Pseudoelaphoglossum ambulans

The Studio

A shot of my studio, with several sculptures in progress.

Notes to Lawrence Weiner

Not to give Dave Hickey's libertarian capitalist view of the art world pride of place, here are my notes to a talk by Lawrence Weiner, whose "materialism" we might fairly read as "historical materialism" (hey the guy used to be muscle for NYC labor unions).

*Note for readers sensitive to the F@(< word, I don't use it in this blog, but I don't censor it here.



Lawrence Weiner
notes from talk given 10 October 2001

The world is a very big place, and the only way to get there is to travel.

art is not a metaphor, art is an empirical reality

metaphorical art carries a structure with it not allowing others to have an immediate experience with materials.

ended up in high-schools w/professors victimized by McCarthy

Pollock & Giacometti; much prettier and nicer girls at art museums

get out. if you do alright you don’t have to get a degree (18 yrs old 1^st show in San Fran)

language takes away the authority of the artists hand [la pata]

sculptor not conceptualist because he’s a materialist not an idealist

“Art that does not allow itself to be used by another culture is telling you…that ethics is aesthetics…that someone who doesn’t look like your mother is not human.”

site specificity is “kinky”

not just for you and our own set. Change the whole order

“If you’re lucky you won’t fuck up somebody’s day on their way to work. You’ll fuck up their whole life.”

“Does every stone have a place in the sun & do you believe where they tell you it belongs?”

“I can’t stand artists who don’t screw up sometimes, it means they’ve got a system.”

phony’s inherently evil

“I see art as useful as shoes.”

“Oh, but Lawrence, art is for rich people, and women.”

Sketchup

Over the last few months poverty, mobility, and the lack of connectivity have conspired to bring about two separate lines of work. I finally had the time to sit down and work on a story I began back in 2004, which I finally finished. In the process, however, it spawned another two or three stories, so at the moment I am about 20,000 words into what will eventually be a 40,000-50,000 word (novel length) collection of related stories, all set in the same time line, but separated by centuries or millennia. I've also had the time to learn how to use Sketchup (sort of, I still go about things stupidly). Once I decided I was going to learn it no matter what, I started drawing up a strawbale house I'd been thinking of for a few years. The way I went about it is embarrassingly clumsy, but worth it to see where I started.


After that I played around with strawbale houses for a couple of months, while working simultaneously on the stories. That led to a couple of drawings, illustrations really, of my second story (it's about anarcho-syndicalist farmers on the moon). Below is my main character's house, with greenhouses and aquaculture units behind it, followed by an overview of the green house complex he runs.



I still haven't gotten it out of my system, but recently, with grad school applications on my mind, I've been drawing up old sculptures I never got around to making, and new ones I'd like to make (if I had $500 worth of plywood and a table saw).


The bisected blue box was started a long time ago, and never finished, we just didn't have enough room in Austin. The thing on the wall made of PVC is a krathong I'd like to make for this year's Loy Krathong. It would be filled with marginal aquatics, and actually clean the water instead of making it dirtier. Below is a x-ray view of the inner workings of the box, followed by several goofy monsters I'd love to make.

Hexagonal Deseret Outpost, Two Versions (Plain and Corral with Coop)

I've been playing with bamboo in the vacant lot down the street, stacking it like giant Lincoln Logs. So far I've made two different versions. The latest is a just a plain, sloping hexagon. The first one was a little more complex, sort of a hexagonal corral with a cantilevered, triangular chicken coop.