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Super-Deformed Medieval Dudes
Did you know that the University of Houston Downtown (soon to be renamed, as soon as they can figure out a good name--I recommend "We're Not the Harris County Prison; Yeah, That's Across the Street, I Know the Buildings Look Alike, It's Weird University" or WNHCPYTASIKBLAIWU for short) has a gallery? It's the O'Kane Gallery, and the current show is called Raw (nothing to do with the classic art comic anthology, alas). The show consists of drawings and paintings by Lisa Qualls, Mark Greenwalt, and Doug Cason. It's Greenwalt's work I want to draw attention to. He's a Galveston artist who really has a way with a pencil. His pieces look like early Rennaissance sketches, and have a little Odd Nerdrum/Heironymous Bosch strangeness to them.
Mark Greenwalt, The Gods of War, graphite, red chalk, acryilic on panel, 2008
He includes a tiny self-portrait in this piece. It looks incongruously contemporary among all these deformed medievel figures.
Mark Greenwalt, The Gods of War detail, graphite, red chalk, acryilic on panel, 2008
I'm afraid my photos don't really capture the subtlety of his drawing. (For decades now, painting has been biased by what art would reproduce well in magazines. Perhaps now, good reproduction online will give artworks an extra boost. Too bad for artists like Greenwalt...)
Mark Greenwalt, Innocence, Death, Wisdom, graphite, red chalk, acrylic on panel, 2008
I really like his work. I think these pieces demand contemplation. Certainly they reward looking very close at the surface and checking out the details.
One more thing about the O'Kane. I realize the student who works there is your average work-study employee. I was one once. But I have two suggestions for her. 1) Pretend like you get and more important like the art, even if you don't. Memorize some facts about the artists you can recite when you have visitors. 2) Don't dress like a student. Torn jeans and tee-shirts show a lack of respect for the art and the patrons. Try to look more artsy-yet-professional. Not like you just did an all-nighter writing a paper. Just saying.
Posted by Robert Boyd at 8:04 PM 0 comments
Labels: Mark Greenwalt
The Kandy-Kolored Geometries of Jonathan Leach
I went to Gallery Sonja Roesch (home of the fastest art in the west) on Saturday. This time, they actually had some art that made me linger! The artist is Jonathan Leach, a Houston artist who does these semi-architectural geometric abstractions. The photos here don't really do justice. No photo can because the art is full of day-glo colors that can't be captured on film or pixels.
This photo was lifted off the gallery's website. It gives the impression that Leach paints in pastel colors, but the reality is that these works are quite vivid.
I took this one, which I think represents the range of value better, but still doesn't give you an idea of the intensity.
These two paintings are the most "architectural" of the work--the other pieces are more abstract, and a few are what I would call minimal. They are worth seeing in the flesh if you like hard-edge abstraction (which I, for one, do).
Labels: 77004, Jonathan Leach
My Favorite Bits of Lawndale's 30th Anniversary Show
The great James Surls spoke about the founding of Lawndale last week. The show that is up now doesn't try to encapsulate Lawndale's entire 30-year history. It is composed of work by six artists who have all shown at Lawndale within the last five years.
Elaine Bradford, Harry With Worlds on Top, taxidermy elk's head, crocheted yarn, 2009
Elaine Bradford has been a high-profile artist in Houston. (Readers might recall that I bought a photograph of hers earlier this year.) I like the piece above because in it I see strong echoes of Dr. Seuss. I didn't see that in her taxidermy/knitting works before, but now it seems obvious. Bradford is hunting and mounting Seusses.
Elaine Bradford, Little Ram, Tiny World, plastic ram head and crocheted yarn, 2009
Emily Sloan turned the columns in the main space in Lawndale into these giant lamps. (I am assuming these columns were already there--I never really noticed them before.)
Emily Sloan, Boudoir Lamps in Black, Red and Gold, four structural columns with fabric, steel, wood and paint, 2009
I have no idea what she is saying with these "lamps" but they look cool.
Seth Alverson, Woman Bending Over, oil on canvas, 2009
Seth Alversons paintings are admirable but cringe-inducing (at least the ones I'm reproducing here). I don't really want to look at that lovingly-painted cottage cheese, but can't look away. He should hope a museum gets it, because it's hard to imagine a collector hanging this on her wall.
Seth Alverson, Tits in a Window, oil on canvas, 2009
Or this (these?)!
Mark Schatz, A Map Drawn from Memory, Torn to Pieces and Thrown into the Sea, mixed media, 2009.
Little bits of landscape, looking like a cross between Google maps satelite view and a model railroad diorama, with huge iceberg-like chunks of stone beneath them, hung upside down. The inherently creative impulse of model railroaders, plastic model builders, and diorama-makers of all stripes is art-schooled here. I approve. I've loved dioramas since I was a little kid. Here's a closer view:
Mark Schatz, A Map Drawn from Memory detail, Torn to Pieces and Thrown into the Sea, mixed media, 2009.
There are other good pieces in the show by other artists. But these were my favorites. Lawndale may not be the wild, crazy, unafraid-to-fail, anarchic place it was when James Surls started it, but it puts on a good show.
Posted by Robert Boyd at 6:32 AM 1 comments
Labels: Elaine Bradford, Emily Sloan, Lawndale, Mark Schatz, Seth Alverson
Jason Villegas / The Art Guys at the McClain Gallery
I hit the galleries hard this weekend--six in total, three I had never been to before. I like to take pictures in galleries, but I feel a little uncomfortable doing it. Museums won't let you--the guards will sweep down on you if you try.
So I went to McClain Gallery with a different approach. I would ask for permission to take photos. I even made up business cards for this blog, to try to give a little legitimacy to my request. And I was prepared to get a "no." That would have been fine. But the reaction I got was weird. The fellow I talked to (McClain?) was indifferent to whether I took photos. But he was worried that I would write something controversial. This was a commercial gallery that existed to sell art--not to create controversy. I assured him that I had no intention of being controversial (kind of an empty promise because I have no idea what he would consider controversial). That ended my experiment with asking permission; in other galleries, I just whipped out the camera, hoping not to be kicked out. Still, given McClain dude's conditional permission, I snapped away.
The show in the front gallery is work by Jason Villegas, who also has a show up at the CAMH. You can't ask for better advertising than that (or, as Don Thompson writes The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, CAMH enhances Villegas' brand in the eyes of local collectors). Villegas does his own version of crap on crap. For him, the crap consists of old golf shirts found in thrift stores, particularly ones that had little animals on them. Obviously the famous brand is the Izod alligator, but it turns out that there were (are?) lots of animal knock-offs.
Conquistador, Jason Villegas, 2009
He approaches the work of tearing up and recombining golf shirts from every angle, including paintings of the assemblages. One of the pieces at CAMH consists of horizontal ripped pieces of shirts stapled to the wall in the shape of a rounded triangle. The shirt bits all have long thin curled up bits of fabric hanging down like fringe. So here at McClain, Villegas basically paints this assemblage. Twice.
Polo Pile, Jason Villegas, acrylic and marker, 2009
Polo Pile Subdued as Microorganism, Jason Villegas, acrylic, 2009
The hanging fringe of the original is replaced by paint drips in these versions.
He also creates self-portraits where he takes on the animal identity of each brand.
Self-Portrait as Fox Brand, Jason Villegas, marker and pencil, 2009
Self-Portrait as Hare Brand, Jason Villegas, marker and pencil, 2009
The biggest piece was drawn and stapled right to the rear wall of the gallery.
Fox Brand Spirit Portrait, Jason Villegas, mixed media installation, 2009
Fox Brand Spirit Portrait detail, Jason Villegas, mixed media installation, 2009
As you can see, the little fox appears to be drawn right on the wall. (Or maybe drawn on paper and pasted.) As the man I spoke with repeated emphasized, the McClain Gallery is a commercial enterprise. All these works are for sale; all of them have prices on a price list. Except this one, which is POR (price on request).
So what do you get if you buy "Fox Brand Spirit Portrait"? Does Jason Villegas come over to your house and staple the bits of torn golf shirt right on your wall? Does he draw a little fox on your plaster? I have often wondered this about installations that are sold through commercial galleries.
In a gallery in the back is a small show by The Art Guys. Whenever I see their work, I just dig their endless inventiveness and humor.
Lamp, the Art Guys, burned matches on paper, 2008
Burned matches? Yep. Here's a detail.
Lamp detail, the Art Guys, burned matches on paper, 2008
But here's my favorite piece in the show. I apologize for the poor photograph. I have done all kinds of digital manipulations to make it a little more readible.
Any of These Locations Would be an Excellent Place to Begin a Drawing, the Art Guys, graphite on paper, 2008
It's hard to read, but the little phrases in this piece say things like "Left of center", "Exact center", "Slightly off-center", "Near the bottom", etc. That piece should go in a drawing textbook.
Impressions of the gallery? Very high-end commercial (although I should add that you could buy some of those Jason Villegas pieces for really decent prices). You look at the artists McClain shows, and they are almost all fairly well-known contemporary figures. In The $12 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark, Don Thompson speaks of how big New York and London galleries will have subsidiary relationships with galleries in other parts of the country, so that non-NYC galleries can market some of the big names from NYC to the hinterland. So I wonder if McClain has that kind of relationship with any blue chip galleries in NYC. Such an arrangement, I assume, would mutually benefit the artist (geographically expanding his market), local collectors (improved access to top artists' work), the local gallery (ability to show top NYC artists), and the New York gallery (improved access to non-NYC collectors). But I wonder how the contracts between the local gallery and the NYC gallery work? Of course, I have no idea if this is what McClain is doing in the first place, so please excuse this idle, completely uncontroversial speculation.
Posted by Robert Boyd at 12:57 PM 0 comments
Labels: 77098, Jason Villegas, McClain Gallery, the Art Guys
Combining Crap With Crap
That's what Karen Archey at Art Fag City calls assemblage in this post. It generated a lot of protest, and was admittedly not quite thought out. But I laughed when I read those words. That is what assemblage is--putting bits of crap together to make art; if you saw the collected elements laid out on the floor would seem extremely unlikely to combine to be "art," and yet do.
Paddy Johnson, responding to the outcry the original post caused, wrote a new post: "Reasons Why Assemblage (Or 'Crap on Crap') Is Now the 'House Style' of the Art World." In my profound laziness, I am just going to copy her reasons here.
1. Everybody's broke and there's always an abundance of trash.
2. Six years of art education teaches that high art is dead so everyone takes the low road.
3. Disgust with capitalism and consumer culture.
4. "Nihilism."
5. Genuine love of trash culture and its byproducts.
6. Avoidance of known art materials.
7. A way to make formal arrangements of things without being called "Greenbergian."
8. A way to be political without sloganeering.
9. Genuine interest in the lineage of Schwitters/Rauschenberg–-considering it an unfinished project.
10. New trash (web and technology cast-offs) necessitates new ways of arranging trash (and new content unknown to Rauschenberg, et al).
I would add at least one more reason. (11) A delight at taking bits of crap and creating something artistically interesting out of it. I guess 11 overlaps with 5, 6, and 9, except I am thinking more of things like Picasso making a bull's head out of a bicycle seat and handlebars.
Of course, some of my all time favorite artists were or are "crap on crap" artists: Kienholz, Rauschenberg, Jessica Stockholder. And the word "assemblage" just sounds like it was invented by fucking PhD. I will keep using the word, but in my mind, all those great pieces of scrap and glue and stuff are "crap on crap" art.
Labels: Art Fag City, assemblage, Ed Kienholz, Jessica Stockholder, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg
Once Upon a Time at Lawndale
Last night, I went to hear James Surls speak at Lawndale. Surls was the founder of the institution 30 years ago. Lots of former students and cronies were present, as well as art lovers of all stripes (I saw the director of CAMH there). It was a standing-room only crowd.
Surls is almost 70, but he has the vitality of a much younger man. He speaks and looks like someone decades younger. Just imagine, then, what a dynamo he must have been when Lawndale started.
He's a modest person. He claims it was the right time and right place for Lawndale, and that he was just along for the ride. He refers to the founding of P.S. 1 in New York in 1971, and similar institutions in L.A., and says it was inevitable that something like that would pop up in the middle of the country somewhere. Probably so.
He had been teaching at SMU, and he proposed that they just buy a warehouse for that purpose. He knew they'd say no. So he comes to Houston, an art professor, no particular ambitions to try to get the university to buy a warehouse because, after all, he knew they'd say no--when the art department's building caught fire. It was uninhabitable. Fortunately, UH had another space. Schlumberger had given UH an old building out on Lawndale. The admin at UH was very apologetic about putting him and his students in this industrial tenement in the middle of a slum. Surls was all, "Please don't trow me in dat briar patch, boss!"
Of course it turned out to be perfect. Huge exhibition and performance spaces, studio space for many, many students (and random fringies). Surls described it as "indestructible."
And it was needed really badly at that moment. The major art institutions in the city had no interest in showing local art. (This was before Peter Marzio came to MFAH.) And, as Surls put it, the big boys in the performing and visual arts in Houston were deathly afraid of failure. They were afraid of putting on a show that left critics (or donors) asking, "What the fuck were you thinking." Surls saw Lawndale as a place where one could fail and it wouldn't matter. (Because Lawndale was indestructible--both physically, and as a no-budget experimental art space, conceptually as well.)
He told lots of great stories. Here's one--about Black Flag playing at Lawndale. He was used to getting in avant jazz bands like The Art Ensemble of Chicago or Sun Ra, but he had no idea what to expect from Black Flag. The show was what you would expect, with punks throwing beer bottles against the walls and HPD coming out in force to shut it all down. The next morning, he gets a call from the head of the art department panicking. The papers had reported a riot at Lawndale. A group of administrators from the University was on its way.
They had a rule--not always followed, but most of the time it was--clean up after a show right away. And they had done so. Remember, Lawndale was indestructible. Some sweeping and mopping and scrubbing were all it needed.
That morning, the big hall was being used by a local girl scout troop to award merit badges. So a bunch of little Hispanic girls in their nicest clothes and patent-leather shoes, their proud moms and dads also all dressed up (lots of ostrich-skin cowboy boots). This is happening when the posse from UH shows up. And they sat a while watching. Then they left. No chewing out, no riot act.
Surls did his own artwork there at Lawndale, too. He said this was considered a no-no, for a professor to be doing his work in view of the students. But he felt that students creating their pieces alongside older and more accomplished artists would have a salutory effect. Perhaps. Perhaps that's so when the artist has Surls' generosity of spirit.
Stuff in Houston started changing after Lawndale. Surls says Lawndale was a catalyst, but again credits the times and the flow of events. Diverse Works, a kind of more sophisticated, professional Lawndale, started five years after Lawndale. The Glassell School's Core artist-in-residency program began in 1982--and that was a way for MFAH to do something similar to what Lawndale was doing. "Fresh Paint,"" the MFAH's first big show of Houston artists, happened in 1985. Now we have things like Project Row Houses, Box 13, etc.
Surls doesn't exactly seem to approve of what Lawndale has become, but he is far too gracious to say it. His only verbalized complaint is that Lawndale is not longer the Lawndale Art & Performance Center. He saw performance as a key element. For a relatively traditional artist (a guy who carves wood with a hatchet to make sculptures), Surls is way into performance art, into conceptualism, etc. He namechecks Chris Burden and the Art Guys (not to mention Sun Tzu and Peter Drucker).
It was a really interesting and inspiring talk.
Labels: James Surls, Lawndale
Frenetic Fringe Festival -- Weekend 3 Bullets
I went to the final day of the Frenetic Fringe Festival on Saturday, and have been processing it ever since. This was the first night that felt distinctly fringey. This is not a value judgement, and if anything, it says more about me than about the work. But on other nights, I might have reacted "Hmmm, yes... Yes..." or "Meh," this night's show evoked a few "Holy shits" from me.
Again I apologize for no photos--they really would help. You wouldn't be forced to depend on my inadequate descriptions, delivered insultingly in bulletpoints, as if this were a memo for upper management.
So with that, away we go!
"What The Storm Brought Home" by Jere Pfister
A one-woman play.
She tells us about her mother and three aunts from New Orleans.
After Katrina, she had to rescue one of the aunts, Billie, from a shelter in Baton Rouge.
Billie is starting to go senile.
Billie talks to the narrator's dead mother about sexual abuse she suffered from her step-father.
The narrator realizes that her aunts, who seemed so puritanical and who took obsessive interest in her sex life, were protecting her.
They never left her alone with her grandfather.
But they could never say why until they were old and seriously infirm.
This was one of the "Hmmm, yes..." pieces. It was good but not "fringe."
"Pain, Pleasure, and a Bunny Rabbit" directed by Kieth Reynolds
A farce like "Spelling Bee Sluts" from the second weekend.
A father takes his three daughters out to one of those hunting ranches where they keep animals penned for hunters to shoot.
One daughter is a goth, one daughter is a curvy blonde airhead, and one daughter is a mannish lesbian.
The animals are mostly dancers, so whenever the ranch manager sets one free, we see some animalish dancing.
Which is abruptly truncated by the shooting of the four hunters.
There is also music and singing.
The music was played on a keyboard set-up and was amplified. It tended to drown out the unamplified singing.
While I watched this, I kept wondering, what is the point? In short, "Meh."
"Tetsujin" by Rebecca French and Robert Thoth
These two are the founders of FrenetiCore and the Frenetic Theater
This film is basically a film of three women dancing in an industrial landscape, while a man does karate movies.
This seems like something in the air--combining modern dance with other activities that involve the moving body.
So combine modern dance with kung fu, or with circus clowning.
It was an interesting piece of work.
Tasteful, not very "fringey" except for the unusual combination of dance and martial arts.
"Forever Hold Your Piece (for Now) A.K.A. Bob Hope's Nightmare" choreographed by Rob Davidson (Kinetic Architecture)
This was the first piece that seemed really fringey.
Davidson is a dancer who presented a kind of high-camp U.S.O. show.
He was dressed in drag as a spike-haired Statue of Liberty.
His dress left his upper chest bare, so we could see his pierced nipples.
His clunky high-heel boots made dancing a little challenging.
The "chorus line" girls were dressed in frilly hot-pants and red-white-and-blue tops.
Davidson spoke to the audience and encouraged audience participation.
One of the dances was to a medley of the armed service theme songs.
Then he changed into a costume that would allow a little more dance-like movement.
He danced to "Don't Laugh at Me."
This is that super corny song that begs people not to laugh at other people because they are different.
The sentiment is unarguable, but the song is cringe-inducing.
In his dance of the song, he kept falling down and popping back up.
It was hard to tell whether he wanted us to experience the music ironically (about the only way I can experience it) or not!
Davidson was funny, an amazing showman, outrageous, and a hell of a dancer.
"Alice and the Underground" written by Janet Thielke and Mark Carrier
A conversation between three members of the Weather Underground on the day they accidentally blow themselves up.
Alice, the female member, is unconvinced about the bombing that is planned.
The two other guys use wacky, fractured logic to try to convince her.
The conversation deliberately reflects Alice, the Mad Hatter, and the Doormouse.
It's a clever conceit, and it sort of works.
But it kind of goes on too long.
"Easy Credit Theater" by Richard Hubscher
This is a performance that includes "dance" broadly defined, singing, and extreme physicality.
It's the second Frenetic Fringe Festival that deliberately recalls Butoh.
Hubscher is on stage in a Butoh-like loin cloth.
But more important, he performs under an extreme physical constraint, one he can barely manage.
This gives his performance unbelievable tension.
He lifts a wide wooden beam onto his shoulders.
It must be 30 feet wide, 4" x 4".
He staggers under the weight.
It is slightly unbalanced, and when he looks like he is about to fall, he asks for help centering it.
He speaks into a microphone.
You can hear him panting.
He tells us that it is a beam from the floor of his house, which has been torn down.
He is muscular--he definitely has a dancer's body.
But he is staggering under the weight.
You can see his muscles straining, and the mike picks up his panting.
He then sings a torch song to a recorded accompaniment.
He finishes while we in the audience were grimacing, awaiting his fall.
Surely he is meaning to recall Jesus Christ bearing the cross through the streets to Calvary.
His assistants lift the beam off his shoulders.
He breathes hard, and slowly puts on his pants, shirt, and shoes.
Then he sings (rants, chants, raps) another song--an angry one about being a Texan.
It's for George Bush.
Untitled by Jim Pirtle
Another legitimately "fringe" performance.
Pirtle is kind of a local performance art legend.
He has stuff up right now at CAMH, if you want to see his tamer side.
For this performance, he explains that he heard somewhere that you can get drunk faster if you squirt booze up your ass.
He has a squeeze bottle, lube, and a bottle of wine.
And "stunt pants" as he calls them.
And thank god for that--he doesn't actually have to take the pants off.
Still, we watch the entire awkward process.
He succeeds in getting a small quantity of wine up there (or so it seems--no way to know for sure, really).
He gives himself the classic pre-breathalizer sobriety test. He is still sober.
But he assures us it might take a few minutes before he is "rip-snorting."
His is the only performance that required no talent.
Yet he was funny and obviously knew how to keep an audience's attention.
Pirtle is a showman, that's for sure.
Labels: 77011, dance, Houston, Jim Pirtle, performance, theater
Last Night I Dreamt About James Turrell
I had this dream last night. A friend of mine (let's call him "C") were on the run from some insistent secret agent types in Philadelphia. We escape by disappearing into the Philly subway system (I have no idea if Philadelphia has a subway). After a number of close calls, we manage to shake them lose. We get help from some other secret agent types, who help us boost a car (a Porsche). I wondered if those agents are actually on our side or are agent provacateurs.
We drive out to the edge of town into some low hills, and we take a dirt road that leads us to a wide flat expanse. Around us are brand new buildings, townhome-style apartments, built of red brick, concrete, and granite. Looking out over the vast field in front of us, I can see the campus of Rice University.
"I know where we are," I tell C. "This is where the new construction for Rice is happening. I think these are new married student apartments or something." I tell him that in order to escape, we should drive across the field to the main campus.
But the drive is blocked by several enormous construction machines. These things seem to be engaged in breaking up huge slabs of granite and concrete. They work so rapidly that there is no safe way to drive past them. We call and gesture for them to let us pass, but they ignore us.
"Those guys are assholes! Let's hoof it."
We have no qualms about abandoning the car (it was stolen anyway). We walk around the machines carefully along the south end of the field, where a man is busy planting bushes. The bushes are being planted in an interesting pattern. I ask him if he is part of this new construction going on.
"Well, sort of," he replies. "The University hired me to create an art piece in the field to visually connect it to the rest of the campus."
"That's cool, but I have to tell you, your co-workers over there," pointing to the machines, "are grada-A assholes."
He smiles a crooked smile of acknowledgement, puts out his hand, and introduces himself as James. He looks to be in his 40s or 50s, has a full head of somewhat curly hair, mostly grey, and a moustache. He is wearing jeans and a blue work-shirt.
"I'm going to take a break--you want some coffee?"
We agree, and he walks over to the completed apartments. He and his family are the only tenants--they are living there while he works on his piece. He mentions having a kid, but we only meet his wife. We make small chit-chat and he tells us a lot about the piece. Then he announces he has to walk over to the main campus where he has a studio set up.
We start to walk when a light-bulb goes off in my head. "Are you James Turrell?" He had never told us his last name.
"That's me."
C looks confused, and I tell him that James Turrell is a well-known artist. I start to mention the tunnel at the MFAH, but C is not the type of guy who goes to museums, so I leave it at that.
Turrell has a studio in the art department at Rice, where he is working with a bunch of students. You can see models and drawings of different ideas for the space. He seems to have both the respect and the casual friendship of the students, and he is generous with his time in talking to C and me. He is genuinely likable.
Then I woke up.
I have no idea what James Turrell looks like. He is, however, creating a piece for the space between the the Shepherd School, the Baker Institute, and McNair. That's great because that open space has long been a weirdly dead area. No one hangs out there.
Hilariously, the press release proclaims "Multimillion-dollar gift will bring Turrell masterpiece to Rice University." Richard Connelly of the Houston Press has some fun with that. I'll be happy if Turrell in real life turns out to be as cool as Turrell in my dream.
Labels: James Turrell, Rice University
I'm a collector on a small scale. Initially collected just comic book and comic strip art. Specifically the work of certain alternative/underground cartoonists, and comic strips from the 1930s to the 1950s (I would love to go earlier than the 1930s for certain strips, but they are typically beyond my price range). And, without really intending to, I bought some art by young Houston artists recently. (I mean, I intended to buy the art, because I liked it, but I wasn't focusing on Houston artists per se.)
But enough about me. Collectors in general are the subject of this post. When I think about collectors, I think of people whose defining quality is their wealth. Totally unfair, but that's the image that comes to mind. After all, collectors aren't the ones with talent and vision--the artists are. So when you see collectors profiled in a magazine or newspaper, it has the exact same feel (to me) as some vapid society page profile--the latest plutocrats (or plutocrat's spouse or heir) being kissed-up to, fawned upon, because they have a lot of money and a mildly interesting hobby. I mean, if someone because rich because he or she was a brilliant businessman and then got into art collecting, that's interesting--as long as you include the first half of the story.
For example, Peter Norton is major collector of contemporary art, especially African-American art. But it is more interesting to me that he pioneered ways to retrieve lost data off of hard drives! And take the De Menils--Dominique and Jean. Dominique was the daughter of Conrad Schlumberger, co-inventer of well logging and founder of the oil services company that still bears his name. Jean eventually became pesident of the company, and the pair, fleeing the Nazi's, set up shop in Houston. I read that Jean eventually went back to guide commando raids against Schlumberger facilities in Romania--helping guys blow up his own facilities in an effort to deny the Nazis precious petroleum. This is way more interesting than the fact that the couple were major art collectors! (Even though I treasure their collection and visit the Menil Museum often.)
OK, maybe I am being harsh on collectors. There are definitely some collectors whose collecting is interesting (and even admirable) in and of itself. Like Norton Dodge, whose daredevil collecting of non-conformist and dissident Soviet Art probably rescued much of it from destruction or oblivion.
This has all been leading up to the story of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel.
The backstory to the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States gift is, well, sui generis to say the least. (So much so that it generated a recently released documentary, "Herb and Dorothy.") New York-born Herb, a high-school dropout and aspiring artist who worked a day job as a postal clerk, married Dorothy Hoffman of Elmira, N.Y., a Brooklyn librarian who also became an aspiring painter. The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection is what resulted from their decision shortly thereafter, in the mid-1960s, to collect rather than make art. They earmarked Herb's modest salary for that purpose, and for much of the next four decades the pair were Zelig-like presences on the New York art scene, easily attending as many as 25 shows a week. In 1990, it would take five full-size moving vans to empty their one-bedroom Upper East Side apartment of the 2,400 works—covering every inch of wall space, stacked in crates and under beds—that they'd so voraciously collected. (Anne S. Lewis, Wall Street Journal, August 18, 2009)
Now these are heroic collectors! I also like their collecting strategies and practical considerations.
They bartered with the Christos: a summer of cat-sitting for a collage preparatory work from the Valley Curtain project. The only rules, Dorothy explained, were that the work "be affordable and fit into our apartment." And be able to be carried home by bus or subway.
(Of course, it helps that they had excellent taste, too.) So what are they doing with their collection? Given the value of many of the pieces, they could auction off some of the most valuable pieces, start a foundation, build a museum ("The Vogel Museum"), and bask in their own glory. Instead, they are giving it away.
In the end, 1,100 works would go to the National Gallery, and 2,500 works by 177 artists were set aside for the Fifty Works for Fifty States initiative, the brainchild of National Gallery curator Ruth Fine, who was inspired by the Kress Foundation's model for distributing its Old Masters collection. The concept was "a mini-Vogel collection for each state," explains Ms. Fine. "There were some artists—Tuttle, for example—for whom there was enough for everyone to get at least one work. Each museum got about 40 drawings and 10 paintings or objects." Gifts went first to museums with whom the Vogels had some personal connection over the years, Dorothy explained. (The Blanton [in Austin], for example, had a Vogel exhibit in 1997.) A Web site to document the project and link the recipient museums may head off the hand-wringing of those who fear that—particularly for its lesser-known artists—dispersing a collection like the Vogels' could fragment it.
 They have a website about this effort here. If a collector can have role-models, the Vogels are perfect!
Is there anyone like the Vogels in the world of comic art collecting? I'd say the closest (that I know of) is Glenn Bray.
Then there are those who are more correctly identified as patrons — initiating projects, conducting obsessive research, sometimes bringing to light overlooked or forgotten niches of culture. For years, Jim Shaw kept urging me to visit Glenn Bray's collection, but it wasn't until I wrote a catalog essay for an exhibition of his archive of work by the visionary grotesque comic book artist Basil Wolverton that I finally made the short trek to the Valley, where Bray still manages the hardware store his father founded, and lives with his partner, Dutch underground comix legend Lena Zwalve (aka "Tante Leny"). (Doug Harvey, L.A. Weekly, May 13, 2008)
If you want just a small taste of his collection, check out The Original Art of Basil Wolverton.
Labels: collecting, collectors, Herb and Dorothy Vogel
Pan Lives!
By the way, here is the Burroughs piece that inspired the title of this blog. I first heard it on the excellent Dead City Radio. It turns out it was written as part of a project with Keith Haring called "Apocalypse."
Mariners sailing close to the shores of Tuscany heard a voice cry out from the hills, the trees and the sky: "The Great God Pan is dead!" Pan, God of Panic: the sudden awareness that everything is alive and significant. The date was December 25, 1 A.D. But Pan lives on in the realm of the imagination, in writing and painting and music. Look at Van Gogh's sunflowers, writhing with portentous life; listen to the Pipes of Pan in Joujouka. Now Pan is neutralized framed in museums, entombed in books, relegated to folklore.
But art is spilling out of its frames into subway graffiti. Will it stop there? Consider an apocalyptic statement: 'Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.' - - Hassan i Sabbah. Not to be interpreted as an invitation to all manner of restrained and destructive behavior; that would be a minor episode, which would run its course. Everything is permitted because nothing is true. It is all make-believe, illusion, dream...ART. When art leaves the frame and the written word leaves the page - - not merely the physical frame and page, but the frames and pages of assigned categories - - a basic disruption of reality itself occurs: the literal realization of art. This is a very different direction from Duchamp, Klein and Manzoni, of appropriating everything in sight by signing it or putting it on a pedestal. Instead of appropriating by framing and signing, remove the frames and the pedestals, yes, even the signatures. Every dedicated artist attempts the impossible, Success will write APOCALYPSE across the sky. The artist aims for a miracle. The painter wills his picture to move off the canvas with a separate life, movement outside of the picture, and one rent in the fabric is all it takes for pandemonium to sluice through.
Last act, the End, this is where we all came in. The final Apocalypse is when every man sees what he sees, feels what he feels, and hears what he hears. The creatures of all your dreams and nightmares are right here, right now, solid as they ever were or ever will be, electric vitality of careening subways faster faster faster stations flash by in a blur.
Pan God of Panic, whips screaming crowds, as millions of faces look up at the torn sky:
OFF THE TRACK! OFF THE TRACK!
The planet is pulling loose from its moorings, careening into space, spilling cities and mountains and seas into the Void, spinning faster and faster as days and nights flash by like subway stations. Iron penis chimneys ejaculate blue sparks in a reek of ozone, tunnels crunch down teeth of concrete and steel, flattening cars like beer cans. Graffiti eats through glass and steel like acid, races across the sky in tornados of flaming colors.
Cherry-pickers with satin brushes big as a door inch through Wall Street, leaving a vast souvenir postcard of the Grand Canyon. Water trucks slosh out paint, outlaw painters armed with paint pistols paint everything and everyone in reach. Survival Artists, paint cans strapped to their backs, grenades at their belts paint anything and anybody within range. Skywriters, dogfight, collide and explode in paint. Telephone poles dance electric jigs in swirling crackling wires. Neon explosions and tornados flash through ruined cities, volcanoes spew molten colors as the earth's crust buckles and splinters into jigsaw pieces.
The household appliances revolt: washing machines snatch clothes from the guests, bellowing Hoovers suck off makeup and wigs and false teeth, electric toothbrushes leap into screaming mouths, clothes dryers turn gardens into dust bowls, garden tools whiz through lawn parties, impaling the guests, who are hacked to fertilizer by industrious Japanese hatchets. Loathsome, misshapen, bulbous plants spring from their bones, covering golf courses, swimming pools, country clubs and tasteful dwellings.
Skyscrapers scrape rents of blue and white paint from the sky, shredding, peeling, nitrous ochres and red eat through bridges, which fall into the rivers splashing colors across - my back I always hear - piers, streets AMOK art - Hurry up please, it's time - floods inorganic molds - Time's winged chariot hurrying - stirring passion of - near. Closing time gentlemen - metal and glass steel - these our actors as I foretold you - girders writhe - actors frantically packing in theatrical - mineral lust - hotels... are all spirits.
Oh don't bother - burst from concrete - with all that junk, John - were all spirits, John - covers - the Director is on stage and are melted into - walls - h don't bother - burst from concrete - with all that junk, John - were all spirits, John - covers - the Director is on stage and are melted into - walls - air and you know what that means in show business - of glass - melt into thin air. Hurry up please it's time. Caught - burn - in New York beneath the animals of the village - with madness - the Piper pulled down the sky. This insub - billion crazed - stantial pageant faded leaves not a - roads buck - wrack behind. Closing time, hurry - sidewalks run ahead - up it's time.air and you know what that means in show business - of glass - melt into thin air. Hurry up please it's time. Caught - burn - in New York beneath the animals of the village - with madness - the Piper pulled down the sky. This insub - billion crazed - stantial pageant faded leaves not a - roads buck - wrack behind. Closing time, hurry - sidewalks run ahead - up it's time.
At my back - faster and faster - I always hear hurry up - energy ground down into - please it's time closing - sidewalks and street by billions of feet and tires erupt from manholes and tunnels break out with volcanic force let it come down careening subways faster and faster stations blur by, Pan whips screaming crowds with flaming pipes millions of faces look up at the torn sky OFF THE TRACK OFF THE TRACK the planet is pulling loose from its moorings, careening off into space spilling cities and mountains and seas into the Void faster and faster.
This is where we all came in blue and white paint from when Everyman sees color nightmares are right here warehouses and piers electric energy floods inorganic molds subways faster and faster, glass steel girder Pan God of Panic whips screaming concrete, faces look up at the torn sky and burn with madness. TRACK the planet is pulling bucking cars and trucks careening into space faster and faster into the Void spinning walks and streets flash by like subway stations in a reek of ozone.
Force let it come, skyscrapers scrape rents of the final Apocalypse in the sky, dream rivers splashing color across solid roads and buildings, AMOK art vitality stirring passions of metal blur by writhing in mineral lusts. Walls of glass melt OFF THE TRACK OFF a billion crazed eyes, the sidewalks run feet and tires, chimneys ejaculate blue tunnels break out graffiti village pulled across the sky in flaming colors.
Skyscrapers scrape rents of blue and white paint from the sky, the rivers swirl with color, nitrous ochres and reds eat through the bridges, falling into the rivers, splashing colors across warehouses and piers and roads and buildings, AMOK art floods inorganic molds, stirring passions and metal and glass, steel girders writhing in mineral lusts burst form their concrete covers, wall of glass melt and burn with madness in a billion crazed eyes, bridges buck cars and trucks into the rivers, the sidewalks run ahead faster and faster, energy ground down into sidewalks and streets by billions of feet and tires erupts from manholes and tunnels, breaks out with volcanic force:
Caught in New York beneath the animals of the village, the Piper pulled down the sky.
Pan from an Antioch Mosaic
Labels: graffiti, Greek art
The Great God Pan is Dead
But as William Burroughs noted, he seems to be lurking behind much of the creative energy of the world, so maybe he is not so dead after all.
In honor of that creative energy, I initiate my art blog. This is a spin-off from my "anything goes" blog, Wha'Happen. I have copied all my art postings from the old blog to here, and will continue cross-posting for a while. But eventually, Wha'Happen will be devoted to oil, finance, cycling, books, etc., while The Great God Pan Is Dead will handle all the art, with only occasional cross-postings.
The Great God Pan is Dead is growing out of my effort to educate myself about the Houston art scene. So if you are a Houston artist or gallerist, keep me in the loop.
(Cross-posted at Wha'Happen)
Labels: art, Wha'Happen
Frenetic Fringe Fotos
I was contacted by choreographer Toni Leago Valle, who had three dances at last weekend's Fringe Festival. She knew one of the photographers present (Ted Viens), and has given me permission to post some of his photos from her dance pieces.
Catalina Molnari in "Silent Victim"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ted_viens/ / CC BY 2.0
Mechelle Flemming in "Interview for a Date/I Take My Dress Off"
Toni Leago Valle in "I Am Mother"
Labels: 77011, dance, Houston
Pieced Together and the Tradition of Graffiti
I went to the opening of "Pieced Together" at the Aerosol Warfare Gallery, an exhibit of graffiti art by a variety of Texas artists. This show has been traveling around the country, and Aerosol Warfare is the final stop. Aerosol Warfare is a local gallery devoted to graffiti art and related items.
exterior of Aerosol Warfare
interior of Aerosol Warfare
The pieces on display are small, essentially acrylic versions of the type of large-scale wall pieces that typify the artform.
"Icons" by Reks and Worms
"Extended Release" by Dmise
The opening was not just a passive viewing experience for gallery goers. They had a wall of tiny canvases where you could make your own micro-graffiti piece for $5; it was very popular with the kids (and their parents). They set up a computer-controlled projection system that allowed people to create large scale graffiti pieces projected onto the wall of a building across the street. And they had car-hoods on easels with local artists creating pieces on them.
Even notorious local poster artist Give Up did one. I asked if Give Up was present, but the publicity-shy artist apparently stayed away, lest someone snap his photo. (Someone even asked me if I was Give Up.)
There was an amazing display in the store.
Commemorative Puma sneakers in honor of the late, great Vaughn Bode. This shows that the proprietors of Aerosol Warfare have an awareness of history.
Graffiti art is essentially ephemeral. Illegally put up on walls and concrete barriers, they get rapidly painted over by property owners, city workers, highway departments, transit agencies, etc. This situation would seem inimical to the formation of a tradition. And yet, in pre-literate societies, traditions like this of impermanent artforms (performed music, spoken poetry) have lasted for centuries.
"Michelle" by Sloke
So who was Vaughn Bode and what does he have to do with graffiti? Was he a graffiti artist? Nope. He was a cartoonist whose style informed a lot of the early New York City graffiti artists.
Early writers not only imitated Bode's art style. They included many of his figures in their pieces--Cheech Wizard, the lizards, the "Bode broads", etc.
What were some other non-graffiti sources? I think the psychedelic rock posters of the 60s had their effect. I also think these artists were looking at the artists from Heavy Metal magazine (which started publication in the U.S. in 1977). Specifically artists like Caza and Druillet.
"Supher" by Supher
But these artists who were covering subway cars in NYC in the 1970s have no relationship to an artist like "News" from the Rio Grande Valley--except that a tradition has been established and spread across the U.S. and indeed all over the world.
"Daily News" by News
This artform has been given a certain degree of respect from the fine arts world, analogous with its grudging embrace of comics art by the art world. Art critics respect its folkish traditions and seeming authenticity. But graffiti art has some problems as far as being a part of the art world. It's not a perfect fit. There is a basic truth about graffiti--it is a fundamentally adolescent artform. This is not to say its practitioners are teenagers (although many are), but graffiti, like so many adolescent activities, involves the thrill of petty crime. The colors and cartoonish origins also feel adolescent.
I am not trying to insult the art of graffiti. But I do wonder what it would mean to be an old graffiti artist. Maybe it would look something like this piece.
"Paper in the Wind" by Spain
Posted by Robert Boyd at 11:01 AM 0 comments
Labels: 77003, art, Art I Like, Dmise, Give Up, graffiti, Houston, News, Reks, Sloke, Spain, Supher, Worms
Last week I complained about the Fringe Festival not being quite "fringe" enough. This week was an improvement on that score, and over-all a more interesting and pleasurable evening. You can still see it tonight (Saturday, August 15) or tomorrow. Again to be brief, I'm going to use bullets.
There's a Tsunami at Your Door
A short play by Mary Ellen Whitworth.
A woman about to commit suicide is interrupted by a desperate cable salesman.
Similar to "Velocity" from last week it its use of a tragedy that happened in the past as the cause of what's happening now.
But it is a straight-forward narrative, not fractured like "Velocity."
The acting was slightly raw.
The play had funny moments despite its grim subject.
Dancing Diana
This struck me as fairly innovative.
Instead of a musical score, there were three short, personal stories by Diana Weeks.
They were recorded by her and played over loudspeakers.
She sat stage (she's an older woman, perhaps in her 60s or 70s) while the dancers danced.
The dancers "interpreted" her story through dance.
The connection was tenuous, but--
Both aspects--the story and the dance--were enjoyable.
It was like, say, riding your bike while listening to your Ipod. You get simultaneous pleasure from both activities.
Spelling Bee Sluts
A short play by Paul Locklear.
Slight, farcical story about a hillbilly who comes to L.A. to make it big on the spelling bee circuit.
He ends up working as a male prostitute.
A pretty minor piece of work, I'd have to say.
G.I. Joe PSAs
These were cartoon public service announcements from the 1980s, featuring the G.I. Joe characters telling kids about safety.
Eric Fensler has recorded new dialogue for them.
This had the potential to be funny but predictable.
But Fensler's dialogue (often sounds or made-up foreign languages) was absurd and bizarre.
It wass still really funny--but not in an easy or obvious way.
Thurmond, W. Va.
A documentary by Laura Harrison about a soon-to-be ghost town.
18 people still live there.
The National Park Service has bought out most of the folks in town. The intent is to turn this coal mining town into a park along the lines of Mystic Seaport.
It felt like a typical documentary, one that had neither the power of the old-school documentaries of, say, the Maysles brothers.
Nor did it use the innovations of Errol Morris or Michael Moore.
Not that it was bad, just not all that exciting...
Three dance pieces choreographed by Toni Leago Valle
These were the best things I saw all night, indeed the best out of both nights.
Three solo dances, three solo dancers. They were highly controlled athletes, but each with a kind of way about her that marked them as artists.
"Silent Victim"
Catalina Molnari is stranded on unsteady looking rectangular boxes. She barely moves as she grips them and attempts to balance.
"Interview for a Date/I Take My Clothes Off"
Mechelle Fleming is the dancer in this strangely sexual piece.
In the first part, there is a film of a girl (Valle) being questioned, job-interview style, about why she would be a good girlfriend for the unseen male interviewer.
The interview itself is forced and calculating, dealing with the value she brings to him as a girlfriend. She is desperate.
When the interview seems to go wrong, she remembers something.
She tells him, "Oh, I forgot! I'm good at sex!"
The whole time, Fleming is sitting on a chair, facing away from the audience.
She twitches and makes small moves, as if she is constrained and ready to move.
The movie ends and she starts dancing.
Her dance struck me as almost tortured. I can hardly describe it in a way that makes sense.
She seem struck by things outside herself, while engaging with a negotiation with herself.
She seemed buffeted, struck by forces.
(But, it should be said, it was clear she was fully in control as a dancer.)
Finally, she took off her dress.
And it ended with her standing there in her underwear.
It it appropriate to mention that she is an astonishingly beautiful woman?
I regret not having photos of the Fringe Festival, especially for the three dances that Valle choreographed.
"I Am Mother"
The dancer was Valle.
Her skin was covered with white, pasty makeup except for her eyes, which were kind of a red racoon mask.
The dance was done seated, under a soft, dim red spotlight.
Weirdly enough, I was reminded of the installation by Carlos Runcie-Tanaka called "Tiempo Detenido/No Olvidar." The atmosphere was similar.
Her movements were constrained by her seated posture.
But the effect was nonetheless electrifying.
I haven't seen enough dance to have a vocabulary to describe what I was seeing. But Toni Leago Valle's three dance pieces were undeniably moving; thrilling even.
General vibe.
I sat under a fan, so the lack of AC wasn't too horrible.
They have us fill out an audience poll that includes demographic info.
Apparently collecting this info will help them get grants.
With which they can, say, buy central air-conditioning.
The seats at Frenetic are only slightly more comfortable than airline seats.
It seems like a lot of folks are there just to see their friends or family's performance.
Consequently, a lot of people leave at the intermission.
Maybe it's not so bad on Saturday and Sunday.
But one would certainly wish for more support from people who have no personal connection with the performers.
(Of course, I could be wrong about the audience...)
I wish I could photograph some of the performances and put them up here.
That said, there were two photographers with serious-looking photo set-ups in the audience.
So perhaps if you search the web, you can find some images.
I thought the show was well-worth the modest ticket price, so catch it tonight or tomorrow if you can.
Labels: 77011, art, Art Bullets, cinema, dance, Houston
The Art of the Offshore Oil Platform
For some reason, the offshore oil rig has never (to my knowledge) been a popular subject for painters. Obviously, their remoteness is a reason--hard to paint what you can't see. And they have bad associations with many people, particularly sensitive artistic types. Plus, I think folks generally (and wrongly in my opinion) think of them as ugly.
So imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this spooky image:
"Longfall," mixed media, Brook Salzwedel
This was reproduced on the L.A. Times art blog, Culture Monster. I went to artist Brook Salzwedel's site and found this image:
"Unphased," graphite, tape and resin, Brook Salzwedel, 2006
Like it. Perfect art for oilmen!
(Hat tip Art Market Monitor.)
Labels: art, Brook Salzwedel, oil
Frenetic Fringe Festival Week 1 bullets
Friday night I attended day one of the Frenetic Fringe Festival at the Frenetic Theater out on Navigation. This was the first night of a month-long series that combines theater, dance, and film/video pieces. My expectations were for some really avant garde stuff. But what counts as avant garde today, after a 20th century full of it? I imagined the theater would be Samuel Beckett or Charles Ludlam-type things, or maybe pieces related to modern performance art, or Antonin Artaud-Alfred Jarry-like provocations. For the film, I imagined Bruce Conner-like assemblages, Stan Brackhage-ish abstraction, or even Andy Warhol-esque minimalism. And I know nothing about dance, so I didn't have much in the way of expectations there--or so I thought.
The Festival was not as radical (so far) as what I expected. The pieces were all pretty approachable. I was hoping to be challenged a bit more.
Nearing Velocity
A short play by Liz Gilbert.
In fragments, we see all the people who were involved in a car accident at Richmond and Montrose.
One driver Mallory is now paralyzed, a man, Boyd [sic], in the other car paralyzed with guilt.
It was a strong opener, with good actors and a play that unfolded in an interesting way.
I now realize that they bookended the opening night of festival with their two best pieces (of the night).
It might be my old age, but I sometimes had to strain to hear what the cast members were saying.
Beyond the Sphere
Three women dancing.
Supposedly about life after death. Music combined with a tape of someone relating a after death experience.
I have a preconceived notion that all dancers are perfect physical specimens, strong but elegant and beautiful women.
(See Olga Khokhlova and Lydia Lopokova of the Ballets Russes, for example.)
But one of these women was a bit on the chunky side.
People in glass houses should not throw stones, yet this slightly disturbed me!
The piece was long (it seemed) and by the end, I was in a pleasantly hypnotic state.
Despite having not understood it at all.
Nevel Is the Devil
This short film was mildly amusing, but not particularly "fringe."
Office Space was a better movie on a similar theme.
Bruna Bunny and Baby Girl
The second play of the evening had a tepidly surreal premise.
A former circus performer's 12-year-old daughter has hair on her chest.
The girl, Baby Girl, was actually played by a little girl, who did a hell of a job.
But the play's point was lost on me--it seemed silly without being all that entertaining.
Access Pending
This dance piece seemed a little more what I would expect from a dance piece than "Beyond the Sphere."
At least, so it seemed to my dance-virgin eyes.
I was impressed but the dancer's skills, but not particularly engaged by them.
But again, maybe that's just me.
I don't know what to look for really.
Kuliman mixes YouTube--ThruYou
This was a rather astonishing piece of appropriation.
Kuliman took bits and pieces of solo music uploaded to YouTube.
(Often these were music lessons, sometimes they were musicians showing off some of their skills.)
Out of all these disparate bits of music, he created coherent, multi-instrumental songs.
The lyrics were often based on spoken-word YouTube videos auto-tuned.
I recall Thomas McEvilley discussing Hellenistic poetry that consisted of appropriating different poets lines into a single poem.
McEvilley was making the point that post-modernism's practices of appropriation was an ancient practice.
But this piece reminded me very specifically of those ancient Greek poems.
The skill shown in finding and mixing these fragments is astonishing.
But the results, while perfectly good, are not great.
This is a complaint that can be made about much OuLiPo-style art.
i.e., art that puts a really complex, limiting constraint on the artist with the intent of fostering new, creative ways of making art.
It's amazing, for example, that A Void was written at all.
The fact that it is also a great novel is a fucking miracle.
Kuliman's mixtures are totally listenable--but won't stick in my mind.
So the Fringe Festival's first night was a mixed bag. I would have been surprised if it hadn't been. I will be there for the subsequent shows. My hope is that someone in Houston will amaze me.
(There is an art show along-side the Fringe Festival. The artworks are for sale. Stephanie Toppin, for some insane reason, is selling her drawings for $25 apiece. I personally think this is a bargain. I encourage anyone who liked her work at Diverse Works and Box 13 to pick up a drawing or four, before Toppin comes to her senses.) (Toppin, not "Tobbin"--corrected now.)
Labels: 77011, art, cinema, dance, Houston, theater
Frenetic Fringe Festival Starts Tomorrow
I plan to be there for it and possibly to blog it, in my ongoing project of educating myself about the Houston art scene. The Frenetic Fringe Festival runs every weekend for the rest of August. If you miss the program tomorrow, you can see the same program Saturday and Sunday.
In addition to the the theater, dance and film presentations, there will be an art exhibit. Among the artists is Stephanie Tobbin, who I have blogged about here and here. Here's one of the drawings she will be showing.
Labels: art, cinema, dance, performance, theater
Art and the Death of a Cat
This is maybe the weirdest and yet most moving blog post I have read in a long time. Houston artblogger B.S. Houston writes about the death of his cat, Pumpkin.
Labels: art, Life's Rich Pageant


Just because someone is not reading off a piece of paper does not mean they are saying is extemporaneous. It just means they have memorized their closing statements and can say them without needing something to read, which is about as canned as you can get.
If they can't say it, without reading it, then that's a concern. Do they carry a card in their pocket when they need to give a 15 second elevator pitch? Speaking with someone vs reading to them, creates a connection. I've never had a candidate knock on my door to read a statement.


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This almost monochromatic image captures birds doing what they do: sit on powerlines! The picture was taken from Pahgre Road, south of Montrose.
I'm coming off a bad sinus infection, but what infected me this evening was the need to ride! I threw some throat lozenges into my vest and donned my gear and headed up Ouray County Road 4. I checked some new roads to see where they went and took some GPS tracks. Then I gassed up in Colona and then took the Lower Powerline Road (here and here) north to Kinikin, then looped back up past the water tower and down to Pahgre. I grabbed some pictures on the way. The one at the top of the post was taken from Pahgre in a very rural area after the sun went down—the picture only shows a fraction of the birds.
I was attracted by the lines you can see running through the field. They contrast nicely with the trees.
The picture above was taken on Ouray County Road 2. The land belongs to the State Wildlife Division, but parts of it are still actively farmed for hay. This field was recently cut and gathered, leaving these nice rows behind—I guess I was going for the abstract here.
In the very distance you see the Sneffels Range. Somewhat closer are the McKenzie Buttes. The valley is the Uncompahgre Valley generally along Pahgre Road, south of Montrose. I was facing almost directly south.
My favorite time of day is in the evening when the just-setting sun bathes everything in orange. The picture above was taken from the road that goes from Kinikin down to Pahgre past the water tower. It's a composite of a few images put together into a panorama by Adobe Photoshop Essentials 6.
Altogether I had a delightful ride! And I never did use any of those throat lozenges.


At some point in time we were all new to the great information LIFE Leadership has to offer. The question is, what did you see when you first saw the plan? Wether it was at a Tuesday open, a house plan, a one on one with someone, an audio or was it at a seminar? Anyway, what were the possibility or potential that you saw that LIFE leadership could do for you or what you could do because of The LIFE Business?
I joined LIFE Leadership simply because I trusted my brother-in-law. He then promoted to me to go and meet some guy at an Open Meeting, which was 1 hour bus-ride from my place. I did not go the first time! surprise surprise! But I did go to the next one and met the speaker. The information presented really opened my eyes to the possibilities. I then started my leadership and entrepreneurial journey!
This is a funny one! We never saw the plan. We knew Claude and Lana for a while and one night when we had enough of our current situation, my husband called them and said "We don't have a clue what it is you do, but we want in." Results were enough for us. Once we actually saw the plan, we saw a way to get more time with our family, our friends and have way more fun than we were currently having!
When I first saw the plan I had no idea what I had to do, but all I heard Brian Powers say was: if you do the work you can earn your freedom! I know at the time I couldn't see freedom from the manufacturing job I had. The more I kept associating and listening to CDs I started to see why I had been lead to believed that being in the 45 year plan was the norm! Thankfully I've associated with great people who because someone took the a step to contact my brother, I am now on my way to real financial and personal freedom!
When we first saw the plan, we saw hope. We had tried everything to move our family forward. We looked at other businesses, we looked at working more than one job. We looked at self employment...and nothing was going to give us what we needed to get ahead...all they did was make us more busy. With this opportunity...my husband saw a way to help people and matter, I saw a way to stay home with my children and own our own home. HOPE and a FUTURE, that is what we saw.
I was shown the plan on February 25th, 2013 from my buddy and now upline leader Bob Wilcox (Crusaders!!). I was already hungry and looking for something different, so I didn't hesitate to jump on board. I've never been part of anything like this before in this industry. Already started my 2nd team and continuing to read, listen, and associate. Looking for financial freedom and become debt free to live the LIFE I've always wanted!!
I was contacted by an old friend that i hadn't seen or heard from in years. i was desperate for a change. I knew that i needed to do something different with my life. When My friend, Peter Schmitt, went through the script, I didn't even ask a question. He came to my house and showed an awesome one on one plan. All I saw that night was the change i so desperately needed. I saw my chance to live intentionally for excellence!
When I first saw the plan I was at the point of hating my life. I had a job that drained me emotionally everyday, I was newly married and still "figuring things out", I was dealing with mental illness that could sweep in and cripple me with no warning signs.
When I saw the plan, I saw HOPE! I didn't understand everything, but I was desperate for change. I trusted my aunt and uncle and started right there that night in their dining room.
It has been 1 year since I started and I can honestly say, I LOVE MY LIFE! I had the opportunity to leave my job and be a "stay at home wife", my relationship with my husband is absolutely amazing (still figuring things out, but in a way more positive way), I no longer have to take medication to deal with my illness. LIFE has completely changed my direction in life and I am so excited for the road ahead and more great things to come in 2014!
When Dolores and I saw the plan we got hope back into our lives! This was not like "one of those things" that people get really excited about it and over time it gets worse. Life leadership has only gotten us more excited over time. We have been involved since Life Leadership has launched and with listening to cd's, reading books, and associating with leaders, Dolores and I have grown in all the 8 F's and applied this Life Training information to build our community we have been able to replace my Plumbing income and live totally free!
Thanks to our mentors Tim and Amy Marks we get to live the life we always wanted, and before we saw this business drawn out I had given up on my goals and dreams. Today we get to live where we want (Florida) and spend time with our kids out boating, hunting, traveling, and giving hope away to a whole bunch of people that feel stuck like we did.
If I can give anyone a piece of advise, if you are checking Life Leadership out, listen to the cd's the person loaned you and read the book. This will change your life for the positive, it has for us and thousands of people around North America and soon the world.
I remember holding our spot, my wife & I... we were so busy we couldn't find time to turn around. The plan I saw that fired me up? TEAM Approach was working for me and I didn't even know it! An organization built under us and we hadn't done a single thing to deserve that yet. Our friends started teaching us what was going on when we finally made time; and then we saw the plan. After thinking that I knew something about this industry... I learned that the Co-founders of Life had knocked it out of the park... this is genius at work. The more I saw, the more I understood and loved what I had become involved in - the opportunity of a lifetime. We started sponsoring our friends and family and never looked back! If you're reading this right now, you're on the right track - look closely, meet the people, see the meetings... and make an adult, informed decision because the LIFE plan, will change your life... and you'll be very happy you joined the Life Community! the next step? Learn the system!!!
Haha, I will never forget seeing the plan. I was introduced to the LIFE products by my then personal trainer and now awesome upline friends and leaders Michael and Brea Stithem. I was in the middle of a training session with Michael when we got to talking about leadership and books we had/were reading. At the time I was on a management track in corporate America and my rose colored glasses were still in tact. Anyway, that day at the gym he casually mentioned that he got a leadership book and several cds a month. I thought that was cool and asked him to hook me up.
A couple of weeks later (I can't remember exactly), he invited to meet his wife and get on subscription. I ran over to their house thinking I would be in and out and just had to sign on the dotted line or something. Well, when I got their they invited me to sit down and chat (check point 1 & 2 make a friend & find a need). Well I enjoyed that but after a while I thought it was kind of funny that they seemed to want to be my friend, haha and not just sign me up and kick me out.
After discussing a wide range of topics they invited me to the kitchen table to fill out the paperwork to get on subscription. As I filled out the paperwork, Michael proceeded to show me a quick plan. He had my partial attention through the 45 yr plan, ESBI, and water town analogy... I just remember thinking the information seemed reasonable but if it was true, I didn't think I liked what it meant for me if I kept going the way I was going. Then he explained team approach and power player where he completely lost me. Haha, I didn't ask questions just listened quietly and thought to myself, I don't think I would be too good at that...just hook me up with the product. And that's how it started. I have been an avid consumer of LIFE products ever since. And after ALOT of reading, listening, and associating I am finally starting to overcome my own fears, taking the steps to grow my business. Tune in when I cross the stage as round table for "the rest of the story." Haha.
When I saw the business opportunity, what attracted me the most was association. The details seemed logical yet I was intrigued with getting to meet new people.
In the two plus years since LIFE Leadersip launched, I can honestly say that I like the direction where my life is heading. I feel blessed with the opportunity to call a very special group of people my friends and some of them are mentors and my extended family. I have also fallen in love with learning for the sake of improving.
I have been blessed and I want to be able to turn around, be a blessing for others and pay it forward. WIth LIFE Leadership I truly feel I am on the right track to live the LIFE that I've always wanted.
How my wife and I first were introduced to Life Leadership was our neighbor. He asked to come over to show me what he was involved in. He told me that it could help me out in any areas of my life. I told him no way! My thoughts were that we don't have the time or money to put in to whatever he had. Then he asked me which of these 8 areas interest you the most?(Faith, Family, Finances, Fitness, Following, Freedom, Friends, and Fun.) I told him I'm always looking for ways to improve my finances. He loaned me a cd called "Ten Financial Principles". I loved it and wanted to learn more.
When he came over he showed my wife and I the basics of how this company works. It sounded great, but "is it real" was alway in the back of my mind. I trusted my neighbor, but didn't trust the company.
The reasons we signed up were...(1. The information was really good, we couldn't get enough of it! (2. We like my neighbor and he was a successful business owner. (3. If what he said was true, we didn't want to miss out. (4. The last thing that made us sign up was, for a cost of a tank of gas(I drove a truck at the time) we would be crazy not to give it a try.
We can't thank them enough for bring this opportunity to us.(Thanks Mike and Cathy!) We finally have found what we have been looking for to bring hope back in our lives!
When I saw the plan the first time I honestly didn't see a lot but I did see a systematic way to do something. It made sense but I wasn't really excited. The second time I saw the plan was at a house plan with about 25 people. That night I started to see all the possibilities. A way to accomplish the goals and dreams that I had been thinking about most of my life. Its so important to get people to a few different meetings so they get the whole picture of what this is about. Then I attended a bigger meeting and I really started to understand how much this process was helping people change and grow themselves to become the best person they could become.
When my wife and I saw the plan I was very skeptical but once I finally agreed to sit and see it I saw a way out of the rat race. At the time I was working for the government (Agriculture and Agrifood canada) during the day and doing construction work in evenings and my wife was field placement coordinator at Moncton NB University. We rarely saw each other and when we did it was not often very positive. All we wanted was a chance to lead a better life. The LIFE community has added so much value to our lives that I couldn't possibly see ourselves without it. Saying "YES" to joining this community was one of the best decisions we made. We finally understand the importance of aligning our lives with our priorities and not just obligations!
Before seeing thr plan, I had recently had a conversation with a friend about financial struggles and challenges balancing Life in general. My husband was working out of town more than not and when he was home we worked opposite shifts. We wanted to spend our lives together but constantly went in opposite directions. We needed another way...but didn't even know there were options. The next day at work, my friend said "I saw something last night that could change out lives." And she was right.
The information we learned from the LIFE products and assocation has changed us forever. I began the business journey and have met friends who are like family. Learning daily, and loving it. So excited for what LIFE brings in 2014 and years to come.
When I first saw the plan all i saw was a chance to make some money. That's the only reason I got in. I was a quarter million dollars in debt and I wanted out. I wasn't sure that the business would work but one thing I was sure of was the fact that what I was doing wasn't working. After working in the factory for 18 years and still be $276,000 in debt, frustrated is an understatement. When they asked me one question ."Where will you be at in five years? I said I never thought about it. Since I have been introduced to this information my eyes have been opened wide. It amazes me how so many people in America are not getting the results they are after but there's still telling their kids do the same thing they did. Today our debt is gone and it's been two years since we punched the clock !! Thank you life leadership.
But that is only a very small part what we have benefited from the life business. Growing up on the Amish farm I was only allowed to have a 8th grade education. So I thought my options of success were very limited. Little did I know that self-directed education is the way to success.
He always had projects, studies and little experiments going on, so I thought nothing abnormal about it!!
He was in his apprenticeship, and so had an amazing couple who really did an amazing job at building a relationship and just being friends with me before anything: they did it right.
Before I knew it, I was at an Open-meeting, seeing Joce Dionne for the first time, and associating with the amazing team I'm involved with now, having already formed awesome relationships with the leaders and true, good friends they are!
When I first saw the plan, I discovered a way to get my time back. I was a single lady, working 40-60 a week as a retail manager for a clothing store. I had just come out of the crazy rush of the holiday season. I knew there had to be something else. I considered going back to school to be an art teacher, because at least I would do something I loved and could actually go home for Christmas (3000 miles away). This business gave me hope that I could not only get to go home for the holidays, but I could actually have my time back! Now I'm married, I met my husband in this community, and we have an AWESOME marriage! The mentorship, books, and CD's have given us the tools and support that are vital to having a marriage that THRIVES. One that gets better every day, week, month, and year. Praise God for LIFE Leadership and for lifting the lid of possibilities on the life we could have. Chris Mattis says it best..." we grow personally, we help others grow personally, and we look for those who want to change the world." I have yet to find anything more rewarding that this business!
I was shown the plan by Brian Powers a week or two before LIFE launched in 2011. Frankly, I didn't understand much of what Brian was showing but that cashflow quadrant made a lot of sense. Coming from a family of self-employed business owners, I knew what he was showing was right in regards to my dad being the system and not being able to leave his business. My wife, girlfriend at the time,went to the launch of LIFE and I stayed home because "I had better things to do." Looking back, I missed one of my favorite talks ever recorded, "Freedom Matters" by Oliver Demille. Need less to say, my wife came home all fired up and I couldn't understand why she was so exited. So, secretly I started listening to cds that she had and I think it might have been Brady's "Camel in the Tent" that got me. After that, I realized that it's the information that is key and it has revolutionized on how I live my life. It is such a blessing to be linked up with this organization.
When a good friend invited me to an Open Meeting and I saw the plan for the first time I had no idea what or how it worked, I just understood I had never attempted to do something "different" with my life in the 20 years of retail I worked. My wife, step-son and I had a rocky relationship at best and my debt was sinking us more by the day. My wife and I took a leap of faith and boy was it the best move we ever made! We cannot thank the LIFE business more for this life-changing vehicle and opportunity! Keep chasing your dreams!
I saw fun - in many ways.
p.s. I was not totally a man of my word.. I didn't actually start reading the book until I got to the Tim Hortons for the follow through. I was trying to rush through as much as possible to not look like a fool if he asked me about it; I think I only got through 2 or 3 pages .
I still would've payed to see this!
My Dad called me. He lived in CA and I lived in AZ. He told me about an Open Meeting at a local hotel in the area. I was interested because my current employer had recently announced that they would be closing their doors and I had to find another job, so I was open to seeing what this was. I took my sister with me to the meeting and we sat on the front row. To my surprise now, the speaker was Chris Brady. All I knew was when that meeting was over I didn't have a clue what he talked about, but his enthusiasm was contagious. He had so many positive stories about helping other people I wanted in. And hearing that he had been job optional for years helped too.
Thank You Chris Brady. You show a phenomenal plan.
The first time I saw Life was at a Life Live Event with Claude Hamilton and Wayne MacNamara! Best decision of my life to go see these amazing leaders and speakers. The moment i shook both of their hands I was convinced that this was for me.
Having been in and around the"Industry" for over twenty years with many different "Teams" and having mild success and more than our share of devastating failures, Angela and I decided that we would NEVER, EVER, did I mention that I said NEVER be involved in the word of mouth industry again! It took our son's friend Josh (Thank you Josh for your persistence) a few months of trying before we finally agreed to see "The Plan" in Feb of 2012. He promoted a couple who, like us, home school, (you might have heard of the awesome Leaders Chris and Marcia Robinson), that we had to meet! Ryan Fronick was on the board and he did an awesome job and I told my wife that, "that boy has what it takes to be big in this deal". I saw right away that the product was ingenious and if I was ever interested in building a word of mouth business again this would be it. When I saw a CD from a huge homeschooling leader as one of the products and someone that we were already purchasing from another vendor and had no chance of ever getting money back for it, I decided what the heck.
It made since to "Hold my spot" but I would not be building and I did not! We bought our products and listened to them very infrequently.Ryan and Sarah Fronick, Brandon and Kristina Brazier and Chris and Marcia Robinson just kept loving us. This past July we decided, let me clarify God decided, that this is what I am called to do! We got started when I showed my first plan July 22nd 2013. We have since qualified for the 6000 for 6 trip and in December hit the Leader Level!! I share all of this to let everyone know that you never know who will or when they will, just know that you need to give them the opportunity to decide, or let God decide for them!
LOL, sadly, the only thing I saw when I saw the plan was MONEY, MONEY, and MORE MONEY!!
I am so happy that I stuck around long enough to let the training system, books, and positive information soften my heart and help me realize it is not just about making money, it is about SERVING PEOPLE!
As Orrin says, "the business will go from your head to your heart." I couldn't say it better.
I didnt do anything for 3 months. No tuesdays nites, no seminars, no listening to cds. Raymond Abernathy showed me the plan and he beat me to my house. I invited him over and he was there aobut 30 minutes before I got there. When I got my first check in the mail that is when I wondered what was going on because I had not done anything to get a check. That is when I learned the most about TEAM APPROACH.
I saw two things. At the time my job had some questionable future in regards to salary and knowing a reduction was in order. Having a completely balanced budget (spend every dollar that came in) a reduction in salary would be very stressful. My wife and I were praying for "something" to find our way through. Then a mutual friend showed us the plan.
In the plan itself what I saw that "got me" was the 45 year plan. I sensed all the concepts of the 45 year plan. And I have been trying to convince myself that I would have to work until I die, as there was little chance of living a lifestyle on retirement income. And we were feeling the stress of going backwards on the flat line while true inflation was eating us alive. The 45 year plan in a single graph COMPLETELY explained exactly what we were experiencing.
After the plan, my wife and I on the drive home looked at each other and I told my wife "well I've been praying for "something" to come along". And my wife admited that she too had been privately praying for "something". And we looked at each other and said do you really think this could be it." After a day or two we just could not get passed the thin threads that lead us to hear the plan and decided that it was only through Providence that this could have happened. And we felt obligated to get started because we just couldn't bring ourselves to ignore God's gift.
So in a nutshell What we saw in the plan was 1) The revelation of the 45 year plan which was like a 2x4 to the head and 2) An answer to our prayers.
I got started, 100% because I couldn't stand the idea of my best friend getting rich without me! Now, obviously my reasons for being in, and doing the business have evolved, and changed rather quickly, but I held my spot completely on the 'what if' factor.
Simple I saw my freedom in many areas least of which is money. Time back is most important to me.
We saw a way to serve and ultimately know that we were doing something more for God's Glory. Glory be to God, this business is so much more than a paycheck...it's a lively culture of individuals taking a stand to say "You are not alone and I'm here to help...".
I was shown the plan by Ian and Emma Cox. Ian told me that he had a business opportunity that he wanted to share with me. I have to admit that I am a skeptic and had anyone told me that it was an networking or multi-media type business I might not have been willing to listen. However I knew Ian and Emma and trusted them. I knew they would never present anything to me that wasn't upright and beneficial. I jumped in, then later got second thoughts and doubts crept in, but I reflected upon the character of Ian and Emma and pressed forward until I gained enough understanding and experience myself to confirm the good of this business and it's products.
First thing I saw way a resource library. A sharp looking guy reading GTD in a local coffee shop. So thankful for talking with him. Quickly found my self absorbing the info. More importantly after 3 months of second guessing everything. Looking at BBB so on so forth.Made the decision. (why so long) sturben plane and simple!!! The info it self is worth it's wait in gold.
The first time I saw it my wife Kelley, had been signed up for a few months. I didn't touch any of it with a 10ft pole(not sure why the 10ft is so significant), but noticed changes in her from the cds & she was reading books which neither of us ever did before. I also noticed that her upline( Carol Baker), seemed to have near endless amounts of time & traveled 6 hrs one way to help Kelley all the time. Carol stp to me & got to a point & asked me "if you don't change something, what will be different in 5 years". I said quickly, " nothing". So right then I figured it was time to see what this stuff was about. Too bad it took 6 months before she dragged me to my 1st seminar ,which was 4hrs away in Madison. But the Marc & Christine help bust some more rust loose in my brain, & my journey starts from there. I will never forget that 1st seminar. Those two were incredible then, but even better now.
When I saw the plan I saw a way to get my time back. We had gotten to a point where my wife could be a stay at home mom, however I wanted the same. We had been trying lots of things to create a residual income...rental properties, other businesses, investing, etc only to get further behind. I was so sceptical about LIFE because of all the things I had tried and not succeeded at before that I asked my sponsor questions for 4 months trying to find something wrong with it. He finally convinced me to try the material, so I did and after 3 months of LLR subscription and appkying it I got a promotion at work and from there I was all in! We have hope again and now a system to follow to success instead of struggling to figure it out for myself.
I didn't pay much attention at the plan, as I assumed I was being shown some scam – as indicated by the comment I made to my friend who invited me to an open, while still in the parking lot: "This had better not be some pyramid scheme!" At that time, I rarely spoke except in very small groups of people that I knew. I saw Claude Hamilton doing an open, and didn't absorb much.
What I did hear – and it was enough to get me in – was the "What if?" followed by "What else?" I was making about $20k per year at the time, and saw that I wasn't going to be going very far there, already asking "is this it?" I saw the compensation plan at the time – not nearly as good as what we have now! – and saw the possibility.
After losing by job exactly two days before the major, my upline, coach, and dear friend moved a ticket to me, and for those of you who've been to one, you know there's no way I could not be in after that!
When I saw the plan, I saw a business that would WORK! I had tried many things, but I saw right away that what this business had to offer would actually teach me to be a business owner- and it did just that!
Scott and I just think you and Angela are awesome!
I absolutely love that! It's so true!
My husband and I were just beginning to date and he invited me to a live Open about 20 minutes from where I lived at the time. It was the final Live speaker open before we switched to the Webinars. Kevin was the speaker and boy did he light up the room. I really didn't know what LIFE was about , aside from a few books Kevin had given to me to read while I was trying to move up the ladder at my job.I had honestly thought at the time that is was a learning course similar to the certifications I attained when I was working at a refinery. What I saw was hope. I saw a group of people who had hope and such incredible positive energy- a far cry from the dog eat dog environment and people I associated with on a daily basis. The plan was new, it was scary but it made me ask the question I had avoided for years-- "What if". That question and leap of faith has lead to one heck of ride that I wouldn't hesitate to do again!
My husband and I went to an Open Meeting when we saw the plan for the first time. BUT, we actually signed up before we saw it! We trusted my husband's parents. They told us about the integrity of the leadership. They didn't understand all the details. They just knew the leaders had character and vision. We trusted them to take us to a future with a great comp plan and a vision to improve our country. Ultimately, as an 18yr. Old right out of high school and freshly married, I saw hope for a great marriage and success without debt!


Japan, an island nation with densely-crowded cities is located in the Pacific Ocean. This country is an archipelago made up of 6,852 islands with the largest islands being Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku. In addition to its modern skyscrapers, pop culture and shopping malls, Japan boasts numerous shrines, majestic palaces and mountainous national parks. Sacred Mount Fuji, a cone-shaped volcano, and the Japanese Alps are the pride of this land. Flying into this country you will likely land at Narita, Haneda, Kansai or the Chubu Centrair international airports. Catch flights to Japan from around the world with Japan Airlines, ANA (All Nippon Airways) or Delta airlines being your best deal options.
Tokyo has been the seat of government since 1603 and is also the seat of the Emperor of Japan. While it is one of the most densely populated cities located on the southeastern side of Honshu Island, it still has a rich variety of attractive green spaces, historic temples and museums to visit. This prolific city also offers tourists abundant choices for entertainment, shopping, culture and fine dining. And if you want to experience true Japanese culture, visit Yokohama just about 30 minutes from Tokyo. Slipping into a traditional kimono, tasting authentic Japanese cuisines, learning the art of origami, visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, soaking in a natural hot spring and staying at a traditional Japanese accommodation should be high on your list when discovering this unique country.


With my experience in technical side the radio industry, there's a subtle excitement that you get from setting up, rewiring, or moving studios around. And quite honestly, there are a lot of details to have in place before going live in a new control room for the first time.
This video was that moment for The Beat 94.5 when the mic went hot from its new studio and over the air.
Project's not done yet, but getting to this point is certainly a relief.
I know it seems odd to be posting a television commercial after such a hiatus from posting, but there is something of a mass media critic in me that is fascinated with this ad.
Prior to doing what I do these days, I got my name on a couple of awards from the Advertising Federation of Cedar Rapids for some stuff I helped write and produce during my days at KRUI. Small achievements that almost had me consider getting into the advertising realm for a short period of time, especially if I could be creative as this commercial.
This is where I find this ad to be somewhat brilliant. Maybe I'm in the minority of people who watch this commercial and laugh each time it pops on, and that's even after it's being re-used in a carbon-copy campaign right now that ran at least a year ago. I think that speaks to how well the creative was done on this commercial, not to mention a bit of pure luck.
In an era where it seems that Geico has 50 mascots and 20 spokesmen, you can develop creative to your heart's content, come up with a funny script, and use all the CGI in the world, but the chances of having that single cut where the balloon shoots off the helium tank and deflates on the manager's shoulder as perfectly as it does in that single shot is something that doesn't just happen when you want it to. As soon as it cuts away to the product shot at the end, you have to imagine that the whole set burst out laughing.
Maybe I dissect too much of what I take in terms of media, but hamburgers are something I certainly don't ingest these days. However, it never hurts to laugh a little and appreciate another aspect of creativity.
I was contacted a couple of weeks ago by a representative of the David Suzuki Foundation about using a photo that I had taken in one of their promotional videos. As it turns out, Devon from the DSF was actually a former intern at the radio stations where I currently work, so it was nice to make a connection with someone who has progressed in their career and on to a great opportunity to work for an organization that I have a lot of respect for.
The photo itself was from the 2008 Canucks Superskills competition at GM Place. I shot it with my Canon S5 IS, and it's one of my more favorite shots of Willie as he was just skating around in circles during a brief moment of downtime. Anyone who goes to see enough Canucks games knows that he's a constant mover on the ice when nothing else seems to be going on.
The video was put together to spotlight an ongoing effort on the B.C. coast by the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform (CAAR) to help preserve the fresh salmon from the effects of sea lice that comes from the salmon farms in the same areas.
You can see more Cause An Effect videos on the DSF website. Many thanks for to their organization for asking me to use the photo in their video.
Aside from hockey and baseball, futbol, or soccer as many like to call it, has to be the next sport in the world that always peaks my interest. And the World Cup in South Africa this year is completely worth getting excited for, much like this Nike ad has done for me. It's quite possibly one of the best ads that most of North America will yawn at, so you should check it out.
If you're not a soccer fan and this gets you curious about the sport at all, this summer is the time to check it out. Countries of the world with their best players going head to head in athletic competition? It doesn't get much better than that.
Truth be told, this was the only photo I took during the entire 12th day of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics. It's not that I wasn't taking anything in or running around the city. As the rain returned to the lower mainland, there was a noticeable reduction in the amount of people celebrating downtown. Rebecca and I are still battling through colds, so it's more comfortable to relax on the couch and let the TV bring the games to us.
What I did discover is the amount of content finding its way onto YouTube. Some of it's official, others… maybe not so much. Regardless, I wanted to share some stuff that I'm seeing on both sides of the borders that deserves to be shared with the world because if you weren't watching it live, you probably missed your chance to see it.
I cannot help but let this 90 second spot get me more and more amped for the games. I'm not a fan of the millions spent on this ad campaign, but at least they did this one very well.
I think what's more impacting is not only the beauty of B.C. that is showcased in this commercial but the way it's delivered. I mean, if you compare those California ads with all the athletes, movie stars, and celebrity politicians, this is night and day. Some subtle background music, amazing shots, and, yes, some celebrities telling you how amazing it is here, but it's done in a way that is very B.C.
I think the slogan used to be, "Beautiful, B.C." This ad actually makes that slogan work now. If you don't believe me, just look at what Rebecca did recently: outdoor speed skating, dog sledding, and, oh yeah, she caught the torch as it ran through Prince George, B.C.
That was all in one weekend.
This brings me back to my point: I'm getting really excited for the games. The city is buzzing, evidence is everywhere, and I'm starting to feel overwhelmed by the amount of things that can be seen, done, and hopefully documented over the next two months.
We have tickets to a few events, but I feel like the most fun will be what we are able to find away from the event locations themselves. Getting to those places sounds like a real adventure, potentially a nightmare, so we anticipate doing all we can by foot, transit, and probably more by foot on the other side of that.
I know they say you gotta be here, but here is just too broad when it comes to these games. Right now, "here" feels like I want to be everywhere and do everything.
This made me laugh pretty hard, so I had to share it.
Credit to Sean Bonner on Twitter for this.


Hello. I am Krisztina, an interior photographer based in Budapest, Hungary.
After finished my studies in KREA Contemporary Art School, I opened my 300 m2 photo studio, SILENS Photo & Style in the 18th district of Budapest.
Primary I photograph interior design and work on my personal projects while the studio is running continuously fully booked.
Digital photography is a fine tool for me, while I consider analogue photography as self expression. My unique style is based on pure forms. I love extraordinary buildings and structures.
With more than 10 years in photography, I regularly organise workshops in the studio, giving visual and technical advice to young photographers.
My photographic works are published both in online and offline media, including interior shots for the Hungarian Octogon Architecture & Design Magazine and Octogon Deco.
Currently, I am increasing the creative investment of the studio and broadening my work to the international market.