AFH UPDATE [October 2018]

Yeah. That just happened.

My family and I just moved across North America. The settings [Bushwick versus Astoria (OR)] are almost comically disparate. In Astoria, the sound of a siren is rare. Drivers rarely honk. Garbage is not strewn almost everywhere the eye rests. I don’t think I’ve seen a single instance of street art. The air is fresh. People are friendly and hardly ever in an apparent rush. I tallied a short list of stuff I miss about Brooklyn: OSLO coffee in the morning; BEST Pizza; Fortunato Bros. canoli; Artist & Craftsman; and a couple dozen friends. My list of crap I am happy to leave behind in NYC is innumerably long and varied.

In the adjustment phase after a big move, I’ve found it pays not to put a ton of credence in the initial feelings, sensations and impressions associating with both past and future. A meditative approach - letting those blasts of specificity pass through consciousness without attachment - helps soften the landing, helps one avoid calcifying narratives that fail to serve one living through any of the available time zones. I am not an astronaut planting a flag on the moon, after all.

Notes on Dimensional Time [NYC 2010+8]

Before we exited the NY Scene, I revisited the photo series “Notes on Dimensional Time (NoTD),” selecting a small fraction of representative images from the enormous collection. The project encompasses a period of eight years (our time in NY), pointing to 4D predictive processes, among others. The scope of the inventory of sequential photos spans macro-social phenomena, studio progressions/expositions, engagement with environment, and switches to other “worlds” like Switzerland and Los Angeles. Some interesting features of the work are the conforming quality of numbers, commemoration as attraction, color presence and more.

Poetry & Precipitation

We have been warned frequently to prepare for the months-long drench that saturates the Oregon Coast. The weather since we arrived has been nothing short of marvelous. The misty, rainy, cloudy days and nights of rain have affected me not in the manner folks speculated they would do. The watery atmosphere inspires me to poetry:

Timbr

Minecraft means a different thing
On a computer, underground, in database analysis
Migration is no joke
If you imagine a body in a computer,
underground, in a database, analyzed
You can visualize movement sequences
in each environment. You will notice
variations, which you may find interesting,
telling, as in revealing, demonstrating
the differences in the environment(s).

He selects a water-rounded stone from many
in the driveway. This one is heavy, relatively
big, pockmarked, dark blue-gray and dense.
He explains to me the stone is dinosaur poop.
I say, “OH?” He assures me, YES, it is. I allow
him to keep it, to place it in a cupholder, in the car.
The story of the stone evolves. I like the sound
of his child voice, its conviction, its of-a-certain-age
complexity. Is that the marker for curiosity? Do
I hear a note of uncertainty, or is he inviting me
to respond, to ratify, to reinforce his narrative?

In the woods, the deer sleeps at the base
of a 100-foot pine tree, folded into a loop
of golden hair, black hooves and nose, white
tufts, breath, in measured blasts. I can see
the stars again, and that is Orion’s belt.
In the short hills across the valley, a cougar
stalks among the shoots along the River,
a vast waterway of sunken vessels, moving
through the Night toward the Ocean. I can see
it all and more through my looking glass,
pointed out the window of the attic of our
century-old house. I hear my child stirring
downstairs, by the fireplace, under his blanket.

Twins, Gymnasts 14

Pausing in a turn, we pivot, gazing at the Bridge.
The Full Moon risen above the Column, beyond ~
Past the optimum angle for the photographer.
To my eye, the mono optical version with a bit
of blur, the scenes mesh and he and I smile,
sharing the sensation of Time staging the event
inherent in our temporary condition, a point
at which the Vision may be confirmed by a knowing
look. He is a fisherman. I am an artist. Now
we are both travelers whose dimension is ever
emerging, a continuum the medium of which is
Memory. The vehicle is a machine. The sky
periodically empty, unless Eddie Vedder's jet
should cut a path through it, noisy and white.
Compare that to the circling bald eagle. Both
are emblems, representations, and autonomous
of the external view, Real of themselves,
compressed, expressive in a secondary, parallel
World of definition.

Stability achieved through joining structure,
the truss, does not explain the two does,
standing side by side in the front yard
of the darkened home, by the mailbox. Any
more than it explains the Creek between
the old Seaside road and the new one. Traffic
over there is faster, denser, more dangerous,
than we find on this one. Topology reflects
the conception of Time, not its mutability. Tom
describes George, the solitary crab in the tub
on the pier by the jetty in terms of survival,
profound endurance, fasting for 45 days
in only water. A marvel. Need for sustenance
appears to be relevant to the creature, only
in perspective, I guess.

The twins’ father, I think, is a cop. I won’t allow
this informed assumption to spoil the moment.
Celtic law is fairly strict, and divination is messy
business. Spatial separation is a negotiation
these magic beings solve through intuition. He
mentions the elder sister, describing her in thirds,
implying triplets, a very different configuration,
containing a gap. The twins subtly communicate
the answer, at the edge of his perception’s limits.
Do they always perform, I wonder? How big
is their awareness of the Other? Its reach feels
massive, an expanse outpacing reckoning. He
tries to translate it in a word-picture about complex
flips in a landing, and I recall a tiny Olympian
spinning through the space within a TV screen,
years ago.

Arriving home, I have a hard time sleeping.
The distinctions between waking and dreaming
dissolved in the movements. Cushions ease
the discomfort, and the fireplace reduces the ache
in these bones. Outside, the light is fantastic,
filtered through trees and thorny brush, pooling
on the unexpected, surface. The air is beautiful,
fresh, crisp, my breath’s embrace. The tobacco
intervenes, & I hear a Song from far away. It is
not a ship, a postman, a radio, a lover, a birthday.
My phone is not ringing. It is not smart. Or dumb.
The wind rises slightly, but noticeably. I will not
forget Standing Rock, so long as I live. No one
can make me.

Accessing the Astoria art scene was a piece of cake! We met Zelda English at Blue Scorcher through our kids, and she kindly invited us to taco night at her home, where we met her polymath partner Barry (artist, arborist, mason, etc.) and a portion of her friend circle during a lovely, warm evening to-do. Subsequently, Zelda invited us to her WAKE Gallery for a closing reception for “All About Hands,” the excellent exposition featuring a collaborative project by visiting multidisciplinary creatives Ariane Pick and Yves Prince from Paris, France. The gregarious, lovely couple spent the summer painting and photographing in and around Astoria, which yielded a diverse body of work conceptually centered on the hand. The event was thoroughly enjoyable, and included a well-appointed pot luck and a raffle, too. The art was arrayed smartly in the raw, transitional show space, interspersed with text and supplemental print + hand drawn graphics. Ariane and Yves were a lively pair, dancing through the Astorian crowd of well-wishers, engaging individuals and small groups with apparent exuberance. Barry led the children, including our Lachlan, on an exploration of the pier nearby. Afterwards, on the way to the car, we dropped by McVarish Gallery and met Jill McVarish (a terrific painter herself) and Morrison Pierce, whose poignant exhibit “America Is” was on display. A few days later, my wife Lauren and I attended the monthly meeting of the Astoria Downtown Historic District Association at Baked Alaska. In sum, it was the most fun I’ve ever had at a business meeting! The agenda was facilitated ADHDA by current prez and Astoria mayoral candidate Dulcye Taylor, owner/operator of Old Town Framing Company. The meeting program commenced with a rousing presentation by recent transplant Paul Polson, who has opened a studio/gallery on 10th Street. [See a sample of Paul’s paintings HERE.] Polson sketched his impressive, diverse artsy autobiography/resume for the assembly, and shared poignant thoughts on the value of art for the community. Paul’s lifelong enthusiasm for the artistic enterprise was evident, and he didn’t hesitate to suggest ways he was willing to add his chops, which include big-time theatrical set design and Macy’s float production, to the local cultural mix. The remainder of the ADHDA program proceeded apace, was chock-full of neat upcoming opportunities to get involved with events and fundraisers, and the routine stuff one expects. When the meeting concluded Lauren and I were surrounded by friendly Astorians, excited to find out more about us and welcome us to our new home town. In a short period of time, we had no problem getting to know some Astorian artsies! Moreover, we have learned that Astoria and the coastal communities we’re exploring (e.g., Seaside, Cannon Beach, Warrenton, Tillamook, etc.) are vibrant and rich in history, and the many people we’ve met have practically uniformly been generous, friendly and kind. We are happy to report our new Oregon life is shaping up to be grand, indeed!

We visited Portland today to meet Gwen and Elizabeth at Elizabeth Leach Gallery. Judy Cooke's exhibition in ELG's front room was excellent! Afterwards, we dropped by Froelick Gallery, where I viewed several remarkable Rick Bartow paintings. We had pizza for lunch at Hot Lips Pizza, and coffee later at Jim and Patty's Coffee. Both were yumz. We were pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to day trip to Portland from Astoria!

The Astoria Art Walk (an ADHDA project) happens every second Saturday. The October 13 edition came on the heels of the overtime victory enjoyed by Oregon Ducks over the Washington Huskies, settling this year's football rivalry in favor of the big O’s. The win set the mood! I endeavored to crawl through a sampler of the participating art-walk galleries and studios on the list of venues, and am happy to report the affair was as I expected: a great conversation starter with local artsies, fueled by the usual finger-food/boozy spreads, plus some mindfully presented fine art. My first stop was Art Loft, a studio/gallery collective atop Astoria’s art supply shop, Dots ‘N Doodles [!], which featured a holdover show (Shon Frostad’s “Love of the Sea”), a set of framed watercolors by Stan Riedesel, also with a nautical focus, and little gem-like dot paintings by Chimoyo. I enjoyed a friendly discussion of the watery subjects in Stan’s paintings with the artist, during which fishy art-chat, I couldn’t help notice his massive hands, which are a bit incongruous, considering the sensitivity of his brushwork. I have a soft spot in my heart for art concerns like Art Loft, which serve a vital and historic role in the American cultural topology. These sustainable art orgs are generally artist-driven, community-based nodes for creative networks outside urban markets for art. The tie the social to the medium, and contribute to the environmental, continuing art ed in villages, towns and even regions across the nation. Art snobs may poo poo traditional watercolor societies, co-ops and such, but in this country they have formed a massive democratic movement for art that has even adapted to the virtual. The online correlate is Wet Canvas, which doesn’t get the kind of cool-kid attention that, say, DeviantArt or Doodle Addicts receive, but has consistently facilitated a useful and encouraging forum/exchange for artists at all levels, since 1998 (ancient, by web standards), boasts about a million members and a staggering amount of activity. Next on my list was McVarish Gallery to take in the new exhibit there, excellent paintings by Jane Terzis. As noted above, this was a repeat-visit at Jill McVarish’s great Astoria art space, and I wasn’t disappointed. In fact, the light in the early evening (@5pm) was flat-out wondrous, even profound. The buttery sunlight cast dramatic shadows through the big shop windows, and after a lovely talk in the midst of prep for the Art Walk crowds, which were already gathering, Jill stopped to pose by her remarkable paintings, opposite the entrance. A couple doors down is Paul Polson’s new studio-gallery, which is. after only three months in operation, shaping up to be a terrific multi-use space for the artist to make, exhibit and sell is paintings, plus potentially host talks and performances. Paul is powwowing with Jill and others to draw buzz and traffic to that corner of downtown Astoria, and the enterprise looks promising, for sure. My final stop this month on the art walk was Imogen Gallery, and Marc Boone’s installation of ab-ex tree paintings on canvas. Each of these three galleries on the tour also put out generous victuals for visitors, were delightfully hospitable, and excited about the event. I met Marc and his bride, and had a chummy talk with the former. Turns out we both have art installer anecdotes galore. His experiences are more extensive than mine. Marc is a true OG, old school artsy, and we had tons of fun remembering episodes from the logistics world for art, an often bizarre and PTSD-creating side of the art world whose practitioners rarely get the props they deserve for keeping the wheels turning and the lights on. I look forward next month to the next iteration of the Astoria Art Walk, to visiting those spots I didn’t get to this time, and returning to see new stuff at those I did!

Shane’s here! He brought a couple of badass vehicles with him to Oregon!

The view out our river-facing window is radically different from the one we had in the loft at Jefferson Street in Bushwick! (Photo: Lauren)

AFH UPDATE [September 2018]

AFHstudioBK Is Closed.

The move-out was completed on August 30th, but preparations occupied much of the month, which the road trip from Bushwick to Oregon interrupted. I have learned that every studio opening and closing possesses a unique flavor and resonance. Each produces a particular sensation that will eventually congeal into a narrative, with attaching summary, list of evocative memories and notable anecdotes. Some get a soundtrack. Moving my studios over the years from room to room, building to building, state to state, etc., has reinforced an awareness of the physical nature of art. Achy back, damaged hands, bruises and bumps, sleep deprivation - all are symptoms of the studio move. The raw 269 Powers [BK] moves were accomplished with the help of Metropolis Moving, and my Godkid Misha, but I still did the prodigious prep work, alone. The artist life involves un-romantic scenarios galore, that may look fine in a montage. The sort of psychic upheaval that attends the shuttering of an atelier is difficult to adequately translate to fictional and illusory media. Maybe VR will be a better medium for capturing the transitional state of artists whose labor has no permanent home. I have known some artists who settled in studios for decades at a time. When I was working for LA Packing, Crating and Transport (that's me on the short ladder in the pic/slideshow on the LAPC&T site front page installing Jonathon Borofsky numbers), I was on a crew helping break down Sam Francis' studio after his passing. It was a huge job. Sam employed a crack team of top-shelf logistics people. We coordinated with them. The atmosphere was palpable, visceral and tangible. I don't know how to adequately frame it, and won't try. I don't like the idea of being a tourist for that singular project. I participated on a few operations, picking up monumental-sized canvases, disposing of materials, and so on, but there were many others other guys handled. That job installed in my mind a perception of artist ghosts who haunt studios and the people who enter the haunts of artists, living and dead.

Traversing America [Again]

I am consistently stunned when someone reveals to me in conversation that they have never taken to the USA highway system (red + blue) and explored this country by automobile. The span of the nation is contained in the proverbial road trip in a way that's inaccessible by plane, bus or other mode of transportation. I would contend that a working comprehension of America is not complete absent the cross-country driving experience. Each traversal of the US by car is fraught with danger, mystery, wonder and a range of often conflicting phenomena. Music is an essential component. Maps also. A navigator is the proper foil for the driver's task. Monuments, diners, marvelous landscapes and a sequence of encounters with local characters define the journey to some extent. The time element is a contiguous presence. If there is a mission, that colors the trip. If one is adrift, or otherwise actively not directed by motivation or intent, the road tripper generates a speculative circumstance for the trek. Whether one is a practitioner or novice on the Road clearly affects the receptivity of the traveler to external and internal momentum/inertia, or entropy. Tensions and capacity (i.e., endurance) play within the dynamic unfolding of every long form transnational crossing. Shane Kennedy and I have shared the road together often over the past couple of decades, in all sorts of vehicles and conditions. This most recent iteration of the Epic USA Bi-Coastal Ride, originating in Bushwick and culminating in Astoria, OR (actually Portland by PDX), will I believe rank highly on the Best of- list. Technically, glitches were rare and minor. In keeping with the protocols of the medium, most of the details will remain our own treasure. If the American Road Trip is not art, at minimum it is art worthy. The experience is a form of saturation, in the context of conditioned programming. Like any 4D proposition, it is specific and unrepeatable. I am thinking of Lewis & Clark, the Oregon Trail, but also Kerouac, and some bards, too. I am also thinking about the state of the country I love, and that love has been shaped over time by the Road Trip, which at this point in my life has expanded into a sequential order, a serial affair, a sensational mix of countless moments and layered images. No one can understand my art and person, absent acknowledgement of the Road's effects upon it. The fool who discounts the import of the Road on the American culture and consciousness will be frequently shocked by the citizen's dimensional, sophisticated perspective on machine-enabled coming & going, day & night. The soul of those uninitiated in the US Highway, its weird dreams and harsh reality, is shallow and unequipped to analyze the nation's modern sons and daughters.

Sale Graphic by PJM [Credit: Little Yellow Miner + Canary by Bryce McCloud of Isle of Printing for SEAM01 at TAG (Nashville, 2001)]

Starting September with a Labor Day Sale at Good Faith Space!

Our new tagline at GFS is "GET SOME!" Thoughts?

State of the Artz Section

Much of the summertime art news in 2018 ping pongs among talking points that in many aspects don't reconcile. The collapsing mid-range economy for art (in the West, anyway) will not be adequately supplanted by photo-op mills that are branded "museums," nor will Basel announcing progressive booth pricing solve the inequality among the Art Bigs like Gagosian and everybody else. Tech art is still a bizarre wrinkle in the fabric of culture. Bruce Sterling's SXSW 2018 (above) keynote reveals much about the emerging field, which in parts is swiftly normalizing [see SRL at the Seattle Art Fair, now directed by Nato Thompson (Can you find Bruce in the article - the dude's all over the place!)]. The real subtext here is that the tech sector is consolidating wealth and power at an alarming rate, so much so that the other social sectors (political, military, police, etc.) are pivoting to reign in the advance of Big 5 mega-corporations through diverse approaches. "Art" is traditionally a means by which the rich and powerful elites diffuse animosity from those who are distressed by the control of massive resources by a fortunate few individuals and companies or syndicates. Sterling's exhortation seems well-enough defined to serve as a practical guide for pushing a tech-art movement into and through the budgets of major players. Clearly, the programming of "art" into tech-evolution is a prospect that is nothing new. It can be tracked at least as far as Leonardo, and arguably the Greeks, which Kittler and others have pointed out. The question is whether any artifying of tech apps (robots, social media, Big Data, etc.) will adequately soften a public that is threatening to turn on the various fields of science and technology that are producing obviously negative effects in the lives of so many people. Are art/tech hype campaigns like THIS in any manner really digestible as real solutions? The shine of ubiquitous, useful "toys" for network communications, computing and connecting People to Things and Things to each other is quickly wearing off. Will art polish tech's dangerous edges? I don't know, but I found a book that I hope clarifies my projections of our tech-affected collective future (enthusiastically recommended by Bruce Sterling and SF/Tech Thinker Bigs like William Gibson & Rudy Rucker):

Frankly, I am bemused of the general confusion expressed by analysts who refuse to acknowledge the stark lessons and unequivocal systemic information uncovered through the dimensional movements of the past decade (mainly OWS, Bernie's Presidential campaign, Standing Rock, but also plenty of others, appearing and disappeared around the globe). The precarious state of most of the art world parallels the precarity of democracy itself, of the economy, of international relations, etc. Nature itself feels very precarious and menacing simultaneously (for humanity, anyway). The primary problems have been accurately identified. Actionable orders are obvious. Precedents demonstrate that the necessary changes are not only feasible, but proven effective. Anyone pretending otherwise now, or falling for any of the distractions pushed by those in great measure responsible for our big problems, and who derive great benefits from those problems remaining unsolved ~ well, pretense itself has become intolerable, and pretenders, too. Talk about Fake.

"Wings" ~ graphic for CD design (ca. 2003, PJM)

On Leaving NYC and Moving to Oregon

Many have breathlessly inquired as to the nature of our migration from Brooklyn to the Northwest coast. On the NYC side, the quality of the inquiry is almost invariably hued by a peculiar cognitive disjunction, which might be characterized as disbelief in the possibility that such a dramatic relocation is possible, wise, even conceivable. More than anything the inquisitor is basing the incredulity on rudimentary assumptions and cultural projections. Why would someone choose small town living over the cosmopolitan offerings of an international destination and trendy hot spot like Bushwick? Did I not notice the movie set on the street in front of our loft building this morning, or the runway models wandering in robes, under umbrellas through the neighborhood all day? Will I not miss the easy felafel dinner option we are enjoying from a couple blocks down, by the House of Yes, next to the Jefferson St. L stop (~ Queen of Felafel)? Shane and I discussed this sort of interrogation by confused New Yorker friends and acquaintances at some length on our road trip. It is symptomatic of a certain stultifying mindset among what I would call captured or captive persons, many of whom will express amazement that anyone could think to leave the city with one sentence, and follow that sentence with a dozen more describing the horrid aspects they despise, which definitely accompany NYC/Brooklyn life. The truth is, my list of things I will miss about NYC/BK is short, and the list of things I will not miss is long. Mostly, it is not things I will miss, but people whom I have grown to love and value over the past eight years of being a New Yorker. I have resided, visited and worked in a fair sample of American communities and a few abroad. A spectrum of experience in congregations big and small, rural and urban, tribal and civilized, productive and destructive, virtual and actual, affords me (I hope) an accurate sense of cost-benefit, with respect to home. At least for the moment, an American citizen can still up and move to another part of the country and start fresh, hoping to improve her or his life and circumstances. That is exactly what we are up to. The proposition is alternately scary and exhilarating, and both feelings are moderated through healthy doses of research, planning and logistical know-how. I won't share my special secret for navigating big change in locus here ~ it's not the proper forum. But I will say I believe we all ought to be in the right place at the right time to do what needs doing. Which is one definition of courage. Still, speaking for myself for emphasis, the people one leaves behind tug at the heart most. It helps to have confidence that new friends await on the opposite end of this beautiful, myriad continent.

YONDER [Reflections]

Bunker Hill Cyclops (DimTim Origin, ca 1983) / Etching in Silkscreen Ink on Masonite with Fixed Pastel / Photoshop-enhanced Flatbed Scan of 35mm Slide film

Mobility as a practical matter activates the process of narrative formation. Mobile narratives are naturally dimensional. They scan the past for clues (reasons), shift in the changing topology of a blurry present, and propose possible futures arising from former conditions, circumstances and scenarios.

My family and I are preparing to move across the North American continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast. The immediate quality of our daily activities suggests miasma. Impulsive ordering of the material and immaterial is practically reflexive.

A few days ago I found myself diverted to a project that led to a sequential revelation of motivations, pertinent to my artist life. The catalyst was a search for photographic portraits of my friend Jennifer (Niederst) Robbins made in the 80s during our Notre Dame studies. Searching through a pile of scrapbooks and folders, I haven't yet found the pictures I originally set out to find. What I discovered instead was a trove of photos documenting my earliest, formative artist experiences.

Of these, a handful emerged as particularly relevant in shaping my views of the art business, art world, and patronage. Reflecting on some specific episodes, I today revel at my tenacity, in pursuit of artistic success. Despite what strike me (now) as horrible experiences, I somehow did not abandon the art enterprise in those first years of my so-called artist career. The act of reflection generates a variant definition of what I do and have done for more than three decades. Art is more a vocation, than a commercial identity, in my mind. Otherwise, I might be compelled by the data to conclude that no sane individual would choose fine art as a professional enterprise, given the typical state of the game for artists, especially those just starting out.

In the text that follows, I will share some anecdotes that hopefully clarify the statement above for the reader. If this chronicle helps another artist, one way or another, all the better. If it starts or adds to a discussion about the systematically brutal and wasteful American arts topology, with its sparkly, rigged vertical fixtures, more to the greater good.

God8' x 4'Mixed media [plywood, car door lining, acrylic paint, found materials + more]1985 — God
8' x 4'
Mixed media [plywood, car door lining, acrylic paint, found materials + more]
1985

1. GOD

This was one of my first art commissions. My memory of the details are a bit vague. I have a foggy recollection of how the thing went down. Maybe the pastor of a local South Bend (IN) Catholic church approached the ND art department, in a search for an artist to do an altarpiece for his chapel? We met, and I got the gig, which I completed between my Junior and Senior years. He had to fight to get approval from the church council. He won the commission funding ($480) in a bingo game, which he figured was a divine intervention. I stayed at the rectory for about a month and made the art. I was drinking a lot then, driving a '78 Trans Am outfitted like the Smokey and the Bandit sports car. When I finished, we hung the art. Almost immediately, the congregation rebelled. The pastor (whose name I can't remember) defended the art and insisted it remain. He passed away about a year later, and I learned that "God" had summarily been disposed of. In hindsight, the experience on the whole proved very educational, with regards the vicissitudes of art/collective/patronage/production, + more. I have never entertained the notion of creating art for churches, since then (although I have received a few inquiries, over the years).

I put everything I could muster into this project. Looking at the image, greatly benefited/restored to close-to-realism by the editing tools of Photoshop, I am proud of the effort. I especially appreciate the iconography, the use of materials and their implications, my Vision of It, of God, at the age of 21. I sure would love to sit down with the young man who painted/assembled this art, to share a meal, to have a chat. I would love to meet the Me of 33 years ago (pretty much to the day).

One of the valuable things about art is it bridges time spans like that 33-year one. I don't really need a time machine, because I have art. Reflection via art is to my mind better in some important respects than the Back to the Future movie version of "time travel." The differences between art enabled time travel and the cinematic imagination's - that's a big topic for another text.

Liberty6' x 6'Mixed Media [1/4" steel, railroad ties, acrylic paint, barbed wire, spray paint + more]1986 (Process photo) — Liberty
6' x 6'
Mixed Media [1/4" steel, railroad ties, acrylic paint, barbed wire, spray paint + more]
1986 (Process photo)

2. LIBERTY

I wrote about this recently. "Liberty" was created shortly after I graduated from ND, and almost died in a motorcycle wreck less than a week later. Maria Rand was the wife of notable NY-based sculptor Archie Rand and curator/buyer for Unique Boutique in Manhattan. Unique was one of the cool shops that sold my FunkShunArt tee shirts in the city. Maria invited me to contribute an art for a show she was putting together, marking the Centennial Celebration of the Statue of Liberty. She said the show was going to be a big deal happening at Herald Square. Archie would be in the show. Maybe Keith Haring, Andy. We spoke on the phone a few times, and when I visited the shop with new FunkShunArt, over a period of weeks or months. It was a long time ago, and the details are a bit fuzzy, now.

..."Liberty" was my offering. "Liberty" was painted on a big sheet of steel and framed in railroad ties and barbed wire. I found the source image in a Playboy magazine. You can't really tell from the Photoshop-improved, old photograph that the finished painting really shimmered, thanks to (relatively new) iridescent acrylics, gel medium, glitter, etc. When completed "Liberty" weighed a couple hundred pounds. JP Keyes drove to Beckley, WV, where I made the art in my parents' garage (during my rehab from the MC-crash-caused head injury), and we loaded it into the Par 3 tour van and drove back to Jersey City, where the band based. JP had just installed a multi-channel sound system in the van, and we listened to a selection of tapes during the ride. It was an educational experience. The art was ready to be delivered on the previously agreed upon deadline date.

The next day, I reached out to Maria. I got the "NY shuffle." Over the next few days, I got the runaround. When I finally got Maria on the phone, she was rude, to put it mildly. Our conversation was colorful. I think my recent brain trauma had an effect on my reaction. The gist? Maria: No show, whatever, GTFO. The next evening, Par 3 & I delivered "Liberty" to Unique. Maria wasn't there. We installed it in the front area of the shop and left. A security dude tried to stop us and wisely stopped doing that.

My righteous anger/rebellion/triumph moment was short-lived. When I took the train to the city, maybe the next day, to see/photograph "Liberty" at Unique, the art was gone. I was furious, although I don't think the UB staffer had a clue, when I curiously asked, "What happened to the big Statue of Liberty painting that I saw here yesterday?" He shrugged and said, "I think some guys threw it in the dumpster in the alley. That thing was heavy. One of them broke his hand moving it."

I can pretend otherwise, but I was alternately brokenhearted and filled with rage. In hindsight, the experience on the whole was a valuable, instructive, initial encounter with the "NY art world." I've been skeptical of curators and their speculative plans ever since.

Angel Series [FunkShunArt (ca. 1984-5)] / Silkscreen + acrylic paint on tee shirt

3. FALLEN ANGEL (No Photo Documentation)

The details of this episode are hazy. A fellow Domer (ND student) offered me - I think - $60 or $80 to paint a mini-mural in his dorm room. I completed the task in short order. I never got the opportunity to photograph my work. As I recall, the figure of a downcast, wrenched angel was directly painted on the wall with bright acrylic primary colors. Really, "Fallen Angel" was more drawing with paint than painting proper. My student-patron did compensate me, and then within a few days overpainted "Fallen Angel" without telling me. When I visited him with friends to share with them what I had made and photograph "Fallen Angel," the guy/patron answered the door and sheepishly admitted to his art destruction. I cursed him out. He apologized. I can't recall ever painting on a wall again, indoors or outside, with one exception (see below).

I admit to a consequent, jaundiced notion of street art, murals, interior wall treatments by artists, probably due to this experience. The negativity association extends to euphemisms like "creative destruction," "erasure," and so on. & Unilateral wall-art obliteration by an owner, like the infamous 5Pointz whitewashing, which had a happy/unhappy ending.

Violence toward art as a prerogative of ownership, or as problematic cultural expression or critique or whatever (see Rauschenberg/de Kooning incident/history) is an uncomfortable subtext in the art/cultural continuum. On the international stage in recent times, ISIS, the Taliban and Al Queda have practiced art/culture obliteration on a massive scale. Being aware of such phenomena, I try not to take others' art-destructive urges and rationalizations personally anymore ~ with a modicum of success. The key is channeling outrage into productive outcomes, and it doesn't hurt to know one's legal options. However, as the 5Pointz case illustrates, it is not obvious that legal recourse can sufficiently address the problem. After all a unique art/cultural expression, once eradicated or vandalized, is not necessarily recoverable.

Yesterday, a man hijacked an airliner, conversed in-flight with air traffic controllers with war planes in hot pursuit of his stolen aircraft, which he subsequently crashed on an island. The man's suicide-by-plane can be interpreted endlessly. Many in the media questioned, "What was his motive?" This artist responds that the definition of performance art is so broad that the incident might be described as a creative expression culminating in the immolation of the plane and the practitioner. Is my ironic explanation really so farfetched, nowadays? What is permissible, if any-everything can be construed as art, and any-/everyone can self-identify as an artist?

Clearly, human beings' struggle with our contradictory impulses for creation and destruction takes many forms, and is scalable. The fundamental issue is of course, Why?

Sneaky Petes48" x 36"Acrylic and Tempera on Canvas1986 — Sneaky Petes
48" x 36"
Acrylic and Tempera on Canvas
1986

4. SNEAKY PETE (No Photo Documentation)

The owner of a local ice cream shop approached the ND Art Department with a proposal for students to decorate his newly opened or renovated store. He would provide materials and ice cream. A graduate student who had been one of my first instructors brought the project to my attention. I agreed to participate, as did a handful of other art students. Each of us was assigned a booth, with an inset, shadowbox wall, upon which we could paint what we wished. I think the owner suggested ice cream-oriented content, but wasn't very strident about it. I promptly began to paint one of my Sneaky Pete creatures in the assigned area, which was about 6' x 5', with two 6' tall, maybe 2.5' wide panels perpendicular to the centerpiece (as I recall). I worked feverishly for about five days during business hours between classes, about 40-50 hours or more total. The Sneaky Pete figure was dramatic, unsettling and jarring. His Eye was a textured swirl of technicolor paint, eventually animated and complex enough to give viewers the impression Pete was watching them as they moved through the shop. The painting contained many layers. Although the color field behind the figure eventually took on a vibrant cerulean blue hue, it shimmered, and contained text elements in applique and hand-painted renderings. Hovering on either side and above Pete were words, such as "WAR" and "PEACE" and "LOVE" and "HATE." At the end of the week I was exhausted and deeply satisfied, proud of the completed art. I couldn't wait to bring my friends (the Keyes bros. + Scott O'Grady) to see it. We hopped in someone's car, maybe Jim's "Grey Ghost," and drove over.

It was yet another disaster. The shop owner, uncomfortable about the text and eye effect, had dipped a 4" or 6" in a can of blue paint and wiped out the words and the "eye." I couldn't speak. My buddies and I drove back to the dorm. They followed me downstairs and looked on as I threw chairs around the room and howled.

A couple of years later, I returned to that ice cream shop. I was outfitted in the manner of Road Warrior. I outlined for the owner some options, all of which ended with my covering my art with white paint. He chose the one that did not also entail harm to his family (who were seated nearby, enjoying sundaes, shakes and cones) and himself, and time-permitting, the burning down of the ice cream store, before the police arrived. I put some music on [Allman Bros., "Whipping Post" (live)], savored some sipping whiskey, and painted over the disfigured art. As I was leaving, I keyed the owner's beloved Corvette.

I haven't entered into any similar commission arrangements, since then. & I'm not really proud of what happened. That said, to this day, I marvel at what people will do without any concern about the repercussions, the consequences, of their behavior, power dynamics be damned. The Chinese just destroyed Ai Wei Wei's studio. Wonder what will come of that this time?

YONDER [Thoughts]

Some simple actions require no thought.
Survival as such is not art.
Being adrift is a state of being, but also a specific type of movement.
Displacement does not mean a thing will come to rest eventually.
Distance is a metrical form.
You can tell how disagreeable a person/place/thing is to one by how far one will travel to get away from the disagreeable person/place/thing, regardless of the degree of difficulty in the transition.

YONDER [Array]

YONDER [Teaser]

AFH UPDATE [July 2018]

FRAGMENT 1

I first moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, shortly after graduating from the University of Notre Dame. How I arrived in "The City Different" is its own story, the poetic version of which is:

A nearly fatal motorcycle crash + a UHaul ride with a fraught father to WV + [immediately] starting-completing the 250# 6'x 6' Statue of Liberty Painting on Steel/Railroad Ties/Barbed Wire for a SoL(LoL) Centennial celebration/exhibit at Herald Square (which instead landed at Unique Boutique > then the dumpster behind UB ~ Fuck U Maria Rand) + 1 month of Jersey City *working last gas station before the Holland Tunnel with Par3 crew & painting stage backdrop & outfits/gear for the band + escape from NY + bad scene in Wisconsin + Colorado > Red Rocks > Trinidad > Raton > Santa Fe > Upper Canyon Rd > Gypsy Alley ... Babe's/El Farol/Carriage Trade ... Artisan's/Elaine Horwitch Gallery ...

I spent most of the decade (1986-95) in the thriving and vibrant Santa Fe art community. Many of the fundamental notions I have of painting, the art business, logistics, presentation and the artist life were formed then. My mentor at Notre Dame, Don Vogl set the table for this experience. About the photo above. I came across it over the weekend in the results of a casual search for Allan Houser. I briefly worked for David at his gallery and met Allan's son Bob Haozous. TC was already gone by then and a legend. His work still lingers in my top-5 all-time list, with Pollock, Michelangelo, etc. David is now a distinguished OG (on the board of SFGA, the Houser estate's Curator of Collections, + more)...

FRAGMENT 2

I don't know how, but I missed Rick Bartow all these years. I came across his profile while scanning Northwest artists. During the Eureka Project I should have made some connection. Oh, well ~ it happens that seemingly obvious connections stay unmade. Rick Bartow passed in 2016. Fortunately, an excellent exhibit of Bartow's paintings is touring a select group of Western museums. God willing, I'll see "Things You Know but Cannot Explain" at one of them. Maybe I'll see you there, dear reader.

FRAGMENT 3

I shot this photo during a madcap Notre Dame holiday break. My roommate Scott concluded he had to visit his girlfriend and family, so we rented a car and drove from South Bend to Beaverton, Oregon and back, destroying the car in the process (those were the days). We took a side trip to Seaside. Now, a quarter century or so later, I think we're going to relocate to this part of the country.

“Rodrigo Hernández: The Gourd & The Fish” installation view (Source)

FRAGMENT 4

I keep an eye on current and emerging Art World notes. I routinely visit dozens of key sites, blogs, and other online sources. Now, that I'm reintegrating soc.med platforms within the AFH frameworks, I am pushed all sorts of AW data from hundreds of culture transmitters/amplifiers/influencers/marketeers/advocates/promoters/news outlets..., including artists, magazines, agents and agencies, galleries, museums, content pushers, fans, non-profits, schools and so on. My virtual research is a function of years, now decades, of connecting concepts and phenomena to nodes to events and people IRT. But the issue of time in a networked system swings like a pendulum through the Panopticon of click-thru webbing, through the miasma of simulation + illusion + hyperbole to create a sensation of knowing more about what is happening than is actually possible for a user operating a keyboard/device linked to the Internet. The actual world is operating according to a divergent order - or disorder - than the numbering and naming machine that mediates much of the cultural existence at the moment, for many players. Nonetheless, it is possible to locate valid correlations among things in the massive set of real objects created for visual (art) consumption. The confusing, convoluted matrix of suppressive immaterial clogging the dimensional info-sphere is still insufficient to prevent effective recognition of coincidental or parallel, which is to say almost simultaneous, at least similar, creations by artists separated by distance, with vastly unalike profiles, who use different materials in radical conformity.

Royal Nebeker, Ship of Fools, 2013, from the Loss and Revelation series [Oil and collage on canvas, 84 x 90 inches (LINK)] — Royal Nebeker, *Ship of Fools*, 2013, from the *Loss and Revelation* series [Oil and collage on canvas, 84 x 90 inches (LINK)]

FRAGMENT 5

Royal Nebeker passed away in 2016. The biographical essay linked in the caption above paints a picture of Nebeker that conforms to the model for a successful artist life I grew to respect early on. In my experience the model ties into a post-War American phenomenon, at least initially. Eventually the model extended, over several decades, to multiple strata in the art ecosystem. Describing the model suggests an abstract subject, when the object expresses itself sufficiently for shared comprehension. To call Royal Nebeker a type is to apply the rules of fiction to Nebeker's life and art, and the truth of Nebeker's story is better than fiction, and so is his art. In my virtual, on-the-fly research into RN I reviewed a variety of associative articles, plus many images, which are helpful for tracing an evolution, an arc per his art (via compressed/JPG representations). The analyst mustn't assume the power of conclusion within the anecdotal context of the systematic 4 dimensional search. The gist is what one is after, supplemented with verification and/or contradiction toward a refined, workable image of the topic. The search is most useful when motivated with the Hegelian Spirit in mind. Spirit of person, place, manifestation, time and so on.

"Remnant" ~ 12" x 9" ~ Acrylic on Canvas [Culture01 series, 2001 (Nashville, TN/Polifilo)]

FRAGMENT 6

"Remnant" connects directly to the work I'm currently doing. It makes sense for art to take a long time to evolve. Therefore artistic progression is not separable from retrospection. If a viewer wants to know what I'm up to in the studio this week, they might take a peek at what I was doing at the turn of the century, if that is at all possible. Which points to why the absence of commonplace quality art writing is awful, not just for the artist but for all. Rarely has any society maintained integrated art mediation for long. The orientation of cultural discourse has been managed over the past century at least, and the result? We can easily identify the public beneficiaries of mass media focus. It's harder, though not impossible, to identify the machinery necessary to create and direct popular attention to whatever subject currently engulfs it. This is the artifice of programmatic consumption, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with art, itself. In truth, programmatic consumption is spectacularly anti-art, at least in effect, even when it has an artsy veneer.

AFH UPDATE [June 2018]

BIO 2 series (Autoportrait 1) at www.artforhumans.com

The representation of Self in art is an anti-art proposition, outside the traditional auto-portrait format in painting. As 4D+ processes expand the possible methods for conducting anti-art operations and transforming the old formats for the auto-portrait, artists find many novel approaches for integrating material and immaterial facets of the Self into structurally recognizable artistic compositions.

Stability in a composition can be achieved through application technique, composition, adherence to formal constraints and so on. The rectangle and circle provide their own stabilizing influence on the painting's visible plane. Stasis, which is a little different than stability, can be subverted in 4D+ painting through effects. Optics play a significant operational role in determining whether a visual tactic is aesthetically successful. Certainly the use of color will affect the impact or lack of it in any arrangement of elements. Pondering the nature of stasis, its desirability in art, and the means by which it may be disrupted, is worthwhile. Balance is a relative of stasis. The Classicist will be attracted to the provisions of geometry for art. By introducing virtuality, the dimensional painter (and sculptor) will punch through the mathematical membrane that restrains pre-4D art. On another level the nominal is subverted by the polysemic nature of meaning in dimensional thought/language. This phenomenon translates in painting to shapes that encourage multiple "readings," none of which on close scrutiny, can be reduced to singular, exclusively specific meaning. 4D+ painting, in other words, escapes the tyranny of text, and does so in the particular and unity forms, its Self. To say that every painting today is a self-portrait is half-true therefore.

The capacity for dimensional art to activate living space has much to do with components. The elements of the living space can be represented in the formal structure within the painting bounds. Identifying a color set that is compatible with most living spaces is not a problem, really. Developing a palette that projects "ART" into the space without destabilizing it is a different tack. The Dimensional artist will displace the discourse on stability/stasis outside the painting into the living space, which is designed to accommodate change, and growth, which is not the same as change. It is helpful to reflect on the dynamic complexity of stability-stasis-change-growth convergence within a Life-platform. The living room above is a convergent (media) space for a family of four. The implications of art in such a space are profound.

WillyPaul 2 series (NewTag) ~ PJM + Will McLean

A critical undercurrent to this discussion is the coupling of certainty and consistency in the medium of choice embodied in art, and then situated in the context of life. Architecture becomes an extension of this subtext. So does the frame. The tissue or membrane separating content and context for art can both magnify and amplify the content relative to the context. The edge of art is pertinent for this reason. The "reality" of art is a function of its definition, not only in space, but in the material composition of the environment or scenario in which the art is placed. The extension of art into dimensional "space" (e.g., this blog post) provisions additional responses to address the divergent protocols (virtual versus actual). In both environments the rules dictate conventional action. In either environment the medium infers a potential scenario, as a set of options. Choice applies in all cases.

WillyPaul 2 series (Crosses) ~ PJM + Will McLean

Memory and memorial coupled in the image within art is a feature of dimensional, especially digital, art. The capacity for the digital composition to integrate multiple layers of source material expands the scenario within the constraint of the edge. The medium of choice operates differently in virtual, visual space. So does geometry. In these WillyPaul collaborations with my son, the activating element is the shape burned into wood by magnifying glass. The stabilizing element is the landscape. The drawing (from the Edward E. Ayer Digital Collection) instills the static feature in the complex array, which blends complex landscape components with many effects and patterns, starting at the pixel level. The 2-+3D mash-up is disrupted by color-driven push and pull. The photographic and gradient + blur effects infer change as a factor of motion, which works in spite of its illusory nature. Pixels don't actually move in a digital image file. We shouldn't gloss over the collaborative aspect of the pieces. The collaboration itself proposes a history that is at once intimate and immediately visible. In the WillyPaul 2 series, at least thus far, the coupling of stories and history proposes a setting for our efforts, while simultaneously adding flesh to the actual narrative attaching to the image. This is the value of 4D+ for art.

AFH UPDATE [May 2018]

AFHstudioBK at 269 Powers St. is proceeding apace! I'm mostly focusing on mid-size pieces in 3-4' range on the big easel plus Topos and 1-2' sizes on the small easel. The second 4D VyNIL series is titled WorkNet and the latest piece begins to clarify the shift from Network. Here's a sampler of work finished in the new space so far:

On the virtual art marketing front, I launched the AFH Vango store. I uploaded a couple dozen 4D VyNIL pieces and eventually will add the remainder. I wanted to gauge any initial push/bump/run effect via the Netflix-like UI for collectors. So far, nada, which was a little disappointing. You can be certain I will be monitoring all the action at Vango, because I'm pretty jazzed about the platform. It's certainly easy to navigate, on the back-end, with a great array of powerful tools built-in. First impressions: Vango provides a software-based intermediation between artist and client. We have researched all the major platforms and chose Vango to try first. I was an early adopter/user of Ebay, Saatchi, Etsy and did not find any of those marketplaces to be particularly humane models for the exchange of art. Vango does make the effort to appeal to the artist-user on some outreach tools. The focus is on selling and the diagnostics are cool. The start-up vibe is still in the Vango system. As opposed to the present-day Saatchi, which I think is the big mover in the field. The variances among the stores are notable, and comparing the divergent approaches is helpful. Artsy, UGallery, Fine Art America - and there are plenty of others - either orient to artist or collector, and every market sets sights on a niche, appeals to its clientele via price point and message. The range is pretty much still open. No one (Saatchi and others wanted to initially) has cornered the online art market, because "ART" is hard to corner. The vertical and horizontal measures of the art world propel a vortex of confusing counter-positions, especially if you add the Internet into the mix. High- and low-, scarcity, de-skilling, provenance, aesthetics and on and on ~ LULZ! Anyway, the AFH blitz is just getting started...

I joined Monegraph yesterday. I will begin building a catalog of digital art there later this month. Excited! I have known the CEO Kevin McCoy (and his wife/collaborator Jennifer) since 2006 or -7, when they were visiting artists at CGU. Great people! Amazing artists! I plan to migrate digital art sales to this pioneering platform, which utilizes blockchain technology to establish provenance for the artz. Kevin was recently featured on ArtFCity podcast Explain Me covering art, blockchain, bitcoin + Monegraph & more. I somehow missed that Kevin was involved when the company launched a few years ago, pursuant to a Rhizome 7 on 7 presentation at New Museum. I'd followed Monegraph since then but hadn't Kevin & the project together - maybe because my profile for him was strictly artsy. Stay tuned!

Later in May we will launch a parallel platform to serve primarily as the AFH dedicated marketplace, a clearinghouse of sorts, the site you can visit to get a better perspective on how the virtual and actual business of selling artwork and projects fold into the rest of our program here. As this iteration of AFH progresses the components will show more and cleaner integration and their scales of value(s) and meaning will clarify. The operations of the network are built to have an all-directional facet. The models in this post illustrate the conceptual design.

I'm posting regularly to AFH Medium, to AFH Facebook, to AFH Twitter, Google+ (which is becoming a links page), Instagram (@valubl), and less frequently to YouTube, Pinterest, the Tumblrs and other soc.med vehicles. I am hoping to do more with the Tumblrs, reactivating a half-dozen in earnest by mid-May/early-June. These include Real.Pure.Digital, No Art in Hell, Transthesis, Not-Artists, and maybe the Occupational Art School. I reached out to the AFH FB to discover whether there might be interest in a 4D+ course for May-June. I will decide yea/nay on the project in the next week or so. Though it won't be an OAS joint, it will be in the vein of OAS. FYI: SmugMug has acquired Flickr, and I have until May 25 to decide whether I will stay with Flickr/SmugMug or liquidate that (huge) AFH archive, which now contains almost 125,000 images. Wow. A lot has changed over the past several years. It is peculiar to be re-entering the field of the virtual social at the moment it hits a wall of scrutiny, and to witness the major players, but more importantly, the business model, crash through the wall with nary a scratch, aside from a bit of temporary stock volatility. I find it telling that the business of data, communications, media, content, etc., survives huge and consistent hacks, discovery of links to a burgeoning international surveillance state, exposure of its most egregious exploitation/extraction schemes, etc., and yet barely flinches. Serious Power props up the status quo, no doubt. I am practicing restraint, limiting my commentary to a minimum, because real change will require a wholesale revamping of the OS. A move like that requires deep and abiding motivation. Opposition to Big Change will be severe, most likely. Practically speaking, as a matter of speculation, all the action required is putting the Grid to OFF mode. Ask Puerto Rico. Wouldn't it be great, if We (the People) chose a less convulsive and devastating route?

AFH UPDATE [April 2018]

WorkNet series #1 by PJM / 40" x 30" / Vinyl on Canvas

To some extent Mercury Retrograde (MR) gets a bad rap, IMHO. Used wisely the fake backwards phase of the little hot planet can yield excellent clarifications on problem areas in one's psychic topology. Just don't try to call your bestie to share your latest explosive revelation while you're driving on a crowded thoroughfare!

Dmitru Gorzo painting/sculpture stack at SLAG Gallery, Bushwick, during Sculpture 56 opening night at 56 Bogart.

I revisited my old gallery SLAG to see my friend Dmitru Gorzo's new painting/sculpture stacks. 56 Bogart was hoppin' that night, with eleven galleries hosting/opening the Sculpture 56 program. Paint master Art Guerra was hanging out by the goody table in the backroom at SLAG. I had nice catch-up chats with Gorzo, Art - who was very interested in seeing the new 4D VyNIL paintings - and Irina Protopopescu, SLAG owner. Re-visitation is fun during MR! ...But here's the rub: everyone had the wrong idea that I had moved somewhere! The misunderstanding was hybridized. Some had heard I was moving out of the old studio (but hadn't heard I was moving into a new one!); others put that info together with my dissertation-related absence from the scene and temporary but prolonged AFH social media shutdown - & VOILA! Word in the hood was I had gone on a runner! NOT SO! Or at least, not yet...

WorkNet series #2 by PJM / 40" x 30" / Vinyl on Canvas

Speaking of the new studio - I've been working there for about two weeks and LOVE IT! It's very different from the last space. The good news is NO LEAKS! I've already finished two new 4D 40" x 30" VyNIL paintings, and have started a third. The working title for second phase of the doctoral cycle is WorkNet. My old Costa Mesa-based pal and AFH Gallery Chinatown/Content-era vinyl collaborator Jason Coulston produced one of my all-time favorite responses to a PJM painting. Responding to WorkNet #2, he typed "Damn. This feels like a million little bits of me. Like a confetti of my vinyl soul." INSTANT CLASSIC!

Below is a slideshow documenting the raw iPhone photos of the 269 Powers studio. I've been posting the P-shopped versions at AFH Facebook, Twitter & Instagram:

I've also been posting selected *artworld* links at AFH Google+. At the AFH Pinterest site I've built some spiffy boards. At the Real.Pure.Digital AFH Tumblr I posted a few sweet morsels of net.art. New albums have been added at AFH flickr. The reboot I'm most excited about presently is happening at the main AFH site. Talk about a truly MR-appropriate project! I'm building a click-thru sequence that starts with a YUGE animated GIF & continues with pages that are designed to blow the doors off your smart phone. The pages themselves are super simple. The images are massive, but otherwise the approach so far is very retro for me, reminiscent of early days HTML AFH. The new stuff is HTML5, and I'm looking forward to building some new code chops for the undertaking. I've encountered some head-scratcherz, trying to integrate moving image/audio in the format, but am confident the problems can be resolved in short order. I am dedicated to building an alternative to the ubiquitous & generally ugly/inadequate options for presentation modes in the major online centers for content distribution. I have always held that Facebook, YouTube, Twitter etc are Lowest Common Denominator solutions for share net-based 4D art. The ONLY qualities they provide is ease of use, and their enormous potential-access pools ("communities"). However, the hidden costs of locating one's output with them are also substantial, including the inherent surrender of civil liberties to participate in their hosted misrepresented *free* exchanges. On this point, I have covered that territory in other texts in a wide array of media and will refrain from recycling my positions for this post. Suffice to say I am thoroughly enjoying the perversity of the timing of my return to wide soc.med, given the loud scandals afflicted the monopoly fixtures currently.

Here are some sample images from the new artforhumans.com series:

In April (post MR) you will see some hot AFH launches, as the platform development continues. The SquareSpace sites will be updated/rebuilt/-integrated (that process has already started). I will be entering the online art market incrementally, and the first step in that direction will happen in the next week or so. Finally, I will be publishing the scanned version of my BETA 4D+ doctoral thesis, mainly through the AFH nexus. Stay tuned!

Title Page, BETA draft of PJM 4D+ doctoral thesis

AFHstudioBK 6.O: Moving on/-in [March 2018]

We moved into an interstitial space for AFHstudioBK 6.0 last week. I'll be working here for 3-4 months. This studio permits a range of activities, including painting, although at a limited vertical scale. Phase 2 of the Network Series [working title "WorkNet"] will commence here. Much of my focus over the next few months will be on a reconstituted AFH Online platform. That work is already happening. I am again posting to/refurbishing AFH social media sites/channels (Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, selected Tumblrs, etc) and even launching new ones (Instagram, Dots, etc). I plan to integrate the half-dozen AFH SquareSpace sites and launch a new one by the end of April. Stay tuned!

4D VyNIL: [Extended] March 10 Open Studio 2-6PM

We have added another Saturday open studio session in order to host a fundraiser for our dear friend Chelsey Pickthorn, who is fighting a winning but tough battle against breast cancer. Check out the crowd-source campaign page "Standing by Chelsey" HERE. Our Facebook Event page is HERE.

4D VyNIL: Open Studio Installation Views

A virtual stroll through my studio a few minutes before the first guests arrived for "4D VyNIL" celebration on February 24, 2018.

4D VyNIL: Pre-Market Price List

NOTE: Prices through March 15, after which they are subject to immediate change.

1.
NETWORK
VINYL ON CANVAS
8’ X 6’
$5200

2.
SUBNETS
VINYL ON CANVAS
24” X 18”
$950

3.
MIRROR
VINYL ON CANVAS
24” X 18”
$950

4.
TRANSFERs

VINYL ON PANEL
20” x 16”
$900

5.
QUAD
VINYL ON CANVAS
20” X 12”
$850

6.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 1
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$350

7.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 2
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$350

8.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 3
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$350

9.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 4
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$350

10.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 5
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$350

11.
MEMORY/MEMORIAL
VINYL ON CANVAS
20” X 18”
$925

12.
GLITCHES…1
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 6”
$150

[SOLD]

13.
GLITCHES…2
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 6”
$150

14.
GLITCHES…3
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 6”
$150

15.
GLITCHES…4
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 6”
$150

16.
GLITCHES…5
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 6”
$150

17.
GLITCHES…6
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 6”
$150

18.
GROUP 1
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 4”
$125

[SOLD]

19.
META-
VINYL ON WOOD
14” X 14” X 7.5”
$1600

20.
SEQUENCE
VINYL ON CANVAS
24” X 20”
$1100

21.
LAYERS
VINYL ON CANVAS 24” X 24”
$1200

22.
NODES
VINYL ON BOARD
16 3/8” X 13 3/8”
$850

23.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 6
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$350

24.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 7
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$350

25.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 8
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$350

26.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 9
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$350

27.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 10
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$350

28.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 11
VINYL ON CANVAS
16” X 12”
$450

29.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 14
VINYL ON CANVAS
20” X 16”
$550

30.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 13
VINYL ON CANVAS
20” X 16”
$550

31.
WEIRD/WIRED MAN 12
VINYL ON CANVAS
16” X 12”
$450

32.
SAMPLE
VINYL ON CANVAS
24” X 18”
$950

33.
CONTAINERS
VINYL ON WOOD BOX
16” X 12” X 3.75”
$750

34.
TOPOS 6
VINYL ON PANEL
11” X 10.75”
$650

35.
GLITCHES…7
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 6”
$150

36.
GLITCHES…8
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 6”
$150

37.
GLITCHES…9
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 6”
$150

38.
GLITCHES…10
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 6”
$150

39.
GLITCHES...11
VINYL ON PANEL
6” X 4”
$150

40.
TOPOS 2
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$450

[SOLD]

41.
TOPOS 7
VINYL ON CANVAS
14” X 11”
$500

42.
STACKS
VINYL ON WOOD BOX
16” X 12” X 3.75”
$750

43.
GLITCHES...12
VINYL ON PANEL
6” X 4”
$150

44.
GLITCHES...13
VINYL ON PANEL
6” X 4”
$150

45.
GLITCHES...14
VINYL ON PANEL
6” X 4”
$150

46.
GLITCHES...15
VINYL ON PANEL
6” X 4”
$150

47.
GLITCHES...16
VINYL ON PANEL
6” X 4”
$150

48.
GLITCHES...17
VINYL ON PANEL
6” X 4”
$150

49.
GLITCHES...18
VINYL ON PANEL
6” X 4”
$150

50.
WOVENFORM
VINYL ON CANVAS
30” X 30”
$2000

51.
ICON 1
VINYL ON CANVAS
18” X 24”
$950

52.
NETWORK 2
VINYL ON CANVAS
34” X 30”
$2200

53.
RENDERING
VINYL ON CANVAS
20” X 20”
$1000

54.
SOCKET
VINYL ON CANVAS
3’ X 3’
$3000

[SOLD]

55.
ICON 2
VINYL ON CANVAS
18” X 24”
$950

56.
GROUP 2
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 4”
$125

[SOLD]

57.
GROUP 3
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 4”
$125

58.
GROUP 4
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 4”
$125

59.
GROUP 5
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 4”
$125

60.
GROUP 6
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 4”
$125

61.
FLOW
VINYL ON CANVAS
24” X 24”
$1200

62.
TOPOS 1
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 9”
$450

63.
GROUP 7
VINYL ON PANEL
4” X 6”
$150

64.
DYNAMIC
VINYL ON CANVAS
30” X 30”
$2000

65.
GROUP 8
VINYL ON PANEL
6” X 4”
$150

66.
TOPOS 4
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 12”
$500

[SOLD]

67.
TOPOS 5
VINYL ON CANVAS
12” X 12”
$500

68.
CONVOLUTION
VINYL ON CANVAS
30” X 30”
$2000

69.
TOPOS 3
VINYL ON PANEL
12.25” X 7.25
$575

[SOLD]

70.
FLEX
VINYL ON CANVAS
30” X 30”
$2000

71.
GLITCHES...19
VINYL ON PANEL
6” X 4”
$150

72.
COMPLEX
VINYL ON CANVAS
30” X 30”
$2000

73.
TOPOS 8
VINYL ON PANEL
3O” X 24”
$2250

[SOLD]

74.
FREE 1
VINYL, INK, ACRYLIC ON BOARD
10” X 8”
$250

[SOLD]

75.
NETWORK 3
VINYL ON PANEL
4’ X 4’
$4000

76.
FREE 2
VINYL, INK, ACRYLIC ON BOARD
10” X 8”
$250

[SOLD]

77.
FREE 3
VINYL, INK, ACRYLIC ON BOARD
10” X 8”
$250

78.
FREE 4
VINYL, INK, ACRYLIC ON BOARD
10” X 8”
$250

79.
FREE 5
VINYL, INK, ACRYLIC ON BOARD
10” X 8”
$250

4D VyNIL: Series 1

DATUM SERIES 1
VINYL ON PAPER 4.5” X 6.7”
$90

4D VyNIL: Series 2

DATUM SERIES 3 [35 PCS.]
VINYL ON PAPER 2.5” X 3.75”
$45

4D VyNIL: Series 3

DATUM SERIES 3 [18 PCS.]
VINYL ON PAPER 4.5” X 6.7”
$90

4D VyNIL * AFHstudioBK Event [2/24 & 3/3/2018]

AFH UPDATE [February 2018]

I watched Loving Vincent and The Square and parts of Final Portrait in the evenings over the past week. The first was magnificent, the second two were flawed but had their moments, their value.

The first set of doctoral paintings are complete. The PhD project(s) will now appear to appear in more explicit parallel. You'll see what I mean.

In the "art world" + dimensional news feed (CONTEXT) the Guggenheim offered to loan the President a gold toilet, instead of the van Gogh he requested. WHAT A TROLL-Y OOMPH GESTURE! O those curators!! Meanwhile Trump is off to Davos, where the recent tax plan for the USA will no doubt be popular. So far in the coverage of WEF I have heard not one word about the Paradise/Panama Papers. And so on. None of that is funny, really. The strain of forgetting is now a wave swamping the mooring of the concrete fictions that compose the mundane. Before one lost recollection dissolves, another absent memory supplants it in the void of shared memory. The social is not reinventing itself in this convolution of absence with the fluttering subversion of substance. The proper metaphor might be two greys, one light, one dark, poured into a slop sink with a sucking drain, and the fluid murk disappears with a snort after a momentary swirl and spiral down the hole.

But those are old stories, now. The new story is the Stock Market Correction. Or the pending US Government shut-down. Or... I can just watch JezZ Bold's fantastic video! Remember him performing this song a few months ago in front of "Network" in AFH Studio BK?

It's a difficult time to be a strictly technical, theoretical painter. Focal discipline is no joke in the studio. Being serious about art currently - in moments, on some days - seems mad, or just preposterous. Then the rain and debris seep through the skylight and spoil 100 pieces, and what can one do?

Conjecture and speculation and rhetoric are only sufficient to a point, and the poignancy of that fiction is not a moving image. Clever words, critique, do even less. One may as well wager on the weather with oneself for a share in nothing real. & That's the Truth, as Edith Ann said.

& then there are Michelangelo's drawings.

I saw this drawing, etc., in the Metropolitan Museum exhibit, which closes Monday.

Oh, before I forget... here are the links to all four Ben Davis "State of the Culture" essays in one place, for your ease of use, dear reader.

AFH UPDATE [January 2018]

A few words about status quo artworld... Ben Davis at Artnet published the first (and second - more in another update) of three important essays last week: State of the Culture, Part I: Museums, ‘Experiences,’ and the Year of Big Fun Art; [LINK]. Ben was my editor at Artinfo before I switched to Brooklyn Rail for the duration of OWS and some months after Occupy was crushed, while Occupy with Art was still active. Ben's writing is consistently insightful, neatly balancing macro-analysis with close-reading. I consider his personal views to be ethically compelled. Given the challenging dynamics coursing through politics and economy, global to local, the concerning trends in technology, the tricky Social and scary military operations, from hacks to threat-levels, and how all these phenomena merge in our shared dimension of experiential Now, the persistent question aired across most interactive media is How should the individual [I] and collective [We] respond?" Obviously, this is a complex conundrum, and the question itself is a sign of confusion - if I/We knew what to do, we would already be doing whatever what-to-do is. To understate, the situation indicates a protocol breakdown, or to put it in the contemporary vernacular, disruption. It is probably a good idea then to take a moment and evaluate the situation, before doing anything, because the situation is complicated, confusing and overall disruptive. We might ask some basic questions during our pause, and reflect on the circumstance. Has this difficult situation been caused or induced by someone or -thing? Why? Is everyone being affected by the situation equally? How precisely do the effects vary from person-to-person and across the collective We? Can we establish an instructive and verifiable timeline/history for the moment? Can we recognize historical patterns that indicate our current situation is like others in the past? And so on. In this post I will briefly stipulate my current approach to making art, which is derivative of a process similar to the one I outlined above. The documentation I have been posting the past several months constitutes my response to the status quo, which is not in fact reactive at all. I am acting as a free radical in contra-position to the state of the culture, which I have determined to be significantly corrupt, misguided and destructive, distorting both short- and long-term schematics and projections. The most powerful forces (pre-)determining the outcomes and shaping narratives prevalent in the artworld are not conducive, I believe, to best outcomes for this artist, or for people collectively. These driving forces mostly serve the interests of a tiny fractional subset of society, and fluff its whims. But I do not have to - yet - submit to the proscribed top-down/+ all-directionally enforced program, and therefore am diligently pursuing what I believe to be the correct course of action, relative to what's happening now.

The first phase of my doctoral art production is nearly complete, and should wrap in the first few days of 2018. I have shared the progression, cataloguing the creative sequence here in this blog. I have chosen not to share he documentation across social media and other platforms. It is not a fanatical privacy I am embracing, much less advocating. I have not prevented a few (trusted) others from publishing in their data streams their encounters with the work. That said, my auto-sequestration approach is fairly thorough. The AFH platform is limited extensively from what it has been since the circa Y2K launch of Art for Humans. The massive AFH twitterfeed stream is off. No AFH Facebook pipeline is sluicing content on the daily. I only post to AFH YouTube in order to post here. The AFH Tumblr array is a fallow garden. The Wiki is hacked and gone. The archives and legacy URLs are barely maintained online or shifted offline. AFH SEO operations are nearly non-existent. Why?

I won't answer that directly for the moment. For context, though, I will recommend a second recent article, published in e-flux Journal, titled "Productive Withdrawals: Art Strikes, Art Worlds, and Art as a Practice of Freedom," written by Kuba Szreder. I would characterize my recommendation of this essay as qualified or partial. The text covers some territory I inhabited in real time, and post-facto reformulates the actual reality with an ideologically colored fabrication. Nonetheless, Szreder at least is honest about the biases driving the reformation of the events (e.g., OWS Arts & Culture) and, I would argue, the others described and discussed in the essay. Further, the author offers excellent observations and conditional analysis pertinent to the artist in our status quo. The following paragraphs contains a sample of these contradictory matters:

“This social recomposition sustains art in multiple different shapes and tastes, operating according to varied economic principles—market logic being just one system among many—and aesthetic idioms. Art thus produced rarely resembles what is called and peddled as art in the blue-chip gallery nexus. Since it does not need to be an authored object of aesthetical contemplation, such art actually might be put to collective use. Steven Wright describes this process as one that creates “art-sustaining environments.” For a radical pragmatist, these social worlds are cooperative networks that link together art-related people, enabling them to get their art done.

Some of these art-sustaining environments are small, others large, some ephemeral, others stable, some informal, others quite institutionalized, some operating on a local scale, others spanning the globe. Some of them emerge as a result of long, evolutionary processes, and dissolve as silently as they were born, without making too much fuss. Others resurface under a protest banner, during an art strike, occupation, or boycott. In this sense, Occupy Wall Street was an art-sustaining environment, a transversal recomposition of existing art systems, a new artistic habitat, sustaining collective ways of practicing and thinking about art that ventured beyond the market-gallery vortex.”

[See footnotes in the original (LINK)]

Szreder's arguments are consistent with a volume of similar critiques and deconstructions framed as solutions for art in service of activism, resistance, etc., that do not actually include art itself, and instead, deny, minimize and/or erase its objective value, as well as the individual's role in creating it. The building blocks of the argument are modular and constitute a code of bias which is designed to resist the puncturing of its falsity in the way that good propaganda is designed. I won't voluntarily waste any more of my time and energy fighting faux-revolutionary fiction posing as the antidote for cultural disease or a call to aesthetic arms against Capital, Fascism, Racism, the Right, Corporatacracy, Patriarchy, Empire, etc., especially if the agent of that fiction refuses even to acknowledge art's existential value, as such, outside of its misuse by the worst elements in Civilization. Art predates these conceptions. As for my stance, one can think of relevant geopolitical phenomena that resonate (e.g., Israel/Tibet/Taiwan...) - why engage with the opponent whose prime tactic requires one's invisibility or erasure? The scenario can only generate first comedy, then tragedy. First the Invisible Man cries "I am here!" When he is still ignored, he must prove his presence, which almost inevitably manifests in tragic action. Even if the impetus - proving presence, and arguably the Present - is very much a basic artistic one.

The false binary [FUN/ERASURE], mapped in the articles cited above, is effectively superimposed on artistic production. The drivers of the phenomenon include a diverse mix of players, institutions, media and explicit and implicit impulses. The false binary originates from linked but separate spheres of compulsion and its management axiom presumes or assumes the artist must comply in the imaginary middle to one or the other. In short the artist is faced with an US/Them identity option. Both conceptions in the binary are fundamentally fictional propositions, involving consumption/displacement subtexts that function as an operative database for agents of both syndicates. This actuality is not readily apparent to casual observers in any case. The causality of immersion is one feature of both fictions, for instance, and either syndicate has ready rationales to justify immersion absent choice (one example, reinforced by its advocates as neo-virtuosity: shared means is redirected to apply to a movement that embodies forcible upheaval, disenfranchisement, a cataclysmic migration in story-packets, positive or negative in tone, depending on the agency). Whereas one agency roots its rationale in Property, the other fixates on the negation of Self, except to serve an ideologically detached and uprooted Mass. The presumptions are ancient, but they are propagated as a formal currency constantly subverting choice, and more specifically, expressive freedom as a sign of liberation in choice, which is actionable free choice. Art is, after many wars against tyranny, the greatest potential medium of choice, the highest version of free speech, as it were, if we accept couching art in linguistic constructs (I do not). In sum, art is hard enough to make and preserve in the best of circumstances. Art-making/preserving on the run is a doomed enterprise. "Precarious" is insufficient to describe the features of despair that attend the proposition of a mobile, immaterial "art." Suggesting otherwise borders on gallows humor and foxhole prayers, the stuff of nihilism, cynicism and pretense within desperation.

My soon-to-be 6 year-old son makes a virtual "painting" in Photoshop. How is this a collective function? Who owns the file, which is not exactly the same as the art? Although initially one might be dismissive of the connection between "Snake of Blood" and the essays linked above, and the content/context for art and artists they chronicle, the fact of my son's art practice is absolutely critical to the status quo. Discerning the emergent features of creativity for his generation is hardly an exercise in the Obvious, any more than it is a matter of Temperament, Taste or Beauty, the Sublime or Abject, the Unconscious. The art of the future is no more the purview of derivative dogma, psychoanalysis, scarcity, utility, or any other of countless immaterial definitions. Neither is the new art a function of the numerically categorical, which is to say, the Genre of Determinism. There never was a finite selection for artistic creation, and that fact has nothing to do with craft or representation, means/meaning and value(s). "It is what it is" echoes a certain divinity, but this proclamation is insufficient to encompass everything possible, and specifically, that which in reality exists. Which does not even touch on the question of Time. An artworld that is busy with other stuff is to an extent oblivious, and frivolous, and certain to fail in its implicit mandate to serve humanity. Basically, the most important immaterial collective activity boils down to establishing what matters, in a hierarchy of time-release priorities, reinforced by creations that help us and me envision, or visualize, realization through a program emerging from our mutually agreeable priorities. Such a program balances the conception>objective equation, and, speaking from experience, often consists of one fun time/thing after another, for all intents & purposes ad infinitum.

Yeah. That just happened.

Notes on Dimensional Time [NYC 2010+8]

Poetry & Precipitation

AFHstudioBK Is Closed.

Traversing America [Again]

Starting September with a Labor Day Sale at Good Faith Space!

State of the Artz Section

On Leaving NYC and Moving to Oregon

1. GOD

2. LIBERTY

3. FALLEN ANGEL (No Photo Documentation)

4. SNEAKY PETE (No Photo Documentation)

Some simple actions require no thought.

Survival as such is not art.

Being adrift is a state of being, but also a specific type of movement.

Displacement does not mean a thing will come to rest eventually.

Distance is a metrical form.

You can tell how disagreeable a person/place/thing is to one by how far one will travel to get away from the disagreeable person/place/thing, regardless of the degree of difficulty in the transition.

FRAGMENT 1

FRAGMENT 2

FRAGMENT 3

FRAGMENT 4

FRAGMENT 5

FRAGMENT 6

[SOLD]

[SOLD]

[SOLD]

[SOLD]

[SOLD]

[SOLD]

[SOLD]

[SOLD]

[SOLD]

[SOLD]

DATUM SERIES 1VINYL ON PAPER 4.5” X 6.7”$90

DATUM SERIES 3 [35 PCS.]VINYL ON PAPER 2.5” X 3.75”$45

DATUM SERIES 3 [18 PCS.]VINYL ON PAPER 4.5” X 6.7”$90

DATUM SERIES 1
VINYL ON PAPER 4.5” X 6.7”
$90

DATUM SERIES 3 [35 PCS.]
VINYL ON PAPER 2.5” X 3.75”
$45

DATUM SERIES 3 [18 PCS.]
VINYL ON PAPER 4.5” X 6.7”
$90