Thursday, January 29, 2009
Blue Cypress Books on OAK Street
Thanks to NOLA RISING, I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to paint a wall over at Blue Cypress Books on Oak Street. Its a cool used book store along an even cooler street full of shops and restaurants. Its on the first block off Carrolton, just down the street from Rue de la Course. Come in and peruse and check out the someday-soon reading room in the back behind the curtain to see the other works.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Value: Its not about MONEY, its about sending a MESSAGE
StuffWhitePeopleLike.com made a good point that when a person works long hours for no pay its generally considered "slavery", unless you agree to indenture yourself, in which case its called "interning." The irony of this servitude is made all the more striking when you're put to work counterfeiting stacks of $100 dollars bills just as I did this past fall. During the weeks leading up to the opening of Prospect 1, I helped Srdjan (~ 'surgeon') Loncar craft his (technically illegal) installation "VALUE," a giant mound of money. For weeks I was waking up early on Sundays mornings to go make money without ever earning any. It tweaked my brain muscle to try and make sense of it, which is exactly what Srdjan was going for.
Isn't that a pretty sight? All that green and beige is enough to make some people's mouths water. The design of the USDs is so powerful that it guarantees a reaction inside of every viewer who sees it. Isn't that genius? Or is it just simplistic and stupid to waste your time and resources wrapping up thousands of chopped pieces of wood in perfectly measured laser prints? I spent a lot of time surrounded by all that paper and at times the scope of the task was exhausting to think about. Just an endless stack of sheets to be cut and folded, over and over, 8 hours each week for a strange stern man in a jumpsuit. At other times I only had to take a look around surrounded by all those greenbacks to lift my spirits up. I know Ben Franklin's sly smile well now. We worked hard (shout out to my man David Merritt, TNASA prez and co-slave) in Srdj's studio which was really a former meat locker with a huge sliding door in a converted old warehouse under a bridge in a rundown industrial district, part of the Art Egg workspace in Mid-City. It looked and felt like the sweatshop of a drug cartel with the unfinished stacks of bills piled up in every corner and us interns bent over the table chopping and gluing, inhaling fumes, crafting the bundles. Every hour or so the boss man would barge in chain smoking his cigarettes to inspect the product, reprimand one of us while the other silently looked on, crack a joke (to show he was keeping his cool despite all the pressure of his impending deadline), and then disappear again to go work on another one of his other massive projects. The dude is intense. I really don't know if I would have stuck it all out if hadn't been for his extra chill artist wife, Adrian Price, who made more of that money it seemed than even Srdj did. She provided a saw-dusted boombox that kept bumping with Radiohead and Bob Dylan at all hours. That's how the work got done.
Location is everything and when it came time to show off the piece, Srdj couldn't have picked a better spot. The whole fat stack was installed front and center at the Old US Mint downtown off Frenchmen's street. The sculpture was divided up between two gated rooms that flank the main entrance when you first walk in. Back in the day when NOLA really made bank, they must have used those cells for the same reason, storing a wad of treasure. To the left the money was piled up (a la THE DARK KNIGHT) where people could get close enough to salivate and sniff at it. Those patrons with that certain glint in their eyes were directed to the connected room where they could PURCHASE(!) the money. A few folks must have regarded this as a ridiculous notion, equal parts modern-art blustering and old-fashioned hucksterism. But a larger percentage of the population considered 500 real USD for 1,000,000 fake ones to good of a steal to pass up. These people were directed to the first room on the right filled with a pyramid of golden briefcases (included in the deal) which they got to fill themselves, eyes aglow and hands atrembling.
Personally, I made the decision to stop collecting coins at the age of twelve when I began to feel like a chump for exchanging ten bucks for 5 cents in wheat pennies. But judging from the look on those people faces as they left the Mint, they knew exactly what they were paying for.
For a few weeks after the show opened I stopped coming by the studio, enjoying priceless hours of sacrificed Sunday sleep. But I was contractually bound by the internship class I'd signed up for at Newcomb to help Srdjan and Adrian. And so a slave to the grade, I slunk back to my master, Ben Franklin and his never ending pile of incomplete clones. Srdjan, fully aware of the hours I still owed him and unresting hustler that he is, was anxious for the re-up and resurgence of his cash flow. He dusted off my seat at the table, plugged in my hot glue gun, and disappeared again. Dave and I carried on just like we had been before (cutting, creasing, gluing, admiring, swaggering, exhausting) for a few more weeks until finals reared its head and we decided we'd made enough money for one semester.
But in the corner of Srdj's studio there still remained one pile of completed cash that Srdj never touched. A crate full of mishaps, cut-ups, half-glued and torn, that for some reason, obvious or not, never passed Srdj's standards. I fondled a few of them when Srdj was out of the room and I was still eying them as David tendered his resignation to the Man.
I casually put it out there:
"Look at these trash stacks, Srdj. Surely, you wouldn't mind if I took one of these worthless old bricks, wouldja?" He eyed me suspiciously, too proud to be hustled by one of his own. "Let me think about it, man. I might need'm for...something."
With David ready to be out of there, I still lingered around one more minute in the studio acting as if there was one last dust pile I needed to sweep up. Just long enough for him to change his mind in fact.
"Alright man, what do I care, you know? You can take some, sure" he said with the same suspicious look. "But what do you want that stuff for anyway?" All he could see was trash still, defects fit only for dogs to chew on. But having built the things for 4 months I knew exactly how to repair them and had already preselected a few bars with minor blemishes. Before he could adjust his eyes and realize what it was that I wanted, I snatched them up and headed for the door.
"Because its MONEY, man!"
I got a 100 Gs from him and its already appreciating.
Isn't that a pretty sight? All that green and beige is enough to make some people's mouths water. The design of the USDs is so powerful that it guarantees a reaction inside of every viewer who sees it. Isn't that genius? Or is it just simplistic and stupid to waste your time and resources wrapping up thousands of chopped pieces of wood in perfectly measured laser prints? I spent a lot of time surrounded by all that paper and at times the scope of the task was exhausting to think about. Just an endless stack of sheets to be cut and folded, over and over, 8 hours each week for a strange stern man in a jumpsuit. At other times I only had to take a look around surrounded by all those greenbacks to lift my spirits up. I know Ben Franklin's sly smile well now. We worked hard (shout out to my man David Merritt, TNASA prez and co-slave) in Srdj's studio which was really a former meat locker with a huge sliding door in a converted old warehouse under a bridge in a rundown industrial district, part of the Art Egg workspace in Mid-City. It looked and felt like the sweatshop of a drug cartel with the unfinished stacks of bills piled up in every corner and us interns bent over the table chopping and gluing, inhaling fumes, crafting the bundles. Every hour or so the boss man would barge in chain smoking his cigarettes to inspect the product, reprimand one of us while the other silently looked on, crack a joke (to show he was keeping his cool despite all the pressure of his impending deadline), and then disappear again to go work on another one of his other massive projects. The dude is intense. I really don't know if I would have stuck it all out if hadn't been for his extra chill artist wife, Adrian Price, who made more of that money it seemed than even Srdj did. She provided a saw-dusted boombox that kept bumping with Radiohead and Bob Dylan at all hours. That's how the work got done.
Location is everything and when it came time to show off the piece, Srdj couldn't have picked a better spot. The whole fat stack was installed front and center at the Old US Mint downtown off Frenchmen's street. The sculpture was divided up between two gated rooms that flank the main entrance when you first walk in. Back in the day when NOLA really made bank, they must have used those cells for the same reason, storing a wad of treasure. To the left the money was piled up (a la THE DARK KNIGHT) where people could get close enough to salivate and sniff at it. Those patrons with that certain glint in their eyes were directed to the connected room where they could PURCHASE(!) the money. A few folks must have regarded this as a ridiculous notion, equal parts modern-art blustering and old-fashioned hucksterism. But a larger percentage of the population considered 500 real USD for 1,000,000 fake ones to good of a steal to pass up. These people were directed to the first room on the right filled with a pyramid of golden briefcases (included in the deal) which they got to fill themselves, eyes aglow and hands atrembling.
Personally, I made the decision to stop collecting coins at the age of twelve when I began to feel like a chump for exchanging ten bucks for 5 cents in wheat pennies. But judging from the look on those people faces as they left the Mint, they knew exactly what they were paying for.
For a few weeks after the show opened I stopped coming by the studio, enjoying priceless hours of sacrificed Sunday sleep. But I was contractually bound by the internship class I'd signed up for at Newcomb to help Srdjan and Adrian. And so a slave to the grade, I slunk back to my master, Ben Franklin and his never ending pile of incomplete clones. Srdjan, fully aware of the hours I still owed him and unresting hustler that he is, was anxious for the re-up and resurgence of his cash flow. He dusted off my seat at the table, plugged in my hot glue gun, and disappeared again. Dave and I carried on just like we had been before (cutting, creasing, gluing, admiring, swaggering, exhausting) for a few more weeks until finals reared its head and we decided we'd made enough money for one semester.
But in the corner of Srdj's studio there still remained one pile of completed cash that Srdj never touched. A crate full of mishaps, cut-ups, half-glued and torn, that for some reason, obvious or not, never passed Srdj's standards. I fondled a few of them when Srdj was out of the room and I was still eying them as David tendered his resignation to the Man.
I casually put it out there:
"Look at these trash stacks, Srdj. Surely, you wouldn't mind if I took one of these worthless old bricks, wouldja?" He eyed me suspiciously, too proud to be hustled by one of his own. "Let me think about it, man. I might need'm for...something."
With David ready to be out of there, I still lingered around one more minute in the studio acting as if there was one last dust pile I needed to sweep up. Just long enough for him to change his mind in fact.
"Alright man, what do I care, you know? You can take some, sure" he said with the same suspicious look. "But what do you want that stuff for anyway?" All he could see was trash still, defects fit only for dogs to chew on. But having built the things for 4 months I knew exactly how to repair them and had already preselected a few bars with minor blemishes. Before he could adjust his eyes and realize what it was that I wanted, I snatched them up and headed for the door.
"Because its MONEY, man!"
I got a 100 Gs from him and its already appreciating.
The Best Argument for Coming to Study in New Orleans
This picture was taken in Bruff Cafeteria tonight. A sorority girl scoffed and questioned me,
"Why do you have your camera out in the cafeteria?"
Because that's a beautiful sight, honey. And if you can't respect that you're whole perspective is wack...
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 26, 2009
The Scoop on 2012
More often than once the date 2012 has come up in conversation as some kind of deadline date for society. This paranoid prediction is based off the ever-handy Mayan calendar and the fact that it only runs up to the date 2012, or something like that. So the talk goes, when the year 2012 arrives we as human race may face some sort of calamity ranging from our all out utter destruction to just having to replace our old obsolete Mayan Calendars with a new one from Hallmark. What may come, we don't know. I'm even not sure if I believe in Armageddon (capital A) but I am curious to know more about this phenomenon so that I can probe other people's beliefs and hysterias.
So I plan on going to hear this keynote address at the Stone Center on Tulane's campus, Friday Feb. 6 @ 7 pm.
What an obscure privilege it will to be able to regurgitate some learned professor expertise at a drunken conversation in a bar later on to bring some legitimacy to the hype.
Knowledge is power. The end is near. Pass on your copy of the PaprPaper.
So I plan on going to hear this keynote address at the Stone Center on Tulane's campus, Friday Feb. 6 @ 7 pm.
What an obscure privilege it will to be able to regurgitate some learned professor expertise at a drunken conversation in a bar later on to bring some legitimacy to the hype.
Knowledge is power. The end is near. Pass on your copy of the PaprPaper.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Look, KNOX Rocks
Knoxville, TN: too often overlooked. Let me lay down a few of the cool things I do know about the place.
-You want to know where the wigs are at? There not hidden inside the Sunsphere, that golden epcot-ical sphere you saw from Interstate 40. But there is a spot along Gay Street right next to Yee Haw Industries that had a pretty comprehensive wig selection last time I checked in there (3 years ago). Its the kind of funky dollar store where its worth your time to peruse the aisles and wipe away the dust to reveal some bygone merchandise from China. They were mostly ladies wigs as I remember in styles from the 80's. Sounds curious enough to investigate right? They also sell looseys at the counter.
-That spot is hit or miss I'll admit but you're bound to see something cool next door at Yee Haw. Plus around the corner from them is Market Square which keeps a good buzz going for a good many hours of the 24 that are available. I got breakfast there at 7 in the morning the other day after I'd spent the night drinking across the way at Preservation Pub the night before. The posters on the wall were funny and the scene smoky and when the itch passed through my body there was a wall around the side to go relieve my antisocial tendencies on. A number of plywood sheets are boarding up part of the perimeter of Market Square and nobody we'll stress you out if you want to spill your creed there with some permanent ink. That's cool and that's where these pics come from.
-Oh, I forgot to tell you that you can actually go inside the sunsphere and poke around yourself. I've been going to Knoxville all my life and only recently discovered the magical elevator at the base that'll take you up free of charge. The first 3 levels are accessable from the street and World's Fair Park (the original impetus for the 1982 architectural wonder) but when you hit the button for floor #4 you actually rise up 22 stories. Definitely a good view to get your bearings and scan the kingdom that is UT. The lookout is only one level but provides 360 degrees of urban critiquing pleasure. Apparently there are some law firms and other buisnesses above that in the rest of the thing, which would not be too terrible a work environment.
So there you go the next time you pass through on your way to Asheville or Virginia or wherever. You don't have to settle down in the damn place, but do snoop around and you will be rewarded.
-You want to know where the wigs are at? There not hidden inside the Sunsphere, that golden epcot-ical sphere you saw from Interstate 40. But there is a spot along Gay Street right next to Yee Haw Industries that had a pretty comprehensive wig selection last time I checked in there (3 years ago). Its the kind of funky dollar store where its worth your time to peruse the aisles and wipe away the dust to reveal some bygone merchandise from China. They were mostly ladies wigs as I remember in styles from the 80's. Sounds curious enough to investigate right? They also sell looseys at the counter.
-That spot is hit or miss I'll admit but you're bound to see something cool next door at Yee Haw. Plus around the corner from them is Market Square which keeps a good buzz going for a good many hours of the 24 that are available. I got breakfast there at 7 in the morning the other day after I'd spent the night drinking across the way at Preservation Pub the night before. The posters on the wall were funny and the scene smoky and when the itch passed through my body there was a wall around the side to go relieve my antisocial tendencies on. A number of plywood sheets are boarding up part of the perimeter of Market Square and nobody we'll stress you out if you want to spill your creed there with some permanent ink. That's cool and that's where these pics come from.
-Oh, I forgot to tell you that you can actually go inside the sunsphere and poke around yourself. I've been going to Knoxville all my life and only recently discovered the magical elevator at the base that'll take you up free of charge. The first 3 levels are accessable from the street and World's Fair Park (the original impetus for the 1982 architectural wonder) but when you hit the button for floor #4 you actually rise up 22 stories. Definitely a good view to get your bearings and scan the kingdom that is UT. The lookout is only one level but provides 360 degrees of urban critiquing pleasure. Apparently there are some law firms and other buisnesses above that in the rest of the thing, which would not be too terrible a work environment.
So there you go the next time you pass through on your way to Asheville or Virginia or wherever. You don't have to settle down in the damn place, but do snoop around and you will be rewarded.
striving to do this
"Getting Up" is a great book I once checked out from the library
'Staying Up' is more than just pulling an all nighter
(Rising Up) will be defined after I've done it...
...............................................................
<<art histroy references: see "Getting Up">>
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Flowers popping up
Michael De Feo came to town recently. I first saw his stuff along the sidewalks of Manhattan where he is more commonly known as 'the Flower Guy' because the flower logo he puts up around there.
For one thing its cool to see somebody's work that I recognize from street art books start popping up around New Orleans (much like Banksy and Swoon). On another level what he does is a good reminder of the effectiveness of good design and simple methods like screen printing and wheat pasting. It seems everytime I go out now I see another flower. A few of them are boldly placed but for the most part they're just around, simply and unobtrusively present.
Its obvious the dude came to NOLA to get work done. And like a lot of people who come here these days he was able to do that and still have fun.
Thanks Mike
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