The finish line

Here are the notes I took from graduation during the first part when I was still giddy and excited and not bored and worn from not having eaten breakfast. My advice to all upcoming graduates is eat a good breakfast the day of commencement because there are a lot of people in your graduating class and on that last day you get to meet them all.

Ellen gave a good speech too.

This poster was pasted up on campus. One of them is still riding after 7 or 8 months. The student speaker, Helen Jaksch, refrenced this quotation throughout her speech but she didn't mention it being hieroglyphics from the book of the dead. I'm going to give her a print

Dumpster Diving Part 2

This post was supposed to precede that last post but so much has happened in the last week I just couldn't find the time. And then of course as I was walking to the computer lab I happened to past the aforementioned dumpster where my most recent goods were found. Every time I say I quit, I just get pulled back into the game...

DIVING FOR ARTWORK: Originals and Reprints

Posters, wall hangings, and art projects turn from precious to unpackable around this time of the year and I end up with more good visuals than could ever fit on my walls. So with that said let me display the most recent acquisitions to my collection

This remains one of this years best finds. He's about 90% actual size, standing a little shorter than me, but he stands on his own (which is ripe for a metaphor but the heat just has me too worn out to be clever today) I stood him up in the living room where he repeatedly freaked me out when I arrived home late night with the lights out: "Ah! Stranger in the apartment!!!" I thought as adrenaline rushed to my drunken brain. But then I'd remember it was just my man Barry, standing upright in the darkness, and I 'd breathe a sigh of relief, pat him on the back and go to bed to dream about nice things.

The very next day I found this painting leaning up against the dumpster. Like most people I'm not really big on flowers unless they arrive to me free and then I'm kind of like "Aww shucks. Really?" This painting was most likely done in an art class and it is really good. The subject matter is typical but its really well done. Plus, I like having it around to remid me that I could paint something if I tried.

Which I'm totally set to do now that I have this awesome, brand new canvas. I never would've bought one but now that I have it maybe I'll get in the habit. I'm thinking of doing an ocean scene, something like this maybe
This was in my roommate's room but I forgot all about it until I'd seen he pitched it along with one of those sweet Prospect.1 maps of New Orleans (hang onto those if you can still find them)

As for other posters I noticed a lot of reocurring imagery. This is probably due to those carpetbaggers who organize the poster sales on campus every year. They lay out big fat books of posters for us dupes to flip thru and purchase a wide-range of western pop-culture imagery. Bands, movies, celebrities, cheesy photoshopped beach scenes, and famous impressionist paintings can all be found. This is how I ended up with 3 different posters of Van Gogh's 'Starry night' last year while doing my salvage work (I got the cafe in Arles reprint this year too).

Even though Van Gogh is one of my favorite artists of all time, I find it srange that these poster sellers go from campus to campus pedalling the same bunch of pictures to students all across the country. Just like television, we all end up looking at the same things, thinking about the same stuffffff.

But this at least allows for interesting sample of the style that people are attracted to. As an artist and/or populist it gives me a good idea about what kind of imagery people respond to and makes me think about how that might affect them personally.

Like what might the affect be on a person if they hang a picture on there wall of an anorexic actress from the 1960's who looks like she's 14 years old and look at it day in and day our for two semesters? I found this one in the trash at least three different times That's the best place for it.

But considering the print I now have up of this cigarette girl, maybe I shouldn't posture about good or bad representations of women in posters. I'd like a femal opinion on this one here. Is this art nouveau ad any better or worse thatn Mizz Hepburn or am I jsut making a too big a fuss in the first place of that cute little movie star and the girls on campus who may or may not adore her and wear similar bugeyed glasses? Posters of Paris and all things french were prevalent too. I found two of the Eiffel tower as well.

And this one is cool simply for being so damn big. I've yet to patch it up


One day I was about to climb in to another red treausure chest, when I heard a deafening boom come from inside it. I jumped back just as another loud crash rattled the metal walls. Shaken, I looked up to see two girls two stories uphaving great fun smashing their ceramic works inside the dumpster. Sculptures are too heavy to pack up for some, I guess. Or maybe they just didn't give two shits about the art in the first place. But this work was just too attractive for me to pass up when I saw it.Even though I still don't know what to do with it, I'm glad I saved it from the landfill.

Mission Accomplished: dumpsters dived, more treasures found

We, the students, keep moving out and the red dumpsters continue to be fed. The underclassmen moved out of their dorms on the 11th and then the graduating seniors had to be out on the 17th, the day after commencement, so i was going to declare today an end to all major combat operations.

However the struggle lives on as i learned to today when I was drawn back uptown like a moth to a flame. The first dumpster I saw had a messenger bag tantalizingly hanging on the outside. It was a clean, well-built specimen that the owner had obviously wanted to go to a good home. I took it as a good omen but passed it up and peered inside instead. It was almost empty but laden with good.

What I found was my third fan for the new apartment (the second oscillating one), a dartboard with 3 darts (that I want to trade to anyone interested), a hand mixer for baking and such (that I believe I 'll give to my hostesses at tonight's banquet on broadway), and this gun which I'm most excited about and will also be attending tonights banquet:

Only one foam dart is missing. I also got these:.

And inside a shoebox labeled "Eurpoe Scraps" I found these french coins. They were buried beneath countless ticket stubs and museum passes that obivously represented a long and storied trip abroad to numerous European countries but that never quite made it to the fabled scrapbook that was planned for their preservation. Bummer, I have a shoebox like that myslef back in my folks home. The coins apparently were purchased for 6 Euro and depict various kings of France. Cool, I guess I'm a coin collector again now:

Meeting of styles in NO

This wall out in Gentilly~ish has 4 of the top writers in the city. Personally I think this guy won though I wouldn't have bet on him to. Whoa. Its an awesome wall.

Mysteries Revealed!

The other day I got a call from my friend Sam Pasquesi who told me he had gotten a call from his girlfriend Jean. Jean told him to check out this cool website, this very one I'm writing for right now. Sam did and said "Cool there's my picture, standing behind Mihir at the art gallery in December."

No surprise really. Sam has always been a strong supporter of my creative endeavors. He is a writer himself and a sometimes stenciller to boot.

In fact it was he who helped me publish the first issue of the Paper*PapeR. A month and a year ago I was over at his place spraying the cover stencil on the first 50 issues while he sprayed the graphic on the back cover. (We did this in this kitchen for some reason and when Thom Bone came home he was greeted by the noxious smell of spray paint throughout his apratment. When he found us he said something like "Guys WTF??? You couldn't have done this outside?" But we couldn't have: there was a slight drizzle outside I think.)

And it was also Sam who suggested I set up a blog to go along with the zine when I first told him about the whole publishing idea. In fact, he was the one who set up this account on the Blogspot and even wrote the first entry. It was a good one about KRS-1 and the use of an uzi as a fashion accessory. Unfortunately for everyone involved, I accidentally deleted this article the first time I logged in and tried to post something myself. I'm a moron. My apologies to Sam once again; hopefully he can be persuaded to generate some more writing for this site in the future (Evan Hanzcor too for that matter...)

But I digress. The picture was not what Jean had called Sam to tell him about. She had called him to tell him about how weird it was that I had found the first draft of the mix CD she had made for him. It is Sam's name written in her hand on that mix that I had wondered about. Apparently she finished making it and then decided to revise the track listing to achieve a more musical mix perfection. She must have felt a little bit of pressure to get it just right since Sam is a renaissance-man musician afterall (see: the New Sunday Toast).

So that's the story of who the mysterious Sam on the mix is: My friend Sam who created this blog. How's that for a full circle?



PS:More to come later about issue # 3 of the PapelPapel

Stairwell Sideshow Salon

Here's the new plan. Ever since I turned in my three submissions to the 15 person BA group show, I've been lamenting my choices, wishing I could've put in more stuff and having regrets before its all even started. With 14 other people in the show I had to make do with a smaller alotted space. Plus it seems that even though the show opens on the 7th, the reception on the 15th is too late for a lot of people to make since everyones leaving town and throwing their ocillating fans in the dumpsters.

So I'm thinking it would be fun to skirt both the exhibit and the official opening and have a side venue in the former graffiti stairwell on the night of Friday the 8th. I'm going to cover the walls with all my other stuff that I couldn't fit in the show and invite anybody else to post their work as well. Then we'll get some booze and boombox and have a little pregame session/art appreciation hour.

How does that sound? More to come. Stay tuned

Back in December...

In anticipation of the Senior BA art show opening soon, I'm finally posting the flicks from the print show I did back in December. For our final project we were assigned to "install" works somewhere. When I asked where we should do this, our professor replied offhandedly: " I don't know, the gallery downstairs I guess." That was about the extent of her enthusiasm for the project and the help she gave us.

There were only four of us in the class and I didn't want the place to feel to empty so I worked ahrd to have enough stuff to put on all the walls. I ended up with 7 works to fill the four walls I got and I worked harder than I ever had thru the months of November and December. Regardless, Prof's response when we she took it all in on the opening morning and saw all the spray painted stencils was: "But Bud where are the prints?" Ouch. She and are good at cutting one another down swiftly like that.

But I'm over it. Really. The show was still a success among the peers, who I gotta thank for coming out and supporting.




LAUGH TO KEEP FROM CRYING



Now Hanging in the Tilton Libray




MR. RED meets MR. BLUE

SOLD!

It has begun!

Christmas in May! When all the dumb children throw out the goods Santa gave them into large dumpsters outside their dorms. I cleaned out my room in anticipation today, making space for all the new stuff I'll soon come across. Tonight Chris and I made our first intial sweep of 8 of the residence halls on campus. At the first one a couple of brahs shouted at us:

"Oh my god, look at those dudes! Their inside the dumpster. What the hell are you guys doing???"

"Um picking throw your stuff, dipshits," I mumbled under my breath. I'm not in this for confrontation, just the goods. Like your fan, brah. I took it up to the lounge to test it and...sure enough it worked fine. First score of the night.

By the end of the night, I ended up with two fans, a Lupe Fiasco poster, small dry erase board with plenty of markers, a pad of graph paper, some coat hangers I need for my closet, a box of unopened daily contact lenses ( I don't wear glasses but I'm thinking somebody might use these, don't know though. They are still sterile and everything since they are packaged individually and inside a box wrapped in plastic), one of those energy saving lightbulbs (I don't need a lamp, which are always plentiful, but I figured the bulbs will come in handy), a set of scrub pants and shirt to be colored on, a color ink cartridge (removed from a smashed printer scanner! It must've been dropped from the second story into the dumpster below. I'm hoping to snag one of those intact before this is all over. Last year I got two and gave them both away), and best of all this mix CD.

It comes complete with a track listing and its not half bad at all. Strange though considering the date; I don't think this was meant to be thrown out. I wonder who Sam is..?

"Listen to everyone. It all means something"

Amen to that. And this is just the first night of diving...