(8/24 by Scott and Borgman)

Start things off with a pseudo-haiku

The weather has stayed the same but the change is still in the air. I realized that seasons had shifted last week when I drove down City Park Ave., a street that's been quiet all summer, and ran right into clogged street full of cars and people milling about on the sidewalk, spilling out of nearby Delgado Community College.

Whoa. People have to go back to school. Its not something that's going to change my schedule but it definitely impacts me. In the city of NO there are a number of institutions that make us a solid college town. Uptown there is Tulane University and Loyola right next door (both of these sprawl up and down St. Charles and allthe way to S. Claiborne). Then down Carrollton by the 17th street canal is historically black Xavier. Then deeper into Midcity is Delgado and Universtiy of New Orleans by the lake. That's not including all the Tulane & LSU med schools and other graduate stuff uptown and downtown. That's a lot of people coming back to the city at the end of August.

Some people have even been asking me "Does it feel strange for you to not be going back to school?" Now I understand the innocence in this question; for 17 of my 22 years on this world I have spent every August preparing myself to be reinstitutionalized like thousands of others. But that is an old habit that did not die hard. The answer of course is NO, it feels great not to have to go back to school. I've waited my whole life for this week in August. Of course I have new responsibilities but I look forward to dealing with them in September on my own terms.

Did I mention the trash???

once you start looking its just so hard to stop. NYC is a rich place, so of course the garbage up there is on another tier. Here are two pictures of stuff I would've gladly scooped up and hauled back to my apartment in Midcity if I could've. Not pictured are the four boxes of free books put out on a saturday afternoon along a sidewalk in Park Slope, BK. I selected a French-English dictionary and a book about urban legends. I regret not taking the complete collection of scary stories to tell in the dark by Alvin Schwartz, but it was heavy.
Phil says: What's the big deal? Its just a legless table thrown out on the curb, let's go!

The Farmer

Check out more

Treasures of the Deep

I love the Tulane library. Not only do they have these nice scanners to use but the place is also full of antique books like these buried among the racks of endless knowledge. I didn't check this one out today (instead I'm leaving with two books for source material on alligators and mermaids and a third book, a novel titled Mermaids on the Moon) but I thought the antique style on Glaucus was worth sharing. How do they print these kind of things?

Inside:

READ MORE ZINES!

Fred Argoff's awesome aforementioned book about Brooklyn purchased impetuously at the Iron Rail info shop.


More on Conejos and Coney Island to come...

Text and Fluorescents

This was interesting to me to see on W.23rd St in New York City because when I first arrived to New Orleans these were plastered all over downtown in and around Canal St and Decatur. They were greyghosted-over over there and half torn down like they were in NY which makes me appreciate them even more. Illegal maniacal rantings on the street, despised by most everyone has my vote.

They're reminiscent of the guy who pasted up all the fetal skulls and anti-abortion slander about liberals around Music Row back in my hometown when I was in high school. More on those if I can find the peelings I preserved. Those were a big influence back in the day, walking back and forth to school and passing them everyday. I got a lightbulb like: Oh? You can just put up any kind of crazy shit on the sidewalks can't you?

Mixed Media

This guy GAJIN FUJITA had some of the coolest work that I remember seeing during Prospect.1. Like everyone, I couldn't make it out to see every exhibiting sight but I did manage to swing thru the Contemporary Arts Center a couple times where one of his canvases was on display (it was actually on panels but I refer to anything hanging in a gallery as a 'canvas'). That one (titled The Saints) was massive and awesome. He had me at hello when I walked thru the doors and saw it right up front. He combines gold leaf and spray paint! what more could an autodidactic student of Boy Art ask for? His is the dopeness.

The above picture came from one of the P.1 brochures they handed out at the CAC. The title is 'RIDE OR DIE' from 2005 and he used gold and white gold leaf, paint marker, spray paint and mean streak on six panels. Overall it is 83 x 126 inches, each 83 x 21 in. I got all that from the little side bar there. This is another thing I like about Gajin Fujita: he listed all his materials. He's not a lazy prick who thinks he's too clever to reveal how he made his artwork. 'Mixed Media' is what most people will put next to their work if it involves the combination of anything much more than two kinds of paint and some paper collage. Artists shouldn't even bother pretending to list the materials used if they will settle for such a lame label as 'mixed media.'

"Oh really, Jackass? You used a mixture of different materials on your canvas? I couldn't tell that at first glance and assumed it must be some kind of super paint that squeezes layers upon layers of textures straight from the tube. When I went to check the information on the label next to your work I was hoping to find out the brand name of said paint so I might buy a tube and copy your style exactly..." If an artist doesn't want people to know how he did it, that's fine, he doesn't have to list anything. But to put 'mixed media' next to it as if that's relevant information is stupid and insulting. Its as enlightening as mentioning that the work is made up of 'physical matter' or better yet 'different stuff.'

The last show I was in, the gallery called me while I was talking to a friend and asked to know the materials used for my one painting that was being shown. I was proud of all the work done by hand it took in that one and I wanted that to be known while the work was displayed. So I listed it all out over the phone while my friend patiently listened. When I was done he looked at me and said "Dude, you can just say mixed media." Nah. No thanks. I'll take an extra ten seconds to let people know why my work rocks on different levels and list all the myriad materials so that people might recognize it as stuff which they themselves have no proficiency. (That way I can feel better about myself when I think "I'm an artist. I make cool looking stuff out of other stuff")

So here is that canvas- Its titled THHBBT!! To pronounce it properly stick your tongue between your lips and blow out air hard enough to send some spit flying onto the face of whoever just asked you how to pronounce the title. Its not actually on canvas but this weird thick absorbent paper Teresa Cole had in her print studio she called blotter paper that she used to blot her paper. I actually displayed it once before in December in a much more lame and incomplete stage (you can see it behind this girl here) Its about 22 x 30something inches

I used spray paint, paint markers, colored pencils, regular pencils, a carpenter pencil, acrylic paint, and woodcuts. I hope you dig

Clap Your Hands Now

A brief debriefing after a most excellent movement North:

>>The idea that everybody in New York is an unfriendly crank is an obvious fallacy. Every stranger I talked to was very nice and helpful to me. The first person I talked to was the volunteer map expert in JFK who was practically too helpful and wouldn't let me go until I assured him I knew the address of my destination. He hooked it up with one of the awesome subways maps though, which I unfortunately left behind somewhere. Another rando I stopped along Atlantic avenue lead me to the G train stop I needed, out of her way and at night down some dark streets. People were especially friendly and eager to talk to me when I mentioned I lived in New Orleans. So I dropped that in most conversations too. I recommend you play that card if you can. It helped me secure a bucket of paint for free late at night. (Provisions provided with all due Props to the stranger and the One up Tops!)

>>Say what you will about "hipsters" but I think Williamsburg is great place. Of course I don't know what the place was like before all the boutique shops along Bedford ave existed but I can't apologize for that. (I did pick up a good zine a few weeks ago at the Iron Rail all about BK so I'll look around for that later). I had a really cool conversation with a chic, slightly nerdy, well-educated couple on a rooftop beneath the Williamsburg bridge one night about what a shame I thought it was that there weren't more women into graffiti and street art. And then the very next day after breakfast my friend and I turned the corner only to discover this scene:



>>In the Juxtapoz issue where they interviewed Aiko, there is a sweet full page photo of her standing next to a wall somewhere in NY with a JAM throw-up and a JESUS SAVES tag behind. I've always liked those writers and that photo and by association Aiko. That day in Williamsburg I got to meet her and watch her work. Awesome. How she filled her massive stencil was cool to learn.



>>The trip to NY this August had me thinking back to the fact-finding mission I took up to Chicago around this time last year. There I did the same kind of things, hitting up all my friends to show me around and let me crash on their couch. One day my man Patrick T. took me around Wicker Park. On Milwaukee Ave. I took his photo next to a mural of some busty cartoons holding a stereo and spray cans with the words "B GIRLS!" next to it. It's an awesome photo too. That day in BK I watched as another one of these females was formed before my very eyes. Turns out it was the same artist and that too was awesome. Her name is Shiro, She's my hero.



>>I hit up all these ladies to draw in my sketch book and before leaving town I made sure to leave that book behind somewhere. Dang. There is still hope for it coming back to me sometime, somehow though. I took these photos on my way out of town, the day after Nick and I first came across this collection of artists (they didn't call themselves a crew).



>>Check out my busted luggage. I schlepped my stuff in one of those mardi gras bead bags from the female krewe, Muses. The stereo played A Tribe Called Quest and Black Star ("whad'ju do last night?") as I made my way for the Williamsburg bridge to get to the Essex Station which then took me to Penn Station and finally a train out of town. Here's a picture of the Empire State building I took from the Bridge.

A Little Help from my friends

I opened up an old book today and this fell out of the pages.

Old poems, New cover

Front
Back
Don't know how many people seeing this now ever got to see the second zine anyway. But the other day I found 7 unassembled issues as I began sorting through prints to take North. The original stencil was nowhere to be found so I cut this one up. The old one

Ogden Museum of Southern Art

The Ogden: downtown in the CBD. My favorite museum in the city. Strapped for cash unfortunately, both me and the institution, we never get to see each other much anymore.

But last week Noah hooked it up with some special coupon for the Thursday night shendig and got me in for free. Whoo hoo.

(He's a good guy like that; gave me the shoes I have on my feet too)

Here's one thing I sketched that night. I'll post it again once I've colored it.

Clyde Hollywood's Trinity