2007 and got a chance to screen it at Gitana Rosa Gallery as part of the Natural Selection film screening, right before I left for Argentina nearly A YEAR ago.

Holy crap.

This Frontier Needs Heroes performed and Jessica also showed her film For the Longing in My Heart. They've been working on recording an album that they hope to release soon.

an afternoon in the cave

2008-06-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

Jenn's room is painted an acid yellow in an attempt to compensate for the lack of light. It has only one window which empties out into a tiny octagonal well with a shoddy wooden ladder leading up to the roof as well as three other windows from the neighboring apartments. Sometimes, in the evenings Pigeon man leaves his blinds up and you can see the shit covered golf clubs, powder skis and stacks upon stacks of Rubbermaid storage containers thrown against the shit-flecked walls of his apartment cum pigeon coop. At night, the rats and pigeons alternate between making the background noises to which I make my drawings. I can hear the mice running through the walls and the pigeons cooing or stretching their wings. And then the BART passes by. Makes for interesting dreams and my drawings are full of honey combs (there are bees in the garden) with eyes peering out of the darkness of each compartment.

I seem to be finally hitting some sort of a stride. My drawings are strange; the palette harsh, the lines really graphic and unpretty. I don't know how I feel about them yet, but I am re-establishing a routine and a discipline, and Jenn's cave of a room is really good for that. There is so much clutter in here, it's hard to get up without ricocheting into a stack of records, an opened book, computer, camera, journal or piece of paper. And when more tea is needed, downstairs for a snack and drum "practice."

Yesterday I watched this. Chris Johanson talking with Jo Jackson about their collaborative pieces at the Walker Art Center. It was hard to sit through; two incredibly intelligent people who are obviously uncomfortable with discussing their work and as a result, come off as painfully inarticulate. It did get better though, once they finished with the slide show, they briefly talked about living in San Francisco, the extremes of human lows and highs it represents, how there is no other place as intense and with such nice light. I agree. And then they talked about not having or wanting a real job, only as a way to pay minimal bills. Talked about spending all their free time in the studio, 40 hours or more a week, the real full time job. Something I admire.

Combing through Jenn's record collection:

once spoken

2008-03-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

Ushuaia isn't all that different from the woods surrounding it. It grows organically up from the harbor, along the hillsides in horizontal stretches. The huts and houses in various states of construction or decomposition grow and die in upon themselves. Old ones grow additions or brace against larger neighbors with nothing more than a few wooden stilts. Ways are carved through in the ordered fashion of the grid, and re-worked with improvised pathways and meandering wooden stairways. And new roads and new houses are continually pushing out on the sides.

When the sun rose in the morning, the clouds parted just enough, allowing it to wash over the Beagle Chanel and illuminate the entire hillside with a golden light. The vintage Chevy truck in the driveway glowed a National Geographic red, bright and yellow-toned and cast a long shadow over the patches of growth glistening with frost. Miles out to sea, past the shelter of the surrounding islands, really just sunken mountains part of the same chain that runs up the length of the entire continent, was the tongue of the Antarctic cape licking up towards us and pushing the spit of snow and rain against its continental pallet. It felt as though I were still looking at one of those glossy pages in the comfort of my living room. But something had gone wrong, or wonderfully right, so that in the act of tearing the image out stretched and animated its landscape to create a convincing illusion. Only there was no illusion to speak of, this was the end of the world and I was standing on it.

The first day we arrived we hiked in the woods. Dense and overgrown with moss. We hiked straight up the hillside of an abandoned ski run, the steel pillars of the lift acting as distance markers all the way to the top. Feet slipping in mud, dogs running circles around us, up ahead and back to check if we were still coming.

Dark grays and greens, shades of maroon and lilac. And the air, sodden with moisture, then became littered with thick wet snow. We spilled out onto a glacial field, completely flat and bordered by deep growth of spiky conifers. Shrouded in the clouds, only the uncovered rocky outcroppings of the mountains were visible. These jagged shapes continued on, formed into perfect white peaks completely obscured by the cover, they materialized out of the dense white air as the clouds thinned.

Coming down through the woods, without a path and crashing through the dense and brittle branches. Dead, dying, thriving woods, moss and mushrooms. Everything crumbling, brittle with age. Trunks leaning against one another, overgrown with thin hairy moss the color of sage, a milky green. And the smell coming up from the ground, littered with shriveled black little sponges once the color of kogiel mogiel and riddled with holes like nanoprene swiss cheese, was like lakes, like rivers; like summer in hibernation. Everything glowed in the bare light, colors standing against each other and at once melting together into the dimness.

THE ANSWER IS YES

2007-11-25T05:00:00.000-08:00

Just in case you were wondering, you do.

The first time I heard about WWOOFing was four years ago, travelling through Spain and France with Leanne. The trip was a month and a half, and we had plans to go all the way along the Spanish coast to Morroco then Sicily and up to England again. But things change when you decide to stay in a crazy squat that looks like a castle, 15 minutes outside of Barcelona. Priorities get shuffled around and before you know it, three weeks have passed. We made it as far as Granada, then hitched back along the coast.

We got stuck just outside of Alicante for four hours in the punishing sun before we got a ride with Jorge in his tiny peugot to a little town just outside Valencia. He left us in his house, advised us not to do anything bad to it, with half a roasted chicken on the table and clean towels. The next day he took us to a service station where we could catch another ride farther up along the coast, and before we were even finished with unpacking out bags out of his car, a trucker walks up to us, asks us if we need a ride and 14 hours later, we're sleeping in a vineyard outside of Montpelier, where Lauren was studying French for the month.

Then up north to Castellon, whith two Columbians working for Michellin, they drop us off at the park that overlooks the city but not before driving us around town to make sure we have some food. In the morning we wake up underneath the shade of a tree, having slept the night on neatly landscaped grass. The view below is a sea of red tiled roofs and the dark spires of a gothic church in the very center of it all. In Paris that evening, where we fail to get in touch with Benedicte and have to sleep at the foot of a stairway entering a public pool. This was in the Latin Quarter and our only other option was the small island of vegetation just outside the entrance to the pool.

We woke up really early, sunrise, and after wandering around in search of food, spilled out on to the plaza where the Pantheon is. Someone was waking up with flamenco, it was wafting out of an open window, and we sat underneath it and watched as a young couple cross the bariers encircling the Pantheon. They lie down on the coble stones and bask in the morning light.

I still have the photo.

The rest of the trip goes well too. Three years later getting ready to travel by myself, I look into wwoofing, join the independents, and this is where I will be working for a couple of weeks in January. Looks like paradise.

But paradise always comes with its complications, so keep an eye out for updates.

ca - nas - ta

2007-11-23T14:31:00.000-08:00

A store front space, teeny-tiny and wabi-sabi, that bills itself as:

BIBLIOTECA
HEMEROTECA
VIDEOTECA
GALERIA
PANIFICACION
TEXTILES

just opened in Buenos Aires in the Colegiales neighborhood. Its the collective effort of Julian, Ana, Guillermina and friends. If you are in Buenos Aires you should go and hang out! I´m not really certain if the word ´panification´really exists in the Spanish language, but its very evocative, just like the pictures of the cappucinos the site proposes to make for you if you go and visit. Canasta DELGADO 1235, COLEGIALES

Julian just had a show open in New York at Little Cakes on November 19th and its going to be up until the 16th of December. Its called The Light Pack and it looks amazing. You can check out the photos on the Little Cakes site. I shot the photos of the test installation that appears in the show card.

Originally he wanted to make rainbows appear in the shot. Me, Julian and Pablo tried misting the whole scene with a pressurized spray can and pointed sunlight into the scene using mirrors and glass, but it didn´t work. After we kind of gave up, I got up close and took the jungle shots. I like how these simple shapes become so personified.

heehee, now go and eat some facturas...

i look

2007-11-19T10:37:00.000-08:00

While in Buratovich, Caro used her superb planning and organizational skills to score us a house in Sierra de la Ventana, an Alpine resortish town and, well, a supposed Nazi hideaway. It was a bizzare experience to walk through this picturebook town, even stranger was going out on these walks with no less than four other photographers at the same time. My friend Francisco Drisaldi takes beautiful photos, you can look at his flickr page here.

Here´s one he took of me. I think I look pretty sad. Which, at the time, happened to be the case. And here is one I took of him and Fernando.

best night

2007-11-04T01:51:00.000-07:00

ever. and another 24 hours until brobot.

apples for nuts

2007-10-30T14:04:00.001-07:00

overstuffed
plastic bag
and contents
threatening
to spill

all
rotten

These photos were taken around this time last year on an apple picking expedition just outside of the city. In the initial stages of planning this outing, we romanticized a swarm of people leaping out of the beat up van and descending upon the groves of unsuspecting trees like locusts, eating everything in sight. The reality was slightly more underwhelming; only about five or six people ended up coming and despite initial excitement about ALL YOU CAN EAT in the orchard, we soon realized it was nearly impossible to pick clean a single tree, let alone an entire orchard.

For anyone who has never been apple picking an experience usually goes something like this: Upon entry you receive a plastic bag you are instructed to fill with as many apples as you can. During your time in the orchard, you are free to pick and eat to your heart's content. You pay for your apples by the bag. It's kind of an old fashioned honor system that these enterprises run on. But just as a precaution, once you line up to exit the grounds, the seasonal teenage workforce casually searches your car for hidden stashes of fruits. You can also buy numerous varieties of "homemade" pie at the "country" store, as well as: jams, preserves, butters, sets of colored pencils made out of tree branches various other useless crap your mother can hang on the walls of her neat and spacious kitchen. Adjacent to the pony, hay, pumpkin related activities is a conscesions stand usually peddling cider donuts and, yes, cider. All remarkably cheap, sweet and delicious. At about the two hour mark the initial signs of sugar overload begin to set it and you start to crash, developing a headache or a minor case of agoraphobia. You finish the day with an equally unhealthy restaurant meal and then you drive the two hours back to the city.

I took these with my Fujica 6x9 range finder right after I bought it from my friend Dave. Despite using some of the cheapest film, student grade Delta, the shots came out amazing. These are some of the last things I printed in the black and white darkroom before I switched to digital.

santa rosa

2007-09-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

and

while it's not
easy to call up
the memory of
ears ringing;
when happy
to be alone
and sad to have
no one to tell it to,
anxiety is a pain
one can learn
to live with
if they
can only
remember
to breathe

audibly