You there God? It's me.

You’re gonna be a shining star.

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 13:27:59 -0500

You’re gonna be a shining star.

Photo

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:49:25 -0500

Photo

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:18:34 -0500

Photo

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:29:53 -0500

Photo

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:31:20 -0500

An addendum, a footnote and a reflexive.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:26:28 -0500

An addendum, a footnote and a reflexive.

Bootsy watches over me. Photo by David Corio

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:17:00 -0500

Bootsy watches over me. Photo by David Corio

Photo

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 19:35:57 -0500

From the archive, circa 2006.

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:55:34 -0400

From the archive, circa 2006.

Photo

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:43:29 -0400

All this talk of disease and H1N1 vaccine is too much. Can we...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:16:00 -0400

All this talk of disease and H1N1 vaccine is too much. Can we talk about health for a second? My favourite definition of health comes from Dorian Paskowitz, self-described “dumb Jewish doctor” and surfer:

“Health is more then the mere absence of disease. It’s the presence of Superior State of Well Being. A pizzaz! A vitality that has to be worked for each and everyday of your life. You cannot get it in a bottle, or from Dr. Phil…it’s got to be gotten through diet and exercise and rest and recreation and attitudes of mind working altogether everyday of your life.”

If you’ve never seen Surf Wise, it’s worth a watch and it might take your mind of all the fear mongering in the media.

Brain Gains - The effect of Physical Activity on Academic Performance - The National, CBC

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:54:49 -0400

Brain Gains - The effect of Physical Activity on Academic Performance - The National, CBC:

A must watch. Beautiful to learn this…

Prickles & Goo: Alan Watts Trey Parker Matt Stone South Park...

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:48:05 -0400

Prickles & Goo: Alan Watts Trey Parker Matt Stone South Park (via http://twitter.com/GreatDismal)

Learn to read pictures: The torch that Hitler lit

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 01:09:00 -0400

Learn to read pictures: The torch that Hitler lit:

It’s amazing how much visual information that is ingested on a single day skims our cognition and understanding. This article in the Globe and Mail presents a good case of visual information mis-read and misconstrued by a visually illiterate population.

In short…The Olympic torch relay, rebranded in 1948 by the British as the “Relay of Peace” was instituted into the modern Olympic games by Hitler et al. and the flame itself is borrowed from Freemasonry.

“They were rehearsing the nazification of Europe and ceremonially visualizing what a new Europe might look like,” says John Hoberman, a professor of Germanic studies at the University of Texas and author of The Olympic Crisis: Sport, Politics and the Moral Order.

Check out the flame route for 2010. What does it mean? Nothing is certain, however, the ability to look at pictures, film, and symbols is a skill lacking in most people. We ingest but we rarely digest imagery.

Flash Points: Art+Economics, Looking Back & Moving Forward

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:05:38 -0400

Flash Points: Art+Economics, Looking Back & Moving Forward:

An amazing collection of links and knowledge about Art and economics.

via curriculum.qca.org.uk

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:01:48 -0400

via curriculum.qca.org.uk

What it's like over here...

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 12:59:00 -0400

When I wake up around 8, I ask if I’ve been snoring again. Yes she says.

A stretch, a yawn, some lemon in hot water, a hot shower, granola with yogurt.
I put my jeans on. Have I been wearing the same jeans everyday since November?
I wonder.
I wonder if I’ve made a mistake.
I wonder if I’m out my mind.
I wonder what the day will bring.
I wonder if I’ll see my brother today.
I wonder what surprises await me.
I wonder about my email.

I check my email. Twitter. Facebook.

This room can get warm. It has a giant sliding patio door, facing south.
This room has all my good books in it, they are behind me.
This room, my desk. Tape measure. My Jenny Holzer poster.
Fischli & Weiss’s HOW TO WORK BETTER. 8 SAY IT SIMPLE
This room, has two desks. Mine but also her’s. We’re learning about each other.
We’re living.
This room, our living room.

There’s been lots of picture taking lately. The blossoms are in full swing.
Spring is springing.
The light in Vancouver is variable, sometimes, pink, white, gray but always sharp.
There’s been a lot of sushi lately.
The joy of being back in fresh fish fields has worn off…
The stress of a lack of income has set in but
It’s amazing how well I handle. Maybe too well.

Arthur Russell beams from the computer that seems to make sense out of all of it.
And now Public Enemy.
That’s better. My nephew, Luke, needs to learn about Public Enemy.

I’ll listen to Michael Snow talk to me about flying later.
Maybe i’ll go for a walk because if nothing else, it’s delightfully sunny.
I’ll do paper work today. And make some art too.

Later, I’ll talk it all over with her. She’ll kiss me, I’ll kiss her and we’ll laugh making love
In the bedroom, I’ll fall asleep on the white sheet under the white covers and
when I wake up around 8 I ask if I’ve been snoring again. Yes she says.

re: phot(o)bjects

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 23:09:00 -0400

phot(o)bjects @ Presentation House Gallery, April 10 – June 7, 2009

Organized by Bob Nickas. Featuring: Alan Belcher, Walead Beshty, Gil Blank, Jennifer Bolande, Trisha Donnelly, Roe Ethridge, Guyton Walker, Rachel Harrison, Robert Heinecken, Matt Keegan, Annette Kelm, Louise Lawler, Carter Mull, Torbjorn Rødland, Alex Rose, Sam Samore, Wolfgang Tillmans, Josh Tonsfeldt, Sara VanDerBeek, B. Wurtz

Isn’t it funny the way things go? A couple weeks ago, in Toronto, teaching myself about photography, I was reading about Wolfgang Tillmans. He’s an interesting photographer who’s made a mark in part by interpreting photography through the not-so-fine arts: fashion photography, magazines, books; an art, employing a width and breadth wider than the usual entanglement. My cursory inquiry in regards to this contemporary master revealed the following intriguing quote “A photograph is always seen through its content and rarely through it’s presence as an object in itself, whereas when confronted with other art objects one always deals with both aspects.” It sat in my head for days and days…

I arrive in Vancouver last week and there’s an exhibition that’s just opened about photography and its status as object. Isn’t it funny the way things go? The show features works that aim to prove for us that photography is more then its content: it does indeed have status as an object. 4 works from Tillmans hang: 2 of them are near monochrome abstracts housed in a Plexi box, the orange one with a neat fold, the other, a green crumpled mess; then a photo of a flattened clothing shot from above emphasizing the flatness of the picture, and finally a photo of a curled photo seen from the side, nearly indecipherable, a gray and vague mess but one decides it’s a photo of a photo from Wolgang’s angle and pointing as to his real meidum: paper. Walead Beshty folds photographic paper and exposes it strategically, in the darkroom, to create a well dented, marked and dinged, but colourful picture that could rival any colourfield painting, old or new. Sam Samore shreds paper up in to strips and seals it in garbage bags. Alex Rose burns them. Guyton/Walker use the paper of photographs to wrap paint cans.

Object is considered less literally by Roe Etheridge, Carter Mull and Robert Heinecken: these 3 consider the layering of images as an object act, and point us to consider images as physical objects dense with layers of information. Trisha Donnely forces us to look at how photos can densely veil their subjects: what is it we’re looking at in pictures anyway? Matt Keegan takes another route and frames the corner of the walls in an inversion of Malevich’s square and forces a highlight of the architecture with two framed photos of sky and tree tops. Alan Belcher uses photos as wrapping for his suitcase sculptures and reflexively wraps a photo of tire swing on a tire swing. Continuing the strain, Jennifer Bolande takes a photo of plywood’s grain, prints it on fabric and slings the fabric back on to the piece of wood. Similarly B. Wurtz’s work of a perforated cylinder in front of its photographed counterpart, draws our attention to the way objects are distorted in photographs, and in fact how photographs can make something so modest look so grand, powerful. Maybe it was the size of the photo itself, well over a metre tall. Or maybe I’m tired.

I remember the show as being fairly smart, but now considered anew and after reading Bob Nickas’ statement, I’m not as intrigued by these formal investigations as I first was. Maybe they’re necessary, it’s true, and these formal experiments are opening another way to re-consider the familiar, fine fine fine okay. I recall a few other works in the show, for me the 3 strongest. Gil Blank presents a 3 foot square photo, in it a life-size Polaroid photo pinned up by a magnet: its brevity asks us to be skeptical about the construction in photos; Josh Tonsfeldt’s installs objects in the gallery, photographs them and installs the photos elsewhere in the gallery and thus asks us to be skeptical about the frame around the presentation of photos and galleries; and finally Torborn Rødland’s amazingly simple photo of a baby, sitting, simply sitting and looking back at us, destroying my, yours, our gaze with his newborn eyes. Silently, the baby asks us to be considerate of photos, pictures, objects and entirely everything. Torborn’s Baby, seemingly lacking formal reflexivity and any tautology, is freshly engaging us in the everyday dialogue of looking, forcing upon us a space surpassing inherent formal logic and transcending what Artur Żmijewski calls “the autonomy of art,” a space he says:

Instead of drawing enjoyment from the outcome of their actions, the visual and performing arts are content merely to dream of such outcomes: fantasy has supplanted reality. The autonomy of art has therefore made it “inconsequential.” The actions of art no longer have any visible or verifiable impact. The deficit that Peter Bürger once discerned in bourgeois art has made its way into high culture: the exaltation of art above day-to-day experience [is] typical for the status of a work of art in a bourgeois society… Aestheticism is also a manifestation of art’s failure to produce social consequences.

The consideration of photography’s formal logic in phot(o)bjects is necessary to create an infant understanding, like that Baby has, of looking at, being looked at, making and understanding the objects around us, those physical, symbolic and cultural markers which can and should have deep social ramifications.

Treasure or Trash? Artist Says It's in the Packaging

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:28:50 -0400

Treasure or Trash? Artist Says It's in the Packaging:

check out the painting of a pepperoni slice for $3.

The North West

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 03:43:07 -0500

The North West