Adventures in Long Island City 2nd - 6th Days

Tuesday April 12th 2011
Traveled from Manhattan to LIC. We started at the studio which hosted Keith Edmier's fabrication of the sculpture to be completed during my stay. I will go into greater detail about the sculpture and the host studio once the piece is installed in Sweden. For now I want to describe the events surrounding the work I did there. We worked through the day on the sculpture and then went back to Manhattan. I got to see Keith Edmier's studio on the way to our spot to crash for the night. Keith Edmier's studio is a strata of reference materials, sculpture, mold making/casting materials and samples. It was super to see the layout of such a great artist's work place. One thing that i thought was cool is that Dick Smith's "Monster Make-Up" kit was prominently displayed in Keith's studio. This kit was one of my prize possessions when i was a kid.

We then went to a mexican restaurant where I had a pumpkin flower quesadilla and then to the place to flop.
The place I stayed this second night is worthy of mention. I stayed at the flat of Frank Veteran, who is the physician that was in charge of attempting to resuscitating John Lennon at Roosevelt Hospital after he was shot by Mark Chapman. Frank Veteran is also the subject of several works by Keith Edmier -http://www.artnet.com/artwork/423873606/frank-veteran-1980.html

Wed April 13th 2011

Close to the studio and around the hotel in LIC i noticed a proliferation of eyeball stickers. These "google eyes" i found out belong to an art project called The Googly Eye Cru. These guys just put these eye stickers on anything that will look like a face with the addition of the sticker.
http://www.thegooglyeyecru.com/?page_id=14
Contact with this group is pending. I think it is time for The Googly Eye Crew to make there presence known in Tampa and Orlando.



I also met the gentleman that built the boat above. Reid Stowe who is known to hold the record for the longest ocean journey without touching land. He lives on his boat docked on the east river with his son. Very interesting man- his boat is also decorated by some really great wooden carvings.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reid_Stowe

Adventures in Long Island City 1st Day

Recently, I was able to spend ten days in Manhattan and Long Island City working on a sculptural project for artist Keith Edmier. The week was filled with interesting people and art ( a common experience in this city) but this trip was exceptional in all ways.




The first stop was at The Grand Central Oyster Bar which even though I have been through Grand Central many times had no idea existed. The place is absolutely beautiful with vaulted arches throughout. It also has one of the most extensive raw bars that I have ever seen. Check out this menu-
http://www.oysterbarny.com/pdf/dailymenu.pdf
I have never seen such a variety of fresh oysters to pick from. In Florida you usually get one choice- just raw oysters from who knows where.


My next stop was at Ye Old Carlton Arms Hotel. This place is one of the funkiest spots I have ever spent the night. Every room is filled with mural work. My room was on the 4th floor which has a hallway themed in an egyptian motif. The room I stayed in(8D) was decorated with a mural of an Italian town(done by artist Colette Jennings) with silhouettes in the small windows. One of them seemed to be depicting someone murdering another person by choking them down. The owner of the place told me that the artist known as Banksy spent a lot of time there and even did a mural in one of the rooms(room 5B). Also all over the hotel are painted works by Richard Hambleton.

http://www.carltonarms.com/

The Curse of the Crying Woman

Found! The film that haunted my childhood with an image that was burned into my memory, even if I had changed it around somewhat. The image from a black and white film of a long haired figure laying face up with its features gradually disappearing ( in my memory the face was nonexistent, a kind of scabbed over mass, and blood welled up from underneath the scab to completely obscure the whole mess)

The film is Curse of the Crying Woman, a Mexican horror pict which includes many of the things i remember as a child. The film was released in the USA in 1969 which is the year I was born. I can only imagine that I saw it years later on Creature Feature or some other television program.

Here is the sequence that I believe is the one that i have searched for all these years.

This sequence also reminds me of another similar all time favorite from "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" where the aliens, in their death throes dissolve into a rice crispy and goo kind of substance that flows out of their clothing.

Orcas at dawn.

Recently i have been working with Nassal Co. in Orlando on scenic environments for Sea World

Orlando, San Diego CA and San Antonio TX. Here are some images of the "Stainless Wave" that will be the new backdrop to the Orca shows at Sea World Orlando and some new friends i met there while doing touch up.
The female whales and the young whales are kept together in a complex of tanks and get moved

from tank to tank often. Watching them while working i got the impression that they really

look forward to the "changing of the tank" routine. They crowd at the entry gate when they know it is time. I have to say that the situation isn't as dismal as i had thought in terms of play space. But it is still not the ocean. In the back of all this, further from the show tank is a large tank where Tilly is kept. He makes his presence known now and then by jumping and causing huge waves to ripple through all the tanks- all the way to the show tank out front. He is kept next to where they are demolishing and updating the tank that he killed Dawn Brancheau in.
More later on this.

Pecha Kucha #8

On March 11th I was one of seven individuals to give a presentation at the Tampa Bay Pecha Kucha event. This was the 8th in a series of Pecha Kucha presentations in the Tampa Bay area.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=56649826779

Pecha Kucha (Japanese: ペチャクチャ, IPA: [pet͡ɕa ku͍̥t͡ɕa]^[1], chit-chat) is a presentation methodology to organize the presentation order of an event, such as in a Pecha Kucha Night.

Pecha Kucha Night was devised in February 2003^[2] by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Tokyo's Klein-Dytham Architecture (KDa), as a way to attract people to Super Deluxe, their experimental event space in Roppongi.^[3] Pecha Kucha Night events consist of around a dozen presentations, each presenter having 20 slides, each shown for 20 seconds. Each presenter has just 6 minutes 40 seconds to explain their ideas before the next presenter takes the stage. Conceived as a venue through which young designers could meet, show their work, exchange ideas, and network, the format keeps presentations concise, fast-paced and entertaining.

In 2004 PKN began running in a few cities in Europe, and has since become a worldwide phenomenon, now running in more than 260 cities in almost every corner of the globe.^[4][5]

The format is 20 slides 20 seconds per slide and I can not stress enough how difficult the format is for the unfortunate presenter who underestimates it. I speak from experience.

My presentation was meant to be on " artwork that defies the established placement in venue '

but because i chose to speak on multiple projects from 1997- 2011 i was left unable to describe most of the content. I was attempting to stuff an hours worth of info into seven minutes.

It must have been amusing in some ways to watch but I was rattled. The Pecha Kucha experience is a good one. I recommend it to anyone who likes a challenge and the audience was great ( even taking great pains to make me feel as if I did a good job presenting my material ).

Thanks to Kenneth Cowart for organizing Pecha Kucha in the Tampa Bay area! We need more

stuff like this and people like him.

Seance For No One

Seance for No One was an exhibition in collaboration with photographer Kym O'Donnell.

The show took place at Tempus Projects from February 11th - 25th. The exhibition focused on spirit photography and "captured ectoplasms" Above and below are some examples of these sculptures.

Proposal For University Area Social Service Center