i think you will like this...

COMBO a collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis (2 times loop) from blu on Vimeo.

christmas run-down part 1

look what Jake got me for christmas!



We're going to the Detroit Opera House on Sunday for the performance. I'm SO excited!

a-ma-zing.

I like this stuff...

Check this out.

The Top 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World

• by The Editors on October 28, 2009

A few weeks ago Art Review announced the Top 100 power brokers in the art world but we thought they missed the real story. So Hyperallergic has released its own list of the people who have never received their moment in the sun.

We present “The Top 20 Most Powerless People in the Art World!”

We haven't seen him for a while, which begs the question, "Did the recession kill the bunny?"

1 – Everyone entirely unknown to Hans Ulrich Obrist – If the kingmaker isn’t on your cell phone, well, at least your mother is.

2 – The guy in the bunny outfit who year after year protested in front of Gagosian’s 25th Street gallery — hey buddy, how’s the career?

3 – Independent curators without trust funds – There’s a saying, “No trust, no love.”

4 – Artists who can’t speak English, French, German, or Spanish. While the world is filled with approximately 6,800 languages, artwork must adhere to the linguistic realities of economics.

5 – That man at all the openings who might be homeless. Wine at gallery openings may be the art world’s only form of social service to people outside their realm, but hey, it’s something.

6 – Beleaguered Administrative Assistants at MoMA – This is a group that knows what it’s like to be underpaid, under-appreciated and powerless — the trifecta!

7 – Assistant Curators living off $27,000 salaries, with $80,000 in grad school debt from a fancy curatorial studies program. (When students enter MBA programs, professors often talk about the negative investment they make in their futures as they spend money to eventually make six or seven figures upon graduation. In curatorial programs, discussions of economics that don’t reference Marx or Negri are just gauche.)

One city just ain't cool.

8 – Anyone living in only one place, as opposed to “between Berlin and Beijing,” or “based in London, Amsterdam, Sao Paolo, and Los Angeles.” Where have you been, mono-urbanity is so 20th century. How do you expect to address globalism by staying put? You probably feel even more like a failure if you were born and grew up in the same city that you currently live in. If that’s the case, you should just fake an accent.

9 – All Chelsea gallery interns, working for no pay but needing to buy the latest dominatrix heels for the upcoming opening. (On the plus side, poverty breeds rake-like thinness which in turn ensures job security. As the late great Mary Boone used to say, “Eat a donut and get a pink slip.” Oh wait, she isn’t dead. Never mind.)

10 – Chinese pop-realist painters (Mao, McDonalds—we get it.)

11 – Macrame Club of Minsk, Belarus – Established in 1974, Minsk’s once burgeoning club of hard-core macrame artists has dwindled to only two members, both named Ivan. The group achieved world renown when they macramed their club house and then shellacked it as a tribute to the durability of the art form and the greatness of Vladimir Lenin. Unfortunately, the group never counted on the severity of Belarusian winters, which have caused the structure to leak and eventually be condemned by the city. The two Ivans currently gather at a local tea house for monthly meetings to discuss the gossip-plagued world of macrame.

"For the Love of the Art God"

12 – The faceless miners in Sierra Leone who procured the 8,601 diamonds for Damien Hirst’s sparkling skull – they may fear for their lives every day as they work in hazardous work conditions and subsist on less than 1% of the value of a pencil in a Hirst installation, but they sleep well at night knowing that a silly sculpture that represents the pinnacle of the latest gilded age exists.

13 – The anonymous frog that Martin Kippenberger crucified – Remember high school biology class? Well, so did Kippenberger. The frog’s family has contacted PETA and they are still pondering if legal action is the best way to resolve the contentious issue.

14 – Darren Johnson, security guard at the Main Street Art Museum, Mobile, Alabama – When he’s not protecting the posters in the gift shop from shoplifters, Mr. Johnson is attempting to stop visitors from trying on the museum’s rare collection of pre-Civil War slave shackles.

15 – Prison inmates – Considering they are all doing the exact same performance that Tehching Hsieh did in his SoHo cell, and then some, the fact that they didn’t get a MoMA show for it just highlights their failure.

16 -Jesus Christ, because he’s just too old to show at the New Museum.

17 – Candida Home, blind art blogger. While unphased by a ban on photography in many major galleries and museums, Candida disastrously tried to cover the Lakeland Ceramic Fair in Derbyshire, England and caused over £80,000 in damage because of her proclivity to touch the art. She has since been banned from most major art fairs and institutions and is only writing about public art.

See you at Reena Spaulings?

18 – Anyone who shows up to a Lower East Side gallery opening non-ironically wearing a button-down shirt and ironed khakis, or eyeglass frames that aren’t from 1983 and gigantic. Pariah!

19 – Rosalind Krauss – we included her on this list because we couldn’t remember who she was and we were too lazy to Google her.

20 – Art critic for the wacky right-wing World Net Daily who floated the idea of McCain inspired art as a weapon against the deluge of Obamart.

herakut

really nice mixture of media and genres. could be the case that i want the dance i'm working on to look like herakut's paintings...

plaster it up

have you seen this???

It is wallpaper that has bookshelves photo-transferred onto it. I found it while whiling away my time before teaching...Deborah Bowness prints it and you can find it here for a mere 159 British pounds!

from memory

Stephen Wiltshire is an austistic artist who took a helicopter ride over New York City, and then drew a detailed panoramic city-scape from memory.

He says that drawing "helps him focus". He's drawn cities as diverse as Tokyo and London. Here's more on his visit to New York City.

new favorite

So, I've been hearing this song, "New Years" on Canadian radio lately--love, love, love it! I may even love the band's name more: ohbijou. I think they may be my new favorite band.

Today Rich Terfry said the video "looks how the song sounds," and so I went in search of it, because I really wanted to see what the song looked like!
What do you think?

I heart autumn.

So, I'm having a fall-in-michigan-moment. Actually, it's been going on all day. I am always struck by how awesome Michigan is in autumn.


It makes me want to make something hearty and fall-ish, like this amazing-looking squash-and-cheddar bake from Molly Wizenberg's Bon Appetit column.

Or, there's always the possibility of learning something new, like the fact that the second most important Chinese holiday is the mid-autumn Moon Festival. I say we head to Ann Arbor and get our Moon Cake on, what do you think?

ukulele. dance. elephant trunks.

Herb & Dorothy

n,
this is the doc i was telling you about... be prepared to fall in love with these people.


HERB & DOROTHY tells the extraordinary story of Herbert Vogel, a postal clerk, and Dorothy Vogel, a librarian, who managed to build one of the most important contemporary art collections in history with very modest means. In the early 1960s, when very little attention was paid to Minimalist and Conceptual Art, Herb and Dorothy Vogel quietly began purchasing the works of unknown artists. Devoting all of Herb's salary to purchase art they liked, and living on Dorothy's paycheck alone, they continued collecting artworks guided by two rules: the piece had to be affordable, and it had to be small enough to fit in their one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. Within these limitations, they proved themselves curatorial visionaries; most of those they supported and befriended went on to become world-renowned artists including Sol LeWitt, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Richard Tuttle, Chuck Close, Robert Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Lynda Benglis, Pat Steir, Robert Barry, Lucio Pozzi, and Lawrence Weiner.

After thirty years of meticulous collecting and buying, the Vogels managed to accumulate over 2,000 pieces, filling every corner of their tiny one bedroom apartment. "Not even a toothpick could be squeezed into the apartment," recalls Dorothy. In 1992, the Vogels decided to move their entire collection to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The vast majority of their collection was given as a gift to the institution. Many of the works they acquired appreciated so significantly over the years that their collection today is worth millions of dollars. Still, the Vogels never sold a single piece. Today Herb and Dorothy still live in the same apartment in New York with 19 turtles, lots of fish, and one cat. They've refilled it with piles of new art they've acquired.

n, i thought this looked like you...
thank you sartorialist for capturing all fabulousness.

n,
we have been neglecting the blog... poor, poor blog. probably because neither of us have reliable internet and you are freakishly busy!! well, since i am less busy for now, i will try and give the blog a hand.
luf,
j

Artists Without Mortarboards

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: September 9, 2009

IN an often quoted remark the Abstract Expressionist Barnett Newman once said, “Aesthetics is for artists what ornithology is for birds.” I wonder what Newman would make of the overflow of M.F.A.-bearing would-be artists pouring out of art schools and universities these days. Maybe he’d say, “An artist without a graduate degree is like a fish without a bicycle.”

An installation view of the show “Love to Fred From Lee Lozano,” at Pocket Utopia. Right wall, Fred Gutzeit’s “Lee Wall”; left wall, “#0001 (hand-crafted surfboard)” by Jeremy Jones.

The professionalization and academicization of the art world has been lamented for some years, but lately they have become epidemic. The recent inflated art market has created the illusion that being an artist is a financially viable calling. Meanwhile art schools and universities — which often provide tenure (safe haven) for artists who may be taken seriously nowhere else — expanded to accommodate the rising number of art students and are now thoroughly invested in keeping these numbers high.

In this context the growing interest among art schools and universities (mostly abroad so far) in offering a Ph.D. in art makes the blood run cold. It also seems like rank, even cynical commercial opportunism. It’s too soon to tell, but I’d like to think that the economic downturn is doing serious damage to this trend and maybe even put budding artists off graduate school entirely.

This brings me to a project that could make the coming season especially exciting: the unaccredited, free art school that the artist collective known as the Bruce High Quality Foundation started Friday in a downtown Manhattan space lent by a benefactor it has declined, so far, to identify. Whoever shows up will have a hand in the formation of Bruce High Quality Foundation University, which is being made up as it goes along.

The Bruces, as the members of the five-year-old group are often called, guard their anonymity fiercely. But they are generally known to be a band of artists, all male, some of whom became friends while undergraduates at Cooper Union in the late ’90s, when Hans Haacke, one of the fathers of institutional critique, was still teaching there.

Like any small group with a good idea, they benefit from the fact that the art world is in many ways one of the least regulated occupational spheres on the planet. As a result it is unusually susceptible, on a local level, to being altered and improved by the actions of a few good men or women.

This has recently been proved by started-from-scratch ventures as modest as Orchard, a Lower East Side collective-as-art-gallery, and Pocket Utopia, an alternative space of nearly two years’ duration that the artist Austin Thomas oversaw in a Bushwick, Brooklyn, storefront until this spring.

More ambitious examples of proactivity include “Prospect.1 New Orleans,” the new bootstrap international biennial willed into existence by the independent curator Dan Cameron last fall, and this summer’s “Plot/09: This World & Nearer Ones” (on view through next Sunday), which inaugurated an international survey of public art that Creative Time will stage every four years on Governors Island, just off Manhattan’s shores.

If the Bruce High Quality Foundation University thrives, it could prove an even more valuable addition. Until now the group has been best known for a sharp, well-aimed and unusually entertaining form of institutional critique. In 2005, when a shard of parkland was being pulled around New York Harbor — the posthumous realization of Robert Smithson’s 1970 drawing “Floating Island to Travel Around Manhattan Island” — the members pursued it in a tiny skiff carrying a small model of one of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s orange “Gates,” which had filled Central Park earlier in the year. (The title of the Bruce piece, playing off Wallace Stevens, was “The Gate: Not the Idea of the Thing But the Thing Itself.”)

In “Public Sculpture Tackle,” a continuing work begun in 2007 and documented in video, one of the Bruces hurls himself against, clambers up or hangs from various pieces of public sculpture around Manhattan, all the while outfitted in quasi-Matthew Barney quasi-football gear. The foundation has also made a site-specific film, “Isle of the Dead,” that charts the death and zombie-dominated resurrection of the art world and is one of the best works in “Plot/09.”

These efforts are fine as far as they go, but now the Bruces are trying to add to a tradition of artist-initiated schools like the Art Students League, 134 years old and going strong. The group has cited as inspiration the Summerhill boarding school in Britain, founded by A. S. Neill in the 1920s, where children and teachers have an equal say in all decisions.

The Bruces’ new direction was indicated last July when four of the group’s members gave a lecture-performance called “Explaining Pictures to a Dead Bull” at the Harris Lieberman Gallery. The title paid homage to Joseph Beuys’s famous performance, “How to Explain Pictures to a Dead Hare,” while addressing a post-boom, dead-bull art universe. Although accompanied by a series of amusingly pertinent or impertinent slides, the lecture was entirely serious. It diagrammed the links among contemporary art, the market and the art schools producing M.F.A.’s who are burdened by debt but largely naïve about the workings of the art world. It ended with the question: “How can we imagine a sustainable alternative to professionalized art education?”

Bruce High Quality Foundation University is one such imagining. Whether it becomes “the thing itself” remains to be seen, but even as “the idea of the thing” it strikes a blow where one is seriously needed, against the big business of art schools. The university’s first course, which is meeting weekly, is titled Bring Your Own University (B.Y.O.U.). In other words, all those present will “design and implement the administrative policy and curriculum.” Whatever happens, this latest move by the Bruce High Quality Foundation adds inspirational heft to its motto: “Professional problems. Amateur solutions.”

since i don't have any money to actually take more classes now maybe i'll just watch them online...

academic earth

history and philosophy of art

curtain-obsessed

Whew. Now that my summer class is over, I have about a week and a half of "staycation" ahead of me. This is good, because I need to freakin' nest already!

I'm obsessed with curtains lately. I keep envisioning different styles and configurations for the windows of each room. Curtains are a big deal, I think, because they can really set the mood and of course, bring color and texture.

These curtains are fascinating. designed by Florian Krautli, they are full of tiny magnets...

...so you can form them any way you like! Sculptural curtains, indeed.

But my heart belongs to these:


What could be better?

chills.

I liked the addiction piece, but this is pretty and intense. Not sure about the "chain" though...but some of the arabesques and the synchronization gave me chills.

Who says you can’t hip-hop if you’re 80-years-old? Who says your days as a performer are long gone? Who says you can’t shake things up and light up a jam-packed sports arena with your hot moves and cool attitude?

Just because you’re a card-carrying member of AARP, do you have to give up on your dreams?

No. You don’t. Absolutely not.

GOTTA DANCE is BAD NEWS BEARS morphed into the flip side of MAD HOT BALLROOM.

GOTTA DANCE the movie chronicles the debut of the New Jersey Nets' first-ever senior hip-hop dance team, 12 women and 1 man - all dance team newbies, from auditions through to center court stardom.

As smooth dance moves are perfected and performed in front of thousands, aging myths and misperceptions are pulverized.

Despite swollen ankles, exhausting rehearsals, fashion clashes and seemingly impossible dance steps, the NETSational Seniors go for it, spreading joy, inspiration and cool dance moves as they hip-hop their way into the hearts of Nets fans and beyond.

read this!

ok, so I'm not proud of it. I read Twilight. I told you I'm not proud of it!!! But, some of the girls at GCF are reaaaally all about it, and one of them lent it to me so we could discuss it.

I had to read this...

to reclaim my grasp of wit and intelligent humor.

The only problem is, now I want to go back to Europe! Help, I'm broke and addicted to travel...what should I do??

mmmhmmm, this is what i'm sayin' . . .

Death and Life of American Cities: Is Detroit the Next Artists’ Haven?

12:33 pm Tuesday Jun 30, 2009

by Heather Schwedel

We just read that 18 visual artists received a boost in the form of $450,000 in grant money from the Michigan-based Kresge Foundation. As the Detroit Free Press reported, “Advocates say the fellowships could have a galvanizing effect on the local arts scene — boosting public perception of an overlooked community, inspiring artists to create more ambitious work and offering them an incentive to remain here rather than leave for New York or elsewhere.” Plus, next year the grants will recognize non-visual artists.

Does this spell a mass exodus from Brooklyn, the current unofficial borough-of-choice for struggling artists, toward a land free of gentrification and trust-funders? Let’s take a look at the evidence.

- Last summer New York magazine suggested that Buffalo might eclipse Williamsburg as an epicenter for all things hipster. We don’t have population statistics on hand or anything, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. Meaning that maybe it’s time to give Detroit a shot. As of December, the average price of a home there was $18,513.

- In a recent video conversation with the New York Times, author and Detroit native Jeffrey Eugenides (and a frequent pick for our Big Brother Book Club!) mentioned that returning to his hometown fills him with Ruinenwert, which is German for “the pleasure of ruins.” The pleasure of ruins is hard to come by in rapidly developing Brooklyn, which is why some artists might find inspiration in Detroit’s “beautiful, horrible decline.”

- Back in May Ron English told us that he was involved with a campaign to buy houses in Detroit. “They’re like super cheap — like $4,000 a piece. The idea is to create an artists neighborhood and artists housing. He’s having all of us pop surrealists donate art to help raise money for this project. A lot of people have said, what kind of person is going to want to live in a neighborhood where the drug dealers are armed and it’s very dangerous? People don’t understand that artists… All they want is space and time.”

What do you think: Is Detroit the next Bushwick?

diy petite gymnase

Harrison and Ford House Gymnastics is a cross breed of yoga, breakdancing, climbing and gymnastics in a domestic setting. House Gymnastics can be performed by anyone, at anytime, anywhere. The greater the height or danger, the better the move. Manoeuvres must be held in position for 3 seconds to be valid. Once the indoor moves have been mastered, they can be applied to outdoor situations and site-specific gallery spaces. All images of Harrison and Ford House Gym moves are 100% real and unaltered.

House Gymnastics allows you to exercise while enjoying your home and other environments in new and exciting ways. People intuitively connect with House Gym because it reminds them of their childhood, when they used to climb around and explore.

Warning: do not attempt to practice House Gymnastics whilst under the influence of drugs or alcohol as this could lead to injury. By viewing this website you hereby agree to the following terms:

i) Harrison&Ford cannot be held responsible for any injuries sustained whilst performing House Gymnastics.

ii) If House Gymnastics addiction forms, you must stop immediately and take up some other hobby like knitting or stamp collecting.

iii) Never perform any difficult House Gymnastics without a spotting partner on hand.

poetry, baby

Oh, how I love this movie! I might even love this poem more, though:

As I Walked Out One Evening
by W. H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.

at the library and hungry

I am at the library, about to start my stroll home, and I'm STARVING!
In order to torture myself, I decided to check out the Bon Appetit website for...what? Images of delicious-looking food to torture myself with? Apparently.

Ah, but don't these look tasty? They are "Crispy Black Bean Tacos with Feta and Cabbage Slaw". I want to eat four right now.

for obvious reasons, i am now in love with this.

My Piece Is Still Running from Miss Tint on Vimeo.

erik burke's website and blog

what's your thesis title?

kind of fantastic . . .

Lucas Murgida at 667 Shotwell from Chris Sollars on Vimeo.

brownies

So, for the pizza and prosecco night, I definitely made brownies from the new magic cookbook.

Let me tell you, lady: they were fan-f*ing-tastic.

I miss you and I wish you were here already.

pretty patterns

Hooray for sunshine and vitamin D!

i've been asleep for much too long. i'm afraid that all the world's coffee has been raptured and replaced with decaf . . .

laban defined "states" that people can move in. awake state is when you're only moving with aspects of space and time. the movements in dream state are basically opposite and are comprised of weight and flow. i'm feelin too dreamy to type anymore on this rainy day, so i'll just add a few pictures . . .

a fun new discovery

hello, friendly. Sorry it's been so long...

I've discovered a new blog. Still kind of figuring out what it's all about, I think it's a gathering of galleries, who knows? Here's some sample pics. Intriguing, no?

so i'm gettin' all dancey these days and i think you need to hop on this train with me--we can be long distance dance partners . . .


personal goal is a handstand. really i want to do fantastic breakdance balanced poses. also, i would like to be able to bust out a triple pirouette when necesary. . .

what do you think? what are your movement goals??

if nothing else, we have to prep for our interpretive dance debut. . .

"page two: happiness is easy
salt or silence."
~nicole brossard

march 1st, 2009

what it looks like outside my window . . .

i've decided to stay inside until it is at lease 40degrees outside. yes, i'm having a sit-in to protest the weather. not sure mother nature is listening though . . .

in the meantime, here are a few photos to remind us both of spring







oh no, in the time it has taken me to up-load these pictures the snow has become all the more furious!! come on spring--i know you can make it to us!!