it's getting spooooky around here...

No art today, just normal human stuff. It's Norah's first Halloween and we've gotten into the spirit. We wish you a fun, safe and
spooooky Halloween!

collaboration

(painting credited to hieronymous bosch)


SdB Yeah. He got a job at Bell Labs doing helicopter design as a way of pursuing his interest in the so-called Psychopter, which he was much more enthusiastic about than the helicopter.

DH What is the Psychopter?

SdB It’s Young’s idea of a vehicle that would transport the self—the human self—into another dimension. He really believed in this.

DH So this is outside of neuroscience or psychopharmacology. Are you talking about nuts-and-bolts engineering in the service of…altered consciousness?

SdB Exactly. He’s in pursuit of something fantastic, but positioned within the world of utter practicality.

DH Well, as painters, we have permission to take questionable theories seriously.

SdB To what degree do you have to be right, as an artist? There is the notion that you should have some idea of what you’re talking about, but it’s never going to replace how interesting a work is.

DH The work needs to reflect the strength of our convictions. Our motivation thrives if we believe that our efforts matter.

SdB I have this belief that the work will yield awareness or trigger a connection to the images as if they’re encoded in the paintings as bodies of information. It also becomes a way of escaping the issues around painting: nothing interests me less than the questions of abstraction, or the possibilities of whether painting can compete with other mediums. That seems to be really behind us.

DH This gets to the core question: What is painting good for?

*(full bomb magazine article can be found here: http://www.bombsite.com/issues/103/articles/3096)


I find this article interesting for the dialogue these two artists are engaged but I also find it taps into an idea that's been mull'n about my kehnoggin for some time. In April I took part in a project that challenged the notion of collaboration and more specifically artist collaboration and artist/curator roles. Because I'm a professional artist I take my role as artist into consideration, not necessarily seriously but always considerably. With professional collaborations there should be a basic understanding of ownership of intellectual property as well a delineation drawn between the art concept and the curatorial concept. One should also think about a contractual agreement if relationships bear a certain amount of hostility towards these lines. Lets just say that I will always be wary from now on. As an artist I think it abhorrent for a curator to shit all over my idea and work. The bold italic dialogue above points to the main issue in my mind - that is, what is the function of the art as opposed to the curatorial umbrella. I say opposed because sometimes there is a great but silent battle taking place between the two. I do have more to say about this in time. In the end I'll add that when conducting projects that involve people of considerable skill, good intention and quality there must be an effort to give credit where credit is due. When collaborating ask yourself, did I do the whole thing by myself with no help and do I deserve complete credit for all this brilliant work? In the end I ask all you self absorbed users to always check your ego at the door when asking for help' (me included).

On another note: The Bomb Magazine article is worth a read. While hardly touching on my issue the conversation is really inspiring. My thought is that it manages to be mindful of artistic practice and sincere. Arthur M Young is also worth checking into.

Got a new toy

TOY

I've been working on ideas in the studio and I've been procrastinating my blog update for these fabulous ideas.
Hah, suffer through another original acoustic death song.

Future Plans

(image comes from an unknown web source not my family photo album)

Justaposition

Heather Corley's foot squashes my tender dropped amusement.

belief

melt

recording more sketches, sketchy songs...

recent notable recordings

I had the pleasure of singing in a gang vocal session for a new album by Sherman S. Sherman. This is the same Sherman S. Sherman that offered up his property to do an audio/video piece for an upcoming - Friday, August 28th - opening at the Hunt Gallery at Webster University. The show is entitled The Unobserved World. Please come. It'll be fun? There's cold beer I've heard.

Jason Hutto (Phonocaptors and Walkie Talkie USA, also happens to be the guitar tech for Son Volt) is engineering the gang of Dirty Peckers (nickname for musicians who work and play in Sherman S. Sherman's Peck of Dirt project). Some pics of the beautiful and talented people who fill St. louis bars and basements with amazing sound taking part in the gang vocal.

I'm not sure when this album will drop but the song we sung on was one of the best Southside dirges I've ever heard...maybe that's the STAG talkin.

Light In The Darkness I Walk

Song sketch

Until The Wind Blows You Out

Two ol' songs

that were recorded by Roy Kasten and played by Ann Tkach, Dallas Woodson and I. Written by me for Acoustic Death Music.
One night in apt. # 402 at 1629 Washington Ave., St. Louis, MO 63103. Winter of 2007

Summer
Waiting for the band

Another collaborative effort sent three wild and crazy guys out to Rancho Sherman S. Sherman. Sherm is kind enough to let me
abuse his property and sometimes his friendship when I've concocted dubious plans in the guise of art. This time Daniel McGrath proposed the audio/video project that set the course for action.

I come at it through the ideas of John Cage, namely related to his "small sounds" lexicon. It's not that the sounds of this project were microscopic but that Cage made it possible for the most "insignificant" of sounds (namely silence) to be placed amongst the most rigid and time tested structures of western audio composition. By making 'all sound' a viable and thus potent carrier of meaning, Cage brings everything we hear and think we hear to the forefront of conceptual materials. So the question that interests me is: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" The question is then about perception and Cage was perhaps the first artist to point out the nature of perception as it is linked to memory.

For this project we set out to make sure that our memory serves us correct...that a tree does indeed make a sound.



Now in the words of Daniel McGrath:

Basically it's about teh philosophical absence of sound if it is not pecieved. It's connected (in this context) to the idea that if there's an opening at a gallery and no one goes to see it, does it exist a a show? What then is an exhibition?

There was a sex pistols concert in Manchester that 30 people saw, most of them went on to form new bands. Was that a tree falling? I think Da Vinci said something like this: "Music annihilates itself as soon as it comes into existence." It's the representation of the invisible.

song sketch

Tonight I was testing out some gear for a project this weekend and I worked out some words and chords. It's been several weeks of not playing much so I was feeling a little rusty. The picture reflects some of the lyrical ideas in the song. The fat cat nor the picture of the cat is mine. I found it while I was looking for pictures of the morbidly obese.

The song combines several personal instances that needed an outlet. I think my time in jury duty slipped some idealistic phrases into the mix where a few curse words would have been used. It's just as simple as you can get. I repeat the entire song in the second verse and chorus but I throw in a G to disrupt the progression at the end. It looks like my gear works..I'm ready for the weekend.

DIN OF THE DEN

laziness of the day, of the week and possibly the year.

One thing I'm reminded of when viewing this video is the laurels some rest on. Note to self: there is always going to be someone more capable and you are not irreplaceable. With this in mind, go forth with well intentions.

what it is what it is what it is what it is what it

Relational strategies in artistic practice/ritual. Warlock Homage. When you place a certain significance on materials. I believe Joseph Beuys coined it "contextual material". You can see it in his felt and fat works. Another fascinating thing about Beuys is taken from the Wikipedia page I've linked:

"Also in 1958, Beuys begins a cycle of drawings related to Joyce’s Ulysses. Completed in ca.1961, the six exercise books of drawings would constitute, Beuys declared, an extension of Joyce’s seminal novel."

Rationing Doom

Held securely in a south city fortress; a muse of death, toppled power, and redemption from the abusers of power slowly unburdens itself from an artist. The work seems to cut a wide arc through ancient and contemporary history all the while and unflinchingly exposing the most earnest of man's endeavor.

In this snippet Coby Ellison see's the mastery of men as a godless enterprise as his characters acquiesce to their fictional and consorting reaper. The characters in power play it a touch under audacious as they know what fantasy can become.

I first met Coby at SnowFlake where we were concurrently showing in two separate displays. His was an installation in the Drive By space depicting a diorama of war between ant armies. Mine was a drawing and audio score of a piece called Hate Project - Car Bomb. At the end of the evening we were sharing our interests in music. It turns out that Coby has also been involved in music with stints in punk rock bands and as a solo artist better known as Debbie.

A welcome sign for seasonal change

Anyone know this little feller? It comes every spring through a crack in the concrete about the time my piennies start to bud, which is early spring. The flowers open and close throughout the day...notice the flower clusters. The honey bees, butterflies and hummingbirds frequent this plant thoroughly which makes for a busy little nectar intersection. I think my fig tree might benefit from the attention this plant gets. Yes, I did say fig tree. Anyone know about the rare Missouri fig tree?

I hate it when good people die

One thing that's been bothering me is the passing of Jay Bennett. Here's a link to a live version of a beautiful album called The Palace at 4am. It would have been a dream of mine to record at Pieholden, Jay's studio. I would have quit all my other fantasies for the duration to do so. 

If there's a heaven I hope Jay is there.

Links to some other work he had done:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAx4CPx3J7M&feature=channel_page 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE3ZON0DXY8&feature=related 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_BYgg4oUmE&feature=related 

and Titanic Love Affair
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqB-lvuv12E

Breathless

A Nick Cave cover because I'm drunk with love.

Breathless

Part 2 of Guitar Drop Duet

Guitar Actions

                                            

                                    

                                    

Guitar Drop Duet in A & C

Kind of like lovers after a rough go of it. The piece is 17 minutes long and consists of me dropping these guitars from a ladder onto each other or the ground and sort of roughing

them up a little. Those are potato stains if you're wondering.

prepared piano piece paired with electric guitar and potato

A sketch for a larger piece I have in mind for another location. While I was at St. Charles Community College documenting and performing "Guitar Actions" I noticed a piano stuffed in the corner. I've always wanted to do a prepared piano piece paired with electric guitar and potato. In this case the potatoes serve to block the hammer dampers from stopping the B string sections. The guitars were ostrich tuned to B. Ostrich tuning means that you tune each string to the same note. I recorded the project but have yet to fumble with it in FCP and Logic. 

guitar actions

So i've been thinking about music and art lately. More specifically how they relate or could relate, how best to capture them simultaneously and how to employ their strengths. These

are general questions but they make sense. First I put myself in the role of an artist and then as someone who enjoys playing songs and sometimes gets lost in the sounds while physically playing. Sometimes I need to distance myself from the tactile quality of music...to challenge where it comes from and place the intellect into the hands of a monkey.  

I wish I could do this to a really nice Strat! 

Incidently some of these ramblin's will be presented at St. Charles Community College for the SCC Multimedia Invitational on march 11 from 7 - 9p.m. Check out the other artists in the show:

Greg Edmondson

Shannon Randol

Anne J. Lindberg

Yosafa Deutsch

Sarah Paula Hoffman

Maya Escobar

Aaron Lovell

Eric Repice

Rosenthal sent for paint restoration

Yesterday morning I scheduled  Tony Rosenthal's - House of the Minotaur, to go out for restoration. I've been using a company based out of St. Clair , MO to do all my blasting and painting projects that require 2-part paint systems.

While I do enjoy restoring work to it's original state and re-establishing the artist's intent, the main reason this process happens is because of the general public's inability to respectart. After a few years of battling my anger with the public's inappropriate interactions with the art collection I am in part responsible for, I've made a positive inroad and started a campaign to instill respect for the rich culture Laumeier has collected, it's strong direction regarding regional, national and international artists and it's unique Art Museum experience.

Tony's work is slated for return in March. We will re-install in a more prominent location to dissuade vandalism. Kim Humphries and I agree that it's original location was too remote and it enabled ignorance towards Platonic idealism. Art should always be respected, even if it's hard to understand or appreciate. It's the idea that humans are striving for something larger than pragmatism and that they're searching for answers or looking for questions. 

Nick Lang helped with the de-install. I rented a Lull all-terrain 8,000 lb fork-lift. We useda cleet clamp and strap for picking. The two other men are named Jim and work for Commercial Blasting. These guys are good. They do classic car restoration from the ground upas well sculpture. Nicky, the intern, took the pictures. I'm driving the Lull.

Daniel and I install Heizer

Today Daniel McGrath and I installed Michael Heizer's - Compression Line, 68'. It's the nature of museum work that it remains invisible to the majority of people who go to art openings. There is sometimes ridiculous events that unfold as museum monkeys scramble to make do with tools not meant for the situation. This is an elegant shot of an interesting day. 

Michael Heizer would be proud. 

Daniel is pictured in the photo. He teaches art history at Webster and is an artist himself. We talked about Robert Graves, down tempo metal, Fi Jae Lee and Allan McCollum and the systems employed when artists create cosmologies.

Fi Jae Lee is showing at the Cecille R. Hunt Gallery at Webster University, Friday, Feb . 20, 6 - 8pm. Click here for details.

The internal struggle, the twin

Going to the museum to stimulate repressed memories.

I usually have a good idea of what artists are saying through their work. Most of the time it isn't a gut reading but more of an academic realization brought about by massive doses of art installing, art history, art magazine reading and art show going. I can only count a handful of times that I had an aesthetic experience that wasn't somehow already burned in memory before I saw the work. I have an encyclopedia of images, artist statements and curatorial poetry that fills in the gaps between the work and the back of my head.

From the standpoint of knowing before going wouldn't it be cool to recall a memory that wasn't informed by the day job or amateur pleasures. When I was young and my parents dragged me around to museums I remember thinking, "why are these things important and why do my parents have an interest in them". These "things" ranged from artifacts of natural history, fine art and applied art. For the most part, a child has an instinctual or emotional experience in museums and sometimes his or her parents have a more puzzling experience because, perhaps it's a learned response they require.

Studied assessments are useful for cultural purposes and academia is fueled by them but what about the information that isn't readily codified or that slips through the labels or has been labeled but still has an alien relation to it's tag. I'm talking about the, "yes I know what this is but it's telling me something else and it makes me feel human" - feeling. I am talking about music or the musicality of art, the one - two punch of being conceptually sound and yet sublimating.

Rosalind Krauss describes Andy Warhol's rorshach paintings as a “parodic vision” in response to color field paintings which had attempted “to move painting into the disembodied realm of pure opticality”. In color field paintings, any interpretation relied solely on the response of the individual observer, saying more about the observer than the work itself. Krauss continues, “Warhol pulled the plug on these sublime aspirations by reminding us that there’s no form so innocently abstract that it can’t be turned back into literary content”. I had the chance to see several very large Warhol rorshach paintings at the Seattle Museum of Art. At first there was this feeling of being told a joke or parody but because of the scale and craft of the work I had to stay awhile and inspect the beautifully made and torrential surfaces. The paint or ink that made up the ink blot was thick, textured and black. Some of the black had oxidized and formed that rainbow slick you see in parking lots after a rain. The paintings were quite brooding and hilarious at the same time.

Sigmar Polke did some interesting landscapes for Parkett no.13 1987. Here he used several tactics for exploring the double image. He strays in two examples by utilizing symmetry found in the image itself but then thereby making reference back to the mirror image. Polke should be closely watched because as an artist he's very much like Warhol. They are both alchemists of pictoral space that both come off as aloof because of their seemingly effortless approach to a complex interplay between the viewer, their intentions and the work.

confiding pandemonium system

Another Paul Hiatt comp. and my routine of late has been working in the studio and listening to this remarkable collection of - hardly know what to call it. I think this one was the last he gave me before leaving for Seattle. It's aptly titled - Free Range Human, Last Chance. Somewhere between a girl and a torrential down-spiral Paul's on the loose with mind altering audio abutment, layers and texture. On this one he dabbles in his previous incarnation as a social worker for the insane. 

This comp has 7 pieces. Two of them are far too long to upload but I'll share the rest. These have no titles that I know of:

#1

#2

#3

#6

#7

Recently a brief email correspondence told of a major hard-drive malfunction and a couple projects may have been lost. I hope this is not the case and there's more Hiatt coming my way.

What go's into a song about hate

There's many ways to start a song. Just like a story, there's personal experience and allegory. Like poetry - there's words, meter, timing, dynamics and delivery; not to mention the choice of key and musical style. 

I've been working on hate. Peering into myself and the surroundings. It's easy really, there's plenty of it and I'll admit that I'm prone to the dark side more than the light. It's also easy for me to see it in other people. That said, I looked into fratricide for inspiration and came up with some interesting comparisons. John Berryman drew from Shakespeare to create his 77 Dream Songs and His Toy, His Dream, His Rest. Shakespeare's Hamlet is Berryman's Henry. An argument go's like this: Hamlet kills his uncle Claudius because Claudius supposedly killed Hamlet Sr. to become king thus Hamlet's stepfather. Hamlet doesn't like the idea of his uncle (his fathers killer) becoming king much less sleeping in the same bed with his mother Gertrude. It's a familial killing and it's not a clear case because it's Shakespeare. Berryman brings it a notch further with the use of modern psychology. Berryman's Henry contains a double self. One self succumbs to the other through self hatred brought on by the suicide of his father and we're left feeling the loss of the weaker self. As one character triumphs over the other everything is lost. Shakespeare tells the story through multiple characters and Henry's fratricide is internal. Similarities arise in allegorical and modern times. Cain and Able for the god fearing, Romulus and Remus (Cassius/Brutus and Ceasar) for Rome and semite killing semite or Israeli killing Palestinian in todays world. Between the Jewish and Arab conflict we see another time honored tradition in familial killing - The Mark of Cain - meaning revenge is seven fold. If we are to follow this to possible outcomes we should wonder if Jews and Arabs in this part of the world might both loose to the another enemy, their Fortinbras.

My very small sketch of a song contemplates this by creating a musical equivalent with tension placed between  Amaj and Abmaj. The horns play a G#(7th) and E(5th) movement to complete and compete with the Amaj and Abmaj chord voicings. An F6 is a half-step up from the flattened Amaj. making a movement in halfsteps or as I like to think, stepbrothers. The dissonance created by the horns, guitar and vocal is like an entire family killing itself. Like Hamlet. You can listen to the slaughter here 

 

Havel, Texas artist paradigm

Joseph Havel is an artist from Houston, Texas but he's also an avid amateur botanist. I found that out one day walking through the Missouri Botanical Gardens. I can't remember latin names to save my life and even common names escape me but Joe just seemed to riffle off a name for every plant he pointed at. I wouldn't have known the difference, whether he was wrong or right; he spoke common and latin I felt, just so I would conceal my doubt and not ruin it for the other company.

A good memory can serve you well, especially when it comes to playing songs. I worked with Joe installing his solo exhibition at Laumeier Sculpture Park. The two of us completed the exhibition in three days. While working with him we talked about stuff. I usually keep to myself and simply manage installations and stay out of an artist's way - but Joe is from Houston.

Houston's where I bounced and confiscated drugs at a club called Energy, where I worked as a palate maker for a shipping company - being one of two english speakers. I lived in Galveston for a couple years playing pool with Russian and Chinese sailers at a prostitution bar called the Pink Lady, just down I-45 from Houston. You could say I know my way around those parts - the best places to find psilocybe coprophila under the moonlight, an isolated fishing beach or in my opinion, one of the best cities for art - Houston. My first proprioreceptive response happened while visiting the Jean - Michel Basquiat retrospective at the Menil. Something never forgotten and only twice replicated since.

Joseph Havel is Director of the Glassell School, a successful artist and just like all my favorite Texas artists, he writes songs and plucks the guitar. Joe and I talked about making songs, poets and how poetry and song writing relates to art, how a string of words can become sculpture, the nearness of words and objects, the use of space in music and sculpture and the stifling heat of a Houston summer.

After installing the show I gave him a CD of demos and said I'd like to hear his work. Two months later I received two CD's in the mail. Here's Galveston from the 3 song demo. I asked him what he thought of my work and he said he liked it because it was honest. You can't get any more honest than an acoustic guitar, an unfiltered close mic'd vocal and a heartfelt list of words strung together.

Welcome to the Hiatt Hotel

It's 1999 and you've just stepped out of the shower. There's a sound outside the door of your loft apartment on Washington Ave. in St. louis. You open the door and your dumb feet kick the crap out of a CD case and send it sliding under a church pew. A couple steps and you bend down to look...oh my, it's Hiatt Hotel.

Not really named Hiatt Hotel, just a play on Paul's name. Could be called - Animal Vegetable Girl or All The Things I like To Eat. There are six tracks on this self produced effort. Most come in at over 10 minutes in length and display multiple movements. Movements are defined by a change in tempo and orchestration. He pulls an instrument and or rhythmic element from the movement and sends it into another configuration - another movement. This is track 3, Hey Digital - the shortest and least offensive. Album cover is an original collage made by Paul. He gave this to me after I shared some 4-track songs with him the night before. Here's hoping he burned that tape. This work is complex, you can hear real instruments in here. It scared the heck out of me when I first heard it. I remember him saying he used a $200.00 computer to do this. That was about the time I started looking into digital recording and thought -schucks, if get a 200.00 computer I can do this? Nine years and 1,800.00 later.