feather2pixels

“Character Profile: New Works in Language, Text, and Wordplay”
Curated by Jon Fischer
Opening Reception Saturday July 13 7-10PM (one block from tacos!)
Exhibition Dates: July 10-27
Root Division
3175 17th Street at South Van Ness, San Francisco
free

About eighteen months ago in Golden Gate Park, I had a sudden flash of inspiration in the form of a succession of twenty-eight free associative phrases that I quite immediately knew I wanted to develop into a substantial art piece.

I was associated with Root Division through some teaching work, and decided to go even further and pitch them an entire language based show through their curatorial submission program. Over the course of four of five months of back and forth I refined the concept, got three or four trusted collaborators involved, and the proposal was accepted as the July 2013 show at Root Division! This group show is going to feature the language-based visual artwork of 27 artists including my beloved Ben Hill, Nowell Valeri, and Erin Bregman. I think it’s going to be a really fun, multifaceted show featuring but not limited to:

• A wall of Toasted Puns.
• An interactive sound installation in which visitors can manipulate Presidential speeches with obscene gangta rap with old TV commercials, to create their own postmodern soundtrack the way God intended.
• Flip Books.
• A New York Times vs USA Today death match.
• eBooks (a humongous “e” made out of books).
• And lots of other engaging, interactive work dedicated to a spirit of play.

Bring your kids!

My project, “American Fistfight” evokes the early era of cinema with rudimentary moving image sequences produced entirely with screen printed 35mm slides. Several vintage projectors connected with a fabricated control panel will allow visitors to maneuver image sequences for themselves while the results are displayed on the gallery wall.

From the curatorial desk:
Character Profile is a visual arts exhibition featuring projects that explore intersections between the forms, mechanisms and meanings of language. Drawing from a cross disciplinary group of twenty-six collaborators from across the country including writers, visual artists, and craftspeople, Character Profile investigates novel functions of language through a broad range of materials, media and approaches. Many of these works are dedicated to a spirit of engagement and play. The exhibition highlights art designed for direct interaction with visitors and work that provokes expanded meanings and alternative associations. These artists present language as both a medium and a subject, and deftly maneuver words to both convey and critique meaning.

OK, because the gallery that was to show my ambitious new series (24 new pieces in 24 days) has dissolved before it even got started, there remains no reason to pursue the imaginary sense of suspense I was previously attempting.  I shall heretofore reveal all.  This new project is another series of prints on trash, but even more legitimate trash.  Imagine me diving into an absurdly deep dumpster at work wearing my fancy dress shoes and you will have imagined the back story of this series.

The image is three traffic cones sitting in one of my favorite Golden Gate Park glens, and the neat thing about the series is that each piece is unique.  Not only is each rectangle of cardboard disgusting in its own special way, but the base layer of every piece is printed in a different color that blends into the same white light that illuminates the cones throughout.  The different colors span the entire visible spectrum and the net effect is a gradual journey from twilight to dusk and back again.

I am not sure if that makes such sense, but the idea was to hang a six-by-four matrix of all twenty-four pieces by color.  Kind of like this mockup.  The idea was to price them so low that people would be idiots to not buy them, and as they did the installation would dissolve and I would be rich.

Here’s the sequence of a few of the pieces:

Layer 1
Layer 3
Layer 5

Next: A small oak tree becomes thirty frames.

These are a few urban panoramas I have shot in the last week or so.  You may note that industrial construction equipment and freeway 280 have become the apples of my left and right eyes, respectively.  Anyway the best shot or two might become raw material for new work.  I think I know which ones I like but, hey,  if you feel like it let me know if any strike you. It would be most helpful.

I have been trying to be proactive about documenting this year’s fantastic February light.  Here’s some more dispatches from the winter:

34th Ave.

Lincoln Park

Lincoln Park

Geary Avenue

JFK Drive, Golden Gate Park

26th Street

This year I realized that something I enjoy about San Francisco winters is unpredictability.  This realization possibly has something to do with the the weather during the last few weeks, which has has consistently fluctuated between foggy thirties and sunny sixties.  Somewhere in that time, I convinced myself this is not too unusual and please feel free to tell me that my double negative dropping ass is full of it.  Also not unusually, I have tried my best to be in the SF outerlands to witness the city in all its messed up moods because I like to think that this is something we have in common.

Here are some pictures that came out alright.

Warm-ass wintertime haze on 47th Ave

The N-Judah turnaround.

Cold-ass wintertime fog at the Sutro Baths

Lost ghostbusters wallet in Golden Gate Park

Some exciting recent multimedia content:

Tahoe:

The Ocean Beach Christmas tree burn:

Inner Richmond storm aftermath:

The storm was a lot messier than it seemed. It didn’t even rain that hard, but a Saturday drive to the Dumpling King with Jill revealed a city absolutely covered in downed branches and trees. It was all somewhat unexplainable. We took the long route through the park, where the devastation was particularly impressive. I couldn’t believe the size of the debris and the roads were barely drivable. A bad situation on JFK Drive, for example, has only become worse (if they are never going to pave that road, they could at least replace the bulbs on street lights). However, the quality of the city’s chive and pork dumplings was quite unaffected.

The view from Jill’s telephone: